A little while ago a friend shared this video, which is of a construction worker in Houston stuck on a balcony of an apartment building on fire. It’s pretty gripping.

Moreso than the people who were incinerated on impact, and even those in the planes who knew what was going to happen, are those that were stuck in the inferno. Who started the day going to work, and ended the day choosing between being burned alive or jumping. Of all of the 9/11 images, it’s the jumpers that hits me the hardest.

This video has a happy ending. I wouldn’t be sharing it if it didn’t. But when I saw it, I thought of today.

Congratulations to the Penn State Nittany Lions, on having their burdensome sanctions lifted. They have clearly earned it, having gone the last two years without covering up any more sexual abuse of children (to our knowledge). We shouldn’t punish the current student athletes for actions that they were uninvolv…

Poppycock.

This is merely the last chapter in an complete and utter farce demonstrating the complete inability and unwillingness of the NCAA to come down too hard substantively on one of its premier programs.

Are we seriously supposed to celebrate how they “turned their program around” over this last two years? What, precisely, did we expect to happen? Did we expect them to cover up further sexual misdeeds the likes of which they covered up before? This is like letting Baylor off the hook because they went a couple of years without covering up players murdering one another.

“But we don’t want to punish the current student athletes for something they were uninvolved with…”

Poppycock.

If you didn’t want to do that, you shouldn’t have taken away the wins of a bunch of student athletes who were not remotely involved with the coverup. Student athletes who, unlike the ones now we suddenly don’t want to punish, had no idea what was going on. The two youngest classes at Penn State decided to go to Penn State knowing full well the sanctions they were under – and what the school did. The two oldest classes have already left. Further, students who had just signed up to go to Penn State were given an opportunity to transfer penalty free, so if they’re still there they chose to be. I think there may be a class in there that fell between those cracks, and that shouldn’t be (because a part of the penalty should have been that any Penn State student athlete, regardless of sport, should have been able to transfer penalty-free), but one mistake need not necessitate another.

But even forgetting that, how precisely is it that they think that sanctions work? It’s not as though they didn’t know this when the sanctions were issued.

Personally, I thought then as I think now: The sanctions included stupid and meaningless stuff at the expense of real penalties. Vacating wins is stupid because the games happened and Penn State didn’t (as far as we know) cheat to win them. The lack of due process given to Penn State was troubling, and perhaps they should have reconsidered at the time. But having gone through all of that, there is no real reason to reconsider now. Considering how well Penn State has done despite the sanctions, they need to be thinking forward about how they can be harder on renegade programs, rather than worried that they haven’t been hard enough.

DuckTales was never my favorite of the Disney Afternoon series, but this is all kinds of awesome:

My favorite was, without a doubt, Darkwing Duck. This will surprise few of you who know I am into comic books, but I actually wasn’t much into comic books or superheroes at the time. Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers was my next favorite, because chipmunks are cute or something like that. Talespin was after that, owing in part to the fact that I was a big Jungle Book fan when I was younger. I don’t consider Gummi Bears to be a Disney Afternoon show, for some reason, though I always did like the villain Igthorn.

I stopped watching around the time of Goof Troop. So I haven’t much opinion of Goof Troop, Bonkers, or Aladdin.

Gargoyles technically was Disney Afternoon for a while, but I don’t consider it such. If I did, it would be #1, blowing Darkwing Duck out of the water.

It’s kind of weird to see this song in a Disney channel context with dancing clowns. For those of you unfamiliar with the song, or who have never really listened to it, it’s actually kind of on the dark side.

The basic story of the song is that a girl was entranced by the circus that came to town. She “took up” with some clown and thought she had found a different sort of love that was fake. When the circus left town, she her broken dreams were left among the litter. The title of the song is “Don’t Cry Out Loud”… not as in don’t cry, but keep it to yourself and try to be strong in a world of heartbreak.

Somebody had the idea of putting some dancing clowns and putting it on the Disney Channel.

In a way, I approve.

-{Editor’s note: I have decided to discontinue the “Hit Coffee Weekend” feature in favor of posts like this, where I find something to talk about in the video.}-

The original TMNT movie does not hold up particularly well. While some of these criticisms are off-base (it was not uncommon for small – portable – TVs to have batteries, back in the day), there are some really goofy things going on.

Incidentally, I was watching Drew Carey Show the other day. There was a scene where you could pretty clearly see a dude standing in Drew’s bedroom in a scene where there very much would not be some dude in Drew Carey’s bedroom. Oops.

-{This post involves race and politics, so obviously partisan and racial commentary is okay. Do comment with care, however.}-

The Hollywood Reporter has a lot of interesting background stuff on Saturday Night Live in recent years. The most interesting part to me, naturally, is the show’s political balance. James Downey, a writer on the show, commented with regard to their treatment of Barack Obama:

If I had to describe Obama as a comedy project, I would say, “Degree of difficulty, 10 point 10.” It’s like being a rock climber looking up at a thousand-foot-high face of solid obsidian, polished and oiled. There’s not a single thing to grab onto — certainly not a flaw or hook that you can caricature. [Al] Gore had these “handles,” so did Bush, and Sarah Palin, and even Hillary had them. But with Obama, it was the phenomenon — less about him and more about the effect he had on other people and the way he changed their behavior. So that’s the way I wrote him.

