Friday, July 28, 2006

Julia Gulia?

Has anyone done this one yet?

Julian Tavarez:

Mister Magoo:

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Bear-ly Legal

Check this one out. Still sifting through the mere five or six video tapes I have here, as opposed to the hundreds in my parents' attic, and I came across this, which I had no idea I had (click on the two ladies):


What a score it turned out to be. That's right, it's a young Stephen Colbert, the "new guy" on The Daily Show, then hosted by Craig Kilborn. This was from 10/27/97, a day after the Marlins won their first World Series.

I figure I was taping that show for the interview with the South Park dudes, and lucked out, capturing some classic unknown Colbert.

I really liked Kilborn. He was the last of the second (first? third?) wave of funny sports people. Anybody after him was just a joke. You can only do something for so long, then it becomes a parody of itself. Nothing against Stewart, either. They both did/do a great job with that show. It's like Joel and Mike on MST3K. While I'll always be a Joel man, strictly because he was the first, and the creator, I still love both versions of the show. (Brian claims Joel's work on Murphy Brown immediately takes away from his case as the cooler host, but without Joel, there is no MST3K.)

I also liked hearing the original, much slower version of the Daily theme song. Did you know Bob Mould wrote that? Click here for the rest of my videos/movies.

Not With Three We Couldn't

I get mad when I have to miss part of a game, like today, on my walk home from work. Because I can't will any good to happen, without seeing or hearing the game. That fifteen minutes proved costly today as usual. I left work at 2-0. I got home and it was 5-0. Not fair. Had I seen those fifteen minutes, I think I could've at least kept it at 2-0. I'm glad we're headed back to Fenway. I'll be up there Saturday and Sunday.

After the game, Chan and I headed down to Pier 54 to watch Jaws. Watching movies, especially one of my favorites, outside on a summmer night is about the coolest thing you can do as a human. Pier 54 is no Bryant Park, but it's still cool. Here's what it looked like:

Arriving at the pier, looking out at the screen with Jersey in the background, across the Hudson.

Really good sunset. Rampant with Jesus beams.

I walked out beyond the screen and got more Jersey with more cool sky above.

The Jaws crowd from behind the screen. It seems like the Empire State Building is visible from all NYC outdoor movie locations.

A close-up of the fiery sky.

Then I got home and saw a comment from AJM calling the Texas Rangers a bunch of chokers. Oh no, I thought, I forgot all about Dunbar, and it looks like they won. I checked texasrangers dot com and saw something about a cruching loss. Oy. After the Yanks' 4-hit attack in yesterday's Texas loss--that's right, 7 runs on 4 hits--they go and blow one in the ninth. Terrible job. We're still up 1.5 games. Am I worried? Eh, No Peg.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

You Loafer!

Terrible job by Meat Loaf, not only for being a dick to O'Keefe when he delivered food to Loaf's house in Redding, CT back in high school, and not only for the shitty tunes through the years, but for this Yankee guitar:


And to think, he just threw out the first pitch at Fenway and wore a Sox hat. Just another person who'll do anything to be liked. (As if the people who see him doing the opposite thing when they're in a different town won't notice!)

[I got this from a Meat Loaf page, and they divided this pic up into four parts. So, Loaf is cut in half. The uncut pic is at the top of meatloaf.net.]

2-0 A's in the fifth.

No Pal Of Mine

Shaggy-haired and fu manchued (fued manchu?) catcher Sal Fasano has signed wil the button-down Yankees.

Terrible job, Sal. The guy clearly enjoys looking the way he does. But wave a bunch of cash in front of his nose, and he'll change everything. He's a perfect fit for the Yanks. (Or was I right in my prediction that Steinbrenner realized right after 2004 that free-spirits can actually win and now he's just copying the Red Sox?)

By the way, I'm so glad the Yankees have this guy because he can't hit for shit.

Saint Frank Treats

Check out this article, from the San Francisco Chronicle. This dude kind of goes back and forth between making me mad and making me laugh. But it all works out in the end, with some great A-Rod bashing. Make sure you at least read the last line of the article if you only skim the rest.

