I love the Manningcast on ESPN2 during Monday Night Football, but if you played a drinking game in which you had to do a shot every time Eli and Peyton said each other’s names, you’d be blackout drunk by the end of the first quarter.
I was saddened to hear of the death last week of Tom Shales, the longtime TV critic for the Washington Post. When I lived in that town, after browsing the front page, I always turned first to two columnists: Shales and sportswriter Tony Kornheiser. I was never able to convince Shales to get up early to guest on my morning show at WCXR/Washington, but I respected him as much as I did Marvin Kitman, who wrote a TV column for Long Island’s Newsday for 35 years and helped invent the form. They were both brilliant, witty wordsmiths with more than a touch of snark. My kinda writing.
Speaking of writers, I’m very impressed with Matthew Futterman, who writes about tennis for The Athletic. I’m enjoying reading his daily dispatches from Melbourne at the Australian Open. The Athletic has a lot of other very talented writers, too. It’s among the information sources I check every morning.
The annual Consumer Electronics Show just wrapped up in Las Vegas, full of all sorts of new tech from a slew of companies. I’ve never attended CES — and won’t, until they invent an app that you can use as a key to your hotel room that works every time. It’s to the point now where my wife and I always ask the front desk for physical key cards, which have a substantially lower failure rate than the digital ones stored on my phone.
I’ve been watching the in-season edition of HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” which has had access to the coaches and players of the Miami Dolphins. It;s become more fascinating as the team lost the last two games of the regular season. Concurrently, the inspirational speeches head coach Mike McDaniel has given to the team have made less and less sense. His players may respect him, but more often that not, they have a quizzical look on their faces as he addresses them. It’s a good thing the show’s on HBO (and streaming on Max) because McDaniel drops more F-bombs than Steve Buscemi did in the entire run of “Boardwalk Empire.” The team had a very good season, but considering the Dolphins were blown out by the Chiefs in their wild card game this weekend, I’m curious what mumbo-jumbo McDaniel will spew on tonight’s episode.