The Crazy Days of August

It has been unbridled craziness here this weekend. Friday night I actually stayed up until 11pm, making it 45 minutes into a 55 minute documentary revolving around the discovery of a sunken pirate ship. Sadly, I succumbed to sleep and crashed on the couch before finding out the specifics of the techniques they were using to clean off the cannons. Still, it was a riveting evening. Then, fresh off the high of that wild experience, I walked into Kroger yesterday afternoon and came relatively close to buying one of their trays of sushi. Sushi…from Kroger! Talk about living on the edge. Ultimately, I found the risk greater than the reward and held off, but still. There’s something in the air I tell you!

"It can take years to meticulously clean the corrosion off of the sunken cannons..."

Perhaps my need for these edgy thrills comes from the lack of entertaining sports in my life at the moment. Consider the fact that in the past week I have learned the following:

1) There were over 40,000 people in attendance at a Little League World Series game.

2) Kris Jenner, matriarch of the Kardashian clan, recently got a $50,000 facelift in advance of daughter Kim’s wedding.

How do I know these things? Have I been watching E! and hanging out on youth baseball websites? Perhaps so, but that is beside the point. No, I came across these factoids while watching ESPN News and listening to sports talk radio. When ESPN and the talking heads on AM sports radio are covering topics such as these, you know times are tough.

Look, I know that football doesn’t start for another week and Major League Baseball is of declining interest to us as a sports-watching nation. But I really must ask that the Little League coverage on ESPN go away. Not only are they broadcasting the games, but “highlights” from these contests are finding their way into ESPN plays of the day. Here’s a good rule of thumb- if the game in question has a mercy rule that’s employed if one team is up by too large a margin, it doesn’t need to be televised or covered.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for kids sports. If my daughter wants to play little league softball or basketball, I'll be plenty pumped and into it. I’ll probably be the guy on YouTube sucker punching a referee for making a bad call against my daughter. But I like to think that even then I will grasp the concept that no one outside of friends and family will have an interest in the outcome of these games. It’s kids! Playing on a miniature field! I assume some people must be interested, because I know ESPN is nothing if not genius about maximizing their viewership. But this one is baffling to me. I knew it was a bad sign when I was actually relieved and somewhat interested when they cut from Little League coverage to back-to-back detailed segments on NASCAR and soccer.

But rest easy, weary friends. We are just one week away from Labor Day, the return of football, and indeed the return of normalcy to our lives. Until then, we'll just have to look for entertainment where we can find it. I believe I did see that there was also a documentary about a ventriloquists' convention, so there's always that.