Octo-berries
Hello World,
Well, good old Will Shakespeare (perhaps more popularly known as "The Bard of Francis-on-Bacon") wasn't just whistling Dixie when he penned those immortal words, "Now is the October of our discontent!" Mind you, they didn't even have Dixie to whistle about back then, and baseball hadn't been invented, so a reasonable person might be forgiven for wondering what the blazes they could have had to complain about in the first place. Speaking of first place, ah, there's the rub, as the Bard also declaimed, and he was right on the button with that observation. Around here, it can be said that there is only Joy in half of Mudville, as the erratic New York Mets orchestrated what amounted to the biggest collapse in baseball history, to the despair of their distraught fans. Of course, the dinosaurs and I can tell you that they've been playing baseball for a good long time now, so being responsible for the biggest collapse in the history of the game is an achievement in futility of mythic proportions on an epic scale. Although the Mets were in first place in their division for almost all of the season, and in fact, enjoyed a 7-game lead with a mere 17 games left, they still managed to post a 5-12 record in those last games, while the 2nd place team reeled off a 15-1 record during that same span. Even the math-challenged among us could see the handwriting on the chalk board there, and the Mets lost the division to those dratted Phillies (boo!) on the last weekend of the season, and because they had been mathematically eliminated from the wild card, their playoff hopes died a-borning.
Meanwhile, over the river and through the woods, or rather, canyons of steel to the House That Ruth Built, where the expectations are ever so much higher, fans of the vaunted Yankees were bemoaning the fact that their pin-striped heroes were in the playoffs only by virtue of the wild card berth, making this the first time since 1997 that the team finished out of first place and didn't win the division title. [For Mets fans, please insert the world's smallest violin here.] So those souvenir T-shirts commemorating the 2007 Subway Series are destined to be nothing more than dust collectors, and more's the pity, I'm sure.
Elsewhere in the wide world of sports, at our house, we like to make allowances at the beginning of the seasons in all sports, for bad calls, botched play-by-play, or inept camera work, by saying, "Well, it's spring training for them, too." This week saw a bumper crop of these miscues, and often by time-tested TV professionals who have been working in sports for as long as the dinosaurs and I can remember. It all began at a college football game, where a new head coach had taken over, and was trying to imbue the team with his personal leadership style, or as the color commentator put it: "He wants to put his own staple on this team." Somehow I doubt that, and in fact, the mental image that conjures up is alternately alarming and ludicrous.
Then there was one of the last pre-season hockey games between the New York Rangers and rival New York Islanders, which inspired this headline in the local media: "Hockey Game Breaks Out At Rangers-Isles Rumble." This event (one hesitates to call it a game) featured 165 penalty minutes, including 10 fighting majors and six game misconducts, and went into overtime, and let's not forget, sports tans, this was pre-season! The pundits made a point of saying that one thing the Rangers fans do not have to worry about this season is that even in September, this club sticks up for one another. During yet another tussle on the ice, one of the Rangers announcers was fulsome in his praise of a smaller player defending his teammates regardless of his personal safety, and at one point he gushed: "He's not afraid to back down." I can't help but think that's pretty much the opposite of what he had in mind, and it was just a case of those pesky pre-season jitters getting the best of him.
Even after the season starts, you can't count on everyone being in mid-season form. During the summer, they hired a new coach of the New Jersey Devils, who started out right away making a lot of changes and alienating some of the veteran players. You might think that he was merely trying to put his own staple on the team, but the announcers explained the difficulty of trying to move the team in a better direction, while still keeping the players motivated. He summed it up with this arresting comment: "It's a huge fine line to walk for a new coach." I'm sorry, even in sports broadcasting, I just have to reject the concept of a "huge fine line" out of hand, and there is just no rescuing that from the realms of indefensible oxymorons. Now, everyone knows that my love of colloquialism knows no bounds, and I can appreciate a well-turned sports metaphor as much as the next fellow, but I just have to draw the (huge fine) line at that one.
Meanwhile at work, I got a call late in the day from the O.R. Manager at our sister institution in Mount Vernon, who needed to place an emergency order from one of our vendors, because the doctor hadn't let him know about the case soon enough. He was moaning and complaining that he was going to have to stay late and take care of this, solely as the result of the doctor's lack of forethought and consideration for the staff, and he just went on and on about the callous mistreatment, the injustice of it all, as well as the other slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that were his lot in life. It happened that this emergency order was from a vendor that, as far as I know, only provides one product to us, which is silicone breast implants. So in my efforts to make him feel better, I said, "Oh, cheer up, Valbert. Look at it this way. Someday you might actually meet this girl while you're out somewhere, and then you'll probably be glad that she got these breast implants." He laughed so hard, I thought he was going to break something.
And lest we think that it's just sports announcers who can't seem to get across what they really mean. I invite you to visit the web page of The Culinary Experience, which offers catering and special events out of Wheeling, Illinois, for the metro area of Chicago, Barrington, Schaumburg, Arlington Heights, Glenview, Northbrook and environs. Bill happened upon them in his travels through cyberspace, and provides this observation:
============================
Anyway, my favorite part is in the bullet points, which say:
This business...
was established in 2004
is female owned
has emergency service
It's a CATERER! What kind of "emergency service" does a caterer have? Oh well, I thought it was funny.
============================
Well, I always say, it's a huge fine line that you have to walk in the catering business, as I'm sure our friends in Wheeling have discovered, in the vast experience of their dozens and dozens of months in the industry. And while it's easy enough to scoff at these newcomers (settle down, dinosaurs!) I for one will not challenge their right to put their own staple on things, or in fact, even more than one staple if the spirit moves them. And I may as well warn everyone right now not to bother to threaten me over this, because after all, I'm not afraid to back down.
