Now that the summer is officially over… as I mentioned last week my summer officially ends with the onset of Rosh Hashana…its time for Fall and the new TV season.
Back in the old days, the first day of school always coincided with the arrival of the Fall Preview TV Guide… a nice little consolation prize to look forward to when I would come home from my first day back. But since TV Guide got rid of its small regional magazine and went to the current format, I stopped reading it, so nowadays I rely on Entertainment Weekly and whatever I can glean off the various TV blogs that I read.
In addition to that, I really don’t get into the TV (or NFL) season until after the World Series. That gives the networks the chance to cancel the really crummy shows before I get a chance to check them out, but leave the less crummy ones there for me to watch. This year the Mets have been so lousy and NBC has made a historic change to its prime time approach, I have actually taken a little sneak preview pre-November.. hence the Sneak Preview Preview. Incidentally, I still watch the Mets so their game has to be over before I watch another show. And even though our suffering ends when the season ends a week from Sunday, poor Howie Rose has to go from this fiasco to announcing a season of Islander games!
One of the biggest changes is NBC’s decision to run the same show every night at 10pm… a concept that had never been tried before as most prime time shows air once a week. But since syndicated game shows and talk shows and court shows run once a day all across the week, why not try it with a prime time show. By the way, speaking of talk shows, what local theater troupe lends its actors to Jerry Springer’s show? There is NO way these are real people… If you pay close attention, the “confrontations” appear rehearsed and scripted and the “guests” always stand in just the right spot leading to those “spontaneous” fights. Yet all is calm later in the show when all the “guests” are in the late segment when the audience members fire off wisecracks, and the hick “guests” tend of have uncharacteristically witty comebacks.
So with Jay Leno getting the 10 pm slot, I decided to check it out to see if NBC made a brilliant decision or a colossal mistake. The network gets some ratings leeway for this show since the program is relatively cheap to produce compared to the usual stuff that airs at 10pm such as Law and Order. Its kind of odd having the 10pm shows moved up an hour, but I guess this is what East Coasters who relocate to Central Time go through.
Along the way, I caught a season premiere and a new show. I haven’t really been much of a fan of “The Office”…. I need a laugh track to watch a sitcom, so I can tell what the producers expect to be funny so I can laugh along accordingly. These laugh track less shows are hard to watch because I can’t take points off for missed jokes. And why don’t the cameramen ever laugh?? Are they required to keep a straight face? Do they reshoot a scene if the cameraman laughs? I guess the Office is ok… although Im not sure why its reruns bounced off Seinfeld from the coveted 730 and 11pm slot on Channel 5. I even caught the British version on Cartoon Network the other day, but I only watched 10 minutes of it. I would need to see more to give it a fair shot.
One new show that caught my attention was “Community” which got a rave review from Allen Sepinwall in the Star Ledger. I actually have found it to be somewhat amusing. Its about a guy who had a fraudulent college degree who has to go back to college and how he befriends a bunch of goofy characters in school including one blonde chic who he has the hots for. Its right out of the ensemble comedy formula of Taxi or Cheers, etc.
This past week’s show introduced us to the Spanish professor who is actually Asian who does a very funny shtick about why the students should ignore the fact that he teaches Spanish instead of Chinese or martial arts. But those of us who saw “The Hangover” during the summer might have been distracted by the actor since he is the same guy who was the naked guy in the trunk. You gotta give him credit… the guy has a iddy biddy teeny weeny little shmeckle yet had the guts to display it in the movie! Hopefully I’ll forget this fact one day and be able to focus more on his acting chops.
Chevy Chase is also in the show, and I am not sure if NBC would want the host of one of the worst talk show flops this side of the Wilton North Report to lead into Leno. And just to get this out of the way early, I am NOT a Leno fan, but I try to watch his new show with a fair attitude. I used to think Jay was hysterical in the 1980s when he would appear as a guest on Letterman’s 1230 NBC show. He also was a regular guest host filling in for Johnny Carson back then, although I tended to prefer Joan Rivers and Garry Shandling. But once Jay got the job, I started to like him less and less.
I recall watching the first episode when he took over the Tonight Show and Billy Crystal walked out as his first guest and went to shake “Ed’s” hand only to discover that there was no sidekick. And you have to give Leno credit for stepping into the shoes of a legend. However, when Bill Carter’s book came out detailing the lengths Leno went to screw Letterman out of the slot, I started to think NBC made a mistake. And when I realized that the Tonight Show Leno was a much more toned down version than the 1230 Letterman version of Leno, I really felt that the more talented Letterman really got the shaft and I was very happy when Letterman got the 1130 slot on CBS.
Leno’s ratings victories are well documented… and even though it started when Hugh Grant went on as a guest after he got caught in an embarrassing situation, one guest does not lead to more than a decade of ratings domination. I guess you can’t account for taste. The only reason I would ever watch a segment of Leno would be if he had a guest I really liked. For example, I remember a show with George Carlin where he was on the couch while Ann Coulter was as guest and you could just see that Carlin was keeping his mouth shut because he knew he could easily tear Coulter apart.
But Leno himself also got a raw deal at first when NBC pushed him out for Conan who I like but still really don’t watch. Once I discovered the incredibly witty Craig Ferguson I moved my late night attention to CBS. Nonetheless, NBC came up with a reasonable compromise by moving Leno up to 10 and probably saved themselves a lot of money in the process.
