This made me smile, and even laugh a little bit. It comes from Jim Callis's weekly chat at ESPN.com and it is a perfect example of the type of illogical trade proposals Yankee Fans come up with and submit in these chats and on sports talk radio. Vito NYC: Jim, I have come to the conclusion that cole hamels would look awesome in yankee pinstripes...do you think a deal involving ian kennedy and melky cabrera along with a lesser prospect like coke, would be enought to pry him away from philly?
Jim Callis: If Yankees fans are going to keep sending silly trades, I guess I'll keep posting them. On this one, I'd say no chance in hell. Would the Yankees trade Joba Chamberlain for Jayson Werth, Kyle Kendrick and Clay Condrey? That would be a more equitable deal. Sheesh.
Where do I even start here? Ok, how about where Vito (perfect name for a stereotypical Yankee fan by the way) opens by saying he has "come to the conclusion that cole hamels would look awesome in yankee pinstripes". He must mean that he would aesthetically look awesome because I think it's safe to say that Cole Hamels would look "awesome" baseball skills-wise in any team's uniform, he's one of the ten best pitchers in all of baseball. Then of course there's the brilliant trade that Vito suggests: Ian Kennedy, Melky Cabrera, and lesser prospect for Hamels. This was maybe, MAYBE a feasible deal (albeit still a dumb one that Philly would likely reject) last offseason, or at least one that you could bring up in a silly chat at ESPN.com for argument's sake. Kennedy and Cabrera's stock have dropped so far in a year, however, that it is nowhere near a starting point anymore. Plus, take however much Ian and Melky's stock have dropped, add them together, and multiply it by two and you get how much Hamel's stock has risen in the past year. He had a great season and then pitched his team to a World Series Championship. But of course Yankee fans think they are entitled to the league's best players so they continue to suggest these absurd trade proposals. You'd think they could at least wait until Hamels is a free agent before they start fitting him for pinstripes.
Wow, that got a little wordy and out of hand in general there. I'm going to go get a drink of water.
After having another pair of cheap Sony headphones crap out on me I decided to conduct a search for my good headphones yesterday. You might be wondering why I wasn't using the good headphones in the first place. That's a fair point to which there is a pretty legitimate explanation that I don't really feel like getting into right now. The point is, I tore my room apart yesterday in search of these headphones and in the process came across a number of amusing items. I figured I would keep an inventory of my favorites because, why not?
Oh, I should add that I eventually found the headphones in more or less the exact spot where I thought they'd be, making the entire search completely pointless in the end.
Inventory of Stuff I Found While Looking for the Headphones:
-Tons of pictures all of which are at least six or seven years old. I found more pictures from when I got to go onto the field at Shea Stadium and participate in a clinic with Roger Cedeno (before he got fat and slow), Turk Wendell (one of my favorite Mets at the time and all time), Cookie Rojas (sadly, probably my favorite Mets 3B coach; this isn't sad because he sucked or anything, it just speaks to how much I haven't liked the other 3B coaches), and Mike Kinkade (nicest thing I can say about Mike is that he was versatile in the field...sort of).
I also found pictures from my last visit to Yankee Stadium. Those probably aren't that old right? Wrong, try nine years old. It wasn't for lack of effort though, I wanted to go to Yankee Stadium one last time before it closed down but I never got around to it. Actually, I guess that is lack of effort.
My favorite set of pictures, however, were from the Model Congress/UN trips we used to go on in high school. Lots of unnecessary shaving cream usage and pictures of Xander Hancock rocking out to Metallica in there. I'm debating whether or not to put any of these sets of pictures up on Facebook seeing as I'm well aware that there is at least one photo in each group that will embarrass the person or persons in it.
-Numerous cards mostly from various birthdays. These were some of the more depressing items I came across solely because they made me feel extremely old. That's probably stemming from my birthday hangover as well though.
-Form letter from Al Gore from when we were all forced to write letters to him in sixth grade pleading to save the dolphins. Mr. Wallace, the sixth grade science teacher was certifiably insane. Speaking of certifiably insane I believe one Mexico Jones actually wrote his letter in favor of not saving the dolphins. I didn't think that was particularly funny back then because of the pro-dolphin propaganda that was being shoved down my throat; now I find it hilarious.
