Prospective Superheroes

Tape Measure Man -

Watermelon Smile

Most uncomfortable Youtube...

Depression Christmas

murderhiking

Funniest thing I've seen in the past hour -

Doin' Dirt Is A Part Of Livin'

I skim off the top like a politician. 2 mash-ups using Dead Prez -





It surprises me that rap-rock sucked so bad cause some of my favorite remixes use indie rock as the beat. I haven't spent much time listening to it yet, but Blakroc (the guys from The Black Keys with rappers like Q-Tip, RZA, Raekwon, Mos Def...) might turn out to be an exception.

The Phoenix Suns All Night Long

It's impossible to hate the Suns.

David Simon Interview

Vice has a gigantic interview with David Simon up. It is fantastic and worth the 40 minutes you'll have to devote to read it. A lot of information I was unaware of with The Wire and his response to how people reacted to The Wire.

The Wire tried to imply—and I felt it being from Baltimore, and I think Baltimoreans felt it, but I’m not sure how well it conveyed for the rest of the country—the value of the city as the essential American experience. We’re an urban people. Eighty percent of us live in metro areas. I don’t buy the whole Republican convention with its small-town values and “We represent the real Americans.” I live in Baltimore. I’m concerned with big-city values and I live among real Americans. I could give a fuck about the other 20 percent of the country. I care about how we live together in cities. I think there were some people who watched The Wire and said to themselves, “You know, why don’t they just all move away? That city’s unredeemable.” We never felt that. I’m vested in Baltimore and I love it, just as I now spend part of my year in New Orleans and I’ve always loved New Orleans.

Oll Right

An Italian musician wrote this song in gibberish to sound like English -

See more funny videos and Music Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Where's Wallace?

Where's Wallace?!

Astronomically Accurate Ant-Size

Feel it.

A Star Wars Man

Alyssa Rosenberg has a nice response to a weird article by Wesley Morris in the Boston Herald. Morris is dredging up the tired argument that Hollywood has a representational void of the American brand of masculinity. Alyssa addresses the absurdities of the argument well -

He sees elements of it in everyone from Clark Gable to Clint Eastwood, and complains that it, whatever it is, is lacking in younger men of today. If he had a firm definition to work from, it might be possible to make that exclusion definitively. But Gable and Eastwood are really only two points on a continuum, and not even definitive end points of it...But just because we've moved beyond once kind of dominant performance for men doesn't mean a total loss: if you lose one kind of role, but gain many others, I think that's probably a net benefit for male actors across the board.

Morris sees the beginning of the end for the Gable-era masculinity with the popularization of the Method form of acting, which doesn't make much sense at all. I can't be certain at all, but were people complaining about the loss of real men in Hollywood when Paul Newman and Marlon Brando and Al Pacino were the leading men? Instead, I think, like most things in my lifetime, the argument can be traced back to Star Wars. As Chuck Klosterman put it -

Studied objectively, Luke Skywalker was not very cool. But for kids who saw Empire, Luke was The Man. He was the guy who we wanted to be. Retrospectively, we'd like to claim Han Solo was the single-most desirable character - and he was, in theory. But Solo's brand of badass cool is something you can't understand until you're old enough to realize that being an arrogant jerk is an attractive male quality.

But the argument that the new generation of American male actors was not masculine enough, at least in my lifetime, I think started with Titanic and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. You could try, like Morris, to validate your argument by couching it in historical comparisons, but a more defensible argument would be to say that Kate Winslet looked too old for DiCaprio, and that turning Darth Vader into a whiny brat and casting Hayden Christensen were two decisions that even my 13-year old self knew was completely wrong. And so, when all those kids who grew up wanting to be Luke Skywalker realized that Han Solo was the cooler character (and the only one with a chance at getting the girl) they were forced to watch the single most evil character of the trilogy turn into Luke Skywalker Sr. It might even lead people to speak in rhetorical circles trying to argue the lack of stoically cool male characters years after the fact - and especially whenever DiCaprio has another movie coming out like The Aviator where his youthfulness can be a distraction - when there is no such crisis at all.

Griffy & Valentine II

I posted this picture of my grandmother's and aunt's dogs back in October and since then they've both passed away. Griffey, the golden one, was on his way out for awhile. Valentine, though, was only 7 when a tumor was discovered in her mouth on Monday. Valentine's health deteriorated way too quickly. We had just gotten her to jump through a hula hoop. Last month I had her jumping in the air 15 times in a row before a cookie reward. She got real tired over the past couple weeks, and couldn't coax much more than a tail-wag on the suggestion of a walk. I thought it was surprising, and a good sign, that on Tuesday she gave a poodle jump before a walk, but apparently it was just a last hurrah. She had an appointment for a specialist today at 8:30 am, but she suffered two seizures yesterday and had to be put down.

Lakers + Refs > Bucks

Yo, that's a proof. Yahoo! discusses the heartbreaking 'loss' last night -

Ep. 486: Cry Foul from The Basketball Jones on Vimeo.

Brew Hoop does the necessary work in pointing out that the Bucks did, technically, miss many opportunities to put the best team in the NBA away, but that sort of mature view, placing the responsibility on the players, is just a bullshit fairy tale when you're playing against the Lakers at home. They don't need the help!

The Yahoo guys focus on the most egregiously bad call in the game, but there were many others. Just horribly officiated, but the Bucks hung in there and are still making this a very enjoyable season and making me glad that I decided to follow the NBA again. Here's Brew Hoop detailing the rest of the officiating -

The game officials (Joe Forte, Marc Davis, Phil Robinson) didn't wear Kobe jerseys themselves, but from start to finish they favored the Lakers. They were bad enough to make some calls that went in Milwaukee's favor too, but even if the score was tied after 48 minutes, nothing really evened out tonight.

The Lakers got the 50/50 calls, sure, but they also got 60-40 calls, 100/0 calls.

Just not good. The worst at the Bradley Center this season, and I've only missed a couple.

There are myriad specific instances, like when Bogut felt the slap heard 'round press row. No call. Or when Kobe got that and-one call on Bogut to bring the Lakers within one in overtime. You remember, the one when he may have traveled, may have charged, and definitely didn't get fouled.

"I don't think it was a foul on Bogut, or whoever they called the foul on. But he's (Bryant) a great player and he's going to get the benefit of the doubt," Charlie Bell said.

Nobody thought it was a foul on Bogut, except the onlybody who matters.

To make matters worse, Los Angeles felt entitled to get calls, you could see that, and despite the foul disparity in their favor, they still griped; both Ron Artest and Lamar Odom picked up technicals for dissent, and at (at least) one point Bryant gave the official the stare-down all the way down the court.

The refs were applauded a few times tonight. Sarcastically, by the crowd.

Forgetting Aaron Rodgers

The last couple of days has found Matt Taibbi's name pop-up over and over again on the blogs over his recent piece on the Rolling Stone piece he wrote about the ubiquitousness of the finance industry in Obama's White House. Unfortunately, it seems that everyone missed the other article Taibbi wrote in the December 10th issue of Rolling Stone. For some reason, it's not online (neither are any of his other sports articles) so I'll copy the important bit down, see if you spot the glaring omission -

But Favre not only hasn't made the big mistake, he's actually played like a Hall of Famer all season. The list of quarterbacks who can throw the deep out with regularity and challenge the whole field is really short - it's basically Tom Brady and Peyton Manning and Drew Brees, occasionally Philip Rivers. And Favre. And that's it.

Even Ben Roethlisberger, accuracy-wise, has been a mess this year compared with Favre. The supersophemores Joe Flacco and Matt Ryan both took big steps back. Jay Cutler has completely sucked balls. Eli Manning lately is playing he's got a giant tick sucking on his decision-making center. And Matt Schaub and Matt Hasselbeck are just guys.

