metsmarathon

hey all, do remember to be mindful of re-upping your franchises! that deadline always seems to sneak up on people come february 14th!

deathship might want to drop some players before tonight's keeper deadline. maybe...

I have a rather short list, I think. in no particular order: 1. shea 2. citi field 3. YS3 4. RFK 5. metrodome 6. chase field 7. dolphin stadium 8? ys2 (er, at least.. I think I went to a game there freshman year.... some impression it made, eh?)

it's not like she floated her way from one ship to another. she moved maybe 10 feet? (i do need to rewatch it. maybe it was 20. i'm not sure i'd call that a lengthy excursion either way) mere mortal humans can survive 15 seconds in the vacuum of space before losing consciousness, and won't be dead if they're repressurized within about 90 seconds. i don't think that more than 15 seconds elapsed i the movie, and if they did, i guess maybe the force gave her an extra second or two of alertness. hardly the most magical thing it's done! so if the not dying for 15 seconds isn't too far fetched, and using the force to gently tug on something is well within the bounds of the expected, then what's really so hard about not dying while trying to pull a doornob? the effect could have been better. sure. give them more time in post. but the act itself, i've no issue with. also, it's been established that the force can be used to extend life. otherwise vader would be really quite dead, and luke & leia would've grown up with a mom.

Edgy MD wrote: And of course, because it's Disney, she has to fly exactly like Mary Poppins, even if she's a popsicle. I.... I mean shit, if you think Disney orchestrated that scene to look like Mary poppins, then, well, damn. I ain’t got nothin.

it's mentioned in at least one of the books in the force awakens prequel set. i do concede that, in movie, it could've been talked about just a smidge. a side discussion between her and holdo, afterwards: "you can do that?" "apparently... luke tried to teach me, but i thought i'd never picked up on it" "you never cease to amaze me" could have been helpful.

she also felt han's death. in the string of (canon) novels leading up to the latest two installments of the movie enterprise, it's clear that leia has a connection to the force. she'd never been seen to manipulate objects explicitly, of course, just that she felt the ebb and flow of the force, instinctively, and used it to guide her. that said, does it not seem a little plausible that in the 30 years since return of the jedi that luke might've taught her even a little bit about how to use the force, and she'd just never taken up the opportunity to go flaunting various jedi tricks? indeed it's mentioned in one or more of the lead-in books that leia had been getting some training from luke. actually, if you think about it, prior to her spacewalk, leia'd used about as much of the force as luke did before he found himself hanging upside down in a wampa cave on hoth. and what did he do then? reached out with the force and gave a pull. also, in the microgravity of space, it doesn't take a whole lot of force to move an object, and the vacuum of space isn't an instantaneous death. it was hardly a herculean feat to tug on a distant doorknob. i also have to think that carrie fisher's untimely passing might've prevented some tidying up of that scene, perhaps with a better blue screen effect. yoda lifted an x-wing out of a swamp, and bounced around like a pinball prior to an unfortunate run-in with force lightning. obi wan and anakin leapt and tumbled around like spiderman. and leia can't give a tug on a lifeline? some punk stablesweep kid can make his broom dance, but leia can't induce a little f=ma? as far as leia being the sacrifice instead of holdo, well, sure, i guess that might make sense, if the plan wasn't for leia to be the big key central character of IX, as had been reported. i mean, yeah, in hindsight, her passing irl would have then made for a lot of sense having her be the one to make the ultimate sacrifice leaving, i guess, luke to carry on the skywalker name. but that wasn't the plan. agreed about the non-humanoids. though c3p0 has really never done anything but bitch and whine, and pulling deus ex machina out of your plothole has always been r2's bag. chewie is massively underserved, like, seriously, thoughout the whole saga. especially considering he was supposedly some big time wookie general (i think), and friend of yoda from back in the prequel days.

Um. The force. Also, magnets.

