The Frivolous Fun of 80s Hair Metal

May 1, 2021January 27, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

They were hairy and kooky, obnoxious and a little spooky, the metal bands of the 80s. As fashionable as it was to love these (mostly) L.A.-based heavy metal in the 80s, it became just as fashionable to openly despise them in the 90s.

I loathed them too, until a young co-worker, who was discovering them for the first time, said, “Hey, they’re not [Bob] Dylan, or [John] Lennon, I get that, but c’mon, they’re fun.” I immediately dismissed that line, because the guy was a doofus. His musical tastes did not define his doofosity, but it was everything else that led me to dismiss just about everything that came out of his mouth. Yet, to my amazement this simple line, from such a simpleton, fundamentally changed the way I listen to music today. I went through a they’re-not-this-that-or-the-other-thing phase, until I eventually turned into a “C’mon, they’re fun” guy too.

I’d love to write, right here, that the self-indulgent critics’ call for important, meaningful music, never got to me, but the pressure to denounce hairy metal from the 80s came from every “cool kid” corner of my life. Prior to loathing them, I went through a long and expensive heavy metal phase when I was a teen. I spent almost all of my minimum wage paychecks on cassette tapes of every major, and many minor Los Angeles-based, hair, glam metal band out there.

When I aged out of it, I sought serious, brilliantly complex music, but when doofus said what he said, I realized that I was trying to make myself into a serious adult, because I wanted adults else to take me seriously. Doofus reminded me that we can all seek complex arrangements in our music from artistic musicians, but let’s not forget to keep it fun.

With his succinct condemnation of my self-importance and self-indulgence, doofus reminded me of the simplistic brilliance of all those years ago. The book Nothin’ but a Good Time also reminded me, more recently, that the hairy, glam metal music of the 1980s never claimed to be anything more than what it was. Say what you want about the bands of this era, and the music they wrote, but they never tried to be vital or important. They never wrote a seven minute opus on the Fall of the Roman Empire and how it might correlate with the modern rise of technology. The music of the Los Angeles-based hair bands were all about having a party, abusing their body with whatever substances they could find, having random and consensual, conjugal visitations, and any other forms of excess they could find to have a good time. The book also pointed out that they didn’t mind practicing what they preached.

Shortly after I grew out of my love of hairy metal, I sought clever and complex music, but I’ve never enjoyed deep songs with meaningful lyrics. This might be a result of listening to so many thousands of hours of metal music in my teens, but I have always considered deep, meaningful songs so silly. They do nothing for me. Most of the time, when I hear a lyricist attempt to write deep, profound lyrics, I think of Fredo from The Godfather, “I’m smart! Not like everybody says… like dumb… I’m smart and I want respect!”

We’ve all read critics pour through lyrics for the deep meaning the author intended, but most of them either have something to do with something political or social, or they contain some oblique, or over the top, reference to drug use. I listen to that music, and I repeat it numerous times, but the lyrics don’t affect me in anyway. Vocals, and vocal inflections, should be used as another instrument in a song. If they do it well, I’ll listen, but I don’t understand why we should care what Thom Yorke of Radiohead has to say about his view of the world any more than we do Bret Michaels of Poison. In this vein, Michaels’ lyrics might be more respectable, because he doesn’t engage in any of the “look at me, ain’t I smart?” type of the self-indulgent lyrics we find in Yorke’s work.

Most of the “vital and important” music critics of the era loathed heavy metal, but we didn’t really care. We didn’t need Nothin’ But a Good Time, and that served to undermine the power of the music critics. The critics knew that most of the hairy metal bands didn’t know how to play their own instruments, and they panned them for not only ignoring socially significant issues but damaging some. They loathed these bands for thumbing their nose at consequential issues, and they deemed them inconsequential. No one I knew cared. We wanted to play heavy metal music at our parties, and we wanted to play that same music in our cars on the ride home from work to remember those parties. The book Nothin’ But a Good Time reminded those of us who loved it that there was a time when we didn’t take ourselves so seriously, and we knew we weren’t vital and important. We were silly and stupid, because we were kids, and we wanted our music to be silly and stupid too. We didn’t want to hear what critics said we should be.

How bad were the hairy metal bands of the 80s? How good were they? It depends on who you ask and when you asked them. As the book points out, the era was all about timing. Those who were in a Los Angeles-based heavy metal band between 1984 and 1988 learned how the other half lives for a while, and they indulged in every excess they could think up. If a heavy metal, glam band had all of the above and they released an album as late as 1989 to 1990, a major record label probably signed them, but every album they made went straight to the $.99 bin. The idea that sales are all about timing is not a novel concept of course, but was any rise-and-fall of a musical genre as stark as what happened to heavy metal in the 80s? Disco? maybe.

