Alspach.org Blog

Wedding Favor-It

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:13:00 +0000

When I reflect on our wedding planning process, the single biggest source of disappointment is the treatment we have received from an unfortunate number of potential wedding vendors. This is an industry that is all-to-frequently characterized by high levels of dysfunction. For example

Vendors who believe that just because the word 'wedding' is attached to something they are justified in charging ridiculous prices for stuff. We looked at one venue that wanted to charge us $10 per chair to set up chairs for our ceremony -- chairs they already own, mind you. For 120 people, that's $1,200. Let's say it took two people an hour to set up 120 chairs and you paid them $10 each. Let's also say it took the same two people another hour to break them down. That works out to $40.
Vendors who are clearly working off a rehearsed script that defines their interactions, prices and level of service. These guys treat the wedding experience like buying a box of Fruit Loops at Stop and Shop.
Vendors who just plain suffer from severe personality disorders.

I've run successful service businesses. You need to offer people a level of service commensurate with the price you're charging and the importance of the experience to them. If I've just spent three hours in your store picking out wedding invitations and am about to drop close to a thousand dollars on them, don't tell me your bathroom is for employees only and send me across the street in the rain to a (locked) public restroom.

So that's a long-winded way of setting up how pleasantly surprised I was to finally encounter -- well over a year into our planning process -- a vendor who actually went above and beyond the call of duty. The set up: we were planning on addressing our invitation envelopes using my office's super beefy solid ink printer. This thing has handled worse, but for some reason decided it didn't like our envelopes. Jam city. Invitations had to go out Monday, it's Saturday and we're SOL. Dialing for dollars commences.

Fortunately, we found Paula. Paula is the proprietor of the Favor-It Shop in East Brunswick, NJ. She sells and prints invitations and other stationary, as well as favors and gift items. She had just gotten back from her son's wedding the prior night, but when we called told us to come right over. She sat down with us right away and started picking out fonts and importing our list. We do a test run on her printer: the envelope feeds perfectly but the printer is randomly dropping ink (smudging) and we can't figure out why. Burns through two sets of ink cartridges. Still no dice. Unboxes the back up printer and burns through another set of cartridges and print heads. Finally success. Envelopes printed and ready by 10 o'clock the next morning.

Again, Paula didn't sell us these invitations (I wish we had known about her a few weeks ago!). She'd never seen us before. She was trying to land our business, which in this case amounted to a relatively modest sum of money. But she spent well over three hours on a Saturday afternoon just trying to win that business, to say nothing of the additional time of actually doing the printing. She could not possibly have been kinder, more pleasant or more fun to be around the entire time. For the first time in the entire wedding planning process, we finally felt as if our big day was as important to one of our vendors as it is to us.

What Honey now wants for her birthday

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:44:00 +0000

Sculpture Dog Cake Incredible - The best free videos are right here

It is a pleasure to do business with me

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:18:00 +0000

An open letter to anyone who I have been, or in the future will be, a potential customer of:

Dear [Sales Associate / Shopkeeper / Service Provider / Human/Animal Healthcare Specialist]:

Congratulations! My current [presence in your establishment / telephone call / perusing of your website] indicates that I am strongly inclined to favor you with the privilege of having me as a customer. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but -- if we can just make it through the next few minutes -- I think you will find that it is a pleasure to do business with me.

First, a word on just how fortunate you are. With almost no direct or immediate effort on your part, you have stumbled into a situation in which you are dangerously close to making a sale. Completely unbeknownst to you, I have arrived at the conclusion that it is in my best interests to exchange a portion of my hard-earned income for a good or service that you provide. Consider that against all the other possible uses of said funds -- savings, investment, other purchases, etc... -- I have decided that I want to use them on what you are selling: even in the midst of these challenging economic times. Moreover, my independent analysis has suggested that yours is the right enterprise from which to obtain my desired purchase, as considered against every other similar business in the entire world.

At the risk of hyperbole, even this may be understating the extent of your good fortune. You see, of all the people in the world who could have shown up on your doorstep quite out of the blue with not only the means but also the inclination to purchase your product -- again, if you will indulge me -- you've really hit the jackpot, because I mean business. I am a thoughtful, pleasant, polite individual who is interested in consummating a fair and mutually-beneficial business transaction. Because I am deeply respectful of your time and effort, I am also interested in consummating it with the minimum amount of delay and fuss. In addition to this, I am highly susceptible to rational argument, meaning that if you can succinctly and logically convince me of the value of what you are selling, you will sell it forthwith.

