Click here to see the new Kolchak video in a new window

I love the show. I have the boxed set and drive my wife nuts with it. She doesn’t understand the fascination with it. Oh well. Anyway, this fellow with the action figures?? Whoahhh. The Kolchak is home made apparently from a figure of McGavin from The Christmas Story. The thing that kills me though, is that he went and made a Vincezo doll! One of the first comments is something like, “…dood, where did you get the Vincenzo doll?”

The Night Strangler has to be one of the best low budget (heck, ANY budget) films of all time. And no, there can be no Night Stalker without McGavin and Simon Oakland. Don’t give me Depp; don’t give me stupid Fox Mulder, a show that went for, what? 10 years and paid off on nothing? Bah.
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While I’m at it. Football. The Giants were lucky. They couldn’t move the ball. Yes, their defense was good but without turnovers, they don’t score. I also think Flacco was robbed and that ball was a catch and if Brady had thrown that (tuck play?) ball, it would have gone for 6.

Why the number is only Pats -3, I don’t know. I’d take them to about -6. I didn’t think Tyler’s National anthem was that bad. It was not good, but it was not disrespectful. He honored the song mostly and he’s not a great singer without all sorts of production from the board. Honestly, people over rate these rock guys so much, I wanted to scream, “…what did you expect?”

Who should sing it at the Soop? Well, you can’t get more NJ than the Giants so you should bring in Floyd Vivino. That’s right, Uncle Floyd. He’s appearing for the Children’s Love Fund in Midland Park at the Catholic Church in Feb. Support the Floyd. He’s a little bit of vaudeville still going strong.

I think this is the one I was thinking of when I posted the one from Breathe. Love the economy of Dave Gilmour. He lets notes breathe (no pun intended). He knows when NOT to play, which, is just as important as what TO play. He obviously loves the sustain, but he uses it tastefully. He lets the piece come to him. That’s not always easy.

Sitting at the kitchen table and “watching” the Liverpool game on the laptop. With Liverpool TV, you can’t see certain matches, but you can listen to the commentary or watch the video commentary. The video commentary is funny, because they can’t show the game. So you are watching a shot like the photo above. They show the crowd.

So naturally, my 4 year old son is asking me “what are you watching?”. So you find yourself describing what you see. And he thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world. Pretty soon you are describing The Kop; it’s one level all the way up. The Annie Road end? 2 decks and you’ll see sun on top of it because the sun sets over The Kop.

Now we have the globe out and I’m trying to explain sunsets. You have to start somewhere. Then we’re drawing pictures and diagrams on paper so he understands why he can’t see the Centenary Stand (because THAT’S where the camera is!).

Next, we flipping coins to demonstrate how they choose sides and I’m explaining that when Liverpool wins the toss, they like to defend the Kop in the first half so that they are attacking the Kop end in the 2nd half. Also, at a 3pm kick off, the sun in the eyes of the keeper at the Annnie Road end is a factor. Other teams like to deny Liverpool this. Does he understand any of this? Not sure.

Looks like another draw. Aren’t Downing, Henderson and Adam great? And Carroll doesn’t start at 35 million. C’mon Kenny! This is getting old. Your new signings can’t play that one incisive ball in to the striker in a dangerous spot. Also, it sounded like the ref waved off about 3 legit chances for Liverpool penalties. The anti-Liverpool, anti-Suarez campaign is in full swing. Great. Let’s just cancel the league and give the title to Man U in perpetuity! That’s how it’s set up, isn’t it?

My kids love the Chipmunks CD now. If I yell “Alvin!” in a loud voice, they will both yell, “o KAY!”, in response as Alvin does. It got me curious as to how they did the voices. Obviously it’s a speed up job, but I was surprised to learn that Seville/Bagdasarian did it all on his own with a variable speed tape recorder that was different in that it allowed more freedom than other models.

There are some guys in their 20′s and naturally, some guys with mad skills playing. You show up with the rust, and they judge you very quickly and you see little of the ball after the verdict has been rendered.

I was always a striker as a kid, but that was 30 years ago and everyone wants to play up there and there’s a pecking order. So I am learning defense and making do. I’d love to play up, but even if I get an odd shift forward, which can happen with subbing, I don’t get the ball up there. So I’m making runs and I’m INVISIBLE. So that’s not the answer. But, you always feel in your mind that you could do well if given the chance.

