Mets Pop Culture Sightings 2012

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

I guaran-damn-tee that Jane knows "Zou Bisou Bisou."

[Theoldmole]

In Lawrence Block's The Night and the Music, Matt Scudder takes kids to a Mets game. Matlack is rocked and the Mets lose 13-4.

[G-Fafif]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Nice. Speaking of Mad Men, I realized I am the same age as Joan Holloway's baby.

But did you develop silver hair, an acid tongue and a tendency to dangle your Camel over infants that (ahem) aren't your child?

[G-Fafif]

Of all the various "junk" from all the various trunks I've seen displayed in various threads, that Diamond Club menu might have kicked as much ass as Kevin Mitchell in a Pier Six brawl.

[batmagadanleadoff]

G-Fafif wrote: Of all the various "junk" from all the various trunks I've seen displayed in various threads, that Diamond Club menu might have kicked as much ass as Kevin Mitchell in a Pier Six brawl.

Thanks. That menu's nothing. In my freezer, I've got three orders of 1964 Diamond Cub Jellied Madrilene and some after dinner mints. The Madrilenes are somewhat dessicated but the mints are in mint condition.

[G-Fafif]

Bite Madrilene First.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Things you don't see on menus anymore: Postum and Sanka.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Things you don't see on menus anymore: Postum and Sanka.

For sure. Postum, Sanka and the Madrilenes are as obsolete as the typewriters and carbon copy paper that the Mad Men's secretaries worked with.

I confess that I had to google Postum because I didn't know what it was.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postum

[batmagadanleadoff]

In 1966, Jane Jarvis is one convincing bullshit artist.

[youtube:2ctthz34]e449KGXFgrU[/youtube:2ctthz34]

[G-Fafif]

Mr. Met with his second appearance of the season on 30 Rock last night, or two fewer than David Wright has in 2012. He appeared on a couch with Tracy Jordan in a wacky flashback montage.

[G-Fafif]

Warmed up for the deHughesining with Men In Black 3, partially set on July 15-16, 1969. Features "my favorite moment in human history," wherein "a miracle is what is not possible but happens anyway."

If you haven't seen the film or the commercials, do the math.

[G-Fafif]

[youtube:18lwbq4d]OQ2YrYGd0Tk[/youtube:18lwbq4d]

A slow jam fit for Metsmerization (via Jeff Pearlman).

[ashie62]

The Beasties were Metly..

[G-Fafif]

"A Song With Orange and Blue" by Wayne Wilentz, a 50th anniversary tribute.

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[G-Fafif]

Jim Harper watched the Mets-Phillies game on his laptop (or was just checking the score, he claimed) in �5/1� episode of The Newsroom, about the night Bin Laden was killed.

[G-Fafif]

H/T to bmfc1 for finding this passage from the 2012 novel, The World Without You by Joshua Henkin.

"If we weren't running late," Lily says, "I'd take you kids to Fenway Park. I could show you the Green Monster." "Are you a Red Sox fan?" Akiva asks. "Only when they play the Yankees." "Why" "Because I'm a Mets fan." In 1986, the year the Mets won the World Series, Lily accompanied Leo, who was fourteen at the time, on the subway to Flushing, to watch Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry play at Shea Stadium. Everyone in the family was a Mets fan, and in the bleachers at Shea even Lily and Noelle got along. Lily has no patience for Yankees fans, especially the newly minted New Yorkers, the arrivistes. She knows suffering: she's witnessed the Mets endure hundred-loss seasons. So when Akiva announces he's a Yankees fan, she says, "Too bad for you. I guess we'll have to eat at separate tables." Akiva is silent. "I'm only kidding," she says.

