Month: September 2006

Not much of a Gap shopper these days anyway, but man, that Audrey Hepburn commercial of theirs is about the most nauseating thing I’ve seen in years. I cringe every time I see it.

(No, no real point here. I just hate that ad.)

UPDATE: In comments, Scotty asks what movie it is that The Gap pillaged for its ad. The flick is the musical Funny Face, which also starred Fred Astaire. The plot was kind of convoluted, as I recall — Astaire is a fashion photographer who is scouting locations for a shoot when he decides to shoot in a particular bookstore where Hepburn is a clerk. Somehow, Hepburn consents to becoming a fashion model herself, because it will result in a trip to Paris, where she can then meet some kind of Bohemian beatnik poet or something like that. The scene featured in The Gap’s ad is a bit of beatnik performance poetry, if memory serves. Yeah, it sounds dumb, but the movie’s got a witty script and all of the songs are Gershwin classics, and hey, it’s Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn!

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On the sportstalk radio shows, and on a few blogs and online articles today, I’ve seen some consternation that JP Losman didn’t do better with his 75-second fourth-quarter comeback bid in the Bills’ 28-20 loss to the Jets yesterday. Frankly, I think that’s a bit unfair — he put his body on the line in scoring the first of the two touchdowns the team would need to tie the game, the weather suddenly turned very nasty for the game’s final minute, and Losman is still very inexperienced.

I’m not making excuses for Losman yesterday; he looked great for a lot of the game but looked terrible on three key plays that resulted in the points for the Jets that sank the Bills. And, yes, the decision by the Bills on that 75-minute drive to start with short-yardage pass plays didn’t make a whole lot of sense on a day when Losman had been throwing the ball very well (again, two or three passes excepted) all along. But it’s not like Losman was calling his own plays in that situation, so I have difficulty blaming him for not really being familiar with that game situation in the first place.

One radio person said that Losman looked like he didn’t want the win at that point, which made absolutely no sense to me. He sure looked like he wanted to score when he ran it in himself moments before, and he sure looked disappointed when his last fourth-down pass fell incomplete to the ground.

Here’s my position on Losman: right now, he is neither a good quarterback nor a bad quarterback. He is a physically gifted quarterback who I think is showing signs of growth over last year, but I think that many peoples’ expectations at this point are not well-considered.

As of today, JP Losman has started a grand total of eleven NFL games. Yes, he’s in his third year in the league, but so what? Watching on the sideline doesn’t mean a whole lot — in fact, it doesn’t mean much of anything at all. Guys who aren’t going to be starting don’t get reps in practice time, and if merely watching NFL action was somehow equivalent in some degree with a certain amount of actual game play, then my two decades of football watching means that I’m ready for at least a spot on an NFL practice roster, right?

Eleven starts. That’s all Losman’s had. An NFL season is sixteen games, which means that Losman has actually played less than three quarters of an NFL season. I’m forever pointing this out: The first two full seasons of Troy Aikman’s Hall of Fame career yielded a record of eight wins and twenty-four losses.

Many football fans seem to have been blinded by the lights of Tom Brady’s amazing success from the first time he was named the starter for the StuPats, and by Ben Roethlisberger’s stunning success since he went 15-1 in his first season in the NFL and won the Super Bowl in his second. Those guys are freakish exceptions to the rule, and Bills fans really need to remember that. Developing a quarterback usually takes two or more seasons worth of actual play. Losman hasn’t even played the equivalent of one season yet. Let’s quit the handwringing for now, OK? I’ve seen nothing as of yet to make me think that if the Bills had a really top-tier defense, and if they had an offensive line that could really dominate the line of scrimmage consistently, Losman would be fine.

(On the subject of comebacks, I’d note that the King of Comebacks, John Elway, didn’t lead his first one until almost the very end of his first season, and perusing the list, it appears that’s what are always termed as Elway’s “comebacks” include quite a few garden-variety drives for game-winning FGs with the score tied. I’d also note that while every Buffalo Bills fan knows that Frank Reich led the greatest comeback in NFL history, the third-greatest comeback in NFL history — from a deficit of 26 points — was led by Buffalo’s own Todd Collins in 1997.)

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The Buffalo Bills just lost their home opener to the New York Jets, 28-20. They looked great out of the gate, with JP Losman being really on-target with the ball and with Willis McGahee running well, but three turnovers by Losman, some bad defensive tackling (especially in the second half), and more bad offensive line play in key situations allowed the Jets to win. So let’s can the playoff talk, OK, Buffalo? The key term this year is still “growing pains”.

