The Ebbtide Crew put another podcast on the books, and as we always end our show with “What Did We Learn?”, I will begin it with the Blog. This last podcast we learned:
1. The Las Vegas Raiders are who we thought they were.
2. As a Virginia Tech fan, Batman doesn’t remember their famous secondary. (Kam Chancellor)
3. Fuck Tom! (I lost a bet to Tideking, Tom from Total Wine provided the finishing touch of humiliation.)
4. The mental real estate that my wife has in my head is astounding.
5. Women can’t have good dick and a successful man . . . in one package.
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NFL Week 12 was a COVID filled drama show proving that the Shield is only reactive, and in some cases petty. The Saints and Broncos was a massacre that could’ve been avoided. While I’m glad that the Saints won the game and they are sitting atop of the NFC, the NFL set the Broncos up for failure and it was a petty act on their part. Broncos backup Jeff Driskel tested positive for COVID. Since he had been around the other QBs for an extended period, AND not honoring the mask mandate, they had to quarantine and were deemed ineligible to play.
With all of the QBs out, instead of rescheduling the game, and the Broncos not willing to forfeit. They went with their college QB turned NFL wide receiver, Kendall Hinton who was on their practice squad. Hinton was only notified that he will be playing QB only 24 hours before the game. This felt like the NFL was punishing the Broncos for not following protocol, nor did they consider the NFC leading Saints, and refused to let them reschedule this game. Hinton did not have the game of a lifetime, nor did he shock the world. Having not taking a single snap under center leading up to this game, he stepped up for his team, and he is to be commended for being thrown to the wolves of the vaunted Saints defense.
Stop me if you heard this one, Derrick Henry and the Titans exact revenge against the Colts. Henry . . . run ball over Colts . . . Colts look like bowling pins as Henry bowls through their defense. The biggest shocker was the Raiders losing to the Falcons in the fashion that validated Tideking’s non-committal stance on their play. The Falcons stomped them 43-6 at home.
On the podcast, Tideking let the rest of the Ebbtide Crew have it. We’ve actually been impressed with the Raiders this season. They’re actually competitive and have been putting together some impressive victories. Yet the whole season, Tideking was not having any of it, and this loss to the Falcons solidified the train of thought that he has been consistently maintaining all season.
What can I say about the Bucs terrible performance against the Chiefs that I haven’t said already of one of their terrible performances in previous losses? What we’re seeing here is mind boggling! For years, the line was imagine if Brady had a Pro Bowl caliber receiving crew, he would be phenomenal! Instead, we’re seeing a 43-year-old QB who has not bought into his limitations as he is aging before our eyes. While the sports media convinced the nation that the Bucs were Super Bowl contenders, us fans in the NFC South knew better. The Bucs O-line is still sorry, their defense specifically their front 4, is a year away from being spectacular. Maybe they can make it to the playoffs and shock the world there.
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The NBA offseason continued to make shock waves this week with Lebron James signing a 2-year extension with the Lakers for $85 million. Anthony Davis resigned with the Lakers for a 5-year max deal worth $190 million. These deals lock up the two superstars to the Lakers for at least the next 4 seasons, giving Davis a choice to opt out of his fifth year of the deal. The Lakers are planning to be a significant force for years to come in the Western Conference. However, with the Warriors Big 3 and Lebron deep in the back half of their careers, can they be the consistent threat that they were in these past 5 years moving forward?
One of the newest Lakers, Dennis Schroder, expressed his thoughts about his role on the team and they came as a big surprise to the basketball world. He said he wants to be the starting point guard for the Lakers so that Lebron can play off the ball more and not have the offense ran through him. Last season, Lebron averaged 25 points, 8 rebounds, and 10 assists in year 17 of his career at the age of 35. Schroder has never average over 20 points a game, even as a starter. His highest assist averages top at 6 per game. Lebron last averaged under 6 assists his rookie year.
The shocker in all of this, is that these were his actual thoughts. This was an actual plan of action that needed to happen in order for the trade for Schroder to be approved prior to the trade actually happening. This was communicated to Lakers GM Rob Pelinka, so when Schroder communicated this to the rest of the world, he was only explaining what he expects to happen when the season starts. This will be an interesting start of the season that will have Laker nation on the edge of their seats. Or we’ll see Schroder get traded again at some point during the season.
