Author Archives: Richard

Adventures in Bird Listening

If you pay attention to your local birds for any length of time (or with any amount of interest), you’ll soon find that some species have distinctive calls. All it takes is for you to clearly see one singing its characteristic call, and then you should be able to instantly say “Oh, there’s a blue-crowned dinglebird in the area” the next time you hear it.

Seems that some of the more easily identifiable birds are among the more common in near-urban and suburban environments. The “caw” of the crow, the screech of the blue jay, the however-it-goes of the cardinal, the sort-of-mewling of the catbird…. With a bit more experience, one can readily pick out robins, chickadees, and (in the right environment) red-winged blackbirds. Some, like house sparrows and mourning doves, are generally nothing special – but so common that they become a default soundscape.

I bring this up now because this summer, it seems my neighborhood has been invaded by song sparrows. Their call has become ubiquitous, even though I can’t ever seem to spot one. They are quite loud for such a small bird, too. Unless they have an ability to pick out a stage where the acoustics serve to amplify their song. I have no idea how they do it. The volume suggests they’re right outside my window, but other aural characteristics tend to put them many dozens of yards away.

One of these days I’ll catch one at it. Maybe I’ll ask them about it.

This, but LOUDER:

Yeah, it’s been a slow summer and I’m just padding things here. What are you complaining about? You’re getting this for free…..

Remembrances of Things Past

No, this is not me getting all Proust on you. Or maybe it is. I’ve never read Proust, so you’ll have to tell me. It’s mostly the heat getting to me. Or something.

I am “of the right vintage” to actually remember cigarette ads on television. One of the brands that still comes to mind every now and then is Benson & Hedges. Their “hook” was that their main product, the “100”, was longer than the typical cigarette. This led, as you might easily imagine, to many a sight gag in their TV spots.

But it’s a print campaign of theirs that came to mind recently. Again, capitalizing on the “100” gimmick, they ran a sweepstakes where you could choose from 100 individual little sweepstakes, where the prizes all had “100” worked into them. Some were clearly meant to be silly, like “100 rolls of duct tape” (for example)…but you never know. Others, like “100 pints of ice cream and a freezer”, were of the sort where you’d think “You know, I could use that”. A few, like “100 minutes on a gondola in Venice” were travel packages or other big ticket items that would certainly garner a LOT of entries. I enjoyed looking over those two-page spreads, and picking out the ones I’d like to win.

I can also sing quite a few advertising jingles from way back then.

Thinking on all this now, I can’t help but notice that advertising has gotten quite dull. It is entirely possible that this is because my media consumption has changed over the decades, as well as because the media landscape itself has changed. No one seems to write jingles anymore (I understand that’s because it’s cheaper to use already existing stock music than to commission someone to come up with a new tune), and a lot of what passes for marketing is in corporate sponsorships and simply getting the brand name “out there”.

This may or may not be a “bad” thing, but I find it bland and boring. We’ll have to see what ad campaigns from the 2010’s are remembered in the 2030’s.

Any recent ads or ad campaigns strike you as truly creative or memorable?

MOVIE REVIEW: The Lemon Drop Kid (1951)

Sidney “The Lemon Drop Kid” (for his habit of always having a box of lemon drop candies on him) Milburn (Bob Hope) is a “racetrack tout” in Florida. Unfortunately for him, after convincing a woman to place her bet on the wrong horse, he finds out that she is a “girlfriend” of notorious mob boss Moose Moran (Fred Clark) – who is none too happy at having lost his sure bet. The Kid convinces Moran to give him until Christmas to raise the $10,000 that he would have won. It won’t be easy, but it’s better than what Moran had in mind.

Now it’s off to New York City, where he’s got just about three weeks to come up with the dough – or else. In the “season of giving”, can he find enough suckers, er, kindhearted people, to give him that much spare change? As it happens, he comes up with a cunning plan, one that will need the unsuspecting assistance of all of his lowlife friends to pull off…. Continue reading →

On the 2023 All Star Game

Well, that was….a game.

I really have to wonder who MLB is expecting to buy the special All Star Game uniforms. Sure, there are some fans in the stands wearing them, but will they be on sale next month in the team stores afterwards? I’ve railed before about how it makes it nearly impossible to identify the players on the field. I would also like to note that in the time-filling promotional spots where they have players in an “airport” and “coffee shop”, they are wearing their actual team uniforms. It’s clearly important for a promotional aspect, so why are there totally new and different uniforms for the game?

