My reaction to the Tiger Woods cheating scandal

We're talking about a golfer here people! Who the fuck cares?!! Any Tiger Woods related news is inherently uninteresting because Tiger Woods and the game he plays are uninteresting. Good fucking Lord is there nothing else to be talk about on sports related websites/tv shows?

Belated Movie Reviews of 2009, part 2

Well, here we are with a scheduled post. Pretty impressive, huh? And if you're still interested in reading my take on the movies I saw this year, well then you've come to the right place. So, let's get to it.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Review: My personal opinion of the Harry Potter movies is that they're better to see if you haven't read the books. Luckily, I only read the first 3 and even those I don't really remember, so I was going into this one well prepared. The reason these movies are better to see with no prior knowledge is that you can actually appreciate them as movies without constantly thinking about all the stuff they left out or changed from the book version. And so I thought this movie was ok. I don't really remember the details of the story, but I think it went something like: the evil Lord Voldemort is out to get Harry, but with help from his friends and professors and the discovery of some hidden magic secret, he is able to overcome the odds or something like that. I guess they're all pretty much the same, but still they're ok. Actually, I think this was the worst of the Harry Potter movies, because it spent a lot of time trying to prove that they were all teenagers and had hormones and experienced young love and all that shit. I think that stuff is better kept to Twilight movies, because at least in those you know they're going to suck and be completely lacking in plot. So yeah, this movie's actual story suffered as a result of the teenage expository stuff, which was pretty conventional and boring. Nonetheless the Harry Potter movies look cool and there was enough to keep me interested. Maybe I'm just cutting it some slack because LCT seemed to hate it and I like to disagree with him.

Bonus Points: I'm actually going to have to deduct points from this one, because I paid extra money and went to see it in 3-D and the 3-D wasn't that great and ended after the opening scene of like five minutes. Total fucking waste.

Final Score: A middling 3.0 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. Has some of the good elements of the other Harry Potter movies, but is hurt by too much focus on the characters' love lives. I came to see some crazy magic shit and I really don't care anything about the characters since they're played by terrible child actors with annoying British accents.


District 9

Review: I think the biggest beef I have with this movie is how ludicrously overhyped it was. I have other beefs, which I will soon outline, but this movie is currently #88 on IMDB's top 250 movies...of ALL TIME. C'mon now people, this was a pretty good movie but I just can't fathom why everyone is jizzing themselves just thinking about it. Is it the Peter Jackson connection? Because the Lord of the Rings movies were seriously overrated too. Maybe he just has that effect on people. Anyway, this movie is a twist on the classic alien movie, because it's about aliens coming to earth and actually being less powerful than humans. Apparently their spacecraft broke down in the sky above Johannesburg and all the ruling class died out, leaving the dregs of society to fend for themselves in a makeshift ghetto in South Africa. I have to admit, it's a pretty clever retelling of alien movies and it is pretty interesting through the first two-thirds or so when it's basically a "documentary" centering around the government employee who has to deal with the alien problem and their relocation. That part is pretty good with some minor flaws, one of which is that the faux-documentary thing has been done to death at this point. Christopher Guest movies, The Office, Parks and Recreation, etc. We fucking get it at this point and it's no longer an interesting way to tell a story, but more of a crutch that allows characterization through direct monologues to the camera. Also, in the earlier "good" part of District 9, I found the apartheid parallels pretty heavy handed. I'm all for a good allegory, but this was an obvi-gory that was smacking us in the face saying "Hey guys, remember how fucked up South Africa was and how it can happen to any society and how racism is bad?" Yeah, we fucking get it.

Even with those drawbacks the first 60% or so of the movie was clearly several notches above a typical alien sci-fi movie and quite good. And then the last part of the movie showed up and it all devolved into a typical Hollywood shoot em up, where the two guys who couldn't get along have to band together to take down the bad guys with crazy guns, a bunch of explosions, and a mech suit that would have looked really cool in 1996.

Bonus Points: for the random bursts of extreme violence in the early parts of the movie, when it was still in documentary mode. I find nothing funnier than a bureaucrat reasoning with a giant cockroach looking alien and the alien randomly kicking him 60 feet in the air and shattering his spine. The violence in the early part of the movie was understated and surprising, unlike the stylized garbage at the end.

Final Score: a pretty good 3.8 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. I gotta give it higher than Star Trek, because it took a lot more creativity to come up with, but it did not live up to either its potential or its hype.


Inglourious Basterds

Review: This movie was off the fucking chain. Seriously, I thought this movie was just completely awesome throughout and I'm definitely not some Tarantino fanboy. It's Quentin Tarantino completely reimagining World War II by having a bunch of Jewish soldiers going around killing and scalping Nazis and then coming up with a crazy plot to kill Hitler. It wasn't perfect: Eli Roth as the "Bear Jew" was pretty horrendous for his few lines and Brad Pitt (who I'm only starting to forgive for the terrible Benjamin Button) walked a fine line between funny and so one-note that it's annoying. Everything else was spot on. I've heard that people complained that Tarantino gets a little too wrapped up in the dialogue and the movie gets bogged down because of it, but in the two long sequences of talking--the showdown in the tavern and Landa's interrogation of the farmer--the dialogue was interesting and served to build up suspense to a high pitch. If you want to see Tarantino get wrapped up in dialogue, go watch the first hour of Death Proof. That dialogue is atrocious, but the dialogue in Basterds was good. Christoph Waltz, the guy who played the villain Hans Landa, was fucking superb throughout the movie being a smarmy, evil, charming dickhead Nazi and pulling it off in several languages. That guy needs to get an Oscar. I guess it was a little annoying when Tarantino winked at the audience a little with his Samuel Jackson voice-over and the big bright 70s letters introducing certain chapters of the movie, but it didn't detract from the film as a whole. The climactic scene in the theater was actually a bit of a let down after such awesome build up, but that's just because it's not quite as good as some of the earlier scenes (particularly the two dialogue-heavy ones mentioned above), but Brad Pitt's revenge on Hans Landa was a satisfying conclusion.

Bonus Points: for shooting Hitler's fucking face off with a machine gun. I think you're kind of wondering the whole time how Tarantino is going to deal with the question of Hitler and what really happened in WWII and then he just says fuck history and kills him in an awesomely gruesome way. Bravo, sir. It's unfortunate that some dumbass kids are going to think that's how WWII really went down, but fuck 'em; they're going to die poor and ignorant anyway.

Final Score: an unprecedented 4.5 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. I don't really feel like giving anything a perfect score, but this was without doubt the best movie I saw this year. Any faults I find are merely nitpicking, because on the whole it was totally excellent.


Capitalism: A Love Story

Review: Well, it's a Michael Moore movie so you kinda know what to expect at this point. Totally scattered thoughts and narrative at certain points, wildly draw conclusions from evidence that is lacking, and an attack on those goddamn fat cats told with a liberal bent. So Capitalism isn't perfect. In fact, it's almost certainly inferior to Sicko and Bowling for Columbine (and I presume, Roger and Me, which I've never seen) but it is certainly calmer, more focused, and less Moore-ish than Fahrenheit 9/11, which is a good thing. Basically, Moore is trying to say that America's blind adherence to capitalism to the subjugation even of democracy as our highest ideal, is not necessarily that great a thing. It's not that he wants us all to become pinkos or something, just that he wants us to realize what exactly the sick immoral disgusting bastards on Wall St. and in boardrooms did to fuck our economy in the ass and how equally evil and corrupt politicians in our nation's capital are only marginally interested in helping out the majority of the country. Along the way, Moore does bring up some very interesting points--like how Goldman Sachs is basically running this fucking country and how the bailout was maybe not as necessary as we thought and is not at all being overseen by government watchdogs. This stuff is pretty good: edifying and rabble-rousing at the same time.

