1. Poker on TV
2. Grand Juries
3. Fantasy Football
4. Faux Indy Movies
5. IPod anything

any other suggestions?

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by a reporter from the Eagle about blogging-local style, and will apparently appear in an article in a new section the paper is launching. Not really sure what kind of section it is; local, technology, fabulously sexy red-heads and their maniacal plans to rule the world with Beowulf cluster of cyber goats.

So during the course of the interview there was the standard reporter boilerplate, "how often do you post?", "What do you write about?", the typical stuff that could be easily attained for oneself by perhaps, reading the website. But there were also some questions a bit on the atypical side. One in particular got me thinking: "If I weren't a blogger, how would things be different, would I still write, think, believe the way I do now?"

It’d be wonderfully independent to think that I am who I am and the world doesn’t change me. But that’s crap; surroundings influence everyone. I can’t turn back time and unread or un-believe, nor would I want to, but I can’t help but wonder if I would still write knowing no one would read it. So I’ve be experimenting, writing without the intent of posting, or publishing, or making public in any manner. It’s something I’ve never done before. Everything up until this point has always been written for the purpose of someone else’s reading, either a teacher, professor, or you-gentle TOG follower.

The experience has been almost entirely negative. Writing and reading my own work, knowing no one will see it, has a different feeling to it; slightly less inhibitions for one, but I also seem to be writing poorly. Grammar, phrasing, and literary excellence are apparently not my forte. Why didn’t anyone tell me that I write in terribly colloquial expressions?

I can’t stand the idea of doing something consistently poor. So I want my reader to tear me a new one. I’m openly inviting you to correct my grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and I’m allowing you to make fun of any pedestrian phrases, colloquial idioms, or generally cavalier language that I may use.

…It’ll make you feel better, I promise.

Back Monday.

Update: It was MO, but I'm back now

Now the Orioles? How do you let this happen?

You’re trading Leo for 200 grand a minor league prospect? How does this happen? If you’re the braves right now, who in the entire organization is worth more than Leo Mazzone? Andruw Jones, Jeff Franceour maybe, and Jon Schurholz: That's it. He's absolutely been the MVP of all MLB coaches for the last decade. When was the last time his pitch staff sucked, 1987? Has anybody else consistently turned 15 game losers into 15 game winners?

I don't care how much you have to pay him; you keep his rocking ass in the dugout until he's dead. It's a steal. You can get washed up prospects with filthy stuff and crummy mechanics for 50 cents on the dollar, give them 4 months with Leo and their solid number 3 and 4 starters.

So he wants to work with a childhood friend Sam Perlozzo, you hire Perlozzo away from the orioles, he'll never get anywhere it that division anyway. You bring him on as the bench coach and pay Leo whatever he wants, 500k, a million...anything. Baltimore won't give up Perlozzo? Give them a couple of the 18,000 rookies with big league experience you brought up this year.

It doesn't matter what you have to do, if you let him leave the streak is over. You might get to 15 maybe 16 straight, but you're going to have to spend for it and you'll have to do it with the bats.

How do you let such a cornerstone slip away? And for what, a minor league prospect and 150k in you pocket? It sickens me, darker days are ahead for the Braves, and I'm not looking forward to them.

No No No No No!!!!!!!

You will NOT take the rocking man away. Damn You Yankees! Damn You! You will earn a permanent spot on my list of death if you hire Leo away.

We hear that often, but most of time the implied situation is based on false pretenses.

Gas prices are too high? They were relatively higher in the 70’s.
You can’t get affordable child-care? Child-care providers are better and make more money just like everyone else. Everyone is making more money and getting better value for everything they buy.
Can’t afford Health-care? It was never cheap, we spend more on health-care now because there are so many more services available, and everyone is living longer. Long enough in fact to survive 5 different diseases that would have killed your parents.
Society is morally corrupt? In absolute terms, society’s been ‘degrading’ since the beginning of time. Every generation rebels against the previous; welcome to the human experience, glad you could join us.
Politicians bicker and only lust for power? The world’s second oldest profession has always been petty. Hell, in 1934 the President of the United States was censured by the Senate because the majority leader was pissed about losing the race. Going back, it’s actually a great leap forward considering most conflicts of leadership involved direct hand-to-hand combat for thousands of years.

