Sandwiches

Now, I love sandwiches.  I mean, what's a burrito if not a Mexican sandwich?  Oh, and I know that I haven't been posting.  I've been quite busy trying to get things done.  And here's what I've been working for:

More Television

It's been a few days since I last posted, my apologies. I'm thinking about reality TV.

It's a little late to think of reality TV as a phenomenon. It is obviously a successful format...not because the shows tend to make a huge profit but because they tend to turn a profit in the first place. The crews can be smaller and you don't have to pay Schwimmer, Aniston, Cox, and the other F*R*I*E*N*D*S something like $2 million and episode EACH.

So fewer ads will cover your costs and anything past that is gravy.

You end up with shows like Monday night's "Heavy."

This show followed a 350+ lb woman and a 650+ lb man around as they tried to lose weight.  The show followed these two people and two trainers on through their days and months.  It was light on flash and light on graphics.  Very inexpensive to do.  Kind of like late night shows.  The salaries are crazy for the hosts, but they get that huge salary but the network gets to put their show on every night.  So the talent fees are lower than the major series.  And on a show-by-show basis, so are the crew fees.

But anyway, "Heavy" seems like a great show.  I'll admit that I fell asleep, but that had more to do with the Chicagoan and the baby who I spent my day with.  It was trashy but also hard-hitting.  We were brought inside the world of the extremely obese to see them try to help themselves get better.  Cool stuff.

Not all reality is good though.  "Jersey Shore" is definitely trash, as is "The Bachelor(ette)."  Bu they're incredibly successful.  "American Idol" is incredibly well done and is one of the highest rated shows on TV.  It's got a big budget for reality shows, but that doesn't mean it's got a big budget for other shows.  See, here's the secret: keep talent costs down.  "Idol" is an example of the talent making a lot of money, but production costs are still down because they don't have to pay for three weeks of shooting to make one episode.  It's a day per episode.  Period.

That's why the news is still on.  Nobody watches the nightly news anymore, but you don't have to pay outlandish salaries to five people.  Maybe one anchor, but (s)he is going to be on every night.  Brian Williams is expensive but NBC sure gets some bang for their buck.

Anyway, I don't really know what the end to this posting is.  I think it's that reality TV isn't as bad as we all want to think it is?

I'm not sure.  Sorry.

Mornings and Late Night

Reid tend to sleep very well through the night, and we're lucky.  He's just a month (minus a day) old and is sleeping five to seven hours in one stretch...awesome!  But despite this, I'm still tired all the time.  The thing is that when he does get up, it's pretty immediate that he needs a change.  One might be able to go back to sleep when you change a baby in the middle of the night, but you don't have much of a shot when you're dealing with a screaming baby at 7:30 in the morning.

So then you're good for a while.  The first couple hours are devoted to baby and mommy care, which is actually pretty good.  At first it was constant, then got to a point where Reid and Leslie took the first four hours of the day at least.  But now Leslie has recovered pretty fully from the operation.

So you're up at 7:30 or 8 (which I actually think is a pretty good time to be up) but then you are going-going-going until midnight or so.  You're exhausted but not sleepy, so you start to cue up a DVD on your laptop.  But then you have to change a crying baby and in the middle of it he pees and poops everywhere so you have to change his clothes, too.

You do put on his Giants onesie and are happy about that.  Then you head back to your bed (which is really a bedroll on the floor) and fire up "Band of Brothers."  2am by the time it's done.

You think, "I could have used that extra hour of sleep."

TV Razes the Bar

"Cheers" was one of the most popular TV shows of all time.  It was a great show, but one that could never happen today.  Society is a weird thing...our society has decided that it's bad for things to take place in a bar or to show smoking, but there is an ever-increasing amount of violence on TV.

Society: "Hey buddy, it's immoral to show people who spend most of their time in the bar."

TV Dude: "But I don't want to show that, I just want to show a mutilated corpse."

Society:  "Sounds fine."

Not that I advocate alcoholism.  It's just that people need to lighten up.  Maybe make another show that takes place in a bar.  Oh wait--there is one!  I the weather in Philly is pretty nice.

"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is a great show.  One of the best shows on TV.  What's great about it?  The fact that the people in the show are the most horrible people you can possibly imagine.  It doesn't take much more analysis than that....put horrible people into an absurd, abstract situation.  Works every time!

Late Night TV

Conan failed as a mainstream guy.  I love Conan, but he wasn't the right fit on the show.  He can whine and complain as much as he wants but the fact is that in today's world, it would take a rare talent to actually be someone I'm interested in watching and also be right for the Tonight Show.  Alec Baldwin maybe?  Dana Carvey might have been great 20 years ago.  But for now, it's too hard to be mainstream and edgy.  I think it ruined Conan's career.  Of course, when you get the money he got, it's hard to claim his career is ruined.

Jay is exactly right for the show, and I also have no interest in watching.  Jimmy Fallon sucks--he has a nervous energy that better subside or he'll keep sucking.  Dave's over the hill and the show will always have a fatal flaw as long as Paul Shaffer is the principle foil.  Shaffer is a fine musician but he's not a funny guy.

Stewart and Colbert are great for what they are but neither one is a major network flagship late night talent.

And none of it is better than watching "Band of Brothers" on DVD.

Television

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SF Giants World Series Parade

I call this one "Fear the Beard" because of the kid doing the Brian Wilson pose in the front, complete with a beard in black marker.  I think maybe the framing could have been wider to show a little more of the fire truck, but I like it alright.

This is in mostly because it's Tim Lincecum.

