Win Or Lose? Transgender Loses

The Schloss-Blog wants to know, did you hear about the Disney animated series set at the middle-school level that has pulled a transgender storyline that was supposed to be running through it?

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According to Disney, the storyline, in the Pixar series "Win or Lose," was pulled because they believe that parents should be able to discuss this with their kids rather than have them exposed to it at that age in an animated series.

You don't suppose they pulled it because of pressure from conservatives?

Then again, Disney didn't exactly stand up to the State of Florida, which pulled the state's largest employer's self-governance of its Reedy Creek development after Disney opposed the state's "Don't Say Gay" bill.

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No sooner did Bill Belichick become head football coach at North Carolina than ESPN started kowtowing to "Chapel Bill" and the Tarheels.

On a Sports Center telecast featuring highlights from a high-profile Florida-North Carolina men's varsity basketball game, unbeaten Florida built a big lead and held on for a 90-84 victory in a game that included great plays by players on both teams.

You'd have never known it if you'd tuned in late to Sports Center and caught the usual, closing Top Ten plays segment.

Two of the plays included North Carolina highlights, of which there were some during the game. Victorious Florida made even more special plays, but ESPN's highlight package didn't include them in the closing segment.

Homage to "Chapel Bill," perhaps?

Probably.

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On a personal note to me and on a sad, consequential note to higher education not only in Chicago but across the nation, Columbia College Chicago, a bastion of creativity and achievement, will be shutting down as many as 11 undergraduate programs and laying off 25 faculty members (full disclosure: I used to be one, for 23 years, until retiring six years ago). 

Enrollment has slipped from as high as 11,400 in 2010 to a reported 6,200 in 2022, a huge drop.

What's next?

School officials say they hope these cuts now will lead to a gradual growth in enrollment and  enrichment in the curriculum.

Enrichment? The number of degreed programs will drop from 58 to 33. Four undergraduate and seven graduate programs will be eliminated in their entirety.

Sure hope one of them isn't journalism.

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On another note, which is as personal as personal gets, another school shooting took place, this one in Madison, Wisconsin, at Abundant Life Christian School, and it left one student and one staff member dead, six others wounded.

The shooting, allegedly by a 15-year-old female student, has to make you scratch your head and cry at the same time: what is going on in America?

CNN is reporting that there have been 83 - EIGHTY-THREE - mass shootings at U.S. schools in 2024. This is sick.

Think Trump and the Republicans will do anything about it?

Yeah, neither do I.

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Good night, Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you, Ohio State Buckeyes.

More Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix rock 'n' roll show.

And tune in to radiofreephpenix.com on Tuesday, Christmas Eve, at 6 p.m. Phoenix time (that's 8 p.m. Eastern) for Andy Olson's annual 30-hour Rock'N' Roll Christmas, live, his 36th annual. You never know what Andy might do.

Bracket This!

The Schloss-Blog doesn't usually talk brackets until the NCAA Basketball Tournament, but the College Football Playoff bracket has generated some discussion. So have the Bears. So has Chicago sports in general, where five - count 'em 5 pro teams will have new, full-time head coaches/managers for their 2025 seasons. 

Chicago sports suck.

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The Chicago Blackhawks only recently fired their head coach and are now being "interim" coached. In other words, thanks for stopping in, Anders Sorenson.

The Chicago White Sox, who set a record for most losses in a season in 2024, will have new manager Will Venable for 2025, promising, as all new mangers and head coaches do, to put a competitive team that will hustle on the field.

Sure you will, Will, sure you will. But can they run the bases, hit the cutoff and get the clutch hit?

Finally, the Bulls - no, wait - have Billy Donovan, who, at five years, is the longest-tenured head coach in Chicago pro sports right now. But with the Bulls perhaps looking to trade their best player (Zach LaVine), will that last?

Those three teams are the ones on the new Chicago Sports Network, which, while available on the satellite networks and Fubo, is not available on Comcast's Xfinity cable network, effectively cutting them off from the vast majority of the Chicago-area market.

So, not only are Chicago-area teams sucking, so is the ability to watch a lot of their action.

The Chicago Fire MLS franchise will have a new coach next season as well, Gregg Berhalter, the former USMNT head coach.

Tyler Marsh takes over as head coach of the Chicago Sky, who are not all that far removed from their WNBA championship year (2021).

They are not what you would call a winner either these days.

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The United Healthcare CEO shooter (OK, alleged), is a hero online.

People who have beefs with their insurance companies over claim denials are praising him as a hero and companies in the industry have had to "beef up," if you will, security around their executives.

T-shirts are praising the shooter as a hero, the industry as the villains. According to NBC News, there were more than 100 items available for sale online, holding the shooter up to be a hero. "Hoodies, stickers, mugs, and even fake bullets" that include the three words that were on the shell casings found on the scene are popular ("Deny, Defend, Depose").

In the United States of America, who do we love? Luigi Mangione, apparently. 

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Donald Trump, the president-elect, attended the Army-Navy football game on Saturday. In attendance with him, VP-elect J.D. Vance, Secretary of Defense-designate and alleged drunk and womanizer Pete Hegseth and Daniel Penny, recently acquitted of criminally negligent homicide in the NY Subway strangling case. The ex-Marine restrained a rider in a chokehold who was an apparent nuisance on an NYC train until authorities arrived.

