www.youtube.com/watch?v=s92DwkAjVqk

I have to give @310toJoba credit for posting a Russian Circles song on his sadly now-inactive blog. He posted “Geneva”, a song I was close to posting myself, but I forced myself to mix it up. I also have to give credit to @DrewGROF for making me go back to the band after only listening to their newest album a couple of times. Now I’ve been listening to all three of their instrumental albums. I think I made a nice selection. The song builds up wonderfully — like some charging, galloping force — then explodes in a ridiculous wall of sound, pulls back a bit, and then finally goes totally apeshit. It’s awesome.

If watching a team that was supposed to be a new dynasty piss away the admittedly disappointing primes of a couple of homegrown players isn’t enough, you can now read about another ultimately disappointing era in Mets history, and also a personal history of the franchise told by a man with a terrifying memory.

The Bad Guys Won! is exactly what that ridiculously long subtitle says. It consists of Jeff Pearlman utilizing his mediocre writing ability to describe the exploits of a Mets team that was actually great. It’s a fun enough read, but after reading an excerpt or two of Pearlman’s 1990′s Dallas Cowboys book, the 1986 Mets seem pretty tame in comparison.

Faith and Fear in Flushing is the book form of the blog named (surprise!) Faith and Fear in Flushing. Greg Prince really likes to write, and it shows in both his blog and book. He’s definitely also a huge dork, but hey, the guy knows his Mets. If you want an emotional and personal rundown of the Mets from their inception — well, a few years into their existence — to their frustrating present, it’s certainly a lot better than Wikipedia.

I want to give away these books to someone who might actually read and enjoy them. If you think you satisfy those two conditions, comment below and shoot me an email at cajolejuice@gmail.com. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep this raffle open, so just comment when you see this — no procrastination!

I’ve been thinking about e-readers a lot lately. This may have something to do with Amazon greeting me with the above picture of its new Kindle every time I visit its site. And I’m not the only one influenced by Amazon–the new Kindle is the fastest-selling version of the e-reader. But doesn’t it seem as if the newest version of any product is always the one bought up the quickest?

Regardless, the $139 price tag is a big deal; just a year ago the Kindle was almost twice as expensive. I believe that this price drop has not been caused by competing e-readers, but by the iPad. Why would consumers buy a device that can only read books when they can get one of those fancy iPads that does everything (except support Flash) for only a couple of hundred dollars more? Yeah sure, consumers can be told that reading a novel on an LCD screen is not the same as browsing the internet or messing around with Excel spreadsheets at work, but many neither notice nor care. In response, ALL the e-reader manufacturers have had to compete with the Apple juggernaut. Who other than technophiles are going to be interested in the Kindle? And that same group of technophiles — at least the ones with money to burn — are definitely going to squeal over the iPad.

Perhaps Amazon is lowering the price of the Kindle because it’s following a razor and blades business model, selling its e-readers at a low price to generate a market for the Kindle Store. Whatever the reasons, e-readers are certainly reaching a mass-market price sooner than I expected. I’m just not sure they’ll ever reach mass consumption — until maybe flexible e-ink is widely available or some other unforeseen development, like people actually reading books more than their Facebook feed. A thin, flexible e-ink screen would be amazing. You could read the digital version of the New York Times, delivered to your flexible e-ink screen each morning; or flip over to your subscription of Wired or The Economist; or download the latest New York Post for a laugh. When you’re done, you can fold it up like a regular newspaper.

But if the technology were that advanced, wouldn’t it have a touch screen and enough processing power for the internet and streaming video and whatnot? It’d turn into an iPad-type device. Instead of reading novels or magazines above a 5th-grade level, they’d play Farmville 2024 and manage their fantasy teams. It boils down to how much people want to read, and I’m not sure that the average person wants to read at the expense of other entertainment.

