Last week the Royals beat the Yankees thanks to an walk-off home run from Alex Gordon. After the game Royals manager Ned Yost was upset that only 13,847 fans were in attendance. On the surface his complaint makes sense. You would think that fans of a team in playoff contention for the first time in 29 years would be busting through the turnstiles to cheer on the hometown nine. However, that whole "not making the playoffs since 1985" thing has a way of dampening enthusiasm. As a fan of another underwhelming team (the Brewers) I have to side with the Royals fans on this one. This is especially true after the Crew's recent 9-game losing streak reinvigorated my empathy for fans of tortured franchises.
This season the Brewers set a club record for consecutive days in first place (150). This streak ended on September 1 and, thanks to the 9-game skid, the Crew find themselves 3.0 games back of the Cardinals in the NL Central. Though they hold a 1.0 game lead on the second wild card, their collapse feels so catastrophic that it's almost impossible for a Brewers fan to envision a scenario where the Brewers make the playoffs, let alone win another game. It's gotten so bad that I cannot bear to watch or even periodically check the score. That's right: my favorite team is so agonizingly terrible right now that I am ignoring them. But there is more to my growing indifference than this recent losing streak.
Collapses are a Milwaukee Brewers specialty. In 2004 they entered the All-Star break over .500 and finished the season 22-53. The 2007 team led the division by 7.5 games in June, but a 9-18 August positioned the Cubs to ultimately take the division. There is also the 1987 squad, aka "Team Streak," which started the season 20-3 before a subsequent 2-18 stretch of awfulness essentially removed them from playoff contention. And if you look beyond this incomplete history of collapses you'll find generally terrible baseball teams. All of this considered, why would the default outlook of a Brewers fan be that of optimism? This brings us back to the Kansas City Royals.
When you follow a losing franchise you are conditioned to expect losses. Four months of winning baseball does not change this, it merely makes you anxious about the inevitable day when the winning will stop. Far too often this fear becomes reality and your natural expectation of defeat becomes even more ossified. This is why you cannot be upset with Royals fans for not attending games or any other tortured fan base for being fatalistic in their indifference. It's hard to get excited when you cannot bring yourself to believe that your team is actually any good, even when they have a winning record.
Being a devoted sports fan involves an emotional investment and sometimes it's better to settle for no return than put all of your capital into what seems like a pouch of magic beans. It may seem irrational for a fan base starving for a winner to be indifferent during a winning season, but to the tortured sports fans of the world it makes perfect sense.
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Everything Wrong with Nitpicking
The Cinema Sins website has a popular YouTube series called Everything Wrong With... that meticulously identifies the flaws in movies. Unlike Mystery Science Theater 3000, the movies being scoured for sins are often pretty good, and this makes the task of nitpicking more difficult given the inverse relationship between quality and flaws. The problem with the video series is that the relentless pursuit of errors inevitably leads to the scrutiny of non-errors. This is illustrated in the Everything Wrong with Les Miserables video.
The Paris Uprising of 1832 is sympathetically portrayed in the various incarnations of Les Miserables and the 2012 film adaptation riffed by Cinema Sins is no exception. The real life uprising occurred shortly after the death of General Jean Maximilien Lamarque, a champion of the poor. At his funeral a group of students with aspirations of inciting a nationwide revolution hijacked and re-routed the cortege. This was an actual event and, considering Les Miserables is a musical, was portrayed about as accurately in the movie as anyone could reasonably expect. Even so, this is documented as a movie sin at the 4:19 mark of the video. The accompanying text states: "So they're (sic) protest is to interrupt a funeral parade honoring a guy they loved?" Ridiculing the movie for featuring a dramatization of something that actually happened is ironically erroneous, and with this example we of how relentless nitpicking can be more annoying than funny.
