Little Billy Ripken was the most unappreciated (and least talented?) member of the Ripken Baseball Dynasty. He played on the Orioles alongside his brother Cal and under the cruel tutelage of his dad, also Cal. They might have overshadowed him on the field, but his courage has been immortalized on his rookie card. Did either Cal ever pose with a shit-eating grin and “FUCK FACE” written on his baseball bat?

Jim Walewander was another shining star, swallowed up by the blackness of space before he could make baseball history. What he achieved for normal dudes that listen to college radio, however, will never be forgotten. At a time when Dead Milkmen fans hid in underground bunkers for fear of persecution, Walewander wasn’t ashamed to show who he really was. In an interview with ChinMusic, he said, “One of the things that made me sort of famous or heightened the notoriety at the time was just my naivete. The press would ask me what I did last night, and I would just tell them, ‘I went to see this band.’ Nowadays, the players just give these pat answers. I was just totally honest because I was stupid. I was trying to be myself. I wasn’t trying to be something macho.”
Walewander may have been stupid, and the association with underground music may have hurt his career, but he was a true pioneer. Could there have been Dennis Rodman without Jim Walewander? Possibly not.

Dock Ellis was always considered a colorful character, and not just by racists. Frequently at odds with Pirates management and his fellow teammates, Ellis always did what he had to do to win. Sometimes what he had to do was intentionally hit three batters in a row, loading the bases and scaring the hell out of the other team. Sometimes what he had to do was acid. Several hours after embarking on a journey to the center of his mind, Ellis showed up in San Diego to pitch the only no-hitter of his career. Fleer issued this limited edition baseball card to commemorate the event:

Posted by Mat on 30 Oct 2007 at 04:10 pm

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HB: Okay. Let’s get this puppy back in gear, Aibo-style. Brief Encounter sat by our TV for quite a while before we got around to watching it. After all, it sounds so very, very boring: a middle-aged couple have an affair that’s more emotional than physical, meeting in a train station every week at the same time for tea. Snooze, right? Luckily, it turns out to be both a great melodrama and directed by David Lean. I say that not to confound you with my utter stupidity at not knowing he directed the movie until watching it (because that’s not true), but rather to point out that Lean really does have a style and, even when not racing across the desert sands or the snowy plains of Russia, it’s gripping stuff. Celia Johnson (who I’d never seen in anything else) and Trevor Howard help make it marvelous, too, but really it’s the stylistic elements that make it a great film, for me–the use of voiceover to carry the entire story (one could call it hypothetical voiceover, as it’s all Laura Jesson imagining telling her husband about the affair), which works better here than in pretty much any other movie I can think of; the extreme closeups, especially on the actors’ eyes; the surprising whoosh of the camera as it runs up to people. All of it provides a lot of drama to a story that could easily not be dramatic. So, one of my questions is: Is it too posh? It’s hard for me to gauge the exact class of both characters, but I’m not sure they’re super upper-crusty (although in that direction). On the other hand, they certainly do talk like they are. I don’t think I’ve seen any other Noel Coward adaptations (and that’s another point: it feels like both a play and a film, which is unusual), so I also can’t tell if we’re supposed to take this poshness seriously, if it’s a criticism of the floppiness of the rich or not. I think the answer is “not,” sort of. What do you think? Did you find it genuinely dramatic?

JB: Well, It’s certainly melodramatic, and it has a lot of dramatic tension, hough it really all takes place within the two main characters themselves rather than between the characters. I hadn’t thought so much about the class thing in this movie, but the Wikipedia entry had some interesting things to say about it. It said, for instance, that the upper and lower classes could basically get away with having affairs: for the former, it’s like a form of eccentricity, and the latter are vulgar anyway, so it’s not really beneath them. The middle class, they contend, is (or believes itself to be) the moral backbone of society and and generally takes those issues very seriously, as do the main characters. At the end of the day though, I’m not sure you can say the main characters fail to consummate their relationship because of their upstanding morals; basically they’re interrupted right before presumably getting it on (and even that seems to have been more of a production code thing–England must’ve had those too, right?–in any case, it’s supposedly a lot more vague in the play about whether or not their relationship was physical. It seems like the other main differences in the movie are: 1) Laura’s desire to commit suicide is slightly more overt, and 2) The final scene in the movie, in which Laura’s husband says “thanks for coming back to me dear,” is not in the play. Another interesting note Wikipedia made is that the forbidden relationship depicted in the play/movie is basically a metaphor about being gay, particularly about being closeted in that specific time period, as Noel Coward was. (Trivia note: apparently Noel Coward voiced the station announcements in the film.) This is kind of interesting to me because I kept thinking how interesting, and necessary, it was that the female character voiced the narration. For one thing, in all honesty, I don’t think the moral dilemma would have been there for dudes the way it was for women. On the other hand I also thought that it was interesting that unlike the main character in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening–which this movie reminded me of somewhat–Laura goes back to her husband instead of killing herself, almost suggesting, by contrast, that women should just suck it up and help make the world go around. The “thanks for coming back to me dear” line, I thought, was meant to be ironic. The Wikipedia entry seemed to suggest that the line meant that the husband kind of knew that she was having, or thinking about having, an affair. I’d have to watch the scene again to know for sure, but I think he was commenting on how she seemed a million miles away, i.e. daydreaming, which obviously she was, because she was narrating the film (hypothetically confessing everything to her husband). In that way, the “thanks for coming back to me dear” line meant “thanks for snapping out of your little daydream” (”daydream,” again ironically, meaning “the affair”). Basically, I took the line in both ways, but saw it more as ironic than that the husband knew what was going on, but I think both interpretations are possible.

