| April 2003 Archives
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April 30 Permalink
Baseball and Rome should not be in the same sentence unless we're talking about this Rome or the jerk with the goatee.
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The Blue Jays are considering changing their name to just the "Jays" and wearing more black. Great, another team like, the Reds, the Mets, and the Royals that look stupid with that color. And they're not like the Devil Rays who should have started as just Rays to begin with.
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Miranda went to the doctor today and the pediatrician believes she has a hyperextended left knee, just like Joe Smith
April 29 Permalink
Edited another episode of Silver Screen Test. All that's left are character graphics. I really screwed up the ending of one show during the taping where I tripped my tongue over simply telling the viewers they can write or go to the web to be a contestant. I put in the audio of a totally different show over that flub and the video of the three contestants. Such is the magic of editing.
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Watched the CSI episode "A Night at the Movies". A dentist is found dead in a repertory moviehouse when his cellphone won't stop ringing. The calls to the phone are traced to a patient who filed a sexual harrassment suit against him.
Later, she's found dead of an apparent suicide, but Gil doesn't believe it at all. He finds the moviehouse's schedule in the toilet and finds written on it the parking space number of a dancehall slimebucket. This guy had a sexual harrassment suit filed on him by one of his dancers.
Then it all comes together as a rehash of Strangers on a Train. Two women with sexual harassment problems decide to kill their harassers instead of the expense of a lawsuit. The dancer kills the dentist, but the patient won't go through with her end of the bargain, so she gets killed. The dancer is careful, using gloves all the way, but is betrayed by her special lotion concoction she uses to keep her legs in shape.
In the other plot, a teen-aged boy is found dead in a warehouse riddled with 109 bulletholes. The trajectories trace back to a single vertical line in the middle of the room.
Five boys concocted stunts in the manner of Jackass. One was "Speedway Surfing," which involved balancing on the horizontal surface of a motor vehicle moving at high speed. Another called for standing in the way of someone driving a golf ball at close range. The dead kid brainstormed "Bamboo Russian Roulette". A handgun spirals down a bamboo pole that is in its trigger guard, firing all the way.
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Watched the CSI: Miami episode "Grave Young Men". An ex-con out on parole that Horatio helped put away asks him to find his missing son. Turns out the kid killed another boy for refusing to participate in a Columbine-style assault. Horatio heroically wrestles the kid, of course dressed in a long black coat.
In the other plot, Speedle appears to get involved with a woman who probably killed the man found dead in her apartment. Rena Sofer, supposedly a show killer, though not in the Alison LaPlaca class, plays the all-too-transparent femme fetale.
Horatio is getting creepy, coming on to his brother's widow.
April 28 Permalink
It's Dis Creed Day. First of all, Creed got seven blackballs in Craig Barker's 128 Band Tournament of Champions. Each nominator had 46 1-point votes, 2 2-point "Powerball" votes and 2 negative one-point "Blackball" votes. So, many people felt it necessary to single out Creed for exclusion.
Now from Tricia Southard:
Tricia: So who did you use your blackballs [Craig's upcoming "best band of all time" poll] on?
Tim : Creed. There was never a doubt in my mind about that one. The difference between Christ and Scott Stapp is that Christ never pretended to be Scott Stapp.
Andrew: Hmm…maybe they should treat Scott Stapp like he really was Jesus. Heh, heh.
Justin: But what if Scott Stapp is actually Christ resurrected, and figured rock music is the best way to send his message to the masses?
Edmund: God owes us an apology.
Tim: You know what I'd like to see? I wouldn't mind seeing the resurrected Christ come back, hire a decent lawyer, and start filing libel suits. Jesus vs. Falwell and such.
Then there's this: Rock fans sue US band Creed. So they wanna sue over the three hours of their life they want back as opposed to the 6000 hours they've wasted being a fan in the first place?
April 27 Permalink
It was supposed to be a day I took it easy. Whitlock took Miranda to sing with the cherub choir this morning. Then they went to Mary's mother's house.
I was doing bills, washing clothes and cutting the grass. Then I decided to go pick up a few things. Not a half mile from home, I heard a funny rhythmic sound frequently associated with flat tires. I stopped, looked back, and found a flat tire. I considered driving the mile to Pep Boys, but just decided to go home.
I called AAA and the tow truck took 2 hours and 45 minutes to arrive, which gave me more time to do bills. I considered going to Just Tires, my favorites tire place, but they close at 4 pm on Sundays and the tow truck left at 3:45. Instead I went to Pep Boys who finished the job in an hour.