The truth is that just about every aspect of life is impossibly better for you than it was for your parents and their parents and their parents. What you may mean to point out is that is a difference between that which we are, and that which we aspire to be. But that is the code of our existence, and indeed our humanity. The world in which we live will continue to improve as long as we continue to endeavor for what could be.

So relax and keep the spirit up, in the words of my favorite dead language,

“Velle est posse”

To be willing is to be able.

Have you seen this Ford Commercial?

It's an ad about the 6 carriage bolts that attach the bed to the frame of the truck and how strong they are. The bolts, made by our very own Textron Fastener Systems, are nice and beefy, but they principally advertise its length; and running the risk of rhyme and that unfortunate alliteration, length as nothing to do with strength. It's all about the cross-sectional area.

And another thing, 5,000 lbs of double-shear capacity in a steel bolt isn't that impressive. There are hundreds of fasteners with more capacity that that in every Citation Cessna sells. Public stupidity like this gets under my skin. Being an engineer sort of screws up you life like that.

Damn, this is a bit of a first.

Normally I don't post because I've got nothing of any interest to say; this week however, this is not the case. I've intended to opine on pointlessness of puditry, the noble cause of debate, the genius of Reno 911, and the absolute fear I have of being in the same place for more than 5 years.

But alas, ever post I started fizzles within the first 3 sentences and I end up deleting the whole out of embarassement for my own bad writing. Even as I write this now I'm struggling to make coherent thoughts.

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah...I suck!

Another year, another Braves playoff loss; this time it came in the form of the longest playoff game ever. An 18-inning battle that was as epic as a baseball can be. Year after year I’ve watch my beloved Braves lose playoff series. I was 12 the last time they didn’t lose their last game, and coming that close over and over starts to get to you. You start to question why the impending collapse shows up every October. Did someone do something to offend the baseball gods? Is the franchise just plain unlucky? Thoughts like these plague baseball fans of every franchise save one, each year.

But in the spirit of all things epic, and words of the great bard,

“The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves”

So here is goes, the 5 reasons the Braves don’t host the trophy:

1. The Pen: it’s never been strong enough, because you can’t build it the same way John Schurholtz builds the rest of the team. Young homegrown studs can step in and contribute anywhere, but the talent of young aspiring middle relievers isn’t they deepest thing out there. There are no personally accolades, you can’t get to Cooperstown as one, there is no singular stat to prove your greatness. It’s impossible to quantify ‘big outs at the turning point of games’. So kids grow up wanting to be crafty 300 game winners or flame throwing, touch of lightning, fear of god closers. Nobody grows up with dream of coming into a 7-3 game in the 5th and tossing 3 innings of 1-run ball. So instead, middle relievers are either starters without the stamina and skill to make the rotation, or burnt out closers who could handle the pressure of the 9th inning.

So what’s a franchise to do? Spend the money; Find an ‘end game’ closer with the shut down mentality. Get a set up man who could be a legitimate closer in his own right. Find a twenty-something kid with a thunderbolt for an arm and convince him that the quickest way to becoming a ‘fear of god’ closer is shut down the best of the best in the playoffs. Then you need at least one generic lefty and one generic righty, they don’t need straight filthy stuff, but they need to know how to pitch, how to put the ball where it can’t hurt their team. Teach them all to pitch for the occasion, keep the ball down, and throw strikes. If you’re going to get hit, and you will, don’t get hit hard, give the defense a chance to do their job. I can’t count the number of blown leads I’ve seen the playoffs over the years that occurred because the middle relief tried to get cute, picture around the corners, and ended up walking themselves into facing a 3-1 count with the bases juiced.

2. You need a clutch hitter, typically a franchise guy. He doesn’t have to hit 300 with 30 homers, but needs another level of intensity when it counts. Call it the Anti-A-Rod. Hitting a 2-out nobody on off the wall blast in the 7th of an 8-run blowout looks the same on paper as a clutch line hugging double with runners at the corners when you’re down by 2. But games, especially playoff games, are played on the field not paper.

