The Leprechauns Must Pay For Our Sins

Go Watch The Muppet Movie

2011-12-01T01:27:00.005-05:00

Right now. It is a movie and it stars the Muppets. If you haven't seen it yet, it is time.

However, if you can't immediately go, there is this. And it is amazing.

'Tis The Season

2011-11-24T13:06:00.003-05:00

I was serenaded thusly this morning:

It's the holiday season
Thanksgiving Turkey
Is coming down the chimney

I Love My Smoke Alarm

2011-09-16T22:20:00.002-04:00

Back at the dawn of time, prehistoric man would commonly wake up to find his cave on fire just before dying in the inferno. This eventually led mankind to move from caves to apartment buildings, which are equally flammable, but feature a device called a smoke alarm specifically designed to let you know if you are in impending danger of being cooked to medium-rare (Doneness may vary due to the strength of the blaze and the mass of the individual in question. Always use a thermometer to ensure precision). Simply by inserting that 9-volt battery you found in the bottom of the drawer where you keep your winter gloves under the hat your great-aunt knitted for you into the machine after first touching it to your tongue to make sure it still has a charge, you can be alerted of danger in time to escape to the great outdoors. But this clearly was not enough. Worried that the batteries might die and remain unchanged in the now-lifeless machines, someone came up with the idea of tying the smoke alarms into the power lines, ensuring that we apartment-dwellers shall always be safe.

As you may have guessed already, my apartment features one of these miracles of modern technology, and while I have not yet stress-tested it due to a desire to not burn my apartment down, I am certain it will alert me should that become a possibility. I believe this due to the impressive number of things it makes sure to alert me to on a daily basis. For example, I can always count on my smoke alarm to let me know that my oven is on. Smoke is not required for it to perform this vital task. I suspect that somewhere in my smoke alarm is a thermometer, and when it registers any sort of temperature, as heat is not native to Duluth, Minnesota, my alarm decides to warn me of this unnatural development. As it is hardwired into the wall, I do not even need to give it a nine-volt for it to perform this function, and I cannot prevent it from doing so, short of taking an axe to it. Which I have certainly debated doing from time to time. However, it does many other things too, this amazing multi-tasking safety device. For instance, last night it decided to alert me to the fact that it was 4:57 a.m. It did this, not by going off to signal any sort of danger, but by emitting an ear-piercing chirp that the Official Girlfriend somehow slept through for no reason whatsoever (We have two of these machines. The other remained blessedly silent the whole time) every ten seconds as I struggled with both it and my sleep-fogged brain in an attempt to figure out how to silence it for good (Cement shoes and Lake Superior being a leading option). I immediately recognized the chirping as coming from the smoke alarm because it had done that in the middle of the night once before, when it decided to let me know that the power was out and it did not have a battery installed in it, so it could not properly protect me. At this point, you may wish to re-read that sentence. That actually happened until I found a battery and jammed it into the alarm, at which point it shut up, leaving unanswered the obvious question: If it had no battery and the power was out, how was it yelling at me at a volume loud enough to wake the (probable) crack dealers in the vacant house next door?!? I still do not know this, but I am so happy with the security this device provides me that I am giving serious consideration to re-enacting the last fifteen minutes of The Shining with it. And then, and only then, will I finally be able to rest easily. At which point I will presumably die in a fire.

Things Dani Said To Me Tonight

2011-08-29T22:50:00.001-04:00

"I had fifty-four minutes of moderate activity today. Half of it was now, and half of it was walking around Target."

I'm Not Dead Yet

2011-08-24T12:47:00.004-04:00

Pardon me for my silence. I've been busy going from being frustrated over my lack of a spacebar and B and N keys to being shocked by the fact that I once again have these letters and/or spaces at my disposal once again, and am trying to retrain myself on the fine art of typing things. While I do so, may I make the humble suggestion that you watch the following video?

Please note that this features a minor amount of language, as I do not want to be held responsible for pain and suffering caused by such language causing you to fall off your chair. By clicking play, you agree to release me from all doctor's and legal fees that may result from said falling. You may wish to coat your floor in Nerf™ first, just to be safe. And because that would be awesome.

Overheard In Line At The Market

2011-06-02T12:11:00.001-04:00

After the cashier informed a man who looked to be shy of 20 that he hadn't given her enough money to buy the soda he was holding.

"How much more? I can't count so good. Don't need that to get a GED. Don't need no diploma to make babies."

It Is Here

2011-04-16T10:53:00.003-04:00

What The Guy From Nerf Herder Is Doing These Days

2011-04-04T21:21:00.003-04:00

Seems like a logical progression from 'Nosering Girl'.

Opening Day

2011-03-31T13:38:00.005-04:00

Baseball is back! Hooray! So without further ado, let's jump right into some season projections (Teams listed in order of projected divisional finish).

AL East

Boston Red Sox - What, you expected someone else? With their offseason additions, the Sox are the best team in baseball, and they should be announcing that Adrian Gonzalez extension any day now.

Tampa Bay Rays - It was a rough offseason in Tampa, losing Crawford, Pena, and pretty much everything in the bullpen that wasn't tied down, including the players. But they did an excellent job with the Garza trade, and have a group of promising young players ready to step up, led by Jeremy Hellickson. Matt Joyce should make for an solid platoon outfielder in right, and James Shields can't really be Jose Lima in disguise, can he?

NY Yankees - Maybe they'd be in second if I was less biased, but tough for them (And the Rays are still really good). Heck of a lineup, but there's not much depth there, and the rotation is beyond paper-thin. Great bullpen, though. Let's hope they don't all get hurt.

Toronto Blue Jays - If you are a right-handed hitter and can make contact with a baseball, have you considered hitting twenty home runs for the Blue Jays? You really should. It pays well.

On a more serous note, the Jays would probably win the NL Central this year, have lots of young pitching, and cannot be praised enough for dumping Vernon Wells' contract on the Angels.

Baltimore Orioles - It's a solid lineup, but they still need some quality pitching. That's where Matusz, Tillman and Britton come in. Also, this year is the year of Wieters. Really.

AL East

Chicago White Sox - Want.

Minnesota Twins - I worry that at some point both Justin Morneau and the cloner the Twins keep using on Brad Radke are going to break.

Detroit Tigers - Verlander and Cabrera are amazing. How many other Tigers can you name?

Cleveland Indians - Carlos Santana will get a full season to show what he can do (Hint: A lot), Shin-Soo Choo will be traded to accelerate the rebuilding effort, and Grady Sizemore will spontaneously combust.

Kansas City Royals - The Royals combine the best farm system in baseball with a front office that struggles to do anything right on the major league level. Hence Melky Cabrera and Jeff Francouer, who are, technically, horrible at baseball.

AL West

Oakland Athletics - They're counting on a lot of young arms, but I think they've got the depth to withstand some injuries and still turn in their typically stellar run prevention, which should be enough to make up for the offense. Anytime Chris Carter is ready, Billy Beane will find a spot for him. Any day now.

Texas Rangers - Pretty much the inverse of the A's. That is one heck of a lineup, but they don't have a single starter without an enormous question mark. I'll say that this is the year for Derek Holland, though. Also, Michael Young seems to still think he's good. That's cute.

Los Angeles Blah Blah Whatever - They took on Vernon Wells' contract while simultaneously getting rid of that problem they had involving a catcher who could hit. This is a really bad lineup. Prediction: A correlation of -1 between the number of games Jeff Mathis starts and the number of games the Angels win (MATH JOKE).

Seattle Mariners - Which is more likely: The Mariners finishing .500 or Milton Bradley killing a teammate?

NL East

Atlanta Braves - Maybe it's because I root for the Red Sox, but I find myself picking teams with good depth this year. So, yeah, the Braves have it. Mike Minor is ready to start in the majors now, and they've got a bunch of power arms rapidly moving through the system behind him. Also, that Hayword guy is kind of good, I hear.

Philadelphia Phillies - The league's best pitching staff is paired with a lineup that, with Chase Utley out, features one above-average hitter for his position, and no, it's not Ryan Howard. This is the year where he hits that cliff he's been moving towards for the last four years.

Florida Marlins - Will turn a profit.

New York Mets - The rebuilding effort begins by the trade deadline, when Jose Reyes gets sold off. It's not going to be pretty. But they're still better than the...

Washington Nationals - I read multiple articles this offseason about how the Nationals are going to surprise people. They're starting Livan Hernandez on opening day. I don't care how much money they spent on Jayson Werth, they aren't really trying.

NL Central

Uggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Cincinnati Reds - They've got a very good offense, even though Dusty is completely destroying every starting pitcher on the roster one by one. I'll call two of them have Tommy John surgery this year, and the Reds win the division at .500.

Milwaukee Brewers - Absolutely no depth, no farm system, two re-signed, injury prone players, the worst-hitting centerfielder in baseball, the worst hitting and fielding shortstop in baseball, and their new ace is out because he got hurt playing pickup basketball. Sounds like second in the Central.

St. Louis Cardinals - Would've been first before Wainwright got hurt. Drop them down another spot when Carpenter goes down.

Chicago Cubs - Tyler Colvin and Starlin Castro actually provided some excellent cost-controlled production last year. Quick Jim Hendry! Overpay them and break their kneecaps!

Pittsburgh Pirates - The Pirates finally have some exciting young talent in McCutcheon, Tabata, Alvarez and Walker. Unfortunately, all the pitching prospects are still a ways away. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, but it's not quite time yet.

Houston Astros - Godawful.

NL West

San Francisco Giants - No, Aubrey Huff and Pat Burrell are not going to do that again, and Miguel Tejada might challenge Betancourt for the title of 'Worst-fielding shortstop in baseball'. Aaron Rowand is a sunk cost. But Brandon Belt is a rookie of the year contender, Kung-Fu Panda should bounce back, and no one outside of Philadelphia is messing with those pitchers.

Colorado Rockies - There's no real offense outside of Gonzalez, Tulowitzki and Seth Smith, but those forst two guys are rather good. Also, I have a bit of a crush on Jhoulys Chacin, even if I can't pronounce his name.

Los Angeles Dodgers - Chad Billingsley is rapidly turning into the new AJ Burnett, but Clayton Kershaw is a beast. And at least they got rid of Carlos Santana for Casey Blake! Who needs a competent catcher? What I mean is that Ned Colletti is a terrible GM.

San Diego Padres - The pitchers should be fine, and I'm excited to see what Cameron Maybin can do, but the offense wasn't good with Adrian Gonzalez. And he's gone now.

Arizona Diamondbacks - It's nice to see that even with a new general manager, the Diamondbacks are still finding ways to block Brandon Allen from getting playing time. Unfortunately for them, the interim regime traded Dan Haren, who is an excellent pitcher, for Joe Saunders, who should probably be a middle reliever. On the Pirates.

Well, that was fun. And just remember, making predictions is a fool's errand, but these ones are clearly infallible. I'll probably post some other thoughts and/or awards projections tomorrow. Until then, enjoy the baseball.

Things I Heard On TV

2011-03-24T20:15:00.001-04:00

Girl (extremely serious): You mean the oldest vampire in the history of time is coming after me?

Rebecca Black Is Not The Problem

2011-03-18T11:16:00.005-04:00

If you haven't seen/heard it yet, here you go. I'll wait:

(Link in case the video doesn't post right)

Okay. Done with that? Let's start with a thesis: This is the worst song ever. Yes, worse than "Muskrat Love". If you doubt me, go back and listen to it again, especially the bridge at around the two-minute mark. This song has blown up, hitting the top-100 on iTunes, passing 15,000,000 views on YouTube and spawning many articles discussing it (And an excellent cover by Bob Dylan), as well as some potential discussion of Black signing a record deal. However, this is not because people like the song. Despite my occasional misgivings about the subject, we have not quite devolved to that point yet. Rather, this song seems to be the focal point for the long-simmering backlash against the entire teen pop genre, which deserved to die many, many years ago. With that in mind, there is the potential for this song to do a wonderful thing for the world.

You see, Black is not actually a singer, and this song is not actually released by a record label. Black is a teenager whose mother paid a (presumably decent) sum of money to Ark Music Factory, a company that lets people be in their own music video, thus realizing the pinnacle of contemporary culture. The performers have the song written for them, and based on this video, have little input whatsoever into what the finished product will sound like, as Black's voice has been auto-tuned out of existence (And the tiny bit that remains seems to insist on pronouncing 'Friday' as 'fried egg'). I don't know how they handle the video, but it presumably isn't a much more involved process. Then the teenager can go hone and show their friends the music video on YouTube. It's all very exciting. This process leads to complete dreck being kicked out, not for totally valid artistic reasons (Like 'We Built This City'), but solely as an obligation for cash considerations, which is what the pop music industry has been about for quite a while now. This is just a slightly more honest way of doing things. And that is where the fun starts.

You see, no label can touch this and try to pretend that they're signing Black as an artist. Rather, any record deal would have to be as a novelty act, also known as a blatant cash grab. But this calls into question the validity of the entire teen pop genre. You see, none of these performers have talent. They are selected for looks and exploitability, thrust into an auto-tune program to sing something written by a 40-year old man who probably lives in Sweden or something, and shipped out into the world to be eaten alive by fame and the press. They don't actually have the skills to write or sing something decent. They are raw meat. This is different from Black solely in the fact that the major labels put more money into it than Black's mother, so they receive a marginally higher-quality finished product. Beyond signing Black, there are now problems with existing artists. Anyone who puts out anything that sounds even remotely close to this song from here on out is going to be absolutely crucified. The backlash against this song has been so fierce and immediate that the entire genre is going to have to distance itself. And there's even the chance that it could sound the death knell for teen pop as a whole. Which I would be okay with.

But there is going to be a cost to this righteous rage. Forgive me if I start sounding like the 'Leave Britney alone!' guy here, but this needs to be said. It isn't the name of (insert horrific songwriter here) who is going to bear this. It is Black whose name is on this, even though she was only marginally involved in the whole process. Really what she is guilty of is being a teenager and therefore stupid, and having parents dumb and rich enough to indulge her whims. The problem is with Ark Music Factory, the people who are actually responsible for this song, and with the entire music industry that has participated in the process of foisting talentless hacks on us under the guise of 'music'. The major labels, one and all, are at fault here. This is simply one ridiculous example of something they have been doing for years. But Black is going to be the one who takes the fall here, and internet justice is harsh. I hope I'm wrong here, but there's a reasonable chance she is going to be destroyed by this process. If and when this happens, remember who is really responsible. It's not the stupid teenager. It's the adults who look at the stupid teenager and see only money.

This Guy Is In Midseason Form

2011-03-16T18:01:00.005-04:00

Full extension to prevent anyone from getting hit and he doesn't even spill a drop! Try telling me anyone on the Astros could do that. Someone get this man a contract.

A Psychological Analysis of Avril Lavigne

2011-03-11T11:31:00.005-05:00

Based on her newest single, "What the Hell". The lack of a question mark is hers, not mine. I read some Freud once, so I am totally qualified to do this. At least I'm as much of a doctor as this guy (Well, I can't find the video I want to go there. I'll give this an update when I do). Anyway, we're going to go through this song line by line. If you really don't like yourself and wish to hear it, here you are. And Avril, if you're reading this, I promise this will hurt me as much as it hurts you. If you're wondering why, click on that last link with the volume turned up. And now it begins.

You say that I'm messing with your head

Though we do not know the identity of the accuser here, we cannot completely dismiss their opinion of Avril's actions. And as people who are messing others around are often acting out some issues of their own, this is not a promising beginning.

All 'cause I was making out with your friend

Well Avril, you see, until very recently you were married (I, ummm, had to look that up. I swear). So, presuming the other in question is your ex, he would seem to have a legitimate complaint here.

Love hurts whether it's right or wrong

Clearly Avril is now trying to deflect the blame/guilt she feels for her make out session. "It's not my fault! It's love's fault!"

I can't stop 'cause I'm having too much fun

In Infinite Jest, 'too much fun' is used to describe self-demapping via an overdose of one's personal addictive substance of choice. Given the fact that she can't stop, it logically follows that Avril is planning suicide through excessive making out.

You're on your knees begging "Please stay with me"

Clearly Avril feels some anger towards her ex still, as she presents him as desperate to keep her around, even after she has confessed her suicidal plans and addiction to making out. Perhaps we should be psychoanalyzing him too. But anyway, their relationship being rather dysfunctional w/r/t ending might be due to the fact that he produced the majority of her new album after the divorce (See previous parenthetical). I'm sure that wasn't awkward at all.

But honestly I just need to be a little crazy!

Giving your problem a name is the first step, Avril. Good for you.

All my life I've been good, but now

Here Avril is claiming she is merely breaking the repressive societal bonds which have held her in check for the majority of her life, forcing her to adhere to a moral code she evidently does not believe in, though she still chooses to uphold it by giving it the designation of 'good'. Though considering she has been a famous music person/thing since her teens, I don't know how much we should believe this claim.

[Auto-tuned Tarzan howl]

OH DEAR GOD, WHAT IS THAT?!?

I'm thinking what the hell

Thinking? I doubt it.

All I want is to mess around

Good for you. You've identified a want. That's a baby step towards being human. You know what? I'm content with offering a diagnosis now, because reading these lyrics is beginning to affect my quality of life. Based on my incredible background in the science of the mind (Not to be confused with 'Virus of the Mind,' which was a (bad) song by Heather Nova), I can say that Avril Lavigne is very clearly suicidally depressed. This could be for one of several reasons, which I will now list numerically:

1. The recent failure of her marriage, coupled with spending significant amounts of time with her ex in the recording studio.
2. The fact that the hook someone wrote for her song is that Tarzan thing, because good lord does that sound terrible.
3. The fact that said Tarzan thing is very clearly auto-tuned, implying that she can't actually sing it.
4. The fact that she lives in a world where someone would even want her to sing that.
5. The fact that she clearly either has the emotional make-up of a confused 12-year old or
6. Is pretending to relate to confused 12-year olds expressly for the purpose of manipulating them into giving her money.
7. The Tarzan thing again.

My Recommendation: Kill it. Kill it with fire.

Mike Versus The Fine Arts, Part Deux: Avenge The Revengeful

2011-02-08T14:54:00.003-05:00

I am a bit of a neophyte to this whole 'Theater' thing, having grown up much more on forms of art which featured the open destruction of instruments, which really didn't alter the tones they were producing all that much. For some reason this form of personal expression has never really seemed to gain the love of audiences everywhere, or even NEA grants, though it's hard to see how G.G. Allin is much different from Robert Mapplethorpe (Also, I cannot recommend google image searching (Yes, this is a verb now) those names. If you do, it's on you. I am just the messenger here). So, despite being the world's leading authority on most subjects, I am willing to admit that there are one or two people out there slightly more familiar with musical theater than I am. Your grandmother. Probably someone somehow involved in the production of Glee. John Hodgman. In fact, my background with musicals of any kind is mostly limited to a strong loathing of White Christmas, which definitely deserves it. So I am not necessarily the definitive voice to weigh in on this pressing issue, but as Hodgman has thus far remained silent, I must do the duty he is shirking, which is to say this: Renegade's performance of Parade is the best piece of musical theater I have ever seen.

This is not to say it is perfect. No, the only perfect piece of theater is my upcoming 9-act opera about dinosaurs with rocket launchers, which will (most likely literally) destroy all other plays. And mankind. But until some theater troupe finally gets the balls to put on THE GREATEST ACT MANKIND WILL EVER SEE, Parade can have top billing. Now, why am I telling you this right at the beginning of the blog post, you may be asking? Don't most great authors (Like Hemingway) save the climax of a piece (Dying in the rain) for the end of the work, hoping to keep up suspense among the readers (Clinically depressed/alcoholic English majors)? Probably. But here, I am hoping to set a (meta-)frame up for the rest of the piece. Because, you see, most art has flaws. Moby Dick had the cetology of whales. Bruce Springsteen had Hungry Heart. The Beatles had Paul McCartney. And Parade, while excellent, is not perfect. It has the chance to become more than it winds up being, and fails to take the extra step. So, lavish praise out of the way, let us now criticize.

(Note: I will probably (Unless I forget) be referring to characters by the first names of the actors portraying them both because I forgot my copy of the programme in the car, and because I am familiar with them primarily by first names due to the presence of The Official Girlfriend in the cast, even though most of them are not familiar with me. This will likely make me look like some sort of creepy stalker. But I'm not, as far as the police department knows.)

/puts on serious face

Parade is set in Atlanta in 1913, and framed with scenes featuring some battle imagery, which is pretty clearly symbolic, as Atlanta was either not involved in any armed conflicts that year, or was very sneaky about them if it was. This refers much more to a city that is still fighting a conflict that ended long ago, the Civil War. It has often been said by people in the North that the South never truly stopped fighting this war, carrying on a lingering resentment of the victors in the North, who were able to let it go because we're way better people than the Southerners. The main part of the play focuses on Jewish factory foreman Leo Frank, uncomfortably living far away from his home of Brooklyn. When a young girl dies in his factory, this resentment comes forth in a flood, the murder investigation becoming the excuse for an outpouring of long-smoldering anger. This is largely possible because the townsfolk do not see Frank as a person. Rather, he is an emissary, representative and veritable effigy of another , the hated North. And this is where the play has its greatest failure.

Leo's wife Jenna (Jena? Anyway, not the character's name) has been raised in Atlanta, and spent her whole life surrounded by the smoldering remnants of the war. She does not seem to be very close to Leo, who is clearly dismissive of Atlanta and its residents, and misses Brooklyn. But when the trial comes, she launches into a defense of her fairly-estranged husband, fighting with both those who seek to convict him and with Leo himself, who does not believe the help of someone he clearly views as inferior could be of value. Why? Because for her, the North has a human face.

It is easy to demonize a group of people. For example, from 2000 until 2008, it was clear to me that America was a bunch of ignorant Rednecks fully intent on running the country directly into the ground and picking fights with any nation who wouldn't grovel when we glanced in their direction. And yet, most everyone I met was really nice. When you meet the demon in person, it often turns out you share much more than you disagree on. This is how it is for Jenna. For her, the demon is a man. He is not The North, he is not the Jew. He is a man who goes to work every day to try to get ahead in life, like just about everyone else. She has been raised in this resentful atmosphere to the point where it must permeate her every pore, and yet for her the demon is a human. And as the first act rolls on, this internal conflict comes close to the forefront, but always pulls away just before it can truly be addressed. And when act 2 comes, the character has been completely neutered, and spends the rest of the play as The Good Wife, a character from whom all the interesting facets have been removed. There are not many characters out there who even have the chance to get close to the heights this one just misses, but it is a miss nonetheless. This pains me far more than any of the sad songs she sings.

The lesser place where the show misses the mark is with Andy's governor in Act 2, a man who is pursuing the truth while knowing it likely will lead to his political downfall (That he also helped cause the mess seems to be strangely unaddressed). This is a much more common sort of character conflict than that of Jenna in Act 1, and also a less rewarding one, but still not an opportunity to be treated as briefly as the script does, essentially referencing the situation for about 90 seconds before moving on, leaving this as another lost chance (Man, these both deal with internally conflicted characters. I must really sound like a Democrat right now (<--THIS IS WHY I'M NOT A POLITICAL SATIRIST)).

