Let's play this like a Choose Your Own Adventure book ...

You're Steve Winwood, an aging rock star with a solid career whose best moments are between 20 and 40 years in the past. You hear that The Who have been offered the halftime gig at the Super Bowl. You're happy for them, but also seething silently, because you think you're just as talented and British as they are.

You're at home, eating Cheetos off of your gut, watching Dr. Who on DVD and drinking Miller Genuine Draft straight from the can when the phone rings. You hesitate before answering it, thinking it may be your creditors, but you take the chance and pick up the receiver.

"Hello?" you say, somewhat hesitantly, but also trying to take these advice of your therapist. Be more positive!

"Steve Winwood?"

"Speaking."

"Hey Steve, this is Big Powerful Exec at CBS. How's it going?"

"Pretty good. This isn't about my cable bill, is it? Because I sent the check yesterday ..."

"No, no, calling about the Super Bowl telecast. We'd like you to play. Are you available?"

"Well, I'd have to check my calendar, but I think we can do that."

"All right, great. Listen, I'm going to have my assistant call you back with all the details, and get you a ticket down to Miami and all that stuff."

Your eyes widen. "Miami! I haven't been there in years. I'm going to have to get a straw hat."

"OK, Steve. You'll be playing in the parking lot 60 minutes before kickoff. Don't forget the sheet music to 'Higher Love.'"

"You got it, boss."

You hang up the phone and your mind starts racing. You don't know whether you want to buy your straw hat or finish your Cheetos and Dr. Who DVDs first.

To go out and buy your straw hat, turn to page 19
To finish wathcing Dr. Who, turn to page 78

Labels: Steve Winwood, Super Bowl

I'll tell you the problem with robots: they don't do anything that the 1950s promised they'd do, like simonize my car or learn Hebrew.

When I was in 7th grade, my Technology teacher (that's what they called Shop in my school) had a whole section devoted to robotics and lasers. During the robotics section, he brought out this short, stubby little robot (to answer your question, it didn't look like R2D2) thing that he could control with a limited selection of voice commands. You know, move forward, stop, bend over, etc. The thing didn't talk back or anything (if it had, it probably would have said something about this guy's decision to always wear a short sleeve button down shirt and white sneakers), but you could see that they were moving in a certain direction with this thing.

Ignore the fact that the school district spent thousands of dollars on this robot that could have saved an art program or something, if you can, and focus on the possibilities.

Remember Screech's robot Kevin on Saved by the Bell? That's exactly what I was expecting within would come from all this in the ensuing 5 years, 10 at the outside. By 1995, I expected to have the kind of robot that I was promised, though ideally my robot would have less sass than Kevin. I'm not looking for a moral compass, just someone to take care of all the little things that prevent me from developing my plans for an effective College Football playoff system.

Here are the seven things that I would expect from my robot:

1) No death threats/attempts

- Lets face it: even the least savvy of self-aware robots could beat the hell out of his/her owner if it got pissed off enough. I'm just looking for an easy-going robot to do my bidding. Frankly, if I were the cause of some Terminator-like robot uprising, I'd have a hard time explaining that to my wife.

2) A British accent

- I'm not sure if I'd want it to be more like Mr. Belvedere or Michael Caine, but either way, no robot should be without some sort of Cockney accent.

3) An unlimited supply of Starburst

- I don't know if the robot would have to go shopping or just be able to manufacture and package the confection somewhere on its person, but the fact remains that there's no reason that I shouldn't be able to have a Starburst when I want one.

4) 2+ years of apprenticeship under a chef who specializes in northern Italian cuisine

- I'm getting tired of eating olives out of the jar and pop tarts.

5) More than a passing interest in the New York Jets

- You know, because someone has to.

6) Access to a good dentist

- Even though my robot's health care needs will be significantly different from my own (needing oil vs. water, no teeth to brush, no masturbating, etc.), I'd like him to at least be aware that the human body needs significant upkeep, and thus, build up a stable of healthcare professionals on which I can rely. Regular visits to the dentist prove effective in dealing with plaque build-up and gingivitis.

7) Intimate knowledge of the blueprints for the Federal Reserve Building in Lower Manhattan

- No reason.

I don't know what it is. Maybe I grew up in the golden age of robotics or something. Maybe I was unfairly promised things that haven't been delivered. I don't know; I'm not a scientist. All I know is that I don't have a robot in my home that does all of the menial tasks that I'm too lazy or stupid to do for myself.

Labels: robots

Adam Gopnik has been enlisted by the New Yorker to write about everyone's beloved sad-sacks, the New York Jets, as they careen through this year's NFL playoffs. My favorite part:

... those of us who were grimly certain that they were going to lose that first playoff game, simply because the Jets are the Jets, remain, after their glorious Cincinnati victory, grimly certain that they will lose the next one. And yet we still have hope. Being a Jet fan recalls the Calvinist view of predestination, which this blogger's kid is studying in school: just because you know something is sure to happen doesn't mean you can't care.

