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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Wednesday, November 23, 2011Megdal: (Mets Need) Gold, Jerry, Gold!Megdal has the “The Seinfeld-Reyes Solution”.
New man…in front office? Repoz
Posted: November 23, 2011 at 06:53 PM | 144 comment(s)
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EDIT: Although I do find the endowed Seinfeld Chair in Shortstop Studies an entertaining notion.
Those of you who got it, bless your hearts. In my eyes, you border on a cult, because your ways and beliefs are completely mysterious, you share a bizarre system of beliefs and a language all your own, and I can't help but just kind of back away when you start talking about the various shared references that only you all understand.
Since Jerry Seinfeld became such a big star, I've always kind of wished the Mets' biggest celebrity fan was somebody I actually liked. But it's Seinfeld. Just my luck.
I'm pretty sure he was commenting on the lack of awesomeness of John Goodman, Billy Bob Thornton and John Hamm. Personally, I think 2 of the three are just fine.
QueensMets fans.I considered that, but it simply makes no sense, as all of those guys are, in fact, awesome. Well, maybe "awesome" should be reserved for only the stratospherically great, in which case I'll amend that to say that all three are pretty great.
Somehow, I read "Bob Newhart" from that.
I don't think I can name a celebrity Mets fan beyond Seinfeld.
You're not alone. That makes two of us.
Brad Pitt?
Maybe the guys in Metallica. They once showed up at a Raiders playoff game and put on a pregame show in the parking lot for the assembled fans (which is, in fact, awesome).
They might like the A's, too, for all I know.
Jon Stewart. Billy Joel seems like he'd be a Mets fan too, but I don't know if he's a baseball fan.
Maintaining financial flexibility is a reason not to sign anyone, I suppose, but hardly a good reason not to sign a fine player to a solid deal. I wouldn't sign Reyes for what he's likely to get for baseball reasons, but for reasons of "financial flexibility"?
I cringe at the later years of the show, which seem for whatever reason to want to roll around in how horrifying people--and its main characters--can be, but the first couple of seasons are good. Solid, ensemble, sitcom good, but nothing transcendent, and I lived in NYC for a decade so that part of the show isn't lost on me. I get liking it, and not liking it. I don't get thinking it's the finest show human beings have ever put together.
Hard to comprehend. What do you find funny? I mean my wife doesn't laugh at Seinfeld but that's because 90% of it goes straight over her head. But to get it, shrug, and move on...I don't get that.
I happen to love Seinfeld, but I'm from NYC. I will freely admit that if you're from outside of the NY area, it might wholly baffling.
Those of you who got it, bless your hearts. In my eyes, you border on a cult, because your ways and beliefs are completely mysterious, you share a bizarre system of beliefs and a language all your own, and I can't help but just kind of back away when you start talking about the various shared references that only you all understand.
It's one of those shows that you either loved or hated. No one seems to think it was "okay." I actually didn't pay much attention to it during it's initial run, but I've seen every episode a dozen times now via reruns and have developed quite an appreciation for it now. But I have met several people who hated it too, so you're not alone, Sam. I think it's right up there with the Simpsons as being one of the most quotable shows of all time and having the biggest influence on modern pop culture.
Arrested Development was the show for me that everyone who watched it said was so awesome and I never understood the appeal. I got it, it just wasn't funny (even though Jason Bateman and Michael Cera have gone on to have funny careers since).
Salman Rushdie came out as a Yankees fan on Twitter during the playoffs.
As for celebrity A's fans, I thought Steve Malkmus might be a fan, but I googled it and he likes the Dodgers.
Chris Rock and Robert DeNiro.
I thought it was one of those shows that you either loved or thought was "okay."
We win.
Yes, despite Jim Belushi, we still win.
I say the same thing about the Office. I don't think I've ever once laughed at that show(it makes andy kaufman appear to actually have said something funny once in comparison....and nobody on the planet, has ever, ever laughed at andy kaufman....carrot top gets more laughs.)
Seinfeld wasn't a bad show, but man the characters are about the worse examples of human beings on the planet, and it makes you want to retch just watching the show and for one second remotely caring about these people.
"Jerry, are you blind?! He's a writer. He said his name was Sal Bass. Bass, Jerry! Instead of salmon he went with bass. He just substituted one fish for another!"
And that's real.
Sure, but unlike, say, Friends, the show knows and acknoweldges that its characters are pretty crappy people.
No. The Brewers win.
