On the incongruity scale, the following highlights from today’s Dan Patrick / Keith Olbermann yack-fest aren’t quite up there with say, Tom Petty’s “You Wreck Me” as the chosen theme muzak for ESPN’s coverage of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals. But you might be entertained just the same to learn that :
1) Olbermann — now answering to the name of “K.O.”, thinks that “rap music is very repetitive.” Paging Jessica Hopper!
2) Pop cuture maven Patrick — already on record as being down with the Arcade Whatstheirnuts — cannot get his head around the results of an NME.com poll to determine The Greatest Album Of All Time. Not only do the Stone Roses not register on the D.P. Rockin’ Radar, but Radiohead are “Coldplay without the hooks” and the wibbling rivals in Oasis are “derivative of the Beatles.”
None of these would be-greats measure up to the genius of Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’, in Dan’s considerable estimation. “That was a new sound, insisted Patrick. “The kind of thing that changed people’s lives.”
Not everyone shared the host’s opinion. “Dude, you’ve got to give ‘O.K. Computer’ another chance,” pleaded a (presumably for real) caller at the end of the show. “It’ll make you want to slit your wrists.”
Hottt Keith Olbermann gossip: during a visit to the Topps offices the other day — he’s a huge baseball card collector (apparently stockpiling those Alex Gordon mistakenly-printed cards) and writes for us periodically — he referred to Todd Jones as “one of my closest friends in baseball.” I don’t know if this makes it more or less likely that he wouldn’t like hip hop very much. I lean towards more. Please feel free to forward this to Gawker.
I think that if the two broke back sports announcer guys stuck to talking about sports instead of trying to be like Don and Mike , they may have better ratings. And please Patrick, no more basketball. I know you have to talk about it as your network sponsors it …but please enough. As your ratings will show, America is watching Nascar.
Don and Mike?
I’m sure many people love watcing the cars go round in a circle. But not only are the NBA ratings up, but if Patrick was an ESPN shill, he’d be all over NASCAR as Bristol U. starts showing the races next season.