More than anything else, I truly believe that you and I are in this together. As such, I'm going to go the extra mile and offer you a few pieces of concrete guidance on what to do to win my business:

The Greeting -- "Hello" is an excellent choice. "Good morning, "Good afternoon" and "Good evening" are also fantastic. Adding "sir" to the end of one of these is beyond great: it's a little stodgy and old-fashioned, to be sure, but it lets me know right off the bat that you are as respectful of me as I am of you, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. "What!?!?" is to be avoided: it creates the impression that my desire to give you sums of money is something of an imposition, and the last thing I would want to do is impose. Ditto on willfully ignoring my presence while conducting a personal cellphone call.
Listen -- Now that we've started a conversation, please listen carefully. I'm going to tell you exactly what my needs are and how I think you might be able to fulfill them. I'm not an expert in your particular field, so I may not be able to express myself as clearly as you or I would like. I am reliant on you to interpret what I need and translate what I say into a plan of action.
Focus -- In situations where people have approached me in a state of inferior knowledge or confusion (as I am approaching you now), I often find it helpful to give them my undivided attention, lest any key or subtle detail of what they're saying slip through the cracks. If a source of distraction (e.g. a telephone call, another customer, a colleague, etc...) should manifest itself once we have entered into our interaction, may I suggest the phrase "I'm sorry, I was just helping this gentleman. I'll be with you as soon as I'm done." It has the effect of both eliminating the distraction and demonstrating to me (and the third party) that you are a polite, serious, focused individual who is proactive in attending to the needs of his customers.
Special note to cashiers -- Kindly familiarize yourself with the operating procedures of your point-of-sale terminal, basic arithmetic and the United States monetary system. It makes me very uncomfortable when I receive only a bewildered response when I hand you $21.10 to pay for an item costing $16.06. Oh, and on the subject of change: first hand me the coins, then the bills, then the receipt. This way, I can use gravity to my advantage and place the receipt in the bag, the bills in my wallet and the coins in my pocket without having to reshuffle.
Special note to medical practitioners -- From time to time, sick people may call your office requesting appointments. By 'sick people', I mean individuals seeking medical care in response to an unexpected deviation from their baseline state of health. At one time, it was common for medical professionals to examine, diagnose and provide care to sick people, often in a timely manner. Many ordinarily healthy individuals still operate under the assumption that, on those rare occasions when they do experience sudden (though not life threatening) illness, they will receive an appointment sometime within a fortnight of their reporting the condition. Please be prepared to explain to such individuals that your scheduling practices no longer anticipate the emergence of sick people and to provide suggestions as to what they should do under these circumstances (e.g. go to the emergency room, apply leaches, quietly suffer/die, etc...). Alternatively, you might consider reorganizing your schedule in response to the emergence of a new, high-priority item, as is routinely done in other industries.
If you screw up -- I probably shouldn't tell you this, but at the end of the day, I'm going to forgive an almost unlimited number of errors provided i) they appear accidental and non-systemic; ii) you seem generally contrite; and iii) you go out of your way to make right.

There it is. Not an exhaustive list, but I think it lays the groundwork to get our relationship off on the right foot. Earlier, I said I was highly susceptible to rational argumentation, but the truth is I'm also highly susceptible to being treated well. If you're capable of at least appearing to acknowledge the fact that I exist and want to do business with you, and even showing a little appreciation for it, I'm sure we're going to get along just swimmingly.

Now, let's get down to brass tacks...

Best plot summary ever

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:47:00 +0000

From the New York Times review of the new animated Star Wars film

...the plot concerns the efforts of Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano, his neophyte sidekick, to secure a fragile alliance by retrieving Jabba the Hutt’s baby son from the double-crossing clutches of Count Dooku, blah, blah, blah. Exploding robots!

Open letter to Macys

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:50:00 +0000

Dear Macys,

Just wanted to let you know that I entered your Freehold, NJ store on Saturday with every intention of purchasing a bottle of cologne. Sadly, I was left with little alternative but to beat a hasty retreat from the Men's Fragrances section when approximately two-dozen sales people stepped into my path and assaulted my senses with a barrage of testers.

