Sunday, June 19, 2005

the best ever death metal band out of denton

My dislike for Mitch Albom is pretty well established. Most of you know him from being a commentator on ESPN's "The Sports Reporters". The one with the ears. Still others of you will also know him as a writer for the Detroit Free Press. If you are not in one of these categories, you may still know him as being the author of such books as Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. They say these books are good, but I'll never know. I'm still holding a grudge against him for making some idiotic remarks about North Carolinians during the Carolina Hurricanes' surprise run to the Stanley Cup Finals against his beloved Detroit Red Wings in 2002. This grudge will prevent me from buying, borrowing or browsing any of his books.
For some reason, though, it doesn't prevent me from listening to his radio program. I have it on a lot at work. He does a little bit of interesting commentary about sports, then some more about something in the news and then has a guest or two. His pride hubris for his Detroit teams is more than a little annoying, but if he can talk about teams that aren't from Detroit (and more importantly aren't involved in a series with a team from Detroit) he's actually kind of decent. His take on current events is sort of humorous. He spent a lot of time joking about the Michael Jackson trial and the resulting acquittal. The other day, though, he segued from making fun of the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes engagement to making fun of this guy who does horse racing radio play-by-play. This guy works a track in or near Los Angeles. During a race on Thursday, they experienced an earthquake of 5.0 (or so) magnitude. Albom had a feed of the radio call of the race. They guy was just calling the race, then very non-chalantly said "we are in the midst of an earthquake". The guy continued to call the race as normal, but for some reason slipped in "I just want to say that I love you all, and that horse racing was my first love". That was the thing that Albom wanted to ridicule him about. So he played it again. And again. And again. About 10 times in an hour. I don't know what his reasoning was, other than to ridicule the guy, but it seemed really mean-spirited. Anyway, I do enjoy his show most of the time, but that one stuck in my head and reminded me "oh yeah.... I don't like Mitch Albom."

I had other stuff to write about, but I forgot, and I'm getting tired.

now playing:
This Mortal Coil -- Blood (no sample available)
This Mortal Coil Blood

1 comment:

doug said...

I can't stand him either - mostly for that same Carolina crap he said a few years ago - but also he's a little too "I'm trying to be the sensitive sports guy" for me - btw, have you seen the parody book - "The Five People You Meet in Hell"? - kinda funny. And, I saw the Hollywood Park horse guy on CNN, and I thought it was actually kinda, well, sweet, and it seemed like he was being a little light with the whole situation - plus, you live in LA, and an earthquake starts, I'm sure you think it's the BIG ONE. Anyway, Mitch Albom is a jerk.