Weird History: Camels in America

People in the 1850s were stupid. They were improving but, among other things, they still hadn’t figured out flush toilets and at least half the country still thought slavery was cool. This story isn’t as unsanitary or unpleasant as those examples, but it’s silly enough to fall under the ‘stupid’ category.

At this time, Americans had no idea what to do with an entire third of the country. This area was inconveniently placed in-between the two coasts where people actually wanted to live. These sides had water, trees and more natural resources than just prairie grass and buffalo. They seemed to think it was easier to survive with those things in supply.

While indigenous peoples had thrived on the Great Plains for some time, those of European descent had barely figured out how to cross it without a good percentage of travelers dying along the way. Roughly five percent of all those crossing this territory died before they finally got train tracks across it in 1869.

So how do you reliably get from the east to the west? Horses aren’t that durable and oxen are slow and use too many resources unless you’re in for the long haul. So the American government decided to try out an animal they knew could cross great distances without much water: camels.

I repeat: there were freaking camels in the American West in the 1850s.

In 1855, Congress agreed to give $30,000 to Secretary of War (and later President of the Confederacy) Jefferson Davis to go halfway around the world and bring back a shipload of camels. So he did. It’s easy to tell already that this guy was easily crazy enough to lead the South in the Civil War. I’d love to see what would happen if someone asked Congress for camels today. I just want the headline “Filibuster Continues over Camel Funds” to exist, really. But back to Davis’s last good idea.

Within the next two years, two ships from Turkey brought around 75 camels to Texas. You’d think these creatures would have been ideal. The American Southwest is similar to the Middle East in climate and they’ve been using camels there since before Jesus came around. Who knows if they’d have worked better further north, but the other alternative got 1 of every 20 people crossing the area killed along the way. Why not give camels a shot in this place people still called, in the absence of any science, the “Great American Desert”?

Well, as soon as the camels got settled, Jefferson Davis left the War Department and it turned out he was the only one really interested in this experiment. The fact that nobody else cared about the potential of these beautiful humpbacked creatures roaming American plains just confirms how stupid people were at the time.

The camels took a few trips from San Antonio into West Texas and just one lengthy expedition to California. Some apparently stayed there, but it seems that no one can really be sure because somehow they were all presumed disappeared within a few years. How do you just straight up lose camels? You’ve magically found these exotic animals that are built perfectly as a solution to your transportation problem and you just say “eh”? They essentially took the blueprints for the first automobile and used them to fuel a fire in a coal train engine. These people were so damn stupid.

Were the camels just let go into the desert/plains? Did they die fairly quickly or did they roam the wilderness for a full life? Did they start mating? Is there a secret pack of camels somewhere in Arizona right now? Or did one dude just keep them all and start a private camel ranch?

 – – – 

Through a post on an American Legion website that cites zero sources, I can possibly provide some answers to these questions. I don’t know if they’re true, but they’re pretty great regardless. Apparently some were just let go to fend for themselves and became feral in the American West. Some were auctioned off and one dude took a bunch to Canada, where an additional few escaped. This site claims that wild camel sightings in both countries were happening up into the 1930s. Despite my earlier facetious question, I can’t imagine that’s true. But hey, I truly hope it is. It would be a sliver of a silver lining to this overall bummer of a story.

If Americans had to go back and fix all the mistakes we’ve made in the past, I don’t think we’d ever finish, but I think this one is fairly simple. Let’s bring some camels back; try it out. Why not?

I want to dress up like Jesse James and ride from town to town on my trusty camel steed. I want to come across packs of wild camels, rope one and tame it. I want camel racing to be a sport. I want to tie my camel up outside the grocery store and have it effortlessly carry my bags home. It’s the America I never knew I wanted.

Big thanks to “The Great Plains” by Walter Prescott Webb for giving me this ridiculous story.

LeBron James is Stuck

I wrote a few months ago that LeBron James should have been the MVP, and I stand by all of that. He’s shown he has the power to get the people around him that he wants. But that’s now proving to be a more complicated matter than I realized then.

LeBron can’t ever leave Cleveland now. His departure in 2010 emotionally destroyed the city and professionally destroyed the Cavaliers. His return, in his words, was all about “northeast Ohio” and “coming home.” Think about how hard he had to work to overcome his image problem after The Decision, now imagine him trying to win back the public after bailing on the Cavs once again <after> he came back to save them. He can’t go through that again.

Which is what makes the Tristan Thompson contract situation so interesting to me. He and LeBron share an agent in Rich Paul, which makes it reasonable to assume that LeBron would be upset if the front office spurned his teammate and agent on a new maximum contract. It would also be reasonable to assume that LeBron has the sway to get his team to pony up and give Thompson the cash he wants.

