This link is to “Jake the Asshole” on YouTube. Jake did a two+-hour video that was more or less an open mic taking comments from his many followers. I watched maybe thirty minutes of it, enough to conclude that the guy is not only not crazy, but is even smart and funny. In this video, which is thirteen minutes and fun to watch, at 5:45 he inserts a Three Stooges clip, which is hilarious and completely appropriate.
The segment from 6:00 to 7:00 blew me away, so staged are the player antics, so obvious what they are doing. Is this game rigged? Yes, of course, but that segment suggests even more. It is not just our national pastime, it is our national cult and a pipeline for propaganda.
Jake, I gather, predicted a 49er win on Sunday, and was wrong. That’s OK by me, as predictions are hard, especially when they about the future. The NFL completely controls outcomes, and 70% of the betting favored the Chiefs, perhaps too many big-wad bettors to ignore. Maybe he overthought it, like I so often do, but I am going to continue to follow the guy, as he is fun and interesting.
By the way, I only said this to my wife, and so have no proof or credibility, but I suggested to her (she who does not care a whit about football) that the 49ers would get off to a large lead in the first half, and that the Chiefs would stage a miraculous comeback in the second. So I got it wrong too, that is, 10-3 is not a big lead, and the comeback was much less dramatic than I suggested. (Tom Brady was not available for another unretirement, I guess.) I had been pausing the broadcast throughout, and through technical ineptitude was not able to see the winning drive at the end. C’est La Vie.
Enough. Football is over. I have many friends and relatives who watch it, and I would never even hint to them what I know watching Jake and others, that it is scripted. They are having too much fun. Why spoil it? Who is harmed by rigged games? That’s show biz.
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Yesterday I went to our local Ace Hardware for this and that, and was standing by a clerk waiting to ask my question, but he was preoccupied by others with similar problems. I was standing close enough to him that he could hear me. He waved at a man maybe thirty feet away, as it was his turn. The guy just stood there looking into space, and the clerk said “He’s not listening.”
I said to him “He must be married to someone.” That got a good laugh.
Later I came back with more problems, and as I entered a lady and her dog were by the door, inside. I asked her if I could pet her dog, Scout, and she said of course, Scout is always ready to accept affection. We connected, and later as I waited for Tina, the clerk, to check me out she was apologizing to Scout and his owners, and as they walked out she covered her eyes and looked away, as Scout was so disappointed.
“What’s the problem, no dogs allowed anymore?”
No, she said. No more dog treats. The owner said it had gotten to expensive. That’s why Scout was so disappointed.
I suggest, if ever there is a good cause for crowd funding, this is it. Doggy treats for Scout and his friends!
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I do not like advertising and shun it, turn it down, cover the iPad screen with the sound off, anything to avoid it. But I had heard that Superbowl ads were often cutting edge, and a couple were. But first, a face I really like watching, Dan Marino. He’s got good screen presence, and is willing to make fun of himself, a sign of character. Watch this ad, not from the Superbowl, but earlier in the year.
I love it at the end, that Emmett Smith and Jerry Rice are doing a dance of pure joy.
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There were two ads that caught my eye during the Superbowl, each worthy of some accolades. I am not religious, but am at an age where people who are so do not bother me. In fact, I know people who have been led to better lives by taking on Jesus as Savior, among them Glen Campbell and Alice Cooper, moving to Phoenix and leaving drugs and booze behind in LA. The Superbowl ad is people washing each others’ feet, as Jesus did, the point of the ad being that “Jesus gets you” and that you won’t be harmed by following. It is wholesome, harmless, and has no place in a Superbowl setting. I liked it for that reason.
Another ad showed young girls in sports, having success and failure, but more importantly, just trying hard. Sports need to be part of every kid’s time growing up. They take up time and teach valuable lessons for life. The point of this ad was that 45% of girls quit sports by age 14, and that we need to do something about that. Agreed.
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Here’s another clip that has made the rounds. The premise is that ESPN has decided that the Manningcast needs a third person hosting, so they are doing auditions. It’s seven minutes of pure fun.
There are many funny moments in the video, but my favorite is when Reese Witherspoon calls in (4:15) … just watch for a giggle. She nails it.
Tom Brady, as regulars here know, is a Bokonovski Brat, the spitting image of Matt Damon, Jimmy Kimmel, quite a few other stars. What really caught my eye was a 2019 movie starring Paul Rudd. The premise of Living With Yourself is that Rudd’s character is world weary and wants out. He finds a storefront where they euthanize him and replace him with a new and improved version. However, the burial of the old character fails, he rises from the dead and there are two of him who are aware of each other for the rest of the movie.
