Let's Go Card-nals!

What a game! What a team! Go Cards!

Yes, for those of you new to following asisaid (now simulcasting on Facebook), I usually have to make my once-a-year sporting comments during the post season (2004 [1 | 2 | 3 | 4], 2005)… and here it is again. I am admittedly spoiled by the luxury that the Cardinals are usually in the post season, of course. Cardinal Nation is excited right now, folks. We've got out boys back in the World Series for the second time in two years and with an amazing first game! 7-2, for those who somehow missed it.

Anthony Reyes really pitched an amazing game in his perfectly ironed cap and long socks. How appropriate: the underdog team (we're always the underdogs, aren't we?) wins the first game of the series we weren't suppose to make it to using a “sacrificial lamb” pitcher. Wooohoo! I say it is time for the Cards to regain the title of World Series champs. La Russa has managed to keep the team's momentum going at an amazing rate for years now, but has not yet returned to the Cards the title we last held in 1982. Let's Go Cardinals!

I might not be the typical sports following type guy, but how can I not love baseball with a team like the Cardinals?

Go. Cards. Go.

That's all that needs to be said right now. It's 1-1 in the 8th inning.

Update (10:20 CDT): Make that 3-1 in the 9th. Slam-a-lama-ding-dong. GO CARDS!

Update (10:37 CDT): Please strike out the last Met. Please?

TQ: Pop Culture

In this week's TQ from Mark, we consider important issues of pop culture:

1. 42 or 2001

42, of course. It is the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.

2. 33, 32 or 23

No idea.

3. ET or AI

Is that maybe “Alf”? If so, then Alf. If not, I'm not sure.

4. Yacko, Wakko, and Dot or Bugs, Daffy and Porky

Bugs, Daffy and Porky.

5. T1, T2, or T3

I do not believe I've ever seen an entire Terminator (though I've seen parts of at least T1 and T2).

6. Captain Picard, Captain Malcolm Reynolds, or Commander Jeffrey Sinclair

Who else but Captain Picard? Who else can “make it so”?

7. TRL or Headbangers Ball

No idea.

8. Beavis and Butthead or Itchy and Scratchy

Itchy and Scratchy.

9. Harry or Frodo

Probably Harry, although I'm just getting to know Frodo.

Extra credit:

vi, emacs or pico

Pico. Vi is evil; and, I want a text editor, not an operating system, so Emacs is out.

Note: The questions on this page written by Mark are governed by the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.5 license. I believe my responses are allowed under fair use and therefore are not licensed under the Creative Commons license (I don't want people messing with adapting my personal opinions, thank you very much).

TQ: TV

I see I have some new blog comments — sorry I've not read them yet and I think it is time for me to hit the sack. For now, the latest questions from Mark.

1. What did you watch on TV when you were a kid?
Not much. Some cartoons, the cheesy old Batman reruns from the 60's, that kind of thing. But really not that much. I didn't “get into TV” until I became a Trekkie. Reruns of Star Trek episodes beckoned.

2. What do you still enjoy watching from your youth?
Very little, up until I got into Star Trek when I was eleven or so.

3. What new tv programs have you seen that you enjoy?
I can't think of any. The last new show I really enjoyed was Debbie Travis's Facelift — but that was a few years ago. I'm not sure if it is still on.

(As a side note, lest someone think I've been making grave punctuation errors, I do know that putting an apostrophe and an “s” after an “s,” as in “Debbie Travis's Facelift” was incorrect in the past, however in the latest editions of the Modern Language Association's style guides, they declared this formerly taboo style of punctuation as the endorsed way to denote a possessive [“genative case”] in English — even for words ending in “s.”)

4. Which show(s) can you not stand?
Most. I can't stand ones with absolute moral garbage; I also have a low tolerance for reality TV, poorly thought out news “magazines,” overly dramatized storylines, bad music, B-quality science fiction…

I'm picky, what can I say?

Note: The questions on this page written by Mark are governed by the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.5 license. I believe my responses are allowed under fair use and therefore are not licensed under the Creative Commons license (I don't want people messing with adapting my personal opinions, thank you very much).

