Fun with Baseball

Posted on May 4, 2004 by Solonor

While I’m busy shepherding the SGCBL through its third playoff season, here are a couple of baseball links to keep you busy.

The Oracle of Baseball lets you type in any two player names, and it will tell you how they are linked (like the Oracle of Bacon).

For example, the pitcher (yes the pitcher) for the 1871 Philadelphia Athletics, Dick McBride, is related to the latest pitching phenom, Dontrelle Willis like this:

Dick McBride played with Jim O’Rourke for the 1876 Boston Red Caps
Jim O’Rourke played with Red Ames for the 1904 New York Giants
Red Ames played with Charlie Grimm for the 1918 St. Louis Cardinals
Charlie Grimm played with Phil Cavarretta for the 1935 Chicago Cubs
Phil Cavarretta played with Minnie Minoso for the 1954 Chicago White Sox
Minnie Minoso played with Richard Dotson for the 1980 Chicago White Sox
Richard Dotson played with Jeff Conine for the 1990 Kansas City Royals
Jeff Conine played with Dontrelle Willis for the 2003 Florida Marlins

The other one is NBCSports.com – Strike Out! In this, you get 9 rounds to pitch against a cartoon batter. Sounds simple enough, but it’s not as easy as that.

I could play with this stuff all day, if I didn’t have to work.

Stupid job.

[ Oracle links via the BKO Lounge. Strike Out! via Xade. ]

Posted in Baseball | 2 Comments

Spot the Hunger Dog?

Posted on May 3, 2004 by Solonor

Hey you! Yeah, you… with the ink-stained finger tips and the pencil behind the ear… Here’s your chance to do something for the children.™

Natalie has gotten herself all big-shotified and become one of the high muckety mucks of an organization that sends food to starving kids around the world. She thinks she’s so special, just because she’s like saving lives and stuff while I’m sitting around trying to find an inoffensive word that rhymes with twit. The only reason I have anything to do with her is because she calls me “monkey butt” (and we’re all about the monkeys around here).

So, anyway, she’s trying to re-do this organization’s web site and marketing and needs some help. There’s a section on her new site devoted to kids. If you get the kids involved, they grow up to be caring adults. But more importantly they drag their parents along in the here and now. (She is a smart cookie, actually. I’ll give her that.)

What she needs, though, is some sort of kid-friendly mascot that can be used on the site and perhaps in other materials. Something cool and cartoonish that gets kids to stop and look at the site and want to learn about hunger and nutrition.

If anyone can come up with an idea and/or artwork, I can give you a tax-deductible receipt for a gift-in-kind donation to our organization (we’re too poor to pay anything) and we would have the exclusive rights to use the image for our brand but you would retain the copyright of the work. You’d get full copyright credit on our site and on any literature that we would put your idea and/or artwork.

I know there has got to be at least one talented artist out there that can whip something up. Maybe Boris the Hunger Bot?

Posted in Yo! Listen Up! | 3 Comments

Intersections and Influences

Posted on April 30, 2004 by Solonor

One of the features on Morning Edition lately has been a series called Intersections: Artists and Their Inspirations. They’ve featured Alice Walker, Patti Smith and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, for example, talking about their chief influences for their art.

I was thinking about this the other day when someone mentioned Groucho Marx, and I thought, “That’s where a significant bit of what I find funny comes from.” This lead to the question: “Who are your biggest influences?”

I don’t mean “real life” people. Obviously, parents, friends, co-workers, etc. will have had a more direct impact. What I want to know is who are the artists that inspired you? Where does your sense of humor come from? Your sense of art? Your musical taste?

It’s tough to limit yourself to a single influence (at least for me), even if you limit the category to music or something. So, I’ll make this a little easier.

List the five biggest influences on what it is that you find funny.

And don’t just list off who you think are funny now. It’s easy to reel of names of shows like Beavis & Butthead, The Simpsons and The Daily Show or names of current comedians. Think about why you find them funny. Who did you see way back in your childhood that sparked the idea that irony or bad puns or silly sounds are funny?

In no particular order, mine are:

  1. Groucho Marx – Bam! Insult! Bam! Retort! Bam! Bad pun! The funniest, wittiest, snideliest guy ever.
  2. Monty Python – Kinda obvious for a geek, but I’d never seen anything like this group of silly people being extremely silly, other than snippets of old Ernie Kovacs shows or Jonathan Winters standup routines.
  3. Mark Twain – The Groucho Marx of literature.
  4. Jay Ward – This was close. The Warner Brothers cartoons – especially Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck – are pretty safe choices for hilarity. But hearing Edward Everett Horton wind up a Fractured Fairy Tale with the most godawful pun is comedy nirvana.
  5. Dr. Demento – I heard more strangeness coming out of my little radio each Sunday than anyone should be allowed. If I missed anything funny growing up, then I got caught up in a hurry by listening to the Dr. Demento Show as a teenager.

Next up: Music

Posted in Blogcritics | 15 Comments

And now a word from our sponsor…

Posted on April 29, 2004 by Solonor

I have a new entry in the “Most Disgusting Thing I’ve Ever Eaten” hit parade:

  1. Dried Seaweed
  2. Canned Dog Food
  3. Atkins Crunchers

Someone handed me an open bag of these foul chips after lunch. They tell me (after laughing at the look on my face) that they thought it was like eating flavored cardboard.

It’s not that pleasant. Trust me.

Posted in Rants 'n' Whines | 5 Comments

Mourning Edition

Posted on April 29, 2004 by Solonor

Yeah, yeah, I read your fricking, answer-avoiding little chat room transcript about how taking Bob Edwards away from my morning commute is just the greatest thing to happen to “Morning Edition” and we should all just deal.

Bite me.

