Meta-ranting

Our long national nightmares are over:

• California Chrome®™ didn't win the Triple Crown™®, which only bettors and nine-year-old girls really cared about.
  
  (And right out of the gate, so to speak, I lash out in my ignorance, knowing nothing about horses, racing, betting or nine-year-old girls.)
  
  (But come on … did you really care about it?)
  
  Co-owner Steve Coburn quickly shook the bandwagon empty and tarnished good feeling by calling other horse owners cowards for not racing their horses in all three Triple Crown©® races, instead putting fresh horses up against California Chrome in the Belmont Stakes®™ last weekend.
  
  But that's the way it's been since almost always — I looked it up, poking tiny light in my darkness — which is why the Triple Crown®™ is so rare: Only 11 since 1919 when the whole business began, the last by Affirmed in 1978.
  
  (I looked it up.)
  
  Horses should have to compete in all three races — the Kentucky Derby®, the Preakness Stakes™® and Belmont®© — in order to vie for the Triple Crown®™, Coburn said into the nearest microphone right after the race, without so much as a "Nice race, congratulations to the winner."
  
  Knowing nothing about horse racing, I still can't see how that would be any fun — a field of tired horses cantering (looked it up!) around the track, jockeys trying not to embarrass themselves.
  
  The Triple Crown©® is a Really Big Deal, I'm gonna guess, because despite having to race fresh horses, the exhausted champions prevail.
  
  Even if California Chrome® had won — what of it? The news value would have lasted no longer than Monday around the water cooler (does anybody really talk around water coolers?)
  
  At best it becomes the stuff of random conversation, like I had last week — no water coolers were harmed — trying to name three Triple Crown winners — Seattle Slew? Secretariat? National Velvet? My Little Pony®™?
  
  Or a movie starring Shia LeBeouf™®.
  
  At least one TV station here sent one of its news anchors to New York to cover Belmont®™ himself (the other co-owners are from Yuba City, about an hour away, and I guess all the news syndicates were broken). I'd put that down as a misappropriation of funds.
  
  Coburn has since apologized to America and the world. But I think he already did us a favor.

• Richard Sherman®™ has been picked for the cover of the next Madden NFL®™© football video game.
  
  I was really sweating it. The cover could have gone any number of ways — imagine the world with Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton on the Madden®™ cover! —  but it went to the polarizing cornerback of the Seattle Seahawks, who is one of the few defensive players to get the honors.
  
  I know this because I can't not know it. It's one of those "News" Items You Can't Avoid If You Tried by spending any amount of time on the Internets. The story went on for a couple of days, masquerading as important and useful in some fashion.
  
  Maddening.
  
• The NBA finals are over.
  
  They're not over? How long does this thing go on? Does it seem to you like the NBA playoffs have rumbled on for three months, maybe longer than the regular season?
  
  How many more days of LeBron and whatever he says, does, thinks, doesn't think, pontificates? How much more of posturing and flopping and cults of personality? No doubt the game is full of physical prowess, but it plays like a soap opera. Gimme baseball, where bat flips and showing off are strongly discouraged.

In other matters completely unrelated, it bears repeating what documentary filmmaker Michael Moore said two weeks about shootings in America,  "Enjoy the rest of your day, and rest assured this will all happen again very soon."