I have caught some of Leno’s early shows and I must admit I have laughed out loud a few times. I am hoping that now that he is not “Johnny’s replacement” but instead is “Law and Order; SVU”;s replacement that some of his late 80s early 90s edge would come back. The open of the show is similar to the Tonight Show.. Stuttering John is not the announcer any more.. but the band looks to be the same and the set is similarly laid out except there is no desk. Jay comes out and does his monologue and then the show steers away from the traditional talk show format.
I have noticed he has a revolving roster of comedians who prepare pre taped pieces. The first show featured the wedding singer from “The Hangover” and had him do a lengthy bit about a car wash that went just a little too long. Also, the other day a black woman did a bit about Harlem that also went a bit too long although it was sort of funny especially the way the black women were making fun of the new hoity toity white hairdresser who had set up shop nearby.
Having these guys are a good safety play for Leno.. if they bomb he just gets rid of ‘em and ultimately I think those pieces will be cut. Nightly news anchorman Brian Williams is also supposed to be doing a regular feature, but I haven’t seen it yet and Williams who I thought was so boring on Channel 2 many years back is actually quite witty in real life.
The talk segments are similar.. guests don’t sit on couches with Jay at a desk but instead sit next to each other on chairs. Jerry Seinfeld was on the first show and he was his usual funny self poking fun at Lenos “farewell” show compared to Seinfeld’s farewell show on NBC where Leno came right back to TV while Seinfeld did not. The segment also featured a funny appearance by Oprah. By the way, Seinfeld and crew will be on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” this season a show whose season premiere I also caught, although it was quite disturbing to see Jeff do the ol hoochy mcscoochy with Funkhouser’s crazy sister, and then deny it claiming she was crazy.
Leno also interviewed that moron Kanye West the day after his crazy appearance on the MTV Music Awards and really got tough with him, asking him what his dead mother would think about what he did the night before. Thursday night’s show featured Rush Limbaugh which was also a well done interview.. good to see Rush lost 80 pounds… his radio success has never translated to TV so you never really get to see him too often. Having him drive an electric car which had a cardboard AL Gore on a race course was quite amusing too.
But some of the segments don’t do as well. Pee Wee Herman was on earlier this week and a bit he did just was not as funny. And when Herman (who looks the same as he did 20 years ago even though he is 57) told Leno he had a new abstinence ring I was waiting for Leno to tie it in with a movie theater masturbating abstinence question.. but the question never materialized. And besides that happened in the early 1990s when Leno was doing funny shtick on Letterman and anybody under 25 probably doesn’t remember seeing Pee Wee’s Playhouse... nor do they remember x rated movie theaters... (how bizarre... there was no internet porn back then!)
So will I watch Leno? I will IF nothing better is on. I am not yet 100% well versed with the new Fall schedule. But what will happen if a CSI or Mentalist is on at 10? Will I watch Leno? Will I flip over to Wendy Williams on Channel 9? And will Leno return to his old edgy self? And more importantly, will this show be a colossal flop>? Or… will it turn into a brilliant programming strategy that will result in other talk/variety shows popping up on other networks? It looks like it could be an interesting season and kudos to NBC for at least trying to do something original and different.
PUMPSTRADAMUS PICK OF THE WEEK
Pumpy lost last week to drop to 1-1. This week its the Indianapolis Colts Arizona Cardinals matchup on Sunday Night... the rare game that Pumpy will see as much as I will since our Jewish friends will be at Temple Sunday night for Yom Kippur and not watching the game. The Cards are 2 1/2 point faves. Sayeth the Pump: "Take Indianapolis since I will be chanting Colt Nidre"
UNBIASED GIANTS FAN PICK OF THE WEEK:
Last week we were 3-0 to even our record at 3-3.
TAMPA 7 point doggies over The Giants - Don't worry Giants fans... Big Blue will win the game.. this just strikes me as a tad too high a spread for a road game.
Chiefs 9 doggies over PHILLY - Are the Eagles really that good to deserve a double digit spread this early in the season?
Carolina 9 doggies over DALLAS - After Rosh Hashana, I watched the Cowboys lose at home... now I plan to do so after Yom Kippur. Big spread here... and Im talking about all the lox and bagels that Trophy Wife will serve!
Friday, September 25, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Thoughts for 5770 - Revisiting "Diary of A Crummy Day"
Hey today is my birthday!
So when does the summer really end? Is it Labor Day? Is it September 22? For me, summer really ends when things get "serious" and I guess being Jewish that would mean the arrival of Rosh Hashana..... (although in the rare years that it comes out before 9-17, we still get a last gasp of summer at the shore on my birthday) And there have been some years that Rosh Hashana came out in October… and in those years my summer continued into October… I even recall the infamous 1994 RH which started the night of Labor Day! My mother was in the hospital that weekend and I remember walking quite a few miles from Linden to Rahway Hospital in brand new shoes. I had blisters on my feet till Thanksgiving!
But the solemnity of Rosh Hashana is where everything gets serious again.. It launches 10 days of repentance, and it also marks the first time that I start wearing a tie and jacket to synagogue again. The Jewish New Year also starts off a few weeks of religious holidays that ends with my favorite holiday of Simchat Torah. (It also marks 3 wks of coworkers asking “There’s another Jewish Holiday?”) Simchat Torah always wraps up with my annual proclamation of “Oh well, no more holidays till Thanksgiving”. I actually stole that line from the Cantor at my old synagogue in Linden; he said it off the cuff to me one year and I have used it every year since!
