Hockey Goalie Mikayla Demaiter Puts On The Pads, Dad Music Video of the Year & Ohio State Fans Are Ready To Bring Back Urban
I don't want to end the year on a bad note but Ryan Day has forced my hand
I was told there's no way you can fire a guy who has gone 56-7 or whatever Ryan Day was entering last night's Cotton Bowl. I was told that Ryan Day is too good of a coach and he would make adjustments and he would have this team back after three straight Michigan losses.
What the hell did I sit there in a neighbor's basement and watch last night?
It was a Spring Game.
I'll tell you this much, thank you football gods for giving us a 12-game playoff next year because what we're watching from these college teams is awful. That was a Missouri franchise with all of its players from a team that stuck right with Georgia until late in the 4th quarter in November.
And Ohio State made that offense look like it was playing a Spring Game for three quarters while Ryan Day's offense ran out some guy from South Dakota.
SOUTH DAKOTA!
I don't care if this Lincoln kid is the second coming of Ty Detmer. When I learned that Ohio State's backup last night was from South Dakota, it told me all I needed to know about the franchise Ryan Day has been building.
This poor 18 or 19-year-old from Pierre, SOUTH DAKOTA (pop. 14,000) looked like he'd been thrown into San Quentin without a game plan besides handing it off to the running back and praying.
I'm told that Ryan Day is an offensive genius and you can't fire the guy because offensive geniuses like Day don't come around very often. I also know what I saw with my own two eyes going back to early in the season when Kyle McCord looked terrified. Then they trotted out Devin Brown and his 33 jersey. I still don't know if that guy can play college football. He's out there for like two plays and disappears for weeks on end.
Then it was this teen from South Dakota.
At some point when it became clear they didn't have a plan for Mr. South Dakota, I told my neighbor they might as well just let him throw the ball in the air as far as possible and see what happens.
Poor Mr. South Dakota finished six of 17 for 86 yards.
And don't get me started on the offensive line.
That's enough for this morning. It's the end of the year. I'm not supposed to wake up on a Saturday and feel this pain.
-end-
Here's the text group dancing on my 2023 college football grave:
Here's a huge USC fan dancing on my grave:
• Then there's Mizzou fan Gerard W. dancing on my grave:
It was still just an exhibition game.
Happy New Year! Keep up the great work. Excited to read your column every day next year!
After all that emotion pouring out, I sure could go for a sunset!
• Jake in Utah knew exactly how to bring me out of my Saturday morning funk:
Thank you for everything you do to keep us normal people sane in a crazy media world. This is at the top of the night skiing lift at Powder Mountain, we truly have the Greatest Snow on Earth, at least that’s what all the ski patrol who travel worldwide tell me! May you and your family have a Happy New Year!
The annual Christmas tree burning
• Mike T. roasted his tree and now it's time for the Ts to head out on their next adventure:
Pizza Hut Classic
• Rob in NC writes:
Joe, been a little while. Hope you and yours had a great holiday.
Wife and I took a quick trip after Xmas to the Smokies in Bryson City NC. We've been there numerous times and I would recommend to anyone.
Anyways got a sunset for Todd and hit a classic Hut on the way out. I was impressed with the wife making a comment the night before about remembering old Pizza Huts.
I thought well we are going before we are on the road home. Happy Holidays to SCN…the Hut was great and a great MTN getaway. Keep up the great work Joe.
Kinsey:
The first thing I noticed from Rob's photos, besides the crisp tablecloth, was how the chairs were pushed in and the tables were perfectly set. It damn near brings a tear to my eye, after my family's Pizza Hut experience where pizza boxes were stacked like 50 deep in the middle of the dining room, to see a perfectly constructed Pizza Hut Classic.
The only thing missing from Rob's report is a report on the beer situation. Does this Classic have draft beer? I still say that's what is going to separate a Classic from a Classic Hut.
Show me a Hut that still has the draft beer stand where pitchers of beer are being poured and I'll definitely cry tears of joy.
