Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Oklahoma City Thunder Behind the Box Score
December 12, 2014Johnny Manziel, Browns will be on FOX for second straight week
December 12, 2014
Hey everyone, here’s my weekly entry for WWW. It’s a big sports weekend in Cleveland with Johnny Manziel making his first start on Sunday, but we’ve honestly talked about that enough. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I like to use this space for some different stuff from time to time. As long as it doesn’t go down a political path, I figure you guys are on board.
O.K. I lied. I’m going to start with something tangentially related to Johnny Manziel.
Marvin Lewis’ comments about Johnny Manziel…
I wanted to hit on the biggest non-story of the week. Almost nobody thinks what Marvin Lewis said was meant to be offensive. The word “midget” can be used in an offensive manner toward some people, and I’m willing to accept that when Lewis used it to describe Johnny Manziel, there might have been collateral damage to people impacted by that word on a daily basis. I get it. I really do. Marvin Lewis shouldn’t have said it. But as I said in the podcast with Dave Sterling this week, we really are making a mountain out of a molehill.
Fox 8 did the funniest thing. They took a situation and made it even more ridiculous when they sent Lil John to Marvin Lewis’ press conference. But I have seen some of the more social crusader types of comments and posts going around as well, and it bugs me when absolutely everything must be shouted from the soap box.
Marvin Lewis was making light of the fact that Johnny Manziel is short in stature as a professional football player. He was making a joke. Whether or not you find it funny, it’s more harmful to legitimate causes – generically speaking – to campaign against jokes as if they’re intentionally hurtful statements.
And I get that Marvin Lewis isn’t funny and he isn’t a comedian. That’s why he apologized, because the context just doesn’t make sense and doesn’t work. To make it any more than that though is an obnoxious level of righteous indignation that seems more for the purpose of having something to trumpet about than the issue itself. Nobody thinks that Marvin Lewis hates little people who are suffering from the social stigma of their genetic lot in life, do they? It was a bit insensitive, he apologized, and that should really be the end of it.
Righteous indignation is important. Protests are important. Serious conversations about serious issues are necessary, especially when they have life and death impacts. As a society, I think there’s a finite limit to the number of serious conversations we can have in a limited amount of time and have them make an impact. Can we please stop wasting our time in scenarios where someone makes an off-handed, slightly off-color joke? It really cheapens the whole culture, I think.
Trying to find time to watch a movie…
Ever since I podcasted with Brian Spaeth and he informed me that Guardians of the Galaxy came out, I’ve wanted to see it. As I sit here on a Friday after three nights of potential opportunities, I’ve still not seen it. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s the season, but it’s increasingly hard to find time to watch a whole movie.
I can’t stay up too late because I rise early – usually between 5:30 and 6 – for workouts. So, that means I’m in bed by 10 and if I’m not asleep before 11, it gets sketchy as to whether or not I’ll get up on time. If I don’t get up on time, I have to cut the workout short and then I want to murder people for the rest of the day.
After work, we pick up the kids, eat dinner and hit a kid bedtime between 8 and 8:30. A few nights a week that 8:30 mark is when I schedule Skype calls with the podcast guests that I hope you’re enjoying on a weekly basis. My wife recently started working out too, in the evenings, and therein lies the scenario by which I have wanted to see a movie since Tuesday and yet I still haven’t seen it yet.
I know I’ve been overly particular here with the specific anecdotal details from my own life, but I’m guessing all that’s different in your lives are the details in the way. Tell me I’m not the only one that has to try and figure out where the time is going to come from. I still am in disbelief that I somehow made the summer movie podcast work the summer before last.
Speaking of making mountains out of molehills…
Last week I smashed three businesses for bad customer service. This week I’m going to stand up for a small business even though they clearly made a mistake.
There’s a story making its way around the Internet about a Harvard Business School professor and a dispute he had with a Chinese restaurant over $4. The dispute is because the prof ordered some food and calculated his bill based on the menu on the restaurant’s website. The restaurant hadn’t updated the pricing on their website menu in quite some time and thusly charged the professor $4 more than what he was expecting to be charged based on the listed prices online. It sucks, but it happens and we can all understand once we get the explanation, right?
