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.