Fantasy Baseball

If you are interested, I have set up a fantasy baseball league on Yahoo sports.

The league name is GHS Vikings

The password is 2k8

The league is setup in a head-to-head format. Which means that each week you get to take on another team and compete in 12 categories.

The categories are mostly standard, but I wanted to add an extra dimension to the league. So, I added Errors and Home Runs Allowed as extra categories to compete in. If everybody hates these two new categories, I can delete them. Just let me know what you think.

The draft for the league is set for Sunday, March 16th. Right now it looks like it is at 1 P.M. eastern, but the way that Yahoo has the time set up is a bit awkward. I’ll keep you posted.

Coming Soon: Big League Chew Field

As you know by now, the Tribune company is contemplating whether to sell the naming rights to Wrigley Field.

I’m of two minds on this topic.

On the one hand, it’s been Wrigley Field for as long as anyone alive can remember. Deciding to rename it now is idiotic. It would be like renaming Comiskey Park something like U.S. Cellular Park. No one would stand for it. It is a travesty. Wrigley is Wrigley. It isn’t a name that can be sold off. Everyone knows it as Wrigley and will continue calling it Wrigley. So, this whole selling naming rights just doesn’t work.

But on the other hand, Wrigley Field has always been a pitching point for a corporation. Seriously, Wrigley is a corporation and they have just had the naming rights on the park forever. So, what would be the difference if they replaced one company with another?

The end result is that regardless of whether the naming rights to Wrigley get sold or not, Wrigley will always be called Wrigley. So, any company thinking about purchasing the naming rights should be hesitant. First, they won’t be recognized as the true name of the park (it’s freakin’ Wrigley). Second, some people are going to be so upset about the renaming that they will hold a grudge against the new company.

Honestly, I still call the White Sox’ home park, “New Comiskey.” Comiskey is just what I’ve always known. I remember the last year of the Old Comiskey. With the slogan, “Someday, you’ll say you were there.”

Corporate naming rights only work when opening a new field. Seriously, I still think of the Astro’s ballpark as “Enron Field.” They were the corporate sponser when it open. That’s the way it will stay for me. Renaming doesn’t work.

Strange Days

Last night I watched Strange Days, which I had rented from Netflix.

Strange Days is set in the future. End of the year in 1999 to be exact. Sure, 1999 is now 9 years ago, but the movie was made in 1995, so it makes a little more sense that way.

The basic premise is that we now have a new version of media. This media combines reality TV and virtual reality. Basically, a person records their life experience and then anyone can playback those same experiences. At the same time, the city of Los Angeles has become a chaotic place where the issue of race is seemingly about to explode into a full out race war.

Watching the movie in context of today, it just didn’t work for me. The whole race war plot seemed absolutely absurd. Sure, there are still plenty of race issues, but we as a people seem to be working it out more civil than through war.

But when I think back about when the movie was made, it becomes a little bit more credible. In those days, we had gone through the Rodney King trial, subsequent riots, and the whole Tupac/Biggie/Police feuds. So, in that point in time this future didn’t seem too far out.

Anyway, The story progresses and our lead character gets dragged down a mystery full of deaths, mysterious people, and plot twists. The general plot worked all right, but it went a little slow/long for my tastes.

I was pretty surprised with the acting in the movie. Really, with names like Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Vincent D’Onofrio, Juliette Lewis, and Tom Sizemore, you’d expect it to be at least capably acted. Not here. Strange Days is full of terrible performances taken right out of the Denise Richards playbook. It is really bad.

Just as bad as the performances, the dialog of the movie is terrible. James Cameron really laid a bomb with this one. He seemed to try to make it edgy, but it fails miserably. This is extremely apparent with the hard core gang banger/rapper characters. It comes off as an old man trying to write speeches for a gangster. The words are phony and attempt too hard to be hard ass. It just doesn’t work.

Unbelievably, there was an aspect of this movie that was even worse than the dialog and acting. The real problem I had with the movie was that there were numerous times where they’d present something really cool/original. It gets my mind going about how cool it would be if they took it in one direction. But then they take it off in another direction (most often in a way to beat the race issue into our heads). That is probably the most annoying thing a movie can do; have a beautiful set-up and then take it in the opposite direction it should have gone.

Overall, I gave Strange Days 3 out of 5 stars on Netflix. It is a pretty interesting movie with some decent plot points. But it never comes close to tapping into the true potential of the movie. So, a 5 star concept ends up being executed at a 2 star level. Hence the overall 3 star rating. If you are really into Sci-Fi it may be worth checking out. Other than that, you’d probably be best served passing over it.

Combining Movies and Basketball

Check out this series of posts on NBA.com.

It is Baron Davis’ (Golden State Warrior’s point guard and movie enthusiast) own version of the Oscars (dubbed the “Boomscars”).

I don’t agree with a lot of the picks he makes, but his insight into why he the picks was usually pretty good. The best of these was his pick for best one-line/dialog/quote from a movie and its subsequent explanation.

If you have the chance, it is worth taking a look at. It kind of reminds me of something I would do.

