What to Blog when there's nothing to Blog about?

Twelve years ago I could always find something on which to write a blog post. Back then I was very keyed into politics, especially the local variety, and there seemingly was always something I found interesting.

Fast Forward to today.

Don't give two shits about politics, don't vote, pretty much dislike every politician and political candidate out there, and except for a few close friends, I'm not particularly interested in debating any of the political bloggers still standing. Here's the rub though, there aren't many.  And the ones that are still standing are partisan and boring.

Mind numbingly boring.

Nor do I miss the days when a humorous blog post (usually making fun of a really bad political ad involving a motorcycle or some such) got me labeled as a "thinly veiled misogynist" or *shudder* a Teabagger. Granted, the fist insult probably involved deep research by the poster who had to determine whether they were using the words right (all three of them probably) and the 2nd was just a word thrown around to try and disparage anyone the poor second writer didn't like.  They had no clue what it meant, they just knew their political friends were using it and the Jr. High level humor made them feel wise.

From circular reasoning to begging the question the old political blogoshpere was a minefield of logical fallacies wrapped in a 5th grade writing level package. In short: It was bad. It was a little ironic that I won my one award, but shuttered my blog prior to the Houston Press releasing their issue naming me "Political blogger of the year" or something along those lines. (This was right at the tail end of their "Best of Houston" actually meaning something. In fact, it might have been the end of it meaning something.) [On another note: I miss the old Houston Press]

Political blogging became boring. Politics became boring. The Left disagreed with the Right who disagreed with others on the Right who disagreed with pretty much everyone. When it came down to it though, both sides were the same, it was just different courtiers hanging on to each side, seeking their pile of the public largesse. When it comes right down to it, the only philosophical difference between Team Red and Team Blue is who they want the government to write the checks to.

So, I bugged out, and I never looked back.

At this point you might be thinking "He's saying all of this to announce that he's dipping his toes back into the pool, that he's going to paint himself and some wonderful centrist, smarter than everyone else with a reasoned take on everything that the two parties are lacking."

Nope.

I'm not. For one, I'm not smart enough to try and solve all of the world's problems, shit, I'm not smart enough to solve my neighborhood's problems. Nor am I especially driven to try all that hard. And I'm sure as Hell not interested in talking to politicians again, or talking to political bloggers again for that matter, I'm quite content to leave them to their joyless corner of the World. Have fun kids.

The fact is that I just felt the need to write something today, and I've found that blogs are usually pretty good when there's a little bit of navel gazing going on.  I'm not sure what I'm going to write about on this thing going forward, but it will be something. I've always said that writing like this fills a creative void in my life that my job just cannot (nothing wrong with my job, but the nature of it is not creative).

I've tried to write a book, but I've neither the skill, nor the attention span to keep with it. I think I've written about one tenth of one chapter, then life gets back in the way.

So the accountant in me will continue to work at my job, and earn the money, and the failed, bad, writer in me will continue to pound away on this blog. I might touch on some current events, some sports and sports betty things, and I might just touch on the things I find absurd in this world. Trust me, there are a LOT of those things.

That's the fun stuff that I have been missing from my early days of blogging, just writing about whatever the Hell I want.  I've been meaning to get back to that, so here we go. I cannot promise a post per day or something silly like that, but I should be able to turn out at least one per every week or two. It just depends on what I find that interests me.

Your mileage and entertainment value may vary. At least you'll get out of it what you paid for it.

College Football: It's getting closer.

 The best site on the planet for seeing what College Football games air on what channel finally has some games listed on their website.  Granted, they don't have times on many, or networks, but at least we're seeing some games.

Add to that ESPN/ABC rolling out their Week One Schedule and it's getting clear that there are only a few, hot and humid(In Houston) months to go before College Football makes it's triumphant return. If nothing else, it will be a great thing to watch North Dakota State University beat up Colorado on Tuesday, after the week 0 Dublin silliness is done.

Will College Football, with it's new 12 team playoff and mega conferences, be horrible this year?  Time will tell.  I'm worried that the importance of the regular season is watered down and that we've lost some regional rivalries etc. But we've regained some as well. Maybe.

