Michael Hopcroft

5 hours ago, tkdguy said:

 

You are aware that Enya's band Clannad performed the theme music for the 1980's British series Robin of Sherwood? WQhich even now is considered the best TVs take on Robin Hood and one of the best media takes as well (Heaven knows how long it's been since we've had a good Robin Hood movie, and no Men in Tights doesn't count.)

On 9/16/2023 at 9:31 AM, unclevlad said:

Ouch.

 

Sorry, slik.  There's no positive take I can see for this....

 

https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/09/16/shohei-ohtani-los-angeles-angels-clears-out-locker

 

EDIT:  ok, so Bottom Line says he's being shut down for the season, due to the oblique that's kept him out the last couple weeks anyway.  I have no problem with that, whatsoever...I'd argue it should've happened several weeks ago.  But the manner in which it happened?  Still makes me say he's NOT HAPPY, and I can't believe there's a snowball's chance he's returning.

He's having a Tommy John done, and the press release expects him to be re4ady to pitch for -- er, whoever4he's pitching for -- in 2025.  But he can probably hit again in 2024.

Whoever gives Shohei the contract he deserves will have a challenge. Shohei wants to pitch. He really wants to pitch. He also wants to hit and does that at an MVP level. But it would be surprising if the workload he took on for the Angels was completely irrelevant to his injuries. He did things the human body was not designed to do. Now he's paying the price.

When the Boston red Sox in 1918-19 had their ace starter George Herman Ruth prove to be a better hitter than most of his teammates and still be capable of being a world-class pitcher, naturally they traded him to the Yankees. The first thing his new club did was teach him how to play outfield and shut him down as a pitcher. It was better, in their minds,, to have hit bat for 154 games than his arm for fifty. How good an idea this turned out to be was validated when "Babe" became the greatest power hitter ever to play in "the segregation era". If he had played for the Sox, they would probably have tried something like what the Angels did with Shohei, which in this case might have co9nsingned the greatest player of his time to a footnote given the status of orthopedic medicine in 1920.

Were I Hank Steinbrenner or some other deep-pocketed billionaire team owner, I would have to rely on my front office to assess the risks and benefits very cautiously. If he tries to pitch, exhaust himself, and blows his elbow out again, even an athlete as remarkable as he is would probably be done as a pitcher -- and you would lose another year of his bat. If you care about your investment (and in thew long run your fanbase) you'll sit down with his agent, look him square in the eye, and say "It's been a great run, but if you want your man to be in baseball ten years from now he is going to have to decide. He can be a pitcher, or he can DH and play an occasional left field. He can't do both. I know it will be a heartbreaking choice, but if he can't make that choice now he'll have to do it in some other colors. The risk is just too great. I love your guy. Seriously, everybody on Earth who plays or watches baseball loves your guy. I want to see him with a plaque at Cooperstown next to Ichiro's. I want to see him play 15-18 more years and break every record known to man. If he were to make the wrong decision it would break the hearts of everyone who's so much as heard the word 'baseball' in their entire lives. So tell him. Tell him how far beyond money this goes, because I refuse to be the man who ruins Shohei Ohtani."

On 9/17/2023 at 11:07 AM, death tribble said:

Carlos Sainz wins the Singapore Grand Prix to break the Red Bull winning streak

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/66836925

This will not be a real problem for Red Bull's quest for the Constructor's Championship (Verstappen has the driver's crown pretty much wrapped up).

What this does, though, illustrates the paramount importance of qualifying in Formula 1. Most of Verstappen's wins have come from the front row. Although he put up a respectable drive in Singapore, there were simply too many cars between him and the podium. And where did Sainz start? On the first row. Of course.

To win races, it seems, the first thing you should do is master qualifying. Where you are on the grid could doom you to failure even if you happen to be Jackie Stewart. If you're in the middle of the grid, you can still get points (even if they don't natter that much by that point in the season), If you're in the back, it will take an enormous effort just to get into points positions, much less win the race, and none of that will matter if you're wrecked. (Verstappen's win streak was built around his prowess in the qualifying rounds, and I don't know if he's wrecked yet) But even wrecks become less common when you've qualified in a row that will put you ahead of the pack.

What happened to Shohei Ohtani is just what I feared would happen when he was assigned to both be the ace of the starting rotation and the full-time DH. Coming up to bat 4-5 times a game is not the same as resting a pitcher's arm for four days between starts, even if he doesn't have to play the field. It was only a matter of time before something broke down under all that load.

