Decisions, Decisions

I will not comment on the NLCS just yet. I'm superstitious enough not to want to jinx anything there, so I'll keep my lips (fingers?) sealed for the moment.

But, having watched the Texas Rangers clinch the AL pennant tonight, I do want to mention a thing or two about Rangers manager Ron Washington.

First, a bit of cold water: the Rangers are getting a lot of credit for not firing Washington this past spring when the news came out that he failed a drug test and came up positive for cocaine use. While everything ultimately worked out very well for Texas, that credit is mostly misplaced. Really, what were they going to do? Fire Washington in the middle of spring training and blow up their season? Sure, maybe they could have hired a new manager who could have pulled the pieces together and kept that team on its upward arc. But the Rangers' options were few and far between at that point. This is especially true when you remember the uncertainty surrounding the franchise and its financial situation at that moment. It says here that Texas kept Washington not simply because he is a good manager (and man, from most accounts), nor out of patience and compassion, but because they had little other choice at that point. It worked out for him and them, and maybe there's a story about good karma in that, but had that crisis happened any time other than spring training, the actions taken might have been very different.

So that's that. On the other hand...

In 2006, the A's--my local nine, as they say--won the AL West and made it to the ALCS for the first time in 14 years. Despite that achievement, they--and specifically, GM Billy Beane--decided not to retain the services of manager Ken Macha.

In the ensuing off-season, Beane had a choice about whom to hire as manager. The options came down to the A's bench coach--and Billy Beane best buddy--Bob Geren, and the aforementioned Washington. Geren had had some success managing the Athletics Triple-A affiliate in Sacramento, had spent several seasons as bench coach on some very good A's teams, and had served as Beane's best man at the GM's wedding. Washington, meanwhile, had been on the A's coaching staff for a decade (part of that time alongside Geren), serving as third base coach and infield instructor. He was immensely popular with the players, many of whom credited him for their success in the field. (If memory serves right, Eric Chavez famously gave Washington one of his Gold Glove trophies in appreciation for the coach's positive influence on his fielding.) However, no reports can confirm Washington's participation in any matrimonial ceremonies during his stay with the A's. Taking this data into account, Beane chose Geren for the A's managerial position. Washington made do with his consolation prize: taking over as Texas Rangers manager.

Fast forward to today. Geren has been A's manager for four years, and this season they finally reached the .500 mark, finishing 81-81 after three losing seasons. They have a promising future, if their young pitching holds up and they can get a few more bats in the lineup.

And Washington just won the AL pennant with the Rangers.

Of course, the A's declining record can be chalked up to many reasons beyond the identity of the manager. And there are many reasons why the Rangers have shown steady improvement for four years, up to the point of clinching their first World Series appearance in franchise history this very evening. But it is conceivable that, back in 2006, when he had a crucial choice to make, Billy Beane may have gotten a best man...but maybe, just maybe, he didn't get the right man.

Something to think about, if you have any hiring to do.

Abysmal

Just want to make a quick hit post here to record for posterity the fact that the announcers on TBS's baseball playoff coverage are, in a word, abysmal. In fact, the whole coverage is abysmal. Technical gaffes, missed plays (no one--I mean NO ONE--said a word about the blown caught stealing call in the Giants-Braves game until at least four innings later), confused commentary--just a disaster. It must be nice, to be so unconcerned about the fate of your industry that you would place its showcase events in the hands of amateurs. Another fine call by The Idiot Selig.

Yeesh.

Reel Reviews Archive

Capote (~)
Shopgirl (+)
Sin City (~)
The Wrestler (+)
Avatar (+)
Inglourious Basterds (+)
Frost/Nixon (+)
Slap Shot (~)
Big Fan (~)
Saturday Night Fever (+)

I Need To Watch More Westerns

It's been a long time since Westerns were the dominant genre in the movie business. They have become somewhat forgotten now. But I just finished watching The Magnificent Seven, and I've decided that I need to watch more Westerns.

Perhaps it's because the genre has dropped so far outside the mainstream, but when viewed with today's perspective, a Western comes across as a remarkably refreshing experience. It is such a different world view contained in those horse operas; the stock and trade elements of the genre are so alien to modern viewers, the characterizations so foreign, the rituals so different from what we're used to, that watching these old films can come across as discovering something new and exciting. The best of them are delightful and engaging anachronisms, like visiting another time and place and relishing the experience of a country we used to know.

