My Return to Baseball Obsession

How exciting has this year been?

As a Cubs fan, one could argue I’ve never had anything to get excited about.  That has been especially true the last two years, with two fifth-place finishes, atrocious defense (and pitching, and offense, and…), and even an unexpected “retirement.”  Mikey Q’s Band of Bad Nicknames didn’t leave me hanging on every pitch, and I have paid as little attention to baseball as at any point in my life since puberty hit.

Of course, me “not paying attention” still means being commissioner of a fantasy baseball league, daily visiting Bleacher Nation and Bleed Cubbie Blue, and generally trying to be more knowledgeable than the “average fan,” because I simply MUST be smarter than everyone else, DAMN IT.

In these two years, I’ve traveled further down the rabbit hole of studying filmmaking, fallen in love with hockey, and written hundreds of pages for drafts of my first full length screenplay while preparing for a move to Los Angeles, where I’m totally going to make it big time, yo.

Then all this happened.

Pardon me, Cardinals fans, but I couldn’t bring myself to link the video of them celebrating making the postseason.  Besides, the MLB website has literally 40+ pages of video links for their postseason highlights alone, so you have enough to make you happy; and don’t complain if they lose the World Series, because they’ve spent all of October getting the not-shitty end of the “anything can happen in a short series” stick, despite playing far superior competition. Rant over.

Anyway, that last night of the season.  This was mere days after seeing Moneyball — which was great, by the way — so I figured I’d try to smoosh as much Cubs baseball into my night as possible.

Then I learned WGN wouldn’t be broadcasting their final game.  I took my relatively minor annoyance — Hell, Ryan Dempster gave up approximately 800 runs that game, so I didn’t miss much — and turned my attention to the Red Sox-Orioles and Rays-Yankees games.

This guy might be my favorite player right now.

Wow. Just wow.  Magic happened that night, and the “good” (read: lesser millionaires) guys beat the giants of the sport, sending the Rays, a team I enjoy watching far more than the now-dull Red Sox, to the playoffs.  It doesn’t matter they lost to the Rangers in the division series; they brought back a fanatic from the brink of joining the ranks of the casual.

It wasn’t over when my posteason ponies lost, though.  Given the Beantown Bunch’s, ahem, improbable September collapse, rumors began circulating the Cubs were courting Boston general manager Theo Epstein to bring Chicago into the 21st century by doing things like building through the minor league system.  Hell, if that were the only qualifier, the Cubs haven’t even been operating in the 20th century.

I spent a week or two doing the “yeah, okay” skeptical face (SIDE NOTE: Why is the sixth Google image for “skeptical face” a picture of a nude girl taking a picture of herself in a mirror?), then things started to turn.  There had been rumors swirling that Epstein would ride into town on his magic carpet (powered by that mystical force, logic), but once the team had officially asked permission to interview him, my excitement truly began.

I want to play the Indiana Jones theme over this.

Epstein’s hire was leaked to the press, and I rejoiced. Then, as if to personally destroy me, came nearly two weeks before the teams could “agree” to make it official, thanks to the not insignificant nudging of Papa Bud Selig.  The compensation for bringing Epstein still has not been decided, due to much hemming and hawing from the Red Sox ownership, but now that Theo’s had his introductory press conference as the Chicago Cubs’ president of baseball operations, this deal can’t exactly go south.

My reasons for excitement are clear.  Here is a guy who, in nine years running the Red Sox, made the playoffs six times and didn’t even come close to falling below .500 at any point.  Without even taking into account the two World Series wins, if an NL Central team were to win 86-98 games a year, as Boston did under Epstein, they’d probably make the playoffs nine times out of 10.

The Cubs are far away from where the Red Sox were when Epstein took the reigns, but if he — plus Jed Hoyer and Jason McLeod, his two buddies from San Diego who will reportedly join him as GM and assistant GM, respectively — can have the kind of drafts he did in Boston, the Cubs can be competing in a couple years and I can hopefully know what it’s like to see my team consistently playing October baseball.