By the way, A-Rod actually did something I can't make fun of him for (but countless others will) last night. In Arlington, the scoreboard was doing "Kiss-Cam," and cut to a shot of A-Rod in the dugout. Without skipping a beat, he turns to Andy Phillips and gives him a kiss on the forehead. Then again, this could have been a publicity stunt to make him seem like a nice guy to the Texas fans who hate him so. I only say that because, well, he's an insecure little prick, but also because I was reminded yesterday by Mike Francesa of all A-Rod's demands when the Mets were toying with signing him a few years ago. His office in the stadium, personal billboards, entire celestial bodies put into orbit to store his collection of gold bars...stuff like that.

And while we're speaking of Steve Perry's ci-tay, San Francisco Sox Fan is documenting her or his* experiences at the Sox series in Oakland, or as I call it, Alterfrisco.

3:35 eastern today, Sox have the third game against the Athletics. And you know what that means? Maybe I'm going to the well one too many times. So, maybe I shouldn't...yeah, of course I should: Bad news for the Athletics!


*I can't tell, and I like it! There's no talk of the players being cute and there's no classic sports-guy-mysogyny that's supposed to be funny but isn't. It's a good blog and it's fun to just not know or care which sex it's coming from. I almost don't want to know. But I'm sure I'm about to find out. I hope I didn't offend you, SFSF. Like in the Brian Regan routine: "Excuse me, sir--" "MA'AM!!!"

And I Apostrophe

Manny Dead Cops!* I love this kid. He seems to know when you the fan assume he's frustrated, but he's got this mystery tape-delayed poise, and gets out of his or whoever else's jam, seemingly every time. Between him and mound-kicking Lester, we're looking at a bright, albeit heart-attack-y, future!

In punctuation news, I think I've found the most common mistake of all time. I'll use the latest example to fill you in. I'm getting this game on the A's channel, and they had a commercial (along with one that said "Hey, Giants fans..." TJ!) that was basically telling you to watch the A's on "FSN-Oakland AlamedaFrisco-Land" or whatever. It was all righteous and stuff, saying how the A's always hustle. They tried to end it with a joke that wasn't funny. Anyway, it closes out with this logo on a bat that says "A's in '06". Now, my apostrophe and my single open quotation mark are the same in this font, so I can't show you what I mean, but I can tell you that they wrote "[single open quote] 06" instead of [apostrophe] 06".

Terrible job. Do people even know there's a difference? The little calendar at my job that goes out to the public gets this wrong every month. I see it all over the place in very professional-type places, done wrong. With a quote where there should be an apostrophe.

An apostrophe signals either a contraction or a place where letters have been left out. It faces left and looks like a nine. A single open quote is for when you put something in quotes within another quote, and is ALWAYS used along with a closed quote--which is identical to the apostrophe and is probably from where this confusion stems. It faces right and looks like a little six.

Three-run double for 'Tek! (Apostrophe used; it shows there are letters missing: "Vari." It's not the start of a quote with no ending and therefore no end quote.) And another two hits! We're up 11-5!


*Manny Delcarmen is often called MDC, which was the name of a band, short for "Millions of Dead Cops."

Update: Nice job on the 18-hit attack. Still 2.5 up and it's day baseball tomorrow, followed by me seeing Jaws outdoors for the second year in a row at night. For staying up until 1:40 AM, we all deserve this Oates video. Note: These videos I put up aren't just things I find on the web, you know that, right? I'm going through my hundreds of tapes, and uploading cool stuff to the web. It's all stuff I either made or taped myself.


Yes, I left the beginning of the commercial in there on purpose. It's my trademark. Commercials preserve eras. Also, check out the rest of my vids here.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Rich Are The Rooms And The Comforts There

I love this stuff... I just bought this on ebay from someone who was selling off an estate. It consisted of a lot of old negatives. A bunch of them were from baseball games in Oakland, including the one I bought (pictured) featuring the official Red Sox Cult Hero of ARSFIPT, Richard Leo Gedman.