But how many power moves can LeBron make before his team, or the public, grows tired of it?

The Cavaliers have already shelled out a potential $1.7 billion in contracts this summer.*

*That is not actually true:

Matthew Dellavedova: 1 year, $1.5 million

LeBron James: 2 years, $46 million

Richard Jefferson: 1 year, $1.5 million

James Jones: 1 year, $1.5 million

Kevin Love: 5 years, $113 million

Iman Shumpert: 4 years, $40 million

JR Smith: 2 years, $10 million

Mo Williams: 2 years, $2.4 million

So they’ve already around $215 million on new contracts for eight players, are under contract for at least $30 million next season between Kyrie Irving, Timofey Mozgov and Anderson Varejao, and LeBron still wants the team to toss out another roughly $20 million per year for Thompson.

They’re already neck deep in the luxury tax, and the Thompson contract would send the tax hike higher than an Irving-James alley-oop.

The obvious reason that the Cavs should do this is that they’re in the interest of keeping LeBron happy. When LeBron isn’t happy, he’s liable to shatter your heart and cast off your franchise into a barren wasteland. That track record is there.

But he really can’t do that again. He could barely handle that first season in Miami, the pressure and scrutiny messed with him too much. Does he really want to put himself in the stocks for the public to call him a traitor/coward/heartless bastard, the metaphorical tomatoes and heads of lettuce in modern times, at him once again? My guess is no.

Which is why I think the Cavaliers have more power here than people think. Thompson essentially wants a max contract; the problem is that he hasn’t really earned it. With the salary cap increase next season, he’ll most likely get that money from somebody. But I’m sure he’d much rather get it from a championship-caliber team, especially one with LeBron on it.

That, and his skillset is perfect in Cleveland. He doesn’t have to do a lot except suck in rebounds (by far his best function), run a decent pick and roll when needed and hold his own on defense. And they need him for those things badly. But is it max contract badly? LeBron seems to think so.

Going deep in the luxury tax would keep the Cavs together, but it would also force them to stay together. You don’t get flexibility when you’re far over the cap and paying dearly for it. Does LeBron really want these specific guys badly enough to stick with them for multiple years? He better. Because if he gets his way, they’ll be there for good, and if it doesn’t work as well as planned he’ll have no one to complain to but himself.

First Thoughts on The Hateful Eight Trailer

The first thing that stands out about the “The Hateful Eight” trailer, and perhaps the most important thing about the movie, is the setting. Snow, snow, snow, snow, snow. For starters, Tarantino is no stranger to the fluffy stuff. The scenes in the mountains in Django Unchained were some of my favorite: the coolest and coolest-looking.

It seems like QT deliberately wanted a difficult shoot for him and his “glorious 70mm” equipment. The road was hard enough before production even started, so why not make the filming as harsh as possible, just so he knows everyone is as committed as him? I’m sure this is exactly the film he saw in his mind when conceiving the project, and there’s no way he was going to cut corners after wading through so much shit just to get it off the ground.

Seeing Kurt Russell in the snow immediately brings to memory “The Thing,” a beautiful, scary film about people going insane and turning on each other in inclement weather. That’s what snow and cold does to people. Would The Thing have been quite as terrifying if the whole base wasn’t under the threat of freezing/starving to death? The answer is no. You don’t need a leaked copy of the script to realize that a group of characters not-so-subtly described as “The Hateful Eight” might not get along too well in this landscape.

The plot is so freaking similar to “The Thing,” with one person not being what they say they are and everyone else left without a reasonable method of discovering who. Just replace the alien with old-timey facial hair and guns and you’ve got a movie.

Yes I’m sure it’ll end up with plot structures and motivations completely diverging from John Carpenter’s classic – there will inherently be more movement and a motivation for an endgame – but when you use the lead actor from that film, you’re not really hiding any similarities. This film even has the same disinterest in using any women prominently. The only female up in those mountains is on her way to get hung, for Christ’s sake. But Tarantino has a history of using badass females in important roles, so here’s hoping Daisy Domergue has more up her sleeve. (A mocking disregard toward her own fate does seem promising.)

But if you enjoy any other Tarantino films, I’m sure it would be difficult not to enjoy this one. Many of his cronies/BFFs/dude muses are back: Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, with his newest pal Christoph Waltz notably absent.

And did I mention the old-timey facial hair and guns? That’s great. I love it. Give me that, please. There’s plenty of implied violence in the trailer; I would expect that to become realized in the real deal. I don’t believe Tarantino would pass up the chance to have bright red blood spray magnificently across a pristine, snow-covered mountainside.

And with a nearly completely white-washed cast, maybe we won’t have to endure so many racial epithets this time around. I think that’s something we can all enjoy.