Whether they can face the idea or not, the Angels have a crucial decision to make for 2024. Ohtani's talent is extraordinary. He can be the best starter of his generation. He can be the best power hitter of his generation. He just can't be both.

A century ago, the New York Yankees faced a similar decision with their new acquisition Babe Ruth. Postseason awards did not exist in 1917, but if they had Ruth would have been a shoo-in for the AL Cy Young with the Red Sox. He had also started to play in the field every so often as his bat started to heat up. When his rights were sold to the Yankees for the cost of producing a Broadway musical (which turned out to be a success), the team knew that they had to choose between Ruth the dominant pitcher and the unlimited potential of Ruth the hitter. They chose the latter, and in his first season as a full-time outfielder in 1920 Ruth shattered the records for power hitting that existed at the time and continued to do so for the next fifteen years. He also played a great left field, and would have won both Gold Gloves and MVPs almost every year throughout the 1920's had those awards existed.

For Babe Ruth, the Yankees made the right decision and it changed (and possibly saved) baseball. The Angels and whatever his next team turns out to be faces the same decision with Ohtani. I have no doubt he wants to continue both pitching and DHing, but nobody's body can withstand that sort of strain for eight to ten years at the Major League level. He will have to choose. I always knew he would have to choose, and the Angels management have been short-sighted in putting off that decision as long as they have.

I am amazed the race was resumed after that downpour that resulted in the first Red Flag I've seen watching Formula 1.  It also marred the fact that before his crash Zhou Guanyu was having one of the best races of his career, especially early.

Admittedly it's nearly impossible to win races if one of the opposing drivers is as utterly dominant as Max Verstappen, but how a mid-level to low-level F1 driver keeps their rides season after season is a question I've often wondered about. The driver is, if nothing else, the face of your team, and there are no bad drivers in F1 -- only unsuccessful ones. I wonder if Liam Lawson's respectable run as a backup driver in his first F1 race will net him a ride in 2024, and at whose expense.

The sport really needs rivalry, though. You can only go so far if Verstappen wins easily pretty much three out of every four races. He needs to have someone rise up to challenge him the way he rose up to challenge Lewis Hamilton to bring out the best, both in himself and in his sport.

4 hours ago, Pariah said:

New Topic: War. What is it good for? (Degree of difficulty: "Absolutely nothin'" is not an acceptable answer.)

It makes for smashing films.

NT: Things to feed the Knights of the Round Table if you run out of Ham, Jam, and SPAM.

"Don't you see? Your hand may be stilled, but your gift cannot be silenced if you refuse to let it be."
"Gift? You keep talking about this damn gift. I *had* a gift, and I exchanged it for some mortar fragments, remember?"
"Wrong! Because the gift does not lie in your hands. I have hands, David. Hands that can make a scalpel sing. More than anything in my life I wanted to play, but I do not have the gift. I can play the notes, but I cannot make the music. You've performed Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Chopin. Even if you never do so again, you've already known a joy that I will never know as long as I live. Because the true gift is in your head and in your heart and in your soul. Now you can shut it off forever, or you can find new ways to share your gift with the world - through the baton, the classroom, or the pen. As to these works, they're for you, because you and the piano will always be as one."

17 hours ago, death tribble said:

NT: To escape further Russian retaliation what do members of Wagner now call themselves and why ? (Naming themselves after other composers classical or not is recommended)

The Belarus National Opera Minsk.

NTL Subtle signs your belief that you can speak Elvish turns out to be massively untrue.

On 8/23/2023 at 11:17 AM, Pariah said:

 

Thumb their noses at Russia, who just crashed one there. 

 

New Topic: Weird Restaurant Combinations (e.g., we have a place locally that serves tapas and sushi)

 

McRamen.

NT: Subtle signs the photographer in charge of taking your mugshot is out of their mind.

8 hours ago, Pariah said:

 

Q: Hey, this itinerary for the Kessel Run is only eleven parsecs!

 

A: The last planet ever discovered. 

Q: What do the few surviving Federation Histories call the Borg Homeworld?

A: This would be a great little town were it not the setting for a TV show.

While I was going through my memories, I came upon this scene/song. It's the first scene of the seminal "cyberpunk" anime series Bubblegum Crisis. There are few moments in the field quite as iconic, quite as unforgettable, and that changed the game for everything that followed.