Now, these are more criticisms of the play itself, not the specific performance. This is because I know little of acting (Though I do know enough to know that Expectant Dads will be the greatest movie ever), and clearly much about writing, so most of what I have to say has focused on the area of my expertise. But there is one more point I am wholly unqualified to discuss, and that is the music. You see, it turns out musical theater often features music (Who knew?!). Parade is no exception to this apparently time-honored tradition. I suspect I am in the minority of the audience when I say that the songs did not really stick with me, but I also suspect I am in the minority when I go to a musical theater performance without really looking forward to the music part of the proceedings. I make no claims to being normal. There were two parts that stood out even to me, though. The first is a rather excellent drunken number performed by Andy in Act 1 as a reporter. The second, more lasting one is the decision to drop the musical accompaniment for the first couple bars of the closing refrain, with pretty much the entire cast on stage belting it out. This was an extremely striking moment, and thoroughly excellent, closing out the performance on a high note. And for a performance that hits the heights this one does, that note is a fitting way to remember it. When I think back on it, Jenna's character conflict in Act 1 brings to my mind nothing less than Dostoevsky's 'Grand Inquisitor' from The Brothers Karamazov. You're not getting praise much higher than that in these parts unless you figure out a way to reanimate DFW (No, not Dallas Fort Worth). Odds are if you're reading this you're related to me and live in Vermont, but if this is somehow not the case, get on down to Teatro Zuccone and watch a showing of Parade. And try the Two Hearted Ale. They go well together.

Great Moments In Conversing With Dani While She's Half Asleep

2011-02-06T08:17:00.001-05:00

Her: What time is it?

Me: Ten after seven.

Her: You've gotta get going soon.

Me (Looking at clock): Quarter after seven.

Her: Oh. You're okay then.

Retroactive January Recap

2011-01-31T16:35:00.001-05:00

Evidently nothing happened this month. Move along, folks.

VII: Another Chance

2010-12-24T10:31:00.005-05:00

Voice-over: We'll be returning to our feature film in just a few short moments, but first, we'd like to take a moment to tell you about a product certain to replace Tickle Me Elmo and Canadian whiskey straight from the bottle as THE gift of the holiday season.

Man #1: Thanks Ed. Now, Brad, I don't know about you, but I often spend the weeks and months before Christmas standing in never-ending lines subsisting on pemmican waiting for the year's newest toy that my child absolutely needs to keep up the will to live, only to find out that they sold the last one to the woman in front of me in the line, and I get the feeling I'm not alone here. How often does this happen to you?

Man #2: Never, since I bought a gun.

Man #1: (Silence)

Man #2: Kidding! (Mouthing to camera: Not really kidding)

Man #1: I can see you, you know.

Man #2: Oh. Well Chad, now you'll never have to do that again, because we've got this holiday season's hottest gift right here, and you can get it shipped directly to your home for the low, low price of just 17 easy payments of $14.83!

Man #1: Wow! That is a low, low price! But enough about how good a deal this is, and it's certainly a good one. What's it for?

Man #2: I'm glad you asked. Chad, how often have you wanted to own your own dinosaur?

Man #1: Ever since I saw Jurassic Park!

Man #2: Are you mocking me? I can't tell. (Pause) Well, what if I told you we've got something even better than that. A dinosaur....

Man #1: Yes?

Man #2: With a rocket launcher!

Man #1: Wow! That sounds like such an amazing idea, I'm surprised Bill Gates hasn't already filed for a patent on it!

Man #2: Actually, he has. We took it (Mouthing to audience: The gun).

Man #1: Well, let's hope he doesn't press charges! But what kind of dinosaurs are we talking about here?

Man #2: With this introductory offer at the low, low price of just 14 easy payments of $19.85, we'll even let you pick the dinosaur!

V-O (Over shots of TOTALLY AWESOME dinosaurs with rocket launchers): That's right guys. You can get your very own rocket-wielding velociraptor! Or a Tyrannosaurus Rex! Or a brontosaurus with side-mounted missiles!

Man #1: What about my very own Maiosaurus?

Man #2: No, because that one's a pussy.

Man #1: (Sulks)

Man #2: Be the envy of what's left of your block! Get yourself a dinosaur with a rocket launcher today for just 182 easy payments of just $103.74! Heck, at that price get them for the whole family!

Man #1: I will, Chad! And I'm never standing in line again!

Man #2: Because your dinosaur will kill everyone in line?

Man #1: No, because people are going to order these to come in the mail. What is wrong with you?

V-O: So just call 1-900-AWESOME and don't check your monthly statements too closely! Satisfaction probable! We now return you to It's a Wonderful Life, already in progress.

The Sabathia-Hernandez Debate

2010-11-18T11:20:00.001-05:00

It's AL Cy Young Day! Hoorays! Anyway, here's something I started a while back and forgot about, then revived before it becomes even less timely. Hopefully I caught all the tenses and things which needed changing now. Alright, here we go.

There's a spirited yelling match currently going on between the old-school writers who believe that the Cy Young award should be given to the grittiest player regardless of results (Because "You can't trust them statistics.") (Also: This player is David Eckstein. Even though he doesn't pitch) and the sabermetrics crowd, who want the award to go to whoever their Excel spreadsheet says it should (These caricatures are completely hackneyed by this point. Sorry for any groan-induced pains reading them may have caused). So, with bedlam gripping the nation as we wait to see who will finally be deemed the best by a small sample of the BBWAA in the voting this afternoon, I have decided to submit a completely unscientific entry that proves absolutely nothing to the discussion. You're welcome.

Most of the disagreement is coming from the 'Wins' statistic. Sabathia (Record of 21-7) led the league in wins, which, it should be noted, are technically something a team earns, rather than an individual player. Hernandez had a record of 13 wins and 12 losses. Which does not sound all that impressive. However, Sabathia also led the league in run support, the runs his offensive players, who he has no control over (Unless he is injecting them with steroids between innings), scored in his starts, whereas Hernandez finished dead last in this, as his teammates are still hoping that someday a coach will tell them which end of the bat they are supposed to hold. This may have had some slight impact on that 'Wins' statistic. So, to complicate things further, I am now going to match up game logs, and keep Sabathia's statistics from each game, but give him the run support Hernandez received in his corresponding start. To make things slightly tipped in Sabathia's favor (And balance out park effects, which are completely ignored here, a bit), it shall be assumed that all run support was scored while he was still in the game, and all relievers who followed him gave up no runs. Also, his runs allowed will be used rather than his earned runs, because, at the heart of it all, the concept of an 'earned' run is fairly convoluted and stupid. Either it scores or it doesn't. Anyway, there are many, many flaws in this method which prevent it from being a tool that is actually useful, but it seems like fun, so I'm going to do it. Basically, pitcher wins are a stupid stat, so I am using a fairly stupid method to point that out. Feel free to point out its flaws in the comments!

Format: Start #: Seattle Runs-Sabathia Runs Allowed, Decision (Pitcher record)

1: 5-5, ND (0-0)
2: 4-0, W (1-0)
3:11-1, W (2-0)
4: 4-4, ND (2-0)
5: 1-3, L (2-1)
6: 3-1, W (3-1)
7: 0-3, L (3-2)
8: 5-6, L (3-3)
9: 5-1, W (4-3)
10: 1-6, L (4-4)
11: 1-5, L (4-5)
12: 4-3, W (5-5)
13: 1-2, L (5-6)
14: 4-3, W (6-6)
15: 5-0, W (7-6)
16: 2-1, W (8-6)
17: 7-2, W (9-6)
18: 4-1, W (10-6)
19: 4-1, W (11-6)
20: 2-4, L (11-7)
21: 2-4, L (11-8)
22: 1-4, L (11-9)
23: 0-3, L (11-10)
24: 0-2, L (11-11)
25: 2-3, L (11-12)
26: 1-2, L (11-13)
27: 6-0, W (12-13)
28: 4-5, L (12-14)
29: 3-0, W (13-14)
30: 3-6, L (13-15)
31: 4-0, W (14-15)
32: 2-3, L (14-16)
33: 0-7, L (14-17)
34: 3-1, W (15-17)

So fictional CC Sabathia pitching for the Seattle Mariners with a perfect bullpen put up a 2010 record of 15-17, tying for the major league lead in losses. Now, this is an imperfect exercise, but it does nicely show how poor the reasoning behind voting for Sabathia this year is. Still have doubts? We can move onto some advanced statistics that matter immensely if you'd like. Hernandez led Sabathia in innings pitched, strikeouts, and runs allowed (Like, he gave up fewer runs). To vote for Sabathia, one has to announce to the world that the only statistic they care about is pitcher wins, and nothing else matters to them. Considering this is what mainstream media writers often like to accuse statistically-minded people of doing (If you sub in, say, VORP for pitcher wins), well, I find this rather amusing. Even though the writers who vote for Sabathia will never understand why.

The Marlins Strike! Wait, That's Too Dramatic.

2010-11-17T20:57:00.002-05:00

The Florida Marlins are one of the most intelligently-run organizations in baseball. After winning two World Series championships in the last fifteen years and being almost annual playoff contenders these days despite a ridiculous shoestring budget, it's safe to say that if you don't understand the moves the Marlins are making, the fault is on your end. The team always seems able to summon young, cost-controlled talent at will from its farm system, and they have an absolutely unlimited supply of power arms down there, waiting for a chance to pitch for the parent club.

That said, I have no idea what the Marlins are doing right now.

The offseason has just begun, and the Marlins have already struck with three trades and one free agent signing following each other in rapid succession. Let's take them approximately chronologically.

Traded LHP Andrew Miller to the Boston Red Sox for LHP Dustin Richardson. This one is easy enough to figure out: The Marlins are attempting to save money. Both Miller and Richardson suck, but Miller has a history of being a top prospect with electric stuff that he has somehow misplaced, and therefore is getting paid a mid-range sum of money this year, whereas Richardson sucks on the cheap. Essentially, the Marlins are betting $1.5 million that Miller never recovers from whatever ails him.

Traded CF Cameron Maybin to the San Diego Padres for RHP Edward Mujica and RHP Ryan Webb. Now, both Webb and Mujica are quality pitchers, albeit relievers rather than starters. But Maybin is still very young, cheap, and while his bat is still a work in progress, he has hit very well in AAA and plays excellent defense in center field. This is usually the sort of player the Marlins look for, not trade away. He is out of minor league options, so maybe they didn't think he'd be good enough to make the team out of Spring Training next year and wanted to move him before that became a problem. Which is weird, because he hit very well in AAA this year, and they have no centerfielder on the roster.

Traded 2B Dan Uggla to the Atlanta Braves for LHP Mike Dunn and utilityman Omar Infante.This is just strange and/or awful. Uggla is an All Star-caliber second baseman under team control for one more year. Infante is a utilityman with no patience or power at the plate who is also signed for another year, and Mike Dunn is a cheap reliever who once heard rumor of a strange land called the strike zone, but dismissed it. Again, though: The Marlins do save money.

Signed C John Buck to a 3-year, $18 million dollar contract. And there goes that money. I know you need a catcher to prevent the ball from rolling to the backstop every play, but it seems to me that if your catcher is going to cost you $6,000,000 guaranteed each season, he should probably not suck. Unfortunately for them, the Marlins do not agree with me about this. Because they signed Buck, who sucks. I could detail how he sucks, but it will be far less painful for all parties concerned if you just take my word for it. You want something anyway? Fine. Here's an unfair comparison: Buck's career .301 on-base percentage is slightly worse than the career OBP of Smoky Joe Wood with the Red Sox. Don't make me actually break Buck down. I will do it. And it will be long. And I'm starting to kind of want to.

Unless there's going to be a sudden pandemic that affects only relief pitchers, I'm mystified here. The Marlins are trading away assets to stockpile players at the least valuable position on a baseball team (Well, okay, more valuable than 'The Guy Who Backs Up Albert Pujols'. But that's about it). Normally the Marlins are a very sharp ballclub, but they suddenly seem to have a dearth of outfielders after jettisoning Maybin and (Slightly more distantly) Cody Ross, and announcing that Chris Coghlan will move back to the infield this season. The relievers will be useful if the team contends, but with the lineup they currently have, that seems unlikely. However, they are moving into a new stadium soon, and should have a rise in revenue from that. And while they've already wasted about 2/3 of what they've saved in the trades on Buck, there's still some left over from that. I wouldn't be surprised if that money plus some more gets invested in a player or two more as the offseason continues, with a goal of moving the team up into contention this year, be it via free agency (Baseless speculation that will never ever happen: Carl Crawford?) or a trade for a high-salaried player (With the Dodgers' reported financial issues, Matt Kemp, perhaps?). These moves just feel like the precursor to something bigger, something that will make the Marlins a Team To Beat in 2011. Because otherwise they just screwed up royally, and a team this smart wouldn't do that. Right?

Update - They will move Coghlan to centerfield. So I figured hey, when's the next time I'll be in Haiti?

Signs Your Cough Drop Isn't Working Well

2010-11-17T20:37:00.002-05:00

1. You cough so hard that you accidentally swallow it.

Oh Wow

2010-10-26T22:36:00.003-04:00

I just saw this on TV.

You're welcome.

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Has Ruined Everything

2010-10-19T11:45:00.003-04:00

In the beginning there were only two game shows, as God intended. Jeopardy and (For those who had suffered frontal lobe damage and enjoyed the fine sport of competitive clapping) Wheel of Fortune. Sure, there were rumors of something called The Price is Right, but I am a blogger. I have no time for vague legends. These two shows kept everyone happy, and for everyone else, there was America's Funniest Home Videos (Quote from a wise man upon a shot of Bob Saget on this program:"Look closely at his face. That's the face of a man who hates himself.") Then in 1999, a show imported from the Brits as part of their most recent attempt to destroy America emerged: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. This programme (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?) was in the form of Jeopardy in that it was a quiz show, but featured only a single contestant attempting to answer questions of increasing difficulty, with possible answers being listed in a multiple-choice format. If this sounds extremely straightforward, well, that's because it is. What the eventually will be known for is something other than these things. Millionaire's legacy is the

Interminable

Pauses

Employed by host Regis Philbin after the contestant has ALREADY GIVEN HIM THEIR ANSWER. These are presumably done to heighten the tension or some absolute crap like that, but all they do is drag out the proceedings and make this vein in my forehead start pulsing. I really should get that checked out now that I have a job that gives me benefits. Eventually Millionaire left primetime for syndication, but while it is now removed from the spotlight, the pauses have taken over everything (Except Jeopardy. Thank God for Jeopardy). The Official Girlfriend has been watching a lot of The Gameshow Network lately, and for each one-hour programme (I DID IT AGAIN), I would estimate there is approximately 3 minutes of actual gameshow combined with 572 minutes of pauses. My math may be off there, but let's just go with it. It is no longer limited to gameshows, either. NBC's ~~smash~~ only hit show The Biggest Loser each week features 25 minutes of actual show (In a two-hour time slot) and a full hour of people standing on a giant scale while the number goes up and down at random despite the fact that IT'S A DIGITAL SCALE AND DEAR GOD JUST SAY WHAT THEY WEIGH AND GET ON WITH IT. This is why, when the multitudes ask me on a daily basis "Mike, why is network television dying?" I tell them that it's all Regis Philbin's fault.

Baseball Storytime!

2010-09-24T12:27:00.002-04:00

Wait, don't leave! This one's fun! And also short! Promise!

Last night Yankees pitcher Javier Vazquez, attempting to pitch well enough to be included on the team's postseason roster, hit three straight batters with pitches. Which, it turns out, ties a record for consecutive hit batters set by Dock Ellis in 1974. Dock Ellis is also famous for throwing a no-hitter while on acid. Yes, that sort of acid. Apparently in 1974, someone on the Reds called the Pirates, Ellis' team, dumb. Ellis said to a teammate that he would hit every one of them. The teammate bet him a steak (And a good one at that) he wouldn't. The teams played near the end of the season, and Ellis decided his teammates had lost their aggresiveness. So he took things up a notch. Before the game he took several uppers, then went out and hit the first three batters of the game. He walked the fourth, not for a lack of effort, but because the batter dodged the four straight pitches that were thrown at him. After the fifth batter dodged two straight beanballs, Ellis' manager removed him from the game. Even though it wasn't technically the whole Reds team, Ellis' teammate payed up on the bet. Ah, the Seventies.

So what was the point of all this? I don't remember. But congratulations, Javy Vazquez.

Awesome

2010-09-15T18:33:00.001-04:00

Get yr nerd on!

Yes, I Would Love the Job

2010-09-09T20:41:00.004-04:00

Well, not so much me, as I am now gainfully employed in a manner I can report to the IRS. The Official Girlfriend is currently job-hunting, an activity which often leaves her frustrated for all the obvious reasons. She spends a lot of time on job-related internet sites, which are known for their startling veracity in all regards. This state of affairs led to her receiving the following email in response to her application for a babysitting job. Please excuse the mangled English. It cannot be helped, as the family in question recently moved to the country, according to an email which accompanied this one, and has now been sadly lost. Where did they move from?, you may well ask. England. I swear I am not making that up.

Hello Dear,

I have listed some questions from for you below as i was adviced by the nanny site that these questions should be the basis for for us to make a choice of a good baby sitter.Our kids mean everything to us and we would do all withing our best of efforts to give him the best of things in life.I hope the questiions are not so breath taking , we are only trying to act as we have been directed by the nanny site so we can know we are having someone with enormous experience when it comes to baby sitting.

Questions are listed below:

Do you smoke?

How well do you like pets ?Any allergies?

Do you drink alcohol?

Do you speak any languages other than English?

Would you work in a position with a mom how far? how long?

What are your education goals?

Have you ever been treated for mental illness/depression?

How many children do you feel comfortable caring for?

What ages do you prefer?

Are you CPR and first aid certified?

What are your weaknesses/limitations?

What are your strengths?

What do you like to do your free time?

How many people are in your family?

What is your relationship like with your parents and siblings?

What jobs have you had in the past?

Have you been a past nanny ?where do you get a job?

Are you interested in taking classes?

How assertive are you?Do you feel you communication?

How much do you charge and what hours are you available?

I hope to get your response back soon enough so we can get on with this.

Thank you and stay blessed lastly kindly send atleast one of your reference (s) so we can contact them and know more about you.

Despite the fact that this is very clearly a legitimate job and not at all sketchy in any way, she decided not to respond to this Englishwoman's very reasonable questions. Being myself, and therefore completely ridiculous, I decided to handle her response for her. It follows.

Dear Nancy,

My breath was initially taken away by your enormous list of questions, but after I regained it I decided that I would try to suppress my anger over your obvious distrust of me long enough to answer your questions. Based on the length of the list, I suspect you are an overbearing person. You should be careful of that, as it could lead to your children having emotional problems later in life, and therapy bills are expensive. Also, I will helpfully number your questions in my response, even though numbers are a tool of science, and therefore against God's will.

I do not smoke cigarettes.
I like all pets except fish, reptiles, cats and dogs.

2b. I used to have allergies, but God cured them.

Not before lunchtime.

I speak Latin as well as English, in case the College of Cardinals chooses to appoint me Pope.
17 feet.

5b. A fortnight.

To someday stop eating the paste.
The court records have been sealed, so no.
Up to one. Ideally less.
I like 'em young.
If God has decided it is time for someone to die, we should not interfere.
I have no weaknesses or limitations, and am insulted that you would even ask that.
I can leg-press 1,500 pounds.
In my free time, I usually hunt the most dangerous game.
28. We're Catholic.
Very poor, but it's their fault, not mine.
I mostly work for tips.
Yes, in a past life.

17b. Usually on the corner.

If God wants me to know more things, he will implant that knowledge directly into my brain.
I am very assertive, especially when I am holding my metal bat.

19b. I are excrutiatingly skilled at communications.

That depends on what the client wants, and am busy at nighttimes.
That is not a question.

I hope this has helped you realize that God wants me to watch your kids, and if you don't give me the position than you must be stupid. Pray to him, as he is my reference.

In His name,

-Dani Stock

I think I turned her into some kind of Catholic hooker there. Anyways, being completely unreasonable and a notorious hater of fun and/or lulz, she refused to allow me to send this. So Nancy, I'm sorry you so rudely received no response (You're reading my blog, right? Cool). She'd love the position. Stay in touch.

Tomorrow I Golf. For Charity.

2010-08-12T20:10:00.001-04:00

Poor, poor charity.

I Am Alive. Barely.

2010-08-10T12:35:00.006-04:00

As I have mentioned on many past occasions, I spend a decent amount of time in my kitchen, and not just because that is the room of the apartment which contains the designated Catan table. As a result of this, combined with my eternal absent-mindedness (Which I also hold responsible for the fact that anytime I hold a marker for over thirty seconds, half its ink winds up on my hands), I am usually dealing with between three and five minor hand injuries at any given time, ranging from slight burns to small cuts, which are prevented from becoming large cuts primarily by the fact that my knives were all ridiculously cheap due to the fact that they are slightly less sharp than Mark Twain's wit (Present-day dead version). So it is no real surprise that last night I suffered a cut on my thumb. However, the specifics are slightly out of the ordinary. I was not cut by a knife, you see. Rather, my knife performed its primary job (Not cutting me) admirably. My thumb was cut by a carrot.

Like this. But evil.
Okay, maybe just like this.

How did I manage this?, you may well ask yourself. And was the cruel perpetrator captured, sauteed with dill and served with catfish? The answers are, respectively, that I was evidently holding the foul vegetable with the point of my thumb on the cutting board when my knifework caused the carrot to slide, making me bleed a bit from under the nail, and it's kind of creepy that you knew that much. I have got to start closing my blinds at night.

'Tis A Special Day

2010-07-12T11:13:00.001-04:00

Happy Birthday, sis.

Delicious Cake

2010-06-25T11:44:00.003-04:00

I'm very late to the party on this one, but it is a party I am unwilling to miss, regardless of severe tardiness issues. For those of you who don't know of it, there is a cable television channel out there called Food Network. And a decent amount of the time, its shows are actually about food. Not necessarily good types of food, but food nonetheless. Then there are their other shows, about Guy Fieri buying coke in seedy diners or whatever. And then there are the unclassifiable shows. Foremost amongst these is the wonderful/reprehensible/nauseating Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee. This show, Sandra claims, will teach you how to make delicious meals that are no fuss out of 70% store-bought ingredients and 30% fresh ingredients, because who has the time to cook these days? The answer: obviously not Sandra.

You see, the premise for the show is reasonable enough for a certain target market. The problem lies in the fact that Sandra has no idea whatsoever how to cook (If you would like proof of this, here is a recipe she made on-air for a skirt steak flavored with 1/4 cup of taco seasoning, then topped with a chocolate-merlot sauce. Really. I swear to god. The users' comments on the recipe might be even funnier than the recipe itself). She simply throws things together at random and then either fakes a foodgasm when she tastes them, or eschews the tasting of her terrifying creations altogether in favor of moving on to her favorite portion of the show: cocktail time! This is the part of the show that explains the whole thing. Sandra's drinking habit. She excitedly makes a cocktail on every show, and then even more excitedly consumes it. Based on how the shows go, it's entirely possible that this is how she prepares for them as well. Not that these are necessarily any better-tasting than the food, but at least if you drink enough of them first, the rest of the mess might seem palatable (You think I'm kidding about these being bad? Oh no. Here is one that combines lemonade, heavy cream, and vodka. Oh yes, you read that ingredient list right. Sandra is evidently not familiar with the term 'curdle').

But then, why does she have a show? I am not entirely sure. But she is blond and prettyish, which apparently goes a long way when combined with rampant alcoholism and a total disregard for the stomachs of her viewing audience. This probably has something to do with it. However, where her show absolutely shines is in her favorite thing other than booze, her 'tablescapes'. Every episode she coordinates things so that her entire dining room is filled with randomly-glued-together items from a craft store designed to accentuate the 'theme' of whatever terrifying menu she has concocted (If you're feeling really motivated, Youtube has a video of the time she covered her christmas tree with all the glasses from her bar. "It shines just like real crystal!" Amazing). Her kitchen will inevitably match whatever she is wearing. It is terrifying. She is essentially a completely over-the-top stereotype of a bored 1950s housewife with a severe drinking problem frozen and then brought back to life in this century and thrust directly in front of a television camera. She simultaneously terrifies and amuses me. Why this lengthy preamble? To give you some context for the greatness that is to follow. Behold: Sandra Lee making a Kwanzaa cake.

