A Diamond In The Rough.

No matter which way you slice it, and they're tough to slice, a diamond is still a diamond. I'm talking about baseball diamonds, of course, and how the majority of fans and players these days want to follow suit with the New York Yankees in building 1.5 billion dollar stadiums to further pamper their overpaid players (Teixeira, Sabathia, AROD!) leaving the Wrigley and Fenway cathedrals to likely go the way of Shea and Yankee Stadium.

Now, in my opinion, which is, in my opinion, the most important opinion on the planet, baseball is the best game that can be played on this earth, and it DOES NOT MATTER where the game is played. As long as the bases are ninety feet apart, and the mound rubber sixty feet, six inches from home plate, I am as happy as a Northside Chicagoan watching the Cubs win the World Series... not that anyone under the age of 100 would know what that feels like (BAZZZZING);)

Carlos Zambrano, the Cubs' ace pitcher was just quoted at New Yankee Stadium saying:

"You come into a ballpark like this and you see great things. You wish that Chicago'd build a new stadium for the Cubs".

Whoa there, Big Z; great things? Like what? A martini bar? Touch-screen LCDs in your locker? What about Wrigley Field's ivy walls, or the completely hand-operated scoreboard? Being a diehard Reds fan since birth(and you have to be diehard...), my hatred for the Cubs is runner-up only to that of the Yankees, but before I'm a Reds fan, I'm a baseball fan, and therefore can't imagine Northern Chicago without historical Wrigley Field. Besides, there's no better place for my Redlegs to lay the hurt on the ol' Cubbies:)

But seriously, baseball predates even the civil war. It isn't about flashy scoreboards, or luxury skyboxes, it's about two teams playing eachother on a warm summer day. It requires nothing more than eighteen players, some hotdogs, four bases, and a pitching mound. I can't stomach the idea of Fenway being torn down just to allow 10,000 more seats. Fenway Park has been a baseball icon since 1912. It's the oldest park in in Major League Baseball, and I think it should remain so until it literally crumbles to the ground during a sell-out Sox/Yanks game.

Parks like Wrigley and Fenway give you those nostalgic, Coca-Cola commercial, father/son feelings that can't be replicated in a 1.5 billion dollar colosseum. George Hermann Ruth, Reggie Jackson, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, and Joe Dimaggio, just to name a few, all played and sweat on Yankee Stadium, and now it's gone by the wayside of extravagance? Weak... Yankee stadium was itself a testimate to the longevity and greatness of the game of baseball, and it hosted the greatest players to ever play the game, but I guess replacement is the fate of all that is good in the world. Yankee Stadium will be torn down piece by piece and sold to the highest bidder so that the already filthy rich Yankees can generate even more revenue.



Where does it end? Babe Ruth's home field will be demolished. Will Wrigley field, where he called his shot in the 1932 world series, be destroyed too? Is Fenway soon to be replaced by a dome with astroturf? It may not be the prettiest ballpark in the world, but it sure as hell has the most character. Pesky's pole, the curse of the Bambino, the Royal Rooters, the green monster. Character, not extravagance, is what so many in this country need to learn to appreciate.

A diamond in the rough...

A Simple Choice, Me Thinks

The other day I went into Half Priced Books to just to look around. I really didn't want to spend any money since I'm between jobs right now, but I ended up walking out having bought ten movies. Now, ten movies under any normal circumstance will run you from 100 to 200 bucks, and I didn't just buy a bunch of B horror movies.

Check this out: Rocky, The Urethra Chronicles, Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of The Jedi, Red Dawn, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Now those are some gems! Which begs the question: How much did I pay?

Five dollars!

Five dollars for ten classics! That's fifty cents a piece. How did I do it? This may be hard to stomach for some, but remember those bulky, black, plastic things that you had to rewind after you watched? Yeah, VHS, MMMMmmm... the satisfying tape hiss that is VHS. Now, you could buy Rocky for fifteen bucks on DVD, or you could dust off that bulky-ass VCR in your attic and enjoy the same movie for fifty cents.



A simple choice, Me thinks. ;)

...And This One Belongs To The Reds!

So here was my dilemma; some of my friends and I had just moved out of our house to a place down the road, and we were without cable with baseball season about three days out. No, I didn't panick. I didn't start hyperventilating into a brown paper bag. Well... okay, I came close, but a very simple idea soon came to me that pacified my very warranted anxiety.

