Men of a Certain Age

by: pageian

TNT has a new series out called "Men of a Certain Age" featuring Ray Ramano.  It's not a comedy, rather it's a drama, or even more precisely a dramadey.  It's not specifically setup for humor but it does have it's humorous moments, the main draw of the show however is the relationship between three middle aged men, their careers and families.  Scott Bakula and Andre Braugher are the other two main characters in the show.

TNT seems to have a hit on their hands, along the lines of other off-network shows such as "Mad Men", though it's hard to imagine this show matching the heights "Mad Men" has found.  The show is set in LA with Ramano as the lead character, owner of a party store, divorced and with a gambling problem.  Bakula plays an actor who rarely has acting jobs and apparently has a peter-pan complex, refusing to grow up and take on the responsibilities of a normal adult.  Braugher is perhaps the most complex character of the three.  He plays a car salesman working at his fathers dealership, married to a loving and strong willed wife played by Lisa Gay Hamilton.  Their house is undergoing renovations and causing all kinds of problems for the family.  He struggles at the car dealership due to the fact that his father is particularly tough on him and he often has trouble with the realities of a job that doesn't fulfill him. 

Similar to "Mad Men" much of the appeal of MoaCA is made up of it's ambiance.  There's rarely any action or suspense on the show but it still manages to be extremely interesting and watchable.  Often times there will be scenes where characters don't talk but are shown doing normal, everyday things like waking up or driving to work.  Most plots revolve around the three main characters dealing with everyday things that we all go through in our lives.  Instead of inventing fantastical plots or unbelievable storylines every week MoaCA instead focuses on real things and delves into them on a level that is intended to develop the characters and explain to the audience what their motivations are for doing what they do.  It's an interesting concept, one that's certainly been done before but perhaps not as well.

Credit needs to be given to the writers of the show as well as the concept of it.  Often times what the characters say is not as important as how they say it or why.  You get the feeling watching the show that it was really well thought out, as if the concept and design of the show came first, the thoughts and meaning that it wanted to convey, and then the actual dialogue was added later in order to achieve those goals. 

Credit also needs to be given to the actors and actresses.  I've been critical of Scott Bakula in the past for his acting but in this show he does well, giving convincing performances.  Also, who knew Ray Ramano was such a good actor?  During his time on "Everybody Loves Raymond" he certainly grew as an actor and became more comfortable with what he was doing though you never got the impression that he felt he was an actor, never got the impression that he felt he belonged on the set with the likes of Brad Garrett, Patricia Heaton, Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts.  All that seems to be gone here though, Ramano gives perhaps the best performance on the show, he's believable and his acting really does a good job of portraying exactly what his character is going through.  He seems like a genuine human being.  Braugher also does an excellent job.  As mentioned earlier, his character has potentially the most complicated situations and Braugher, similar to Ramano, portrays perfectly his characters emotions and motivations.  You really get the feeling that he's just a human being, it's easy to forget that these guys are actors playing parts.  You don't need to suspend reality in order to believe what the characters are going through, it's all done so naturally that you might think that they're actually real people who your following through a camera.

"Men of a Certain Age" appears to be poised for a run of many seasons if the actors and creators are willing to follow through.  Ramano has said that it was his choice that the first season would have 10 episodes so it's apparent that things are relatively under his control so unless TNT decides to pull the plug for some reason then it would seem that the show will continue for as long as Ramano and his fellow actors and producers are interested.  Let's hope they stay interested and continue their creative and enjoyable show.

Air America goes bankrupt

Makes you wonder, wasn't anyone listening or are liberals just not very good at this capitalism thing?  That wouldn't surprise me, they certainly don't understand it.  And yeah, no one was listening either, that's one of the tenents of capitalism, the market will decide.  In a socialist society Air America would still be on the air even though no one was listening.  Multiply that a million times over for the market and then imagine how ineffective socialism would be on a nationwide scale.  Heck, we don't have to imagine, just look at communist Russia and it's bread lines.  That's socialism at it's finest folks.

So while capitalism works again and the liberal, socialist democrats get slapped in the face for the second time in a week keep in mind that all the talking heads will give their opinions on why Air America failed but the simple fact is that if people were listening they'd still be in business.  No market, no job.  I realize that's anti-socialist, but it works and it works well.

The Tonight Show Travesty

by pageian:
Conan Vs. Jay. Looks like Conan is giving up to save the integrity of the show. Thing is, with him gone who's going to care about the Tonight Shows integrity? Leno is a nice guy but he's wrong here. He should have rescheduled after the Tonight Show or gone to a different network (Fox?). Get the feeling that the Tonight Show is never going to be the same, likely because of selfishness on Leno's part.