I can’t explain Mr. Epstein’s philosophies as well as he can, so here is a brief overview of his appearance on yesterday’s Chicago Tribune Live.  It’s nice to see someone who’s energized and prepared ready to step in, instead of this.

It may be impossible to save the 2012 season, but this is the most excited I’ve ever been for a team I know will be utter dog shit.  That said, though, please put together a winner soon, Theo.  After all, “Baseball is better when you win.”

Creativity, College, and TED

I’m not good at school.  Therefore, I don’t like school.  It’s a simple correlation, really.  At least that’s what I’ve learned in places with “school” in the title.  I think.

Throughout my education, I’ve worn many caps: the ambivalent, the eager-to-please, the baseball, you name it.  The one that never fit very well was the thinking cap.  I’ve spent years wondering why that is, and only lately have I realized the answer.

I don’t think like other people.  I don’t want to think like them, either.

Why is that?  Because for my whole education experience, and particularly the last three and a half years since I’ve been in college, the word I’ve probably heard most is “no.”  Well, probably “the,” but who counts articles?  Anyway, I’ve either been not good enough, not smart enough, nor did people like me, doggonnit.

The preceding sentence may mostly be a joke, but it’s got one of those nuggets of truth with which I’m so enamored.  The ones that are “not well developed,” (skeptically) “interesting,” “not written academically,” or either “too personal” or “not personal enough.”  These are all things I’ve either been told by professors or had written on my papers.

I try playing the game.  You know the one.  It’s the game of trying to figure out exactly what the professor wants and exploiting that for an A.  Most often I am wrong.  It gets frustrating.

This frustration has led me to, pardon my French, do whatever the fuck I want.  Take a look at last week’s post to see what I mean.  I didn’t follow the rules of my assignment but did something I’d personally be more interested in reading.  And my professor commended me on my creativity.  And the morning after I finished writing that, seeing it up on the website made me feel like a million bucks.  I’ve never felt proud of a school assignment like that.  The pride stemmed from throwing convention out the window and doing something my way for once.  It was nice.

My creativity probably isn’t anywhere near the level of others’.  Hell, it’s not even on par with some of my friends.  I realize that.  I can live with it.  But what I can’t live with is being forced to stifle my creativity for the sake of someone else’s sense of success.  That being, college leads to job, job leads to money, money leads to Fantasyland Happy Place.  There are reasons why I drink.

I don’t particularly care about those things, especially not the having sex with and subsequently murdering hookers part.  And if there is one thing I want you to glean from this post, it’s that a college degree automatically leads to having sex with and murdering prostitutes (for those who don’t get my obscure pictures, the Christian Bale one is from American Psycho).  What I do care about is entertaining people, and it’s a skill I have.  However, it’s not a skill that’s well respected in academia.

That respect, Sir Ken Robinson, an education and creativity expert, agrees is desperately needed in today’s school systems.  His February, 2006, talk at TED was what inspired this pretentious, whiny post in the first place.  But hey, you take the inspiration as it comes, right?  So let me get out of the way and allow Robinson to inspire you.

P.S. If the video doesn’t play, click on the hyperlink in the previous paragraph.

Rob’s Creative Midterm Paper

I’m 22 years old and still haven’t finished college, so to say I’m a little bored with writing traditional papers would be underselling a bit my feelings on the subject.  I’m sick of never being able to use my own voice, feeling distanced from the material, and checking my passion at the door in order to churn out an auto-piloted version of something that would probably be far more interesting in a different medium.  It is for those reasons I’ve decided to get a little creative for my Social Media class, as this paper’s prompt says, “Social Media has had a profound impact on society and the process of communicating. How have these changes affected the process and what does it mean?” Given the title of the class, I felt writing a Ten Commandments-sized blog post an apt way to complete the assignment.  Instead of regular in-text citations — ones which you know won’t really be checked — I’ll utilize hyperlinks and videos within the body of my text to not only show that I did my research but so you can also check things out for yourselves.  Besides, I don’t know how you can write about films without offering actual footage of them.  So chew on my punk rock aesthetic, college, because I’m totally too cool for school.  And now, without further ado, here is my Social Media midterm paper.

