Athletics 7, Twins 3 -- and a game of Mound Ball to boot

I know, I know.  It's another baseball post.  I was hoping to sneak something else between game summaries, but it hasn't happened.  I promise to work on it.

I even thought about skipping this summary completely, but since Duckie and I attended the A's/Twins game last Sunday, the A's have been swept in Seattle by one of the worst offenses in baseball and they've also dropped the first of the weekend series in Tampa.  It would be a shame if Duckie and I attended the last win of the season for the A's, and I completely failed to blog about it.

Going into the game, the A's were actually playing pretty well.   They were scoring more runs per game than anyone else in baseball after the All-Star break.  At least I think I read that somewhere.  In any case, that wasn't what brought us to the game.   We bought the tickets months ago with the hope of getting a hold of the promotional giveaway item for the game: gold Kurt Suzuki jerseys.  We knew the Coliseum would be handing out the jerseys to the first 15,000 fans, and we made sure to get there an hour early to get ours (though, honestly, based on fan attendance at A's games, I wasn't worried about missing out).  The jerseys are pretty sweet.  Take a look:

The Food:

With our jerseys in hand and an hour to kill before game time, we took the opportunity to have a nice ballpark lunch.  Duc has been craving spicy and tangy foods these days, so she wanted nachos with extra jalapenos, and I decided to go the hot dog route.  I bought the dog first from a special sausage-centered concession stand.  For some reason my focus was on total quantity of food, so I picked the Super Atomic Dog with peppers and onions for $7.50 over a bratwurst for $5.95.  It was the wrong choice. (I'll 'splain shortly).  I don't remember what I paid for the nachos, but I do remember that the woman serving me took my request for extra jalapenos very seriously.  I almost told her to stop as she added tongful after tongful to the top off the tortilla chips.  It looked like a lot of freaking jalapenos, but the amount worked out fine in the end.

Why was the Super Atomic Dog a mistake?  First of all, somehow my puny malfunctioning brain didn't catch on to the fact that "Atomic" meant the dog would be spicy.  I like spicy food, but not so much in hot dog form.  Second, the juice from grilled peppers and onions dissolved the crease of the bun which disintegrated when I picked it up.  The whole thing was a messy pain in the ass to eat, and much of the peppers and onions ended up in a pile in the tray. That's what you get for bringing your malfunctioning idiot brain to the ballpark. Duc's nachos were more successful.  Not all the jalapenos were eaten, but we put a good dent in them.

Off the field:

The off-the-field entertainment was typical stuff.  There was a weird competition in which two ten year-olds put on visors with tea bags dangling off them and they had 1 minute to flip both tea bags onto the brim of their visor without using their hands to win a prize.  I prefer the frozen t-shirt competition in Cleveland.  There's something unsavory about tea bags.

The best off-field entertainment, though, was provided by our neighbor to my right and a game called 'Mound Ball'.  I talked to this guy a bit and learned that he came up from Sonora with his friend and his friend's girlfriend.  Apparently, they were originally going to bring the friend's 30 year-old son so he could see Twin's catcher Joe Mauer play ball.  This was something of a bucket-list wish for the son who had some form of terminal cancer.  Unfortunately, the son passed away a month before the game.  A sad story to be sure, but it didn't keep the group from having a good time at the game.  The game of 'Mound Ball' certainly contributed to the fun.

Mound Ball works like this: every inning the three participants put a dollar in a cup (in this case the money apparently ended up in the girlfriend's bra -- a different sort of cup, but still a cup I guess).  Each inning is assigned to a different player in rotation.  After the third out of every half inning, the umpire throws a baseball toward the mound for the next pitcher to use for his warm up.  Sometimes the ball rolls up the mound and stays on the dirt, but most of the time it rolls all the way back down to the grass.  If the ball the umpire throws to the mound at the end of the inning (the balls used in the middle of the inning don't count) stays completely on the dirt -- it can't be touching the grass at all -- the player assigned that inning gets to take all the cash in the cup at that time.  If the ball touches the grass, the players just add another dollar apiece and move on to the next inning.  The point is that the money builds up until somebody wins, kind of like a skins game.

