Edgy MD

Nah. We have a right to look for meaning.

Maybe. I don't think the existence of decent-sized-but-disengaged-crowds at minor league parks is a direct consequence of sideshow antics. I just think the reality of affiliated ball keeps people from getting emotionally involved in the game. If it's all for the glory of a team representing a city we may never visit, and any successful player is busting his ass not for the glory of the town on his jersey, but to get the hell out of that town, well, I might be more interested in the antics of the costumed litter patrol guy, too. My wife enjoys me bringing her to minor league parks much more than major league ones.

Notice how the only ones paying attention to the game are the ones in uniform.

I would re-submit the poll. The old polls give you one vote, final and forever. The new polls allow people to switch, which I'm sure they would after frequent and vicious beatings.

Hmm... I don't want to act as if I'm unaware of their tastes, just that I have a much broader palate...

His few departures were all released under alternative pen names.

Maybe. I just threw them out there. Based mostly on my dad's shelf of water-logged mass-markets.

It's been going on a while. The name is a brand and, to be sure, many of those brand-name authors probably stop doing the writing well before they die. But yeah, it's kinda creepy. And I didn't mean to suggest that the books were aimed at seniors. But rather at adult males across a broad range of ages. But in their heyday, they were huge among 47-year-olds and if you didn't get started by the time you were fifty, AARP would sign you up. The heavy hitters in the category of Beach Reading for Dads: Robert Ludlum Ken Follett Martin Cruz-Smith Dan Fuckin-Brown I guess you can call the broad genre Conspiracy Thrillers (though I like my name better). Grahame Greene and other literary figures wrote books that could fit in this category, but Richard Condon turned it into a new publishing area with The Manchurian Candidate. After that, every major publishing house had to have one of these guys telling you about the secret Cold War web being woven all around you have NO FUCKING IDEA ABOUT. His ill gimmick was to title all his novels as The [surname] [Noun]. The Scarlatti Inheritance (1971) The Osterman Weekend (1972) The Matlock Paper (1973) The Rhinemann Exchange (1974) The Gemini Contenders (1976) The Chancellor Manuscript (1977) The Holcroft Covenant (1978) The Matarese Circle (1979) The Bourne Identity (1980) The Parsifal Mosaic (1982) The Aquitaine Progression (1984) The Bourne Supremacy (1986) The Icarus Agenda (1988) The Bourne Ultimatum (1990) The Scorpio Illusion (1993) The Apocalypse Watch (1995) The Matarese Countdown (1997) The Prometheus Deception (2000) Most of these guys, along with the genre, faded as the Cold War ended and they got too old to keep feeding the beast. The idea that Dan Brown survived and escaped the genre fiction shelves to be read seriously by a vast cross-section of the reading (and sometimes the otherwise non-reading) public just makes my head explode on a daily basis.

Ludlum has always been beach reading for your dad (and, specifically, my dad). I guess I'm glad those movies got made, because almost no films come out of Hollywood aimed at mature men (though I'm sure they're more youth-oriented than the books). Nonethless, I had zero interest in seeing them.

Richard Brody of The New Yorker wasn't very Hollywood happy this decade: 1. Eloge de l�amour (�In Praise of Love�) (2001, Jean-Luc Godard, France): Lives up to the promise of its title: one of the most unusual, tremulous, and understated of love stories, as well as the story of love itself; a depiction of history in the present tense, as well as a virtual thesis on the filming of history; a work of art, as well as the story of the work at the origin of art; Godard�s third first film, thus something of a rebirth of cinema. You'll notice that none of his descriptions will include a plot summary. 2. The Darjeeling Limited (2007, Wes Anderson, United States): As ever with the films of Wes Anderson�the best new American director of the last twenty years�love and death, comedy and tragedy, comfort and adventure, understanding and opacity, style and substance fuse in a modernism of personal and reflexive cinema and a classicism of grand and subtle literary emotion. It's a certain brand of modernism though. I'd sum up his themes as the alienation of white privilege, and a desire to go back to the seventies before we found out how empty it was. But congrats to Anderson for making the list. U-S-A! U-S-A! 3. The World (2005, Jia Zhangke, China): The best new non-American director of the last twenty years, here revealing, at great risk, China�s, and his own, painfully ambiguous place in the world. Fuck the Zhangkes! 4. A Talking Picture (2003, Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal): The great September 11th movie, from a spry ninety-five-year-old who sees not only the century�s long view but seemingly encompasses Homer�s. Dude is still living and allegedly film-making at 101. 5. �Regular Lovers� (2005, Philippe Garrel, France): The events of 1968, depicted by one of its cinematic heroes as an intimate epic�and, with a self-deprecating fury, as a lovely but unsustainable burst of youthful lyricism. Did Valadius write that blurb? 6. Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 P.M. (2001, Claude Lanzmann, France): This discussion with Yehuda Lerner, who took part in the uprising against the extermination camp�s guards, is as profound a dialogue on the morality of violence as the cinema has seen. A Nazi documentary built around a single interview. Yikey. 7. Fengming: A Chinese Memoir (2009, Wang Bing, China): From one of the decade�s two best new directors, as well as its best new nonfiction filmmaker. If I had seen Wang�s �West of the Tracks� in its entirety, I�d have put it here instead; I saw only about a third of its nine hours, but this feature, converging recent Chinese history with the sufferings endured, at the hands of the regime, by one free-thinking couple, does quite as well. Wang Bing sounds like a mashup of "Everybody Have Fun Tonight and "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby." Anyhow, can you tell I haven't seen any of these? 8. Knocked Up (2008, Judd Apatow, USA): Suddenly, all contemporary comedy seemed old-fashioned. From Lubitsch through the Farrelly brothers, the funniest guys in the room were behind the camera; Judd Apatow discovered, or rediscovered, the trick of the great silent clowns�to put funny people on screen�and to make it personal. (If Eddie Murphy had, say, directed �Norbit� in addition to starring in it, it would likely find a place on this list too.) I liked it too, and I think Apatow is on to something, but, of all the American film-makers... 9. Moolaad (2005, Ousmane Sembene, Senegal): Women, resistance, and centuries of oppressive tradition, seen with the fiercely clarifying wisdom of age. The subject is genital mutilation; the phalanx of respected women eager to do the dirty work is truly frightening. Bloody hell. 10. The Other Half (2007, Ying Liang, China): The other of the decade�s two best new filmmakers, the one who does dramas, bringing a laser-like analytical eye to the crossroads of private life and oppressive authority. His anger builds to an apocalyptic outpouring with few parallels in the history of cinema. Score it: China: 3 France: 3 United States: 2 Portugal: 1 Sengal: 1

