Sometime around 2am tonight (tomorrow morning?), I'll get myself to the airport and be whisked, ever so gently, to Phoenix, Arizona, home of your Oakland Athletics spring training facility. This is the second year in a row I'll be going to the A's spring training, but there's something very different about this year.
I've heard of many of the players.
Nomar Garciaparra. Orlando Cabrera. Jason Giambi. Matt Holliday (who still hasn't touched the plate against the Padres from the playoff game in 2007, but that boat has sailed). To be honest, I am incredibly confused. We're signing actual players? Usually, Billy Beane does the exact opposite of this and, halfway through the year, right before the trade deadline, trades off everyone good for half a year of a veteran. But, this year, we're overloading on tenuous offense early in the season. If Eric Chavez stays healthy, it's almost like a real lineup.
Usually, the mantra for the A's in the beginning of the season is, "If people can stay healthy, we have a shot at winning." But it seems like this year, the mantra is, "If enough people can stay healthy, we have a shot at winning." And I like that a lot better.
But I'm still confused. I don't get you Billy Beane...I don't get you at all. Just get us into the playoffs.
All that being said, Bobby Crosby was the starting shortstop for the A's until about two days ago, when Oakland signed both Orlando Cabrera and Nomar Garciaparra. A former Rookie of the Year, Crosby's got to be pretty unhappy he quickly he went from starter to third string. He's made it clear that he'd rather play everyday somewhere else, but man. What a slap in the face. Maybe if he played more than 50 games a year it wouldn't be such an issue.
So, to sum up: what the fuck is going on in the Oakland front offices? Only time will tell, but I'm a lot more excited about spring training than I was when I booked the tickets in December. We're in it to win it this year. Or, at least contend. Let's start small.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
The critique nobody wanted of the first Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
I just watched the premiere episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, because, well, what the fuck else am I supposed to while not getting drunk, and I have a few thoughts. I'll bet you can go to Hulu by the time you read this and catch yourself up if you didn't watch, yet still feel like it's VERY important to know what I thought about the show (you don't).
The monologue was very Leno-esque. I don't mean that in a "not funny" way, as some of it was somewhat amusing. I mean that, though all the hosts short of Ferguson can't merely allow laughter to follow their punchlines but instead have to add a few words of "banter," Fallon copies Leno in that the comment following the (somewhat stilted) joke tended to dumb down the joke by explaining it in a laughing manner. If Fallon (or Leno) asks why firemen wear suspenders, and finishes with, "To keep their pants up," you can be guaranteed that during the applause, Fallon (assuming we've removed the previous parenthetical) will look over at his band leader (?uestlove, of course), and say, "Well, something's gotta hold them up!" And people will stop laughing.
The slow-jamming the news could become good. The awkwardness of that was more on the Roots than Fallon.
The game played with the audience, "Lick It For Ten," could almost be a Letterman game. The game had three audience members come on stage and lick a lawn mower, a printer/copier, and a goldfish bowl, respectively. However, what Fallon and Co. don't seem to realize is that Letterman's games either 1) don't involve the audience and thus can be relied upon to be good because they're ridiculing Rupert Gee or playing the utterly absurd "Will It Float," or 2) are actually comedy routines or rejected monologue jokes that don't actually need audience participation. Unless you're The Price is Right!, don't rely on your audience to provide humor. They can only be fodder.
Dangerous choice having Robert De Niro as the first guest ever. I was worried at first that Fallon was going to slide into what I would do if I had a talk show and got to meet De Niro, and fall right into fanboy mode and just say, "Oh my God...you're Robert De Niro," over and over again. But Fallon calmed down pretty quickly.
As Fallon stated outright, De Niro is notorious for not giving particularly great interviews (side note: "notorious" actually has no negative connotation, according to the OED), and he didn't disappoint here. Fallon handled the anti-interview pretty well, almost Conan in style, in that he announced he would be asking De Niro questions that could be answered with only one word, and was calm enough later in the interview to bring the joke back when De Niro answered a very leading question with only one word.
When Justin Timberlake came out, Late Night turned very quickly into the Late Late Show when Craig Ferguson has a friend on as a guest, where they share inside jokes and leave the audience out. Fallon had Timberlake do a few impressions that I'm sure were hilarious in the green room of SNL, and were pretty funny here, but it seemed a lot like they were at a party, and Fallon was saying to Timberlake, "Oh, oh, do the one where you're John Mayer! Guys, guys, you'll love it!" And everyone else at the party just doesn't care. As well, they did their ne'er-requested Gibb brothers talk show song from SNL.