I don't know if I should thank Taibbi for being able to write an entire article about Brett Favre without mentioning the Packers or if I should ignore him completely for failing to mention Rodgers' very good year and most obvious comparison point to Favre. Regardless, I'll double down on this -

There is a school of thought out there that Favre shouldn't get credit for any kind of feat this season because (a) he whined and schemed his way out of two different teams, the Packers and the Jets, and (b) he did so precisely to get himself to the Vikings, playing opposite an A-list defense and behind a monster offensive line, handing off to a snarling beast of a running back, Adrian Peterson, whose very name makes strong safeties everywhere shit their pants in terror...you'll hear people say that even JaMarcus Russell might look like an NFL quarterback on this current Vikings team.

I do feel protective towards Aaron Rodgers, though, against the criticisms of Wisconsinites who can't divorce themselves from Favre and against the national narrative that seems to view him as the kid sitting alone on draft day, the kid sitting on the bench for 2 years, and then the kid who, having usurped the QB throne as Favre whined about loyalty, has to be compared to the predecessor's myth. Despite the 6-10 record he played well last year, better than Favre, but because Favre had that 6 touchdown game early in the year it seemed every week brought a new lamentation that Thompson backed the wrong QB.

Now this year, Rodgers is having a fantastic season, basically carrying the offense despite a weak line, but Favre took his revenge in the 2 regular season games, which feels like the only thing that matters. It's obvious the Vikings are the better team, but I'm still hoping for the Packers to run into them in the playoffs. Regardless of whether the Packers win or not, or whether Rodgers has a good game or not, or whether Favre continues to tear my soul from my body, this story isn't over. As TNC put it regarding Vince Young -

Likewise, for Vince Young, but even more. That drive yesterday is why I watch football. For people who think it's only about the hits, I'd show them this. There's something almost super-biographical about it. I called football a narrative earlier this year, and maybe that's not quite right. Myth, maybe? Watching a guy go from the bottom, watching him come back better at his job, and then, against incomparable odds, arrive at a moment where it all depended on a choice, is resonant. (Especially when, like me, you've spent a good part of your life considering yourself a fuck-up.)

The ending I want to see is Rodgers destroying the Vikings and Favre throwing a pick to Woodson to end the game, but if Rodgers and the Packers lose to Favre in the playoffs it'd be devastating in a way that matters. In a way that would alter the lens people viewed them with. And I'd continue to back Rodgers.

deep thought for the day

I‘m interested in how people personally decide to refuse a technology. I’m interested in that process, because I think that will happen more and more as the number of technologies keep increasing. The only way we can sort our identity is by not using technology. We’re used to be that you define yourself by what you use now. You define yourself by what you don’t use

- The Technium

I've got 7 pages to write in the next 5 hours.

playground revolution

Jonah Keri makes the case to get rid of traditional pick-up basketball scoring -

This is the problem plaguing pickup hoops. In nearly every pickup game I’ve played for the past 10 years, the scoring system has been the same: 1 point for a basket, 2 points if it’s a shot from beyond the three-point line, game to 11....

There’s a simple solution to this problem. Make field goals worth 2 points, and 3-point field goals worth (gasp) 3 points! Game to 21. Play goes just as quickly, you’re still rewarded for superior shooting range, and everyone else can get back to playing a normal game.

Math is tough - I suggest one point for everything.

Also, American Pie Presents: Beta House is quite possibly the most offensive movie I've ever seen, but I think I'm missing half the story by seeing the television version as opposed to the unrated one.

Holla at ya later, Kendall

The Royals could be one of the first teams to enter The Tyson Zone, as they continue their 5-year rebuilding plan into the next decade by signing Jason Kendall for 2 years and $6 million.

there's something about lois

I think that it is a sign of my increasing maturity that I'd take Lois over both Betty and Veronica (Betty > Cheryl Blossom > Veronica, btw)

The most annoying laugh

Colbert interviews the guy who does Conservapedia:

Checkpoint deterrence

Neenah is debating over whether or not to have drunk driving checkpoints -

As motorists approach a checkpoint, they would have the option to pull into the right lane to stop or take the left lane to drive through without interference.

Motorists who stop would be asked a few questions while officers activate passive alcohol sensors that test the driver's breath alcohol while he or she is talking.

If officers notice no sign of impairment, they will hand out educational pamphlets and send the driver on his or her way. If officers notice a sign of impairment, they will tell the driver that he or she now is being lawfully detained, consistent with a normal traffic stop.

Neenah resident Bob Lace initially thought Wilkinson's idea was ludicrous.

"I can't visualize anybody volunteering to go through (the checkpoint), even for a coupon," he said. "You are not going to get any drunks going through unless they are absolutely stoned."

I always assumed that with checkpoints you were forced to pull over if the cops wanted to see if you were wasted, but I guess I was mistaken. I think it would still work to deter drunk drivers, as Lace understands, since people who choose to skip the the checkpoint would be potentially monitored by the cops for impairment. You'd also have the deterrent effect, in the sense that people who go out drinking and know they have to pass a checkpoint later in the evening will be more likely to plan ahead and either not drink as much or get a sober driver. The large-scale deterrence might do a better job of curbing drunk driving then the suggestion of beefing up roving patrols. The strength of the checkpoints come from the visibility and certainty of the program. Of course, police might be able to get the same returns from just publicizing that the police are going to crack down on drunk driving for a certain amount of time -

"More than 300 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies will be on the hunt for OWI offenders beginning Friday, Aug. 21. This is part of a nationwide "Drunk Driving. Over the Limit. Under Arrest" crackdown on drunk drivers that will run through Labor Day.

Drunk driving is a big problem in Wisconsin. Last year, approximately 37,000 Wisconsin drivers were convicted of drunk driving. Alcohol-related crashes in Wisconsin killed 234 people and injured 4,319 last year alone, according to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation."

Regardless, it's safe to say that these responses to drunk driving will continue to be slaps on the wrists of offenders as long as the first 3 times you get caught drunk driving is misdemeanor.

The bill approved by the Senate mirrors the Assembly bill in many ways. Both would:

• Make a fourth offense a felony if it occurs within five years of a previous offense. Now, drunken driving isn't a felony until the fifth offense.

• Require ignition interlocks for all repeat drunken drivers and for first-time offenders with blood-alcohol levels of 0.15 or greater - nearly twice the legal limit for driving.

Ignition interlocks don't allow vehicles to start until drivers can show they don't have alcohol in their system by blowing into a device similar to a Breathalyzer.

• Make first-offense drunken driving a misdemeanor if a child younger than 16 is in the vehicle. Wisconsin is the only state to treat first offenses as traffic tickets, rather than crimes. The provision wouldn't affect punishments for those with two or more offenses if they were caught driving with a child in the vehicle.

• Expand statewide a Winnebago County program that gives judges the option of offering reduced jail time to offenders who complete alcohol or drug treatment. Backers say it saves money while reducing recidivism.

• Eliminate a provision that provides lighter penalties for those with a blood-alcohol level between 0.08 and 0.10, compared with those above 0.10. Those with lower blood-alcohol levels would face the same penalties as those of 0.10 or above.

Umbrellas for sexy days

Only 5% of high schools in the country distribute free condoms, and it looks like Milwaukee Public Schools could join them as the plan clears a committee to send it to the Milwaukee School Board, the JSOnline reports -

In MPS, about 63% of high school students - and more than a quarter of middle school students - are having sex, according to the latest data on youth sexual behavior collected by the district.

Kathleen Murphy, MPS health services coordinator, said sexually transmitted infections such as chlamydia, gonorrhea and, increasingly, HIV are afflicting high numbers of teenagers and young women.

Despite that, condom use among young people is on the decline, according to Murphy. Free or reduced-price contraception is available at many health clinics and other sites around the city, but Murphy said many students may not seek out those avenues because of inconvenience, embarrassment or cost.

In MPS, the condoms would be available only in high schools that have registered nurses, and the students would have to talk to a nurse before receiving a free condom.

