Attention Overload!

Wow, is there a lot going on right now. Big things, little things, consequential things, trivial things, nerd things, political things, sporty things, personal things, many combinations thereof.

Now, the personal things tend toward the nerdy and trivial. Don't want to get anyone's hopes up. But between the news, pop culture, and baseball/softball, my brain is jam-packed with musings.

Some, about the latest debasing of Major League Baseball by its own commissioner, were posted yesterday, so no need to rehash that except to just say once again—because there's never a bad time to say it—that Rob Manfred is horrible. But related to the All-Star Game are musings about the gathering I hosted here for it; I invited a bazillion people, but knowing it was for an event that has lost its luster and that started at 5:00pm on a weekday, I figured maybe seven or eight people might show. I overestimated by a few, but we had fun and I ate way too much junk food, including some oddly-made pizza from Spiro Not-Agnew's down the street and so-so store-bought guac. (Always worth it to make your own guac, dummy.) Thanks to Abe, the one person from my umping world to pop by for a while, and Mack and Erik for bringing some of the junk food. (Abe didn't know my dietary preferences, so I skipped his, but still thoughtful.)

That was Tuesday night. Last night was my softball team's final game of the year—we play a really short season, for better or worse—which was typical: We lost by a lot, only got to play a little over half a game because of the enforced mercy rule, and in my one at-bat I swung blind as the sunset was happening right behind the pitcher and tapped out 1-3 but still managed to tweak my ankle running to first. Kind of fitting, really.

Meanwhile, I went to see the new Superman film and enjoyed it. If you want a good rundown on it, I recommend Erik's review, I basically agree with everything he says there. I now want to see it a second time to better gauge my feeling abut it as it was somehow both really good and kind of a drag and I can't quite put my finger on why. It's very comic-booky, for lack of a better description, as opposed to the gritty/angsty Zach Snyder version of Superman or even the operatic Richard Donner Superman; in some ways, that's great, kind of my wheelhouse, there was a lot of funny stuff in it that required that sensibility. In other ways I thought it was maybe too fast-and-loose with conceptual reality with its "pocket universe" and off-hand inclusions of semi-intelligent "troll monkeys" (though that made for one of the biggest laughs) and an unexplained kaiju-like giant monster that was the least effective sequence for me. But on first viewing, I'd say Superman (2025) ranks below Superman (1978) and Superman Returns (2006) but way ahead of Man of Steel (2013).

Also, the long-awaited season three of Strange New Worlds premiered last night with two episodes. Both eps were good, neither was great, and there was plenty of good character stuff and smart dialogue to meet my high Trek standards.

Those all fall in the pop-culture/trivial/personal buckets. As for the big political world-affecting stuff, I find myself navigating a mix of outrage, hopefulness, hostility, schadenfreude, anxiety, callousness, and trepidation. Which is, let's face it, the new normal, but with new dimensions given the latest info:

• The MAGA civil war is fascinating as some of the cultists belatedly realize that their champion actually is a lying garbage person who gaslights them and thinks they're stupid. The fact that they see this only because they bought into a conspiracy theory he and they promulgated for years that he is now denying hasn't sunk in yet, but hey, baby steps.
• Today's publication of an article in the Wall Street Journal, of all places, that reinforces what most of us already knew—that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were two peas in a pod in their depravity and criminality—is outstanding, as it is causing the wannabe dictator and his minions to panic and dig themselves deeper into the hole they're in with the cultists. I've oft wondered what it would take to get the cult to turn on this subhuman stain when none of the prior atrocities seemed to make a dent, and it figures that the answer is apparently reneging on an implied promise to inflict cruelty on people they don't like.

• With all that creating chaos for the White House, official spokesmodel Karoline Leavitt told the press corps that our wannabe-dictator has health issues—which, again, duh—that she plays down as minor but actually might well prevent him from finishing his term of office.

  The demented occupant of the Oval Office has Chronic Venous Insufficiency, which in and of itself is not a big deal. Lots of senior citizens deal with it. But the patient in question is not "lots of senior citizens," he's an obese rage factory who doesn't believe in exercise and maintains a fast-food diet. And this has progressed enough to include Stage 5 or 6 elements, e.g. venous ulcers (evident from photos of POTUS47’s hand and the lie from his press secretary that he was bruised from aspirin and an overabundance of handshakes). Whether the hand wound is from the CVI directly, a complication of it, or from something else, it indicates something more serious than swollen ankles. Add to this the daily evidence of cognitive decline and one has to wonder if the CVI is severe enough to have hindered blood not just to the extremities but to the brain.

