After a month off ...

Here's something cool. Go take a look:

http://www.warnervideo.com/jlnewfrontier/

and I promise to return to posting regularly in a few days. Honestly.

Meow? Meow. Meow! Meow?

OK, I should make a real post here, but this was too entertaining:

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1435088

It's cats having a conversation. I think they were discussing how surprising the Browns are this year.

Those fightin' fullbacks

A post sent to me in an e-mail, with which I agree entirely:

"There is a reason New England is so good. Bill Belichick did not run up
the score on Buffalo. The fullbacks for New England, Kyle Eckel from
Naval Academy and Heath Evans had 20 combined carries for 96 yards. No
fullback(s) has had 20 carries in one game in the NFL for more than 20
years. The running game finally clicked. Their sissy tailback had 6
carries.

"Remember Bill Belichick in Clevland? He used a three-Fullback offense
at times: Tommy Vardell, Leroy Hoard and Kevin Mack.

"There is a reason a running game is successful in northern climates?
Jerome Bettis was a fullback in New Orleans when Pittsburgh traded for
him.

"Lawrence Vickers had 3 carries last Sunday, most in one game by a Browns
fullback since -- you guessed it -- Bill Belichick was coach.

"Give the ball to the FULLBACK. Success will come.

"Marion Motely, Jim Brown, Ernie Greene, Mike Pruitt, Tommy Vardell,
Leroy Hoard, Kevin Mack ...

"The "Ickey Shuffle" for Paul Brown's 'other team.'

"Ohio State halfbacks under Woody Hayes were such brutal runners, they
played fullback in the NFL: John Brockington @ Green Bay, et al.

"....and Green Bay fullbacks during the glory years."

-- Dave Johnson, Cleveland sports (and fullback) fan

10 Question Tuesday

Playing "10 Question Tuesday:"

1. Could the Browns win the Super Bowl?
Maybe they could in 2008, if they add a pass rush and generally beef up the defensive line. This year, I'd hate to be facing them in the playoffs, because with their offense, they might just knock of a better team by outscoring them.
2. Are the breaks finally going the Browns' way? After the fans bottle-throwing game in 2001, Duane Rudd's helmet-throwing loss, and all the other bizarre ways the Browns have lost games since coming back, maybe winning last week after the Ravens were already celebrating a victory in the locker room is a good sign. The Browns still have a few of this oddball endings coming to them, I think.
3. Who's the MVP for the Browns so far this year? Probably Derek Anderson, but don't forget how important a contribution Josh Cribbs has made. It was his kick returning that really put the Browns in position to win in Baltimore, and he's a threat to run that ball back every time. Cribbs kept them in the Pittsburgh game after a kickoff return for a touchdown.
4. Who's my favorite player on the team? For years, it has been Phil Dawson. He cemented that status in 1999, when he scored a touchdown on a fake field goal. Apparently, he played fullback in high school. I am glad the kick went his way against Baltimore. He's the only Brown left from that first year, and he has always been a good kicker and a class act. I doubt they make jerseys with the kicker's name, but if there was one, I'd probably buy it. I almost always have him as the kicker on my fantasy football teams.
5. Who would I try to sign in the free-agent market if I were the Cleveland Indians? Andrew Jones would be my number one guy. He has power, he can still play great defense and he has a lot of playoff experience. He'd add a right-handed bat to a lineup that needs one more guy. Where would Jones play? I might move him to right field, because reports are he's lost a step in center, and he still has a very storing arm. Heck, that would give the Indians a heck of a defensive outfield, with Jones, Grady Sizemore and Franklin Gutierrez.
6. Do I like the Indians new alternate uniforms for 2008? Yes!
7. Who would I play at shortstop for the Indians in 2008? Asdrubal Cabrera, if I could. Jhonny Peralta if I had to. I think I'd try to either trade Peralta or move him to third. It doesn't sound like the Indians want to do either, though. In truth, he may have been their best player in the playoffs, and really did as much as anyone to help the team win.
8. Why didn't Victor Martinez get any support in the American league's MVP voting? I have no clue. A catcher who batted cleanup for most of the year, his over .300 with more than 20 home runs and more than 100 RBIs, who played good defense and provided leadership to a team that made the playoffs for the first time since 2001 sounds like a good candidate to me. The Yankees could have finished second in their division without Alex Rodriguez. In fact, if you listen to some of the complaining and moaning from New York fans, they didn't even need his 50 plus home runs.
9. Do I wish I could terminate my employment, and then come back for $270 million over 10 years? Heck, yeah.
10. Can I think up a tenth question? Sure, although this might not be a very satisfying end to this exercise.

Writers' strike strikes!

Apparently, Fox has decided to air episodes of Family Guy without series creator Seth MacFarlane during the Writers Guild of America strike:

http://www.animationmagazine.net/article/7610

For anyone with any interest in the subject, Mark Evanier has been posting rather lengthy comments regarding the situation on his Web site:

www.newsfromme.com

An old tape that's still new

I have no idea how old I was when my dad made the tape. I assume I was less than junior high school, maybe fifth or sixth grade, but I have no idea.
I do know, however, he had gotten a new radio/cassette player that was something short of a boom box. He got it from my brother for Christmas one year. Late one night, he was listening to the radio (I think it was WJR, "The Great Voice of the Great Lakes), and decided to pop a cassette in and record what was on.
What was on, you ask?
Well, the first item was a song making fun of people who watched too much television. The song started in the middle, and it was more than 20 years before I ever heard the beginning.
Next came a song from "The Music Man," from early in the movie when Robert Preston comes to town to sell musical instruments.
"Oh, you got trouble, with a capital T and rhymes with P and that stands for pool!"
Following this, a Dragnet parody called "Little Blue Riding Hood." After that, a longer piece poking fun at the Lawrence Welk Show, "Wunnerful, Wunnerful."
The recording concluded with an episode of "The Bickersons." That one got interrupted in the middle when my dad had to flip the tape over.
It also took me 20 years to realize that wasn't Robert Preston signing the song from "The Music Man."
It was Stan Freberg.
The younger version of me listened to that tape over and over and over. I usually cut it off at "The Bickersons" to listen to the Freberg material.
His clever satire really made me laugh then, and it still does today.
I listened to it so much that I memorized "Little Blue Riding Hood," and I can still recite it from memory today.
It took me until I was 32 to buy a best of Stan Freberg CD, and lo and behold, there were all those tracks for me to listen to as an adult.
I finally got to hear the beginning of "Tele-Vee-Shun," I learned that was Stan, not Robert Preston signing the song. I still have no idea why he re-recorded it, but there it was.
I also have "The United States of America" parts one and two, his funny satire and parody songs about various incidents in American history.
That's really about all the material you can find by Freberg these days, even though in his heyday, he released lots of comedy records. There's a box set that features most of the things on the greatest hits CDs, but also includes a whole CD of the radio commercials he made for such companies as Chun Kin Chow Main, Pittsburgh Paints and Taco Bell. (Taco Bell in China?)
I wish someone would re-release more, but what's available is wonderful.
Some material is dated, but most of it stands up really well for modern audiences.
I hadn't seen "Dragnet" when I heard "Little Blue Riding Hood," but it still made me laugh. I still sometimes have to repress a laugh when I watch a rerun of Jack Webb talking.
I think if there's one famous person I wish I could meet, it would be Stan Freberg. I have no idea what I'd say to him, but I guess I'd just thank him for all the hours of enlightening enjoyment I have gotten from listening to his albums.
By the way, I think the original tape my dad made still exists somewhere and may still be playable. I'll have to go see if I can find it.

The Spectacular Spider-Man

For those of you who are into seeing previews of a new animated show featuring everytone's favorite web-slinger ...

http://www.marvel.com/movies/Spider-Man.The_Spectacular_Spider-Man

Enjoy!

Just to be sure

This one is always worth an occasional check:

www.abevigoda.com

Non-blogging

I thought I'd have a blog entry about how Stan Freberg is the funniest comedian I can think of, and how I'd really love to meet him and just talk to him for a few minutes and how I have listened to his comedy albums (as many as I could find) for many, many years. I was going to explain why I think his satire is so funny, and I was going to quote passages and probably link to Mark Evanier's Web site about Freberg.
But, I didn't get it done in time. I blame myself.
So, I guess this serves as a preview for Tuesday's post.