Tonight, I get thrown up front early and quickly I get a a ball well out from goal that is falling to my left. I have my back to goal. I spin around and just instinctively take it off the bounce as I’m spinning and catch it real good and it goes in from distance. I heard someone make a crack about “goal of the year”, so that is nice to hear. I’m thinking to myself, “…hey, I might be a load on defense, but I can turn and shoot and finish…”

Next shift I’m up front again and my friend who I car pool with is tied up near goal with a man or two draped on him and I go drop for him and he looks up and sees me and rolls a nice ball to me and I step into it and catch it 100%, low and hard. The keeper sees this and he’s ready, arms out, and it just lasers past his head–nothing he can do. What a nice feeling to catch it square and keep it down. Again, I am thinking, “…I can do this”.

The game is 2-2. Then we go down 3-2. The play was physical. It was the kind of night with a kind of weird energy. Lot of hard challenges on 50-50 balls and the ref is letting all kinds of physical stuff go. The young guys are getting mad and they want to win. The old guys just want go to work the next day–that’s the difference.

I was going to go in, but the sub would have put me at midfield and I didn’t want that in this close game, so I let the other guy have it and he goes in and scores and it’s 3-3 now. We fall behind again 4-3 and I get a shift up front. My thinking was that these guys were fast and skilled and I didn’t want to be playing defense on them in a close game that the young guys wanted to win so badly. So when I could get a shift up front, I took it.

I ended up inside the 6 and a corner got through to me and I tucked it in nice and calm for #3. You have to understand that I don’t score. There are several guys on the team who will not pass me the ball almost under any circumstances. While that hurts somewhat, I do understand the jock-ocracy and why it is. Still, you win plenty of 50-50 balls and it doesn’t much matter. Besides, it’s tiring to have a lot of the ball and a lot of the time, I’m looking to conserve energy and don’t want the ball. But up front, you have to make runs and do positive things or it stands out. So it was nice to be scoring goals. The last one, ANYone on the team might have scored, but still, I got myself into the correct spot and that’s key. Be where you’re supposed to be is half of it.

The first 2 goals? I don’t think anyone on the team would have even shot the first one and the second? Low percentage; maybe 2% of those get hit well and beat the keeper in that situation. So obviously, as they say in Liverpool, I’m all made up about tonight. I had a bad game 3 weeks ago and thought of dropping the indoor. Just saying “I pulled a hammy” and bagging it. I think that was a night I was wide open for drop on a guy who was getting stripped and he looked up and saw me and I saw him recognize me and DQ the idea to drop it to me. And there was no one within 15 yards of me. We’re talking IN SPACE. And, yes, that, and s***ing most of the night, hurt. You wonder, “…at my age, why am I doing this?” For nights like tonight. That’s why.

And it was funny too, because I look at these things like a Sociology experiment. I observe and I enjoy noting what the group dynamic is. Some guys might be oblivious that they don’t get passed to or just not care. I notice it and track it. Nothing personal, I just find it interesting. So tonight, I noticed that no sooner do I score the cracker–the first one, that wah-lah, I’m getting service [angels singing], and of course, I did nothing with it (almost nothing).

But it’s funny. If you watch. A “good” player will lose the ball and play bad balls a lot of the time, but that is overlooked. A player like me has a clunky touch and you can just hear everyone, “…oh, look, he can’t do this or that”. It’s just the way it is. I’m not making a normative judgement. It is what it is and I find it interesting.

I’m also finding it interesting how much of this game is confidence: Between the ears. I thought baseball was the most mental game (well, golf), but this is up there. You can have made skills and it won’t do you any good if you don’t have the confidence to back it. And in soccer, confidence can be audacity almost. There’s a reason that good strikers are almost universally Big Prima Donnas–because to be good, you must think you are superman, and MEAN it. I think of Cantona. He was nuts. There wasn’t anything he didn’t think he could do on a pitch.

