I have been begged, cajoled and pleaded with to blog again and yes, it’s been a while. Over the weekend Karen litereally hollered at me for not writing more, and today came this not so subtle hint from St. Ides: “I'm still waiting for that blog bashing Rosenheiney. ;)”
Well fans, wait no more. Rookie camp is open, veterans practice tomorrow, Javon Walker showed up, and Drew Rosenhaus for the first time in his life is speechless.
Of course, the term used in journalisim is “unavailable for comment” which is unusual for the ubiquitous Rosenhaus. Rosenhaus is the kind of guy who opens the refridgerator, sees the light go on, and is compelled to do a three minute interview.
Last night Javon Walker quietly slipped into Green Bay wearing a Dan Marino Dolphins jersey and a cap, and told a reporter who was camped out at Austin Straubel airfield “Tell them I’m coming in”. Reports are that Grady Jackson, Rosenhaus’s other hold out is right behind. Terell Owens, another Rosenhaus gem, eariler this week indicated that he would report to the Eagles camp. Owens however made it clear that he was very unhappy with his 49 million dollar deal.
All of these cases have one common thread: in each case, their agent Drew Rosenhaus had stated as late as Tuesday evening that the players would not be reporting to camp.
So what happended?
First, the NFL can fine players for missing camp to the tune of $6,000.00 a day. This computes to about $180,000.00 for the entire camp. For Walker, who is scheduled to make $515,000.00 this season, this is no small chunk of change. The problems for Jackson are even greater. It is well known that Jackson is having financial problems, indicated by his request for an advance of $65,000 in salary which the Packers gave him (the Packers also restructured his salary so that his “weight bonuses” would be easier to attain). In other words, it’s in the players best interest to report.
Second, players are image conscious. Owens is all about image, and the popular support was not in his favor. Walker is a good kid, and the Packers know it. Read all the articles about his holdout and almost every quote from the Packer brass mentions how good Javon is, and how the fans shouldn’t blame him, and how much they want him back. Management tried to create a schisim between the player and the agent, and they suceeded.
My favorite secret that I’ve learned explains what motivates Rosenhaus. When a player switches agents, the new agent doesn’t make any money unless the player signs a new contract. Poor Drew Rosenhaus inherited a seven year deal with Terrell Owens. You think Terrell is going to be around in 7 years to make a new deal? You think it’s going to be worth 6 mil a year? It’s in Drew’s best interest to have Terrell sign a new contract now, while he’s at his peak. Rosenhaus picked up a lot of new clients this year but he’s not seeing any money for it. Truthfully, I totally get his motivation. He’s a businessman and a businessman makes money.
I’m a fan, so I don’t care about that. I want to see Brett Favre throwing passes to Javon Walker just like he did the night after his father passed. I want to see Grady Jackson plugging up the middle and stopping the run so I can yell “There stands Jackson like a stone wall”. I want to see Terrell Owens play the game with grace, and yell at him when he mouths off. As far as Drew Rosenhaus is concerned, mostly I want to see him go away.
Rosehaus represents everything that’s bad about sports, but I must conceed that the nature of the sporting business has created the likes of him. He reminds me of carbon monoxide. I accept that it’s this evil byproduct of my car but I still drive my car. I don’t have to like the drek is spews out, but until someone figures out a way to make a cleaner byproduct, I’m going to live with it.
I was originally going to say that Rosenhaus was like shit, but I always feel good after a nice shit. I don’t feel that way when I think about Drew, ever.
Well, except this one time….
About a week ago, Drew Rosenhaus was at Disney World “visiting with clients” when he heard some yelling coming from a swimming pool. Rosenhaus, a former life guard, rushed to the sceen and found an unconcious 4 year old who had been pulled fron the water. The boy had no pulse. He immediately began to perform CPR on the child and resucucitated the boy. Cpl. Carlos Torres of the Orange County Sheriff's Office had this to say: "Rosenhaus brought him back"
Although some have reported that Rosenhaus was not performing CPR, but rather was attempting to suck the gold fillings from the kid’s mouth, it just goes to show that there truly is goodness in all people. For you religious types out there, we secularists call that "humanism".
In an unrelated story, Donald Duck has hired Rosenhaus as his agent. Duck released the following statement after meeting personally with Rosenhaus last week:
“After over 50 years with the William Morris Agency, I have decided to terminate our relationship and have hired Drew Rosenhaus to be my personal agent. Rosenhaus has an impressive list of clients and has a reputation for negotiating the best contract based on a clients performance and overall worth their organization.
With that stated, I am immediately announcing a hold out.