Were Motley Crue (‘83), Ratt (’84), Poison (‘85) that much better than Bang Tango (’89), Junkyard (’89), or Dangerous Toys (’89)? When we listen to classic rock radio today, which bands do we hear? How many of us even know the latter three? One would think that if the latter bands had music that was just as good that they would eventually rise to some levels of prominence. They didn’t, in part, because the more prominent bands of the era tapped into a time and place of the zeitgeist that will presumably never die in some quarters.

What happened in the intervening years, some of those band members interviewed in Nothin’ but a Good Time say the dynamic in the industry experienced a subtle shift when Guns N’ Roses changed it a little in 1987. Others not in the book, say the industry tilted further away from the “Rock and Roll all nite and party every day” rock theme when the funk-rap hybrid bands Faith No More (’89) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (first noteworthy album ’89) arrived on the scene, but most acknowledge that the Seattle, grunge movement led by Nirvana’s Nevermind in 1991 sounded the death knell of the hairy metal of the 80s.

To read about 98% of most modern critics, the modern reader might believe that Kurt Cobain single-handedly killed ‘80’s hairy metal. The critics write this, I think, because they loved everything about Cobain, Nirvana, and the single Smells like Teen Spirit. They love the narrative that ten minutes after Smells like Teen Spirit aired on Mtv, everyone knew the heavy metal movement was over. Some of the artists interviewed in this book, however, suggest that Slash might’ve done more to end the mid-80s version of hair metal than Cobain. I consider that an intriguing notion, considering that most put the heart of heavy metal’s reign over the music industry between ’84 and ’89, and that it began to wane two years before Nevermind was released. As factual as that statement appears to be, according to record sales and Mtv plays, it’s not as compelling as the narrative that suggests one band, one man, and one song ended it all. Others claim that other Seattle artists Mother Love Bone, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden did something so different in the years preceding Nevermind that they laid the times-they–are-a-changing groundwork to pave the way for Nevermind. Some musicians claim that the King’s X 1989 album Gretchen Goes to Nebraska laid the groundwork for what some call the Seattle sound, and others call grunge. Regardless the who, what, and whens of the argument, most agree that Nevermind did put the final stake in the heart of the dying carcass that was the hairy metal of the 1980s.

*******

As compelling as the argument of the death of heavy metal is, the tale of the birth of heavy metal might be as interesting. Almost every artist of the era lists Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin as the forefathers of their sound, and others state that the first Black Sabbath album, AC/DC’s Back in Black, and Quiet Riot’s Metal Health, and Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry all played a role. The over-the-top looks, the stage theatrics, and the simple, arena, sing-a-long rock songs intended for nothing but fun, however, belong to KISS. Put simply, if KISS didn’t rule the airwaves of the 70s, the early hair metal movement of the 80s probably doesn’t happen.

Nothin’ But a Good Time mentions KISS a couple of times, but for the most part this book strives to cover the scene in this era, and it provides little backdrop for who (other than Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister) might have inspired it. Yet, if KISS inspired the early years of the movement, it would be a stretch to say they were the catalyst for the entire era. KISS came out in ’73, and they hit their peak commercial value between ’75 and ’77. Why did it take seven years for bands like Poison and Motley Crue to take their influence to platinum success?

The missing link, in my humble opinion, arose from a subtle shift the British band Def Leppard made away from their more traditional heavy metal sound from the KISS, AC/DC sound to the more polished, David Bowie, T. Rex catchy pop-metal sound that proved more radio friendly when they made the relatively successful High N’ Dry in ’81. In ’83, Def Leppard took that concept up a notch with the release of Pyromania. That album’s success did not happen overnight, but in my world, no one I knew had ever heard of a group called Def Leppard on Thursday, but by Monday, everyone I knew was wearing the Def Leppard Union Jack sleeveless T-shirt. The groundswell was almost that immediate.

The primary difference between Def Leppard and KISS, in my world, was defined by every teenaged girl I knew. I knew teenage girls who liked KISS, especially the song Beth, but when Def Leppard put Pyromania on the shelves, every girl I knew suddenly loved a rock band. When the songs from Pyromania hit the radio, it was the closest thing to Beatlemania that I’ve ever experienced. Every teenage girl I knew listened to Pyromania and when teenage girls love something that much, teenage boys pay attention, and they eventually learn to love it.

