Completely unrelated issues where ordinary people absolutely irk me:
1. Community-minded people in a snit over military base closings, as though the U.S. government owed something to their respective burgs. My goodness, of all the reasons for a military force to make specific decisions: Do what it takes to defend our country and its interests. Ix-nay on the orture-tay. Things like that are just a little bit more important than whether Congressman Jimbo can bring home the requisite amount of pork.
On the island where I now live is a sad space, where the old military base used to operate. I'm sure the closing hurt like hell but Alameda picked itself up and moved on already.
My favorite, amongst the idiots who mean well and don't even realize who moronic if not contemptible their statements are: "Why would you walk away from something after investing $300 million?" Uh, learn some basic economics.
2. People who are so (pardon the expression) dogmatic about the teaching of evolution that they can't be bothered to take the arguments of intelligent design advocates seriously (and subsequently demolish those arguments, which should be easy enough). I'm glad Ellen Goodman understands the irony. Perish the thought that high schoolers learn the process of scientific research and reasoning, rather than being spoonfed at school a cant that doesn't fit very well with the cant they're spoonfed at home/church.
Of course as far as some of you are concerned, I'm sure the latter is not only don't even discuss it it's so far beyond the pale but also as a personal-freedom-minded kind of guy who wants lower taxes but hawkish foreign policy, somehow my own fault by major-party association.
Consider a random "Jennifer"; how old is she?
Not many high school quiz players named Jennifer. If they were born in 1987 then Jennifer is their mom, or at least their aunt.
Not many high school quiz players named Emily, Jake, or Hannah yet either, but give each of those about ten years.
A bunch of Davids and Andrews, though (not unlike ten years ago).
Among the guys I played poker with last night were two diehard basketball fans (one Spurs, one 76ers) both of whom believe (perhaps with numbers to back it up) that Tim Duncan's (or "Tim Dunk-On's") defensve is vastly overrated.
I don't know a thing about basketball so I can't evaluate their belief, though I'm well aware of his reputation.
Yeah, poker. I've relapsed into horrible newbie mistakes, one of which is apparently forgetting that there's such a thing as a simple raise, in proportion to pot size and well short of "all in."
Considering both hand quality and decision quality I was doing surprisingly unpoorly for awhile, then went out against the insanely big stack on a hand where neither of us had much business being all in, though in fairness my all in reraise was proportional to his reraise. (Which was disproportional to the pot but not egregious given his stack. He had twice as much as anyone else at that point.)
I had 59.8% pre-flop EV on our all-in hand, 77.7% post-flop (obviously I don't remember the exact suits his hand or of the flop cards, though the ranks are exactly right as are my suits) but he caught his queen on the turn.
With a simple call pre-flop (instead of all in), I can probably bet big on the flop to induce a fold. Then again, there's at least one maniac among the two of us. Given his style, I read his own raise as an attempted steal and was very confident in that reading. That said, if you're going to try to steal, there are worse hands than KQo to take your chances on if you're re-raised.
(He was two to my left, with rocks on either side of him. Marked strategic contrast.)
Oh, I should mention the hand where I got away with raising JJ (by far my best down cards of the night) all in pre-flop, way disproportionate to the pot. The rock three to my left was the initial bettor and I mistakenly believed he was still as short-stacked as he'd been 2-3 hands earlier. I raised all in with dead certainty that player to my left would respect me and even the big-stack maniac two to my left would respect the original bettor. (He'd used and abused the original bettor's abundance of caution on previous hands, but with already "all in" there was no way he could raise further.) Anyhow, my target, being not at all shortstacked, was flummoxed by my all-in raise and folded AQ (not sure whether suited) after a big think.
Over a 5-minute break, he explained his dilemma to one of the best players there (how I know he had AQ), leading to a long explanation of why one should play AQ far more tightly than AK, precisely because one of the few hands that'd justify what I did was AK itself.
For amusement value, there was this chop hand: As dealer with folds all the way to me, I min-raised KJo and both blinds called. KQJ rainbow flop. First player bets with gusto, after a fold I big-raise her, she immediately puts me all in, I immediately call, we both reveal our KJo. Going into the river she may have actually had a flush draw.
