Tell me what's in the envelope.

Criss Angel is cooler than I ever would have guessed. There's this new show on NBC called Phenomenon. It's basically American Idol, but replace the singers with "mystics" and "mediums" and crap like that, and replace Simon, Randy that tubby Laker girl with goth magician Criss Angel and spoon-bending douchebag Uri Geller. When I first saw ads for this show I had very low expectations. One thing that drives me nuts is pseudoscience. I can't stands that guys like John Edward (The A-hole that hosts Crossing Over, not the A-hole that's running for president) can become gazillionaires by manipulating vulnerable people.

From the ads, two things struck me as troubling about Phenomenon. The first is that they never described any of the contestants as Magicians. This implies that the contestants are suggesting that what they are doing (reading minds and shit) is not a trick, when it should be obvious that it is just a trick. The second problem with the show is Uri Geller.

Uri Geller came to fame in the 1970's by performing various psychic tricks, bending spoons with his mind, dousing and stuff like that. It's obvious that many Americans are not familiar with Geller or have forgotten his downfall since he has a job. Geller has been debunked time and time again. Perhaps the most famous incident occurred when Geller appeared on The Tonight Show in 1975. Prior to the show, Johnny Carson, an amateur magician himself, contacted friend James Randi, a well-known debunker of pseudoscience. He told them to provide their own spoons and other props. As you might have guessed, Geller couldn't do any of his tricks. Here's a video:



But now Uri Geller is back on network TV propagating his bullshit. Luckily, his co-host is Criss Angel. I was unfamiliar with Angel prior to seeing Phenomenon, but apparently he's a very popular street magician similar to David Blain. He's hosted several specials and a TV show called Mindfreak. Although Angel has been the subject of some controversy, he admits that his act is all trickery and doesn't claim to have any supernatural powers. He's one of the good guys.

On the second episode of Phenomenon, a contestant named Jim Callahan did a performance in which he claimed he was in contact with a dead guy named Raymond who told him what object was in a closed case. Uri Geller ate his performance up. Criss Angel didn't:



Angel took a page out of the James Randi playbook and made Callahan look like what he is, a phony.

A Book, a Movie, and a TV Show

Baseball season is over so it's time to entertain myself in other ways. So here's brief list of stuff I've been reading, watching, and.. uh... watching. Maybe I'll try to do something like this periodically.

Book: More Sex is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics, by Stephen Landsburg. This is one of those pop-economics books that have been popping up since the success of Dubner and Levitt's Freakonomics. Like Freakonomics and Landsburg's earlier book, The Armchair Economist, it's a collection of essays that discuss the underlying economics of everyday situations. In particular, it explains why "conventional wisdom" in many situations is wrong. The title chapter argues that the spread of STDs would decrease if people that have no sex, or very little sex would have more sex. The argument goes like this: Say that if you're a woman (You can switch the genders around in this example if you want to. You can even just switch one if you're into that.) on the prowl and there are 4 dudes in the bar that you're willing to bed. Two of them are very promiscuous and the other two only venture out once a year. Assuming that the two man-whores are more likely to have herpes, your odds of finding a safe mate are around 50%. Now assume that you could magically make every dude that only bones once a year into a dude that bones twice a year. Then, on any given night, there would be twice as many of these relatively safe dudes out on the prowl, including our hypothetical evening. Your odds of safe sex mating would go up to 66%. And there's like a multiplier affect because then when you go bed some other dude, you'll have less chance of spreading herpes yourself. Get it? Increased activity by sexual conservatives, according to Landsburg, would slow down the spread of STDs.



But Landsburg's point in this chapter, and most of his other chapters, is that the benefits of doing something like this are mostly for others, not for the sexual conservative choosing to get it on more often. He'd obviously receive the benefit of getting laid more often, but he'd only be sharing the benefit of a safer pool of partners with a jillion other people. It's this problem that he really analyzes. If the only good that is caused by a particular one of my actions is a benefit to everyone else rather than a benefit to me, what motivates me to act that way? Here's where I started to get a little uneasy with some of Landsberg's ideas. He pretty much wants to subsidize everything. That's not something you hear a lot of economists saying, but he things the government should pay sexual conservatives to have sex (and pay them with condoms), pay jurors to find verdicts, and fine them for bad verdicts, and it should buy every patent and put it into the public domain. This stuff all sounded crazy to me at first, but Landsburg has a way of almost convincing you that these are great ideas. Whether or not you buy into anything he says, it's an interesting read and a great way to see how an interesting mind works.

