Super Stupor, and Other Business News

The Schloss-Blog watched the Super Bowl and...

...wonders how the NFL allows a great rap performer like Kendrick Lamer to express his personal distaste for another artist through his halftime show, the NFL's biggest stage.

And if you're wondering how Serena Williams' husband, Alexis Ohanian, feels about her crip-dance cameo appearance trolling Drake, her 'ex.' Well, he thought it was a "Super halftime show," or so he said on social media.

Or so he said.

Don't know about you, but I don't ever expect to see my wife crip-dancing on the reputation of an 'ex' of hers at the Super Bowl, let alone at a Super Bowl party. Maybe in private at a girls night out, but that's about it.

Nah.

Anyway, guys, how many of you expect to see your wives crip-dancing on the reputations of an 'ex?'

Yeah, that's what I thought.

***

Just thinking that I'm not expecting to see the NFL have Morgan Wallen as its Super Bowl halftime entertainer next year.

The pregame performers this year were all terrific though, as was Jon Batiste doing the National Anthem.

The ads - Harrison Ford for Jeep, the all-star lineup of female athletes doing "So, win" for Nike and the Stella Artois ad with David Beckham and Matt Damon all killed it.

***

Switching gears now, according to Ilyce Glink, one of the best sources for business news I know of ...

"Since the pandemic, inflation has hit hard. The typical new car costs more than $40,000. Housing has had an unrelenting upward trajectory and is extremely expensive for renters and home buyers. Mortgage rates are arond 7%, which means a home buyer’s dollar doesn’t stretch nearly as far. The level of consumer debt is back to an all-time high. Buyers at all ends of the home-buying spectrum (except the super-rich?) are having trouble finding homes they can afford that meet their needs."

In other words, strap in - inflation isn't letting go.

Anytime soon.

***

Why is it that every time Duke basketball is on TV, it's a home game?

And they kick ass.

How about a Duke road game, please, where the other team has a chance.

***

The penny is dead. Long live the penny.

That and all the personnel cuts Elon Musk is making will add up to about - what? - one-tenth of 1% of the federal budget.

Great work, President Musk, great work.

***

Good night, Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you, Grinnelville 11.

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

Overlap, Not Overtime, Is A Killer

The Schloss-Blog, like Mad Dog Russo, is mad about ...

...games on TV that start on time but you can't see 'em.

Don't you hate it when you tune in to ESPN to watch a certain basketball game or to CBS to watch a big golf tournament, and the message scrolling across the bottom of the screen, while you're looking at a basketball game in which you have no interest, says, "the game you tuned in to watch is airing on ESPN News, the ESPN App or ESPN.com."

WTF is ESPN News on my cable or satellile or streaming service directory?

Why don't these networks and leagues appropriate the proper amount of time for these games so they don't overlap? The Schloss-Blog is not happy that by the time the game I want to watch comes on the score is already 21-18 and the first half is half over.

And I could care less about the game they forced me to watch before they switched over.

By the way - you ever see this happen to an NFL game? If a college basketball game overlaps into an NFL game, you know it's the college basketball game that will be switched to ESPN News while the NFL game gets underway on the principle network.

The NFL wouldn't tolerate such treatment from any network and would be on the phone to network management, probably to the president, if that happened. These NFL guys are bastards to work with; trust me, I've had to work with them on a book project on which they gave me a hard time about permission to use a photo of theirs.

I said "F_ck you," literally, to the obnoxious NFL rep I was talking to and used it anyway and now, more than 30 years later, they never did come back at me, but they were effing nasty.

Thank goodness I didn't overlap a telecast of theirs. Or maybe I would've liked to. So the score though, after all these years, is still Schloss-Blog 1, NFL 0.

***

Can't wait to go on vacation at "The Riviera of the Middle East." I hear the tunnel transportation is top notch, aside from the dead bodies on the tracks.

***

After today's Super Bowl, it still persists and you saw some of it today as well - defensive players miss tackles, or they just can't tackle.

Know why?

They try to tackle with their heads down and y'know what happens when you try to tackle with your head down?

If you can't see it, you can't hit it.

I will always - ALWAYS - remember the late, great Buffalo Grove High Football Coach, Grant Blaney, telling me after a big state playoff game that I covered, that he reminded his defensive coaches to remind their defensive players to tackle with their heads up in a game against a school with a stud running back.

