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.