Somewhat Manly Nerd

So I haven’t made a baseball post in a while. I haven’t made a Mets post in an even longer while. I think it’s about time I bitch and moan about this offseason and just how little hope I have for 2010. Hopefully this post will just pour out of me.

Let’s see: the Yankees practically stole Curtis Granderson from the Tigers; the Red Sox have signed John Lackey and Mike Cameron and are reportedly trying to trade for Adrian Gonzalez (I think they should give up Buchholz and Ellsbury, myself — Walkoff Walk seems to agree); and the Phillies have traded for and wrapped up Roy Halladay for the next five years (although stupidly trading Lee softened the blow immensely). These are the big teams and markets the Mets are supposedly competing with.

The Mets have signed a bunch of replacement-level players, a Japanese reliever, and are reportedly willing to offer Jason Bay a 5-year contract. Fuck me.

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This is apparently the opening scene for a Channel 4 pilot called The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret. Why it’s for British television, I have no clue — I only know that I can’t watch the rest of the episode, and that blows. And I also think this is the only scene with Will Arnett, which is also unfortunate.

Now I just want to watch all of Arrested Development again.

Yes, I did.

Battery…dying. Guy in the back likes some show called Peepshow. He sounds like a dick. #livetweetingAVclub

I was the “guy in the back.” Awesome. And yes, this was a week ago — and yes, I realize I haven’t written a blog post for about three weeks. Although I didn’t realize that latter fact until today. I don’t even know what I’ve been doing. Lying in bed in the dark with the blinds drawn thinking about past and future mistakes? Nope, not at all.

Anyhow, back to being called a dick. #livetweetingAVclub would be a Twitter reference to this A.V. Club event in Brooklyn, which I attended for the hell of it — because what else was I going to do on a Monday night? The event started at 8, and I got to the hipster bar at about 7:30, looked around for a bit, didn’t notice anything signifying an A.V. Club book reading, so I sat at the bar and ordered a beer I had never heard of. When I say hipster bar, I mean people were sitting around reading, and there were bocce ball courts. Indoors. But maybe that’s not even hipster; maybe Union Hall used to be a Italian retirement home.

So I start talking to a girl who’s also there for the A.V. Club thing, and after 10 minutes or so, she says she’s going downstairs. Ohhhhh, so THAT’S where everything is going down. I didn’t even realize there was a downstairs. This obliviousness led to my vision of the tiny stage and projector, when I finally made my way down there just before 8 PM, being almost totally blocked. One of the few times I wish I were taller than 5’7″, in addition to almost every other waking moment.

This backstory is important (not really) because about an hour in, I just gave up on twisting my neck and standing on my toes to see what was going on, and decided to make my way to the back to get another drink. Turns out there was even a stool to sit on. Fuck standing and being dry, it’s about sitting and getting drunk. At some point during my imbibing of Blue Point Toasted Lager, the A.V. Club fellas mentioned that there would be a Q&A sesh after their formal presentation. It was then that I decided I would ask about the total absence of Peep Show from their TV of the Decade coverage. I could excuse most entertainment outlets for not mentioning an absolutely hilarious British sitcom that has only had its first season aired on BBC America years ago, but not the A.V. Club.

The problem was that, as a result of being ALL the way in the back, I would have to yell at the top of my lungs to be heard. I feel like it’s hard not to sound like a dick when you’re yelling your lungs out and no one can even see you. Perhaps yelling, “Everyone should watch it!” — after the ONE PERSON among the A.V. Club personalities who had seen it finished her thoughts — didn’t help. So it was at this point at which that tweet must have been…tweeted.

I then proceeded to drink more and then go up to the A.V. Club writers and subsequently implored them all to watch Peep Show. Except for the one cool chick who had already seen it and loved it — and also wrote this article almost a year ago! If her co-workers didn’t listen to her, why would they listen to me? I was just a drunken lunatic raving about some British sitcom. But if the A.V. Club starts reviewing old Peep Show episodes — or at the least the 1st series DVD — I will take credit.

Oh, and I was also photographed for The Onion at some point during the night. So, out of the people who read this who know my ugly mug, keep a lookout for me in an embarrassing photoshop of some kind, most likely with an equally embarrassing caption or quote accompanying it.

