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Thursday, August 30, 2007

Making a deposit the hard way

Car creates new drive-thru at bank branch
Just before 10 a.m. Thursday, an elderly woman drove her car through the glass doors of a U. S. Bank in the 3800 block of Lexington Road.
http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=7006457&Call=Email&Format=Text

I get "Get Fuzzy"

Why do I like the comic strip “Get Fuzzy?”
It’s not the laugh-out-loud funniest strip I have ever read, nor is it as absurd as “The Far Side,” nor is it as iconic as “Peanuts,” nor is it as whimsical ad “Calvin and Hobbes,” nor is it as pop-cultural as “Bloom County,” nor is it as compellingly complicated as “Li'l Abner.”
But, that being said, I really like the characters.
It is amazing to me that Darby Conley, the strip’s creator, never owned a cat until well after starting to draw the strip. He seems to be able to lampoon their behavior pretty well.
One of his main characters is Bucky, a Siamese cat, who is constantly doing mean-spirited things to the other household quadruped, a dog named Satchel. Bucky is also a constant irritant toward their owner, Rob.
The characters have changed a little bit since the strip started. For example, Bucky’s schemes have gotten larger in scale, and much more self-promotional.
In an early story, Bucky put hair remover in Rob’s bathroom, leaving Rob bald.
At one point, Bucky was destroying household items, labeling them and calling them art in an effort to become recognized as a brilliant modern artist. In another recent scheme, he was trying to become someone renowned for speaking only in witty quotes. In the current story line, Bucky is trying to start his own line of high-fashion clothing, to be called “Monkeywhere?”
Of course, Bucky rarely leaves the house, and has no access to anything that could propel his, uhm, creativity into the world.
Satchel is usually a foil who falls for Bucky’s endless supply of schemes. In the most recent strips, Satchel bought two of Bucky’s “Monkeywhere?” shirts for the price of three.
Conly also has a cast (I just made a typo and learned that an anagram for cast is cats.) of goofball characters, including Shakespug, a pug who often quotes Shakespeare; Chubby Hugs, a pudgy cat who hugs everyone he sees; and Mack Mac McManx, one of Bucky’s cousins who stays at the house sometimes. The only normal character who turns up from time to time is Rob’s dad, who seems to be the only person capable to handling Bucky’s antics.
My favorite strip has Rob talking to Bucky about some grand scheme, and Rob says something like, “I have five bucks that says you’ll never do it.”
To which Bucky replies, “I won’t be intimidated by you or your freakish talking money.”
I wish I had the occasion to use that in conversation someday.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Somewhere between tragic and just gross

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20084866/

I'll not clutter up your mind with my thoughts on this. Just read it and look at the picture.

Three players who belong in the Baseball Hall of Fame

If you ask me, these guys should be in:

1. Tommy John, with 288 wins, and a type of reconstructive surgery named after him. If he had not lost time to that then-radical surgery, he'd certainly have made it to 300 wins and be a lock.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/j/johnto01.shtml

2. Bert Blyleven, with 287 wins, was, at the time of his retirement, third on the all-time strikeout list. Oddly enough, Tommy John shows up on his list of comparable players. Blyleven also won two World Series titles, in 1979 and 1987.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/b/blylebe01.shtml

3. Mel Harder, who had 223 wins, also was one of the greatest pitching coaches of all time. He was known for teaching the curveball to lots of Cleveland Indian pitchers during the many years he was a coach there. He also is credited for being the first coach to focus exclusively on pitching. Many former Cleveland players and sports writers have campaigned for his induction, and they make a convincing case. Only Bob Feller won more games for the Indians than Harder. A trivia note: he started, and unfortunately lost, the first game in Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Read the Baseball Library essay -- it's short and says an awful lot about why Harder deserves to be in.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/h/hardeme01.shtml
http://www.baseballlibrary.com/ballplayers/player.php?name=Mel_Harder_1909

4. Honorable mention: Jim Kaat, just because he was durable, won a lot of games and happened to pitch 303 innings and win 20 games at age 36. I have always thought he deserved more consideration than he gets.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/k/kaatji01.shtml

5. Sportscasters were fond of telling us all through the late 1980s and early 1990s that Jack Morris was the winningest pitcher of the '80s. Doesn't that merit some consideration, too?
http://www.baseball-reference.com/m/morrija02.shtml

