MLB Tv is back! And still not worth it for a lot of people!

Well, Spring is upon us.  That mean’s baseball is here!  MLBTV is also upon us.  For someone that doesn’t have cable and wants to be able to watch whatever team I please, MLB TV still does not live up to the hype that all other sports networks have for providing content to people who want content provided to them.  What you may not know about MLB TV is that they subject their customers to blackout rules. 

Now under the NFL blackout rules, you can watch the team you want so long as the game you are watching is sold out.  That’s pretty much the only blackout rule that affects customers. 

With the NBA, you get every game whenever you want for about $25 a month and it’s available on your laptop.  Not on a PS3 or an Xbox 360 (yet), but it is available on DROIDS and Blackberry’s and iPhones.  The only blackout rules are the ones where the game is being televised on ABC, ESPN, TNT, or NBA TV.  That usually means it’s a huge game that you can catch at your local bar.  Doesn’t really affect people that much I suppose.

Now, if you type into Google “MLB TV blackout” the next word suggestion is “ps3 workaround” and “mac workaround”.  That’s a bit of a concern for the MLB or at least it should be.  The MLB blackout rules that are on this site are that local broadcast stations and cable stations have contracts with teams to over National Broadcasters.  So, if a game is broadcasted on ESPN and another local station has broadcasting rights to that same game, ESPN is blacked out.  Stupid

The second rule of the blackout rules is quite a hard thing to think about.  It involves FOX, ESPN, TBS, and the times for which games on Saturdays are available for watching.  FOX gets the games on Saturday’s between the hours of 3:55 and 7:00 PM.  ESPN gets the games after 8:00 PM.  The Marlins and Rangers are exempt from this.  I read the rule and still don’t know why.  TBS doesn’t hold the exclusive rights to their Sunday afternoon game of the week. 

The third rule is that flagship radio stations are not allowed to include MLB games in their live Internet streaming.  I don’t understand this at all.  Why would streaming the radio feed live over the internet make any difference in how a fan gets their content?

Now, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with MLB owners and such.  But I think if Baseball is “America’s Pastime” then I think it’s time that we, as a nation, start to rally and get our baseball when we want it and where we want it.

I feel bad for people in Las Vegas and Iowa.  People in Las Vegas cannot watch the Angels, Athletics, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Giants, or Padres.  People in Iowa cannot get games for the Brewers, Cardinals, Cubs, Royals, Twins, or White Sox.  A Red Sox fan who doesn’t have cable cannot watch the Red Sox because they are contracted by NESN.  Same with the Yankees and YES Network.  FanGraphs was ranting about this and went into much more detail with the frustration of a product that doesn’t seem like it would be that complicated at all to configure.  I don’t get this.  There has to be something changed!

JaVale McGee is the NBA Clown of the Year

In case you haven’t seen a lick of NBA action this season, or haven’t found a reason to, here’s one: JaVale McGee.  He is having the funniest season for an NBA player and might be the biggest clown in sports.  He is a great player to play along with John Wall on the Washington Wizards, but I would only pick him on my team in I needed someone to make the other players laugh hysterically.  Here are some videos of why JaVale McGee is absolutely hilarious to watch:

He gets back on defense faster than anyone else!  That takes dedication!  This seems like something that would only happen in a Youth Basketball League while parents would chuckle and say to one another “That’s my boy!”.  Now if you were making millions of dollars doing that, that’s a different story.

He goes above and beyond for making a dunk for the fans!  He knows he is a star and wants to make fans love him.  What better way than to attempt a Jordan-esque dunk in a game, not once, but TWICE!  Pure dedication to giving the fans a good time!

Back to defense!  No matter if the ball is about to go in, JaVale McGee will swat that thing to the 10th row back like an Olympic Volleyball player.  The look on the girls face when the ball is going back to the court says it all.  No one is safe from JaVale’s blocks.  Even the people sitting far away on purpose.

Who wouldn’t want to be around a guy who planks on a moving sidewalk at the Hong Kong airport?  This man might be on the list for best comedian of the year.  Forget Zach Galifianakis, Louis CK, and whoever else you might think is funny, JaVale McGee is in the running!