The above error is about as far from a sin as you can possibly get. Les Miserables makes the logic behind the funeral protest exceedingly clear. As the song goes, the rebels needed a sign to rally the people and bring them in line. The death of Lamarque provided the sign and the students seized it. The historical action is worthy of criticism, and Les Miserbles does this implicitly by portraying the students as idealists who do not have a good grasp of what they are actually doing. Within the movie the motives of the "sinful" act are adequately described and its actors sufficiently admonished through their development as misguided rebels. Taking these things into consideration, this sin should have been overlooked.
To be fair, the top two goals of Cinema Sins are two generate views and be funny. The latter goal gives them license to have a liberal perspective on what is or is not a goof. Moreoever, the sin in question grabbed my attention and caused me to watch the video multiple times, so the people producing Everything Wrong With clearly know what they are doing. Even so, the videos fail when they make fun of non-errors. Pointing out idiocy is a foundation of comedy, but jokes are only funny if they are ridiculing something truly idiotic.
Nitpicking is perfectly good if actual flaws are being pointed out. However, it becomes unfunny and annoying when the focus is so intense that relevant context or basic historical facts are ignored. When this happens you are left with snark instead of humor, and excessive snark has a way of getting tiresome quickly.
The Paris Uprising of 1832 is sympathetically portrayed in the various incarnations of Les Miserables and the 2012 film adaptation riffed by Cinema Sins is no exception. The real life uprising occurred shortly after the death of General Jean Maximilien Lamarque, a champion of the poor. At his funeral a group of students with aspirations of inciting a nationwide revolution hijacked and re-routed the cortege. This was an actual event and, considering Les Miserables is a musical, was portrayed about as accurately in the movie as anyone could reasonably expect. Even so, this is documented as a movie sin at the 4:19 mark of the video. The accompanying text states: "So they're (sic) protest is to interrupt a funeral parade honoring a guy they loved?" Ridiculing the movie for featuring a dramatization of something that actually happened is ironically erroneous, and with this example we of how relentless nitpicking can be more annoying than funny.
The above error is about as far from a sin as you can possibly get. Les Miserables makes the logic behind the funeral protest exceedingly clear. As the song goes, the rebels needed a sign to rally the people and bring them in line. The death of Lamarque provided the sign and the students seized it. The historical action is worthy of criticism, and Les Miserbles does this implicitly by portraying the students as idealists who do not have a good grasp of what they are actually doing. Within the movie the motives of the "sinful" act are adequately described and its actors sufficiently admonished through their development as misguided rebels. Taking these things into consideration, this sin should have been overlooked.
To be fair, the top two goals of Cinema Sins are two generate views and be funny. The latter goal gives them license to have a liberal perspective on what is or is not a goof. Moreoever, the sin in question grabbed my attention and caused me to watch the video multiple times, so the people producing Everything Wrong With clearly know what they are doing. Even so, the videos fail when they make fun of non-errors. Pointing out idiocy is a foundation of comedy, but jokes are only funny if they are ridiculing something truly idiotic.
Nitpicking is perfectly good if actual flaws are being pointed out. However, it becomes unfunny and annoying when the focus is so intense that relevant context or basic historical facts are ignored. When this happens you are left with snark instead of humor, and excessive snark has a way of getting tiresome quickly.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
The Toolbox Revolution
Rooting for intriguing cast-offs is one of the few perks of rooting for a terrible baseball team. Though your Mike Trouts or Clayton Kershaws are more entertaining, superstars lack the endearing "I played in the minors for 10 years because I love baseball" quality present in marginal talent. Moreover, lack of talent requires adaptation and this adaptation can inspire the imagination. Brooks Kieschnick, also know as "The Toolbox," is a good example of this.
The career stats of Kieschnick are about as pedestrian as you will ever see. He hit .248/.315/.444 with 16 homers in 336 career plate appearances and had a 4.59 ERA in 96.0 career innings pitched. In 2003 he played for the Milwaukee Brewers and had his finest season, posting a solid .300/.355/.614 slash line in 76 PA and an ugly 5.26 ERA in 53 IP. On the surface this resume is the epitome of forgettable, but a slightly deeper analysis reveals that it is somewhat remarkable.
