Just a link for the day...

Bob Greenberger discusses the death of Weekly World News.

Casting Call

By an unfortunate coincidence of timing, some comics related roles were unavailable to the people best able to play them in other media. Would there have been a better Wonder Woman than Katherine Hepburn? Well, Lynda Carter was certainly perfect physically, but from an acting perspective the young Katherine Hepburn had both the beauty and the athleticism to handle the part.

Would there have been a better Batman than William Powell? He could have done the playboy Bruce Wayne and the action Batman perfectly. Additionally, he was the consummate screen detective.

Picture the Fantastic Four with Barbara Stanwyck as Sue Storm, Bing Crosby as Reed, Eddie Cantor as Johnny and Bob Hope as Ben Grimm.

Antman and Wasp? I give you Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Of course Erroll Flynn is the obvious Tony Stark.

Fredric March was born to play Hal Jordan, but unfortunately he was born fifty years to early to get the chance.

Fred Astaire would have been the perfect Daredevil.

Of course, there are some characters the golden age of Hollywood couldn't help us with. Gary Cooper would have been only okay as Superman. (I think Bogie would have been great as the Joker.) Burt Lancaster might have done a good job as Thor, but that's the only candidate I can think of. Spider-Man? Maybe Danny Kaye.

Just a link for the day...

Perhaps if we start eating more extinct species they will be saved!

In Praise of Exercise Machines

A year and a half ago my doctor told me I had to lose weight.
This is nothing new. I had my thyroid gland out around ten
years ago, and I gained eighty pounds, and I was already built
like an offensive tackle. So lose weight, yes, fine. But how?
Well, diets are no fun, and after they took my thyroid out,
they put me on a 1500 calorie a day diet. And I still gained
weight because, of course, I had no thyroid gland, and it took
them a couple years to find the right dosage for me. (They do
not just assume that because you are three times the size of a
normal person that you need three times the dosage.)

Believe me that nothing makes you more cuddly to be around than
being on 1500 calories a day and still gaining weight,
especially when you are bicycling around Bloomington Indiana
ten miles a day.

This time around, however, I joined a gym. It turns out that
while I can't diet that well, I can exercise like a demon. So,
six days a week, two hours a day I am in the gym, lifting
weights and doing cardio. And now I have lost six inches and
gained a lot of muscle mass.

One thing I have noticed is the cardio really is machine
dependent. The stationary bicycles and recumbent bicycles,
which are not weight-bearing exercise, do not really burn any
calories compared to, for example, the StairMaster and
treadmill, which are absolutely murder on the knees. However,
there is a happy -- well, a tolerable -- medium. The
ellipticals and the basic stairstepper. The basic stairstepper
burns more calories than any other machine, and the programs on
the elliptical and the cross ramp elliptical make it
competitive on a calorie basis.

The elliptical has a cross country and hill climb program that
are very challenging. The crossramp has gluteal and cross
training programs that both make me feel like I am
accomplishing something vary movements enough to avoid
instilling muscle memory in my legs. The crossramp does not
have the arm motion, but the standard elliptical does, and on
the cross country I could get my heart rate up to 158 or so. Now
it's leveling off in the 140-150 range, but my blood pressure
is way down, even if my weight has ballooned back up. (My
clothes haven't gotten tighter, though, except around the
shoulders and biceps. Muscle mass?)

The thing about these machines is that they looked fairly
complicated when I first started. I simply did not think I was
coordinated enough to use those machines. It turns out I was
wrong. The treadmills and StairMaster are murder on the knees,
and bicycles are not weight bearing exercise (and neither is
swimming. It's great for toning, but for getting your blood
pressure down or burning calories or building endurance, forget
it.) I recommend the elliptical and the stairstepper.

Just a link for the day...

The Americans Indians nearly had their own state.

Morgan freeman, Threat or Menace?

Morgan Freeman, great American actor or not? I first encountered him when I was a child, of course, on "The Electric Company." I first became aware of him, however, when Siskel and Ebert singled him out of an incredibly bad Christopher Reeve called "Street Smart." (This happens to me a lot. My favorite comic writer is Christopher Priest. I remember vividly turning to the credit page thinking "Who wrote this? He's great." That's how you know a comics guy is great, btw. Since the reviews are crap, basically, you know someone is good when you read the book and think, "Who is this guy? He's great." I might expand on this later on.)

Morgan Freeman made that movie my senior year in high school, back before I was a critic, but he hasn't stopped making movies since. And he's been in a lot of good ones. He's been in "The Shawshank Redemption," "Se7en," "Driving Miss Daisy," "Glory," etc, etc, et further cetera. However, those are great movies with other great actors in them. He's also been in "Chain Reaction."

I started thinking about this because he's the perfect Lucius Fox in the "Batman" movie. He's got a wonderful voice. The best voice since James Earl Jones. He's black. He has great screen presence. But he lacks the one thing Lucius Fox has. He doesn't seem to be dumber than Batman. Bruce Wayne is meant to be the smartest guy in the room. Lucius is supposed to be fantastic at running Wayne Industries, but he's not supposed to be better than Bruce would be is if he wasn't out beating up the Joker all the time. In "batman begins," Lucius Fox was smarter than Batman.

