Dan Mooney

The sun rose again this morning, and set this evening. In other news, Johan Santana will miss his next start with elbow discomfort. New Met Jeff Francoeur has quickly taken to his new team, also succumbing to injury, his a torn thumb ligament.

The Curse of Willie Mays strikes again!

In all seriousness, though, higher powers are at work here – dark powers. It’s been a strange few years for the Mets: the ‘06 NLCS loss was heartwrenching, but ultimately decided by the players themselves – Molina hitting a home run, and Beltran not swinging. ‘07 was double agent Glavine bleeding Brave dark blue, pounding the nail in the coffin with a tomahawk and ensuring a Met burial versus the Marlins. ‘08 was eerily similar.

But ‘09 has been a cat of a different color from the very beginning. Frankly, after three years of defeat at their own hands, I’m actually relieved, as a Met fan, that their non-season is not due to a lack of talent, just to a lack of healthy talent. With so many games missed to injury by the starters, I can only and safely assume that this source is not within themselves but something paranormal, man. I’ve never seen anything like it – well, nothing in real life, anyway:

Let’s take a closer look at these misfortunes (found here):

# Player, Position, Fate
——————–
1 Steve Sax, 2B – six life sentences
2 Wade Boggs, 3B – punched out by Barney
3 Darryl Strawberry, RF – pulled for pinch hitter
4 Jose Canseco, LF – saving burning house
5 Don Mattingly, 1B – kicked off team
6 Ken Griffey, Jr., CF – overdose of nerve tonic
7 Mike Scioscia, C – radiation overdose
8 Ozzie Smith, SS – lost in Mystery Spot
9 Roger Clemens, P – thinks he’s a chicken

“But that will never happen. Three misfortunes, that’s possible. Seven misfortunes, there’s an outside chance. But nine misfortunes? I’d like to see that!”

# Player, Position, Fate
——————–
1 Jose Reyes, SS – 36 GP, last played May 20th, hamstring
2 Daniel Murphy, LF – ***
3 David Wright, 3B – Hit in the head Aug 15th, concussion
4 Carlos Delgado, 1B – 26 GP, last played May 10th, hip surgery
5 Carlos Beltran, CF – 62 GP, last played Jun 21st, bone bruise (knee)
6 Ryan Church, RF – Missed 13 G in May/June, hamstring; traded
7 Brian Schneider, C – Missed 39 G, back
8 Luis Castillo, 2B – Missed 3 G in August tripping on the dugout steps (!, …)
9 Johan Santana, P – Elbow discomfort, late August

*** Daniel Murphy has actually played in all but 5 of the Mets’ games this year — good for him, but he’s only hitting .260 with only occasional power, so, just okay for the Mets. Or should I say, “MEHts”?

And — this is was just the opening day lineup! The Meht bench and bullpen were similarly decimated along the way.

Dark forces, right? John Swartzwelder’s not responsible for this.

Whom I will blame? The Wilpons. In the face.

This is what happens when your ownership sacrifices what little history your own team has in favor of celebrating the distant memory of another team entirely – from a different borough, from a different generation – and to the exclusion of another, more successful, more celebrated, more historic franchise that used to play just to your northwest.

There is no good goddamn reason for Citi Field to look like Ebbets Field — for the Dodgers, or for Jackie Robinson, to be so honored in a place the New York Mets call home. If the Wilpons and others want an exhibit honoring the man, and the team, somewhere on public display, tuck it away in centerfield. Fine. All the better — they’re a part of New York baseball history. But just as Yankee Stadium would look silly honoring Jackie Robinson at its front gate, so would, and do, and seemingly forever will, the Mets.

And if Jackie Robinson is such a symbol of equality in baseball, how dare the Wilpons not also celebrate on a similar scale the Giants, the “other” National League team? Isn’t that inequality all the same? Isn’t that unjust? Isn’t that hypocritical?

Where’s Willie Mays in all this?

