2012 DBC Pro-Am

As I have done for the last couple of years, I got my hands on some tickets for the Deutsche Bank Championship Pro-Am and brought my camera along for the ride. I was excited to learn Tiger Woods would be playing for the first time in a few years, though not excited enough to get up to see him tee of at 6:50 in the morning. However, knowing how slow the amateurs play I was confident he would still be on the course when I got there around 11. I hustled to 18 to catch him finishing up.

Turns out I could have taken my time because Woods was still a couple holes from being done. The first people I saw play through were Justin Rose and Hunter Mahan. Since Mahan is my boy I took plenty of pictures, but I saw him later and got better pictures then, which I will show you later. The next guy to play the hole was Watney, who impressed me by picking up his own divot.

Finally Woods came up. You can tell when it's Tiger because the crowd around the hole suddenly doubles. I can now totally understand why people say they don't mind playing with Tiger, but don't like playing in the group in front or behind him. It's a lot of moving pieces. What's nice is that Tiger helped me out by hitting it left off the tee to about 20 feet from where I was already standing. I'm proud of myself for not sprinting to his ball. Not all grown men in the area can make the same claim.

This was where I was reminded that being a professional athlete must have it's drawbacks. Every second of this guy's life is on camera. Also, people crap on athletes who won't sign their stuff, but you never hear the other side of that story. We as fans need to learn when to ask for autographs and when not to. One woman called out for one at this instance and seemed miffed Tiger didn't come running. For future reference: before and after holes, not during.

At this point I had a decision to make: stick around and wait for Jason Dufner to come up 18 or head back to the 10th tee and watch Rory McIlroy tee off. I figured two Major titles was the tie-breaker and headed to 10. Rory was apparently a little late and literally ran down the street to the tee box. Chalk that up as something you won't see every day.

Rory was playing in the Pro-Am with the President of Deutsche Bank. (I'm sure that was just a lucky draw on that guy's part.) The benefit of being tall is that I could stand behind the tee box and still see over the wall to stand behind Rory as he swung, which is the best place to watch the pros hit. Rory hit an amazing drive which went high, far and straight. Honestly, there are cannons which are jealous of this kid's accuracy.

I decided to wait around and see Matt Kuchar, who was next on the tee. While waiting for Kuch I heard a commotion going on behind me and turned around in time to catch Bubba Watson hopping into his cart. As you can tell, I didn't have time to get picky about getting a good picture.

The funny this is that while I was taking Bubba's picture, Kuchar silently arrived at the tee, which is why my camera was still so zoomed in. Never heard him coming, which leads to a new theory: Matt Kuchar is a ninja.

I decided to work my way backwards through the front 9. The first person I came across was Ian Poulter. The entire time I was taking out my camera to snap this picture, Ian was giving his pro-am partner a putting lesson. It made him seem like a really cool guy. That is going to make rooting against him with every fabric of my being a little harder during next month's Ryder Cup. Still, something tells me I'll manage.

 

I hope he doesn't take this personally, but I admit that when I first started walking passed World #2 Luke Donald I had to ask myself if I really needed to take his picture. That is why I was almost beyond him before deciding that, yeah, I can make the effort to press a button. People wonder why Luke doesn't seem to get the attention he deserves. I can't explain it, but I know I am as guilty of it as anyone.

The next person I came across was Charl Schwartzel, desperately trying not to make eye contact with the kids he was snubbing. It is kind of amazing to think this guy won the Masters and yet most of the people asking him for his autograph don't even know who he is, they just know he is famous.

On the next hole I crossed path with Rickie Fowler. I don't know if he coordinated with the "Blue Crew" volunteers on purpose, but it's nice to know he doesn't feel obligated to wear Oklahoma State Orange all the time.

At this point I ran into Justin Rose for the second time that day. The good news is that this time around I didn't need to mess around with my camera settings and could just take a picture. I'm sure he was feeling snubbed.

This was also where I ran into Hunter Mahan for the second time that day and got a much better picture than when I saw him play 18. That made it 3 of the 4 'Golf Boys'.

As a crossed over #4 on the tee was Ernie Els, which means I had also now seen 3 of the 4 Major winners this year (I'll let you decide which foursome is more important). After this was taken Ernie proved his reputation as one of the nicest guys on Tour was true as he called over an older gentleman who had asked for a picture and patiently waited while his wife fumbled with their camera. Everyone says Els is one of the best and I could clearly see why.

I came out of the woods and found Lee Westwood on the tee at #4. Again, I don't want to disparage Mr. Westwood, but I did ask myself if I needed to take his picture, especially since I'm just going to be talking crap about him come the Ryder Cup. But, I figured I would be nice for now and snapped away.

I was just about done for the day, but before I left I headed up to the range, where Tiger was still practicing, but way off to the side in a place I couldn't get another good picture. Instead I took a picture of Carl Pettersson, who I'm sure gets mistaken for Tiger Woods all the time.

After checking out the range I went to have my swing looked at by one of the Golf Town pros. He gave me some great tips, but the line was longer than expected, which meant that by the time I was finished it was nearly time for Mickelson to tee off and since I was already there, why miss that? On my way back to #1 I passed Graeme McDowell. He's shorter than expected, but don't expect me to make any leprechaun jokes.

Lastly, I arrived to watch Phil tee off. What I found amusing is that Mickelson felt the need to go up to all his pro-am partners and introduce himself by saying, "Hi, I'm Phil." Dude, I'm pretty sure they already knew that. In fact, I'm pretty sure they spent tens of thousands of dollars to play with you because they know who you are. Still, it was a nice touch.

A Man Of Many Interest

This afternoon as I was driving and listening to the radio the DJ read a news item about how Godsmack lead singer Sully Erna is training for a marathon, which he plans to run for charity. Now, I'm not about to crack jokes about anyone who can run a marathon, let alone someone who is going to do it for charity. That being said, I couldn't help but think telling people they can track your training progress on Nike.com is not very rock 'n roll. It got me to pondering: when did rock stars stop trying to be bad-asses? In the last few years I have notice that many former rock gods have gone all soft and cuddly on me. Whether it's Steven Tyler temporarily leaving Aerosmith to host the decidedly un-rock "American Idol" or Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich hosting gallery openings as a way to show off his art collection, it seems the rock stars of my youth are suddenly acting like they are one step away from banging on the ceiling to get their kids to turn it down. Hell, Ozzy Osbourne used to bite the heads off live bats and now he's doing commercials encouraging men to get a prostate exam. Not a move you would expect from a man who once wrote a song called "Suicide Solution."

At first I was going to point to Dee Snider testifying in front of Congress in full "Twisted Sister" regale to protest having warning labels put on the band's CDs by telling them he and his bandmates were normal guys who just happened to be entertainers as the moment the rock curtain started to slip open and reveal the wizard behind it. (Bad move on two fronts as they lost all their street cred and those warning labels were the easiest way to sell a million albums.) However, as I get older I'm slowing coming to realize that there is a chance that none of these bands were ever all that dangerous to begin with. Now that I have taken a few marketing classes, I am well aware that as long as there has been music there have been musicians who were only going to show the public as much of their personalities as the stylists and record label representatives were going to allow and that wasn't very much because they had so much to lose. They were selling the image even more than the sound. (A wise decision in a couple instances. KISS, I'm looking at you...) Alice Cooper is a scratch golfer, has been since he was still painting his face and dancing with snakes around his neck. But no one knew about that until about a decade ago, long after people stopped expecting him to actually walk around in black leather pants. The only difference now is that people aren't waiting as long to show that side of themselves.

Personally, I think this ability to separate the image from the person behind it is a sign of maturity in us all. After all, only stalkers expect celebrities to act like their persona at all times, so acknowledging that even rock musicians need a non-destructive hobby for balance does nothing more than make us all look like level-headed adults. In some respects I guess this level of open sharing should be seen as a good thing for the artists as well. It has to be kind of liberating to strip away everything but the music. (Admittedly, some of you should have stayed behind the fake persona.) Either way, at this point you have no one but yourself to blame for not knowing that between Twitter, camera phones and all the other forms of social media, news gets out whether you want it to or not. With that in mind you are better off being honest from the start because acting tough only to have the world find out your favorite room on your property is for yoga and quiet meditation could really lose you some musical credentials. Letting people know you collect wine won't win you much in the way of death metal fans, but at least you can't lose them if you never had them to begin with.

