Steroids - Simple, Right?

One of the things that I both love and hate about the world is that nothing is ever as simple or as complex as it seems. Nothing is black and white. Personalities, leaders, and politicians love to reduce issues to black and white, as they become much easier to deal with at that level, but simply casting aside facts or ignoring findings in order to reach a conclusion is not a stance that enhances the human condition - it just get things done.

Steroids are a perfect example. Journalists and talking heads love to throw down a hard line about steroids - immediately scapegoating anyone unlucky enough to have been associated with them. But it's stories like this that make it impossible for me to take such a stance.

Basically, the story makes the case that people (including athletes) have been known to test positive for the steroid clanbuterol after eating beef from cows that have been injected with the substance. This is a fairly common practice in places like China, Mexico, and most of South America. So maybe some of the Latin players who have tested positive in the past actually didn't knowingly inject steroids. Really.

Sure, the guy probably actually did take steroids. But it's stories like this that have to at least put the seed of some doubt in any rational head. It wouldn't be fair to punish a player who tested positive if they had a false positive from eating the wrong steak. Would it?

I'm sure some people will say that yes, it is fair. You have to draw the line somewhere, and the person that tested positive is on the wrong side. That's not a line I'm going to be responsible for drawing.

Lulz

I just have to say - I'm not sure how I got so lucky, but goddamn I'm glad that the Internet has brought together so many baseball-loving twenty-something stat nerds who love the 80's, pop culture, are funny, anti-establishment, and who write well.

I mean, it's all of my favorite things, rolled into one. Thank you, Brandon Stroud (the Dugout). Thank you, FireJoeMorgan.com. Thank you, Craig Calcaterra. Thank you, people of Camden

Chat.

But these days, it's mostly thank you, Carson Cistulli and the brilliant team at NotGraphs.

Especially because of this: the Amazing Adventures of Joe West.

O's Notes, 3.7

Well. Let me just say, in the immortal words of Mr. Buck O'Neill - baseball.

It was back last night on the TV, the Orioles taking on the Yankees in an evening Spring Training exhibition game. I watched every single pitch, and even though the game was extremely uneventful, a tad anticlimactic and ended in a 0-0 tie, it was glorious. My fiancee and I enjoyed ice-cold 16oz Coors Lights and those crab-flavored crackers. After enduring what seems like one of the most dreadful winters I've ever experienced, to kick back and watch the new O's play some baseball was exactly what I needed.

All of which leads me nicely to what will become the new feature of this blog, at least for this baseball season. I'm a big fan of Craig Calcaterra and his Hardball Talk blog, and one of the best components of his page is his "...And That Happened" daily post, in which he gives a two or three sentence blurb about each game from the previous night. It's a really nice way to catch up on what happened last night in a completely non-SportsCenter type way. I'm not going to do that for all of the games throughout MLB, but I'm going to post my notes and comments from the Orioles game the night before. Or at least I'm going to try. Or try to try. For a while.

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O's Notes: March 7, 2011

Orioles 0, New York Americans 0

Zach Britton works fast - very fast. Jim Palmer and Gary Thorne simply couldn't keep up - especially in the first inning. It was like they had sheets and sheets of notes that they had been working on all off-season that they were so excited to use, but they kept getting cut off by that jerk on the mound who wanted to keep pounding strikes.

Britton: 3 first pitch strikes in the first inning. Second and Third innings? Not so much.

What in god's name is Brian Roberts doing bunting for hits? That's been one of the things I love so much about B-Rob - he has bunt-for-hits speed and smarts, but he's smart enough to use his great contact and power to drive the ball for hits and doubles - he's not Juan Pierre, damn it.

And more importantly, what is B-Rob doing sliding into first? In the first inning???! In a split-squad Spring Training game!!!!!!!!@#$!#@$!#%!@! You're not competing against anyone for a spot, Brian...I think you have it locked up IF YOU CAN JUST NOT GET INJURED BY MAKING BONEHEAD SLIDES INTO FIRST(*#&(#@*&_#(@)*)#!

Luke Scott is now sporting the backwoods goatee....in fact most of the players have some sort of facial hair they didn't have last year...maybe facial hair rules are relaxed during the Spring?

Sergio Mitre is far more intimidating in video game form.

Was Matt Wieters wearing a vintage O's batting helmet while he was catching?

My fiancée loves - loves Luke Scott's forearms. Hmph.

