Mass Confusion

Toolshed of Suffering

2012-01-13T13:20:00.003-05:00

I love Michael Shermer, and thanks to this presentation, I now have the name for my fantasy baseball team for 2012, which I've used as the title of this post (above.)

Enjoy the rational thought, the Nun Bun and the Nileppez.

Really Pat? Really?

2012-01-04T11:11:00.000-05:00

Let's give Pat Robertson the benefit of the doubt.

Let's say he does have private conversations with the man upstairs.

This is what he comes up with after a WEEK of talking to him?

A prediction he is "not allowed to share," plagiarism of Abraham Lincoln and a game of 20 questions...

How does this man have any credibility with anyone?

The Customer is Always Right?

2011-12-29T09:39:00.001-05:00

Here's a story from my time in the casino trenches... I felt it was appropriate to share after seeing all that footage of over-exuberant holiday shoppers taking things a little bit too far.

Sometimes the customer needs to be put into their place!

While qualitycustomer service is always expected from the front-line employees at a casino,let’s face it – it’s not always possible to achieve. After all, you can’tfollow the age old axiom that “the customer is always right” when a rantinglunatic is trying to convince you that they want their $100 bet at the roulettetable returned to them because the dealer took their chip off the winningnumber in error –especially when there are no $100 chips on the table, even inthe “muck” (the large pile of losing chips that is pushed to the side in theclearing away process) making the truth of their claim impossible.

Of course, thatkind of “shot taking” – where a scam artist will attempt to trick aninexperienced dealer or floorperson into making an erroneous payout – iscommonplace. Most of the time, it can be stopped before it has a chance tostart, simply by dealers following “proper procedure” in terms of gameprotection – placement of the cards, what direction to angle their bodies sothey can see cheaters place late bets, the order in which they are supposed toclear chips from a roulette layout, etc. Of course, even the best of the bunchcan sometimes make a mistake, as what happened to me one fine day near the endof my eight-hour shift of dealing blackjack.

Blackjack is a gameI could deal in my sleep, and quite often did, as I simply turned on myauto-pilot, without any real need to pay attention to what I was doing. Simplyput, since most people play “by the book” and you tend to keep the same playerson your table for hours on end, a certain “confidence” is formed between thedealer and the gamblers. They recognize you know what you’re doing, so theyrelax and let you do it. In turn, you know they’re not going to make any “crazyplays” like hitting a hard 17 or standing pat on a 13 against your face card,so you deal without thinking and the time goes by faster.

Honestly, as adealer when you’re good enough to reach that level of confidence, it shows. Oftentimesin the midst of my “trance” I’d suddenly snap out of it in the middle of makingpay-outs, simply because it just “felt wrong” – and I’d know I’d made amistake, which could have been either inthe player’s favor or the house’s favor – my job is to get it right, eitherway. I’d quickly correct it on the spot, and again, the players’ confidencelevel in me grew – even to the point that if after I swept the cards away and aplayer who wasn’t paying close attention to the game would ask me somethinglike “What did I have? Didn’t we push?” I could simply say, “No, I beat you”and they’d shrug and the game would continue. I might not have had any memoryof the hand at that point, but I knew I was right, and based on theirexperience with me, so did they. The issue died there.

In short, shot-takerssimply didn’t bother coming to my table – they could see very quickly it wasn’tgoing to fly.

But on this oneoccasion, I got caught. I had been dealing to this gentleman, playing alone atthe table, for several hours, and he was strictly by the book. He never oncevaried from basic strategy, and while we didn’t converse, there didn’t seem tobe any animosity brewing at the table, even as he started to lose a bit morethan we won. However, I let my guard down, just for a split-second, and made aclassic “rookie mistake” by “assuming” a hit was forthcoming without waitingfor the hand signal.

He had 14. I had an8 showing. In this situation, you hit since you always assume a face card forthe dealer’s down-card. If I have 18, he loses, so he “has to” hit. Of course,I jumped the gun and pulled the next card out of the shoe, which was a King,causing him to break. But before I could even get the card over to his hand, hestarted shouting at me. “I didn’t say to hit! No hand signal!”

Plain and simple -he got me. I was angry with myself for letting it happen, but hey, it doeshappen. I immediately told him to relax. I agreed with him. He did not give mea hand signal, so he doesn’t get this card. His hand is still live. I calledfor the floorperson to come over so I could explain what happened, but she wasbusy handling an issue at another table, so it would be a few minutes. While wewaited, I explained to the player what would happen… by law, we are not allowedto change the order of the cards. So, if he didn’t want the King, that was fine– however, it is the next card out of the shoe. If I needed to hit, then theKing would be my card. If I didn’t, then as it was exposed in error, it wouldbe “burned” or moved to the discard rack. He seemed to understand, but thefloorperson was still busy, and he was itching to continue gambling, so whenthe pit boss walked by at this point, I called for his assistance.

I explained thesituation to him, and he confirmed with the player that he didn’t want thecard. However at this point, the player said he wanted another card. That’s nothow the game works. He takes the King or nothing. I could see this was goingnowhere, so I suggested to the pit boss that we hurry along the process byexposing my hole card. After all, if I had a 4,5,6,7 or 8 underneath myalready-exposed 8, then I’d be forced to draw – meaning I’d get the King, andbreak. We could pay this guy and move on. The pit boss agreed and son-of-a-gun, I flipped over a “2”.

So, we tried invain to explain to this guy for the next ten minutes… if he hits, he loses. Ifhe stays, he loses (as I’d have 20 to his 14) – therefore, he loses. Period.End of story.

“I want a differentcard!” The player screamed at the pit boss, getting more and more agitated.

“You can’t get adifferent card,” the pit boss explained for the umpteenth time, remaining calm.

“This isbullshit!!!! You’re bullshit!!! ” The player lurched forward to pointaccusingly at the pit boss, who unfortunately was not the tallest man in theworld, and ended up making contact forcibly with his nose.

“You get nothing!You lose! Good day sir! Take your free fizzy lifting drink and get the ^$%$%out of here!”

And so, withsecurity quickly approaching the table, the man left without further incident.However, it wasn’t the last we’d see him that day. About twenty minutes later, Terri,the shift manager came to my table to ask me what had happened. Apparently, theman had filed a complaint with the Casino Control Commission, claiming we hadcheated, and he was not going to back down until he got his money back.

After I told herwhat had happened, she rolled her eyes and started laughing (especially thepart about our Oompa-Loompa-sized pitboss getting poked in the proboscis.) Because it costs far more money to defendourselves in a case like this than it would be than to give this man his $10bet back – that’s right, we’re talking about $10 here – she let me know thatshe was going to give him his $10 and escort him from the casino, where hisbusiness was no longer welcome.

However, when theman showed up at my table, looking smug and high and mighty, ready to gloat asI was forced to give him back his bet, Terri had one last surprise for him. Shewasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of making me give him those two red chips. She told him she would be givinghis ten dollars back, but if he wanted it, he would have to go to our special“returns table” on the other side of the casino, a good ten minute walk away.He was about to argue, but when she asked, “Do you want to make the walk ordrop your complaint?” his smile vanished and his posture slumped.

He waited by theescalator for Terri to lead him on what I was sure would be the least-directroute to the furthest table from our location, and as she turned to join him,she looked back at me and said with glee, “Wait until he finds out I’m payinghim in quarters.”

Charge to the White House?

2011-11-29T12:37:00.001-05:00

Check out a "review" of sorts of my book on The Huffington Post.

It's How Fantasy Sports Explains... the Republican candidates?

Twice Upon a Time

2011-11-17T12:12:00.001-05:00

It's hard to know what to think about ABC's Once Upon a Time, because even though I want to like the show, the first few chapters of the story have just missed the mark for me.

The conceit of the program is that fairy tales are "real" and that the Evil Queen has put a curse upon all the characters that we know and love from the bedtime stories of our youth (Snow White, Cinderella, Jiminy Cricket, etc.). The curse has sent them into "our world" where they are forever stuck in a sad state of limbo, and where none of them have any happy endings -- except of course for the Evil Queen, now the mayor of Storybrooke.

Enter "Emma" into the tale, who we learn during flashbacks to pre-curse fairy-tale time, is (unbeknownst to her) actually the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming. Her own son (put up for adoption years ago and not-so-coincidentally now living with his own wicked stepmother -- the mayor) knows the "truth" and tracks Emma down to help rid the town of the curse.

She is skeptical at first, as any normal person would be, but feels compelled to stick around and help her son battle his delusions as well as his oppressive adoptive mother.

And herein lies the problem with the show... half of each episode is spent in flashback, revealing to us the "true history" of these characters, with fresh spins on the classic tales, such as where Rumpelstiltskin (above) kills Cinderella's fairy godmother in order to take advantage of the naive girl. The rest of each week's hour shows us how these characters' modern-day plights mirror that of their backstory, all the while Emma slowly begins to buy into her son's fantasy.

Now it would have been far more interesting for us to be left in doubt as to whether or not this is indeed a delusion, but that's not how the show decided to play it. Unless the writers are outright lying to us, these are fairy-tale characters. As such, we're left with an interesting world of differently-spun fairy tales combined with a completely separate and somewhat intriguing "soap opera" world of Storybrooke, neither of which have any real stakes involved unless and until the characters themselves all "remember" who they really are...

Individually, there's a lot of fun ideas being bandied about in both worlds, but in trying to construct a bridge between the two, I'm afraid I'm left unsatisfied. Something just isn't "right" with the balance here. I guess maybe that makes me one of the three bears? If so, Goldilocks can't arrive soon enough to shake me out of my doldrums.

John Carpenter - Psychic Director?

2011-11-15T08:34:00.001-05:00

Take a closer look at the cult classic film They Live and you can see the footage that most media outlets were forbidden from shooting overnight as the NYPD cleared out Zucotti Park.

The Grass Roots Movement Begins!

2011-11-11T14:05:00.001-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen... the bar has been set. Who shall be the Sergei Bubka of reviewers to trump this one?

Challenge... extended.

Surviving!

2011-11-08T17:01:00.001-05:00

In case you missed it, please click on over to Rob Cesternino's website and take a listen to the fun podcast we did on "How Fantasy Sports Explains Survivor"

Here's the link: CLICK ME!

Rob C. - the best player never to win

And One Fraud to Rule Them All...

2011-11-03T12:24:00.000-04:00

Prepare to be amazed? No, I don't reckon I will...

Imagine if you will a reality show competition where, each week, the judges are to eliminate the contestant whose efforts are the least impressive, until only one true champion remains.

Actually, it's not hard to imagine, as these shows are all over the television dial. But what makes The One from Australia an impossible pill to swallow is that none of the contestants actually demonstrate any talent at all in what they're supposed to be talented in.

You see, The One is the search for Australia's Top Psychic, and we're told that the smiling faces in the photo above were chosen for being the best of the best out of hundreds and hundreds of applicants to the program. Now I'm not going to waste time thinking too hard about that last sentence, but how this show actually manages to keep a straight face is beyond me. It's a train wreck!

Through the first three episodes, the contestants have faced some daunting challenges indeed:

They were stranded in a forest setting and given 15 minutes to find the rescue helicopter waiting for them a short distance away. (A few did, but most just wandered in circles until time expired.)

They were sent to an apartment and asked to identify the why/how/where of a murder that had taken place inside some time ago. (Many guessed that it was a lover's tiff, but even the few who correctly hinted at a possible strangulation also threw out stabbing and gunshots as the cause of death.)

They were asked to study four volunteers and diagnose their "medical maladies." (Rather than actually saying, "You've got a fake leg!" or "You're pregnant!" they spoke in vague generalities like, "You've got a scar or something in the lower part of your body...yes?" and "I see something with the stomach area?")

It's akin to if you had turned on the first episode of the new season of Top Chef and watched as six of the ten cooks burned the dish beyond recognition, two placed inedible meals in front of Padma and Tom, and the remaining two served up some toast. There's no way you, as a viewer, would be able to, shall we say, "stomach" such a showing.

I see dead people!

Of course you do... you're in a cemetery!

Which brings us to the judges: Stacey Demarco, a "respected spiritual practitioner" (whatever that means) and skeptic Richard Saunders, who fights in vain to put some sort of rational spin on the events taking place. It's frustrating, because it is clear that both the editors, as well as the host of the show, are keen to dismiss Saunders as the silly one for not believing.

When a psychic misses and Demarco is asked what she thinks went wrong, it's always couched in terms of "nerves" or "doubting her own abilities" and the host nods and agrees that these are difficult tasks indeed. When Saunders is asked the same question and dares to suggest that maybe the reason that the contestant "misread the energy" in the room is that there is no "energy" there, he's met with eye rolls and mocking tones. "What ever will it take to convince you, Richard?"

I invite you to take a look for yourself here, but my psychic prediction? You won't need to "brace yourself for the impossible" as the show suggests you do before watching. You'll simply be shaking your head in disappointment and disbelief.

Time for TAPS?

2011-10-21T12:00:00.003-04:00

I used to love watching the show Ghost Hunters on television. Now, however, I find the program sadly disappointing.

It has nothing to do with my views on the existence (or rather, the non-existence) of ghosts and other paranormal activity -- I discuss that topic more in-depth with DJ Grothe of the James Randi Educational Foundation (J-REF) in my book, which can be found here.