The only way to get one of these is scouting and luck. Chances are if he’s a clutch hitter, he’ll be a clutch everything else as well. Some guys are just like that, they’ve got a knack for big spots. Why do you think Derrick Jeter is going to the hall of fame? He’s never been able to carry a team on his own. He’s going to the hall because he’s Captain Intangible. Opposing teams absolutely fear him in big spots. When’s the last time you saw Jeter or Ortiz ground into an inning ending double play in the 8th when it mattered? When’s the last time they made an out in a big spot? And if you want to win you need that.

3. You need a ball breaking stud with the strength of five gorillas is a threat to jack a home run at any at bat, he’s got to be able to produce enough offense on his turn a tight win into a blow out, or a humiliating loss into a whole new ball game with one swing. A 440 ft no-doubter is more demoralizing that a 315 poke over the short porch. And the playoffs are a battle of wills. If you convince your opponent that they can’t win, then they can’t. The motivations of baseball are that of self-fulfilling prophecy.

4. You have got to be able to kick it up a notch in the playoffs. As a manager you need to be able to manufacture a run when you have to. Play the match-ups, Righty vs. Lefty. Pinch hit, pinch run. The sacrifice bunt and the Suicide squeeze, you have got to squeeze every ounce of production from everything you’ve got. All this must be done because you’ve got to be better than you were in the regular season. There is an art of deception that is played. You have to hold something back as a manager during the regular season if you want to hoist the trophy. This is a concept that both Bobby Cox and Tony LaRussa have yet to master. They know how to manage too well; they’ve developed a knack for knowing the situation and their personal, so they push their respective clubs to regular season over-achievement with less talent. The teams play up to their potential for 162 games, so when the playoff comes and other teams finally gear up to play to theirs, there isn’t much left in the tank.

Now, this isn’t truly a bad thing. If the Bobby doesn’t push like he does, there’s no way he get 14 straight division titles. The consistent pushing, prodding, and tweaking is worth 10-15 games a season. In reality he’s turning an 80-game winner into a 95-game winner every season. So I suppose it isn’t that odd that a team with less talent rarely wins 3 straight series against teams with more.

5. The X-Factor. The fire, passion, whatever the thing is that flips a switch and motivates the team an extra notch. It’s not always the same thing, in fact, it rarely is. There has to be some extra motivating factor. ‘Worst to First, ‘We Get No Respect’, ‘We’re the Best’, etc. It’s an extra motivation that only gets displayed on walk-off hits, hit batters, and 3rd out strikeouts. You can tell a lot about a time by how excited they get for the performances of their teammates.

Here’s another area where the Braves frequently fall short. They don’t seem to be as motivated or excited as other teams, likely the cause of another self-fulfilling prophecy. They’ve got no positive pressure; this isn’t a freak opportunity to make a splash. They’re always in the playoffs so there will always be next year, They’ve won a world series so they don’t have the ‘can’t win the big one’ label. It’s another year and there just another team in the playoffs. Everything that is historic has already been achieved during the year, the press goes nuts over another title and how improbable it was and how its all different this year, and how John Schurholtz is a genius. It’s expected that they will lose but there is no disrespect. The worst thing you can do to anyone or any team isn’t hate, contempt, or even apathy; it’s feigned support, playing the card that everyone knows is a lie but refuses to acknowledge. A cunning linguist and philosopher could derive true motivation from this, but these are professional athletes, so by and large we aren’t talking about the most intellectual people on the planet.

So heed my advice geniuses of the national pastime and don’t disappoint me again.

Here's the continuation from my previous review of the Foo Fighters In Your Honor:

Everything about this album is exactly what you would expect from a great album. It's not trying to hard or struggling for message. It's nostalgic yet feels new. Dave Grohl’s raspy vocals in previous albums may have seemed pushed, but not here. It’s readily apparent that the band approached this album determined to produce a quality record that could define their sound for the ages. And that I suppose is the point.

A great throwback aspect of In Your Honor, it’s a double album; you get the feeling, while listening, that if it were plausible, the two discs would have been made back to back. There is no accidental genius here. The pure energy and egotism of the first disc is wonderfully balanced by the soulful peace one experiences during the second time around.

