Monday, August 3, 2015
The Daily Paragraph -- Seveneves and Wet Hot American Summer
Yesterday I finished reading Neal Stephenson's latest novel Seveneves, and I also completed a weekend long binge-watching of the Wet, Hot, American Summer reboot series. Two pretty impressive accomplishments for one day. I'm really struggling to come up with some parallel that will tie both achievements together in one tidy little bundle. It's a stretch. Seveneves is a 860 page novel about the survival of the human race in space after the moon randomly blows up, breaks apart into millions of little asteroids which crash to the earth setting the atmosphere on fire over several thousands of years. Seven billion people die. It's a real pick-me-up. The Wet Hot American Summer reboot, is a goofy cheesy absurd series in which a collection of A-list comic acting talent in their late thirties and early forties reprise their roles as teenage camp counselors which they were too old to play when the original movie came out fifteen years ago. Silly, silly, silly. I admit it. I laughed...out loud...a bunch. In the end, the only thing the two things have in common is me. I have a long-standing history as a Neal Stephenson fan. I think I've read every novel he's written, and I don't know the last time I read a book of fiction that wasn't his work. Ten years, maybe. I've also been following much of the cast of the Wet Hot American Summer for years as well. The creators of the show were on the early 1990s MTv sketch comedy show The State, which I loved and own on DVD. So in the end, the connection is devotion on my part...and the fact that I happened to express it at roughly the same time for both. Yep. That's pretty weak.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
The Good Guys Beat the Worst Guys 4 to 1
On Saturday, my family finally made it over to O.co Coliseum (or OcoCo, for short) to catch our first, and potentially last, A's game of the season. You see, Major League Baseball games are not events scheduled with preschoolers in mind. Day games fall right at nap time, and night games, well, they're night games. Anyway, Saturday's A's game had a start time of 1 pm, and we decided to take our chances.
The A's were facing their rival, the dreaded Los Angelheim Angels --easily my least favorite team. These days I've taken to calling them the Porsche Cayenne of baseball (ie, they're expensive and high-performance, but they're also ridiculous, ugly, and fundamentally pointless). The day before, the Angels had managed to come back from a 7 to 2 deficit to beat the A's 12 to 7, so I was actually not very optimistic about our chances.
We arrived early, which made sense for two reasons: 1) we were likely to leave early to accommodate a potential very sleepy three-year old, and 2) because the first 15000 fans to the game were to receive a Sonny Gray gnome with a solar-powered glowing baseball (I'm not going to try to explain that --it's too much). After we got our gnomes and checked out our seats, we went straight to the A's Fun Zone, the children's place space on the second level behind the concession stands. It's not much of a place space, really. It has four coin-op mechanical rides (two were broken for much of our time there), a small mediocre play structure, and some random toddler toys (mostly lawnmowers, for some reason). I would generally rate the space as inferior to our local playground, but I think Theo considered about a hundred times better than actually sitting in our seats to watch a baseball game. We spent a lot of time there.
I went off to buy us lunch, and we were back to our seats before the first pitch. I forced Theo to stay there for two whole innings, during which the A's manufactured a run. Then it was back to the Fun Zone for us for the next two innings. Theo spent much of that time running to the play structure for a trip down the slide and then climbing up on a broken coin-operated elephant, because, hey, why not?
I convinced him to head back to our seats by the top of the fourth inning. He still wasn't into the game, so Duckie got out her phone and turned on Netflix. Theo watched Curious George instead of watching the A's and Angels fail to score any runs for the next couple innings. Arguably the right choice.
Then, in the top of the sixth, Angels superhero Mike freaking Trout, tied the game off a single by Erick Aybar, and I was expecting things to get ugly. But A's pitcher Jesse Hahn locked things down, and no more damage was done. And better than that, the A's strung together some hits in the bottom half of the inning and ended up with a three run lead. In fact, they hit three consecutive doubles -- the first with a man already on base. It was pretty great. Theo even managed to clap along with the crowd and give us high fives.
At the end of the 6th, we decided it was safe to leave. I didn't want stick around to watch the Angels come back, and if the A's blew the game open later I wouldn't have felt bad for missing it.
Theo watched Duckie's iPhone pretty much for the whole walk out of the stadium to the car. He once yelled at the crowd for being too loud because he couldn't hear his videos. We stopped by a souvenir stand on the way out so I could buy a new A's cap (a more traditional one, this time), and we drove home. Theo fell asleep in the car, the iPhone blaring away in his hands.
As it turns out, no further runs were scored that game. Somehow, I was at my seat every time a runner crossed home plate, despite missing two full innings hanging out in the Fun Zone and leaving after the sixth. I rarely get that lucky when it comes to watching sports.