I’m not above considering this trade-off, as I tried to allude to with my fantasy sports joke. I play video games, browse internet forums, IM people, and generally do a ton of shit other than read. An iPad device does appeal to me — just not at its current price point or level of functionality. At the moment, the Kindle is still much more enticing because it’s almost quarter of the price of Steve Jobs’ God tablet.

And, as I’ve said on here and on Twitter, I’m starting to hate all the crap I’m gathering. Books have been eating up my shelf space this year much quicker than Blu-rays, DVDs, and video games combined. I’ve really cut back on that latter group, but I’ve compensated with $25 or above mini shopping sprees on Amazon. An e-reader would eliminate a lot of future clutter, but I wouldn’t be able to lend my books to friends and, more importantly, I wouldn’t be able to exhibit them on a shelf in a vain attempt to make myself look intellectual, an impression unlikely to last if anyone looks down at my Judge Dredd or Family Guy DVDs.

For now, I think I can resist purchasing a Kindle. But once they’re selling for $99 and I’ve finished reading all of my physical books, I might just take the plunge. It’s the price point that got me to finally buy a PS2, and I remember feeling like an idiot for waiting so long.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc9xq-TVyHI

Watching this video was the first noteworthy thing I did this month of September. Can I just fast-forward to October now? This month isn’t going to get any better. Unless the Braves collapse and don’t make the playoffs somehow.

It’s amazing that even with an underpowered, two-and-a-half-year-old laptop, my two gaming companions of the past few months have both been PC titles. I have returned to my ongoing love affair with Team Fortress 2 and started a new and dedicated relationship with Starcraft II. Not only do I play both games a few times a week (ok, I actually haven’t played TF2 in a while), but I will continue to do so for years to come thanks to the frequent updates the games will receive.

And it’s not as if I fall in love with games easily; for example, I stopped playing Red Dead Redemption shortly after its release, quickly becoming bored of riding horses around a barren Western landscape while trying to aim and shoot with a shitty control scheme. I don’t want to digress into a Rockstar-bashfest or an argument about console and PC gaming; I’m just using my experience with Red Dead Redemption to contrast my experience with TF2 and SC2. Maybe I just enjoy games that end in “2″ this year (Mass Effect 2 was the fucking shit).

Although I love both TF2 and SC2, they are polar opposites. Two multiplayer games couldn’t be any more different from each other (perhaps UNO and Street Fighter 4 or Counter-Strike and Carcassonne). One game is a cartoonish and ever-evolving first-person shooter featuring at least one huge element of luck; the other is a science-fiction (although not exactly gritty-looking) real-time strategy game requiring multitasking, flawless execution, and a thorough knowledge of a game that is similar to its predecessor.

TF2 is about as casual and straight-up FUN as a PC game can be while still appealing to hardcore players. You can jump right in and play as a soldier, spamming rockets across the map at the other team, and have a good time doing it; or play as a Pyro, trying to find a way to get behind the other team so you can roast them up-close; or play as a Sniper, hanging back behind the rest of your team while trying to snipe enemies in the head. You can jump in and play for fifteen minutes or spend an entire night killing characters that look like they were created by Pixar.

Starcraft II, on the other hand, is about as ruthless and unforgiving as a game can be while still appealing to players who are unable to click their mice 100 times a minute. Although, the multiplayer is only appealing after you’ve played a bunch of the single-player. There’s no way you can just jump in and have any idea of what to do. And then even once you have an idea of what you’re doing, you’re still going to be on the very bottom of the ladder without knowing some basic knowledge. And then once you have a grasp of the basics and can follow a build order and know counters, you have to learn how to scout and keep track of your own base at the same time, how to attack and train reinforcements at the same time — then maybe you’ll be decent. Then maybe you’ll learn how to micro-manage your army for maximum effectiveness, using spell-casters to devastate the opposing forces in a way pure brute force can’t. And this all happens at a pace much faster than most other RTSs. Units and buildings are very fragile, magnifying every small mistake. Oh, you told those units to move instead of attack-move and lost a bunch of them? Guess you fucking lose now. It’s brutal. Yet when you win a close game or fight off early cheese (do you really want me to explain that?), there aren’t many games more satisfying.