Movie: Children of Men was a pretty heavy movie. It was really well made if you're into artistic shit like cinematography and "style." It's got some Citizen Cain style newsreel stuff in it, and a single shot action battle sequence that is really really cool. All this stuff was secondary to the story about a post-apocalyptic future in which nobody can have babies and everyone has lost hope and gone bonkers. Great Britain is the only functioning government left and it's being torn apart by a flood of refugees and terrorist groups. Clive Owen ends up finding a pregnant chick and trying to escort her... somewhere. It doesn't really matter where because this is one of those road movies where the journey is more important than the destination. It was a solid movie, but I have a hard time with movies where the journey is more important than the destination. I'd rather the story teller finishes their story than leave it up to me to interpret. But it's well worth watching regardless.



TV Show: Season two of Dexter started Monday. Before I talk about Dexter, I need to say that Showtime is the best network on TV and those bastards at Time Warner totally sold me on it by giving it to me free for 6 months. I know HBO generally defines what constitutes great television drama, or "dramady" in some cases, but with the [non-]death of the Sopranos, Deadwood, and that show with all those ugly chicks in New York City, Showtime has a stronger overall lineup right now. Showtime's lineup now includes one outstanding show in Weeds, and at least four very very good shows in Bullsh!t, Dexter, Brotherhood and Californication. Bullsh!t was great in it's first two seasons but has declined somewhat due to the fact that they're running out of bullshit. That's good for society I suppose, but bad for TV. But I digress.

The hero and title character of Dexter is a serial killer. That premise alone is just so interesting. In Silence of the Lambs and it progeny, they made us a little sympathetic to Hannibal by having him find respect for Jodie Foster and kill that weaselly vice principal dude from Bostin Public. But we still all knew Hannibal was a bad guy. Dexter is actually a pretty good guy, despite the fact that he's murdered tens or hundreds of people. The premise is that Dexter was raised by his stepfather, a cop named Harry. Harry realized pretty early that Dexter was crazy and would probably end up a killer. So Harry trained him to control his urges using what Dexter refers to as "the code of Harry." He still kills, but he only kills bad guys. He finds out who the bad guys are through his work as a forensics cop specializing in blood spatter analysis. This skill also helps him make his own crime scenes perfectly clean. At first I found this premise a little too far fetched, but as I watched the show, I got into it. It helps that Michael C. Hall (the dude from Six Feet Under) plays the part so well.

This season begins with Dexter unable to kill, but he doesn't see this as a good thing. Which is kind of weird. Meanwhile, and more intriguing, some divers find the place where Dexter dumps all the bodies of his victims. That's about all we got in that story line, but I'm interested to see how the public reacts when they start identifying Dexter's victims, who are all really really bad guys.

Who's Now?

I've been watching a lot of this television station called "ESPN" lately. "ESPN" is an initialism for "Entertainment and Sports Television." But it's clear to me that they are more concerned about the "Entertainment" aspects--the bling and the gossip and the egos--than they are about the "Sports." Exhibit A is this miniseries they've been showing. Yes, the sports channel is showing a miniseries. It's called "The Bronx is Burning" and was probably made under the mistaken impression that anybody outside of New York gives a shit about the Yankees. From what I gathered in a half hour of watching the Bronx burn, the plot is that John Turturro (Transformers, Mo Better Blues) likes to yell about some guy with big glasses. That's all I got.

But Exhibit B of why ESPN blows is this thing they've been doing on SportsCenter called "Who's Now?" I know a lot of guys live and die with SportsCenter, but I've never really gotten into it. My knowledge of sports, at least with respect to the big three, doesn't go too far beyond the state borders of Wisconsin and I've never really cared what the Yankees or the Lakers are doing. Plus SportsCenter is hosted by some really annoying guys.