It’s not bad, especially for Rudd fans, and I am one I confess. But Tom Brady does a cameo at the beginning where he walks out of the store that is doing the replacements, as if taunting us who know something of fakes – he’s laughing at us. He knows he’s fake, and is enjoying his fame.
Piece of Mindful 
Jake is great entertainment and has been for some time. He had a brief affair with flat earth, but he rings true. I like his low tech basement setting and no nonsense, no BS approach.
Speaking of religion, evangelical Christianity does beat alcoholism hands down. Three of my good friends from my teens had serious alcohol issues where they ended up in automobile accidents, then eventually went sober and found Jesus. At first their evangelizing was annoying, and I stopped communicating with them for several years, especially since I am no Christian. Eventually I realized they had chosen the better path, and that Christianity is much heathier than hard alcohol and drugs. What was most interesting to me is the “addictive” type personality does seem to more susceptible to born again Christianity.
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That’s a very good point, that last sentence.
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I just went to watch Jake’s India fake Moon Landing video and it was blocked by Microsoft edge. OK? Yes sounds like a national security issue to me.
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Please watch at 4’25” on the video. Why is #32 looking at his cell phone in his left hand as he falls to the ground? I would swear that was inserted as some kind of subliminal weirdness. As strange as seeming the mike hanging from the ceiling when Oswald was “shot”.
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I will.
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Damn. No other way to see it. Good eye.
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If it’s not a cell phone it might be some laminated card with the sequence of plays spelled out and when to tackle and when not to. These cards are probably dispersed with every set of downs as the game evolves. Essentially moving the prearranged outcome forward but issuing contingencies as the plot runs its course, but flexible in detail to address unavoidables like injuries. Quarterbacks have such cards on their forearm, allegedly with plays in code. Catchers have forearm gear to signal pitchers what to throw. The tech is here. Or, that cell phone is a restaurant style buzzer and when it buzzes, let the man go through. Meaning hit the deck but pronto. Okay, enough spitballing.
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I listen to Joe Rogan’s podcast. On Monday he had Brett Weinstein on. The first thing they discussed, introduced by Weinstein, was the super bowl. Weinstein claims he watched it (though he’s not a football fan) because he had nothing better to do. What??? The guy’s allegedly a genius and learned and he didn’t have anything to do? He’s an evolutionary biologist! He didn’t have important papers to write, topics to research or conspiracy theories to debunk? Come on. Rogan, to his credit, said he didn’t watch it. He probably knows the fix is in. Now that we all know most forms of entertainment are propaganda, let’s stop supporting them.
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As an athletic endeavor, it is a disgrace. A purest point of view maybe, but I cannot tolerate the obvious cheating – amongst a great many other shortcomings or indifferent negative promotions (as I mentioned before). I happen to agree with Wifey, and NO we did not speak before either of us typed in. I refuse to believe (maybe naïvely) that Walter and the boys were influenced.
As “entertainment”, join the WWE and NASCAR fan[atics]. Garbage to me – and I will not participate.
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1,696 players in the league are chosen from the college ranks, occasionally high school, so I suggest it is safe to say that they know by that time how the game is played. But almost all college players have no future in football, so I cannot imagine one or two of them would not speak up. This suggests the college game might be a little more on the up and up.
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Personally, I abhor violent sports and cringe when I see it so no more football wouldn’t upset me too much (along with MMA, boxing, etc.) I don’t even like slapstick and pratfalls…
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One of the first events broadcast on TV in its infancy was a Joe Louis fight versus Billy Conn (6/1946). It was the first sporting event broadcast, and a small boxing ring was easier to manage than a football field. It was on NBC but I think only broadcast to New York affiliates.
Going on memory from some Hulu programming.
I remember watching baseball on TV in the 1950s. Hank Aaron was at bat, and grouinded out, and I said something like “He’s supposed to be good.” In the mind of a six-year-old, he got on base every at bat.
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Sorry for duplicate post just realized I hadn’t replied to you and didn’t want you to miss my hope of having you do face splits on this one.
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Carla, I tried to email you privately (my first issue of County Road just arrived) but the email bounced back. Please get in touch with me at mpthct at proton dot me.
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Here in the South, from what I can tell, college football seems to be the much greater passion. People identify very strongly with “their” schools, whether they went there or not. And the rivalries are quite emotional rollercoasters for
those who invest in them. Diehard fans may watch it all, but plenty could probably not care less about pro ball.