Releasing "direct to video" (VHS tape in this case) was considered shameful in much of the world, the fate of bad Disney sequels and movies that were withdrawn before they could be released to theaters.  Bubbblegum Crisis was revolutionary -- an entire series released to VHS the moment it got out the door. Too long to be a theatrical feature and far too violent for TV, it created a niche in which it would fit, setting a course that many other productions would follow (such as Tenchi-Muyo! Ryo-Ohki) where the release format was not held against them. 

It also led to the initial success of a North American distributor called AnimEigo which was quite proud of their ability to take a show that is still in Japanese, add careful subtitled, and in turn release directly to VHS where they found a willing audience.  They would apply the lessons they learned to translating many other series, like Urusei Yatsura (a 192-episiode comedy that combined sci-fi, Japanese mythology, school satire, and romantic comedy).

So this is the song that changed anime and animation forever by enabling the telling of episodic stories in shorter series -- and for proving that there was a North American audience for subtitled anime and profit to be made from it.

As for Bubblegum Crisis, there was a TV remake in the early 21st Century. Whether animation had improved or regressed in that amount of time is unclear.

A couple of old anime OPS from my memory of the 1990s. (And it makes me feel old that the groundbreaking Gundam Wing is almost thirty years old).

First a series few would remember by now -- Sorceror Hunters, about a luckless, lecherous lycanthrope loved by two very possessive and very dangerous sisters and on a quest to rid the world of wicked socerors.

Speaking of Gundam, I was one of the few admirers Turn A had at the time before its long-delayed licensing tyo the States, I guess it canbe best described as "Gundam by Studio Ghibli", mainly due to the character designs. But it's quite a story, in which warriors from a Lunar colony invaded an Earth that had regbressed to 1910s kevek technology -- with Earth's main hope being a long-lost mobile robot suit called Gundam. It runs out that the daughter of a tycoon on Earth bears an astonishing resemblance to the Moon's revered monarch, to the point that when they meet they decide to swap places back and forth for the rest of the series. 

And speaking of Wing, the OP was quite impressive -- and initially unseen by US audiences. But the show brought the sort of grey morality to a "Cartoon" that had not been seen by North Americans in forever. Are the Gundam Pilots heroes, terrorists, murderers, or saviors? Perhaps they were all of the above. Oh, and this was one of the most notable early series to be "shipped" among the male cast, even though each had a female love interest, in a triumph of "subtext" that would forever alter fandom not just for anime but for just about everything else.

Now I feel incredibly old.

"Marshal Ney, you will be the first to confront there Werewolf. I know you love this man."

"I did -- once. But I promise Your Majesty I will send him back to Paris in an iron cage!"

"Soldiers of the Fifth! You know me. If you want to shoot your Emperor, well -- here I am."

'Napoleon is not a gentleman."

"Why, Arthur, how very English of you!"

"On the battlefield, his hat is worth 50,000 men -- but he's not a gentleman."

""One of the benefits of being Section Chief is that I know who gets promoted. You have no kills on your record, and promotion to 00 requires..."

"Two"

(A moment's pause) "How did he die."

"Your contact? Not well."

"Made you feel it, did he? Well, I wouldn't worry. The second is..." (Sound of a muffled gunshot)

"Yes, much."

10 hours ago, Pariah said:

A: I said lech, not lich. 

q: But I used all the ingredients you told me to, and you dare call my Special Flan "Musty?" MUSTY?

A: Two Wet Fools who forgot to knock!

On 8/4/2023 at 6:03 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Agreed. 

 

 

 

He may have been working and seeking work constantly (in his prime he was ultra-famous for a show that splayed the Top 40 songs for the previous week, while his voice work was virtually ignored. But there were lines he wouldn't cross, like quitting Transformers when they started using more anti-Middle Easterns slurs in stories about terrorist (always Muslim). Kasem was Christian Lebanese and wouldn't stand for the unjust treatment of anyone from that part of the world, even sworn enemies.

The original Shaggy Rogers was his most memorable role. Now that he is no longer with us, his name and his work is getting far more recognition (at least as a non-DJ) and appreciation.

8 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

Will we see the establishment of a cottage-industry for human creativity?

Now.