But I have to say, based on my limited exposure to the show, "Who's now?" must be an all time low. I mentioned "Who's Now?" a while back after seeing the match up between the greatest golfer ever and a mediocre QB that porked some skanks. For your review, "Who's Now?" consists of a bracket-style "tournament" in which various athletes are matched up against other athletes in "nowness." I guess that means accomplishments on the field/court/pitch/pool, plus style and shit like that. Apparently accomplishments on the field are weighted much less than the other intangibles that make up "nowness." So each day or week or whatever, Stu Scott announces the current match up, three douchebags discuss it, and 50,000 morons vote on it. The last match up was between the greatest tennis player that ever lived and some guy I've never heard of. Now I scoffed at Tiger versus Matt Leinert, but at least Tiger won. This time though, according to three douchebags and 50,000 morons, Roger Federer, the greatest tennis player ever is less "now" than some guy I've never heard of (who is Tony Parker?). Awesome.

But the current match up has me livid. It's Michael Phelps versus Shaq. Now keep in mind the contest is for who's the most "now." As I've stated, I don't know what "now" means, but I can't imagine it means "ten years ago." Michael Phelps is unquestionably the best swimmer who ever lived. And frankly, it isn't very close. No person has ever dominated his sport more than Phelps. (The only possible arguments I would entertain are Tiger and Federer). And Phelps is doing it RIGHT NOW. And he's barely 22. So after Stu Scott announces the match up, he turns it over to two guys I've never heard of and an australopithecus that used to play wide receiver for Tampa Bay for some discussion. Now, this match up seems like a no-brainer (a total Schaivo as Ace would say) to me. Phelps wins. Hands down. It's a stupid contest, but Phelps is untouchable, especially against some aging NBA center that hasn't been dominant in years. (Don't get me wrong, I love Shaq as far as NBA basketball players go. He seems like a class act and, as I understand it, was once pretty frickin good.) So Stu Scott turns it over to the no-names and the caveman for some discussion, and ALL THREE of these "sports analysts" pick Shaq. Seriously, ALL THREE. ESPN, you are a stupid TV station.

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Speaking of who's now, how 'bout them Brewers? I attended the baseball match between the Crew and the Arizona Diamondbacks last night and it was some good baseball. The D-Backs started the show with a solo dinger from their first batter. But Corey Hart answered right back when it was our turn. Two batters later, Ryan Braun made it 3-2. A Prince Fielder double in the fifth added another, and despite two more solo homers by the D-Backs, the Brewer's hung on to win 4-3. Ya gotta win those one-run games. Cordero and Turnbow both looked good shutting down the D-Backs in the 8th and 9th.

The bad news is that Ben Sheets was put on the 15 day DL yesterday. We brought in a pair of studs from the AAA squad down in Nashville. Manny Parra is a lefty starter that has been kicking butt with a 1.7ish ERA and a perfect game under his belt, and righty reliever Grant Balfour, who also had a 1.7ish ERA and a bunch of saves. This brings the average age on the team down to like 16. It's my kind of team Charlie, my kind of team.

Summer Solstice Festival, Comparing Mustached Brewers to Non-Mustached Brewers, and more Showtime on Demand

On Saturday night, former roomie B and I met J&S at the East Side Summer Solstice Music Festival. It's basically a block party on North Ave. between Oakland and Farwell, on the "fashionable" east side. B was a bachelor for the weekend because the missus was in DC. I'm a big fan of these block party type festivals. I know Summerfest is the "Big Gig" around here, but I actually prefer these smaller down-town festivals. I think what I really enjoy more than anything on the planet is drinking beer outside. Call me easy to please, but if it's a nice night and I'm outside with a cold beer, I'm a happy man. We mostly just hung around, listened to some bands, watched some guy juggle stuff that was on fire, and listened to J's fiance tell me that I'm sexist. Good times were had by all.
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I went in to the office during the day on Saturday. One of my bosses, who is a big Brewer fan, was there as well. We got to talking about how the current Crew would stack up against the '82 squad.