I doubt Westerns will ever catch on again and dominate the screen the way they once did. Our country--indeed, the world--has long since passed that time by. But folks could do worse than to step into that world for a couple of hours every once in a while. Viewers might, if ever so fleetingly, find something they may have otherwise lost forever.

As Expected

Phillies back in first place, by a game as of this post. Nice. Now they just need to carry through and bring the division home--no jinxing it. It will be nice to see at least a few of my preseason predictions actually come through; at the moment, only the East divisions have held form. But another trip to the World Series for the Phillies will help assuage my feelings of frustration, to be sure.

Human Again, Again

Today's reading on the scale came to 296.5 pounds--the first time in over 2 years I'm below 300 pounds. I am, for the moment at least, human again. Let's see how well I can build on this.

Momentous Occasion

It happened just short while ago, in my kitchen. As I walked past the open window, I caught the first distinct whiff of that certain flavor in the air that always says "Fall" to me. I don't know what it is exactly, what constitutes that scent and distinguishes the air of autumn from any other time of the year, but I've always been able to smell it, distinctly, and this evening proved to be the first time this year I met that welcome omen. Bring on the football, falling leaves, holidays, and crisp weather!

Cinema, verité

I just got around to watching Avatar last week. I was pleasantly surprised, finding a better movie than I was expecting, with some decent character development and a story that was perhaps somewhat obvious, but not really "eye-roll" worthy. Then I finally got around to watching Inglourious Basterds tonight, and again I was pleasantly surprised. Tarantino delivered a tight, entertaining movie (even considering its running time [around 2:30]), not the sprawling mess of a film I thought I recognized at first glance. And just that quickly, Inglourious Basterds moved up the ladder, knocking Avatar down a peg on the list of best movies of last year.

That judgment led me to consider the long plight of special-effects-laden sci-fi epics--a class of film long on success and influence, but short on critical respect. Ever since Star Wars--you know the one I'm talking about; episode numbers be damned--changed movies in America (and around the world, really), received a Best Picture nomination, and then lost to Annie Hall, a string of wildly popular, commercially successful, and visually innovative films have come and gone without receiving much respect come awards season beyond some statues for their technical merits. Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Dark Knight spring to mind as examples of special effects spectaculars that hit the theaters as blockbusters, bringing new dimensions to movie-making that, taken with their financial successes and widespread cultural impacts, would have made any one of them arguably the film of the year at their respective times of release. Yet only The Return of the King actually won the Best Picture award. All the others came up short--some as nominees, others out the running entirely. Avatar is just the latest to join that list of big movies that couldn't.

This track record has always seemed unfair. Many of these films far outpaced their contemporary competition in any number of facets. One can certainly argue, for instance, that Jurassic Park, for all its flaws, was destined to have a far greater cultural impact than that other 1993 Spielberg film, the one that actually did win the Best Picture Oscar: Schindler's List. That Schindler's List is a fine movie and influential in its own right is undeniable. But by many a metric, one would be hard pressed to argue that Schindler's List had a greater impact than Jurassic Park. The latter represented a quantum leap forward in the art of special effects, bringing new technologies to the art of filmmaking that continue to evolve and change movies to this day. (Avatar is almost a direct descendant of Jurassic Park, in this sense.) And that comparison, between Jurassic Park and Schindler's List, is one of the narrower battles. Few people today would rank Gandhi ahead of E.T. on their list of favorite movies. And while Annie Hall is a fine movie and fondly remembered, any argument that its impact on movies and our culture outweighed Star Wars would be laughable.

Given these examples, the temptation may be great to view Avatar in a more favorable light than Inglourious Basterds. Its long term impact on film will likely be greater, given its advanced special effects and (perhaps) its 3D presentation. (I'm not sold on 3D as yet.) It is likely that sequels will be forthcoming, and future directors will be taking its cues when making big, blockbuster special effects entertainments. Inglourious Basterds will not have a similar impact. (The odds of it inspiring a string of violent, highly cinema-literate war movies are, shall we say, unlikely.) So why, then, do I rate Inglourious Basterds as a better movie than Avatar, having just watched them back to back?

