Saturday, September 20, 2008
PARKER STEVENSON'S BIG ONE: The 2008 Emmy Awards do air Sunday night, so I guess it's worth asking whether you care which of the nominees ends up winning anything. Me? Hoping for a lot of 30 Rock success, and it's about damn time that Hugh Laurie picked up a Best Actor for Dr. Hizzy. Beyond that, I'm just hoping for an entertaining show, no-doubt topped -- as always -- by the nominee reel for the Outstanding Writing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Program (2006, 2007).
THIS WEEK IN PETER KINGSANITY: An occasional feature in which I point out that Peter King is the worst football columnist in America. This is, what, my fourth post on this topic? So I might as well call it a regular feature.
Gregg Easterbrook, in his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column, has mocked at length and for a long time the practice of newspapers and sportswriters trying to predict exact scores of games, pointing out that after picking over 250 games a year, the pickers generally get no more than one right every two or three years. So I'm not going to plow that field again.
It's one thing to try to guess the exact result of a game, though; it's another to make exotically strange guesses. Guessing 17-14 or 24-21 is boring, but more likely to be right than, say, 18-4. King's exact-score picks are often so weird that I wonder if he even understands how the game of football is scored. This week, for instance, he apparently thinks that the Bears, Texans, Colts, Giants, Niners, Rams, Browns, Ravens, and Chargers -- nine teams -- will combine for 32 field goals (including four by Indianapolis and five each by San Diego and Houston). Now, granted, King might be focusing on last week, when eleven teams kicked three or more FGs. A paid football analyst should know, though, that that is extremely infrequent -- it has only happened one other time in the last year-plus. NFL teams kick, on average, 1.5 field goals per game; the kickingest team in football kicked just under 2.2 per game last year. Since the beginning of 2007, there have been only two weeks where nine or more teams kicked at least three field goals, only five in which three teams kicked at least four, and none in which two teams kicked at least five. In fact, out of the last 542 regular-season chances, only nine times has any team kicked five field goals -- but King thinks that both San Diego and Houston will both do it this week. So King thinks that not only does he know that this is going to be a historic week for kicking multiple field goals (essentially a random event), but he knows exactly who is going to do it.
It is possible, of course, that King is not predicting FGs but rather 2-point conversions and safeties. That, of course, would be batshit insane: there were only 30 2-point conversions and 18 safeties in 512 team-games in 2007, for example.
So this is a little like turning on the TV and hearing your weatherman tell you that he thinks that nine tuesdays from now he has a gut feeling that your city will experience a record low temperature. It might be helpful if based on actual analysis, but because it is not, it is just some dipshit flapping his lips. Conclusion: Peter King is a lip-flapping dipshit.
ETA: Spaceman Tremendously Precise Amateur Four-Team Tease Prediction, Guaranteed to be Exactly as Accurate as Peter King's Remunerative Predictions:
Kansas City 18, Atlanta 4
Buffalo 1,946, Oakland 1,943 (OT)
Tampa Bay π, Chicago ξ
New England 3 vowels, Miami 2 vowels
Gregg Easterbrook, in his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column, has mocked at length and for a long time the practice of newspapers and sportswriters trying to predict exact scores of games, pointing out that after picking over 250 games a year, the pickers generally get no more than one right every two or three years. So I'm not going to plow that field again.
It's one thing to try to guess the exact result of a game, though; it's another to make exotically strange guesses. Guessing 17-14 or 24-21 is boring, but more likely to be right than, say, 18-4. King's exact-score picks are often so weird that I wonder if he even understands how the game of football is scored. This week, for instance, he apparently thinks that the Bears, Texans, Colts, Giants, Niners, Rams, Browns, Ravens, and Chargers -- nine teams -- will combine for 32 field goals (including four by Indianapolis and five each by San Diego and Houston). Now, granted, King might be focusing on last week, when eleven teams kicked three or more FGs. A paid football analyst should know, though, that that is extremely infrequent -- it has only happened one other time in the last year-plus. NFL teams kick, on average, 1.5 field goals per game; the kickingest team in football kicked just under 2.2 per game last year. Since the beginning of 2007, there have been only two weeks where nine or more teams kicked at least three field goals, only five in which three teams kicked at least four, and none in which two teams kicked at least five. In fact, out of the last 542 regular-season chances, only nine times has any team kicked five field goals -- but King thinks that both San Diego and Houston will both do it this week. So King thinks that not only does he know that this is going to be a historic week for kicking multiple field goals (essentially a random event), but he knows exactly who is going to do it.