-Admissions materials from some colleges I applied to. I found this interesting solely because it made me wonder how things would be different if I had chosen to go to a different school. This is why someone needs to invent one of those portal things from Sliders where you could visit parallel universes. What's that? I was the only person who watched that show? Sorry, let's move on...
-A medal from winning an Edward 40-Hands competition junior year of college. Now before you go off thinking about how awesome/disgusting I am for winning, I should clear up a couple facts about this competition.
1. The competition was not particularly stiff. I was at least a 3:2 favorite going into it, if not more.
2. The forties weren't even malt liquor, they were different varieties of light beer I believe. Still, I won by a significant margin despite a late push by a couple other contestants.
-An old ballot from the 2000 All Star Game. This might be my favorite thing that I found. I thoroughly enjoy looking through all the names and seeing who was still active and starting in the 2000 season.
Some personal favorites included: 2B Homer Bush-Blue Jays OF Butch Huskey-Twins 1B Rico Brogna-Phillies SS Rey Ordonez-Mets 3B Fernando Tatis-Cardinals
And there's many more where those came from. I may have to fill out that ballot some time and send it in.
-A few more pairs of broken Sony headphones.
-Old high school report cards and schedules. I should keep the schedules by my bed in case I start having the recurring dream where I'm back in high school and I have no idea what my class schedule is again. Seriously, I've had this dream at least 40 times and now that I'm thinking about it I'm probably going to start having it again.
-Countless pairs of ridiculous sunglasses. It seems that I, along with many of my friends can not help ourselves from continuously acquiring absurd pairs of sunglasses. I found at least 7 or so during my search. Many of them were from the now defunct (R.I.P.) $1.29 store on the Seaside Heights boardwalk. Most of the pairs purchased there were obtained during the Summer of '02 which was also when the infamous "sunglasses picture" was taken.
And if anybody knows who the dude in front is, I would love to know.
I posted this on a friend's wall on Facebook, but I feel so strongly regarding this issue I'm going to put it here as well. It was in regards to my friend pointing out how amazing the backlash to Toyota's Saved By Zero ads have been.
"For more than a year people complained about the Mellencamp "This Is Our Country" commercials, not realizing that if you forced yourself to enjoy them (i.e. drank enough) they became awesome. Now, as karmic retribution for everyone whining about the Mellencamp ads we're stuck with these Saved By Zero ads which are by my calculations about 1,000x worse. Basically what I'm trying to say is that the backlash is justified."
Some related stuff from the anti-Saved By Zero Facebook group:
Back in the spring, advertising for the Mike Myers vehicle, “The Love Guru” was in full effect.If you didn't know that Mike Myers would be invading multiplexes across the country with a new silly accent you just weren't paying attention.Also, if you didn't know that this movie was no doubt going to suck you were an idiot.Former TRS? scribe Morrison Lewis and I, naturally, made a habit of constantly criticizing this movie (I should add that this was after a period where Lewis and others repeatedly harassed me about the movie, knowing that it's very existence was something I found irritating).
Eventually something strange began to happen though.Each of us, on our own accord, began to realize that at some point, we were going to have to see this movie.We didn't necessarily have to see “The Love Guru” in theaters, but we had to see it.As the movie bombed and the months passed leading up to the DVD release I became more and more excited to finally see what would almost certainly be a disaster of a film.It couldn't possibly disappoint.If it was somehow better than what we expected, we would have a pleasant surprise on our hands.If it was as bad as we expected, we would be prophets.
A few Sundays ago we watched The Love Guru.
Call me Nostradamus and call Morrison the Oracle of Fucking Delphi because “The Love Guru” may be the worst movie I have ever seen.It's certainly the worst attempt at a comedy.
So Morrison, our friend Gras, and I sat down to watch “The Love Guru”.Before we started the movie I decided it would be worthwhile to take some notes throughout.After all, I had a Sunday afternoon of football's worth of drinks in me and I wanted to have some clear talking points if I ever got into an argument aboutthe guru, and there was almost no way in Hell I would ever watch this movie twice.
