Not Penny's Boat

1. I'm still waiting to see a number of movies (namely There Will Be Blood, Sweeney Todd, Charlie Wilson's War, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly and Juno) before offering my thoughts for the best of 2007. In the meantime, The Onion's AV Club has offered there thoughts on the worst movies of the year. I'm happy to report that I haven't seen any of the films on the list. Number 1? Norbit. Not on their list but on my list: Dan in Real Life.

2. Here's a very funny review of the upcoming J.J. Abrams' produced movie, Cloverfield (choice line: "I don't know if the movie makers are looking for poster quotes, but this movie is like a pussy that eats YOU out."). For those not in the know, Cloverfield is the upcoming geek movie de jure, about a monster that goes ape-shit destroying New York City. Inspired by real-life footage of the 9/11 attacks, the movie is entirely shot from the hand-held digital cameras of its characters. Cloverfield mashes its way into theaters this January. You can watch the trailer here.

3. Set your DVR's - new episodes of LOST return Thursday, Jan. 31st at 9pm. Due to the ongoing writers' strike, only 7 of the season's 16 episodes have been completed - so we'll have to sit through a hiatus between episodes similar to last season. A preview for season 4 is below, and a link to the ongoing Missing Pieces "webisodes" can be found here. Also for fans of The Wire, the upcoming season will feature actor Lance Reddick (Lt. Cedric Daniels)

Gabe and Max's How To Get the Dreamlife of Your Dreams Using the Interne

I don't know who these guys are, but they're funny.

Your 2000 World Champion.... New York Mets

Today's post is brought to you by Seth Oilman, who offers his thoughts following the release of the Mitchell Report. For those who don't know Seth, he's some-what of a Mets fan.

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By Seth Oilman

Coming off today's news where a sizeable portion of the 2000 New York Yankees appeared in the Mitchell Report.... For those scoring at home Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Mike Stanton, Denny Neagle, Jason Grimsley, David Justice, Chuck Knoblauch, Jose Canseco and Glenallen Hill- 9 of the 25 active 2000 New York Yankees (36%) have been implicated in the Mitchell Report, so with help of a friend, I did a personalized Elias Sports Bureau study into the performance of these players vs. the other Yankees playing in the series and came away with some ineteresting findings.

1) Half of the post-season Yankee pitchers in 2000 were using steroids against the Mets, and they threw 65% of the innings of the 2000 World Series

2) Users: 30.7 innings, 1.47 ERA, Non-users: 16.3 innings, 4.97 ERA

3) In the 4 Yankee wins, a steroid user was the starting pitcher. In the one Mets win, a non-steroid user (El Duque) was the Yankees starter.

4) Game 2 starter, Roger Clemens, threw a sawed off bat at Mike Piazza in the 1st inning- behavior commonly referred to as "roid rage"

5) Steroid user Mike Stanton played a key role in 3 Yankee wins in this series AND does not allow a baserunner the entire series.

Need more? Game-by-game analysis:

Game 1: Andy Pettitte pitches 6.2 shutout innings, staked to a 2-0 lead thanks to a double scoring two by steroid user David Justice, and is relieved by non-user Jeff Nelson with two out and two on in the 7th. Torre should have gone to roid user Stanton, because Nelson allows 3 runs with two out, giving the Mets a 3-2 lead. The Yankees tie it in the 9th with an RBI sacrifice fly by steroid user Chuck Knoblauch. Then, the suddenly invincible roid user Mike Stanton keeps the Mets at bay with a perfect 11th and 12th and Jose Vizcaino wins it in the 12th on a dying quail to LF.

Game 2: Clemens dominates, only interruption is his roid rage out mentioned above and leaves after 8 with a 6-0 lead and allowing only 2 hits. in the 9th, Torre trusts non steroid users, Jeff Nelson and Mariano Rivera to close it out, but the Mets score 5 on Mike Piazza and Jay Payton HRs and Todd Zeile threatens to tie the game with a 389 ft fly out to the top of the wall in left-center. (I guess Torre should have kept the roid freak Clemens or brought in the suddenly Hulkish Stanton here too?)

