A Lost post wth No Specific Spoilers

I've never seen Nip/Tuck but I've spent about 15 minutes reading about it on various wikipedia pages, and the impression I got (correct me if I'm wrong Nip/Tuck fans - I may be) is that basically each season got more ridiculous than the one before - the plot was more fantastic, insane and the level of realism lower. I'm not sure if this is exacty right, and I'm not sure whether that makes the later seasons of Nip/Tuck a more or less pleasurable viewing experience, and I'm not sure how serial Nip/Tuck is between seasons - what I'm interested is in comparing that model to Lost.

Lost seems to feel that it needs to increase its scope every season, make it's plot more epic - more going on, people with random powers - giant battles of control for the island over space, time and space-time. Watching Lost's first season would be unrecognizable to someone now following it - they're just on an island fighting amongst themselves and trying to get food. Though I haven't tried yet so I can't say for sure, I would guess this might impact it's rewatch value - it's hard to watch something when you know that the events your seeing are completely insignificant in later events.

Not only that, but Lost seems to want you to think there's a grand plan - from the beginning each and every piece was carefully laid out - and each time a secret is revealed your mind is to be blown - but whenever you think about any one part - one great reveal from an episode - for more than a minute, you realize how many more questions come from that revelation rather than answers - things haven't been cleared up or come together, but have been made more muddy - more things that the creators now have to find a way to weave together later on.

The other thing is normally in a show like this, part of the fun could be trying to guess what's going to happen next, but the thing is in this show it's impossible - the answer to the current problem is something you never could have guessed because it's not something that had previously been in the parameters of the show - time travel for example, or random immortality, or ability to morph, or ability to talk to dead people, or I'm sure if I thought hard I could think of tons of random new and different supernatural things that you would never have guessed at come the humble beginnings of the series.

The point is not that shows should eschew the supernatural - the point is that shows should be consistent in their scope - you should know what level of supernatural you're dealing with and what can you reasonably expect. Watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from the first couple episodes you know some basic things about vampires and demons, and they remain true during the entire series. Essentially there are no guns in Buffy, so when there is one (and there's only one really of any importa as far as I remember) it's a huge deal. I'm sure there are other good examples of shows like this too. Hell, even Battlestar Galactica, for all of my occasional problems with it, you pretty much believe that it's plausible within the fabric of the show most of the things they throw at you (with the exception of a specific one or two, but that's for another discussion).

The point is Lost changes what it is as a show every season, and expands to the point at which not only is it not really the same show, not only does it not really make any internal sense, but the things going on keep expanding past the parameters it had set for itself previously - this may make things temporarily surprising, but when you look back at it it makes the show work worse. Anyway, I probably have more things to say about Lost, including maybe the occasion things it gets right, or the more specific things it gets wrong in the Season 5 final, but that's for another time.

Two things:

First: New baseball rule

If a pitcher walks/hits by pitch four consecutive batters (any combination of the two) the manager is oblgiated to remove him from the game. A la, in today's Rockies-Braves game, when Jorge De La Rosa hit a batter and walked the next three straight, Clint Hurdle must remove him from the game, which possibly would have prevented 8 more runs from being scored that inning. Just maybe.

Second:



Who is caught up on this Happy Youngster controversy? I'll sum up if you're not, from what I know.

Happy Youngster is Brewers fan (Nick Yohanek for those who hate nicknames) who has the relatively unusual hobby of ball-hawking - basically, he goes to the ballpark and catches balls anyway he can - I don't know the details, but he catches tons of batting practice balls and had, before Wednesday May 14 had caught 48 home run balls without eliciting national controversy. That all changed on that Wednesday when he caught Marlins rookie Chris Coughlan's first career home run.

This is when the stories diverge, but I've been able to read his story far more completely and from what I've heard his sounds a lot more consistent - but don't worry the controversy isn't merely about exactly what happened itself. He wrote a full long blog entry about it here but it appears to have mysteriously disappeared (you can hear about it all in the audio clip linked here but unless you really don't believe me, it's not worth it - it goes on for a while).

