Friday, January 4, 2013

Jim Schwartz and jewelry

Detroit Lions' head coach Jim Schwartz is making a few extra bucks on the side these days. Now he's on TV commercials pitching the wares of a jewelry store.

Jewelry stores have lots of fancy stuff. There's blue stones and green stones, and red stones, and purple stones. You name the color, and they've got pricey stones available. Lots of gold and silver too -- to mount them on in an infinite variety of ways. Rings, bracelets, necklaces, anklets, earrings, even piercings. They've pretty well got something for everybody. If you've got the dough, they'll get you good to go. They even have black pearls and white gold. That doesn't make much sense. Do they paint that stuff or is it fake? Beats me. Besides, why would anybody want such things? Would you pay big bucks for a green labrador retriever or a shiny new fluorescent orange toilet?

Of course, they always have a bazillion or so diamonds. Sometimes I wonder where all these diamonds keep coming from. Most experts will tell you it takes at least tens of thousands of years under extreme pressure from deep in the earth for small pieces of carbon to become diamonds. It's not like they're a renewable resource. Then again, if one was to dig a hole about 100 miles deep in their backyard, plant some pieces of carbon, cover them up, and live to be maybe 50,000 years old, then one could have their very own diamond mine. Personally, I have enough trouble planting, and hoping those Yukon Gold spuds will grow in the garden, but I've only been waiting for 175 years, so perhaps I'm rushing things a bit. Did I forget to say my pic on this blog makes me look much younger than I really am? That Grover Cleveland was a hoot, I tell ya. The stories I could tell you about him when he used to stop by, but I digress.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Jim Schwartz in the jewelry store. Right.

That would seem to be an appropriate place for him. Perhaps he's looking for a couple more "diamonds in the rough". Lord knows he's had to deal with enough of them on the Lions over the last few years. Consider stomping, neck-wringing, and dope smoking. Then throw in car crashes, law suits, sucker-punching a teammate, and intentionally lining up in the wrong spot on the field. Add a heaping spoonful of a yappy veteran center that hasn't won anything since high school, and yells obscenities at his home town fans. Season to taste with the clown act of the week, with everything from special teams giving up multiple touchdowns, to a QB that said he wasn't trying to force the ball to a particular wide receiver, even though the guy had 5 defenders around him at the time.

Jimbo has had plenty of diamonds in the rough going on -- including himself. He once went berserk over a post-game handshake with the opposing coach, then later cost his team a touchdown, and likely a win, by throwing the red challenge flag at the wrong time. Afterwards he said he knew about that rule, but did it anyway. Confidence is a good thing. Belligerent ignorance is not. Cockiness, sometimes, but only if you're a winner. Career losers like Schwartz aren't supposed to be cocky, else they run the risk of being perceived as a buffoon. A very rich one, to be sure, but still an arrogant buffoon.

So besides the cha-ching Schwartz got from being a pitchman for that particular jewelry store, here's hoping they showed him what some highly polished finished products really look like.

Couldn't hurt.

The Lions? Owner William Clay Ford doesn't need diamond mines. He's got assembly lines passed down from his granddaddy Henry to keep him rolling in the dough. He married Martha Firestone, the daughter of Harvey, so they likely won't run out of tires anytime soon either.

But as far as a professional football team is concerned, William Clay might as well have planted those same Yukon Gold tater spuds I did.

He's been waiting for almost 50 years. I check in at about 175, as I mentioned before. Millions of years can pass, but it doesn't matter.

Neither will ever turn into diamonds. There's miracles and then there's miracles, but some things just ain't meant to be.....








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