Jeremy Accardo has one of the most violent right hand deliveries I've ever seen - but he was effective.

This O's club will not lead the league in walks. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and say it right now - I bet we lead the league in strikeouts. By a significant margin.

Ryan 'Heartbreaker' Adams struck out - saw it a mile away. So sad - I want him to succeed simply because of his name but I just can't see it right now.

Don't you just love seeing young guys in Spring Training games when they come up to bat in the 8th and 9th innings? They look so small and wiry compared to most major leaguers, and they always make them wear those retarded double-flap batting helmets that make them look like they're in the Little League World Series or something. Love it.

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So there you have it - it will be something like that each morning after an O's game. Or something else. Or nothing at all - you'll just have to wait and see.

Dubble Bubble Ain't S***

I haven't written a blog post in a good while. The last two posts that I wrote were long-ish diatribes on my feelings toward art, the artistic process, and songwriting. I used phrases like 'Artistic Intuition'. All of which leads me to my next blog post which is on, of course, gum!

As we get caught up in the day-to-day stresses and anxieties of our normal lives, it is easy to lose sight of 'the now'. It's much easier to look back on past eras and say, 'man, wasn't it nice when...' or look to the future and say, 'man, won't it be nice when...'. It's human nature. But every once in a while, we need to step back and recognize the world that we live in for what it is now. And let me tell you, we live in pretty good times.

I've mentioned it in previous posts, but the technological era that we currently live in is really pretty impressive. It may not be the electrical hover-crafts and hologram TV's that Isaac Asimov talked about in that Boy's Life article from 1989, but we do have video chat, portable hand-held computers, and 3d TV. But that's not the half of it. I am convinced that we are currently living in......

THE GOLDEN AGE OF GUM!!!1

When I was a kid (as I recall), there were a few gum options available to you: Juicy Fruit, Big Red, Extra, Big League Chew, Bazooka, etc. The big boys. They typically came in stick format and were nearly always packaged in that rectangular foil wrapper. You had a few flavor options; spearmint, peppermint, fruit, or...that standard 'gum' flavor that Bazooka and Dubble Bubble had. Life was fine. We didn't know any better....but my god, have things changed.

Take a look at Trident gum's product webpage: http://www.tridentgum.com/#/products/. I count 32 individual SKU's. 32 different types of gum! From Trident alone! And not only do you have a bunch of different flavors, you have five different styles:

- Trident Standard

- Trident Splash

- Trident White

- Trident Xtra Care

- Trident Layers

And look at the long-standing gum and candy magnate Wrigley: they offer no less than 11 brands of gum, including:

- Eclipse (which provides "incredibly fresh breath solutions for people whose on-the-go lifestyle demands a breath freshener that delivers.")

- 5 ("Stimulate your Senses")

- Big Red

- Doublemint

- Extra

- Freedent

- Hubba Bubba (its somehow very reassuring that Hubba Bubba is still being produced)

- Juicy Fruit

- Orbit (including regular Orbit, Orbit Mist, and Orbit White)

- Spearmint

- Winterfresh

Really take a look the next time you're in a gas station - the choice of gum in even the worst, cheapest Exxon station is mind-boggling. And that doesn't even touch how cool some of the new packaging is. The aforementioned "5" brand from Wrigley actually uses it's packaging as it's main selling point:

"5 is a groundbreaking sugar-free stick gum product. The mouth-freshening gum delivers long-lasting flavor and a unique experience. The sleek 5 envelope created the next great packaging enhancement for stick gum. Each distinctive envelope has an eye-catching design and holds 15 sticks. Now available in the new Prism flavor.(!)"

The gum that got me thinking about this post, however, is the newest offering from Trident, Trident Vitality. It was just released, and it comes in three styles:

- Vigorate, which is enhanced with Vitamin C

- Rejuve, which contains white tea

- Awaken, with a "dash" of ginseng

Check out this press release for a taste of how crazy the gum market has become. I actually picked up a pack of the 'Awaken' gum yesterday. The box alone had me sold - it is truly a piece of work. It's a full cardboard box with a recloseable lid - none of this wrap-around nonsense that Dentyne and Eclipse have been using - the damn thing is like Fort Knox. In a word, it's awesome. I mean, the gum still tastes like, well, gum, but the packaging - wow!

