Former Stars to Help Fix Major League Baseball

As some of you who follow sports may know, Magic Johnson (and Friends!) recently bought into become a partial owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Many people in sports think that this is the most important thing that baseball can do to make itself more accessible to it's slowly declining fan base. This "celebrity" or "super star" involvement has most certainly proven itself to work for teams like the Pacers (NBA) and Penguins (NHL), but it is not a "sure thing." Otis Smith of Magic fame (infamy) was an NBA player as well. And I hope I'm not alone in saying that I ha--that he should no longer be a part of the Magic Organization.

So while, indeed, Magic Johnson's (he's already a minority stockholder in the Lakers, and the fans love it) move is definitely a stroke of genius by and for the Dodgers (on par with the Rangers hiring Nolan Ryan as their Fearless Leader and the failure of the Jaguars to acquire Tebow,) it's not going to fix the core problem that the MLB is having in regards to business...

Baseball is freaking boring.

It's nearly impossible to watch an entire game of baseball without wondering why you aren't doing something else. Didn't I need to mow the lawn or something?

I'll even take you a step further, why watch an entire game of baseball (even if it is the Braves, I know you really really love the Braves) when you can turn on Sports Center in the morning and see every important play that happened in the entire game. Sure you run the risk of hearing something along the lines of "This is the 15th game in a row the Clippers have won at home on a Tuesday when Magic Johnson ate a hot dog with his left hand in Boston." But thems are just the breaks.

Assistant: Pssst. Dude. The boss wants you to tell them about the amount of sodas consumed this year in relation to last year in Los Angeles as a factor in how the Orlando Magic are playing this season as compared to last.

Stuart Scott: Well, I just don't see how that's relevant at all. In any way.

Assistant: Relevant? Dude, this is SportsCenter.

Moving on. I read an interesting article last year (it was actually written in 2000) about how much baseball is actually played during a Major League Baseball game.

It was not pretty. The most important quote I found in the article (although there are so many interesting tidbits) was this:

"Time the baseball was actually in play, including pitches, batted balls, foul balls, pickoff attempts, relays, throws to bases and anything else even Bob Costas might consider actual sporting activity (and I was being generous with the stopwatch): 12 minutes, 22 seconds."

This is baseball's core problem. It's not fun to watch. Is it fun to play? Of course. Why else would we make it easier and change the rules so you could drink alcohol while you play?

The future of sports. Only bowling could possibly be better.

But I'm not the one who has to worry about how baseball can save itself. I don't need to figure out how management needs to change, ownership needs to change or even what rules they need to change.

All I need to do is change the channel.

The Twitterverse is Buzzing about Something, Let's Write an Article About It!

Twitter, or as I like to think of it, New Media's bastard child with illiteracy, is getting out of hand. I use Twitter. I'm sure you can see that, it's over on the side thing (oh my God, follow me! Follow me!) but I use it specifically to call attention to my blog and my generally awesome sense of humor. Not because I feel like I can say anything meaningful or World changing in 140 characters or less.

However, the reality of Twitter (aside from its aforementioned existence) is that it is incredibly useful to those of us who are in the entertainment and media industries. (I say in, in my case I really mean, fitfully running around a locked house looking for an open window or a hidden key.) The majority of Twitter accounts are held by high school kids who use them as quick facebook status updates and random people trying to get that mystical Justin Bieber retweet. (If he retweets anything you say, you gain a level in real life.)

Twitter has launched quite a few careers and even spawned multiple books and TV shows, I give you "Shit my Dad says." You may remember it as the one funny preview with William Shatner a few years back on CBS. The book is actually fantastic as the majority of it's entries are longer than 140 characters and it actually tells meaningful stories from Jim Halpern's life. (So I guess he tells them.)

Look for this:

Not for this:

So why am I on this random Twitter spiel? Well, I find a lot of my funny news via twitter links and the like (I follow a lot of people that are funnier than me, and a few that just have more followers.) However, I get the majority of my news from credible news sites, i.e. Yahoo! News, MSN news, and so on and so on. (I used to do NPR, but then my iPhone software updated, and I never re-downloaded the app. Odd time for that revelation to hit? Or meaningful? I'm going with meaningful.)

So the two news stories that struck out to me today were not truly news stories. They were bullshit hidden in a news story-like article on MSN. The first was about Tebow's trade to the Jets...and what it was doing to Twitter. I'm not altogether unhappy with the move (for Tebow), but going to Twitter and and quoting three Tweets is not a news article. Reputable media outlets should not begin quoting something that inspires poor (I mean non-existent) grammar and odd little abbreviations that rarely make sense.