While waiting, I did what you're not supposed to do in a strip mall - wander about the stores. I went into Modell's, Michael's, Staples and Target. I did a quick Google search and didn't find much on the strip mall vs. enclosed mall debate. While enclosed malls are more expensive, they create a captive audience. Once you've shopped at one place, you are enticed to spend your money elsewhere in the mall. In a strip mall, you're more likely to get what you need and go. The most recent enclosed mall in Upper Montgomery County is Lakeforest in Gaithersburg which was built in 1979.
After I got home, Miranda played in our next-door-neighbor Stephanie's new swing set. Whitlock planted Lily-of-the-Valley from her mother's house.
April 26 Permalink
Rough day. It started last night when Wendell Wagner, bringing home world-famous media fan Martin Morse Wooster, got a flat tire outside our house. Wendell wanted to fix it himself, but I talked him into calling AAA and waiting in our house, instead of trying to put on the donut spare in the cold and damp. The tow truck took more than an hour, but the three of us sat in my darkened living room, talking and waiting. They left about 1:30.
Then this morning at about 5:30, Mary's mother called. She was in Suburban Hospital for low blood pressure. She needed Mary to go to her house and pay the cleaning people. She's fine and Mary brought her home after taking care of the cleaning people.
The rest of the day we just spent catching up on our sleep. I watched or slept through three soccer games and two baseball games.
April 25 Permalink
Hosted the Knossos meeting. The book was Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. I didn't finish the book, but I noted that when Gulliver was adbucted by a Brobdingnagian monkey, and carried to the top of a building, it reminded me of King Kong.
April 24 Permalink
Took a look at the Expos and Orioles 2002 draft:
Expos:
DC Colleges-2
Maryland Colleges-2
Maryland Junior Colleges-1
Northern Virginia High Schools-4
DC High Schools-1
Maryland High Schools-0
Local total-10
Orioles:
DC Colleges-0
Maryland Colleges-1
Maryland Junior Colleges-1
Northern Virginia High Schools-0
DC High Schools-0
Maryland High Schools-1
Local total-3
So that's Minaya's strategy? Sign with us so the home folks can watch you play?
April 23 Permalink
Rick Santorum is on the hot seat for this comment:"And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery."
But I think he digs himself into a deeper hole with this:
Santorum:That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality --
AP: I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog" with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out.
Here's the full interview on WCAU-TV.
April 22 Permalink
Watched the Enterprise episode "Judgment". Rehashing a portion of Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country, Archer is subject to a Klingon trial and sentenced to the dilithium mines at Rura Penthe before a tensionless rescue. At the very least, Rick Berman and Brannon Braga are not credited with the story or the screenplay.
J.G. Hertzler, General Martok from Deep Space Nine, plays Kolos, Archer's defense attorney. John Vickery, Neroon from Babylon 5, plays the prosecutor. Kolos tells us that Klingons are not all warriors,"Now all young people want to do is take up weapons as soon as they can hold them. They're told there's honor in victory -- any victory. But what honor is there in victory over a weaker opponent?"
Archer got in trouble for helping refugees the Klingons branded as rebels. He escaped, merely disabling a ship captained by someone we assume is a member of the Duras family. However, they never bothered to show exactly how Archer was turned over to the Klingons. What were the diplomatic maneuvers? Is he still in trouble with Star Fleet and the High Command? Just thank goodness the Bermaga machine didn't get its grubby fingerprints on this one and we got to see some fun acting.
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Watched the Twilight Zone episode "Another Life". Wood Harris plays a rapper named Marvin Gardens who gets visions of being interrogated by the police for a cop killing and being called Dwayne. Like Buffy in the mental institution, we find the police station is the real world and the rapper life he created to cope.
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The other episode was called "Rewind". Eddie Kaye Thomas plays a gambler who gives three bucks to a street person and gets a magical tape recorder in return. It rewinds time back up to five minutes. He makes a killing playing poker and vows to "beat the house," the owner of the casino. Turns out the owner has a rewind device of his own.
April 21 Permalink
Took off a little early to pick up Miranda from school. This day was originally a holiday, but added because of the days cancelled due to snow. Unfortunately, the day care center never adjusted their calendar, so they were closed. Miranda read Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Babe Ruth Baseball.
April 20 Permalink
Cleared the last of the leaves, then dropped some grass seed down. Miranda enjoyed it so much, she spread some herself. Then we had Easter dinner at my parents house - Chinese takeout.
April 19 Permalink
Watched the CSI episode "Precious Metal". A couple of ATVers turns into the gratuitous blonde hair falling out of helmet shot. The airheads find a barrel with a body inside turning to soap.
The body belongs to a former tank driver who has turned to building those radio controlled robots you find on Battlebots, Robot Wars and Junkyard Wars. I try to explain to Whitlock the fascination of violence with no humans getting hurt.
