If you've ever used public transportation west of Sepulveda, you've probably been on the Santa Monica "Big Blue Bus." The Big Blue Bus services all of Santa Monica, much of Venice, West LA, and UCLA in Westwood. It is often considered one of the best metro bus lines in the western United States. And I am here to question its anthropological context.
Santa Monica is a really weird place. It is one of the few independent cities in Los Angeles along with Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. Santa Monica is essentially a city that thrives with the tourism industry. The city is much bigger then most cities with only 90,000 people and that is because on a given day, the population will be well over 100,000 due to the massive amounts of tourists walking around. For this reason, the western section of town (west of Lincoln) is dominated by over-priced restaurants and boutiques. The other dense business area is about three miles east near the intersection of the San Diego Freeway and the Santa Monica freeway. Both highways offer nice locations for many company's offices and people from all over the city come each day from about 8-6 to add to the population.
In between the 405 and the beach, however, about 85,000 people make their homes. There are scattered businesses serving these people along Wilshire Blvd, and this stretch of suburbia is by NO MEANS desolate. In fact, this area is essentially the true Santa Monica in that it serves those who LIVE in the area, as opposed to those who are visiting. But these homes are still "near" the beach. Housing prices and rental costs are still exorbitantly high thanks to one of the most famous beaches on Earth being a short bike ride away. So, like most beach towns, Santa Monica is strictly bourgeoisie, although unlike most beach towns, Santa Monica is big, and a real, self-sustaining city. This fact requires that public transportation, something that is rarely seen in small beach towns, be efficient. This is where the Big Blue Bus comes in.
The Big Blue Bus acts as the mass transit system for people paying at least 900 dollars a month for an apartment. See, in our culture, The Bus (notice the caps) represents something that is not present here. The Bus is perhaps the most iconic symbol of the working class. Especially in a city like Los Angeles, where the Bentleys and Beamers seem to outnumber the pedestrians, a bus stop is chock full of symbolic associations of the proletariat. Bus stops all over the country, and especially in LA, are homes to the brown and black people that are cleaning the homes, washing the dishes, and building the 3 million dollar homes of the people driving by in their 75,000 dollar range rovers. Metro bus systems aren't an exercise in environmentalism—a tool to lessen our footprint—they are a tool to get to work for those without cars. Metro bus lines across the country are filled with working-class people on their ways from working-class neighborhoods to places like Santa Monica. The Bus (still in caps) is how burgers get flipped, hotel rooms get cleaned, and Hummers get waxed.
But Santa Monica is a town without a working class. That is not to say there are not workers, there are plenty of people who go to work every day. But these people tend to be white people working white collar jobs—people who in New York or Chicago would be using trains to get around, but thanks to LA's sprawl, aren’t offered this opportunity. Full disclosure here, my girlfriend works in Santa Monica, and often takes the Big Blue Bus—she, like many residents, work as hard as any busboy or caddy, but is not a member of the working class. We are middle-class through and through. And here is the problem. Middle class people in other cities don't take busses. But here, they need to. But just because they need the bus (no caps), doesn't mean they want to ride The Bus (caps). So the Big Blue Bus offers an alternative.
By renaming the bus line to invoke images of a cartoon, the Big Blue Bus has taken steps to remove the proletariat stigma that The Bus invokes. Beyond the name, by cutting off service at UCLA, the Big Blue Bus services exactly ZERO working-class neighborhoods hence, it allows citizens of one of the richest cities in the country, and students at on of the most prestigious universities on the West Coast to happily get from point A to point B without waiting at a bus stop with the black and brown people that are synonymous with our idea of a bus stop.
Furthermore, instead of marketing to what the bus actually does (take people around), the Big Blue Bus markets itself as a green alternative to driving. And while this fact is 100% true, it still doesn't compensate for the fact the Big Blue Bus still is a Bus, and its meaning isn't a green alternative to driving, but in reality, it is a way for people to get to and from work. But by limiting the range, using the "green" façade as marketing tool, and of course removing the symbolic associations of calling it The Bus, and instead creating its own symbolic association that seems to attempt to place it amongst a Richard Scary fantasy town, the Big Blue Bus has removed any misconceptions that the riders on this bus are anything like the thousands of riders on busses across the country.
I can't decide whether this strategy is an incredibly insensitive exploitation of the citizens of Santa Monica, or an absolutely brilliant marketing tool. I will say this, Santa Monica, despite having only 90,000 residents, somehow supports five Whole Foods. Whole Foods is not just expensive, but overpriced, exploitive, and just unnecessary, yet somehow five big "grocery" stores are supported in this town. This phenomenon—that of "organic" being such a powerful marketing tool—is most likely akin to the Big Blue Bus. Perhaps if the Ralph's or Vons in LA were renamed "Green Organic Markets" they would cease to service working class people hence making them more appealing to middle classers. I really don't know what all this means, but I think I don't like it.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Why the NFL SUCKS, part II
Because of the idiots that support the league:
First off—let me get this out of the way: No, I do not think that just because you watch the NFL that you are an anti-intellectual, racist, idiot. I am merely pointing out the connections between the two, and obviously would be equally as ignorant if I tried to pain the entire fan base of one of the most popular things in this country as red-state idiots.
THAT BEING SAID…..
I have held that this statement is true: "Not all Republicans are racists, but pretty much all racists are Republicans." It would be really hard to argue that, even a republican. And PLEASE spare me with the radical left-wing bullshit—it's a fact that 99% of all modern-day, redneck racists, with confederate sympathies vote fucking republican. OK.
Now, what does this have to do with the fan base (and hence production) of NFL football? I am arguing that while not all NFL fans are antiquated, meathead, anti-intellectuals, I am pretty sure that most meathead, masculine, idiots, are big fans of the National Football League.
It's like this: In the last fifteen years, congruently with the explosion of anti-intellectual reality TV such as American Idol, as well as the two elections that somehow put someone who didn’t know how to read into the highest office in the land, Mass culture has found a pigeonhole in exploiting and manipulating the lowest common denominator of the American population. Network TV, national radio, the two Bush campaigns; these are examples of using very simple and anti-complex themes to appeal to the retards that make up this country. All of these ventures have been VERY successful.
The NFL, a league that has been on the cusp of being the most popular sport in this country for four decades, finally took on this method in the last fifteen years and the league, and especially the fans of the league, have come to resemble the same slack-jawed rednecks that voted for Bush or make shows like Idol the most important things on Earth.
I DO believe that the NFL is something that could be discussed on a VERY intellectual level, and can come to represent very significant moments in American culture. But for the reasons mentioned above, the league has instead chose to appeal to those most easily entertained. We get absolutely TERRIBLE announcers, day in and day out, in order to not confound the viewer with facts or opinions that might stimulate brain activity. We are exposed to countless hours of ridiculous and mundane "commentary" on ESPN, the NFL Network, and tens of other outlets whose main goal is not to advance thought about the sport, but instead to regurgitate the same facts over and over, as if it was a common case of Herpes. And then the league is marketed to the base of the American population as a national holiday. The Brett Favre story became so iconic for this phenomenon that The Onion ran a headline last week: ESPN completely misses Brett Favre/Packers story.
Yes, it's kind of funny, but it's also commentary on how simple the league's main audience has become. I listen to these sports commentators who tell the same stories, regurgitate the same information, and NEVER offer an independent original thought lest offend the gigantic fan base that comes to pray to the altar of idiocy each Sunday.
My two favorite example of this is the NFL draft.
The Draft is silly because it is one of the biggest crap-shoots on Earth. Each year, GMs take turns throwing darts at a draft board and selecting guys that have exactly a 50/50 shot of becoming players. Yet SOMEHOW, we watch this draft as if there is any formula or skill involved and give guys like Mel Kiper Jr. the respect not only to watch him, but to establish value in the market. This past year, Kiper (and about every other person who had ever watched football in their lives) had Texas Tech's Michael Crabtree rated as the number one receiver. But when archaic Raiders owner Al Davis selected Maryland's Darius Heyward-Bey over Crabtree, Crabtree actually used Kiper and others' opinions as contract leverage against the team that drafted him. Needless to say, the contract is not signed, and it's now week 6.
Four years ago, someone (probably Kiper) determined that Vanderbilt's Jay Cutler was less of a NFL prospect than Texas's Vince Young or USC's Matt Leinert. Despite better numbers and a more polished set of skills, the fear was that Cutler's college experience "in the shotgun" would not translate over to the NFL. Of course, this line of thinking is ridiculous because skills are skills, and Cutler could be taught to QB from two steps forward (and also because 30% of his snaps are in the shotgun anyways). But somehow, this became the predominant flaw against Cutler. The NFL fan base, and its inability to form their own original thought, all of a sudden had an opinion. I can remember 4 separate people telling me why Leinert or Young would be more successful, and it was all due to Cutler's shotgun experience. Of course these people never saw Cutler throw a single pass, and had no clue what they were talking about, but these talking points became Cutler's downfall. This line of logic is not dissimilar from the "swift-boat" technique that brought John Kerry down in 2004, and most likely was appealing to the same idiots.
Young was selected third overall. Leinert tenth. Cutler went eleventh. Today, Cutler is the starting QB for the Chicago Bears with a career 87.3 QB rating. Leinert and Young are either backups or third-string (depending on who you ask) for teams with 37 year-old starting QBs.
This year, this retarded crap shoot will be broadcast in prime time for the hordes of zealots and nuts that think of this as substantial television. They will watch names they only know through Kiper's inane ramblings, and the hundreds of pointless hours of coverage the draft receives despite the utter irrelevance of 95% of the picks.
So, by now, 1000 words into this, you're waiting for me to say what the hell all of this bitter rambling has to do with meatheads. Have you been to a sports bar recently? I went to one two weekends ago for the Browns-Bengals game. The bar was showing every game at that time, and I was one of 50 people on the back patio. Now, I admit, that this is my own personal opinion, but if you are reading my blog, I assume my opinion means something to you (either direct or inverse), but I have done everything in my power in the last twelve years to avoid being around these people. Well, everything short of giving up the NFL. They are stupid, they are misogynistic, they value masculinity and individual prosperity far more than myself, and their concern for deeper issues or further explanations of things they have been taught are turn-offs. Now, how do I know this about someone's inner-character merely by getting a cursory glance at them during one fo the hundreds of commercial breaks we are forced to endure? Obviously, I don't, and I am making a sick and gross assumption about people I don't know. But this is the image they give off. This is the contiguous character that comes off in between their sets at the gym and their inability to use words bigger than Favre. Essentially, these are the people that put George W. Bush in office, not once, but twice! THERE, I did it!
Take a look at where football is most popular. The flagship for the sport of football is Texas where Friday Night Lights illuminate America's team. Where kids are bred from age 6 to play football. Where Varsity Blues meet Hook em Horns. Where G.W. Bush was governor, where John Kennedy was murdered and where Lamar Hunt realized that no matter how many rings he won, he would never win the hearts of the Cowboys fans. And outside of Texas, where else is football most iconic? Canton, OH. Now, I know I know a lot of you from Canton, and I know you are not all bad people, but it's not exactly a bastion of critical thinking. Instead, the McKinley v Massilon game (the biggest high school game in the country) is a breeding ground for future Buckeyes, and future wife-beaters; future NFL player, and future Idol viewers. The point is that the associations that SURROUND the sport, are not progress, thought, and compassion, but instead Hank Williams III, Air Force flyovers, and Rush Limbaugh.
And speaking of Limbaugh, it was he who just this morning said that, despite his banishment from the potential ownership team trying to buy the Rams, that he "remains one of the sport's biggest non-paid promoters."
So here it is. No, I don't think that just because you like the NFL, that you are Rush Limbaugh, but I'm pretty sure that all the racist, repugnant, and anti-intellectual Rush Limbaughs of the world are big fans of the league.
First off—let me get this out of the way: No, I do not think that just because you watch the NFL that you are an anti-intellectual, racist, idiot. I am merely pointing out the connections between the two, and obviously would be equally as ignorant if I tried to pain the entire fan base of one of the most popular things in this country as red-state idiots.
THAT BEING SAID…..
I have held that this statement is true: "Not all Republicans are racists, but pretty much all racists are Republicans." It would be really hard to argue that, even a republican. And PLEASE spare me with the radical left-wing bullshit—it's a fact that 99% of all modern-day, redneck racists, with confederate sympathies vote fucking republican. OK.
Now, what does this have to do with the fan base (and hence production) of NFL football? I am arguing that while not all NFL fans are antiquated, meathead, anti-intellectuals, I am pretty sure that most meathead, masculine, idiots, are big fans of the National Football League.
It's like this: In the last fifteen years, congruently with the explosion of anti-intellectual reality TV such as American Idol, as well as the two elections that somehow put someone who didn’t know how to read into the highest office in the land, Mass culture has found a pigeonhole in exploiting and manipulating the lowest common denominator of the American population. Network TV, national radio, the two Bush campaigns; these are examples of using very simple and anti-complex themes to appeal to the retards that make up this country. All of these ventures have been VERY successful.
The NFL, a league that has been on the cusp of being the most popular sport in this country for four decades, finally took on this method in the last fifteen years and the league, and especially the fans of the league, have come to resemble the same slack-jawed rednecks that voted for Bush or make shows like Idol the most important things on Earth.
