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SITES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS Sweaty Dudes [aka Sports] Metsblog The Funny My Blog Could Be Your Life Subbaculcha Bookslut Parental Guidance
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Die Die Die: Dairy Queen Trains Future Lolitas I know this will totally come across as a Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children?! post. But if there is one point on which I agree with the Helen Lovejoy Crowd, it's anger over the premature sexualization of little girls. It's always bothered me, and now that I have a daughter of my own, it bothers me even more. The biggest perpetrator of this crime is, of course, Madison Avenue--although Roger Clemens has certainly done his part. To be fair, this trend is part due to the fact girls now hit puberty at ridiculously young ages. Thanks to all the hormones we pump into the animals we eat, if you poured some milk and slapped a raw steak on a bowling bowl, it'd start growing breasts. But I also wanna say it started with Britney Spears, 'cause hey, why not? Way back in the late 1990s, Britney Spears made music that was squarely aimed at the Radio Disney crowd, while cultivating a persona of Slut In Training. She had all the confused sexual politics and virgin/whore complexes of a Rock Hudson/Doris Day movie, but with better production values and half the self awareness. The creepiest part about it was, when you heard her talk at this time (and God help you if you did), she seemed blissfully unaware of the Lolita Vibes she gave off. When the subject of sex was actually broached, she sounded like Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock trying to fake-hit on Tracy Jordan's wife. She was clearly being manipulated by a publicity machine capitalizing on the Look But Don't Touch Appeal of an underage hottie. Not to be alarmist, but look how well that turned out for her. Here's but one example of what Spears hath wrought: In the post-Britney universe, the sluttacular Bratz dolls are perfectly acceptable toys for little girls. They look like someone took the creepy big-headed chicks from Steve Madden ads, made them nine years old, and dressed them up like Hunts Point prostitutes. Feminists got all mad about Barbie's impossible-to-live-up-to dimensions, but the Bratz are a million times worse, with their monstrous egg-shaped domes and frighteningly thin bodies that a real girl could only achieve if she was strung out on methadone or harboring an intestinal parasite. But at least the Bratz deliver a positive message to girls, that's it's totally okay to, like, shop. I was sick of all those dolls that told girls it was cool to go to school and use their minds and be independent and stuff. Spend daddy's money and rely on boys to do the heavy lifting--that's the true path to liberation! This brings us to the latest object of my ire: a commercial from Dairy Queen that has so many double standards and gender issues in this ad that I'm sure Andrea Dworkin is spinning in her grave. Just take a peek.
Where to start? First off, neither of these kids can be any older than 10. And yet the girl makes goo goo eyes at the boy, and the boy smiles back like they've spotted each other across the proverbial crowded room. Ten year olds should not even be close to dating. What's supposed to happen after he sends her the sundae? He gets her number and invites her out for a drink at Chuck E. Cheese? So basically, this girl cons the boy into buying her a sundae, which seems a sort of pre-teen version of fourth- or fifth-wave feminism. In other words, it's okay to engage in the kind of capricious, manipulative behavior that sexist men ascribe to women, because this shows that you've somehow liberated yourself from traditional feminist notions of how women should assert themselves. Or something. In the old, Gloria Steinem days, women showed their independence by getting jobs in male dominated fields, challenging unfair wages, and lobbying for reproductive rights. Nowadays, they do it by treating themselves to a shopping spree! Whee! Luckily for Big Bidness, this notion of "freedom" just happens to involve lots of conspicuous consumption. Like how Sex and the City is presented as being feminist because Carrie loves fancy shoes. The mere act of buying a bunch of Pricey Shit is now considered bold and daring, as long as you do it unashamedly and with a sense of entitlement. It's the intellectual equivalent of a diet that promises you'll lose weight while eating nothing but White Castle and Haagen Dazs: it's popular because it tells people something they'd like to believe. Even worse, the jaded, world weary way in which she manipulates the boy to buy her a sundae is the creeptastic topper. Like she's been twirling males around her finger for so long that it's no longer even a challenge. She dismisses the boy with a sniff of goddess-like superiority. "Like shooting fish in a barrel," she says (which is totally something a ten-year-old would say). So at the tender age of ten, she's already figured out the secret to stringing along dumb guys, and this realization has brought not satisfaction, but resentment. She feels