Can Morgan Freeman play dumb? Maybe, maybe not. Even in "Million Dollar Baby" wherein he plays a punch drunk boxer, he's still smarter than everyone else. His character in "Unforgiven" was not a rocket scientist, but he wasn't stupid compared to anyone else in the flick. Red, in Shawshank, was the second smartest character in the movie. When I think of people I consider truly great actors, they usually handle at least one moron. Donald Sutherland played Vernon Pinkley in "The Dirty Dozen." Spencer Tracy Played Manuel in "Captain Courageous," and Mr. Hyde in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Kate Hepburn played Susan Vance in "Bringing Up Baby." Bogie played some real idiots.

Morgan Freeman only plays smart guys, and I think that's a hole in his resume. He would have been miscast as Blockbuster, but Lucius Fox in the Batman series is not a particularly interesting career choice.

Just a link for the day...

Chster Gould could draw Dick Tracy blindfolded.

My God Can Beat Up Your...Wait, They're the Same

I'm all for ecumenism. I suppose I'm even all for ecumenism in
the Catholic Church, but I'm all for ecumenism is the sense
that I don't think religions gain much by being actively
hostile to each with regards to, for instance, armed conflict.
I don't think ecumenism is necessarily a good idea if it tends
to change the character of the religious belief itself. Karl
Marx called religion the opiate of the masses. Well, the thing
about opiates is that they make people happy. Arthur C. Clarke
said that he viewed religion as insanity, and while he didn't
mind people being happy, he preferred to be happy and sane. ACC
is my favorite writer, but he apparently has not met very many
actual living, breathing human beings, because while they might
not be insane, tolerance is not one of their predominant
qualities. More people have religion than don't. That might not
make believers sane, but I don't think you can classify
religious belief as a symptom, either. What it does mean is
that these people have a core belief which they think makes
them happy, say, Catholicism.

Now, Catholics particularly, have a sort of "go hang yourself" attitude toward religions with which they don't agree. The Protestant Reformation gets all the press, but there was also the Great Schism which split off from the Orthodox Churches. Benny Hex has told people that Christian unity is his objective, but he doesn't mean compromise. He means that people have to agree with him. It should come as no surprise then, that last week, the Pontiff announced that Catholicism provides the one true path to salvation. People criticized him for this, but all I could think was: "He's the Pope. It's part of the job to think that." Nobody who is not Catholic should even really care what he says on the subject. And frankly, I would have guessed that he thought that even if he did not tell me.

The reviving the Latin mass thing got under my skin a little, but if people want the mass in Latin, so be it. However, the idea that the Pope should keep his mouth shut about Catholicism being the one true faith is silly. Whether he is right or not is a matter of factual reality, and not saying it is not going to change anything anyway.
How are people supposed to proselytize if they cannot say that their religion is the best?

I do find it more comforting that the Pope expresses confidence in Catholicism than an Episcopal priest converting Islam without giving up her church. Huh? These are two mutually incompatible belief systems.

Just a link for the day...

Speaking of health care. A bunch of material from "Sicko" on google video.

Americans Got No Reason

Maybe this is why we aren't winning the medals in basketball anymore.

Height. Now academics are telling people that Americans are getting shorter. This observation has its genesis, I suppose, in the idea that Americans are also getting fatter. So our malnourished bodies are converting what little nutrition they get into fat rather than height. And the extra fat is smooshing us downwards. (Actually, that article blames it on health care.)

I, personally, have always felt that Americans were too short. From my own height of 6'6", it has been clear to me that we are basically a nation of munchkins. Scrawny munchkins, too. The abstract says that they only looks at whites and blacks, so immigration from Asia and Latin America shouldn't be a factor. But some of those white guys came from Europe after the war. Their own baseline is that height started to decrease after the Big One. I haven't read the whole article, but unless you are really, really careful, you will run into issues of intermarriage with immigrants and war orphans and the like.

However, let us assume that Americans are getting shorter. The researchers conclude that health care and welfare are the culprits. Americans can't stay healthy or get enough to eat. Because of that, we've gotten shorter. The primary factors in height are genetics and nutrition. Health care impacts both of those, welfare impacts nutrition and health care.

I do have to say that while the shortening of America is an interesting bit of trivia, I'm not certain I consider it the foremost issue in demonstrating that the lack of national health care is a problem. The inability of people to get prescription drugs seems a more direct and a more dramatic illustration than the idea that we've lost a few centimeters in height over the last six decades.

On the other hands, I might have to go to Europe to find that 6'1" red head I've been on the look out for for the last twenty years. I'm wondering, though. I'm still tall, right. I mean, should I actually be 6'7" or so, and I am just not living up to it?

On the other hand, anything that makes our health care and welfare systems look as inadequate as they are is a good thing.

Just a link for the day...

The trailer for "Get Smart!"

The Arms of Morpheus

Are alarm clocks counter productive? I have always had sleep
issues ranging from insomnia to sleep apnea. Some of these have
been resolved by my C-PAP, but some of them seem rather weird.
One of these is my alarm clock or rather alarm clocks.
No matter what alarm I use, it eventually starts to make me
drowsy. For the longest time I would watch the CBS Early Show
college. Well, actually, I would watch Kathleen Sullivan and
then Paula Zahn, but they were on the Early Show. The theme
song was "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" from "Oklahoma." Now, I
can't watch a production without getting sleepy.

