Somewhat Manly Nerd

I just watched the Mets play a 20-inning game for 6 hours, 53 minutes. It was one of the more painful experiences of my life. I’m so drained that I don’t even feel like writing about it. I just know that I need to chronicle this moment for myself somewhere other than Twitter. Although, it’s comfortable knowing the Library of Congress will still have my ALL CAPS tweets decades from now. When someone in 2050 researches why anyone ever rooted for the Mets, they’ll come across these gems:

OH MY GOD K-ROD YOU JUST WALKED THE GUY IN FRONT OF ALBERT PUJOLS YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE

THANK GOD TONY LARUSSA IS OBVIOUSLY FUCKING DRUNK AS SHIT

THE METS HAVE FACED A POSITION PLAYER PITCHING FOR TWO INNINGS AND STILL HAVEN’T WON

Yet they eventually won. Jerry Manuel and Tony LaRussa were competing to see who could win the award for Worst Managed Game of 2010 and LaRussa won. He double-switched Matt Holliday out of the game, allowing Albert Pujols to be protected by the pitcher’s slot in the lineup. Then he refused to pinch-hit for two relief pitchers when they came up to the plate with the bases loaded in the 12th and 14th innings. And in 19th, he had Ryan Ludwick steal with Albert Pujols at plate. He also mismanaged his bullpen totally, forcing him to use position players.

Fuck this, I’m done running down the disaster that was this pathetic display of baseball. Tony LaRussa fucking sucks more than Jerry Manuel. Pretty incredible. K-Rod also sucks at pitching. I can’t wait to pay him $17.5 million in 2012.

It’s funny how downtrodden I am after a win, but the Mets continue to break me after I thought I was already totally broken. Many fans point to Game 7 of 2006 NLCS as the most painful feeling, but at that time there was so much optimism for the future that it made the devastating loss a bit easier to swallow. The collapse redux in 2008 is what officially broke me. Now, in 2010, I have so little hope for the immediate future that it’s getting really fucking tough to give a shit. It took the Mets more than two full games to win a game — or just score a fucking run — in which they had their ace facing yet another 5th starter. It was beyond pathetic.

Oh, and Ubaldo Jimenez pitched a no-hitter today. Ubaldo Jimenez 1 – Mets 0.

I’ve had at least one person say that when they see my blog is updated, they get excited — only to be disappointed when they see baseball stats. I will get around this by talking about the Mets without using stats. Or at least no stats you wouldn’t see on a typical ESPN broadcast.

The Mets had about as easy an opening week a team could hope for: three games against the Marlins, and three games against the Nationals. Both of these series were at home. Yet the Mets are currently 2-4 and in the cellar in the National League East. The good thing is that this only constitutes 1/27th of a full season. The other good thing is that I expected the Mets to do fuckall this season. They’re already 3.5 games behind the Phillies — a distance which will only increase as the summer rolls by. I just don’t enjoy watching the Mets lose a game where they are pitting Johan Santana against Livan Hernandez, a man whose age is listed at 35, but who is actually closer to 50 due to being from Cuba. The Mets couldn’t score a run off of him in seven innings. I’m glad I thought twice about purchasing tickets for what seemed to be a perfect Sunday game. I sat in my room staring at the TV mouth agape inning after pathetic inning. Superstitiously, I knew the game was over once Johan gave up a grand slam in the first inning, but some allegedly logical voice in my head told me the Mets should be able to score off a man who throws 85 mph fastballs. Logic did not prevail.

I just read a book called “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives”; I guess Sunday’s debacle was just a perfect example of all the coins landing on heads for the Nationals. But the book also says how our minds don’t exactly process randomness and probabilities and statistics correctly. My anger over this particular loss perfectly demonstrates this fact. Every fifth game, I expect a win, or at least a close game — not a 5-0 game for practically the entire game, until the Mets added a couple of trademark meaningless runs when it was already too late.

Of course, it isn’t just Sunday’s game. Mike Jacobs has sucked so bad that I find myself longing for Daniel Murphy. John Maine and Oliver Perez have showed no evidence of turning back the clock to 2007. David Wright still can’t make routine throws across the diamond. Gary Matthews Jr. has been up to the plate 18 times already; Alex Cora, 21 times.