Okay, so it's not the most exciting game in the world, but it kept our neighbors occupied.  It also provided the single most enjoyable off-field moment of the game.  When the 6th inning rolled around, the Mound Ball moolah had gone uncollected by any of the players.  Our nearest neighbor owned the rights to the inning.  When the A's surrendered their third out, the ump chucked a ball at the mound, and sure enough it rolled up onto the dirt and sat there.  Our neighbor stood and cheered it all the way: "Go! Go! Go! YEEESSSSSSSS!"  Of course no one in our vicinity was standing or cheering for any reason (Why would they? The A's just got out), so our friend stuck out like a loud middle-aged nut job screaming for no reason.  He made $18.  That's enough to buy a ticket to another A's game.

The Game:
I'll keep this brief.  The A's won, so it was a great game.  Brandon McCarthy pitched very well for the green and gold, striking out 9 Twinkies.  The bullpen struck out five more to bring the total to 14 Ks.  In fact, the only Twin not to strike out was the aforementioned Joe Mauer.  Even pinch-hitter Trevor Plouffe struck out.  I only mention him because his name is on the list of "Worst Names in Baseball," along with Taylor Teagarden and Madison Bumgarner.  Plouffe (rhymes with poof) sounds like something used to apply make-up, or maybe a brand of toilet paper.  The boy needs a name change.

So we saw the A's last game of its best month this season.  Since then, they've sucked.  I don't really think the A's will go winless for the remainder of the season, but it'll be a shame if they just suck through August and September.  More July would be nice.

Indians 3, Angels 2 -- The Streak Continues

This past weekend, Duckie was kind enough to accompany me to my 20th high school reunion in Penfield.  This was our second trip to Rochester this month.  Now, I love my family and I think Rochester is a great town, but two trips there in the hottest month of the year?  Well you gotta add a little somethin' somethin' to entice the wife to make the trip.  In this case, the "somethin' somethin'" took the form of a side trip to Cleveland to see an Indians game.  Was it worth it?  Hell, yes!

Cleveland Rocks!
I had never been to Cleveland (neither had Duckie), but we would definitely go back.  The front desk staff at the Hilton Garden Inn was great.  Super friendly.  And not they-pay-me-to-be-friendly friendly.  They were really friendly.  Stuart, our waiter at Carnegie Kitchen and Dining was awesome.  We went to CKD, twice for cheap high quality breakfast and Stuart's helpful advice about Cleveland.  We didn't actually take his advice about what to eat at the ballpark because we were too full of the tasty goodness from Iron Chef Michael Symon's restaurant, Lola, to eat during the game.  I'm sure his suggestions were spot on, though.

Finally, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland. Go there.  Go see the inductee video presentation on the 5th floor.  It takes a while to get through all 26 years of inductees, but it's worth it.  The guy next to Duc had a grand ol' time.  He couldn't stop laughing, which was a little weird but not totally inappropriate.

The Park:
Progressive Field opened as Jacob's Field in 1994.  It's nickname is "The Jake", which has to be the best nickname for a baseball park.   It's a nice park.  Not quite as pretty as AT&T and PNC parks, but it has to be the easiest stadium to get in and out of that I've ever been to.  We had field level seats behind home plate about 25 rows back.  They were pretty sweet.  It felt like reasonable foul ball territory, but nothing got anywhere near us.

