October 30, 2004
Episode III tease week
The Revenge of the Sith teaser poster:
Omigosh! Do you think Anakin is actually Darth Vader? Isn't that what this poster implies? Holy crap! How could I have missed all the obvious clues?
October 29, 2004
"Incompetent or incoherent" sounds like a Jeopardy category
The Economist endorses Kerry, though only "with a heavy heart," titling their endorsement "The incompetent or the incoherent"
Some creative Halloween costume ideas from The Stranger for your child, including "The Littlest Prisoner at Abu Ghraib."
Another reality tv show: The Next Food Network Star. The winner gets their own six-episode show on the Food Network.
West Elm's beds don't hold up under wild sex. I walked through their new Chelsea Store the other day and it was mobbed. You'd think that heavy pounding would be a standard stress test for a bed frame.
Goodbye, Steve Stone
Longtime Cubs color commentator Steve Stone has resigned. It's a sad moment for Cubs fans like myself who grew up listening to his color commentary on WGN-TV. This year he was involved in some disputes with Cubs players like Moises Alou and Kent Mercker, and even Cubs manager Dusty Baker and general manager Jim Hendry. Stone didn't pull any punches in the booth, and it rubbed some players and coaches the wrong way. Stone was always fair, and those players and managers should've worried about winning on the field instead of acting like millionaire babies.
Harry Caray was a little loopy (I'm being generous, but we forgive our old and increasingly senile baseball personalities, like Peter Gammons) his last few years in the booth. Stone's patience (he never made a big deal about Caray's many mistakes or mispronunciations) and reasoned insight helped to balance out Caray's more partisan, emotionally driven play-by-play. Now WGN's entire commentary booth will turn over next season since Chip Caray left for the Braves.
True, perhaps none of this affects the team's on-field performance. But the Cubs sure are making it difficult for fans to warm up to the team. It feels, as Seinfeld said, like I really am rooting for laundry.
Review: SidewaysSwingers for middle-aged divorcees
Miles (Paul Giamatti) organizes a week-long bachelor trip for his engaged college buddy Jack (Thomas Haden Church), a jaunt through Northern California wine country. We realize as the movie progresses that Miles has set the trip up as much for himself as for Jack; Miles is the oenophile, the one who loves pinots and syrahs. Jack, a former soap opera star, is an overgrown surfer who chugs wine while chewing gum.
For those who watched Swingers, Jack is Trent, and Miles is Mike. The parallels continue. Miles is divorced but not over his ex-wife Victoria. He's uneasy around women, even those attracted to him, and he over analyzes every situation. Jack is about to be married but hasn't got the inveterate womanizing out of his system. He's an easygoing charmer with the looks of a middle-aged surfer and the personality of one who never grew up. Jack sets them up on a double date with a women who serves them alcohol at a winery (in Swingers it was a cocktail waitress at some off-Strip casino). There's a painful phone call and later a voice message from Miles, though Mike's in Swingers is far more uncomfortable. There's the distribution of condoms. While Jack puts the moves on his date Stephanie (Sandra Oh), Miles has a soulful conversation with his date Maya (Virginia Madsen), a waitress he's met before and has always been attracted to. Later, the two men play a painful round of golf. The territory of male healing treads familiar ground.
The other similarity between the two movies is that they're both very funny. After seeing the trailer, I didn't think I was ready for middle-aged men on a road trip, but the trailer doesn't do the movie justice. Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor (Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt) write dialogue that is always informing us about the characters at the same time that it keeps us laughing. Only a few moments into the movie, and Miles and Jack emerge as distinct personalities with depth. Giamatti, Haden Church, and Madsen are all excellent.
It's always enjoyable to poke fun at oenophiles. Miles, at one point, babbles on about a wine while Jack looks on with wide-eyed incomprehension: "...just the faintest soupçon of asparagus, and, like a nutty Edam cheese." He says all of this with a straight face but can muster none of this eloquence when describing his own emotional hurt.
Payne's comedies have dark souls, though. Unlikeable and somewhat grotesque middle-Americans inhabit his movies (Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick in Election, Jack Nicholson and his daughter's fiancee's family in About Schmidt). The movies seem to elbow us in the ribs, with a pursed lips and a point of the chin: aren't these losers pathetic? Don't you pity them? We hope most of them will find a patch of unpolluted happiness or grace, but the end credits always leave us uncertain.
October 26, 2004
Hey, what's this iPod thing everyone's fussing over?
Everyone knows by now that Apple released two new iPods today. One is the 20GB black U2 Special Edition iPod with the red clickwheel: 
The U2 designation is for the engraved signatures of the 4 band members on the back of the iPod, a $50 gift certificate off the The Complete U2, a digital box set collecting over 400 U2 songs, and a U2 poster. Personally, I'd rather just have the option to customize the color of my iPod and its clickwheel. And what's a digital box set?! That term should be reserved for music that comes in a really cool physical package.
The other new iPod is the iPod Photo. Here is a photo of a photo on the iPod, umm, Photo:
The main problem? The only way to get my photos from my digital camera onto the iPod Photo is to first transfer the pics to my Mac laptop or desktop and then push them across via iTunes/iPhoto. I'm sure some third parties will introduce some media card readers, but I already have a gazillion media card readers and cables. I want less of those, not more. I would have preferred either a USB port for direct photo transfer or a media card slot (or both; I'm leaving wireless out at this point b/c it's probably too much to ask for). Then I could leave my laptop at home while traveling and simply xfer photos from my digital camera onto my iPod, using it as both portable music player and portable photo hard drive. While traveling, I could share photos in slide show format on the iPod or on a television without having to bust out a massive laptop.
The iPod Photo is cool, but only in an evolutionary, not a revolutionary sense. I'd love one, but with those price and feature set coordinates, I'm not in heat. I do need to put my 1st generation antique brick of an iPod on life support, though. During my twenty mile long run, the fully charged iPod went dead at mile 20, and so did my legs. My iPod can barely reach 3 hours on a full charge now; it needs some iPod viagra.
Delicious Library, on the other hand, sounds awesome, especially since it supports iSight scanning. Arrives in 13 days. Can't wait.
Mary Meeker's report titled Update on the Digital World is available as a PDF. I'm a Meeker fan and happy to see her research available for free online instead of available only to wealthy Morgan Stanley clients.
Finally, something to listen to on that iPod of yours, whatever its generation. My Nov. issue of Wired arrived yesterday with a Creative Commons CD inside. Cool track list. Those who don't have a subscription and are too cheap to buy a copy of the newstand can download the tracks online at a variety of sites. For example, here's the CD in 320 kbps MP3 form as a BitTorrent, or as 192kbps MP3s from Nixlog.
11th hour Kerry endorsements
The Nation, The Washington Post, Andrew Sullivan, Slate, The American Conservative (sort of).
Karen and I tried Skype
Karen and I tried Skype last night, both of us on Mac OS X, and it worked fine after I finally got my iSight to work as a microphone (I think you have to quit iChat AV to resolve an input conflict, though who knows for sure?). The sound quality on Skype is noticeably better than iChat's; perhaps it's the audio compression codec they use.
I've also caught up to the entire season of Lost using BitTorrent. Count me engrossed thus far.
Other things worth watching online: Eminem's video for his anti-Bush song "Mosh." I wonder which will be a greater aid to Kerry's election hopes next Tuesday: the angry rap polemic of Eminem or the the smooth drawl of the real, slimmer Shady himself, Bill Clinton, back on the campaign trail. Maybe the former, since Clinton and The New Yorker, who issued a long endorsement of Kerry in this week's issue, may be preaching to the converted, eloquent as they are. So far, MTV has not said if they'll air Eminem's video.
Finally, finally, MI-5 Vol. 2 will come out on DVD, but not until January 2005. Loved Vol. 1 (the show is called Spooks in the UK), and was never sure why season two wasn't out on DVD yet. Too bad I can't locate season two on BitTorrent anywhere.
October 25, 2004
Union Square Cafe
James, Angela, and I went to Union Square Cafe Sunday night. From the outside, it really does look like a small cafe. The interior is more spacious, though still cozy. Danny Meyer's restaurant, which opened in 1985, is a New York institution. We enjoyed both of the things it's famous for: chef Michael Romano's excellent New American/Tuscan cuisine, and the hospitality.
Our appetizers were the butternut squash gnocchi and terrine of duck foie gras with pear/apple chutney. The butternut squash gnocchi were super, and the terrine of foie gras solid, but I wish they had seared foie gras instead. For entrees, I had crispy duck, James the herb-roasted baby lamb chops with garlic potatoes and mustard greens, and Angela the special entree, hangar steak with basil risotto and chanterelle mushrooms. The lamb chops really stood out. Cooked to medium-rare perfection, and those garlic potatoes just melted in our mouths. For dessert, James ordered butterscotch mousse, Angela the pumpkin upside down cake, and I the Baked Alaska. The wine list is both extensive and impressive.
Our waiter, a very young guy, was extremely friendly and knowledgeable. I wonder, though, if the restaurant's hospitality would be as notable in another city. At restaurants of similar quality and price range ($9 to $16 for an appetizer, $24 to $30 for entrees, $8 to $10 for desserts), isn't top-notch service de rigueur? Or perhaps it's the warmth of the wait staff that's the novelty, not the service quality? Smiling, courteous waitstaff, a reliably solid meal--I can understand the restaurant's status as bedrock of the NY dining scene.
The three of us decided to try and visit one expensive and renowned New York restaurant a month (if a restaurant is good and cheap, you can visit anytime). Any and all foodies are welcome. For November, perhaps we'll target one of the hot new eats in the Time Warner building.
October 22, 2004
Another reason to see The Incredibles...
