Mowin’ the Lawn
The way winter went, Diane and I started to wonder if we’d ever see our big new Kewanee lawn again. Man, that was a lot of snow. Almost Minnesota-like, I must say.
The way winter went, Diane and I started to wonder if we’d ever see our big new Kewanee lawn again. Man, that was a lot of snow. Almost Minnesota-like, I must say.
No, not drugs. Never touched ‘em. Rarely drink, never smoked if you don’t count the few “look, I’m cool” cigars I’ve tasted. I chewed a little “tabacky”, when I played baseball, but basically I’m vice free. Except for games.
I like games. Mind games particularly. I spent a lot of time with the Rubik’s Cube when I was a teenager, but NEVER had the patience to figure it out, and am amazed at the people who do it so quickly today, except the blindfolded ones. They’ve gotta be cheating, right?
In the computer/video game age, I’ve become hooked on several games over the years, with each new game helping me kick the habit of the old game. I have the steering wheel and foot pedals required to play all the CPU racing games, I’ve even hooked up huge speakers to my system and placed them under my chair so I can “feel” the rumble while playing “Srpint Car Racing”.
Anyway, Sudoku is my latest addiction. Diane got me a handheld Sudoku game for christmas, and I have trouble putting it down. Here’s how bad it is: I have a Motor Trend in the bathroom that I’ve had for three weeks, and haven’t read it yet. Now THAT’S amazing.
Sudoku…it’s not just a puzzle, it’s a way of life.
Interesting story yesterday about the HOI Fair in Peoria, full of quotes from Eileen Frey, most of which were either not quite the whole story or completely false.
In the story, she says the North Dakota State Fair paid Tim McGraw $425,000 for one show last year. I think that’s a tad high. It might have been $125,000, or maybe even up to $200,000, but I highly doubt it was $425,000. I know, I’ve talked with promoters and managers for years. If Tim DID get $425,000 for one show, he laughed all the way to the bank.
But be that as it may, she also said the HOI Fair struggles to get the big acts because they don’t have enough money to spend. I don’t doubt that, but maybe the REASON they don’t have enough money to spend on big acts is the way they’ve done things over the years.
I arrived in Peoria in 1996, and the HOI Fair brought in pretty big acts every year back then. Heck, in 2001, the country shows alone were Brad Paisley, Montgomery Gentry, and Collin Raye. Not bad. Paisley and MG were already all over the charts, and Raye was a solid act who had just come off a nice run in the 1990’s. Having all three of them in one year couldn’t have been cheap.
All three performed on the football field at Richwoods, in front of the grandstand, which the HOI Fair no longer uses. She claims in the story “it’s not big enough” of a venue. Um, yeah it is for what you’re trying to do.
The REAL problems, as I see them, are these:
1. The fair never accurately counted it’s attendance at these shows. Entrance into the fair also got you into the show if you wanted to see it, so you just walked into the concert. Then, people with clipboards would “estimate” the attendance based on how many seats they thought they had available, and how many people appeared to be in those seats. By doing that, they could then tell the fair board “that show didn’t draw that well” without accurately knowing. Example: Montgomery Gentry packed the place. Not an empty seat in the grandstand, not an empty chair on the running track in front of the grandstand, and people STANDING on the track beyond the chairs. I stood next to the gentleman in charge of estimating attendance that night, and he wrote “3,500″ on his report. Excuse me? 5,000 grandstand seats (according to him) and 600 chairs on the track. My eyes saw 5,600 PLUS standing, my guess was 6,000 in attendance. Nope, he said 3,500. He also said “it’s awful loud”. A-ha! He didn’t LIKE the show so he UNDERestimated the crowd.
Two nights later, a local country show plays before about 200 family members and friends, and the report says “1,700″. See the problem? How does the fair board justify paying Montgomery Gentry when it appears they’ve only drawn twice as many fans as a local kareoke singer?
2. Pay at the gate, walk into the show. Duh. If you said you were bringing in Sugarland or Kenny Chesney or Brooks & Dunn to the fair this year, and you then said “you not only have to pay $10 at the gate to get into the fair, but it’ll cost you an extra $30 to get into the concert”, guess what? People would DO IT! $40 to see a headliner? Very much inline with seeing them at the Civic Center, PLUS you get to browse the fair. People would do it. The fair is very short sighted in not seeing that. Say you pay $35,000 for Terri Clark (her going rate as of this past summer), and then you charge $20 per seat plus fair admission. Say she brings in 4,000. Do the math. No brainer. BTW, last time I saw Terri live was at the BUREAU COUNTY FAIR in the metropolis of PRINCETON, about three years ago. Hello? Bueller? The Bureau County Fair can bring in headliners and the HOI Fair can only afford kareoke?
3. The biggest problem, in my opinion. When I arrived in 1996, it was radio wars at the HOI Fair. Every company had every station out there broadcasting live, and battling to see who could turn their monitors up the loudest. Then Regent came. Regent Broadcasting bought into the Peoria market in 2001, and one of their goals was to “own” events. Not a bad plan if you can pull it off. The HOI Fair soon made a deal that Regent stations would be the only stations they advertise on. Guess what? Attendance has been off, revenue has been off, and entertainment has been curtailed ever since. It’s not Regent’s fault entirely. It’s simple logic. If you only advertise the fair on four radio stations out of a market of 15-20 stations, you’re not going to reach the full audience. It wouldn’t matter if it was Regent, JMP, AAA, Kelly, or now Independence. Your advertising is going to miss 60-80% of the entire market if you don’t spread it out!