She was still alive when I left; the other aforementioned rock lost an AA vs. 22 short stack vs. short stack pre-flop all in showdown when one of the deuces caught a flush on the river.
Consider a team with five pitchers who can throw at least 82 miles per hour. If you're used to major league raw statistics, you'd take this for granted. Any team that didn't have five guys (more like 10) who threw 82+ was in trouble. Any individual player who can't meet that benchmark either doesn't make the majors, doesn't last long there, or gets a reputation for his freakish performance.
But apparently 82 miles an hour is pretty darned good for high school.
I had a friend growing up in the '80s, big Cub fan, who claimed to throw 86. (Not even remotely an athlete; in no better shape then than I am now.)
I'm dead certain he based his sense of numbers entirely on the miles per hour he saw and heard about on WGN broadcasts, without ever thinking about just how much better these guys were than anyone, much less himself. I picture him going to a ballpark some day where they had the $1.00 per three baseballs speed pitch (my best ever is 47, thanks for asking), and becoming disabused of that "86" notion.
This is probably as good a time as any to mention that (quoting my better half) Kotsay catches everything. She determined her favorite player on her own (for all I know, I subconsciously influenced her) through empirical observation. That's actually almost never reliable (sample size, etc.), but I'm pleased that what she's observed matches not only what everyone else has observed but also what the best available numbers indicate. He's the best defensive center fielder in the American League by a wide margin.
Kotsay catches everything. Would it have been possible for a new baseball fan to come under the notion that T-Long catches everything? Well, come to think of it, yes, had that new fan's formative experiences included the end of this game rather than the misadventures that gained him the nickname "Magellan."
There are the obvious choices for worst Supreme Court decision ever, but then there are the ones that don't get much discussion because at first glance they don't seem relevant to U.S. history or our current daily lives, so you'd know about them only from going to law school.
Have I ever mentioned how viscerally angry I get about Wickard v. Filburn? Even aside from the question of whether the Commerce Clause has become egregiously abused, is there not something inherently offensive about extending this kind of regulation even to our own homes?
Regardless of what goes on in the big nasty world outside, I like to think that a big benchmark of freedom is that when I can go home at night and lock the front door, from that point on I can live essentially as I please. It's not a perfect privilege - I can't disturb the neighbors with impunity, and as a renter I certainly can't trash the place - but you see the principle, no?
If we believe in life, liberty, and property, then I'd have trouble thinking of something more offensive than the government telling us we can't grow our own food on our own property.
Of course, this came up in discussion of Raich (the medical marijuana case that the Justice Department probably will win but definitely shouldn't win).
I think exactly five Hole songs are worthy of my top 500, and I thought of the album while brainstorming tributes and eulogies. Not that anything on the album is necessarily about the lead singer's late husband (though rumor has it all the compositional skill came from him in his lifetime, at least as a strong influence, with Celebrity Skin showing equal "influence" from subsequent love interest Billy Corgan).
Lyrics included so you readily identify the song, not necessarily to single out that lyric for praise.
Hole - "Asking For It" ("If you live through this for me I swear that I will die for you")
Hole - "Miss World" ("I am the girl you know can't look you in the eye.")
Hole - "Violet" ("Go on take everything, take everything I want you to.") This song pops into my head during chess games a lot, or used to when I played chess more. Goes great with a piece sacrifice, or even just with stupidly hanging something.
Hole - "Doll Parts" ("Someday you will ache like I ache.")
Hole - "Softer, Softest" ("I've got a blister from touching everything I see.")
The Shangri-Las - "Leader of the Pack"
Ray Peterson - "Tell Laura I Love Her"
Mark Dinning - "Teen Angel"
Dickie Lee - "Laurie (Strange Things Happen)" ("I saw my sweater lying there upon her grave")
Jan and Dean - "Dead Man's Curve". I don't honestly expect this one to last on my top 500 list but the other four actually might and the theme, you can't go wrong with the theme.