What's wrong with the Boilermakers?

by: pageian



Purdue men's basketball just lost their third game in a row after opening the season 14-0 and getting as high as #4 in the rankings.  Purdue didn't lose a game in non-conference play, beating everyone they played, every place they played, including two teams ranked in the top ten and undefeated themselves at the time.  The Boilers are only 2-3 in Big Ten play though, their only wins coming at lowly Iowa and against Minnesota at Mackey Arena.  They've lost to Wisconsin on the road, Ohio State at home and now Northwestern on the road.



The Northwestern loss is particularly troubling.  The Wildcats are perennial doormats in the Big Ten and the Boilers usually handle them easily.  The Wildcats are looking good this year but most analyst's still felt they didn't have much of a chance of getting into the NCAA tournament though.  Now?  They just beat a team that's ranked 6th in the nation (though that will certainly change Monday when the new rankings come out) and they're beating teams they're supposed to be as well as some they aren't.  After this win they have to be taken seriously as a tournament team.


The problem for the Boilers appears to be the inside play of star forward JuJuan Johnson.  Johnson put up 25 points and 10 rebounds against then unbeaten and 6th ranked West Virginia on January 1st after only getting 6 points and 4 rebounds at Iowa.  In fact since the start of Big Ten play Johnson has only scored in double figures once with 16 against Minnesota.  Johnson has a total of 40 points in five Big Ten games for an average of only 8 points, he's also averaging only 6.4 rebounds in Big Ten play.  In non-conference play he averaged 15.3 points and 7 rebounds.  He's obviously dropped off since league play started and since he's really the only big man Purdue has, or at least the only inside player they have they've suffered because of it.  The Big Ten is a physical league, perhaps the most physical of all the major leagues in the NCAA's.  Johnson is lanky and athletic but he's undersized in the Big Ten and can be pushed around and gotten into foul trouble by some of the bigger, stronger guys in the league, which is exactly what's been happening lately.


Purdue coach Matt Painter has done an excellent job recruiting since he took over for Gene Keady in 2005, yet one thing he appears to have overlooked is a big, physical inside presence that's particularly necessary in the Big Ten.  Painter has recruited good athletes and good basketball players but his team has 11-guards, 4-forwards and only one center, Johnson who's actually listed as a forward-center.  Johnson is 6'10" but only weights 215 pounds.  The only big guys Purdue has on the bench are freshman Patrick Bade, who's listed as a 6'8", 235 pound forward and Kelsey Barlow who's listed as a forward but at 6'5", 199 pounds he's actually more of a big guard, small forward type player.


Purdue simply doesn't have enough strength inside to dominate in the Big Ten.  They are more of an athletic, finesse team that wins when they shoot the ball well and play defense well.  Since they've gotten into the Big Ten part of their schedule they're getting pushed around more than they're used to and as a result their record has suffered.  Three losses in a row might not knock them out of the rankings but it's going to knock them out of the top ten for sure and probably ends their hope of a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.  There's still plenty of time though.  Not only have they played a tough Big Ten schedule so far, with a tough game on the road coming up at Illinois, they've played some good conference schools as well.  They haven't gotten any breaks in the schedule.  When those come, expect the Boilers to regroup and figure out what needs to be done.  Then they'll focus on fixing their problems, or at least focus on working with those problem so that they can win games in the league.  At the end of the conference schedule they'll be there, maybe a game or two back but close to the top, and hopefully they'll be primed and playing their best basketball of the season at conference tournament time (like they did last year when they won the conference tournament) and put themselves in a positions for a good seed in the NCAA tournament.  Given the success Purdue has had the past few years and even earlier this year I think it's fair to expect nothing less.


Purdue is still a good team, they've just run into some teams lately that played great games and may have figured out how to exploit Purdue on the inside.  Painter and the team will work on that and figure out a way to counter it.  Getting it taken care of now will only benefit them when it come time for the tournaments.  And hey, if they don't win the league now that they have 3 losses in league play, I can live with that if it means they got their problems exposed and fixed and are going to be a better team going forward because of it.



Boiler Up!

Mystery object to whizz by earth on Wednesday

 
Scientist don't know what it is, an asteroid, space junk?  Something is going to pass within 80,000 miles of earth and they don't know what it is?  Seems strange.  It's 33-50 feet wide and it's 80,000 miles out (at it's closest), doesn't seem like a good candidate to be space junk.... at least not space junk from Earth (alien space junk maybe?).  If we assume it's an asteroid that would explain it's mysterious origin but it's a bit disturbing that something that big remained unknown until now and it still can't be identified.  At least they're saying that if it is an asteroid it's tiny, too small to cause much damage even if it does hit.  I assume most of it would burn up in the atmosphere before it reached the earth.  Hmm, maybe it's a Borg scout ship, or maybe a miniature Deathstar?