The number of people I’ve run into over the last few summers who say “the fair is over? I didn’t even know it was going on” lends credence to my argument. Other entertainment entities in town who’ve done similar deals over the past five years have also seen their attendance flatten or decrease. The benefactor, of course, is the radio company that gets the exclusive deal. But it’s not a win-win situation for the entertainment entity. The HOI Fair, as I said, is not alone in this problem.
But they can correct it by correcting their marketing. And they can get bigger acts WHEN they market better, and when they change their internal workings as far as how they charge and what they charge for.
Peoria’s fair shouldn’t be on a death march. But I think it is in it’s current form.
The University of Minnesota has hired Tubby Smith from Kentucky to be their new basketball coach, and personally I’m pretty happy about it.
My favorite school is getting a darn fine coach, needed as they’ve fallen to rock bottom in the Big 10 under Dan Monson and most recently Jim “Offense is Not A Priority” Molinari. The Gophers have never been a basketball power, but they did have a good run in the 70’s under Bill Musselman (that ended with probation), again in the 80’s with Jim Dutcher (which I think ended up with some kind of probation) and then in the 90’s under Clem Haskins (that ended with probation). Anyone see a pattern here?
So Monson was hired from Gonzaga to not only win games, but clean up the program, which was - unlike MOST schools that cheat - involved in a test score scandal, not an “I’ll buy your mom a new house and a satellite dish while you get an Escalade” scandal. Monson did apparently clean up the program, but couldn’t win a game to save his butt, so he quit in December, making his assistant Molinari the interim coach. The undertalented team played hard under Jim, but eventually started scoring in the 40’s and 50’s for entire games, which of course was his hallmark and ultimate downfall at Bradley.
So Tubby is in. That’s a huge step forward for my favorite school. Basketball is now the fifth most successful WINTER sport at Minnesota now, behind the National Champion wrestling program, the soon-to-be-National Champion hockey team and the women’s basketball and hockey programs. But since most so-called “sports fans” only care about football and men’s basketball, those other accomplishments go pretty much unnoticed. So men’s basketball needs to get better. And they will. And I can throw my Minnesota basketball jersey back into my rotation of clothing that I wear.
When did it become okay to just cruise along with your brights on with no regard for oncoming traffic? It happens to me mostly on interstates and divided highways, but that doesn’t make it any less rude.
Dim your lights, you’re not the only freakin’ car on the road.
There are only four types of people who don’t dim their lights: the arrogant, the ignorant, the idiotic, and some combination of the three.
I just love how the hard line GOP’ers continue to whine about the “angry left” and how democrats and liberals just won’t stop “hating” George Bush.
This from the party that sold bumper stickers in the 1990’s that read “Where is Lee Harvey Oswald when you need him?”
Yeah, that was classy.
…am I to understand that last week George W. Bush said something bad about one of our high-ranking government officials…and he did it while in MEXICO?!?!?!
That does it, I’m not buying any more of his CD’s.
In the post I just wrote, the one below this one, I mention the NBA being easier to watch now than college ball.
Which reminded me of the recent discussion I listened to regarding Peoria’s own Shaun Livingston. He’s badly injured right now, and people were saying (was it a radio talk show? I think it was!) that he’s going to regret not going to college now if he’s done playing.
Wrong. He’s got the money now to pay for his own education, should he choose to do that. He chose to go pro out of high school, he was good enough to get drafted in the first round, and he took the money. NO ONE any of us knows would have done it any differently, and those same people complaining about him skipping college would be doing a 180 if he was at Duke and had the same injury. They’d be saying, “he should have taken the money.”
Take the money every time. College can wait, if it’s needed at all. And here’s hoping he can come back from this latest injury and return to the form the Clippers knew he was capable of when they drafted him, and the form he had flashed this season as his minutes increased.
Anyone in the same boat as me, in not paying any attention whatsoever to college basketball right now? Haven’t watched a game of the tournament(s) - but then, I never watch or care about the NIT - haven’t seen a full game all season, haven’t checked out a box score, didn’t fill out a tourney bracket (first time in my adult life, I think), and don’t even know what teams are still in it.
Why?
I’m quite sure, for me anyway, it’s because basketball isn’t basketball anymore. The game has morphed into some ugly, non-officiated, pick up game. There are gross abuses of rules on every possession. The few minutes of college hoops I caught this year, I counted traveling violations in the dozens in about two minutes of play. No one can dribble correctly, there are carrying the ball violations on EVERY possession. No one can shoot. The form is awful. Remember what we were taught? “Go straight up, elbow in, legs quiet, land in the same spot you left.” THAT’S how you make a jumper. That’s how Larry Bird, Jerry West, Lou Hudson and Trent Tucker did it. Pure jump shooters, perfect form.
Today? Form? What form? These guys are pathetic. Leg flailing, off balance, brick throwing pathetic pieces of turd. Not the whole turd, mind you, they’re not good enough to get that label. No, just pieces of turd.
And defense. Since when did assault and mugging constitute defense?
I know the complaints: “you could call a violation or a foul on every play, it would kill the game.” No, it wouldn’t. It would help. One year of 35 traveling calls, 46 carrying the ball calls, and 150 free throws per game would pretty much solve the problem and put the game back where it should be.
And the worst thing of all? While calling high school games this winter, I watch as young men look incredulously at the official who dare calls a traveling on him. The player thinks to himself, “what did I do wrong? That’s how Duke does it.” Sadly, he’s 1/2 right. That IS how Duke does it, it’s just not legal. Unfortunately, it’s never called at that level. Sadly, what they see on TV is what they try to do in games, and it’s starting to now screw up high school ball. Fortunately, there are still some officials out there who call the game correctly.
Bottom line, college basketball has never been worse. It actually makes the NBA easier to watch. The NBA actually has less walking, less carrying the ball, and less thug defense than college ball.
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