[G-Fafif]

�...sending you from second to fifth place in the course of five days, a feat I previously thought was only accomplishable by the New York Mets.�
�Reese Lansing (Chris Messina), �The Blackout Part I: Tragedy Porn,� The Newsroom, 8/12/2012

[bmfc1]

The new cast of Survivor has been announced and it includes Jeff Kent:
http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20354695_20622229_21202100,00.html

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

bmfc1 wrote: The new cast of Survivor has been announced and it includes Jeff Kent: http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20354695_20622229_21202100,00.html

He should do fine, as long as nobody points a camera at him, asks him to do anything dumb, or tries to talk to him.

[G-Fafif]

Speedo Tracksuit with author and Mets fan Paul Auster this past Sunday.

Paul Auster still does not understand why Lucas Duda matters to him. Or why, at age 65, the author wants to be on this leather couch, gripping a stemless wine glass, sucking a cigarillo and caring about the fourth-place Mets. It is Wednesday evening, August 29, and Gary Cohen is reciting the starting lineups in Philly. On the top floor of his longtime home in Park Slope, Auster is reclining deep into the sofa, his long legs unfurled on a coffee table. This living room has bookshelves built into every wall, but Auster�s eyes point at the television in front of the couch. When Daniel Murphy steps in against Phillies rookie Tyler Cloyd with one out in the first inning, the phone rings. It is Auster�s publisher, informing him that his new memoir, �Winter Journal,� is ascending the New York Times bestseller list. �I don�t care,� Auster says, amiably, hanging up as Lucas Duda bats. He tops off my glass, and returns to what interests him. �Oh, we have to talk about Duda,� he continues. �He is a case of temperament and character. The way he hangs his head, the look in his eyes � he could be a great player, but he is bedeviled by doubts.� Confidence is the great Duda question, but there is also the Auster question, which tonight is the adults loving sports question. What is fandom all about, anyway? Or as the author frames it: �What is this thing that compels middle-aged and old men to keep watching younger men banging their bodies against distant ballfields?� * * * Paul Auster is a perfect laboratory for this inquiry, having spent a life digging for big ideas, but always returning to baseball. The arrival of the Mets-infested �New York Trilogy� in 1987 announced Auster as a top novelist, and he has remained perhaps the definitive Brooklyn writer of these last few decades. Among his books are 14 novels, seven works of non-fiction, and one collection of poetry. He has written and directed films, accumulated awards, and seen his work translated into 43 languages. But before all that, while Auster grew up across the river in New Jersey, baseball lit sparks that have never extinguished. Awe for Willie Mays in the 1954 World Series, and time as a New York Giants fan. Watching a 1955 World Series game at Ebbets Field. Once he saw Mays at the Polo Grounds and asked for an autograph. �Sure kid,� Mays said, �you got a pencil?� Eight-year-old Paul did not have a pencil, and neither did Mays. The Giants left. Then, in 1962, Auster made an April visit to Casey Stengel�s new club at the Polo Grounds. �The minute New York got a National League team again, I was a fan,� he says. There was normal teenage drifting. Auster was a high school shortstop, a good one, until he �discovered alcohol, tobacco, girls and literature,� and quit. But he never fully extricated himself from the Mets, and by early adulthood was addicted again. Graduating from Columbia and worried about the draft in 1969, his mind drifted to Tom Seaver. Writing poetry on the French countryside in 1973, he listened to the World Series on a transistor radio. That Mets heat has simmered through many of Auster�s novels. In �City of Glass,� characters chat about Dave Kingman and George Foster. The protagonist, Quinn, writes mystery novels under the pseudonym �William Wilson,� and eventually realizes that he shares that moniker with �Mookie Wilson, promising young player whose real name was William Wilson.� �Surely,� Quinn thinks, �there must be something interesting in that.� Surely. But what? Throughout this Mets-Phils game, I prod Auster to theorize, but the action intrudes. Having noted Duda�s confidence gap a few innings earlier � with sympathy, not scorn � Auster stands when the sulky slugger wraps a third-inning homer around the right-field foul pole. �Oh, Duda! Duda! Good for you!� he says. In the eighth, Duda steals second base; after sliding, he pops up and seems to inflate. �Look at Lucas,� Auster says, smiling. �He is looking prouder tonight. Did you see the way he jutted out his chin?� * * * And that right there, Lucas Duda�s human development, is why we watch. This, at least, is the opinion of Auster�s wife, the acclaimed writer Siri Hustvedt. Hustvedt joins us for some of the game, willing as usual to engage although not sharing the same mania. When she and Paul have movie nights, Siri allows frequent SNY check-ins. During the couple�s post-film discussions, she does not mind that Paul keeps the broadcast on mute. About six-feet tall, with blonde hair swept atop her head, Hustvedt curls in a chair opposite the couch. The 3-2 Mets win is completed, and the couple is grappling with the fan question. Hustvedt recently re-read Tolstoy�s �Anna Karenina,� in which the heroine commits suicide by throwing herself in front of a train. She compares her absorption to Auster�s interest in Duda and the rest of the Mets characters. �Baseball is like a novel,� Hustvedt says. �You enter into fiction really just as eagerly and passionately.� Auster is not convinced: �I just think that the vehemence and passion that are inspired by these games is something I haven�t fully understood yet.� His wife presses. �It�s like Anna Karenina,� Hustvedt says. �I�m living through these people. How is it different?� �But why do we care so much?� Auster counters. �It means nothing.� I pipe in. �But does it mean less than anything else?� Hustvedt, emphatically: �No. (Anna) lays down on the tracks, then she changes her mind. It feels horrible, but it isn�t happening to me. Isn�t that what a great game does?� Earlier in the night, Auster had made a similar point, and he does not challenge his wife now. �It is kind of an aquarium of human life, a baseball game,� he�d said, before emitting a throaty laugh. �Or perhaps it�s a terrarium. You�re not swimming.� Now it is late. The wine is nearly drained, and on TV Bob Ojeda has wrapped his postmortem. Auster has other theories � he played in high school, so observing recalls a joyful physical experience � but Hustvedt�s idea of baseball�s narrative pull is impossible to refute; why else would anyone watch this garbage-time game? �Other sports mimic war,� Auster finally says. �Baseball is life.�

[Edgy MD]

That's just perfect.

[G-Fafif]

In the new CBS Sherlock Holmes series Elementary, Lucy Liu is Joan Watson, Mets fan. New York magazine is on the case.

I just saw the pilot, which ends with your character watching the Mets as they lose. Was that an homage to your growing up in Queens? [Laughs] I actually love the Mets and the Yankees and I think they originally had the Yankees in there. But the Yankees did not want to portray themselves, obviously, as a losing team. But I think the Mets were open to it and that�s how we ended up doing it. [laughs]

[G-Fafif]

Bart to Homer: �But you love New York, now that your least favorite buildings have been obliterated: old Penn Station and Shea Stadium!�

Homer�s fist-shaking reply: �Lousy outdated relics..."

--Season premiere of 2012-13 (24th season), �Moonshine River,� The Simpsons, 9/30/2012

[Edgy MD]

Ripped, quite literally, from the pages of Lucky magazine.

I'm sorry my office only offers me a b/w scanner --- and I've done some pretty grainy work with it --- because you can't see how spectacular Michelle's office ensemble truly is.

[Theoldmole]

Watson's Mets have a guy named Ryerson playing for them.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Ryerson can't be any worse that what we already have.

[Edgy MD]

Ned? Ned Ryerson?

I hope you haven't forgotten him, because he sure as heckfire remembers you!

[Guest Swan Swan H]

Not sure this belongs here, but I'm not starting a new thread for this. Former rumored Mike Piazza paramour Sam Champion comes out and announces his engagement. Piazza has a press conference scheduled today to deny that he is a bridesmaid.

[Guest cooby]

Swan Swan bringing on the funny again...

[G-Fafif]

TCM recently aired 1968's Bye Bye Braverman, which yielded a couple of shots of Shea Stadium and World's Fair relics in the background of scenes shot at Cedar Grove Cemetery off the LIE.

But they weren't burying the Wes Westrum era.