This Boone deal the Yanks just made may be the final straw for me as a fan.  First of all, I liked Ventura even though he was in a pretty steep decline.  Second of all, the deal just highlights once again what a joke professional baseball is.  Every year, teams like the Yankees feast on the bones of other, poorer, struggling franchises, and there's nothing to stop them from doing it.  It's really an 8-team league -- the rest of the franchises are glorified farm teams.  I know that there are usually one or two low-budget contenders each season, but those teams can rarely stay together more than a year or so. I've just about had it -- I am going to raise one less glass of celebratory champagne when we win it all this year.  And I don't really care much for Boone.  Maybe because I never liked his dad, Pat Boone.

Has a show ever straddled the line between brilliance and utter shit for quite so long as "Married with Children"?  I was watching an episode during my lunch break the other day, and I laughed out loud about four times. I also cringed about 8 times. It just got me thinking about this show, a show that ran for more than ten years, a show we were all aware of, and we often found ourselves watching, but never really committed ourselves to as fans.  You'd never say, "Did you see Married with Children last night?"

Strengths: The show had six characters who were capable of delivering the big laughs on any given episode.  It had an iconic figure in Al Bundy.  It pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable to say and do in a primetime sitcom.  It was dark -- unlike most sitcoms, none of the characters had dreams of a better life.  It had good jokes, sometimes.  It had a nubile young thing in Christina Applegate.  It had Frank Sinatra singing the theme song.  It took place in Chicago.  It wasn't ever ashamed of what it was, and it never tried to be anything more.   

Weaknesses:  Like Howard Stern, it relied too much on T & A.  It fell in love with its signature moments, such as when Al was about to give one of Kelly's boyfriends the boot, and the audience would start moronically cheering for Al (although I secretly enjoyed these moments).  It was crass.  It had lots of clinkers among the belly laughs.  It was low-brow and offensive and sometimes just plain stupid.  It had that "Gilligan's Island" sense of hopelessness that made it tough to watch a whole episode.  Each show was basically indistinguishable from the next.   

In many ways, the public's relationship with MWC was similar to the relationships between the characters on the show:  a constant presence in each other's lives, something we'd never admit we loved, but who else are you gonna spend Sunday night with?  I kind of miss old Al.

In response to my complaint about the dreariness of the internet (I like thinking of the internet as being in constant flux, like weather -- some days it's just gorgeous and breathtaking and others it's damp and grey and dismal), my friend Chris sent me the following list of links, which have proved enjoyably distracting:

7/30/3:

This Karim Garcia is a winner.  As much as I like watching Mondesi throw guys out on the basepaths, he is quite clearly a dickweed and had to go.  Garcia is tough, sweaty, and wears lots of cool jewelry.  Who needs Mondesi's grumpy ass?

Also Yanks-related: the other night, Dinny sent an email saying unequivocally that Torre must go, that he's just not the right guy for this group.  I disagreed, but after watching tonight's game, a game in which he stomped on three potentially positive innings by sending runners into strike 'em out, throw 'em out double plays, maybe Dinny is right.  His NL-style managing is just not right for this team -- the guys who got thrown out today were Posada, Garcia, and Giambi.  I know you want to stay out of the DP (except in porn), but these slow fat bastards getting thrown out at 2nd is just unnecessary.  They were all dead ducks.

7/29/3:

I love commercials in which there is a song about the product -- it totally cracks me up when the singer just belts out a truly emotional rendition of a lyric about kleenex or tires or insurance.  You wonder where their musical career took that final turn, where they weren't just singing jingles, but belting 'em out with everything they've got.  My new favorite is the Applebee's commercial that has taken the song "Susie Q" (which must have been used to sell Suzy Q's at some point, right?) and changed the lyric to "Bar-be-cue." It's goes a little something like this:

"Oh, Barbe-CUE.  Oh, Barbe-CUE. Oh, Barbe-CUE!
How 'bout YOU?  BAAAR-be-CUE!!!!"

The guy gets so into it, it's devastating.  You can picture him being wheeled out of the studio in tears, drained physically and emotionally from the experience -- the power of the song and the power of the barbecue.  