I gather that at least some players are OK with them – but you’ll always find good employees who will say they like whatever they are told to like. And it’s not like it’s impossible to tweak the regular uniforms into special All Star versions. One could, for example, keep the regular uniform but simply replace the team / city name on the front with “American” or “National”. At the very simplest, put stars at the sides of the number on the back of the uniform.

Continue reading →

Picking the All Stars

We’re in the thick of the All Star Team selection process, and I’m already seeing LOTS of whining in various comment sections on the order of “How can you choose this player over this one?”

I suspect a lot of these people are forgetting some very important things. First, you’re not simply selecting the Top 30 Players By Wins Above Replacement (or whatever number you want). You’ve got to field a team. What use is having six shortstops when you only have one first baseman? And there are a few other good rules, too.

Continue reading →

The Worst Teams Ever

Thanks to ownership that doesn’t care and has been selling of the team piece by piece, the Oakland A’s are currently on pace to have one of the worst records ever for a major league baseball team. Up to now, the worst baseball teams over a full season have been:

Team Wins Losses W-L Pct
2018 Orioles 47 115 .290
2003 Tigers 43 119 .265
1962 Mets* 40 120 .250
1935 Braves 38 115 .248
1916 A’s 36 117 .235
1899 Spiders 20 134 .130

 

* Expansion team in their first year

The Cleveland Spiders are a bit of a special case. The team’s owner also was a part owner of a team in St. Louis. Since St Louis was a bigger market (with a bigger stadium) than Cleveland, whenever a player started getting good for the Spiders, he was “traded” to St. Louis for a player who was underperforming. After a while, all the talent was in St. Louis, and Cleveland had the dregs.

In a way, though, the A’s ownership shenanigans are similar. This Oakland team is on pace for a record of 41 – 121, for a winning percentage of .250. It should be noted that they are being given a “run for their money” by the Kansas City Royals, who are on pace for a record of 46-116 (a winning percentage of .282). Since the Royals’ ownership isn’t holding a “Moving Sale”, one might actually have to consider them the worse on-the-field team.

I’ve been wondering – what are the worst teams ever in the other major sports? Continue reading →

Deckard and the Replicants

There was a recent interview with Harrison Ford as part of the promotional tour for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Ford was asked about quite a few topics related to his career and the characters he played.

One of the questions had to do with his performance as Rick Deckard in 1982’s Blade Runner. He was asked if he thought Deckard was a “replicant”; one of the androids constructed by the Tyrell Corporation.

It’s one of those movie questions that fans love to talk about, expending a not inconsiderable amount of time and effort in pointing out all the little hints in the movie to support their contention.

You know, I’d have thought the matter would have been settled by now. In fact, I maintain that it should have been settled within days after the movie’s initial release – indeed, within a few minutes after the question was first asked.

Continue reading →

MOVIE REVIEW: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

Well, you probably know the deal by know. At least I hope you do. A team of adventurers realizes that when their last “heist” went to heck, the wrong person got the wrong item. And that they are getting back together to stop her from carrying out her evil plan.

At least that’s what the trailers and ads tell you.

The main plot line actually concerns Edgin (Chris Pine) breaking out of jail so he can go get his daughter back and rebuild his family. If it happens that he and the gang discover the evil scheme along the way and decide to stop it, well, why not?

Having actually paid to see it in a theater, I noted that the movie satisfies no matter what your level of D&D knowledge might be.

Continue reading →

Let’s Kill Hitler!

The opening scene of the Doctor Who episode “Let’s Kill Hitler” (Series 6, Episode 8) ends with a secondary character (Melody Pond) holding a handgun and saying to The Doctor, “I’ve got a gun, you’ve got a time machine. What the hell, let’s kill Hitler!”

Aaaaand instead of some serious contemplation of the ethics of killing a person – even someone like Hitler – or The Doctor lecturing on how “You can’t rewrite history! Not one line! Believe me, I know!”, they wind up converting the episode into “Let’s Quickly Shove Hitler Into a Closet, and Spend the Rest of the Episode Doing Character Development”.

It was a real disappointment.

One of the most popular “alternate histories” is that where Germany / The Nazis win the Second World War. It’s justifiable to remind us of the evils of Nazism / fascism, but it’s at the point of being so overdone it’s boring.

What would be more interesting to see would be how WWII or even the rise of Nazism could be avoided in the first place.

What if you could go back in time, and stop Hitler? Continue reading →