So the next time you open a cool new package of Dentyne Ice (Now FLAVOR Charged), take a moment to reflect how things once were and where we are today. We are no longer starved for flavor options. If we want a strawberry-orange layered sugarfree stick that whitens our teeth, it is readily available. We are truly living in a golden age.

Artistic Intelligence & the Lack Thereof

I finally received the Springsteen box set re-release of 'Darkness on the Edge of Town' for Christmas. It is a truly magical thing: 3 CD's, 3 DVD's, a color lyric sheet/photo set, and a reproduction of the notebook that Bruce used throughout the period. Awesome. If you're into Bruce, it is an absolutely essential item - but you probably knew that already. If you don't get Springsteen, don't worry about it - it won't change your mind.

But if you're interested in songwriting at all, it is chock full of cool quotes from one of the best in the business. This one hit me pretty directly:

I go back to most of my writings before 'Greetings (From Asbury Park)', and, you know, it all appears simply terrible to me. You know, you're still writing a lot of...bad words, you know? You're writing a lot of bad verses. So you're trying to learn how to write well, but your artistic instinct is what you're going on - your artistic intelligence hasn't been developed yet. Hopefully, it increases and develops over a long period of time. That gives you an ace to play, down the road, as you get older.

At the time, I was going on artistic instinct...and that's a wide-open game. You know, I'm following all kinds of paths, and all kinds of roads, and all I'm going is, 'That doesn't feel right'. 'That doesn't feel right'. 'That doesn't feel right' - that's how I'm judging.

That pretty succinctly says something that I've felt but have not been able to articulate for some time (something that Bruce does for me all the time). It's refreshing to hear a songwriter as great as him speak of struggling with 'artistic intelligence'. I kinda assumed he always had it. But there is a very real difference between having 'artistic instinct' (having an ear, having style, being able to recognize quality) and having 'artistic intelligence' (knowing when to hold back, what to hold back, being tasteful).

And once again, He Who Can Do No Wrong in My Eyes (well, except for Human Touch - that album suuuuucked) shows that there is still hope for me yet.

Water, Water Everywhere, and all the Music Sucks

It occurred to me this morning on my drive into work that there are two albums that I have possession of that have been released in the past couple of months by two of my favorite artists: Richard Thompson and Ryan Adams, that I have not yet listened to all of the way through. These are two decent albums that are quite listenable (at least the parts that I've listened to) and that have gotten very good reviews. I really don't have any excuse for not having listened to them.

Truth be told, I've been busy and I haven't been keeping up with either musician - both releases surprised me as I didn't know they were coming out. So it's not like I was itching with anticipation for either one, but still, I'm surprised that I haven't really delved into either album yet.

This never would have happened when I was 16. I can remember waiting, and waiting, and reading, and waiting some more for Eric Clapton to release 'Pilgrim' in or '98, rushing out to Blockbuster of all places to spend $16.99 to get it, and then listening to it all the way through at least 3 or 4 times even though it was an incredibly terrible album (and I knew it then, too). Same thing for the Rolling Stones' 'No Security' (also a terrible album), and Dave Matthews Band's 'Before These Crowded Streets' (not a terrible album). Back then, an album was a tangible thing, something worth waiting for and planning your trip out to Sam Goodie to buy it, bringing it home, reading all the liner notes, and playing it until you're sick of it.

Part of that whole equation was the fact that all of the other albums that were in your collection you were already sick of for the same reason - you had truly consumed them and taken them all in. All of which brings me to my theory on why I haven't listened to my Ryan Adams and Richard Thompson albums all the way through, and why I wasn't even excited to purchase them: Media Overload.

We are completely overwhelmed with media these days. Not only is it possible to listen to your music at home, at work, in your car, on the street, in the shower, wherever you want, it is entirely possible to listen to practically any music on the market at any time, as long as you have an Internet connection. Let me take a moment and list all of the potential sources of music I have at my disposal on a given day:

1. My CD library

2. My vinyl library

3. My iTunes library, which can be played on my computer, my iPhone, my iPod, or my home entertainment system through my PS3

4. Pandora

5. My MOG account, which for $9.99/mon allows me to either stream or download 90% of the music that is available on the market

You could make the argument that anytime I'm within range of a 3G or WiFi signal, I have basically 95% of the music that has been made in the last 60 years at my immediate access.

That's a lot of choices.