Familiarity, thy name is Mignola, Rude, Allred and Miller

It was like 1995 again.
Sometime last month – I know it was on a Wednesday, and you’ll know why in a few more words – I was at the local comic book store buying that week’s new comics. I walked out having bought a new issue of “Nexus,” “Madman,” “Hellboy” and “Martha Washington.”
Why is this significant? Well, with the exception of “Hellboy,” the titles had been essentially mothballed for years. Now they are back, and I am very happy about it.
All four titles were comics I discovered after a year or two or three of a comics-reading hiatus I sort of took from somewhere in mid-1992 to late 1994. For various reasons, to include becoming an alarmingly arrogant snob who decided Harvey Kurtzman and Alex Raymond were such brilliant cartoonists, there was no need to read anything current, I cut back on my comics reading significantly. It also had to do with that bane of all young comics fans, the First Serious Girlfriend, but you know how that goes.
All that came and went, and when I was ready, comics were there, waiting to welcome me back.
I started with “John Byrne’s Next Men,” and “Harlan Ellison’s Dream Corridor,” but I found my way to three of the titles I picked up last month. Hellboy, oddly enough, was created and drawn by Mike Mignola, but the same John Byrne from “Next Men” wrote the script to the first Hellboy story.
I found “Madman,” in a black and white graphic novel collection of his earliest stories. While it was obvious that writer-artist Mike Allred was still growing as a cartoonist, the book was clever, fun and well-drawn.
I started picking up “Nexus” because I had read it years before occasionally, but I never was a rabid fan. It was something familiar, which I knew was a high-quality product. I really got into it and bought almost all the back issues in a several-months-long binge.
“Martha Washington” was written by Frank Miller and drawn by Dave Gibbons, both outstandingly talented cartoonists I knew well. I came about it from a roundabout way, reading all the copies of Miller’s “Sin City” I could find, and then working my way to his other recent products.
It is difficult to explain the glee from re-discovering a beloved hobby like I did. By not reading comics for a while, I had allowed the candy jar to be re-filled with all sorts of unknown delights.
I traveled around to different comic shops hurriedly gathering all I had missed and making sure I didn’t miss any more. In the process, I found Monarch Comics, in Toledo, Ohio, where I would go on a weekly basis for something like 12 years to buy comics.
There I found regular issues of “Hellboy,” “Nexus,” “Madman” and various Frank Miller projects including “Martha Washington.”
Slowly, time passed and all except “Hellboy” stopped being published regularly. I don’t remember when the last “Madman” or “Nexus” was, but it was probably in 2000 or so.
Imagine my surprise when I went into the comic store and found all four in one week! The first issue of a new “Madman” came out the month before, but “Nexus” and “Martha Washington” were completely unexpected.
Now, after a many-year hiatus, Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier are bringing out a new “Groo” series next month. Could life get any better?

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

It's been a while

Boy, am I behind. Eighteen days. How can I expect anybody to read this thing when I don't add anything interesting regularly. To prime the pump, here is an e-mail I received a long time ago, and kept around because I thought it was funny:

EXCERPTS FROM A DOG'S DAILY DIARY:
8:00 a.m.Oh, boy! Dog food! My favorite!
9:30 a.m.Oh, boy! A car ride! My favorite!
9:40 a.m.Oh, boy! A walk! My favorite!
10:30 a.m.Oh, boy! Getting rubbed and petted! My favorite!
11:30 a.m.Oh, boy! Dog food! My favorite!
Noon- Oh, boy! The kids! My favorite!
1:00 p.m.Oh, boy! The yard! My favorite!
4:00 p.m.Oh, boy! To the park! My favorite!
5:00 p.m.Oh, boy! Dog food! My favorite!
5:30 p.m.Oh, boy! Pretty Mums! My favorite!
6:00 p.m.Oh, boy! Playing ball! My favorite!
6:30 a.m.Oh, boy! Watching TV with my master! My favorite!
8:30 p.m Oh, boy! Sleeping in master's bed! My favorite!

