Have you seen the E*Trade (?) commercial wherein the baby is trading online and says he's going to use his "extra coin" to rent a clown? We then see Bobo making balloon animals in the background. The ad's tag line is "I really underestimated the creepiness." No kidding!
Whomever hired Dennis Hopper to be Amerprise's ad spokesman really underestimated the creepiness, too. There is something fundamentally wrong about having a 60s counterculture icon tout retirement funds.
Or maybe I'm just grumpy because it reminds me that I'm getting older despite myself.
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I watched a DVD yesterday of 15 Academy Award-winning cartoons. Most were originally produced by MGM, though the funniest were originally produced by Warner Brothers. [Hey, I like "Tom and Jerry" just fine, but those cartoons are really a one-trick pony.--Ed.] The oddest inclusion was a winner not for "Best Animated Feature" but for "Best Documentary Short." It was a 1950s era promotion for the Public Health Service, directed by the venerable Chuck Jones.
If you saw it, I think you'd cry. I did. It promoted a vision of Public Health Services as a positive good, costing every taxpaying American a whopping (!) 3¢ a day [yes, this was back in the day when you could max out a 2-hour parking meter for 1¢, but still!--Ed.], and its emphasis was on the high quality and wide quantity of services offered throughout one's life, all because it was both better for everyone and cheaper for everyone to support universal systematic public health services than it is to let them be implemented haphazardly--or not at all.
Remember: this was during Dwight Eisenhower's presidency. What the heck has gone wrong in the succeeding 50 years? [That was a rhetorical question.--Ed.] I am in mourning for a sensible vision and plan lost.
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Have you seen the new Major League Baseball Network (MLBN)? It has been a godsend to those of us for whom this is the bleakest time of year . . . which only gets worse once the Super Bowl is over. Still, pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report to Spring Training on Valentine's Day, so happy days will soon be here again.
Anyway, the best program I've seen on MLBN so far is "Prime 9," which lists the nine best in any number of major league baseball categories ranging from "The Best Characters" of the game to "The Greatest Shortstops" in major league history. It's a top-nine list instead of a top-ten list because, after all, baseball has nine players per side and a game usually lasts nine innings. The show also promises to start more arguments than it stops.
I'll second that. One episode that just aired was for "The Greatest Records." Note that this is "records" as opposed to "feats." Hitting 3 home runs in a single game is a feat. Hitting for 56 games in a row is a record. I have no quarrel with any of that. What I did disagree with was that Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak was ranked only 7th on the list. It has been said by wiser heads than mine that the hardest thing to do in sports is to hit a round ball with a cylindrical bat so squarely that the batter is rewarded with a base hit.
Not only did DiMaggio do something that no one else ever has been able to come within even six games of accomplishing, it was a solo effort. Baseball is unique in that it's a team game that allows for individual accomplishment by every starter on each team. A team can still win even if one--or more than one--individual team member has a slump. But no one else could do it for Joltin' Joe. The streak lasted as long as he could make it. [Yes, he did get a favorable scoring decision in the middle of it, but that happened well before he was into record-breaking territory, so it should not count against him or minimize his effort.--Ed.] So the "degree of difficulty" was higher for DiMaggio than it was for all the team records on the list. I'd have ranked it as high as #2, right behind Cy Young's career win total of 511, which came in at #1, and ahead of Cal Ripken's 2,632 consecutive games played streak, which "Prime 9" ranked as #2.
By the way, I mean no disrespect at all to Cal Ripken. What he did is gargantuan. But anyone who chooses to play for 16+ years and who wills himself to start in every game (no matter what injury or illness he may have) has a chance to break that record. It's mostly a question of mental toughness. However, no matter how much you want to, hitting in more than 56 games in a row is harder than starting every day, even for 16 years in a row. The hitting streak requires the player to conquer many variables that are totally out of his control. To name just three: the home plate umpire's strike zone, the pitcher's "stuff" on any given day [and now that the game has specialty pitching down to the level of short-relievers and closers, the degree of difficulty is raised even higher than it was in DiMaggio's day--Ed.], and the official scorer's decision on close fielding plays.
"Prime 9" ranked the New York Yankees' five-years-in-a-row streak of World Series championships from 1949-1954 at #3, which was the highest team record listed. In my rankings, it would have been #4. But "Prime 9" did get it right in terms ranking team vs. individual accomplishments. I do think no other team ever will win the World Series for five years running. The last team to win even three World Series in a row was the Oakland A's, and that was 20 years ago. As the Yankees'(and for that matter, the Atlanta Braves') recent travails have illustrated, even with the best players in the game, it's so much harder to get back to the World Series than it used to be that even repeating becomes nearly impossible. Five-in-a-row? Unthinkable.
Of course, I hope I am remembering correctly that Cy Young came in at #1. Pitching has changed more than any other aspect of the game, it seems to me, and not only will no pitcher ever get to 511 wins ever again, we may never see another career 300-game winner after Randy Johnson and Todd Glavine retire.
I will say that every entry in the "Prime 9" list deserved to be there. Probably none of those records will ever be broken. But then again, one of the great beauties of baseball is that every year we see things we've never seen before, including the breaking of supposedly "unbreakable" records.
So I won't hold my breath.
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You know what one of the most immediate signs of the economic meltdown has been? TV advertisers are using old commercials instead of coming out with new ones. This is tax season, and H&R Bloch is using a commercial (the one with the guy in the "money suit") it first used at least a year ago. And most of the "baby doing online trading" commercials premiered over a year ago, in time for last year's Super Bowl.
Watching the ads during this year's Super Bowl is going to be very, very instructive.
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Back in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and even the 90s, I used to want to scream at those who were pushing an agenda of greater rights for states (at the expense of both individuals and the federal government's proper, Constitutionally-ordained bailiwick) that "The Civil War ended in 1865. You lost. Get over it! Grow up and move on, already!"
The 00s ["the Aughts?"--what are we going to call this decade, anyway?--Ed.] have changed precisely nothing. When true civil libertarians lose on an issue, we are supposed to suck it up and move on--so why aren't the forces of reaction required to do the same? They have all the money, that's why. They can afford to keep rehashing their losing causes until they get their way.
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And while we're at it, a quiz: what grates on the ears like fingernails on a blackboard? The GOP's lockstep use of the noun "Democrat" when grammar requires the use of the adjective "Democratic." I am ready to pull out my hair every time I hear some GOP wise-ass say "The Democrat Party" this and "The Democrat Party" that.
AAARRRRGGHHHHH!
I know why they do it. Some dim bulb in the GOP who fancies him/herself a bright light decided it would be better to be grammatically incorrect than to have even the slightest hint that someone would hear small-D "democratic" instead of capital-D "Democratic." And GOP spokespeople followed in lockstep. Heaven forfend that Republicans should even inadvertently seem to compliment Democrats or give them the positive attribute of being "democratic."
But not only is is ungrammatical. It's petty. It contributes only to the sense of "the permanent campaign" that Karl Rove (among others) championed, and in its admittedly small way adds to the sense of "politics as usual" that everyone with even half a brain hates.
Besides, it debases the language--so much for English first and other such traditional values. And it gives me additional support for my contention that were Lincoln alive today, he'd not be a member of the Republican Party.
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