What follows are the notes I took with a few slight alterations so that they make sense.Anything in italics is additional commentary I am adding now.
6 minutes in, one blatantly racist joke, Jessica alba’s name on the screen made us wonder if we’d get to see her boobs.
Wishful thinking regarding the boobs obviously, Love Guru is PG-13.The next day, Morrison raised a good point about Jessica Alba, if she's in a movie there should be no question it's going to be awful.
Jessica Alba films I can come up with off the top of my head:
Good Luck Chuck
Into The Blue
Fantastic Four 1 & 2
watching this movie in a theater would be extremely awkward, considering nobody at all would be caught dead laughing at these “jokes”
14 minutes in, this movie just ripped off a family guy joke (electric factory) wasn’t funny then…
Now that I think about it, when Family Guy made fun of those Electric Factory segments with the silhouettes making compound words it was a little funny.When Mike Myers rips off Family Guy though, not so much...
in regards to an awful poop joke Gras: Artie Lange wrote a better movie than this.
That movie is Beer League, never saw it but I'd wager anything it's funnier than “The Love Guru”
20 minutes in, we are discussing worst movies we’ve ever seen, Battlefield Earth and Street Fighter are better,we get to quote Street Fighter AWESOME
That's the Jean Claude Van Damme/Raul Julia Street Fighter btdubs, great movie.
(the following quote is best read in your best Jean Claude Van Damme voice)
Colonel William F. Guile: [solemnly] Troopers, I just received new orders. Our superiors say the war is cancelled. We can all go home. Bison is getting paid off for his crimes, and our friends who have died here will have died for nothing. But, we can all go home. Meanwhile, ideals like peace, freedom, and justice, they get packed up. But, we can all go home. [angrily] Colonel William F. Guile: Well, I'm not going home. I'm gonna get on my boat, and I'm going up river, and I'm going to kick that son of a bitch Bison's ass so hard that the next Bison wannabe is gonna feel it! Now, who wants to go home... and who wants to go with me? [the troopers cheer]
whats wrong with sharkskin
more like gayskinWHAT??????
I wish I remembered the context of this joke but it's escaping me at the moment.I do know that is an actual exchange in the movie though, I think it speaks for itself.
37% of this movie’s jokes are based on acrostic poems, the ones you write in 2nd/3rd grade
I did consult Morrison and Gras before coming up with the 37% figure FYI.
43 minutes in, we have our second truly racist joke of the movie (gospel dancing scene) the aunt from family matters is playing romany malco’s mom, awesome?
It was good to see that Aunt Rachel is keeping busy, one of the highlights of the movie.Also, Romany Malco is the actor who plays hockey player Darren Roanoke in the film.If you haven't Googled him yet, he's the black guy from 40 Year Old Virgin and Conrad on Weeds.
Garcia correctly identified a diarrhea joke, 200 points!
Don’t know what I was talking about here, let’s move on.
There were likely more racist jokes by this point, just so you know.
48 minutes in: Me: they really made this movie huh?
Gras: this is the worst movie I've ever seen
50 minutes in: “joke” based entirely on stupid hairdo for mike myers and cover of more than words…awful
51 minutes in: movie goes for easy, alley oop lighter joke during more than words
Following a sing along to Extreme’s “More Than Words” a bunch of people raise up their lighters.I’m pretty sure there could not possibly be a more predictable joke.I would think it’s safe to say that Mike Myers isn’t even trying at this point, but it’s really really hard to tell.
