Slumberlord
Monday, February 27, 2006
I know it's still early...
...but spring training is getting started and I'm sick of waiting.
ALE – New York Yankees
ALC – Chicago White Sox
ALW – Oakland Athletics
WC – Toronto Blue Jays
American League
The Yankees should be able to handle the ALE with their two main rivals weakened, although their bloated roster and merely good pitching (by Yankees standards) will probably rule out another trip to the ALCS. The White Sox should control the ALC wire to wire with the Cleveland Indians nipping at their heels the entire way and the Twins possibly making a push here and there but failing for lack of offensive power. Oakland, with a pitching staff as deep as the White Sox rotation, decent hitting and a spittin’ mad Frank Thomas, should bash the malnourished Angels in the west. The wild card could come down to a race between Toronto and the Tribe with Texas as a dark horse, but my inclination based on last year’s postseason is to follow the pitching and bet the Jays will muscle their way in there.
NLE – Atlanta Braves
NLC – St. Louis Cardinals
NLW – San Francisco Giants
WC – New York Mets
National League
I don’t follow the national league as closely, so my predictions are fairly conservative. The Braves will win the NLE yet again. Despite signs of life in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Chicago, the Cardinals will once again steamroll the NLC as the Rocket-less Astros fall behind. St. Louis may for once be vulnerable in the NLDS series, though. The west is a real mess but I don’t see the Padres stepping into the same power vacuum that just barely took them into the postseason last year. The Dodgers and Giants both have serious health risks and weaknesses, but even a decent showing by Barry Bonds and some performance from a pretty good pitching staff should put the Giants on top. Wild card could go anywhere, but I will guess the Mets with the Nationals and Marlins making heartening (but ultimately unsuccessful) runs at the slot.
Post-Season
White Sox beat Blue Jays (3-1)
Athletics beat Yankees (3-2)
Cardinals beat Mets (3-0)
Giants beat Braves (3-1)
The White Sox bump the Jays with superior pitching, the Athletics just barely earn the ALDS victory they so richly deserved in past years, the Cardinals repeat their sweep from last year against the Mets this time, and the Giants struggle past the Braves as bullpen problems again keep Atlanta down in a disappointing year.
Athletics beat White Sox (4-2)
Cardinals beat Giants (4-2)
In an upset, the Athletics, true to history, beat the White Sox 2-1 to take the ALCS. The flagging Cardinals find the Giants feistier than expected, but eventually dispatch them in an exhausting six game series.
Athletics beat Cardinals (4-1)
Albert Pujols does his best to lead the Cards to a WS championship, but the flexible, tough and adaptive As prove too much. Frank Thomas, who will have racked up a solid OBP through smart hitting and walks during the first 2/3rds of the regular season, will get his second World Series ring in two years, but is again stuck watching from the dugout.
...but spring training is getting started and I'm sick of waiting.
ALE – New York Yankees
ALC – Chicago White Sox
ALW – Oakland Athletics
WC – Toronto Blue Jays
American League
The Yankees should be able to handle the ALE with their two main rivals weakened, although their bloated roster and merely good pitching (by Yankees standards) will probably rule out another trip to the ALCS. The White Sox should control the ALC wire to wire with the Cleveland Indians nipping at their heels the entire way and the Twins possibly making a push here and there but failing for lack of offensive power. Oakland, with a pitching staff as deep as the White Sox rotation, decent hitting and a spittin’ mad Frank Thomas, should bash the malnourished Angels in the west. The wild card could come down to a race between Toronto and the Tribe with Texas as a dark horse, but my inclination based on last year’s postseason is to follow the pitching and bet the Jays will muscle their way in there.
NLE – Atlanta Braves
NLC – St. Louis Cardinals
NLW – San Francisco Giants
WC – New York Mets
National League
I don’t follow the national league as closely, so my predictions are fairly conservative. The Braves will win the NLE yet again. Despite signs of life in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Chicago, the Cardinals will once again steamroll the NLC as the Rocket-less Astros fall behind. St. Louis may for once be vulnerable in the NLDS series, though. The west is a real mess but I don’t see the Padres stepping into the same power vacuum that just barely took them into the postseason last year. The Dodgers and Giants both have serious health risks and weaknesses, but even a decent showing by Barry Bonds and some performance from a pretty good pitching staff should put the Giants on top. Wild card could go anywhere, but I will guess the Mets with the Nationals and Marlins making heartening (but ultimately unsuccessful) runs at the slot.
Post-Season
White Sox beat Blue Jays (3-1)
Athletics beat Yankees (3-2)
Cardinals beat Mets (3-0)
Giants beat Braves (3-1)
The White Sox bump the Jays with superior pitching, the Athletics just barely earn the ALDS victory they so richly deserved in past years, the Cardinals repeat their sweep from last year against the Mets this time, and the Giants struggle past the Braves as bullpen problems again keep Atlanta down in a disappointing year.
