Won’t you stay just a little bit longer? Cavs-Lakers, Behind the Box Score
February 10, 2016LeBron James is No. 3 on ESPN’s all-time NBA rankings
February 11, 2016Happy Thursday, WFNYers; inclement weather be damned. Snow and rain can wet our roads, but they can’t dampen our spirits! We will persevere! Do your worst Mother Nature, you vile wench! Carpe diem!1
Congratulations to those among you who will be happily spending Valentine’s Day like myself: beside some romantic candle-lighting with a bottle of wine, alone, and watching the NBA All-Star Game. The Cavs coasted into the All-Star break with a win against the Traveling Kobe Farewell Roadshow on Wednesday. It was just 12-and-a-half months ago that the Cavs used a trip to the bowling alley and a win over the Lakers to propel themselves to a 12-game win streak and a 17-out-of-19 win stretch. Perhaps the win over the Lakers will catapult the Cavs to similar results upon return from their mid-season respite. The Cavs have a few days off, the Indians are approaching spring training in the desert, and the Browns are knee-deep in felony season — but while we’re waiting … .
The second episode of American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson aired on Tuesday, and I recommend watching the show if you’re not already. Jacob touched on it briefly in last Thursday’s “While We’re Waiting… .” The first two episodes have been excellent, and it’s been one of my favorite TV experiences of the year so far — which isn’t identical to saying it’s a “great” show, though the first two episodes have been exceptional.
Tuesday’s episode of The People v. O.J. chronicled the entirety of the infamous “white Bronco” (not the trusty steed or the Denver Broncos mascot) chase scene, when America came to a complete halt to watch a football player drive straight on an empty highway. Both Scott (a lot) and Andrew (a little) talked about how culture intersects with sports in their “While We’re Waiting…” this week, and in no instance was that more apparent than the O.J. Simpson pursuit and ensuing trial. I think American Crime Story has been well acted and well done so far (aside from the gratuitous moments with the Kardashian children). I think the degree of difficult is high and there are a lot of ways to bungle the handling of it, so I’ve been impressed with the first two episodes.
In fact, if you had one “event” to describe to a person from another country or an alien visiting earth that would explain everything they needed to know about America, I would argue that the O.J. Simpson pursuit and trial best encapsulates the country’s motives, interests, attitudes, values, and habits. The O.J. Simpson saga “says” more about modern America than any war (either of the foreign or civil variety), political episode, current event, or pop culture phenomenon. The O.J. Simpson saga explains America better than Watergate, the birth of rock and roll, the Civil War, the moon landing, 9/11/the war on terror, the popularity of William Hung, American involvement in World War II, the rise of oil, railroads, and the automobile, the war on drugs (uhh we have a lot of wars), the creation of light beer, and nine seasons of Seinfeld.
America is a TV nation, and the O.J. Simpson saga was the best television show it ever had…
America is a TV nation, and the O.J. Simpson saga was the best television show it ever had…
The O.J. Simpson saga had everything. A charismatic athlete-turned-movie star idolized by the masses was accused of brutally murdering his ex-wife (the savagery of which is the most-overlooked aspect of the entire episode), and everything that followed was a miscarriage of justice in one form or another. It had sports, celebrity, race, and (of course) violence. Even those among us who view themselves as “above” tabloids can’t help but be fascinated by the O.J. Simpson saga — there’s just so much material, and all of it was riveting. And it spawned the Kardashians!
It even involves concussions, the topic du jour in football. Credit to Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman, who years ago talked about the possibility of Simpson having brain damage from football on the B.S. Report. (( I couldn’t find the episode after a brief search, presumably because ESPN obliterated it from the internet. )) Even if American Crime Story dramatizes the scenes with Simpson, it seems painfully obvious now that Simpson was suffering from some mental illness, and it’s not a great logical leap to think it might have something to do with the hits to the head he sustained while running for 11,000 yards in the 1970s. Whether knowing Simpson has severe CTE changes your opinion of the situation is an interesting intellectual exercise.
