September 20th, 2006 → 8:23 am @ Seth Mnookin
(This info comes courtesy of the Very Short List, a soon-to-be-launched daily email update of “the best entertainment, media, and culture. … Each weekday, VSL subscribers get to read about a single recommended gem.” VSL hasn’t officially been launched yet — I’ll include info when it is — but the selections they’ve had so far in their testing phase has been great. Oh, also: it’s free.)
Since my post about Dylan’s “Theme Time Radio Hour” on XM satellite radio, I’ve gotten plenty of emails asking how people can hear said show without signing up for XM. Now there’s a way: AOL has started offering free streaming of Dylan’s show via AOL radio. You’ll need an AOL signon or an AIM screen name; if you don’t already have one, you can get one for free. The show airs Wednesday mornings at 10 am and noon, Fridays at 6 pm, and Sundays at 8 am and 8 pm. To find it, go to the XM menu on the AOL radio page and click on “Deep Tracks” at any of the appointed times; the show will start streaming automatically.
Post Categories: Bob Dylan
September 19th, 2006 → 11:24 am @ Seth Mnookin
Poor Murray Chass. The Red Sox aren’t playing the Yankees again this season, thereby depriving him of his favorite subject; that means that he’ll have to write completely nonsensical columns about other subjects.
Like the Mets! In today’s column, written the morning after the Mets clinched their first division championship since 1988, Chass manages to find a raincloud in the midst of the Champagne celebrations. “When is losing good for business?” Chass asks in the lead of his piece. “When the Mets are on the verge of clinching their first division title since 1988 and their fans buy tickets hoping to be at the game when they do.” The Mets, Chass claims, “sold more than 10,000 extra tickets for last night’s game at Shea Stadium because they had lost all three weekend games in Pittsburgh and still needed one victory to wrap up first place in the National League East.” (Chass actually implied the team might have considered losing some more games in order to sell some more tickets: “No one can blame the Mets for trying to make a few extra bucks.”)
Wow: 10,000 extra tickets. That is impressive. It also seems to have absolutely no relation to reality. Last night’s attendance was 46,729; in Chass-land, that means the Mets sell only around 36,000 tickets on nights when the team is not on the verge of clinching their division. In fact, in the entire second half of the season, the Mets’ home attendance has dipped below 45,000 only nine times, has been under 40,000 thrice, and under 35,000 only once (August 18 versus Colorado).
This completely made up piece of information transitions into an extended riff on the Mets’ problems with left-handed pitching (“Now that they are there, though, the Mets have to deal with a slice of reality. They have recently had trouble beating left-handed pitchers”) before explaining why the losses against lefthanders actually have nothing to do with the opposing teams’ starters (“According to Elias Sports Bureau, in the 25 games started by right-handers before last night, the Mets’ starting pitchers had a 3.74 earned run average. … In the 19 games that left-handers started, the Mets’ starting pitchers had a 7.18 E.R.A.”).
I think I finally have the formula down: Start out with an incorrect anecdote; awkwardly transition to a totally seperate subject; then explain why the reader should ignore everything just written about said seperate subject. (At least the Times seems to realize Chass isn’t going to lure new readers to the paper; under the paper’s Times Select program, some of the paper’s columnists are put behind a wall, necessitating on-line readers to pay for the columns separately. As you can see from the front of the Sports Section, Harvey Araton is one of those columnists today; Murray Chass is not.)
EDIT: Even Chass’s colleagues at the Times seem to be refuting his claims of 10,000 extra tickets being sold. As Jack Curry wrote in yesterday’s paper, the Mets had sold 40,000 tickets for Monday’s game as of Sunday night; it appears as if about 2,000 of these were sold after the Mets lost to the Pirates, which would mean the most ticket sales could have increased is 8,000. This, of course, doesn’t take into account Mets’ normal day-of-game sale numbers, which could be 500 or could be 8,000; we’ll never know, which isn’t surprising: the Times has a track record of not providing context when it’s needed to make sense of a story.
Post Categories: Murray Chass & New York Times
September 18th, 2006 → 2:16 pm @ Seth Mnookin
This morning, someone asked me if I felt like a more informed observer as a result of my research while working on FTM. It was a tough question to answer: on the one hand, I now feel as if there are hundreds of previously unknown subplots unfolding when I watch a game; on the other hand, I’m also much more aware of how much I don’t know.
