Month: August 2008

Posted on

The Greatest Game Ever Played

1915 was a great year for tiny Cumberland College of Lebanon, Tennessee. In that year, Cumberland’s baseball team defeated the mighty Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets by a lopsided score of 22-0. To say that Tech’s pride was wounded would be an understatement. And the fact that Cumberland hired ringers for the game absolutely infuriated Georgia Tech football coach John Heisman, the man for whom the Heisman Trophy is named.

Cumberland was such a small school that it often couldn’t field a football team. In fact, football was dropped at Cumberland in 1906, resumed in 1912 and dropped again in 1915. Cumberland wasn’t even going to field a team at all in 1916, but Heisman absolutely refused to release the school from its contact to play Georgia Tech. If Cumberland didn’t play Tech that year, they’d have to pay a $3,000 penalty to Tech (which is almost $61,000 in today’s dollars). Heisman knew that Cumberland couldn’t afford to pay the penalty, and thus had to play Tech.

And so… on October 7, 1916 Cumberland College came to Atlanta… and John Heisman had revenge on his mind. And the result was the biggest ass-kicking in the history of American football:

Yes, you read the score correctly. Tech defeated Cumberland by a score of 222-0. Tech’s 222 points are the highest ever recorded in an American football game; the score also represents the largest margin of victory in any football game.

Here are some fun facts about the game:

– Tech had exactly zero passing yards in the game. In fact, Tech didn’t even attempt to pass the ball. On November 6, 1976, Tech would defeat Notre Dame by a score of 23-14… also without attempting a pass.

– On the other hand, maybe Tech didn’t need to throw the ball, as they ran up 978 rushing yards against Cumberland.

– Tech also had 440 yards on kick and punt returns.

– For those of you keeping score at home, that’s a mindboggling 1,418 yards of total offense for Georgia Tech. In a single game.

– In the 2007 NFL season, offenses averaged 325.24 yards per game. Thus, Tech’s offense in the Cumberland game equaled the average offensive output of 4.36 modern NFL games.

– Tech’s defense and special teams scored 12 of team’s 32 touchdowns in that game.

– Tech wasn’t perfect, however: they missed 2 extra point attempts. Still, going 30 for 32 in PATs in a single game is pretty good in my book!

– Neither team made a first down in the game: Cumberland either punted, committed a turnover or turned the ball over on downs on every possession, while Tech scored every time they got the ball.

– Cumberland ended the day with -28 yards on offense. Contrary to popular belief, Cumberland’s biggest gain was not a 2-yard loss… it was a 10 yard pass. Unfortunately for Cumberland, it was 4th and 22 at the time. Cumberland also turned the ball over 15 times, committing 6 interceptions and 9 fumbles.

– As if all this weren’t humiliating enough for poor Cumberland, both head coaches agreed to cut the second half short by 15 minutes (instead of not playing the fourth quarter, the coaches agreed to make the third and fourth quarters seven and a half minutes each). This is why Tech’s offensive output seemed to dip in the second half. Had a full game been played, the score might have ended up being 252-0!

Amazing, huh? Something I’ve always wanted to know about this game: what, exactly, do you as a head coach tell your team in the locker room at halftime when you’re down 126-0?

Posted on

Good News and Bad News

Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news from the world of TV Land today.

First, the good news: according to Robert Seidman over at tvbythenumbers.com, Mad Men will definitely be renewed by AMC, barring some unforeseen ratings disaster. And why would AMC renew an incredibly expensive show that can’t even crack the Basic Cable Top 20 Ratings?

Well, two reasons: first, Mad Men is a darling of the critics. If the show wins even a handful of the 16 Emmy Awards it was nominated for, it will be a triumph for AMC, which would then inherit prestige it could never otherwise have had… especially since Mad Men (along with FX’s Damages) are the first two basic cable shows to ever be nominated for the Best Drama award.

But more than that, Mad Men gets what I like to call “30 Rock Ratings”. You may have noticed that there is little (if any) talk about canceling Tina Fey’s comedy, even though the show pulls down mediocre overall numbers. Part of this is because NBC management loves the show. Another part of it is that “industry insiders” also love the show. But the main reason 30 Rock stays on the air is that the show attracts an insanely wealthy demographic. In fact, among households earning $100,000 or more per year, 30 Rock actually ranks as the #2 show in America. As you might guess, advertisers cream over numbers like these, and upscale brands like BMW and Sub-Zero will line up around the block to advertise on 30 Rock. Mad Men is in almost the same boat: although less than 2 million people watch Mad Men every week, around 40% of those people are in households that earn $100,000 or more per year. So trust me: my favorite show isn’t going away any time soon.

