30 Rock

A quick note about the blog title change. I've kinda fallen for the show 30 rock lately, and this is one of my favorite scenes from it:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NzCQQo1jbXo

It's possible it's only funny if you're into the show. It's also possible that it's just not that funny. Still, you should definitely give the show a chance. You can probably watch old episodes free at nbc.com

Mo-Town - first HayMaker '07 tournament

Right now I'm feeling super psyched to play this weekend at mo-town throwdown in detroit. If anybody wants to follow along to see how we do:
http://upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=20&id=3954
I guarantee it won't update during the weekend, and quite possibly won't for a while afterwards either, but eventually it'll show how we did. The seedings are changed from what they started as (originally DingWop was ahead of us, which is absurd). Originally we were playing 5 games instead of just 4 with a by. Which is probably good since we're only bringing 18 guys out of 26, and yet even as I type that it sounds pretty weak. Two years ago playing with HogButcher I think we averaged 10 guys at a tournament. Sure, the team sucked, but it was alot tougher. I'm still not used to playing on big teams, I still want to be in every point. And yet, I think that's good too. I hope everybody on our team this year wants to be in every point, I hope they want it as bad as I do. And for the most part, I think everybody does. I really do think we ended up with a good group of guys, and for as much fun as I know this season is gonna be, I think that we'll do pretty damn well for ourselves too. First test is this weekend.

I'm probably gonna regret not being in town this weekend though, and having time to move in to the new place. As it stands I'm gonna be rushing around trying to get a LOT of stuff packed up and moved on monday and tuesday after work. Hey, if anybody wants to help out please gimme a call.

Moving in

For anyone who hasn't heard, I'll be moving to the north side soon. The move is going to save me a good bit of money (assuming I get a job some time before I quit my current one Aug 31), so naturally, I'm looking for a way to blow it all. There's been serious talk of a trip to see the Cubs play the DiamondBacks in Arizona Aug. 25-27. If anyone's interested, lemme know.

The Cubbies!

It's a weird thing to feel so happy about being 3.5 back, but from where we came, this is a great place to be. It's gonna be a dogfight the rest of the season, but we're in striking distance of the division lead, and even better off in the wild card race. I have just a few comments about some of the recent news from the cubs.

Kerry Wood - It's so nice not to need him anymore, or even be counting on him. Still, you have to hope he can get back and pitch again, even if it's not this season. Not only was he a tremendous talent, but he's a good guy too. True, he likes to party maybe a bit too much, but I'm not really in a position to criticize somebody for that. I've been very encouraged by the news from him lately, and how awesome would it be if we could get somebody to replace Eyre or Ohman without going outside the organization?

Cesar Izturis - It's good he's getting a chance to play every day now, at this stage in what has been a good career, he doesn't deserve to be sitting on the bench. And the truth is, if he had been getting regular time he probably would have been hitting better. (Case in point, JJ) Still, with Theriot and Fontenot as good as they've been, there's no way you can keep Izturis on the roster instead of another arm in the bullpen. Unfortunately, due to the injury to Daryle Ward, now Cedeno is likely to be recalled. This is probably gonna lead to more DeRosa playing in the outfield or at first base, which is fine. But I'd have preferred to see Murtono called up. None of this would have been an issue if they hadn't dealt Izturis, but after that grundle-lovin he gave Ramirez on national TV, it's probably best that he and the team parted ways.

Cliff Floyd - You're not a young guy anymore, you can't go diving all over the outfield. And when some skinny ass dude is standing in the middle of first base, don't hurt yourself trying to avoid him, just clear the way with your 250 pound frame. You're too good of a hitter to keep putting yourself on the bench for short stretches with avoidable injuries.

Derrek Lee - Please come back hot from your supension. It's been a great July and I'm not used to losing two games in a row anymore.

Ken Griffey Jr. - I'm incredibly skeptical that a deal would happen where he would come to the cubs. That said, it's about the only deal I would like to see involving another bat added to the lineup. Please, Jim Hendry, don't go after Adam Dunn. Between Sori and Ramirez, we don't need more free swinging strike-out artists.

Heroes

There are so few true heroes in today's world....
Actually that's not true, and the word hero gets thrown around so much that it's lost much of it's meaning.
Nonetheless, I came across this article today:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07172007/gossip/pagesix/pagesix.htm

You should read the article before you keep reading, wouldn't want to spoil anything for you :)


I don't know how many people remember when Phil Hartman was shot and killed by his wife back in the late '90s. I happened to be a pretty big Hartman fan, and I remember how sad and shocked I was by his death. He was one of those guys where you said "Someone shot him? Who the hell would want to hurt him?" Still, for one reason or another I had never heard about the Andy Dick connection before. Now I already hated Andy Dick for a hundred other things (he's Gilbert Godfried without the talent, and with more cocaine and face-licking), but now he's creeping towards the top ten people I most hate.* So when I heard that Jon Lovitz, who is a fantastic comedian and actor, had kicked the living crap out of him I was thrilled. But after reading the above article, it's not just a sense of schadenfreude I feel, but I get a genuine sense that someone who severely needed an ass-kicking has finally received it. Hopefully this is just the start of a whole host of people kicking the crap out of Andy Dick. Maybe Tim Meadows, Will Farrell, or Dave Foley can step up to the plate next.

For repeatedly slamming Andy Dick's face into a bar, Jon Lovitz is my hero of the week.



*It's too late to try to come up with a top ten list right now, but maybe in the future. An important note though, Dennis Miller, who is definitely on the list, is singing "take me out to the ballgame" at Wrigley this Saturday. I'm looking into buying tickets under the press box so that I can go and boo him (and also catch a cubs game), so if anyone is interested, let me know.

Caveats

1) I overuse commas, all the time, so much so that 9 out of 10 sentences I write would drive an english teacher mad, especially my rhet teacher from college, so don't bring it up, I won't change, no matter what,
2) I don't write in a stream-of-conciousness way, I just have the attention span of a goldfish. Everything I write weaves in and out of the realm of having a point to it because that's the way my brain is.
3) If this is boring, shouldn't you be working anyways?

You are not special

I don’t know how many people have seen the “Little Deviants” commercials for the Toyota Scion, but they aggravate the living crap out of me. For those of you who haven’t seen it, little demons run around a city driving scions and decapitating “sheeple”, whose crime is apparently conformity by way of not buying a customizable scion. Let’s set aside the insulting nature of referring to people who think the scion is an ugly piece of crap, and the advocating of cutting their heads off, to focus on the issue of why this dumbass ad campaign is even being run.

Advertisers know that our generation is insanely self-centered, and most of their “generation-y” focused advertising is all about exploiting that. A side effect of being incredibly self-centered is the belief that you’re more important than everybody else, reinforced by all of our parents, educators, telletubbies telling us that we’re special for our entire childhoods. It sounded like a great idea, to boost all of our self-esteems, but it mostly contributed to our ability to justify acting like inconsiderate jerks.

When you’re more important than everyone else, you’re free to treat them however you’d like. Zoom around people in traffic on the shoulder, cut in front of people in line, toss garbage wherever the hell you feel like. It’s all justified because you’re special, who the hell are those other people anyways. Of course if anyone else does these things, it’s because they’re raging assholes. (If you want to know more about this kind of justification look up “fundamental attribution error”)

Ok, that was a bit of a different tangent, but it’s related to the problem. People in our generation feel this driving need to be better than other people. How could we possibly be special if we’re not better than others? Everyone has their own personal ways of feeling special, some are better at sports, some are better at school, and some buy scions. I guess the upside to owning a customizable scion is that you are instantly a daring, break-the-mold, little demon creature. At least this is the appeal of owning a scion that Toyota is trying to sell.

What the hell is the purpose of this ad campaign? As far as I can figure it appeals to people who feel that they are outside the mainstream, above the influences of popular culture, but at the same time are bitter enough about being spurned by it to go on massive campaigns of random decapitation. It’s the crowd that would have worn black trench coats, 80’s punk clothing, or listened to slayer in order to be non-conformist, but wanted something a little trendier. The irony is that Toyota is advertising a trend of non-conformity, but they’re certainly not alone in that regard. What they are alone in is making a commercial where they glorify DECAPITATING PEOPLE WHO DON’T OWN SCIONS. It’s not the violence that bothers me, it’s the utter idiocy of insulting every consumer who doesn’t buy a scion. But it’s ok, because Toyota thinks you’re too stupid to connect the scion insult to any of their other products (the name Toyota appears nowhere in the commercial).

Stupid as this ad is though, it works, and that what pisses me off the most. There are people out there who drive around in their damned scions looking down at other “sheeple” for their helpless conformity. And there are plenty of other people looking down on others for whatever product, viewpoint, and interest they aren’t a part of. God I really want to rant about so many other things that this ties into; selfish capitalism, more about attribution error, corporate personhood, advertising excess. But if this goes on too much longer it’ll just get more and more incoherent as my short attention span wanes, and there’s a good chance you’ve gotten to the point where your attention span is spent reading this, if you’ve even gotten this far. Besides, if I want to start ranting regularly I’ll need to leave some topics for later.

First Post!

It's the first attempt at a blog post, so I'll start it light with something I overheard today:
TA - "I get a rash sometimes when I drink, but only with hard liquor, never with wine"
Student - "Well, wine is fermented, but hard liquor is distilled, so maybe it has something to do with that."

Seriously, if you don't understand alcohol, you shouldn't be allowed to drink it. I'm all for lowering the drinking age to 18 if it's accompanied by an alcohol competency test. Part of the test would be getting hammered with the administrator of the test (like the driving test at the dmv), and then you are driven to a random place 2 miles from home and have to get back by dawn.