Ironically, Amazon is making quite a stir with their investment in self-publishing, and as a self-published author I appreciate the efforts. Things are being done on Youtube that have never been done before -- there are innumerable videos of covers, spoofs, and the like of classic music, for example. Scott Bradlee has already become a legitimate celebrity with the brilliant Postmodern Jukebox . So have artists like Puddle's Pity Party ("The Sad Clown with the Golden Voice"). 

None of these people are getting rich, at least not yet, but they show they still belong, whether by their virtuosity or their willingness to go in new directions. Now we just need to find a way to make these viable without megacorp support.

(I am reminded of the story of an NFL player who decided after his retirement to go to someplace like Atlanta and become an actor. His reasoning was that you can become a star in New York or LA, if you can bet the enormous odds, but an actor can live and work at his craft anywhere. Of course, it helps to have a side job and support -- Portland is a solid theater town, but some of the best actors ever to work here have found themselves living out of their cars because they can't afford Portland's notorious rents).

"Don't let the Bastard win!"

On 7/31/2023 at 4:56 PM, Pariah said:

 

Q: So, this guy started on AD&D? How can you tell?

 

A: To pull this off, you need to roll a natural 23.

Q: See that mote in the elephant's eye two miles away? I'm going to fix it by attaching a suction cup to this arrow,  tie a two-mile-ling line to it, shoot it into the elephant's eye and pull it back Voila! Mote-free elephant! What do you think?

A: It's ok that your character died, She earned about 70000xp in the process!

Add to that the ability in the near future to use AI actors to appear in video files and you know why the SAG-AFTRA (?) and Writer's Guild strikes are not inconveniences for audiences, but a struggle for the very soul of all entertainment. If studios decide they no longer need to make art, but can let their cleverly-crafter AIs do it for them, then we have landed in the world of 1984's "Prolefeed" and there will be no going back. Humans might as well no longer be humans if all our forms of creativity are replaced by greedy megacorporations and the idiotic AIs they control.

"Bronny" James, the son of HOF-bound legend Lebron James, suffered more than a setback this weekend -- he was the one in ten likely to survive a heart attack during a practice at USC.

Bronny is supposedly a great talent. He has already studied basketball skills with a father who is unbelievably good in all facets of the game (the fgact that he has only one ring to show for it can be laid down to limits on how often one can beat Stephan Curry). Lebron really wanted to play in the NBA with his son. Will that happen now? Will USC find a way to get him healthy enough go on the court, or should Lebron just be satisfied that his sone still draws breath?

I hope that everyone makes the right decisions so this talented your man gets a long, healthy life even if playing basketball is not ion his future?

On 7/9/2023 at 9:26 AM, death tribble said:

Max Verstappen wins the British Grand Prix

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/66148503

Max has had two incredibly dominant seasons. It would take things best left uncontemplated by racing fans to prevent a second straight Drivers Championship and for Red Bull to be unable to ride his back to the Constructors title. It's been a historic run (borderline le4gendary). Unfortunately he has no rival, not even a fading Lewis Hamilton who has slipped out of that position.

It helps that he is one of the best drivers at qualifying runs in the sport right now. Starting from the pole is about two-thirds of his races means that with the speed he is capable of he can leave opponents in the dust virtually effortlessly in the actual race. He still remains fast in those positions. And he still has that intensity and recklessness he has always possessed, although he is rarely in a position where it poses a problem. He is soi dominant that the screens of the TV concentrate on the duels "lower" in the field, which is where the excitement is.

Max is brilliant but needs a rival of his generation, and right now we do not have such a driver. And that can't be good for F1 in the long run.

On 7/17/2023 at 8:40 AM, unclevlad said:

A:  Those who run away, live to fight another day.

Q: What is the very last thing a Civil War deserter wanted to hear?

A: The cause of death was a blatant disrespect of the laws of physics.

1 hour ago, Asperion said:

A: Welcome to Club Procrastination - Where there is no Better Time than Tomorrow 

Q: You say it will take an hour to get a drink to the table? Great! Thank you!

A: Because the "Comical Moonlight" doesn't have the same ring to it.

13 hours ago, Pariah said:

 

Q: Wait, that's not the Imperial March. Is that ... Rastafarian music?

 

A: That really salts my melon!

Q: This pink stuff you said you brought all the way from the Himalayas to California -- what does it to exactly?

A: Yes, it did turn out that what you had on your fries when you were six years old did make a huge difference in the course of history that only now do you see terribly realized.