Life in the Philadelphia region (and beyond) from the ever-mobile desk of a Pennsylvania ex-pat living in South Jersey. Politics, sports, restaurants, food and drink reviews, family updates, considerations on celebrity, lots of photos and much more updated darn near daily.
Yesterday was a day where nothing went the way it was planned to go, but the result was still a surprisingly pleasant day in the end.
I was running a bit later than I wanted to be to get John and Emma picked up and over to John's game, but just as it was time to get moving to the fields, the game was canceled due to rain. We were able to have a leisurely morning and not race around like crazy people. We also avoided having to play and watch baseball in the rain! We headed home ahead of the forecast nor'easter and decided to do some long-delayed chores around the house.
Alas, I had not remembered to pick up John's bookbag the night before (why is that my job?) so we haded over to the Duff's to retrieve it. What I had expected to be a 15 minute trip there and back (I had told Emma we were not staying) turned into an impromptu Flyers Eliminate the Pens and The Phillies Really Suck party as Emma and John got to catch up on the goings on back in Mount Laurel, we cheered on the Flyers to victory, met a new friend and generally had a good time.
I meant to do a load of laundry when we got back, but it just seemed like a far better idea to watch some Don Draper and catch up with some friends on Facebook. Thanks to those who introduced me to Mad Men, I am now out of clean socks.
No baseball was played and not a bit of housework got done, but it was a really great Sunday. I hope everyone else enjoyed the rainy day as much as we all did!
Last night the Prince of Darkness and his minions smashed the forces of All That Is Good and Holy and took the national championship for NCAA Men's Division I Basketball. There was a score, but the score was not really indicative of how much The Prince's (John Calipari) forces dominated the boys from Kansas. This was as thorough a destruction as I have seen of one team in a championship game and despite a late attempt by Kansas to make things look respectable, the game was really never in doubt.
This was the predicted outcome. The gifted recruiter Coach Cal would finally get his national championship ring and his players would disperse to the winds to prepare for the NBA draft, possibly never having seen a UK classroom this semester. Bill Self's KU squad, already a loser to Kentucky back in November didn't have the firepower then and it didn't last night. Kentucky may not either next year, as they are set to lose freshmen superstars Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist for certain and probably also Marquis Teague.
But Kentucky will reload with new talent, the recruiting of top prospects fueled by Coach Cal's first ring and the likelihood that the NCAA is still a few years away from catching up to him at Kentucky. I don't really have a problem with the players to spend a year 'at school' and then head to the NBA draft. For me, an educated, suburban, white guy to tell these kids who generally have so little academic preparation for college that they need a college degree to be successful while the NBA beckons with guaranteed millions is just stupid.
However, I do think that this is just another example of how college sports are nothing like what we pretend them to be. There is very little honorable or noble about universities making millions off the labor of athletes who will never graduate. Similarly, the athletes participating in this sham are little more than mercenaries, serving their term of enlistment for the bonus at the end of the line.
And it's not going to change. The NCAA tournament TV contract is an $11 BILLION deal. Anyone who has been to a Final Four has seen the obscene amount of money that gets thrown around in bars, restaurants and clubs wherever the games land each year. Then there is the merchandise. People who can't find Kentucky on a map are bedecked in school color, wearing foam fingers and painting their faces. It's a virtual orgy of consumerism around a few games played by kids, who for the most part are not even able to drink yet.
It's a giant mess and it isn't going to get better. I've always been a huge fan of March Madness, but this year may have been the beginning of the end for my enjoyment. The Madness isn't in Lehigh beating Duke (ouch that hurt) or in Butler making it all the way to the final game. It's in the masses believing that this is really amateur athletics and that the experience is somehow important to what colleges and universities are supposed to be about - namely education.
I will admit that I am a NASCAR fan. It's more casual these days than it was in the late '90s and early 2000s. Back then, I had a Dale Jarrett '88' sticker on my red Ford F-150 pickup and a list of radio stations that carried the race in my toolbox for the Sundays I could not watch live.