Meanwhile, I thought you could amuse yourself with this:
www.zombo.com
Remember: You can do anything at Zombo.com.

Watch for falling ... cows?

I'd post a real blog entry today, but there's no way I could possibly top this:

Cow falls off cliff and crashes onto van on highway, motorists unhurt
MANSON, Wash. (AP) -- Charles and Linda Everson were driving back to their hotel when their minivan was struck by a falling object -- a 600-pound cow.
http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=7319725&Call=Email&Format=Text

The Batman artist I think of

If I am lucky, you’ll see a piece of art along with the entry. It depends if I can find any on the Internet. If I do, it will be a panel or so from a “Batman” comic book drawn by Irv Novick.
So, where am I going with this, talking about a long-time comic book artist, who doesn’t get much discussion these days? He was a not a visionary so much as a craftsman, who knew how to draw and how to tell a story clearly. He probably drew, at one time or another, every time of comic out there. Perhaps his longest runs were on war comics, The Flash, and Batman.
When I think of what Batman should look like, I think of Novick’s drawings. When I think of what The Flash should look like, I see Novick’s drawings.
While there are other artists who have done iconic work on these titles — Neal Adams, Frank Miller and Bruce Timm on Batman, and Carmine Infantino or Alex Saviuk or Mike Wieringo on Flash — Novick always sticks out in my mind.
When drawing Batman, Novick did not draw the overly muscled, bulky character that Jim Lee is popular for in recent years. He didn’t make the Dark Knight look like a shadow or a demon like Kelley Jones did.
His Batman was muscled but lean, like a gymnast. His Batman could be a detective or a moody, frightening avenger of the night without losing the consistent thread that he was a man.
He moved with grace, power and ease, but still could hide in the shadows only to emerge at the right time to make evildoers cringe in fear.
Novick always drew the supporting characters with a consistency that is unmatched in recent days. He didn’t decide how he wanted the characters to look. He drew them as they were supposed to be drawn, based on the way the company always presented them.
Commissioner Gordon always looked like Commissioner Gordon, Lucius Fox always looked like Lucius Fox. Villains, too, were consistently on-model for that matter.
I didn’t read that many issues of his Flash, but he handled that character the same way. The Flash was not an over muscled weightlifter, he was a lithe runner. This only makes sense. How fast could The Flash run if he weighed 250 pounds and was muscle bound?
(On a related note: who do some artists insist on making the Sub-Mariner look like a big-time wrestler? The guy is a swimmer for crying out loud!)
Another beef I have with modern artists is they confuse what the human body looks like, and what the human body looks like under clothing. Many modern comic book artists draw as if they have heavily studied the musculoskeletal system and want to show off their knowledge.
They forget that if you put clothes over the body, no matter how form fitting, every little vein and every little sinew won’t show. Oh, and by the way, clothing almost always wrinkles a little around joints.
Look at Novick’s drawings. The characters are still muscular, but not so much they look like their costumes were spray-painted on their bodies.
I wish there were more artists today not necessarily drawing like Novick, but learning some of the lessons he could teach about grounding art in reality and putting some careful thought into character design.
Novick is from a different generation than the modern artists, and in this case, I think many in the current crop could stand to learn a little something from their elders.

OK, so I was early

Those were my Tuesday posts, but they were posted Monday night. Sometimes, I am so organized and prepared, I amaze myself.

I could have sworn I saw someone in that old attic window

This is an interesting ghost de-bunking story. And, what's that in the hallway behind you?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/62337

I wouldn't eat salmon dip, either

In high school, the cafeteria once served salmon loaf. Once. (Remember that?) I didn't eat it then, and I wouldn't eat salmon dip, either, and apparently that's a good policy.

Salmon dip recalled after Ga. inspectors find bacteria
Georgia inspectors have found a deadly bacteria in a package of Kroger Smoked Salmon Dip -- prompting a produce recall.
http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=7280727&Call=Email&Format=Text

Making managers

Maybe somebody out there knows more about this that me (certainly someone does), but I noted a very interesting thing about the Kansas City A's from 1962-65: Those teams had a LOT of players who would later become significant managers and/or coaches in major league baseball.
How did I start studying this? I looked up former St. Louis Browns, Kansas City As, Baltimore Orioles and Cleveland Indians general manager Hank Peters. The current crop of playoff-caliber Cleveland Indians is a direct descendant from Peters' handiwork, to wit:
Peters became the Indians general manager in 1988. As his assistant, he picked John Hart, a young former player her knew from Baltimore. When Peters fired manager Doc Edwards that summer (Let us note Edwards was one of the A's players I shall shortly list. He was team's primary catcher in 1963-64.), Peters replaced Edwards with Hart. Hart finished out the season and then was kicked upstairs to the front office, where Peters would groom him to be the next general manager.
Peters believed in player development, and Peters and Hart put together the core of the team that would win six American league central pennants in the 1990s and early 2000s. Hart trained as his replacement Mark Shapiro, who has been in place since 2001, and who used a player development oriented minor league system to rebuild the Indians after the 2002 season.
Thus, the modern Indians are the heirs of the 1970s and 1980s Baltimore Orioles teams overseen by Peters, building around home-grown players from a strong minor league player development system.
Now, back to where I started. Long about 1962. Peters had moved into Kansas City's front office as a director of scouting and minor league system a few years earlier. I went to check and see if the A's developed any superstar players while he was there.
If they did (and Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter and so on certainly were great players) they did not surface until after Peters left to return to the Browns, who were now the Baltimore Orioles, in 1965. However, it seems that Peters may have had one lasting effect on baseball: his team developed players who became major league coaches and managers at an amazing rate.
Baseball-reference.com has all sorts of interesting things on it, and that's where I found lists of the teams including the following names:
1. Tony LaRussa (manager)
2. Dick Howser (manager)
3. Doc Edwards (manager)
4. Ken Harrelson (manager)
5. Haywood Sullivan (manager, front office guy, owner)
6. Charlie Lau (hitting coach)
7. Dave Duncan (LaRussa's longtime pitching coach)
8. Bill Fischer (pitching coach)
9. Jack Aker (pitching coach)
There may be others I don't know. But, at the rate of nine managers and coaches on one team over three seasons, I doubt there has ever been teams as "baseball smart" as these were. Unfortunately, they only won 72, 73 and 57 games during those seasons.

Also lurking

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/

Cool animation site, for those who have not seen it.

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/events/animation-in-columbus-ohio

This is about an animation festival in Columbus starting in November. If I still lived there, I'd go.

What lurks within ... the Internet

This is a website with all kinds of scanned pages from Jack Kirby’s pre-Marvel monster comics.
http://monsterblog.oneroom.org/collectors_corner/kirby_monsters_never_reprinted.html.
The trick is – none of the stories were ever reprinted after they appeared from 1959-1962. What a find!
Mostly inked by Dick Ayers or Christopher Rule, the art isn’t really much like what Kirby did at the peak of his Marvel work a few years later. Still, it has a charm all its own, and I have always loved reading the old monster stories when I found them.
I have a bunch of the monster reprints Marvel issued in the 1970s, but to find there were some “lost episodes” made me very happy. The original issues would be really hard to find, and probably very expensive.
There is one story inked by Wally Wood that’s worth checking out.
They are short, sinple, campy monster stories reminiscent of the Twilight Zone TV show. They are not great literature, but they are great fun to read.
Who could not love titles like, “I Am the Menace from the Purple Planet,” or “I Created Mechano!” or “We Were Trapped in The Twilight World.” For that matter, “The Luna Lizards Had Me Trapped” sounds like a winner, too.
I assume Stan Lee wrote most of them, or maybe Larry Leiber, his brother. No credits were given on many of the original stories, though.
To read these, you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief, and some of the laws of common sense, but if you do, there’s almost nothing more fun than these old monster comics.

What happaned to my Tuesday post?

The cat thrwew up on it and the dog at it and I lost it and when the bullies beat me up Monday afternoon, it fell out of my bookbag and went down into the sewer drain. Honest.

Collecting Sturgeon

(This is my Friday post, a little bit early.)