I DO believe that the NFL is something that could be discussed on a VERY intellectual level, and can come to represent very significant moments in American culture. But for the reasons mentioned above, the league has instead chose to appeal to those most easily entertained. We get absolutely TERRIBLE announcers, day in and day out, in order to not confound the viewer with facts or opinions that might stimulate brain activity. We are exposed to countless hours of ridiculous and mundane "commentary" on ESPN, the NFL Network, and tens of other outlets whose main goal is not to advance thought about the sport, but instead to regurgitate the same facts over and over, as if it was a common case of Herpes. And then the league is marketed to the base of the American population as a national holiday. The Brett Favre story became so iconic for this phenomenon that The Onion ran a headline last week: ESPN completely misses Brett Favre/Packers story.
Yes, it's kind of funny, but it's also commentary on how simple the league's main audience has become. I listen to these sports commentators who tell the same stories, regurgitate the same information, and NEVER offer an independent original thought lest offend the gigantic fan base that comes to pray to the altar of idiocy each Sunday.
My two favorite example of this is the NFL draft.
The Draft is silly because it is one of the biggest crap-shoots on Earth. Each year, GMs take turns throwing darts at a draft board and selecting guys that have exactly a 50/50 shot of becoming players. Yet SOMEHOW, we watch this draft as if there is any formula or skill involved and give guys like Mel Kiper Jr. the respect not only to watch him, but to establish value in the market. This past year, Kiper (and about every other person who had ever watched football in their lives) had Texas Tech's Michael Crabtree rated as the number one receiver. But when archaic Raiders owner Al Davis selected Maryland's Darius Heyward-Bey over Crabtree, Crabtree actually used Kiper and others' opinions as contract leverage against the team that drafted him. Needless to say, the contract is not signed, and it's now week 6.
Four years ago, someone (probably Kiper) determined that Vanderbilt's Jay Cutler was less of a NFL prospect than Texas's Vince Young or USC's Matt Leinert. Despite better numbers and a more polished set of skills, the fear was that Cutler's college experience "in the shotgun" would not translate over to the NFL. Of course, this line of thinking is ridiculous because skills are skills, and Cutler could be taught to QB from two steps forward (and also because 30% of his snaps are in the shotgun anyways). But somehow, this became the predominant flaw against Cutler. The NFL fan base, and its inability to form their own original thought, all of a sudden had an opinion. I can remember 4 separate people telling me why Leinert or Young would be more successful, and it was all due to Cutler's shotgun experience. Of course these people never saw Cutler throw a single pass, and had no clue what they were talking about, but these talking points became Cutler's downfall. This line of logic is not dissimilar from the "swift-boat" technique that brought John Kerry down in 2004, and most likely was appealing to the same idiots.
Young was selected third overall. Leinert tenth. Cutler went eleventh. Today, Cutler is the starting QB for the Chicago Bears with a career 87.3 QB rating. Leinert and Young are either backups or third-string (depending on who you ask) for teams with 37 year-old starting QBs.
This year, this retarded crap shoot will be broadcast in prime time for the hordes of zealots and nuts that think of this as substantial television. They will watch names they only know through Kiper's inane ramblings, and the hundreds of pointless hours of coverage the draft receives despite the utter irrelevance of 95% of the picks.
So, by now, 1000 words into this, you're waiting for me to say what the hell all of this bitter rambling has to do with meatheads. Have you been to a sports bar recently? I went to one two weekends ago for the Browns-Bengals game. The bar was showing every game at that time, and I was one of 50 people on the back patio. Now, I admit, that this is my own personal opinion, but if you are reading my blog, I assume my opinion means something to you (either direct or inverse), but I have done everything in my power in the last twelve years to avoid being around these people. Well, everything short of giving up the NFL. They are stupid, they are misogynistic, they value masculinity and individual prosperity far more than myself, and their concern for deeper issues or further explanations of things they have been taught are turn-offs. Now, how do I know this about someone's inner-character merely by getting a cursory glance at them during one fo the hundreds of commercial breaks we are forced to endure? Obviously, I don't, and I am making a sick and gross assumption about people I don't know. But this is the image they give off. This is the contiguous character that comes off in between their sets at the gym and their inability to use words bigger than Favre. Essentially, these are the people that put George W. Bush in office, not once, but twice! THERE, I did it!
Take a look at where football is most popular. The flagship for the sport of football is Texas where Friday Night Lights illuminate America's team. Where kids are bred from age 6 to play football. Where Varsity Blues meet Hook em Horns. Where G.W. Bush was governor, where John Kennedy was murdered and where Lamar Hunt realized that no matter how many rings he won, he would never win the hearts of the Cowboys fans. And outside of Texas, where else is football most iconic? Canton, OH. Now, I know I know a lot of you from Canton, and I know you are not all bad people, but it's not exactly a bastion of critical thinking. Instead, the McKinley v Massilon game (the biggest high school game in the country) is a breeding ground for future Buckeyes, and future wife-beaters; future NFL player, and future Idol viewers. The point is that the associations that SURROUND the sport, are not progress, thought, and compassion, but instead Hank Williams III, Air Force flyovers, and Rush Limbaugh.
And speaking of Limbaugh, it was he who just this morning said that, despite his banishment from the potential ownership team trying to buy the Rams, that he "remains one of the sport's biggest non-paid promoters."
So here it is. No, I don't think that just because you like the NFL, that you are Rush Limbaugh, but I'm pretty sure that all the racist, repugnant, and anti-intellectual Rush Limbaughs of the world are big fans of the league.
Playoff DIscussion
Mike "the bot" Hearn:
This morning, I calculated this:
[Sport/Full Season/First Round Playoff Length/Percentage] –
Football/16/1/6.25%
Basketball/82/7/8.5%
Baseball/162/5/3%
Conclusion: baseball has the shortest first-round playoff of the three major sports by more than 50%.
[Sport/Winning percentage of top quarter of teams/Winning percentage of bottom quarter of teams/Difference] –
Football/73%/21%/52%
Basketball/72%/27%/45%
Baseball/59%/40%/19%
Conclusion: baseball has more parity by far than the other sports, meaning odds of the better team winning are lower than in any other sport.
Together these two conclusions essentially mean that a five-game playoff series is a coinflip. After 162 baseball games, the good teams and the bad teams are only separated by 19% points, so imagine the parity of putting almost equally good teams together and having them face-off in a series that is not long enough to statistically determine who is better. It’s meaningless.
What if a prize-fight only lasted one round? Or if the Super Bowl were 28 minutes (which is 3% of a total season, by the way)? It would be bullshit, and no one would accept that the victor was the better team because there WASN’T ENOUGH TIME TO DETERMINE ANYTHING. In a five-game baseball series, your star pitcher could have a bad day or A-Rod could go 2-12, whatever, and your season is OVER. Randomness rules over consistency as time span decreases.
To properly choose the length of the playoffs, two factors need to be considered: parity, and boring the crap out of people. Now to TRULY establish which team is better, a series would have to be INFINITE games, and the wins/losses would slowly approach the true mean of how good two teams are. In 1997, maybe in an infinite series the Indians would win 60% of the games and the Marlins 40% (but the Marlins win 4 of the first 7, sucks for you guys). However, infinite series are obviously unfeasible. So you need to pick the highest sample size (i.e. number of games) that will reflect the quality of a team without boring the crap out of an audience –
This is when parity comes into play. If in an infinite series (the ideal), one team wins 51% of the games while the other 49%, in reality you would need A LOT of games to establish this. Whereas if the split was 90%/10%, you could probably establish it in a 5 or 7 game series. This is why football (differential: 52%) can survive on one-game playoffs – because the good teams beat the bad teams. Same for college basketball’s March Madness. The NBA is king here – they have high parity (45% differential), and a high season/playoff % (8.5%). This is why the same good teams tend to win the championship: Bulls in the 90s, Spurs, Lakers, Pistons. The good teams win the championship. Astonishing.
Alternative #1: 9 game series. Why the fuck do baseball teams take breaks in between games in the playoffs? They have like one off-day every week during the season, then all of a sudden during the playoffs they get like every other game off. Play 9 games in 11 days. Fuck it. Also, your good pitchers would go 3 times, your good batters would get more than 15 ABs in the series.
Alternative #2: Bring back the old East/West system. There are 162 games in a season; it’s a pretty good system for figuring out who are the best teams, so you don’t need an elaborate playoff. Why are 8 teams in the playoffs? Just put the two clearly best teams into the AL/NL Championship series and then the winner plays in the World Series. It worked for like 60 years, FUCK YOU BUD SELIG.
Alternative #3: Allow steroids. This would not fix the parity issue but I’d get to stop hearing about it and that is so much better than having a legitimate champion ever year.
Matt Glassman
Ok, first off allow me to say that I think playoffs in ALL sports are bad. They are outdated. Playoffs were originally intended to find out which of the two leagues (AL and NL), two leagues with different governing bodies, different rules, and different groups of players was superior. Now, you have a standardized canon of rules, one draft pool, and 162 games to figure out who the best team is. If it were up to me, the NY Yankees would be hoisting a trophy right now. This is why I think the much beleaguered college football system is the best right now. Each week, regular season games are really fucking important. Baseball games are irrelevant for the most part.
Second off let me say that of the 3 major sports playoff systems, I think baseball is the most entertaining and BY FAR the best judge of superior talent, and I will explain in a moment.
In his e-mail, the bot showed a very well-researched and incredibly shortsighted and closed minded argument. First off, his formula to find parity is a very rudimentary and simple one. It ignores the fact that as teams play an amount of games approaching infinity, they will approach a .500 winning %, so of course baseball has the most parity, they play 10 times more games than football. Furthermore, he ignored the middle half of teams, which is where parity is usually found. 2 years ago, the super bowl winner was outside that top quarter and yet crowned champion, a glowing example of parity, but one ignored by the Bots formula.
Furthermore, he spends a lot of time on the percentage of the regular season that the playoffs represent, and I just don't see how this is valuable. In fact, I feel like one could make a very strong argument than the SMALLER the % of the regular season the playoffs represent would be more desirable hence placing a higher premium on the 6 month, 162-game regular season. This argument is easily made by looking at the utter irrelevancy of the NBA regular season given the 2 month-long, up-to-28 game playoff season nullifies so much of the regular season that it becomes almost boring. But that is not the crux of neither the Bot's nor my argument. Just something that should be noted.
He also points out that the first series is a "coin-flip." Well, bot, consider these facts: In basketball, the number 1 seed plays the number 8 seed in the first round. Often this is the best team in the league against the 16th best team in the league. Considering there are 29 teams, the top team, the favorite to win it all, is playing a team that finished 2 spots closer to last place than they did first place. That's a considerable adv. In baseball however, the Dodgers are the 4th best team against the 7th best team. The Red Sox and Angels represent the 2nd against the 3rd. The Phillies are the 5th and the 6th, and the Yankees are the best against the 8th. All of these are fairer and hence lead to a more "coin flip" atmosphere. Obviously if infinite games were played, the better team would always win, but in this case, that is not possible, and 5 games will have to do.
It should also be noted that when the NBA did have 5 game series, that the 8 seed only beat the 1 seed twice in history - once in the strike shortened 1999, and once in what many consider to be the greatest playoff upset in league history, the 1994 Denver Nuggets. So 5 games was always enough for the better team to win in basketball.
As far as football goes, it is true that their one-game playoffs are exciting and proportional to the regular season, but a football game more than any other sport is a coin-flip. Football games (between two good teams) essentially come down to 5 big plays. The bot argues, "what if a pitcher has a bad game, or A-Rod goes 2-12?" Yeah, but what if a QB hurts his ankle on Friday and can't play? What if a star running back has his first fumble in weeks during a critical drive? What if a kicker, who hasn't missed all year, misses a 40-yard field goal as time expires (see 2005 Colts/Steelers.) Things happen, bot. It's the playoffs. And considering the season starts in trianing camp in May, and can end on the mistake of one man's foot in January is doubly as unfair as CC having two consecutive bad starts in the 2007 ALCS. The season ending because of a bad pass interference call (see 2008 Colts/Chargers) is wayyyyy worse than A-Rod failing to get an RBI in 4 straight games in the 2004 ALCS. Sorry, but that argument doesn't fly.
And then he makes the argument that the NBA consistently puts the best teams in the finals because of their marathon playoffs. Well, I have two responses to that.
1. If that were the case, than wouldn't baseball's regular season consistently put better teams in the playoffs year in and year out due to having twice the regular season? This year, 50% of baseball's 8 playoff teams repeated as playoff teams. Last year's top 8 in basketball repeated 62.5% of the playoff teams. Despite having 50% the games. Which brings me to point #2.
2. The nature of the games--basketball and baseball--are different. In basketball, having a super-duper star like Lebron or Kobe essentially guarantees you a top 8 spot, while in baseball, the Yankees finished outside the top 8 in 2008 with the most super stars. The sports are just different and hence the results of the champions should be different.