What ties these two games together is their respective developers, Valve and Blizzard. Both are the kings of PC gaming because they stick to what they know and polish their games until they’re nearly perfect. There’s the “Valve-Time” meme, but Blizzard is just as bad with getting its games out in any reasonable amount of time — but no one cares once they are finally out. Whenever they come out with a game, it just becomes the de-facto standard for the genre. Starcraft is a spectator sport in Korea. Diablo II and World of Warcraft have ruined thousands of lives. Valve too has ruined thousands of lives, starting with the famous mod for the original Half-Life called Counter-Strike, a game that became a worldwide phenomenon and introduced many gamers to the concept of “clans.” But more importantly, Valve created Steam, a digital distribution and multiplayer platform that is probably the greatest development of the 21st century thus far. There’s no disputing the integral place of both companies in PC gaming history and its future.

The bottom line here is that both games offer more than enough content to satisfy most gamers. TF2 is the wacky, content-laden, constantly-updated distraction; SC2 is the high-maintenance, but ultimately rewarding obsession–well, as rewarding as beating someone at a VIDEO GAME can get.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsZ1SagUPb4

I have to think this will be my last Inception-related post. The movie isn’t going to pass $300 million domestic and probably not $700 million worldwide, so I won’t have any reasons to make a stupid box office post.  I’m not even sure why I would post about those numbers other than the fact that they’re nice and round and big. Mmmm, round and big. But this is a good way to wrap up the Inception obsession, as I don’t think there are going to be any a better-made spoofs than this.

This video, which is actually months old, reminds me of when I used to do that. Colbert also happens to be about 100x more talented at portraying death and destruction.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sc4Ftvu5Og

www.youtube.com/watch?v=glii-kazad8

- Somehow I managed to NOT make a post about Anderson Silva’s miracle triangle armbar a week ago. The dude is fucking amazing. Just like seemingly everyone else, when Silva was taken down in the 5th round I thought the match was over, but he had enough strength left after getting punched more than in his entire UFC career to pull that shit off. Wow. GSP-Silva needs to happen ASAP.

- It’s amazing how It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is now AT BEST the third-best half-hour of television on FX. Archer and Louie have had amazing first seasons, while Sunny is in decline. Shit, The League had a fantastic first season, too.

- My ability to not buy shit has increased tenfold. The Bourne Trilogy on Blu-ray for 35 bucks? Months ago, I would’ve jumped on that like Tiger on a blonde cocktail waitress, but now I just want to sell more things. I apologize for the Rick Reilly/Jay Leno-esque joke.

- It always feels good watching guys who make a living playing golf miss 5-foot putts. Then I remember they make hundred of thousands, if not millions, of dollars playing golf.

- I need to play a roto fantasy league for money next year. And a keeper league. Maybe combine the two for ultimate fantasy baseball action.

- I don’t touch upon controversial subjects on here much, especially not legitimately important controversial subjects, but the Ground Zero Mosque bullshit is ridiculous. I won’t dedicate a full post to it because it’s too fucking simple. It’s a goddamn community center two blocks away, not even within view of Ground Zero; it’s not the 100-foot-tall minaret-topped building most people envision when they think of mosques. I understand the outrage of some relatives of victims, but some people in that group didn’t want any reconstruction at the WTC site at all. Sorry, but fuck them. I totally empathize with their grief, but life needs to go on. Republicans meanwhile, politicize a building that SHOULDN’T BE A FUCKING ISSUE, but vote against a bill that would actually help people directly affected by 9/11.

- Girls grow up way too soon. I’m going to stop checking out hot girls in the mall, because I’m sure they are all 16 years old.

- I’m not surprised at Scott Pilgrim vs. The World totally bombing, losing to Inception‘s 5th weekend. If it weren’t for Edgar Wright’s involvement, I would think the movie looks incredibly awful. Since I doubt most people care about that fact — if they were even aware in the first place — $10 million sounds about right. But I’ll still go see it; I don’t want to risk Speed Racer-like regret.