But it appears as though another of my favorite (new) shows is going away, and that’s where the bad news comes in: it looks like Swingtown will not be renewed. Although CBS has not made any announcements about the show’s future, actor Grant Show has already shaved off his “porno mustache” and taken a role on Private Practice. This frankly isn’t much of a surprise, given the show’s ever-dwindling numbers. But at least we’ll have closure: according to Swingtown executive producer Alan Poul “[t]he season ends with a cliffhanger, but it’s also a completely satisfying ending. So, if we go forward, there are many new things that are set up to explore. And if we don’t go forward, there’s no feeling that we’ve been left with something incomplete.”

Sure, I’ll be sad that Swingtown is gone. Although I initially watched the show for its titillating premise, I’ve grown to care about the characters in what amounts to a conventional drama with a few peccadilloes thrown in for fun. Perhaps the show was a bad fit for CBS. It’s not perverted enough for HBO these days, and doesn’t seem to fit in with what Showtime’s doing these days. Maybe it would have worked better on FX or USA?

In any case, I’ve watched a lot of British TV in the past couple of years. Most British shows have 6-8 episodes per season, with a maximum of 3-4 seasons. Unlike American shows, which tend to go on and on and on over the years (Prison Break, I’m looking at you), most British shows have 32 episodes or less to tell a story, complete with a beginning, middle and end. And that’s that. And it’s kind of refreshing in a way. Instead of “I used to like that show, but gave up on it after season 13”, most British shows just end, and viewers move on to something else. So as long as Swingtown has a nice ending, I’ll be happy.

Posted on

I’ve Officially HAD IT!

Somewhere deep in my heart, I actually have sympathy for the folks at the Department of Homeland Security. I mean… imagine if the president of the United States came to you and said “Hey [you]… you’re now in charge of preventing terrorist attacks in the United States”. Jesus! Where would you even begin to do that job? And once you start looking for terrorist scenarios, you can find them almost anywhere. A terrorist could get a job at an airport and plant a bomb on a plane. He could rent a tanker truck and blow it up on the Golden Gate Bridge. He could fire an RPG at the New York Stock Exchange. He could blow up an electric substation here in Charlotte and bring Bank of America to its knees. He could even do something as simple as dump a bucket of LSD into a reservoir. Lord knows that chemistry students in college have been whipping up batches for years… a dedicated team of terrorists could easily cook up enough acid to plunge Los Angeles or Boston into chaos.

Up until now, I’ve been pretty quiet about us losing our liberties to the jackboots at DHS. After all, most of the hassles ordinary Americans have to deal with come at the airport, and if recent reports are any indication, people are becoming so fed up with air travel that something will have to change in the next couple of years, or else the airline industry will collapse. And I’m confident that that “something” will, in fact, happen.

But I have now officially “had it” with DHS and the whole “War on Terror”. What caused this change of heart? The recent news that agents from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement may now seize laptop computers and other electronic devices from travelers entering the United States. It’s important to understand that the people that own these devices need not be suspected of anything, much less actually charged with a crime. Not only that, they can hold the items for any amount of time that they wish, and they can share the private data on those laptops with other government agencies, and even non-government agencies contracted to do government work. And no, this doesn’t apply to just foreign nationals entering the United States… it applies to anyone entering the country – even American citizens! And although the government swears that any copies made of your personal data will be destroyed, the agencies are actually empowered to keep any notes they make whilst examining your laptop, pager, cellphone, iPod, or any other device.

Fuck that… and fuck you, Michael Chertoff. Do you honestly think that anything productive could ever come of this policy? Please, Mr. Jerkoff, show me one example of where this policy has stopped a terrorist attack. Just one.

In an op-ed piece in the USA Today last month, Herr Himmler Mr. Chertoff assured us that “”the most dangerous contraband is often contained in laptop computers or other electronic devices” and that DHS searches have uncovered “violent jihadist materials as well as images of child pornography”.

Kiddie porn? Really? Really? Look, I hate child pornographers as much as the next person. Hell, if I were Emperor of the United States, I’d order every person convicted of child pornography to be hanged by their balls until they fall off, then lock the bastards in a sewer until they die of gangrene from their infected wounds. But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna trample all over the Constitution of the United States just to lock up the occasional idealistic Muslim college kid with a “Fuck America” essay on his laptop or some damn pervert with kiddie porn.

I mean, does Mr Jerkoff really think that the next Mohamed Atta is going to try and enter the United States with his complete “Plans of Destruction” on his laptop? And why the hell would he? In case Mr Jerkoff hasn’t heard, there’s this newfangled thing out there called the Internet, and terabytes worth of data moves through it every day. And there are so many techniques for hiding data (not to mention billions of places to hide it) that it makes the very idea of the need for this policy laughable.

Continue reading “I’ve Officially HAD IT!”

Posted on

What the hell?

