Off-Day Entertainments: Wholly unrelated.

And now, for no good reason, five excellent song and music video pairings.



That coal miner sure can dance.



When they did this, they did it live backwards...and replayed it...backwards!



A recent addition to my list. This would make a good animated feature unless Disney got his dead and deadly hands on it.



Either you love or hate "Genius of Love," and so it is with the video. I prefer cheaply-drawn animation to the expensive flawless sort.



One of the first music videos of any kind. One of my favorite non-album tracks, too.

LOSS 9,987: You poor, poor bastards.

Good series against Arizona, boring series with Colorado approaching (in anticipatory terms, as interleague continues to unjustify its value), but I'd like to focus on another team today, and another city. The city is Philadelphia, the team, the Phillies. The approaching event: loss #10,000.



The Phillies are on the verge of a historical level of suck, much like our President is and will be by January 2009. But while our president only has eight years to send the country into the suck, the Phillies have had over 100 years to suck, and were it not for that one solitary championship season, the dread would be unimaginable...as it is, the Marlins have more championships than the Phillies in about 1/10 of the time. They've had players like these on some ignonimous, and most infamously, blew a 6.5 game lead with 12 games to go in 1964. That's beyond the Sox's 1978, and to even compare them is like comparing losing a lot of weight on a three-month Atkins diet versus doing the same thing in a couple weeks, with stomach stapling and Dexatrim.



Oh, Philadelphia. The tourist attractions are psuedo-1776, the core hasn't changed since 1976. A city epitomized in its famous cheesesteak, a food one craves, then eats half of and starts feeling ill, then eats the rest of and feels nothing but heartburn, heartache, and regret. No championships for over 20 years will make you do stuff like booing Santa Claus.

The Phillies should be celebrated...for being around a very long time, and ultimately running the A's out of town, sorta. Philadelphia's a nice place, although it's easy to make fun of.



Philadelphia: It ain't Cleveland. But that William Penn (statue) sure is a vindictive sum' bitch.

Off-Day Entertainments: EXTREEEEEME!

In honor of the unofficial end of Carl Pavano in pinstripes, I present the genuine dumbest idea ever. Thanks to Knuckle Curve.

Off Day Amusements: Starting Lineup

For those who don't know or don't remember, Starting Lineup was a set of collectible pro sports action figure collectibles, exactly the sort of thing that's fun for kids and embarrassing for adults who have still kept them in their boxes. (Or should be.) The interesting thing my friend J. Laakso noted is that these figures look NOTHING like the athletes they're supposed to resemble. In an era of freakish verisimilitude in video games (seriously, compare/contrast), this seems almost quaint. A few examples. (There are worse, which I've seen in baseball card shops, but unfortunately good pictures of these online are hard to find.)




Barry Bonds, smiling. Additionally, his head looks a little big, since Pittsburgh Bonds wasn't yet San Francisco Bonds. That's not a 755+ home run swing there, by the way; Barry is nowhere near facing a pitcher, unless that pitcher's throwing from third base.




Someone at Kenner wasn't even trying.




It's not enough that this looks nothing like Barry Larkin; the features are so generic this may as well be a black Ken doll.




Below= Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson.
Above= Some guy with his fists closed coming to kick your ass. This was made in 1997, proving Kenner never stopped not trying.