These days I watch the big races, especially the night races and the local races at Dover and Pocono. And I try not to miss Daytona. The first race I ever watched was CBS Sports first flag-to-flag coverage of a NASCAR event, the 1979 Daytona 500. I was in my grandfather's living room in Brookhaven, snow piling up outside with not much else on TV. We watched the rednecks driving around the giant oval in Florida and as the race ended, the two leaders crashed out and got into a fistfight! All their friends got into it with them! All on national TV!
It would be a few more years before I watched regularly again, but I have had some pretty good memories of watching the Daytona 500. My favorite was in 1993, when NASCAR legend Ned Jarrett, then a broadcaster, got to call his son Dale Jarrett home to the checkered flag. My heart was in my throat and I wasn't even a father yet!
In 1996, I visited Daytona and I was blown away by the sheer vastness of the engineering marvel the place really is. The three story high, steeply banked turns with hundreds of thousands of seats around them were pretty exciting even without 40 some cars flying into the turns at 200 miles an hour.
So I was pretty bummed when, with me sick and immobile on the couch, weather delayed the race until Monday. Then it was delayed again until night time and I was pretty happy I would get to watch. So we were going to get the first-ever Monday Night Daytona 500. All that was weird enough. Then the race started.
And it was a pretty normal race for a while. Big wreck on lap 2 took out Danica and some fan favorites. Pit stops, commercials, cars running real close to each other in big packs, more commercials. I was fading in and out of sleep.
And then all of a sudden there was a GIANT FIREBALL on the screen. One of the safety trucks seemed to have exploded. How is that possible?
What happened was that some idiot put a bunch of FUEL TRUCKS towing JET ENGINES on the track at the same time as drivers going 200 miles an hour. All this to blow debris off the track. Umm guys? Have you not heard of vacuums? Wasn't there anything more dangerous to clean the track with? Maybe something plutonium-powered?
Jesus Christ, who thought of this jerry-rig? Take a military surplus jet engine and tow it behind a truck filled with JET FUEL??? 'Hey Jethro, run on down to the army-navy store and grab us some jet engines so we can get the track cleaned off in a hurry. An' get some a' that duck tape so we can get the engine really tight on the truck!'
Anyway, I went to bed as they were trying to put the fire out, but I woke up to the coverage on every new outlet this morning. Apparently it was a pretty good race aside from the giant fire and no one was hurt. It will be a memorable race, but not one of the top 10 Daytona moments in my book.
There was really very little about the Super Bowl this year that intrigued me. I likened it to a cage match between Idi Amin and Hitler. Two thoroughly unlikeable teams in a matchup where, by rule, someone MUST win is not what I am generally looking for in a championship. Put the game in a craphole town like Indianapolis and you've got the worst possible confluence of events. They should have just canceled the thing.
Sadly, the game was played despite my misgivings.
After the initial excitement of Tom Brady brain farting his way into a safety, I was pretty much bored out of my mind. I caught myself checking out ESPN's counter programming of 'The World's Strongest Man,' where giant freaks of nature pulled trucks with their teeth. Despite New York trying to give New England every chance to win, Tom Brady threw behind open receivers all night and Rob 'Jesus' Gronkowski could not haul in the desperation heave as time expired.
Thus, Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning have been guaranteed enshrinement in the ever-more-mediocre Football Hall of Fame.
I was hopeful that the commercials would at least be a respite from the bad matchup. While there were a few bight spots, I was left thinking that this was the weakest set of Super Bowl Commercials in the modern era of commercialdom. While I think that the animal commercial era has had it heyday and is in decline, I did I enjoy the Doritos 'You Didn't See Nuthin' spot. I thought the Seinfeld/Leno spot for Acura was very witty and well-done, but was surprised to see it twice,
Some of the big ads fell flat for me. I felt like the Budweiser Prohibition ads were just 30 second versions of 'Boardwalk Empire' with no guns or nudity. The Honda commercial with Matthew Broderick re-living his Ferris Bueller role was too long and really did nothing for me as a fan of the movie.
