Local TV viewers and radio listeners are accustomed to Howard Eskin kvetching.
For more than 30 years, as a survivor of all media formats and changes, Eskin has never shied away from saying what he believes, even if it leads to controversy and disparagement from some of his sports colleagues.
Sports provides a lot of room for opinion and analysis. Eskin is happy to tell you Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer put ego ahead of Golden Rule tradition when he had his team go for a touchdown instead of taking a knee with 30 seconds remaining in their national championship game against Oregon. He is willing to brand New England Patriots fans the “worst” and “most moronic and idiotic” in the world because of their dogged defense of Tom Brady in the case of the deflated footballs that marred the Pats’ latest Super Bowl victory. (He grants a pass, by the way, to the terminally ill 90-year-old woman who said she couldn’t die in peace unless she showed her support of Brady.)
Little has happened in sports that Eskin has nothing to say about. But sports is not the world.
Newscasters, feature reporters, and even weather folk have oodles of topics on which they can comment. Eskin experiences some of the frustrations the subjects do in those stories. He has opinions about politics, shoddy practices, and day-to-day life just like everyone else.
He wants to express those ideas as well. He wants to take on mayors, governors, attorneys and rule-bound authority figures with the same zeal he’s confronted general managers, team owners and uncooperative players over the decades.
Eskin knows that when a matter has driven him to such distraction, he’s had it, and now he has a chance to share his gripes, comments and observations about general life with you.
“Howard’s Had It” began as a regular feature segment on Channel 29’s 5 p.m. newscast around the time the Fox station was celebrating its 50th anniversary on the air.
“Howard’s Had It” is wide-ranging. At 5 p.m., there’s Howard is in his well-tailored suit and equally natty haberdasher and a good trim to his hair and beard venting to viewers about anything that happens to be riling him that day.
The agitation may come from a news story. When the Amtrak train derailed in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia, killing a number of people and injuring scores of others last month, Eskin expressed sympathy for the dead, the hobbled, and their families, but went on to attack a group he said literally made him sick.
Attorneys. Not all attorneys, but ambulance chasers, the ones who rushed down to the accident site to present their cards and institute action before a burial or diagnosis took place. Wait a day. Let people mourn and grieve. Let doctors do their work before swooping in like starved vultures to collect the spoils of calamity.
Politicians are another target. Happy the primary is over so he doesn’t have to listen to legions of ads and promises, Eskin wondered aloud what happened to those promises. Who’s feet are held to the fire to deliver on the policies and programs a candidate said he or she is going to pursue?
Howard said he wants to track what the primary winner – virtual mayor-elect Jim Kenney – said he was going to do while seeking office once he obtains the office. Howard’s had it with politicians who don’t come through.
He’s also had it with the cost of campaign ads. While grateful as a broadcaster for the bounty political ads bring to station coffers, Eskin wonders why corporations and individuals give candidates money to pay for expensive, but ephemeral, commercials when those millions might be better used to fund schools and other institutions that go begging while money is being wasted.
Eskin is also willing to take on crazy rules. He talks about being on an airplane and having to use the bathroom, but being told he had to walk 30 rows to the rear of the plane, where there’s a line, instead of four rows to the facility that happens to be in first class and is empty. He acknowledged he was sitting in coach, but wants to know when logic will prevail.
“I gave opinions about all kinds of sports matters over the years,” Eskin said about the “Howard’s Had It” segment. “I thought it was time to get some other complaints off my chest.”
Here’s two ideas from my treasure trove of pet peeves: People who are in line at a cash register but don’t have their wallet, credit card, or any currency in their hand when they’re told the price of their purchase – I really hate it when they count out pennies – and officious bank tellers and others who won’t complete a transaction with a senior who has stopped driving because his or her I.D. has expired. This is especially galling at places where the senior has shopped or banked for years and is known to be who he or she claims to and is known to be entitled to the service requested.
Marvel-ousWhen I was a kid, D.C. Comics featuring Superman, Batman, Flash, the Green Lantern, the Green Arrow, and Wonder Woman were all the rage. I couldn’t wait for the beginning of a month when the new magazines were issued.
D.C. continues to have currency, but it has great competition from Marvel, whose Avenger characters and others have spawned hit movies and popular TV shows, such as the current Netflix favorite, “Daredevil.”
Doug Schaer, an entrepreneur who searches for enticing entertainment projects, and his partners wanted to find a way to make the experience of encountering Marvel characters more immediate and interactive, a way to immerse a fan in all things Marvel.
His solution was to create a program in which spectators would not be sitting or standing, but doing and participating while following a narrative and being surrounded by images, experiences and options that bring the comic setting of Marvel to life.
Called “The Marvel Experience,” Schaer’s show is at Lincoln Financial Field through Saturday, and uses images from four quadrants, acoustics, and other technological tools to give people an experience he said “is common to all who attend but unique to each person participating.”
A person can be part of the action but also take the time to pose for a selfie with an animated character. Schaer said the technology is more on a scale with 2030 than 2015. “Images surround you at 360 degrees, and the effect is like being in 3-D. Characters are floating around you, including some villains. Or Spider-Man.”
“The Marvel Experience” lasts for 24 minutes, and Schaer said groups entering the site are measured, so it’s never too crowded. Participants are directed, Schaer said, but you can make you own path and have your own experience.
Kudos to Ch. 6I had tentative dinner plans with a high school classmate, and was debating whether to keep them. Adam Joseph was exhilarating, showing his Channel 6 audience a series of sophisticated graphs and charts that might pinpoint where a tornado could hit in the region. He warned viewers in Exton and Malvern they were the prime candidates for a twister. Tornado or not, a series of storms was brewing, and damage in the form of flooding and downed trees and power lines could affect lots of people in lots of place.
Just as I was becoming mesmerized by the calculative columns of lights composing Joseph’s graphs, I heard rumblings in the distance and saw lightning, the same signs of mayhem Channel 6 reporter Dann Cuellar was telling Joseph he was witnessing while riding in a Channel 6 van in Chester County near the likely tornado path.
Next thing I knew, Joseph disappeared, Cuellar was rendered silent, and everything electric in my house started hibernating as rain came a-tumblin’ down in torrents.
That clinched it. No lights, no staying home. I confirmed with my friend, jumped into the shower, miraculously matched socks by the first flicker of renewed sunlight, and headed off to South Philly since I decided the storm warranted comfort food, which meant an old-style Italian meal at Ralph’s. Following dinner, fearing my outage was not resolved, I headed for the one Starbuck’s I knew was civilized enough to stay open until 11, the one on Penn’s campus, and read my ubiquitous 18th-century history until I was forced to face going home. Stopping to buy batteries, and ice, in case I had to protect items in my fridge and freezer, I headed home to find the darkness unabated. Miffed that I couldn’t raise the leg rest on my electric lounger, and more irritated I would have no air conditioning, I figured early to bed was the only option. Then, what to my wondering eyes did appear, but a flickering light from a lamp standing near. On came the air and my old television, and I laughed as I thought of my former derision. With the fridge roaring in, and the safety of light, I could do what I do and stay up all the night. Which I did.
Empathy to those who were without power for days. A scant 10 minutes was enough to drive me to distraction.
The point of all of this storytelling is to congratulate Adam Joseph, with a supporting nod to Dann Cuellar, for the thoroughness, accuracy, and interesting nature of their reports. My biggest regret at losing power was to the certainty of missing Adam being fascinated by all of his forecast equipment, just as we were fascinated by his analysis.
