Jontay Porter is the Tip of a New Iceberg When it Comes to Professional Sports, Gambling, and Ethics

Today is a sports-themed kind of day, I guess, considering I just wrote about a new sports card store earlier and now have this post! It's funny as I used to never write about sports but now I touch on that along with other popular culture. Now then, I have zero problem with sports gambling because if it can bring income to states, and isn't hurting anyone (problem gambling should obviously be addressed), then states should do it. That said, if sports leagues are going to partner with gambling sites/entities, have them advertise a bunch, pay for stuff, and otherwise be a huge part of sports, can anyone really feign surprise if some athletes take all that as a sign they can get involved in sports gambling to some degree? It was announced that Basketball player Jontay Porter was caught by the NBA illegally gambling on his performance to make money and working with bettors. He is going to be the tip of the iceberg in regards to some athletes trying to game the system to make extra funds.

Think about it. If you make gambling a huge part of the game, don't be stunned when those playing the game see a way to possibly get some scratch--ethically/legally or not. It's a new era of professional sports and gambling on a sport has mostly come out of the shadows, but plenty of metaphorical dark crevices for illicit activity remain. I don't know if there is enough light to stamp out everything questionable that could occur--although thanks to everything being legal various systems noticed the odd betting patterns regarding Porter, at least. Pete Rose's gambling on baseball was Earth-shattering news decades ago. Now, that's going to look positively quaint compared to the shitstorm I could see hitting pro sports in the coming years if athletes try to get in the game on their games. It isn't right, but I can predict it happening more and more. 

Porter isn't an isolated case, either, just the most brazen so far. Major League Baseball's new star player Shohei Ohtani has his own scandal by proxy. Ohtani's translator, Ippei Mizuhara, allegedly stole 16 million dollars from him and placed sports bets without his knowledge, but only so many players have a translator to blame (I'm not saying Ohtani did any illegal gambling, but if it ever came out he did, my lack of shock would be evident). We aren't even halfway through 2024 and already two sports have been rocked by gambling scandals. I'd bet--no pun intended--that there are going to be a lot more gambling fiascos before the year is done. I mean, don't forget that the Summer Olympics are this year, and plenty of legal sportsbooks are ready. I'm bracing myself for a mess with that, although I hope nothing sketchy occurs. Time will tell.

314 Sports Cards is a Stellar Place to Buy (What Else?) Sports Cards

I've gotten into hockey cards as of late (and sometimes I'll dabble in other entertainment cards as well for fun) and National Hockey Card Day was this last Saturday. I was unable to make it out to any stores on the day itself but had the chance today to visit one I'd heard good things about and had been meaning to visit, 314 Sports Cards.

Located at 9640 Olive Blvd in Saint Louis, MO (63132 area code), 314 Sports Cards is a fun shop! They've got all the fandoms represented that others know and love as well as the one I follow, hockey! Everyone there was extremely nice when I visited and I appreciated how they gave me some of the free cards for National Hockey Card Day that they still had leftover! You can buy hobby boxes of a variety of products and individual packs of some items too. There are notable single cards for sale as well. With, "Sports Cards," in their name it makes sense they have plenty to offer!

Matt (left) and Devin (right) posing with some of their awesome wares!

314 Sports Cards is a great spot to visit in the Saint Louis region whether you're an expert in the hobby or a relatively newer person like myself when it comes to sports cards. I'd recommend stopping by their shop or buying from them via their website; I know I'm excited to have another great sports card shop in the region to frequent!

The Machinists Hall Sports Cards & Collectibles Show is Really Cool!

I've written about how I got into hockey the past handful of years and then late last year began really enjoying hockey cards. When I saw that Machinists Hall was going to have a sports card show, I reached out to them and asked if I could come and cover the event for my blog. They said yes, so today I attended my first-ever sports card show! The Machinists Hall Sports Cards & Collectibles Show was a little intimidating to think about going to as while I know a ton about comics, I will not pretend to know even 10% as much about sports cards (although I've learned a lot about hockey cards these past months). That is why I appreciated how of the many dealers at the show everyone was incredibly friendly and not at all judgemental at my, "Newness," to sports cards.

There was a range of cards from tons of baseball and basketball to a chunk of football, and hockey had some representation along with fandoms from Pickleball to Pokemon (and a bit of wrestling). Everything from expensive single cards to cheap bundles was for sale, along with sealed packages from the past to the present. If you were looking for a specific sport or era, it was likely represented by a number of dealers here!

