My Thoughts on the Mets

Yesterday, I nervously stared at the ESPN.com pitch-by-pitch scoreboard, hoping that the Mets could keep Shea alive for one more day, before it will invariably be destroyed. My heart sank a little bit when my roommate tauntingly told me that Sabathia had propelled the Brewers to a win. Shea needed a victory. But, just like last year, the Metropolitans dropped two out of their last three, ending a weak September effort and keeping themselves out of the playoffs. I lay in bed for a few minutes, wondering how I should feel.

I wasn't entirely depressed by the whole thing (the slew of obscenities at the top of my lungs seemed to expel most of my dejection). My biggest disappointment wasn't in the team that I had watch unravel in nearly identical fashion to end the season. Instead, I was just disappointed that I couldn't see them do it. I couldn't watch the animosity that was electrifying Shea as Carlos Beltran tied the game with a home run (The last Apple at Shea!), let alone be a part of it . I couldn't jump up shouting, screaming and giving hugs and high fives as I had done when Endy hauled in a ball over the left-field fence, keeping the Mets alive in their last game of 2006. Nope, I was just stuck watching a little computer-screen diamond with automated squares on the bases (or a lack thereof, as was the case for the Mets), since I was hundreds of miles away from the game broadcast.

Many Mets fans have hatred and disappointment running through their veins, but I can't get mad at the Mets, even if they are a bunch of choke-artists. Some may be upset at the fact that they were born just months after the last time the Mets won a World Series, knowing that their hopes of a Shea championship in their lifetime will soon implode. But how could I possibly be upset with all that the Mets have given me?

I've loved the Mets since the day I was born - I really didn't have much say in the matter. In fact, little baby Sax Jazzarello can be seen donning orange and blue in many old photos. Because of my dad's fanatacism for the Cowboys, he wanted to name me Dallas, though I'm sure he would have considered Queens, Flushing and Shea if they weren't even worse names than Dallas. So my being a Mets fan is quite arbitrary. I could have been greeted to this world with a Blue Jays teddy bear or even a *shudder* Braves blanket. But just because I was born into liking the Mets, that's not to say that I haven't fallen helplessly in love with them on my own.

When I was six, my family moved to Long Island. Soon after, I discovered the joys of Shea Stadium just miles to the West. Since then, I've had countless fantastic, memorable moments take place there.

I remember Bernard Gilkey's 3-run moonshot to left field to win the game (and I'm still bummed every time I see him miss a fly ball in Men In Black).

I''ve cheered, booed, laughed and sighed with a sweet sausage and peppers in my hand. In fact, I've done each of those more times than I could possibly recall.

I've seen President Bill Clinton and Jackie Robinson's widow honor the man who broke the color barrier in baseball by retiring his number across the league.

I remember Lance Johnson. Butch Huskey. Tsuyoshi Shinjo.

I've watched the Mets win 1-0 on a Wild Pitch in their last game of the season in order to propel them into October (Hell, me and Lafferty missed minimart for it!)

I've shouted "Mr. Mojo Risin'" at the top of my lungs as Mike Piazza would crush a ball to centerfield, and I even managed to enjoy "Who Let the Dogs Out thanks to the Mets.

In middle school, I would revel at my uncle's hilariously inappropriate heckles. Now, I join him.

I remember that time I went to Shea for my birthday.
I remember that other time I went to Shea for my birthday.
I remember a third time I went to Shea for my birthday, and got to watch a girl pee in the parking lot.

I'll never forget about Todd Hundley, Benny Agbayani or Rick Reed.

And all those Subway Series showdowns! Like that time the Mets came back from five runs behind to beat those damn Yankees. But even such an intense cross-town rivalry couldn't keep the fans from uniting, and we owe it all to John Rocker, a man second only to Osama Bin Laden as the most hated in all of New York who inspired his very own (very unofficial) Battery Night at Shea.

I remember my dad buying me a six-dollar beer.
And then a seven-dollar beer.
Now I get the eight-dollar beers myself.