[By the way, is anyone else around here getting a little sick of this 25th anniversary of the 1982 AL Champion Brewers thing? It's everywhere. Vintage commercials, promo DVDs, bobblehead dolls of the '82 squad... I mean, it was a great team and all, but we LOST the '82 World Series for Chrisake. I realize that this is all the success the Milwaukee Brewers ever had [so far], and that it's not as much about the record as it is about how the mustached personality of the Crew reflected the beer-bellied culture of the city, but let's start concentrating on this year's team.]

So the boss was pretty sure that the '82 squad and their mustaches were measurably better than the 2007 Crew. He noted that they hit an insane amount of home runs. I replied that we've hit more dingers than all but one other team in baseball right now and we're in the National League. He mentioned the rotation anchored by filthy mustached pitchers Vuckavich and Caldwell. I replied that we have like 8 guys on our team that would start for most teams in baseball, and a solid ace in Sheets. He mentioned mustached reliever Rollie Fingers. I responded that numbers-wise, Cordero is better. He mentioned that 82 defense, with Yount at Shortstop and Molitor at second. I... had to concede that one.

Anyway, I decided to consult the ol' baseball almanac to see how the offense on the current roster stacks up against the 82 squad. To begin with, as I'm writing this, the Crew is 43-32. The '82 squad was 42-32-1 after 75 games. So that's slightly better. I just looked at offensive stats for the top 8 starters for both teams since the 82 team was in the American League and it doesn't seem fair to compare a pitcher-less offense to one with a pitcher.

The Mustached squad of Ted Simmons, Cecil Cooper, Jim Gantner, Paul Molitor [the only non-mustached player on the team, presumably clean-shaven to facilitate his cocaine use], Robin Yount, Ben Oglivie, Gorman Thomas and Charlie Moore hit for an average of 282, an OBP of 337, SLG of 462, and 186 dingers.

The non-mustached squad of Johnny Estrada, Prince Fielder, Rickie Weeks, Ryan Braun, JJ Hardy, Geoff Jenkins, Billy Hall and Corey Hart are currently hitting for a 288 average, a 353 OBP, 514 SLG and are on pace to hit 196 dingers.

I'm no mathematician, but this strikes me as a better offense. I should note that, due to my laziness, Ryan Braun's projected home runs in this model are only 11 because I used the same multiplier I did for the rest of the team even though he's hit 5 in like just 23 games rather than in the 75 games or whatever. I think, realistically, he could hit 20 or 25. It's also interesting to note that the average age on this team is like thirteen or something.
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I've been watching a lot of Showtime On Demand lately because [the pricks at] Time Warner Cable gave me six months free. I just watched Season 1 of Dexter. That is one messed up television program. The plot of the show is that the dude from Six Feet Under is a serial killer, but as a child, his step father realized he was fucked up and sort of taught him how to manage his little problem. So Dexter lives by this "Code of Harry" under which he kills people, but he only kills killers. He works as a forensics analyst specializing in "blood spatter analysis" (is that a real job?) for the Miami police. It's a pretty good show. From the very get-go, I told myself "there is no way they can make me like this character." But they did. Which kind of freaks me out. There are some very serious plausibility issues going on in the show, but overall, it's entertaining and different. And the Six Feet Under dude plays "creepy" very very well.

Baseball players are bad actors...

But soap opera stars are even worse.

When the Brewers were out in LA last month, Jeff Supan, Chris Capuano, JJ Hardy and Bill Hall filmed a guest appearance on a soap opera called The Young and the Restless. It aired today and it was totally ridiculous. Seriously, watch the clip. The best part is when Hardy says "She can warm up with me anytime." Nice face JJ.

I wanted to know why it was that four Brewers made cameos on the show. What does the Crew have to do with some crappy soap opera? Well, I did a little research and it turns out that The Young and the Restless takes place in a fictionalized version of Genoa City, Wisconsin. I thought shows like that all took place in LA and New York. Who knew? Apparently the dude in the clip (the bad actor, not the baseball players that are bad at acting) is running for state senate, and the lady that thinks Cappy is the "best left-handed pitcher in baseball" is either his retarded assistant or his retarded wife or something like that.