Look, you don't have to believe in the existence of zombies to enjoy The Walking Dead, for example. But what drew me into Ghost Hunters in the first place was primarily two things: 1) the interesting and engaging personalities of the investigators, and 2) the trust in the evidence that they would present.

As to the first part, I always enjoyed the banter between Steve and Tango as they explored dark passageways on a quest to debunk possible hauntings. Steve's fear of heights, spiders, flying, heck - his fear of everything, it seems, except ghosts - was always good for a laugh.

It brought a fun spirit (so to speak) to the whole enterprise.

The series' high point, for me, cames when during a live Halloween special, guest-investigator and ECW wrestler, Elijah Burke, suddenly got freaked out and ran off screaming. It was hilarious, and whether or not you believe ghosts are real - his reaction certainly was authentic, and more importantly -- entertaining beyond belief.

Now, though, Steve and Tango's appearances have become few and far between. The new interchangeable batch of investigators is full of bland and unremarkable non-entities. And with none of them distracting me from the "gathering of evidence" I can see even more clearly the cracks that exist in that department.

When the show first started, the evidence consisted primarily of grainy video and EVPs - recorded audio that when played back seems to have captured spooky, otherworldly responses to questions that were not heard "live" by the investigators.

While there's plenty of room for interpretation of these images and sounds, at least the audience at home can actually see and/or hear them. Sure, the conclusion that there is no other explanation for these things save for the supernatural is not one I'm on board with, but at least I can concede it remains a "possible" explanation, however unlikely.

But over the years, new devices have been brought into the mix -- tools such as the K-II meter (seen below) which TAPS claims will measure variation in the EMF field in a room. They'll ask questions to a ghost they believe to be in a room and when the meter's lights move, they present it as proof that the ghost is responding to them.

Of course, that might hold some water if there was any scientific basis for believing that when a ghost talks (and we'll assume for the sake of argument that ghosts exist at all and that the meter itself does what they say it does) that by so doing, the EMF in a room is somehow affected. But there really is no reason to make any connection between the two things.

It would be like me, sitting in my house, watching my cat raise his paw at random non-specific intervals and to conclude that it must be being caused by the inter-dimensional mice that are trying to manifest themselves into our universe. Correlation is not causation. It's all "woo."

Now add to that an annoyingly loud soundtrack that makes it impossible to ever hear the sounds that the investigators claim they are reacting to, along with the need (for dramatic reasons) to always investigate in pitch darkness, even when the claims by homeowners frequently state they've seen apparitions while eating lunch in full sunlight...

Oh, TAPS. I'm afraid... I'm afraid our time here is done. On to the next one...

Zombies!

2011-10-15T20:53:00.001-04:00

"The Walking Dead" returns for its second season on AMC, and to celebrate, please enjoy this catchy little ditty by Jonathan Coulton.

This One Goes to 11

2011-10-15T00:00:00.000-04:00

What's the key to a lasting marriage?

It's the ability to laugh.

Even through the hard times... especially then.

It's knowing without question that the person with whom you exchanged vows has got your back 100 percent of the time. And of course, you've got theirs as well.

No doubts about that. Ever.

It's that unspoken bond... the conversations you can have across a crowded room, expressed with only a look here and a tilt of the head there.

It's knowing that under no circumstances whatsoever should I place either a Starship or Hall & Oates YouTube video right about now... if I know what's good for me... Quick, save me Stefon!

Yes, mostly, it's the laughter.

And after 11 years with Sara, that's something we still share -- something we actively seek out, even when we've had a day that make us want to scream.

And that's why I still love her... and always will.

Happy Anniversary!

This Show Sucks

2011-10-13T09:36:00.003-04:00

Lighten up, Morgan!

I usually enjoy competition-style reality shows that are based on creating some sort of tangible product. Even though eliminations are based on judging which is totally subjective, usually the panels do a good job of explaining the rationale behind the decision on who gets the ax in a given week...

On Project Runway, for example, clothes can be deemed to be constructed poorly or they don't fit the model properly, and I can understand and see that. On Top Chef, while I can't taste the food for myself, when a judge spits out the entree into a napkin, one can easily see the writing on the wall for that soon-to-be saying sayonara contestant.

Which brings me to Work of Art, which debuted last night, and featured a contestant that the show has no problem referring to as "The Sucklord" (real name Morgan, pictured above). It fails on so many levels... first, it tries way too hard to copy the Bravo mold of: model host/eccentric mentor/stern, hard-to-please judges. However, Simon de Pury (below with China "Not Heidi" Chow) is no Tim Gunn and has such a thick accent, he's often impossible to understand.

"Veldt, we cat some find heart, donuts China?"

A typical exchange with an artist goes something like this:

Simon: "Well, I don't know what you are doing here, but I am sure it can be something fabulous if you do it, you know?"

Contestant: "Um...."

Simon: "Go for it and be sure to be bowler or the juice willow son horn! Yes?"

Contestant: "Um...."

The actual creative process is interesting to watch as we see the artists struggle to interpret the particular instructions of the challenge... but in the end, it is the pompous judging panel that ruins the program.

The assignment this week was to take a shlocky piece of art of the "velvet Elvis" variety and transform it into something of "quality." So they praise one contestant for taking a sculpture of a blindfolded woman and painting a picture of it -- "Changing the medium was so clever!" and she is in the top three. Then they scold The Sucklord for taking a painting of Gandalf and making a sculpture based on it -- "You didn't change anything!"

What?

Ugo? You go.

I get that it is a matter of opinion, but when I watch other shows, I marvel at how the contestants can do something I cannot (make a glamorous dress, cook a five-star meal) and in such little time.

When someone has eight hours to work on a challenge, and does little more than crumpling up a piece of paper, splattering a little paint on it, throwing it on the floor and calling it a day? I can do that. And when that contestant ends up in the top three for their "work" while the esteemed panel eliminates a guy for doing an intricate work that reminded them of Keith Haring (you know, an actual artist)...

Sorry Bravo. I won't be hanging around your gallery.

In My Prime?

2011-10-05T09:25:00.005-04:00

At least I'm in better shape than this poor lady...

Please, no gifts...

Today I turn 41.

That's not the answer to life, the universe or anything.

It's not a nice milestone birthday like "the big four-oh."

It simply is what it is...

It was the number of the last symphony composed by Mozart.

It's the age Nate Dogg was when he died. And I haven't laid any busters down or let my gat explode in many a year.

I share a birthday with Kate Winslet, Mario Lemieux, and the actor who played the guy who invented Facebook, among others.

One of those others is Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, who was kind enough to be interviewed for my book.

Ah yes, the book... after all that time spent obsessing over every single word in the writing process, now I obsessively track the Amazon rankings, my mood rising and falling in step with that number... today, it's down, and hence, so am I -- at least a little bit...

I also have a wonderful wife and an amazing little boy in my corner each and every day. I have a job that I love doing, and that I know many people dream of having. Allergies aside, I am in reasonably good health. I am extremely lucky... I get it.

So this is a happy 41st birthday after all.

But, if you really want to know what would make me happy... have I got a book for you...

Total Eclipse of the Plot

2011-09-30T09:33:00.000-04:00

So when we last left our saga atthe end of New Moon, Edward (our pasty-whitehero) has agreed to acquiesce to Bella's request to be turned into a vampire --but only if she agrees to marry him. And if she doesn't get a little more fangyand a little less heart-beaty soon, the Volturi (La Policia Nosferatu Italiano)will come and kill Bella, Edward, and the entire Cullen clan.

So, Bella hems and haws and readspoetry to her immortal beloved, invoking all the foreshadowing fairies inthe universe to hang over her while she laments that marrying young doesn't meanthat a couple is in love, but rather that they "got knocked up."

And besides, it wouldbe a buzzkill before graduation.

She is also so grounded by herDad for her having disappeared to Italy for three days at the end of the lastfilm. (Some parents just don't get it!) But he agrees to let her out of her room to visit Jacob andthe rest of the Werewolf family.

However, it's really a trap! They sit Bella down and show her a "The More You Know" PSA, trying to convince her that vampires areevil -- a short film about how centuries ago, one of the undead monsters almost killedtheir entire tribe. Fortunately, they were saved when a brave woman -- referred to only as "the Chief's third wife" -- stabbed herself, distracting the vampire with the scent of her blood long enoughfor the Chief to defeat her.

See, Bella? Werewolves are muchbetter than vampires, and this heroic woman is still celebrated today on"Chief's Third Wife Day" -- her name lives on, whatever it was! Comelive with us and join our forward-thinking group. Misogyny much?

Then Jacobkisses Bella, despite her protests, and she breaks his nose.

Meanwhile, Fergie, the lastBlack-Eyed Peas Vampire standing, is in Seattle. Apparently, the Grunge scene,dead since 1994, is a great place to sire a "newborn army" sincethose newbies are super-strong and easily manipulated into attacking the Cullenclan on her secret say-so.

The Volturi stand around, just watching the whole situation,looking rather poncy and goth, as they do, because you know -- carnage, fun!

Anyway, even the werewolves realize that an army of theundead will likely send property values spiraling downward, so they agree to takepart in an 80's training montage with the Cullens and set aside past disputesin order to keep Bella alive.

To mask Bella's scent, Jacob carries her away to a frigidmountaintop and snuggles shirtless with her in order to boost tween fangirlticket sales. Then he finds out she's accepted Edward's proposal and freaks out.She kisses him in order to shut him up, and to try and keep this lame"romantic triangle" storyline from completely flatlining. He goes offto join the fight in warmer climes.

Eventually, Fergie and her new main man Riley figure outwhere Bella is stashed, and arrive to finish her off. Edward and Bella try and convinceRiley she's just using him. And Fergie's all like, "I make them boys gocrazy. Can't no other lady put it down like me. Honey, get some patience, thenyou'll get a taste."

Then Bella goes all Chief's Third Wife and the scene playsout as expected.

There's an awkward scene with the Volturi as they won'tadmit that they knew what was what the whole time, and the Cullen's pretend theyweren't all chummy with the furry next-door neighbors. And to prevent anyfurther unpleasantness, they give the Volturi invites to the wedding -- please,no gifts necessary.

That's about it… can't believe there's still two more ofthese films to go. Maybe they'll get LMFAO into the mix now that the Peas areall dead? Until then… everybody just have a good time.

Chapter and Verse

2011-09-22T11:20:00.001-04:00

I just realized I've never posted a complete chapter listing for my book... and so I shall recitfy that in this post.

Hopefully, at least a few of these tantalizing titles will tickle your fancy... if so, you can get the book at Amazon.com, on Kindle, or for the Nook - and at a bookstore near you...

1 - Christmas Eve with the Iversons - An account of my unfortunate first-hand experience trying to figure out "The Answer" at an Atlantic City casino.

2 - WWJD: Who Would Jesus Draft? - An interview with Catholic Answers' Jimmy Akin explores what kind of fantasy commissioner the Bible's first-round draft pick would have made.

3 - Alone on an Island - Jury consultant Marshall Hennington helps me understand why people simply can't change their minds about how they feel about certain players.

4 - Sylvia Browne Told Me to Bench A-Rod - Noted skeptic DJ Grothe joins me for a discussion on why fantasy experts are given far less leeway than psychic charlatans.

5 - Wall Street and Huston Street: Is There a Magic Formula? - Financial genius Paul Wilmott ponders whether or not the performance of athletes can ever be boiled down to a simple mathematical formula.

6 - Matt Millen, Bring Me Your Torch - We take a look at art of the deal, and what Survivor's Yau-Man Chan learned from his attempts to bargain for a million dollar prize.

7 - Shall I Compare Thee to Tom Brady? - In which the Reduced Shakespeare Company doth offer pithy insight into what maketh a game a game and a sport a sport. Yea, verily.

8 - Looking for Kevin Love in All the Wrong Places - We all irrationally covet certain players, much to our fantasy team's detriment. Hear what Steve Ward of VH1's Tough Love thinks we can do to fix that.

9 - Why the Founding Fathers Would Have Hated Bill Belichick - When politics rears its ugly head and people try to game the system, fantasy sports league work about as efficiently as Congress.

10 - Smarter than Stephen Hawking - Don't think you understand quantum physics or time travel? I'll bet you really do - and I prove my theory to astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

11 - The Dark Side of Fantasy - Darth Vader probably never won his fantasy football league, and it has nothing to do with his penchant for early drafting of kickers. Alec Sulkin, Family Guy writer, muses intergalactic.

12 - The Thrill of Vicarious Victory - With an emphasis on "fantasy", we talk to writer Jane Espenson (Buffy) about why people need these escapes, and then talk to Damien Echols, while he was still unable to escape from Death Row.

How Fantasy Sports Explains - Hurricane Irene

2011-09-12T11:04:00.005-04:00

When Hurricane Irene was heading for New Jersey, where I currently live, it wreaked a lot of havoc on my fantasy football draft, which was very odd since the storm wasn't due to hit until sometime Saturday afternoon, and my draft was scheduled for Friday night.

Part of the problem was that two of the owners in my league were vacationing in Ocean City, New Jersey and were told that there was a mandatory evacuation on Friday afternoon, and they had to pack up all their stuff and leave town, pronto. They ended up coming over to my house, ended up spending the night, and then headed out first thing in the morning so that they could get home to Connecticut in plenty of time to enjoy a power outage for over a week.

