Cardinals and Yankees news, sponsorship bucks, a dubious diversity mark, a class action against MLB, spiked Mountain Dew, lemonade out of lemons, slavery is bad, but! and . . . just one more thing
If Maddux is staying in the organization it's conceivable that he'll continue to be the one coordinating the pitching development throughout the system I guess. Maybe that's his new full time job.
It’s early days yet, but Brent Strom leaving the Astros last year was seen as a big question mark, but so far it seems like the philosophy he inculcated organizationally persists. So hopefully that’s the case in Stl
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Which could apply to most of the above.
Worth noting that one reason Columbo was so good is that we weren't getting 22 episodes a season, but a maximum of eight (and that only happened twice). As while I am finding that watching/rewatching old stuff with 22 and 26 and even 39 episode seasons is satisfying in that "I want more, and there is more!" way, we are probably better off with shorter seasons, though given the shape of some shows, we still get stuck with filler. My own qualm about "Poker Face" is that while Rian Johnson is clearly a capable writer and director, "Knives Out" left me a bit cold. I honestly could not tell if Johnson really loves old school mysteries or loves spoofing them (albeit without any malice). As I think I will still have Peacock at a discount in January, I will give this one a try, but I am not expecting greatness.
Hard disagree about "Knives Out." I loved it. And I've heard "Glass Onion" is great, too. "Brick," "The Last Jedi," several episodes of "Breaking Bad": I'm down with just about whatever Rian Johnson does.
There is neither reason nor excuse for a Columbo reboot. Without Peter Falk, it will suck. It just will. It reminds me of what a total pile of coprolite the Disney remake of "Mighty Joe Young" was. You can't remake a perfect movie. Neither can you insinuate Mark Ruffalo into the existential space vacated by Peter Falk.
Loved it, love the fact that there's finally a sequel coming, and really wish the pandemic hadn't happened so that Johnson might've legit explored the idea floated by a fan (from a now-protected Twitter account) that each entry in a Knives Out franchise have Daniel Craig sporting a different accent, with no reason given for the difference.
Brick was a really good directorial debut, and was the first time I realized Joseph Gordon-Levitt was really talented. Knives Out hit all of the right notes for me--just an amazingly fun movie.
The trailer looks great, but the gimmick’s been done before. Or am I the only one who remembers a show on Fox six or so years ago starring Tim Roth as a guy who could tell when people were lying? It wasn’t a mystery per se; closer to a police procedural. Like “Bones”, only with lies instead of, well, bones.
The gimmick could really be a problem. Indeed, the reverse gimmick in Knives Out was one of my issues with it. And the appeal of a Columbo is that he doesn't need special powers to tell when someone is lying, he just needs his brains.
I didn't get the idea from the trailer that Lyonne's character has special powers, at least in the superhero sense of the word.
Instead, it seemed to me that she was just good at picking up on a liar's tells, not unlike a world-class poker player might be, hence the title Poker Face.
All depends on the execution. If nothing else, if the people she is catching in their lies aren't worthy challenges, it can get dull fast. Again, that was the whole trick on Columbo. And when the bad guys were too obvious and it was clear Columbo was way ahead, the episode was forgettable. (Also, I am assuming this is intended to be a whodunit and not a howcatchum, but I do hope that the big name guest is not the killer every week. That was one of the biggest flaws with Elementary.)
Closest you will come to Columbo is currently available as "Vera" with the excellent Brenda Blethyn, trench coat and all. She speaks down to her suspects (referring to them as "sunshine" in a vaguely threatening way) drives a ratty old Range Rover, and it's a lot of fun.
Am I worried about repeating myself? No, but I am aware I'm repeating myself.
As long as I'm being redundant, may I just say, the best part about Judge leaving the Yankees for the Giants or somesuch will be that I will NOT have to see a lineup with Judge leading off since Boone is coming back (IF it's even Boone making that bad move, who knows these days?)
That was the exact premise of the show I was talking about, which a quick perusal of IMDB tells me was called "Lie to Me" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235099/). Tim Roth solves the weekly mystery by picking up on miniscule facial tics, pupil dilations, etc. to suss out the lies.
I'm still gonna watch. But I'm tempering my expectations. If nothing else, "Poker Face" is a better title than "Lie to Me", which is a bit too nail-on-the-head.
The issue with a lot of those shows, I think, is that the tone was a bit too self-serious. Part of what makes a good detective work is there needs to be some humor mixed in, too, both at the detective for being something of a shlup and for the criminals, who are always a bit dumber than they think
Yeah, that's my issue with a lot of the British/Australian detective shows and procedurals. A lot of serial killers and sex crimes and both cops and criminals with Heavy Fucking Backstories.
Those can be well done, but the comfort food I want is a fairly bloodless crime, perpetrated by a kinda normal person hiding a dark side and a victim who, on some level, probably had it coming. Even if the tone is mostly serious there can be a few jokes along the way and, in the end, the bad guy is simply taken away, lamenting their sloppiness or, perhaps, defiantly saying they'd do it again if they had the chance, with Tense Shootouts or Games of Wits With Deadly Stakes kept to a minimum.
For me, the master class in striking the right tone was, at least for about 20 years, the Poirot series with David Suchet. The wobbly little egg shaped man with the silly mustache who solved serious crimes that tended not to involve much blood was a great balance of all the elements needed to make a mystery both engaging and fun. Alas, the longer the series ran, the greater the temptation for the scriptwriters to get serious, leading to a well made but utterly depressing version of Murder on the Orient Express that didn't have the fun of the Albert Finney movie. And then the series ends on a total downer, though that was faithful to the book. (My mother waited a decade to see the finale, and when it finally aired on NJ PBS, she was so disappointed.)