The second was either a complete space filler or a shameless plug for this writer's personal Twitter project (it only has [currently] 363 followers, one of whom is me) GoddamnDora. That's right. Naughty Dora the Explorer, something that I feel has taken far too long to come into existence. And while I agree with the sentiments of a cursing Dora, or a Depressed Darth Vader, I just can't get behind actual news reporting on Twitter trends. That's ridiculous.

It's like the media is turning into one big Entertainment Weekly website.

It's freakin' depressing. And I'm not featured, which is also lame.

Bookworms to Arms! Literary Criticism Gets Physical

People are finally starting to take literary pursuits seriously. It's been so easy for everyone to just judge literary criticism by its multi-colored cover.

And occasionally by it's less threatening cover as well.

But finally, after years of quiet debate in near empty classrooms populated only by angsty (Screw you, spellcheck, angsty is a word, and a correct one at that.) hipsters and creative writing majors struggling through a sleep deprived professor's sleep inducing course, literary criticism has gotten physical.

Hell yes, fellow Bookworms! That is real! The shit be on now, yo! Now we rollin'. And any other such phrases that inspire a "to arms" response! Yeah!

Here's a picture of puppies, getting ready to throw down. Cry havoc, again, and all that.

(Yes it's the same picture as before, and yes I love it that much.)

What's that article actually say for all you non link-clickers out there? Basically some nerds got into a fight over in Ann Arbor. Boom. Over what? Books. The argument was said to be over Tolkien and (or vs, it all depends on perspective, I suppose) C.S. Lewis. (Oddly enough, both were decidedly Christian thinkers and members of the Inklings, a very non-violent group.)

Apparently somewhere during a "conversation about books and authors" (quoted from this website) "The 34-year-old man was then approached by another party guest, who started speaking to him in a condescending manner." (The "34-year-old man" was the one who was attacked, by the by.)

Really? Imagine that. Someone who reads (Let's just assume he's also an aspiring writer himself.) and discusses books got condescending. Who da' thunk, a literary enthusiast thinking he was better than someone else, even a fellow wordage connoisseur. For shame.

And humor.

The Ides of March (And Substituting)

Last week I substituted for an English teacher whose class was doing Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar.

For $9.95 you can get this "Julius Ceasar" wig and also look like the great Ceasar himself, re-imagined as a lesbian.

I was so excited! This was my first chance to really get into the stuff I love about teaching English. Writing, reading, plays! Yes! The kids were going to love this!

They didn't.

Not even a little bit.

I had to pick students to read in each class. One student volunteered that she was by far the best reader in the class. Everyone else agreed. I made her Brutus, chose a Cassius and a Marcus Antony (We were in Act II) and I narrated.

Brutus, as you may have guessed, has quite a few large verses in this section of the play. And while I wouldn't say the student lied to me. I would say that she is not the best reader of a play. It was Shakespeare as read by Ben Stein.

Yeah, you thought you were getting a picture of Ben Stein or maybe an irritated eye? Balls to that.

It was horrible. And to think, this was my little social activist in the class, she was all about saving Uganda and finding Kony and blanket days, and she couldn't muster up any emotion when it came to the death of a friend, hero and tyrant.

About twenty minutes into our (incredibly boring) reading, I asked the class what had happened so far in this scene.

They all just looked back at me blankly. Finally one of them said "Marc Antony is trying to get Ceasar's body for a funeral thing."

I was impressed. I was about to ask her why that was important. Before I could open my mouth another student interrupted, "Wait. Ceasar's dead?"

Were I a dragon, this is the face I would make.

"Yes, sir. He died on the second page of the reading."

"But no one mentioned that!"

"I'm pretty sure I did."

"When?"

"When I read the line, 'they all stab Ceasar.'"

"Oh."

So I asked again. "Alright, Class. What is happening right now?"

Blank looks. It was time for a break down.

"OK. So Ceasar was kind of being a jerk. He had taken over Rome, right? He was this tyrant, he had taken the title 'Dictator for Life, yo.' He was the Ancestor of the first OG (Original Gangster for all my non-80's kids.) So Brutus, who really really loved Roman society, Rome and the Roman Republic, was convinced into a plot to murder him. This could be argued to be a great crime, but more than that it, was one of the World's greatest betrayals, as Ceasar had given Brutus nothing but chances, leniency and friendship over the years. (That link is about Brutus, he stirred up some anti-Ceasar shit before.) After they kill him, they need to immediately explain it to the Roman people, and their rivals, like Marc Antony."