MLB Hall of Fame welcomes Andre Dawson

Andre Dawson was voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame on Wednesday, the only player who earned the required 75 percent of the vote to get in.  Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven fell just short with 73.7 and 74.2 percent respectively.  Dawson, who spent his career with four different teams, the Montreal Expos, Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox and the Florida Marlins will likely go into the hall as an Expo, though that's still not known yet.  The Hall of Fame now chooses which team the players go in as ever since Dave Winfield was offered money and jobs by the San Diego Padres and New York Yankees to choose their cap for his enshrinement.  Dawson spent the majority of his career in Montreal but gained perhaps his greatest fame as a member of the Cubs.


Cub fans everywhere love and respect Dawson for his time with the team as well as for how he came to be a Cub.  Desperate to get away from the artificial turf of Montreal's Olympic Stadium Dawson gave the Cubs a blank contract before the 1987 season and told them to fill in the amount.  The Cubs paid Dawson $700,000 that year, a more than 30% pay cut from his 1986 salary, yet Dawson went on to win his only MVP that year, hitting .287/.328/.568 with an OPS of .896.  He hit 49 home runs and drove in 137 RBI's, numbers too big for the MVP voters to pass up even though his OPS and OBP were generally lacking for an MVP candidate.  In those days statistics like OPS weren't available and OBP wasn't valued as it is now.  There were players in 1987 who had superior average stats to Dawson yet his league leading number of home runs and RBI's carried the day. 


Dawson went on the spend six years with the Cubs after spending 11 in Montreal (where he won the Rookie of the Year award in 1977).  He finished up his career with two years in Boston and then two more in Florida where he suffered from injuries and compiled only 307 at-bats.  For his career he ended up with 438 home runs, 1591 RBI's and 2774 hits while hitting .274 with an on-base percentage of .323, slugging percentage of .482 and an ops of .806.  He won 8 gold gloves, one MVP, Rookie of the Year and was an 8-time all-star.


Bert Blyleven missed the cut in his 13th year on the ballot and has two more chances of getting into the hall.  Given how his vote total has increased from year to year it's almost a given that he'll get voted in next year, and if not he surely will the year after, his last chance.  Alomar was considered a great candidate to get in on his first try given that he's one of the better second baseman to ever play the game.  Voters didn't make him a first ballot hall of famer likely due to an ugly incident in 1996 when he spit in the face of umpire John Hirschbeck.


It's my opinion that the biggest injustice in the voting this year isn't that Blyleven or Alomar have to wait at least another year.  They'll get in eventually.  To me the vote total of Jack Morris is the biggest disappointment in that it's still going up.  Jack Morris won a lot of games and pitched some classic playoff games yet for all his apparent fame wasn't really a great pitcher.  His career ERA+, a measure of how much better a pitchers era is compared to league average, was only 105, meaning Morris's era was only 5% better than a league average pitcher throughout his career.  That to me doesn't sound like a hall of famer and it doesn't raise the standards for the hall.  In fact, if Morris is eventually voted in he'll go in with the highest career era of any pitcher in the hall, by a lot.  People like to point out that Morris won more games than anyone else in the 1980's, to which I reply, who won the most games from 1981-1991, or 1977-1987?  See, wining the most games in the 1980's is completely meaningless and arbitrary.  Unless voters are willing to vote in players who won the most games for every ten-year period than they shouldn't vote Morris in just because he happened to win more for a certain 10-year period than anyone else.  It's meaningless.


There are other injustices in the voting this year, Edgar Martinez only received 36.2% of the vote, Tim Raines only got 30.4% and Fred McGriff only 21.5%.  It's quite likely that Martinez will eventually get in though it's starting to look like Raines is going to have a tough time even though he's clearly one of the great hitters and base stealers of  his era and perhaps the second best leadoff man of all time behind Rickey Henderson.  It's also a shame that Alan Trammell only got 22.4% of the vote and it's pretty clear now that not enough writers think of him as a hall of famer even though he's perhaps one of the ten best shortstops of all time.



In all it's not a bad year.  At least Andre Dawson is safely in the hall where he belongs.  Even though some other players have to wait and others have vote totals they don't deserve, one way or the other, at least the voters finally got it right for Andre Dawson.  Now if only Ron Santo would get in with the veterans vote next year all the Cubs who are eligible and good enough will be in.

Cub fans, meet Jacque Jones...... umm, I mean Marlon Byrd.

