Five.... Five Dollar.... Five Dollar **SHUT UP**

A fairly long time ago (blogger code for "there's no way in hell I'm looking up exact time measurements), Subway debuted the now-famous 'Five Dollar Footlong' song. If you've forgotten how the original sounds, here's your chance to catch up.



This commercial obviously had several things going for it.

1. It was hypnotic.
2. It was catchy.
3. It sort of reminded me of Viva Voce (never a bad thing).
4. It had cute Asian chicks and Godzilla in it (they must have gotten in trouble over that, because later versions of the commercial had Godzilla removed, but cute Asian chick remains. I guess if you have to remove one.....)

It ranked right up there with 'Gimme Back That Fillet-o-Fish' as one of the better jingles to come out in the past few years.

Fast forward a few months, and Subway has turned a simple jingle into a huge advertising campaign. Needless to say whatever qualities the original may have had have.... faded.

The newest commercial features Michael Strahan, Justin Tuck, and Jared Fogle fake singing the song in bizzare baritone voices. So, how far has it fallen?

1. It is in no way hypnotic. In fact, the only positive application the commercial could possibly be used for would be to snap people in comas back to waking life.

2. It is not catchy. It is the anti-thesis of catchy. It's as catchy in the same way Kidz Bop rendition of Mastodon would be - as in, not catchy.

3. It does not remind me of Viva Voce in any way.

4. It features a grand total of zero cute Asian chicks. It also features a conspicuous lack of Godzilla monsters.

Subway, you have destroyed what should have been a simple "one and done" jingle. Stop. For the love of all that is good in life, just stop.

Ouch.... ouch ouch ouch

Note the position of the umpire as he calls the clearly fair ball foul.

Great game by Blackburn. Too bad that it all has to wind down in the shittiest way possible.

On a sidenote, I overheard Ron Darling saying after the team's MVP Justin Morneau went down with an injury, it was guys like Michael Cuddyer, Jason Kubel... and Delmon Young that pulled the Twins into contention.

Joe Mauer, meanwhile, selfishly hit .354/.471/.487 - to be clear, that means he was getting on base almost as often as he was getting out over the critical playoff drive. What Cuddy did was great, but he and Kubel aren't getting RBIs if Mauer isn't setting the table for them. To act as if the soon-to-be AL MVP had less to do with the Twins eventual division title than DELMON YOUNG, is cockflickery, my friends.

Also, in what universe do people still think the MVP of the 2009 Twins is Justin Morneau??

What a complete disappointment... let's pick up at least one from this very beatable team, shall we, gentlemen??

Hitters Who Would Better Leadoff Batters Than Matt Tolbert: A Handy Reference

Ron Gardenhire seems to think that in lieu of an actual leadoff hitter (Denard Span), he should simply place a speedy player at the top of the lineup. Normally, it would only matter to a limited extent, but putting a batter who's hitting .175 (also sporting a nifty .270 OBP and .237 SLG!) the highest number of plate appearances in a given game seems like a great way to not score very many runs.

Since Gardy is obviously confused as to what makes a good leadoff hitter (hint: see pitches, get on base for other hitters to get you in), I've composed this helpful cheat sheet.

List of People Who Would Be More Apt to Bat Leadoff Than Matt Tolbert

Brendan Harris
Joe Mauer

Nick Punto (and, my God, does that distress me)

Luis Ayala
Cecil Fielder

This man and his two career stolen bases would be a much better leadoff hitter than Matt Tolbert.

Scott Baker
Emilio Navarro (propped up with a series of levers and pulleys)
An unoccupied batter's box
Carlos Gomez (but only just barely... that was a long, angering road I'd rather not go down again)
A Sony Aibo
American Idol winner Kris Allen
Most of the commenters at the Star Tribune's website
Doctor Who
The gun toting corpse of Charlton Heston
That one guy on Lost... you know... the bald-ish guy, the mysterious guy with the shifty eyes... yeah, him
Eddie Gaedel
A sentient jack-in-the-box
Ordinary buttered toast

But is it scrappy buttered toast? Does it battle its tail off??