The success of Def Leppard’s Pyromania (’83) led to Poison’s success (in ’85), and Motley Crue’s shift from their KISS-inspired (’83) album Shout at the Devil to the more female friendly Theater of Pain (in ’85). The formula Def Leppard set (by selling 6 million albums at the time) was to release a hard rock single followed by a more radio friendly ballad led every 80s heavy metal act who followed, to include a more female friendly ballad. (This formula started before Def Leppard, but they appeared to reignite it.)

The book Nothin’ But a Good Time begins right about here. The book doesn’t mention the integral role that I think Def Leppard played, but after the success of Pyromania, every major label tried to sign their own version of Def Leppard/KISS between 1984 and 1988. Most metal bands signed during this era went gold (selling 500,000 units sold), and some went platinum (1,000,000 units sold) to multi-platinum. As evidence of how crazy this signing spree became, a member of a band called Bang Tango said, “We weren’t even a real band when we were signed, and we had to learn quickly.”

Were most of the 80s hair metal bands ridiculously excessive? Were they politically incorrect? Did they have the lyric “baby” in every song, at least once? Were they everything critics loathe? The answer is D, all of the above. No one cared. When I write that we didn’t care about the critics, that shouldn’t be limited to the “who cares what the critics think?” trope that bands drop about critics. I’m talking about genuine, almost total obliviousness. We may have dropped a “You know the critics hate these guys right?” To which, the other guy would say, “Really? No, I didn’t know that.” And that was the end of the discussion in the non-cerebral and non-political party we teenagers were all having for a majority of the mid-80s.

At some point, the party we were all having with the L.A.-based, hair metal, glam bands had to end. The definitions of when and how this happened differ, but it did end. Some bands were still being signed to major record companies, and in this book those bands said that they paid their dues, and they felt like they wrote a decent album, but the record company didn’t promote them the way they might have just two years prior. They claimed that they were just as talented, or more so, than other bands who made millions two years prior. They missed the signing spree, and the multi-platinum awards for any band who could string together a halfway decent heavy metal ballad. They missed the crucial money making part of the era by about two years.

For those of us who were young and easily-influenced teenagers during this era, the polished pop metal to heavy metal music they produced will always be “ours”. It seduced us into believing life could be fun, and that it could be one big party that doesn’t have to end. Logic dictates that everything must end, however, and there came a point when glam metal needed to die. An era defined by excess eventually became so excessive that it became a parody of itself, and those of us who once loved it developed a love/hate relationship that eventually came to an end when young, rock enthusiasts reminded us how fun the music from the era used to be. Even with that, however, some of the artists interviewed in the book Nothin’ But a Good Time now admit that it became obnoxiously excessive, and it had to die under its own weight. Someone had to come along and burn the field to prepare for the harvest of something different and new. These facts about life and art can be as hard to accept as they are to deny, but as the book states a number of the top-tier bands of that era have experienced a certain rebirth from younger crowds who missed it the first time around and older crowds who seek the nostalgia of the acts.

“Write jokes, get paid,” was the philosophy Jay Leno followed throughout his career in comedy. He also preached this to his fellow comedians who thought they could and should use comedy to change the world. “That’s all such nonsense.” Leno reportedly replied. “It’s all about write jokes, get paid.” The glam metal of the ’80s followed this philosophy. They wrote fun, little meaningless songs that they hoped young people would enjoy so much that they might run to their local record store and buy, and we did, by the millions. The music was not important, vital, or consequential, but those of us who lived through the era thought it as a lot of fun. When we comb through music timelines, with critics who write such things, we’ll never see them list our favorite artists on the “most influential artists of the eras” lists they write. Those of us who lived through the era know what a ridiculous time it was in music, in terms defined by music critics, but if we were to write a eulogy on the time period, we might say something like, “Was it a meaningless era that focused on a lot of dumb, superficial stuff? It was, but that was the kind of party we were having back then. Sorry, you missed it.”

The Complaint Cloud

April 7, 2021December 31, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

When the complaint cloud approached our table, we didn’t need a meteorologist to tell us that conditions were ripe for a chance of complain. All we had to do was wait for the complainer to receive her food.

“There’s something wrong,” Rosalyn said to introduce us to her complaint, and she added the international prelude to the complaint, “I don’t want to complain, but …” She probably expected us to avoid starting our meal, until we could address her complaint. We didn’t even pause. In lieu of that apparent insult, Rosalyn repeated her complaint. She wouldn’t eat. She couldn’t, because she found something wrong with her food.