It wasn't just cards, of course. There were balls, pucks, and Funko Pops plus old magazines that (mostly) related to sports in some fashion. I even saw a comic or two along with the occasional Marvel trading cards. The vendors were eager to talk about their varied wares and it was really fun to interact with this card fandom that has similarities to the one I know quite well (comics) but is also very different. 

Gibson came with me and enjoyed the show too!

All my pictures you see in this post I was able to snap before the show kicked off and it got busy, fast. The Machinists Hall Sports Cards & Collectibles Show runs through Sunday, so try and go this weekend if you live in the area (or can make the trip). It's only $3 to get in tomorrow and free on Sunday! Here is the link again for the show so you can check it out too!

The World Series Got Really Cool for a Minute

I am not a big fan of baseball, or sports in general. The one sport I do enjoy and follow to some degree is hockey, because the mixture of grace, brutality, and its fast-pace keep my interest. Baseball however bores me, which can cause people to gasp when I say that here in Saint Louis, where folk really love the Cardinals. Hence, while last May and June I was incredibly excited to see the Saint Louis Blues win the Stanley Cup I had a general disinterest in how the Cardinals were doing in their attempt to get to the World Series (they didn't make it) and I was unsure which teams were even playing. Well, I know now, because last night the World Series got really cool for a minute. The Washington Capitals are competing in the World Series against the Houston Astros and were playing a game in Washington D.C. last night. Donald Trump showed-up, and in Washington D.C. itself, in a stadium filled with a lot of middle-aged white-folk (his supposed bread-and-butter), the crowd spontaneously began chanting, "Lock him up," loudly. Trump looked displeased.

It was glorious, and I don't care what people say who think it was some kind of hoax, conspiracy, or whatever, I believe this was just proud members of our Country expressing their opinion about the worst President ever. As for anyone who insists we should at least respect office of the President and, "Be civil," or whatever, I find it interesting many of the folk saying this also were relentlessly negative about Barack Obama for reasons they didn't want to fully admit (he was black, and this made them never recognize him as a legitimate President with lame made-up ideas he was somehow not really American, was a secret Muslim Extremist, or other nonsense). Trump is an awful human being, which admittedly does not disqualify him from being President, but he also has been committing numerous crimes and abuses of power, which means those acts should lead to his impeachment. The man frankly belongs in prison, so he should be locked-up, honestly.. If it is petty to be giddy a crowd at a baseball game chanted, "Lock him up," then I guess I'm just petty. At least it made the World Series (and baseball) really cool, even if for a brief moment.

Flashback Friday: Two Creators with Four Comics I Keep Coming Back To

Books I Keep Re-Reading
Believe it or not, I've read a lot of comics over these years (shocking, I know). With all the comic-books I have read there are certain ones I find myself always wanting to go back and re-read even if my pile of new stuff which I need to catch-up on continues to grow. Therefore I wanted to share some of the comics I find I keep going back to every once in awhile to read and enjoy because I loved them so much. Interestingly enough, there are two creators who each did two comic series (so four total) that I find really stick out in mind. While there are a number of comics I love to revisit every now and then it is notable that these two gents have more than one book that really stay in my mind. Therefore, I wanted to talk about these two guys--Grant Morrison and Charlie Huston--and their two books.

Grant Morrison's New X-Men
Morrison arguably provided the X-Men story for his run on the book. I think it is the best X-Men run ever, which lovers of Chris Claremont's stuff consider offensive, but I stand by my statement. Morrison came on the book and immediately did huge things like having the mutant island of Genosha be destroyed, introduced a drug called, "Kick," that was actual a sentient virus, took Magneto to his logical extreme endpoints, killed Jean Grey (who stayed dead until recently), gave us the new character Fantomex, made mutants more of a large minority population as opposed to  a small number of people in the world, and otherwise was amazing.

Morrison's run was so incredible Marvel had to basically undo most of it as soon as it ended through things like, "House of M," reducing the mutant population, trying to re-write Magneto's genocidal rampage in the book as being done by a psychic force known as, "Xorn," even though the whole point of, "Xorn," was that it was a fake personality Magneto posed as to infiltrate the X-Men. You know, dumb stuff like that because Morrison's run was too wild to let most of his changes stand. I still crack open the big omnibus collecting his entire run that I have to enmesh myself in Morrison's amazing run.