My co-worker's car exploded on the way to work today.  Nobody got hurt, but it was pretty wild to watch a car just go up in flames like that.  More on this later.

7/26/3:

I saw a guy walking down the street today wearing a T-shirt that said, "Don't judge me if you don't know me."  What a tool.

Outside of guys with 85% success rates, I am opposed to the stolen base.  Is it necessary?  Same thing about the bunt.  Baserunners are precious things, why take chances when there are so many big studs ready to knock 'em in?  Can anybody get me a link to the old Earl Weaver "Manager's Corner" where he talks about "fuckin' fleas gettin' picked off the bases?"  He also offers some excellent dating advice to a female fan. 

7/25/3:

Is there anything good to look at on the internet anymore?  I know, but I mean outside of pornography.  I feel like I used to go online and entertain myself for hours looking at regular stuff on there.  Where did it go?  We've all seen that ad where the guy reaches the end of the internet because his connection is so powerful -- I feel kinda like that, but more like there's tons of interesting stuff out there, but I don't have the knowledge of where it is or the energy to seek it out.  I find myself looking at the same 8 or 1o boring-ass sites (news, sports, onion, occasional music, roger ebert, IMDB, etc.) Can anybody send me some sites?  Stuff where you can just browse for hours, learning a little bit and being amused for long stretches of time?  I guess I could go outside my house and interact with other human beings, but I thought the whole point of the internet was that we wouldn't have to bother with that anymore.

B-List celebrity snippets without naming names: The past two nights, my wife and I ate dinner at the same overpriced but fun bistro on the upper West Side.  The first night there, we saw a quite well-known and reportedly well-endowed actor (this marks the fourth or fifth time we've seen him there), perhaps from Ireland or Scotland or someplace like that.  I overheard him entertaining his friends with a story of a new script he had just received that required him to "do a masturbation scene."  One of the women at his table said, "No problem there, right?"  Then, tonight, we saw another actor of similar professional stature, but without the monster-cock reputation.  This guy, who must be about 60 and appeared in a well-known comedy from 1978, was dining with a much younger woman who he clearly didn't know very well (he asked her how many siblings she had at one point).  The most interesting thing he said was, "If I had to be single and unemployed, I would do it in New York.  Or London.  Or Paris.  Or Venice.  But not L.A.  I would never want to be single and unemployed in L.A."  For what it's worth, Newark isn't great for that, either.

I know I keep going on about this, but how much more can we as a society endure of Fucking Sterling and Kay, in any dosage? "Yankees win.   THE-E-E-E-E YANKEES WIN!" (most likely piped through the streets on a loop all night in the neighborhoods in hell that even the baddest men of all time are terrified to stroll through) and "SEE YA" and "GET UP AND STRETCH" and "Time of the game, a VERY unmanageable 3:22" and all their other little catchphrases are almost as horrid as the men who utter them.   They are new additions to the list of unacceptable things about living in New York.  Don't we as a city of 8 million deserve better than some of the crap we get?

I must admit: when the Yankees are playing the Red Sox and Pedro is pitching, I root for Pedro.

7/22/3:

I had a boss who was always talking about how, when life just got overwhelming, he wanted to chuck it all -- give up his job, leave his loving family, and head out to Arizona, maybe Scottsdale, where he felt he could easily and semi-anonymously find work as a busboy (a job he thinks he could perform with such proficiency that he could hold onto it forever, especially once he informed his bosses that he did not want to eventually be moved up to waiter).  Let's be honest:  some variation on this "I give up" fantasy is as much a part of the male genetic makeup as the need to scratch one's balls when not itchy (although maybe women feel it too).  I have a friend, a young guy, about 28, who's got a great job and just got engaged.  He seems totally happy, and then, all of a sudden, he mentions to me the other day something like, "Yeah, I know I'm lucky to have such a good job, but half the time I think I'd be happier if I was just checking ID's or something."  What I think this demonstrates, and I like, is how far we have each taken our little fictional scenarios of low-stress, low-pay, just-leave-me-alone laziness  -- for each of us, it's a little different.  Instead of fantasizing about being rich and traveling the land in fancy cars with beautiful women at our sides, stopping only at plush oceanside resorts, where we will eat, drink, and make love until it's time to go to sleep, we dream of a meager way to get by, a simple life with no strings attached.  A life we feel we're actually entitled to, a life we deserve.  Well, I guess we might have more than one.  My deluxe fantasy always involves driving around in a VW van, selling small trinkets from town to town.   Making enough to eat, and seeing the country through its people and highways.  My secondary escape dream involves me living in a small town about thirty miles from Boston, renting a room in the second floor of a two-story brick apartment building, working in a sandwich shop, and never speaking to anyone I've ever known again.