Rosalyn didn’t call the server over, because some part of her enjoyed having the complaint cloud hover over us while she instructed us on the proper way to prepare an onion ring. She said she didn’t want to lord her industry knowledge over our table, the server, or restaurant, but she couldn’t help herself. It might’ve taken a server two minutes to address her concern and return with a new plate of onion rings, but Rosalyn didn’t want to explore that avenue. Rosalyn wanted to guide us on a tour of the knowledge she attained in her years in the industry. She shared a strained smile to reveal her internal struggle, but she knew too much to just eat a poorly prepared onion ring that she knows isn’t a temperature the industry requires.

Rosalyn could’ve said her onion rings were room temperature, but she knew that description carried no attention-grabbing exclamation points, so she said, “They’re ice cold!” to superlative her way to some real attention. When she finished displaying her mastery of provocative adjectives, we feared touching the onion rings the way we do dry ice, because we know the physics behind something being so cold it could burn.

To bolster her characterization, and the resultant sympathy that followed, Roslayn added that her slightly above room temperature onion rings were, “Gross!” Was it a gross exaggeration to call them gross, yes, but isn’t it always. We all do it, because no one challenges the “Gross!” assessment. Gross is also such a relative term that it’s personal, and any challenge of a personal assessment is perceived as a personal insult.

The proper reaction to the “Gross!” assessment, as illustrated by our fellow patrons across the country, is the sympathetic and empathetic crinkled nosed. The crinkled nose response is so pervasive and ubiquitous that it’s almost reflexive now. We don’t even require the “Gross” assessor to back up their assessment. They say it, and we crinkle our nose. Gross can now be used to describe everything from finding live insects in our food to tasting excrement in fresh seafood, to finding a french fry in a serving of pasta, or being served an onion ring that is somewhat less than perfect.

My prime directive, at one point in my life, was to try to unseat the word gross from atop its perch in our lexicon. I tried to develop a campaign to limit use of the word in my social circles, to give it back some of its power. I made some strides in my battle against the ’ly words, literally and actually, so I thought I might experience some success with gross. I didn’t know what I was up against. The word is gone, it’s just gone. Overuse has diluted any power it once held, because it wields so much power, (and yes that dichotomy was intended).

When someone at our table tired of her grumblings, as a result of Rosalyn’s carefully orchestrated drama, they called our server over. It was anticlimactic when the chef quickly arrived, in a surprisingly timely fashion, with a new hot plate of onion rings. The chef informed us that the price of the onion rings would not appear on our bill. Shows over folks, time to go back to other conversations, because there’s nothing left for us to talk about in the immediate aftermath of a resolved dilemma.

“How are those onion rings?” one of the uninformed asked her.

“Eh, they’re all right.” The uncomfortable truth about those onion rings was they were not all right, and they never would be, because no onion ring can ever be all right in the complaint cloud. They’ll never be as tasty as they could be, or as hot as they should be, or as crispy and pleasing as the industry requires. “I prefer a solid crunch when I bite into an onion ring, don’t you? Yeah, no, these are not for me. This is a fine restaurant and all that, that’s known for their onion rings, but these… these just don’t meet my expectations.” Rosalyn picked the restaurant, and she selected the side item that she would eat, for which this restaurant was well-known. She knows restaurants, because she works for a competitor, and she knows what this restaurant specializes in, and she’s “always wanted to try their onion rings”. When they arrive, she takes it personal when they serve her something that is a couple of degrees below the industry standard that she knows only too well.

“Do you have any idea who I am?” is a question Rosalyn would never ask, because she knows they don’t, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t care. Plus, no one outside of the cartoon world of Gilligan’s Island or Scooby-Doo says that anymore fearing that someone might confuse them with an archetype, obnoxious rich guy. Yet, the subtext of her complaint suggested that part of her complaint was just that, an attempt to treat her like a commoner who doesn’t know the difference between gross, room temperature onion rings and the top-notch onion ones they reserve for the clientele of discerning tastes.

Roslayn made her complaint cloud personal, and she concluded this dramatic portrayal of her virtuosity by saying, “I will eat them,” when the server returned to see if the second plate of onion rings met her expectations. She was kind enough and virtuous enough to suffer through those onion rings, so we wouldn’t view her as a complainer after she spent the last couple minutes doing nothing but complaining.

Praised be the all mighty, now will you climb down and speak to the peasants, as you said you would when you invited us to try to enjoy an evening out with you?

