Ed Romero 1988 Fleer

Sometime in the last two or three months, I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB). By the way, this is a great look at the 75th anniversary patch of Fenway Park  that the Sox wore in 1987:

 

 

 

Even when I was a kid, I knew that not everyone on a baseball team was drafted and brought up through the minor leagues by the team that they now played on. There were agencies to improve teams, like free agent signings and trades.

 

Trades were always the cooler of the two options, any moron could splash a pile of money in front of a guy and say, “Play for us, you disgusting Hessian here’s your filthy lucre.” And nine times out of ten, that player would take the cash. BTW, there is no judgement or shame in the preceding sentences, every single one of us would (and do) the same things every day in our lives.

 

Who doesn’t want to get paid?

 

But trades were a gentlemanly pursuit of excellence, a General Manager needed a bit more deft and cunning to outsmart his cohort. The ability to watch a team other than your own and say, “That chap there looks like he can certainly help our outfit!” and then contact his employer with a proposal to bring him to your team—without sacrificing too much—that takes the steady nerve of riverboat gambler.

 

The ability to really want something, let someone know you really want something and then not give everything you own to have that something—often in a time of extreme need—is a skill that most people don’t possess. If you’ve played cards with me before, you already know that I don’t have it.

 

This is a long road to saying that former Red Sox infielder Ed Romero was one of the first players that I remember seeing in the day’s current set of baseball cards (not this one) pictured for his old team while watching him on TV with his new team. I was well aware that the Red Sox got Don Baylor from the Yankees for Mike Easler in a seldom-seen swap between the two franchises Also add in that it was one-for-one position-for-position trade and this was a landmark deal that weighed heavily for Boston.

 

But Ed Romero? When did we get him? (December 11, 1985) Who did we give up to get him? (Workhorse, but oft maligned, reliever Mark “Big Foot” Clear – I have no idea why they called him that) What is he going to do for us, we already have Marty Barrett and Glen Hoffman plus future shortstop Rey Quinones is rocketing through the minors? Why do we need him? (Because Quinones flopped, Hoffman wasn’t much better when he wasn’t hurt and you need backup infielders because players get tired; though Manager John McNamara might not agree with that last statement)

 

Romero came over to the Sox from the Milwaukee Brewers, the only franchise he had ever known, and was kinda not great for his three-and-a-half years with the team. His totals were .236/.287/.280 with two home runs and two stolen bases (and four caught stealings). For a guy that played 12 years in the bigs (no small feat) but couldn’t really hit (.247/.298/.302) or run, Romero must’ve been a really good glove man.

 

I have no recollection of that. But I mean, he must’ve been. Why would you keep Ed Romero around for more than a decade if he couldn’t do at least one thing well? So let’s assume that he was a versatile (he played every defensive position—including DH!—except pitcher and catcher, according to Wikipedia) glove first ball player.

 

He played on two World Series teams, 1982 with the Brewers (he didn’t play in the Series) and 1986 with the Sox, and lost both of them. I wonder if he thinks about that a lot? I mean it’s cool to say that you were in the World Series, and doubly cool to say that you were in two World Series but the next questions are always: how did your teams do? We lost both. How did you do? I got one at bat in one game and didn’t get a hit.

 

Maybe it’s not something he brings up too often while at dinner parties.

 

The one thing that I remember most about Romero was the Gatorade bucket incident. I didn’t recall all of the particulars, but the Athletic did. Apparently the Sox were playing the Yanks in June 1989 and were getting beat 7-2. All of a sudden things started clicking for the good guys and the score was tied. Romero came to the dish with the winning run on first, facing Dale Mohorcic.

 

The right-handed Mohorcic started the right-handed hitter off with three straight balls when Yankees manager Dallas Green felt like he had seen enough. He summoned another right hander, Scott Nielsen, to try and get the dangerous Romero out. At this point Red Sox Manager Joe Morgan decided it was time to put his genius into action and sent up the left-handed Rich Gedman (who was probably hitting as bad or worse than Romero at the time) to win the ball game!

 

I mean, this is a move straight from Monty Burns. It’s called playing the percentages! It always works—just like telling Daryl Strawberry to hit a homer. Gedman walked, Jody Reed grounded out and the Yankees won after getting a run in the eighth inning.

 

But the big incident was Romero going insane and throwing a Gatorade bucket on the field. He was incensed that Morgan would show him up like that. I remember columnists lit into him and whenever TV stations ran sports bloopers, that was always on one of the reels. 

 

From what I've heard Romero, was a pretty mild-mannered guy, so I wonder what his teammates thought? I know that they called him "Gator" for a bit, which must've made Mike Greenwell mad as that was his weirdo nickname. But I think that they had to have sided with him because that was a bullshit move that Morgan pulled. And I bet Morgan would agree. 

 

Morgan, who was interviewed for the Athletic piece, said that he understood why Romero would react that way but that he (Morgan) “made crazy move (like that) once in a while”, which would’ve have driven today’s baseball fans insane. Morgan said that Romero paid the $50 fine right after the game and they never spoke about the incident again.

 

I recall that Romero was released like a week later, but it was a little longer than that. His employment with the Red Sox ended on August 5, 1989. From there he played with the Braves, the Brewers (again) and the Tigers. Finally retiring in 1992.

 

Romero is a baseball lifer and has been bouncing around various leagues with various jobs, I would assume that he’s retired. But you know who’s not? His son, Eddie. Eddie Romero has been in the Red Sox front office since 2006, currently an executive vice president and assistant general manager.

 

Not a bad deal at all.

The Doom That Went on Forever!

For the most part, super heroes are dumb. Maybe not Bat Man, but in order to move the plot along, super heroes have to do stupid things. It adds to the adventure, it ups the stakes and it forces the bad guy to change his/her devious scheme. I guess there is some sort of correlation between abject stupidity and courageousness. Like the hero is going to save the world so hard, he/she doesn’t care about his/her own life.

That being said, the Champions are filled with some very dumb heroes.

Black Goliath is at the bottom of the Champions Tower where he sees the skies exploding in a Kirby Crackle. Since he’s a black guy first and a brilliant scientist second, writer Bill Mantlo has him exclaim, “Holeee CRUD!” as he stares up at the building. He climbs up the building hoping to save his friends, but he gets sucked into a vortex. He doesn’t meet his teammates, but he happens upon the Stranger who is trying to hold the world together so that the Null-Life Bomb doesn’t explode.