Even the Washington Wizards administrators on are board with JaVale McGee being the center of comedic attention.  I can’t think of anything that would escalate McGee’s presence in the NBA.  He would have to go campaigning for Obama.  Or even better: Mitt Romney!  I can’t even describe what future this man has in store for himself.

Hey Remember That!: When the Disney Channel had to be Paid for…circa 1995

First things first: mute the video – it’s Journey.  Might be embarrassing.  Moving on.  I was wondering what I could bring back to people to create a sense of nostalgia.  Most of what I remembered was from Nickelodeon and the Disney channel.  I remember when the Disney Channel was part of cable packages that weren’t free.  No 500 station packages.  You had 73 stations and everyone knew everyone else’s channels.  HD was a myth.  Paying for the Disney Channel was something of a treat that the cable company would toss out for people to subscribe to and then cut it when they wanted to pay for.  Remember the days when NESN wasn’t free and you had to pay to watch Red Sox games?  If your family was upper-lower-middle class and semi-poor, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  TV won’t really ever be like that again.  Not with the new stuff the Internet is churning out year after year.  I’m watching the video and I’m at the 1:40 mark and I forgot how Doug went from being on Nickelodeon to being an ABC One Saturday morning cartoon.  Really changed the dynamic of the whole kids cartoon.  We didn’t need Tween shows.  We had shows about middle schools kids, monsters, talking animals and babies.  And that was it.  The content was what kept us kids glued to the tube.  Oh well.  Those times are something I can only dream about now.  Although I’m sure that all of the shows listed on this video are on DVD or streaming or somewhere out in the world waiting to be bought by my generation years from now and re-consumed just to feel the Edward G. Robinson wanted to feel at the end of Soylent Green.  Adieu. 

My fictional writing piece that was me writing an observational piece….Judge all you want.

So this is the piece I wrote for my class. I’d love feedback:

 

That noise is all I hear sometimes. It sounds the exact same. I heard it when my teachers told me I needed to step up in school. I heard it when my mom told me about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, and when she talks about Dad in a bad way. I’m now just hearing it again from my personal trainer in front of about ten guys that I know are going to look at me differently when I come here. The noise is a high-pitched noise, that my body has trained itself to insert into every conversation that I find repetitive and useless. I don’t have time for this kind of crap anymore. I just don’t.

“Katie, you need to…”, then the noise chimes in, and drowns out all my other thoughts as I stare blankly into my trainers beautiful blue eyes. I stare more as if I’m concerned, but I know he’s not worried about it. He got paid. My hearing starts to come back as I hear the clanking of weights on machines and muscular meat-heads talk about their latest conquest or some health recipe or how big some other guy’s trapezius muscle is, whatever that is. It makes me sick. I don’t know anyone here and I don’t think I want to. I’m sweating, which is gross, but then again so are the synchronistic rows of people watching Biggest Loser, a lame Football Game, and some generic female detective show where the heroine wears high heels at crime scenes and wears hair extensions to get ahead in life. My mom likes those shows. I’d rather draw, paint or sketch to my punk rock vinyl’s in my room; alone. Not perspire on a machine checking my pulse and telling me I had a great workout when I walk away uninspired and desiring a cake donut with a French vanilla iced coffee. Eight sugars.

“…Katie? Katie!”, my trainer asks me as I perk up. “Do you want to take a break or did you want to continue to the next exercises?”

“I’m fine, let me get some water and we can do whatever’s next,” tilting my head to the side just waiting out the minutes left in my session. I walk to the water fountain that has a line of vertical testosterone mutants standing in front of it. I stand idly, hoping no one talks to me, or notices me for that matter. Although it’s hard to ignore a tiny redheaded girl with a couple of wrist tattoos in stupid tight yoga pants made by my nemesis Jillian Michaels. She’s such a druggie workout whore. Oh my God, someone just leered at me, and it was an ugly muscle head; great. Only 10 more minutes of these carnivorous looks and lame Top 40 hits and I’m out of here. Probably for good.

