Annoyance

Good evening!  Tonight's topic will be things that have annoyed me lately - some good, some bad.  There will be, as always, a wide array under discussion.  Let's begin!


IMPARTIAL PLAY-BY-PLAY

So I picked up this AWESOME DEAL at mlb.com.  For $20.00/yr., I can listen to any baseball game I want, anytime, anywhere, which is just the perfect cure for your typical workday boredom.  I've noticed something odd with spring training, though.  You get the option of listening to either the home or away broadcast for any game, but if it's a spring training game and the local radio station isn't covering the game, some dudes at mlb.com will cover the game instead.  Now, on paper this sounds great cause you can listen to just about any game you want because someone's covering it.  The bad news, however, is that there's a huge drop off in quality between...

Juuust a bit outside.  He tried the corner and missed.

...the home or away's team broadcast and...

HELLO FANS.  IT IS A BALMY EIGHTY-TWO DEGREES IN THE SUN HERE AT PRESS PLAY ON TAPE FIELD.

...the mlb.com announcers.  You see, when you have local broadcast, either home or away, they really care about the game cause it's their guys on the field.  They know them, they want them to win, and there's passion tied to it.  In radio, all you have and the only tool at your disposal is your voice and you can hear when someone's really into the game.  I think that's why baseball lends itself so well to radio.  The snap of the glove, the crack of the bat, and the relatively slow pace of the play allows you to really get out the brush and paint a vibrant picture of what's going on down on the field, or even just have a conversation.  I've listened to half-innings where the announcers were just talking about hot dogs.  Sure, they did the play-by-play, but they talked about the grills, the hot dogs, the barbecue sauce ("with those little chunks of apple in it") and that was great!  You don't get that in other sports - not by a long shot.  I'd love to hear Jim Hughson talk about hot dogs through a powerplay.

The annoying thing here is the mlb.com guys.  I don't wanna say anything bad about them cause they're just doing their job, but if you're employed by mlb.com, by that very fact you're just sitting there on the fence not taking one side or another.  Essentially you're just a neutral party that's just there to call the balls and strikes and put the game on the air for people to listen to, and by God is that boring.

Now, I suppose some people are thinking that, well, don't you want impartial commentary so that you know what's really going on in the game?  It's no fun listening to total homers like, say, for example...

Green is the colour, football is the game, blah blah blah...

...cause that's just not - well especially the talk radio shows that debate the game.  Even worse.  But I suppose the point that I'm trying to make here is that if I picked up a regular season ballgame on the radio I get my choice of home or away broadcasts, and that's as it should be.  One broadcast for both sides by someone who really doesn't get involved really flies in the face of what it means to the typical fan of professional sport - but at the same time, please be courteous to both sides, respectful to your adversary, and put the 'sport' in 'sportsmanship'.


SOCCER

As a teenager I played soccer at school and it was fun.  I quite enjoyed it.  It was a fun game if you're in it or on the field.  I find it to be the archetype of games that are more fun to play than to watch, unlike games that are more fun to watch than to play like for example...

Aw, sorry.  Wrong pic.  I thought this was UFC but it's just a Miami grade 12 gym class.  Oh wait.  No, sorry again.  Math class.

I think that soccer is one of those things that's an acquired taste to watch on TV.  I think that, maybe, if I sat down on a Saturday (or Sunday, or...  actually I have no idea when soccer's on TV at all...  Please check your local listings.) morning and watched a day full of it that I might get it, like it, understand and appreciate it, but right now... yeah, not so much.

I'll tell you one thing, though, there's one huge thing that gets in the way of me finding the will to see the light and start appreciating soccer:

Corruption.

Now before I tear into soccer, I'll preface it by saying that other sports have their failings as well.  For example:

Baseball

Hockey

Basketball

Football

But for crying out loud!  See there's this fundamental thing where when two teams get together to play a game that they're both going to try.  They're both going to go duke it out and may the best team win.  Sure, some teams are better than others, but when you get ot the stadium and you sit down in the seats you don't know what's going to happen.  That there is the essence of sport: you don't know what's going to happen.  Without that it's just plain not sport anymore.  It's not even theater.  It's nothing.  Case in point this game right here.

Let me paint the picture.  What this game is is a qualifying match for the 2014 World Cup.  Indonesia's already out of contention, so whatever.  Bahrain (and if you don't know where Bahrain is, it's an island in the Persian Gulf) however is still in contention.  Well, sort of.  They have a nine goal deficit going into the game in the standings which they have to overcome if they want to make it to the next round and after looking through a few tables of recent statistics, the average goals per game in any professional league is somewhere between 2.5 and 3.0 - and that's not 2.5-3.0 apiece, that's 2.5-3.0 total.  So there are a whole lot of 1-1, 2-0, 2-1 games.  So it doesn't appear likely that Bahrain's going anywhere.  Now what was the final score of this game?  10-0 for Bahrain.