Meanwhile, we got very lucky and although we lost one tree in the front yard, there was no significant damage, and in fact, we didn't even lose power. In fact, much of the area that was evacuated in South Jersey, because of the fact that the storm had weakened significantly by the time it arrived, ended up being just fine.

What boggled my mind, though, as I watched the local television coverage as Irene slowly marched across the state of New Jersey, was how unwilling the anchors and meteorologists were to admit that the storm was not in fact going to be the end of life as we knew it, which is how it felt like it was being sold to the public by Governor Christie in an attempt to get people to evacuate in the first place.

This footage - pretty much at the worst of Irene - was typical of how things were that night... certainly bad, but not nearly as severe as the "if you stay, you will die" tone before the storm arrived.

View more videos at: http://nbcphiladelphia.com.

One reporter for this station had been on the Atlantic City beach all afternoon, and each time the anchors threw to him, they'd say something like, "If you haven't evacuated yet, you need to do so... it is not safe to be in Atlantic City. Now, let's go to our reporter in Atlantic City...you look wet, Justin." And Justin would laugh and say he was and point to the one garbage can that had blown over as proof that the storm was going to be a killer.

The fact is that we simply can't predict the path of a hurricane with complete accuracy anymore than we can predict how many yards a certain running back will gain when he takes the field this week. While we can get a general sense of the possible outcomes and potential paths that massive storms will travel, it's still only a guess -- just as we may have a sense that Steven Jackson is more likely to gain 100 yards than Ben Tate in any given week. But when Jackson gets hurt after two carries in Week 1, and Tate ends up as Houston's only healthy back halfway through his game, strange things can happen.

Tate having 116 yards on the ground and Jackson only 56 was certainly not an expected outcome, but after having happened, it still wasn't an outcome completely out of whack with what someone might have predicted, albeit at the extremes.

So, while I am certainly not upset with the decision to evacuate coastal towns where the flooding could have been deadly -- because it certainly could have been that bad -- at some point, it would have been nice for the news to stop being fear-mongers and simply admit that the storm (thankfully) was simply not going to be as bad as it legitimately could have been -- just as at some point, although that point is not after just one week of play -- those who nay-sayed the fantasy value of players like Cam Newton should be willing to eat crow, provided he continues to excel.

I'll close with a video of a bit by Lewis Black, who correctly asserts that Al Roker and his ilk are often wrong -- by enormous proportions. I first saw him do a version of this bit in person in the early 90's, and at the time, he was talking about how if you predict 7 inches of snow and there's 14 inches of snow, nobody gets too upset because at least there was a "shitload of snow" but if you miss by the same amount in the other direction, and it doesn't snow, then there's going to be hell to pay.

Jokes.com

Lewis Black - The Weather

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Lewis Black

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He closed the routine (when I saw it) by suggesting that if Roker wanted to impress him, he should predict something interesting -- like actual shitballs falling from the sky! "Get that right and maybe I'll listen to you from now on, but until then, no, I shan't be sure to bring my umbrella on this day."

My experience tells me though, that even if that was Roker's forecast, and it actually took place, a large majority of people would treat such an occurrence just like Cam Newton's Week 1, shrug it off and say,"He got lucky. Let's see him do it again."

And so it goes...

Ten Years

2011-09-09T09:32:00.001-04:00

I originally wrote this in 2006… but given the approaching anniversary, I have updated these words slightly and decided to share them again with you today…

I was not feeling well that morning.

I couldn't quite figure out what was wrong with me, but whatever it was, I decided to call my doctor and see if she could fit me in. Unfortunately, the office was not yet open, and I decided to head into work anyway, and called the office to let them know I might be a few minutes late. I ran out of my apartment and headed for the subway.

Looking at my watch, it was 9:00 on the dot. I was going to be late, but not by too much. I was only two blocks away. The thing about living in New York is that people are always on their cellphones and talking loudly, and nobody really pays too much attention to the people around them, especially when you're in a hurry.

Still, I couldn't help but notice that EVERYONE was on a cellphone and all were looking in the same direction, and pointing, and standing still. I turned around to see what all the commotion was about and saw a large plume of dark smoke pouring out from a ways behind Chase Manhattan Plaza. From where I was standing, only the South Tower was visible, and I merely assumed there was a large fire in a building somewhere. So, I kept walking and reached the corner of Pine Street and ordered my usual morning bagel and coffee from the street vendor.

That's when the world changed for me.

It was 9:03.

First came the sound.

Take a piece of paper and tear it in half. Now magnify that sound by about one hundred thousand and have it increase in volume as it comes closer and closer to you.

My arm fully extended, my hand still held one end of the dollar bill. The vendor held the other end of the bill, as our heads turned in unison and watched the plane fly into the building. The explosion. The bits of paper falling from the sky. I remember standing there for a minute or two trying to wrap my head around what I had just witnessed. And then I walked towards the water, following a little voice in my head that told me that the building was going to fall.

Cellphones were now useless, and I could not get through to my wife, who was working in what was now the tallest building in the area that wasn't already on fire. I circled back towards the subway station and heard President Bush on a car radio saying the country had suffered an "apparent terrorist attack". It was 9:30, although I could have sworn only a few minutes had passed.

The conductor came up out of the subway station to the street and screamed, "Last train to Brooklyn" and I instinctively got on. Standing on that particular street corner was not going to be a safe place to be.

I got home in time to watch the first tower collapse on TV. That video of the giant cloud of smoke and debris surging around the corner of a building… my wife's building… time stood still.

The rest of the day, the week, is a blur. We had to leave the city for a time because the smoke from what was now called Ground Zero was constantly seeping in under our apartment door. Even when we returned to our jobs weeks later, the air was thick with the acrid smell and the twisted charred metal served as a constant reminder of the tragedy.

We were not sleeping. We needed to leave. We put a bid in on a house in South Jersey in December and moved away at the end of February.

These were the lemons we were dealt.

Ten years have passed. But it feels an awful lot closer. Had it not been for that day, though, my wife and I would probably still be in New York, and most likely would have decided not to raise a child in that environment.

As my son boarded the bus this morning for his third day of first grade, he stopped for a moment and turned to give me a hug, just because. I can truly say, he is the sweetest lemonade there could ever be.

Hug your kids. Call your parents. Take a moment to reflect. Then make yourself some lemonade.

"A man builds a city with banks and cathedrals. A man melts the sand so he can see the world outside. A man makes a car and builds roads to run them on. A man dreams of leaving, but he always stays behind."

Dedicated to the memory of Craig Staub and Gopal Varadhan, two of the many who died that day.

How Fantasy Sports Explains - The West Memphis Free

2011-08-24T12:15:00.002-04:00

When I was growing up in New York, I was a Rangers fan, which was a very difficult inheritance that my father had bestowed upon me. Going to school surrounded by seemingly countless Islanders fans, all reveling in the glory of Bossy and Trottier and He Who Shall Not Be Named (except at the appropriate moment when the rhythmic whistling rains down from the blue seats) as they won Stanley Cup after Stanley Cup after Stanley Cup.

Every year, the playoffs ended in yet another disappointment. Some years, we'd come close to ending the "1940" catcalls once and for all, but most years -- and usually at the hands of the Washington Capitals of all teams -- all we got for our fandom was a swift kick in the nether regions. A championship remained ever out of our reach. We'd have to settle for Ron Duguay's jeans commercial.

Then came Mark Messier. The guarantee. Stephane Matteau and the call by Howie Rose.

And finally... victory! Celebration! Ticker tape parades! And then... well, now what?

Once the afterglow had faded, here was a huge void that was suddenly present. I'm reminded of a line from a song in the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "The battle's done, and we (kind of) won, so we sound our victory cheer. Where do we go from here?"

The next season there was lockout, and when things finally got going, the Rangers barely squeaked into the playoffs, and were swept by the Flyers, and I happily gave them a mulligan. The same thing happened the next year when they lost to the Penguins in 5. Because the thrill of that Stanley Cup victory had been so long in coming and so intense... the "void" that had been filled by that euphoria no longer needed attention.

By 1997, the team wasn't even making the playoffs anymore, and I'd already lost interest. I'd moved on... The story was told. The book put back on the shelf. Nothing more to see here, move it along.

I think Red Sox fans might have some inkling of what I am talking about here... after all those years of coming so close to a World Series title and just missing out... and then finally the 3-0 comeback against the hated Yankees and that euphoria of finally reaching the top of the mountain. Of course, Boston has been a winning team ever since, so the investment is still paying off and I expect fewer fans have moved on to other pursuits... but I wonder if Cubs fans aren't headed for a similar fate -- should they ever win, that is.

All of which brings me back to the West Memphis 3, and the decade-long efforts of some of their supporters to get them released from prison. In some ways, the Alford Plea might be a good thing for them, since there's still a goal to be reached here -- namely, the clearing of their names.

After all this time of hoping for a victory, once the dust settles and Eddie Vedder has moved on. and the supporters have moved on, and the world has moved on -- Damien, Jessie and Jason may well be left sitting there saying, "Now what?" There's never been any other goal than their freedom. That consumed every waking moment, and likely the sleeping ones, too...

I'm glad Damien is a Red Sox fan. He's still not seen a World Series victory with his own eyes... so let another quest begin. There are still mountains to climb... time to take those first steps.

Hope Pays Off

2011-08-19T15:57:00.001-04:00

When I was writing my book, I asked Damien Echols if people who were supporting him from afar should feel a sense of victory if he ever were to get released. He told me that they absolutely should because they would have directly participated in the effort, even if all they did was buy a T-shirt or put a bumper sticker on their car.

Today, I celebrate his freedom after all these years.

Congrats to Damien and his wife, Lorri, to Jason and Jessie and to everyone else who hoped this day would happen.

Victory is ours to share!

While still incarcerated, Damien Echols (right) kindly contributed to my first book.

How Fantasy Sports Explains the World

2011-08-15T09:29:00.000-04:00

With the book "officially" coming out on Wednesday, you should be able to find it in your local bookstore -- assuming your town, unlike mine, still has a local bookstore.

I'd like to thank those of you who have already purchased a copy, and those who are still not caving into the peer pressure... you can join the cool kids by buying the book here.

Please do continue to spread the word, and if you have any comments about the book, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I've obviously put this blog on the back burner for the time being, in order to focus on promoting "How Fantasy Sports Explains the World" so I appreciate your patience. But I'll be back with a vengeance after this week's big media blitz, and as the reviews trickle in, I'll post some of them here.

Thanks again,

It's Official... I'm a Published Author

2011-08-01T08:36:00.002-04:00

We talking published? Published?

With the words "In Stock" glowing proudly on Amazon.com, the long journey finally enters the next stage. If you've enjoyed this blog or my writing at ESPN.com, then you'll enjoy "How Fantasy Sports Explains the World" - available now!

An excerpt appears on ESPN's Page 2 here!

ROS? More Like SOS.

2011-07-27T14:15:00.002-04:00

I've been filling in for my colleague Tristan H. Cockcroft this week on some of his baseball columns as he takes a well-earned week off to rest up for the upcoming -- and indeed we now know it IS upcoming -- NFL season.

Part of the purpose of these columns (like this one) is to provide a list in which we predict a ranked order of players based on "their expected performance from this point forward, not for statistics that have already been accrued."

Everything's up in the air...

There's an inherent problem with stepping in for someone else in this task. For one, I had no part in shaping last week's list, and as such, I may or may not agree with it as a starting point. So when, in the article, I write about how I think Player X is due for a decline, it may not appear consistent with the fact that I end up raising this same Player X in the rankings by a few spots.

But, in fact, the two can be completely consistent... if you consider that last week I may have simply had Player X ranked much higher than I did this week, yet even after docking him several spots in my rankings, I may still have him higher than where Tristan did last week.

That's a difficult concept to express, and I'm not even sure I completely accomplished the goal of doing so here, so I get why people may call out the rankings as not being logically consistent with some of my points... and yet, I assure you, they are.

Wait? What?

But here's the even more confusing thing about these rest-of-season (ROS) predictions... Let's say that last week you agreed with the list that Player Y should be ranked 50th for the ROS. Now this week, after he hits .750 with five homers and 11 RBIs, where do you think he should be ranked?

Counter-intuitively, if we were indeed right last week, and Player Y had a great week, then in the new ROS ranks, he should actually drop in the rankings, shouldn't he? Otherwise, we were wrong last week and had him ranked too low. (So if you didn't complain then, you shouldn't have an issue with a lower rank now. And yet...)

Regardless of the mathematical truth of the situation, however, once you make a list, people are going to disagree with it. That's the nature of the beast and part of what makes fantasy sports so much fun to play.

So feel free to offer up your own opinions of who is going to be better than who, and where you think we've gone off the deep end. All I ask is that you try and make sure you're complaining for the right reasons.

Let's Compromise

2011-07-15T12:51:00.005-04:00

I think I've finally figured out how to settle this whole AL-NL rules divide so that we can have six even divisions of five teams apiece, and all playing under the same set of rules. Here it is: the DPH.

Let him play!

Simply put, one of the biggest hurdles to unifying the leagues into one big, happy family is the fact that guys like Vlad Guerrero, Hideki Matsui, and David Ortiz can't play the field anymore, and if the DH is abolished, then whither these veteran sluggers?

