New Rafael Albuquerque Comic Funny Creek Announced By ComiXology - Bleeding Cool News

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ComiXology Originals previously announced a collaboration with Stout Club Entertainment, and it will now kick off this August with the release of Funny Creek, a new all-ages comic written by the co-creator of American Vampire, Rafael Albuquerque. The five-issue, all-ages series is about what happens when a child's obsession with a fictional character goes too far, which sounds a lot like what's happening every day on Comic Book Twitter. Albuquerque is joined by co-writer Rafael Scavone, artist Eduardo Medeiros, colorist by Priscilla Tramontano, letterer by Bernardo Brice, and editor Bis Stringer Horne. The series will be released simultaneously in English and Portuguese and is one of four comics in this deal with Stout Club, which is a collective of creatives including the above Funny Creek team as well as Mateus Santolouco. 

Funny Creek cover. Credit: ComiXology Originals and Stout Club.

This series, which will tell an emotionally poignant tale about a time of innocence darkened by tragedy, follows a girl named Lily as she enters the world of her favorite cartoon. It's a coming-of-age tale about self-realization and how, when a long journey is complete, one must always come back home. Along with this press release, Funny Creek writers Rafael Albuquerque & Rafael Scavone said:

"Funny Creek is a very dear project that we've been planning for years with Eduardo Medeiros, our longtime friend and partner in the Stout Club. In many ways, it's a story about friendship. It's also a story about growing up in a culture that idolizes violence, a place we all have been as children. It's a very special project for the three of us, a story we believe needs to be told."

Funny Creek page, written by Rafael Scavone and Rafael Albuquerque with art by Eduardo Medeiros. Credit: ComiXology Originals and Stout Club.

Albuquerque, who will finish his long-running series American Vampire with writer Scott Snyder starting this October, added:

"We've wanted to collaborate in a new project for a long time and finally decided on a book aimed for young readers, which is not our comfort zone at all. While brainstorming ideas, heavy subjects kept coming to our minds, and we decided that we should not avoid, but embrace them—figuring out how an 8-year old kid would deal with things like loss, guilt and grief. That was the path where we found something unique and interesting for both young and mature audiences."

Funny Creek is set to focus on the depiction of violence in society and fiction, and how this can be interpreted by a child trying to find ways to cope after being traumatized by grief. Scavone, who is known for his work on Wonder Woman, All-Star Batman, and Hitgirl added:

"Guilt is a tough subject for adults to deal with, but it's even harder from a child's point of view. The most beautiful in how children communicate — and the most challenging to someone trying to represent it! — is that it is absolutely simple, and yet so rich in meanings. I faced many of my dilemmas as a young and as an adult Rafael, while writing this story. And each time I see Eduardo's unique art over my script it gives me a sense of magic and growing up."

Funny Creek page, written by Rafael Scavone and Rafael Albuquerque with art by Eduardo Medeiros. Credit: ComiXology Originals and Stout Club.

Medeiros, who readers may recognize from Gotham Academy, ended the teaser for the new series by saying: "Courage, Loyalty, and Joy!"

We could use a little more of that in our world, and certainly in our fiction. Funny Creek debuts on Comixology on August 4th and will release weekly.

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About Theo Dwyer

Theo Dwyer writes about comics, film, and games.

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July 31, 2020 at 04:00AM
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Madden Bowl 20 champion Joke signs with XSET - ESPN

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3:56 PM ET

Madden Bowl 20 champion Raidel "Joke" Brito has signed with XSET, the new esports organization co-founded in July by former FaZe president Greg Selkoe, the organization announced on Thursday.

"Basically [XSET's] vision is to make video games cool," Joke told ESPN. I feel like video games are frowned upon. My mom was always like, 'why do you play so many video games? You need to go to school.' Even now, my little cousin who is 13 years old is really into Fortnite and my aunt isn't really into video games and even though I've had a ton of success in video games, she doesn't let him play it because she wants him to get a real career.

"I feel like [XSET] is trying to give people who want to be video gamers an option to do that by making it look cool. I think that's something that's kind of frowned upon between people in general, especially the old generation, where people just don't want their kids to play video games. That's the big reason why I like the vision that they have."