"So, Marc Antony was Ceasar's friend? Why did he come back and grovel then? Shake hands?"

"Grovel, good word. And I would say, because he didn't want to die. If your friend, your best friend, was murdered and the ten dudes with knives asked you, 'hey, you cool with this?' Would you say 'no' or 'yeah, guys, totally.'?"

"Marc Antony was smart. He was humble to their faces but when they left, it was all 'Cry Havoc' and dogs and stuff. It was about to be on. As they said in the lingo of my youth."

And I was all "HAVOOOOOOOOOOC!" and then I let them loose.

"Then he gives this really great speech about friends and Romans right?"

"Well, he opens up a speech that way."

"What's the speech about?" Asked one of the students.

"Dude. You read the Marc Antony part out loud."

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry."

Roman statue facepalm.

Hand Sanitizer and a Mother's Worst Fear

I was at Disney recently, and not exactly by my own choice, but the story there gets hazy and is full of cartoons and roller coasters and there's no real reason to go into further detail. We'll begin and end the Disney segment with this: I was at Disney recently, and not exactly by my own choice.

A reality of theme parks and public places in general is their near uniform lack of cleanliness (on the germ level.) You can pay people to walk around picking up trash and wiping down glass...

Smiles? Here, sir. Anti-bacterial spray? He didn't show up for work, sir. Damnit, forget him boys, we'll do this with brooms and trash scoops alone. Once more into the breach, gentlemen.

...but in the end, every park goer, mall goer, boardwalk walker and roller coaster enthusiast, is touching every park surface, every bathroom faucet and every single one of those roller coaster line railings. Just running their hands all the way along them. All the way along.

I give you for evidence, my dear ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, Exhibit 1.

So it should be no surprise to a country full of scared mothers that those very same women who help perpetuate those germs, are terribly afraid of them, in a deep and lasting way. Germs scare mothers on more than one level.

a) They're gross. You touched this, and you probably went to the bathroom this week. And you probably didn't wash. (And mothers have this talent for saying words like "probably" so they sound more like "definitely." And they're so good at it that you actually begin to feel guilty.)

b) Germs can get their kids sick. And there's nothing a mother hates more in the entire World than anything that harms her baby. Unless of course it's the fact that she had kids in the first place, a lot of mother's seem to hate that. Under their breath, to other parents, when their kids aren't looking, or are so young to not hear (or rather, understand) the insult.

c) When kids get sick it's really inconvenient. Work has to be called in. Schoolwork has to be sent home. Lots of driving. Lots of appointments at lots of doctors. Waiting in waiting rooms, waiting in line at the grocery store for soup, waiting in line at the pharmacy, watching the same cartoon movie four times in as many hours, and when the child is finally asleep, not being able to think of anything other than that damn cartoon the rest of the evening.

At the end of my Disney day, I was sitting with my friend on a bench, waiting for our bus to come take us back to the car. We were settled in right next to a couple and their young daughter. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon and the mother and father were watching their child run around with open surprise. I could see the question floating through their heads, "What did she take to get this kind of energy and where can I get some?"

The daughter kept running over to a bench, touching it, hitting it, and sprinting back to her mother. And like clockwork, her mother would demand of her daughter, "Show me your hands." With a sullen obedience the girl would put out her hands, allowing her mother to put anti-bacterial on, before she sprinted off to explore our little corner of Disney.

After about five minutes of this the mother just had her hand sanitizer at the ready, and the daughter would sprint over with her hands out. Time savers, all.

Finally, the young girl runs over to me. She says something along the lines of "Diiiiiisneeeey" before running over to the trash can. This was the last object in our space that she hadn't explored. She hadn't touched.

But the carrot was on the string. The apple had been seen. Temptation is a cruel bitch.

Her mother looked on with a kind of distant horror, I would describe it as a pure understanding of the fact that nothing good could come of this. Her daughter continued to look at the trash, so she said, "Come here, honey. Why don't you play with your toys!"

Without even a look at her mother the little girl grabbed both sides of the trash receptacles opening, and shoved her entire head inside.

The mother's head mimicked the girl's motion, but instead of into a trash can, into her lap.

Dear God, why do I bother?

Finally the father got up, fighting a smile, and pulled his daughter's head out and hands off of the trash can.