Athletics beat White Sox (4-2)
Cardinals beat Giants (4-2)
In an upset, the Athletics, true to history, beat the White Sox 2-1 to take the ALCS. The flagging Cardinals find the Giants feistier than expected, but eventually dispatch them in an exhausting six game series.
Athletics beat Cardinals (4-1)
Albert Pujols does his best to lead the Cards to a WS championship, but the flexible, tough and adaptive As prove too much. Frank Thomas, who will have racked up a solid OBP through smart hitting and walks during the first 2/3rds of the regular season, will get his second World Series ring in two years, but is again stuck watching from the dugout.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
No more spicy Thai food just before bedtime
I had the strangest dream one night a few weeks ago. Essentially it took place in France just prior to the allied invasion of Normandy, and the country was still under Nazi control. The strange thing was that the Nazis were not only persecuting Jews but also Christians (and presumably organized religion in general) because they were trying to re-awaken some forgotten “age of enchantment.” In my dream, apparently organized religion was some sort of self-induced hypnotic state, in which the world’s natural pagan element was willfully repressed by the majority of the world. And the Nazi invasion of Western Europe was a cover for restoring the druids and the faeries and such. Ruined, apparently, by D-Day. Hm.
I have no idea what it all means but I think for the next few weeks I should maybe try to read Bertrand Russell instead of Martin Heidegger prior to going to sleep.
I had the strangest dream one night a few weeks ago. Essentially it took place in France just prior to the allied invasion of Normandy, and the country was still under Nazi control. The strange thing was that the Nazis were not only persecuting Jews but also Christians (and presumably organized religion in general) because they were trying to re-awaken some forgotten “age of enchantment.” In my dream, apparently organized religion was some sort of self-induced hypnotic state, in which the world’s natural pagan element was willfully repressed by the majority of the world. And the Nazi invasion of Western Europe was a cover for restoring the druids and the faeries and such. Ruined, apparently, by D-Day. Hm.
I have no idea what it all means but I think for the next few weeks I should maybe try to read Bertrand Russell instead of Martin Heidegger prior to going to sleep.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
ESPN: Billy Beane to trade John Bonham for Tommy Ramone, Richard Hell and a draft pick
I was recently involved in an argument that seemed simple on its face: Is there some objective measure for judging art, and music specifically? My gut reaction, naturally, was that music is subjective – that central to the idea of art is that there really isn’t some sort of measuring tool or equation we can use to gauge the worth of every sort of music. As the argument unfolded, I was inclined to change my view in a small but important way.
Theoretically it’s possible that we could quantify every human response to art (this would first probably require a complete understanding of the human brain, which is a far away thing in itself). But I consider this to be so far outside the realm of practical possibility that it’s barely worth discussing.
The point was of particular interest because I had just finished “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis. That’s the book that sent shockwaves through professional baseball by allegedly revealing the statistically superior methods that the Oakland Athletics used to defeat far richer opponents year after year. Essentially Lewis argued that when selecting new players to draft, most teams in baseball used criteria that were partially or totally subjective. The Athletics re-evaluated the qualities in players that lead to wins, and repeatedly drafted players who were overlooked by other clubs. (The accuracy and effectiveness of the book’s theories has since been called into question in several fashions, but the overall gist remains the same for my argument).
Oakland was fighting on the side of objectivity against subjectivity, against the tradition of baseball scouts who picked out players based on their appearance or intangibles rather than the statistics that proved they would bring wins to the teams for which they played. Art, of course, is completely different. There are no wins or ERAs or WHIPs. Sure, there are Billboard figures and polling tallies at Metacritic.com and Acclaimedmusic.net, but they do no more than give us the consensus subjective opinions of different groups (buyers and critics respectively). We can’t figure out Angus Young’s VORP, or estimate how many times DMX can be arrested before it outweighs his musical production value.
Or can we? Companies have begun to spring up and offer the music industry data that tracks what features supposedly make a song a hit. This would still be just one primitive step toward the theoretical impossibility I described above. Even if it is something that could be learned, the argument might be made that ignorance is bliss – that learning how art affects us could take away the mystery, just like how a magician’s act loses its luster once the audience understands how the trick works. But… that doesn’t mean people won’t go ahead and figure it out anyway.
(Of course, now I’m reading Jacques Derrida, who would probably say that a logos-centric search for foundational truth is at best impossible or at worst, missing the point entirely. But that’s a conversation for another day…)
I was recently involved in an argument that seemed simple on its face: Is there some objective measure for judging art, and music specifically? My gut reaction, naturally, was that music is subjective – that central to the idea of art is that there really isn’t some sort of measuring tool or equation we can use to gauge the worth of every sort of music. As the argument unfolded, I was inclined to change my view in a small but important way.
