So, Who Exactly Is The Hero Of This Movie?

Thursday night I did a favor for a friend who is currently without an automobile. I picked her up from her job as a server at a comedy club and allowed her to pay me for taxi service in beer and nachos while I watched the Thursday night NFL game at a local bar.

While waiting for our Chicken Nachos and while Jessica was out socializing with some of the other regulars the commercial for Tom Hanks’ movie “Charlie Wilson’s War” appeared on the TV. Needing something to keep my attention and being in a WiFi hotspot I pulled out my trusty iPhone and Googled Charlie Wison.

Asside: That may have been the single nerdiest statement ever made on this blog. Wait, here comes another.

When I landed on Charlie’s Wikipedia page (don’t say I didn’t warn you!) I did some quick reading and getting the bare minimum facts from the open-source encyclopedia I read of his playboy lifestyle and the various welfare state agenda items on his voting record.

Throughout the eighties, though, Congressman Charlie Wilson picked up a new cause: Afghanistan. With the Afghanis in a long war with the Russians, our cold war adversaries, Charlie Wilson on multiple occasions offered supplies, weapons and various military aid to the Afghanis in order to fight the cold war by proxy.

One thing that the article does not mention is who was leading the resistance against the Russians in those days. The Afghani leader’s name should be familiar to us all by now, Osamma Bin Ladin.

The most surprising thing about this is that Tom Hanks would get involved in another semi-controversial movie character so soon after the forgettable film rendition of The DaVinci Code. Of course to keep Hanks’ status as America’s favored son in Hollywood the part of Professor Langdon was rewritten to show him to be at least somewhat a person of faith.



Of course what sends my liberal-slant-spidey-sense tingling is the fact that activist and part time actress Julia Roberts is his co star in this film. Obviously Hanks is here to provide the film with some amount of acting credibility.

Much like the Wikipedia article the movie could be done glorifying the noble efforts of a liberal Texas Congressman turning from a playboy to a Cold Warrior without mentioning exactly WHO was receiving his aid.

Representative Wilson died in 1996 and thus never saw the extent to which his cause had gone awry. Still upon seeing this movie one should remember who it is “Good Time Charlie” was really helping back then.

References:

• Wikipedia article
• Official movie site

In the news…

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these so I thought I’d tackle a few issues.

First up, Madonna in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7143011.stm

Singer Madonna will be inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next
year, it has been announced.

John Mellencamp, The Ventures,
Leonard Cohen and The Dave Clark Five, will also be honoured at a ceremony next
month in New York.

I guess this just proves that controversy throughout your career by rolling around on the ground in your underwear is an acceptable substitute for talent.


As Baseball Braces for Report, Pettitte and Clemens Cited
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/sports/baseball/14mitchell.html?em&ex=1197694800&en=6adaa7fdd3f9dc4b&ei=5087%0A

A former trainer for Roger Clemens provided information about Clemens’s steroid use to investigators for former Senator George Mitchell, who will release a report Thursday on steroids in baseball, two lawyers familiar with the investigation said.

The trainer, Brian McNamee, also provided information about steroid use by pitcher Andy Pettitte and first baseman David Segui, the lawyers said. McNamee spoke to Mitchell’s investigators under pressure from federal prosecutors investigating the use of steroids in baseball.

Mitchell is to release his 304-page report, covering 20 months of investigation, Thursday afternoon. More than 50 players are named in the report, according to individuals who saw the report.

Now we’re talking about substances such as steroids, and Human Growth Hormone (HGH) commonly referred to as “performance enhancing substances”.

Why do we watch professional sports as opposed to other professions? The answer is to see enhanced performances. Nobody pays $17.50 to sit in a hard plastic chair to watch me at my job. Well even if I had a job they wouldn’t do that.

But how narrowly should we define performance enhancers? Tiger Woods openly endorses Lasik eye surgery. The result of his procedure has given him better than 20/20, or super human sight.

A first year pro on the PGA Tour probably hasn’t earned enough prize money or endorsements to have the discretionary funds to get this procedure. This gives Tiger Woods performance-enhancing advantage over the rookie.

What do you get if you take the steroids out of Major League Baseball? You get Minor League Baseball. People won’t show up to see the league’s best home run hitter struggle to get to 30 runs in a season.

Even if every player in Major League Baseball did take steroids there is one part of baseball that no amount of performance enhancing drugs will enhance the performance of. That part is hitting a five-inch spheroid with a four-inch diameter cylinder. That only comes from raw talent amplified by years of practice.

Former Senator George Michell and his report will attempt to get congress to do something substantial about professionals doing anything they can to excel at their profession, while ignoring other issues such as illegal immigration, terrorism, taxes, inflation and dependence on foreign oil.

Thank you very much, Senator Michell, you've compromised the security of the country!

What I DON'T Want For Christmas

I've come to believe that the worst christmas gift you can get is any christmas decoration. I put up my tree yesterday and when I decided to add to festivities I looked in my closet and found the following 3 items:

• a dog that barks christmas carols
• 2 snow men that sing "Baby it's cold out side"
• and a penguin that dances and sings to an overly upbeat version of "Jingle Bells"

All 3 of these were Christmas present and aside from the singing dog that used to upset our real dog who thought another dog had invaded her house, none of them get used more than a week a year.