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Considered one of the greatest competitors in Madden history, Joke has appeared in 11 Electronic Arts major tournaments, earned more than $200,000 in prize earnings and appeared in multiple Madden Bowl final fours.

He also co-founded Elite Madden, a strategy website geared towards helping aspiring competitors up their game in the football simulation title. Being able to continue promoting Elite Madden -- sporting their gear at events and posting about it actively on social media -- was what drew him to sign with XSET. Joke said many other esports organizations that were interested in signing him wanted to restrict him from promoting his own brand and focus solely on theirs. With XSET, he'll be able to do both.

XSET is the first major esports organization to enter the Madden space since a shooting that occurred at a tournament in August 2018. At that event, after being eliminated one of the competitors re-entered Chicago Pizza, which housed the GLHF Game Bar, with two handguns and opened fire on fellow entrants. 10 attendees were injured and two participants, Taylor "SpotMePlzzz" Robertson and Elijah "TrueBoy" Clayton, were killed by the gunman. Since their deaths, Joke and many other prestigious Madden players have held tributes for SpotMePlzzz and TrueBoy.

But the shooting, Joke said, has had a large effect on the business of competitive Madden.

"There was actually a decrease [of interest] in Madden, obviously after Jacksonville," Joke said. "A lot of teams were hesitant to get into Madden because of the shooting. I think [me signing with XSET] is going to be really big for Madden because since the shooting, this is the first team that's getting into Madden. There were already teams in Madden -- Complexity was already in it when the shooting happened. This is the first esports team going into Madden after the shooting. I think it's a big thing for the Madden community."

XSET was announced in early July, with the founding team featuring Selkoe, Framerate founder Marco Mereu and two other former FaZe staffers. In an interview with the New York Times, Selkoe said he felt that FaZe could be better about its diversity, particularly in the wake of uptick in discussion around the Black Lives Matter movement following the death of George Floyd and the LGBTQ+ community.

"We have a responsibility to do something that pushes change," Selkoe told the Times. "We intend to have a very clear social mission of inclusion. We want to stand up for kids who have been bullied or feel like there's not a gaming organization for them. We want our organization to look like the youth of America."

Like FaZe, XSET will focus heavily on merging pop culture -- such as music, streetwear and sports -- with gaming and esports.

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July 31, 2020 at 03:04AM
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'It’s not a joke': Houston doctor Stella Immanuel defends use of hydroxycholoroquine for COVID-19 - Houston Chronicle

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An unorthodox Houston doctor-minister whose promotion of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 earned a retweet from President Donald Trump and a rebuke from medical experts is passionately defending her dispensing of the medication.

“It’s not a joke,” Dr. Stella Immanuel said during a brief interview outside her office with The Houston Chronicle. “The people that are saying that it doesn’t work, they are lying.”

Among those she has targeted is Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the nation’s top infectious disease experts. She tweeted this week, “Fauci you are lying. You know it. Americans are dying and you are playing Russian roulette with their lives.”

Fauci and other medical experts have noted that multiple clinical trials have found hydroxychloroquine doesn’t benefit those who have become infected, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned that it can trigger heart rhythm problems.

“The overwhelming prevailing clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have indicated that it is not effective in [treating the] coronavirus disease,” Fauci said.

Immanuel, 55, who holds medical licenses in Louisiana and Texas, gained national attention when she and others on Monday touted the drug’s benefits on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. A video of the event went viral, and Trump retweeted it to his 84 million followers.

Social media platorms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter classified the video as misinformation related to the coronavirus and removed it. The ensuing media focus on Immanuel revealed that she is also a preacher with a long history of making bizarre claims.

Immanuel leads a church in Katy called Fire Power Ministries and she focuses on deliverance, or using rituals to cleanse people of evil spirits or demons. She has said she believes in alien DNA, and in 2013 she shared a video saying that certain women’s diseases are caused by sex with demons in dreams.