...as if you needed one. The first teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith will debut with Pixar's latest movie on Nov 5, though members of StarWars.com get the trailer Nov. 4 in Quicktime, so it will inevitably make the rounds on the Internet as a BitTorrent and be mirrored up the wazoo. The teaser will also be shown on television the evening of Nov. 4.
October 21, 2004
Red Sox:Yankees as Kerry:Bush?
Rich Goliath tries to buy victory, but is turned back by slightly less wealthy foe (okay, let's call him David, to extend the metaphor; after all, a David did end up as series MVP) from Massachussetts. Maybe the Red Sox are showing Kerry the way. There's also still a chance that Stephen King is scripting all this using some eerie mentalism as he types the manuscript for Faithful.
I had predicted Houston and Boston to make the World Series, and I stand by that with the pitching matchup tonight. Houston:RedSox as Bush:Kerry is even better a baseball/politics parallel simply because of geography.
Okay, now that they've released Skype for Mac OS X, I'm ready to try it out. So Skype Me!
ParkingTicket.com. Ah, if only I'd known about this site while I still owned a car. [via TMQ]
Ken alerted me to the latest Bush gaffe. In a speech in Florida, he proudly proclaimed, "After standing on the stage, after the debates, I made it very plain we will not have an all-volunteer army." The crowd went deathly silent, looks of confusion everywhere. A few people shouted to correct him: "You mean we will have an all-volunteer army, right?" Umm, yeah. Freudian slip. I mean no, just a normal slip. Not Freudian.
Meanwhile, Teresa Heinz Kerry was making verbal gaffes of her own. Sometimes I think THK is just crazy. Actually, I think that all of the time.
Violinists: ask your doctor if Inderal is for you. I had no idea classical musicians were pill popping to overcome nerves. I wonder if figure skaters and gymnasts use beta-blockers, too (assuming they're not illegal in those sports).
The New Republic endorses John Kerry. Iran endorses Bush, much to the Bush campaign's dismay.
Man deposits one of those fake checks that arrive in one's junk mail. To his surprise, it cleared. An old story from a couple years back that still amuses, though that guy needs an editor. His constant self-promotion is grating.
Mindball is a game where two layers control a ball via brain waves. Most relaxed player wins. Loads of fun for your next board game night, especially contemplating all the naughtier variations of the game that could be played. It looks pricey, though. 20 000 SEK (~$2,800) for the multiplayer version, and the shipping page features a picture of a semi. [previous 2 stories via Metafilter]
October 20, 2004
Red Sox/Yankees in semi-realtime
Rich is in town visiting. After a dinner out for sushi, at which we each had a good luck Asahi for the Red Sox, we're settling in for the game. When it comes down to it, only Yankees fans can root for the Yankees. I can't think of anyone on the Yankees I'd root for. Go Sox!
Why did Dale Sveum send Damon in the first inning? I thought the Cubs with Wendell Kim were the only ones who had to lose hair over runners thrown out at home.
Wow, Big Papi tatooed that ball! That home run may have killed some fan in the right field bleachers.
Rich is feeling ill. I hope it wasn't the sushi. Rich has to tap out. I will soldier on.
Man, Brown has nothing. Who knows how he'd have been if he hadn't broken his hand in a childish fit of rage. The Greek tragedy is coming full circle.
Damon with a Grand Slam!! If I were Damon, I couldn't resist the urge to trot back out to my position and subtly flip off the fans in right field behind my back. He's too nice a guy to do so, but they sure give him hell out there. I wouldn't fault him for doing it.
This afternoon, Schilling was on Baseball Tonight and called A-Rod's swipe of Arroyo's arm last night a bush league play. When someone like Schilling, a respected player, calls A-Rod out on a cheap shot...that's just another heated page in the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry. What I thought was uncool was A-Rod claiming it was part of his natural running motion. I mean, c'mon. That was like Lance Berkman pretending he was hit in the head by a pitch earlier this year against the Cubs, lying there like he was unconscious, when replays clearly showed the ball didn't even touch him. Would Roy Hobbs do that? There ya go.
Speaking of Roy Hobbs, was the blood seeping through Curt Schilling's sock last night the most famous blood on a baseball player since Hobbs's bloody bullet wound in The Natural? It was perfect. A Red Sox player with literal red socks. If Schilling has that bloody sock left he could auction it off for millions on eBay. Some bar in Boston would buy it and build a golden shrine to it.
A-Rod chose Madonna's "La Isla Bonita" as the song to play over Yankees Stadium speakers when he comes to bat. Okay, that right there is another problem for A-Rod. I'm sorry, that's just not an intimidating song. If you're Ricky Williams and you've decided to retire from football at the peak of your career to go sit on a tropical beach somewhere and smoke pot from a three foot bong, maybe you can play that song as you're packing up your locker.
I can't believe the Yankees, with their payroll, bat Tony Clark in their lineup. His OBP this season was .297 and he struck out 92 times in 253 at-bats. Brutal. I wondered why Giambi didn't pinch-hit for Clark last night. I thought Giambi was on the post-season roster just for that reason.
Unfrozen Caveman is not just thawed, he's on fire! Upper deck! Maybe he really is Jesus. Next inning we may see him levitate into the sky to take a home run away from the Yankees.
Side note not related to this game: I just saw the box score of the NL game. Lidge pitched another 3 innings today, no hits, 5 Ks! Just ridiculous. He has to be fried for tomorrow's game. Doesn't he? And even Izzy went 3 innings for the Cardinals, so you know Larussa was desperate. Lidge's numbers from this season are sick: 94.7 innings, only 57 hits and 30 walks, 157 K's (!?!), a 1.90 ERA. His slider is just illegal. I still think K-Rod is the most fun relief pitcher in baseball to watch (similar numbers to Lidge: 84 IP, 51 hits, 33 BBs, 123 Ks, and a 1.82 ERA) just because his 89mph slider/curve and then 97mph fastball look like videogame pitches thrown with a whiffle ball they move so much. Plus he has a wild, exaggerated windup, and I miss those. Why don't more pitchers have wild and crazy windups like Juan Marichal in the old days, bringing the arms way back over the head, leg kicking up so that the knee is nearly over one's head? It adds a huge element of deception to the delivery, and it's so much fun to watch. Think Goose Gossage and Pascual Perez. Pitchers today with huge leg kicks and long, looping deliveries: Hideo Nomo, Dontrelle Willis, El Duque, Shigetoshi Hasegawa (sort of; interestingly, lots of Japanese pitchers seem to have huge windups; I wonder why?). There are probably others. There should be more.
Other side note on the NLCS game: I just saw a replay of Edmonds game winning home run. It's amazing that a guy with such a huge uppercut can take high and away fastballs and hit them out of the park. I saw him do that to a 94mph Kerry Wood high and away fastball earlier this year. People say to pitch him high and away because of his uppercut, but I think that needs to be amended to high and inner half. Otherwise he might just hit a 7-iron into the stands.
Ramirez chases Bernie's fly ball, and Buck says, "Ramirez with a late jump on it." Isn't that pretty much standard with every fly ball that goes to left against the Red Sox?
I was over at ESPN's Sportsnation Chat and saw a thread in which Boston fans were wondering when Francona would pull Lowe. Only a Cubs or Red Sox fan could be so paranoid. Lowe's up 8-1 and has given up one hit in 5 innings. I'd cut the man some slack. Sheesh.
What do you call a single Red Sox player? A Red Sock?
If they pull Lowe out and replace him with Pedro, I'll be shocked. That doesn't seem necessary, or wise, when you could have Pedro start in the World Series. There, I said it. World Series. I guess this is the World Series, in many ways, for the Red Sox. The NLCS has been exciting, too, but it's clearly been pushed to second class status this offseason, its games pushed to times when no one can watch to accommodate the ALCS in primetime.
A Felix Heredia sighting. The other day, Ken e-mailed me when Heredia got up in the bullpen, laughing uncontrollably. We remember him from his Cubs days, when he ran up ERAs of 4.85, 4.76, and 6.17.
Hmm, Pedro is coming in. Very bizarre. Maybe he's just treating this as his between-starts throwing session.
Pedro's not throwing very hard, and Matsui and Bernie double back to back. Still a healthy lead, but I still would have left Lowe out there. Sinkerballers are more effective when they're tired, or at least that's what they say. He looked plenty good to me. Pedro can't even break 90 right now, and he just gave up a single to Lofton, who I believe is collecting social security. Pedro still has a 5 run cushion, but seriously, what is he doing out there? Let the man rest.
Leave Pedro in too long last year, bring him in too early and unnecessarily this year. Some might pity the Red Sox managers for having to deal with such stress, but I blame the managers for making such lousy tactical decisions.
95 and 95mph on Pedro's last two pitches. Maybe he's warm now.
And now the Yankees Stadium organist is encouraging the Who's Your Daddy chant between every pitch. Oh, please make it stop.
The other option is that Pedro's reaching back for something extra. And he made it out of the inning giving up just two runs. Now send him to the showers and ice that arm of his. Since Cubs fans and Red Sox fans share similar nightmares, I can only imagine how much Pepto-Bismol is being consumed in Boston. Only a Cubs or Red Sox fan could insecure with such a big lead and just two innings to play. When you've had no empirical evidence in your entire lifetime to justify your faith, that's how it goes.
This may be the first post-season game where some pitcher requires Tommy John surgery during a series. Given how long the Red Sox/Yankees series has gone, Foulke could have had Tommy John after game one and recovered to pitch the ninth in this game.
Fickle is Red Sox Nation, is it not? Bellhorn and Damon have gone from goats to toasts with their recent home runs, while Manny is now a dirty word after his struggles this series.
Bottom of the 8th: Phew! Pedro is gone. Francona has overcome his temporary insanity and brought in Timlin.
Wow, what a dig by Mient...however you spell his name! Maybe this will dispell some of the post-season mythology around Derek Jeter. Has he done anything this ALCS? Maybe Jessica Alba will dump him. Please?