But it happened with my beeping alarm clock which I used
throughout law school. The beeping noise would start to make me
feel drowsy. It even makes me think of an old Jimmy Olsen comic
story wherein he is forced to sleep on a spaceplane flight.
Now, the thing is, the beeping noise makes me drowsy, but also
keeps me awake. In fact, I apparently have some sort of
internal clock, because I typically wake up a minute or two
before the alarm goes off.

Recently, circumstances forced me to switch to my cell phone's
alarm clock, and it worked well enough that I haven't made any
effort to replace it, but, here's a kicker, after a couple
weeks, sure enough, it's making me drowsy.

I'm going to start varying the ring on this phone and seeing
what happens, but I have investigated this phenomenon. Some
psychologists seem to think we should not use alarm clocks, but
rather allow our body to dictate terms and wake up. I usually
wake up before the alarm anyway, but what about people who
don't? For some people the kids or the dog would get them up,
but otherwise you are stuck with the alarm clock or going to sleep
two hours early.

In law school I used to take naps on weekends to pay back the
sleep debt I built up during the week. These days I workout six
days a week, with a rest day in the middle of the week, so I do
a lot of actual physical exertion, which doesn't actually make
me feel more energetic, and I have less time to nap. I am
taking little catnaps when I can, however. And for those, I
don't use an alarm.

Just a link for the day...

The Philadelphia Phillies ball girls. Their own website? What is this? NFL cheerleaders?

Undersize Me

McDonald's has unveiled the new Chipotle BBQ wrap, available in
either deep fried or grilled chicken options. It's actually
quite good in the grilled version, and, in deference, to my
waistline I did not try the the deep fried version. The
chipotle sauce was strong enough that I could smell it in the
bag, and it was hot. The sauce was tangy. The wrapping flat was
strong enough to hold together, but not so tough to prevent
eating the wrap. The chicken was hot enough to melt the cheese.
The lettuce was still crunchy despite being both covered in a
sauce that contained vinegar and with steaming hot grilled
chicken, which, again was hot enough to melt cheese. In short,
not a bad dining experience for $1.39.

The bizarre thing is that these wraps are meant to the
healthier options. Why is it bizarre, you might wonder, that a
grilled chicken wrap appears to be among the new healthier
options that McDonald's is offering to the American dining
public? Well, because if you look at what was on the menu
before, you notice: chicken sandwiches both grilled and deep
fried, breakfast burritos, McNuggets (with sauces, of course),
and salads. So, basically, these ingredients, lettuce, chicken
and so forth, are already used by McDonald's. The other wraps
are honey mustard and ranch sauced, so the wraps would appear
to belong to the "just-scrape-together-whatever-we-have-on-
hand" school of culinary arts.


So...what was stopping them from having healthier options
before? Why do I weigh 350 pounds plus? (Well, in fairness,
partially because I lift weights regularly and partially
because I no longer have a thyroid gland, but otherwise...) I
don't order french fries. I usually will get a double cheese
burger with extra pickles if I go to McDonald's, though the
breakfast menu has me sticking with either a breakfast burrito
or a steak bagel. In fact, if I may digress, McDonald's and
other fast food places, actually tend to make it easier for
someone on a diet to stick to it if they want to, because you
know, in principle, exactly what you are getting. The diabetic
exchange diet, for example, relies on knowing the values of
certain categories of foods available to you. The exchange
values of most McDonald's items are trivially available.

But even so, nobody goes to McDonald's looking for a healthy
meal. "McDonald's" is, after all, written on the sign outside.
"Come, get your coronary artery disease here" it says, in
effect. But why? They have the stuff on hand. Why haven't they
tried to make healthier food until now? Why haven't they tried
to market the healthier choices until now? The point I made
above about knowing precisely what you are getting helping you
to plan your diet was told to me by one of my anthropology
professors in college almost twenty years ago. Given that, they
could have had a marketing campaign regarding that knowledge
long ago. Mickey D's seems to have made, then, the affirmative
decision not to be considered the healthy choice until now.

The American sense of machismo, perhaps dictates that they not
knuckle under to the metrosexual point of view to avoid that
first coronary. Also, it's not easy to eat a salad from the
drive-thru., and perhaps chicken is simply more expensive than
beef and grilled chicken more. I don't know.

I do know that when I ordered my large diet coke, the cashier
suggested I upgrade to the extra-extra large for only 89 cents
as opposed to the $1.55 I was going to pay. I did, and if I had
gotten regular soda, I probably would have slipped into a
diabetic coma on the spot. As it stands, I just have to worry
about the phosphoric acid leeching the calcium from my bones.

As it stands now, the jury is still out on whether "Supersize
Me" is a documentary or a horror flick.
(One guy tried the same diet with diet
soda instead of regular and apparently lost weight.) Can
McDonald's be a healthier choice? Yes, and they always have had
that potential, but they don't necessarily seem to want to be
known as such.

Just a link for the day...

The new Doctor Who releases this November are Timeflight and Arc of Infinity.

