LET’S be serious:
You can’t be serious!
So Seth MacFarlane, with only warning track power to begin with, was a crude, lewd, rude, dude as host of the Oscars on Sunday?
So so what? Why, at this point, would anyone expect anything else, anything better?
MacFarlane no doubt behaved as per the terms of his previous TV engagements, as per behavior seen and heard from previous hosts and presenters on previous awards shows, behavior based on a tacit understanding that what he did and said was what was expected of him.
Why, after all, should MacFarlane’s content have tracked differently from the content of other live, huge-audience telecasts, the Super Bowl, for example.
A chronicle of the 47-year TV history of the Super Bowl shows a halftime that once featured Pat Boone-ish song-and-dance troupes waving streamers has “evolved” into bump-and-grind mobs wearing spiked heels and bras, accompanied by enough pyrotechnics to make North Korea disarm.
We’ve gone from Up With People to Down With Pants and Off With Clothes. The next Super Bowl halftime marching band we’ll see will be the Brazilian Bikini-Waxed Boom Room Brigade.
Super Bowl halftimes and the costly ads that drive its telecasts are no longer aimed at the heart, but at the crotch.
This year’s annually prurient Supe ads for GoDaddy.com were extra anticipated given that GoDaddy made a big pregame buzz by having its original version banned as too sexually explicit — by design. The company’s website traffic likely tripled!
Comedy on TV? Televised awards shows?
Clever and funny have been replaced by down and dirty. Legitimate laughter has been lost to “Woos!” from trained audiences that sound like trained seals. The most inappropriate network promo is chosen as the most appropriate. And the classless ambush — no matter if it’s during the World Series, Super Bowl or the Oscars — has become TV’s cheap and easy substitute for marketing genius.
So get off MacFarlane’s back. He was doing what was expected of him.
Amazin’ duo points out MLB missteps
Bud Ball: Strong stuff Monday from Mets’ radio guys Howie Rose and Josh Lewin during Nationals-Mets.
Rose began with a lament of MLB’s continuing deconstruction of its nicest traditions. He noted the Reds, which, as the majors’ oldest franchise traditionally opens the MLB regular season at home on a Monday afternoon, will open with an interleague game, vs. the Angels. (The season opener in Cincinnati used to be preceded by a parade — players seated in the backs of convertibles — with kids given off from school).
Lewin added the Mets are scheduled to play an interleague series April 12-14 in Minnesota, where the Twins’ now play outdoors. Playing at such a time in Minneapolis, Lewin said, is senseless given that more likely postponements will make it almost impossible for the Mets to return to play make-up games. (April 12 is a Friday nighter; the Saturday game is scheduled for a 3:10 CST start. The average mid-April low for Minneapolis is 36 degrees, average high is 56.)
* Funny, how MSG’s Warriors-Knicks telecast Wednesday eventually had to be shot from deep because 61 3-pointers were taken (11-of-13 by Stephen Curry). Used to be when teams crossed half-court, the view would taper.
* Lost Tapes, Cont.: Mike Francesa sagely assured “Lincoln” was a lock to win Best Picture.
* Reader/thoroughbred fan Don Reed on how IKEA might market its new meatballs following a recall on the suspicion they contained horsemeat: “Tastes great! Less filly!”
* All 39 World Baseball Classic games will be live on MLB Network, starting tonight, 11:30, Australia at Taipei. Team USA begins March 8.
* Hey, if Syracuse can retire Carmelo Anthony’s number after just one season in school, imagine what Syracuse would have done for my first college roommate. After five years, he was a second semester sophomore.
* Page 1 of the Mets’ website includes a box, “2012 Leaders.” It shows Jonathon Niese having led the team in wins, ERA and strikeouts. R.A. Dickey? Never heard of him.
ESPN ‘courts’ disaster
To think that ESPN, which could have — and should have — becomes our sports’ best friend, continues to be their most relentless and heartless enemy.
Tuesday, moments before Minnesota, at home, would beat Indiana, an ESPN promo appeared in which someone — an ESPN play-by-play man? — delightedly hollered, “And the students are storming the floor!”
Back at Minnesota, such a storming was gathering. Spontaneous? Hardly. The Gopher were up seven and Indiana was in desperate, clock-stoppage mode.
Regardless, this scene would explode to become what ESPN has encouraged: an obligatory audience participation mob rush, an act already — as per the dictates of logic and inevitability — proven dangerous.
So the gotta-do-it court-rush proceeded. All that was needed for this “spontaneous celebration” to turn to disaster was one kid tripping at or on the edge of a court — one made extra perilous because it’s elevated. Those just behind that kid would have been toppled like dominoes, the students at the bottom of the pile most helpless.
But ESPN always is eager to encourage stupid over smart, from hiring the worst acts in sports — say, where is that Bobby Knight Goes Nuts reel? — starting with when it mindlessly presented footage of showboats needlessly hanging on rims until the backboards shattered, then rewarding such as the No. 1 Play of the Day.
At a time to awaken to the NFL as a concussion mill, ESPN gleefully presented footage of excessive head-hunting brutality through its Monday night feature, “He Got Jacked Up!” — ESPN stars Chris Berman, Tom Jackson and Stuart Scott in joyous accord.
Having largely escaped news media wrath, ESPN is nonetheless eager to distance itself from the inevitability of its own creation: The death, last month, of an X (for Extreme) Games stunt artist, a snowmobile aerialist — crushed on both landing and on ESPN’s design, dime and time.
And now it’s shoving college kids, mobs of them, all at once, on to basketball courts while the kids are unable to see, know and avoid what’s going on in front of them.