So what's the point of giving someone a Christmas decoration when most people decorate BEFORE christmas and take things down by new years? it's like saying "Here's a gift that you can use for the next week and then not for another year." You know what's a better gift than this?

ANYTHING ELSE!

• Underwear
• Socks
• A spatula
• The complete DVD Box Set of 227
• A gift card for a brazilian wax

Timing is Everything

So now that I’m unemployed… oh yeah, the rest of this story informs that statement.

It all started with the Browns in Pittsburgh this weekend. Everybody expected a blowout for the Steelers but when the Browns went up 21 to 9 in the first half the football world was shocked.

The second half was another story, though. Pittsburgh changed up their gameplan and aside from some spectacular special teams returns by Cleveland’s Josh Cribbs the Steelers made a comeback to win 28 to 31.

Now I have a pretty healthy rivalry with most of my now former coworkers, the majority of whom are huge Browns fans. So I sent a text message to Bryce, the biggest of the Browns fans, saying, “I’m fired aren’t I?”

It happens that my previous week at work I was struggling to find things to do. Nothing was really coming in, though on Monday in the first five minutes I was bombarded from several angles on things that needed priority or more immediate attention.

But it was at around four o’clock Bryce asked me to meet him in the conference room. “This has nothing to do with the Steelers and the browns,” he said.

What happened next was an explanation for why I haven’t been busy the previous week. In his words, “I blame the sales team”. You see this company has two products. First there is the courseware, flash-based corporate training on various topics; and Learning Management Systems, the hosted website that houses the courseware and maintains records for the client.

The sales process has required my involvement recently. Instead of just selling the product based on its merit, I would get a requirement document for a client with a basic outline of what was to go into this “Demo” site and I would then build it for each potential client. Thus I am now spending my work time building products that are not generating revenue.

Last week when even the requests for demos went cold I was a little bored at work.
So after waking up from a mid afternoon nap at about 2:00 today I started looking for jobs. In about 2 hours I had updated my resume and gotten 3 interviews set up with recruiters. I figured that was enough productivity for one day for a guy who’s unemployed.

Shouldn’t it be called Blue Week?

This week NBC attempted to further the propaganda of environmentalism with a “Green theme” in all their prime time shows. Of course since the earth is actually blue when seen from space I think the whole green theme misses the point of the Earth’s natural state, but I digress.

All week, starting with Sunday Night Football, NBC’s shows have gone extra preachy with their environmental message.

Sunday Night Football kicked off (sorry for the pun) the green message by turning out the lights in the studio. This was mostly a symbolic act since the rest of the year the studio will be very well lit. I think most football fans would agree that they only care about the green status of the game when the Jets play the Packers.

To be honest after watching this week’s episode of Heroes I didn’t catch an overly preachy environmental message. But then again as NBC’s highest rated serial drama throwing in a green sub-plot be more out of place than that replacement green peacock that’s been in the lower corner of the screen all week.

Thursday night tried to present the “You’re bad for being affluent” message with humor. Though the script writers got their own commentary on the network edict in which was funnier than the rest of the shows.

On “My Name is Earl” The warden (Craig T. Nelson) of the jail in which Earl (Jason Lee) is serving time is enacting a scared strait program and wanted Earl to do the presentation in the school. He then added “Add a green message,” to which Earl replies “That doesn’t fit with the rest of the presentation, wouldn’t it just seem kind of tacked on?”
Which it was.

Later Steven Carell did his best impersonation of “Survivor Man.” The show ended with him giving a speech, meant to support the environmental cause. As is status quo with this show Carell’s character gets everything wrong, but things work out in spite of his bumbling. His Environmental speech actually made sense.

“Man became civilized for a reason. He decided he wanted to have warmth and clothing and television and hamburgers and to walk upright and to have a soft futon at the end of the day. He didn’t want to have to struggle to survive. I don’t need the woods, I have a nice wood desk. I don’t need fresh air because I have the freshest air around: AC.”

Later Scrubs featured this exchange: Janitor: That’s very wasteful, must you wash your hands so often?
Carla: I just changed an eighty-year-old man’s diaper and I’m about to eat a muffin. So if you don’t mind I’m going to wash away.

This proves that conserving water helps in the spread of hepatitis.

NBC spent the week perpetuating falsehoods about mans ability to affect change in our constantly fluctuating Earth. There have been ice ages and periods of warming, none of them were caused by saving water or driving a gas guzzling SUV.

Environmentalism has become as much a religion as is practiced at your neighborhood church. It involved belief in something that has never been proven (faith). A set of guidelines for living (commandments), consequences for disobeying them (sin) and a way to make up for it (redemption through carbon credits).

The biggest difference, though, is that NBC would never put together a series of programs called “Jesus Week.”

