Another brilliant idea. I’m full of them!

Imagine swimming in one of these?

I’ve been saying for years now that I’m an idea guy…big on ideas, poor on execution. 

I first read a few years ago that some uber-hipsters took a 30 yard trash dumpster, put in a pool liner, and created a night club/country club/oasis on the banks of the Gowanas Canal.  I’ve only dreampt of being cool enough to think of going to such a place.  The cynical New Yorker in me thought dumpster, Gowanas, toxic waste…you do the math. 

So now they’re going to put one on Park Avenue.  Not Park Avenue around the corner from where I grew up…I mean THE Park Avenue.  In Manhattan.  And who are they appealing to?  The industry mogul that’s too lazy to head out to the Hamptons?  What, the pool at the Waldorf Astoria is closed for renovations? 

While a 30 yard dumpster is essentially a rectangular above-ground pool, I figured why not improve it?  Go bigger.  And again, use something that’s relatively available.  Ocean containers.  40′ open tops, to be exact.  OK, open tops are much rarer than standard boxes, but there is no roof…there is no need cut the roof off a standard container.

Now the benefit is not only can you dive in (not from a board, but you can do laps!  Most of these dumpster pools are for cooling off, not serious swimming.  Sure, it’s not Olympic sized, but you get the drift.  Fill one side with sand to raise the floor to create a “shallow end”.  You can bring them into the neighborhoods and teach the kids to swim. 

Ahh…the 40′ open top container pool…I’ll leave it to the engineers and bean counters to hash out the details.

Blog Psychic, Episode 3

There’s a lot of chatter regarding the predictions for the World Series, especially down here in enemy territory.  Rare is it when the Post and the Daily News have the same back cover…SHUT ROLLINS UP!!! 

My evil plan would be that the New York Football Giants would play the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, and win.  And the twin-bill nightcap of Philly/New York, the Yanks would win Game 4 of the World Series for a sweep.  Now while I’m pretty confident the G-men will beat the Iggles convincingly, especially coming off a loss to the Cardinals, I wouldn’t expect the Yanks to sweep.  I say they do it at home in Game 6, which means they’ll do it in five.

But don’t count out the sweep just yet.  Go Girardi wouldn’t pitch CC Sabathia on Games 1 and 4 if he didn’t think he’d have a very good chance of winning them.  So let’s assume he does win both.  Game 2 is AJ Burnett vs. Pedro “Who’s your Daddy?” Martinez.  Pedro is older, and will have to work very hard against a Yankee lineup that will look at a lot of pitches.  I say he’s doesn’t make four innings.  The Yanks pounce on the underbelly of the the Phillies bullpen and win Game 2.  Game 3, Andy “Mr. Most Wins in Postseason History” Pettitte vs. a shaky Cole Hamels.  Get in Cole’s head, he’ll cough up runs, throw a hissy fit, and the game.  And look at that…a four-game sweep.

Game 2, 2004 ALCS

So you heard it here…book a flight to Vegas, and you can thank me later.  Hell, if the NFL didn’t dick over Delaware, you could have driven here instead.  Well, you could bet on the Giants, but you need two more games for the parlay (sucker) bet.

There's always room on the shelf for one more.

Nobody would be saying anything if it wasn’t the Yankees playing…

Oh my God!  The world’s coming to an end!  The sky is falling!  A major-league umpire made a bad call.

Game 4 of the 2009 ALCS had more “bad calls” than a usual game.  I’m not going into detail about Swisher and the pick-off attempt, Swisher and the tag-up, or Cano/Posada on third.  Or at least I don’t want to.

Let me first squash the conspiracy theorists.  The Yankees have not paid off the umpire squad.  They have not bought the World Series (yet, but they’re no different than the Red Sox…again another argument for another time). 

So-called “bad calls” are bad because we, in the confines of our living rooms, enjoy a view the umpires do not have.  There’s all kinds of cameras covering a typical baseball game.  I believe the YES Network employs no less than 17 at a typical Yankees game.  Hence, we, the viewing public, can enjoy MULTIPLE camera angles showing the action from different points of view, in super-slow-motion, and if you have it, in high definition. 