This is the big reason I prefer Raymond Chandler to Dashiell Hammett, too. Philip Marlowe being a self-aware sad sack added a needed bit of levity to the stories
I am with you on the Knives Out. I know I am in the minority. Maybe it was hyped up too much before I saw it. I thought it was ok but not great. I do like both Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne, so I will check out this show. looks like it is right up my alley.
I liked Knives Out enough that when Glass Onion drops, I will watch it with my wife (who is a bigger fan). Given how particular I am about things - she will have to watch The Old Guard 2 and Black Panther 2 without me - this is actually a big deal.
I did not enjoy knives out. I don’t watch a lot of tv/movies anymore but I heard this was so great and twist filled (and a baseball movie). I spent the two hours or whatever to watch it. It was OK, I guess, but not great. I didn’t solve anything, but my special lady friend did mid way through.
I have no idea how it stacks up with contemporary whodunnits, because like I say, I don’t watch, but Knives out didn’t strike me as the throwback mystery that I was hyped on.
'It ain’t the National Pastime if a big segment of the nation doesn’t take part.'
--not seeing a whole lot of women out there, either. Back in the '90s I thought we'd have at least a few female pitchers, second base(wo)men, etc. in professional ball. Just as a business move, if nothing else. Is gender segregation in sports a permanent state, or will we, 50 years from now, look back on it as a silly anachronism?
Just because men in the aggregate have an advantage at most of the skills required for baseball does not mean that there are not outliers within the aggregate. If MLB actually wanted to do it, they could find women who could perform at the level necessary to compete in baseball. But that is not who runs MLB teams.
I went to a Division II school and worked at various sports games while in college, doing things like stat keeping, scoreboard operating, even occasionally announcing.
My school hosted a women's basketball tournament every year around the holidays, and the team that won during one of those years when I was doing that stuff, Glenville State out of West Virginia, was really fun to watch. I think they were one of the higher-ranked Division II teams at the time. Their star player was amazing, so quick and smooth, cut through defenses like butter and was a lights-out shooter. No one could stop her. It was a light bulb moment for me, realizing that the women's game could be every bit as entertaining as the men's game.
I would add that those who make the minors - let alone the majors - have been focusing on their skills for a decade getting in tens of thousands of repetitions. Take the outlier of all outliers, pull her away from women’s competition as a youth and best case scenario, we turn the next Sue Bird into a weak hitting backup 2B?
Disagree. There’s a reason Serena never competed against Federer, Nadal, or Djokovic. That she could easily beat 99.9% of men in the world doesn’t mean she could beat the 0.0001% on the pro tour. Same in baseball.
Aboutamoo, exactly. I have three teen daughters who all play competitive softball.
They are quite good and are more athletic than 97% of the males within 100 miles, but there are several thousand girls their same age that are better than them and tens of thousands of teen boys that are bigger stronger faster.
It has nothing to do with one one one sports. Is Serena one of the top 750 tennis players in the world? Yes, probably.
In basebal you don’t need to be the best, you just need to be good. If there were more of a pipeline for women athletes to play baseball there would be women playing professional baseball and some in the majors.
Currently, as noted, the best girls athletes in the world and thins country are funneled into soccer and basketball (and tennis and golf, but they are different skills) because there is a path to college/pros that way.
"In basebal you don’t need to be the best, you just need to be good."
That's an incredibly dismissive statement on the level of talent and dedication it takes to be a Major League ballplayer. There are literally thousands of "good" baseball players in this country who will never in a million years make it to Major League Baseball.
You make note of all the best girl athletes being funneled into soccer and basketball, but I don't see any of them in the Premier League, or even MLS, which is several levels of competitiveness lower than the Premier League, and would very dearly love the media attention that came from having a woman prove herself against the boys.
I don’t think European soccer could be touted as a bastion of gender equality.
When you have a womens league that is relatively fruitful for the players, they will go there. A’ja Wilson is not going to step onto an NBA team and dominate, but she could hold her own. It’s just not worth it.
Actually, MLS is a level of competitiveness higher than the Premier League, and is in fact the top soccer league in the world. They have been attracting the greatest superstars in the world for many years, such as David Beckham, Thierry Henry, Didier Drogba, Wayne Rooney, and several others. Those are all top-level competitors that wouldn't join MLS if it didn't have the top tier of competitors to sharpen their iron against.
MLS may have lagged behind the Premier League several years ago, but in 2014 that all changed when the MLS All-Stars destroyed Bayern Munich - the reigning FIFA Club world champion and essentially the German national team fresh off a World Cup title - 2-1 in Portland. That was the point where MLS proved it was the best league in the world.
Some will say that Bayern Munich just treated that match as an exhibition, but the Bayern head coach being super pissed after the game proved he actually wanted to win and was trying to win. That's why guys like Bastian Schweinsteiger played in that match and didn't sit out. And because Schweinsteiger saw how much more dominant MLS skills were when Landon Donovan schooled Bayern's asses, even he left the Bundesliga to join the Premier League (Manchester United) so he'd eventually have a better chance to move up the chain to MLS to sharpen his skills even further. His dream finally came true when he made the Chicago Fire roster in 2017 to reach the pinnacle of his career.
You may be right, I’m just thinking that a team like the Pirates or Reds would sell A LOT more tickets if they had a female second baseman. Road games would be huge, extra TV coverage plus forever being known as a barrier-breaking franchise a la Dodgers.