Lest you think I'm overly pessimistic, here another list.

List of Hitters Who Matt Tolbert Would Probably Be Better Than

Alexi Casilla
Bob Buhl

Please, listen to reason. Scrappy, light-hitting infielders who strike out almost as often as they get on base do not in any way scream "leadoff hitter".

Snipers on the Auction Seas (A Tragedy in 3 Acts)

Act I (In Which Our Hero Spies the Item of His Desires)

The Protagonist is perusing eBay. He spies a copy of Quarashi's self-titled debut CD.

The Protagonist: I need to buy this!

Chorus: When last you saw this item, it sold for $90. Your coffers are far too bare for such an undertaking.

The Protagonist: Nonsense! I'd never forgive myself if I didn't at least make an attempt.

Chorus: Then make your attempt, though it be in vain.

The Protagonist: Fifty dollars ought to at least give me a chance.

Chorus: Fifty dollars is a foolish number. It is neither so small as to be sensible, nor so large as to assure victory. Your efforts are both wasted and unwise.

The Protagonist: Not at all! See there? The bid is only at thirteen dollars right now.

Chorus: Four days yet remain. Temper your unchecked optimism.

---

Act II (In Which Ominous Signs Gather)

The Protagonist: I suppose I must tell my wife about my impending purchase.

Chrous: This ought to be good.

The Protagonist: I'm buying a CD.

The Wife: Why are you telling me this?

The Protagonist: It's sort of an expensive CD.

The Wife: What do you mean? How expensive?

The Protagonist: My high bid is fifty dollars?

The Wife: ...

The Protagonist: The current bid is only fifty dollars....wait....never mind it's at fifty dollars.

The Wife: ...

The Protagonist: Don't worry, it's a collectors item - any serious Quarashi fan would pay this much and more.

The Chorus: You talk about "serious Quarashi fans" as if they are tangible things that exist in this world.

The Wife: Are you out of your mind?

The Chorus: Our thoughts are akin.

---

Act III (In Which Hope Is Dashed Upon the Rocks)

The Protagonist: With one minute on the clock, I'm still in the lead.

Chorus: Sixty seconds is an eternity in this place.

{Forty Seconds Pass}

Masked eBay Sniper the first: I strike! Sixty dollars!

Masked eBay Sniper the second: HA! I strike! Seventy dollars!

The Protagonist: Wait! NO!

Chorus: Fifty dollars was already a fortune. Seventy would be too foolish even for you. Will you relent?

The Protagonist: Yes.

The Protagonist: This is ridiculous! The eBay system is built along the concept of a maximum bid being the highest you will pay for a given item. What point is there in this pointless sniping? If the user had placed seventy dollars as his maximum bid in the beginning, they still would probably have won the CD, and I wouldn't have had to go through all this nonsense. I'm sure it saved them a dollar or two, but so what? Stupid. I hate snipers.

Chorus: You are merely angry because it's a legitimate strategy and you're neither wealthy nor savvy enough to take advantage of it.

{PAUSE}

Chorus: Well?

The Protagonist: And what if I am?

Our hero resumes his searches, knowing them to be in vain.

Movie Review: The Happening

Dear M. Night Shyamalan,

Are you even trying anymore?

'The Happening' is one of the stupidest movies I've ever seen.

Anytime the main core of the advertising for a movie is "the first R-rated film from director x", it's basically admitting "man, we've got zero plot, so we're going to up the gore and hope no one notices". Well guess what, M - I noticed.

The best part about the entire movie is Zooey Deschanel's eyes. I am not making this up.