Spiritual Advisers

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:58:00 +0000

So Obama's spiritual adviser du jour has gone and said some new inflammatory things, this time about Senator Clinton.

Am I the only one who is less put off by the comments and more put off by the fact that modern presidential candidates have something called "spiritual advisers"? Sounds like something a king would have.

It makes me think of the pharoh's magicians from Exodus who turn their staffs into snakes, only to have them be devoured by Aaron's staff. Those guys were spiritual advisors. Plus they could do magic. All these current guys can do is blast the world's easiest target.

Things there should be words for...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:50:00 +0000

When using a public restroom, the series of sounds made to alert one's fellow bathroom-goers to the fact that your stall is occupied.

Low Definition

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 11:54:00 +0000

When you're watching SportsCenter and a highlight comes on from a game that was covered only by standard definition cameras, don't you feel a little bit bad for the athlete who did the highlight-worthy thing? The whole thing seems low-rent.

It's 3AM...

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:21:00 +0000

CBS radio personality Dave Ross pointed out something this morning that I'm glad I'm not the only one to have noticed with regard to Hillary Clinton's "It's 3AM..." television spot. This is the one that's supposed to convince us that she's tough and experienced and best equipped to deal with foreign policy issues:

Like me, Ross noticed that the telephone rings a total of six times in the course of the ad. I know it's 3AM and all, but I'd like to see my president answer the red phone before it goes to voicemail.

Form factor

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:37:00 +0000

I was looking at the newest crop of PDAs and smartphones over the weekend. The trend here is towards these flip or slide phones where the screen (usually a touch screen) rotates when you open the phone to reveal a full, (comparatively) large QWERTY keyboard. Examples include the AT&T Tilt, Verizon Wireless XV6800 and Samsung SCH-i760. I played around with a couple of these at the happiest place on earth (aka Best Buy) and came to the conclusion that I'm not a fan of this form factor.

The concept of a bigger keyboard seems like it would be a good innovation in an abstract sense, but when I atually tried to use it, the weaknesses immediately became clear. First of all, the size of the keys doesn't work for me. If you use, e.g., a Blackberry or Motorola Q (which, for my money, has the best keyboard of any smartphone), you develop the technique of thumb typing using the very tips of your fingers (or even the nails). This works for me, and I can do it with reasonable speed and accuracy.

My expectation with the new breed of devices was that you could adopt the technique of typing using the pads of your thumbs, rather than the tips. I could see where this would lead to greater speed and a little more flexibility with being able to hit a key off center and still getting the right character. But it turned out that with my average-sized fingers, the keys were still too small to do this with any degree of accuracy.

As a result, I had to switch back to the the tips-of-the-thumbs method, but this doesn't really work either. Because the devices are so wide, I found myself having to shift the way I was holding them in my hands in order to comfortably reach all the keys with my thumbs. This is in contrast with the Blackberry or Q, where I can just cradle the device in my hands and hit all the keys comfortably without having to adjust my grip.

Also -- and this is coming from an admitted Microsoft homer -- I feel like we should be able to do better than Windows Mobile 6 on these devices. In the post-iPhone world, I don't think it's too much to ask that these phones offer an attractive, clean, simple UI; a desktop-like browser experience and touch screen functionality that can be easily used without a stylus. I don't really get the cartoonish appearance of the UI on a business-oriented operating system (especially when the UI appearance in recent MS products like Vista is so attractive), and Mobile Internet Explorer isn't in the same sport (let alone the same ballpark) as the iPhone's browser.

Sensitive Man

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:26:00 +0000

Today's Bushism of the Day:

"I'm oftentimes asked, What difference does it make to America if people are dying of malaria in a place like Ghana? It means a lot. It means a lot morally, it means a lot from a—it's in our national interest."—Accra, Ghana, Feb. 20, 2008

People I am glad I don't work with

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:51:00 +0000

From MSNBC's article about yesterday's Blackberry outage. I'm removing the jackass who said its name and company so as not to publicize them.