The only way this gets dangerous is that sometimes too much information is not good for anyone. For example, I enjoy some country music, so I should at least be a Taylor Swift listener if not a full-fledged fan. However, by this point I simply know too much about her personal life that I don't want to and she has begun to grate on my nerves (a phenomenon I call the 'sympathy boomerang'). She could probably stand to take a couple lessons from actors, because those guys seem to be the best at showing enough of their own personality to remind people they are not the character they are playing, but some of them have maintained very private lives. It's about balance. The funny thing is that you would think someone would have reminded these stars that no matter what they are going to do someone out there is going to be annoyed by them anyway. It's the law of averages - no one likes everyone all the time. I could write a post saying something as non-threatening as "I'm not a huge fan of cats because I am allergic to them" and if the wrong person stumbles onto this blog I'm going to get a tensely-worded letter outlining why the world would be a better place if it was filled with nothing but cats. With that in mind you may as well do what is going to make you happy because that is the only thing in this equation you can control. I mean, you could always right really good music which stands alone no matter what you wear, say or do in your free time, but considering some of the stuff coming out of my radio these days, I'll stick to encouraging artists to just be themselves and not get greedy.

The Jerk Store

One of the common topics on this blog is my lack of sales skills. I simply don't possess that killer instinct to talk people into buying my product. But, more and more I'm discovering that it may not be a bad thing because it could just be I'm not mean. It seems to me that the hot new sales tactic is to make the customer feel like a jerk, which in and of itself is kind of a jerky move. I first noticed it at Christmas time when I was walking through a mall, passed a row of kiosks while desperately trying to avoid making eye contact with the people working there because eye contact is an open invitation to hear their sales pitch and I was not in the market for slippers that looked like sneakers, a decorative cellphone cover or a framed picture of Fenway Park. But, one of the women working at the spa kiosk that is in every shopping center in the world popped out into my path and asked me how I was doing today. Full of Christmas spirit I answered her with, "Not interested. Thank you." She replied with, "Well, I didn't ask you if you were interested, I asked how you were." Now, you can argue that technically she was correct and I immediately felt like kind of a dick for blowing her off without even thinking about it. I'm sure she felt very proud of her little comeback in that moment.

Something similar happened tonight. I was eating dinner when the phone rang. The caller ID said "Private Caller" which made me pause because occasionally that turns out not be a telemarketer. (Had it said "Unavailable" I would have gone on ignoring it, knowing full well this is election season and those bastards love to call at dinnertime.) But, I answered the phone and was greeted by someone looking for donations to a local political campaign. When I replied that we were having dinner the woman said, "Oh, so you don't want to talk to me?" Now, this probably shouldn't have made me feel like a jerk because she called me unsolicited and I was eating dinner at the time. Nothing about this timing was of my choosing. I mean, I wouldn't have talked to her under any circumstances and definitely wouldn't have given her a donation even if there had been a gun to my head, but I thought it was unnecessary for her to use that 'what are you so busy doing that you can't spare two minutes?' tone with me. Yet, that part of my brain which knows this woman is campaigning for something she actually believes in and that she should be admired for that passion couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed that I wasn't willing to listen to her spiel.

Look, I'm sympathetic to almost all telemarketers because I think they would tell you this wasn't the life they envisioned for themselves. No one writes "When I Grow Up" reports as a child which end with them sitting in a cubicle working their way through the phone book and trying not to get yelled at so loudly that their ears bleed. So, they aren't much happier about cold-calling you than you are about having the phone ring as soon as you sit down for dinner. They must get chewed out and hung up on countless times a day, all while a supervisor stands over them and reminds them they have a quota to meet. Under those circumstances I can hardly blame them for taking a jab at someone as soon as they realize there is no chance of completing a sale. It's probably the only time they win all day long. That being said, you should notice that in both occasions the zingers were not enough to make me change my mind. In fact, the longer I have to think about them the less I guilty and more annoyed I feel. Had that woman not hit me with attitude there was a chance I might have told her to call back a better time. Sure, those chances were incredibly slim, but they still existed. Instead in about half a second I went from feeling bad about not listening to their sales pitch to resolving to never give money to that person's campaign, ever. (The only reason I'm not mentioning the candidate by name is that I honestly don't remember it.) At this point if it comes to me on election day you can be damn sure I'm planning to vote for the other guy.

I'm sure people who make their living through sales are always trying new techniques and this is just another attempt to be different. I guess their thinking is that if customers suddenly feel like the salespeople don't need them because the next person will surely be smart enough to jump on this amazing deal they may change their minds. I assume it is the same basic instinct which makes dangerous guys so appealing to teenagers girls. But no matter how successful it may be in the short-term, I would like to suggest they move on from this particular technique as quickly as possible. Even if you can occasionally rope someone back in by making them feel like crap, it is not exactly the way to build any type of customer loyalty. After all, you never hear anyone say, "Oh, I love that place. The service is awful." If anything, they won't come back around at all and then you'll have no shot at shaming them into a second purchase. And I really wouldn't suggest it for people on the phone when the client can easily hang up because they didn't ask for your service to begin with. It is entirely possible that I am reading too much into this because if it was really a successful strategy the first woman would have had a store, not a kiosk and the second would be working on a national campaign instead of a local one. But it would still be better to stop this trend before it goes too far.

Thank You, Come Again!

Every time I am in a public setting and mention that I prefer to use the self-checkout lane whenever it is presented to me as an option, there is at least one person there who will feel the need to disagree with me. Usually their argument will center around the theme that what companies have done is tricked us into accepting fewer services than we are used to while simultaneously lowering their operating costs because they don't have to hired people to work at registers. All the while prices of items either remain the same or continue to go up. Basically, their contention is that we are paying more money and getting less for it. (From a pure numbers standpoint it is hard to dispute their logic. The problem is that it doesn't really matter how articulate this person's reasoning may be, in my head I'm busy assuming they don't like the self-checkout lane because they can't figure out how the system works.) But even if you think there may be something to the thoughts that someone else working the register is included in the price, it doesn't change the fact that sometimes doing it yourself is just better for everyone involved. I was reminded of that yesterday.

While cleaning out a drawer last week I came across a gift card I got for Christmas. Now, when I first got this gift card I was excited because I knew exactly what I was going to buy with it. But, as so often happens with me, I didn't do it right away, stuck the card in a drawer and promptly forgot about it. Determined not to let that happen again I left the card out in plain sight on my desk to serve as a constant reminder to not forget again. So even though I have been feeling under the weather the last couple of days, I brought the card with me as I was doing a couple errands yesterday afternoon and stopped into the store. I quickly found the item I wanted and was at the register in about two minutes. Honestly, I should have been back in my car and underway in another two minutes, but that was when I ran into a problem. I handed the guy behind the counter the gift card and he swiped it through. After a second he asked me to enter my pin number. I told him I didn't have a pin number. It was at this point he realized I had handed him a gift card and not a credit card, which was what he had told the computer he was trying to scan. Upon learning it what it actually was he handed me back the card and told me I would have to wait until another register opened up, because he didn't know how to do gift cards.

I looked to the left at the guy working the next register, but he immediately turned away in a desperate attempt to not make eye contact. He then apparently decided that wasn't going to be enough to slow me down and took the unprecedented step of walking away completely, still without looking in our direction. Figuring I was on my own I turned back to the screen (which thankfully I could see) and before the guy cancelled out my purchase I noticed that there was a list of functions, among them was "Gift Card." I suggested the guy try that button before giving up completely. He did, scanned the card a second time and, wouldn't you know it, it worked like a charm. (Ironically, the next pop-up on the screen asked if the clerk intended to help me install my purchase. Half of me wanted to say yes, just for the sake of comedy, but I declined. Maybe if I wasn't in such a hurry to get home and climb back into bed.) After that I walked him through the rest of the transaction, told him how much was let on the gift card (he was curious), thanked him for his time and told him to have a nice day. Honestly, we should have just exchanged shirts so that I had a name tag and gotten it over with.