*******

Complaining is what we do. It’s what I do. We even complain about complainers. “I don’t want to hang out with him anymore, because all he does is complain,” we complain. I complain all the time. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m doing in this article. I’m complaining about complainers who complain too much. We complain about family, friends, politics, religion, our place of employment, and the people who walk extra slow through cross walks. Complaining is just kind of what we do when we’re in groups, but we shroud most of our complaints in humor. Complaining is fun and illustrative. It defines our character, and it can provide for some provocative, engaging conversations. When we invite friends and family for a night out, however, most of us try to keep those complaints in check. We know the looks, the eye rolls, and the physical discomfort some display when we complain too much about our relatively comfortable lives. We also know some of our complaints can bring an evening to a crashing halt.

Some of us don’t complain when we probably should, because we don’t want to bring unnecessary attention to ourselves. Is this submissive? Perhaps, but how brash are you? We know that they “Don’t want to get you started, because you have so many opinions to challenge the status quo that you’ll shake up and shatter their whole world,” but are your complaints really that substantive, or do you just enjoy lofting yourself up into the complaint cloud for the impressions it accrues?

“I don’t care. I’m paying for these goods and services,” complainers say to justify their complaints, “and the least they should do is try to provide me what I’m paying my hard-earned dollars for, and some of the times they don’t.” They also say such things about air travel, “You’re flying in their aircraft, and the airline should do everything they do to accommodate you and assure your comfort and feelings of security.” It’s all true of course, and it’s actually a good rationale to expect as much from our fellow man as we expect from ourselves, especially when we’re paying them, but as Malcolm Gladwell once wrote, there is a tipping point.

The tipping point arrives when everyone you know, knows that you’re going to complain about something, anything, just to complain. We know that it doesn’t really matter what you’re complaining about as long as you’re complaining about something. The meal they set before you could pass every stringent code restaurants have for quality food, and you will find something, because you’re not some stooge who’s going to eat anything just ‘cuz. We could try to dig into their past to figure out what drives them to do this, but it all boils down to one incontrovertible fact that some people just love to complain. Most of us go along to get along, and others debate, argue, and fight because it provides grist for their mill. They might not consider themselves complainers, and they might even say they hate people who complain all the time, but if the people intimate enough to know them know that the minute they sit down for a meal that a complaint cloud will darken their table one minute after that server puts food before them, it might be time to reevaluate that perception. When it happens once or twice, it’s annoying. When it happens so often that the people at your table dread this moment, it should be obvious that your greater complaint is not with the goods and services others work so hard to provide, but with the way your life panned out.

Guy no Logical Gibberish III

March 30, 2021November 11, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

Most of us have been reading for so long that we fail to appreciate what a complicated exercise it is. Those of us who read every day are shocked when we read that literacy rates are not 100% across the board in the United States. The U.S. literacy rate matches the world literacy rate at 86%, but with as much as the U.S. taxpayer pays on education, the U.S. citizen should be angrier that it’s not higher. As low as it is, it’s double the literacy rate when JFK was the president, when it was 42%, and that more than tripled the literacy rate of Abraham Lincoln’s childhood in 1820, when only 12% of the world was literate. Our eyes glaze over when we hear that Lincoln was self-taught, as self-taught has taken many meanings over the years. The bar of our current definition of self-taught now is much higher than it was in Lincoln’s day. Lincoln’s formal schooling, he once said, wouldn’t have amounted to a full year. He had too much work to do as a child.

Those of us who read something every single day assume that human beings have been reading for as long as human beings have been on the earth. When we hear that some famous historical figures were either illiterate, or barely literate, it’s noteworthy to us. “They accomplished that with little to no education?” When we learn that Abraham Lincoln was mostly self-taught, after reading his speeches, we think, “What a teacher!”

Books are such an unlimited commodity today that we take them for granted, but as far back as Abraham Lincoln’s day, the future president and others walked miles to borrow a good book. They didn’t have many books, newspapers and pamphlets were a limited commodity, and they didn’t have the internet of course. They appreciated the limited commodity of books, and they loved to use their brains for the complicated past time of reading.

If we take this one-step further, how complicated is it for the average citizen to write a book? For most of my life, our lives we’ve heard how difficult it is. “I wrote a couple novels in my spare time,” Actor George Kennedy once said. “It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

Kurt Vonnegut counters, “Writing allows a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anyone can do it. All it takes is time.”

