. I have shared with you recently The Swaggers current addiction to the TV series “24”. Beyond the superficial appeal of this well-written and well-acted pulse-racing “spy yarn”, it has yielded vital clues to a series of heretofore unexplainable events in area sports. Indeed, Jack Bauer, Nina, Tony, Victor Drazen and Ramon Salazar are tied to Dickie, Chuck, Mike, John, Ol’ Roy, Meezie, Ye Olde Legend and the various other human flotsam and jetsam that get dragged through this website.
24 is fiction. Completing its 4th TV season it is the on-going story of the members of the fictional Los Angeles “CTU” (Counter Terrorism Unit). Keifer Sutherland plays federal agent “Jack Bauer” who thus far has saved America from four calamities of 9/11+ magnitude. Jack’s cohorts and adversaries evolve over the seasons via assorted writer prescribed demises.
The show’s cult-following is triggered by its “real time” script. Each season tracks Jack Bauer vs the designated evil terrorist plot in 24 60-minute segments that viewed concurrently in DVD format amount to one day (24 hours, get it?). I can’t explain it any clearer than that. I didn’t understand it myself until I got into it. Go to Blockbuster NOW … tell’em Swagger sent you. Do NOT try to use an AMEX card, I’ll explain later. GO NOW!
Jack Bauer is the quintessential rogue agent with all the Delta Force killer instincts. Within 24 hours he dispatches that season’s ultimate baddie with the help of a gaggle of highly dysfunctional compu-geeks back at CTU headquarters. At any one time 50% of the compu-geeks at CTU are double agents working for the sinister forces de jour.
Unlike ALIAS which has its own cult following, Jack never goes undercover as a hooker or runs around in Victoria Secret combat teddies like Jennifer Garner’s Agent Sidney Bristow. Elisha Cuthbert who plays Jack’s daughter Kim did play a porno star in another movie. There are no titillating sex scenes in “24” unless one is in to sado-masochistic torture sequences. If a strung-up nude Jack being hit with a cattle prod does it for you, check out midway Season 2.
Jack’s escapades are the primary theme but the concurrent story line involves “David Palmer” America’
s 1st African American President. The actor is Dennis Haysbert, best known as Pedro Cerrano the voodoo loving ballplayer in Major League. Palmer is a “Democrat” but the writers (who all happen to be heavily Conservative) don’t stress ideology. Palmer’s wife/ex-wife makes Hillary look like Mother Teresa by comparison. She kills a paraplegic billionaire by yelling at him. Sherry Palmer will stop at nothing including nuking Los Angeles to get the power she craves. David Palmer won’t even jaywalk; however most everyone on his staff is dirtier than a bus station restroom.
Jack and President Palmer have secret cell phone conversations in the 23rd hour to save the world. I know it sounds silly; but it works.
This show is a testament to cell phone technology, the Internet, and all seeing satellites. Everything these people do can actually be done by modern spy guys. Does Dickie Baddour wears boxers or briefs or what flavor syrup does Darth K prefer on his pancakes? Michelle or Kim at CTU will “get right on it” and have the data downloaded to your screen within 15 minutes … need it faster … clear it with “Division”. These folks are sooo far beyond James Bond’s “Q” you won’t believe it.
So how does all this tie in to the heroes and villains that comprise our silly arena of sports.
…The following takes place between 8:00 AM and 9:00 AM …
It is obvious now how Jim Knight knew to reverse that fateful goal line call last October 9 … the call that saved John Bunting’s job and sent scores of Wuffs into psycho-therapy. Sat-3 was over the Eastern Seaboard at that precise moment and it’s infra-red cameras picked up T.A.’s knee hitting the Kenan turf. The image was transmitted to a special receiver in the UNC Bell Tower and sent down to a receiver in Referee Knight’s whistle. If Knight had revealed that in his post game comments it would have jeopardized national security by revealing our satellite’s orbit trac.
The Three Amigos – Bowman, Thomas, and Sparkman – learned of the satellite transmission and were threatening to go public unless they were given new Sony Play Stations and Escalades. CTU operatives posing as dorm housekeepers planted the marijuana and alerted the dorm RA. The three young men relocated under a Federal Defensive Lineman Protection Program. Only Gunther Brewer knew of the solution … and he vanished to a mysterious location CodeName – Stillwater.