In some respects I guess I should be grateful for the self-checkout registers, because between them and my previous time in retail I am capable of figuring out how to complete my purchase at almost any store. If not for their years of subtle training who knows how long I would have been waiting for another employee to get motivated enough to come over and help (which I bet it would have been a while). However, there is another part of me that thinks if another person is going to be involved in ringing me up than the least they could do is pull their own weight. I have no problem doing all this stuff myself, but if I'm expected to essentially wait on myself then don't expect me to make small talk with a complete stranger while I do so. I didn't even like doing it when I worked in retail, which is why I don't do work in that industry anymore. I guess the person who is really at fault is the manager who trained the guy at the register, because they clearly didn't do a very thorough job. Maybe what that store should do is install some self check-out registers, but keep them in the back of the store for the employees to practice with. They seem to be working wonders for the rest of society.

Storage Auction Hunter Wars

While watching just one episode too many of a SpikeTV "Auction Hunters" marathon, about guys who go around buying abandoned storage units (I prefer it to the alternatives "Storage Wars", "Storage Wars: Texas" or "Storage Hunters"), I decided to see if there were any of these auctions in my area. A quick Google search revealed that there is actually a website you can join to let you know when auctions are coming up and, in a moment of weakness, I signed up. When I got an email informing me there was an auction on Friday in Walpole I knew I had to check it out for myself. Here's what happened...

-I got there and discovered about 15 hard-looking guys with a couple of even harder-looking women waiting for the auction to start. I went into the office to sign in and found even more people inside. I could tell the guys in the office were the auction veterans because they were sitting around and talking about the business the way old-time baseball players would talk about the game. It was all, "How much did you get for those Jordan cards you found" or "Everyone just wants to get on TV doing this." Not these guys, though - they just love the craft. Still, the way you could really tell they knew what they were doing was that they stayed in the air-conditioned office until the last second while the rest of us were sweating outside on a 90-degree day.

-Before the auction started the Auctioneer had to read the terms and conditions to the group. If you've ever seen any of the storage auction shows you probably already know them: no going into the unit or touching anything inside, it was a cash-only auction and a $100 deposit was required on any unit you bought, refunded when it was empty and in this particular case you had until Sunday to clean out the unit. But, lest you think these are like any old terms and conditions where you can ignore them and still participate, that was far from the case. If you missed the reading of the terms and conditions you were not allowed to bid, only observe as was explained to the couple who showed up as we were walking to the first of five units up for auction. Clearly, they took these seriously.

-Unit #1. The first door swung open to reveal what looked like the typical contents of someone's garage. The highlights included a couple of shelving units with plastic containers, a Lamborghini car care kit which I guarantee you has never seen a Lamborghini in its life and a bed frame. But, there was a lot more in the back of the unit that no one could see. The Auctioneer started us off at $250, which no one bid on. Eventually he lowered his starting price to $200, which got a couple guys interested. This was when I noticed the over-stated way people bid on TV is a lot different than how it happens in real life, which was probably for the best. This crowd did not strike me as the kind who would appreciate flair. The back-and-forth continued until the unit sold for $300. Given what I've seen on TV that was a lot cheaper than I expected. Also, with the advantage of hindsight I would argue this was the best unit of the day, because it had the most potential for treasures to be discovered.

-Unit #2 The first thing we saw when they opened this unit up was a pile of wood scraps. I'm not sure if the person was using this unit as a workshop or just where he was leaving the remnants of his latest home improvement project. This unit actually had two doors, but they were only allowed to cut the lock off of one of them (never got that part explained), which meant we only saw half the unit. This is why the veterans bring flashlights. Without one the only things I could see were some mat padding that would go under a carpet and the tell-tale grey fuzz of either a speaker or an amplifier. The Auctioneer started us off at $200, but when his attempt was met with silence he dropped it down to $100, while asking us to "be reasonable." When that still didn't get any nibbles he dropped to $50 and eventually $25, at which point a mother and son team jumped in. They were joined by a man in a NASCAR shirt and eventually worked back up to $85, with the mother and son team taking it. "That's $200 worth of padding," the son said as we walked to the next unit. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I highly doubted that number.

-Unit #3 Ironically, this was the biggest unit, but it had the least amount of items in it. There was a couch, a couple twin mattresses, a treadmill, some skis and a large wood frame which looked like it would go around a fireplace with room for a TV in top. The stuff was nice and looked to be pretty good quality, but I think the key to a good storage unit is a little bit of mystery. You know you are buying things someone else decided they could live without, but you are just hoping they forgot about all the valuable stuff that was in there. With this unit you could see everything you were getting. On top of that the veterans made it sounds like mattresses are more trouble than they are worth. The Auctioneer started us off at $400. At this point I decided he must have some kind of formula based on the size of the room, because if he was trying to get people to bid based on what he thought the items in a unit were worth he was way off. Every time he lowered his starting bid he asked people to "be reasonable" and eventually at $200 he got a bid. Still, there wasn't much interested and the couple that bought the first unit ended up getting this one for $225. They may not have much excitement as they go digging, but I bet they will easily get their money back.

-Unit #4 When this door opened we were met with a cloud of sawdust and regular dust that had the first people in line coughing and retreating. Other than a mini-fridge like you would see on the counter of a convenience store and a metal Christmas tree holder, this unit mostly looked like wood shelves as far as the eye could see. I didn't see anything particularly interesting, so when the guy in the NASCAR shirt tried to jump on the unit by starting the bidding at $500, it send a murmur through the crowd. One of the veterans next to me told his friend he wouldn't have gone higher than $300 while several people went back to the unit to double-check if they had missed the extremely valuable thing that guy saw. As you can imagine, no one tried to out-bid that guy, which had to be a sinking feeling. It must have sucked as it slowly dawned on him that he bid way too much. Even if he eventually found something valuable, he still had to know that he could have had that unit for cheaper than he paid.

-At least, that's what I thought until we started walking to the last unit of the day. The guy in the NASCAR shirt was bragging about his victory to his friend, saying that the drafting table in the unit was, "easily worth $200." First off, I saw no drafting table. Secondly, what world does he live in where used drafting tables are that expensive? This was when it started to dawn on me that I may have the wrong mentality for these auctions. Even when I am super confident about something I just bought I will still have that half-second of buyer's remorse after the transactions. Not these guys. Every successful bidder was convinced that they had just tricked the rest of us. Their confidence, however misguided it may be, was actually kind of inspiring.

-Unit #5 This was the last unit up for auction for the day, so as soon as the door went up people started to head for their cars, which I didn't think was a good sign. When I finally got my first look inside this small unit I saw a bureau and a dusty armchair - that was it. As you can imagine the Auctioneer's attempt to start the bidding at $100 was met with amused silence, as the veterans were already saying their goodbyes to one another and making plans for the next auction. When he told us once again to "be reasonable" as he lowed his starting asking price to $25 I wanted to retort that he should be the reasonable one. At this point the only people still hanging around were me, some guy who showed up after the third unit and a couple of the veterans and none of us had any intention of bidding. I think we all just wanted to know how low he was going to have to go. The same couple who bought the first and third units tried to bid $1, but were told the lowest he could go was $10. They settled on $10 and not having to put down the security deposit (had I known that was an option I would have done it, just to say I had won an auction).

-As I walked away from my first storage unit auction I couldn't help but notice that for all their talk, only about four different people put in bids all day long, which means I had bid exactly as many times as most of the 'veterans'. And here I had been worried my lack of bids would make me stand out in the crowd. What I would have liked to do was hang around long enough to be there when people started going through their lockers, but that seemed like a breach of etiquette. Either way, it was an amusing way to kill an hour on a Friday morning. Still, the biggest thing I took away from the experience was something I already knew: with a little dramatic music and well-timed edits, you can make any activity seem much more dramatic on TV than it really is.

One Small Step...

