Some quick San Diego Fun Facts: The average temperature in March is 66.7 degrees. We have the sixth lowest crime rate in America and the smallest murder rate among cities with populations greater than one million. In a completely unrelated note, only 10.8% of the population is African-American.
San Diego also happens to have the worst sports writing in America.
Nick Canepa is the septuagenarian scribe for our ultra-conservative, right-wing rag The San Diego Union-Tribune. He's one of those whiny old white guys who surely starts every sentence with phrases like "Back in my day…" and ends them with "…(racial epithet, plural) knew their place."
Today, he's covering the colossally uninteresting non-story of the Chargers' new uniforms. With apologies to my friends at Fire Joe Morgan, it's time for some TBG-ery (Canepa's words are in italics):
Sportswriters, as a rule, are not clotheshorses, merely horses.
I actually had to look up "clotheshorse" in the dictionary, kids. I consider myself what Canepa would call "a well-spoken, articulate Negro", but I'd never heard this word before today. In my dictionary, I found the year 1775 listed next to "clotheshorse" which, according to the good people at Merriam-Webster, is its first recorded use.
(And, likely the last, according to my vernacular calendar.)
Sure, there are stallions among our breed of nags. As excellent examples, my natty colleagues Jim Trotter and Kevin Acee dress for football games as if they've just arrived from their weddings. Not that there's anything wrong with that. They're quite stunning.
I tried my best to confirm that both Trotter and Acee are Black, but I'm only reasonably sure about Trotter. Of course, the "brothers" are all snappy dressers, aren't they, Nick? With their conks and zoot suits and 23-skadoos…
But I know what looks good; although I also know clothes don't make the football player, either. Put the 2006 Raiders in Vera Wang jerseys, Dolce & Gabbana trousers, Salvatore Ferragamo shoes, accessorize with Gucci helmets, and you're still going to have your basic silver and black – and two wins.
Oh, snap! Was that Raiders-bashing?! How sneaky and unique! Speaking of wins, here's how many wins the Raiders had in January: zero. Now, here's how many wins the Chargers had in January: zero.
Of course, only the Chargers played in January, but you already knew that.
Al Davis is not Al Lauren. What would Mr. Blackwell do to Big Al? White leisure suits and that "Mean Streets" hair-do? Al, wake up and smell the Donna Karan – and stay off the red carpet, where Joan Rivers' face will break if she sees you.
Wait…when did Joan Rivers and Al Davis become fodder for bad comics? Why didn't I get this memo? Have we been allowed to bash them since the start of 2007 or was this bill signed into law sometime sooner?
As you may have guessed, I never had attended a fashion show until yesterday afternoon, when the Chargers threw one at the revamped, posh, U.S. Grant Hotel, to unveil their new uniforms. And, yes, there was a runway in the room, like the one Lucy Ricardo walked when she wore that Don Loper tweed suit in Hollywood.
I Love Lucy debuted on October 15, 1951.
The uniform change was a long time in the making. Chargers COO Jim Steeg, not exactly Fred Astaire, came up with the idea…
Fred Astaire was born on May 10, 1899. And, wasn't he famous for dancing, not "clotheshorsing"? I'll ask my grampy for a ruling on this.
He did good. The Chargers didn't get fashion stupid, like Denver or Seattle.
Total Super Bowl wins for the Denver Broncos since they changed their uniforms in 1997 to their current style: 2
Total Super Bowl appearances for the Seattle Seahawks since they changed their uniforms in 2002 to their current style: 1
Total Super Bowl wins and/or appearances for the San Diego Chargers since 1997: 0
True. It was time, which as noted in "Citizen Kane," waits for no football player, but part of the reason was because the previous unis were not striking.
Citizen Kane was released on May 1, 1941. Way to keep it timely, Nicky. And, I'm pretty sure that no "football player" is mentioned in the movie, unless you were trying to be funny. To that, I say stick with the ubiquitous "Rosebud" quote if you're looking for comedic source material.
It worked for Orson Welles' "Rosebud" frozen peas. They're full of country goodness and green pea-ness…!
And so the fashion show began, with team radio tonsil/MC Josh Lewin calling this "a monumental moment . . . historic." Sort of like Pearl Harbor.
The Pearl Harbor bombing happened on December 7, 1941. The Pearl Harbor movie (A Jerry Bruckheimer Production/A Michael Bay Film) was released on May 25, 2001. I'm pretty sure Canepa was referencing the bombing.
Football unis are like Twinkies (not on yesterday's menu). It's what's inside.