The problem is when Moore tries to pull off his everyman act. Empty displays of anger and justice-seeking like being a dick outside Wall St. office buildings to make citizens arrests in the name of the American people is just a waste of his and our time. Also, the whole scene where he has the trader try to explain derivatives and such to explain how debt became a valued commodity in the American marketplace is just insulting. He asks the guy to explain some admittedly complicated financial stuff and then constantly interrupts him with these "Gee willickers, this sure is confusing and hard to understand for us regular folks on Main St." dickish questions. I get his point, i.e. how the hell did our economy move from manufacturing and service to becoming dependent on labyrinthine financial workings of the Ivy League super-elite. But treat the audience with a little more respect than that. At least TRY to explain some of it and don't act like you're too dumb (because you're not) and we're too dumb to possibly rap our little middle or lower class heads around this stuff.

Bonus Points: for including that economic and philosophical wizard Wallace Shawn, and finally giving him the platform to expound his opinions. Actually, I'm not sure if this is positive or negative points. It was just odd and confusing.

Final Score: a decent 3.7 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. It had its flaws but I walked out of the theater wanting to skin a bank executive alive after boiling him in a vat for several hours to make his skin more loose and pliant and therefore easier to remove from his muscular system. And that's a good thing.



The Hurt Locker

Review: I think this was my second favorite movie of the year. It's set a couple years ago and is basically just following three guys around Baghdad as they serve their tour as bomb defusers. It is not especially romanticized or even really dramatized with a ton of personal looks at the three main characters. There is one brief "I gotta get out of here" speech near the end, but it is muted and fitting with the events of the movie. Otherwise, for the most part I think it is an attempt to accurately depict what life is like for some soldiers over in Iraq and it definitely seems very realistic. What dramatizing there is in the movie happens from the innate drama of being in the middle of a fucking war and is not shoved into the movie in other ways. My only minor issues were that I found the little Iraqi kid that the main character takes a shine to quite annoying and, in fact, that whole relationship walks the line of feeling forced and sentimental but I think it works ok. Also, I prefer the conclusion of the movie, which is something like-the main character comes home to the US but is really anxious and bored and actually can't wait to get back to Iraq because he's basically a crazy-ass adrenaline junkie who doesn't really work as well in any other setting than the fucked up one that is Iraq. I certainly prefer this finale to the "soldier comes home, can't readjust, is haunted by war experiences, his life sucks at home" finish that has been covered adequately in numerous other war movies. But it still just reinforces my impression that a lot of people in the military are either stupid or insane or both and have joined for those reasons. Oh well, maybe that's just me.

Bonus Points: for immediately killing the only two actors who are really recognizable. Guy Pearce gets his head exploded inside of a bomb-defusing spaceman suit in the opening scene, and Ralph Fiennes gets shot in the neck a couple minutes after appearing as a British special forces guy. I liked that for some reason.

Final Score: A very good 4.25 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. Just a very good little movie. I don't know if it really got a lot of attention, because it didn't have any big stars, but it is definitely worth checking out.

Alright, folks, that's it. In summation, Inglourious Basterds was awesome, as was The Hurt Locker. District 9 is worth watching, just don't expect to see one of the greatest movies of all time. And...you know there's no point to summing it all up. It seems that I didn't give any of these movies a truly terrible review, which is disappointing, because bad reviews are much better than positive ones. It's always more fun (and especially so for a pessimistic hater like me) to rip on stuff than to praise it. And so I want to leave you with this: in the past two years there have been 10 movies nominated for the Academy Award for best picture. This is the award of awards for movies, and watch them or no (and whatever your take on the idea of deciding a "winner" in a field that is so overtly subjective) I still think they're a pretty big deal. 2 of those 10 movies, i.e. 20% of them, were Juno and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Now, I know I just said movie opinions were inherently a subjective and personal thing, but objectively speaking those 2 movies were the most wretched piles of festering dogshit committed to film in recent memory. Oh, and also Mad Money--worst movie ever.

Belated Movie Reviews of 2009, part 1

Well in my laziness of not updating this blog for months on end I have neglected to keep you, dear reader, fully informed of my opinions on movies that I went to see in the theater this year. By my reckoning, I went to see 9 movies since I last did a movie review post. Now since I know you have all been clamoring to hear my personal take on a select group of movies I actually went to see in the theater this year, most of which I only vaguely remember, I have decided to condense these 9 movies down into one small megapost. And away we go:



Star Trek

Review:This was a pretty good movie. A bit run-of-the-mill action thillerish, but at the high end of that spectrum. The effects and action in this movie were first rate, the acting was Oscar-worthy (jk lolz), and there were even some shout outs to the true Trekkies out there. Wait, on second thought, I didn't like that at all. This was the Star Trek movie that was supposed to be a mainstream hit and it was, and still the producers/director felt they had to make some sort of homage to old Star Trek shit with a Leonard Nimoy cameo (and frankly the only Nimoy cameo that was worth a damn was on The Springfield Files). They didn't have to do that. The reason this movie was a hit was because it wasn't a boring pile of space nerdery like everything else Star Trek and those who took extreme interest in Star Trek (those eponymous Trekkies of douchefag fame) prior to this film deserve to be ostracized and shunned from society--not pandered to. Also, I think the plot was a bit jumbled up and relied on time travel and had some holes, but I can't really remember that at this point.

Bonus Points: for a Simon Pegg appearance. That guy is a legend based on Hot Fuzz alone.

Final Score: A solid 3.7 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. It was about all you could ask for in a summer blockbuster type movie.


Angels & Demons

Review: This movie was meh. I don't think it's quite as terrible as people make it out to be and I think the same is true of The DaVinci Code. The problem with these movies is that Dan Brown is such a good story plotter and such a mediocre prose writer that these books were read by everybody. Now when stupid people read their first book since 7th grade they have a tendency to believe "THis is the bestest book evar!!1!" And so, because the general populace is generally worse at judging the quality of books than the quality of movies (because people see way more movies than read books), they get all upset when a mediocre movie is made from a book they considered to be awesome. Those Dan Brown books (and I've only actually read A&D) were ok, but they took on some sort of cultural significance far beyond their actual literary merit. Also, they very much relied on omniscient narration of a character's thoughts, which you can only do in a movie if Morgan Freeman has time to lend his voice.

Anyway, the movie had a solid hour long stretch in the middle that was paced quickly with enough suspense and action to keep me well entertained. Unfortunately, the movie was well over 2 hours and droned on and on about "science vs. faith" which is a pretty uninteresting argument. Science one that argument a long time ago in my book by using "facts" and "reality." Maybe that debate plays better in the heartland, I don't know.

Bonus Points: for Tom Hanks cutting his hair a bit and being a little less creepy, but it was really only a very little less creepy so not a ton of bonus points.

Final Score: A meh 2.7 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. Some good parts in the middle, but it really is a tough type of book to make a movie out of and the science/faith stuff was heavy-handed and unnecessary. Also, I think I dislike Ewan McGregor, but I'm not sure. Have to get back to you on that one.