Like most Americans, I was saddened yesterday to learn that Neil Armstrong had passed away. On a number of occasions I have used this blog as a way to talk about my fascination with space, so as you would expect, I had a great deal of respect for Armstrong and all the men who went to the moon. Honestly, sometimes it doesn't feel like they have been given their proper place in human history. Part of that probably has to do with the fact that we no longer travel to the moon, a fact which has caused some people see the space race as a costly endeavor which didn't produce any long-term benefits. Apparently, they forget that sometimes the journey is the thing. Unfortunately, it seems as though human nature makes giving people proper credit for achievements while they are still alive next to impossible, because we never do a particularly good job of putting history into context while it is happening. We tend to go to extremes right after an event happens, which has numbed us to when something actually is worth of that kind of praise. As such, we need a few years to really figure out how big a deal something is. I can only hope that as time passes more people appreciate what an accomplishment being the first human on the moon truly was and that we celebrate the remaining astronauts while we still can.

Weekly Sporties

-Last night came the stunning news that the Red Sox and Dodgers had completed a blockbuster waiver-wire trade, sending Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett and Nick Punto to the Dodgers for James Loney and prospects. I'm not surprised about Beckett being dealt and even though Crawford was only here for a year I think both sides could already tell it wasn't working. But, the inclusion of Gonzalez stunned me because I thought he was going to be the face of the franchise going forward. Early in the week a report had surfaced saying that last week's news that several Red Sox players had a heated meeting with ownership about manager Bobby Valentine which included a text from Gonzalez was not accurate, because while the text had come from Adrian's phone, it had been written by catcher Kelly Shoppach who had recently been traded to the Mets (how convenient). This counter-report had led me to believe Gonzalez was being shielded by ownership and that he was going to be here for a long time. Apparently that was wrong and Valentine is the one who will be sticking around. Still, the reason this move really shocked me is because it is the first time in years that the Red Sox have openly admitted that this season isn't going anywhere. (I'll be fascinated to see how much longer the front office keep up the farce of having a sell-out streak.) Normally they would make some kind of minor deal to pretend they still have a shot at the playoffs. Instead, this year they are waving the white flag and just dumping salary. (So, this is what it's like to be a Royals fan. Wonder if we'll get their ticket prices, too. I doubt it.) Hopefully the down season will at least have the positive result of thinning out the pink-hats and bandwagon fans going forward. I think that is one trade Red Sox fans would be thrilled about.

-When the United States Anti-Doping Agency announced they were bringing charges against Lance Armstrong, I voiced my opinion that I was officially tired of that story and that I was done talking about cycling until Armstrong was actually convicted of something, which I didn't think was ever going to happen. So, you can imagine my surprise when on Thursday night Armstrong dropped his appeal and allowed the USADA to strip him of his 7 Tour de France titles and ban him from cycling for life. The penalties themselves are meaningless because Armstrong wasn't competing anymore to begin with and, in a fit of delicious irony, every single one of Armstrong's Tour titles would be going to someone who is fighting their own doping allegations. Actually, my main feeling to come out of this thing was disappointment. Not that Armstrong cheated, because at this point I assume every cyclist is a cheater. My disappointment is in the douchey way he admitted it. Or should I say didn't admit it as much as tried to act like a martyr by saying that he was allowing them to ban him because he was tired of fighting the USADA's witch hunt. Talk about an underwhelming confession. If Armstrong really was innocent than he should know innocent men don't let themselves be convicted of crimes they didn't commit. Lance says he's tired of fighting. This is a man who beat cancer after it had spread almost all over his body - he doesn't strike me as the quitting type. That leaves me with the conclusion he knew they had damning evidence and he didn't want it to become public. Honestly, if you finally got caught and couldn't live with the lies anymore that is one thing, but to act like you're doing the world a favor by falling on your sword is completely another. But the good news is that now we really can go back to ignoring cycling in all forms, forever.

-Lance could probably gleam some inspiration from the way Melky Cabrera tried to go about fighting his failed drug test. Facing a 50-game suspension for having unusually high testosterone levels, Cabrera told MLB that he must have accidentally taken some over-the-counter medication which boosted his levels and caused the positive result. When investigators looked into the product Cabrera said he took they found a website based in the Dominican Republic and ordered the substance to check it out. While waiting, they did some more digging and discovered the website for that product was owned by an associate of Melky's and the product wasn't being advertised on that site until after Cabrera tested positive. Basically, these two were trying to invent evidence to make Cabrera look innocent and instead he looks even guiltier than before. It turns out they even had enough forethought to buy existing websites because they assumed MLB would get suspicious if the website was brand-new. This was not some half-assed attempt at the last second. I know it didn't work because they got caught and now Cabrera's associate has been banned from baseball (he works for Cabrera's agents and claims he acted alone the entire time. If you believe that I have some Dominican testosterone cream to sell you) and Melky is looking at an increased suspension, but despite all that I have to admit their grand scheming ways are kind of admirable. Everyone who gets caught taking steroids claims it was an accident, but these guys really went the extra mile to try and convince people that was true. Just be happy these guys went into baseball and not internet scams.

-One more steroid-related story. This week Roger Clemens announced he was coming back to pitch one game for the Sugar Land Skeeters, an independent team in Texas. At first no one could figure out why Clemens was doing this now when he hasn't pitched in almost five years. Certainly, he doesn't need the money. However, Roger's motives may have become slightly clearer when scouts for the Astros came to watch him workout. That was when the rumors started flying that Clemens was trying to talk the Astros into letting him make an appearance to re-set his Hall of Fame clock back to zero. You see, players have to be retired for five years to be eligible for the Hall and if they so much as pitch one inning, the clock starts over. (Because they have literally nothing good happening for them this season, the Astros are reportedly considering it.) The thinking is that Roger doesn't want to be up for election this year, as it is also the first time Barry Bonds will be coming up for consideration and Clemens thinks the two will be grouped together as users and ignored by voters. Apparently he is hoping that allowing memories to fade for five more years will get him into the Hall. I have bad news for Clemens - it isn't going to work. He can reset the clock all he wants, but he isn't getting in unless there is a massive change in the thinking of baseball writers and five years is not going to be enough time for that kind of shift to take place. Roger may as well schedule his 2014 start for the Astros now, because if he doesn't want to be eligible until he thinks he will get into the Hall on the first try, he is going to have a long wait ahead of him.

-A couple weeks ago, the St. Louis Rams very quietly backed out of their agreement to play one game a year in London during the next four yeas. Some people are saying the Rams simply don't want to upset their fans by taking away those home games, but others are saying it is because the Rams are eyeing a move to Los Angeles in the near future and traveling from LA to London every season would be too much of a hassle. At first I was fine with this because I continue to believe there is no reason to waste an NFL regular season game on an English crowd which clearly doesn't want it. But have no fear, imaginary European NFL fans, the NFL doesn't plan to leave you high and dry - the Jacksonville Jaguars are stepping up and taking over the Rams' commitment to building a fanbase overseas. While skeptical at first, while thinking about it I came around and now love this plan for everyone involved. First off, if there was ever a team which could use one fewer home game, it is the Jaguars. They can't sell out the stadium as is, so maybe only having 7 games a year will be the trick - make it a hard ticket to get, because scarcity leads to desire. Also, Jacksonville fans should take comfort because while they may be losing one home game a season, the Jaguars had been long rumored to be the team going to LA, so this means at least you will probably keep the franchise. But, mostly I think this is good for people like me who oppose the NFL in Europe. Because if anyone is going to kill the will of ex-pats to flood the city for a chance to see American football, it will the historically inept Jaguars. Honestly, after 4 years of being subjected to such horrible football, England probably won't let Roger Goodell into the country.