the hollow sting of getting what she wants, and realizing it means nothing to her if it comes so easy. If Brett Easton Ellis wrote a novel about fourth graders, this would be the film version. The first time I went clothes shopping for my baby, I was struck by an intense Gender Achievement Gap in toddler apparel. Shirts for baby boys say things like FUTURE ALL-STAR or FUTURE PRESIDENT. But shirts for baby girls said things like PRINCESS or SPOILED ROTTEN or HIGH MAINTENANCE. The boy clothing was indicated, This child will strive to be successful. The girl clothing indicated, This child will be taught to expect other people to do things for her. This commercial is just another signpost along that same road, like a sparkly pink onesie that says FUTURE GOLD DIGGER. A simple request: If you're gonna film a commercial that portrays women as joyless, manipulative harpies, can you at least make the girls of legal age? Even Neil LaBute keeps his misogyny restricted to adults. Posted 05.09.08 10:07pm * Permalink Booing Rick Astley and Everything Else: The First Homestand Note: This post is already vaguely outdated, but events conspired to prevent me from posting it on Friday like I wanted. I thank you for your anachronistic patience. Booing is stupid. I suppose it serves a purpose as shorthand when venting one's frustration--it's much more succinct than screaming out "I disapprove of what you are doing, good sir!" Other than that, I don't really believe in it. When I'm at a game and somebody does something stupid, I prefer to yell out something more sophisticated. Like, OH, WHAT THE FUCK NOW?! Booing is taken as a birthright by most fans, particularly New Yorkers. Regardless of team affiliation, New York sports fans seem to feel that it's their duty to boo the shit out of everyone and everything. A very good player who just happens to play for another team? Boo! Your all-star third baseman makes an error? Boo! Guy in the loge section drops a foul ball? Boo! Hey, I just realized I paid $15 for a watered-down Bud Light and a rock-hard pretzel! I'm a moron! Boo, me! Why? So we can convince ourselves that New York really is a "tough town to play in." I find this a curiously small-town attitude to have, something that should be the province of a city that struggles to extract itself from New York's long, oppressive shadow. A place like Philadelphia, which certainly didn't invent booing, but has elevated it to an extremely violent art form. [Case in point: for this year's NHL playoffs, the Flyers have adopted the slogan VENGEANCE NOW! I can't imagine any NY team having that as their rallying cry, but it suits a Philly team perfectly. And is also utterly terrifying.] But during the Mets' first homestand of the year, it was the local boosters doing their best impressions of Eagles fans. At the home opener, I kept scanning around Shea to see if someone was whipping D-cells at Santa Claus. As far as the home opener goes, I don't blame the boo birds. Most of them had probably paid exorbitant StubHub prices to go The Very Last Home Opener At Shea, even though the event had all the cultural cachet of The Very Last Whaler Sandwich at Burger King. I managed to snag some not-horribly-expensive tickets, but my seats were way high in the upper deck and still marked up more than 50% above an already ludicrous "Platinum Level" face value. Fans expected to see a team all fired up to exact revenge on the Phillies, who committed the heinous crime of playing really well when the Mets tanked. And they had every reason to think the Mets would be able to smack around nonagenarian lefty Jamie Moyer, the only pitcher in the majors whose fastballs are clocked by sundial. What they got was a listless, error-filled, yawning effort. There are some days when it's great just to be at the ballpark, no matter who wins--especially early in the season, when you're just getting back into the Baseball Groove. This was not one of those days.
The day began auspiciously enough. On my way to Shea, my local 7 train was passed by an express comprised of various old subway cars. Luckily, it was waiting in the station when I arrived at the Shea stop, so I got take a few pics. I've got a thing for old timey subway-iana (probably not a word). I’d heard in the off-season that the subway exit rotunda had been torn down. Knowing the Mets, I figured it would have been replaced with one rope ladder, or an air mattress for jumpers to land on. Amazingly, they actually built a staircase. And not only did it prove to be a faster exit than the old one, but it was completely finished! No wet paint or exposed bolts or anything! I guess the Mets front office folks are gearing up for their new stadium, and have finally realized that a facility's amenities are supposed to enhance the fan experience, not undermine or destroy it. Once I was down at the bottom of those stairs, I got a great view of the almost-completed CitiField. If you look at the pic here, you may notice the hastily applied sticker for Governer Patterson (adulterer, former coke fiend, and Mets fan! huzzah!), covering up New York's former chief executive-slash-Elmer Gantry writ large. Of course, the afternoon was all downhill from there.