Bars, How I Met My Wife and 'Get Gotti'
• Derby City Max checks in on a variety of topics:
What have done with this Screencaps column is truly phenomenal. Caps almost feels like a fellowship, spread coast to coast and beyond. We have photographic vacation journeys from Mike & Cindi, exotic wood destinations. I could go on and on. Daily reader, 2nd time emailer.
Best Bar that I have been to was the Cat’s Meow on Bourbon St, NOLA. We. had a group of about 20 there for the 1996 SEC basketball tournament. NOLA was a sea of KY Blue. Go to this bar and they had 3 for 1 beer and mixed drinks everyday between 4 & 8.
KY played Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 1. When we show back up on Saturday the staff remembered who we were. The doorman/bouncer was as big as Whisper from Live and Let Die 007 movie. He tells us we don’t have to leave at 8, we can buy what we want at the 3 for 1 pricing and they will designate a spot in the cooler.
We passed the hat to buck up, we bought 7 cases that turned into 21 and we stayed until closing. Went back on Sunday after a loss in the finals to Mississippi St and did it again. KY won the NCAA Championship that year.
I bought a 1972 Pontiac Grand Prix for $300.00 and drove it for 18 months. Extremely powerful with a 400 CID motor. Gas and oil are the only thing that I put into it.
I didn’t meet my wife in a bar but met her right across the street. My family sold our house and moved to Pennsylvania for my Dad’s work when I was in 6th grade. His job didn’t work out as planned and we moved back into the house they sold at the end of my 8th grade year, but now as renters. Her house had a basketball goal with a large driveway. Played bball with her brother and his friends. Noticed her hanging around and finally asked her out when I was 16. Celebrated # 37 this past September.
Working at the KY Derby in 1981 as an Andy Frain usher. I was a junior in high school. I was responsible for a certain set of box seats. Noticed this extremely beautiful woman walking my way, I asked I If I could show her to her seats. She said yes and then I realized it was Barbara Eden from I Dream of Jeanie. I wiped all the rails and seats down then escorted her down the steps. I tried to keep from staring at her ample assets. She gave me a tip, I thanked her and asked for an autograph, which she happily offered. Nice to see a picture of her in Friday’s Screencaps. Check her out on Harper Valley PTA the movie.
Finally, you mentioned Get Gotti in Thursday’s Screencaps. Mob shows and movies are my favorite. I watched all 3 episodes last night. Gotti was ruthless.
Great American Dave K. who shared the wild airplane blanket incident this week is back & now he has a celebrity encounter to share that happened...THIS WEEK
• Dave K. has had a week:
First of all, YOU are a Great American for running this fine community of other Great Americans. Second time emailing in a week: you’re like Pringles - once you start you can’t stop.
Celebrity in the wild sighting on the heels of the Great Alaska Airlines Blanket Incident of 2023 (see Wednesday’s Screencaps for details).
Following a great day of snorkeling with the fam, we wander Cabo for a bit and stop into Sammy Hagar’s Cabo Wabo. The kids had no idea who Sammy was, no sweat - fixing that is a happy problem to solve. OBTW: there isn’t a single pic of Eddie or Alex in that place that I saw. Lots of pics of Michael Anthony and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
As I’m settling the bill John Cougar Mellencamp rolls in with a few folks and is seated right behind me. I recognize him instantly and tell the wife (who is now calmed down from the Great Alaska Airlines Blanket Incident of 2023 - again, see Wednesday’s Screencaps. Also, amazing what a couple of days of poolside margs can do for the soul.)
The wife has to Google to confirm, and agrees. The kids (19 & 17) have both zero idea or care about some old man.
I gather my stuff and offer him a “sir, thanks for all the great music” and a fist bump. He was nice enough but the bar manger hustled me away, “maybe manana, senior.” All good, I understand. Bro wanted a late lunch with some friends, but when you roll into an American music tourist trap as an American music celeb, there may be some first-class American fist bumps, ammi right?
Kinsey:
Thanks to a Google Search, I just learned that Mellencamp is 72.
'Go Back To Ohio'
• Ron in Dayton fires back at the supposed hatred those in South Carolina have for Ohio tourism dollars:
Feel the need to respond to the SC native lamenting the many Ohio people in SC. For the record, one of my good friends at our golf club in Dayton is from South Carolina and now lives in Dayton.
