Wade on January 2007
By Wade KwonThen and now
The Nick rocks: (Warning: Every item will be about football or television, just like real life.) Nick Saban, the former LSU coach and recently departed Miami Dolphins coach, graciously accepted the head coaching position at Alabama for a paltry $30 million. Talk about sacrifice.
Since then, a reporter released off-the-record comments in which Saban uses an ethnic slur regarding Cajuns. (It’s as though our prediction No. 85 came true!) And he’s been the subject of a “salary” vs. “feed the poor” or “educate kids” or some such crap debate. Plus, the classic welcome video, after the jump …
Let’s make a (fatuous) deal: Birmingham survived the glare of the white-hot reality TV spotlight, as “American Idol” and “Two-a-Days” showed the true stars in town: costumed weirdos. On “Idol,” featuring Birmingham auditions, we had the mother-daughter pair with six feet o’ hair each, plus the crazy 50-year-old (“Officer, I swear she said she was 26”) lady from Atlanta dressed in Big Bird yellow. On the Homecoming episode of “Two-a-Days,” we had Hoover High students dressed as cowboys, Indians (feather, not dot) and hillbillies.
And they say reality television cheapens us all.
The Detroit of the South: Pretty soon, everyone will drive cars made in Alabama. And yes, they’ll have all four tires and everything. Isuzu joined the growing list of state-based automakers, buying a former distribution center in Jefferson County, to build commercial trucks.
(We lied about the all-football, all-TV stuff.)
Haiku flashback
crave theater (Jan. 7)
When someone suggests
“milkshake,” it’s stuck in my head
if not on menu.
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Archives: January
Special report: Wade on 2007