My Juvenile Justice class discussed this on Monday, and it surprised me how many people were not only against the distribution of condoms but were offended by it. Arguments against the plan revolved around religion, abstinence, the proper role of schools in sex education, and the thought that schools would be promoting sex by giving students condoms. The JS actually does a pretty good job in answering these criticisms -

According to data the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a few months ago, Murphy said, the United States has the highest rate of sexually transmitted infection of any developed country, and African-American females 15 through 19 have the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea.

Another recent CDC survey reported that one in four teen girls has had a sexually transmitted disease.

On the survey, which was administered to middle- and high-school students last spring, 63.1% of high schoolers reported having had sexual intercourse. When the survey was administered in 2003, just under 60% of students reported having had sex.

Reported condom usage among sexually active teenagers has changed significantly from 2003 to 2009, however. In 2003, 70.5% of sexually active students reported using a condom. In 2009, only 66.2% of high schoolers having sex said they were using a condom....

"We want our students to be abstinent," said Brett Fuller, a health curriculum specialist for MPS. "But when they make the choice (to have sex), they need to have the tools and understanding on how to protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections and to prevent unwanted pregnancies. That's why we have a comprehensive sex education program."...

"Most of the research that has been done in sexuality education has shown that it does increase the use of contraception, but not the rate of being sexually active," Wooley said.

It'll be interesting to see how this goes forward as abstinence education seems to have not done much to prevent kids from having sex. A story today in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune highlights a new study that shows that casual sex is not emotionally harmful for young adults. The study focused on 18-24 yr olds, but the take-away is important for educating any young person who could be sexually active -

"Casual sex is not for everyone" as an emotional matter, she said. Moreover, there is real physical risk: Rates of sexually transmitted diseases are rising relentlessly, and teen pregnancy rates in Minnesota are on the increase as well.

But, she said, sex education curriculums, parents and public health programs should "focus on the things that are real threats," such as interpersonal violence, pregnancy risk and STDs, not on the theory that casual sex is emotionally harmful.

Someone in class said one of the people involved in the MPS committee hearing compared the distribution of condoms to umbrellas in that buying an umbrella does not cause it to rain. I can also add, from personal experience, that getting condoms does not necessarily lead to having any sex.

How to get me to care about All-Star weekend

Step 1 - Get the exciting rookie point guard that plays on my team to participate in the 3-point contest

Step 2 - Have him compete against a chubby guy who looks like Ron Jeremy that doesn't actually play in the NBA



Bingo, you've got another viewer. How can you not cheer for Stan Van Gundy to win this?

I hope this catches on so next year we can see Lou Piniella finally participate in the home run derby.

I haven't been this excited for an exhibition basketball contest since MTV's Rock & Jock.

Grizzly Bear, Kitson

This fan-made video for "Two Weeks" by Grizzly Bear is amazing -



How I Met Your Mother used the song in last night's episode for a montage of the "Second Greatest Love Story" and I realized I should give the band a second chance after Yellow House bored me except for "On A Neck, On A Spit".

*Daniel Kitson, comedian, posted 2 shows on his website, which is exciting because good recordings of his stuff is impossible to find and he hasn't put out any comedy albums or videos despite being a winner of awards. All of his own accord -

Starting as a stand-up comedian at 16, he'd won a Perrier Award by the tender age of 24, along with several Fringe Firsts and a slew of international accolades.

But Kitson treats this information as if it's an embarrassing secret, the sort of thing you wouldn't want your mother to find under the mattress.

"It was unfair," says Kitson. "No-one asks you if you want to enter the Perrier Awards. Every step of the way, I was saying, I don't want to do a photo shoot, they make me itch, I find them upsetting. I don't want to do press. I don't want any of it."

In fact, the fewer people that turn up to his events, the better. "I'd really like to whittle my fan base down to about 12 – you can call them disciples if you like."

What marks this reticent star out from other shy celebrities, however, is the total control he has over his image. Acting as his own manager and publicist means that there's no one around to persuade him into that extra gig or that other interview. His website has one podcast on it, from 2005. Beside it is a note saying that he intends, eventually, to post more, maybe. It may suit Kitson down to the ground but the rest of us miss out on discovering the melancholy joy he brings to audiences with a combination of story telling, imagination, imagery and pathos.

Daniel Kitson video.

Endings

100 Best Last Lines From Novels

The title is misleading because they included short stories as well as novels, so the end of "The Dead" by James Joyce is rightfully included -

His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

DFW, teacher

A former student of David Foster Wallace posted a class worksheet entitled, "IF NO ONE HAS YET TAUGHT YOU HOW TO AVOID OR REPAIR CLAUSES LIKE THE FOLLOWING, YOU SHOULD, IN MY OPINION, THINK SERIOUSLY ABOUT SUING SOMEBODY, PERHAPS AS CO-PLAINTIFF WITH WHOEVER’S PAID YOUR TUITION". I'm pretty sure I didn't get any right. The answers and explanations are here. Links to an article by David Foster Wallace in Harper's, and an old essay by George Orwell are included in the 2nd link.

I spent yesterday at Barnes & Noble reading through Zadie Smith's new book, Changing My Mind, and she closes her book with a fantastic essay on DFW. Highly recommended.

Fact of the day?

It can be argued that the purpose of hate crime laws is to punish not so much the act, but the thought, and are therefore thought crimes and dangerous to a free society.
-Actual (word for awkward word) true/false question from a quiz in my Police Process class. The closest my book comes to making a statement like that is, "Because motivation is subjective, it is often difficult for police officers to determine if an offense was motivated by bias." I'll let you guys guess what the correct answer is, but my own conclusion is that reading that sentence is a thought crime and dangerous to a free mind.

Pretend Harvard

Harvard has put up a series of their Justice Course on their website. The preview of the class below makes it look pretty interesting.



I have this inexplicable dislike of every student in the video, though. It's funny how low my self-esteem must be if all I can think of while watching those students applaud their professor and have debates in microphones is, "They think they're sooo much better than me. What dicks." But now I can watch these class videos and pretend I've sneaked into their class and destroy all their pretty conventions, like how I feel watching The Hills.

You Can Count On Me

The AV Club released their list of the best film performances in the 00's. I can't find anything to complain about. Some people might think using 2 spots to list both Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo from You Can Count On Me is overkill, but not me, I love that movie, and I'm thankful the AV Club dug that up to remind me that I should watch it again.

And while I really enjoyed both Peter Sarsgaard as Charles Lane and the movie Shattered Glass, I have to admit that the character the AV Club describes Sarsgaard as playing, "a consummate professional who tries to protect his reporter and the integrity of the magazine while digging into painful truths that will severely undermine both", bears little to the Charles Lane currently publishing articles claiming that poor Americans don't go hungry because there is so many fat people -

Again, if Lane had read the study that he is so busy dismissing, he might have noticed that there is a connection between obesity and food security. Indeed, two of the questions in the food security survey focus on the inability of respondents to buy balanced meals. More on the connection between poverty, nutritious foods and obesity can be found here. People who have little money to spend on food aren’t able to buy nutritious foods, both because such foods are more expensive and because poor people often live miles from grocery stores, meaning that they have to buy most of their food in convenience stores where only three food groups are featured — soda, candy bars and snacks.

So, Mr. Lane, scoff all you will at people who are poor and fat. Prop that up in your own feeble mind as a justification for ignoring issues of food security, hunger and nutritional health among the poor. And, please, sir, go ahead and have a second helping of everything on Thanksgiving. Have another glass of that $60 bottle of Merlot. After all, you deserve it for all your hard work.

From Sadly, No!

Fact of the day

Via Sullivan

Fact of the day

From The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception at Boston.com

The Marxist-Rozellian Dream

The Shepherd Express' Frank Clines and Art Kumbalek bring forth solid arguments about why baseball does not need a salary cap.

Artie: In the old days everything depended on signing and developing your own players, and guess what? The bigger markets had an edge in money then, too. But with free agency there's a flow of players into the open market, and a team that spends wisely can make big changes.

Frank: The key is "wisely.” The Yankees spent a ton on guys who didn't produce championships: Randy Johnson, Kevin Brown, Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright, Jason Giambi.

