Your chance to electrocute David Blaine

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David Blaine, the magician and endurance artist, is ready for more pain. With the help of the Liberty Science Center, a chain-mail suit and an enormous array of Tesla electrical coils, he plans to stand atop a 20-foot-high pillar for 72 straight hours, without sleep or food, while being subjected to a million volts of electricity….

When Mr. Blaine performs “Electrified” on a pier in Hudson River Park, the audience there as well as viewers in London, Beijing, Tokyo and Sydney, Australia, will take turns controlling which of the seven coils are turned on, and at what intensity. They will also be able to play music by producing different notes from the coils….

“It’s like having your whole body surrounded by static electricity, the kind that makes your hair stand up on end,” Mr. Blaine said afterward. “It doesn’t hurt, but it’s strange. I have no idea what 72 hours of exposure to these electromagnetic forces will do to the electrons in my cells and the neurons in my brain.” One prediction he will make: the 27-pound Faraday suit will feel a lot heavier after a couple of sleepless days standing on a pillar.

 – John Tierney, N.Y. Times.

Why? Just… why?

That said, I’ll probably check this out because Tesla stuff.

Tim Tebow captured biting the hand that feeds him tons and tons of attention

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Deadspin’s got an investigation and subsequent conclusion on some photos Tweeted by a girl who wound up in a hotel room with Mark Sanchez and Tim Tebow, which it turned out was a totally innocent meet-up related to a charity event. What’s more interesting is the shirt on Tim Tebow:

That is presumably to mock ESPN’s East Coast bias, which has now pretty decidedly been replaced by its Tim Tebow bias. But then I guess you could argue Tebow doesn’t want all the coverage and has a right to wear whatever funny t-shirt he wants, or you could just say screw it and join the rest of society in admiring the way he fills it out.

Taco Bell Tuesday

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Not just Taco Tuesday, Taco Bell Tuesday.

Chipotle gets Einhorned: Remember David Einhorn, hedge-fund honcho and would-be part owner of the Mets? He’s rich enough that the stock market actually reacts to things he says, which is… please David Einhorn send me a million dollars. Anyway, at some sort of rich-guy conference this morning, he announced that he was short-selling Chipotle stock largely because of Taco Bell’s Cantina Menu.

Einhorn said, among other things, “Taco Bell has started to eat Chipotle’s lunch,” which is clever. At one point, according to Barron’s:

He then sang “Come to Taco Taco Taco Taco Taco Taco Taco Bell.” Really.

Needless to say, Einhorn’s behavior prompted some hand-wringing and age-old Taco Bell jokes from some Twitterers, but he was laughing all the way to the bank (and stopping at the drive-thru on the way) when Chipotle’s stock dropped five percent.

I don’t really know what else to say. I don’t even own a stock, but if I did I’d probably want to buy up both Chipotle and Taco Bell because they’re both delicious and why not hedge my bets? Note: Do not take stock advice from TedQuarters.

I think Twitterer @RTDaniels put it best:

https://twitter.com/RTDaniels/status/253158919801810944

That’s Gordita, buddy. But yeah.

Taco Bells to glow in real life and not just in our hearts and minds: Remember that new Taco Bell prototype discussed here a couple of weeks ago? It turns out it’s going to glow purple in the night.

The design’s most striking feature is a layer of narrow black metal slats covering one of the building’s four tan exterior walls. At night, LED lights shine Taco Bell purple light out from between the wall and the slats, which are spaced out slightly to let light through.

“As night falls, and as late night begins, we really celebrate that light-night feeling with a purple glow that comes from behind the slat wall,” [Taco Bell’s director of concept development Dan] Roberts said. “You will be able to see it from a quarter-mile away. This building is truly going to be best on block, it will truly be a beacon in the night.”

So that’s the greatest and best thing I’ve ever heard. Also of note: Taco Bell has a “director of concept development,” and I have a new life goal. Just not sure I’ll be able to match the work of my predecessor, the guy who came up with the Glowing Taco Bell idea.

