Recent Events

What a run of twists and turns the world has thrown at us.

Ed McMahon died, but that wasn't a major surprise. He'd had health problems the last few years. He was the best sidekick to the best late night host of all time. He hosted Star Search, which has somehow been forgotten in TV history. It was a good show, and have you checked out the list of people who performed on it? And of course, McMahon was the face of Publisher's Clearinghouse, which led you to wanting him appear on your doorstep unexpectedly. His was an eclectic career, and as they say, "We will not see his like again."

Farrah Fawcett died today, which was also no surprise, as she had been dying of cancer for a while. Growing up, "Farrah Fawcett" was one of those "names" that I heard ALL THE TIME, even before I had any idea who she was. It was along the lines of "Farrah Fawcett = beauty." She was a reference point for hotness.

The biggest story--and the biggest surprise--is that Michael Jackson died today. I need not tell anybody who gets notified of a new blog post what it was like growing up at a time when he was the biggest star in the world. Not just the most popular singer, but probably the most well-known person on the planet. He came from a musical family, was a child prodigy singer in a very successful group, and then hit even greater heights going solo. He could moonwalk!

Somebody asked what some memories of him are, and I came up with these: 1) Seeing "Captain Eo" at Disney World (in 3-D, no less). 2) Hearing people say, "I remember when Michael Jackson was black." (you know how when you search for something on youtube and it has some suggestions as you type in the keyword? Once I got to "Michael Jackson o", it automatically suggested "Michael Jackson over the years", which is what I wanted to search for. People have typed it in so much, it's an autofill suggestion now) 3) The beat to "Smooth Criminal". 4) The "Thriller" video scared the crap out of me (not linking to it, because if you haven't seen it, you ain't never gonna see it). 5) Weird Al doing "Eat It" and "Fat" parodies of "Beat It" and "Bad."

Jackson was a guest voice on the "Simpsons" back in Season 3, playing Leon Kompowsky, a man who claimed to be was Michael Jackson. Note #1: They're in Season 20 now. Note #2: By my count, of the celebrity guest stars who have appeared on the Simpsons, Michael Jackson is at least the 21st to die. Ed McMahon was the 20th. I could be wrong on the count, but I'm not interested in going through to see if anybody from Sonic Youth has died lately. I counted at least 21.

And now: sports!

The Mighty Tigers of LSU defeated Texas to win their sixth NCAA College World Series championship. As a former participant in the Skip Bertman Baseball Camp at LSU, I feel like I deserve a little credit for the program's success. Three years ago, LSU fired a coach who was running the program into the ground and hired Paul Mainieri from Notre Dame, who had actually taken a Northern team to the CWS. For reference, the eight teams in this year's CWS were LSU, Texas, Arizona State, Cal State Fullerton, Arkansas, Southern Miss, North Carolina, and Virginia. Teams from the West Coast, Southeast, and Southwest tend to dominate the sport, so taking Notre Dame there is impressive.

Mainieri recruits well, seems like a really nice guy, and manages his players very well. Here's to him sticking around for a long time.

I won't bore you with a lot of names of who played well, but I will mention this one player: Jared Mitchell. Mike Patrick, Orel Hershiser and Robin Ventura spent a good portion of each game talking about his "tools." Mitchell is also a wide receiver on the football team who was drafted by the White Sox in the first round. He's a great athlete, and the announcers couldn't say enough about his tools, his tools, and his tools. The first two games of the 2 of 3 finals, I played a game where I had to do a shot every time they mentioned "tools" in reference to Jared Mitchell. The bottle didn't even make it to the third game.

In international soccer, the U.S. defeated Spain 2-0 on Wednesday to advance to the finals of the Confederations Cup. Spain is ranked #1 in the world, had won 15 matches in a row, and had not been beaten in 35 matches. The U.S. will face Brazil in the title game, after a late goal put them past South Africa. ESPN2 is showing the replay of that game, and I managed to catch the national anthem of South Africa. Listening to it, I was wondering if it would be in Zulu, Afrikaans, or English. The answer is "yes" with two others thrown in. It runs through Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans, and English. You can see the video here. If you ever watched the Shaka Zulu miniseries on TV--and I know you did--you heard the word "nkosi" a lot. The song translated it as "lord", but I tended to understand it as "king" on the show.

Note #3: Brazil's national team is known as the Seleção ("the select"), while South Africa are Bafana Bafana ("the boys"). A list of notable team names can be found here. Among my favorites:

The Eagles of Carthage (Tunisia)
Indomitable Lions (Cameroon)
Super Eagles (Nigeria)
War Elephants (Thailand)
The Clockwork Orange (Netherlands)