And I hope that someday, by some serendipitous fortune, I run into that toupeed vendor with the absolutely hilarious voice, even by vendor standards. Decades from now, I'm sure that I'd know him the second I see him.

This is just a small cross-section of my Shea Stadium memories that I've managed to think of just now... the full list is nearly endless. Sometimes I'll watch someone hit a home run so far that it's "Almost as far as that one McGwire hit for number 50 at Shea". Or a faint smell of copper will hurtle me back to a game against the Expos in the right-field loge.

But why have these moments been so incredibly memorable? Well, because it's not just baseball. It's a chance for tens of thousands of people to collectively unite as they cheer for their Metropolitans. It's train rides and tailgates. It's something that bonds you with that guy behind the deli counter, or the guys in the breakroom, or the girl with the Wright jersey. It's a way to know that I'm feeling the same joys and pains as my friends thousands of miles away. And it's a day with the family at the ballpark.

So how could I possibly be upset at the Mets right now? Though their season is over and it's time for their hibernation, I know that they'll be back next spring, just as they are every year. And even though I'll miss Shea, I certainly won't forget about it; I'll just stretch my list of memories as much as I possibly can as they settle into their new home. They may not win them all, but they will surely give me enough reasons to be damn happy that I completely love the New York Mets.

I Knew McCain Was Old, But...

Historians today unveiled an extremely rare alternate of John Trumbull's The Declaration of Independence (more info here):

(Click either picture to zoom in)

I figured this warranted some extra research, so I went looking at our Declaration.
The results may shock you.

...
...
...


I think this could be the inspiration for "National Treasure 3: Tale of the Undying Maverick"



A hearty thanks to DC for suggesting the first one. Also, still need a guy that can sing a mean Meatloaf.

Why So Serial?

Confused?
Check out this.
And this.

If Sax Jazzarello Made Cell Phone Ads...

Sax Jazzarello and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Film...Called Iron Man

As promised, here is my assault on Iron Man.

I've been thinking about this for a month and a half now, wondering how I could possibly condense all of my hatred of Iron Man (currently in the form of ten pages of scrawled notes and a small handful of aneurisms) into a brief, coherent blog post. I'm not sure I can, but I'll take a stab at it anyway.

Let's begin with a little analogy that I feel properly explains everything about Iron Man:

Fantastic : Detestable :: WALL-E : Iron Man (which, incidentally, is synonymous with Cracklin' Oat Bran : Galloping Gertie, but I digress)

But in case you need more convincing, I'll elaborate:

Things That Make Iron Man A Steaming Loaf of Bullshit:

Booze, Gadgets, Cars and Sex

Now I know what you're thinking: Those are all fantastic things! I completely agree. In fact, the only thing that would have made WALL-E even better is some greasy, drunken robot love.

Nevertheless, it's worth pointing out that Iron Man clearly took a rejected Entourage script, made it an hour and a half long, and blew some shit up. There is NO substance! I would have no problem with this if people hadn't raved about how absolutely fantastic Iron Man was... just about everybody I talked to made it seem like Iron Man rivaled There Will Be Blood - 0r Batman Begins, at least.

Let me highlight a few scenes:

The movie wastes no time in throwing all this crap at us: Not one minute in and we've got Tony Stark drinking up, making sex jokes, talking about banging 12 Maxim models, and cracking wise about Myspace and gang signs (LOL!). Oh man this movie's gonna be so deep!

A little later, we get some ridiculously hot reporter interviewing Tony Stark, bringing up several ethical questions about the very real subject of arms manufacture....yawnnnnnnnnn, I don't want to have to think!... Oh wait, they just started fucking!! Whew! These writers know what I came here to see! I really hope they don't bring that crap up again [they don't]!

