Tag: COVID

2020 In Review – Part III: We’re All Cam Girls Now

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*Me speaking to my grandchildren in 2060*: You know everybody, there was a time, believe it or not, when it was perfectly acceptable to sit in your living room BY YOURSELF and get hammered, so long as there was a web cam on.

I’m of course already dating/aging myself as I don’t think anyone says “web cam” anymore. The need, for the most part, of an external device that provides you with video capability for a meeting/chat is gone. But my point still stands. From the work place to social lives, 2020 was the year of the virtual meeting.

To start, the introduction of quarantine was a huge test of “how much does your company fucking suck?” If you’re like me and have friends whose job satisfaction ranges from apathetic to “I hope I get t-boned on the ride in,” it was fascinating to watch which companies did what. Most did the right thing and just shut down the offices, which for some was a gigantic 180 from their normal stance on working from home. Some tried to avoid that drastic of an action and went to a reduced office presence with different people in on different days. I had one friend whose company just happened to have a half-filled office lying around an hour away and they sent some folk to work there for awhile. No big deal, just that added gas money and commuting time with no kind of stipend for it. For those of us who got to go full remote however, it was mostly for the first time. Do you put on pants? Do you gel your hair? Can you listen to ESPN in the background? So many questions with so little to guide us. I was in a particularly odd position as I actually started my job the first day of Charlie Baker’s lockdown here in MA. Never met a coworker in person, never got to see the office. To make matters even stranger for folks like me, companies have different policies on whether or not to even turn on the damn webcam. So I ended working with a string of mystery men and women like I’m a Charlie’s fucking Angel or something. Bizarre man.

The social scene was a different monster entirely. What happens when such a well oiled machine completely breaks down? When you want to meet up with your friends you go to their house or a bar, if you just are looking for some companionship for the night, the latter of the two. Those simple mechanisms disappeared, literally overnight on March 22nd. Now what? Our generation is arguably the most social yet and suddenly we were barred from being just that. Then video chatting sprang up to save the day. It was always there, but it received little use outside of long distance relationships hell bent on failing or for that one friend that moved to Boulder because “they liked the energy more.” Now Zoom, Google chat, etc. were the only way to share a beverage and a chat with your pals. It was weird at first. I think everyone can admit that. And then it just kind of became normal. Hell, an entire app, House Party, emerged just to facilitate conversations and games between friends who were locked down. Even if we couldn’t be together, we still gonna have a few brewskis, shit talk each other, maybe gossip a little, and if you’re anything like my friends, have food delivered mid fucking conversation. It added such a bizarre layer of disconnect that has been at once sad and entertaining.

On the social end, the video chats dried up back when things started opening up again, only to reappear over the past month or so amid a surge in cases. Who knows if this will remain a thing moving forward when folks just straight up don’t want to leave their houses or when you gather with friends and want to call that one friend who moved to Oregon to “be more with nature” (they work at a coffee shop). Who knows. All I know is what once would have been viewed as halfway to being a page out of a virtual version of “Eyes Wide Shut” is now the way friends stay in touch. And that aint a bad thing.

-Joey B.

2020 In Review – Part II: Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game

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“The Bubble”

Never before has an actual, sort of physical thing become a metaphor for itself and the panic surrounding it.

As sports league were trying their damnedest to return from the hiatus Covid caused, the idea and then implementation of “the bubble” came to fruition. Using the NBA as an example, all players, coaches, staff, and anyone else allowed in were to stay in a designed area (I believe just the hotel and arena) and were only permitted to have contact with their team and whoever they saw on the court that night. That’s it. For as long as the rest of the season lasted, they could not see or interact with another soul.

Now, you see, there’s a problem with that. Because NBA players are used to traveling from one city and arriving at another already having lined up what is probably a laundry list of booty calls. From strip club daliances to hotel room rendezvous, the men in the NBA put in some serious work over the course of a season. I mean, there is a reason Wilt Chamberlain was believed to reach his 20,000th conquest before all was said and done. And that was before the DM. Lord have mercy.

So now you take that group of successful young men, who have so much money and fame, and who to their credit have a lot of stress they need to burn off, and you try and lock them in….”the bubble”. How was that ever going to work?

Nothing short of a litany of players were caught sneaking women into the bubble. A couple more were caught sneaking out of the bubble and going to strip clubs. Here we were, in the midst of a deadly pandemic, the NBA barely able to find a way to finish the season, and these guys were going to be damned if they weren’t going to get their Ds wet anyway. It’s inspiring really.

But no other defiance of bubble protocol, in any sport, holds a candle to that of Seattle Seahawks rookie cornerback Kehmah Siverand this past training camp. Or should I say, very much former Seattle Seahawks cornerback. Siverand, an undrafted rookie out of Oklahoma State, risked the longshot opportunity that the Seahawks gave him for the almighty P, and lost his chance for it. But it wasn’t just that glaring lack of decision making ability that makes Siverand’s discretion the most notable. It’s the means by which he went about it. You see, rather than simply trying to skirt bubble security, the young lady accompanying Kehmah Siverand tried the old Trojan Horse-cum-guy on another guy’s shoulders approach. She dressed up in full Seahawks warm ups and basically tried to pass herself off as just a teammate of Siverand’s entering the hotel with him. Don’t mind me Mr. Security Officer sir, just about to go to sleep before a long day of training camping tomorrow. The only issue was that this lass was all of 5’2 and I’m guessing not muscular in build, as opposed to a normal NFL player who, no matter their height, are built like brick shit houses. Needless to say security wasn’t fooled and as alluded to earlier, Siverand was cut.