Maybe there is someone out there that could do it, but the tippy-top of the MLB talent pyramid is getting smaller and higher all the time.
I have long believed that there is a path to the majors for a woman who could master a knuckleball. If Phil Neikro could throw it in his mid-40's and get batters out, there's absolutely no reason a woman couldn't. I'm not saying it's an easy path or a likely one, just that I don't see any physical limitations in the way.
See also scrappy, good-fielding middle infielder. If David Eckstein could do it, I can't see why it's not possible that a woman could as well.
Will we see a woman hitting 60 home runs? Unlikely. Of course, not many men have done that either.
I agree this would be the likeliest path (edit: of all the exceedingly unlikely paths). But I wouldn't underestimate the physical strength it takes to throw a knuckleball, either -- getting to 70 MPH with the inherent disadvantages in the knuckleball throwing motion vis a vis other pitches is no mean feat.
Agreed. It's the most likely of the unlikely paths, but not likely at all. If it were easy to be a knuckleballer, there wouldn't be so few of them at any given time.
Oh, I'm not saying that just anyone could do it. I sure as hell couldn't. I'm just saying that there are women who can throw that hard, and that it's possible. I could see a scenario where a super-talented 12-14 year old girl could decide to really see if she could master it, just to see if it's possible.
Wow, that’s awesome news about Poker Face! We have Peacock, and I’m in. I hope someone finds a similar vehicle for Mark Ruffalo; I always enjoy his work.
If you want to really dig into what that clause in the 13th Amendment allows, explore Convict Leasing. Essentially it allows companies to pay the state for prisoners to work for the for free (or nearly free, like 65 cents/hr. There are prisons where companies have built factories on the grounds so they’d have access to that on-demand labor pool.
There was a story earlier this year from Arizona where the state was debating building a new prison even though they still have significant capacity in others. Some of the people arguing for it publicly said that they needed the prison to get the roughly free labor or it would hurt the economy.
When you put that together with the private for-profit prison industry that incentivizes the state to put more people in prison and the drug laws that were written starting in the 1970s with the express purpose (according to the Republicans who wrote them) of putting more Black and Brown people in jail, the picture just gets uglier and uglier.
So yes, we absolutely need to close that loophole in the 13th.
Thanks for pointing that out. I've read a little about it and immediately it put me in mind of the collaboration between German companies and the SS to decide where to put concentration camps so they could have access to slave labor.
I was reading an article about people in prison working a few years ago, might have been Arizona or New Mexico (definitely southwest) and one prison staff person was lamenting that a woman was getting out soon because she was such a hard worker they didn't want to lose her labor!
I'm not sure when I've wanted to punch a stranger in the face through the internet so much in my life. They were sad because they were losing a slave, not happy that she was such a hard worker she had a chance to succeed and stay out of jail in the future. 😠
If the A's owners want to continue to alienate Oakland fans, they could go with a Las Vegas casino as the sponsor.
Or better yet, the Las Vegas tourism board that runs those "What happens in Vegas" commercials. Then they could just have "Las Vegas" on their sleeves.
There is a huge difference between chain-gain style work requirements (which are "punishment for a crime") and optional opportunities for incarcerated people to work. I don't know the details of these ballot measures, but there's no reason eliminating the former should eliminate the latter. And eliminating the former is a great idea whose time came decades ago, so good for those states.
As far as the latter: no incarcerated person truly has a choice about anything. So calling them "optional" or "voluntary" or what have you is kind of per se wrong. But with that disclaimer out of the way, allowing people to do something productive or learn a skill is hugely important. Corrections officials shouldn't be allowed, in a fit of pique over losing just a bit of power, to eliminate that.
While I agree that doing work while incarcerated is good for the inmate and society and the comity of the prison, paying them $0-$1.35 an hour is a problem. Pay a living wage. Hold the money on account, draw down their restitution.
It does 3 things, 1) gives people an nest egg for release 2) gives them skills 3) prevents the prison from “in sourcing” work that should be done by people being paid a fair wage
The last point will make prisons even more expensive, which unfortunately is the only thing that may make the general voting public rethink prisons.
It’s easy to dunk on Mountain Dew, but when is the last time you actually drank some? And what of those other bright colored versions I see advertised at Taco Bell?
Since you brought it up, I feel you have an obligation to investigate, and provide answers.
Last time I purchased a Mountain Dew for myself, with the thought, "I'd like to consume a Mountain Dew! This sounds like a fine idea!" was probably 1996 or so.
My son got some rancid Mountain Dew flavor variation a year or two ago and I had a sip. It was not for me. I think it's possible, barring some sort of experiment or dare, that I'll never touch the stuff again for the rest of my life.
We believed Dew was more caffeinated that Coke or Pepsi in college in the late 80s. No idea if that is actually true but I drank a bunch of Diet Dew when I was trying to learn an entire semester's worth of accounting in one evening.
Yes, I checked that myself one day in college. As I recall Coke had about 88% of the caffeine content of Mt Dew.
Also I preferred the taste of diet Dew to diet Coke so I switched. Still drink it, still enjoy it, but instead of swigging it directly from a 2 L bottle I drink a single bottle over the course of a few hours. Then use the emptied pop bottle for refilling with water and various drink mixes all week long at work.
Diet Mountain Dew is my favorite soda, and as a grown man that fact is the shame of my life as Mountain Dew is primarily associated with rednecks and teenage gamers. I jokingly call it "liquid radiation" around my wife, yet I still drink it.