"I'm mad — it's enough already," said a frustrated [name redacted], who said he gets 1,000 e-mails a day as director of field marketing for [company name redacted]. and can't afford the downtime.
[Name redacted], who worked most of Monday on a laptop while traveling, plans to ask his company to buy him a backup smart phone from a rival like Palm Inc., which makes the Treo, in case BlackBerry service goes on the fritz again.
"I don't know what happened, I don't care what happened. They need to save their excuses for someone who cares," [he] said.

Oooooh, pardon me, your majesty: Do you want your new Treo in hot pink or purple, you fancy man you?

What a total prima dona. I hope for his sake that this wee girl sells a lot of business, because if he worked for me I'd have a mind to fire his ass for being a jerk in the press and bringing bad publicity down on my company.

The service was down for three hours. It shouldn't happen, it's inconvenient, but give me a break. Take a deep breath, pop into a Starbucks, turn on your laptop and check your email while sucking down a venti white hot chocolate, you stupid drama queen!

Tell us what you really think

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 02:36:00 +0000

From Josh Levin's review of Meet the Spartans:

This was the worst movie I've ever seen, so bad that I hesitate to label it a "movie" and thus reflect shame upon the entire medium of film. Friedberg and Seltzer [the directors] do not practice the same craft as P.T. Anderson, David Cronenberg, Michael Bay, Kevin Costner, the Zucker Brothers, the Wayans Brothers, Uwe Boll, any dad who takes shaky home movies on a camping trip, or a bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it. They are not filmmakers. They are evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization's decline under the weight of too many pop culture references.

Make with the cash... then we'll talk

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:32:00 +0000

So here's another one of the innumerable things that piss me off about the remaining candidates for President: if you go to the official candidate website for a number of the remaining candidates, the section of the site requesting donations is more prominently featured than the sections showing, you know, where they actually stand on the issues. Here's a rundown:

John McCain: going to johnmccain.com lands you on a page featuing a large black and white photo of McCain with a prominent red button that says "Donate Today." Below this graphic (which takes up about 2/3 of the page) is a small hyperlink that says "Click here to continue to JohnMcCain.com," where you can actually see what he thinks about stuff.
Mitt Romney: This is the one that pisses me off the most. Mittromney.com takes you to a splash page. The left side of the page features a video on Romney's economic stimulus package. The right side of the page features a photo of Romney and his wife with another big red "Contribute" button. Down in the bottom right corner is a a gray button (about 1/3 the size of the "Contribute" one) that says "Skip to Site" -- as if the donation page was the main attraction and you're out of line for skipping over it.
Mike Huckabee: Mercifully, navigating to Mullah Huckabee's site takes you directly to the main content page, where a prominent link to "Issues" appears in the top navigation banner. There's a link to contribute in this same banner, as well as one in a little "Help Mike Today" panel. This strikes me as a reasonable way to handle this issue. Too bad he's a theocratic, squirrel eating nutcase.
Hillary Clinton: This one is very borderline for me. On the plus side, there's no splash page and an "Issues" link is featured in the navigation banner. At the same time, there's that tacky red "Contribute" button again in the main header section, right below the featured headline (today's headline: "Hillary Wins Florida!", which, in my opinion, is disingenuous given that there were no delegates at stake and the state was essentially boycotted by the Democratic party and the other candidates, but I digress..). Generally speaking, I find the design of Hillary's site to be the most attractive of all the candidates. It's very clean and Web 2.0.
Barrack Obama: This is the strangest of all. You go to a splash page, which asks you to register your email address so as to "join the movement." There's a link to go to the main site without joining, and that's where you get the standard "Issues" link and "Donate" button in the top banner.

What's interesting about the sites that give you a splash page is that they use a cookie to disable it on future visits, which strikes me as the exact opposite of what the rational thing to do would be. If it's the first time I'm visiting your site, presumably I'm not going to give you any money (or join your movement) until I've seen what you think about the issues... so send me right to where I can get at that information. Conversely, if I'm a return visitor, it's more likely that I'm already familiar with what you think and (since I'm coming back) it's also more likely that I'm sympathetic to your candidacy, which makes me more likely to join up or donate -- so give me the splash screen on my return visit.

Less is more

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:33:00 +0000

As a sometimes digital filmmaker, I try to learn a little something from every film, TV show, Internet feature or commercial I watch. One such lesson is that less is almost always more. Here are two very different examples.