EXCERPTS FROM A CAT'S DAILY DIARY:
Day 183 of My Captivity: My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects. They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while I am forced to eat dry cereal. The only thing that keeps me going is the hope of escape, and the mild satisfaction I get from ruining the occasional piece of furniture. Tomorrow I may eat another house plant. Today my attempt to kill my captors by weaving around their feet while they were walking almost succeeded; must try this at the top of the stairs. In an attempt to disgust and repulse these vile oppressors, I once again induced myself to vomit on their favorite chair, must try this on their bed. Decapitated a mouse and brought them the headless body, in an attempt to make them aware of what I am capable of, and to try to strike fear into their hearts. They only cooed and condescended about what a good little cat I was. Hmmm, not working according to plan. There was some sort of gathering of their accomplices. I was placed in solitary confinement throughout the event. However, I could hear the noise and smell the food. More importantly, I overheard that my confinement was due to my power of "allergies." Must learn what this is and how to use it to my advantage. I am convinced the other captives are flunkies and maybe snitches. The dog is routinely released and seems more than happy to return. He is obviously a half-wit. The bird, on the other hand, has got to be aninformant, he speaks with them regularly. I am certain he reports my every move. Due to his current placement in the high metal room, his safety is assured. But I can wait, it is only a matter of time ....

Friday, August 10, 2007

Steriods

I thought I’d try to weigh in on Barry Bonds and the home run and the steroid controversy. Here’s where I started, a year or so ago, with a look at the career records of Bonds and Hank Aaron.:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/b/bondsba01.shtml (Bonds)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/a/aaronha01.shtml (Aaron)
If you look closely, other than Bonds 72 home run season, their totals aren’t completely out of whack with each other, mainly because Aaron was so consistent for so long. That surprised me. Bonds is better, granted, but not wildly out of line better.
How much, then, do steroids help?
There are a lot of baseball players who have gotten caught with steroids in the last couple of years, and most of them were marginal major leaguers. Steriods didn’t seem to be helping them all that much. So, the questions then are, how would one show that Bonds was, in fact, taking steroids? And, if so, what was the effect? Here are my three methods:
Figure out an average number from somewhere, either the average number of homers Bonds in his first five seasons, and use it to measure how he might have done in his last five. (I used five as a guess. I suppose it could be seven or even 10 if need be.) Other averages to use could include Aaron’s averages for his last five years; an average of the averages of a group of top home run hitters’ last few seasons, prorated by era and ballpark. I doubt this really gets to the bottom of it, though, because it’s really comparing Bonds either to someone other than himself, or to himself as a younger player playing under different conditions. But, it’s a start. My guess on this method id that it would show Bonds with some 600-plus home runs, but probably not enough to beat Aaron. But, if Bonds has beaten Ruth, even if he was 44 or 45, who’s to say he wouldn’t have hung around two or three or even four extra years to take a shot at Aaron? Who’s to say he wouldn’t have passed him eventually?
One would have to be a physicist or kinesiologist to figure this one out, but determine how much steroids increase a person’s strength. Then, apply that increase in force to the torque created by swinging a baseball bat of a certain weight to determine how much farther a ball, hit squarely, might travel. I assume you would have to work from a squarely hit ball, because trying to figure out how it affects a ball that’s not well hit adds other variables. Because a home run has to be hit fairly solidly, we could probably come up with a good measure. My guess is what this would show is that a well-hit ball would travel, at best, 10 or maybe 15 feet more. That’s a complete and utter guess, and maybe the number is measured more in inches. To hit a ball well is a function of not only the strength, but also the swing, the bat, the wind, the humidity and so on. Maybe the effect is really marginal. At any rate, you’d have to check all of his homers against all of the ballparks in which they were hit since the steroid rumors started, and determine by this factor how many home runs he gained.
How about using stop-motion photography to compare bonds in the late-80s and early 90s with Bonds now? The idea would be to see if his swing actually got faster or stayed the same. Using film, one could use certain cues in his wing to determine how it changed over the years. Especially by comparing his swing to other of similar age and accomplishments, where film is available, we might get a measurable idea of how his swing at an advanced age differs from other similar players.

None of these methods strikes me as likely to show Bonds had a huge advantage. The third probably would be the most telling, but even that couldn’t really show how many extra home runs he may have hit. There are too many factors cluttering up the analysis.
As many people point out, Bonds was a Hall of Famer long before the steroid controversy erupted. There’s no question he’s one of the best to ever play the game. The question is how can baseball fans understand his career in the context of the typical career we are used to seeing?
I doubt there will be any other players, juiced or otherwise, who will hit 72 home runs in his late 30s. There are a lot of people saying Alex Rodriguez may pass Bonds eventually. It’s possible, but he’d have to build up a huge pad of home runs because of Bonds’ late surge.

I am a snake head eating the head of the opposite side

This story reminds me of one of those movies that have several false endings when the bad guy keeps coming back from the dead.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20212558