Charlie Huston's Moon Knight
I wasn't that familiar with Moon Knight some years ago. Then I picked up a hardcover at Borders (I told you this was awhile ago) that collected the first arc of Charlie Huston's run on, "Moon Knight." The six issues containing his writing and David Finch's artwork introduced me to a hero who was fascinatingly unhinged. A man who might have a serious psychiatric issue or legitimately have gained powers from an Egyptian God. Someone who either had multiple personality disorder, was simply pretending to be other people to fight crime, or maybe actually, "Became," the other men he would sometimes act like.

It was a revelation and resulted in me seeking out all the old, "Moon Knight," comics collected in the Marvel Essential's books, only to find that they had aged pretty well (prevalent sexism and racism of the era aside) and Huston had expertly drawn from these old stories for his amazing run on Moon Knight that sadly only went 13 issues before he handed the reigns to Mike Benson--who did a solid job, but it wasn't the same. Huston's Moon Knight run was stellar and I would say as good as the stuff by Doug Moench (who created the character), resulting in Huston's run being my favorite modern take on Moon Knight.

Grant Morrison's The Filth
Arguably my favorite comic of all time, this 13-issue mini-seires by Morrison with art by Chris Weston and colors by Gary Erskine is a masterpiece of surreal mind-fuckery. It's sort-of about a secret society that keeps the world safe--"Status Quorum,"--but it also involves a talking Russian chimp who killed Kennedy, injectable personalities, comic-books powered by living ink, a hyper-fertile porn star with amnesia, a miniature planet Earth made-up of little robots, the world's largest cruise ship that descends into an anarchic chaos, and so many other ideas that it makes my head spin to this day trying to wrap my mind around everything in this comic.

I always make sure I own two copies of, "The Filth," so that I have a copy to read and one to give to a friend who I think will appreciate its bizarre wonder. It isn't an easy book to get into at first with all the strange things going on and it can be confusing as Hell, but by the time you finish it...you're still a little overwhelmed. After you read it for the second or third time however you really begin to appreciate the book.

Charlie Huston's Bullesye: Perfect Game
I am probably one of a handful of people who even remember this book existing. It was a Marvel Knights two-issue mini-series that doesn't really even take place in continuity and focuses on a character I mostly dislike--Bullseye--playing a sport I honestly don't care much about--Baseball. However, Huston is such an amazing writer he creates probably the only comic with Bullseye that I've ever read where I maybe, just maybe, get some of the character's motivation. The general idea is that Bullseye knows he an amazing assassin and he's grown bored from the lack of challenge he faces. Then a lowball offer comes in for him to kill a star baseball player who didn't throw a game and cost some bad people a lot of money. Bullseye takes the gig and then...disappears for a year.

You see, Bullseye assumes a new identity and becomes a pitcher for a baseball team. He does all this because he wants to kill this target in the middle of a baseball game with a well-thrown ball so that the stadium full of people all see it and gasp. Bullseye is such an empty narcissist he's willing to take a poorly-paying assassination, work his way up through the minor-leagues, and wait until he finally faces this other player at bat just so he will get some twisted form of recognition from a large crowd. The story is narrated by an old baseball-memorabilia collector to an unseen listener and it gives the whole story an air of, "Is this true or some old man's ramblings?" It is weird, wild, and over just two issues results in a comic that I adore despite it being about a character I loathe (Bullseye is almost always just boringly evil) in a sport I consider slow and boring (which in the Saint Louis region makes people clutch their pearls and gasp in shock when you say you don't care about the Cardinals). Just an amazing weird comic you can find for dirt cheap on eBay as nobody else cares about it besides possibly me.

Always Worth a Revisit
There we go, four books by two creators that I keep coming back to. This was fun and maybe in the future I should talk about other comics by more folk I always enjoy rereading.

What's Happening In the World? Let's Use Links to Find Out!

Before I head off to the Wizard World Saint Louis convention today I thought I would share various interesting links or news stories that I feel are worth noting.

So, What is Happening?