Umpires, on the other hand have a very different point of view of the action.  They’re at field-level, not tens of feet above the action like the cameras up on the middle deck or the outfield, up on the backstop, or even on top of the stadium.  Sometimes where they be may not be the best angle to see what really happened.  Take Nick Swisher tagging up on third.  The instant replay showed Tim McClelland looking down the line into left field.  He’s looking for the catch, not if Swisher left the bag early or not.  It’s impossible to be looking at two things at once.  Now I know some of you will say that umpires have “blue” eyes…one blew this way, one blew that way.  But seriously…

Or here’s an every-game example.  The batter hits a ground ball to short, he fields, and fires to first.  Where’s the umpire?  He’d behind the first baseman in foul territory.  He doesn’t have the best point of view to see when the ball hits the glove.  That would be somewhere inbetween the pitcher and the first baseman.  So the umpire looks at the bag to see when the batter hits it, and listens for the snap of the ball hitting the glove, and makes the call from there.  Bottom line, he doesn’t have a clear view of the ball.  But one of the TV cameras sure does.

I challenge anybody to come off the street and do what the umpires do.  They’re pretty much on the road for the entire season, unlike the players who are home for 81 games.  The umpires are standing the entire game in the heat or the cold.  And they’re expected to be the pope.

But for the most part, we wouldn’t even know if the umpires were even making bad calls if it weren’t for all the instant replays on TV.  Now I’m not saying all these camera angles are bad for watching the game at home.  But if Major League Baseball wants to expand the instant replay beyond the current home run call, there needs to be some serious structure in place, and it needs to be used sparingly.  While the guys in the TV control trucks do an excellent job getting the replays up, many times they’re being shown while the next guy is up to bat.  While I hate limiting the number of challenges the NFL has (so the coach can’t be right a third time?), games in the playoffs are long enough as it is.  Adding an extra two or three minutes here and there can really drag things out.  It’s bad enough when they add an extra 30 second commercial after every half inning for the national games as it is.

But what we really need, not right now in the playoffs, but say next year on some random game, is the umpire cam.  Fos has buried cameras in the pitchers mound, and we’ve even had “catcher cam”.  Why not make the umpire wear that mask, so we, the great unwashed, can see exactly what the umpire sees as he’s hunching OVER the catcher so he can see the plate to call balls and strikes. 

And to further the point, how many times do you see grainy black-and-white footage from decades back, and see umpires making “bad calls”?  They had, what no more than three cameras back then?  And none of them were in the outfield.

Sure umpires have a job that people love to hate, but it’s all part of the game we all know and love, that is baseball.

Got this on twitter last night...

Reason 8,475,232,997 to hate Walmart

I don’t shop at Walmart.  My number one reason has nothing to do with how they treat labor, how they ruin small towns, or anything like that.  It’s rather quite simple: there is no Walmart near me.  In the vast suburbs of northern tax-free Delaware, Walmart is nowhere near where I live or where I shop. 

Walmart has a culture of low-prices, but they’re only pennies less than Target for any item.  It’s not worth the extra gas I’d spend to schlep all the way there.  But the other reason is that even if it’s the nicest Walmart in the country, it’s still a Walmart.  I don’t know how things are in other parts of the country (if I’m traveling from state to state, it’s to visit ballparks, not Walmarts), but Walmarts up here are cluttered and unorganized, have long checkout lines, and have a certain skeevy factor about them.  I’m sure I’m just stating the obvious, as there are countless blogs that go into this ad nauseum. 

Like www.peopleofwalmart.com.  This blog is hilarious.  It chronicles the “characters” that shop at Walmarts across the country.  Do a google search, and there isn’t a people-of-target dot-com.  And I don’t know what it is about Walmart, but it just attracts people like this, even up here.  You can imply some of these people live in trailers, or as we like to say in Delaware “manufactured housing”, but I’m sure some like in shacks, hobbles, caves, etc.  OK, but for a gem like this one, there’s always a story like this one to counter it.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/arizona-couple-suing-bathtime-photos-prompt-wal-mart/Story?id=8624533&page=3

So this couple has some pictures they want to develop.  OK, probably digital images, but who’s arguing semantics here?  Oh, that’s right, me.  So they have the obligatory pictures of their cute kids in the bathtub, you know, the ones all junior-high kids fear their parents will blow up to poster-sized and put on display at a school assembly, or simply whip them out when they meet the boyfriend/girlfriend before the first date.  Yes kids, we really do this for this sole purpose.  But it’s NOT to swap them creepy people on the internet who have to register with the local governments and are not allowed to give out candy at Halloween. 

