With Christmas now in the rear view mirror, this introduction could easily qualify as a "Plus/Minus Take of the Week". The plus: football fanatics everywhere were treated to a Christmas Eve full of football; it was like being able to open presents at midnight instead of waiting until 9 a.m. long after Santa done crawled his dusty behind back up with milk in his mustache and Christmas cookie crumbs in his beard. The minus: although they had two pivotal division matchups with playoff implications--one being in prime time--they had to sacrifice most of Christmas Day to the NBA. Either way, outside of celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ and spending time with family and friends, there aren't too many other things I'd rather do than watch football on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. For some teams--as well as some coaches and GMs who will get their pink slips before Black Monday--jolly old St. Nick had lumps of coal. However, if you were like the first team featured in this week's edition, then you felt like you got straight As and minded your manners at the 11th hour...
When Gladiator, Ransom Rellic and my alter ego twin A.J. Throwback got together the first time around for "The Grinch...A Christmas Story" back in 2010, it was a zany ride passing the mic from a grumpy grinch with some perspective to the cooler head prevailing to the co-signing misfit encouraging the grinch's behavior with some mischief of his own. Fast forward six years later and the trio is back at it again with a sequel which could've easily made the soundtrack to Office Christmas Party, abandoning any form of "good tidings" for an even crazier set of strategically-placed-mistletoe-and-spiked-eggnog-ready tales. To stream and/or download "The Grinch Part 2", please visit https://ajthrowback.bandcamp.com/track/the-grinch-part-2. If you like or love what you hear, then PLEASE share your thoughts in the comments and PLEASE spread the word! Thanks to everybody for your support in advance!!!
Once the Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches subsided, I cared about one thing: when would I hear that first Christmas song to make the holiday season official? What I'm about to say is guaranteed to both validate and increase the amount of gray hairs in my goatee: today's generation is missing out when it comes to Christmas music. Not only is most of the new stuff often swaggerless retreads of classics, but you darn near have to wait until Christmas Day to hear the radio play anything seasonal and it seems like only the adult contemporary stations play Christmas music at least most of the day. Although I was more excited to wake up early in the morning to open presents with Big Little Brother Scribbler, one of the greatest joys of Christmas was tuning into WHUR 96.3 FM and hearing Christmas music from sunup to sundown while having some memorable moments with the fam. So in the spirit of the season--and because I haven't done a new edition of this series for two months now--allow me to share five songs I must hear to feel like the Christmas season has arrived decked with boughs of holly, sleigh bells and inappropriate mistletoe placements...
Jeff Fisher can credit himself with starting a trend: when you're an average or putrid head coach, teams aren't waiting until the end of the season to relieve you of your duties. If any of my fellow football fanatics think or feel anything like I do--especially if your name is Eric Dickerson--then you were thrilled at the news early last week of the Rams cutting ties with Mr. "7-9 Bullsh*t". In five long and painful years, Fisher amassed a grand total of 31 wins, 45 losses and one tie and not one of those seasons was above .500. In fact, with a lifetime record of 173-165-1 (.512) and without a winning season since 2008, he had the opportunity to break the all-time record for losses held by Dan Reeves (190-165-2, .535) had he stayed one more week in the position because the Rams lost that game, too. (Surprise, surprise.) Despite helping to build a reputable defense with Aaron Donald, Michael Brockers, Alec Ogletree and Robert Quinn, the Rams have trotted out one of the most putrid offensive units over the past five years--being no better than 23rd, residing in the bottom five for four years straight, being the worst offense since last year and averaging 18.3 PPG during his tenure. Perhaps NewsOne Now's Roland Martin kept it the most candid: "If y'all wanna understand White privilege, how does Jeff Fisher still have a job? He's had six winning seasons in like 22 years...they gave him a two-year extension, and how does he reward them? They go out there and get blown out 42-0!" Speaking of blown...
I honestly had no plan to write about the tragic shooting death of former New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs running back Joe McKnight in Terrytown, Louisiana by 54-year-old Ronald Gasser. In fact, once my fellow writer and friend at Evenin' Tea did this excellent piece, I assumed my thoughts were all covered. According to several eyewitness accounts, McKnight got out of his vehicle and tried apologizing to Gasser before Gasser pulled out a semi-automatic handgun and shooting the former NFL player multiple times--including one witness who said Gasser stood over McKnight after he shot him, said "I told you not to f--k with me" and shot him again. He waited for the police to arrive, was arrested and then released. That's right, boys and girls...not held with or without a bond...set free after murdering someone. Perhaps an even bigger umbrella to the obvious race factor and what drove me to write about this incident is the controversial "Stand Your Ground Law" and how this could potentially be a defense for Gasser as his case moves forward. However, I will discuss how this law seems to apply to anyone who isn't Black and how it could be a smack in the face to McKnight's family and his memory as they seek some semblance of justice...
When doing this week's edition of "Views from the Nosebleeds", the natural choice of a lead story was last week's senseless murder of former Jets running back Joe McKnight in an alleged road rage incident with 54-year-old Ronald Gasser at an intersection in Terrytown, Louisiana right outside of New Orleans. However, because of the racial, social and political layers involved, I decided to make that a post unto itself. Furthermore, as a Black man in America whose spirit has grown weary from constantly being reminded the lives and memories of people who look like me don't matter--see the mistrial in the Walter Scott case as further evidence--I have too much frustration in my heart to take away from what is intended to be a half-serious, half-light-hearted series about my favorite sport. Since these posts are already long enough on their own, there is plenty of good and not-so-good football to discuss, so let's kick things off with two not-so-good, but-not-as-heavy stories...
So here are three things to note about this month's edition of the "'Get Out of My Brain!' Countdown of the Month". First and foremost, given the lack of girl power on the November edition of "In Heavy Rotation", I apologize to the ladies and don't want y'all to think I'm slighting y'all one bit; however, the songs which rule my brain space unfortunately control me and not the other way around. Trust me, y'all will be better represented later this month. Second, I have developed a more-exact-but-still-inexact science for tracking all of this: I simply note the amount of times a song comes to mind and about how long I'm thinking about it. It ain't perfect, but it's a much better system to make sure folks don't get cheated out of the opportunity to make this countdown like no other. (I doubt most of these folks care that much, but still.) Third, this edition will feature songs either belonging to "The Blame Game" in which I blame specific people and/or things for my mental repetitiveness, "NPT HitstoryMakers" for artists and songs who and which boldly go where no others have gone before or stand on their own two category-less feet. Since you have been prepared and briefed probably more than you wanted to be, let's get to the madness...