Now I will address his ways to make it besser:
1. 9 game series. . What you said about playing every day for 9 games and the best pitchers pitching 3 times. Assuming they play 6 games, day off, 3 games. The best pitchers would pitch twice. Games 1 and 6. The same amount of games the best pitchers pitch now: twice. In addition to this, the number 5 starter--the guy who under the current system doesn't make the roster would pitch twice as well--including game 9. So the World Series could come down to Paul Byrd against some musher on the Cards. That's fair. Joke. Not really.
2. I'd be all for bringing back the old East v West system, but what's the point? You still have a 7 game series to even play for the World Series. This is a small band aid that doesn't solve anything.
3. I'm all for bringing back steroids.
Also, it should be noted that the bot is basing this info on numbers alone. He doesn't watch the games. He doesn't remember the magical 95 Yankees Mariners series, or the 1999 Tribe Red Sox. Watch a baseball playoff game and tell me that it is not the best system. Look, unless you played an unlimited amount of playoff games, you're never going to figure it out. But consider this bot, 2 years ago; the New England Patriots went 16-0 in the regular season. First team to ever do that. They were the best team, maybe in NFL history. Then, they lost to the New York Giants in the super bowl who finished 10-6, the same record as the Cleveland Browns, who didn't make the playoffs. So somehow, to you, a system in which a team with the same record as a non-playoff team, beating the best team in NFL history is a fine way to judge, but 19 games in 4 weeks started by the best pitchers in the game, in the loudest stadiums where every pitch matters is bad.
The Bot:
Hey glass, thanks for the response.
I'll start off by clarifying the parity situation:
If I flip a coin 1,000,000 times it will come up 50/50, because both heads and tails have p=.5 chance of coming up. Not the case in sports. In a theoretical infinite series, the better team will win > 50% of the games. If the Yankees and my local little league team played an infinite series, the Yankees would still win 99.99% of the time despite the infinite nature of the series. It would never approach 50%, it would approach the true mean of their team's abilities. Baseball has an incredibly high sample size, 162 games, and yet their parity difference is only 19%. Football's difference was 52%, which I admittedly based only on the past season, but I expect if I took winning/losing percentages of the top/bottom teams from each of the last 10 years (meaning 160 games), the difference would still be roughly 50% (meaning the good teams win 70% of their games, the bad teams win 20%).
In these sports, it doesn't have to do strictly with the sample size, it has to with the odds that in ONE GAME a good team will beat a bad team. In baseball, there's a higher probability of this happening than in other sports -- I don't know why, but that's how it is. The best record of all time was only 116 wins for the Mariners (71% win percentage). Four NBA teams had a higher percentage of wins LAST YEAR -- Cleveland (80%), LAL (79%), Boston (75%), Orlando (72%). That's just how it is. In a baseball game, a worse team has a statistically higher chance of beating a good team than in other sports. In my first note, I demonstrated this with the parity calculation using win percentages of good and bad teams, but I'll just say it in plain English -- in baseball, worse teams win more often, and the randomness of any particular game is much higher than in other sports. This is objective. If the Cavs played last year, they had an 80% chance of winning. If the Mariners played, they had a 71% chance. Which game would you bet on?
So -- having said that: due to the closer parity, you NEED A GREATER SAMPLE SIZE to have a truer determination of the better team. That's all I'm saying. A five game series is utter randomness because ANY TEAM CAN WIN when the difference in win % between the two teams is minimal. If I have a coin, in a 5 game series heads might win 3-2, or 3-1 or even 3-0, but in an infinite series it will approach 50% for each. Similarly in a 5 game series between baseball teams, even when one team might win 60% of the games in an infinite series and the other 40% (which, note, is roughly the parity difference in baseball as a whole), the worse team has a good shot of winning a 1 game series, a slightly worse but still good shot of winning a 5 game series, same for 7 games, 9 games, etc -- but as the series gets longer, the worse team's chances of actively winning the series decreases. In a 99-game series, the better team will win about 60 games, the worse about 40. When I say "approaching the mean", that's what I'm referring to.
Other notes:
--The baseball season does a great job of putting the best teams in the playoffs. I'll never counter that. A 162 game season is great at that. It's the playoffs I take issue with.
--In a 9 game series -- c'mon, you know managers would throw their aces out there in games 1, 5 and 9. They try to pull that shit in 7 game series, usually to catastrophic results.
--In football it's true that one individual play can change the outcome of the game, yet despite this the good teams still win a higher percentage of their total games than good teams do in baseball (football: 80%; baseball: 60%). I don't know why this is, but football is apparently a much more controlled game than baseball.
--In this argument, I'm not taking into account how good teams are across seasons, because so many factors can change. Somehow the Yankees weren't in the best 8 teams in 2008, despite their stacked roster. The 162 game season is more than enough sample size to prove this. Something on that team was wrong that couldn't be accounted for in their lineup (wait, their pitching -- it was terrible).
--The east/west series works because it keeps the riffraff (i.e. the wildcard) out of the playoffs (a clusterfuck where anything can happen); basically, it prevents undeserving teams from benefiting from the randomness that extreme parity the playoffs results in.
--The 2007 Giants are an interesting example of the randomness of having a one-game playoff system. I can't really account for them, other than to say that if football had a 3 game series in each round, the Giants likely would not have won. Again, sample size is important, but I accept the one-game series in football because of the lack of parity (i.e. better teams usually beat worse teams).
--Basketball, again, is the gold standard of the best team winning the playoffs. I don't know why they got rid of the 5-game series for basketball's first round, frankly, because if ever there was a sport that could actually use LESS GAMES, it's them. Good teams win 80% of their games, and they're usually playing terrible teams in the first round. They don't need 7 games to figure this shit out. I think the Bulls swept their first-round series in the 90s, like, every time. They could also cut off the first round entirely; because again you don't see the #16 team every winning shit, but whatever. I'll let basketball do what it wants.
Closing argument: the baseball playoffs may be exciting, but the wildcard has won the World Series FOUR TIMES since 1994. That is bullshit. But because in the baseball playoffs anyone can win when the series is short, they have to either (a) make the series longer to make sure the wildcards get beat by the better teams, or (b) make the playoffs more exclusive and eliminate average teams from benefiting from the almost coinflip results of a baseball series.
Glassman:
OK, I'm going to re-address the bot's issue with the MLB playoffs. First off, allow me to say that I think that the parity question really is an example of how you want to measure parity. One way of looking at it, is to compare the top to the bottom and how far they are from each other (which is what the bot has done.) Another way would be to look at how many teams comprise the middle (or in this case, low-end playoffs teams) in which case football would far and away win. Another way to judge parity would be to examine how often the same teams repeat in the playoffs, in which case basketball would be the sport with the most parity. In any case, it is somewhat of an irrelevant question.
The bot points out that the wild card has won the World Series 4 times since 1994 (there was no WS in 94, so he means since 95). He uses this is as an argument to prove that too often, a bad team (what he refers to as "riff-raff" wins the world series over far better teams, hence proving that baseball's playoff system does not provide a solid enough foundation to put the better team as a champion). What he leaves out is how baseball's wild-card system works. He assumes that the wild card is the 4th best team in each league and represents the 7th and 8th best reg. season records. That could not be further from the truth – in fact, the wild-card team regularly is not in the bottom tier of playoff teams. This year's wild cards, the Red Sox and Rockies were the 3rd best and 6th best teams in the major leagues respectively. By the way, both of these teams were eliminated in the first round. Last year, the Red Sox (4th best team) and Brewers (6th best team) were the wild cards and while the Red Sox beat the Angels in the playoffs before losing to the Rays, the Brewers were swept in the first round.
He then mentions that 4 wild card teams have won the championship, and that that is BULLSHIT. Unfortunately, he declines to note that in that same time period, 4 NFL wild-card teams have ALSO won the championship, and ignores this significance.
The 4 wild-card teams that won the championship are the 2004 Red Sox, the 2003 Marlins, the 2002 Angels, and the 1997 Marlins. These teams were the 3rd best, 6th best, 5th best, and 4th best teams in the MAJOR LEAGUE'S respectively. I'm sorry, but in 15 years, having the 6th best team in baseball win ONCE, while the rest of the teams have come from the top 5 doesn't seem so bad to me.
The 4 NFL wild card teams that won the super bowl are a different story. These teams are the 2007 Giants, the 2005 Steelers, the 2000 Ravens, and the 1997 Broncos. These teams were 9th, 9th, 3rd, and 4th best teams in the NFL. Somehow, this fact is OK.
He also points out that the NBA's marathon playoffs are the best to determine the best team, and while I agree KIND of on that, I stick by my argument that it is too long and arduous and nullifies the regular season. I will expand on this argument more in a moment.
By the way, his main argument is against the randomness of the 5 game first round series. Yet somehow, despite coin-flip odds, the NLCS is a rematch of last year's NLCS and the team with the better regular season record won every series this year. In fact, let's look at something really quick.
In the last three years, the MLB's first round (the round of 8), the team with the besser regular season record is: 10-2. This is 5 game "coin-flip" series, over the course of three years. In that same time period, in the round of 8 in basketball (7 game series, better judge of the besser team), NBA teams with a besser record went 9-2, with one series pitting two even teams against each other. So by default, baseball did besser, but even if one says even, to call the MLB first round BULLSHIT, when in the last three years if has performed as well, if not besser than the gold standard NBA is bullshit in itself. In case you were wondering, the NFL's round of eight in the last three years, is 4-7 (with one game featuring evenly matched teams).
The point is this: playoff strength boils down to a philosophical question. The NFL is the league the best rewards its teams for a strong regular season, DESPITE the regular season meaning nothing. The top 4 teams in the league receive BYES, making a first round victory a literal certainty. Furthermore, the best teams need to play ZERO road games. However, despite this advantage, the top 4 regular season teams are 9-11 in the last three years of playoffs with one champion. I don't get HOW the fuck the bot is fine with that.
The NBA, which obviously is the longest, and probably best, who also rewards the best regular season teams quite handsomely (Games 1 and 7 at home, in the sport with the greatest home-field adv BY FAR). The top 4 teams in the league in the last three years are: 24-10 in series with two champions.
The much-maligned MLB, with it's "coin-flip" playoff scenarios, and limited home-field adv. is somehow 14-10 with two champions. Also keep in mind that baseball teams aren't afforded the 1-8, 2-7 matchups that basketball teams are. Remove those from the NBA and they go down to 13-9, pretty even with major league baseball, with the same amount of champions.
The philosophical question is this: why do we have playoffs. Is it really do find out who the best team is? Because I feel as though 162 games tells us that. And if it really is, than anomalies like the 2007 NY Football Giants and the 2005 Steelers should NEVER happen, let alone twice in three years. Baseball is the best regular season because of its length and because of its symbolic meaning. But if you made the playoffs any longer, they would stretch into November, with rain, snow, and freezing temperatures, as opposed to the occasional game like Sunday's CO/Phi game, that would be the norm.
I agree that 5 games is a short series, but I disagree that it nullifies the regular season or that it is not fair. The team with the besser record has games 1 and 5 at home, as well as a 60%- 40% home field adv, as opposed to 56-44 in basketball or 100-0 in football; the best pitcher in the series will pitch twice, and if needed the second best pitcher will pitch twice. It allows the wild card, which despite the bot's RIDICULOUSLY short-sighted analysis ACTUALLY allows for a top tier (meaning top 5 MLB) team to get into the playoffs despite their unfortunate division placement. It gives hitters 20-28 at bats—more than enough for averages to matter—and exposes teams weaknesses (see: Bullpen, Rockies; lineup depth, Stl). Furthermore, these series have consistently been exciting, worthwhile, and competitive (as opposed to the NBA first round) and consistently allows the better team to advance (as opposed to the NFL).
Playoff baseball is DIFFERENT than reg. season baseball. Your top 2 starting pitchers become MUCH more important, and your bullpen and defense get exposed, but it was like this BEFORE the wild card, and before the fucking AL/NL CS. That's one of the beauties of October baseball.
Now, I think I'm done, I have to go get ready for the second round, featuring the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th best regular season teams in baseball. Bot, you have officially been served.
This morning, I calculated this:
[Sport/Full Season/First Round Playoff Length/Percentage] –
Football/16/1/6.25%
Basketball/82/7/8.5%
Baseball/162/5/3%
Conclusion: baseball has the shortest first-round playoff of the three major sports by more than 50%.
[Sport/Winning percentage of top quarter of teams/Winning percentage of bottom quarter of teams/Difference] –
Football/73%/21%/52%
Basketball/72%/27%/45%
Baseball/59%/40%/19%
Conclusion: baseball has more parity by far than the other sports, meaning odds of the better team winning are lower than in any other sport.
Together these two conclusions essentially mean that a five-game playoff series is a coinflip. After 162 baseball games, the good teams and the bad teams are only separated by 19% points, so imagine the parity of putting almost equally good teams together and having them face-off in a series that is not long enough to statistically determine who is better. It’s meaningless.
What if a prize-fight only lasted one round? Or if the Super Bowl were 28 minutes (which is 3% of a total season, by the way)? It would be bullshit, and no one would accept that the victor was the better team because there WASN’T ENOUGH TIME TO DETERMINE ANYTHING. In a five-game baseball series, your star pitcher could have a bad day or A-Rod could go 2-12, whatever, and your season is OVER. Randomness rules over consistency as time span decreases.