Example #1:

I finally got a chance to see No Country for Old Men this week. Putting aside my usual issues with the Coen Brothers' dramatic films (aggressive naturalism was once again out in force) and my praise for the performances (Javier Bardem in the scariest SOB alive), this has to be one of the most effective horror films I've ever seen. Of course, it's not primarily intended to be a horror film, but it builds suspense and tension so perfectly that I don't know if I've ever been more disconcerted while watching a movie.

It's all about threatening violence. To be sure, it's a violent movie -- it's tough to watch -- but, particularly early on, all of the scenes that depict actual violence are pretty quick and straightforward. It's the scenes where Bardem never actually does anything -- the scenes where he just talks, watches or listens -- that create the sense of dread. Roger Ebert's review has a good discussion of the coin flip scene, which is probably the best example of this. This scene should be taught in film school: the dialog and editing is so perfect. You're on the edge of your seat the whole time, expecting the other shoe to drop... and then, it never does.

The use of silence is also brilliant. There are numerous long shots of deserts, highways and urban settings where nothing is said and no music plays. Similarly, many of the dialog scenes include long pauses as the characters (and the audience) contemplate what's going to happen next.

In many ways, it's the anti-Hollywood blockbuster: nothing whiz bang, no quick edits, no special effects. Things are just allowed to unfold, very deliberately, and the audience is left to fill in the blanks as they do.

Example #2:

Thanks to John Swansburg at Slate for extolling the virtues of my current favorite series of TV adds: the Bud Light "Dude" spots. I love these commercials! The concept is so simple and the execution is perfect. Every choice in these commercials is right: the piano music, the documentary-style cinematography, the performance of the "dude" Dude. And the best part is there's only one line of dialog: but it's used to convey so many different meanings (Swansburg counts 6 distinct connotations of "dude" in the first spot).

My improv inspiration Brandon Beilis talks a lot about "finding the game" of a particular improv exercise. By this, he doesn't mean "game" in the sense of the premise of the exercise (e.g. "this is the one where we speak only in questions"). He's talking about the unique hook or catch to the particular exercise you're now performing that makes it interesting or compelling: it could be the relationship between the characters, it could be a particular line or catchphrase, it could be the central conflict of the scene. In improv, Brandon stresses the importance of identifying the game early on in the scene and then ruthlessly focusing later choices in the scene around playing to it and strengthening it.

The game of these Bud Light spots is so simple and the attention to it is so singlemindedly focused. What an object lesson for aspiring directors.

The most wonderful time of the year

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:43:00 +0000

While spending Sunday afternoon exploring the stacks at the local Borders whilst sipping on caramel mochas, I came across the first sure-fire sign of spring. Others had insisted it had not yet arrived, but I slipped over to the periodicals and had a look, perhaps inspired by an unrealistic and naive optimism.

But there it was... The first fantasy baseball guide of the season.

And so begins another year of the obsessive nerdery, frustration, exhilaration and clever team names that is OBFBL. Well, I supposed by some measure my obsessive nerdery began last week when I created an official statistics website for the league.

In fact, it's probably more accurate to say that my obsessive nerdery is without beginning or end, but what the hell: Kurt says I'm the "the coolest guy I know" because of it.

Pitchers and catchers report in 24 days.

Mike Huckabee actually said this

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:05:00 +0000

WARNING: This is a serious post.

In setting up this blog, I made the choice to keep the content on the lighter side: silly observations, sports, my adventures in the world of improv/film/theater, etc... I've intentionally avoided posting on politics and philosophy, despite having strong opinions in these areas. I now feel compelled to make an exception to this principle in response to the following comments made by Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee in a recent speech in Michigan:

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the Living God. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

If this seems surprising or unlikely to you, here's the video:

Please understand what this man is saying, especially if you, like many voters, believe the country is headed in the wrong direction and increasingly lacks a moral center or code. Understand it most especially if you are sympathetic to the idea that Christianity is right and this country would be a better place if more people adhered to its teachings.

He isn't just saying that he doesn't like the way things are going. He isn't just saying that Christianity is good. He isn't just saying that Christianity has something to offer our culture. He isn't just saying that Americans would do well to embrace or "return to" traditional Christian values and ethics.

