I remember when “Twin Peaks” was on the air, and every single one of the friends with whom I share copasetic entertainment tastes insisted I had to watch. I had to watch. I was crazy if I didn’t watch. It was right down my alley.
I didn’t doubt that they were right, but I was working nights, and I didn’t get the head’s-up in time to set my broken-down VCR (Note to readers under 18: Ask your parents what a “VCR” was.) for the first few episodes and …
Well, I never did get to watch “Twin Peaks.” And so for the last 20 years, I’ve had to seethe whenever some pop-culture wiseguy tried to sneak a reference to Laura Palmer or Dale Cooper, since I honestly have no earthly idea what it all means. And as a pop-culture wiseguy myself, that is wholly unacceptable.
We are spared that now, of course. For four years, those same friends told me I was missing out on “The Wire,” and by the time I finally believed them, I could do something about it: I would hold three- and four-hour marathon ep-a-thons, and it was a magnificent experience — catching up in about a week, between the on-demand channels and Netflix. Same thing with “Oz” and “Breaking Bad,” with the added benefit that my wife became equally
as addicted to the adventures of Walter White as I did.
That is how you do things in 2011 now, right? We can live life while pushing the fast-forward button, contracting everything into right now, right away. You aren’t all that up-to-date on your Pearl Jam library? Take a stop by iTunes and you will be in 15 minutes. Amy Winehouse died last week, and my iPad sadly was devoid of any of her music. Not anymore.
That’s why the week that just passed may be among the greatest of all for modern sports fans. In seven days time, the NFL agreed to labor peace, began its free-agent rush and opened camps. What normally takes about five months took about five minutes. You half expected the voice of Lindsay Nelson to boom out of the sky and say, “Let’s move ahead to action further on in the week”
(Note to readers under 30: Ask your older brothers who Lindsay Nelson was, and what it was like to watch Notre Dame football highlights before Notre Dame football hijacked NBC.)
Coupled with the fact that baseball’s trading-deadline season seemed to wait until the 11th hour to really get cooking, compressing four months of season into about 48 hours worth of wheeling and dealing, and you have a week for the modern attention-deficit sports fan that was to die for, an on-the-move, under-the-gun, run-and-shoot of a week in which it was impossible to hit the “refresh” button on your Twitter account fast enough.
It’s perfect for anyone who is accustomed to getting everything you want in as little time as necessary. Surely anyone who has watched a taped sporting event on DVR (Note to readers over 70: Ask your grandkids about DVR.) understands this. (By the way, ranks out like this:
1. Football: You can see every play, full speed, in about 22 minutes.
2. Baseball: You can watch every pitch in 35 minutes unless you have an advanced thumb and can watch on two-arrow speed, in which case it’s about 27-28 minutes.
3. Basketball: Face it, you cheat and speed ahead to the last four minutes.
4. Hockey: It’s fast enough .
5. Watching live? That’s so 2010.)
WHACK BACK AT VAC
Martin Gavin: That Terry Collins and Sandy Alderson have us Mets fans excited, even a little, at this point in the season as we ship off TWO all-stars in the last few weeks, says a lot about the great job they are all doing together as a team. It’s quite amazing, and fun, and entertaining to watch.
Vac: What’s also quite amazing, and fun, is watching Mets fans fall back in like with their team again after a few years of unremitting anger.
Bob
Gardner: Last Friday, Pete Rose criticized baseball for the big dropoff in offense this year. I guess he must be betting the “over” too much.
Vac: They say athletes die two deaths, but doesn’t it seem that Rose has had about seven or eight already?
Richard Siegelman: Doesn’t Mariano Rivera’s stretch run to reach 600 saves deserve as much special coverage as A-Rod’s run to 600 home runs, not to mention Derek Jeter’s run to 3,000 hits? This feat has not been achieved by 27 other players!
Vac: We can’t celebrate Mariano enough, in my opinion. And probably won’t ever celebrate him enough, sad to say.
Don Jennings: I am not a fan of Woods, but I will admit he is one of the best golfers ever. However, do you think Steve Williams was treating fans the way Woods would have liked, too, except his outside endorsements would have suffered? Why would any decent person put up with an employee so awful?
Vac: Stevie had about 10 million reasons. And while Tiger isn’t exactly magnanimous with fans, I don’t think you can become a jerk-on-demand as deeply as Stevie was. I say that part was already in him.
VAC’S WHACKS
* Are we absolutely, positively sure there’s no way HBO can’t knock out a quick “Hard Knocks” miniseries with the Patriots now? With a special guest appearance by Mike Shanahan, whose face will turn irretrievably purple if Bill Belichick really turns Albert Haynesworth around?
* Terry Collins gets all the love for the Mets’ grittiness, and fairly, but at some point it might be worthwhile to mention that few coaches in baseball have had as good a two-year run in their particular discipline than Dan Warthen has had with Mets pitchers.
* I suspect the Tom Coughlin-Plaxico Burress summit was a wee less highbrow than, say, Frost/Nixon.
* We’re all sure that picture of Santonio Holmes wasn’t just him guzzling Cristal-flavored Gatorade, right?