Another Klosterman/Simmons thing on Page 2

A little while back I posted a Chuck Klosterman and Bill Simmons article from the archives on ESPN’s Page 2. Well, at that time there was another article called Klosterman vs. Simmons, but it was only available to ESPN Insiders (who pays for that, honestly?).

Well, checking back on the site, I found that the article is now available to everyone.

So, go here if you want to read it.

An Interesting Article for You.

There’s a pretty good interview/Q&A on the Orlando Sentinel today with Richard Kraft.

Apparently, Richard Kraft is an agent to movie music composers (Danny Elfman to name one).

The real interesting part of this is Mr. Kraft’s fandom of Disney. He goes into different things from what he likes at Disney World to his collection of memorabilia.

A must read for any Disney fanatic (not to give anything away, put if you like/remember the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride, you need to stop reading this and go read the article now).

I don’t really have much to discuss about the article. I just thought you might enjoy the interview. It made me want to check out the documentary/ego-project that Mr. Kraft was pitching.

Let me know what you think.

Freakin’ A

Today the Dodgers claimed Esteban Loaiza off of waivers from the A’s.

This makes 4 solid contributors that the A’s have let walk, getting absolutely NOTHING in return (no cash, no prospects, not even a crappy veteran).

Let’s run through the list:

1) Milton Bradley – He was the first to get dumped. At the time I was flabbergasted. He was either the best or the second best outfielder on the team (Nick Swisher has a case against him, but he’s not as well rounded as MB). Since joining the San Diego Padres, he is batting .352 with 9 HRs and 26 RBI in 31 games. [Note: this was actually a trade. The A's did get a pitching prospect. But, it was far from equal value.]

2) Bobby Kielty – Bobby’s departure wasn’t that surprising. There had been a bunch of rumors about him being traded to the Red Sox. Then the trade deadline came. All of the sudden, Kielty was just let go. He later signed with the Red Sox. He is currently batting .348 with 1 HR and 8 RBIs in limited playing time (only 8 games).

3) Joe Kennedy – Just like Kielty, there were rumors about a Joe Kennedy trade. Then he gets claimed off waivers. He’s had a post A’s line of 20.25 ERA in 2 and 2/3 innings.

4) Esteban Loaiza – There had been a couple of waiver trades rumored. Today, he went to the Dodgers for nothing in return. Loaiza had just come off the DL and had thrown 2 good games.

5) Jason Kendall – This was actually a trade. The A’s did get a return of a back-up catcher and a prospect that might make a middle reliever some day. Since the trade, Kendall is batting .308 with 1 HR and 15 RBIs in 33 games.

So, the A’s have basically given up 5 players who have either had a track of success or have gone on to be successful and received little to nothing in return.

Now, some people say that the A’s did this to allow some fresh faces to be called up from the farm. The problem with this is that the A’s minor league system has been depleted of talent already. There’s no way they can take over these roles.

It’s come to a point where Billy Beane is pissing me off enough to make me want to stop rooting for my team. Honestly, if I were to move back up north to, say, Milwaukee, I would give up rooting for the A’s and jump on the Brewer bandwagon. It’s just embarassing.

Yay!

I just saw on Netflix that Reign Over Me is now officially coming out in October. I’m pretty excited because along with Hot Fuzz, Reign Over Me has been my favorite movie of ‘07 so far.

So, put it on your calendar to rent Reign Over Me when it comes out in Oct.

Hey, that sounds kind of familiar…

I was just checking out IMDB’s celeb news and came across this:

Mechanic Arrested for Dunst Hotel Robbery

A 33-year-old mechanic has been arrested in connection with the robbery of Kirsten Dunst’s New York hotel suite. Dunst’s penthouse at the Soho Grand was broken into on August 9. The gang stole designer bags, $2,500 in cash, credit and ID cards, two digital cameras, a cell phone and an iPod music player. James Jimenez, 33, was arrested on Sunday and charged with burglary and grand larceny. Police believe Jimenez was the accomplice of Jarrod Beinerman, who was arrested last week. Jimenez’s lawyer, John Bostany tells the New York Post, “I know James has the deepest respect for Spider-Man and would never want anything to happen to Spider-Man’s girlfriend.”

Funny, I thought that the Knights of Prosperity was cancelled.

Fantasy Football League

In case any of you care, my family/friends have a Fantasy Football League that is open to the public.

It is over on ESPN. The league name is GHS Vikings. The draft will be held on Wednesday, 8/29, at 5:45 PM ET.

Last I checked, we had for teams spoken for (My Dad, My Uncle, Chris, and myself). I know Gerald said he was going to join the league. So, that leaves 5 slots open (10 team league). So, if you want to get, register now!

Y’all are Brutilizing Me.

A couple of day’s ago, Alice asked me what movie “Y’all are brutilizing me” was from. To answer the question, it was said be Ronnie Dobbs (played by David Cross) in the movie Run Ronnie Run (it was also said in Mr. Show by the same character/actor).

If you have yet to see Run Ronnie Run, put it on your Netflix queue. It is a very funny movie (“We’re gonna make the night Lincoln got shot look like a peanut.”). In addition, there are a ton of solid character actors and cameos throughout the movie (including David Koechner, Jeff Goldbloom, Jack Black, and Nikki Cox as well as many more that I can’t think of off the top of my head). It is pretty surprising for a movie that had it’s release date pushed back and eventually cancelled and then get distributed Direct-to-DVD.

The 1989 World Series

For the past year or so, I’ve been losing my mind. Or at least that’s what it felt like.

Back in 1989, my Oakland Athletics were in the World Series versus the San Francisco Giants. Any baseball fanatic would tell you that this World Series was notable for one reason, the Loma Prieta earthquake stopped Game 3.