Add to that the fact that National League owners and fans don't want to lose the "strategy options" that having the pitcher hit provides.

So here's my idea: the DH is abolished and the pitcher bats ninth in all major league games -- excepting, of course, when Tony LaRussa does his pitcher-bats-eighth schtick. As is the case now, whenever the manager wants, he can pinch-hit for the pitcher and once this happens, the pitcher is out of the game.

As long as I can still find a way to use this rule in a zany way...

Here's the difference: the next time the pitcher's spot comes into play the manager can once again use this same pinch-hitter (henceforth known as the DPH) to bat for the current reliever, which also forces him to remove the pitcher from the game. If he wants the pitcher to stay in the game, he has to let him bat, which will officially remove the DPH from being eligible to hit again in the contest (but he is then free to pinch-hit for future pitcher at-bats as he would any other position, in the current NL-style of play.)

I think this is a perfect compromise solution... it keeps an element of strategy in play, but also enables a "big bat/no glove" guy to get multiple at-bats in a ballgame. Comments welcome...

Worse than the World Cup

2011-07-13T10:04:00.000-04:00

When an English team came calling on San Jose in a "friendly" who knew we'd see once of the lamest goaltending efforts in the history of the sport... Robert Green, you are off the hook.

Oh, Lord Won't You Buy Me Some Brains?

2011-07-11T08:47:00.005-04:00

Keith and Porsche (Yes, spelled like the car. Sigh.)

So, now that Big Brother 13 is in full swing, I'm going to once again lament the choice by the "powers that be" to try and stir the pot with gimmicks.

By bringing back 6 former contestants into the house to join 8 newbies, once one of the returnees won the HOH comeptition (in this case Rachel) the battle lines were clearly going to be drawn along those lines (as anyone with half a brain could have predicted.)

Now, by itself, the concept of forcing the houseguests to play as pairs for the first few weeks would have been sufficient to generate conflict and to be the catalyst for alliances to form... and the fact that a secret alliance (nicknamed The Regulators) was indeed forged by one member of each of the four "new pairs" was a welcome surprise. For once, the casting department managed to find at least a few people who understand basic strategical concepts. Who knew they had it in them?

Unfortunately, the "pairs" conceit won't work when coupled with the returning duos because the forced pairings have no inherent loyalty to one another, whereas two engaged couples and a loyal father/daughter (at least when they are in the house) will never betray the other. The Regulators, in a house full of first-time cast members would be a force to be reckoned with... but in this format, they are all but guaranteed to remain outnumbered -- and that's before the alumni start to woo people to their side.

What did you expect? My name is EVEL!

As Evel Dick so brilliantly schemed out, what the"Alumni" have to do is to recruit one loyal noob (and eventual sacrificial lamb) to their team and they'll have the numbers advantage throughout the rest of the game. And Porsche walked right into his trap, somehow thinking that she was a genius for being smart enough to make such a bold move.

Perhaps I would applaud her if not for the existence of the third wrinkle set in motion by the "powers that be" -- that pairs must be nominated together, and whoever of the two is not eliminated gets a free pass to the final ten. So, when Porsche immediately runs to her partner, Keith, and pretty much tells him that she's now in cahoots with Evel Dick, and isn't that great news... all she's really doing is giving him a heads up that he needs to start campaigning against her, because she's already going to have the Alumni voting to keep her and not Keith.

Stupid!

Further, she honestly was stunned when she and Keith were ultimately nominated for eviction, and feels totally betrayed.

Double stupid!

She's not even clever enough to realize that the nomination is being made in order to get her that "golden key" and a trip to the top ten and therefore, is not a betrayal, but rather a sign that Evel Dick (and by extension, the entire Alumni, through HOH Rachel) is living up to his promise.

Oh, ironic product placement, I think I love you!

Of course, because of certain major spoiler info that leaked -- another problem of trying to maintain secrecy and creating dramatic tension for the network broadcasts while Live Feeds of the ongoing competition are readily available to those who wish to see them -- much of what I've written above is about to be rendered somewhat moot.

I'll not spoil it here myself, but it's just another example of the "unexpected" destroying much of what the "powers that be" tried to force-feed into the Big Brother game, when, had they simply gone with 14 new contestants... Well, things would be a lot less confusing in the next episode...

Stay tuned!

All Apologies to Chubby Checker

2011-07-07T10:41:00.002-04:00

Tonight is the premiere of the 13th season of Big Brother, a show with which I have a very strong love/hate relationship.

Of all the reality shows out there, it's the most "pure" in terms of generating a winner. There are no judges to impress and, in theory, the viewing audience does not have a say in who ends up winning the whole shebang. The only people who determine who wins each season's top prize are the contestants themselves.

Now, you could say the same thing about Survivor, but the reason I prefer Big Brother's game engine is because the structure of the show provides far more strategy than does Tribal Council. A competition yields a Head of Household who nominates two people for eviction. A second competition gives one contestant a chance to veto one of the nominations before the secret ballot.

In other words, there are chances for "dead-in-the-water" houseguests to save themselves, along with the potential to use decoy nominations to throw people off the scent of any secret alliances.

Unfortunately, CBS does not know how to leave well enough alone, and that's where I get annoyed...

Left alone, the show will generate its own drama and intrigue, simply because the format of the show is built to do so. However, each year, CBS feels the need to inject some element of unpredictability -- a "shocking twist" -- in order to put a so-called stamp of originality on the upcoming season. In doing so, though, the game engine itself is often artificially altered just enough to ruin the competition.

Past seasons have seen contestants "blindsided" by the inclusion of: secret partners working together, identical twins swapping in and out of the house to see if anyone caught on, former romantic partners being inserted into the cast, one player who America would tell what to do and how to vote each week, and last season's incredibly ill-conceived concept of a saboteur.

The "saboteur" was not in the house to try and win, but merely to be a nuisance to the rest of the housemates. If the saboteur lasted a certain number of weeks, they would win a cash prize, and then, presumably, be removed from the game. The houseguests immediately tried to vote out the person they thought was the sabotuer -- a stupid move in and of itself, since keeping the sabotuer would actually help their chances of winning -- but somehow, by sheer chance, they got it on the first try.

The season's "big twist" was rendered moot in Week 1, and CBS had egg on their face, and scrambled quickly to try and come up with a Plan B. Of course, no such second option was needed, because with the lame concept gone, the season actually proved to be one of the more interesting in the show's history. Why? Because the game engine was left to run on its own merits and worked perfectly.

So now, this season, what have the brilliant minds of CBS done? They've promised the Craziest Twists Ever! Yep, they're going to have 8 new contestants in the house along with returning "pairs of previous houseguests." That will either create an artificial 8-6 split in the vote right off the bat (if the newbies all bond together) or more likely, if the newbies aren't that savvy, a 6-vote bloc of returnees who will likely control the game from the outset, blindsiding the rookies who don't realize the power of working together.

Live together, or die alone.

Of course, knowing the producers, they're probably going to "shock us" at some point during the debut by announcing that there will in fact be "teams of two" and pair up six of the newbies with a returning player and everyone will say that they never saw this coming -- meaning of course that we'll really have 3 teams of 4 all vying for the love of the lone pair of newbies, who will likely be given some sort of "joint HOH" status for the first week.

Just leave it alone, guys... you're not helping! And so help me if I'm right, because it means we're headed for a looooooong summer.

Watch What Happens - Again and Again

2011-06-28T09:25:00.005-04:00

Crazy Countess Luann (left) and not-Niclole Kidman, a.k.a. Alex

Reality television comes in several distinct flavors...

One family of shows is the competition, which can be either audience-vote driven (American Idol, Dancing with the Stars) or a self-contained elimination show (Survivor, Top Chef). Personally, I much prefer the latter, when done well.

However, the other family of shows is, sadly, far more prevalent. That's the "faux-documentary" cameras which follow the "stars" of the show 24/7 and showcase their "real lives."

I use the adjective "faux" because on most of these shows, "real" is a very loose term. I don't dispute that these shows aren't scripted, but there's a big difference between sticking the cameras in a room to record what actually happens and sending your entire cast off to a luxury resort, getting them liquored up and then instructing them to discuss hot button issues.

But here's what's different with the Real Housewives of New York. Yes, they do all of the same things that other programs of this ilk do. This season, for example, they shipped all the titular ladies off to Morocco for a three-episode adventure. And yes, the conversation seems very contrived... "Luann, I need to talk to you about what happened between us right before we left..." Cue convenient clip to refresh our memories of the prior confrontation.

Location: Morocco. The argument? About a year-old incident in the Caribbean. So been there.

Yet, there's no mistaking the reality of these conversations... because they go nowhere. A typical argument goes like this:

"You said A, B and C."

"No, actually, I said D, then YOU said A and C, but then she said B."

"That's not how I remember it... and frankly, I was very upset that you said B and C."

"But I never said C. YOU said C."

And so on, until finally both combatants either agree to disagree, bury the hatchet and move on -- or one storms off, vowing that the friendship is irreparably damaged.

Because we each remember our experiences from our own perspective, this sort of thing happens in real life all the time. It's very "real" - but ultimately tedious.

We, the viewers have been shown the actual footage and therefore, we know with a high level of certainty as to who is in the right and who is in the wrong in these fights. Sure, in the heat of the moment, it's fascinating to see just how different each woman's view of the world may be (in some cases, the level of delusion is incredible -- and strangely compelling), but the failing of the show is that they rehash these same arguments over and over and over again, each time replaying the same incriminating sound bites "proving" to the audience who is the "villain" to be scorned.

How dare you call me a drunk! And where is the waiter with more Pinot Grigio?

The story doesn't advance... and that's when inertia starts to set in and the remote control works its magic.

So, while I give props to this set of Real Housewives for trying to keep it real, where they succeed in doing so somehow (perhaps illogically) also ends up being the reason the show ultimately falls flat.

Platinum Miss

2011-06-14T10:00:00.004-04:00

"People living their lives for you on TV...They say they're better than you and you agree"

If you don't recognize those words, allow me to refresh your memory. That's the opening lyric from Who Will Save Your Soul? a huge hit from Jewel, the host of Bravo's god-awful new reality series, Platinum Hit.

Basically, the show is Top Chef, but instead of cooking meals, the contestants have to write songs. Here's the problem: on Top Chef I can't taste the food that the chefs prepare, so I have to take the judges at their word when they say, "This tastes great, but that tastes like crap." And Padma and Tom usually can put into words exactly what they find wrong with the dishes they hate. We accept their expertise and the cheftestants do as well, even if they disagree.

On Platinum Hit, I can hear the songs they sing, so I am more than able to form my own opinion as to who should win each challenge and who should be eliminated. As a result, the judges need to be incredibly clear with their criticism in order for me to see things their way, and it is here where Jewel and Kara DioGuardi completely drop the ball.

Your lyrics need to be special, like "You're lifting me up. My bra, My bra, My bra."

Last night, which will be the last time I watch the show, they tasked the songwriters to write a catchy "road trip" song. Each contestant crafted a chorus and Jewel and Kara picked their top three. The contestants were then split into three teams to fine-tune and finish those "winners."

After the writing was all sung and done, we got to hear the end product: one uptempo "road trip" ditty and two angst-ridden dirges. So naturally, the one group that actually did what they were asked to do was deemed the loser by Jewel and Kara.

Then they reamed out the contestant who had written the hook they already said they liked because apparently, they liked it so much the rest of the song sucked by comparison -- and therefore, she's in danger of being eliminated while the girl who contributed one lyric to the song and the guy who played a little guitar at the beginning of the song were both safe.

It made so little sense that the contestant herself started crying and screamed, "This makes no sense!" And I have to agree... Jewel and Kara's logic is erratic at best. You can't handpick three songs that you think are the best, team these "winners" with lesser talents (by your own evaluation) and then threaten to eliminate the winners because their inferior cohorts (by your own evaluation) dragged them down to their level.

But then again, I have only myself to blame. After all, I should have bailed after the premiere episode when Jewel and Kara both ripped into a lyricist for singing, "They say you won't make it."

"Who are they? You never use they in a song! The audience will think you're talking about them! You've just alienated your entire audience!"

Once again, I bring your attention to the lyric at the top of this post. Channel changed. The defense rests...

District 9, Enjoyment 6

2011-06-13T10:32:00.002-04:00

No, I would not like to read any pamphlets.

District 9 was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, which is quite the achievement for a foreign-made science-fiction film about bug-like aliens who are essentially forced to live in a South African interment camp after their spaceship runs out fuel in orbit over Johannesburg.

There are so many things that work in this film, most notably the special effects which are so seamless, you easily forget that these creatures aren't actually living, breathing entities. Unfortunately, even though I was able to fully immerse myself into the movie, eventually, it collapses under its own weight, and by the final act of the film, whatever interesting social commentary had been present in the first half of the film (the "aliens" are more "human" than can be seen via the lack of humanity shown by humans to each other) disappears and you're left trying to figure out when Michael Bay took over the director's chair and when Shia LaBeouf is going to jump out and join the explosion-fest.

How do you say "Optimus" in Swahili?

Not only was the film's final act "transformation" unfulfilling, but the whole concept of the movie was that we were watching a documentary about what happened to main character Wikus. Interviews done after-the-fact and found footage are weaved artfully together to get us up to speed on how the aliens arrived and what they are doing on earth. The film does such a good job in this regard that it didn't even occur to me to question the fact that every alien understood English and every human understood Bug-arian, when in practice, that wouldn't make any sense.