  What makes this especially hinky is that the White House—in the first term and in this one—never reveals anything about Dear Leader's health. They give bogus doctor notes from their very own Dr. Nick that say he's the healthiest person that ever lived. We got no information when he had COVID. We got no information after he was mildly wounded when someone took a shot at him last summer. They never reveal anything about his health, yet today Leavitt said he has CVI, probably the most innocuous explanation for the photo of his swollen ankles.

  It's probably true as far as the CVI goes, but what's not being said? Is he looking at heart failure? What about vascular dementia? Has he had a stroke? It sure fits the observable circumstantial evidence that long-standing CVI (pun not intended) correlated with lack of circulation to the brain begetting vascular dementia accounts for a lot of his nonsensical rants and wandering tangents and inappropriate dozing off. (Then again, this is the laziest, stupidest, most emotionally stunted public figure in the world, so all that crap might have nothing to do with his blood flow.)

  Might this health admission be the first step in a soft coup by the oligarchs that want JD Vance to be emperor? Might it be a first move in a fallback contingency should the Epstein mess actually catch up with him—he could resign for health reasons, get pardoned by Vance, and completely avoid any accountability for anything?

  And why am I conflicted about the prospect of PseudoPresident Convicted Felon dying of heart failure soon? Frankly, that's a better scenario than a pardon.

Oh, and CBS canceled Colbert because they need to not piss off the regime in order to get FCC approval on their corporate merger with SkyDance. That's just lovely. (Skip the below video to about the two minute mark for more context.)

 

Tagged Politics, Movies, Star Trek, President VonClownstick, Baseball, Softball, Posted on July 17, 2025 at 9:02PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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All-Star circus

All-Star Game so-called MVP

The baseball All-Star Game has been a shadow of its former self for a long time now. For several years running the games themselves have been dull, assisted in their dullness by a circus atmosphere generated by the tandem producers of Bud Selig/Rob Manfred (commissioners) and Fox Sports (broadcasters).

There are several reasons why they've been dull, most of them not related to the generally low scores; low scores can be great under other circumstances (see below, 1987). They've been dull because the game itself has become kind of a sideshow. No one is trying to win beyond a perfunctory measure, strategy is limited to things like "when should so-and-so be put in to replace starter X" and "how can we generate a fake applause moment for a guy by taking him out of the game mid-inning." The powers-that-be (i.e. Selig/Manfred and Fox) have made it a regular thing to interrupt the game more than once for some sort of ceremony that would be better done pregame. Managers care more about using all/nearly all of their rosters than scoring runs. Broadcasters care more about having inane banter with players actively in the game than actually, you know, covering the game.

(The principal mid-game interruption this time was for a tribute to the late Hank Aaron, which was a fine subject, but Manfred/Fox blew it anyway. As Craig Calcaterra put it:

In an otherwise nifty tribute to Henry Aaron's 715th home run, they played the audio of Vin Scully calling the shot from back in 1974, but cut it off the last bit. Here was Scully's whole call back in the day:

"What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol.”

Except, during the Aaron tribute last night, MLB decided to cut it off after “. . . for the country and the world." Which is awful, because when you omit "A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol" from Scully's call you completely alter what he was describing as "marvelous." Scully was NOT just broadly marveling. He was marveling at a very specific, very important thing.

But MLB didn't care about that. They no doubt cut off that sentence specifically because they didn't want to anger the white supremacists who run our country and of whom Rob Manfred is an ardent supporter by making note of an important moment in the racial history of the United States. It's the same reason MLB nuked its diversity and inclusion initiatives earlier this year and why so many other businesses and institutions have done the same.

It was an utter disgrace and everyone involved in that decision, be they with Major League Baseball or the Fox network, should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.

Craig noticed this in real time while I did not, as I was too busy talking with friends to pay strict attention to a clip I'd seen many times before.)

I'm not saying the players and even the TV crew shouldn't have fun with the ASG. It's an exhibition game, after all. But instead of the game itself being the showcase focus of a break in the regular season, Home Run Derby has become the thing that gets most of the attention, so much so that, for the first time since Manfred instituted yet another stupid change to the game, the ASG itself was decided by a home-run-hitting contest.

