Mike Rice: unintentional dirty old man

Mike Rice cracks me up; his commentary is peppered with unintentionally dirty comments. Tonight I will do my best to catalog some of the inappropriateness.

Of Jeff Pendergraph:

He'll bang ya. And there's a guy named Dwight Howard on the other team who maybe needs some bangin tonight.

About a foul:

Andre Miller really nailed Howard and he thought it was the big guy, Joel Przybilla, and they're goin' at it.

Just calling the game:

Miller really gets it from behind.

On Joel Przybilla:

Boy I'll tell you, Joel is huffin' cause he is just bangin'. Every time down, him and Dwight Howard bang each other.

You've gotta meet Dwight Howard early so he doesn't get low-post position, so you bang him there. You bang him everywhere.

Joel going out of the game made the Orlando Magic spurt.

Even Mike Barrett got in on it tonight:

It was all set up on the penetration of Bayless.

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (0)

I have this idea for a blog. It would be called Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow. If you don't know who Rebecca Haarlow is, that is okay. She has a Facebook page. That means she is a celebrity. She is the on-court interviewer for the Blazer's commentary team of Mike Rice and Mike Barrett. I think she's pretty good at her job, but never really thought about her that much. One of my co-workers said she and her husband couldn't stand Rebecca Haarlow and I thought that was weird; I mean, it's a pretty innocuous job. But one evening we noticed a guy in the stands at the Rose Garden with a big sign that said "We Love Rebecca Haarlow!!" (Or something similar.) So we looked her up, wondering if this was going to be a thing. We didn't learn much - just that she went to Princeton, is tall and an athlete - and I did not make any of that up. I think it was that same evening, each time she introduced a pre-taped bit and the camera was about to cut away, her face would fall very suddenly and she would look some combination of annoyed, tired, irritated and/or sad. I, of course, started hypothesizing as to why this might be.

"Oh, maybe it's cause the story's about Joel being hurt. Maybe she's got a thing for Joel. Ooh, Pete! Do you think they were secretly involved and now they've broken up and she's annoyed?"

"No no, I think maybe she's got a cold. Maybe she's really tired. Yeah, she looks tired."

"Ooh, Pete wouldn't it be awful if she and Joel were involved? And she had to report on his injury? [Silence] What? What is that look for?"

I determined that maybe Pete did not think listening to me make things up about Rebecca Haarlow was very interesting. Also, he couldn't hear Mike Rice's palaver over my own.

And then it came to me: this should be a thing on the internet. Only I can't quite bring myself to start a new blog that is definitely totally stupid and that I might only use twice. So I thought I would start here. So look for me making things up about Rebecca Haarlow (for no good reason) in the near future.

Srsly-

the country version of the Blazer's song sucks.

So very, very much.

Omigod: please play something else. This weak sauce is making me regret the invention of music.

Mike & Mike: Completely Biased Commentating

Pete's been watching a lot of Blazers games, so I've been watching a lot of Blazers games. I have come to both love and hate the two local announcers. I love how much they admire the players and how excited they are about this team. I think it's funny how totally pro-Blazers they are, especially Mike Rice, who at least once a game is ired by some imagined infraction missed by the officials. Mike Barrett (or "MB" as Rice calls him, which never ceases to crack me up; it's like he's a 15-year old girl) always quietly disagrees, then when the video is replayed clearly showing no such foul, gently indicates as much and graciously allows Rice to move on to something else. What I can't stand is how repetitive they get. If I hear them say "points in the paint" one more time, I may scream. And lately Rice can't stop saying the word "faux-hawk" because if the Blazers get to the playoffs he will shave his hair into a faux-hawk, possibly because Sergio has one, possibly he made this decision before Sergio's haircut. I don't really know, and I don't really care; I just want him to stop saying faux-hawk sixteen times a game.

Rice is probably 65, but there are moments when he sounds like he's 80. And there are things he says that sound so borderline racist... I find myself saying, "Oh my God, can he hear what he's saying?" (The answer is no, because he's already moved on to the next thing.) It's clear that nothing could be farther from the truth - he seems like a super nice guy - but taken out of context, (or, if you will, in the context of my crazy racist Grandfather hypothetically saying them), and they sound pretty odd. Tonight he said something about how guys from Mississippi know how to hide in the weeds. Or maybe tall grasses? Whatever: he sounds exactly like someone's granddad giving a running commentary on the game in the middle of a family get-together. (I have to admit, that has its own appeal.) Actually, he sounds like the players' granddad giving a running commentary. Like he's just so proud of each of them, but especially Brandon Roy.

If the Mikes could just stop saying "points in the paint" (seriously! it haunts me!) and obsessing about Rice's potential future faux-hawk, it would be a great broadcast (for me). The thing is, I really like them. I like the running joke that Rice cheats at the Aflac trivia question each night. I loved when Oden joined them the other night and what they wanted to know about was the 32" sandwich he had for dinner the night before. I might hate having to watch basketball all the time, but I really like our team and it's nice to hear commentary from two guys who love our team.

Okay, I just saw Jay Leno make out with a brown bear of some sort in an ad for the Tonight Show. I have clearly gone insane. I need to go to sleep.