one day

That and that and that and that and that and that. And my tAR teams were next to last and last. What a day.

Ugh.

These are the nights that keep me up pacing. And not sleeping so much I spend the next evening sleeping and you wonder why I’m always never quite where I want to be.

SportsGuy (dot net) led of his post 2003 ALCS Game 7 column with a line about having to check to see if the Red Sox killed his Dad. (They did not.)

Here, today’s the kinda game you turn on the radio just to make sure Ron Santo wasn’t killed by the Cubs. He was not. Though, after they gave up the lead, he fairly obviously got up, left the booth, and trying to walk the gut shot off.

It must be a Cubs thing. I dunno.

I think I’m going to maintain a 24, maybe 48 hour local radio silence. I can already imagine the insane. I don’t want to get sucked in. Maybe national too – do I really want the underinformed and overinflated mistaken opinions of the Michael Wilbons of the world to waste a second of my time being annoyed by their moronity? Probably not.

The one thing I do want, though, is to stop the world, or at least the city and the collar counties, and conduct a Cubs census. “Are you still onboard for this season?” If you say no, well, you can buy the hats and shirts and wear your Mark Prior jersies (or even more likely, a Cubs jersey with your own name on it), but when someone ask you if you’re a Cubs fan, you’re only allowed to say: “Only when things look good.”

You’re not allowed to buy tickets, though. Those are for people who are fans of the team, and not just of winning.

By ignoring everything that’s being said, I am kinda denying myself of finding out if someone stated it correct, which is sad. I mean, I really hope that somewhere, someone who gets paid to do the analyzing for a living realized that Dusty made not just a mistake but an Indefensible Mistake. It’s not a second guess mistake, it was something clearly wrong at the time, and while I don’t want to crucfix Dusty Baker for making a mistake, it was a mistake and should be acknowledged as such.

BTW, the reason you don’t sign So Taguchi is because there’s fifty of them available every spring. They’re sadly not all Japanese, but there’s plenty of Tom Goodwins avaiable, so why pay a preimium for anyone? Unless you want them to rot on your bench.

Example: There are a lot of people who throw fast. So there’s no need to tie up a Kyle Farnsworth, and get stuck having a long term arrangment with a average pitcher. Except someone surely will, and I wish them and him the best of luck. (We did the same thing with Remlinger.)

We’re 3.0 out of the Wild Card. No Wild Card team is scary. We don’t play the Cardinals any more, and it’s a good thing. We’ve got the Reds today, so we can pass them up. Those are the things we should be focusing on – the mistakes are the mistakes, and hopefully everyone learns from them, but dwelling on the problems doesn’t solve those problems.

By the virtue of actually having outs, I want to focus on them. But I’m stuck in a culture that focuses on the problems. I don’t want that aggravation.

So let’s move on.

—-

I’m really not going to the ROH show on Saturday. Other plans came up, and it’d be too much of a rush to get there when I’m not totally sure I want to be there. I will have to live in regret that my Rocky Romero singles matches are limited to TiVo memories.

I don’t know why, but the WWE really seems to have been shifting back and forth on the cartoon vs serious aspect. Around WM, it was the serious story of two men finally achieving their goals of being the recognized best in the business, then we had the shift to Mordecai and Voodoo Ladies and Eugene and Japaneese Guys From Another Time, and then the last few shows, we’re heading back to being really serious and the brands hate each other and we’re breaking out the really good matches on TV. It doesn’t feel like there’s one philisophy of how things should work that they’re sticking to, just spinning around and trying to find someting they can grab on to.

That’s the worst metaphor ever. Muffeled message.

Looks like at least part of my theory about why they cut the Diva firing was off.

Doing an Iron Man match on TV is neat, but it got me to thinking that with the way they do things now, I don’t know if we’ll see one of those on a PPV any time soon. The goal seems to fit as many deserving guys on the show so they can get paid, and you can’t well do that if you’re giving up 40% of the show to one single match. I’m sure there’s a increase in cash when you’re working TV, but it doesn’t sound like it compares to PPV money, and since they’ll only pay if you actually work, and people will only be happy if they get a cut of the PPV, there’s really no room for 60 mintue matches featuring only two people anymore. I’m sure there’s some midcard guys still cheesed that they didn’t get match because Shawn and Hunter went 40 minutes last time out.

Of course, if they make the secondary characters any less intersting or meaningful, maybe they are better bumping them off shows. It’s cool that Rosey is now an offical Superhero, but shouldn’t that have been saved for something more meaningful then saving Stacy in a bit that won’t be followed up next week. (Why wasn’t Nidia with the Hurricane? People would’ve MARKED OUT). You’d think you’d save it for him winning a title or a big match or something for Hurricane to say “Ah. You’ve passed the test! You can now graduate!” Losing to Randy Orton doesn’t quite fit. Even if it was Rosey’s best match ever.

How do you end RAW? The first Diva Search elimination doesn’t give much time to set up the phone numbers for round 2, but obviously that’s the number 2 angle. Not only is everything else going to fill at a different level, but there’s going to be no flow left to the show. The SmackDown! Iron Man match featured at least two quicky segments to work in commerical breaks before the match started and even then people were complaining about too many during the match. The quarterly rating is likely going to drop big time from the end of the match, just because they’ll be taking lots of ad time to make up.

It’s probably too late for the WWE to steal my idea for soccer-style commerical free sponsorship, right? Hopefully it’s not too late for someone to relaize that an uncut version of the TV matches that don’t get included on the PPV DVDs would rake in some nice cash. Unless UPN or Spike prohibits, I can’t imagine why there’s not a Best of RAW/SmackDown: Jan-Apr ’04 type DVD out every few months.

I figure Spike’s probably wouldn’t be thrilled with them going over, because they’re airing the new Joe Schmoe’s after, and they’ve already cut one of those down from 90 to 60 because people tune out after Midnight EST regardless, so there couldn’t be much of an overtime if they started it at the beginning of the second hour. Triple H’s entrance would take care of the 5 overrun time anyway.

I hope Benoit and Triple H aren’t as dumb as the other two and actually work on the mat for a while. That’s more Triple H’s style so I’d think he would, but you never know what you’re getting.

It’s 2 AM and I’m completely rambling. Let me sleep. Please.