Tuesdays with Tom: Mailbag Part III
Welcome to the third edition of Tuesdays With Tom: Mailbag Questions! We got a great bunch of questions and some hopefully good answers to them. Let’s see what the people want to know.
What are your biggest pet peeves?
Chris K.
I talk about gym pet peeves pretty often but I do have some other ones. I don’t like when people say “You’re welcome” before you can say “Thank you” about something. I call that “rude-polite” where someone is insinuating that you won’t say thank you, so they try to beat you to the punch with a “you’re welcome” and make you look like an asshole. Well, now I don’t really want to say thank you. I’m very good about saying thank you, but not if you’re going to do that. Another one that’s specific to me is when you’re making plans and people don’t want to participate in the planning, but they still critique the plan. For example, let’s say you are deciding on an activity for the night. You throw out a couple of ideas and someone says “I don’t want to do that.” Okay, well then what do you want to do? “Oh I don’t care!” You can’t have it both ways idiot. You can’t say you don’t like an idea, but have no other suggestion for a different one. Some people just don’t want to be involved in planning. That’s fine! But then stay out of it completely or participate and contribute to the ideation. I’m a very decisive person about many things so people who are naturally indecisive, that gets on my nerves.
Finally, here’s one that is new and anyone under the age of 30 can probably relate to. There’s a social media trend going around called “Felt cute, might delete later” where essentially you take a selfie, post it and then openly question whether or not it’s cute enough to share publicly. 95% of the time someone posts something, it’s a well thought out, calculated post that’s been thoroughly vetted for cuteness. The forced self-deprecation on platforms like Instagram is so prevalent that a Netflix show just did an entire sketch about it. Either own that you’re doing a complete joke or be genuine. You want to post a cute photo? Go ahead. But don’t tell me that something you posted isn’t cute, when it clearly is meant to be. And if you’re posting it, you already chose not to delete it! Even if you delete it later, it’s too late. It’s been posted. It’s just a very nonsensical concept to me. I won’t be participating sincerely.
Can you summarize the Patrick Ewing NBA lottery conspiracy for me?
Mike D.
Certainly! First for some further context. Between 1966 and 1984, the NBA determined who received the No. 1 overall pick by taking the two teams with the worst records and held a “competitive coin flip.” The winner got the first pick and the rest of the draft was placed by inverse order of standings like most player drafts. In 1985, they introduced the lottery system for the first time. At the time, there were only 23 teams total meaning that only seven non-playoff teams participated in this inaugural lottery. Georgetown center Patrick Ewing was the consensus top prospect heading into the draft. The New York Knicks struggled through the 1984-85 season, finishing second to last in the Eastern Conference at 24-58. Overall, they had the third worst record in the league behind the Golden State Warriors and Indiana Pacers. As the conspiracy goes, the league was in a ratings swoon and had a vested interest in making New York a relevant team. Adding a player like Ewing seemed like a sure way to give them an instant boost in talent and star power.
You can watch the lottery drawing here. Unlike today’s set-up, the drawing was broadcast on live television. All seven sealed envelopes were placed into a bingo-like sphere and spun around until they were able to mix it up. Commissioner David Stern drew the card and unveiled the Knicks logo as the winning hand. Many people believe that the combination of David Stern’s aggressively relaxed expression upon reading and the envelope being slightly bent, shows that the league fixed the lottery so that the Knicks could engineer an upset win. There are some who take this even further and suggest that the NBA froze the Knicks’ envelope so that Stern would be able to feel that one out amongst other envelopes more easily. Ewing went on to have a Hall of Fame career with the Knicks for 15 seasons.
So is any of that true? It’s impossible to know for sure, but fun to talk about. This isn’t the first time the league has been accused of fixing the lottery and it won’t be the last. All I know is that the conspiracy theorizing started at the first lottery and that is really something.
Do you fear any type of animal?
Chris K.
Chris had a lot of questions for me. This is a broad question, but I will attempt to answer it as specifically as I can. There are plenty of animals that if I encountered in the wild, I’d be instantly afraid of them. But truthfully, the odds of me being in the vicinity of with a killer whale, African lion or a giant squid are extremely slim. So for the sake of this question, I’m only going to consider animals that I could reasonably interact with. I love dogs and growing up with Bernese Mountain dogs for most of my life, I really have no fear of large breed dogs of any kind. I don’t like cats but I also don’t fear them. There is one entire class of animals that I have never, ever really gotten along with at all. Insects. Particularly, bees and I can tell you exactly why. When I was about 7 years old, I was waiting for a train with my mom one summer day. A gigantic hornet flew onto my hand and stung me squarely in my palm. I cried the entire train ride to downtown Chicago. Basically ever since then, I physically recoil and nearly freak out at the sight of bees. My friends give me a very hard time about it and squeal with delight watching a fully grown adult man yell obscenities at a little bee and running around like a child to avoid them. It’s extremely childish, embarrassing to admit and I cannot seem to shake this habit. I’ve even been stung by bees multiple times since and barely winced in pain unlike when I was younger.
