Monopoly Woke Up

For the first time in over 85 years, Monopoly’s 16 Community Chest Cards are about to get a “long overdue” redo, Hasbro announced last Thursday.

And, why not?  #metoo has an entirely new meaning these days, DeShaun Watson aside.  Hasbro is following the lead of Dr. Suess and the Potato Head formerly known as Mr.

Call it “woke” or call it “cancel culture,” but most of all call it corporate me too.

“True to its longstanding history of inviting its fans to help make changes to the game, and during a time when community means more than ever before, Monopoly is asking consumers worldwide to determine the new cards by voting at MonopolyCommunityChest.com,” the company said in a press release.   Actually, the long-standing history is that it rarely changed until now.

The press release drivel continues, “covering topics like beauty contests, holiday funds, and life insurance, there is no denying the Monopoly game’s Community Chest Cards are long overdue for a refresh. And, coming out of the tumultuous year of 2020, the term “community” has taken on a whole new meaning. Hasbro is counting on their fans to help reflect what community means in their real lives, into the Monopoly game, by voting for new cards like “Shop Local,” “Rescue A Puppy,” or “Help Your Neighbors.”

And on, “according to the Monopoly website where players may vote, card options include rescuing a puppy to get out of jail free or being penalized for not recycling your trash.

Woke indeed.  But perhaps they should have gone even further.  Changing just the Community Chest cards doesn’t seem inclusive enough.  BBR has a few further suggestions to iron out to bring the board game into 2021.

Pennsylvania Ave. should be eliminated.  The real-world Pennsylvania Ave. in DC has a Trump Hotel on it.  No one should have to land on that and pay the Donald rent money.

Reading Railroad should be eliminated as well.   This screams of prejudice against the illiterate.

The money that you are given to start the game isn’t enough either.  Maybe an additional $1400 for everyone whether legal, illegal, or incarcerated would be helpful in these tough times.

And, why even have a jail?  That corner space could be renamed Bill de Blasio Blvd as he always has an extra “get out of jail free” card in the rare instance that someone in NY is actually charged with a crime.

Mediterranean and Baltic should go.  No one should live on streets in such squalor.  And, Boardwalk and Park Place must go too.  No one should be able to afford such excess.  Maybe the rules could assess a property tax to the rich landowners each time they added houses and give it to the squatters of the aforementioned lower-class neighborhood.

Oriental Ave?  Really?  Wow!

The game’s goal used to be to empty your competitor’s bank account not empty recycled trash.

Maybe Hasbro could insure that everyone wins from now on.  Heck, even the name “Monopoly” should change, shouldn’t it?

One tweeter unloaded and called it a “terrible idea” and said it’s a classic board game for a reason.

“Make a new woke version if you must but please leave the original game as it is. Hopefully, you feel the pain of a massive boycott while you’re on the cancel culture bandwagon,” the user stated.

We feel the tweeter’s pain.

 

 

 

$pring Break

In case you missed it, and we hope you did, the University of California, Davis offered its students $75 to not travel during spring break.

How so very thoughtful of them.  Let’s break it down.

They used mom and dad’s tuition money and gave it to mom and dad’s kids to get in an attempt to control the kid’s actions.

Does that sound at all like the government taking your tax dollars and then spending them in any fashion they deem necessary in an attempt to control your everyday life?  Stay home, we have $1400 on the way as a minuscule part (9%)  of the $1.9 trillion we just spent.

Power is a drug more powerful than any approved COVID-19 vaccine.  Control is the by-product high.

What better way to enjoy the $60k tuition school year is there?  Hey kids, listen up.  How about we have virtual classes and a virtual spring break?

Some other colleges, including The Universities of Michigan, Tennessee, and Baylor amended their calendars to do away with spring break altogether.

The predictable responses are flowing from the CDC and the honorable Dr. Fauci almost as fast as the beer from the taps of the millions that ignore them.