Theoretically it’s possible that we could quantify every human response to art (this would first probably require a complete understanding of the human brain, which is a far away thing in itself). But I consider this to be so far outside the realm of practical possibility that it’s barely worth discussing.
The point was of particular interest because I had just finished “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis. That’s the book that sent shockwaves through professional baseball by allegedly revealing the statistically superior methods that the Oakland Athletics used to defeat far richer opponents year after year. Essentially Lewis argued that when selecting new players to draft, most teams in baseball used criteria that were partially or totally subjective. The Athletics re-evaluated the qualities in players that lead to wins, and repeatedly drafted players who were overlooked by other clubs. (The accuracy and effectiveness of the book’s theories has since been called into question in several fashions, but the overall gist remains the same for my argument).
Oakland was fighting on the side of objectivity against subjectivity, against the tradition of baseball scouts who picked out players based on their appearance or intangibles rather than the statistics that proved they would bring wins to the teams for which they played. Art, of course, is completely different. There are no wins or ERAs or WHIPs. Sure, there are Billboard figures and polling tallies at Metacritic.com and Acclaimedmusic.net, but they do no more than give us the consensus subjective opinions of different groups (buyers and critics respectively). We can’t figure out Angus Young’s VORP, or estimate how many times DMX can be arrested before it outweighs his musical production value.
Or can we? Companies have begun to spring up and offer the music industry data that tracks what features supposedly make a song a hit. This would still be just one primitive step toward the theoretical impossibility I described above. Even if it is something that could be learned, the argument might be made that ignorance is bliss – that learning how art affects us could take away the mystery, just like how a magician’s act loses its luster once the audience understands how the trick works. But… that doesn’t mean people won’t go ahead and figure it out anyway.
(Of course, now I’m reading Jacques Derrida, who would probably say that a logos-centric search for foundational truth is at best impossible or at worst, missing the point entirely. But that’s a conversation for another day…)
Monday, February 06, 2006
Abject boosterism
I was looking for a new razor to up my shaving game and someone on the Internets recommended the Gillette Mach 3 razor. You have perhaps seen the commercials, which are totally preposterous and imply in rather unsubtle terms that the user of said razor will be transformed into either a futuristic racecar driver or a shooter of fishes in barrels in terms of the lady scene. As both of those roles have always been secret goals of mine, I picked this thing up. It’s a pretty basic manual razor with one difference – there’s a triple A battery in the hilt that makes this mother vibrate.
Not quite an electric, not quite a manual, but a hybrid, a Frankenstein offense-to-God that provides the best of both worlds and gives me a deadly fresh look. Yes, deadlier than before.
So you may be asking “Has this totally changed your life?” (Perhaps even “Has this totally changed your life?!?”). The answer is yes: Women are clearly most impressed. Most of them want to get with me obviously but I’m trying to be selective and not spoil this gift I have been given. However I have not changed and become all jerkish and caught up in the flashy go-go swinging world of smoothly shaven men. I retain my down-home charm and total disregard for everything and everyone around me. That’s what I’m all about: Growing without losing touch with the country boy at my sensitive yet cruelly indifferent core. And that’s what the Mach 3 has allowed me to do.
Thank you, Internets. And thank you, Gillette Co.
I was looking for a new razor to up my shaving game and someone on the Internets recommended the Gillette Mach 3 razor. You have perhaps seen the commercials, which are totally preposterous and imply in rather unsubtle terms that the user of said razor will be transformed into either a futuristic racecar driver or a shooter of fishes in barrels in terms of the lady scene. As both of those roles have always been secret goals of mine, I picked this thing up. It’s a pretty basic manual razor with one difference – there’s a triple A battery in the hilt that makes this mother vibrate.
Not quite an electric, not quite a manual, but a hybrid, a Frankenstein offense-to-God that provides the best of both worlds and gives me a deadly fresh look. Yes, deadlier than before.
So you may be asking “Has this totally changed your life?” (Perhaps even “Has this totally changed your life?!?”). The answer is yes: Women are clearly most impressed. Most of them want to get with me obviously but I’m trying to be selective and not spoil this gift I have been given. However I have not changed and become all jerkish and caught up in the flashy go-go swinging world of smoothly shaven men. I retain my down-home charm and total disregard for everything and everyone around me. That’s what I’m all about: Growing without losing touch with the country boy at my sensitive yet cruelly indifferent core. And that’s what the Mach 3 has allowed me to do.
Thank you, Internets. And thank you, Gillette Co.