Halftime show? Even if you believe Madonna wasn't lip-synching that performance, what is this? 1987? I loved the Material Girl as much as any red-blooded american teen in the 1980s, but who's next? Rick Astley? The lame additions of current 'stars' did nothing to add energy ot the show, but DID add some controversy.
I did enjoy the company as an impromptu scheduling change left me available to hang out with my brother and his buddies. The debate over Trey vs. Keith Richards in a guitar death match and the needling of Alice lent a bit of fun to the atmosphere and wrapped up a very good weekend.
This week's passing of Robert Hegyes, best known for his role as Epstein on the 1970s TV show 'Welcome Back Kotter,' got me to thinking about iconic TV this morning. So much of what is on TV today is pretty formulaic, with the crime and court procedurals, the family comedies and all the reality TV crap.
Shows like Kotter, which you can still catch on local channels in syndication or can pick up at Amazon, still play well 25 years later. Yeah the hair and clothes scream 1977, but the jokes are still funny, the stories are still interesting and you can still relate to the characters even in the social media age. It's probably not a top 4 iconic show, mostly because there was only so much you could do with a story line largely centered on a high school class, but it's still a show that broke some ground.
What are the four most iconic TV shows of your lifetime?
The Simpsons - still fresh, funny and making a statement after all these years. I know not everyone is a Simpsons fan with the low brow and slapstick stuff that the show sometimes relies on. But each episode is saying something in a way that is accessible across generations. proved a prime-time animated show could be a winner and inspired dozens of copy cats.
The Rockford Files - Everyone probably already knows I am a big Rockford fan, but TRF really was a different kind of show for its day. It made it ok to be a TV detective who wasn't a tough guy, made the careers of many of new faces (Tom Selleck and Sopranos creator David Chase among the most notable), and has the best opening sequence of any TV show ever.
M*A*S*H - I think everyone watched the last episode, but if that's all you remember, then you missed how much this show changed TV. It was anti-war, created the 'dramedy' genre, showed the blood and dirt of war right on your living room TV. As the Vietnam era ended, M*A*S*H lost a bit of its edge, taking on other social issues before going out with the most watched TV episode ever.
Seinfeld - The show about nothing that dominated TV in the 90s, Seinfeld was never really one of my favorites. I do recognize how thoroughly it became part of the culture and remains so today. Like Friends, the 4 person cast was huge together, but never really had as much reach as individual actors.
It's a few minutes before the season finale of Boardwalk Empire, signalling the end of my weekend.
Friday night was a fun time, drinks, dinner and dancing with old friends out in Philly. I will be doing a review of one of the new spots we hit. Saturday was a day of college basketball and football, and a night with some new friends.
I've been looking for curtains for my room for a few weeks. Emma vetoed the last set after I hung them with a disgusted shake of her head and the remark, 'Daddy sometimes you have no clue.'
So after the Eagles' big win over Miami today, I returned the rejected curtains, and picked out another set that at least matches my comforter. After a few hours of grocery and Christmas shopping, I waved the white flag, but not before crossing two more names off the list.
In a bit less than an hour, HBO's Boardwalk Empire has its season two debut. It's the first show I have watched since The West Wing went dark a few years back.
Like The West Wing, Boardwalk Empire has stellar writing, seriously good acting and some really interesting plot lines. The characters are fascinating and the sets are wonderfully done. I have been waiting for months for tonight's premiere.
I don't do much TV. It's generally all pretty bad. I watch a lot of sports, a read a lot and the kids take a lot of time. I like a few shows like NCIS that are in syndication, and HGTV draws my attention on some Sunday morning. I had a Food Network thing going for a while, but it faded this past spring as baseball season started.
I'm prepping for tonight's 9pm premiere by watching a few old episodes of The West Wing I snagged off the internet. I figure it's a good pre-game.
Despite dozens several requests for a Charlie Sheen-related Fan 4 this week, I'm going to have to say no. I mean what could the topics be? Top four hookers Charlie has been with? Top four drugs he's done? Top four movies he's been in? He hasn't been in four good movies.
Since it's Spring Break at the old workplace, and Da Boss is on Da Plane, I'm going Spring Traditional in topic selection this week.
