Ice Athletes, Bad Bunny, & Knights in Shining Armor
Special Escapist BlowOut Edition
The beans are simmering, the bacon is crackling in the skillet. The buttermilk cornbread is rising in the oven.
It’s better than sticking my head in, right?
I am planning a major televised escapist weekend today and tomorrow, in between a few subversive errands for the cause.
We gotta eat and we gotta dream, in order to fight another day.
So let’s roll this out:
Television is peaking this weekend. We have the Winter Olympics, Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl, and the new episode of Dunk and Egg. Not to mention a solid binge of The Lincoln Lawyer, Season 4.
Before I begin, I’ll admit I’m one of the less-savvy sports commentators you’ll ever meet. My speciality is the politics— I don’t know the rules of the actual games.
Rest assured, I live with my partner, Jon, who can bust out at a second’s notice with the last 10 years of curling game stats— he cherishes every event, no matter how under-loved. I adore him for that; it’s like sitting next to my own color commentary analyst.
I am drawn to sports psychology: Which uber-masochist is competing with a torn ACL (Vonn), or the Norwegian penis suit scandal, or the American athletes who are repulsed by the White House no matter how many gold medals they take home.
The most potentially lethal time bomb is the Olympic ground itself— both the last-minute fragile construction of the Milano ice arena— or the environmental corruption which is . . . astounding.
The American sports community, athletes and fans, are more political this year than anything I’ve seen since the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. It’s deeper than that.
The NBA crowd warm-up chant is, “FUCK ICE.” The All Star Wrestler Event, the champ Brody King wore an Abolish ICE shirt. It’s the same across major league sports, including football.
I wonder how the Super Bowl attendees will behave. Those seats are so expensive it may recall John Lennon advising the audience at the Royal Albert Hall that they could rattle their jewelry.
How much do Super Ticket-holders hate the Regime? Will they be cheering on the half-time show? The star is Puerto Rican musician “Bad Bunny” who is on Trump’s personal shit list. Green Day opens the show, and band leader Billie Joe Armstrong gets points because he called Trump “Hitler” long ago, when other people were still complaining about the price of eggs!
I can’t imagine how tight the Bowl security is going to be. Bunny says he will remain unbowed and will speak DIRECTLY to the (television) audience of millions who see him as a hero.
“Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say, ICE out,” Bunny said, accepting his recent awards at the Grammys. He is the first Spanish-language artist to win the ceremony’s top prize, Best Album of the Year— point taken. “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.”
It’s gladiator time all right— not between the Seahawks and the Patriots, but between unredeemable racists and the REST OF US. (Trump will likely drop some asine video/remarks about “garbage people” because he thinks this is great for his ratings).
More critically, Trump and She-Noem have promised to send the full complement of ICE Stasi to the Super Bowl — to arrest as many brown people and Presidents of ANTIFA that they can lay hands on. Will that include the paying audience members, or just the hot dog vendors? We’re about to find out.
The prelude is such a paranoid fracas that the Santa Clara Sheriff is doing press conferences to beg for calm. He said his department is not assisting ICE— what does that mean?— and that people in trouble at the Super Bowl should cheerfully look out for their personal tan and green uniformed staff. Or maybe it’s the blue and black ones. Sure, great, it’s all costume coding now. Don’t they understand? No one trusts anyone anymore.
Guess who is the only man to take the Super Bowl to task for not fighting the Gestapo?
BATMAN.
Check him out, he just addressed the Santa Clara City Council:
“What the fuck are we doing here? — You have had months to prepare for this!
“Can any one of you go home to your children and tell them that you did everything you could to protect their classmates, to protect their grandparents, to protect them?
“I don’t think you can.”
Game of Thrones, Robert Silverberg, and The Erotic Fantasy World
Yes, I’m infatuated with the wonderful Game of Thrones prequel, The Dunk and Egg Show. I decided to order all the original novellas as they first appeared in short story collections, as well as their first appearance in graphic novels — the comic books.
The first and second novella were published in high-profile speculative fiction collections called Legends and Legends II, edited by my old Best American Erotica author, Robert Silverberg.
Robert, who started publishing then-taboo science fiction in the 1950s, was living in the Berkeley Hills in the 1992 when he shared a story with me called “Two at Once.” It was very much in his picaresque-humor period.
In person, Bob was quite a crank. Rude. He acted as if my youthful (I was 35!) command of the BAE series was absurd. But he finally agreed to be included, and I met so many other people through his tide-pools of fans and authors, all connected to the earliest days of SFF writing. All of them wonderfully bohemian when it came to sexual possibilities.
Today, I learn Silverbeg was part of mentoring the young George RR in his early days. Nice.
Harry Lloyd is a Treasure
My second Hedge Knight dish is this: The audiobook edition is read by none other than Harry Lloyd, an actor notorious for two things:
He is Charles Dickens’ great great great grandson.
He played the Villain, Vaserys, in the first season of Game of Thrones— the sadistic brother who finally got his “crown of gold” in a most shocking demise.
Lloyd is a consummate actor— he can voice all the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms characters with such aplomb and tenderness— I’m listening to it for the third time.
Should you also listen to him narrate Great Expectations? Absolutely.
Lincoln Lawyer Back on the Streets
Is the latest Lincoln Lawyer season a winner? It’s based on Michael Connelly’s The Law of Innocence, and as LA’s premiere courtroom observer, Connelly doesn’t miss a trick.
I binged the show; I nursed my insomnia with it. Corniness is one of Connelly’s endearing faults, but the mystery and action never fail. Actor Manuel Garcia-Rulfo is a fox in the lead, and his charisma is a tonic. We need more Mickeys, and more Hedge Knights, and more Schoolroom Batman’s to save the day!
Caveat: I’m a legal drama soft touch. My favorite season of Law & Order was the first, with Michael Moriarty strutting around spitting, “Tick Tock, Gentlemen!”
What is your favorite legal drama TV?
Yes, you can vote for the original Perry Mason. I am ride or die with Rumpole of the Bailey. I don’t care how old they are; they just have to capture my heart. I’m about to start an Australian series called Rake that a friend suggested. Any takers?
There is a welling up in American pop culture right now, the aching need for an Honest Man. —Like Alex Pretti. Renee Good. Little Liam Ramos and his father.
The Honest Man is a legend beyond male or female. Beyond age. We want our Joan of Arc. We seek inspirations who know what a moral decision is, and who act on it every day. Practice, practice, practice.
Minnesota Watch
I know we’re all helping our friends across the country as best we can. Our neighbors are our heroes.
Let me introduce you to Haven Watch, whom my good friend Mary in Minneapolis introduced me to. They’re raising money.
“We help individuals released from ICE detention centers who are often discharged with no phone, warm clothes, ID, transportation, or resources. Many are released into freezing weather after experiencing severe trauma. We provide immediate support, warmth, transportation, and connection to resources so no one is left alone at the gate.”
In Case You Missed It
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Here’s a cool ungated article about the women of Minneapolis holding shit down: Includes interviews with folks from Haven Watch, but much more. https://archive.ph/2026.02.07-172437/https://www.glamour.com/story/the-women-holding-minneapolis-together
Wendy from Salt Spring Island writes:
“Favourite legal drama: The Good Wife and the series that spun from that The Good Fight!
Oh, and LA Law, of course!
(I’ll have to check out Lincoln Lawyer if you say it’s good!)”
Wendy, I am such a fan of the “Good’s” too. Christine Baranski, what a woman, eh? As for Lincoln Lawyer, start with Season 1, it will draw you in.