The A's were facing their rival, the dreaded Los Angelheim Angels --easily my least favorite team. These days I've taken to calling them the Porsche Cayenne of baseball (ie, they're expensive and high-performance, but they're also ridiculous, ugly, and fundamentally pointless). The day before, the Angels had managed to come back from a 7 to 2 deficit to beat the A's 12 to 7, so I was actually not very optimistic about our chances.
We arrived early, which made sense for two reasons: 1) we were likely to leave early to accommodate a potential very sleepy three-year old, and 2) because the first 15000 fans to the game were to receive a Sonny Gray gnome with a solar-powered glowing baseball (I'm not going to try to explain that --it's too much). After we got our gnomes and checked out our seats, we went straight to the A's Fun Zone, the children's place space on the second level behind the concession stands. It's not much of a place space, really. It has four coin-op mechanical rides (two were broken for much of our time there), a small mediocre play structure, and some random toddler toys (mostly lawnmowers, for some reason). I would generally rate the space as inferior to our local playground, but I think Theo considered about a hundred times better than actually sitting in our seats to watch a baseball game. We spent a lot of time there.
I went off to buy us lunch, and we were back to our seats before the first pitch. I forced Theo to stay there for two whole innings, during which the A's manufactured a run. Then it was back to the Fun Zone for us for the next two innings. Theo spent much of that time running to the play structure for a trip down the slide and then climbing up on a broken coin-operated elephant, because, hey, why not?
I convinced him to head back to our seats by the top of the fourth inning. He still wasn't into the game, so Duckie got out her phone and turned on Netflix. Theo watched Curious George instead of watching the A's and Angels fail to score any runs for the next couple innings. Arguably the right choice.
Then, in the top of the sixth, Angels superhero Mike freaking Trout, tied the game off a single by Erick Aybar, and I was expecting things to get ugly. But A's pitcher Jesse Hahn locked things down, and no more damage was done. And better than that, the A's strung together some hits in the bottom half of the inning and ended up with a three run lead. In fact, they hit three consecutive doubles -- the first with a man already on base. It was pretty great. Theo even managed to clap along with the crowd and give us high fives.
At the end of the 6th, we decided it was safe to leave. I didn't want stick around to watch the Angels come back, and if the A's blew the game open later I wouldn't have felt bad for missing it.
Theo watched Duckie's iPhone pretty much for the whole walk out of the stadium to the car. He once yelled at the crowd for being too loud because he couldn't hear his videos. We stopped by a souvenir stand on the way out so I could buy a new A's cap (a more traditional one, this time), and we drove home. Theo fell asleep in the car, the iPhone blaring away in his hands.
As it turns out, no further runs were scored that game. Somehow, I was at my seat every time a runner crossed home plate, despite missing two full innings hanging out in the Fun Zone and leaving after the sixth. I rarely get that lucky when it comes to watching sports.
Friday, January 23, 2015
My Athletic Achievements
So I'm 42. It's time to face facts; my athletic peak is in the past. I don't have any chance of impressing anyone with my competitive accomplishments without making use of the phrase "in my age group". It's time to look back on my athletic life, such that it was, and examine the highs and lows. Let's start at the bottom.
In a moment of stupidity during a full-on dorm-to-dorm snowball fight in my Freshman year at college, I decided to make a one-man charge across the frozen tundra between Mary Donlon Hall and Helen Newman Gymnasium. I don't exactly what I expected. Glory? Cathartic validation of my manhood? What I got was ice-pelted testicles, a black eye, and bruised ego.
Later in college, my friends and I assembled an inner-tube intramural water polo team. We were handed a fast exit in the single-elimination tournament in which we participated. On personal level, I had mistaken an ability to swim for competence at paddling awkwardly around a pool and throwing a ball into a goal. Not the same thing.
In graduate school, I had the privilege of playing on a really terrible intramural basketball team. We had at least three guys who wanted to point guard, but zero guys up to the task. I played the role of the lunky big man (lunky is combination of lanky and clunky) with no particular ball-handling skills and absolutely no touch. We played three games. We lost the first one badly, and that was our best performance. That pretty much represented my last attempt make use of my height to my advantage in sports.
I was also on a really terrible Berkeley Chemistry Department softball league team in grad school, but I kinda liked playing on that team. I also played on the league champion team one year, and that sucked.
All in all, I don't think that's such a bad list. Embarrassing? Yes, but it's not like I missed the game winning field goal wide right at the Super Bowl twenty-five years ago like Scott Freaking Norwood! I'm not bitter. Anyway, I'll get to the top moments in another post.