If I hadn't already included it earlier, "J.A.R." by Green Day would fit this quintet perfectly.
Gordon Lightfoot - "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"
The Commodores - "Nightshift"
Slaughter - "Fly to the Angels"
L.A. Guns - "The Ballad of Jane"
The Offspring - "Gone Away"
This entry actually sat for awhile, with writer's block following the first two choices. Then one right after the other I thought of the metalheads. Of the last three above, was it suicide, suicide, natural causes, respectively?
It's not quite right to say the more I write the less I care about my choice of words. I care very much about using exactly the right words, though I want to express an idea as clearly, concisely, and quickly as possible. It should take as little time as possible not only for me to write but also for someone to read it and understand it.
This came up yesterday in a conversation about my writing compared to the prose of someone else I know (not a blogger) who is deeply infatuated with word choices and in particular with erudition. He wants his writing, I think, to be challenging yet rewarding. The last thing I want my writing to be is challenging (at least not the delivery; of course the content should challenge), though of course it shouldn't be boring either. You should say "I really like Matt's ideas" (even if you violently disagree with them) or "nice choice of topics" (even if you honestly wouldn't have cared a whit about baseball) and take the actual words for granted.
Cutting to the chase, I think we all know people whose vocabulary and writing style make something like this funny. (Those people would vehemently defend themselves by noting that their word choices are right whereas the Thesaurusized song lyric parodies are comically wrong choices.)
Songs played on 95.7 "The Max" (previously 95.7 "The Bear" as a country station, before that 95.7 "The Drive" as album-oriented classic rock) around noon today:
KC & The Sunshine Band, "Get Down Tonight"
Corey Hart, "Never Surrender"
REO Speedwagon, "Roll With the Changes"
Eric Carmen, "Hungry Eyes"
They claim now to play "70s... 80s... whatever we feel like." Time will tell whether this is a variant on that trendy "Jack" format (update: duh - it's "Max" as in the guy's name, so obviously yes, a "Jack" clone) or just a suckup to Gen X as it enters (we enter) middle age. Either way, stations like this that change formats every two years trying to stay alive will be made obsolete by satellite radio.
More about my radio dial than you'd have really cared about, after the jump:
My newest car radio thing is public-sponsored jazz. Julia got into this station when she got fed up with the weak signal on the FM incarnation of KABL (which got booted off its AM frequency to make room for Air America).
FM1 (left to right):
KCSM "Jazz 91" (Jazz of course)
Energy 92.7 (dance - and Blogspot! that's when you know you've got a big marketing budget)
95.7 (70s/80s, was country until today)
KFOG ("World Class Rock")
Live 105 (alternative rock)
107.7 "The Bone" (rock)
FM2 (left to right):
KFRC (oldies)
98.1 Kiss FM ("old-school and today's R&B")
Alice (was alternative once, now more Hot AC)
KOIT ("lite rock, less talk")
KABL (adult standards, piss-poor FM signal)
Classical 102
AM
610 AM (KFRC sister station, A's games)
680 KNBR (Giants)
1050 (KNBR sister station) - random Westwood One sporting events
740 (KCBS all-news)
560 and 960 (KSFO and "The Quake": Rush et al and Air America, both sides of SF's political flamewar, not that I ever listen to either these days)
Not listed above: Star 101.3. When I went to add the jazz station, something had to go, and of the 12 I already had, this was the only one that brought nothing unique to the table. Maybe if I had any tolerance whatsoever for cheesy fossilized iconic-yet-overrated morning guys...
Metallica - "For Whom The Bell Tolls"
Metallica - "Harvester of Sorrow"
Metallica - "Master of Puppets". As of two years ago apparently I found the "[verb-based noun] of [noun]" parallel amusing enough to name two baseball teams (in AL and NL scoresheet) after it. No longer quite so amused but the team names still stay, at least for continuity.
I think of the three above as "the obvious ones," and yet there are "obvious" ones that won't make this quintet, where I should separate "got crowded out" from "wouldn't have made it."