Scab Writer to the Rescue

With a writers strike in Hollywood eminent many of our favorite TV shows may not be available. In an effort to limit the number of reality shows on television and keep quality programming available as a vehicle for Erectile Dysfunction ads I am offering the networks (and maybe Cable if the money is right) the following list of TV shows I’m willing to scab write for the sake of keeping television interesting:

Down Town Grounds
Set in a trendy coffee house the manager Mark Linn-Baker (Perfect Strangers) must fight off caffeine addicted homeless people, sometimes with a shot gun.

The Ass Kicking Action Hour
Mr. T, Chuck Norris and David Hasslehoff are a team of superhero crime fighters who travel the world kicking ass.

The Sweeps
Basically a rip off of Grey's Anatomy where there are a lot of good looking people with lots of personal drama, but instead of being doctors they’re Chimney Sweeps.

I’m a Schizophrenic and So am I
Dana Carvey returns to television as a lawyer with multiple personality disorder, often taking different sides of the same case.
Also staring Chritina Applegate as Nurse Pinkthong.

Rivals
Can mascots from different teams live together? We find out in this wacky sitcom where Pittsburgh’s Pirate Parrot, the San Diego Chicken and The Philly Fanatic all move in together. Also featuring Wayne Brady and Nikki Cox as wacky neighbors.

Lunch at Tiffany’s
Based on the classic film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” Jessica Alba stars as Holly Golightly, a New Yorker living a carefree lifestyle running information for the mafia. Can she balance her high society lifestyle with her commitments to the mob?

Dysfunctional Family Sitcom Featuring a Fat Guy with a Hot Wife
Based on the comedy of comedian (insert comedian name here) this family looks normal on the surface only to realize that they actually bicker constantly.
Also staring Tara Reid as the hot wife that would never bee seen with a guy like that in real life.

Big Ten Network’s Sweeps Month Ratings Gimmick

Thursday November 1st begins the November sweeps. That is the period in which TV ratings are taken and analyzed for the purpose of setting advertising rates for the coming months.

So this is why the Big Ten Network spent a huge part of their budget to get the Ohio State Wisconsin game to be a Big Ten Network exclusive.

Big Ten Network is currently asking $1.10 per household per cable provider to carry the channel. This is a rate that neither Time Warner nor Comcast has agreed to.

However it appears that if the Big Ten Network can get enough of a ratings boost out of the third most exciting game shown in Central Ohio they may be able to raise their advertising rates and lower their subscription fee.

The problem: A majority of people who are Ohio State fans don’t get the Big Ten Network.

I don’t know how the Nielson Ratings people adjust for this, but it will likely be that most people who subscribe to Time Warner in Columbus will visit their local bar to watch the game. Since Nielson Ratings primarily track household viewers this ploy by the Big Ten Network may turn out to be a bust.

Bacterial Conjunctivitis and Hillary Healthcare

“Just got back from the Dr. I have pink eye”

Of all the text messages to get on a Friday evening from someone you saw on Thursday this is not one you want to get.

Now everything I know about Pink eye I learned from an episode of South Park where everyone was turning into zombies a’la “Night of the Living Dead”. So at this point I’m afraid to touch my eye for fear of becoming a brain-eating member of the undead horde, as those are the only symptoms I’m familiar with.



As it turns out the actual symptoms are red crusty eyes, and the feeling of sandpaper under your eyelid.

I had none of these. However, because everything I know about medicine I learned from Scrubs, I decided to endulge my inner hypochondriac. So Saturday morning I made a visit to the local Urgent Care, just as a precautionary measure.

The nice thing is that the center opens at 9:00 and I got there around 9:15. By 9:30 I had a nurse giving me an eye exam. Ten minutes later the doctor was trying hard not to laugh at me for coming in without symptoms and by 10:00 I had received a prescription for the eye drops I don’t need.

All this cost me forty dollars, which is my insurance’s co-pay, and probably exactly what the doctor made in the ten minutes I talked to him.

Now what if there were free healthcare available to me? I would walk into the same urgent care as led by my inner hypochondriac only to find that every other inner and outer hypochondriac in the Dublin/Powell/Worthington area has come to the same clinic as me looking for a cure for their runny nose, sneezing, coughing aching and all the other typical stay-in-bed-and-rest illnesses.

I would not have seen a doctor until at least noon, and been exposed to a lot of stuff much worse than the pinkeye I didn’t have!

Eventually the amount of work made for the one or two doctors on call at this facility would be so immense that no doctor would be willing to set foot therein. The facility would close causing a lack of a medical facility in the greater Dublin/Powell/Worthington metro area causing people who actually need medical treatment to not get any.

If you don’t believe me look at what’s happening in Canada when there aren’t enough beds in Canadian hospitals and pregnant women are being life-flighted to the US to deliver their babies.

Oh, as it turns out this person I was exposed to had the bacterial form of Conjunctivitis and outside of sharing contact lenses there’s no real way to transmit that to another person.

How bad is the Big 10 network for college football?

I live in Columbus, Ohio where the Ohio State Buckeyes are king. If you ever want to avoid a crowd in a public place, go there during an Ohio State Game because everybody else will be watching the game. This city is obsessed and pretty much looses their minds when they can’t see the game on any given Saturday.

