AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION

OK, I just got a totally evil idea for a ‘tribute’ album.

Imagine There’s No Mercy: Deconstructing the Music of John Lennon features 12 classic John Lennon tracks sorted through the worst sort of cultural filters imaginable:

1. Happy Xmas (War Is Over) performed by a German oompah band
2. Across the Universe in the style of Wesley Willis, rendering it even more random and incomprehensible
3. Instant Karma! by a Western swing band
4. A Day in the Life by the Gramercy Park Madrigal Ensemble
5. I Am the Walrus arranged after the manner of Sun Ra
6. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, klezmerized
7. Give Peace a Chance by the Texas A&M University Marching Aggies
8. Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite a la Pantera
9. Dear Prudence in the ’smooth jazz’ style
10. Nowhere Man by a very, very untalented boy band
11. Revolution in the style of Burt Bacharach
12. Imagine rendered in telephone touch-tones

TAKE ME OUT OF THE BALL GAME

I am often accused of hating baseball, simply because of nine or ten things I’ve written in the past two and a half years. I’d like to set the record straight. I do not hate baseball. In fact, under the right circumstances, I’ve been known to watch as many as three or four at-bats of a televised game, providing that no football, hockey, golf, tennis, indoor lacrosse, bowling, competitive spelling, backgammon, keno, Candy Land, or peek-a-boo games are being broadcast at the same time.

Okay, it’s true. I do pretty much hate baseball. But I want you to understand, dear reader, that my hatred is not entirely irrational. Compared with a fitting candidate like, say, college football, baseball is severely lacking as a pastime.

We’ll start with the first and most obvious complaint: Nothing ever happens in a baseball game. Well, not “ever;” sometimes as many as 60 of the 240 or so pitches thrown in a baseball game result in something happening. In fact, I believe that there have been baseball matches in which there were as many as twenty actual base hits. So it wouldn’t be fair to say that nothing ever happens in baseball. Let’s call it “next to nothing” instead.

But when something does happen, hoo boy! Get ready to hear an exhaustive dissertation on the historical and statistical importance of that bloop single you just saw! Baseball fans have stats for everything, and some of them even make sense. They’ll tell you that a lifetime .300 hitter is really something, even though that stat compares unfavorably with Bo Schembechler’s bowl-game record (or John Cooper’s record against Michigan, if you prefer). They’ll break down how Player X bats with runners in scoring position, or with a left-hander on the mound, or with a bad case of Cuervo’s Disease, or whatever. They’ll even come up with stats that show this particular pitcher can’t get this batter out, since the batter is a left-handed utility man with an unusually open stance and a tendency to pronounce the word library as “liberry,” while the batter doesn’t stand a chance against the pitcher because he can’t hit a pitcher who throws a side-armed split-finger fastball, trims his sideburns to the exact midpoint of that flap that sticks out where his ear canal is, and always remembers to put the toilet seat back down. So, since the batter can’t hit off the pitcher, but the pitcher can’t get the batter out, that means one of two things: (a) you’re about to witness an intense struggle between two implacable combatants, locked in a battle of fierce pride and tribalism, ending only when one of these warriors’ wills prove more indomitable than the other, or (b) you’re about to witness a nine-pitch walk.

Never mind, of course, that there are seven players on the field at all times who have essentially nothing to do but stand around and wait for something to happen. And never mind that a really active play might involve three of those seven players. Nope, it’s all about that ego duel between the pitcher and the batter, with the catcher serving as an oddly-dressed consultant. The combination of endless, semi-meaningful statistical manipulation and all the conceivable action centering around 20% of the participants reminds me of one other thing: Dungeons and Dragons. In fact, watching baseball is a lot like watching people play D&D, except D&D’s magic system makes considerably more sense than the infield fly rule.

So, since there’s seldom anything happening on the field, most baseball fans retreat into the meta-game, the real “inside baseball” stuff, if I may steal that cliche back for a second (I promise to return it to the political wonks shortly). But even here baseball’s a dud. It doesn’t have heroes right now, since we’re now mostly convinced that a lot of the recent offensive heroes have been, well, “enhanced.” (I realize it’s not fair to paint with such a broad brush. I wish that 93% of all power hitters didn’t have to give the other 7% such a bad name.)

Baseball can’t even come up with a good villain. The best they can do right now is Barry Bonds, who (a) hasn’t played a lick all season, and (b) is about as threatening as a bunny with the sniffles. (If you can’t tell the difference between Bonds and a true athletic villain like, say, Steve Spurrier, well, it’s nice to meet you, Adam, and please don’t take any dietary advice from your wife.) Baseball freaks love to tell you that they love the way Barry Bonds plays the game, but they just wish he’d be a little more connected with his teammates and a little more forrthcoming with the media. Otherwise, they say, he just might not be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Honestly, I can’t believe that the threat of having to wait one more year for his inevitable indictuction into Cooperstown hasn’t caused Bonds to get his act together. It’s probably keeping him up nights as he tosses and turns endlessly on his bed of cash.