- David Wright is now officially having the worst offensive season of his career. It’s cool how Wright and Jose Reyes have declined right when most players hit their prime. Really. Fucking. Cool.

Fangraphs — namely Dave Cameron — ranked the Seattle Mariners as the 6th best organization in MLB during this past offseason. In hilariously inept fashion, the Mariners have gone 45-71, spawning the Twitter hashtag “#6org” along the way.

Although this has been a running joke for weeks, if not months, I bring attention to it now because of an increasing focus on defensive metrics and their apparent limitations (moreover, I recently attended the Fangraphs NYC event this past Saturday). Just yesterday, I came across three blog posts attacking the methodology behind defensive statistics. It’s as if bloggers were waiting to see whether the Red Sox would make a late-season push and the Mariners would do ANYTHING before totally jumping on UZR and Plus/Minus and Total Zone.

But before I delve into that, I’ll say that the Fangraphs event and its subsequent afterparty was a damn good time. Almost nothing is better than intelligent baseball discussion while drinking awesome, albeit overpriced, beer. The official Fangraphs event might have had quite a few interesting speakers and some amusing moments, but it was naturally nothing I couldn’t get from just listening to the recording of it — outside of the Bloomberg Sports presentation, which was probably the coolest part of the event. It was also responsible the best #6org moment: as the presenters pulled up video of Justin Smoak’s one HR (Dave Cameron made sure to yell out that he actually had two), someone else yelled out, “Do you have video of him getting sent to the minors?” Sadly, I doubt anyone reading this blog post will comprehend the full scope of this #6org burn. The rest of the event is covered about as comprehensively as possible by this…chick?

The “live” event was just the precursor to the good stuff for me. The meeting down at a bar in the Village wasn’t for a few hours later, so I went go see Inception again in this theater. Perhaps I should have walked around Central Park since it was such a nice day, but I couldn’t resist the pull of the Ziegfeld only 5 blocks away, alright?

There’s not much point in me relaying my baseball conversations with random people, but I did get to mess around with the Bloomberg Sports application that had been showcased at the event. It was fucking glorious. I want a job working for a Major League club just to look up shit all day with it. I would watch video of every 2-0 count of David Wright’s 2010 season for minimum wage. I could see every single sequence a pitcher has thrown in fancy multi-layered pie charts. I could see every ball in the dirt Jeff Francouer has swung at. It’s an absolutely incredible tool.

Besides that, I believe I kept harping on why many Mets fans hate Wright, Reyes, and Beltran. I never even thought of it this way before, but in my drunkenness, I couldn’t help realize that with no one around them for support, the failures of the only good players on the team are magnified greatly. When they suck, the team sucks. And then the natural tendency is to think the team sucks because they suck. SOMETHING needs to be done with the #15org, but it’s not trading Wright or Reyes, even if I’ve almost reached my wit’s end in defending them (mostly against my own dad).

Yet I didn’t take the chance to ask Cameron how he felt about #6org or the apparently failure of focusing on defense this past season. I wish PaulNoonan from Brewed Sports was there to talk to him about thoughts like these:

1. The Zero Bound

You cannot hold a team to fewer than 0 runs. Think about a team made up of average pitchers, 5 Ozzie Smiths (assuming that Ozzie would be brilliant defensively at every position. And let’s leave catcher out of this for now.) and 4 average defenders. Say Ozzie plays 3rd, SS, 2b, CF, and RF, and Mr. Average plays 1st, LF, Catcher, and DH (say we’re in the AL). Already this is a brilliant defensive team. Ozzie in center will cover for most of the deficiencies of the LF, and 1B just isn’t that important a position to defend. Maybe this team gives up 2 runs a game where your normal defensive team gives up 3. Maybe a bit better than that, and maybe a bit worse. Now add another Ozzie. Put him in LF.