Metallica - "The Unforgiven". I think most Metallica fans like Metallica ("the black album") more than I do. "Enter Sandman" in particular stands out as overrated, though "Wherever I May Roam" comes close to making this list.
Metallica - "Low Man's Lyric." Woo hurdy-gurdy. Best song on Reload (don't press me on an opinion of Reload either; I'll say "better than St. Anger" and leave it at that), though "The Memory Remains" is worthy of honorable mention.
I'm still torn about Garage Inc. It's certainly better than St. Anger and might be better than S&M. The world is probably a better place for both these albums (Garage and S&M) existing. Once you've already done Ride the Lightning and ...And Justice for All, another album just like those could make the world a little bit better but could also make it a lot worse.
From that album "Tuesday's Gone" was going to make the list above but it got crowded out. The Bob Seger cover got way too much radioplay, but then so did the original. ("Turn the Page," that is.) The Irish ballad also got too much radioplay but I kind of miss it.
"No Leaf Clover" isn't awful but wouldn't make my top 500, and while I'm happy to have the orchestral versions of all these songs, there's no orchestral version that itself needs special mention here. Nothing on St. Anger (have I beaten this dead horse enough yet? - how many times have I mentioned on this weblog that the day I bought both St. Anger and 200 km./Hr in the Wrong Direction (t.A.t.U.), the latter was the less sucky?) even sniffs this list.
Anyway, back to the top 500 in general: You might see "One" or "Hero of the Day" (or as mentioned, "The Memory Remains") on a future list. In theory you could see "Sanitarium" or "Fade to Black" or even "Call of Ktulu" (how big a number is 500 again?) though I wouldn't hold my breath for those.
Arianna Huffington joins your bandwagon.
1. Running for governor of California.
2. Blogging.
What will she ruin signify the downfall of next?
No analogy is perfect (the best discussions result from finding what distingushes two situations) but this can't be a good sign.
I have no idea whether the latter is guilty of child molestation (I have my suspicions but I'm neither on the jury nor spending any time whatsoever following the trial). I do know, as we all know, that he's one of the most disturbingly freakish people out there.
I claim still to have no idea whether the former knowingly used steroids, though I'm coming out of years of denial about his personality. I now totally understand not only how people can be in denial about the latter's disturbingly freakish personality but also get deeply offended whenever people point it out.
They're both at least partly the target of people going out of their way to take them down, but that doesn't excuse any bad behavior either of them might have committed.
1. Misappropriated Star Wars quotes.
2. Comments over heard at a brainstorming session between Ted Nugent[...]
3. Al Qaeda's new medium of communication.
Speaking of #3: Good grief, everyone was right about that guy, and I didn't believe you, partly because any time everyone is so unanimous in an opinion like that it makes me suspicious. (And, granted, "He's an SOB but he's our SOB" rears its ugly head.)
The third Molina brother is still young but at this point he's a worse hitter than either of the other two, quite an accomplishment.
It looks as though our annual "suck" league died stillborn this year; had the draft ever happened, I'd have been all over Yadier this year. He and Mike Matheny easily the top two spots, with the only question which one to grab first.
In the Baseball Prospectus HACKING MASS contest, I went with Matheny, so far to my marginal detriment. We'll see. He'll stop hitting but keep his job. The risk with Yadier was the Cardinals getting impatient (since they're only a championship contender) and... well, not benching him for Einar Diaz, but at least trading for someone.
Sadly, I actually have to rely on Yadier in a non-suck baseball league. That is, I need him to do well in this league. As of a couple weeks ago he was getting roundly trounced by even the sub-replacement-level "Catcher-AAA" generic placeholder.
I'll believe this article (via Fark). The points system rocks.
Fiber is good for you; fiber's main side effect is also very good for your body. Eating enormous portions (always my main pitfall) is of course bad for you.
Also recommended by this blog: Take 4-mile walks along the beach. (I suppose 4-mile runs would be all the better.) Don't eat in the 4-hour interval before bed. Use your "extra" points only as extra points - they're there as a cushion; if you budget them then that defeats the purpose and you'll inadvertently exceed even your cushion.