A-Rod....whiffffff! How sweet it must feel for the Red Sox to knock out the guy who almost came to them and instead ended up with their hated rivals. To think, it was the player's association that nullified that trade to the Red Sox and set A-Rod up for his fall. And why was the trade nullified? A-Rod and Scott Boras's greed in setting up his original contract with the Rangers, one that the player's association wouldn't allow the Red Sox to shrink. Yes, another example of hubris. This Greek tragedy is about to conclude. Steinbrenner poisons some drinks, kills Cashman and Torre and then has a heart attack and dies. As bloody an ending as Hamlet.
If I'm a Red Sox fan, especially if I'm in the bleachers, I'm trying like hell to start a "Who's Your Daddy?" chant right now. And then I'd duck and run like hell.
A token playing of "Enter Sandman" for Rivera. It doesn't sound that intimidating when the Yankees are down 7 runs. Has Rivera ever come into a game in which the Yankees trailed by this much? I doubt it.
In the World Series, we'll get to find out what David Ortiz looks like playing 1B. The AL winning the All-Star Game and giving the Red Sox home field advantage in the World Series is huge in that respect.
If I hop the train now, I may be able to get to Boston in time to buy a Red Sox hat and hit the streets. On this night, that would be enough for a guy to get lucky, if he wasn't trampled to death in street riots.
Pitching change to Embree with 2 outs in the ninth. A pause for Red Sox fans to pull the champagne out of the fridge and pop the cork.
Red Sox win!!! Pandemonium!!!
I like the Red Sox against whoever comes out of the NL. Neither the Astros nor the Cardinals has the starting pitching to hold down the Red Sox lineup, even with the pitcher having to hit in NL parks.
Shake Shack's "Shacktoberfest"
Angela was the first one to tell me about Danny Meyer's newest restaurant, Shake Shack. Meyer is the man behind Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern, respectively ranked as Zagat's Most Popular NYC Restaurant in 2004 and 2005. So when I first visited and saw Shake Shack a few weeks back, I was a bit taken aback.
As for the food, it wasn't anything fancy. The menu's staples include...
Of course, this is New York, so you can order a glass of wine with your Chicago Style Hot Dog.
The difference between Dick's in Seattle and Shake Shack is one example of the difference between Seattle and New York City. A deluxe burger at Dick's cost $1.80 (I think; it's been a while). A Shack Burger costs $3.95. Both, in their contexts, are considered cheap eats. I was never a huge fan of Dick's burgers but could understand the appeal of one to satisfy a case of late-night munchies. The Shack burger is pricey but really tasty. The secret is the Shack Sauce, a concoction that reminds me of Thousand Island dressing with more zing and spice.
Shake Shack's Chicago Style Hot Dogs are, to this former Chicagoan, quite good. I've already lauded the Shack Burger; I much prefer it to their plain hamburgers and cheeseburgers. The meat is ground daily from sirloin and brisket. I have yet to sample the fries; Dick's had good fries. I also haven't sampled the plain frozen custard, though, so I can't compare it to Ted Drewes in St. Louis (good stuff). I did try one of the concretes (frozen custard blended at high speed with homemade mix-ins) and it lived up to its name. It took me an entire day to finish one cup it was so rich and thick (The Concrete Jungle: hot fudge, bananas, peanut butter, mixed with the frozen custard of your choice).
Yes, I'm a big fan of Shake Shack. It's just a few blocks away from me, and sometimes if I've run a lot during the week I treat myself to one of its temptations. Today I stopped by on my way back from midtown and discovered, much to my pleasure, that they're running "Shacktoberfest," featuring special beers, sausages, and hot dogs. Special sausages
- Rocky Mountain Wild Elk Sausage stuffed with Jalapeños & Cheddar Cheese
- Wild Boar Sausage stuffed with Cranberry & Apricot
- Wild Buffalo Sausage stuffed with Jalapenos & Cheddar Cheese
- Pheasant Sausage stuffed with Mushroom, Spinach & Parmesan
- Brooklyn Brewery's Oktoberfest
- Kostritzer, Schwarzbien
- Reissdorf, Kölsch
- Ayinger, Oktober Fest-Märzen
- Smuttynose, Pumpkin Ale
- Victory, Festbier
- Rogue, Dead Guy Ale
I tried the featured Wild Buffalo Sausage and Reissdorf, Kölsch combo today. On a grey, cool autumn day with a brisk breeze blowing, the meal was so pleasing. Nothing like a light beer buzz mid-day.
Sadly, Shake Shack shacks up for the winter Nov. 1.
Legendary bandit buried in India
Legendary bandit buried in India. The funeral of India's most notorious bandit, Veerappan, takes place at a village in southern Tamil Nadu state. [BBC News]
A real-life Robin Hood? People still earn the title bandit?
Guess who's getting flu shots?.
[via Marginal Revolution]
Finally read Ron Suskind's NYTimes Magazine article on George Bush. Frightening. That president man (let's use Bush's folksy tone of voice) runs the country on a wink and prayer, though in his case it's more like a smirk and a prayer. A president who refuses to be molded to some degree by his constituents and his advisors and the world at large, especially one who's been a C-student most his life, is an idiot blinded by hubris. I thought the pilgrims left England to escape hereditary monarchy.
October 19, 2004
Round 15
Game 7! I'm living vicariously.
Curt Schilling. Still the coolest player left in the playoffs. Gutsy effort, just like that of Randy Johnson when he pitched in relief in Game 7 the day after he'd started Game 6 for the Diamondbacks in the 2001 World Series. I think the word "courage" is thrown around too much in sports--it's just a game, after all--but you have to admire a guy who's fighting through some pain and trying to hold down the Yankees lineup with less than his best stuff.
I also admire that he pulled himself out after seven innings. There's a machismo ethos in sports that says it's admirable to play despite injury or fatigue that limits your effectiveness, but at some point it's just detrimental to your team. For example, pitchers who refuse to admit fatigue and leave the game, hitting astronomical pitch counts that lead to injury or ineffectiveness in their next start. It's a fine line, but Schilling knew where he stood relative to it. A veteran like Greg Maddux is not afraid to tell his manager when he's done for the day, and more pitchers should.
Contrast Schilling with A-Rod, who just may never be as beloved as a guy like Schilling. His slap at Arroyo didn't seem malicious, though it did remind me of Robert Fick's cheap shot tomahawk chop to the arm of Eric Karros in last year's NLDS (the Braves fined Fick for that play and benched him the rest of the series. Somehow I doubt the Yankees will do the same to A-Rod). Anyhow, A-Rod will never get the Schilling love for many reasons. His willingness to chase the biggest contract and his inability to change the perception that he's a mercenary for hire who chased money and then success but wouldn't tradeoff between the two. Who knows if it's true or not? For me to presume to know A-Rod would be, well, presumptuous. But he doesn't own a spot in the Hall of Fans' Hearts the way Schilling does.
I wouldn't object to some instant replay process in the playoffs and World Series to aid umpires on select types of plays when they're not sure about calls. They did get both disputed calls correct today, but what if they hadn't? Would it really hurt anyone to have some umpires in a booth reviewing replays for a minute or two, just as the umpires on the field get together for a moment to confer? Why don't they use that HawkEye system that CBS uses to draw digital replays on television to aid umpires with line calls in tennis? I don't understand the argument that human errors in judgment are part of sports. Would we be satisfied if 100 meter sprints were still judged by a few old men eyeing the finish line as runners blew past at 28 mph?
It will be a zoo tomorrow night at Yankees Stadium. I'd love to be there.
Who's your papi?
Some good baseball last night. I know, because it managed to keep me awake despite the near coma I was in after my longest run to date (I think it was over 20 miles, though who knows because my watch and GPS tracking unit mysteriously stopped tracking after mile 17 or so). I plugged my projector in and just shot it against the wall, lying on the ground with a Gatorade IV into my arm, switching back and forth between the two baseball games and MNF.
Both series, but especially the Yankees and Red Sox series, feel like heavyweights just beating the crap out of each other. The bullpens are depleted, it seems like their games are always on television, and Damon's hair has grown down to his waist. If they served alcohol past the seventh inning in MLB ballparks they'd be carrying Boston fans out on stretchers between innings. While last night's Yankees Red Sox game wasn't, as Theo Epstein argued, the greatest game in baseball history (both teams made a ton of mistakes which stretched the game out longer than necessary), it made for good playoff theater.
It seems like all the post-season managers have learned that an ideal strategy is to use your best relievers as much as possible, and as early as possible in close games. Foulke, Rivera, and Lidge have shown up in just about every game. James Click of Baseball Prospectus wrote an article recently discussing the broadening depth of the ace reliever pool. It used to be that most relief pitchers were failed starters, those without good enough stuff to start. Now you have pitchers who are bred to be relievers from the time they're in college or the minors (e.g. Jorge Julio, Francisco Rodriguez, Ryan Wagner), or you have starters who have good stuff who are just switched to relief where they can just air it out for an inning at a time (Foulke, Isringhausen, Smoltz, Gagne, Dotel, Rivera). The result, as the article notes, is that many teams actually now have better bullpens than starting pitchers. That reversal implies that it might be best for some teams to just pitch an entire playoff game with one reliever after another instead of throwing out some retread fourth or fifth starter.
The Yankees still haven't learned to pitch around David Ortiz. I predict Big Papi will die in about six years when his heart does a big poppy after the three thousandth free meal and five thousandth free beer he receives while out on the town in Boston.
With every hit that drops in front of Bernie Williams (he looked to be somewhere in Connecticut on David Ortiz's bloop single--shouldn't you play in more when Rivera or Loiaza is pitching to a lefty with that jamming cutter?), I just see the contract the Yankees will offer to Beltran going up and up. The Cubbies really need to break the bank and get Beltran, if only to keep the Yankees from getting him.
