shazaam the sinbad movie

9/28/2019 – Michigan 52, Rutgers 0 – 3-1, 1-1 Big Ten

This is all Raj's fault. He referenced the Mandela Effect in Punt/Counterpunt, and I clicked the Wikipedia link. There I had a record scratch moment:

In 2010, this shared false memory phenomenon was dubbed the "Mandela Effect" by self-described "paranormal consultant" Fiona Broome, in reference to a false memory she reported of the death of South African leader Nelson Mandela in the 1980s (who was at the time still alive), which she claimed was shared by "perhaps thousands" of other people. Other such examples include memories of the Berenstain Bears' name previously being spelled as Berenstein, and of a 1990s movie Shazaam, starring comedian Sinbad as a genie.

This is a bad moment, the moment an article about someone else's bad brain suddenly becomes about you. I remember a 1990s movie named Shazaam starring comedian Sinbad as a genie. I remember thinking that it was dumb that they had a movie named Kazaam starring Shaq as a genie. They just made that movie. Why on earth would you make a genie movie like two years after the other genie movie?! No I didn't see it, I have standards.

I have been googling furiously!

I must report back that Shazaam does not exist. This is a jarring thing to myself and fully two-thirds of the people who voted in my very scientific twitter poll on the subject, which even points out that this Sinbad movie is not the Shaq one:

was Sinbad in a genie move in the 1990s that was not the Shaq vehicle Kazaam

— mgoblog (@mgoblog) September 29, 2019

I believe in the ability of the internet to surface literally everything that's ever been, especially if it's dumb and/or funny. Any Shazaam surfacings have been quickly debunked as photoshops or Sinbad appearing as a turbaned host for a bunch of Sinbad movies, often by Sinbad. Sinbad himself insists he was never in a genie movie.

Undeterred, certain other persons have not and will not ever be put off their conviction that Shazaam exists. There's going to the mat for something and then there's this, for a 90s genie movie:

Carl’s explanation, however, is the most detailed. …

“University of Oxford’s philosopher Nick Bostrom suggested that members of an advanced civilization with enormous computing power might decide to run simulations of their ancestors,” he says, also arguing that quantum computers are now able to run such simulations. “In a day where we can now run these simulations, is this a far-fetched theory?” he argues, noting that the famous scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson put the odds we are living in a computer simulation at 50-50 earlier this year.

“Does it make more sense to argue with the scientific minds of our time exposed to the greatest understanding of the capabilities of modern technology, or to argue with the masses of people who simply write off these effects we are noticing as faulty memories?” Carl asks.

Shit, Carl. I had not thought of it like that. That had not occurred to us. I had not thought that we were in a faulty simulation that may fray at the edges by accidentally deleting the existence of Shazaam. Fiona Broome, the paranormal consultant—aren't they all—referenced in the Wikipedia article, has built a semblance of a career on another theory:

The “Mandela Effect” is what happens when someone has a clear memory of something that never happened in this reality.

Many of us – mostly total strangers – remember the exact same events with the almost identical details. However, our memories are different from what’s in history books, newspaper archives, and so on. … parallel realities exist, and – until now – we’ve been “sliding” between them without realizing it.

If this sounds like Ms. Broome had several mind-altering substances during a Sci-Fi channel marathon of the mid-90s Jerry O'Connell vehicle Sliders, well… yeah. This is absolutely, 100% what happened.

But I have to consider the possibility that the dubious provenance of this theory does not keep it from being true, because several people I talked to after the game said things like "that was better" or asked me if that performance changed my opinion. These people must have slid in from parallel universes where the Wisconsin game was less of a debacle. Maybe their universe's version of Rutgers is a spunky, cursed underdog like Indiana is in ours.

Or maybe this isn't "our" universe at all; maybe I, along with the six-hundred or so people who said Shazaam is a real movie in my twitter poll, have shifted timelines. My googling hasn't picked up any glaring alterations from my home universe, so let's just take a big sip of coffee and find out who the president is…

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[Barron]

Your perspective may be different if you've recently shifted universes. In this one Michigan is a team with a ton of question marks and no more time for answers. Rutgers doesn't provide them. Michigan's first touchdown came on five-yard out to Nico Collins on which he was still running 43 yards later. Rutgers fired its coach immediately after the game.

Michigan is staring down the barrel of Iowa, a team with defined offensive and defensive philosophies and an 18-17 win against Iowa State in which they got outgained by about 100 yards and didn't face a potential game-winning field goal drive because one Cyclone obliterated his teammate when he was trying to field a punt. Michigan was a 7-point favorite when betting opened; that line has been hammered down to 4.5 already.

Iowa will be an opportunity to change some perceptions, to prove something. At best it'll probably prove that Michigan can beat a mediocre Michigan State team. That would be nice, but when people ask me about whether needle's moved—no, it still points directly at another Ohio State loss.

We could try to pick out the things about this game against Rutgers that make it seem like the Army and Wisconsin games are not fate for the rest of the season, or we could sit down and try really hard to shift into a different universe. The latter is my bet. Maybe in the other universe they'll have supermarket tomatoes that are good.

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