As 2017 draws to a close, lots of people are looking back and reviewing the “Best of” the year, or what have you.
Well, I’ve got nothing else to write about at the moment, so….
(And in no particular order, either)
(Lots of videos after the jump)
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Yet Another Holiday Message from Our Sponsor
For some reason, this doesn’t come up on the lists of “Best Holiday Commercials”, though the knock-off one by Budweiser with their Clydesdales does. It’s got great simplicity, great visuals, great music, and it isn’t trying to sell you anything. It’s just a one-minute long Christmas card from the Miller Brewing Co. to everyone:
I don’t watch much TV these days, so I haven’t really noticed what’s current in holiday TV ads. But there’s one sort that really gets my goat – those car ads where the husband buys a new car for his wife. The ones where the car has the big ribbon and bow on it.
I know that we shouldn’t expect TV World to be an accurate reflection of reality – but who does this? Who buys a luxury car for someone as a Christmas present? Yeah, there are people who a so stinking rich that they could if they wanted to, but those aren’t the people shown in the ads.
The couples/families in the ads look to be upper middle class. The sorts of people that would not be making a major purchase – like a luxury car – without full knowledge and consultation of everyone. I can picture the wife, when the cameras stop rolling, saying, “Wait a minute. How much did you spend on this? And where did you get that kind of money? What about the monthly payments? Who’s paying the insurance on it? What made you think I would want to have this exact car?” And then snowballs (because it’s always a snowy scene in these ads) and worse being thrown about in anger.
Then there’s the subtle sexism in the ads. You never see a *wife* buying the car, do you. A lot of TV ads have what could be called “reverse sexism” in them. The husband/man tends to be shown as stupid, sloppy, forgetful, and incompetent – the wife/woman is the one who somehow fixes everything. It doesn’t tick me off that much; I figure it’s a sort of payback for all the sexism against women over the decades (or centuries). If you don’t believe that this exists, next time you see a TV ad with a husband and wife, imagine it with the roles reversed….
Anyway, enjoy your holidays. And may you get something that’s actually practical and useful – and doesn’t require any extra payments on your part.
On the Holiday Window Displays
Since I was in Manhattan recently, with time to kill, I took the opportunity to stroll up Fifth Avenue and check out the big holiday displays – Lord & Taylor, Saks, Tiffany, Bergdorf Goodman.
L&T had their usual fantasy scenes. I couldn’t get close enough to Saks to see what was in their windows, but they did have their big light and sound show on the facade.
Pro Tip: The best way to see the Rockefeller Center tree? Come at it from Sixth Ave, or one of the side streets. It is practically impossible to approach it from Fifth Avenue, because that’s where the mob of humanity is forced into tight passageways. Approach the tree from another direction, and you can get right up to it!
TIffany featured some nice winter scenes with silver and diamonds. Bergdorf Goodman saluted NYC cultural attractions in their windows.
While I have no problems with any of the displays, I do have some ideas for things I’d like to see…
A Christmas Mix for You – Vol 4
Well, it’s that time again.
I’ve kind of fallen into the common trap with these collections. You gather all your favorites, and find you have too many for one collection. So you pick a few to go in Volume 1, and then add a few that didn’t quite make the cut to the batch for next year. And then the next year, you find you’ve got only a few “favorites”, so you do your best to pad out the collection to make something worth putting together and sharing. Then, you realize you somehow forgot a few, but four or five songs do not really make a “mix tape”, so you pad it out with general stuff that you hope people like…
Well, there it is. I’ve got a few more (three or four) that I could toss out next year. Kind of like stocking stuffers when compared to the big gifts. Or I could just repost the first Mix from 2014. We’ll see what I feel like next November, when I start thinking about this.
Anyway, here’s the link:
http://www.dropbox.com/s/lcdt2075r2ln0ka/Chirstmas%20Mix%204%20-%202017.zip?dl=0
And here’s the list of songs:
The Hall of Fame and the Keltner List
It’s that time of year again – the Baseball Hall of Fame has released their annual ballot. Let the arguments begin!
The arguments typically involve analyzing a player’s statistics (which is NOT to be confused with statistical analysis!) and deciding who is better on some arcane and arbitrary scale.
There’s “Wins Above Replacement”, which exists in two versions. At Baseball Reference, you can look up Bill James’ “Black Ink”, “Gray Ink”, and “Hall of Fame Monitor”, which all assign points to various career accomplishments and compare them to players already in the Hall. Jay Jaffe has come up with his “JAWS” score, which is an attempt to combine everything into a single number by which one can easily judge a player’s Hall-worthiness.
(Note that JAWS and WAR are pretty much calculations in a multidimensional space – but more on that in a future post….)
These are all attempts to take something that is purely subjective – a player’s greatness – and treat it in an objective manner. But they still wind up being subjective in the way they assign weights and importance to their individual components. And what the heck is meant by a “half a win” above replacement, anyway?
