Friday, April 04, 2014

Trash or Treasure?

While cleaning my house for sale, I have come across some very old items. Instead of deciding whether to throw them out, I will leave it up to the Poopheads.

First item up for bids, a picture of The Concierge cut out of the Staten Island Advance in the mid 1990s.



Wednesday, April 02, 2014

How I Met Your Dead Mother

And Ended Up With the Woman I Really Wanted the Entire Time

I really don’t know how to feel about the series finale of “How I Met Your Mother”. So let me start with a big sweeping generalization.

Women ruin everything, but especially sitcoms. When sitcoms are designed only for men they are funny. When sitcoms are designed to appeal to the female audience too, they become sappy and every couple that’s “supposed” to be together ends up together. It may be hard to remember this now, but “Friends” was actually funny when it started. But then the female fans started to clamor for certain characters to be coupled with other characters and it became an incestuous mess.

I firmly believe that’s what happened here. The female fans, and probably the female writers, and maybe some of the males, wanted Ted to end up with Robin in the end. It just felt right.

I actually kind of agree, untilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll they called her Aunt Robin for the first time. [I thought that happened in the season one series finale, evidently it was the first episode, but still my point remains]. Once they did that, they should have thrown the whole idea out the window. I know they didn’t want it to be too obvious (people would have bitched), but if it felt right, it would have felt right.

And if we’re looking at it from the sappy point of view why not make Ted and Tracy a happy couple who shares their life together. That’s how the show started, Ted running through all the wrong women because he believed in love and that he would eventually find the right one, the love of his life he was looking for.

I loved the scene when he finally met my mother under the yellow umbrella at the train station. And they talked about all their near misses, and all the luck that brought them together.



As I was watching I thought this would have worked out really well. Lily in her white whale costume, Robin walking out the door, and instead of Robin being Ted’s white whale. Ted became Robin’s. The symmetry would have been beautiful.



But they ruined the ending. It could have been beautiful, he went through all the trials and tribulations of looking for love and finally found the one perfect woman for him. Why did they have to kill her off and get him together with Robin? Girlz is dumb.

There have been many series finales (Sopranos and Seinfeld come to mind) that people hated because they weren’t true to the show.

Note: I sort of felt this way about “Breaking Bad

But that’s bullshit. Sopranos was a mob show, we were never promised some deep look into the makeup of the American family. How I Met Your Mother is a comedy. Its only mission is to be funny. I think the finale failed on that point a little, because too many sad things happened (Barney-Robin divorce, deterioration of the gang and of course my mother’s death) and it wasn’t all that funny.

But I don’t think they degraded the entire series by making it about my mother who in the end didn’t necessarily turn out to be the real love of Ted’s life. Nor do I think the entire final season was a waste just because it focused on a wedding for a marriage that didn’t last.

My problem with the final season and especially the final episode is that they weren’t all that funny.

But as a whole, I do feel a little bit good about the way the series ended, with Ted and Robin and the blue French horn as the final image of a show I really enjoyed for a really long time.

Boy Meets World Meets Samuel L. Jackson

Another brilliant segment from "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon"
Here is Samuel L. Jackson doing a slam poem about "Boy Meets World" and perfectly summing up the entire series in 3 and a half minutes:



I wonder if Samuel L. is a BMW fan, if not he really practiced and studied this because he got everything perfect including the inflection on the "Fee-nay" call.

Song of the Week

"It's Alright" - The Impressions
One of my proudest moments came when this song was on the radio and I asked Mrs. Poop who the lead singer was.
After initially refusing to guess she came up with the correct answer "Curtis Mayfield."
Some of the things I've tried to teach her have sunk in.

)

Tuesday, April 01, 2014

It Only Took One Day For the First Gruesome Injury of the Season

Angels hitting coach and 1979 AL MVP (despite finishing 24th in the AL in WAR) Don Baylor was kneeling at home plate to catch the ceremonial first pitch from Angels legend Vladimir Guerrero, and this happened:



Diagnosis is a broken femur. Not quite sure how that happened. But the sickest part is not when he gets hurt, it's when he tries to stand and collapses back to the ground.

I'm not sure Guerrero knew immediately how serious the injury was. It looks like he is laughing.

If you are ever going to click on tag and scroll through old posts of a similar nature "Gruesome sports injuries" is the one for you.

Listen to Vin Scully Describe an Earthquake

Even an earthquake sounds pleasant and relaxing when described by legendary Dodgers announcer Vin Scully.

Monday, March 31, 2014

Late Game Strategies

Sometimes you just get beat by a good player making a great play. That’s what happened to Michigan against Kentucky. Aaron Harrison drained a 3 to win while being closely guarded.



But there might have been a way to avoid that result.
Here’s the situation, Michigan ball, down 2, 56 seconds left.
Michigan did the prudent thing by trying to get a quick shot, which Stauskas missed.
Here’s where they screwed up, twice they got offensive rebounds and kicked them out for rushed 3s. They didn’t need a 3 trailing by 2, and they certainly didn’t need the hurried jacks they settled for. It worked out because Jordan Morgan tipped one in (it actually looked like Julius Randle did) to the time game.

But Kentucky had plenty of time and Harrison hit the game winning shot.

I think once the shot clock was turned off (under 35 seconds to go in the game) Michigan should have held the ball for a better shot, with less time left. It seems to me, if you miss a shot there, no matter how much time is left, you have very little chance to win.
So if you’re best hope is overtime or a game-winning , it’s better to do that as late in the clock as possible to prevent Kentucky from getting the ball back with a legit opportunity to score.

2014 Baseball Season Predictions

NL East: Washington Nationals
NL Central: St. Louis Cardinals
NL West: San Francisco Giants
NL Wild Card: Cincinnati Reds over Los Angeles Dodgers
NLCS: Washington Nationals over San Francisco Giants

AL East: Tampa Bay Rays
AL Central: Cleveland Indians
AL West: Texas Rangers
AL Wild Card: New York Yankees over Anaheim Angels
ALCS: Tampa Bay Rays over Anaheim Angels

World Series: Washington Nationals over Tampa Bay Rays

NL MVP: Bryce Harper
AL MVP: Mike Trout
NL Cy Young: Steve Strasburg
AL Cy Young: David Price
NL ROY: George Springer
AL ROY: Masahiro Tanaka
NL MOY: Bruce Bochy
AL MOY: Buck Showalter
NL CPOY: BJ Upton
AL COPY: Josh Hamilton