Monday, May 09, 2011

76% Uncertain Of Who Wears What Number

During the game NESN showed Jose Iglesias in the dugout, wearing #76. Two days in the bigs, two different uniform numbers, as he wore #68 on Sunday. (MLB Gameday doesn't know about the change. But what do you expect? Remember, for real news and truth, turn to fans.) In the 11th, after a Lowrie walk, #76 came on to pinch run. Going on the 3-2 pitch, Crawford sends one off the Wall, and Jose makes it all the way around to score his first major league run, the game-winning one. Beckett was great, and the Twins only tied it because of another Aceves balk and a bloop hit off Pap in the eighth.

So we've won six of our last nine, and finally this homestand is done. We cross the border later tonight.

Huge News: Your New England F**d dealers, "official and enthusiastic sponsors" of the Red Sox, have finally switched over to the updated Red Sox logo in their ads. They made it a month and a half into the third year of the new logo's reign before changing. Maybe they saw my recent post! (And right after I saw that ad, I saw a Bob's one--they've corrected their misspelling of "chocolate"! The world may finally be coming around to my way of doing things un-wrong-ly. Speaking of all this, before the game, they showed outtakes from the Red Sox doing their DD commercials. I couldn't help but notice that sadly, none of them went, "hey, look at these two Red Sox logos we've got on the wall here in the Ft. Myers clubhouse--they're over two years old. Whoops! Hahahaaha. Take two...")

"Stuff I've been forgetting to say" section: Have you noticed the volume of the PA system at Fenway is lower this year? First I noticed it halfway up the bleachers. I figured they just re-positioned the speakers or something, because I could hardly hear. Then up in the third base deck SRO section, I noticed you almost couldn't hear it at all. People weren't clapping for the players in the starting lineups, because they couldn't hear them. Then yesterday, I was down by the dugout. They played that snippit of that "leader of the pack" song which they've used for years as an intro for people who are being honored for doing stuff in the community or whatever. In the past, when they would play that, on the motorcycle-revving part, it would *almost* hurt your ears. This time, it was weak as a Bizzaro Rondo. That's when I knew the volume is down overall. All these surveys they've been doing, I wonder if people complained--I know I've tried to talk to the person standing next to me with no luck in recent years between innings at Fenway. So, nice job, Fenway--but I'd like to be able to decipher what's being said when you're trying to tell me something. Tweak it just a little. This paragraph is dying for a "just make 10 louder, don't go to eleven, like the Red Sox did tonight" joke, but it would just be so predictable and unfunny. I miss the days when only some people knew what Spinal Tap was. And who Ozzy is.

Comments:
Watney to Crawford in post game: "If Iglesias wasn't pinch running, do you think David woulda made it?"

Uh...he was pinch running for Lowrie, not Ortiz. Crawford laughed and said "maybe if he got a good jump." Not sure if was just going along with it as to not make Heidi look like a fool. It's not nice to correct people. I'm talkin' to YOU, me!
 
You know what *I* noticed about the Dunkin Donuts outtakes? While you were noticing the logos, I was reflecting on how major corporations these days with millions of dollars at their disposal apparently have decided that the film-medium is for fuddy-duddies, and instead choose to shoot their commercials using off-the-shelf digital cameras they got at Walmart. Man, I remember the olden days (it was really only a few years ago) when commercials, TV shows and movies actually looked, you know, good. Where the people in them didn't look like the undead. You know, where the cinematographer who shot had no reason to feel embarrassed.

But I digress. (Hey, this is only slightly more off topic than mentions of Spinal Tap.)
 
I know exactly what you mean and have been meaning to do a post about this--about a specific thing I've seen in ads that relates to what you said. I'll probably post it tomorrow.

And Red Sox Diehard hasn't added Iglesias' 76 to the Red Sox all-time uniform # list! She put the 68 up there right away, she's still gotta get that 76 up though!
 
I hope this doesn't seem like I'm trolling, but I can't help but let loose with a longer post. Yeah, I know I'm a psycho.

If you really want to make a complete post, you'll pretty much have to indict the entire entertainment industry (and society as a whole who embraces it all). Because it's not just commercials. Pretty much everyone, TV and movies too, has switched to shooting digitally, and *invariably* it looks like crap. (Even the very best examples look just a step above the average Youtube "vlog" video.) These last few years apparently the entire population of the world has lost its collective mind.

It would be like if they replaced all the food in the world with styrofoam facsimiles, and you are the only one who notices that all the new food tastes like crap and doesn't nourish the body. (The rest of the population apparently are so cut off from their own souls and bodies that they don't notice the deficiences. All they do is point at the styrofoam and numbly declare, "Pretty colors!" because of the neon spray-paint.)

Most days I feel like the Roddy Piper character from "They Live." Except I don't need special glasses to feel bewilderment when I realize that apparently I'm the only one who notices that digital simply looks flat and dead. The entire point of the medium of moving images is to transport the viewer to another living world. For 100 years, that's exactly what it did, effortlessly. But not anymore. Digital throws that all out the window. And it's ironic that at this point in history, when the average person is more drowning in media than at any other time before, it is at this time that we should willingly discard the most basic reasons why this stuff ever touched us in the first place.

(And if it seems like I'm ranting here, this is one of my more restrained set of thoughts on the matter. Digital has become my white whale.)
 
LOL, I haven't added the #76 yet because I was at last night's game. I did notice it when he came out to stretch right before the game. He wore 76 in spring training this year and last, so it was weird for me to see him in the 68 the first day. I imagine they just have a couple of spares lying around for people who get there without much notice - I remember Williamson in '03 and Cabrera in '04 joining the team on the road and wearing #36 the first day before switching.

OK, you shamed me into it. I'll go add #76 now! :)
 
"I haven't added the #76 yet because I was at last night's game."

I shoulda known!
 

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