Repairing our Pastimes

The letter I had been waiting for from the White House finally arrived yesterday. It read,
Dear Mr. Gervase,
I have decided to appoint you secretary of my new Homeland Sports Repair cabinet post. Please send me your recommendations for fixing sports as soon as possible. I’m positive I can get the country, Congress, and EPSN to buy into your changes. Hell, I got Health Care Reform passed, I can do anything. Besides, I’m not doing much these days anyway.
Sincerely,
President Obama

Naturally, I jumped right into my new task. Here’s what I sent back:

Dear Mr. President,
These are my recommendations for the following sports:
Baseball:
• Widen the use of instant replay to include everything except balls and strikes or check swings. The Mets and Giants recently had a game decided by a bad call at the plate. Imagine if either team makes or misses the playoffs by a game. And what about poor Armando Galarraga? Not only did he miss out on a perfect game because of an ump’s boneheaded call, he also got sent down to the minors. Thus, the manager of each team gets one replay challenge per game. Get Apple to create a video replay application for the iPad. On challenges, the ball boys will bring it and four camp chairs out to home plate and the umpires can sit and watch the replays. Until the iPad is ready, the crew chief will have to walk up the stairs to the field level concourse, stand in line for a hotdog, and watch the replay on the TVs before making his call.
• Enshrine Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame. But he may not work in baseball. His accomplishments as a player merit his enshrinement. His crimes came after his retirement. If we can forgive President Clinton for what he did in your office, Pete can get his atonement too.
• Fix the All-star game. It no longer should decide home-field advantage for the World Series. Instead the teams from the losing league will have Tim McCarver’s audio feed from every game he’s ever announced piped into their clubhouses. If that’s not incentive enough to win, I don’t know what is. Cap the All-star rosters at 25 players. Every team doesn’t have to be represented, except for the host team.
• Tell the networks that they no longer get to dictate the start times for postseason games. No game will start later than 6:00 p.m. on the east coast. Wouldn’t it be nice if kids actually got to see their teams play in October? Don’t worry about us in the West. We can set our DVRs (Shhh. Don’t tell the networks that we don’t watch commercials).

NBA
• Dictate the league to go to back to having two refs. Maybe it’ll cut the number of fouls in a third.
• Mandate that the director of televised games is only allowed to use one camera during live action – the one at center court. I like that my couch is actually the best seat in the house. He needs to stop hindering my view. No half-court floor camera that shows nothing but the ref’s backside. No behind-the-basket shots that flattens out the court. No more switching from the standard view to an under the basket view in the middle of a fast break.
• High Schoolers can go straight to the NBA if they’re able, but if they go to college they must stay for three years. Baseball players do it, so can basketball players.


College Basketball
• Order the NCAA to not expand the tourney. It’s completely fine as it is.
• Send Dick Vitale to Afghanistan. There he could announce or coach in the TBL (Taliban Basketball League). After a week they’ll give us Osama Bin Laden just to get Dickie V (With his height, he’d make my all-Windex team, baby!) out of their beards.

College Football
• Playoff. Nuff said.

NFL
• Not much to tinker with here. Although the players’ off-the-field actions need to be cleaned up. Command all the teams to hire a family from the show, “World’s Strictest Parents.” Each rookie must then live with that family for a week. Then the parents get to administer all discipline to any player caught doing something off the field the parents wouldn’t approve of.
• Mandate that all preseason-game ticket prices are set at $5.00 each. Did you know that only two percent of NFL TV fans have actually attended a game? Going to an NFL game is a Bucket List item right up there with climbing Kilimanjaro or seeing the Great Wall of China. Wouldn’t it be nice if a few more fans saw the inside of a stadium before they died?

NHL
• It’s hard to even know where to start here. The sport recently returned from the ICU, but is one work stoppage away from a frozen cemetery. I’d start by enlarging the net, decreasing the size of the goalie’s pads, and using two pucks at once. More scoring can’t hurt.
• Eliminate the three periods, two intermission system. Like football and basketball, hockey needs four quarters and one halftime. Take a five minute break to clean the ice between periods. A normal intermission can then be had after the second period.

Soccer
• I think you can easily get Congress to generate some revenue from this global sport. Add a page to the Obama Care Bill requiring the FDA to bottle the World Cup and sell it as an over-the-counter sleep aid.