***

Planning to go to an Easter Egg hunt, Nephew #5 was in the basement with a stick practicing fencing techniques on a wall. He was two-years-old, but he apparently watched enough video to know lunge techniques and some counter attacks. Sister-in-law #3 said his facial expressions were so intense, he looked angry.

“What’s the stick for?” she asked.

“My nana said we’re hunting the Easter Bunny,” he said, “and my mom won’t let me bring a gun.”

While still two-year-olds, nephew #5 had a real phone that was not plugged in. He picked up the phone and said, “Maury, my girlfriend and my wife keep arguing, and I can’t take it anymore.”

***

My first nickname for a woman I knew was “unfair”. I considered it unfair that she should have all of the characteristics boys like. Most of us have an abundance of one characteristic and a deficit of the others. My guess is that anyone else who saw considered it just as unfair that God decided to be so stingy with all of our superficial characteristics while giving her everything. Those who believe our characteristics are solely genetic and a result of everything our forebears passed down, have to wonder how all of the optimum characteristics filtered down to her. My guess is that her relatives, or those who didn’t have all of the optimum family characteristics passed down to them, hold a lifelong grudge against her. When her relatives, and anyone else who sees her walk down our employer’s hallway, see her, they know how unfair life can be. I developed another nickname for her, through the years. I called her “The Godfather”. Every time we went to a bar together, guys would come up to her and whisper in her ear. We sat at these bars together, in a group, for about 90 minutes on average, and it never failed. Some guy, from some part of the bar, would walk up and whisper something in her ear. One night, in particular, four different guys whispered things in her ear. She told us she knew two of them, and two she didn’t. What were they whispering? She didn’t cite the Southern Italian code of silence and the code of honor that forbids telling outsiders anything that is discussed, but she wouldn’t break their trust and tell us what these guys were whispering to her.

***

An eight-year-old boy asked me if I wanted to hear examples of the extent of his knowledge of swear words. I asked him why he was so fascinated with swear words. He didn’t know, of course, as he never dissected it. My guess is that it’s independent knowledge he has attained outside the home, and the psychology of it fascinates him. He knows it’s taboo and that fascinates him.

***

Some people complain that other people, mostly men, waste huge chunks of the precious time they have left on earth watching NFL games. Watching the NFL is a complete waste of time in the sense that we get little to anything out of it, but it’s no more a waste of life than watching any other TV show. I found an even greater waste of time, paying attention to mock drafts.

True NFL fans are almost as concerned with next year as they are this year. As such, they waste huge chunks of their precious time left on earth reading Mock NFL Draft experts guess what college player NFL teams will select in the upcoming draft. The NFL Mock Draft industry is now a multi-million dollar business built almost single-handedly by a guy named Mel Kiper, a man some claim “built an empire out of nothing.”

Why is spending countless hours reading, listening, and watching what these experts think such a huge waste of time? A writer named Derek White graded Kiper, Todd McShay, Peter King, and other top experts of mock drafts in 2014, and he found that top, universally acclaimed experts picked the player an NFL team would select 4.6 times out of 56. Reading other, more recent grades for the experts, they often correctly pick an average of 6 times out of 32. This inflated score includes a heavy asterisk, as the first draft pick is often set in stone by draft day, and the next two are often so obvious that we shouldn’t give these experts any credit for stating the obvious. If these admittedly debatable points are true, then the true prognostication of NFL Draft experts begins at pick four. At that point, the top experts in this field average about 3 correct picks out of 29, or just under 10%. These experts watch countless hours of game film, they have insider access to insiders of each team, and they spend hours studying their algorithms before they sit before a massive NFL audience to reveal their findings. They know way more than we do, and they correctly pick the college prospect an NFL team will select less than 10% of the time. Do these mock draft experts take abuse for missing, yes, but before we feel sorry for them remember that they are paid fairly well to do something most of us pay to do. The question isn’t why do they do it, but why we waste such a huge chunk of our precious time left on earth watching, listening, and reading them do it?

***

In 2015, a writer for the East Oregonian wrote that major league pitcher Pat Venditte was the majors first major league pitcher to switch hands pitching in 20 years. The writer for the EO picked up a story from the AP and wrote, “Amphibious Pitcher makes debut”. I believe the writer intended to write that Pat Venditte was the first ambidextrous pitcher in 20 years. I know Pat Venditte. I might not know him well, but he’s never been anything less than a mammalian to me.

Some 30 years prior, while former NBA player Charles Shackleford was at North Carolina State, he told reporters, “Left hand, right hand, it doesn’t matter. I’m amphibious.”