Apparently not, because the Harvard prof is one of THOSE people. You know they type. They do things that defy logic and common sense to the point that even if they have a point, their relative point is undercut by how hateable they are.
From his emails to the restaurant…
“I suggest that Sichuan Garden refund me three times the amount of the overcharge,” Edelman helpfully wrote Duan, according to theGlobe.
“The tripling reflects the approach provided under the Massachusetts consumer protection statute, MGL 93a, wherein consumers broadly receive triple damages for certain intentional violations,” Edelman wrote in one of several lengthy, detailed emails to Duan published by the Globe.
“Please refund the $12 to my credit card. Or you could mail a check for $12 to my home.”
Duan was very polite with Edelman as he explained in his own emails that the website hadn’t been updated with new prices, and as he offered to refund him the four bucks the professor was overcharged. Duan said he would wait for authorities to determine any penalty and whether he actually owes Edelman treble damages.
Is the restaurant wrong for not having its website up-to-date? Absolutely. And it sounds like they’ve been extra late in updating as there have been complaints about this since 2010. But so what? We’ve taken an extra giant leap from a small business owner not taking charge of their website to “intentional violations” whereby the prof seems to assume that this restaurant was attempting to profit from the mismatch in prices by trying to pick people.
Maybe the courts would agree with the professor on a technicality, but it seems pretty plain to me that he’s the jerk here. He was offered to be made whole by the restaurant, but that wasn’t good enough. No, he wanted to treat a Chinese food restaurant like a grocer with intentionally faulty scales or a gas station that has rigged their pumps to overcharge customers in some way. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t feel like laying a heavy-handed smack on these people for this transgression.
It appears that now that a light has been shined on this situation the professor has reflected on his tactics with regret. Good on him for realizing the error of his ways.
Your weekly moment of soccer zen…
A really really really long half volley shot finds the back of the net!
Brand new original Christmas songs from Los Campesinos!
New Christmas music is something that normally makes people groan. It’s a weird “genre” of music where people want to hear nothing but the classics or really good covers of those classics. People don’t want to hear new, original Christmas songs. They just don’t.
That being said, I love a couple songs from the new Los Campesinos! Christmas album, “A Los Campesinos! Christmas.” I don’t love them because they’re reminiscent of classic Christmas songs. I love them because they’re pretty typical Los Campesinos! songs.
That’s it from me this week folks! Hope it was a good one. It’s Johnny Manziel time. Let’s hope they find the magic and keep the feint playoff hopes alive.
29 Comments
Craig,
Tomorrow night, send the kids packing for a sleepover at grammy and pop pop’s house. Turn the lights down low, the fire up high, crack open a bottle of wine, tell the wifey you’re about to take a visit to Pleasure Town…AND WATCH GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY.
Seriously, you’re only hurting yourself here.
I am Groot.
Honestly, it amazes me that Craig both gets 8hrs a sleep a night and works out everyday. That is impressive dedication on both ends there. On the other hand, I have seen GotG, so I think it’s a push.
Thanks to a fitness center at work, I use only my lunchtime to workout. I still don’t get 8 hours of sleep, but that is my own fault.
And I seriously thought GotG was the best movie I saw all year. Granted, I didn’t see a lot of movies, and I admit some comic book bias (although probably not even close to you, as I’ve seen from your comic knowledge comments), but I still thought it was outstanding in so many ways.
Thanks, I know the Marvel stuff pretty well because that’s what I loved as a kid. I am pretty ignorant of all of the other comics.
GotG was refreshing. I think that’s the best way to put it. It was such a nice break from all of the super-serious comic book movies they have been putting out lately. A bunch of those are great, but they are freaking comics, they don’t have to all be gritty.
The only issue I had with it is that I cringed on some of the language because I brought my kids. Thankfully, the main lines they repeated afterwards were the final interaction quotes (the whole “what if I” questions…hilarious).
Good molehill takes, Craig. The midget thing is so stupid and trivial, but every single writer of every single article about the upcoming game in the Plain Dealer feels s/he has to mention it, as if s/he will be denigrated for not doing so. I wish they’d grow up and give it a rest already.
