Opening Day

Today is baseball's official opening day (despite the Red Sox and A's playing a couple games in Japan already a couple of days ago). A bunch of teams kicked off their seasons- the Yankees have to wait an extra day because of a rain out. This means the last season opener at Yankee Stadium will be a night game- that's a little strange. Let me talk a little about the Yankees this year.

ESPN seems to hate the Yankees- no one predicts that the Yankees will win it all, only one person predicts that the Yankees will win the division. This is contrary to almost every SABRmetic prediction estimating that the Yankees will win about 94 games over Boston's 92- assuming the Blue Jays and Rays (no more "Devil") remain who they are, that would mean the Yankees are predicted to win the division by most "SABRmatricians". To further shame ESPN and their predictions, only one of 4 analysts correctly guessed the total average number of wins per team in 2008: 81. How do you not know that? Isn't that just basic math? Each team plays 162 games, there must be a winner and loser in each game, thus the average number of wins per team should be exactly half of 162- 81.

I'm particulaly excited about the Yankees this year. First, we have three young and promising pitches in Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlin and Ian Kennedy. As a Yankee fan, you have to be excited- this group can potentially end up as a Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz for us. Second, a we have a new intelligent manager in Joe Giardi- no longer will I have to wonder if the manager is asleep during the game. He'll manage the bullpen much better, using more than the 3 people Torre seemed to abuse. Third, the future is so bright I need sunglasses, but the present ain't all that bad in itself.

Like I mentioned, most SABRmatricians predict a very Yankee season out of these Yankees. At the very least, our starting pitching will be better. Wang and Pettite will be about the same, Mussina can't be as bad as he was last year (it was statistically a ridiculously unlucky year for the guy), and the combination of Hughes, Kennedy and Chamberlin in the back end of the rotation has to be better than the parade of mediocre-at-best pitchers filling in the 4 and 5 spots last year. Our bench is quite solid as well- Wilson Betemit, Morgan Endsburg, Shelly Duncan, Jose Mollina could all easily be starting on another team. Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and Bobby Abreu are all in good shape and seemed promising in the spring.

It's good to be a Yankee fan.

In the end, screw baseball, when's the NFL draft?

I support terrorism?

Our Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, says that terrorists groups "view IP crime as a lucrative business and see it as a low-risk way to fund other activities." (Source) So the copy of Photoshop CS3 that I downloaded instead of paying a ridiculous $650 somehow supports terrorism? Someone please explain this to me- seriously. I thought I was only screwing over Adobe (and their ridiculously crappy .pdf file readers and their overpriced software).

He's magical!

Mr. T might be magic. We already know a number of new facts we know about Mr. T (my favorite is "Mr. T isn't black, the sun's just afraid to shine on him"). Well, Mr. T might really be magical after all- in real life. He brought a boy out of a coma.

Seems like Laurence Tureaud has come a long way since B.A. Baracus.

Song of the Week- 3/29/08

This week I give to you, "Dreaming of You" by The Coral.

The Coral is a part of the new Brit rock scene. Although they aren't the most popular (that's the Arctic Monkeys) or the most resounded (also the Arctic Moneys), they are great in themselves. I first heard "Dreaming of You" on Scrubs last year. That summer, I got hooked on Scrubs, rewatched all 6 seasons and this song just stood out as one of their more memorable musical montages. What makes this song great? First, it's full of hooks everywhere, left to right, up and down. The bouncing bass part drives the song while being accented by drums, the electric organ (that somehow got lost in the 60s and finally found its way back into mainstream rock), and the jangly guitar. In front of all of this, we have lead singer James Skelly's great voice singing very simple lyrics. The song as a whole, after summing up all the parts, is a great pop-rock song that sounds like it was lifted straight from the 60s.

That's it for this week, enjoy.

Include Rap Music in Your Next Presentation!

To the left is a graphical representation of the Wu-Tang Clan's "Wu-Tang Ain't Nuttin to Fuck With." There's this website that has this huge collection of a large number of graphical representations of rap songs. There are some fairly contemporary songs as well as some classics. Here's the link, enjoy.

Haiku- 7

Bones in my closet
Grow heavier as days pass
Running out of space

John Adams

Recently I've been hooked by HBO's new mini series, John Adams. It's a period piece that's been painstakingly constructed for material realism- of course there are some artistic liberties taken, but it's noting like say The Patriot or The 300. At least the liberties taken turn John Adams into a more interesting character than what I remember from American History class: the most uninteresting founding father. Freakanomics does a good job at pointing out all the little historical incongruencies so far in this post.

I'm not so thrilled about the choice of Paul Giamatti playing John Adams- I still have memories of him being completely blue in Big Fat Liar. I'm also not much of a fan for the weird camera shots- why are half the shots canted? why are the canted shots not canted in the same direction? is there a meaning or reasons to these canted shots? why is the camera doing a quick pull in during the scene entering Liberty Hall? There mere fact that I have to ask these questions make the camera work suspect in my opinion- the camera work should add to the story, not distract.

However I will say that I am impressed by the choices of David Morse as George Washington and Tom Wilkinson as Ben Franklin- they're great! I have no idea who plays Thomas Jefferson, but he's great too. Also, is it just me or are the women of the Adams family uncompromisingly beautiful? The make-up (or lack-there-of) is great and the dialog is amazing.

Whatever the case is, I encourage anyone to watch it. HBO films does not fool around.