So, to recap: in his first show, Fallon had moments of Leno, Letterman, O'Brien, and Ferguson. Also, he shares the same first name and structure of last name as Jimmy Kimmel (consonant-vowel-double consonant-vowel-consonant, in case you didn't want to do the math yourself). That being said, I liked Jimmy Fallon better tonight than I ever did on SNL, and think he could ultimately be on to something. And at least he didn't also copy Chelsea Lately. That being said, I don't have DVR, and if I'm ever up this late again, I'm reading a book.
You know what the best part about this whole post is? If you're reading this, you literally couldn't care less what I think about the Jimmy Fallon show. But, hey. We're just trying to keep limber here with the writing. They can't all be gems.
The monologue was very Leno-esque. I don't mean that in a "not funny" way, as some of it was somewhat amusing. I mean that, though all the hosts short of Ferguson can't merely allow laughter to follow their punchlines but instead have to add a few words of "banter," Fallon copies Leno in that the comment following the (somewhat stilted) joke tended to dumb down the joke by explaining it in a laughing manner. If Fallon (or Leno) asks why firemen wear suspenders, and finishes with, "To keep their pants up," you can be guaranteed that during the applause, Fallon (assuming we've removed the previous parenthetical) will look over at his band leader (?uestlove, of course), and say, "Well, something's gotta hold them up!" And people will stop laughing.
The slow-jamming the news could become good. The awkwardness of that was more on the Roots than Fallon.
The game played with the audience, "Lick It For Ten," could almost be a Letterman game. The game had three audience members come on stage and lick a lawn mower, a printer/copier, and a goldfish bowl, respectively. However, what Fallon and Co. don't seem to realize is that Letterman's games either 1) don't involve the audience and thus can be relied upon to be good because they're ridiculing Rupert Gee or playing the utterly absurd "Will It Float," or 2) are actually comedy routines or rejected monologue jokes that don't actually need audience participation. Unless you're The Price is Right!, don't rely on your audience to provide humor. They can only be fodder.
Dangerous choice having Robert De Niro as the first guest ever. I was worried at first that Fallon was going to slide into what I would do if I had a talk show and got to meet De Niro, and fall right into fanboy mode and just say, "Oh my God...you're Robert De Niro," over and over again. But Fallon calmed down pretty quickly.
As Fallon stated outright, De Niro is notorious for not giving particularly great interviews (side note: "notorious" actually has no negative connotation, according to the OED), and he didn't disappoint here. Fallon handled the anti-interview pretty well, almost Conan in style, in that he announced he would be asking De Niro questions that could be answered with only one word, and was calm enough later in the interview to bring the joke back when De Niro answered a very leading question with only one word.
When Justin Timberlake came out, Late Night turned very quickly into the Late Late Show when Craig Ferguson has a friend on as a guest, where they share inside jokes and leave the audience out. Fallon had Timberlake do a few impressions that I'm sure were hilarious in the green room of SNL, and were pretty funny here, but it seemed a lot like they were at a party, and Fallon was saying to Timberlake, "Oh, oh, do the one where you're John Mayer! Guys, guys, you'll love it!" And everyone else at the party just doesn't care. As well, they did their ne'er-requested Gibb brothers talk show song from SNL.
So, to recap: in his first show, Fallon had moments of Leno, Letterman, O'Brien, and Ferguson. Also, he shares the same first name and structure of last name as Jimmy Kimmel (consonant-vowel-double consonant-vowel-consonant, in case you didn't want to do the math yourself). That being said, I liked Jimmy Fallon better tonight than I ever did on SNL, and think he could ultimately be on to something. And at least he didn't also copy Chelsea Lately. That being said, I don't have DVR, and if I'm ever up this late again, I'm reading a book.
You know what the best part about this whole post is? If you're reading this, you literally couldn't care less what I think about the Jimmy Fallon show. But, hey. We're just trying to keep limber here with the writing. They can't all be gems.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Newspapers for dummies
This morning, I'm reading my favorite anti-American neo-communist fishwrap, the New York Times, and I come across a story that gives me pause. And I'm not talking about the story that merely had the headline "Michelle Obama Goes Sleeveless, Again," which might be okay in the Style section, but certainly not The Caucus, where it appeared. However asinine I think that is, there are other articles that demand our attention today.