The booing began early, as every single member of the Phillies was jeered upon their introduction. This extended to the anonymous members of the Phillies' coaching and conditioning staffs, their bullpen catcher, and even a presumably confused video coordinator. "Hey, I just cue up the scoreboard graphics! What gives?" Chase Utley and Ryan Howard were booed rather lustfully for...I'm not sure why, exactly. Because they're really good players who play for another team? Not a good enough reason in my book. I save my booing for truly evil players. In fact, now that Roger Clemens is gone (*fingers crossed*), the only player I can imagine myself booing is Chipper Jones. But even with him, I'm sure that's exactly what he wants from a Shea crowd, the prick. Jimmy Rollins got the biggest Bronx cheers in Queens that day, of course, but I can't bring myself to boo him, either. Sure, I think he's a tad overrated, that he's helped out much more by his home park than any Colorado Rockie, and that he only won the MVP over Matt Holliday because of his "team to beat" declaration. (That kind of thing gets sportswriters' hearts a-fluttering much more than those pesky stats do.) But I have to tip my cap to anyone who's as short as me yet plays professional sports. Within a few innings, craptacular play had transferred the boos onto The Home Nine. But the biggest boos of the day went to Rick Astley. Or rather, his chart-busting 1987 hit "Never Gonna Give You Up," a song whose existence is apparently hysterical to kids not old enough to remember its initial release. Thanks to a write-in campaign by 4 million douches (3.95 million of which have probably never set foot in Shea), this was one of the Mets' choices for an eighth inning singalong. The crowd was already pissed off, and not in the mood to be the butt of a mass Rickrolling. Personally, I don't know why there has to be any singalong at all. It's so forced and contrived, like a wedding DJ who demands that everyone get up and do the Electric Slide. Things that fans do at games should be organic, like the Yankee Stadium bleacher roll calls, or the "Jose/Ole" chants; that started as something the Shea crowd did, and was then adopted by the team. While we're on the subject of singalongs, "Sweet Caroline" should never be played at Shea ever again. My reasons are thrice: (a) Red Sox fans are convinced we "stole" it from them (even though they didn't start it, nor are they the only team to do it as a singalong), and I'd just as soon not give them any excuse to whine about something; (b) when I think "Sweet Caroline" singalong, I don't think ballgame, I think drunk chicks with tramp stamps screeching together about 20 minutes before last call; and (c) it's a terrible, terrible song, just aggressive in its suckitude. Please, make it stop. As the Rick Astley revved up over the enormous Shea speakers, I got the mental image of 4 million 15-year-olds--the same kind who post FIRST on every comment board on the internet, the same kind who propagated Fill in the Blank Ate My Balls 10 years ago--cackling at this BRILLIANT hoax they'd perpetrated on Shea Stadium. As internet memes go, this wasn't as gross as 2 Girls 1 Cup, but no less sickening. I assume most of the other fans got a similar feeling, because they booed almost as vociferously as they did for Jimmy Rollins. Poor Rick didn't even get to the chorus before the PA system mercifully turned him off. I actually had nightmare visions of the Mets staging a big comeback in the bottom of the 8th, which would have led superstitious players to believe they were propelled by the power of Rick Astley, and that this would in turn lead to "Never Gonna Give You Up" being played at every home game this year. I was faced with a moral dilemma: Do I hope for the comeback if it means a Summer of Rick Astley at Shea, or do I dare root against my team to keep from ever hearing this song again? Of course, the Mets' listless bats made this debate purely academic. I was also on hand for another semi-historic event which didn't go so well: Johan Santana's first start at Shea in his new laundry. He wasn't booed off the mound after giving up three home runs, as some NY papers would have you believe. When they show replays of that game, it sounds as if every single person in the stadium was booing, but I can attest to the fact that it was a very small, vocal minority. If you have a crowd of 56,000, and 95% of them say nothing while the rest boo, it doesn't matter that only 5% of them are booing. That 5% will be the only ones you hear. Still, the fact that the best pitcher in baseball was booed by anyone at all after one bad start should indicate the depth of Mets fans' frustrations, and Johan is certainly not the only target. Reyes' slow start bought him some boos, as did Delgado's. Beltran is booed every time he strikes out, particularly when looking. Scott Schoenweis is booed every time he doesn't show up dead in a gutter somewhere. The thing is, these