The Hangover

Review: Pretty standard party/drinking/road trip type movie made a little more interesting by being told backwards linearly, i.e. 3 guys have to figure out what happened to their soon to be married friend who is lost in Vegas by piecing together clues from a night they can' really remember. That sounds pretty cheesy right? Well it is, but there are still enough funny parts to keep you interested through pretty much the whole thing. I'm not sure why this turned out to be such a massively popular comedy; maybe it was for lack of competition, because it really wasn't that funny. But like I said, there were some funny parts and enough Zach Galifianakis to make it worth checking out. I gotta say though, Andy Bernard was not funny, but actually annoying as hell throughout this entire movie. Also, the setup is unbelievably unimaginative: it's like Bachelor Party meets Road Trip!--this is actually my guess for how it was pitched to the studio.

Bonus Points: for Zach Galifianakis, who really carries the movie and is just generally hilarious anyway. Also, for the pictures at the end and particularly the one of Zach G. getting a beej from a really old looking whore.

Final Score: A middling 3.1 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. Ok, not great.



Up

Review: This was the widely praised pixar release of the year, because apparently those guys can do no wrong. Well, this fucker sure as shit wasn't WALL-E but it was still pretty decent. It's about a grumpy old man who always wanted to travel with his wife and finally gets a chance to do so after she dies by tying a bunch of balloons to his house and floating to South America. Along the way he is accompanied by a grating little boy scout, who perfectly captures the spirit of America with his obesity and desire for rewards without accomplishment. Anyway, it's a pretty good concept for a movie and I can't knock the pixar guys for lack of imagination, but there are some problems. For one, that "girl" at the beginning is clearly a little boy meaning either that the Ed Asner character is gay or his dead "wife" was somewhere in the T part of the LGBTQ scale. Either way, seems a bit risque for a kids movie. Also, the movie was really just audaciously ridiculous at times, none of which I can recall now but which made me shake my head in the theater. And then I realized that me and mamatro were the only people there who weren't either little kids or their parents and I had to shake my head at myself.

Bonus Points: for the talking dog collar thingies, which were actually very funny and a good way of dealing with the concept of talking animals while still letting the movie exist in a certain realm of believability (although, c'mon, he floated to South America in a house so talking animals wouldn't be a huge stretch).

Final Score: A solid if unspectacular 3.6 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. It was very creative and had some funny moments, but was hampered by ridiculousness (gotta keep the kids guessing) and one-note characters (b/c kids do not get the idea of complex personalities). Not bad at all for a childrens movie, but well short of Pixar's best in my opinion.

Ok, well I was gonna do one big post but I'm tired and this is taking too long. Tomorrow, in part 2, I review the Harry Potter movie, District 9, Inglourious Basterds, Michael Moore's Capitalism, and The Hurt Locker. That post will feature my 2 favorite movies of the year (among those I saw in the theater at least). As a hint, they weren't Harry Potter, Michael Moore or District 9.

These people hate our way of life...

...and so the best way to show them that we as democratic freedom loving Americans cannot be effected by them is to hold secret military tribunals and then execute them without due process.



So says Rudolph Q. Giuliani, self-proclaimed King of 9/11.

Rudy just go get the 09 patch sewn on to your Yankees 2627-Time World Champs! jacket and shut the fuck up.

Refueling on Sportswriter Hate

Today I will be hating on Bill Simmons--ESPN's "Sports Guy," which is undoubtedly one of the most clever nicknames ever devised for a sportswriter. Here's the thing about Simmons: you know what you're going to get with him. Too many pop culture references aimed at people in their 30s that he seems to think are hilarious but which just get grating and gimmicky after a while. Sycophantic "mailbags" where his legions of mindless fans send him emails with the general outline of 'question about sports thinly veiled as annoying praise of Simmons and an attempt to get him to like me if only in a pseudo-internety kind of liking way, phrased exactly how he would phrase a paragraph in his own column.' Boston shit. Stuff just reminds him of the 86 Celtics all the time and he will randomly just throw away column space on the Patriots at times. Podcasts that are occasionally interesting and funny, unless he calls his buddy Jacko the Yankee fan--having listened to a couple of these Jacko podcasts I can safely say that my personal hell, if there is a hell to which I shall be relegated at the time of my dying, is listening to a Red Sox and a Yankee fan, neither of whom have any knowledge of baseball beyond shit that Dan Shaughnessy or Mike Lupica would write, debate who is more worried about their ridiculously wealthy well-run teams that are virtual locks for playoff spots year-in and year-out.

But the thing is--Simmons is not that bad. He's a decent writer and he genuinely has some interesting insights about sports sometimes (but not baseball, he should just ignore baseball at this point) and he's kinda funny. And so, despite the reservations about him that I have listed above, I do check out Simmons' page at ESPN on a fairly regular basis.

And then he goes and writes a steaming pile of shit like this. In case you don't want to click through, his column is called "Running on sports-hate empty"; hence the title of my post here. It's basically a post about how 3 of the athletes he hates the most--Kobe Bryant, A-Rod, and Peyton Manning have earned his begrudging respect and forced him to reconsider his "hate" for them. Fine, whatever. Pretty trite, but they can't all be doozies. The real problem here, though, is not the idea, but the content. E.G.:

"If you're not familiar with the term, "sports hate" is an underrated part of fandom. Everyone has guys they don't like, and more importantly, guys they enjoy not liking. The reasons are unique to us. There doesn't have to be anything rational about it. Sports hate can be triggered by one incident, one slight, one game gone wrong, anything."

If I'm not familiar with the term? Huh? As if this is a term in common parlance or is regularly used by a certain group of individuals here. I think it's pretty self-motherfucking-evident what you're talking about so don't treat me like I'm stupid and don't try to make "sports hate" seem like a "term" that you or someone else has coined because it's not. It's two words that mean what they say: hate related to the realm of sports. God, don't be such a douche Simmons.

Anyway, he then proceeds to talk about A-Rod finally being clutch in the postseason this year, because like many "stupid fans" he doesn't understand the concept of small sample sizes and randomness that influence any human endeavor, but in particular the sport of baseball. If you're not familiar with the term, "stupid fans" they are an unfortunate part of fandom. Everyone knows fans that are clearly less intelligent than them when it comes to thinking, writing, or talking about sports. You may even enjoy being smarter than them about sports, but it certainly is frustrating when they have a huge national platform. But yeah, "stupid fans:" I'm trademarking that shit. Just coined it here on the spot.

Our friend Billy then talks about how Peyton Manning's continued goodness at football proves that he's really good at football and Kobe Bryant won the basketballing championship of the national association or some such thing--not sure what sports league he's talking about there. And then he drops this gem:

"Read those previous three paragraphs again. (Actually, read them for me. I am covered in smoke because my flesh is on fire. I can't see my laptop. [ed. note: jokes, ha!]) Imagine you're me. You have a sports column. You're a passionate guy. You care a little too much about sports. You're all about the Boston teams. You love getting riled up about players who you feel are either selfish, overrated, attention hogs, bad teammates, transparent or whatever. You always believed that Manning would choke when it mattered, that A-Rod was a fraud, that Kobe's selfishness would trump his talents. These realities are no longer true.

Do I feel empty inside? Yeah, a little."