New Looneys are Coming!

The new Looney Tunes collection is coming October 30, and once again it promises to be a good one. Among the announced extras is the PBS documentary "Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens."

For me, it has always been the Warner cartoons. Well, I also liked The Pink Panther, but those were just one character, sort of like my affection for Droopy Dog or my dislike of Woody Woodpecker. But when I was kid, the real competition was Warner
and Disney. Some people liked Mickey and Donald and Goofy. Some people liked Bugs and Daffy and Porky.

I was a Warner guy. Disney was just too sweet for me. Donald Duck was my father's favorite character, but I didn't like his voice. I liked Mickey in Fantasia, but he never did anything for me in the shorts. I even liked the secondary characters better. Pluto and Minnie and Goofy were just not as interesting to me as Marvin the Martian, Foghorn Leghorn and Sylvester.

However, the Warner and Disney argument sort of overshadows animation. I've never cared for Tom and Jerry, for example, but they won seven Oscars. On the other hand, I enjoyed just about everything Hanna Barbera did apart from the Tom and Jerry stuff. I don't know why I didn't like the cat and mouse, but something about their conflicts just made it seem too real and less funny. In the Sylvester and Tweety/Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner conflict, I never thought the birds were in danger or that the predators were trying. Tom really seemed to want to kill Jerry, and Gene Kelly wasn't around to help!

Anyway, the Mouse is being weird with its animated shorts and its animated features. Warner is releasing stuff once a year, but the other stuff from other studios is coming out regularly. A significant amount of Hanna Barbera stuff is available on home video from Tom and Jerry to Scooby Doo, including stuff like Wacky Races and Dastardly and Muttley. Droopy and The Pink Panther are available as well. Woody Woodpecker arrives on DVD by the end of the month.

Finally, let me put in my pitch for Felix the Cat. He is the oldest of the cinema stars, and if you go to You Tube, you will see some truly bizarre Felix stuff from before Mickey Mouse was a glimmer in Uncle Walt's eye (back when Uncle Walt used to
work for the guy who made Felix.) If Paramount had gone with sound earlier, Felix might be remembered as the greatest animated movie star ever.

Just a link for the day...

The most populous countries in the world

So Jim Starlin has the Anti-Life Equation

The New Gods of Jack Kirby are apparently being targeted for death by DC comics, with hired gun Jim Starlin brought in to do the dirty work. To me this seems an odd move, but then the New Gods are an odd sort of franchise. To begin with, the whole thing is part of Jack Kirby's Fourth World concept, which included not just New Gods, but The Forever People, Mister Miracle, and, yes, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen. Mister Miracle appears to be fair game for the series, and even Jimmy got in the way of Lightray and appears to be coming down with powers in Countdown.

The Fourth World, then, consisted of four titles, one of which was not only firmly in the DC Universe and continuity, but also firmly entangled in DC's flagship character. So the New Gods were bound to collide with DC Universe proper. Sometimes this worked as with "The Great Darkness Saga" but sometimes it didn't. I have never been exactly sure what the new Gods are supposed to be. Are they truly new gods, and thus, they should really be busy creating worshippers or being manifestations of qualities in the universe? Or are they just new gods who are busy creating a mythology of heroic and infernal deeds to inspire legends. Surely Kalibak has better things to do than fight with Dan Turpin?

In fact, when Tom Peyer did the New Gods in the 1990's, I suggested to him that Brainiac 5, being from the future of the DC Universe, should worship Metron, the god of knowledge and science, since he did know who Darkseid was in the Great Darkness Saga, I thought it would be a cool call back to that story to show that Darkseid and Metron were actually part of his religion. No dice.

But therein lies part of the problem, as gods go, the New Gods come off more as though they are a superhero group than as a pantheon of deities. In contrast, Marvel's Thor while clearly a superhero, always had a bit of tension with Odin disapproving of his crime fighting exploits to a greater or lesser extent. While Darkseid is clearly a threat to Superman, it is just as clear that Superman can physically beat him, and he has. It's never clear just exactly what the New Gods are supposed to be.

But that's not why I find this new approach odd. I find this new approach odd because I don't see how it makes any economic sense whatsoever. The idea of killing them off seems to imply that people want to see them die so much, they'll buy eight issues with that in mind. When Supergirl and Flash were killed off in Crisis on Infinite Earths, they were killed off in the context of a great story. People were buying it anyway, and the two characters who were not necessarily that popular were not the drawing cards. But here, it's gonna be "death of the New Gods and pray for rain." So, if the New Gods are popular enough to support an eight-issue miniseries, why kill them off? And if they are unpopular, why devote eight issues to killing them off rather than just not using them. Additionally, nobody who has read more than twenty comics thinks they are going to stay dead.

Of course, Marvel did have Starlin on "The Death of Captain Marvel" graphic novel, but then again, that was a fresh comic for a fresh format. At this point, killing the New Gods in a miniseries strikes me as neither.

It is interesting to note, by the way, that Jack Kirby also created some new gods for Marvel in the Eternals. Marvel recently gave those guys to Neil Gaiman who decided that rather than kill them off, he'd try to do a story about them.

Just a link for the day...