boos aren't really for Santana or Delgado or any one player, so much as they are the malaise surrounding the team, an ennui that is eerily similar to the kind on display for most of last year. Each inning they've played thus far seems to be a mini-encapsulation of the 2007 season: threaten early, fall apart late. Stranding a small army on the basepaths, letting excellent pitching go for naught, squandering multi-run leads--these are not things a team in desperate need of redemption should be doing. Mets fans feel as if team isn't aware of how agonizing last year was, and how desperately they want redemption. And whether or not the players are truly clueless, for a good chunk of this season (which is, granted, an infinitesimal fraction of the entire season), they have played as if they are. Fans are desperately searching for the fire and drive they saw in 2006. Judged on pure talent alone, the team fielded in 2008 is no worse than that one; with a top three of Santana, Maine, and Perez, and with Pedro due to return some time next month, this team is probably better. Not to sound too Joe Morgan-y, but there is some intangible, ineffable thing that the Mets seem to be lacking right now. (Ugh. I feel like I need a shower.) Which isn't to say they can't get That Thing, whatever it is. This time last year, the Phillies were already being written off as losers with zero chemistry. Then Charlie Manuel yelled at a reporter, or something, and suddenly they were GRITTY and GUTSY and PLAYED THE GAME RIGHT. ("Playing up to their talent" and "the law of averages evening out after a small sample size" are not in sportswriters' vocabulary.) There were a few bright spots of the first homestand of the year, of course. After a home opener so ugly not even a mother could love it, they actually won a game against the Phillies (and they said it couldn't be done), thanks mostly to the holey glove of Greg Bruntlett. Then they won another one, despite the bullpen coughing up a lead late in the game, pulling out the slimmest margin of victory possible in the bottom of the 12th. (Jose Reyes = safe. I will not debate this.) There's also the feel-good story of Brooklyn's Own Nelson Figueroa, who's pitched two excellent games. He's too good of a storyline not to regress at some point, but I won't piss on his parade while it's still lurching down 5th Avenue. And as far as products of Coney Island go, he's still more likely to be successful than Sebastian Telfair. There was also a sweep of the Nationals, which I can't get too excited about, considering the victim of the sweep. Especially the last game of the series, where the Mets were struck out 11 times in 6 innings by a pitcher with 2 major league wins to his credit, and did the we're-totally-gonna-win-it-this-time cocktease in every inning from the 8th to the 13th only to come up short, and only won it in the 14th because Nats reliever Joel Hanrahan literally threw away the game. (He had the same look on his face as Tom Glavine did last September: like he was worried about catching a cab to the airport.) [I see Tom Glavine is on the DL for the first time in his career. The cause: detached retinas from rolling his eyes at the umps too many times when he didn't get a strike call three feet off the plate.] Still, a good team is supposed to beat a bad team--the Yankees won't get half a win each time they pound the Orioles this weekend--and that's exactly what they did. Over .500 for the first time since Opening Day, the Mets now go to Philadelphia, where fans use decades of frustration to hone their boos like prison shanks. After their up-and-down boo-filled homestand, they should feel right at home. Posted 04.19.08 10:05am * Permalink Except Big Stein Build the House, They Labor in Vain that Built It
Posted 04.14.08 8:20pm * Permalink God Appreciates Your Input
Posted 04.08.08 10:31pm * Permalink Games 4 and 5 The Phillies were the Mets' chief nemesis last year, but I still can't summon the hatred for them that I can for the Braves. I mean, intense, white-hot, primal hatred. The kind of hate displayed by a cornered animal, lashing out at its aggressor, knowing that his fury is the only thing standing between escape and a claw to the jugular. It doesn't matter that the Braves were only mediocre the last two seasons. It doesn't matter that I actually kinda like Jeff Francoeur and Brian McCann (I even broke my No Braves Policy and drafted McCann for my fantasy team this year, which he has repaid by sucking so far). It doesn't matter that virtually all of the perennial heartbreakers circa 1998-2001 have scattered to the four winds. They still have John Smoltz. They retrieved Tom Glavine (aka The Manchurian Brave). And they still have Chipper Jones. In my Pantheon of Hatred, the top tier is reserved for genuinely evil super villain types like Osama bin Laden. One step down is the level for greedy bastards who put their own accumulation of personal wealth before the good of the planet.