And bam I stopped reading. Literally haven't gotten any farther than that sentence, because it just shows when you give a Boston sports fan a national column. Boston sports fans have been blessed with a string of very successful teams over the last decade, and so to a certain extent the appeal that Simmons' writing probably originally had as the voice of the lovable loser, who approaches sports with some hope but a healthy amount of pessimism, is now irrelevant. There is no more claims to years of suffering to be offered up by the people in New England, and they probably miss that a bit. But what they miss, and what Simmons misses (if I may put on my armchair psychologist's cap for a minute) is not the suffering per se. It is the ability to Lord that suffering over everyone else. If you're arrogant and obnoxious (and Massholes can't really help that--it is stamped into the very fiber of their beings) when your teams are good then you're just a huge fucking dickhead. That is what Boston fans are at this point, and why they have surpassed fans of my own native city in national detestability. But if you are arrogant and obnoxious when your teams are bad, and are specifically arrogant about the badness of said teams, well then you get to feel superior to others while not being directly hate-able since your dickishness is tinged with a bit of sympathy for your suffering. The problem of course is that I really think Simmons and others of his brood actually think that their suffering is more deeply felt or more important than that of other people.

And so no, Bill Simmons, I will not imagine I'm you. I will not try to put myself in your shoes and feel your "sports suffering" (another gem I just came up with; refer to my glossary if you are not familiar with this term). I have my own thank you very much and it is not better or worse than yours; it just is. So don't lay some Bostony guilt trip on me about how you feel empty inside. I already knew you were empty inside, because you see, sir, you have no soul.

The Inner Circle of Baseball Hell

That is where Mets fans are currently residing, myself among them. Clearly God hates the Mets and their fans and has shown this to them by injuring everybody on their roster, presenting them with a succession of Steve Phillips, Jim Duquette, and Omar Minaya, by giving us a Braves-Yankees WS in 1999, and lastly by allowing the abortion that is this year's World Series. This isn't a "Oh, woe is us!" bullshit-Red Sox thing: that happened because of their city's and organization's racism. The Mets are cursed for no good goddamn reason and it has all led to us having to make a choice about rooting for the Yankees or Phillies in the classic matchup of mystique vs. grit.



Now there are those who say we should root for the Yankees. After all, we all know Yankees fans and many of us have friends who root for the Yankees. However, I must explain to you that any Yankee fan friends that you know are decent people are the exception to the rule. Yankees fans are obnoxious loudmouths with a ridiculous sense of entitlement and such a dearth of knowledge about baseball that they immortalize people like Scott Brosius while vilifying Alex Rodriguez. We Mets fans, despite the best attempts of the Wilpons to eradicate it, must not forget our heritage. And that heritage means hating and rooting against the Yankees with every fiber of our being. Paul O'Neill, Chuck Knoblauch, Roger Clemens, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, A-Rod etc.--don't you just fucking hate these guys. I know I do and deep down you do too. We must not root for the Yankees. The Yankees are not our crosstown brethren, they are our crosstown fucking rivals, and if I didn't root for the Yankees after 9/11 when New York "needed " and "deserved" a World Series, then I'm sure as shit not rooting for them now. The Yankees deserve nothing.



"Well, then dtro," you might say, "I guess that means we have to root for the Phillies." To which I say FUCK NO! While it is important not to lose sight of our hate past in the presence of the nouveau-douchiness of the Phillies, let's not pretend that this team and fanbase are not ridiculously detestable. Phillies fans are drunken mongoloids with no loyalty to anyone but the Eagles. They are violent and despicable people who seek out confrontation with other fanbases and others within their own fanbase, because frankly there's nothing better to do in a shithole like Philadelphia but get drunk and fight and then go complain about the best QB in your franchise's history. Philadelphians harbor a pitiful yet grating inferiority complex regarding the city of New York (and well they should) and lack the class, sense of history, integrity, or creativity to come up with their own rallying cries. The Phillies themselves have a roster of fuckfaced fucks. Jimmy Rollins is a douche, who likes to make big claims and shush Mets fans in the CitiField crowd while putting up a .296 OBP. He is probably the second most overrated player in the NL, trailing only Ryan Howard. Cole Hamels likes to call our boys choke artists? Choke on my dick. Chase Utley looks like he should start up a barbershop quartet with Wes Welker where they can sing about their hair parted perfectly down the middle (not to mention he leans into about 15 pitches a year). And Shane Victorino is a special kind of douche, my hatred of whom cannot be expressed in words. We may be in the inner circle of baseball hell right now, but rest assured there is a special place reserved in baseball hell for Shane Dicktorino after his fatal stabbing a couple of months from now. Just kidding...but I seriously wouldn't mind if he got stabbed and slowly bled to death.

That's right Mets fans, our best bet is to ignore this whole fucking thing. This is an opportunity to spend time with family and friends and not think about baseball until we're welcoming Matt Holliday with open arms and preparing for a 2010 Mets team that will exorcise all of our demons. And if you still feel bad about baseball right now, there's always this to cheer you up:

The New Manifesto*

*By which I won't swear at all.

Based on some texts exchanged with Boyce on this fine drunken friday night, yours truly will try to post some more shit on this blog. Shit about how Steve Phillips' banging a busted-ass psychopath showed poorer judgment about fat people than the Mo Vaughn signing.

Shit about how Mother Teresa was a dirty fucking sham artist, who was more interested in death bed conversions than actually helping the poor, sick and needy (this according to G Wilko--although I tend to believe him,cynical as I am).

Boyce says hes in it for the lulz, but not me. I'm in it for the loot. Every time you log in to this page I make the potential for future income in the tens of dollars a year based on google ad revenue. I mean if a woman walks up to you who might be homeless, but a high-class respectable homeless, and offers to buy a cigarette off you for some nickels and pennies proffered in her outstretched AIDS-poisoned (assumption on my part) hand explaining that you "might could buy a soda" with it--and you seriously consider her offer: well then for fucking fuck's sake you need some loot.

And so I beg of all of you who read this: do not judge me (us) harshly for my (our) absence. Consider instead giving me some money so that I can get drunk and write some similar shit again. Clearly, the next time it might be about the clear lack of judgment on the part of a family that entrusts the majority of its money to Bernie Madoff and Omar Minaya, but I digress.

A man once said to me, "There are lots of people moving everywhere in this hustle and bustle we call life. But you," (and by this he meant ME), " you can see everything clearly, because you take the time to stop and look and consider everyone. You look at everything all around you, and for that you are blessed. Can I get a couple bucks for the train so I can get to..." blah, blah, blah: the fucking homeless bum. Dude smelled of piss-soaked potatoes and guilt-forced me into a MetroCard swipe at High St. (because when your in the Heights you feel like you can afford an extra fare or two, what with the deliciously wealthy smell of wood-burning fireplaces).

Fuck it I'm DAAAAAAARUNK!