How much better did you make the team? The CF Ozzie was already helping Mr. Average LF a lot. Most of the field was covered by brilliant defenders. Most bloop hits were caught. Most plays deep in the hole were being made. Now add another Ozzie at 1st base. How this arguably helps even less. On defense, I would argue that except for catcher each additional investment you make helps you less and less. You are in a situation where you are realizing diminishing returns.

It’s a good point, and one that I’d love to see someone like MGL, the creator of UZR, expound upon. The other points I have some problems with, but this one just seems like common sense. And his last point segues into the biggest problem people have with fielding metrics: there are too many of them.

Tim Marchman over at SI had a good write-up on why defensive stats don’t carry much weight with many fans due to the disparate numbers they supply, even thought they’re attempting to measure the same thing.

This can’t be done with defense because we lack statistics that we can rely on to describe what happens on the field. Colin Wyers of Baseball Prospectus wrote an excellent piece about the problem recently, and it might fairly be summed up “garbage in, garbage out.” The underlying data that feeds systems like Plus/Minus is subjective, not objective, and prone to varying kinds of bias. This does a lot to explain why they arrive at different results.

He also mentions sample size issues and how UZR doesn’t have a strong correlation with team winning percentage. I admit it’s bizarre to see guys go from -10 to +5 from year to year in one fielding statistic, while he might go down over the same two years in another — it just seems WRONG.

Joe Posnanski, while writing about the actual process behind the Plus/Minus system, points out that it’s still better than anything we had before at evaluating performance.

Here’s the main point for me, though: Whatever subjectivity they have in their intensive and painstaking and methodical approach to studying defense seems to me to be NOTHING compared to the subjectivity that you and I get watching baseball even night after night after night. They look at every single play. More than look, they CHART every single play. More than chart, they CONCENTRATE on the defense for every single play. You and I don’t do that. Scouts don’t do that. Announcers, sportswriters, managers, general managers, nobody else does this. We may watch every single play (probably not), but we’re watching those plays in the larger context. We’re watching the pitcher, the hitter, the base runner, the umpires, the fans, the game. They are not. They are watching only defense. It’s a different thing.

Man, I love Joe Pos.

I originally ended this post with that sentence, but that seemed abrupt, no? I haven’t said why I think the Mariners suck (defense at the total cost of offense) or why the Red Sox won’t make the playoffs (injuries and an insane division). I do not believe those two cases have anything to do with defensive stats being wrong or overrated.

I recently learned of the existence of a human being who hadn’t seen Die Hard until recently when forced to watch it by someone who loves the movie almost as much as I do.

In this person’s defense, this obviously uncultured human being happens to be a female. Granted, she’s a female who’s in her mid-20s — which makes the situation less understandable than if she were still a teenager — but a female nonetheless. Women simply don’t sit around and watch Die Hard just because they came across it on Fox Movie Channel, or have discussions about Die Hard that end up with someone — I’m not naming names — smashing a beer can on the ground in anger, or make appreciation threads about the original trilogy.

But even cured of this deficiency, she still hasn’t seen Robocop, Lethal Weapon, or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Her not seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark is particularly shocking since it’s such a classic, mainstream film. She might as well have told me she hasn’t seen Star Wars. It’s not even about the quality of Raiders of the Lost Ark (or any similar movie), but about its pervasiveness in popular culture. In some way this person AVOIDED seeing this movie.

I’m not immune to this phenomenon. The very person who hadn’t seen Die Hard was shocked, appalled, and disappointed to learn that the only David Lynch I had seen was the first hour or so of Dune (which was absolutely atrocious). But I’d argue that Lynch is not a mainstream figure, especially with my age group. Mullohand Drive is not airing on TNT or FX or some other cable channel every other week. Not that I’d want to watch it on these cable channels anyway (I’ve made a point of not watching any R-rated movies for the first time on cable for a long, long time now).