When looking back at classic columns in NWOW, one that stands out in my mind appeared here on 8/24/06… the day The Highland Park Conservative Temple and Center was damaged in a fire. I kept a diary of my thoughts for that day and decided to post a column that night with a narrative of the events of that day… unlike other columns that I work on for a few days… That particular column was one that I wanted to post at the end of the day to effectively capture my emotions. I remember attempting to upload that column…”Diary of a Crummy Day”… (see the August 2006 archives) to blogspot that night and got increasingly frustrated because I couldn’t get on the internet, and I very impatiently continued to log on until after what seemed like an eternity when I finally got the signal... I recommend you check it out if you had never seen it before.
In retrospect, the Crummy Factor of the day has diminished. Unbeknownst to me that day, a little baby was born in a nearby hospital that day… and now 3 years later Trophy Wife and I have become friends with that kid’s parents… And how crummy a day could it be if a little baby arrived that day? And also unbeknownst to me on that very day, a new family moved to town just 6 houses away from where we live now. That family had a baby this summer… but not in the hospital.. but actually at their house! The night the baby was born there was a nasty thunderstorm and I watched the rain coming down hoping that the loud noises weren’t scaring the newest member of our community. Over the last year, Trophy Wife and I have also became friendly with that family… and again, how crummy a day could it be if this nice new family moved here??
And this weekend, the Crummy factor will diminish yet again with the arrival of 5770. For the first few months after that August 2006 fire, the Temple building was totally unusable. The sanctuary wing needed to be rebuilt and the rest of the building had to be cleaned out from smoke damage. The office staff moved their operation to an office building that was kindly donated by a Temple member. Services were split up between that office building, The Y and the High School. After about 10 months, one side of the Temple was usable again and we moved everything into what was once the gym, a gym that was reinvented for 2 years as a repainted temporary sanctuary and general all purpose room. It is also the same room where I met Trophy Wife on December 29, 2001.
Now 3 years later as we begin the New Year, we will finally have the Grand Re-opening of the Temple’s sanctuary that was destroyed by that fire. If you saw the 2006 column, the very night of the fire, officials of the Temple held a meeting at the local Y (which has since been torn down) and announced that the rebuilding process would start immediately and a fundraising campaign was launched. That money has now gone towards a nice new addition that has resulted in a redesigned building featuring an even bigger sanctuary so the overflow crowd can sit in pews and not on temporary chairs. There are many other new features but they are a mystery to me because I haven’t seen them yet. The new Sanctuary wing has been kept under lock and key from curiosity seekers like myself, and until the New Year begins, nobody will be allowed in there, except for the Temple Officers who have been posting pictures regularly on Facebook. And I gotta tell you… these pictures really look fantastic!
This Saturday Morning as I wake up and wipe the cobwebs from my eyes… I’ll run downstairs to get some caffeine and I plan to tie my tie a little quicker; I’ll already have the jacket picked out and I plan to scamper off to synagogue with a little spring in my step. (Hopefully I wont step on any cracks or potholes like I did on Rosh Hashana 1999 when I sprained my ankle on my way to Temple!) And I plan to set aside a little extra time on my arrival to oooo and aaaaah as I check out the brand new sanctuary… hopefully I won’t sound too much like Merv Griffin because belting out "Lovely Bunch of Coconuts" at Temple would be highly inappropriate! But after those first few minutes Saturday as I reintroduce myself to the new Temple, I will also take some time to further downgrade that Crummy factor from 3 yrs ago.
And this should be the theme for 5770 - downgrade the Crummy Factor. And single people and ventriloquists should also rethink their dating habits and downgrade the Dummy Factor. Life is tough right now.. the economy has tanked, 401k's and wallets are hurting and everybody is sniping. Congressmen heckle the President… Serena Williams yells at referees… and Kanye West kvetches because his friend didn’t win an award.
Believe me, as a mortgage broker I see firsthand that people are having problems! But before you sit at services reflecting on all the problems from last year… remember the old Monty Python song…: “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”… Instead of spending time worrying about things, take the bull by the horns like our Temple crew did that August 24th and look to the future and see what you need to do to improve your situation. Nothing would be better if over the next several months we are all able to downgrade our Crummy Factors. And as tough as it might look right now, we don’t have the foresight to look into the future… so even though life might be crummy now, things have a way of working out… just like August 24, 2006.
PUMPSTRADAMUS PICK OF THE WEEK
Pumpy is 1-0 after hitting it with the Jets last wk. This week we go to Georgia, the home state of Former President Jimmy Carter who may have started a firestorm this week by saying Obama critics are prejudiced against blacks. The Falcons are 6 point faves over the Panthers. Sayeth The Pump:
“First I want to correct the column’s last paragraph that we don’t have foresight to see the future… Second.. I too had a daughter this summer that you didn’t mention. As for the pick,. Let’s take the Panthers because my son "Little Pumpstradamus" likes The Pink Panther.
UNBIASED GIANTS FAN PICKS OF THE WEEK; Last week we were 0-3. Home teams are in caps.
Giants 3 point doggies over DALLAS - Looking forward to this one after 2 days of Rosh Hashana.
Saints pick 'em over PHILLY - The Cheese Steaks have some serious QB problems.
Rams 9 1/2 point doggies over WASHINGTON - The Skins didn't look that impressive last week even though the Rams looked that bad. Double digit spreads are a little dangerous this early in the season.