What four places would you most like to go to spring break next week?
La Jolla, CA - Not so much for the golf, but for the warm breezes and the sunsets
I enjoyed watching the Super Bowl last night. It was a great game interrupted by an visually brilliant and tonally terrifying halftime show, spiced up by the best TV commercials Madison Avenue has to offer.
We can talk about the gritty determination of the Packers' defense, how turnovers ALWAYS have a huge impact in the Super Bowl, what drug the producer who though Fergie singing Guns and Roses was on, or we can talk about the commercials. Everyone else is, so why not Another Delco Guy?
USA Today says the top 2 commericals tied for popularity were the Bud Light Dog Party spot and the Doritos 'Pug' clip. I honestly didn't think the Doritos spot was even the best from its brand brands, let alone the best of the night. (The best Doritos spot to me was the odd, stomach-turning one with the finger licker in it. Are you really going to forget that one any time soon?)
My top two were both funny spots this year. There were some good serious spots, including the epic Chrysler commercial 'Imported From Detroit,' that definitely deserve a look, but the Super Bowl is an international party, so I tend to lead to the funny spots.
My Numero Uno for the night was Best Buy's "What's a Bieber" starring the ancient former rocker turned former reality TV star Ozzy Osbourne and upstart, oddly androgynous pop sensation Justin Bieber. I don't know what made me laugh so hard about this spot, but it topped out for me.
My second fave from Super Bowl XLVXBXLVVII was the Pepsi Max commercial about about first date thoughts. Corny, yes! But it was the commercial that had men laughing and women shaking their heads across the world last night. Ya gotta love that!
Overall, I thought the quality of the offerings was down a notch or two from yeas past. Clearly there was no Coke 'Mean Joe Green' or Apple '1984' instant classic spot, but two trend really struck me. First, the movie promos were uniformly blah. I could care less about seeing any of those movies after those promos. Second, the internet website commercial may have run its course. I usually love the E-trade baby, but last night's spot was awful. There were at least three ads from websites i have never heard of and have forgotten in 12 hours. And I am reasonably certain 90% of the world has no idea who Danica Patrick is, let alone why she is shilling for GoDaddy.
Summing it up, for once the game was the biggest reason to watch. The commercials were down, but they had a strong lead over what might have been the worst halftime show in history. One week until pitchers and catchers folks!
The restaurant where I ate lunch had ESPN News looping when I went in today. The Tiger Woods statement was shown in its entirety at the top of the hour. It wasn't a pretty 13 minutes.
Is it just me or has someone scooped Tiger's brain out with a melon baller and inserted an android processor which just mouths words in a nearly human manner? i know the guy is known for his focus and lack of emotion on the golf course, but this was just unreal.
The presentation varied between the world's #1 golfer and uber philanderer staring at the papers in front of him and reading, or apparently freezing up in his speech and looking straight at the camera. Not pretty either way.
The best part was at the end when the robot known as Tiger walked over to his mom and his programmers had them embrace ion a long hug while the rest of the people in the front row stared at them, praying 'please god don't let him try to hug me.'
My brother and I had a spirited IM discussion about the Tigercast. He was amazed at the 'entitlement' the public felt toward Tiger and how much is being expected of him. Matt notes a belief that Tiger owes us nothing. I beg to disagree.
One of the reasons this guy has such problems is that he has no emotion beyond himself, not for golf, not for his wife, not for me, a fan of the game, or apparently for anything else. And he showed it again today.
While it's very true that infidelity is common in the world and probably more common among sports stars, that isn't really the issue. What I saw today was a guy trying to come before the public for its blessing and doing it with such hollowness that he was rendered unbelievable and even more pathetic.
He didn't have to do this. Tiger chose to be part of the public theater. If he was going to go out there and do this, he had a responsibility to do it well. If he couldn't do it well (which was apparently the case) someone should have told him to just stay silent and move on to the next phase of his therapy and ignore us. Because otherwise he ends up looking like a guy who felt like he had to go out and say that he was putting his wife and family first, but not because he necessarily felt that way.