In a moment of stupidity during a full-on dorm-to-dorm snowball fight in my Freshman year at college, I decided to make a one-man charge across the frozen tundra between Mary Donlon Hall and Helen Newman Gymnasium. I don't exactly what I expected. Glory? Cathartic validation of my manhood? What I got was ice-pelted testicles, a black eye, and bruised ego.
Later in college, my friends and I assembled an inner-tube intramural water polo team. We were handed a fast exit in the single-elimination tournament in which we participated. On personal level, I had mistaken an ability to swim for competence at paddling awkwardly around a pool and throwing a ball into a goal. Not the same thing.
In graduate school, I had the privilege of playing on a really terrible intramural basketball team. We had at least three guys who wanted to point guard, but zero guys up to the task. I played the role of the lunky big man (lunky is combination of lanky and clunky) with no particular ball-handling skills and absolutely no touch. We played three games. We lost the first one badly, and that was our best performance. That pretty much represented my last attempt make use of my height to my advantage in sports.
I was also on a really terrible Berkeley Chemistry Department softball league team in grad school, but I kinda liked playing on that team. I also played on the league champion team one year, and that sucked.
All in all, I don't think that's such a bad list. Embarrassing? Yes, but it's not like I missed the game winning field goal wide right at the Super Bowl twenty-five years ago like Scott Freaking Norwood! I'm not bitter. Anyway, I'll get to the top moments in another post.
Monday, November 3, 2014
Absurdist Humor Versus Lazy Writing, A Case Study
Several months ago, we discovered Peppa Pig, and she and her world have been a presence in our lives ever since. There are an apparently endless collection of G-rated 5-minute episodes of her show available online (on youtube and Nick Jr. and I'm sure other media sites as well). I would have expected to have seen them all by now based on how much time logged watching them, but every now and again, we stumble across one that none of us recognizes.
Here's a primer for the uninitiated: Peppa is an anthropomorphic pig/little girl who lives with her mother (Mummy Pig) and father (Daddy Pig) and little brother (George Pig) in a mostly anthropomorphic universe of talking dogs and elephants and sheep and cows and rabbits and so on. The parallel universe all these creatures inhabit appears to be somewhere in or around England since the full gamut of accents found in the British Isles is represented. This latter fact has had some curious impact on my household. My son has adopted a few British terms for items and events that were not yet familiar to him in American vernacular. For example, he uses swimming costume, power cut, and climbing frame in place of bathing suit, black out, and monkey bars, respectively.
The videos generally quite cute and toddler appropriate, and they span from the benign to the modestly educational to the genuinely clever. My wife, son, and I all seem to enjoy them on some level.
The purpose of this blog post is to discuss one episode in particular: Snowy Mountain. It's a personal favorite of mine because, frankly, it's ridiculous. I'll spare you the narrative description since the full video is a mere five minutes long and it's linked below.
Peppa Pig: Snowy Mountain
There's some full-bore nearly Monty-Python-esque silliness to be found in this video, and I'm not sure if it's all intentional. I love the fact that Madame Gazelle carries around her trophy for being the World Champion in Skiing in a magical, object-volume concealing packet in her ski jacket. That strikes me as a deliberate and successful attempt at goofy humor. But some other funny gags appear to be the product of lazy screen-writing.
I find it hilarious that Pig family tries to drive up the mountain in their car, but based on later in the dialog, we are led to believe that Mummy and Daddy Pig have been skiing before. Seems like they should have known better. I'm willing to roll with the notion that Mummy Pig is able stay vertical on her skis while chaotically zipping down the Snowy Mountain even after what we can only assume to be years away from the slopes, but how the hell did all the rest of the skiers, including a full class of young beginners, manage to remove their equipment, descend the mountain, and climb into a bus in time to watch her ski down the street and crash into what I believe is meant to be her own home? Is that all just part of the madcap wackiness of the show, or did Editorial take a nap and pass the script on to animation without even reading it?
In any case, I still think it's great. It just goes to show that you should never let plausibility get in the way of a good gag.
Here's a primer for the uninitiated: Peppa is an anthropomorphic pig/little girl who lives with her mother (Mummy Pig) and father (Daddy Pig) and little brother (George Pig) in a mostly anthropomorphic universe of talking dogs and elephants and sheep and cows and rabbits and so on. The parallel universe all these creatures inhabit appears to be somewhere in or around England since the full gamut of accents found in the British Isles is represented. This latter fact has had some curious impact on my household. My son has adopted a few British terms for items and events that were not yet familiar to him in American vernacular. For example, he uses swimming costume, power cut, and climbing frame in place of bathing suit, black out, and monkey bars, respectively.