Artie: Their payroll was more than double the Brewers' last year, but the Crew made the playoffs and the Yankees watched. I say no salary cap. Let teams sink or swim by shrewd management.

Frank: How do the Twins keep getting to the playoffs? How did Tampa Bay suddenly make the World Series in '08? How do the Marlins rebuild every few years?

Artie: And Florida's on the rise again, with young talent.

It's nice to see some common-sense arguments be made in the aftermath of the Yankees World Series where it seemed everyone agreed that the Yankees are guaranteed champs for the next decade and baseball will be irrelevant without a salary cap. Jonah Keri did a good round-up of why that is false and that it is more than possible that some of the several older players will regress next year and the Yankees take a step back -

The Yankees face another regression-related situation. They had an old roster in 2009. Two of the top three starters, five of the nine starting batters as well as the Hall of Fame closer were 33 or older.

It is possible that 35-year-old Hideki Matsui’s knee problems are behind him and that 28-homer seasons will remain the norm. It is conceivable that Johnny Damon’s tying a career high for homers at 35 (he turned 36 on Nov. 5) means we should expect a big power threat for the next half-decade. It is imaginable that Andy Pettitte, a 15-year veteran who has flirted with retirement in recent years and has nearly 3,000 regular-season innings under his belt, will keep winning games well into his late 30s and beyond.

But it is not likely. Few players are more likely to see a regression in their numbers than those getting well into their 30s who have suddenly had a big bounce-back season. The Yankees caught lightning in a bottle with Matsui, Damon and Pettitte, who are free agents, as well as incumbent 30-somethings like Jorge Posada. Even (gasp) Mariano Rivera cannot fight Father Time forever.

It's nice that the Shepherd Express gives some space every week to Clines and Kumbalek to talk sports since the Journal-Sentinel is too frequently pretty awful. Today, Michael Hunt (no link, J-S charges you to read his stuff online) jumps around from one weird argument to another in his 800 words. Under the headline, "NFL looking a lot like baseball", Hunt ledes off with this -

Like Karl Marx's vision for a classless society, Pete Rozelle's plan for NFL parity has been shattered. Expose both to the light of real-world conditions, and they wither.

Apparently riffing off the idea that the NFL is going to get rid of their salary cap after this collective bargaining agreement ends, Hunt believes that Rozelle's "favored "on any given Sunday" maxim no longer applies in a general sense" (he mentions Tampa Bay beating Green Bay, but calls it a "random occasion"). He thinks that -

What we're seeing now is a preview of how the NFL could emerge without a salary cap, especially in the NFC: a couple of ruling elites, a vast wasteland of have-nots and a sparse middle class.

That Minnesota and New Orleans are presently sharing the mountaintop is illusory. Both are financially strapped...Point is, like in baseball, only the select few appear capable of winning it all anymore

Well, forget that if he had read The Shepherd Express Hunt would know that baseball has had the most diversity in champions over the past decade, but how does any of Hunt's statements connect at all? The NFL, under a salary cap, allows financially strapped teams rise up to the top of the league, but, because they succeed with a salary cap, that success doesn't count? No, I'm guessing Hunt feels that football is totally uninteresting unless every single NFL team finishes the season 8-8, and the salary cap has failed unless it achieves that vision of a Marxist-athletic society. I don't know which is more ridiculous for Hunt to believe, but it doesn't really matter because Hunt drops this line of argument in the 6th paragraph to question whether the Packers have the ability in the next 5 games to make the leap from the shrinking middle-class to one of the elite teams because, "If so, the Packers will rattle the NFC's gated community without security being called." Michael Hunt apparently believes that the potential upward class mobility of the Green Bay Packers is evidence of NFL class stagnation. He also apparently believes that the Vikings and the Saints are evidence of a ruling elite that is inevitable without a salary cap, like in baseball, but the Vikings and Saints aren't really ruling elites because they could only be ruling elites in a system where there is a salary cap, and that somehow indicts the salary cap system as it hasn't created the Marxist-Rozellian dream of a classless NFL society.

Following this tortured logic I think it would be probable to assume the J-S hires the best area writers to cover sports in order to charge customers for their product, while The (Free) Shepherd Express is doomed to the vast wasteland of have-nots, pitifully begging for a salary cap in order to attract the best talent. Or maybe, as Clines, Kumbalek, and Keri might argue - money does not guarantee success, money may make success easier, but the world is filled, from sports to journalism, with examples of the failures of big pockets.

The Real World: Washington D.C.

I gotta thank Kole for introducing me to Mark Todd, a republican candidate for governor of Wisconsin. The guy is painful to listen to, stammering around about being comfortable talking to billionaires as well as "street people", but just as confusing in print -

Maintaining our religious freedom is extremely important. The phrase “separation of church and state” has misled many and does not give an accurate interpretation of what the First Amendment says. The prohibition of established religion has the purpose of preventing government-sponsored coercion of religious conscience. The First Amendment does not forbid all influence of religion on the public and the political system. Using authoritarian government power to force views that contradict religious conscience on issues such as abortion, abortifacient devices and drugs, and homosexuality is unacceptable.

The closest I can come to unraveling this messis, "Religious freedom is extremely important so the only valid government power is that which asserts the correct religious conscience which everyone is free to be forced to agree with." Eh?

But, hey, get this - while climbing out of the incomprehensible Escherian castle that is Mark Todd's brain, I find out that Sean Duffy of Real World: Boston is running against David Obey in Wisconsin's 7th district. He's inviting you to "Roll With Duffy" here, which I first interpreted as Duffy's attempt to be down with the young generation or maybe some allusion to 9/11 calls of "Let's Roll" but then realized that it is a reference to Duffy's log-rolling success in the lumberjack games. Either way, I'm just happy knowing that appearing on The Real World won't destroy someone's potential political career so CT and the Miz can run together on their Real World/Road Rules Challenge achievements.



At over six feet, weighing in at approximately 230 pounds, CT's one of the best players in the game. But when he's been boozing, all bets are off -- and this drunken lug has a history of hitting the bottle and looking for an excuse to throw the first punch.

For the more modest golfers

I think I'm in the majority of men golfers in that, after having 2 or 3 or 8 beers on the course, I'm cool with peeing just about anywhere because it's all just nature, man. But, courtesy of The A.V. Club's Gift Guide, comes a (real) product for the dude who thinks even picking out a nice tree is one step too many -

Golf is supposedly a gentleman’s sport requiring the utmost precision and focus in carefully lining up each shot, but even the best among us is capable of succumbing to our basest needs and having to take a leak between holes. That’s where the Uroclub swoops in to solve a problem that hadn’t even occurred to most of us. Designed by Florida urologist Floyd Seskin, the Uroclub is essentially a portable urinal that looks like a 7-iron and can be discreetly tucked away into your golfing bag. Made of a “non-porous material,” the dishwasher-safe Uroclub is leak-free and also comes with a handy towel so “it appears you are just checking out your club” when in fact, you’re pissing into it. Only you and Uroclub know the truth!

Sounds good! Only downside is the possibility of getting it mixed-up with my golf club-shaped flask of vodka I keep in my bag.

Also, You've Got Mail was on the Style channel all night.

Chick flicks on planes

I enjoy many chick flicks - I have a hard time changing the channel when You've Got Mail is on (which it always is) and allowed When Harry Met Sally persuade me to believe, for a brief moment, that Billy Crystal doesn't always make me want to rip my eyeballs out of my skull - but James Parker goes further and argues that the world would be a better place if everyone was forced to watch What Women Want and Something's Gotta Give, preferably on a plane, preferably a little drunk -

Here the moviegoer sticks sourly and soberly in his or her demographic bracket, and the films of writer-directors Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers are dismissed as “chick flicks.” But would the world be a better place if everyone who queued up this summer to see Inglourious Basterds had been treated instead to a surprise screening of Ephron’s Julie & Julia? After the initial bloodletting, I think it probably would.