The Fans:
Meh.  The park was far from full, and the fans weren't particularly decked out in Indians' regalia.  I don't know.  Maybe the Cleveland fan base is just too worn down from years of futility and abuse.  Maybe they're embarrassed by the iconic but decidedly offensive Chief Wahoo.  Or maybe I'm just becoming biased because the Giants fans are beginning to look and act like the Red Sox Nation thereby making other mellower fan bases look uncommitted and disinterested.  Or maybe they just need more Asian fans (Duc spent several innings scanning the stadium trying to establish her level of Asian tokenhood.  We eventually spotted an Asian women several rows in front of us, and later a bunch of Asian kids popped up on the diamond vision screen).  In any case, I wasn't impressed.

Extracurricular Entertainment:
The staff at The Jake did a decent job keeping us entertained between innings of a game that was pretty tedious for the first 6 innings or so.

They had a race in which an 8 year-old with a mohawk unfolded and put on a frozen t-shirt faster than his normal-haired opponent. 

There was a footrace between three poor suckers dressed up as condiments (or maybe they were hot dogs covered in particular condiments -- it wasn't clear) during which we learned that Ketchup is a dirty no-good cheater.  (Duckie got a great picture of Mustard before the race.  He finished last.)


Thanks to the folks at Fenway, a lot of ballparks feel a need for an 8th inning sing-along.  The Jake is no exception, and the song of choice is "Hang On Sloopy" by the McCoys.  A great choice for the home of the Rock 'N Roll HOF, I must admit.

The Teams:
The Tribe squared off against the Los Angelheim Angels, my least favorite baseball team.  Orange County is home to two off the worst American cultural phenomena: the Angels and "The Real Housewives of Orange County".  Two good reasons to stay clear of the place.  I'm trying to come up with an insulting name for the Angels based on TRHOOC without sounding misogynistic.  If you have any ideas, send 'em my way.

The Indians team featured two Athletics' cast offs: right fielder Travis Buck and third baseman Jack Hannahan.  In the 9th inning they were batting back to back (7th and 8th in the line-up, I think).  That's enough to give an A's fan PTSD flashbacks of the Bob Geren era {shudder}.

The Angels team also featured a former Athletic -- a good one though.  Danny Haren got the start and pitched very well for Los Angelheim.  He struck out 10 in 7 2/3 innings with 2 walks, 3 hits, and 2 earned runs.  I like the guy, but I'll like him more when he gets the hell of that damn team.

There were a bunch of really great names involved in the game on both sides:
Torii Hunter -- We've decided to start pronouncing both i's as if he were Japanese or Hawaiian
Ezequiel Carrera -- A z and a q in one first name?  Awesome.
Asdrubal Cabrera -- He's an excellent shortstop with first name of dwarf from Middle Earth
Carlos Santana -- He's a Black Magic Catcher....(sorry about that)
Maicer Izturis -- Pronounced just the way it's spelled.
Lonnie Chisenhall -- Great rhythm to that name, but not as much as...
Alberto Callaspo  -- Don't forget to pronounce the double l properly.  It makes all the difference.

The Game:
It's was a great game, but I don't think I would have said that in 6th inning.  I'm not going to give you the full recap or run through the box score.  Not my style.  I'll just let you know what I found noteworthy.

First of all, the Indians starting pitcher, Fausto Carmona, is extremely painful to watch.  He takes something like 3 hours between pitches, and it's not like he's efficient with his pitches.  He only struck out three Angels in 6 innings while walking 3 and giving up 4 hits with 100 pitches.  It didn't feel like a dominant performance, but when he left the game he was beating Danny Haren 1-0.  Unfortunately for Fausto, the Indians bullpen let him down.  No win for him.  Angels DH, Bobby Abreu -- or as I like to call him, some jerk -- hit a 2-run homer in the 8th.  Since Danny Haren recorded two more outs in the bottom half of the inning, he was in line for the win when he left.  He didn't get it, which is what made the game a great one.

The Angels appeared to have things well in hand when Haren was pulled.   They had a one run lead, and reliever Scott Downs finished off the Indians that inning by making a miracle catch on a ball that was just drilled right back at him off the bat of Austin Kearns.  At least I think it was a bat.  It may have been some kind of missile launcher.  All I know is that if Downs hadn't caught that ball, it would have killed him.  But then things turned to shit for Los Angelheim.  Hurray!