Mets Willets Point wrote: my biggest bitch is that they have gravity-operated bombers in space. the physics don't work one bit, despite the fact that they're cool AF. Two thoughts on this: 1. Perhaps starships give off a gravitational force. After all, people are walking on decks inside the ship not floating around, so they must have invented an artificial gravity source. Perhaps the gravity extends outside of the ship a short distance, explaining why they had to get so close for it to work. 2. Perhaps they're not gravity-operated, but magnetic and were drawn to the metal of the hull. the internets tell me they're not gravity operated, that they are indeed forced out of the bottom of the bombers. i do think they need to work on the implementation of those things though, because it looked like most of the bombs that were dropped detonated sympathetically, not via contact with the target. i guess if the ships were moving faster there would've been a better spread....?

TFA left too many questions unanswered, in hindsight. so much so that the next movie was overly encumbered with answering them all. and i think it answered them in the best way possible, and in line with the whole movie, really - to stop looking to the past for answers. i'm ok with snoke not having a backstory. you know who else didn't have a backstory? palpatine. the emperor is a master of the dark side of the force - how did that come to be? nobody fucking knew! and it took three shitty movies to tell us! how much backstory do we really need? i'm also more than okay with the new force powers invented for this movie. because, seriously, the original saga kept on inventing new force powers to the point where, by the time we got into the prequels, jedi were all-powerful superheroes who were also masters of parkour and all manner of martial arts. backstory is how we got fucking midichlorians. i'm okay without backstory. besides, i'm cool with it being fleshed out in the accompanying literary material. as far as the new force powers, is luke's projection really all that much out of line with the idea of force ghosts? if the spirit of the dead can manifest itself in a physical representation, then why cannot the spriit of a living, sufficiently meditative force master? we've already established that force users have telepathic links - is the ForceTime™ connection between rey and kylo really all that far out of bounds, especially if we allow that it has been set up by a seemingly old, powerful master of the dark side? sure, both take the force in new directions and expand on it some, but it's not like we're jumping from force choking and jedi mind tricks to future-seeing and lightning bolts, dammnit! i'm also totally down with the daughter of the chosen one, he who was immaculately conceived by the force, and the twin of the last true jedi master, being able to call on a very limited force tug in her time of greatest personal need, having spent most of the past 30 years knowing that she, too, had some force sensitivity. she'd meditated on it, and exhibited some inklings of ability as shown in her telepathy with luke in the original trilogy. and luke even told her that she has the power of the force within her, or words to that effect. so i'm really truly cool with her drawing on it when it was all she could have. it's not like she's catching blaster bolts or pulling down a star destroyer! it doesn't take a lot of force (pun) to move an object floating in the microgravity of space. and it sure seemed to drain her, too, though being in space might also have contributed just a tad. so what if porgs were invented to sell soft plushy toys. george lucas brought us ewoks and jar jar binks. fucking hell, internet people everywhere! it was by no means perfect, and there were things i wasn't crazy about. but i'm a lot more mature and jaded than i was way back when i first watched the original saga. that said, i'd put the last jedi at about the same level as return of the jedi, maybe even slightly higher. it was not at the level of empire, and it's hard to top the original. but its worst moments are parsecs better than even the best moments of the prequels. it also lacks the retread problem from the force awakens. it gave us a deepening of the force mythology, had truly breathtaking visuals, and had a fairly mature message that lays the foundation for a future in that galaxy, and ho-lee-shit luke brushing off his shoulder. yeah, i guess luke could've been the super-duper infallible space wizard who was a complete and total badass, against whom no dark side user could even stand a chance. and the leader of a whole new generation of super, ultra-enlightened jedi. but where does that leave us, story wise? where's the tension? he could blink any enemy out of existence, if he wanted. any new threat would have to be just preposterously massive to even merit a story-telling. and then it's superman against thanos. and is that really the same star wars as a story of an unknown farm boy who saved the day against immeasurable odds?