I guess this makes it even except that we are more welcoming!
Matt and Mark B., the B Brothers, are now tag-teaming in the inbox and I am having trouble keeping track of which B I'm communicating with
• Matt B. in Dunwoody, GA, whose brother Mark B. couldn't believe his eyes this week when he read Screencaps only to learn his brother was a contributor, writes:
I'm starting to feel like you're part of the family with all the emails going around. While I wasn't aware California Mark was a contributor, I was aware he read screencaps because last year he texted me to ask if I'd heard about TNML. Let's just say I wasn't the last horse to water as I immediately shot him a picture of my sticker (see below on blue one).
You'll notice I keep my stickers on other items in my garage. While your first reaction might be "that's disrespectful", it's my way of bringing the movement to the masses by rolling it to the curb once a week for everyone to see. No lingering for eternity in the back of a garage for my stickers. Now, back to my brother where he pumped my tires a little about doing hard things every day. Not sure I can claim that unless you allow that my daily cold shower meets the requirement (started it this year and the way it makes me feel I'll never take a hot one again). Before you judge, try it for a week is all I ask of Screencaps nation.
Today's column also featured Bo in Michigan. Is that the Bo T of Green Beret veteran fame? If so, let him know he's still doing God's work inspiring the next generation of leaders. For the first time in a few years, I'm optimistic that 2024 is going to be a keeper. Thank you, Joe, for keeping all of us connected through the Screencaps brotherhood.
Kinsey:
Yes, Bo T. in Michigan served 22 years in the Army starting with infantry and then moving up to Special Forces -- Green Beret.
I'm told this is from 2020, but it still resonates with me in 2023 so I've named it my Music Video of the Year
The Best Screencaps Story of the Year
• Mike N. writes:
The guy that attended the military weapons conference in Moscow. Authentic, original, entertaining, and will never happen again in our lifetimes.
Kinsey:
Here's Brandon C. in Pinckney, MI one more time for the new readers who might've missed it back in November.
• Brandon C. writes about Russian defense contractor shows:
I'll tell you about the Moscow Air Show which I attended twice. Company puts you up in a 5* diplomatic hotel.
Breakfast buffet has a harp player, sushi chef, and your choice of carved roast beef/turkey / pork. Transportation is all done in concert with either private security, or US embassy assistance. You go from your hotel to a military airbase outside Moscow (about a 60-minute drive). You're there for 10-12 hours so be ready (backpack with bottled water, energy bars, and a Gatorade).
Inside the grounds, every major defense company in the world has large booths with demo models of their coolest shit. GPD jammers from North Korea? Check. Mig's and Sukoi's on the airstrip with missiles attached? Check. Swedish air defense missile systems? Check. Israeli x-ray systems and high power directed energy weapons? Check.
Want to sit in a Brazilian counter-insurgency aircraft with a helmet on and pretend you're manning the side guns?
Check.
And all around you are foreign military officers and their flunkies from every country you can think of, in enough varying uniform designs to make you think about the old Naked Gun movie intro. You as the American are the prize catch, so everybody wants to talk to you.
The booths are manned by top15% Instagram models from the local Moscow region, and some imports. Think Mikaela Demaiter straddling an air-launched cruise missile on display in leather chaps and a cowboy hat. And then beside the display booths are the "chalets"-- glamping tents set up with air conditioning, fully stocked bars manned by even more fully stocked Instagram models, armed security in numbers that would make a rap mogul blush, and all the slimy dictator's 3rd cousin by a second marriage hangers-on than you can imagine.
Star Wars cantina style. This is where the real deals happen. If it's a Russian company (and I was there one of the years the Russians were willing to sell things to US people), they break open the vodka and you talk business. Export laws, export licensing, "transport fees", "shipping fees", "administration fees" (all skimming by the seller), dates, shell bank accounts, you name it. And you have to finish the vodka or else it's an insult.