In 2003 the Milwaukee Brewers were coming off a 56-106 campaign and entering a rebuilding phase. With nowhere to go but up the Brewers were able to take a flyer on Kieschnick. What he accomplished in two seasons with Milwaukee was sneaky impressive. Kieschnick became the only non-starting pitcher since 1946 to throw more than 20 innings while getting more than 50 at bats in a season, which happened in 2003 and 2004. This is a nice bit of trivia, but when you think about it, hybrid players like Kieschnick just might be more than roster filler for cellar dwellers.
The potential value of a dual-threat player is comes from the grueling length of an MLB season. Regular occurrences over a 162 game season include starting pitchers getting knocked out in the 2nd inning, outfielders tweaking their back and needing a day off, bullpens being burdened with bringing blowouts to their merciful conclusion, and so on. A hybrid player brings value by absorbing this fatigue, which is especially useful to playoff hopefuls who need all of the energy they can muster during the stretch run.
A good hybrid player would also make the lives of NL managers much easier. Instead of performing bench-gobbling double switches, a manager could use the hybrid to pinch hit and then throw an inning of relief. You can easily imagine how this might come in handy during extra-inning games at any point of the season.
Granted, it's also easy to think of reasons hybrid players do not exist. For starters, there is the logistical issue of where they are situated. How would they be able to warm up for an inning of relief and take practice cuts for a pinch hit appearance at the same time? Furthermore, it does not make sense for a power-hitting corner infielder on the cusp of making The Show to try to get a call-up by adding bite to their slider. Even so, when you see backup catchers pitching in blowouts and throwing 95 mph fastballs, it makes you wonder if their role is not unnecessarily limited to being a backstop.
Baseball is in a golden age of embracing unconventional ideas, so there is a faint glimmer of hope for the hybrid revolution. It's highly likely this revolution will never happen because GMs know it's an unfeasible idea, but it's more fun to believe it's simply because The Toolbox was truly one of a kind.
The career stats of Kieschnick are about as pedestrian as you will ever see. He hit .248/.315/.444 with 16 homers in 336 career plate appearances and had a 4.59 ERA in 96.0 career innings pitched. In 2003 he played for the Milwaukee Brewers and had his finest season, posting a solid .300/.355/.614 slash line in 76 PA and an ugly 5.26 ERA in 53 IP. On the surface this resume is the epitome of forgettable, but a slightly deeper analysis reveals that it is somewhat remarkable.
In 2003 the Milwaukee Brewers were coming off a 56-106 campaign and entering a rebuilding phase. With nowhere to go but up the Brewers were able to take a flyer on Kieschnick. What he accomplished in two seasons with Milwaukee was sneaky impressive. Kieschnick became the only non-starting pitcher since 1946 to throw more than 20 innings while getting more than 50 at bats in a season, which happened in 2003 and 2004. This is a nice bit of trivia, but when you think about it, hybrid players like Kieschnick just might be more than roster filler for cellar dwellers.
The potential value of a dual-threat player is comes from the grueling length of an MLB season. Regular occurrences over a 162 game season include starting pitchers getting knocked out in the 2nd inning, outfielders tweaking their back and needing a day off, bullpens being burdened with bringing blowouts to their merciful conclusion, and so on. A hybrid player brings value by absorbing this fatigue, which is especially useful to playoff hopefuls who need all of the energy they can muster during the stretch run.
A good hybrid player would also make the lives of NL managers much easier. Instead of performing bench-gobbling double switches, a manager could use the hybrid to pinch hit and then throw an inning of relief. You can easily imagine how this might come in handy during extra-inning games at any point of the season.