“They are responsible for serious gynecological problems,” she said in the 2013 video.“We call them all kinds of names — endometriosis, we call them molar pregnancies, we call them fibroids, we call them cysts. But most of them are evil deposits from the spirit husband. They are responsible for miscarriages, impotence, men that can’t get it up.”

Outside her office Thursday, Immanuel confirmed her eccentric beliefs.

“Yes, I’m a demon buster. Yes, demons sleep with people,” said Immanuel. “Yes, if you pray for them they get better.”

Immanuel said she was invited to speak Monday at the gathering of “America’s Frontline Doctors” in Washington, D.C. after a tweet of hers started to go viral this month. Immanuel tweeted “I refuse to be chained by fake science,” and tagged Trump. It has since been retweeted 30,000 times.

“I have successfully treated over 250 COVID patients with HCQ, zpack and zinc. No deaths. All these double blinded studies sponsored by big Phama is fake science,” Immanuel posted on July 17, referring to Big Pharma.

Speakers at the Monday event that masks and government shutdowns were not needed to combat the spread of the new coronavirus.

The Washington Post reports that pop star Madonna shared the video of Immanuel, calling the Houston doctor “my hero” and asserting “some people don’t want to hear the truth.” Madonna deleted the post after Instagram blurred the video and classified it as “false information,” the newspaper reported.

Still, on Thursday, U.S. Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Tyler, said that he would take hydroxychloroquine after testing positive for coronavirus.

Outside her office in Houston, Immanuel repeated the same message that she did in the nation’s capital: hydroxychloroquine works.

Immanuel, who has called the medication a “cure” for COVID-19, noted that her medical practice has been “inundated” with patients and has so far treated more than 400 people with the drug, including elderly people, asthmatics and diabetics. She encouraged her patients to come forth and speak publicly.

“We have not lost a patient yet,” said Immanuel.

Immanuel is not the only local doctor promoting the drug.

After a COVID-19 outbreak at a Texas City nursing home, Dr. Robin Armstrong, the medical director and a state GOP officer, began providing the tablets to 35 residents who had tested positive but not yet shown symptoms. He said in mid-May that three died but most were no longer showing symptoms.

Born in Cameroon, Immanuel graduated in 1990 from the University of Calabar in Nigeria and completed a residency at a Bronx, N.Y., hospital.

The Texas Medical Board licensed Immanuel in November 2019 for pediatrics and emergency medicine with an address associated with the Rehoboth Medical Center. She has no documented disciplinary actions or known complaints in Texas or Louisiana, where she was first licensed in 1998.

Court filings reveal she was sued in January in Louisiana for medical malpractice in a case involving a woman who died in 2019 after being treated by Immanuel at a medical center. The woman complained of a broken needle in her arm after doing methamphetamine. Immanuel and another doctor prescribed Norvell medication but did not order a closer look at her arm through an X-ray or other medical tests, the woman’s family alleged. She later developed a flesh-eating disease from the wound and died, according to documents provided by the family’s lawyer.

The family’s lawyer was surprised to learn that Immanuel had left Louisiana to work in Texas.

Some of the videos on Immanuel’s YouTube, Twitter and Facebook pages hint at her medical background. In a March 26 video, she appeared to be at her medical practice while singing, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” altering the lyrics to pray for doctors and nurses.

Other videos on her personal pages show her praying outside of her clinic with a megaphone, especially after the death of longtime Houston resident George Floyd and the protests that followed. On June 20, she shared a video that equated Black Lives Matter founders with Marxists.

Immanuel has said that people don’t need masks to protect against the coronavirus, despite wearing them in her videos. In a Facebook post this week, she clarified that she does wear a mask because it’s “the law of the land and it makes me a good example.”

She said she is on hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis, making her unconcerned about catching the virus.

Asked about specific studies that show hydroxychloroquine is not a cure for COVID-19, Immanuel said there are many studies that prove it works.

“Whenever we have two or three studies that show it works,” said Immanuel. “There’s always studies that come out and knock it down. It’s fake science. They’re going to allow people to die so that they can sell vaccines and sell $5000 drugs. It’s diabolic.”

Immanuel cut off the interview after about nine minutes and headed to the parking lot, saying she needed to go.