What makes someone want to dish out some 30 bucks a-freakin'-piece for 11, so far, volumes of "The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon?" Especially when it is noted that he-who-is-typing-this-little essay already has most of the stories in their original, or second- or third- of fourth-printing, paperback forms?
A little background:
(And please pause for a moment to note that I have just read Harlan Ellison's wonderful introduction to the latest volume, number 11 in the series, called "The Nail and the Oracle," and I have his authorial voice pouring through my fingers and, try as I might, if I write anything right now it comes out on the keyboard.)
I spend a few years after I graduated from college reading a lot of science fiction. I mean a lot. I mean, sometimes three books-a-day a lot. Often, it would mean finishing one book in the morning, reading another in the afternoon, starting a third in the evening, and then going to be to wake up and do it again.
I started with Ray Bradbury. For some reason, whenever I want to read but can't, I can always turn to Bradbury to make me read again. I don't to this day really understand why, but it almost always works.
The book was "The Vintage Bradbury," and I had bought it and was supposed to read it for a college class (English 210, "Lit of Science Fiction," if I am to remember correctly). I had read a few stories in it, written a paper and discussed what I had read, along with what I hadn't, during the class.
There were several similar books from the class which I had read but not read that I read that summer as well. None were written by Theodore Sturgeon, however.
I moved on to a book I had wanted to read but never did, "The Essential Ellison," and worked backward to re-read Ellison's "Angry Candy" which I had bought and read a few years earlier. In the introduction to that book, Ellison talked at some length about people he knew who had died recently. One of them was — A-hah! Here's where I am going at last! — Sturgeon.
After reading Ellison eulogize his friend so passionately, I started looking for some books Sturgeon wrote. The first I found was his wonderful novel, and science fiction classic, "More Than Human." I read it, and really enjoyed it. So, I kept looking for more.
I haunted used bookstores that whole summer, and found lots of old Sturgeon books. I could find almost none of his works in new book stories. I think most of his short story collections were out of print by the early 1990s.
But, I rounded up "E Plurbus Unicorn," "Theodore Sturgeon Is Alive and Well," "Beyond," "Caviar," and many others. I found his novels like "The Dreaming Jewels," "The Cosmic Rape," and Venus Plus X."
So, I had, and still have, a pretty good Sturgeon collection. I didn't have everything, though.
Then, a few years later, random House books started publishing "The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon," which, I think, was initially supposed to be a 10-volume set. (It has already reached 11 volumes, and I don't know when it will stop.)
Initially, I decided not to buy them, because I figured I had most of the stories, anyway. Plus, they were expensive, even as paperbacks.
Cut to an evening in 2001 and I am perusing a Half-Price Books store in Columbus, Ohio and I find two of the earlier volumes, three and four, for $5 apiece. What did I do? I bought them.
Sturgeon's story "Killdozer" is considered one of his best. However, I always get stuck reading it. I have tried to work through it something like four or five times, and I have to force myself. I don't really know why.
I started the volume with "Killdozer" in it pretty soon and I got the books, and I got stuck. So, I didn't finish the volumes I had until 2004.
I figured I ought to take something along to read when I was on my honeymoon in Ireland, something that I could pick up and put down as I wanted. So, I picked the Sturgeon book.
I think I finished it while my lovely new wife was showering one evening, and when I got home resolved to start buying the rest of the series.
At this point, there was something like eight or nine books, and I had but two. The later ones were only being issued in hardcover, which meant they were expensive. Like $35 apiece expensive.
I got a couple and plowed through them, all the while planning to get the rest, buying maybe a month or two at a time. Well, it didn't work out that way. I shunted the collecting to the side for something like two more years.
Allofasudden it was 2007, and I was arranging my Sturgeon on a bookshelf and I saw which ones I was missing. So, I tried to get one book from what I thought was his peak period, which turned out to be volume eight.
I ordered in it April from Amazon.com. It was backordered. I waited something like four months, and it never came.
I tried to order a used copy from Barnes and Noble's Web site. A seller listed it, but then I ordered it, it never came. Ultimately, I got a refund. I tried to order it from the Random House site. I got an e-mail that it was back ordered there, too. I cancelled that order a day later.
Because it was so hard to get, I realized I may run out of time. I worried they wouldn't be in print forever, and I'd have a collection with some gaping holes.
In the mean time, I started buying all the other books I didn't have. I got volumes one and two from Amazon. I got volume six, too. I got volumes nine and 11, too -- all of them for less than cover price, sometimes less than half.
Finally, on Amazon, a used volume eight appeared for cover price, $35, and I ordered it. I got it four days later. It's the only one I paid full price for.
One can safely say that after some six years, I almost have the complete stories of Theodore Sturgeon. Volume 10 is on the way to me now, and I'll finally be done with the whole thing.
I just noticed something: I still didn't answer the question I started with: what makes a person want to buy all these books? Sturgeon is a wonderful writer, whose stories are entertaining, informative and enlightening all at the same time.
I guess if you really want to know why I got all the volumes, you'll just have to get one, read it and find out for yourself. Needless to say, I think having all the stories is worth the work I went through.

Here's my new blog plan

Let's see if I can keep this up. Maybe I will, maybe I won't.
My goal is to do two column-length blog entiries a week, one to be posted on Tuesday, and another to be posted on Friday.
It looks like I have focused on two subjects mainly: baseball and comic books, so I suspect that will be the majority of the entries. I'd like to be consistent about it, so there would be a comic book entry on Tuesday and a baseball or sports entry on Friday. I don't know if that will be the schedule, though. I'll see what works.
I'd also like to post more things like links in between the main postings. Silly little things that pop into my head or that I run across from time to time.
So, here's my pledge: Tuesdays and Fridays I update. What time, I cannot gaurantee. It may be better to look at the blog on Wednesday and Saturdays, depending on how late in the day I post.
I'll try this for a few weeks and see if I keep up.
Wish me luck!

Sabathia, Crisp, Borowski and more

Ten questions about the American league Championship Series game five:
1. How will C.C. Sabathia pitch?
A: Against New York and Boston, he was starting the first game of the series and placing a lot of pressure on himself to get the team off to a good start. He pitched poorly both times. My guess is that because the Indians are leading the Red Sox three games to one, there will be less pressure and C. C. will be able to settle down and pitch a good game. Also, he has had two poor starts to learn from, and sometimes the guy who fails learns more and ultimately becomes better than the guy who always succeeds. Just law of averages makes me think sooner or later a pitcher as good as Sabathia will win, and eventually, Josh Beckett has to have a post-season start in which he struggles. Maybe it won't be tonight, but we'll see. Even Orel Hershiser eventually lost a few playoff games.
2. How will the Red Sox respond to having their backs against the wall?
A: This is a veteran team. They won't be intimidated. If they show up ready to hit, they can beat anybody. There is little doubt in my mind they could still win the series if they started getting some little breaks, and their hitters — other than Ramirez and Ortiz — and pitchers started living up to expectations.
3. Should the Red Sox bench Coco Crisp and play Jacoby Ellsbury?
A. I'd say no. Crisp hasn't hit in the series, but sooner or later, he will. He's a good defensive player and has a lot of speed, too. If Terry Francona was going to bench him, he should have done it long before game four. If I were managing, which I am not, I'd figure out who my best players were and get them as many at-bats and innings as I could on the premise that the talent will assert itself.
4. How much longer can Rafael Betancourt keep getting out the Red Sox hitters?
A: I have no earthly idea, but I hope for at least another week.
5. If the Indians are leading by one run in the ninth in game five, should manager Eric Wedge give the ball to shaky closer Joe Borowski?
A: Yes.
6. What if that happens in a game seven?
A. Maybe.
7. What if that happens in game seven of the World Series?
A. Well, the Indians would have to get there first. But, remember Jose Mesa? I think Borowski has done a good job for the Indians all year, and he did lead the AL in saves, and he did have more three-up-three-down saves than Mariano Rivera this year, but if he is pitching in game seven of the World Series with a one-run lead, and gets two strikes on the last batter, I don't know if I'll be able to watch. At least we Indians fans learned to deal with this in recent years with the team's all-time saves leader Bob Wickman keeping us on the edge of our seats for years.
8. Isn't it interesting the way Wedge has bunted and stolen bases way more than usual in the playoffs?
A: Yes! Since runs are harder to come by in the post season (because you are facing better teams and generally only seeing the better teams' better pitchers), it only makes sense to have the team ready to play for one run in certain situations.
9. Will this come up in game five?
A: I guess we'll see. If I were the Indians, I'd do anything I could to facilitate ending the series in Cleveland. First, I'd like to get the series over and send the Sox home as soon as I could, and second, I'd hate to have to go back to Boston and try to win. Fenway Park is one of those places where no lead is ever really safe.
10. How hard was it to come up with 10 questions about a single game?
A: Harder than I thought. It might be easier to do for the World Series. We'll see.