“Last year at this time spring break travel may have led to the super spread of the virus,” says a Ball St study.  Dr. Fauci said yesterday, “this is no time to let your guard down based on what may happen.”   May.

“The behavior of Americans in the months of March and April will be critical in preventing another surge,” Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said earlier this month.  Who knew that the CDC had a flying Walensky?  But we digress.

Next thing you know they’ll be telling us there are variant strains that will require us to, well, nevermind.

Speaking of flying, the TSA screened 1.3 mil and 1.2 mil passengers this past Friday and Saturday, a sure sign that Americans and spring breakers are moving on with their lives.

If you are/were somewhere between the ages of 18-22, what would you do?  You could take the $75 bucks that your parents paid the school.  Or you could go risk it all on a beach chasing fun in the sun with a 99.99999% chance that even if you contract the virus you’ll dispense of it as quickly as you got it.

Or, you could take the $75 and still fill the Volkswagen love van with petro and drive to the beach.  Ah hah.  Who said education doesn’t pay?

Remember when we needed to shut down for two weeks to slow the spread?  That was a year ago.

California, home of Cal Davis, is still mostly shut down.  How’s that working out?

For Gavin Newsom not so well.   He felt free to move about while instituting the lockdown and now he might get ousted.

Remember, feel free to stay home as long as you like.

And, you used to feel free to go to the beaches as well.

 

White Pow(d)er

It seems, luckily, that Joe Biden took office just in time.  This climate change thing might be real after all.  And the education system is even worse.

From sea to shining sea this week America has been covered in white powder.  Staying warm has never been more important.  Where is the global warming that we all need right about now?

While Joe is fixing that it looks like the education system is bound and determined to fix not the white powder problem, but the white power problem.

On the far left coast, the Oregon Department of Education is seeking to root out white supremacy in mathematics, manifested by an emphasis on “getting the right answer” and making students “show their work.”  Oregon’s progressive Department of Education has furnished educators with an 82-page training manual titled “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.”

The education department mailed the manual to teachers as part of Black History Month.

The manual enumerates signs of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom.”   “In order to embody antiracist math education, teachers must engage in critical praxis that interrogates the ways in which they perpetuate white supremacy culture in their own classrooms, and develop a plan toward antiracist math education to address issues of equity for Black, Latinx, and multilingual students,” the manual declares.

“Praxis” is a noun that means “accepted practice or custom” in case you needed to look it up like we did.  That old-school education apparently does leave some things to be desired after all.

What the manual never addresses is how dumbing down mathematics will magically eliminate “mathematical inequity,” a counterintuitive proposal if we ever heard of one.  Nor does it address the racial overtones of why it would need to be so.

We wonder what type of math is taught in other countries.  Isn’t math, math?  Maybe one plus one does equal three after all.

But wait, there’s more!

Three time zones over, a NY school principal is taking higher education to an even higher level.  East Side Community High School Principal Mark Federman reportedly sent a survey to white parents asking them to identify their level of whiteness.

Federman is asking parents to “reflect” on their “whiteness” — passing out literature that extols “white traitors’’ who “dismantle institutions,” education officials confirmed to The New York Post on Tuesday.

The offensive at the East Side Community School in Manhattan features a ranking list titled “The 8 White Identities,” which ranges from “White Supremacist’’ to “White Abolitionist.”  You can click on the link if you wish to see who you are and how much woke your wokeness has or does not have.

So we have a white principal, who knows white privilege when he sees it, sending homework home for his student’s parents, who don’t see it, to do.  Who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

The racial makeup of the student body at East Side Community is 55 percent Hispanic, 18 percent white, 15 percent black, 10 percent Asian and 2 percent other during the last school year.   Isn’t the categorization of “other” offensive?  We digress.

The assignment was sent home to all parents.  So we wonder how 82% (the nonwhite) of the parents felt about the characterization, the assignment, and how they graded out.  Who knew nonwhites fell into one of these eight whiteness categories as well?

How did we get here?  Once upon a time, there was a little red schoolhouse on top of a hill.  If we built the same today there would there be a debate about the paint color?

