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Yesterday’s news: There was always something dumber about Favre

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Tom Hoffarth / FartherOffTheWall.com

Brett Favre wasn’t the first or second choice for that Hail Mary/NFL quarterback cameo role in the 1994 flick “There’s Something About Mary.”

In 2014, speaking to the NFL Network’s Rich Eisen, writers/directors/producers Peter and Bobby Farrelly explained how New England Patriots QB Drew Bledsoe was their No. 1 overall pick for the ultimate part for a celebrity love interest with Cameron Diaz. Including a near-kiss scene. But yikes – Bledsoe and a teammate apparently had just injured a woman in a mosh pit at an Everclear concert, and he was worried about how doing the flick might affect his name, image and likeness. He knows now he blew his shot.

Pass.

The Farrellys next sought out San Francisco 49ers QB Steve Young, at the height of his NFL career. But the Mormon King turned them down. He wasn’t keen on children seeing him in an R-rated movie.

Pass.

And then came Favre. He had no baggage. Then.

If asked today, the Farrellys might admit they goofed by casting him. All things considered.

But the reason isn’t what you think.

Forget the third choice for “Mary,” he should have been first choice a couple years earlier when they made “Dumb and Dumber.”

And all he had to do was act naturally.

Just Google “Favre” and “stupid,” and stuff happily pops up from hibernation. Written in 2008. Or in 2009. Written in 2010. Or in 2017. Or 2021.

Favre’s IMDb.com profile, which will never be confused with Jon Favreau, includes not just five acting credits, but also as the executive producer on the 2021 documentary, “Concussed: The American Dream.”

Favre may have to use that as Exhibit A when he appears before a judge when trying to explain how his head just wasn’t in the game when buried himself in his latest legal entanglement.

We may be a little slow on this, but apparently Favre got some Mississippi lawmakers engaged in diverting some $5 million in state welfare funds into help him get a new volleyball athletic facility at his alma mater, Southern Miss.

Credit FrontOfficeSports.com for heading this garbage off at the pass with stories here and here. We gleaned from the Associated Press’ latest report that Mississippi’s largest-ever public corruption case has ensnared several people, including a pro wrestler whose drug rehab was funded with welfare money.

But it’s getting dumb and …

Does that make him an accomplished accomplice? In the meantime, the court of public opinion, Favre should be wearing a cheese head made of real limburger.

Here is the NFL’s answer to Curt Schilling.

There was that running joke in “Something About Mary,” where Ben Stiller’s character couldn’t pronounce his name. He mangled it into “Far-vra.” Or “Fav-ruh.” Favre was a known commodity – a three-time AP MVP from ’95 through ’97 as the Green Bay Packers burgeoning star when this movie emerged. It was a name John Madden couldn’t stop repeating in every sentence for about 10-straight years.

But now there’s something about anyone even trying to defend Farve’s name. The Notorious No. 4 is a wanted man.

Yahoo!Sports columnist Charles Robinson calls this a cautionary tale about hero worship? Even O.J. Simpson is laughing at that headline.

But not Jenn Sterger.

Favre can’t deny culpability, because we know which playbook he’s working from now.

Jeff Pearlman wants people to stop buying the bio he did on Favre a few years back: “So, sincerely, don’t buy the book, don’t take it out from the library. Leave it. There are sooooo many better people worthy of your reading hours. Of your time. I prefer crumbs like Brett Favre shuffle off into the abyss, shamed by greed and selfishness.”

Do us all a favor, Favre. Stop trying to scramble out of this.

Even if this all isn’t really on you.

By the way, if there is any playbook to get out of this mess down the road — way, way down the road — to repair whatever image he has left, see what Tom Brady did.

In the 2015 Seth MacFarlane movie, “Ted 2,” the sequel to “Ted,” Mark Wahlberg and a stuffed teddy bear are in a scene where they’re trying to break into Brady’s house and decide to dupe him into signing off on a broken air condition order.

Brady plays himself as a straight man.

“If you could just write … to John and Ted, from Number 12 … and you’re not a cheater. I mean, I think you’re balls are perfect,” says Walhberg.

Brady sighs.

The reference was to Deflate-gate. Everyone can laugh it off, apparently.

Here, it’s different.

Favre has balls, too, just very imperfect ones. And, at the moment, what he did doesn’t look all that ballsy.