Bob Uecker > Bill Murray
Any other living person > Jim Belushi
This
I was always under the impression that new yorkers thought that the seinfeld characters were actually pretty good examples of the typical new yorker(which is why I have always thought of new york as a step below a cesspool...I mean if a narcisstic ugly moron like George and a narcisstic anal attentive ditz like Jerry represented new york, I would be the first person to push the button to nuke that place off the face of the world.... I mean seriously we can't let those type of people breed.(at least the friends characters---except Joey and Rachel---pretended to be somewhat human)
I absolutely love Seinfeld. My group in high school quoted it regularly (these were the first few seasons), and it was the only appointment TV when I was in college. I watched the reruns for years, and reached the point where I knew every episode; when I'd start to play one, I'd quickly run through all the jokes in my head, laugh at them once, then watch the episode and laugh at them a second time.
I felt a bit saturated a few years ago, so I stopped recording the reruns on my DVR. I now have the itch to watch an episode or two.
Pretty much. Same goes for LA of course. Everybody hates LA, but of course nobody in LA is actually from LA, it just the two or three best, most attractive people from every town in flyover country.
Anyway, I watched the Jon Lovitz cancer/George's poker face episode tonight, seriously if you can't find a laugh in there that's a you problem.
BTW, I only just now, while making my xmas list, found out that WKRP's dvd set has been utterly mutilated by music rights issues. So sad.
Billy Beane never should have changed the station's music format.
Julia Stiles is a Mets fan.
edit: Oh ####, Wodehouse was a Mets fan late in life?
Really? That is troubling. I think the Mets could also claim Rex Stout, too. Hmm.
"As God is my witness I thought turkeys could fly"; I thought WKRP was a great show in its heyday, that's too bad about the dvd set issue. The Seinfeld show always appealed to me because the characters seemed so real, self-centered and without a shred of humanity, if that doesn't basically sum up the vast majority of the people in the world (not just New Yorkers), then I don't know what would. Happy Thanksgiving everyone, only three months until pitchers and catchers report.
They're pretty good examples of typical people: a lot of good stuff but also insecure, petty, and selfish at times. In the later years, they just dropped all the good stuff out. I thought the final show was a pretty brilliant concept--a final condemnation of these awful people and by association, the viewers had come to know and love them.
I haven't seen them, so I don't know. I usually feel online commenters from a massive group are not really generally to be trusted, but the Amazon reviewers really lay into how badly it harms the show, sometimes in great detail.
That's super-awesome.
I suppose all of us have a few shows that have tremendous popular appeal that for some season we just don't get. Cheers is pretty high on the list for me. I've watched a bunch of episodes and I've never found it to be funny. I was a big fan of Taxi, though, so it's not "new television snobbery" (although I would say that television is pretty much on a different plane today, especially if you consider cable shows). I also don't see the appeal of the Cosby Show.
If you cared about the characters in Seinfeld no wonder you didn't find it that funny.* Seinfeld is essentially a black (as in dark humor not African-American) comedy in which our foibles are taken to their extreme. If you wanted a precedent, the closest that springs to mind is Blackadder.**
It's a bit like the difference between the British and American versions of The Office. The British version has no sympathy at all for the Ricky Gervais character -- he is irredeemably smarmy, petty, unconfident, incompetent and borderline delusional.
One thing that amazes me about Seinfeld (and the Larry David thing whose title escapes my mind at the moment) is how well they work despite the fact that the actors aren't particularly good.
* Like many great things, it was great early and only rare moments of greatness as it aged.
** as opposed to, say, Buffalo Bill (I was probably its only fan) where only the main character is despicable. And quite different from All in the Family where Archie was despicable but chastened in every episode.
Curb Your Enthusiasm killed Seinfeld for me. I thought Seinfeld was a very good show but sometimes a bit too campy. Curb is like all of the best parts of Seinfeld, plus not having to worry about getting things past the network.
Do you know that Curb is pretty much unscripted? That might make you appreciate the actors a bit more.
I actually liked Seinfeld, just don't love the show(I can think of easily a dozen sitcoms that I were greater--of course that includes a non-sitcom like M*A*S*H*, so I should probably call them scripted comedy shows--actually after trying to make a list, I'm not sure I could come up with 10 that meet the requirements of something I really liked and something that was very good for a sustained time, I could make a list of easily a dozen shows I preferred but which are by no means great shows see Psych, or a list of a dozen shows that are arguably better, but that I never really got into--see All In the Family)
I don't think I could ever like the Office, I've tried multiple times to try and get into that show and it just does nothing for me. The Steve Carrell character completely ruins it for me. I'm used to a Kramer type of caricature being a supporting character--and even there Kramer had more depth-- but as the primary character it just doesn't work for me.