This strikes me as pretty wrong, on its face. I knew even way back then the tact I would take: aloof, arrogant, and self-interested. Now, I don’t know the extent to which he actually is these things, but he did actually come off that way just a bit from early on. Enough to be able to pounce on. But SNL didn’t and said, even back then, that Obama was just so hard to make fun of.

It’s tempting to chalk this up to politics, but Downey isn’t very liberal, had some serious issues with Obama, and did go after him in another way (specifically, the media’s treatment of him). It’s honestly hard not to attribute this mostly to race. Specifically, the fear of being racist.

It isn’t the worst thing in the world, of course, that it’s harder to make fun of black candidates and presidents without getting a social wrist-slap. I’d argue that it’s actually generally a good thing. I do think that there was the fear of either being considered racist – even if white candidates do get that treatment. I think there was the fear of giving the racists’ cover (and I have no trepidation in saying that a lot of Obama’s critics are racist or use racism as a spiked hammer in their attacks). Which is actually quite understandable, but very much to the detriment of the show itself.

This actually speaks a bit to the odd place that Obama puts us in. Both in the sense that his critics have used his race to attack him, and in the sense that his supporters have attempted to link race with the vast majority of attacks against him. Unless it’s Obama eating a watermelon or something to do with Kenya, there are very few Obama criticisms that are so clearly and incontrovertibly about race that you can attribute it to such. Think back to the criticisms of previous presidents and how they might be perceived if applied to Obama:

He’s is a womanizer… that’s a fear of black male sexuality.
He’s is a smooth talker… ditto.
He’s is stupid… are you saying black people are stupid?
He talks funny… uhhhh?
He is a wimp… said only due to racist stereotypes of black masculinity.

So we’re left to where a race angle can be provided to just about anything. But it’s too easy to say that we shouldn’t consider race unless it’s a cross burning on a front lawn. One of the things Game Change that was pretty clear was that Hillary Clinton’s and John McCain’s people (over the alleged objections of the candidate) were using race, even when there was plausible deniability. And Obama’s people were using charges of racism even when they didn’t think that racism was actually a factor.

I said when Obama first clinched the Democratic nomination that it would be a race between the two parties. The Republicans would try to make race an issue as much as they could without getting called on it. The Democrats would try to take as many criticisms off the table by calling it racist. I should have figured this would apply to candidates as well.

Superdestroyer and I have gone back and forth on the future of lower-level athletics, with him believing that there is none and that before long schools will start dropping football programs and myself believing that (while some may) most will hold on and take the financial loss.

The University of Hawaii is talking about dropping its football program:

Athletic director Ben Jay on Monday asked officials to help lobby the state for $3 million to help keep the the school’s athletic teams competitive or it may have to consider a reduction in sports, according to a report in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and KITV-4 News.

“There is a very real possibility of football going away,” Jay said under questioning by members of the Board of Regents Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics, the Star-Advertiser said.

But, he said, “but even if football goes away, all the revenues that football drives goes away and then it becomes a costlier venture for the university.”

Most likely, he’s bluffing to get the state to cough up more money. The other FBS programs that have talked about dropping their programs (San Jose State, Rice, and Tulane) haven’t. Further, Hawaii is in the Mountain West Conference which is presently in a better financial position than those other schools in terms of revenue.

On the other hand, Hawaii is not a school that necessarily benefits from having a football program. The benefits are mostly comparative, and Hawaii has almost no competition within its state and appeals to a particular kind of student outside of its state. While having a football program or not may be the difference between having heard of Georgia State and not having heard of it, and mentally comparing Georgia State to Georgia Southern, the University of Hawaii has the benefit of being the flagship state university of our nation’s most unique state.

Which is how they have stayed competitive despite numerous disadvantages. I was stunned when I read an account of why June Jones made the lateral move to SMU. He had no recruiting budget and had to actually recruit players that had either never been to the campus or payed their own way to visit it. The facilities are in exceptionally bad shape. They do seem among the more vulnerable to dropping their program.

Other than the realignment ramifications – explored below – Hawaii exiting football would have two effects. Since Hawaii is in a particular position, I wouldn’t expect other schools to start suddenly re-evaluating football. It would, however, put an end to one of the pecularities of FBS football, which is that the NCAA allows teams that make the trip to Hawaii the opportunity to play a 13th regular season game. It is an effort to induce teams to take the long and expensive trip out. The second is the almost certain demise of the Hawaii Bowl, which was pretty much set up solely for the sake of giving Hawaii a place to play during bowl season. Typically, the the participants in the bowl are teams that have trouble filling their own stadium, and aren’t going to bring crowds to the Aloha State. While it’s a reward for players on teams that become bowl eligible, it’s an even greater money-sink than most bowl games and the visiting teams don’t even bring their marching bands due to cost.