Enter the Big Ten Network. Powered by Fox broadcasting the Big Ten network was designed to provide the schools of the Big Ten (all eleven of them) with televised promotion of the universities, course broadcasts and sports broadcasts. This all sounds great until Time Warner and Comcast, the two biggest cable networks in the Midwest refuse to carry the Big Ten Network on basic cable.

The argument by the cable companies is that Big Ten Network wants $1.10 per subscriber from the cable company. Given the millions of subscribers of Time Warner and Comcast this will fill Big Ten Network’s piggy bank quite quickly. However, The big cable companies don’t want to provide every basic cable user with this fairly niche channel at a loss of $1.10 per customer until the next billing rate increase rolls around.

On the other hand the smaller regional cable companies, trying to gain local market share away from the monoliths have adopted the Big Ten Network at the network’s demands.

Where the Big Ten Network is gaining its worthwhile material is on a day like today, given an obsessed audience still wants to see Ohio State cream Kent State 45 – 3. In the past this would have been an ESPN+ game. A game recorded by ESPN at a financial loss for the purpose of thorough sports reporting and broadcast almost exclusively on the Columbus, Ohio ABC Affiliate. The local broadcast channel can then sell ad time at a premium because even though it’s a pathetic excuse for competition the hype surrounding this game keeps the whole city watching so there are guaranteed eyes on the TV at that time.

Since college football is such a regional appeal there is no guarantee that all basic cable subscribers would want to watch Big Ten games in Time Warner and Comcast serviced areas not lying between Happy Valley and the Twin Cities of Minnesota.

Living in the Midwest there’s less college football on TV this year. At noon none of the broadcast networks were showing football today and whereas in the past I would have had options to watch other Big Ten games on on the local broadcast channels broadcasting ESPN broadcasts of games unfit for cable. Instead they were all showing a wide variety of infomercals and movies staring David Schwimmer. I ended up finding a close game between the Hawkeyes and Illini because ESPEN2 secured the rights to that game somehow.

Even if I had Big Ten Network I would have only benefited from one more game since Purdue at Michigan was also a Big Ten Network game and here in ohio we would have only been shown #3 Ohio State beat up on a MAC school.

Fall TV reviews.

“Kid Nation” CBS Tuesdays 8:00
This is one of the most talked about shows for this season. Let’s put 40 kids in a ghost town and see w hat kind of society they come up with? Will it be better than adult society or will they all die of some sort of plague?

While the premise is exciting and original, the final product is wholly unrealistic (this coming from the guy who’s favorite reality show is SciFi Channel’s “Who Wants To Be A Superhero”).

While the kids do have to do their best to make society work, the interview segments, especially, seem overly edited and entirely too well scripted for this to be a reality show. Of course it’s hard to watch this and think that everything you see is completely spontaneous when there are obviously cameramen everywhere. Kid Nation is another reason I set aside Tuesday Nights for reading.

“Chuck” NBC Mondays 8:00
He’s a computer geek who works at a superstore helpdesk whose best friend who emailed him the only copy of all the secrets of the NSA computer. Several secret service agents chase after him only to be convinced that he can help them.

The premise is weak and wholly unrealistic. While the special effects and female lead look great the show is too far into left field to deserve an hour drama format. They should have reduced the complexity of the plot to and made it a hybrid comedy like Scrubs.

If you really want to laugh at a nerd who can’t seem to function correctly around beautiful women check out “The Big Bang Theory” over on CBS at 8:30. That show already made up its mind to be a pure comedy.

“Journeyman” NBC Mondays 10:00
If “My Name Is Earl” is Quantum Leap for white trash, then Journeyman is Quantum Leap for… well, Quantum Leap fans. Journeyman is the story of a man who travels through time every time he falls asleep. Oddly enough he tends to visit his late ex-fiancé which would probably make his wife at least a little jealous.

The show is very well produced, acted and written. The period music for each “journey” Is very fitting though sometimes overpowers the dialogue.

Journeyman is a surprisingly good show and should do well with a solid lead-in from “Heroes.”

Bionic Woman NBC Wednesdays 9:00
In a nutshell: Too much drama, not enough ass kicking. Jamie Sommers, a San Francisco bartender becomes the Bionic Woman. What would otherwise make this show seem more plausible is that the agreement between Sommers and the black-ops organization that made her bionic is the exact same premise that “Chuck” used two days earlier.

Flash Gordon SciFi Channel Fridays 9:00
For a character who got his start in black-and-white B-movie serials it’s fitting that the modern incarnation is a relatively low-budget cable show. However, when you get past some of the production goofs (like flash finishing a marathon without breaking a sweat) the show is pretty enjoyable. Gone is Flash’s rocket ship zipping from planet to planet, and instead we find Steve “Flash” Gordon a local athletic hero from Suburban Virginia who ends up traveling to the bizarre planet of Mongol and also battle evildoers from there as well.

It’s not great but gets pretty good mileage out of it’s meager special effects budget.

Back To You Wednesday 8:00 FOX
I havent’ seen it yet but seeing Patricia Heaton give Kelsey Grammer his comeuppins on a weekly basis sounds like a hit to me!

Other returning favorites:
Smallville: Should have killed off Chloe… would have made for better story and easier transition to new cast members (who is a really hot blonde!).