He is saying that your Constitutionally-protected right to freedom of religion should be repealed and that the government should legally require you and every other citizen to adhere to certain principles or practices of the Christian religion.

There is a name for a political system that forces its citizens to adhere to a particular religious doctrine: it's called a theocracy. Just think about that for a minute: you and I and every other American now live in a country where a major political candidate just publicly and explicitly advocated the establishment of a theocracy: not in the Middle East, not in the Third World, but here in America. Ask yourself if that's something you ever thought you would see in your lifetime.

I acknowledge that there are a lot of people in this country who think Huckabee probably has the right idea: they were instrumental in electing our current President (twice!). I'm not interested in talking to those people. If you agree that this country would be a better place under a fundamentalist religious dictatorship, please do the following for me: on Election Day, don't vote. Instead, have the courage to demonstrate the strength of your beliefs by staying at home and praying for your candidate to win. If you're really serious about what you believe, you should be honest enough to acknowledge the outcome of the election is in God's hands anyway and that He is much more qualified to decide who should be President than you are.

If, on the other hand, you believe that individuals should be free to make their own decisions about religion according to the dictates of their own conscience -- even if you have personally made the decision to embrace Christianity or any other particular doctrine -- I urge you to go back and read or watch Huckabee's comments again and again until you fully grasp the implications of what he's saying. Then, decide if you're comfortable with the idea of supporting a candidate (or political party or faction thereof) whose platform includes the concept of forcing every man, woman and child in this country to adhere to the same religious beliefs -- even if they are beliefs you happen to personally agree with.

Thanks to NoodleFood for bringing these comments to my attention.

The last zoo post... I swear

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:40:00 +0000

Yes, I know I've been posting a lot on matters related to zoos lately, but some of this stuff is just too good.

So I happened to make reference to Jack Hanna in an email this morning and went to Wikipedia to get the correct spelling of his name. There, I found this nugget of information:

Though unable to secure zoning as a zoo for his father's farm, the two [Hanna and his wife] opened a pet shop and petting zoo. In 1973, a three-year old boy was mauled by a lion at Hanna's farm and lost his arm. Hanna settled the subsequent lawsuit out of court, shut down the petting zoo, and moved his family to Florida.

Despite my total lack of experience in caring for exotic animals, I'm thinking of changing careers and becoming a zoological management consultant. I'm full of such good ideas that apparently haven't occurred to these people. Lions -- probably not the ideal animal for a petting zoo.

The Mitchell Report: American Gladiators edition

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 03:27:00 +0000

Every once in a while, Slate gets it right:

When the commissioner of television asked me to investigate the alleged illegal use of anabolic steroids in American Gladiators, I did not take the assignment lightly. If America can be said to have a national sport, it is this: jousting on platforms with oversized Q-tips, dodging tennis balls fired from a cannon, and scuttling like spiders across a Velcro ceiling. The men and women who call themselves gladiators are heroes to every child who dreams of one day wearing a codpiece on television.

Sadly, my investigation concluded that the veined, grotesque physiques of these mystical warriors were built by needles and pills instead of hard work and warm milk. Most of the illegal substances were procured from Laser, a former gladiator who currently lives upstairs from a Rite-Aid. I conducted four interviews with Laser, during which he was warned that failure to tell the truth could result in jail time, fines, and confiscation of his Atlasphere...

Tiger postscript

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:40:00 +0000

The truth finally comes out:

Zoo officials say the tiger likely climbed out of an empty moat that separated the public from the animal's enclosure, which had a 12 1/2-foot wall, making it 4 feet shorter than the recommended minimum height for U.S. zoos.

4 feet shorter than the recommended 16 1/2-foot height, huh? That's 25% too short. That's not what I call a little bit too short. That's a fairly significant deficiency. 25%... wow. That's like seeing a 6-foot tall man and estimating that his height is 4' 6".

Tigers and doubt

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 21:58:00 +0000

If I may wax philosophical for a moment:

There are certain subjects that are not appropriate objects of doubt. For example, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to doubt one's own existence: if you don't exists, what's doing the doubting?