So when does the summer really end? Is it Labor Day? Is it September 22? For me, summer really ends when things get "serious" and I guess being Jewish that would mean the arrival of Rosh Hashana..... (although in the rare years that it comes out before 9-17, we still get a last gasp of summer at the shore on my birthday) And there have been some years that Rosh Hashana came out in October… and in those years my summer continued into October… I even recall the infamous 1994 RH which started the night of Labor Day! My mother was in the hospital that weekend and I remember walking quite a few miles from Linden to Rahway Hospital in brand new shoes. I had blisters on my feet till Thanksgiving!
But the solemnity of Rosh Hashana is where everything gets serious again.. It launches 10 days of repentance, and it also marks the first time that I start wearing a tie and jacket to synagogue again. The Jewish New Year also starts off a few weeks of religious holidays that ends with my favorite holiday of Simchat Torah. (It also marks 3 wks of coworkers asking “There’s another Jewish Holiday?”) Simchat Torah always wraps up with my annual proclamation of “Oh well, no more holidays till Thanksgiving”. I actually stole that line from the Cantor at my old synagogue in Linden; he said it off the cuff to me one year and I have used it every year since!
When looking back at classic columns in NWOW, one that stands out in my mind appeared here on 8/24/06… the day The Highland Park Conservative Temple and Center was damaged in a fire. I kept a diary of my thoughts for that day and decided to post a column that night with a narrative of the events of that day… unlike other columns that I work on for a few days… That particular column was one that I wanted to post at the end of the day to effectively capture my emotions. I remember attempting to upload that column…”Diary of a Crummy Day”… (see the August 2006 archives) to blogspot that night and got increasingly frustrated because I couldn’t get on the internet, and I very impatiently continued to log on until after what seemed like an eternity when I finally got the signal... I recommend you check it out if you had never seen it before.
In retrospect, the Crummy Factor of the day has diminished. Unbeknownst to me that day, a little baby was born in a nearby hospital that day… and now 3 years later Trophy Wife and I have become friends with that kid’s parents… And how crummy a day could it be if a little baby arrived that day? And also unbeknownst to me on that very day, a new family moved to town just 6 houses away from where we live now. That family had a baby this summer… but not in the hospital.. but actually at their house! The night the baby was born there was a nasty thunderstorm and I watched the rain coming down hoping that the loud noises weren’t scaring the newest member of our community. Over the last year, Trophy Wife and I have also became friendly with that family… and again, how crummy a day could it be if this nice new family moved here??
And this weekend, the Crummy factor will diminish yet again with the arrival of 5770. For the first few months after that August 2006 fire, the Temple building was totally unusable. The sanctuary wing needed to be rebuilt and the rest of the building had to be cleaned out from smoke damage. The office staff moved their operation to an office building that was kindly donated by a Temple member. Services were split up between that office building, The Y and the High School. After about 10 months, one side of the Temple was usable again and we moved everything into what was once the gym, a gym that was reinvented for 2 years as a repainted temporary sanctuary and general all purpose room. It is also the same room where I met Trophy Wife on December 29, 2001.
Now 3 years later as we begin the New Year, we will finally have the Grand Re-opening of the Temple’s sanctuary that was destroyed by that fire. If you saw the 2006 column, the very night of the fire, officials of the Temple held a meeting at the local Y (which has since been torn down) and announced that the rebuilding process would start immediately and a fundraising campaign was launched. That money has now gone towards a nice new addition that has resulted in a redesigned building featuring an even bigger sanctuary so the overflow crowd can sit in pews and not on temporary chairs. There are many other new features but they are a mystery to me because I haven’t seen them yet. The new Sanctuary wing has been kept under lock and key from curiosity seekers like myself, and until the New Year begins, nobody will be allowed in there, except for the Temple Officers who have been posting pictures regularly on Facebook. And I gotta tell you… these pictures really look fantastic!
This Saturday Morning as I wake up and wipe the cobwebs from my eyes… I’ll run downstairs to get some caffeine and I plan to tie my tie a little quicker; I’ll already have the jacket picked out and I plan to scamper off to synagogue with a little spring in my step. (Hopefully I wont step on any cracks or potholes like I did on Rosh Hashana 1999 when I sprained my ankle on my way to Temple!) And I plan to set aside a little extra time on my arrival to oooo and aaaaah as I check out the brand new sanctuary… hopefully I won’t sound too much like Merv Griffin because belting out "Lovely Bunch of Coconuts" at Temple would be highly inappropriate! But after those first few minutes Saturday as I reintroduce myself to the new Temple, I will also take some time to further downgrade that Crummy factor from 3 yrs ago.
And this should be the theme for 5770 - downgrade the Crummy Factor. And single people and ventriloquists should also rethink their dating habits and downgrade the Dummy Factor. Life is tough right now.. the economy has tanked, 401k's and wallets are hurting and everybody is sniping. Congressmen heckle the President… Serena Williams yells at referees… and Kanye West kvetches because his friend didn’t win an award.
Believe me, as a mortgage broker I see firsthand that people are having problems! But before you sit at services reflecting on all the problems from last year… remember the old Monty Python song…: “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”… Instead of spending time worrying about things, take the bull by the horns like our Temple crew did that August 24th and look to the future and see what you need to do to improve your situation. Nothing would be better if over the next several months we are all able to downgrade our Crummy Factors. And as tough as it might look right now, we don’t have the foresight to look into the future… so even though life might be crummy now, things have a way of working out… just like August 24, 2006.
