After Dark Karaoke

We’ll pass 58,000 fatalities tomorrow with somewhere near 28 million Americans displaced from their employment in the last six weeks. I could play today’s briefing from Donald Trump, but instead I think I’ll do this.

Ignore pretty much everything this dimwit suggests. Continue your social spacing, use sagacious judgment, and get thru this with your loved ones.

Be safe.

Dennis Rodman On The Last Dance

Dennis Rodman in and of himself would be a heckuva of a docu-film, but as a supporting role to Jordan, Pippen, Jackson, and Krause he fills this role perfectly in The Last Dance.

His story is remarkable as he makes it from Southeastern State in Durant, Oklahoma to become a five-time NBA champions with both the Pistons and the Bulls.

I had forgotten Rodman was traded to the Spurs and then of all things was traded to the Chicago Bulls for Will Perdue. Will Perdue for Dennis Rodman…..that’s an amusing NBA footnote.

The film is great and I hope many of the newer NBA fans in the Oklahoma City area fanbase are taking the time to watch the film.

Since it would appear doubtful there’s going to be anymore NBA basketball this season… I wish they would go to one episode a week to stretch this out as long as possible.

Maybe, just maybe, by Memorial Day–Major League Baseball without fans in the ball parks will have gotten some traction going with their season.

Bill Laimbeer: Captain Chaos

The Michael Jordan film gets going again tonight with episodes 3 & 4. I would guess there will be a heavy emphasis on Michael’s epic struggles with the Bad Boy Pistons.

What a great era of basketball it was. The toughness in the game which is sorely lacking in today’s game make today’s game quite frankly seem like Little League girls are playing in an Edmond rec league. Detroit literally mugged Michael every time he touched the ball. It was more like hockey than the bullshit we see today.

Can you imagine either frilly Kevin Durant or Steph Curry playing against the Pistons of the early 90’s?

OMG…not a chance. Kevie’s momma would have to walk out there on the floor and kick Bill Laimbeer’s ass for bullying her little Cupcake.

But Michael fought through it. It took him a couple of years to figure it out as Pippin elevated his game, but the Bulls finally got past the Bad Boys in the playoffs and basically never lost to them again in the Michael Jordan Era.

I have to admit…a part of me came to love Bill Laimbeer, Rick Mahorn, John Sally, and Dennis Rodman. I loved the physicality. The sheer passion of their checking game. They’re the only basketball team in history who played dump and chase with forecheck.

I loved it. It was like watching full checking ice hockey all over the ice.

If Michael touched the ball, it was simple….he was going to be hit.

It’s a shame David Stern had to close the Pistons’ mode down at some point. What a show it was.

The Magic of the Waffle House

This will be the first restaurant I sit down inside of following my coronavirus restaurant hiatus. You have not lived until you’ve sat at the counter of a Waffle House at one in the morning and taken in the whole experience.

In the spring of 2017… I somehow found myself at the Waffle House on Memorial and Western at one in the morning after the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor fight.

I was the only non-black person in the building as the place was packed with people just like me who had watched the fight. I was lucky enough to get to sit right at the counter as two white cooks started talking a little bit about the fight.

Calm was restored and the food orders were finally cooked, but it was epic.

That’s the whole thing about the Waffle House beyond the food…it’s about taking in the human experience.

You haven’t lived until you’ve done the five course breakfast starting off with a pecan waffle.

Trust me.

Smerconish Question of the Week

The show itself was pre-empted this morning for a Sesame Street Special with kids from all over the U.S. asking questions in relation to the coronavirus.

I’ll go ahead and sub for Michael Smerconish today with a question which was sent to me on my private line by a reader on this blog.

Kara from San Jose asks, ” Do you think this president has the ability to put this economy back together like a real president?”

My answer:

“No. Because he operates on the emotional level of an average third grader and is a pathological liar at every turn. Plus, he cares nothing about any other human being and operates with a complete lack of empathy for pretty much everyone except for his beloved Ivanka.

We’d have a better chance with a blind-folded chimpanzee throwing darts at a dartboard. I hope that wasn’t vague or ambiguous.