Decent Exposure

Dear Grandma, your grand kids are not cuter than mine.
If I had some grand kids, they would be much cuter than yours. And for that matter, my wife is prettier than your daughter, my dog is smarter than yours, my roses smell lovelier than yours, and my toaster makes better toast than yours!

I spend more time than a proctologist looking at rear ends and often I am both amused and shocked at what some people will stick on theirs. I’m talking about automobiles. I enjoy seeing what people have placed on their cars for my reading pleasure, but other times I cringe at the R-rated material.

I like trying to decipher the letter-limited vanity plates. Some people are very creative. Others are a little more cryptic. Yesterday I saw a plate that read, CSTMBLD. Was it custom build? Custom bold? Costume bled? I grow so curious that I want to get out at the first stoplight to inquire about the exact meaning. Other people can be so inane with their plates. BMER4ME: Yeah, no clue Buster, you’re driving a BMW. I hadn’t noticed. You have to advertise your status on your status symbol? Cool.

In ultra-conservative, mega-churched Orange County, the Jesus Fish has been replaced by the “Not of This World” window decal. It’s a reference to John 18:36 in which Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now, my kingdom is from another place.” Sometimes I take things too literally. So, does it mean the car is from heaven? I bet God didn’t need a government bailout for his auto industry. Or does it mean the car is “saved” and is going to auto heaven. It’s been cleansed at the local John the Baptist’s car wash? Maybe the car just has a great deal of faith. “I can do all things through Castrol.” Yes, I know the driver of the car is a Christian and is signifying his or her membership in Jesus’ otherworldly kingdom. However, I’ve never felt the need to advertise my faith in Jesus on my car. I hope my life is advertisement enough.

Then there’s Grandma’s boasting about her ever-so-cute grand children. Give me a break Granny Braggadocio. I certainly hope that you think that your grand kids are really cute. But are they cuter than someone else’s? Can’t you say, “I think that my grand kids are really cute?” Why does our society have to be so into one-up-man’s-ship? Is life a game and you have to be the winner? Is everything Coke vs. Pepsi, McDonald's vs. Burger King, my grand kids vs. your grand kids?

As entertained as I am by some license plates, I am also shocked at the vulgarity and obscenity that a few people slap on their cars. I don’t need to see Calvin from “Calvin and Hobbs” taking a leak. I don’t need to see cuss words, including the F-word, while driving on the freeway. And grandma’s cute grand kids don’t need to see naked women on the way to day care.


Free speech and the first amendment are good things. But I also believe in decency. Decency is defined as “a standard of propriety, good taste, and modesty”. What happened to good taste? Do people with naked women and cuss words on their custom built pick-ups not care about decency? Obviously not. They certainly don’t care what others think of them. That’s fine. It’s a free country. But to not care about their personal impact upon others is sad. They don’t care that children who are learning to read will be sounding out those cuss words. I often imagine what it’s like for a parent to have to explain words and images that can be found on the backs of vehicles today. Just because it’s allowable to be indecent in the privacy of one’s own home, does not mean it’s in good taste to be a billboard of indecency on our surface streets.

I think what it comes down to is a lack of consideration of others. People are so concerned with themselves that they don’t give a second thought about how what they stick on their cars affect others or reflect upon themselves. We’ve gone from the “It’s all about me” generation to the “I don’t give a flip about you” generation.

I wish that some citizens would order up a generous helping of decency. From watching one’s language at the ballpark to removing items of poor taste from a car, showing a respect and concern for others, especially children, can certainly go a long way toward delaying the timetable in which our youth will get their exposures to indecency.

Unless of course Grandma is bragging about how cute her bleepin' grand kids are.

Lessons from the Stormtroopers

Children still love to dress up as Star Wars characters for Halloween. This makes George Lucas a genius - because 33 years ago, I dressed up as a Star Wars character for Halloween. Yes, I was a Star Wars fan. Every Christmas brought new Star Wars action figures and merchandise. I had the whole movie on … a record. And of course, there was my homemade Luke Skywalker costume. Star Wars was my introduction to the silver screen and I’ve been in love with movies ever since.

But one question has plagued me since my early movie-going childhood: why couldn’t Darth Vader’s white-plastic-wearing foot soldiers hit the broad side of the Millennium Falcon with their blasters? I mean, they had to have had the worst aim in history, past and futuristic. And every time I watch a movie where the villains and bad guys can’t hit a thing, I call them graduates of the “Stormtrooper School of Shooting” … because to be that bad, they had to have been taught by the very worst.

Bad marksmanship probably didn’t start with the Stormtroopers. I bet the Germans and the Indians had horrible aim in every John Wayne war movie or western. However, as weaponry improves, bad guy shooting seems to be getting worse. I just watched, The Green Zone featuring Matt Damon. With automatic weapons that from 500 yards could cross the F on Lindsay Lohan’s fingernail, the Iraqis couldn’t bring down a limping Damon trudging across a Baghdad courtyard from a nearby rooftop. I know the protagonist can’t get taken out, but why do the directors have to make it so obviously silly when the bad guys spray a room with lead and hit nothing but the wallpaper?

Another action-movie staple that I can’t stand is the fight scene in which the hero takes on five bad guys at once. Except that the bad guys, never rush the hero at once. No, that would make too much sense. Instead, they each wait patiently in line as if they’re at Starbucks ordering a mocha. They charge into the hero’s punches, kicks, and head-butts before falling like dominos, one after the other. In the movie Taken, Liam Neeson is searching for his kidnapped daughter. He finagles his way into an upstairs apartment where a group of meanies are sitting around playing cards (bad guys love to kill time playing cards). Liam initiates a brawl, single-handedly whipping the villains as they come at him one at a time. You can almost see them playing “Rock-Paper-Scissors” in the background to determine who gets his butt kicked next. Of course, one bad guy survives the melee, and chases Liam out of the apartment and down the stairs, littering the whole area code with bullets, none of which connects with its target.

Of course action movie heroes always have impeccable aim. Our brave protagonist (insert over-paid actor name here) can be down to his last bullet, arrow, or pocketknife; and can be riding on a horse, a motorcycle, a boat, a helicopter, driving a car or hanging out of a airplane and WILL always put one right between the eyes of his pursuer. The good guys never attend the Stormtrooper School of Shooting.

In addition to fine shooting skills, the action movie’s star also has to have the superb ability to escape and defy impending doom. Once in every action movie, the hero will ultimately get caught by the bad guys. Normally, the head bad guy will show up and order the hero to be executed. However, the final bullet is never fired immediately. Again, that would make too much sense. Instead, our trusty hero is usually spared immediate death, and is relocated to a better killing room, usually involving overhead pipes from which he can be dangled. While the bungling henchmen sit around (playing cards) waiting for the perfect time to carry out the boss’ orders, (Funny, the boss said “kill him,” not “sit around and wait for him to free himself, then kill him”) our hero will escape, foil the execution, and expediently slay his captors who are this time drawing straws one at a time to decide the order of their one-by-one attack.

Just about every action movie nowadays thinks it’s a James Bond film. Bond should be only character permitted to fall out of planes, survive car explosions, and jump from an overpass onto a moving semi. Bond movies are really just Roadrunner cartoons. Like the Coyote, OO7 takes a pounding in his tuxedo, only to bounce back in the next scene to gracefully order a drink and cozy up to the nearest bombshell. We as viewers expect the Bond films to be this way. It wouldn’t be a Bond film if it were any different.

But action movie makers these days are always trying to top each other. They sacrifice storyline, acting, and writing by trying to create the biggest explosion, longest chase scene, or most dynamic computer-generated special effect moment that always leaves me shaking my head and saying, “No way!”

I’m really tempted to watch The Book of Eli. Denzel wouldn’t go James Bond-wanna be on us, would he? But the trailer gives it away. Too many explosions. Too many fight scenes. Too many poor-shooting bad guys. I even went to film’s website to get a better idea of what to expect. I wasn’t surprised. Because there on the Credits page was a photo of lead villain Gary Oldman and his cohorts displaying their diplomas from the Stormtrooper School of Shooting.

Separation of Church and State

On the heels of our nation’s birthday, I have a history quiz for you. In which document do the words, “Separation of Church and State” (SOCAS) appear?
A. The Constitution
B. The Bill of Rights
C. The Declaration of Independence
D. Madalyn Murray O’Hare’s family cookbook (Oh wait, that’s the separation of “cheese and steak”)
The correct answer is E, “None of the above”. The first document believed to contain SOCAS is a letter from President Thomas Jefferson in 1802. Jefferson was responding to a letter from a group of Connecticut Baptists who were worried that because freedom of religion had been written into the laws and constitutions, the government might someday believe that it was okay to “regulate public religious activities.” The Baptists believed that freedom of religion was a God-given right, not a government-granted right. They didn’t want future governments to one day revoke freedom of religion. Jefferson agreed. He wrote back saying, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise of,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”
Jefferson was not alone in his stance on church and state. Remember he was pretty active in the founding of the USA going back to 1776 when he put his quill to work. Contrary to Lost Symbol author Dan Brown’s “history” books, many of the Fathers were bible-believing Christians. Religion was pretty dang important to those white-wigged-wearing politicians. I mean they didn’t wait to the 10th amendment to bring up God. They led off with Him.
And when it comes to the First Amendment, records show that in the discussions about the Almighty, the word “religion” was often interchanged with the word “denomination”. The beginning drafts of the First Amendment were written as, “Congress shall make no law establishing any particular denomination.” In those records the discussions revolved around curtailing what has been their experience under Great Britain, “the legal establishment by the national government of a single religious denomination in exclusion of all others.”
So in essence, the bricks of Jefferson’s wall were laid not to limit religious expressions, but to prevent the government from interfering with public or private religious activities. Times have changed, huh?
But change was slow. For nearly one hundred and fifty years, courts (including the Supreme one) often cited Jefferson’s letter and interpreted it to mean that the government couldn’t interfere with traditional religious practices such as public prayer or the use of Scriptures. Over time the courts outlined how and when the government could poke its fingers into religion. For example, the government could prohibit religious expressions that were “in violation of social duties or subversive of good order.” Things such as human sacrifice, incest, polygamy, or skipping Sunday services to stay home and watch football.
Then in 1947, the Supreme Court did an about-face and interpreted SOCAS “as requiring the federal government to remove religious expressions from the public arena.” Instead of limiting governmental interference, the First Amendment was now a limitation on religious expressions. In doing so, the Court did not cite Jefferson’s whole 1802 letter, his many other statements on the topic, or mention that earlier Court rulings used Jefferson’s phrase to preserve religious principles in public society.
In 1962 the Court went another step further and began redefining individual words of the SOCAS phrase. “Church” was no longer “federal denomination” but instead became, “public religious activity.” So, SOCAS became to mean that “public religious expressions must be kept separate from the public square”. Basically, those worrisome Connecticut Baptists were just a mere 160 years ahead of the game.
After the 1962 decision, the Court began removing religion from the schools. Many conservative folks will say that this is when our country and our educational system went to hell in a rolling backpack. I think the moral decline of our country was very subtle, happening over decades. Something occurred over time that shifted the heartbeat of the United States from God Bless America to America Ignores God. I wonder if it was the prosperity of the Industrial Revolution or the roar of the happy 1920s? Was it the agony of the Great Depression, or the atrocities of World War II? Was it a combination of everything? Maybe it’s just simply switching from putting God first to putting America first.
The good news is that the Courts are doing a 180 on their initial about-face. Two dozen states now mandate “abstinence-only” teaching in schools. The Supreme Court has now made it okay to have evangelism, prayer, and Bible clubs on public school campuses. “It’s permissible to show films that present family values from a religious perspective, pay for some student religious publications with school funds, and teach the Bible for credit. Furthermore, there are new laws that prohibit the content-based censorship of American history due to religious references found in certain historical documents ranging from the Mayflower Compact to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.”
God said in II Chronicles 7:14, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” Lord knows America needs some healing. I’m sure it’ll be tough to get a country of 300 million people to buy into II Chronicles 7:14. But maybe 300 million don’t have to. Maybe if more of the 600 or so non-wig-wearing big wigs in Washington D.C. gave a more concerted thought to the spiritual ideas of the Framers, America might just stand a chance.

(Quoted material above is from David Barton’s book, Separation of Church and State, What the Founders Meant.)