PUMPSTRADAMUS PICK OF THE WEEK
Pumpy is 1-0 after hitting it with the Jets last wk. This week we go to Georgia, the home state of Former President Jimmy Carter who may have started a firestorm this week by saying Obama critics are prejudiced against blacks. The Falcons are 6 point faves over the Panthers. Sayeth The Pump:
“First I want to correct the column’s last paragraph that we don’t have foresight to see the future… Second.. I too had a daughter this summer that you didn’t mention. As for the pick,. Let’s take the Panthers because my son "Little Pumpstradamus" likes The Pink Panther.
UNBIASED GIANTS FAN PICKS OF THE WEEK; Last week we were 0-3. Home teams are in caps.
Giants 3 point doggies over DALLAS - Looking forward to this one after 2 days of Rosh Hashana.
Saints pick 'em over PHILLY - The Cheese Steaks have some serious QB problems.
Rams 9 1/2 point doggies over WASHINGTON - The Skins didn't look that impressive last week even though the Rams looked that bad. Double digit spreads are a little dangerous this early in the season.
Friday, September 11, 2009
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
Well for one thing, I was not blogging as I discovered while going through the August 2009 archives. But it’s good to be back.. and today is September 11th… and while there is a call for a national Holiday to remember 9/11 – which would be hard to do so soon after Labor Day - here is my proposal:
Flip flop Labor Day and Memorial Day and move Memorial Day to September 11th, although I am not quite sure how that would affect The Jerry Lewis Telethon…. I think it’s a great tribute that they read all the names of those who lost their lives and maybe something like this should also be done on Holocaust Remembrance Day too.
I Summer Baseball
I was busy during the summer doing some volunteering and spending too much time playing Typing Maniac on Facebook. I have also been working on a project that I will elaborate on in a future column. We didn’t do a Baseball Quarterly Report column at the 120 game mark, because for the first time since we started NWOW back in November of 2005, the Mets are having a pretty lame season so my attention to baseball has drifted off as the Met losses continue to pile up. My buddy Walter announced as the Mets dropped under .500 earlier this summer that he would grow a beard until the Mets were back to the break even point. Unfortunately that won’t happen until April’s 0-0 record… but Walter refused to give up and now looks like ZZ Top.
My fantasy baseball team is as lame as usual… but this year our league has a new rule that players can only be protected for 3 seasons, and the team that finishes 5th gets the first pick… which will most likely be Albert Pujols. My team actually rallied over the last month or so led by my nice Jewish boy pitching staff of Jason Marquis and Scott Feldman and pulled within 20 points of that #5 spot. That spot by the way is held by my Fantasy Baseball nemesis Bob Salvo who came from behind to knock me off the top spot in 2007…. Perhaps this year, revenge will be mine!!
Anyway, the Mets tsuris has been covered ad infinitum… and any team whose offense is centered around Jose Reyes and Carloses Delgado and Beltran would run into trouble if the heart of their lineup went down with injury. David Wright’s microscopic home run total didn’t help matters either… I bought new glasses a couple of weeks ago to get a better view of the box scores because I was squinting to see David Wright’s nonexistent home runs. The Mets recently announced that they are not planning to bring the fences in for 2010… maybe its too expensive after they lost so much money to Bernard in his Madoff scheme? Perhaps they should just keep the fences where they are, but just move home plate closer to the fences??
One interesting baseball story caught my eye recently when Reds 2nd basemen Brandon Phillips corrected the media about the status of his broken/fractured hand. Here is how he “clarified” his status:
"My wrist is not broken. I didn't mean to say broken, I know I didn't say 'broken.' I said 'fracture.' I didn't know 'fracture' and 'broken' meant the same thing. My wrist feels like it's fractured. Yeah. That right there.
"The last time I took an X-ray, it said there's nothing broke. Broken and fractured are the same thing. It feels like it's broken, fractured, or broken -- it's the same thing. But my wrist really does bother me."
And to his credit Phillips continues to play every day despite the injury even though his team is totally done for this season.
As for my preseason picks from back in April… memo to the Yankee fans..the team with the best regular season record does not always win the Series. I missed on my preseason pick of Tampa and Chicago going to the post season, but I was right on my Boston-LA Angels post season prediction. I took the safe route predicting the same AL playoff teams from 2008… but, if the Red Sox don’t get their stuff together soon, Texas could very well grab the Wild Card!
In the NL, the Dodgers and Phillies are playoff bound while the Mets and Cubbies are staying home… I think that an LA – Philly NLCS could be quite exciting and I will pick LA as my Mets replacement to advance to the Fall Classic because Philly’s bullpen is not quite doing the job and Brad Lidge has been quite crummy compared to his flawless 2008 performance. And if LA makes the World Series…. Wouldn’t it be cool for Joe Torre to face the Yankees?? Nonetheless, I am sticking to my preseason pick of the Red Sox going to the Series….
Here were my awards picks from the All Star Game…
MVP – Albert Pujols and Joe Mauer
Cy Young – Tim Lincecum and Josh Beckett
Rookie of the Year –Tommy Hanson and Andrew Bailey
I think the only one wrong here is the AL Cy Young…where many think it will go to Zach Greinke… But y’know what?? I’m going on a limb and picking Feldman for the Cy Young and in a different year, you could go with an all Yiddish Cy Young (or Sigh, I’m not so Young and my grandchildren never call me) but Marquis’ excellent season is no comparison to Lincecum or the Cardinals tandem of Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright.