I am not at all saying I won't be a fan of Tiger the golfer when he comes back, but I'll be a fan for the same reason I always have been- because he can do amazing things on a golf course, not becasue he is the accessible everyman on the golf course, a la Arnie Palmer. In the mean time, I want him to go away and get better and stop wandering though my life, blathering on about things it's clear he has no solid grip on yet.
Well we are about 5.5 hours from the first pitch of the 2009 World Series where my beloved Phils will be taking on baseball's most bloated payroll in the Bronx tonight.
To get things started on the right foot this morning, my son John's teacher Carrie Siwiec, organized a pep rally at Fleetwood Elementary School around the corner from our house. Bill Henley from "The 10 Show" was there and broadcast a few minutes of the fun live.
Check the clip below starting at about the 1 minute mark for a very happy kid on the right named John who has his dream World Series matchup.
Loyal readers will know that my student worker Isaac has been helping out with the Fantastic Four this summer because I have been slacking.
Today, it's his turn to slack, so it's my turn again. This week's list is inspired by the news that Josh Duhamel will headline NBC's remake of the classic 1970s TV series The Rockford Files. I'm sure if you already know TRF is my favorite TV show ever, so #1 on the list comes as no surprise.
What are your four favorite TV Show Theme Songs?
The Rockford Files - They're updating the show to the present day, so the theme might not survive, but I sure hope it does
Cheers - who doesn't love the feeling of walking into you favorite bar or restaurant and having everyone say hello?
Hill Street Blues - the sad piano repetitions and jazzy guitar matched the show perfectly
The Dukes of Hazzard - Waylon Jennings was the narrator for the show and sang the theme for the show we all watched in
I have really been enjoying this year's AT&T alter-ego commercials where they have the actor saying, "My phone doesn't have any bars here or I would know ..." They are all really very good.
This one, however, may be the funniest thing I have ever seen on TV:
I mean we've all done things where the final outcome was not what we thought it was gonna be, right? I love the debris raining down as well as the part at the end where he realizes part of his beard is missing.
I can't believe that Major League Baseball let that game go on last night. Yeah I know they didn't want to call it and have the Phils win a tainted World Series title, but to let it go on in a complete monsoon was ridiculous and dangerous.
I know that fans are angry, and so are the players, but I am in the odd position of being happy. since I am out of town, MLB's moronic decision making process last night will give me the chance to perhaps be in town when the rains let up on Wednesday. Regardless, I'll be home for the parade.
There is a god and he wants me to see the Phils win the world series in person.
Michael Moore was on Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show Friday night sticking his foot in his mouth. In this clip, Moore calls Hurricane Gustav "proof that there is a God."
It's apparent that Moore is so ridiculously absorbed in his self-appointed role of attacker-in-chief on the Bush administration that he has failed to note that Gustav is poised to place millions of people in harms way, do billions in damage and potentially destroy a great American city.
It's time for Michael Moore to admit he's just as out of touch as those he has spent the last 20 years attacking.
I met Tim Russert last May in Buffalo, New York as he spoke as the home-town guest to a conference he attended. It was a few weeks before father's day and he spent most of his 40 minute speech talking about his dad, Big Russ. He also spun some fun yarns from the set of Meet the Press and took us inside what his day is like.
Afterwards, he stood around the makeshift conference bar with a few of us political junkies and had a beer, talking about the possibilities of the 2008 race that was still a year away at the time. He was down-to-earth, extraordinarily well-informed and generous with his insights and time.
I chose the image today from the 244 on flickr because it was not your standard headshot and seemed to capture the guy I met over a beer in his hometown. Thanks to Timothy Pedersen.
For quite some time I really didn't think that much of Tim Russert's work on NBC. For some reason, his style and I did not connect and I generally avoided Meet the Press, which I considered a poor competitor to This Week.
Then came the White Board Moment.
On a night when seemingly no one on television was able to explain just what was happening, Tim Russert threw aside the technology and the maps and the millions of dollars of stuff at his disposal and communicated directly with the American public. He clearly showed us what was happening and how important Florida had become.
With a $2 white board.