I fear somewhat to type it, but not so much because I probably wouldn’t be right anyway. But if the dark forces present this year are the first evidence of yet another of baseball’s curses, let’s just speculate that the Mets will continue to lose until at the very least there’s an orange 24 perched proudly in the Jackie Robinson/Willie Mays Rotunda.

What with the Mets’ season over already and my own Old Timers’ league winding down for the summer, I’ve reclaimed my nights and weekends, which only means I’ve been watching much more TV than usual. I first realized this when I decided to devote these next few hundred words to a commercial. Yes, advertising is everywhere, even here.

The ad on today’s agenda – and it’s an ad, despite the fuzzy PSA undertones – is for an HPV/cervical cancer vaccine called Gardasil. You might have seen it around, but let’s take another look:

Did you find that tough to get through? My stomach turns every time I see it. With almost each passing sentence in the spot, I shed another tear for the shame we continue to bring on our race. My rage is equaled only by my sadness when I consider what we’re doing, and truly what we’ve already done, to the younger female demographic that might be among the only innocents left on our planet. How dare we?

One less woman? How about one fewer woman?

Each of these independent minded young women is mature and responsible enough not to want to contract HPV in the effort to stem cervical cancer – and yet not one is willing to stand up with a handwritten sign correcting the pinheads who hatched this marketing scheme: One fewer, not one less. Our future!

One less –- two syllables, strong sounding, fits squarely into the double-dutch rhyme at the end of the clip there. I get it. But I don’t excuse it for being horribly, wildly inaccurate.
Not because I’m picky when it comes to this, or that there aren’t other grammar rules that I and everyone else have let slide (I try not to split infinitives, ever, but then I don’t always eat my vegetables, either).

What bothers about this particular ad – well, what bugs me the most is the semi-automatic repetition of the earsore: one less, one less, one less – but what bothers me slightly less than that is the message embedded in this error: We are enlightened individuals, destroyers of ignorance who care enough about ourselves to take certain precautions, and who love ourselves enough to want to tell everyone else how enlightened we are. In the dumbest sounding way possible.

I applaud these medical advances. I certainly hope they work, and I do think more good than harm will come of them. But I also disagree with the idea that our collective energy should be focused solely on curtailing the spread of STDs while poor grammar usage goes viral, infecting more and more people, of all ages and genders, especially children, on an even more fundamental level.

Be strong. Be a beacon. Stop the ignorance. Call attention to one petty inaccuracy at a time.

I find myself more or less an optimist on this first full day of summer.

Sure, the days will only get shorter from here on out, the nights creeping in closer and closer to dinnertime, eventually leapfrogging the meal altogether.  The afternoons will get warmer, then hotter, then miserable.  The trees are in their fullest form, but they aren’t gaining any new leaves, and we’ll all watch them shed their bounty slowly at first, then all the rest in a defeated shrug.

The baseball season will continue, culminating just before my early November birthday, a small ray of excitement at the end of another long year.

I find myself an optimist today because my daily evening slate has been wiped clean.  In this age when time finds new ways to waste itself, I get three hours back per day.

No, it’s not a version of daylight savings, a Da Vinci kind of sleeping regimen or a shorter commute.  It’s the Mets season, now a paradox – while it continues, it’s actually over.

Carlos Beltran is headed to the DL.

He’s the latest in a legion of Mets talent relegated to the sidelines.  Some of them, perhaps the veterans among them, may be lucky enough not to have to watch career minor leaguers not filling their shoes.

It’s an absolute farce, and it can only get worse from here.  I can already see the Mets trading away what few good young players they have to get stopgap players to man recently vacated positions, all in an attempt to convince the wonderful fans, about whom they care so much, that they haven’t given up on the season, despite what is clearly happening right in front of their faces.