To properly choose the length of the playoffs, two factors need to be considered: parity, and boring the crap out of people. Now to TRULY establish which team is better, a series would have to be INFINITE games, and the wins/losses would slowly approach the true mean of how good two teams are. In 1997, maybe in an infinite series the Indians would win 60% of the games and the Marlins 40% (but the Marlins win 4 of the first 7, sucks for you guys). However, infinite series are obviously unfeasible. So you need to pick the highest sample size (i.e. number of games) that will reflect the quality of a team without boring the crap out of an audience –
This is when parity comes into play. If in an infinite series (the ideal), one team wins 51% of the games while the other 49%, in reality you would need A LOT of games to establish this. Whereas if the split was 90%/10%, you could probably establish it in a 5 or 7 game series. This is why football (differential: 52%) can survive on one-game playoffs – because the good teams beat the bad teams. Same for college basketball’s March Madness. The NBA is king here – they have high parity (45% differential), and a high season/playoff % (8.5%). This is why the same good teams tend to win the championship: Bulls in the 90s, Spurs, Lakers, Pistons. The good teams win the championship. Astonishing.
Alternative #1: 9 game series. Why the fuck do baseball teams take breaks in between games in the playoffs? They have like one off-day every week during the season, then all of a sudden during the playoffs they get like every other game off. Play 9 games in 11 days. Fuck it. Also, your good pitchers would go 3 times, your good batters would get more than 15 ABs in the series.
Alternative #2: Bring back the old East/West system. There are 162 games in a season; it’s a pretty good system for figuring out who are the best teams, so you don’t need an elaborate playoff. Why are 8 teams in the playoffs? Just put the two clearly best teams into the AL/NL Championship series and then the winner plays in the World Series. It worked for like 60 years, FUCK YOU BUD SELIG.
Alternative #3: Allow steroids. This would not fix the parity issue but I’d get to stop hearing about it and that is so much better than having a legitimate champion ever year.
Matt Glassman
Ok, first off allow me to say that I think playoffs in ALL sports are bad. They are outdated. Playoffs were originally intended to find out which of the two leagues (AL and NL), two leagues with different governing bodies, different rules, and different groups of players was superior. Now, you have a standardized canon of rules, one draft pool, and 162 games to figure out who the best team is. If it were up to me, the NY Yankees would be hoisting a trophy right now. This is why I think the much beleaguered college football system is the best right now. Each week, regular season games are really fucking important. Baseball games are irrelevant for the most part.
Second off let me say that of the 3 major sports playoff systems, I think baseball is the most entertaining and BY FAR the best judge of superior talent, and I will explain in a moment.
In his e-mail, the bot showed a very well-researched and incredibly shortsighted and closed minded argument. First off, his formula to find parity is a very rudimentary and simple one. It ignores the fact that as teams play an amount of games approaching infinity, they will approach a .500 winning %, so of course baseball has the most parity, they play 10 times more games than football. Furthermore, he ignored the middle half of teams, which is where parity is usually found. 2 years ago, the super bowl winner was outside that top quarter and yet crowned champion, a glowing example of parity, but one ignored by the Bots formula.
Furthermore, he spends a lot of time on the percentage of the regular season that the playoffs represent, and I just don't see how this is valuable. In fact, I feel like one could make a very strong argument than the SMALLER the % of the regular season the playoffs represent would be more desirable hence placing a higher premium on the 6 month, 162-game regular season. This argument is easily made by looking at the utter irrelevancy of the NBA regular season given the 2 month-long, up-to-28 game playoff season nullifies so much of the regular season that it becomes almost boring. But that is not the crux of neither the Bot's nor my argument. Just something that should be noted.
He also points out that the first series is a "coin-flip." Well, bot, consider these facts: In basketball, the number 1 seed plays the number 8 seed in the first round. Often this is the best team in the league against the 16th best team in the league. Considering there are 29 teams, the top team, the favorite to win it all, is playing a team that finished 2 spots closer to last place than they did first place. That's a considerable adv. In baseball however, the Dodgers are the 4th best team against the 7th best team. The Red Sox and Angels represent the 2nd against the 3rd. The Phillies are the 5th and the 6th, and the Yankees are the best against the 8th. All of these are fairer and hence lead to a more "coin flip" atmosphere. Obviously if infinite games were played, the better team would always win, but in this case, that is not possible, and 5 games will have to do.
It should also be noted that when the NBA did have 5 game series, that the 8 seed only beat the 1 seed twice in history - once in the strike shortened 1999, and once in what many consider to be the greatest playoff upset in league history, the 1994 Denver Nuggets. So 5 games was always enough for the better team to win in basketball.
As far as football goes, it is true that their one-game playoffs are exciting and proportional to the regular season, but a football game more than any other sport is a coin-flip. Football games (between two good teams) essentially come down to 5 big plays. The bot argues, "what if a pitcher has a bad game, or A-Rod goes 2-12?" Yeah, but what if a QB hurts his ankle on Friday and can't play? What if a star running back has his first fumble in weeks during a critical drive? What if a kicker, who hasn't missed all year, misses a 40-yard field goal as time expires (see 2005 Colts/Steelers.) Things happen, bot. It's the playoffs. And considering the season starts in trianing camp in May, and can end on the mistake of one man's foot in January is doubly as unfair as CC having two consecutive bad starts in the 2007 ALCS. The season ending because of a bad pass interference call (see 2008 Colts/Chargers) is wayyyyy worse than A-Rod failing to get an RBI in 4 straight games in the 2004 ALCS. Sorry, but that argument doesn't fly.
And then he makes the argument that the NBA consistently puts the best teams in the finals because of their marathon playoffs. Well, I have two responses to that.
1. If that were the case, than wouldn't baseball's regular season consistently put better teams in the playoffs year in and year out due to having twice the regular season? This year, 50% of baseball's 8 playoff teams repeated as playoff teams. Last year's top 8 in basketball repeated 62.5% of the playoff teams. Despite having 50% the games. Which brings me to point #2.
2. The nature of the games--basketball and baseball--are different. In basketball, having a super-duper star like Lebron or Kobe essentially guarantees you a top 8 spot, while in baseball, the Yankees finished outside the top 8 in 2008 with the most super stars. The sports are just different and hence the results of the champions should be different.
Now I will address his ways to make it besser:
1. 9 game series. . What you said about playing every day for 9 games and the best pitchers pitching 3 times. Assuming they play 6 games, day off, 3 games. The best pitchers would pitch twice. Games 1 and 6. The same amount of games the best pitchers pitch now: twice. In addition to this, the number 5 starter--the guy who under the current system doesn't make the roster would pitch twice as well--including game 9. So the World Series could come down to Paul Byrd against some musher on the Cards. That's fair. Joke. Not really.
2. I'd be all for bringing back the old East v West system, but what's the point? You still have a 7 game series to even play for the World Series. This is a small band aid that doesn't solve anything.
3. I'm all for bringing back steroids.
Also, it should be noted that the bot is basing this info on numbers alone. He doesn't watch the games. He doesn't remember the magical 95 Yankees Mariners series, or the 1999 Tribe Red Sox. Watch a baseball playoff game and tell me that it is not the best system. Look, unless you played an unlimited amount of playoff games, you're never going to figure it out. But consider this bot, 2 years ago; the New England Patriots went 16-0 in the regular season. First team to ever do that. They were the best team, maybe in NFL history. Then, they lost to the New York Giants in the super bowl who finished 10-6, the same record as the Cleveland Browns, who didn't make the playoffs. So somehow, to you, a system in which a team with the same record as a non-playoff team, beating the best team in NFL history is a fine way to judge, but 19 games in 4 weeks started by the best pitchers in the game, in the loudest stadiums where every pitch matters is bad.
The Bot:
Hey glass, thanks for the response.
I'll start off by clarifying the parity situation:
If I flip a coin 1,000,000 times it will come up 50/50, because both heads and tails have p=.5 chance of coming up. Not the case in sports. In a theoretical infinite series, the better team will win > 50% of the games. If the Yankees and my local little league team played an infinite series, the Yankees would still win 99.99% of the time despite the infinite nature of the series. It would never approach 50%, it would approach the true mean of their team's abilities. Baseball has an incredibly high sample size, 162 games, and yet their parity difference is only 19%. Football's difference was 52%, which I admittedly based only on the past season, but I expect if I took winning/losing percentages of the top/bottom teams from each of the last 10 years (meaning 160 games), the difference would still be roughly 50% (meaning the good teams win 70% of their games, the bad teams win 20%).
In these sports, it doesn't have to do strictly with the sample size, it has to with the odds that in ONE GAME a good team will beat a bad team. In baseball, there's a higher probability of this happening than in other sports -- I don't know why, but that's how it is. The best record of all time was only 116 wins for the Mariners (71% win percentage). Four NBA teams had a higher percentage of wins LAST YEAR -- Cleveland (80%), LAL (79%), Boston (75%), Orlando (72%). That's just how it is. In a baseball game, a worse team has a statistically higher chance of beating a good team than in other sports. In my first note, I demonstrated this with the parity calculation using win percentages of good and bad teams, but I'll just say it in plain English -- in baseball, worse teams win more often, and the randomness of any particular game is much higher than in other sports. This is objective. If the Cavs played last year, they had an 80% chance of winning. If the Mariners played, they had a 71% chance. Which game would you bet on?
So -- having said that: due to the closer parity, you NEED A GREATER SAMPLE SIZE to have a truer determination of the better team. That's all I'm saying. A five game series is utter randomness because ANY TEAM CAN WIN when the difference in win % between the two teams is minimal. If I have a coin, in a 5 game series heads might win 3-2, or 3-1 or even 3-0, but in an infinite series it will approach 50% for each. Similarly in a 5 game series between baseball teams, even when one team might win 60% of the games in an infinite series and the other 40% (which, note, is roughly the parity difference in baseball as a whole), the worse team has a good shot of winning a 1 game series, a slightly worse but still good shot of winning a 5 game series, same for 7 games, 9 games, etc -- but as the series gets longer, the worse team's chances of actively winning the series decreases. In a 99-game series, the better team will win about 60 games, the worse about 40. When I say "approaching the mean", that's what I'm referring to.
Other notes:
--The baseball season does a great job of putting the best teams in the playoffs. I'll never counter that. A 162 game season is great at that. It's the playoffs I take issue with.
--In a 9 game series -- c'mon, you know managers would throw their aces out there in games 1, 5 and 9. They try to pull that shit in 7 game series, usually to catastrophic results.
--In football it's true that one individual play can change the outcome of the game, yet despite this the good teams still win a higher percentage of their total games than good teams do in baseball (football: 80%; baseball: 60%). I don't know why this is, but football is apparently a much more controlled game than baseball.
--In this argument, I'm not taking into account how good teams are across seasons, because so many factors can change. Somehow the Yankees weren't in the best 8 teams in 2008, despite their stacked roster. The 162 game season is more than enough sample size to prove this. Something on that team was wrong that couldn't be accounted for in their lineup (wait, their pitching -- it was terrible).
--The east/west series works because it keeps the riffraff (i.e. the wildcard) out of the playoffs (a clusterfuck where anything can happen); basically, it prevents undeserving teams from benefiting from the randomness that extreme parity the playoffs results in.
--The 2007 Giants are an interesting example of the randomness of having a one-game playoff system. I can't really account for them, other than to say that if football had a 3 game series in each round, the Giants likely would not have won. Again, sample size is important, but I accept the one-game series in football because of the lack of parity (i.e. better teams usually beat worse teams).
--Basketball, again, is the gold standard of the best team winning the playoffs. I don't know why they got rid of the 5-game series for basketball's first round, frankly, because if ever there was a sport that could actually use LESS GAMES, it's them. Good teams win 80% of their games, and they're usually playing terrible teams in the first round. They don't need 7 games to figure this shit out. I think the Bulls swept their first-round series in the 90s, like, every time. They could also cut off the first round entirely; because again you don't see the #16 team every winning shit, but whatever. I'll let basketball do what it wants.
Closing argument: the baseball playoffs may be exciting, but the wildcard has won the World Series FOUR TIMES since 1994. That is bullshit. But because in the baseball playoffs anyone can win when the series is short, they have to either (a) make the series longer to make sure the wildcards get beat by the better teams, or (b) make the playoffs more exclusive and eliminate average teams from benefiting from the almost coinflip results of a baseball series.
Glassman:
OK, I'm going to re-address the bot's issue with the MLB playoffs. First off, allow me to say that I think that the parity question really is an example of how you want to measure parity. One way of looking at it, is to compare the top to the bottom and how far they are from each other (which is what the bot has done.) Another way would be to look at how many teams comprise the middle (or in this case, low-end playoffs teams) in which case football would far and away win. Another way to judge parity would be to examine how often the same teams repeat in the playoffs, in which case basketball would be the sport with the most parity. In any case, it is somewhat of an irrelevant question.