The fun part was figuring out what game it was. I started with the obvious: the players in the photo. Rich Gedman played for the Sox for the entire 80s, pretty much. Tony Armas is the other guy in the photo (note BO/STON-style uni), and he only played for Boston from '83-'86. So it would have to have been taken during that four-year period. Then I made the assumption that Armas had just homered. The picture pretty clearly tells you that. It was a solo shot, as no one but the next hitter--clearly Gedman, with bat in hand--was at the plate to congratulate Tony. So, we'd need a Sox at Oakland game between '83 and '86 in which Tony Armas batted directly before Rich Gedman, and hit a solo home run.

Started in with the retrosheet. (Can I just reiterate what a gift from the heavens that site is? It's the site I'd bring with me in that all-too-common deserted island predicament.) There were, as we who grew up in the 80s are oh so aware, 12 games each year vs. the west in those central-less days. Two home series, two road. So I started with '83 and sifted through the two series at Oakland each year, up through '86.

There were only three games ever in which Rich Gedman followed Tony Armas in the lineup as a member of the Boston Red Sox at Oakland, California's Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. One in '83, two in '84. We can throw out the '83 game, since Armas didn't homer--or score a run, for those that doubt the home run theory. But, come on, he's pretty clearly scoring on a homer. The next batter wouldn't get all the way up to the plate if a play was happening. And don't give me any "he could be scoring on a ground-rule double" crap. It's a home run.

So that leaves us with Saturday, April 7th and Sunday, April 8th of 1984. Now that we know it's April, we know it's a day game, as a night game would start in the dark, as opposed to summer, when it's still light at game time. Amazingly, both games fit all the criteria: Both were day games in which Gedman batted after Armas and Armas hit a solo home run.

There's no way of telling, from what we've got so far, which of the two days this picture is from. So I checked the Old Farmer's Almanac online. On 4/7/84 at the airport in Oakland, it got up to 61 degrees, with no precipiation. On 4/8, same deal, only with a trace of rain. (Alameda Naval Air Station reported 64.9 on the 7th, and an even 64 on the eighth, with 0.02 inches of rain and some fog.) Both weather stations are about the same distance from the Coliseum. So this tells us nothing.

The final data we have to work with is: the other negatives this person was selling. A bunch appear to be from that same day. There are some shots of older players in different uniforms, including Willie Mays. This makes me think it must have been Old Timers' Day. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that would've been held on a Sunday as opposed to a Saturday, although it easily could've been either.

So I'm going with Sunday, April 8th, 1984. Tony Armas has led off the top of the second with a homer off of Steve McCatty, cutting the A's lead to 6-1. Gedman would follow with a fly out to left fielder Rickey Henderson. (Al Nipper was the pitcher for the Sox at the time, having relieved Mike Brown in the first.)

This is the second time I've done Geddy-ciphering. A while ago, I got an autographed black and white photo (on ebay, for, like, two bucks or something) of Gedman getting thrown out at third at Fenway against the White Sox. Rich had glasses on, which he only wore in '81 and '82. There were buntings on the wall, so I checked early-season games from those years. And I found it: April 12th, 1982. Opening Day. Gedman doubles to right and gets thrown out trying to stretch it to a triple. Steve Kemp, the left fielder is in the shot, backing up third, which is impressive. And the third baseman? Jim Morrison.

Painful

Derek Jeter showed clear signs of injury last night. For some reason, though, Yankee announcer Ken Singleton refused to acknowledge it. I'm not blaming Jeter for getting injured or anything like that. It just seemed odd that Singleton either didn't notice or didn't want to admit it, even with fellow dunderhead Bobby Murcer trying to point it out right next to him.