I call this one "All Eyes on Aubrey."  I'm often more interested in the hoopla surrounding the event than the event itself and I feel this one shows both Huff's passion for the moment and everyone else's enthusiasm.  I also like that it makes you realize that the camera taking the picture is just another one of the cameras in the crowd.

"Natty Light."  I wanted to call it "Baptism" but thought that might be a little heavy-handed.  The backstory is that the guy getting doused had been giving "baptisms" (his use of the word, not mine) to his friends previously (note the wet shirt of the douser).  The tables were turned.

This is maybe my favorite shot of the whole set (there are a lot more that I haven't put on here).  I call it "Long Arm of the Law."  I was blown away by all the confetti on the ground and asked a group of people to take some and throw it up in the air so it could catch the backlight.  Kind of corny, I admit, but I figured I could just not show anyone if it seemed too much.  But right as they were throwing it in the air, a cop came over and told us to clear the street.  I was pissed because he wouldn't let me get the shot I wanted and his arm was in the only two frames I fired off of the shot.  But then I saw the flare and realized the shot wasn't perfect anyway and just became more interesting to me with the cool scene as well as the cop's arm.

So there are some of my photos.  I look forward to incorporating some others into the blog as well.  I haven't shown these anywhere, so I figure now is a fine place to do it.

Also, please let me know if you know how to set it up so you can click on the photo and see it in its original size.

Thank you!

All images copyright Stephen Allan.

Omar Vizquel

I'm not sure that this deserves to be my first full post but it's what I'm thinking about, so I guess it does.  Unfortunately I'm probably not going to do a lot of research about it--it's more of an impulse post than anything.  Anyway, I promise that not all of my posts will be about sports.

I read Rob Neyer's interesting article about whether Omar Vizquel is a Hall of Famer.  As a Giants fan, I felt the impulse to assume that he is one.  But I started thinking about it and a few questions came up in my mind about what a Hall of Famer is and what rubric one might use to determine worthiness.

If you don't want to read the whole article, Neyer makes an argument about MVP votes: basically, that the Hall of Fame is proof of greatness and that the MVP award is a certain standard of greatness that should be taken into account.  But an argument about MVP voting misses the point in Hall of Fame discussion regarding Omar Vizquel because a player like Vizquel rarely even receives a vote.  He's the archetype slick-fielding, bat-handling shortstop.

If you're the guy who starts the double play and moves the runner from first to second, the people who are going to get the most credit are the pitcher who threw the slider and the guy behind you who knocks the runner in from second with a single.  The principal question for Hall of Fame voters is whether this type of player deserves to be in the Hall of Fame--your prototypical #2 hitter if you will.

It's also a judge of the value of the glove.  It's a hard thing to quantify but if the general wisdom is that Ozzie Smith and Omar are the two "greatest fielding shortstops of all time" and that the shortstop is the most difficult defensive position one then has to evaluate Omar with Ozzie.  Batting-wise, Omar wins in almost every category (Ozzie gets him in stolen bases, which isn't surprising considering he played on Whitey Herzog's Cardinals).  Supremacy in the field is debatable.  So head-to-head, Omar should be elected.

But I'm not an advocate of pure numbers.  I'm an advocate for more than that, in that a player needs to transcend the numbers in some way.  This is the same reason I don't think Rafael Palmiero should be in the Hall...he has all kinds of numbers, but he didn't transcend them.  Think of it this way, in 20 career seasons, Palmiero only made four All-Star teams.  Despite having 569 home runs, he never led the league.  The only things Palmiero ever led the league in were runs, hits, and doubles.  He only won each of those categories once.  A very good hitter, sure, but not great.  And NOT a Hall of Famer.

Vizquel, on the other hand, played in a way that transcended his numbers.  He was often the emotional soul of his team.  He might be the best defensive shortstop ever.  But now that I've claimed that I won't do research to back up my post I will break that promise and throw some numbers at you.

He only hit over .300 once in his career.  He is only 8th among active players in runs scored despite being first in plate appearances.  He did lead the league in sacrifices four times (mad credit, Omar) but he NEVER led the league in any other offensive category.  Defensively, he is third all-time in SS assists, despite having played more games at short than anyone else.  Eleventh in putouts at SS.

And, in a 22 year career, Omar only made 3 All-Star teams.  On top of that, I only found one year (1993) in which Omar spent the majority of his at-bats hitting leadoff.  And that year he hit almost as often (275 times) in the 9-hole as he did hitting leadoff (283).  I would guess that he spent more games in the 9-hole that season, considering how many more at-bats a leadoff hitter generally gets than a 9th-place guy.  Omar was never a middle-of-the-order guy and spent his best years in the 2-hole.

It pains me to say it (I have always thought of myself as a #2 hitter) but #2 hitters are not your Hall of Fame guys.  The Hall is for the stars.  It's for guys who bring everybody home or for the rare leadoff hitter dynamic enough to transcend that role.

In my penultimate point, I will bring up Willie McGee.  Willie was a much better hitter, leading the league in batting twice and hitting .300 seven times.  He was fast on the basepaths and a very good outfielder.  He won an MVP award (1985)  But nobody claims he's a Hall of Famer.

Think of it this way, Maury Wills is not in the Hall of Fame.  Pee Wee Reese had to wait until the Veterans Committee.  Omar was a very good player but I can't justifiably say that he was a better shortstop than Maury Wills or Pee Wee Reese.  Can you?

Will I be able to keep this up?

Well, I've signed up for a blog....I'm hoping that I might keep up with it.  You think I can?