They were unable to add any insurance runs in the top of the ninth, so they had to hold on to a 1 run lead in the bottom of the inning.  They didn't do it.  First Michael Brantley singled then stole a base and finally scored the tying run on Travis Hafner's double with one out.  Hafner soon had company on base due to a walk and a hit-by-pitch.  With the bases loaded, our boy Travis Buck stepped to the plate with an opportunity to be the hero.  But in classic Athletic cast-off fashion, he did the second least useful thing he could do in that situation.  He hit a soft grounder that allowed the Angels to get the force out at home.  At least he didn't hit into a double play.  (In a possibly related note, Travis Buck was just designated for assignment.)  So Buck left it to rookie call-up Jason Kipnis to win the game.  Kipnis was playing in only his second major league baseball game, and he had yet to get a hit.  Guess what he did.  Yep.  Game-winning walk off RBI single to right field.  Nice job, Jason!

So in the past two seasons, Duc and I have attended 5 non-Bay Area baseball games, and the home team has won every time.  Yes, we will accept tickets to attend games at your favorite team's ballpark to work our magic ...unless your team is the Angels.

Giants 5, Dodgers 3 -- July 19, 2011

The Giants have a ridiculous number of promotional give-away events this season.  There are bobblehead nights and T-shirt nights and replica World Series trophy nights and horrendously ugly Giants based beer stein nights.  Sometimes these give-aways are available to the first 20K-25K fans (that's how we got our Cody Ross Bobbleheads).  And sometimes the give-aways come with specially purchased tickets (that's how I got my cursed Cody Ross T-shirt).  A few weeks ago, Duckie decided that she wanted to exploit one of these special offers, so we bought pretty nice View Level seats behind home plate on Bobby Thomson bobblehead night.

You'll be happy to know that this particular bobblehead does come with sound effects.  Specifically, pressing the little black button on the pedestal plays the famous radio broadcast of Thomson's "shot heard 'round the world".

So that's why we were at this particular game.  And it was a good game.  I probably wouldn't be writing that if the Giants had lost, but they didn't.  So it was a good game.  I'm not going to recap the game, though.  If you want a recap you can find it here.  And here's the box score for you statistically-minded folks.  Instead, I'm going to provide my own impressions from on and off the field.  That will be more fun for me.

Off the field:
 Last night was a particularly beautiful night for baseball in SF.  It wasn't cold.  It wasn't windy.  The sky was clear, and it was about 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  Duckie didn't even put on her jacket until the 8th inning or so.

We got to AT&T Park in time, but since we decided to get food and our bobblehheads before going to our seats, we missed most of the first inning.  No biggie.  No one scored.

Food-wise, we ate well.  I had my traditional Cha-Cha Bowl and a beer.  Duc went for a Polish sausage and Sprite combo.  Later in the game (the fifth inning, I think), I went off to find us some ice cream for dessert.  Fortunately, there was a Dreyer's (that's Edy's to those of you on the East Coast) stand not far from our seats.  The line wasn't that long, but progress was very slow.  I missed the full inning.  When I reached the front of the line, I learned the reason for the delay.  The kid manning the scoop put nearly a half of pint of ice cream in each waffle cone.  It was ridiculous.  But for $7.25 per cone, they should give me at least a half a pint.  I ate all of mine, but Duckie had to bail out on hers just as she made the ice cream flush with the top of the cone.  I couldn't help her much, either.  Dairy sits heavily on a bed of Cha-Cha Bowl and beer.  I was too full for the remnants of her cone.  In the end I spent $25.75 on food for me alone.  Actually, in San Francisco that's not that bad.

The other major form of off-the-field entertainment for me was my traditional Giants game texting conversation with David.  I think we exchanged about 50 texts during the course of the game.  I may need to upgrade my plan if I go to too many games.