I am tired of not being compensated with a salary commensurate with my talents, while other so called talent such as Mickey Mouse are paid far and above their worth. Mickey Mouse is a no talent rat bastard that couldn’t hold my jock strap. Plus, he’s gay. That whole thing with Minnie is a front. I know because I’ve been banging her for years. Goofy too. I mean, Goofy’s been banging her too, not Goofy and I have been banging.
Anyway, I’ve got to think of my family. Daisy’s getting up in her years and those three dead beat nephews of mine just loaf around in the pond all day on their little duck asses doing shit. They’re worse than the Hilton kids. I swear to Christ I’m going to buy some Orange marmalade and a few boxes of Stove Top stuffing and cook the sons of bitches myself.
Until my contract is renegotiated, I will not be appearing at any Disney properties or in any Disney productions such as (but not limited to) films, cartoons and Disney on Ice. And if Disney makes any attempt to hire a replacement actor, such as Daffy Duck I will personally chomp his nuts off with my beak and spit them on the gates of the Magic Kingdom”
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Friday, July 8, 2005
The Blog Epidemic
Okay, I've been thinking about this for awhile, but it's finally time that I put it in writing.
There are too many blogs in the world, and they are getting far too much attention and press.
In the past week, I have read no less than 3 "news" articles on major websites which use random blogs as their main source. All I have to say is: What The Fuck?!
Since when did schmucks like us replace the mainstream media? Since when did Bob the Janitor have a degree in journalism making him worthy of being quoted on CNN.com just because he has a blog? This is getting absolutely fucking out of control, and I think it's just a matter of time before we see some kind of vicious backlash.
Exhibit A: This item from Eonline.com about the remake of the Willy Wonka movie, starring Johnny Depp. The article talks about some similarities between Depp's Wonka and Michael Jackson. A fairly retarded comparison, and one that basically takes up space on the entertainment website. But fine, whatever. I was bored, I read the article. Then I read how this comparison was first made by a blogger, and how this was such a genius realization, the idea was a hot topic on blogs everywhere! Are you fucking kidding me? Not only do they mention this brilliant blogger by name, but they interviewed him to get more accurate ideas on his view, and they plugged his blog. With the millions of blogs out there now, how on earth could they claim this one guy was the first person to make this connection, and kiss his ass so much for doing so? Maybe I'm crazy and this is making me mad when it shouldn't, but it does.
Exhibit B: An article on CNN.com about the bombings in London yesterday. I'll spare you my personal opinion on it, and just say it's a horrible thing that happened, and my condolences to the people effected by this attack. And although the information in this article is somewhat interesting, halfway through the article is stops quoting experts, and starts pulling random quotes from unidentified people from web site postings. "On one popular Web site, one person wrote…" should NOT be the sort of information that is passed off as respectable news. Is this what our (already crappy) media is coming to? Finding a few websites and then grabbing a bunch of quotes from both sides of the issue, and then slapping that together and calling it an article? Sheesh.
Exhibit C: And last, but not least, we have this one, where a child molester and killer may very well have incriminated himself and even given hints of what was to come. Before the advent of blogs, people who wanted to keep their own personal thoughts and diaries did so in the privacy of their own home, where often nobody read about their innermost thoughts and feelings. Now, you have people writing these diaries online for all the world to see. Is that a good thing or bad thing? Well, that's a whole different debate. On one hand, someone paying a bit more attention might have recognized the warning signs in this guy's writings, and been able to stop him. On the other hand, his writings could have been a cry for help. An attempt to get some attention and have someone reach out to him and help him through his problems. With the hundreds of thousands of blogs out there now, being noticed and attracting the attention of someone who can or will help is pretty unlikely. So maybe, just maybe, when his trouble blog entries went unnoticed and unanswered, he again felt shunned and ignored by society, and that was the final straw that put him over the edge. Am I over-analyzing a bit? Perhaps. Is it at least a possibility, if not in the case, then in future cases? I'd say so. I fear that this is not the first nor the last time we find out after the fact that criminals had blogs outlining their thought processes and signaling their planned crimes.
What's my point? Well, I'm not sure I really have one. Which would make me like every other fucking idiot out there writing pointless blog entries right now. No, I take that back. I do have a point. My point is that this phenomenon has gotten way out of control. Anybody and everybody has a blog now, and think that people care about what they write about. Some people have realistic expectations, and know that only a handful of their friends will actually read what they write (sort of like this one). But others out there are delusional. They think they will be noticed. They think they have something to say that has not been said before, something that is so interesting that everybody will be talking about it, or something so controversial that they will be all over the news. And, when you see websites like Yahoo and Eonline devoting articles to such blog-birthed concepts as the connection between Willy Wonka and Michael Jackson, their hopes are given a bit of a boost. I'm sure we'll see even more and more blogs popping up as the weeks and months go on, and I'm sure we'll notice more news articles simply ripping off ideas that seem to pop up there, regardless if there really is any way to confirm the actual origin of new ideas.