That also doesn't take into account other forms of media, like YouTube, RSS feeds, Facebook posts, DVD's, etc. I think the reason I haven't delved into those albums I mentioned is simply because there's so much more out there for me to delve into. It's not all great - in fact, the more I see the more I'm reminded of why I like the artists I do - but there's just such a wealth of stuff out there that it's frankly overwhelming to take it all in.

Should I be complaining? Am I complaining? I'm not sure. I certainly don't think it's a bad idea to have access to whatever you want, whenever you want. But increased supply means decreased demand, and that equals me being a little bit disappointed when I'm not directing all of my listening energy to devouring two new releases by two of my favorite artists. There was a certain responsibility you had to yourself after you spent $17 of your hard-earned lawnmowing money to really make your investment worth it. The two albums that I downloaded only cost me a fraction of the $9.99 that I pay each month for the MOG service, and I'm just not sure that that kind of ease and cheapness create the same type of commitment, if you will, to a piece of work.

I think that the record industry is going to need to come up with a way to recreate that link between the album buyer and the album - I mean, I care deeply about music and the music industry and I feel this way. How much devotion do you think a 16 year old girl downloading an album for free off of BitTorrent feels towards her Taylor Swift album? If the physical or emotional link to an album isn't there, nowadays it just ends up being a mislabeled .mp3 file shoved in the back of an external hard drive. And that is sad.

Going Back Down South, Part 1: Monday

So, as promised, here is the beginning of the multi-day journal I'm going to be keeping over the next week chronicling my trip to South Carolina to install a new theater system at the Congaree National Forest Visitor Center:

Today started brusquely; the Ravens - Steelers Sunday Night Football matchup from the night before proved to be just interesting enough to keep me up until past 11:30 PM. Typically I'm in bed by 10:30 at the latest to be up at 6 AM - today I had to be out of bed by 3:30 AM. I knew I wasn't going to be the happiest of campers going into the whole ordeal. However, the whole situation was made worse by the fact that the game was a battle down to about the last :30 seconds, when Joe Flacco couldn't complete on 4th and 2 and the game went to the Steelers. I had to go to bed with my heart pounding and my nerves, well, all a-flutter.

Needless to say, with the combination of the game, my nervousness over the impending trip, and our fat cat Layla who insisted on laying in between my legs at the most uncomfortable position possible (as usual), I believe I got about 45 minutes of quality sleep.

Not the best scenario before embarking on a 9-hour drive.

Nonetheless, I got up at the right time, put in my contacts without too much pain or effort, and thanks to my work the previous evening packing and preparing, was able to push off from home base on time and in a decent mental state.

One of the most difficult things I've found when dealing with a long travel day is the timing of your food and drink intake. All of us have standard schedules for eating and drinking when we are at home and operating in 'standard' life mode. However, things tend to get altered a bit when you wake up three and a half hours earlier than usual, expend a ton of effort getting your vehicle loaded, and then proceed to sit on your ass for the next 9 hours. My diet today has been thus:

4:00 AM - a glass of water

4:30 AM - a 'lungo' espresso from the work espresso machine

5:30 AM - a FiberOne chocolate chip bar

8:00 AM - a McDonald's sausage burrito & small orange juice

10:50 AM - a Burger King Whopper value meal, small, with a Diet Coke

11:30 AM - a 20oz bottle of water

1:00 PM - an orange 5-hour energy drink

4:30 PM - a 16oz bottle of water from the hotel

5:30 PM - a Bombay Sapphire martini, dry, with two olives and a batch of homemade chips

Okay, so perhaps not the most healthy travel day of my life, but what are my options? Even if I get rid of the martini and the 5-hour energy, my options for food on the run are not spectacular. Subway, I suppose - but Subway always leaves my stomach gurgling in a 'deli meats shouldn't be quite that cheap' kind of way. Why doesn't America have healthier fast food options?

ANYway...

Today we unloaded all of our gear at the site and locked away the trailer behind the maintenance yard. Tomorrow we'll get started removing all of the theater's old gear and running our new lines throughout the building. I'll take some pictures tomorrow so you can get a feel for it, if you're so inclined.

As far as pictures of the area go......well, let's just say this section of South Carolina isn't exactly coffee table book material. As far as I can tell, this area is primarily churches, fire halls, extremely well-placed cops in Dodge Chargers, flat plains, cotton, and not much else. I'll try to grab the essence tomorrow, but you know how it goes trying to catch lightning in a bottle.....