The only way for Mets management not to fail epically would be not to do anything.  Now that there’s some room, let Daniel Murphy play every day at first.  Don’t just platoon him with Fernando Tatis, who’s done nothing for you lately.  Let him get his at-bats, even against lefties, and continue to give him the opportunity to make some mistakes.  If you coddle him now and never left him face lefties, he’ll never learn.  Let Sheffield (the next to go on the DL) play left, spelled by Tatis, and throw Reed in center.  Martinez needs more than two more weeks to learn anything at this level this year.  Send him to Buffalo so I can see him play vs. the Toledo Mud Hens on July 19th (There’ll be fireworks!).

Do not trade Bobby Parnell for Aubrey Huff.

Can we get Carlos Gomez back?  Unlike Reyes, he’d have 20 triples in his spacious home park.

I just sighed.  I know this speculation is just that, and makes me feel only marginally better about the Mets.  What sound does a towel make when you throw it in?  It’s a thud, but not a dull thud.  It’s a delicate thud, maybe not even a thud, more like a fft.  The thing about throwing in the towel is that even when you’re livid, and get some good speed behind it, the fft only gets so loud.  The world only acknowledges a small part of your sad energy.

Which is why I’m choosing to be optimistic.  At least for today.

There is time now.

For a guy who shovels all sorts of information into his brain, hoping some of the better stuff will stick, I can occasionally be very particular about what I don’t want crossing my eyes and ears and somehow lodging itself in my long-term memory. I don’t need to see certain horror films, say, or grainy beheadings at the hands of monsters. Sometimes it’s to spare my sanity, others my stomach. Sometimes I just don’t think a certain piece of information deserves a place in my head.

Enter the Jonas Brothers.

I’m surprised how well I’ve done avoiding these kids. Most of it is unintentional, thankfully -– I’ve aged out of their target demographic. They’re not on the TV shows I watch, in the books I read, and seldom on the websites I flip through.

What started as a convenient litmus marker –- I can define myself by what I don’t know about the Jonas Brothers –- became an unexpected (and petty) source of pride. My accidental evasion of their self-promotion gave way to a puff-chested renunciation of them and their hype, as their hype symbolizes the Hype of Something You’re Supposed To Listen To If You’re Young and Want to Fit In. A smaller moral victory has yet to be recorded on this earth.

The clearest way for me to remain at a cool remove from all this, to ensure my place outside their kingdom, was merely to remain ignorant of their first names, specifically the third one’s name. I was sorry to think I picked up the name “Joe” at one point, and “Nick” at another, though I was content not to be sure of either. Not knowing the remaining name presented me with a paradox that a nerdy control freak and pop culture enthusiast like me is generally unfamiliar with: I was gleeful not to know this bit of trivia.

I didn’t think it would be hurtful or embarrassing not to know. However big the Jonases are now, they’re not the Beatles, whose whole was comparable to its individual parts, whose first names also crossed so many boundaries and really were world-famous. Neither would it be awkward for me not to know: I once had an engaging philosophy professor who, when the title popped up in class, didn’t know what The Matrix was. And this is not me being cute, all “What is the Matrix?” philosophy professor ha-ha-ha –- no, the movie had simply not entered her world in the two years since its release. I’m not judging, I’m only saying that the situation, when this came up, was awkward.

Now, I have also been known to shy away from similar cinematic information when it comes to trailers for movies that I’m sure I’m going to see: I didn’t need my appetite whetted for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I was going to see that movie, no matter what. It was fated from before my conception. Our paths would eventually and necessarily cross. All that was yet to be revealed in this material world was the lucky theater that would get my money.

This avoidance of trailers is partly to do with the fact that nowadays the entire movie is given away– I’m not ruining it by saying Frost/Nixon hinges on five seconds of material – you know which ones – and being so informed by the advertising deflated in me more than half of the tension the rest of the movie took the time to build. That’s a particular kind of blissful ignorance. It’s certainly neurotic, but I’ll argue there’s a nobility there, too — a sign of respect to the filmmakers and a bump of the wrists to the marketers who sacrifice so much of the product for their own sake.

The ignorance is useful, then, but it naturally runs its course: I avoid the movie until I see it. I remain in the dark long enough for the waiting light to seem at its brightest.

