Restore Sanity?

I'll try and write about the three movies I recently saw in the coming days. But first, a political rant, with Election Day almost here -- and, by the way, make sure you all vote. There's no excuse whatsoever not to vote.

I was amused by the flurry of Twitter activity today revolving around the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" held in Washington. Co-hosted by Comedy Central stars Jon Stewart (pushing sanity) and Stephen Colbert (in character, representing fear), it seemed to be a response to the rally of right-wing nuts back in August, and a plea for kinder, gentler political discourse.

I didn't watch it. Perhaps it was entertaining. (Yes, there were entertainers there, from Sheryl Crow to Mavis Staples to Ozzy Osbourne and the former Cat Stevens, Yusuf Islam.) Perhaps it was more than an unusual vehicle to promote "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." But for my money, it was a waste. It's the same old "let's find common ground" message that has failed for the last 30 years, since Ronald Reagan took office and began his reign of terror. Democrats, liberals, progressives, whatever you want to call yourselves, you need to get this into your heads once and for all: THERE IS NO COMMON GROUND WITH THESE PEOPLE. They are out to defeat you and destroy you. They will never play nice. They'll pretend to do it, and then stab you in the back the first chance they get.

This is why the Republicans are likely to regain control of the House and, at the least, gain a number of seats in the Senate.

IHOP Screwed Me!

When I was walking around Outfest earlier this month I happened upon the IHOP table. There's been an IHOP in the Gayborhood for...I dunno, a year or two now? Well, they were asking people to sign up for their mailing list, to get emails with coupons and promotions and the like. The first deal would be a free Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity. I like free stuff, and if it's food, so much the better. So I signed up. A few days later I got an email with the deal. I didn't print it out at the time. I was going to do it the next day and again decided to wait for some reason. A couple of days after that, I decided to print it, only to find I can't. The email suddenly has an addition. Note the area I've circled:

Can you believe this? I assume this is to try and prevent people from forwarding it around or printing it multiple times or something, but there has to be a better way than this. I wonder if there's a cookie on my computer that caused this? I want my free food, dammit!

More Naked Pat Burrell

Remember the item I posted on Monday about the YouTube video that featured someone strongly believed to be former Phil Pat Burrell walking by briefly, his face covered (by a mask) but almost everything else uncovered, while Giants teammate Brian Wilson was doing a TV interview from his home? I don't understand the costume's name, but according to TheFightins.com it's called a gimp outfit. And today they revealed -- with photgraphic proof -- that Burrell's worn it before:

I don’t really want to go into detail about how I acquired this picture, but it was taken at Pat Burrell’s house in Arizona during a Christmas party in (I believe) December of ’04 (possibly ’05). According to my picture-taking accomplice, every year during his Christmas party — which is attended by a veritable who’s who of baseballers who spend their winters out in AZ — Pat wanders upstairs and slips into his assless-chapped gimp outfit to entertain his party guests while making them feel extremely uncomfortable all at the same time.

I took this at the Phils' Photo Day in '04. Pat was more fully dressed

It's not of very high quality, but there's some buttcheek there. I'd be drooling if it was a clearer shot. Seriously. Drooling. And I need to get invited to this year's party.

The (possibly NSFW) picture from TheFightins.com follows the jump:

My Week In Comics 10-20-10

A little overloaded just about all month, thanks to various one-shots and specials These 7, plus 5 more I bought today that I'll talk about in a future post.

Supergirl 57: The conclusion of Supergirl's trip to end the alien attack on Bizarro World. Supergirl continues to grow and evolve as a character, and some of that growth shows here when she has to inspire her Bizarro counterpart.

Superman/Batman 77: Supergirl's in this one, too. No Superman or Batman, though. A mass grave's been discovered in Metropolis and Supergirl needs help from the world's greatest detective to find the killer. But there's no Batman around, and she settles for Robin. Kara and Damien clash in a humorous way, and it's a Halloween issue as well. Speaking of which...

DC Universe Halloween Special 2010 1 (of 1): ...just like the Simpsons' annual Treehouse of Horror, the DC yearly set of "scary" tales arrives. There are six stories. The first and best one is actually a sequel to a tale from last year's collection.

My 2010 World Series Thoughts

Okay, so I didn't think either team would get to this point. That doesn't mean anything except that postseason experience isn't always so important. That won't come into play here, because the Texas Rangers have never been to the World Series and the San Francisco Giants haven't been here since 2002, almost a lifetime ago in baseball years. If my guess is true I won't be too happy because while they're the Texas Rangers, it's basically a Dallas team, and we all know Dallas sucks. Plus, the Rangers are the team that used to be owned by George W. Bush, and who wants him to celebrate anything? Unfortunately, Texas will win. Unlike the Phillies, the Rangers have hit well all year and continued to do so in the playoffs. The Giants can't match the Rangers' hitting prowess, and while they have a strong pitching staff, they don't have Cliff Lee. Rangers in 5.

Eye Yi Yi!

I was up much too early this morning because I had an appointment with my ophthamologist. Before we get into that, though, let's discuss our favorite public transit system.

