Zazoo, Yaw Wicked Retahded. subtitled: Lost Talent

I saw yesterday that Nomar Garciaparra signed a one year deal with the Oakland A's a couple days ago.

Circa 1996 there was a lot of talk about the new generation of shortstops who would change the game of baseball. Leading this charge was the trio of talented and presumably beautiful young players, Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Nomar Garciaparra. Until that point, shortstop was not a position you expected to get much from on the offensive side of the ball. Guys like Ozzie Smith and Omar Vizquel were considered as good as you could get at that position. Cal Ripken, Jr. had a bit of power, but was objectively limited in both defense and offense relative to what were considered superstars of the game (I'm not trying to front on Cal, he was definitely in the 95th percentile).

Anyway, these guys were gonna change the game. A-Rod was the standout and Jeter was the leader, but the guy who I honestly thought was gonna be the most valuable of the three was Nomar. I love Derek Jeter, but he was never on the same level as these other two gies from a pure talent standpoint. What Jeter brought and still brings to the table is consistency (Jeebus, look at Jeter's 1999 season. I must have taken that one for granted). I thought that Nomar was the best defensive shortstop and the best pure hitter among the three of them.

In 1999 and 2000 Nomar really started to hit his stride. He hit .357 and .372 respectively. For a while in 2000 it looked like he might hit .400. And his OPS in those years was 1.022 and 1.033 respectively. As I understand, an OPS over 1.000 is pretty good (you'll have to ask Open Bar about these new metrics. He's the one who loves Nate Silver). Then in 2001 he had a freak injury. As it turns out, he was never the same again. He was in Boston in 2002 and 2003, and he played 156 games each year, but he just wasn't the same. At the time Boston traded him in 2004, he was hitting .321, but I guess he wasn't really tearing it up in other areas.

The point is that he, in my opinion, had the potential to really be a legendary type of player. A-Rod (steroids aside) and Jeter I think are sure fire hall of famers. Nomar is definitely not. He's turned into a journeyman and a piece of the puzzle, rather than a lynchpin for a franchise.

We'll put him on the list with Grant Hill, Bill Walton, Larry Johnson and Anfernee Hardaway of gies who would have been legendary but for nagging and unusual injuries. Side note: as I understand, Bill Walton, in the one season he was healthy, dominated the league and led the Trailblazers to a championship nearly single handedly. He was also the guy who allowed UCLA to continue its dominance in the 1970s under John Wooden. On a different list is gies like Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry who would have been hall of famers except that they self destructed. Bill Walton impression: "It's a shame that Nomar had that freak wrist injury. He was never the same after that. He'll go down in history as the guy with the most talent who got a bad break and had it taken away from him along with guys like Grant Hill, Anfernee Hardaway, Larry Johnson, Demar Bonnemere, Scooter Baskin, and myself."

On a related note: this isn't worth a whole nother post, but look at how far Dontrelle Willis has fallen. I'm not expert, but this particular case was very predictable. His motion was a disaster from the start and now that he's lost control of his pitches, his mechanics seem to be on the verge of irrecoverable.

Old School Album of the Day: August and Everything After

The Counting Crows are a good band. I like a lot of their stuff, including many of the things they put out after their first album (particularly their second album), but I'm gonna focus now on this album, which is probably (definitely) their best. August and Everything After is just a really beautiful record. Can you still call albums "records"? For that matter, can you still call them "albums"? I'm missing my point. The point is that I wanted to highlight this album because I'm not sure if it really got much play back in the day, and it's definitely worth getting if you don't have it.

This album for me just packs a huge emotional punch. The songs are really catchy and the lyrics are really deep. It's an interesting combination. You get hooked in by the tune, but then you start thinking about the lyrics and it hits you all over again. It's a bit like hearing the album again for the first time once you start to listen to the lyrics.

I'm not really sure where to go from here. I could definitely talk about each song individually and why I like it, but that seems unnecessary. All of us know (and love?) Mr. Jones and 'Round Here. Imagine a whole album of songs as catchy as Mr. Jones, and then also really meaningful in retrospect. I particularly like "Sullivan Street" and "A Murder of One".