I delivered pizza for about five years from high school through college, and my favorite thing in the world was, and still is, listening to Marty Brennaman call Reds games on the radio. Even when I have the game on television I usually mute Chris Welsch and turn on the radio to hear Marty and Jeff both praise and criticize my team; however, at this time in my life I was without a radio except in my car. I literally sat in my car for three hours outside my place listening to a spring training game. This; however, couldn't continue. I could talk my roomies into splitting the cost of cable with me, but none of us watch TV, so we would be paying for cable just for baseball, which is a pretty damn good reason in my opinion, but not gonna happen. or, I COULD BUY A RADIO!

I remember listening to Reds games on old analog radios when I was a kid, so I didn't want some digital cd/mp3/mp4/blue ray/xm/retinal scanner that happens to pick up am stations. No, I wanted an old fashioned analog radio with turn dials and everything. No heat sensing on/off switch, no digital channel memory, just a warm-sounding, vintage radio.

So I got on craigslist and found just that; a 1978 Sony AM/FM with a simulated wood finish about fifteen minutes drive from where I live. So I got in my car, drove there, and bought it for ten bucks. That very night I listened to Marty and the Reds beat the Brewers 7-6. By the way, what was with simulated wood in the 70s? Fake wooden paneling, fake wooden radios, fake wooden dashboards in cars; what's the deal?



...and this one belongs to the Reds!

John Carpenter Meets Kurt Russell

Some of my favorite movies are also some of the world's cheesiest. John Carpenter mastered cheesey melodrama in his 1981 cult classic "Escape From New York". Basically, the United States has converted Manhattan Island into a giant maximum security prison. Biker gangs rule the entire island, and there's no way on or off of it. The plot begins in 1997 (16 years in the future when the movie was made in 81. I love movies that are so old that their future is our past) when Air Force One goes down over Manhattan Island and the president gets captured by the island's rampant gangs. Snake Plisskin, played by Kurt Russel, is a legendary ex-soldier/fugitive who is offered a clear record if he saves the president in 24 hours. He's a perfect anti-hero.



Snake's character is a bad-ass, anti-social, fugitive who could hardly care whether he lives or dies, let alone anyone else in the world. The movie is overflowing with one-liners, and from start to finish, you can't even tell whose side he's on. What a bad-ass. He has his own agenda, and if it doesn't comply with what you want, he'll kill your ass. You meet a handful of other shady characters throughout the movie, including the Duke of New York, played by Isaac Hayes. Hell yeah, right? I don't want to give anything away, but the movie has one of the best endings ever. Snake pulls a total "fuck the world" in the best way possible. Something else interesting about Snake's character is that Hideo Kojima, the creator/director of one of my favorite videogames ever, "Metal Gear Solid", got his inspiration for the main character, Solid Snake, from Carpenter's Snake Plisskin; right down to the eye patch. I guess John Carpenter is huge in Japan.



Another interesting scene is when Snake gets into Manhattan Island by landing a glider on top of the World Trade Center. The Twin Towers were also in the first "Die Hard" movie. Thankfully John Carpenter and John McTiernan immortalized the Trade Center in their movies.

Carpenter had a hell of a time getting this film made because he didn't have much say-so in Hollywood at the time he wrote it (in the 70s). However, after his success with Halloween he had a lot more influence. It's an excellent post-apocalypse action movie from beginning to end, and I highly suggest it to anyone looking for a little 80s cheese in their life. Also, if you like this movie, you might try another John Carpenter movie starring Kurt Russel; a little cult classic action/comedy called Big Trouble in Little China. There was also a sequel to Escape From New York released in 1996 called Escape From L.A. Hmm... the sequel was made a year before the original was set... Science Fiction writers should really start setting their stories deeper into the future. 2001: A Space Odyssey is an excellent example of this. I'VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR THE MONOLITH FOR SEVEN YEARS NOW!

We Loved Every Second Of It

If you tried to describe me as a stubborn nostalgist who can't get over the past, I wouldn't disagree with you. I just like the way things were done when I grew up. I know I'm only 22, and I'm probably too young to say "back in my day," but I had a good childhood, and therefore like things that remind me of it.



