Breaking Bad Finale

Go softly into the night Walter White....

Absolutely love this show.  It doesn't even matter what it was about.  The camera angles, the barren but ordinary nature of New Mexico, the pedestrian haunts, the foreshadowing of events, the music... all divine.  The fact of the matter is how this show - about a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher who decides to make meth to support his family in his dying days - captured the attention of this fairly attention-deficit-disordered populace is fairly impressive.

Someone said to me that they didn't see the show but heard it was too violent.  The show was not about violence per se, but about the transformation (as the ads during the weeklong marathon kept telling us) of a man who wandered into something out of necessity but then became a kingpin of its landscape - which was scattered with many who he would never have ever crossed paths with before.  But Walter White got to use his incredible smarts for something other than having to corral incorrigible students in chemistry class - he was able to create an industry in his neck of the southwest.  He became the man.  He was taking care of business. And, as he admitted in the final show, he liked it.  A lot.  "I was good at it" he told his wife before his final showdown the next day.

And the music - how many "blue" songs were there to reference the hue of the main product here (and some of my favorites - Crystal Blue Persuasion, Baby Blue......?)  I was just eating it up the final episodes.

Great show, great ending. Thanks Walt and Jesse. I'm going to go get my car washed now.

Et tu, Johnny Football?

It was just a friggin' 15-yard penalty.....

Johnny Manziel, Sophmore QB of Texas A&M and last year's Heisman Trophy winner finally got to play football again after a summer of much publicized events which pretty much accompany a freshman that wins that coveted award - oh, yeah, nobody has ever  done that before.  So he had pictures of him taken at parties et al. He hung out with a few celebs. Then there were allegations that he may have been paid to sign autographs - but there was no proof.  So the NCAA and A&M basically agreed to have him sit out the first half of their first game this season with Rice.

So while leading the game by a touchdown after halftime Johnny Football, as he is known, came in and threw 3 TDS and secured the game for the 7th-ranked Aggies.  However, he did get into a jawing session with one Rice player after a A&M TD that seemed to revolve around his apparent signature signing allegations.  Johnny got an unsportsmanlike penalty, didn't exactly talk to his coach as he headed to the bench and sat out the rest of the game.  Just for the record this happens in probably 1-in-5 college football games.

But man you wouldn't believe that if you listened to the talking heads at ESPN who somehow thought that Johnny Football leaked secrets about the NSA and fled to asylum in Russia (by the way I see no one on ESPN, or anywhere else frankly, foaming at the mouth about Edward Snowden's behavior ). Or maybe they were reacting to him like the three black kids who beat up an old WWII veteran because they "hate white people".  Nope he just got a penalty in a college football game.

But if you listened to Jesse Palmer, Lou Holtz and that other ass from Pitt on ESPN, they just laid into Johnny like he was a serial killer.  It was pathetic.  And, in fact in one segment, after lampooning Johnny and saying that his behavior was unwarranted even if he was just 20 years old, they did a segment on Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig's recent behavioral issues and responded in a totally different manner saying he just needed time and compassion and daisies to help him get through the day being "just a youngster".  Hmm, what a juxtaposition.  And what if Johnny wasn't white, by the way?

"Scoreboard!"

Thankfully a few morning ESPN'rs on First Look put it in bit more perspective after the holiday with one saying "man, some people are talking about him (Johnny) like he committed a crime - and of course that's not the case - we need to ratchet this talk back a bit and put it in better perspective".

Thanks Skip and Stevie - needed that.  And for the rest of you, bring it on, haters.