OPENING “DAY” ?

OPENING “DAY” ?
March 24, 2010

The Red Sox opening “day” game currently has 6000 + unsold tickets. That’s a lot of tickets. Now, I’m not naïve enough to think that they won’t sell. The scalpers (I mean brokers) will see to that.

I’m actually kind of glad about this. For the past 5 years Red Sox management has looked at “Red Sox” nation as a giant ATM. They act as if they can basically take a crap on our chest, and as long as their singing “Sweet Caroline” we will say thank you, and ask for another.

Putting the Yankees on opening day and moving it to Sunday night is a perfect example of what I’m saying. [Aside: Why oh why are they putting the Yankees on opening day. It makes no sense. Opening day is good enough as it is. You don’t put chocolate on pizza do you? ]

Opening day is supposed to be a sunny afternoon game where you sneak out of work early to and have a couple of midweek/mid day beers, or you sneak your son out of school and have one of those father/son Normam Rockwell moments. It’s supposed to be what’s good about baseball. The game is never very good, so it’s the experience that you’re going for.

Instead, the geniuses on Yawkey (and to be fair in Bristol, CT and wherever the hell Bud Selig works) have figured out a way to screw even this up. Let me see if I can do the math.

Big recession + night game in early April + work the next morning + ESPN + Yankees + Easter = opening day?

Let’s say you want to take your son to the game. Here's what you need to do

(1) Acquire tickets. Say 200 bucks for average seats.

(2) Leave your family. So what if they are all there for Easter dinner. Gotta go!

(3) Get into the city. 20 bucks on the train for two. Or you can pay 40+ to park (the Special “Yankee Game Surcharge)

(4) Sit through a 4 ½ hour game. ESPN = extra commercials and both the sox and Yankees work pitchers mercilessly.

(5) Bring a winter park - Average night time temperature in Boston on April 4th is in the mid 40’s

(6) Hit the ATM – two hot dogs, two sodas, a program and two hot chocolates will cost you just this side of healthcare reform. Actually probably around 35 bucks. Beers are $7 each.

(7) Get home around 1:00 AM. That is assuming you stay the whole game.Oh, and the commuter rail doesn’t run that late so you may need to get a cab.

There’s not a lot of people who can do all that. In fact, there are very few.

And it’s sad because the only reason this is being done is so that ESPN/MLB can sell their advertising inventory for the first “Sunday Night Baseball” game of the year.

So when you’re sitting in your office on Monday morning - sleep deprived and sick from sitting out in the cold for 5 hours, $350+ poorer, and with a wife who wont speak to you anymore - remember to hum “Sweet Caroline” and thank Larry Lucchino and MLB for such a great Opening “Day” experience.

HGH Testing in Sports? Lebron to take up Baseball? The End of the MMA glory days?

Earlier in the week, a story squeaked across the wire all about a British Rugby player being suspended for HGH. This shouldn’t shock anyone who’s seen a match. Those dudes are huge. But that’s not the scary part. The fact that there is now a viable test for HGH has the potential to rock the sports world as we know it. Following the recent steriod crack down. HGH has become the go-to PED of choice for many pro athletes. Need examples?

Baseball: World Champion NY Yankees had 6 key players over 35 (petitte, Jeter, Damon, Matsui, Riveria, Posada (Arod's 34)) who all "suddenly" had career years and two who have already admitted to using PEDs (Arod and Petite)



Basketball: 18 year old kids coming right out of high school competing with grown men? Suddenly they put on 30 lbs of muscle onto an already chislded frame? Lebron will be taking up baseball as a hobby ala MJ if this goes mainstream

MMA: Brock Lesner anybody? Ok, forget him, he’s an anomaly from the WWE days. What about Randy “THE NATURAL” Coture. 43 and Still ripping guys up – Now I don’t doubt that he’s a skilled athlete, but just use the “head test” He make Barry Bonds look like Beatle Juice.