After a time, though, you realize much of Wikus' journey would never have been captured on film, and while it is a testimony to Neill Blomkamp's direction that the story doesn't screech to a halt due to this erratic inconsistency in the point of view of the storytelling, it still counts in the "imperfection department" as a strike against the movie.

There were plenty of things to like about District 9. The achievement in special effects is to be praised. The overall concept was sublime. But in the end, it just didn't hold up to all the critical acclaim. An "A" for effort, but at best, a "B-minus" in terms of delivery.

Drag Me to War (Spoilers Within)

2011-06-06T10:32:00.002-04:00

Bad things happen in dark cellars...

I just caught up on two movies that had been sitting in my DVR, just begging to be watched. The first was Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell, and the second was Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. While I was hoping to enjoy both movies, I had no idea that I'd be viewing perfectly complimentary works of art.

With Raimi's work, you know it's going to be campy horror -- more "startles" than actual scares and a fair share of Rube Goldberg-styled cartoonish violence in lieu of the current glut of torture and sadism. In contrast, with Tarantino, you know you're going to get long scenes of witty dialogue and philosophical debate, punctuated by bursts of horrific gore.

The two styles could not be more distinct, and yet, like two sides of the same coin, they somehow come to the same conclusion on morality.

In Drag Me to Hell, Christine Brown wants a promotion at her job. She is disgusted at the way her primary competitor for the position behaves in his attempts to curry favor with her boss, and refuses to stoop to his level. She's far too decent a person to sell her soul to the bank just for a few extra dollars in her paycheck... and believes her decency and hard work will win out...

However, when an old gypsy woman comes in begging for yet another extension on her delinquent mortgage, Christine asks her boss what she should do. He says it's up to her to decide, and she takes that to mean she needs to reject the old woman's request. For her efforts, the gypsy puts a curse on her that will ultimately end up with her being dragged to hell by demons.

Of course, the boss never actually said she had to reject the woman's request... Christine took it upon herself to make that call. Throughout the rest of the film, with her only goal now being to act in selfish self-preservation, she will agree to sacrifice animals, desecrate graves and even consider murdering completely innocent strangers, all in an effort to "atone" for her initial act of greed.

By the end of the film, Christine only admits her wrongdoing when she believes herself to be free of the curse and in possession of the promotion, and therefore no longer subject to any repercussions. She has transformed from an innocent farm girl into someone deserving of all that evil that came her way during the movie.

The message is clear: do the right thing and show compassion to others or else you'll get what's coming to you.

Now, let's look at Inglourious Basterds. This movie does not take place in everyday society, but rather in a time of war. The rules are different here... in order to survive, you cannot show compassion. Any act of kindness or concern for the welfare of others will result in death.

Shoshanna (Tarantino's innocent farm girl) only meets her tragic demise after she has a pang of remorse about shooting Fredrick. Bridget von Hammersmark's treachery is only brought to light because she had signed an autograph for an adoring fan at a time when she would have felt bad about being rude to him. The German soldiers who escape the clutches of the Basterds along the way? Those are the ones who betray their fellow countrymen's positions, trading their own lives for theirs. Those who show blind loyalty to "the cause" end up both dead, and with a gruesomely receding hairline to boot.

They say war is hell -- and living at a time and place where more often than not your only chance at survival is by killing before you get killed yourself is certainly not a place I ever want to find myself. I'd much rather live where respecting others and lending a helping hand is the preferred (and rewarded) course of action...

After watching these movies, on this, I think both Sam Raimi and Quentin Tarantino would agree.

Coming August 1, 2011

2011-05-19T18:40:00.000-04:00

Answer, Please?

2011-05-19T13:17:00.003-04:00

So, what did they all have in common?

All the people pictured in my previous post were interviewed for my first book, "How Fantasy Sports Explains the World: What Pujols and Peyton Can Teach Us About Wookiees and Wall Street" -- which is just a few months away from being found on the shelves of your local bookstore.

Also in the mix? The writers who created the two scenes depicted above, Alec Sulkin (left) and Jane Espenson (right)... and many others who were all gracious enough to share their distinct points of view with me.

How does it all come together and what in the world does this all have to do with fantasy sports? For those answers, we're just about 70 days away...

What Do They All Have in Common?

2011-05-17T11:12:00.005-04:00

Yau-Man Chan (Survivor) Steve Ward (VH1's Tough Love)

The Reduced Shakespeare Company

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson Damien Echols (see: WM3.org)

The Book With the Draggin' Plot

2011-05-11T14:24:00.001-04:00

So, this book is the first in a trilogy that was published posthumously and became a huge international sensation. I've finally gotten around to reading it, and, well, Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

It's not that it's written poorly -- in fact, the central mystery at the heart of the book is quite well-crafted. It's just that it takes so long to get into the investigation that by the time you do, you've almost forgotten why you were reading in the first place.

On top of that, the translation from Swedish into English is clunky at times, and anything which slows the pace at which you can turn the pages in a page-turner is a detriment to enjoyment. Moreover, although I have some Swedish ancestry, the culture depicted in this book is so alien that it's hard to fully immerse oneself into it.

I've never read so many descriptions of coffee being brewed, poured and shared in my life. And I get it... it's cold. But do I need page upon page of text telling me how cold it is? It's like Anne Rice and her infatuation with pointing out each and every magnolia tree in Louisiana before finally getting around to introducing the witches. I get it... now can something happen?

Really, this book was really three compeltely different stories mashed up into one - the first was about the titular girl, which was essentially a version of La Femme Nikita. The second was a snooze-fest about financial espionage that smacked on John Grisham platitudes. The third was a noir-esque "cold case" that actually had some meat to it, save for the fact that for about 100-150 pages, the main character sat around debating whether or not to participate in trying to solve it.

It's decent, but not the be-all end-all that it was purported to be. Personally, I waited several years before deciding to read the book, and now that I have... I wish I'd waited for David Fincher's movie.

The Plot Quickens

2011-05-06T14:56:00.001-04:00

Sorry for the lack of new posts this week... Not only did we spend some time up at Bristol, locked in a room with my ESPN fantasy brethren -- or in Stephania's case, sistheren -- ranking all the top fantasy football options for the next year, but we also are in the homestretch of the editing process for the book -- less than 90 days and counting!

Once we've locked down the galleys and can come up for air, we'll be back a bit more regularly...

Oh, and for those who haven't already figured out the whole Marty the Fishboy thing... he was indeed the kid's show host's sidekick. But why is that important to me? Well... for that, you'll have to wait for the book...

For Those in Hogwarts Withdrawal

2011-04-27T15:16:00.004-04:00

I just finished reading The Magicians by Lev Grossman, and wanted to share my thoughts. The book's plot draws on both Harry Potter and the Narnia series, but thrusts these recognizable memes into a far more gritty and unforgiving environment.

Quentin, a Brooklyn high schooler, is on his way to an interview that he hopes will help him get into an Ivy League school. Things don't go as planned, as instead, Quentin discovers a dead body waiting for him. Quicker than you can say Gryffindor, he is magically transported to Brakebills, a college that he never even knew existed.

However, although this school teaches that magic is definitely not PG-13 -- and the extra-curricular activities that go on when class in not in session would make most people turn a shade of red brighter than a Weasley's head of hair -- as time goes by, Quentin and his schoolmates learn that though magic can do many things, it cannot provide happiness or a purpose in life.

Searching for some sort of "quest" to occupy their time, they make another shocking discovery -- that the mythical land of Fillory, which most of them read about in books as children, is in fact a real place. However, their eventual journey there once again shows that the sugar-coated stories told to children often gloss over some deeper, darker, painful truths.

This is not a fantasy novel full of precocious children, benevolent elderly wizards and cute, cuddly talking animals. While there are moments of humor throughout the novel, at its core, this is a harsh and sometimes depressing spin on what it means to leave childhood behind -- and the overwhelming cost of trying to hang on to that innocence when it comes your time to finally grow up.

Some people may not like how this book -- the first part of a planned trilogy -- ends, but if you're willing to rid yourself of those "everybody lives happily ever after" endings you were constantly exposed to as a kid, you may find the journey through its pages are more than worth the effort.

How Can I Spoil Something That's Already Bad?

2011-04-26T11:50:00.000-04:00

Who killed Scream 4? It was Kruger!

Let me preface this by saying I am a big fan of the original movie Scream. Coming at time when nobody else had thought to write a horror movie script where the characters had actually ever seen a horror movie themselves, the screenplay was clever, refreshing and exciting.

Not only that, but adding the icing on the cake was the fact that the killer was not a mindless killing automaton whose only rationale for slicing and dicing the cast was explained away as "pure evil" as was the norm at the time. In Scream, the killer was quite human and could be killed himself -- actually, themselves. Yes, the savory cherry on top was the twist that there were two killers working together, and not two. Again, at the time, that had rarely, if at all, been done before.

Now, I just saw Scream 4, and it was a huge disappointment -- not because it failed to recapture the magic of the original, but that it came so close to doing so before falling woefully short. Spoilers ahead, so if you don't want to know, stop reading.

There were really only two possible ways for this new movie to have lived up to the original's audacity, in my humble opinion. One would have been to have the three surviving cast members from the original films die. The other, to have one (or more of them) be the killers. Sadly, neither of these options happened -- although it appears that fault may not lie with screenwriter Kevin Williamson.

I don't know what his original script looked like, but I do know that they brought in Ehren Kruger -- the auteur who penned the weakest member of the original trilogy, Scream 3 -- to do extensive rewrites, most notably to "fix" the ending. After seeing the result, it's clear to me that this turned the plot into a incomprehensible nightmare.

Actually, I look more like the younger Salinger sister...

The film clearly wanted to end with Sydney's death at the hand of her cousin, Jill. That final tableau had been foreshadowed throughout the movie and when it finally happened, it seemed "right" to end that way. Now, having the killer actually survive the movie would be a huge twist -- and a divergence from the end of all three previous films -- plus, using the media's reaction to Jill's survival, calling her a "hero" with zero actual investigative reporting or fact-checking, would have been a perfect commentary on today's society.

Unfortunately, that's not how it ends. No, instead we are treated to an implausible, hack job of an ending where Jill attacks Sydney -- who miraculously survived the stabbings -- in a somehow completely vacant wing of the local hospital. Jill subdues Dewey with a *sigh* bedpan, and holds Gayle at gunpoint until the killer is finally defeated by our eternal hero, Sydney -- just as Neve Campbell's character did in each of the first three movies.

Not only is this a preposterous scene, seemingly written just so Syd can fire off the clever bon mot, "Don't &%#$ with the original" but it also completely renders moot the social commentary that preceded it.

Hold on, folks. I'm just an actor... I didn't write this crap.

I would have been willing to overlook the stupidity of some of the characters who died in this film, like the agent who gets out of her car in a failed effort to reach the stairwell to freedom in the deserted parking garage even though she has a working cell phone and could easily have dialed 9-1-1 from the safety of her locked vehicle.

I would have excused the pathetic decision to have Anthony Anderson's cop character get stabbed in the head, piercing his brain, which should have caused him to die instantly, instead resulting in his slowly getting out of his car, blindly throwing punches at the air and ultimately firing off an unfunny one-liner before dropping dead.

Whatever this film could have been it clearly changed once Kruger got his knife-like talons into the re-writing process, and that's a shame because even though Sydney survived in this version of the script, the franchise -- at least as far as I am concerned -- no longer has a pulse.

Entertaining Enough

2011-04-20T10:05:00.001-04:00

Tough Enough has always been one of my favorite reality shows, and the "new and improved" version is even better than ever. Even if you have no interest in professional wrestling, the show rises well above the standard reality fare out there.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, at the simplest level, it's merely American Idol for aspiring professional wrestlers. A bunch of wannabes try to show that they have the talent and personality necessary to be a WWE Superstar, enduring weekly challenges and trying their best to avoid elimination.

There's nothing new here in theory, but the difference (apart from the fact that Idol contestants rarely face the possibility of getting crushed by an angry 300-pound Bill DeMott if they mess up) is the fact that the mentors and judges actually care about who wins in a way that no other reality show's decision-makers do.

Whoever wins this show's top prize will be their newest co-worker. If they choose the wrong person, forget about their "reputation" as a talent evaluator being tarnished -- their own earning potential may be hurt.

What? No, Donald... YOU'RE fired!!!

Whereas Donald Trump questions potential "apprenti" from across a boardroom table, and seems to eliminate someone on the merest whim, when Stone Cold Steve Austin does it, he clearly spells out what each individual's mistakes have been, and should they not show the appropriate remorse or give the slightest indication that they aren't taking this whole affair as seriously as he does -- because it's not a "show" to him, it's his passion and his way of life -- then they are toast, potential be damned.

Plus, as Austin paces back and forth in a wrestling ring in front of his three potential victims, there's a sense that at any moment the wrong answer to a question will cause him to physically lash out -- and the contestants feel it too. That brings a level of reality to the affair that no other show can match.

Check it out...

America Is Not Wrong, Dawg!

2011-04-15T10:59:00.001-04:00

It wasn't your best for you for me, yo yo yo!