A lesser band, or even an earlier version of the Foo themselves, would have cut 2-3 songs and attempted a mega-album trying to rearrange the music to make it all fit together. But to their credit, the Foo Fighters just let it go. The separation highlights the differences and embraces each disc's identity. You know the mood you're heading for when you pop them in the CD player, but you don't know where or how it will take you there.

The first disc is most decidedly plugged in. The second reminds us of the best of what acoustic music can be, and was the thing that really sold me. As you groove, content in your musical buzz, your mind naturally wanders to the good times you remember feeling like this, like something out of a Norah Jones song before she won eight thousand Grammys and shone like the sun. Then, bam! It’s Norah Jones grooving a duet with a no longer raspy voiced Grohl. I don’t know of any other potentially great album with this level of dedication to the chill feeling. While this isn’t my favorite album right now, I’ve only had it 2 weeks and it’s climbing up the list fast.

And maybe I won’t know for some time; the real difference between a really good album and a great album is its posterity. If some 14-year old kid can pick up the album in 20 years and fall in love with the music and if it can prompt that kid to pick up other albums of the era and open their eyes to a whole new aural world, then you’ve got a great album. Think The Clash’s London Calling, Nirvana’s Nevermind, or Dark Side of The Moon by Pink Floyd. Timeless and classic, there aren’t very many of them, and you won’t really know for years.

What ever happened to the teen-show kissing yell?

Back in the day, circa '94, anytime there was an on screen kiss on any show geared toward kids and family (a la Saved by the Bell or Full House) the studio audience would give an incredibly enthusiastic and incredibly prompted,

"WOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooh!!!!!"

That was great, back when kissing on television was tawdry, and was actually a full-fledged base in the forbidden romantic progression. You know, back before getting to third meant secretly taping your three-way not releasing it on the internet. Innocence of days or innocence of youth? Probably both, but It was cool while it lasted.

What ever happened to predictability?
The milkman, the paperboy, evening TV.
You miss your old familiar friends
Waiting just around the bend

Everywhere you look
Everywhere you go
There's a heart
A hand to hold onto.

Everywhere you look
Everywhere you go
There's a face
Of somebody who needs you.

Everywhere you look
When you're lost out there and you're all alone,
A light is waiting to carry you home,
Everywhere you look.

And if you think I didn't just pull those from memory you're underestimating my 3:30 p.m. childhood TV watching.

The alternative minimum tax is the last line of governmental defense between you and sanity. The AMT only exists because congress doesn’t know what the hell their doing. It’ an ‘In case you figured out how to use us overreaching our power and complicating the hell out of things because we couldn’t get a real job against us, actually understand the normal tax code, and beat us at our own game’ tax. It’s a congressional cop out that's shallowness is only exceeded by the unnecessary complexity by the preceding sentence's grammar.

Because you're playing the their court of law, it's akin to being the kid who brought the ball, taking the ball and going home if you don't win.

I just threw up a little bit in my mouth

At this point if you're famous, don't tape yourself getting down. The tape is getting out and there's nothing you can do about it.

Why didn't anybody tell me that "In Your Honor" was so freaking good? Intoxicatingly good! Addictively good! Me being forever a general fan of the Foo wherever they may be, I still seldom buy albums and somehow this sucker slipped through the cracks. I have the same basic philosophy in music as I do in movies. I'm a reasonable snob. I think to think that I fully appreciate quality wherever it’s found and I abhor tacky pop. However, I can appreciate the not good but entertaining (think Linkin Park or anything produced by Jerry Bruckheimer).

We interrupt this post with the late breaking news that I'm totally going to be late for work if I don't stop right now. Therefore...

To Be Continued.

If the planet keeps sucking up cosmic rays and heat from the sun and we as a global population continue to convert natural potential energy into other forms, coupled with the fact that the natural state of any system regardless of size is one of increasing entropy–that's the second law of thermodynamics and pretty much irrefutable in the world of science–Doesn’t it merely stand to reason that global warming has probably been occurring naturally since the beginning of time, and it’s not some new product of evil corporation hell-bent on destroying the world?