I Could Do That

During my brief but award-winning college play-by-play career I tried a little bit of everything. I called baseball, football, softball, basketball, even lacrosse. But, I never was called upon to broadcast a soccer game. Mostly it was because that's what we made freshman do, but also since I never played soccer I figured I wouldn't know what I was talking about and it would come across on the radio. But yesterday I found myself watching soccer (go ahead and take a second to let that sink in, cause I was just as shocked as you are) and paid special attention to the job the announcers were doing. It was not exactly the hardest job in the world, because here's a pretty good summary of what the guy said:

"Anderson... Fletcher... Anderson... Park... Fletcher... Anderson.... Park... Out of Bounds."

And that was it. 45 minutes of just saying last names as players passed the ball around. That guy probably makes 6 figures a year. Maybe I should have tried calling a game somewhere along the line.

-While I'm not exactly happy about the way the Red Sox have sort of been stumbling to the finish line this season, I am pleased with the way that they backed into the Wild Card spot last night. By losing against the Blue Jays, but then having the Rangers lose to the Angels at about 1 AM on the East Coast, it prevented them from being able to go nuts and shower each other with beer and champagne. I find an over-the-top celebration for simply making the playoffs to be in poor taste, especially when you consider the team's payroll and the talent on the roster. If a team like the Rockies, who traded their best player during the offseason, have a low payroll and made a manager change early in the season make the playoffs, I can see why they would want to celebrate. But the Red Sox were supposed to make the playoffs and not just as the Wild Card. Save the celebrations for winning the World Series, or at least the ALCS.

-So, wait, is Jessica Biel single or not? Cause I'm still looking for a date to this wedding in a couple weeks and I think we would have a wonderful time.

Banned Books Week

As of last Sunday it's Banned Books Week here in the United States. This is where some libraries and book stores around the country take the opportunity to celebrate books that people have objections to by putting them out front for all to see on special displays. It's sort of a giant middle finger to people who are pushing an agenda of censorship. Personally, I love this idea and I can't believe this is the first time I'm hearing about this week. I have a large and serious problem with people who think they have the right to tell other people what is ok to read and what could be too risky for them or their children. Honestly, who the hell do these people think they are? Last time I checked this was a country where people were allowed to make their own damn decisions and just because your brain is too under-developed to know the difference between fiction and non-fiction that is not the rest of society's problem.

The people who want to ban certain books are the same lazy parents who would rather get TV shows or movies taken out of because God forbid they have to have a real conversation about a serious topic with their kids. They just want to be able to stay as their kid's 'friend' rather than their parent and, apparently, friends can't tell other friends 'no'. Sure, now other parents may have to have a tough conversation about why their kids can't find a Harry Potter book at the library, but better those guys have to do it. Also, the hypocrisy that is going on here drives me up a wall, because often times these are the same people who have a big problem with schools having books available that may not be in line with their values, but no problem whatsoever with pushing to have those books removed. I guess it's ok to only have access to one side of an issue as long as it's their side. I would actually be on board with them if they simply requested both sides be represented, but that's rarely how these fights go.

Thankfully, most of these crusades don't work. I'm very grateful to live in New England, which only had a few challenges (none in Vermont or New Hampshire) and in a couple cases people responded to books being removed by donating extra copies as a replacement. Basically it proves that all these people are doing is steeling the other side against them. So, not only are they annoying, but they're bad at strategy. Still, my biggest problem with these people is that most of them don't even read the books they want banned. Ask them to point out a section they find offensive and half of them don't know where to look. They were just told that a book is bad and believed it without reading the book for themselves. That makes them stupid and easily manipulated, which are two very scary things when combined. However, I guess this stuff doesn't remain much of a problem as long as the whack jobs don't get any real power... shit.

Bombs Away

I don't know what has gotten into the acorns around here (no, I'm not talking about the political group - I literally mean the ones that grow on trees). For some reason they seem to be much bigger than usual this fall. I guess we could blame the wet early summer, because we seem to want to trace all the problems in nature back to the rain we had in June and July. When they fall it sounds like rocks are bouncing off the ground. The ones that land in the back of my dad's truck are especially fun, because you get the echo and they are even louder. I read somewhere that large acorns in the fall mean that it's going to be a harsh winter, so consider this your warning. I guess as long as they avoid my truck (which I spent hours cleaning on Saturday) than they won't bother me too much.

