Somewhat Manly Nerd

The massive Carsten Charles Sabathia pitched a gem last night, putting to rest the thought that going on 3 days’ rest might actually make him somewhat ineffective after a long season. The fact that people were even arguing about the decision in the first place blows my goddamn mind. Sure, it’s a small sample size, but last year’s September with the Brewers was fucking legendary. The disaster that occurred in the playoffs was no doubt a combination of going on three days’ rest for an entire month, and also dealing with a minuscule strike zone — neither of which were a problem tonight. (There were plenty of issues with the umpiring, though. No really, I’ve never seen so many blatantly terrible calls, holy shit.)

C.C.’s final line for the night: 8 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 5 K, 101 pitches

That’s pretty economical — I’m sure C.C. wasn’t even tired by the end of his outing, only hungry. I should probably add those 5 postgame BLTs to his final line. You know it’s a good C.C. game when he has a 1:1 hit-to-BLT ratio.

So it’s looking like a Yankees-Phillies World Series, as LA is on the precipice of annihilation, much to the chagrin of Pat Sajak and this little girl:

The 7th season of Curb Your Enthusiasm started about a month ago and I haven’t even dedicated one post to it. This had to be remedied. So far this season has tackled road head, dating chicks in wheelchairs, fighting over paying restaurant bills, impossible-to-open packaging, breaking up with a cancer patient, and most notably a Seinfeld reunion — quite the variety of topics. I think it’s safe to say that Season 5 was the low point of the series, and the Blacks totally revitalized the show, Leon in particular. Observe:

8-6 Phillies. Bottom of the 8th inning. Two outs. Men on 1st and 3rd. Charlie Manuel leaves in Ryan Madson to face Manny Ramirez, even though he had already let up a run in the inning, and had just given up a single — probably because he knows his closer Brad Lidge wouldn’t fair any better.

The following is what occurred:

Madson didn’t throw a strike the entire at-bat, yet Manny was swinging at almost everything, and eventually grounded out weakly to 3rd base. That first pitch was definitely a result of Manny wanting to jump on a good first pitch, and the ball just ran inside on him, tying him up completely. Manny once again feel victim to being overanxious with pitches 3 and 4, letting the high and inside pitch dilate his pupils. And by the final pitch in the at-bat, Madson knew to stay inside and high — there was no way Manny was going to do any damage with that pitch.

Once Manny made that 3rd out, the game was pretty much over. Not even Brad Lidge was able to blow it. By the way, anyone who says LIDGE IS BACK needs to shut the hell up. He will blow a save this series, 100%.

Anyone who doesn’t love dogs doesn’t have a heart. And that Rottweiler got his dick bit.

I’ve had Google Wave for a while now. Oh, I didn’t tell you? Maybe because I don’t have any invites to give you — or I just don’t know where they’re hiding. Or maybe because it’s not all that useful as a social communication tool, especially when no one you’d want to email has access to it.

There’s not even many impressions for me to relate, as most of my activity in Wave has been similar to a forum in real-time. It’s kinda cool to see someone else replying to you before you’re even done typing, but it’s not really much different than a forum — and right now it’s infinitely wonkier. The little things — like being able to drag-and-drop pictures and watching an embedded YouTube video while replying — are cool, but in terms of functionality, I’m not sure if it saves much time or is worth the effort. People for the most part will stick to plain emails, or IM, or Facebook, or Twitter.

Where Wave will be useful is in collaboration in school and work. I wish it was around when I was in college. Students could post their lecture notes and classmates could edit them or add their own comments. Peer editing on papers could be done in real-time over the internet; you’d watch the person fixing or commenting on certain parts of your essay, and be able to converse and ask why they think your paper sucks. Group projects would no doubt benefit even more, in ways I can’t even think of, due to not actually participating in many of them.

I really thought I could write long blog posts consistently, but I usually run out of gas after three paragraphs. How do I get more writing stamina? What’s the equivalent of masturbation in writing? Joe Posnanski’s blog?

As I type this, the Phillies and Dodgers are getting ready to take the field for Game 1 of the NLCS. Two  days without baseball just shouldn’t happen at any point during the season. I almost watched hockey and preseason Knicks basketball (ok, not really) — but I did find and read too much analysis about the series that were already over and the series to come.  How much can you go over stuff that is basically a crapshoot? We all know the Yankees are a better team than the Angels, but Burnett and/or Sabathia could easily have a bad couple of starts and then BAM they’re out. A-Rod, Teixeira, and Jeter could all go cold. It’s possible! We also know the Phillies bullpen is total shit, but in the past week we saw a bunch of great closers completely meltdown.

The ALCS is supposed to start tomorrow, but somehow I can’t see it getting kicked off, considering it’s been raining all day and the precipitation looks to continue for the next couple of days. So not only will my tennis lesson on Saturday be canceled — shut up — I might not have a game to watch that day, either. Not to mention it’s chilly as fuck for mid-October in New York. What the hell is up with that?

[Insert obligatory anecdotal GLOBAL WARMING IS BULLSHIT comment.]

My other baseball annoyance of the day was arguing with a Phillies fan about the MVP of their team. It hasn’t been anyone but Chase Utley for four years. Sure, Ryan Howard loves his HR and RBIs, but Utley does EVERYTHING — especially getting on base in front of Howard. I need to find out a way to look up how many times Howard hit Utley in. Baseball-Reference, don’t fail me now.

