Two Tickets to Paradise?

A great deal of buzz has been going around this week about the Florida Marlins selling tickets to Roy Halladay's perfect game, which took place last Saturday evening, May 29. You're reading that right - the Marlins, one of only three organizations with multiple World Series championships in the post-1993 Wild Card era, are selling tickets to a game that not only already took place, but featured their team fail to put a single runner on base. Not only are the tickets selling fairly well, but this is not even an unprecedented move. OK, I get it. You buy a previously-unsold ticket to a perfect game for face value, hang onto it for a few years, keep it in good condition, maybe even frame it. Then one day you hope to be able to toss that bad boy up on eBay and sit with your feet up as the bids roll in for such a vaunted piece of memorabilia.

Normally you'd expect me to blast the Florida organization for chasing dollars this way and essentially giving a big F-you to the 25 men who wore a Marlins uniform that night. But oddly enough I'll give the Marlins a pass on this one. Take the revenue where you can get it. I see it more as a passive-aggressive jab by the Marlin organization at their relatively disinterested fan base for coming out to the ballpark in putridly small amounts despite the team being consistently respectable and competitive. It's like they're saying, "ok, all you South Floridians, maybe if you guys did a bit better job of showing up to our games and acting like you really cared about the team, you'd have the right to be miffed at the fact that we are somewhat celebrating a game in which we were dominated. But until then, we don't want to hear it." I'll stop short of saying I applaud the Marlins for doing this. Let's just say I "golf-clap" them for doing it.

But of course, if I didn't have anyone to chide, I wouldn't be writing this. I've got to tweak the few thousand people who actually went online and bought these after-the-fact tickets. Like I said before, I get what your reasoning is - you want that little piece of baseball history and the prospect of selling it at a profit in the future. But do you have no personal pride or sense of what is genuine? Are you really going to anxiously await for your prized May 29 Phillies/Marlins tickets to arrive and then cherish them as if you were actually at the game? Are you going to display the ticket(s) prominently somewhere and pass stories down through the generations about the view from your seat that night, at what point you realized the perfecto was in reach, how nervous you were not to jinx anything, or the lump that went in your throat before Shane Victorino tracked down that monster fly ball to center for the first out of the 9th inning? No, my friend, you are not going to do any of that.

If you bought a ticket to that game after it took place, please look yourself in the mirror. You are now on the level of the guy who buys a $1,000 driver to try to make up for the fact that his golf swing stinks, or the guy who uses his buddy's dog or toddler son to try to pick up women, or Charlie Sheen one night in 1996 when he bought up all the left field lower deck seats at an Angels game in a fruitless effort to get himself a home run ball. Stop trying to cheapen and dilute the experience of the 25,086 who were indeed present at Sun Life Stadium that night. Money can't buy life experiences. That's what makes them so valuable! Yes, I'm certain I read that somewhere.

Sh*t I Don't Understand: Bumper Stickers

Let me first say that I have no problem with self-expression, as long as it doesn't encroach on those who are simply minding their own business. After all, this isn't Russia. Is this Russia? This isn't Russia. But that being said, there are numerous opportunities to express oneself among all the ins and outs of our lives, so why do so many people feel compelled to adorn the back of their cars with bumper stickers? Is it some form of illicit obligation to let everyone who drives behind you get to know you a little bit? Or is it the feeling that your hobbies, habits, and viewpoints are so cool and/or unique that you must, MUST share them with the world?

There are three things I care about and absolutely need to know when it comes to the driver of the car in front of me: if they are intent on turning left or getting over to the left, if they are intent on turning right or getting over to the right, and if they are on their brakes. That's all I ever need or want to know, and there happen to be these fancy blinking lights on the back of cars that indicate these very facts. Anything else is superfluous and an outright waste of my concentration.

I don't care what teams you root for. I don't care what bands you like. I don't care what radio station you listen to. I don't care who you plan to vote for in an upcoming election. I don't care who you voted for in any past election (a hot-air gun and a sharp thumbnail are all you need to take down that Kerry/Edwards 2004 sticker, folks). I don't care what your religion is. I don't care what nationality you are. I don't care that you'd rather be fishing. I don't care that your other car is a broomstick, so you say. I don't care if someone has dubbed you the "World's Greatest Dad." I don't care if you are a "Jersey Girl." I don't care that you love your bullmastiff. I don't care that there's a baby on board. I don't care if your car climbed Mt. Washington. I don't care if you ran a half-marathon or a full marathon. I don't care that you've been to OBX. I don't care what shore you go to. I don't care what college you attended or presently attend. I don't care what school your children attended or presently attend. And I absolutely, positively, do not give one rat's ass if your kid is an honor student.

I'm not saying not to be proud of who you are and what you're about. I'm just saying to scale it back a bit. Loading your car up with bumper stickers makes you look like a sitar-playing hipster in addition to potentially hurting the car's value. Allow your actions, words, attitudes, and (to an extent) your sense of style paint the picture of exactly who you are. Shoving your persona into everyone's face via the back of your vehicle is the human-interaction equivalent of force feeding, and I, for one, would like to feel like less of a veal calf when I'm out there navigating our lovely roads.

Unnecessary Courtesy

Being courteous will get you far in life, or at least that's what we're told from about age 3 and on. And you need not look further than the "License and Registration, Please" series from a few months back to see how we value etiquette and a heads-up attitude around these parts. But much like people often take the simple act of saying "thank you" to an unwelcome extent, there are certain elements of courteous behavior that are just flat-out superfluous.