Luigi Mangione couldn't be released yet or Trump might've had him on board as well. Wonder if he'll pardon him upon an almost-certain conviction down the road, along with the hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters Trump has pledged to pardon.

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Speaking of pardons, does ABC and George Stephanopoulos deserve one?

They will pay Trump $15 million for Stephanopoulos referring to him as "a rapist" in an interview with South Carolina Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace, questioning her support for him in the wake of the E. Jean Carroll civil verdicts against him. Because he was found liable of sexual assault, the jury’s verdict did not mean that Ms. Carroll had “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word 'rape.'"

Trump's administration is expected to carry on its campaign against mainstream media once he's sworn in, except now, the Department of Justice is likely to bring the fight against, prospectively, the NY Times, MSNBC, et. al.

Of note, Harvard's Laurence Tribe, the esteemed law professor, said in a Blue Sky post that ABC likely wouldn't have paid Trump $15 if he wasn't president-elect.

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The Onion was denied the opportunity to purchase Alex Jones' "Infowars" website, ostensibly to convert it into a parody of itself.

The bankruptcy court judge who made the ruling said it failed to maximize the amount of money it could've yielded to the families who have long suffered in the wake of Jones' defamation of them since the Sandy Hook school shooting.

Onion owers say they will continue to seek ways to to provide said relief, or, in other words, make even more of a buffoon out of Jones and Infowars.

Hopefully, Onion ownership will win on - aheam - a-peal.

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There's been so much talk about the College football Playoff bracket, most of it in Alabama.

Or on ESPN.

And it can stay there.

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Good night, Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you, Cheryl Sweet.

More Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix rock 'n' roll show.

Speaking of RFP (https://radiofreephoenix.com), welcome back to the airwaves, Cheryl Sweet, now in the 4-8 p.m. slot weekday afternoons (Arizona time, that is). And be with RFP on Christmas Eve, when station-founder and face Andy Olson starts his 36th annual "Rock 'N' Roll Christmas" at 6 p.m. and goes 30 hours straight, live, through all of Christmas Day.  

  

 

The Devils You Say...

 The Schloss-Blog is mad that...

...if the New Jersey hockey team kept "Devils" in its name and got rid of "Red," how come the Tampa Bay baseball team took "Devil" out of its name and kept "Rays?"

Huh?

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Baseball's prospective "Golden At-Bat Rule" would allow teams to send up the hitter of its choice in a critical situation.

Any situation. At any point in the game of the team's choosing. Just one time per game though.

But why stop at just "Golden At-Bat?"

Why not "Golden Pitch?" Yeah, give teams a chance to use the pitcher of its choice to any batter in any situation?

Why not?

Well, Commissioner Rob Manfred is now saying that perhaps the "Golden At-Bat Rule" is an idea that needs, well, some reconsideration.

Ya' think?

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Trying to decide what's more difficult: 

Which team should've been left out of the College Football Playoff: 

**Alabama ... or ...

**SMU.

Or what loser should've been left out of Trump's prospective Cabinet:

**Tulsi Gabbard ...  or ... 

**Pete Hegseth?

Although Matt Gaetz did us all a favor.

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Roman Mendez, 6.

Elisa Wolford, 5.

They were the critically injured victims in a shooting earlier this week at Feather River Adventist School, which is near Oroville, California.

They are 6 and 5, respectively.

They were shot by Glenn Litton, 56, who targeted them and their school before shooting himself. He had a criminal history and could not legally purchase a gun.

But he had a "ghost" gun, you know, one that's made principally from parts assembled from different guns.

Litton supposedly had a problem with Seventh Day Adventists.

America has a problem with "ghost" guns. 

Tell Congress. Yeah, right.

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Do you watch Sports Center on ESPN?

I do.

It has competent, intelligent and often wickedly, wonderfully sardastic anchors.

So how come the hot female ones try to be hotter by dressing for a news and information program as if they are going out clubbing immediately thereafter.

Or as if they just came in from clubbing all night?

OK, I'm not saying they should dress like "school m'arms." But do they have a disco in the basement of ESPN's headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut?

I mean, I've heard about the wild parties that are (were?) legendary there... as mentioned in "Those Guys Have All The Fun; Inside The World of ESPN," by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales (2011).

But ladies, really? I think you're good looking but if I want to see you in clubbing attire, I'll take you out dancing.

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Hey, heard about Sydney Gifford and Alyssa Sheil?

Well, it finally happened. In the world of "Influencers," Gifford sued Sheil, one influencer suing another, claiming she totally copied her ... style.

Yeah, her style.

Specifically, the suit claims Sheil copied "her fonts and camera angles, decorated her apartment to match, got a similar haircut, and featured comparable Amazon products on her social media," according to a report in Fast Company.

These two, 24 and 21, respectively, had reportedly discussed a mutual project when Gifford alleges Sheil copied ... well, everything, and Gifford is asking for as much as $150,000 in damages.

Will be watching their respective TikTok video feeds closely.

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Good night, Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you (again), Jordan Grinnell.

More Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix rock 'n' roll show.