Music has changed drastically in the past ten years. I was gettin' down to blink-182, Green Day, and Jimmy Eat World in high school, and that was considered weird. Now even the most obscure indie bands and metal bands have high budget MTV videos. Think about it; Underoath is on MTV. The Devil Wears Prada is on MTV. Now, Underoath is a far cry from like, Dying Fetus, or The Chariot, but most mommys and daddys would have called an exorcist if their kids were listening to Underoath in the 90s (even though there were already heavier alternatives like Desecration or Cannibal Corpse; however, they weren't on MTV). Now they pay for their kids' tattos and buy them expensive amps and guitars so they can start their own annoying, angsty, deathcore bands. It's not a bad thing that heavier music has become more accepted, though there are still those who call anything with throating "devil music," but what I'm saying is that in order for something to remain fresh and underground these days, it has to get more and more obscure. Some might say this is musical evolution, and in some ways it is, but in some extreme cases this "evolution" gets so "experimental" that it can't be recognized as music. Ambient recordings of crickets and electric bass mixed with someone smashing a TV with a hammer isn't music to me. People say, "you just don't get it". Whatever, neither do you. Those that "get it" are, more often than not, just pretending to.

Basically, all it really comes down to is this: I miss three-piece bands that have only one goal; rocking out. No obscure message, no crazy time signatures, no fancy haircuts, (though I still appreciate all those things minus the haircuts) just rockin' out. I've been in a lot of bands, (some good, most bad) and the most fun I ever had was in a crappy three piece pop punk band with my best friends called "Freedom451". I know, terrible name, and the music was worse, and the lyrics were even worse, but we loved every second of it.

www.myspace.com/freedom451punk

The Power of Nintendo Products

Some of my fondest childhood memories were those early Christmas mornings when my parents would wake my brothers and me to open presents in our lame PJs. All I ever wanted for Christmas was videogames, and that's what I got...every year. My parents always managed to trick me into thinking they couldn't find or afford whatever it was I wanted -- be it a Super Nintendo, a Sega Genesis, or the newest Pokemon game -- but they always managed to pull through. My reactions (thankfully not recorded) were no doubt as charming as the videos below.

Adults These Days

Okay, so these kids in Greenwich, Connecticut get bored and decide to build a miniature Fenway Park; you know... Fenway... the home of the Boston Red Sox? Anyway, these kids get together and go around town to find supplies. They recycle some plywood and pallets to make Fenway's famous green monster wall that's held so many potential doubles to singles. It took a considerable amount of imagination and even more physical effort for these kids to pull this off (sure as hell beats sitting at home eating microwaved burritos and playing Grand Theft Auto IV). They found an empty lot in their neighborhood, cleared out the shrubs and brush, and assembled their field of dreams, but before they could even get good 'n dirty sliding headfirst into second, they were being shut down.



Neighbors began to complain, seeing "Little-Fenway" as a noise violation, a risk liability, and -- God forbid -- an endangerment to their property values. Okay, risk liability? It's wiffle ball! I guess some people think their kids should stay safe at home blowing the heads off digital drug dealers and watching soft porn on HBO late at night. These people need to see it for the blessing it really is. These kids put lots of effort and thought into what they built. They've done something extremely positive in creating a safe recreational alternative to television and youtube. These kids are getting exercise and being OUTSIDE in an age where most kids grow up on the internet.

One neighbor, Liz Pate, was quoted saying:

"I'm all for Wiffle ball and apple pie and baseball and the American flag, but there are plenty of fields in town they can use instead of building something in people's backyard. If I come home at 6 at night after working all day, I want peace and quiet. I can't have that. I have dozens of people behind my house playing Wiffle ball. If their parents think this is so great, let them play at their house."

Okay, lady, you miserable fuckin' ogre. God forbid you get off work and come home to kids laughing and playing within earshot. You've got it bad. Maybe you should move to a quieter neighborhood where kids are selling drugs and killing eachother and not making suck an unbearable ruckus playing wiffle ball. How spoiled are we when the idea of kids playing in their back yard is so unbearable that we have to sick a legal team, the police, the town nuisance officer, AND the tree warden on them. It's a tough life you live, Liz Pate.

These kids would have an impossible time keeping me out of the games if I lived in Greenwich, Connecticut. I'd pester them until they let me at least umpire. What more do we have to do to keep kids inside, where they can overeat, drink Red Bull, and convince each other to send naked pictures of themselves over myspace? We wouldn't want the next C.C. Sabathia or Mickey Mantle to come out of their rooms and realize their potential, now would we?

Adults these days...