“Hard Knocks” & Why I Won’t Watch The Texans This Season

I only made it through one minute and 15 seconds of “Hard Knocks” with the Houston Texans. I didn’t need anything else. I got all the information I could possibly desire about the upcoming season from the opening speech head coach Bill O’Brien gave to his staff.

My conclusion: I don’t want to watch any Texans games this year, and I don’t even want to know what happens in them.

– – –

The show opens with the usual B-roll footage: a garage door opening to reveal the practice field, sprinklers, goalposts, yardlines. It’s one day until Texans training camp begins. You hear Bill O’Brien’s voice before you see him. “Let’s be honest with each other,” the disembodied voice says. This is not something anyone who voluntarily associates themselves with the Texans should do. But this is what the voice commands.

Okay then, let’s get into it. We finally see the man in charge. He is seated at the head of a very long table filled with coaches, trainers, etc. with laptops and coffee and a general look of fear and resignation towards their head coach. As he continues talking you begin to understand why this is the case. I will now present to you O’Brien’s monologue in full:

“Let’s be honest with each other. This place has no respect in the league, just so you guys are all aware of that. This organization is 96-126. Thirty games below .500. Turn your TV on. No one talks about the Houston Texans, because no one thinks we’re going to win. And the disrespect they show out quarterbacks, I’m tired of that, too. Because both those kids can play. They just need a chance, and one of them is going to get it. Alright? Enough is enough. Every player that’s out there, all 90 players are players I want for the 2015 season. When you fucking guys show up to practice tomorrow, they better be ready to fucking go.”

WHEW.

You see what I mean? There’s no need to watch a single Texans game all season.

But look Alex, Bill O’Brien is intense and awesome, don’t you want to watch that in-game? No. First, I don’t get to hear speeches like that on a FOX broadcast. If I do, it’s watered-down halftime clichés. Not interested.

Second, he immediately contradicted his own opening statement. How can you say you’re being honest with everyone when you follow it up by saying Ryan Mallet and Brian Hoyer, who are 27 and 29 by the way, are “kids” who “can play.” I know he wants to believe it so, so badly. I respect and adore that. Because I do, too. But sad to say, the media disrespects them for a reason.

The ESPN coverage of the training camp utilized graphics for the Houston quarterbacks that were horrifying. I don’t remember the actual statistics, but the side-by-side comparison was basically looking at dog shit next to goat shit. I couldn’t tell you the difference, and it wouldn’t do me any good to try. These dudes will be bad.

So good try, Coach O’Brien. I love your enthusiasm, and I realize you don’t have a choice. You can’t say your quarterbacks are closer to Tim Tebow than Tom Brady when television cameras are around. But your irritated insistence on denying the fact is too beautiful. Hard Knocks one minute in is more interesting than any actual competitive football you’ll play in the coming 17 weeks.

My plan is to save the rest of this episode for the Texans’ opening Sunday and watch it then. There will be five episodes of this, I can watch all of them three times on Sundays throughout the season. By watching them instead of games or coverage or interviews, I can watch O’Brien’s angry optimism and pretend the season hasn’t started and the losses haven’t already come.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence this is where I happened to pause HBOGO. This will certainly be Bill O’Brien’s mood for at least 80% of the season. I’ve seen the future, and it’s grumpy as hell.

Besides, I can’t bear to see my beautiful baby J.J. Watt lose many more games, and he can be nothing but a winner on this show. I choose Hard Knocks instead.

Let’s Cool It on Mike Riley For A Sec, Guys

I’ve kept mostly quiet for the last nine months or so on Husker football, mostly because I’ve had very little to say about Mike Riley. And at least 80% of the words written about him since his hiring on December 4, 2014 have been guesswork, blind hope, or the words “nice guy”. We could have done all that in the first week and moved on, but this is Husker football and we’re in Nebraska; it constantly needs to be talked about.

So I’ll (tentatively) jump in now. First off, Mike Riley does genuinely seem like a nice guy and good coach who is entirely capable of fitting in and winning plenty of games at Nebraska. I don’t think that’s in question. But that’s where the certainties end, and the point that every writer and fan in the state has used as a launch pad to soar to some wild proclamations and praise. Let’s remember that the dude has yet to coach a game for this team yet.

That doesn’t matter to most people around here, just because they see Riley as the guy who will “change the culture” and/or “bring back Nebraska football”. It feels like we’ve seen this before, right?

Let’s play the headline game, see if you can fill in the blanks:

A. Omaha World-Herald: “Excelling at basics is job one for Nebraska in ____”
B. USA Today: “Under new coach ______, Nebraska gets back to basics”

The answer to A is “2015”. That article was published three days ago. The answer to B is, of course, “Pelini”. That was published exactly seven years ago today. Maybe time really is a flat circle. And Husker fans had as bleak a view on the world last December as Rust Cohle.