The videos generally quite cute and toddler appropriate, and they span from the benign to the modestly educational to the genuinely clever. My wife, son, and I all seem to enjoy them on some level.
The purpose of this blog post is to discuss one episode in particular: Snowy Mountain. It's a personal favorite of mine because, frankly, it's ridiculous. I'll spare you the narrative description since the full video is a mere five minutes long and it's linked below.
Peppa Pig: Snowy Mountain
There's some full-bore nearly Monty-Python-esque silliness to be found in this video, and I'm not sure if it's all intentional. I love the fact that Madame Gazelle carries around her trophy for being the World Champion in Skiing in a magical, object-volume concealing packet in her ski jacket. That strikes me as a deliberate and successful attempt at goofy humor. But some other funny gags appear to be the product of lazy screen-writing.
I find it hilarious that Pig family tries to drive up the mountain in their car, but based on later in the dialog, we are led to believe that Mummy and Daddy Pig have been skiing before. Seems like they should have known better. I'm willing to roll with the notion that Mummy Pig is able stay vertical on her skis while chaotically zipping down the Snowy Mountain even after what we can only assume to be years away from the slopes, but how the hell did all the rest of the skiers, including a full class of young beginners, manage to remove their equipment, descend the mountain, and climb into a bus in time to watch her ski down the street and crash into what I believe is meant to be her own home? Is that all just part of the madcap wackiness of the show, or did Editorial take a nap and pass the script on to animation without even reading it?
In any case, I still think it's great. It just goes to show that you should never let plausibility get in the way of a good gag.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
For some reason I thought that taking each US State, alphabetizing the letters in its name, and then re-alphabetizing all the states would be interesting. Here are the results:
The outcome isn't as interesting as I had hoped. With the letters in their names alphabetized, the vast majority of the states start with 'a'. In fact, only six states even start with consonants. That's pretty boring, I think. Somehow, Missouri ended up at the end of the list. I don't find that very interesting either.
The most interesting part of the exercise was learning what states are easy to alphabetize and which aren't. Ohio, Idaho, Tennessee, Mississippi? Easy to alphabetize. Pennsylvania and North Carolina take a little more thought.
I hope you can find more value in this table than I did.
|
State
|
Alphabetized State
Name
|
|
Alabama
|
aaaablm
|
|
Alaska
|
aaakls
|
|
Arkansas
|
aaaknrss
|
|
Nebraska
|
aabeknrs
|
|
Massachusetts
|
aacehmssssttu
|
|
California
|
aacfilnor
|
|
North Carolina
|
aachilnnoorrt
|
|
South Carolina
|
aachilnoorstu
|
|
Delaware
|
aadeelrw
|
|
Nevada
|
aadenv
|
|
North Dakota
|
aadhknoortt
|
|
South Dakota
|
aadhkoosttu
|
|
Indiana
|
aadiinn
|
|
Maryland
|
aadlmnry
|
|
Pennsylvania
|
aaeilnnnpsvy
|
|
Hawaii
|
aahiiw
|
|
Oklahoma
|
aahklmoo
|
|
Louisiana
|
aaiilnosu
|
|
Arizona
|
aainorz
|
|
Kansas
|
aaknss
|
|
Montana
|
aamnnot
|
|
Colorado
|
acdlrooo
|
|
Michigan
|
acghiimn
|
|
Rhode Island
|
addehlinors
|
|
Florida
|
adfilor
|
|
Idaho
|
adhio
|
|
New Hampshire
|
aeehhimnprsw
|
|
Georgia
|
aeggior
|
|
Minnesota
|
aeimnnost
|
|
Texas
|
aestx
|
|
Washington
|
aghinnostw
|
|
Virginia
|
agiiinrv
|
|
Utah
|
ahtu
|
|
Maine
|
aimne
|
|
Iowa
|
aiow
|
|
Connecticut
|
ccceinnottu
|
|
New Mexico
|
ceeimnowx
|
|
Kentucky
|
cekkntuy
|
|
Wisconsin
|
ciinnossw
|
|
West Virginia
|
eagiiinrstvw
|
|
Tennessee
|
eeeennsst
|
|
New Jersey
|
eeejnrswy
|
|
Oregon
|
egnoor
|
|
New York
|
eknorwy
|
|
Vermont
|
emnortv
|
|
Wyoming
|
gimnowy
|
|
Ohio
|
hioo
|
|
Mississippi
|
iiiimppssss
|
|
Illinois
|
iiillnos
|
|
Missouri
|
iimorssu
|
The outcome isn't as interesting as I had hoped. With the letters in their names alphabetized, the vast majority of the states start with 'a'. In fact, only six states even start with consonants. That's pretty boring, I think. Somehow, Missouri ended up at the end of the list. I don't find that very interesting either.