Nicole Hensley contributed to this report, which contains material from the Associated Press.

brooke.lewis@chron.com

samantha.ketterer@chron.com

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July 31, 2020 at 08:39AM
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Was Beethoven Black? A Twitter meme reveals more about race and music than the composer's origins - The Conversation CA

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The year 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth, and in mid-June this year, he started trending on Twitter. Perhaps it wasn’t so strange that Beethoven was popping up on social media platforms, but what was unusual and certainly unforeseen: the claim that “Beethoven was Black.”

Where did this idea come from? The circulation of this trope has no doubt been catalyzed by recent events — namely, the death of George Floyd and the subsequent ascendancy of Black Lives Matter — and by the rigorous debates over race that have since permeated mainstream and social media.

As it turns out, though, Beethoven being of African descent is not a new idea: the notion of the great composer’s secret ethnicity has circulated at the fringes of the media and scholarship for more than a century.

Anecdotal evidence

The original theory of “Black Beethoven” first appeared in the popular press in the early 20th century. Much of the anecdotal evidence for this claim is based on contemporary accounts, many of which were collected in Sex and Race, published in 1944 by historian and journalist Joel Augustus Rogers. These accounts present the composer as having the features and complexion of a Black person.

Beethoven was described by some contemporaries as “dark,” “swarthy” or as a “Moor.” This latter term, “Moor,” was used in the 18th and 19th centuries to refer to a Muslim person from North Africa or the Iberian peninsula, or more generally a dark-skinned person, and has generated particular interest and conjecture about Beethoven’s race.

Historians have suggested that a member of the Habsburg royal family, Prince Nicholas Esterhazy I, even called both Beethoven and Joseph Haydn “Moors,” supposedly because of their dark complexions. Such accounts are likely specious. But one possibility is that, if the prince used this term for Haydn (whom he employed as a court composer) or for the young Beethoven, he was using it idiomatically: that is, “Moor” could be a dismissive epithet for a servant.

For some scholars, Beethoven’s music itself, its rhythmic complexity — specifically its syncopation — points towards his hidden ethnicity, as it suggests a knowledge of West African musical practices. A few writers even go so far as to suggest the presence of reggae- and jazz-like rhythms in his piano sonatas. Beethoven was Black because his music “sounds” Black; in other words, notwithstanding the unlikeliness of his familiarity with African music or that syncopation was commonplace in European music at that time.

Others cite Beethoven’s friendship with the Afro-European violinist and composer George Bridgetower as somehow evidence of the composer’s own multiracial identity.

Friendship with Bridgetower

An illustration of the composer George Bridgetower by Henry Edridge, c.1790. (Wikimedia Commons)

Ultimately, there is no reason to believe that Beethoven was Black: the genealogical evidence going back to the 1400s shows unambiguously that Beethoven’s family was Flemish. Speculative anecdotes from the early 19th century about his swarthy complexion, broad nose and coarse, black hair are unsourced and racist.

The suggestions that jazzy syncopations in his music somehow derive from African genetics are anachronistic and absurd. Calling a white person with a darker complexion a “Moor” was also not uncommon in the 19th century: Karl Marx’s companions referred to him as “the Moor,” not because of his race, but apparently because of his thick black hair and voluminous black beard.

Pursuing the idea that “Beethoven was Black” both whitewashes and blackwashes music history, as African American studies scholar Nicholas Rinehart has observed. Blackwashing makes important historical figures Black for the sake of seeking to validate the cultural contributions of people of colour. Whitewashing refers to the practice of valourizing Black musicians and composers by giving them white referents: a gifted Black composer becomes, for example, the “The Black Mozart” or the “African Mahler” — a mere “footnote” to a white composer, in Rinehart’s words.

Ultimately, it may be Beethoven’s friendship with Bridgetower, and not internet memes, the blogosphere or the Twitterati, that provides a way to productively approach racial politics in classical music.

How many of us, in the 21st century, are even aware of Bridgetower, who was an accomplished and well-known violinist in England and Europe during his lifetime and was also the original dedicatee of Beethoven’s famous “Kreutzer” sonata for violin and piano? As the African-American writer and poet laureate Rita Dove insists, Bridgetower might have become a “household name’ in the 19th century musical world had he not been Black.