Here's where I am fed up with American Idol...

It's not the constant praise that the judges heap on the incredible lack of talent that takes their stage weekly and forever ruins some otherwise enjoyable songs.

Nor is it the hypocrisy of their getting so worked up about the "shocking elimination" of Pia that they threaten to commit hari-kiri on the spot, then follow it up by barely registering interest the next week when Paul, who they've been equally complimentary of, gets the boot.

No, what steams me is the finger of blame pointed at the audience: "America, you got it wrong!" "This is who you voted to be in your bottom three, America."

I could care less who wins or loses this show, but I do take umbrage at the lack of "up-front-iness" about the process. Nobody ever gets voted off the show. America never chooses who goes home. That's not how the show's voting process works.

People call in and cast a vote FOR their favorite contestant. While some people might spread those votes amongst several candidates, the vast majority are simply going to call in and call often for their No. 1 choice to win.

It is quite possible that, if asked, everyone who voted the week Pia was eliminated thought she was second or third-best overall. They might all have thought that Stefano or Paul or Jacob was the absolute worst. But those guys also each had their own core of fans voting to keep them safe.

So it really shouldn't be that surprising when someone that everyone watching thinks should finish no worse than fourth or fifth suddenly goes home in ninth because nobody wants them to win the whole thing. In fact, I'd be shocked if we had a season where that didn't happen.

And yes, the reason the process won't change is because the controversial bootings are good for ratings and generating a buzz for the show. I just wish that when they inevitably take place, the show's judges didn't start pointing the finger at viewers, because that starts people thinking there are conspiracies and hidden agendas at work.

America can't conspire to vote anyone out of this competition. The process won't let them. So, no Ryan, this is not the "bottom three we voted for" but rather, those five singers sitting safely on the couch are the "top five we like best." There is a big difference.

Pray for education, J-Lo

And Then There Were Two...

2011-04-14T10:08:00.001-04:00

We're losing another choice today from the hunt for the true identity of Marty the Fishboy. Sadly, for those of you who selected the option -- The lead singer of an indie pop band from Texas -- you are wrong.

Eric Michener is the lead singer of the band, Fishboy, from Denton, Texas. Along with his buddies Sweatpants, Sixlets and Medicine Ball, the group has developed a bit of a cult following. However, no Marty is in sight on the program when this band hits the stage.

Fishboy-A Surprise Return

Fishboy | Myspace Video

When will we know if Marty is actually a kid's show sidekick or if I simply made the whole thing up? Soon, dear readers, soon.

Time to Winnow Down

2011-04-12T09:06:00.000-04:00

Our quest to discover the true identity of Marty the Fishboy takes another step forward today, as we eliminate one more of our multiple choice options... He is NOT a genetically mutated parasite who was born in the aftermath of Chernobyl. That would be this fine fellow:

Run for it, Marty!

This is the Flukeman, a "monster of the week" from a 1994 episode of The X-Files who was created from Russian radioactive sewage and ends up terrorizing the citizens of Newark, New Jersey after taking up residence in the city's sewer system.

He kind of looks like a combo mummy-worm beast, and in the end, although he is ultimately sliced in two by Fox Mulder, regeneration allows him to live on past the closing credits. However, as a possible answer to our question? That ship has sailed.

The truth is still out there folks... and all will soon be revealed. Stay tuned...

Times I Don't Miss My Old Job

2011-04-08T09:37:00.000-04:00

Is that cop reaching for a firearm -- and why are the children
completely oblivious to Mr. Met's presence?

This Guess Was a Double-Fault

2011-04-06T09:23:00.000-04:00

That's M-A-R-D-Y.

Who is Marty the Fishboy?

Did you select A: a professional tennis player about to break into the Top 10?

If so, I'm sorry to tell you that you are incorrect!

Although American Mardy (with a D) Fish has an Olympic silver medal and is sometimes called "The Fishmonger" or "The Fisherman" -- "The Fishboy" is not one of his usual appellations. In the latest world rankings, Fish has risen to No. 11.

Of course, men's tennis has lost a bit of its luster from the days of John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors -- the biggest controversy, it seems, with Mardy Fish is that he recently started wearing longer socks... the horror! -- so Fish is hardly a household name.

In fact, you've probably seen more of his wife on your TV screen, as she was the keeper of "Suitcase No. 2" on Deal or No Deal.

One choice down... still no deal!

More to come...

Multiple Choice

2011-04-04T14:16:00.001-04:00

Who is Marty the Fishboy? All will be explained soon. But until then, why not take a stab at it?

Marty the Fishboy is:

A) A professional tennis player about to break into the Top 10.
B) A costumed sidekick on a low-budget local-television kid's show.
C) The lead singer of an indie pop band from Texas.
D) A genetically mutated parasite who was born in the aftermath of Chernobyl.
E) You aren't fooling me, AJ -- it's none of the above.

Feel free to scroll down and vote in the survey below if you'd care to put your guess on record.

All will be eventually be revealed...

Coming Soon

2011-04-02T09:38:00.000-04:00

WHO

MARTY

THE

FISHBOY

???

Shameless

2011-03-31T14:23:00.001-04:00

AJ's no Gary Busey. That's a good thing.

I know, I've been slacking. It's been a few days since my last post. Please forgive me... but I know where to place the blame.

You see, a little over a year ago I wrote this post, looking for a Mysterious Benefactor to help sponsor this blog, so that I could give up the need to actually have to work for a living and to be able to post something pithy here each and every day.

Suffice it to say, the not-so-anonymous billionaire in question did not come through. (Although, surprisingly, donations of about $1.68 did come in, and for that I am thankful, even if we fell way short of our goal.)

Still, I remain optimistic that someone out there who may have enjoyed reading my musings here and perhaps knows the friend of a friend of a friend of a billionaire, who might want to put in a good word for me.

So once again, the donations button is there on the right, Secret Millionaires of the world... My mother always told me that you don't get anything unless you ask. So, what do you say?

It will be our little secret...

In Goal, Bugs Bunny... At Striker, Bugs Bunny...

2011-03-24T12:09:00.000-04:00

I coach my 6-year-old's soccer team, and just received the list of names on the "randomly selected roster" of kids who I will attempt to whip into a goal-scoring machine by the end of the Spring.

For some reason though, of the seven players on my team, FOUR of them have the same first name. Seriously? Nobody thought to look at the list before finalizing it?

Just imagine... "Hey Bruce, sub in. For who? Bruce. No, not Bruce... Bruce. No! Bruce!" What a coaching nightmare!

Nothing Smart to See Here, Thankfully

2011-03-18T08:49:00.001-04:00

All sorts of awesome, with a cap-i-tal A, baybee!

Three Words - Star Wars Musical

2011-03-17T11:14:00.000-04:00

If you've seen the title of my upcoming book -- and if not, simply scroll your eyes up -- then you'll probably not be surprised to learn that I have a soft spot in my heart for the original Star Wars trilogy... so while I don't have the financial wherewithal to help this project out -- I certainly can do my part in spreading the word:

Sitting for a Spell

2011-03-15T12:42:00.002-04:00

This past weekend I was asked to be a judge in my local area's Tri-County Spelling Bee, a feeder competition to the national Scripps event in Washington, D.C., which gets televised by ESPN and ABC in June.

I shall rule the entire Tri-County area!

Essentially, my job was to crush the souls of these children by informing them that they were to be considered abject failures, and suffer nightmares for the rest of their natural lives simply for not knowing that "caribou" did not end with a "double O."

What fun it was to watch as a nine-year-old girl started weeping uncontrollably upon hearing that her word was "Kabuki" and that she instantly knew she had no idea how to spell it, even if she was told it was "a form of Japanese dance-drama" and was a noun -- as if that would somehow help.

See, we have a dictionary. We must know what we're doing!

How delightful to have parents come up to the judges' table to appeal on behalf of their children that "the menu at the restaurant we go to regularly spells anchovy with an I-E at the end, so it must be right" and other such specious arguments. Hey, my local Chinese restaurant offers up both "oxital soup" and "french fiies" but that doesn't mean your kid moves on, lady.

OK, maybe the whole experience wasn't that bad... after all, look at the smiles on the faces of our top three spellers below...

Congrats to Stephanie Miller for being the last one standing after 34 others had fallen by the wayside. We'll be rooting for her in June and hoping that all those I's continue to come before those E's, except of course, after those troublesome C's.

Captain Crazy Coat In Trouble

2011-03-10T11:25:00.000-05:00

I don't need you now...

Idol's "Top" 13 sang last night, and one of my audition-episode favorites -- I use the term loosely, since it is kind of like having a favorite dental implement. It's still painful, only a tad less so -- was in a word, awful.

Paul McDonald, what happened? Given the choice to essentially sing any song in the world, so long as you could spin some fable about how the artist who sang it (even if it were a cover version) meant the world to you, he chooses a Ryan Adams song? Not Canada's own Bryan Adams, but Ryan Adams.

In and of itself, that's not a bad thing, but when singing for votes, choosing an obscure artist is strike one. Strike two? Picking a song few people have heard before. Strike three? Selecting a ditty with the following chorus:

Come pick me up - Take me out - F*%# me up - Steal my records - Screw all my friends -

They're all full of S&^! - With a smile on my face - And then do it again - I wish you would

If he's eliminated before he gets to torture my eardrums with that omnipresent Lady Antebellum piece of a Ryan Adams chorus... I'll never forgive Captain Crazy Coat. As it is, he's likely to be in the bottom three with Diva-ster Ashthon and Haley the Yodeler.

The Bicycle Man Cometh

As for who goes home? It all depends how many tweens aren't scared off by his Gordon Jump on Diff'rent Strokes vibe. You know what I mean...

Watch Out For Flying Chairs!

2011-03-07T14:51:00.000-05:00

I caught about ten minutes of America's Next Great Restaurant on NBC last night, and already I am almost convinced that contestant Sandra Digiovanni (above, left) is really Coach Bob Knight in disguise.

Please, whatever you do, DO NOT send your meal back to the kitchen!

What an Improv Show!

2011-03-04T09:55:00.004-05:00

The first results show of American Idol has now come and gone, and boy, if I were one of the people going home, I'd be pissed beyond belief.

I totally believe that the voting is on the up-and-up. Fox has too big a cash cow here to risk a Quiz Show sized scandal by playing with those numbers. Isn't that right, "Junebug" (above, right)?

However, when you play as loosey-goosey with the way you're going to handle the results, seemingly changing them up to the last moment, it's hard to take the whole process seriously. We were told that the top 5 guys and top 5 girls would be automatically through to the next round, leaving seven guys and seven girls out in the cold. Again, fine.

But then, we were told there would be "wildcards" added by the judges. Mr. Seacrest kept babbling all throughout the two-hour show -- one that had about 15 minutes (at most) of actual content -- that "we" didn't know how many wildcards there would be or how they would be selected.

About halfway through the program, Ryan again stated his confusion and asked Randy Jackson to explain. Randy then repeated verbatim exactly what Ryan had said, including the part about "We don't know how many or what the process will be" and we were left in the dark again.

I don't know what's going on... do you?

Whether or not it's true, the impression this gave me was that a) the judges and Ryan truly did not know in advance what the results of the public voting were -- and that's good. But also b) that the show had a few contestants they were going to put through come hell or high water, and they'd spin the wild-card process in whatever way they could to ensure the field they wanted -- and that's bad.

At any point, if the powers-that-be don't like the outcome, they can just change the rules. "We'll have six of the 14 losers sing for wildcard spots." "How many?" "One. No two. No, wait... who got cut? Three!" It's totally disingenuous and totally unfair to the audience and competitors alike. Set up the rules -- in advance -- and let the chips fall where they may.

It’s like that reality show Forever Eden. Anyone remember that one? It was on during the same time as things like Paradise Hotel and Temptation Island.

All the contestants on the show would vote for someone to get an apple which meant that person could then pick someone to nominate for eviction -- UNLESS that person was the same contestant who had been selected in a separate secret vote held for no apparent reason earlier in the week, in which case the person with the apple would be evicted -- until he or she came back the next week and summarily replaced the person given the next week's apple UNLESS the new apple-holder had selected the old apple holder's former roommate as his/her new roommate, in which case the roommate would be sent home instead.

Maybe I’m not remembering it right, but I’m not too far off the mark. Every eviction could be manipulated at the whim of the producers, and while I'm sure they were thinking all these twists made for great television, the show that they said "could last for years" didn't even last the season, leaving the air after seven episodes.

Be transparent and I'm willing to buy in. Play games like having Ryan asking if the judges had their decision yet and them saying "No, we need more time!" and then having Ryan act all flustered and "What should we do?" and then going "Why don't we just show this debut J-Lo music video that we happen to have lying around in order to give the judges time?" Come on, man! Even the little blurb on my on-screen guide said you were showing that video tonight. Don't act like this is improv!

And yet I continue to watch. So help me... I'm part of the problem. Shame on me.

Idol Chatter - The Girls

2011-03-03T08:53:00.001-05:00

Second verse, same as the first: are there even five girls to select to go through to the next round?

Better than the rest, but that's not saying much.

I did like two girls: Naima Adedapo (above) Lauren Turner. Twist my arm for the rest and um, um... I guess Rachel Zevita (below) for entertainment value, Pia Toscano for not being horrific in the closing "pimp slot" and um, um... Maybe Lauren Alaina -- though she unexpectedly went country this week.