Where are the Champions? In the realm of a blind guy named Kamo Tharn. He tangled with Hercules before and is still pissed at him because Herc, Thor and Thor’s Asgard girlfriend Sif stole his Runestaff. The Runestaff is what the Stranger needs to defuse the Null-Life Bomb. The Champions were sent to this hell scape to get the staff, but guess what? Hercules remembers that it’s back on Earth.

(D’oh!)

Kamo, Kamo, Kamo Chameleon is happy that he doesn’t have to hunt Hercules down and kill him (he was totally about to do that, you guys), so he sends a bunch of monkey men to fight the Scion of Zeus and the rest of the Champions. The battle is a typical super hero battle with mindless drones. It looks like the good guys are going to lose, but then they rally to win. The one cool part of the fight is that a monkey man has Ghost Rider by the waist. Instead of trying to turn around and punch the creature, Ghost Rider tilts his head back and with his flaming skull sets the monkey dude on fire.

I’ve never seen that before.

New best friend, Darkstar, realizes that these monkey men aren’t ever going to stop coming. Every time a Champion kicks their ass, she says 12 new ones pop up. She notices that there’s a sliver of a portal and using her darkfield power opens it up. She hops out, hoping that this is the way home.

Ice Man, aka Bobby Drake, has barely spoken to Darkstar but he LOVES her. He knows in his heart that Darkstar is the girl for him and makes this creepily obvious to everyone at the most inopportune time. BTW, Darkstar has not given him the time of day. Ever. She barely responds to him. Remember how Jessica Lovejoy (played by Meryl Streep!) reacted to Bart when Bart had a crush on her in the Simpsons episode, “Bart’s Girlfriend”? “I think I’m going to stand over there.” That’s how Darkstar treats Bobby. Except worse.

(That's cold, baby)

He’s in the middle of fighting monkey dudes and freaks the fuck out when Darkstar goes into the rift. “Something’s got her – but it keeps her only over Ice Man’s dead body!” He has no clue what he’s doing, but he jumps in right after her. Because he loves her. Or wants to fuck her. Or wants to settle down and have DarkIce babies (which sounds like a beer that came out in the 90s).

Guess where he ends up? Outer space. Like hey, Jupiter is over there and here comes Mars right now! You want to know what there isn’t a lot of in space? Air, yes. Of course. But also, there’s not a lot of water either. So in order for Bobby to survive, he syphons the water of his own body and creates a sphere to protect him. Only now he’s totally dehydrated.

You know what sucks even worse? Darkstar has no idea he’s there. She’s in her own sphere and it’s probably not slowly killing her. Guess what, Ice Man? Women don’t always need a guy’s help. They can do pretty much anything they want by themselves. So you pretty much have killed yourself because you’re a sexist pig who thinks that woman are made to be saved.

Spoiler alert: Ice man wins the gold for doing the dumbest thing in this issue. But coming in second, is Black Goliath who is talking with the Stranger and he says, “Anybody just try smashing this thing?”

He’s talking about the Null-Life Bomb. Yeah, just smash that bomb. That’s how people usually defuse all types of bombs, science guy. Instead of exploding, the NLB has a security system robot that protects it. It beats the crap out of Black Goliath. I guess nobody is smashing anything.

The remaining four Champions are in Kamo’s world looking for a way home. Ghost Rider says to Black Widow what we were all thinking, in regards to his frosty teammate, “But Drake may just have killed himself by following her (Darkstar), a defector! Stupid!”

First off, Ghost Rider sounds like a Donald Trump tweet. If Trump didn’t obviously love Russians. Secondly, Black Widow is also a defector. Remember that adventure that you and your teammates went on a few issues back? It was all about Black Widow and the guy who trained her? That’s not a good look to have, dude.

Anyway, they fight their way through the land but each Champion thinks that his/her teammate died. Turns out they didn’t, it just looked like they did. I didn’t really understand this at all. It was kind of just a hand-wavey thing. Yeah, yeah, they’re fine. Totally fine.

But in a very unhand-wavey thing, the Angel goes shithouse on Kamo Tharn and kicks the ever-loving crap out of him. He grabs him by the throat and just rains blows down upon him. Just like Frank Costanza rained blows down on the mother who wanted the last doll in the store for her daughter that his son George wanted. That vicious beat-down begat Festivus. This beat-down just allowed the Angel to beat the piss out of a blind guy.

While this is going on, it turns out Darkstar was right; that rift led them through space and her and Bobby end up at the feet of the Stranger. Again she totally ignores Ice Man, which makes him whine, “Can hardly … move! Feel like I’ve been through a wringer! Laynia (Darkstar)? Laynia! You’re not even listening I – I came after you – risked my life – and  you act like you don’t even care!!”

A few things: no one asked you to go after her, Bobby. She was perfectly fine without you. Secondly, she has an idea for stopping the Null-Life Bomb, sorry that she hasn’t dropped everything to give you a thank you handie so you can feel better for yourself. Jesus, he’s fucking pathetic.

Darkstar tells the Stranger that if they can find the Runestaff of Kamo Tharn, the Stranger could run his power through her to make the bomb grow larger and larger. Which sounds crazy, but if the bomb grows smaller, it explodes. But if it keeps exponentially growing larger, the bomb will short circuit. Which, okay. Seems like a logical solution.

Do you know where the Runestaff is? Of course, you don’t. It was in the broom closet of a New York City hospital. Of course, it is.

(Right next to the mops!)

That’s where everyone keeps these things. To make an awfully long story short, the Champions win the day.

A couple of things:

• Dave Cockrum does another great job on the cover. Aside from the first page of dialogue, Mantlo did a nice job with the script too. It was a weird issue. I like weird.
• The one thing that people hold against John Byrne is that he appears to not like drawing background at all. I never really understood that charge, because I never noticed it. But holy shit, is it evident here. These guys are fighting on a white background more than half the time. They look good, but it’s not that detailed.
• For a hero whose introduction way back in X-Men 1 was putting snow on a piece of pie and calling it “pie a la mode”, Bobby Drake did an incredibly dumb thing in this issue. If he had died, that would have been fitting. You could even chisel his epitaph on his grave, “He Died, Like He Lived: Stupidly. And He Also Thought Snow Tasted Like Vanilla Ice Cream.”

