On Inconsequential Things That Matter To Me

1. Only a Game

I just recorded an interview for NPR's most excellent sports show Only a Game, which runs on more than 200 public radio stations (list here). It should be airing this weekend.

2. Louie Louie You're Gonna Die 

Are you watching Louie? Because let me tell you, if you're not watching Louie, you should be watching Louie. You may find it disconcerting; if so, I completely understand. I've never seen anything quite like it, a series of semi-comedic, moderately to highly uncomfortable set pieces that vary in tone from moderately horrifying to absurd. Last week's episode was like a stoner comedy in miniature*; this week's episode was like a Raymond Carver story. If nothing else, it is the most interesting television experiment I've seen in a long time.

3. Orchestrated Violence

I do understand why Antonio Cromartie's seeming inability to recollect his prodigious reproductive history was the big blogosphere takeaway from HBO's Hard Knocks last night, but my friend Chuck did raise an interesting quandary: Is it odd that Rex Ryan essentially orchestrated a fight in order to motivate one of his players? I do understand that there are far worse things that take place in professional football, but it does seem a little craven to orchestrate a throwdown in a sport that is just beginning to deal with the repercussions of excessive violence. Or maybe I'm just not swearing enough to understand the ethos.

4. I'm the Man Who Has the Ball

Really, at this point, with the obvious exception of talent, is there any profound difference between Kenny Powers and Roger Clemens?

*With the added attraction of Josh Hamilton**, star of the funniest post-college film ever made.
**The other Josh Hamilton. Not this one. Though I would pay at least $38 to read a 5,000 word essay by Posnanski about that Josh Hamilton.

On the Best News of the Day

So HBO has announced that it is renewing Eastbound and Down, the absurd and crude and bracing television mini-series about a John Rocker facsimile attempting to cope with his own failure. It's odd, because the star, Danny McBride, cannot even throw a baseball without looking like he might sprain several muscles he does not even have--he is the worst cinematic hurler since Wiley Wiggins in Dazed and Confused--and the humor is broad and occasionally ridiculous (the climax of the first season centered around one character literally getting his eye knocked out of his head by a fastball), and yet I would venture to say that this might be the most realistic portrayal of major-league baseball since Jim Bouton's Ball Four. In fact, I could (and will, I guess) make an argument that Kenny Powers, the main character, is the embodiment of the steroids era*, for he is angry and spiteful and disturbingly convinced of his own self-worth (his book-on-tape autobiography is the greatest exercise in egotism since Trump: The Art of the Deal). Here, in the form of a foul-mouthed washed-up relief pitcher, is the greatest representation yet of what baseball has done to itself in the past 15-20 years, and of how the game, in embracing its coarse and insular nature and refusing to address its problems, seems to have completely lost sight of its audience.

Then again, it's also just a damn funny program, and it feels like nothing I've ever seen before. Any show that can introduce with an entirely unsympathetic character and turn him into a cult hero in six episodes must be doing something right.

And with that, I'm f-ing out.

*And he does have a brief dalliance with steroids during Season 1.