Sometimes if I have a long drive ahead of me and I need a hit of caffeine to help power me through, I'll even fill up a big cup of it at the gas station while my head hangs low and I stare at the ground as I take it up to the register, feeling the weight of all the judging eyes around the convenience store that I imagine are all laser-focused on me, the weirdo loser adult man purchasing a giant cup of Mountain Dew.
Haha ok thanks for the encouragement. I always have a dirty feeling when I get it, like I'm purchasing the equivalent of porn or something and wishing there was a way to conceal it until I am back in my car.
And to add to that, one time there was a oddly-dressed man in line in front of me at the gas station, looked like he was in his 50's and giving me vibes of Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters with that headset thing on, with this gigantic Mountain Dew mug that he just spent like 5 minutes filling up with liquid radiation. This mug had to have been like a gallon or so, I had never seen anything like it. It was basically a vat of Mountain Dew.
Anyway, as I watched him set it on the counter at the register and the clerk rang him up, I then gazed down at the big (but miniature in comparison) cup of the same stuff in my own hand, sighed, and wondered... What am I doing with my life?
I can find the 12-packs of it pretty consistently at Publix, not sure about 2-liters. Impossible to find as a fountain drink, except for the month after it was released, but at this point, I’m lucky if they even have DMD.
The replies to this thread really hammer home the median age of CoC subscribers.
I may have tried a Baja Blast at Taco Bell, but i don’t think I’ve ever willingly sought out a Dew. I suspect there’s a U shaped dip in Dew affinity for folks born after its golden era and before its turn to the gamer market.
My 18yr old son got into Columbo about 18 months ago when he said he saw memes and clips and though it looked good. He got his grandparents to get him the full box set last Christmas (which they were very happy to do since they are big Columbo fans). He had me bring the box set to him at college, he texted me this past weekend “can you bring my Columbo box set this week and do you have Peacock there is a new show coming I want to watch”. This was before I saw Keith Law retweet Rian Johnson’s tweet about the show. Great, now I got to get another streaming service that I’ll forget to cancel after watching this.
I would’ve thought that a thorough reporting on Wainwright’s return would have asked the all important question: does this mean that JD Drew will likewise return for a final season in ATL?
Nothing is exact but that trade was so close to the Smoltz for Alexander deal that I feel karmic balance has been achieved for ATL fans.
Moody, temperamental player who hadn’t quite lived up to his billing brought in to plug a hole on an aging former championship team looking for another run, a great performance driving the club to a division crown that ends up flaming out in the playoffs in part due to said rental flopping in October.
And in exchange, a young minor league arm with infinite potential who breaks through for a long career with season after season as a top ten pitcher.
The A's dumping salary and getting no one in return! Was Eddie Collins the first such victim?
Not really on point, but years ago I saw the arbitration materials for Juan Cruz right after that trade. It was the first time I saw either side use something like WPA, trying to adjust raw performance for leveraged (or lack thereof) usage.
To add to the Cardinals staff openings, it was also announced yesterday that bullpen coach Bryan Eversgerd will be “reassigned within the organization” so we’re basically down to the base coaches at this point.
I have been watching Longmire this week. I've been getting my crime-of-the-week feels from that, and wondering how I missed it when it was "on" a decade ago.
While I think that the lack of Black American players in the World Series this year is something to talk about, this years' rosters are still a whole lot less White than they were in 1950, with at least 20 Latinos among the 52 guys on the rosters.
I suspect that youth participation rates for baseball are down across the board in this country, as the expense of year-round travel teams in many sports means that kids are specializing early in different sports or just not playing at all.
If Maddux is staying in the organization it's conceivable that he'll continue to be the one coordinating the pitching development throughout the system I guess. Maybe that's his new full time job.
It’s early days yet, but Brent Strom leaving the Astros last year was seen as a big question mark, but so far it seems like the philosophy he inculcated organizationally persists. So hopefully that’s the case in Stl
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Which could apply to most of the above.
Worth noting that one reason Columbo was so good is that we weren't getting 22 episodes a season, but a maximum of eight (and that only happened twice). As while I am finding that watching/rewatching old stuff with 22 and 26 and even 39 episode seasons is satisfying in that "I want more, and there is more!" way, we are probably better off with shorter seasons, though given the shape of some shows, we still get stuck with filler. My own qualm about "Poker Face" is that while Rian Johnson is clearly a capable writer and director, "Knives Out" left me a bit cold. I honestly could not tell if Johnson really loves old school mysteries or loves spoofing them (albeit without any malice). As I think I will still have Peacock at a discount in January, I will give this one a try, but I am not expecting greatness.
Hard disagree about "Knives Out." I loved it. And I've heard "Glass Onion" is great, too. "Brick," "The Last Jedi," several episodes of "Breaking Bad": I'm down with just about whatever Rian Johnson does.
Don't forget Looper (the last time I saw a good Bruce Willis performance).
There is neither reason nor excuse for a Columbo reboot. Without Peter Falk, it will suck. It just will. It reminds me of what a total pile of coprolite the Disney remake of "Mighty Joe Young" was. You can't remake a perfect movie. Neither can you insinuate Mark Ruffalo into the existential space vacated by Peter Falk.
I second T.J. on Knives Out.
Loved it, love the fact that there's finally a sequel coming, and really wish the pandemic hadn't happened so that Johnson might've legit explored the idea floated by a fan (from a now-protected Twitter account) that each entry in a Knives Out franchise have Daniel Craig sporting a different accent, with no reason given for the difference.
Brick was a really good directorial debut, and was the first time I realized Joseph Gordon-Levitt was really talented. Knives Out hit all of the right notes for me--just an amazingly fun movie.
The trailer looks great, but the gimmick’s been done before. Or am I the only one who remembers a show on Fox six or so years ago starring Tim Roth as a guy who could tell when people were lying? It wasn’t a mystery per se; closer to a police procedural. Like “Bones”, only with lies instead of, well, bones.
The gimmick could really be a problem. Indeed, the reverse gimmick in Knives Out was one of my issues with it. And the appeal of a Columbo is that he doesn't need special powers to tell when someone is lying, he just needs his brains.
I didn't get the idea from the trailer that Lyonne's character has special powers, at least in the superhero sense of the word.
Instead, it seemed to me that she was just good at picking up on a liar's tells, not unlike a world-class poker player might be, hence the title Poker Face.
All depends on the execution. If nothing else, if the people she is catching in their lies aren't worthy challenges, it can get dull fast. Again, that was the whole trick on Columbo. And when the bad guys were too obvious and it was clear Columbo was way ahead, the episode was forgettable. (Also, I am assuming this is intended to be a whodunit and not a howcatchum, but I do hope that the big name guest is not the killer every week. That was one of the biggest flaws with Elementary.)
Yeah, I got the impression that it's more Sherlock Holmes than Wonder Woman's lasso of truth.
Closest you will come to Columbo is currently available as "Vera" with the excellent Brenda Blethyn, trench coat and all. She speaks down to her suspects (referring to them as "sunshine" in a vaguely threatening way) drives a ratty old Range Rover, and it's a lot of fun.
Am I worried about repeating myself? No, but I am aware I'm repeating myself.
As long as I'm being redundant, may I just say, the best part about Judge leaving the Yankees for the Giants or somesuch will be that I will NOT have to see a lineup with Judge leading off since Boone is coming back (IF it's even Boone making that bad move, who knows these days?)
That was the exact premise of the show I was talking about, which a quick perusal of IMDB tells me was called "Lie to Me" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235099/). Tim Roth solves the weekly mystery by picking up on miniscule facial tics, pupil dilations, etc. to suss out the lies.
I'm still gonna watch. But I'm tempering my expectations. If nothing else, "Poker Face" is a better title than "Lie to Me", which is a bit too nail-on-the-head.
The issue with a lot of those shows, I think, is that the tone was a bit too self-serious. Part of what makes a good detective work is there needs to be some humor mixed in, too, both at the detective for being something of a shlup and for the criminals, who are always a bit dumber than they think
Yeah, that's my issue with a lot of the British/Australian detective shows and procedurals. A lot of serial killers and sex crimes and both cops and criminals with Heavy Fucking Backstories.
Those can be well done, but the comfort food I want is a fairly bloodless crime, perpetrated by a kinda normal person hiding a dark side and a victim who, on some level, probably had it coming. Even if the tone is mostly serious there can be a few jokes along the way and, in the end, the bad guy is simply taken away, lamenting their sloppiness or, perhaps, defiantly saying they'd do it again if they had the chance, with Tense Shootouts or Games of Wits With Deadly Stakes kept to a minimum.
For me, the master class in striking the right tone was, at least for about 20 years, the Poirot series with David Suchet. The wobbly little egg shaped man with the silly mustache who solved serious crimes that tended not to involve much blood was a great balance of all the elements needed to make a mystery both engaging and fun. Alas, the longer the series ran, the greater the temptation for the scriptwriters to get serious, leading to a well made but utterly depressing version of Murder on the Orient Express that didn't have the fun of the Albert Finney movie. And then the series ends on a total downer, though that was faithful to the book. (My mother waited a decade to see the finale, and when it finally aired on NJ PBS, she was so disappointed.)
This is the big reason I prefer Raymond Chandler to Dashiell Hammett, too. Philip Marlowe being a self-aware sad sack added a needed bit of levity to the stories
If you’re into Australian productions, you must see “Rake”.
I have bad news for you: that show is coming up on its 14th birthday in a few months.
Time flies, right?
I am with you on the Knives Out. I know I am in the minority. Maybe it was hyped up too much before I saw it. I thought it was ok but not great. I do like both Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne, so I will check out this show. looks like it is right up my alley.
I liked Knives Out enough that when Glass Onion drops, I will watch it with my wife (who is a bigger fan). Given how particular I am about things - she will have to watch The Old Guard 2 and Black Panther 2 without me - this is actually a big deal.
I did not enjoy knives out. I don’t watch a lot of tv/movies anymore but I heard this was so great and twist filled (and a baseball movie). I spent the two hours or whatever to watch it. It was OK, I guess, but not great. I didn’t solve anything, but my special lady friend did mid way through.
I have no idea how it stacks up with contemporary whodunnits, because like I say, I don’t watch, but Knives out didn’t strike me as the throwback mystery that I was hyped on.
'It ain’t the National Pastime if a big segment of the nation doesn’t take part.'
--not seeing a whole lot of women out there, either. Back in the '90s I thought we'd have at least a few female pitchers, second base(wo)men, etc. in professional ball. Just as a business move, if nothing else. Is gender segregation in sports a permanent state, or will we, 50 years from now, look back on it as a silly anachronism?
Just because men in the aggregate have an advantage at most of the skills required for baseball does not mean that there are not outliers within the aggregate. If MLB actually wanted to do it, they could find women who could perform at the level necessary to compete in baseball. But that is not who runs MLB teams.
I went to a Division II school and worked at various sports games while in college, doing things like stat keeping, scoreboard operating, even occasionally announcing.