II Where do you get your news revisited??
Some interesting news media trends this past summer… First, one newspaper I have stopped buying is The NY Post!! Their coverage of the Erin Andrews story was just hideous. The entire point of the Andrews story was how terrible it was that a peeping Tom snapped some nudie shots of her in a hotel room and posted them on the internet. The Post’s coverage include still shots of her naked tuchis that were taken from that video.
And isn’t it interesting how Phil Mushnick, the sports media columnist for the Post criticizes every media outlet when their employees don’t say anything about other less kosher aspects of their company? For years he has ripped into Mike Francesa for not publicly criticizing WFAN for running commercials for betting services as has been the case with a lot of others who have found themselves on the wrong end of his poison pen including competing newspapers. As much as he may want to criticize sports wagering ads, those are much less worse than the Post’s Andrews pictorial. And what did the high and mighty Mushnick, the self proclaimed King of all Morals say about those pictures in his paper? Absolutely nothing. What a hypocritical windbag.
By the way, there are some oddities about the story. Why did Andrews lawyer announce those pictures were of his client? It’s very easy to deny it’s her since there is really nothing on her body that would give it away that it’s definitely Erin Andrews. It’s not like she has an old ESPN tattoo of Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann on her tuchis. Some skeptics think it’s a publicity stunt. I am still waiting for the announcement of an arrest of this culprit; you wonder if Charles Kushner might want to hire that cameraman next time he has a relative to screw over?
As I have discussed in the past, most of my News comes from Channel 4 and The Star Ledger but both of their days are numbered as my source for news. I have already switched to channel 7 Eyewitness News on weekends since Channel 4 got rid of Carol Anne Riddell… and now I will also watch Channel 7 at 5pm now that Channel 4 is getting rid of its 5 o’clock news hour in favor of some dreck-y magazine show. Channel 11 is also adding a 6:30 pm newscast (My former radio intern is a producer for that newscast!) competing against the network newscasts. How original… why didn’t anybody think of that sooner? Actually for a long time the “6:30” network news used to air at 7pm and the 6 o’clock news used to run for a full hour back in the days of Dan, Tom and Peter airing at 7 after an hour of Jensen, Scarborough and Beutel.
And the Ledger… I’ve read it since childhood but the quality continues to drop… They got rid of their beat reporters for all the sports teams except the Giants, Jets, Nets and Devils… and pick up the other teams reports from the Daily News and Associated Press. They have no more Sunday sports columnists yet oddly have a Tuesday Soccer column. And worst of all they destroyed the comics over the summer getting rid of several decent ones and then breaking them into regular comics and “Classic” comics… the “classic” comics consisting of the older strips and they are usually tossed in somewhere in the auto classified section… (although for the last wk they have been easier to find in the Today section) They also dropped Frazz when they did this silly move, but then they quickly came to their senses and reinstated it 2 wks later. Frazz happens to be a very clever strip about a guy who is very rich yet works as a school Janitor and has amusing exchanges with the students and teachers at his school…. usually consisting of incredibly clever word play.
And finally, a few weeks ago CBS broke into Craig Ferguson’s show to announce the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. I flipped channels to see how the other networks were covering this breaking story. CNN had its usual post 1AM breaking story blues as the CNN International Team again struggled to cover an American story… However I flipped to Fox News… and nothing!! They were running a repeat of that evening’s Greta van Sustern show and didn’t say a measly peep about Kennedy.
I was never a big fan of Ted Kennedy’s… but I admire his longevity in the US Senate. I am also too young to understand the popularity of JFK and the rest of the Kennedys… but there is one important fact about them – here is this family that is rich beyond comprehension, and they decided that they would dedicate their lives to public service! Yet here we have Republicans who politicize a simple “Welcome Back to School” speech by President Obama… and sneer at any kind of health care reform that would dare take their money and give to the poor in some kind of Robin Hood scheme.
Republicans like to talk about how much they hate the idea of giving their money to able bodied people who are lazy and refuse to work. Even liberals like DAS don’t believe in subsidizing that lifestyle, but the reality of life is that there are more people who are less fortunate due to circumstances beyond their control. And when Facebookers put up a status about nobody being without health care, it’s the Republicans who point out that they want no part of funding illegal Mexicans… as if Illegal Mexicans are the only people who are going to benefit from this.
Perhaps Kennedy’s legacy will be that he ended up richer than all these other Republicans, yet he makes them look bad because he decided to dedicate his life to using his power and money to help make others lives better who are less fortunate.
I was talking to Trophy Wife about the idea of segregating ourselves from the Republicans and having them take half the country and we take the other half… Then they can live their happy lives and figure out ways to keep from paying reasonable taxes and buy their expensive cars and drive to work in them…. But be careful of the bridges, (and no this is not a Chappaquidick cheap shot) as Minnesotans discovered when Governor Pawlenty’s severe tax cut affected budget left them without enough tax revenue money for important bridge repairs!
PUMPSTRADAMUS NFL PICK OF THE WEEK
Pumpy is back for another year of pigskin picks. Last year he went 11-6 and once again despite his total lack of knowledge about anything related to sports, his uncanny picks are usually right on especially early in the season. This year we go with our Met fan Walter's favorite team - The Jets who are at Houston to play the Texans. The Jets are 4 1/2 point doggies. Sayeth the Pump:
"I'm going against the Texans because most of them were so wacky this week when they kept their kids home from school so they couldn't see the Presidents speech about staying in school. Take the Jets!"