All-in-all: three out of five vested Angels.

Good Songs XXV

Stop! – Jane’s Addiction

Closer – Nine Inch Nails

Ziggy Stardust – David Bowie

Down With Disease – Phish

South of the Border – The Simpsons

The Summer Wind – Frank Sinatra

The Choice is Yours – Black Sheep

Louder Than A Bomb – Public Enemy

I Stay Away – Alice In Chains

Drive In, Drive Out – Dave Matthews Band

Egg Man – The Beastie Boys

Rocket – Smashing Pumpkin

Never Tear Us Apart – INXS

Deeper Shade of Soul – Urban Dance Squad

The Reflex – Duran Duran

Let’s Stay Together – Al Green

Heart Shaped Box – Nirvana

Crush With Eyeliner – REM

Love Fool – The Cardigans

Crazy – Seal

NOTE: When I typed the words "Dave Matthews Band and Phish" into the Google machine, the second picture came up before the first picture. The first picture, if you don't know, is Dave Matthews and Phish lead singer Tre Anastasio. Infer what you will from that.  

This is part two of a two-cassette tape set that I created in the spring of 1997. You read about the first half in Tuesday’s mammoth entry. I don’t think that this Blog post is going to come anywhere near 3,000 words, so let’s dive right in.

This tape has two bands that I don’t like very much anymore: the Dave Matthews Band and Phish. Add the Grateful Dead from last entry’s mix and you have an unholy trinity of jam bands that love nothing more than to waste their audience’s time. That’s my biggest issue with jam bands as a whole, I don’t like being at a concert and waiting 20 minutes to hear the next song.

And this goes double for bands that I do like, I have a Led Zeppelin live CD and there is a 33-minute version of “Dazed and Confused”. You know how many times I’ve listened to that track? Never. Not once. You know why? Because I have better things to do with my time than listen to Jimmy Page act as if he’s never seen a guitar before. Moby Dick is on that album too. Who wants to listen to a 20-minute drum solo? TWENTY MINUTES of John Bonham banging on the drums. You’re right Slater, you do need strong acid to handle that shit.

Actually my problems aren’t entirely with the bands—I likea bunch of the Dead’s studio stuff*, there are a handful of Phish songs I can tolerate and DMB, ugh—but it’s the fans of these bands who, for the most part, drive me crazy. Dead fans are the most benign of this lot, as they get high, trade tapes and stay smiling in the corner. Though there are some exceptions. When I was in college, nothing was worse than the newly minted Dead fan, the guy (and it usually was a guy) who “just found the Dead”. Ugh. There’s not a more annoying person alive than the person who was recently baptized in lake Jerry. And they’re all so eager to convert you. No, I do not want to hear the Dead live in Munich from 1973, Larry—especially if the band is going to jam on a “Box of Rain” for 37 minutes. 

* Do I think it takes talent to jam on a song for more than 10 minutes? Sure. But lots of things take talent and there are a lot of things that I don’t have the patience to watch. Much less spend $100 for a ticket. The Dead have some good music, some nice harmonies and wrap songs up in less than five minutes on most studio albums. I enjoy that. Music isn’t like baseball, I don’t want it to go on forever. Like David Spade once said, “Play the song like it is on the record. NO TRICKS!” Ugh. I can’t believe I quoted David Spade. See what you’ve done to me, Grateful Dead fans?

On a personal note, I had to live through that very sad day in August of 1995 when Jerry Garcia died. That was a truly troubling day. Not because Garcia died, but because I had to listen to every two-bit Dead fan cry about how “Jerry” and how his death was “really going to affect them”. No. You got over it, just like people got over the death of Kurt Cobain, John Bonham and Shannon Hoon. You just got extra high that night, because “that’s what Jerry would have wanted”. The same Jerry Garcia who died of a drug overdose, yup that’s exactly what he would have wanted.

I was working in the Merrimack College library that summer and my friend came in all dejected. I lived with this guy for a year and he knew about my musical taste and he solemnly said, “Dude. Dude, did you hear? Dude, did you hear about Jerry? What a bad day. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t sit in class.” Ugh. You just started liking this band six months ago, which was a year after your Saigon Kick phase. You’re going to be fine.

The one interesting aspect of the day Jerry Garcia died was that Dead member Bob Weir was at the Hampton (NH) Beach Casino that night performing with his band. Since I lived six miles from the venue at the time, I took a drive to see what the scene was like.

I wasn’t a big fan (obviously) but the scene was sad as hundreds of people from around the area came to sit outside the small theater to pay their respects to the man that they loved so much. That was amazing because Hampton Beach is about as far away from the Dead’s stomping grounds as you could get. But people were sad and didn’t know what else to do with their grief but they collectively thought to go to a place where they knew that there would be a collective of their people. And that was nice. There were tons of television crews outside, interviewing Deadheads and talking to them about Garcia and his impact on their lives. That was therapeutic too, I imagine.

I did try hard to be a jam-band guy when I was in college. I did. I tried my best to grow my hair out*, not care about my appearance, and really get into the music, man. But I couldn’t. I just don’t have the patience. And no band tested my patience more than Phish.

* This was a disaster. When my hair gets long, it gets incredibly bushy. I already have a long head, I don’t also need a house plant sitting on the top of it.

The first few dozen times I heard Phish, they were okay. They had some interesting melodies, clever-ish lyrics and a nice mythology. “Dude. They’re from Vermont and they love their fans because they let them tape their shows for free and someone I know knows someone who knows them and he says they are really good people.” But my college roommate was really into Phish and he got my other roommates really into Phish and he got some of my hallmates really into Phish. After a while, it was wall-to-wall Phish, around the clock. And when they weren’t playing Phish, they were talking about Phish. “Do you know that Phish drummer John Fishman plays the vacuum cleaner on stage?” That makes sense, because they both suck.