53 minutes in: 8 consecutive testicle jokes, none of which are funny, testicle jokes are extremely easy
got more laughs criticizing those testicle jokes than the entire movie has gotten thus far
Not even slightly exaggerating here, eight consecutive testicle jokes.That may not seem like a lot, but trust me, it’s a lot.
still no sign of alba’s naked breasts
I would say I come up with about seven new uses for a time machine each day of my life.Today’s third use would be to go back in time and tell myself at this point in the movie that her breasts are not coming and I should just turn it off.Of course if I did that I wouldn’t get to see the movie’s thrilling climax…
verne troyer (mini me ) just asked what the capital of thailand is, I said Bangkok obviously, guess what troyer said and, subsequently, did
He said Bangkok and then proceeded to hit Mike Myers in the balls.Get it?Bangkok, BANG COCK.This was mildly funny the first time you saw someone do it in junior high, nowadays, not so much.I have just come to the realization that Mike Myers’s movies could really only conceivably be funny to someone in Junior High.Additionally, I saw Austin Powers/still watched SNL regularly/thought Mike Myers was pretty funny in Junior High.Perhaps Myers is in some state of arrested development in which he can only write jokes/movies that only a Junior High School/Middle School aged male would find particularly funny.It’s entirely possible I’m onto something here, that or I’m blinded by my hatred for Mike Myers.
timberlake’s character is probably gay, which I expected about an hour ago.Also, I called the celine dion cameo before the movie even started, well, not really, but close enough.
I believe I may have made a comment about Celine Dion showing up early on in the movie, hence my close enough comment.Also, I’m not sure if JT’s character being gay is supposed to be a twist or not.It’s telegraphed pretty blatantly so that may have been the point.Regardless, I couldn’t be less interested in going back and verifying this.
cornershop’s brimful of asha serves as the soundtrack to the maple leafs game’s 4 and 5 comebacks MAJOR PLUS
The only good thing that came out of this movie (besides greeting people by putting my hands together, bowing, saying “Mariska Hartigay”, and seeing the looks I get) was how it rejuvenated my interest in this song/album.I was inspired to upload this album to my iPod and as a result this song got a lot of play in the following couple weeks.
UNNECESSARY PLOT MECHANISM? (suitcase)
A suitcase comes into play late in the movie.I took a wild guess and assumed it would be entirely unnecessary to the plot.It was.
70 minutes in, another racist joke regarding outsourcing and Indian people taking said jobs, dell computers
This might have been the only sign in the entire movie that Mike Myers is aware that it’s 2008.
missed a major plot point regarding alba making a move on myers and myers denying her due to some chastity belt bullshit
You have to love a good chastity belt joke.I guess Mike Myers has seen Robin Hood: Men In Tights.It was released in 1993 after all.
just realized verne troyer (mini me) is supposed to be the coach of the maple leafs, whoops
PREDICTABLE MIDGET JOKE SAVES THE DAY?!!!
Don’t remember the specifics of this joke but I assure you it wasn’t funny.
Nope, elephant looks like it will save the day.
Elephants are banging on the other end of the ice to distract romany malco, (it’s part of an acrostic poem)!
It makes perfect sense that the climax of the movie would somewhat revolve around an acrostic poem.
Colbert just made a post-ejaculation joke, should be funny, isn’t..
Steven Colbert was one of, if not the most disappointing parts about the whole movie.He’s a pretty funny guy generally and you’d think he’d be able to slip at least one or two good lines in there.Sadly this is not the case.His jokes flop just as bad as any others.
ROMANY MALCO SCORES!!!! UNBELIEVABLE! THE TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS HAVE WON THE STANLEY CUP!!!
MIKE MYERS AND KANYE WEST APPEAR IN THE MOVIE! MYERS HITS THE UNDER ON HOW MANY CHARACTERS HE WILL PLAY IN THIS MOVIE.
What I mean here is that Mike Myers plays himself.He is sitting next to Kanye at Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals since he’s a big Maple Leafs fan.I think we had set the over/under on how characters Myers was going to play at 2.5 in case you were wondering.We all took the over.
Deepak chopra cameo, that must’ve been expensive.
Yep, that was probably most of the budget actually.I’ve gotten to the point here where I can’t even tell if I’m being sarcastic or not, time to wrap this up.Hopefully, this movie ends soon.
Please let this movie be over, at 1 hour and 20.
…almost there…
Awful rendition of steve miller band’s the joker closes out the movie, ouch.