"Activity points" are all well and good; if you're not earning them, you should be. But if you are earning them, pat yourself on the back and pretend they didn't exist. Unless you're about to collapse from exhaustion, you don't need to convert those.
Of course getting on my high horse is a good way to jinx things this week. Knock on wood that the progress continues, though,
Take this (via Marginal Revolution).
My Moralising Quotient is: 0.30.
My Interference Factor is: 0.00.
My Universalising Factor is: 1.00.
Essentially my gut instinct is that moral correctness doesn't depend much on local conventions, but that even things to which my gut reaction is "That's wrong" shouldn't be punished or prevented.
The prose displayed after the test gets its panties in a bunch about this seeming contradiction, except that we have an uncertainty principle problem here: The things to which my gut says "that's wrong" are things that cause me discomfort to observe.
That is, I don't give a damn whether the specific activities mentioned in the quiz took place, though if I saw any of them personally I have no problem passing judgment on them.
Via Fark, I had to go look through these. They're the only thing I'll mention about the whole affair, except that the heroine looks a bit like Laurie Metcalf only after a whole lot of botox.
The other day I was thinking about a quiz-bowl issue that reminded me potentially of a particular movie scene.
In that scene, somebody's tried to set up a press conference, only to be disappointed by what appears to be nobody showing up. The disappointment turns into shock and elation when it turns out so many people came they had to move it to a different location.
Couldn't place the reference until an hour later, though you already realized it was this.
You get a rare three-fer today.
Ozzy Osbourne - "Flying High Again": There I go again with the drug anthem. (On the other hand there are quality drug anthems and craptacular drug anthems. Every time a classic rock program director falls back on Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf," the world gets a little worse.)
Ozzy Osbourne - "You Can't Kill Rock and Roll": Another good track from Diary of a Madman.
Lita Ford & Ozzy Osbourne - "Close My Eyes Forever": The ultimate power ballad duet.
Ozzy Osbourne - "Time After Time": Best of the late-Ozzy sappy songs, edging out "Mama I'm Coming Home." Sounds fantastic on piano.
Ozzy Osbourne - "No More Tears": Edges out "Mr. Tinker-Train" amongst songs implying extreme child abuse. Y'know, for all the grief he took over "Suicide Solution," I'm surprised nobody moralistic objected to either of these. I suppose the moralistic objectors tend to look only on the surface of a song, and so if something is veiled - even thinly veiled... But c'mon: "Maybe a kiss before I leave you this way / Your lips are so cold I don't know what else to say." Yeah, that's consenting adults there.
Elsewhere in the Ozzy discography... I'd like to be true to the roots of any given music movement. I wanted to appreciate Black Sabbath, but "Iron Man" is one of the most overrated heavy metal songs ever. Is it that nobody sounded like that before "Iron Man" and so we broke new ground now taken for granted? No other explanation makes sense.
I also don't get the exaltation of "Crazy Train," which is inferior to at least two out of three randomly chosen Ozzy songs.
The Beatles - "I Want To Tell You": Forget the sitar stuff, this is the best song on Revolver if not the best Beatles song period, and a glaring omission from Part 20.
The Rolling Stones - "Jumping Jack Flash"
The Rolling Stones - "Brown Sugar": As good a time as any to break out the best Stones songs, and these two tower over the rest (in my opinion).
Petula Clark - "Don't Sleep in the Subway": The subtlety and sarcasm of this song is easily missed; it's actually a really clever break-up song, in a "don't let the door hit you on the way out" vein.
The Who - "Love Reign O'er Me": Brings Quadrophenia to a dramatic, flagrantly oversung end. Surprised I didn't think to include this amongst the over-the-top quintet with Benny Mardones et al.
"Who are the Beatles?"
"No, I'm asking you, who are the Beatles, I've never heard of them."
--(not really) Catherine Zeta-Jones
The Beatles - "L.S.D."
