Priceless Picture of the Day
Bookie D sent me this great picture today, which is simply crying out to be posted on this blog. My question to you all is this: Which of these three athletes wasted the most talent? I'll have to go with Straw. The guy had one of the sweetest swings I've ever seen, monstrous power, and could run like a deer. Coulda been a cross between Ted Williams and a pre-'roids Barry Bonds. Truly depressing what happened to him.
Baseball's Back (Almost)!
Well, it's almost that time again (finally) - baseball returns on Monday when the Mets host the Nats. This, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with the picture, which I provide for the benefit of Bookie (go Gators!).
In any event, I wanted to know what people really think about the Mets' chances this year. I'm not terribly concerned about second base -- we need a decent glove there, and Kaz will still be buried by June in favor of Hernandez, I predict -- or the batting order, which I think will work itself out. No, the issue, as always, is starting pitching. We somehow managed to go from a record surplus in starting pitching in '05 to a record deficit in '06 (forgive the political analogy), basically giving away Kris Benson and Jae Seo for bupkes. Here's hoping Bannister emerges, Pedro stays healthy, Zambrano finds himself, and Heilman doesn't whine about being in the pen. That's asking an awful lot. The pen should be solid especially if Heilman stays there and Julio is relegated to mop-up duty.
What do the rest of you think? I know Sonny's predicting a 15-win season, but I'll predict 90-72, second place in the NL east, and wild card winners. Yes, I've learned my lesson, and I am NOT picking against the Braves ever again, no matter who's on that team. As Joe B said on WFAN, you could put nine blind men in Braves uniforms and they'd beat the Mets.
YJIT
Tuesday Night Musings
Ok, I just heard a rap song on Music Choice by The BackWudz which sampled "I don't like the look of it" from the Oompa Loompas of Willy Wonka fame. Say what you want about rap, but these playas are creative.
Can someone agree with me that every pharmacy in New York has the slowest and longest lines of any stores in New York? It doesn't matter. CVS, Rite Aid, Duane Reade all are like entering a doctors waiting room where you sit there for like 30 minutes and all you can read are 3 year old issues of RedBook. I walked by my local CVS at 840 tonight and there was a line of like 8 people. One could solve the unemployment problem by just hiring people for the drug stores in NYC.
Is it a prerequisite that every movie store rental employee has to be some high school drama student reject who just dorks out about any movie ever made? I just was in a movie store where I listened to this guy go into a 5 minute solioquy (sp) about how Natalie Portman's role in Vendetta was her best since closer. I then had to listen him tell me how the new Harry Potter had much more action adn was much darker than the other ones after I just asked if it was pretty good.
I think we may have already mentioned this, however I think the Sleuth channel could be the best rebranding on TV ever, outside of The Nashville Network's transformation into Spike. I mean what other channel allows you to view reruns of Miami Vice, Simon and Simon, A-Team, and Knight Rider. These are classics of our time. Now we just need a Magnum PI marathon.
And to follow up on Joe's fine post on Grey's Anatomy, it brings us to a new top 5 of most annoying chick shows on TV over the years.
5. Aly McBeal & Felicity - tied although I give the edge to mcBeal since that chick was not hot and the Felicity was smokin.
4. Gillmore Girls - shoot me
3. Desperate Housewives
2. Will & Grace - if Debra Messing got naked this show might be cool
1. Sex and the City - I think I just threw up in my mouth
Be Gone, Grey's Anatomy!
I've tried to suppress it, I've tried to live with it, but there's no holding back any longer: I despise "Grey's Anatomy," and I don't care who knows it. Why is this show - which, unfortunately, the
Flitgirl LOVES - so awful? Several factors are at play here:
(1) I Cannot Accept Any Show In Which Patrick Dempsey Is The Resident "Hunk." I mean, we're talking about
Ronald Miller here, people. Not to mention the guy from "Loverboy." And people on the show are calling him "McDreamy"? Unacceptable.
(2) It Has An Irritating Faux-Sex-And-The-City Narration By An Equally Irritating Lead Actress. Another huge problem. One "Sex And the City" was bad enough. But now we have to endure an hour-long version with the same phony-"deep" moments of self-reflection by the star about the episode's events? "And just like that...life can surprise you." Hey at least Sarah Jessica's character had an excuse - she was supposed to be a writer. Who the hell is this dummy talking to? And by "this dummy," I mean the actress I once referred to as "the chick from 'Old School'," and who I now refer to as "that corpse-like annoying talentless chipmunk from 'Grey's Anatomy.'"
