All I want for Christmas is some jewelry and a freaking expensive-ass car with a bow on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak5thX7cZO4&w=560&h=315
No…wait. Maybe I’ve been watching too much TV, because it seems odd that a young boy is going to grow up to be a grown-ass man with a family and responsibility and still look out the window for a luxury car. He couldn’t even drive when he was 8 because he didn’t have a license, didn’t know how to drive, couldn’t reach the pedals, it was illegal, etc. But y’know, buy people shit. Buy people expensive shit. Because the amount of money you spend is equal to the amount of love you are giving. This is America, damnit! Christmas is an American holiday. We invented it!
Y’know what I really want for Christmas? To know what in the holy hell a catch is, in the NFL. We have it figured out in the NCAA, but the NFL and the complete the catch nonsense…nope. We have more camera’s on the field with a higher definition than we ever had before and we still can’t decide what a catch is?
You know what else would be nice? More than 4 teams in the college football playoff. The FBS has enough financial strength to pay coaches MILLIONS (and millions) of dollars after they get fired for sucking at their job. Yet the FBS can’t find a for a team to play one more game? Really? The FCS does it with 12 teams. The NCAA even has a bracket, on their website. Div-II, Div-III, and even the NAIA have true PLAYOFFS. Div-II and Div-III have FAR more games than the higher divisions as well. Programs that don’t have the millions of dollars to pay someone to not work for them and not lose games for them. They don’t worry about travel and playing too many games. But the elite level of college football can’t do it? Are you freaking kidding me? Give me 8 teams. The five power house conferences and three “at large” teams.
Something else nicer than opening a gift – some consistency from the NHL Player Safety Department. Gabe Landeskog got 4 games for a cross-check to a guys face. Suspension worthy? Yup. 4 games bad? Not in a million years. Oh, and Patrick Kane did the same thing and got no suspension and no fine. But he’s a star and it’s the freaking Blackhawks so, y’know. Oh, and Landeskog is a repeat offender. Being a “repeat offender” officially doesn’t matter, but they mentioned it in his punishment. Ok. Whatevs. Sidney Crosby slashed a guys finger off, he hit Ryan O’Reilly in the junk with his stick, and he has thrown things at a ref. And the NHL….did nothing to Sid. But they DID come down hard on slashing but to the point that if your stick was near a guys glove, it was a penalty. You are taught as a kid to get your stick up on his mitts, not hard, but just to disrupt the play, and now you expect NHL players who have done this their ENTIRE lives to just stop doing it? Yeah, that’s definitely more reasonable than holding Crosby accountable for taking a dude’s finger off. They could argue that people pay money to see Crosby and Kane play, so they would be ripping off the fans. Heck, with enough money maybe Sid can rip off YOUR finger. He might even sign it. But, their fans paid good money to see the stars play, unlike the NBA where stars take nights off. That doesn’t include Landeskog for Avalanche fans? Who am I to judge after driving from Des Moines through all of Nebraska and the desolate land of eastern Colorado to come watch my team play. I wanted to see my captain on the ice. It was part of the reason I bought the expensive ticket and drove the 20+ hours to get there. It should have been 1 game, he should have played when I was there. And the Avs would have probably won that game and the other games they’ve lost without their captain and one of their best players on the ice. But y’know. Player safety. For Matthew Tkachuk, because people pay a lot of money to watch that guy….
Also, can we figure out what the holy hell “off-sides” is in the NHL? It’s so convoluted that the refs didn’t know the rule, and the NHL had to come out the day after the St Louis vs Colorado game and say they done messed up A-a-ron. I’ve only noticed it with the Avalanche because that’s the team I watch but it seems like they get the bad side of offsides consistently. It happened with the Blackhawks last year. Clear as DAY offside but y’know…it’s the amazing Blackhawks vs the lowly Avalanche so…yeah. It happens to other teams as well, I’m just going off my frame of reference here, Donnie. If the refs don’t know a rule and you have to come out and explain that the next day, then the rule sucks.
Another unreasonable wish I’ve got for this holiday season is to make the Ball family go away. Way away. Stop giving this delta bravo egomaniac the credit he craves. I don’t care how good his kids are at basketball, he’s a terrible human being for using his kids to up his own profile and make a buck. It’s damn near child abuse. Gary Busey is completely out of his mind, but it’s entertaining. Lavar Ball is out of his mind but aggravating. Gary Busey is the crazy uncle everyone loves because he says wacky shit but it’s never harmful. Lavar Ball is the crazy uncle that would sell you out in a second if he could make a quick buck.
For this holiday season, I wish for ESPN to move away from the shows of people yelling at each other and go back to what made SportsCenter and other shows fun – wit, humor, and tact. I didn’t mind watching highlights of the Nets vs the Blazers, because the anchor would make it entertaining with their charm, wit, and humor. They didn’t have to yell at me or talk over someone else. Stephen A Smith is an intelligent human being. So is Tim Tebow. Having them yell at each other is garbage television. It’s cheap, it gets people talking, but it’s garbage. ESPN 30 for 30 and E:60 are brilliant shows that show what ESPN is still capable of. The world, instead, apparently needs mindless entertainment, and that’s what we’re getting. Clickbait is now more important than news, and a quick distraction is far more important than telling a narrative. Seriously, how many TV shows do we need about a “rogue doctor who sticks to their guns and instincts (that are never wrong) to save patients that the world can’t save” and doing it in amazingly clean hospitals with perfect hair and the entire staff is amazingly attractive.
While I’m wishing over here, lets get term limits for every single elected office. Iowa kept electing the same guy governor over and over and over. It’s not what’s best for the state. Strom Thurmond was an EIGHT TERM SENATOR that served until he himself had reached TRIPLE DIGITS on the life odometer. There is no justifiable reason for this. Get new ideas in there. If this current President really wanted to “drain the swamp” then this should have been one of the first things to happen. Oh and please give me someone besides a Bush or a Clinton for once. Same thing with the Kennedys.
(The above is the gif that came up when I tried to search “Term limits”. It’s better than politics.)
My final unreasonable Christmas wish is for people to stop being cruel to each other, especially online. I genuinely like people, and would imagine that’s a common thing. I don’t always agree with them or the decisions they make, but it’s their life, it’s their right. I want them to be happy. But people let you down, people disappoint you, people make mistakes. We’re human. It doesn’t make us less valuable, heck it might even do the opposite. But my goodness, just because someone doesn’t have the same viewpoint as you doesn’t mean they hate you. They don’t. True hatred is disgusting and evil. I use the word hate in my daily life way too much because I don’t actually mean it. I’ve only truly hated a very few amount of people in my 35 years on this planet. But thanks to social media and written text lacking context and tone, a lot is lost in translation. What someone truly meant to express is completely lost. So simple disagreements can explode out of control and ruin lifelong friendships because of a few characters and words posted on Facebook or Twitter. We’re more than our social media history. Hell, we are A LOT better than our social media profile. We’re complex imperfect beautiful creatures. When someone doesn’t talk about a topic or want to talk about it. They have a reason. They don’t want an argument. They don’t want to be mad. They don’t want to be bitter at someone. Not during the summer and especially not during the holiday season. You actually don’t win anything of value by winning an argument on the internet. In fact, you’ll probably lose something more important.
