The Pope, Hamburgers, Nucky Thompson and Other Items From a Mixed Bag

Some disparate thoughts....

• Like so many of you, I found the news of Pope Benedict XVI's decision to retire to be a stunner.  I also found it to be an incredible act of courage in the Pope recognizing and admitting that he no longer has the "physical and mental strength" to continue in the job.
• The specificity of the time of the Pontiff's abdication - February 28 at 8:00 PM - was curious.  Why eight o'clock at night?
• I am stunned by the International Olympic Committee's decision to drop wrestling from the Olympics beginning in 2020.  Not that I was a huge fan of the sport.  If I watched it at all, it was during the Olympics (if you could find it on TV during any of the recent Olympiads), but if there is truly a classic Olympic sport, it's got to be wrestling, right?  I don't think you'll find many ancient Grecian urns depicting rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming.
• I am too cheap to subscribe to HBO, but I think nothing of buying boxed DVD sets.  As such, we just finished watching Season Two of "Boardwalk Empire".  Great series, albeit  quite violent, with good acting and writing, compelling story lines, and, in true HBO fashion, a healthy dollop of gratuitous nudity.  Can't wait for the Season Three DVD set to be released, which will happen about the time that Season Four begins on HBO.  It is almost a full time job trying to avoid Spoilers.
• The Great Hamburger Quest of 2013 continued yesterday with a visit to Sunny Jim's on Camp Horne Road in Emsworth.  Sunny Jim's is known for it's terrific wings, so I figured the burgers had to be good, right?  Wrong.  The burger was large and filling, but my request for a "medium" burger came out resembling something the Penguins would use during their shoot-arounds.  I guess any kitchen can have an off day, and maybe that is what I encountered yesterday, but them's the breaks.  Until I am again inclined to order a burger there, Sunny Jim's burgers fall in the "Unranked" category.  To be fair, Marilyn's Cheese-steak hoagie was good, and SJ's wings ARE very good.
• Ash Wednesday today.  Lent is here, and The Grandstander will, for the next 40 days, be switching from the Hamburger Quest to Friday Fish Fries!  Who says that Lent is all about sacrifice?

The Pope, Nucky Thompson, and Sunny Jim's all in one post.  If that doesn't define "disparate", I don't know what does.

The Olympics Begin!

Not sure about all of you, but I plan to be in front of the TV tonight watching the Opening Ceremonies of the London Olympics tonight.  No doubt they will be overblown, very self-congratulatory, and will last too long, but they will also be colorful, fun, and in some ways inspirational.  Plus, the commercials will probably be pretty good, although we will no doubt tire of them by the time the torch is extinguished in two weeks time.


Here are the things that I look forward to during this Olympiad:

• The men's basketball tournament.
• The Phelps-Lochte duels in the pool.
• Usain Bolt.
• Both men's and women's track events.
• Finding out what event and what athlete(s), heretofore completely off of my personal radar screen, will capture my imagination and captivate me during the Games.

Humorous Burning Question:  Now that they are permitted to wear more "modest" uniforms, will Women's Beach Volleyball be a less interesting sport, to both viewers and the NBC TV cameras?

Serious Observation:  Very disappointing that the IOC cannot find it in their hearts (assuming that IOC Members actually have hearts) to allow for a moment of silence to commemorate the slain Israeli athletes during this the 40th Anniversary Year of the massacre in Munich.  In point of fact, the IOC has NEVER had any such official commemoration of this event on the center stage of their ceremony, so I suppose that their continuing to spurn the requests of Israel shouldn't come as too big a surprise.  Keep this hypocrisy in mind while Jacques Rogge makes his speeches about the Olympic Ideal tonight.

Pirates, Jeter, Olympics, and Absent Friends

The Grandstander is going to be off the grid for a couple of days, so let's clean out the Mental In-Box (Penn State free!)......

• How about those Pirates?  The nice thing about where they are now is that we are concerned, not with being 14 games over .500, but, rather, with being 1/2 game out of first, or two games up in the Wild Card race.  Thank you, Fred Shugars, for making this observation.
• Trade deadline looms and the name that intrigues me the most is Shane Victorino.  He would be a two month rental, which means he wouldn't, or shouldn't, cost the Pirates a boatload in a trade, and tell me he wouldn't be a huge step up in that lead-off spot in the line up?
• Ichiro to the Yankees.  Interesting.
• Speaking of the Yankees, Derek Jeter celebrated his 38th birthday a few weeks ago, and one of the interesting, if not amazing, facts I heard was that Jeter had more career hits as of his 38th birthday than Pete Rose had on his 38th birthday.
• I got into an exchange with ESPN's Buster Olney a few weeks back on Twitter.  Now Buster has to have thousands of followers on Twitter, so I was very surprised that he actually responded to my Tweet, so good for Buster.
• That said, for a major media guy, @Buster_espn appears to have remarkably thin skin.
• Heard on PTI tonight that Andrew McCutchen is hitting .484 in the month of July.  .484!!!!  I have trouble wrapping my mind around a number like that.
• If you read John Mehno's column in Sunday's www.timesonline.com you may come to understand why the Pirates are not rushing to promote Starling Marte - yet.  Good stuff.
• Also, in that same column, John reports that Lacee Collins might be resurfacing at The Fan soon.  C'mon back, Lacee!!!
• The Olympics begin on Friday.  I am looking forward to taking in much of the 300,000 or so hours of coverage that NBC will be offering on it's various media platforms, and I will no doubt be commenting on it over the course of the Games.  What are you most looking forward to watching?  The elfin, robotic female gymnasts? The men's basketball?  Watching how fast Usain Bolt can, er, bolt from the starting blocks? Seeing how many weightlifters and wrestlers get banished for doping?  The bikini-clad beach volleyballers?
• Me?  I can't wait for the curling! Oh, wait, that's in two years in the Winter Olympics.  Damn!
• I confess to missing much of the British Open, excuse me, The Open Championship, this weekend.  Blame it on the time difference, and having other things to do in the mornings.  From what I can tell, it would have been painful to watch Adam Scott's El Foldo over the last four holes, so in a way I'm glad I missed it.
• If you are old enough, you can no doubt remember the dire warnings of 40 or so years ago over the creeping specter of Pay Television.  It would end our entertainment options and the American Way of Life as we knew it.  This thought came back to me when I realized that all live coverage of The Open Championship was on ESPN, and no one, apparently, thinks any thing about that.  ESPN, in case you don't realize it, is, in fact, Pay TV.  Much of the Olympics will also be on Pay TV platforms. That battle has been lost, and was lost, long ago.

Let us end with noting the recent passing of some Absent Friends:

• Pittsburgh radio man, Ted Atkins, aka "Cap'n Showbiz", as he was christened by O"Brian and Garry.  He was the GM of radio station WTAE who came to town, listened to the station and made the first note on his To Do List to "fire Myron Cope".  Atkins soon realized who Cope was, what he knew, and what he meant to Pittsburgh, so he changed his mind and installed Cope with his five nights a week talk show.  The rest is Pittsburgh radio history.  
• Tom Davis.  Those of us who can remember the first seasons of Saturday Night Live can remember that they sometimes featured on air performances by two of the writers, "Franken and Davis".  Al Franken is now a US Senator, and Davis went on to an itinerant career as a comedy writer and performer until he succumbed to cancer last week at the age of 57.  His obit noted that he was responsible for the classic skit where Dan Ackroyd played Julia Child.  Yes, "save the liver" came from the fertile comic mind of Tom Davis.
• And just in today, Sally Ride, America's first female astronaut, died today at age 61, a victim of pancreatic cancer. An inspirational figure.

RIP to all.