dimland radio 10-12-19 show note

Pinstripe Fever. Yes, Again!

In last week's show notes I wrote that I smelled a sweep coming. I was certain the New York Yankees would beat my Minnesota Twins in three games and they did. I explored my reasoning for believing the good guys would be once again bounced out of the post season by the Evil Empire. Both my emotional and rational reasons.

Now, I'm no expert on baseball, but I did far better predicting the results of the ALDS than the local sports talk radio guys did. All of them had the Twins winning the series. Naively optimistic fools.

With the series over and the frustration still fresh, a clever internet person created a video that really sums up the post season woes the Twins have dealt with this century at the hands of the Hated Yankees. Click here to see it.

And I blogged about it here.

Inktober, It's Not Just About The Likes

Well, of course, it isn't since I'm barely getting any. I think I'm producing some nice drawings for the month-long event. I'm pleased with most of them anyway. A few more likes would be nice though.

The Inktober Facebook group posted a list of 31 prompts to get internet artists something to draw each day of the month of October. I decided to stick with a horror, scary theme (mostly) for my drawings and to further narrow the scope by making each drawing be a scene from a horror (mostly) movie.

I mentioned a few of them, so I'd better post them:

Day 1: Ring

 

Day 3: Bait

 

Day 5: Build

 

Day 6: Husky

 

Day 10: Pattern

 

Not bad for fairly quick drawings done in ballpoint pen.

A Dimland Radio Pedant Moment: How Many Arms?

 

Not so much a moment of pedantry, more a spotting of a continuity error. In the 1995 movie Se7en, a bleak film about the hunting of a serial killer using the Seven Deadly Sins of The Bible to inspire the murders, I spotted an error of continuity. It was while I was working on a drawing for the Inktober prompt of Frail.

I grabbed a screen capture from the scene and I lightened it so I could see what was going on in there. That's when I spotted he victim had a third arm. Whoops! The arm along his left side should have been covered by the shirt he was wearing (see image below). It slipped out of place and no one caught it.

 

I have watched the movie a dozen times and I hadn't noticed it. I fixed it in my drawing. 

 

 

A Yucky Thing

Sometimes the janitor job offers up some yucky thing that need to be dealt with. I've cleaned poop off of carpet and off of walls, I've cleaned boogers off of toilet stall partitions, and just this past Friday I' had to clean some errant-landing urine.

The men's room had a heavy smell of urine and I discovered why. There was pee on top of the urinal and a big puddle on the floor under it. Yuck. But I did my job and cleaned it up. The smell was eliminated.

Hopefully, it was just an accident.

Cool Thing: In Research Of

A new podcast is being produced by Blake Smith of the podcast MonsterTalk and Dr. Jeb Card, an archaeologist and professor in the anthropology department of Miami University. It's called In Research Of and it will be an episode by episode reexamination of the mysteries explored by the paranormal granddaddy show In Search Of.

I love/hate In Search of. I love it because it was done so well, I hate it because it mystery mongers rather than try to get to the actual answers to the mysteries they look into. I love it because of its host Leonard Nimoy, I hate because it set the template of the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands (OK, I'm exaggerating) of mystery-monger TV shows that followed and still pollute the airways today.

The first episode of In Research Of has dropped and I think it's a promising start.

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: 'Night Time' by Killing Joke & 'Abacab' by Genesis

Second ad break bumpers: 'Gardening By Night' by REM & 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic' by The Police

Closing song: 'Angler's Treble Hook' by $5 Fiddle

That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

Images used under Fair Use.

why i hate the new york yankees

I've talked about this on my show, Dimland Radio - Saturday nights at 11 Central at www.ztalkradio.com, last year (6-1-13), but I thought I'd blog about here since it is World Series time again. I hate the New York Yankees and, in the summer of 2013, I discovered a clear reason for my animosity.

There are many reasons to hate the Yankees:

Being a Minnesota Twins fan, in recent years when they weren't the losers they've been lately, each time my club would make the postseason, they would face the Hated Yankees right away and lose.

The envy I feel for the market New York provides the Yankees, so they are always rolling in money. Money the owners are willing to spend.

There's the media attention. Oh, the media attention. It sometimes seems the only team in baseball is the Hated Yankees. (Yes, I know. More envy.)

And then there's the fact that the Hated Yankees have won 27 World Series. Twenty goddamn seven!! The next closest team, the St. Louis Cardinals, has won eleven. I agree there is something to admire about that kind of success, but... goddamn.

And, since 9/11, this forced tradition imposed by the Hated Yankees (ok, maybe not them specifically, it does seem to be a media driven thing) of adding the singing of 'God Bless America' to the seventh inning stretch has my curmudgeonly self grumbling every time. I could be wrong but my thinking is if that terrorist attack had happened in St. Louis or Chicago we wouldn't be subjected to that horned in tradition every postseason. There's already a fine tradition that takes place as part of the seventh inning stretch, folks.

But, I discovered a reason that seemed to cut right to the heart of my hatred...

Stephen Jay Gould and the 1960 World Series.

Stephen Jay Gould - New York Times

Last summer, I was rewatching Ken Burns' Baseball documentary for I don't how many-ith time, when I got to the 8th "inning" it struck me. This is why I hate the Yankees.

It was the 1960 World Series, the Hated Yankees would be taking on the Pittsburgh Pirates, who, at that time, hadn't won a World Series since 1925. The Yankees were clearly the better team and the games they won in that series were blowouts. But the Pirates were able to force a seventh game in Pittsburgh.

It all came down to the bottom of the ninth when Bill Mazeroski broke a 9-9 tie by hitting the game and series winning home run. The better team lost.

Mazeroski's Home Run

So, in the documentary, we hear the tale told by Billy Crystal, Mickey Mantle, and Stephen Jay Gould. Crystal usually annoys me, so I pretty much just shrugged off his comments. Mantle was on that Yankee team, so his disappointment is understandable. Gould, however...
 

I like Stephen Jay Gould. He was a good scientist and science communicator and, as far as I can tell, a good guy. He died way too soon. He was a baseball fan and his team was you know who.

The revelation of the source of my hatred came when Gould stated that 30 plus years after the fact his friends and family know never to mention Mazeroski's home run. That's when it hit me.

Why the hell would you give a damn?! Pittsburgh hadn't won a World Series in 35 years! For the Hated Yankees it had been since 1958. And it's not like Yankees fans didn't have many champions to celebrate. In a young Stephen Jay Gould's lifetime the Hated Yankees won in '49, '50, '51, '52, '53, '56, and '58. They would go on to win again in '61 and '62. In all, the Hated Yankees have won 27 World Championships.

And Gould still carried ill feelings about losing what would have been their 19th championship? What the hell? Let it go. It's just one your team didn't win.

I swear the attitude is - It's the postseason, the Yankees are in it, just give them the trophy.

So, maybe it's more accurate to say I hate the Yankees fan. Maybe I shouldn't hold it against the team. Maybe I should admire a team with such a winning tradition. Maybe I should just stop calling them the Hated Yankees.

Maybe...

Nah.