You're welcome.

These Guys Are Probably Tired

2010-06-23T19:01:00.003-04:00

These two tennis players are John Isner and Nicholas Mahut (Isner's on the left. He's tall), who were slated to play each other in an early round of Wimbledon yesterday. And they did, but they weren't finished yet when it got dark, so the match was suspended until today, when they went out to play the fifth set, tied at two sets apiece. And they played the fifth set until it got dark, at which point it was again suspended, and now they will attempt to finish it tomorrow. In case you aren't familiar with how the scoring works here, each set in tennis is won by the first person to win six games, with there being a tiebreaker if the players are, well, tied. Except in the fifth set, which goes until a player leads by two games or someone collapses and dies on-court, whichever happens first. As it stands right now, this match is tied 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (3), 59-59. That last bit is not a misprint. They have now been playing this match for over 10 hours, 7 of which was spent on the fifth set today. Yes, seven hours of tennis in one day. Isner was tired enough today that he swung and missed at the ball. Twice. Mahut fell down.

Get up, wuss.

The match is scheduled to resume tomorrow, so please, if you're a fan of great tennis or watching people die on-court for the amusement of spectators, tune in.

The Truth

2010-06-21T09:45:00.004-04:00

Pre-introductory note note: Apparently something has changed in the default blog layout so that embedded videos are now cut off on the right-hand side. As much as I don't want to change my blog layout due to familiarity and/or laziness, this may necessitate it. It shouldn't matter too much for this video, but let me know if it's irritating you like it is me and I'll see what I can do.

-The Management

Before you click on that play button sitting there so temptingly below, I just want to say that this video comes with both a language and content warning. From me. At the same time, it is possibly the funniest thing I have heard this year, even though it was originally released in 2004. This makes me ahead of the times as far as the Midwest is concerned. So now, please enjoy the vocal stylings of Mr. Greg Giraldo, if appropriate for your sensibilities.

And in doing some research, apparently the guy behind Lazyboy was originally in Aqua. Yes, that Aqua. I don't really know how I feel about that, but I definitely like this much better.

Indiana, You've Got A Problem

2010-06-12T11:37:00.003-04:00

As I'm sure you all know because everybody who reads this knows me (Feel free to point this out in the comments, Isaac), I recently drove a U-Haul from Vermont to Minnesota, which is only marginally more fun than it sounds. Due to a tragic error on the part of the founding fathers, this meant that I had to drive through Indiana on my journey. Now, having grown up in Vermont, I never paid much attention to Indiana during my younger, more vulnerable years, knowing it only as the place where Hoosiers was filmed, I think, and where John Mellencamp probably came from, and hopefully can be sent back to. Having spent somewhere upwards of two hours in the state, I am now a fully qualified Indiana expert or something of the like, and would like to share my misery with you. So please, join me as you learn everything there is to know about the only state in the union to rival Delaware in terms of utter dullness! Hey, where did everybody go?

The first thing I noted upon driving through Indiana was that there was absolutely nothing there, an observation that the remainder of the trip would utterly fail to contradict. In fact, I believe that on I-90, Indiana actually had more rest areas than exits. Which is amazing. Fortunately, the horizon does not detract from the nothing throughout the state, as anytime I stood up I immediately became the tallest thing in sight. I thought I saw a hill once, but it turned out to be a dream I had. About Indiana. Worst. Dream. Ever. But despite all of this, there is something very distinct about Indiana beyond the remarkable number of Christian rock stations on the FM band (Many of which were absolutely hilarious. Picture a more bombastic version of Creed. Now don't picture it. Aren't you happier the second way?), and this is the number of public service/notice posters at each and every rest area, all of which were about meth. Specifically, the fact that you should not do or manufacture it. Now, I thought this was a fairly well-known sentiment due to meth's rather severe effects, but apparently after spending enough time in Indiana, these start to look rather appealing, which I can actually understand.

So that's Indiana in a nutshell. Jesus rock and meth. Thanks for joining me as I experience bad travel-related flashbacks. You are now a fully qualified Indianaologist or something. Someone should probably give me a government grant for all I'm doing to publicize the state here to only people who know me.

As a postscript, Indiana also did feature the city of Gary, but I'm going to file that under 'meth'.

For Other Purposes:

2010-06-02T12:02:00.000-04:00

Heaven Is Whenever

2010-05-17T14:31:00.008-04:00

It's like a white, middle class dork's dream at the moment, with new albums out by indie royalty The National, The New Pornographers, Broken Social Scene (Who somehow manage to be good in spite of that terrible name), and the ever-mighty The Fall, as well as the latest disc from The Hold Steady, who have just put out their fifth studio album, Heaven is Whenever. And as much as I'd love to tell you my impressions of their direction gleaned from the recent concert I attended were wrong, I cannot do so in good conscience. But, as much as I hate to acknowledge that eternal bastion of pretentiousness, I must agree with Pitchfork in their assessment of this album, namely, this is very clearly a transitional album for the band, moving from their past awe-inspiring awesomeness into whatever brave new world awaits, and until that endpoint becomes fixed, it's hard to entirely judge this album. But while future offerings may lead to a re-considering of Heaven is Whenever, at the moment we only have the available information to go on, and that information is not good.

Since their last album, 2008s Stay Positive, the band featured a slight lineup modification, as they lost both keyboardist Franz Nicolay and his awesome mustache:

Win

The general thinking out there was that this would signal a return to the guitar-based sounds of Almost Killed Me, losing the keyboard flourishes that had populated recent offerings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rather than continue with what they've been doing or return to the past, the band instead chose to take an abrupt left turn, as they have incorporated their familiar sound with what sound like the guitars U2 stopped using in 1991 (Admittedly, they found them again in 2001, when, presumably, someone in the band had gotten behind on his mortgage). In concept, this sounds like a rather awkward marriage, which is fitting, because that rather perfectly encapsulates what it turns out to be in practice.

The album begins with what sounds rather like a dobro on The Sweet Part of the City, a surprise after the last disc came out blaring the fire-breathing Constructive Summer. This is mixed in with acoustic guitars and backwards plucking, as Craig Finn revisits his by-now traditional themes of kids drinking and playing music mixed in with the requisite religious imagery/references. It's by no means a failure, but at the same time, it never manages to really be interesting either. Finn, now showing more confidence in his expanded range after the years of vocal lessons he has been taking, sings rather than sputters, and nothing of note ever happens. What is noteworthy is that there are far more background vocals than were present on past albums, a trend that will continue (And become increasingly more obnoxious) as the album progresses. Yet this is still better than track two, Soft in the Center, which attempts to bring back the guitars to restore some sense of normalcy to the proceedings, but falls flat on its face. This highlights a disturbing fact: The band has not completely turned its back on rocking out, but throughout Heaven is Whenever, they often sound awkward when they attempt to bring back the guitars. Of course, considering a decent amount of the slower songs are also off-putting maybe it's simply the songs themselves. But the fact that The Hold Steady no longer seem able to slide back into what made them a name in the first place is rather disconcerting. Anyway, Soft in the Center is a fairly generic ballad, featuring stilted riffing under Finn's singing throughout the verses, which really could be played by almost any band out there, something that simply could not be said about past offerings. But so far we're in boringly inoffensive territory. It is what used to be the band's highlight that moves this track over the line to outright awful. Over syrupy oohs and ahs, the chorus finds Finn crooning "You can't get every girl, so love the one you're with the best". Excuse me, but when did this turn into a Jimmy Eat World album? Beyond my absolute hatred of the use of the second person in music, this brings out a major break with the band's past, as Heaven is Whenever shows Finn moving away from the third-person tales of former songs. Rather, on this album he is directly in the songs, as first-person narrative dominates. Combined with the occasional second-person bits, it sounds that, rather than telling stories, Finn is now speaking directly to the audience, trying to connect with them. When he references Pavement on the dreadful ballad We Can Get Together, it isn't that they're a good band. It's that he likes them, and you like them, so won't you like him too? It's cloying, and it comes off as a desperate and disturbing attempt to keep ahold of the fanbase they've built as they abandon the very things they did to build up that following.

This is not to say that the album has no redeeming qualities. The Weekenders is a highlight, combining the now-requisite backing vocals with a wonderfully-delivered rollicking chorus which seems to feature the horse-racing clairvoyant from Chips Ahoy!, and the chorus is so wonderful that it takes multiple listens to even find the verses, which drift aimlessly along over The Edge's best atmospherics, disappearing from memory as soon as they end. The absolute highlight is Barely Breathing, a minor-key staccato affair featuring Finn's best spitting over the top as the band breaks loose. But even this is not perfect, as the random clarinet solo halfway through adds nothing to the song, save to serve as a good point to stop listening before the completely unnecessary and dismissable minute-long outro begins. Maybe I've been spoiled, but in the past they just made the whole 'playing music' thing seem so effortless that I'm rather shocked by the fact that even the minimal triumphs present on Heaven is Whenever are so hard-won. I never really thought about it when it was happening, but now that it's done, I'd love to be spoiled again.

And now let us no longer mince words: the middle of the album sucks more than a Brendan Fraser starring vehicle. The Smidge and Rock and Roll Problems both try to bring back the familiar sounds of past albums, but even musically, the band just sounds awkward, and Finn's vocals on the latter track especially are among the worst he has ever penned, and the delivery only highlights this. The band then moves into the aforementioned We Can Get Together, whose minimal goodwill is completely destroyed by the outro that takes up almost half the runtime of the song, and features a disjointed backing vocal chorus which merits the burning of the masters on its own, though nothing the band does really makes a case for saving them. And then we get Hurricane J, so generic a song that all it does for me is make me think of Jessie's Girl, hardly a masterpiece of artistic achievement (This is understatement, in case you're in the slow class). This is the song the band chose to play to a national television audience on The Colbert Report last week, as damning a sentence as I can think of. On an album full of mediocrity and worse, The Hold Steady seem to believe that the worst of the batch is what they want to put out there. Going forward, this seems like a rather bad omen.

Closer A Slight Discomfort, while still moving away from past glories, at least leaves the listener with some fond memories of the album, as it goes through a slow build over its first five minutes until it climaxes in chiming keyboard and pulsating drumming surrounded by a massive wall of sound, and it is only after it all fades out that you are struck with the realization that at the climax of the album, where everything should be peaking, Craig Finn, center of The Hold Steady, has checked out and left you with an instrumental coda. For a band whose reputation was built on Finn's firecracker persona, this is outright shocking. From here on out, the odds are the bandwagon will only get bigger, but while I still intend to watch from afar, I have officially left it.

Bad Romance

2010-04-30T13:50:00.004-04:00

Music video breakdown time by request! Hooray! Anyway, Lady Gaga is a famous individual who has worked very hard to reach her current celebrity status via a two-pronged plan which I imagine went something like this:

1. Sing obnoxious songs.
2. Wear ridiculous things in public.

There may have been another step involving a pact with Satan. I'm not sure on that point. But regardless of possible demonic involvement (Welcome to my blog, hardcore Christian crazy conspiracy theorists!), I think we can all agree on one thing: If she didn't have the word 'lady' in her stage name, no one would be entirely sure. Come to think of it, I'm still not.

If you care, here's a link to the video. I will not be embedding it due to the fact that I have some standards. If you care about this sort of thing, be forewarned that it features some naughty language and very minimal amounts of clothing.

0:01 - It begins in a room from THE FUTURE. Said room features the entire cast of 'A Clockwork Orange' made over by the flamboyantly gay guy on America's Next Top Model. Not that I've seen that show. Let's move on.

0:06 - Zoom in on our heroine, wearing a glittery failed origami project and a pair of square sunglasses which have eaten her entire face, which is really for the best.

0:12 - She has part of a screen window on each fingernail. Of course she does.

0:32 - Oh god, the sounds! Please make them stop!

0:44 - Oh wow. Five or so people who seem to be David Bowie from Labyrinth wrapped head to toe in opaque white plastic have climbed out of pods in the Gaga Bath Haus and are now dancing or having seizures or something. This is simultaneously slightly disturbing and rather hilariously terrible. The video, I mean. Not the song. The song is solely the latter, but with only one adjective. I'll let you pick which one. Also, no word yet on how many transmittable diseases the Haus features. I'll let you know when I do.

1:29 - The lights in the Haus have been turned on. Any time they'd like to turn them back off is fine with me.

1:40 - And someone just ripped off Gaga's shirt. I need a beer. And to unsee all this. Sweet, sweet alcohol. Nectar of forgetting.

2:00 - And now she is evidently an extra from Where the Wild Things Are.

2:03 - Her clothes got torn off again. Can they stop doing that, please? I volunteer to staple them onto her, if that will help.

2:05 - MY CHIN IS MADE ENTIRELY OF METAL

2:33 - Please make her wear something. And I don't mean the lampshade she has on her head. Please. Anyone.

2:43 - Hairless cat. More or less terrifying? Hmmmmmm......

2:50 - The glasses have been replaced by eye makeup of equal volume. How I miss the glasses.

3:06 - Now she is an underwear model surrounded by hovering diamonds. This makes less sense than Eraserhead.

3:12 - Seizure dance! Seizure dance! No, in all seriousness, it doesn't look like a seizure. It looks like they're trying to do a modern interpretation of how a Tyrannosaurus Rex grabbed onto anything with its tiny arms.

3:20 - Human shiny gyroscope thing in her underwear. I wonder why that superhero never caught on. At least she has large sunglasses on again. Life is about the small victories.

3:30 - Time for the breakdown! So of course she is wearing a sparkly bodysuit made of lizard skin that puffs out around her hips for no apparent reason. Somewhere a fashion designer is thoroughly blotto on her coin laughing hysterically.

3:37 - Also, her hair seems to be modeled on SNL's own 'Coneheads'.

3:45 - I AM WEARING A POLAR BEAR! SUCK IT, PETA!

4:13 - Polar bear-wearing woman and metal chin man. A match made in heaven. Please say everyone involved in the production of this music video is sterile. Please. I'm begging you.

4:26 - Fire! Take two steps to your left, please.

4:30-4:57 - I just... I don't... No.

4:58 - Lights out! Hooray!

5:05 - And her bra is shooting sparks while she lies strung out and smoking on a cemetery plot next to a skeleton. This is actually an improved look for her.

In conclusion, I would like to ask a question: Amy, why do you evidently hate me?

Placeholder

2010-04-26T18:15:00.002-04:00

Congratulations to Ryan Howard and his agent on Howard's new 5-year, $125 million extension. Lesser congratulations to the Philadelphia Phillies, who now have an entry for the annual 'Worst Contract in Baseball' competition. Because any time you can lock up the mid- to late-30s of an overrated player already in a four-year decline, you make that happen.

Hold Steady

2010-04-13T16:03:00.005-04:00

30 some-odd years ago, Neil Young posed the question of whether it is better to burn out than to fade away. Since then, he has spent the majority of his time fading away. So that's nice. Also of relevance: The band whose name conveniently doubles as the title of this post. Because otherwise this would be even more of a load of gibberish than it is currently devolving into. So wait, let's try this: The Hold Steady are an awesome band who recently played in Burlington, Vermont. I was there. It was fun.

That was easy. But not quite what I was hoping for. Or very long. Abortive attempt number 3 to follow.

Ten years ago, Lifter Puller broke up. They were a band who, like so many others, I had not heard about by the time of their demise (Chief amongst these: The Beatles. I blame my parents. And the inevitably linear movement of time). Like many others, they played fairly straightforward post-punk. However, unlike many others, they were fronted by Craig Finn. You see, this is important. Because, rather than singing songs, Craig Finn gets extremely wired and simply yells out the lyrics. The more lines and syllables the better. Typically these words will be tales featuring those traditional topics of rock and roll, sex and drugs. And he approaches the songs as stories, with characters who weave throughout albums, and, to some extent, the band's entire catalog. There is a phrase for this, and it is nerd chic. I am so there. So in 2000, unbeknownst to me, Lifter Puller broke up. This led to Finn and their guitarist, Tad Kubler, forming a new band, The Hold Steady, who were pretty much the same thing, but with a keyboard player. Which will work just fine.

The set kicked off with 'The Cattle and the Creeping Things' off their second album, a jittery rant skirting the edges of religion over a hyper-caffeinated staccato beat. And while the music is quite excellent, the real draw for The Hold Steady live is Finn. He came out with a guitar around his neck, a tool of the trade which would quickly be revealed as a prop. For the entirety of the first song the guitar simply hung around his neck as he used one hand to hold the microphone and stand at various odd angles as he spit the lyrics out into it, the other hand being thoroughly preoccupied with wildly gesturing for the duration of the lyrics. In between lines, he would often continue yelling things at the audience off-mic. If this doesn't sound brilliant to you, we probably can't be friends anymore. And you probably drink less coffee than I do. Well, you probably do that anyway.

They are now four albums into their career, and are gradually tweaking their sound with each album. Because, you see, if you don't do that, you eventually turn into Clinic. Or Boston, if you'd like me to make fewer indie references. Just admit that I'm hipper than you (c. 2003). It's easy to tell anyway, primarily because I have a bad haircut. Anyway, the majority of these tweaks have involved more melody, more singing, and less TOTAL AWESOMENESS AND DOMINATION VIA THE AUDIO FORMAT. As you may have been able to ascertain, I feel this direction is not the best use of the band's considerable talents. I was subtle about it. Their second album, Separation Sunday, was a peak from which the band has been gradually receding ever since. This is not a major fault or anything. Most bands never sniff anything close to the heights that album scaled. Think 'Black Dog', but for 50 minutes. And with better lyrics. And singing. And without that terrible hitch in the guitar riff that makes the entire song terrible. Got it?

That was the format Finn followed for the majority if the set, which hit a number of high points (Hello 'Chips Ahoy'), even if it stayed away from the older material more than I would have liked. And it was a blast. That said, I have grave concerns about the upcoming album. They played six songs off it, and three of them, technically, sucked. One was especially terrible, featuring chugging power chords under traditionally sung verses and chori. And of the three good songs, one featured a mysterious intro that sounded lifted off The Joshua Tree for two minutes or so grafted awkwardly onto a song that only took off once said intro ended. They called the singer for the opening band out to provide additional vocals for one song, stating that he did a lot of singing on the new record. And, most damningly of all, during the breakdowns in several songs, spots which old live recordings will attest used to feature Finn telling stories to the audience, the band jammed. That is a dirty word in these parts.

But, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I come not to bury Caesar, but to praise him. After all, burning out leaves a legacy untarnished by decline. However, reputations are built on achievement, something gained by being on top of one's powers, a state hard to maintain for an extended period of time. And a decline phase, while sad to behold, is where bands can generally make money, continuing to ply their trade to an audience growing behind recognition of past achievements. For it is the rare band to become dramatically better multiple albums into a career. Burning out is for purists, but fading away is only too human, especially if one has the desire to eat. And, except in the case of the Rolling Stones, the fade is generally not drawn out over a ridiculously excessive length of years, and allows us to do something we do not always manage: Rather than criticizing the fall of the mighty, let us look at where the ascent peaked, and be impressed with a high water mark most never reach. As a wise man once said, let us remember the good times. Kenny would have wanted it that way.

Attention Muzak Playlist Editors

2010-04-10T14:37:00.001-04:00

It is now the year 2010. There are no more excuses for playing 'No More I Love Yous' by Annie Lennox.

MLB Season Preview

2010-04-04T15:43:00.007-04:00

So, here we go. I rather liked the approach Cousin Ben took to his version of this same topic, so I'm going to ape it for a bit. Beginning with the big boy league, let's do this.

AL East:

1. Boston
2. Tampa
3. The Enemy
4. Baltimore
5. Toronto

So, I may be a bit biased here. If I was being a bit more objective, I'd note that the top 3 teams are the three best organizations in all of baseball, and any one of them could easily win the division. Also, it sucks to be either Toronto or Baltimore, although with the amounts of young talent Baltimore has, it probably sucks more to be Toronto. I also loved Baltimore's signing of Garrett Atkins, as an everyday warning to Matt Wieters of what he could become if he doesn't work hard.

AL Central:

1. Minnesota
2. Uggggghhhhhhhhhh. Bad, bad division. Chicago (White Sox), I guess. Confidently.
3. Cleveland
4. Detroit
5. Kansas 'Trust the Process' City

So, yeah. Even with Joe Nathan out, I like the Twins to win a weak division. I loved their offseason moves (Hardy, Pavano and Orlando Hudson headlining), and think they'll take the division even with Joe Mauer's inevitable regression and the sudden realization that Justin Morneau isn't all that great. Beyond that, it's a bit of a crapshoot. I at least trust Chicago's pitching staff, so they get the two spot. Cleveland has a lot of really interesting young hitting (Including absolute beast of a catcher prospect Carlos Santana, stolen from the Dodgers in exchange for Casey Blake) to go along with pitching slightly better than you'll find in an average game of wiffle ball. Detroit has Miguel Cabrera and did I mention Miguel Cabrera? Their actual plan for this season involves having Dontrelle Willis in their rotation. By design. The same Dontrelle Willis who, one month ago, described himself thusly: "To me, the issue is I'm terrible". Good luck with that. And also, there are the Royals.

AL West

1. Texas
2. Los Angeles of Anaheim of California of The United States of Planet Earth of The Milky Way of Whatever is Bigger Than That
3. Seattle
4. Oakland

No knock on Oakland, who could easily finish second in the AL Central. This is a good division top to bottom, with the Rangers riding an amazing wave of young talent right to its forefront (Interesting number of the preseason: 5. That is the number of players on the Rangers 40-man roster over the age of 30. That is amazing). I could see each of these teams finishing over .500. It won't happen in the end, but man, that would be cool. Anyway, after adding more pitching this offseason, I don't like Seattle all that much. I actually think they take a step back. They outperformed their pythagorean record last year, and Cliff Lee is already hurting. Still the best defense in baseball, but it's a small step back first for an organization which is undoubtedly on the rise. As for LAoAoCoTUSoPEoTMWoWiBTT, whatever. They are not at all exciting, and finally lose their death grip on the division this year to a Rangers team poised to start an impressive playoff run of their own.

On to AAAA!

AAAA East:

1. Philly
2. Atlanta
3. Florida
4. Washington
5. NY Mets

Yeah, that's the last-place team. I debated. Do I think it's a lock? No. But man, that's a bad, old team with no depth. At all. If anything goes wrong, it's going to go really wrong. So congrats to Omar Minaya for building the All-Downside Team. Why haven't they fired that guy yet? Anyway, on to more competent organizations. The Braves and Phillies are almost a coin flip at the top of the standings, but I'll take the Phillies riding a resurgent year from Cole Hamels, who was terribly unlucky last year. And I hear there's some 'Holiday' guy. Don't know what that's supposed to mean. The Braves are once again retooling around an impressive crop of talented youngsters, and should take the division from the aging Phillies in another year. In other news, the Marlins are now paying three players a livable wage, and the Nationals suck.

AAAA Central:

1. St. Louis
2. Cincinnati
3. Milwaukee
4. Chicago (Cubs)
5. Pittsburgh
6. Houston

I'm scared that Chris Carpenter's arm could fall off at any time, but I'll bet that he makes it through half the season first, which will give the Cardinals enough of a lead to coast to the playoffs in another bad division. I like Ben's pick of the Reds, but I think he's a year early on them. Next year, providing Dusty doesn't chop off Aroldis Chapman's arm with an axe, watch out for them. They have a lot of young talent, led by certifiable beast Jay Bruce (Joey Who? He's alright, I guess). Milwaukee imported Randy Wolf to try to stop the bleeding in the rotation, which would have been better last year if their opponents had been allowed to use a tee. Chicago has a bunch of terrible, expensive, aging players, and have willingly decided to let Carlos Silva start. Pittsburgh is still bad, but moving in the right direction. As for Houston, I will continue to beat the 'Ed Wade is terrible' drum until he is fired. Should be soon, considering how bad this roster is.