Granted, it's also easy to think of reasons hybrid players do not exist. For starters, there is the logistical issue of where they are situated. How would they be able to warm up for an inning of relief and take practice cuts for a pinch hit appearance at the same time? Furthermore, it does not make sense for a power-hitting corner infielder on the cusp of making The Show to try to get a call-up by adding bite to their slider. Even so, when you see backup catchers pitching in blowouts and throwing 95 mph fastballs, it makes you wonder if their role is not unnecessarily limited to being a backstop.
Baseball is in a golden age of embracing unconventional ideas, so there is a faint glimmer of hope for the hybrid revolution. It's highly likely this revolution will never happen because GMs know it's an unfeasible idea, but it's more fun to believe it's simply because The Toolbox was truly one of a kind.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Fantasy Body Horror
One of David Cronenberg's contributions to cinema is the popularization of the body horror genre. In these films the terror comes in the form of inescapable and grotesque bodily transformations. Cronenberg's The Fly is arguably the best film in the genre. Despite the title and plot, The Fly is more of an allegory about aging and terminal illness. This subtext makes the film chilling in a different way than a film purely about the metamorphosis. Yet not all instances of body horror are allegorical, and often they are intended to be comical. These films belong to the heebie-jeebie inducing sub genre I call fantasy body horror.
As the name suggests, fantasy body horror involves a nightmarish and cartoonish transformation which can only occur in a films that are not concerned with realism. The Fly almost fits this categorization, but is far too grim for the fantasy sub genre.
Another important facet of fantasy body horror is the absence of subtext. A transformation that attempts to express a larger idea suppresses visceral repulsion due to intellectual engagement. But your typical bizarro fairy tale is not attempting to inspire thoughts other than "Wow! It would be truly unpleasant if such a thing happened to me." For some people (e.g. me) this makes such films oddly unsettling. So what does fantasy body horror look like?
In the third installment of the Leprechaun series, the appropriately titled Leprechaun 3, the titular character goes to Las Vegas for some reason. While there he loses a charm and wants it back. The vapid Vegas denizen who stumbles upon the charm soon feels the wrath of the Leprechaun's dark imagination:
Cautionary tale about the pitfalls of vanity aside, there is not much more to this scene than what happened. Because of this you are left to focus purely on what is on screen. Without an allegory gobbling mental bandwidth you can simple ponder what it would be like to have duck lips. This is not something you commonly think about, yet when you see it in a movie it becomes oddly plausible. If I ever get cursed with duck lips my I think exploding while attempting to squeeze through a doorway would be a merciful escape.
As the name suggests, fantasy body horror involves a nightmarish and cartoonish transformation which can only occur in a films that are not concerned with realism. The Fly almost fits this categorization, but is far too grim for the fantasy sub genre.
Another important facet of fantasy body horror is the absence of subtext. A transformation that attempts to express a larger idea suppresses visceral repulsion due to intellectual engagement. But your typical bizarro fairy tale is not attempting to inspire thoughts other than "Wow! It would be truly unpleasant if such a thing happened to me." For some people (e.g. me) this makes such films oddly unsettling. So what does fantasy body horror look like?
In the third installment of the Leprechaun series, the appropriately titled Leprechaun 3, the titular character goes to Las Vegas for some reason. While there he loses a charm and wants it back. The vapid Vegas denizen who stumbles upon the charm soon feels the wrath of the Leprechaun's dark imagination:
Cautionary tale about the pitfalls of vanity aside, there is not much more to this scene than what happened. Because of this you are left to focus purely on what is on screen. Without an allegory gobbling mental bandwidth you can simple ponder what it would be like to have duck lips. This is not something you commonly think about, yet when you see it in a movie it becomes oddly plausible. If I ever get cursed with duck lips my I think exploding while attempting to squeeze through a doorway would be a merciful escape.
Monday, March 10, 2014
They Might Be Giants - Dead
They Might Be Giants have a very particular lyrical style. To put it more accurately, most of their lyrics are perfectly constructed gibberish. Their songs make you believe you're listening to something incredibly profound that lies just beyond your grasp of comprehension, a belief that lasts until you realize most of their lyrics are nothing more than poetic nonsense. Yet occasionally you will come across a lyric that indeed is incredibly profound.
