While going through some old papers today, I discovered by written list of players I'm pretty sure is my draft from my first fantasy baseball league, ten years ago, in 1999.

I'm honestly not sure how I did in the league, and it seems to not be listed in Yahoo's archives, but I figured I'd roll through the players on my team just for kicks and see how they did. I didn't know as much about baseball as I do now of course, but offhand, it looks like a pretty good 1999 fantasy team. I feel like it was points instead of roto, but the points were probably given for things related to 5x5 roto stat, so Ill use those as the standards, rather than list all the double sand triples and such.

The "starters" (or at least that's how I have them written in - reserves are listed later):

OF:


Larry Walker - I feel like this had to be one of my earliest picks (though a couple of others look that way too, which makes me suspicious - I suppose there weren't that many people in the league, so that's a factor). Taking advantage of the insanely pro-hitting Coors, Walker who was just a year removed from an MVP, and had had another great year in 1998, seemed like a sure bet and led the league in average with a .379 average.



Brian Jordan - for some reason, Jordan was one of the players on this team that ended up becoming a fantasy favorite of mine even though he was merely an aveage player, he had an eminently average season in 1999 - his first with Atlanta. Perhaps I was fooled by his career best 1998.



Raul Mondesi - there was a time at which it looked like Mondesi could have become a big star, and he was a solidly above-average player for the first few years of his career. He was also coming off a career best 1997 , and unlike Jordan, a bit of a journeyman, Mondesi actually looked like he was a real possiblity to break out in '98, before falling off by a bit. His '99 was extremely similar to his 1998 but slightly better in terms of fantasy stats - 33 HRs (30 in '98), 98 runs (85 in '98) and 99 RBI (90 in '98) - all career highs, but this masked that Dodger stadium was slightly more hitter friendly than it had been in the recent past, so Mondesi was actually playing a little worse, but for fantasy it was about his peak, aside from his brutal .253 average - he also had a career high 36 steals.



1B: Jeff Bagwell - the second of four guys on this team that seem like they could have been first round picks, but I don't honestly remember what the conventional draft order was in the year. Bagwell was one of the best of a generation of strong first baggers (Frank Thomas, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro) but he had one fantasy baseball stat the rest of them didn't - Bags stole bases. Bagwell had yet another banner year with 42 round trippers, a league leading 143 runs scored, and 126 driven in, and stole 30. He really didn't have a bad year in the entire '90s decade.



2B: Dameon Easley - harken back to a time if you will, when Easley was, believe it or a not, an almost-superstar. It was a very short time, I grant, but there was a moment, more or less in 1997. He had another above average year in 1998, before falling back to average in 1999, where he would hover for a few years - he hit 20 home runs which was still nice from a middle infielder, with 65 RBI and 83 runs scored, and a .266 average. (And of course he didn't steal bases, so the power is a trade off for that I suppose, fantasy-wise).



SS: Barry Larkin - this borderline-hall-of-famer was nearing the end of his excellent career, and managed to put up a fine fantasy year, while his real quality was declining. He stole 30, scored 108 runs, drove in 75 and hit 12 jacks with a .293 average - acruing all these numbers in part by playing all but two regular season games.



3B: Scott Rolen - just one year removed from winning the Rookie of the Year award, it's too bad Rolen's find D couldn't count for fantasy. Rolen put up a fine year when he was on the field, albeit, a bit worse than his previous year - but the main problem was that he was only on the field for 112 games. Remarkably he stole 12 bases, and I had forgotten that apparently he stole a dozen or more bases somehow each of his first three years, though at bad percentages except for 1999.



C: Javy Lopez - up to this point it looked like the Braves may have had a relatively young star catcher for many years on their hands. Lopez was coming off a 34 home run year with 108 RBIs, and he was just as good in 1999, when he played. Unfortunately, that was for less than half the season - Lopez got in a total of 65 games, and was great in them - it was the only time he would play in less than 100 games until 2006.

Starting pitchers:



Pedro Martinez - yeah, this was a pretty good year - if you don't have some recollection of you, you probably weren't watching much baseball back in 1999. Along with Bagwell and Walker (and the next person coming up) he's one of four people I feel like could have been first rounders, and wonder how I came to get them all. Pedro was pretty much as good as it is possible for a starting pitcher to be, short of starting a trillion innings. Roto stats seemed to ally with more sophisticated stats as the Red Sox bats helped make sure he got in 23 wins, along with his otherworldly 2.07 ERA, .923 WHIP and 313 Ks. Now he obviously didn't quite do that in 1998, but he did pretty damn fantastically well, and would do again in 2000.



