Oh my

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Now look, please don’t take this as a defense of Roger McDowell. I figure there’s at least some gray area involved and I seriously doubt the Giants fans were completely innocent in the situation, but there’s no place for homophobic slurs at a ballpark or anywhere.

But this video is, well… I don’t even know. It might as well have been produced by The Onion. This man should not have subjected these children to all these lewd acts, which we will now reenact in front of the very same children. It’s going to take a neat trick to convince me that this isn’t more scarring for those little girls than anything McDowell might have said.

I mean, seriously?

“The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention.”

Twitter Q&A-ish thing, part 2

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Here’s a fun fact (that @MLBoorstein already knows I think, but for anyone else who might care about my reading habits): I don’t really read much non-fiction. I like it fine; learning is great and everything. But I do most of my reading immediately before bed, and for some reason when I read non-fiction I don’t sleep well. What’s that about? I guess fiction helps me transition into sleep by distracting me from reality, escapism or whatever. Something like that.

Anyway, I’ve read a lot of vaguely disappointing novels lately. But I enjoyed Joshua Ferris’ The Unnamed and Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin.

My opinion on donuts is that they’re amazing. Sad story: When I was leaving Miami, on my way to the airport around 6 a.m., I stopped in a Starbucks to get coffee and a donut. And the donut sucked. It’s hard to put my finger on why exactly, but the cake part was too sweet and the glaze was too thick and the whole thing got me feeling sick, to the point where I actually had to stop eating the donut — something I’m not certain I’ve ever done before. Then, about a mile further down the road, I passed a brightly lit standalone Krispy Kreme with the hot doughnuts light flashing. I had a plane to catch so I couldn’t stop, plus I wasn’t in the mood for doughnuts after that terrible donut. But man, what misfortune.

Krispy Kreme doughnuts are incredible, but if we’re using the broadest possible definition of the pastry I’d say my favorites are the beignets from Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans. As for New York City, I really like the Donut Pub (together at last!) on 14th and 7th, and I’ve still yet to try the famous Doughnut Plant on the Lower East Side that everyone raves about. Hard to get down there in the morning hours.

Well if it’s a sandwich it’s Ricobene’s breaded steak, no doubt. But truthfully — and I think I may have answered a similar question before — if I had to choose a last meal it’d probably be my mom’s ravioli with meat sauce. It’s really, really good.

Twitter Q&A-type thing

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Believe how? Believe they’re a playoff contender or believe they’re better than a 5-13 team?

I figured the Mets for 84 wins before the season and I’m sticking with that now. If anything, the awful start should serve as a reminder to everyone about the trappings of small sample sizes. Yes, they looked terrible. But teams playing terribly always look terrible, and plenty of teams better than this one have endured 5-13 stretches.

It got really frustrating when people started pulling out the 1962 Mets talk, suggesting — seriously — that this club could challenge that one for the all-time loss record. It’s like everyone forgot the Mets have David Wright and Jose Reyes, among others. And yeah, a handful of good players does not a great team make — we learned that under Omar Minaya — but look at how awful the 1962 Mets were. Every guy in the Mets’ current rotation would have been the ace of that team’s staff. They combined for an Omir Santosian 82 OPS+.

The Mets are not going to win every game for the rest of the season. There will be more bumps along the way. But they don’t have a bad club and they never did. It’s easy to be blinded by all the negativity coming from large portions of the media and fanbase, but the Mets have a deep and pretty good lineup that should score a lot of runs. I’m not optimistic about Johan Santana’s return, so unless Jenrry Mejia is ready to become a good big-league starter by the end of the season  the pitching should be shaky all year. But again, not nearly as awful as it looked in the first couple of weeks.

Here’s the link, since you can’t click through from that image.

What does “Designated Kisser” even mean? Actually, wow, I have so many questions.

For example: A) Is this supposed to be, I don’t know, sexy? Does anyone think this is sexy? B) Do they make underwear with Mets logos and quasi-racy nonsensical slogans for dudes? Because if not, that’s just sexism brother.

Also, I struggle to figure out which is the front and which is the back of women’s underwear. You’d think the bigger side would be the ass side but it doesn’t always work that way. I don’t really want to write about women’s underwear anymore. This is all making me very uncomfortable.

I’m going to vote for Jermaine Copeland, receiver for the L.A. Xtreme.