AAAA West

1. Colorado
2. Los Angeles
3. Arizona
4. San Francisco
5. San Diego

The last division. The Rockies have already lost Jeff Francis to the DL, which hurts (He was penciled in as their #2 starter). But I still think they can pull this out, led by a beast of a young offense. Though the sooner they get rid of Brad Hawpe, the better. Seth Smith, currently their 4th outfielder, is a better hitter than Hawpe, and also not the worst defensive right-fielder in baseball. So he's got that going for him. Which is nice. In LA, I think Manny continues his gradual decline, and phenom Clayton Kershaw takes a step back. This leaves a rotation of Chad Billingsley and pray for rain, which probably will not work well. Though I'm rooting for knuckleballer Charlie Haeger, who made the rotation as the fifth starter. The world can never have too many knuckleball pitchers. Arizona has some impressive talent, but not enough to make a run at the divisional title with Brandon Webb still not throwing. As for San Francisco, well, they're built entirely on their pitching. However, for some reason apparent only to their management, they have decided to surround the pitchers with players who can't hit or field. I'll probably go into this in more detail later. Cliff's notes version: Bad idea. And there is San Diego, which I'm told means "A Whale's Vagina".

I like Tampa and Atlanta to win the Wild Cards, with the World Series being Boston v. Colorado. And the Sox take it. Yes, I am biased. Now, on to more interesting things.

AL MVP - Evan Longoria. It's only a matter of time. We are all witnesses.
AL Cy Young - John Lester. With that defense behind him, he's going to be awesome.
AL RoY - Will be arbitrarily voted on. And not a pitcher.

AAAA MVP - Pujols. Every year, Pujols.
AAAA Cy Young - Ricky Nolasco. My fantasy team believes.
AAAA RoY - Jason Heyward. And he won't even be that good this year. Down the line, watch out.

And now for some longer thoughts:

Favorite stat of the offseason: Courtesy of Joe Posnanski. Last year, out of all the players in the majors who qualified for the batting title, only nine posted an OPS+ of 80 or less (An OPS of roughly 90% of the league average. Guys below this mark don't tend to stick around that long). Going into this season, the Royals are starting 5 players who achieved that dubious distinction.

Why the Red Sox won't get shut out every game: Dan Shaughnessy is a moron. See, last year, Boston's offense was still third-best in the AL, despite getting less than nothing from shortstop and catcher (Until the victor Martinez trade). Yes, Mike Cameron is an offensive downgrade from Jason Bay, but he is a huge defensive upgrade. The Sox are starting guys who have a legit chance at a Gold Glove at all four infield spots, and have good defenders at each outfield spot as well. All this without sacrificing much (If any) offense, and keeping flexibility down the road with short-term contracts. Awesome job by the front office. The defense will help ground-ball heavy pitchers more than the rest, so I look for big performances by Buchholz and Lester, and stick to my guns that the former will be better then John Lackey this year.

The odd Minnesota defense: the Twins pay close attention to infield defense, so much that they routinely start Nick Punto, who does not, technically, know which end of the bat to hold. This results in wonderful infield D, as well as many, many outs. Their outfield, on the other hand, can (kind of) hit (Delmon Young excepted). However, they play defense slightly worse than if the outfield was manned by me. Drunk. In a sack race. To put it mildly, I don't understand. Fortunately for them, their best pitchers are fly-ball oriented. Look, just because I picked them to win a crappy division doesn't mean I agree with everything they do.

What in the world is San Francisco doing?: They have the best pitcher in the game. They have a very good #2 pitcher. They have Barry Zito, who quietly has become respectable again, if not the ace he used to (appear) to be (He was rather lucky). They have Jonathan Sanchez, who may need corrective lenses of some kind, but is absolutely unhittable. And then, here is their positional lineup, along with whether or not the player can hit and field their position:

C: B. Molina (No/No)
1B: Aubrey Huff (No/Not really)
2B: Freddy Sanchez (-Ish/-Ish)
SS: Edgar Renteria (No/No)
3B: Pablo Sandoval (Yes/No)
LF: Mark Derosa (-Ish. He hits well for a second baseman/-Ish)
CF: Aaron Rowand (-Ish/No)
RF: Nate Schierholtz (Who? Is this a real player?)

Attention, Brian Sabean: You're wasting prime years of Tim Lincecum's career. Please cease and desist.

Worst contract of the offseason: Brandon Lyon, 3 years, $15 million, to Houston. A team way, way out of contention is handing out major guaranteed money to a guy who is league-average at the least important position on the roster. Wow.

Funniest thing of the offseason: The fact that, back in the day, Red Sox scribes used to bemoan the team's lack of pitching and defense in favor of all sluggers. Now that the team has focused on pitching and defense, we get articles about how the team won't score enough runs. I hope the Boston media dies in a fire.

And one more Royals note: Last year, Dayton Moore chided fans for not trusting 'The Process'. This offseason, we learned that 'The Process' is apparently to acquire every player they could find who was deemed not good enough to play for the White Sox. That ought to work well.

So, that's it. Let the season begin! If you have any questions on anything here, or anything I didn't cover, let me know. I'll throw up a comment or post in reply, depending on how long an answer it necessitates.

Site News: Where'd the Ads Go?

2010-03-31T19:53:00.006-04:00

As some of you have astutely noticed, the random ads on the side of my blog were recently replaced by vast, restful expanses of white space. As a firm believer in clutter (It's genetic. Thanks, Mom), I have decided to remove these, in favor of whatever will show up in their place (Probably nothing. I haven't checked yet). Now, why did this occur? Well, a while back I received an email from the ad people, which I possibly am not supposed to post here. I don't know. If anyone wants to take the time to back up the archives in case Google sends the Matrix or something after me, then thanks. So, without further ado, here it is:

Hello,

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our
advertisers in the future, we've decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in advance
for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions about your account or the actions we've taken,
please do not reply to this email. You can find more information by
visiting https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153
.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

That's right, ladies. I'm dangerous.

Today's Most Terrifying Moment

2010-03-26T15:06:00.005-04:00

I worked today, which means that many, many things could compete for the prize that is this post's title ("That person reproduced?!?" *shudders*). However, one moment stands above the rest. During the lunch rush, we helped an elderly gentleman who didn't always seem aware of where he was sort out what he wanted and made him a quite tasty sandwich (You see, that is what we do). He was then gone for about an hour, before turning back up to stand on the other side of the window separating our pastrami slicer from the parade of people who would otherwise be unable to restrain themselves from touching the shiny object. It took a while to get his attention, but once we did, we determined that it was the best sandwich he had had in a long time, and that he could not find his car. Now, our parking lot is not the sort of thing you see outside sporting stadiums. It is more Vermont-sized, by which I mean it does not take long to traverse on foot. So my manager, using the gentleman's description of his car, went out and found it, then came back in to show the man where the car was located. Once they reached it, he realized that there was no second person to drive. Considering how aware this gentleman was of where he was at all times, this hardly seemed like the ideal situation. As my department is located near the front doors of the store, I was actually slightly concerned for my own personal well-being. Upon returning from his trip and reporting both that the customer was his own chauffeur and had not been receptive to mentioned alternate travel plans, the boss went off for a while. Not sure where exactly, but I think it involved a quick consultation with other members of management to determine whether something should be done involving calling the PD with a license plate number. And I do not know what decision was reached, but I sincerely hope that, as of 3 hours after this occurred, both the gentleman in question and anyone unlucky enough to be in his path are still alive. Because these sandwiches aren't going to eat themselves.

Great Moments In Marketing

2010-03-24T17:13:00.006-04:00

Although I work at a fine French dining establishment, I do not feel the need to offer them extreme loyalty w/r/t grocery purchasing. Which is how I recently came to find within my fridge a quality jar of salsa from the competing company Hannafords, the salsa being the same brand. This salsa is, I would estimate, 30% crushed tomatoes, 70% water (It's like the earth in salsa form!). Awesome. The only reason I forced it upon my poor, unsuspecting palate is that quality salsa is evidently made from a combination of gold bullion and unicorn tears. Not being overly awash in money, store brands and sorrow it is. However, this bottle of salsa, as opposed to most of the other unsatisfactory models I have tasted recently, proved to be worth its weight in, well, salsa. How, you may well ask. Well, I'll tell you this: it certainly wasn't the salsa.

You see, per convention, this bottle features a label. Otherwise it would be naked. This label features a rather attractive picture of a tomato, reclining gracefully with an onion, garlic, and both red AND green hot peppers (Presumed marketing statement: "Think of the colors!"). Standard stuff so far, as those are fairly typical ingredients for salsa, even if this particular version features trace elements at best of all but the tomato. But then I noticed something. Written right there in the bottom-right corner of the picture, under all the vegetables (Or vegetables and fruit, if you want to be a real prick about classifying everything properly, scientist) are the words 'Serving suggestion'. Yes. I swear it says that. Nowhere on the label is there any picture of salsa. I can only assume that the marketing team either got really drunk the night before the picture was due and missed the deadline, or they had some sort of Road-To-Damascus-esque revelatory moment (Or possibly are in a crappy Jim Carrey movie) in which they saw the light, because they're right. I really should've just bought the component parts, and not the salsa.

A Further Note On Caribbean Radio

2010-03-22T12:16:00.002-04:00

As most of you are probably aware, we as a world are currently in the midst of an economic downturn, excepting China, to which I believe we as a country now owe our firstborn children, who are ticketed to replace China's second-born children who, to my understanding, have been thrown into rivers. This has led to individuals and businesses cutting back on their expenditure, impacting revenue streams, and leading to further cutbacks. It's a vicious cycle, and almost no aspect of life has been untouched. This would, of course, include advertising budgets, vital dollars that the mass media depends on. And Caribbean radio stations are showing the strain. But they have risen to the occasion by adopting an innovative strategy regarding the gaps in incoming ad flow, one that would never have occurred to me. I would have gone with playing more music than before, replacing the ads that no longer were coming in, or possibly temporarily dropping advertising prices until the demand for them increased. Or maybe have all the DJs shot to decrease costs. Probably that last one. However, none of these fine ideas seem to have been used. Rather, I heard, on February 24th, an advertisement (Distinguishable from the DJs yelling in the midst of songs by the fact that, for the ad, a man yelled while music was being played) for the largest Super Bowl party in the Caribbean. Yes, that Super Bowl. The one that happened on February 7th. This would never have occurred to me, and I would like to congratulate the Caribbean radio stations for thinking so far outside the box on this issue. Now please stop yelling at me.

Radio Stations: UR Doing It Wrong

2010-03-15T22:03:00.000-04:00

So, originally this was going to begin with a sentence stating that I recently returned from a vacation to the location pictured below. At this late date, however, that no longer seems appropriate. So rather, let's try it like this: Earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to go on vacation to the US Virgin Islands. Even I can't manage to complain about that. The islands are beyond gorgeous, and feature large bottles of rum priced to sell. I win/won. While there, I spent the majority of my time relaxing as much as possible without actually exposing myself to the sun, for the dual fears that I would immediately break out in first-degree burns and that passing planes would crash on my head after the pilots were blinded by the reflecting light. Thanks to generous aid from sunblock whose SPF was measured in exponents, I succeeded admirably on both counts (The planes may have crashed elsewhere. Don't know, don't care). However, there was one day in which I broke from this absolutely backbreakingly rigorous schedule and stayed sober long enough to drive the rental jeep on a sightseeing tour of the island. Random things will be written about it after I start a new paragraph for no apparent reason.

That was fun. Anyway, let me tell you a little bit about the road system on the island of St. John. Firstly, most of the island is uninhabited national park, as the island was gifted to the United States government by the Rockefeller family, who evidently are richer than God, and had quite the number of anti-trust legal matters they were trying to 'settle'. Presumably this worked. Or all the surviving family members are in prison. Whatever. Anyway, the point I was trying to make before I went of my meds was (I think) that most of the island's roads go through the wilderness. And not just any wilderness. Steep, steep wilderness. I would estimate that you could base a very good roller coaster on the St. John road system. I think there may even have been a loop at one point. But that is not the fun part. Because, you see, the engineers who designed the highways, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the best time to make the roads do sudden, erratic 270 degree turns is when you are furiously attempting to convince your rental jeep that it wants nothing more than to go up the 80 degree incline it has been presented with, a thing it is telling you very clearly it has no intention of doing. Also, did I mention that you drive on the left-hand side of the road? This is not because the steering wheels on the cars are reversed, like in that weird Europe place. Rather, this is so the driver can see exactly how close he is to the unpaved, unpacked, sharply dropping off shoulder. This is very important when, say, there is another car on the road, because the roads were apparently designed for Matchbox™ cars. Somehow I survived (Though there was one close call involving a pack of island donkeys and a water tanker, driven by a maniac who I can only assume is currently deceased), which is how I can report to you that the Virgin Islands are doing the radio station thing all wrong. You're welcome.

You see, where I come from, radio DJs are supposed to play the songs and get out of the way, with the exception of 'Morning show' hosts, who should be rounded up and shot. In the Virgin Islands, this is not the preferred method of DJing. I can definitively say this, because I must have listened to every radio station in the region, as they were constantly fading out due to sudden turns around entire mountains. And, with the exception to the modern RAWK station (Station name: The Buzz. Of course), all the DJs followed a very specific formula, which can be approximated as follows:

1. Begin song.
2. Allow song to play for upwards of 30 seconds, but no more than 45 seconds.
3. Temporarily mute song (You cannot pause it. The song must continue playing, unbroadcast).
4. Yell something. It does not matter what you yell, provided it is unintelligible.
5. Unmute song for up to five seconds. Ideally less.
6. Mute song again.
7. Yell something else. Slur it like Shane MacGowan with a Caribbean accent.
8. Repeat forever, or until the listener changes stations, whichever comes first.

Seriously. Every radio station followed this format, which is terrible. It may have been the sudden elevation changes that did it, but I believe at one point I began bleeding from my ears. I blame the radio. However, I bravely continued listening, because the alternative was making conversation, and when you're on vacation on a tropical island, even that mild endeavor seems like too much work. Sadly, however, this method of playing songs over the airwaves was everywhere, preventing me from fully appreciating the fine music my ears were assaulted with, which included (I swear this is true. Sadly, I cannot find the name of the song anywhere) a Caribbean techno version of the hokey-pokey. Yes, that one. I almost drove off the road in sheer hilarity and befuddlement.

At the end of the day of adventure, I found I had suffered many wounds from my epic journey across an absolutely gorgeous piece of land. For one thing, there was the blood seeping from my ears. I should probably get that checked out. At one point when there was an especially vicious assault on what remained of my eardrums, I jammed my finger stabbing at the radio. And that was it, actually. Two wounds. Fortunately, there was cheap rum waiting for me when I returned to the resort. Sometimes life is hard.

Envy Me

2010-02-19T16:38:00.001-05:00

Attention Impressionable Youngsters: Please Stop Listening To Terrible Music. Also, Give Me Money.

2010-02-17T19:21:00.005-05:00

It has recently been brought to my attention by a credible source who shall here be identified only as 'My brother' that I have a larger audience than I previously suspected amongst the future leaders of America. Upon finding this groundbreaking information out, I immediately said 'Huh'. Then I took a nap. But after I woke up, I realized what I had to do. I then promptly forgot, because I am getting old. So, rather than provide you, my youthful-skewing readership demographic, with whatever groundbreaking, completely brilliant thing I was going to write, I instead have a request for you: Please stop listening to terrible music. Also, give me money. I guess it's two requests.

You see, young people, you wield incredible power that you did not know about until I decided to tell you about it in a couple sentences. In fact, you still don't know it unless you decided this whole thing was getting too long, and skipped ahead. You should probably be on Ritalin®. But that is not my point, at least not until I buy stock in the Ritalin Corporation. Instead, my point is that you control the mass media. I know. Doesn't it make you want to flex your hands in pleasure, feeling your newly-stated power coursing through them. Go ahead and do it. Alright, stop flexing them now. After two times you start to look ridiculous. Anyway, there is a very scientific reason for this, and that is that you control the majority of the country's disposable income, barring that possessed by trophy wives, which is wisely spent on silicon products. This spending on the part of the trophy wives leaves you as the controllers of the almighty dollar (Soon to be Yen) in the entertainment industry. Where you get this money to spend is unknown. Perhaps you steal it from your parents' wallets while they are napping. I won't them tell if you give me some of it. But scientific studies have shown that you are the ones with the purchasing power, and what you want is to be entertained. Again, the Ritalin thing.

Now, I am not going to sit here with rose-colored contacts in and tell you that back in the day, everything to do with the music industry was wonderful (Partly because I am lying down as I type this). Indeed, as those of you who were subjected to the on-screen tragi-comedy that was the Super Bowl halftime show would know (At least the ones of you who have been released from the necessary sessions of post-traumatic therapy), I would be blatantly lying if I tried to peddle this to you. Rather, I would relate to you a story from my days when I was a stupid youth, much like you are now. Here we go: When I was a stupid youth, I listened to absolutely TERRIBLE music, much of which (Such as Creed. Especially Creed) is extremely embarrassing and/or nauseating in hindsight. Now that I am older and know everything there is to know, I have much better taste, consisting primarily of bands that no one has ever heard of whose records are impossible to find in stores, and realize the folly of my younger, stupid ways. So please, young people, don't do it for me, do it for your future selves (Note: If you have plans to die within the next couple years, before you start to sprout nose hairs, you may ignore this advice safely): Stop listening to terrible music.

But you are shouting at your computer screen right now, "But HOLLA(R)! How am I supposed to know what music is good and what is horrible?!? I am merely a young person, and therefore stupid!" I know, and that is why you are lucky I am here to help you. Firstly, stop that shouting at the computer. I can't hear you, unless you have broken into my apartment and are reading this on my laptop. If you are doing this, please leave me some money. The first step to telling what music is terrible is checking the band name. If the band name is 'The Black Eyed Peas', the music will be terrible. This also holds true for the name 'Nickelback'. Or 'Panic! At the Disco'. Just to be safe, you should probably ask me before you listen to any music. Ask away. I will handle any and all questions as I receive them.

If you all stop listening to terrible music in unison, young people, then in a few years we may finally see some results from your laudable choice. Why will it take what is a substantial portion of your life thus far to see results? This is because the music industry is run by people who, rather than asking you directly which bands you would like to spend your parents' stolen disposable income on, instead prefer to keep their heads lodged firmly in a place where it is hard for changing cultural taste, or sunshine for that matter, to reach them. But ideally, within several years they will have to remove their heads due to a lack of oxygen, and will notice the masses of young people out there who, instead of choosing to spend their money on terrible music, have decided to give it to me (Hint hint). The resulting shock will probably cause their feeble hearts to give out, and they will be replaced by people who will know how to respond to changing cultural trends. Those who do not surface for oxygen will die of suffocation, which will help to correct this problem in much the same fashion already outlined. Long story short, it's probably worth dropping the cash to reserve a cemetery plot now before they become overcrowded with music executives and you wind up having to share a casket with the creepy guy who lived across the street.

So what have we learned today, young people? Quite a bit, I think. Maybe. But you do not know this, because you skipped directly to the end, rather than reading all the pearls of wisdom I attempted to bestow upon you. So I will now make you an offer: Rather than forcing you to reread everything you have scrolled past, I will send you a recording of me singing the whole thing for the low, low price of $15.99! This offer is not available in stores, and is only good for a limited time. So go on and steal some money from your father's wallet. He keeps it in the left pocket of his jacket. Make sure to get enough for the stamp, too. You'll thank me when you're older and still have your self-respect intact, by which point I will hopefully have made enough money to move to an undisclosed location so that you can't find me to demand a refund.

Sage Advice

2010-02-09T11:39:00.004-05:00

So, once again, I found myself at my place of employment. This time in my official capacity as Company Ambassador of Goodwill and Smoked Fish, I was approached by a woman lacking the normal amount of teeth, who seemed to be operating her shopping cart in a rather military fashion (Here I am thinking of "Left! Right!", not banana republics). She hailed me, so I went over to her and her cart, which featured a large number of bottled sodas carefully arranged in a very random fashion, which flew about and smashed together any time she randomly jerked her cart in a different direction, something that happened approximately two times per second. She then asked me "Can I get a bag to put these in so they won't roll around so much? I'll pay for them up front." Now, would I ever question the integrity of strangers? Yes. Yes I would. So, rather than proffer the requested plastic, I arranged them in a more orderly (Read: A) fashion, which would prevent them from rattling more loudly than the velociraptor pen in Jurassic Park every time she changed course. She admired my handiwork, and then said to me "Thanks, man. Don't smoke weed this early in the morning. It's, um, medical. Marijuana. Don't smoke it."

Duly noted.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

2010-02-02T11:09:00.003-05:00

So yesterday I was at the fine French dining establishment at which I work (Le Chopparé du Prix), and we were somewhat busy. As a result of this, I required a certain amount of refortification, here defined as caffeine. To achieve this end, I went over to our coffee shop on my break, only to find that they were out of French roast! Rather than curse my place on this mortal coil, I chose to loiter conspicuously in the area while a new urn was brewed. Whilst I whiled away the time, an elderly gentleman came up to the counter and asked for a senior coffee (Presumably he wanted fresh coffee at a reduced price for some sort of senior discount, as I do not believe coffee ages in the same fashion as fine wine), and was informed that Le Chopparé du Prix does not have this sort of price reduction at the coffee shop. Having been thwarted thusly, the gentleman determined that the only recourse left to him was to turn to me and announce "Why don't you go to war and learn what freedom's all about? You don't have the guts!" While this did nothing to solve either his or my caffeine-related dilemmas, it certainly made me wonder what in the world was going on, and whether that had actually just happened. He kindly ended my befuddlement by repeating his statement verbatim. Seeing as how the customer is always right, I responded with a straightforward "You're right. I don't." I am nothing if not a good company man.

Now, this leaves me with a few questions. Firstly, does he go around saying this to people everywhere on a daily basis? Or was this triggered by some sort of disappointment over not getting a prix reduction on his coffee? If so, how does he handle any sort of major disappointment? Pistols at dawn, perhaps. But more importantly, this gentleman bore most of the major signs of getting up there in years, from seemingly being slightly hard of hearing to walking slowly to facial wrinkling, which means he's very fortunate that I am an ambassador of goodwill while on the clock. Because I think I could have taken him.

Things That Are Funnier Than Jay Leno

2010-01-23T13:40:00.004-05:00

Sadly, this list shall be, by necessity, far from comprehensive. Feel free to add any glaring omissions in the comments. With that in mind, here we go:

Bill Murray
Brian Doyle-Murray
Pearls Before Swine
The Aqua Teen Hunger Force Christmas album
Seeing somebody get kicked in the balls
Getting kicked in the balls
A song I heard a stoned hippy singing at a bake sale about apple muffins
The Masturbating Bear
The fact that NBC is projected to lose $200,000,000 on the Olympics
The fact that NBC will not show any of the Olympic events live
And will broadcast them 3 hours later on the west coast than on the east coast
Even though the Olympics are in Vancouver
This dream I had once about a talking chalupa
The Budweiser frogs
Jury duty (The movie)
Jury duty (Being selected for it)
Jimmy Kimmel pretending to be Jay Leno
Intestinal parasites
The ending to Romeo and Juliet
Paris Hilton's singing career
A death in the family
One of Leno's cars breaking down
The local news
The phoneless cord
Spam
Evan Almighty
This list
The FJM archives
Christopher Walken's spoken word version of 'Poker Face'
Tim McCarver
Narcolepsy
Hitting your thumb with a hammer
The Nixon-Kennedy debates
On second thought, not Tim McCarver
Analogies involving the Battle of Trafalgar
Paying the electric bill
Flying monkeys
Amputation
Snooki
Massive blunt-force head trauma
The gout
Ranger Rick, the magazine
Mark Trail
Sitting on a tack
Norm MacDonald's post-SNL career
Dan Quayle jokes in 2010
Seriously, can you believe that guy was Vice President?
He was so dumb!
Fitviavi mold
Pet rock
Crunchy frog
Drunken Joe Namath
AIDS

Current Events

2010-01-19T12:08:00.004-05:00

Congrats, cousin Chris. According to the Center for Statistics I Just Made Up, 55% of all marriages end in annulment, so if you make it to next week, you're ahead of the game.

