Filed under: Ayn Rand, Golf, McCain, Spencer Pratt, U.S. Airways, baseball, dbacks, economics, elections, male sexism, myspace
Sorry for another link dump, but there’s a lot going on today that deserves commentary…
Would McCain drop out of the race as a bait and switch?
Apparently Myspace is launching it’s “2.0″ version this Wednesday. They’re getting killed by Facebook and Bebo, but –as i’ve been saying forever — nobody is making any money.
My DBacks are playing terribly. I’m not sure why, but they need to get it together.
The U.S. Open was amazing yesterday — and this is coming from a guy who pretty much despises golf (and played 36 terrible obligatory Father’s Day holes this weekend. For those of you who don’t have to — or don’t want to work today…the playoff is streaming here.
U.S. Airways has announced that it will join the insanity and start charging for checked luggage, and non-alcoholic beverages. Why not just raise ticket prices across the board? Oh, because fewer people can afford to fly and then you couldn’t screw them after they’ve already booked the ticket? Got it.
I always thought this commercial was a funny exaggeration…now? Not so much.
What really chafes me about this airline deal is that they’re openly bending us over, but when they declare bankruptcy in a few months, it’ll be our taxpayer dollars that bail them out again. It’s times like this that i wish Ayn Rand was in charge of the Fed. (If you haven’t read her, her main point is that businesses that don’t adapt deserve to go out of business and will naturally be replaced by businesses that do it better, smarter, more efficiently…even if it causes some mass unemployment/hardship/etc.) This country is definitely having it’s “Who is John Galt” moment right about now…
When i was in college, i took part in a lot of discussions relating to race and gender portrayals in the media. Many of these discussed the role of women in commercials, whether it be the stay-at-home mom making bagel bites or experiencing the joys of a new mop or the beer commercials that make attractive women love you as soon as you open a Bud Light. But lately, i’ve noticed a new breed of commercial, one that portrays the man as absolutely retarded in any social or purchasing situation. The dad is the doofy idiot who is uncool to his children unless he’s buying them something or he’s in constant need of correction from his wife or he’s the beer swilling moron who has to buy his wife something expensive to make up for his obvious shortcomings. How is this acceptable? Or is it just that the men have been so bad to the ladies for so long that we have to sit idly by and take this retribution for a while? (i can’t find these commercials online but the one’s that come to mind are the Toyota Truck commercials, the Verizon mosquito commercial, etc. You know them when you see them.)
And just so we end on a happy note, i just found out what a “Spencer Pratt” is, but apparently he is another semi-famous person who is an absolute waste of oxygen and David Letterman pretty much tells him as much on his show. Enjoy.
I can’t be certain when this started, but i blame Stuart Scott. As far as i can remember, the first guy with this type of nickname was A-Rod. You know the guy with the purple lips:
and the questionable sexuality:
But when that nickname caught on, they started calling everyone this…anyone who’s last name ended with Rodriguez instantly became “blank”-Rod (including Ivan Rodriguez which sounds a little bit like an Apple brand sex toy to me…) and it expanded from there to J-Roll (Jimmy Rollins), Dice-K, Co-Jack (Conor Jackson) and even K-Rod, even though the guy’s first name is Felix. (yea, i know, K stands for strikeout…still stupid.)
It’s worse in basketball where we have T-Mac, C-Webb, D-Wade, R-Jeff, Q-Rich, J-Rich, J-Kidd, J-Ho, J-Will and J-Chill…
This has proliferated to a point where last night at the Diamondbacks game, i heard someone call Justin Upton, J-UP. That’s the dumbest thing i’ve heard since someone predicted that by 2008 we’d have a woman or a black man as president, i mean, yeah right. (Ed note: Whoops.)
What happened to the great nicknames? The Admiral, Primetime, The Mailman, Clyde “the Glyde”. How about George “The Iceman” Gervin or Frank “Big Hurt” Thomas or “Magic” Johnson?!? His nickname was so good that the casual fan probably doesn’t even know his real first name… How about “Tiny” Archibald or William “The Refigerator” Perry or Dr. J or the Splendid Splinter…i mean, these were good. And they took some creativity.
(I do have to give credit to whoever annointed Ryan Braun as “The Hebrew Hammer”. I love my Jewish fantasy players.)
Taking the “a-rod” way of giving a new guy a nickname is lazy, a disservice to the player and definitely Needs to Die.
Filed under: China, History Channel, Logging, McCain, Monday Morning, Obama, Olympics, baseball, dbacks
How’s that for a name? Best i’ve come up with yet.)