10 to nothing?!  10 to nothing?!  Let's look at this.  Indonesia's first round was against Turkmenistan.  Game One was a 1-1 draw while game 2 saw Indonesia squeak ahead with a more wide open 4-3 affair.  On to the next round they go. However, in the next round, poor Indonesia went 0-6, but the scores didn't seem that exaggerated.  0-2, 1-4, 2-3, 0-3, 0-4.  They're bad, but they're within reason.  So when Bahrain strolls in to play the last game and needs nine points to make the World Cup, although they may win it didn't seem likely that they were going to fill the net like they would need to so that they could advance.  So what happens right straight away to Indonesia's keeper on a sketchy trip?

Uh huh.  And Brendan Shanahan weeps.  Seriously.  Watch the game if you can stomach it.  From what I hear from serious soccer dudes is that this is a sickening display that gives every indication that the suitcases of cash were exchanged somehow.  Sick.

Oh, and the worst part of all?  FIFA has vowed to investigate the incident.

INTERPOL is putting their best man on the case.

Uh huh.  Moving on.


NANCY GRACE ET AL

Have you ever flipped through the channels and come across something so bizarre that you just couldn't look away?

Good morning!

It was some time ago.  I remember that she was going off about this girl who was convicted of murder in Italy.  Amanda Knox was her name.  She was convicted of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher and spent four years locked up in an Italian jail.  So when the verdict was appealed successfully and Ms. Knox was released and brought back home to America, Nancy was some pissed.  It seems once a murderer, in her mind, always a murderer.  I mean, if the court had found her free of guilt, that's good enough for me and any reasonable person, I would think.  I mean, we all have to live with the laws that our society has in place because that's how society functions.

I remember another instance.  This time it was another one of HLN's pit bulls.

Make sure you get my good side.

So, go google pictures of Jane Velez-Mitchell.  Go ahead.  What do you see?  A whole lot of pictures of her not just smiling, but beaming.  Everywhere!  You'd think she was a happy person or something.  However, I was flipping through channels during and after the Casey Anthony trial some time ago and I gotta say, she was none too happy then.  In fact, I flipped through one day and noticed she looked pissed while she was grilling someone.  Then the next day: pissed again.  And the day after.  And it was the same with Nancy.  Wow!

I don't get it.  Well, I mean, I think I get it.  They get paid a lot of money and saying outrageous things seems to sell.

Right?  Right.

But I don't get how you can stay "on" all the time.  I mean, she smiles.  A lot it seems.  So why is it that whenever I look at HLN she's snarling?  I wonder, could I snarl for two hours?  Three hours?  Four hours?  Could I look angry?  Indignant?  Fuming?  Mad as hell?!  Well, maybe, but you know what?  It's just all so fake and insincere.  Such garbage!  It's all just this theatrical nonsense designed to whip people up.  And the worst was after Casey Anthony was found not guilty.  They still went after her.  It's like never mind the court decision, we know the truth and she did it.  I feel so bad for Ms. Anthony!  She's found not guilty and yet her life is still ruined by it.  It's crazy!  The law is executed in the courtroom and not on television.  Period.  End of story.


YAY AMERICA MOVIE 
 
As a Canadian I have a ringside seat to see all of the shenanigans here, there, and everywhere, at home and abroad, and there's one thing that I just can't stand: Yay America Movies.  What do I mean by that?

Actually, if you photoshop out the alien and the death ray, it looks much like a Thomas Kincaid painting.

Independence Day.  Aliens attack and start destroying the world.  Who's going to save them?

The delightfully insane Randy Quaid.

The United States of America, that's right.  They can take down the Eiffel Tower, the Kremlin, the Cristo Redentor, the Dome of the Rock, and about anything else worth mentioning, but when they go and blow up the White House, oh it's on like Donkey Kong.

Just picture Donkey Kong as an alien and Mario as Bill Pullman.  Oh, and the Princess is Judd Hirsch.

Sure, there were funny moments, but it was pretty darn sappy.  And then there was this one which was totally, totally shameless.

This movie gets my vote for worst love triangle ever.

 Holy crap was this bad!  The love story was terrible, the faux emotion was terrible, and Dolittle's raid at the end was, well, terrible.  A terrible, terrible movie that just anguishes about the great, but vulnerable America.  Yuck.

Now, this isn't to say that there aren't Boo America films...

He looks like he's enjoying this a little too much...

Remember: don't declare war. go to war.

Making dictators more and more ronery every day.

...but I find that Boo America films are a bit more pointed and thoughtful.

And I mean, come on.  Having the President leap into the cockpit to save the world?  Come on...  As much as I would like to see Harper fly an F18 on bombing runs through Libya, Chrétien drive a tank through Afghanistan, Mulroney pilot a rescue chopper during Desert Storm,  Trudeau wielding a flamethrower in Vietnam, or anything like that, but Canadian politicians just aren't like that, you know?  It just doesn't happen.  They're all scheming, Machiavellian lawyers and career politicians.  There's no such thing a Canadian war hero who is at the same time politician.

Funny how it takes a fighter pilot to win the Nobel Peace Prize and try to stop war.

Well, except Prime Minister Mike.  And he was a huge baseball fan, too!  I guess they're not all bad.  Hm!  And that's all the time we have today.  Thank you for reading and have a good night!