Then if you make the deal, you must celebrate! More vodka, or if you're a crafty American, you break out the bottle of bourbon you brought-- Russkies love Jack Daniels. Full stop. Then you and your translator figure out a way out of the chalet and rehydrate while poking at an overly burnt kebob you got from the food stands. Yes you want the overly burnt kebob because (A) you're not really sure its the animal they say it is and (B) if it's burnt it ain't living (organisms).
Then rinse, repeat for the rest of the day. All the while, you're taking notes of the "friends" you pick up along the way and figure out what foreign intel service they're from-- mostly likely Russian SVB, but could be someone else. If you know or remember some of the companies there and they're friendly, you'll likely get invited to sit down at their booth for an adult beverage.
A Scottish company where I know the the CEO from his previous gov't service with HMG invited me to just sit down for about an hour and bullshit while he poured some 20 yr old scotch from his local distillery. Show's over and after you picked up your share of high end luggage giveaways (once got a legit $250 North Face messenger bag from a Norwegian armored vehicle company), bottles of premium vodka, a Sukoi aircraft company hockey jersey, usb thumb drives that have more viruses than James Bond's underwear, and occasionally brochures and technical manuals you're not quite sure you won't get arrested for at the airport, you board the bus back to the hotel.
That evening you go out to a high end dinner with company compatriots and amazingly(!) the same guys you saw at the airshow are there two tables over! How weird. $250/person later you stumble back to the hotel, pass the hotel bar which is now populated with every manner of hooker allowed by the hotel concierge, and hit the sack.
You might be woken up at 2-3am by a knock at your door from a scantily clad lady who wants to "practice her english" with you, or the unusual fire alarm that goes off at 4-5am but lasts for 30-60 minutes and when you get back to your hotel room, your luggage seems slightly off from where it was, and a new lamp is on your nightstand.
You leave to go home and after the expected hassling at the airport security, you board your flight happy to get back to the Ol' USA. The Russian trip I described was the most extreme example of this-- other foreign military shows are most of the time a couple highlight displays with some conference hall presentations on new advancements in a weapon system and going out for a pub crawl in a really interesting foreign city.
Overall, I have a rule for military trade shows- if the "door prize" for registration is good, then the conference is going to be good in content as well as booth giveaways. The best piece of luggage I own came from a mil trade show about 15 years ago and that conference continues to get my money as the best organized and run trade show. Never hungry, alcohol is free, after party scene is varied/creative/walking distance, and the work day ends around 4 pm local.
'How I met my wife from Texas'
• Myron in the UP writes:
Actually I have been blessed in having this happen twice. First time was 1976, I went back to college and was required to take a chemistry placement exam to make sure after 6 years of retail work I remembered enough. Walked into a 150-person lecture hall with about 35 people in it, sat down beside the prettiest woman, married her 4 years later.
Fast forward to 2016, she had passed a few years before from complications due to MS , and I was called to a leadership position at Church. One of the ladies listened to me talk, called a friend of hers in Texas and said, you need to meet this guy. Her friend responded you're crazy, its cold up there in the UP of Michigan.
After some urging, on December 28 the friend sent me an email that her friend said we should be pen pals. Five month later, having spend less than 10 days in each others presence (100s of hours on text and telephone), she married me, I packed everything she owned in a truck, and made the three day drive from Texas to the UP. Last winter she admitted to acclimating to the cold.
Again, thanks so much for what you do, bringing a bit of brotherhood, a bit of nonsense and a lot of love to the day.
This is a fun contest idea from Clay...congrats to the Bama fan who nailed this prediction
That's it for 2023.
What a year out of this column. What a year out of SeanJo keeping Screencaps going strong on Sundays and filling in when I'm out on the road or on vacation.
Let's keep the momentum rolling. The calendar already includes the Ragnar Relay set for October 2024 in Lexington, KY. There will also be a twist on the summer golf invitational I've been holding for years now. We'll be on the mainland and some of you might even be tempted to fly into Detroit to take part.
Thank you to each and every one of you who read, contribute, send material on Twitter, the Instagram DM guys who are about as loyal as it gets. This column isn't a success without audience participation.
Now go have an amazing holiday weekend.
I'll be back Monday morning.
Email: joekinsey@gmail.com