Aside from bees, really any bugs and crawling type insects give me the willies. For my entire childhood, I slept at the top floor of my house and without fail every spring, a swarm of ladybugs would crawl through the windows day and night and fly around. So I became very paranoid about insects constantly being in my presence. I’ve probably killed over 1,000 ladybugs in my lifetime, which I later learned is concerned horrific luck. So there you go. Tom who is afraid of bugs might be here to stay forever!
What are your thoughts on Game of Thrones?
Various People
(SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE FINALE)
As I’ve said to a number of people these last six weeks, I’ve been enjoying the last season. The amount of attention and scrutiny this show receives in absolutely insane. On one hand, any network would kill to have this problem. The show has massive following of millions. It is squarely in the center of cultural conversation for each new episode displayed by the immediate meme-ification of every single frame on social media. But this is a double-edged sword. Have you ever been so excited about something that you inflate your expectations beyond reason? I think what’s happened with Game of Thrones this entire season. The two-year wait for these last six episodes made people mad with excitement and it’s worked against the creators of the show. Essentially, they’ve become a victim of their own success.
The most common criticism of the past two seasons is that they are rushing to the story’s finish line. That’s very interesting (read: annoying) to me because I remember countless times watching in previous seasons when I felt that things were going too slowly. Part of the enjoyment of the show was the slow burn, but I think there’s been a revisionist history about past seasons that every episode was filled with shocking deaths and massive battles. That’s never been the case. This show eventually had to end. Whether or not that was eight seasons or 12 seasons, it was always going to end. Television shows have to walk a very tough line of constantly creating new stories within one framework or universe and then suddenly, creating an ending to a never-ending medium. It’s very difficult to stick the landing on a series’ finishing run because the tantalizing potential you imagine is almost always more exciting than what eventually happens.
Let’s get into the actual ending. Like I said in great detail, I do think people are more concerned about being right than just purely enjoying the show. I didn’t mind that many beloved characters didn’t die for once and I found it strange that many people were actively rooting for more character bloodlust. I’d say roughly 85% of the main and supporting characters that were introduced are now dead. Is that enough? You want more?! How many more fake people need to die for someone to be satisfied. I’d like for some characters I love to live and we got exactly that. That doesn’t mean it was a completely happy ending either.
Jon Snow, the show’s most important character, was faced with a terrible, terrible choice. He chose to kill the love of his life in cold blood to protect the rest of the living humans from her tyranny. I thought that was extremely affecting storytelling that again, would have been difficult to predict. His reward was being banished from society, even though his true parentage gives him the best claim to the throne, where he will live with his Free Folk friends. All of the living Stark children have made peace with their situations and will live relatively good lives. After all they’ve been through, they deserve it. I’m good with this ending and I don’t know what else people would prefer for an ending. Another thing I’ll say for the many who are underwhelmed. I remember when The Sopranos ended with a dramatic cut-to-black and people were extremely pissed off. Now most people agree that the ending is solid and made sense all along. It’s funny that Jon asks Tyrion if he made the right choice killing Dany because it “doesn’t feel right” right now. Tyrion replies by saying to ask him in 10 years. Well, I’d love to know what some people think 10 years from now when this show is nothing but a memory.
Did you really watch Shark Tale last week?
Nobody
Yes I did and I want to talk about this animated children’s movie from 2004 right now. First of all, I probably haven’t seen this movie in 15 years. I randomly popped it on as background noise while I did some work on the computer at home. I immediately started laughing (in a bad way) at all of the ridiculous pop culture references and in-jokes that are now quite dated. For example, in this world Reef City is a downtown underwater metropolis where stores like “GUP” instead of GAP exist. Nothing makes children laugh like references to The Benny Hill Show, A Few Good Men, Once Upon a Time in America, The Jeffersons, The Love Boat, Scarface, Die Hard and Jerry Maguire. This brings us to the plot which is loosely based on The Godfather. Again, what about The Godfather is exactly relevant for children in the 2000s? The main premise is that great white sharks are all involved in an organized crime family that basically just eat other fish, who are common citizens. Lenny (Jack Black) is the son of the family boss (Robert DeNiro). His mild-mannered nature and closeted vegetarian diet makes him unlike all of the other sharks. At one point, it’s also kind of implied that he might be a homosexual, but they didn’t explore THAT one too much. Meanwhile, Oscar (Will Smith) is a colorful fish with luscious, big lips for some reason that works at the Whale Wash scrubbing whale tongues. He aspires to be rich and famous but tongue scrubbers don’t make a lot of money. He is completely oblivious that his best friend/co-worker Angie (Renee Zellweger) is in love with him and openly pursues another fish (Angelina Jolie). So oblivious in fact, Angie gives him a family jewel to pay off a $5,000 debt and he decides to spend it all on one seahorse race when he hears the race is fixed. He doesn’t seem to think anything of that incredible gesture.