People seemed to like it. Social media posts on it were largely favorable.

I hated it.

Up until the farce of home-run-derby, last night's All-Star Game was easily the most interesting one to take place in at least 15 years. In fact, I'd take it back to 2008, another time when the game was tied after nine innings. But that just meant you kept playing, so the game went on, with drama in ensuing innings and an eventual win for the American League in the 15th. And managers were prepared for extras thanks to the debacle of 2002, when the game was tied after nine, continued for two relatively quick innings, and then abruptly halted because both teams were on their last pitcher (both starters in their regular jobs) and didn't want to make them throw a third inning. That was the game that gave us the iconic image of Commissioner Bud Selig just throwing his hands up in the air in a "well, I guess there's nothing to be done about it" show of utter impotence.

Subsequent to 2002, more pitchers were required (minimum 12 now) and managers re-learned to keep two or so pitchers capable of more than one inning in reserve in case of extras. No need for that now.

Because now any tied ASG is 2002 with a mini-derby to cap thigs off, completely erasing anything from the game itself from memory.

When thinking back on the 2025 ASG will anyone remember Ketel Marte's first-inning double off of Tarik Skubal to plate two? Or Pete Alonso's three-run blast that was a real home run off a real pitch from a real All-Star pitcher? Or Steven Kwan running out an infield chopper to plate the tying run with two out in the ninth? Eh, not many.

What people will recall is Kyle Schwarber hitting three balls over the fence in the "tiebreaker" that were lobbed to him from 35 feet away by a third-base coach.

Tied All-Star Games were the best in my mind because in extra innings they became more real. Rosters had been pared down to normal size, there weren't wholesale substitutions going on any more, strategy came back. My favorite ASG is probably 1987’s, played in Oakland for the first and only time. That game was a pitchers' duel, scoreless through 12 innings with pitchers going multiple frames; of 15 pitchers used, only five of them pitched one inning or less and Lee Smith—closer for the Cubs, used to stints of one-frame-and-done—pitched three innings before giving way to Sid Fernandez, who usually started games, for the 13th. The National League won after one of my favorites, Tim Raines, in his third at-bat since coming up for the first time in the 9th, tripled in two for his third hit of the game with two out in the top of the 13th after Willie McGee lined out in what appeared to be a rally-killing running catch by Dave Winfield. Fernandez would walk his first batter (current Mariner batting coach Kevin Seitzer) and then shut down the next three to lock up a 2-0 NL victory. 

1994 was also good, a ten-inning affair that saw the NL come from behind to tie it at 7-7 in the ninth, survive a 2-on, 1-out threat in the 10th, and win it in the next half when Moises Alou doubled on Pittsburgh's then-Astroturf to drive in Tony Gwynn from first base.

Before 2002, there was some emphasis on actually winning the game; it was minor, but there. Prior to that, through the early 1990s, it was a really big deal who won, at least for many. Back then, of course, the leagues were separate entities. They had their own presidents, their own rules, and were in a loose affiliation with each other as "the major leagues." There was no interleague play except for the World Series and ASG, which contributed to the ASG's specialness.

Now it's just a party that no one remembers any details of the next day, still in a home-run-derby hangover.

Alas.

This concludes today's Grumpy Old Man post.

 

Tagged Baseball, Rob Manfred, Posted on July 16, 2025 at 6:11PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The Neverending Battle

I haven't seen the new Superman film yet, but I will later tonight. I have avoided spoilers on the film itself, wanting to go in cold; will it be good? Could be, I have faith in director James Gunn to treat the character well. But maybe not, I mean, the recent history with DC comics properties on film has been a mixed bag, to put it charitably.

But I am amused by the prerelease backlash the movie has gotten from right-wing blowhards. Republicans, evidently, hate Superman. Not the movie—though they claim to hate that without even seeing it—the character.

Most of the nonsense I've seen relates to the fact that Gunn apparently (again, I have yet to see the movie) celebrates the fact that Superman is an immigrant to America. Immigrants Good! is sure to make 21st Century Republicans blow their tops. Right-wing actor Dean Cain, who once played Superman himself in the 1990s ABC TV series "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," reacted to a comment from Gunn about Superman being an immigrant and the character and film embodying "basic human kindness" by spouting off with incredulity, "How woke is Hollywood going to make this character?"