I'm talking about an article entitled, "Germany Rejects Bailout Plan for Eastern Europe." Now, I haven't even read the whole article yet. In fact, I haven't gotten past the first sentence. That's because the first sentence is this little beauty that blew my mind:
But almost more importantly, while technically accurate in that a multibillion euro bailout will, in this economy, always equal a multibillion dollar bailout, implying that the euro can be described as "a dollar" is incredibly lazy and poorly researched. Actually, researched isn't even the right word. Because if you're on the international beat for the AP, you already know that a euro is not a dollar. So, it's just poorly done. Very poorly done.
In the spirit of terrible journalism, I have decided to cull some back issues (back issues can't be the correct phrase) of the Times in order to see if I can't update them to be more in the new style of the Times. Pun kind of intended. So, here we go!
1. President Obama (James K. Polk) on Saturday described his expansive budget proposal as “a threat to the status quo in Washington (Cambodia)” and cast himself as a populist crusader willing to do battle with special interests to expand health care, curb pollution (dogs) and improve education.
2. CHICAGO — Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation’s most familiar voices, died Saturday (Tuesday) in Arizona, according to ABC Radio Networks. He was 90 (107). (Notice also the Chicago dateline for an event that happened in Arizona.)
3. Despite huge enforcement actions on both (three) sides of the Southwest border, the Mexican (Chinese) marijuana (black tar heroin) trade is more robust — and brazen — than ever, law enforcement officials say.
If I had readers I'd say, hey, make your own in the comments! But, really, I wrote this whole things so I could replace the word "Mexican" with the word "Chinese," and really that even failed because I couldn't find "Mexican" as a noun, because then I could have done what I really wanted, and and replaced it with "Chinamen." But, life goes on.
I'm talking about an article entitled, "Germany Rejects Bailout Plan for Eastern Europe." Now, I haven't even read the whole article yet. In fact, I haven't gotten past the first sentence. That's because the first sentence is this little beauty that blew my mind:
BRUSSELS (AP) -- Germany rejected appeals Sunday for a single multibillion euro (dollar) bailout of eastern Europe, even after Hungary begged EU leaders not to let a new ''Iron Curtain'' divide the continent into rich and poor.What the fuck, New York Times and Associated Press? Let's start small. First off, do we really need a parenthetical legend to explain what a euro is? I understand that newspapers, even ones as esteemed as our Gray Lady, write to target like a fourth grade reading level, but that's just ridiculous. If a reader has to stop in the first sentence of reading a piece on the economic structure of Europe because he or she doesn't know what a euro is, it's probably a good wake-up call that he or she ought to do some background research.
But almost more importantly, while technically accurate in that a multibillion euro bailout will, in this economy, always equal a multibillion dollar bailout, implying that the euro can be described as "a dollar" is incredibly lazy and poorly researched. Actually, researched isn't even the right word. Because if you're on the international beat for the AP, you already know that a euro is not a dollar. So, it's just poorly done. Very poorly done.
In the spirit of terrible journalism, I have decided to cull some back issues (back issues can't be the correct phrase) of the Times in order to see if I can't update them to be more in the new style of the Times. Pun kind of intended. So, here we go!
1. President Obama (James K. Polk) on Saturday described his expansive budget proposal as “a threat to the status quo in Washington (Cambodia)” and cast himself as a populist crusader willing to do battle with special interests to expand health care, curb pollution (dogs) and improve education.
2. CHICAGO — Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation’s most familiar voices, died Saturday (Tuesday) in Arizona, according to ABC Radio Networks. He was 90 (107). (Notice also the Chicago dateline for an event that happened in Arizona.)
3. Despite huge enforcement actions on both (three) sides of the Southwest border, the Mexican (Chinese) marijuana (black tar heroin) trade is more robust — and brazen — than ever, law enforcement officials say.
If I had readers I'd say, hey, make your own in the comments! But, really, I wrote this whole things so I could replace the word "Mexican" with the word "Chinese," and really that even failed because I couldn't find "Mexican" as a noun, because then I could have done what I really wanted, and and replaced it with "Chinamen." But, life goes on.
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