Balloon Glow

Every year, St. Louis's Forest Park is host to the “Great Forest Park Balloon Race,” the largest (by attendance) hot air balloon race in the U.S. Often times on the Saturday of the race, the balloons will drift all the way to St. Charles, and I'll have the pleasure of observing them float by. This year, however, I saw them up close. The night before the race, there is a “Balloon Glow,” where the balloons are inflated and illuminated (by their burners) for the public's enjoyment. It was extremely crowded, but well worth attending.

I took 600 or so pictures this evening, so I need to sort through them, but once I do, I'll post some of my favorites (including the ever popular Energizer Bunny balloon, which really stole the show).

My Fall Lineup

Well, since the rest of the Cranium Leakers are posting their TV schedules for the new fall season, I feel obliged to do the same. Here's my schedule. I know it may come across as a bit confusing at first with all of the options, but just try to muddle through it once or twice and then maybe it'll make more sense.

Sunday
None.

Monday
None.

Tuesday
None.

Wednesday
None.

Thursday
None.

Friday
None.

Saturday
None.

Phew. So you made it through that, huh? Yes, I know its a tough schedule, but somebody's got to do it!

Seriously, the schedule isn't completely true — I do watch some TV. I might watch a movie (often courtesy of Charter's Video On Demand service) or an old sitcom rerun. I just don't find any draw to watch major network TV on a regular basis. The last first run TV series I watched was, I suppose, NBC's Revelations that ran for six weeks in April and May of 2005. I was also into Debbie Travis's Facelift on HGTV for a bit, although my schedule usually meant I missed it and I got out of the habit of watching it.

This is true for several reasons. First, I tend to prefer more of what I'd call “classic broadcasting humor” in sitcoms; the comedy that made shows like I Love Lucy or the Dick Van Dyke Show simply doesn't seem to exist anymore. I'd say that breed of sitcom probably died with the end of the Cosby Show (at least as far as I've been able to tell). Second, for the most part, I prefer comedy over drama in a TV show. In my opinion, drama usually is more appealing in movie form. I was (am) a Trekkie, but nothing after Deep Space Nine was compelling enough to get me to watch on a regular basis.

On top of all of this, there are usually other things I'd rather do, especially as opposed to watching shows live (I watch basically everything in recorded form).

Chihuly at the Missouri Botanical Gardens

Today marked the second time I've had the pleasure of seeing an exhibit featuring the glasswork and paintings of Dale Chihuly, the Seattle-based glass artist. This time was a bit unique: the setting was at the Missouri Botanical Gardens, the beautiful park of exotic (and not so exotic) gardens founded by Henry Shaw over a century ago. Chihuly's works graced not only the main building, but also the gardens themselves, including the reflecting ponds. I did not pay the price of admission to go into the Climatron and see the main exhibit, although I plan to go back to see that.

I've posted some photos of the day in my photo gallery.

Day After Tomorrow

Thanks to an airing on one of the Cinemax channels that I was able to nab via DVR a few weeks ago, I watched the Day After Tomorrow tonight. Given the critical thumbs down it seemed to receive, I did not have very high expectation for it, but it was able to exceed those expectations.

Note: this post is a spoiler on a number of plot elements.

This movie, in my opinion, shares a lot with the Da Vinci Code. Yes, more than that I happen to disagree with the world view displayed in each. More importantly, both dabble on the line between truth and fiction, and as such, probably mislead a lot of people unable to deal with such blurrings. In both cases, the fiction/fact blending is what makes the storyline compelling, so I'm not saying that such a mix is a bad thing, only that people need to be cautious.

Having watched the latest iteration of War of the Worlds a short while back, I couldn't help but see much of the plot as the same. An invasion from the skies, something covering most surfaces, cities utterly destroyed across the globe — in short, simply good summer mega budget movie fodder. The difference between the two movies is that far more people, people I'd not question the mental state of, believe in the eventual reality of Day After than of War of the Worlds. Aliens with tripods probably won't invade, but perhaps the Atlantic conveyer really will shut down.