I sip some water, thankfully uninterrupted by muscle model de joir and walk back to my trainer. He’s holding a ball, which he hands to me. It’s not a real ball; it’s a heavy, unbounceable ball probably filled with my self-esteem and hopes. He’s about to teach me how to do some exercise that will strain my abs, but as he’s teaching, I hear my favorite song come on: the ever-comforting high pitched tone.

Finally Finished Ken Burn’s National Parks

Okay, before watching this, all I knew was that it was 6 episodes long and it was a PBS documentary about The U.S. National Parks.  I have to say first, that about 12 hours of footage and history is in this thing.  It is A LOT of watching.  I recommend watching an episode every now and then and make it maybe a once a week thing.  It’s the most recent work from Ken Burns aside from his Baseball: Extra Innings.  After seeing it, I think the images and video footage is just amazing.  It rivals only Planet Earth from Discovery Channel.  It’s amazing to capture all of the history about most of the national parks and the legislature that surrounded them.  I think I can honestly say that after watching this, I would want to at least make it out to Yosemite, Yellowstone, and a couple other of the major original parks that people like John Muir cultivated and helped establish.  Alright, that’s enough of the hippy Mark Sheehan.  Back to life and what else to watch on whatever it is you watch.

Well, that’s the end of that.

I don’t know what to think after that game.  But I do know that I just don’t want to hear about the Patriots at least until August.  That’s just about it. 

Something New To Watch On FX! AGAIN!!!

Aight kids!  From the creators of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia comes the newest animated series about teens involving sex, drugs, and rock n roll – Unsupervised.  It’s on Thursdays, but since I don’t have cable (doy), I watch it via Hulu.  It’s starring Justin Long, Kristen Bell, David Hornsby(?), Fred Armisen and Kaitlin Olson.  That’s right, Sweet Dee is playing a cartoon character.  And this show has only had about 3 episodes, but I am convinced that this along with Archer will be supporting one another during the Comedy Cram Night, known as Thursdays.  Put it on the queue boys!

Happy February!

Ok, so it's February!  That means Black History Month!  And Punxatawnee (don't care how its spelled) Phil comes out of his hole and goes back in.  Although people would be stupid to think that we've been using an animal to decide whether our future weather predictions will be accurate or not.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that we haven't used the actual animal for this measurement in a long time.  I'm not going to look it up, only because I think this is the stupidest holiday on the calendar and is only used as something for kids to be concerned with.  I think there should be many other holidays that we could celebrate with days off and get drunk, but then again I'm not the President.  So, in honor of this month, I am back to blogging and writing, sort of.  I am taking a writing class with about 5 other people and I got rave reviews from my first homework assignment.  I think I might post it for my next blog entry.  Good day!

Hey Remember That: Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling!

Alright, so there is something revealing about me with this clip from a Hulk Hogan cartoon.  I loved wrestling as a kid.  I loved cartoons as a kid.  Most of the cartoons I watched were on USA network sometime during the weekend mornings.  Now, rewatching this made me so excited.  The ridiculous cars.  The footage of cheering on a wrestling crowd.  The cartoon of Rowdy Roddy Piper (how can anything go wrong after that?)  Who would have thought that someone could write a cartoon about Andre the Giant, Superfly Jimmy Snooka and some other weird wrestlers could take over a French bakery to make Andre the Giant’s mother happy?  Skip ahead to the 4:45 mark to see some calamity involving the remake of an I Love Lucy skit and then turning it into a food fight.  And cue Mean Gene at the 5:30 mark!  I didn’t think that I would ever remember this, or that there would still be footage of this somewhere online.  This is the kind of stuff that PIPA and SOPA would be taking away folks.  Our memories would be the only thing left, and we wouldn’t be aloud to relive the magic or remember the agony.  Save the Internet!