Just one guy. James Hetfield is.
It just takes certain Newyorkcitification to truly appreciate that show...
Haha, hardly.
Curb Your Enthusiasm killed Seinfeld for me. I thought Seinfeld was a very good show but sometimes a bit too campy. Curb is like all of the best parts of Seinfeld, plus not having to worry about getting things past the network.
Watching 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' you really see looking back, what a huge amount of that show was Larry David driven & created, incredible. Watching Seinfeld now is sorta like watching a childs program by comparison.
30 Rock is full of New York specific jokes. I find myself explaining some bits to people who do not live in NYC.
I thought it was very New Yorky. The Puerto Rican day parade, Kramer rents a horse and buggy, traffic on the Van Wyck. And a ton of the jokes were based on real NYC locations. The Soup Nazi, La Caridad, H&H Bagels.
I guess it's not as New Yorky as 30 Rock (or Sex and the City). But I remember contrasting it with Friends, which had virtually no New York color.
Also, Walt, I'm not sure how one could call Jason Alexander not that good of an actor.
Thing about Jason Alexander is that when you see him as himself, like on talk shows or whatever, he has this aura of dignity about him that's completely absent when he's being George Costanza. I don't know how he does that. He's like the opposite of David Ogden Stiers, who put on that kind of aura when he was playing Winchester on M*A*S*H*.
QFT. Hot women who don't know they're hot are freakin' FLNRSA kryptonite.
Roger Ebert went to school with Stiers, and wrote that he always talked like Winchester. Nobody could figure out where that came from.
I agree with the second part, but that's what makes it an enjoyable show! See also, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Newsroom, The Thick of It...or hell, any other show or movie that I've loved in the past 15 years.
EDIT: Black Adder another good addition, thanks for the reminder.
DOUBLE EDIT: Just another data point. I love Seinfeld and have no interest in ever setting foot in New York.
I honestly don't understand how anyone could say this. It's so absolutely foreign to my thinking. Do you have no interest in ever seeing Paris or Tokyo?
I've been to Paris twice!
Though both times it was just my city of departure after a trip around Europe, and I didn't get around much aside from watching In Bruges in a cinema. Generally I'm just not much of a fan of big cities, and I have irrational biases against New York (thanks a lot Yankees) and Paris that unfairly sully them in my eyes. I wouldn't be against visiting Tokyo, though I'd probably need to go with someone who knew the city fairly well to feel comfortable.
The reason I rate Seinfeld and Curb light years above all other sitcoms (not that I've seen them all) is Larry David's explicit "no hugging, no learning" mantra, the absence of which makes shows like All In The Family and even many episodes of The Simpsons simply unbearable.** And shows like Taxi and It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia are just way too formulaic and jokey-jokey for my taste. There's no real bite to either of them.
**I can't even imagine (thank God) a book with a title like The Torah According to Jerry Seinfeld, whereas there is indeed a book with the cringeworthy name of The Gospel According to the Simpsons.
EDIT: Of course those episodes of The Simpsons that stick to the humor and forego the preaching (and the celebrity cameos) are among the greatest comic shows ever.
Oh don't get me wrong, I love traveling. I just enjoy smaller places I can walk and wrap my head around. My all-time favourite trips are probably driving the north coast of Wales, poking around Belgium for a couple weeks, and renting a car and driving a massive circle around France and seeing just about everything BUT Paris.
* JERRY: Anywhere in the city?
GEORGE: Anywhere in the city - I'll tell you the best public toilet.
JERRY: Okay.. Fifty-fourth and Sixth?
GEORGE: Sperry Rand Building. 14th floor, Morgan Apparel. Mention my name - she'll give you the key.
JERRY: Alright.. Sixty-fifth and Tenth.
GEORGE: (Scoffs) Are you kidding? Lincoln Center. Alice Tully Hall, the Met. Magnificent facilities.
* I never new I could drive like that. I was going faster than I've ever gone before, and yet, it all seemed to be happening in slow motion. I was seeing three and four moves ahead, weaving in and out of lanes like an Olympic skier on a gold medal run. I knew I was challenging the very laws of physics. At Queens Boulevard, I took the shoulder. At Jewel Avenue, I used the median. I had it. I was there.. and then.. I hit the Van Wyck. They say no one's ever beaten the Van Wyck, but gentlemen, I tell you this - I came as close as anyone ever has. And if it hadn't been for that five-car-pile-up on Rockaway Boulevard, that numbskull would be on a plane for Seattle right now instead of looking for a parking space downstairs.