The white powder across this land will soon turn to slush. Joe is up to the task of making it so.

We hope the minds of our young ones across this land won’t soon turn into mush.  What a task that is.

From this point of view, the change in education is far more extreme than the change in the climate.  And, as a reminder, it’s record-breaking cold outside.

Double Drivel

In Washington DC, the second impeachment of Donald J Trump has many implications.

For one, and especially if convicted by the Senate, it quelled any hopes for four more years in four more years for the petulant child.  But, in reality, that ended when Biden was elected and was reassured when the first pane of window glass was shattered by the ingrates who illegally entered the Capitol Building.

In Houston, the trade of James Harden has many implications.

For one, any hopes of a run to the NBA Finals went out of a very different window.  But, in reality, that ended when the petulant child stopped playing nice with his teammates and coaches.  It was reassured when he addressed the media Tuesday and told the Zoom assembled that his team wasn’t good enough to compete.

Donald Trump probably feels like he has given it his all in the last four years to Make America Great Again.  James Harden told us that he loves Houston and had done everything he could in his years here to make it great again as well.

Both love the environment.  Trump said he wants clean air and water.  Harden “makes it rain” almost nightly at a gentleman’s club of his choice.  But, we digress.

Trump feels like he carried so many incompetent people along for the ride that the task was burdensome and then some.  Harden said as much.

Trump fired people left and right along the way.

Harden forced head coaches to be fired and good to great players to be traded.

Trump is skipping the Biden Inauguration under the guise of safety.  He wasn’t ever going and now he has a thinly veiled cover to conveniently use.

Harden is skipping off to Brooklyn.  He wasn’t even playing for Houston this year.  His uniform, while he was on the court, was a thinly veiled cover to receive a paycheck.

When times call for all of the surviving Presidents to gather such as funerals of dignitaries, etc. Trump won’t get an invitation.  He wouldn’t go even if he did.

When Houston has a reunion of great players Harden won’t get an invitation.  He wouldn’t go even if he did.

Trump accomplished a lot in four years.  Even his detractors have to admit as much whether they like what he accomplished or not.

Harden won scoring titles and “led” Houston deep into the playoffs a time or three.  Even his detractors admit that.

Neither understand that there is no “I” in the word “team.”  Their egos walk through the door minutes before they do.

A meaningless basketball job has nothing in common with the most important job in the world.  It’s only ironic that one was asked to move on the same day that one was moved on.

But, if how you are remembered is important, these two have much in common.

And now America and Houston have spoken.  Don’t let the door hit you in the……

 

 

2021-Part II

We asked yesterday.  Who could have predicted that 2020 would bring us so many 12 to 6 curve balls and 95 MPH knee-high outside corner strikes?  No one could actually.

Who could know what 2021 could possibly have in store for us in the sports and news world?  Well, BBR of course.

And we delivered our foresight on the first six months.  Today take a look at the second half of the 12-month journey below.

You’ll be glad you did and then let the champagne flow.

July-  Jimmy Fallon celebrates the Fourth by drinking a fifth on The Tonight Show.  NBC fires him on the sixth.  Courtside, Hunter Biden watches the NBA Finals held in China for the first time ever.  LeBron is named MVP of the series, retires, and is named US Diplomat to China.  Joe Biden calls and jubilantly  congratulates “LeBron and his Cleveland 49ers on the championship.”

August-  Trump’s Agent Orange TV show is canceled due to low ratings.  Trump calls it fake news and demands a recount of the viewership.  The dog days of summer roll on with record highs in the California desert reaching 127 degrees.  Gavin Newsom, poolside from his villa in Cabo, issues a mandate for all Californians to stay indoors till 2022.  President Biden announces that he and Dr. Jill are headed to “Margaret’s Vineyard” for a well-earned summer getaway.   Mark Zuckerberg creates a Facebook spinoff soon to IPO called Shitfacedbook aimed at the inebriated crowd.