Right below them is Chipper Jones, registering on the Personal Hate Index below Rupert Murdoch, but above Bill O'Reilly. Somewhere between Paris Hilton and Dick Cheney. Why? Because Chipper Jones was the douchebag who told Mets fans to "get their Yankee gear on" after a sweep late in the 1999 season put a serious hurt on their playoff hopes. Because he's constantly lauded as one of the game's "good guys" even though he knocked up a Hooters waitress. (Imagine if any black athlete had done that--can you imagine one single middle-aged white sportswriter ever calling him a "good guy" for the duration of his career?) Because he bitched about David Wright winning a Gold Glove this past off season, not so subtly implying that he deserved it. How about the fact that he's a grown-ass man who insists on being called Chipper? What is he, one of Barbie's friends? Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ on a bike, how old are you? Oh, and he has punished the Mets his entire career. Again and again and again. Fifty years from now, if the Braves reactivate him to pinch hit for one game, he will hit a grand slam that both ends a no-hitter and eliminates the Mets from the playoffs. Even if they have to roll him up to the plate with an IV tower and a colostomy bag. But it was never just Chipper. Oh no, if only it were so simple. When the Braves have beaten the Mets, nine times out of ten something weird happens along the way. Like an ump blows a call at the plate. Or an infield that has made no errors all year suddenly gets the yips. Or they score the winning run of the league championship series on a bases loaded walk. No matter how good they might be on paper, just being around the Braves turns the Mets into a team full of morons. Witness this weekend, wherein the Mets played really stupid, their manager managed really stupidly, and their stupidity was aided and abetted by some stupid umpiring. Saturday's game pivoted on two key plays. With the bases loaded and the Mets trailing 4-1, Reyes poked a ball to left center that should have easily scored two runs. But because the umpires initially said that Mark Kotsay caught a ball that bounced into his glove--and the play wasn't even close, not even to the naked eye--it looked like a sure 2 RBI hit would instead result in a double play and the end of the inning. To their credit, the umps reversed an awful call. But they only allowed one run to score. Another run scored on a Castillo groundout, but that was all she wrote. Thanks to a pinch hit grand slam by Kelly Johnson (off of Jorge Sosa, who Willie Randolph stuck with in his typically stubborn and bewildering fashion), that was all she wrote. But just as big, I thought, was a two-strike pitch to Mark Teixeira in the first inning. If this pitch wasn't a strike, then I give up watching baseball, because the rules must have changed overnight. Instead, Teixeira walked to load the bases, the Braves got a run on a sac fly, and John Maine's pitch count skyrocketed further. I truly believe that if Teixeira had been called out on strikes like he should have, the whole game would have changed. Or Maine would've given up a 3-run homer to McCann. Whichever. I can't decide which loss is more disheartening, Saturday's or Sunday's, in which a 1-run, 7-inning, gold glove performance by Santana gets him nothing but an L. Does it matter? It's like comparing stab wounds and trying to see which one is bigger. In the end, they both really fucking hurt. What was troubling was to see the Mets do exactly what they should have done--run up Smoltz's pitch count so he was in the 90s by the end of the fifth inning--only to do absolutely nothing against a terrible bullpen that got shellacked by the Pirates (the Pirates!) last week. If one can take any heart from this weekend, it's the fact that Rafael Soriano looked utterly lost as closer. Despite being given a three-run cushion after Teixeira's 2-run homer (thanks, Heilman, ya fuck), he had the terrified air of Calvin Schiraldi about him. Were it not for Teixeira's great play on a rope by Brian Schneider, it's quite likely he would have blown the game. So, you know, good luck relying on that guy to close out games all year. And between Smoltz, Glavine, and whoever the hell's at the back of their rotation, that bullpen's gonna log a lot of mileage before the All Star Break. Tomorrow is the home opener, which I will attend for the fourth year in a row. I managed to snag some not horribly expensive tickets. I'm sure the Shea Faithful will boo Jimmy Rollins and company lustfully. But I don't care how the Mets fell apart last year. There's still only one team that can truly sap the Mets of their mojo. Other than the Mets, that is. Posted 04.07.08 08:17pm * Permalink |
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