I may be skipping something, but the gyst is - Youngster was approached by a Marlins person and offered a batting practice ball for the home run ball. Youngster declined, assured Marlins person Coughlan would get his ball, and said he would come up with what he wanted. A few innings later, he decides what he wants - a signed bat by Chris Coughlan saying something to the effect of "Thanks for catching my first home run" and a Hanley Ramirez bat. When interviewed by a Marlins TV reporter he shows his handwritten demands on the TV screen. He also asks for a MLB authenticator to authenticate the ball - according to him, and I don't know enough, but have no reason to assume he's wrong about this - there should be two at every ballpark. Anyway, the exact order is unimportant but Youngster is accused of switching the ball, told he can't get what he wants, is sent to negotiate with the team's psychologist, who is very rude to him, talks to Chris Coughlan, who is very rude to him, and is eventually told he can't get a Hanley bat and then asks for tickets to a Marlins-Brewers series instead, and ends up parting with the ball.

Coughlan's story is far less coherent. Basically, it's a story that the ball was held for ransom, and that he was pissed at the fan - but he doesn't really say much differently about the demands except that the Youngster wanted tickets to a Yankees-Marlins series, but as the guy is a hard core Brewers fan, that seems to make a lot less sense to me. The money quote is, "He told me he goes around a lot and catches these balls and holds them for ransom -- even though he doesn't say that he does, it seems that way." Basically, I don't want to nail someone too much for one quote - the best of us can say something stupid without thinking it through, and everyone does - but essentially Coughlan does not help his credibility at all but starting the quote by saying Youngster said something, and then later in the same sentence admitting Youngster didn't say that at all - essentially admitting that he lied just a few words earlier.

Basically, this preceeded a few days of the Youngster getting shat on in every possible way by both Marlins and their fans, and Brewers fans who apprently had been harbording secret resentment for years and were anxious for the chance to get it out on the national scene.

You know what? Fuck this righteous indignation. Now, I don't know every little thing Happy Youngster has done in the past. If he's pushed kids out of the way, or run over old ladies in pursuit of a ball, then I certainly don't support that. But everyone has hobbies. Some people love golf, some people love drag racing, some people love stamp collecting, and he loves catching balls. What's the big fucking deal? Who are you up on your pedestal asshole Brewers fans calling this guy out for doing something you think a kid should be doing? If he enjoys it why shouldn't he go after catching baseballs? What if I tell you whatever you like doing is immature, even if you enjoy it? Now if he's doing something shady again like pushing people, then sure, in those scenarios, that's not cool by any means. But, wearing different teams caps and shirts? Oh nos! Go fuck yourselves, self righteous Brewers fans.

Now, to the trade part of the issue. Let's start looking at this in the right light. Chris Coughlan is a major league player, albeit a rookie - but even making the absolute major league minimum he is making more than most people will ever make in a year. The Florida Marlins are a many millions of dollars sports organization, even as pitiful as they are. Miller Park Drunk, a blogger who gives drunks a bad name, writes ,"People think they are entitled to things just because they bothered to show up." Um, no. He paid for a ticket to the baseball game. He caught a ball. That's his legal property. So, sorry, folks, this has nothing to do with entitlement. He wasn't entitled to the ball - he caught it. He wasn't entitled to a Coughlan and Ramirez bat but then again Coughlan wasn't entitled to the ball, either. He engaged in what's called negotiations - they wanted something he had, and he wanted something they had. He asked for something eminently reasonable - a bat of the player who hit the home run - simple enough, and a bat of the team's best player - and then when he couldn't get the bat of Hanley, tickets for the Marlins-Brewers series in Florda (these are Marlins games - they don't sell out. EVER). This shouldn't have been hard to arrange - Coughlan has tons of bats - so let's not even debate that one, that's easy. Now I'm not sure why a Hanley bat would be so hard to get. It would take him approximately three seconds to sign one of his hundreds of bats, and he'd be doing it for a teamate. Even if that couldn't be done, there's absolutely no reason Marlins tickets couldn't be given - they can't give them away most of them time, at least here's someone who wanted then. So excuse me if I don't cry for the major league ballplayer. It's not his ball. Once it goes into the stands it's the fan's ball. It's a fan's game anyway. He could have asked for whatever he wanted, and it's in the Marlins court whether they want to exchange. That's not ransom, that's commerce. And, you know, if he had asked for something ridiculous or been more inflexible, perhaps I would actually change by stance. But he didn't and I won't.