Greg Maddux - fourth pitcher I would have thought might be a first rounder - sure, he was at the tail end of his run of greatness (on his way to a fair run at very goodness) and we probably could have seen warning signs but we were certainly not that sophisticated back then - after all, he did have an NL leading 2.22 ERA in 1998. His numbers were not so great in 1999. To be fair, they weren't terrible by any means - but comparing them to Maddux numbers of old, it was pretty much his worst season since 1990. He finished with a 3.57 ERA and only 136 Ks, and a 1.345 WHIP but at least he picked up 19 Ws.



Andy Benes - ah, we begin the great run into players who aren't quite remembered so well (mostly more on this when we get to the reserves). Benes, a former number 1 overall pick had managed to carve out a career as a slightly above average pitcher, a career which began its decline in 1999, when his ERA shot up to 4.81 (which was below average but actually not that terrible in this era) from 3.97 and his WHIP shot up to 1.503 from 1.275. At least his wins only fell by one from 13 to 12.



Chan Ho Park - it is amazing that this guy is still managing to kick around (and also honestly that he was somehow at one point an all star - in 2001). That said, he was consistently decent while he was in LA, albeit with a massive walking problem, and having his ERA helped out by pitcher friendly Dodger Stadium. It all came crashing down in Texas, but of course 1999 figured to be his only truly bad year in LA - a 5.23 ERA backed with a 1.585 WHIP, though a solid 174 Ks (thankfully his 100 walks didn't count again outside of WHIP) and 13 wins.

Relief pitchers:



Troy Percival: He was a top tier relief pitcher for the first few years of his career - until he starting striking less people out and walking more. I just happened to catch him in the year when he was unlucky enough to have just 31 saves (11 less than the previous year) and struck out 58 instead of 87. Also amazed this guy is still pitching (though this is probably the end, but credit to him for hanging out so long, and coming back from a whole season out of the majors (2006).



Jeff Shaw - an unlikely big time closer in the late '90s as anyone because he didn't strike out all that many for a late inning reliever, Shaw was right in the middle of his string of five years of closing games and saved 34 of them while managing to only strike out 43 in 68 innings. Strangely he retired two years later at 34, after a relatively effective year - I'm not sure why (injury, personal reasons?).



Designated Hitter: Edgar Martinez - I assume this is more or less utility, and also am not sure why it's listed after the pitchers, but I clearly chose to take an actual designated hitter here, and a guy who I assume lost some fantasy value because this is the only spot that he could play. Otherwise, Edgar, a New York native, had another banner year as one of the lead hitting machines of the '90s - batting .337. He missed about 20 games, and also gets hurt in fantasy because his obscene amount of walks are meaningless. That said he put up a respectable 24 bombs and 86 both runs and RBI.

Reserves next time!

I just wanted to remark on what an awesome fucking nickname La Furia Roja is for the Spanish football team. Beating them was great, but I think the US's next mission should be trying to get a nickname for themselves half that cool.

Also have these Vuvuzelas been driving anyone else crazy? If you don't click on the link, but have watched any of the Confederations Cup, it's basically that insane noise that you hear for the entire fucking broadcast. The site describes it as a "vociferous airhorn" - (in what world does that sound like a good thing?) and quotes some fan as saying he couldn't enjoy football without them - well maybe you just don't like football, and just like loud fucking air horns. And for those seeming to make this into some sort of great proud South African tradition, it became popular in the fucking 1990s. Perhaps with the upcoming World Cup, and the tutoring of some South African scholars, I will become accustomed to the wonderful and unique sound of the Vuvuzela, but at the moment it's just irritating while watching on TV.

For the first time in my life today I went to a golf tournament (wait, that's not technically true - some number of years ago (I'm not sure exactly, but probably around 10) I went to a tournament in Westchester (which I believe was then called the Buick Classic) with my dad, but the rain came down just about as soon as we got there, and we didn't see any real golf). Through my brother, I lucked into some free tickets for the US Open at Bethpage Black for the remainder of the fourth round on Monday.