Two reasons. One, Inglourious Basterds is simply a better overall movie. Better dialogue, better characters, better story. Avatar was fun to watch, but just not up to that snuff. Two--and here's the meat of the matter--Avatar's impact almost certainly will be bigger in the long term, for the reasons previously stated. Yet, taking the long view, that influence is not automatically destined to be positive. As with Star Wars, Avatar is likely to spawn a host of imitators and descendants, most if not all of which will be something much less than the original. (In the case of Star Wars, included among those poor imitators would be its own prequels.) The new technologies and techniques created by James Cameron will be bequeathed to a host of unworthy followers, whose ill-conceived offspring will assault our cinemas for years to come. How many bad movies will waste our viewing hours, annoy us with their saturation advertising, and clutter the shelves (or disk space) of our libraries in the future, all because someone tried to make the next Avatar? As likely as not, we'll suffer no such indignities thanks to Inglourious Basterds.

That, then, is the problem with special effects sci-fi spectaculars. The very thing they hang their hats on, the engine which drives their ascent from the middling ranks of genre up to the heights of movie-making, is the same thing that ultimately sullies their environment. Their very own innovations are what eventually drags the level of their genre back down into the abyss from whence it came--and thus makes the future climb that much steeper. In that way, what appears at first glance to be an unfair lack of respect may in fact be nothing more than justice served ahead of its time. And so, any filmmaker who wishes to rise to the top through the ranks of the sci-fi genre may find the effort leads to an ending which is ultimately--if you'll forgive me for indulging in le mot juste--inglorious.

A New Equation

In response to this story, I'd like to propose a new equation:

E > mc^2s

Should be read as:

Einstein (is greater than) motherfucking conservative squares

Really, that about says it all.

crApple

I have an iPod. Two of them in fact. And I have long been an Apple partisan, having been the owner of a series of Macintosh desktop systems. But I'm getting fed up.

My iPod Touch is--or rather, was--a delightful piece of technology. But then it took a swan dive into the toilet, and this unscheduled dip had, shall we say, a negative effect on it. The screen turned dopey, and no longer displays everything in clear, sharp, vibrant tones. But it's still readable, for the most part. And the speaker/headphone interface wound up screwed up; the music being played would come out of the speaker even when the headphones were plugged in, thus decreasing the volume going into the ears and rendering the volume control non-operable. Not great, but the machine retained some measure of its functionality. Apps still worked, info kept being stored, the music would play, albeit in a crippled state.

Then Apple released an update to the system software. And ever since that update installed on the Touch, there have been issues. The music volume, already problematic, now has developed a habit of going schizo right in the middle of playing, with the usual result being the iPod stops playback by itself. This renders listening to the sounds frustrating, at best.

So I tried to perform a restore on my Touch. The panel in iTunes clearly says, if you're having problems with your iPod, try to restore it. So I did. Except, when I did, the computer informed me that "there was a problem." The upshot being, it couldn't restore my iPod to its last known settings. Hence, some of my personal info--app content and settings, mostly--got lost in the process. (Oddly, not all; just most of it.) Boom. Gone. Several months worth of checklists, high scores, bookmarks, etc. down the drain.

You may ask, well, what do you expect? You're Touch is broken. Yes, it is, but it was not functionally broken. It still worked, and showed no sign of not working before the software update. Being dinged up should not be a death sentence for a piece of tech. My old iPod mini--the one I now use for music listening--has gone through many a hell of knocks and drops, and it survives quite nicely and does what it always has done. And I've heard stories of other pieces of equipment that have been through a lot--some even through the washing machine--and still came out working. What's up with the Touch that it's so fragile?

Plus, remember, it wasn't the brief toilet swim that knocked it out of semi-working condition. It was limping along, but usable, before the update. It's a software issue, not a hardware issue. And it's further complicated by another software issue: those backups iTunes runs every time you link up your iPod apparently aren't worth shit. Because when the time comes to restore...oops, can't do it.

This episode--along with other recent news--only increases my sense that Apple more and more doesn't give a shit about the quality of its products. It only cares about getting them publicity and selling them.

And that has me thinking about the future. At some point, I may need to seriously reconsider my choice for a computer. And a personal music player. And whatever else the future has to offer. Because Apple is not making the grade. And now, for the first time ever, I'd have to say that if I were asked by someone on the fence, someone looking to buy a first computer or phone or whatever, I would not automatically recommend anything Steve Jobs has had his hands on.

Think different indeed.

