Monday Night Bites: Animal Farm and Rockets Funeral

 Entertainment: Animal Farm

In 7th grade, I cracked open Orwell’s agricultural allegory for Communist Russia. This year, in 9th grade, we were assigned Animal Farm again. This time around, I spent less time analyzing the text and actual meanings, and more time making dumb comparisons between sports and entertainment figures. Here are a few:

  1. Napoleon reminds me of Stalin (I doubt anyone’s ever thought of that before)

  2. Boxer is like a high volume running back: treated like a king during his success, but overworked by the cruel owners and sent away the minute he gets injured

  3. Old Major is that chef who died in the Stranger Things pilot: you forget about him 2 minutes in, yet his influence carries throughout the story

  4. The sheep are those Jordan stans who will defend him through anything: They may not understand much, but they have complete respect for their master. “Napoleon’s improving the farm by decreasing our rations and increasing our workload” “It’s better to go out in the first round than lose in the Finals”

  5. Mollie, the vain rabbit is the Regina George (Darn, I promised myself this wouldn’t turn into a Which Mean Girls character are you? column) of the farm: self centered, over the top, and wears pink on Wednesdays

  6. Squealer, Napoleon’s hype man, is Rob Manfred. Yeah, at the beginning of the story, you think how great it is that all the animals are equal, until you realize that a pig named Astro just bangs on a trash can all day, and achieves great success. I guess it doesn’t matter after all, because the Animal Farm trophy is just a piece of metal anyways

Sports: Rockets Obituary

I’d now like to discuss the death of the Houston Rockets, who got through a minor case of the Dorts that turned bad before running into a deadly virus known as LAKER-20.


Their coach, Mike D’Antoni, is in a better place now, one where he can coach a team where 5 players move the ball instead of James Harden efficiently isolating and Russell Westbrook inefficiently isolating. Maybe, he can even rest in New Orleans or Philadelphia, where players above 6’6 exist plentifully, and 2 players are not legally obligated to sit in a corner and occasionally shoot. 


Their front office mastermind, Daryl Morey, hurt the NBA’s revenue with his comments on Hong Kong. However, that’s as respectable as can be. What’s bad is his brilliant efficiency system. It will forever be what we remember from him, but it turned thousands of fans off of basketball and didn’t keep the Rockets on their screen in June. Maybe he’ll stick around on life support for a few years, but his Houston story seems just about completed. Perhaps we’ll get some kind of Jerry Maguire story out of this, where he’s fired for making a boring efficiency system that didn’t come through in the playoffs, but rallied back by going to the Hornets and having Terry Rozier tell him to “show him the money,” before Morey makes him the next Harden. 


Finally, we turn to the most complicated tale, that of Harden and Westbrook. Their complicated tale will live on for a few years as they try to film one of those sitcoms where the divorced couple lives together again. Finally, with no chemistry, they’ll go their separate ways again, but will never quite put it together to get that Larry O’ Brien Trophy on their mantle. Finally, they’ll have some reunion at age 40 and get demolished by the Mavericks’ Luka/Giannis superteam unceremoniously.


A sad tale indeed, but the saddest part is the fact that very few attended the funeral. They couldn’t fill up the lower bowl of Toyota Center, and will sadly perish with few diehard fans. Their fans were more focused on Bill O’Brien getting scammed by a Nigerian prince and the Astros beginning a century of no playoff appearances 

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