Heroes: underwhelming set-up episode for season 2. Don’t over think things, it’s just television!

Lost: Won’t be found on TV until February.

The Office: Pam and Jim together at last. Finally I can sleep at night.

Ugly Betty: I still don’t want to watch something called UGLY BETTY!

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

Yes it’s the most wonderful time of the year… No the Christmas sales haven’t started early… yet. I’m talking about that other most wonderful time of the year: FOOTBALL SEASON!

Ah yes, the green, usually artificial turf, the drunken fans in the parking lot, cute girls in face paint. Strangely that also describes the last KISS concert I attended.

But the best thing about football season is the game of football. There’s college football, high school football, pro football and fantasy football.

I prefer the professional football to the collegiate game. I think it takes more guts to stick it out with a pro team moreso than as a fan of a college team. Who are your big college fans? They mostly gather around your USC’s your Auburn’s Texas’s and here in my own city we’ve got Ohio State.

The thing about all those teams is that they’re all perennial winners. A bad season in college football for your a-list teams 7-5 and crappy no-name bowl game. As opposed to pro football where the Superbowl champions can go 8-8 a year later and miss the playoffs.

Saying you love a team who’s going to win the majority of their games every year takes less courage than to stand by someone like say, Cleveland who always looses!

Now of course my argument has been cut down in recent weeks by two teams who would have normally been listed with the schools named above as winning schools. However meeting this week we have winless Notre Dame and Michigan meeting at the big house on Saturday. This will be one of the highest rated games of the week only because people love a train wreck and one of these teams will end up as a total train wreck.

First Michigan. Some will say that Michigan hasn’t won a game since Bo Schembechler died. Less of a coincidence and more accurately the downfall of big blue most likely stems from loosing a very close winnable game to Ohio State for a chance to go to the National Championship last year. Nearly two months later the Michigan team barely showed up to face USC in the rose bowl and were put down nicely in a 32-18 loss.

During the off-season several Michigan players skipped the NFL draft hoping to finish what they started by winning a bowl game, beating Ohio State and winning national championship.

In their first step toward these goals the #5 team in the nation was out played to a 32-34 lose to Division I-AA opponent Application State. Was it over confidence in their returning starters? Was it not taking a Division I-AA team? Whatever it was Michigan lost their competitive edge. They lost their spirit and for the rest of the season they’re the team knocked out of the top 25 by an opponent in another division.

The other half of this week’s 0-fer-bowl is the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. Three years ago new coach Charlie Weis came to an embattled South Bend to guide the Irish again toward victory. In his first year the team went 9-2, the next year 10-2 effectively giving the team the same record.

Now the biggest issue I had at this point was that Charlie didn’t improve from is first to second year. Yes his pro-style coaching and unseen bag of tricks lead the team to a new start in 2005 but there was nothing new in 2006.

Also, with the highly publicized, yet unarguably mediocre Brady Quinn and many other starters left college to play on Sundays. So this is in all reality a rebuilding year in South Bend.

Who will win this Saturday? I don’t know. But I do know that since College football did away with ties somebody’s going to have to!

Base-Blogging: There’s more to baseball than Barry Bonds

Last Night in San Diego, California the ever-enlarging Barry Bonds hit his 755th home run tying Hank Aaron’s record. I was at PNC Park in Pittsburgh during this event, which was shown immediately after the Pirates lost to the Reds in extra innings in a hard-hitting contest to prove just exactly who is the worst team in baseball.

But why is it that you can have perpetually bad teams like the Pirates and Reds while the big money teams: The Yankees, Cubs and Red Sox, are paying for the smaller money teams to stay where they are.

Since Revinue Sharing in Major League Baseball started the basic principle is that the big market teams, as stated above, will share their profits with the rest of Major League Baseball. Now the flaw with this system is that there is so much money coming in because these three teams will pay the best athletes to play for them, they’re in the big cities that love baseball and get great TV ratings so commercial revenue is through the roof.

Now if you’re a small market team where your games are broadcast somewhere on basic cable and your record is such that CSI reruns get higher TV ratings in your city you can actually not bother paying quality athletes on your team, take the revenue sharing cash and operate a baseball stadium knowing that the game is just too much fun for people to not show up.

Now obviously we’re dealing with rich greedy owners and that’s the problem. But it can also be the solution. You see Greed is the easiest of the seven deadly sins to manipulate because it is quantifiable. You can put a number on greed and usually a dollar sign in front of that number.

It’s easy to compare Baseball with Football because the National Football League has a system of salary capping that keeps each team’s payroll within a certain standard deviation. The thought process behind this is that each team will have the same amount of money to spend on players so that each team gets approximately the same quality of players as determined by free market forces dictating the worth of a player.

The salary cap is not perfect but much better than the Revenue sharing system. However it is possible to revive the Revenue sharing system to bring back baseball. Even though all the money is in Boston New York and Chicago these teams aren’t running away with every World Series. Just a few years ago the Flordia Marlins took the Series from the Yankees when one player from the New York Nine was making more than the entire Florida dugout. Therefore it is possible that a team of hard working under-paid ball players can win baseball’s biggest crown.