In the meantime… football season is coming soon, and I'm sure we'll come up with plenty of clichés and analysis that has been done a hundred times before on other websites and blogs. We can only hope that someday, somehow, we come up with a unique thought that catches the eyes of the masses and gets us some press time on a major news website. Speaking of which… has anybody else noticed the similarities between Michael Jackson and Jeff Garcia…
There are too many blogs in the world, and they are getting far too much attention and press.
In the past week, I have read no less than 3 "news" articles on major websites which use random blogs as their main source. All I have to say is: What The Fuck?!
Since when did schmucks like us replace the mainstream media? Since when did Bob the Janitor have a degree in journalism making him worthy of being quoted on CNN.com just because he has a blog? This is getting absolutely fucking out of control, and I think it's just a matter of time before we see some kind of vicious backlash.
Exhibit A: This item from Eonline.com about the remake of the Willy Wonka movie, starring Johnny Depp. The article talks about some similarities between Depp's Wonka and Michael Jackson. A fairly retarded comparison, and one that basically takes up space on the entertainment website. But fine, whatever. I was bored, I read the article. Then I read how this comparison was first made by a blogger, and how this was such a genius realization, the idea was a hot topic on blogs everywhere! Are you fucking kidding me? Not only do they mention this brilliant blogger by name, but they interviewed him to get more accurate ideas on his view, and they plugged his blog. With the millions of blogs out there now, how on earth could they claim this one guy was the first person to make this connection, and kiss his ass so much for doing so? Maybe I'm crazy and this is making me mad when it shouldn't, but it does.
Exhibit B: An article on CNN.com about the bombings in London yesterday. I'll spare you my personal opinion on it, and just say it's a horrible thing that happened, and my condolences to the people effected by this attack. And although the information in this article is somewhat interesting, halfway through the article is stops quoting experts, and starts pulling random quotes from unidentified people from web site postings. "On one popular Web site, one person wrote…" should NOT be the sort of information that is passed off as respectable news. Is this what our (already crappy) media is coming to? Finding a few websites and then grabbing a bunch of quotes from both sides of the issue, and then slapping that together and calling it an article? Sheesh.
Exhibit C: And last, but not least, we have this one, where a child molester and killer may very well have incriminated himself and even given hints of what was to come. Before the advent of blogs, people who wanted to keep their own personal thoughts and diaries did so in the privacy of their own home, where often nobody read about their innermost thoughts and feelings. Now, you have people writing these diaries online for all the world to see. Is that a good thing or bad thing? Well, that's a whole different debate. On one hand, someone paying a bit more attention might have recognized the warning signs in this guy's writings, and been able to stop him. On the other hand, his writings could have been a cry for help. An attempt to get some attention and have someone reach out to him and help him through his problems. With the hundreds of thousands of blogs out there now, being noticed and attracting the attention of someone who can or will help is pretty unlikely. So maybe, just maybe, when his trouble blog entries went unnoticed and unanswered, he again felt shunned and ignored by society, and that was the final straw that put him over the edge. Am I over-analyzing a bit? Perhaps. Is it at least a possibility, if not in the case, then in future cases? I'd say so. I fear that this is not the first nor the last time we find out after the fact that criminals had blogs outlining their thought processes and signaling their planned crimes.
What's my point? Well, I'm not sure I really have one. Which would make me like every other fucking idiot out there writing pointless blog entries right now. No, I take that back. I do have a point. My point is that this phenomenon has gotten way out of control. Anybody and everybody has a blog now, and think that people care about what they write about. Some people have realistic expectations, and know that only a handful of their friends will actually read what they write (sort of like this one). But others out there are delusional. They think they will be noticed. They think they have something to say that has not been said before, something that is so interesting that everybody will be talking about it, or something so controversial that they will be all over the news. And, when you see websites like Yahoo and Eonline devoting articles to such blog-birthed concepts as the connection between Willy Wonka and Michael Jackson, their hopes are given a bit of a boost. I'm sure we'll see even more and more blogs popping up as the weeks and months go on, and I'm sure we'll notice more news articles simply ripping off ideas that seem to pop up there, regardless if there really is any way to confirm the actual origin of new ideas.
In the meantime… football season is coming soon, and I'm sure we'll come up with plenty of clichés and analysis that has been done a hundred times before on other websites and blogs. We can only hope that someday, somehow, we come up with a unique thought that catches the eyes of the masses and gets us some press time on a major news website. Speaking of which… has anybody else noticed the similarities between Michael Jackson and Jeff Garcia…
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