The one song I do want to talk about specifically is "Anna Begins". It's easily one of my favorite songs ever. It never gets old. I could listen to it over and over again for the remainder of eternity. Beautiful song, intriguing lyrics (should be a good game). If you don't know this song, then download it today.

Funny Thing About Baseball

Studying baseball statistics is really an interesting practice. I find it to be pretty interesting that the sport that relies most heavily on statistics, and the one in which peoples' statistics are used to judge them most heavily is also the sport where the statistics between players, teams, and eras are the least comparable from an objective standpoint.

Let's take the largest, and probably least relevant, issue, steroids. Assuming a lot of gies were taking steroids circa 1990 through 2004 and were not taking them much outside of this window, then those stats are, in one way or another, skewed. How much they are skewed is really beyond the scope of this post. It also seems like something that would be really hard to determine, certainly from my perspective, but just aknowledging that they are skewed is enough.

The more important issue here is really the arbitrary nature of the baseball field. Can you imagine in the NBA if you went to Boston to play the Celtics and whenever you went there the basket was 9 ft. high istead of 10? And going into Cleveland the court was an extra 20 feet longer. And in Phoenix the 3 point line was 5 feet farther back. All of those are ludicrous notions, but in baseball they are completely acceptable. Guys who call themselves "purists" will tell you that's what adds to the charm of the game. I'm somewhat surprised that no one makes a bigger deal of this to be honest with you.

If Joe DiMaggio didn't play in Yankee stadium with a 500+ ft. left-center field, he would have had conceivably hundreds of more home runs. If Babe Ruth didn't play in Yankee Stadium with a 300 ft. right field porch, he would have certainly had fewer home runs. Nearly every stadium built since Camden Yards has shrunk the dimensions of the field it replaced, and made it far easier to hit home runs. There are some exceptions, PetCo Park in San Diego and the new CitiField come to mind, but for the msot part fields are shrinking. Would Ryan Howard be nearly as valuable a player in any other stadium? Ryan Howard must hit more opposite field home runs than any other player in baseball. He's got tremendous power to the opposite field, but it doesn't hurt that they play their home games on the Clubhouse Field (Clearly the Middle Field would be more conducive for MLB games).

Home runs is the easiest statistic to point to relative to the arbitrary nature of each field, but is certainly not the only statistic that's affected by it. Smaller fields mean fewer doubles and triples. Different size fields mean different defensive alignments, and what I'm sure are significant differences in fielding percentages and assists, put outs, things of that nature.

The point here is that comparing gies from the days when a lot of fields were cavernous to today when fields are much smaller, and comparing guys directly who play in different home stadiums is, in many respects, and exercise in futility. No one tries to control for field size or other conditions that confound the statistics. I'm not saying they should, but then we should also not point so heavily to those statistics when we talk about baseball players.

The Personal Guarantee

I am a little surprised that in almost two years of blogging (our second anniversary is right around the corner!) there is virtually no mention of The Personal Guarantee. The Personal Guarantee (capitalized and italicized here for no particular reason, other than to add some gravitas) is a concept that we came up with probably more than 15 years ago. And by "we" I mean the four contributors to this blog plus winit and Diesel. And I think gettobob might have been in on The Personal Guarantee as well. (btw - gettobob - are you out there? You should be reading and commenting on this blog way more often. Can someone look into this?)

The Personal Guarantee, as the name implies, was and is invoked when the guarantor wants to communicate total certainty to the rest of the group.

Example:

Side Bar (to Open Bar): Dude - can you pick me up at the airport next Tuesday? I am totally stuck for a ride.

Open Bar: Sure, no problem.

Side Bar: Listen - you can't forget, ok? I have to be in court on Tuesday afternoon, so I need you to be there on time to get me back to the city. And you are a degenerate lowlife who I can't depend on for anything. I don't even like you that much, let alone trust you. And the only reason I am even asking you is because every car service in the tri-state area is booked that day, and every other friend we have has turned me down.