###

Rob Samuelson

Don Krause

Social Media

2 March 2011

Filmmakers Further Their Careers Using Social Media

The New Crew

That looks familiar, right? You’re somehow acquainted with it, but it’s different from what you know, leaving you with a deja vu sensation which you can’t quite place. That’s probably because you spent the summer of 2009 being inundated with the imagery developed four years earlier in this short, Alive In Joburg, by director Neill Blomkamp and expanded into the feature film District 9.

Blomkamp is among the crop of modern Hollywood success stories who have scrounged for years in film schools and dead end jobs, searching for financial support in order to fund their little passion projects; they are the people who have slickly used social media websites like YouTube to market their skills to Hollywood.  In Blomkamp’s case, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson took notice and originally shepherded him in an attempt to adapt popular video game Halo into a film.

And yet nobody has seen a Halo movie.  Why not?  Because that’s what happens in Hollywood.  Sometimes things don’t work out as expected/hoped/fantasized.

When Halo didn’t pan out, Blomkamp and Jackson refocused their energies on something they knew had potential: Blomkamp’s original Joburg short.  All’s well that ends well, as they completed District 9 on a budget of around $35 million — chump change for a science fiction ‘splosion spectacular such as this — garnering critical praise and earning a cool $115 million in box office receipts. Oh, and it also received four Oscar nominations, including Best Motion Picture of the Year and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published.

Blomkamp has since returned to the viral video well, releasing a minute-long teaser for Wired Magazine that may or may not have anything to do with his upcoming project, Elysium, other than generating interest in his abilities as a filmmaker who can tell a compelling story.  Or maybe he wants his fans to know he’s still around and has not forgotten them.

Blomkamp’s story may be the most complete, but he’s not alone in finding success through YouTube.  Federico Alvarez, an Uruguayan director, has found himself being mentored by Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, Spider-Man) based on the merits of his produced-on-the-cheap alien invasion short, Panic Attack!, which was released on YouTube in 2009.

Panic Attack!, which runs less than five minutes, currently has upwards of six million YouTube views, which is no small feat considering how it only cost Alvarez a few hundred dollars to produce.  Now that Raimi’s production company, Ghost House Pictures, has signed Alvarez to develop a “genre” — probably in the science fiction realm — project, Alvarez appears set to reap the rewards of a professional filmmaking career.

This is not a phenomenon which will disappear anytime soon.  Given Hollywood’s obsessive-compulsive need to replicate success, agents, producers, and studio moguls will feel the pressure to find the next Blomkamp or Alvarez, even at the expense of the sanity of parents everywhere.

YouTube: The New Bootleg

Up and coming filmmakers aren’t the only ones benefitting from the exposure YouTube provides. For all intents and purposes, YouTube has replaced typical street vendors at the bootlegging game, providing for the masses things that had only previously been available in rare collections and by illegal means.

Fans of such Oscar winners as Martin Scorsese and the Coen Brothers can view early work and oddities, and compare those with the filmmakers’ more famous output.

Take Scorsese’s (Goodfellas, Raging Bull) NYU student film, What’s A Nice Girl Like You Doing In A Place Like This?, for instance.  It’s a surrealist comedy so far removed from his typical subject matter of gangsters and male inadequacy that it’s almost unrecognizable as a Scorsese film. But that is just part of the fun of exploring the depths of what YouTube has to offer.

In startling contrast to Scorsese’s attempt to find himself as an artist, all 30 minutes of noted auteur Paul Thomas Anderson’s (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood) short film Cigarettes & Coffee — not to be confused with Jim Jarmusch’s almost identically named Coffee & Cigarettes – can also be found on YouTube.  It finds Anderson already with a firm grasp of what kind of storyteller he wants to be, as much of the film was expanded into his first feature, Hard Eight; or Sydney, if you ask Anderson himself.  To the best of my knowledge and research, I cannot find any other form in which this film has been released, and given the cult following the man has developed in his career, this is an important satiating resource for fans to utilize while they await his next film, whenever he makes one.