Why the Mets Failed pt. 339

Testing out this graph for Amazin Avenue FanShot:

Milledge and Manny for All-Star

Because Major League Baseball and the All-Star game in particular under the leadership of Bud Selig has been retarded. Because noone can really pretend to be that mad at Manny for doing steroids or whatever, because everyone freaking did it for the last 15 years or so. Because Lastings Milledge is one of this blog's favorite players, and we know he is going to turn around his career in Washington and even if he doesn't he was still worth more than a 29-year old platoon outfielder and a douchebag fucking plumber masquerading as a major league catcher. Because the Nationals suck and having a AAA player represent them in the all-star game is a hilarious concept. Because Manny is still entertaining and funny to me. Because fuck the all-star game; it's pointlessly long and stupid and ended in a tie a few years ago and someone from every team has to make it and the managers try to get everyone in the game and the pitchers can't go for more than a couple innings and for some reason Bud Selig thought it would be a good idea to give world series home-field adavantage to the winning league even though the game is often decided by token all-stars from inferior teams that have no shot at the playoffs. Because MLB puts together their all-star ballots before the season and never changes them to accomodate changes in clubs' rosters. Because of all this I encourage everyone to vote for Manny Ramirez and Lastings Milledge to start as outfielders for the National League.

And also vote for Beltran as the 3rd guy, because he is awesome.

The bored at work, haven't posted for a while Mets suck post

Some thoughts on a shitty Monday morning:

-Have you ever heard that old line about "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain"? You know, having two really good pitchers and hoping to muddle through the rest. I guess you could do one easily for the Mets, like: "Johan and Maine and pray for rain," except that I'm pretty sure John Maine sucks. It should have been "Santana and Lowe and pray for snow," except that Omar Minaya misjudged the market for Derek Lowe and then pretended he wanted Oliver Perez all along, saving a couple mil a year to have a ridiculously inferior pitcher kill our bullpen every fifth day (And now he may kill our bullpen from the inside, all part of Oliver Perez' latest plan: Operation Destroy the 2009 Mets). So now it's just "Santana and pray he goes 9 innings or pray that JJ Putz will revert to 2006-7 form after a year in which he was injured and that none of the other relievers blow this one and that Daniel Murphy catches flyballs hit at him and that the Mets not strand 15 runners and actually give Johan some run support and that it then rains for four consecutive days." And that's just not very catchy. It doesn't even rhyme.

-And speaking of rainouts, how have there not been more rainouts when I can only remember like 4 days out of the last 40 where it didn't rain in this godforsaken shithole of a city where the Metro closes at midnight on weekdays making it pointless for me to even think about going out on a Thursday night since I'm gonna waste an extra ten bucks taking a cab home?

-Sign the petition to paint CitiField's walls blue. Let's see, you cut down the seating from 55,000 to 42,000 to help create a false demand for tickets, allowed a corporate sponsor to name your stadium with money from the American taxpayers, completely ignored 47 years of Mets history and devoted all stylistic elements and historical flourishes of the new stadium to Jackie Robinson, a stadium that is now two huge apartment buildings and a team that left Brooklyn so long ago that all of their local fans are in Greenwood or those huge cemeteries out in Queens, painted the seats green and the walls black, and sold my dad a 15-game pack in a spot where he can't see a large portion of left field (which might be a good thing considering Sheffield's/Murphy's defensive play). You must be the Wilpons and you must truly have your finger on the pulse of the average Mets fan! At the very least paint the damn walls blue and give the place an identity that is somewhat Mets, rather than its current identity of "a place with very good food for a ballpark."

-Hey St. Francis Prep, I hope you all get swine flu. That's what you get for naming your sports teams the Terriers. Pussies!

-Mark Sanchez is gonna be fucking awesome! Except he's probably going to suck, because the Jets and Mets will continue to be disappointing for the next 50 years!

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Inspired by this, I encourage you all to check out this.

Ah, the smell of the fresh cut crack of the bat

Well, baseball is back just in time. My bracket sucked,and the seven months of NBA/NHL playoffs are about to start dominating sportscenter, so thank God baseball is here. Forget for a minute that ESPN realized that the Sunday Night Baseball* team was horrible and then thought to themselves "Hmmm, how can we make this more horrible?...I know, Steve Phillips!" Let's just focus on the good things, like Johan Santana at one o'clock today and Ricky Nolasco hopefully coming through for 3 different fantasy teams of mine.

*I think maybe I'll use a Pozterisk** here to mention that I no longer believe a word Joe Morgan says. He can be talking about anything and I just think "No, he totally made that up. He pulled that out of his ass. This guy's an idiot." Like he said that Chase Utley had trouble on breaking balls last year due to his nagging hip injury, and I thought "No. He made that up. Even if that's true, there's no way in hell Joe Morgan knows that." And Jon Miller's lengthy explanations of OPS in the first inning were just downright insulting. Thankyou so much, Jon, for explaining that, but there's really no need as I have been sentient for the last 10 years.

**Read some of this guy's posts to understand.

Anyway, let's get some predictions going for the baseball season. I was pretty terrible at this last year, but I've got a good feeling this time around:



AL
EAST: Red Sox. Fuck this team and their racist mongoloid fans.
CENTRAL: Indians. The Twins were a fluke, the White Sox are old, the Tigers have meh pitching, the Royals suck. Therefore, the mediocre Indians win a mediocre division.
WEST: A's. Fuck it why not. The Angels let Teixeira walk and thus have a shitty offense. Lackey, E. Santana, and Escobar are hurt at the moment. I'm going out on a limb and saying that the A's young pitching comes through and the Holliday-Giambi-Cust combo is enough.
WILD CARD: Rays. I will never pcik the Yankees, and though their rotation is awesome, I don't think their lineup is amazing, especially with Anabolex out. I think the Rays are all-around solid and that Matt Joyce will have a huge breakout year (just fucking with you LCT).

MVP: Grady Sizemore. Division winner, good player, Jeter black.
CY YOUNG: Jon Lester. If he's really good, the cancer* thing will push him over the top.
ROY: Matt Wieters seems to be some sort of combo of Johnny Bench and Jesus, so we'll go with him.

*Ok, so AIDS was the disease of the 90s and cancer has been the disease of the 2000s. What will be the disease of the next ten years? The leading contenders would probably be heavyweights like alzheimers and autism, but I can't help but root for an underdog like harlequin ichthyosis.



NL
EAST: The Mets of New York town. 4 awesome players + better bullpen - Willie Randolph + Daniel Murphy's unbridled intensity + Gary fucking Sheffield - Aaron Heilman - Scot Schoeneweis = who fucking knows, but I'm not picking the Philthies.
CENTRAL: Cubs. This is definitely the most obvious choice. Why do they even have this division any more?
WEST: Dodgers. Solid lineup, ok pitching. The D'Backs aren't bad and neither are the Giants somehow, but the Dodgers lineup is deep and Chad Billingsley will be awesome (I hope, for fantasy purposes).
WILD CARD: Phillies. Ugh. Braves have a good rotation, but the goddamn Phillies just will not go away.

MVP: Raul Ibanez. If it's not Pujols, it generally goes to the 4th or 5th best Phillie hitter.
CY YOUNG: Johan. The man, the legend.
ROY: Tommy Hanson. I think that's the Braves pitcher who will probably come up at some point. I don't really know. Who cares really? Ben Grieve once won one of these.

Ok, that is all.

My Top Ten All-Time Favorite People

Names of the Year

In honor of the Name of the Year Tournament, which is one of my favorite websites of all time, I have decided to come up with some names I think would be tournament worthy. Those in bold are real names.