I figure we should drop all the pretense of objectivity, and go with the Keltner List.
Do You Like Scary Movies?
It’s that time of year when film critics and fans trot out their lists of the greatest horror movies of all time. They’re usually pretty good, and one can generally predict which ones will be in the Top Ten.
Brazilian film critic and cinephile Diego Carrera approached the topic from a different perspective. Noting that from their very beginnings, movies tried to shock and startle people, he picked one important “horror” movie for every year from 1895 to 2016:
Careful viewers will note that, strictly speaking, not everything on the list qualifies as Horror. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, for example, is a comedy. But they’ve all got their moments that are at least unsettling.
You are free to disagree with some of the movies Carrera’s included. But keep in mind, it’s based on the YEAR, and isn’t intended to be a list of the “greatest” (even though many of them would be on such a list).
So check it out, and see if there’s something there that you haven’t seen yet….and then check that out!
President pmurT
You know how most of the President’s cult and the Reactionary Right-Wing (RRW) tend to believe that somehow President Obama destroyed America and it’s their mission to “Make America Great Again”? It came to me last night – what if Trump’s mind is actually working or thinking backwards in time?
Rethinking Columbus
You may recall that a month or so ago, there was a bit of a hubbub in the papers about people wanting to take down or at least relocate certain monuments to Confederate generals and leaders. Has anything come of that, by the way?
Lost even further down in the media coverage were a few proposals to remove statues and other similar proposals to sweep Christopher Columbus under the rug, as it were. I believe that the City of Los Angeles decided to change the name of “Columbus Day” to “Indigenous People’s Day”. In New York City, it was suggested that Columbus Circle be renamed, and the massive monument in the middle of the circle get put someplace where no one would be forced to look at it. A modest statue (a bust, actually) of Columbus in my area was smashed by vandals.
This is all part of an ongoing movement to discredit Columbus at best, and brand him as a genocidal maniac at worst.
Is it at all possible anymore to have a reasonable discussion about him?
Just Checking…
Back at the end of March, in the introduction to an essay on the validity of the “win” as a worthwhile statistic for pitchers, I tossed out my picks for the six division winners this baseball season:
Now I could use this opportunity to discuss my picks for the Divisional Champions (Nationals, Cubs, Dodgers, Red Sox, Indians, Astros), but I really haven’t been paying attention to how Spring Training has been going.
Turns out I was right on all six. It’s not really a big deal; it was pretty obvious at the start of the season that they were the strongest teams (at least on paper) in their divisions. But it’s still kind of nice to go 6-0 in my picks.
I’m NOT going to give any predictions for the World Series; I’ll just note that if it’s Cubs and Indians, that will be the first time since 1977-1978 that there’s been a “rematch” in the W.S.; and if it’s Dodgers and Astros, it will be baseball’s best pitching staff (Dodgers) facing baseball’s best offense (Astros).
This is Going to be Great!
We’re heading down to the final weekend of the baseball season, and it’s shaping up to be a great batch of playoffs. The division winners are essentially set, and it’s pretty clear who’s going to be facing each other in the wild-card “play-in” game. And they’re all worth rooting for.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have already reached 100 wins. They haven’t done that since 1974. For a while it looked like they were going to set a record for wins, but they stumbled a bit down the stretch. They’ve righted the ship, and it looks like they’ll have home-field advantage all the way through to the World Series. Which, if they make it, will be their first pennant since 1988.
The Cubs want to be the first team to repeat as World Series Champions since the 1999-2000 New York Yankees. The Washington Nationals are (still) going for the first pennant in franchise history (including their tenure in Montreal). I don’t think they’ll settle for just winning more than one playoff game, though. With three of the best pitchers in the NL (Scherzer, Strasburg, Gonzalez), you can’t blame them. And their “window” is closing; Bryce Harper is nearing free agency….
Over in the American League, the Cleveland Indians certainly want another shot at the World Series to end their drought. They’ve been tearing up the joint this month and a half, and should get 100 wins by the time the season ends. The Astros also have a shot at 100, and how can you not root for Houston?
The Boston Red Sox, meanwhile, would like to remind Yankee and Aaron Judge fans that they actually lead the AL East, as well as having Cy Young candidate Chris “300+ strikeouts ought to count for something, right?” Sale.
Speaking of awards, most of these teams have a solid candidate for some serious hardware. Chris Sale and the Indians’ Corey Kluber are the top choices for AL Cy Young, Max Scherzer of the Nationals and the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw to worry about. The Astros’ Jose Altuve is the leading AL MVP candidate. The NL MVP Award field is rather crowded; the Cubs’ Kris Bryant has an outside chance at it.
All the division leaders are loaded with talent. Expect a lot of great, exciting games in October! And however it turns out, it’s pretty much guaranteed that a deserving team will win.
Pure Blather 