ALCS: closer than a good shave

I have no idea who is going to win the ALCS. The Indians and Red Sox are very similar teams with similar strengths and weaknesses. My guess is, it will come down to which team gets the little lucky breaks, like bunts rolling foul, bugs descending on the field, fly balls ricocheting off of walls and bouncing away for all the fielders and so on. The only thing I dare predict is that we'll be seeing a game seven in Boston, and I'll need a whole bottle of Tums.

Baseball playoffs are here!

This may not get posted before the playoffs start, but it is being written well before (or, the afternoon before, anyway). Here are my thoughts about the MLB playoff series:

Indians-Yankees:
I am biased, but I'll take the Indians. Two reasons: 1. I think the Indians have dominant starting pitching and 2. The Yankees don't. I remember those muscle bound late-1990s Indians going into series after series with great hitters and mediocre pitching and losing. The Yankees are a similar hitting-heavy team. The Yankees may have the better bullpen, mainly because of Mariano Rivera, but the Indians' pen is good enough to win, especially in a short series in which their weaker relievers may not have to see much action. The Indians just have to knock out the Yankee starters early and hold a lead. The Tribe can't keep up if the games become slugfests.

Red Sox-Angels
I like the Sox, although the Angels have some good starting pitchers, too. The Sox just have too good a team not to win in the first round of the playoffs. That said, I think the Angels could win this series on the strength of starters John Lackey and Kelvim Escobar, especially if the Boston bullpen, with struggling late-season acquisition Eric Gagne, doesn't pitch well.

Diamondbacks-Cubs
I don't care who wins this series. I really don't. I have no investment in either team. My prediction: Who cares?

Rockies-Phillies
Perhaps this is the most compelling matchup in the playoffs, with both teams sprinting down the stretch to get in. I was rooting for the Phillies all the way (Who cares about seeing another New York team in the playoffs again?) and not paying much attention to the Rockies. I think the Rockies overall hitting (Helton, Holliday, Hawpe, Tulowitzki and Atkins) is more consistent than the Phillies, although the Phils have more home runs. I'll take the Rockies, but not by much.

The Browns won again

Well, that was a convincing victory.
The Browns beat the bejeesus out of the Ravens this afternoon, about a week after I gave them up for dead when the lost to Oakland. Maybe there's more to this team than I thought.
After the big Cincinnati win, and then the last-second oakland loss, I figured here we are on a march to get another high draft pick (which the Bornws already traded to Dallas.) I'd just as soon send Dallas a really low pick, but I doubt that will happen.

Another Week Old Post

(I meant to post this after the Browns beat the Bengals 51-45.)

Cue the theme from "Twilight Zone."
Pan the camera in from the side, focus on Rod Serling standing in front of an empty Dawg Pound in Cleveland Browns stadium. It is quiet, but in the background a man from the cleanup crew is picking up cups, plates and a Bengals jersey with "85"on the back.
Serling begins to speak:

"What did we learn Sunday about the Cleveland Browns?
"We learned
Their defense still isn't really that good.
Joshua Cribbs is a very good special teams player (but we already knew that).
Derek Anderson can win as a starting quarterback in the NFL.
The Browns offense, given the opportunity, really does have some explosiveness.
The players have a lot of character, to come back from the crushing loss in game one, and the unexpected trade of their starting quarterback the day after and the general confusion surrounding the team since training camp began.
"Perhaps more importantly, what didn't we learn? We didn't learn whether or not these Browns will be a particularly good team for the rest of the season, freed from Sunday's trip through the Twilight Zone."

Week Old Post

(I meant to post this a week ago, but ...)

Context, context, context.
I haven’t read too much about Kathy Griffin’s censored comments upon winning a Cable Emmy. Apparently, The E! Network has decided not to air her acceptance speech because while accepting an award, she said, according to the Associated Press, which I have to use because I haven’t seen the actual speech:

“Griffin said that ‘a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus.’“She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-color remark about Christ and proclaim, "This award is my god now!’"

I believe the off-color remark was, “Suck it, Jesus,” according to other sources who must have seen the tape.
The question isn’t whether Griffin’s comments are offensive. Of course they are, and she knew it when she made them. For someone to say that and not think people would be offended would be at best naive and at worst hopelessly stupid. She probably intended to offend people, and generate publicity, when she said what she said.
The real question is: How offensive was what she said?
In context, perhaps not as offensive as one might think.
Griffin is known for being outrageous and saying outrageous things. That’s what got her on TV; gave her her own cable show, “My Life on the D-List;” and got her considered as a permanent host on “The View.”
Last season, when she didn’t win the Emmy, she threw a comedic temper tantrum, and screamed, ''I was robbed and you all know it! Everybody can suck it!"
Further, a recent stand-up comedy show that aired on Bravo, the same network at “D-List,” was titled “Suck It.”
So, what she said was a running joke, albeit one taken to another level.
Further, and on this point I have to agree with Griffin, how many hypocritical people who pay no attention to their religion 99 and 44/100 percent of the time, and then get up and thank Jesus for helping them win an award?
Does God really care about the Cable Emmys? (How often do sports figures thank God for winning a game? Does God care if you scored a touchdown on overtime to win a preseason NFL game? If so, what does that say about the cornerback you burned on a deep pass pattern? If God loves you by letting you score, is that cornerback going to Hell?)
So, how offensive was what she said? Pretty offensive. Does context make it less offensive? Probably not to most people who were offended.
But, it does make more sense why she said it.
Does it make sense to know where the joke came from and the circumstances as to why she said it before condemning her to the same fate as the cornerback who blew the coverage? Yes.

AAAaaaaalllvin!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF7qP3LqdG4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBMEZvZSWFQ

Entertaining. Old Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Is it weird ...

... to be able to continually play -- and enjoy -- the same computer baseball game for five years?

I have a game I got in 2002 (Season Ticket Baseball 2003) that's all about being a general manager and making trades and growning minor league players into major league ones. For some reason, I can sit down and continue to run my team from season to season without ever getting permanently bored.

I suppose it's one of the games that never ends. No matter what, there's a new season and some younger players to develop and work into the lineup.

Well, I am going to sign off. I have to decide if it's time to switch teams again. My current team has won the World Series two times in a row.

Charlie, we hardly knew ye

I really wanted Charlie Frye to succeed, and I am really upset about the Cleveland Browns handled this situation, trading him after he started the first game of the season and got clobbered. I just don't see why they didn't trade or release Frye weeks ago. It would have given everyone clarity throughout training camp. I have rarely seen a team handle a quarterback controversy so badly, in a way that doesn't seem to help anyone.

Did it make Charlie Frye any better? No. He was named the starter, but never got a full chance to do the job.
Did it make Derek Anderson any bettter? No. He gets to be the starter now without the benefit of a preseason of preparing to be one.
Did it make Brady Quinn any better? No. He just gets jostled about and will eventually become some new beef for the Browns' quarterback meat grinder.
Did it make Ken Dorsey any better? No. He had very little practice time in training camp and ultimately got released by the Browns before they brought him back.

I would have thought better of this organization, that they would have made a solid plan after the draft and stuck to it. It reminds me of the difference of opinion the Indians brass had about Brandon Phillips, and we see how that turned out. The difference is, the Indians had enough talent to overcome that misstep. I am not so sure the Browns can afford do the same thing.

That said, it leads me to wonder if there's some serious friction among the team's leadership that's pulling the team in different directions. If so, are we looking at yet another house cleaning before next season?

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.

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?

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 ....