Then there are guys like my friend's uncle, who kissed his wife goodbye, went out for bagels and never came back.  Or my Great Uncle and namesake Rody, who, according to family legend, left his family without a trace, never re-establishing contact until about five years later, when the family received a signed postcard from Spain that said only: "I'm OK," not a word more, nor a return address.  Like Chief, they somehow got up the nerve to throw that water fountain right through that glass window, and then to climb through the shards and start running.  And they knew never to look back.

7/17/3:

Do you ever have those days on the job when you just don't want to perform?  It happens to the best of us from time to time.  It can be caused by any number of factors:  job dissatisfaction, personal problems outside work, low pay, bad parenting, chronic laziness, mental or physical exhaustion, thinking about sex, hung over, drunk, barely coherent due to illegal drugs, barely coherent due to prescription drugs, bored, being sexually harassed, sexually harassing someone else, itchy, offended by workplace temperature/noise/smell, spent from fucking all night, afternoon ballgame on TV, boss on vacation, boss's boss on vacation, afraid to screw up, emotionally recovering from previous screwup, sore from gym, busy wondering where it all went wrong, waiting for the other shoe to drop, surfing the internet, making personal phone calls/sending personal emails, paying personal bills, shopping for a new pet, car, or apartment online, internal bleeding, light job responsibilities, nice day outside, didn't eat yet, ate too big a lunch, scared for your personal safety, overwhelmed/don't know where to begin, nobody will notice/what difference does it really make?, a little under the weather, nervous about something but you can't recall exactly what, planning escape route when co-worker goes on bloody rampage, reminiscing about stuff, sobbing quietly all day, etc.   This is just a list I came up with off the top of my head of the things that have slowed me down in the past two weeks.  I imagine everybody else can add a few of their own, so when you think about it, it's a wonder anybody ever gets a damn thing done.  Anyway, in one job I once held at one time in this life, a co-worker and I created a name for this kind of sub-minimum effort.  We'd call it "Flynn," in honor of erstwhile Mets middle-infielder Doug Flynn.  For instance, on those days when you had an opportunity to do a little extra work that might save the company $85, we'd kind of look at each other and say, "Flynn" or "Doug" and skip the money-saving extra work.  It's not so much that Doug Flynn didn't try (by all accounts, he was a "scrapper"), it's that his performance fell just short of adequate on most days and in most ways.  In other words, to perform like Doug Flynn is to embody sub-mediocrity, which on some days seems like just the right thing.  And before you say, "Why pick on a never-was like Doug Flynn?  He gave it his best," take a look at the picture below.  It's pretty clear that our man Doug was enjoying the big-league life, sleeping around, having a great 70's, and showing no remorse whatsoever for his below-averageness as a player.  What a role model!  Let's all be #8 hitters!