If I may wax philosophical about large jungle cats for a moment:

Here's a quote from MSNBC's article about the recent tiger escape/attack at the San Francisco Zoo:

Experts doubt tiger could have leapt

One zoo official insisted the tiger did not get out through an open door and must have climbed or leaped out. But Jack Hanna, former director of the Columbus Zoo, said such a leap would be an unbelievable feat and “virtually impossible.”
Instead, he speculated that visitors could have been fooling around and might have taunted the animal and perhaps even helped it get out by, say, putting a board in the moat.

Ron Magill, a spokesman at the Miami Metro Zoo, said it was unlikely a zoo tiger could make such a leap, even with a running start.

“Captive tigers aren’t nearly in the kind of shape that wild tigers have to be in to survive,” he said. He said taunting can definitely make an animal more aggressive, but “whether it makes it more likely to get out of an exhibit is purely speculative.”

See, if your zoo finishes building its tiger enclosure and you take a look at it and there's doubt around the issue of whether or not it will, in fact, adequately contain the tiger, you know what: go back and redesign the tiger enclosure. Not an appropriate subject for doubt, zookeepers.

Early Christmas Gifts

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:27:00 +0000

This is why my friend Joe is cool:

It really ties the room together...

The Mitchell Retort

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 21:58:00 +0000

Disorganized reactions to a first skimming of the Mitchell Report:

It's short on new, revelatory information. I'd be a embarrassed to have turned up so little we didn't already know after 20 months worth of work and $20 million.
Roger Clemens has apparently been a bawdy little monkey. ESPN.com is reporting that there are over 9 pages of material specifically relating to him and 82 references to him by name.
Human growth hormone appears to have performed as advertised for Mo Vaughn.
As Rotoworld notes, HGH apparently does not help you throw to first base.
The willful turning a blind eye in the face of overwhelming and obvious steroid use by players on the part of ownership and management is really reprehensible. Giant's GM Brian Sabean deserves particular dishonorable mention in this regard. See the section on Barry Bonds starting on page 121 of the report.
Hey baseball teams, here's a suggestion -- when someone applies for a job with your organization as an athletic trainer or wishes to use your facilities while working with one of your players in the capacity of an athletic trainer, how about verifying that he is, in fact, a qualified athletic trainer and not a seedy gym rat who struggled to make the same middle school baseball team as your star player.
With all the Mets of the early 90s on steroids, how come they sucked so bad?
Players named in the report involved in trades or signing contracts in the last two weeks: Miguel Tejada (traded from Baltimore to Houston), Jose Guillen (signed with Kansas City), Andy Pettitte (signed with Yankees), Paul Lo Duca (signed with Washington), Eric Gagne (signed with Brewers). Nook Logan was also non-tendered by Washington on Wednesday.

Thanks to Mike Stein for those last two points.

Here are two marginally more organized thoughts:

1) Having reviewed the report, I think it was improper for Mitchell to have included player names, given the nature and quantity of evidence included and the level of cooperation he received from the MLBPA and its members. To be clear, I don't think it's improper or unfair towards the players who were named: they made their beds and now they need to lie in them. Mostly, I think it's unfair to the public by virtue of the impression that it creates.

The MLBPA clearly decided that its members were not going to cooperate with the investigation and, for the most part, they didn't. This means the only players who were implicated in the report were those who could be fingered by sources outside of the MLBPA that Mitchell et al were able to get in touch with. On any realistic reckoning, this surely represents only a minority of players who used performance-enhancing drugs. In the interest of justice and perspective, I think this fact needs to be made abundantly clear, because if you don't do so, it contributes to...

2) The report succeeding in doing a pretty clever job of what I'm sure MLB would like very much for it to do: laying the groundwork for moving past the issue. Less than half of the 88 players mentioned in the report are still in the majors, and all of the specific incidents described took place 2 or more years ago. It's easy for baseball to spin this in such a way as to suggest that the problem isn't really an ongoing one (or has at least been greatly diminished).

But if you read between the lines, you get a sense of the culture of indifference (if not tacit support) that pervades baseball when it comes to performance-enhancing substances. There are so many stories of fellow players, clubhouse employees, training staff and management choosing to ignore evidence of the use of banned substances (the nonsense at the Giants being the most clear example). That just doesn't happen unless their use is simultaneously widespread, widely accepted and deeply entrenched. You're not going to convince me that in a few short years, that type of culture has been totally turned around, especially when the current drug of choice, HGH, can't be detected by available testing methods.