On the other hand you have the Cubs, even being one of the top markets in the league, so much so building owners across the street from the stadium pay royalties to the team for seats sold there. Yet the Cubs have not been in the mix of winning championships recently as much as the other big money teams. This proves that it’s not a money problem in baseball; it’s a competition problem.

The reason for this is that not every owner of every baseball team is George Steinbrenner, who I would call a baseball fan first and a baseball owner second. So let’s re-organize revenue sharing so that it benefits greedy owners and their fans. At the end of each year we should reward good teams with more of the Revenue Sharing pool than bad teams. This then becomes an incentive for teams to do well. Owners would then have profits tied to their record.

I’m a Pirate fan, and it’s not that I’m asking for them to win the World Series, I just want to see them try for a change!

Speaking of the World Series I’m fairly certain that I can accurately predict the losers of this year’s fall classic. Having seen Ohio State loose both the collegiate football and basketball championships this year, the Cleveland Cavaliers loose the professional Basketball championship and recently the underdog Columbus Destroyers loose the indoor football championship, it’s pretty safe to say that Ohio is doomed to suffer many losses at a national level. Therefore with the Reds still far enough out of the mix to be inconsequential, I predict that the winner of the World Series will be the team playing the Cleveland Indians.

Even if that team is the Cubs!

Enough of the sentimental crap, here's some movie reviews

Summer movie reviews 2007:

• Shrek 3:
  Third Time Is Not a Charm for Shrek.
  2/5
  


• Spider-Man 3:
  Spider-Man 3: It’s like a chick movie with a hell of a lot of action
  4/5
  


• Fantastic Four:
  Fantastic Four: Rise of the Bridezilla
  2.5/5
  


• Transfomers:
  Transformers: More action than meets the eye.
  3.5/5
  


• The Simpsons Movie:
  Believe it or not, after eighteen years there’s something that The Simpsons haven’t already done.
  4/5

Something tells me...

Just because it's a blog doesn't mean I have to spell it out for you!

Why do pretty blonde girls make such bad decisions?

In a divergence from the ordinary, I am not going to be talking about either Al Gore or the iPhone, instead one of my other favorite topics: Pretty blonde girls who make bad life decisions.

Nothing makes for better news than a pretty blonde girl in trouble, be it Jessica Lynch, Natalee Holloway or the latest cable news sensation Miss New Jersey: Amy Polumbo.

Polumbo has been at the center of controversy because someone has sent “embarrassing” photos of her to pageant officials that could cost her the title of “Miss New Jersey” and possibly her slot in the Miss America pageant.

On the Today Show Miss Polumbo said that these photos "were meant to be private" when the put them on the internet.

For those of you who do not know, the internet is a series of interconnected computers networked over the whole planet. This as opposed to something that would be considered more private like say, a room with a locked door.

Before you get your hopes up, the photos not nearly as graphic as… well, whatever you’d get your hopes up for when a pretty blonde girl is embarrassed by photos of her that would get her kicked out of the Miss America Pageant.

I will now pose a new theory: Pretty Blonde girls make bad decisions. So if you’re a pretty blonde girl here is a list of five things you should always consider before making a decision:

1. Nothing good ever came from getting drunk with foreign strangers


2. Stay with your convoy when traveling through Iraq


3. When being photographed getting out of your Porsche, make sure you have on underwear (clean or not)


4. Don’t marry Kevin Federline


5. If you want something kept private don’t put it somewhere that it can't potentially be accessed by every computer on the planet

UPDATE:

Now as an endeavor to keep my Miss New Jersey crown (a state I have never actually been to) from ever being taken away I will preemptively post embarrassing photos of myself here:


Me at a Tracy's party holding a beer with Tracy, John and sme girl I don't remember (I don't remember her not because I was drunk, she just kind of showed up about the same time John and I got there and Tracy wanted a picture, but we didn't really talk to her the rest of the night).

Me drinking one big ass margaritta. I was of legal age to drink, but not of legal age to run for president.

Me dressed as Clark Kent.

Me dressed as a laundry basket.

Me dressed as Obi-Christ Kenobi.

David Hasselhoff (some of these aren't just embarassing for me).

Drinking Al Gore’s Cool-Aid

This weekend Al Gore will be hosting rock concerts around the world on each of the Earth’s continents (Antarctica was excluded for it’s obvious lack of participation in the global warming crisis). The concert series is inappropriately titled “Live Earth” when a more appropriate title for something like this, given we’ve had Live Aid and Farm Aid, since we’re trying to cool the earth with massive amounts of electric guitars and lighting effects this concert should be called “Cool Aid” Because if you’re there you’ve obviously already had at least a sip of Al Gore’s.

The Concert venues include New York, Washington D.C., Sydney, Johannesburg, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Rio De Janeiro, Shanghai and Tokyo.

Having been inspired by pop music (something that rarely happens to people not in junior high) I have decided to do my part to help cool the Earth.

I hereby pledge to turn my air conditioner on high at least once a week and open all my windows so that cool air will fly out the windows and cool the Earth.