After a few months of listening to Phish and the endless supply of bootlegs* that my roommates procured, I couldn’t take it any more. The interesting melodies had become ponderous, plodding guitar solos that had become boring and masturbatory. The clever-ish lyrics had devolved into a bunch of random words thrown on a page and sung quickly to masquerade the fact that they held zero meaning. By 1995, the sight of the Phish logo made me want to gut some neo-hippies.

* I will say this, Phish fans were one of the first to understand the power of the internet. One of my roommates used to logon to Usenet (a prehistoric Reddit) and scour alt.music.phish for people trading tapes. He’d contact them, they send a tape (often for free) and my buddy would have two hours of new music to listen to. That was Jetsons-like in 1995.

This leads me to the question: if I hated a band so much in 1995, why did I constantly add them to a mix tape over and over and over again? I can’t answer that question. Maybe I just liked these particular songs. Maybe on some level I enjoyed being the only anti-Phish outsider* and listening to the songs reminded me of my college friends. I don’t know why I did it then, but listening to Phish now, maybe I took my hate for the band a little too far.

* To be truthful, I did enjoy being the Big Bastard on this one. I remember one night where my frustration got the most of me and ripping into Phish in front of my roommates, deriding the bands’ entire catalog as a “four assholes mindlessly noodling on their instruments”. I had to leave the room because I thought that they were going to hit me. And looking back, they had every right to. I was being the asshole that night, not Tre Anastasio.

I’ve seem to have made my peace with Phish and the Dead in the last few years, but I can’t do it with Dave Matthews. I don’t know whether I just outgrew them or what, but listening to a DMB song now is like fingernails on a chalkboard. Like the Phish phungus, DMB was brought into my life by the same college roommate – he also was fond of Blues Traveller (before they went commercial), Rusted Root (I still can’t believe they nabbed a national commercial), God Street Wine, New Riders of the Purple Sage and another band whom I can see the cover of their CD but can’t remember the name. Each band was terrible, aside from Dave Matthews.

We played “Under the Table and Dreaming” a lot in my room during the spring of 1995 and I liked it. In fact, I liked Dave Matthews quite a bit; eagerly anticipating their follow-up to UtTaD, “Crash”, watching their videos on MTV and seeing them in concert in the fall of 1996 (which was really good—though the next day I saw Pearl Jam in concert and that was wayyyyyy better). Yeah, DMB were a jam band, but they were an interesting jam band – they had a saxophone AND a violin! That made for some totally different music.

I don’t consider myself a hipster—and if you look back at these Good Songs entries, I’m sure you don’t either—but as DMB got more and more popular, I liked them less and less. Which is dumb, I know, but I couldn’t stand to be lumped in with the same people who I saw at the second Dave Matthews Band show I went to. I stood behind one girl who screamed for “Satellite” for the entire show. By the end, she was losing her damn mind pleading and yelling for “Satellite” over and over and over and over again. Side note, the group did not play “Satellite” that night and the wailing banshee went home very sad.

It was at the very moment that I decided, “I don’t want to become part of this” and started to distance myself from the band. I bought the group’s third album and half-heartedly gave it a listen, but I was done. My friend was a super Dave fan at the time and he got a bunch of tickets to a show in Foxboro* which I went to. But I only stayed for the opening acts (Ben Fold Five and Beck) and then I went back to the party bus that he rented to transport us to the gig. I’m a notorious cheapskate, if I paid money to see a movie that turns out to suck, I’ll stick with it, but I didn’t feel bad about leaving that show early on that night.

* The Dave Matthews Band is the first band I’ve ever seen in concert where the shows moved to progressively larger arenas. First one was at the TD Garden, second was at GreatWoods and the last one was at the old Foxboro Stadium.

I am all done with Dave.

The rest of this tape is still really good. Some quick hits:

The Simpsons – they actually didn’t sing “South of the Border”, Gene Merlino did, but I first heard it on the “Kamp Krusty” episode and it blew me away. Maybe it was because that episode was one of my favorite episode endings of all time, “Get ready for two weeks in the happiest place on Earth! TIAJUANA!” and then the drum hits. What a song.

Beastie Boys – this song reminds me of a lip sync my friends did in high school, but aside from the high school nostalgia the song itself is pretty awesome. This whole album (Paul’s Boutique) was the beginning of a long stay at the top for those guys—even though no one knew it at the time.

Duran Duran – “The Reflex” is the best pop song of the 1980s. I believed it when I was in fifth grade and I continue to believe it now. DD may have bottomed out in the 90s (find their album of covers) but they knew what they were doing when they were famous.

Thursdays at 8:00

During the last two Thursdays, something interesting has happened to my television viewing: one of my favorite shows left the air and another one of my favorite shows tardily began its fourth (abbreviated) season. These two shows yin-yanged themselves onto Thursday nights at 8:00 pm on NBC.

I’m talking about “30 Rock”, which is the show that’s leaving the network and “Community” which is returning to the network – albeit on borrowed time.

To say that “Community” had an interesting nine months since a new episode last aired would be disingenuous to the word “interesting”. It’s been chaotic, as the show’s creator and producer Dan Harmon was kicked off his show for being “too difficult” to work with. Two new show runners were brought in and were set up with a writing staff that was once under Harmon.

In addition to the upheaval at the top, there were constant rumors of cancellation, but the prevailing wisdom is that “Community” wasn’t canceled because it was so close to its syndication threshold that it was actually better to have an abbreviated season so that Sony (which owns the show) could sell it off and recoup the first-run losses with second-run money. Also, Chevy Chase (the cast member who may be the most widely-known to the culture at large) has feuded with pretty much everyone on the show and in a fit walked off the show with two episodes left to film. He is not expected back.

During this uneven off-season, the group of people who love “Community” became more vocal and tried to hype the show as much as it could, using social media as a tool. The Twitter hashtag #sixseasonsandamovie trended during various times in the summer. With all of this news, “Community” was technically gone, but never left.  

* A note on the next few paragraphs, a lot of the next few paragraphs came from a few posts that I made on a Red Sox message board. You may think that it’s strange that a board devoted to sports would also have topics about television shows—and you’d be correct—but the Sox didn’t give us much to cheer about last year, so we had to expand our interests. It may be disjointed, but I haven't written long-form in about two years, so give me a break. 

With nine months of inside baseball, I was ready for the new episodes to start off and it did last Thursday. As I said earlier, “Community” holds down the lead-off spot in NBC’s “Must See TV” lineup.