Luckily, Matthews and Cora won’t continue getting those at-bats. Jose Reyes is back; Carlos Beltran will be back SOMETIME. With those two back, along with Murphy being an upgrade at 1B if he repeats his second-half performance last year, the offense will actually be formidable. Unfortunately, I don’t expect Jeff Francoeur to continue walking at record pace or slamming extra base hits. Somehow Francoeur has been walking so much while swinging at MORE pitches out of the strike zone; something’s got to give, and it’s going to be his OBP. But he gained a metric shitload of goodwill with me by launching a 275-foot laser to throw out lazy fucktard Adam Dunn tagging up from 3rd base. That was fucking awesome. With Jason Bay and Carlos Beltran manning the other two outfield spots, maybe — a big maybe — I can withstand Frenchy in RF.

The bright spots have been the starts of Mike Pelfrey and Jon Niese, but it’s hard to get excited from one start. It’s much easier to get pissed off at players that everyone knows suck…sucking. God, Mike Jacobs fucking SUCKS. At least Alex Cora made some nice plays that would have made Luis Castillo’s knees explode when he filled in for him. And Gary Matthews Jr. should NOT be playing over Angel Pagan. Fuck you Jerry Manuel.

Tonight, I get to watch John Maine pitch in Coors Field. I predict three home runs. I also get to watch Angel Pagan bat 8th because “Pagan at No. 8 is [Manuel's] way of testing him 2 spots in front of Reyes.” Are you fucking kidding me? Yes, because having the pitcher in between them is basically the same as one leading off while the other hits 3rd. Kill me. Or blow up the team from the top.

There is purposefully no question mark, ladies and gentleman. It’s a statement of exasperation.

This blog, The Somewhat Manly Nerd, was originally just another WordPress.com blog. As you can tell by the archives, I started it about three and half years ago (Fuck).

About two years ago, I bought the somewhatmanlynerd.com domain from GoDaddy. But then I didn’t do anything with it for a year. I should have been telling people to go to that URL, while having it redirect to my thesomewhatmanlynerd.wordpress.com blog. Instead, I paid 10 bucks for that first year and did nothing with it. By this time, I was getting about 400 hits a day on the blog. Not too many commenters, but certainly more than I’ve gotten since I moved to self-hosting.

So after that first year of wasting my lame domain, Dreamhost had some deal for four years of hosting for 200 bucks. I figured it was a decent enough time to jump in, if only to have somewhere to host all my GIFs in one place without having to worry about going over my Photobucket bandwidth limit. And I also had wanted to move my blog to self-hosting for a while. I guess the reasons ranged from possibly wanting to put an ad somewhere just for curiosity’s sake, to not liking any of the themes on WordPress.com, to wanting to be able to use Javascript on my blog.

Moving my blog over to my new webspace about a year ago has resulted in this creation, and I’m almost as proud of it as the awesome putt I made on a practice green today. A few dozen people read it and a handful of them occasionally comment. But it is kinda maddening that the old version still gets twice the traffic after not being updated in over a year. I shouldn’t have moved in the first place. I gave up 400 hits a day! Now I’m lucky if I get that in a week. And I guess pride does factor into it, but I also just miss having massive comment threads like the one I got on this Bear Grylls post; I like creating discussion with my blog, even if it’s moronic discussion.

And then I see that WordPress.com now has the very theme I’m using, and on top of that it’s being used by an e-friend of mine on her blog Baby Got Books. She was no doubt inspired by me, which is flattering, but it also makes me want to move back. But then I’d have to give up my nice looking polls, and my Featured Content Gallery, and my embedded Hulu videos. It’s too much to sacrifice.

I remember I also thought about moving to Tumblr, just because people seem very big on reposting stuff from other Tumblr blogs and following people and all that community crap. But that crap allows people to build up readership. I stayed away from Tumblr because I thought every possible theme looked like crap, but I guess there is quite a bit you can do, as evidenced by this Tumblr creation from another e-buddy, How To Kidnap A Supermodel. If only Tumblr allowed massive GIFs, I would have an awesome Tumblr just for them.