UNBIASED GIANTS FAN PICK OF THE WEEK
Last yr we went 31-19-1... definitely our best season picking games on NWOW.
GIANTS 6 1/2 faves over the Redskins - You gotta love how the Skins sued some fans who ran into money trouble and couldn't pay for their PSLs.
PANTHERS 2 1/2 doggies over Philadelphia - I don't like using the word doggies in a sentence involving the Eagles new QB Michael Vick.
BUCS 6 doggies over Dallas - I am really liking the home team cooking this week.
Flip flop Labor Day and Memorial Day and move Memorial Day to September 11th, although I am not quite sure how that would affect The Jerry Lewis Telethon…. I think it’s a great tribute that they read all the names of those who lost their lives and maybe something like this should also be done on Holocaust Remembrance Day too.
I Summer Baseball
I was busy during the summer doing some volunteering and spending too much time playing Typing Maniac on Facebook. I have also been working on a project that I will elaborate on in a future column. We didn’t do a Baseball Quarterly Report column at the 120 game mark, because for the first time since we started NWOW back in November of 2005, the Mets are having a pretty lame season so my attention to baseball has drifted off as the Met losses continue to pile up. My buddy Walter announced as the Mets dropped under .500 earlier this summer that he would grow a beard until the Mets were back to the break even point. Unfortunately that won’t happen until April’s 0-0 record… but Walter refused to give up and now looks like ZZ Top.
My fantasy baseball team is as lame as usual… but this year our league has a new rule that players can only be protected for 3 seasons, and the team that finishes 5th gets the first pick… which will most likely be Albert Pujols. My team actually rallied over the last month or so led by my nice Jewish boy pitching staff of Jason Marquis and Scott Feldman and pulled within 20 points of that #5 spot. That spot by the way is held by my Fantasy Baseball nemesis Bob Salvo who came from behind to knock me off the top spot in 2007…. Perhaps this year, revenge will be mine!!
Anyway, the Mets tsuris has been covered ad infinitum… and any team whose offense is centered around Jose Reyes and Carloses Delgado and Beltran would run into trouble if the heart of their lineup went down with injury. David Wright’s microscopic home run total didn’t help matters either… I bought new glasses a couple of weeks ago to get a better view of the box scores because I was squinting to see David Wright’s nonexistent home runs. The Mets recently announced that they are not planning to bring the fences in for 2010… maybe its too expensive after they lost so much money to Bernard in his Madoff scheme? Perhaps they should just keep the fences where they are, but just move home plate closer to the fences??
One interesting baseball story caught my eye recently when Reds 2nd basemen Brandon Phillips corrected the media about the status of his broken/fractured hand. Here is how he “clarified” his status:
"My wrist is not broken. I didn't mean to say broken, I know I didn't say 'broken.' I said 'fracture.' I didn't know 'fracture' and 'broken' meant the same thing. My wrist feels like it's fractured. Yeah. That right there.
"The last time I took an X-ray, it said there's nothing broke. Broken and fractured are the same thing. It feels like it's broken, fractured, or broken -- it's the same thing. But my wrist really does bother me."
And to his credit Phillips continues to play every day despite the injury even though his team is totally done for this season.
As for my preseason picks from back in April… memo to the Yankee fans..the team with the best regular season record does not always win the Series. I missed on my preseason pick of Tampa and Chicago going to the post season, but I was right on my Boston-LA Angels post season prediction. I took the safe route predicting the same AL playoff teams from 2008… but, if the Red Sox don’t get their stuff together soon, Texas could very well grab the Wild Card!
In the NL, the Dodgers and Phillies are playoff bound while the Mets and Cubbies are staying home… I think that an LA – Philly NLCS could be quite exciting and I will pick LA as my Mets replacement to advance to the Fall Classic because Philly’s bullpen is not quite doing the job and Brad Lidge has been quite crummy compared to his flawless 2008 performance. And if LA makes the World Series…. Wouldn’t it be cool for Joe Torre to face the Yankees?? Nonetheless, I am sticking to my preseason pick of the Red Sox going to the Series….
Here were my awards picks from the All Star Game…
MVP – Albert Pujols and Joe Mauer
Cy Young – Tim Lincecum and Josh Beckett
Rookie of the Year –Tommy Hanson and Andrew Bailey
I think the only one wrong here is the AL Cy Young…where many think it will go to Zach Greinke… But y’know what?? I’m going on a limb and picking Feldman for the Cy Young and in a different year, you could go with an all Yiddish Cy Young (or Sigh, I’m not so Young and my grandchildren never call me) but Marquis’ excellent season is no comparison to Lincecum or the Cardinals tandem of Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright.
II Where do you get your news revisited??
Some interesting news media trends this past summer… First, one newspaper I have stopped buying is The NY Post!! Their coverage of the Erin Andrews story was just hideous. The entire point of the Andrews story was how terrible it was that a peeping Tom snapped some nudie shots of her in a hotel room and posted them on the internet. The Post’s coverage include still shots of her naked tuchis that were taken from that video.