The most interesting part of the exercise was learning what states are easy to alphabetize and which aren't. Ohio, Idaho, Tennessee, Mississippi? Easy to alphabetize. Pennsylvania and North Carolina take a little more thought.
I hope you can find more value in this table than I did.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Top 5 Christmas Special Songs
My 6 favorite songs from the classic American animated television Christmas specials of the 60s, 70s, and 80s:
6. "Hark! The Herald Angels" -- Loo Loo Loo version from A Charlie Brown Christmas
First of all, A Charlie Brown Christmas must have a representative song on any reasonable list about great television Christmas specials and their music. Vince Guaraldi's score is iconic ("Christmas Time is Here" was employed by the writers of Arrested Development to help portray Charlie Brown-style abject personal rejection on the show). There is so much to love on that soundtrack. But to me, nothing says Christmas like the Peanuts gang loo-loo-looing the melody of "Hark! The Herald Angels" with their noses pointed up to the sky except when they pause for a collective inhale.
5. "Even a Miracle Needs a Hand" -- Twas the Night Before Christmas
Twas the Night Before Christmas is a bit of an odd special. It doesn't really portray Santa in a very flattering light. He's apparently kind of a hypersensitive jerk. He decides not to deliver toys one Christmas because a cabal of adolescent nerd mice wrote a letter to the editor of some one-horse town's local paper and denied his existence. Sheesh! He could be a trophy wife on one of those reprehensible Real Housewives shows. Still "Even a Miracle Needs a Hand" is a pleasant, uplifting, little ditty performed in the special by Joel Grey (You probably know him as the martial arts master trainer, Chiun, in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins).
4. "The Island of Misfit Toys" -- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
This is another special where Santa comes across pretty poorly...at least at the beginning. Seriously, St. Nick, what's with the reindeer bigotry, man? And why is a glowing red nose any more of a mark of shame than that bizarre shock of anthropomorphic blond hair on Fireball's scalp? I don't think I'll ever understand Arctic culture.
Anyway, I look forward to Rudolph and Herbie's visit to the Island of Misfit Toys every time I watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The song plays a big part in that. The intro is eerie and sad but after a few seconds the tune turns chipper and hopeful. But my favorite part is the roll call of misfit toys. Some of them are odd and silly -- right up my alley humor-wise. A water pistol that shoots jelly? A cowboy that rides an Ostrich? Those aren't just simple manufacturing rejects. That's some serious toy design weirdness there.
Now it has been almost 50 years since Rudolph was first broadcast. Let me see if I can provide some new misfit toys for the modern era.
1.) A first-person shooter video game that isn't available on XBox. (a swing and miss!)
2.) A Ninjago Lego kit with only green square blocks. (strike two!)
3.) A doll that doesn't include any voice recognition software (Aaaaand you're out!)
Okay, I give up.
This is another special where Santa comes across pretty poorly...at least at the beginning. Seriously, St. Nick, what's with the reindeer bigotry, man? And why is a glowing red nose any more of a mark of shame than that bizarre shock of anthropomorphic blond hair on Fireball's scalp? I don't think I'll ever understand Arctic culture.
Anyway, I look forward to Rudolph and Herbie's visit to the Island of Misfit Toys every time I watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The song plays a big part in that. The intro is eerie and sad but after a few seconds the tune turns chipper and hopeful. But my favorite part is the roll call of misfit toys. Some of them are odd and silly -- right up my alley humor-wise. A water pistol that shoots jelly? A cowboy that rides an Ostrich? Those aren't just simple manufacturing rejects. That's some serious toy design weirdness there.
Now it has been almost 50 years since Rudolph was first broadcast. Let me see if I can provide some new misfit toys for the modern era.
1.) A first-person shooter video game that isn't available on XBox. (a swing and miss!)
2.) A Ninjago Lego kit with only green square blocks. (strike two!)
3.) A doll that doesn't include any voice recognition software (Aaaaand you're out!)
Okay, I give up.
3. "We Three Kings" -- A Claymation Christmas Celebration
Back in the 80s, the California Raisin Advisory Board launched an ad campaign featuring dancing singing claymation raisins performing R&B classics, and it worked. They were extremely popular. Not bad for a product that fundamentally looks like rabbit poop. In 1987, CBS took that popularity and broadcast a half-hour Christmas special of claymation sketches and videos set to Christmas music. The California Raisins were featured performing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". The special won an Emmy, but somehow failed to break into the Rankin-Bass style pantheon of classic Christmas specials.