Little Boxes, Sports Bars and Crazy Packer-backers

My life over the past two months has looked vaguely like an after-school special. Instead of being about drugs or eating disorders, however, the after-school special of my life would be about TV and the Internet. I moved into a new [but very old] apartment in May. I decided not to get cable or Internet at the new crib. This was motivated partly by the desire to save money, but mostly because I wanted to be more productive. If I didn't have easy access to cable or Internet, the argument goes, I would go exercise, read books and talk to friends in person. After a month or so of idiot-box sobriety I broke down and called Time Warner Cable. At first I used it reasonably. A few shows here or there, checking my email a few times a day. But after a short time my downward spiral continued. On Sunday, I realized that not only does my cable come with 6 months of free Showtime. It also comes with 6 months of free Showtime On Demand. After three days with Showtime On Demand, I have two questions: (1) Why aren't all TV stations "On Demand"? and (2) Isn't Weeds the awesomest show ever?

I've watched the first two seasons in the last three days. Everything about that show rules. For those of you not in the know, Weeds is about a hot suburban housewife that starts selling pot in her affluent suburban neighborhood to pay the bills after her husband dies. Great concept for a show, no? The theme song, Little Boxes, is so catchy in an old fashioned kind of way yet so fitting for describing suburbia. The supporting cast it dominant. It's great to see Kevin Nealon working again, and Elizabeth Perkins should never lose the Emmy for best supporting actress. Both the kids are great too, and Uncle Andy is hilarious. And most importantly, I am absolutely in love with Mary Louise Parker.

Yowza. Normally I'm not that into brunettes that are 15 years my senior, but wow. She's also an awesome actress. So much of the show rests on Parker's eyes and lips, which she uses to show frazzled mom, no-nonsense drug pusher or really hot babe quite effectively. If you haven't watched Weeds, you should check it out. It may seem at first glance that Weeds is kind of like a Desperate Housewives equivalent, but it's closer to the antithesis of that show. It also might seem at first glance that Weeds is just stoner humor, and although Uncle Andy and Kevin Nealon's characters do provide plenty of stoner humor, that's really not what it's about either. It's more clever than that. It's more about the deconstruction of suburbia. The show sets up easy PTA jokes and pot cliches, but then takes them in a slightly different direction. It's hard to explain, but it's awesome. And did I mention that Mary Louise Parker is really really hot?

Isn't it ironic that I hit rock-bottom in my TV addiction with a show about drugs? [Actually, I don't think that is ironic. It's fitting.]

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Last night I took a break from Showtime On Demand and watched the Brewer game at Zim's Sports Bar. Zim's is a prime example of the change in the ambiance of sports bars to a more grown-up atmosphere. Your classic sports bar has fake wood walls, pennants from the local team, PBR in a can, peanuts in the shell, vomit in the sink and a cigarette machine. In contrast Zim's features a more trendy atmosphere, clear views to several plasma TVs, leather couches, vintage black and white photos of local sports heroes like Brett Favre, Robin Yount (There are few things funnier than Yount in 1982 Brewer garb and mustache riding a motorcycle) and Al McGuire, and more interesting bar-food, drinks and micro-brews. Now don't get me wrong, I love a good old sports-dive, but I like Zim's a lot too. It's located in an old carriage house on Milwaukee St and still has the same brick walls and slightly sloping floor that once made it easier to wash the stables out at night. The front wall has been opened up with big windows that remain open in the summer. It's a good place to watch a game.

The Crew dropped the Giants with the help of a complete game from Sheets. Most of the offense came off of effective small ball played against struggling rookie pitcher Tim Lincecum. The Cubs and Cards both won too so the Crew remains seven games ahead in first.

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In other sports news, Wisconsinites are thinking about the Packers even though it's June. Packer fans are a unique breed. Most people know that, despite the fact that they play in the smallest market in professional football, all home Packer games are sold out for the next 35 years or so. Dads put their new-born sons on the waiting list for tickets in hopes that the babies will have seats by the time their midlife crises set in. What some of you may not realize is that they actually sell out Lambeau Field for the intra-squad scrimmage. When some teams that play in big markets like Phoenix can't sell out regular season games, it's pretty impressive (or pathetic and delusional, take your pick) that the Pack sells out the Brett Favre vs. Aaron Rodgers QB match-up. We love our Packers like we love our children--not because they are good, but because they are ours.