September-  President Biden is hospitalized briefly after his ninth Covid vaccination.  He forgot about getting the first eight.  A lasting side effect seems to be that his face has turned pale green.  AOC proposes that the 95 trillion dollar Green New Deal be renamed in Biden’s honor.  The Senate sends a bill to Biden recommending that Labor Day no longer be recognized as it’s prejudicial against the unemployed.  The NFL kicks off another season with no kickoffs now a rule-safety first.

October- Dr. Fauci declares that the NFL face mask screwed on the helmet might help prevent the spread of Covid or might not.  Jacksonville QB Trevor Lawrence throws for 345 yards as the Jaguars beat the KC Chiefs in London 37-17.  The hit TV series Yellowstone passes the 200th killing mark in one year in a very rural community milestone.  Nancy Pelosi’s fifth facelift is free thanks to the “buy four, get one free” promo at Dr. 90210.

November- The Smithsonian gets the very last necktie ever for sale at Macy’s.  It’s put on display on a male mannequin in a phone booth smoking a Camel.  Tesla’s stock price hits $3000 a share, up a paltry 500% from 2020.  Scientists warn that Apple watches can cause cancer (and break legs) in lab rats when worn for over 12 hours a day.   The Dog Pound in Cleveland is rabid as the Browns head to December 12-0.

December- The Army beats Navy 28-3 to complete a 12-0 season but is left out of the FBS playoffs.   Hunter Biden is rushed to the emergency room after attempting to snort a hot marshmallow around the campfire at Camp David.  Joe Biden thanks Doc Martens for the successful extraction and reiterates to the press how proud he and his wife “Dr. Jane” are of their son.     Tampa Bay finishes 7-9 and cites Tom Brady’s time away from the team filming AARP commercials in season as a distraction.  Covid is no more, but Santa is pulled over and cited for not wearing a mask while flying over Cuomo’s New York.

2020 is no more.  2021 will soar.

Thanks for being a part of BBR.

Happy New Year!!!

 

 

2021

Who could have predicted that 2020 would bring us so many 12 to 6 curve balls and 95 MPH knee-high outside corner strikes?  No one could actually.

Who could know what 2021 could possibly have in store for us in the sports and news world?  Well, BBR of course.

Take the first six months of the 12-month journey below.  You’ll be glad you did and then let the champagne flow.

January-  Alabama beats Clemson 45-28 and a masked Nick Saban hoists his 23rd or so FBS trophy, each as tall as he is.  The Kansas City Chiefs make it two Super Bowls in a row beating the New Orleans Saints 38-35 in overtime on a 61-yard field goal.  Joe Biden gets sworn into the highest office in the land while mistakenly placing his left hand on the bible.  Donald Trump, the most outgoing President ever, becomes the first outgoing President to not attend the inauguration.

February- To kick off Black History Month President Biden, by executive order, renames the White House the Black House.  A new civil rights organization, Tall Lives Matter, is formed and takes over four square blocks near the house, and names the area Shaq.  Dr. Fauci opines that the next pandemic could be far worse than this past one, or it might never come.

March- The stock market dives from its all-time high of 33,321 to test the March 23, 2020 lows of 18,321.  President Biden calls it March Madness and the greatest buying opportunity of his 103 years.  He proposes that the government buy Apple for 3 trillion dollars, rename it Ring My Bell, and promises free phones for all.  Donald Trump gets his own TV talk show named Agent Orange.

April- Gonzaga finishes 33-0 and wins the real March Madness tournament.  They cut down the nets sans masks forcing them to forfeit their trophy and 2 scholarships for 2022.  The Ways and Means Committee eliminates April 15 as the tax deadline effectively allowing you to pay your taxes when you wish and if you wish.  A bill on the Senate floor to rename America as Neverland is narrowly defeated 51-49.

