Month: October 2012

The Tragedy of Narrative: World Series 2012 Game Four Recap; PLUS 2012 MLB Awards Wrap-Up

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As October turns into November, so yet another baseball season draws to an unspectacular conclusion. (What makes it unspectacular? Well, this particular World Series does, as well as anything that involves the Yankees winning. But that’s besides the point.) Now we turn to the inevitable stream of awards and hardware handed out to assuage the fragile egos of many a ballplayer, as well as to celebrate what went right for so many teams and what went wrong for all but one of them.

When last we left the World Series recap, the Giants had just gone up 3 games to zip-zada-zero on the Tigers, with imminent demise highly foreseeable for the boys from Detroit. Once again, I was at work during the majority (i.e. all) of Game Four, yet with the game featured on the big screen televisions in the bar at which I work. I did manage to see Miguel Cabrera’s home run that gave the Tigers their first (First!) lead of the Series, followed by raucous celebration from the Detroit fans.

And then the channel was switched over to showcase some football game featuring the New Orleans Downtrodden and the Surgically Prepared Monster that is FrankenManning.

Sigh. So much for prescient analysis.

However…

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A Certain Certainty of Fate: World Series 2012 Game Three Recap

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The World Series returned to Detroit for the first time since 2006 (back in the days when The Office and How I Met Your Mother weren’t hollow shells of themselves, and before we knew that Daniel Day-Lewis would, in fact, drink your milkshake) not with a bang, but a whimper. And what a whimper it was. Unfortunately, owing to commitments elsewhere (Recorder Halloween Party 2012?), I was unable to observe and comment upon the actual nature and intrinsic shape of the game. Things would have been different if one of the members of the staff were not only historically adverse to the sport of baseball, but also hosting the party. I’m sure there’s a provision about this in Robert’s Rules, and thus it went unchallenged. Consequently, I only witnessed brief snippets of the game last night.

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Ye Gods!: World Series Game 2 Recap

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They say that the Christian God is an impartial deity. However, this leaves room for the gods of sport to make their influence known as they see put. And in this World Series, it would seem that the baseball gods are Giants fans.

There is much to talk about from Game 2. Specifically Madison Bumgarner pulling a Barry Zito and letting his postseason problems fall to the wayside with a dominating seven inning performance. Shutting out the Tigers is no small change, even given Detroit’s extended layoff. Though he never threw harder than 92 mph, Bumgarner gave the Tigers’ hitters fits all night long. In addition, his pitching through the 7th inning allowed Tim Lincecum to obtain crucial rest, leaving him able to start Game 4 or 5 if manager Bruce Bochy deems it necessary. (Yes, yes, the more dominant of the two bullpens is now fully rested. This should be followed by the hash-tag #firstworldproblems)

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World Series 2012 Game 1 Recap: The Ballad of Barry Zito, Kung Fu Panda 3, and Why Time Off Leads to Failure

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Alright, so I know that I promised a playoffs preview. That fell through, mostly due to a combination of ineptitude on my part, a miscalculation of the amount of time between the end of the regular season and the Wild Card Playoff Play-In Games, and my being so emotionally invested in this year’s edition of the Cincinnati Reds that I couldn’t write anything without sounding like a huge homer.

For example: Sure their line-up lacks the consistency of a world champion, but they’ve got the best bullpen in baseball, a frighteningly consistent rotation pulling together at just the right time, and one of the three best players in baseball! HOW CAN THEY POSSIBLY LOSE?

I even thought about doing a preview of the LCS once it seemed as everything would be working out. I started that particular Opus right about halfway through Game 3 of the Reds-Giants Series.

Oops.

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We’re still here (and we have things planned)!

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Hello world,

Sorry for the long break in our correspondence, but life can get in the way of many things. Sadly, for the past month or so, life has been getting between us and our beloved Recorder for one reason or another. But have no fear, for Alex, Andrew, ~J, and Travis are all doing well and will soon be back with a vengeance.  The rest of the boys will get their work on here in good time, but I wanted to chime in and let our readership know about a few of the projects that I have been working on and plan to spit out soon.

Firstly, I am and will remain your devoted TV viewer, and so I am starting a recurring feature where I will drop an article every week or two about one of the shows that I keep tabs on. This will give me a chance to expound on all the programs that I dearly love (or still tolerate), without breaking my neck trying to do a weekly recap of absolutely everything. That’s what The A.V. Club is for.

Secondly, the awards season for films is quickly approaching, and since I have a longstanding fascination with the simultaneously excellent and awful horse race that is Oscar season I will be chiming in with coverage of that. I’m going to endeavor more to cover the films themselves, on their artistic merits (as I have with surefire Oscar contenders Moonrise Kingdom and The Master), but will likely devote a few posts to the race itself as well. Also, I plan to complain a lot about how the Academy consistently mishandles how to present itself and its mission (Seth MacFarlane!?! Really?!?).

Finally, I am planning on working through one of my burning shames as a cinephile. Many of my friends and colleagues know that I am a huge fan of the Coen Brothers, the filmmaking siblings behind such modern classics as Fargo, O, Brother, Where Art Thou?, and No Country for Old Men. What I rarely let on when I discuss the Coen’s work is that I have not seen huge swaths of their filmography. Every cinephile has many blind spots, and one of my most glaring ones is that I have not seen any of the films that the Coen Brothers have made before The Hudsucker Proxy. So, I plan on rectifying that with a series of articles wherein I will watch (or re-watch as the case may be) and write about every Coen film up to 2010’s True Grit. I think it will be illuminating to travel through their eclectic resume in a (relatively) short span of time, and if this is a hit, maybe I will do the same with other filmmakers or movements that I am woefully underseen on.

Anyway, that’s the plan of attack for yours truly. I’ll see you in the comments section.

P.S. I am going to write my essay about it someday, but if you’ve been holding your breath since the 1st week of July the best show on TV last year was Louie. It will also be the best show on TV this year. My thoughts about it will appear when I do not feel hopelessly intimidated and over-matched by its genius.