I wrote earlier that it didn't seem that any young players could make an impact on either series, but I was wrong, as usual. Brandon Backe pitched eight innings of one-hit ball against the Cardinals murderous lineup. Incredible.
In my heart of hearts, I can't really root for any of the teams left--are there really even any underdogs?--but it's hard to turn away. Just when I think I'm done with baseball for the year, it pulls me back in.
The Talent Myth
The Talent Myth is the ChangeThis manifesto by Malcolm Gladwell. ChangeThis is a site seeking to spread ideas, though unfortunately all manifestos are only available in PDF form. In this case, what's unfortunate is that this is just the duplicate of an article Gladwell wrote for The New Yorker a while back. Good article, though ChangeThis seems to pass it off as a new essay.
Free Reach Access Daily Flosser!
October 18, 2004
Frontline - The Choice A
A new process for coloring black and white films, employed by Scorsese in The Aviator.
Qurio.com is an interesting photosharing option for Windows users. It serves photos directly off of your computer, through your high speed Internet connection, so you don't have to upload photos to an external site.
Remains of a weekend
I haven't set up my television here in NYC, and before that I was traveling for months so I had just sporadic access to a television. I haven't missed it nearly as much as I thought. It's given me time to read and enjoy life outside my apartment. I'm sick of reality television, have no need for CSI: Minneapolis ("Hmm, I think Steve Buscemi died when his partner axed him in the head and put him through the wood chipper. Yaaaa, I do."), and any television show I really want to watch can usually found on BitTorrent. For example, the clip of Jon Stewart on Crossfire as he bitch-slapped Tucker Carlson. Deeply, deeply satisfying. I can't stand Tucker Carlson. What a buffoon. If you don't know how to use BitTorrent, you can see the clip just fine here at iFilm. Could Jon Stewart be any more golden right now? I walked by the Union Square Barnes and Noble when he was there for his book signing, and by the looks of the drooling women in line, you'd think Jude Law or Brad Pitt was there to sign a swimsuit calendar.
Of course, I must have my television set up by this Thursday, when The Office Christmas Specials (part 1, part 2) air in the U.S. on BBC America. I tried to find it on DVD in London this summer, but all I could turn up was pity from Londoners who tsk tsk'd as they revelled in recounting the rapture of humor the special had bestowed upon them. The DVDs? Release in the UK Oct. 25. If you haven't seen the show yet, I either pity or envy you. And who the hell are you and where have you been living?! The show has no laugh track, because you'll provide one. But don't take my word for it. The New Yorker calls it perfect.
Malcolm Gladwell writes about the high cost of prescription drugs with his usual (i.e., unusual) insight.
Wal-Mart.com, of all sites, has audio clips of the Friday Night Lights soundtrack. I'm just about over my Friday Night Lights kick. After watching the movie I bought the soundtrack and inhaled the book (recommended and recommended, respectively). The music has been a nice change of pace from the usual stuff in my "Running" playlist in my iPod, all of which I've heard about eighty times by now.
The baseball stadium in Houston is a joke. People are hitting pop flies out of the stadium in left field for home runs, and that hill with the pole in it in center field is ludicrous. What an atrocious baseball playing field (I've never seen the exterior, but it seems fine). The fact that all baseball stadiums have different dimensions in the outfield used to never bother me, but if they standardize the dimensions of all playing areas of all MLB stadiums, allowing architects to customize all other aspects and dimensions of the stadium, I'd have no objections. Imagine one NBA basketball court having baskets nine feet high instead of ten, or a three point line that was shorter than in other stadiums.
Games 3 and 4 of the ALCS were brutal. Each game lasted about two days. Alan, Sharon, and I rented a movie, started watching when game 3 started, and when the two hour movie finished that game was in the fourth inning. I don't know how anyone who's not a Yankees or Red Sox fan could stay awake. I remain steadfast in my hope that MLB will speed up the games. If you adjust your batting glove and then stand there to take a pitch, why do you need to step out and adjust it again? Is the velcro defective?
I met James, Angela, some of their college friends, Alan, and Sharon for lunch at Carnegie Deli today. The Carnegie sandwiches are MASSIVE. RIDICULOUS. I had a reuben, their specialty, and it was actually just a mountain of pastrami covered by several layers of cheese. It looked like an elementary school model of Mt. St. Helens erupting cheese. I finished about a quarter of it and will nibble on the remains for the rest of the week. Carnegie Deli is a mecca for pastrami and corned beef lovers.
I didn't miss my car until I saw this promotional clip for the new BMW M5. Sweet mother of...sometimes, late at night, when the subway seems like it will never arrive, wouldn't you just like to hop into something like this and just play Pole Position with the cabs.
NYC's arts lineup is overwhelming. Everyday I find at least five things I'm dying to go see. Monday night (oh, that would be tonight) Ricky Gervais is speaking at the Museum of Television and Radio before a screening of The Office Christmas Special. I'd kill to see Julie Taymor's production of The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) at the Met. Alex Ross raves about it. What stops me is the memory of my first NYC credit card bill. Upon opening it and reading the balance, I screamed, dropped the bill, my eyes rolled up into my head, and I fainted theatrically, like a swooning movie diva.
The weekend ended with puppet entertainment. No, not the marionettes of Team America World Police, but the puppets of Avenue Q, the much acclaimed musical that won the Tony for best musical in 2003. I am not a huge musical fan, but I enjoyed this one for not taking itself so seriously. It offers quite a contrast to the melodrama of most musicals and seems a descendant of the Rent lineage of musicals, one that's sadly sparse. The show features a cast of puppets and people who live in a rundown neighborhood in Manhattan as they sing about life and its problems. But these are HBO-class puppets, not Sesame Street or Jim Henson muppets (even though some of the characters really resemble Ernie and the cookie monster), so they swear, drink, and have sex. As Phil said at intermission, it might not a musical you'd be comfortable seeing with your parents. The puppets are held by actors who stand alongside them as puppeteers, singing, with their hands clearly inserted up into the puppets or waving their arms around. It's jarring for just the first few seconds, but then, the rest of the time, as the cast sings songs like "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" or "The Internet is for Porn" or "Schadenfreude", you realize it all feels on some level like a clever deconstruction of the musical as an art form. Would Kermit and Miss Piggy have grown up to be a dysfunctional married couple? Would Bert have come out of the closet to confess his love for Ernie? Would Big Bird be surfing porn on the Internet? I'm of the generation that wouldn't find those stories surprising at all, and I'm glad some musicals have caught up.
October 17, 2004
Newspapers issue endorsements
Newspapers across the country have seen enough to issue their presidential endorsements. I've tried to link up to the editorials I could find without too much trouble.
A sampling of those papers endorsing Kerry:
NY Times
San Francisco Chronicle
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Boston Globe
Philadelphia Inquirer
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Detroit Free Press
Arizona Daily Star
The Oregonian (Portland)
The Seattle Times
The Philadelphia Daily News
Most of the free world
For Bush:
The Chicago Tribune
The Arizona Republic
Dallas Morning News
The Oakland Press
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Tulsa World
The Union Leader
Savannah Morning News
The Pueblo Chieftain
Amarillo Globe-News
The Leaf-Chronicle
All this of course doesn't guarantee any election victory, as many of the papers endorsing Kerry this election endorsed Gore last time around.
October 15, 2004
In other news...
A tried and trued business model: when in doubt, add a dose of beautiful girls. For example, HootersAir.
Chris Rock will host the Oscars next year. Hallelujah!
Jim Caviezel wants to play Superman in Superman Returns, to be directed by Bryan Singer. From Jesus to Superman. That would be quite a resume.
October 14, 2004
I dream of closet space
Dreams are contextual. The other night, I dreamt that I walked into my entrance hallway and discovered two huge walk-in closets that I had inexplicably overlooked while unpacking. I was overjoyed until I woke up with the same two meager closets in my bedroom as before.
Google Desktop
Google Desktop. Finally, Google searching for your local hard drive. I want Google Laundry so I can find my missing socks.
Paralyzed man sends e-mail by thought.
Somehow, the graphic producers behind the new Gourmet Cookbook didn't realize that light yellow is a terrible color for headings. As a result, the book is getting reamed by negative customer reviews.
I'm really feelin' the expressionist sonic landscapes of Explosions in the Sky, a band from Austin, Texas, who did the instrumental pieces for the soundtrack of Friday Night Lights. The soundtrack includes some previously recorded songs such as "Your Hand In Mine" from Earth Is Not A Cold, Dead Place, and the trailer features "Have You Passed Through This Night" from Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever. This latter album is also notable for having been released on Sept. 10, 2001 with cover art featuring the words, "This plane will crash tomorrow." You can download recordings of some of their live performances (the best way to experience their music).
October 13, 2004
Game Two
Why he made that daddy remark I'll never know. He claimed after the game that he didn't regret what he said, but if he doesn't, Red Sox fans and his teammates will. You just can't give the most obnoxious, arrogant baseball fans in the country ammunition. He'll be hearing that chant for the rest of his career at Yankees Stadium, unless, of course, he joins the Yankees this offseason. The Yankees would probably overpay for him, and he's clearly on the downhill side of his career, but still, if you're the Red Sox, do you want to see Pedro in pinstripes? It would be an echo of too many painful memories, and it would just tickle Yankees fans to death.
[Note: the chanting of "Hoosier Daddy" at Bobby Knight when he was still head coach at Indiana remains the most original usage of the phrase]
When the game started, I realized that roll call only occurs from the right field bleachers. Inevitably, we were seated near a completely inebriated Yankees fan who was teetering all over the place. He kept falling into me, and every time he went to buy another beer with his buddy I hoped he'd pass out somewhere and not return. And of course, we had the alpha-obnoxious Yankees fan running up and down our aisle, cursing out anyone who wouldn't stand up and scream along with him. There seems to be one in every bleacher section. He was dripping with sweat, his face red, his voice nearly hoarse. He kept apologizing to a young boy of eight or nine years old everytime he dropped another f-bomb. What a f***.