And it worked. BG shut him down after he burned them on an opening drive and Blaney's team moved on to the next round of the playoffs.

Can't see it? Can't hit it. NFL players have to learn that. 

Quickly. Can't believe defensive coaches still tolerate it.

***

Good luck, Ohio State football.

We'll see if your team is as good next year without masterminds Chip Kelly and Jim Knowles.

The latter defensive coordinator moved on to rival Penn State and the former offensive coordinator has move on to the NFL's Las Vegas Raiders.

As Tony Kornheiser would say on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption, "Happy Trails."

***

Jimmy Butler, by all accounts, wanted to end up in Phoenix.

He didn't.

Kevin Durant didn't want to go to Golden State.

He didn't.

Bottom line: Butler got the two-year extension he wanted at Golden State, which was the one he wanted to get in Phoenix.

Kevin Durant, meanwhile, is on a team with two other superstars but the team - the Suns - sucks. They're a team with a dynamic trio as good as anybody else's "BigThree." even the Lakers.

What's wrong with the Suns? All that talent. Why aren't they winning? Maybe it's the third coach in three years.

No, definitely, it is.

***

If you think Chicago sports is hurting (Cubs, Sox, Blackhawks, Bulls, Bears), you should move to Phoenix (Cardinals, Diamondbacks, Suns, Coyotes ... no, wait, they moved to Salt Lake without a whisper and no one cared enough to build them a new stadium; nobody wanted to keep them around). 

If you split your time betwen Chicago and Phoenix, like so many snowbirds (like me) do, it's difficult to find a winner to get behind (OK, Arizona State football, for now, that is).

Yet, hope springs eternal. "Pitchers and catchers report."

Oh boy.

***

Put Eli Manning in the Hall of Fame, please. He deserved first-ballot approval. He'll get in eventually. Just not this time.

Just ask Tom Brady about him.

***

Good night, Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you, Grinnellville 11.

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

  

Josh Allen, Bears' Offensive Coordinators, Lots In Common (And A Stampede in India)

The Schloss-Blog has noticed that Josh Allen and Bears Offensive Coordinators have some things in common, and they're not pretty.

***

More on Allen and the Bears in a moment, meanwhile, in India, there was a disastrous mob stampede at a religious ceremony that took at least 30 lives and injured many more people.

Yes, a rush of people attending the Maha Kumbh Mela festival in northern India wound up killing that many people and injuring so many more. This festival often involves as many as 100 million, so perhaps it's a minor miracle that only 30 were killed.

But it immediately stirred memories of the killed and injured at a Who concert in Cincinnati, a football game in Madison, Wisconsin, and a soccer game in Britain that also get people to act irrationally and endanger themselves and others unnecesssarily.

The crush to get into a general-admission, open-seating Who concert in Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum killed 11 people in 1979 as people rushed for upfront seats.

Also, no one was killed but 79 were injured, 6 critically, following a postgame rush to the field at a University of Wisconsin football game in 1993, when the Badgers upset Michigan. Fans were crsushed against fences at the field level designed to keep them out.

And the Hillsborough Stadium disaster in 1989 killed 97 and hospitalized 162 at a British soccer game, when fans wanting to get in, without tickets, rushed the gates and overwhelmed security.

Emotions, at a soccer game, a concert, a football upset win and a religious ceremony, get the best of us and cause us to do things that put others and ourselves at risk.

Why?

***

It's called DeepSeek.

And it has U.S. markets and investors turned inside out. Tech stocks slipped 9.2% last Monday when news that the Chinese-born AI application was a less-expensive alternative to all the fancy U.S.-based  applications that were humming along so handsomely.

Oh, but the markets are so fickle. All China has to do is sneeze and stocks suffer a near-wipeout daily tumble.

They all came back in part during the week.

But wait, China is developing it's next great, displacing app - a snack that can read your astrological forecast.

It's called - a fortune cookie.

***

Trump's "inflation" tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China are here.

Hold onto your wallets.

As if that's not bad enough for the abnormal president, he's blaming DEI and Democrats for the disastrous plane-helicopter crash in D.C.

Subsequently, the Eagles and Chiefs have already turned down invitations to the White House. The NFL says it will send Aaron Rodgers instead. Just Aaron Rodgers, not the Jets.