Nicole Richie is Wonder Woman!

If Only She Had Worn a One Piece

For that they fired Amy Jacobson? I have to admit that I do not watch the NBC news, and I was basically unaware of who she was. Having seen the video footage, however, I will tell you exactly what happened.

Amy Jacobson is a reporter in the Chicago television market, which I would guess puts her average work week at approximately eight zillion hours. She had an off day after the Fourth of July and promised that she would take her children swimming. She did. She happens to be covering the disappearance of one Lisa Stebic, whose husband stopped talking to the police last week. Amy Jacobson, along with probably two thousand other reporters, no doubt gave her card to the husband's family.

So, what happens? She's on her way to spend time taking her kids to the beach like she promised on her day off, and she gets a call from the husband's sister. The guy has stopped talking to the police, but now he wants to talk to her. She's in her swimsuit (the news media in Chicago is making a big deal about how she was in a bikini. Mary Ann Childers probably said "in a bikini" ten times during the report, which is also on the website. That's fine, but Ms. Jacobson was going to the beach, and I felt cheated when I went to the CBS2chicago.com website to look at the video. Tammie Souza shows more cleavage at least twice a week.) Ms. Jacobson possibly said something like, "I can't come right now, I'm taking my kids to the beach. I have to take them home and change." The response she gets is "Oh, we have a pool. Bring them over." So...

She does.

Why?

Because he apparently wants to talk now, and I feel certain other people have given the family their cards. She has the scoop. She doesn't even have to break her promise to her kids. If you look at the video, what do you see? Amy Jacobson wrapped in a towel up to her chest talking on a cell phone and trying to corral her kids. The bathing suit is a halter style bikini top, but she is wrapped in a towel so large it that it should probably come with a wimple. I've seen more revealing nun's habits. (In "The Novices.") So, we don't even see the bikini bottom. If she had been wearing a thong, I can tell you what the front page photo of the Tribune would have been today.

And who is she talking to on that cell phone? Either her husband or, more likely, her producer, and she's saying "Hey, I got him to talk to me." Meanwhile, CBS 2 Chicago, which is apparently monitoring the guy's house sees her and figures they can try to ruin her credibility by somehow making her out to be too close to the story. If she was having a rendezvous with the guy, would she bring her kids? Would she be calling anyone? Hardly.

So, NBC fired her because she crossed a line. Well, yes, she is a ten year veteran, or almost ten year veteran and she's pushing 40 years old. So, she's expensive and she's too old, and now everyone has seen her in a bikini, and it wasn't even on channel 5! And there was not even a butt shot. I heartily encourage NBC5 to take revenge in kind. I suggest a few candidates to catch in their swimwear: Tammy Souza, Tracy Butler, Mary Ann Childers, Mary Kay Kleist, Alita Guillen, Megan Mawicke, Susan Carlson and Linda Yu. Sadly Tamron Hall and Michele Leigh aren't in town anymore.

So she crossed the age line and the salary line. She says she made a lapse in judgement. And I agree. If she had the day off, she should have told them to call Anne Kavanagh. Now her, I want to see in a baby doll nightie.

Lost in all this? Amy Jacobson went over there because the husband had agreed to talk to her. Gee, I wonder about what...

Just a link for the day...

In honor of the horrible national anthem at the All-Star Game, I give you the greatest assist in NBA history with Mo Cheeks and Natalie Gilbert.

Jimmy Rollins is the Best Shortstop in Baseball!

Jimmy Rollins has been well and truly ignored by the world. Here's a lead-off man with over 50 RBIs at the All-Star Break, who is leading the league in runs scored and who plays a excellent shortstop. Not only was he not selected for the All Star team by the fan vote or the reserves by the coaches and players, but he was not even on the list of alternates for people to vote on (neither was Ryan Howard, which is just stupid since he's the reigning MVP and home run king.)

Let's examine young J-Roll. He's a terrific lead-off batter. He doesn't get a lot of credit for this because of his lower on base percentage. Bill James, among other people, have convinced the world that in order to be a great leadoff man it is important to get on base, like say, Tim Raines or Brett Butler or Ricky Henderson, all of whom tended to have on-base percentages in the .390 or higher range. Jimmy hovers around .330. So, yes, that is a significant difference.

However, what is the point, I ask you, of getting on base? Well, what is the point of baseball? To win the World Series. How do you do that? You win games. How do you do that? You score more runs than the other team. How do you do that? Well, you score runs. Getting on base helps you score runs, and obviously, Ricky Henderson et al. scored plenty of runs. Brett Butler scored 100 runs six times, and his career high was 112. Tim Raines scored 100 runs 6 times with a career high of 133 and 123. Ricky Henderson scored an insane amount of runs, the most ever, with 13 seasons over 100 and highs of 144 and 130. Jimmy Rollins has, in his young career, scored over 100 three times (in 6 complete seasons, with 71 at the 2007 All-Star break) with a career high of 127 that he will almost certainly surpass this year. He scores runs while getting on base with less frequency than same other leadoff men do. How does he manage this? He has more power than most lead off men and he has speed. He hits a lot of doubles and triples and steals a good number of bases and is almost never caught stealing. This power and speed close the gap with regard to the on-base percentage issue.