My school hosted a women's basketball tournament every year around the holidays, and the team that won during one of those years when I was doing that stuff, Glenville State out of West Virginia, was really fun to watch. I think they were one of the higher-ranked Division II teams at the time. Their star player was amazing, so quick and smooth, cut through defenses like butter and was a lights-out shooter. No one could stop her. It was a light bulb moment for me, realizing that the women's game could be every bit as entertaining as the men's game.
Couldn't you have just said Connecticut? Sorry. Couldn't resist.
Same here. My apologies for blowing your cover.
I would add that those who make the minors - let alone the majors - have been focusing on their skills for a decade getting in tens of thousands of repetitions. Take the outlier of all outliers, pull her away from women’s competition as a youth and best case scenario, we turn the next Sue Bird into a weak hitting backup 2B?
Disagree. There’s a reason Serena never competed against Federer, Nadal, or Djokovic. That she could easily beat 99.9% of men in the world doesn’t mean she could beat the 0.0001% on the pro tour. Same in baseball.
Aboutamoo, exactly. I have three teen daughters who all play competitive softball.
They are quite good and are more athletic than 97% of the males within 100 miles, but there are several thousand girls their same age that are better than them and tens of thousands of teen boys that are bigger stronger faster.
It has nothing to do with one one one sports. Is Serena one of the top 750 tennis players in the world? Yes, probably.
In basebal you don’t need to be the best, you just need to be good. If there were more of a pipeline for women athletes to play baseball there would be women playing professional baseball and some in the majors.
Currently, as noted, the best girls athletes in the world and thins country are funneled into soccer and basketball (and tennis and golf, but they are different skills) because there is a path to college/pros that way.
"In basebal you don’t need to be the best, you just need to be good."
That's an incredibly dismissive statement on the level of talent and dedication it takes to be a Major League ballplayer. There are literally thousands of "good" baseball players in this country who will never in a million years make it to Major League Baseball.
You make note of all the best girl athletes being funneled into soccer and basketball, but I don't see any of them in the Premier League, or even MLS, which is several levels of competitiveness lower than the Premier League, and would very dearly love the media attention that came from having a woman prove herself against the boys.
I don’t think European soccer could be touted as a bastion of gender equality.
When you have a womens league that is relatively fruitful for the players, they will go there. A’ja Wilson is not going to step onto an NBA team and dominate, but she could hold her own. It’s just not worth it.
Actually, MLS is a level of competitiveness higher than the Premier League, and is in fact the top soccer league in the world. They have been attracting the greatest superstars in the world for many years, such as David Beckham, Thierry Henry, Didier Drogba, Wayne Rooney, and several others. Those are all top-level competitors that wouldn't join MLS if it didn't have the top tier of competitors to sharpen their iron against.
MLS may have lagged behind the Premier League several years ago, but in 2014 that all changed when the MLS All-Stars destroyed Bayern Munich - the reigning FIFA Club world champion and essentially the German national team fresh off a World Cup title - 2-1 in Portland. That was the point where MLS proved it was the best league in the world.
Some will say that Bayern Munich just treated that match as an exhibition, but the Bayern head coach being super pissed after the game proved he actually wanted to win and was trying to win. That's why guys like Bastian Schweinsteiger played in that match and didn't sit out. And because Schweinsteiger saw how much more dominant MLS skills were when Landon Donovan schooled Bayern's asses, even he left the Bundesliga to join the Premier League (Manchester United) so he'd eventually have a better chance to move up the chain to MLS to sharpen his skills even further. His dream finally came true when he made the Chicago Fire roster in 2017 to reach the pinnacle of his career.
That's ridiculous
The people who run baseball teams are in it for $$$$. The first actual female MLB player would be a goldmine.
No one owner would pass that up, especially 30 would not pass on a mountain of money.
I don’t think it would be a goldmine. Selling a few shirts is not really big business.
You may be right, I’m just thinking that a team like the Pirates or Reds would sell A LOT more tickets if they had a female second baseman. Road games would be huge, extra TV coverage plus forever being known as a barrier-breaking franchise a la Dodgers.
Maybe there is someone out there that could do it, but the tippy-top of the MLB talent pyramid is getting smaller and higher all the time.
I have long believed that there is a path to the majors for a woman who could master a knuckleball. If Phil Neikro could throw it in his mid-40's and get batters out, there's absolutely no reason a woman couldn't. I'm not saying it's an easy path or a likely one, just that I don't see any physical limitations in the way.
See also scrappy, good-fielding middle infielder. If David Eckstein could do it, I can't see why it's not possible that a woman could as well.
Will we see a woman hitting 60 home runs? Unlikely. Of course, not many men have done that either.
But I think there's paths.
I agree this would be the likeliest path (edit: of all the exceedingly unlikely paths). But I wouldn't underestimate the physical strength it takes to throw a knuckleball, either -- getting to 70 MPH with the inherent disadvantages in the knuckleball throwing motion vis a vis other pitches is no mean feat.
Agreed. It's the most likely of the unlikely paths, but not likely at all. If it were easy to be a knuckleballer, there wouldn't be so few of them at any given time.
Oh, I'm not saying that just anyone could do it. I sure as hell couldn't. I'm just saying that there are women who can throw that hard, and that it's possible. I could see a scenario where a super-talented 12-14 year old girl could decide to really see if she could master it, just to see if it's possible.
Just imagining my wife trying to master a knuckleball and complaining about all the ruined manicures. :D
No Lady Gaga video to close the newsletter? Poker Face was right there.....
Wow, that’s awesome news about Poker Face! We have Peacock, and I’m in. I hope someone finds a similar vehicle for Mark Ruffalo; I always enjoy his work.