MLB Cookbook

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:53:00 +0000

In what is sure to be Bud Selig's finest moment as Commissioner, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association are proud to announce the release of Don Zimmer's Guide to Healthy Eating: A Baseball Cookbook.

Selig proudly announced that all 32 teams contributed recipes for the book, but admitted that only about 8 recipes had any realistic chance of being made coming out of Spring Training.

"We share our revenue, and, now, we share our recipes," Selig said. "Revenues and recipes: everyone wins. This will put fans back in the seats around their kitchen tables and allow small market clubs to regularly compete with the big boys, at least gastronomically speaking."

MLB also took the opportunity to announce that Rachel Ray will be the new spokesperson for baseball, following the departure of equally obvious choice, Dane Cook. Ray said she was excited about the opportunity.

"MLB and EVOO: I live for this!" she added.

A selection of the recipes found in the 162-page book follows:

Appetizers:
Blum-in Onion (Astros)
McCann-ed Tomato Soup with Chippered Hampton and Crab (Braves)
Casey Blaked Goat Cheese Dip with Carmona-lized Onions and Figs (Indians)
Split Pea-vy Soup (Padres)

Main Course:
Chicken Catch-a-Torre (Dodgers)
Baked Zito with Dur-ham and sausage in a creamy, clear sauce (Giants)
Spaghetti Colonese (Angels)
Slowey Cooked Chicken with Silva-red Almonds (Twins)
French Bread Piazza (submitted by the A's, but nobody wants to claim it anymore)
Cedar Plank Salomon Torres over Turnbowtie Pasta (Brewers)
Eggplant Rolen-tini (Cardinals)
Chicken/Beef Ojedas (Diamondbacks)
Spotted Dickey (Mariners)
Seared Hermidatlantic Marlin with Byung-Hyun Kim Chee (Marlins)
Pork Lowe Maine (Mets) (caution: small morsels may present choking hazard!)
Beef Kouzmanoff (Padres)
Riccota-stuffed Cattalan-oni with Saltalamacchia and Pepper crust (Rangers)
Chopped Matsui (Yankees)
Pasta Prima Rivera (Yankees)
Rocky Mountain Oysters in Holliday-aise Sauce (Rockies)
Duckworth a l'Orange and Sweet-ney Corn Pozole (Royals)

Sides:
Brocail-i and Cheese (Astros)
Carl Craw-fish Etouffee (Rays)

Desserts:
Rum Rai-Zaun Pie (Blue Jays)
Lemon Harang Pie (Reds)
Felix Pie (Cubs)
Assortment of Cream Huffs (Orioles)
Chocolate Lowell-ipops with Cinnamon Crisps (Red Sox)
Pudge Fudge with G-Inge-r-swirled Ice Cream (Tigers)
Chocolate Chip Mientkiewicz Ice Cream (Yankees)

Beverages:
Wily Mo Pena Colada (Nationals)
Dye-t Koner-coke (White Sox)
Mountain Dewitt (Orioles)
Sunkist Pete Orr-ange (Braves)

We also do breakfast!
Green Eggs and Hamels (Phillies)
Jason Bay-gel and Cream Cheese (Pirates)
Hash brown Po-theriots (Cubs)

Don Zimmer's Guide to Healthy Eating: A Baseball Cookbook is available wherever books are sold and features a forward by Sidney Ponson.

-- Thanks to OBFBL members Paul Cardillo, Mike Stein and Bill Barker.

I Topped This!

noreply@blogger.com (Brian) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 17:51:00 +0000

Over the summer, my improv group friends and I made some videos for the Heinz Top This commercial challenge and then completely failed to hear anything about them again. (I happened to think our videos were pretty darn funny, but whatever).

Today in the mail, I received a plain brown package from "MyHeinz.com". Inside was a postcard saying:

Your debut as a director in the Heinz "Top This" Challenge helped to make our commercial campaign such a huge hit that audiences everywhere are demanding more!

They go on to talk about their new contest starting December 14th where they're offering another $57,000 prize.

But also inside the box was this little item:

I think that's pretty rad.