This is where things get a little muddled.  As an Eight year old, I was watching game 3 downstairs on my own (Dad was at work and I lived with a bunch of chicks). In my memory, I distinctly remember Jose Canseco crossing home and then the earthquake hit. I always thought that it was strange that right as he touch home, things went to crap (By the way, I think this is the same series I sliced my pinky toe open and had to get 3 stitches; but that’s an entirely different story).

Fast forward to about a year ago. I was looking online for information about the earthquake and the 1989 series. I just wanted to relive the memories. So, I found a website (could have been wikipedia, baseball reference, or some other similar site) that discussed the event. Upon reading the description, I found out that the earthquake started before the game even began. Wait, if that’s true, then what the heck was I remembering?

At first, I just blew it off. I figured, “hey, I was 8, I must have remembered it wrong.” But still it nagged at me. I always see Jose cross home and then the picture goes out. So, then I start thinking that maybe the site I read was wrong (unlikely, but I was so assured of my memory that I thought it was possible). So, that leads us up to today.

I was trolling around wikipedia, trying to kill some time. I came across the ‘89 series. I decided to see what it said about the event that has been paining me for so long. As I read the article, it mentioned that the eathquake took place during the pre-game warm-ups. I start thinking, “okay, maybe they were just warming up and Jose was near home plate when it happened.”

So, I continued reading the article and I came to the ”quotes of the series” section. The first one describes the announcers as they called the earthquake. Here is the exact qoute:

“‘…and he fails to get Dave Parker at second base, so the Oakland A’s take……take……..WELL I’LL TELL YOU WHAT, WE’RE HAVING AN EARTH-’ – ABC Sports color commentator Tim McCarver and play-by-play commentator Al Michaels, respectively. Michaels’ sentence was cut off to the television audience due to the loss of power during the earthquake.”

Wait a second, what?!

How come Tim McCarver is talking about Dave Parker right before the earthquake hits? I know he’s not a great announcer, but still he wouldn’t be talking like that in pre-game work outs, would he?

At this point, my mind is in overdrive. What’s with the call? Is my memory actually acurate? Was Dave Parker really still in the majors back in 1989?

I next decided to check out what happened in game 2 of the W.S. When, low and behold, in the fourth inning, Dave Parker smacked a double. Which, wait for it, scored Jose Canseco on the play.

It turns out that Mr. McCarver was doing a pre-game review of the previous game’s action. That’s why I remember Jose crossing home right before the power went out. On the telecast version, he crossed home and then the earthquake happened.

Now, I can rest easy that I’m not in a JFK type conspiracy (where Jose Canseco is the gunman on the grassy knoll). But, I guess I can’t rest too easy, because I did forget that it was a pre-game recap, and not actual action. Either way, I’m enjoying the fact that my memory of the telecast has stayed with me for the past 18 years (really?! it’s been THAT long?!) and held up pretty well.

Writing a short story in one week

Seeing as though Patti had no school work this week, we decided to try something new to entertain ourselves. Instead of just watching TV all the time, we decided to write up a short story in a week.

I wanted to make it so that we had to incorporate certain aspects into our short stories. In order to do this, we made of three categories; Genre, Item/Place, and Subject (could be a person or an action in the story). Then we each came up with 3 examples of each category. We combined our like categories into piles. Then we put them in a hat and each drew one item from each category. That way we each got one of each category that we would incorporate into our stories.

Here’s what my story will have to include:

Genre: Sci-Fi

Item/Place: A Beard

Subject: Shopping

A pretty interesting combination if I do say so myself.

Here’s what Patti has to include:

Genre: Dark Comedy

Item/Place: A Baseball Field

Subject: Teenager

The interesting thing about this one is that any two of those can go together pretty logically, but all three together will be more difficult (in my opinion).

As it stands right now, Patti pretty much has her story outlined from beginning to end (she admits that she will have to come up with an ending). I, on the other hand, have only completed half of my story outline.

I’ll let you in on what I’ve told Patti about my story so far. I have decided to look at several examples from each category to see which way I want to go with the story. Here is a breakdown of the subcategories:

Sci-Fi: Time Travel, Space Travel, Aliens, and Teleportation. - I have chosen to work with Teleportation from this group.

Beard: Bushy, Well Groomed, Unkempt. – I am going to work a character in with an unkempt beard.

Shopping: at a mall, for groceries, for a new car. – I am going to have grocery shopping as a main point in my story.

So, mine is a story of teleportation, produce clerk with an unkempt beard, and a grocery store.

I’ll probably post the story when it is finished next week. So, that gives you something to look forward to.

Netflix Community

Recently, Netflix unveiled a community feature. With this feature you can see what percentage other people’s tastes are similar to yours. 

I’ve checked out the feature a little bit. When you see someone with similar tastes, you can check out the movies they rated 5 stars. So, in essence, you get to see why they are supposedly similar to you.

The highest % similar to me that I’ve seen so far is 80%. Not too bad, but I think it is an example of my odd tastes as I discussed in an earlier post.

Anyway, looking at the movies rated 5 stars by Mr./Ms. 80%, I found numerous movies I’d consider “terrible.” This raises questions about my whole movie rating existance. If this person loves shitty movies and is 80% similar to me, are my favorite movies to be considered shitty? Why does Netflix match me up so well with someone whose favorite movies I don’t like? Really, is the system broken or is my viewing broken?

This is not what I was looking for when I started checking out the community. I was hoping that someone similar to me would show up and, upon viewing their favorites, open my eyes to some movies that I passed over. But instead, I get to take part in a partial existential meltdown.

Netflix needs to start allowing messages sent between people in the community. I need to find out why my closest match likes so much garbage.