Dude… what the hell is up with all the beheadings lately? I’m sure you’ve heard about the beheading on a Greyhound bus in Canada… but did you heard about the Greek guy that beheaded his girlfriend on the island of Santorini, then walked around the island showing off the head to tourists? And it’s not just the crazy men out there… a Malaysian woman living in London became jealous of another woman and beheaded her, dumping her body in the Thames. Oh, and seven London men were recently convicted of attempting to behead a man using samurai swords… At least here in the US we can just shoot people and get it over with quickly!

You might think that all this is bizarre… but how about this: remember the 2002 Bali bombings? Three of the men convicted for that terrorist attack… are demanding (yes, demanding) to be beheaded (instead of facing the firing squad).

The older I get, the less I understand. Really.

Posted on

False Advertising?

The website Consumerist.com is usually a sad place, chock full of horror stories about people trapped in customer service nightmares with Comcast, Sprint, or WaMu. In fact, it’s downright depressing, and reading the site every day might lead you to think that customer service not only doesn’t exist in America any more, it’s actually morphed into some kind of Kafkaesque nightmare.

Occasionally, however, they’ll run a funny story… like this one about a guy named David Ng that bought a “Banzai Wild Waves Water Park” for his kids. It sure looks like fun on the box… but the reality is quite different. On the box three kids are enjoying the inflatable pool, but the final product looks as though it could barely fit the little boy in the picture:

Posted on

Mad Men: “Flight 1”

Wow – Mad Men continues to impress! In this episode in particular, the attention to detail was simply amazing. It began with a party scene (more on that later), then went back to the office the next morning, where people were huddled around a radio: it seems that American Airlines flight 1 had crashed in Jamaica Bay (and yes, that actually happened). Later in the episode, one of the characters goes to Mass, and not only is the priest celebrating the Mass in Latin (Vatican II hasn’t happened yet), the crucifix is also draped in purple cloth… and yes, the American crash did happen during Lent in 1962. It’s the attention to detail that really makes this show so special; most other TV shows would have had the Mass in English, or forgotten to drape the crucifix in cloth (or both). But not Mad Men.

As mentioned, the episode opens with a long party scene at Paul’s place in Montclair, New Jersey. Paul makes a big deal about telling everyone from Sterling Cooper how “artsy” and bohemian Montclair is. He lords over his party with his new beard, ascot, a pipe… and his new black girlfriend! Paul is a pretentious twit, and his efforts to be “cool” are obvious to everyone. He’ll get his comeuppance later in this episode, trust me.

We then move ahead to the next morning, where everyone is huddled around the radio, listening to news reports about the plane crash. People start making off-color jokes, including Pete… who finds out minutes later that his father was aboard the plane that crashed:

It’s never been a secret that Pete and his father didn’t get along. Pete’s dad hated his son’s profession (he famously called Pete a “pimp” in “New Amsterdam” in season 1). Pete’s dad – from a now-broke blueblood New York family now coasting by on their name alone – was an overbearing bastard, the type of guy that only tells his son that he loves him once or twice in an entire lifetime. Although Pete is often played as a jerk, it was nice seeing him look around the office for sympathy, specifically how he looked to Don as a father figure. But more on that later.

While all that’s going on, Sterling, Cooper and Duck are having an intense conversation. It seems that one of Duck’s contacts from his London days works for American, and they are interested in possibly changing ad agencies in the wake of the crash. There is, of course, a catch: Sterling Cooper currently represents Mohawk Airlines. And thus, a huge conflict erupts between Sterling, Cooper and Duck (who see huge dollar signs if they can land the American account) and Don (who thinks it’s unfair to ditch Mohawk Airlines just for the chance of landing American). This is, of course, quite revealing. Don is, at heart, a con man. You’d think that he’d be all for trying to get an account that could get him a summer home in the Hamptons. But no: Richard Whitman has so thorougly become the man he is pretending to be that he can’t see things as they actually are.

We then visit the Campbell family as they “grieve” over the loss of their father\husband. Many online pundits seemed to misunderstand this scene. It’s an old-school WASP family that has absolutely no idea how to grieve, much less deal with each other:

It’s slightly familiar (although my family wasn’t nearly as stiff as the Campbell family). The bit where Pete’s mom pratically forces Trudy to take the pink elephant is so… human. She sees her world collapsing around her – especially since Pete’s dad apparently not only spent all of his own money, but also spent a huge chunk of his wife’s trust fund too. It’s awkward, in much the same way that scenes from The Office make you cringe… only this time it’s not funny.

