Arrogant Americans

While in Singapore, I met some Irish folks, from Northern Ireland. To make a long story short, as a favor to my friend, a Singaporean, the Irish folks were going to take me to the night safari they have there.

No sooner than I get into the car, they are saying rude things because they have a real, live American in the car with them. The anti-American was just dripping off of them (I don’t blame them really, if you watch CNN, BBC, Reuters or the AP all day, you can’t NOT hate America).

Out of the blue, a woman in the car directs to me an accusation that the United States is arrogant because we “force Spanish people to learn English when they immigrate”. I was shocked, the gloves were off. But I kept my feet and calmly said, “No, if we tell people that they don’t have to learn English, we are actually lying to them and hurting them in the long run. Because to be fully successful in America in business and education, you need to speak English.”

Her own father, who was totally apolitical unless beer and cigarettes were concerned, piped up with a, “yes, he’s right” and a nod. God bless that man. His daughter was furious. Wrong answer I guess.

Can you imagine the cost of doing business in America if all 500 languages that were brought here, were spoken? Do you think we’d have this lifestyle if we did that? But to a liberal from the UK (hey, Northern Ireland), we are arrogant and she is sitting in the UK getting worked up about what THIS country does. How did it get that way (hint: media) Now that’s scary. –fog

I Realized the Other Day

 

With pitchers and catchers still a ways off (and they are really only a tease, aren’t they?) , I’m listening to the XM sat radio baseball channel and even they are struggling to get excited about anything baseball.  Driving and listening, it hit me.  I have never had a bad time at a game.  I love being out the game.  Sure, there are factors that make it better or worse, but really, the only important thing is that you’re inside and the world is outside.  How many things can you really say that about?

 

I took these pictures at Citizen’s Bank Park in Philadelphia two years ago.  I love this photo.  These guys sat right in front of us.  Great view.  It is America’s pass-time and they were passing time.  We are supposed to be a melting pot and we are.  No matter what part of the earth we come from, at one point or another during the game, we are ALL thinking the exact, same thing: “…Where the &@$*% was THAT, Blue?”

 

Their kids even got a foul ball in the upper.  That speaks to how low the upper is in the new Philly yard.  At Shea Stadium, the game is only a rumor from the upper.  And what kid hasn’t wished for a foul ball?  Nothing like it. –fog 

 

Superbowl Box Pool Number Frequency

Great stuff from someone I know at a bigtime polling/survey company (figures, right?). Thanks Toots.

Thanks and for more Click Here

This table is the result of all the quarters played in Superbowl history:

This table is the result of all the quarters played in the 2006-07 season:

For the first quarter the following numbers in the last 40 Superbowls have been: 0,3,4,6,7. That’s it. If you have those numbers, for any team, you are looking good, at least for the first quarter prize.

0 has shown up 37 times (20 times for the away team, and 17 times for the home).
3 was 19 times.
4 was 5 times.
6 was 1 time.
7 was 18 times.
Best first quarter combo? 0,0, which showed up 9 times.

For the second quarter the following numbers in the last 40 Superbowls have been: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Everyone can be a winner! Those holding 0, once again, are looking good.
0 has shown up 25 times
1 was 2 times.
2 was 2 times.
3 was 16 times.
4 was 8 times.
5 was 1 time.
6 was 7 times.
7 was 14 times.
8 was 3 times.
9 was 2 times.
Best second quarter combo? 7,0 which was 5 times. Plenty of other combos showed up 4 times.

Once again, for the third quarter the following numbers in the last 40 Superbowls have been: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.
0 was 16 times.
1 was 4 times.
2 was 2 times.
3 was 10 times.
4 was 12 times.
5 was 4 times.
6 was 8 times.
7 was 17 times.
8 was 2 times.
9 was 5 times.
Best third quarter combo? There isn’t a clearcut favorite. 0 and 4 show up 4 times.

The final score everyone shows up again.
0 was 12 times.
1 was 9 times.
2 was 4 times.
3 was 6 times.
4 was 10 times.
5 was 4 time.
6 was 10 times.
7 was 15 times.
8 was 3 times.
9 was 7 times.
Best final score combo? 7&4 showed up 4 times. 7&0 was 3 times.

The best number, clearly, was 0. It appeared 90 times: in every quarter & final for the last 40 Superbowls.
7 showed up 64 times, or 20% of the time. The worst number was 8, which appeared only 8 times. This was also the same story for 5, which hit 9 times.