Now I could insert a punchline about living in Arizona, or how Conservatives are ruining the country, or even how hippies are letting their kids run around the house nekkid.  But I think that in today’s society that awards fifth-place trophies and is hyper-letigious (I still think they should sue the BALLS off Walmart), I think the lesson learned here is to invest the money in a photo printer.

Hi, my name is Chris, and apparently, I’m a child pornographer…

Three Strikes, and Yer Out!

Today is a day that all New Yorkers (including displaced ones like myself) take to heart.  One of the most despecible things to happen not only in this country, but in the history of this planet.  No need to give a replay to history here.  But here’s what pisses me off. 

First of all, it’s been eight years, and the Trade Center site is still a hole in the ground.  The red tape, bickering among interest groups/designers/planners, etc., and we still have nothing to replace the Twin Towers yet.  NYC built two baseball stadiums since 2001.  The Empire State building took 406 days to build.  Clearly the terrorists have won.

But nothing worse is people that profit from 9/11 merchandise.  I’m not talking about all the American flags that were made in Taiwan.  Or the hack CD’s of bad parody songs that not even a two-bit morning zoo show would play.  What pisses me off is what I saw on TV earlier this evening.  The Yanks/O’s were in a rain delay, so we shifted over to the Phils/Mets, and since they’re playing down here, and the rain has already passed, they were actually playing.  Mets batted in the top of the first, and then the Phils came to bat.  But I got confused for a minute because the Mets were wearing red caps.  You know, the ones MLB forced ALL teams to wear (with their own logos in stars and stripes) which were red, even if your team doesn’t wear red anywhere on their uniform.  That means the Yankees, a team that hasn’t changed their uniform since the early part of last century, has to wear a dopey red cap.  It looks horrendous.  And it’s sole purpose is that dopey fans will buy one with their team’s logo.  It is purely for profit.  And that, among other reasons for another rant, is why I’m calling for Bud Selig’s head on a platter.

Am I sounding like a conspiracy theorist?

Did anybody think that perhaps President Obama made those comments about the People’s Republic of Cambridge police force from some run-in he had with them back when he was at Harvard Law?

A good idea, a better idea, and the best idea of them all…

So we’re chock in the middle of baseball season, so what better time for the other three major sports to try to grab the headlines.  (For the record, I’m wearing my NY Islanders polo shirt as I write this.)  The NHL has announced that Fenway Park will be the venue for the 2010 Winter Classic.  The Boston Bruins will host the Philadelphia Flyers this coming January 1.  Read the story here. 

This is great on so many levels.  The Winter Classic, albeit a gimmick, gets people to watch the NHL on TV.  And the die-hard fans in the local market where it’s held go bonkers for it.  It’s a badge of honor to host it, and it’s a situation that more than half the teams will never be able to do.  There will never be a Winter Classic in Florida, Los Angeles, etc.

And it only adds another dimension to the sports rivalry between Boston and Philadelphia.  The Sox and Phils have developed a nice little rivalry during interleague play.  The Iggles and Pats played in the SuperBowl in 2005.  Larry Bird and Doctor J.  The Flyers won their first Stanley Cup in 1974 vs. the B’s.