The bot points out that the wild card has won the World Series 4 times since 1994 (there was no WS in 94, so he means since 95). He uses this is as an argument to prove that too often, a bad team (what he refers to as "riff-raff" wins the world series over far better teams, hence proving that baseball's playoff system does not provide a solid enough foundation to put the better team as a champion). What he leaves out is how baseball's wild-card system works. He assumes that the wild card is the 4th best team in each league and represents the 7th and 8th best reg. season records. That could not be further from the truth – in fact, the wild-card team regularly is not in the bottom tier of playoff teams. This year's wild cards, the Red Sox and Rockies were the 3rd best and 6th best teams in the major leagues respectively. By the way, both of these teams were eliminated in the first round. Last year, the Red Sox (4th best team) and Brewers (6th best team) were the wild cards and while the Red Sox beat the Angels in the playoffs before losing to the Rays, the Brewers were swept in the first round.
He then mentions that 4 wild card teams have won the championship, and that that is BULLSHIT. Unfortunately, he declines to note that in that same time period, 4 NFL wild-card teams have ALSO won the championship, and ignores this significance.
The 4 wild-card teams that won the championship are the 2004 Red Sox, the 2003 Marlins, the 2002 Angels, and the 1997 Marlins. These teams were the 3rd best, 6th best, 5th best, and 4th best teams in the MAJOR LEAGUE'S respectively. I'm sorry, but in 15 years, having the 6th best team in baseball win ONCE, while the rest of the teams have come from the top 5 doesn't seem so bad to me.
The 4 NFL wild card teams that won the super bowl are a different story. These teams are the 2007 Giants, the 2005 Steelers, the 2000 Ravens, and the 1997 Broncos. These teams were 9th, 9th, 3rd, and 4th best teams in the NFL. Somehow, this fact is OK.
He also points out that the NBA's marathon playoffs are the best to determine the best team, and while I agree KIND of on that, I stick by my argument that it is too long and arduous and nullifies the regular season. I will expand on this argument more in a moment.
By the way, his main argument is against the randomness of the 5 game first round series. Yet somehow, despite coin-flip odds, the NLCS is a rematch of last year's NLCS and the team with the better regular season record won every series this year. In fact, let's look at something really quick.
In the last three years, the MLB's first round (the round of 8), the team with the besser regular season record is: 10-2. This is 5 game "coin-flip" series, over the course of three years. In that same time period, in the round of 8 in basketball (7 game series, better judge of the besser team), NBA teams with a besser record went 9-2, with one series pitting two even teams against each other. So by default, baseball did besser, but even if one says even, to call the MLB first round BULLSHIT, when in the last three years if has performed as well, if not besser than the gold standard NBA is bullshit in itself. In case you were wondering, the NFL's round of eight in the last three years, is 4-7 (with one game featuring evenly matched teams).
The point is this: playoff strength boils down to a philosophical question. The NFL is the league the best rewards its teams for a strong regular season, DESPITE the regular season meaning nothing. The top 4 teams in the league receive BYES, making a first round victory a literal certainty. Furthermore, the best teams need to play ZERO road games. However, despite this advantage, the top 4 regular season teams are 9-11 in the last three years of playoffs with one champion. I don't get HOW the fuck the bot is fine with that.
The NBA, which obviously is the longest, and probably best, who also rewards the best regular season teams quite handsomely (Games 1 and 7 at home, in the sport with the greatest home-field adv BY FAR). The top 4 teams in the league in the last three years are: 24-10 in series with two champions.
The much-maligned MLB, with it's "coin-flip" playoff scenarios, and limited home-field adv. is somehow 14-10 with two champions. Also keep in mind that baseball teams aren't afforded the 1-8, 2-7 matchups that basketball teams are. Remove those from the NBA and they go down to 13-9, pretty even with major league baseball, with the same amount of champions.
The philosophical question is this: why do we have playoffs. Is it really do find out who the best team is? Because I feel as though 162 games tells us that. And if it really is, than anomalies like the 2007 NY Football Giants and the 2005 Steelers should NEVER happen, let alone twice in three years. Baseball is the best regular season because of its length and because of its symbolic meaning. But if you made the playoffs any longer, they would stretch into November, with rain, snow, and freezing temperatures, as opposed to the occasional game like Sunday's CO/Phi game, that would be the norm.
I agree that 5 games is a short series, but I disagree that it nullifies the regular season or that it is not fair. The team with the besser record has games 1 and 5 at home, as well as a 60%- 40% home field adv, as opposed to 56-44 in basketball or 100-0 in football; the best pitcher in the series will pitch twice, and if needed the second best pitcher will pitch twice. It allows the wild card, which despite the bot's RIDICULOUSLY short-sighted analysis ACTUALLY allows for a top tier (meaning top 5 MLB) team to get into the playoffs despite their unfortunate division placement. It gives hitters 20-28 at bats—more than enough for averages to matter—and exposes teams weaknesses (see: Bullpen, Rockies; lineup depth, Stl). Furthermore, these series have consistently been exciting, worthwhile, and competitive (as opposed to the NBA first round) and consistently allows the better team to advance (as opposed to the NFL).
Playoff baseball is DIFFERENT than reg. season baseball. Your top 2 starting pitchers become MUCH more important, and your bullpen and defense get exposed, but it was like this BEFORE the wild card, and before the fucking AL/NL CS. That's one of the beauties of October baseball.
Now, I think I'm done, I have to go get ready for the second round, featuring the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th best regular season teams in baseball. Bot, you have officially been served.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Bon Iver at Hollywood Forever
Bon Iver at Hollywood Forever
Last night, I worked until ten o'clock. After a long work day/night on Friday and a lousy nights sleep on Friday night, I was an absolute wreck by ten Saturday night. But I had plans. Weeks ago, I had bought tickets for Katy and I to go see Bon Iver, one of our favorite bands. Katy and I go to a ton of concerts but this one was unlike anything I had ever heard of. The show was at Hollywood Forever Cemetery at dawn on Sunday morning. For those who live outside of L.A., Hollywood Forever is a very well-known and awesome cemetery, filled with the remains and ornate headstones of many of Hollywood's most loved historical figures. The cemetery also does movie nights on Saturdays when they show cult movies on the well of the Masonic Lodge. This place is VERY unique.
So, not only was the location of the show completely noteworthy, but that fact that the show would not start until dawn on Sunday morning was entirely unheard of. The doors opened at midnight and for six hours, the crowd was entertained with two DJ sets, a feature presentation of Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, and then a presentation of the PBS series Planet Earth: Jungle with no sound and a super phantasmagoric soundscape played behind it.
However, given my crazy work schedule, and our unease about going straight to a cemetery at midnight, we decided we'd go home and catch a quick nap. Didn't happen. Katy went right to sleep, I stayed up all night. Watched some Seinfeld, some Glenn Beck, and then decided, OK it's time to go. I woke Katy up at 3:20, we wandered down in a foggy haze to Fred 62 and had a Bossa Nova Waffle Sunday. I have to drive home the fact that both of us were in between some weird stage of waking and sleeping that is usually reserved for hard-core drug experiences or nervous insomnia. Never in my life have I been willfully driving AWAY from home in this state. Do your best to try to imagine the remainder of the night somewhere in between this stage—though I never fell asleep, we were never awake.
Fred 62 was still hopping when we got there as the 2 AM bar crowd finished their meals. I can't tell you anything that went on around us outside of Katy drinking two to three cups of coffee and my Huevos Rancheros. By the time we paid and left, the place was emptying out and the bathrooms were a little too bizarre for our fragile mental state. We got out and climbed into my car only to find that a thick layer of marine fog had descended upon L.A. about 14 miles from the ocean. The drive to Hollywood Forever was both literally and figuratively entombed in one of the thickest layers of fog I've seen east of Sepulveda and my increasingly paranormal mental state. We parked on Santa Monica about a quarter mile from the cemetery, saw some friendly concert-goers moving towards the front gate and grabbed our blankets.
We walked though the gates at 4:30 AM and it was pitch black. Sporadic aides with flashlights guided us through the maze of tombstones, some simple, some more grandiose than any I've ever seen. We made our way to the open field in front of the Masonic Lodge surrounded by palm trees, gravestones, and lagoons. To our astonishment, we came upon the field and noticed thousands of people had beat us there. Literally thousands of blankets, and candles, and cigarettes; people sleeping next to people talking next to people smoking next to people laying on their backs staring up into the foggy blackness. If at this point my writing seems to be getting poetic and surreal, it is because from this moment on, the night begins to become a surreal mix of dreamland and reality. Thousands of people, some high, most just restless, sitting in the middle of a pitch black cemetery in the middle of one of the greatest cities in the world. On the Lodge wall, the Jungle episode of Planet Earth was providing more visual irregularity and a DJ played a dreamlike concoction of sounds and music to accompany. It was the height of a feeling normally only attainable through designer hallucinogenics being realized through lack of sleep and an incredibly comfortable alternative universe.
We found a small patch of grass in the very back of the field. The blackness of the night prevented us from, not only seeing a stage, but knowing in which direction the stage was set up. Essentially, we were just finding a place to lie down in the awesome fogginess and enjoy more of the unexpected. There were all sorts of people around us: college students talking about people they knew, a sleeping couple buried beneath their blanket, hippies passing a joint around, and incredibly annoying young twenty-something who insisted on making cell phone calls for everyone to hear, and an array of would be photogs, including Katy, all trying to capture the impossibility of what was around us.
When the movie ended, the music did as well, and we just sat there. From about 5:00 AM to 5:30, it was black silence, the only lights coming from the closed soundstages at Paramount to the south, the candles scattered amongst the field, and the large computer screen in the middle of the field presumably controlling sound, or lights, or both for the still-hidden stage. And the lights created an eerie and somewhat beautiful aura around us as the fires mixed with the fog and lit the 60-foot-tall palm trees in reddish-purplish halos. The sun was not on anyone's mind. 5:30 is a time almost universally reserved for sleeping for even the hardest partiers and the quickest early birds, yet here were several thousand of us, sharing blankets, weed, and coffee in the middle of this graveyard. Still without sleep, it was hard to distinguish reality from imagination, and I insist that this was a shared consciousness around the field. That line between waking and sleeping was blurred when we got there and was not made any clearer by the increasing strangeness and beauty that was around us.
At 5:30, two Buddhist monks took the dark stage and chanted for 15-20 minutes. They were apparently blessing the stage but the unfamiliarity of the rhythmic chants coupled with the fact that they were not visible in the night made this moment as strange as those before it. Though the lights and fires shifting caused a small change in the palm-tree halos, the sky was still a thick black emptiness. My only thought at this point was that I wanted to watch this show sitting on our blanket. I was simply not strong enough, either mentally or physically, to stand up, and sitting in the very back, behind hundreds of rows of people, I knew that eventually we would all be standing. But my fingers remained crossed.
At this point, I almost fell asleep. Laying back on Katy's empty bag, amongst the chanting and murmuring around us, I almost delved into a true dream that would not be distinguishable from reality. But as I started to fade, I heard a buzz throughout the crowd. I sat up and realized that a twenty-foot stage had been lit up in the southeast corner of the field. And much to my delight, the cheering crowd remained seated on their blankets.
At 5:50, Bon Iver took the stage. To be honest, their set-list (especially in the beginning) is hazy. I think they opened with Lump Sum, but what didn't dawn on me until this moment was that I was about to see one of the most respected live acts in the world. Bon Iver, who I've never seen, is known around the country as one of the best shows around. Through the haze of the surreality that I was living in, I forgot that the content was not merely the production but the show as well. If I would have seen this show at the Troubador on a Thursday night, it still would have been amazing.
When they took the stage, it was pitch black outside. They couldn't see us. Justin, the lead singer, complained about flash photography from the front rows bothering him coming from such a black abyss. The set slowly moved on, and during maybe the third song, I pointed up to the sky and alerted Katy that a very faint tint of dark blue was beginning to contaminate the blackness of night. Because of the heavy fog, the sun never really "rose" per se, but the sky just started changing colors. By the end of his incredible rendition of Skinny Love, which included all three other band members smashing their own drum kits in a monk-like rhythm, there was no black left. By 6:30, as Justin spoke to us about how weird this is for everyone involved and how foggy his memory is, the dense layer of fog was clearly visible sitting atop the green field which we could now see was much denser with blankets and hippies that we first could notice. By the time he told us that they would only have a couple more songs, the sun was out, the sky was white, and the palm-trees that an hour earlier wore a surreal red halo appeared to be pinning the layer of fog to the ground.
For the duration of the entire set, most of the crowd never stood. We all fought through the early morning restlessness and enjoyed an incredible set together. They played electric and acoustic, hard and mellow. Justin chatted with us and asked us if we were ok. And after their last song ended, we all stood, stretched, and gave him the standing ovation that we were waiting to give him. As Katy and I stood, we noticed the grass, the flowers, the people; things we just didn't notice in the dark.
For a final show of strangeness, we all walked out together, onto a now somewhat busy Santa Monica Blvd, clutching blankets, backpacks, sleeping bags, and coffees. Thousands of people, emerging from a graveyard at 7:30 on a Sunday has to be weird for uninformed passer-bys.
We came home and I still haven't slept. Instead, I sit here recounting the experience to you as I listen to For Emma, Forever Ago and try to convince myself that everything that I remember actually happened, and wasn't part of a dream.