(3) It Has A Bland, Inoffensive, Adult-Contemporary VH1-Friendly Soundtrack. Every 30 seconds, the show breaks into some banal, adult-contempo song, which is bad enough - but the show makes you listen to the equally banal lyrics for minutes at a time, which I guess are supposed to have some deep meaning to the storyline. I finally figured out the meaning last night as the Flitgirl was watching an episode: We suck!
(4) It Telegraphs Each And Every Storyline So That A Retarded Person Could See Where It's Going. This one really kills me. Now, please note, many shows are guilty of telegraphing. Heck, even the Sopranos makes a practice about hinting at what's to come (see, e.g., Christopher and the middle-eastern guys last week). But there's a big difference between hinting and essentially holding up a big sign that says "THIS WOMAN IS AN UNGRATEFUL DAUGHTER WHO WILL LEARN HOW MUCH HER FATHER MEANS TO HER IN THE END," for example. Why watch the whole episode when you can realize what's gonna happen in the first five minutes?
Well, that just about sums it up. Unfortunately, I have many years of "Grey's Anatomy" in my future, considering how big a fan the Flitgirl is. However, I have hit upon a fine solution: Flee to the bedroom after the Sopranos, lock the door, and crank up ITunes. Thank god for one-bedroom apartments.
YJIT
Looney Tunes
There is this cool site I have been reading lately called www.deadspin.com it has a lot of good sports snectdotes and amusing stories. Well today they provided a link to a funny story about the
Bugs Bunny Baseball game Cartoon that I thought was pretty good. Give it a read.
Oooo, girl....
My rant for today is about a new, appallingly bad TV ad for Carmel Car Service. Please tell me you've all seen this one (if not, clearly you don't watch NY1 as much as I do). Allow me to set the scene:
SCENE: An outdoor cafe in Manhattan. Four attractive, early-30-something women are discussing in earnest tones what sounds like the perfect man, a sexual dynamo, who is apparently dating all four of them.
WOMAN #1: He comes when I call him.
WOMAN #2: He takes me out to dinner!
WOMAN #1 (seductively): He takes me to the theater...
WOMAN #4: I LOVE the theater!
WOMAN #3: He takes ME to the airport!
WOMAN #1 (excited): That's HUGE!
WOMAN #4 (even more seductively): Sometimes...he just takes me home at night.
WOMAN #2 (apparently aroused): Oooh, girl...
That's it. That's the ad. Now, I have more than a few problems with this, but here's the biggest one: I understand what they were going for. It sounds like they're all talking about a man who does romantic, sexy things, but, ha ha ha, they're actually talking about a limo driver. I get it. But the sequence is all screwed up. I think it would've worked better if the airport "gag" is the last one. So, the tension would've been building (...out to dinner...), and building (...to the theater...), and ready to explode (...home at night...), and then, finally, when we can take no more tension: "He takes ME to the airport!" BWWAMMMP BWAAAMMMM....(trombone music). But, no. The ad-wizards at Carmel put the airport gag smack dab in the middle, where it makes no sense. So, when you hear Woman #4 talking about being taken "home at night," you already KNOW she's talking about a limo driver, as opposed to some mysterious dinner-eating, theater-going super-stud who's gonna hump the fillings out of her teeth.
Discuss.
Every Rose Has Its Thorn
Well, we took what looks like to be a new annual golf trip this past week where we went to sunny Naples, FL where the beer flows like wine and the catheters and cadillac devilles are a plenty.
It was a great time. We played seven rounds of golf in five days. My fingers hurt, but my team wound up winning the inaugural Jim Beam Boot.
We also went to a fantastic sports bar called
Foxboro . You wouldn't believe the bar appetiezer menu at this place. Everything from stix, to skins, to poppers, to wigns, to dillas, to buffalo shrimp, to EVEN mini corn dogs.
In any event, I came across this stunning picture of our buddy MCDEV, and thought it was appropriate for a caption contest.
Let's get some good one's up for this one.
They are real! And they are fantastic!
No, it's not that. But
this is pretty cool if you haven't seen it. Now how come we didn't think of doing that?
Baseball Fever!
Yes, after a lengthy hiatus, DANCING WITH DA SCHWIZZ is back and psyched as ever for the upcoming baseball season. Perhaps not as psyched as Jeter and A-Fraud, as evidenced by this picture. Methinks it's time for a new caption contest. Who can beat these?
(a) Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez re-enact a scene from "Brokeback Mountain" for their teammates.
(b) "Hey Alex, why do
I get the Heimlich when
you're the big choker?"
(c) "C'mon, Derek... Cecil Fielder told me you used to be able to take 10 inches!"
(d) Jeter and A-Rod reveal demonstrate special "Yankee" squeeze play for rookies.
