Mugged

Quelle Surprise

I did my best to ignore the fawning, over-the-top, lachrymose fan-boy nonsense that surrounded last week's broadcast of Jon Stewart's final episode as host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show. That there was such interest in this event is revealing about the sorry state of both culture and political discourse in this country.

"Whoops! Turns out I was a shameless partisan this whole time!"

I never really understood the appeal of the "fake news" genre. It sort of made sense as a short segment like Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live, but for the life of me
I don't get the appeal of entire programs dedicated to partisan snark disguised as "political satire."

No fair-minded individual could possibly believe that Stewart's shtick was applied even-handedly to both sides of the political spectrum, but even people who knew he was a progressive mouthpiece all along were a little shocked when news leaked that he had frequently visited the Obama White House for secret "briefings" (read: discussions of how best to promote Obama's agenda), and that his writing staff often contacted sources in the White House to solicit input.

It wasn't ALL a love fest, of course. There was a great article in The New York Times taking him to task for his sanctimoniousness, and another one in TIME explaining how Stewart's program had undermined political discourse in this country. I agree with both of those assessments.

Good riddance...

Things That Make Me Happy: Good Housekeeping Edition

It was another tense game yesterday afternoon at Kauffman Stadium, but in the end my beloved Kansas City Royals made a trip to the broom closet...

...and completed a three-game sweep of the Chicago White Sox with a hard-fought 5-4 victory.

The Royals jumped on White Sox starter Jose Quintana for three runs in the bottom of the 1st inning, two of them coming on DH Kendrys Morales's 13th home run of the season. But Royals starter Danny Duffy struggled, and the White Sox tied the game in the 3rd inning. When Danny got into another jam to start the 4th, manager Ned Yost brought in Kris Medlen...

"That'll be enough of that nonsense, White Sox."

Kris pitched brilliantly, allowing only a walk in his three-and-two-thirds innings of work. He was the pitcher of record as the top of 8th began with the Royals clinging to a 4-3 lead. The usually-reliable All-Star Kelvin Herrera couldn't hold the lead, though, so Kris was denied a well-deserved "W." The Royals rallied to score the winning run in the bottom of the 8th when Alex Rios beat the throw home on Omar Infante's fielder's choice grounder to first base...

"Nyaaah! You missed me!"

Ryan Madson came on in the 9th and retired the Sox in order, with two strikeouts, to earn his second save.

Now the Detroit Tigers are in KC to start a three-game series tonight. Game 1 will see a rematch between the Royals' Johnny Cueto and Tigers rookie Matt Boyd. Boyd got his first major league victory in their last meeting, besting Cueto and the Royals 2-1 at Comerica Park last Wednesday.

Not a "Gadget," Exactly...

Rapid Mac Cooker

...but it is gadget-like,
I suppose. I had never seen or heard of the thing, but there was a display of them at a store I shopped in on Saturday, and the price seemed reasonable, so I took a shot...





Thus far I have only made one box of mac & cheese (Kraft Original, of course), but it did perform its task in a satisfactory manner. Further study is required, but if this thing can cut the prep time and fuss for mac & cheese to a minimum, I will be happy to recommend it.

A Public Service to the Tech-Impaired

From the wonderful Randall Munroe webcomic xkcd, which you should read every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Until Next Time...

The 46th anniversary of the original Woodstock Music & Art Fair will be this coming weekend, and as a member of the so-called Woodstock Generation I will have quite a bit to say about it when we get there. But I have something else in mind for today's send-off.

Original 1970 Promotional Poster

Like most kids in the midwest, I wasn't able to attend the original show, so my first exposure to what went on there other than accounts in the newspapers was in a movie theater. Michael Wadleigh's Academy Award-winning documentary film of the concert was released in the spring of 1970. My best friend and I were huge fans of The Who by this time thanks to their ground-breaking "rock opera" Tommy, which had been released about a year earlier. We already had tickets to a concert they were going to play in Kansas City in July, and were excited to see them play in the film after having read a number of glowing reviews of their performance.




Keep in mind, neither of us had any reason to expect they'd look or sound much different than we had seen them in TV performances or in the film Monterey Pop. Little did we know what an enormous difference a couple of years had made in the band's look and sound...

For those of us who came to the film primarily wanting to see the rock bands, the early performances were a bit of a snore. Richie Havens, a folkie, was the first live performance showed in the film, a fairly monotonous appearance that seemed to go on interminably (as it turned out, Richie was told to keep playing at the end of his set because there were no other acts ready to perform next).

Now imagine our disappointment when the next live act shown in the film is another folkie, the obnoxious communist Joan Baez. After listening to her caterwaul for a few minutes, I was starting to wish I had brought ear plugs, but when she finished up her appalling a capella version of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," the screen went completely dark. And then, in all its 70mm, state-of-the-art theater sound glory, came this: