I really don't know anything about the NBA. I went with this picture because of the obvious appeal to my color bias.
*I don’t watch Sports Center because it isn’t baseball season. Even then, I try to get most of my information from Baseball Tonight. Allegedly, there is an NBA season going on right now and this morning I realized I have no idea about any of it. The last thing I heard was about CP3 going to the Clippers. The most time I’ve spent thinking about basketball was the few minutes during which I watched Charles Barkley pretend to be Shaq on Saturday Night Live a couple of weeks ago.
I don’t understand why (though I have a theory) I have such a disconnect from basketball. I can’t say that it’s because I never played basketball, I never played football either, but I can still follow that. I purchased Bill Simmons book about basketball because I like Simmons as a writer. I had hoped that his style would somehow make the all of the information within tolerable. I was wrong. I don’t know enough about basketball to make sense of most of it.
The last time I sincerely cared about the NBA was when Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton were creating havoc in the Pacific Northwest. Obviously, it’s been a while.
My theory is that my apathy during towards the NBA season is the result of timing. I only care about the NBA – in passing – during the drama of the playoffs. For the better part of the regular season, I am interested in the NFL. By the time the Super Bowl is over, I’ve already begun my hardcore fantasy baseball research, and catchers and pitchers are about to report. I go straight from the NFL to the MLB. By the time the NBA playoffs drag themselves out over the course of four months, the MLB season is already a couple of months old and I am therefore completely obsessed with despising the Mets and figuring out ways to improve my 10-12 fantasy baseball teams. No thanks, basketball, no time.
Tom Brady doesn't have a "complacent" face.
*I got into a conversation with a couple of my students yesterday about who I’d like to see win the Super Bowl since A) the Conference Championships have been set and B) the Cowboys never made the playoffs. I want the Patriots to win. I went on to sing the praises of Tom Brady before being cut off by my students. They accused me of a very graphic, physical version of a man-crush. I tried to explain it to them as simply as possible.
In truth, I was too young to appreciate the primes of Joe Montana and Michael Jordan. I was aware of it, but I didn’t have enough perspective to understand why their play was transcendent. Albert Pujols and to a greater extent Tom Brady, are current examples of domination that I can understand.
Tom Brady’s iconography has been well-documented, so I won’t go over it. But there’s something in the way he goes about his business that makes his business compelling. He refuses to enjoy his success. A 33-yard pass does not make him happy, he’s already thinking about the remaining 27 yards between him and the end zone. He’s maniacal in that way.
Also, after he obliterated the second coming of Christ in football pads last week, he likely went home to his lingerie model wife and at the very least got a shoulder massage. That’s a pretty nice set up.
Surely I can understand my students’ hatred (or more likely, envy) of Tom Brady. It’s the same way I hated Joe Montana and the 49ers back in the day. It’s the same way I felt when Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz were racking up Cy Young Awards with Atlanta: I was too emotionally involved in the situation to see their brilliance clearly. But I see Tom Brady clearly, and that’s why I fantasize about him wearing a helmet with a star on it, shouting at Miles Austin and Dez Bryant to get their shit together.
The anchor of my fantasy staff.
*I already received my copy of this year’s Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster. Lynnette saw me pull it out of the box from Amazon.com and she started making dramatic and sarcastic comments like “Oh, God, is it that time already?” and “Uh-oh, looks like you’re going to start with all your mock drafts.” The way she says the second line in particular makes me want to crawl under a rock with a flashlight and read my book in silence away from mockery.
But then, I spent an entire drive out to Kapolei explaining why I love that book. In short, it’s helped to shape the way I think about baseball, particularly from a fantasy perspective.
I’ve already marked up the book with highlighter and made mental notes for the upcoming season. “The season doesn’t start until April, you asshole,” you say? Wrong. The season never ends.
SO… if Ryan Braun can somehow successfully appeal his drug suspension, and Steven Strasburg can come all the way back from Tommy John surgery, and Joey Votto can take a step forward, and if Adrian Gonzalez just does what Adrian Gonzalez always does, and and and if Jose Bautista doesn’t mysteriously disappear and his numbers don’t fall off a cliff, I should be okay. Notice I haven’t mentioned the Mets? I don’t want to spiral into depression before my day even starts.
*Just finished season 3 of Mad Men and I can’t get over how well done the show is. There are only three TV shows in recent memory that made me care about what happens to most of the characters: The Wire, Lost, and Mad Men. That’s it. Since the show is set in the late-50s/early-60s, they’ve got a great opportunity to make historical allusions (like Marilyn Monroe and JFK), and also for attempts at irony. Season 3 focused on the adjustment period for the Sterling Cooper Ad Agency after being sold to another company. Once they receive word that they are going to be sold again, the three major players (Don Draper, Roger Sterling, and Burt Cooper) conspire with their boss, Lane Pryce to leave Sterling Cooper and start a new company (a t-shirt for the company, left). They take the best talent and/or people with the most existing accounts and leave in secret over the course of a weekend. I have to admit that I was really excited as the pieces started to fall. The picture on the far left is the “office” of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and the rest of the staff. I have no idea how this will affect the other characters who worked at the OG Sterling Cooper (will we see less of them?), but I think the idea is fantastic. Most TV shows that go on for several years always run out of story to tell (just ask Lost), but this particular storyline is the best of both worlds- they’ll still be doing the ad work and living that lifestyle (the heart of the show), but it will appear fresh because they’re essentially a start-up now. It’s like starting all over- in season 4! Only not in one of those “we’re-taking-you-back-to-the-start-via-flashback-hope-you-can-follow-along” deals. There’s the rub, though. My wife and I enjoy watching the show by season (it moves slowly sometimes and we can best remember things this way)- we’re always a season behind because we wait for it to be released on Blu-Ray. Every single time I’m slumming around the internet, I avert my eyes at the mere mention of anything closely related to the show. But I’m so excited to see how this all plays out now, I don’t know if I can wait…
*Stephen Strasburg made his debut on Tuesday. Don’t act like you’re not impressed. I won’t go into the legend that is Stephen Strasburg. He can throw 100 MPH and all that. He saved 14 squirrels from a forest fire while barefoot. All of that. I tuned into the MLB Network for what was undoubtedly the most hyped debut by a baseball player I can remember (even Mark Prior wasn’t this big). He was amazing. He was working his 4-seam fastball at 97-99 and more or less maintained his velocity as the game wore on. I feel the need to explain how ridiculous that it. Very few pitchers top out at 99. That was Strasburg’s cruising velocity. He was throwing a sharp, late-breaking “curveball” at 82-83. That’s just not fair. He struck out 14 batters, walked none, and did it on less than 100 pitches. That’s crazy. Strasburg gave up a bomb on a change-up (his third best pitch) and that was about it. The thing that struck me the most was how easily the ball came out of his hand. He doesn’t have one of those max-effort deliveries like K-Rod. The ball just projectile vomits itself out of his hand. He is going to present an odd problem for opposing teams. Since everyone knows that the Nationals are going to handle him with kid gloves, other teams will be tempted to get his pitch count up. Take a few pitches, work the count, etc. The problem is that his stuff is so good that a batter can’t afford to fall behind. The last pitcher I can remember to be this out-and-out dominant was steroid-era Eric Gagne, but he was only doing it for an inning. Strasburg did it for 7. Granted, the Pirates aren’t a great team, but it’s still a line-up of Major Leaguers. The only guys who had success looked like they were guessing. It was like they were looking for a particular pitch in a specific spot. If it wasn’t there, then well, they were going to be beat. During the second time through the line up, he started throwing a 2-seam fastball at 92-94 (!) with tail into righties. If he can master the run on that pitch and turn it over into something closer of a sinker, it might be the most dominant since the steroid-era Kevin Brown’s. As a baseball fan, I’m so excited that Strasburg is happening right now- during a time in my life when I can appreciate how rare his gifts are. As a Mets fan, it depresses me to think that the foreseeable future will be filled with names like Halladay, Nolasco, Johnson, Hanson, and now Strasburg. Ugh.
*A while back, my co-worker (who ironically now lives in Arizona) briefly filled me in on the Arizona immigration law that caused a fervor because of racial implications. Politics and policy aren’t my forum, so I have to admit, I know very little about the law itself. What I do know is that it’s caused all kinds of backlash from citizens and also celebrities. Two of those famous people are Daryl and John Oates, the key members of a little band called… Hall and Oates. I caught a story that said the band would be canceling a show in Phoenix because of their personal stance on the immigration law. In other words, they can’t go for that (no can do). I’m positive someone has already made that joke, but I couldn’t help it. So… I guess it makes me happy to know that Hall and Oates are still touring and belting out their greatest hits. If you look at the picture to the left- the cover for the album H2O, both men are drenched in sweat and staring at each other while their faces are mere inches apart. They’re taking things a little too seriously. It’s awkward and it’s just an album cover. Strangely enough, though, the reason I love the music of Misters Hall and Oates is because I don’t take it seriously at all. They make the best kind of pop music, in my opinion: catchy, easy to relate to, simple, but always with subtle reminders that yes, there is genuine talent at play. Hall and Oates are the musical equivalent of The Shawshank Redemption, High Fidelity, Field of Dreams, and A Few Good Men for me. Any time I happen across those movies on the TV, I watch it. It doesn’t matter what point of the movie I stumbled into. I’ll just watch it until it’s over or something pulls me away from the TV (like a daughter shouting “I hungee!”). If I catch Hall and Oates on the radio, I’ll listen to them. If they pop up on my iPod, I have to think long and hard about jumping past them. They’ve got the best song about not doing an ambiguous something this side of Meat Loaf (“I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)”). They’ve written about love that is so generic and beautiful it makes me crazy that they ruined it by making it specific by including a woman’s name in it (“Sara Smile”). They own one of the best feel-good songs of all time (“You Make My Dreams (Come True)”). They’ve got a better version of “One on One” than Natty Vibes. And of course, they’ve written one of the greatest audience-participation songs of all-time: “Private Eyes- clap- are watching you- clapclap- they see your every move.” I always say things like “Why don’t more people make music like Hall and Oates?” The truth is, not only would I not like it, I’d probably criticize the hell out of it. There’s only one Hall and Oates. I mean, really, when it comes down to it, what other artists can pull off an album cover like this one?
Hey, That's Us! In Words and Pictures! 