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

Playoff pitching problem

IF I was a major league manager, and I was going to set my pitching rotation up for a seven-game World Series, and I could arrange them any way I wanted to (regardless of how they had pitched in the previous series), here's how I'd do it:

First, I'd only use my best three pitchers. The 1987 Minnesota Twins (http://www.baseball-reference.com/player_search.cgi?search=1987+Twins) won the World Series using only three starters (Frank Viola, Bert Blyleven and the immortal Les Straker.) This minimizes the use of my two worst starters, and gets the greatest number of starts for my three best pitchers. It runs the risk of fatigue, but it's the World Series.

The next part is what I have been doing some thinking about: How best does one arrange the top three starters in a seven-game series. Instinctively, you'd think it would be Number one guy in games one, four and seven, number two guy in games two and six and number three guy in games three and seven.

Noe that no matter how you do it, the top guy pitches three games, and next two pitch two each. However, I don't want my number three starter starting game six or game seven. If I get that far (and many series do) I want my best guys at the end, and I want my worst guy to start the least meaningful games. Can this be achieved?

Yes! The rotation would go like this: 1, 3, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1.

Why does this work? The ace gets three starts (games one, four, and seven). The second best guy gets his starts in game three and game six. This means the third-best pitcher pitches games two and five.

Why is this an advantage? Well, assuming the ace wins game one, there isn't as much pressure on the number three pitcher to win game two. It's not a bad start to a seven game series to split the first two games, especially with your best two pitchers coming up. Even if he loses, you are down 2-0 with the best two pitchers in the next two games.

In the worst game five situation, team is down three games to one. In that case, things are pretty bad anyway.

The best case, it's up 3 -1, and that means it doesn't really matter how well the third starter pitches, because your two best pitchers are coming up and they only have to win one game between the three of them.

Any other combination of wins and losses at game five merely continues the series with the best two pitchers left for the last two games.

What about the 1987 Twins? They followed a 1-2-3 sequence. They used Viola (their ace), Blyleven (their number two) and Straker (their number three) in sequence. They won anyway. Viola was the loser in game four, but he won games one and seven. Blyleven won game two, but lost game five. Straker wasn't around for any decisions, but the Twins split his starts, losing game three but winning game six.

So, each pitcher lost a game, but the Twins won the World Series because Viola won twice. Therefore, the most important piece of the puzzle may be having a dominant pitcher and making sure he pitches as much as possible. The rest is all scraping around for a small matchup edge.

What got me to thinking about this -- a long time ago -- was Pete Schourek. He started game four of a five game playoff series in 1998 between the Boston Red Sox (his team) and the Cleveland Indians. Facing elimination, manager Jimy Williams could have pitched Pedro Martinez, one of the most dominant starters that year, instead of Schourek, whose record was below .500 for the season.

He picked Schourek, using the logic that the team had to win both games anyway, and Schourek was going to have to pitch in one or the other. Williams was going to save Martinez for game five when he would have an extra day of rest.

It didn't work. Schourek lost, and Martinez never got the chance to win the decisive game

I always thought this was kind of silly. In a short playoff, a manager should go with the best pitcher he has today and worry about tomorrow's game tomorrow. So, the logical question is: What is the best way a manager could use his pitchers to avoid a dilemma like that and (here's the key) have the two best starters available for key games?

My solution may not be perfect, but it's a plan. I promise to use it the next time I am managing in the World Series.

Harry Potter

I started reading the new Harry Potter book. I am desperately trying to finish before someone blows the whole story for me.

So far (page 20) so good.

If I were John Edwards ...

... I'd show up at the next nationally-televised presidential debate with a flat-top haircut.

But, heck, if I was on national TV, I might do that even if people weren't making an issue of my $400 haircut.

Whattya think about dredlocks?

Pug Davis

I really should stop posting links, but this is interesting:

http://www.sugarboukas.com/PD

It's (I think) an e-comic called "Pug Davis." I don't know if it's been published anywhere on paper. Worth checking out, if only because of the unique art.

Elwee and the Tree Weasels

Boy, YouTube has a wealth of things, like Kricfalusi Mighty Mouse episodes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpNNduExImk

Here's the Elwee and the Tree Weasels episode. Why is that 20 years later, this stuff never fails to amuse me?

And what the hell is that in Sandy Bottomfeeder's mouth?

And, why all the relish?

Here's a bonus: an old favorite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKm3Ol1EqYU&mode=related&search=

Yeaaahh? Well put me down. Gotta finish my theme song.

The Fantastic Four

Here's an oldie but a goodie. If you ask me, the 1967 cartoon show is the best version of the FF so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMQj8NCey1A (Part one)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgMuJ6LW7I4 (Part two)

No guarantees how long the link will stay active.

By the way, the voice of Galactus is the same guy who played Lurch in "The Addams Family," I think.

I need to post more ...

... to keep this worth coming back to. I shall endeavor to do so.

Something new

Unfortunately placed advertising:

http://www.oddee.com/item_87332.aspx

Dog fighting: Awful or Horrifying?

Below is a link to the federal indictment of Atlanta Falcons quarterback (for now) Michael Vick. It describes in detail the allegations regarding the dog fighting charges against him.

http://msn.foxsports.com/id/7035302_37_1.pdf

Harry Potter and the Movies That Won't End

General thoughts on Harry Potter (The whole schmeel, not just the new movie):
I like Harry Potter, for the most part. I really enjoyed the first two books, which I read together sometime in late 1999 or early 2000. They were clever and although allegedly written for children, they had skillful writing, intelligent characters and exciting plots.
The third book came out, and I quickly bought it. It started feeling a little bit like formula to me: introduce Harry’s mean uncle and aunt, show how miserable he was with them, whisk him away to Hogwart’s School of Magic and foreshadow an eventual climactic battle with the evil wizard Voldemort and put Harry and his friends in some mortal danger to give the book an exciting climax.
After a while, though, all the books started blending together.
By the end of the third book, I couldn’t remember what happened in each one. I still can’t. I think he fought a giant spider in one, and I remember the fight in the Ministry of Magic from the latest movie because I just saw it. Other than that, I couldn’t tell you what happened in each one. They all blend together.
As every reviewer has so far stated, the first two movies slavishly followed the books. To me, however, the screen versions seemed to be mostly exposition with some situations that showed us who the characters could do followed by a rushed climax and an overhanging threat of eventual grave danger.
The books didn’t seem this way, probably because author J. K. Rowling has a lot more room to pace the story. But the movies seem to spend all sorts of time introducing things rather than putting them in motion quickly.
What occurred to me today is that the movies taken in sum (maybe the books, too) are just like they are individually: Lots of exposition and character introduction leading to the real climax in the last movie. Maybe they will be magnificent if watched consecutively in one sitting. (You try it first. I am not dumb enough to carry out all my grand ideas.)
We’ll see when the last book comes out later this week, but Maybe Harry Potter VII will feature a constant stream of action, with all the characters who have been thoroughly introduced finally going into action in a giant, cellulose chess board.
Maybe they’ll change the movie title to, “Harry Potter and the Destruction of All Life As We Know It.”

Inventory issues

Sorry if I am loading up with too much long stuff. I am clearning up the inventory of stuff I had that I felt needed an audience. I'll try to mis it up and post some shorter, silly stuff in the near future.

I only have a few more inventory items that I can post. I am trying to pick things that either aren't terribly timely or are interesting even if dated.

Courthouse again (the last time for a while, I promise)

This was my response to a letter that appeared in the Advertiser-Tribune, something like two days after I wrote the last post. The original letter had 17 reasons to save our courthouse. My response is called ...
17 Reasons (Not) to Save Our Courthouse:

1. The ground floor always has been of use. It held various county offices, including Judge Thomas Spellerberg’s courtroom, office and jury room, plus the public restrooms, and it is elevator accessible.
1. And, that courtroom was considered inadequate by every official and juror who served in it. Judge Spellerberg kept comment forms in his office to send to the commissioners that almost all listed “courtroom is too small” as one of the comments. Judge Steve Shuff moved out of it as soon as possibly could.

2. Security is a simple matter: Close all but one main entrance, install a metal detector and post a security guard.
2. True enough. It was already being done. However, there are still lots of windows and doors on the first floor that would allow access to someone with nefarious intentions.

3. Space required for modern office equipment (copiers, computers, etc.) makes housing all county offices in one building an impossibility.
3. Right again, but what does saving the courthouse have to do with that? Either way, the county will find enough space for its operations. The question is which is more efficient and, ultimately, cheaper for the county and its taxpayers? The fewer buildings, the better.

