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Show wjk o (tiLrpraira Ihlnnhi about Sports Broadcasters. SANTA MONICA, CALIF. Somebody said that there were always two big sporting events the one Graham Gra-ham McNamee saw and the one that actually took place. But, alongside the present sports broadcasters, Graham's wildest flight would sound like the dulcet twitters twit-ters of a timid love bird as compared with the last ravings rav-ings of John McCul-lough. McCul-lough. Coaches brag of the lowered percentage percent-age of serious football foot-ball accidents this fall. But oh, think of tV-i Ar Hocnrin. ' I j . si... A tionists who'll wind Irvin S. Cobb up the season -suffering from nervous exhaustion, wrecked vocal chords, violent rush of loud words to the mouth, complete com-plete collapse, even madness. You'll be passing the rest cure sanitarium, and, as the windows burst outward, you'll hear pouring forth something like this: "Oh boy, boy! with one tremendous tremen-dous burst, Irish Goldberg is jamming jam-ming his way from the red back line right through the black interference! inter-ference! Nothing can stop him!" But don't get worked up. What you hear is merely a convalescent microphone orator mentioning a checker game between two fellow-inmates fellow-inmates and reverting to form. Virtues in Snakes. SOMETHING I said recently about the folly of killing every snake on sight, without investigating the snake's character, brought a flock of letters from readers who don't like snakes. Even a so-called venomous snake may have his better side. In Kansas, Kan-sas, in the old local option days, you could get a drink only on a doctor's doc-tor's prescription, excepting in case of dire emergency, such as a snake bite. So every properly run drug store kept a rattlesnake on the premises to serve the citizenry. And the only time a drug store rattler ever refused to bite a thirsty stranger stran-ger was when he was all worn out from accommodating the regular local trade. And what though it was a snake that led Eve astray in the garden of Eden? He may have brought sin into the world, but wouldn't we have missed a lot of spicy reading matter mat-ter in newspapers if he hadn't? Yep, I plead guilty to thinking an occasional charitable thought for any decimated and vanishing group. I feel that way about old line Republicans Re-publicans and mustache cups and red woolen pulse-warmers. Political Predictions. WE TAKE the opportunity to announce an-nounce that the Literary Digest, Di-gest, or rather its journalistic successor, suc-cessor, will not conduct a poll on next year's congressional and state elections. The burnt child dreads the poll. Let others go around taking straw votes, but, the way the Digest folks feel now and, in fact, have felt ever since last November, they wouldn't start a canvass to prove that two and two make four. Because, look here what if it should turn out that two and two merely make some more Marx brothers or a double set of Siamese twins? Anyhow, the business of basing cocksure predictions on half-cocked estimates doesn't seem to be flourishing flour-ishing these days. Figures don't lie, but the citizens who furnish the figures may do so, either unintentionally uninten-tionally or just for the sake of a laugh. The rise of candid camerasa-tionalizing camerasa-tionalizing say, we just thought up that word proves that a photograph photo-graph of things as they are is mightier than a lot of loose statistics sta-tistics predicated on what the voters vot-ers may or may not do and probably prob-ably won't, when the time comes. Forgotten Stars. ONCE interviewers clamored for a hearing and her face was on half the magazine covers and her name in letters of flaming light above all the marquees. Once impressive im-pressive tycoons catered to her temperamental tem-peramental whims; press agents waited upon her, courtiers attending attend-ing a queen. Autograph seekers besieged her then, while now only bill collectors desire her signature and they'd like to have it on a check. Speak of her to the newer generation, and somebody will say, "Who? Spell it, please." She is all through, all washed up. But, like the deaf husband whose wife has slipped, will be the last person in town to hear the news. Having traveled a road which issues is-sues mighty few round-trip tickets, she still dreams of a come-back. She is the most tragic and the most pitiable figure and one of the commonest to be found in this place called Hollywood. She is any one of the host, men and women, who, ten years ago, or even five, were glittering stars in movieland. IRVIN S. COBB. Copyright. WNU Service. I |