(Editor's Note: We sent 4-time Jeopardy champion, local stand-up comic, and Norman TLO Trivia Night host Wampus Reynolds to the Norman Police Department on Thursday morning to review the Joe Mixon assault tape with the "media." Here is his report.)
When I heard the Norman PD was releasing the Joe Mixon assault tape, I like every other rubbernecking and curious OU fan wanted to see the video. Mixon couldn't have just decked an innocent girl for no reason, right? He's a Sooner. The players have a, sigh, great reputation. There had to be a Zapruder film showing a second puncher-in-the-facer in the booth behind the action, or perhaps the victim Molitor had a fake plastic thumb full of chicken guts that she dumps on her face like a charlatan bare handed surgeon.
But this "screening" (seriously, Norman Police Department, you call this a "screening?" Screening is a free 5 o'clock showtime at Tinseltown of the new Paul Rudd comedy. Call it VIEWING.) was for the media only. What the what? Why can Tuff Nixter, sportswriter and classified ad salesman for the Wayne Payne Times see footage that has captured the 405's collective imagination and Joe Landman can't? It really makes no sense. It's like sports folk were now courtroom sketch artists, but instead of drawing in colored pencils a dead-eyed defendant's profile, they had to describe the action.
Outraged Seinfeld voice: "And have you actually read these people?" Not exactly the erudite Roger Aingell prosody around these parts. I've actually heard one sports radio personality say this sentence on air: "He ain't got no, uhhh...fast." You want this guy to relate what happens to you? By the end, you'll think some person turned into an actual pickle and fell on a table and Regular Jim Traber ate it.
I tweeted TLO (for whom I co-host Trivia Night at Local in Norman every Wednesday at 7) that I'd write a real good piece if they got me in with press. And thanks to two emails and a responsive officer, I was on the list. I did get the distinct pleasure of seeing Patrick saying that I should show my "press credentials" and regarding those words as if they were in Sanskrit. I was hoping he'd pull out a dusty fedora with a card saying PRESS tucked in the headband. He wrote back "We ain't got no, uhhh....authorize" instead.
I showed up at the Norman Investigations Center and went in a small group. We walked down a hall (I noticed golf clubs in one office along the way; OJ investigation style!) and entered a big chilly room. Many of the great Oklahoma sports personalities were there. Berry "A six months younger Matlock" Tramel! Andrew "I know from childhood when he had Harpo hair" Gilman! Myron "Myron" Patton"! Others!
The police chief came in, identified himself and moved to the side. Then a captain said he had no comments and they'd start the video. They did.