Today's Max Kellerman show was the quintessential Monday morning sports show. It was a recap of the events of the weekend, including: Pedro Martinez's outing for the Mets, the NCAA Tournament, Tiger Woods and the Paquiel fight. So with all this information to talk about, I decided to start this post with something from Friday's show.
Yes, I know, its Monday's Max Kellerman Musings on sports. But on Friday, Max touched on a topic that reminded of my childhood - Punch Out. Growing up in Long Island in the 80's my friends and I used to ride our bikes to 7-11 or stationery stores and play video games. I can remember many a Sunday spent with my friends David Y and Lonnie O at 7-11 eating devil dogs, drinking big gulps and playing video games. Among my favorites were Sprint, Ultimate Warrior, Time Pilot and, yes, Punch Out.
Punch Out was a game where you stood as a boxer (you actually tried to look through him) and attempted to knock out various other boxers - Glass Joe, Piston Hurricane, Bald Bull (I never could beat him), Kid Quick, Pizza Pasta and Mister Sandman (I never saw ANYONE beat him). As you boxed, the tinnish announcer voice would call out "body blow, body blow" or "uppercut!" As you got close to the point where you could put the other boxer away the game would blare "knock him out!" For those of you too young to remember the game, I have provided a link to a site that has the actual sounds of the game along with many of the images http://www.crocopuffs.com/soundboard/punchout.html .
Yes, I know, its Monday's Max Kellerman Musings on sports. But on Friday, Max touched on a topic that reminded of my childhood - Punch Out. Growing up in Long Island in the 80's my friends and I used to ride our bikes to 7-11 or stationery stores and play video games. I can remember many a Sunday spent with my friends David Y and Lonnie O at 7-11 eating devil dogs, drinking big gulps and playing video games. Among my favorites were Sprint, Ultimate Warrior, Time Pilot and, yes, Punch Out.
Punch Out was a game where you stood as a boxer (you actually tried to look through him) and attempted to knock out various other boxers - Glass Joe, Piston Hurricane, Bald Bull (I never could beat him), Kid Quick, Pizza Pasta and Mister Sandman (I never saw ANYONE beat him). As you boxed, the tinnish announcer voice would call out "body blow, body blow" or "uppercut!" As you got close to the point where you could put the other boxer away the game would blare "knock him out!" For those of you too young to remember the game, I have provided a link to a site that has the actual sounds of the game along with many of the images http://www.crocopuffs.com/soundboard/punchout.html .
But enough reminiscing and a return to today's show. The show started with a recap of the weekend's top stories and an attempt to rank them in order of importance. I had to turn the show off a few time to take work calls, so I am unsure of the final ranking, but it seemed that the Pedro Martinez performance on Sunday was the most important NY story.
The show then digressed to the Rock N Roll Tournament that pitted U2 against Stone Temple Pilots. Brian Kenny and Max began to debate which group should advance based on playing clips of songs from each band. I can't believe that the voting was close as U2 was a band that revolutionized sound, had staying power and (most importantly in my opinion), continued the theme of using music to convey a message. It took me years to understand the meaning of some of the songs (Sunday Bloody Sunday, for example) but it only led me to have a deeper appreciation of the music.
The odd thing was that Max said that the show was going to pander to the Irish audience (as it was St. Patty's day) but it really did not. Indeed, in attempting to argue that Stone Temple Pilots was a superior band to U2, it probably turned off a significant portion of the Irish audience. But how would I know, I'm Jewish. I should probably ask my friend Nick D. He is an Orthodox Jew from Ireland who lives down my street. Although his wife is from Brooklyn, his kids have authentic Irish names. Nick would probably be a better source for whether picking against U2 would alienate Irish audiences.
But back to the music issue - the whole discussion on the Rock N Roll Tournament started from Max saying that he was not into the NCAA Tourney. How far have we fallen from the days that I spent watching Chris Mullin, Walter Berry and even Bill Wennington give us hope that St. John's (my adopted BB college) could take home a National Championship. (I have even corrupted my 9 year old and made her a Red Storm fan after I won tickets from 1050 in March 2007 and took her to see SJU upset the Orangemen at MSG).
The idea that Max Kellerman played out of finding solace in music when other things are not going well was just another example of Max intuitively referencing the fundamentals of the Jewish religion. As many people know, during the three week summer mourning period when we commemorate the destruction of the Temples, we refrain from listening to music. Similarly, during the sefirah period that will be upon us in a little over a month, we again refrain from listening to music out of mourning for the students who died. Why do we do this -- because music makes us happy and during the mourning period we are not to distract ourselves from the seriousness of the time. Of course, since Max was not really in mourning for St John's there was no problem listening to music today, but you know that Max already knew this...
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