Alright, alright, I saw Julie & Julia and it was absolutely fantabulous so I don't really chafe at Parker's suggestion, but his article does highlight a pretty disheartening fact - What Women Want made $374 million worldwide making it one of the most successful movies directed by a woman. Ughhhh...

Parker has nothing poor to say about the movie so as an antidote here is a recent synopsis from a recent Cracked.com article -

According the lady-thoughts of this movie, most women are either:

A. Mindless, shallow shells of nothingness; their empty skulls filled with sleepyheaded flies lolling around musing banalities such as whether or not they left the coffee pot on, or

B. Obsessed, either positively or negatively, with Mel Gibson. His butt, his sorry attitude, his crotch. All Mel, all the time. It's like a Jewish nightmare inside the heads of the women in this movie. The only way our leading lady distinguishes herself is by managing not to immediately fall for the guy who coined the phrase "Sugar Tits." Of course, when she finds out that he's been reading her mind without letting on that he was literally reading her mind, she melts like warm, implausible butter.

Marisa Tomei is real cute in the movie, though.

Fastly Food

Maira Kalman writes some of my favorite things for the New York Times. Her new piece is about food consumption -



My favorite is about her visit to Monticello.

Worst List Ever

The Hollywood Reporter makes a list of the top ten tv series of the decade -

10. Modern Family
9. Lost
8. 24
7. 30 Rock
6. Mad Men
5. Damages
4. The Shield
3. Curb Your Enthusiasm
2. The West Wing
1. The Sopranos

MODERN FAMILY makes it on this list after 12 episodes and no Arrested Development or The Wire?? Totally ridic. And as much as I love The West Wing, it debuted in 1999 and it was only really great the first four seasons so you're basically awarding the show for two seasons in this decade.

And Deadwood!

Collecting texts

Creepy stuff. From Mother Jones -

13:37:59 PLEASE CALL WIFE ON CELL OR ANYWAY YOU CAN.
13:38:50 IM GLAD YOUR SAFE. I LOVE YOU. CALL ME IF YOU CAN GET THROUGH. 9087885429 SUNSHINE
13:38:56 Russ, I am going to work from home, honestly I can not concentrate here, news, radio, hope you understand
13:38:56 Mike, The Center has been asked to evacuate
13:38:57 Pizza has been ordered if you haven't had lunch yet. Come by fish bowl. sd
13:38:57 YOUR SISTER CALLING TO CHECK TO SEE IF YOU ARE OK.

Where did all these messages come from? Wikileaks says: "While we are obligated by to protect our sources, it is clear that the information comes from an organization which has been intercepting and archiving national US telecommunications since prior to 9/11."

Being the glass half-full type, I am pretty pumped there is a job out there that will pay me to read other people's text messages.

Jimmy Fallon is funny?

I don't think so, but this made me chuckle -

Your New York Mets

I laughed at this.

Jonah Keri-

Matt Wieters is a supremely talented catcher who had a solid if unspectacular rookie season. Still, his performance was clearly the best by any rookie this year, a nearly 2-win performance according to FanGraphs. So when Topps released its All-Rookie Team today (h/t Baseball Think Factory), you had to figure that Wieters would get the call behind the plate.

Nope. Topps scoured the major league landscape, evaluated all rookie performances, and finally found their man.

Omir Santos.

Oshkosh, really?

Businessweek lists Oshkosh as the best place to raise kids in Wisconsin with West Allis being the best place to raise kids in Milwaukee. Of course, Businessweek decided to run the picture of best place to live in Wisconsin with this -



Which is a picture of Milwaukee.

Journal-Sentinel's write-up -

BusinessWeek likes Oshkosh's mall, new hospital, indoor hockey and soccer rink, and the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.

West Allis and Eau Claire were picked as runners-up in Wisconsin.

"Things like our parks system, our high-quality schools and amenities like our farmers market allow our residents to enjoy a high quality of life," West Allis Mayor Dan Devine said. "Our location lets us have every benefit of a major city, yet we can keep our small-town feel."

I'd be curious to see how Appleton fared on this list because I prefer it immensely compared to Eau Claire and Oshkosh. Kole has a lot of work to do if Appleton wants to compete with Eau Claire and Oshkosh like make sure you have no choice but to drink your beverage out of a plastic cup at restaurants and turn nice Appleton fields into dumping grounds for trash and traffic jams for yearly festivals about planes and country singers.

Newspapers

I don't know how many people routinely get into arguments about whether the decline of the newspaper is a good or bad thing, but for people who suspect that the failure of newspapers will lead to a net-positive, this article provides some compelling arguments to steal and claim as your own -

Now, a newspaper partisan might argue that reporters’ gatekeeper role was a good thing because, in essence, the reporter had a better understanding of what the reader needed than the reader himself did. I think this is not only paternalistic, but it also misunderstands the role of the front page in local politics. The reason putting something on the front page of the local newspaper could affect the political debate wasn’t that it mobilized otherwise-disengaged citizens. If you put a water board story on the front page, most ordinary citizens are just going to flip to the sports page. Rather, the reason getting on the front page mattered was mostly because before the Internet, there were a lot of people who were interested, but who—thanks to the limitations of the newspaper format—might not otherwise have seen this particular story.

It used to be pretty difficult for insiders to keep track of the issues they card about. Before search engines and RSS feeds, it took a lot of work to comb through newspapers looking for every story relating to a particular subject. This is why large organizations subscribed (and still do) to expensive newspaper-clipping services. The Internet has made life radically easier for the politically active. If I want to know what’s going on in a particular issue I care about—software patents or eminent domain reform, say—I can directly subscribe to RSS feeds related to those subjects. I can set up a Google News alert for my favorite topic, my favorite (or least favorite) politician, or the name of my home town. So the Internet is having two effects that are really opposite sides of a single coin: it’s making it easier for interested citizens to follow the issues they care about, and it’s making it easier for uninterested citizens to ignore the issues they don’t care about. Given that non-engaged citizens have always been little more than deadweight in the political process, I consider this a good thing.

Safe by Todd Haynes

I had to watch this movie for my Contemporary Political Theory course. I thought it started off pretty slow, but it works towards building a creepiness that pays off at the end. Reminded me of a low-key David Lynch type film. It was #12 in The A.V. Club's list of movies too painful to watch twice, so there are only a couple of other films to beat if you were in the mood for that type of thing...

A sort-of horror movie in which the monster is the entire world, Todd Haynes' Safe follows a rich, empty housewife (played masterfully by Julianne Moore) into the depths of "environmental illness"—a malady that real-world doctors still can't agree on. Is it all in her head, which is half-vacant and in need of something to worry about when all basic needs are met? Or is she just sensitive to low levels of toxic chemicals that most people simply don't notice? The film doesn't offer an clear answer—instead, it follows Moore through incredibly uncomfortable anxieties and unpeggable illnesses. She ends up at a wellness retreat, which at first seems to offer some hope, but she's soon sucked even deeper into the discomfort of her own mind. It's pure bleakness.

ESPN Deal

Via KLaw, Amazon is selling yearly subscriptions to ESPN the Magazine for $5 this week and it should include making ESPN Insider available. Pretty sweet deal.

Iconic Photos

I really like this blog but sometimes I run into a photo that has the potential to ruin my entire day.

Facebook Blackmail

GQ does a longish article on the scandal at Eisenhower High School near Milwaukee. A senior boy posed as a girl on facebook to get boy students to take naked pictures and sending them to him. He then blackmailed these students by saying he'd release the naked photos if they didn't have sex with him. And some of the boys did.

The article expands on the reaction by the school, the town, and the students that I hadn't read before in the newspaper articles -

Then he got a text from Tony, who talked him into meeting at the public library.

It was going to be okay, Tony said. If they did this, Kayla would delete the pictures.

X went to the library, and he and Tony went into the men's room and into a stall. Tony got down on his knees. X looked down and saw that Tony was holding a camera. What the fuck?

It's okay, Tony told him. Kayla just has to see proof.