The reaction to this teting could just mean that people will move onto other substances, but what if this becomes the next big scandal? Will the NBA go back into a funk when some of its biggest stars are discovered using? What about baseball, its seemed to have successfully moved on from the steriod era, how would this affecct them.

Those two entities are well protected by unions who will invoke 'player privacy' issues to postpone testing as long as they can.


But what about MMA? Theres really no one to protect them (no big network contract, no "fighters" union) All they have is a single entity (the UFC) who's commissioner could likely fall under similar scrutiny as its athletes.


WWE got away with it the same way hollywood did..."Its Entertainment" ...But how does a sport that's desprerately struggling to find legitamacy move forward when something like this hits them? Will this pasts few years explosion be looked at with the same jaundiced eye as the home run chase of the 1990's?

Or, has the public become so jaded, so sick of this story that it just shrugs its shoulders and moves on.

Personally, I don’t really care if pro athletes want to do performance enhancing drugs. I have an accountant who uses Adderol to get through the day and lawyer who takes Ambien to get through the night. Do these help them perform their jobs better? Damn right they do. But as long as there going to be a concern about the use of drugs in sports (athletes have to be role models after all) this is going to be an issue…

And perhaps thats going to be a big part of what keeps mma out of the spotlight. The people who watch it - and more importantly, the people who cover it from a media perspective - "get it." We grew up with steriods in sports, we grew up with ritalin in schools. We're not the 50+ year old sports writers and broadcasters who continue to whine about the heroes of their youth being over shadowed like they have in baseball and football.

I have a hard time envisioning someone saying "remember the good old days before all these punk kids ruined the sport." No one is pining away for the days when Royce Gracie would fight a 400lb sumo wrestler, an aging boxer, and then pull on a guys ponytail for 20 minute to win a tournament.

These are the glory days for MMA, I just hope they realize it and take care not to lose them.

Somebody call in SVU...I just paid a 70% markup on Buffett tickets at Live Nation.

Does that come with a Reach Around?

Ok, never mind why I would go see Jimmy Buffett. That’s my issue. For anyone who’s never gone, it’s kind of like a one day spring break for 30 something’s. That’s the best sales pitch I’ve got. If it’s not for you, then I don’t think ill convince you.

No, my issue here is not about mid-life crises being lived out in a parking lot, it’s about the ridiculous nature of ticket pricing.

If you live in Boston, scalping is just the way things get done. Its been overlooked by cops, the AG and everyone else, so we’re sort of used to paying a fortune for Red Sox and other sports tickets. Its just a way of life (although my friend got arrested last year as one of 5 people for “scalping tickets” on opening day…the reality was that we were trying to sell some extras we had bought on Stub Hub. We paid 200 bucks for them and were trying to sell for 100…the red sox agreed not to press charges and it was dropped…gee thanks.)

Ok, so a lawn seat for buffet is 28.50. Seems reasonable. A little over a hundred bucks to bring my girl and another couple. Then we add in the venue fee…what the F#$% is a venue fee? I mean, I understand that some sort of venue is required, but why do I have to pay to use it? Isn’t that’s like driving through McDonalds for a 99 cent double cheese burger, then finding out that the actual cost is $1.50 because of a “speaker fee” to use the drive up? Whats next? An electicity fee? “We’ll those guitars aren’t going to amplify themselves ya know”

Shouldn’t they just add this into real price of the ticket? (It’s 7.50…per ticket…a 28% markup) Would a $35 dollar ticket really put him out of his “everyman” image? They already have like 140 dollar section up front - You’re not fooling anyone, James.

So that’s a 25% increase over face value. But wait, there’s still more. We have a “convenience fee”…oh yeah…thats only $12.10 PER FREAKIN Ticket.

Now, I remember when that used to be a little something they stuck on the end of a bill to cover the cost of setting up a little shop and actually printing out tickets…maybe a couple bucks a piece. But now, their just insulting us…$12.10 per ticket??? For a ticket you’re going to email to me? Actually a, its a ticket that computer program -- created by a guy in India that you are paying less than 12.10 per hour -- is going to send to me.