Herschel Controversial
Schlomo Himmler
Monetary Christmas
Rich Poormansblood
Shaky Parkinson
Peter Rigglesdick
Valentino "Scooch" Pascucci (Why was/is Marlon Anderson a met when Scooch had to settle for Zephyrhood?)
Johan S. Burg
Pretoria A. Part-Hyde
Wenceslas Malady
Horatio Hammerfinger
Booker Woodfox (Creighton hoops)
Mervin McMervin
Remember Patience Whipple (I actually don't know if this is a real name or a fictional character, but I remember my sister having a book about a girl who comes over on the Mayflower with this name)
Francine Frogswallow
Percy Merciful
Dick Octagon
Santos de los Santos (NY-Penn Leauge player from a few years back)
Glasford Barnaby (Played baseball with him when I was 13 or 14)
Alabaster Black
Drake Rakish
Martin Luther ibn Faheed
Jatavius Hotnickels
Randall Cummings-Onurback
Oregon Riverford
Dingo Destitute
Foopa Cooper
Long Dong Gonzalez


You get the idea. I could really just think of names all day, but my ideas are running pretty thin.

David Wright, National Hero

That is all.

Well, actually no it isn't. Watching the US beat Puerto Rico got me thinking just how stupid this World Baseball Classic is. I was excited at the prospect of it a few weeks ago, but now that's it under way I am fully convinced that this whole thing is pointless. Mercy Rules and pitch counts = my 10 year-old Babe Ruth little league series. Also, isn't the US playing Puerto Rico kind of like the US playing Florida. Puerto Rico is not actually a country. I understand that they are an island and speak a different predominant language, but if the Netherlands can field a team the majority of which is from Curacao and Aruba, then why aren't there Puerto Ricans on the US team?

Anyway, I thought I'd put together a roster of some states that might be able to rival Puerto Rico.

Florida
C-Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Mike Napoli
1B-Casey Kotchman
2B-Rickie Weeks
3B-Chipper Jones
SS-Jeff Keppinger (bit of a stretch...SS is pretty thin)
CF-Rick Ankiel
RF-Ryan Ludwick
LF-Elijah Dukes
DH-Gary Sheffield
Bench: Outfield-Luke Scott, Denard Spann (or Lastings or Matt Joyce or Marlon Byrd); Infield-Howie Kendrick; Utility guy-Ryan Freel
Starting Rotation: Zack Greinke, Jesse Litsch, Brett Myers, Bronson Arroyo, Tim Wakefield
Bullpen: Scot Shields, Chris Ray, Scott Proctor, Chris Perez, Bobby Seay, Boof Bonser (as the swingman), Andrew Miller (I think he could be a good releiver on this team.

Anyway, there may be some guys I missed, but that seems like a pretty competitive team. (Conspicuously absent: David Eckstein, Brian Schneider)

California
C-Gerald Laird, Jason Kendall
1B-Adrian Gonzalez
2B-Chase Utley
3B-Evan Longoria
SS-Jimmy Rollins
CF-Jim Edmonds (for defensive purposes I guess)
LF-Ryan Braun
RF-Carlos Quentin
DH-Milton Bradley (or Jason Giambi)
Bench: Derrek Lee, Dustin Pedroia, Jermaine Dye, Troy Tulowtizki (over Michael Young), Randy Winn (or Xavier Nady)
Starting Rotation: C.C. Sabathia, Danny Haren, Ted Lilly, Aaron Harang, Kyle Lohse (or Randy Wolf)
Bullpen: Heath Bell, Brian Fuentes, Bobby Jenks, Troy Percival, Chad Qualls

That's a damn good team, even taking out some big names that couldn't make it. (Conspicuously absent: Darryl Kile, Cory Lidle, Joe Kennedy, Eric Byrnes)

I was gonna do Texas and maybe another state, but I'm bored of this now.

The worst year in sports ends...

...with a trip to the NIT.



Of course, by worst year in sports I mean worst year for dtro's teams in recent memory. And I'm also including the 08-09 Georgetown Hoyas among 2008 teams, because that's when their season started. However, if you want to count last year's Hoyas then a disappointing second round loss to a naked mole rat also fits in with the general pattern.

Let's review here: My favorite 4 sports in order are MLB baseball, NFL football, NCAA football, NCAA basketball. All other sports and leagues are pretty much pointless in my opinion.

1) The New York Mets of 2008 were not really collapsers, but a disappointing team nonetheless. And coming off 2007 and the 06 NLCS, it's not easy to be an optimistic Mets fan. Luckily, all Mets fans are sour-minded misanthropes, so the team fits our general outlook nicely.

2) The J-E-T-S were flying high for a minute before the reality that Brett Favre is old and sucks began to mainfest itself on the field. They were a true collapse and thoroughly infuriating.

3) Michigan Football suffered its worst season since the Rutherford Hayes administration or something. New coach Rich Rodriguez proved that recruiting and not necessarily coaching itself is his strong suit. The combined play of Nick Sheridan and Steven Threet was reminiscent of a back-alley abortion, and a loss to Toledo was probably very confusing and embarassing for LCT.

4) And here we are with the Georgetown Hoyas. The team started strong with a win over Memphis and only a loss to Tennessee prior to conference play. After they won at UConn to start the Big East schedule we were looking at a ranked team that was surprising people with how quickly they had recovered from the loss of Roy Hibbert and Jonathan Wallace. And then they started to suck. They remained fringe contenders for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament based on the fact that the Big East has been anointed the greatest college basketball conference in the history of forever and that their strength of schedule is #1 in all the land, but the bubble picture has finally been clarified by their embarassing overtime loss to St. John's last night.

Let's delve a little further into the Hoyas' season.



THE HIGHLIGHTS:

-Greg Monroe. An outstanding freshman center with decent post moves and good passing ability. He's already the best player on the team, but he's not good enough to be a freshman phenom and bolt for the NBA, meaning he should only get better next year. He should probably work on getting rebounds.

-Youth. The Hoyas only had one senior on the team, so at least they can blame part of their failure on being young. Dajuan Summers is a junior and has a claim against Monroe as the best player on the team (except that he disappears for no apparent reason during large stretches of games)so he'll be back next year as the senior leader guy or whatever. Chris Wright and Austin Freeman are sophomores and showed flashes of goodness. Henry Sims and Julian Vaughn are young guys and tall, which is nice I guess. I truly believe Georgetown has enough good players with a couple of decent recruits to be a Big East contender next year.

-Nikita Mescheriakov. A white guy in the rotation? Hell yes! The Bulgarian Bomber, as I have dubbed him, was pretty awkward looking at times but he could hit a few 3s and looked like he was trying hard. Also of note, he is from Belarus, but Bulgarian works better in my nickname for him.

THE LOWLIGHTS:

-Jesse Sapp. The Hoyas only senior was expected to provide leadership and hit some big shots, or at least hit a few shots. Unfortunately he completely forgot how to shoot and forced JT3 to use...

-...Jason Clark. He's a freshman, he's athletic, he plays hard and he's a fucking HUMAN TURNOVER MACHINE. He can't dribble, he can't pass and it looks like he just went through a growth spurt and hasn't yet adjusted to the size of his feet.

-Rebounding. Nobody, and I mean nobody, on this team can rebound. The Hoyas have been outrebounded by an average of 47-11 per game over the course of the season (note: figures are approximate/made up). You can play all the defense you want, but if everyone gets 2 or 3 shots per possession you are fucked. JT3 talked at the beginning of the year about running more, because the team was more athletic than it has been in years past, except he forgot to tell the players that in order to run you have to GET SOME MOTHERFUCKIN REBOUNDS.