Maybe just use this as a new mantra … or the Farrellys might consider a new casting idea:

The writing on (and off) the wall: An ocean kayak, or an Airbnb listing?

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Tom Hoffarth / FartherOffTheWall.com

One sure-fire way to get from San Francisco to Hawaii:

Cannon-ball onto kayak.com, winnow it down to an agreeable direct flight (keeping in mind few exist with a change of planes on some pontoon out on the open Pacific), decide if you want the cheapest/best/quickest trip, get a COVID test, then buckle in for a five-and-a-half hour nap/ride in a reverse time machine.

Or, pile into the rumble seat of Cyril Derreumaux’s maxed-out supersonic kayak. 

Derreumaux just took the 2,400-mile distance with many layovers — 91 days and nine hours in fact. All in all, the San Francisco Chronicle declared him to be “the first kayaker ever to travel alone from California to the islands under his own power.” He clarified and amplified on his website: “This is a solo, unsupported, and 100% human-powered expedition, the first of its kind crossing this ocean!”

The 46-year-old was obviously having a mid-oceanic midlife crisis. Yet, he called it a “spiritual experience” of a lifetime.

When we first read about it, we prayed, too – that this wasn’t someone who fell asleep in McCovey Cove trying to snag a home-run ball and woke up in the mouth of a whale near Waikiki.

Not only did Citizen Cyril do it all intentionally, but he apparently completed his own nautical home run without the aid of BALCO labs.

Or, when you really look at it, was this actually performance enhanced?

Naturally.

Not to split oars over all this, but before we call the record-keepers at Guinness and raise an foggy Anchor Steam in his honor, read the details about Derreumaux’s kayak. This wasn’t something he pulled off the discount shelf at Big 5 and strapped onto the top of the Karmann Ghia.

It may have been just two feet wide, but from the travelogue photos, it looked more like something he airlifted out of the Disneyland pond from the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage ride.

It measured 23-feet long. It included a sleeping cabin, state-of-the-art GPS, a mini-desalinization machine to provide drinking water, and a sea anchor, reports SFist. Derreumaux also had the capability, and presence of mind, and technology, to compile a daily online journal about the whole thing.

Spell kayak forwards or backwards, but if it’s all the same to you, most Airbnb listings aren’t this accommodating. Derreumaux’s vessel is as much a modest kayak as a top-of-the-line Toyota SUV hybrid is really the same as a used Prius.

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The writing on (and off) the wall: The audacity of Bill Walton (San Diego mayor, ’24)

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Tom Hoffarth / FartherOffTheWall.com

As a general rule, retired sports-folk who still have celebrity draw shouldn’t assume that makes them a qualified candidate to run for political offices.

Herschel Walker and his clumsy pursuit of Georgia’s U.S. senate seat running on the platform that he’s a former Georgia Heisman Trophy winner and has all the endorsement entrapments that come with it could end up as lasting teachable moment.

Tommy Tuberville, the former Auburn football coach and now senator in Alabama, has become a symbol of corruption and self-interest. He’s no Tom Osborne.

Bill Walton, on the other hand, could tap into his UCLA social justice roots and manage some major mayhem as the mayor of his own San Diego — and perhaps school others how this kind of thing can activate community support.

The Voice of San Diego – that’s a publication, not a new nickname for the Big Red Head — recently explained how Walton has been so upset with the homeless crisis in his neighborhood that he’s been sending missives to current San Diego mayor Todd Gloria.

He feels betrayed. He feels the mayor has failed the city, and himself.

An Instagram post shows a collection of those who appear homeless with the text: “@toddgloria please give us our park, our bike paths, our neighborhood, our community and our lives back …”

He has followed up: “Sadly, and with a broken heart, I can no longer say that my hometown of San Diego, is the greatest place in the world, I can no longer say that SD is a safe, healthy, clean, and beautiful place, I can no longer urge my family, friends, tourists, and businesses to come to SD to live, work, and play … I can no longer say that our neighborhood for the last 43 years is still my dream, I am brokenhearted, Mayor @toddgloria —clean up our city, and let us reclaim our lives, we must fix our homeless crisis, we need engagement, rehabilitation, and constant enforcement, and we need it now.”

The Voice of San Diego followed up after Gloria responded on Twitter with a long list of posts, claiming progress has been made “the last few days.”

The VOSD original story explains that when Bob Filner resigned as San Diego mayor under a scandal in 2013, there was an undercurrent that Walton might consider challenging for his seat. He instead supported Gloria, a third-generation San Diegan who eventually left his seat in the state assembly and became the city’s 37th mayor in 2020.