Brothers Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, No Country For Old Men), much like Scorsese, would not have the chance for people outside of Region 2 DVD releases to see their section of the film anthology Chacun son cinéma (To Each His Own Cinema), entitled World Cinema.

This short, while a simple oddity filmed during the production of No Country For Old Men, displays a certain playfulness creeping into the collective consciousness of the biggest names in today’s filmmaking.  It’s a feeling that not everything needs to be a sweeping epic in order to excite audiences.  Writers and directors can simply play a little; they can use these shorts and miniature conversations as practice for their larger, more long-term projects.  Whether they’re attempting to create a new visual style for themselves or write in a dialect that’s eluded them thus far, I can’t imagine the creators doing anything other than having a blast working on these things.

Twitter; Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Fan Interaction

Jon Favreau.  David Lynch.  Rian Johnson.

It’s all right there in Johnson’s Twitter profile description: “[B]ig time [H]ollywood director.”  That’s what these people are, and they are 140 characters away from interacting with their fans.

The connection of modern artists to their fans is at the highest point it’s ever been, thanks in large part to social media, particularly Twitter.  Instead of fearing about even more of their private lives being exposed, these celebrities act to be even more connected to the people who follow them.

Favreau, a one-time prolific actor now doing mostly big budget directorial work like the Iron Man movies and the upcoming Cowboys & Aliens — a film I absolutely cannot wait to see, but that’s a story for another time — tends to connect to fans the most, utilizing Twitter’s @ function with great regularity to answer questions and voice his thanks for the support he receives.  He also offers updates from first the set and now the editing room of Cowboys & Aliens, providing an insider’s peak into the process of how a massive blockbuster gets made.

Johnson (Brick, The Brothers Bloom) does much of the same, although he generally takes a more businesslike approach to selling his film, the currently filming Looper.  He often cross pollinates his promotion by posting to Twitter production photos located on the film’s Tumblr site.  He takes a mysterious approach to doling out information about the film, which follows the lead of recent ad campaigns for films like Cloverfield, which are supposed to be all about the suspense and “what could this possibly be about?” hype.

Lynch tends to take a more relaxed, day-in-the-life approach, as he is not currently producing a film.  Given his tendency toward dark and idiosyncratic filmmaking — to put it lightly — it is surprising to see him writing thoroughly normal things like birthday wishes to actress Laura Dern (Jurassic Park, huzzah!).

These three directors display the symptoms of a phenomenon which is creating an even stronger sense of connection between artists, their art, and the art’s appreciators.  Where these artists take this phenomenon remains to be seen — 140-second short films? — but what can be assured is the presence of social media at every turn.

R.I.P. Ronny. Thank You

Rest comfortably, Ronny. Maybe you can put in a good word with the Big Guy for the rest of us, eh?

My childhood took another massive hit today as Ron Santo, beloved former Cubs third baseman and ever optimistic radio broadcaster, died at age 70 from bladder cancer complications, following years of diabetes-related health issues.

And clichés be damned, nothing will ever be the same for the Cubs or WGN Radio.

There are already plenty of epitaphs for Ronny, so I don’t need to rehash anything that’s been said.  It’s a sad day for any Cubs fan, especially because the team has come so close to winning it all in recent years, only to come up short.  Those must have been crushing blows to Santo, who was always the team’s biggest supporter.  And for anyone out there who claims to be the Cubs’ “biggest fan,” trust me, you have nothing on Santo’s half-century attachment.

I know I’ve got a hefty lump in my throat over this.  After all, most years, Ronny was the best part of following the team.  His exasperated sighs indicated when the team inevitably played like shit, and “aw geez” has become an instantly recognizable catchphrase among my group of friends.  The second one of us utters those choice words, it’s an immediate tip off that something has taken an unexpected turn for the worse, just like when LaTroy Hawkins would squander yet another save opportunity in the ’04 season, or when Mark Prior would blow out his elbow time and time again.