I need to move to a new paragraph, because I’ve hit the limit for the word “Tumblr” contained in one. It does hit that balance between blogging and Twitter. Maybe I’ll try to make some more awful movie charts and make a Tumblr just for them.

And this is another shitty, boring blog post that I’m going to end now. I apologize to anyone subscribed to me waking up this Monday morning. Not a good way to start your week.

I feel like this is the type of blog post that could be much more entertaining if I were intoxicated. This probably goes for the vast majority of the posts I make, but it only comes to mind because I was planning on writing a bunch of stuff last night upon returning home after watching UFC 112, but ennui overcame me. I blame Anderson Silva.

This week — I don’t even remember which day of the week anymore — I went up to Smithhaven Mall with the sole intention of making a beeline for the Apple Store there and to plop down in that pristine white space and mess around with a new piece of hyped-up technology. I haven’t really provided many of my own thoughts on the iPad up until this point, only creating a 1st-grade-level photoshop, and linking to a few articles about it. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t waste any words on it before giving it a test run, since my feelings and preconceptions weren’t affected much.

The one thing I hoped they’d have loaded on the iPad was the MLB At Bat app, so when I quickly saw it on the first collection of icons, I clicked it and immediately looked for a way to watch a game on it. Unfortunately, the quality was pretty damn shitty, which I originally chalked up to an overworked internet in the Apple Store, but 1) there weren’t many people in the store, and 2) it was recently brought to my attention that MLB.TV was performing terribly the first few days of the season — or maybe that was just Opening Day. No matter the reason, I’m not ready to blame the iPad directly for the awful, pixelated stream. It did have a lot of cool pop-up boxes, though!

Oh yeah, the other thing I immediately realized was that — contrary to what I’ve heard numerous people say — the iPad is not that heavy. I don’t know what people were expecting, but it’s pretty much the exact weight I expected a computer tablet to be. Did people seriously believe it’d be anywhere as light as a Kindle? Yeah, you’re not going to be holding it up to read for any extended period of time, but don’t a lot of people rest a book on an armrest or something while they’re reading, anyhow? I think the discussion is moot, though, since I can’t imagine trying to read a book on an LED-backlit screen. Reading an internet article of any sort of length is tough enough for me.

Where the iPad shines is in its internet browsing. It’s tough for me to admit, but flying around web pages and click on links with your fingers is fun, and compared to iPhone or iPod Touch, it’s about 50x as functional. Everything is bright and clear, pages load much quicker, and you can see so much more of every webpage. On the other hand, not having Flash functionality is fucking GARBAGE, and it destroys any chance of me agreeing with Apple’s statement that the iPad is “the best way to experience the web.” I guess I just contradicted the first sentence of this very paragraph. Basically, it’s awesome at browsing the parts of the web it actually supports.

What else did I do? Not much, since way too many of the apps loaded onto the iPad were iPhone apps. New York Times app for iPhone? No fucking thanks, I want to try out the version that has a resolution above 480×320. I guess Plants vs. Zombies was the one iPad-optimized game I played, and it was for about 15 seconds, since I rather just play the Steam version. Shit, there really were way too many iPhone apps on it.

I did get accustomed to typing on the iPad fairly quickly. With it rested on a flat surface, I was able to go at probably 80% speed with only a small drop in accuracy. I guess that bodes well for anyone who plans on doing a lot of typing on it, but I can’t see many people fitting that profile. I also can’t see all that many people even needing this admittedly impressive piece of technology. The iPhone (or smartphone of your choice) + laptop combination still makes way too much sense for someone on the move. When I’m at home, I’m not going to have the urge to use a gimped internet browser. I feel like even the hundreds of thousands of people who have already bought one see it as a complimentary device to use around their house, not some new type of computer.

BUT I guess the huge advantage an iPad has over a laptop — or even a netbook — is its battery life. I don’t know what to make of that, as I don’t travel often, and even when I have lately, I didn’t bring along my laptop. And that has nothing to do with having a monstrosity for a laptop, nope. I made use of my hotel room Wi-Fi with my iPod Touch. That was good enough. No need to buy a $500 king size version of it.

Damn, this post needed to be much more negative, if only to get Apple fans to post. I don’t think my heart was in it this time, guys.

I’ve skipped a few weekends. Hopefully this comeback is comparable to Tiger’s 69 today.