-Bad losses. Getting blown out by Louisville and losing a thriller to Syracuse are acceptable. Getting swept by Cincinnati, losing to Seton Hall, and blowing a 16 point lead against a St. John's team led by a guy named Rob Thomas are not.

-Losing to Duke. I think we can all agree that it's tough to see the "Leader of Men" and Duke win any games. Fuck I hate that team.

-Luke Harangody. His torching of the Hoyas for 31 pts. and 11 boards was fucking miserable. Luke Harangody is exactly like Tyler Hansbrough...if Hansbrough were fatter, uglier, less athletic, had a retarded haircut, and bitched at the refs nonstop for 40 minutes.

I guess Georgetown technically has a chance if they win 5 games in 5 days to take the Big East Tournament crown. But that's not happening.

Look out Davidson, we're gonna get our revenge!

In the NIT!

EDIT: At least I don't root for this team.

Snow Day

Ok, so I'm the idiot who actually came in to work today not remembering that our nation's capital shuts the hell down when there's a few inches of snow. Naturally, no one else from my office is here, but my boss's boss just came by and thanked me for coming in and offered to help throughout the day (translation---I can't leave at 9:30 like I was planning to if no one else showed up). DC shutting down when there's a bit of snow is one thing that bothers me. Here are some other things that have been bothering me lately:

-Metro escalators: you stand on the right side, you walk on the left side. It's really very easy, but people not knowing where to stand is just a minor quibble of mine, because they might be tourists and not know any better. If you are going to walk down the escalator, though, then FUCKING WALK WITH SOME PURPOSE. I don't have time to be caught in the left lane behind your moseying ass. Just walk fast or stand to the side you jerk.

-Save the Children: thank God it's snowing today, because it actually spared me from having to make pretend phone calls or quickly walk away and avert my eyes to avoid the Save the Children people who usually hang around outside my office building. Listen I hate poverty and want to help orphans as much as the next guy, but with, you know, moral support---like remote pity and such. I'm at work here and I've got rent to pay, and you've seen me enough by now to know that I'm not signing up for some monthly payment plan.

-Dubious charitable donations: There's the thing, Save the Children and Greenpeace (who are occasiaonally lurking in front of the Chipotle down the block from my apartment) don't want you to know. I know what you're up to. I know you don't just get people to donate money, but make them sign up for some sort of ongoing payment thing. Don't try to guilt me into something when you're pulling the same tricks magazines do when they have "free" subscriptions around Christmas. The jig is up you charitable bastards.

-People bumming cigarettes and then needing a light too: do you smoke or don't you? I only gave you that cigarette under the assumption that you were an unfortunate smoker caught without any more smokes.

-People asking me for directions: what is it? Do I just always look like a local or like I know where I'm going? I think I must be the most approachable looking guy in New York or Washington, DC, because wherever I am I get stopped on the steet and asked for directions once a week. And I really don't know where I'm going in DC so I just make stuff up half the time.

-No sports. G'Town basketball is rather disappointing this year as they fight for an undeserved at-large bid on the strength of the Big East's ability to claim that it is the greatest sports conference of all-time. The NBA and NHL are a joke. Why can't Spring Training last for only a week.

-People looking at me funny just cause I'm reading a book called Cannabis: A History on the train. I'm not a pothead and fuck all you old ladies for even thinking that.

The Academy would like to honor Jerry Lewis, gay people, and Indians (from India)

The 81st Annual Academy Awards have come and gone and they were long and they were boring. And yet I watched them for some reason. Here are my two cents on what has been termed the Super Bowl for women. Although, I think the Oscars are more like Olympic Figure Skating if it was held every year.

-I'm glad Benjamin Button was recognized in the way it was, i.e. it got make-up and visual effects type awards, because those elements of the movie were actually very good. It was the other stuff in the movie, like the acting and story, that sucked.

-Why did they keep moving the cameras around during the "people who died this year" montage. Once we see that it's Queen Latifah singing then just show the video, because we know it's her and can hear her voice. And when you show the video just show it; this is a memorial tribute not fucking Cloverfield.

-Amy Adams should win every award ever, because I am in love with her.

-Slumdog Millionaire was a good movie. I think there has been a sort of backlash against it from a lot of people because it was SO critically praised that people went into the theater expecting to have a life-altering experience. It was a good, slightly hackneyed but visually awesome movie. I'm glad it won, because it was the best of the 3 best picture nominees I saw.

-Better movies than the best picture nominees in my opinion: The Dark Knight and In Bruges. I was rooting for In Bruges to win the screenplay Oscar, but alas it was the year of the gays and Indians.

-Best speech: the Japanese guy who kept saying "sank you" over and over and closed with "domo arigato Mr. Roboto." That guy is cool.

-Was Jerry Lewis making funny faces or is his body deteriorating rapidly leaving him with limited muscle control?

-I liked when the guy who did the music for Slumdog won his second straight award for one of the songs from the movie and said something like, "All my life I've had a choice between love and hate. I chose love and look where I am." Dude, what the FUCK are you talking about? Are you saying you're better than me? If I just choose love will I win an Oscar? Was that even your voice in the musical number? I don't think it was.

-I can't tell if Hugh Jackman was any good. I mean, it's not like I wanted Jon Stewart up there telling jokes and talking about Obama the whole time, but Hugh Jackman mincing around like a Producers audition was just weird.

-Good god Beyonce's got some thighs on her. She could cut a horse in half with those thunderstix.

-Sean Penn thanked a bunch of people and took the time to tell the Prop 8 voters that they were evil and would never be able to look their grandkids in the eye, but forgot to thank Jenny or the gay screenwriter who they kept showing in the crowd as he was tearing up. Hey remember when Sean Penn was cool as Spicoli and would say stuff like, "Whoa, those guys are fags!" That was a long time ago.

-KK Hollidae seems to think that Anne Hathaway is beautiful, like really marvelously good looking. Here's the thing about Anne Hathaway, who was about the 30th hottest actress there. Her appeal to men is that she's attainably hot, i.e. she's pretty but you might have a chance with her because she's not anything really special. Girls love these types of famous women, because they don't make them feel self-conscious or inadequate and then girls start claiming that they're amazingly beautiful when really Anne Hathaway is only pretty enough and I might have a shot at her if she was hammered and I was rich.

-Sofia Loren haunts my dreams.

Adjudicating the Mets' Offseason

The boss is out of the office today and there's not much going on around the internet to entertain me, so I might as well write a blog post. As you may know, I work for a huge government-run entity in the personnel security office and a large part of my job consists of fingerprinting employees, volunteers, contractors, etc. who work for this organization. Well when we receive the results of those fingerprint checks most people have no records and we simply close their case and let the coordinators know that they're ok to bring on board--these people are CLOSED FAVORABLY. Sometimes the fingerprint checks reveal a criminal/arrest record that forces us to review their files (some of the more interesting marks on people's records this week: forcible sodomy and uttering)--when we can't in good conscience let these people work for our organization they are deemed UNACCEPTABLE. Sometimes we fingerprint old and/or sweaty people and their prints do not come out clearly, meaning that a check is done based on their name, SSN, date/place of birth, etc. These "name checks" are not always accurate and thus we may have to re-print somebody whose prints were garbage--they were considered UNCLASSIFIABLE.