Scoring a goal is HARD. It’s ridiculously hard and to do it, you have to make very quick, very risky decisions, most of which, will turn out bad and look quite selfish; but you must do them to score! And you can’t be self conscious to take those selfish risks. Look at my first goal tonight. No one would hit that ball. But I play a lot off the wall and I have, for years, enjoyed practicing the turn-and-hit. Left side, right side, what have you. When I saw the ball fall there (it wasn’t played TO me, just a random ball that fell to my vicin), I immediately felt comfortable and formed the thought, “…I can hit this well”, and so there was no hesitation whatsoever. In fact, I had been to the wall on New Years Eve and hit several of these in my workout. It was a warm day and I had a great workout–totally enjoyable. As I’m spinning to hit that ridiculous shot, all I need is a lane to the goal. There’s no time to look, you just factor it out and hope. In your mind, you have a very definite idea of exactly where you THINK the goal is, so all you’re doing is thinking: (1) hit it well (2) Keep it down and (3) on goal; edge of goal if possible.

One of the beauties of that shot is you are back-to-goal. With good defenders, you will get many balls in that state, so being able to do this is a big plus. The other thing is that it is such an outlandish strike attempt that goalies are flat footed, or better; they’re screened. They aren’t expecting a shot from that distance and position. You also aren’t lifting your leg and telegraphing a shot so some defender yells “shot!” and all of a sudden you have no lane. It’s funny, playing off a wall will not do much for your ability to play with others (I’m living that now), but it does totally hone your ability to one-time balls and be two-footed.

Hopefully, I’ll see a little more of the ball and hopefully, I’ll do good things with those opportunities and not just waste the little capital I’ve amassed with my team mates. I think I’ll have a window of about 1 game where I’ll be more involved. You know, I didn’t want to go around campaigning for playing striker. I just don’t want to campaign with my mouth. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping that I get up front a bit more. I won’t campaign though. And I’m not thinking that I can go out and do this routinely. Some nights the ball falls for you fortuitously and gives you chances to do things you know you can do. It ain’t baseball, where you’ll hit at least 3 or 4 times. In footy, you may not get the chances to do the things you want to.

I recall the time I first had him and was in an apartment. I opened the refrigerator door to get something out and he calmly walked OUT of the refrigerator. How he got in, I don’t know. He must have snuck in while I was closing it. Thankfully, it was dinner and he didn’t have long to wait.

Anyway, I’ve been doing other projects and just have not had anywhere near the time I would need to do this. But, I’ve gotten some requests to keep going from some people that I really respect, so I thought maybe I could try and do a few and see how it goes.

Here is a link to a show from 1956, I believe. It is “What’s my Line?” or “I’ve got a secret”. Anyway, I was looking at the Jack Benny one, and you know how it is, they put similar ones up and then I’m watching Jackie Gleason and then I stumble on this one. The idea of it is just so absurd that it’s amazing to think of. Have a look:

Click here to see the show

Read article on Samuel J Seymour

The article points out that the fall that Seymour experienced in his hotel room in Feb, lead to his death in April. A shame. They literally killed this man, in a sense, to get him on this show, which, apparently, he was excited to do, and who wouldn’t be? Can you imagine, when this guy was 5 years old, the idea that this 5 year old boy would be on national television, 91 years later? And that the country would not have 30 states or whatever it was, but 48? And just have finished up fighting 2 world wars etc. It’s so amazing to think of on several levels.

Other thoughts? Well, when you watch a guy like Jack Benny or Jackie Gleason you realize how bad our current, foul-mouthed comedians are today. Look at these guys. They didn’t need to work blue to make you laugh. They were talented in the days when to do that work, you had to work your way up through maybe vaudeville even; point is, years of working as a pro in live situations etc. They were pros. Today, we slap a guy up after 15 minutes and call him “great”. I don’t think so. Making potty jokes and/or cursing and being negative is not comedy. I think of a foul-mouthed, negative guy like Lewis Black and these thoughts come through loudly. Benny and Gleason and their ilk were tremendous.

Manchester United loses at HOME, on Alex’s 70th birthday no less, to BLACKBURN! Then Spurs give up a late equalizer and Chelski loses 3-1 to Villa. If only QPR could have leveled vs The Arsenal. City tomorrow. With a nice win over Newcastle in the books on Friday, I could sit back and watch and be all made up about it! And listening to Gerrard score again was chilling. He’s 31, and I have no illusions, but it was just plain nice.