At least all of the sudden we have some games to point to.

Let's go.

The NFL Draft Actually Sucks. (But we cannot get enough of it *self included*)

 Tonight, we're going to be told that 32 dreams will come true.

And it will take hours for that to happen.

When the Chicago Bears go on the clock they will, undoubtedly, take up almost their entire allotted 10 minutes to finally send in the pick that they, and pretty much everyone else in the world, knows that they are going to make. Hail Caleb Williams, good luck to you. Then another 10 long minutes will pass before the Commanders finally turn in a card with whatever quarterback they settled on weeks ago, then the Patriots, etc. etc.

We're told that this is happening because teams are busy working the phones trying to secure a trade partner to "trade down" in the draft to receive more draft picks, but is that really true? No, they're told to take their time so the NFL TV partners can spend too much time telling us things about the player just selected that we already know. But, are the teams really trying to find a "trade partner"?

In Chicago's case, certainly not.  They got rid of Justin Fields and desperately need a new face of the franchise. Do you really believe that they're going to trade with Minnesota (the team targeted as most likely to want to move up) and settle for picks 11 & 23 and (possibly) Bo Nix? And the Commanders, also desperately needing a quarterback, will probably select reigning Heisman winner Jayden Daniels. The the Patriots will select Drake Maye and THEN we might get some serious intrigue.

The Cardinals have a QB (Kyler Murray) but it's thought that they MIGHT be interested in J.J. McCarthy. I say no and they do the obvious (but not necessarily the smart) thing and take Marvin Harrison Jr. At this point we might see a trade as the Chargers will most certainly not take J.J. (they already have a franchise QB in the form of Justin Herbert) despite Harbaugh's glowing over him. What Harbaugh has done is classic draft day smoke. He's hoping to get someone to overpay for pick 5.

And so on and so on.

Already some NFL draft experts are predicting as many as 10 trades in the first round. Breathless regurgitations of "this is the most intriguing draft EVER" gush out of everyone's mouth. At the back end it may be. The reality is that, while this is a relatively deep draft at certain positions, there are probably not 32 players in this draft with 1st round grades. That means that teams near the back-half will want to trade back to get the same quality of player for much less money.

We like to think that the actual NFL draft is much like the Kevin Costner movie "Draft Day", GM's wheeling and dealing and last minute shockers about player's character causing them to fall down the draft board.

The reality is it's a bunch of people in a room pouring over numbers, projections and perceived value, with a smidgen of trade value talk sprinkled in. It's too long and, for the most part, pretty boring unless your team is picking.

But, it's football. In a time when all we're given is the, so-far, very underwhelming UFL. Because of that, we'll all watch it. Then we'll listen to the talking heads after the draft giving draft grades which are about as useless as a shot clock in hockey.

All that said, I'll be watching.  Because it's football, and it's the draft, and it is fun to see where the players you enjoyed watching will end up as professionals.

And you probably will be as well.

Happy 2024!!!!

 Well, we made it through 2023. Despite, at times, it's best attempts at foiling us.

2024 is starting off with some promise. Michigan is in the CFP final, it's looking like my cardiac issues are going to be not much of anything, and I'm just going to have to get used to the health challenges that come with being on the North side of 50.

Which means, as you can imagine, all of the usual New Year's Resolutions (get healthy, exercise more, etc. etc.) but also an eye forward to a LOT of change this year. And I'm talking about BIG life changes, not just the little, insignificant things that we poke at.

I'll be sharing a little bit more about those things in the months to come.

For now though let's just be happy that we've made it to another year and that we can all, just, still find a good burger no matter where we travel in the USA.

Good wishes.

Happy Thanksgiving

 As the National Day of Giving Thanks approaches I wanted to wish all of my (few) remaining readers a very Happy Holiday.

May you eat, drink, watch parades and football with the best of them.

Me and my house will be eating Turkey but, if you choose not to, then enjoy whatever it is that you will be feasting on. If you choose to be a crank and aren't thankful for anything well.......it's possible this Blog is not for you.

As a reminder, Benjamin Franklin wanted our National Bird to be the Turkey, which would have meant we'd be farming and eating Bald Eagle on this day.  Thank goodness he lost that one.