I probably could have given this a '2' if the phoned in "OMIGOD, WE DIDN'T LEARN UR LESSON AND IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN" ending hadn't been tacked on. That could be seen as a spoiler, but honestly, it's the ending we knew was coming from about 10 minutes into the movie. But, hell... you had to prove your point, and I respect that to the tune of one

Please stop making movies until you learn what is and what is not a good script. Also, for the love of all that is holy, please send your next script to no fewer than three 5th graders. If even they think it's a moronic waste of time, please rewrite until you have something that makes some damn sense.

Now, if you'll pardon me, I have to go find some lions and allow them to rip my arms from my body for no other reason than a bunch of trees told me that I don't want to live anymore. Sounds cool with me.

1/10 (This is one of the stupidest movies ever. I know I already said this but seriously, the Mummy Returns is like the Godfather compared to this pile of garbage.)

The Coming DRM Storm

When EA announced 'Spore' a few years ago, video game enthusiasts everywhere were pumped. Here was a game that promised what video games had only hinted at throughout their existence - a fully immersive and interactive world were the user literally created their own race and evolved them into whatever they wanted.

The game itself has failed to live up to it's massive hype, which isn't a large surprise. What's (unfortunately) even less surprising is EA's decision to use this particular title as the spearhead of its DRM campaign. EA is hardly the first to try to ensure that pirates don't siphon off any potential profits, but they (along with 2K and their infamous Bioshock DRM) are at the forefront of a disturbing new trend in removing any sense of ownership from the end user's hands.

First and foremost, the problem with DRM is that it doesn't have its intended effect. Those who are absolutely set on stealing any form of digital media will find a way to do so. There's no way to stop them, and in trying this hard to dissuade them, you punish legitimate customers.

The larger problem with this can be found in comments from EA's CEO:

"There is a longer-term transition from a disk-based model for retail sales to an “average revenue per user” model. Five to seven years from now, investors will look at EA as how we have 100 million customers where we have an ARPU relationship that amounts to so many dollars a month. It’s different from selling so many disks a month at wholesale prices. It’s a gradual evolution. But we need the tools to be able to do that. The ARPU model is a better margin business for us. It’s less cyclical. It’s a better business. Some of our businesses have characteristics like that: EA Mobile, Pogo.com, and The Sims. We want to move in that direction. People predicted the demise of the DVD rental model for Blockbuster a long time ago. I don’t want to be the guy with a retail store renting DVDs in a world that has moved to Netflix and pay-per-view. We want to innovate and drive along that front, whether it’s with FIFA Online or Pogo or The Sims. Nucleus is a positive step in that direction. Spore has a download model. We could wait for someone else to eat our lunch or we could do it ourselves."

http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/21/e3-perspective-an-interview-with-john-riccitiello-ceo-of-electronic-arts/

This would seem a sound business proposal, except for the fact that his examples are totally skewed. Netflix succeeds because there is a large contingent (myself included) who don't want to buy every single movie that we want to see. Quite often, one viewing is enough. Certainly there are games like this, but there are already services out there for this sort of thing (Gamefly, etc). He's not talking about game rental, he's talking about game leasing. It's akin to the idea of buying a DVD, and then having to pay x amount of dollars a month to continue to buy back the right to view something you already purchased. World of Warcraft gets brought up in these discussions, and I suppose that's fair, but they're charging for the right to connect to their servers. EA is hoping to charge you for the right to sit down and use your purchased product at your own computer (and, if they had their way, your console as well).

Reaction to this has been mixed. There are plenty of people who trot out the old "it don't apply to me since I'm not doing anything wrong" line. That, in my view, is a mistake. Most of us have already not been doing anything wrong, and we're being punished for it. The pirates are one thing, but they are simply being turned into an excuse to add this self-crippling software (which will require you to re-activate it if you do something so simple as change your video card). In effect, they hold your product - the one you spent your money on and purchased - hostage. Who's to say they won't start making you pay to activate it? Who's to say that this trend will stay limited to video games?