Next its off to the Draper home, where Don only wants to rest after a trying day. Unfortunately for Don, Carlton and Francine are coming over to play cards. There was a lot going on in these scenes: Don teaching his young daughter how to make mixed drinks (that’s probably considered “child abuse” thse days); the kids sneaking around, trying to see what the adults are up to; Don and Betty’s differing opinions about their son tracing a drawing and claiming it as his own (Betty: “he’s a liar”, Don: “boys will be boys”); the almost complete reversal of Don and Betty’s roles in the home (sometime between late 1960 and spring 1962, Betty started wearing the pants inside the Draper home, and now Don is the whiny, needy one – more impotence on his part?); lastly, there’s Don’s nickname for Betty. During season 1, he usually called her “Birdie” – now she’s “Bets”. What does that mean, exactly?

Continue reading “Mad Men: “Flight 1””

Posted on

R.I.P. Skip Caray

It saddens me to announce that longtime Atlanta Braves announcer Skip Caray has died. He was 68.

The son of famous Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray, Skip began his broadcasting career announcing basketball games for Saint Louis University and the St. Louis Hawks. When the Hawks moved to Atlanta, Skip went with them. He would later join the Atlanta Braves broadcast team in 1976, and Carey and sidekick Pete Van Wieren would go on to become Atlanta legends.

Caray was famous (some might say “infamous”) for his witty, irreverent and sometimes sarcastic announcing style. In the late 70s and early 80s – the low point for the Atlanta Braves, when attendance could often be measured in the low hundreds – Caray would often tell listeners that the game was hopeless, and that as long as they pledged to patronize the sponsors, it was OK for listeners to turn off their radios. During an especially bad run for the Braves in the 80s, Caray once began a game with the infamous line “… and, like lambs to the slaughter, the Braves take the field”. Caray once got into an infamous feud with Atlanta Journal columnist Ron Hudspeth, which ultimately led to Caray hiring an airplane to circle Atlanta Fulton County Stadium; the airplane towed a banner which read “For a good time, call Ron Hudspeth at…” followed by Hudspeth’s actual phone number. If a day game ran long, Caray would often give “traffic reports”, in which he would make up off the top of his head. During pre-game call-in shows, Caray was also famous for giving sarcastic answers to caller’s baseball questions, and would often cut off the call entirely if he deemed the question to be “too basic”.

But Caray wasn’t always “piss and vinegar”. Some of the Braves’ best moments were captured by Caray, such as his famous call in the 1992 NLCS, where the Braves defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates in Game 7 (with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th, no less):

A lotta room in right-center, if he hits one there we can dance in the streets. The 2-1… Swung, line drive left field! One run is in! Here comes Bream! Here’s the throw to the plate! He is……. safe! Braves win! Braves win! Braves win! Braves win! Braves win! They may have to hospitalize Sid Bream; he’s down at the bottom of a huge pile at the plate. They help him to his feet. Frank Cabrera got the game winner! The Atlanta Braves are National League champions again! This crowd is going berserk, listen!

[audio:braves.mp3]

And then there was the 1995 World Series:

Mark gets the sign, the wind and the pitch here it is… swung, fly ball deep left center, Grissom on the run… Yes! Yes! Yes! The Atlanta Braves have given you a championship! Listen to this crowd! A mob scene on the field. Wohlers gets ’em one, two, three. A couple of fans rushing on the field. The Atlanta Braves have brought the first championship to Atlanta!

Rest in peace Skip! I have no doubt that “it’s cocktail hour” wherever you are right now! As a poster said in a Georgia Tech message board… “We lost a legend today. I only hope St. Peter didn’t ask him how to compute slugging percentage”!

Posted on

Hooray for Football!!

At long last, the wait is over! NBC will air tonight’s Hall of Fame game, a pointless preseason battle live from the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. This year, the Indianapolis Colts will take on the Washington Redskins, who are 4-0 in their Hall of Fame Game appearances. Kickoff is at 8pm and the game will be televised nationally. Yes, it’s a stupid and pointless preseason game… but it’s FOOTBALLLLLLLLLL!!

Hell to the m***********g yeah, people! FOOTBALL!!! Goddamn… I missed it SO MUCH!

Lisa, myself and stuntbaby ready for football!
Lisa, myself and stuntbaby ready for football!
Posted on

“Mayakovsky”

By the way… if you watched the season premiere of Mad Men last Sunday, you probably recall that the episode ended with Don Draper (Jon Hamm) reading a poem. If you’re curious, the poem is called “Mayakovsky”, and it is indeed part of the Frank O’Hara book Meditations In An Emergency that featured prominently in the episode.

The full text of the poem is as follows:

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

Incidentally, Meditations jumped from 15,565 to 161 on Amazon’s sales ranking list after Mad Men aired last Sunday night.

I have resisted the urge to say this about Mad Men so far, but I’ll go ahead and get it out of the way now:

You HAVE to love this show or you’re stupid.