May 2004

Only in San Francisco: Homeless “advocate” Allison Lum on today’s implementation of “Care Not Cash”:

“This gives homeless people less money to live on and nowhere near enough housing to take them,” she said. “It’s stealing from them, really. It’s an outrage, and the court just made it worse.”

Stealing? STEALING???

I’m not a fan of baseball, professional or otherwise. For me, it’s right up there on the excitement scale with watching paint dry. But I’m rather amused at the current case of baseball purists being all up in arms about the idea of introducing advertising into the game. Something about “crass commercialism” or such…

Say what?

Apparently, some baseball fans have this fantasy that the professional version of the game has nothing to do with money, and is all about a bunch of really dedicated volunteers playing around in a field near somebody’s barn. Apparently, they remain blissfully unaware of the strikes, the unimaginable salaries of their favorite players, the marketing schemes and broadcast rights, and of the extortionary tactics team owners use against the municipalities which house their stadiums…

Here’s a clue: professional baseball, like all professional sports, is ENTIRELY about money and commercialism. It’s a business, and its primary purpose is to create profit. Hence the term “professional”. And you know what? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The only problem is the sentimental fans who constantly whine about how “crass” and “commercial” the sport has become…

Unfortunately, these same fans are the ones who fall hook, line. and sinker for team owners’ pleas for new taxpayer-financed stadiums every five years. Their misguided notion of the game somehow blinds them to the fact that the team is a business which should be self-supporting, not some altruistic endeavor which must be publicly supported…

Yours, Mine, and Ours was on TCM this morning. The host made the same mistake so many others make: that the movie was the inspiration for The Brady Bunch. It’s completely untrue; the Brady pilot was written a couple of years prior to the release of the movie (which was a true story). It was the success of the movie, however, which finally paved the way for the actual PRODUCTION of the Bradys in 1969…

I’m sorry. I just expect those generally well-informed hosts on TCM to know little tidbits like this…

Tomorrow morning I say farewell to my thyroid gland. It’s a simple procedure; I drink a glass of radioactive iodine and wait a few days (or months) for the results. I’m prepared, I guess, but I’m still a little sad to see it go…

I could say the same thing about Tony Randall too, now that I think about it…