For a couple of days, X thought he was in the clear. Finally, it was over. He'd learned his lesson. Now please let him move on.

Then he got another text. This one from Tony. Bad news. He messed up. He deleted those pictures from the library by mistake. Kayla still needed proof. She wanted them to do it again.

He deleted them? That dumbshit! X thought his head was going to explode. He wanted to tell him off, but he couldn't risk it. So X agreed. He would meet Tony a few days later, before school started, in the downstairs boys' bathroom at Ike.

They did it again, and Tony took another picture. They were finished. He texted Kayla, told her he'd met her conditions—and even let Tony take the pictures to prove it. This was the end. He was done.

Then Kayla got scarier. She texted back that that picture was not good enough. Oral was not good enough. She wanted to see more. She wanted Tony to put it inside him, and if he didn't let that happen, she was going to send the pictures to all his friends.

Now X was more trapped than ever. It was getting worse. Fast. This was so far out there he felt totally lost.

So a few days later, he let Tony come over to his house, and they went to his bedroom, and Tony took a picture of them doing that, too. But even that didn't make it stop. Kayla said they had to do it again—so he let Tony come into his bedroom to do it again.

Then Tony asked X to take naked pictures of his brother—and that pushed X to a line he would not cross. He turned around and did the only thing he'd never done with Kayla, or with Tony.

Finally, he refused.*

Reaction from the town/school -

Everyone wondered, How could these boys let this happen?

At the courthouse, a middle-aged secretary in the clerk's office said, "When I was in high school, boys like Tony Stancl got the crap beaten out of them. Why didn't they beat the crap out of him?"

Another secretary said, "Maybe he was a cool kid."

The first secretary raised her eyebrows and touched her heavy gray turtleneck. "I saw his picture," she responded, "and he does not look cool to me."
...

Local leaders used the language of predatory terror to describe the case. The D.A. called Stancl's scheme "sinister" and "malicious." A respected columnist at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel suggested that true justice would come when Tony was turned over to the ultimate sex predators, prison rapists: "Has Stancl pondered the possibility his cellmates will have some schemes of their own to spring on him?"

...

After agonizing over whether to talk about the case to GQ, one school employee finally justified the decision by saying, "This may ruin my career, but if I can help save just one more kid from getting ass-raped, it will be worth it."

Inside the superintendant's office in Ike's boxy 1969 brick building, two deep lines furrowed on the bridge of Kreutzer's nose when he scrunched his forehead. He asked, "Is this the Columbine of texting?"

What happened is awful and Tony Stancl is a fucking predator, but, c'mon school employee, ass-raping? They gonna put up fliers, "Only you can stop ass-raping"? Don't let the next ass-raping Columbine 9/11 occur, report any suspicious ass-raping activities. These kids were obviously victims of rampant political correctness to have never been given the proper information about ass-raping. Back when I was in high school we beat up the suspected fag ass-rapers and let the jocks violate our buttocks -

Ecstatic Viewing

Shoals at Free Darko describes what it was like for me to watch Jennings last Saturday -

My sense is that, for the most part, sports become easier to invest one's self in the more you know about them, and vice-versa. The trick is that this class of athlete short-circuits this relationship. They don't transcend the burden of understanding, they tear down the very parameters by which understanding is so strictly tied into spectatorship. Call it ecstatic viewing, performance without description, or the belief that some moments in sports can cause sports to fall away and just sit there in front of you, beaming, as if their power were inherent, their expressiveness final, and their ends, inevitable, if not irrelevant.

Yep. That game - that performance by Jennings - reintroduced me to basketball. It made me forget why I grew to dislike the NBA. And now I'm hooked with this team, just hoping for another performance that reaches that level again (And shit if Monday almost did it).

They talk the Bucks again on today's Free Darko podcast here.

Brewer Award Winner

Joe Posnanski gives Manny Parra his Les Sweetland Award, or the Anti-Cy Young Award -

That poor Brewers pitching staff. Whatever bug hit one hit all of them. Jeff Suppan went 7-12 with a 5.29 ERA. Braden Looper won 14 games with a 5.22 ERA. David Bush had a 6.38 ERA. Tough times.

Manny Parra, though, had the toughest year of the bunch. Parra was probably best known coming into this year as the guy who got into that shoving match with Prince Fielder in 2008. He pitched pretty well in 2008 — but struggled mightily in 2009 though he did become the first pitcher since 1938 to win more than 10 games with an ERA higher than 6.25. He went 11-11 with a 6.36 ERA.

One thing I found interesting — and this is obviously just a small sample size thing but still I like it — is that Parra was 7-6 with a 5.97 ERA on four-days rest but 2-3 with a 10.52 on five-days rest. Maybe he’s the kind of guy who pitches better with the less rest you give him. Maybe if you pitched him on three-days rest he’d go 8-5 with a 4.74 ERA and go 7-1 with a 2.23 ERA on two-days rest. I just wish teams would try stuff.

He almost gave the AL Anti-Cy Young to Luke Hochevar, which would have lent a nice symmetry to the award since I'm sure there are many Royals fans who still expect good seasons from Hochevar. I have not given up hope on Parra, and expect that once Parra finally gets diagnosed for social anxiety disorder and gets on some meds that his career will turn around.

Female Comedian

So Maria Bamford is doing Target commercials now and reminded me that I wanted to hear her new comedy album, "Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome", and I grabbed it and it is great. She's hilarious and cute as a button and totally insane -

I was gonna chop people into chunks, have sex with the chunks, and put the chunks on Cobb salad and feed it to my parents

and this

I was unable to sleep at night for fear of being a rapist or a murderer or a genocider, and would have constant anxious thoughts of doing those things—to friends, family, babies, kitties, etc.—and it was especially powerful the more taboo or inappropriate the situation.” Like, say, shitting on the altar while yelling “I am a Promise Keeper!” in a church.

You can download the album here. Her album, How to WIN!, is also fantastic and worth listening to.

Manufacturing weather

Dude, China is creating snowstorms -

Chinese scientists artificially induced the second major snowstorm to wreak havoc in Beijing this season, state media said, reigniting debate over the practice of tinkering with Mother Nature.

After the earliest snow to hit the capital in 22 years fell on November 1, the capital was again shrouded in white Tuesday with more snow expected in the coming three days, the National Meteorological Centre said.

The China Daily, citing an unnamed official, said the Beijing Weather Modification Office had artificially induced both storms by seeding clouds with chemicals, a practice that can increase precipitation by up to 20 percent.

55

I went to my first Bucks game in years on Saturday night. Picked up scalped tickets for less than half price for $10 a piece and went and just grabbed some random seats in the 2nd deck cause the stadium was half-empty and no one cared where you sat up there. I was telling Kole before the game I was convinced Jennings would lay an egg considering my luck at Brewers games this year and my general cynicism about the Bucks. But goddamnit if that wasn't the finest athletic performance I've ever seen. 55(!) points for Jennings. 29 in the 3rd quarter when the only shot he missed was the last one he took. Got to see Charlie Bell knock in a half-court shot to end the 3rd. Bogut continues to look like an NBA player. Like Kole said, the only disappointment was seeing Bango miss his somersault dunk at half. I'd say nobody saw this coming from Jennings, but EA Sports was on top of it from the start -



That is exactly what happened! This is the most realistic videogame I've ever seen!

Gonna go out to the bar tonight to catch tonight's game on NBA TV. Haven't ever felt the need to do that for the Bucks.

Doc Ellis and the LSD No-No

Fantastic animated video about the no-hitter Doc Ellis threw when he was trippin' balls on LSD -



I'd get MLB Network if they promised to play this game daily over the off-season.

Update: And just like that, here is a petition to get the MLB Network to air the game. This needs to happen.

I want to see this

Others

Jim Henson

was certifiable.



I bet in 30 years we'll look back at Jimmy Fallon playing beer pong with a similar amount of nightmarish horror.

More cool movie posters

Here.

Carl's Jr

I haven't been this persuaded by an advertisement since Wendy's decided to call their bacon cheeseburger the "Baconator".