Last night, I worked until ten o'clock. After a long work day/night on Friday and a lousy nights sleep on Friday night, I was an absolute wreck by ten Saturday night. But I had plans. Weeks ago, I had bought tickets for Katy and I to go see Bon Iver, one of our favorite bands. Katy and I go to a ton of concerts but this one was unlike anything I had ever heard of. The show was at Hollywood Forever Cemetery at dawn on Sunday morning. For those who live outside of L.A., Hollywood Forever is a very well-known and awesome cemetery, filled with the remains and ornate headstones of many of Hollywood's most loved historical figures. The cemetery also does movie nights on Saturdays when they show cult movies on the well of the Masonic Lodge. This place is VERY unique.
So, not only was the location of the show completely noteworthy, but that fact that the show would not start until dawn on Sunday morning was entirely unheard of. The doors opened at midnight and for six hours, the crowd was entertained with two DJ sets, a feature presentation of Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, and then a presentation of the PBS series Planet Earth: Jungle with no sound and a super phantasmagoric soundscape played behind it.
However, given my crazy work schedule, and our unease about going straight to a cemetery at midnight, we decided we'd go home and catch a quick nap. Didn't happen. Katy went right to sleep, I stayed up all night. Watched some Seinfeld, some Glenn Beck, and then decided, OK it's time to go. I woke Katy up at 3:20, we wandered down in a foggy haze to Fred 62 and had a Bossa Nova Waffle Sunday. I have to drive home the fact that both of us were in between some weird stage of waking and sleeping that is usually reserved for hard-core drug experiences or nervous insomnia. Never in my life have I been willfully driving AWAY from home in this state. Do your best to try to imagine the remainder of the night somewhere in between this stage—though I never fell asleep, we were never awake.
Fred 62 was still hopping when we got there as the 2 AM bar crowd finished their meals. I can't tell you anything that went on around us outside of Katy drinking two to three cups of coffee and my Huevos Rancheros. By the time we paid and left, the place was emptying out and the bathrooms were a little too bizarre for our fragile mental state. We got out and climbed into my car only to find that a thick layer of marine fog had descended upon L.A. about 14 miles from the ocean. The drive to Hollywood Forever was both literally and figuratively entombed in one of the thickest layers of fog I've seen east of Sepulveda and my increasingly paranormal mental state. We parked on Santa Monica about a quarter mile from the cemetery, saw some friendly concert-goers moving towards the front gate and grabbed our blankets.
We walked though the gates at 4:30 AM and it was pitch black. Sporadic aides with flashlights guided us through the maze of tombstones, some simple, some more grandiose than any I've ever seen. We made our way to the open field in front of the Masonic Lodge surrounded by palm trees, gravestones, and lagoons. To our astonishment, we came upon the field and noticed thousands of people had beat us there. Literally thousands of blankets, and candles, and cigarettes; people sleeping next to people talking next to people smoking next to people laying on their backs staring up into the foggy blackness. If at this point my writing seems to be getting poetic and surreal, it is because from this moment on, the night begins to become a surreal mix of dreamland and reality. Thousands of people, some high, most just restless, sitting in the middle of a pitch black cemetery in the middle of one of the greatest cities in the world. On the Lodge wall, the Jungle episode of Planet Earth was providing more visual irregularity and a DJ played a dreamlike concoction of sounds and music to accompany. It was the height of a feeling normally only attainable through designer hallucinogenics being realized through lack of sleep and an incredibly comfortable alternative universe.
We found a small patch of grass in the very back of the field. The blackness of the night prevented us from, not only seeing a stage, but knowing in which direction the stage was set up. Essentially, we were just finding a place to lie down in the awesome fogginess and enjoy more of the unexpected. There were all sorts of people around us: college students talking about people they knew, a sleeping couple buried beneath their blanket, hippies passing a joint around, and incredibly annoying young twenty-something who insisted on making cell phone calls for everyone to hear, and an array of would be photogs, including Katy, all trying to capture the impossibility of what was around us.
When the movie ended, the music did as well, and we just sat there. From about 5:00 AM to 5:30, it was black silence, the only lights coming from the closed soundstages at Paramount to the south, the candles scattered amongst the field, and the large computer screen in the middle of the field presumably controlling sound, or lights, or both for the still-hidden stage. And the lights created an eerie and somewhat beautiful aura around us as the fires mixed with the fog and lit the 60-foot-tall palm trees in reddish-purplish halos. The sun was not on anyone's mind. 5:30 is a time almost universally reserved for sleeping for even the hardest partiers and the quickest early birds, yet here were several thousand of us, sharing blankets, weed, and coffee in the middle of this graveyard. Still without sleep, it was hard to distinguish reality from imagination, and I insist that this was a shared consciousness around the field. That line between waking and sleeping was blurred when we got there and was not made any clearer by the increasing strangeness and beauty that was around us.
At 5:30, two Buddhist monks took the dark stage and chanted for 15-20 minutes. They were apparently blessing the stage but the unfamiliarity of the rhythmic chants coupled with the fact that they were not visible in the night made this moment as strange as those before it. Though the lights and fires shifting caused a small change in the palm-tree halos, the sky was still a thick black emptiness. My only thought at this point was that I wanted to watch this show sitting on our blanket. I was simply not strong enough, either mentally or physically, to stand up, and sitting in the very back, behind hundreds of rows of people, I knew that eventually we would all be standing. But my fingers remained crossed.
At this point, I almost fell asleep. Laying back on Katy's empty bag, amongst the chanting and murmuring around us, I almost delved into a true dream that would not be distinguishable from reality. But as I started to fade, I heard a buzz throughout the crowd. I sat up and realized that a twenty-foot stage had been lit up in the southeast corner of the field. And much to my delight, the cheering crowd remained seated on their blankets.
At 5:50, Bon Iver took the stage. To be honest, their set-list (especially in the beginning) is hazy. I think they opened with Lump Sum, but what didn't dawn on me until this moment was that I was about to see one of the most respected live acts in the world. Bon Iver, who I've never seen, is known around the country as one of the best shows around. Through the haze of the surreality that I was living in, I forgot that the content was not merely the production but the show as well. If I would have seen this show at the Troubador on a Thursday night, it still would have been amazing.
When they took the stage, it was pitch black outside. They couldn't see us. Justin, the lead singer, complained about flash photography from the front rows bothering him coming from such a black abyss. The set slowly moved on, and during maybe the third song, I pointed up to the sky and alerted Katy that a very faint tint of dark blue was beginning to contaminate the blackness of night. Because of the heavy fog, the sun never really "rose" per se, but the sky just started changing colors. By the end of his incredible rendition of Skinny Love, which included all three other band members smashing their own drum kits in a monk-like rhythm, there was no black left. By 6:30, as Justin spoke to us about how weird this is for everyone involved and how foggy his memory is, the dense layer of fog was clearly visible sitting atop the green field which we could now see was much denser with blankets and hippies that we first could notice. By the time he told us that they would only have a couple more songs, the sun was out, the sky was white, and the palm-trees that an hour earlier wore a surreal red halo appeared to be pinning the layer of fog to the ground.
For the duration of the entire set, most of the crowd never stood. We all fought through the early morning restlessness and enjoyed an incredible set together. They played electric and acoustic, hard and mellow. Justin chatted with us and asked us if we were ok. And after their last song ended, we all stood, stretched, and gave him the standing ovation that we were waiting to give him. As Katy and I stood, we noticed the grass, the flowers, the people; things we just didn't notice in the dark.
For a final show of strangeness, we all walked out together, onto a now somewhat busy Santa Monica Blvd, clutching blankets, backpacks, sleeping bags, and coffees. Thousands of people, emerging from a graveyard at 7:30 on a Sunday has to be weird for uninformed passer-bys.
We came home and I still haven't slept. Instead, I sit here recounting the experience to you as I listen to For Emma, Forever Ago and try to convince myself that everything that I remember actually happened, and wasn't part of a dream.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
NFL Announcers
NFL Beef #1
I'm going to try to make this a running thing, that is, my unending beef with the NFL. Some will be shorter than others and that should not signify some sort of importance or ranking system on the growing list of problems that make the NFL such an offensive product. Nor should the order in which I write.
Before this begins, please allow me to offer this short disclaimer. Many of you close to me have offered the opinion that my growing distaste with the league has more to do with my beloved Cleveland Browns' failures than anything substantive. This is simply not true. The Cleveland Indians, who I love equally, if not more, than the Browns, are as inept as the Browns and possess an arguably weaker future. I still love baseball. In fact, I think that baseball's steps in the last several years—MLB Network, MLB.tv, lower ticket prices—have been great for the consumption of the game. Perhaps it is because I live in Southern California, away from the throngs of irrational Browns fans that piqued my interest in the NFL's off months in years past. I don't know. I would like to believe it is merely a legitimate distaste based on logical and simple criteria that I have been able to finally realize as the issues grow, and my interest fades even more.
Also, it should be noted that I LOVE college football, and still get amped when watching old clips of football games. I think NFL Films is a treasure, and many of the game's personalities still interest me. This is merely a harsh criticism of one of the most popular entertainment options in the nation that I find offensive and backwards.
Today I will discuss the announcers.
In other team sports, almost every game is broadcast by a local TV affiliate and announced by employees of the team. In baseball, the Tribe is called by Rick Manning and Matt Underwood, neither of which do anything to enhance the experience, but neither do anything particularly offensive either. Most importantly, not only do they spend the season following the team, but they call the games to a local audience trained on the players' names and histories. The games are called with an expectation of familiarity with the characters and story lines within the organization. Cavalier games are called by Fred McCleod and Austin Carr. Sure, Carr turns many fans off with his over-the-top uses of the same four phrases, and McCleod has turned off a lot ex-TV man, Michael Reghi's fans, but the same knowledge and familiarity is expected in their calls and information is more-often-than-not directed at fans of the team.
Throughout the year, and much more often in the case of the Cavaliers, games are broadcast nationally. Depending on the network and time slot the game is on, this broadcast can be the only broadcast of the team, even in the city of Cleveland. While national broadcasts are directed towards a national audience, significantly less familiar with the teams than local broadcasts, the games are usually one of the only games being nationally televised so that viewers are treated to a top-tier broadcasting team. Personally, I would rather listen to loud dogs barking than endure a baseball game called by Joe Morgan or Tim McCarver, but I respect their calls as legitimate and their opinions—though I essentially universally disagree with everything they say—rarely am overly offended by an opinion they offer.
This trend holds true with college football as well. Nationally-televised games feature top-notch announcing teams that, often, enhance the experience. So in most sports—meaning all other than the NFL—the two options are either a local broadcast directed at a small sub-section of the sports' fan base, complete with inherent knowledge of the events and characters that that sub-section shares, or a national broadcast featuring many of the game's top announcing personalities. These options aren't always ideal, but they are rarely offensive, and often offer great additions to the sport.
The NFL is different. During the regular season, every game outside of two each week are broadcast by CBS or Fox. Because all the games are played within a six hour period of one another, networks are forced to provide upwards of nine productions per week. Meaning, unless your game is the featured game of the week, you are forced to listen to bottom-tier announcing teams. Furthermore, the games are presented as if they are on national TV (which is only half true as most games are just broadcast to the two cities playing each other). So, instead of getting local teams, super familiar with the team and treating their jobs as liaisons to the team's fans, we get garbage teams, without any knowledge of the teams, outside of the handful of days spent in the days leading up to the game, speaking to general football fans, despite their audience being almost wholly composed of rabid fans without interest in general football activities. So, as a result, a fan, not even a particularly rabid fan, but a fan somewhere in between "casual" and "moderate" will consistently have more knowledge of the team than the announcers.
Furthermore, while the play-by-play man is usually the 2nd-9th best play-by-play man in the company, the color guy is always an ex-player/coach who has no choice but to view his current position as a vacation from his tedious and demanding old job. Color guys rarely exhibit the effort required to study the teams, the seasons, and the changing rules and trends within the league. We often get information and ideas that are simply being regurgitated from the tiresome and redundant pre-game shows and talk-radio forums from the previous week.
This, at least to this observer, is offensive. I follow my teams. When we have the Broncos next week, I do my best to learn about the Broncos and go above and beyond the easy and lazy opinions written by the Peter Kings and argued over by the Phil Simmses of the world. By Sunday, I will know far more about both principles than the seventh-best CBS broadcast team that I will be forced to digest for 200 minutes.
What sucks is that I am rarely, if ever, enlightened. I am often given bad or at least gratuitous information. And I am treated as a "general" football fan with interest in all thirty-two teams, despite my utter apathy towards thirty-one of them. I didn't like Brian Billick as a coach, but I took pleasure in seeing him on the sidelines because of his lack of common sense and the chance that that inability to consistently make the right decision would benefit the Browns. Now I am forced to listen to him pretend to know about the Browns and do his best to weave his favorite Brett Favre musings into the game. In any other sport, Billick would be lucky to be calling games for a local broadcast, but at least there his limited ability to learn would be focused on one team. Here, we get his opinions of a team he has spent two hours a day studying for three days.
The other insanely annoying aspect of the announcing is a residual effect. Given the NFL's wildly growing and uninformed fan base, Billick's presence on one of sixteen official NFL broadcasts passes as some sort of verification that he is a sage of information or knowledge in the complex world of the NFL. Things he says, opinions he has, are instantly credible in the world of the worst fan base on Earth. He now has the ability to affect NFL news cycles and form the paradigm from which we consume the NFL. Much like Vin Scully defining the Dodgers, or Keith Jackson elevating the game of college football to the levels it is now, the NFL is defined by the likes of Ian Eagle, Rich Gannon, Solomon Wilcots, and Billick, further dragging the games down to the levels that have turned off at least one formerly rabid consumer.