-Remember how last week I said that it was really annoying to go into the Monday Night Football game knowing that you're going to lose your fantasy football match-up that week, it's only a matter of when and by how much? The complete opposite of that feeling is when you have the only guy going in the game and you're already up by 40 points. The match-up is already over, now I'm just going to run up the score. I feel like Urban Meyer.

-Going in to last night, I was pretty intrigued about how The Cleveland Show was going to be. I think Family Guy is brilliant and since it's from the same people I thought it would be pretty good (then again, I thought the same about American Dad). If it was somewhere in the space between American Dad and Family Guy I would have walked away satisfied. Unfortunately, it was not - to be honest, The Cleveland Show came up woefully short. Now, it was just one episode and they were trying to establish all the new characters so I'm not giving up on it yet, but there is the nagging feeling that Cleveland is not a strong enough character to build an entire show around. Plus, his voice get annoying after too many scenes. We may have found the cartoon version of Joey.

Announcers Are Annoying

-When did it become a rule that if an announcer is calling a game, he's suddenly not allowed to give his opinion on who he thinks is going to win? Up until the last couple of years it never seemed to be a problem, but now whenever a guy is calling a game he refuses to offer a guess as to who will win the game he's at. Are we to believe he doesn't have an opinion? I'm sure it's because in some studio executive's head the guy has been talking to coaches all week and so he might have "inside information" that gives him better insight into the game plan. Yeah, that's kind of the point. Would it aid a person who was wagering on a game? Sure. But it would also make it seem like the guy knew what he was talking about. It's ok, we all know that people gamble on sporting events.

-The other thing that annoyed me yesterday was when an announcer seemed to focus on one thing and hammer the point home repeatedly. As a result, the people in the studio seemed to latch on to that same point because they are trying to watch 4 games at once and assume the guy at the game has a good grasp on the action. Only if the guy is way off on his point, now the people in the studio look stupid by association. Here's why this is in my head - yesterday as the Notre Dame/Purdue ending was coming to a close, Notre Dame had the ball 3rd and goal from the 2 with no time-outs. The announcers were convinced that the Irish were going to spike the ball and waste a down despite having plenty of time left on the clock. Purdue called a time out to make sure the right personnel was on the field. The announcers started ripping the Purdue coach, saying he gave Notre Dame a free down. Only the Irish were lining up with tons of time left on the clock so you have no idea if they were actually planning to spike the ball or not. I then had to listen to 15 more minutes of them talking about a scenario that probably wasn't even going to happen.

-About that Notre Dame game: Charlie, I like some gambling on 4th down. I understand that being aggressive is part of your style. But, when it's 4th and 10, you're using the unproven back-up quarterback and you're close to mid-field, take the delay of game penalty to give yourself some more room and punt. You were up 10, play the field position game.

-Next time Penn State wants to plan a promotion where everyone wears white tee-shirts, perhaps they should check the weather report. Just a thought.

I Guess They're Not As Cool As Us

A couple of months ago my family had a large yard sale. Now, when we have a sale, you get some real quality for your money. We buy each other nice stuff, so a couple people were able to pay little money and still get some good stuff. Now, not being a veteran of the yard sale process, I foolishly assumed that everyone had good stuff at their family yard sale. Turns out, that is not the case at all. I rolled into a multi-family sale in Dedham today, fully expecting to find a couple specific treasures (more on that in a second). Instead, it was mostly just other people's crap. The 4 minutes that it took me to cruise through this thing was enough time for me to remember why I don't ever go to yard sales.

The other reason I never go to yard sales is because of the way that I shop, which is as if I'm on a scavenger hunt. There is no wandering aimlessly, even when I'm not looking for anything specific. If I don't see what I want, I'm gone, and that is not the way to go through a yard sale. Those things are complete crapshoots and you have to go in with no agenda and just be surprised if there is good stuff. (Of course, I know this now. Would have been nice to know a few hours ago.) A couple weeks ago I went golfing with my buddy Josh who was using brand new clubs in a new bag. Now, there is a commandment that says 'Thou Shalt Not Covet Your Neighbor's Wife.' That's fair, but there is nothing in there about his golf equipment. Because of that I'm in the market for a new bag, but at the same time I'm still not very good and so I'm not looking to spend a lot. That's why I thought a yard sale would be a place to get a good deal. And, again, going off my family's yard sale I assumed that there would be a plethora of golf equipment, cause my uncle supplied some and I thought a multi-family yard sale would mean an actual selection. Alas, it did not. So, I think this was my first and my last yard sale excursion.