Wow, Entertainment Weekly is definitely experiencing a fall from grace. First they cause a hubub with saying they want people to write for them for free, and then they lay-off a bunch of their paid employees as if to double-down on this, "Hey, write stuff for us and we won't pay you" plan they have. Now, I've done some writing for entities that paid me and entities that did not, but if I've done it for a place that lacked payment it was for a solid reason. Namely, they were too broke to pay for a guest article just as I would be too broke to pay any guest writer. If you're Entertainment Weekly however, I would imagine you should have enough scratch to pay people.

Marvel has tentatively planned out their movies into 2028. That is some long-range thinking. Meanwhile, DC announced this week that they might get a "Justice League" movie out sometime in the future, adding, "Maybe, who knows? We really have no clue what we're doing here."

You mean it "Begins Here...After Quite The Delay!"

Speaking of Marvel and planning, I kind of want to pick-up the first issue of "Inhuman" not just to read the comic, but also to see if it is a bit messy due to how Matt Fraction was on the book, left it, and then Charles Soule took over as writer and had to make due with some things that were already done while adding his own new stuff to what I assume was at least a partly-finished first-issue.

Our nation freaks out when someone foreign who identifies as Muslim is arrested for a terrorist plot, no matter how outlandish it is. Yet, as is pointed out here, when a  native-to-America and Christian extremist with a quite implementable plan is caught, it gets little-to-no attention. Is this down to some kind of xenophobia, fear of other religions, or what?

This show was/still is awesome.

This article about the old mature-viewers cartoon "Home Movies" really took me back to in the day when I would watch the show. True, I was catching reruns as the program had stopped making new episodes when I would watch in the mid-2000s, but that didn't make it any less of a quality program. It's absurd nature, snarky tone, and otherwise hilarious jokes make it quite the treasure.

The Fort Hood shooting incident is tragic and shows how Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (which the shooter was being treated for) is nothing to ignore or be too proud to discuss. Mental illness is still so stigmatized and can result in those needing help not always getting it. The odd thing is that the shooter had never seen combat, so was it truly PTSD or some other mental illness? That seems to be the question some in the media are asking.

To answer this question, no. No, I do not. Ever.

In-app purchases are something I generally despise. They also can be quite predatory and target children who don't realize they are spending real money for all those in-game goodies. This article breaks that whole issue down quite thoroughly.

Major League Baseball player Daniel Murphy took some brief time out from his career to spend time with his wife as she gave birth, and then be with her and their new child. Apparently there are people out there who find this outrageous and said things as stupid as that Murphy's wife should have had an elective C-Section so that her pregnancy wouldn't have "interfered" with Baseball season. Adding a child to your household, be it through birth or adoption is one of the bigger life events a person can experience, so I think Murphy was fully in the right to take some time to enjoy this major occasion. I say to all the men mad at him that they should skip their partner's next birth or not be present for an adoption and see how they feel then.

Even today the earlier Sonic games holdup well. 

This piece asks if Sonic The Hedgehog maybe never was as cool as we remember him being. I would say that I enjoyed Sonic's games back on the old Sega Genesis/Master System (it had different names in different countries) enough to conclude that he was indeed cool once, but yeah, he ain't that hip now.

The upcoming live-action "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie sounds more and more like it might be an unholy mess.

"Yeah, odds are my new game is going to be awesome."

The new Batman "Arkham Knight" game from Rocksteady (the team behind "Aslyum" and "City") looks like it will be incredibly cool and finish out the trilogy of "Arkham" games wonderfully ("Origins" doesn't count as it was a different developer than Rocksteady and clearly a cash-grab in hindsight with this game's announcement). Plus, you finally get to drive the Batmobile, how sweet is that? Now if only DC could give us an awesome Justice League game (besides "Lego Batman 2"), then we would be all set.

David Letterman announced yesterday he is going to be retiring from his late-night show in 2015. With Leno gone too (for real this time) this kind of brings an end to an era of the late-night wars. I would say a new war is brewing though with all the current shows. Between Fallon, Kimmel, Arsenio (yes, he's back), Conan, and Colbert all over-lapping to some degree that is a lot of folk, and that's without even talking about the even-later-in-the-night guys. Then I hear rumors that Kevin Smith may be getting a late-night show on AMC and I think that something has gotta give.

Lastly, I've discussed my concerns with the CGC before and articles such as this don't inspire more confidence.

That's What is Happening.
That's a variety of stuff I found interesting enough to share with you, my dear readers. I'm off now to Wizard World Saint Louis and plan to see the new Captain America movie tonight, so expect things to be written about both sooner than later!