-While we're on the subject of franchises potentially moving, this week there was an odd rumor on the web which contended that Virginia Beach was making a serious push to be the new home of the Sacramento Kings. The Kings have had problems with the current stadium deal for a couple of years and while it looked for a while that it had been resolved enough for the team to remain in California, recently team owners made it be known they were still open to hearing from locations who might be able to support the franchise. Now, the first place most people penciled them in for was Seattle, because the NBA seriously owes that city for the way they let the Sonics leave. Also, you heard Buffalo and Kansas City, both of which used to have NBA teams (Kansas City actually had the Kings from 1972-1985). But this Virginia Beach rumor seemed to come out of the blue. Now, I've never been to Virginia Beach and I'm sure it is lovely. That being said, I can't imagine the NBA would let a team move there. First off, they are way too close to both the Wizards and the Bobcats, two teams which do not need any more competition for fans. Secondly, it's not that big of a media market. I know the people in that area will point to the fact that Oklahoma City isn't a large media market and they do just fun. Also, any pro team in Virginia would get wonderful support because they would be the only game in town. I would counter-argue that the Kings are the only thing to do in Sacramento and they apparently can't get out of there fast enough and while the NBA may like the way Oklahoma supports the Thunder, they don't want their next TV contracts to be built around several small media markets. I won't be surprised if the Kings aren't in California within a couple years, but I will be really surprised if those moving trucks are headed to Virginia Beach when they leave.

-I've never understood why the Augusta National golf club gets so much flack for not having any women members. Honestly, there are tons of ladies-only gyms across the country and no one says a word, so why was the membership policy of one privately-funded country club a national news story every single year? Of course I thought they should have female members, but I also didn't think people should be going to court to try and force them to change their ways. Honestly, outside of the yearly Masters Tournament, who really cares about that place? Well, whatever the fascination with it, everyone can move on to the next cause, because on Monday the club announced that it has invited two women to join. Financier Darla Moore and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were invited to join starting in October and both of them accepted. (Still no word on when the club plans to have the first member who is a registered Democrat.) First off, you can tell the club wanted to get this over with because they are notoriously tight about the people that make up their membership roster and they yet in this instance they put out a press release to spread the news. But, I also like the fact that they brought in two women at the same time, because now no one has to carry the mantle of "first female member". The good news is that now that this has been settled we can get back to the important issue surrounding Augusta National - forcing them to expand the amount of coverage the networks are allowed to show each year. If we're going to complain about something a private club is doing, we should at least complain about something which is going to benefit us all.

We're In A Rush

For the last few weeks I have repeatedly been seeing a commercial for the movie "Premium Rush" which opens today. It stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and in it he plays a bike messenger who got his hands on the wrong package, but is determined to deliver it no matter what. The movie looks fine enough and while I'm not going to see it in theaters, don't be surprised a year from now when I'm reviewing the film because it was on one of the cable channels. My quarrel isn't with the picture, it is Gordon-Levitt's profession in the movie. I feel like bike messengers are another one of those professions where Hollywood keeps using them even though their cultural importance stopped in the mid-1990s. (Their lasting legacy appears to be the messenger bag, which is mostly used by guys in their mid-20s who work in finance but refuse to buy a briefcase because it would confirm this is their career path and instead use the messenger bag as a way of fooling themselves into thinking they are really going to quit this job and become a professional poker player soon.) I'm sure there are still plenty of people who make it their living, it just seems to me that there are an inordinate amount of bike messenger movies when contrasted to the actual number of bike messengers in the world.

You can understand when you see a preview for yet another "teacher goes to the rough neighborhood and tries to turn things around" movie, because there are hundreds of thousands of teachers in this country and that may actually be happening. But, as near as I can tell there are only about 25 cities which would need to employ bike messengers in the country, meaning only about 2,000 positions and yet the movie about the street-start and morally upright bike messenger comes out every three years or so. Sure, most go straight to video, but they still get made. Hell, there was even a short-lived series about it. (1995's "Double Rush", because apparently you can't have be associated with bike messengers unless you use the word 'rush'. As further proof, I just found out there is a reality series about bike messengers called "Triple Rush.") Bike messenger is hardly the only profession to get this kind of treatment. I feel like Hollywood makes a lot of surfer movies despite the fact that the only two people in history have gotten famous enough through surfing to make the leap into mainstream sports consciousness - Kelly Slater and that teenager who got her arm bitten off by a shark. But at least with surfing movies you can understand the visual attraction. You can capture some amazing footage within the wave and with slow-motion wipeouts. You don't get that with bike messengers. With them is it just a lot of weaving in and out of traffic while everyone honks at them in annoyance because they refuse to stay in the bike lane even though they can't pedal as fast as even the slowest car rolls.

Even worse the movies seem to portray it as some kind of noble profession, which I find hard to stay with because I have seen a few bike messengers around the city and noble is not the word I would use to describe them. My informal poll shows it to be a lot of white guys with dreadlocks. Also, they don't think of it as a calling, as much as a job. Lastly, I'm suspicious towards people who are that comfortable wearing bike shorts in public. The reality is that it seems like the kind of job you take for a short while just to make ends meet but really shouldn't still be doing once you get over 30, like bartending or being a bouncer. (Yes, movies have been made about those jobs as well. And while "Cocktail" and "Road House" were fine, those professions also produced "Coyote Ugly" and "Road House 2". This is what happens when you try and stretch a thin amount of material.) My other problem is that the bike messengers in movies are always seen as some kind of genius who is wasting their talents, while the reality is that the majority of the bike messengers I have met would love to be doing something else but are unable to apply for any other jobs because they know there is no chance in hell they will pass the drug test.

Look, I'm not saying I don't see the appeal of the bike messenger as a symbol. They get a lot of exercise, help the environment by not using cars and people general like to get mail. There are a lot of directions you could take a character like that if you wanted to make a movie. However, the simple truth is that in today's society people have more options for delivering a package which don't include handing an important legal document to a guy who may or not be high and is about to pedal into traffic on his Huffy. And that is if they need to send the physical documents at all - most of the time you can simply attach these things on an email. So, doing a movie about a bike messenger is a little like making a movie about a video store employee - it may have worked a few years ago, but at this point it is a niche market. I'm sure in their little world it'll be a big hit, but the fact is that is an increasingly shrinking world. The sad part is that this movie is only going to inspire the remaining bike messengers to risk their health trying more and more radical maneuvers as they speed around the city. Keep that up and they won't have enough people left to see the sequel.

At Home In Public

Last night, I went to see "The Expendables 2". [Quick review: Eh. If you thought the first one was light on plot, you ain't see nothing yet. Honestly, every moment of dialog seems forced, as if the actors were annoyed this pesky 'talking' was keeping them from doing another action sequence. But, my main problem with it was the fun was missing. The reason the first "Expendables" movie was so good was that it was done with a "wink, wink" feel to it. Everyone involved knew this movie was not going for screenwriting Oscars, it was just a throwback to the action movies of yore and it was really cool to see all these big-name stars on the same screen. This one tries way to hard to replicate that feeling and, as everyone knows, the quickest way to ruin a party is for the host to walk around constantly asking their guests if they are enjoying themselves. Every time another big name came onto the screen I half-expected Sly Stallone to look into the camera and smirk, Ferris Bueller-style. Basically, the fun from the first film felt forced this time around. I'm not saying it was a bad movie, because at the end of the day you get exactly what you expect, but sadly, it was just not as good as the original.] But, as so often happens when I go out, it was the side action I found most interested. Specifically, the fact that I think we are all getting a little too comfortable in public settings.

As you would expect on a Wednesday night at a movie which has been out for a couple weeks, the theater was pretty empty when we entered. There were only two other groups of two already in their seats (the final tally for the whole movie ended up being about 20 people). The first was a couple kids in the last row and what I at first thought were two more teenage boys, but discovered upon approach were a couple butch women, near the center. The ladies had positioned themselves near the best seats in the place, so much so that had the theater been empty I would have picked the seats directly in front of them, but I know that it is both rude and weird to sit close to strangers when you don't have to, so I wasn't about to sit there now. Not that I could anyway, because one of the ladies had her feet up on the back of the chair and was pushing it forward, which meant picking that chair probably would have led to a confrontation. Now, I like to put my feet up as much as the next person, but I don't do it at the movies. However, I'm not going to stop people from doing it, even though I personally believe social etiquette dictates you should wait until the movie has started before you do. She had no idea how crowded this movie was going to be, so to essentially claim this extra seat just seemed rude to me. Actually, these ladies had taken up two extra seats because they were using the chair to their left to hold their large, restaurant-sized pizza. They had basically spread themselves out. This is what I mean by getting too comfortable.