Putting aside the fact that "woke" is a term originally referring to awareness of one's surroundings and a measure of empathy for others and therefore those railing against it by definition mark themselves as preferring unconsciousness and disdain for others, it's remarkable that even someone like Dean Cain goes immediately to outrage over someone championing kindness.

Right-wing podcasters jumped on the immigrant angle to claim that Gunn's use of this very basic element to the character's origins and almost-90-year history would deter people from seeing the movie. “[Gunn]'s not going to get any more viewers saying this, and he might chase some people away," said podcaster Christian Toto while stoking his anti-immigrant fires. Podcaster Ben Shapiro is offended that, in his view, Gunn has tried to "separate Superman off from America" while podcaster Tim Pool went the other way and said Superman would be "denied birthright citizenship" as an illegal alien.

Fox TV personality Jesse Waters said that, because the phrase "truth, justice, and the American way"—something used only in radio and 1950s TV incarnations of Superman during and after World War II until said satirically in the 1978 Superman film, wherein Lois Lane responds to it by telling Superman "you're going to end up fighting every elected official in this country"—is not used in this movie that therefore Gunn's Superman "fights for truth, justice, and your preferred pronouns," as if everything has to come back to picking on trans folks. Not satisfied with that, Waters went on to say "You know what it says on his cape? 'MS-13.'"

Yes, Jesse Waters equates not overtly espousing support for "The American Way" to being a member of a violent criminal gang of bogeymen.

On the same show as Waters, everyone's favorite advocate for "alternative facts," Kellyanne Conway, complained of the film that, "We don't go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology on to us." No, people go to Fox News for that, obviously. Kellyanne is jealous that someone might be working her corner on the throwing ideology front.

All of this I find entertaining, because it illustrates how threatened the modern Republican party is by anything in popular culture that doesn't reflect their brand of cruelty, preferably wrapped in jingoism. Oh no, people like this thing that shows value in empathy and tolerance and decency! We must demonize it immediately so those same people come to think it's all some sort of psy-op. But not like our propaganda ops, never reveal those.

As for the folks who made the movie, they've responded to the backlash properly. "Somebody needs a hug," said actor Nathon Fillion, who appears in the film. When asked what he thought of the right-wing critics, Gunn himself was succinct: "Screw ’em."

Our pal Craig Calcaterra mentioned this in his newsletter too, and he pointed out how much these modern Republicans would relate to the villains in Superman movies. Noting the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, Craig says, "The first one featured a scheme to nuke California as part of a real estate play; the second one centered on the desecration of the White House and the destruction of the American way of life by an evil whack job who constantly demands fealty from others; and the third one featured a bad guy billionaire fixated on financial domination via technology and the final boss of the movie was some insane, sentient A.I. computer monster thing. The shit's relatable."

Superman, of course, foiled all of those villainous schemes. "No wonder Republicans hate him."

Tagged Politics, Republicans, Superman, Culture, Posted on July 12, 2025 at 8:12PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Civil disobedience (baseball edition)

I have new respect for Jorge Polanco.

The infielder/DH of this year's Seattle Mariners has had a Jeckyll-and-Hyde kind of season, with a scalding-hot .395/.434/.816 line in the first five weeks or so, then .173/.236/.240 over the next two months, then .333/.375/.733 in the last week. He's been a questionable presence in the lineup, to say the least.

But in today's game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Jorge showed me something.

Not with the bat, though he did notch his 1,000th career hit today (congrats). But with his sleeve.

One of Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred's goals in life, apparently, is to put advertising on as much space as he can within the game of baseball. It's truly disgusting how much ad space has proliferated since he assumed the role of Commissioner from the previous guy to hold the title of Worst Commissioner Ever. Ads on the outfield walls are as old as outfield walls, ads on stadium deck facings are somehow not terribly obtrusive. But since Manfred they're everywhere, including on the field itself and the ballplayers' uniforms.

The Mariners were slow to adopt the sleeve ads—this is the first year we've been subject to them—but there they are, bright orange to make them difficult to ignore, on the sleeve facing the center-field camera when one is up to bat (right sleeve for left-hand batters, left sleeve for righty batters).

Today Jorge rolled up his sleeve, obscuring the ad from view.

And why not? I don't know for sure that Polanco was defying the practice for philosophical or political reasons, or indeed making a statement of any kind, but I assume he was. He likely doesn't have anything against the sponsor company, which I will not name because, among other reasons, they aren't paying me anything.