Has one paragraph ever so accurately captured a fan base's sad attachment to their team? Jets' fans (myself included) are truly some of the most beaten human beings in the entire world. When Cincinnati scored that TD to make it 21-14, I immediately told my wife that the announcer had cursed them, simply because he'd said that the Jets could put away the game if they scored points on the 3-and-out drive that they'd had just prior to the Cincy TD. This is the kind of insanity that I buy into: the announcer, sitting in a booth high above the field, has some sort of magic ability to alter the game's outcome with his words. Intellectually, I know this is both the law of averages and selective memory at work. Instinctively, I can't help but feel that the fucking guy just jinxed my team.

I've loved the New York Jets for a long time. My dad and I used to sit in two rows from the top in the end zone to watch them lose 9-6 the Colts. And countless disappointment after countless disappointment, I can't help but think that something has to go right. But I also can't help but think that all the things going right are setting me up for something bigger to go horribly wrong.

Two things about Adam Gopnik:

1) His book, "Angels and Ages" is one of the best books that I've read some of (I can't find the damn thing in my stacks, otherwise I'd finish it) in some time. I say this having barely understood a word of it.

2) He's speaking at the 92nd St. Y with Malcolm Gladwell on Feb. 16.

Labels: Adam Gopnik, New York Jets, New Yorker

Hello,

I came onto your site today to purchase my infant daughter a New York Jets jersey to wear while we watch them lose this weekend. I was more than a little surprised to find that the only option for purchase was a Brett Favre jersey. Considering that a) he's not on the team anymore and b) he nearly single-handedly destroyed our season last year, it's a little unlikely that I (or any like-minded Jets fan) would purchase such apparel.

I'm wondering if you will have something else available in the near future, since I'm looking forward to bonding with her, as we share the lifelong pain of being a Jets fan

Please let me know.

Best,
Geoff Wolinetz

Labels: New York Jets, NFLShop

I was watching Airplane the other night, and for the first time in the many, many times that I've seen the film, I asked myself, "Kyle (that's what I call myself), did Manny Mota ever actually bat for Pedro Borbon in a live game or did the writers of the movie just pick a pitcher at random and have the formar all-time leader in pinch hits bat for him in the scenario meant to test the echo in Ted Stryker's head as a goof?"

The first step was determining if the two had ever even played on the same team. I popped on to Baseball Reference and looked up the careers of both Borbon and Mota.

Borbon played 12 years in the majors, the vast majority of these seasons came with the Cincinnati Reds. His last season was the year that Airplane was released (1980).

Manny Mota played 21 seasons, his last 11 with the Los Angeles Dodgers. His career ended in 1982.

So, no, Manny Mota never pinch hit for Pedro Borbon.

But since this didn't take even close to as long as I thought it would, and I'm in the business of extreme procrastination, I went ahead and checked if Manny Mota has ever batted against Pedro Borbon. This seemed significantly more likely, as both of these players played almost their entire careers in the National League.

Once again, thanks to our good friends at Baseball Reference, we're able to determine that Mota did hit against Borbon. In 14 plate appearances, Mota singled 3 times off of Borbon, drove in one run and struck out twice. Man, this is bull. I thought I'd at least be able to look up a home run that Mota hit against Borbon or something. Let's go to Retrosheet and find out when Mota drove in that run.

Actually, Baseball Reference has this information also. It was in the second game of a doubleheader on June 23, 1973. With the Dodgers already up 4-1 in the bottom of the 7th, Mota hit a single to center and knocked in Davey Lopes. Tommy John went the distance and got the win, 3-hitting the Reds. Here's the full scoreboard from that game (this appears courtesy of Retrosheet):

CIN N 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 - 1 3 0
LA N 0 0 0 0 1 3 1 0 x - 5 8 0

Well, this was a complete waste of time (in a bad way). If this demonstrates anything, it's that the InterWeb has turned what could have been a colossal time-waster into a mere distraction.

Labels: Airplane, Manny Mota, Pedro Borbon

Before I went to college, I saw a lot of movies. Tons. I saw just about everything that came out in the theater. Genre didn't really matter. As long as I had popcorn and moving pictures in front of me, I was good. And I didn't really spend a whole lot of time questioning whether these movies were good or bad; I just loved the experience of going.* Why not, right? Frankly, there was just not a whole lot else to do where I grew up with the people that I hung out with. It was either go to the movies or watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 in someone's basement.**

*This is a very 1950s way of looking at things: marveling at the wonder of them, instead of seeing them for what they are. I'm not apologizing for this. I wish I still had it.

**I was tooling around You Tube the other day and I stumbled across a clip from one of my favorite episodes, Mitchell, starring Joe Don Baker and Merlin Olsen. It also happens to be Joel Hodgson's last episode. I don't know why I brought this up.

Until I saw Speed.

It's not really just that Speed is a bad movie (which it is)*. It is a very bad movie that somehow launched Sandra Bullock's career (that may, in itself, explain her career). It's an outright insult to anyone with even a shred of intelligence. Everyone watching this movie should have walked out of the theater and demanded their money back.