4. Additional county buildings house multiple offices:
4. This is not a reason to keep the existing courthouse. It’s simply a fact.

5. Our courthouse has ample county parking lots: A) Annex Building; B) former county commissioners building; C) county commissioners building; D) Juvenile and probate court building; E) RTA building/CSB building; F) Job and Family Services building.
5. True enough. By this standard, so would a new one. Again, not a reason to keep or rebuild.

6. Our courthouse is located on two-way South Washington Street.
6. And one-way Court Street, and one-way Jefferson Street and one-way Market Street. A new one also would be located along the same streets.

7. Environmental regulations require removal and proper disposal of any hazardous material — whether our courthouse is restored or destroyed.
7. Again, that’s not really an argument to keep the existing courthouse. It’s just a fact.

8. Our courthouse already is connected to the Annex for heating and cooling; is constructed of natural insulating materials (thick stonewalls); was designed as fireproof and constructed as durable for hundreds of years.
8. A reasonable argument, until you realize how leaky the windows are. Even if the building is renovated, it would have the same windows and doors in the same places. The renovation might be more efficient than the old building, but it wouldn’t be as efficient as a modern one.

9. Restoration plans show the elevator moved from the central stairwell and handicapped accessible; “large hallways” already are handicap accessible.
9. A new courthouse would be REALLY handicapped accessible. Nyahh.

10. By a very narrow margin a tax increase that would have paid for restoration was rejected. Citizens did not vote for demolition. No official polling or ballot proposal has ever been offered citizens concerning preservation versus destruction.
10. However, citizens voted not to renovate. This probably does not indicate a desire to let it sit empty and rot, so the only alternatives are keep using it as it is or build a new one.

11. Our courthouse is the only remaining E.E. Myers designed county courthouse in the nation. The four remaining preserved and restored Myers courthouses function as state capitol buildings.
11. But, it is not in its original state. The original clock tower is gone, for one. It’s actually a mixup of bizarre styles. E.E. Myers would probably want it torn down after seeing what’s been done to it. I don’t know if anyone has asked him about it, though.

12. The Annex, hastily and erroneously erected atop contaminated soil (previous site of oil storage tanks), now requires additional funds to conform to environmental standards. Where are the reports of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency testing? Haste does make waste!
12. Is anyone talking about putting up a new courthouse in haste? The Annex had a construction deadline to meet because of insurance money. A new courthouse would not.

13. When our courthouse is restored, there will be one secure main entrance for taxpayers, judges, lawyers and visitors.
13. Didn’t we do this in number two?

14. Renovation, alteration, and relocation of all county offices to a warehouse-style structure would be cost prohibitive and ludicrous.
14. Don’t you think it would be nice if all the county buildings matched the new Wal-Mart?

15. Communities with preserved/restored historic courthouses report revitalized downtown areas and increased tourism revenues. Counties that destroyed their historic structures regret their decision, citing among many reasons: a depressed downtown area, diminished tourism and the inability to erect buildings with the same durability, longevity, quality of materials and workmanship. Many buildings built today have a life span of about 30-40 years.
15. I know you are but what am I?

16. As of June 14, the “Save Our Courthouse” Tiffin Historic Trust petition to our commissioners has received in excess of 1,000 signatures, following the “courthouse rally” held on a cold, cloudy Saturday morning.
16. Where were those 1,000 people during the election to pass a tax to renovate the courthouse? See point 10.

17. Parking accessibility? See No. 5.
17. So, this isn’t 17 reasons. It’s actually 14.

P.S. Unlike the publicly printed statement of one of our current county commissioners, I and thousands of Seneca Countians do care about our heritage, our history and historic structures which stand as visible connections with our past and tangible links for our future generations.
P.S. I’d love to preserve the heritage of the county and its history, but I don’t think county employees should have to work in a historical dump. The courthouse should be replaced, with a modern structure. The 1880’s design and the neglect of the last 50 years makes it unusable. The beauty it may have had has long been destroyed, and it’s time to build something new that Tiffin can be proud of.

Seneca County Courthouse

Maybe some people who read this will care about the Seneca County Courthouse. This is a letter to the editor I wrote a few weeks ago that turned into a column that never got sent to any editors, so I shall post it here.

As a longtime Seneca County resident, I have long had an opinion about the Courthouse’s fate — tear it down. The current discussion about saving the building is misguided and far too late.
For five years I went to the Courthouse every day, or almost every day. As I entered, I was confronted by steps that were in such bad shape that, with my clumsiness, I was only one slip away from an embarrassing, and possibly injurious, wipeout in full view of downtown Tiffin.
I also faced an elevator that usually took you to the right floor, but not always.
I faced steep steps inside that gave my legs a solid workout as I went up and down from floor to floor (At least with the steps I knew where I’d end up.). And, that was just to get into any given office or courtroom.
Now, these items could all be repaired during a renovation project. But the point is the access routes into the building were designed with the 1880’s in mind. The elevator that was installed later didn’t help matters, because it didn’t really work and took away whatever beauty the inside corridors were designed to have.
What can’t be repaired is the 1880’s way the rooms in the courthouse are divided. There are many small rooms, with load bearing walls placed all around so it would be very hard to actually create a lot of larger, more modern work spaces.
The county needs two full-sized courtrooms because the population, the number of criminals and the number of possible offenses has grown considerably since the 1880s. There’s almost no way to make that happen in the existing building, and there’s certainly no good way.
Do the preservationists remember Judge Thomas Spellerberg’s basement courtroom, the one downstairs in which the gallery was so small the public had to set outside and watch the proceedings on a closed-circuit television camera? I do.
Do they remember that courtroom barely had enough room for 12 jurors who sat with their backs right up against a curtain that covered a vault door? I do.
Do they remember that even the first floor courtroom used by Judge Steve Shuff, after he took over from Spellerberg, was still too small for use as a courtroom? I do.
Finally, the workers in the courthouse were squeezed into small office spaces. They had to face cramped working conditions, an electrical and wiring system cobbled together long after the building was built and a workplace that had no central air conditioning. The building was simply not built for modern operations — especially electronics and the power, telephone and Internet lines they require.
No renovation could provide a comfortable, efficient and safe workplace. The building simply was not designed to be used in modern ways.
So, even with renovation, I see continued problems in accessing the building, more problems in conducting trials (a courthouse’s main purpose) and even more problems in continuing to perform routine courthouse work in the everyday environment as more people, more paperwork and more electronics get crammed into the same tiny offices.
I have not touched on security, the heat during trials that made the upstairs courtroom almost unbearable during the summer months (it was either live with the heat or strain to hear testimony over the roar of the fans or the window-mounted air conditioner), or the lack of adequate space for juries to conduct their deliberations.
A new building could be designed to meet the modern needs with modern spaces, modern heating and cooling and modern wiring.
In a letter in Thursday’s A-T, the writer lays out the totals for a 2001 projection of the cost of renovating the Courthouse, noting it would be cheaper at those rates to renovate than rebuild. What she misses is twofold: One, the costs have most certainly increased since 2001, and, two, the probable cost overruns in renovation combined with the increase in price means the cost to demolish and rebuild the courthouse is likely similar to the cost of saving the original building.
Absent from the discussion is the commissioners could call for the building to be an elegant new feature of downtown Tiffin. A new courthouse doesn’t have to look like a building in an office park. They could create something that, while housing modern operations, has a stately quality to compliment the other buildings in downtown Tiffin.
Face it: The existing building isn’t all that great, anyway. It is a hodge-podge of styles without its original clock tower. After looking at Wyandot and Hancock’s courthouses, Seneca County’s is, frankly, underwhelming.
The discussion should no longer be about whether we should save the courthouse — the decision was made, and it was the right one. The discussion should be how to build a new building that reflects the community and brings pride back to downtown Tiffin.

If this be ... BLOG!!!

So, I just hadda ask myself: What would I blog about if I had a blog?
I tried to start one once, you know. I even had a Web address and everything. The problem was, the site wouldn’t let me in to update it. (And, I have to update immediately after I post, because that’s when I always find the typos. Typos, incidentally, were always the first thing I always found upon opening the morning edition of the newspaper with a story by me.)
So, what can I blog about?
Comic books? An easy natural subject for me.
Movies? Maybe sometimes.
Music? I like listening, but I doubt I have a deep enough knowledge of the subject to be interesting.
Random things that come into my head? Maybe, but I absolutely hate reading random things typographically vomited upon a page because the writer can’t think of anything better.
Politics? Nah. I can make fun of politicians, but who am I to opine of George Bush’s immigration policy or debate intellectually whether John Kerry or Mitt Romney or a spawning salmon is a bigger flip-flopper? (I’d probably vote for the salmon, but Romney is catching up fast.)
My perspective on life? It’s too easy: Always take the way out of the building that allows you to drink from the most water fountains.
Strange things that happen to me? It would offer a wealth of material, but I’d have to vet it carefully to make sure I wasn’t descending into minutiae. (I cut myself shaving today used to be my running joke. I don’t want it to be a daily blog entry.)

The best blog I have read is Mark Evanier’s. (http://www.newsfromme.com/) He talks about comics, Hollywood, creative people, politics (a little), television, and things that happen to him. That’s what I’d like to do, to be honest. But, he’s already doing it. All I could do, really, is copy what he does poorly.
I have tried to read other blogs, some even by people I know. Some of them aren’t updated enough. Some are just boring. The fake “Planet Tad” blog in MAD is pretty funny, though.
The trouble is: Who will read the darn thing? People I know? Well, then, that’s one audience and one set of expectations. People I don’t know? Then, that would free me up to re-invent whatever crap I want to. (Sort of like the Beatles suddenly becoming Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.)
By the way, I am getting so sick of people who spend all their time making pop culture references. I just made one there, didn’t I? The point in making them is they have to be a. relevant, b. general enough so most people get them and c. enlightening, or d. funny. The fourth option cannot happen without the second. See, if I type the words, “The jolly, candy-like button,” a bunch of people will laugh their butts off. But, people who have not watched that episode of that show will have to clue what that means. So, I should strive to avoid too many obscure, look-how-smart-I-am pop culture references. (This paragraph’s possible titles: “Why Dennis Miller Sucked on Monday Night Football,” or, “I Was Ready for Some Football.”)
I really don’t want to begin too many blog entries with “I’m so sick of …” If I don’t pick something worth picking on, who really cares, anyway?
I’d love to blog about life in Tiffin or Fostoria, Ohio, but I don’t live there any more, and I’d hate to offend people most of the rest of my family have to live with.
(If you really must know, I say rip down the Seneca County Courthouse, and replace it with a replica of the Ohio State House. How to pay for it? Use the Way-Back Machine at the Seneca County Museum to go back in time and drill for oil in 1840 in Jackson Township. Bring back the oil, and at $75 a barrel, it will only take about 500,000 barrels or so to pay for a really nice courthouse.)
So, I guess if I had a blog, this would be about what it would be like. Hopefully, with more coherent, longer entries about some subjects and some short-quick-hitting things that pop into my head.
It might be fun to write – and to read – at that.

Harry Potter

If an obsessive Star Trek Fan is a "Trekkie," should an obsessive Harry Potter fan be called a "Pottie?"

Should I write comic books?

Here's a few issues worth of ideas for Fantastic Four comic books I came up with a few months ago. I hate to put all this stock writing out there, but any joke you haven't heard is a new joke.

1st Issue:

Dr. Doom decides there’s no point in attacking the FF any more. While unwilling to admit defeat, he is disgusted by the stalemate he always achieves with Reed Richards. So, he decides to turn his attention to his country, Latveria, and become a monarch. So, he starts running his tyrannical small claims court, and bankrolls a small cottage industry for the people to work. Of course, it’s his product, and only he can suggest improvements – not that the original wasn’t superior, you understand. The little cottage industry develops, and soon is a recognized world leader in the product.
All of a sudden, one day, he is advised by his people that Reed Richards has patented a product that renders Latveria’s useless. Naturally, Doom kills this advisor, falls into a rage and concocts a plan to kill the FF again.
This plan is very different. He realizes he can’t shoot the Baxter Building into space, nor steal the Silver Surfer’s power cosmic, nor can he lure them to his castle to kill them – none of that worked, anyway. He decides to go back to an old plan, though. He sends a cleverly disguised Doombot to infiltrate the building and destroy the FF from inside.

2nd Issue:

The FF hires a new maintenance man/janitor. Reed is happy to find someone who is capable of doing the job with all the hard work it entails, especially when some of his research goes wrong, or when Ben gets a little too enthusiastic in the exercise room, which of course happens as soon in the middle of the conversation. Reed and the janitor head for the gym, and find Ben cursing at the cheap workmanship in the exercise equipment as it lies in piles of rubble all over the floor. He tells Reed he is going out to a diner to get a hamburger.
Naturally, the janitor is a Doombot. Nobody can tell, and none of Reed’s instruments can detect it. The only person who can tell is Reed’s daughter, Val, who cries every time she sees the janitor. Val and Sue enter the gym after hearing the huge crash, and Val cries when introduced to the new janitor.
In an aside, Sue tell Reed she just got a letter from Agatha Harkness, who said she is again living in her old mansion, and would love to see the family and the new baby. Both are happy to hear from her, but remember the problem that followed her when she was Franklin’s governess.
The janitor goes about his job, eventually planting little defects in Reed’s work. This is Doom’s way of disorienting Reed so that he won’t see the larger picture. It also plays to Doom’s ego to be messing with reed’s inventions. Reed naturally is confused when his inventions don’t work like they are supposed to, and digs himself into his lab to figure out what went wrong.
The big clue happens when Sue and Val pass the janitor in the part of the building where he shouldn’t be. Val cries like nobody’s business, and Sue becomes suspicious. She makes the janitor’s skin invisible and sees there’s a Doombot below. She uses her force field to blow the robot apart, and hits the alarm to call Reed.
Reed analyzes the memory banks of the Doombot, and realizes what it has done. The Doombot has triggered the door to the Negative Zone to blow up, opening a passageway to that other dimension that could destroy the building, the city, the plant, and maybe the universe.

3rd issue

Reed searches and finds the device, just after it blows up, and opens the door. Reed was able to reduce the effects enough that his back up system kicks in to contain the Negative Zone.
Everyone is relaxing, and contemplating the next move, when a little light blinks on at the Negative Zone monitor. For the brief moment the portal was open, the monitor received a clear distress signal from inside the Negative Zone. It appears there are a number of creatures marooned on a planet which is about to be hit by a giant asteroid.
Reed ponders for a moment whether to go after Doom, or help the creatures in the Negative Zone. He decides that Doom can wait, especially since time moves a little slower in the Negative Zone, and they may be able to complete the rescue mission and still head off to confront him in a timely manner.
So, they head off to save the people inside. Reed tells Ben to stay behind to watch the kids, because Sue’s force field and Johnny’s ability to fly may be more essential to this mission. Ben harrumphs, but Reed assures him it should be routine, and besides the children need him in case Doom should attack again. If there’s an emergency, Ben can turn the kids over to HERBIE, the robot babysitter, and head in to help.
Ben complains, but grabs Franklin and asks him if he’s ready to get his butt whooped in Madden football while they watch the Negative Zone monitor.
Reed, Sue and Johnny get into a space vehicle built specially for the Negative Zone, and head in. They cruise to the small planetoid, which is almost the size of an asteroid. They scour the surface for the small group of people, and find them living near some mountains. Reed sees their space craft. It definitely crashed, but it looks like it’s been abandoned for a long time. More like years than months. Reed notes that the distress signal is awfully powerful for such a beat-up ship.
The FF craft lands and the people gather around. As the FF climb out, they are greeted with some clubs and slingshots and are knocked unconscious. Actually, they are faking, and Sue is protecting them all with force fields. Reed wants to know what these people are up to.
They pretend to wake up a little later, bound, in front of a giant molten mouth. Reed looks off in the distance, and sees that this is no planetoid, it’s a life form, and the stranded people are there to lure food for the planet. One of them tells him they have been there for decades since their craft crashed, luring food for the planet, which in turn keeps them alive when it is properly fed. He apologizes to Reed, but tells him he has to do this to keep his people alive.
The three members of the FF are being carried to fiery pit, and several of the inhabitants work to move the space vehicle to feed it to the planet. As they are carried along, Sue and Johnny nod at Reed, as if they know what the plan will be.
Ben and Franklin are loading the game when the Negative Zone alert comes. Ben sees what is happening, and summons HERBIE. He uses his flying cycle to go into the Negative Zone.
He arrives just as the rest of the FF is lowered into the lava pit.