Not Juan Epstein

7/15/3:

I have some serious respect for all the masters of the quasi-sports, like Tony Hawk and Kelly Slater and Minnesota Fats.  Their excellence is so awe-inspiring to a layman that it gives their sport a certain credibility.  In other words, if you are watching someone play a sport at a level that you could never hope to compete at, it makes the game they're playing seem legitimate.  Pro bowling is a major exception.  The best bowlers in the world average about a 210 or so, which beats the hell out of my best game.  But on a good day, I am in the 180's or even 190's, and I am a mediocre hack bowler who doesn't even throw a hook.  A guy I work with has like a 190 average, which means that he could occasionally beat Earl Anthony or Pete Weber or Walter Ray Williams or whoever the Grand Duke of Bowling is these days.  Like, if my friend Sal bowled against the PBA champ, and they bowled 10 games, Sal might win 1 or 2.  It makes me think anyone who's interested could make the tour.  Pro bowlers should stop trying to show how amazing they are at bowling, and take advantage of the fact that theirs is a sport (at least at its lower levels) that endorses drinking beer all night long.  I hope the pros are allowed to do that.  Imagine the following a guy could attract if he got blotto during tournaments, and managed to maintain his lofty average?  

7/11/3:

Has a team ever won a game in which they brought the outfield in? Has there ever been a network that runs more recycled, self-congratulating programming than MTV? Will I ever tire of watching it? If you get the Rage Virus, do you attack other creatures until they are dead, unless you are interrupted by the opportunity to kill another creature (or some other distraction) that forces you to leave your initial victim infected but not dead? Has a trailer ever made a movie look less watchable or made its stars look more smug and unbearable than the one for Bad Boys 2?

Are the Lakers a big bunch of cheaters?

7/9/3:

My office is located in a shitty neighborhood.  I say that with a great deal of authority, because the streets around our workplace are actually lined with feces -- equine, canine, and most definitely humine.  We are right up against the west side of Manhattan.  As we walk east to go get our lunch everyday, we encounter so many disgusting objects that we have created little games to make the trip more bearable.  As we are dodging huge shit-piles, we will play "Dog or Human?"  We also do used-condom counts -- I think we've seen close to ten on one block when the weather is warm and the lovin' is easy.  We once saw the box for a giant vibrator called "The Rabbit."  Rats and crazy people and incredibly foul odors -- we are on the cutting edge of unpleasantness.  But today, as we strolled back from a peaceful pizza lunch, something caught my eye.  Have a look and draw your own conclusions.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Yes, it sure fucking looked like a severed human finger, possibly wrapped in some bloody gauze.  And before you ask, yes I used my digital camera to snap these shots.  My boss and my co-worker and I were just mesmerized.  We stood around the thing for about 5 minutes, trying to figure out for sure what it was.  When we finally left, a man who had seen us studying the thing approached us and said, "That's a human finger, isn't it?"  When we said, yeah, we think so, he was like, "I knew I wasn't crazy."  When we got back to the office and shared our news and photos, a few people were shocked that we hadn't called the police.  We had actually thought about it for a minute, but we weren't really sure what it was, and it seemed no more criminal in nature than the rest of the detritus on those sidewalks.  Some other people eventually went back to have a look, and the object had been tampered with and now sort of just looked like a tube-shaped piece of bloody gauze.  The "nail" had disappeared.   And bloody gauze just isn't news in our neck of the woods.  As my boss pointed out, "We stopped taking pictures of shit years ago."

7/8/3:

Saw a little NFL training camp video.  What does the sight of Bill Parcells in shorts possibly accomplish for his team?  How are you supposed to work hard and get in shape when this hideous weeble of a man is screaming at you with his swelling gut testing the limits of his size XXXXXL t-shirt, which is tucked into his horrid coach's shorts, which in turn are hiked almost all the way up to his ample bosom?  How can you take him seriously?  Unless he's yelling stuff like, "Don't let this happen to you!" He must address this issue with his players.  I bet he says stuff like, "Yeah, I'm a fat fucking pig with heart problems.  But I can afford to be, you pussies, because I'm the fucking coach.  And I can cut your ass anytime I want.  Understand?"  That seems like the kind of thing he'd say.  He's a big jerk.