In hindsight, the Simpson saga seems even more insane than it did at the time — and it seemed crazy at the time. The nation stopped to watch a white Bronco amble down an empty I-5 and 405 while Simpson had a gun to his head in the backseat after his ex (with whom he had had a history of domestic violence) had been slaughtered. Then, one of the most notoriously racist institutions in America (the LAPD) botched the handling of the case, and a trial in which every tertiary character became a celebrity ended in an acquittal despite some fairly convincing evidence. I mean, O.J. had a gun pointed to his head in the back of the Bronco while we all watched on TV during the NBA Finals! It’s nuts! The 30 for 30 “June 17th, 1994,” does a nice job of expressing the lunacy of the situation (and I highly recommend that, as well).
America is a TV nation, and the O.J. Simpson saga was the best television show it ever had — so much so that Lili Anolik of Vanity Fair argued in 2014 (rather convincingly) that the Simpson trial created reality television and killed pop culture. And now there’s a television show about that television show. It’s so meta!
Anyway, the O.J. Simpson saga encapsulates the intersection of culture and sports better than anything we’ve ever seen, and is one of the most compelling and bizarre news, pop culture, and sports stories in American history. America Crime Story has been good so far. Let’s see if it can maintain this quality throughout the season.
Your Calvin and Hobbes strip of the day. Maybe I can convince Calvin to make a Valentine on my behalf for a certain Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback.
And now for the random 90s song of the day. I can’t disclose too many details of the process used to select the random 90s song of the day (because it’s top secret), but I will say that it involves a rigorous empirical model, a Native American ritual that definitely does not involve peyote, a papal conclave, and it makes more sense than the Iowa caucus.
But there were several candidates up for consideration for this week’s entry of R90sSotD, until a tweet from Sarah Sprague made the choice obvious. I summoned the conclave and we quickly decided that Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” was the obvious answer for Thursday’s R90sSotD — the conclave also gave me three bronze demerits for not reaching this obvious conclusion sooner. Yes, “Sabotage” is involved with the aforementioned Bronco chase in this week’s episode of American Crime Story, and Yes, it’s awesome.
Man the OJ chase scene being set to 'Sabotage' and suddenly it's 1994 so hard.
— sarah sprague (@sarah_sprague) February 11, 2016
“Sabotage” is also one of my favorite music videos of all time. The Beasties’ fake mustache game is very on-point. And though I can’t confirm it, I believe the “Sabotage” video partially inspired the scenes from Dirk Diggler’s Brock Landers pornos (link SFW) in Boogie Nights.
Scheming on a thing, that’s a mirage
I’m trying to tell you now, it’s sabotage!
- Easy for me to say, as I live well outside the range of lake effect snow. [↩]
9 Comments
Kyle, please refresh my memory. How did the LAPD botch the handling of the case? I don’t remember that. I do remember F. Lee Bailey nailing Mark Fuhrman on a tangential racism issue, but I don’t recall any missteps relevant to the actual murders. I’m not saying there weren’t, I just don’t remember them.
I confess, the OJ thing bores me to death (literally), so I may have no actual recollection, but wasn’t there some issue with possible planted evidence (or at least some question as to the chain of custody of some evidence)?
That seems vaguely familiar, although I don’t know if that went anywhere.
I think the only major botching that was done was by the jury.
But, boy, I sure don’t want to argue this all over again. Kyle, I withdraw the question. And I withdraw from the conversation.
Don’t mean to draw you back in, but the whole “have the defendant try on the gloves” thing was also colossally stupid.
My memory is a bit hazy, but I clearly remember Jackie Chiles nailing the glove issue as “outrageous, egregious, preposterous!”
Mark Fuhrman botched the collection of evidence, his history of racism provided a loophole the defense exploited to insert enough reasonable double to win an acquittal. Happens everyday in America just that the defendant in this case was black and on the winning side.
Wow. I remember laughing at that Calvin and Hobbs strip when I was a kid. When I read it now, my bully alarm goes off immediately. If my daughter got that valentine at school today, I’d lose it.
There was legitimate chain of custody issues with one of the blood samples.
Fuhrman perjured himself on the witness stand and later pleaded the 5th to a question about planting evidence.
Like Making a Murderer, the OJ case has shown me that the accused may be guilty AND the police may be tampering with evidence to make getting a conviction that much easier.
If the bra don’t fit, you must acquit!