Kansas State coach Bill Snyder loves Taco Bell: I’m not a huge college football guy, but I just became a Kansas State fan. Bill Snyder’s all right by me.

Taco Bell searching for media agency: Honestly, I have no idea what they’re looking for or why because I got bored by the article about a paragraph in, but I’d like to throw my name in the ring anyway. It starts with passion for the product, Taco Bell. And I feel this is just the tunnel I’ve been seeking toward my career in Taco Bell concept development.

 

 

Speaking of Edgardo Alfonzo…

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You know the cliche about how every baseball game brings something you’ve never seen before? Check this out — click the picture to play it:

Of note: Curtis Granderson realizes it’s hilarious but Chad Jenkins acts like it’s no big deal and walks toward the dugout. That’s got to be adrenaline, right? There was just a baseball rocketing in the general direction of his head, so you can excuse him for maintaining a straight face. Otherwise, Chad Jenkins just has no appreciation at all for the absurd.

For what it’s worth, I saw the aforementioned Edgardo Alfonzo do something vaguely similar in 2000 while I was working at Shea. They made vendors show up a few hours before game time to get assignments, then we had nothing to do until about a half hour the first pitch. So I’d always sit somewhere in the Field Level seats and read while the Mets took batting practice and the women of Queens held up signs with their phone numbers on them proclaiming themselves “The Future Mrs. Piazza.” (That actually happened.)

Anyway, one time Alfonzo was at second base while some lefty hitter hit a sinking line drive about five feet to his left and a little over his head. Alfonzo took a step and sort of lazily tossed his glove at it, and the glove somehow actually caught the ball in flight and held it in the webbing until they hit the ground.

The best part about it, to me, was that Alfonzo — by then already a five-year Major League veteran — expressed about as much excitement as I would have if I did the same thing. He shot his arms up in the air, yelled out, and started looking around to see if anyone else had seen. When none of his teammates acknowledged it (there’s a lot going on during BP, and it was entirely possible no one had seen), I applauded as loudly as I could from 10 rows deep behind the Mets’ dugout. Then, playing it cool, he sort of nodded in my direction and collected his glove like it was no big deal.

Edgardo Alfonzo rules.

Foo Fighters guitar guy Pat Smear looks a little like Edgardo Alfonzo

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It seemed more apparent during the Global Citizen citizen concert at Central Park on Saturday, but there’s definitely some resemblance there:

It’s no Kruk/Loaf but I like the comp because they sort of fill similar roles — the “shadow hero,” to quote Gary Cohen’s description of Alfonzo. Remember when Nirvana showed up on Unplugged and there was some fourth guy in Nirvana? And you were like, “hey, who the hell is that guy? He’s pretty good at the guitar.” Then he went on to a short stint with the Foo Fighters, left amicably then returned amicably a few years later because it seems like the Foo Fighters do most everything amicably.

As for that: I’m not a huge fan of the band or anything, but their performance in Central Park was awesome. Turns out if you can maintain a two-decade career as a rock star like Dave Grohl has, you’ve probably got some kind of charisma. Also, Dave Grohl’s got about the most impressive discography of any rock musician there is.

On Trout vs. Cabrera, briefly

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Fun fact: If you space out in high school history class and the teacher calls on you to answer some question you did not hear, always say, “Nationalism.” It’s better than even money that’s an acceptable response. Trust me, I spent a lot of time spaced out in high school history class, paying just enough attention to learn that history textbooks will chalk up every international conflict to nationalism, among other things.

In high school, I always thought that seemed ridiculous. Really? People will go to actual war over my side vs. your side silliness? Civilized people? My know-it-all teenage self figured it first for an oversimplification, then a needless complication, something that is really true only in high school history class.

Then I tuned into some of the AL MVP debate online and it didn’t seem so hard to believe.

I’m kidding, obviously, and I know that everyone currently arguing for and against the MVP cases of Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera realizes that MVP Awards are a frivolity, like sports themselves, and only merit such heated rhetoric within the narrow confines of baseball chatter. And sometime in December when it all has passed, the staunchest Troutite and the loudest Cabreratista might run into each other somewhere and say, “oh hey, that was great fun, both players are excellent, baseball is wonderful,” and share a beer and a hearty bro-hug.