We'll be off until after the Holiday weekend.

F1 Hates You. (Yes, you.)

 'Las Vegas Biggest Event in Years was a Disaster'

And while I think "Disaster" is a bit of a reach it certainly was not the grand slam that organizers were hoping for.

Yes, the actual race was, by F1 standards, pretty good.  There were actual lead-changes and some overtaking for a change. Typically F1 races are decided by qualifying and the cars, too big for the older tracks they run on, pretty much just go around with the leader (previously Lewis Hamilton but now Max Verstappen) pulling away and winning by several seconds. While it might be among the most glamorous, and most expensive, of the racing circuits, in terms of actual racing it is the absolute worst. F1 is terrible.

But the television broadcast was a pretty thing. (Full disclosure, I wanted none to do with actually being in Las Vegas for this event). The dynamic of the cars going full-chat down the Strip and the really cool Sphere in the background was awesome. Martin Brundle's grid-walk had plenty of rich, famous and other cool stuff, just like they wanted.

I even hear that the high-rollers showed up on race night, and casino employees in the tip pool did quite well. So the very rich Euro-trash showed up on their private jets as well.  Good deal for all.

In the end, that's all that F1 really cares about. That they had stars and the wealthy at the race and on TV providing the whole shoddy mess with an air of faux-sophistication. In some ways, that's VERY modern Las Vegas Strip.

Because, and this is important, just like the employees and owners of the Las Vegas Strip casinos, F1 hates you (and me) the common folk. 

Oh sure, they NEED us, but they hate us. They want our attention and our money and (important for F1) our eyes on televisions but, if they had their druthers, they would really prefer if you'd just take the table scraps that they give you, fork over your money for little return and then politely STFU.

Already there are social media chatter from Las Vegas Strip employees that they would really prefer if just Strip employees were allowed to comment on things and the visitors just be silent. The idea that the Strip employee is the center of Las Vegas, and not the paying customer, is an issue that some cruise ships are dealing with and it's not something good to get a toehold in an area that relies on customer service.

Mrs. TPM and I have been to Las Vegas hundreds of times. We've been on the Strip for many of those. we abandoned the Strip a few years back because we noticed these conditions creeping in but we went back on our last trip to check out a VGK game.

The service that we received at NYNY Center bar was amongst the rudest we've ever experienced. It was very cleat that were were imposing on the bartender's time rather than being the reason for it.

And that's exactly how F1 views the general public. A problem that has to be tolerated, not an opportunity to make new fans. You're a nuisance to them, something they have to put up with in order to take your money from you. They kicked the public out of the viewing areas ahead of Free Practice 2 (after FP1 was cancelled after 8 minutes and everything thrown into a mess by Carlos Sainz' car getting chopped up like scallions in a Gordon Ramsey restaurant by a loose drain cover.) simply because the race organizers did not want to pay overtime to the employees they hired to cater the event.

They did their level best to block the view of any location where people might be able to glimpse a second of race action without paying for a ticket, and (by many accounts) their private security service was screaming at people walking around the Strip during the race. If you weren't walking fast enough, you got screamed at.

Here's the thing though.  The race seemed to do OK. Probably nowhere near the (*snickers*) $1.3B economic impact that was predicted, but well enough to ensure that, next year, all of this happens again, and again and again for the next nine years. On race night, the grand stands were full, Shaq and Brad Pitt were on Pit Lane telling everyone how marvelous things were, Max Verstappen (the race winner and the most unlikable champion of this generation) even put on an Elvis inspired racing suit after weeks of saying the whole thing was a sham, that he hated Las Vegas, and would just skip the whole mess were it up to him.

Now, the checkered flag has been waved, the teams have moved on to their next, meaningless, race (the driver's and all-important constructor's title having long been decided) and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor's Bureau is warning people that it will take "at least" 8 weeks to tear everything down.

Looking at my calendar that means somewhere around mid-January. Which means that F1 could cock-up the New Year's Strip fireworks as well.

From that sense F1 Las Vegas is peak Corporate Vegas.  Enjoy.