Then we've got Robert Downey Jr. and Terrence Howard chilling on the plane. Naturally, the former has a drink in his hand (Apparently Downey Jr. won't put his drink down long enough to film a scene), and offers sake to the much more straight-laced Howard. Next thing you know, they're both hammered, and the plane has turned in to a dance club of sorts, with all the insanely hot stewardesses ("flight attendants" is not nearly sexist enough to describe them) grinding up on a stripper pole. What the FUCK!?!???! I'd expect this from Vince and Turtle, maybe, but not from a movie that has 93% positive reviews. I've seriously seen more sensible plots on Bang Bus.

I could continue with the countless excesses, status symbols and unneccessary pop culture references the movie has, but just rewatching these scenes has caused a rage filled blood vessel of mine to explode, so I should probably move on.

Product Placement

It's really no surprise that a movie throwing more consumerism at us than a Price Is Right marathon is riddled with blatant product placement.

Things I felt compelled to buy after watching Iron Man:

A new Verizon LG phone
Lots and lots of "Burger King American Cheeseburgers" (Tony Stark's words, not mine)
Subscription to Maxim
Multi-million dollar Jackson Pollack painting (Solely because it's extremely expensive, since that was super-cool Tony Stark's reason for getting one)
Subscription to Vanity Fair
More Audis than I can count

Propaganda
(Warning: For this section, Mazzy transformed into his own Superhero alias - Liberal Man! Proceed with caution)

The biggest product placement of all?
America.



Twice during the movie, the military higher-ups decide that it's best to report strange, Iron Man-related deaths to the American public as training misisons gone awry. This is done in a casual, but matter-of-fact manner, being joked about by all parties. Clearly, there is the tacit acceptance that it's the military's right (and duty) to lie to the public.

And every time the terrorists are shown, they have an uncanny resemblance to those pesky Middle Easterners we're bombing the shit out of. They show Tony Stark being held hostage by a bunch of terrorists, who've put a burlap bag on his head and are pointing guns at him. Hmmm... that's EXACTLY like those damn Iraqi terrorists I've seen in the newspaper! Let's kill them all!

Tony Stark even knows that he won't be set free by these evil people... they're far too evil to negotiate with. Let's kill them all!!

Oh man! Tony Stark just joked about all those bad guys living in caves! Doesn't Bin Laden live in a cave??? Let's kill them all!!!

Once Iron Man makes it clear that we need to kill all evil Middle Easterners, the movie shows us just how easy that is! Just as one particularly evil group of terrorists is going to murder a man in front of his kids and wife, Iron Man (AKA Tony Stark, the embodiment of everything American, and the manufacturer of our military's weapons) busts in and instantly kills all of them while sparing the hostages they have in their arms. Message to viewers: "These ragheads don't stand a chance against AMERICA."

The propaganda isn't just limited to the military... remember that hydrogen-powered bus shown during the epic battle between Tony Stark and The Dude? Well America and all of its gas-guzzling car companies can't have this earthy, sustainable shit! Tony Stark gets thrown through the bus, ripping through its hydrogen-advertising side. Uh oh, looks like hydrogen power took quite a hit the- OH SHIT! THE BUS JUST EXPLODED! Message to viewers: " FUCK hydrogen power."

Other Stuff

At one point, they show some E! reporter talking about an event that evening: "Whatever the case may be... no one expects an appearance from Tony Stark tonight!" Well guess what happens next?!?

HOLY SHIT! TONY STARK SHOWED UP! ZOMGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!

Later, Terrence Howard looks at the Iron Man suit, contemplates for a second, and then says, "Next time" as he walks away. Oh you're gonna wear the suit next time, air force man? Yeah, Paramount, we know you're making a trilogy. Do you really need to make it that blatant for the audience? (Yes, because the average American kid who eats this trash up is dumb as a funnel full of wing-nuts.)

Lastly, I hated that repeatedly throughout the movie, you'd see shadows stand up in front of the camera and walk off the side of the screen. Oh, you didn't notice that? I guess that was just in my copy.


In entirely unrelated news, I'm working on a little project that requires a male who can sing an excellent Meat Loaf rendition. Seriously. Let me know if you feel up to the task.