The Cubs have a way of doing that just about every game, and no matter how much ire and faded-out swears they’d draw from Ronny, he’d always bounce back within an inning or two, confident they’d somehow pull off an improbable win.  That type of ever present optimism worked perfectly as a metaphor for dealing with the shit that life throws your way.  His stories about his toupee and player name mispronunciations were always hilarious, but it was his constant championing of the Junior Diabetes Research Foundation that were heartfelt reminders that baseball is just a game that shouldn’t impact our lives as much as it does.

Quade Named Cubs Manager; Sorry, Ryno

New Cubs manager, Mike Quade.

The Cubs announced today that Mike Quade is no longer the interim manager, as he signed a deal to manage the big league club for the next two years.  This decision was made at the expense of denying the job to former Cubs second baseman, Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg, and while most longtime Cubs fans are probably very disappointed in the decision, I’d be willing to bet large amounts of money that the team will do just as well with Quade at the helm as they’d be with Sandberg.

Why is that? It’s simple.  The team went 24-13 after Quade took over for the retired Lou Piniella in August, and they were a completely different club.  They played with energy, didn’t make nearly as many dimwitted mistakes, either defensively or on the basepaths, and the pitching was phenomenal, particularly Piniella whipping boy, Carlos Zambrano (8-0 with a sub-2.00 ERA in his last 14 starts, looking like the player he was before Piniella was hired).  In short, they became fun to watch for the first time all season, and a lot of it stemmed from having a manager who wasn’t distracted by family issues and lame duck status (or maybe it was just the psychological warfare Quade’s frightening face provides) like Sweet Lou was.

Now, I’m sure Sandberg would do a great job managing in the big leagues, and he probably will be hired somewhere very soon — think of the poetic justice if he were hired, and won, in Milwaukee — but the fact remains that Quade spent even longer in the Cubs’ system, lorded over the third base coaching postion like some sort of Universal monster since 2007, and then took a team that traded away most of its productive veterans and made them into a winner for the last month and a half of the year.  He’s paid his dues and is just as worthy of a shot as Sandberg.

So now the work of turning the Cubs into a winner for a full year begins.  Quade will have his work cut out for him, as most of the truly productive minor league players from the last couple years — Starlin Castro, Tyler Colvin, and Andrew Cashner — are on the big league team.  They’re still pretty raw but will be good in time, and there are a few other players in the system who will be calling Wrigley home very soon, like outfielder Brett Jackson.  But the fact remains that the team is still without a true first baseman/middle-of-the-order power threat, and the budget will be lowered next year.  Maybe they will sign Adam Dunn, watch him strike out 8,000 times a year and be a liability at first in order to get some left-handed run production, but that is not a guarantee.  Either way, my optimistic prediction for next year remains: the Cubs will be a third- or fourth-place team, hovering around .500 as they develop their young players for a shot at winning in 2012 and 2013. And for those of you still smarting from the Sandberg snub, remember, the plan would be the same if he were hired.

So as a frustrated Cubs fan who would have loved to see Sandberg in the dugout, I still think GM Jim Hendry and the Ricketts family made the right choice.  Now, for the love of all that is holy, go win for once.

Solomon Burke, R.I.P.

Soul music lost a giant today, as Solomon Burke died at the age of 70 of unknown causes.  The man had many great songs, like “Cry to Me” and a song made famous for its inclusion in The Blues Brothers, “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.”  My favorite, though, was introduced to me in the pages of High Fidelity, though, as “Got to Get You off of My Mind” is Laura’s favorite song in the novel.

‘The Tempest’ Trailer: Um… What?

Take a look at director Julie Taymor’s trailer for her upcoming adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

I am flabbergasted.  This looks to be the craziest movie released this year (or any year, barring Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch).  I guess that’s to be expected with Taymor, whose films Across the Universe and Titus are some of the weirdest movies I’ve seen.  Put lightly, they’re not very good, and put strongly, they’re unmitigated disasters of artistic license run amok, eschewing both historical moments and coherence.  I’m not a Shakespeare fan, but I’d imagine those people who are fans must be pretty pissed about the strange casting choices.  Beats me.  All I know is that I won’t see it.

Emma Stone in ‘Spider-Man’? Why Not?