Unverbal

I realized today that it had been a while since I posted here. No matter, really, since no one reads this. But this does exist as a record of my thoughts in time and place, so I might as well write something. And then, as I sat here, hands hovering over the keyboard, I realized that I couldn't think of anything to write about. (Except one thing, which would be a screed about one more of the indignities that are routinely dumped upon my head by life, but at the moment I choose not to vent about it.) Really, nothing to say, either about life in general, specific instances, what's going on now--nothing--or even the most banal observation about the 'dog days' of Summer having firmly landed upon the world with an unceremonious 'thud.' ('Dog days' of Summer being the wretched opposite of the much more delightful 'Cat Days of Christmas,' a concept of which I am the author. Check the archive.)

I have nothing to say. I am Unverbal. I am, as Lisa Simpson once famously noted, losing my perspicacity.

Part of a larger trend? The result of monotony, unemployment, consistent disappointments in a number of minuscule venues? I don't know, but it's a bit disturbing.

Then again, I at least had enough language bouncing around the cranium to write this post, about no being able to write a post--so perhaps there's no real problem at all.

Shrug. So it goes.

Midseason Review

So we're at the All-Star break (or a day or two later--no difference), the traditional mid point of the baseball season, so let's take a look at my predictions made back in April.

In the AL, two of my three picks to win their divisions, New York and Chicago, are in first place as of the break. The third, Los Angeles, is in second place, a perfectly reasonable 4.5 games out. My choice for the wild card, Boston, trails Tampa Bay by 3.5 games--again, not an insurmountable lead. Most of the rest of the divisions play out about as I expected, with most teams within one slot of their predicted order of finish. The one wild hare (hair?) is Texas, who are far exceeding my expectations. I must admit, at this point, that the Rangers seem for real to me, and I don't expect them to fade away. That said, I reiterate as above, the Angels can still overtake them without extraordinary effort. Expect this to be close all the way to the end.

The NL looks quite a bit different. None of my predicted division winners hold first place at the moment. I had Atlanta as a wild card team, so I definitely knew they would make a move upward; I just didn't expect the disgracefully indifferent play of the Phillies, who should have a substantially better record right now, injuries or not. And San Diego and Cincinnati have played far above my expectations; I had both clubs in the bottom of their divisions, if not actually in last place. Nevertheless, I see the Phillies within striking distance (5.5 games out) if they would just get their shit together; I see St. Louis a mere whisker behind the Reds, at 0.5 GB; and Los Angeles, at 2.5 GB, breathing heavily upon the necks of the Padres (and the Rockies, just a half game ahead of the Dodgers). And the rest of each division stacks not too far away from what I predicted (indeed, with the exception of the Reds, the Central stacks exactly as I predicted--a decent trick even for half a season.

Put it all together, and I feel good about my prognostications. I'm definitely getting the hang of this. Not quite Stephen the Greek, perhaps, but moving ever closer to making this preseason prediction thing less a guess, more a science.

Selah.

Scientific Genius

I have lately been in the habit of taking the Periodic Table quiz over at Sporcle.com. I first took this test on 3/13/10, and scored a poor 71 out of 118 elements. Subsequent trials have seen my score improve again and again, until finally, this evening, I GOT ALL 118 ELEMENTS! Clearly, I'm on my way to becoming the next Seaborg.

Top that, bitches!

Stunning Similarity

I have a habit, something that developed during my years living in the relative remoteness of my last apartment, where there was little chance of being observed in my habit. Which is this: after I take a shower, I like to towel myself off, then lay down on my bed uncovered, usually with the fan on, blowing gentle breezes over me as any residual moisture is evaporated from my naked skin. I tend to indulge myself thus for perhaps a half an hour, sometimes longer, until I decide I've had enough of this particular pleasure.

Why do I mention this? Because I'm currently reading Doing Nothing by Tom Lutz, described by subtitle as "a history of loafers, loungers, slackers, and bums in America," and I came across this most germane passage:

He [Benjamin Franklin] became notorious in London in the 1760s for his daily "airbath," which consisted of lying uncovered and naked on a bed for an hour, a practice he claimed was good for one's health.

Imagine that. Me, a modern Ben Franklin! Now if only I could invent a new stove or become Postmaster of someplace...

New Knowledge

I came to the conclusion tonight that the two most important substances in the universe are cheese and chocolate. That's all I have right now; if I develop this notion any further, I will report back later with details.