Prelude to My Assault on Iron Man

Thursday night, realizing that my only alternative was to get drunk by myself and watch Bad News Bears, I decided that I was bored enough to see Ironman.

But first, I got wonderfully, fantastically and terribly high. The kind of high that makes you frantically jump from nervous paranoia to an excited warmth as you rock out in silence, realizing that you're living life in the fast lane, picturing yourself amongst the cast of Detroit Rock City (when sober, you realize that you're an idiot for thinking this). The kind of high that makes you incredibly thankful that your only responsibility for the next two hours is to sit and enjoy Westbury's tiered cinema seating, since you're certain that you couldn't physically do much else (you could, but you're just too stoned to realize it).

More importantly though, I was in that incredible state that completely alters all perception, disjointing seemingly connected events. I would intensely focus on mere seconds at a time, only to find myself struggling to recall my latest epiphany. Such a skewed drug-induced lens allowed me to witness the film in a manner entirely different from how filmmakers expect you to view their work. In other words, for those two hours, I could see through ALL the bullshit. Hear that, Favreau? Yeah, fuck you.

Anyway, I plan on rewatching Iron Man so I can systematically point out every single piece of steaming, rotten garbage that makes up the movie. To give you a little preview of that, I'll discuss the previews that I sat through, stoned as ever:


The Happening (trailer)

I love M. Night Shyamalan, certainly more than most people. I am appalled that Unbreakable was a flop (Samuel L. Jackson's hair is worth the rental price alone), I defend Signs and The Village against their myriad criticisms, and I even lied to myself and others by saying that I liked Lady in the Water.

But with this trailer, I'm finally taking a stand against Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan (yeah, not such a cool name now, is it, bitch?). It doesn't take long to realize that this movie should be called "The Already Happened". To show this, I whipped up a handy little chart:

And I'll be damned if there's not a twist at the end!


The Love Guru (trailer)

Writer: Any ideas for the next film before the inevitable Austin Powers 4? Come on Myers, I know you've got a bunch more zany characters up your sleeve! Or we could just whip up another Wayne's World. All the money's in bullshit sequels these days.
Mike Myers: No go on WW3... Carvey's not interested because he's neither a hack nor a sellout. You know, I do do a really great Indian impression.
W: No you don't! You don't look or sound the least bit Indian!
MM: Who cares how bad my impression is? Don't you see that this is just another vehicle for us to hit the midget with shit for an hour and a half?
W: True. And I'm sure Verne's in. He lost his self-respect years ago! But we're gonna need some filler...
MM: OOH! We can ruin one of Max's favorite jokes by overly explaining it, turning it into a social faux pas that will only be said by middle-schoolers, frat guys and frumpy middle-aged secretaries that wrongly think that they're fun people!
W: Dammit, we can't lose Max! I hear he secretly loves most of this garbage. He thought Dodgeball was hilarious, though I'll be damned if you'd find that info on his facebook page!
MM: Jessica Alba should do the trick.

Yes, yes she should.


You Don't Mess With The Zohan (trailer)

I must give some creativity points to the Happy Madison crew... by opting to go from Isreali Counter-Terrorist to Fashion Designer, rather than going from Jackass to Athlete, they've extended beyond their typical plot formula:



Despite such formulaic plots, I'll probably see all three of these movies, since I love all that stupid shit. But you know what I don't love? Iron Man. More to come soon.

FUTURE SHIRT!

RickRoll'd

The joke's on you, Internet, because I love Rick Astley!

Three Films That Would Be Better Than The Bucket List

I think Rob Reiner has lost his thunder.

Undoubtedly one of the best directors of the '80s (Stand By Me, Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally), he has fallen quite far. And hell, he even co-wrote the first episoder of Happy Days! Yep, things we're looking rosy for Carl Reiner's kid... until South Park pointed out his affinity for club sandwiches:


Since then, he's directed three films:
Alex & Emma - Fyodor Dostoevsky must be rolling in his intimidating monstrosity of a Russian grave knowing that this piece of poop is loosely based on his life:


Rumor Has It - I'll just quote the last two lines of its Wikipedia page on this one.