Does the price include sending someone to my house to assist me should my laser printer jam up? What if it does get jammed and I get toner on my dress shirt? Can I send them an “inconvenience fee” for dry cleaning? Can I mark it up 7 bucks for a venue fee? (the dry cleaning guys got to have some place to work out of, right?).

Over all, a $28.50 ticket is marked up 42.5% for “convenience” and 26.5% for “venue fees”. Didn’t Pearl Jam start this company a while back to fight against Ticketmaster’s outrageous fees? Nice work. Apparently we are now paying for the legal fees that were incurred during that law suit.

Is it a coincidence that the markup is 69 percent? I think not, I think its just Live Nation’s version of foreplay because in the end they know were the ones getting F-cked.

"Whale Wars" gets nasty

05 Jan 2010
"Whale Wars" gets Nasty

NOTE: The Klowne of the week (KOW) will be a new segment at the Klownehaus. The Crew of Whale Wars is this weeks recipient of the Golden Kow

Saw this footage today making its round on the web. My friends and I love to watch this show just to see how much of a train wreck the crew can be.
The only way I could see a reality show being more unintentionally funny is if Vh1 accidentally switched the girls from “For the Love of Ray Jay” with the girls from Frank the Entertainers “Basement Affair”

For those uninitiated, the show follows the exploits of the Sea Sheppard’s…a group of anti- whaling activists who go out every year in an effort to deter the Japanese whaling fleet. The “crew” of this ship is made up of the same kind of people who come home from their first semester away at college with Dreadlock, a standard freshmen issue Che Guevara shirt and want to convert to Socialism and Buddhism at the same time (worked out well in Tibet, eh?). Few of then have any maritime experience; a couple had never seen a whale in the wild. But I’m sure they make up for that with their enthusiasm and good intentions.

(Am the most salty guy myself? Not exactly, but I do spend between 15-20 hours a week from May thru November tuna fishing 25 miles off shore in a 20 foot boat. Sometimes less then 10 feet from 60ft humpback whales. So, I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what I’m doing out there)

On of my favorite parts about this show, is that other than chasing the Japanese boats around and annoying them, there’s not much else they do. This particular video looks like their typical propaganda stunt. The big bad Japanese ship “rams” the helpless little Sea Sheppard boat. The Sea Sheppard clowns probably ran out in front of them and thought…hey, there’s no way their going to run me over…THIS WILL BE OUR TIENAMEN SQUARE MOMENT!!!

Unfortunately for these geniuses, they forgot to consider that ships don’t have breaks. A boat the size of the Nushi Marin probably takes like ½ a mile to come to a full stop. And it’s not likely the most nimble vessel in the world, so if couldn’t exactly “swerve” to avoid contact. That’s probably why they were blasting them with the old water cannons. To get them to move. (I do love how they keep shooting at them even after they’ve hit. That must be so much fun for the guy running the water cannon)

One thing the try to do is throw stink bombs and some sort of acid that makes the deck slippery. I guess this is to deter the Japanese from going on deck and whaling, but lets stop for a minute and consider their weapons of choice…Stink Bombs and slippery stuff…

Really? Anyone ever spend anytime at see knows that a boat can already be a pretty horrific smelling place. Add in whale (literally) tons of whale carcass and you’ve got some working conditions that aren’t probably up to OSHA standards already. There’s a great book by Nathaniel Phil brick called. Into the Heart of the Sea about the Whaling Ship Essex where he describes the smell on board a whaling ship. I wish I could find the passage, but suffice it to say a little Febreeze isn’t going to do the trick.

And as for making the deck slippery, well, it’s a whale boat - in the arctic. There’s probably quite a bit of slippery stuff on deck already in the form of ICE and, oh, I don’t know, maybe whale blood?

Anyway. I just thought I’d pass along. I don’t think whaling is a good thing, but these jokers aren’t really helping their cause with anyone other than those people who already believe in them.

So what did we learn?