Meanwhile, there are a large number of people who have had understandable problems with this. Enough of them have flooded Amazon.com to the point where Spore's current customer rating is 1.5 stars (an unheard of low rating for a major release), and EA's forums are buzzing with questions as to why software - which not only cripples their product, but often causes sizable issues with the user's computer - is being installed on their system without warning. EA, of course, been deleting these questions as fast as they can. This is a not a matter they wish to discuss, and while they have relaxed their activation policy (from 3-4 activations to unlimited), they would very much prefer you to buy their game and shut up about it.

Sorry, I'll pass.

For more information, check out the following links:

"Wired" discusses the Amazon rating attack
Amazon deletes all customer reviews (predominantly negative) - Oops.
The Register talks about EA (sort of) easing up the restrictions
The Kicker: Talk about DRM, have EA threaten to deactivate your product

Winning Isn't Everything

The win is one of the worst ways to measure a pitcher's effectiveness.

Case in point: Livan Hernandez is, by nearly every metric available, the worst starting pitcher on the Twins' staff (5.18 ERA, on pace to give up over 300 hits, and a mind numbing 3+ strikeouts per 9 innings), but because he's 9-5, he's considered to be the 'ace' of the staff. Dick and Bert, however, aren't satisfied to give him credit for his ridiculous luck, they're happy to attribute everyone else's (much better) pitching to his 'veteran presence' and even when he gives up 7 runs in 4 innings, he's "showing the other pitchers" how to grind through lousy starts (he certainly has the practice). If the Twins were able to make a trade and get a low level third string A-ball catcher who rolls the ball back to the pitcher, I would happily take it.
By contrast, Johan Santana is 7-7 this year, and while I seriously doubt/hope that no one would call Livan Hernandez a better pitcher than Johan Santana, I did overhear some true baseball genius saying just the other day how losing Santana didn't hurt the Twins, because they've got Livan, and he's got 9 wins, whereas Johan only has a 7-7 record. He's not as brutally dominant as he was in his 04-06, and his strikeout rates down a touch, but he's still one of the best pitchers in major league baseball, and to see him in the same paragraph as Livan irks me a bit.

It's this line of reasoning that's keeping Bert Blyleven out of the Hall of Fame, and it's unacceptable and ridiculous.

Movies.com is Dead to Me

The new movies.com sucks. Fandango?? Seriously?? The (relatively) compact, to the point site that I've enjoyed the past few years has been replaced with a monstrosity.If this is the reason that Dave White abandoned ship, he was wise to leave.

You Suck, Universal Records...

I purchased the new Be Your Own Pet CD on Saturday. It's pretty decent, what with the bratty female-fronted noise punk, but I already knew that... I'd downloaded a relatively low-quality leak a few weeks ago, so I had a pretty good idea what I was getting into.

Not quite enough of an idea, it seems...

It seems that 3 of the songs on Get Awkward are 'too violent'. This would usually bother me, anyway, but when one of those tunes happens to be my favorite off of the CD. Well, dammit... you've gone ahead and pissed me right off, you corporate cockflickers. Here's the lyrics to 'Becky':

Doesn't matter anyway, 'cause I've got a brand new friend, OK
Me and her, we'll kick your ass
We'll wait with knives after class!

With bands like Bloodhound Gang, Lil Wayne, and Lindsay Lohan under employment in one form or another by Universal, I'm a bit confused as to why things need to be pared off the album seemingly for no good reason while Bloodhound Gang gets to keep their mind-bogglingly dumb (and giddily profane) music untouched and complete. I mean, what... songs about teenage revenge murders aren't kosher?

So yay, now I get to own a dumbed down, murder-free version of Get Awkward. Hooray for double standards, corporate shenanigans and all-around general idiocy!

Note to Universal Music Group: I'm no dancer, but on that sweet day when no one's buying your products anymore, and the entire music industry moves and leaves you and your old ways in the dust, I think I might cut a jig on your grave.