In any case, I've always liked the version of "We Three Kings" they put together for that special. The three kings themselves sing the verses in a straight-forward traditional style, but their hip camels, replete with leather shoes and bow ties, jazz up the chorus. It's pretty great.
Back in the 80s, the California Raisin Advisory Board launched an ad campaign featuring dancing singing claymation raisins performing R&B classics, and it worked. They were extremely popular. Not bad for a product that fundamentally looks like rabbit poop. In 1987, CBS took that popularity and broadcast a half-hour Christmas special of claymation sketches and videos set to Christmas music. The California Raisins were featured performing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". The special won an Emmy, but somehow failed to break into the Rankin-Bass style pantheon of classic Christmas specials.
In any case, I've always liked the version of "We Three Kings" they put together for that special. The three kings themselves sing the verses in a straight-forward traditional style, but their hip camels, replete with leather shoes and bow ties, jazz up the chorus. It's pretty great.
2. "Heat Miser/Snow Miser" -- The Year without a Santa Claus
The Year without a Santa Claus has always been my favorite animated Christmas special, and that's almost entirely due to the Miser Brothers. I love those guys. The dry humor. The cool supernatural powers. The team of Mini-Me minions. What's not to love? The performances are perfect, too. Snow miser is frenetic and wiry. Heat Miser slows the tune down a bit so it picks up a little flavor of a New Orleans summer. So good!, There's really not much more to say.
1. "You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch" -- How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Well of course this is number one. You have to love the rich booming bass of Thurl Ravenscroft (yep, that was his name). He could have just repeated the lyrics "You suck, Mr. Grinch" one hundred times, and it would have been awesome. But instead, Ted "Dr. Seuss" Geisel penned some appropriately Seussian lyrics and made history. They're icky without being gross ("nauseous super naus", indeed), and spooky without being frightening. Geisel certainly paints the Grinch as a dark-hearted dude without making him seem irredeemable or evil, which is important for the narrative. It might be interesting to hear the song as rewritten by Rob Zombie, but I don't think it would have fit in the story. There's little doubt in my mind that "You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch" was a stroke of pure genius.
Well of course this is number one. You have to love the rich booming bass of Thurl Ravenscroft (yep, that was his name). He could have just repeated the lyrics "You suck, Mr. Grinch" one hundred times, and it would have been awesome. But instead, Ted "Dr. Seuss" Geisel penned some appropriately Seussian lyrics and made history. They're icky without being gross ("nauseous super naus", indeed), and spooky without being frightening. Geisel certainly paints the Grinch as a dark-hearted dude without making him seem irredeemable or evil, which is important for the narrative. It might be interesting to hear the song as rewritten by Rob Zombie, but I don't think it would have fit in the story. There's little doubt in my mind that "You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch" was a stroke of pure genius.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Theo gets his first wins
My wife and I had a baby the day after Christmas, 2011. As much as anything else, that explains why this blog has gone on an extended hiatus. Pregnancy and planning and baby-having and more life stuff have all gotten in the way since I last wrote a post for this blog.
But I'm back. Know why? Because that baby we had on Boxing Day is now big enough to take to local baseball games. In fact, he's been to games at both AT&T Park and O.co Coliseum. This post is a report on how those games went.
July 15, 2012 -- Houston Astros 2, San Francisco Giants 3.
Theo's first MLB game ever. I would have preferred to start him out in Oakland, of course, but this game was also a birthday gift for my wife so the Giants got priority. It's fine. I've gotten over it. In any case, it was good choice for a first game because it featured Giants starter Matt Cain facing the very team he threw a perfect game against only a month earlier -- the hapless Houston Astros. The fans genuinely believed that Cain was going to repeat his June 13th performance. He didn't, but the Gigantes won, so everyone went home happy, anyway.
I bought us tickets in the cushy digs of the Club Level so we could access to the cozy indoor seating in case of inclement weather or just general baby fussiness. The weren't cheap, but they were definitely the right choice. Our actual seats were on the third base side under the View Level overhang so we didn't have to worry about shielding ourselves from the infamous skin-charring San Francisco summer sun (note to those unfamiliar with SF: ain't no sun here in the summer).