Between the internet, bootlegs and reduced time between when films are in theaters versus available for home rental, people are increasingly staying home to watch their movies. As a result, movie theaters have had to compensate for this by offering things to make the experience more tailored to individual wants. Some of it is extreme - such as family friendly-screenings with lower decibel levels to not wake the kids or adults-only ones where everyone has to be at least 21. But most of it falls into the simpler realm of wide, plush seats which recline and better food options. However, I think some people have started to take this "make yourself at home" policy a little too far. I don't care how nice the seats are or how much space there is between you and the other strangers taking in the film, you are still out in public. This wasn't this woman's house, so get your damn feet off the furniture. This doesn't just happen at the movies, either. I remember one incident from my time at Gillette Stadium. The luxury clubhouses featured couches for people to sit at and one cold, rainy game a woman came in during the first quarter, took off her shoes and spread out, hogging the space. No one could say anything to her because she was a season-ticket holder, but we were stunned by her complete obliviousness. Everyone else paid equally good money for their tickets, but she clearly thought of the area as hers. Apparently no one explained to her that while she paid to be there that money doesn't go towards buying that couch. Her sense of entitlement was astounding.

I understand the concept of making consumers comfortable to try and get them to hang around and spend even more money. However, I do think there is a line where putting customers at ease switches into making them a little too cozy and a lot of places are letting people cross that line, apparently forgetting that most people are quick to take advantage of a situation. It's perfectly reasonable to get what you paid for, but that doesn't mean you should let yourself go completely. It is the same principle behind why I never go crazy spreading out my belongings any time I check into a hotel room - I know that technically the room is mine for the next couple of days, but that still doesn't make it my home. (This mentality is probably why I also prefer to sleep in my own bed whenever possible.) Even more amazing is that some of these people do things which they would never do at their own home. Ask yourself - what are the odds these ladies put their dirty sneakers on their own couches? I'll put it another way: if when you were a little kid and your mother came in, would she tell you to stop whatever activity it is you are currently doing? If the answer is yes, than don't feel like you can do it just because it isn't your stuff getting wrecked. If you really want the full theater experience in your home you should build your own home theater. Until you do that, remember that the price of your ticket doesn't include anything more than one seat to watch the film and just because that seat has gotten increasingly comfortable that doesn't mean you get to treat it like it's yours. And if you find yourself in a mostly-empty theater and you are allowed to lounge, just consider it your lucky day and not the way things should be.

Make An Entrance

In recent political rallies, Vice Presidential Nominee Paul Ryan has been coming to the stage to the pounding beats of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Going To Take It." Now, I like this song for workouts, but in terms of setting a political agenda, I find it to be a little lacking. Honestly, the central message of the song is "we are angry" which works in this political climate, but doesn't really give any reasons as to why or how you plan to remedy the situation. I'm just saying you could go a little more nuanced and help move the campaign forward if you felt like doing ten minutes of research to come up with a better song. Either way, I'm not going to take offense to their choice. The problem for them is that I'm not Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider, who has publicly objected to the campaign using the song. If this sounds like a familiar story that is because just a week ago the Silversun Pickups sent the Romney campaign a cease-and-desist letter to make them stop using their music at speeches (you would think the Silversun Pickups would appreciate any attention they could get). On top of that, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello wrote an article for Rolling Stone in which he essentially told Ryan he shouldn't list the band among his favorites because he represents everything the band is against. All in all it has not been a smooth musical ride.

You could see why Ryan would think his choice of entrance music was ok. After all, Snider campaigned for Schwarzenegger in his run for Governor, so assuming he supported all Republicans isn't a huge jump. But, the main reason this story caught my eye is that I feel like this exact news item comes up every single year (because there is always someone running for something). Actually, there is a long tradition of this in politics from both sides of the aisle. The most famous example is probably Springsteen forbidding Ronald Reagan's campaign from using "Born In The USA" (if anyone should have know the rules about needing music releases before using a song, it should have been the former actor). And on the one hand, you can't really fault the campaigns. Most people aren't as passionate about music as former DJs like myself and when you have that much to organize the entrance music is probably such a low priority that the person in charge forgets about it until the night before and is forced to work off their personal iPod. Also, despite what they claim, I'm sure most of these musicians aren't worried about being affiliated with one party of another, they are pissed their music is being used by these massive fundraising entities who have money to burn without getting paid for it. Send enough cash their way and I'm sure you could use just about any song in the catalog.

That being said, I feel like this story also sums up why I get so annoyed with politicians. As I said before, I read this story every single year. In fact, the only time I know what songs candidates are using for entrance music is if some musician is telling them to stop. Yet no one ever learns from the previous mistakes, which is infuriating. Partly, it reeks of self-importance where these candidate assume these musicians would be thrilled to be associated with them. But mostly, it just appears lazy. If you saw your opponent make a blunder like this wouldn't you try really hard not to repeat it? Seriously, how difficult is it for these people to make a phone call to a record company and get the all-clear? They're not some guy running for city dog catcher; it's the nominee for President for the United States - I'm pretty sure they will return the call. Plus, plenty of acts contribute thousands of dollars to various politicians, so if you just check the list to see who was sending money to which party you will already know who is on your side. Ryan could have used any number of Hank Williams Jr songs and he never would have said a peep. I simply feel this kind of repeated mistake sends a terrible message, because you are failing at what should be an easy task and that does not inspire confidence. If you can't figure out something as simple as getting clearance to use a song for 30 seconds than how can you be expected to tackle complex issues?

Instead, I offer two simple solution to any candidate who is searching for the correct entrance music. First, you could always use foreign acts. Americans get a lot of crap for not paying enough attention to the politics happening in other countries, but rest assured that everyone else is ignoring us just as much as we ignore them. Find a British pop act and come out to their music. By the time they figure out who you are and decide whether or not they want to be associated with you the campaign will probably be over. The second, and decidedly more badass, option is to hire a musician to write your own entrance music, WWE-style. Politics has always felt kind of rigged to me anyway, so you may as well take it the next step. Look, I stopped watching wrestling a decade ago, but if I ever need some bad-ass entrance music I still know exactly where to go to find it. Whatever company is doing that for the professional wrestlers can't be so busy that they couldn't come up with some generic-enough sounding political rally music in a few hours. Not only would it be instantly recognizable and make the crowd go nuts, it would also avoid making you look like an idiot who can't stop repeating their mistakes. Unless you use the "Brooklyn Brawler's" entrance music, because that guy never saw the beating coming.

Not My Type

One of the most damning piece of evidence during the NFL's pay-for-hits investigation was an audio recording of a defensive meeting in which ex-defensive coordinator Gregg Williams is heard telling the Saints players to go after San Francisco running back Frank Gore's head on tackles. They got the audio as a result of a documentary film makers who was following around former Saint Steve Gleason, who is fighting Lou Gehrig's disease and some have wondered if there was a connection between his illness and his time in football. At the time the clip was released, Gleason blasted the film makers for violating his trust. However, in a recent interview for HBO's "Real Sports" Gleason appeared to come around, saying that, "The real problem was that no one seemed shocked." It was a pretty damning indictment about the kind of things Williams may have been saying for years from a man who would have had the insight as a former player, but also could speak freely without the fear of being labelled as a snitch in football circles because his NFL days are over. There was only one problem with the quote: that was only half of it. Gleason said HBO got his words wrong because he only meant the players nearest him and not necessarily the whole team. And while "I was misquoted" is the standard athlete defense when they have said something in an interview which has gotten them into any hot water, this time HBO admitted that there was a problem with the close captions and while the tone was close the quote was not entirely accurate. Seems like kind of a big mistake to make.

What's funny is that this comes just a couple days after I was watching the news in a bar with the closed captions on and was stunned by all the spelling mistakes. At one point they did a story which contended that Mitt Romney has a tax plan designed to help the "missile" class. (If you can afford missiles, how much help do you really need?) But, that was just the most amusing in a long line of examples, because there were several sentences which made a lot less sense. I'm sure some of this has to do with the system these companies use. I'm willing to bet there is some kind of auto-complete feature which only requires that people type some kind of shorthand and then the computer guesses the word based on words which have frequently appeared in previous conversations. I know people have something similar with text messages, but am I the only one who thinks companies which are trying to do this at a professional level should be working with a technology that is more advanced than what comes on even the cheapest of smart-phones? I'm all for easy technology that you can take with you, but at some point you need to upgrade if you want to be taken seriously. Think about it like this: there is a reason you never see professional photographers walking around with iPhones on tripods.