So no, I don’t think that’s the biggest hole in my film-watching history. In terms of popularity, it HAS to be It’s A Wonderful Life. I have never seen it, and that’s because I have never ever made it a priority — I might even avoid it. Perhaps my assumptions are wrong, but I don’t feel like watching some sappy crap on Christmas. I rather watch Die Hard.

Then there’s Lawrence of Arabia, a movie renowned for its cinematography — which is my reason for waiting until it hits Blu-ray. There I said it. I want it to be as beautiful as possible the first time. I’m saving myself.

But I don’t mean for this post to be about me or some poor Bruce Willis-deprived girl. I want this to be about the movies families sit around and watch, movies that teachers show their students, movies that both hipsters and dudebros have seen.

Unfortunately, a problem arises when I attempt to answer this question. I’m pretty sure that in my mind “universal” translates to “universal for 20-something-year-old male white Westerners”. So how do I approach the task of coming up with a list of these movies? First off, I’m going to make the uncontroversial statement that there are different lists for different groups. The list of definitive movies for my parents’ generation is going to be much different. But then again, aren’t I supposed to be talking about the movies that transcend all these generational and cultural boundaries? But I only truly know my own experiences, along with those of the people I interact with. So it goes in a massive loop, like this paragraph.

So you know what? I’m not going to bother trying to come up with some list of universal movies, because that’s just going to end up turning into a typical list of classic movies. Sure the most embarrassing holes in my movie knowledge are classics, but that’s me, a stupid wannabe blogger trying to know everything about everything (except anime). So I’m going to attempt to come up with some definitive list for the generation that grew up parallel to the internet; the generation born in the 80s; the generation that grew up with Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

There’s a reason why Forrest Gump and Shawshank Redemption are staples of cable television. I’m not even sure I need to explain why stories featuring likable characters overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds are loved so much. The third film in the 1994 Oscar argument trifecta — Pulp Fiction – I don’t believe stands up to the other two in universal appeal nor cultural saturation. I have no doubt there are Christian sects out there who forbid their members to watch anything by Quentin Tarantino.

Then there’s two series that I can’t imagine anyone has avoided completely. The first would be the James Bond collection of movies and then the animated movies that fall under the “Pixar” label. I’m definitely stretching it a bit with the latter, but I think it’s pretty easy to lump them all together.

If someone didn’t see an older Connery or Dalton or Moore Bond film with their dad growing up, they probably saw Goldeneye, and if not then, they almost certainly saw Casino Royale. Even the ladies got in on that action, right? Daniel Craig had to pull in that demographic.

And Pixar? There’s Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Toy Story 2, and even Cars for redneck children! Ok, that’s unfair — rednecks born in the 80s were 15 when it came out. Among the people that didn’t see Toy Story when it came out, I bet a lot of them now have kids and leave Pixar movies in the DVD player for easy on-child’s-demand viewing.

Getting back to singular movies, Jurassic Park. That’s it. That’s the movie I’ve been trying to think of. It has goddamn DINOSAURS. And it’s the perfect year for 80s children. The age range goes from 13 to 3, with myself falling pretty much right in the middle. The first movie theater experience I can remember. It was fucking awesome and I’m sure any kid from 13 to 3, from whatever cultural background, would have eaten it up as well. Even for adults there’s a sense of wonder in the movie that, despite some definite issues with the movie, must have made that inital viewing extremely enjoyable. And what other movie has engrained in the collective consciousness what something should look like? Perhaps not intellectually, but at the most basic level, I truly believe Steven Spielberg’s idea of what dinosaurs look like is what they REALLY looked like. Anything else looks strange and wrong.

I can’t even think of something to compete with that. Sure, there are movies like The Matrix and Gladiator, but they still skew toward adolescent males. Hmm, Groundhog Day is a legitimate competitor. Something about it just lends itself to being watched over and over…

I think I’m about done with this disgustingly long, aimless blog post. I can’t even bring myself to wrap it up with some sort of meaningful or amusing conclusion. Just add your suggestions in the comments, alright?