He has enough power that for several games when Ryan Howard was hurt, J-Roll batted third. Because of the power, he has 53 runs batted in to date in 2007. He's tied for 18th in the league. And, of course, he's led off most of the year, so he's batting with the men the 7th, 8th, and 9th slots on base (and with no designated hitter in the National League, that includes the pitcher's spot.) Those people don't get on base that often and he's knocking them in anyway. One knock on him is that he is enamored of his power and is thus not enough of a conact hitter for the lead off spot, which is why his his walks and on base percentage are low: he strikes out a lot. And he does strike out a lot, but strike outs are not that horrible when considered with everything else. For one thing, if a player strikes out, he is not grounding into a double play. J-Roll's offensive contributions taken in their entirety allow him to bypass the typical "get-on-base" issue to score a lot of runs anyway, and thus manage to put him into the area of great lead-off men.

Additionally, he plays a key defensive position at shortstop. He's a very good, not a great defensive shortstop, but he has a strong, accurate arm, and he is always above average in number of chances, assists and fielding percentage, and he has a good number of put outs and plays a tremendous amount of defensive innings at short. And like any good shortstop, he provides leadership for his team. He made some headlines this year by claiming the Phillies were the team to beat in the national league. This caused some sniggering when the Phillies got off to a 4-9 start, but they are only 4.5 games back at the break, and, besides, what is he supposed to say? That his team has no chance? Jimmy Rollins is a brilliant lead off man who drives in a terrific number of runs, is a team leader and plays a key defensive position well and is leading the lead in runs at the break. I think he should have been on the All-Star Team.

Just a link for the day...

As you might have heard, the Phillies helped the Colorado grounds crew with the tarp during a heavy wind which in fact threatened to injure the groundskeepers.

I Prefer Snorri Sturluson's Version Myself

Thor the Thunder God has returned to the Marvel comics scene,
complete with his alter ego Donald Blake. This development
might prove interesting, but the first issue was rather odd
because while it showed Thor returning from the dead, it
doesn't really explain how he returns. We see Thor fighting
some generic monsters and claiming Mjolnir. After this bout,
Don Blake shows up in a hotel room.

Interesting, but worth one whole issue? I think not. Other
venues, I submit, exist for retelling the return of the Son of
Odin to Midgard. When I heard Thor was coming back, and I saw
that one of the characters in World War Hulk was one of the very
Saturn rock men Thor had faced in Journey into Mystery #83, I
would have sworn that Thor would be brought back in the middle
of a fight. A call back, if you will to the reveal in the Civil
War. Is it really Thor, Hulk and others would wonder? Reed is
one of the people Hulk is coming for, after all. Surely the
possibility that he could have made another clone would play
to the suspicions of the Marvel heroes.

Additionally, Marvel is pretty high on Ultimates right now, and
the Ultimate Thor has a certain ambiguity as regards whether he
is in fact the Thunderer. Bringing back Thor in this fashion would
allow a certain degree of that tension in the mainstream Marvel U.
At least, it would tie in the return of Thor with the current major
crossover event: World War Hulk and allow Thor to return and immediately
face an old enemy or three (the stone man, Hulk and Hercules.)

Beyond any of this, the conversation between Don Blake and Thor
indicates a sort of bizarre mixture of humanism and theology which
doesn't make any sense. Don Blake, a construct that did not exist
until created by Odin says that gods do not create man, man creates
gods. However, if one accepts the premise that gods in the form of
supernatural deity-type creatures exist, then generally speaking,
the myths say that they do create men, though not in the Norse
myths. On the other hand, the humanist precept that men create gods
typically refers to a notion that man creates the concept of gods.
Not that man somehow creates the sort of efficacious supernatural
entity that is exemplified by Thor.

The Marvel universe is apparently working by a mechanism akin to that
of Discworld, wherein gods are manifestations of the human subconscious
and gain energy from direct worship. The problem with this is that if
gods are merely constructs of humans, then how does Don Blake get
created? How does he get called from the void? It's a nifty line but
it makes no sense.

Thor is one of the more important characters in the Marvel Universe
because if you have Thor, you almost have to account for him in the
larger stories. Hercules is powerful, but lacks charisma, and it's
possible to be a Marvel fan without being aware, in some sense, of
how powerful Herc is. The same for Namor. You can have a company
crossover without inviting them, though World War Hulk has them both,
but Thor and Dr. Strange are both powerful and famous. If they are around,
they have to be involved. I do not know the time line, but if there is a
Thor title on the self, then Thor is around. And if Thor is around, then it
makes more sense for him to return in battle in the crossover, as opposed
to return in the middle of some philosophical debate on the nature of death
and theology in a standalone title. It makes better sense dramatically. It
makes better sense for the history of the character within the Marvel
universe. And it also makes better sense for regaining interest in
Thor.

Just a link for the day...

A classic moment with Sting and Puff Daddy from the 1997 MTV video music awards.

We Have a Drinking Problem

I have noticed a shift, in the last several years, in the way
restaurants handle beverages. The leisure service dining
establishments such as Red Lobster and Outback Steakhouse are
no longer listing the prices of the beverages on the menus.
Restaurants are also now charging for soda water. Additionally,
some fast food joints are charging for a glass for water even
if you order food in the restaurant.