Now, I don't know all that much about golf - just as much as one gains by being a relatively big sports fan - I follow the four majors pretty closely, read about random tournaments sometimes, and can name, I don't know, 20 golfers or so who are currently competing on the regular or tour. I have no idea what clubs people should be using, or how good a shot is (I read somewhere - a few golf writers bashing NYers for not being all that knowledgeable - maybe bashing is a bit harsh but basically said " I wasn't impressed with the golf knowledge of the New York fans. I think if you ask the players they would tell you the same. I heard lots of cheers over shots that were mediocre by even weekend golf standards." - I'm sorry we were cheering shots that weren't good enough to warrent cheers and that that's what you get for deigning to have a tournament with all the rabble on a public course and people who don't necessarily play golf themselves - I'm sure I'm sometimes snooty towards stupid baseball fans, but even I don't think I've accused them of cheering too much). Anyway, I had paid particular attention to this US Open in a little bit of hometown pride, and also because the egalitarian in me likes that it's on a public course.

To be honest I wasn't sure what approach one takes when watching a tournament - it's not like most other sports where you just have a seat and all the action takes place in one place. The leaders were on 8 when we got to the course, having picked up from where they ended up on Sunday, and we started by taking in the action from 17, which was a par 3, so you were able to see both the tee off (albeit from afar, where we were) and the green from one place. The only problem here was that it's hard to see a whole lot - due to the cloud cover, we could see the ball leaving the golfers' clubs off the tee, and see the ball land, but not all too much in between. That said, we saw the putting, which lots of golfers seemed to have trouble with, and we hung out there until Tiger (and his partner Micheal Sim) came by. We then walked over to the 16th, and then to the 15th, where we stayed as the last three groups came through, featuring most of the players that had a chance at that point - Phil Mickelson, Hunter Mahan, Ross Fisher, David Duval, Ricky Barnes and eventual winner Lucas Glover. We were able to see mostly the fairway so we got a decent look at the second shots of a lot of the players on the par 4 15th and 16th.

As much fun as actually watching the players hit, though, was attempting to follow the action elsehwere as it was going on, both through the roars of the crowd that would accompany a birdie or par, in different volumes, and through the radio and mini-television that one of the other members of my party had. After each shot, or sound I needed to know - what happened to Glover and Barnes on 14? What did Fisher shoot? Did Phil make his tough par putt? I never imagined I could be captivated by a golf tournament. Tiger had a chance for a while, but missed several makeable birdie putts and was pretty much done after the 16th. After Phil Mickelson eagled at 13, the excitement really heated up - ultimately becoming a bit anti-climactic after the outcome was all but decided by the final hole, but it was exciting for a pretty good while - in a way, like watching the early rounds of a NCAA tournament - while you're watching one thing, just as eager to figure out what's going on elsewhere.

Anyway, basically, I write this as much as anything else to give a little bit of an apology to golf. I've bashed you many times in the past, and I probably will again in the future. Golf isn't my favorite sport by any means and I haven't quite reach the point at which I'm interested in attempting playing (I don't have any clubs, and I'm worried that the frustration would drive me nuts). That said, I enjoyed you in person for one day very much, and kudos for that.

After doing so wiki research on Public Morals, it naturally led me to investigate other shows in the classic only-one-episode-aired field. The first incredibly interesting one I came upon was Britain's 1990 sitcom, Heil Honey I'm Home! Basically, the premise is that a '50s era TV sitcom has been rediscovered which is about the uncomfortable relations in 1930s between Hitler and Eva Braun and his nosy semetic neighbors Arny and Rosa Goldenstein, who he wants out of their lives, but who seem to keep butting into them. Naturally, the programme (it's British, remember), was hugely controversial and widely panned as being in bad taste, and possibly trivializing Naziism. The premise of the first episode is that Neville Chamberlain is coming to dinner ("the most important man in Europe" Adolph claims) and Hitler wants to keep the Rosenbergs out of it, but of course they find out and chaos ensues. With a set up like that, it seems like the program is bound to be either hilariously bad, hilarious offensive, hilariously absurd, or at least in some way funny on any pure or ironic level. I mean, there are so many different ways for it to at least be mildly amusing through it's potential for incredibly misses-the-point parody.

Anyway, so I found it on youtube, which I was pretty stunned about at first, until I watched it.