Take David Ortiz’s at bats. He has, as anyone who has seen an inning or two of a Sox game can tell you, been known to voice his displeasure at called strikes he feels are out of the zone. When you’re watching the game on TV, it’s pretty easy to tell if Ortiz’s complaints are justified (as they were in the second game of yesterday’s doubleheader); it’s impossible to tell whether Ortiz is the subject of more crappy calls than most. But last year, I sitting with some of the team’s baseball operations crew at Fenway when Ortiz started shaking his head and barking at an umpire. “Just shut up, David,” one of the guys said. I asked if Ortiz complained more than most. “He bitches more than anyone in the league. He also gets more crappy calls than anyone in the league.” (This wasn’t conjecture; it was actually something the Sox had looked into.) And so it goes, goes round again: Ortiz complains, umps get pissed (consciously or subconsciously), he gets squeezed, and he complains some more. The good news: it doesn’t seem to be adversely affecting his hitting much.
In other news, the Sox took three out of four from the Yankees, and there was plenty to be happy about over the weekend: the continuation of gutsy pitching performances from unlikely starters; the joy of watching Dustin Pedroia and David Murphy get their sea legs; a ray of hope that perhaps Coco Crisp will actually be a decent center fielder (as impressive as his well-timed leap to rob Posada of a home run was, I was just as happy with the good jump Crisp got on the ball); and Mike Timlin learning how to close. (Again.) Don’t tune out yet, folks: the Sox won’t be playing in October, but that doesn’t mean baseball isn’t the best game out there.
Post Categories: David Ortiz & Oblique references to Joe Jackson songs
September 17th, 2006 → 10:39 am @ Seth Mnookin
It’s been twenty years since Kurt Andersen and Graydon Carter founded the late, great Spy magazine, and since then, it’s not as if Andersen’s been a shrinking violet. He was the editor in chief of New York. He co-founded Inside.com. He’s been a columnist for Time and The New Yorker.
And he’s currently a columnist for New York, hosts “Studio 360” for Public Radio International, and has a novel coming out inthe spring.
You’d think that, with this resume, there’d be someone at the Times — if not the writer, then a story editor, and if not a story editor, a copy editor — who knows that Andersen doesn’t spell his name with an ‘o,’ as in ‘Anderson.’ And yet in a story in today’s Style section about the just-launched Good magazine,” there’s this quote:
“I was really surprised at how much I wanted to read it, and how good it looked on a first glance of a first issue,” said Kurt Anderson, a former editor and founder of magazines, including Spy and Inside.Com. “First issues aren’t necessarily great, but I was impressed by how it looked, the writers they got to write. It’s an interesting idea. Lord knows if they can make a go of it commercially.”
A quick online search shows the Times has made this mistake at least eight times since Andersen founded Spy. Still, he shouldn’t feel too badly: as recently April, the Times was still getting the name of the paper’s founding family, the Ochs-Sulzbergers, wrong. And they’ve only owned the paper for 110 years.
Post Categories: Kurt Andersen & New York Times
September 15th, 2006 → 6:14 pm @ Seth Mnookin
The headline to Keith Law’s column on the woes of the Red Sox: “Prescription starts with more pitching.” (The full column’s only available to ESPN Insiders, but you don’t need to read it to get the point.)
Accompanying the piece, right next to a bit about how the Sox should play Wily Mo Peña as much as possible, is the following graphic:
Wily Mo Peña
Starting pitcher (Emphasis mine)
Boston Red Sox
Profile
2006 SEASON STATISTICS
GM AVG HR RBI OBP SLG
72 .307 11 41 .348 .528
I hear he has a helluva curve.
Post Categories: ESPN.com & Wily Mo Pena
September 15th, 2006 → 10:54 am @ Seth Mnookin
First things first: thanks to everyone who came out last night to hear me talk about Feeding the Monster at Professor Thoms’. Chris, the always delightful man behind the bar, has some more copies of the book on stock; if you want to get a signed copy, pick one up from Chris during the Yankees series this weekend and I’ll come in and (inscrutably) personalize for you. (Line of the night, coming from Chris after I signed a book for his friend: “What in the world does that say?”) PT’s is at 219 Second Ave, south of 14th Street on the west side of the street.
A couple of other things about last night: I know fewer people want to watch the Sox these days. On the one hand I understand that; on the other hand it baffles me. I’ll never tire of watching baseball, and will never tire of watching the Sox. I love how Pedroia turns the double play; I love how Youkilis is perfecting the “what the fuck!” both hands on the helmet look; I even love watching lefty Lenny. I do not, however, love watching Mike Timlin pitch the ninth. Apparently, the Globe isn’t much enamored of that, either: in today’s game write-up, there’s almost no information about the actual game itself, as most of the article is dedicated to a discussion of whether or not Manny will play again this year. (My bet: nope.) In case you’re actually wondering what happened in Baltimore, Ian Browne has the skinny on redsox.com. A quick summary: Ortiz is getting walked a lot without Manny in the lineup; Mark Loretta is following in the Todd Walker-Mark Bellhorn tradition of unlikely offensive forces coming out of 2B (even though Loretta was at first last night, with Youks in left); Timlin gave up a first-batter double in the bottom of the ninth with the Sox clinging to a one-run lead before escaping from a 1st and 3rd, one out situation.