Who are you kidding, Baseball Fan? The reason Bonds and his ilk treat you like leftover French toast is because you’ve proven, time and again, that you’ll take whatever disrespect they can dish out, and you’ll come wimpering back once you hear those magic words, “Pitchers and catchers report.” They don’t care because they cannot possibly put a product on the field which is so dreadful that you won’t watch it. People lose all sense of rationality and perspective when baseball is involved. Heck, here in southeastern Wisconsin we pay–we volunteered to pay–an extra half-cent-per-dollar sales tax to build a stadium for the Milwaukee Brewers. At the time of that vote, this was sort of like people in Atlanta voting to subsidize the William Tecumseh Sherman Interpretive Center, right there in downtown on the corner of Peachtree and Peachtree.

So maybe the owners are to blame? Quick, name three baseball owners other than George Steinbrenner and Ted Turner. Can’t do it? Neither can anybody. I came up with Mark Attanasio and Carl Pohlad, and that was it. But shouldn’t George and Ted qualify for true villainy? Bosh. Ted Turner is the Wile E. Coyote of baseball; his season always ends with him cowering under a pink parasol, holding up a little sign that reads “help.” And Steinbrenner’s team just isn’t good enough to hate anymore.

(You know, it’s funny. When Daniel Snyder bought the Washington Redskins, his actions seemed so ill-informed and tyrannical that people started calling him “Boy George,” an obvious reference to Steinbrenner. But now, in 2005, who’s got the lineup that might’ve scared everybody silly if it was still 1998?)

Nothing (OK, next to nothing) ever happens. Most of the guys on the field just stand around trying to look athletic. There’s nobody you can hate, but there’s nobody you can really like, either. It’s no wonder NASCAR has now eclipsed baseball as America’s number-two televised sport. At least in NASCAR, things are always moving (albeit in the same direction), and there are plenty of drivers you can hate. It’s enough to make a guy happy they call baseball the “national pastime” and not the “national interest.” To be an interest, you must be interesting.

I don’t mean to rain on tonight’s Some-Star game, but for somebody like me, this is one of the greatest nights of the year. After all, there’s no baseball tomorrow.

SPOT THE DOOFUS

It shouldn’t be too hard . . .

TONIGHT’S TV LISTINGS

ABC: 8 Simple Rules For Dating Desperate Housewives (Comedy-Drama): Owen Terrell (Terrell Owens) gets a nasty lesson in double standards when he takes a bit acting job; one of the housewives uncovers a sinister secret when she audits the PTA’s bank statements.

CBS: CSI: Wausau (Drama): The investigators have just 24 hours to determine whether a giant inflatable SpongeBob found in a Dumpster is the same giant inflatable SpongeBob missing from a Burger King three blocks away.

NBC: Law & Order-Unclaimed Property Unit (Drama): When a mysterious drifter shows up to claim a Santana tape stolen from a Camaro in 1983, the UPU’s dectective attempts to link him to a 25-year-old theft of a Pure Prairie League tape from a truck stop in Idaho.

FOX: Trading Real World Maternity Survivor Apprentices By Design (”Reality”): A group of young single mothers are abandoned on a tropical island, then told that one of their babies will be adopted by Donald Trump. The winning mother will be determined by a competition in which the mothers are pitted against each other in a quest to see who can best renovate the interior of a lean-to shelter using only coconut husks, bits of string, and a golf ball. Halfway through, the mothers are forced to switch shelters.

ESPN: World Series of Slot Machines (Sports?): Live action from Walleye Bob’s Taco House and Casino in Aberdeen, SD.

ESPN2: Dream Job-Radio Edition (Reality): Contestants vie for a one-year contract reading offshore sports-book and “male enhancement” commercials for ESPN radio. Judges: Mike Golic, John Moschitta Jr., Ray J. Johnson.

FOX SPORTS: Best Dang Ol’ Sports-Like Television Program, Question Mark (News): Tom Arnold makes a bunch of Roseanne jokes, some rapper you’ve never heard of comments on the state of the NBA, a live audience interprets everything the female reporter says as a double entendre.

SPEED: NASCAR Nextel Cup Practice Session (Sports): Gear-shift linkage adjustments. Live, from Daytona Beach, FL.

E!: True Hollywood Story: That One Nerdy Guy From ‘Riptide’ (Documentary): The career of that one nerdy guy from the NBC action-adventure series ‘Riptide’ is recalled. Interviewees include Perry King, Hal Sparks, Michael Ian Black.