The Bills looked talented to me today, but not seasoned. JP Losman’s two fumbles resulted from his failing to react to pressure. (His interception was a deep pass on which his arm was hit as he released, so I’m cutting him a little slack there.) Still, Losman showed to me a lot of heart in the way he kept battling until the very end — he scored a rushing touchdown himself with little more than a minute left, and then tried to do a tying drive after the Bills recovered an onside kick, but he couldn’t pull it out.

Since a lot of people were mentally pencilling the Bills in for a playoff spot after they beat Miami last week, I fully expect them to go off the deep end the other way this week and bitch up a storm about Losman. And yes, he made mistakes that were probably the biggest reason the Bills lost today. But he did a lot of good stuff in this game, stuff I’ve been waiting to see him do, and the fact still remains that good teams find a way to overcome mistakes like the ones he made today.

The defense didn’t record a single turnover. Nate Clements, the overrated cornerback who dubbed himself “playmaker” two years ago, once again didn’t figure in a single play until he got called on a tripping penalty that helped a Jets scoring drive. The defensive line failed to generate any consistent pressure on Chad Pennington. The tackling was often poor.

And the offensive line? Well, Losman’s protection was better than usual, and Willis McGahee had a good day running the ball. But on a crucial goal-line situation in the fourth quarter, the line couldn’t command the line of scrimmage enough to get the ball through to the end zone.

So today, the Bills showed a lot of talent and a bit of heart at the end. But when the real chances were before them to either respond to a big play with one of their own or to get back in the game, they failed.

Like I said, I’m down on Losman’s results today, but I’m not getting down on him as a player. He’s still young, and even in spite of the bad mistakes he made today, he did a lot of good things that I’ve been looking for (big passing plays, mostly). He showed a ton of ability today; now we need to start seeing some growth.

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My love of spiced rum (“spum”, naturally, given that “spam” is “spiced ham”) is well-documented, but I’ve just discovered vanilla rum (“vrum”, obviously!), which makes an ordinary 6-oz glass of root beer taste like a root beer float with some kick. Vrum! Yum!

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I alluded yesterday to a certain genre of book I’ve been reading lately, wherein people write memoirs of their lives after they make fairly drastic changes, like moving to an entirely new locale and taking up a new lifestyle. Here are some brief notes on two such books, plus a third that partly fits that description.

First I read Piano Girl: Lessons in Life, Music, and the Perfect Blue Hawaiian. This book reads as something of a companion piece to the movie Mr. Holland’s Opus, in which a guy who wanted to be a serious composer ends up taking a job as a music teacher, just for a little while, to pay the bills until he can make money composing — and next thing he knows, he’s been teaching his entire life and found a life of meaning in it. The author of Piano Girl, Robin Meloy Goldsby (official site), tells how she fell in love with the piano, learned to play it well, looked to become a classical musician for a time — but instead made a career out of playing the piano in cocktail lounges all over the country, and later, the world.

Goldsby’s book is basically a collection of short vignettes relating tales from her life as a cocktail lounge pianist, and she tells these stories mostly with a lot of charm and wit. She is openly aware that her work does not require tremendous musical skill, but she also reveals that being a fine lounge musician requires entirely different sets of skills — voluminous knowledge of the songs, social skills for dealing with patrons and management, and so on. I’d always figured that places like the Hyatt in Manhattan just hired any old out-of-work pianist to play in their bars; I had no idea that such musicians are also represented by agents in a highly competitive environment. Not a profound book, but an entertaining look into a musical world we usually don’t much consider.

Then there was Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris, by Sarah Turnbull. Turnbull was a journalist from Sydney, Australia who was traveling in Europe when, while in Bucharest, she met an intriguing Frenchman named Frederic. First she agrees to spend a week with him in Paris, and then she ends up moving in with him and, eventually, marrying him.

Almost French focuses less on Turnbull’s relationship with Frederic than on her relationship with Paris and with France itself, although there is a great deal of relationship stuff here. France is well known for being less than cordial to foreigners, and Turnbull’s experience is no different. Much of the book details missteps Turnbull takes in her attempts to break the ice with various French acquaintances, and her growing realization that she can live to ripe old age in Paris and she will still always be a foreigner.

If you don’t like France, nothing in this book will change your mind. (Anyone tells me what kind of pants I should wear just because it’s not nice for the bakery guy, my response is, “F*** the bakery guy”.) I certainly have less interest in visiting Paris after reading Almost French; Turnbull makes it seem like a society where one is supposed to simultaneously rigidly conform to social norms and still not care one whit what other people think of you. It’s a strange thing. But I did like this book.

