TayTay Tuesday…Tuesday Open Thread

Can’t stop. Won’t stop.

Taylor Swift Fever has swept the NFL, as Pennsylvania’s Sweetheart gave creedence to rumors that she and Master of the Masturbatory Mime Travis Kelce

are An Item. Swift and potential-future-ex-potential-future-mother-in-law Donna Kelce looked on from a suite at Arrowhead as the Chefs demolished the Bears, and then she walked out with Kelce. Because Swifties are insane, this resulted in a 400% increase in sales of Kelce’s already-popular jersey. I suppose when you’re spending an average of $3,801 for a ticket on the secondary market, $129.99 for a jersey to burn when they break up isn’t really that steep of an impulse buy.

I dig Taylor. Her music is fine, her business sense is fierce, and she seems as normal as it’s possible to be when you have a cult bigger than Oprah. That said, it’s gonna be glorious when Swift signs on for the 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show and leads it off with her new hit single “Cheating Bastard Football Player” while Kelce sits in the locker room.

NFL NEWS

-Chandler Jones: may be in some trouble. For the last several weeks, Jones has been public feuding with his coach and employer, the eminently feudable Josh McDaniels and the Raiders, including an accusation that the team had called the Las Vegas Crisis Response Team on him at home.

Well, apparently someone went a step further, as Jones says he was involuntarily committed from some time last week (when 5-7 LVFD folks took him in) until Monday. He alleges that he was forcibly medicated as well.

Assuming for the moment that a chain of police and medical professionals did not grossly overstep their bounds (not always a safe assumption), I hope Jones gets the help he needs.

-Saquon Barkley: not ded. After sitting out Thursday’s throttling by the Niners, Barkley is considered day-to-day with a high ankle sprain. Having lived through week after week of Tyrone Wheatley’s high ankle sprain in my first year of fantasy football, to all the Barkley owners:

-Mac Jones: dirty-ass motherfucker cheap-shot artist. Mac Jones is under investigation for allegedly punching Defensive Rookie of the Year Sauce Gardner in the crotch during Sunday’s slapfight. At least he’s carrying on  one Patriot quarterback legacy (being deeply hateable).

If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. This will be at least the fourth credible allegation of dirty play against the Bible-Salesman-faced Jones in only three years. Last year he was fined for diving at Eli Apple’s knee:

In his rookie season, he tried to mannually dislocate Brian Burns’ ankle:

And of course, who could forget him going cleats-up into Jaquan Brisker’s testicles?

So yes: fuck Mac Jones.

New York Jets: surrendering. In an apparent attempt to placate the teeming, howling masses of Jets fans, New York has signed a new quarterback! Unfortunately, it’s Trevor Siemien.

The Jets brass knows they have to draft a quarterback high next year regardless of Rodgers’ status. But they can’t just sit pat and let that #2 pick come to them- they will be killed and eaten by a pack of rabid Mike Greenbergs the next time they try to get a slice. So they sign fellow Northwestern alum and Human White Flag Trevor Siemien, so they can look busy without actually gaining ground.

NON-NFL NEWS:

-Orioles great Brooks Robinson passed away.

Underappreciated Movie of the Week: Gone in 60 Seconds (2000).

It made a lot of money, and it had a lot of stars in it. So I guess I am arguing uphill a bit in calling the remake of the 1974 bizzareness of the sae name “underappreciated.”

But in the context of Nicholas Cage’s body of work, it falls unfairly between Con Air and Snake Eyes in the third tier of films. Cage was in his Second Golden Age, having hits with The Rock, Con Air, Face/Off and that one with Elizabeth Shue. His weird fixation with Superman was known, but this was pre-dinosaur-skull so no one thought he was totally nuts yet.

And you can see his transitional state in the acting. It’s relatively low-key by later Cage-chewing-scenery-non-stop standards, but there are some beats that hit…well, like he’s not drawing on the same human experience as most of us. There’s more chemistry between him and Robert Duvall (and Delroy Lindo, for that matter) than with Angelina Jolie, but it’s a true Popcorn Flick.