First, Jeter was shown limping home. Singleton was ready for the replay of Derek scoring. As it played, he started to give the usual spiel about Jeter's hustle. He got confused when Jeter just kept jogging, clearly in minor agony. "And...you see Jeter....well, he usually runs a lot faster than that on the bases." Murcer (who had to read the disclaimer, since Kay was on one of his many vacations, which is always fun, since "reedin'" isn't one of Bobby's strong suits) mentioned Jeter's sore back, but Singleton ignored him.

Later, they showed a replay of Jeter running to first from the head-on angle, much like the shot of Mark Teixeira look-alike Anthony Keidis in the "Under the Bridge" video, minus the visible nipple-bouncing. The look on Derek's face was a painful one. Okay, that confirms it, he's hurting, right? Nope. Singleton: "And there you see that drive in the face of Derek Jeter." Something like that.

I was watching the late Red Sox game by the time Jeter left the game. Maybe at that point Singleton finally admitted there was an actual injury. Derek's in the lineup tonight, so maybe the guy will never figure it out.

Tonight, Curt Schilling goes against the Athletics. And what does that mean? Bad news for the Athletics! Last night I got the A's channel. They played "Red Skies At Night" by the Fixx, and their announcers were fine. Not a huge deal if I get them tonight, but rooting for NESN, of course.

L8

Hey, I didn't stay up late for nothing! Beckett, Timlin, and MmmBop tried to make it close a few times, but got some key DPs. Our defense was the star of the game as usual. That and those three dongs. And Papelbon. My eyes hurt. Still 2.5 up. Scroll down for funny videos.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Pretty Pretty Pain Cave

Does anyone remember this? It was during the Wayne's World craze, and out of the blue, MTV started airing this song they did called "Pain Cave." I still don't understand what this tune has to do with anything. But I don't care, it's awesome. It almost looks like Myers doesn't even realize they're being filmed.

Click huge box to play video:

I Googled "pain cave" and there isn't much talk about it. So here it is.

On the screen:

The Wayne's World Band Featuring Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar (as visualized by Wayne and Garth)
"Pain Cave"
I Hear the Trees Are Crying
Tentpole Records/A Subsidiary of Shwing Productions

The Best Football League In The World


Back in the early nineties, the NFL launched a new "world" league of American football. Nobody cared. But me and my friends decided it would be cool to all like the same team for once. That team would be the New York/New Jersey Knights. Knights fever was rampant. For a week or two. And then the league folded. Or is it still going under a different name? I don't know. But check out this preview of the Knights vs. the London Monarchs I taped in 1992. Can you say over-the-top? And check out that crowd! You know, I had a Knights hat that I wore back then. It was gray with a black brim. I even broke it out years later, and it worked as a cool retro-hat.

Also, note the brief shot of then-Sox manager Butch Hobson and then-Sox third base coach Don Zimmer, from a '92 spring training game on ESPN, at the end of the video. This will be a patented move of mine. Leaving the other stuff I taped before and/or after on the uploaded video. Also, every video I paste here will be either something I made or taped myself, unless O.N. Enjoy. And watch for that Wayne's World thing later.

Popularity Contest

A few days ago, or, "a few days back," I'd say for 2-5% more street cred, there was a minor uproar from directv customers who apparently stopped getting NESN pre- and post-games. The weird thing was, the day I found out about this, I saw an ad during the Sox game (on my Extra Innings package) saying something like "Directv customers, now you can watch the Sox in HD..."

Yet still, people went off on NESN, and since it's owned (80%, I believe) by the Red Sox, they went off on them, too. Once again, it just seemed like people were looking for any reason to call Lucchino the devil. One day without a pregame, and it's "For them to go out of their way to show us they don't care..." and "If they want it to be 'Red Sox Nation,' why would they purposely try to destroy us all and kill our crops, making it impossible to feed our families?"

Within days, the new directv package had kicked in. The Red Sox weren't trying to kill you.