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My ex (we’ve been divorced or separated for 30 wonderful years!) was a huge Notre Dame fan, solely based on being 1/2-3/4 Irish, not sure which. She claims 100%, as if some kind of trophy she won, but that’s a lie. And, she did not attend college, much less a prestigious school like Notre Dame.
I said to her one day as a Fighting Irish basketball game was on TV, “Gee, I did not realize there were so many black Catholics”. Did not go over well.
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It’s the same thing in tennis. The number of times you see a player who plays incredibly well one day and incredibly badly the next when he has no reason to be exhausted, and who is facing an opponent who doesn’t play much better than the previous one. Or a player who plays very well for 1 hour, then collapses and plays rubbish, then starts playing well again. When you know tennis, it’s obvious. In the end, I got bored of watching it.
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Baseball too … 2016 the Cubs and Indians really looked fixed. Any pro coach will tell you that if you throw a fastball down the middle of the plate, even at 98 mph, there’s a good chance it will be leaving the park. The hitters are too good. And, if the batter is tipped on the type and location pitch on the way, bye bye ball.
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Hi, DSKlausler made an observation about being fed up with the corruption in sports, and having no interest in professional sports. I was an amateur cyclist starting in the 1980s, during the arguable golden age of cycling, with the Lemond/Hinault rivalry front and center. However, by the early to mid 1990s it had become clear doping and the use of Erythropoietin (EPO, blood cell growth stimulant hormone) had come into use on a massive scale in Europe. Almost overnight amateur cycling in America was ruined by dopers like Armstrong and Tyler Hamilton – whom I knew personally and who was riding a quantum leap ahead of all us other amateurs. This is not really possible in reality – which should produce a bell curve of athletic ability, with the top athletes clustered tightly together. A large advantage therefore is likely only possible through mechanical or pharmaceutical blood doping. Indeed, Hamilton was caught doping at the 2000 Olympics, with him subsequently losing his gold medal.
Now, to what I wanted to get to: Lance Armstrong: did he fake his cancer and treatment? I have yet to see serious research into this topic. I don’t see how someone could have metastasized cancer, undergo massive amounts of chemotherapy treatment, and be kicking everyone’s ass 2 years later. Best explanation is massive fraud plus an excuse for Armstrong to be on a bunch of steroids and other PEDs because of his “cancer”.
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I am indeed familiar with the cycling enhancement progression. Lance has obvious mental issues, however, on top of the prevalent use of those enhancements, he was better still than ALL – in my opinion. I think that it was in his book that he claimed to have an unusually large heart (and its baseline functionality) – implying the pump was the reason for his dominance. His “associates” were probably mad, or jealous, or just envious because he was a better liar than they. Where do the lies end?
My once beloved track and field: “I just do what coach says.” Ugh, the stupidity of that… incredible – willful ignorance perhaps. Druggies abound. I presume that if you’re a low-level “player” (much like football) and you want to be high-level, that the temptation of assistance through chemistry (and the ease of access) is quite tempting. Ghetto to penthouse?? I once wrote about a few athletes that I thought were “clean”. I still believe that Ashton Eaton was, and is the model of what a true athlete is – all sports included – body AND mind. Look him up.
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YOUCANCALLMERAY, what’s your take on mechanical doping? In my opinion classical doping doesn’t explain the anomalys of pro cycling. How can a guy like Vingegaard (1.75 m, 60 kg), a great climber, gain 3 minutes on the flat part of time trial against one of the best time trialist Van Aert (1.90 m, 78 kg)? How can a skinny guy like Pogačar (1.76 m, 66 kg) leave behind a classics specialist like van der Poel (1.84 m, 75 kg) in Tour of Flanders?
It’s either mechanical doping or pro tour is scripted like the autumn criteriums (here’s a great text on those races: https://www.podiumcafe.com/2011/8/16/2365901/the-shadow-of-the-tour-the-post-tour-criterium-circuit).
The best proof of mechanical doping is Cancellara’s acceleration in Roubaix and Flanders:
And also Froome’s attack on Contador on Mont Ventoux in 2013:
Froome is in my opinion the biggest fraud in history of sport, Armstrong was at least a very good classics rider before his “magical” transformation into time trialist and climber, while Froome was just awful, not good enough for pro tour.
Some people are also accusing Armstrong of mechanical doping:
Regarding cancer, years ago I read an article that he faked it, the case was very convincing, but I can’t find it anymore.
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I stopped following professional cycling after the Floyd Landis debacle. To those who don’t know Landis, he was an Amish kid making an epic ride in 2006 to the win the Tour de France, immediately followed by a positive doping test and then surrendering the title to Oscar Pereiro (who?). Talk about a buzz kill for cycling fans: 8 straight years of doping Americans winning! Landis was a real phenom, which I believe all these guys were at some point: Lemond, Armstrong, Landis, Hamilton – but then flipped to the dark side at some point before reaching the top. I don’t know much about the riders since then, like Froom. Just the technological advance of cycling (hyper-expensive bikes, wheels, power meters, etc), aside from the doping and cheating issues, has ruined the essential joy of the sport.
Are Lemond and Armstong the twin pillars of American bike racing Masonry? They both went through very bizarre death and rebirth rituals (Lemond getting shot, Armstrong’s cancer) before finding permanent success. Don’t forget Lemond got his own brand of bicycles after his tour success, a pretty nice payday. Plus he put on some masonic shaming rituals later on, claiming to be molested. Maybe he was, and if so thats nothing to make fun of, but the fact it was made quite public and he still appeared to care (who gives a Fu** about shaming especially if you won the Tour de France?) about the public knowing he was molested, is very suspect.
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I have a hypothesis as to why Lemond and Armstrong were chosen to win the Tour – to popularize cycling (and especially expensive bicycles to the masses) in America, where cycling was something only children took seriously going back to the 1970s. The most expensive bicycles in the 1980s were on the order of $1-2k, vs. 10x that much today. And the costs for manufacturing of junky modern bicycles (and golf clubs) is very low, with profit margins much higher than in the past. Like skiing was previously marketed to fleece Americans of their spare cash, cycling and golf followed in the 1990s and beyond.
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I see Miles is stealing my ideas (LOL). I’m kidding, although if he is I’m happy. He just did a piece on Armstrong, getting around to his Cancer diagnosis fakery which I had pointed out was something insufficiently covered.
I don’t think “traditional” drugs like amphetamine would help much in cycling, because it’s a strong stimulant, and you are already pushing your body as hard as possible, so it’s not going to yield much more by being hyper-stimulated. Red blood cell packing makes a lot of sense, along with EPO and other blood cell stimulants. And steroids like testosterone and their analogs, to allow faster recovery/muscle building and fat shedding.
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My take on Jake.. having only watched a few minutes from videos here, and as a non-sports watcher (not anti-, just never got into it).. Yes he’s funny and entertaining, but that comes under the heading of “rhetoric” and is a little bit of a distraction if you don’t already share his conclusions and actually want to know the truth of the matter. Plus music playing in the background, and moving quickly from play to play, rather than slowing down and replaying a play several times at both normal speed and slo-mo.
His interpretation always seems subjective and debatable – he may be right, he may be wrong, but it depends on my accepting his expertise as a close observer of the game. I can often imagine objections to what he says, but he doesn’t (in what I saw) much raise these “devil’s advocate” positions and address them. Or include a co-host who is also a long-time student of the game, who could speak for the counterpoint, and let the two of them debate their claims, so we could weigh the merits of both.
If you (impersonal “you”) find his interpretation obvious and correct, and you are or consider yourself an expert on the game, again that may be so or not, but it’s your expertise and not mine. It doesn’t really help me to allay my doubts.
I can easily see how some marginal nudging could be done with a few key coaches, refs, players, but the sort of total choreography he alleges.. it’s possible, but as a grander claim, I’d like more than these subjective judgment calls that rely on subjective (confirmation bias susceptible) personal expertise.
Just in general, the sort of falling down, “bumbling” etc.. this is what football games have always looked like to me, besides being an incomprehensible ant’s nest of chaos. Are they all and everywhere scripted? Or, pro players are supposed to be totally smooth and always get their man, always execute flawlessly?
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JTA is ofc a shill, BUT a better and funnier shill actor then most others. He also tells moaar truth then other shills (except the FE which he pushes ofc) 🙂 I lost interest in his stuff anyway as it is now mostly abt (amerikkkan) sports etc. gähn Another funny shills is QNFEE a dutch comrade (turns out I lived only some km from him when I worked near Amsterdam)… but this one is even moar into the FE shillery but funnier then JTA (imo ofc taste of humour differs)
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what is FE?
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If you’re interested and have time maybe you could do face splits on this one.
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