Monday, February 28, 2005

Back Bay/Kay/Ray

My new favorite New York weather person, Lee Goldberg of Channel 7, said to expect 8 to 12 inches of snow tomorrow night. Cool. I can't wait. I still haven't gotten any sledding in this winter. I'll sled til I'm 100, I can guarantee you that.

Here's why this dude is my new favorite:

On Michael "Backwards" Kay's radio show last week, Goldberg came on to give an update on a storm that was coming. (Slow day, Michael? But then Sid and Joe of the FAN had a different weather person on their show the next day. Maybe they were trying to keep up with the "hip" ESPN Radio's weather-includin' sports shows...) So, Goldberg was telling Kay about the snow, and I heard him say how, for that storm, there would be less snow up north, where we usually get "those jackpawt amounts." It was subtle, but it was there. This guy's gotta be from Boston, I thought. So as Kay's wrapping it up, he says, "Now Lee, I know you're a big Red Sox fan..." and then asked him about the ring ceremony. I knew it. Tonight I came across his weather report, and I listened for further Boston accent -isms. They're hard to catch with this guy, but there are some syllables he just can't hide. Like the way he says "Manhasset." Just un-imitatable. I've tried it, it doesn't work unless you're from Boston. (Or you're my cousin Mary-Ann, who moved to Boston and gained the accent!)

Speaking of that, did you notice the sign someone had in St. Louis before Game 4? It's message was that the series would be going back to Boston, so "Don't Pawk Your Cawr." What's wrong with this sign? That's a New York accent. It's "pahk," "cah." That's the one of the most famous accent imitations in the history of the world. How do you mess that up?

Tonight I also saw a Joe Torre interview on Mike'd Up, which was not hosted by the now father-twice-over Mike Francesa, but by fill-in Bruce Beck. Beck asked the zombie-like manager if he ever second guesses himself about the ALCS. (Which they first showed a nice slow motion montage of. I feel like some of the New York media gets a perverse thrill out of rubbing this in yankee fans' faces. Fine with me.) Torre said the same thing he said about the '01 World Series: "We got it to the point where we had a one run lead with three outs to go and Mariano on the mound." I still don't follow this logic. Yes, you did, and...? You gotta close those out, Joe! You don't just get to that point and let fate take over. Whatever he means, I think it's just his code for "Can we please stop talking about this?"

I watched a lot of the "Normal People Movie Awards" tonight. Mainly because Chris Rock was hosting. Good job by Rock. But The Life Aquatic and I Heart Huckabees weren't mentioned once, and I watched almost the whole show. Terrible job, Oscar. Oscar needs to Gamble more. Alright, for the young kids: Oscar needs to De La Hoya more. The Fever Pitch trailer is funny. I like the first scene they show, where Barrymore is telling Fallon he needs a cell phone. As a non-cell phone person, I thought it was great. A Sox fan and a non-cell phone dude...this movie speaks to me.

The Jamie Foxx best actor speech was pretty cool. There was a great shot from behind Foxx where, right after he said something about "The African-American dream," you see Oprah in the crowd raise a fist among the otherwise reserved crowd. First good thing Oprah ever did. (That middle class audience of hers does NOT need any more cars.)

Foxx also was doin' some Ray Charles "Heyyyyy" "Hooooo"s. I didn't see the movie Ray. But Ray Charles, besides doing that great song "You Don't Know Me," which played over the best scene in Groundhog Day, said one of my favorite lines of all time. In Blues Brothers, Charles played Ray of Ray's Music Exchange. When Murph tests out an electric piano, he turns to Ray and says "There's no action left in this keyboard." Ray walks over to it and says "Excuse me, I don't think there's anything wrong with the action on this piano," and proceeds to play the shit out of the thing, sparking a neighborhood-wide sing- and dance-along to "Tailfeather."

That line is, like, my motto in life. I don't care if my guitar is a little out of tune, or the strings are too high or low off the neck, or if it's in two pieces, for that matter. Anything you do with an instrument comes from inside you. Hence the term instrument. Sounds idealistic, maybe, but I saw Nirvana play live, and I'm telling you, Kurt Cobain could have come out on stage with a fucking triangle, and still would have sent us home limping.

So here's to you Ray Charles, maybe someday I'll see that movie about you. (But terribe job doing that Pepsi commercial a long time ago--you know, "You got the right one ba-bayyy, Uh-Huh." Coke rules.

Comments:
I dunno, I can't blame Torre for saying that. I mean, have you ever made a point of going to some stats website and just taking in Mo's numbers? I have, as it's my contention that Mo, and not Jeter, is the true Mr Yankee. Anyway, yeah the numbers, they're ridiculous. He walks nobody. He allows almost no hits. He has an above-average K rate, but he's also a groundball pitcher. And of course, the ERA's always range from very good to spectacular.

And he's been doing it for years.

If there's one closer in baseball who can be called automatic, it's Mo. So I agree with Torre when he says that, hey, the Yankees put themselves in position to win.

And in a way, the odds are against them, you know. What are the odds that the Marlins would be the one team in baseball history to lose a 7-game series after winning the first 3 games? Not very good, since the Marlins have only been to playoffs twice.

But the Yankees have been to the playoffs more than anyone. And the law of averages still exists in the playoffs, although sometimes it's easy to forget that ...
 

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