Monthly Archives: April 2010

Videocracy

YouTubery Friday: Muppets and Podcast Goodness

It’s Friday! Procrastinate and count down to happy hour with these lovely bits!

Do you love the Muppets? That’s a trick question. Of course you do. After all, you’re a human being with a sense of humor and a soul. Only an inhuman monster would not like the Muppets. I would not care to be in the same room or ever meet such a quote-unquote person.

Yesterday, the tweeting of Chunklet led me to this YouTube gem. It’s a camera test for the first Muppet movie (aptly titled The Muppet Movie). I don’t know who posted this, but I owe you a few beers. Words can not express how happy this video made me. In it, Kermit and Fozzie engage in an existential meta-conversation about what they are, exactly. Plus, Miss Piggy admits to a horrible, horrible crime.

There is another video from the same session, apparently, which is not quite as brilliant but still has some amazing dialogue in it. For instance, Fozzie wondering why the car he’s riding in does not have a stove.

This next thing is not a video per se, but it’s my damn site and I’ll promote whatever the hell I want. The illustrious Paul F. Tompkins and Tom Scharpling appeared together on a special two-part edition of the podcast Comedy and Everything Else. It made for nearly four hours of non-stop hilarity. I particularly like Tom’s reasoning for why he shouldn’t have to sit through the Sarah McLachlan animal cruelty PSA’s. Subscribe now and listen to it all. You won’t be sorry.

The Parallel Universe Fake Mets

The Parallel Universe Fake Mets: Games 7-9

Game 7: Rockies 6, Mets 2
Fake Mike Pelfrey gave up a leadoff homer to fake Carlos Gonzalez, then settled in to retire nine batters in a row. The fake Mets could do little against fake Aaron Cook, though they scratched out the tying run in the top of the third when fake Josh Thole reached second base on a throwing error, moved to third on a Pelfrey sac bunt, and scored on a fake Jose Reyes groundout. But the fake Rockies came right back with an RBI double from fake Todd Helton in the bottom of the third, and two more runs in the bottom of the sixth. Fake Pedro Feliciano gave up a two-run homer to fake Clint Barmes in the bottom of the eighth that put the game out of reach. The Fake Mets loaded the bases with no outs in the ninth, and much like their real counterparts, could do little with it. Fake Orlando Hudson had a pinch hit RBI, but with two outs, fake Fernando Tatis tried to score from second on a single up the middle. In the real world, he would’ve scored easily. In the fake world, Gonzalez gunned him down at the plate to end the game,

In real life: John Maine improved on his disappointing first start by turning in a complete shit-show, aided by some typically Mets-ian brainless baseball, en route to a 11-3 drubbing in Colorado.

Game 8: Rockies 7, Mets 4
The Fake Mets touched up Fake Jeff Francis for four runs in the top of the fourth, then decided to take the rest of the game off. Fake Good Ollie was seen at first, shutting down the Fake Rockies through the first four innings. Then Fake Bad Ollie made an appearance to give up four runs of his own, including a two-run bomb to Fake Todd Helton. Fake Chris Ianetta untied the game with a solo homer off of Ollie in the bottom of the sixth, and Helton put the final nail in the coffin with his second two-run homer in the eighth.

In real life: Jon Niese could not hold leads of 1-0 and 3-1. The Mets rallied late to tie the game at 5, but Jennry Mejia gave up a leadoff homer in the bottom of the tenth to Chris Iannetta, handing the Rockies a walkoff victory.

pufm_009.jpgGame 9: Rockies 1, Mets 0
Fake John Maine pitched a complete game, scattering eight hits over eight innings. Unfortunately, one of those hits was an RBI single by Fake Troy Tulowitzki in the first, and that was the only run the Fake Rockies would need. Fake Jorge de la Rosa completely baffled the Fake Mets hitters, and they could only manage four hits as they were swept by fake Colorado.

In real life: The Mets salvaged their series in Denver with a 5-0 win over the real, much more hittable Jorge de la Rosa. Mike Pelfrey pitched seven great innings to overcome some weird base running mistakes and his teammates’ continued inability to hit with runners in scoring position.

Parallel Universe Fake Mets record: 2-7

Real Mets record: 3-6

Baseball, Technical Nonsense

From the Scratchbomb Annals of Failure: OSS

Perhaps you’ve heard of No Mas. They’re an awesome apparel/art conglomco that focuses on the dark/weird side of sports. They first caught my eye many years ago, when an acquaintance of mine showed up at a local bar wearing this beauty. I enjoy their products because they clearly love sports, but they lack the unblinking reverence for athletes usually found in sporting media. Their favorite figures are guys like Mike Tyson and Doc Gooden, whose obvious and continued personal failings make them much more compelling than the stainless steel heroism of the Derek Jeters of the world.

Earlier this year, No Mas announced a design-a-t-shirt contest, and I immediately had what I thought was a brilliant idea. Many of No-Mas’s t-shirts play on team logos, such as this one, which combines the Padres’ horrid 1980s uni design with another horrid 80s product, Pablo Escoabar. I went a similar route, and decided to combine the cheesy White Sox logo of the mid-80s with the curious case of Moe Berg.

Moe Berg was a backup catcher with an up-and-down major league career in the 1930s. In an era when most ballplayers were nigh-illiterate farmboys, he was an Ivy League educated gentleman who knew several languages and traveled the world. But he’s still remembered nowadays because at the same time he caught in the major leagues, he also worked as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the precursor of the CIA).

Berg even went on major league barnstorming trips to the Far East with superstars he had no business playing with, like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, as a cover for him taking covert photos and film of the Tokyo cityscape. During World War II, his footage aided in planning Pacific bombing raids. He also parachuted behind enemy lines to aid Nazi resistance groups in Yugoslavia, and traveled Europe to interview physicists and convince them to join the American effort to build the atomic bomb.

That’s a life and half right there. I find his story so fascinating that I used it for the jumping point to a novel that I SWEAR I’m going to finish some time this year (it does not actually involve Moe Berg in any way). I thought he deserved to be immortalized in t-shirt form. And he actually played for the White Sox, which made my idea vaguely appropriate.

I slaved over my design, employing all of my Photoshopping skills, and convinced myself that it HAD to win. Just like I convinced myself for every contest I ever entered as a kid. Unfortunately, I was so convinced of my victory that I never bothered to actually send in my entry. I totally forgot about it until the deadline had long since past, and only remembered when I found the files while scouring through my computer this week.

I present the design to you now, so that it may live in some form. In case you’re wondering, Berg played in an era when most players did not have numbers, so the “34” refers to 1934, the year he took his second trip to Japan for spy photography purposes. My question is, if this was an actual t-shirt, would you buy it? If there’s enough interest, I will look into making this an actual thing you can purchase and wear. Warning: The threshold for “enough interest” is probably “one dude”.

oss_crop.jpg