A few thoughts for the day:
(Ed Note. Video is graphic and pretty disturbing, if not completely inappropriate for work or school, fyi)
Apparently this is ok at U of A, but at ASU, we call this sexual assault.
John McCain is a warmonger? Hmmm… As much as i’m terrified of his saber rattling with Iran, i do agree that we cannot just abandon Iraq. Yes, we should have never gone, yes, it was completely unjustified, but now we’re there and we need to stay there until things get better or at least until we can assure that we’re leaving it better than when we got there. I would love to hear Obama use his unity rhetoric to convince the multi-national force that should have been there in the first place to come back…then he would be my perfect candidate. He isn’t, yet. Either way, this will be an important week for McCain.
Have you seen Axe Men yet? Much like Deadliest Catch (back next week!), Dirty Jobs and Ice Road Truckers, i love this type of show. I am finding this one interesting because of the history and the way these guys care about the natural resource even more than so-called environmentalists. Trees — at least in this country — are a renewable resource and because of huge advances in technology, ever tree felled is being used in its most effective way. I am curious to see what my friends in the Pacific Northwest think of this show and logging in general. It isn’t the destructive force it use to be, they’re more worried about conservation and protecting their industry than ever before. Definitely changed a lot of my perceptions.
I saw a Prius with a John McCain 08 sticker on it this morning…caught me by surprise.
Dbacks home opener is tonight and yes, i’ll be in attendance sporting my Sedona Red. I love baseball…so expect more posts on the subject soon. Oh, and apologies to Samuel for the absolute ass-whipping i handed to him in Fantasy Baseball last week.
The protests for the Beijing Olympics are really ramping up…i think America has been surprisingly quiet about this whole thing…what do you think? Should we boycott or at least make a statement?
Filed under: NLCS, baseball, dbacks, yankees | Tags: baseball, diamondbacks, more fucking stupidity, NLCS, yankees
Last night, i had the privilege of attending another Dbacks playoff game. This time it was Game 1 of the National League Championship series against the Rockies. This is for the big one.
The game sucked, the Dbacks finally played like the inexperienced rookies that they are and they lost 5-1, but that’s not the big story.
During the 7th inning, Justin Upton slid into second base with some authority and knocked Kaz Matsui over while he was attempting to turn a double play. The umpire ruled that he interfered and, by rule, called him and the runner at first base out. The runner that had advanced to third had to return to second base. So instead of 1 out and runners on 1st and 3rd. It was 2 outs with a runner on second. Diamondbacks fans, for the first time in history, erupted in anger and proceeded to LOUDLY boo. It was so loud in fact, that they couldn’t continue playing. While the players and umpires waited for it to die down a bit, a few fans started throwing stuff onto the field. Maybe 10-15 bottles and cups at first. The security people ran out to clear the field and as soon as they’d run back to the sidelines another few cups and bottles would come down. It was actually kinda hilarious. Now i don’t know if you’ve ever thrown an empty plastic cup, but they don’t go so far and they certainly wouldn’t hurt if it hit you. But at that point the umpires suspended the game and waved the players off the field. That incited the fans even further and we continued to stand and boo for a good 12-15 minutes before they finally got the field cleaned up and resumed play.
To hear them talk about it on the blogs and sports web sites and on Sportscenter this morning, it would seem like God himself unleashed a plague of bottles, cans, fire, brimstone, cats, dogs, locusts and the Icecapades onto the field. The sensationalism was just incredible. I couldn’t believe it. There were maybe 50 bottles and cups — tops…TOPS! – thrown on the field the entire time, total. Now, i’m not saying that even 1 bottle thrown is appropriate behavior, but come on, if this would have happened in New York, Boston, Philly or Chicago, the fans would have thrown D-cell batteries and car parts onto the field (remember the riot police on the field for the entire game 7 of the 2004 ALCS? i do) and then ESPN would have reported, “These fans are passionate and they love their team, you can’t blame them for their reaction.” but when typically comatose Dbacks fans do it, we’re automatically unruly or have no class. Go fuck yourself Sportscenter. And just while we’re on the topic, fuck ESPN and its constant AL East dry humping. Sportscenter this morning didn’t even lead with the story of the game…they led the show with “Will Joe Torre stay as manager of the Yankees?” a story which hasn’t changed in 5 days and probably won’t get resolved for months. Stupid fucking Yankees.