Two things:

1. I think that “Community” is not an 8:00 show. An 8:00 show should be all-encompassing and welcoming. If you miss an episode of an 8:00 show, it shouldn’t be a big deal. “The Cosby Show” and “Friends” were 8:00 shows that worked well for NBC in the past. In spite the ironic title “Community” is exclusionary and much like “Arrested Development” if you miss an episode of “Community” you’re going to miss a bunch of jokes.

2. NBC Thursday night is not really “Must See TV” anymore. In fact, it’s a bit of a comedic graveyard in terms of ratings. It seems that no one wants to sit down and watch great sitcoms any more as “30 Rock”, “Community”, “Parks and Rec” and even “The Office” have seen Nielsen Families ignore them as if they were the new kid’s first day of his senior year a new in high school.

After the episode, this was my initial reaction: I liked the episode, though I didn’t love it. If I were to give it a grade it would be a B. But there did seem to be something off. I don't know how to explain it, so I'll use an analogy. I have kids and when they break something I will glue it back together. They will play with it and will use it like any other toy, but at the same it doesn't quite feel like the same thing. Something has been changed, even though it's been fixed.

Perhaps I'm making too much of this and seeing stuff that isn't there. Maybe if I didn't know the behind-the-scenes crap and wasn’t besieged by “Community” propaganda on an every-day basis, maybe I wouldn't have felt that way, but I do. So even though I went into the episode determined that nothing was broke, something felt a bit off.

The one negative is that there seems to be too much Dean Pelton . I like the character a lot, much the way that I liked Ed Helms' character Andy Bernard from his first couple of seasons on "The Office". But once Helms started getting a ton of camera time, it became too much. I think that there are two things wrong with the character:

1. He's a bit of a one-note character. Like Bernard, Pelton is a broadly stroked character.

2. There are already six main characters, seven if you count Sr. Chang, and a bunch of really good background characters that sometimes move to the foreground. The show is only 22 minutes long, so there is only so much that each character can do. If you add another one then you take away from the core six.

Other than that, I thought it was a good beginning.

The premiere of “Community” has me a bit worried (I guess as worried as I could be about a TV show – first world problems!) about the return of "Arrested Development" to the land of the living. And it's not that I'm worried about the quality of the show, I'm worried about my crazy, high expectations. I still DVR AD and watch as many episodes as much as I can, it's like the early seasons of the Simpsons and Seinfeld, I know every episode front to back. And much like how later seasons of "The Simpsons" (and "Seinfeld" for that matter) fared in comparison to the syndicated version of the show being shown right before the newer episodes, the perceived quality of the show always seemed worse. Whether that is true or not is left to be debated at another time.

The point is this, will "Arrested Development" Season 4 be considered as "good" as seasons 1-3, at least initially? No. People are going to say that it's missing something, much like some of us are doing now. But in reality what the show will miss is the mythology of the first three seasons and the constant syndication of those seasons. In this case familiarity doesn't breed contempt, but love. I think that fourth season of "Community" may go down the same path, albeit without the constant replaying of the shows.

Also what's working against "Community" (and AD for that matter) is months and months of hype of how this is "the best show ever" and how "NBC is stupid to cancel it because it's so awesome". From my own experience there have been a grand total of one time where I have waited for something for a long time and the result lived up to the hype (both in my head and from the pop culture world around me) and that was this past summer with "The Avengers". I'm not saying that "The Avengers" was the greatest movie ever (far from it), but since I bought my first Avengers comic back in 1981, I dreamed of how it would look like on the screen. And it looked almost exactly how imagined it.

Anyway, the point is this, things that are overhyped tend to disappoint and rarely live up to expectations. That doesn't mean that they're bad, it just means that they aren't quite as good as what we thought they would be. Again "Community" is perceived as such in an us-(meaning "intelligent" TV watchers)-vs-them-(slack-jawed CBS watchers)-pop-culture mentality that there is a chance Season 4 will never live up to those incredibly high standards. Plus the unanswered question of "What would Dan Harmon have done differently"?

Which leads to my next point, as far as Harmon leaving, he probably didn’t have a bottomless pit of ideas, but he was fastidious in his attention to detail that it made watching and reading about the show incredibly fun. We've all seen the Beetlejuice thing right? That's some epic-level, OCD, editing right there. It's almost sick (as in mental illness wise) the way that Harmon orchestrated every, single piece of this universe. That's what I'll end up missing (even if I don't know at the time that I'm missing it).

That last question (what would happen to a show if the main voice left) was something that “30 Rock” never had to deal with. Despite being saddled with terrible numbers (but tons of love from the industry and TV critics), NBC stubbornly kept it on its schedule. With the show experiencing a resurgent in writing during its last season, some people felt that it was unceremoniously shown the door.

I think that their anger is misguided because what other network would have the patience to keep this show on the air despite it never being a true hit? This was the best era and NBC was the best network for this show to be on. The Peacock Network has been so bad during the last decade that they kept one of it's only critically acclaimed shows going even though the numbers were god-awful.

What if this show debuted during NBC’s salad days or on another network?

If this was the 80s or 90s, the show would have lasted a month, tops.
If this show was on CBS, the show would have lasted a half-season.
If this show was on HBO, it wouldn't have been half as clever as it is.

NBC did a really good job nurturing this show and giving it a chance (IE not moving it around, I'm pretty sure it was always on Thursday) and gave Tina Fey a lot of latitude in the scripts. If you wanted to watch “30 Rock” you knew where to find it.

As has been said time and again, networks aren’t charities and they don’t keep shows on the air that don’t make money. “30 Rock” brought prestige and was allowed to leave on its own terms and with something left in its tank, which is rare. A show like “The Office” is limping to the finish line, “Friends” was down-right unwatchable in it’s last few years. I enjoyed the Larry David-less seasons of “Seinfeld” but even I admit that it lost some of it’s cynical bite that made it so awesome.

Maybe when networks cancel a show too early, it’s a good thing. It allows us to rage against the machine while also allowing us the ability to use our brains to imagine what the next seasons would be like. TV shows have a shelf life, our imaginations do not.