Now, I can’t do this alone people. I encourage everyone to do this, especially if you have a window unit. Take the unit out, turn it around so that the cool air is blowing outside. You’ll have to get a bucket to collect all the condensation that would otherwise drip on your floor.

Gore Al-colite: But that won’t help global warming.

Andy: No not just one person but everyone working together

Gore Al-colite: Even if you had hundreds of thousands of people blowing air conditioning into the air you couldn’t change the temperature of the earth?

Andy: Then how can hundreds of thousands of people blowing their air conditioners inside their houses cause global warming?

The Adventures of Andy and the iPhone (with photos!)

I did it! I did It, I got the iPhone!!!

In your face Sprint!

Now for those of you who missed earlier episodes I have abandoned the Sprint Corporation over a matter of twenty dollars. So because Sprint would not discount the purchase of a phone I have switched carriers just so I could have the latest gadget and be the envy of all my nerdy friends.

So the adventure begins Friday when I left work at 4 PM to get in line at the AT&T store. Fortunately the store is just across the street so I went home picked up my camera, stopped off at the ATM. That’s when I hit my first obstacle.



The sidewalk was freshly cemented so I had to do just a bit of jay walking to get across Sawmill Road. Okay htat was a pretty lame obstacle, but what’s a story without conflict? I ended up in line at about 4:20.



As you can see I was not first in line.



I did end up making friends with my fellow gadget geeks. There was a security guard on site but the crowd was very well behaved. We all knew what we were there for, and for $500 - $600 a purchase (before optional accessories and activation fee) you’re there to drop some coin, not start a fight.



Speaking of which I had a dream earlier in the week that I had gotten in line and someone cut in front of me and got the last iPhone. In my dream I just about started a fight.

The AT&T staff was very nice. They even brought out cold drinks for people in line.



The security guy made sure we weren’t spilling over into the parking lot and made a count of people. I was about #28 and probably the first person attempting to get the 4 GB model. This just proves that I’m very secure about the size of my hard drive. They eventually gave everyone a fact sheet to fill out about why we were at the AT&T store today (duh!) what service you were going to buy etc… About 6:30 I had made it to the front of the line and was very excited.



They had a list of names and as one person left they would let another iPhon iPhanatic in the store. Inside they let you play with a demo unit. Here’s a picture of the cute girl in charge of letting you play with the display models.



She took a picture of me finally getting my hands on one!



And I took a picture of myself on the demo phone.



It really is very cool, and all the features from the commercial work just like that in real life. From the demo they let you pick out accessories. The only one I liked was a rubber sleeve for the phone, but usually that stuff is cheaper at Wal Mart than at the actually phone store so I passed.

About 7:30 I had my I Phone and was ready to plug it in. Unlike traditional phones there is already software on your computer to run it. I unpackaged everything and was impressed with what the iPhone comes with. First there’s the charger, but I was happy to see a cradle come with it. That’s such a nice feature. There’s also a set of earphones with a microphone so you don’t have to unplug to answer the phone.



The box itself is beautiful. It’s a glossy black finish with a nice organizational holder for each of the included items. There’s even a nice piece of cloth to wipe off all finger prints you can see ended up on there immediately.

The phone is small and about the size of a Motorola Q, or a late model Compaq iPaq. It’s bigger than the standard flip phone. Oh and I’m not abusive to my phones that’s just 2 years of jingling around in my pocket with keys, coins and anything else that might end up in there.



Setup was pretty simple. But I needed to do it on my desktop rather than my laptop because I don’t have XP service pack 2 on my laptop. (long unrelated story) All you do is plug in the iPhone into your PC, turn on iTunes (make sure you have the latest version) and it recognizes the new device. Then it prompts you put in your phone number, your account number and a few other items like billing information and voila… your phone is still locked!

What?!?!

Well since I was transferring my number from Sprint they emailed me saying:

AT&T is now processing your activation.You will receive an email confirmation once your activation is complete.

I got that email about 1:07 today and boy was I excited! I quickly ran upstairs, plugged back in and iTunes started the registration process. When it was done the phone was unlocked. I made the maiden call to my mom who said I sounded like I was in a tin can, but eventually sounded better.

Next it was off to YouTube to view a friend’s mini movie. Unfortunately I don’t think that all YouTube videos are available on the iPhone so I looked up Van Halen. It took a while because the typing program thought “Halen” was a typo for “Galen” But eventually I got there and here’s a photo of me watching the video for “Jump”. The only disappointing thing is that when watching videos the speakers are on only one side giving you only a mono sound. This is easily resolved by plugging in headphones.



Next I used the wireless web to look at my blog, looked up directions to my house (even though I’m already there) on Google Maps and read my email online!



There’s still plenty to figure out and I don’t think I’ll be getting any incoming calls until around 9:13 tonight but still it’s a really cool device. Everything they say it can do it does and I’m sure a lot more. My next step is to put some music and videos on there.

The guys at work were telling me that I’d come in Monday as a total Mac convert. I said probably not but don’t be surprised if I show up in a mock turtleneck and jeans like everybody’s favorite iCeo Steve Jobs.



Come to think of it, I do look good in black!

"But it's an iPhone!"