It was awful. Beyond awful. It was set up in three parts, and after watching the first, which I barely got through, there was not a sliver of a chance of watching the rest. Nothing about it was funny. Not the show itself, unsurprisingly. But not the Hitler offensiveness. Not how ridiculously stupid the humor was. Most of the times the laugh track went off, there wasn't even a joke, not even a cheesy, cliched, or Lockhorns style jab. Usually, someone just said something and then for reasons I couldn't understand studio laughter ensued. Anyway, I'd recommend not watching anything in the video I'm putting up here as a document of the show's existence.



It really makes you appreciate things that are so-bad-it's-funny. When you watch something like, say, Manos: The Hands of Fate - sometimes it makes you feel as if anything could be made so bad, that it's funny - but it's really not true. Some things - many things, even are so bad, they're just bad - and watching isn't funny, or even painfully funny, or ironically funny, it's just painful.

The only other notable thing is if you actually choose to watch the first couple seconds of the theme it bears a vague resemblence to the song from the old "My Buddy" commercials.

Steven Bochco takes on, part 2.


Public Morals - Cop Rock may be Steven Bochco's commonly accepted biggest failure, but as far as I can find, Public Morals is his only one-episode wonder, and his only true sitcom, airing on October 30, 1996. It was based around a group of detectives in a city's vice squad, and the actors included Donal Logue and Peter Gerety, of Homicide fame, and the first season of the Wire, along with possibly either groundbreaking or offensive gay administrative assistant played by Bill Brochtrup whose character was imported from NYPD Blue. The most interesting thing I can find about this show is it's one and only IMDB user comment, under the subject heading "Not Bad" by goomba8, "I saw this in it's original one-show run, and have it on tape somewhere. I didn't think it was any worse than 75% of the comedies on TV. I know that if there had been a second show, I would have watched it. The word was out that this was going to be some sort of low-level, politically incorrect comedy show, and it was reviewed badly before it aired, so I kinda knew by the first commercial it would be gone." Impressive.

Total Security - A series apparently so obscure it doesn't even have a wikipedia page, or is mentioned anywhere on the site, random poster Marty McKee, added a two sentence summary on IMDB describing the show as an "anti-Rockford Files" about a high tech security firm in which an odd couple of private investigators take on cases including blackmail, divorce and murder. The series starred James Remar and James Belushi and featured an early few episodes with Jason Biggs. It appears that 6 or 7 of the 13 episodes made aired in 1997.

Brooklyn South - This ensemble cop drama attempted to do for uniformed cops what NYPD Blue did for detectives and even won an Emmy award for best directing in a drama series. It featured such cast mates as Adam Rodriguez, who is apparently some guy on CSI: Miami, Dylan Walsh who would become Sean on Nip/Tuck, Yancy Butler, who starred in Witchblade (and apparently is also the daughter of Lovin' Spoonful drummer Joe Butler) and Doogie Howser's dad James B. Sikking. It lasted for a full season before getting canned.



City of Angels - Entirely unrelated to the movie of the same name, Bochco attempted to enter the medical world again in this drama, apparently noteworthy as the first primarily African-American medical drama to air on network TV. It featured established stars such as Blair Underwood, Vivica A. Fox, and Michael Warren of Hill Street Blues fame, and future stars (stars is a relative term) such as Maya Rudolph, Gabrielle Union, and Hill Harper who would go on to be some guy in CSI: Miami. It lasted one season, or two half seasons rather - from January to December 2000, before getting the axe.



Philly - Kim Delaney made the ill-fated decision to leave NYPD Blue to star in this lawyer drama in which she was a partner in a small law firm with Tom Everett Scott. It lasted it a whole season, but nothing was doing - low ratings got it canned. Co-stars included Homicide's Kyle Secor and Terminator 3's Kristanna Loken.



Blind Justice - Yes, it's true - this is pretty much one of those TV series that were created just for the name (can anybody say Saving Grace?). It's, as you might guess, about a recently blinded police detective who is out to prove he can still do the job. Castmates include 24 sixth season actresses Marison Nichols (Agent Nadia Yassir in 24) and Rena Sofer (Jack's mom). The midseason replacement lasted 12 episodes and was not renewed.



Over There - Steven Bochco went to basic cable and FX to take on the war on Iraq, marking another minor first - the first scripted show about an ongoing US military action. The show shows such luminaries as Erik Palladino, who apparently was in a Law & Order: SVU episode I saw recently, and Josh Henderson who played Nicolette Sheridan's nephew on Desperate Housewives. It was panned for taking no stand on the war in any way, and lasted all of 13 episodes.