Most of you know how the game went by now. In the bottom of the first, Pedro walked Jeter on 4 pitches, hit A-Rod, and then gave up line drive single to Sheffield to give the Yanks a quick 1-0 lead. Alan and I were looking at the stadium radar gun, and Pedro was hitting mid-90's with his fastball. He looked to have decent velocity and stuff, certainly better than the last time I saw him here, when he got shelled, but his command was just a bit off. A few non-strike calls here and there hurt him.
One thing I did like about Shea Stadium which I remembered last night was that they post not just the velocity of each pitch but what type of pitch it was. How they figure that out I have no idea, but they do. Most pitches you can identify by the velocity and the path it takes (fastball, curve, slider, changeup, and split are easy to identify). However, for one pitch at Shea the board displayed "cutting fastball." Huh? Amazing, to think that it's someone's job to sit there all game and press a button to display the pitch type. At the Yankees game, from where I was sitting, I had some difficulty identifying between some of Pedro's changeups and curves. We were just a bit too far away for me to see the pitch path clearly.
A side observation: MLB needs to speed up games. I know they tried, a few years ago, but they failed. Umpires at my community softball game do a better job of keeping games going. Batters step out after every pitch to unstrap and restrap their batting gloves, tap their feet, take practice swings. C'mon. Batters shouldn't get to call time or to step out of the box after each pitch. That should be a rule. MLB also doesn't need two minutes between innings. Most pitchers ready after just a couple warm-up pitches. There should be a rule banning the fake pickoff throw to third and then to first. Pedro did that several times. Has that play ever worked? They should just make that a balk.
Meanwhile, the magic pixie dust they sprinkle on players when they join the Yankees to revive retreads was working as Jon Lieber was mowing down the Red Sox, and Olerud hit a go-ahead two-run homer off Pedro in the sixth. Lieber has a nasty slider. It's especially effective against right-handers. Whenever it was 0-2 on a batter, I'd look at Alan and say "slider." If he didn't get the strikeout with it, I'd say "slider" again. The Red Sox had to know it was coming, and they still couldn't lay off of it.
Teams with two million or so lying around can do worse than invest in a pitcher who's coming off of Tommy John surgery. Look at A.J. Burnett, Lieber, Kerry Wood, Ryan Dempster, John Smoltz, Matt Morris, Tom Gordon, Eric Gagne, and Mariano Rivera. It's as commonplace in baseball now as ACL reconstructions in basketball and football. Someday we're going to see a mediocre pitcher undergo pre-emptive Tommy John surgery just to see if it adds some velocity and stability.
Are there a pair of weaker center-field arms than Damon and Bernie? Watching Bernie warmup before innings is painful. He has a strange hitch in his throwing motion. Damon's arm is just plain weak.
They flashed a picture of Jack Nicholson up on the scoreboard at one point. Jack's a Yankees fan? He roots for the most hated basketball team in the country and now the most hated baseball team as well? The next time I watch Karate Kid I half expect to see Jack sitting ring-side, sharing laughs with the Cobra Kai Sensei and cheering on Johnny as he take out opponent's legs.
Gary Sheffield scared the crap out of me everytime he was at bat against the Cubs in last year's NLDS, and he's still imposing in the box with that menacing way he waves the bat around as if to say, "This thing is like a toothpick in my hands it's so light." Baseball needs to do something about batters standing on top of the plate, though. The rules are just stacked against pitchers. It's nearly impossible to throw inside anymore. You either end up hitting the batter, whereupon he either takes first or yells at you and elicits a warning from the umpire, or you hit the inside corner but the batter jumps out of the way, making the ball appear inside, and it's called a ball. They should move the batter box away from the plate a bit, maybe two to three inches. Jeter, A-Rod, and Sheffield were right on top of the plate, and Pedro couldn't drive them off of it.
Against the Yankees in the playoffs, you have seven innings to make some noise. Otherwise, out beyond the center field wall, an unnatural force named Mo begins to stir...
"Mo, Joe needs you."
Rivera looks up, somewhat groggy. "Have them lay out my uniform, shoes, and glove. In the meantime, two hot towels and my razor, please."
Now comes news that Schilling can't start Game Five. If the Yankees play the Cubs' arch nemeses the Cardinals in the World Series, I'm not sure who I could root for.
CMJ
The CMJ Music Marathon is overwhelming. The roster of bands looks like a war memorial.
GOOGL B(E) 10003
Google SMS. Keen.
B to the E power?! B(E)? I can just see shouting this over heavy techno music to a bartender at a club.
"Can I have a B(E)?"
"What kind of beer?"
"NO, A B(E)!"
"A BEER? I KNOW! WHAT KIND?"
"A B TO THE E!"
Firefox extensions for BugMeNot.com.
They don't have GMail Drive shell extension for Mac users, but I've been using my GMail account like that all along. I don't really receive any e-mail at my gmail account. I just forward files and messages there for storage and easy search/retrieval later.
Kerry is trailing again in the Electoral Vote Predictor, 264 to 270. These debates do seem to matter, though it's just a guess on my part. Bush started out like a shrill screamer again, but he hung in and landed several effective blows in debate #2.
I AM LEARN is a weblog written by a Perl script.
Carl Lewis vs. William Shatner in the celebrity-turned-musician category. Advantage Captain Kirk. Seriously, he has Ben Folds in his corner as guest producer, he did a cover of Pulp's "Common People", so he has taste, and guest appearances include Aimee Mann, Joe Jackson, and Henry Rollins.
Mark Cuban passes on "the handjobber."
Humorous exchanges between pilots and air traffic control towers.
Tricks of the Trade continues on in weblog format.
The saying "You want to have your cake and eat it too" makes no sense. If it's my cake, why can't I eat it? It makes more sense as "You can't eat your cake and have it too."
While I was in France and the UK this summer, I saw the new Smart Car Roadster and Roadster-Coupe. They looked smart. Now the Smart Car is coming to the U.S., with an American-friendly SUV among the optional models. Chouette!
The next Pixar short is Boundin'.
Okay, this is fairly stale, but it's still the best suggestion I've seen yet about how to cure the ills of USA Basketball.
October 12, 2004
1-Love, Yankees
Well, I didn't expect the Yanks to shell Schilling. He was off. If he's injured and can't recover during this series, the Red Sox are in trouble.
Manny's defense in LF cost the Red Sox at least a few runs. He should have cut off Matsui's ball in the 1st to hold Sheffield at third. He didn't catch the ball, he didn't dive, he didn't cut it off. That's just lazy/bad. He should have caught that ball in the 8th, though I couldn't tell if he was just slow or lackadaisical on that one. The other thing about Manny is that he seems to be a guess hitter, even with two strikes. I've seen him get caught looking with balls right down the middle so often. He can hit, though, so you live with all that.
Should be a lot of chants of "Who's your daddy?" at Yankee Stadium tomorrow. Ooh, it's going to be crazy. Four cool things about Yankees games:
- Roll call--the RF bleacher fans chant each Yankee defenders name in sequence in the top of the first (all except the pitcher and catcher) until each player looks back and waves the glove. The order is Matsui, Bernie, Sheff, Olerud, Cairo, Jeter, and A-Rod. One of the best cheers in sports.
- The playing "Enter Sandman" by Metallica when Mariano Rivera trots out of the bullpen. Gives me chills because you know Rivera can back it up.
- The playing of Sinatra singing "New York, New York" after wins. Obnoxious, and if it were happening against the Cubs, I'd want to shoot myself, but it's Sinatra,
- The voice of the Yankees public address announcer, Bob Shepherd. I only heard it just recently, at my first game at Yankees Stadium, and it gave me goosebumps. He's the best public address announcer I've ever heard. I'd pay to have him say my name over the speaker stadium at Yankees Stadium just once.
Clash of the Titans
Is it possible the Yankees are finally the underdog? Granted, we're talking about the richest team in baseball being dogs to the second richest, so it's not exactly David versus Goliath, but it's news nevertheless.
The Red Sox have a stronger lineup 1-9. The Yankees have some great batters, but then they also have Ruben Sierra, John Olerud, and Miguel Cairo. Sierra is about 73 years old, Olerud was cut this season by the 63-99 Mariners, and Miguel Cairo was once a Cub utility player. The Red Sox lineup is ridiculous. They scored 949 runs this year. It's the type of patient and powerful lineup the Moneyball philosophy would produce if you actually had money. The Yankees ranked second in MLB with 897 runs scored and have also been marked by solid plate discipline over their championship years. These teams don't let mediocre pitching off the hook. The bench for Boston is also stronger. You can hide your lack of pitching depth in the playoffs by stretching out the number of innings your best starters and relievers throw, but you have to start a lineup of nine batters, and the Red Sox have an edge there. I haven't heard if Giambi is healthy, but last time I saw him he looked sickly.
The Red Sox have an ace in Schilling. I've always loved Schilling for the way he goes after people with his fastball (or these days his fastball/spliter combo). He's a gamer, and he's a gamer: he plays Everquest. Cool dude. Twilight years Pedro called the Yankees his daddy (maybe he's mellowing out in his old age), but he's a solid #2 guy. Arroyo looks good, and Wakefield has not, but knuckleball pitchers are wildcards. On any given day the knuckler could be dancing. The Yankees would have a great starting staff if all their starters were healthy, but no one really is except for Jon Lieber. For some reason, Lieber was pitching at every Cub game I attended for a two, three year stretch. He's a solid throw-strikes-and-let-defense-do-the-work guy, an inning-muncher during the regular season, but he doesn't scare anyone with his. Left-handers have always hit him hard, even after he added a changeup to his sinker-slider repertoire. Mussina, Brown, and Vazquez/Hernandez are all top-notch when healthy, but only Vazquez is whole, and for some reason he never took that next step into stardom this year. Mussina is the de facto ace, though a healthy Kevin Brown with his 10 pound power sinker would usually play that role. If Brown is healthy, he can be the Yankees' Schilling. As it stands now, though, not a sub-4.00 ERA among the bunch, though. Amazing what a crappy pitching staff nearly $200 million will buy you.