Beyond that he doesn’t possess the business chops to pull this off because in his life he’s never shown himself to be a successful business person. He’s a brand personality who inherited $420 million from his father and in reality didn’t do all that much with what was given to him by his father.

This will be a very complex and integrated puzzle to put back together as in certain segments like the restaurant, sports, and airline industries this is going to be very, very tricky as how to reboot human consumption of these services.

This would be right in Michael Bloomberg’s wheelhouse. You may not like his debate stage personality, but this isn’t a time for having an inept fool making decisions and running the country.

Plus, in many states their budgets have literally been eviscerated by the two previous months of business inactivity in their states.

Michael Bloomberg or a real problem solver would be a much better choice.”

Thanks for the question, Kara.

After Dark Karaoke

I had a wonderful day. Oklahoma City seems alive again although the traffic is a bit of a downer. That was the one thing I actually liked about all of this…no traffic. It was like owning the roadways of your own somewhat major city (27th). It was so nice with me not screaming at drivers in Edmond. Especially the women in the friggin’ SUVS who drive them like battleships.

Edmond, Oklahoma has to have the worst drivers in the United States of America bar none. Two-thirds of these people cannot negotiate a simple right turn in less than five minutes. It is truly stunning to witness.

But I guess you have to deal with traffic if you want to get to the business of rebuilding our economy after it was cratered by Donald Trump’s inability to trend to anything beyond a mid-range reality television novelty.

Maybe at some point the GOP will have Bernie Madoff or Charlie Sheen as their standard bearer…who would know at this point.

Anyway, to me, this song is the greatest rock song ever composed in the Confederacy. This song is to southern rock as to what the Mona Lisa is to art.

‘Free Bird’ was released in 1975 by the group Lynyrd Skynrd. The year I graduated from high school…BTW.

I can’t think of a better way to start the week-end.

Be safe. Be smart. Be sure and keep spacing.

Mid-Day Thoughts

This isn’t an official karaoke selection, but this song came on my truck radio yesterday while I was driving around Lake Hefner in Oklahoma City during my work day.

It was an amazing thing as this song was on the radio for the first time since the pandemic pretty much closed down Oklahoma City….there were people and dogs on the walking paths and bike trails with their better other, or by their lonesome, or with their dog. People were fishing the shorelines as well.

I asked one young man with a mask if he was having any luck and he told me just several minutes before I got there he caught a nice crappie.

Maybe half of the people were wearing protective masks. But all were spaced I observed. You could tell that despite it being in the hub of what I thought were the non-gravity Trump knucklehead believers—they believe Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx on this one…not the Christian Evangelical Pussy Grabber with the orange hair who cratered Obama’s recovery.

Good for them. And of course this is in the heart of the 5th Congressional District where Dem Kendra Horn stunned the free world as we know it by winning a Congressional seat which hadn’t gone to a non-gravity believing Republican since I became old enough to drive.

I now have a mask I wear in certain situations. I’m very careful about spacing. I haven’t gone into a restaurant to eat in over seven weeks and for a person who lives to eat this should tell you how serious I’ve taken this.

As much I miss sports—I think I actually miss pretending to be Anthony Bourdain going into restaurants and being with people even more. I’ve come to realize I miss that more than the sports. It’s talking about the sports and eating and drinking with others which I miss the most.

First restaurant I go into will be the Waffle House and I’ll be ordering the Five Course Anthony Bourdain Special.

My wife even has me watching this cooking show called Cook Country County Cooking or some bullshit like that and we’re going to make blueberry cornbread this Sunday. I might even attempt to cook my first ever pepper steak with potatoes lanaise. Go figure. Call me your Renaissance Man. Move over, Pioneer Woman.

I might even go a step further like Kramer and Newman did when they ran their version of the Merv Griffin Show from Kramer’s apartment by running my version of the Anthony Bourdain Show from my sports viewing room and soon to be sport bar/restaurant.

So yesterday was kind of a turning point day for me as I search for my own new normal as I travel down the path of life its own-self.