The same blogger to whom I referred above later on writes" If I am your dentist do I keep your daughter’s first tooth? When you ask someone to take a picture of you and your friends, do they ask you what will you give them for it?" These analogies, however are incredibly inaccurate. Did Chris Coughlan ask Youngster to hold his ball? Does the dentist pay to take out the tooth? Youngster paid to the go to the game. Now, I'm not 100% positive, but I'd venture to say the tooth would not be the dentist's legal property, unlike the ball. This is getting needlessly technical but the point is, it's Youngster's ball. Now it would be cool if there would be a way it could get back to Coughlan - but oh wait, there was and it was completely reasonable and easy for the Marlins to comply with, but they made a stinking mess out of it.

Now, hell, maybe Youngster's an asshole in real life. Maybe he is divorced, maybe he doesn't pay child support, maybe he cheats on his taxes and his wife. I have no idea. But here he's right. Stop feeling sorry for professional ballplayers and teams. They're both extraordinarily successful, and are perfectly capable of giving a bat and some tickets to a fan for a ball one of their players wants - a trade that costs them very little. And I almost have as little respect for the Brewers bloggers getting on his case as people on the Marlins side. If it's for something else he's done, fine - I don't know - I tried to find out more details about his catch about Geoff Jenkins 200th home run ball - it seemed he asked for a Prince bat, which again seems very reasonable to me - but I don't know for sure and thus won't comment it. But here you're wrong, get off your high horse, and deal with it.

Books, books, books

World War Z by Max Brooks



Maybe this is unfair, since I knew coming in that Max Brooks was Mel Brooks' son, and, hey, it's a book about zombies, so I thought it was supposed to be funny. It wasn't. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying I thought it would be funny, and that wasn't the case, so maybe it has some influence into my thoughts on the book. Anyway, basically, it's a fictional oral history of a zombie war (obviously fictional as it's of a zombie war, but I always seem to add that anyway) taken by Brooks, working on behalf of the UN, via interviews from various parties throughout the world. As was noted on the wikipedia page somewhere, it is more or less a kind of horror meets alternative history. It's okay. It was interesting enough to keep reading it, and I liked the invented slang and vernacular several of the interviewees use when describing the battles and the technologies (the zombies are called "Zack"), and the way in which it really did sound like a real war - it was clear Brooks had looked into what would have been the most effective ways to kill zombies if they did exist. That said, it's hurt a bit by the lack of characters you could really hold on to, and a story that really drew you in - it was interesting, but it didn't suck me in through the second half, like my favorite books tend to. It's okay and relatively fast.

6.7

I watched Reality Bites recently for the first time, and got into a discussion with someone about it the other day.

Basically, for any who hasn't seen it, it's about few friends dealing with post college plans, and the central conflict is the main character, portrayed by Winona Rider choosing between Ben Stiller, who plays a young corporate executive type for a TV station, and Ethan Hawke who is a deadbeat musician wannabe who has apparently been Rider's best friend for some time.

Simply put, the central problem, if that's what you want to call it is this - basically, at the end of the movie she ends up choosing Ethan Hawke over Ben Stiller, and it seems like Hawke is supposed to be the good guy - he's arty, he's got soul, he cares about her, while Ben Stiller is the evil soulless corporate suit. I'm not sure what the feeling is overall, but my friend took this stance, buttressed by the position that Ethan Hawke was really hot, which is not something I can speak to. Anyway, in the movie this position is supposed to be reinforced somewhat by the fact that Rider's documentary - a movie she's been working on featuring all her friends - was destroyed and torn apart by Stiller's TV network in an effort to make it cool or edgy or whatever, tearing apart the project she had spent months working on, and in her anger, Hawke is there to comfort her.