The bullpens are top heavy. Gordon and Rivera, and Foulke, Timlin, and Embree, and if anyone else is in the game it's a bad sign. Lowe might be a pleasant surprise out of the bullpen for the Sox. Those guys may need surgery to re-attach their arms by the end of the series, and Francona and Torre will be the ones applying the sutures. Just thinking about seeing guys like Tanyon Sturtze, Felix Heredia, Esteban Loaiza, Mike Myers, or Curtis Leskanic in the ALCS is sickening. Oh, this Cubs fan is in mourning.
[The one thing this series lacks is a rookie, late-season call-up, or young stud who steps up with no fear and lights up the game's brightest stage in his first post-season appearance, like Andruw Jones, or Josh Beckett and Miguel Cabrera, or Francisco Rodriguez (K-Rod). When you've got money to spend, you can buy older, known commodities.]
Francona doesn't inspire much confidence in Red Sox nation, but it's AL baseball, so managing consists of making sure to bring in the right pitchers at the right time and knowing when to make the proper defensive substitution. I'm fairly certain he won't leave Pedro in too long this year.
In the end, the Red Sox should prevail. Tom Gordon's vision is blurry from being hit by a champagne cork during the Yankees' ALDS celebration. Kevin Brown hurt his hand punching a wall in anger. They have the highest payroll in baseball history. These are omens straight out of a Greek tragedy, one with $186 million of hubris. And of course, there's the Ex-Cub Factor, which says that the team with the most ex-Cubs is doomed to lose. The Yankees have five ex-Cubs: Cairo, Lieber, Lofton, Gordon, and Heredia. The Red Sox have just two--Bill Mueller, Mark Bellhorn--and they traded one of their former stars, Nomar, to the Cubs, which should have the effect of working in reverse.
Alan and I are going to catch game two tomorrow, and though I'm still depressed over the Cubs' collapse, I'm fired up to be a witness to baseball's fiercest rivalry. Red Sox in five.
October 11, 2004
Wingwomen.com
A new service called Wingwomen.com offers females to escort you out as your wing women.
Shockingly, most novelists are planning to vote for Kerry instead of Bush. Well, except for Thomas Mallon, Robert Ferrigno, and Orson Scott Card.
Review: The Machinist
Finally, The Machinist comes to theaters. Jason and I saw this at Sundance this January, and I thought it would gain distribution sooner. Paramount Classics is putting it out Oct. 22.
Christian Bale lost 60 pounds to play this role, and his physical transformation is nearly as painful for the audience to witness as it must have been for him to pull off. Bale plays Trevor Reznik, a man who hasn't slept for a year. He is plagued by nightmares; are they real or hallucinations brought on by his own paranoia? He works in a factory with a distinctively apocalyptic feel, and someone is leaving cryptic post-its on his refrigerator.
It's a psychological suspense thriller, and director Brad Anderson and his crew create a foreboding atmostphere, filled with a lush darkness and eerie fluorescent lighting. It's also a mystery, and I enjoyed trying to unravel the clues, though living in someone's nightmare for that period of time left me ready for a round of beers with friends at the local pub.
October 10, 2004
Review: Maria Full of Grace
Anyone who feels the slightest bit of self-pit about their first year struggles upon arrival in New York City should see this Maria Full of Grace, one of the best movies I've seen this year. It's potent, not easy to stomach, but not nearly as difficult to swallow as the capsules of heroin or cocaine that drug mules carry in their stomachs from Colombia to the United States.
Maria Alvarez is a bright, courageous, and fiery seventeen year old. She is not the type of person who would seem to have to turn to life as a drug mule to survive. But writer and director Joshua Marston efficiently and methodically shows us the forces that both push and draw her in that direction: the meager pay of her monotonous job de-thorning long-stem roses, her abusive boss and working conditions, the claustrophobic pressures of living at home with and helping to support her impoverished mother and sister and nephew, and the simple desire for something more out of life. She is also pregnant by a deadbeat boyfriend she doesn't love. Soon she is on an airplane along with several other drug mules, carrying not just her unborn child but dozens of drug pellets. Not everyone comes to America on a boat that passes by the Statue of Liberty on its way to Ellis Island. Some arrive at JFK Airport and encounter suspicious and unforgiving customs officers.
Marston doesn't over-dramatize material that comes loaded with tension. He catalogs it all with a documentarian restraint, and Catalina Sandino Moreno makes an unforgettable screen debut as Maria Alvarez. In an otherwise bleak view of the American Dream, her spirit reminds us that many who come to America carry the American dream inside them, rather than finding it here.
[Interesting footnote: On the movie's official website I learned that Orlando Tobon, who plays Don Fernando in the movie, plays a real-life Don to Colombian immigrants in New York City. The "Mayor of Little Colombia" operates a travel agency in Jackson Heights, Queens, where he aids Colombian immigrants. Over twenty years, he has repatriated the bodies of approximately 400 Colombian drug mules who died while journeying to the U.S.]
Review: House of Flying Daggers
I saw a midnight screening of House of Flying Daggers at the New York Film Festival Saturday night. While walking into the theater, I saw a pseudo-red-carpet alley being formed by throngs of people. I went over to see what the commotion was about, thinking that there was no way it could be...and it was. Zhang Ziyi. She is stunning. Some people never lose the skin they had as a baby. I had an urge to reach out just to run my fingers across her cheeks, but then I remembered that I'd probably get tackled and beaten by a few aspiring Vin Diesels, and I still did want to see the movie.
Director Zhang Yimou also walked in. Both of them received a Cannes-lite reception. Inside, Zhang spoke a few phrases which were translated into English. He mentioned that he was almost too intimidated to attempt a bamboo forest fight scene after Ang Lee's success with the same in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but that he was pleased to have found a unique way to shoot it which he hoped we'd enjoy. Zhang Ziyi came out to the crowd's delight and said in shy, halting English, "Thank you for coming. Please enjoy the movie."
I've never seen a movie at Alice Tully Hall before, and especially since my seats were in the back row, I wasn't too hopeful about the acoustics and picture. I was wrong. As the picture came on screen, a huge drum sounded, and it was LOUD. No surround sound, but the acoustic picture in the front half of the theater was distinct and LOUD. I was so pleased, because as the movie progressed, I realized that the sound design and soundtrack of the movie are critical to its effect. The sound of drums shaking the air, the whisper of silk fabric sssssliding across itself, the whistling of (flying) daggers slicing through the air, of leaves rustling as horses or soldiers rush past...all of them came through crystal clear.
As with Hero and Raise the Red Lantern, Zhang favors lush, saturated color palettes. The scenery, shot in parts of the Ukraine and China, is gorgeous, and the actors outfits are often coordinated to the environment. When Zhang Ziyi dances at a brothel, her blue dress complements the hall decor. When she's running through an autumn forest, she's dressed in muted navy and gold, and near movie's end, when she's in a forest of bamboo and leaves, her spring green robe blends in such that an interior designer would be proud. Those ancient Chinese had great fashion sense. The finale brings together all the color palettes from the movie and highlights them against the neutral backdrop of a white snow-covered landscape.
The House of Flying Daggers is a clandestine rebel group that steals from the rich, gives to the poor, and combats the waning Tang Dynasty government. Leo (Andy Lau) and Jin (Takeshi Kanehiro) are two soldiers in the General's Army, given the assignment of capturing the new leader of the House of Flying Daggers in ten days. Jin, a ladies man, is sent undercover to the Peony Pavilion, a brothel, to investigate and win the heart of a new blind dancer, Mei (Zhang Ziyi), rumored to be a member of the House of Flying Daggers.
Anyone who's seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero or any of the classic wuxia movies will realize that to summarize any more of the plot would be difficult. Wuxia movies always involve complex, labrynthine plots full of double crosses and shifting loyalties. Whereas the characters, love stories and, combat in Hero felt so ethereal and mythic and pure as to be constricting and suffocating, HOFD contains more humor and humanity. Jin and Mei, both played by real life heartthrobs, flirt and laugh, a refreshing change from the formal, muted romances between Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in Hero. The scale of the story also stays at an individual level, focusing on Jin, Mei, and Leo, instead of rising to the level of a national epic.
The combat is somewhere between that of a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where characters could fly, and a Bruce Lee movie, no wires required. The warriors in HOFD can certainly leap in a manner that defies physics, but not so much that they seem superhuman. In Manhattan, they'd still have to take the subway to get from downtown up uptown. More importantly, the combat has force and impact. Characters bleed and sweat and stumble in the leaves and snow. Not that there's any shortage of the balletic. As in CTHD, there are battles set at treetop level in a forest, and a fight that soars up and down stalks of bamboo. Yimou uses a combination of special effects shots and wire work to achieve some lyric shots. Overhead shots frame Mei's acrobatic backflips, and the bullet-cam shots so popular with John Woo allow the camera to circle and follow daggers and arrows as they rip through forests and over fields of wildflowers, traveling impossible distances to slice and stab their targets (Jin is Aragorn with the sword, Legolas with the bow and arrow). It's technically ravishing.
The acting and dialogue are true to the wuxia tradition which is both a strength and a limitation. Wuxia movies won't ever provide the type of dialogue or elicit the type of acting that wins Oscars. It takes a game actor to keep a straight face pronouncing some of this dialogue, and it's even more difficult for the audience to keep a straight face listening to much of it (the subtitling was actually quite good, even if it failed to convey bits of nuance here and there). Some people find the chivalry and heroism of wuxia movies touching, and others hokey. HOFD is not as geniunely moving as the pictures Yimou made with Gong Li, but the emotional hooks dig deeper than those of the typical swordplay movie. At the very least, Lau, Kanehiro, and Zhang are a handsome group, even when their faces are frozen in the wuxia tragic mask--expressionless, stoic, as a tear runs down one's cheek to hang for dear life at the corner of one's chin.
[The movie was dedicated to the memory of Anita Mui, who died from cervical cancer during filming. Zhang rewrote the script to remove her character. Kathleen Battle sings the theme song.]
October 8, 2004
Review: Ray
While I was in Seattle last week, I caught a screening of Ray, the Ray Charles biopic directed by Taylor Hackford which opens at month's end.
I don't know Ray Charles's life story. When I was young, though, my dad would occasionally play his music on an old reel-to-reel, and I'd also see Charles on television, usually on Bob Hope or July 4th specials, singing America the Beautiful. I'm skeptical of the historical accuracy of most movie biographies (e.g. A Beautiful Mind) given Hollywood's distaste for truth that doesn't go down easy, but I enjoyed learning the rough sweep of Charles's life story. Others with more knowledge of his life story are better suited to address the movie's historical accuracy.
But the music...goodness, gracious. Jamie Foxx, who owns a degree in classical music, plays piano and plays it like a pro, and the vocals are provided by old Ray Charles recordings. Played over a good movie theater sound system, the soundtrack is glorious, and it will sell a lot of CDs (on the movie website, you can preview clips from some of the songs by clicking on the headphones icon in the lower right corner).
The movie is a montage of moments from his childhood and his adult life. The seeds of conflict in childhood are obvious. Charles goes blind at age seven, a huge obstacle in achieving the independence his mother wants for him (a scene where a young Charles finally learns to use his hearing reminded me of the origin of Daredevil). Later in life, the usual vices of popular musicians take hold: drugs, women, and money. Charles marries, but as his star rises, temptation overtakes him.
Still, the movie pulls its punches, and for the most part is a loving tribute to the man. It's difficult not to be seduced by Charles's soulful voice and beatific smile, reproduced with uncanny accuracy by Foxx. What makes Foxx such a suitable actor for this role is his natural warmth and charm. He has an everyman-type of humanity that comes across on screen both here and in his role in Collateral (where it was featured in perfect contrast to co-star Tom Cruise's larger-than-life intensity and celebrity; the roles could not have been reversed). Foxx practiced for this role by living in darkness, with his eyes covered for days on end. This is Foxx's star-making role, and he nails it. He's crossed over into serious leading man territory.
The movie is only partially successful in two areas. One is in the commingling of the story lines of drugs, womanizing, family, and music-making. Story lines seem to disappear for scenes on end before reappearing suddenly, in jarring fashion. Scenes of joy and sadness don't mesh as smoothly as those same feelings do in his music. Heroin use scenes (flame, surgical tubing, spoon, needle, eyes rolling back into one's head) have become a movie trope and have lost their originality and power to shock. The movie seems to drift for a long period in the middle before tying up the movie abruptly.
The second problem is with the visualization of one of particular personal demons. Charles is haunted by a tragedy from his childhood, and since Charles is blind, the moviemakers visualize his struggle to overcome it for the audience. It includes hallucinations involving water and imagined encounters with his mother and brother in places he saw before he went blind. Movies struggle to depict imagined demons, usually resorting to visual metaphors (Bruce Lee fighting a giant warrior in Dragon, Paul Bettany as imaginary friend to John Nash in A Beautiful Mind). It's difficult to think of alternative methods to document mental afflictions on screen, but the current methods still don't satisfy me.
When the movie sticks to Foxx winning people over with his music, it's entirely convincing. There are moments of wonderful humor throughout, showcasing Charles's ingenuity. And that music. Foxx has said that while he simulated blindness, he realized that the reason Charles would sway to and fro all the time was that it was easy in the darkness to nod off.
But when his music plays, I want to close my eyes and sway with a smile on my face, just like Ray. Maybe he, too, was overcome by the beauty of his own music.
Review: Friday Night Lights
Friday Night Lights is an adaptation of journalist H.G. Bissinger's bestselling book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream. The Permian Panthers of Odessa are the winningest high school football team in Texas history, and Bissinger chronicled their 1988 season. I haven't read the book, but from what I've read about it, the movie pares down the breadth of the book and focuses on Odessa's high school football obsession, only hinting at other socioeconomic issues. With just that story to tell, and with a dash of Hollywood fairy tale dust (some documented here), the movie seizes the audience's emotional strings and tugs. Hard.
The movie unwinds expeditiously. The movie opens and It's football preseason, and the players roll up to Ratliff Stadium in the late summer Texas heat. The sun is so blinding it bakes the color out of the landscape. We meet the key players: Boobie Miles (Derek Luke), the star running back. Mike Winchell (Lucas Black), the quarterback whose athletic peak will always be to be a winning high school quarterback and who has the burden of an ailing mother at home. Don Billingsley, the fullback who can never live up to the expectations of his alcoholic father Charles Billingley (Tim McGraw) who himself won a state championship at Permian 20 years ago and wears his state championship ring like a war medal. Ivory Christian is the silent but driven defensive lineman and a dead ringer for Joe Dumars, down to his quiet demeanor. And the coach under fire, Gary Gaines, who bears the burden of the community's obsession with winning at all costs and struggles not to pass those costs on to his young players.
Billy Bob Thornton plays Coach Gaines with a pitch perfect control. I tried to think of another actor who could have played this West Texas high school football coach any better, and no one came to mind.
I won't give away any major plot points. The season and story unfold with familiar twists and turns for anyone who has seen football movies or grown up in a suburb consumed by high school football. Players and coaches alike struggle to handle the pressure which engulfs them at every turn in the small town that few will escape. Most scenes are shot close and tight, even the sports scenes, emphasizing the claustrophobia the actual townspeople feel. Young players who make mistakes on the ball field are berated by parents and coaches and classmates, and of course the local sports radio station is deluged at all hours by angry callers second questioning the coach and team. A player who endures serious injury is in denial, and family and coaches knowingly join him in his denial in sending him back on the field at the expense of his health. The football scenes are, as in most movies, elevated to that particular level of exaggeration that fails the test of documentarian realism but passes the one of cinematic and emotional impact. Quarterback Winchell is crushed after every pass by defenders who fly into him sideways like torpedoes--if he'd been hit like that in real life they'd still be prying his teeth out of the turf. Some tacklers fly out of the sky at angles that suggest they were launched out of a circus cannon.
As I mentioned before, the movie only hints at some broader socioeconomic issues. Many of the players live in single parent homes. We detect hints of racial divisions in the town and within the team, some of which may be economically echoed in the geography of town, but the screenplay doesn't amplify them. These hints linger as omens casting shadows over the movie's uplifting moments, even after you leave the theater.
What elevates the movie is the nuance the actors bring to each character. Everyone who could be a stock football movie character type displays enough complexity to be human. Coach Gaines is alternately chilling, as in a speech trying to motivate/antagonize Winchell at his home, sympathetic, as when accosted by the near psychotic team announcers in a grocery store parking lot, and moving, during a halftime speech at the movie's end that gave me goosebumps.
And the movie passes the test I give all sports movies, and that is whether or not it makes me want to run out of the theater and go play that particular sport. I was ready to don some pads, run stadium stairs, and play some tackle football. The woman in front of me in the theater was alternately whooping and hollering at the screen, clapping at plays as if the football game were real, and sobbing like a baby.
When I was in high school, on Friday nights in the autumn, everyone headed to the high school football stadium. Naperville wasn't as football-obsessed as Odessa, so many of us went just to socialize, but it did feel like there was no other place in town to be. From all over town, we could see the towering lights at the football stadium calling us there like airport runway lights. On other nights of the week, we'd cruise around town in someone's car, music blasting, wondering when we could escape beyond the confines of the cornfields and strip malls to see the world beyond, but on Friday nights, we couldn't see much. The lights were so damn bright.
A little bit of that
Village Voice's Best of NYC 2004
Minipops: bit-sized people.
JibJab's new sing-a-long Flash movie: It's Good To Be In DC. Not This Land quality, but if we get one of these every few weeks, that's not a bad thing.
Kerry is now leading in the Electoral Vote Predictor. Whupping Bush in that debate sure helped (PDF). Iowa Electronic Markets still sees a Bush victory in which he captures more than 52% of the popular vote ($0.325 a share for a $1.00 payoff).
October 7, 2004
All About Apples
A free e-cookbook from Scott Carsberg, chef at Lampreia in Seattle. I only ate there once, and it was awesome. Lampreia is certainly one of the top high-end restaurants in the Pacific Northwest.
1 tasting menu, 8 recipes, 100 pages, 291 photos. That's a really high ratio of pages and photos to recipes.
Bandon Dunes
Last weekend, Bill, Ken, and I journeyed to Bandon, Oregon, to Bandon Dunes for what's become an annual golf trip for me. The tagline of Bandon Dunes is Golf as it was meant to be, and I'll attest to that. If I were Hemingway and wrote a letter to a friend after this weekend, I might write:
Just played Bandon Dunes golf course this weekend. It's a goddamn beautiful course. It's been called golf as it was meant to be, but nothing's pure in life, I've decided. But it's the closest thing to it.I hadn't played much golf this year, but I made up for it over the weekend. As Bill and I arrived at the airport at North Bend on Friday (a single gate in a structure the size of Bill Gates's outhouse), I called the course to see if any tee times had opened up on Pacific Dunes.On the ninth hole, we spotted some wild pheasants resting in the gorse. Bill and I circled around the back, inch by inch, all the while watching the wind direction. We got close enough to take our 8 irons to a few of them. Bloody mess. Knocked the head of one of them thirty yards. Ken had no stomach for it.