[Since I am getting hits from France and the Netherlands on this topic, for those of you who don't know, most American offices sell the 100 squares in a 10 x 10 grid for money. Typically 5 and 10 dollars a box but I have heard of guys spending as much as $500 a box. After all the boxes are filled in, the digits 0 through 9 are drawn randomly and written in over each column on top and down the left side for each row. Then the team names are picked. This is so you can not choose your numbers beforehand, because, the way American NFL football is scored in 3's and 7's mostly, certain numbers are much more favorable. Payouts are for the box with the score at the end of each of the 4 quarters. The big payout (usually half), is for the end. For a 10 dollar box pool, there is 1000 to win. 500 for the end and usually 250 for the half and 125 for the first and third quarter. If the score at the end of the quater is 0-0, the person who owns the box at the intersection of 0 and 0 wins, and so on.]

I’m thinking of adding a heavy metal umlaut

I’m thinking of adding a heavy metal umlaut to my name.–fög

Baseball’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy

Kenny Rogers Pinetar Secrets  (What did you expect at The Pinetar Rag?)

A while back, we debated the great brown stain on Kenny Rogers’ hand in the Woil Serious. Some were aghast that

Civil War Re-enactors With Man Perms

I was watching History Channel recently and there was some Civil War documentary on and they had shots of re-enactors, playing out the scenes of this raid and that skirmish. As I looked at it and thought, “gee, they sure went to a lot of trouble, these guys…”.

And they had. Uniforms, guns, tents, wagons–the works. Then I noticed that almost every last one of these guys were huge! We’re talking 30 to 50 pounds overweight and some north of that. I suppose the demographic of your garden-variety, fully-equipped, Civil War re-enactor is basically fat guys. And it’s a shame really because the scenes were done up in such painstaking detail otherwise.

In 1864, guys who marched around and ate wormy hardtack (a fat saltine) and salt pork on Sundays, would be super-skinny. Every last one of them would be bones and sinew. If you were ever lucky enough to get a big-ole fatty meal, they’d march it right off of you in a day or two. Yet on the show I see our re-enactors come marching in, busting out of their fake uniforms and all puffy cheeked and doughy-faced like little Confederate-woodchucks. And if you really think about it, the re-enactors are all 35, 40 years old and the “boys” they are “playing” were as young as 16 and most 18-22 years old.

And you know? God Bless those Civil War re-enactor guys. Hey, they dig history. Whatever floats your boat. They read the books, rent the movies and the next thing you know they’re camping out in tents with a case of Pabst and in the morning, they get to be in the movie and play with mild explosives. Just remember, they’re serious historians, right?

Click here to go to a Civil War Re-enactor site

[Here's a shot off of that Reenactor site I googled up. Clearly, this is a modern day guy posing for the retro Daugerotype. He's got the tell-tale, pop-tart fed, puffy cheeks going. (Maybe if you had triathletes posing?)]

[You know, since putting this up this morning, I see that the Civil War Reenactors site has changed the main photo from this guy to a scruffier looking dude. I really hope that it is a routine rotation of the members and that I didn't get this guy DQ'd. I mean only fun in pointing this out. It's the same way that people in Europe know instantly that we're Yanks, because we're all fat b****s, relatively. I am a student of history and have personally visited Gettysburg at least 3 times, Chickamunga, Fredricksburg, Chancelorsville, Spotsylvannia, Manassas, Petersburg and Antietam. I read the books and watch the shows and argue the silly arguments and I "get" the whole thing in a way. I just don't do it myself and I was just having a little fun is all. (I actually think the Daugerotype looks pretty cool)  Hope some click-traffic went their way. --fog]

I’m not even going to get started on the hair. The truism in Hollywood is that no matter the cost of getting the period right, the hair of the actors is always a dead giveaway as to when it was shot. I never understood that. These people work for you. You’re paying them a good buck. Shooting the movie is costing you a FORTUNE! MAKE them get the period hair too!