The Game:
This game marked the return of Giants rookie first baseman, Brandon Belt.  With the rookie Brandon Crawford at short, the Giants were employing a two Brandon infield.  It was a risk that paid off.  Belt had 3 RBI on the night including a solo homerun in his first at bat.  Welcome back, Brandon.

Brandon Belt has a great baseball last name for obvious reason, but the Giants starting pitcher for the night, Madison Bumgarner, has one of the worst baseball names around.  Ever since the movie "Splash", Madison has been a girl's name.  I don't know how the Bumgarner parents missed the memo.  And Bumgarner is a clumsy last name that starts with a euphemism for 'ass'.  No good.  And no one has come up with a good nickname for the guy, and he needs one badly.  The press seems to like MadBum.  I think it sucks.  No flow.  But I have now an alternative. I'll get back to it in a minute.

The Dodger's starter was a fireballer named Rubby De La Rosa.  He hit 99 mph on the gun at least once that I noticed.  He wasn't super dominant, but he was relatively effective, and damn he throws hard.  His biggest problem is that Rubby is pronounced Ruby (ROO-bee).  Not in my dictionary it's not.  When I expressed my disdain for the pronunciation to David, he proposed that if changing Madison Bumgarner's name to Mubby (MOO-bee) made him throw 99 mph, he'd be on board.  So, you can probably guess my proposal for MadBum's new nickname.  Mubby Bumgarner it is.  At least until someone finds a better name that I'm willing to accept.

Anyway,  the Giants won the game, and Mubby got the W.  We have tickets for three more baseball games for sure this season, and only one is in AT&T Park.  I'll try to remember to blog about my impressions of those games, too.

Adventures in Eating: Extra Dessert Delights Chewing Gum

More than two months after my last post, I'm finally ready to post again.  Let's chalk it up to me building the suspense.

Anyway, I was wandering through the gum aisle at Walgreen's when I spotted a snack food I had never heard of, but looked too horrifying not to try.  Dessert Delights sugar free gum from Extra.  I saw three flavors and bought all of them.

Here they are in order (from least to greatest) of potential to induce retching:

1.) Key Lime Pie
2.) Strawberry Shortcake
3.) Mint Chocolate Chip

Sportingly, Duckie agreed to try them with me, although she was definitely concerned about vomiting as a product of this little experiment.  It didn't turn out to be a problem.  Let's get to the results:

I decided we should try the key lime pie first.  It seemed the closest to being a typical chewing gum flavor.  You know, citrus (okay, that's still an unusual flavor, but it's not unheard of).  So we each popped a piece.  And you know what?  It actually tasted like key lime pie!  Kinda.  The flavors were there, though it could have been limier.  It even had a creaminess that you would expect from a key lime pie.  How about that?

After allowing our palates to recover we moved onto the mint chocolate chip.  That was the flavor I was most curious about.  Mint is obviously extremely common as a gum flavor.  You've got your spearmint and your peppermint and your wintergreen....mint, mint, mint, mint, mint.  But chocolate?  Have you ever had chocolate gum?  If I've had it I'm sure it sucked.  Extra's foray in the arena wasn't great, but it did okay.  The mint was strong, the chocolate was weaker but inoffensive, and again we had that creaminess.  Interesting.

Finally, we tried out the strawberry short shortcake.  It had the classic synthetic strawberry flavor so ubiquitous in processed foodstuffs (well....the strawberry flavored ones, anyway).  I don't know if the other flavor could be really defined as shortcake, but once again it was vaguely creamy.

So I guess we know what happened.  The good people at Wrigley discovered a "creamy dessert-like" gum flavoring, and then crammed it into some gums with other desserty flavors.  Ta Da!  Dessert Delights gum!  Hurray!

I think I'll stick with Doublemint.

Adventures in Eating: ?????