Where’s Greenspan?

I read an article over on MSN today about how the U.S. is facing steep inflation.

My response to this?

Well, no shit. Anyone that’s taken a Monetary Economics 101 class could have told you that this was pretty much inevitable once Mr. Bernacke started dropping the interest rates.

A very simplistic explanation of the relationship between interest rates and inflation is that they are inversely related. This means that when one goes up, the other goes down.

So, when Fed chairman Bernacke reduced the interest rates (it seemed like there were 3 or 4 drops all within a months time) it is naturally that the inflation is going to go up.

They can’t take our freedom…

Check out this article from WIRED.

It does a good job going into the economics of information on the internet. It goes into the various reasons why so much on the internet has gone toward being free. It also speculates that more things on the internet will eventually be free to. Naturally, I dug the heck out of it due to my economics and technology background, but I’d think most people would be interested in some of the ideas presented also(i.e. don’t you ever wonder how some websites make money despite being free to the public?).

The article is pretty long (6 pages) but it is worth the time it takes to read it.

Look it over if you get the chance.

The Answer to Your Problems

Anyone who is paying attention to the NBA season knows that the Western Conference is chocked full of great records. The way things have been going there it looks like 9 teams have a legitimate shot of winning 50 games. Seeing as though only 8 teams make the playoffs in a conference, this has been a big issue of who will make it and who’ll be left out.

Well, it looks like that quandry has just been solved.

Yao is out for the season. This likely means the end of the Rockets run. I’m not saying that they can’t make the playoffs still, but with 8 other teams at full force it doesn’t look good.

How I Met Your Mom

Over the weekend, I rented the first disc to How I Met Your Mom from Netflix.

I didn’t really know what to expect going in. I’d heard of the show before, but it always looked too sitcom-y for my tastes (similar to the Rules of Dating My Daughter or According to Jim Belushi). Netflix was predicting a high 4 star rating from me (close to a perfect 5 star score).

So, battling between how something looked and what others said about it, I put it on my queue. I eventually decided to bump it up on my queue because Jason Segel and Neil Patrick Harris are in it and that got me a bit curious.

It turns out that my first impressions of the show were pretty acurate. It comes off very sitcom-y (complete with laugh tracks so you know what is funny!).

But at the same time I’m dissing the format, Netflix wasn’t too far off. If you can get past the laugh tracks and the sit-com feel, there are several laugh out loud moments through out the episodes.

So, overall, HIMYM is quite possibly the weirdest TV/movie I’ve had to rate. At times it is the most awful hackneyed sit-com garbage on TV. Then at times it is fresh and genuinely funny. Then I think about the premise and realize that it is pretty much Coupling (the BBC show) with a lot less sexual themes.

Really, this show is all over the map. I ended up giving it 4 stars out of 5 on Netflix, but I could see someone giving it one star and I can also see someone giving it 5 stars. I’d say check it out and make a decision for yourself, because it is just to perplexing for me to describe and recommend one way or the other.

It’s Saturday Night Live

Did you watch SNL this week?

I was pretty impressed by it. Sure, it still dragged towards the end of the show, but the first few sketches were legitimately funny.

Tina Fey did a good job, but seemed to be a little under-utilized in my opinion (kind of like how she was during her SNL head writing days).

Also, I have to say that the current crop of SNL women are probably the best looking group. They aren’t the funniest group, but more than likely they are the best looking. Look at the run down of current females on the show:

1) Amy Poehler – Not extremely good looking, but she holds her own. She is probably the funniest of this group, though.

2) Kristin Wiig – Very attractive. Her level of comedy skills is still in question for me.

3) Casey Wilson – Last week’s episode was her first. She is definitely an upgrade over Maya Rudolph. She would fall into my cute classification.

Compare that group to some of the others:

Jane Curtin and Gilda Radnor (1975-1980 Era)

Robin Duke, Mary Gross, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (1980-1985 Era)

 Nora Dunn and Jan Hooks (1985-1990 Era)

Victoria Jackson, Julia Sweeney, and Ellen Cleghorn (1990-1995 Era)

Cheri Oteri, Molly Shannon, and Ana Gasteyer (1995-2000 Era)

Rachel Dratch, Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph (2000-2005 Era)

Really it is not much of a contest. If you did want a contest, though, you could argue for the funniest group of comediennes.

Now that would be difficult to decide. I’d probably lean to the 1995-2000 ladies, but that may just be because those were part of my formative years. Curtin and Radnor would have to be in the debate. I also thought that the 2000-2005 group were pretty good.

So, what’s the point of all this? Nothing really, but if this past week is any kind of indicator, SNL is back to a ”watch if you get the chance” level. Definitely an upgrade over the “only watch if you are really into the host” that it had been at lately.

NBA Trades Fall Out

As you know, the NBA trade deadline passed last week. If you’ve been keeping up with it all, I’m sure you can rattle off all the big trades. If not, here’s a quick run down:

1) The Pau Gasol trade

2) The Shaq-Shawn Marion trade

3) The Jason Kidd trade

4) The Cavs’ 11 player swap