I’m only saying that I don’t really care to pour my teacup of kerosene on an already raging inferno, and that most every argument — good, bad, ironic, angry, etc. — has already been made for both players, plus the backlash to those arguments and the backlash to the backlash. And the season isn’t even over yet.

Anyway, that’s all a lengthy build-up to a rather obvious point: Mike Trout is ridiculously awesome.

Mike Trout deserves to win the AL MVP this year, I believe. But if he doesn’t, he’ll probably get at least one eventually.

By baseball-reference’s standards, Trout is in his age-20 season. He has, to date, a 156 career park- and league-adjusted OPS+ over 765 plate appearances. That’s extraordinary. Here is the complete list of baseball players who put up an OPS+ above 140 over at least 500 plate appearances by their age-20 seasons:

Ted Williams
Mike Trout
Ty Cobb
Mel Ott
Mickey Mantle
Frank Robinson
Jimmie Foxx
Rogers Hornsby

Besides Trout, every single one of those guys is a Hall of Famer. Every one. All but Ott won an MVP award at least once, and Ott got totally jobbed in 1938. The average for non-Trout players on that list is 1.9 MVP Awards (or their equivalent), and both Hornsby and Cobb dominated their leagues in long stretches in which no such award existed. Also, Trout plays a premium defensive position exceptionally well and steals tons of bases without getting caught. In short, if Trout turns out anything like as good as the historical precedents suggest, he should win plenty of MVP Awards by the time he’s through. If Trout’s as good as we hope — and this is a terribly heavy thing to put on a 21-year-old — he’s going to be an inner-circle Hall of Famer.

Cabrera, meanwhile, is no slouch himself. And though the Triple Crown, like everything else, is a frivolity, it’s nonetheless a rare one. And while neither batting average nor RBI is necessarily a great stat with which to assess offensive talent, you’re never going to find a Triple Crown winner who’s not a transcendent hitter. So Cabrera is that. It seems like he has somehow sort of flown under the radar despite being the second best hitter in baseball for most of his career, and if it takes a novelty like the Triple Crown to make him a household name, then great. Guy’s awesome, let us not forget.

Which is all to say, I guess, that it’s not really worth getting so furious about.

Depends on the deal

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No one wants to hear it, and I get that. It’s the time of the year and the type of the year when we’re so fed up and worn down that we just want to worry about which guys the Mets should get rid of without concerning ourselves with why the Mets are getting rid of them.

Sure, if pushed any rational human would allow that no trades happen in vacuums and that all this-guy or that-guy talk in early October is merely a means of passing time between the last remaining regular-season baseball games, and no one really needs to be reminded so frequently that whether this-guy or that-guy should be traded always depends on the deal. And frankly, at this point, it’s getting obnoxious.

But it’s still true every time.

Should the Mets trade David Wright? I don’t know. Should they trade him for Mike Trout? Yes. Should they trade him for Greg Dobbs? No.

The Mets should trade Wright if they believe the players they receive will be worth more to them than Wright and their ability to sign Wright to a contract extension — a difficult thing to evaluate. Wright is a world-class player, the best in franchise history. He endured a few rough seasons by his standards from 2009-2011, but even then was still excellent. In 2012, he returned to form with an MVP-caliber season.

Or maybe 2009-2011 is the form and this is the fluke.

The Mets will finish with 75 or fewer wins this season and don’t appear primed to contend next year, even if it’d be silly to write off any team for 2013 in October, 2012.

Wright will eventually decline, as all players do. But when, and how severely? How much will it cost to extend his contract, and how much more than that price tag will he have to be worth to them to merit keeping him around? If the Mets know they can get multiple cost-controlled everyday players in return for Wright, maybe they can maximize their resources by trading him now and signing someone else with the money they (hopefully) had earmarked for his extension.

But then, how often do players as good and as young as Wright hit the open market these days? Can the Mets really hope to find a better fit in free agency?