I thought I would do things a little differently this time.  I'm just going to give you a list of ingredients, and you get to guess the foodstuff.  Let's get started:


1.) Beef -- Good start so far.  It's probably not Oreos.
2.) Mechanically separated chicken.  Guess what.  It looks worse than it sounds.

3.) Corn syrup.  I just juked you right there, didn't I?  You thought I was gonna zig, but I zagged.
4.) Flavoring.  Yep, that's what the packaging says.  Is it grape favoring?  Or pumpkin spice flavoring?  Or mint flavoring?  I can't tell you.  You're on you're own.
5.) Soy protein concentrate. I think another term for that might be "filler".

I'm going to pause here to let you know that, according to the packaging, this food item contains less than 2% of the remaining ingredients.  For some of these ingredients this information is meant to provide some solace.  "Sure this food contains ant livers, but don't worry.  They make up less than 2% of the total product.  That's not so bad, is it?"


6.) Dextrose.  More sugar. Apparently the corn syrup wasn't enough.   Wait, aren't the corn syrup people busy telling us that sugar and corn syrup are the same thing?  Why do we need both in one product then?  Hmmm....
7.) Vinegar.  Probably to cut through the mechanically separated chicken.
8.) Paprika and paprika extracts.  So this food is super paprika-ey.
9.) Sodium tripolyphosphate.  Mmmmmm.  Yummy!
10.) Tabasco brand pepper sauce.  This ingredient is a bit of a distraction.  As it turns out, the label I'm taking this ingredient list from is a "Tabasco Spiced" variant of a classic processed food.  We should all just be relieved that there is Tabasco in this "Tabasco Spiced" product.  Hurrah!
11.) Hydrolyzed soy.  You can call it soy sauce.
12.) Corn and wheat proteins.  There's that filler again.  At least it's not wood pulp.
13.) Lactic acid starter culture.  I have no idea about this one, and frankly I'm a little worried.
14.) Sodium nitrite.  Eh.  It's a preservative.  We can live with that, right?
15.) Sodium hydroxide.  Also known as lye, and it's the main ingredient in Drano.  I'll just remind you about the fact that this ingredient comprises less than 2% of the food.  Feel better?

Okay, have you got a guess?  What if I told you that this tasty, though disturbing, food was also marketed in the 1980s with the help of the gravel-voiced WWF wrestler, Randy "The Macho Man" Savage?  That gives it away, doesn't it?  Snap into it!

Adventures in Eating: Dark Chocolate Minty Mallows

Marshmallow?
meh.
Dark Chocolate?
well......
Peppermint?
I'm listening....

I've been a terribly negligent horrible blogger.  I apologize.  Fortunately for you all, I have been provided with inspiration in the form of Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Minty Mallows.  My good friend and lab-mate, Steve, put them on my desk and said, "Here's something for you to blog about." (true story).  That just goes to show you that inspiring me to blog is as simple as giving me free food.

Let's get down to brass tacks.  What are Minty Mallows?

They are "Light and Fluffy Peppermint Marshmallows Drenched in Smooth, Dark Chocolate", just like the box says.  There's a decidedly wintry theme to the decoration on the package -- ice, snow, candy canes, etc.  I don't know if Minty Mallows are a seasonal treat (just like Ma used to make us on Martin Luther King Jr. Day Eve back in the day), or if the mintyness is meant to evoke a cooling sensation a la York Peppermint Patties.

I'm not really a marshmallow guy, so these weren't exactly the best snack for me.  Marshmallows are too springy.  If I'm going to expend extra effort chewing, I better get a substantial pay-off in flavor.  Plain marshmallows are just gelatinized corn syrup, so the only flavor you get is sweet.  They're like eating big chalky gummi bears with no fruitiness.  You may like 'em, but they're not my fave.  The minty mallows supplement the mallow with -- you guessed it -- mint.  That's an improvement, but is it enough?  No!  Fortunately, the good people at Trader Joe's realized that, and they coated the mallow with a layer of dark chocolate.  Okay, now we're talking.