NSFW: I Admit It, The iPad Is A Kindle Killer. I Just Wish It Weren’t Going To Kill Reading Too – Makes a pretty damn convincing argument for why all but the biggest bibliophiles who also happen to be technophiles will get a Kindle instead of an iPad. Because really, who reads anymore?

The magic is dead – In which an aspiring writer e-buddy laments the sad state of affairs when it comes to practical effects. Filmmakers used to create ingenious ways to pull off shots and effects, while nowadays computers do all the work. I can’t say I care too much, except when the CGI sucks e.g. the Burly Brawl in The Matrix Reloaded. Sigh. There’s a reason why Jaws (mentioned in the blog post) still holds up today.

L.A. Candy by Lauren Conrad – A review of a book I’ll never read. Actually, I never would have heard of the author or the book if it weren’t for the damn internet. Apparently this “Lauren Conrad” was on “The Hills.” As much as I’m sure the book sucks — an opinion backed up by this review from another e-buddy — I’m impressed that she’s able to form complete sentences. Putting thousands of them together in a novel is just mind-blowing.

5 Ways Facebook Changed Dating (For The Worse) – Let me add 6) A girl is able to blow you off by saying “Facebook me”

How good was the Springfield Power Plant Team? – Remember that awesome Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns collects a bunch of Major League players for the softball game against Shelbyville plant and all the players except Darryl Strawberry fall victim to absurd incidents and circumstances? Well, I’m about to ruin it for most of you by linking to this article which grades the team by WAR. I think we all wondered why the hell Mike Scoscia was on the team, though, even as a kid. At least I did.

Regular Season Baseball Signals The “Return” of LOLMLB – So are these captions officially played out yet?

+/-, RZR, and New Fielding Stats – You didn’t think you’d get through this entire post without getting linked to a pure sabermetric article, did you? SO MANY FIELDING METRICS IN ONE PLACE WHAT AN EARLY BIRTHDAY PRESENT. RZR kinda sucks, though. It’s like that $10 gift card to some store you never shop at.

The Masters started today, which made Nike think it was the perfect time to release this bizarre Tiger Woods commercial. Why is Tiger’s father speaking to him from the grave? And why is he so damn cryptic? I would think he’d just say, “What the fuck’s wrong with you, son?” I don’t really want to stare at Tiger’s mug for 30 seconds, either.

In related news, I really want Tom Watson to win the Masters at 60 years old, just so no one can pretend golf is a sport anymore.

The other commercial is not bizarre — just homoerotic. I feel like anything involving a male cast member of Jersey Shore is bound to have gay undertones, and I guess non-Mets fans will argue that David Wright has the same effect. Fuck you.

I present to you a Vitamin Water commercial starring David Wright and The Situation:

I walked into Borders a few weeks ago to pick up the second book of the “Millennium Trilogy” — The Girl Who Played With Fire — and was surprised to see the new paperback prominently displayed right as I walked into the store. It was evidence that I don’t have a clue as to what is popular outside of the internet. Sure, it seemed pretty popular in the places I spend time online, but many times that hasn’t exactly indicated mainstream appeal or popularity. Even when I went up to the register to pay for the book (using my 40% coupon — the only time I’ll shop at Borders), the cashier said how much he loved the book and then started talking about the film adaptation of the first book and then I mentioned the American remake and by that time I’m sure the line behind me hated both of us; I seemed much more concerned about this than the cashier. Man, I knew the books (and film) were big hits over in Europe, but I didn’t realize they had already elicited such a fanbase over here.

So if you’re wondering, the first book is in the title of this blog entry: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. As for its myriad forms: there’s the original Swedish novel; then its Swedish film adaptation; and coming in 2011, its American adaptation. I experienced the first two practically back-to-back, and I’m still looking forward to the American version solely due to confirmation of David Fincher directing it. Yeah yeah, needless American remake — but the guy behind Se7en and Zodiac directing another dark, murder mystery film? Count me the fuck in. read more…

I’ve mentioned David Foster Wallace on my blog before. I quickly decided that I needed to read more of his works after reading A Supposed Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, and This is Water was my second DFW experience. I was at Borders this past Friday night and I wanted to kill some time, so I picked up this small hardcover off the shelf. I had read some reviews on Amazon saying it was a ripoff, since it was just a speech put into book form, so it seemed like the perfect way to spend ten minutes sitting on a comfy leather chair in Borders.