Up In The Air, And The Increasing Trend Of Filmmakers Lying

2010-01-13T09:54:00.006-05:00

I saw Up In the Air yesterday, now that it's been out for something like six months and has garnered a bunch of nominations for some awards show that will probably be both boring and televised. Ever since I saw a preview for it, the movie was on my radar as One To Watch, Ideally In A Theater. Yesterday I did this. That's just how on the ball I am. Anyway, it was very good, and I recommend it to everyone who is not Isaac (As a wise man once said, this movie has naughty language!). George Clooney stars as A Charming Character, and performs his role very well (Who would've thought Clooney could be charming?!?). The performances are all quite good, and the script is great. So, yeah. I'm not a movie critic (As you can probably tell, I'm not really trying), and this is not why I've called you here today. Why have I called you here? Well, I'll tell you, in new paragraph form.

No, why I am writing today is the fact that, w/r/t Up In the Air, I was deceived. You see, Up In the Air has a very intriguing preview, which is only made better by the fact that it is set to 'The Passenger' by Iggy Pop, which is awesome. Not only is it set to this song, Iggy actually (From what I've heard) re-recorded a version of the song specifically for this film. And yet, the song does not appear in the movie. As George Steinbrenner would say, #$!&* the heck?!? Instead, we are treated to a variety of music than can be described nicely as 'twee', about what you'd expect from a production crew that was in some way involved in Juno (I'm too lazy to look up what the exact connection is). Still, I can even see not putting the song in the bulk of the film, as it is a fairly driving piece, which might overwhelm whatever else is happening on-screen at the time (Not that it does this in the previews, but let's be charitable here). But, then, isn't that what the ending credits are for? Not in this case, as halfway through the credits the song playing ends, giving us a perfect moment to bring on the Iggy. Instead, we are treated to some crappy acoustic number evidently recorded by Fisher Price™ tape recorder, closing things out on a bit of an anticlimax.

Most troublingly, this is not the first time this has happened to me in the last year. I'd estimate I go to see somewhere between one and two movies in the theater annually, and the last two have now played this exact same deceitful sleight of hand on me. The other film in question is Where the Wild Things Are, a movie whose trailer was set to a rerecording of The Arcade Fire's stunning Wake Up, a song which perfectly fit the mood and got me so amped up that you'd think it was a motivational speech by Rex Ryan. And then, again, not present in the movie. Lame. So what gives, filmmakers? Yes, your movies are good (At least the ones I bother to see. I suspect Tooth Fairy, starring Dwayne Johnson (a.k.a. The Rock) will not be on the level of Citizen Kane). But why the lying? Why must you pull the old Three-Card Monte in your previews? Because I give you my word that, if I find a certain combination of music and imagery exhilarating on the small screen, I will not suddenly be put to sleep when I see it on a screen the size of my apartment. In fact, it might even be better. At the least, it will be bigger and louder, which I thought was what Hollywood did these days.

Hall of Fame Voting: Bring on the Stupid

2010-01-08T09:00:00.005-05:00

As the two of you who care about baseball already know, the Hall of Fame results were announced this week. Congratulations to Andre Dawson, the sole inductee. I wouldn't have voted for him, but his inclusion is hardly some kind of horrible miscarriage of baseball-specific justice. Now, Hall of Fame voting, beyond meaning imminent elections, also signals another venerable tradition: The sportswriter's column detailing his/her (Usually his) reasoning for the players voted for. Many voter take this process very seriously, and submit ballots which, while they may be disagreed with, are well-considered and rationally explained. Then there are the morons who probably submitted ballots marked with drool stains. These are more fun to mock. So here come the dumbest HoF articles I have been able to find so far this year (We may have a special post on this within the next week, as Bill Plaschke has not yet written a HoF column, and I'm sure when he does that it will be riddled with idiocy). Let us begin.

First up, blowhard Jay Mariotti, who submitted a blank ballot, and then justified his voting thusly on the excruciatingly terrible TV show Around the Horn:

I didn’t vote for anybody in the baseball hall of fame this year. Ya know why? To me…the first ballot is sacred. I think Roberto Alomar is an eventual Hall of Famer, not the first time. [snip] As far as Blyleven and Dawson…if they haven’t gotten in for years and years I cannot vote them in now. Ripken, Rickey Henderson and Gwynn. They are true first ballot Hall of Famers, but I didn’t vote for anybody, throw me out of the Baseball Writers. I don’t care.

Now, let it be noted that, in addition to this line of thinking being moronic, the BBWAA rules makes no distinction between first-ballot years and the other 14 years players are on the ballot. But more importantly, he has voted for Blyleven and Dawson in the past. Apparently their numbers in 2009 were bad enough to drop them off his ballot. Or is it a moral stand? Well, last year Mariotti voted for Jim Rice in his 15th year on that ballot. So maybe it's just that Mariotti is an attention whore whose moral stands change based on how many cameras are pointed at him at any given moment. I think they should take him up on the offer he closes that quote with.

Next up, the 973-year-old Murray Chass, who states that he did not vote for Blyleven because

As good as Blyleven was in winning 287 games, he had some of his worst years when his team had good years. The best example of that dichotomy came in 1988 when the Twins finished second with a 91-71 record while Blyleven had a 10-17 record and a 5.43 e.r.a.

That's right, Murray voted against Blyleven because he had a bad year in his 19th big league season, one in which he reportedly pitched through shoulder soreness all year. The next season Blyleven finished fourth in the Cy Young voting. The fun bit? People like Murray Chass who clearly lie with statistics are the ones who like to throw out accusations that statistics lie. Anyway, this is dumb. Even Murray should be able to recognize that.

Moving on to Jon Heyman, whose HoF article has so many odd twists and turns in the methodology that it almost feels like he has some sort of multiple personality disorder:

I don't put quite the same emphasis as some on career statistics, especially in cases where I've had the chance to follow a player's entire career as it was unfolding, as was the case with this year's entire ballot. (That happens when you get old.)

I consider impact more than stats. I like dominance over durability. I prefer players who were great at some point to the ones who were merely very good for a very long time. [snip] Some will say that Blyleven's career was equal to Hall of Famer Don Sutton's but I say it is just short of Sutton's. They both had big totals in other categories but Sutton wound up with 37 more victories, going over the magic 300 mark by 24.

So if Bert had won 13 more games, you'd vote for him? Jon, you do realize you're allowed to proofread these things before you hand them in to remove contradictory statements, right? No? Alright then.

And now for everyone's favorite whipping boy, Dan Shaughnessy. Picking apart Dan is really like shooting fish in a barrel, so we'll be quick here. Dan's HoF voting process:

Each Hall voter applies his own standards, and mine often references the famous line that Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart applied to pornography. Stewart argued that he might not be able to define what was pornographic, "but I know it when I see it.''

For me, it's the same with Hall of Famers. Some guys just strike you as Cooperstown-worthy and others do not.

Dan, Stewart was roundly mocked for saying that because, well, it's stupid. If you really want to use that as your standard, go right ahead. But you might be a bigger blowhard than Mariotti.

And finally, let's wrap up with Bill Conlin, who dropped this bit of genius on us:

I voted for Tim Raines his first year of eligibility. But when he failed to get 25 percent of the vote, he was moved to the back burner. Sorry, that’s just the way it has to be. Maybe more eligible ballwriters should have measured the Rock’s career numbers in all phases against those of analog basestealer and first-ballot inductee Lou Brock. Try it, you’ll be amazed.

Good news for Raines, however. Yesterday, in one of the most bizarre elections in a bizarre process, he collected 30 percent and is now back on my radar.

So, Bill, you're criticizing the electorate for not voting for Raines, who you believe is worthy of being enshrined in Cooperstown, and then state that YOU DID NOT VOTE FOR HIM THIS YEAR BECAUSE A LARGE PERCENTAGE OF THE ELECTORATE DID NOT VOTE FOR HIM IN THE PAST. In what dark recess of your tiny little addled mind does this make even a [Mount Kilimanjaro] bit of sense? Holy [Hummingbird], this takes the cake. You have out-dumbed Shaughnessy. Good God.

Okay, I think that's out of my system. Finally, let's close with a bit of intelligence from Ken Rosenthal, who yesterday wrote a column suggesting that the BBWAA needs to get rid of some of the voters who do not do the HoF voting process justice. Ken, preach on. I would like to submit the above five voters as fine choices to be the first kicked out.

Note - My apologies to the many fine candidates who did not make the final cut to five, especially Marty Noble, who withheld his vote from Alomar because Roberto had two bad years with the Mets, whom Noble covers. Keep on trying, Marty, and you just might make the cut next year.

Tonight on Jay Leno

2010-01-05T21:10:00.005-05:00

Coming up in an hour, Jay has Kim Kardashian and Jillian Michaels as guests. So, if you're keeping score at home, that's one guest just as talentless as Jay, with the whorishness a wash as well (She had a sex tape released to the internet, he had 24 separate product placements during the 22 minutes of the first episode of his new show), and one guest who looks like this:

She is a fitness trainer on The Biggest Loser, which I have been subjected to enough of to know that the above picture is a reasonable representation of her personality. And as her job title would suggest, she is rather ridiculously in shape. So now, let us pray that she takes advantage of her close proximity to two talentless hacks tonight to forcibly remove their heads from their torsos using only her bare hands. Please, Jillian. For myself, and America. And the children. Think of the children.

People Who Should Die: The SchoolInPJs.com Girl

2010-01-04T08:47:00.003-05:00

My apartment is a very modern facility which features both electric lighting and indoor plumbing, so it should be no surprise to you, the reader, to learn that Tivo™ is also present in this veritable treasure trove of technology. I use this service to record many things, all of which are The Daily Show and Good Eats, which I then proceed to not watch until the Tivo™'s hard drive is full, at which point it yells at me to erase them. I usually do, as I do not wish to anger Tivo™. I have found that Tivo™ has other uses besides being a deposit box for unwatched videos, however, as I recently also used it to watch an episode of The Daily Show. And, based on a fairly omnipresent commercial aired during the broadcast, this apparently makes me a sucker with disposable income. Because there is no way a website called Schoolinpjs.com is not a scam. So going forward here, I'm simply going to assume the website in question is not an accredited university*.

*I did a minute amount of research on The Google and found claims that the website in question is owned by Kaplan University, which it conveniently refers people to. Kaplan, in turn, is owned by the Washington Post. What does this all mean? No idea.

I'm not even going to link to the ad here. If you want to see it, you can find it yourself. Suffice to say that it is beyond obnoxious, as the girl greets us wearing pajamas and fluffy slippers, but in a shocking twist, it turns out she's going to college! My God! This will revolutionize everything! Because lord knows people who don't want to leave the house to go to school will absolutely galvanize the workforce once they have their degrees! We are also given, in between repetitions of the website address (Which is also conveniently displayed at the bottom of the screen for the entire ad until it permanently burns itself into your TV screen) bits of HILARIOUS humor. Such as when she advises guys to "Cover up, please". OH NO SHE DIDN'T! You see, it's funny because it's true! I'm not wearing any clothes right now! Time to scratch myself! Where's my spittoon?!? Look here, wench. I hope your pink fluffy slippers catch fire and the flames then ignite a previously undetected gas leak which causes your house to explode. And your final thought will be that you could have avoided this if you went to a real college. Die.

Baseball-Related Linkage

2009-12-27T10:19:00.001-05:00

The fine folks over at The Dugout take us behind the scenes in the Jason Bay contract negotiations. (Note - The link does feature some semi-starred-out language).

My Spice Cabinet Is Trying To Kill Me

2009-12-22T19:34:00.003-05:00

I spend a fair amount of time in my kitchen because, in my experience, that is where food comes from. As someone who enjoys eating both for the ability it allows me to continue my existence as well as for the flavor it can provide, I take this aspect of my life fairly seriously (Probably more seriously than I should, as I recently used a thermometer to take the internal temperature of a sweet roll as a means of determining doneness, which spell check does not think is a word). I take pride in whipping up tasty meals out of whatever I feel like buying at the store (As I also work at the store, these things are inevitably cheap), and really love the room of my house from which the food comes. So I was shocked when I recently discovered that my warm, fuzzy feelings are evidently not returned by that most crucial of cupboards, my spice cabinet.

As someone who is, technically, poor, I find myself often hit with sticker shock when I enter the spice aisle of a grocery store and find that .0056205032 ounces of bay leaves will cost me $41.85. This is why I buy my spices from the bulk section of the local Organic Hippy Co-Op, which allows me to fill a bag with however much of a particular spice I want, and then buy just that amount. Beyond helping me ensure that my spices are constantly fresh (Yes, they deteriorate with age), this saves me a not-insignificant amount of money. But occasionally I get spices at a regular store that does not smell of patchouli, which is why my spice cabinet is littered with small, frequently unmarked bags of Mystery Spices broken up by the occasional Enormous, Mostly Full, Clearly Labeled Jar. Most of the time it is fairly easy to determine which spices are in which bags, as most look different from one another, and in the rare cases that they are similar, well, no one's going to care too much if the basil is actually oregano (One exception: Do not confuse paprika with cayenne pepper. Ever). As a result of this system, my cabinet contains very few words. So the other day when I looked into the cabinet and saw the jar of coriander standing there like some kind of flavorful colossus, I was a bit startled to see that the side of the container read:

NO IRRADIATION

This is less than comforting, especially since none of my other containers or unmarked bags contain similar sentiments. On the upside, it does explain where the eerie glow in my kitchen comes from. Now, being a history major with an English minor, I am not too heavy on the sciences, and therefore am not entirely sure what the effects of radiation are, but I am reasonably certain that it is where Godzilla came from. Thank god that I am no longer in New York, because I am petrified of what might happen if a cockroach got into the cumin. And while this does eliminate the need for me to buy a nightlight (I now keep the garam masala next to the bed), I now spend most of my time wondering what the trade-off of good-tasting food v. decreased life expectancy is worth to me. I have yet to figure out the exact answer, as my thought process is fairly scattered due to the noise being emitted by the Geiger counter I placed next to the nutmeg (Which actually has a label, albeit one that identifies the bag's contents as 'nutmed'. Evidently I was tired). Such is the price of safety. In response to this alarming set of circumstances, I have composed my last will and testament, and would like to let each and every one of you know that I love you all equally, though some of you more than others. And if I am found dead, or glowing, or Godzillaing, be assured that the turmeric did it.

Were You Aware Of It?

2009-12-19T20:02:00.003-05:00

Hanukkah pronounced backwards is 'hakuna', famously used in Disney's The Lion King. There's a 'Jews control the mass media' conspiracy theory in here somewhere.

John Lackey

2009-12-17T09:25:00.004-05:00

Well, thanks to the Red Sox for waiting all of two hours or so to make my last post completely irrelevant. Mike Cameron, welcome aboard. Great to have you (Here's a fun question: Who has provided more Wins Above Replacement to his team over the last two years: Mike Cameron or Jason Bay?). John Lackey? Well, this one I'm a bit more concerned about.

One thing I won't deny is that the deal looks like it makes the team better for this year, as it makes the question marks the Sox have in the minors force their way onto the roster rather than being handed a spot, and with the guys the Sox have down on the farm, that sounds good to me. But this deal is a lot of risk to assume, especially for a team that has been as low-risk as the Sox in the past. 5 years for a pitcher is a heck of a commitment considering the high injury and attrition rates at the position, and Lackey has a checkered injury history the last two years, a glaring red flag considering those seasons follow 5 consecutive years of heavy workloads. Pitching-wise, Lackey is slightly ground ball-oriented, though essentially neutral in this regard. What he makes his money off of is his ability to strike out an above-average number of hitters while limiting his walks, making him a good starter. Which is why it concerns me that his ability to K batters is in a five-year decline.

Lackey's peak year was 2005, when he was legitimately Cy Young-caliber. Since then, with a graph line that points up a bit each year, batters make contact with 5% more of the pitches they swing at in the strike zone, and a whopping 20.4% of the pitches they swing at out of the zone. Lackey has gone from very hard to hit to essentially league-average (Or slightly worse than league-average) contact rates. For obvious reasons, this has led to his strikeout rate declining, as that is also in a five-year decline. Now, Lackey is what the old sportswriters call a 'Crafty veteran', and he hasn't let this go unnoticed. Rather, he seems to have changed his pitching style a bit in response to his increasing inability to obtain a swing-and-miss, upping his pitches thrown outside of the strike zone significantly last year. Unfortunately, as I just mentioned, batters have dramatically increased their contact rate against these pitches as well, and while the move undoubtedly helped Lackey's strikeout numbers a bit, it also led to an increase in his walk rate. Things like this scare me.

So what we have is an aging pitcher who has struggled with injuries, with a dwindling ability to strike out hitters, lacking the strong GB-tendencies that would make high contact rates acceptable. The fortunate bit is that so far Lackey has had a very gentle annual decline, and he was starting from a high talent level in the first place. But eventually there comes a point where a pitchers inability to put one past a hitter pushes that pitcher off a cliff completely (See Hernandez, Livan). I am not going to claim I know exactly where that point is, but each year John Lackey gets a bit closer to it (When he manages to stay on the field), and the Sox just committed to paying him until he's 35. As long as they aren't expecting an ace, they shouldn't be too disappointed, as with this rotation, Lackey is third-starter material at best. But I wouldn't be surprised if, by the end of 2010, Clay Buchholz has pushed Lackey down to fourth in the pecking order, and it's probably not getting better from there on out.

Interesting Non-Tendered Players

2009-12-14T08:44:00.004-05:00

Big name free agents and blockbuster trades can wait. Yesterday was the deadline for teams to offer salary arbitration to those youngsters still under team control, with any- and everyone not receiving an offer heading into the free agent pool, which by my unofficial count seems to have 6,000,000 players in it at the moment. I tend to prefer the bargain-basement players to round out the roster, as you can often get good production from low-cost players on short-term deals, which gives you roster flexibility down the line (Always a good thing). So after flipping through the list of newly-available players, three especially stand out (Kelly Johnson was disqualified, as the fact that he hits from the left side of the plate outweighs his solid bat and positional flexibility on a team sporting lefties at both outfield corners), either due to the fact that I think they'd be a good fit for the team, or due to the fact that I keep hearing their names (This is only one of them). So let's take a look at the cheap players out there, the type Theo seems to love signing (Editor's note: This is not a criticism).

Firstly, let's start with Jonny Gomes. At this point, the Sox seem comfortable going into 2010 with a starting outfield of Hermida-Ellsbury-Drew, letting Jason Bay go wherever the money takes him. As an unathletic, all-bat corner outfielder in his thirties, no objections here to not re-signing him. The proposed OF, however, is all lefties. I would feel more comfortable picking up a right-handed bat to pair with the three fine gentlemen listed above. Enter Gomes, just cut loose by the Reds. Jonny has two glaring weaknesses, none of which are hitting left-handed pitching (.261/.341/.503 vs. lefties the last 3 years, which includes his trainwreck of a 2008). he can't hit a righty to save his life, but in this outfield, he wouldn't have to. His abnormal HR/FB spike in 2009 (22%, 15.7% career) will come back to earth a bit, but he's still a very useful bat to have. The glove, on the other hand, not so much. Gomes is something of a piece of furniture in the outfield. And we're not talking an end table with wheels here. We're talking 'Let's move the pull-out couch up the stairs!' furniture. He's worth -22.3 runs per 150 games in an outfield corner over his career, also known as the Manny Ramirez School of Defense (Feel free to sub in the name Jason Bay if you'd prefer). This is a significant wart. But as a player available on a cheap one-year deal who would ideally play in about 1/4 of the team's games, Gomes is worth the price. And yes, this essentially is the poor man's version of signing Mike Cameron, a move I support even more (In other things that might make some sense, trading for Krispie Young (A rumor I'm making up right now. I have heard less than nothing about this) would also serve the same purpose as signing Gomes, but without the execrable defense).

Next up we have Matt Capps, a surprise non-tender by the Pirates. Let's immediately dispense with the basic 'If a guy is being released by the Pirates, that's the end of the line' joke, as that's below even Shaughnessy to write (Full disclosure: I'm actually not sure if anything is below Shaughnessy after his recent idiotic column about Theo's 'Bridge year' quote. The man is a complete hysterical idiot). Until last year, Capps was the Pirates closer, and a very good one at that, posting an ERA of 2.28 in 2007, followed up with a 3.02 showing in 2008. Then last year the wheels fell off. Capps missed time with injuries, and the ERA jumped to 5.80, leading to his outright release. So what went wrong? Well, first and foremost, Capps wasn't anywhere near that good to begin with. He does one thing very well, and that is that he doesn't walk batters (Career 1.66 BB/9). However, his strikeout rate is extremely average, and his groundball rate is Wakefield-esque (6.89 K/9, 36.0% GB career). Strip out the luck caused by extremely low HR/FB rates in 2007 and 2008 and the extremely high rate posted last year, and we find that Capps has been essentially the same pitcher every year, with an expected ERA between 3.95 and 4.37 for each of the last four years, right around league-average for a relief pitcher. Considering he posted these numbers in the weak NL Central and is an injury risk, passing on Capps looks like the right move.

Finally, my favorite reclamation project pick-up: Chien-Mien Wang. One presumption out of the way first: I want the Sox to sign Adrian Beltre to play third base. Since the Sox seem to want to sign him too, this works out well (This topic will get its own post soon). This gives the Sox a defensive infield of Youkilis-Pedroia-Scutaro-Beltre, also known as The Best Defensive Infield in Baseball, and it's not even close. That's a Gold Glove-caliber player at each position. And what better way to make use of this quartet than by signing a pitcher with a career 57.5% ground ball rate (It's a rhetorical question)? Now, as with Gomes, there are caveats here. Wang has been hurt for just about two straight years, and was been shelled when he pitched last season. But that's not quite how I see it. In 2008 Wang was off to another season right off the assembly line until a fluke Lisfranc injury to his foot while running the bases in an interleague game ended his season. He came back in 2009 and got shelled, then was eventually shut down for shoulder surgery. Now, I don't have access to detailed medical records (And wouldn't know what do do with them if I did), but this sounds to me like the foot injury didn't heal properly, and as a result of Wang trying to pitch through it, he lost his effectiveness and injured his shoulder (By way of more concrete analysis, Wang's pitch mix changed a bit last year, as he threw his sinker 20% less, in exchange for a corresponding increase in his percentage of two-seam fastballs. When he threw it, his sinker had its customary drop. However, he lost 2.5 inches of horizontal movement on it, which may be a sign that he was unable to throw it properly after the foot injury, and seems as if it would certainly help batters square up on the pitch). If team doctors are willing to sign off on him being fully healthy, both in his shoulder and his foot, putting a ground-baller like Wang behind this infield on a one-year deal is a move with the potential to pay extremely high dividends, and fits nicely with Theo's running theme of injury-reclamation pitchers.

Are these the best free agents out there? Absolutely not. But these are three available players who should have low price tags, two of whom would be a nice fit for the Sox roster. Unfortunately, the third is the one whose name I've seen thrown around the most. However, as none of that name-slinging has been done by any front office sources, I have faith that the Sox can see right through Capps' deceptive numbers and focus instead on players who can and will help them more.