Twinkies were invented on April 6, 1930 and haven't been relevant as a societal pop culture reference since the soft, phallic junk food experienced a minor uptick in popularity during the 1970s when Hostess introduced mascot "Twinkie the Kid" in 1971.
You stay classy, Nick Canepa.
Jerk.
So wait, you went college (and a white college at that) and you'd never heard of a "clotheshorse."
ReplyDeleteFor shame.
Math, I love ya, but what the hell is a white college? I'm glad you cut your teeth at Drumline U. with an accompanying Master's at Stomp the Yard State, though.
ReplyDeleteI'd shudder (SHUDDER, I tells ya!) if you found out about Biggie dying while enrolled at Arizona:
Mathan: (Sobbing uncontrollably) "Biggie dead! Biggie dead!"
Roommate Connor: Who?
Mathan: Shut up, Connor! I guess I'll have to write about Biggie every year on the anniversary of his death, so no one forgets him. Well, maybe not *every* year. I'll just write the first column in 1998, then recycle it every year thereafter.
No one will notice.
(See how different it would've been Math?!)
A white college? Those are the ones where the Black students are in the minority. Y'know, like Ivy League schools and 90% of all insitutions of higher learning.
ReplyDeleteWait, "white" schools are just like the one in Higher Learning (y'know the movie that saw Ice Cube actually stretching as an actor, playing a college student.)
And for the record Black college life is just like School Daze, lots of singing and dancing and Samuel L. Jackson.
And if I'd not gone to a Black college and attended an in state school, I'd probably be father of one, married to the sole Black female resident of, oh let's say Montana, working a 9-5 and venting via the internet about the nuance of life, inbetween bouts of food poisoning while waiting for The Dove Shack's comeback.
Hey, that last part rhymed!
A Dove Shack reference and it wasn't made by me? Outstanding! Now, find a way to slip "Tha Twinz" in your next comment. Hurry!
ReplyDeleteYeah, it was a toss up between the Dove Shack and Tha Twinz, but I realized that the latter are still active, if you consider "active" to be putting out mixtapes that aren't even suitable for setting drinks on.
ReplyDeleteWhat was the point again?
How do you not know what a clotheshorse is? I swear you made references to The Golden Girls, surely you'd heard the term before.
I'm pretty sure that Joe Reid *might've* made reference to "clotheshorse" around the time that Sarah Jessica Parker signed her exclusive endorsement deal with The Gap, but I can't confirm it.
ReplyDeleteEither way, "clotheshorse" has now become my new "use-it-once-day" word to impress the bitches.
It replaces "titmouse".
Are either of these guys black?
ReplyDeleteOh, Nicka Please.
ReplyDeleteFYI, it's perfectly acceptable to withdraw silly and baseless comments (IE, alleging Canepa is a bigot who uses racial epithets) from your blog. It can come back to haunt you. But, seeing as no one has read your blog for 19 months, maybe you are lulled to sleep. And FYI, Acee is white. The black guy is now a national sports figure, and is regularly lauded by Canepa.
ReplyDeleteThe sub-text seems to be that you are a Raiders fan. It is inexcusable to invoke argumentum ad hominem (oops. Back to the dictionary.)
Final suggestion: read a columnist more than once before you pull the race card.
Because you're not playing with a full deck.
- Denzel Larkin
"Race card"..."full deck"...heh. I see what you did there.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, though, my sincere thanks for taking the time to read my post and comment. I would hope that you followed your own well-intended advice and read my stuff "more than once". You'd see that I'm still writing and people are still reading up thru today. (See archive sidebar to the right.)
Really, it doesn't take more than a few minutes to "get" this blog. Your email is infinitely more serious than the material you're railing against.
That said, I appreciate the effort - and passion - you have for defending Nick Canepa's honor. Oh, and don't get me started on the Raiders. They can have me back when control of the team is wrested from Al Davis' undead hands.
Again, thanks for the comment. Maybe the next time I'll get the "cheerful" Denzel from "Carbon Copy", instead of the prickly Denzel from "Malcolm X".
Take care,
Aaron
Don't know about any of these people mentioned above and have no opinion, but "clotheshorse" as used by my mother (now 96 and far gone in dementia so I can't ask her about it) was a woman who dressed at the height of fashion all the time, and looked good doing it. She might not be beautiful or even pretty, but she was "dressed to the nines," another antique phrase. I also got the impression that sometimes being a clotheshorse meant that the person was fairly ugly looking but dressing extremely well made up for it. Hope this helps. Of course, context means everything
ReplyDelete