Now, I admit that I am not a particularly fast or accurate typist (you should see these posts before I go back and clean them up) but then again I'm not trying to make my living at it. As with all things in life, once you are getting paid for it I feel as though the standards get higher. Still, I could forgive the mistakes if it was a live newscasts because I'm sure trying to talk as fast as people type is impossible. However, that particular quote about the "missile class" came from a piece of pre-recorded footage, which means the person at the keyboard had the time to look ahead at the script before the telecast started. Or they could have looked at what had been entered into the teleprompter and worked off that, because if "Anchorman" is to be believed newscasters rarely venture far from it. As a man who is extremely detail-oriented about making sure things such as movies are quoted accurately, that kind of error just feels lazy. (That is why I get really mad when I watch movies with subtitles on and they don't match exactly what is being said. You have all the time in the world to get these right and you still screw it up? That is just lack of pride in your work.) It is as if they think the deaf don't appreciate precision.

There is a simple solution to this problem, of course. For pretty cheap money you can get voice-recognition software which would do the typing for you. I don't know how accurate it is, but it can't be much worse than what is currently being used. For those of you who point out that most newscasts have two or more speakers which the computer would have to pick up, I assume that software already exists (and if it doesn't you are welcome for the idea). Also, if you have ever watched a sporting event in a bar you know that most of the time the close caption for live events don't distinguished between who is speaking anyway. [Sidebar: this is actually a really fun bar game to play - figure out which person just said the incredibly dumb thing you just read. Hint: it's usually Tim McCarver.] There has to be a better solution. In this day and age, where something which is seen as even slightly offensive by a small group of people can end careers, accuracy should be at a premium. Instead we're still allowing these kinds of spelling and speaking errors which can change the entire tone of a sentence to slide through. I just worry that one day we're going to misspeak about the wrong person and it's going to create a real problem, because if the news to be believed there is an entire class of people out there with missiles at their disposal and I bet they like to be quoted accurately.

Drowsy Discovery

Every now and again I will come across a product which makes so much sense, I will wonder why it hasn't existed before then. The infomercials for patent lawyers tell you that the next big invention will be something which no one has thought of before, but I'm not so sure that is the path to commercial success. I think what you want to do instead is find the sweet-spot where the product will clearly fill a need, but at the same time that need hasn't been so crushing that society demanded something be invented before that point. It's about giving people something they may want, but do not really need. I think that is why so many of the most famous products the world has seen were created accidentally. A few months ago I remember writing a post about how the maker's of Play-Doh had been trying to come up with an easier way to strip wallpaper and instead invented a beloved children's toy. No one was crying out for multi-colored clay that would occupy their kids for a couple hours but that doesn't mean they were going to ignore it once it was available. Well, I can only imagine the product I saw came about in kind of the same way. It's called ZZZQuil.

As you would expect from the title, ZZZQuil is from Vicks, the same company which produces NyQuil and DayQuil. For those of you who may never have had a cold in your life or believe in holistic healing, NyQuil is what you take when you have an illness and are worried about staying up all night long, coughing and sneezing. Since the body needs rest at those moments, Nyquil knocks you out within a few minutes of taking it and you wake up between 8 and 49 hours later feeling much better. Sometimes when you are sick all you want is a really deep sleep and NyQuil provides that. You may not know what day it is when you eventually come to, but at least you can inhale through your nose while you try and track down a calendar. In other words, it is the heavy artillery of cold medications. I'm a big dude, but one small cup of it can take me right out. Meanwhile DayQuil doesn't knock you out, but seems to do a good job of fighting colds. Still, I certainly wouldn't chug some and then operate a lawnmower, never mind heavy machinery because it is not like you are very clear-headed after taking it.

It seems a lot of medication is discovered accidentally. That is understandable, given the number of drugs which have to be combined and tested, because you never know what two random chemicals are going to do when mixed together. For example, scientists were trying to come up with a medication for high blood pressure and came away with Viagra instead. (Ironic, considering the commercials tell you not to take Viagra if you have high blood pressure. Still, you can't deny that was the most profitable failure since Columbus landed in America while trying to find India.) I have to imagine that something similar happened here. Since DayQuil is essentially NyQuil without the medications which make you tired and ZZZQuil is designed to only make you tired but not fight a cold I assume someone was sitting around one day, looking at the two halves which make up NyQuil and simply had an epiphany. Apparently when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade and when life provides you with a powerful concoction of drugs which will render people unconscious within a few minutes, you make sleep medication.

That is why this product seems like a natural next step. After all, the marketing behind NyQuil is all about it knocking you out and helping you sleep through the night. Also, I've heard of people who take NyQuil at the first sign of a cold because they just can't get that kind of deep sleep anywhere else. Since taking cold medication when you don't have a cold can't be healthy for you, it is probably a good thing that Vicks has come out with version which provides the rest but doesn't have as much unwanted medicine. The claim that it won't be as addictive as the sleep aids which require a prescription, but that remains to be seen. Considering drug companies exist to try and keep you alive just long enough to have to buy more of their medicine (this is Chris Rock's old joke about why they never cure anything), I have my doubts. The tagline for Nyquil used to be that it was "The nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, best-sleep-you-ever-got-with-a-cold medicine." I don't know is ZZZQuil is just going with "The best-sleep-you'll-ever-get medicine" but when you've got a foothold in the public's memory banks you should never be too quick to give it up. Maybe no one was asking for this medication, but now that it is here I'm sure a few people will be wondering how they ever lived without it.

Forgot All About You

On Friday, Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst announced that the band had retired, to which most of the world replied, "Who?" Since it is no longer 2001, many people required a refresher course as to why the punk/hip-hop band was popular in the first place. (Honestly, I can't even tell you. I chalk it up to us being young and confused.) Still, this reminded me of why I usually laugh when actors and musicians tell us they are retiring. Unlike sports, where athletes are forced into retirement way before they would like, most entertainers can tour or continue to get roles until they are dead. It doesn't matter if they were a one-hit wonder, as long as there is one fan willing to buy a ticket and they are willing to swallow their pride they can keep chugging along. So, musicians don't retire - society retires them. Most of the time we simply decide we don't want to hear from them anymore and stop paying attention. Only about 10 acts in history have ever announced a retirement which generally bummed out their fans who wanted them to keep touring. The rest of them announce they are quitting entertainment in a tone similar to the person at work who responds to being fired by screaming, "You can't fire me because I quit!"

The timing of this was particularly odd because I swear I just saw a commercial for a pay-per-view Limp Bizkit concert a couple weeks ago. I can only assume the number of sales were very low and this prompted Durst to announce the band's retirement as a litmus test to see how outraged their fans became. Considering the announcement was mostly met with jokes on the internet about how people had thought it already happened, I can't see this inspiring the band to regroup for a new album. Now, it is entirely possible that the band will reform at some later date, because musicians always try to squeeze out every last dollar with a reunion tour, usually after a hearing in bankruptcy court. But for now we will take the boys at their word that this is it and give them a musical interlude send-off. I picked the best Limp Bizkit song which, ironically, wasn't ever on a Limp Bizkit album - it's from the soundtrack to an awful movie called "End of Days". Seems strangely appropriate.

Weekly Sporties

-The Red Sox season of turmoil continued this week when Yahoo Sports had a report that several prominent members of the team, including Adrian Gonzalez and Dustin Pedroia, had a heated conversation with Red Sox ownership at the end of July concerning manager Bobby Valentine. Since the report came out Sox management has denounced it, calling the report both exaggerated and inaccurate. Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino gave an interview a couple days later where he emphatically said that Valentine would finish the season as manager. If you think about it, that isn't really much of an endorsement. I mean, of course Valentine will finish the season. You could easily argue that there is no point in firing him now. It is not like the Red Sox are going to suddenly have a fire lit under them and go on a run to the playoffs. Frankly, they are too far back in the wild card chase to bother making a change. Still, I think the way Lucchino phrased his endorsement makes it pretty clear that Valentine will not be back next year. It sounds like he has lost the locker room and you can't replace all the players as easily as you can one manager. With that in mind I actually go the other way and think the Sox should just fire him now and get it over with. Not only will this clear the air in the locker room, it will also turn the fans' focus back on the players, which may be a good thing for ownership. They don't have much cache thanks to last September's collapse, so a couple months of making them sweat couldn't be the worst thing heading into the offseason. Either way, I think it is pretty clear the team is looking forward to 2013. The goods news is that next year has no where to go but up.