The game included a free Madison Bumgarner (I call him Mubby because his real name sucks) bobblehead to the first 25,000 fans to arrive. We got there early enough to get ours, but that meant standing in line for 30 minutes to get into the park. We parked at a half a mile from the Orlando Cepeda entrance, and we literally (the real kind of literally not the kind that doesn't mean literally at all) got in line within 100 yards of leaving the parking lot. In retrospect, this may not have had an entirely positive effect on our boy.
Theo had a bit of a tough time through the pre-game rigamarole and the first couple innings. While we found our seats and ate our ballpark lunches, Theo grumbled and whined. Early in the game, I took him to the men's room for a diaper change (it had been a while), and he did NOT like it one bit. After we got back to our seats, the excitement of the day finally overwhelmed him, and he fell asleep in my arms for about an inning and a half. He was fine after that.
Frankly, the game wasn't that exciting. I barely remember it. Part of the problem was the Astros. They're a bad team having a bad season. They have exactly one player of interest, Jose Altuve, their shortstop. That's it. I'm actually pretty glad that they'll be joining the AL West next season. I'd love to have another crappy team around for the A's to beat up on (I hope I didn't just jinx that). The Giants didn't really help matters, either. Bruce Bochy definitely assembled a B-team line-up. The now disgraced and suspended Melky Cabrera didn't even play to pad his testosterone-enhanced stats. At least no one can claim that the win was tainted by PEDs.
Looking over the box score, I can see that no one hit very much. The Giants got a bunch of walks. And Matt Cain and the Giants' bullpen were effective. 'Nuff said. I do remember that when we left around the 7th inning, the final score was already locked in, so we didn't really miss much.
Despite some dark moments, Theo began his live-and-in-person baseball watching career on a good note.
August 19, 2012 -- Cleveland Indians 0, Oakland Athletics 7.
This past Sunday afternoon we finally evened out the split loyalties of our household by taking Theo to his first Oakland A's game. This time my wife bought the tickets. In the light of ticket prices at beautiful AT&T Park, the smart strategy when picking seats at for the less popular East Bay team playing in the clunky out-of-date dump currently known as O.co Coliseum is to "go big or stay home." Duckie honored this approach. The seats I bought in the mezzanine level well into the outfield down the third base line at AT&T Park cost nearly twice as much as the seats Duckie bought 16 rows behind home plate at the Coliseum. Of course, I was also paying a premium to get access to the Club Level accommodations in San Francisco, but you can be sure that equivalent seats in the two parks don't have equivalent impacts on your pocketbook.
Anyway, the seats were great, and so was the weather. It was sunny without being to hot. Like in San Francisco, there was a giveaway gift for attending the game -- a green T-shirt commemorating the A's record-setting 20 game winning streak in 2002. This time, however, we arrived too late and went home only with our ticket stubs to serve as mementos.*
The visiting club was the Cleveland Indians. I was much more excited about them than the Astros the month before. They're a nominally better team (still very much out of the playoff hunt, though), but more importantly they have a team stacked with really cool names. Maybe, I only feel that way because due to a general ignorance of traditional Hispanic first names, but I stand by my position. The Indians players had names like Asdrubal, Ezequiel, and Esmil while the A's trotted out two guys named Josh, a Brandon and Derek (they get some points for Coco, Yoenis, and Jemile, though).
The game was fun, mostly because the A's were so dominant. A's starting pitcher Jarrod Parker had a good outing, and the hitting showed up as well. Brandon Moss and Coco Crisp hit homers, and the team tacked on a few more runs earned through less potent methods as well. More importantly, the Indians didn't get anyone home at all.
I think Theo had a slightly better time at this game. For now, I'll refrain from assuming it's because he's already dedicated his baseball allegiance to the A's. The timing was probably just a little better with respect to eating and napping. Once again, we left after 7 innings or so, but all the scoring was already done
Thus far Theo appears to be a bit of a good luck charm for our local MLB clubs. Let's hope the streak continues for a while. Go A's and Giants!
*This actually isn't true. At both parks we stopped by guest services and got Theo his official First Game certificates. They're pretty low tech, but they're free.
But I'm back. Know why? Because that baby we had on Boxing Day is now big enough to take to local baseball games. In fact, he's been to games at both AT&T Park and O.co Coliseum. This post is a report on how those games went.
July 15, 2012 -- Houston Astros 2, San Francisco Giants 3.
Theo's first MLB game ever. I would have preferred to start him out in Oakland, of course, but this game was also a birthday gift for my wife so the Giants got priority. It's fine. I've gotten over it. In any case, it was good choice for a first game because it featured Giants starter Matt Cain facing the very team he threw a perfect game against only a month earlier -- the hapless Houston Astros. The fans genuinely believed that Cain was going to repeat his June 13th performance. He didn't, but the Gigantes won, so everyone went home happy, anyway.