I didn’t realize the book gave each and every sentence its own page, stretching out a speech to 150 pages, but once I started reading, it made some sense. The format forces you to take your time and pause when Wallace paused, allowing you to digest each and every word he originally spoke at Kenyon College’s Commencement in 2005.

Maybe it’s a bit harsh to call the book a money grab (as I do if you scroll and hold your mouse over the book pic), but it’s hard to justify spending $10 on it, nevermind the $15 Borders was charging for it. But the content is great, and it does almost seem like a perfect college graduation gift. Find the Best GAG Gifts at abracadabranyc.com.I guess I would just write the URL of a site with the speech inside a card instead of buying this posthumous publication.

Wallace talks about “learning to think” and how it’s easy to default to the natural setting of our brains when we have to deal with the day in, day out world. How it’s easy to hate everyone around you when you’re stuck in traffic or the line at the grocery store. How it’s easy to not think about anyone else’s life because we are, in fact, the center of our lives. How it’s easy to worship money or beauty or power.

“Learning to think” is somehow changing your default-setting to deal with the mundaneness and pettiness and frustrations of everyday adult life without going mad. And the saddest part is that Wallace never was quite able to do it himself. He says:

None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head.

He didn’t make it to 50 (he didn’t shoot himself in the head, at least, though). But it doesn’t make his message any less powerful or true. As in the link to the speech I already included in the post, I’ll quote this sentence:

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

I guess I’ll end with that. I don’t want you wasting time reading this post instead of the speech.

https://abracadabranyc.com/collections/funny-gifts

I like keeping to tradition where I can.

- David Wright’s 2009 was an anomaly. And I still love him. I’m ashamed that I didn’t have enough faith in him to fight off all bidders for him in my auction league. FORGIVE ME.

- Albert Pujols proved once again he is not of this earth.

- Roy Halladay is going to absolutely roll over the National League. 7 IP, 1 R, 9 K will be a normal line for him this year.

- Jason Heyward is truly the Messiah. Goddamn it.

- Mark Buehrle is able to do whatever he wants on the baseball field.

On a side note, having to watch a commercial before watching a one minute highlight is fucking bullshit. The NHL allows all sorts of highlights on YouTube, why can’t the MLB? I guess because the latter is a real league.

- The Royals are unbelievably awful and Zack Greinke — if he does win another Cy Young — will do it in spite of the pure ineptitude around him.

- Livan Hernandez — before yesterday — led active pitchers in Opening Day starts. How the fuck did that happen?

- Pitching like dog shit doesn’t hurt your extension negotiations, Josh Beckett.

- Tiger Woods tried to ruin the most holy day of the year. Cheat on your wife all you want, just don’t have a bullshit press conference on Opening Day, douchebag.

This post might end up being the longest stream-of-consciousness post I’ve ever made. I’m not going to be looking up projections or Vegas lines or predictions while typing it up. I’m not going to be calculating stats in spreadsheets. I’m not even going to link anywhere else, since I’ll just do that in my link post later today. This is going to be the same talk you would get from me if you ran into me at the bar right now, devoid of Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs (I would link, but that’d be already breaking my promise).

While I’m giddy about meaningful baseball kicking off again, my excitement is of course tempered by the knowledge that the Mets will be lucky to break .500. There’s no way Omar Minaya actually believes the bullshit he spouts during an interview with Mike Francesa on WFAN, specifically when he insists he has some sort of faith in the starting rotation. He calls back to past performance of John Maine and Oliver Perez, but the last year they were good was 2007. And it’s not about past performance. It’s about future performance, and there’s not much of a reason to believe that either pitcher will regain their best form — and their best form isn’t exactly mind-blowing. Maine doesn’t have the late movement on his fastball that allowed him to throw it so frequently years ago. Perez just did not have the same stuff this spring, much like when he pitched last season. Maybe he’ll walk less than a man an inning this time around, though. I guess I have to hope Mike Pelfrey and Jonathan Niese live up to their potential. read more…