...to be continued when Steven Bochco puts out five or so more failed shows

Anyone watching TNT in the last month or so, either for NBA Playoff games or endless repeats of Law & Order has been subject to countless previews for its second year series "Raising the Bar."

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the preivew on youtube - so here's the idea - Steven Bochco is a god of Drama, a late 20th/early 21st century Shakespeare who portrays the law the way it is while keeping you on the edge of your seats with hairraising legal and personal battles which intersect in interesting ways. Basically, a bunch of cast members talk about the gospel of Bochco and what it means to work for him, and what you, as the viewer, will be getting by watching the show. The disembodied narrator at the beginning and ends of the commercial tell us that Bochco is the man who brought us such shows as NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues and LA Law.



However, through this lionizing of Bochco, (with plenty of credit given for three successful series - not an easy feat) a few of Bochco's less successful shows have been glossed over (along with one or two successful ones)

I've his other creations aside from the big three of NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues and LA Law , in chronology order. It's an impressively long list, so I'm slicing it into two parts.

Paris - Bochco's first series with his new production company, was, unsurprisingly a cop show - James Earl Jones starred as Captain Woody Paris, who oversaw a team of young detectives, and dealt with issues at home as well. Wikipedia claims the show was critically well reviewed, but was put up in a killer time slot on Saturday nights. The most lasting impact of the show was Jones meeting his future (and current) wife Cecilia Hart, a fellow cast member.



Bay City Blues - Airing in Fall 1983, although it sounds like it could easily be another cop show, Bay City Blues was about a minor league baseball team - young players on their way up, older players on the way down and everyone in between. It was the second Bochcho show (after Paris) to go up against Hart to Hart and lose. It starred Michael Nouri of Flashdance fame and Ken Olin of Thirtysomething fame and is perhaps most notable featuring very early roles for Dennis Franz and Sharon Stone.



Hooperman - This one actually ran two seasons, perhaps because it featured John Ritter, as, what else, but a police officer, named Harry Hooperman, and from what I can glean, the premise is more or less that he's a police officer, and he takes over his apartment building after his elderly landlady is killed, and hires what is to become his romantic interest to run it. What else happens is anybody's guess, but there were 42 episodes worth, remarkably.



Doogie Howser, MD - Ah! The biggest success story outside the big three, probably not as noted because it strays from Bochco's favorite topic of cops. You know the basic story, and of course, Neil Patrick Harris has thankfully reemerged once again as a star thanks to Harold and Kumar and How I Met Your Mother. It's worth noting that this was executively produced by two of the biggest creative minds in television over the past 25 years, Steven Bochco and David E. Kelley, leading to feelings it could have been even more successful than the modest four season run it had (They had both worked together on LA Law, but it was started by Bochco, and then run largely by Kelley).



Cop Rock - The legend itself finally arrives. Ranked 8th in a TV Guide list of the worst television shows of all time (which makes me both incredibly curious to actually see an episode, and to see what 7 shows are worse), how the idea somehow got beyond the planning stage must speak to how much weight Steven Bochco carried at the time. The title, for what it's worth, more or less summarizes the idea of the show - it's Hill Street Blues meets, well, a broadway musical, or more likely, a grade b musical television special. Wikipedia does not have nearly as much information as I would like, but it teases with lines like "Another episode had a lineup of Hispanic suspects proclaim in song "We're the local color with the coppertone skin / And you treat us like we're guilty of some terrible sin." (There was amazingly an NBC team drama/musical that debuted the same year called Hull High which naturally failed quickly and spectacularly as well - it's true that things really do come in pairs).



Civil Wars - Another legal drama a la LA Law, it focused on some New York divorce lawyers (get it? Civil Wars? Between husband and wife?) Mariel Hemingway and Debi Mazar star in this series which apparently lasted two seasons, after which it was cancelled, but Mazar's character was somehow inserted into the last season of LA Law.