And Now I Am One

2009-12-09T16:09:00.004-05:00

Well, not me. This blog. I won't say how old I am in hopes that the flood of stupid teenyboppers who are certain to flock to this blog following Katy Perry-related searches will think I'm one of them, and give me a substantial portion of their parents' disposable income. So, congrats, blog. I'll hoist a beer in your honor. Thanks to Guest Informant for all the help over the year. And now, to commemorate this truly momentous achievement of not being dead, I'd like to highlight the things some noteworthy Americans accomplished at the ripe old age in question:

George Washington: Did not tell a lie. Also, could not talk.

Abraham Lincoln: Did not shave.

John Madden: Ate entire Turducken.

Gerald Ford: Bonked head on things.

Thomas Edison: Probably invented something.

Santa Claus: Yeah, he's American. Suck on that, other countries.

Joe Biden: Preparing for the office of the vice presidency, drooled on self.

Albert Einstein: Wait, was he German? Whatever.

There you have it. Congratulations on getting older, blog. I hope you weren't expecting anything nice. Or well-written. Now about that beer....

Modern Dance Review, Part Deux

2009-12-04T10:53:00.003-05:00

I wasn't there. My bad. So instead, let's talk about cars.

You see, the reason for my nonattendance was the sudden inability of my car to do essential car things, such as going uphill, without stalling. As this same thing happened several months ago, the problem seems to lie within the fuel system, leading me to suspect the fuel pump. Which, considering the car has over 245,000 miles on it, might be worth more than the vehicle is. Good times. So an executive decision was made to load the car onto a trailer and take it to an automotive shop, where people with more sophisticated equipment than my socket wrench complete with two sockets (One of which is metric!) could examine it and determine the exact cause of its inability to move, something which was probably related to the glowing 'Check engine' light present on the dash. This plan was carried out, and the car removed from my driveway. So yesterday I heard the verdict: There is nothing wrong with the car. Apparently in an effort to fool the mechanics, the check engine light shut itself off in transit to the shop, and the stalling problem went away as well, even as the car was put through a 300-mile test over various terrains. So now I am going to go pick it back up, with no alterations made to it. This is somewhat less than comforting. Essentially, I feel as if I am living with an alcoholic housemate and have just been told by the Betty Ford clinic to just keep the door to the liquor cabinet closed and he'll be fine. I somehow doubt it, but I'll give it a try. If you see me by the side of the road with my thumb out, please pick me up.

FAIL

2009-12-02T08:23:00.004-05:00

So, turns out it's hard to write a novel in a month. Who knew? I end National Novel Writing Month just shy of 10,000 words, less than 20% of the way to the goal. But I think that the novel I've begun is actually good, and something I will finish. And I've gotten better (I think) at setting aside some time each day to write, though that's gotten a bit harder as the days have gotten busier due to the continual jettisoning of parts by my faithful steed, which will now only run where gravity takes it (Which is not far, since the way out of the parking lot is uphill). Yay for buses!

Anyway, 2,147,483,647 words were written by the participants last month, and congratulations to all of them. In this sort of race against the clock, everyone can set aside personal competition and just write without regard to how their quality stacks up against that of others, which is presumably something of a liberating feeling, and something I did not manage to achieve. Which is why I bet my book-in-progress is better than theirs (collectively). With the pace I've set for myself, they'll get to find out this summer.

In unrelated news, I'm volunteering at Vermont Public Television tonight for what I presume is pledge drive assistance. I think this officially makes me a member of the liberal elite. Does the title come with a paycheck?

Playing Literature Catch-Up

2009-11-29T17:59:00.006-05:00

Here now, reviews of the books I've read since I last wrote a full review, in order, all in 25 words or less. Why not?

In case you're easily confused: Book - Author - Words

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami - Murakami is the man. Now if only someone would return Kafka on the Shore to the library. You should read this book.

Lost in the Funhouse - John Barth - Connected short stories, all about writing said stories. Witty, frustrating, and better than the premise sounds.

Great Days - Donald Barthelme - More of the same from the master of the modern short story. But before trying this book, read 'The School', the best short story ever.

You Bright and Risen Angels - A completely insane and madcap telling of the war between bugs and electricity. Insects or computer glitches? Who cares if it's this much fun?

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Murakami - I can't read when I run, so I don't. Run, that is.

And with that tossed-off bit above, we're up to date. Hooray and stuff!

Clearinghouse: Yes, I Am Alive

2009-11-12T09:33:00.002-05:00

On November 5th, a new keyboard was procured, so I can type once again. It's kind of nice. "But wait!" you're saying. "That was a week ago!" I commend you for your ability to use a calendar, and have an excuse. November is National Novel Writing Month, and I'm trying that, though I started behind and it hasn't gotten any better since. If you care, their website is www.nanowrimo.org , and my profile and excerpt and whatever is here. So that's why posts have been nonexistent. I'm getting the urge to vent, so the novel writing may be interrupted soon.

Other things: Ben, it's probably too late for Huck Finn help at this point, but if you need a hand with anything for class, throw up a comment or shoot me an email and I'll start up a post for it. I suspect that between myself, Uncle Rick and Cindi you'll have a hard time finding a book that none of us have read.

And baseball: It's season awards time. So far the Gold Gloves are out, and the people who vote for them are stupid and wrong. Probably a rant coming on that (And the other awards) at some point. Count that as a threat if you'd like.

My novel: Is a fairy tale featuring a nymph with hepatitis. You probably shouldn't read it. But thanks for asking.

There's A New Box On The Right

2009-10-15T13:22:00.002-04:00

It's really self-indulgent. This post is the proper place to give me a hard time about it.

The Great Gatsby

2009-10-15T12:00:00.007-04:00

As is often the case with great works of literature, I was introduced to The Great Gatsby in high school, and promptly hated it, dismissing the classic as "A second-rate soap opera". But as time has passed, I have sometimes found myself wondering if perhaps the fault was not in the book itself, but rather somehow was something personal, if there was something I had missed in the slim volume. Impossible as this scenario sounds, I decided to re-read the book, just to make sure. And you know what? Most high schoolers are stupid. But man, not me. I was five kinds of brilliant.

You see, The Great Gatsby essentially is a brief soap opera, dealing with high-society shenanigans in the early 20th century; full of lavish parties, lengthy car rides and characters who are not what they initially seem to be (NOTE TO CINDI: HE DIES AT THE END). Based on the headlines I am assaulted by every time I attempt to buy groceries at a supermarket, there remains a thriving market for this sort of thing, though a basic level of literacy is no longer a prerequisite for those wishing to partake of it. Unfortunately, it completely fails to grab me. I feel much like I do when reading Jane Austen, recognizing the quality of what is before me, but simply uncaring. It's great that Jane recorded massive manuals of upper-class British dance etiquette, and when I find myself in a situation calling for a knowledge of that protocol (Should be any day now), she'll be the first source I turn to. But until then, she can sit on the shelf (The shelf in question belongs to someone else), unread by me. Same thing here. If I need to know the proper way to conduct an affair while living in 1920s NYC, Fitzgerald it is. Until then, I will pass.

Or I would if not for one thing: The prose. Regardless of how little I care about the events on each page, The Great Gatsby is far beyond wonderfully written. Every image in the book is fully formed, each far more clear than it could possibly be in any picture, moving or static. Opening to any page at random will yield a line so well-formed that it will not inspire, but rather make you wish to never write anything ever again, for it will pale in comparison to Fitzgerald. Just by way of example, I let the book fall open, and it chose pages 34 and 35. Upon page 34 resides a sentence stating of a character that

She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here.

Instantly, you know exactly what that looks like. This happens on every single page. It is borderline-amazing, and makes the book so much better than the sum of its plot that it really must be read to be believed. So go forth from this place and do so. And then return, gawking at my suboptimal sentence structure, mocking me in the comments for them. Actually, don't. That would be mean. Instead, forget about the Great Gatsby. Click on the ads and mail me blank checks. Ideally while chanting my name. That is a much better use of your time than spending two and a half hours bombing through a canonical work of Western Literature. Because these B and N keys don't seem like they're going to fix themselves, and all this copying and pasting isn't a ton of fun.

Oh God No

2009-10-15T11:19:00.004-04:00

I can't even bring myself to put this video on the blog. Katy Perry is releasing an MTV Unplugged performance. Please god, make it stop.

CURRENT EVENTS

2009-10-09T09:03:00.001-04:00

SPILLED WINE ON COMPUTER. BE BACK LATER.

I Am Racist Jesus

2009-10-02T12:27:00.008-04:00

Prelude - This post is a review of the movie Gran Torino, which came out last year. Now, if you're interested in the movie, you've had plenty of time to see it. But in deference to anyone who hasn't while secretly harboring the desire to do so, allow me to warn you that this is going to contain spoilers. In fact, now that I think about it, it's more a short essay on the movie than it is a review. Too bad my delete key is broken.

Gran Torino supposedly is Clint Eastwood's swan song, and the movie shows it. Eastwood is present in every scene, dominating the movie with his craggy visage and the rasp that age has left of his voice (He is officially in contemporary Cohen territory at this point). And while the movie itself is fairly good, it winds up seeming a bit self-indulgent as a result of this. Then there's also the fact that the ending is so over-the-top ridiculous that the phrase 'ham-handed' does not even begin to do it justice. But we'll get to that.

Eastwood plays a man at the end of his life. His wife has died, and he has strained to nonexistent relationships with his children and grandchildren. So what's a man to do? Well, why not sit on the porch with his dog at his side, drinking PBR all day, observing the downfall of the neighborhood? This is how he spends his time, using his personal definition of 'downfall of the neighborhood', which can be nicely translated as Asian people moving in. That's right, Clint plays a racist character, obviously still haunted by his experiences in the Korean war and unwilling to attempt to befriend (Or even acknowledge) his new neighbors. That is, until the presence of a totally non-stereotypical Asian gang sets off a chain of events involving Clint slowly coming out of his shell in a fairly predictable, drawn-out fashion. The movie addresses the sensitive topic of racism with a sense of humor, the highlight of this being two seperate scenes set in a local barbershop featuring Eastwood and the barber hurling ethnic slurs at each other (Maybe if more people had a bit of humor about things our society would be less sensitive and angry, and then rather than dying of heart disease, people would die two years later from type-2 diabetes. I have a dream). There's a running dialogue between Clint and the priest at his local Catholic church based around Eastwood's wife's request that this priest gets Eastwood to go to confession. And that's 90% of the movie. It's fun in a slightly offbeat yet predictable way. Now let's get to a very detailed discussion of how it ends.

By this point the gang violence hits a point where it needs to be stopped. Clint being the local war veteran who has gradually stepped up to become pretty much the neighborhood patriarch by this point (As well as having the coveted title of Guy In Every Scene), it is apparent that this will fall to him. So he goes at night to confront the gang. We are now at the point when I am going to be stating massive spoilers left and right. Let's start with one in a parenthetical, all caps (NOTE TO CINDI: HE DIES). There then is a lengthy confrontation on a front lawn between Eastwood and the gang members that ends when he quickly reaches inside his jacket and is shot approximately 5,000,000 times. He dies, with his hand opening to reveal that he was going for his lighter to fire up a cigarette, and was actually unarmed. The gang is arrested, and the neighborhood is saved. Yay! Heavy-handed ending? A bit. But we haven't got to the best part. After Clint is riddled with enough bullets to supply a third-world military coup, he (Totally coincidentally, I'm sure) falls to the ground in the exact shape of the cross (Yes, he took confession earlier). I AM RACIST JESUS is not proclaimed, but would be about the only thing that could make this more ridiculous.

At least, that's what I thought at the time. Little did I know that the ridiculous factor would shortly be turned to 11. After this we have a scene of the reading of his will, which features some more humor in the form of ethnic slurs (It was funny. That sentence makes it sound like it wasn't. Again, stupid delete key). The titular item is given, not to a family member, but to one of the Asian kids from next door who Clint de facto adopted. And then the movie gradually fades into the credits over a minute-long shot of this kid driving the car, listening to a faux lounge-jazz number on the stereo. But what's that? The vocals! Dear god, it's 956-year-old Clint Eastwood rasping out a lounge number (Dear Heather joke goes here)! And cut to black. Yes, that's the ending. I did not think, upon viewing the climax of the film, that the denouement would be able to up the comedic ante. But dear lord, it certainly did. For a film that attempts to take a serious-yet-light approach to a heavy topic, the fact that I have tears of joy in my eyes remembering it probably is a result the production team would be proud of. However, I'm not so sure they'd be happy about the reason.

This Year's Rays

2009-09-26T16:24:00.007-04:00

So in the quick season predictions piece I put together in March, I dealt with the media fascination of which team would be this year's Rays, going from nowhere to contention. I said that no one would fill that role this year, and in one sense I was correct. But not in the sense of there not being a 'This year's Rays'. Because what the Rays really did was go from last to first by improving their defense, providing a blueprint that three teams have followed this year. And while none of those teams have had as large a turnaround as the Rays did last year, all three can make a case to be the Rays of this year (Please note that the Royals, preseason expert consensus to fill the Devil-free shoes this year, will not be appearing in this article except to note that Dayton Moore is a terrible General Manager who must have incriminating pictures of the team owner that he used to get his four-year extension. Or ownership is for some reason trying to lose games. Either/or).

In 2007 the Devil Rays were dreadful, both in the standings and with the glove(s), finishing in the AL East basement with a record of 66-96, and allowing 57.7 more runs than an average defensive team, worst in the league by a full 9.6 runs (All defensive data is UZR from Fangraphs, which is scaled to the simplest possible figure: +runs (Runs saved) and -runs (Runs allowed)). Then in 2008, the Rays suddenly jumped to +74.2 defensive runs as a team, best in the majors. How did they do this? It was surprisingly simple. They mostly moved their existing players around the diamond until they found a part where each was good, or at the least serviceable (Aiding this adjustment was the fact that many of the Rays' players were young and athletic, making positional transitions easier). BJ Upton was an absolute butcher in the infield, so he was shuffled to centerfield, where he was worth +10.3 runs in 2008 (To give you an idea of how good that is, playing Upton in center would completely cancel out playing (post-hip replacement) Mike Lowell at third, no easy task). Akinori Iwamura moved from third to second, and super-prospect Evan Longoria replaced him. Delmon Young and his impressive brand of butchery were exiled to Minnesota, replaced by Gabe Gross (+11.4). Carl Crawford rebounded from a poor 2007 to do that thing he does (+19.6). Essentially working with parts they already had, the Rays allowed 129.9 fewer runs in 2008 than in 2007 simply by improving their defense. So who made a similar leap this year? Three teams.

Firstly, we have the Detroit Tigers. They've gone from -39.1 to +44.0 over the course of one season by moving Brandon Inge to third (Where he excels to the tune of +9.6), getting Carlos Guillen out of the infield (And Guillen was hurt for quite a while this year, replaced by Josh Anderson in the outfield. Anderson hits worse than I do, but he's a great fielder), and replacing the corpse of Edgar Renteria with Adam Everett at shortstop. Add in that they played Magglio Ordonez less in right than in previous years and that Miguel Cabrera has proved surprisingly competent at first base and you have another last to first story, albeit a less dramatic one.

The Texas Rangers are the team that has gotten the most praise and press this year for revamping the defense, probably because they went about this in the most visible way of these three teams. The Rangers moved incumbent Gold Glove shortstop off the position to the less-demanding third base this offseason to make way for slick-fielding freshman Elvis Andrus. Young fought the move at first, leading to a good amount of ink spent on the issue. But eventually he relented, and the move has indisputably helped the team. The Rangers have gone from -51.7 in 2008 (Worst in the majors) to +33.0 (6th). A lot of this turnaround can be attributed directly to Young and Andrus. In 2008 the Rangers 3B position was an absolute revolving door, with the common link between all the men trotted out being putrid defense. Five men combined to cost the team 26.5 runs, far worse than even Manny Ramirez has managed in a single season. This year Young has improved the position from historically bad to merely bad, as he has staunched the bleeding to an extent by only being 7.5 runs worse than average. Meanwhile, Andrus has taken over for Young at short admirably, upping Young's -5.6 runs in 2008 to a Gold Glove-consideration-worthy +8.2 this year (See, Young's Gold Glove last year was silly and wrong. He didn't make errors primarily because he had no range, preventing him from, you know, fielding baseballs. We call it Derek Jeter Syndrome in these parts. Though Jason Bay Syndrome would also be appropriate and accurate). Josh Hamilton has been hurt, sparing the team a repeat of last year's version of centerfield butchery, Hank Blalock has been permanently DH'd to reduce the risk of injury to both himself and fans in the front rows, and statuesque wind turbine Chris Davis has been sent to first base under strict orders to not move anywhere else for the good of the team. The result? A surprising playoff contender.

But the most dramatic turnaround has been that of the Seattle Mariners. The Mariners fired the clueless Bill Bavasi after last-year's team became the first-ever 100-100 club ($100 million payroll, 100 losses), and replaced him with Jack Zduriencik to clean up the mess Bavasi left behind. And the early returns are beyond good. The Mariners have gone from a poor (Though not putrid) -20.9 runs last year to this year's league-leading figure of +76.2 runs. Yes, +76.2. That is a full 33% better than the second-best team in baseball (The Rays), an amazing margin. The key to this was the 17-team, 180,000 player deal between the Mariners, Nets and Indians which netted the M's both Endy 'Gold Glove' Chavez and, more importantly, The Big FraGu (Franklin Gutierrez). Chavez took over for the departed Raul Ibanez and his glove of -18 putrification, saving a quick 18 runs at the position before he suffered a season-ending injury. Ichiro slid back to RF from CF, replacing 'cast' there with his usual brand of steady D (+8.4). But most important is the man in centerfield. Gutierrez this year has been worth +24.7 runs, an amazing number that can essentially be read as 'Willie Mays in his prime' (Random Mays aside, apropos of nothing, from Bill James: "Catching Willie Mays in a rundown is like trying to assassinate a squirrel with a lawnmower.") Based on last year's free agent contracts, Gutierrez's defense alone has been worth $11.25 million to the Mariners this year, before you factor in his offense or position. He even managed to make Jarrod Washburn look competent for half a season. So, yeah. Nice trade. Then there's the infield, which is merely good rather than spectaular (Exiling Yuniesky Betancourt, a.k.a. The Worst Player in Major League Baseball, to KC helps a lot, as well as Adrian Beltre finally not being injured (Beltre's defense is awesome. He is not at all overpaid, as many media members like to claim)). Put them together and you have the best defensive team in the majors, and it's not even close.

So there it is, this year's Rays, as well as a bit on the value of defense, something that the Red Sox front office is hopefully paying close attention to (As the season has gone on, the Sox D has improved. They are now merely bad, as opposed to awful, which they were for the first three months of the year). And while none of these teams underwent as impressive a turnaround as the Rays did over the course of a single season, the fact that their General Managers seem to recognize both the value of defense and how to build around it bodes well for their respective futures, all of which look much brighter than they did a mere twelve months ago.

Blatant Space-Filler

2009-09-19T08:15:00.004-04:00

So I have places to be this morning. Maybe I'll get a ridiculously long evaluation of the value of defense in later. Until then, here's a wonderful internet phenomenon that I found late, Auto Tune the News. Auto Tune is a program used to fix the vocal melodies of people like myself and Ashlee Simpson who can't actually sing, but look pretty while trying. When over-applied, it makes people sound rather robotic. But after years of it being used solely for this, some snide Brooklynites have discovered its true calling: Turning the nightly news into a music video. And it is wonderful. the sixth one is below (It's from a while ago, if you're wondering why the news in question isn't current). For any sensitive viewers out there, this video does feature some mild language from representative John Boener, R-OH. Party of family values my rear end. If this interests you, I also strongly recommend #5. It features a C-Span debate on the drawbacks of smoking lettuce.

Oh No

2009-09-17T16:57:00.003-04:00

Go here. Listen to the audio samples. That is all.

Update - Amazon appears to have pulled the audio samples, probably in response to reports of consumers bleeding from the ears. The album in question is entitled "Christmas in the Heart," and it is an album of traditional Christmas songs performed by Bob Dylan. If I can find samples anywhere, I'll let you know. Because I had to suffer, so everyone else should too.

Update part deux - TwentyFourBit has them all combined into a simply incredible seven and a half minutes. Click here for it, then hate me in the comments.

Anna Karenina

2009-09-13T12:01:00.005-04:00

Is it possible for a book that has been roundly canonized to possibly live up to the hype? Of course it is, but it's not an easy task. When one opens a book expecting sheer brilliance, any missteps will doom the book, even if it remains excellent, solely because it makes the expected perfection unattainable. Fair? No, absolutely not. But this is just how it goes, living under the crushing weight of expectations. Perhaps this is why Tolstoy made all his novels 1,000,000 pages long. Some things are harder to crush than others.

So let's get this out of the way at the beginning: I have now read both War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and at this point I feel safe concluding that I am a Dostoevsky man. Each of his novels seems to be sculpted to address a single topic, an extended musing on philosophical and cosmological minutiae told through half-crazed Russians who seem to passionately exclaim about 2/3 of everything they think. Tolstoy, on the other hand, moves at a glacial pace, seemingly attempting to show life in his novels, without any overt statements on the, or possibly even a, subject (The exceptions seem to be any time a character has a religious epiphany, at which times Tolstoy can be overly preachy). This novel took me a long time to wade through (And there were multiple detours into other books in the middle), as what Tolstoy does seems to be specifically designed to not grab one's attention. The cast is an ensemble, some of whom will likely appeal to everyone out there, while likely everyone will also be left cold by a character or two. Unfortunately for me, one of these doubles as the title.

I have nothing against Anna especially, but just have no sympathy for her. See, when she makes the decision to leave her husband (By the way, she leaves her husband for her lover) she knows exactly what this means for her. She knows how society will view her actions, and what their response will be. She knows she will not be allowed to keep her child. Yet she does it. The fact that later she struggles with the consequences does not excuse her from guilt, as she knew what would happen when she made her choice. The events that lead to her death (She dies too) are caused solely by herself flipping out completely. She essentially loses her mind with jealousy (Despite the fact that there is no evidence he is cheating on her. In one memorable scene she yells at him because he smiled at a delivery girl bringing him a package from a relative. She is nuts), and does everything she can to drive away the man most dear to her. When she kills herself, it's a relief. While I'm sure it's supposed to be a sad moment, I'm just left glad I don't have to deal with the crazy woman anymore. She chose everything that happens to her. Just because she couldn't take it doesn't make her sympathetic.

One thing I will give Tolstoy is that he does wonderful death scenes. Normally I don't care for these all that much in the mediums I feel traditionally revere them (Film and theater). I generally find myself wishing someone would hit the dying individual over the head with whichever blunt object is nearest so that they will finally die and we can move on. But Tolstoy does these well. Anna's death is wonderfully written, and the only chapter in the book with a title ('Death,' occurring much earlier) is also well done, if not quite as brief or powerful. This gibes with War and Peace, in which the death of Prince Andrey is one of the most memorable images I have ever read (It involves a dream and a door). It is in moments such as the spiritual revelation of Levin that Tolstoy struggles to express himself without getting on a soapbox (See: "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"), and that moment mars the end of Anna Karenina significantly. It is as bad as all this may make it seem? Absolutely not. But Tolstoy's love of a glacially-plotted affair leaves me a bit cold, wishing I could hear a little less about the formal rules of Russian societal interactions and a little more about, well, pretty much anything else (Except English societal affairs, thank you very much Jane Austen). Tolstoy's novels are almost ridiculously ambitious and overstuffed, yet nothing really happens. He lays out a great mass of humanity, but never answers the question of why. In the end, I find myself left with some questions and the feeling that I spent my time well solely due to tackling a classic, even if I didn't enjoy all of it, but I would be hard-pressed to tell another that the book is worth the time it takes to read it. In my memories, it is similar to Thomas Pynchon (Oddly enough), in that I don't have much of an image of a whole picture, but rather some minor scenes that have stuck with me. Which is enough for me to make it an enjoyable read, but not what I had hoped for before I began, or what the general acclaim would lead one to expect.