It is possible, of course, that King is not predicting FGs but rather 2-point conversions and safeties. That, of course, would be batshit insane: there were only 30 2-point conversions and 18 safeties in 512 team-games in 2007, for example.
So this is a little like turning on the TV and hearing your weatherman tell you that he thinks that nine tuesdays from now he has a gut feeling that your city will experience a record low temperature. It might be helpful if based on actual analysis, but because it is not, it is just some dipshit flapping his lips. Conclusion: Peter King is a lip-flapping dipshit.
ETA: Spaceman Tremendously Precise Amateur Four-Team Tease Prediction, Guaranteed to be Exactly as Accurate as Peter King's Remunerative Predictions:
Kansas City 18, Atlanta 4
Buffalo 1,946, Oakland 1,943 (OT)
Tampa Bay π, Chicago ξ
New England 3 vowels, Miami 2 vowels
SINGING FOR THEIR SUPPER: OK, based on this interview with Kristin Chenoweth, can someone get on the task of either finding a revival or writing a new musical for her and Neil Patrick Harris to do together? It sure sounds like they'd be game.
TABLOID WORLD CATASTROPHE: Maybe I'm just extra-callous, but my initial reaction to the plane crash that critically injured Travis Barker and DJ AM -- both of whom are in a burn unit in Georgia -- and killed four others was not "oh, God, that's awful," but rather, "huh, that's random." Barker and AM (nee Adam Goldstein) are mainstays of the celebutard social scene in LA (with occasional forays into NY and Vegas) along with Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Mischa Barton, the Madden brothers, and La Lohan. Their clique operates like a prime-time soap that has overstayed its welcome, in that everybody in the group eventually dates everybody else of the opposite sex (or, in Lohan's case, no qualifier), nobody ever leaves except in a sweeps stunt (Joe Francis goes to jail; the aforementioned plane crash), and new characters are introduced only infrequently to boost ratings. I didn't watch Meet the Barkers and I don't read OK, US Touch People, but I still feel like I know too much about these guys (gastric bypass, catfights between a lazy-eyed celebutante and a booze-saturated ex-beauty queen) and therefore hope that they have a speedy but publicity-negating recovery.
Post removed, then returned, as news came in about Barker and AM. Current prognosis: full recovery.
Post removed, then returned, as news came in about Barker and AM. Current prognosis: full recovery.
Friday, September 19, 2008
ALOTT5MA PHILOSOPHY COLLOQIUM:Please compare and contrast the Philosopher Jagger, the Philosopher Perry, the Philosopher Bell Bundy, and any other philosophers you think are appropriate. Your grade will be reduced for unnecessary references to the Philosopher Astley, however.
THE STADIUM WAS OLD -- OLDER THAN THE SCREAMS, OLDER THAN THE TEAMS: Paul Simon pens a farewell to Yankee Stadium, which closes up shop this weekend. It has hosted 37 World Series and 161 postseason games, college and professional football games, countless prize fights, four Popes, and two U2 concerts, though had you asked me growing up, I'd have insisted that all the former Yankees were buried in Monument Park as well.
I only attended two games there, so the memories aren't for me to share. Go ahead.
I only attended two games there, so the memories aren't for me to share. Go ahead.
"I DON'T REMEMBER GETTING ANY MORE HITS SINCE THE LAST TIME THEY TURNED ME DOWN": Joe Torre, Dick Allen and Ron Santo top the Baseball Hall of Fame Veterans Committee ballot for 2008, with Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Tony Oliva, Luis Tiant, Bill Dahlen, Sherry Magee and Carl "Yes, I Killed Ray Chapman With My Fastball" Mays among the others under consideration. I'd vote yes on the top three, and no on all the rest.
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