Open Bar: Dude, I personally guarantee I will pick you up at the airport on Tuesday, and I will be on time.

Side Bar: Oh. Great, thanks.

That's the beauty of The Personal Guarantee. Once issued, it leaves absolutely no doubt whatsoever. And, to maintain its seriousness, it is only used in situations where it is warranted ("I personally guarantee that I will get you a beer when I come back from the kitchen," would be considered a violation of the sanctity and significance of The Personal Guarantee). Because the thing is, once you issue your own personal guarantee, you have to follow through on it.

In the history of The Personal Guarantee there has only been, to my knowledge, one violation. *Someone else can fill in the details here if they can remember them.* I know that Diesel personally guaranteed something, it didn't come to pass, and there was a lengthy trial in my driveway, resulting in his guarantee privileges being revoked for some period of time. He may still be on probation.

The Personal Guarantee has been a useful device for settling debate, and giving reliable assurances on important and quasi-important matters. But it has only stood the test of time because we have all honored the rule that it be used sparingly. When The Personal Guarantee is thrown down, a hush falls over the room, and people take notice (well, we do anyway). Even amidst our many years of drinking and general debauchery, there have been few - if any - instances of casual use of The Personal Guarantee. Its sanctity has been respected by all.

Until today.


Chuck - locked in a bitter dispute with Open Bar regarding the order in which tags appear on the left side of your screen (alpha or numeric, with Chuck advocating forcefully for the latter) - has issued invoked The Personal Guarantee that his name will always appear at the top of the list. In other words, he will post with enough frequency, and include his tag in a sufficient number of posts so as to ensure that no tag has a higher number associated with it than his own.

As I commented earlier, this is an irresponsible use of The Personal Guarantee. Setting aside the obvious risk that Open Bar can just put up like 50 posts some night when you are in bed (he stays up late, you know), take a screen shot, and invalidate your guarantee solely as a matter of spite (and no, he is not above that), there is the distinct possibility that you will have other things to do, and someone will occasionally go in front of you.

I accept the possibility that Chuck fully intended The Personal Guarantee that was issued today to be taken with the level of seriousness that I have described. Perhaps he knows what he has promised, and will stand by it. But this is a dangerous game.

And that is why The Personal Guarantee ought not be used for a promise of such extended duration, nor on such an insignificant matter. It flies in the face of everything that The Personal Guarantee was meant to - and, to this day, does - accomplish. For shame.

Passive Aggression

To recap, we've been discussing the best way to sort the tags on the blog. I feel they should be sorted alphabetically, while Open Bar feels they should be sorted numerically. Anyhow, I've decided to let the whole thing go...sort of.

I decided early on in the blog that I wouldn't put my name in the tags of the posts I made. I felt like it was easy enough to find the posts that I wrote. Anyway, this is unimportant except that now things have changed, biotches.

Please to enjoy the tag list with "chuckjerry" as the number one most used tag. You're asking yourself, "ChuckJerry, did you really go through the whole archive and edit every post that you wrote by putting your name in the tag list?" The answer is yes. Now you're asking yourself, "ChuckJerry, was it worth it?" Again, undoubtedly yes.

You have my personal guarantee that my name will be on the top of that list for as long as the tags are sorted numerically. That's not a threat. I'm not suggesting that anyone change it. It's simply a statement of fact.

Dude, You Know What 31 Means?

It means we're too fucking old for you to have your birthday party start at 10pm. Doesn't anybody meet at the bar at 8 o'clock any more?

Happy birthday, homes.

A Fundamental Difference of Opinion On a Matter of Epic Importance

I have discussed this with him him in person, but I now realize that this is clearly the more appropriate forum for this debate. Open Bar and I have a fundamental disagreement on the nature of the blog. More specifically the way the tags are sorted.

Open Bar has sorted them in numerical order. Thus, the tags that are most frequently used are at the top of the list. His feeling, as he relayed it to me, and which I've undoubtedly skewed to suit my disagreement, is that it's better to see which tags are used most frequently and then you get an idea of what we blog about most often.

My feeling is that the tags whould be sorted alphabetically. I find myself sometimes with nothing to do searching through the archives of the blog and I'll want to read a particularly witty post, typically written by me, the captain of wit. Or I'll just feel like reading all the posts that have the "music" tag or some such thing. The problem is that I can't just look on the list for the "music" tag. I have to essentially read every line in order to find the tag because I don't have any idea how many posts have the "music" tag.

My feeling is that if it were alphabetical, then it would be easy to find any particular tag I was looking for. Also if they were sorted alphabetically, it would be pretty easy to find the most popular tags, given that the number of posts is right next to the tag. It's much easier to spot bigger numbers next to an alphabetical list than to spot specific tags in a numberical list. I had at one point resorted the tags alphabetically, figuring i was just a default setting and no one would notice or care, but within a couple days it had been resorted numerically.

Open Bar, I believe I'm characterizing his opinion correctly, agrees that the tags are harder to find in the numerical list, but suggests using the "ctrl-f" search feature to find a specific tag or simply the search blog feature at the top of the page. I feel this kidof defeats the purpose of the tag list, but hey, maybe I'm wrong.

Good day, sir. I said good day.

Rupert, You Poor Son Of A Bitch

I can buy the idea that the original intent of this idea was to simply mock the stimulus bill and that the guy who drew it didn't intend for it to be a thinly veiled racist statement. But how many people saw this thing before it hit the fucking paper? Because when I say that it's a "thinly veiled" statement, that's the understatement of the year. Is there no one in the editing room at the Post who was thinking about this offending people?



And I have to admit, the intent of this cartoon was originally lost on me. I had to think for a moment why someone was shooting monkeys in the street before remembering about the chimp that went crazy. For me that made it simply a racist type statement with absolutely no irony whatsoever. What bothers me most is that this just lends another forum to Al Sharpton to get up and grandstand with his bad hair weave.

Here's an apology from Rupert himself printed in the Post yesterday:

As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me.

Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.

Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you - without a doubt - that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such.

We all hold the readers of the New York Post in high regard and I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.

The notion that the Post holds its readers in high regard is pretty funny to me. And why did it take a couple of days of discussion to understand why this might offend people? And I like how the apology still mocks the legislation, thus implicitly endorsing the cartoon.

Not bad, dude, but you're no Matt

Here's a video by this guy named Ely Kim, who apparently is a Yale MFA student. I'm a sucker for this kind of random-geek-dancing thing, and this one is done very well. On Ely's Vimeo site, he explains that this is the product of "100 days, 100 songs, 100 locations, 100 dances." So if you've got a minute or so, take a look. (And definitely check the stuff below, too.)



But I feel that Ely is a bit remiss in not even mentioning his forbears. Like, for example, the number 2 most viewed video in YouTube history, Judson Laipply's "The Evolution of Dance":



Perhaps you also remember what I think is maybe the best online video ever. Keep the sound on, and prepare to feel good about things. Unless, of course, a chimpanzee just gouged out your eye and bit off your mouth, nose, fingers and genitals, in which case, uh, nice job finding our site. You can use a mouse? I guess you got that going for you. (Which is nice.)

From Where the Hell Is Matt?:

The Oscars are Fucking Terrible

I am an "average" movie fan. I do not see every movie that is nominated for an Academy Award, but I do usually see all of the best picture nominees, and occasionally a handful more (even if I do not get around to seeing them all until after the Academy Awards, as this year).

