Shoup Airlines

Oh, how the Mighty have fallen!

Since the Dodgers are playing like they really wished it had all ended in September, I’ve been reading up on the freshly opened hockey season.  I missed the entire second half of last season due to living under a rock affectionately called Basic Combat Training.  So there’s been some serious catching up to do. 

Apparently they are no longer the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.  Now known as simply the Anaheim Ducks I believe they’re slimming down the name in preparation to follow suit with their colleagues across the freeway and soon become the California Los Angeles Ducks of Anaheim in Orange County and Tijuana.  This way they can bridge the gap between the Latino community that has a huge fan base in hockey!

One of the few things I liked about the Ducks was the fact that they referred to their arena as the Pond.  Yes, it’s cheesy and a bit sally-ish compared to the likes of the Shark Tank or the Bank Vault but still.  More officially, it was the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim but God Bless those naming rights and the money that comes with them!  The facility is now just the Honda Center.  Sometimes I really wish capitalism would take a flying leap off a rather tall building. 

Green Light…Red Light! RED LIGHT!!

For those of you who watched/heard yesterday’s series opener between the Mets and Dodgers…um, yeah.

Things were looking good all the way up into the second inning.  Yep, they lasted that long!  Dodgers were up 1-0, and then it turned into tee-ball.  Kent and his pornstache on second, every Dodger fan’s favorite idiot, J.D. Drew, on first and Russell Martin knocking one back to the wall.  I remember thinking this would be a good inning.  Silly me. 

Kent misreads the play and tags up on second. Drew’s already in a dead sprint, I guess thinking the ball will carom off the wall weirdly.  Oh yeah, and he’s catching up VERY quickly to Kent. 

By the time Kent gets to third, the baseline coach can’t do anything but wave him around even though the perfectly executed relay from right field is obviously going to beat Kent because Drew is right on his heels.  Disaster control at its finest. 

You’d think it ends here, but you forget Drew is involved. Maybe Donnelly (third base coach) needs a big, bright, red stop sign out there for the less intelligent runners but something tells me that wouldn’t have worked.  Something more subtle, ooh I know, a sledgehammer!  Anyway, you get the picture.  For some reason Drew rounds third as Kent is being tagged at the plate.

The real kicker came when Lo Duca finally realized Drew was sliding in and tagged him.  He had no idea Drew was even coming in until he tagged him!  So an easy bases loaded scenario ends in a double play and sets the mood for the rest of the game, if not the series. 

In typical frustrating Dodgers fashion they come back from a 3 run deficit to tie the game and then throw Brad Penny in as a relief pitcher in the 7th.  Whuh?  He’s a starter not a reliever, and it showed.  Pitching them back into a 2 run hole, LA did everything to come back in the 9th but fell short on Garciaparra’s strike out.  At least Nomar didn’t injure himself in the swing! 

I have yet to understand how this team can be so bad and then so good and then bad again but make it exciting enough to continue watching.  Frustration at its finest!

At least I can console myself in that comical act called The Twinkies.  Such a beautiful inside the park home run that was! 

Super Size Me

Wow, if you haven’t seen this documentary, go see it. I’m sure you all know the premise of this one, if not you’ve been living under a rock. I’ve never liked McDonald’s to begin with, now I don’t think I’ll ever eat there again.

The most impressive experiment? Spurlock takes several hamburgers and fries from Mickey D’s and puts them each in an individual sealed glass container to see how they decompose. The fries… You know, those fries everyone loves lasted an entire 10 WEEKS without a single hint of decomposition, mold or anything! The kicker came when the intern threw them out by accident, so who knows how much longer they would have lasted. But I’m beginning to realize just what the cockroaches will eat after the nuclear holocaust.

You may be thinking, “Ew, documentary! They’re always long and boring.” Not so with this one. Morgan Spurlock keeps the narrating light, comical and all the information quite interesting.

The last tidbit of trivia is about this dude that has been eating at least two Big Macs a day for some umpteen years. The total was above 19,000 at the time of the film, which is ridiculous. The ludicrous part? This guy is a bean pole with a cholesterol level below 140!!