Blatantly stealing a page out of Judd Apatow’s playbook here.Sorry Mike, we’ve all seen The 40 Year Old Virgin, many of us multiple times.It’s also about 40.000 times funnier than The Love Guru by the way.
Gras: that was absolutely the worst movie I’ve ever seen in history, and I’ve seen a lot of movies.
Morrison: *laughs* I’m speechless, it’s just…I never thought that they could, there would be a comedy…they couldn’t make anyone come remotely close to laughter.Mike Myers should be shot.
In case you think that we were biased or went into the movie expecting it to be awful and ended up creating a self-fulfilling prophecy I would like to end with a few notes about the movie from other sources:
-The Love Guru has an IMDB user rating of 3.8 out of 10, which is absolutely atrocious, especially when you consider how many people out there have bad taste in movies.
-The Love Guru has a Metacritic score of 24 (generally negative reviews) with its highest score being a 75 from The Christian Science Review.
-Metacritic attributes three zeros to The Love Guru, from Slate.com, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.
Times reviewer A.O. Scott has what may be my favorite quote regarding the movie.I like it partially for its comedic value (it’s funnier than anything in the movie for sure) and partially for its veracity.I also think it’s a good note to go out on.
“To say that the movie is not funny is merely to affirm the obvious. The word ‘unfunny’ surely applies to Mr. Myers’s obnoxious attempts to find mirth in physical and cultural differences but does not quite capture the strenuous unpleasantness of his performance. No, ‘The Love Guru’ is downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again.”
This past weekend, during a solid Rock Band session it was decided to take on one of the various pre-decided set lists that are offered to you during the tour mode. If I remember correctly, the particular one that we had chosen was five songs long. For those of you unfamiliar with the intricacies of the game, the goal of the set lists is to simply pass all of the songs they are made up of. I believe we had made it to the fourth song of this set list when we had to play AC/DC's "Let There Be Rock". While I've never been a fan of AC/DC (in fact, I would consider myself to be a detractor) I figured that this song wouldn't pose too much of a problem, at least not in the way it eventually did.
I was actually sitting this song out at first, so I saw fit to make a trip to the bathroom. As I was relieving myself I heard Morrison Lewis yelling at me about how I had to hear the lyrics to the song they were playing. As I listened to Morrison through the bathroom door I thought to myself about how there was no way the lyrics to "Let There Be Rock" could be as bad as he was saying there were.
Shortly after I stepped out of the bathroom, however, the band failed the song. I offered my services to try and sing the song in hopes that we could get through it. But as I began to sing the song I realized I had made a mistake. The lyrics to the song were as bad (if not worse) than advertised. I was literally having trouble making it through lines of the song without breaking down laughing, and it only got worse as the song went on. The lyrics were that bad. Here, take a look for yourself:
Lyrics I find particularly ridiculous in bold
In the beginning Back in nineteen fifty-five Man didn't know about a rock 'n' roll show And all that jive The white man had the schmaltz The black man had the blues No one knew what they was gonna do But Tchaikovsky had the news He said - "Let there be sound", there was sound "let there be light", there was light "Let there be drums", there was drums "Let there be guitar", there was guitar "Let there be rock" And it came to pass That rock 'n' roll was born All across the land every rockin' band Was blowing up a storm And the guitarman got famous The businessman got rich And in every bar there was a super star With a seven year itch There were fifteen million fingers Learning how to play And you could hear the fingers picking And this is what they had to say "Let there be light" "Sound" "Drums" "Guitar" "Let there be rock" One night in a club called `The Shaking Hand' There was a ninety-two decibel rocking band And the music was good and the music was loud And the singer turned and he said to the crowd - "Let there be rock"
After another failure on the song in no small part by yours truly, Morrison gave the vocals another go. Fortunately they passed the song this time, and that's the story of the last time we ever played AC/DC's "Let There Be Rock" in Rock Band.
Jim Callis: If Yankees fans are going to keep sending silly trades, I guess I'll keep posting them. On this one, I'd say no chance in hell. Would the Yankees trade Joba Chamberlain for Jayson Werth, Kyle Kendrick and Clay Condrey? That would be a more equitable deal. Sheesh.