Now watch the second episode of Peep Show on Hulu:

God Bless Hulu. I was trying to figure out a way to embed the first episode of Peep Show on my blog so I could make a post about it and then tell you to watch it, and now my dream has come true!

The show is basically a modern British version of The Odd Couple, shot in the first-person — hence the title of the show. In addition to the viewing perspective, it also utilizes inner monologue to perfect hilarious effect. The vast majority of the show deals with sexual situations and frustrations (another reason for the title) and usually involves Mark — the stuck-up, awkward one of the two friends — totally embarrassing himself. Jeremy, the other half of the male couple, suffers his own humiliating moments, but it’s almost always hilarious to watch, as opposed to absolutely painful when witnessing Mark make a fool of himself. The British sure like their awkward comedy. If you prefer romantic series, you may explore the titles at https://my-drama.com/.

Regardless of its painfulness, it’s a pretty damn brilliant and immensely quotable show, and it only gets better as it goes along. There is continuity throughout the entire run, with most individual series (they call seasons “series” over there) having a overarching plot thread. Having series of six episodes each really does wonders for the quality of a TV show. I still think a dozen episodes is the sweet spot, but six episodes is better than twenty-four and running a show into the ground in a few seasons.

I’m posting the pilot episode because I’m a bit obsessed with starting things at the very beginning, and I think you should too. But if you don’t think the first episode is all that great, give it at least the second episode as well. Give yourself some time to warm up to the the British idiosyncrasies. Do it for me. And then post a comment for me, too. Or not. But I’ll be upset!

Joe Mauer. Albert Pujols. Zack Greinke. Tim Lincecum. The 2009 winners of the most prestigious awards baseball has to offer — and they were actually the four guys who deserved the accolades. It’s almost as if the sabermetricians have won the battle for the minds of the baseball world. Almost.

The full voting results here:

AL MVP
NL MVP
AL Cy Young
NL Cy Young

Mauer was a no-brainer in the traditional sense, not just in the sabermetrical sense. He was a good-fielding catcher who hit .365, winning his THIRD batting title. He has a chance to be the greatest catcher of all-time. That baseball writers almost voted him the AL MVP unanimously is not a massive development. Pujols winning unanimously isn’t a revelation either. Sure, it’s awesome that the right guys won the awards, but when you dig a little further into the balloting you still see some disappointing and baffling choices.

Chase Utley was left off 14 ballots. I chalk this up to the never-ending under-appreciation of Utley’s greatness. But what can you expect from the rest of the baseball world when I actually had an argument with a Phillies fan who said that Jayson Werth had a better year. Come to the Mets, Utley — I’ll respect you.

Ben Zobrist was left off 17 ballots. Basically the AL equivalent of Utley this season. I can understand that he doesn’t quite have the name recognition because he came out of nowhere, but by WAR he was easily one of the top 3 players in the AL. But since a lot of that value came from fielding, and he didn’t hit any magical numbers in his counting stats, he got screwed.

Ryan Howard finished ahead of Prince Fielder. The Phillies made the playoffs. The Brewers didn’t. I’m pretty sure it’s as simple as that. Or the voters really like five-dollar footlongs.

Mariano Rivera finished ahead of Zack Greinke. So the guy who ran away with the Cy Young award with a 2.16 ERA in 229.1 innings is less valuable than the robot who threw a quarter the amount of innings (66.1) to a 1.76 ERA? And Greinke actually had a lower FIP! Yankee mystique.

Jeremy Affeldt was put on a ballot. Speechless.

And that’s just a sampling from the MVP balloting. Now, I’m not saying there can’t be some differing opinions, but these five things are just WRONG.

The Cy Young voting is admittedly much more encouraging. The fact that Greinke and Lincecum won with 16 and 15 wins, respectively, is a huge step — but no pitcher hitting 20 wins for the first time ever might have had an effect on that. A sad fact is that in the NL, Adam Wainwright actually got more first-place votes than Lincecum — no doubt due to his 19 wins. A 20th win probably would have pushed him over the top. Chris Carpenter fell in between the two, and there was a huge outcry about Keith Law, who left Carpenter off his ballot.

