Monday, February 9, 2009

To Be Bobby Then, You Have To Be Bobby Now

  • Random Pop Culture:
    • Isn't evil, snarky Sylar way better than good, earnest Sylar? And kind of cool when that kid shot the heat at the agent; the guy's hands were so melted that the dad from That '70s Show hit him with a car. Not a really obscure reference, but kudos if you figure it out.
    • I was going to write about what an a-hole Jack Bauer was tonight, but then this happened: "He doubled back on the 337. I'll take Connecticut to save time." That doesn't make any sense. There is no 337. Nobody has ever taken Connecticut to save time in the history of DC. And then the guy was on the Beltway and Jack was taking a left on Pennsylvania near the Old Post Office and they called out a bunch of street names that don't exist and Jack somehow ran into the guy miles from the Beltway and the First Gentleman was being held near what looked like Dupont but on a road that doesn't exist. It made my head hurt.
    • I had made a point to avoid every Bush speech or press conference since the start of the Iraq War. Yes, that long ago, but when he told me that Saddam was implicated in 9/11, I called shenanigans, so he and I had to part ways. So tonight I watched my first Presidential press conference in six years or so. When the president first came out, I got more than a little giddy. After the excitement of the Inauguration, I stepped away from politics for a bit, so it was a nice non-surprise surprise to see him. Maybe I could have done a running commentary -- he used the term "shaky assets", which I'm pretty sure is the title of a Lil' Wayne song, and someone asked him about Alex Rodriguez, which was a little surprising considering he had used the word "depression" more in the previous forty minutes than Sylvia Plath had in her entire life. What, no Chris Brown question?
    • Still, you have to knock Obama for the fact that his press conference wasn't nearly as funny as any of the highlights I had seen of Bush's. Very boring. Delightfully boring, I suppose.
  • Random Hatred And/Or Love:
    • Can we stop with the fake indignation over Alex Rodriguez? Nobody can actually be surprised. And who cares what it means to kids? Parents shouldn't let them heap unqualified worship on someone they don't even know. And not let him in the Hall of Fame? Obviously many players used performance-enhancing drugs during this era and A-Rod (and Bonds) still performed at a level way above the rest of them. Bret Boone was nowhere close to them. F.P. Santangelo could barely hang on in the bigs. Their steroid use didn't guarantee huge numbers. Yes, they juiced, but yes, they are also extraordinarily gifted athletes. Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson (through 1968) pitched on a fifteen-inch mound, compared to the ten-inch mound today. That gave them a huge advantage statistically over pitchers today. If we're to believe Jim Bouton that so many players were popping greenies back in the '70s, then we can't know for sure that Hank Aaron or Johnny Bench didn't use. Shoot, in 1920 only one team, the Phillies, hit more total homers than Babe Ruth hit by himself. We're going to just accept that at face value. So, please, spare me the complaints. We may have been lying to ourselves in 1998, but we've known for a long time what this baseball era has been about. Enjoy the game, put these guys in the Hall with other cheaters like Ty Cobb and Gaylord Perry, stick a note on their plaque about the steroid era, and quit it.
  • Random Video You Didn't See:
    • Does anyone watch the Grammy Awards anymore? After Herbie Hancock beat Kanye's near-perfect Graduation for Best Album last year, I'm sure not. And definitely not next year after Robert Plant and Alison Krauss won the same award this year. The best album of the year was clearly Viva la Vida and the performance I heard everyone talking about today was Coldplay's medley of "Lost" and "Viva la Vida" that featured a special guest. Even if you don't like Coldplay, watch at least the first two minutes. Just absolutely sick.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

And since when, in Washington, is any number called "the" anything. "The 337"?

BTW, last night was the night that the civil libertarian in me gets indignant enough to more or less stop watching. Because torturing babies is good.

Josh said...

On that note, didn't you find it funny that Heroes was all about the government overstepping their bounds, while 24 was all about the government not overstepping their bounds enough?

Roy said...

I don't think all of the indignation is fake, and I think if people want to have it, they have a right to, the same way you have a right not too. How would you react to someone saying through the course of the last eight years that you should stop your fake indignation of George W Bush since everyone know politicians are underhanded, liars, and cheats, therefore him breaking habeas corpus or ordering torture is the same as Clinton's blow job?

A lot of people, myself included, view steroid use as waaaay different then pitching from a raised mound or scuffing a baseball. Both are still cheating, but in the way that taking 15 minutes on the clock at work looking at facebook and embezzling $25 million are both stealing. People get to apply their own reasonable measures of where the levels are.

When people get caught cheating, and get penalized in whatever way they do, the result is the result. It may not always be fair in every single persons measure, but you take that chance when you cheat, no matter who else is doing it with you. If at a University, one student cheated his/her way through every class all four years, and never got caught, and another cheated in one class in senior year, got caught, and expelled without a degree, the second student doesn't get to avoid penalty, or the label of cheater, because we don't know how many other students cheated at that school through out the years. We deal with what we do know, in the context of what we think, and not in every instance of what might have been.

More importantly, with regards to the Hall, the voters & the hall can figure that out. If they keep them out, then that's fine, because everyone else doing something and getting away with it doesn't make if fine for you, or make it without penalty if you get caught. And frankly, if someone, somewhere does come with results that Show Aaron or Bench as users, some people, including me, can have the same indignation.

Lastly, being "the best of the cheaters" is B.S. It's that type of a permissive attitude that people use to justify all types of borderline and wrong behaviors in life. The best of the cheaters is still a cheater, and if they are judged by others that way, there is no one to blame but themselves. Is a cheater at Harvard really better than a cheater at Towson University because they are a more gifted student? Or are they both wrong, and worthy of losing their degrees if caught, because they both cheated? Just my two cents.

Also, the Coldplay video is silly. The whole interplay with Jay-Z was great, but their musical execution as a whole is just so tight. I am one episode behind on 24, and two on Heroes, so I'll skip on those until I get to see them.

Anonymous said...

Genial fill someone in on and this enter helped me alot in my college assignement. Say thank you you for your information.

Anonymous said...

Not sure where to post this but I wanted to ask if anyone has heard of National Clicks?

Can someone help me find it?

Overheard some co-workers talking about it all week but didn't have time to ask so I thought I would post it here to see if someone could help me out.

Seems to be getting alot of buzz right now.

Thanks

Anonymous said...

Sorry for my bad english. Thank you so much for your good post. Your post helped me in my college assignment, If you can provide me more details please email me.