Capital Critters - Bochco's foray into the world of animation turned as well as his foray into musicals. Featuring the voicework of Neil Patrick Harris and Bobcat Goldthwait among others (and of course as any show with animals must, Frank Welker), it was an oddly serious attempt to probe deeper issues through cartoon mice. The series begins with our main character mouse, Max, fleeing to Washington DC, after seeing his entire family in Nebraska murdered by exterminators while he was gathering food, and eventually he ends up mingling with other critters in the White House basement. It lasted a month and a half before being cancelled.



Murder One - Probably the most successful relative failure of Bochco's is this one, which was serial television, before it became popular again ten years later. The first season involved one major case - which led to audiences who missed episodes before the advent of DV-R to lose track of show, and an attempt to revamp the second season, making it easier to follow, and replacing original star Daniel Benzali with Anthony LaPaglia and adding future Buffy principal and 24 president DB Woodside. A handful of other well-known actors and actresses appeared in the series, including Stanley Tucci as the villain in the first season, Patricia Clarkson as the Benzali's wife, and future 24 president Gregory Itzin. After two seasons, it was done.

Much moreore in the concluding segment.

Jerry Manuel is a terrible manager. Any Mets fan knows this and it frustrates me to no end. It makes games painful to watch. There are so many reasons why, but in the first inning in today's game against the Phillies, he shows it right away - after a Luis Castillo double to lead off the game, of course, Manuel has second place hitter Alex Cora bunt to play for one run in the FIRST INNING against the NL-runs-per-game leader PHILLIES with TIM REDDING on the mound. It's frankly, unjustifiable.



I can't wait 'til he's gone, though my gut tells me even if the Mets fail this year, he's got at least one more full year before there's even a chance of him being fired. There will come a day, sooner or later, when it will be unacceptable to completely ignore stats, and do things like Manuel does on an everyday basis, and snicker at people who are open-minded and are open to stats, as if, as a baseball insider, going with your gut is your birthright. I'm confident it will happen one day, I'm just not sure when, but I can't wait.

I was browsing the shelves of Virgin Megastore in Union Square recently, and pretty much everything was on sale, as the store is closing up for good any day now. However, some items seem to be more featured on sale - they're not just in their alphabetically designated rows, but rather there in a display case closer to the front - sometimes with little labels telling why we should take that particular album. Now, since it was closing there were a lot more of these albums than usual at stores, but amongst them I noticed what always seems to be a strange inclusion - Pearl Jam's Binaural.

I myself bought Binaural a couple of years back at a Circuit City (when it still existed, and before it was going out of business) for three dollars. It was where it usually is when there's a sale - sitting aside the legions of greatest hits collections and copies of whatever relatively new artist the store thought would sell three months ago.

What's so special about Binaural that seems (at least in my experience) to earn it this strange distinction? I'm not quite sure. Binaural was released in 2000, Pearl Jam's sixth album, and its first not to go platinum. Still, reviews were generally favorable, and Pearl Jam has a fairly devoted fan base. But that begs the question regardless - why the hell are record stores and electronics stores overstocked with Binaural copies?

Maybe this is just something I see - I have a weird condition that makes me see Binaural on sale everywhere, but I think something's up. Just haven't figured it out yet.

Apparently A&E's The Cleaner is coming back for a second season.



Now it turns out this Benjamin Bratt led drama (featuring Grace Park of Battlestar Galactica fame, the second best well-known Korean actress, after chick-from-lost Yunjin Kim) is about the incredibly lame premise that Bratt is a former addict who thinks of clever and creative ways to drive people off their addictions.

Of course, I only found this out after turning to wikipedia - based on the incredibly vague commercials, I had thought it was about something different entirely - and the other people whom I had asked what it was about, had thought each their own totally different thing.

I wish I remembered them all, but the impression I had (I'm honestly not really sure why I had this impression - maybe when you see such a vague add, you just think of something cool that could work with the title, and assume that's it) was that Bratt's character would be like Harvey Keitel's Mr. Wolf character in Pulp Fiction - he would be hired by murderers, or perhaps other criminal organizations to "clean" up their crimes - eliminate the evidence and such. How does that not sound a million times better?

Or The Cleaner could be the story of a money launderer - this is another great idea - he cleans other people's cash - there's never been to my knowledge, a movie or show that focuses on the one doing the laundering - always on the ones making the money - he could have run ins with both criminals and the government - it's a great anti-hero position - he's not murdering people, so he's easier to like - there's all different ways to launder money, and he may have to switch around to prevent from being caught, or risk being held up by criminals - I really want to see this made.