Regarding "except as a punishment for a crime," are you familiar with peonage in South, from after the Civil War until the 1940s? https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/peonage/
I have watched that documentary. Slavery was legal and common in this country up until just before WWII.
If you want to really dig into what that clause in the 13th Amendment allows, explore Convict Leasing. Essentially it allows companies to pay the state for prisoners to work for the for free (or nearly free, like 65 cents/hr. There are prisons where companies have built factories on the grounds so they’d have access to that on-demand labor pool.
There was a story earlier this year from Arizona where the state was debating building a new prison even though they still have significant capacity in others. Some of the people arguing for it publicly said that they needed the prison to get the roughly free labor or it would hurt the economy.
When you put that together with the private for-profit prison industry that incentivizes the state to put more people in prison and the drug laws that were written starting in the 1970s with the express purpose (according to the Republicans who wrote them) of putting more Black and Brown people in jail, the picture just gets uglier and uglier.
So yes, we absolutely need to close that loophole in the 13th.
Thanks for pointing that out. I've read a little about it and immediately it put me in mind of the collaboration between German companies and the SS to decide where to put concentration camps so they could have access to slave labor.
Yep. It's in the same spirit, if not in the same degree of horror. Some people's lives don't matter, and we can force them to make us money.
The existence of such an obvious loophole only incentivizes people in power to exploit it.
We can get free labor from convicted felons? Well I guess we better convict some felons then!
It was one of those things that I was shocked by when I learned about the 13th Amendment, but didn't completely internalize until much more recently.
I was reading an article about people in prison working a few years ago, might have been Arizona or New Mexico (definitely southwest) and one prison staff person was lamenting that a woman was getting out soon because she was such a hard worker they didn't want to lose her labor!
I'm not sure when I've wanted to punch a stranger in the face through the internet so much in my life. They were sad because they were losing a slave, not happy that she was such a hard worker she had a chance to succeed and stay out of jail in the future. 😠
If my sad sack Oakland A’s aren’t wearing “CHICO’S BAIL BONDS” on the backs of their jerseys next season, Rob Manfred should be fired.
If the A's owners want to continue to alienate Oakland fans, they could go with a Las Vegas casino as the sponsor.
Or better yet, the Las Vegas tourism board that runs those "What happens in Vegas" commercials. Then they could just have "Las Vegas" on their sleeves.
The A’s non tendered their biggest asset this winter.
https://twitter.com/ashotdog/status/1585008321811320832?s=61&t=RnIUuZetnzR1dkzD29GuKw
There is a huge difference between chain-gain style work requirements (which are "punishment for a crime") and optional opportunities for incarcerated people to work. I don't know the details of these ballot measures, but there's no reason eliminating the former should eliminate the latter. And eliminating the former is a great idea whose time came decades ago, so good for those states.
As far as the latter: no incarcerated person truly has a choice about anything. So calling them "optional" or "voluntary" or what have you is kind of per se wrong. But with that disclaimer out of the way, allowing people to do something productive or learn a skill is hugely important. Corrections officials shouldn't be allowed, in a fit of pique over losing just a bit of power, to eliminate that.
While I agree that doing work while incarcerated is good for the inmate and society and the comity of the prison, paying them $0-$1.35 an hour is a problem. Pay a living wage. Hold the money on account, draw down their restitution.
It does 3 things, 1) gives people an nest egg for release 2) gives them skills 3) prevents the prison from “in sourcing” work that should be done by people being paid a fair wage
The last point will make prisons even more expensive, which unfortunately is the only thing that may make the general voting public rethink prisons.
Exactly. At the very least, pay them minimum wage.
100%
It’s easy to dunk on Mountain Dew, but when is the last time you actually drank some? And what of those other bright colored versions I see advertised at Taco Bell?
Since you brought it up, I feel you have an obligation to investigate, and provide answers.
Last time I purchased a Mountain Dew for myself, with the thought, "I'd like to consume a Mountain Dew! This sounds like a fine idea!" was probably 1996 or so.
My son got some rancid Mountain Dew flavor variation a year or two ago and I had a sip. It was not for me. I think it's possible, barring some sort of experiment or dare, that I'll never touch the stuff again for the rest of my life.
I’m daring you to try the original and a couple variations and tell us about the experience.
If it auto corrects to dating one more time… I had to get on my real computer.
We believed Dew was more caffeinated that Coke or Pepsi in college in the late 80s. No idea if that is actually true but I drank a bunch of Diet Dew when I was trying to learn an entire semester's worth of accounting in one evening.
Yes, I checked that myself one day in college. As I recall Coke had about 88% of the caffeine content of Mt Dew.
Also I preferred the taste of diet Dew to diet Coke so I switched. Still drink it, still enjoy it, but instead of swigging it directly from a 2 L bottle I drink a single bottle over the course of a few hours. Then use the emptied pop bottle for refilling with water and various drink mixes all week long at work.
JOLT - All the sugar and twice the caffeine!
Yeah, but it tasted like Jolt Cola!
#truth
There's always Shasta...
https://twitter.com/super70ssports/status/1406998427586662413
I'll take the crab juice.
Was looking for this response. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t94mSKjEVNs
My go to whenever I have to pee at an inconvenient time is "Why did I drink all that crab juice."
Could you tell if the soda that guy spilled in the DC food court was Mountain Dew?
Wow, good memory!
Pretty sure it was a cola, though. Could've been Dr. Pepper or root beer I guess. Definitely brown.