*My high school yearbook actually has an inscription from someone saying that they disagreed with me about Speed and that they thought the movie was very suspenseful. I can only assume that person's yearbook has a profanity-laced tirade about how stupid they are.

It starts out OK. Disillusioned cop (played by Dennis Hopper of all people) that's forced to retire goes loco and wants to exact his revenge by killing lots of people. Fine. That's at least the beginning of a plot that I can get behind. But from there, it's all ridiculous. City bus driver knows the name of someone trying to catch the bus and actually stops to let them on. Bomb attached to bus will explode if speed dips below a certain level. Neurotic, crazy, stereotypes on bus make escape difficult. Woman that caught bus creates a sense of brotherhood among them. Snappy one-liners exchanged. Keanu Reeves involved.

It's just stupid insult after stupid insult. I take the bus every single day. Nothing happens. In fact, the only people even talking on the bus are the people on their cellphone that think the bus is their living room.

And the moment that broke my brain was when they get on a highway to keep the speed of the bus at the appropriate level, never mind that the thing is a 1980s-era bus that guzzles gas like my little cousins eat Cheerios and should have run out miles ago, and no one realizes that the highway HASN'T BEEN FINISHED YET. No one among the people that live in the area could think to mention that the highway on which their careening bus was about to go hadn't yet been finished.

That's the point that I stood up and screamed, "Oh, come on!"

So the bus drives off of the unfinished bit of the highway (which also just happens to form a ramp), lands and keeps going. Later on, they rig the surveillance camera on the bus in an infinite loop, gradually move the people off of the bus before Dennis Hopper figures it out, and then Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock open the emergency exit on the bottom of the bus, line up a small wooden board on rollers beneath it at 50 miles per hour, then get on it to slide themselves off the bus, which explodes in the background as they roll to safety. There are no words.

Forget realistic. This doesn't even work in a fantasy. Some monkey on PCP must have written this film. It just forced me to realize that Hollywood will just take any piece of garbage, smear it on a cracker and tell me it's goose liver pate. Not only that, they expect me to smile and hold my nose while I eat it, then make yummy sounds when I'm done. After Speed, I just couldn't do it anymore.

And now, I can't watch any movie the same way. Every action movie is a ridiculous farce, every drama is a sappy mess and every comedy is an unfunny train wreck. I haven't truly enjoyed a movie the same way in 15 years. Oh, sure, I've enjoyed movies, but they just aren't an essential activity for me anymore, because I just don't buy in with the same enthusiasm.

And this, friends, is how Sandra Bullock ruined my life.

Labels: movies, MST3K, Sandra Bullock, Speed

This article runs down the 12 most annoying Facebook users. You know someone who falls into every category. It got me to thinking about the whole Facebook thing today.

I really enjoy catching up with people that I haven't seen (or thought about, frankly) in 10 or 15 years, but what I find most difficult is reconciling the reality of who they are now with the image of how I remember them. One of my really close friends was one of the biggest goofballs that I knew. We had some really crazy ridiculous times together, but I've spoken to him regularly for last 15 years. I watched him transform from the guy that hit on strippers to married man to homeowner to father of two, so it's not shocking to me. Don't get me wrong: the idea that the guy that used to show off his dangle to people that didn't even ask has two kids hurts my head on several levels, but it's not shocking.

But when the guy that used to pick his nose and flick it at people friends me on Facebook, and I look at his profile and he's a married doctor, it's just a little bit shocking to me because I didn't see the evolution of his persona (or worse, he never evolved and is still flicking boogers at people, only now he also removes spleens).

And every time that I connect with someone, I go through this exercise and see who people have become and I'm never any less shocked, in the same way that my dog is never any less happy to see me when I walk in the door, whether I've been gone two minutes or two months. The guy that masturbated in the back of English class and then threw the er, "result" into the curly hair of the girl who sat in front of him is now a teacher. The girl that blew a guy in the stairwell is now a VP at Goldman Sachs (which I assume is how she got to be a VP in the first place, I'm sure the men that work there also have to suck someone off to get promoted). These are both true descriptions of people that I've known in the past.

I suspect that everyone who hasn't talked to me in 15 years that gives me a "poke" is thinking the same things:

"Someone actually married that schmuck?"
"He's been able to hold down a job?"
"Does he really still have the same haircut?"*

*The answer to all three of these questions is yes. To be honest, I'm as surprised as anyone.

Sure, the sharing seems over the top to me, but hey, it's your life. Share as much or as little as you want. You should know that I probably don't care (if I cared, I probably would have tried harder to stay in touch when it wasn't so easy to do so), but that's more my problem than yours.

And if you want to be that guy or gal that announces that someone died literally moments after that person actually died, then put RIP after it, as if it's not completely disingenuous or it will keep you from going to Hell, more power to you. I can't stop you. I've probably hidden your status updates by now anyway, but whatever. Go to town.

I just have so much trouble reconciling two visions of people in my head: one as I knew them and one as they are today. It just sends my brain into this infinite loop of Finkel/Einhorn-ness.

Labels: Facebook