My Half-Assed, Very Quick 2011 MLB Preview

BTW, I have no idea who the kid pictured is. I did a Google image search for "Yay baseball!" and this is what came up.

Ok gang, Opening Day has come and I’m late delivering my Major League Baseball preview. So let’s get to it, shall we? This is the second time I've done this, click here and here for the 2008 previews and see how awful I was.

Enjoy!

American League East:

1. Boston Red Sox: on paper, they’re the best in the division, best in the league and best in the sport. I don’t think that they’re going to win 100 games--the American League East might be the best division in baseball--but I think that they win between 95 and 99 games.

2. New York Yankees: not as bad as you think that they’re going to be. They’re going to hit like hell and on the third, fourth and fifth days they’re going to need to. The back of their bullpen is absolutely stacked (provided that the Mariano Rivera-bot 3000 doesn’t break down) and their infield could be one of the best in baseball history.

3. Tampa Bay Rays: have the exact opposite problem of the Yankees: their bullpen has the potential to be a fire hazard and their starting rotation is loaded. Evan Longoria is probably going to need some help, but this isn’t a bad hitting team either. Plus they got new astroturf at the Trop. Finally I won’t want to treat myself for depression after watching a game from there. Did you ever see their old turf? It looked like shag carpeting from George and Weezie's rumpus room after their weird British neighbor puked pea soup all over it.

4. Toronto Blue Jays: I don’t know what to make of these guys, they could be a third place (or even second place team) or they could completely suck. Former Sox pitching coach John Farrell is up there and he’s a pretty bright dude, so I’d say it’s closer to the former.

5. Baltimore Orioles: despite Buck Showalter’s headline grabbing stunt of a week ago, I don’t think that the Orioles are going to be that bad. In fact, I think that they’re going to be a real interesting team and one that no one in the East should take lightly.

American League Central:

1. Chicago White Sox: in all actuality, any of the next three teams could win the AL Central and I wouldn’t be surprised. However, I think that the White Sox are going to be the ones that climb out of this scrum due in part to their power. That being said, Paul Konerko is going to be the fantasy guy that you’re going to look at in June and say, “Why the fuck did I draft him?”

2. Detroit Tigers: Miguel Cabrera is a beast and along with Victor Martinez should help the Tigs put up a lot of crooked numbers on the scoreboard. And they’re going to need it, as their pitching is mediocre at best.

3. Minnesota Twins: I put them here because I don’t want to watch the Twins in the post season this year, rolling over for the Yankees. Though I have to admit, I love watching Joe Mauer hit.

4. Kansas City Royals: either next year or in two years, they’re going to be the class of the division. They have six prospects in Baseball America’s Top 40. You have to figure that even with KC’s luck, at least two or three of those guys have to pan out, right?

5. Cleveland Indians: I wonder if Clevelanders get angry that so many sports fans pity them? It used to piss me off when I’d read or hear people from other cities patronize Sox fans and say, “Don’t worry, you’ll win too some day.” Fuck off.

American League West:

1. Oakland Athletics: they have a stellar pitching staff and they brought in a bunch of “professional hitters” like Hideki Matsui to improve an anemic offense and that should be enough to win the American League West.

2. Texas Rangers: last year was a year where just about everything fell in line (including the Mariners telling the Yankees to screw off and dealing Cliff Lee to Texas). No matter how good you are, when you experience a season like that, the next year never follows the same script.

3. Los Angeles Angels: I guess we’ll see how brilliant Mike Scioscia really is, won’t we? I will admit this, he was one of the funnier guest stars on that baseball Simpsons from the early 90s. In fact, most of the Major Leaguers were really funny. According to the writers, only Jose Canseco was an asshole. What a shock—at least he didn’t send his twin brother to the taping.

4. Seattle Mariners: last year I was telling everyone that they were going to the World Series. I was really high on the Mariners and they crashed and burned, hard. This year, around July 31 there’s going to be a fire sale in Seattle. You can get yourself a really nice Chone Figgins for cheap. Maybe even a Felix Hernandez (I just hope the M’s dick over the Yankees on this one again).

National League East:

1. Atlanta Braves: a few years ago I bet three of my friends $20 that Tim Hudson would win 20 games with Atlanta (he had just been traded from Oakland). He did not do it, but I think that he will this year. The Braves also have some nice young talent that’s about ready to contribute. Could be a fun year.

2. Philadelphia Phillies: I think that the Phils will make the post season and they’re going to be really awesome with their four starters. I just think that they have a lot of injuries to overcome in the first half of the season that may make a division crown a tough road. According to Jayson Stark, they do have the easiest first half of any team in the majors. So basically, I have no idea.

3. Florida Marlins: they’re in third place every, single year aren’t they? They’re just good enough to take seriously, but not that good to keep your attention. Next year they’re going to have a new stadium and will be known as the Miami Marlins. Also, orange will be one of their primary team colors which has a bunch of people who love uniforms up in arms. Frankly, the fact that I know what angers uniform aficionados this says more about me than it does about them.

4. Washington Nationals: they won’t be this bad for much longer. Bryce Harper is coming soon and Stephen Strasburg is beginning a rehab from Tommy John surgery. Even with all of that, I wonder why Jayson Werth signed with them? Oh yeah, he likes money.

5. New York Mets: this team is such a mess, it’s not even fun to rag on them. Good luck Mets fans, take heart in the fact that at least you’re not Yankee fans. However, if you’re a Jets AND a Mets fan, go crap in the woods.

National League Central:

1. Milwaukee Brewers: if the Brewers don’t win this year, then it’s going to be a long time before anything good happens in Suds City. They got Zack Greinke and Shaun Marcum, so their rotation should be good enough. They also have Ryan Braun and a pre-walk-year Prince Fielder. If they miss again, cheer up. Milwaukeeans in only a little more than a year, I will come to your city. Woo-ha!

2. Cincinnati Reds: the Reds have young pitching talent. The Reds’ manager is Dusty Baker. Ask a Cubs fan if this ends well. Aside from the young pitching, they do have more than a few guys that can hit bombs. In any event, this is a fun team and I’d love to see them make the post season. I’m just not sure if it will happen.