This problem will never change. Most people are unaffected by this and within the local markets, have an alternative—to mute the game and put on the local radio broadcast. However, this is one of the primary things that has turned me off in an NFL game. I spend more time critiquing the broadcast and complaining about how annoying certain announcers are than I do actually enjoying and consuming the game. That something this distracting and easily fixable is not a bigger complaint amongst the fan base I regret, but this blog post felt cathartic.
I'm going to try to make this a running thing, that is, my unending beef with the NFL. Some will be shorter than others and that should not signify some sort of importance or ranking system on the growing list of problems that make the NFL such an offensive product. Nor should the order in which I write.
Before this begins, please allow me to offer this short disclaimer. Many of you close to me have offered the opinion that my growing distaste with the league has more to do with my beloved Cleveland Browns' failures than anything substantive. This is simply not true. The Cleveland Indians, who I love equally, if not more, than the Browns, are as inept as the Browns and possess an arguably weaker future. I still love baseball. In fact, I think that baseball's steps in the last several years—MLB Network, MLB.tv, lower ticket prices—have been great for the consumption of the game. Perhaps it is because I live in Southern California, away from the throngs of irrational Browns fans that piqued my interest in the NFL's off months in years past. I don't know. I would like to believe it is merely a legitimate distaste based on logical and simple criteria that I have been able to finally realize as the issues grow, and my interest fades even more.
Also, it should be noted that I LOVE college football, and still get amped when watching old clips of football games. I think NFL Films is a treasure, and many of the game's personalities still interest me. This is merely a harsh criticism of one of the most popular entertainment options in the nation that I find offensive and backwards.
Today I will discuss the announcers.
In other team sports, almost every game is broadcast by a local TV affiliate and announced by employees of the team. In baseball, the Tribe is called by Rick Manning and Matt Underwood, neither of which do anything to enhance the experience, but neither do anything particularly offensive either. Most importantly, not only do they spend the season following the team, but they call the games to a local audience trained on the players' names and histories. The games are called with an expectation of familiarity with the characters and story lines within the organization. Cavalier games are called by Fred McCleod and Austin Carr. Sure, Carr turns many fans off with his over-the-top uses of the same four phrases, and McCleod has turned off a lot ex-TV man, Michael Reghi's fans, but the same knowledge and familiarity is expected in their calls and information is more-often-than-not directed at fans of the team.
Throughout the year, and much more often in the case of the Cavaliers, games are broadcast nationally. Depending on the network and time slot the game is on, this broadcast can be the only broadcast of the team, even in the city of Cleveland. While national broadcasts are directed towards a national audience, significantly less familiar with the teams than local broadcasts, the games are usually one of the only games being nationally televised so that viewers are treated to a top-tier broadcasting team. Personally, I would rather listen to loud dogs barking than endure a baseball game called by Joe Morgan or Tim McCarver, but I respect their calls as legitimate and their opinions—though I essentially universally disagree with everything they say—rarely am overly offended by an opinion they offer.
This trend holds true with college football as well. Nationally-televised games feature top-notch announcing teams that, often, enhance the experience. So in most sports—meaning all other than the NFL—the two options are either a local broadcast directed at a small sub-section of the sports' fan base, complete with inherent knowledge of the events and characters that that sub-section shares, or a national broadcast featuring many of the game's top announcing personalities. These options aren't always ideal, but they are rarely offensive, and often offer great additions to the sport.
The NFL is different. During the regular season, every game outside of two each week are broadcast by CBS or Fox. Because all the games are played within a six hour period of one another, networks are forced to provide upwards of nine productions per week. Meaning, unless your game is the featured game of the week, you are forced to listen to bottom-tier announcing teams. Furthermore, the games are presented as if they are on national TV (which is only half true as most games are just broadcast to the two cities playing each other). So, instead of getting local teams, super familiar with the team and treating their jobs as liaisons to the team's fans, we get garbage teams, without any knowledge of the teams, outside of the handful of days spent in the days leading up to the game, speaking to general football fans, despite their audience being almost wholly composed of rabid fans without interest in general football activities. So, as a result, a fan, not even a particularly rabid fan, but a fan somewhere in between "casual" and "moderate" will consistently have more knowledge of the team than the announcers.
Furthermore, while the play-by-play man is usually the 2nd-9th best play-by-play man in the company, the color guy is always an ex-player/coach who has no choice but to view his current position as a vacation from his tedious and demanding old job. Color guys rarely exhibit the effort required to study the teams, the seasons, and the changing rules and trends within the league. We often get information and ideas that are simply being regurgitated from the tiresome and redundant pre-game shows and talk-radio forums from the previous week.
This, at least to this observer, is offensive. I follow my teams. When we have the Broncos next week, I do my best to learn about the Broncos and go above and beyond the easy and lazy opinions written by the Peter Kings and argued over by the Phil Simmses of the world. By Sunday, I will know far more about both principles than the seventh-best CBS broadcast team that I will be forced to digest for 200 minutes.
What sucks is that I am rarely, if ever, enlightened. I am often given bad or at least gratuitous information. And I am treated as a "general" football fan with interest in all thirty-two teams, despite my utter apathy towards thirty-one of them. I didn't like Brian Billick as a coach, but I took pleasure in seeing him on the sidelines because of his lack of common sense and the chance that that inability to consistently make the right decision would benefit the Browns. Now I am forced to listen to him pretend to know about the Browns and do his best to weave his favorite Brett Favre musings into the game. In any other sport, Billick would be lucky to be calling games for a local broadcast, but at least there his limited ability to learn would be focused on one team. Here, we get his opinions of a team he has spent two hours a day studying for three days.
The other insanely annoying aspect of the announcing is a residual effect. Given the NFL's wildly growing and uninformed fan base, Billick's presence on one of sixteen official NFL broadcasts passes as some sort of verification that he is a sage of information or knowledge in the complex world of the NFL. Things he says, opinions he has, are instantly credible in the world of the worst fan base on Earth. He now has the ability to affect NFL news cycles and form the paradigm from which we consume the NFL. Much like Vin Scully defining the Dodgers, or Keith Jackson elevating the game of college football to the levels it is now, the NFL is defined by the likes of Ian Eagle, Rich Gannon, Solomon Wilcots, and Billick, further dragging the games down to the levels that have turned off at least one formerly rabid consumer.
This problem will never change. Most people are unaffected by this and within the local markets, have an alternative—to mute the game and put on the local radio broadcast. However, this is one of the primary things that has turned me off in an NFL game. I spend more time critiquing the broadcast and complaining about how annoying certain announcers are than I do actually enjoying and consuming the game. That something this distracting and easily fixable is not a bigger complaint amongst the fan base I regret, but this blog post felt cathartic.
Monday, August 17, 2009
I hate the radio
My problem today is an old one: that of the terrible feeling that the radio gives me. This is both an attack on corporate takeover and consolidation of the airwaves, and the frustration of loving music and being in the car a lot—a scenario which should provide a more-than-fortunate scenario to take advantage of unfortunate driving circumstances—and being forced into a delirious anger caused by constant playings of MGMT.
It should be noted that I am not the only person that hates the radio, and this is something that goes back to living in Cleveland, but out here, given my schedule of spending close to 90 minutes in my car each day and my Ipod being stolen, it has reached a terminal boiling point and now needs to be discussed.
So, without any further disclaimers or qualifiers I give you my beef with LA radio.
When I first moved out to LA, I was impressed with the quality of radio. For one, KROQ was one of the most influential, if not famous, radio stations in the country for the past twenty years. We also had Indie 103.1, a smaller but (so I thought) popular station free of the corporate routines and playlists that have driven me crazy in the past. My favorite thing about Indie wasn't the fact that I heard newer bands like SIlversun Pickups and Cold War Kids months before they hit national airwaves, but that they played older songs, from say the 1990s, and late 80s that I loved too. It wasn't about being obscure, elitist, or chic, it was about being rad. On top of these, we had (and have) KCRW, an NPR affiliate known for having incredible music collections and the uber-intellectual/influential Morning Becomes Eclectic known for breaking now-popular bands like the Shins.
To me, coming from the dull and repetitive Cleveland scene, this was nirvana. Then, in the past year, several things have happened.
For 1, 98.7 a contemporary music station changed formats to an edgier, younger format calling their listeners Rock-a-Holics and playing tired and repetitive playlists that I was sick of before they started.
2. KROQ, feeling the heat from 98.7's TERRIBLE sound, began to try to compete with the 16-22 year old brain-dead demo and started playing bands with "The" before their name, but no "s" at the end. (The Bravery, The Fray, The Airborne Toxic Event)
3. Maybe I'm wrong, but it feels as though KCRW has dipped into more obscure, trip-hoppy, anti-commercial elitism as opposed to just playing shit that SOUNDS good.
4. The coup-de-grace, Indie 103.1, citing poor ratings and beleaguered listeners closed their doors and turned mariachi.
These things all happened at a similar time which happened to co-incide with my IPod getting stolen, 97.1 FMTalk going off the air, and the midday crew on AM 570 KLAC's midday show getting an unneeded and disappointing makeover making my drive time a figurative funeral procession through the palm-tree lined streets that seem to directly contradict the shit being played on the radio.
Here's the thing: 98.7 is the devil. I mean that. They are the fucking devil. For 12 months, they played Kings of Leon's Sex on Fire every hour. I couldn't get into the car without hearing that song. Do you know what that does to me!?
Now, an album that I loved is trash to me because I associate it with screaming and pounding the steering wheel waiting for the 98.7 DJ's to stab themselves with a fictional turntable needle. It makes driving unbearable, and it makes the band super-popular with the high-school crowd that now ruins every KoL show by taking their parents money and buying tickets in front of me at the Nokia Theatre or the Forum when they should be playing the fucking Fonda. Then, when I do get to see KoL, they play al new songs, and only one song from their first album. Also, I am NOT, that guy, the guy that bitches about how he liked Snow Patrol back when they were still a real band, no, I'm the guy that called Only by the Night the best album of 2008.
Now I hear MGMT's Kids, a song that came out over two years ago, and by my cout, probably the 6th best song on an OK album 15 times a day. The latest Silversun Pickups CD, a CD I actually LIKE, and by a band that three years ago REPRESENTED the triumph of indie music, has been exploited and destroyed after 98.7 LITERALLY began playing Panic Room every other hour.
Just to play catch up, KROQ has followed suit.
The only bright spot in this mess has been the emergence of 100.3 The Sound who plays just about anything they want, as long as it's not the best song on a particular album. About 1 in 6 songs is actually really good, compared to about 1 in 15 on the other stations.
What are these stations doing. I ask only this of you, radio:
RESPECT YOUR LISTENERS.
We are not as dumb and short-sighted as your market research may argue. We are not Midwest sheep that listen to what is played for us. We sell out three nights at the Wiltern for Wilco. We sell out the Greek for My Morning Jacket. We support the biggest record store in the country, and I can promise you, it's not with Killers CDs and Coldplay. We are BRIGHT people. That doesn't mean that you don't need to appeal to a larger audience by playing hits. I'm not asking for ELO album sides or playing unreleased Frank Zappa. That last Kings of Leon CD was dope, but there are eleven songs on it. Play them all, and not so much! Play stuff from the 90s and early 2000s that we haven't already heard 200 times. If we liked the first Strokes album, chances are we'll like to hear Someday just as much as Last Night. And I know I was young, but I could SWEAR the Smashing Pumpkins had more than four songs.
Please radio, I'm begging you. I don't want to buy a new IPod before I buy a new bike. We're better than this and you could be too.
Now, I will sign off and go see the Flaming Lips at the Greek – a band I've never heard on LA radio, yet somehow they sell 6000 tickets for 50 a pop on a Monday night. Must just be another cult phenomenon.
It should be noted that I am not the only person that hates the radio, and this is something that goes back to living in Cleveland, but out here, given my schedule of spending close to 90 minutes in my car each day and my Ipod being stolen, it has reached a terminal boiling point and now needs to be discussed.
So, without any further disclaimers or qualifiers I give you my beef with LA radio.
When I first moved out to LA, I was impressed with the quality of radio. For one, KROQ was one of the most influential, if not famous, radio stations in the country for the past twenty years. We also had Indie 103.1, a smaller but (so I thought) popular station free of the corporate routines and playlists that have driven me crazy in the past. My favorite thing about Indie wasn't the fact that I heard newer bands like SIlversun Pickups and Cold War Kids months before they hit national airwaves, but that they played older songs, from say the 1990s, and late 80s that I loved too. It wasn't about being obscure, elitist, or chic, it was about being rad. On top of these, we had (and have) KCRW, an NPR affiliate known for having incredible music collections and the uber-intellectual/influential Morning Becomes Eclectic known for breaking now-popular bands like the Shins.
To me, coming from the dull and repetitive Cleveland scene, this was nirvana. Then, in the past year, several things have happened.
