Jaundiced Eye

    You may have noticed that right in this blog’s title, it is indicated, or at least implied, that I am a man.  (My nephew actually came up with the first four words of the title, and perhaps to him, I am.)  Assuming that I am indeed a man, when did I become one?  It probably happened about two years ago, when I realized that I don’t need to watch a football or baseball game just cuz it’s on TV.  That is when I became a man.  Or maybe that’s when I became a woman.

    The Super Bowl turned out to be a good game.  I watched most of it, including the exciting finish.  But I have a limited tolerance for hype.  Every game in sports is the game, as opposed to the perfunctory fulfillment of a contractual obligation.

     Michaels and Collinsworth did a good job.  Fortunately, neither FOX nor CBS had the rights to the game.  How about a V-chip that mutes only the play-by-play guy’s voice.  Now that’s censorship I can believe in.  If Joe Buck, Jim Nantz, or, god forbid, Brent Musberger calls a football game, I watch with the sound off.  Ian Darke, the guy who does the World Cup games, does it right.

    CBS is particularly good at taking the enjoyment out of watching sports on TV.  Starting several years ago, every time they go to or from a replay, they hit you with that eye-punishing, radiating eye logo that I can’t watch on my TV.  At someone else’s house, it never seems as bad, and they often don’t understand my complaint.  I have a very vivid TV.  You want a TV like that. It’s quality. But when the broadcasting imbeciles put up noisy, overdone  graphics every 20 seconds, it’s the visual equivalent of getting repeatedly kicked in the head.  Talk about a jaundiced eye.

    After a while, you can kind of time when they’re going to do it.  I’m looking down and away, like someone who’s being scolded, trying to calculate when it’s safe to look again.   You need to get a rhythm:  Turn your head and curse… turn your head and curse.  That should be CBS Sports’ slogan.  (Actually, I guess they’ve recently dropped the radiating eye torture for a different type of explosive, blinding visual noise.)  Other CBS shit: During a college hoops free throw, they splash a big, flickering ad for How I Met Your Mother.  More like, How I Fucked Up the Game.  And from the NCAA season opener in December until the final commercial break in April, how many times will they have cued that insipid  jingle?  Dah nuh nuh nunt...duh DAH Nunt.  Dipshits.

    ‘Course I'm irritable and my eyes are sensitive.  These days I can’t watch certain programming without a welding mask.  And forget about watching NBC’s The Office.  Hey camera man:  Hold the fucking camera still.

    College hoops is genuinely exciting.   The NBA, on the other hand, could fold and I wouldn’t notice.    I remember my friend’s wife saying many years ago, “You only have to watch the last two minutes.”  Indeed, oftentimes the hoops team that wins is the team that scores last, whereas in hockey it’s the team that scores first, and in soccer it’s the team that scores at all.

     (Mar 2013 update)  As a 'Cuse fan, I figured the Syracuse / Indiana game would be like watching the torture scene in the film Syriana.  But lo and behold, the Orange pulled the upset.  Let's go Orange, and in hockey, Let's go Pens!