In that moment I felt understood this guy and how well he connected with the US populace. Last year, I was gratified to find that my analysis was correct, but more gratified to get a chance to hear him talk about his dad and his son, to thank his wife for all of her time spent helping him and to thank those of our group for helping students like his son Luke go to college.
Last week he got to see Luke graduate from Boston College. Russert had done an awful lot in his career, but I am glad that "Little Russ" got the chance to see that moment before the screen went dark yesterday.
I have stayed away from the presidential election primaries for the most part, but the Iowa caucuses are upon us and I guess it's time to begin thinking about the person who will succeed the moron-in-chief.
For the most part, I think that it's way too early, but the folks who want to be president have been bothering the good people of Iowa and New Hampshire since Labor Day, invading their diners and TV sets every day trying to dos something that will help them stick out from the crowd. I think the best way to note how ridiculous it is to begin political television ads 16 months before the election is to review this actual TV spot running in Iowa for for Republican Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor.
Yup, friends, that's an actual TV ad. And he's serious. You should vote for him because and actor playing a part says you should. Or he will punch you or something. Huckabee's plan for 'securing the borders' is Chuck Norris? Give me a fucking break. This is the front runner in the race for the Republican nomination? How can I be expected to take this group seriously?
I tend to tune out commercials or jump up to grab a beverage or pee during them. So I had heard this one several times before I actually saw it. Then I had no idea what they were selling because I was too confused by the animals. So I started waiting for the commercial to see what the heck they were trying to get me to buy.
Turns out that Jeep is trying to get me to buy the new Grand Cherokee by running this spot on ESPN and Discovery all night long.
The music is "Rock Me Gently" a #1 Billboard hit by Andy Kim from 1974. I'd never heard that one, but I do remember his other #1, "Sugar, Sugar," which he sang with Ron Dante as part of "The Archies."
I'm torn on whether this is a great commercial. I mean I had NO CLUE what the product was for the first 3-4 times I was exposed to it. However, the unusual music and the animated animals drew me back enough times for me to figure out what they were selling. Heck, I even went and found the video and did a post on it.
Now what's the wolf eating and regurgitating the bird about?
I have to admit that the first time I saw this commercial i had to tell myself that it really WAS on network TV and that I was not imagining the visual puns.
I have to hand it to Kellogg's for not taking themselves too seriously in this ad spot for All-Bran. Not many commercials on the air for products like this handle it as humorously. I mane how often do you see a construction worker talk about 'doing it' with All-Bran while a truck TAKES A DUMP just behind his ass? Even Slate magazine has picked up on it/
Brilliant.
Really. Go ahead. Laugh. It's ok!
This ad is WAY better than the 3 guys in the car talking about a 4 hour erection being 'a scheduling issue.'
On the positive side, it was an amazingly well-played game and I can't wait to see if the Phils can make a real play to bring Schill back here for his last season. Mike Lowell would look nice in red and white at 3B as well.
And I am never buying another Taco Bell product again.
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Not a good first impression for a company trying to get me to switch from Comcast's Triple Play. The Verizon commercials with the little kid and the Verizon tech are so good, i decided to stop by the website to see what the pricing is like.
Then they have a system error. Puts them in the same category with the Comcast guys.
Every Friday at work we do a 'Friday Fantastic Four List.' Basically, you list the four best of something, the four favorite of something, the four most memorable of something, etc.
This week the topic is the best TV shows of all time. Shout out to Chris Morse, fill in at the counter and all around good guy for this week's topic.
Here's my list:
1. The Rockford Files
2. SportsCenter
3. NYPD
Blue
4. The West
Wing
Honorable mentions:
The Waltons
Star
Blazers!!!!!
MASH
News Radio
Buffy
Fraggle
Rock
Cheers
The Muppet Show
Letterman
The Daily
Show
WKRP In Cincinnati
The
Simpsons
SportsNight
Dennis
Miller Live
30 Minute
Meals
Scooby Doo
ESPN Sunday
Night Baseball
It should be noted that I have never seen the Sopranos. I am not a 24 fan. I hate reality Tv. So let's hear it. What's your list?
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