Adweek – "How the Flyers Created Gritty, the Internet’s Most Beloved Mascot"
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
The Chicago Bulls Intro Music
The Ringer – "Aaaand Now … an Oral History of the Greatest Starting Lineup Introduction in Sports History"
"Tommy played us “Sirius” and everyone in the office agreed it matched an introduction of the players beautifully. But we were concerned that it wasn’t a household song, like “Thriller” or the Miami Vice theme. On the other hand, we loved having something unique. When you work in game entertainment, you hope that you find one thing that everyone will remember as being yours. You live for that. The Cubs had it with the singing of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch. The Blackhawks pioneered the use of a foghorn after goals. We were hoping the Bulls had found a similar tradition with the intro."
...
"Michael Jordan once told me Chicago Stadium gave the Bulls a five- to 10-point advantage. Did the intro factor in? Oh, hell yeah! The other team had to stand there and watch: “Now, in this corner, the reigning champion!” It was like ancient Rome, with the Bulls as the lions and the opposing team as the Christians just there to be sacrificed. If you weren’t slightly intimidated by that, knowing what this team was, then you didn’t have emotions. The visitors had to be thinking: “Why isn’t my team’s stadium doing something like this?”"
Brian Tyree Henry Becoming a Movie Star
GQ – "Brian Tyree Henry Is Learning How to Be a Movie Star"
"He's been, basically, marooned on film sets for the past year. “Living with a lot of personalities,” as he puts it."
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"Henry is often confronted with the suggestion that he has lucked into his current position in Hollywood. “I get irritated, 'cause people are like, ‘Oh, you're having a moment.’ I'm like, ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ ” After graduate school, when Henry moved to New York to do theater, “I was pretty much homeless,” he says. For a while, he couch surfed and survived on food stamps. “But I'm glad I experienced that to be where I am now,” Henry says. “I'm so glad that this shit didn't start happening for me until now, with the TV and film aspect. I'm so glad it wasn't back when I was real tiny and I was, like, a 33 waist and I was in the gym every day, and the agents I had at the time were like, ‘You're still too fat.’ I was like, ‘Are you kidding?’ And you believe that stuff, though. I was berated all the time, like: ‘You're too big.’ I was so tiny, man. I have never been more comfortable in the skin I am in now. Because all my life, I was so body dysmorphic. I had all these people telling me how I look. Like: ‘You're not a leading man. You're not small enough.’ ”
But then Henry got The Book of Mormon. “I remember being on Book of Mormon and just sitting there and being like, The fuck? I'm making money. I'm eating whatever the fuck I want. Like, What's that? Pommes frites? Yeah, man. Give me that. I don't know what that cheese is. Give me that cheese. I love myself, man. I love myself. I didn't give a fuck.” He fired his agents, got new ones. “It was so nice to be at some point in my life where I could love every inch of my fucking body, man. And as soon as I did that, I got Atlanta. I got everything. I got everything as soon as I stopped giving a fuck.”"
Thursday, November 8, 2018
"Sports have become videogames"
Wall Street Journal – "The NBA and NFL Have Become Videogames"
" In the actual NBA at the time, 3-pointers accounted for 8% of total points. But on any given “NBA Jam” machine, that number was between 50% and 52%, said Mark Turmell, the game’s creator. It turns out all those people were onto something: 30% of points scored in the NBA now come from 3-pointers, and that rate has steadily increased every single year for the last three decades.
The way the NBA reflects “NBA Jam” is uncanny but not unusual. So many of the innovations that have revolutionized professional sports in recent years are the same intuitive strategies that people have been using for as long as arcades have existed."
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