-You know, there is a reason I don't sing anywhere but the shower. This is pretty much what I think would go down should I try karaoke again. What happened to the good old days when everyone was polite to your face, but then made snide comments once you were off stage? Apparently, this was the first time that this woman tried karaoke. I'm willing to go out on a limb and also say it will be her last. She must have been terrible. Also, my favorite part of the story is collection of women's mug shots, where the two women wearing purple look confused as to what the hell the camera is going to do.

Real Genius

So, Starz has been showing some older movies on their Starz Comedy Channel (personally, I think it beats the usual strategy of playing nothing but recently-released movies on a 4 hour loop). The past couple of days have featured some great mid '80s movies like Money Pit, Man With One Red Shoe and Spies Like Us. But, today they had a cult classic on - Real Genius. For those of you who have never seen it, it stars Val Kilmer and is about a group of genius college students who are tricked when the laser they think they are making for a final is really being made into a weapon (in classic mid-80's fashion, it's weapon that could vaporize a person from space. Hollywood loved its space weapons in the '80s). As I was watching the movie today I was thinking about what other films I could use to identify the rest of the cast from. They looked familiar, so they must have been in something more recent than a movie from 1985, right? Actually, nope.

Seriously, if you look at the cast on IMDB, it's pretty much a list of people who made this movie and went on to careers of being Guy #4 in Store. Outside of Kilmer the only person who I could place in another movie is the dickish professor, who made a career of being the dickish guy - either the dickish reporter in the first two Die Hard movies or the dickish city inspector in GhostBusters. When he's the second most recognizable person in your movie and even a guy like me (who watches a lot of movies), has no idea what his name is then you may have made some casting errors. Though, when you stop and think about it, the fact that 90% the cast seemed to have peaked as actors in this one film is a pretty impressive feat. It must have been one hell of a job by the director to get a good movie out of this crew... it's almost like when Herb Brooks was able to win an Olympic gold medal with a bunch of kids who went on to fairly unspectacular NHL careers.

Just know, there is no way this movie gets made today with a cast like this. If they did try to get no-name actors they would receive almost no pre-release publicity and be out of the theatres in a week. Instead, studio executives would insist that every person, no matter how small a role, be played by an actor that the audience would recognize. They would bring in someone like Jeremy Piven to be the dickish professor and have Ryan Reynolds do his best Val Kilmer impression (which, let's be honest, is all Van Wilder was anyway). They would follow that with Michael Cera as the geeky boy-genius and put thick glasses on the girl from Juno to play the smart girl who deep down every knows is actually pretty cute. Then sneak in a cameo by a comedian like Paul Rudd and you've got a scene for the trailer. And this movie, which would not be half as funny as the original Real Genius, would make $50 million opening weekend. Damn, I should move to Hollywood.

My Kung-Fu Is Strong

-Sorry for the late post time, but after yesterday's blog about the best board games of all-time, my day was spent online playing Connect Four and Battleship (as you may have guessed, I'm just killing time waiting for an offer to be officially mailed and I'm no good at waiting so this was as productive as I was going to be today). Turns out that I forgot something - I suck at Connect Four. I focus too much on my offense and don't play enough defense. The computer kicked my ass all day. But, the tides turned when I found the online version of Battleship. I went undefeated for the day, proving that my mother was right, I did not need the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier.

-I know Nets fans (those that are left, anyway) are excited that this Russian Billionaire looks like he is about to buy the team and start spending money like water. But, it doesn't change the fact that he still has to work around a salary cap and the team is going to Brooklyn. The team he needed to buy was the Pirates. He could spend as much as he wants in MLB and they could use a jolt - the attendance at this afternoon's game was 2,500. You get more people in Fenway to watch batting practice. They tried to blame the poor attendance on the fact that traffic in the city is screwed up due to the G20 summit being in town. I don't buy it. If this was a Steelers' game you can be damn sure people would have found a way there.

-Am I the only one who finds it distasteful that the Kardashian sister and Lamar Odom felt the need to register for gifts for their wedding? First off, I give it 6 months and so I think making people buy you a gift is unnecessary. Secondly, Lamar just signed a $33 million contract - buy your own damn toaster.

-So today is Arthur Guinness Day, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the founding the Guinness brewery. Fun fact - he signed a 9,000 year lease for the land. There is a man who had some faith that his company would last. Well, Arthur, it took me a while to come around to your beer but believe me, I've converted. While I still enjoy the occasional Miller Lite (especially following golf) and do not care for most dark brews, I'm a big fan of your work. So, raise a glass - to Arthur!