Although the bubbles are just about a thing of the past (the NHL has gone with a sort of macro concept of the bubble where each team is only playing their division) there are still protocols about where players can go and they are still being broken. Especially by James Harden. James Harden just hates rules and following them. So the lesson learned no matter how deadly of a plague we are facing, trying to keep pro athletes from the fairer sex is pointless. And quite frankly they are too large for any of us to protest. Let them live.

-Joey B.

COVID Vaccine Getting the NBA on ESPN Intro Treatment is the Funniest Video You’ll See All Day

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The Patriots Are Dropping Like Flies as FIVE Players Have Now Opted Out of the Season Due to COVID

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Today has been a rough day for the New England Patriots and I haven’t even finished my morning Iced Tea from Dunkies. This was bound to happen as the guinea pig that is the MLB showed everyone just how quickly an entire sports league can turn into a disaster with this bastard that is coronavirus. The Marlins have had 17 guys test positive and because of the six degrees of separation other teams like the Phillies and the Yankees had to cancel games as they awaited their own COVID test results.

So if you’re an NFL player watching this quickly unfold, it has to make you think. Is this worth it? If you’re Dont’a Hightower and you’ve already made millions and millions of dollars and won three Super Bowls and you just had a baby, do you want to risk bringing that infection home with you? Even if you’re Clay Travis and you think the risk of getting into a car crash is worse (seriously), do you want to have the anxiety of worrying about that every day for the next several months? It seems like a lot of Patriots players are saying hell no.

Bert Breer was on Toucher and Rich this morning and half jokingly wondered aloud is this the price the Patriots pay for having a team comprised of a bunch of smart, thoughtful veterans. It’s a good question because if you’re a young player or a fringe roster guy you might not have secured the bag yet and you may never get another job that pays nearly as much as the NFL. So thats a risk you are a lot more willing to take than an established/paid veteran in this league. Especially when the average NFL career is like 3.3 years.

The question now is how much are the Patriots in trouble and what if even more players opt out? If you’ve listened to the McCourty brothers at all you have got to be worried about whether they’re going to play or not. Those two are intelligent and vocal guys and they have expressed valid, legitimate concerns with resuming play. Right now the Pats have lost their starting Right Tackle, their best Linebacker, a key special teams and depth RB, plus their fullback and another OL. All of this after the team was already tasked with replacing Tom Brady as well as key veterans like Jamie Collins, Kyle Van Noy, and James Develin.

To be brutally honest I don’t expect most of these leagues to finish the season. There’s just too many people interacting with one another and especially in the MLB with teams flying all around like its no big deal. Now imagine that with rosters triple the size in the NFL. The leagues that went with the bubble are the only real shot we have of seeing a completed season this year, but even the NBA has dudes hitting up the strip club for some drums and flats. I don’t know about you, but a strip club is one of the last places I’d want to be during a freaking pandemic. The NHL may be the only league to get through the year as they have a bunch of historically laid back homebodies in hockey players quarantined up in Canada.

Now I’m not going to panic about the Patriots just yet because I tend to agree with my friend here below, even if it is because I’m wearing rose tinted glasses that Belichick and Brady fused onto my face over the last 20 years.

But that’s assuming we even get to the start of the season. Players weren’t even due to report yet and the Patriots had five guys opt out. Lets watch this Marlins story play out a bit more and see if MLB can get back on track because we’re less than a week into the season and it already has the makings of a doomsday scenario.

However, if MLB can’t stem the outbreak and more importantly assuage any player concerns, it could be the harbinger of bad news for the NFL in 2020.

Tom From Toonami Should File a Cease and Desist Against the NFL for These COVID Helmet Designs

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My first thought after seeing these helmet designs is that Tom from Toonami is currently filing a cease and desist against the NFL.

And if you’re too young to get that reference or never watched Toonami on Cartoon Network, then I pity you. Tom used to get me jacked up for all my nerdy anime as a kid. Pretty sure Toonami is singlehandedly responsible for every asshole with an internet connection and iMovie creating their own anime emo rock compilations and uploading them to Napster.

Now back to these space helmets that may or may not be a real thing. Obviously these are designed with player safety in mind as it relates to COVID because players can’t be wearing cotton masks made my Melissa from Etsy. I would however love to hear from the crowd that wanted to ban helmets entirely in an effort to stop defenders from launching into receivers with their heads. How about this astronaut helmet to discourage players from pretending they’re a land to air missile? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t I suppose.

Well, if this helps get players back on the field and brings the NFL back to this sports-less post-apocalyptic world then I am all for it. It’ll be nearly impossible to top the greatest helmet in league history though.

PS – I also just learned that apparently Cartoon Network legitimately killed Tom off? Like straight up gatted him. Wow. RIP brother.