These practices bother me on a few levels. I realize that soft
drinks are a source of both profit and frustration to a lot of
restaurants. If you go into a Bennigan's and order a diet cola,
you typically get free refills. The server has to come by to
check on the customer several times. They have to make the some
of the drinks like ice tea or lemonade, and they have to deal
with changing the syrup and gas tanks on the machines. All that
effort goes to maintain for something they only charge around
$2.00 a glass for.

On the other hand, that two dollars a glass is probably almost
pure profit. Not listing the price bothers me because the
drinks can be as much as $2.50, and it is tough on the servers
too, because the prices on certain drinks can be higher than
others on the same menu. I asked a server about this phenomenon
on one occasion. She said customers got upset when they found
out a coke was $1.95 but a raspberry iced tea was $2.10. Think
about that. You sit down. You order a drink with a group of
people. You itemize the bill. Suddenly, you can't figure out
why you are two bucks short, until you factor in the drinks.

Now, I would think an intelligent server would warn the guests
in advance that, by the way, those drinks cost different
amounts. However, they ought to, because the restaurants
should tell a family of five that they are going to spend ten
to twelve extra dollars on dinner than they thought. It costs
more for a glass of cola in a restaurant than it does for two
liters in the supermarket. I accept that, but don't try to
insult my intelligence by not listing the price on the menu.
Plus, I just know that one day they'll raise the price
to $5.00, because they won't even have to change the menu.
In any event, I will almost never order soda pop in a restaurant
that does not list the price, because I find this practice
morally objectionable.

I used to order soda water. However, many restaurants are
charging the same for soda water as for soft drinks, which is
to say, we have no idea what they are charging. Soda water
involves even less outlay on their part because there's no
syrup involved. Some restaurants do not charge for soda water.
On the other hand, the only way to find out is to ask.
Asking brings up another issue. It's "only" a couple bucks. If
you quibble you seem cheap. Now, in principle I don't rightly
care what some server at Outback thinks of me, but it's
annoying to get a look from some high school student because I
want to know how much I am paying for soda pop and whether, in
fact, I am paying for soda water at all. In any event, I like
water better anyway, so I am usually happy to stick with it.

There are, of course, other issues with soda pop. It tends to
have caffeine and sugar and the diet versions have other
chemicals. The main ingredients in colas is phosphoric acid,
which leeches the calcium from human bones. Water is a fine
alternative. Yesterday, I went to a local fast food joint and
got a sandwich. I asked for a glass of water. The cashier said,
"I have to charge you five cents for the cup." Now, I realize,
that's "only" five cents, but there's a reason for the saying
"nickel-and-diming you to death." I refused to get the water
there, went home, and drank it out of the tap. I could understand
if I hadn't also ordered food, but I did.

Next time, how can it be prime rib if they use USDA
choice cuts of beef.

Just a link for the day...

My brother, David, is participating a diabetes bicycle ride in Indianapolis next weekend.

Lee Marvin, Clint, the Duke and ...

Back when I was in high school, Robby Vega and I used to talk
about movies and actors. One thing we used to talk about was
what made a great movie and what made a great movie of a
specific type such as a great western or a great war movie. And
if it was not a great movie, is it a real western or a
real war movie. Over the years, I have thought about
this, and one thing I have centered on are the individual
actors. If you have Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire or Cyd Charisse
in a musical, it is clearly a real musical. If, on the other
hand, you have Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood, as in "Paint Your
Wagon" it probably isn't a real musical in some sense. It
lacks the street cred that, for example, Julie Andrews would
give it, had they hired her instead of Jean Seberg. (Ray
Walston was on the exact same set, and they still used Lee
Marvin.)

"Paint Your Wagon" is actually a classic Broadway musical, but
the movie version lacks street cred the way Dracula lacks a sun
tan. The movie was written by the great Paddy Chayevsky, who is
a brilliant writer and even a great Broadway writer, but not a
musical guy. Joshua Logan was a good director, probably his
best movie was "Picnic, and he actually directed "South
Pacific" and "Camelot," which are famous musicals, but only
okay to good in their movie versions.

In any event, Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin are big stars, but
they also give street cred to certain kinds of movies. Those
kinds are war movies and westerns. You put Lee Marvin in a war
movie, like "The Big Red One" or "The Dirty Dozen," and you
have yourself a war movie. Westerns used to be more popular
than they are now, but if Clint Eastwood made one tomorrow, it
would have instant street cred.

Or take a sci-fi movie, for example. In the 1970's, if you stuck
Charlton Heston in a science fiction movie or a disaster flick --
pre-"Star Wars," of course -- you would have immediate credibility
with sci-fi fans.

Now, if you know anything about movies, you might be thinking,
"Why use Charlton Heston as an example of science fiction
street cred? I know he was in a bunch of s.f., but surely he's
more of a Biblical epic or period drama guy?" I used him so I
could bring up Donald Sutherland, the first guy to play Homer
Simpson (in "The Day of the Locust.") Most people think of
Donald Sutherland, if they associate him with a specific type
of movie, as a comedic actor, I suspect, on account of
"M*A*S*H" and "Animal House" among others. I don't know this,
but most conversations about Sutherland I have had involve me
arguing that he is just a great actor, not that he is a great
comedic actor, but the responses I get tend to be dismissive on
account of his comedic background.