ANYWAYS, this is a children’s movie where the primary conflict is Oscar falling into loan debt with the shark mafia. After a botched hit job by Lenny, Oscar takes credit for the death of Lenny’s shark brother. He becomes rich and famous as “The Sharkslayer” (which was going to be the title of movie before DreamWorks nixed it to be more family friendly). Lenny helps him keep up the lie in exchange for Oscar helping him fake his death so he can be a free gay, vegetarian shark somewhere else. Nothing screams “kid’s comedy” like financial debt, elaborately faked murder, materialism, socio-economic classic dynamics and racial stereotypes. You can add Jamaican stereotypes to that list as two jellyfish bouncer-types, Ernie and Bernie, are somehow 100% Rastafarian and sport jelly-based beanies and dreadlock tentacles. The original cut was in fact so offensive to Italian-Americans that John Mancini, the founder of the Italic Institute of America, convinced DreamWorks to change many of the names of the sharks to be less overtly Italian, dropping many mannerisms and forms of speech. If that’s the case, I can’t imagine how much worse it was originally because it’s pretty obvious in the final product.
I found myself ironically amused by this absurd movie. But to twist the knife into Shark Tale, this movie came out a full year after Finding Nemo. That’s a much better film and I understand why a competitor would want to make a fish-related movie after that. This was just a really, really weird way to go about it. I know this is way too much detail on a mediocre kid’s movie, but I’m glad I randomly did this. If for nothing else, this is a fun time capsule for 2004-specific humor and jokes that are so bad, they’re good.
Tom’s Thoughts of the Week
Not only was I dead wrong about the NBA lottery winners and losers, but the Bulls got completely screwed in the process. They dropped from the 4th slot to the 7th pick, tied for the biggest drop of any team. They also watched the Lakers jump up from 11th to 4th, the Grizzlies from 9th to 2nd and the big winner of the day the Pelicans went from 7th to 1st. The entire purpose of flattening everyone’s lottery odds was to disincentivize tanking. If this is how it’s going to be every year, it might actually work. It’s pretty hard to convince me that this lottery was fixed in favor of the worst NBA fan market in the league. As for the Bulls, this is the third year in a row they will draft 7th. There’s no spin for this. It’s a disastrous outcome for a team that’s got a very murky future at the moment.
A 70-year-old man was kicked off a Southwest flight for making a joke about vodka. You read that right! After a nearly four hour delay while sitting on the plane, a flight attendant was passing out water to a passenger. This man joked “Wow, I hope that’s vodka because we’ve been sitting here for so long.” The flight attendant wasn’t amused by the joke and then said “Yeah, it’s vodka”, then when she went to another row he said “Hey this isn’t vodka.” She then walked up to the front of the plane and it began to turn around to the original gate. Police officers got onto the plane and escorted this jokester off it. Sorry, but I’m completely with the jokester on this. How can you get kicked off a plane for being sarcastic? I’m in big trouble if that’s the case. It’s not like he made the one joke you can’t make on an airplane. He just made a questionable joke during what was likely a highly stressful situation. Lighten up Southwest.
Last week was the 20th anniversary of the release The Backstreet Boys most successful album, Millennium. I wore this album out when I was a young kid. They were my first concert and somehow a lot of these songs are still relevant today. “I Want It That Way” was voted as the No. 1 boy-band song of all-time by Billboard not too long ago (and that was out of the top-100). “Show Me The Meaning of Being Lonely”, “Larger Than Life” were also huge hits from the album. This was at the peak of their fame and the 1990s-2000s boy band craze. It’s definitely a weird feeling to think that’s 20 years old now. I’ll be writing about a different 20th anniversary for music next week. Teaser alert!
Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of people in my industry using the term quarterback as an analogy. For example, “we are the quarterbacks of the planning process.” Occasionally, you will hear this swapped out with “point guard” but it’s almost always quarterback. Most people’s knowledge of sports positions is pretty thin, but I wish that these comparisons extended beyond the mainstream. Imagine if you heard a co-worker say “I’m the left-handed specialist reliever of our billing inventory.” Or if someone said “I’m the fourth line winger of the marketing team.” Or if someone said “When a project is almost done, I’m the oversized defensive lineman-turned temporary goal line fullback that you bring in as a human shield so that another teammate can score a metaphorical touchdown.” This might only be hilarious to people who love sports, but that’s one absurd fantasy I wish I could bring to life.