Determined to win Jeff back, Sarah flies back to New York City and tells Jeff of her feelings. They eventually make up.

As the movie closes, we see Sarah and Jeff's wedding.

Whoops, forgot to say "spoiler alert". Apologies.

The Bucket List - Surely the most cliched, trite film ever made, telling the story of two old guys (Starring Jack Nicholson as Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as Morgan Freeman) from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds (guess which one's poor!) who become best buds because they're both dying from cancer. They set off to do all those fun things they've always wanted to do, because cancer time is happy fun time, apparently!

There is a very long list of films I would rather see than The Bucket List. In fact, there's a whole Wikipedia page on it! With this in mind, I even made up a few of my own that I'd rather see:


The Fuck It List



Jack Pickleson (About Clit, Wanger Management) and the famously liverspotted Morgan Creamin' (The Sum of All Rears, March of the Sexy Penguins) team up as a pair of affable, dying sex addicts, who pledge to travel around the world and sleep with all the hot women they never got a chance to bone. It would surely push the envelope on the Interracial Old Guy Threesome genre. Co-starring Kathy Bates.

The Suck It List


Shawn Michaels and Triple H are both dying of cancer, when they remember their glory days as D-Generation X, telling hicks and middle schoolers all around the globe to "Suck It!" while simultaneously giving their signature crotch chop. They reunite and pledge to spend their dying days homoerotically crotch chopping a whole slew of people who never got to see the DX magic; a Suck It swan song, if I may.
Highlights include telling Dakota Fanning and Vladimir Putin to suck it, simultaneously.

The Mr. Bucket List


Sadly, this one isn't a buddy flick. Feeling abandoned by the Chicken Limbo chicken and the gator from Gator Golf, and diagnosed with cancer, Mr. Bucket sets off on a last hurrah of ball-popping. Unfortunately, he gets into trouble after he is jailed by a Thai prince for attempting to pop his Katamari. While in prison, Mr. Bucket is forced to star in numerous Internet snuff films while his cancer (testicular, ironically enough) eats away at him. Directed by Oliver Stone.

The Commercial Drinking Game!

Last night, North Carolina beat up on Louisville en route to the Final Four. Always looking to help out my team, I somehow rationalized that being a good Tar Heel meant getting drunk during the game. My roommates and I drafted up some rules: Drink for a second for each point we score, drink every time Tyler Hansbrough looks like he's had a lobotomy, and so forth:


Anyway, this proved to be a terrific game for the four minutes; we were already drunk thanks to Psycho T McMurphy. But then something terrible happened... they went to commercial.

Uh oh. Now we're sitting there soberly listening to Sally Field talk about osteoperosis. Not good.

Solution? Let's make a commercial drinking game! Here are some rules I thought up. Feel free to suggest your own in the comments.

Drink every time a well dressed, light-skinned minority is shown doing something positive
Diversity's all the rage these days (it's the new black, if I may), and advertisers are sure to do their part, showing sharply dressed, attractive twenty-something minorities enjoying Mcdonalds and having perfect teeth, or something like that. But not just any minorities will do; they've gotta be non-threatening, white-friendly minorities, of course! Because of this, they're often as close to white as possible while still maintaining their minority status (Just think about how many commercials Tiger Woods stars in... had Davidson made it to the Final Four, I'm pretty sure Stephen Curry could have a career as a commercial actor).

As for the "doing something positive" part, this is what I like to call the Anti-Buckwheat. Since advertising execs know they can't portray minorities doing something negative (It's racist), these minorities are always cheery and fun and doing something great! They get inexplicable pleasure out of being customer service representatives, having life insurance or driving Volkswagens. Drink when you see 'em. By the way, I was always a fan of another kind of Anti-Buckwheat, namely Harry White, the hilariously dorky white kid on Nickelodeon's short-lived My Brother and Me:



Drink every time there's a caveman (Courtesy of Andy Tompkins):
Seriously, what's with all the cavemen? Commercials used to have monkeys in suits, now they have cavemen. Go figure. And be sure to drink when you're not busy figuring.