My appointment was for 8:40 am. I got down to Frankford Terminal to catch the El around 8:10, giving me plenty of time to get to Allegheny station and either walk or take another bus to the office. However, when I got up the stairs to the El platform, there was chaos. It was filled with people waiting for a train, and some were getting quite disturbed. I got my phone and logged onto the mobile version of SEPTA's website to see if there were any advisories, and found...nothing. They have a Twitter account as well. I went on Twitter and found...nothing. (Later I checked and saw that their Twitter account hadn't been updated in 3 days until this afternoon, when there was an announcement about a book drive.) Thanks for nothing, SEPTA.

I thought about waiting to see if a train was coming from somewhere, but I saw that one of my fine Twitter peeps, PhilthyBlog (the actual blog is here) posted that he was sitting on a train that was stuck at a station for 15 minutes. So I left the El platform and caught a bus instead, and ended up only a few minutes late.

So, about my eyes...

I've been to the eye doctor's often over the last two-plus years.

Is That REALLY Pat Burrell?

Via AfterElton's link to this blog I discovered the video below. It's from a Fox Sports interview with San Francisco Giants' closer Brian Wilson. At about the 43-second mark, the provocatively (and barely) dressed man who walks into the picture is allegedly none other than Pat Burrell.



Obviously what we need is a look at the original video on a 50-inch HDTV.

Brings back memories of this, doesn't it?

Phillies: The U Word Resurfaces

The end of the Phillies' season played out very much like most of the season itself: with a lack of offense. So often the team's bats went south this year that it shouldn't have been a surprise when it happened in the playoffs, especially against the solid pitching of the San Francisco Giants. And yet, somehow, it was. Because they told us all year long that when it really mattered, they'd be fine. After the three consecutive shutout losses against the Mets at Taxpayer Bailout Field. After losing three of four to the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates (the worst franchise despite the best ballpark). After losing 6 of 7 coming out of the All-Star break. After falling 7 games behind Atlanta in the NL East. After the four-game sweep at home against the also-ran Houston Astros. They always told us they'd turn it around.

And they did, for a while. The Phils roared to their 4th straight NL East title and the best record in the major leagues. And you couldn't ask for a better beginning to the postseason than Roy Halladay pitching a no-hitter in his first-ever playoff start. But during the entire postseason the team struggled to score, often needing subpar fielding from the Reds and Giants in order to get some runs. Their lack of hitting with runners in scoring position was excruciating, especially in NLCS Game 6, in which the Phils scored twice in the first, and Giants' starter Jonathan Sanchez was so shaky that he was removed before getting an out in the third inning. But they never scored again. They were 2-for-11 with RISP and both of those hits came in the first. Making things worse, the Phils' own fielding let them down at times.

And so I feel the need to use a word to describe this team that hasn't applied in a few years now:

More Helpful Twitter Hints

Here are a couple more of my Twitter pet peeves. If you use Twitter, and especially if I am one of your followers, please begin following these instructions immediately. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.

First, if you have a story to tell, do NOT use six or eight or ten consecutive tweets to tell it. With the number of accounts I read, and since the timeline starts with most recent posts, your story is being told backwards and with large gaps between tweets. Those gaps are filled with other, and often more interesting, tweets. If you want to write a story, start a blog already and post a link to it.

Also, regarding "Follow Fridays," don't make posts recommending EVERY ONE of your 483 followers. I don't need to see posts like "#ff @lugioretur @oasdgiogf @apfuweiou @poidugio @aseuggirgvv @potgysdgrgr @qweiggrho"* over and over and over and over and over. And if you're going to give reasons to recommend someone, such as "#ff @JoeInPhilly 'cuz he's really smart and cool and funny and great in bed"** do it just a few times and not a few DOZEN. Make "Follow Fridays" something special and worthwhile. If you just throw up a bunch of names I'm not going to pay attention.

*not actual Twitter accounts

**actual Twitter account, and a 100 percent accurate description as well. Especially the part about being great in bed. Don't believe me? Prove me wrong, boys, prove me wrong.

Why There Shouldn't Be Hockey In Phoenix

Check out this "crowd" last night. The second home game of the Phoenix Coyotes' season, coming off a season in which they finally made the playoffs, drew an announced attendance of 6,706. Yet the NHL insists on having a team in Phoenix. They've lost tons of money over the years, they still don't have a new owner (I can't even begin to sum up that debacle, but here's a Wikipedia link), taxpayers in Glendale (where their arena is located) are on the hook for $25 million to be paid to the NHL to pay for the team's losses this year...and according to left winger (and former Flyer) Scottie Upshall, they can't even make ice properly, as evidenced by this tweet after the team's home opener:

He later issued a clarification...

There are too many NHL teams in markets that simply can not or will not support hockey. The Coyotes should have been allowed to move back to Winnipeg (where they used to be the Winnipeg Jets) or to Hamilton, Ontario or some other location.

And now, for the non-hardcore sports people, here's a picture Upshall tweeted earlier this summer...