Game 3: No roid pitchers available, Mets win 4-2!

Game 4: Nowin a tight series, Torre comes back with steroid user Denny Neagle to start the critical 4th game.Neagle keeps the Mets locked down untilthe roid-proof Mike Piazza, who can not be stopped by cheaters hits a home rundeep into the Flushing night to make it 3-2. The Mets get the tying runaboard with one out, posied to tie the score in the 7th, when the suddenly invincible Mike Stanton, two years after beingdiscareded by BOTH Atlanta and Boston, strikes out the next two batters. Rivera comes in with 2IP to close it out.

Game 5: Mets magic gets to roid abuser Andy Pettitte as the Mets take a 2-1 leadwith someMets magic-an Al Leiter bunt base hit,a throwingerror and a Benny Agbayani RBI single.With the score tied at 2 in the 8th, you guessed it- Mike Stanton comes in and pitches a 1-2-3 inning to allow the Yankees to come up and win it with 2 in the top of the 9th.


Now this is strictly entertianment here. I don't believe the Yankees should lose their 4 WS titles, but I do think we are well within out rights to point these details out to Yankee fans next time we are harassed at a bar about the 2000 World Series.The Yankees won it- thanks to the help of 9 steroid userswho played integral roles in ALL 4 WS wins. One last note, the Mets are not innocent either- they did have two users themselves, Todd Pratt and Matt Franco. They had no hits in 3 at-bats :)

We Didn't Start The Fire (Part II)

It's no secret that I am an enormous Billy Joel fan. Perhaps more than any other artist, he shaped the way I hear music (this is a result less of being raised on Long Island and more of being subjected as a child to my parents' preferences, where the car's tape cassette collection ranged from Frank Sinatra to...Billy Joel. I think my parents may have been the only baby boomers who never owned a Bob Dylan or Rolling Stones record). In my view, he's a significantly more talented song writer than Bruce Springstein (a glorified bar musician with political aspirations) and his craftsmanship is closely related to the rightly revered Elvis Costello. In particular, I've always been impressed with Billy Joel's more socially relevant compositions - songs like "Allen Town" which mythologize the plight of steel workers and "Goodnight Saigon," a song about Vietnam that's as poignant and terrifying to listen to as watching "Platoon" ("we came in spastic / like tameless horses / we left in plastic /as numbered corpses").

After releasing "The River of Dreams" in 1993, he's pretty much retired from writing new pop music, resigning himself to touring with old favorites and dabbling in classical piano. So it was with particular interest that I listened to Joel's new pop song, "Christmas Time in Fallujah." The song is written from the perspective of an American solider in (of course) Iraq. However, Joel does not sing it himself - rather, he gave the song to relative Long Island unknown, Cass Dillion.

Why didn't he record the song himself? According to Joel: "I thought someone with a young voice should be singing this, someone just starting out in life. Plus, you know, I'm 58 years old. My voice isn't the voice I was thinking of when I was writing; I was thinking of a soldier, someone of that age."

So how is it?

It's terrible. Actually, it's beyond terrible - it's embarrassing. It gives credence to every negative critique of Billy Joel you've ever heard (cheesy edgeless hack for fans of safe, soulless rock and roll music). Not only is it musically lazy and derivative, with a cliche Middle Eastern hook, it's lyrically pretentious:

It's evening in the desert
I'm tired and I'm cold
But I am just a soldier
I do what I am told
We came with the crusaders
To save the Holy Land

It's Christmas in Fallujah
And no one gives a damn

And I just got your letter
And this what I read
You said I'm fading from your memory
So I'm just as good as dead
We are the Armies of the Empire
We are the Legionnaries of Rome

It's Christmas in Fallujah
And we aien't never coming home

We came to bring these people Freedom
We came to fight the Infidel
There is no justice in the desrt
Because there is no God in Hell
They say Osama's in the Mountains
Deep in a cave near Pakistan
But there's a sea of blood in Baghdad
A sea of oil in the sand
Between the Tigris and Euphrates
Another day comes to an end

It's Christmas In Fallujah
Peace on Earth Goodwill to Men
It's Christmas In Fallujah

You can watch a performance here and judge for yourself:

We Didn't Start The Fire

Staged or Amazing Coincidence?