It’s first thing in the morning. I don’t want to deal. I want to listen to Bob Edwards.

About NPR : Changes at Morning Edition

Posted in Rants 'n' Whines | 5 Comments

I’ll take a bit more Imaginary TV, thanks.

Posted on April 28, 2004 by Solonor

Until now, Fox had the most offensive reality show premise yet. But it’s ABC’s turn to wear the back end of the ass costume!

Not satisified with losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the moron demographic, ABC decided to promote an upcoming 20/20 segment by hyping it as an adoption competition.

It’s this week’s edition of the ABC News program “20/20,” a show titled “Be My Baby,” which chronicles what anchor Barbara Walters has called an “extraordinary competition” among five couples hoping a teen mother in Ohio will choose them to adopt her baby. The “20/20” promo that aired on ABC over the weekend described the show in this way: “Five couples desperate to adopt, all competing for her baby. Four will lose, one will get the baby of their dreams.”

While it may be true that the segment itself won’t be nearly as tawdry as the promo makes it sound, this is one of those times for which the phrase “what the hell were they thinking?” was invented.

I can hardly wait for more of this stuff. Shows like…

“The Amazing Race”
A caucasian, a black and an oriental compete to see which race will be allowed to breed… only one skin tone wins!

“Kill Bill”
Each week viewers select the method of execution for a random person named “Bill” and watch it live! (I’d be looking into a new pseudonym there, missy.)

“The Swan, Starring Miss Swan”
Three hot cheerleaders get complete makeovers by Mad-TV character, Miss Swan.

“Forever Eden”
Six couples get stuck on an island with aging sitcom stars like Bob Denver, Estelle Getty and Jamie Fox and can’t leave until they convince one of them to have sex with them live on TV! Hosted by Barbara Eden (duh).

“Plastic Surgery Idol”
Watch as the five finalists let viewers pick their nose!

Quick! We need us some more reality shows afore our brains start gettin’ all smartified.

Posted in Rants 'n' Whines | 11 Comments

See? I’m not paranoid. I know they’re after me.

Posted on April 28, 2004 by Solonor

Yahoo! News – Blog-Tracking May Gain Ground Among U.S. Intelligence Officials

Nothing new in this article about how blogs are the next big thing in information and news and how the CIA ought to start tracking them (like all those IAEA hits are really from Mars). Blah, blah, blah.

I just liked the line from Tim Witcher, former Seoul, Korea, bureau chief for Agence France-Presse, a news service:

“A blog only becomes news when we can be 100% sure that it’s true.”

Funniest. Line. Ever.

Posted in Wouldya Lookit That! | 3 Comments

Derek Jeter: Dreamy Spy

Posted on April 27, 2004 by Solonor

Crap! Now, the enemy is using nocturnal infiltration techniques to try to get inside the heads of our anti-Yankee resistance. Good thing they didn’t find anything in there… um, I mean…

Posted in Baseball | 2 Comments

Check for traps!

Posted on April 27, 2004 by Solonor

E. Gary Gygax! It’s the 30th anniversary of the creation of Dungeons & Dragons!

D&D has reached the age where it’s o.k. to talk about in public. Heck, there’s nothing about the anniversary on the WotC site. I found out about it via the semi-respectable BBC NEWS (via Slashdot and others).

But what self-respecting geek can ignore the birthday of the Mother of All Role-Playing Games? I certainly can’t. Without D&ampD, I might not have met my wife!

Our language revolves around an assortment of catchphrases from D&ampD sessions. One of our favorite expletives is simply saying “E. Gary Gygax!” in shock and dismay. One of the first things we taught our son to say was “Fireball!” I don’t know what we’d substitute for “Got any artifacts and/or relics laying around?” or “Throw food!” or “Doorknob!” or “Hey, hot knees…”

Our characters were so distinct and fun that we can still see them. Like characters from a movie, we remember Charmian, Domino, Elessar, Gambit, Krespin, Sulamon, Sarek, Ooshka, Nikon… and their adventures in Greyhawk and our own fantasy worlds. Without D&D, Ric the Schmuck wouldn’t be who he is. And, of course, instead of Solonor, I’d be stuck using my real name. Ick.

There’s a site called the Dungeons & Dragons Archive that has pictures of the original books and modules. I think Grump has a copy of the original 3-volume set that I’m going to steal and sell on eBay for millions. Just glancing through these pages brings back memories of The Keep on the Borderlands (one of our first adventures), Ravenloft, The Temple of Elemental Evil and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.

And if I die before I’m 50, it will be from the leftover effects of combining Mountain Dew and Skittles. (I’m convinced that this is where Mike Judge got Cornholio, too.)

Thank you to the creative minds in the D&D Timeline: Mr. Gygax and Dave Arneson and Jeff Perren (who wrote the rules for the tabletop miniatures game Chainmail) and Don Kaye (who helped launch TSR and publish D&D in 1974).

Posted in Wouldya Lookit That! | 12 Comments

Bloggy Lurve

Posted on April 26, 2004 by Solonor

Whenever I wander around leaving comments in the blogonetisphereathingy, I try to convince people that I’m not a big softie, but a grumpy old man. Some people just refuse to understand this. They keep insisting on giving me virtual hugs and kissies, while I’m shouting “Get offa my lawn, ya dang punk kids!” And just when I think I’ve got them under control, along comes the annual snazzykat love-in to get them all stirred up again. Thanks a lot, Erika. Good thing you’re a Red Sox fan.

So, to all the blogs I’ve loved before (great, now that’s stuck in my head, too), a great big Happy Love-In Week (yes, it’s a whole week now).

Blogger Love-In

Now, get offa my lawn ya crazy kids!

Posted in Aortal | 4 Comments