* What am I, a bulimic, chain-smoking stenographer from Staten Island?
* Derek Jeter: We won the World Series.
George Costanza: In six games.
* Newman: June 14, 1987.... Mets Phillies. We're enjoying a beautiful afternoon in the right field stands when a crucial Hernandez error to a five run Phillies ninth. Cost the Mets the game.
Kramer: Our day was ruined. There was a lot of people, you know, they were waiting by the player's parking lot. Now we're coming down the ramp... Newman was in front of me. Keith was coming toward us, as he passes Newman turns and says, "Nice game pretty boy." Keith continued past us up the ramp.
I like those too, but being completely unable to "wrap my head around" a place is its own type of awesome. I grew up in NYC, but I can walk it up and down and still find things I had no idea about or cannot explain. (That does not happen much in my new home, the comparatively small San Francisco). The most intense and inexplicable big city I've been to is Mumbai - I imagine you'd hate it - it is so busy and rude and dense and complicated that I don't think anyone understands what the #### is going on. Not relaxing, but fascinating.
Never mind. Wiki is my friend:
The episode also featured the New York area code 646. When the 212 area code ran out of numbers, 646 was created. Elaine repeatedly gets a piercing high beep in her phone after Kramer signs up to receive restaurant menus by fax with a service called "Now We're Cookin'". Elaine then gets a new number with the 646 area code. She is not happy with the new number because she believes the area code makes it too long to dial. She is proved correct when attempting to give her number to a man in the park. Initially eager, he reads the number, asks if it is in New Jersey. Her response is, "No, it's just like 212 except they multiplied every number by 3… and added 1 to the middle number." He makes an excuse and walks off.
Not sure that is a New York centric conceit though, roughly around that time even in St Louis, we were transitioning from just a 314 area code to a larger influx of 573 area codes(573 means you are a hoosier/redneck/white trash---type of thing)
That's the mantra that makes Seinfeld after season three unpleasant--for me--though. It's as unrealistic a formula as mandatory hugs and positive life lessons. I find a lot of late MASH unwatchable for just that reason.
I can understand not liking Arrested Development, but I can't really understand saying that Bateman and Cera have had funny careers since then.
And shows like Taxi and It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia are just way too formulaic and jokey-jokey for my taste. There's no real bite to either of them.
No bite to It's Always Sunny? Buh?
It's Always Sunny has a lot of bite. I always say that show is a lot like Seinfeld, only every character is George Costanza.
In an interview I saw with Glenn Howerton (Dennis) where he's listing their influences he gets to Seinfeld, stops, and sheepishly admits that they're pretty much just ripping him off.
Which is part of the problem. Too much of one particular type and the bite's effect is diminished.
In an interview I saw with Glenn Howerton (Dennis) where he's listing their influences he gets to Seinfeld, stops, and sheepishly admits that they're pretty much just ripping him off.
The "bite" I see in Seinfeld but not in Sunny derives from the fact that the former seems to be a spot on parody of classic modern New York urban types, whereas the latter just seems like an endless procession of adorable goofiness, a few "edgy" comments that really aren't that edgy at all, and a comic sensibility that doesn't seem particularly original.
And then there's this: Unless you count The Simpsons, which of course is a cartoon, the side characters in Seinfeld are in a class by themselves. We could sit here for half an hour listing all the Puddys and the Mr. Petermans and the Newmans and the Sids and the Silvios and the Soup Nazis and the Banyas and the Romanian "comedians" and the gay armoire thieves and we'd still leave someone out. It's an endless list. I've never seen any other show (again, not counting The Simpsons) which could even remotely match that, although Curb is getting there. If you leave them out, the show loses nearly everything, and I think that people who don't "get" it, don't "get" it in great part because it takes awhile for these classic side characters to get absorbed in your consciousness. In that sense, Seinfeld is a lot like baseball.
If I go to Paris though, it won't be in the summer. Anyone I know that has been there has complained about the overwhelming stench of dog #### and human piss.
The only remotely large cities I've been in are Denver, LA, Vegas, Montreal, Ottawa, Boston and Toronto. Denver was pretty cool, but I could care less if I ever set foot in LA or Vegas again.
I actually agree with this. "Ha ha look how awful" all the time just isn't that funny to me either.
You mean India, at the Oval? Great show, but 12 episodes is too small a sample size.
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