The casting news for Sony’s upcoming Andrew Garfield-starring Spider-Man reboot is getting more interesting, as this Entertainment Weekly article says two female leads are in the movie, which means both of my main man Spidey’s love interests, Mary-Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy, are likely to have large roles in Peter Parker’s on-screen life.

Stone's a very good option for Mary-Jane.

The article says Emma Stone, best known for Zombieland and the new Easy A, a movie I couldn’t be less interested in despite very good reviews, certainly looks the part of Mary Jane, and I’d be interested in seeing Stone use her charm and humor to put some life into the character, who, when played by Kirsten Dunst, was pretty wet blanket-rific.

The article makes it sound likely that Stone has the part wrapped up, which is fine by me, as I really enjoyed Zombieland. She showed she can handle big budget action and not get lost amid the explosions, which will suit her well in what is sure to be one of the biggest movies of 2012. And, of course, she actually has red hair, unlike Dunst.

The next Gwen Stacy? Perhaps.

Less certain of a role is Mia Wasikowska, from Tim Burton’s decidedly blah-but-all-right Alice in Wonderland, who’s rumored to be auditioning for Gwen Stacy.  She was merely okay in that movie, but then again, so was everything else about it, and she seems to be a rising star, so she’s probably got plenty of talent.  If Gwen’s expected to be the sweet option for Parker like in the comics, director Marc Webb could do a lot worse than casting Wasikowska.

Whoever eventually gets these roles, they’ll definitely have a good costar in Garfield, who has me sold on his acting abilities after I recently saw the first of the English miniseries, The Red Riding Trilogy, where he played a young reporter in 1974 piecing together corruption and murder clues.  He was amazing in that and I can’t wait to see what he can do with an American accent in The Social Network next week.

Fincher’s Reasons Behind Doing ‘The Social Network’.

Fincher's newest film is one I cannot wait to see.

Instead of being a good student and getting ahead on homework today, I was mindlessly searching the Internet and came across a Slash Film interview with one of my favorite filmmakers, David Fincher, who gives his reasons for doing the upcoming The Social Network, a film that’s already been on my radar for a while, and now I’m even more excited for it.

As a big fan of every Fincher movie I’ve seen — everything besides Alien 3 and the movie that’s currently on my floor waiting to be watched, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — I was curious about his choice to direct a movie about the rise of Facebook, considering how he generally leans toward edgier fare, like The Game and Fight Club, but the interview does a good job of highlighting his interest in his newest film’s subject: technology.  He approaches this movie with “great respect and admiration” and with his methodical, everything-must-be-juuuuust-right style, I could easily see The Social Network being in my top five favorite movies of the year.

And, just for good measure, why not take another gander at the film’s trailer.

‘Rubicon’ is Worth Keeping Around.

The ratings haven't been great, but hopefully they're enough to keep 'Rubicon' on the air.

AMC, if you’re listening, it would be in your best interest to keep the low-rated conspiracy thriller Rubicon on your schedule for the foreseeable future.

Why?  Because, after what was, admittedly, a glacially slow start, the show has whipped itself into can’t-look-away shape and I’m engrossed in both the overarching conspiracies at the American Policy Institute think tank, as well as the minutia experienced by API’s employees, including star James Badge Dale’s Will Travers and his team of government policy savants and their bosses, with its scenes involving both massive secrets and true-life depictions of working in an office.

The most interesting thing about the series is the way it treats the inner workings of the think tank, where there are very human reactions to things like the prospect of bombing a public street in order to kill a high-ranked terrorist.

With the show’s renewed interest in its characters after the relatively boring first two episodes, there’s a reason to care about what happens in this world, and enjoy the nervous energy of the proceedings at every turn.  No, it’s not as good as Breaking Bad or Mad Men — and who’s to say it won’t get that good in time? — but it’s got a ’70s vibe to it that bring to mind classics like Marathon Man and there’s nothing wrong with that.

With the way the show’s been going in recent weeks, it appears to be building to climactic scenes like that, and it’ll be well worth the network showing some faith in the show’s abilities to gain a larger audience and granting a second season.