3. St. Louis Cardinals: I hate Tony LaRusa, but I’ve always liked the Cardinals. They have really cool fans (I’ve been to St. Louis before and they’ve come up here when they played the Sox and they couldn’t have been nicer) and they have a transcendent player in Albert Pujols. With that being said, I would be lying if I said I didn’t chuckle when Adam Wainwright went down for the year. If you’re such a genius, LaRusa, manage around that.

4. Chicago Cubs: I don’t know what to tell you about this team. It seems like a club that’s loaded with crappy, over priced veterans that can’t be moved and they don’t have a lot of good, young guys coming down the pike. I would pencil them in for 78 wins exactly. And I’ll be seeing you next year too, Chicagoans. Yes, I am going to Chicago and Milwaukee with my buddies next year in part two of our “Seeing all the Stadia Tour”. Check out part I right here.

5. Pittsburgh Pirates: they could be the Royals of the National League, though they may have to wait a year or two extra before they get good. The last time the Pirates were over .500, I was starting college. In 1992. That is so depressing on a number of levels—both for me and Pirates fans.

6. Houston Astros: this could be the worst team in the Major Leagues. I watched the Red Sox kick the crap out of them on Wednesday night in the last Spring Training game and there was absolutely nothing there. Just a rotten product. And owner Drayton MacLane may sell the team, so anything decent is going to be sold off for pennies on the dollar come July and August. That should put some fannies in the seats.

National League West:

1. San Francisco Giants: last year’s rookie catcher’s name was Buster Posey. This year’s rookie first baseman’s name is Brandon Belt. Grantland Rice himself couldn't have written better names. I think that the Giants are a hair better than the Rockies this year, but that’s only because I am really biased against the Rockies for some strange reason.

2. Colorado Rockies: they have a good staff, they have decent hitting but like I just said, I don’t like the Rockies. I have no idea why I don’t like them, I think it’s because I don’t like Denver. Which is really strange because I’ve never been there before. Maybe it’s because of my hatred of Robin Williams who starred in “Mork and Mindy” which was set in ... Boulder, CO. Same fucking thing. Nanu, Nanu.

3. Los Angeles Dodgers: these guys are almost as messy as the Mets. The good news for them is that they have the Padres in their division and they still have some pretty good players. Unfortunately, they don’t have as many good players as the Rockies or the Giants. And clean-shaven Don Mattingly is managing them. I'm not sure what makes Mattingly (or anyone) think the he can manage without his mustache.

4. San Diego Padres: yes, I realize that the Pads were about three days away from beating the eventual World Champions and taking the NL West crown last year, but let’s be honest: that was done with smoke and mirrors. They got rid of their best player (you DID stay classy, San Diego!) and Will Venable led the team with 13 home runs. That’s not a lot. At least you San Diegans had the San Diego State University Aztecs hoop team this year, they were really exciting.

5. Arizona Diamondbacks: it's been almost 24 hours and I finally realized that I forgot to add these guys to the preview. That's how bad it is for the Diamondbacks. They do have the All-Star Game this year, so that should be pretty good. Other than that, it's snoozeville in Phoenix.

I almost forgot to do this:

ALDS
Boston over Chicago
Oakland over New York

ALCS
Boston over Oakland

NLDS
Atlanta over Milwaukee
Philadelphia over San Francisco

NLCS
Philadelphia over Atlanta

World Series
Boston over Philadelphia

20. South Park

The way that I was introduced to “South Park” was such a unique experience that there is no way that I will ever be able to duplicate it again. When “South Park” was launched on August 22, 1997 it had been about two weeks since I had moved away from parents' house. My two college friends and I had rented a third-floor, three bed room apartment in Winthrop, MA. This place was pretty damn nice. It was a large apartment on short dollars that put subsequent places I lived in to shame.

Aside from the large rooms, one of the great things about this place was its proximity to Boston and despite my meager earnings as a fund accountant (and later a reporter for a mid-sized city weekly) we’d all venture into Boston every Friday and Saturday night determined to quench our thirsts. When we got back from the latest Boston bar adventure, we’d end up staring at the TV hoping for nudity or sports scores. One of the first nights we came back from Boston, we got something a bit more interesting.

In the mid- to late-90s, Comedy Central was still trying to find itself. It would run hours and hours of crappy 80s comedy flicks, warmed-over sitcoms and a bunch of dated stand up "specials". Every once in awhile it would debut a new series, but it usually died on the vine never lasting more than a season or two. In therms of standout performers, the biggest star that Comedy Central had at the time was Craig Kilborn who hosted “The Daily Show” and that’s because most people knew him as the sarcastic 2 am SportsCenter anchor who was among the first to escape Bristol, Connecticut. Other than that, it was a wasteland.

With shows like "Beavis and Butthead", "The State" or "The Half-Hour Comedy Hour", MTV was a better place for laughs despite the channel being known for music.

We weren’t expecting much that late Saturday night when my buddies and I were drunkenly channel surfing and wound up on some crudely animated kids cursing a blue streak, threatening to kill each other and witnessing a gigantic alien anal probe sticking out of the fat, obnoxious kid’s ass. It was a jarring enough image that we dropped the clicker and watched the rest of the episode. And then another, and another, and another, and another—Comedy Central was running a marathon that night and we were completely blown away.

We were shocked at how unlikeable the fat kid was and how much he hated the Jews (is his name Cartman or Carmen?) and we were taken aback at how the kid in the orange sweat shirt died in every single episode. I was really surprised at how bad the animation was, but I was more surprised at how I couldn’t take my eyes off the show. And there was a reason for that. Even though I was a devoted “Simpsons” disciple and often told people who ripped on the show for being “just a cartoon”that it wasn’t the medium, it was the message that made that show great, I didn’t truly realize until watching “South Park” exactly what that meant. Because “The Simpsons” has very good animation and terrific writing it wasn't until that I saw show with great writing and shoddy animation was it proved that ultimately it doesn’t matter how well the animation was done, it really was about the writing.

And “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone could really write a great story.

My friends and I became obsessed with the show at this point. And it wasn't just us. It seemed that overnight everyone knew who Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick were. If someone talked about Scuzzlebutt you knew that he understood that this was a monster who lived in the woods and had Patrick Duffy for a leg. When someone referenced Mr. Hanky you knew that that person was talking about a literal piece of shit that only appeared around Christmas. And if one of your buddies “pulled a Stan” when talking to a girl, you knew that he was so nervous that he threw up (whether literally or figuratively) all over her.