Bobby Vee to Boston? Why not? Why do people just love to hate on this guy? He’s a goofy guy in a lot of ways, but he’s a pro’s pro and he knows the game. He’ll take that squad and get them playing to their ability and that’s all you can ask for. He’s not Houdini. He will write names on a card mostly. He will hook pitchers. After that, the players play, or eat or drink or what have you…haha. Good luck Bobby. Beat the Yankees.

McGonnigle (1999-2011). What can you say? McGonnigle. Gonnigle. Gonnicle, or as my kids said because they couldn’t pronounce McGonnigle, “Ah-Gonk!”. He was wonderful.

FACT: The Liberal media provides millions of dollars of free tailwind and headwind to the candidates that they like/don’t like. In 2008, they got John McCain the GOP nomination because he was the closest thing to a Democrat running on the GOP side, and he was the most beatable candidate.

This time, they’d like nothing better than Huntsman, because he’s basically a Democrat. But they know it’s not going to happen, so they are backing Mitt Romney (a man, who, I might add, could NOT beat John McCain last time!). They are backing him in the primary season. If he gets the nomination, expect that same Liberal media that backed him to POUND him on being a Mormon and on having enacted universal healthcare in Mass. Oh, and they’ll dredge up some other stuff. The tone will change ON A DIME–over night.

Romney is NOT a Conservative. He is a very liberal pol. Any Republican who can (a) win in Mass and (b) pass universal healthcare, isn’t Conservative. Oh, and, by the way, that universal healthcare is costing multiples MORE than he promised and that’s precisely how the Obamacare will go and why it is imperitive to repeal it–we simply don’t have the money. Forget that it’s bad law–we simply don’t have the money. It will break us. We borrow 42 cents of every federal dollar spent. To enact a monolithic entitlement program like that when we are borrowing so much money is as close to national suicide as you’ll ever see. It must go.

The candidates who will figure are now running thusly:
Cain, Romney, Gingrich, Bachmann. Paul is only a factor if he is dumb enough to run as a 3rd party guy and virtually ensure that Obama wins. Huntsman is not realistic. Santorum ditto.

Bachmann may do very well in Iowa and, as a Conservative woman with gravitas, she may be a viable veep candidate. I would applaud that as the Dems have a permanent 15% advantage with women and that is why they attack Palin and Bachmann so rudely and visciously: they are scared stiff of a woman on the GOP side pulling that number down. Their whole “party” rests on that. The other leg of the stool is minorities, and that explains the treatment that Cain and Clarence Thomas get.

Now originally I liked Cain. I LOVED that he was NOT ROMNEY! And that was the point to Cain. But for 2 reasons, I don’t want him nominated. The 999 thing is not the right thing right now. I want a candidate who won’t waste ANY political capital on a radical overhaul. The radical overhaul is REPEAL OBAMACARE. It must be the first and only thing focused on until it is done. So 999 is a distraction that could cost us dearly. It also introduces a national sales tax, and I don’t want Congress with any new taxes to play with. Once enacted, they only go up. The power to tax is the power to destroy!

The Cain scandals are not a bother to me. I believe they are 100% manufactured by Dem operatives. That’s how scared they are about Cain on the GOP side. (See my earlier comments). The best thing I’ve read about it is this–it’s a must-read for every American and you won’t hear these things in the mainstream media–that’s how it works.

The real reason Cain needs to step aside? He recently said on the record that China was seeking nuclear weapons! Even as a school kid, I knew that China had them since the 1960′s. You can’t win the general and be throwing this red meat to the media. He will lose. There is too much at stake.

If he was Joe Biden, he’d get a pass, but he’s the opposite of Joe Biden–every Liberal “journo” wants to nail him, and if it’s that easy, then buh-bye, Herman. I respect you; I like you; but you can’t do that and win. This is too important. I wish you all kinds of well. And thank you for a very important job well done–you exposed the hate machine that is the Democratic/Liberal Media complex, that is for those who look at it objectively and in good faith.