Which must have the University of Idaho absolutely salivating. Idaho’s football program is currently languishing in the southern-based Sun Belt Conference while they wait for an invitation to the MWC. Unfortunately for U of I, they will probably be disappointed. Not just because UH isn’t likely to drop its program, but because if they do they are at best third in line. The first position being BYU, who is unlikely to be interested. The second position being UTEP.

UTEP is also probably closely monitoring the situation. They left the WAC for Conference USA in part for schools that have left Conference USA. There were rumors that they had tried to get into the MWC and were rebuffed. If they can afford the Conference USA exit fee, they’d probably gladly accept the invitation. As things stand now, they’re playing second-fiddle to their sister school in San Antonio. Both in the UT system, both with the same colors, except with UTSA having far more potential as a program. Geographically, they are a better fit for the MWC as well. For the MWC, they would be able to claim the El Paso market and have a presence in Texas (albeit barely).

If UTEP did make the move, then Conference USA would probably need to move to replace them. Last time around, Western Kentucky beat out New Mexico State for the slot. There is a strong likelihood that UTEP played a role in keeping New Mexico State out, and with UTEP out of the picture NMSU may be able to step right in. Though Arkansas State and Louisiana-Lafayette have been mentioned as potential candidates, neither seem particularly likely to me. Both other competitiveness, but Arkansas State doesn’t offer much of a region or market and has a lackluster academic profile. Louisiana-Lafayette has the academic profile, but not much of a market. More likely is that they would skip straight to Georgia State, which has made it clear that they are working to invest heavily in getting their fledgling program off the ground (plus: Atlanta!). Since UTEP itself isn’t very good, they can afford for the replacement not to be very good. Another possibility would be Massachusetts, which is looking for a home for its football program. However, that’s unlikely as UMass wants to keep its non-football sports where they are and the last time C*USA had this choice (with Temple) they were uninterested in football-only members.

The Sun Belt, whether losing Idaho or some school to Conference USA, would probably not expand.

Typically, it’s female actors who have to worry most about the effects of aging. Producers and casting directors tend to favor younger, and younger-looking actors for both genders, to be sure, but it tends to be more pronounced with women. There are more role niches for aging men than women. This is part and parcel of more general trends, where men are also allowed to be fat more frequently than women.

They don’t have to be young heartthrobs. Often, though, they are. Hollywood does like its hunks.

As a straight male, I’m not an expert at assessing male attractiveness to women. But I do read things, and I do have eyes and see some guys that I think have to be attractive to women.

Thomas Gibson and Benjamin Bratt are two such people. I see those guys and think to myself “Those are especially good looking guys.” Even by Hollywood standards. (Note, the picture of Bratt – left – isn’t the best.)

For such attractive men, it seems like both of them have aged particularly poorly. Neither of them are what I would consider unattractive, but there used to be a magic in their appearance that seems gone now. They seem less like “pretty attractive men” and more like “aging hunks.”

It is probably related to the fact that I got to “see” most of them when they were at their peak and it’s hard not to compare them to that.

Bratt is in Private Practice, which I’ve commented about a couple of times here. On the show, he is presented as being extremely attractive. He just doesn’t quite look the part anymore. It feels like the opposite of Carol on Growing Pains, where the writers just decided that she was fat even though the actress, Tracey Gold, wasn’t. Gold would later go on to develop a serious eating disorder.

Better this than the alternative, I suppose. If it were decided that Bratt were the unattractive character, he might have mutilated himself.

One of those listicles covering characters who disappeared from TV shows without explanation. It’s an odd list as some of them I thought sufficient explanation was given, like Erica Hahn from Grey’s Anatomy. She was dumped and humiliated when she made her exit, so I’d figured she just wanted to get the heck out of Seattle. They got Denise Huxtable wrong, who wasn’t on The Cosby Show when Money got pregnant (she was on A Different World), as well as Tori from Saved By The Bell who actually alternated with (as opposed to replacing mid-season) Kelly and Jessie. Minkus from Boy Meets World gets an entry (but not Mr. Turner, limiting themselves to one per show I guess). Though I don’t typically mind switching out casts, one of the ones that drove me crazy was Nikki Faber from Spin City.

Faber, played by Connie Britton, was Michael J Fox’s character’s love interest for three seasons. It was pretty well done with a very good build-up. They actually got me to care about the answer to the “Will they? Won’t they?” question that writers are always wanting us to care about. They did!

Then the very next season, they signed Heather Locklear as a cast regular as Caitlin Moore, and Mike and Nikki broke up at the opening of the season to make room for Mike/Caitlin, which I never cared as much about. When Fox left the show due to his health, it became Charlie/Caitlin with Charlie Sheen’s character. Which actually worked better, as far as that goes. Nikki disappears at the end of that season.

Later on during Sheen’s run on the show, Fox returns for an episode where he is engaged to be married and he’s using his affiliation with the mayor to check out of the whole thing (too busy to focus on the wedding, that sort of thing). Anyhow, that would have been a perfect opportunity for old school viewers like myself if Mike and Nikki had ended up together after all. But no, it was some other character. Boo.

Perhaps Britton was busy or too expensive. But it would have been almost as cool as Minkus’s return to Boy Meets World.