Well, good old Will Shakespeare (perhaps more popularly known as "The Bard of Francis-on-Bacon") wasn't just whistling Dixie when he penned those immortal words, "Now is the October of our discontent!" Mind you, they didn't even have Dixie to whistle about back then, and baseball hadn't been invented, so a reasonable person might be forgiven for wondering what the blazes they could have had to complain about in the first place. Speaking of first place, ah, there's the rub, as the Bard also declaimed, and he was right on the button with that observation. Around here, it can be said that there is only Joy in half of Mudville, as the erratic New York Mets orchestrated what amounted to the biggest collapse in baseball history, to the despair of their distraught fans. Of course, the dinosaurs and I can tell you that they've been playing baseball for a good long time now, so being responsible for the biggest collapse in the history of the game is an achievement in futility of mythic proportions on an epic scale. Although the Mets were in first place in their division for almost all of the season, and in fact, enjoyed a 7-game lead with a mere 17 games left, they still managed to post a 5-12 record in those last games, while the 2nd place team reeled off a 15-1 record during that same span. Even the math-challenged among us could see the handwriting on the chalk board there, and the Mets lost the division to those dratted Phillies (boo!) on the last weekend of the season, and because they had been mathematically eliminated from the wild card, their playoff hopes died a-borning.
Meanwhile, over the river and through the woods, or rather, canyons of steel to the House That Ruth Built, where the expectations are ever so much higher, fans of the vaunted Yankees were bemoaning the fact that their pin-striped heroes were in the playoffs only by virtue of the wild card berth, making this the first time since 1997 that the team finished out of first place and didn't win the division title. [For Mets fans, please insert the world's smallest violin here.] So those souvenir T-shirts commemorating the 2007 Subway Series are destined to be nothing more than dust collectors, and more's the pity, I'm sure.
Elsewhere in the wide world of sports, at our house, we like to make allowances at the beginning of the seasons in all sports, for bad calls, botched play-by-play, or inept camera work, by saying, "Well, it's spring training for them, too." This week saw a bumper crop of these miscues, and often by time-tested TV professionals who have been working in sports for as long as the dinosaurs and I can remember. It all began at a college football game, where a new head coach had taken over, and was trying to imbue the team with his personal leadership style, or as the color commentator put it: "He wants to put his own staple on this team." Somehow I doubt that, and in fact, the mental image that conjures up is alternately alarming and ludicrous.
Then there was one of the last pre-season hockey games between the New York Rangers and rival New York Islanders, which inspired this headline in the local media: "Hockey Game Breaks Out At Rangers-Isles Rumble." This event (one hesitates to call it a game) featured 165 penalty minutes, including 10 fighting majors and six game misconducts, and went into overtime, and let's not forget, sports tans, this was pre-season! The pundits made a point of saying that one thing the Rangers fans do not have to worry about this season is that even in September, this club sticks up for one another. During yet another tussle on the ice, one of the Rangers announcers was fulsome in his praise of a smaller player defending his teammates regardless of his personal safety, and at one point he gushed: "He's not afraid to back down." I can't help but think that's pretty much the opposite of what he had in mind, and it was just a case of those pesky pre-season jitters getting the best of him.
Even after the season starts, you can't count on everyone being in mid-season form. During the summer, they hired a new coach of the New Jersey Devils, who started out right away making a lot of changes and alienating some of the veteran players. You might think that he was merely trying to put his own staple on the team, but the announcers explained the difficulty of trying to move the team in a better direction, while still keeping the players motivated. He summed it up with this arresting comment: "It's a huge fine line to walk for a new coach." I'm sorry, even in sports broadcasting, I just have to reject the concept of a "huge fine line" out of hand, and there is just no rescuing that from the realms of indefensible oxymorons. Now, everyone knows that my love of colloquialism knows no bounds, and I can appreciate a well-turned sports metaphor as much as the next fellow, but I just have to draw the (huge fine) line at that one.
Meanwhile at work, I got a call late in the day from the O.R. Manager at our sister institution in Mount Vernon, who needed to place an emergency order from one of our vendors, because the doctor hadn't let him know about the case soon enough. He was moaning and complaining that he was going to have to stay late and take care of this, solely as the result of the doctor's lack of forethought and consideration for the staff, and he just went on and on about the callous mistreatment, the injustice of it all, as well as the other slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that were his lot in life. It happened that this emergency order was from a vendor that, as far as I know, only provides one product to us, which is silicone breast implants. So in my efforts to make him feel better, I said, "Oh, cheer up, Valbert. Look at it this way. Someday you might actually meet this girl while you're out somewhere, and then you'll probably be glad that she got these breast implants." He laughed so hard, I thought he was going to break something.
And lest we think that it's just sports announcers who can't seem to get across what they really mean. I invite you to visit the web page of The Culinary Experience, which offers catering and special events out of Wheeling, Illinois, for the metro area of Chicago, Barrington, Schaumburg, Arlington Heights, Glenview, Northbrook and environs. Bill happened upon them in his travels through cyberspace, and provides this observation:
============================
Anyway, my favorite part is in the bullet points, which say:
This business...
was established in 2004
is female owned
has emergency service
It's a CATERER! What kind of "emergency service" does a caterer have? Oh well, I thought it was funny.
============================
Well, I always say, it's a huge fine line that you have to walk in the catering business, as I'm sure our friends in Wheeling have discovered, in the vast experience of their dozens and dozens of months in the industry. And while it's easy enough to scoff at these newcomers (settle down, dinosaurs!) I for one will not challenge their right to put their own staple on things, or in fact, even more than one staple if the spirit moves them. And I may as well warn everyone right now not to bother to threaten me over this, because after all, I'm not afraid to back down.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 3:20 PM
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