As much as I want to root for the out of work arty one, it clearly seems like Ben Stiller is the good guy here. Ben Stiller is nothing but incredibly nice to her the entire movie, and he tries to get her video on air to help her out - not because he wants to massacre it - he even admits he hasn't seen it after the edits his station did to it. In fact, he feels so bad about it he comes to find her and offer to a chance to go with him to New York and get it changed. If he was really supposed to be all crass and commercial, maybe there'd be some speech about how changing it made it better, or at least how comprimising on her integrity a little would allow more people to see it, but there's none of that.

On top of that, Hawke is downright hostile and is a complete jackass to Rider (not to mention Stiller) several times in the film. Making fun of people is one thing, but he's downright mean. And he's out and out rude to Stiller - I don't care if you're jealous, that's still completely uncalled for - bury it deep within yourself and drink a lot later. Not to mention he's extremely pretentious, and full of himself. He gets fired from the job he originally has for stealing a Snickers. He refuses to show up for an interview that Rider's dad arranged for him - now it's one thing if he doesn't want the job, but he doesn't even have the decency to tell someone beforehand. He has several chances early in the movie to go after Rider - she clearly likes him but time and again he says he's not interested - after her first date with Stiller, he rips her relentless than says he's in love with her, just to get a rise out of her, and then tells her not to flatter herself. He only finally discovers he cares enough when he has competition. Now, sure the whole he left to deal with his dying father is supposed to somehow equate him maturing or something, and it's terrible that his dad died, but I'm not buying it.

I say this having come to this movie finding most Ben Stiller characters very annoying - you know what I call the "Ben Stiller character" - the neurotic awkward guy who is always a step behind but in a set-up-for-vulgar-slapstick-Farrelly-brothers-style rather than some kind of adorable, naive way. But that character had yet to be established. Ethan Hawke is a douchebag. She made the wrong choice.

What is the goal behind a twist ending? To surprise I suppose - to take everything you thought about the movie, or book, or TV show, and then turn it all around to some extent - what you thought you saw was totally different than what you had really seen, after finding out about the twist. Of course, the best twists are ones that were foreshadowed earlier, and which enhance your viewing/reading the second time around due to the information you now know. Often, however, there is no way you could ever see the twist, which makes it lose some meaning. Less often, the twist is not even shocking - the huge twist ending isn't even much of a twist.

I bring all this up to talk about what is I believe the stupidest twist I have ever come across. Naturally, this is in a Twilight Zone episode. I've spent far too much time reading synopsis of Twilight Zone episodes on wikipedia over the past couple of weeks, and when you have so many twists, you're bound to hit upon some duds.

The episode is The Midnight Sun. Basically, the premise is this. The Earth, somehow, has fallen out of its orbit, and is moving closer and closer to the sun. The Earth's temperature is heating up rapidly, and it's only a matter of time 'til it becomes a fireball. Most people in the city where the episode takes place have either moved up north where it's colder, or have died from the extreme heat. Two characters, a painter and her landlady, are the focus, as they stay in their apartment building and try to cope with the building heat. The landlady is starting to freak out, having trouble dealing with the conditions mentally as well as phsyically. A man comes in and steals their water and then begs their forgiveness. Eventually this is all too much for the landlady, as she collapses and dies. The temperature continues to go up, and the painter herself collapses eventually.

But that's not it just yet. A twist remains? Perhaps, the Twilight Zone classic, that it was all in the painter's mind, and the Earth is just fine? Maybe it's not really Earth after all? Maybe it turns out they're characters in a disaster movie or a painting, or this is part of a devious plan by aliens to conquer the solar system?