The plot centers around a warehouse that serves as arena and workshop for the builders. A bitchy bimbo named Ginger owns the property and serves as den mother. The victim crushed his opponents one night with much glee, leading to a room full of pissed-off suspects. The perpetrator switched transmitters and convinced the victim's partner that he did it.
With the dwarf and robot builder subcultures profiled on recent CSIs, will one of their writers turn up at Game Show Congress and Viva TRASH Vegas? Will we see some plot where a TRASH player with skills, but no class get his final buzzer on a booby-trapped Judge? Maybe one of them could have a gambling problem.
In the other plot, a man's body is found but not investigated for 10 days because of bureaucratic error. The teary wife has been bugging the police the entire time to no avail until now. The murder weapon appears to be a very bad attempt at primitive fetish sculpture.
An empty box leads to suspicion that a coin collection was specifically stolen and we learn Greg knows quite a bit about the hobby. He helps bust the fence who did the murder. Seems the fence found out the couple would be out of town and burgled the coins, but was interrupted by the husband.
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Went on to the Angel episode "Inside Out". When last we saw this show, they'd finally caught on that Cordelia was evil. Then Connor comes in and rescues her.
Angel captures Skippy the demon guard. Does Skippy have a gambling problem? They bind Skippy to the lobby of the hotel to interrogate him. Skippy infodumps that impossible manipulations served to put evil in the place where it wants to be. Angel has to kill Cordelia before whatever's growing inside can get out.
Meanwhile, Connor captures a virgin, about to be killed by a vampire. Cordelia needs her blood for the labor-inducement ritual. Darla appears, acting like the First and looking like Marg Helgenberger, trying to talk Connor out of killing the girl. Connor's mom is there a while before Cordelia comes in to figure out what's going on. To me, this seemed like that cliche where the mom pleads with the son,"Don't marry that tramp!" Connor kills the girl anyway. He must rub the fresh blood on Cordelia's abdomen. Angel turns up and much fighting ensues.
Back at the hotel, an earthquake starts which frees Skippy. Of course, nothing Fred, Gunn or Wesley can do can harm him until Wesley finds a little tiny hole through which he fires a bullet.
A lot of light comes out of Cordelia, replaced by Zoe from Firefly. Angel and Connor are mesmerized.
April 18 Permalink
Seems MLB wants to enforce "ticket discipline" which means kicking somebody out of a section if they don't have the right ticket. Let me get this straight, they want to harass people in the most expensive seats that are unoccupied for one of the following reasons: They're too expensive and can't be sold, or the people who bought the tickets care so much about the team, they didn't bother to show up. You want to kick out people who have spent their time and money to come to the game and leave empty those seats most likely to appear on television, leaving the impression that no one comes to the games. This is favored over big scary security guys or limiting alcohol sales. Does this policy have less to do with security or more to do with preserving the "premium value" of those seats? If they're not causing any trouble, leave 'em alone.
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Thanks to Dave Barry, This article says the participants found the experience uncomfortable. I understand. It's pretty noisy, but I know there must be someone out there who would probably be turned on by it.
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Due to some confusion Wendell turned up. He showed off his Salman Rushdie-autographed books.
April 17 Permalink
On Baseball Musings, David Pinto says this:
When I was a regular at Fenway in the 1980's, they had a very good solution to security. They hired football players from the local colleges as bouncers. They were dressed in navy blue blazers and wore ties so they looked professional and authoritative. If someone was causing trouble in the stands, you could seek one of these men out and they would come talk to the offending person, and if needed escort them out of the park. If some fan ran onto the field, they would chase them down (and yes, they were good runners), tackle them, and lead them to the hoosegow. It was a win for everyone involved. The players had a summer job that gave them time to practice, they got to hang out at Fenway, and they worked cheap for the Red Sox. And the games were more enjoyable with them around. Someone should revive this practice.
Pinto's reader Craig Damon responded with the following:
Just a slight correction: At least when we used to have our season
tickets (88-94), Fenway hired the BC hockey team. They were even better
than football players if something really got started and they could
pin someone against the wall in nothing flat. But college hockey
players have also learned to control their temper in the midst of
violence.
That sounds great. The Blackhawks aren't busy, heck, neither are the Red Wings, says the Capitals supporter tempting fate.
The BBC has some on-field tips from Mia Hamm: Footy's Most Famous Female. Women's soccer is still thought of as a freakshow there, but then the women's partipation level is about 21 times higher in the U.S. I remember seeing an article in FourFourTwo contrasting the English and USA U-17 girls teams. Back in school, the English girls were outcasts framed by the tomboy-lesbian stereotype. The American girls were the cool ones back home. Of course U.S. media can also turn Mia, Brandi Chastain and Heather Mitts into sex symbols.
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