My Jonas Brothers project is the dark side of that coin, ignorance first for the sake of ignorance, blossoming into other signs of a hardening heart. I’m getting crotchety. It is on this tiny soapbox that I make my stand, apparently on one foot–

Or, it was.

The streak is over. Ended two days ago. Entertainment Weekly. Turned right to it, actually. Big spread. Like the laughing dog in Duck Hunt, there, in big bold letters, was the third name, once relegated to the ether like the tenor that wasn’t Pavarotti or Domingo. Now this given name is branded on my hippocampus and elsewhere in my brain, perhaps near Larry’s other brother Darryl and the Santa Maria. I can’t bear to share it with you and risk paying this misery forward.

I don’t know. Maybe my curiosity won out. Maybe I did really want to know. Maybe I just didn’t want to expend energy in ignoring it further. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it does.

I find myself in a weird position this afternoon – and for once it’s not slouched so far down the couch I’m almost falling off. No, I’m sitting upright – for a change – but I’m still not quite right, and this has everything to do with the Oscars that’ll soon unfold like a red carpet stretching well into the night.

I am excited about the Academy Awards, as I always am: for trivia purposes, to see some familiar faces, to see those lucky few succeed in their pursuit of excellence.

This time around, though, it’s like watching the NBA Finals – I know who’s playing, I’ve read about the personalities involved, I’ve seen clips of their work, I’ve followed their success. But in the end, it’s mostly been without sitting down and actually watching the full performance from beginning to end.

I could list a dozen reasons why this negligence is the case. I won’t, but I’ll list half that:

1. Movies are expensive, we know. At the same time, TV is cheap (even free TV isn’t free), Netflix is a pretty good deal, and except for the visionary tentpole movies you must see in a theatre (The Dark Knight), one can generally go the home theatre route as less is lost seeing a taut family drama on a smaller screen (which gets bigger every year, incidentally).

2. I’ve been watching more TV than movies anyway because of how good, good TV is and because of my fractured schedule and atrophied attention span for which more than 60 consecutive minutes of anything overloads the system.

3. Going to see movies is increasingly irritating and time-consuming.   To get a seat that’s at all decent, I have to arrive at least 30 minutes beforehand, just in time to watch (or try and fail to ignore) 30 minutes of commercials. Then the trailers show up and by the time the movie starts, I’ve been there an hour and I’ve forgotten what I came to see and why I was excited for it in the first place.

4. The theater where I lived most of last year didn’t play the best of the best, just the more popular movies on more screens. It was the only theatre in town, but then Astoria didn’t have many bookstores, neither – just one I can think of, a retailer specializing in outdated encyclopedias and computer manuals from the early 1990s. It remains a fun neighborhood full of people smart is different ways than I, where residents find company and solace in each other at sidewalk cafes and smoky bars, not in books and movies and in his own head like I would.

5. I’m older now and more easily tired, surely more jaded and unfortunately not as easily impressed, it seems. I also have responsibilities to other people in addition to myself, and different responsibilities to myself at that. I was lucky enough for movies to be my life for three years, and books for another two, but now with less chance to see movies, I’ll only see a few of the very best ones. It hasn’t recently been the case that I’ve had the time, energy, enthusiasm and opportunity to see twenty or thirty movies, then know from my those experiences which ones would or should be nominated for awards, and seeing the process along from the very beginning. So it was six years ago, and perhaps so again shall it be. But not now.

6. “They don’t make movies like they used to.” Fight Club. American Beauty. The Matrix. Three seminal movies, two more alike than the third, but all centered on a single man in a search for meaning in his life. Existentialism, fatalism, secular humanism, ism ism ism ism, lots of philosophy tossed around among the three. Get this: all three were released in 1999. I know how little I know, but I still don’t know of three current movies that would inspire me in the same wonderful, primal, intellectual, complementary way. Sure, it was a moment in time. It was trendy then. I can’t expect all movies to be as meaningful to me. But if that’s the case, I don’t have to be as excited about them.

Such is life.