But let's just say this did happen. Let's say, if you have directv, you get the games--the NESN feed every time-- but you just don't get the pre- and post-games. Boo-freakin'-hoo. I lived in New England for the first thirty years of my life, and I never was allowed to have NESN, because Fairfield County, Connecticut is considered outside their territory. Even now, with Extra Innings, which I paid a lot for, I only get the NESN feed half the time, and no matter what feed I get, there is no pre- or post-game. And when we play the Yanks or Mets or on Fox, I'm blacked out of the NESN feed automatically. So, I'm sorry you directv people missed, like, four pre-game shows, but please, beggars, quit your choosin'.

So, if I don't post again until tomorrow morning, it means that this:

"Last Updated on: 07/23/2006 20:40:04 Currently Cable customers in New York, NY may experience difficulties connecting to the Internet. Our engineers are aware of the issue and are working to resolve this as quickly as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience."

is still in effect. You'd think they could at least update the status, jeez. So, in this modern age, and considering the dough we shell out for this internet thing, apology not excepted, Earthlink or TimeWarner or whoever you are, and get your asses in gear.

If I do post tonight, it will conatin the winner of the first-ever-video vote here at ARSFIPT. The current tally:

Wayne's World unpopular original tune video: 0 votes
World Football League Knights vs. Monarchs Preview '92: 0 votes

It's a dead heat! Your vote could break the tie! Vote now in the comments.

Oh, I almost forgot. As promised: Tonight we've got a game with the Athletics. What does that mean? Say it with me, people: Bad news for the Athletics!

Are You Shitting Me?

That was the title of the post I wrote last night after the Red Sox game. It involved me being frustrated over a crappy loss, complete with Timlin refusing to waste more pitches and Coco and Manny looking like they were more suited to play Chutes and Ladders than baseball.

Before I could post, though, (I know, you've heard it all before: I wrote this awesome story but the internet ate it! Hey, this is like the new "the dog ate my homework," or the modern-day fish-tale...) I noticed that our internet connection had a problem where I was connected, but no web pages would load. I asked Chan about it. Chan does this shit for his job and he couldn't fix it. He finally called the TimeWarner hotline or whatever, and it turns out the problem was theirs. Sorry, New York, your high-speed internet is running at exactly zero miles per hour.

I woke up this morning to find it still wasn't fixed. Now I'm at work, where we don't have TimeWarner. (Which I call TomWerner.) I figured there'd be something about this on the news, but there isn't. Weird. I mean, it's not like Dubuque, Iowa doesn't have internet. Oh well, at least we don't live in Queens.

And the title of the that post easily works for this one.

So, as you know, the video-era is in full-swing here at ARSFIPT. I'm goig to be putting up a lot of weird, wild stuff. For the next video, I will let you people vote, and we'll see how it goes. The choices: An over-the-top World Football League promo from 1992, or a video for a song by Wayne and Garth that will be new to most people since I don't see it up on the internet anywhere. Vote in the comments section. Thanks. (Oh, and fear not, they'll both go up eventually anyway. Maybe the loser can go into the next vote. Humor me, humans.)

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Sidney And Slappy

I don't know who I hate more, the pricks or the phonies.

Example of prick: Sidney Ponson (has given up 4 runs over 2 1/3 as I write this--too bad you're in Toronto, Sidney, numbers like those get you a standing O in The Bronx), who says to his agent, "Get it done with the Yankees." (In other words, he's a human being who really, truly, deep down in his black heart, wants to play for the Yankees.)

Exapmle of phony: A-Rod, who, two years removed from fully agreeing to sign with the Red Sox until the league nixed the deal, says, "I'd rather die on the field as a Yankee than go to any other team." That's totally not an exact quote. But it was something like that.

I think I'll just hate both equally.

Fucking awesome update: Kris Wilson replace Sidney in this game I'm watching, and allowed a three-run dong to his first batter. That closes the book on Ponson: 2 1/3 IP, 5 H, 6 ER. Curtain call, Yankee fans! Come on, do it! From home!

More awesomeness: Vernon Wells has hit four deep fly balls. And it's only the fifth inning. Two went over the wall, one was caught by a leaping Melky at the wall, and one was dropped right in front of the wall deep in right center by Bubba Gump Crosby. 11-3 Jays.

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