The Wire: Episode I

From The AV Club Newswire:

"Somewhat softening the blow of the upcoming, abbreviated season of The Wire being its last, HBO is offering short "prequels" featuring Wire characters for free right now on Amazon.com, beginning Dec. 15 on HBO.com and its On Demand service, and each will air at the close of a fifth-season episode, starting with the third installment. Creator David Simon produced the vignettes concurrently with working on the show's finale, although they don't have any bearing on the season's story lines: Two focus on Proposition Joe and Omar as children (!) and the third follows McNulty and Bunk on McNulty's first day on the job, making them something akin to David Simon's Wire Babies. For people who love The Wire (there are a few of you out there, right?), shiiiiiiiit....Christmas just came a little early."

Seperated at Birth

I still can't believe SNL's Andy Samberg killed all those people in an Omaha shopping mall. Seriously, I didn't see that one coming. I guess the writers' strike is really starting to take its toll.

More Obama

The Wall Street Journal has a great opinion piece by Dan Gerstein on how the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are symbolized by the celebrity endorsements of Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Streisand, respectively. At the outset, it recognizes that celebrity political endorsements are generally insignificant (or more precisely, as "just another episode of the Democratic Party's long-running series of superstar superficiality."). However, Gerstein goes on to highlight why in this case there's something larger at play:

More than anything, Oprah is a uniquely transcendent figure in our public life: engaged in serious debates and willing to put her money where her mouth is, yet unsullied by the ugly political and culture wars of the past two decades, and independent in her thinking and affiliations. In this, she personifies the new post-Bush, post-partisan, post-boomer politics Sen. Obama is preaching. She is the way we want things to be (at least those of us outside the narrow margins of the ideological extremes): genuine, unifying, trustworthy, aspirational.

So how did the Clinton campaign respond to the news that Oprah would be stumping for Sen. Obama this coming weekend? Instead of sticking to their core message, and showing the confidence of a true front-runner, they fell into the tit-for-tat trap of countering with the endorsement of the polarizing, '60s-studded Streisand--in essence, the anti-Oprah. In doing so, the Clinton camp did not just fail to blunt or dilute the O-factor, they managed to accentuate it by unwittingly suggesting Mrs. Clinton stands for--like the Streisand anthem--the way we were.

This is a subtle, yet illuminating distinction on how the narratives of these two campaigns ought to be presented by the Obama campaign. Of course, I'm not the only one with advice for Mr. Obama. Karl Rove, the General Tarkin of the Bush administration, recently penned a column for the Financial Times advising Obama on how to handle the Clinton juggernaut.

The Politics of Kindergarten

Taking a page straight out of The Onion, Hillary Clinton's campaign has attacked Barack Obama over claims that he never had a plan to run for President. From her website:

Today in Iowa, Senator Barack Obama said: "I have not been planning to run for President for however number of years some of the other candidates have been planning for."

Oh really?

"Senator Obama's comment today is fundamentally at odds with what his teachers, family, classmates and staff have said about his plans to run for President," Clinton spokesperson Phil Singer said. "Senator Obama's campaign rhetoric is getting in the way of his reality."

[The evidence is presented, including below]

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want to Become President.'1/25/07 ]

Yes, that's right. The Clinton campaign is using essays Obama wrote in Kindergarten to attack his candidacy.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton responds: "I'm sure tomorrow they'll attack him for being a flip-flopper because he told his second grade teacher he wanted to be an astronaut."

As an aside, if anyone is interested in perfecting their Hillary Clinton impersonation I've provided three easy steps:

1. Deliver your speech in monotones.
2. Intermittently use your right hand to make pointing gestures while angling your head to the right.
3. Gradually bring your monotone, robot-like speech up successive octaves.

Observe: