Monthly Archives: April 2016

A Great Scrubbing of the World?

Movies, Uncategorized, ,

Movie night!

I like Peter Weir movies and tonight I’m watching THE LAST WAVE.

This flick gets ripped for being obscure and for not solving the mystery.

I will grant the latter. I think one of the responsibilities of artists who trade in mysteries in movies and books is they must, at some point, solve the mystery. Is that too much to ask? In both THE LAST WAVE and PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK. Mr. Weir chooses not to do so. I still like both films.

I will however, take issue with the accusation of obscurity.

Since my teens, I’ve had a literary addiction to novels and stories of the supernatural. One of my favorite British authors is from the early 20th century; Arthur Machen. Machen writes often of nature in revolt – of nature, thought to be tamed, but perpetually about to bust out and re-exert dominance over man in disorienting and disturbing ways. In this light, THE LAST WAVE makes amazing sense.

Nature hovers. Disturbing and disorienting intrusions occur.

  • Baseball-sized hail falls from a cloudless sky.
  • From his protective bubble of a car in a torrential downpour, Richard Chamberlain sees;
    • A man with an extreme umbrella drinking from a water fountain. Why doesn’t just open his mouth? No, he chooses the “tame” water over nature’s wild water.
    • A poster for the local zoo featuring apes gazing back at Chamberlain in his car. Who’s really caged and on display?
    • Vehicles crawling through snarled traffic with icons on them featuring the image of a jungle cat; jaguars in the streets.
  • At Chamberlain’s home, with the maelstrom outside continuing to rage, turning the windows of the home into images like of the inside of a dishwasher, water appears inside the house flowing down the stairs. We immediately assume there’s been a leak from the outside, but it turns out to be a bathtub overflowing. Water thought to be tamed…
  • Chamberlain’s wife admits that she’s a fourth-generation Australian, but she’s never met an aboriginal. She’s lived distanced from nature, behind societal barriers that now appear to be quite fragile.

This is not obscure. It’s mysterious and ominous, but not obscure. We think we’ve tamed and sealed out nature from our lives. (Climate change? Pshaw!)

But nature will persist. It will find a way past our barriers. It will win. How scary is that? Nothing obscure at all.

It’s a fine and effective film.

Give the Other Man His Chance

Baseball, ,

Well, my Reds finally have a chance to get back in the playoffs…probably for about fifteen minutes.

Barely a winning season record, warning track power, no launch angles, exit velo well within the local speed limits…

Analytics…they’ll kill ya.

Still, I watch.

It’s baseball. It’s my beloved Reds. They might win any night…they might……s’possible.

As disconcerting as the year meanders, it still illustrates with every game another of the many reasons to cherish the sport. Every final inning contains a chance of victory or failure. No matter how big a lead may be, the winning team must play major league caliber baseball and get those last three outs. No coasting.

Roger Angell in his very satisfying collection THE SUMMER GAME, quotes Earl Weaver in his 1969 explanation of the Orioles’ unexpected loss of the World Series to the Mets;

“You can’t sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You’ve got to throw the ball over the goddam plate and give the other man his chance. That’s why baseball is the greatest game of them all.”

No stalling. No waiting for the clock to run out.

“…give the other man his chance.”

Perhaps our elected officials should be watching a bit more baseball. Frankly, as far as our current elected officials are concerned, I’m more than ready to give another man (or woman) their chance!

( geezer grumping off to cypher some more about spin rates…)

Baseball Rhapsody

Baseball

April 4, 2016

Stop the presses!

The only sport that matters opened its 2016 season this afternoon in Cincinnati. Oh sure, there were a few games played yesterday and we’ll count those results out of pity, but we know what’s right and what’s wrong. The season doesn’t truly begin until the first pitch flies in Cincy.

It flew today and it flew well.

I love baseball for many reasons and many of them were on display today.

Frankly, things look grim for my beloved Reds this year.

  • This year’s Reds came into this season looking like the second worst team in baseball. That was before they opened the season today with their entire starting pitching rotation on the disabled list.
  • They started an outfield today in which Jay Bruce was the greatest offensive threat. Mr. Bruce had his worst year in baseball in 2015. He batted about .226 and spent the winter waiting to be traded. He continues to wait. He’s the best outfielder we have.
  • Our all-star third-baseman was traded in the winter and has been replaced by a young player who has not previously played the position.
  • Our shortstop only played about 40 games last year due to injury.
  • Our catcher only played about half of last year due to injury.
  • Our second-baseman has a clause in his contract that allowed him to refuse multiple off-season attempts to trade him. How inspiring for him to be playing for a team that wishes he would go away.

Given all those happy considerations, why watch ‘em?

Day-to-day baseball is not played on paper. We play the games every day, and every day is new flip of the coin, a new chance to catch the grounder you didn’t/couldn’t catch before, a new chance to hit the curve you didn’t/couldn’t hit before, a new chance to clip the corner of the plate with a come-back fastball that missed yesterday…you get the idea.

The Reds won today. They won!

The starting pitcher pitched well: the bullpen pitched better. The outfielders didn’t hit, but they made sterling plays in the field. The young third-baseman fielded his position well. The shortstop looked healthy and got three hits.

They made the catch. They made the throw. They got the hit. They won the game.

They may lose the next 161, but they won TODAY.

The largest opening day crowd in Cincinnati history watched them win. Why were they there?

Because baseball is all about hope – not great, grand, life-changing hope for the future – but daily hope; hope that today could be better than yesterday. Oh sure, it might not be, but that’s OK too – after all, we’re gonna play again tomorrow!

I love baseball.