The song 'Dead' from their brand new record for 1990, Flood, is about nothing in particular. An argument can be made that this song is about a tyrannical figure being beheaded and later reincarnated as an expired bag of groceries. Or maybe not. Determining what this song is actually about is just as challenging as trying to understand the plot of a David Lynch film. Even so, for all of the bizarre allusions and stray observations, the chorus contains a line that pretty much sums up existence for most people who have ever lived:
Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want, or I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do.
This is the battle cry for the rudderless souls who lament the absence of purpose in their lives, even though they have no idea what that purpose should be. The subsequent feeling of regret is only surpassed in strength by the desire to do nothing at all. Perhaps the solution is to have no desires, meaning you can both do nothing and everything at once.
The song 'Dead' from their brand new record for 1990, Flood, is about nothing in particular. An argument can be made that this song is about a tyrannical figure being beheaded and later reincarnated as an expired bag of groceries. Or maybe not. Determining what this song is actually about is just as challenging as trying to understand the plot of a David Lynch film. Even so, for all of the bizarre allusions and stray observations, the chorus contains a line that pretty much sums up existence for most people who have ever lived:
Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want, or I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do.
This is the battle cry for the rudderless souls who lament the absence of purpose in their lives, even though they have no idea what that purpose should be. The subsequent feeling of regret is only surpassed in strength by the desire to do nothing at all. Perhaps the solution is to have no desires, meaning you can both do nothing and everything at once.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Mr. Show Searches for Truth
Adam Sandler infamously declared during a video segment at the 84th Academy Awards that he's "eventually trying to, one day, tell the truth." Sandler might not be the most credible truth-seeker out there, but his pursuit to portray reality through comedy remains noble (even if this somehow involves the existence of Grown Ups 2). After all, humorously exploring universal human experiences fertile ground for comedy. The agony of making binary decisions is one such experience.
Binary decisions can be the most difficult to make because you cannot make a correct choice if each option seems equally correct. This can turn a simple "yes" or "no" question into a form of torture that only sociopaths are spared from. This universal truth (as Adam Sandler might put it) was best illustrated in the Mr. Show sketch 'Change for a Dollar.' What should you do when someone asks for change for a dollar, quarters mostly? The sketch does not definitively answer this, but we do learn that ultimate success in life is not about making the correct decisions, it's about making decisions. This is an important truth to know.
Binary decisions can be the most difficult to make because you cannot make a correct choice if each option seems equally correct. This can turn a simple "yes" or "no" question into a form of torture that only sociopaths are spared from. This universal truth (as Adam Sandler might put it) was best illustrated in the Mr. Show sketch 'Change for a Dollar.' What should you do when someone asks for change for a dollar, quarters mostly? The sketch does not definitively answer this, but we do learn that ultimate success in life is not about making the correct decisions, it's about making decisions. This is an important truth to know.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Deceiving Blowouts
It's hard for a football game to be more one-sided than Super Bowl XLVIII. The Seahawks dominated from the first play from scrimmage and at no point did Broncos fans witness anything to get excited about. Denver's only reprieve from humiliation was as meaningless third quarter touchdown that ended the shutout. It's rare to see a wire-to-wire thrashing of this magnitude; rare to the point I do not believe it proved the Seahawks are the better team.
The rules of the NFL playoffs are simple: win every game and you're the champion. The Seahawks claimed their title with such emphasis there is no disputing their champion status. Their claim to "The Best Team in the NFL" title, however, is something we will never truly know. It's difficult to determine the best team by looking at individual games, especially when one of the games is such a significant deviation from the expect outcome that you wonder if what you saw was a macabre figment of your imagination.