I bought us tickets in the cushy digs of the Club Level so we could access to the cozy indoor seating in case of inclement weather or just general baby fussiness. The weren't cheap, but they were definitely the right choice. Our actual seats were on the third base side under the View Level overhang so we didn't have to worry about shielding ourselves from the infamous skin-charring San Francisco summer sun (note to those unfamiliar with SF: ain't no sun here in the summer).
The game included a free Madison Bumgarner (I call him Mubby because his real name sucks) bobblehead to the first 25,000 fans to arrive. We got there early enough to get ours, but that meant standing in line for 30 minutes to get into the park. We parked at a half a mile from the Orlando Cepeda entrance, and we literally (the real kind of literally not the kind that doesn't mean literally at all) got in line within 100 yards of leaving the parking lot. In retrospect, this may not have had an entirely positive effect on our boy.
Theo had a bit of a tough time through the pre-game rigamarole and the first couple innings. While we found our seats and ate our ballpark lunches, Theo grumbled and whined. Early in the game, I took him to the men's room for a diaper change (it had been a while), and he did NOT like it one bit. After we got back to our seats, the excitement of the day finally overwhelmed him, and he fell asleep in my arms for about an inning and a half. He was fine after that.
Frankly, the game wasn't that exciting. I barely remember it. Part of the problem was the Astros. They're a bad team having a bad season. They have exactly one player of interest, Jose Altuve, their shortstop. That's it. I'm actually pretty glad that they'll be joining the AL West next season. I'd love to have another crappy team around for the A's to beat up on (I hope I didn't just jinx that). The Giants didn't really help matters, either. Bruce Bochy definitely assembled a B-team line-up. The now disgraced and suspended Melky Cabrera didn't even play to pad his testosterone-enhanced stats. At least no one can claim that the win was tainted by PEDs.
Looking over the box score, I can see that no one hit very much. The Giants got a bunch of walks. And Matt Cain and the Giants' bullpen were effective. 'Nuff said. I do remember that when we left around the 7th inning, the final score was already locked in, so we didn't really miss much.
Despite some dark moments, Theo began his live-and-in-person baseball watching career on a good note.
August 19, 2012 -- Cleveland Indians 0, Oakland Athletics 7.
This past Sunday afternoon we finally evened out the split loyalties of our household by taking Theo to his first Oakland A's game. This time my wife bought the tickets. In the light of ticket prices at beautiful AT&T Park, the smart strategy when picking seats at for the less popular East Bay team playing in the clunky out-of-date dump currently known as O.co Coliseum is to "go big or stay home." Duckie honored this approach. The seats I bought in the mezzanine level well into the outfield down the third base line at AT&T Park cost nearly twice as much as the seats Duckie bought 16 rows behind home plate at the Coliseum. Of course, I was also paying a premium to get access to the Club Level accommodations in San Francisco, but you can be sure that equivalent seats in the two parks don't have equivalent impacts on your pocketbook.
Anyway, the seats were great, and so was the weather. It was sunny without being to hot. Like in San Francisco, there was a giveaway gift for attending the game -- a green T-shirt commemorating the A's record-setting 20 game winning streak in 2002. This time, however, we arrived too late and went home only with our ticket stubs to serve as mementos.*
The visiting club was the Cleveland Indians. I was much more excited about them than the Astros the month before. They're a nominally better team (still very much out of the playoff hunt, though), but more importantly they have a team stacked with really cool names. Maybe, I only feel that way because due to a general ignorance of traditional Hispanic first names, but I stand by my position. The Indians players had names like Asdrubal, Ezequiel, and Esmil while the A's trotted out two guys named Josh, a Brandon and Derek (they get some points for Coco, Yoenis, and Jemile, though).
The game was fun, mostly because the A's were so dominant. A's starting pitcher Jarrod Parker had a good outing, and the hitting showed up as well. Brandon Moss and Coco Crisp hit homers, and the team tacked on a few more runs earned through less potent methods as well. More importantly, the Indians didn't get anyone home at all.
I think Theo had a slightly better time at this game. For now, I'll refrain from assuming it's because he's already dedicated his baseball allegiance to the A's. The timing was probably just a little better with respect to eating and napping. Once again, we left after 7 innings or so, but all the scoring was already done
Thus far Theo appears to be a bit of a good luck charm for our local MLB clubs. Let's hope the streak continues for a while. Go A's and Giants!
*This actually isn't true. At both parks we stopped by guest services and got Theo his official First Game certificates. They're pretty low tech, but they're free.
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