I noticed today flipping through the radio stations while driving that sports radio sounds exactly like conservative talk radio. Same intonation, same speech pattern and rhythm.
“State a fact. State a fact. Restate the first fact and keep talking and opining in a rising tone, like its the most important thing ever and you’re pissed about it.”
And they were talking about how some college football team is managed, like literally the least important thing in the world and literally no one listening has any input on whatsoever. At least with political radio you can vote for or against candidates and ballot resolutions.
I’m 99% sure that the big local sports talk radio station in Boston, WEEI, is what turned my dad into a conservative. Generally, their positions are going to be conservative because they are
pro owners and signing high level players, so they’re for the wealthy and don’t want heavy taxation to discourage players from signing. They view the double taxation of American players going to play for Canadian teams as a negative.
They want state and local governments to help very wealthy private businesses build arenas and give tax incentives to owners to keep them there.
They sure as heck don’t want college athletes to get paid because that means the head coach of the local superstar college team won’t make quite as much money
They encourage an “us vs them” mentality. I’ve noticed most sports fans only care about their teams. My parents, for example, are really only interested in watching the Red Sox, not baseball in general. It’s a small minded perspective, much like the current US isolationism. My primary sports fandom is Indycar, and my favorite driver is Will Power. I’m very happy when he wins, but even if he crashes, I can enjoy a good, dramatic race.
As an extension of this point, with the exception of soccer(and perhaps hockey) no sports talk host is going to talk about international leagues. The perspective is local. Me? I want to know who’s awesome in the Japanese baseball league! I used to watch Korean baseball when it was streamed on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJSjweNslNg
Yesterday was…interesting. In the morning, some guys at the rider house said they were going to the city to hit an arcade. In a car (as opposed to motorcycles), so I went with.
The driver decides to play Fast and Furious on a tiny, windy hill road and almost sends us rolling down the hill on the first hill. The a car’s dangling on the the edge with no traction and we can’t get out because it would probably tip over if we moved too much. Fortunately, we were right next to a house and the people who lived there called someone to haul us back onto the road.
Then the police finally showed up and one cop gave the driver a well-deserved dressing down (apparently drivers from Honshu are the number one cause of traffic deaths in Hokkaido) while the other took down our information. Getting my foreign info to fit in their boxes was fun.
Then there was a festival where local guys ran around carrying 20kg torches, which was fantastic.
Then around 11 somebody’s like, “Onsen?” “Onsen?” “Onsen!”. I figured it would just be a local bathhouse that’s open late. Nope. Hot spring in the middle of nowhere up a mountain. No lights, no moonlight, just a little light from the stars. A while after we got there, a couple showed up, saw us, and turned right back around; pretty sure we ruined that guy’s date night.
On the way back, a different guy drove. And Initial D’d all the way back down the mountain. This guy actually knew what he was doing. So while it was a surprise and pretty scary at first, it was a hell of a 15 minutes.
I found out about them right around the time Rosanne Barr’s show came back and she was revealed to be a certified nut job. She was like… I don’t know tweeting about them or repeating their talking points. And yeah, they’re nuts.
Participating in Nebuta, one of the biggest festivals in Japan, basically entails buying the requisites outfit at a supermarket and skanking in a straight line or in place (which took some getting used to) and chanting “rase rase rase ra” for two hours. It was exhausting. And exhilarating. I never want to do it again…except maybe in a few days when my feet stop hurting.
There’s also rain coming up, so I think that’ll be the perfect time to go watch Mirai no Mirai or the new Pokemon movie.
I’ve also somehow managed to become fairly well know in the northern Japan traveler community. I had five people go “Your that Ryan?” today.