Maybe Polanco figured they weren't paying him anything either, so why show the logo? Except they are paying him something indirectly, sort of, as his employer pays him out of revenue they collect from whatever sources, including sleeve ads. Which is perhaps why he rolled the sleeve down later in the game. Someone probably told him he was going to get in trouble with the team or the Commissioner or something.

What the Mariners get from the sponsor company for this defacement isn't widely known, but it's likely similar to the fee [other sponsor] paid for the naming rights to the ballpark, which is less than the typical salary of a middle reliever. (Most are undisclosed, but the top payment for a team is evidently the $25 million paid annually to the Yankees by their sleeve sponsor. The Cincinnati Reds and Miami Marlins each get $5 million a year for theirs. The average is reportedly around $8 million.) It's peanuts in the grand scheme of things for a Major League club's revenue, making the whole endeavor seem even pettier. Not even counting ad sponsorships, merchandise sales, or any other revenue, the Mariners—a middle-tier club in this regard—reportedly took in $70 million last year in ticket sales + TV and broadcast fees – player payroll. (What do you want to bet Manfred and the team owners start crying poor despite this when it's time to negotiate with the players' union again next year.)

I don't know what Polanco's thinking was either way, on rolling up the sleeve or rolling it down again later, but I was both amused and supportive when I saw the blocking of the ad.

Good on you, Jorge Polanco. Stick it to the Man(fred).

Tagged Baseball, Rob Manfred, Seattle Mariners, Posted on July 6, 2025 at 9:02PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The hot dog bill

Yesterday the Senate passed its version of the Republican cruelty bill, the "One BBB," or as I like to think of it, the "Brutal Bashing of anyone not a Billionaire Act of 2025." It's not a done deal yet, the House now has to decide if they're OK with the Senate's alterations and if not, make their own changes and send it back to the Senate.

But in some form or other, the damn thing is probably going to end up getting signed into law. And whatever form that is, given how the Republicans have behaved thus far, it will be disastrous.

Josh Gondelman compared the bill to a hot dog on the latest Bugle podcast: It might be slathered in appealing-sounding condiments, but it's not good for anyone and the more people find out about what's in it the less they want anything to do with it.

I won't go into the details of all the nasty, mean, and literally lethal aspects of this bill. You can read about them all over the Internet. But in short, it will:

• Transfer more wealth from the lower strata of Americans to the richest of the rich than ever before
• Deprive millions of health insurance and make it untenably expensive for millions more
• Penalize green energy initiatives while rewarding fossil fuel industries and polluters
• Deprive millions of low-income Americans of SNAP benefits (food stamps)
• Cause rural hospitals to severely limit their services or shut down entirely (despite a provision added to get a Senator or two to vote in favor that establishes a $50 billion fund for rural hospitals; that'd fund, what, ten hospitals for a year?)
• Impose new bureaucratic hoops to jump through for those not summarily deprived of services in order to discourage people from using said services
• Revamp Federal student loan policy to be far more onerous and remove eligibility for Pell grants from nearly 10% of applicants
• Make it easier for the wealthy to cheat on their taxes
• Boost funding to the regime's burgeoning Secret Police (via DHS, ICE, and other "border enforcement") to levels higher than an entire branch of the actual US armed services
• Directly increase the Federal deficit by about $2.5 trillion and indirectly increase it by another $2 trillion or so via expected tax non-compliances and by another $1 trillion or so in added annual interest

There is nothing good in it. Nothing. Even the so-called "no tax on tips" provision is a smokescreen that effectively changes nothing (it only applies to cash tips, which nobody ever claimed on their taxes anyway and are an increasingly small share of tips, and has other restrictions as well). It is entirely a gift to the billionaire class and several kicks in the teeth to everyone else. Every Senator and Representative that voted in favor of it should be ostracized.

The fact that even Sen. Lisa Murkowski was bought off to vote in favor of this nightmare (by partly exempting Alaska from SNAP cuts, of all things) is both maddening and befuddling. She is/was one of the few remaining semi-sane Republicans and even she can be strongarmed into siding with the cult with very little effort.

What's really upsetting is that this catastrophic legislation might not be the worst thing in the news this week. The new concentration camp gulag in Florida might get that "honor" just for its brazenness.

It's all so fucking hopeless right now.

I'm going to go play softball tonight, and try, at least for a few hours, not to think about the fact that we're governed by the most evil people to ever hold office in this country.

Posted on July 2, 2025 at 6:46PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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