Alas. It is none of these. Well, part of the twist is typical - it turns out it was a dream of the painter's, and the Earth was not moving towards the Sun and everything was not burning to death. No, indeed - it is the exact opposite! Everyone is still going to die, but instead of towards the sun, the Earth is still out of its orbit, but moving away from the sun, and everything is going to freeze over! The temperature is changing, but the exact opposite of the way you thought for the entire episode! Of course, pretty much everything from the episode would remain the same. They'll all die. But of cold, and not of heat!

Now, I previously railed against the twist ending to Matchstick Men, but the problem with that twist ending was that it was ridiculously implausible, not like here, that the ending didn't change the plot of the episode at all. This is essentially like having a movie end with a man hanging himself, and then saying, no, wait, twist, he still killed himself, but by drowning instead. Who cares? How does that change anything?

This I submit is the dumbest twist ending, well, I was going to say of any Twilight Zone episode, but I'm going to go ahead and say of anything I've ever seen.

I just watched A Bug's Life. If I learned one thing from it, it's that ants were not put on this earth to serve grasshoppers. It's an educational film.

More books!

The Soul of Baseball: A Journey Through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski



Another short one here, Joe Posnanski basically more or less follows around Buck O'Neil but a year and tells us about it. Without insult to Buck O'Neil, that seems like a weak premise for a book, even a short one, but Posnanski's writing style and ability to capture the feeling of meeting Buck O'Neil through words (I haven't met Buck O'Neil, so I have to take Joe's word here, but it sure seemed that way anyway) makes this a more than worthwhile read. I am an avid reading of Posnanski's sports writing, as he's one of the best around, and I was not disappointed by this full length effort. I learned a bit about the negro leagues (if there a really good comprehensive negro leagues book out there? I would like to read one if there is) but more than that it was a feel good story about Buck O'Neil, and about, you know, hope and optimism and America, and all that garbage/good stuff - things that both can't help but make you smile, but are ripe for the worst kind of cliches if not handled by a masterful writer; it's not as if Posnanski is trying to make you feel a certain way, it's just the way he describes the real events so well (particularly the way he captures the cadences of O'Neil's speech) that makes you feel that way. If you like baseball, it's worth a read, and of course should be required reading by the Hall of Fame voters who have decided Buck does not warrant a place in the Hall.

9.0

Loose Balls by Terry Pluto



An oral history (well, written oral history) of the ABA (American Basketball Association), Pluto is more a compiler than author - the book essentially splices the comments and stories as told by players, coaches, owners and observers, with short headings and occasional clarifications by Pluto. This does mean that it's not quite a cohesive narrative, but it does give the benefit of hearing the stories of the ABA as told in the participants own voices, and often hearing differing views of the same situation by different parties. I have been wanting to learn more about the ABA for a long time, and the book is about as definitive as is possible for something with the inherent limitations of an oral history - there is no tying in of everything, of all the strands, and how they all tie together - there are short sections on each team, on all the important players, and Pluto adds a short round up about each season of the ABA. And while it lacks the great unifying a narrative would add, it is very comphrehensive in its scope - it hits every team, every important player - not just the Dr. Js and George Gervins and Rick Barrys, but more minor players that someone largely unfamiliar with the ABA (like myself) had never heard of, and of course the stories. I'll leave with one of my favorites from the book (the basic facts anyway - I don't remember the names and exact words), as a tease - one player was known for being particularly nuts - when told his team was taking a flight, that because of the change in time zone, which took off at 4 and landed at 3:59, said something to the effect of "I ain't taking no time travel machine."

7.8

Okay, I swear Feed the Tree by Belly was in my dream last night. Why? I don't know. It just was.

Okay, I've been meaning to do this forever, but what better time to start than now. I'm going to start rolling through books I've read and make brief comments and assign them a semi-arbitrary rating on a scale from 0 to 10. (Worse than 5 means I regret reading it, I'll say, so pretty much nothing will be below that).

