Three-Dot Friday 2.2

Sometimes the best course of action is to either keep walking or not driving angry.

The final tour… but not the final show, apparently. (photo by author)

Technicalities will let people get away with anything. Like last summer, when what’s left of the Grateful Dead, now called “Dead and Company,” went on what they called THE FINAL TOUR in big capital letters. I went and saw two of the FINAL TOUR SHOWS in San Francisco and the scene was great and it felt like classic Dead shows and all the fun stuff that came with them, including the merch tents. And it really felt like the end. Well, this week Dead and Company announced a six-week residency at The Sphere in Las Vegas this spring. Technically, it’s not a tour. But it’s a thin excuse to play more shows and therefore feels even more like a cash grab than usual. Spiritually, it feels off. And since the Dead and Deadheads are all about the vibe, the vibe for these shows is very, very wrong from the beginning…

Is Bill Belichick really not going to be an NFL head coach this next year? I really felt like if the Chiefs lost the AFC Title game that we’d soon hear that Andy Reid was retiring and that Belichick would become the head man in KC. I had no insight and no rumors bubbling around, it just felt like everything was on hold waiting for the title games. There was even weird message-board speculation that if the 49ers lost to the Lions that Kyle Shanahan would get the boot for Belichick in SF, but that was just speculation. It sure feels like Belichick will end up somewhere. It still might be KC. But are we really sure the Bills are going to keep puttering along with Sean McDermott?

I think a lot of the Taylor Swift/football hate stems from the fact that she doesn’t know football? Uh, let me remind you that no matter who you are or how many games you’ve watched, there was a time when you didn’t know football and nobody held that against you when you went to your first game. And if somebody did then you either ignored them or thought they were jerks and went about your business. (Besides, there are a lot of people who refuse to patronize or learn football, period, because it is an incredibly violent sport very much connected to brain damage and tremendous problems, physically and mentally, later in life.) Maybe you learned about it when you were young and it just feels like you’ve known about it forever, maybe you were in marching band and your first time actually going to a football game was when you marched in high school, and maybe you got student season tickets in college because that’s what college kids do and you had a lot of fun at the games and it made you want to learn more about it. Frankly, Taylor learning about the game because she’s dating someone on the team is the stereotypical classic story of how girls learn about football. Besides, the reason she didn’t learn football before now was because she was too busy putting her energy towards building a multi-billion-dollar industry of a musical career. While you were watching football. And now she has a reason to watch football. What’s wrong with that?

Today of all days, don’t drive angry!

Hard to believe we are now just weeks away from spring training. It feels like half the big names in free agency still have yet to sign, and that’s basically true. It could seem suspicious that most of those big names are clients of super-agent Scott Boras, but this is all very much within his wheelhouse. He’s trying to drive up the prices of his clients by holding out. And the teams are not freaking out - yet. It does feel to me like a lot of these deals, especially the inevitable Matt-Chapman-to-the-Giants signing, are being held up by haggling more than anything else. Like the bonus for making the All-Star team or winning a Gold Glove or whatever. At some point both sides have to just say “fine,” and shake hands…

KANSAS JAYHAWKS BASKETBALL UPDATE: A huge game Saturday against Houston for Big 12 supremacy, but there’s still a month in the regular season to go…

I think the Golden State Warriors might have figured it out? I really don’t think they’re going to make any trades at the deadline, which is now just a week away. As I have said for months now, if Andrew Wiggins plays good enough to be traded, then you don’t need to trade him because he’s playing good enough to be kept. The only reason they would deal him at this point would be for salary cap tax relief, and that’s hard for the Warriors to come by. They have a massive payroll, and they are in 12^th place in the Western Conference, well out of the playoffs at the moment. They are stuck and are going to have to figure this out with the pieces they have. Including Andrew Wiggins…

Sometimes businesses really do close because of economic issues. and sometimes they close because even though they were really close by and should have been a great place to be, the service was awful at the beginning. So one gave it a bit to get it ironed out, and then tried again and the service was awful. So one put that down to maybe pandemic issues, gave it a bit and tried again. And then decided the best thing to do was walk past…

Which is exactly what I’m going to do if I somehow happen to be in Vegas during a certain six-week period this spring and happen to be near The Sphere…