Beethoven originally dedicated his composition ‘Violin Sonata No. 9, Op. 47 in A major’ to his friend, the Black composer George Bridgetower (after they fell out, Beethoven later re-dedicated it to violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer).

Forgotten and overlooked

Efforts to make Beethoven Black — an awkward dance of trying to examine the issue of race and classical music while simultaneously maintaining the canonic centrality of Beethoven — ultimately obscure the existence and contributions of actual people of colour in the history of music. Black composers like Joseph Boulogne, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and William Grant Still, Rinehart argues, have simply been "forgotten, overlooked and overwritten.”

The “Beethoven was Black” trope trending on Twitter serves the interests of current racial politics and social justice movements like Black Lives Matter, just as it served the Black Power movement in the early 1960s: Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael both invoked Beethoven’s would-be Moorish ancestry to claim that he — along with other historical figures, including Hannibal, Columbus and Jesus — was a Black man.

If the genealogical or phenotypical pursuit of “Black Beethoven” leads to a dead end, it nonetheless emphasizes the importance of past and ongoing work by Black scholars to research and document the history of music and race. Just as musicology finally embraced feminist and gender theory in the 1990s, providing new and more inclusive ways to examine the meaning and experience of classical music, the recent conversations about “Black Beethoven” points in the direction of fruitful and necessary avenues of inquiry into music history.

This, in turn, may help inform our contemporary cultural dialogues in these turbulent times.

The Link Lonk


July 30, 2020 at 09:01PM
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Was Beethoven Black? A Twitter meme reveals more about race and music than the composer's origins - The Conversation CA

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Meme group joins with Lincoln Project in new campaign against Trump | TheHill - The Hill

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The group Meme 2020 is partnering with The Lincoln Project, a prominent Republican group opposing President TrumpDonald John TrumpGovernors' approval ratings drop as COVID-19 cases mount Gohmert says he will take hydroxychloroquine as COVID-19 treatment Virginia governor, senators request CDC aid with coronavirus outbreak at immigrant detention facility MORE’s reelection, with a new campaign targeting young voters through popular Instagram accounts. 

Meme 2020 made its first foray into politics earlier this year with a push backing Michael BloombergMichael BloombergThe Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Facebook - Trump pivots on convention; GOP punts on virus bill Bloomberg's gun control group spends M on campaigns in eight swing states Democrats' lurch toward the radical left — and other useful myths MORE’s presidential campaign, but its latest project, which launched this week, is instead focusing on a broader voter mobilization effort. 

“Meme 2020 is sort of laser focussed on sort of building up this new medium that has been kind of undeveloped in political advertising,” said Ryan Patrick Kelley, chief of staff of Meme 2020. 

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Partnering with The Lincoln Project, he said, seemed natural given the spotlight the anti-Trump GOP group has garnered in recent months. The Lincoln Project is run by Republicans opposed to Trump, including George ConwayGeorge Thomas ConwayLatest Lincoln Project ad: 'It's Trump's virus now' Lincoln Project ad features former Navy SEAL: 'Trump is not conservative' Sinking Trump seeks to squash GOP dissent MORE, the Washington, D.C., lawyer married to White House counselor Kellyanne ConwayKellyanne Elizabeth ConwayLatest Lincoln Project ad: 'It's Trump's virus now' Lincoln Project ad features former Navy SEAL: 'Trump is not conservative' The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Facebook - Trump pivots on convention; GOP punts on virus bill MORE. 

“It's no secret that the Lincoln Project has been just an absolute juggernaut in this area,” Kelley said. 

The GOP group earlier this month said it raised $16.8 million in the second quarter of 2020, and it has launched numerous ads attacking Trump. But the Lincoln Project has been active in “more traditional spaces,” Kelley noted. Through this partnership, their message can expand to try to reach younger voters, which will be a key voting bloc for the November election. 

“The Lincoln Project is resonating all over America because we speak to conservatives and independents in a way they‘ll understand," said Sarah Lenti, executive director of the Lincoln Project. "Meme2020 works much the same way: we’re using the language of the internet to speak to younger voters.