That burger was forged from the devil's soul and charred on the grill from hell. Something awful awaits Carl's Jr employees in the after-life.

Roland Emmerich

The director of Independence Day and 2012 has a weird house -

A diorama depicts John F. Kennedy's assassination.

A guest bedroom features a headboard made from the wing of an airplane.

I find it strange that a guy nutty enough to keep a picture of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad next to his guest bed makes movies where aliens, the weather, and Godzilla are the villains.

Before Gomez

There was Bowden, Lind, and Snider. As NBC Sports reports, Brewers were talking to the Red Sox and the Blue Jays before settling on Carlos Gomez. The Red Sox were willing to trade Michael Bowden, but the Brewers wanted either Buchholz or Daniel Bard. There's also this from Ron Gardenhire -

He irritates people. Sometimes me. We've been trying to get him to calm down and get him to control the situations, and sometimes the situation controls him. There are times when you're like, "Go-Go, you have to see what we're trying to do here." We just had a 25-pitch inning from our pitcher, and he goes up and falls down swinging on the first pitch.

Gomez will have plenty to talk about with Corey Hart in the dugout.

New Hood Internet Mix

You can download here.

Tracklist -

The Mixtape Volume Four:
1. Intro
2. David Banner vs Fujiya & Miyagi - Get Like Pterodactyls
3. The Beastie Boys vs Matt And Kim - Good Ol' Fashion Rump Shaker
4. Kanye West vs Cage & Aviary - Touch The Television
5. Lil Wayne (feat. Babyface) vs Royksopp - Comfortable Up Here
6. Passion Pit vs Juvenile - Back That Sleepyhead Up
7. DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince vs Daft Punk - Summer Circuit
8. Public Enemy vs HEALTH vs Nosaj Thing - Bring The Tabloid Sores
9. AZ (feat. Ghostface) vs The Golden Filter - Solid Gold From New York
10. Modest Mouse vs Kanye West - Floating Paranoia
11. Clipse vs Yuksek - Kinda Like A Big Break
12. Weezer vs Glass Candy - Buddy Holly's Imagination
13. Bangers & Cash vs Bag Raiders - Bang Raiders
14. Amanda Blank vs VEGA - No Reasons To Like You Better
15. Michael Jackson vs Ratatat - Billie "Wildcat" Jean
16. Kid Sister (feat. Pitbull) vs Phonat - Free Control Ocho
17. Twista (feat. Erika Shevon) vs Boys Noize - Wetter And Jeffer
18. Flo Rida (feat. Ke$ha) vs MSTRKRFT - 1000 Times Right Round
19. R. Kelly (feat. Keri Hilson) vs Sally Shapiro - Number One Christmas
20. Drake vs The Rapture - Best Jealous Lover I Ever Had
21. Bon Iver vs Friendly Fires vs Aeroplane - Lump Sum Of Paris
22. Jeremih vs Handsome Furs - Birthday Furs
23. Yung LA vs Solid Gold - Who Ain't I Gonna Run To?
24. Major Lazer (feat. Santigold) vs Dirty Projectors - Hold The Stillness
25. Dead Prez vs Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks Of Hip Hop
26. Soulja Boy vs Joe Jackson - Swaggin' Out
27. OJ Da Juiceman (feat. Gucci Mane) vs Discovery - Make The Loop Aye
28. Glasses Malone vs Chromatics - A Moment To Remember Haterz
29. Paper Route Gangstaz vs Animal Collective - Animals Collecting Money
30. B-Hamp vs Little Boots - Ricky Bobby Boots
31. Ghostface Killah vs Beirut - Save Me Concubine
32. Keri Hilson vs The Glitch Mob/TVOTR - Red Dress Turnin Me On
33. Dorrough vs Bibio - Fire Ant Paint Job
34. Outro

I enjoy it

Brewers Prospects

Fangraphs does a round-up of Brewers prospects over the last year using this criteria -

Prospect ranking season is here. Top 10 lists will be arriving shortly and in preparation for that, we present an intro series looking at some of the players who deserve mentioning but probably will not be appearing on their teams’ Top 10 lists. The series is back for a second year.

They have some nice things to say about DiFelice and Josh Butler. They talk about Lorenzo Cain's struggles, too. So far it looks like Cleveland made the right move grabbing Brantley instead of Cain, granted it wasn't that difficult a choice to make.

Fangraphs also has a post up showing how underrated Mike Cameron truly is by comparing him to Jason Bay -

With the season over and the clock ticking towards the beginning of free agency, you’re going to see a lot of rankings of the available players. I would imagine that every single one of them will have Jason Bay slotted in as the #2 position player on the market, behind only Matt Holliday. And there’s every reason to expect Bay to pick up the second biggest check of any free agent position player this winter.

However, there’s another right-handing hitting outfielder on the market that is a better player than Bay and yet will still demand a fraction of the price. That player? The chronically underrated Mike Cameron.

Did you know that, since 2002 (the first year we calculate WAR for), Mike Cameron has been worth +29.6 wins, or about the same as David Ortiz, Aramis Ramirez, and Jim Thome? Or that Cameron has posted a WAR of +4.0 or higher in three of the last four seasons? Yet, due to a slew of factors that include accumulating a large portion of value on defense, spending most of his career in extreme pitchers parks, and posting a low average with a lot of strikeouts, Cameron has never gotten the recognition he deserves.

If we get a top quality starter with the money we save on Cameron then I'll understand grabbing the cheap Gomez, but the Brewers are definitely taking a hit by not keeping Cameron, and it's disappointing that I think not many people are going to recognize it.

John Lackey, Milwaukee Brewer?

Buster Olney thinks it is a possibility. His article requires ESPN Insider, which I no longer have, so I can't see his reasoning but here's Craig Calcaterra explaining it -

There are no perfect fits, but Olney likes Lackey in Milwaukee of all places. It actually makes sense though given their needs and the fact that they did offer CC Sabathia a lot of money last year. I suppose there's a chance that that was a phony offer and that they'd never be willing to pay $100 million for a pitcher, but at the very least it shows some guts on Doug Melvin's part, and guts come right after money when it comes to the things a team needs to land a big fish like Lackey.

If the money saved by dropping Cameron goes towards Lackey (instead of Wolf or Pineiro) I would definitely change my opinion of the trade. I doubt Milwaukee will be able to compete for Lackey, though, given the lack of good pitchers in the free agent market.

Also, if anyone has ESPN Insider and wants to let me free-ride on their account you'd make me a very happy person.

So frustrating

God, how do the Packers lose to a winless Tampa Bay Buccaneers team led by a rookie QB who has never started a game before and score 37 points and it makes me want to scream! but I'm trying to let it go and not let it get me down because there are always birds and TREES AND FLOWERS!!! And the Japanese always inventing sweet robotic ways to do things like locking up your bike.

Dogs != SUV's

In case you were wreckt with guilt. I feel much better.

Coal and kids

Disturbing story about the effects of coal ash on a Dominican Republic town -

Maximiliano Calcaño is 2 and was born with no arms.

``When I was pregnant, I was dizzy, vomiting and could barely walk,'' said Maximiliano's mother, Anajai Calcaño, 20. ``My tooth cracked and fell out. Then my baby was born like that, without arms. Nothing like that had ever happened here before.''

By ``before,'' Calcaño means before a U.S. power company's coal ash arrived at a nearby port, sitting there for more than two years.

... A civil lawsuit filed Wednesday in Delaware charges that toxic levels of waste dumped at the Arroyo Barril port has made people nearby sick. After years of repeated miscarriages, women whose blood levels show abnormal levels of arsenic are giving birth to babies with cranial deformities, with organs outside their bodies or missing limbs.

The case highlights the debate over coal ash, an unregulated byproduct of coal energy, which when processed and recycled is used in everything from cement to the foundation for golf courses. Popular Mechanics magazine this month calls a concrete made from coal ash one of the ``10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009.''