This weekend, Mrs. Side Bar and I saw Slumdog Millionaire on Saturday and Doubt on Sunday. Both were excellent (side note: I have a bit of a, er, reputation, for bringing less than the most critical eye to movies. But whatever. Both of these were legitimately good movies). Slumdog was a funny and uplifting story (with very harsh realities mixed in throughout), and Doubt was simply phenomenal stage acting captured on camera (it was a play before it was a movie, which makes total sense). If you wonder why Viola Davis was nominated for an Oscar after only appearing on the screen for 12 minutes, then you haven't seen the movie yet. And Phillip Seymour Hoffman's scenes with Meryl Streep were incredibly engaging. The movie felt like it was 20 minutes long.

So having seen two of the more well-known movies of the year, and committed to seeing Milk, The Reader, and Revolutionary Road at some point in the next few months (side note: I have no interest in Frost/Nixon. Absolutely none. It is 2009. Stop it. Just get the fuck over it and move on. He was an asshole, he had some guys break into a hotel like 180 years ago, and he got caught. No more movies, no more books, no more awards. Please just stop), I sat down with some measure of interest to watch the Oscars (I am using "Oscars" and "Academy Awards" interchangeably. Ok?).

What a fucking nightmare.

I do not even know where to start. First of all, they load the show up with so many fucking montages and musical numbers that it is impossible to keep track of the six things anyone cares about: best supporting actor, best supporting actress, best director, best actor, best actress, and best picture. That is it. No one cares about cinematography, let alone best animated short. But at 9:08 p.m. eastern on a Sunday night - right smack in the middle of prime time - I am listenting to the producer of La Maison en Petits Cubes (loosely translated: "I am a French d-bag and I have little cubes in my stupid French house") talk about how much this 8-minute cartoon can change your life.

Where the fuck do you even go to watch an animated short?

I will give $50 to every reader of this blog who can prove to me that they saw La Maison en Petits Cubes before last night. And I am sure you were all relieved to see that Smile Pinki beat out The Conscience of Nhem En for Documentary Short Subject. We were actually going to go see that one, but it has been sold out for the past few weeks. Je. Sus. Christ.

But the stupid awards are not even the worst part. The show just drags on and on and on. Finally, at like five minutes to eleven, when I am sure they will get to the stuff I care about, the announcer says, very dramatically, "coming up . . . a tribute to Jerry Lewis!" Are you fucking kidding me? That was enough for me, so I shut it off and went to bed, catching the last hour this morning on DVR.

After Queen Latifah (who can freaking sing, by the way) did a five-minute montage to all the dead people, they finally got to the actual awards. But by then they were more than 30 minutes behind schedule, and they have to rush through everything. So the stuff you have been waiting hours to see is compressed and hurried, all because the guy who won for best costume design hogged the mic for fifteen minutes.

Even the length of the show pales in comparison to how impressed all of the Hollywood people are with each other. I mean, I am sure there are some actors and movie-types who do a lot of good, but for the most part these are pretty people living in a fantasy world. I vascillate between laughing my ass off and screaming my head off when one of these people starts talking about the "gifts" that they bring to our world, and how "transcendant" their art can be. Shut up. Let's keep our eye on the ball here, ok folks? Teachers, nurses and guys who work three jobs to keep their kids in a good school are worthy of a bit more praise than Anne Fucking Hathaway.

And I am not even going to bring up the fact that they all spent kajillions of dollars on dresses, and jewelry and parties and limos, etc., all while we are in the midst of a depression (yep, that's right). I do think there should have been a more candid acknowledgment of the financial crisis, and the canyon of difference between the haves and have-nots in our country, but I am not one of these people who thinks that you have to just cancel every public event because of the economy. So I will not talk about the fact there were probably tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars spent last night in connection with the Academy Awards. Money that no doubt could have been put to better use. Nope, not bringing it up.

I guess I should have learned my lesson by now, but I can't get over it. Because they should have learned their lesson by now, too. The Oscars should start at 9 and end at 11. Ten-minute intro by the host (the musical number that Hugh Jackman did was kind of funny), 30 minutes of miscellaneous stupid awards and other bs (with commercials, that gets you to the halfway point). And then spend an hour on the shit people care about. And then be done with it.

I can't be the only one who feels this way.