Finally, judging from last night’s Q/A, there’s still a whole lot of interest in the shortstop formerly known as Nomah. So here are the three interview outtakes I printed back in June:
* Nomar on his Achilles injury and 2004
* Nomar’s not always that thrilled about Boston
and finally:
* Nomar on being traded to the Cubs
There’s lots, lots more about Nomar in the book — and lots more about the enigma known as Manny, the other hot topic last night — so if, for some odd, unknowable reason, you haven’t picked one up yet, do it now. (Providence/Boston are folks can do so next week and have me sign said book at one of my appearances.)
Post Categories: Feeding the Monster Outtakes & Feeding the Monster Readings & Manny Ramirez & Nomar Garciaparra
September 15th, 2006 → 10:33 am @ Seth Mnookin
Yesterday, I published a piece on Slate about the decades-long, morbid fascination with the murder of Elizabeth Short, a.k.a the Black Dahlia. You should check it out: it’s not everyday you can write about masturbation, incest, serial killers, and pornographic fantasies for an outlet owned by the Washington Post Company. I didn’t talk much about Brian De Palma’s new Dahlia movie, so here are some thoughts about that…
In 1997, Curtis Hansen turned James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential into the best L.A.-based noir since Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, and perhaps the best movie of the 1990’s. Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell, and Kim Basinger turned in some the best performances of their careers; Russell Crowe and (to a lesser extent) Guy Pearce announced their arrival as major talents; and even role players like Danny DeVito used their skills to further a wonderful, and wonderfully complex, storyline.
Brian DePalma, who hasn’t had a hit since ’96’s Mission: Impossible, has spent his entire career in the shadows of Martin Scorsese and Stephen Spielberg — Speilberg’s Jaws came out in ’75; DePalma’s Carrie and Scorsese’s Taxi Driver in ’76, and it’s been downhill for DePalma almost ever since. He likely thought he could do as well as Hansen with Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia — starring Scarlet Johansson, Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Mia Kirshner, and Hillary Swank — which was released yesterday. Boy, was he wrong.
At his best, Ellroy combines William Burroughs’s hallucinatory vision, Hunter Thompson’s evocation of a runaway freight train, Raymond Chandler’s preoccupation with private morality (and his staccato prose), and Jim Thompson’s nihilistic obsession with pointless and bloody violence to create a deliciously affected orgy of lowbrow, high-gloss brain-twisting thrillers. Dahlia, the most personal of Ellroy’s novels, combines these aspects to create a shockingly raw final product. (Ellroy’s Black Dahlia is a stand-in for his murdered mother; I talk all about that in the Slate piece. There’s plenty of biography mixed in even beyond the Geneva Ellroy-Elizabeth Short angle. To wit: Ellroy’s first sexual contact was when he and a friend began “jacking each other off” with Playboys spread out in front of them. Worried that he was a “fruit,” Ellroy eventually challenged the boy to a boxing match. One of the opening scenes in Dahlia is a boxing match between the two main protagonists, men who become partners and spar over the affection of the same tainted woman.)
DePalma’s Dahlia almost completely eviscerates the tortured struggles and soul-killing obsessions that fuel Ellroy’s novel. All of the novel’s nuance and complexity has been chopped out of the script, ineptly adapted by War of the Worlds screenwriter Josh Friedman (but beautifully rendered by cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond). Johansson and Hartnett are actors capable of disaffected inscrutability; they’re not so good at portraying the evolution of people slowly hardened by a rising tide of senseless destruction. Eckhart, perfectly enjoyable in comedic roles, looks silly trying to play a Benzedrine-addled, coldly calculating cop. The film’s depiction of the Dahlia’s murder, which features Fiona Shaw channeling Gloria Swanson channeling Norma Desmond, is pure camp. Most crucially, De Palma’s movie alters the book’s ambiguous denouement, opting for cinematic neatness rather than a more open-ended, and more challenging, conclusion. In Ellroy’s Dahlia, the book’s narrator ends up entering into a conspiracy with his lover, who also happens to be Short’s killer and doppelganger. In De Palma’s screen version, he blows her away at point blank range.
I’ve been looking forward to De Palma’s Dahlia for over six months; with the absence of Teamocil in my life, I need to find some pop culture distractions besides the stilted Pam and Jim love affair. Alas; it looks like it’s back to Behind the Music for me.
Post Categories: James Ellroy & Oblique references to Arrested Development & Oblique references to the Office & Slate & The Black Dahlia