Weekly Free Economics Lesson: The Penny

When I was in college, I learned about economics.  We learned about money and how certain money producing systems (aka Mints) would change their currency and change their exchange rates with other countries.  The Dollar, the Euro, the Krone, the Yuan, the Yen, Franc, the Peso, they all made sense in some way.  However, there was one part of our own economy that still continues to baffle me: the penny.  Above is a video that shows how awful this Congress is with not only printing money but also making sure that the currency doesn’t become worthless.  The penny started being worthless in 2006 and has just plummeted since.  I don’t understand why or how people get upset or don’t even know how to change this.  I Would urge everyone to write their congressman and ask them why they don’t do this.  The penny is a drain on this economy and it would save us money if we didn’t print it.  The video is wrong about one thing: Only one state accepts pennies at a Toll Booth: Illinois; because Lincoln was from Illinois.  Note this video:

I think I might drop a few economics lessons every now and then just to stretch my mind a little more from living the bachelor life. 

Will I Watch it?: Chelsea Handler’s NBC show

So, after watching this trailer and admittedly seeing the first episode of this show, I can tell you that this trailer is all you need to see to understand the pilot episode.  The only differences are that they switched out the best friend for a small Asian named Ali Wong, Jo Koy isn’t on the show as the bar friend, the redheaded guy was switched (which makes and there really isn’t a joke in this show that I haven’t already expected or heard from Chelsea Handler before.  Plus laugh tracks and voice overs aren’t really funny on any show.  There is a little person in the show and I don’t understand why.  That joke might work on her show, but I don’t think it’ll work for the 8pm timeslot on NBC.  This being the same time slot that Bill Cosby and Jerry Seinfeld ruled for a long time.  The first words from a TV show shouldn’t really include the words “power-slurp the worm”.  I don’t think this show will really last that long, but only because NBC has really overdone the whole funny female comedian thing.  They already have 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, and Up All Night.  Whitney was a good addition.  But Chelsea pushes the car over the ledge and into the river. Will I Watch it?: Probably Not!

“Hey Remember this?” continues!

Now here is a gem from the 90’s that at one time interrupted my Saturday morning/afternoon television time.  Xuxa (pronounced SHOO-SHA) is apparently one of the most prolific Brazilian singers and performers of all time.  I was expecting to watch either wrestling or more Inspector Gadget and all of the sudden I see this show come on and I have no idea what was going on.  This show was on FOX (typical) and played every Saturday afternoon, my guess to compete with Sabado Gigante.  I recently saw the movie Senna, realized that this memory of Brazilian blondes singing to kids wasn’t just a bad dream, but she was at once romantically involved with the Worlds Most Famous F1 driver.  So, now, I’m going to watch this clip and insta-blog along with the time.  Enjoy.

0:02: Kids are either singing ‘Shoe shine” or “Sue Shy” or I am going crazy and kids don’t know what they are saying.

0:09: Holy Bowl cuts and 90’s hair!

0:13: I had no idea the letter X could be pronounced like a “Sh” but apparently it can. 

0:20: Fact: if a show in the 90’s had a kid dancing with face stickers on with a bunch of other kids doing the same thing, it was an instant hit on Nickelodeon.  Wouldn’t work now.  Someone would get called gay and the show would be shutdown.

0:25: A Panda bear and a Lion? are slapping five and wearing clothes leftover from the Dinosaurs wardrobe.

0:30: Ah!  The woman named Xuxa!  Great!

0:35: Jesus Christ she is tall!  And gorgeous!  But what the hell is she doing wearing a pair of mens underwear at her knees? Those should be on a man!

0:45: Kids break dancing in a crowd.  God I miss those days. 

0:51 She has got to be 6-5.  Why wasn’t she more famous in America?!

1:05: Panda Bear is playing patty cake with kids.  In a pink and black checkered vest no less.  Something tells me this is a female.  But who cared back then!

1:12: Not only does the break dancing and backflip give it away that there is no white guy underneath that Cheetah costume, but also that he is down with Yellow hoodies.  Which no white person wore in the 90’s. 

1:20: Confirmed: Panda is more White than Black after dancing in a circle like that around a hot chick.