And that’s why I have a call for action.  Let me get my megaphone.  ATTENTION FLYERS FANS!  THE SECOND TICKETS GO ON SALE, I WANT YOU TO IMMEDIATELY SCOOP UP AS MANY AS POSSIBLE.  PACK UP THE WALLY WAGON, BUY YOUR TICKETS ON SOUTHWEST, US AIRWAYS, AMTRAK, BOLT BUS, MEGABUS, PETER PAN, OR GEYHOUND.  DECEND ON THE SO-CALLED “HUB”.  RETURN THE FAVOR TO THOSE OBNOXIOUS RED SOX FANS THAT CAME TO CITIZENS BANK PARK, NATIONALS PARK, CAMDEN YARDS, OR ANY OTHER BASEBALL VENUE IN AN ATTEMPT TO HAVE A HOME-FIELD ATMOSPHERE ON THE ROAD.  THIS IS YOUR CHANCE FOR REVENGE.  SHOW THEM YOUR BEST 700-LEVEL HECKLING.  YOU WILL BE ON THE NATIONAL STAGE.  DO NOT DISAPPOINT!!!

I’d even suggest pushing off the Mummers Parade off until Saturday, the 2nd.  I’d even suggest sending a few string bands to parade in the outfield during intermissions. Again, an opportunity to market the Mummers Parade.  Yet, I digress…

But while we have the ice out at Fenway, why just have the Flyers and Bruins play.  There’s been rumors that they’re trying to get BC and BU play.  But I say why stop there?  GET THE BEANPOT!!!  I don’t care if it’s played on successive days on January 2 and 3, or just one round, but GET MY NORTHEASTERN HUSKIES IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS!!!  PRESIDENT AOUN, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO GET YOUR NOSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS!!! DO NOT LET THOSE TWO SCHOOLS GET THE SPOTLIGHT AND PUT NORTHEASTERN IN THE SHADOW AGAIN! NOBODY PUTS BABY IN THE CORNER!!!

That is all.

Something good from the All-Star game…

I’m not going to go off on MLB for starting events at a time that I can barely keep my eyes open on the East Coast.  Or the over-produced national anthem that takes sixteen minutes to belt out (shut up and sing the damn song).  Or that the only reason the game “counts” is because of World Series home-field advantage for the winner.  (It’s nothing more than a ploy to get people to watch, nothing more.)

But hat’s off to President Obama, wearing his White Sox jacket to throw out the first pitch.  Not some non-descript All-Star Game jacket, not a Cardinals jacket, but his hometown White Sox.  In a celebration of the best players in the sport, and with each and every team being represented in the game, there’s no reason for him NOT to.  And no, I don’t think he would have done it any differently if the game were at Minneapolis, or if he were a Cubs fan, I’m sure he would have worn a Cubs jacket in St. Louis. 

That’s a page out of my book.  I always wore my Yankee cap in Fenway, even if the Yanks weren’t playing.  You show your loyalty, but you don’t be an asshole about it.

Justification

Ah, to be productive with insomnia…

They say early to bed, early to rise.  I didn’t sleep much Sunday night, so I crashed early on Monday night (9pm), got my five hours of sleep, and was up promptly at two.  (Two???)  So what better time than to catch up on what’s on the DVR?

I recorded the last episode of Jay Leno hosting the Tonight Show, and the first episode of Conan O’Brien.  What better way to compare than to watch them back-to-back?

Jay Leno has been and always be a f-stick.  He has shat on the Tonight Show franchise for 17 years of suckitude.  He’s not funny.  I hate his phony greeting the audience, and his constant barrage of low-quality jokes that make up his “monologue”.  Then he goes out on the street (like he invented the bit) and gets stupid people to flub simple questions.  Wow, that’s a stretch.  That being said, this is still the end of an era, and I was thinking I’d see something historic, like when Bette Middler serenaded Johnny Carson.  Or Bill Murray spray painting Letterman’s desk on his first day at CBS.  Nope, not here. 

Now it should come as no shock that I’m a big Letterman fan.  Now while Paul Schaffer drives me nuts, Letterman is a comedic genius.  And his New York humor just strikes a chord with me.  I’ve always despised that snarky Southern California holier-than-thou attitude which Leno’s show just drips with.

I’ve always been a huge Conan fan, but now that I’m in my 30’s, I’m hardly staying up to see an 11:30 monologue, let alone a 12:30 monologue.  But Conan has been steadily flying under the radar and at this point is the quintessential successor to Leno. 