May- Biden mistakenly signs his name on the new healthcare act as President Harris.  Mitch McConnell gets new glasses sponsored by Coca Cola. They are affectionately known as Bottoms Up.  Ghislaine Maxwell, under oath, swears that William Jefferson Clinton was such a frequent guest on Epstein’s island that they named the slip and slide into the pool after him-Slick Willie.  A race track star is born as Pie O My III wins the Kentucky Derby by 12 lengths.

June- The earliest hurricane ever recorded slams Washington, DC and it takes nearly three full weeks to drain the swamp.  The San Diego Padres win their 17th game in a row to take a commanding 12 game lead in the NL West.   George Springer hits his 27th dinger for the NY Mets.  Joe Biden, by executive order, deems 1-3 PM Monday through Friday in the Black House as nap time.  The stock market hits an all-time high of 33,666.

Tomorrow we’ll see what the second half of 2021 has in store for us.

 

 

Smoke em’ if You Got Em’

After World War II ended with a big bomb the American economy exploded.

As they are known now Baby Boomers were just babies back then.  And, more was better.   Population growth meant economic growth and the housing, car, and television markets, amongst many others, took off like a Pan Am jet.

Those were the good times.  Peace and prosperity reigned.  Dinner parties were all the rage and were but an excuse for lots of drinking and smoking.

Smoke em’ if you got em.”  And most everyone did.  Advertising men, or ad men, were Mad Men back then.   Newspapers, magazines, and then tv ads for cigarettes littered the mediums like the lung darts themselves filled the ashtrays.

“Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.”  “Newport refreshes while you smoke!”  Paul Hornung was the star football player and the star of the Marlboro magazine ad with the tag line “the filtered cigarette with the unfiltered taste.” Hell, Kool Super Lights helped you discover the most refreshing low ‘tar.’  Yummy.

But, by the mid-sixties, smoking was linked as a direct cause of cancer.  And, one full generation later, smoking went from sexy to tres gauche.  By the dawn of the 21st-century smoking was not only frowned upon but was banned in many public places and private spaces.

But all the while, America’s love affair with the gasoline-powered automobile grew and grew.  Post-WWII houses generally had one car garages.  But that gave way to two, three, and even four-car garages as Motor town, or Motown, revved.   Owning a car was 1A after the dream of owning your own home.

But, now, another generation later a company named Tesla is threatening to make GM’s gas guzzlers and Ford’s loud exhausts as relevant as Taryton and Pall Mall.  Will Tesla make 2040 America look back and laugh at when 2010 America was asked “wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick?”

Did you know that Ford now only manufactures two cars along with its extensive line of trucks?  One is the Ford Fusion.  The other is the iconic Mustang.  But, even Mustang will offer a battery-operated version.

Wall St thinks so with a stock market valuation on Tesla greater than all other American car companies combined.

The cig is to your lungs as the combustion engine car is to your climate it seems.   The cigarette industry and the oil industry both produce filters for their product.  The former is on life support and the latter is gassed.

Apple Corporation agrees.  It announced this morning that it plans to roll out a line of electric vehicles by 2024 with a battery that will revolutionize the market.  Wowza!

Chevrolet is still punching out Malibus while Apple is already reinventing its replacement.

GM and Ford are running out of money.  Tesla and Apple are printing it.

Smoking is out of style.  Innovation never goes out of style.

 

Sir Charles for President

Yesterday while channel surfing we stumbled across an NBA TV show celebrating Sir Charles Barkley’s 50th birthday.   Ernie Johnson sat down with Barkley and recounted his upbringing, his NBA highs and lows, his life post NBA, etc.  Nevermind that the show originally aired in 2013, it was quite good.

Why was it quite good?  Barkley was a breath of fresh air.  Barkley is always a breath of fresh air.  He’s such a well-rounded person (pun unintended) overall, and he has three key attributes that we relish.   He is authentic, honest, and funny.  Those are three characteristics that are far too often MIA.

In today’s world don’t you yearn for more, plenty more, of all of that?