Excerpt from an IM conversation with Kelly

andy: I'm getting an iPhone
Kelly: you should see the look of shock on my face
andy: Save it, and I'll take a picture with the iPhone's camera LOL
Kelly: and that's different from my FREE Verizon camera phone HOW?
andy: it's an iPhone!
andy: :D
Kelly: its hundreds of dollars
andy: but it's an iPhone

Need I say more?

The pot calling the kettle black

I heard a review on the radio about a new book depicting the Reagan presidency. The radio personality gave it a great review and said it was the best book he’s ever read.

Having my interest grabbed I did about thirty seconds of Googling (the maximum allowed given my internet-age attention span) I found what I was looking for on a list of New York Times Best Sellers.

The book was #2 on the nonfiction list and the synopsis reads as follows:

2. The Reagan Diaries, by Ronald Reagan. Edited by Douglas Brinkley.
(HarperCollins, $35.) Selections from the 40th president's daily White House
diaries.

What shocked me was not that my beloved Ronny was #2 but what exactly was #1, and not so much that it was #1 but the title of the book.

1. The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore. (Penguin Press, $25.95.) How the Bush
administration has degraded the political environment through secrecy, fear, and
rejection of fact-based reasoning.

Now if you told me that Al Gore had a book called “The Assault on Reason” I would have assumed it was a how-to tome detailing techniques for dodging scientific analysis of global warming propaganda.

Of course Gore refuses to debate anyone on global warming which is sad because he is a good debater. He’s taken on impassioned opponents like Ross Perot on NAFTA and had strong showings in the 2000 presidential debates. Yet when someone of intellect like Michael Chriton challenges Gore’s beliefs the former Vice President is nowhere to be found.

Mr. Gore, Reason is not a buffet line. You can’t pick and choose where you apply it.

How to make an otherwise reasonable individual want a $500 cell phone.

My current Cellular carrier is Sprint. They’ve never done me wrong, in fact through my former employer I got a little discount on my bill so I’m getting more service than I need for what I’m paying.

However my contract is up and, honestly, I was just waiting for a new phone to come along that I liked. Currently I’ve got an LG something-or-other that is without a doubt the best phone I’ve ever owned. I even have a custom AC/DC ring tone. In the office everyone knows I’m getting a call because Back in Black starts playing.

So last weekend I got a flier in the mail for the new LG Fusic for $29.99. It’s like my phone but is also an MP3 Player, has a camera and does all the multimedia crap that has somehow become associated with telephones in the 21st century. I have yet to explore the option of still getting the company discount by taking the flier into the store, but more on that later.

I decided to do my research and looked up the Fusic online. On Sprint’s website it’s selling for $9.99. When I first became a Sprint customer I found the phone I currently have online, printed out the online deal and took it to the store and got a new phone for the low, low price of $1.99 (plus tax). Trying to leverage the same buying power again I do the same thing.

My first mistake may have been going at noon when everyone on their lunch break was at the Sprint Store buying cell phones. I was a little put off by the attitude of the customer service people. Now I’m not one who likes to be hounded by sales people the moment I walk into a store, but this day I was virtually ignored.

I walked around the store a couple times, stood by the demo of the Fusic, with a smile as if to say “I’m here to give you money!” Then I realized that instead of helping people who were willing to pay for such help there was a rather uninspired kid standing at a podium taking names and putting them up on a big TV screen so you know who is next to be helped.

Finally a tall woman called my name and I told her about the $9.99 deal and how I wanted that phone and to renew my contract. Overwhelmed by the possibility of a new phone for $9.99 (after rebate of course) I forgot to try and leverage my former employer’s name.

But that was a moot point as the girl told me that as of June first they were no longer honoring website deals in the store.

Why not? It’s the same [expletive] company!

Still, twenty bucks is twenty bucks so I try to buy the phone online. Fortunately for me (the sarcasm becomes apparent at the end of this paragraph) there are two options for purchasing the phone online. The first one I tried was for current customers to replace or add a phone. I go through the process, choose my plan and am ready to check out when I notice that this will cost me a total of $60.

I'd like to point out that at this point the only thing keeping me on my quest is the fact that NFL network is an exclusive feature to Sprint.

So next I try to purchase a new phone. Again, I choose my plan, and attempt to check out when they ask my area code so they can assign me a new number.

[Expletive]!

At this point I ask myself, if I’m an AT&T shareholder why am I using Sprint’s product? So I start browsing the AT&T website, remember they used to be Cingular. And find a very similar phone, a similar plan and at a similar price (actually the phone would be free). Then I realize that if I only wait until June 29 the Apple iPhone would be available.

This, to me at least, would be the ultimate act of defiance to the Sprint Corporation because of their lousy customer care. Yes, over a matter of $20 I’m considering leaving their service to purchase a $500 product that in a year will be half price with more features.

Somehow this experience has made me long for the days when everybody had AT&T phone service. You rented your phone from the phone company and it weighed about fifty pounds and if you missed a call you had to wait for the person to call back. Sure there was only one choice but you didn’t have to go through the hassle of comparing every phone plan out there and using the word [Expletive] out loud in otherwise polite company.