A NeoGAF thread made me think of all the television shows/mini-series I’ve watched in their entirety. I’m talking EVERY SINGLE EPISODE. The following is a list of these shows, with an attempt to rank them by my overall enjoyment — this is how I cop out of any objective judgment of quality.

Band of Brothers
Seinfeld
Arrested Development
The Shield
Curb Your Enthusiasm
The Wire
Breaking Bad
Mad Men
Chappelle’s Show
Peep Show
House
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
The Venture Bros.
Dexter
Freaks and Geeks
Battlestar Galactica
Lost
30 Rock
Chuck
Undeclared
The Office (UK)
Firefly
Planet Earth
Eastbound & Down
From the Earth to the Moon

Let the bashing begin.

Caution: The following trailer may cause spontaneous impregnation.

Is there anything I could add after watching that trailer? B-movie action stars, hammy one-liners and enough explosions to make Michael Bay wet the bed — what more could you possibly want? I wonder if anyone has ever had more fun putting together a movie than Sylvester Stallone did coming up with this shit. It’s like we’re back in the 80s — so bad it’s good.

When I woke up today, I knew that I’d be stopping by my aunt’s house 20 minutes away to help her with a computer issue. What I didn’t know is that she’d lead me down the slippery slope to iPhone ownership.

I arrived at my aunt’s house shortly after 1 to help her figure out why the Spanish speech projects her students had put on flash drives wouldn’t play for her. That turned out to be an easy enough fix — she had to open the flash drives to look at the contents, so she could manually select the Audacity project files. She was probably clicking “Play” when autoplay came up, and it would try to play the Audacity file with WMP or some shit. Just a guess. What’s important here is that in the middle of this activity, I noticed an unopened iPod Touch sitting next to the laptop. How could that not catch someone’s eye? Apparently she received it free two months earlier when she bought a MacBook for her son (my cousin). Not a bad deal.

I continued cleaning up the messy computer: deleting programs, and telling others not to automatically begin their retarded processes on startup. Meanwhile, I continued to eye the iPod Touch, as I can’t help but be mesmerized by a shiny new piece of hardware. Apple products may be overpriced, but no one can deny that they’re almost all striking pieces of hardware. The Touch is half the thickness of my 2.5 year old 80GB iPod and has a screen double the size. It’s impressive before you even turn it on.

As I waited for the installation of Vista Service Pack 1 to finish (yes, I really helped my aunt out!), I mentioned how curious I was about the iPod Touch. I admittedly have been somewhat interested in the iPhone, but the monthly price would naturally keep any unemployed person away. I didn’t realize how easily that curious comment would be construed as wanting the iPod Touch. My aunt immediately replied with saying I could have it, and I was fairly shocked. The natural reaction to protest such a gift was somewhat weighed down by the thought of actually being able to mess around with such a gadget. I tried to tell her the various cool things she could do with it, but she wasn’t having any of it. I knew her son already had one, so I asked if her daughter (other cousin) would want it, and she insisted she would not be interested. I can’t say I put up the biggest fight at this point. I was getting an iPod Touch for Geek Squad work!

I didn’t think of the consequences of having such an awesome piece of hardware in my possession. Ignorance is bliss, and now the thought of having all the functionality of this iPod Touch practically all the time is already getting to me. The phone part of it barely fits into the equation. As I have already posted, I could check Fangraphs with the greatest of ease any time! I could watch Mike Tyson talking about stomping on children’s testicles whenever I wish! I could play games and annoyingly post my high score to Twitter every time! The possibilities are endless.

As for right now, I’m still giddy messing around with the few free apps I’ve downloaded. I’ve also uploaded some pictures and a converted episode of Peep Show (thanks, Handbrake) just to see how they’d look. It’s pretty much a technological marvel, but the iPhone is obviously on an entirely higher level, so having an iPod Touch only makes one realize how awesome having an iPhone would be. Goddamn it. Fuck you, Steve Jobs. Let Verizon in on your shit so maybe I could pay less than $75/mo for a reasonable iPhone plan.

Steve Jobs to me: Get a job, douchebag.

Good defenses don’t give up 3 touchdowns in the 4th quarter. Good defenses don’t let some rookie QB named Chad Henne go 20-26 with 241 yards. Good defenses don’t give 400 yards of total offense. The Jets’ defense is evidently not good.

Why did Chad Pennington have to break his shoulder for the 25th time? There’s no way he would have been able to cut up the Jets’ defense like that. One of the long bombs Henne threw would have died halfway to its intended destination if it had left Pennington’s arm.

In Mark Sanchez news, the USC rookie had another solid game. I don’t quite know why ESPN was sucking his cock so much during and after a 12-24, 172-yard performance (actually I do, he’s so dreamy), but at least he didn’t throw any inceptions or fumble the ball in his own end zone. He played a smart game for the most part, and aired it out pretty damn well when he needed to. This should have been enough for the REX RYAN DEFENSEâ„¢, but they didn’t hold up their side of the deal. Both times the Jets took the lead in the 4th quarter, they couldn’t wait to give it back!

Disappointing result tonight aside, I haven’t been this optimistic about the future of the Jets in a long time. The Braylon Edwards trade already paid dividends tonight with his absolutely phenomenal almost-touchdown catch, and Sanchez is only going to get better. Sure, it’s frustrating to see the defense play so shitty in a game they should have won — especially after their impressive performance against a much better offense last week — but I’m going to chalk it up to the learning process. Maybe the REX RYAN DEFENSEâ„¢ just needs a bit more time to truly be in Beast Mode every single week.

I’m still more upset about the Phillies winning their NLDS tonight. Douchebags.