You know what's great?  The little inclined grassy area in the Texas Rangers' baseball park, just beyond the centerfield fence.  Fans are apparently allowed to run out there on a home run hit to that part of the park, and then they wrestle around violently on the hill to try to retrieve the ball.  It's pretty fucking spectacular.  Tonight, Juan Gonzalez smashed one out there, and as it was coming down, there were at least ten knuckleheads waiting for it.  One guy in particular was in perfect position to make the catch on the fly, but he just kind of boxed everybody else out like Bill Laimbeer, and waited for the ball to land.  As soon as it did, the battle was on.  There were like seven freaks right in front, Laimbeer included, writhing around and trying to grab the damn thing.  I honestly wonder if the crazy bastards had agreed in advance that catching the ball was forbidden.  Or perhaps Laimbeer knows that barehanding a 400-foot homer is more challenging than diving onto soft grass to pick it up.  I'm pretty sure somebody else got the ball, and some other people went home with injuries.  As it should be.

Also cool, but not as cool, is that one stadium (Houston or Detroit?) that has the hill IN centerfield. How did the players' union sign off on this?  Isn't some outfielder gonna break his back out there?  It looks like fun, though, running up the hill to rob somebody of a hit.  If I did that, I would keep running, all the way to the top, and then I'd beat my chest and yell "King of the Mountain!"

7/7/3:

I got back from Montreal last night.  Here are a few quick observations:

-The bilingual skills of the citizens are incredible.  You need to be able to speak English and French fluently just to survive there.  What I like is that everyone you deal with in a public setting, especially in the service industry (i.e. waiters, store clerks, prostitutes) will begin their question in French, and then, seeing not a hint of recognition flashing across your Yankee face, will make the mid-sentence adjustment and finish it off in English. So it's like, "FRENCH BLAH BLAH MORE FRENCH NONSENSE BLAH see a menu, sir?"   It works like a charm.

-Polite, beautiful people, clean, beautiful city, thriving sex industry.  A lap dance is called a "Contact Dance" and no, I didn't go to any strip clubs.  I was with my wife and that stuff is awkward and uncomfortable anyway.  They also feature Cinemax-grade smut on their regular cable channels at night.  While we were there, the legislative body declared that swingers' clubs were legal.  But you have to be a member, or at least have one, to participate.

-Border security is distressingly light.  Yes, we were delayed for two hours by border traffic on the way back, but all that was required in either direction was that we answer a few simple questions -- no vehicle search or passport request.  I will recommend that you avoid making the mistake I made.  When the border guard asks you if you purchased anything while in Canada, skip the "Just grass and nukes, officer" joke. 

-Parking meters adjoin the buildings rather than the curbs.  Makes sense.

-It's cool that your bank automatically converts your ATM withdrawals for you.  We would take out $100 Canadian, and our bank would debit our account either $77 or $78 US.  Probably not news to anyone, but I haven't been out of the country since August of 1983.

-Rody's artistic style has already been co-opted and commercialized up there.  Check out this movie poster I saw on the "Metro" (I love how it can't be the subway, it's gotta be the "Metro"). 

OK, enough about the Canadians, and on to more important topics.  As Dizzy Dean once said, "It ain't bragging if you can do it."  So I hereby state without any sense of false bravado that I am one of the world's greatest catchers of accidentally-dropped shower soap.  At least three times a week, I accidentally lose my grip on the soap, and it squirts free.  It almost never hits the ground.  I'm just too quick, too coordinated -- too damn good.   Sometimes I'll just miss snatching it on my first try, but then I'll bat it against the wall or the curtain just to keep it alive, and then eventually I'll knock it back into my control and make the grab, and I just shake my head in awe.  I can't help thinking, "There aren't a half-dozen men on the planet who can make that catch."  I'm really something -- I wish you could see me.

As much as I hate Coors --their company, their products, their ad campaigns -- I must admit:  they are the only beer that accurately depicts their consumers in their ads.  They are assholes getting drunk and acting stupid.  Prior to these recent Coors spots, I don't think I've ever seen a beer commercial that shows the drinker actually getting loaded, screaming, laughing fiercely at stuff that's marginally amusing, harassing women, and exchanging high-fives with his douchey buddies.  The truth is, this is what people who drink Coors do, and they'll readily admit it.  Kudos to Coors and the fuckheads who drink it.