With Cain a disaster, that leaves only Gingrich to thwart the disaster that is Romney. I know, I know, he said some things that were head scratchers. The photo op with Pelosi and the Globaloney Warming comments. I get it. But he is so smart and so dang erudite under pressure that he HAS to be the nominee. He also understands as do NO OTHER CANDIDATES that he is not only trying to convince people to vote for his IDEAS, but that he is fighting a ruthless and dishonest enemy: the press. He routinely goes after the press and calls out their ridiculous Liberal bias! To me, this is now a REQUIREMENT of any Conservative candidate. You MUST fight back against the bias and not only is Newt the one best equipped to do that, he is the ONLY one who seems to understand that it must be done! I’m tired of the Bush’s laying back and allowing their enemies attack them with no fear of pushback. The ideas need to be put out there and Newt will do it.

Newt is experienced. He has the Contract with American and the very skill full dampening of the most Liberal part of the Clinton years after the ’94 congress. He understands Congress and how you get things done. He understands the space. He is pleasant and smart and steeped in historical contextual knowledge and what’s more: he can THINK and SPEAK ON HIS FEET!

He is, I believe, realistically Conservative. What does that mean? Well, it means he is smart enough not to waste his time tilting at windmills with stuff like 999 while the healthcare bill alone is holding back GDP by 2-3% per year right now just on fear alone! He knows what needs to be done in what order and he knows what is OBTAINABLE and in what time frame!

We are very close to having the Liberal media, once again, shove a very liberal, lightweight candidate down our throats. We have a very short window left with which to thwart this. Newt is the only choice and he’s a da*n good choice too!

Don’t blow this. Don’t be fooled by radical/unelectable Ron Paul or Cain. Romney is who your enemies want. Gingrich has the added sweetner of being HATED by the Liberals! A Gingrich presidency would rankle them monumentally; right up there with Palin or Bachmann or Cain. They were so scared of Newt in the 90′s that they put him on the cover of Newsweek:

You want to know who the Left fears? Watch who they ATTACK! And NO ONE was more attacked in the 1990′s than Newt.

Addendum: How can I prove the media is pushing Romney and tearing down everyone else? Well, there are many ways. Newbusters.org is a great daily source of objective, verifiable stuff, but it’s even simpler than that. Just go about your business and count up the times you hear a KNOWN Liberal say, “…Oh, Romney has already won” and add that to the number of times you hear: “…Cain CAN’T win” or “…Bachmann can’t win”, or “…Gingrich can’t win”.

They want you to think that it’s over; that Romney has already won; that there are no issues with Romney; that all the other candidates are deeply flawed. Just listen with half an ear and it’s obvious.

Last weekend I worked all weekend clearing trees and raking leaves and had my headphones on Bloomberg Business News and the Liberal bias on Bloomberg was just STAGGERING. It was a joke. It was either bashing Cain or pushing Huntsman the whole weekend. It was a cartoon. But remember, Fox News is biased, even though they can’t give specific examples; even though Shep is a Lib; Greta is a Lib; Juan Williams and Geraldo are Libs. You think there are any Conservatives at MSNBC? hahahaha.

Swagger: to conduct oneself in an arrogant or superciliously pompous manner; especially : to walk with an air of overbearing self-confidence

My point was about playing with confidence and I was making a distinction between confidence and swagger. I distinguish the two like this: Confidence in sports, is something you have unconsciously. Swagger is something you affect, consciously.

And the word “Affect” reminds me of one of my favorite high school vocabulary words. You know those words you memorize for the SAT’s and then never use? Here it is:

Affectation: a : the act of taking on or displaying an attitude or mode of behavior not natural to oneself or not genuinely felt b : speech or conduct not natural to oneself : artificiality.

So my position was that swagger is an affectation while plain old fashioned confidence is not. There. My 100 year old 9th grade English teacher would be proud of me. I used it in a sentence.

The Rhodesian Office was merely communicating an idea. I think we were both communicating the SAME idea and were using different words and I was doing what I do here, and that is being pedantic, and dissecting it to the nth degree. We were both referring to the same idea and everyone got that. Just having a little wonky fun with it–otherwise I have nothing to write. Here’s the definition of Pedantic, while we’re at it:
pe·dan·tic [puh-dan-tik] adjective
1.ostentatious in one’s learning.
2.overly concerned with minute details or formalisms, especially in teaching.

