Umpires who are hurting the game

“Time! No, that’s a balk!” You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

Yeah…That Wasn’t Me

But thanks for visiting

40 Years on the Red Line

My latest video is now online! This year Infineon Raceway is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and I made a “short history” of the racetrack for the official webpage. I’m really happy with the final result, and have grown a lot as a “filmmaker” (I don’t know if this term applies yet). Filtering through several hours of material encompassing 40 years, wriggling that material down to 8 minutes, and then have everything line up with the interview portions that I shot for the documentary was a nice challenge.

Watch the video on Youtube or go to the Infineon Raceway webpage!

$126 Million!

Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure that nobody is more pissed off and depressed about Barry Zito’s performance with the Giants than Barry Zito. He’s a competitor, he’s a nice guy – he did not join the club to collect an oversized paycheck and lean back. But that doesn’t change the fact that the $500k/game pitcher that the Giants signed in an irrational “OMG Schmidt is leaving!” frenzy has gone 0-5 this season (after a less than stellar 2007 season), while the young pitching that San Francisco has been known for for several years is kicking ass while making a fraction of that salary. And that sucks.

In 4 years, Giants management has:

• Kept signing Barry Bonds mostly for the money that his homerun pursuit was generating, never getting close to winning a championship
• Traded away promising pitching for hitters that everybody had doubts about (and who left after 1/2 season)
• Spent ridiculous amounts of money on unnecessary pitching while not signing a single big hitter

And that sucks, no matter how well this young team will do this season. I actually believe in the team and think that they can pull off some amazing upsets! But that doesn’t excuse obvious piss-poor management.

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Hello, FCC?

Can somebody explain to me what the hell is going on with the Comcast SportsNet that is now taking hold of the Bay Area? I’m no legal expert, but a TV provider owning actual TV stations strikes me as bad. There’s a reason why the Supreme Court broke up the classic Hollywod studio system in 1948. And now we have a TV cable provider branding and producing its own TV program, while denying other sports channels widespread distribution? I’m sure I don’t understand all the subleties here, but this looks troubling. As of today, I can still receive my Giants and A’s games on the familiar channels, but isn’t the next logical step that the Comcast SportsNet, which has the exclusive on tons of local programming that is of public interest, become exclusive to Comcast customers? And isn’t the FCC supposed to prevent this stuff?

AMA Superbike Riders

I’m doing some housekeeping on my raceway footage, and I realized that I never uploaded the AMA Superbike panel that I recorded at the raceway earlier this month. Miguel Duhamel, Neil Hogson, Matt Lynn, Jake Holden and, in a separate video, Mat Mladin. Some fun stuff, Miguel Duhamel is funny as always.

Danica Patrick Wins

IndyCar is picking up some steam these days! Some early momentum was built last season, with a closely contested 2007 championship, Dario’s flips, and tempers flaring at Watkins Glen, but then the whole thing seemed to fizzle a bit with two former champions (Hornish and Franchitti) leaving for NASCAR. Well, look at where we are after just three races in 2008: Champ Car and the IRL have reunited to form one league, drivers from both sides of the old fence have already won races (19 year old Graham Rahal became the youngest driver ever to score a victory in St Petersburg), and now – finally – Danica Patrick has become the first woman to win a major automotive competition in the United States! I don’t really have a strong preference when it comes to racing – Victoria and I pay attention to both NASCAR and the IRL equally these days. But it’s great to see OWR slowly return to its former glory. Congrats Scott Dixon, congrats Graham Rahal, congrats Danica Patrick! Looking forward to the rest of the season, especially the stop at Infineon Raceway this August. And of course I’ll be there to document it all, up close and personal

Digital Juno

Gotta give a shoutout to the Fox DVD department: getting a free digital copy of the movie when you buy Juno on Blu-Ray is pretty damn cool! And useful. Sure, it’s DRM’ed, but the license acquisition is as painless as any other iTunes purchase. And even though we’ll watch the movie on the big TV, it’s great to have the movie on the iPhone for unexpected waits at the doctor etc. It’s good to see big studios embrace the digital frontier and deliver a purchase in multiple formats. I paid for it, I can watch it wherever I am! Perfect.

Free Lair Downloads

The free Lair Dragons and Control Pack is now available on the Playstation 3 store. Two new playable dragons, analog control option, and a whole bunch of fixes for free!

R.I.P. Ollie Johnston

Not much more to say than this, the last of the Nine Old Men has passed away. I remember how excited I was when I finally snagged a copy of The Illusion of Life, which was incredible hard to find for the longest time. For good reason, it’s the standard work on animation principles, no matter if 2D or 3D. And just now I’m reading Neal Gabler’s excellent Walt Disney biography, which obviously has quite a few references to and quotes from Johnston.

R.I.P. Ollie Johnston.