Riley is what we thought Pelini would be. Pelini was what we thought Callahan should be. Callahan was what we thought Solich could be. Solich was supposed to be Osborne Part Deux. It never, ever ends.

I recently watched “Edge of Tomorrow,” where Tom Cruise relives the same day over and over, learning from all his mistakes in the previous days to defeat an alien invasion. And damn if it doesn’t feel like Nebraska football is getting its ass kicked in a metal suit, trying to figure out why it keeps dying.

Nebraskans loved Pelini at first because he had been at, and succeeded with, Nebraska before. After the distant Callahan, that was comfortable and familiar. He was a steak and mashed potatoes dinner. It felt safe. Early success didn’t hurt, either. An ESPN story on Pelini from early ’08 hit that comfort angle hard, comparing the new hire to Osborne as “They’re straightforward and rarely mince words.” Pelini was always going to tell you how he felt and not back down, and we grew to resent him for it.

Riley is also a lot like Osborne but in a much different way, the “aw shucks senior citizen” kind of way. He’s also a steak and mashed potatoes dinner, just with a different seasoning. This steak is also cut into tiny pieces and chewed ever so slowly. (The joke here is that he’s old.) And there’s nothing wrong with that. But it is a little too obvious, right? Nebraska is like the dude that starts dating a girl that looks creepily similar to his ex-girlfriend. We still haven’t really moved on. And will we ever? Even if he wins a national, or even a conference title, won’t he just be known as the first coach to win at Nebraska since Osborne?

It’s a tough situation to jump into, but Riley looks trustworthy. He represents both a return to “traditional Nebraska football” but also progression to “national relevancy”. And Husker fans eat that shit up. It’s happened four straight hires in a row. When will it actually work?

I wrote long about this in my late, great “TSL Wrap Up” column for Corn Fed Sports after Pelini’s firing. Here’s part of that:

“Nebraska has demanded excellence and national prominence from its head coaches, but hasn’t been able to get that for three straight hires. At what point does it stop being about the coaches and we start to think about what exactly this program is and what it’s capable of?
Say Pelini was stuck in a rut all you want, I can’t disagree with you. But the program was in an even deeper rut before him. How many coaches can the Huskers go through before they find one that brings the success and glory they so desperately desire?
The facilities and resources are excellent, one of the best in the nation. Memorial Stadium has sold out for 340 straight games. The head coach makes several million dollars. Eichorst reiterated this over and over at the press conference yesterday, that there’s no reason why a coach can’t compete for national championships at Nebraska.
So why did three straight head coaches over the course of 16 years fail to maintain that envisioned standard of excellence, despite all everything in place? There is something bigger within the program that administrators must look at.
…
You can hire and fire all the coaches you want, but if it never works out, what are you left with? Nebraska could just be a program, university, and state that’s stagnant in the present, always working in vain to get back to the past.”

I still mostly stand by this. There’s some reason for 17 straight years of (relative to Osborne) failures that goes deeper than each specific coach’s flaws. The problem neither I nor anyone else knows what that is.

Maybe Riley does. Maybe he takes an already talented roster, adds his own guys, and sprints straight to the top, as fast as a guy his age can go, without looking back. I would love that. Please, dear god, let that happen. But after the last three times we’ve gone through this, I don’t see those odds as very high. Which I realize makes me a lot unlike most people in Nebraska.

At this point, we’re a Lite version of Cubs fans. We believe every year we’re championship caliber. We’ll twist facts and believe anything that gives us hope. And that’s not a bad thing. That’s how a sellout streak happens and recruits say the fanbase helped swing their decision. That rabid passion helps, and I love being a part of it, but it’s just so freaking disheartening after a while. I don’t know how Cubs fans have been at it for 97 years.

– – –

So can we please be less like Cubs fans and actually wait for the season to begin? Every sport’s preseason, or right now for college football, is prime time for undeserved hype and conception of madly-hoped-for expectations. Can we just cool it for now? We don’t know jack about the 2015 Nebraska Cornhuskers, and we won’t until they play an actual college football game.

Fall camp will bring about names of starters, key players and surprising upstarts earning their spots. That’s nice, it tells you how the players compare to each other. It tells us zero percent of what will happen when this team faces off against BYU in September. What Riley will call, how he’ll react to the atmosphere and crowd, his strategies and gameplans; all of that is a month away.

So let’s keep it there. Wait until Riley has coached some damn football first. Then I will eagerly absorb your thoughts, once you actually have something to base them on. Wouldn’t that be helpful?