Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Christmas is coming...

Don't know what to buy for that special blogger in your life? Check here.

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I went to the Iowa State football game in Ames, IA on Saturday night. You might have read about it. A tornado caused the evacuation of the stadium,and destroyed about sixty homes in a neighboring town, killing an elderly woman. My friend and I ducked the storm admirably. We had not been tailgating early in the day, and we were enjoying Jimmy John's sub sandwiches during the 45 minutes or so when the threat rolled through. Seeing a cyclone on your way to an Iowa State game ranks somewhere between seeing a cardinal on your way to a St. Louis game and seeing a wolverine on your way to a Michigan game.

One thrill-seeker with a camcorder captured the tornado on tape in the badly-damaged town of Stratford. He's lucky he didn't get a street light stuck through his abdomen. I have now seen his video on all four of the local news stations, CNN, Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, and The Weather Channel. Now I don't fault the guy too much for his storm spotting and his disobedience towards the safety experts at the National Weather Service. It's human nature, perhaps even a protective nature, to want to know where the storm is and what it's doing. I roll my eyes, though, when I listen to the news anchors issue their liability warning- We don't recommend that you do this... - just before or after they air the video.

Regular readers know that I will attempt to make any issue apply to baseball and steroids, and that's what I'm going to do now: The media is so quick to pass judgement on people just as they cash in the story themselves. Lives may be lost by failing to heed safety warnings, but here's the amateur video we attained that was collected in just that manner, and, by the way, it's just in time for November sweeps. The television news director is not going to reject that juicy weather video anymore than a hypocrite sportswriter like Mike Lupica will give back the money he made on his book, Summer of '98.

4 Comments:

At 6:17 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

The Cardinals are shameless and pathetic. They'll do anything to drum up more money to pay over-the-hill outfielders. I'm sure there's a website somewhere that I can bid on some toilet paper salvaged from Busch Stadium. "We'll open the bidding at $30. Come on people, it was used by Ken Oberkfell!"

 
At 6:27 PM, Blogger CM said...

In truth, the Cardinals have announced they won't raise payroll in 2006, despite these creative revenue streams.

 
At 6:32 PM, Blogger CM said...

The players' urinal is item #111.

 
At 11:05 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Oh my God! I was kidding! A urinal?! Do they have autographed urinal cakes too? Truth really is stranger than fiction and there is truly no depth to which the Cardinals won't sink. They're not even going to have anything left for the wrecking ball. Are they going to sell the rubble by the pound? I absolutely cannot wait until the stadium gets knocked down like a Mark McGwire homerun record.

Actually, the one thing that surprises me on the auction site is that those retired number flags aren't going for more. The Enos Slaughter flag is only $400 bucks right now. They should have one of the current players take a piss on it to raise the price.

 

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