As expected, Russell Westbrook was traded from the Houston Rockets to the Wizards for John Wall and a 2021 1st round pick. Westbrook is reunited with his former OKC coach, Scott Brooks, and joins Bradley Beal, who has a mountain of a chip on his shoulder after averaging 30 points a game last season and somehow got left out for the All-Star team and failed to make it on any of the All-NBA teams. The guard migration to the Eastern Conference continues, and the Wizards improve significantly with this move.
The jury will be out on the Rockets. This combination of Wall, Harden, and Cousins will be an interesting one. John Wall and Boogie Cousins are former college teammates, so there is a rapport between those two, but the three of them concerns me. On paper, this can be a “Big 3” force in the Western Conference that can legitimately contend for an NBA title. The Rockets are going on their 3rd different All-Star point guard in 3 years. Can Harden buy into a new Head coach and to legit All-Stars this season enough to keep him Houston? Or will he continue his usual bitchass tendencies that runs everybody out of town.
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During this pandemic, I’ve binge-watched a few shows that I would’ve never given a second glance otherwise. But I have found that I am better for it, and I have been made aware of some things in our history that truly blew my mind away. The latest show that I am currently watching is Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath. Remini, a famed television actress, from shows such as King of Queens and Saved by the Bell, grew up in the Church of Scientology. She left the church back in 2013, because she decided she no longer wanted to be part of an organization that separates families, abuses their parishioners, and bankrupts their followers.
Remini said when you’re in Scientology, you’re cut off from the rest of the world. A Scientologist thinks that they’re saving the world and making it better place. They are learning to be a better person and to clear their minds of the clutter that weighs one down from being their best possible self (this is called going clear). Anybody in your life currently that isn’t sharing these beliefs is labeled a Suppressive Person and can no longer be in your life. A Scientologist must disconnect from them forever.
In Scientology, going clear isn’t cheap. You’re taking courses to reach the ultimate level of going clear. Remini and other ex-Scientologists suggest that the average parishioner will have spent $350 thousand in an effort to go clear. The tragedy of it all is where all of this money actually goes. They have some of the premium state of the art buildings and estates all over the world, with $400 million worth of real estate in California alone. The international Mecca is located in Clearwater, FL, where they own most of the downtown area.
For all of the grand buildings and estates they own, ex-Scientologists say it’s all a spectacle without any substance. On the show, they have said many of these buildings, or ideal orgs as they are called, are empty. At most, there are only 10 people working throughout the whole of some of these buildings. These are massive size buildings, and they project the image to their congregation that they’re saving the world, when actually their doing nothing.
While I sympathize with the ex-Scientologists who have lost contact with family members and felt scammed out their money, the conditions that they described of being in the Church and then leaving it sounds a like man’s point of view of love and heartbreak once you remove the phallic nature of relationship.
If you think about it, when a man is in love, money sometimes is no object. We will spend within and outside of our means to keep our woman happy. As the love between a man and woman grows the mental real estate that a woman gains in the mind of a man is astounding. In my 42 years of life, I think about how my own wife has built her real estate portfolio in my brain. I can see mental buildings in my mind where I must make consistent pilgrimages to in order to stay in love and keep her happy. Believe it or not, she has her own police force in my head as well.
I think back to one time at work, a female coworker noticed my hands were ashy. She offered her scented hand lotion, and I politely turned her down. My wife’s patrol lights went off in my head and I immediately thought of the potential “wanted of questioning” scenario that would take place when I got home. From the clothes we put on to the scents a man wears, women become involve in the politics of our conscience until gets to the point where we can’t function without them.
Then through whatever reason, like ex-Scientologists have said, they had a moment of clarity. Sometimes a man or a woman realizes that we no longer belong together, this isn’t worth it anymore. Because you’ve built up so much together, the mental real estate is now just a spectacle without any substance. Not only are you left with a ghost town of memories in your mind, but you’re also left to deal with the reality of a broken heart.
I say all of this about the mental real estate of love, because our own Tideking has come to terms with a new developer and they have closed the deal on his heart. He is off the market folks! The moves this woman has made so far have some of us in the Ebbtide Crew not recognizing him anymore. It’s been a long time coming, but I know for me personally, I am excited for this new chapter.
Tony Love