We can ignore 3B, SS, CF, 1B and Johan for the time being (they were simply ID renewals that had a previously acceptable investigation). Here were the 2008 Mets' problem areas, as determined by me: Bullpen, 2nd Base, Left Field, Rotation (behind Johan), Catcher. And remember, we can adjudicate Mr. Minaya's moves in three ways: closed favorably, unacceptable, or unclassifiable.



BULLPEN

Where we stood: The 2008 Mets bullpen was retardedly atrocious. Wagner got hurt in August, leaving a cast of LOOGs and ROOGs trying to preserve precious leads. They all failed pretty miserably. Heilman was all-around shitty, Dirty Duaner got tired as the year wore on, Schoeneweis and Feliciano couldn't retire righties to save their lives, ditto Joe Smith but with lefties,Luis Ayala was a National castoff who was thoroughly mediocre...you get the idea.

What we did: Clearly the bullpen was the Mets' biggest flaw in 2008 and Omar got right down to business fixing it. He signed K-Rod for 3 yrs./ $37 mil, which ain't half bad considering he dit it before the FA market bottomed out and early prediction had K-Rod looking for 5/70 or thereabouts. Omar also unloaded Heilman and Joe Smith, along with Mike carp and some lower-level prospects (and, alas, the lovable Endy Chavez) in exchange for JJ Putz and Sean Green (and Jeremy Reed, who ain't no damn Endy, lemmetellya). The Mets also threw out some minor league deals to no-names and picked up a guy named Rocky Cherry in the Rule 5 draft.

Adjudication: We picked up the best free agent closer and traded for an arguably better closer to set him up. Green is essentially a Joe Smith replacement and should be adequate. I expect a healthier and better year out of Dirty Duaner. If Wagner comes back in August the Mets could have the best bullpen in recent memory, and even without Billy that's still a hell of a one-two punch. CLOSED FAVORABLY.



SECOND BASE

Where we stood: 2nd base was a miasma of suck for the Mets last year. Castillo could barely hit his weight and couldn't move more than a few steps in either direction to field(great signing Omar!), Damion "GIDP" Easley actually tangibly looked like replacement level personified, and Argenis Reyes was an all-field no-hit bleach blonde dumbfuck.

What we did: Easley's gone, and in his place is...Alex Cora! Hooray, a 33-year old life-long bench player with a .245/.313/.348 in 2800 at bats. Alex Cora, come on down and collect your 2 million dollars.

Adjudication: Looks like Omar's crossing his fingers and hoping for Castillo to justify that contract. And $2 million isn't a ton, but I really think Omar could have allocated that money elsewhere. It's not like I wanted to go throw a bunch of money at Orlando Hudson (who might wind up being really cheap considering he's still unsigned as of this writing), but as long as Luis Castillo is hobbling around with an orange NY on his hat there is only one adjudication possible. UNACCEPTABLE.



LEFT FIELD

Where we stood: Left field was a revolving door of players of whom nothing was expected, because what the Mets and Mr. Minaya expected was for Moises Alou to play more than a couple of games. Fernando Tatis and the Superman music shocked the shit out of every one by playing quite well for several months before separating his shoulder in mid-September. Daniel Murphy burst on the scene in a big way, hitting very well in 131 at-bats during August and September. Nick Evans looked rather benchy, but hit lefties well in his limited playing time. Angel Pagan (definitely a member of the Brooklyn Cyclones Hall of Fame) had a hot start before falling over a railing at Dodger Stadium in May and ending his season. The Mets actually got OK production out of LF last year despite Omar's efforts, but none of these guys really seems like a big league leftfielder.

What we did: Closed our eyes and pretended Manny Ramirez, Adam Dunn, and Pat Burrell didn't exist. Signed a bunch of filler (Cory Sullivan, Rob Mackowiak, Bobby Kielty, etc.) to compete with Jeremy Reed for a 5th outfielder spot and round out the Buffalo roster.

Adjudication: It seems Omar is content with a Tatis-Murphy platoon in left. It seems pretty risky to expect Tatis to replicate last year's magic or Murphy to live up to his great start, and it's disappointing that that's what we have to hope for when Dunn, Burrell, and even Bobby Abreu (not a LF, but still) were had for very little money. I guess the budget is set and we can thank Bernie Madoff for that. Here's hopin that Murphy is the next John Olerud. UNCLASSIFIABLE.



ROTATION

Where we stood: Johan is a beast. Big Mike Pelfrey was great from some time in June onwards, but he threw a lot more innings than ever before and still can't strike people out. Let's hope he picks up those strikeout rates and doesn't fall victim to serious fatigue or arm issues after last year's workload. John Maine was pretty lousy and then hurt, but he still can be a solid 3 when healthy. Ollie was up and down as usual, with a stretch at the beginning of the year where he was brutal, a stretch in the middle where he convinced us all he'd finnally turned it around, and a stretch at the end where he was pretty blah; and he walked 1700 men. Pedro, as much as I love the guy, was brutally, indescribably awful.

What we did: We watched the Braves over pay for solid consistency in the form of Derek Lowe. After a long and arduously boring negotiation we re-signed Ollie for 3 yrs./$36 mil, which seems ok until you read smart people explain how much he's actually worth. We signed Tim Redding to a major-league $2.25 mil contract, which seemed fine at the time, but then the market went downhill and I realized we could have had 7 Tim Reddings or maybe even someone better for that. We signed Freddy Garcia to a minor league deal with a bunch of incentives. And for some goddamn reason we just signed Livan Hernandez and invited him to St. Lucie.

Adjudication: I can't help but feel that Omar paid a bunch of money to tread water. I love Ollie and I hate that Derek Lowe contract, but he's a proven commodity and a better bet to be good despite his age. I do like the fact that the Mets actually have some rotational depth this year, with Jon Niese, Redding, and Garcia all in the running for that 5th spot. I expect Garcia to make the rotation and Redding to serve as the long man/injury insurance to start the year. All in all, meh. UNCLASSIFIABLE.



CATCHER

Where we stood: With the trading away of Schoeneweis and my soon to come assassination of Luis Castillo, Brian Schneider is my least favorite Met. Whether it's sour grapes from the Milledge trade, the fact that he hit's like a little bitch, or the fact that he CAN"T BLOCK A BALL IN THE FUCKING DIRT, I can't stand the guy. He clearly is not a good catcher. Ramon Castro can hit some bombs, but he's hurt all the damn time and was again last year. Robinson Cancel looks like a retired-and-now-gotten-fat Ninja Turtle, but that doesn't mean he should be on an MLB roster.

What we did: Not a damn thing, although there weren't really any options. If they could have gotten Varitek for cheap and then fed him to sharks on live TV that would've been OK.

Adjudication: Well there weren't really any great options out there. We didn't really have the prospects to get one of the Rangers' catchers or Montero from Arizona. I'm actually pleasantly surprised that Omar didn't sign PudgeRod. Lest we forget though, Omar traded Lastings Milledge for Schneider and also let Washington scoop up Jesus Flores in the Rule 5 draft two years ago. Thank God we were able to hold on to Julio Franco for half of 2007, where would we have been without him. UNACCEPTABLE.

What have we learned: Nothing really. If Ryan Church and Delgado play like their good halves of 2008 this coming year we got a shot. Otherwise, we're looking at last year's team with a bullpen. At least I'm not LCT, though, because the Tigers are gonna suck.