LIFETIME: Not Without The Perfect Deception By A Mother’s Intuition (1996, Movie *1/2): After moving to a small town in Colorado, a woman uncovers a conspiracy to overreport standardized testing results at the local school. The stress of her battle to make the truth known gives her the rare, fatal disease Murphy-Jaegermann Syndrome, which can only be cured by a transplant from the sister she hasn’t spoken to in years. Sam: Judith Light. Principal Gorman: Tom Skerritt. Brody: Bruce Boxleitner.

COURT: Cops (Reality): Cedar Rapids, IA: Officers investigate claims that a family living on the even-numbered side of the street is watering their lawn on an odd-numbered day; an elderly woman doesn’t like the looks of some teenagers.

HGTV: Emasculated by Design (Comedy): While a man is out of town at a monster truck rally, his wife (with the help of two interior designers and a suspiciously unhandy carpenter) boxes up all his worldly possessions and redecorates the garage in pastel ginghams.

FOOD: Emeril Live (Science Fiction): “Deep-Fried Garlicky Crap Tossed on a Plate”: Garlicky crap is deep-fried, tossed on a plate, then dramatically showered with a curious spice mix. Also: Chicken with Forty Catchphrases.

MTV: The Real World (Reality): After failing to show up for his $5 an hour job at a coffee shop, Drake is fired; Amanda and Evie discover that, after a weekend of partying at expensive clubs, they’ve spent this month’s rent money and have no idea what to do; Jermaine’s one-night stand steals all his credit cards.

VH1: Driven (Documentary): Scientists at VH1 Laboratories attempt to gain DNA samples from Paris Hilton and Britney Spears in an effort to create “ParisBritney,” a clone sharing genetic material from each, intended to be the perfect talent-free sex symbol/living Bratz doll to serve as the basis for all of VH1’s future programming.

TVLAND: Leave It To Beaver (Comedy): Something almost happens, but Wally is able to stop it in time.

TBS: Seinfeld (Comedy): Something almost happens, but Kramer is able to stop it in time.

CNN: Crossfire (Comedy): Something almost happens, but a special report about an Indonesian peanut shortage is able to stop it in time.

BRAVO: Queer Eye for the Straight Truck (Reality): The Fab Five are turned loose to work their magic on a 1963 GMC grain truck.

HBO: Deadwood (Drama): The characters swear twice as often, hoping you’ll forget “The Sopranos.”

CSPAN: Partisan Bickering (Public Disgrace): Members of Congress make impassioned speeches to an audience consisting of CSPAN’s cameraman and people who didn’t pay their cable bill last month.

SILENT NIGHT . . . PLEASE!

Ten Christmas carols that could go away–far away–without causing me to shed a tear:

• “Carol of the Bells”: “Hark hear the bells/Drive you insane/Ringing like mad/Inside your brain/The same four notes/ninety-four times/Until your ear-/drums ring like chimes/Music professors/call the weird rhythm/a hemio-o-la/Not realizing that no one cares/They’d prefer being eaten by bears/To hearing this/Pathetic ’song’/From every store/All season looong . . .”
• “The Little Drummer Boy”: Maybe you like this song. Maybe you’ve never been a twelve-year-old male percussionist.
• “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas”: Would this song even exist without grade-school orchestras? Or would it have been lost to the mists of time?
• “Sleigh Ride,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Jingle Bells,” “Frosty the Snowman,” “Let It Snow”: I’m counting these as one song because they all have the same problem: what do they have to do with Christmas?
• “The Holly and the Ivy”: A favorite of over-enunciating choirs everywhere, this song is a good argument that music from the medieval era is best left there.
• “Happy Holidays”: While I doubt anybody has recorded this song in 30 years, this early attempt at political correctness might as well be called “Best Wishes for an Appropriately Festive Multi-Celebratory Convergence Corridor.” However, it would be very hard to rhyme anything with that.
• “O Come O Come Emmanuel”: Beloved by liturgical apparatchiks who would deny Christians the privilege of singing Christmas carols during Advent because, well, this is the only Advent song anybody on the planet actually knows.
• “Here Comes Santa Claus” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”: I would contend that only a pastor can hate these songs with the appropriate intensity they deserve. Sets up the whole “Christmas as behavioral control” thing, allowing well-meaning parents to add blasphemy to the idolatry and covetousness they’re already instilling with the whole guy-in-the-red-suit mythos. But I can’t say anything about it, because it’s cute and they’re only little for a little while . . . which is true, but the idea that Christmas is a secular spend-and-consume-fest rather than a religious celebration seems to last forever–and the child really is father to the man.
• “O Christmas Tree”: Not that I was ever in danger of appreciating it, but Jim Varney pretty much ruined this song for me forever.
• “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”: Funny the first time I heard it; slightly amusing the next 14,342 times; now, it makes me want to gargle with warm eggnog until I lose consciousness.