4th Issue:
Recap of the previous issue, as Ben arrives, sees the other team members bound and lowered into the lava. He starts tearing up the little encampment and the people who live there to get to the other members.
Reed Sue and Johnny rise out of the lava easily enough, as Sue’s force field protects them, and Johnny absorbs the heat.
Reed apologizes to Ben for panicking him, but assures him they were never in any real trouble after they woke up. The inhabitants surprised them, Reed says, but were too crude and unsophisticated in their attacks to really do them any harm.
Meanwhile, the encampment where these people live has been completely destroyed by Ben as he raged through the crowd.

Another oldie but a goodie

This is from about a year ago, too. But, it will help to fill the pages:

What makes a person a writer?
This is a question many writers themselves have tried to answer. Perhaps there are a series of smaller questions to answer in the process of finding out.
I have heard it said that writing is like, um, going to the bathroom. When it’s time, a writer has to do it. He has limited control over the process. I have never really bought that theory, though.
I just saw a movie about the singer/poet Leonard Cohen. I really knew very little about the guy, except that my wife, Hallie, loves his deep, deep voice.
During the documentary, a whole bunch of people, including Bono and The Edge from U2, talked about how Cohen’s words affected them so powerfully. Bono said something about his writing exploded with colors and textures he had never seen before.
Cohen takes a long time to write anything. He revises it and revises it until it’s just right for him. Even so, there are those songs or poems that even he admits never came out right.
For contrast, how about Bob Dylan? He seems to write in the moment always trying to capture some ethereal now, whereas Cohen is always reflecting on something that happened in the past.
There is a clear difference in approach, but both men are singer-songwriter-poets. What makes Dylan write, and is it so different than Cohen’s inspiration?
Ring Lardner and J. D. Salinger tell their stories in distinctive voices, much like Cohen’s or Dylan’s.
Salinger captured the mind of the teenage outcast Holden Caulfield in “The catcher in the Rye” a decade before Dylan and Cohen were writing songs about being outcasts.
Salinger’s work is a lot like Lardner’s, except that Lardner had a different sense of voice. He wrote stories in the form of a baseball player’s letters home to his friend Al. It was said that Lardner’s writing captured the American voice like no other.
Ray Bradbury, a very different writer from the generation after Lardner, talks about the joy of writing. He talks about writing a story every week for his whole life.
He talks about the joy of reading, too. He waxes nostalgic about how the books he has read take him to places he could never go. Certainly, Bradbury’s imagination does that for his readers, taking us to places like Mars and to events like sinister carnivals and even inside the minds of people.
A college professor once said that Alfred Hitchcock understood the human mind like no other person. Hitchcock is not a writer in the traditional sense, but is a storyteller in much the same way as the others. He “wrote” with the visual images that moved in narrative form across the screen.
How about a comics writer like Will Eisner, who draws his inspiration from writers like Lardner and films like Hitchcock’s? He tells stories visually in narrative forms, too, only he uses his drawings to propel the reader across the page.
For all the people who were praising Cohen, there’s just as many, and maybe more, who will praise the others listed here. And, there are so many more writers out there who are beloved for their creativity.
What makes people love a certain writer, I think, is that he or she opens the reader’s mind to something they want to let in. The key is the reader’s complicity. What makes a certain book appealing at one time of life may render it uninteresting and useless before or after.
So, what makes a writer?
A writer is a person who is willing to put down on paper those things that make him a human being. For a reader, a writer is someone with whom they have something in common — a shared experience or a shared belief or a shared image.
There are a lot of us readers out here looking into their worlds for insight into our world. We should welcome their vision.

An oldie but a goodie (maybe)

I wrote this about a year ago after going to see the movie "A Scanner Darkly." It's kind of me puking prose all over the computer screen, but it's something to start this thing.

This is a column about going to see “A Scanner Darkly.” It’s not about the movie itself, although I’m sure that will crop up as I continue.
Having just moved to Louisville, it took me a while to figure out where the second-run theaters were. In fact, I never did find any. My wife, Hallie, did it for me.
She grabbed me upon my return home from work on Friday night, with news that she had found a dollar theater. Not a second run theater that showed movies for $2.50 or something, but an honest-to-goodness dollar theater.
We checked the address on the Internet and learned the place wasn’t Kentucky — it was on the Indiana side of the Ohio River. We hadn’t been to Indiana very much since we moved — our realtor told us he never had any reason to go to Indiana even though he had lived in Louisville for some 40 years — and thought this might be a good opportunity to take a look at what was over there.
So, we went. We saw a sign for a Cracker Barrel at which we thought we might east supper. But, after much driving around and becoming acquainted with the southern Indiana countryside, we didn’t find the restaurant and settled instead of Bob Evans.
The area at which we were driving around, exit four on Interstate 65, was fascinating. It looked like an area that had achieved a lot of growth 20 or 30 years ago, and developers are trying to revitalize it now.
The mall — with the dollar theater in back — looked like the Toledo, Ohio malls that were built with I was a kid in the early 1970s or before. It had four corridors with three anchor stores and one main entrance and no discernable food court.
(Newer malls all seem to have food courts. The name implies to me that the food is on trial and we are all judges. If mediocrity was a charge, food court food would be a habitual offender.)
Next to the mall was a huge Bass Pro Shop, the kind of store that is becoming a destination for outdoors types. (In Michigan, there’s a similar store called Cabella’s that draws people from Sri Lanka, I think.)
There’s also a few other newer stores in the area, and the next exit, exit five I think, has all kinds of new development, like a new Target, a new Wal-Mart and some new restaurants.
There was a motel being torn down, right down the street from a Best Western that looked like it was built in the early days of interstate highways and still was in good shape. There was a brand new Hampton Inn and a new Outback Steak House in the same area.
What I saw was an area in the midst of redevelopment.
It was fascinating to see the old strip-malls and free-standing stores along the highway and right behind them a huge new sign and a brand-new building for Dick’s Sporting Goods.
There were three movie theater buildings around the mall. One was closed and looked like the movie theater behind the Findlay Mall that I went to as a young child. The second, the dollar theater, looked newer than that one, maybe built in the 1980s as an attempt to add more screens.
In the next block over from mall, with the Bass Pro Shop and the Dick’s Sporting Goods, — and with the new Target and other stuff on the next road over in the background — was a yet-to-open new theater being built that looked like the modern theaters with all the glitz and lights and so on.
Hallie and I proceeded to the dollar theater. It was obvious the owners weren’t putting much money into it.
There were a lot of people there, from all ages. There were a lot of teenagers and some parents with smaller children.
But, while the theater was once bright and colorful, it had been allowed to deteriorate and was kind of dingy.
For example, in the men’s restroom, there were five urinals that would not flush, and one toilet that wouldn’t stop flushing. Hallie told me the women’s restroom was in about the same shape.
The screening room itself was pretty out-of date and looked like it hadn’t been maintained with a lot of care. It was one of the few places where I have actually checked my chair to make sure there was nothing wrong with it before I sat down.
In an odd sense, it was a good place to see a movie like “A Scanner Darkly.” It’s a very dark movie about a future in which Bob Arctor, an undercover cop, is trying to bust a ring of dealers of “Substance D.” In the process, we see how Arctor gets hooked on the drug, how it ruins the lives of all his junkie friends and the cops who are trying to investigate them.
Much of the movie takes place in Arctor’s house, which once was a bright, shiny home he shared with a wife and two daughters, but has become a run down flop house for his drug-abusing buddies.
So, I thought it was very fitting to see “A Scanner Darkly” in the theater — and an entire shopping area — that was getting run down and in the process of being renovated and/or replaced.
The developers are one step ahead of Arctor, though — they are working to revitalize the area. Arctor was getting more and more paranoid as he watched his life crumble down around him.
(One note: I’d strongly suggest reading the book before seeing the movie. I read the book two years ago, and I still got a little lost in the movie’s complexity as I tried to remember the plot. It’s a powerful indictment about of drugs, drug users and a war on drugs that sometimes makes the problem worse.)