The Beatles - "Strawberry Fields": The two drug anthems seemed like the obvious choices to me, where "obvious" always makes me wary of cliche. But on further review there are enough other "obvious" Beatles songs, most of which wouldn't make my list.
The Beatles - "Ticket To Ride": Their best early work.
The Beatles - "A Day in the Life": "I saw a film today, oh boy..." It looks as though this list will shut out Revolver, which is kind of a shame. I'll give a shout-out here to (of all things) "Tomorrow Never Knows," which - like "A Day In the Life" - closes out an album.
The Beatles - "Glass Onion": "Eggman" is overrated, but this is the song that tells us the walrus is Paul.
Green Day - "She"
Green Day - "Welcome to Paradise"
Green Day - "Longview"
Green Day - "Redundant"
Green Day - "J.A.R."
Why devote an entire quintet to the same band? Best reason is if the band has a lot of superlative songs from among which you have trouble singling one out. (A detractor might attribute it to the band's songs all sounding somewhat alike, but it's all a matter of degree.)
Above are my three favorite tracks from Dookie (great workout music, actually), a standout from Nimrod that grabbed my by the collar (figuratively) the first time I played it on iTunes (Nimrod was actually Julia's CD), and the song with my all-time favorite use of a guitar note instead of a syllable.
Honorable mention to "Warning." Nothing from American Idiot came close, though I've heard only the title track and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams."
Notable exclusions from Dookie: To nitpick, "Basketcase" doesn't quite have the "Canon in D" chord sequence. It's like "Canon in D" but with the next-to-last chord omitted. There was a time in the 1990s when radio stations so overplayed "When I Come Around" as a single that I got sick of it.
If you expected "Good Riddance" to make this list then you need your head examined. As vortices of suck go, that song and the Seinfeld finale deserve each other.
The running feature wherein we rank a list of randomly-drawn Simpsons episodes is on hiatus until the week of June 6-10. That's four weeks from now.
Currently we're in a lull where in theory all of you check out this spreadsheet showing results from all 56 prelim pools along with how I'd rebracket the episodes (with some being promoted or relegated). The more of you weigh in with comments - what should I have promoted/relegated but didn't?; what did I promote/relegate that shouldn't have been? - the less bogus the playoff tiers will be.
(Reminder: David's observation was exactly right on the post a few days ago, for ranking integrity I can't/won't move an episode into a tier above that of an episode that did better in the same pool, though obviously two episodes from the same pool can share the same tier.)
Of course you can always check the category archive for the latest, not to mention our comments on the pools as they happened, almost like a time capsule.
Game Report: Washington at San Francisco (Saturday, May 7) - beautiful day, but cold in the shaded seats down the third base line.
Every half-inning this game was either a goose egg or a "big" (4+ runs) inning. So 14 zeroes of 18 in the linescore, yet a score of 11-8.
Jeff Fassero sighting. I saw #14 warming up as Jason Schmidt started to get rocked; should have remembered he made the Giants this year. He's 42 (I told Julia exactly right) but didn't make his major league debut until 1991 (three years later than I'd told Julia).
Fassero and Zach Day, as relief pitchers, got to pitch to each other as consecutive batters.
Apparently we're claiming Day was brief and ineffective, because otherwise: Hector Carrasco relieved Day in the 5th inning with a lead to protect. Because Day was himself a reliever, the five-inning rule wouldn't apply. Had Carrasco protected the lead, would Day have gotten the win? If so, then I think you have to charge Carrasco with the "Blown Save," it still only being the 5th inning nonwithstanding.
Mid-sixth, they showed us the Kentucky Derby live.
Bottom-seven, I saw Jim Brower and Scott Eyre both warming up. They were both among the league appearance leaders in 2004, a righty-lefty combo who both have extreme platoon splits. These days I thought that Eyre was setting up Brower in Armando Benitez's absence. Sure enough, Eyre pitched a scoreless eighth... but then there on the mound was #59.
If I'd had my computer at the ballpark I'd have used the WiFi there to pick up Jeremy Accardo (Giants' new closer?) in a fantasy league or two. As it was, he blew the lead anyway.