reading is fun... or not

This may surprise some of you, but I never read The Yankee Years. I got it from the library when it first came out, but I just like, dreaded reading about 2001 and 2004 so I never even started reading it. I'm pathetic and irrational like that. Well, now that we won, I finally read the thing. And all I gotta say, other than that I massively enjoy David Cone...

Holy fuck Joe Torre and Tom Verducci get off your GD high horse. Is it weird of me to say "fuck" and then use "GD"? Yes? Okay. Verducci, I think you're a really talented writer. You have a way with words, of describing how awesome the game of baseball can be at its greatest moments, that I envy tremendously. But wow, you just love going on and on about steroids when it totally had nothing to do with the Yankees (okay, it didn't have nothing to do with the Yankees, but going on about Ken Caminiti for like 25 pages has nothing to do with the Yankees). You also have an obvious and shockingly controversial love for Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, and disdain for Alex Rodriguez.

And honestly, you're completely hypocritical throughout the book. Paul O'Neill freaking out and cursing at himself in the locker room when he left guys on base? He just wanted to win, he hated losing! Kevin Brown freaking out and cursing at himself in the locker room when he pitched a terrible game? He's a headcase that represents everything that's wrong with the Yankees since 2001! George Steinbrenner saying to the media that the 2006 season was a failure because the Yankees didn't win the World Series? That's putting unfair pressure on Torre and diminishing everything he did! Derek Jeter saying to the media that the 2006 season was a failure because the Yankees didn't win the World Series? He hates losing and that's a great mentality to have! Theo Epstein and the rest of the Red Sox front office are awesome because they're unsentimental, oh and they invented the term on-base percentage! But Brian Cashman is a terrible terrible terrible person because when Bernie Williams was totally done, based on, you know, stats, he wasn't bending over backwards to let him on the team! And how dare he suggest Torre make his batting order with the high on-base percentage guys toward the top, instead of just letting him go on crazy whims!

As for you, Torre, aaargh @ this "I never wanted Giambi and A-Rod! It was so awful to have them on my team!!!" bullshit.
Jason Giambi, career with Yankees (2002-2008):
.260/.404 (!)/.521 (!)/.925, 143 OPS+, avg. 38 HR/162 g.
Tino Martinez, career with Yankees (1996-2001):
.279/.348/.488/.837, 114 OPS+, avg. 31 HR/162 g.
Alex Rodriguez, career with Yankees (2004-present):
.300/.401/.567/.968, 152 OPS+, avg. 44 HR/162 g.
Scott Brosius, career with Yankees (1998-2001):
.267/.331/.428/.759, 96 OPS+, 65 HR, avg. 20 HR/162 g.
Brosius's career year, 1998, gave him an .843 OPS for a 121 OPS+. That's very good; he'd never have a year like that again and his OPS+ in the years after was 86. In Alex Rodriguez's worst year ever (other than 1994 and 1995), he had an .846 OPS and a 120 OPS+. That was... 1997. He was 21 years old.* I don't need to tell you what he did in the years after that (but I will anyway. A-Rod in 1999, 2000, and 2001, when Brosius was posting an 86 OPS+: 148 OPS+.).
There's a few reasons the Yankees weren't winning championships with Giambi and Rodriguez on the team but they didn't really have to do with Giambi and Rodriguez. I am not trying to diminish what Martinez or Brosius and their roles on those amazing dynasty teams still mean to me today, but they're just inferior players compared to Giambi and Rodriguez. It probably would have been smart to keep Tino on the team after 2001 while grooming Nick Johnson to be the 1B of the future, and gone after Johnny Damon instead of Giambi, but let's not pretend Giambi wasn't an excellent hitter, even if he could barely manage fitting a glove on his hand. I would never in a gazillion years take Brosius over Rodriguez. At any rate, if you're a manager, you should want Giambi and Rodriguez on your team because they are (or were, in the case of Giambi) excellent players.

I don't want to hear about, "Well, it was Verducci's book, really." Sure, it's got a lot of Verducci in it, but Torre was the one who provided all the behind-the-scenes stuff. And if Verducci really wanted to tell the full story of those years, why did he just go to Torre? Why not get interviews with Cashman or Alex Rodriguez? It's obvious that Verducci wanted to tell one very slanted version of those years, Torre's. I don't know whose idea it was, but they were both frankly wrong to do it, almost disgustingly so considering that Torre is still managing and many of the players he talks about in the book are still playing. If I'm a player on the Dodgers, I don't want to talk to that guy or do anything around him; it could end up in a book some day, after all.

Oh and that conversation between Pettitte and Torre after Pettitte was named in the Mitchell Report so did not happen because it read like part of a terrible screenplay.

* insert "holy crap I'm 23 I have not accomplished anything in my life ;_;" panic here

I love it. ._.