The latest San Diego homeless count has surpassed 1,600. It seems there was about that number of folks predictably responding on social media with claims Walton is showing NIMBY tendencies of the out-of-touch privileged elite.

They don’t know Bill Walton.

“It’s easy to say that Walton is wrong for devaluing the situation that homeless people are in,” writes Sean Keeley for The Comeback, “and it’s easy to say that Walton is right and that the homeless should be shipped out of town to … wherever. Somewhere in the middle is an honest and ongoing conversation that many major cities are having about what to do about this complicated issue.”

A conversation we’re sure Walton would be ready, willing and able to lead.

Continue reading “The writing on (and off) the wall: The audacity of Bill Walton (San Diego mayor, ’24)” →

The writing on (and off) the wall: Surf Coachella and catch a wave of environmental outrage

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Tom Hoffarth / FartherOffTheWall.com

If every desert had an ocean
Across the U.S.A.
Then everybody’d be surfin’
Like down La Quinta Way
You’d see the hippie-weed baggies
Hibachi hashish, too
A bushy blushy blonde pale ale
Surfin’ Coa-chell-a

If you’re planning out a route to a) keep the Colorado River flowing, b) the residents of Riverside County easy going, and c) divert the Hang Ten-induced traffic from Interstate 10 so it’s never slowing, help drown out an array of proposed surf resorts that are about to redefine how the world might view a Southern California endless summer.

A place already awash with about 150 days now of temps that exceed 100 degrees has something new to get a little hot under the collar-less shirt.

An artists rendition for DSRT / Surf near the Desert Willow golf courses.

Just look at what’s planned at the base of the Coral Mountain in Palm Desert – no, not another luxury golf course or minor-league ice hockey rink, but try 16 football fields of land filled with 22 million gallons of precious potable water — until it evaporates into the dry heat.

As John Oliver said on his “Last Week Tonight” show, the idea of four new surf parks in this region is “just monumentally stupid.”

And it’s stupendously stupid enough to work.

What better place to revive the 1960s lifestyle craze of beach blanket bingo than among the dust devils, scorpions and Indian casino slot machines. It’s all baked right into the idea that the Coachella Valley Surf Club can thrive with a mission to promote, educate and enjoy “all the surfing possibilities that wave pools bring to the inland.”

They’re behind a vision by 11-time world champion surfer Kelly Slater and his wave company to manipulate an otherwise unusable 400-acre swatch of land that hasn’t be compromised into a solar farm and giving guests access to the “largest, rideable open-barrel, human-made waves in the world.”

Roll out the barrels, stay for Octoberfest. As long as there is a pickle ball complex nearby.

At a time when celebrity residents of Benedict Canyon are pushing back on developers who want to build them a luxury hotel, and all sorts of homeowners/renters/squatters in Venice and Santa Monica gripe about more affordable shelters to address the current homeless, there’s gotta be a way for the Coachella Valley-ites to stop getting their NIMBY board shorts in a bunch and pool their creative resources.

Make this the ultimate retirement village for burnouts avoiding income taxes and all sorts of bikini waxes.

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The writing on (and off) the wall: Getting too judgy in the Ohtani-Judge discussion

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Tom Hoffarth / FartherOffTheWall.com

Come Judgement Day 2022, when the Baseball Writers Association of America voters attempt to separate the G.O.A.T.s from the unicorns, Aaron Judge will be the chosen one for the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award.

New Yorkers won’t have it any other way.

Anaheimers know better.

Shohei Ohtani, who has somehow put together a more stunning resume than last year’s AL MVP season, appears to have set a bar far too high. Others are under duress trying to quantify what is normally thought of superior greatness when put up against unworldly achievement.

The social-media banter starts civil and devolves into something logic can’t always appropriate:

Ohtani is not only the game’s most valuable commodity, but also its most invisible. He is the greatest influencer as well as the sport’s most cost-effective player. A meager $5.5 million stipend from the Angels’ payroll — or what it costs for a 30-second Super Bowl TV ad — equates to what Justin Verlander ($28 million this year) and teammate Mike Trout ($37.2 million this year) are both doing right now.

How do you reward him, if not with cash, than with proper recognition?

Continue reading “The writing on (and off) the wall: Getting too judgy in the Ohtani-Judge discussion” →