In the Woods by Tana French



For the first half, I really liked it - it takes place in Ireland and features the narrator, a homicide detective and his partner attempting to decipher to separate murders which happened in the same place, one that happened recently, and one that happened 20 years again, which the main character has a connection with, unknown to the rest of the department except his partner. They made slow but gradual progress through the case, and ferret out interesting leads and suspects, wondering whether or not the cases are related. Two things happen towards the end of the book - one, the older mystery is never really solved, and second, the main character becomes an utter douchebag. The first I could probably live with - even though the book is billed as a mystery by my library, which led me to believe it would be the type of things in which everything at least gets vaguely wrapped up, I'm fine with if done well, things being unsolved. The second I couldn't live with. By the end, I was forcing myself to read it because I knew if I stopped, I wouldn't want to again, because the guy just, and I feel like there should be a more eloquent way to say this, but maybe there isn't - pissed me off. Maybe this sounds juvenile, but I've read many, many books where the main character isn't particularly sympathetic, and this one particularly irritated me, I think maybe because, for the first half, he seemed nice enough and then just became a brat. Okay, so maybe that's an utterly simplistic reason to not like something, but fuck it, it's good enough for me. Also, the ending was too easy - not the actual solving of the murder that was fine - but the personal consequences for the main character, and I couldn't stand all the parts in the book where the narrator (writing from the future) would refer to the past and say, oh, things would great then, and it got all fucked up - I'll find out about what happens when I get to it - those hindsight reflections added absolutely nothing to my experience.

6.0

Atmospheric Disturbances - Rivka Galchen



This book had a great premise, which is a large part in why I decided to read it (it was somewhere on amazon's top 100 books of 2008) - a man wakes up one day and decides his wife has been replaced by a nearly identical carbon copy which is not her. It's brilliant. Now maybe that raised my expectations, and particularly since this is a relatively short novel, about 250 pages, I shouldn't have expected any kind of opus or huge winding conspiritorial narrative, but even considering that, there just wasn't enough there. Just not enough happened in the book, and it got a little repetitive - it didn't move enough from where it started - and there just seemed to be a limit on how much could happen without diverting from the great central premise, when the story is only told from his point of view. I just wish there was a litte more to it is all - when I realized I was getting to the end, I was thinking to myself, how can this be satisfactorily moved along, and as so often happens, it couldn't have been - a little type of ending was squeezed into the last few pages, but it was incredibly unsatisfying - then again, it is short - a definite benefit.

6.2

Clockers - Richard Price



Okay, I really don't bash everything, as you're about to see. Clockers was excellent. I had initally known about Richard Price as a writer for the Wire, then read his latest book, Lush Life, and I decided to dig further into the ouvre with what seems to be his most well-known book Clockers. (I also had no idea that the Spike Lee movie Clockers was about the book - it is now on my netflix queue). It makes perfect sense, after reading the book, why Price was hired to write for The Wire. The subject matter is similar for one - Clockers is the story primarily of a drug dealer who is frustrated with the limitations of his position and wants to either move up or move out, and a homicide cop who has lost the drive he originally had when he came on the force, and a murder that brings their stories together. More than the subject matter though, the book shares with The Wire an insistence on crisp, realistic dialogue (not that I really know what drug dealers talk like, but so they say, and anyway it sounds realistic - good enough for me) and generating an ambiguouity between the good guys and bad guys - sure cops are good, and the drug enforcers who kill people are bad - but there's a lot in between - cops who take bribes, kids who have no other way to make it in the world than working on drug corners. Now, of course, this message has certainly been done before - but this general tone interwoven with an engaging story, three dimsensional characters and just good writing. I look forward to reading another one of Price's books in the future.

8.7

I know this has been said in many places, but what the hell I'll say it again.

Well, first, Mets fans, stop bashing David Wright. He's one of the best 10 positional players in the major leagues. Be thankful to have him. He should never bunt. No matter what.

Instead, perhaps direct your anger towards Jerry Manuel who should be fired immediately for pinch hitting Omir Santos of .650 minor league OPS for Ramon Castro. Immediately. Today. Yesterday. Unforgivable.

Yeah, I'm sure most people agree on these two things. But just putting them out there again.