The Cy Young balloting only includes three slots, and I thought Law’s reasoning was totally sound with regards to voting Javier Vasquez second and Wainwright third. I believe it boiled down to the fact that Carpenter pitched under 200 innings, and I think that’s a fairly reasonable stance. For him, it was Lincecum and then the next three guys in a toss-up, anyhow. It’s not like he voted for Jeremy Affeldt for MVP. And looking at the balloting, he wasn’t the only one to leave Carpenter off. This other guy must have voted Lincecum-Wainwright-Haren. That’s arguably a worse ballot.

…almost as bad as the guy who voted Justin Verlander first in the AL Cy Young voting — who I really hope wasn’t the same guy who screwed up Mauer’s unanimous win by penciling in Miguel Cabrera first. He needs to be stripped of his voting privileges if so.

So 2009 is wrapped up now. It’s time to look forward to the hot stove, while wondering how inefficiently the Mets will spend their money.

Them Crooked Vultures – Scumbag Blues

It may be of interest to know Them Crooked Vultures is made up of Josh Homme, Dave Grohl, and John Paul Jones. It doesn’t get much better than Queens of the Stone Age, Nirvana, and Led Zeppelin molded together (I leave off Foo Fighters because Grohl is playing drums here). I only quickly mentioned looking forward to the band’s album a few months ago in a QOTSA post — well, it’s out now. I definitely need to listen to the entire album a bit more, but I’ll admit that the first listen was a bit disappointing, if only due to unrealistic expectations. Listening to this song repeatedly is hindering me from going through the entire album again. I do have to say that I recommend any fan of QOTSA — or good old-fashioned hard rock — to check out the album immediately; at the very least, it’s a decent substitute for no proper QOTSA album this year.

Anyone who watched It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia last night got to see Dennis Reynolds run through this entire system in brilliant and hysterical fashion. Make sure to follow this to the T for the next girl you choose to court.

This is the Always Sunny I love — not the insane and totally farcical stuff — but the comparatively subdued character pieces that accentuate the worst traits of the cast — traits that have always been there, not ones just made up for a certain episode. The rest of the episode was pretty great too, but after the awesome opening it could have been Danny Devito throwing up for 10 minutes and it would have still been a classic episode.

[Credit for the pic goes to BlueTsunami at GAF.]

*If you live in America.

Keep in mind that the second episode is funnier and has much less fantasy football talk. Take that as you will. Either way, it’s my favorite new show this season.

Foo Fighters – Everlong

I know you’ve heard this song approximately 1385 times already, but my friend played it at the bar tonight and I have the natural inclination to post it on my blog. You’ll have to suffer my depression and yearning for a couple of months ago. I have the almost insatiable urge to play this song on fake Rock Band drums right fucking now. I just want to drown myself in the song. Instead of blasting the song at full volume on my TV, I’ll have to settle for destroying my ears by blasting it in my halfway-decent Sennheiser headphones.

Because I’m sure the A.V. Club will cover it all much better than I ever could.

Best Of The Decade: Television (starts Tuesday, November 10^th)

We’ll be covering the waterfront through a variety of features looking at reality shows, our favorite one-season wonders and, of course, our picks for the decade’s best shows.

Best Of The Decade: Music (starts Tuesday, November 17^th)

Just like above, only with music.

Best Of The Decade: Books (Monday, November 23^rd)

The must reads of the ’00s.

Best Of The Decade: Comics (Tuesday, November 24^th)

The best from the first decade when everyone seemed to acknowledge comics aren’t just for kids anymore.

Best Of The Decade: Games (Wednesday, November 25^th)

The games we couldn’t put down this decade.

Best Of The Decade: Film (starts Tuesday, December 1^st)

From the best bad movies of the decade to the 50 best films of the ’00s, this week’s all about film.

TELL ME WHAT TO LIKE, A.V. CLUB! No really, I’m pretty hyped to see what brilliance they think I missed. They are usually right on the ball with just about everything — except gaming. Their music list will be better than Pitchfork’s, at the very least. Although, I have to say the books list is what interests me most, considering the only books I’ve read from this decade are non-fiction — a list that includes such universally-praised classics as the Bill Simmons’ penned Now I Can Die In Peace and Tony Kornheiser’s I’m Back For More Cash. I obviously need some culture.