-For years I have been screaming that baseball needs to expand instant replay. I don't want it in place for all balls and strikes because that would take far too long, but they at least need to implement it for outs and foul balls. I mean, it is one thing for an umpire to make the occasional mistake, but this year has been full of blunders which have shown that Major League Baseball has a serious problem on their hands. Mercifully, late in the week came word that they will expand replay... maybe. Two separate systems are being installed at the Yankees and Mets' ballparks which will determine whether or not balls down the line land in fair or foul territory. One works in a similar fashion to the flight camera used in golf and the other is like the system used down the lines in professional tennis. While they won't be used to correct any bad calls this year the data collected will help determine how accurate they are, which system is better and how fast the replay can be called up. (God forbid a 4 hour baseball game last 4 hours and 5 minutes with all the calls being correct.) The data will then be analysed and voted on at the owners' meetings in November. If that seems like kind of a long process, that is because it is. Most sports see a wrong which needs to be corrected and they fix it (hell, hockey will create a rule between games of a playoff series), but baseball was never much for rash decisions (at least about important stuff). Frankly, the fact that it took them this long to get to this point is practically criminal. However, I'm going to file this under "better late than never" and hope the owners don't screw this up by voting against it at their meetings because if they don't do it this time who knows how long it will take for the issue to come up again.

-Of course, I may be giving MLB too much credit in assuming they would get replay right to begin with, because they haven't shown they can get the policies which have been in place for years to operate correctly. A couple days ago San Francisco Giants outfielder Melky Cabrera was suspended 50 games for testing positives for performance enhancing drugs. While one or two guys popping positive every year shouldn't be seen as a larger issue, Victor Conte, whose BALCO lab was at the center of the Barry Bonds steroid allegations and was found to supply drugs to sprinters like Marion Jones, has said that the number of guys who are cheating the system is far greater. Despite MLB's claims that baseball has a very good testing policy, Conte estimates close to 50% of MLB players are on some kind of steroids and just haven't been caught. Now, you could easily point out that Conte is essentially a drug dealer and a scumbag. However, what is abundantly clear from his years of testimony is that he is not a liar. Much like Jose Canseco, people may not want to listen to him because they think he has an agenda (and he does), but they can't deny that Conte has been right about steroids a hell of a lot more than people whose job it to investigate this kind of thing. Considering baseball still hasn't figured out how to treat the statistics from last group of confirmed steroid users the last thing they need is another generation of stats that the average fan thinks are inflated. The only people who can be pleased with this report are confirmed steroid users, because it might be the only thing which ever gets them into the Hall of Fame.

-One of the funnier "controversies" to come out of Cabrera's positive drug test is the question of what to do about home field in the World Series. As you probably know, a few years ago MLB put in a policy stating that whichever league won the All-Star game would get home-field advantage for the fall classic. The thought was that after years of going through the motions, players and managers might take the event a little more seriously if they thought they had a legitimate prize at the end. At the time it was panned because of the concern that a player from a teams which had no shot at the playoffs could determine a fairly important factor, especially given the way American League teams use their DHs. But, baseball quickly pushed ahead as they always do with bad ideas and while people complained, they eventually accepted it. However, this year Cabrera was the MVP of the game, which was won by the National League 8-0. Some people have questioned whether this means the American League should be given home-field instead. First of all, this is the kind of thing you have days to debate when you play 162 games in a season, half of which don't mean much in the grand scheme of things. And while I happen to think you should given home-field advantage to the team with the most wins (make all those games they slogged through actually count for something), I don't think one guy testing positive for steroids in an All-Star game means you should automatically reverse the decision. After all, it wasn't like the National League won by one run in extra innings on a Cabrera homerun. They won because Justin Verlander barely made it out of the first inning and even though the Detroit Tigers probably won't make the playoffs, in MLB's eyes that is seen as a perfectly legitimate reason to give the National League home field, steroids or not.

-Just last week I mentioned that Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt wanted to try and make the jump to the Premier League to play for Manchester United. At the time I said Olympians should stay in their lane (so to speak) and if they need that kind of attention all the time they should take up sports where people care for more than two weeks every four years. So, you probably expect me to blast the Patriots for sign US 4 x 100 meter silver medalist Jeff Demps to a contract on Friday, except I won't. The difference is that Demps was a football player who just happened to be fast enough to run track, not the other way around. Demps played tailback at Florida and left the school as the 8th leading rusher in Gator history. As much as I like to poke Florida fans about Tim Tebow, there is no denying the program has produced some studs in their time, so that is no small feat. Demps probably would have been drafted last April, but told teams he wanted to focus on training for the Olympics and if there is one thing NFL coaches hate it is people with interests outside of football. I actually love this signing for the Patriots because they could use a boost in the return game and despite what guys like Chris Johnson say, Demps will probably be the fastest guy on the field from day 1. The saying in basketball is that you can't teach height. Well, in football you can't teach speed, you can only point it in the right direction. Demps is a fast football player who just happened to be good enough to run track. Bolt is a sprinter who dabbles in soccer. There is a big difference, which is why Demps has an NFL contract and Bolt is still waiting for that Manchester United try-out.

-Golf has a long history of gimmicky events, from celebrity pro-ams to tournaments which mess with the scoring system just to be different. So when it was announced that Tiger Woods would face world #1 Rory McIlroy in a one-on-one match-up in China at the end of October, many people dismissed it as nothing but PR. I tend to agree. With no real stakes this is nothing but a way to sell more advertising space and get publicity for Nike, Titleist and whatever investment firm is sponsoring the event while adding another zero on to each player's already sizable bank account balance. But, you know what else? I don't care. As soon as Rory won his second major last week the golf world started calling for Tiger vs Rory at the upcoming Ryder Cup. Due to the fact that the respective captains have to submit their line-ups independent of one another, the odds are fairly slim we would actually get to see that. One of the reasons people love events like the Ryder and President's Cups is that we see guys compete against one another instead of the golf course. It is closer to the kind of competitions most people are used to. It won't really tell us who the better golfer is, just the better golfer that day, but I'm still going to be very interested to see how Rory does one-on-one with Tiger under the spotlight. So, while this won't carry the importance of a Ryder Cup and the two golfers will probably be more friendly than combative, this is about as close to a duel as we will see between them unless they are paired together on the last day of a major with no one else within shouting distance. Given how Tiger has been performing at Majors lately that is unlikely to happen, so we'll just have to take what we can get.

-Before the preseason coaches poll for college football came out, USC head coach Lane Kiffin said he wouldn't vote for USC because he didn't think it was right to vote for your own team. However, Kiffin had to remove his foot from his mouth when a report in USA Today revealed that on his ballot he had done exactly that. A couple days later, Kiffin resigned his vote. (Didn't matter, as USC was the preseason #1 anyway.) Once again, sports proves it is never the crime, it is the cover-up which does you in. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with voting for your own team as #1. If you don't believe you are the best team in the land than why should anyone else? Honestly, any coach who doesn't vote for themselves should probably be fired. But secondly, I actually believe Kiffin when he said he wouldn't do that because there is an above-average chance he didn't fill out his own ballot. The coaches' poll has an inglorious history, full of stories which contend most times the ballot is actually filled out by some intern in the sports information department because the coach doesn't have time to pay attention to how other teams are playing. It is entirely possible Kiffin wouldn't vote for his own team but didn't tell whomever was actually filling out his ballot that and had no idea what teams were in what order, which makes the fact that it is used to determine part of the BCS match-up all the more insane. The good news is that we only have two more years of this before the BCS is done away with and we have a playoff system to determine the best college football teams in the land. I just hope once that happens they can find the interns some different work to do.