When I accidentally leave up a "shower" away message for like two hours and then I get all kinds of creepy IMs. Seriously. It's awesome. Slash, not at all.

Jason Schwartzman is so terrible.

Why does he continue to get roles in anything? Like, when Sofia Coppola makes a movie and it's gorgeous and brilliant, it's all OMG SHE'S JUST USING HER DADDY! and this guy can suck in everything and nobody mentions he's a Coppola.

Oh, and I still kind of want another one of those quesadillas. So fucking delicious.

WTF?

Why am I still sick?

I forgot to mention, probably because I wanted to forget about it

Based on the preview for next week's Top Chef, everyone's favorite judge Toby Young is back next week. FML.

Oh noooo, Toby, look what you made me do! You made me tag this post with both "Top Chef" and "stuff I hate." Those two things shouldn't go together! Stupid Toby. :( :( :( :( :( Now I know how Michael Scott feels...

Ugh.

You know, I think the characters in The Devil Wears Prada are so horrible the movie is kind of unwatchable despite the fact that it's good (make sense of THAT statement, I dare you!), but Andy's friends... ugh. The WORST. In that scene where she's handing out all the stuff she got in the supply closet and her boyfriend is sitting there making "OMG this is so gross and offensive to me" faces, I WANT TO STRANGLE HIM. And Adrian Grenier is playing him! WHAT.

GOD.

So can anyone write an article on Anne Hathaway that isn't the equivalent of sucking her dick? Meryl Streep, sure, she deserves it, I don't mind if anyone waxes rhapsodic. I was reading an article in uh, I think it was New York Magazine about Anne in Shakespeare in the Park (ughhh!!! Way to corrupt my Raul and Audra by putting Anne in the same production!!!), and there was some sentence that was LITERALLY like, "If she wasn't so talented and so beautiful, she'd be stuck as a counselor in Stagedoor Manor."

Errr, writer. She's (probably) not going to sleep with you just because you wrote that (though maybe she slept with you beforehand, to get you to write that. I wouldn't put it past her.). And she's neither talented nor beautiful; I know some Stagedoor Manor counselors, and they're all more talented than Anne.

See, the thing is, I wouldn't mind the occasional "OH MY GOD SHE IS THE BEST EVER" article, if they weren't all like this, including Shirley MacLaine's embarrassing bosom-heaving intro to her at the Oscars. Was Anne strong in Rachel Getting Married? Kinda. Is she the best actress of her age, and really worthy of the amount of praise she gets? Not even fucking close.

Religulous

Wow, that SUCKED. If I wanted to be lectured at by Bill Maher for a few hours, I would have asked him to do so.

I'm not even religious, but it was just disgusting.

WTF IS THIS SHIT.

NO SERIOUSLY, I THINK THIS SHOULD BE ILLEGAL.

So, I actually read Twilight today.

Oh. Dear. God. It was SO BAD. It wasn't even ironic-enjoyable-bad, minus a few sentences here and there in its 500-page length garrrr. It definitely wasn't DaVinci Code-bad, where you know it sucks but you can't stop reading it. It was just totally boring as all hell, incredibly poorly written, and yeah, really really bad. I really wanna cry that this chick got something published before I did.

for once, in non-defense of snark.

I was reading New York Magazine and they reviewed some book that speaks out against snark. They didn't have a very positive view of said book. I don't blame them; as might be assumed from my blog title, I have a very positive view of snark. That said, the review defended Television Without Pity's brand of snark, calling the viewers there exactly what TV executives want, passionate and opinionated.

Oh. Hell. No.

I used to LOVE Television Without Pity, back in like, the beginning of high school when everyone watched Survivor. They didn't cover many TV shows, but they did a great job of recapping and gently poking fun at the things that weren't so great about these TV shows. Over the years, they've gotten more expansive, with larger forums and more shows and recappers, and now Television Without Pity simply fucking sucks. Its motto is "spare the snark, spoil the networks," but it might as well be "spare the snark, leave the people who like to bitch about everything in the cold." No recapper seems to actually enjoy the show they watch; the chick that used to review Survivor from uh, Pearl Islands? on spewed hate on every single damn contestant, and the guy who did The Office in S2 treated it like it was fucking Masterpiece Theater. It's these people that piss me off when it comes to The Office; it's not The Serious Jim And Pam Talk About Their Issues Show, it's The Office. The most celebrated episode involves the boss grilling his foot, and one of the employees running into a pole and vomiting all over his car.

The forums are even worse, despite how respectable they may seem at first glance due to the good grammar and whatnot. The moderators have ridiculous rules and moderate with iron fists. Though some recappers on the site are still good, the forums do not understand the difference between "snark" and "being a humongous asshole for the sake of it." It's very rare that anything positive is said about anything. It's like if someone made a major forum about Anne Hathaway, and the only person who ever posted there was me.

So, to conclude. Snark = good; Television Without Pity = bad.