“It’s incredibly exciting to see two entities, from different partisan backgrounds, join together in solidarity to change the course of history,” she added in a statement. 

Meme 2020’s campaign is funded by tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman. The group is also partnering with Rhyme Combinator, a viral media company that promotes artist and progressive causes, on the project. 

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Unlike the sponsored content backing Bloomberg in February, the new launch isn’t candidate-focused and will include content to connect potential voters to resources, including finding their polling places and requesting mail-in ballots.

“Voter mobilization is sort of centric to this launch,” Kelley said. 

The group is working with popular meme Instagram accounts including, MyTherapistSays, which has more than 5.5 million followers, TankSinatra, which has more than 2.6 million followers, and AdamTheCreator, which has 762,000 followers, in the latest campaign. 

Memes posted by the accounts on Wednesday focused on mail-in voting, which Trump has railed against while issuing baseless claims that it leads to voter fraud. The memes feature applications for mail-in ballots for different states with text messages from “FBI agents.” 

The meme posted by MyTherapistSays, for example, features a California mail-in ballot application with a text from an “FBI agent” that reads “Good to see you doing something productive. Also, quarantine is not an excuse to reply to him, Jenna.” 

One posted by TankSinatra features a mail-in ballot for Florida, a key swing state for November’s election, with a text from an “FBI agent” stating “You know Joe Exotic isn’t on the ballot, right?”

In addition to the memes, the accounts included links users could follow to request mail-in ballots. 

Along with the launch of the campaign, Meme 2020 this week filed paperwork to create a super PAC to further build on its efforts to engage young voters, Kelley said. The group filed paperwork Wednesday to form Meme America PAC. 

“You have some of these great super PACs out there, [but they’re] not necessarily geared toward younger Americans,” he said. 

The PAC will help the group amplify its message and activate voters through Election Day, he said.

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July 31, 2020 at 04:31AM
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MLB suspending Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly for 8 games is an absolute joke - For The Win

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Major League Baseball is terrible at handing out punishments and making smart decisions so this news shouldn’t surprise anyone – Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly has been suspended eight games for throwing at a few Astros players on Tuesday night and then brilliantly taunting them while walking off the mound.

I mean, come on MLB. Eight games for that!? As the great Ken Rosenthal points out, this 8-game suspension in a 60-game season is the equivalent of a 22-game suspension in a normal 162-game schedule. That’s also eight games more than any Astros players got for cheating.

Which is an absolute joke.

Also to be noted – Kelly, who doesn’t always have the best control, didn’t hit any of the Astros players that he threw at. So he’s basically getting suspended for throwing a ball near a batter, which is a pitcher’s job. Should he have avoided throwing the pitches behind the hitters? Yeah, probably. But still, nobody was hit by any pitch.

If anything, Rob Manfred should suspend himself for continuing to be so terrible at his job.

Manfred, of course, didn’t suspend any Astros players for their roles in the trash-can cheating scandal that helped them win the World Series over the Dodgers in 2017. Manfred, in defending his decision on that lack of punishment, even called the World Series trophy just a “piece of metal.”

By not punishing any of the players he left the Astros more vulnerable to situations like we saw Tuesday night. What did he think was going to happen when members of the Dodgers and other teams had to see that nobody was punished for that scandal? Were they just going to accept the fact that the league doesn’t care and move on with their peaceful lives? No, of course not.

I think we can all agree that Manfred is a bumbling fool who should have been out of a job a very long time ago. Punishing Kelly for such a long time in such a short season is more proof that Manfred and MLB are completely out of touch with reality.

Kelly is protesting his suspension and will be eligible to pitch tonight and if I’m the Dodgers I just let him go out there and pitch the first inning as a big middle finger to a league and a boss that are way over their collective skies.

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July 30, 2020 at 04:37AM
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Funny? Anger? KFI host took it from berating dads to this - Redlands News

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Now that we have baseball back …

Tim Conway Jr. fooled me back on Feb. 18 while driving through Redlands on my way to a boys’ basketball playoff game between a couple of “San Bernardino Strong” teams — Aquinas and Indian Springs.

