By CHARLES ANDREWS
NOW, THAT’S JUST SILLY
With all that’s going on in the world, you’re going to use this precious space to complain about… sports on TV? (Hang with me on this.) That was my first thought, too. But then I considered the bigger picture, the patterns, the connections.
I am a one-sport guy. Saves me a lot of time throughout the year. No long baseball season, no endless soccer tourneys, certainly no macho-military-head injurious American football. If I want long bombs, blitzes, trenches, and field generals, I’ll tune in to the latest Pete Hegseth buffoonery.
Basketball. Hoops. It’s elegant, almost balletic, extreme athleticism, strength and quickness, split-second strategy changes, mid-air adjustments, five-on-five weaving, guarding, passing, throwing a 9.5” ball through an 18” hoop from 25, maybe 45 feet away. Instantaneous, instinctive geometric calculations, while some 240-lb. mass of motivated muscle is charging right at you full speed. And the game is sometimes not decided until the last minute, or the last second.
So that’s my sport, I loved to play it (badly), and I love to watch it on TV. If Your Team is still in it for the championship, you tweak your calendar around those games. But now, corporate greed has reared its ugly head on the hardwood.
I don’t spend hours in front of the TV. Don’t have any subscriptions, just a Roku plug-in for a few extras. Am I the only American who does not have a Netflix subscription? I missed a couple of important Laker games because they were only available on Amazon Prime. They lied to us and said, ” Oh, only for the first round games.” Well, my Lakers survived the first round, and now I will have to LISTEN to tonight’s crucial game on AM RADIO, because the NBA decided a few million bucks more for Jeff Bezos is more important than the fans who got them where they are today, a sport played and followed worldwide.
YES, BEING A SPORTS FAN IS SILLY, REALLY
Like rock and roll. But I like it. But this scenario is just one more example of how our lives are needlessly filled with frustration and often downright suffering and even death, because of corporations and billionaires owning our political system. NBC’s Nightly News has a segment each week called ”The Cost of Denial,” where they present the story of someone denied vital medical care because their insurance refused to cover it, against all good medical practice and science. Almost every time, that instantly changes when they have the network cameras focused on them. So, where does that leave everyone in the same boat who doesn’t get NBC’s spotlight? We are the only developed nation on earth who does not provide universal health care. That’s a human right.
But there is nothing beyond the grasp of the billionaires, no matter what the human cost. A few years ago, the CEO of Nestle declared that drinking water was a commodity, not a human right. People think there are boundaries, lines corporations will not cross. Not so. The bottom line is profit, and nothing else. The only way to control that is with strong government regulations. You know, the ones the right keeps whining will take away your freedoms. No government interference! Except in the bedroom, at the voting booth, in women’s bodies, in Constitutional guarantees, in the schools, the wedding chapels, etc. Remember the cries of “states’ rights!”? That was BS for let the states decide about discrimination and abortion, because they know they can control our state government.
NO HANDLES
On paper grocery shopping bags, Vons started that five weeks ago, and someone told me Ralph’s is doing it now, too. Gelson’s, where nearly everything is overpriced, gives you handles.
Think about it. Someone at corporate HQ came up with that bright idea that saves them, what, a penny a bag? Of course, times a gazillion bags in all the stores, it adds up. But how about this? No bags at all, ever? That would save even more. How about eliminating checkers and letting everyone check out and bag – oops, no bags – their own purchases? Oh, wait, yeah, they already did that.
An employee at a Vons told me EVERYone was complaining about the no handles. I have a couple of car-less neighbors not in their 20s who, by necessity, shop at Gelson’s. They can no longer get more than one bag of groceries, and cradling that one while walking back up the hill on Ocean Park is not easy. This is ridiculous. What a slap in the face to so many Santa Monica residents. Where are all those high-minded groups who want everyone to walk or bike in SM?
I wanted to get some answers from the two large chains about this decision, but it would seem they may have been paying attention to the 3 a.m. tweets of the Oval Office Orange One, and decided the press is the disgusting fake enemy of the people that they have no obligation to answer to. One store employee left me on hold for 20 minutes when I announced I was from The Mirror and wanted to ask the manager a couple of questions. One of the chains had two different phone numbers listed under customer service or public relations that were “no longer in service.” I think that tells you a lot. I will persist, as well as with the LYFT problems at Big Blue Bus’s MODE operation. They can all hide, but not forever.
The idea behind the recent national strike on May 1 was “workers over billionaires.” It has been going on for centuries, millennia even, and the $B-Boys have a lot on their side, but we have the numbers, and they need our dollars. All we need are a few hundred good men and women in DC, and the SM City Hall. Now is the time.
Charles Andrews has lived in Santa Monica for 40 years and wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. Really. Send love and/or rebuke to him at therealmrmusic@gmail.com.