The week before the XFL started, I saw a headline on ESPN.com that said, “Jermaine Copeland excited for the XFL season.” So, wondering who Jermaine Copeland was and why I should care about his feelings on the XFL season, I clicked through. This is how the article started:

“Jermaine Copeland is excited for the XFL season,” said Los Angeles Xtreme reciever Jermaine Copeland.

Still funny to me. I don’t know if that makes him hardcore, and there’s no way to guarantee that talking in the third person wasn’t written in to XFL contracts, but he’s basically the only XFL player I can remember besides He Hate Me and He Hate Me seemed too obvious an answer.

That one’s easy. Taco Bell is not Latino food. Taco Bell is Taco Bell.

I love Mexican food, but I never go get Taco Bell when I’m in the mood for Mexican food, just like I never get Wendy’s because I’m in the mood for a cheeseburger. I’ve never had actual Mexican food that tastes anything like Taco Bell, and most Mexican places I know don’t even have seasoned ground beef as an option.

And I know people lash out at fast food on principle because it’s corporate and it’s bad for us and all that. But Taco Bell is delicious, convenient and cheap. I don’t owe anybody anything; the burden is on every restaurateur who’s not Glen Bell to come up with something that’s a better value if they want to tear me away from my Cheesy Gordita Crunch.

 

Selling the drama

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I remember being disappointed when the Jets drafted Vernon Gholston, thinking he was a mere workout wonder, the type of guy that would never pan out. He didn’t. But then I remember being disappointed when they drafted D ‘Brickashaw Ferguson, thinking they were favoring a local guy over the skill-position players they needed. Now he is great, a cornerstone of a very good offensive line.

I don’t remember thinking much of anything when they picked Darrelle Revis, just sort of shrugging or something. Now he is one of the best players in the NFL.

Tonight the Jets will draft some guy, and some people will love it and others will hate it. Analysts in ridiculous suits will bark that he is a great pick or a not-so-great pick, then show 30 seconds’ worth of game footage to justify their stances.

And yeah, maybe some of those guys really put in the time and effort researching and watching footage and figuring out which young athletes seem most likely to become productive professional football players, but no one really knows. Where were the draft gurus on Tom Brady? Kurt Warner?

Of athletes in all the major sports, football players’ success is most dependent on their teammates and their coaches. There are likely running backs with all the skills to to succeed in the NFL who will go undrafted tonight because they had crappy offensive lines or played in systems that didn’t feature their talents. Quarterbacks will be overlooked because they had receivers that couldn’t run routes. Linebackers will be ignored because they played behind tackles that couldn’t prevent opposing linemen from reaching the second level.

It’s all a crapshoot. Teams make a series of educated guesses, then in September we find out if they were good ones. But the bluster around the draft has grown, for me at least, intolerable.

The NFL should be credited for a hype machine that can turn even the announcing of the schedule into prime-time TV, but there’s a breaking point. And a multiple-day American Idol buzzfest scheduled up against actual Major League Baseball games — things that count, real sports — is more than I can bear.

 

Mets flying high

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Here are photos of airborne Mets in last night’s game, courtesy of the Associated Press:

And here’s Murph, just because:

About Murph: Plenty of people were killing him last night for the run the Nationals scored in the 8th inning. Jason Bay attempted a sliding catch on an Adam LaRoche pop-up but it bounced off the heel of his glove, then Murphy wasn’t quick to cover second and LaRoche advanced.

First off, let’s not forget that Bay is hardly a rangy left fielder and that many Major Leaguers would have made the play pretty easily and without sliding. I suppose it’s easier to blame Murphy for a mental error than Bay for lacking the physical ability to make the play, but it’s not as if it was guaranteed that LaRoche would have been out at second even if Murphy were hugging the bag from the beginning. Also, Murphy was not responsible for the passed ball that moved LaRoche to third, allowing pinch runner Brian Bixler to score on a sacrifice fly.

Anyway, point is Murph is crushing the ball. All players make errors and we’re going to pick out and pick on Murphy’s because we have it in our heads that he’s a bad defender and we know he’s playing a new position. But when he’s hitting like this, you have to tolerate the mishaps knowing that he’s still producing more runs at the plate than he’s costing the team in the field.

Six in a row, huh? Probably shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, but at least this will quiet the 120-loss set.