Parker and Stone were clever enough to add these really surreal moments and characters to some great story lines. Not only did it put the two creators on the map, but it also made Comedy Central a top-tiered channel enabling it to shed it’s reputation as a place where bad movies go to be rerun into infinity. Before the Jon Stewart-hosted “Daily Show”, this was the only show that kept people coming back to the channel week after week.

My roommates and I had completely different schedules but there was only one thing that all of us cleared the decks for: Wednesday nights at 10:00 pm. We were on our couch watching “South Park” and laughing until our sides hurt. And while the community aspect is something that I won’t experience again, what I find most fascinating is how this show sneaked up on us. The internet was still in its infancy in 1997, it wasn’t the sprawling source of information that it is today and even if it was, I wasn’t connected to it. I wasn’t living in a vacuum as I used to read at least two newspapers a day and was able to keep up with popular culture through television and radio.

But “South Park” came out of nowhere. If I hadn’t been drinking that night, I’m not sure when I would have run into this show. I assume that it would be at least by October of that year, because Comedy Central marketed the hell out of it, but for the first three or four weeks, it was nice to seemingly be in on the cutting edge of something that you knew was going to be huge. And it was.* Now, that doesn't happen. Thanks to the internet, most people know about TV shows and movies weeks if not months before they show up.

* My wife, who was going to school at American University when "South Park" started airing, told me that her entire dorm was as obsessed about the show as my friends and I were. She said that they would use their dial-up modems to download episodes, wait the hour or two and then watch them. Because of the tiny bandwidth, it was often tough to discern exactly what was happening, but she said that they enjoyed the dialogue the most. Again, the lesson here is: message NOT medium.

Suddenly everyone was wearing a “South Park” t-shirt, the mall was overstuffed with “South Park” tchotchkes*, they were on the cover of “Rolling Stone” (when that meant something) and everyone was imitating Cartmen’s voice or quoting the show (“Oh my God! You killed Kenny!” or “Screw you guys, I’m going home.” or “Sweeeeeet”). By March 1998 it was starting to get to be a bit much and the show was growing stale.

* I had Kyle, Cartman and Kenny key chains sitting on my computer, a post card of bit character Pip on my bulletin board at work and a “South Park” sticker on my wall. So, I was definitely a part of this merchandising madness and I am convinced my boss thought that I was a 12-year-old.

The one shining light was on April 1, “South Park” was finally going to reveal who Cartman’s father was. A lot of people that I knew were terribly excited about this and couldn't wait for the show to air. When April 1 came, the show wasn’t about Cartman’s father rather it was a joke episode centered around the South Park boys’ favorite cartoon those farting Canadians “Terrence and Phillip”. After the first five minutes of this episode passed, my roommates and I kept waiting for the big reveal. After the first commercial break came back with more Terrence and Phillip, we knew that the big reveal wasn’t going to happen.

This angered a lot of fans, so much so that Comedy Central sent out a press release the following day promising that the conclusion to the first part of “Cartman’s Mom is a Dirty Slut” (which aired on February 25) was going to air on April 22. It sucked, but three weeks was better than never so again, the clock ticked down to finding out who Cartman’s father was. The episode never lived up to the hype (these things never do) and it turns out the Cartman’s mother was a hermaphrodite who impregnated herself.

This letdown, combined with the Terrance and Phillip debacle*, soured me on “South Park”. I would catch it now and again, but I kept waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me—once a show loses a viewer’s trust, it’s hard to get it back. To me Stone and Parker were just a bit too clever for themselves and overplayed their hand. I was pretty done with the show.

* After a few years have passed, I can see now that the Terrance and Phillip April Fool’s Day show was actually brilliant. Parker and Stone were riding high on the show’s popularity and as we would see in subsequent seasons, they rip on everything. Fooling your own fans is tough to do, but they did it. And more importantly, they did it really well. In my circle of friends, finding out who Cartman’s father was was as big of a deal as finding out who killed JR Ewing or what was in Al Capone’s vault (how’s that for timely references). When the T&P episode was aired it was like a big fuck you to the fans, but in a way that borrowed from the classic William Shatner SNL skit where he told a roomful of Star Trek fans, “You need to get a life. TV isn't that important.” This message is never truly understood at the time and only after you separate from your obsession do you truly get the meaning.

During the next few years, I stayed away from “South Park” and looked down my nose at people who still watched it. I just found the entire show to be a copy of “The Simpsons”, which looking back wasn’t true. Especially since “South Park” devoted an entire show to the criticism and made the point that “The Simpsons” have been on for 20 years and have over 400 episodes and that there are only so many stories that can be told.

A few years into my self-imposed “South Park” exile, a friend of mine was talking about the show and asked if still watched it. I said no and gave my myriad pompous reasons to which he countered that I should give it another shot, he said it was still really funny. That night I sat down and watched an episode and he was right, it really was funny.

I became a big “South Park” fan again, only this time is different because it seems like there is a much smaller group of fans. Because of that the newer episodes are a bit different than the older ones. There is more a topic du jour where Parker and Stone stand on their cartoon pulpit and lob bombs at that week’s hypocrites. The show takes less than a week to write and animate, so turn-around time on various topics are insanely quick.

While that week's targets are easy and really unnecessary, for the most part Parker pens episodes that make solid points. When he does do one of these episodes, the episode tends to devolve from a well-thought out argument into one where a universally detestable (like Paris Hilton or Snooki from "Jersey Shore") gets their comeuppance. And while that's nice (and cathartic) to see, you almost want to tell him that he's better than that and there's a better way of satirizing the rich and stupid.

And the duo are equal opportunity offenders. You would expect a couple of Colorado-born, young-ish, pothead cartoonists and social commentators to be lean to the left side of the political spectrum. But they aren’t, I believe that Parker (the main writer) is a Libertarian, so his ideology is with neither the Republicans nor the Democrats. And this is a good thing.

While “South Park’s” message and satire is a bit heavy-handed and a little too black-and-white at times, it’s still a thought-provoking show. It forces the watcher to be literate on not only pop culture but on the world around them. And that’s a good thing.