And isn’t it interesting how Phil Mushnick, the sports media columnist for the Post criticizes every media outlet when their employees don’t say anything about other less kosher aspects of their company? For years he has ripped into Mike Francesa for not publicly criticizing WFAN for running commercials for betting services as has been the case with a lot of others who have found themselves on the wrong end of his poison pen including competing newspapers. As much as he may want to criticize sports wagering ads, those are much less worse than the Post’s Andrews pictorial. And what did the high and mighty Mushnick, the self proclaimed King of all Morals say about those pictures in his paper? Absolutely nothing. What a hypocritical windbag.
By the way, there are some oddities about the story. Why did Andrews lawyer announce those pictures were of his client? It’s very easy to deny it’s her since there is really nothing on her body that would give it away that it’s definitely Erin Andrews. It’s not like she has an old ESPN tattoo of Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann on her tuchis. Some skeptics think it’s a publicity stunt. I am still waiting for the announcement of an arrest of this culprit; you wonder if Charles Kushner might want to hire that cameraman next time he has a relative to screw over?
As I have discussed in the past, most of my News comes from Channel 4 and The Star Ledger but both of their days are numbered as my source for news. I have already switched to channel 7 Eyewitness News on weekends since Channel 4 got rid of Carol Anne Riddell… and now I will also watch Channel 7 at 5pm now that Channel 4 is getting rid of its 5 o’clock news hour in favor of some dreck-y magazine show. Channel 11 is also adding a 6:30 pm newscast (My former radio intern is a producer for that newscast!) competing against the network newscasts. How original… why didn’t anybody think of that sooner? Actually for a long time the “6:30” network news used to air at 7pm and the 6 o’clock news used to run for a full hour back in the days of Dan, Tom and Peter airing at 7 after an hour of Jensen, Scarborough and Beutel.
And the Ledger… I’ve read it since childhood but the quality continues to drop… They got rid of their beat reporters for all the sports teams except the Giants, Jets, Nets and Devils… and pick up the other teams reports from the Daily News and Associated Press. They have no more Sunday sports columnists yet oddly have a Tuesday Soccer column. And worst of all they destroyed the comics over the summer getting rid of several decent ones and then breaking them into regular comics and “Classic” comics… the “classic” comics consisting of the older strips and they are usually tossed in somewhere in the auto classified section… (although for the last wk they have been easier to find in the Today section) They also dropped Frazz when they did this silly move, but then they quickly came to their senses and reinstated it 2 wks later. Frazz happens to be a very clever strip about a guy who is very rich yet works as a school Janitor and has amusing exchanges with the students and teachers at his school…. usually consisting of incredibly clever word play.
And finally, a few weeks ago CBS broke into Craig Ferguson’s show to announce the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. I flipped channels to see how the other networks were covering this breaking story. CNN had its usual post 1AM breaking story blues as the CNN International Team again struggled to cover an American story… However I flipped to Fox News… and nothing!! They were running a repeat of that evening’s Greta van Sustern show and didn’t say a measly peep about Kennedy.
I was never a big fan of Ted Kennedy’s… but I admire his longevity in the US Senate. I am also too young to understand the popularity of JFK and the rest of the Kennedys… but there is one important fact about them – here is this family that is rich beyond comprehension, and they decided that they would dedicate their lives to public service! Yet here we have Republicans who politicize a simple “Welcome Back to School” speech by President Obama… and sneer at any kind of health care reform that would dare take their money and give to the poor in some kind of Robin Hood scheme.
Republicans like to talk about how much they hate the idea of giving their money to able bodied people who are lazy and refuse to work. Even liberals like DAS don’t believe in subsidizing that lifestyle, but the reality of life is that there are more people who are less fortunate due to circumstances beyond their control. And when Facebookers put up a status about nobody being without health care, it’s the Republicans who point out that they want no part of funding illegal Mexicans… as if Illegal Mexicans are the only people who are going to benefit from this.
Perhaps Kennedy’s legacy will be that he ended up richer than all these other Republicans, yet he makes them look bad because he decided to dedicate his life to using his power and money to help make others lives better who are less fortunate.
I was talking to Trophy Wife about the idea of segregating ourselves from the Republicans and having them take half the country and we take the other half… Then they can live their happy lives and figure out ways to keep from paying reasonable taxes and buy their expensive cars and drive to work in them…. But be careful of the bridges, (and no this is not a Chappaquidick cheap shot) as Minnesotans discovered when Governor Pawlenty’s severe tax cut affected budget left them without enough tax revenue money for important bridge repairs!
PUMPSTRADAMUS NFL PICK OF THE WEEK
Pumpy is back for another year of pigskin picks. Last year he went 11-6 and once again despite his total lack of knowledge about anything related to sports, his uncanny picks are usually right on especially early in the season. This year we go with our Met fan Walter's favorite team - The Jets who are at Houston to play the Texans. The Jets are 4 1/2 point doggies. Sayeth the Pump:
"I'm going against the Texans because most of them were so wacky this week when they kept their kids home from school so they couldn't see the Presidents speech about staying in school. Take the Jets!"
UNBIASED GIANTS FAN PICK OF THE WEEK
Last yr we went 31-19-1... definitely our best season picking games on NWOW.
GIANTS 6 1/2 faves over the Redskins - You gotta love how the Skins sued some fans who ran into money trouble and couldn't pay for their PSLs.
PANTHERS 2 1/2 doggies over Philadelphia - I don't like using the word doggies in a sentence involving the Eagles new QB Michael Vick.
BUCS 6 doggies over Dallas - I am really liking the home team cooking this week.
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