Drink when American car companies advertise without actually saying anything objective about their vehicles' performance/Drink when Japanese car commercials demonstrate the statistical, irrefutable greatness of their products
Chevrolet meeting:
"Our cars blow. Our trucks blow. How can we sell them?"
"America?"
"Fuck yeah."
"Ok, I got it. Let's get some shots of Martin Luther King, Jr. [see above], some soldiers, the World Trade Center and baseball."
"Hold on, hold on. We need some background tunes."
"Born in the U.S.A.?"
"Nah, I think education and the Internet have started cueing people on to the fact that that's not actually promoting Old Glory."
"OOOOH OOOOH PICK ME!"
"Yeah?"
"JOHN COUGAR MELLENCAMP!"
"Meeting adjourned."

Toyota meeting (as translated by me):
"Ummmm... Maybe we can drive one to the edge of a cliff because our breaks kick ass?"
"Sweet. What else?"
"Let's drop a truck from really high up, and then have another one drive really fast to show that we're even better than gravity!."
"YES. Meeting adjourned."

Ford meeting:
"Arright guys, we all know that the Japanese make better cars, but now Toyota's actually showing it through commercials??? WHAT DO WE DO?!"
"Let's tie an F-150 to one of those NASA centrifuges and spin it around!"
"One problem: That doesn't prove anything."
"Uhhhhhhh.... Space?"
"I'm sold. Meeting adjourned."

Drink every time you see a commercial for whatever you're drinking
I guess this one's because I'm a huge fan of everything self-referential. I mean c'mon, I blogged about blog. Whoa. Plus I've been researching the fourth dimension (it's there, ya damn naysayers), so I see this as having some deep, trippy Lewis Carrollian implications, which'll totally add to your buzz if you think hard enough about them.

Drink whenever products are advertised for geriatric people
You're drinking during the Price Is Right, which is totally awesome. Keep at it, it's almost noon.

Goodness Gracious Great Blogs a' Fire

So this is it, eh? I'm a blogger now. I've stepped into the Geocities of the twenty-first century: the Information Super Blogway. I'm one of those people.

What does some lowly college boy have to bring to a blogniverse dominated by political pundits, technological pundits, economical pundits, middle school girls and, to a lesser degree, culinary pundits, you may ask? Well boy are you in for a treat!

I mostly just think of silly shit and write about it. Like the word blog. THAT is some silly shit. For a wonderful attack on the word blog, I refer you to Maddox (First blog link! "blink"? Yeah, let's go with "blink". I'm such a revolutionary!). With such a goofy word so new to our collective vocabulary, I think it would be fun add a whole slew of words and phrases into our lexicon. For instance:

Blog Cabin: Perhaps this is cyberspace's second-wave response to Internet cafes? Instead of a place you can go to get some coffee and surf the web, at Blog Cabins you can write about random shit on the 'net, and they give you pancakes or something cabiny like that. Maybe some flannel.

Bilbo Bloggins: Way back when, there was a little hairy dude who adopted the kid from Flipper and saved middle earth, AND he wrote about it online every day. He was a bloggin' Hobbit, or "Bloggit", if I may.

Blogger: Now I know what you're thinking: "Blogger is a word. It's a website! Look six inches higher!" but nonono, not that kind of blogger. This kind of Blogger is a video game, where our hero runs across the street avoiding cars so he can successfully get to the Blog Cabin where he writes about how he almost got hit by a bunch of cars. Surely this would be a very interesting blog.

Got some more? Blogswell Cogs, perhaps? Blogavad Gita, maybe? Leave 'em in the comments.

And so concludes my first blog. Rockin'.