I would suggest, however, that Donald Sutherland also brings
war movie credibility to his oeuvre. He has been in some great
war movies, "M*A*S*H," "The Dirty Dozen," and "Johnny Got His
Gun." He has been in some war movies which are not great, but
have street cred partially because of his presence such as "The
Eagle has Landed" and "The Eye of the Needle." In fact, two of
his comedies are also war movies: "Kelly's Heroes" and "Start
the Revolution without Me." Now, clearly, Sutherland has been
in a bunch of movies, spread over many genres, and suggesting
that he is identified with war movies in the way, for example,
that John Wayne is identified with westerns (or war movies, for
that matter) would be clearly wrong. However, I submit that the
question for street cred purposes is "Can this actor put me in
the mood to enjoy this movie just by his presence?" I can watch
"Take Me Out to the Ballgame" simply because Gene Kelly is in
it. The music and dancing are not that great, but Gene says to
me, "Hey, I'm here, this is a musical." If the Duke or Clint
show up in a western, I know immediately what to expect.

I suggest that even if people don't associate Donald Sutherland
with war movies, they should. His presence indicates that if
you like war movies, you'll like the war movie he is in.
Obviously I can't make the zeitgeist change, but if you like
war movies, I suggest you pick up a few of Sutherland's, but
then, if you like war movies, there's a good chance you've seen
a few of them already.

Next time, Yul Brynner and westerns.

Just a link for the day...

How to tell if someone is telling a lie.

First E.T. and Now the King

Over the past couple years, various candy makers have been treating us to limited edition candy bars. Some of them, like the Reese's Big Cup with Nuts, are quite good. Some, like the Hershey's Raspberries and Creme bar are bad. Some, like the Reese's White Chocolate Peanut Butter cups, are really, really, really bad.

I've been seeing a lot of these confections in my local dollar stores, which indicated to me that they were being remaindered, and, indeed, they were originally meant to be available only for a limited time. It turns out, however, that these are actually auditions.

Today, I discovered that some of these special editions are being brought out as "New" candy bars. The Starburst Berries and Cream flavor, for example, is back as a new flavor. Given this new trend, I thought I would examine some of the newer flavors.

Starburst is having a great deal of success, from a flavor standpoint. Any special edition they try seems to work from Baja to Ice to Counter Culture. And the Peter Paul products with variations on Almond Joy and Mounds are working fairly well, though they need to work on making the flavors distinct.

Reese's is somewhat misguided, in my opinion, when they try to make a limited edition out of the regular Reese's cups. There is not enough room to put more distinct food stuffs in, and replacing one of the flavors completely, for example the white chocolate fiasco, changes the nature of the bar enough that it is truly a different product. However, one of their other limited edition products, the Big Cup, is providing an excellent ground for experimentation. The new Elvis Peanut Butter and Banana Creme -- the *King* Size, as the package tells us -- is very good indeed, partially because the candy has enough space to accommodate both the peanut butter and the banana creme. Reese's certainly knows how to get celebrity endorsements. I wonder if they are selling this in Graceland.

Kit Kat as a brand has also caught on in this regard. They have tried different flavorings of white chocolate in their regular bars, which, as I said, tends to lose the unique qualities of the original. (And the Apple Kit Kat's were just bad. I am not certain I believe anyone tasted those before they were sent to market.) Also, their extra crispy wafers are just silly on the smaller, regular bars. On the large, Big Kat bars, however, they can do many things such as adding caramel or making the wafers extra crispy which work quite well.

On the other hand, I am not certain what Hershey's is trying to accomplish. The chocolate mint cookie bar is good, but the the fruit flavored ones are awful. Orange chocolate and raspberry chocolate require a subtle fruit flavoring. A strong flavoring will clash with dark chocolate and kill the taste of milk chocolate. The white chocolate versions are okay, I suppose, but the Hershey's milk chocolate versions just don't taste good enough in a conventional enough way to appeal to the masses.

Hershey's is also experimenting with different types of nuts. Their Hershey's with Almonds is, of course, a classic, but almonds are a long, flat nut and they can put whole and nearly whole nuts in the bars, and almonds make an excellent mix with chocolate (see also Almond Joy). The Hershey's Nut Lover uses cashews, peanuts and pecans in addition to the almonds. These are also decent complements to chocolate, but they are all chopped fine in the candy bar, and they do not necessarily mix with each other in that context. It's very hard to make out the flavor, and because of the chopping of the ingredients, the characteristic nut texture is lost. Hershey's currently has a limited edition Special Dark bar with macadamia nuts which suffers from a similar problem because dark chocolate dominates the taste of the macadamia nuts.

Finally, one trend I have noticed is a trend to include coffee flavorings. Cappuccino and espresso and mocha and the like. Coffee is an evil beverage, and this use of the flavoring in otherwise wholesome and soul-nurturing candy is obviously the work of Satan on earth. Avoid them.

About the Title

How to build an aluminum foil deflector beanie.