But let’s continue with the theme. Because the death of Joe Frazier brought the difference between confidence and swagger into sharp focus recently. You think Frazier, you think Ali. Joe was a simple fighter. Ali would run his mouth. Ali called Joe a “gorilla” and other obnoxious things. The media at the time (and probably still) thinks that everything Ali said was witty and worthy of praise.

The truth? He was a creep. He was rude. He taught a whole generation (or two) of Americans that you can and should run your mouth instead of being a gentleman and just playing your sport. In fact, I have always posited that all the incivility in sports being pedaled to kids can be traced directly to Ali. I don’t like him for that. Was he a good fighter? Sure. But so was Joe Frazier. And all Joe did was just show up and do his job with dignity. He didn’t belittle the other man. This was how things were in the World War II generation. In the 1960′s, the Liberal media changed this and Ali was their poster boy. So you want to talk about Ali and his swagger and his mouth? You can keep him. And realize that this is a different topic than the Cardinals and whether they looked poised or centered or confident.
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Last thoughts on baseball:

LaRussa. So close to 2nd place all time. He’s 3rd to John J. McGraw and Connie Mack.

He needs a half season to pass McGraw, and it’s such a remarkable record that I figured he’d be a cinch to manage one more victory lap year and knock it off (is Bobby Cox’ victory lap over yet?).

Interestingly enough, go ahead and look at Connie Mack’s record. That’s the one that will NEVER be broken, along with Cy Young’s 511 Wins and Wahoo Sam Crawford’s 312 career triples. Mack managed for over 50, count em, 50 years! He was born about 2 months after the battle of Antietam in the Civil War (1862) and he was in the dugout, in Philadelphia, managing the A’s in 1950! That’s mind boggling. He managed the A’s from the inception of the American League! He managed them in the famous 1905 world series against the Giants when every game was a shutout pitched by a Hall of Famer. He couldn’t use Waddell because he was pretty sure that gamblers had bought him. That same guy was in the dugout until 1950. That’s from Queen Victoria’s last year of reign through Edwardian times; through World War I, through the roaring 20′s, through the depression, through World War II and up to Korea. All while managing the A’s.

And he managed in street clothes. There is only one other modern manager who managed in street clothes. It’s a great, obnoxiously geeky trivia question.

And of course Mack owned the team, so no one could fire him. That’s how you manage for 50+ years in the bigs. I think Tony could have gone, with good health, another 10 years easy, taking him to 43 years, and within 10 of the old man.

Another amazing fact about Mack is that they always say he broke up his good teams. True, he needed cash in the early 30′s (who didn’t?), so he sold Foxx, and Grove and Cochrane to raise cash. The team had peaked, ok fine.

But the $100,000 dollar 1911 infield? Home Run Baker, Eddie Collins, Stuffy McIniss? Those guys, he sold, because he knew some of them were dirty and he didn’t know which ones, so he sold them ALL. Smart man. And by “dirty”, we mean that gamblers had “bought” some of them as was rampant in those days and he didn’t know who it was. Look back at the world series records and tell me how all those great Giant clubs lost all those world series? McGraw was seen openly betting with A’s fans in the seats before the 1905 series. I think he was trying to win that one. And 1912 was a tough loss. But the others? Especially 1917? Hmm…

Can’t imagine how much money it would take for a player to “sell” a game now. Just astronomical. But then? Not so much. And it happened a lot from 1900 to 1920.

Anyway, LaRussa was real close to 2nd and he walked away. I predict he will “pull a Jack Mckeon” and show up somewhere for a short stint within about 5 years, and he’ll crack the record while “caretaking” a team like Davey is doing now.

Enjoy the game.

Addendum: Go here and click the column header for “W” and see the all time winning mgrs. LaRussa averaged 82 wins a year for 33 years. At 1000 victories behind Connie Mack, he’d overhaul him in only 12 more seasons. That would take him from age 67 to age 80. A big stretch, I know, but I’m just putting the mark into perspective. Talk about being a prisoner to a compilation record!