Look at Little House on the Prairie (that Mrs. Pinetar seems to have on all the time). Charles Ingalls (Michael Landon) has a man-perm that the guy in REO-Speedwagon would be proud of. Now how the he|| am I supposed to get into the show with the bad 1970′s hair? The give and take with my wife goes something like this: “…but honey, if you showed up in 1870 with the Jimmy Page hair, they’d probably pitchfork you as a…”

–fog

Bullet Proof Man

For anyone who watched “The Prestige” and wondered if turn-of-the-century vaudeville magicians really died in tricks-gone-awry, the answer is yes. While reading the Houdini bio recently, I came across the story of “The Bullet Proof Man”. His act was wearing a suit filled with pockets of ground up glass and having a guy from the audience come up and shoot him with a gun and he’d “take” the bullet and not get hurt…er…until a wiseguy shot him in the groin (where the suit didn’t protect him) and he died. When Houdini went to London for the first time, he took the Bullet Man’s vacated spot on the bill. (And no, none of the tricks in The Illusionist ever went wrong, but I still liked it much more than The Prestige) — fog

All Hail, Victor Horta (and Jerry Garcia)

Mrs. Pinetar and I were in Brussels this summer and we went to the Victor Horta museum. Horta was a great Art Nouveau architect and the Belgians are very proud of him (as they should be) as many things there are named for him. When we got back, we looked him up and there aren’t a lot of English sites on him.

Tonight I found this one.

If you go to Brussels, everyone will insist that you go to Grote Market and see the Hotel DeVille. You won’t miss that. No one will let you. But don’t miss the Victor Horta house and musem and don’t miss the Old England building. Old England is THE most Art Nouveau building you’ll ever see, and it houses the museum of musical instruments and a cafe (cha ching) on top.

The amount of custom iron work inside and out was stunning. This building must have seemed like a spaceship to the Victorians of 1890, when it was built. These types of buildings are now mostly gone because they:
(1) Were only built from 1890 to 1910

(2) Were radically different thus when they got old, they were very out of style

(3) Are ridiculou$ly hard to maintain

While I wouldn’t want to live in a house as over-the-top Art Nouveau as Victor Horta, I do really like some of the aspects of this style. In fact, the Musee D’Orsay in Paris has a big Art Nouveau section that was totally deserted as people are all looking for the silly water lillies.

(Musee D’Orsay, Paris)

The furniture especially, has these amazing lines and sweeping, tangled motifs that are designed to look like they are growing. Amazing stuff. It’s a shame it only lasted a few years and then bled into Art Deco after The Great War. Now, most only know it from Grateful Dead concert posters, but it was a whole movement. –fog

Little Jeters Running Around…

You know, Mrs. Pinetar’s point on Barbaro’s “legacy” makes me wonder: What if Derek Jeter, you know, offered some future Jeter stardust, out for sale?  Certainly, women would line up around the block for that, no?  And be willing to pay a fortune, right?  You wonder when bigtime athletes will arrive at this “business” opportunity?

Straw pretty much tried it (But he was bad  at marketing himself).  Steve Garvey actually DID it (remember the bumper stickers in San Diego: “Steve Garvey is my Padre”).  OJ wouldn’t be above it (but his marketing department is worse than Straw’s).  Canseco?  Charlie Sheen?  Who knows? –fog

Barbaro Was My Last Bet

I don’t know much about horse racing but each year, I take the office bets down to the Bronx OTB (an adventure in itself) for the triple crown races. It’s great, everyone is an expert and no one knows diddly.

I try to Exacta box the favorites with some reasonable long shots. This year, for the Preakness, I had the winner (forgot who already) and Barbaro boxed. The message for me here, is clear: When your horse breaks down, it’s time to quit.

On the business side of this, they spent more money keeping this horse alive than it probably ever would have earned in stud fees. Does anyone have any numbers on that? Would, if he had lived (we all hoped, it’s sad), the owner have had any chance of recouping and then going into the black on him? Before you all razz me, let’s not forget that it IS a business you know. And it’s sure a business to the young Jamaican guys and the old Italian guys standing in the stink of the Bronx OTB, muttering the F word every two and half minutes.  Whoever called it “the sport of Kings”, hasn’t been to the Bronx OTB.

All in all, it’s a shame. You wonder if coming out of the gate early was any indicator. With that kind of dough on his back, they certainly weren’t going to scratch him. –fog

Mrs. Pinetar reminds me that they were, er, ah, you know, “harvesting” Barbaro’s stuff, so maybe they’ve banked up quite a bit of that by now and will still make money on him. Forgot about that aspect. Hmm, who might know this? Well, this fellow

http://salemslots.wordpress.com/

is a very knowledgeable guy from Kentucky (horse country) so perhaps he can weigh in on this?

I was also wondering: if you do that sort of work as a profession (Vet tech?), how does that get listed on your resume/CV? Or am I just an uptight city/burb slicker?