A week ago, I'd finally had enough and was going to write a rant about baseball players hitting their teammates with pies during post-game interviews. I decided to hold off, though, largely because I wasn't in the mood to devote the time to a pie rant. As background, baseball players are known for their "pranks" and occasionally childish behavior, but this pie thing is just the pinnacle of being infantile and selfishness. It was cute the first two times maybe, but now -- like football players dumping Gatorade on the coach after winning a game -- it wore its charm out really fast. The Gatorade dump is worse on one level because it's because the default "celebration". But the "pie gag" is worse on the more important level because it involves the fan. When the public has made the effort to stick around specifically to hear the interview with the Star of the Game, it's selfishly rude to interrupt that with a "hilarious" pie that often ends the interview. Guys, it isn't as funny as you think. Anymore and more and more and more. If you want to hit your teammate with a pie in the locker room when a print reporter is asking questions, swell. But stop already in public. Which brings us to yesterday. The Baltimore Orioles won when Nick Markarkis got a game-winning hit in the bottom of the ninth inning. His teammates mobbed him at homeplate, and not long after Markarkis prepared for his post-game interview on television. A few minutes into the interview, there in the background you could see his teammate J.J. Hardy comes sneaking up with a pie. And you think...oh, sigh. But -- what Hardy did next puts him in the comedy Hall of Fame. But keep watching because the Orioles mascot wasn't as lucky. Which I have to admit was actually funny and the perfect topper.
0 Comments
"Everyone goes hysterical over two or three sentences. Private organizations can deal with, private businesses can fire people, I suppose."
-- William Kristol, about racist statements by Donald Sterling. What it's clear at this point in life that William Kristol likes to consider himself wise and an expert on most everything, the one tiny detail he conveniently overlooks in his defense against over-reaction about racism is that Donald Sterling OWNS this private enterprise. It's not even that he's president of it. He owns the team. But then, at this point in life, after hearing William Kristol be so wrong about so many things, so wrong about the Iraq War, so wrong about elections, so wrong and wrong so often when he speaks, it shouldn't be surprising here. And yet ABC keeps having him back on this show This Week to spout his opinions, as he did on Sunday. For those not keeping a scorecard, let's refresh our memory on just a bare few things Mr. Kristol has been intensely wrong about. ON NPR's Fresh Air he dismissed concerns of fundamentalist law being created in Iraq, saying "There's been almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular." Except for the 800 years of religious fighting between Sunnis and Shias. Or when he said, ""Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic primary. I’ll predict that right now." This is worse bombastic prognostication than a conniving carnival barker. Or when he was promoting the early days of the Iraq War, William Kristol wrote, "But the war itself will clarify who was right and who was wrong about weapons of mass destruction." In fairness, it did just that -- Mr. Kristol was wrong. No doubt he's still looking for the WMDs. Or that he kept famously writing things like, "American and alliance forces will be welcomed in Baghdad as liberators." It's not that William Kristol is so often wrong. It's that he's so often so gut-wrenchingly wrong. The other day I said that it was proper for the media to discuss this topic about Donald Sterling, no matter how obvious it was. What I didn't say is that everything they discussed had to be smart. Earlier in the This Week show, for instance, William Kristol showed his deep and great insight on the same topic by saying -- "Deeds matter more than speeches I don't think the LA Clippers are a bigoted organization. There's no evidence of that." Actually, no one is complaining that the LA Clippers are a bigoted organization. They're saying that Donald Sterling is a bigoted man. And, in fact, there is evidence of that. Microsoft has issued an important advisory (which you can read here) that a bug has been found in most versions of the Internet Explorer browser (from version 6 through the current 11). It creates a vulnerability that could allow users to be tricked to click on fake websites, from which malicious software could be run and potentially gain access to the user's computer.