No, that’s not it at all. I’ve seen those things all said about TLJ, and it strikes me that the same people who would criticize these movies for those points must be those who’ve never critically viewed the original trilogy. Because while those movies were awesome, they were also rather imperfect. The idea that these movies don’t feel like Star Wars movies is , well, odd to me too. Because the prequels aren’t really Star Wars movies. While these latest three installments in the galaxy seem to me at least to better fit in with the whole space. Maybe it’s because I never read the EU catalogue, so I have no preconceived notion of what these movies are supposed to be about. I’m sure hats a large part of this. These movies were made by Disney, so everything we see, be it a retread of a beat from the originals or a subversion or diversion from that same beat is seen as evidence of the house of mouse’s destructive influence on the stories we most held dear. Because know Lucas never fucked these things up at all. Nope. Not one bit. The prequels sucked ass so hard, but we’re made by the same guy who made the originals so any subsequent movie that doesn’t seem like what Lucas would have done is somehow... wrong...? Shit, if these last three movies are what Disney does to Star Wars, well, shit, can they do a reboot of the prequels too? Or are they only supposed to be picking over the volumes and volumes and volumes of intersecting, conflicting, frequently incongruent, and often uneven EU back catalogue to find the stories that the super duper fans already know and that box in any newcomer from being able to tell anything new or interesting or mysterious.

The empire and its remnants have always been dominated by those who’ve managed to fail upward. I found hux to be believably over the top. IMO, while there’s a considerable backlash against wasting time in canto bight, I think that segment raised the stakes beyond just a handful of resistance fighters on a ship to really the whole galaxy, and will have been a very necessary slice of world building that sets up the futurre of the franchise. It’s not just the good guys against the bad guys, but the rich and gray against nameless powerless multitude. Plus riding the force-attuned megafauna follows a thread laid by rebels. (A show very much worth watching). I agree that it took Holdo too long to make the light speed jump in-theater, but in universe, I don’t think much time passed at all. Remember that the plan was for the escape pods to be unnoticed and for raddus to be the distraction I don’t think there was much of a backup plan in place, and I don’t think that many admirals have “ram my ship into theirs at speed” as one of their principal courses of action. The thoughtful contemplation seemed legit. She was resigned to her own demise. Then she saw that it was to be for naught. She would watch her firends die, and then they would come for her and there was little she could do. And then she realized that she had one last arrow in her quiver, if she wasn’t destroyed first. Driving her ship into the he dread naught must seem in hindsight to have been the only, obvious play, but few successful officers rose through the ranks when their first fallback plan is a kamikaze attack. It was also yet another tremendous beat carries over from rebels (seriously, love that show), where Hera had engaged hyperspace as she was about to pass through a hanger of an orbital station to escape a blockade. Obviously not the same effect, but it helped TLJ feel more of the same universe. If cute critters are a problem, then we’ve got a problem from the jump. R2 and a pile of jawas are the original Ewoks. Also, and let’s be honest here. If uneven acting and odd pacing are dealbreakers In a movie undone by pointless side quests, magically instant Jedi training and light saber mastery, dubious space physics and questionable military tactics with deeply flawed and oddly specific implements of war, unearned relationships, with space battles between improbably close ships with terrible aim, and timelines that fall apart under scrutiny, then I dont think we saw the same version of empire strikes back. By the way. Luke was a badass. I’m glad he wasn’t some all-powerful all-conquering infallible and invincible Jedi super-wizard. The whole point of the movie, and indeed most of the whole damned saga, is that the Jedi are flawed. An impossible and impossibly rigid standard responsible for their undoing. Luke saw that at long last through Rey, and it saved the resistance and lit that damned spark. He redeemed the galaxy by finally accepting his imperfection and that of the Jedi order.