For example, there was nothing funny about Tony Bobulinski’s interview last night.  Well, at least he sure seemed honest and authentic.  Did you not see it?  Understandable.  CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, and ABC so far have refused to run any of this, in their words, “unsubstantiated” story on the Biden family profiting from Hunter selling access to his father to foreign and sometimes communist countries.

Is there a shred of honesty in those outlets calling themselves news organizations any more?  And, make no mistake, while Fox ran with it on Tucker Carlson’s show, they aren’t a bastion of authenticity in the media any longer either.

And, what about the subjects themselves?  There’s nothing funny about Hunter’s documented troubled personal life.  And where is he?  Shouldn’t he be screaming from the mountain tops about the travesty of it all and how honest he and his father are?

Patriarch Joe has repeatedly denied knowing anything about the pay to play ruse that Hunter and his cohorts ran in multiple foreign lands.  Now last evening comes and goes and in written and audiotaped form comes undeniable proof that Joe knew even when he said he did not.  We’ll stop shy of saying that Joe directly profited from these arrangements, but authenticity of that sordid transaction is only a checking account statement away it seems.

Say it ain’t so Joe, again.  Or, admit that it is so.  Honesty is always the best policy we’ve been told.

An authentic and honest media of days gone by always fact-checked a dishonest politician.  The Watergate story was dug up by very hardworking journalists who would stop at nothing to uncover the truth.  Now, the only mudslinging is done by a compliant media to cover up the hole that the side that they have chosen has dug for themselves.

Charles Barkley has considered strongly, on multiple occasions, pursuing an elected political office.  We so wish he would.

There’s nothing funny about what we’re missing.  Honesty and authenticity used to go a long way.

Would the media even cover his campaign? Actually, now that we think about it, Sir Charles is in the media.

Perhaps he could cover his own campaign accurately.  It’s about the only way to get it done these days.

Rodney, Again, on 2020

Alas, another week has come and gone in these COVID-19, new normal, #apartogether, rioting, unprecedented times.

Enough of the heaviness already.  We think that a peaceful protest is in order.

Who better to do that than one of the best comics ever.  We take a swing at what Rodney Dangerfield would have to say today if he were witnessing these daily train wrecks.

  1.  These ANTIFA kids are stupid you know, very stupid.  Do they even know what they are fighting about?  I can relate though.  I come from a stupid family myself.   During the Civil War my great uncle fought for the west!
  2. Looking at all of this rioting and looting makes me sick.  Not as sick as my mother was once though.  Are you kidding me,  my mother had morning sickness after I was born.
  3. There’s too much hate in this world.  Too much I tell ya.  It’s been festering a long time.  How long?  I’ll tell you how long.  My parents hated me so much that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.  Ah, don’t give me that BS, it’s a funny line!
  4.  I wish so many people weren’t dying needlessly though.  My uncle had a wish way back when as well.  His dying wish was to have me sitting on his lap. He was in the electric chair!   No respect.
  5. The police are in a tough spot.  They are in a very tough spot, that I can tell you.  The situation reminds me of way back when for one of them.  Once when I was lost I saw a policeman and asked him to help me find my parents. I said to him, “Do you think we’ll ever find them?” He said, “I don’t know kid. There are so many places they can hide.”
  6. You get to a point looking at the tv that you feel like you can’t take it anymore.   You need help.  I know the feeling.  I remember I was so depressed years ago.  I was going to jump out a window on the tenth floor. They sent a priest up to talk to me. He said, “On your mark…”
  7.  It got worse.  I met the surgeon general. He offered me a cigarette.
  8.  And worse.  I was making love to this girl and she started crying. I said, “Are you going to hate yourself in the morning?” She said, “No, I hate myself now.”
  9.  And it finally bottomed out.  My wife made me join a bridge club. I jump off next Tuesday.
  10.  I needed help.  I got the advice of a professional.  My psychiatrist told me I’m going crazy. I told him, “If you don’t mind, I’d like a second opinion.” He said, “All right. You’re ugly too!”

No respect at all!