Author Archives: G

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Seven Hours in Amsterdam

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IMG_0125Amsterdam is a picturesque city filled with endless canals and gorgeous architecture, and it pretty much shuts down around 2AM. This was only problematic since I’d cleverly planned my 14-hour layover at Schiepol Airport to allow me time to wander the city, assuming it would be open all night for me to take some pictures, drink lots of coffee and, of course, get that all-important stamp in my passport.

I’ve been to Amsterdam’s main airport a half-dozen times, but I’d never passed through customs, and the rule is you have not officially been to a country unless you physically set foot in said country and/or a customs officer reviews your passport. Airports do not count. I was determined to cross Holland off the list.
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The Edges of the World

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Istanbulnight1 108Istanbul is a big city. Wikipedia confirms this observation in its description of the metropolis: “With a population of 13.9 million, the city forms one of the largest urban agglomerations in Europe and is among the largest cities in the world by population within city limits. Istanbul’s vast area of 5,343 square kilometers (2,063 sq mi) is coterminous with Istanbul Province, of which the city is the administrative capital. Istanbul is a transcontinental city, straddling the Bosphorus — one of the world’s busiest waterways in northwestern Turkey, between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea.”

On a day with the most perfect weather ever for a February in Turkey, I left my hotel in the late morning without the faintest idea where I was going and headed out into the sprawling mass that is Istanbul.
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More is Better Than Less.

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Aroldis_Chapman_2010_(3)The Cincinatti Reds curious decision to keep superstar pitcher Aroldis Chapman in the bullpen for the foreseeable future is a curious one indeed. Now, I used curious twice in that sentence, but what I really want to convey here is just how mind-numbingly/earth-shatteringly stupid this decision is, and what better way to highlight such staggering ineptitude than to draw a parallel between lousy front-office management and repetitive, mildly lazy writing. Worse still, the Reds do not even use him properly as a relief pitcher!

We can infer how painfully overrated the closer is in baseball given that the main statistic associated with the role, the save, is perhaps the most misleading/useless statistic in baseball. The average closer in baseball throws around 70-80 innings in a full season. Of those, how many are stressful and deserving of a special accolade, namely the ‘save’? We can define stressful as a tie game, one-run game, seventh inning or later, in which the pitcher makes an appearance. Saves are a meaningless’statistic’, occasionally descriptive but more often misleading, since a save can be earned if a pitcher successfully records one out with a three-run lead. ‘Ending’ the game would be a significantly more accurate description than ‘saving’ in this scenario.
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The Kansas City Royals or Long-term Strategic Thinking in a Buyer’s Market

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So you're saying there's a chance.

So you’re saying there’s a chance.

The Kansas City Royals perfectly illustrate the difficulties of winning in the steroid era with a small-market team. Consider that between 1975 and 1990, the Royals had 12 winning seasons in which they won two AL pennants and one world series. In the fifteen-year period from 1997 to 2012, the team managed only one winning season, in 2003, finishing 83-79. The reason, to a large degree, can be traced to an economic disparity in baseball that began, coincidentally, about 15 years ago.

In 1985, the year the Royals won the world series, their payroll was a little over $11 million, just slightly above the league average. Only 8 teams will have a lower payroll than the Royals in 2013, including the Houston Astros, who will spend less on their entire opening-day team than the Yankees will spend on what remains of Alex Rodriguez. In the American League, the Yankees will spend almost $150 million more than the Royals this year. To steal/mangle a line from King Theoden in The Two Towers, “So much money. What can men do against such reckless spending?”
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What does it take to get fired?

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Count the bullets, courtesy of Southern California's finest.

Count the bullets, courtesy of Southern California’s finest.

It’s only February, but frontrunner for horseshit moment of the year has already arrived. It starts with the Obama administration and moves across the country to the LAPD and its Chief, Charlie Beck.

First things first. Obama is completely cool with the U.S. government killing its own citizens without the hassle of charging them with a crime or providing a trial, because it’s safer for the nation to simply have someone killed because they might do bad things in the future, which in fairness to the administration is unquestionably true. A leaked document provided the legal rationale behind the drone strike that killed an American citizen about a year ago in Yemen, arguing that assassinating a U.S. citizen is fine if an “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States.”

Let’s briefly forego the monumentally idiotic language here granting authority to kill to any ‘informed, high-level official’, language that’s so over-the-top comically broad it would be rejected for the first act of the third Ace Ventura movie, and instead, let’s just focus on the White House’s core belief that it is acceptable to kill its own citizens without the benefit of the protections afforded them by the Constitution.
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Hitler Hates Esquire Magazine

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esq-megan-fox-cover-0213-lgNothing has made me laugh harder in recent memory than Esquire’s February cover story on Megan Fox. It’s spectacularly awful in every way. Here’s a link to the full article – http://www.esquire.com/features/megan-fox-photos-interview-0213

If the myriad of funny responses excoriating the piece that are easily found with any Google search containing ‘Esquire Megan Fox’ does not entertain you on a slow day at the office, please enjoy Hitler’s spirited defense of a young actress who used to think very highly of Marilyn Monroe.

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Politicians Are Annoying. And Other Shocking Surprises.

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obamaObama’s press conference detailing his 23 executive orders designed to curb gun violence was an exercise in the worst excesses/lowest common denominator of political language, highlighted by putting a bunch of children front and center and reading excerpts from letters they wrote on why people who shoot people are mean. Nothing like letting your ideas speak for themselves free from crass manipulation. I’m surprised a staffer didn’t direct the kids to look directly into the camera and plead with the House of Representatives to make the world a safer place for their friends and family.

Parading a bunch of cute kids in front of the camera serves only to highlight how little the president believes in the power of his argument to sway the general public on its merits. And why should he? His entire approach is wrong.
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Once Again, You Can’t Have It Both Ways.

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Zero-Dark-Thirty__121106175531Zero Dark Thirty is a decent movie whose depiction of torture in the search for Bin Laden has touched off a series of accusations/protests against the film. Here is one such example, a letter from Senators McCain, Feinstein and Levin directed to Michael Lynton, chairman of Sony Pictures: “With the release of Zero Dark Thirty, the filmmakers and your production studio are perpetuating the myth that torture is effective. You have a social and moral obligation to get the facts right.”

This is a flawed argument in a number of ways. First and foremost, movies are under no obligation, moral or otherwise, to get the facts right. This is silly. Movies are at their core, Adam Sandler and otherwise, art, and art knows no obligations save for itself. That’s what makes it art. The marketplace determines whether the movie will sink or swim, critically and commercially, so encouraging filmmakers to censor themselves for the social good is an idea on par with letting Tim Tebow start at quarterback.
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Islands of Princes

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Sultanahmet.

Sultanahmet.

It’s about an hour and a half ferry ride to get out to Princes’ Islands from the European side of Istanbul, which really puts into perspective the size of the city. Ferda and I got to the ferry early and had plenty of time to sit by the water, drink tea and relax.
DSCF3366
My t-shirt proved popular on the day, apparently images of squirrels with guns successfully crosses all cultural and geographic lines.
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The NBA Comes Clean

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davidsternThe NBA has produced a lousy product for decades, held together by superior marketing and an intrinsically pleasing game. I’m from Indiana. I can still shoot free throws at better than a 70% clip despite being old, out of shape and only playing once or twice a year, and if there is a television screen nearby with images of a basketball floating through the air majestically, I will always and forever be drawn to it. I love basketball, which is exactly why I hate the NBA.

The reason for this is simple. The NBA has long been a failure at the one thing that matters most to a professional sports league – integrity. My friends have had to listen to my annoying rants about how NBA playoff games are fixed (they are) and why the games, in the regular season in particular, are terrible (they often are) but just yesterday the league (aka David Stern) came out publicly with the exact same assessment. Well, maybe not the one about playoff games being fixed, they’re probably hoping people don’t notice that.
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