7/2/3:

I remember when Barry Bonds got to around 550 home runs, they asked him about Aaron's record, and he said, "No way -- there's no way I'm gonna get near that.  I just don't want to stick around that long."  Bullshit.  He will definitely break the record, I'm sure of it.  Just watching his little self-congratulatory hand-slap when he stole his 500th base last week gives you an indication of how important statistics and personal milestones are to this guy.  I have no problem with that --I just hate his false detachment from the whole thing.  He would have to hit a steep decline in the next three years or so to fall short.  I think he'll end up with 783.

I hate to agree with the Jeter-bashers, but his defense is very average.  I can't remember him reaching a ball hit more than a few feet to his left all year.  And he no longer makes that slick running, leaping throw to first from deep in the hole.  Although that throw always bothered me.  I suspect that if he planted his feet and threw with all his power, he'd be able to make up the time lost in setting up his throw with the increased velocity he'd get.  Still, it looked cool, like Sid Luckman or Sammy Baugh or something.

Jim Kaat, who I generally like, was doing the Yankee game last night, and he was lamenting the new umpire-evaluating system that has been instituted this year.  His reasoning was: he spoke to an umpire who is so nervous about being rated by the system (which I assume is just a camera that shows where the pitches are and how many times an umpire fucks up a call) that he is barely aware of who is at bat.  Kaat said the umpire told him that he used to be a fan of the game, but now he's just focused on calling pitches.  My thinking is, if a guy wants to be a fan of the game, let him buy a ticket or watch godawful YES network like anybody else.  An umpire's JOB is to call balls and strikes.  Kaat said that in the past, if a hitter like Giambi or Ted Williams took a pitch, it must have been a ball.  In other words, superstars should get superstar calls because they've "earned" it.  Now, with this annoying new system, the poor umps can't give those close pitches to Giambi or Maddux or whoever they would like to suck up to, they have to call the pitches as they see them.  This is somehow a bad thing.  I hate the whole superstar system in sports officiating.  I remember Charles Barkley once saying superstars don't get ENOUGH calls.  He said, if you knew how much better than the other guys the superstars are, and how much the superstars get beat up by lesser players cheating and pushing them around because they can't keep up with them, you'd agree.  What is this horseshit? The idea that games should be called with anything other than complete uniformity for all players is puzzling to me.  What's more mind-boggling is that this is the mainstream stance on this issue.  If all umpires like to give the outside corner to all pitchers, and that's what it takes to keep the games under 5 hours long, that's OK (although why not just make the plate the appropriate size?).  But if the sporting world thinks it's fairest that the best players also get the benefit of the doubt from the officials, I need to know why.

7/1/3:

I hate to fall prey to my generation’s seemingly endless reliance on the pop culture icons of our youth as a source of amusement, but I have to talk about Hawaiian Punch for a minute. For as long as I can remember, Hawaiian Punch ads had one little character named “Punchy” and another character named “Opie,” or “Oaf” (OK, I looked up the names). The campaign would work like this: Punchy, who looks like a tough little Hawaiian dude that would definitely fuck you up in a bar fight, would ask Oaf if he wanted a Hawaiian Punch. Oaf, who apparently shared a few bong hits with Wile E. Coyote and Charlie Brown at Falling for the Same Stupid Tricks Every Goddamn Time University, always answered, “Yes.” Then Punchy would just blindside him with that mean little four fingered punch, right in the face. This cruel and unfunny practical joke was good enough to serve as the basis for Hawaiian Punch’s advertising campaign for about 30 years. Then, the other day, I was in a movie theater, and I saw a little bag of Hawaiian Punch-flavored candies. There was ol’ Punchy, fist clenched, poised to just cave somebody’s face in, but…where was Oaf? Gone. No mention of what happened to him. Did he get brain damage from Punchy’s relentless beatings and retire to a nursing home? Did Punchy actually kill him? Did he get let go in a cost-cutting measure by Hawaiian Punch? Or did he finally just say, “Fuck this. I’ll go get my own Hawaiian Punch” and ride off into the sunset? I like to think he sued Punchy for a shitload of money and retired somewhere nice, some warm and tropical place where when your pal offers you a sweet and delicious beverage, you can take him at his word. Maybe the Virgin Islands.