Tag Archives: Television

Hail Flutie

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I’m watching BC play Maryland at home on ESPN2. Pam Ward, if that is her real name, was just talking about Doug Flutie’s Hail Mary pass to Gerard Phelan against Miami in November of 1984. She said it happened “right here on this field” – which it DIDN’T! The game was played at the Orange Bowl!

As a BC alum, I’d like our history to be reflected accurately on a national telecast. As a sports fan, I’d like the commentators on national telecasts to get these kinds of details right. It was a HUGE play, one of the most famous in college football history, and I must insist that those pairs of people who are selected to speak expertly about a subject actually know what the fuck they’re talking about.

UPDATE: The “Miracle in Miami” was addressed in the trivia question, read by Ward. She was slow to read it, as if confused, but as she put 2 and 2 together, she appeared to realize the error of her previous ways. Thank goodness for all of us. I didn’t suppose a researcher would nudge a producer who was inform Ward of the correction, but am nonetheless glad that it was all set right. We can all sleep tonight.

ESPN’s Jon Miller Has a Strange, Halting Way of Speaking

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I’ve noticed -  something weird about – Jon Miller, who – does play-by- – play on the ESP – N – Sunday Night Baseball broadcast.

It makes me seasick.

For a guy who speaks for a living, Miller has a voice that lacks the euphonious flow of, say, every other broadcaster I’ve ever heard.  His sentences don’t rise and fall, in speed or pitch, under the momentum of their meaning.  He seems not to know how to use dependent clauses, which, in case you haven’t been paying attention, are the on-the-fly footnotes that flesh out sentences that would otherwise zoom toward their targets with unforgiving speed.  (Fleshing out sentences, of course, is the mostly invisible artform that radio and tv guys espouse to fill the air during those several-hour games.)

No, Miller cuts and weaves like Barry Sanders, without needing to.  To extend the metaphor, maybe he should just know where the seam is going to be and hit it spot on at full speed, finding the next word and the next word smoothly instead of making it seem like he’s pausing to think about every decision as if a lewd comedian on truly-live TV, trying not to be reprimanded.

Joe Buck, by the way, is at the other end of this spectrum… his sentences flow so seamlessly into each other that it truly appears he doesn’t ever stop talking – at least until he puts me to sleep, or I mute the TV or change the channel, one of which I inevitably do because the put-on is just too much, discussing everyday sports with such restraint as if they’re tonight’s serious world news.

Since Miller’s doing the Yankee game right now, here’s what I think about the usual suspects: Michael Kay, too nasal, and way too much of a homer.  John Sterling, too full of himself.  Suzyn Waldman, too much for my mind to wrap itself around that someone with such a think Boston accent could be such a big Yankee fan.  Jim Kaat was goofy sounding.  I never minded Phil Rizzuto or Tom Seaver, by the way, nor Paul O’Neill nowadays.

This was not all just me gearing up to say that SNY’s Gary Cohen’s voice is my favorite, both in what he says and how he says it.  But put Cohen and Miller ear-to-ear and you’ll hear what I’m talking about.

Political Ringing, Pt. 1

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You know those electronic billboards in Times Square, the big television things?  And you know those billboards that aren’t billboards as much as ads applied directly to the side of the building somehow, painted or otherwise?  If I had the means, I would rent out, say, twenty-four of these typically poisonous contraptions, spread out equidistantly within the city.  And then I would set up concert-level sound systems below each of them.  And then I would get two dozen projectors, and two dozen copies of the DVD of Dr. Strangelove. And at each location, I would screen this film once every night until the very night of my birthday (psst: Election Eve).  And y’know why?  If you’ve haven’t seen the movie, stop reading this post.

If you have, you’d know that it demonstrates quite hilariously, and heartbreakingly, how one – singular – nutjob, acting upon his own unjustified, groundless, psychopathic whims, can initiate a chain reaction that will ruin this world for everybody.

Slowlympics

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I think I’ll have to get out of the habit of checking espn.com every couple of hours now that the Olympics have begun.  Or are they finished already?  Just how long is that tape delay?

See, I pretty much read espn.com every day during lunch, some scores, most of the columns, to fill the time and to keep abreast.  But since I hate spoilers more than most, and wouldn’t want to destroy whatever Olympics I might watch each night, I’m going to have to find a different avenue to find out what’s pressing athletically with baseball and the like.  Or, I can stop paying attention to espn.com altogether and probably be better for it.

Degrees of Fantasy

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If women everywhere can enjoy Sex and the City, that bastion of careerist female “empowerment,” I can watch Californication without having to answer to anyone.  I can watch it, and I can enjoy it, and I will answer cries of “Misogynist” with deadpan mutterings of, “Yeah, and women are sanctified on your own show there…”

How out there does Sex and the City have to be for Californication to be arguably more realistic?

Plus, Duchovny’s character plays with language much more carefully and humorously than his HBO co-whore-ts, rattling off puns that are actually funny, not those that make me feel like I’ve been kicked in the same balls that have retracted after watching even five minutes of Sex and the City.

Edge: Californication.