Frank Uppsershaw died last Sunday afternoon. He died utterly and absolutely during the fourth quarter of the Ravens-Seahawks game. Ravens were up by six points. They had the ball. There were two minutes and twenty-three seconds left to the game. Then Lamar tossed a short screen to Ingram, and it looked like Ingram fumbled. The refs were reviewing the playback when ABC cut to a news break.
So, there was that. The Hawks may or may not have gotten the ball off the fumble, and the damned station cuts to a news break. That might have been enough for ole Frank’s ticker to hammer its last pump. But it wasn’t. What hampered Frank’s ticker is that he was tuned to ABC when the news break came on. What stopped Frank’s pump cold mid-systole was that he was face to face with an ABC news break and was utterly and completely unprepared for its lack of rosy hued filter on the news.
The ABC news folks did not have the same reference, not even the same set of Faux facts, as Frank’s go-to for misinformation, namely O’Rully and Sariah Sunders. This news break dropped, completely unfiltered, the fact that the sky is blue, not rosy beige; that the earth is composed of water, minerals and dirt, not apple pie with whip cream topping; and that snacking on a quarter of an apple pie with whip cream topping while watching the Ravens hammer the Seahawks was not a good idea for a Hawks fan. But it was not the overload of whip cream that creamed Frank’s last thought. What dumped Frank Uppershaw into the eternities was that his center of being just could not take the overload of trying to reassemble the vast reservoir of fake knowledge O’Rully and Sunders had been feeding him for these twenty-three years. His believing just could not take an earth of water, soil, and minerals.
Frank died from an overload of facts.
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