1:33 Just noticed that Xuxa has a dragon sleeve on her coat.  Imagine me watching this at 7 years old and asking “What the fuck is this?”.  I’m repeating history here.

1:52: What’s with the backup dancers having about 3 inches of leg showing?  Either wear pants to match the uniform or wear shorts.  I don’t see why this wasn’t brought up in some meeting.

2:11: It’s just become known to me that this woman is lip-syncing.  Something that did not die in the 90’s.  But who could blame her, she has to look this good while trying to sing?  Let her mouth over the words….this time.

2:32: This Panda might be a pedo.

2:40: Jackpot!  We have a kid with Panda-face! 

2:50 She whistles very good for a hot blonde.  And her English isn’t so bad either.  Maybe I can download this “Hello” song on iTunes or Amazon.  But that would require effort and filtering through endless remixes of Xuxa songs by Latin American DJ’s on Youtube.

2:57: Sing songs?  Clown around?  Play tickle games?  I LOVE ALL OF THOSE THINGS AND I’M 25!!!!

3:10: I don’t know what she said before the camera panned away but I think it sounded like “Jump a Chicken!”  Don’t lie, you heard it too.

3:15: Xuxa may or may not be the financial backing for Kidz Bop.  Which would make her a billionaire.  Should’ve got in on that one early.….damnit!

'”Hey Remember That?”: The IM Warn

Ah, yes.  Remember the days before Facebook, when everyone would chat thru AOL Instant Messenger and nothing else.  Chat rooms were a thing that middle school kids would do on a saturday night to find out weird things on the Internet.  Instant messaging random people and try to “cyber”, which sadly, is still around today.  The term “a/s/l pic?” became a popular way to either meet some stranger and/or creep the hell out of them.  Then came the WARN button.  If you clicked on it, it would add 20% of a warning rate to a person’s screen name.  The funny part about the warn button itself, is that it is the only idea that I can think of what a company would institute for its customers to not use their product.  It’s like if every Playstation came with a soccer ball.  However, with the all-but-certain death to AOLIM, the warn button revolutionized how people would interact with each other. 

Recently, cyber bullying has become a recent topic of discussion, yet interacting with each other online has been here for an even longer time.  Since people use Facebook chat, G-Chat, Skype, and everything else between, the number of bullied kids has increased because THERE IS NO WARN BUTTON ON FACEBOOK.  Something easily attainable with a few friends and some time to ambush them with IM’s.  If you warned someone enough, they would be forced offline for at least a couple of hours or at most a whole day.  Meaning that AOL is the only Internet company to address cyber bullying before society knew it would turn into a suicidal pandemic.  This is something that Marc Zuckerberg and other CEO’s that have user-chat platforms have not addressed, but only come out and denounce.  I say, actions, speak louder than words (er, IM’s).    Bring back the warn button and cut cyber bullying out of the equation!

“Hey Remember this?”…My new segment

This is a new segment that I will be adding to the repertoire of blogging topics that I will be incorporating with television and not having cable.  Youtube will be very handy in this kind of thing.  The first “Hey remember this?” is dedicated to one of the long lost cartoons that was pretty much a rip-off of the Transformers series and never really panned out, although I can totally see it being rebooted and made in 4 Michael Bay movies in the next couple of years.  M.A.S.K. (Mobile Armored Strike Kommand) was a show with transforming automobiles driven by men who were pretty much G.I. Joes.  Two things before I move one: 1. That’s badass 2. That’s pretty much the exact sentence from wikipedia on this cartoon’s description.  Now, M.A.S.K. fought off V.E.N.O.M. (Viciosu Evil Network of Mayhem), only proving my theory that the best bad guys come from acronym networks.  I don’t think there is anything in Hollywood going on that would suggest this can or would be remade.  But now that G.I.Joe is getting a movie sequel and Transformers 4 was just released, I don’t see how something like this can go unnoticed with the fan-boy culture of 80’s things being remade over and over and over.  This clip is from a two part season premiere, which is a great way to hook in an audience that will one day have a dying love for Mountain Dew, Nintendo, and be growing up in front of screens.  Enjoy!