HB: I think you’re completely right about the end of the movie. Whoever wrote that on Wikipedia isn’t reading it in a very subtle way. While I think it’s possible her husband may have some inkling of what’s going on, I’m not sure he would say anything if he did (certainly not something so obvious). Do you think it’s supposed to be a little sad that she’s stepping out on such a nice guy? I guess it’s because she feels the need for romance, rather than crossword puzzles, in her life, but I <em>like</em> crossword puzzles. I guess his niceness adds to the sadness somewhat–to the “suck it up” message you comment on. Really, being stuck with crossword puzzles is much better than getting squashed by a train, so perhaps the movie really has an anti-romantic stance in the end.

So they are supposed to be middle class? That makes sense in a lot of ways (where she eats when she goes into the city; her worries about extravagance in presents), but, again, the accents play against it. Maybe it’s just the sort of thing we’re supposed to accept at face value, like the huge New York apartments on <em>Friends</em>.

JB: Well, I think he just doesn’t pay enough attention to her. Isn’t he reading the paper the whole time she’s imagining (the entire movie)? Also, at one point in the movie actually mentions to her husband that she had lunch with the guy she wants to have an affair with and he barely reacted. He’s kind of the stereotypical, “Yes, that’s nice, dear” (I’m not really paying any attention to you) husband, isn’t he. As for the class thing, they live neither in a mansion nor in a trainyard, so
I guess they’re middle class.

HB: Yeah, but this is England. It’s more complicated than that. The only thing I can think of that I have left to ask you is what you thought of them going to the movies. I think those scenes are the most enjoyable ones in the film, with them giggling at the organist and watching the previews and eating and just generally behaving like very normal human beings.

JB: Yeah, scenes of/at the movies within movies are almost always great.

Posted by teambrown on 23 Oct 2007 at 09:18 pm

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This is a great example of why I am pulling for Edwards in ‘08!

Posted by ryan on 23 Oct 2007 at 11:46 am

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For years I’ve been hearing people warn that Death Cab for Cutie’s music poses a serious risk to anyone that hears it. It seems like Homeland Security finally agrees. Earlier this week, a hard drive containing the master tracks for Death Cab guitarist Chris Walla’s solo album was confiscated at the Canadian border, and for once it wasn’t those damn Mounties.

Walla acknowledges that the songs on his forthcoming album are politically-charged, but there’s no word on whether this is why Homeland Security is holding the hard drive indefinitely. There’s also no word on how long before Walla will get it back or at least receive notification that it was detonated by a bomb squad. Basically there’s no word on a lot of things.

Walla has unmastered tracks still on tape, and will use these to complete his album for a January release.

Ben Gibbard is still at large.

Posted by Mat on 17 Oct 2007 at 02:51 pm

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Random review time.  More to come, no doubt. 

X-FACTOR #24
By Peter David, Pablo Raimondi, Valentine De Landro, and Drew Hennessy.

The Isolationist story arc comes to an unsatisfying conclusion, as David hurriedly clears the decks before the next all-encompassing crossover.  There’s no real conclusion to anything, as the main antagonist, Josef Huber, just sort of wanders off at the end.  Huber is a mutant with the powers of all mutants, including all the psychics, and the resultant mental chatter is so painful and overwhelming that he’s lived in isolation for decades.  After the decimation of 99% of the world’s mutants (yeah, I don’t really want to go into that), Huber can tolerate the mental interference enough to return to society and enact an impractical plan to murder all the remaining mutants in one fell swoop.  Nonsensically, that plan involves the lame Spidey anti-hero Solo and an anti-mutant knock-off of Prussian Blue.   But so, in issue number 24 Huber’s scheme comes to a really anticlimactic non-ending, and even though I’m sure David will pick up the dangling threads (hopefully as soon as Messiah Complex is over), it’s still awkward and disappointing.  And speaking of Messiah Complex, I don’t think I could be any less interested in the crossover.  I gave Mike Carey and Ed Brubaker a shot when they started on the main X-Men titles, but I remain uninterested in the wider X-universe, and so I might have to sit X-Factor out the next three months.  Which really sucks, as it’s otherwise been one of the two or three most consistently enjoyable superhero comics these last couple of years.  

Posted by Garrett Martin on 16 Oct 2007 at 03:52 pm

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Posted by ryan on 11 Oct 2007 at 02:53 pm

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so Radiohead released a new record for all of those early to mid 30s types who still haven’t gotten over Kid A and Ok Computer. it’s funny that a band whose been singing about the angst and fear and evils of technology and the modern world would decide to release a record that can only be downloaded over these here interwebs…but hey dude, that’s the world we live in. it’d be alot cooler if they put it out on tape, but i guess that’s asking alot. anyways Radiohead are letting people download the album on their website and their website alone and you can pay whatever sum you want to own this precious zip file. i am cheap and Radiohead doesn’t need anymore money…so i downloaded the fucking thing for free.  identity theft is a bitch, dog…i ain’t gonna risk it. who knows…radiohead could be working with the Russian Mafia and stealing all your credit card numbers. think about it. anyways i listened to about half of this bleeping, blooping, mess and realized that i no longer give a fuck about radiohead…not even the slightest. all i could do was think about how they’ve really just been making the same album ever since Kid A, “the anti-Ok Computer” and at this point it’s just boring. which really is the biggest sin a band can make. Boring is worse than Shitty…at least in my book. i don’t know, who cares? people are still gonna jackoff on their music blogs and put radiohead stickers on their landrovers and buy this thing when it comes out on CD and talk about how seeing radiohead live changed their life and blah blah blah. but not me, i’m over it. Radiohead is dead to me.

 i realize this is no kind of a record review worth reading and tons of dorks will put this in their top 10 of the year…but honestly i’d rather listen to Grinderman.

Posted by justin on 11 Oct 2007 at 09:41 am

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Posted by ryan on 09 Oct 2007 at 01:06 pm

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