the more i think about this movie, the more i love it, and the more i want, need to rewatch it. to me, the fundamental thing about the movie is to subvert the idea that what the galaxy needed, what everybody needed, was the jedi - the heroes - to return. that waiting for your legends to come back and solve your problems does nothing but lead you into failure. it sets up not that teh force is for but a special few, the exceptional, the jedi. rather, it binds us all, all living things. it flows through us, around us. it is in us all. our salvation is not in our heroes, but in ourselves, in even the least among us. the force is there for us all, if only we can tap into it. you don't need to be the son, or daughter, of the most powerful badass in the galaxy to shape its future, to defeat the great evil. you can be some nobody scrap scavenger on a dust planet, or an invisible orphan stable boy. the light belonging to everybody, not a few singular point of brilliance, is how the darkness is to be eradicated.

so, i fucking loved it. i gave it 4 stars just because i might simply be too giddy about it to be objective. to be honest, one of the things that i loved the most was that i could see that there was a thread connecting from this movie all the way back to some of what's been going on in star wars rebels. in a general sense, the way the force connects with all living things, not just jedi. also the thing with the lightspeed carries forward an echo from the past. my biggest bitch is that they have gravity-operated bombers in space. the physics don't work one bit, despite the fact that they're cool AF. also, the resistance really needs to work on the tactical employment of those things - yeesh! ever think that maybe, just maybe, ach-to has radically shorter days than the galactic standard?

space wizards return with their laser swords. hilarity ensues. your thoughts?

i loved it, and think that more superhero movies should be more fun instead of more grimdark.

hmm, in every year of this league, my pitchers have had the highest strikeout total. too bad they couldn't do a goddamned thing else well....

this is a movie which, while i'm sure i've seen all of it in parts, i'm not entirely certain that i've watched it all the way through in one sitting. i was a mere babe when it was originally released, and i don't think i ever saw it in theaters, resultantly.

if i may continue a thought from the 2017 thread... instead of divisions, and if we did put some small meager cash money on the table, we could always award a smaller prize for the second-half winner. tally the stats at the all star break, reset the totals to zero, and see who does best from then on. that might be enough to keep people's interest. alternatively, and i'd mentioned this in the message board, we could try to run an off-line head to head mirror league, where we sum up every team's weekly stats and match 'em up against that week's designated opponent. it'd take a fair bit of work to pull off, but would offer some distinction and maybe a reason for lower-tier teams to play. altogether though, i was in 7th place at the end of june, and going into the last month, i honestly felt like if things broke just right, i might be able to make a run at the lead. and was really hoping to at least take second. and the devil toads climbed from 35 points to 60, and were within spitting distance of a few more points, too. and poor muddy chickens, looked like he was going to run away with the damned thing early in the season, and he dropped to 8th (and will plummet to 9th once his pitching stats get expunged). so the season is really up for grabs even late. i guess the bigger issue might be how do we get the bottom of the league to get into the game, and keep trying to run out the best lineups and build the best rosters, but theoretically, the dynastic nature of our league should make that happen. those teams should be shedding salary and building future depth.

i have a friend who might be interested in taking on a team, if need be. he's a mets fan. although, given the history of the league, maybe y'all shouldn't let me bring anyone else in, so as the rest of y'all might have a chance of winning!

good god, i'm pitiful. i think i've seen maybe a dozen of these films...

damn, my desperate run to catch first is sputtering... sigh...

yeah, man. there's a lot of dollars still out there burning a hole in every team's pocket. at this point, you probably have to pay double what a guy is probably worth in the draft, or just hope to get really lucky. is there a type of player you might be in particular need of? i'm developing a bit of a surplus of players. btw... please don't quit fantasy. you're the commish of my favorite fantasy league, dangit!

i gotta say, i miss having kershaw.... though he wouldn't necessarily solve my pitching staff, he sure wouldn't hurt it right now. my staff is so completely and utterly revamped from the start of the season, that it kinda hurts my head. bottom line, i suppose, is that i'm glad i stuck with severino. heck, my offense has seen a hell of a lot of turnover as well. I've currently got so, so many decent cheap slugging outfielders and 1bmen that i really cannot play them all. i mean, shit, i've got miggy cabrera sitting on my damn bench and he's my most expensive player!

i'd play another league, probably, but i cannot support an 8:00 PM draft.