***

OK, back to the news we started with - what do Josh Allen and Bears offensive coordinators have in common?

Four, that's what.

Allen is 0-4 against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in the playoffs. The Bears, meanwhile, had four offensive coordinators through the rookie year of  quarterback Caleb Williams through this past season.

Five if you count the hiring of Declan Doyle for new head coach Ben Johnson. But kinda' think he's gonna' design and call all the offensive plays anyway.

Now then, about the offensive line, Ben...

***

Good night, Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you, John Calipari (nice win at Kentucky).

More Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix rock 'n' roll show (and get over to shop.radiofreephoenix.com and buy a T-shirt, mug or poster - guys, buy the black T-shirt with the white lettering and wear it out to a bar on a Friday night and I promise you that an interesting woman will start up a conversation with you).

 

OMG! Bannon, Musk and Hot Hosts on ESPN

The Schloss-Blog wants to know ... where does ESPN find all those hottie blonde anchors on Sports Center?

And most of them dress like they're going to or coming from a hot night out at New York's finest clubs. I mean, a lot of them don't dress appropirately for national TV news (Run away with me, Nicole Briscoe). Seriously, they almost look a little too "red carpet" (Kelsey Riggs, I love you). I mean, I think about changing the channel when one of them is anchoring (You and me, Shae Cornette, forever). 

Just kidding.

Or am I?

***

On a lighter note, the inauguration of the 47th president has to be moved indoors due to the extreme cold weather in D.C.

Shucks, that cancels any chance of a record-breaking crowd, but you know '47' will say it was anyway.

***

OK, OK, Elle Duncan - I know you're not blonde but you make my "hot Sports Center anchors" list anyway, OK. 

And don't call again to complain.

***

Have heard - Steve Bannon is out to stop Elon Musk, who he calls "truly evil."

Really, never though I'd see the day Bannon would start tossing around generous compoliments like that.

***

Been watching TGL - The Golf League? It's the Tiger Woods/Rory McIlroy-inspired indoor game of teams playing on a high-tech wonder of a wild golf course in a studio arena transformed into the most insane simulated golf course ever.

So far ... meh.

While the technology is incredibly impressive and the players among the world's best, I'll be more into it when Tiger and Rory make it available to the masses at an affordable "greens fee."

That means the masses, as in 'me.' Hey Tiger, Rory, get some of those built around the country. Please.

I would love, during winter in Chicagoland, to go to Tigerland (OK, Rory/Tigerland) and hit a few balls, play a 'round of golf' and have a few cold ones with my buds.

Of course, it doesn't have a hottie cart girl driving around with snacks and cold ones, it doesn't have real water traps (although it does have sand, real sand) and it doesn't have other bad golfers like yourself hitting into you, no, literally, into you.

But really, the only thing missing is ... Elle Duncan.

***

Inflation isn't the only thing down in Phoenix lately (1.6% the last 12 months). Check out the murder rate, down 28% in 2024, year over year.

Donald Trump had us believe crime is rampant in America, but the only thing rampant is his wild tendency to lie obsessively.

***

America's soon-to-be Secretary of Death, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., tried to have vaccinations halted for COVID during 2021, when we needed it most.

He's going to try to kill us America, or die trying.

***

I always get stoppers for my drinks at Starbucks, to keep them from splashing inadvertently. 

Ask for stoppers at a Starbucks in New York though and guess what? They ain't got none.

It's a New York thing, my wife tells me.

So is a $9-and-up 'congestion' fee for driving your car into Manhattan south of 60th Street. For New Yorkers, if they have to or want to come into the city, they'll pay the various fees and not even blink, even if it costs them as much as $2,000 a year.

A New York thing? It's called money.

***

Notre Dame versus Ohio State on Monday night.

I despise both.

But Ohio State will win, and for my Cleveland-native wife, they better.

***

Speed limit in Chicago is going to be reduced from 30 to 25 on city streets.

They must have heard I was back in town this week.

However, the move got blocked in the Ciy Council for the time being.

I'll take as many MPH as I can get.

***

Yes, the Sports Center anchors are professionals, broadcasdt predigrees with poise, sophistication and fluidity on air.

Who often dress like it's girls night out at the NY clubs, or maybe a bachelor-ette night out. I'm sorry, but they do.

***

Good night Mrs. Calabash. Heres' to you, Jordan Grinnell.

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