Free Darko BJ

Guys from Free Darko talk to Matt Yglesias and then later about Brandon Jennings.

Ugh

And, like that, Hardy is traded to the Twins for Carlos Gomez. I don't like this at all. Manderfeld should be pretty excited about this upgrade for the Twins at SS. I could maybe understand this if Hardy always hit as poorly as he did this season, but this is an all-star SS two years ago, who hit 26 and 24 hrs in 2007 and 2008, respectively with lines like this -

2007 - .277/.323/.463
2008 - .283/.343/.478

Carlos Gomez could be Hardy's equivalent defensively, but he is an absolute zero at the plate with a career OBP under .300(!). He's young so he might get better, but he's most definitely worse than Mike Cameron.

Cameron - .250/.340/.448
Gomez - .246/.292/.346

Fangraphs -

Assuming some bounce back, Hardy should project as something like a +3 win player for 2010, making him a significant value at a salary that should come in around $5 million or so. He’s easily worth twice that, and if his offense returns, he could be worth $15 to $20 million to the Twins in each of the next two years.

To acquire Hardy, the Twins gave up Gomez, an outstanding defender in his own right. Milwaukee apparently wanted a premium defender to replace Mike Cameron in center field, but they’re taking a pretty big hit offensively in the swap. Gomez strikes out too often to make the slap hitting gig work, and his inability to bunt himself on base in 2009 caused his average to sink to unacceptable levels.

Even with his elite range in the outfield, Gomez is going to have to improve offensively in order to be worth a starting job. With infields taking away the bunt, he’s going to have to get himself on base in other ways, because it’s nearly impossible to justify starting an outfielder with a .286 career wOBA when you’re trying to make the playoffs.

Doug Melvin -

"J.J. has been a steady performer for the Brewers," Melvin said in a statement. "His professionalism and popularity with our fans and his teammates made this difficult, but he has been given the opportunity to go to a great organization to play and perform at the high level he is capable of playing."

Highly regarded prospect Alcides Escobar is expected to be the Brewers' starting shortstop next season.

Gomez hit .229 with three home runs and 28 RBIs in 2009. He played in 137 games, often as a defensive replacement.

The deal is potentially bad news for center fielder Mike Cameron in Milwaukee. Cameron, eligible to file for free agency, made $10 million this season. With Gomez in the picture, the Brewers may not be willing to match that going forward.

"Carlos brings to our club great speed, athleticism and energy at a position that we needed to fill," Melvin said. "His defense will serve as a key component to us improving our pitching."

I know Melvin had to say that Gomez's defense will improve the pitching, but Cameron was one of the better CF last year so I can't see how much of an improvement it could be. Let's pray that Kendall is gone next year because no winning team could survive with multiple black holes in it.

NBC Sports -

Minnesota has long been rumored to have interest in Hardy and the fact that his demotion to Triple-A pushed free agency back another season no doubt appealed to the budget-conscious Twins. Gomez fell behind Denard Span and Delmon Young in the Twins' outfield pecking order, rarely playing down the stretch, and has made little progress offensively since coming over from the Mets in the Johan Santana trade.

Milwaukee picks up a speedy, Gold Glove-caliber center fielder with tons of physical tools who still has plenty of time to develop further offensively. Minnesota gets a relatively young shortstop who's under team control through 2011 and prior to struggling this season batted .277/.323/.463 with 26 homers in 2007 and .283/.343/.478 with 24 homers in 2008. Some trades just make sense and this is one of them.

Rob Neyer -

And yes, Gomez does play fantastic defense, even better than Cameron. (I ranked Gomez fourth on my Fielding Bible ballot, and he might have been higher if he'd played more.)

But what a zero, offensively! Yes, he's just now turning 24. But however young, you'd like to see a bit of progress, right? Gomez's seasonal OBPs: .288, .296, .287. That looks like a guy who just doesn't get it, at all. Sure, he did much better while still just a baby in both Double- and Triple-A, but those seasons are starting to seem like a long time ago.

Still, the Brewers need a center fielder and Gomez is cheap (particularly compared to Cameron). Between the money they won't be spending on Cameron and the money they won't be spending on Hardy, the Brewers have gained a fair degree of payroll flexibility, which is the lifeblood of every financially challenged general manager.

Tom Haudricourt -

The Brewers will lose considerable pop in center with the exodus of Cameron. He hit 25 homers with 70 RBI in 2008 after signing a free-agent deal, and socked 24 homers with 70 RBI this year. Cameron also played Gold Glove-caliber defense in center but was strikeout prone, with 142 Ks in ’08 and 156 this year while compiling a .342 on-base percentage.

Cameron is a Class B free agent. To get a supplemental draft pick in exchange for him signing with another club, the Brewers would have to offer him salary arbitration. Because the signing club doesn’t forfeit a pick, he might sign before that deadline, however, giving the Brewers the draft pick.

Gomez is strikeout prone too, having 142 k's in 2008, and 72 last year with less playing time and putting up a lower OBP than in 2008.

Anyone got any other reactions so far? I'll see what Melvin does with the money saved before hating on this deal too much, but if it means that he's going after Joel Pineiro or some other buy-high veteran I'm gonna be upset.

Protect those copyrights

Don't want other people to steal our work.

Time Killer

Anyone bored and looking to kill time could download this "Coal For Kids" coloring book. I'm no propagandist, but what is gained by this -

Additionally, FOC ladies auxiliary members have visited children in West Virginia hospitals to give them a “special present“: Mr. Coal, “a small, black Labrador stuffed puppy meant to bring a smile to kids’ faces during hospital stays.” (Coal pollution kills 24,000 Americans each year.)

Last year, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), another industry front group, also tried to make coal seem warm and fuzzy by creating the “coal carolers” — illustrated lumps of coal singing Christmas carols whose altered lyrics praised coal power. After widespread scorn, ACCCE took down the carolers. Find out more on what coal is really doing to Appalachia at Appalachian Voices.

Do adults with fond memories of hospital visits by Mr. Coal turn into big coal industry investors? It reminds me of the cartoon Joe Posnanski saw in Tampa Bay that warns kids of the evils of statistics with the villainous character Dr. Stat.

It seems that Dr. Stat — and I’m quoting from the cartoon now — wants to “use his knowledge of useless statistics to destroy the game.”

Yes, I’m completely serious here — I saw the thing twice. This Dr. Stat them appears on the Superfriends monitor, and he asks them who was the highest paid umpire in 1888. The Rays, of course, don’t know, and they make it clear to him that it is a stupid and pointless question. Dr. Stat then says, “Wrong answer,” and he says as punishment he will point his stat ray direction at Tropicana Field in order to make it impossible for people to enjoy the games.

The stuff of nightmares.

Hardy is good at defense

Fangraphs is ranking the top 5 defensive players during the past 3 years and so far they've done the bottom 3, which look like this -

5. Ryan Zimmerman
4. Omar Vizquel

And then JJ Hardy -

Hardy’s inclusion should not be too much of a surprise. Unlike the previous two profiles, Hardy does not have much in the ways of peaks or valleys in UZR. Instead, he is rather consistent with UZRs always in the level a tad more elevated than simply ‘above average’.

If you wanna get lost in the weeds, you can read up about how UZR is measured here. In short, it takes into account range, arm, double plays, and errors and the numbers are how many 'runs' above or below average he is.

I watched a bunch of Brewers' games with Jared this year and he hates JJ Hardy - thinks he's awful in the field as well as at the plate. I can understand the reaction because Hardy has a way of moving that makes it look like he's never truly going his hardest, but I was also aware that you don't have to be a Brewers' apologist to think Hardy was actually a very capable defender. This is important because his bat completely disappeared and his trade value needs to come from somewhere. Maybe he can get sent to Philly because he looks exactly like Mac from It's Always Sunny -



Also, Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder both rank near the bottom of the league in defense over the past 3 seasons, hopefully Braun is only there because of his experiment at 3rd base, but he looks lost out in left often enough to make me hope he gets better.