Would have guessed Almost Famous was from 1998 or 1999. That's got to be on my list, as it's almost perfect. Hard to rank the three Lord of the Rings Films. They all hit pretty equally for me. I guess the more Christopher Lee, the better. The less Sean Bean, also.

Going with ten, reviewing this forum (which covers, at best, half of the decade), I've got: 1) Wall-E 2) The Station Agent 3) Gran Torino 4) The Wonder Boys 5) Superbad 6) Sideways 7) Adventureland 8) The Incredibles 9) Once 10) Um, Hitch, I guess Given half a chance, I'm sure I'd pull half of those, but that's where I am right now.

Oh, wow, he was the stupid sad sack in Dog Day Afternoon? That guy? With that face, he could have worked as a character actor for 40 years.

My first two guesses, which I correctly expected would turn out wrong: Martin Scorcese's father. Lee Strassburg. Both had a somewhat longer list of credits than I expected.

LeiterWagner, I'll roll with Valdez over Cora, but no room for Sean Green?

It seemed silly to see Redding above Hernandez, but I checked the stats and they support that ranking. (I'd be tempted to put Maine above Livan also.) The argument in Hernandez's support is that most of Redding's production, such as it was, came too late to be of much use.

Wait, was Valadius writing on his own or copying from the press release?

My wife, also a big fan of Hank and Office Space, explains: "The plot as outlined in the trailer --- guy isn't getting any at home, develops a crush on cutiepie underling, gets advice from loser buddy who suddenly appears wise --- seems kind of sitcommy and hard to sustain beyond the standard sitcom 22-minute running time." As for "Ben Affleck, you suck," Wifey says, "Duh!"

Good job. Where does Reed fall? He's kind of stuck in the middle of Sullivan's name.

Yup. Parnell was effective as a reliever, and ineffective as a starter pretty much after the Mets had thrown in the towel by shutting Santana down.

In recent weeks, Stoner has been buzzed about the blogosphere as a dark horse for the Mets rotation. Really good control, but like Pelfrey, having trouble finding an out pitch. He's the second-ever Met born in Germany, joining Ron Gardenhire in the small fraternity of ÃœberMets.

Switzer, like Ken Tak, was auditioned for the hard-to-fill second-lefty-out-of-the-pen role.

There were a million of them. Feel free to rank them all. I just need your top 30. In reviewing this list, I was surprised to find out the guy I had most forgotten about was Ken Takahashi. [table:3sp3h44y][tr:3sp3h44y][td:3sp3h44y]Marlon Anderson Carlos Beltran Angel Berroa Lance Broadway Emil Brown Luis Castillo Robinson Cancel Ramon Castro Ryan Church Alex Cora Carlos Delgado Elmer Dessens Nick Evans Pedro Feliciano[/td:3sp3h44y][td:3sp3h44y]Nelson Figueroa Casey Fossum Jeff Francoeur Andy Green Sean Green Anderson Hernandez Livan Hernandez John Maine Fernando Martinez Ramon Martinez Pat Misch Daniel Murphy Jonathan Niese[/td:3sp3h44y][td:3sp3h44y]Fernando Nieve Darren O'Day Angel Pagan Bobby Parnell Mike Pelfrey Oliver Perez J. J. Putz Tim Redding Jeremy Reed Argenis Reyes José Reyes Francisco Rodriguez Johan Santana[/td:3sp3h44y][td:3sp3h44y]Omir Santos Brian Schneider Gary Sheffield Brian Stokes Tobi Stoner Jon Switzer Cory Sullivan Ken Takahashi Fernando Tatis Josh Thole Wilson Valdez Billy Wagner David Wright[/td:3sp3h44y][/tr:3sp3h44y][/table:3sp3h44y]

"Thank you, Mr. Kong. This will a great service to Met fans everywhere. Now please turn around and put your hands up against the wall. You have the right to remain silent..."

Mark Healy just befriended D-Maggz.