Does Nike make straitjackets in men’s XL? Either I’ve gone nuts or these voices in my head are starting to mess with me.
Being financially partnered with Ponzi legend Bernie Madoff, 1-800 flower-power ad-scam king Jim McCann, the fined folks at Amway, and manipulative hedge-hog Steve Cohen isn’t sleazy enough for the Mets.
Now they’ve proudly announced they’re bringing in Denizen of the Dumpster thug 50 Cent to entertain a family crowd — the Manson Family? — after a late Saturday afternoon game in June.
Buyer beware. At least when the Nets ran a “Guns For Tickets” promotion they requested the owners first empty the clips — that slug in the chamber, too.
50 Cent — that’s “Mr. Cent” to the New York Times — puts the rap sheet in rap. And what he raps for a living is beyond both the pale and the pail. As the Mets’ first manager, Casey Stengel, urged, “You can look it up.”
It doesn’t matter that Cent was arrested, again — then copped a plea to avoid another felony — just this year, this time for assaulting the mother of one of his children. Nope, the Mets are pitching this warm, cuddly angle: The Mets and Fiddy are homeboys, both from Queens!
Hey, so is the Queensboro Correctional Facility! Why don’t the Mets send over a few buses, fill them with inmates and take them out to the ball game — perhaps Banner Day. Maybe that’s why the cons on the top floors have been secretly collecting bed sheets.
Perhaps, too, the Mets can conduct a rap-along — follow the bouncing stray bullet! — posting Fiddy’s lyrics on the big scoreboard.
Do the Mets know — or even care — that a 2009 50 Cent performance in Queens was cancelled as per directives from the offices of Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Paterson because of safety (er, ah, life and death) concerns? Seems Fiddy’s preoccupation with guns and violence tend to attract those similarly preoccupied.
But the Mets will host a 50 Cent concert after a late afternoon game this June. Brilliant. Hey, it was that or the Girls Gone Wild Twerk-a-Thon from the Pepsi Porch.
Where is the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig, on this? Oh, never mind. “The King was in his counting house, counting out the money …”
MSG Rangers, Knicks repeats full of spoilers
So you’re the head of a network that has rights to Rangers’ and Knicks’ telecasts.
And you come up with, or approve, a neat idea: In the hours after those teams’ games you’ll condense them into 60-minute telecasts — an attractive option to those who missed the games, especially to next morning viewers.
The only thing you must guard against is revealing the final score along the crawl at the bottom of the abridged telecasts. Why wreck your own come-on and undercut advertisers?
Easy. On Day 1, you order that the crawl never include anything about the game that’s being rerun. Never. One slip-up? Well, one, but no more.
Yet, for several years, since the Rangers and Knicks “In 60” began on MSG Network, its appearances have been bereft of standard, fundamental quality control. Foresight often loses to abject neglect. Only sometimes does MSG remember to get it right.
Thus, Monday night’s Wizards-Knicks, as seen Tuesday morning on “In 60,” was tied at 100, 40 seconds left, when MSG’s crawl told this: Final score, 102-101, Wizards.
On one hand — or in one ear — I know WFAN host Tony Paige well enough to know that when he adopted an Italian accent to ridicule Knicks big man Andrea Bargnani for his ill-advised shot last week, he meant no harm. Heck, he’s named Tony.
On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine Paige, who is African-American and often identifies racist behavior in things that could go either way, would find amusement in a white man’s mocking of a black man’s stereotyped speech following a wrong-headed play. Just sayin’.
Women can be mean, too
Many of the worst kinds of massacres — the needless further stomping of opponents already squished — now come from women’s college basketball. One night, last week:
In Texas’s 109-48 home win against Sam Houston State, Texas played three starters more than half the game, while one Texas kid played three minutes, another sub two minutes.
In Norman, Okla., where Oklahoma beat Maryland Eastern-Shore, 105-46, one Sooners starter played 30 minutes while one sub played five.
(Imagine tuition or taxpayer money being spent to make Maryland Eastern-Shore at Oklahoma!)
Yet, what on the surface seemed to be the week’s ugliest stomping — North Carolina beat New Orleans, 124-41 — actually wasn’t. UNC coach Sylvia Hatchell played all of her kids at least 10 minutes.
The Mets will assign Bartolo Colon the locker next to Mr. Met’s — since Colon’s PED days they wear the same size cap. Reader Alan Streisfeld suggests Colon, given No. 46, is the first Met to simultaneously wear his waist size, cap size, and, perhaps, his age.
How is it that Mike Francesa is both a know-it-all and the last to know? Late Tuesday afternoon he suddenly reported the carjacking and murder in the Short Hills Mall, as if it were a news flash. He then apparently was told that it occurred the previous night.
How do the Knicks, among many others, read/look at the tattoos on the backs and sides of their necks and shoulders? Or do they read them to one another? Or do they forgot that they’re there? Must be easy to forget they’re there, no?
Eric Nadel, a Texas Rangers radio voice the past 35 years and recent winner of the Hall of Fame’s Ford Frick Award for broadcasting, was a Brooklyn kid then a graduate of Brown. After being hired by the Rangers and moving to Texas, he became so proficient in Spanish he called winter league games in Latin America.
The latest Mike Zaun (“Mike’s On”) video — Francesa and Chris Russo in 1943 “breaking down” World War II — is hysterical, superb. That’s three-for-three — the Revolution, Civil War and WWII.
The Flyers, who didn’t make the playoffs last season and this season appear no better than eh, have announced that for those purchasing tickets on a specific date, the team “will absorb the cost of any online transaction fee!” Wow! A team’s running a one-day special — it will only charge the cost of the tickets!