And just this morning I finished a wonderful book, Little Chapel on the River: A Pub, a Town, and the Search for What Matters Most, written by Gwendolyn Bounds (official site). Bounds is a writer for the Wall Street Journal who lived in an apartment building in lower Manhattan when 9-11-01 happened. With her apartment rendered unlivable after the attacks, Bounds and her room-mate end up moving to a little town called Garrison, fifty miles up the Hudson River from NYC, where Bounds becomes part of the daily life in a bar and convenience store called Guinan’s.

Little Chapel on the River poses an interesting contrast with Almost French. Where Sarah Turnbull can never become a part of Parisian culture, Wendy Bounds becomes part of Garrison’s culture very easily, and her gift for making that little bar come alive shines on every page. Seriously, folks, this book is as good an evocation of a setting as any I’ve ever read. We’re talking Lord of the Rings quality here: in the same way that I come from Tolkien feeling like I’ve physically been in Middle Earth, I come away from Bounds’s book feeling like I’ve been in Garrison, and that I’ve met the denizens of Guinan’s bar: Fitz the ex-Marine, Jane the hard-luck woman who helps out, Walter the next-door neighbor who constantly toes the fine line between “frugal” and “skinflint”, and above it all, Jim Guinan the aging bar-owner and his adult children with whom he doesn’t always get along so well.

This book is funny, bittersweet, and encouraging; it is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.

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NBC, you suck. Not only have you done something stupid, but in doing so, you’ve put me on the same side of an argument as Brent Bozell, a guy whom I find precisely as unpalatable as I do Ann Coulter. Thanks a lot.

Basically, NBC has decided to put VeggieTales on its Saturday morning lineup, but has required that the show’s overt Christian content be removed before each episode airs. Now, it’s true that the show can be appreciated on plenty of levels besides the Christian one — unlike Bozell, I think VT is successful not because it’s Christian but because it’s good — but it’s still a show that’s mainly centered on a certain set of premises, and NBC has basically cut most of that loose. Ugh.

And to think that just twenty years ago NBC was the network of Little House on the Prairie. Boy, we’ve come a long way. I don’t think that we need more Christianity on network TV, or less Christianity on network TV. I’d just like to have more quality stuff on TV, and less attention paid to who’s going to be offended by what.

I learned this via Shamus, whose take on this I pretty much completely agree with. Phil Vischer, the creator of VeggieTales, has his own blog, and looking it over, he seems perfectly happy to have his creation neutered just so it reaches a bigger audience (“Kids are going to be meeting Bob and Larry on network TV! Yay!”). This seems kind of sad, but it’s worth remembering that as wonderful a creation as VT is, Vischer himself has a history of apparent cluelessness. Just read his version of how Big Idea Productions ran into trouble, and you’ll see a frightening blend of naivete combined with a lack of business sense. Go here and read the series of posts entitled “What happened to Big Idea?”

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Lynn evidently got a search-engine hit regarding Patrick Stewart’s suggestion of a favorite tea for Captain Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was rejected in favor of Earl Grey, which is now known in Trekker circles as Picard’s curt instruction to the replicator: “Tea: Earl Grey, hot.” According to this 1998 interview with Stewart, this is true:

In Star Trek you drink a lot of Earl Grey. Do you see that as a man’s tea?

When it first came up that Captain Picard was going to drink a lot of tea I suggested lapsang souchong, but the producers thought that nobody would know what it was. I must urge people not to send me any more Earl Grey. I’ve got so much of it now I could open a tea shop.

So there we have it: Stewart did indeed suggest lapsang souchong tea. (I’ve never tried that tea, myself.) Of course, that was a pretty dumb thing for producers to do; I’m sure audiences would have figured it out. But what always baffled me about Captain Picard was that he was a Frenchman, and yet, all of his passions are for British stuff! What was that about? He was always reading Shakespeare whilst sipping Earl Grey. Shouldn’t he have been reading Proust over glasses of red wine?

There’s other good stuff in that interview, by the way. For instance:

Have you ever had a comb-over?

Oh God, I did that for a while and it was horrible.

What’s your least favourite synonym for ‘bald’?

When I accepted the job on Star Trek in 1987 my daughter, who was then 15, used the expression “To baldly go where no man has gone before”. I thought that was tremendously funny. I actually find the whole subject of my head really boring. I’ve also got a big nose, but people don’t ask me about that because it would be rude. Somehow it’s always open season with baldness.

I’ve always thought that Stewart was blessed with the perfect noggin for baldness, but that’s just me.

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