Like any red-blooded American male, I spent Sunday afternoon watching the football championship games. I am that occasional fan who only watches the second half of the championship games (After all, why bother with the first half and the silly half time shows?) This one felt personal because it was the old guys—Tom Brady, 41, and Drew Brees, 40—against the young guys, whose names escape me. With Brees, I was really conflicted since he was playing against our hometown team; my regional loyalty finally won out and I rooted for the Rams. With New England, it was easier to root for the old guy against the kid quarterback, who really looked like he wasn’t old enough to shave. Once again, the old pro came through, but that isn’t the point of this column. When Brady took off his helmet, he looked like perhaps he had come from a set of tennis at the country club. There were barely any lines on his face. Now I know Brady trains hard every day, with a fleet of trainers to help condition his arms, back, legs and just about every portion of the human body that is trainable. But there is absolutely no way to train your face and unless Brady is secretly sneaking off for some Botox shots (which I doubt), the guy is on to something. If he could bottle it, he would no longer have to stand up there to be knocked down by a 300-pound defensive lineman.
It was so different compared to when I was a kid. My next-door neighbor, Barney, was an usher at the Polo Grounds, where the New York Giants football team played. He’d get my buddy and I tickets and once the game started, he’d slip us down into the no show, expensive seats. Like any other young teenage boy, we’d run out on the field after the game as the players were walking back to the clubhouse to try and get an autograph or even start a conversation. One game, I managed to actually talk to Charlie Conerly, the then 35-year-old (ish) Giants quarterback from Ole Miss. The difference was that when Conerly took off his helmet, he looked like an eighteen-wheeler had run over his face, with cuts and bruises and scars, the way you would expect an old grizzly quarterback to look. Somewhere today, there is a Fountain of Youth that only certain pro quarterbacks know about. If you know where it is, please send me an email.
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The Malibu City Council did a very smart thing the other day. It realized that if it was going to do an investigation about the Woolsey Fire in Malibu, people had to believe it was objective and fair, that the chips would fall where they may. So rather than having Rick Mullen and Skylar Peak doing the investigation as they originally intended, the newly elected members, Karen Farrer and Mikke Pierson, are going to do it. Kudos to Karen and Mikke for asserting themselves, as seems to be the way with freshman these days, and to the entire council for realizing that it made sense. Investigation may be the wrong word—perhaps it’s an inquiry or an analysis, but no matter what, we need to get to some of the root causes.
This Saturday, Jan. 26, the LA County Fire Chief Daryl Osby is coming to Malibu to speak to us at a public meeting at City Hall in the council chambers between 3-5 p.m. The fire department has come under considerable criticism for their handling of this fire and the loss of the 600 plus homes in the greater Malibu area. Considering the emotions locally, it takes guts to come to a public meeting to explain what his department did and we owe him the courtesy of a listen. We don’t have to agree but we have to allow him his say and not jump down his throat as soon as he starts talking.
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Our federal government is still out to lunch with no end in sight. Our political leaders are not looking like great “Profiles in Courage.” Also, the U.S. Supreme Court came down with a couple of decisions that may be an indication that they are not about to jump into the political thicket and bail anyone out. If Trump was counting on the newly very conservative court to help him out, I suspect he’s sorely disappointed. In a strange way, Trump’s tweeting may be working against him in the court. The court knows if it gives him any substantial win, he’ll be tweeting and bragging about it all over the internet and claiming he owns a court that will do his bidding. That is about the last thing it wants, so it appears to be avoiding very controversial cases and, more importantly, hot button areas. The next presidential election is in Nov. 2020 and that’s only 21 plus months away. The court also knows that its members may have some very tough legal calls to make in regard to the Mueller report and its aftermath. They certainly don’t want the American public to view the court as simply an extension of the Republican Party by a vote of 5 to 4.