We all know that the better team does not always win in sports. This is why the NCAA Tournament is so fun and the core of Kurt Russell's inspirational speech in Miracle. Nobody will argue that the Arizona Cardinals are better than Seattle because they won at CenturyLink Field in Week 16. Similarity, it's hard to argue Seattle is not better than Denver after last Sunday, but are they really 35 points better? Considering nobody 35 points better than anybody in the NFL, the answer is no. So what is there to make of Seattle's 43-8 win?
Sometimes athletes perform poorly. Very, very poorly. Patrick Roy was one of the best goalies in NHL history, yet he surrendered 6 goals before being pulled in Game 7 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals at Detroit. Last year's NL Cy Young Winner, Clayton Kershaw, surrendered seven earned runs in four innings in the deciding game of 2013 NLCS at St. Louis. Each player has such a comprehensive track record of greatness that their respective shellackings are indicative of nothing other than them having a bad day against good opposition. The same can be said about teams.
The 1999 Miami Dolphins were pretty good. They won the Wild Card, their first playoff game, and then lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars 62-7 in the Divisional Round. In 2003 the Marquette Golden Eagles, led by future NBA Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade, lost in the Final Four to Kansas 94-61. (It was 59-30 at halftime.) Both the Dolphins and Golden Eagles losses were that nightmarish anomaly that happens when peak performance meets poopy performance, and that's about it.
The 2013 Seahawks do deserve credit for being a buzzsaw. The 49ers were hopelessly over-matched in their first meeting with Seattle, losing 29-3. However, a regression towards the mean occurred as the 49ers emerged victorious in their subsequent game and nearly won the rubber match in the playoffs. Unfortunately the Broncos will not have the opportunity to prove the Super Bowl was a fluke. The next best thing for them to do is to burn the game film and pretend like it never happened. Getting 111,500,000 more people to forget might be a bit more challenging.
The rules of the NFL playoffs are simple: win every game and you're the champion. The Seahawks claimed their title with such emphasis there is no disputing their champion status. Their claim to "The Best Team in the NFL" title, however, is something we will never truly know. It's difficult to determine the best team by looking at individual games, especially when one of the games is such a significant deviation from the expect outcome that you wonder if what you saw was a macabre figment of your imagination.
We all know that the better team does not always win in sports. This is why the NCAA Tournament is so fun and the core of Kurt Russell's inspirational speech in Miracle. Nobody will argue that the Arizona Cardinals are better than Seattle because they won at CenturyLink Field in Week 16. Similarity, it's hard to argue Seattle is not better than Denver after last Sunday, but are they really 35 points better? Considering nobody 35 points better than anybody in the NFL, the answer is no. So what is there to make of Seattle's 43-8 win?
Sometimes athletes perform poorly. Very, very poorly. Patrick Roy was one of the best goalies in NHL history, yet he surrendered 6 goals before being pulled in Game 7 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals at Detroit. Last year's NL Cy Young Winner, Clayton Kershaw, surrendered seven earned runs in four innings in the deciding game of 2013 NLCS at St. Louis. Each player has such a comprehensive track record of greatness that their respective shellackings are indicative of nothing other than them having a bad day against good opposition. The same can be said about teams.
The 1999 Miami Dolphins were pretty good. They won the Wild Card, their first playoff game, and then lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars 62-7 in the Divisional Round. In 2003 the Marquette Golden Eagles, led by future NBA Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade, lost in the Final Four to Kansas 94-61. (It was 59-30 at halftime.) Both the Dolphins and Golden Eagles losses were that nightmarish anomaly that happens when peak performance meets poopy performance, and that's about it.
The 2013 Seahawks do deserve credit for being a buzzsaw. The 49ers were hopelessly over-matched in their first meeting with Seattle, losing 29-3. However, a regression towards the mean occurred as the 49ers emerged victorious in their subsequent game and nearly won the rubber match in the playoffs. Unfortunately the Broncos will not have the opportunity to prove the Super Bowl was a fluke. The next best thing for them to do is to burn the game film and pretend like it never happened. Getting 111,500,000 more people to forget might be a bit more challenging.
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