It's a serious issue, though that doesn't mean most people will be impacted by it. However, if you use Internet Explorer as your browser there are nonetheless two strong suggestions being made until a fix is sent by Microsoft. Using either one would eliminate the problem for now. The first is to simply temporarily use an alternate browser if you have one, like Firefox or Chrome. The second is to disable Adobe Flash Player in your Internet Explorer Browser for the time being. This is extremely easy to do: Open Internet Explorer and go to Tools. Then select "Manage Addons." On the left, you'll see a column called "Add- on Types." The first listing should be called "Toolbars and Extensions" -- click on that. In the right column, look for something called either Shockwave Flash Player or Shockwave Flash Object. (It will be listed under Adobe Systems Incorporated, which likely will be listed first or near the top.) Click on it to highlight, and the click "Disable" at the bottom of the page. That's it. You'll be protected. (The downside of this option is that there could be some animated objects that won't work during your browsing. Most most of your browsing will be unaffected.) This just in... Fox has announced that, following the lead of NBC (okay, they didn't say that part...), it too will be broadcasting a live musical, scheduled for 2015. The show they've chosen to do is Grease -- which they're now calling Grease Live." No cast has been named yet, but the announcement said that the show will feature a "young ensemble cast" For all I know, they'll bring in some of the cast of their network's series Glee. Given that show's success, it's sort of surprising that Fox hasn't thought of doing this before. I’m not a huge fan of Grease, but who cares? If it’s what’s needed to help push this sort of thing forward, and make live musicals a trend, more power to it. And not just live musicals, but live dramatic productions, as well, like CBS did several years back with George Clooney and Fail Safe. And besides, what’s good about the choice is that from what I know about the stage show is that it’s quite different from the movie, so people will see a very different experience. Quite a few of the stage show's songs were dropped, and a lot of new songs, included several of the now most-famous were added (like "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and "You're the One That I Want." That said, in subsequent revivals of the show, they've incorporated some changes that were made for the film, especially with a few of the songs, I remember when Grease was just a local production in Chicago by a couple guys, Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, writing an homage to their Taft High School. It’s sure come a long way… Including all the way Down Under to Australia. Here's the Australian cast performing one of the original songs, "Summer Nights." A bunch of people asked me what I thought of Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers who apparent comments about not wanting his Black Hispanic girlfriend to bring any blacks to the stadium during games, among other things. I said I had two reactions of Mr. Sterling --
1) He is poorly named. 2) Given how 70% of NBA players are black and also that black people therefore make up a disproportionately huge part of a team's fan base that buys tickets and merchandise, I suspect that even Cliven Bundy would think Donald Sterling's words were insane. I reserve the right that maybe at some future time I'll comment more, but --- honestly, is all that much needed here? It's certainly not only proper, but important for the media which covers basketball to deal with the issue extensively, from a personal, societal and business perspective. It's proper for anyone to comment to their heart's content. It's just that, for most people, what can one express after whatever your initial disbelieving thought is that isn't obvious? "Fill in the blank" seems to fit well. At the Clippers' game on Sunday in San Francisco, signs such as the following were seen - This week's contestant is Doug G. from Georgetown, KY. I was pleased to guess the hidden song in about four seconds, before the song itself even started, just from the fairly well-known introduction. I had two guesses about the composer, and settled on one. Happily, I was not only correct, but my other guess was basically this composer's mentor.
What's odd here is how the contestant can't get the hidden song. It's quite well-known, but he has no idea. Even when pianist Bruce Adolphe slows things down and highlights the song, he has no idea. And even almost takes pride in the fact that he has no idea. At one point, Adolphe strips away most of the hidden notes and virtually plays the song for itself. Nope, no idea the guy puffs. Only when Bruce Adolphe basically starts to sing the song does the guy go, "Ohhh..." and "gets it." But no sense of "Oh, what an idiot I am." I've mentioned in the past what an ingratiatingly nice and genial host Fred Child is, how he'll go to great lengths to tell the contestant how "You got both the hidden song and composer, well done!" -- this is Fred Child and his most ingratiatingly genial. It's almost bizarre how he finds it in himself to congratulate the contestant for getting both -- yet the only thing more bizarre was that the contestant doesn't say, "Thanks, Fred, that's very nice, but seriously, I didn't. Bruce had to shove it down my throat and virtually tell me the name..." Instead, he happily leaves being told that he "got" it. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
Categories
All
|
© Copyright Robert J. Elisberg 2024
|