A Eulogy, Opening Day, and Rank Needs Money

From the Sports Desk- Some true, some fiction, all commentay/satire

"Baby, baby, baby you're out of time.
I said baby, baby, baby you're out of time
You are all left out
Out of there without a doubt.
Cause baby, baby, baby you're out of time"- The Rolling Stones (1966)

Boy, those lyrics sure sound definite. I gave my opinion on the concept of "definite" a few posts back. That is, I think its bullshit. The only things that are "definite" are death and boycotting a restaurant after a bad meal (Roast, I'm looking at you). Anyway, I just started and am already on a tangent. Where did that come from? This post was outlined as a eulogy for pop culture and sports, along with my Tigers Opening Day fun, capped off with a medical update. So lets kick out the jams.

The death of pop culture/entertainment/sports started long before Covid-19. From 2017 through 2019 I found myself going to the theater less and less. The quality of movies, especially movies that interested me was at a nadir. I didn't even bother with music, and all books had to focus on an agenda and not the important things like character and story. Sports became a turn-off because of the absurd contracts, high ticket prices, owner corruption, "superteams", and player scandals. It just wasn't fun anymore. There was little entertainment aside from that you made yourself; backyard shows for birds, highly intoxicated (the band, not the birds, I think), going to the grocery store mildly intoxicated, and watching old JCM shows at 3am, out of beer, with an M-80 in my mouth, its wick covered in water, just to see if it would light. Then Covid-19 hit harder than bad Chinese takeout on one's stomach.

Now, pop culture, film, and music depend completely on streaming services. There are too many to keep track of, and a new one every week. To be fair, music has depended on this for over a decade now no matter how many Record Store Days there are. The, already declining, theater experience is currently non-existent, which Asian Bass Player Vinnie predicted a year ago (One more dollar in the bet pool; you are up $4), although drive-in's are making a comeback, which is cool. The tentpole movies keep getting pushed back, hoping for re-openings. Who knows, we may never see Tenet, Wonder Woman 2, or Halloween Kills (awful title) on the big screen at all. Yowie Wowie!

Sports are even worse. Baseball and basketball are back with shortened seasons and no fans/tailgating allowed, although bars and restaurants will be open in some cities, Detroit being one. College seasons are kaput. Football is the only one that will have fans starting in September, which means we'll all be dead by January. In addition, every pro athlete seems to have turned into a bandwagon-jumping, insufferable, preacherman. The pitchers mounds and basketball courts have "black lives matter" printed on them, which is cool even if they're decades tardy. The first game of the year saw both the Yankees and Nationals take a knee in a sign of unity, which is cool, but about as dated as a 1980's Rolling Stones song. They should switch it up and let each team have 45 seconds to loot the opposing team's equipment room; practicing social distancing of course. I also have to wonder if the mass kneeling would have happened if there were fans in the stands. How would the broadcasters handle the possible boos? I also wonder where all the people who would have been at the game watched it. Ratings were up so "at home" would be a good guess, but as I referenced earlier, you have to wonder how many went to the bar for opening weekend. We'll all be dead before football even starts. One neat thing is that the NBA is letting players customize their jerseys with names of the deceased, slogans such as "No justice, no peace" and "4X the safe level of Fentanyl". You can even customize your own through their shop site, although they rejected my "Free Hong Kong" and "Tunde Ate My Nachos" requests. And through all of this, still nobody is talking about hockey...

All of this can be applied on a local level as well. The local film industry dried up years ago due to the infamous "We can do it ourselves!" Detroit Inferiority Complex. As for sports, the Tigers and Lions can be lumped up above and the Pistons season is over, ho ho ho. I did see that die hard Tigers nut Woodman made the drive to Cincy for the first Tigers game, presumably watching through the gates or at a pub. I didn't see any masks though. Still, I would trust a drunk caveman over a media whore like Fauci who looks like he should be running Heaven's Gate 2.0 (and who knows, maybe he is muahahahaha).

As for the local music scene, that's been dead for years anyway. In the present day there are no shows to say you will be going to that you will no show. You know who you are. Everybody reading ha ha. Right now its all basement live streams, the latest shitty new song, and podcasts. Which reminds me, what happened with that one podcast that had a GoFundMe set up for thousands of dollars? Due to XXXXX [Redacted] reasons, I can't name names, but if the coney dog is to Detroit then the Coronavirus is to....well, you get it. More importantly, Where Did All The Money Go?

Oh wait, there actually was a local show this past weekend, the first since the shutdown. It was called the Detroit Music Weekend 2020. There was not a lot of hype about it, but this is Detroit after all. Here is/was the link:
Detroit Music Weekend 2020
Of course all of the artists are painfully dull no-names who represent nothing of what Detroit music means to me (What a dickish statement). Here is their flyer:

Hey wait! They totally ripped off the Detroit Music Award logo from the year JCM won. I have mine framed.

To their credit, they did take great effort in social distancing, which is cool. Did this event actually happen? I decided to get in on the fun (and fun coupons) by bringing out the tried and true "Down on His Luck Troubadour" gimmick. I was dropped off close to the venue, but not too close so that I didn't scare anyone away from the event due to my hazmat suit. My driver, Fuzz, dropped me off and went to play the "dollar bill trick" with the neighboring lots. It took me a while to find a stranger to use my phone to do me up. My go-to line was "I don't have That Bug, but if its a Bug you want there's a really nice alley right over there."

I ended up making $11.13. They should just re-open local shows, a surefire way to keep people at home; bring back Blowout. Okay, jump, flash, cut to my Tigers Home Opener, two days later.

I passed on the bar for multiple reasons (27 days!), and decided to have it at the Compound. I had the meat and extras ready to roll way before first pitch.

For those curious, the blue/black plate is my special marinade, a tab of acid. Who gets it, steak or burger, steak or burger? Next up was to fire up the grill. Fire it up. Fire it up.

My editor advised me to put the explosive on the ground as the grill was unstable (not the only one) and I could set the Compound, or at least a car, on fire.

At last, it was time to eat and the game hadn't even started. Afterwards, I felt like a good ole' Dixie Pig, but at least I didn't catch The Bug (unless you count salmonella).

To wrap things up, a brief medical update. The future two weeks promise more bloodwork, a visit with the Gastro-Doc, two visits with rehab (even though I will be drink free for over a month by that time), and a MRI. Something wicked is on my liver. It has been called a cyst, tumor, a spot, a dark spot (dark spots matter), and, most recently, a lesion. I find "lesion" the scariest. I've never had an MRI before, but 45 minutes in a tube, surrounded by noise seems like the perfect time to take my last hit of acid.
   So that's it for now. I wrote way more than I wanted to, but what else am I gonna do? Start a podcast? Gimmie my money. Cash Me now! Because baby, baby, baby you're (almost) out of time.

As I Remain,
Jefferson Rank (is Bryan Metro)