KFI’s Drive Time/Prime Time host (KFI 640) from 6 to 10 p.m. was on a rant.

He was taking on the “Little League” dad. About time, I thought. It’s terrible, I thought. Rant on, I thought.

Stay tuned, though. I wasn’t thinking, I thought. He had a deeper point to make.

Tim Jr.’s dad, famous comedian Tim Conway, Sr., had long spent time in the backyard with his boy.

“My dad would play catch with me.” Never used the excuse that he was too tired, either. “Any time,” said Tim Jr.

Tim Sr. never ran roughshod over Tim Jr. that he had to bloody himself — translation: Overtrain at all expense — to reach the pros.

Dads, he seemed to be saying, overwhelm their own children.

“I remember we had Jim Gott, one of the ex-Dodgers, on the show one time.”

Gott told Tim Jr. how he’d hired a private coach for his two kids, just so he could protect the relationship with both his sons.

Tim Jr. kept advancing his case.

Dads have to get their kids to the pros. Think of the money. The fame. Winning a Stanley Cup. An NBA ring. A Super Bowl trophy. Or, in this case, a World Series. All that pressure. Extra hitting. Extra lifting. All that extra running.

At the championship trophy presentations, noted Tim Jr., those guys “Thanked their mothers on TV.

“Why do you think they thanked their mothers?” Tim Jr. asked.

He answered his own question: “Because the dads ruined their relationship when they were growing up.”

So where was Tim Jr. going with all this?

Was this a shakedown on all youth sports connecting dads with their kids?

Or was it a “my dad is better than your dad” type of rant?

Was this his way of bone-crunching modern-day dads into being more humane to their kids — any sport — by backing away from their own lost dreams of making it to the pros?

Hmm.

I kept listening. That Aquinas-Indian Springs game can wait, I thought. Tim Jr. had me intrigued.

Tim Jr.’s point was suddenly about to become clear.

All that high-pressure might’ve come from age 8 on up through the ranks — youth ball, practices, games, extra workouts, travel ball, high school, even college — was the price you had to pay.

Tim Jr. finally revealed his hole card. This was all about 2017.

“When the Houston A-Holes cheated the Dodgers out of the World Series ...”

A lifetime of preparation and sacrifice came crashing down to that. Stealing signs, which I thought was a time-honored tradition in baseball, got a little too far away from acceptable standards.

Tim Jr. played on Dodgers’ third baseman Justin Turner’s meritorious rip on baseball — all those Astros’ shenanigans, plus MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s assault on the World Series trophy.

Turner expressed himself well. Manfred got caught in a war of words, calling the trophy “a piece of metal.”

Argued Tim Jr.: “Those guys might not ever get another chance to win the World Series.”

This was great radio.

Tim Jr., who’s not a regular sports talk radio host, in short, out-commented that regular sports talk radio crowd — all of the slick guys from Colin Cowherd and Dan Patrick in the morning to Roggin & Rodney in the afternoons, plus everyone else in between.

Tim Jr. may have gotten to the bottom of it better than any of those pro sports commentators. Showcased it much brighter.

All those sacrifices made by each Dodger player — Turner, Clayton Kershaw, Kenley Jansen, Cody Bellinger, manager Dave Roberts, an entire roster — were knocked off by electronics and a trash can.

Listening to Turner’s rants, which Tim Jr. played, was far more effective than just reading Turner’s biting words in the print media.

Great prep. Well-organized. Better than TV. Got you right to the gut of that whole wacky cheating scheme.

As for me, I’m perfectly willing to let Tim Jr.’s rant speak for my own feelings. No wonder this guy's a star in broadcasting.

This was one of the best examples of all.

When I walked into Aquinas’ tiny-but-packed gym that night, I was pumped.

Got a sports tip? Want to talk sports? Hit me up at obrown@redlandscommunitynews.

The Link Lonk


July 30, 2020 at 10:34PM
https://ift.tt/2Xc2FLD

Funny? Anger? KFI host took it from berating dads to this - Redlands News

https://ift.tt/3eOfySK
Funny