You have to hand it to Jim Hendry, he knows what he likes.  Former Texas Rangers.  Mediocre outfielders coming off of career years.  Guys with the initials MB.  Neifi Perez.

The Cubs have signed Marlon Byrd to be their center fielder for the next three years.  The deal is worth $15 million dollars and in typical Jim Hendry fashion it's back loaded so that the bulk of the money will be paid out in the later years.  Specifically, $3 million in 2010, $5.5 million in 2011 and $6.5 million in 2012.  This of course has the affect of helping squeeze Byrd into an already tight payroll and still gives Hendry the flexibility to add a pitcher or pitchers with his remaining budget.  Apparently he doesn't care about next year or the year after but that's another story.  Hey maybe Hendry will be able to talk Derek Lee into taking a $2.5 million dollar pay cut after his $13 million dollar a year contract runs out after the 2010 season so payroll won't have to go up!  /end sarcasm

Okay, let's get serious for a minute.  This isn't a terrible signing from a baseball standpoint.  Marlon Byrd is an average player if you look at his road stats.  In a normal year he's likely to put up an OPS of about .750 which is about league average.  His defense in center is also average, it fluctuates year to year like most players but in general his UZR is acceptable.  When he plays the corners he's defense is much better, going from average to very good.  The problem is that his bat doesn't play in a corner outfield spot where you'd normally expect a slugger or at least an above average hitter.  In center, if Byrd can just replicate his last three year road splits his bat will be fine though and since his defense is average he's not going to be hurting the Cubs.

What is going to hurt the Cubs is the contract, more specifically the length of the contract.  Three years for a 32 year old player in today's game (post-PED's) is stretching it.  Players don't start their decline at a set time but generally it comes on in their early to mid thirties.  By the time Byrd reaches the end of his contract he will have turned 35 and will quite likely have been regressing for at least a year.  By then he's probably going to be a fourth outfielder, and since he'll then be making $6.5 million dollars he'll be an extremely expensive fourth outfielder at that.  Those are very hard to trade without eating some of the contract.  Unless Jim Hendry knows something we don't about the future of the teams payroll then I'd imagine if he's having trouble fitting in a $3 million dollar contract into the 2010 payroll he's going to have trouble fitting in a similar contract in the 2012 payroll, and having overpaid, below average backups on the roster isn't going to make that easier.

So, is Jim Hendry really doing what's best for the team or is he just trying to save his job?  The new owners, the Ricketts, can't be to pleased about the Milton Bradley fiasco that they inherited and that dominated the headlines in the first few months of their ownership.  They also can't be very pleased about the team struggling against payroll limitations even though they were only an 83 win team the previous year and regressed in many important statistical categories.  Not all of that is Hendry's fault, bad years from Alfonso Soriano, Geovany Soto, Milton Bradley, Kevin Gregg as well as injuries to Carlos Zambrano and Aramis Ramirez helped limit the teams effectiveness.  It should be noted that Hendry traded for Gregg when there really wasn't anything to suggest that he was worth spending $4 million dollars on (he fell for the saves total, the most overrated stat in the game) and he handed out $30 million dollars to the volatile Bradley when it would have reasonably been predicted that the situation would end badly.  Oh, and the Cubs are still on the hook for five more years of that ridiculous contract he handed out to Soriano after the 2006 season.

Maybe Hendry is trying to save his job with a good 2010 season or maybe he just doesn't have a good idea of how to put together a roster anymore.  Before 2006 the Cubs always operated below what their revenue would seem to have dictated.  Hendry was forced to acquire players through trades and shrewd free agent pickups.  After a poor season in 2006 and with the team likely headed for sale the Tribune decided to open the checkbook and allowed Hendry to go on a spending spree like MLB has rarely seen outside of the Bronx.  He spent more than $300 million dollars that winter and he hasn't been the same since.  He seems to try to solve all the teams problems in the most expensive fashion now, through the free agent market.  There's not a more expensive way to acquire talent in baseball than that.  Hendry has only made one trade of real consequence since 2006, his trade for Rich Harden midway through the 2008 season (who he just let walk as a free agent himself without offering arbitration because of financial concerns). 

Teams can't live that way, can't acquire all their talent through free agency.  They have to be able to make trades to fill holes, deal from strengths, sign amateur talent and look for minor leaguers who are undervalued by their current organizations.  Essentially they have to be able to beg, borrow and steal every talent they can find for the least amount of resources.  Jim Hendry hasn't done that in awhile and the Cubs are paying the price for it, regressing in the standings and bumping up against financial limits.  Marlon Byrd is just the latest example, and the latest to take advantage of Hendry's free agent addiction.