--Making the deck of a fishing vessel slippery and stinky isn’t really that much of a deterrent
--Big boats can’t stop. Get out of their way
--PETA is way better at publicity stunts
--Those Japanese game shows where everyone gets jacked up are starting to make a little more sense

Cell phones, slush and annoying contractors with Nextels..

Cell phones, slush and annoying contractors with Nextels..
4 Jan 2010

Happy New Year to everyone.

Do you ever get the scary feeling when you don’t have your mobile phone? I swear, sometimes I’m on the verge of a panic attack when I don’t have mine. It’s like the world could well come to a horrific end during the next 19 minutes it takes me to run to the bank and get gas, and I would never know.

On the way home from a little post-holiday shopping for at the outlets in Maine this weekend, I realized I didn’t have my cell phone. So I turned around (I was already in NH) then drove back to the McDonalds where I found it laying in a pile of slush. Apparently LCD screens react to freezing water about the same way as Wes Welkers knee reacted to cutting on astro turf.

So I had to go a day without my phone…it was horrible.

What will happen to me if I can find out via Facebook that my sister is taking over Cuba in“mafia wars?” Or what if a Nigerian banker needs a trustworthy assistant to help him move millions of dollars? I have to know these things at all times! (Thank God, I’m not a twitter addict…how ever would I know about the darling little things my friend’s kids are doing at every minute of the day)

I guess my bigger question was, how did we survive before these things? When stuff used to be really important, we’d send it Fedex, or even “fax” it over. I remember growing up in the 80’s; my dad would make calls to our family friends (about 60 miles away) from the office after 8:00 because that’s when it was the cheapest. Maybe it’s because my family was uber cheap, but it was like he was using the red phone to call a foreign dictator. There was something dangerous about it.

Back then, if you wanted instant communication it meant only one thing. CB’s. That’s a big 10-4 good buddy. Yep, we had em in all our cars, and even the big “home base” antenna – it looked like a 50 foot tall umbrella frame on the roof of the house). We would use them whenever my dad would go away or if we were driving to the cape. I knew all the lingo…my favorite was a 10-100 (taking a dump) and even had secret channels we’d go to have “private” conversations (only anyone with an antenna could pick them up…)

Sometimes, I long for the days of codes and a little more secrecy. I guess today’s equivalent is the Nextel two way walkie-talkie phone. I think these are actually pretty good tools, but if you have one, can you explain one thing to me?

Why, oh why, do you feel the need to keep it on speaker phone and yell into it everywhere? I mean, you are allowed to pick the thing up and put it next to your ear, right? I believe the phone actually functions as a normal phone….you don’t always have to use it on speak mode.

When your on the job site, ok, it makes sense. Maybe even when you’re in home depot I can see it. But do you need to do it in front of me at Fenway? Or does everyone waiting in the bank line need to know that “…the a$$hole doing the plumbing F**ked everything up?” --- I don’t think so.

I think it would make a good Bud Light "Real men of genius commercial….”


Singer “REAL MEN OF GENIUS”

Voice Over: Bud Light salutes you, mister yelling into your next tell guy..

You provide your crew- and everyone with in a 400 foot radius – with directions of how to hang the dry wall

Singer: “Make sure you spackle the cracks!”

VO: Every time that phone beeps, you - and all of us waiting for coffee- know that Tony down at the jobsite, screwed something up again.

Singer: Keep the Backhoe off the gas lines!

Why pick up that phone, when you can just as easily yell into it and share your thoughts on the girl from last night with everyone at the DMV

Singer: I think I’ve got a cold sore…

VO: So here’s to you, oh sultan of the speaker phone

You really put the “Tell”, into Next Tel

Singer: …Mr. Screaming into your Next Tel Guy…


So, what did we learn?

-Blackberrys don’t float, nor do they do well in freezing slush
-My family was a bunch of rednecks with CB radios

-Dad misappropriated company resources to make long distance calls

-It seems that something in the genetics of super annoying guys with horrible accents and -

Winston-riddled voices precludes them from having a spec of self awareness

-If someone has a Nextel and you want to have a private conversation with them, you’re probably better off doing it on a CB