Here's what they're like to eat:  When you pop one in your mouth, it fills up a whole cheek -- left or right, it doesn't matter which.  Frankly, these suckers are too big.  If they were a little smaller you would get more dark chocolate per volume of mallow, and I'm in favor of that.  When you first bite down, the outer chocolate shell crumbles apart, and you get your first blast of mint.  The flavors aren't bad, but you still have that spongy wad of sugar to get through.  As you chew, the chocolate bits from the outer shell start to melt, and gradually, with effort, the mallow dissolves away.  What you're left with is a nice creamy residue of peppermint tinged dark chocolate coating the inside of your mouth, and eventually that too disappears.

Minty Mallows are just okay.  If it were up to me, I'd dump the mallow business completely and just make Dark Chocolate Mintys, and call it a day.

My Connection to the Guy Who Brought ESP "Mainstream"

Today, I was perusing one of my favorite blogs, boingboing.net, when I came across a post that struck a chord with me.  The post referred to a New York Times story about the acceptance by The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology of an article by Cornell Professor Daryl Bem supporting the existence of ESP (Man, there are a lot of prepositions in this sentence!).  As the NYT piece mentions, this research has been met with a lot of doubt and even a little outrage.  Ordinarily, my response to someone claiming that they had proved the existence of ESP would be "Pfft!  What a load of hokum!", but this time I'll be more nuanced.  Like this, "Hmmmm. Interesting."  Why the retreat from my typical hardened skepticism?  Because of my experience with Daryl Bem himself.

<Putting on monocle> You see, I attended Cornell University from 1991 to 1995, and while at that fine Ivy League Institution I had the pleasure to take Professor Bem's Personality Psychology class.  I enjoyed the class greatly, and I think I got an A of one sort or other.  Let's say an A- so I can maintain some semblance of humility.  Actually, I remember a lot about that class and Daryl Bem in particular.  The class was taught in the big lecture hall in the south wing of Goldwyn Smith Hall (yes...I had to look the building name up).  I remember that this class took place around the time that portable laser pointers were still fairly expensive but by no means unattainable.  I know this because some rich entitled tool thought it was funny to covertly project a red dot on Professor Bem's tie during one lecture.  Fitting the academic stereotype, Professor Bem never noticed.  I also remember that Professor Bem's wife, Sandra Bem, was the head of the Women's studies department, and the two of them were raising their children free from gender roles.  I later heard that Sandra left Daryl for another woman.  Shocking, I know.

But most of that is beside the point.  Here's the relevant stuff.  Daryl Bem is an accomplished magician.  In fact, the first time I saw him he was a guest lecturer in the uber-popular Cornell Psych 101 class.  He recreated one of those big-tent mind-reading events where he picked someone seemingly at random from the audience and then proceeded to tell her all about herself, much to everyone's astonishment.  The fact that he knew she had a poster of herself in a bikini on her bedroom wall was particular compelling.  Of course, it was all fake, and he told us how he did it after the fact (put simply, she wasn't randomly selected, and he got all the information about her from her mom).  It seems a little incongruous that a guy so familiar with charlatanism and trickery would be interested in studying parapsychology.  He's like the opposite of the Amazing Randi.

I think that Professor Bem's background lends a lot of credibility to his research on ESP.  Frankly, I think that familiarity with experimental psychology and the techniques employed in performing illusions should be the minimum requirement of anyone wishing to perform research into paranormal phenomena like ESP, clairvoyance, telekinesis, etc.  I remember Professor Bem telling us about his research in class, and though I'm not convinced that his results truly prove that parapsychology is real, I'm sure that he sincerely believes that he's onto something.  I'm also sure he did his damnedest to account for all the potential confounding variables.  Only time will tell if this research stands up, but I hope Professor Bem comes out of this with his reputation intact either way.