Family. Ties.

Let’s start with the “Ties“ part, because that’s really the silliest. I just ended my latest seasonal participation in an online knowledge, OK trivia, competition I was invited into several years ago. It wound up being one of my best seasons ever. The record was definitely my weirdest. Over the course of 25 non-holiday weekday games (the final one yesterday, probably the last time they will do one on Juneteenth), I ended with 11 wins and 5 losses, placing me in the fifth place, just outside the top for who will be “promoted,” or in my case “doomed,” into a group of much smarter people next time around.

But 11 and 5 don’t make 25!,  I hear you cry. Wow, you’re smart. You should sign up for this thing. That’s because the other nine matches ended in a tie, or as they say in soccer, a draw. That’s the weird part of how this went. Each day, you play an "opponent" but don't "compete" in real time, knowing what and how they're answering, so you don't officially learn how either of you did until the next day. So getting the same number of points as your opponent on any given day is always possible and not particularly uncommon. However, it was, for me anyway, very unusual to have that happen more than a third of the time over a single season of games.

Nerd that I am, I did my resurch. Historically, it had only happened about 15% of the time, and as of this weekend, when I checked the 32 players I was competing against this season, the only thing I was leading everybody in WAS draws. I had eight going into yesterday (yup, the final one also ended tied), only one other player had as many as seven ties, and twos and threes were much more common.

Was it of some significance, statistical or karma? I guess I’ll find out in August when we start up again. If I do get bumped into the higher group, which sometimes happens if an opening occurs, I’ll probably never find out because I’ll probably lose my way right back to where I am now.

(By the way, if any of this is of the slightest interest to anyone who hasn’t seen this before, and you want an invite to join it, leave a comment. Many players and even multiple champions on Jeopardy! have come out of this group, and most of the people are fun without being obnoxious.)

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One other oddity did come out about my talking about this with some of the other players. I referred to my recent sudden experience with tying my opponents as “kissing my sister." One other player immediately asked what the term meant, and whether it had been an autocorrect.

I'm certainly no strange Durr to those, but no. "Kissing your sister" is a term I've long known sports fans to use when one of their teams' games ends in a tie, which among many of them is as bad as a loss. The term has been apparently used to refer to experiences that "could be better/could be worse" since at least the 1890s; later, by Prohibition, researchers suspected alcohol was involved. But it's been connected to ties in sport since at least the 1940s.  It has become perhaps less common as ties themselves have become rarer, and that's mainly by rule.

Some sports make ending in a tie impossible; basketball has always been "play some more," and baseball rules limit them to the rarest of "it just doesn't matter" circumstances at the end of a season. Perhaps predictive of my current situation, my baseball loves have been involved in some of the longest let's-settle-this games in history. In regular season games, the Mets participated in some of the longest-ever contests- going 23 innings in 1964 (after a regular nine-inning game before it that day!), 24 in 1968, 25 in 1974, and 19 in 1985. (That one, on the road in Atlanta, also featured rain delays that resulted in the game ending at 3:55 in the morning, whereupon the Braves set off the July 4th fireworks because, Georgia.) Not surprisingly, the Mets lost all of those games. They did win two of longest-ever postseason games ever played, in 1986 at Houston and in 1999 at Shea over those same Atlanta Braves. Yet the granddaddy of them all was the Rochester Red Wings going 33 innings before losing to the Pawtucket Red Sox- a game that blew through curfews, was finally suspended and resumed during the 1981 MLB strike, and is the subject of at least one full-length book and a chapter of another. And yes, my team lost that one, too.

More recently, pro hockey has removed draws from regular and post-season play; the latter games go through full 20-minute periods until somebody scores, while 3-on-3 short OTs and then a "shootout" determine games before the Cup brackets are set.  Meanwhile, you can still play to a tie in the NFL until the playoffs begin; it's uncommon but has ticked up slightly in recent years and, with the advent of sports gambling, may become more common still if the bookies get to the kickers or refs.  NFL playoff games are all decided in overtime, using rules that are hotly debated and periodically updated based on three criteria: overall fairness, probable duration, and how likely it is the Bills will be screwed by them.

Despite the general demise of the draw, it is still possible, in some situations, for a team to "play for the tie"- in the last moments of an NFL regular season game, or in the NHL to keep the game tied at the end of regulation so each team is guaranteed a "loser point." Fans of both teams generally hate seeing this, and no player or coach will ever admit to doing it, but I've seen it happen.  Oddly, the one sport where draws are the most common is the one where "play for the draw" is most acceptable, and that's soccer. Ted Lasso ended both of its seasons with the fictional Richmond AFC club kissing its sister in the final moments of play, only to be scored on in the final seconds of Series 1 but with a better, still-tied-but-good result to end Series 2.  They also had a series of consecutive ties at the start of the second season that woiuld be unheard of in Murkin sportsball but was merely a curiosity over there. 

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On to a probably remote connection to family:

I made a brief reference the other day to a series called The Bite. It's from Robert and Michelle King, who created the long-running Good Wife series on CBS, are still working with its Good Fight sequel, did the underappreciated Brain Dead for a season with Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Tony Shalhoub, and are now starting the third series of Evil on Prime/Plus. The Bite is a six-episode COVID quickie, released a year ago and stuck, of all places, on Spectrum On Demand.

It's fun and frightening, and a total sendup of the reactions to the pandemic from science and stupidity fighting with each other. It covers some of the same territory as the Don't Look Up full-length film that came out on Netflix late last year. The performers include Audra McDonald and Phillipa Soo and their real-life husbands among the main characters.  There's also blood and gore, but tastefully presented for the most part (Robert King honed his craft under the legendary schlock horror king Roger Corman), and the music is always good and sometimes hilarious (an Addams Family shoutout, for one).

The remote connection to my own family, though, comes through a plot point that I will try to mention without spoiling: there are references, that may or may not be significant, to the involvement of the cosmetics industry in the "second wave" pandemic they depict here fictionally (we hope). In particular, there are mentions of Botox.

Which has what to do with me, Mister Barely Brushes His Hair?  I don't remember the whole story, and probably couldn't tell it if I did, but there was A Guy. Who somebody in my family knew. Who went on to a key role in developing Botox- short, if you didn't know, for botulism toxin- into a legal though regulated product used in the cosmetic surgery/treatment business to ward off wrinkles. 

If I'm remembering right, the same Guy, or someone in his family, also became involved with one of the sports mentioned above.

See how it all, um, ties together?

If I get more detail on this, I may share it. Or I may not.