Wasn't she in Hostel 2?

We'll see what America thinks... after the break.

Idol Chatter - The Boys

2011-03-02T13:17:00.000-05:00

Not that anyone should care what I think, but then again -- you did come to my blog, so maybe you do care what I think.

Here's who I think should advance from the Top 12 Guys, into the final round of American Idol. This is not who I expect to advance -- heavens knows, we've seen our share of Sanjayas somehow, inexplicably last all the way to the final five. There's bound to be a shocker in there somewhere.

But, based solely on the merits of the single song they performed this week, here's my choices:

The best of what's left, at least for now...

The first four in are Casey Abrams, Brett Loewenstern, Scotty McCreery, and Paul McDonald.

It should be noted that I cannot stand most country music (Scotty) and I despise Rod Stewart (Paul) but that doesn't mean I can't recognize when a song is sung well. I'm not going to simply regurgitate "It wasn't your best for you for me" just because I didn't dig the song choice.

As for the fifth guy, it's between James Durbin and Jacob Lusk. I could see this one going either way, and the odd man out, assuming I get the rest right, is probably getting a Judge's Wildcard ticket anyway...

On to the ladies...

Comedy Killers

2011-02-28T16:13:00.003-05:00

He's got some Adrian Adonis DNA

No, this post isn't about the Oscars, painfully unfunny as much of the scripted schtick was... but rather it's about those people who should not be allowed to use Twitter or Facebook. I call these people the "Comedy Killers" and they need to be stopped.

Recently there was a funny Twitter hashtag producing much laughter: #threewordmovies. At first, most people got the joke and posted things like "Monarch has stutter" and "Iceberg sinks ship" and my personal favorite, "Bella can't act." (Just to make sure you get the joke and we're all on the same page here, those comments refer to, respectively, The King's Speech, Titanic and Twilight.)

Now, not every attempt to add to this list is going to be a winner, and I'm not suggesting that just because you try to be funny and fail that you should not be allowed to try. Heaven knows I've missed the mark from time to time... but people who completely fail to grasp that humor is going on at all? Why? Why do you do it?

I enjoyed reading these Tweets until people started submitting things like The Social Network and Big Momma's House. In other words, they completely missed the point of the exercise and sucked all the humor out of it by simply listing movies with three word titles. (That sound you hear is me slapping my head.)

I'm sure you've experienced the same phenomenon on Facebook, as well. One of your friends will change their status to something like "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking." You type in a response, "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking."

Another friend types in "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue." And as you sit there, just waiting for the next person to respond with "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines" -- a Comedy Killer strikes by worriedly asking, "Why? What's wrong? Did something happen? Drinking isn't the answer. I hope everything is OK."

Please, if you're one of these people... CUT IT OUT! Yours is not a victimless crime.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to accept your friend request...

In One Ear...

2011-02-23T14:10:00.010-05:00

This week, I have an article up on ESPN.com about the Pittsburgh Pirates and their young outfielder, Andrew McCutchen.

Some, shall we say, less-than-honest websites out there, starved for original content, will outright steal: cutting-and-pasting the text of my articles, and publishing them on their own sites. Actually, I noticed sites like these often will first run the article through a translator into some other language and then back into English, resulting in a phrase like "Ichiro is a strong bat" morphing to "Ichiro has the power of concussion."

So to save these nefarious evil-doers both time and effort, I ran my the first few paragraphs from my McCutchen piece through Google Translator, bouncing it around from English to Japanese to Spanish to Urdu and eventually, back to English...

I'm sure my arguments need no further explanation:

The Pittsburgh population lost 105 attacks, it was a disaster. I blame the Netherlands. I go dismal fate successful pioneers include, finally, that the action plan from the next generation at all sites must be paid according to the last part.

In all this darkness, there is one true sign of hope. He alone is of concern among outfielders in total, because of his negotiations. We project a real danger of escape, a reason for concern, his course may have time to blow Hitoshi Hazime.

Samurai Pizza Cats, from Exec. Producer, Hitoshi Hazime Guri

Last year, look at crime statistics and the associated overall project, the number of players per team in accordance with the War. You must take into account the number looking for part-time work. Only one: McCutchen.

I use a bare chest.

Yoshi Yoshi, we need to win its first season. Oh, the pirates of the disastrous year of Miley Cyrus. "She's a star so far. We do not lose the bottom of the flower!"

Fear Not: Watson is NOT Skynet

2011-02-17T09:08:00.000-05:00

Yes, Regis. That is my final answer...

After watching Watson, a computer, defeat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, the amount of alarm that I've seen on the internet is mind-boggling. Some people see this as the first step down a path where robots will rule the world and humans will be turned into nothing more than "pets" to their new overlords.

Certainly, you have to be impressed with the team that created Watson. As someone who got his first computer back when you had to program in BASIC and creating dot-matrix line-art was considered "advanced," it's stunning to see how far we've come... but if anyone is surprised that Watson won, I'm not sure why.

When I want to perform large amounts of calculations on a table of data, I could do it by hand. I could use a calculator. More practically, I type the numbers into Excel and then create a function so my computer can do it for me. If I then want it to find certain entries that meet certain criteria, it can do that far faster than I could searching line-by-line.

Watson, come here... I want you.

In essence, that's all Watson is. A vast amount of information has been entered into the machine, and it answers questions about that information -- and given the fact that Ken and Brad were able to buzz in faster than Watson on several occasions, it's clear that Watson isn't all that more efficient than humans at doing this incredibly specific task.

Certainly, I'm not trying to downplay the marvelous advances in programming that Team Watson have accomplished here, but I'm also not losing any sleep that we're suddenly going to be obsolete. Eventually, the internet -- with access to enough data to make Solomon blush -- may well become self-aware. (Robert J. Sawyer has written a terrific series of novels based on that very premise.)

I'm not so sure that would mean the end of the world, but hey, if it does -- we've got nobody to blame but ourselves and how we react to that development. After all, there's "no fate but what we make." That doesn't mean controlling our machines, but rather controlling ourselves.

Improv for the Non-Improv Set

2011-02-15T14:15:00.000-05:00

This is my dear friend Kat Koppett, with whom I've had the great pleasure of performing and teaching with over the years. Here, she gives an all-too-brief motivational speech about the power of improv in everyday life.

If you want to check out Kat and her improv company (MopCo) and you happen to live in the Albany-Troy-Schenectady district of New York, please don't miss out.

Homeo-Phobia

2011-02-11T08:47:00.003-05:00

As I write this, James Randi is very much alive. He shouldn't be, of course, since he has been taking fatal doses of sleeping pills on a regular basis. Of course, these aren't any ordinary old sleeping pills -- they are homeopathic sleeping pills, and hence, worthless. Yet that hasn't stopped pharmacies around the United States from actually selling these fraudulent products right alongside real medicine.

What do you mean you're not getting sleepy?

It may sound "quaint" to try taking a homeopathic remedy, calling back the nostalgia of "Grandma's chicken soup," but these so-called medicines are dangerous -- not because they can hurt you, but because they don't do anything at all. They are created by diluting any active ingredients to the point where they no longer exist in the mixture, for all intents and purposes.

Imagine you put a tiny speck of aspirin into a glass of water and stirred it up, then poured that glass into a pitcher of water, then poured that pitcher into your swimming pool and took a sip... according to the proponents of homeopathy, that sip will cure your headache better than actually ingesting an entire pill of aspirin.

And if you have a serious illness that does need to be treated with drugs, wasting your time with these nonsensical homeopathic "cures" might delay you from getting needed medical attention. As the video below says better than I ever could, homeopathy (as well as other psychic nonsense) is truly a very dangerous thing:

(Feel free to skip ahead after the introductory remarks to 11:44 or so for the Homeopathy rant.)

Out There On Their OWN

2011-02-09T12:41:00.006-05:00

None of these things is not like the others...

I have a degree in broadcast journalism, so I was drawn to the new reality show, cleverly titled Your OWN Show on Oprah's new television network, OWN, much in the same way I imagine people who can cook tune in to watch Top Chef, or interior designers -- my wife included -- can't wait to sit and watch Design Star.

Let's face it: when a reality competition show touches on an area in which you have an expertise, it is like a moth to a flame.

After several weeks, it's very clear that I remain ambivalent about this program. On the one hand, I appreciate the fact that these contestants are having such a difficult time putting together segments each week. I mean it would suck if I spent four years learning how to properly create content for television and these neophytes could jump right in and do Emmy-award winning work.

Yet at the same time, are these really the best ten contestants they could come up with? Take Dr. Tony Roach, pictured below (left)

The winner of this competition gets a full-time job as a host of his/her own show and Dr. Roach actively avoided any on-camera role until his teammates darn near broke his arm with all the twisting they were doing. Then, once he finally did get assigned to be in front of the cameras during a cooking segment, he suggested that the most entertaining course of action would be to spend the first 90 seconds of said three minute segment arguing with his co-host over which one would do the segment. Then he added, we can just let the cook (Curtis Stone) do the rest by himself since he knows what he's doing. Forget about hosting... has this guy ever watched TV?

After his horrific performance, Dr. Roach would have been eliminated, but instead interrupted the judges before they could render a verdict and "chose to leave" -- making sure they understood he was not quitting. Whatever, Dr. Quitter.

Elizabeth Espinosa (above, right) is supposedly already on television, as her bio says she is a reporter for KTLA. (East coast bias here -- I wouldn't know.) Presumably, though, we can see all of her assets in that photo, because when it came to professionalism, she came up empty every time. Mercifully, she finally got the boot when, in her last chance to save herself, she resorted to plagiarism, asking the same exact questions that had earned the winning team praise for their originality. (Never heard of James Frey, my dear?)

In the end, I guess it doesn't matter, since I'm not Oprah's target audience and regardless of who wins among the remaining candidates, I won't be tuning in to see their show... but I guess I'm just a little bit bitter that $100,000 goes to the winner of this contest, when my college classmates and I did better work on a routine basis while paying that much for the privilege.

Come on, Oprah! Hook me up!

New Moon, Same Crap

2011-02-03T14:27:00.003-05:00

The Saga Continues... much to my chagrin

So, when we last left the gang of Twilight after the first movie, poor depressed Bella had nearly died at the hands of the Black-Eyed Peas, who had interrupted her baseball game with her vampire boyfriend and his family.

In New Moon, the second movie of this planned five-part franchise, Bella turns 18 and goes back to Casa Cullen to celebrate. Unfortunately, she gets a paper cut while opening a present and young (admittedly, a relative term in vampire films) Jasper can't control his hunger -- and lunges after her, ruining the party. Of course, this is all fairly dumb, since all Bella wants for her birthday is to have Edward turn her into a vampire... but Edward stubbornly refuses that request, and instead decides it's "too dangerous" for the Cullens to remain around. He breaks up with Bella and the family disappears.

Miserable, Bella sits in her room for months on end, in a montage sequence which served no purpose other than to waste several minutes of running time. Eventually, Bella snaps out of her funk long enough to spend some time with Jacob, who *shocker* reveals himself to be a werewolf in order to save Bella when will.i.am comes back for a midday snack.

There's some other stuff involving Bella seeing visions of Edward whenever she does something dangerous, like riding a motorcycle without a helmet, cliff diving, or running with scissors. Somewhere in all of this mess, Bella goes to the movies on a date with Jacob and a non-supernatural suitor, Mike -- who ends up getting sick and wants to simply go home (perhaps to his Mummy?)

The plot sickens..

Evil Fergie returns to try and kill Bella, but the werewolf gang holds her at bay. But, wacky hijinks ensue when Jacob tells Edward over the phone that Bella's father is "arranging a funeral" and Edward somehow takes that to mean Bella is dead, rather than you know, ask "Whose funeral?"

Anyway, that's when Edward travels to Italy to visit the "oh so fancy" Volturi (pictured above). The Volturi are basically the vampire police and they all have mysterious powers and since Edward is now sad, he wants them to kill him, which they will only do if he reveals his true nature to humans.

Bella arrives at the last minute -- despite the fact that Edward is hours ahead of her, and we actually watch several scenes of her driving around the Italian countryside -- to keep this from happening, but then the Volturi decide that either Edward must turn her into a vampire or they will kill her. Need I point out again -- this is what she wants -- yet he again refuses.

But eventually it all works out when the "read your mind" vampire sees that the "see the future" vampire is telling the truth when she says that Bella will become a vampire before too long, so why don't the Volturi just let the Cullens go back home and instead eat those human tourists in the next room. Seriously, so cliche. I mean how many times have we seen that lame plot device used?

Austin Scarlett, Volturi fashion designer

So how does New Moon end? Edward at long last agrees he'll turn Bella into a vampire -- um, soon. He'll do this even though if he bites her, the werewolves will end their truce with the vampires for biting a human, for the last time, EVEN THOUGH IT IS WHAT SHE WANTS!!! The only thing Bella has to do first? Marry Edward.

Fade to black.

Roll credits.

Boom boom pow!

Hey, gang... brace yourselves. I gotta feeling Eclipse is even worse...

Nailed It!

2011-01-28T09:26:00.001-05:00

Check out a spot-on parody of the American Idol audition shows from the often-brilliant Randy Rainbow.

Let the Games Begin!