Random things often stick in my memory, and that story is one of them, haha
So what you're saying is that you're not going to conduct this experiment that The Everywhereist did? https://www.everywhereist.com/2022/07/i-tried-21-flavors-of-mountain-dew-for-some-reason/
Thank you.
Not if my life depended on it.
Even if I double dog dare you?
If you dont get a Baja Blast with your free World Series Taco Bell Stolen Base Taco(tm) you are doing Taco Bell wrong.
I think given my reaction to coffee, Mountain Dew would explode my heart and ruin my sleep for a week. So I have never tried it.
Diet Mountain Dew is my favorite soda, and as a grown man that fact is the shame of my life as Mountain Dew is primarily associated with rednecks and teenage gamers. I jokingly call it "liquid radiation" around my wife, yet I still drink it.
Sometimes if I have a long drive ahead of me and I need a hit of caffeine to help power me through, I'll even fill up a big cup of it at the gas station while my head hangs low and I stare at the ground as I take it up to the register, feeling the weight of all the judging eyes around the convenience store that I imagine are all laser-focused on me, the weirdo loser adult man purchasing a giant cup of Mountain Dew.
Haha ok thanks for the encouragement. I always have a dirty feeling when I get it, like I'm purchasing the equivalent of porn or something and wishing there was a way to conceal it until I am back in my car.
And to add to that, one time there was a oddly-dressed man in line in front of me at the gas station, looked like he was in his 50's and giving me vibes of Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters with that headset thing on, with this gigantic Mountain Dew mug that he just spent like 5 minutes filling up with liquid radiation. This mug had to have been like a gallon or so, I had never seen anything like it. It was basically a vat of Mountain Dew.
Anyway, as I watched him set it on the counter at the register and the clerk rang him up, I then gazed down at the big (but miniature in comparison) cup of the same stuff in my own hand, sighed, and wondered... What am I doing with my life?
Ha, I'm also a road trip Diet Dew-er
I still drink Diet Dew! And I'm definitely an old lady by now. Haha.
I don't drink Diet Mountain Dew often, but if I go into a convenience store for a soda, that's what I'm often walking out with. I enjoy it.
Diet Mountain Dew and Mint Skoal took me cross country 11 times between 2012 and 2017.
MD Zero is great. Hard to find, though. Need it in 2 liters and as a fountain drink.
I can find the 12-packs of it pretty consistently at Publix, not sure about 2-liters. Impossible to find as a fountain drink, except for the month after it was released, but at this point, I’m lucky if they even have DMD.
For some reason, I recently got a yen for Vernor's gingerale (much more gingery than Canada Dry or Schweppes) - a Midwestern thing I believe.
Found it online and got some - not quite as good as I remembered, but still better than the non-ginger gingerales!
Buffalo Rock ginger ale out of Alabama is the best if you like a punchy one.
The replies to this thread really hammer home the median age of CoC subscribers.
I may have tried a Baja Blast at Taco Bell, but i don’t think I’ve ever willingly sought out a Dew. I suspect there’s a U shaped dip in Dew affinity for folks born after its golden era and before its turn to the gamer market.
Diet Mountain Dew is surprisingly good. It isn't my go to beverage, but on the right day with the right tacos, it can be a solid move.
My 18yr old son got into Columbo about 18 months ago when he said he saw memes and clips and though it looked good. He got his grandparents to get him the full box set last Christmas (which they were very happy to do since they are big Columbo fans). He had me bring the box set to him at college, he texted me this past weekend “can you bring my Columbo box set this week and do you have Peacock there is a new show coming I want to watch”. This was before I saw Keith Law retweet Rian Johnson’s tweet about the show. Great, now I got to get another streaming service that I’ll forget to cancel after watching this.
Good to see the kids getting into Columbo. It really is a lot of fun.
I would’ve thought that a thorough reporting on Wainwright’s return would have asked the all important question: does this mean that JD Drew will likewise return for a final season in ATL?
Maybe they can still win that trade!
Nothing is exact but that trade was so close to the Smoltz for Alexander deal that I feel karmic balance has been achieved for ATL fans.
Moody, temperamental player who hadn’t quite lived up to his billing brought in to plug a hole on an aging former championship team looking for another run, a great performance driving the club to a division crown that ends up flaming out in the playoffs in part due to said rental flopping in October.
And in exchange, a young minor league arm with infinite potential who breaks through for a long career with season after season as a top ten pitcher.
You haven’t checked in on the Tim Hudson trade, have you?
The A's dumping salary and getting no one in return! Was Eddie Collins the first such victim?
Not really on point, but years ago I saw the arbitration materials for Juan Cruz right after that trade. It was the first time I saw either side use something like WPA, trying to adjust raw performance for leveraged (or lack thereof) usage.
To add to the Cardinals staff openings, it was also announced yesterday that bullpen coach Bryan Eversgerd will be “reassigned within the organization” so we’re basically down to the base coaches at this point.
Except for the hitting the road part, the premise for “Poker Face” sounds a lot like “Psych”, another entry in that genre that I quite enjoyed.
I have been watching Longmire this week. I've been getting my crime-of-the-week feels from that, and wondering how I missed it when it was "on" a decade ago.
We finally watched Longmire last year.
Definitely here for Poker Face.
While I think that the lack of Black American players in the World Series this year is something to talk about, this years' rosters are still a whole lot less White than they were in 1950, with at least 20 Latinos among the 52 guys on the rosters.
I suspect that youth participation rates for baseball are down across the board in this country, as the expense of year-round travel teams in many sports means that kids are specializing early in different sports or just not playing at all.