Paps Papwell’s 3-Dot Hot Takes: COVID-19 Edition

So anyway, I finally get out of my court-mandated 18-month stint in Lars Ulrich’s Rehabilitation Hospital and School of Rock, only to emerge into a world of stay-at-home orders and no sports. I should have stayed at Lars’; I was still confined to my room, but at least there was lobster thermidor every other Wednesday. . . I’d like to preface my column today by thanking all of the fine people at the Los Angeles County Municipal Courthouse, Judge Glenda Steeples, and the staff of Ulrich’s Barbados rehab facility for their hard work in helping me atone for my crimes, confront my demons, and enjoy several consecutive months of sobriety for the first time in over 47 years. . . I’d also like to thank my friend and confidant Nacho for stopping by my apartment after my release to show he was still there for me, and to drop off a week’s worth of methamphetamine, without which I wouldn’t be awake at 3:52 AM penning a sports column in a time of no sports. . . Onward and upward! With baseball on hiatus for the foreseeable future, I’ve had to shelve an interesting piece I’ve been working on about Giants’ first baseman Brandon Belt. With the help of some private investors, Belt has been quietly developing a fully biodegradable beard substitute. Turns out the “beard” he’s been sporting for several years is actually repurposed coffee grounds! . . . Another fun baseball story that’ll have to wait for another day is the saga of those delightfully brazen cheaters, the Houston Astros, and the “Bean Jose Altuve” Tour that they were set to embark on. I had already put down $20K at Caesar’s Palace on “lower back” as being the first body part hit in 2020. The suspense is killing me. . . With live sports shut down, ESPN has been resorting to some pretty lame substitute programming. I was beyond disappointed the other day when I turned on something billed as the “National Cornhole Championship.” Having not grown up in the Midwest and with little interest in cookouts or wholesome family activities, I was shocked to find out that the event consisted of people tossing beanbags into holes in wooden boards. Where I come from, that’s not what we mean by “cornhole”. . . The 2020 Olympics have also fallen prey to the COVID-19 crisis, a real tragedy for those who enjoy watching cities go into incalculable debt building white elephant stadiums that slowly decay into sad landmarks of futility, broken promises, and government malfeasance, and for fans of gymnastics. . . Of course, they’ve only been postponed a year, so don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of corruption and graft to go around next summer. And gymnastics. . . Been busy huffing gas and watching “The Last Dance” doc about MJ and the Bulls. While my heart thrills at the sound of Michael Jordan saying “motherfucker,” the best part so far has got to be the segment about Phil Jackson’s brief marriage to Pamela Anderson. I had forgotten all about their Lake Havasu sex tape, so it’s been nice to relive those moments again. . . I’ve resorted to some desperate measures to keep my gambling buzz alive these past few weeks, too. I lost $42K in a poorly-conceived Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament with Nacho, but bounced back by taking a local brothel owner to the cleaners with a $50K wager on “The Masked Singer”. . . We’d be knee-deep in the NBA Playoffs by now under normal conditions, but the prospect of a Clippers team that might actually contend for a title led directly and inevitably to the outbreak of a worldwide pandemic that shut down every major industry in the world while killing hundreds of thousands. Never let anyone tell you the Clippers Curse isn’t real. The dead who’ve been left in the wake of the Kawhi Leonard signing would argue differently. . . You know that commercial where the woman is washing blood out of a shirt, and then a man in a Guy Fawkes mask walks in with an even bloodier shirt and a box of detergent, and then they wrestle one another and end up falling into a vat of chicken chili, and the man starts yelling about how it’s burning his eyes? That’s a weird commercial. . . Hang in there everybody, it’s time for me to sign off for now. I’ve got a long night of freebasing and Korean baseball ahead of me. Those goddamn Doosan Bears are “due” for something, alright: a comeuppance!