I still thought they should have moved the Tonight Show back to New York (where it was when Carson started), but I guess with the proximity to Hollywood, there is a dearth of potential guests out there.

But Conan has finally returned the Tonight Show franchise to it’s former glory.  The set is outstanding and imposing at the same time.  There are three distinct parts, band stage left, desk stage right, and the curtain in the middle for the monologue and musical guests.  The curtain is definately a throwback to the Carson era.  It’s such a simple and classy touch. 

But finally the quality of the comedy has been restored.  All Leno could do in his last show was a best-of (if you could call it that) of asking stoned Gen X-ers what country the Panama Canal is in.  But Conan’s genius came through with his opening skit highlighting his move from New York.  He checks his to-do list, build set, etc. and last on the list is move to LA.  The camrea pulls back, and you see the Chrysler Building in the background.  So he goes downstairs to hail a cab, and I thought he was going to ask the driver to go to LA (as was hinted the NY Times Magazine last week), but, as we all know, you can never hail a cab when you really need one.  So he just makes a run for it.  Mind you, he’s still in his suit.  Running across the GWB.  Across Wrigley Field.  Over the mountains and through the desert.  He gets to Universal, and he forgets his keys, which are still in New York.

As Conan hinted the people at Universal have been great, and I think he’s going to be like a kid in a candy store filming on the backlot.  It should be more of good things to come.

Now the big question comes what am I going to watch if I do make it up to 11:30?

Another reason people don’t take you seriously…

Manny  Ramirez has been one of the most dangerous hitters in baseball.  He can do what’s very difficult to do in baseball…single-handedly change a outcome of a game.  He’s a very talented hitter, and he has over 500 home runs to show for it.  He’s been very dangerous, especially when he’s motivated.  Just look how he carried the Dodgers into the playoffs last year. 

Now I’m not about to defend how he acted in Boston and got himself traded.  But at the same time, Boston let him get away with childish behavior for way too long.  Guess they learned Manny being Manny was only good when they were winning.  And that hair is just ridiculous.

So all the off-season tabloid fodder has surrounded baseball players and whether or not they’re on steroids.  Who’s juicing?  Who’s not?  Are records legit?  Now one of the great things about baseball is that over the course of history, the game itself has evolved from the introduction of non-white players, to the 162-game season, to division play, to the designated hitter, to the wild card and expansion teams.  Records one year may not necessarily have the same set of scenarios as the next season.  They’re being played in different stadiums with different dimensions.  And different players.  So what? 

So now the question is whether or not steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs really do give players a competitive advantage.  Some can quantify it, others say the jury is still out.  But we do know one thing…they’re not proverbial cans of spinach.  I’m the sam age as Derek Jeter, and you can shoot a gallon of the stuff in my ass, I’m not about to start fielding like Jeter or swinging the bat like Reggie Jackson any time soon.  Or even a single-A player. 

So it’s old news that Manny Ramirez got caught.  He denies it.  OK, what else is he going to do.  He’s trying to land one more big contract.  Per wikipedia, “According to an ESPN report, the drug used by Ramirez is human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), a women’s fertility drug typically used by steroid users to restart their body’s natural testosterone production as they come off a steroid cycle. It is similar to Clomid, the drug Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and others used as clients of BALCO.”  If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, well, any idiot can draw their own conclusions. 

Now come out the clowns at Peta issuing a press release.  http://www.peta.org/mc/NewsItem.asp?id=13036 “We want to turn Manny on to the wonders of ‘veggie Viagra’–a healthy vegetarian diet–so that he can get his ‘big stick’ back in the game without having to use any weird ‘performance-enhancing’ drugs,” says PETA Assistant Director Dan Shannon. “Guys who stuff their bellies full of dead animals in the kitchen are often unable to score in the bedroom.” 

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??? Manny Ramirez makes an excuse that’s as hollow as can be to maybe he can get another $50 million dollar contract.  If I were him, I’d say anything short of being Jesus to get that kind of coin.  And the dopes at Peta are taking him at face-value to push their vegan agenda?  It’s no wonder this diddy din’t get much press coverage.

For the record, I have no problems grilling up some veggies next to my steaks.