Scene #1: you're walking into work around normal time on a typical morning, so that means there will likely be several other people walking into the building at about the same time as you. Now that you've got the mental picture, how easy is it to envision this: 2-3 people walk in about 50 feet ahead of you, one of whom holds the door for the other(s). That's all fine, it's common courtesy to keep the door open for someone walking in right behind you. But then this overly nice guy or girl continues to hold the door for you even though you're still a good 15 yards away. The mental reflex is for you to feel indebted to this person for maintaining the gigantic 12-kg force (yes I Googled it) necessary to hold the door open. And what happens next? Without even thinking, you break into that embarrassing "half-running-half-walking" stride so you look like you're making an effort to get to the door as quickly as possible and spare this Samaritan a second or two of exhausting door-holding duty. I've grown to detest this awkward power-walking gait so much that now I intentionally slow down when walking into work just so not to be caught in that door-holding gray area.

I'm an able bodied person, who is neither visibly injured nor carrying a ton of shit that would necessitate someone holding the door for me. And don't worry, I won't be mad if you simply allow the door to close when I'm any farther than 5 feet away. Opening the door for myself won't exactly ruin my morning. And on the other side of the coin, I'm not going to feel eternal gratitude to you if you stand there like a bellhop holding the door for me while I practically still have one foot in my car. So for everyone's sake, just walk in and get on with your business. Oh, and another note: going out of your way to hold the door for that good-looking chick who works on the third floor is not going to make her want to hook up with you, so just stop.

Scene #2: you're at the gym and it's fairly uncrowded. As you're in the middle of a set, Mr. Excessive Manners ambles over to you and asks "hey, are you working on that machine/bench/cable station over there?" Normally this would be no problem - in fact, I applaud such a level of gym etiquette - but in this case it's abundantly clear that there's no way in hell you're actually using the apparatus this dude wants to use. No sir, you see, I'm in the middle of a set of squats, what do you think the chances are that I'm also using the dip stand on the other side of the room? There are these things called muscle groups, and most people do not dip and squat on the same day, let alone super-set them. So relax Richard Simmons, you're not being presumptuous if you hop on the dip stand without asking me first, you're just using (gasp!) a bit of deductive reasoning and common sense.

What do we pin all this unnecessary courtesy to? It could just be that some people are so scared to ever make anyone mad, especially in a public setting, that they'll constantly try to appease others to avoid ever being thought of as rude or inconsiderate. But I think the bigger cause of this annoying behavior pattern is that too many people just aren't that observant. You can't live your life on autopilot. Keep the head on a swivel and have a sense of your surroundings, because even those seemingly ironclad rules of "being nice" that we're taught as kids have exceptions.

Stop Fixing What Isn't Broken

Wow, one hell of a national championship game we had last night, yes? The only way it could have been better would be if that half-court shot at the buzzer had fallen for Butler, but all in all you could hardly have scripted a tougher-fought or more entertaining conclusion to the college basketball season. And so what if we had to stomach Duke winning the title, because the consolation prize of "One Shining Moment" was awaiting us just a few moments afterward.

Possibly the most anticipated 3-and-a-half minute montage of the year, "One Shining Moment" is a lock to put a nice cherry on top of the tournament, regardless of how well that night's title game turned out. So you can imagine the disappointment shared by millions of Americans on the edge of their seats as they were subjected to this shit. I refuse to even embed it because I don't want to deface our blog, so you're going to have to click on the link to see what I mean. It starts innocently enough, but at the :53 mark, instead of a nice "opening tipoff" shot to go along with the opening line "The ball is tipped," we get a shot of Jennifer Hudson's fat face wailing at us. And then it didn't stop. Intermittently, it kept cutting to pre-set studio shots of Jennifer Hudson doing her best to put the song through a blender. What, 64 basketball games didn't provide CBS with enough footage to fill 210 seconds? "One Shining Moment" has never (not to my memory, at least) cut to shots of the person singing it; it just stuck to what people actually want to see - the defining images of that year's tournament. Why change that now? Is CBS trying that hard to manufacture Hudson as the next great big star?

It baffles me that CBS found it necessary to do away with the Luther Vandross version of the song that, despite not being the earlier version that really made a name for the song, did it total justice. Both versions evoked a soothing yet masculine inspirational feeling, thanks in large part to the vocal work of the men singing them. The Jennifer Hudson version? Her voice is too high and she takes every chance to inject her own style into it and try to turn it into soul music. It sounded like such canned ham that I honestly sat there hoping it was going to turn into a Rick Roll.

I don't want to rip on Jennifer Hudson too much because I remember the personal tragedy she has recently overcome. But part of me can't forget how her Super Bowl XLIII rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" went from a B+ to a D in the final 45 seconds because she tried to elongate it and soul it up. I understand she's a hell of a singer and an Academy Award winner, so questioning her talent would be stupid on my part. My real problem lies with the style, and furthermore my problem lies with those at CBS who saw it fit to hire her to apply that style to "One Shining Moment."

Certain things in civic culture and popular culture reach such high levels that there becomes only one right way to do them. There is one right way and about 4 dozen wrong ways to sing our national anthem. Similarly, you don't say the Pledge of Allegiance in a Cartman voice; you say it seriously and straightforward. Maybe we didn't realize it until CBS screwed with it this year, but "One Shining Moment" was at such a point. We like it the way it was. It is best the way it was. It is not to be modernized, enhanced, or left up to an individual performer's interpretation.

Oh well. It's just an ending montage that we'll all forget about within a week or two. I mean, at least there's not something galactically stupid going on like the NCAA expanding the tournament to 96 teams or anything. Oh wait, never mind....