If we get past that and put the two films on the same level, science fiction, then I would say that Day After Tomorrow offers a much more compelling version of the cataclysmic than does War of the Worlds. The acting was good and the characters were well written, likable people. While Tom Cruise never managed to make me care about his character's fate, Dennis Quiad did so early on in Day After. Both are men that are absorbed in their own projects to the detriment of their children, but Quaid's Jack Hall comes off as misguided, not just a jerk.

No, I don't think tomorrow we will face “super-cool” winds that will instantly freeze everything. But just because I don't expect something to happen doesn't mean it can't make for good fiction. We just have to remember it is fiction.

Other Notes of Biases: One other thing should be said. The film is politically tilted about as far as it could be without donkey logos flashing on the screen. The well meaning, if not terribly fast to respond, president looks very much like Al Gore, suggesting all kinds of possibilities. (“This is where Gore should be,” perhaps?) Likewise, the evil vice president, who later sees the light, has a Cheney-esque air to him, though not as much as the president matches Gore. More importantly to the story, the global cooling seems to stop for the most part precisely at the U.S. border, allowing Mexico to be the “good guy” that allows all of the “illegals” to come from the U.S. fleeing the storm. At the end of the movie, when the vice president has become president, he spells this out, noting the “hospitality” of the countries that we previously looked down on as “third world.” Finally, the last remarks from the space station note how clean the earth looks now that the Northern Hemisphere is shut down, but that seems unrealistic both because pollution wouldn't disappear that fast, and (here's what Hollywood doesn't want you to know) the worst pollution comes from newly industrialized countries such as the ones hosting the refugees.

Ding Dong the Wiz was Here...

Last Friday, I made the annual pilgrimage to St. Louis's municipal outdoor theater, the Muny, to see the Wizard of Oz. I wasn't quite sure what to expect in a musical drawing off of the 1939 MGM film, but I did expect to see something fairly good. The movie, I think most people will agree, belongs to that mystical canon known as The Classics ™. When filmography is looked back on much as literature is now, Oz will surely hold a spot in the realm of film-ature.

To me, that made it harder to imagine as a live performance work. While many musicals go the opposite direction from play to film, or films move from dramas to live musicals, it seems a bit less common for a musical film to move to the stage. As far as I can tell, while other stage adaptations of the story have existed, the MGM film has claim to a different sound track, one that this play used. And, for that matter, used very well.

The main characters in this production all seemed to have had spots on the Muny roster from last year (and, in particular, from the two plays I saw: Jesus Christ Superstar and Mame). While they were up against difficult acts from the original, they did a great job with all of the songs, keeping the flavor close to the movie without seeming like they were merely providing stale imitations.

The sets were well thought out, as always, and I was pleased to see that they managed one of the most memorable parts (at least for me): Miss Gulch/the Wicked Witch of the West flies at the beginning while riding on her bicycle. There were some changes to get the work on stage, for example, pyrotechnics were the preferred means of dramatic entrances or exits, and I would say those alterations were really great. Because they weren't used entirely consistently, the fireworks' shooting up managed to add surprise to several scenes.

Probably the one who really stole the show was none other than Toto, Dorothy's dog. This was one well trained pooch, barking at just the right times, tolerating lots of commotion and just acting rather adorable (and I'm not even fond of dogs, typically). He got a very healthy applause at the end.

As a whole, I'd say the Wizard was not as good as the Music Man or Jesus Christ Superstar at the Muny, but it was well worth seeing, and, if it were still possible, I would say you should go see it.

Rating: ***1/2

Just a Teensy Weensy Request

Okay, so I have a request. During the summer months, every four years, we have the Summer Olympic Games. During the summer, I have my normal load of business to take care of, but no school work, so I have more time to watch… only, there aren't that many things I enjoy watching during the Summer Olympics.

Similarly, during the winter months, every four years, we have the Winter Olympic Games. During the winter, I have my normal load of business to take care of, plus deadlines on papers, reading assignments, etc. I have very little time to watch… only, there are many things I enjoy watching during the Winter Olympics.

Would it be that much to ask the IOC to switch to featuring the Winter Games during the Summer and the Summer Games during the winter in the future?

As an aside: wouldn't you rather see all that snow when you're hot in the summer than in the middle of winter when you're cold anyway?