Crossing Over

2009-09-11T11:42:00.002-04:00

I am willing to bet that most of you out there have never heard of the film Crossing Over. And that is okay. Really, it is. Your ignorance allows me to point at you and laugh derisively, which is an opportunity my ego appreciates. But enough small talk about your personal inadequacies. Let's get back to the movie by playing a strange sort of guessing game. In it, you will have to try to guess the quality of this film based on the fact that no one in the world has ever heard of it as I give you a list of true statements about the movie. Ready? Let's do this.

1. It stars Harrison Ford.

2. It co-stars Ashley Judd and Ray Liotta.

3. It was produced by the Weinsteins.

4. It was released THIS YEAR.

5. There really isn't a 5. That should be enough.

Okay. So, taking all those things into consideration, how bad do you think the movie would have to be for no one in the world to have ever heard of it, and the people involved in its production to have already forgotten about the entire experience, possibly due to some Eternal Sunshine-esque brainwashing experiment? Oh no. It is far worse than that.

Crossing Over aspires to follow in the footsteps of Crash, offering an honest take on a subject that is difficult to have a discussion about in our society (Racism in the case of Crash, immigration in this film). But it fails in this. Crash was a good movie, probably not Oscar-worthy, but a quality film. It had many central characters whose stories intertwined as the movie progressed, rather than the traditional, front and center Main Character. These people were fleshed out as the movie went on through a time-honored art of writing called characterization, a long-standing tradition evidently unfamiliar to those responsible for Crossing Over. This made them actual people about whom it was possible to care, getting the viewer interested and invested in the film. Crossing Over is what would happen if you took the script for Crash, translated it into Portugese using only Babelfish, then translated it back and made the movie without changing a thing. The people we see on-screen all are shockingly revealed, as the film goes on, to be exactly what they seemed to be upon first glance. Out of 8 or so main characters, only one of them even experiences something that could be viewed as a moment of doubt. I am not in the mood to be charitable to this steaming pile of script, so I will not give it that nicety.

Let's do some character studies. Harrison Ford, for example. He appears almost immediately in the film, and is quickly revealed to be The Good Cop, in the most stereotypical fashion possible. That is it. As the movie goes on, he never has an internal struggle. He is an amalgam of the Good Cops that have previously graced the screen, completely devoid of life. How about Ashley Judd? She works for the Department of Justice or Immigration or Something as an attorney for those oppressed by the cold-hearted US Government. As such, she has a heart of gold. Nothing changes this. At the end of the movie, her husband is arrested pretty much in front of her. She stares at the camera for about a second, then proceeds to continue adopting the underprivileged child she was already in the process of adopting, and never addresses the subject of the husband. How about the husband? From his initial appearance, he is clearly sleazy. He continues to be sleazy in the exact same unchanging manner throughout the remainder of the movie, even when presented with a clear emotional conflict by another character. At this moment of confrontation, what happens? He leaves the room, and nothing changes. These are not people. They are terribly artificial constructs of a scriptwriter clearly incapable of operating on an emotional level higher than that of a kindergardner. Any time the film wants to try to get the viewer invested in the movie, it simply has the Big Bad US Government tear apart another poor immigrant family. Unfortunately for the immigrants, their characters are as flat as a piece of paper from the script they were working from, and therefore are impossible to care about. Crash was the student in class who wasn't the brightest, but always tried really hard, so the teachers gave it good grades. Crossing Over wears a helmet to protect itself, and isn't allowed near sharp objects.

Wait, What Did They Just Say?

2009-09-09T08:36:00.005-04:00

If I may return to pop music for a minute (I know the month is over. I just don't care), I'd like to discuss the song "Don't Trust Me" by the band 3oh!3 (I swear to God, Google says that is the band's name. I will judge them a bit based on that alone. In a negative way). This is getting quite a bit of airplay on the corporate pop behemoths that bestraddle this continent, owing allegiance only to ClearChannel and the almighty dollar. It features a laughable/terrible intro, featuring some low synths and a series of godawful lyrics sung at least 85 decibels louder than they merit. Let's ignore them completely. The song then goes into a fairly catchy chorus featuring the singer adopting a falsetto while the rest of the band goes for your basic four on the floor dance-rock beat. But this is just the first half of the chorus. Here, in full as played on the radio, are the lyrics for the second half. Breaks between lines are the band's, not mine.

Don't trust a
Never trust a
Don't trust a
Don't trust me

Those of you paying attention may have noticed that those are not, technically, complete sentences. Or even sentence fragments. With the beat of the song, if the radio is censoring a word there, that word is one syllable long. So here's a fun game you can play at home if you like: What one-syllable word that would require censoring would fit there? Google lyric searches are cheating. I have spent way more time than is healthy thinking about this, and haven't come up with anything that makes a lick of sense yet, so I am just about ready to conclude that the band got distracted in the middle of the songwriting process (Possibly by a shiny object) and forgot to finish writing the song itself. Somehow this did not hurt its (The song's) marketability. I suspect cash factors into this somehow.

But anyway, this is not even the most unfortunate part of the song. After we go verse/chorus/verse/chorus, per time-honored tradition, it is time for the bridge. Here now are the bridge lyrics, sung by what sounds like the collective extended family of the entire band, over solely a drumbeat (Yes, all the music is dropped to better allow us to focus on the poetry at hand):

Shoosh (sp? Shush? Shhhhhhhh?) girl/Shut your lips
Do the Hellen Keller/And talk with your hips

Now, I don't feel I'm usually one to get my knickers in a twist (At least not seriously. It's kinda fun if I'm joking about it), but isn't this actually offensive? I liked the Official Girlfriend's take on it, "I must have missed that part of The Miracle Worker'." It might have made that movie more interesting, I'll give it that. I guess it's what the kids are listening to these days, and the children are our future. So, as always, that is why I hope to die young.

Great Moments in Rock: Christianity Is Stupid

2009-09-04T08:00:00.005-04:00

Back in the dark days before digital editing software was so ubiquitous that your grandmother could use it (Mine has her own experimental techno band), Negativland took care of tape manipulation so that you didn't have to. And you never even thanked them. The band released their first album in 1980, and over the course of two more developed a distinctive sound featuring live instrumentation, genre-hopping, and both narration and found sound as the frequent vocal tracks. A good amount of sampling was also involved, and as often is the case, this got the band embroiled in some copyright lawsuits. But that is a story for a different song, a story which I will probably write sometime and post here, even though the band has already written a 270-page book about the subject (Mine will filter the actual event through my uninformed knowledge of the event, so that should be fun and/or unique and wrong). On Negativland's 4th album Escape From Noise, released in 1987, they moved from their own Seeland records to punk label SST, and for the first time found themselves having to deal with the demands of someone other than themselves. And one of these demands involved touring. As a primarily studio-oriented concept, this was something they had never got that heavily into during their formative years, and advance ticket sales looked as though the band members would each be losing a significant amount of money on the label-mandated tour. So what to do? Well, why not take credit for a murder?

This was in the 80's, the time of strange haircuts, regrettable fashion choices, and the Senate porn rock hearings. Two years earlier Judas Priest had been accused of causing two boys to commit suicide through masked messages in their music. Tipper Gore was using her authority to order Steve Dallas' decapitation. And so Negativland did what any group of trendy musicians would do and jumped on the bandwagon. When David Brom killed his family with an axe, they issued a press release stating that the FBI (Specifically agent Dick Jordan) had asked them not to leave town due to their song "Christianity Is Stupid" being involved in the murder investigation. Jordan did not, technically, exist, but this did not stop the media from jumping all over the story. But before we get to that, let's talk about the song for a minute.

As propagandists everywhere know, quotes and audio clips can be taken out of context to make almost anyone say almost anything. So in this spirit, Negativland took a sample from a 1971 Christian film entitled "If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?" as the centerpiece of Christianity is Stupid. Over an industrial-metal beat and guitar line, the song features a repeated vocal sample from the film of a man announcing "Christianity is stupid. Communism is good. Give up." Intended, as many Negativland creations are, as a joke with a point, the band claimed that Brom had been arguing with his Christian parents over the song on the night of the murder. Once the media ran with it, the band fueled the fires as much as they could, in the simplest way possible: By announcing that their attorney, Hal Stakke (Who also did not exist), had advised them not to make any comments. However, they were not ignoring the media completely. No, while the media worked itself into a fine lather, Negativland were recording them. The follow-up EP, Helter Stupid, broke down the media coverage of the fake controversy in often-hilarious fashion (All the other stories the media jumps to are about serial killers as well, and when Rolling Stone calls to ask about the murders, they are answered only by someone repeatedly shouting "Now it begins!" into the telephone as they ask about possible backwards masking in the song). The end result? Negativland got a funny story to tell, and didn't have to tour. And in the end, the media proved to be far stupider than Christianity.

An Easy Call

2009-08-27T09:39:00.003-04:00

While large contracts get all the attention, developing a talent base of cheap players for depth is a very important part of putting together a baseball team, and something Omar Minaya has overlooked during his time in New York all too often. But it's never too late to start, as Matt Murton is currently available for free (He was DFA'd by the Rockies, who are absolutely loaded with outfielders). Murton is hardly going to make the big splash that Minaya seems to feel is a New York necessity, but what he will do is prevent the Mets from having to play, say, Fernando Tatis. And that can only be a positive for them. Murton has a long body of work showing that he can get on-base (Career MLB OBP of .353 in over 1,000 plate appearances), hit for a very limited amount of power (.438 slugging), and play good defense in left field (As opposed to, say, the Daniel Murphy Experience). He is making the league minimum salary for next year as well as this, which is a bonus for the suddenly cash-strapped Mets. So let's do it, Omar. Up until this point you have been fairly to very bad at your job, but there's still time. Go out and make this happen. Because I know you're going to read this post.

Actual Good Music

2009-08-24T08:25:00.002-04:00

I know it might be occasionally hard to remember that such a thing exists if you read only my various rantings from the last month (Which, let's be honest, is all anyone ever needs to read). Here is a fine example of it, provided by New Zealand's finest, complete with a sexy dance:

Just as a warning, while the lyrics contain no naughty words, they are about adult themes. Also, they are wonderful.

Mind-Boggling Stupidity

2009-08-23T12:10:00.003-04:00

John Kruk, speaking about Tim Lincecum: "If you look at stats, which I try not to do". Allow me to state this clearly: Statistics are a measure of what happens on a baseball field. John Kruk is a lead baseball analyst on the biggest sports network in the world. Essentially, what he is saying here is that he doesn't try to do his job, and allow me to respond for the rest of the world when I say that we can tell.

Update - Throughout the rest of the program, John proceeded to mention team ERA's multiple times as well as other things that sounded remarkably like stats. If I didn't know any better, I might think John Kruk is an idiot.

A Short Play Inspired By Cobra Starship

2009-08-15T08:35:00.003-04:00

Firstly, if you aren't familiar with the song in question, here's the music video. Sorry about the MTV things taking up valuable on-screen space.

Characters:

Boy
Girl, Good
5 Best Friends (Hers) - Interchangeable

Act I

Girl - It sure is fun hanging out in the corner at a club.

A Best Friend - What?

Girl - Nevermind.

Guy - Hey there. Do you want to go bad?

Girl - No.

Guy - Are you sure?

Girl - Now that you mention it, not so much. Hang on. (Turns to A Best Friend) What do you think of this guy?

A Best Friend - I don't know. He looks kind of creepy.

A Best Friend - And what's that thing he's doing with his voice when he sings the word 'bad'?

A Best Friend - How come we can hear each other over the music now?

Others - Shut up.

Girl - What you're saying is true, but he makes me want to lose control.

Guy - That's right I do.

A Best Friend - Oh, that's all right then. It certainly doesn't sound like you've been roofied. Go on. We'll hang out in the corner without you.

Girl - Thanks!

Act 2 (Call and response)

Guy - I should probably let you know that I'm a convicted sex offender.

Girl - That's okay because I've been roofied.

Guy - This probably violates my terms of parole.

Girl - That's okay because I don't plan on seeing you after tonight.

Guy - So everybody wins?

Girl - Unless your P.O. finds out.

Both - Yay!

Act 3

A Best Friend - Where'd Girl go?

A Best Friend - Who?

A Best Friend - Whatever.

An Important Question

2009-08-08T21:26:00.003-04:00

In what is rapidly becoming pop music month around these parts, I present another quick post. I recently found myself listening to 'This Kiss' by probably Faith Hill due to reasons beyond my control, and realized that one way she describes said kiss during the chorus is that it's criminal. Does this mean that the participants are related?

Further Evidence of the Decline of Western Civilization

2009-08-05T03:16:00.001-04:00

The hit single "Knock You Down" by Keri Hilson (Who? I don't know) features a guest appearance by a rapper who actually says "OMG". Just like that. OMG. For those of you who are not into the whole 'text messaging' thing, or the 'sounding like an idiot' thing, OMG means Oh My God. Which is the same number of syllables. Exactly three. I just counted. Meaning it would not have thrown off the beat of the line at all. The children are our future, and that is why I hope to die young.

203 Seconds of Hell: Waking Up In Vegas

2009-08-04T10:11:00.005-04:00

At the moment I am working an hour and a half from where I reside, a situation that occasionally has me listening to the radio stations whenever VPR goes to a pledge drive or something like that. Sometimes this is a bad idea. For example, when the song being played is the latest from Desmond Child (Writer of both 'Livin' La Vida Loca' and the reprehensible 'Who Let the Dogs Out?'. He deserves some kind of anti-lifetime achievement award), Waking Up In Vegas, as sung by Katy Perry through a computer autotune program. This song is all over the pop airwaves right now, presumably due to some combination of money and/or sexual favors given to radio producers by Perry, Child or Perry's record label. Possibly all of the above. Because good God is this song terrible.

It kicks off with the sound of a carefully-processed bit of feedback, to let you know that we are now going to RAWK! Then the guitars promptly begin to chime rather than squall, just to let you know that things aren't going to actually challenge any of your sensibilities, and either a person does an excellent job of imitating a drum machine or Katy Perry's backing music is the beginning of the long-feared Robot Apocalypse. May they kill her first. Speaking of Perry, this is the time that what the autotune has left of her voice enters the mix, sitting at a much higher level than her vocal cords merit. I am going to reprint the line that closes the first verse exactly as it appears in the song (Without label permission. I didn't ask):

We need a taxi 'cause you're
Hung over and I'm broke.

One of these is not related to needing a taxi. Can you spot it? Anyway, these and other similarly aggressively sub-moronic lyrics get belted out (For example, right after this she talks about losing her fake ID. She is 24 years old), some of them accompanied by this terrible warbling thing the computer does to Perry's voice, all of which makes the veins in my forehead stand out a bit (This song makes me need oatmeal, I think). Then we get the chorus:

Shut up and put your money where your mouth is
That's what you get for waking up in Vegas
Get up and shake the glitter off your clothes now
That's what you get for waking up in Vegas

Barring people (Possibly short, magical ones) breaking into your room while you sleep and dousing your garments with sequins (A possibility in Vegas, I suppose), these lines make absolutely no sense whatsoever. If Perry really is chastising people for failing to heed her warnings of mischievous sparkling elves, I will retract all the statements contained in this post. Because that would be awesome. Anyway, the song continues to go from here, with Perry caterwauling nonsense and androids playing completely featureless background music. The end result is, to my knowledge, the first song ever written to specifically cash in on a successful marketing campaign (Or at least the first since Paul McCartney and Wings recorded 'Ring Around the Collar'). The sole purpose of this song is to ride the coattails of the 'What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas' campaign, milking a bit of cash out of the army of gullible morons that is the general public in the process. Money that will presumably be used to arm the robots. It is a complete failure in every possible sense of the word, and everyone involved in its creation and production should be ashamed of him/herself. Tragically, I suspect their bank accounts are increased because of it, and for them, that means that they have succeeded.

Note(s) - If you wish to assault both your eyes and ears simultaneously, the music video can be found here. It is, amazingly, almost as bad as the song. And while doing a bit of research for this post (A very minimal amount of it), I found Allmusic's review of Katy Perry's album. It is wonderful, and can be found here. They seem to share my opinion, but are even angrier about Katy's continued existence. I love them.

Not Quite a Rocket Launcher

2009-08-03T09:28:00.000-04:00

But still, not bad.

21 Guns

2009-08-02T09:05:00.000-04:00

The new Green Day single (Which doubles as the title of this post) is now out. And the vocal melody during the verses is the same as the melody to Heart of Gold by Neil Young. Honestly, Green Day. Did you think we wouldn't notice?

Role Models

2009-07-31T15:20:00.004-04:00

Every now and again a movie comes along featuring an actor or actress you like (Sometimes multiple ones), and you watch said preview and find yourself thinking, "Wow. That looks really bad." This is the position Role Models put me in. The previews for the film featured a mix of things that were probably supposed to be jokes and some children. Great. So, despite my feelings towards several members of the cast, I approached the film with trepidation, feeling nothing good could possibly come of the next hour and a half. For once, my pessimism was misguided. This probably will have no impact whatsoever in my outlook in the future.

Anyway, back to the movie. It stars Paul Rudd, who is typically awesome, as me in ten years. Well, not quite literally. His name is different. Everything else is spot-on, though. He is described by another character as always being convinced that he's the smartest guy in the room, yet still being miserable. He picks a fight with a barista who insists he refer to his large coffee as a 'venti'. And he wonderfully interprets the Kiss classic as 'I want to rock and roll all night and part of every day'. A little more rocking than I could probably handle, but still. That's an eerily accurate portrait. Co-starring with him is That Guy Who Played Stifler playing, well, essentially Stifler. So good for him, I guess. Also appearing is this guy:

Awesome. Anyway, the plot centers around Rudd and TGWPS having a run-in with the law after Rudd's girlfriend breaks up with him. They are sentenced to 150 hours of community service as mentors to troubled children, drawing McLovin and the incorrectly-apostrephized Bobb'e J. Thompson as their little buddies. This leads to the only real bad part of the film. Jane Lynch has been in some other movies, and seems to just play every character very over the top in a way that is not especially funny. Every time she comes on-screen in this movie I cringe. The character is outright bad. But this in no way negates the greatness that is seeing Paul Rudd be me on-screen. He is wonderful, and the movie throws together community service, nuclear-colored energy drinks, live-action role-playing and Kiss to great effect. Will it change the world? Absolutely not. But it will make you laugh for the majority of an hour and a half, which makes it very worthy of stealing on the internet. Which is much better than I thought it would be.

What Seattle Shouldn't Do

2009-07-31T15:09:00.001-04:00

I'll keep this short. It's for you, Ben. At the trade deadline, the Seattle Mariners are technically in contention, but are a long shot to make the playoffs. They have gotten good pitching out of middling-to-bad pitchers (Felix Hernandez excepted. He's good or something), primarily due to the fact that they play excellent defense, which can only improve now that Yuniesky Betancourt has been exiled to Kansas City. However, the Mariners' problem is that they can't hit. Especially against right-handed pitchers, who they cannot touch. They are the fourth-worst batting team in baseball, the reason being that they have many unskilled regular batters, 7 of whom are right-handed. What the Mariners need is a competent left-handed bat. They're unlikely to get it at this point, but any pitching that isn't young or nailed down should be shipped out to try to achieve this, as the M's defense will make whatever dreck they throw out on the mound look serviceable (Non-Carlos Silva division, of course). Trading for Roy Halladay would make less sense for the Mariners than it would for almost any other team in the majors. Sorry Ben.

Note - This was originally going to be called 'No Cousin Ben, You Are Wrong' when I first intended to write it two weeks ago. I'm working 60 hours of construction each week. I'm tired. My bad. Anyway, the title was an obscure FJM reference. If you like your sports analysis hilarious and obscene, Google that one. They're now sadly finished, but they're still missed.

Two Stupid General Managers

2009-07-19T10:07:00.004-04:00

I feel like a decent portion of my younger life was based on Saturday morning cartoons. Not as much as many kid's formative years, bu still a sizable chunk. One of the shows that sticks out was entitled Two Stupid Dogs. Frankly, I cannot really remember any shows besides this one and the blatantly homosexual Captain Planet. I can recall a substantial portion of that show, but my only specific memory of Two Stupid Dogs is of an episode where, for what seems like it was the entire show (30 minutes? 15 minutes?) the titular characters sat outside the exit door to a store trying to figure out how to get in. For purposes of this article, one dog shall be known as Omar Minaya. The other is now Dayton Moore (Or DMGM, if you prefer. I do). I know I like to go to ridiculous length on these sorts of things, so I'll try to keep this to a paragraph apiece.

Last weekend the New York Mets, presided over by Omar Minaya, traded Ryan Church for Jeff Francoeur. Both players are right fielders, and it's not likely that either one will make or break a team's season (For a great breakdown of the trade, I recommend this. I disagree with their analysis, but it's funny. Even those of you who dislike baseball might enjoy it). But it is still submoronic on the part of the Mets. Ryan Church has below-average power and an above-average eye for a corner OF, combined with an ability to post a reasonable batting average and play slightly above-average defense, and an inability to hit left-handed pitching. He is in his first year of arbitration, meaning he comes at a reasonable price and can be cut after the season at no future cost to his team (Full disclosure: Church's numbers have gone downhill since a concussion last year. But with no commitment after the season, this is a very limited risk). The Braves already have a corner OF who can mash lefties but not hit righties in Matt Diaz, so by combining he and Church, the Braves have created a good two-headed outfielder out of readily available pieces at a very low cost, making this an excellent trade for Frank Wren. Francoeur, on the other hand, is not a major league baseball player. He is bad at hitting for average, plate discipline, baserunning, hitting for power and average at best defense (All his defensive value is in his arm. His range is abysmal). Presumably he would also be a bad pitcher as well, but to the best of my knowledge he has never been asked to do that. When he came up to the bigs in 2005 he looked like one of the game's bright young stars, but now that he is in a five-year decline, that is long gone. For last year and this year, Francoeur has been worth negative wins to his team. The Mets, beset by injuries, cited the fact that Francoeur has never been hurt as one of the reasons they traded for him. Which makes it kind of funny that the only way Francoeur could help a team is by actually getting hurt, thereby causing them to play a player who would not hurt the team as much. The salaries in the deal are a wash, as Francoeur is in the same arbitration year as Church, and the Braves threw in a bit of cash to make them match. If I had any confidence that the Mets would cut him at season's end, this would be less damaging. Francoeur is also seven years younger than Church, but given his track record of de-improving, all this means is that he will still be young enough to play baseball in 2015, when he will be striking out twice per at bat.

Moving to the Junior circuit, the Kansas City Royals, under the management of DMGM, traded two minor-league pitchers (Derrick Saito and Dan Cortes) for shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt. Before the season, Baseball America ranked Cortes as the Royals' third-best prospect. He has struggled a bit this year and had some off-field issues, but he still should have some value. Which is more than can be said for Betancourt. Continuing the theme of the day, Betancourt was promoted to the majors in 2005, and immdiately showed promise as a decent-hitting young shortstop who was very good defensively. He had little power and no plate discipline whatsoever, but was cost-controlled for six more years and flashed some spectacular work with the glove. What happened then is one of those times where scouting and statistics go hand in hand. In the three and a half years since his auspicious start, Betancourt has gotten worse in the field every single year (If you care, his UZR/150s, in order: 2.1, 0.7, -1.4, -12.7, -17.4. That's runs saved per 150 games, essentially. For obvious reasons, negative numbers are bad). Beyond that, his offense stagnated the first three seasons, and has nosedived the last two. Yuni has limited power and will swing at anything up to and including an attempt to intentionally walk him (He set a career-high of 17 walks in 2006, and matched it in 2008. 17. In 558 plate appearances). All his value is tied up in his batting average, which has declined sharply since 2007. Why? Well, scouting reports show a player with limited range in the field these days who is also slow on the basepaths (Career steals: 24 in 44 attempts. Grounded into 23 double plays last year, a number Jim Rice only topped 4 times), probably because he appears to be carrying at least 20 more pounds than he was when he entered the league. Combine that with the fact that he doesn't bother to try to get better at baseball by practicing (He had run-ins with management over missed batting practices and fielding drills), and you have a player rapidly working his way out of baseball. The worst of it? Former Mariners GM Bill Bavasi (Now coincidentally unemployed) gave Betancourt a contract that runs through 2011 guaranteed, with the club having the option to buy out 2012 for $2 million. Assuming the Royals will buy out that year, they just traded their #3 prospect plus a throw-in for the right to pay a sub-replacement level player in steep decline $9 million dollars. The sheer amount of stupidity involved is mind-blowing. If any baseball clubs are reading this and would like to consider hiring me, I promise I can do a better job than Minaya and DMGM. Heck, I think the dogs could.