… The following takes place between 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM …
For 18 years Special Agent Charles Amato was in deep cover in Tallahassee Florida gathering vital intell on a suspected BCS terrorist group known as The Bowden Family. In exchange for his 18 years under cover, Amato was promised the Head Coaching position at NC State. The deal included delivery to Amato of a bionic man from Athens Alabama … Phillip Rivers. Rivers would insure Amato’s extended tenure in Raleigh. To protect Amato from revenge by The Bowdens he dresses in a variety of outrageous sideline disguises that will draw camera attention on him at all times.
… The following takes place between 10:00 AM and 11:00 AM …
In 1946 in Krakau Poland, a linguist named Zebrignev Krzyzewski developed a highly complicated code language. Encrypted with a series of two word keys beginning with mutha ___. Yelling this code while standing on a hardwood floor will cause zebras to do your bidding. If this deadly Tourette Virus fell into the wrong hands it would spell the end of basketball. Knowing authorities were closing in on him, Zebrignev put the code on a microchip and implanted it into his infant son, Mikhail, who was spirited away to the South Side of Chicago where he would grow up unaware of the horrible secret he carried with him. The chip carrying the code was encased in a slow dissolving membrane which would release the profane obscenity virus starting in young Mikhai’s 40th year. Eccentric Billionairess Doris Duke learned of this secret, kidnapped young Mikhail from the US Army at West Point and hid him in a Gothic Fortress at her family compound in Durham. Beginning in 1985 no zebra would be safe in Mikhail Krzyzewski’s presence.
… The following takes place between 11:00 AM and 12:00 PM …
Files discovered in a Beirut Best Buy are leading authorities to a diabolical plot to insure eternal confusion in the ACC. Knowing that college athletics are the backbone foundation of American society, the key to paralyzing the Free World is to so confound and confuse sports fans that daily functioning becomes impossible. To this end, a terrorist cell codenamed Tassel Loafer sent its most sinister agent to the idyllic community of Chapel Hill in the mid 60s. Assuming deep cover as a low level bureaucratic chipmunk, this agent known as The Dickster would lay low for over 30 years until the time was right.
In 1997 while counting paper clips and throwing #2 pencils into his ceiling tiles, his comsat phone rang in the distinctive Ah Zigga Zoomba ringtone. After 30 years of idle preparation he sprang into action. The retirement of Gene Corrigan and promotion of John Swofford was all part of the plan. Dickster assumed control over “the sleeping giant” of college athletics. With surgical precision he orchestrated the departure of Mack Brown, the retirement of Ye Olde Legend, and the erection of Jumbo The Giant Scoreboard. These otherwise unrelated events led directly to subsequent disasters – “the Matt Doherty Era” and “losing to Dook in Kenan in 2004”. A debilitating depression virus infected a worldwide alumni base of over 300,000 Tar Heels. Manifesting itself thru bizarre user names and wasting countless hours babbling on the Internet, this virus spread by a 5’7” Lebanese secret agent named “Dickie” destroyed all that really mattered in their world. The only antidote to this virus rested with a huckleberry in Lawrence Kansas known as Ol’ Roy. Project Blue Messiah. He had only two years to revive the fan base … and Mikhail Krzyzewski and his Tourette Virus stood squarely in his path.
As authorities pieced together intell on “Dickie” it was thought he had a bald organ playing co-conspirator known as “The Meez”. The Meez, however, was simply a yahoo who had wandered into South Building to get out of the rain while hitchhiking from Lincoln Nebraska to Daytona Beach for Spring Break. Sitting in the lobby waiting for a break in the weather, a local dominatrix named Susie Estroff fitted him for a dog collar and ordered him to crawl under a coffee table and make motorboat sounds. He did as she ordered. Estroff was part of a fanatical terrorist group known as The Faculty Squirrels. She set Meez up as her Puppet Chancellor giving him a thimble and a rubber band to play with for the next 8 years.
11:59:57 … 11:59:58 … 11:59:59
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Swagger’s Stumper
From “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou”
What was Dapper Dan & Fopp
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Shoeless Joe and his cornfield teammates would never let Ty Cobb play with them … never could stand the SOB.
Rasheed Wallace vs Tim Duncan … that oughta get the respective message board loonies from UNC and Wake in a super sized insulting twit. … When Larry bolts to Cleveland what will happen to his Tar Heel posse in Detroit … Ol’ Roy has his own Jayhawk posse so no room back at Ye Olde Dean Dome.