Now that i’ve seen the replay of Upton’s slide, it was absolutely the right call. But at the game (where they have a huge multi-million dollar Jumbotron and yet didn’t show the replay once, because God forbid you give paying fans a reason to have an opinion about the game they just paid $80-$140 to see…) it looked like total bullshit. When they made that call we had been getting hosed on calls all night, the home plate umpire had been terrible. I’m super proud of my fellow Diamondback fans for actually standing up and booing for a good 10-12 minutes. Most of these people don’t even watch the game for that amount of time…We actually are starting to give a shit and i couldn’t be happier. We had a right to be pissed.
I think i’m going again tonight. Let’s go Dbacks!
Filed under: baseball, dbacks | Tags: baseball, cubs, dbacks, october is the best, Playoffs, sports
Remember my sports blog? Remember when i only posted on it when something extremely happy or fucked up happened to an Arizona sports team? Well something happy is happening (and something fucked up might have happened by Sunday…).
The Diamondbacks, despite having one of the youngest teams in baseball, despite having one of the lowest payrolls in baseball (with a good chunk of that still going to Big Bird aka Randy Johnson, who isn’t playing.), despite having more runs scored against them than they scored this year, despite having a ridiculously fairweather fanbase that turns out more Cubs fans than Dbacks fans to it’s weekend series against the Cubs, despite all that, The Arizona Diamondbacks had the best record in the entire National League and won the NL West Division.
Tonight, we face the Cubs who despite spending some $400 million on free agents this season, managed to win the fewest games of all the NL teams in the playoffs and barely won the weakest division in baseball. The Cubs haven’t won the World Series since 1908…i don’t need to do the math for you there.
So to recap, the Diamonbacks had the best record in the NL, the Cubs had the worst. The Dbacks have a bunch of young players who have gelled together under the banner that they never give up, that they never admit defeat, that they always try and come back and win a game and the Cubs have a team full of overpayed, cast-offs that barely won the worst division in baseball. So who do you think all the “experts” are picking to win? Yeah, you guessed it, the stupid fucking Cubs.
GFY, experts.
I’m obviously picking the Diamondbacks because i’m an outrageous homer (i’m going to both home games), but also because i don’t think these guys are going to roll over for anyone, especially ”America’s lovable losers.”
Now that my prediction is out of the way, let’s make fun of the Cubs some more…
Ok, i know this post is only going to matter to a few people, but they are some pretty important people. Baseball is important. Maybe not to you, but to some people it absolutely matters. And if you’re not one of those people, you’re going to have to learn to understand someday.
The most unreasonable thing happened today in sports since Peyton Manning became the star of at least 9 commercials in a row (the one with that fake mustache being the most pathetic of them all. Seriously, is he so desperate to look human that he’s begging us to like him during every single commercial break?) Two teams from the painfully mediocre NL West made the playoffs. The Padres were in 3rd place most of the year, then the Dodgers lost 11 straight right after the all-star break, then fought into first place by winning 18 of 19 and then capped off that run but losing like 9 in a row after that.
For a while, the top 4 teams (out of 5) in the division were seperated by only 1.5 games…which was really amazing if only for its sadness.
For those of you who don’t know, the NL (national league) is made up of 3 divisions (East, West and Central) and the west was without a doubt, the worst of the three. And yet somehow, they have contributed 2 teams into the playoffs…. It’s absolutely wacky.
The AL East has the Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Orioles. Now the Orioles have blown since before the Palmeiro/Sosa steroid debacle of ‘05 BUT the rest of their division has still been made up of pretty amazing ball clubs on paper. Meanwhile, the NL West has been completely horrible for a good while, rarely fielding a team with a few wins over .500, but the AL East has been great, with ball clubs with winning records and relatively amazing players. So they get only 1 team in the playoffs this year, but the NL West gets 2??? It’s like Jerry Colangelo (former owner of Dbacks), Jerry McMorris (maybe still Owner of the Rockies) and Bud Selig made some kind of blood pact that actually came true.
I’m going to go watch Field of Dreams and Rocky 2 and actually believe that those stories came true, because they would be as likely as the NL West fielding not one, but 2 playoff teams.
And that will conclude my first and only baseball post of this year, unless some amazing World Series ensues, like the NL West opponent beating the Yankees in the World Series with a bloop single against Mariano Rivera on the last out of the 7th game of the World Series, 3 weeks after a terrorist attack kills at least (but not more than) 5,000 people in NYC and only if Jay Bell scores the winning run. (God bless Luis Gonzales)
God bless the D-backs. May they R.I.P.