2011-01-26T15:20:00.004-05:00

I just finished reading The Hunger Games trilogy, by author Suzanne Collins. Yeah, it was intended to be read by those closer in age to book's protagonist, 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, but then again so too were the Harry Potter series and Twilight, and they entered the public zeitgeist as well.

They're rushing this one to the big screen, with a release date of 3/23/12 for the movie version of the first novel, which has yet to be cast...

On the surface, the story is not all that original. It takes place in a dystopian future, and an annual Shirley Jackson flavored lottery selects two tributes -- young teenagers -- from each of the country's 12 districts to compete in a Survivor/American Gladiators/Thunderdome battle called the Hunger Games. All 24 boys and girls enter the arena, and fight to the death in a televised bonanza, but only the sole survivor lives.

Bella Swan, the heroine in Twilight, is sullen and depressed with her life because she has divorced parents who both love her and has to decide between her hunky vampire beau and her equally hunky werewolf suitor. Yeah, Bella, life is hard -- *eye roll*

At least we can understand why Katniss hates her life. Her father is dead, killed in a mining accident. Her mother is distant on her best days, and an empty shell of herself most of the time. She lives in District 12, the poorest of all the districts, where food is scarce and hope even scarcer.

Although I found the third book to be a bit lacking in both substance and surprise, and a bit more tonally like Starship Troopers than the V for Vendetta/1984 feel of the first two books, I nevertheless enjoyed the read and appreciated both the depth of the characters, as well as the obvious political overtones.

I look forward to the film, which is reportedly to be directed by Gary Ross (Pleasantville) -- a movie that turned what could have been a light-hearted comic romp through a 50's sitcom landscape into an unbelievable allegory about the civil rights movement of the 1960's. He's the perfect choice to craft a film that hopefully will make the PG-13 crowd think more about the Senate than Snooki.

If that happens, maybe we all can win.

What a Fool Believes

2011-01-14T17:40:00.005-05:00

It's just a jump to the left!

PHONECIA, New York — You may be signing that checkbook with your John Hancock today, but you might be surprised to find that you actually should be using your Higb Glbxixj.

A new alphabet was unveiled recently by linguists at Upstate Tech in New York, with each letter shifted one space on the traditional keyboard, moved thanks to the efforts of the moon’s gravitational pull.

“The ancient civilization that developed our alphabet used stone tablets, which were far heavier than the loose sheets of paper that we use today, and were thusly immune to the forces of the solar system. During the ensuing millenniums, the moon's gravitational pull has made the Earth 'wobble' around its axis, creating a one-letter shift in our language's letter-to-symbol correspondence," said Bob "Viv" Jones, Professor of Fine Arts at UTNY.

Thus our new alphabet reads as follows: LVXSWDFGUHJKNBIOPEARYCQZTM.

The change will take some time to get used to, but will slowly be transitioned into common usage by the summer of 2012, just before the Mayan calendar runs out and all life on Earth ceases to exist.

LH Nlaa contributed to this report.

Storming Time

2011-01-13T16:10:00.004-05:00

We're No. 18!

Looks like it's once again time for me to write about my rules for storming the court at the end of a college basketball game. The short and simple version goes as follows: Don't.

99.9 percent of the time when you storm the court all you are saying about your school is that "We suck and we know it!" Now, that's fine if you're an 0-15 team and you upset No. 1 in the nation. By all means, go crazy. After all, in that case you're more than welcome to revel in the victory.

But at least in that case I understand why you'd want to go nuts at the end of the game. When you're No. 3 in the country and you beat No. 14? Don't storm the court. You're supposed to win. Be happy. Cheer like madmen! Stay off the court.

See this picture below? This is the celebration that happened after Florida State beat No. 1 Duke. A truly once-in-a-lifetime win that is certainly cause for euphoria, right?

Huzzah! Seminoles win! P.S. - WE SUCK!

Here's the problem... the picture above is not from last night (Wednesday) when said upset took place. It's from March of 2006 when the same exact said upset took place. Storming the court against Duke only says one thing to the fans of Duke: your team is better than ours.

That said, there are a few exceptions to this rule. In my opinion, you are allowed to storm the court under the following circumstances without it reflecting poorly on your school. They are as follows:

1) You win the last home game of the season and in the process either win your conference title or complete an undefeated season. This is clearly a celebration of your team's season and the identity of your opponent in this situation is irrelevant.

2) A spontaneous rushing as a result of a buzzer-beater. Nobody is going to call you out if rushing of the court seems natural... in fact this classic one at the Carrier Dome -- fast forward to 1:06 to get to the good stuff -- takes forever to actually develop.

3) Huge comeback against a rival. It's not enough for a Big 12 team to come from 15 points down to a Great West team with ten minutes to play to warrant a court-storming. When you're supposed to win by 40, a nail-biter is nothing to celebrate. However, if you're Michigan and you score the last ten points to beat Michigan State, or vice versa... regardless of the records or the time of year, go for it.

Remember... storming the court is a grand statement by a fan base. Before you do it, make darn sure it's saying what you want it to.

The More Things Change...

2011-01-13T11:20:00.006-05:00

This is the text of a speech given by Robert F. Kennedy on April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated and just two months before he himself was gunned down. Change the words in bold at the start of the second paragraph to "party" and "Democrat and Republican" -- and they ring just as true today in the aftermath of the Arizona shooting. I'm not sure how that makes me feel... How about you?

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by his assassin's bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies - to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear - only a common desire to retreat from each other - only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is now what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember - even if only for a time - that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek - as we do - nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

Pitchers and Vampires Report

2011-01-12T10:38:00.004-05:00

Old enough to be Cy Young

So I broke down and watched Twilight recently. It only seemed fair to actually see the film that I had intuitively decided to mock over the past few years... and now that I have -- all guilt is gone. What a crap-tacular movie!

In a nutshell, the story revolves around Bella Swan, a morose teenager who moves back in with her father, a sheriff in the small Pacific Northwest town of Forks, when her mother decides to go on the road with her minor league baseball playing boyfriend.

There, she encounters the mysterious and uber-pale Cullen clan, who we learn are the adopted children of Mr. Jennie Garth, so there's nothing at all anyone, including school guidance counselors, should find creepy about the fact they all seem to be dating each other -- except for odd-man out Edward. Eventually, as you would expect even without being familiar with the story, Edward and Bella fall in love, which leads to much moping around and long scenes of sadness, since -- shocker -- Edward and his family are vampires.

Actually, some of the new takes on "being a vampire" are somewhat refreshing... for instance, they can go out in the sunlight, but don't because doing so causes them to "sparkle" and thus would reveal their true identity. Hence, the reason they chose to live in a perennially overcast area. That's at least a creative way of not having to have every scene take place after curfew.

Shoeless Joe was on Team Edward

However, any chance the movie had at succeeding to capture my heart flew out the window when Edward takes Bella out on a date to play baseball with his family. And no, that's not a lame cover story the couple tells her naive father so they can go off on an illicit rendezvous. No, apparently, vampires in Twilight actually love to play baseball -- but since these immortals are also super-strong, they can only play baseball during thunderstorms so that the "crack of the bat" from their Ruthian blasts does not draw attention to their exploits.

(And of course their choice of uniform is reminiscent of the Chicago White Sox -- after all, they wouldn't have been able to go to any Cubs games until 1988 for fear of sparkling. Now that I think of it, Glenn Close in The Natural must have been a vampire! Oh, no! Poor Roy Hobbs.)

See how she sparkles!

Anyway, the baseball game goes on for far, far too long, and probably would have gone on even longer except that suddenly the Black-Eyed Peas show up and want to eat Bella along with their peanuts and cracker jack. The rest of the movie involves the Cullens trying to keep Bella from getting stepped on like a leprechaun.

Some other stuff happens, but quite frankly, I've already forgotten... hopefully, there will be some sort of recap at the beginning of New Moon, which is next on my DVR queue. I'll let you know soon... but in the interim, feel free to mock away!

"I Gotta (Bad) Feeling...

I Wish I Had Known

2011-01-08T12:45:00.001-05:00

When I first heard about the film Knowing in 2002, I thought the concept was incredibly cool: A time capsule is buried at an elementary school to be opened 50 years later. When the day finally arrives, it is indeed opened and the drawings that the children had placed inside horrifyingly depict every major tragedy that has occurred in the past five decades -- and there is one drawing left.

Not only that, but Richard Kelly, the director of Donnie Darko -- one of my favorite movies of all-time --was working on the script and was going to direct. I was very excited to see the movie… but it kept encountering delays and eventually Kelly left the project and I forgot about it.

However, with the snow coming down and a free Showtime preview on my dish, there it was on the schedule, just begging to be watched. Sure it starred Nicolas Cage, who plays only two types of characters -- manic depressives and over-the-top manic -- and in both cases, monumentally stupid characters at that. But, nonetheless, I wanted to see what director Alex Proyas, who had helmed the underrated Dark City, had done with the cool story.

Disappointed much? You bet I was.

Although the story still has a time capsule, gone was the concept of children's drawings depicting disaster. Instead, one little girl, freshly cut from the now-requisite Samara mold of pale and sullen creepy kids, writes out a endless series of seemingly random numbers -- or are they?

Flash ahead to the opening of the time capsule, where Cage's son gets to open the envelope with the numbers. Although Cage spends the night in a drunken stupor, because the single dad still mourns the loss of his wife in a tragic fire, a portion of the numbers catches his eye. He writes these numbers on a dry erase board, but can't quite figure out why they seem to resonate with him -- is it 91-10-1? No, that's not it… Wait a minute! It's 9/11/01!

Right here the film starts to lose me… I'm actually fine with the idea that he might have seen 9/11/01 in the grid of numbers and then taken a closer look. But for him to decide to play with that particular string of numbers at random without recognizing it as an important date in history? Come on! It's not like he was staring at that day's Jumble and absent-mindedly found a word.

Nevertheless, Cage uses his Google skills to shockingly discover that this list of numbers actually contains a series of dates where tragedies took place, followed by the exact number of people who died in each disaster. I'll actually be generous here and throw the script-writers a bone, and let it slide that the "official number of victims" of many tragedies often changes from when the first news stories get written. There are far bigger fish to fry.

Cage, by the way, is a professor at MIT, so he's supposed to be a big smarty-pants. He shows his discovery to his colleague, best-friend and fellow smarty-pants along with the revelation that there are three tragedies left on the list (all conveniently forecast to occur within the next week) and is met with a resounding "you're nuts and seeing things because you're still in mourning over your wife's death."

Look, I'm not saying if faced with that situation in real life that I'd blindly buy in that this pattern was forecasting future doom. I'd probably assume someone was pulling an elaborate practical joke of some sort, but clearly there was no mistaking that there was a pattern there. The proper response from the guy who clearly understood that he was dealing with manic-depressive/manic Cage would have been to say that when the next date passed and the pattern was broken, would he please promise to seek some grief counseling.

Instead, he challenges Cage by pointing out that there were a whole lot of numbers that they didn't know the meaning of in between the dates, therefore the whole thing still seems random to him. Which is kind of like seeing a page full of seemingly random letter strings, having someone say that they've figured out that these are actually words in French and that you dismiss his theory as lunacy because although he identified "bonjour" and "aurevoir" he doesn’t know what the string of letters "savoirauncomplotmuets" means.

Anyway, the next day, Cage figures out what those other numbers mean. While driving to pick his son up from school, he gets stuck in a traffic jam and while sitting there, his gaze falls upon the GPS in his car. The "extra" numbers, he now realizes, are the location of the disaster, and he is sitting on the site of the one predicted for that day. He gets out of the car to see what is going on and a plane crashes right in front of him.

Again, I'm willing to accept this conceit for the purposes of the movie. It's the next step that makes no sense. Cage plugs in the numbers and figures out the exact street corner in New York City where the next disaster will occur. He then calls the FBI anonymously and tells them to clear the streets there, as a "terrorist attack" is imminent, gets in his car and drives to said street corner.

When he sees that it appears to be business as usual, he gets upset and walks up to a police officer and asks why they haven't shut down the intersection. The cop has no idea what he is talking about, and he angrily declares that he phoned in the warning, so why haven't they done anything. At which point she walkie-talkies "It's him" to a bevy of government agents who had been lurking nearby and a chase of sorts ensues, leading Cage into the subway… two trains crash, killing the expected number of people and fulfilling the prophecy, and Cage simply walks away.

The film only gets worse from here as the final predicted death toll is shown to be not "33" as written, but actually "EE" since we learn the young creepy girl often would write letters backwards, and in fact, stands for "Everybody Else." Yes, the final disaster is Armageddon, caused by deadly solar flares that, if they actually occurred as explained in the movie would not actually do the damage that it eventually does, killing everyone on the planet…

…Oh, except of course for Cage's son and the granddaughter of the creepy girl who are saved by being ushered away in a spaceship by a quartet of mute Spike-from-Buffy-looking aliens and brought to a new Eden-esque planet. Did I forget to mention that whole subplot?

I wish I could read one of Richard Kelly's drafts, but I fear that's trapped in a forgotten time capsule somewhere, never again to see the light of day. But since that is not to be, allow me to offer to you my own secret warning code:

KNOWINGISANAWFULMOVIEPLEASEDONOTWASTEYOURTIMEWATCHINGIT