What Just Happened?

2009-07-11T08:34:00.005-04:00

Trade writeups can wait a bit. Here is how I just began my Saturday morning. It started with waking up, doing the dishes and making coffee. I decided to go sit on the couch and fire up the computer for a couple minutes before showering. Yes, we have large windows in our apartment, but they face the river. So I sat down with a cup of coffee in my boxers. After a minute I heard rocks crunching (There's a bit of gravel just outside the windows) and a man looked into the apartment. He was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, with long hair hanging out from under a Patriots cap and a decent amount of stubble. After I watched him for several seconds he noticed me. One of the top windows was open, so I could clearly hear him say to me "Nice place you've got." Many possible responses came to mind, but my brain wasn't awake enough yet to process what was going on in a timely fashion, so I wound up going with "Thanks". He then walkeed away.

So, slightly strange encounter with a homeless interior designer who approves of my setup. Odd, but whatever. Then a minute later he came back holding a spray can of Off insect repellant and asked me if he could borrow it. I swear this actually happened. As it was not mine, I told him that. He responded with "Come on, man. Help me out." I had had a bit more of the coffee by this point, but was still not really in the mood to debate the concepts of ownership and personal property with him. After several seconds of back-and-forth exchanges with neither of us budging from our original position, he wandered away. And I continued to be confused.

Update: He stopped by to sit down and have a beer. While enjoying his beverage, a woman walked by on the path by the river. So he yelled at her to ask her why Neil Armstrong isn't here. We all wonder that.

A Day That Will Live In.... Well, What? Confusion?

2009-07-10T19:04:00.005-04:00

Today, July 10, 2009, the two worst players in Major League Baseball were traded within hours of each other, one to a team with no hopes of contending, the other to a team supposedly trying to make the playoffs. Unless the General Managers of the teams in question lost bets or have key family members being held hostage, I am completely mystified. The players in question are Jeff Francoeur and Yuniesky Betancourt, and both had something of value traded for them. Odds are I'll break these down tomorrow morning in some sort of attempt to memorialize abject stupidity, but for now my head is spinning. I think I need to sit down.

What Really Matters In Tennis

2009-07-04T09:26:00.001-04:00

In the Women's Finals at Wimbledon, I am rooting for Venus Williams to prevail over her sister Serena, not for any tennis-related reason, but because Venus does not grunt every time she hits the ball. Or if she does, it cannot be heard over the sonic booms being emitted from Serena's mouth.

Can I Keep My Jersey?

2009-07-03T08:43:00.003-04:00

Okay, show of hands: Who wants to read a basketball memoir? Okay, three of you (No, I won't say which three). Now, what if I told you that, rather than being written by a star player, it was written (Not ghostwritten. Written) by a nomadic player who typically finds himself the twelfth man on a twelve-man team when he is in the NBA? Where'd the hands go? Alright. Now let's tack on the added stipulation that this player, whom we'll call Paul Shirley (Because that is his name) wrote a blog for NBA.com in which he did not spout any meaningless sports cliches. A blog in which he described his reason for being on the Phoenix Suns thusly: "[All it took to get me here was] a trade by the Suns that sent away Casey (Jacobson) and two others, and the Suns’ subsequent need for a warm body to keep the bench from tipping toward the coaches." All right, at least those of you who haven't stopped reading yet seem content to finish this post, provided I keep it short. That'll have to do.

What I am discussing here is the memoir of a rather sarcastic journeyman, one who wrote openly about the experience (In the Probably Not Unrelated file, he hasn't been employed by an NBA team since this book came out). And it is rather exceptional. He takes a very conversational writing style, something that makes sense considering the material is developed from the journal he kept during his travels. The end result is essentially what you would get if you had a good friend who managed to be one of the 500 best people in the world at something, yet still could find the time to complain about it (Wait, that didn't come out right). In a field of competition replete with athletes thanking Jesus for helping them put a ball through a hoop, it is rather refreshing. Instead of sentiments such as these, this book finds the author lamenting a missed opportunity to kick Kobe Bryant in the testicles. I think you can see how one of these is more interesting to read.

So if you would like to become a little wiser on the topics of Russia ("As far as I can tell, Russia causes me to have suicidal thoughts, so the faster I can get out, the better"), minor league basketball ("The Rattlers do not usually play their games in the UNLV student rec center but, because the porn convention in town had outbid the team for the use of their usual facility, we played there that night (I'm not joking)."), basketball arena announcers ("The Grizzlies may very well have the best announcer in the NBA. He has a knack for making everyone’s name sound intimidating. I wonder what he could do for a guy that has a girl’s first name as his last name?") and injury rehab ("Until that [The healing] process begins, there is no real reason for the pain to subside. Therefore, I take lots and lots of drugs."(In case anyone is wondering, the drug in question is Gene Fackelman's personal mountain of doom, and Shirley offers a quite wonderful, yet thoroughly unprintable, description of his feelings toward it)), con your local library into buying this book. It's probably more fun than I've made it sound here, and a quick read. Which at the least makes it better than Bleak House.

Great Moments In The Internet

2009-06-27T10:40:00.001-04:00

Savor it.

Analyzing Dice-K

2009-06-25T09:08:00.004-04:00

Two days ago, Bob Ryan wrote an article entitled It Just Doesn't Add Up for the Boston Globe. The article is about the fact that Daisuke Matsuzaka is struggling this year, and isn't worth the money the Red Sox paid to sign him. In it Ryan briefly touches on the topics of interest, but never does any sort of actual analysis either of baseball's salary scale or of the reasons for Daisuke's ineffectiveness this year. So I will now attempt to pick up the ball he has dropped. Because with how awful the Red Sox media is, Lord knows someone needs to fill the void by competently discussing the team (These guys do a better job than I will ever manage, by the way).

Last year Daisuke went 18-3, a phenomenal Win-Loss record. However, he was nowhere near as good a pitcher as that suggests. Before I get into why, let's lay down some basic parameters here. The goal of pitching is to prevent runs, plain and simple. There are different ways of approaching this, the most effective of which is striking people out. Ground balls are another extremely effective method, as no amount of steroids Raul Ibanez injects before breakfast can cause a ground ball to go over the outfield fence. However, pitching is not the only factor here. Team defense accounts for approximately 1/3 of run prevention, leaving the pitcher responsible for the other 2/3. We'll come back to this point. And then we come to luck. It is really amazing how much dumb luck influences pitching. To paraphrase Bill James (a.k.a. Sabermetric Jesus), it is entirely possible that what I am going to refer to here as luck is not actually that, but rather just something that we do not yet know how to measure. And so it may be, but until we devise that measurement, luck it shall be. Things that are primarily luck include Batting Average on Balls In Play (Hereafter BABIP), Home Run per Fly Ball %, and Strand Rate. For more complete rundowns of these numbers, I recommend Fangraphs, The Hardball Times, or (If you'd rather pay money for something you can get for free) Baseball Prospectus. BABIP measures the amount of balls hit into the field of play that result in hits. Now, there are obviously things that affect this slightly, but by and large every pitcher's BABIP should be about .300. Numbers lower or higher than that are simply good luck or bad luck, and are completely unsustainable for extended periods of time for reasons beyond a pitcher's control. HR/FB for all pitchers should be right around 11%. The home park a pitcher spends his time in can affect this, but the only way to be certain to prevent home runs is to lower the rate at which you allow fly balls, as 11% of them are going to go over the fence. And finally, strand rate is simply the number of players who reach base against a pitcher who do not score. Simple enough. This should normalize around 72% for an average pitcher, with better pitchers being able to post slightly better numbers than that (For obvious reasons). Okay. I can't believe I haven't run down that stuff before, but that's done now. Since there was quite a bit of it, let's start fresh with a new paragraph.

As I mentioned above, Dice-K was 18-3 last year, with an excellent ERA of 2.90 (Earned Runs Allowed per 9 Innings, for those of you who are baseball neophytes. You've all stopped reading by now, haven't you?). But in truth, he was nowhere near that good. If we compare his 2008 statistics to his 2007 statistics, a year in which he was merely a solid pitcher rather than an ace, we find some rather startling results. Let's do this in chart-ish form.

K/9 (Strikeouts per 9 innings)
2007: 8.84
2008: 8.27

BB/9 (Walks per 9 innings)
2007: 3.52
2008: 5.05

BABIP:
2007: .306
2008: .267

HR/FB%:
2007: 11.7
2008: 7.5

Strand Rate:
2007: 73.9%
2008: 80.6%

Notice anything? In K/9 and BB/9, two luck-independent outcomes which are largely in the control of the pitcher, Matsuzaka actually performed worse in 2008 than in 2007, even though he improved his ERA by a full run and a half per game. This improvement is because of the last three numbers listed, luck-related statistics in which Daisuke performed at a rate far above the sustainable league average. In fact, if we normalize his luck-dependent stats to determine what his ERA should have been in each of those years (xFIP, if you're wondering), we find that in 2007 he pitched with an ERA of 4.42, while in 2008 he checked in with a worse showing of 4.82, a progression in the wrong direction. So he actually got worse between the two seasons, which still does not entirely explain this season's disaster. Ignoring the components to jump straight to the conclusion, what is his xFIP so far this year? 4.93, almost identical to last year. So what's the problem? Primarily bad luck. His K/9 and BB/9 have actually both improved from last year, and while there's still a long ways to go before his BB/9 hits a number that we can call 'good' (I'd settle for 'acceptable' at this point), it's legit improvement. But his BABIP has gone through the roof, checking in at an obscene .441, and his fly balls allowed are clearing the fence 17.5% of the time. These are the primary reasons for his decreased performance, and are things that should work themselves out over time. But is it entirely bad luck? No.

The thing about normalizing BABIP to exactly .300 for each pitcher is that this assumes that pitcher has a league-average defense taking the field behind him. This is almost never the case, meaning small variations in team BABIP should be expected, with good defensive teams posting a lower number, while poor defensive teams post a higher one. Last year's Red Sox were an excellent defensive team, posting the fourth-best UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating, available on Fangraphs. Why UZR? Because fielding percentage means less than nothing) in all of baseball. This year's version comes in 29th, only better than the beyond-inept Washington Nationals. The primary culprits are Mike Lowell, Julio Lugo and Jacoby Ellsbury, all of whom have fallen off a cliff (Since Lugo was fringe-average in the first place, this is not at all a good thing for him). The fact that Jason Bay has posted a worse showing in both years than Manny Ramirez did over the first half of last year is not really helping things, either. So while we should expect Daisuke's BABIP to rise above league average, we're still talking about a range closer to .310, not the stratosphere in which it currently resides. Given the chance, he will resume pitching at the level we are accustomed to seeing him at, even if we do not always understand what level that actually is.

Now let's go back to our good friend Bobby Boy. His article is not necessarily about how Daisuke is finished, but rather about the fact that Bob believes he is overpaid. Now that we've finished with a performance analysis, let's move on to salary matters. To argue his thesis statement in the article in question, Ryan provides us with the following pieces of evidence:

Daisuke's salary, presented in a misleading fashion
That is all

Besides making the reader question how Ryan still has a job, this does not actually accomplish much. Let's go through money matters now. Daisuke was a free agent in 2006. This is important because, in MLB, the rookie salary scale artificially depresses the salaries of young players for the first six years they are in the majors, years which are often their best. This makes baseball salaries often seem different than they actually are. Player salaries need to be divided up between cost-controlled youngsters and free agents to get an actual idea of what players are paid. And on the free agent market of the winter of 2006, free agents were paid about $4,000,000 per win above replacement player that they provided for their team the previous year. This amount increased linearly with each additional win, meaking a 2-win player worth $8 million, a 3-win player worth $12 million, and so on (This can be easily determined by merely dividing the total dollars all free agents were given that offseason by the WAR they collectively provided the previous year). Ryan does not once mention this. Now, I am not saying the best way to run a team is to go out and spend money on free agents. But if you do so, this is what it will cost you. This is the same free agent market where Carlos Silva is worth $12 million annually for four years (The Silva deal was signed one year later, when free agent value had risen to $4.5 million per win. The point stands). Providing this context makes Daisuke's deal look very reasonable, possibly even exactly where it should be, which is probably why Ryan did not put it in his article (Showing blatant disrespect for his reading audience, as he is presuming they will not know this. Either that or he does not know it himself, and is unwilling to research a subject before he writes about it, which calls into question why he has his job). In 2007, Daisuke was worth 3.9 Wins Above Replacement (WAR), or $15.6 million, based on the year he signed his contract. In 2008, 3.3 WAR, or $13.2 million. Per the terms of his contract, in 2007 Daisuke was paid $6 million by the Red Sox. In 2008 he made $8 million (By the way, lest you think I shouldn't be riding Ryan about the research, these numbers took me 17 seconds to find using Google. I timed myself). So why is he overpaid again?

Well, this is because Ryan combines the posting fee paid to his former team in Japan as part of Daisuke's salary. It is not. Daisuke was a professional athlete under obligation to remain in Japan. To release him from that deal, his team offered negotiation rights with him to the highest bidder, who happened to be the Red Sox. Essentially, the Red Sox spent $51 million to buy out his deal with his old team. Whether that was money well-spent or not, it is certainly not a part of his contract. And the fact that this money bought exclusive negotiation rights is almost certainly what enabled the Red Sox to sign Matsuzaka to what is actually a below-market deal. As you would not know if you read the Ryan article, Daisuke signed a contract for 6 years, for a total of $52 million dollars. Per the going rate of the free agent market, of which Daisuke was a member, this valued him at almost exactly the same worth as Odalis Perez. Why are you complaining, Bob? If the Red Sox get no value out of Daisuke the rest of the season, over the first three years of his contract they will have made a profit on the wins received for the money they've paid him so far, making the signing a good one for the team. And I hate watching him pitch. There is nothing more frustrating than watching a pitcher who seemingly cannot throw strikes. But it is still a good contract.

Ryan also seems to be objecting to one more thing, which is that Daisuke was billed as the Next Big Thing, and he has not delivered on that. Fair enough. But who billed him as that? Was it the man himself? Certainly not. It was the media, of which Bob Ryan is a large part. After Daisuke's seventh career start, Bob Ryan announced to the world that "The Daisuke Era has officially begun." Is there a single mention of the fact that what Ryan primarily objects to about Daisuke in his article is something that he himself helped create? No, there is not. Because writing that would involve both honesty and accountability, two qualities you are not likely to find in an article written by Bob Ryan. If you want to learn about baseball, the best thing you can do is avoid reading the Boston newspapers. All they will do is keep you mis- and uninformed.

Blog Layout

2009-06-23T10:50:00.004-04:00

The layout seems to have changed for some reason, and I have absolutely no idea how to get it to go back. If I can figure it out, it will be changed. I suspect it's the fault of the post directly below this one. Also, comment moderation is off on old posts, because I found that option while trying to change the layout of the blog.

I am the least tech-savvy person to ever work in tech support.

Edit - I figured it out. So, ummmmm, you can ignore this post now. Delete it? What?

Edit again - Ben says he's having some problems with the text size. It looks fine to me. If you're having any problems with it, throw a comment up here for me. Then I guess I'll learn HTML or something. If you're not having any problems with it, I don't know. Send me some money or something.

V: Taking Over

2009-06-23T08:58:00.015-04:00

Look, here's the thing. I thought this idea would be a fun lark, but it's really not working so far. While it is still fun to watch a terrible movie every now and again, it turns out writing up every single event in said movie is not really all that enjoyable (How is it to read?). So after a lot of thinking about it (Seriously. How long has it been since I wrote one of these?), I have decided to man up and admit it. If you're at all interested, right now some indeterminate Asian man is performing kung-fu in front of a pagoda. I am not. To give you the full background, here's where the idea came from. I used to live in Park Slope, a nice neighborhood in the oftentimes terrifying Brooklyn, New York. This area features approximately two bodegas per square foot, which presumably decreases profitability significantly. So to compensate for this, one of the bodegas on the way to the subway evidently rented out their window as advertising for Dragon Wars, with a poster featuring two dragons (Which are Chinese dragons, meaning they really just look like oversized snakes. Lame) snarling at each other over the ruins of a city. Needless to say, this made me rather excited. And when the movie came out, my fellow awful film afficionado Robert Fliegel (Hereafter referred to as Bob. Because that is what he goes by) took the initiative to both rent this cinematic masterwork and invite myself and Sir Nicholas Managanananananan, along with our significant others, over for a night of Masterpiece Theater and Malt Beverages (By the way, the next time we are in the same city, the film of choice is going to be Outlander, a movie about a man from outer space whose spaceship crashes in 8th century Norway. He then has to team up with Vikings to fight a monster that escapes from the ship. I am excited). About halfway through the film, two of the others retired to any room in the apartment not showing Dragon Wars, with only the Official Girlfriend sticking it out for the fair sex. Afterward, she mentioned how bad the movie was. Now, I clearly had to defend its honor, so I countered her false accusation with the demonstrably true statement that it was, in fact, the best movie ever made. And, barring occasional references to it in the months that followed, I figured that would be just about the end of that.

And then she bought the movie for me as a Christmas gift.

Now what was I to do? What started as a bit of a laugh on Terrible Movie Night had turned into a game of one-upsmanship, a game which she evidently had mastered on the sly without telling me. So I began this series of blog posts as an attempt to raise the stakes even higher, but sadly it looks like this is one game I'm going to lose. So I guess I might as well tell her and oh my god, that's a dinosaur with a rocket launcher. I cannot even begin to tell you how awesome this is. The time-honored 'Period after each word' strategy does not even begin to do it justice. G.r.e.a.t.e.s.t. i.d.e.a. e.v.e.r. Think of the most awesome thing you can possibly think of. Now think of that thing getting blown up by a dinosaur wielding a rocket launcher. Not that I am necessarily calling the rest of this film the greatest thing ever (Though it's certainly moving in that direction now), but that is a reasonable approximation of what is happening on the television at the moment. In a movie as uninspired as this one, where did this genius come from? Well, let's start at the beginning.

Much as there are 55 dramatic situations usable by authors the world over, for years there have been attempts to precisely codify the possible animal-weapon combinations. As with most things, this began with Miguel Cervantes, who introduced the world to the concept by arming a horse with a lance-wielding buffoon in Don Quixote. And while this was certainly a ground-breaking beginning, there was clearly work to be done. This would be continued by Thomas Jefferson, who, in an attempt to better protect the populace, gave all Americans the right to an armed bear (Congress, feeling this could be dangerous, changed bear to buffalo, something that completely fails to help people now that the species has dwindled). Henry David Thoreau chimed in with Turtle Chainsaw Massacre, a book whose title he changed to Walden upon having it pointed out to him that it was unclear whether the turtles were the massacrers or the massacrees (It was the first). But scholars generally agree that the definitive work on the subject was provided by Carolyn Keene (Who knew? (Also, I'm not going to say who she is. You have Google. Look her up)) in 1951, when she officially submitted two lists to the world for consideration:

Finally, writers everywhere knew what options they had. By combining an entry from column one with one from column two, every possible animal-weapon combination was literally on the tip of their pen, waiting to be brought to life for consumption by the masses. And while I mean no disservice to Carolyn, one of these combinations is clearly better than the rest, as measured in sheer awesomeness. And it is sitting on the TV screen in front of me. And thus I shall boldly press on. Bravo, Dragon Wars. Bravo.

Weighing In On Raul Ibanez

2009-06-18T11:11:00.002-04:00

So there's been quite a bit of controversy lately about a blog post that was written featuring both the name Raul Ibanez (Left fielder for the Philadelphia Phillies) and the word steroids (If you'd like a thorough review of the issue, you can find one here). Being the most notable blogger in the history of the internet, I feel compelled to put my two cents in on this less-timely-than-it-was-last-week topic. So, just to help clear the issue up, I have heard from my sources that Raul Ibanez has never bought steroids, as he prefers to manufacture his own.

Prisoner's Dilemma

2009-06-14T16:16:00.004-04:00

The year is 1951 and Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Inferior Cheese State*) is leading a witchhunt for Communists via the media, who, for though I feel they are failing us almost completely these days, evidently weren't much better back then. He brings two Senators into his office and sits them down in front of his desk. He then informs them that he knows they're both Reds and has enough evidence to indict each of them, but not enough to get the sentence he believes they deserve. Therefore, he proposes that he will generously let whoever comes forth with the goods on the other first go free. If both squeal, they both get longer sentences than they would if they both stay quiet, but less than if they stay silent and the other volunteers information. He then puts them in separate rooms to interrogate each individually. What do they do?

*Okay, I've been taking cheap shots at Wisconsin's cheese pretty much whenever the internet in these parts works for over 3 consecutive minutes, which was not much until Friday when we got our own and stopped having to steal from our neighbors (Or neighbours, if you prefer. Blogger's spell-check does not). But in fairness to Wisconsin, while I was generally unimpressed with their cheeses, I did have what is possibly the best cinnamon roll I've ever eaten there, at Denny's (Not the Chain) Diner in the Wisconsin Dells. Awesome. Also, this footnote format is blatantly thieved from Posnanski. Since the internet is now legal, I wanted to at least steal something. It's a rush.

That is the question posed over breakfast by Eddie Hobson Sr. to his brood of youngsters, 75% of whom have already moved out and are back visiting at the same time solely because their father's undiagnosed illness has worsened. The lack of a diagnosis has nothing to do with the failings of modern medical science, but rather Eddie Sr.'s avoidance of such, a situation that is likely to change only when the trained coroner is required by the authorities to confirm he is deceased. Such a morning puzzle is a Hobson tradition, as Eddie continually keeps everyone on their toes, so to speak, refusing to let their minds rest, even when it sets the family's collective nerves on edge. But he does not rest either. In his free time, he constructs Hobstown, the world as it should be, and one that will cure the planet we live on, despite the fact that he doesn't even allow his family to view any results of the project. In it World War II, himself and Walt Disney intertwine, in a captivating subplot so well-done that I actually researched the (non-fictional) subjects to see if any of it was true. Alas, it is not. At the beginning of this novel, the two seperate parts of it lie far apart. But as the book goes on, they begin to merge more, until the two almost bleed into one another. This is a captivating novel that picks up speed from one of the best living novelists, and a great bit of fun with the traditional screwed-up family. And what of our prisoners, who we briefly visited back at the beginning of this post? Well, that depends. What do you consider to be a prison?

Edit - Wow, I forgot to write the author's name. His name is Richard Powers. And I feel very smart right now, though evidently I have no clue how to proofread.

Sunday Morning is Biscuits and Gravy Time!

2009-06-14T09:49:00.000-04:00

So no, I'm not dead yet. Though based on breakfast, I'm evidently working on it (Literally. It's time to add the buttermilk to the biscuit dough). On the upside, I do have internet once again. Book review coming later.