As for the Harvard pencil-neck, I wonder if he likes Johnny, because if he does, Mike Polk has a club for him.
Guardians is worth checking out Craig. You could tell everyone had a blast making it.
I haven’t watched a movie in months. By the time we get to my son to bed and then I take care of stuff around the house like emptying the dishwasher, taking out the trash, etc., it’s too late to start a movie. Plus if we do have the time it would take to watch a movie, we’d rather spend it on catching up on TV shows. I assume I could watch movies if we made it a priority, but I guess movies are just pretty low on my priority list. The last movie I saw in a theater was Dark Knight Rises, and I’d be surprised if I see another movie before Star Wars comes out next year.
We’re the same way – DVR comes before movies, and the DVR is never empty.
We are the opposite. Movies are the priority. TV shows are usually just something that gets put on in the background while we do other things.
I’m pretty much in the same boat with you on finding time in the evening. Putting the kid to bed between 8 and 8:30 sucks up that valuable prime time. And like you I get up early so I need to be in bed early. My Netflix queue is neverending.
Also, I love those Los Campesinos songs. I put them on my offbeat Christmas songs list.
I loved GotG. I saw it in the theater twice and I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie twice in the theater. Make time, Craig. Lose sleep for it.
yes, I too know Assistant Professor Edelman. Given his life priorities, guessing he is no longer actively consulting for Microsoft, NY Times, etc. and that he does not have children. He’s the guy who manages to tell everyone, from his barista to his building maintenance guy, that “I’m a Harvard professor.”
How do you like dem apples?
something like that, maybe substituting nerd glasses for the Michael Bolton look.
Mr. Edelman has obviously never seen Waiting…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvVdIg-sTo4
Edelman’s whole thing is fair, lawful transparency of businesses on the internet. So I kind of understand how he missed the forest for the trees on this one. Not to defend him too much because he was still a jerk and wrong. But I can see how he ended up convincing himself it was about more than four bucks. My free advice: you probably should reconsider your actions when you find yourself saying – “it’s the principle of the thing”.
The whole thing does illuminate two points of the the internet age for me though: 1.) for some reason people find it hard to show basic decency online and 2.) there’s no such thing as a minor incident any more.
I need to convince my girlfriend to watch it.
Just take the advice I gave Craig – wine, fire, two tickets to Pleasure Town – and then when she goes the 10%, hit play. She’ll thank you after.
Or seriously, if she’s into music at all, sell her on the soundtrack.
http://www.amazon.com/Guardians-Galaxy-Awesome-Mix-Vol-1/dp/B00KLF5J64
if there ever is going to be a comic book movie that is a “gateway movie” into the genre, then this is that movie.
The Pina Colada Song will not help my chances.
Also this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBeKaR-IOrA
The movie makes it work.
Think the problem is the few we’ve watched have been sort of meh. Tried Avengers, which is good, but starts too slowly. I think I’ll be able to sell her on the quirkiness and visuals.
i get it too. But when a small restaurant owner, kind of guy who works 80 hours a week, says he goofed and apologizes crusader man made his point and can sheathe his weapon. At some point we all must figure out that we are to act like humans first, pinky pointing walking curriculum vitae second. His public comeuppance is fitting.
Eh, I guess. I’m just getting tired of public shaming, I think. Been a lot this year.
I do too, but what if the NCAA is the one getting publicly shamed? Honestly, I’m a bit upset that Yahoo! Sports chose to release this story on a Friday. This could have caused a real conversation if it wasn’t heading into the weekend.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/peek-inside-johnny-football-circus-reveals-manziel-s-value-at-a-m-and-ncaa-s-poor-handling-of-it-all-062735852.html
It’s never wrong to publicly shame companies, organizations, or institutions.
Great piece.
the best part of it was how the NCAA is hurting itself. I think he’s absolutely correct that more athletes would stay in school and make the NCAA product better overall (and the professional products by virtue of more training)
Sooo….Locker or Mallet?
/ducks