For 1, 98.7 a contemporary music station changed formats to an edgier, younger format calling their listeners Rock-a-Holics and playing tired and repetitive playlists that I was sick of before they started.
2. KROQ, feeling the heat from 98.7's TERRIBLE sound, began to try to compete with the 16-22 year old brain-dead demo and started playing bands with "The" before their name, but no "s" at the end. (The Bravery, The Fray, The Airborne Toxic Event)
3. Maybe I'm wrong, but it feels as though KCRW has dipped into more obscure, trip-hoppy, anti-commercial elitism as opposed to just playing shit that SOUNDS good.
4. The coup-de-grace, Indie 103.1, citing poor ratings and beleaguered listeners closed their doors and turned mariachi.
These things all happened at a similar time which happened to co-incide with my IPod getting stolen, 97.1 FMTalk going off the air, and the midday crew on AM 570 KLAC's midday show getting an unneeded and disappointing makeover making my drive time a figurative funeral procession through the palm-tree lined streets that seem to directly contradict the shit being played on the radio.
Here's the thing: 98.7 is the devil. I mean that. They are the fucking devil. For 12 months, they played Kings of Leon's Sex on Fire every hour. I couldn't get into the car without hearing that song. Do you know what that does to me!?
Now, an album that I loved is trash to me because I associate it with screaming and pounding the steering wheel waiting for the 98.7 DJ's to stab themselves with a fictional turntable needle. It makes driving unbearable, and it makes the band super-popular with the high-school crowd that now ruins every KoL show by taking their parents money and buying tickets in front of me at the Nokia Theatre or the Forum when they should be playing the fucking Fonda. Then, when I do get to see KoL, they play al new songs, and only one song from their first album. Also, I am NOT, that guy, the guy that bitches about how he liked Snow Patrol back when they were still a real band, no, I'm the guy that called Only by the Night the best album of 2008.
Now I hear MGMT's Kids, a song that came out over two years ago, and by my cout, probably the 6th best song on an OK album 15 times a day. The latest Silversun Pickups CD, a CD I actually LIKE, and by a band that three years ago REPRESENTED the triumph of indie music, has been exploited and destroyed after 98.7 LITERALLY began playing Panic Room every other hour.
Just to play catch up, KROQ has followed suit.
The only bright spot in this mess has been the emergence of 100.3 The Sound who plays just about anything they want, as long as it's not the best song on a particular album. About 1 in 6 songs is actually really good, compared to about 1 in 15 on the other stations.
What are these stations doing. I ask only this of you, radio:
RESPECT YOUR LISTENERS.
We are not as dumb and short-sighted as your market research may argue. We are not Midwest sheep that listen to what is played for us. We sell out three nights at the Wiltern for Wilco. We sell out the Greek for My Morning Jacket. We support the biggest record store in the country, and I can promise you, it's not with Killers CDs and Coldplay. We are BRIGHT people. That doesn't mean that you don't need to appeal to a larger audience by playing hits. I'm not asking for ELO album sides or playing unreleased Frank Zappa. That last Kings of Leon CD was dope, but there are eleven songs on it. Play them all, and not so much! Play stuff from the 90s and early 2000s that we haven't already heard 200 times. If we liked the first Strokes album, chances are we'll like to hear Someday just as much as Last Night. And I know I was young, but I could SWEAR the Smashing Pumpkins had more than four songs.
Please radio, I'm begging you. I don't want to buy a new IPod before I buy a new bike. We're better than this and you could be too.
Now, I will sign off and go see the Flaming Lips at the Greek – a band I've never heard on LA radio, yet somehow they sell 6000 tickets for 50 a pop on a Monday night. Must just be another cult phenomenon.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Funny People Review
Funny People
The Review
(Spoiler Alert)
I saw Funny People last night and I loved it. After reading a few reviews after seeing it, I've noticed it's quite a polarizing film. And not the typical generational polarization with the square older population not getting the humor of the edgy youth. No, either you got this film as a whole, or you didn't. It wasn't about understanding the humor, or being offended by the production quality. Critics say it ran too long, it made a point that wasn't there, or even that it was poorly directed. First I will say what I liked about this movie, and then I will address the overarching theme argument that several critics have used to attack the film.
First off, there is the Larry David-esque blurry line between fiction and reality. I'm sorry, before I start crediting David with this, allow me to honor the true originator of this type of comedy, Gary Shandling. Anyway, like Larry Sanders or the fictional Larry David, Adam Sandler's George Simmons was playing the part of a fictional Adam Sandler. From the campy, but wildly successful feature list, to the juvenile but original brand of humor, Simmons was playing Sandler. Throwing in old clips of Sandler doing prank calls, stand-up, even an old spot on Conan (obviously as Adam Sandler), blurred this line even more and made for an incredibly unique character. It was as if we knew the character's background without any development. Added to which, we (the audience) immediately felt somewhat of a personal connection to Simmons, not because of any creative and effective writing of the character, but because we grew up watching him. Sandler has always been a part of our lives, hence Simmons was. And Apatow pulled this off BRILLIANTLY, by interweaving the aforementioned early Sandler stuff in with fictional but mildly familiar films that Simmons had created.
On top of this, was the beautifully drawn out world of showbusiness. The comedians being themselves, the backstage stuff, the celebrity cameos which felt less forced than any I can remember—these things were executed brilliantly. Ray Romano, Paul Reiser, Eminem, and Andy Dick were playing themselves, interacting with a fictional character. The stand-up stuff was pulled off just as brilliantly as tension, nerves, and a silly subculture was presented as accurately as I've seen before. I loved this.
Then there's the stuff that maybe I like because I live in LA. There are certain things—Entourage, Californication, Shop Girl, 500 Days of Summer—that I'm not sure I would love so much if I lived in Ohio. I DON'T know…maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't. But this movie was chock-full of that stuff. The guys' apartment at Larchmont and Melrose. Their relationship. Jason Shwartzman's half-success on his show was perfect. We all know these people—we all deal with them—they're not bad guys, they're just EXACTLY like that. Then there's the recognizable places like The WeHo Palm, Runyon Canyon, and Malibu that I feel some love for because I've been there. This isn't that first movie to get being mid- to late 20s in LA right, but it was one of the best. All of the younger characters—Shwartzman, Rogen, Hill, the girl, even the people at Thanksgiving—were reminiscent of people we know. Loved it.
The soundtrack was perfect. James Taylor, John Lennon, and then, during the resolution, while Rogen and his love interest sit on top of a peak in the Eastern Santa Monicas listening to Wilco's Jesus Etc., I just about lost it. Probably my favorite song ever being played over one of my favorite hidden secrets about living in LA. I couldn't imagine a scene more powerful…to me.
OK, now the themes. To me, and maybe I'm wrong, this movie showed how the late-twenties struggling comedian's romance with fame and success is much closer, but also much less desirable than he might know. I'm not talking about the "I don't have any friends," or "no woman ever really loves me," themes that are illustrated, and necessary. I'm referring more to the idea of what success actually means. At the beginning of the film, Rogen asks Sandler to help HIM write. Sandler lets him know that that's not how this relationship works. The payer does not do the writing.
But throughout the movie we learn how close these two characters (both representing larger clumps of people) actually are. Sandler (or Simmons) the ultra-celebrity gets terminally ill. The aura of invincibility is shed moments after the opening titles. They work the same tours, clubs, and crowds. Rogen's ability to converse with the older, successful celebrity crowd shows that the fame that they all have in common is not the only thing that can bind these people together. Simmons, despite hordes of money and women, is ultimately rejected by his true love and is more affected by that, then he was of the news that he would die. This rejection, played against Rogen's triumph to the tune of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot shows the dichotomy of the two characters again.
If Apatow is trying to make a statement in this film, it was, at least to me, that celebrity is merely one measure of success. To me, the final scene, in which Simmons visits Rogen at the deli in which is working to give him jokes that he in fact wrote for him, is poignant in that it shows that Simmons views the two as equals, despite his giant Malibu house and Rogen's deli job alongside an awesome ex-con played by the RZA.
Sure, the third act ran long, the overdeveloping of both Leslie Mann and Eric Bana's characters killed a lot of the momentum, and the overarching themes may have been lost amongst the conflict/resolution of other smaller themes, but stepping back—I think Apatow did a great job with an incredibly original and unique approach to celebrity.
I'll like any post-modern attacks on reality, so I am an easy target, but Funny People had me cracking up and thinking about life in LA as something more than it probably is. But at the end of the day, I think that's the point of this film.
The Review
(Spoiler Alert)
I saw Funny People last night and I loved it. After reading a few reviews after seeing it, I've noticed it's quite a polarizing film. And not the typical generational polarization with the square older population not getting the humor of the edgy youth. No, either you got this film as a whole, or you didn't. It wasn't about understanding the humor, or being offended by the production quality. Critics say it ran too long, it made a point that wasn't there, or even that it was poorly directed. First I will say what I liked about this movie, and then I will address the overarching theme argument that several critics have used to attack the film.
First off, there is the Larry David-esque blurry line between fiction and reality. I'm sorry, before I start crediting David with this, allow me to honor the true originator of this type of comedy, Gary Shandling. Anyway, like Larry Sanders or the fictional Larry David, Adam Sandler's George Simmons was playing the part of a fictional Adam Sandler. From the campy, but wildly successful feature list, to the juvenile but original brand of humor, Simmons was playing Sandler. Throwing in old clips of Sandler doing prank calls, stand-up, even an old spot on Conan (obviously as Adam Sandler), blurred this line even more and made for an incredibly unique character. It was as if we knew the character's background without any development. Added to which, we (the audience) immediately felt somewhat of a personal connection to Simmons, not because of any creative and effective writing of the character, but because we grew up watching him. Sandler has always been a part of our lives, hence Simmons was. And Apatow pulled this off BRILLIANTLY, by interweaving the aforementioned early Sandler stuff in with fictional but mildly familiar films that Simmons had created.
On top of this, was the beautifully drawn out world of showbusiness. The comedians being themselves, the backstage stuff, the celebrity cameos which felt less forced than any I can remember—these things were executed brilliantly. Ray Romano, Paul Reiser, Eminem, and Andy Dick were playing themselves, interacting with a fictional character. The stand-up stuff was pulled off just as brilliantly as tension, nerves, and a silly subculture was presented as accurately as I've seen before. I loved this.
Then there's the stuff that maybe I like because I live in LA. There are certain things—Entourage, Californication, Shop Girl, 500 Days of Summer—that I'm not sure I would love so much if I lived in Ohio. I DON'T know…maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't. But this movie was chock-full of that stuff. The guys' apartment at Larchmont and Melrose. Their relationship. Jason Shwartzman's half-success on his show was perfect. We all know these people—we all deal with them—they're not bad guys, they're just EXACTLY like that. Then there's the recognizable places like The WeHo Palm, Runyon Canyon, and Malibu that I feel some love for because I've been there. This isn't that first movie to get being mid- to late 20s in LA right, but it was one of the best. All of the younger characters—Shwartzman, Rogen, Hill, the girl, even the people at Thanksgiving—were reminiscent of people we know. Loved it.
The soundtrack was perfect. James Taylor, John Lennon, and then, during the resolution, while Rogen and his love interest sit on top of a peak in the Eastern Santa Monicas listening to Wilco's Jesus Etc., I just about lost it. Probably my favorite song ever being played over one of my favorite hidden secrets about living in LA. I couldn't imagine a scene more powerful…to me.
OK, now the themes. To me, and maybe I'm wrong, this movie showed how the late-twenties struggling comedian's romance with fame and success is much closer, but also much less desirable than he might know. I'm not talking about the "I don't have any friends," or "no woman ever really loves me," themes that are illustrated, and necessary. I'm referring more to the idea of what success actually means. At the beginning of the film, Rogen asks Sandler to help HIM write. Sandler lets him know that that's not how this relationship works. The payer does not do the writing.
But throughout the movie we learn how close these two characters (both representing larger clumps of people) actually are. Sandler (or Simmons) the ultra-celebrity gets terminally ill. The aura of invincibility is shed moments after the opening titles. They work the same tours, clubs, and crowds. Rogen's ability to converse with the older, successful celebrity crowd shows that the fame that they all have in common is not the only thing that can bind these people together. Simmons, despite hordes of money and women, is ultimately rejected by his true love and is more affected by that, then he was of the news that he would die. This rejection, played against Rogen's triumph to the tune of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot shows the dichotomy of the two characters again.
If Apatow is trying to make a statement in this film, it was, at least to me, that celebrity is merely one measure of success. To me, the final scene, in which Simmons visits Rogen at the deli in which is working to give him jokes that he in fact wrote for him, is poignant in that it shows that Simmons views the two as equals, despite his giant Malibu house and Rogen's deli job alongside an awesome ex-con played by the RZA.
Sure, the third act ran long, the overdeveloping of both Leslie Mann and Eric Bana's characters killed a lot of the momentum, and the overarching themes may have been lost amongst the conflict/resolution of other smaller themes, but stepping back—I think Apatow did a great job with an incredibly original and unique approach to celebrity.
I'll like any post-modern attacks on reality, so I am an easy target, but Funny People had me cracking up and thinking about life in LA as something more than it probably is. But at the end of the day, I think that's the point of this film.
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