Friday, November 2, 2007

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

A-Rod

Damn this work schedule, keeping me from commenting on inanities as I love to do so much.

A quick observation:

Of the many things being said about A-Rod opting out of his contract, one of the dumbest came from the crew of Baseball Tonight, suggesting that A-Rod's "playoff failures" should scare away potential suitors.

A-Rod's postseason OPS: .844
Jeter's postseason OPS: .846.

That .002 is the difference between the heart of a champion and hideous failure, I tell you.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Finally

Atlanta's long drought is over. No, I'm not talking about the fact that we are about to run out of water. We finally have our own WNBA franchise. (Aside to Crystal: Who said there weren't good places in Atlanta to meet women).

http://sports.espn.go.com/wnba/news/story?id=3067643

There are a few questions that I asked myself when I found this out:

1. Do they expect a city that has the lowest attendance for NBA games to support a WNBA franchise?

2. Will they outdraw the Hawks?

3. What will the mascot be? As of this posting they don't have one yet. Might I suggest the Ladyhawkes

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Book Review: That Hideous Strength


Due to the fact that we agreed that this blog would only be about pop culture and not delve into religion or politics I will only say that everyone needs to read this book. This is the third book in C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy and all of them are among my favorites.

Friday, October 12, 2007

The Mitchell Report, Cover. TomKat, Inset.

The Mitchell Report is coming out. I am glowing with schadenfreude already. I can't wait to see which Major Leaguers are busted as steroid abusing freaks.

I can't help but draw a parallel between the steroid scandal and the tabloids, though. I mean, when Game of Shadows came out, ESPN ran a sidebar where you could compare skinny Pittsburgh Barry to the current Incredible Hulk model. It was almost exactly like those US Weekly shots of Farrah Fawcett one year ago, next to one of Farrah today, speculating whether or not she had plastic surgery.

Steroid watching is very much akin to tabloid reading. Which I suppose makes Troy Glaus akin to that naked girl from High School Musical, and Barry Bonds akin to Lindsay Lohan.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

And having mentioned music videos...

I met this guy at a wedding reception this past weekend, and we chatted about rock-n-roll. He encouraged me to check out his brother's band, the XYZ Affair.

The song is pretty damn good, and the video is good for a laugh- particularly if you are as big a fan of old-school Nickelodeon as I am.

Morning TV (or, "Rumors of my demise have been (somewhat) exaggerated")

I too must apologize for my long respite from the blog. My side of the ledger was starting to look more neglected than my front yard.

There are plenty of things that I have been meaning to write about lately. Instant replay in baseball. The baseball playoffs. My ode to liner notes. Rod Stewart.

But for now, this will be something of a quick hitter, as I just finished preparing for one trial and am now beginning to prepare for one next week. (And by quick hitter, I do not mean to imply that this is short- rather, unplanned.)

I have had the hardest time finding good background noise for my shower and shave. A couple of years ago, I tried playing the radio, starting with Dave FM. Every morning, The Police, The Eagles, Bob Marley, U2. Usually in that order. Sometimes, to trip me up, they would play Sting solo instead of The Police. I couldn't take it anymore. So finally, I got so furious that I called to complain about their lack of variety. In my phone call, I also noted to them the irony of their limited playlist, in light of their variety-trumpeting ad campaign. The intern who fielded my phone call feigned ignorance.

99X had a mess of a morning show, that had the unfortunate double-whammy of being crass and boring. There was no way I was going to listen to the regular guys. And try as I might to seem enlightened, NPR was encouraging me to go back to sleep more than it was serving as a springboard into a productive day.

Then, I had cable installed. But, as discussed in a previous post, I have grown disgusted with SportsCenter. And Mike and Mike were slowly driving me into a homicidal rage every day. (They have the unfortunate double whammy of being unfunny and stupid.)

Now, I have settled on VH1/MTV. Not bad.

For one, they actually show videos that time of day. And not too many commercials, either.

For another, the videos are almost universally entertaining. It must be a great time to be twelve years old. The videos those kids have are way better than the faux-performance videos they showed back when I actually watched MTV.

I would have loved Nickelback's "Rock Star" back in the day- it is visually compelling and superficially clever. Even now, I enjoy the spot-the-cameo game it inspires.

12 year old Babar would have also loved the Maroon 5 video for "Wake Up Call." It has hot women, a nearly-amusing "story line", and gun violence- all you need in a good video, if you ask me. And as an aside, the song is good. I defy you not to have it stuck in your head after you hear it. When I confessed this to my girlfriend, she noted that I reluctantly said the same thing about the first single from this Maroon 5 album. She asked me if I was going to buy the album. I told her that I may not have a choice.

And 12 year old Babar would have been freaking enamored of the "AYO Technology" video with 50 cent, Justin Timberlake, and scores of scantily clad ladies. In fact, I probably would have recorded it for frequent viewing. And again, what's more, it is a good song.

Throw in an aggressive new offering from the Foo Fighters, that irrepressibly catchy song from Feist (the first ever VH1 You Oughta Know artist that I didn't want to bludgeon to death with a mic stand), and a countrified Bon Jovi, and you have some good morning TV.

The only pimple on the ass of VH1: Avrile Lavigne. Her new song sucks hard. And the video is crappy-weepy. If her voice had even a hint of twang, this video would be a staple on CMT (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Anyhow, music videos are where it's at in the morning. I encourage you all to reawaken your inner pre-teen as you reawaken yourself every morning.