We were in luck. I grabbed the next available tee time on Pacific for that afternoon, and I also put us down for another round on Pacific the next morning, before a previously scheduled round at Bandon Dunes at 12:30. Our room wasn't even ready yet. Bill and I just headed straight to the course from the airplane and teed off.
The Tom Doake-designed Pacific is more difficult than David McLay Kidd's Bandon. The fairways and greens are tighter, and it's more like target golf. Low handicappers tend to favor Pacific. The course has a longer stretch of holes along the ocean. My golf swing was rusty and felt alien to me. I stood over every ball confused and expecting the worse, and I shot my worst round in years.
Saturday morning, Ken, Bill, and I were the first group sent out at Pacific Dunes. We arrived at the course in near darkness just after 6:30 in the morning, and as soon as enough light diffused through the cloud cover, we teed off, at around 7:20am.
They've taken the fangs out of Bandon since last year. They cut back the gorse (a nasty, thorny bush that swallows golf balls whole) on either side of the fairways, widening already wide landing areas on most holes. It's a great course for creative links-style play, though, especially when the wind is gusting. You can use your imagination and approach every whole in a variety of ways. The greens roll as true as any greens I've played anywhere, and the course always plays fair.
We finished our second round at about 5:30pm. I could barely walk. At Bandon, your first round of a day is full price, your second round is half price, and your third round is free. Since we'd already played two rounds that day, any additional holes we played would be free. There's not a whole lot else to do there, and who could turn down free golf on a course as beautiful as Bandon on a glorious day? Bill's caddy Dale did a double take. "You're headed out again? You guys are crazy." This from a guy who said he was half blind in one eye because his brother had dropped a slab of concrete on his head while horsing around when they were young.
We were the first ones out that morning, and we were the last ones to tee off that evening. We could hardly walk, but having that entire course to ourselves was magic. The course had changed yet again, framed by the searing orange of the setting sun.
We sat outside of Mulligan's Pub by an outdoor fireplace, slumped in our chairs like soldiers returned from war, feet aching. A few glasses of the Rogue beer brewed especially for Bandon Dunes restored our energy.
Sunday we had planned on another 25 holes of golf: 18 at Bandon and the 7 just-opened-that-weekend holes at Bandon Trails, the new Ben Crenshaw/Bill Coore designed course that's set to open next year. Unfortunately, Bandon Trails wasn't open on Sunday so we'll have to challenge it next year.
I birdied the second hold on Sunday, a par 3 that played about 170, but it was Bill who was the story. By hole three, when he hit his approach shot, Ken and I looked at each other and made the "whooo-eee" expression. Bill was in that happy place athletes call the zone. We're not professionals, so it wasn't that he was assaulting every flag stick, but he was just rock steady, consistent from tee to green.
On the back nine, I found my swing for a stretch and stayed with Bill for about five holes, all pars and bogeys, but the last few holes he lost me. After the round, Ken and I tallied the score and asked Bill what he thought he had shot. He said 84. We showed him the scorecard, which we had autographed for him. He had shot a career-best 81.
I carded a 91. I think I'm a good luck charm. I was there with Robert when he shot a 73, just barely missing a putt for par, at Washington National. I think I carded a 91 that day also.
Pacific and Bandon rank #2 and #7 in Golf Magazine's 2004 Top 100 Courses You Can Play. Pebble Beach is #1, but at a cost of $395 to $420 a round, it's not a better value. I'll have to try Bethpage (Black) which is ranked #3 and is in Farmingdale, NY. I played Torrey Pines (South) in June, and it doesn't compare to Bandon or Pacific. For golf purists, Bandon Dunes may be the premier single destination in the U.S., especially once all eighteen holes of Bandon Trails open next year.
October 6, 2004
One of the few tools he lacks: mathematics
Michael Vick after the Falcons victory against Carolina: “We’re a complete 360 degree turn from last year,” Vick said. “This is a great defense and they are only going to get better. I’m very excited about the future of this team.” He can do just about everything else, so I'm sure the Falcons will forgive him his geometry ignorance.
101 essential classical music pieces of the 20th century
Steve Hicken compiles his list of the 101 essential classical music pieces of the 20th century (remember, composers like Beethoven and Mozart weren't alive in the 20th century and thus are absent from the list).
Marathon toys
One thing I do enjoy about taking up new sports, even ones as painful as marathon training, is examining new gadgets. I thought that a simple sport like running would be immune to gadget excess, and for the most part it is, but not completely. For the runner without a budget:
- Experimental injections of PPARdelta - turns mice into marathon mice
- Hypoxic tent - oxygen deprivation increases body's red blood cell count, though it's unlikely to impress the ladies
- Adidas 1 running shoe - computer chip continually adjusts the shoes cushioning
- Curved running track - strengthens running muscles by forcing you to run fast enough so that centrifugal force keeps you on the track.
- Vibration plate machine - strengthens the bones. There are several such machines on the market.
- Avacore CoreControl powered by Rapid Thermal eXchange (RTX) technology - keep your core body temperature low even on the hottest of days.
The only real gadget I've used is the Timex Bodylink System (I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Bean bought me a stick of Bodyglide, and that's been a lifesaver also; it sounds vaguely kinky but protects against distinctively unsexy running maladies). The Timex Bodylink System consists of a watch, a GPS unit you wear on your upper arm, and a heart rate strap. When it works (which is when the GPS unit has a decent line of sight to the sky), it's great. It provides your mile pace and total distance covered, and it can be set to record mile splits automatically. My first month and a half of marathon training, I didn't run a long run in the same city twice, so having a device just track my distance allowed me to just focus on running and enjoying the views.
I ran in Seattle around Greenlake a couple times, then to the base of Golden Gate Bridge from Bean's place in Nob Hill, then through Stanford campus (including a pass by The Dish), then along Manhattan Beach near my sister Karen's new apartment, and finally all over Central Park in Manhattan. I love the view of the city skyline at night from the north end of the Reservoir.
The variety and often stunning views really helped, because otherwise I find running to be slow and painful. If I were Kenyan gliding across the land at a five minute mile pace, I'm sure I'd feel differently. Others speak of runner's high and of how they can't wait to get a run in. I just don't feel that way about the sport. In fact, with the marathon just a month away, I'm realizing that marathon refers to the training, which seems interminable. My knees ache, and this tendon that runs under the big bone on my ankle throbs all the time. Laura said she had tendinitis there also, and hearing that helped, because I wasn't sure there were any tendons in that part of my foot. When I run, it seems like everyone and their mother and their grandmother blows past me. So frustrating for someone prone to overcompetitiveness.
Can you tell I'm dragging a bit?
I am looking forward to the marathon itself. I'm ready for that day to be here.
Ichiro vs. Gwynn
Pointed comment from Gary Huckabay of Baseball Prospectus in a recent roundtable on Ichiro:
Ichiro is Tony Gwynn with an MLB work ethic.Gwynn is one of the most overrated players in the history of the game, and in my view, one of the most tragic and confusing. He got a ton of press for basically being someone who pounded the videos and was chronicled as a "dedicated and disciplined student of the game," which is crap.
Discipline isn't manifested through compulsive and repetitive execution of those tasks which you enjoy, like cage time and video study. It's manifested through the diligent repetition of those tasks you don't like--in the case of Mr. Gwynn, cardio workouts, weightlifting and proper nutrition--so that you're in a position to perform the entirety of your required task set at the highest possible level. The final years of Gwynn's career were a pathetic waste, plagued by excessive fragility and impaired defense, primarily because of miserable conditioning. Barry Bonds could look like Tony Gwynn instead of like a 28-year-old Rickey Henderson. He doesn't.
MLB playoffs
I'm having a hard time watching the baseball playoffs, given the Cubs collapse at year end. Sharon, Alan, James, Angela, and I were at the game at Shea Stadium (one fugly-looking stadium, I might add) when the Cubs blew a three run lead with two outs and two strikes in the ninth. Ryan Dempster walked two batters to lead off the ninth, and Latroy Hawkins came in and gave up a three run home run to Victor Diaz. Yeah, I have no idea who Victor Diaz is either. Two innings later, in the eleventh, Kent Mercker gave up a game winning walkoff home run to some guy named Brazell. Brutal. The Cubs went on to lose a few extra inning games to the Mets and Reds (two awful teams) and basically flamed out to end the season.
In the game, Sammy Sosa struck out four times, and his fifth at-bat, he grounded into a double play. In the final game of the season, Sosa arrived late and left early. Later, Sosa blasted Dusty Baker for blaming him for all the team's woes. Clearly, it's time for Sosa to go, especially since his bat speed has evaporated. He's always been vulnerable to good fastballs, and now he's lost his plate discipline and willingness to go to the opposite field. He proved sensitive to the fans booing, his manager's innocent comments, and the harsh words of the press. In other words, he needs to be fitted for diapers.
The rest of the Cubs were a whining crew as well. They complained about announcers Steve Stone and Chip Caray (especially Kent Mercker). They complained about the umpires (especially Alou). It was really unbecoming and made it difficult to root for them as hard as I usually do. The Cubs had a team OBP of .328, ranking them 11th out of 16 NL teams, and thus they went through long offensive droughts between home run binges.
Fortunately, though they're certainly no spring chickens, the Cubs are not as old as the competitive teams they've fielded in the last twenty-five years. An imminent collapse can be avoided by building around the really young and talented (Prior, Zambrano, Leicester), reasonably young and talented (Wood, Lee, Ramirez, Barrett, Hawkins), and old but still effective (Maddux, Walker). Patterson is so frustrating, but he's still young and cheap, so he'll probably stay. Everyone else is either too old, too ineffective, too expensive, or some combination of all three. They can go.
I like the Red Sox and Astros to go the World Series.