Friday, March 07, 2008

These are trained professionals

There are plenty of ways to waste time. But if you're a snarky and nitpicky pro wrestling fan, this video of botched moves and broadcasting mistakes (and the rest of the clips in the collection) will kill any entire afternoon. Enjoy.



By the way, I actually have the MP3 of the music used in the video.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Musical microphones

Couple of interesting changes in the local broadcast booths this season:
-- Steve Stone is back in Chicago, although this time with the White Sox. In effect, he's pulling a reverse Harry Caray, who worked on the South Side before becoming a beloved Cubs announcer. Stone will be doing radio with Ed Farmer. I missed Stone doing Cubs games, but he had an interesting chemistry working with Steve Phillips and Gary Thorne on ESPN a couple of years ago. Strangely enough, Stone will be replacing Chris Singleton (whose dad is one of 500 people calling Yankees games on YES), who looks to be heading to Baseball Tonight.

-- Joe Buck won't do Cardinals games this season, ending a 54-year era of Bucks in the St. Louis booth. I'm not as much of a Joe Buck hater as some of my friends; I'm pretty ambivalent about Buck as an announcer. Of course, he's been showing up in a multitude of commercials (Dude!?!) and doing all sorts of other stuff that his cameo appearances with St. Louis seemed like just a ploy to keep the ties between the Buck family and the Cardinals alive. Besides, it's not like the primary network baseball voice has to have a local gig on the side, right?

Rambling on, with awkward pauses

If you watch enough American Idol, you'll get enough of these bizarre Paula Abdul moments. But I just realized why some of those stumbling moments sound so familiar -- Larry Merchant has made it an art form for years on HBO's boxing coverage.

Monday, March 03, 2008

Err-ball

Put it simply, if you really want to know more about the ABA, you're better off finding the HBO documentary Loose Balls, based on Terry Pluto's great book. Yeah, I saw Semi Pro over the weekend and was predictably disappointed. They did a good job of replicating the look of the uniforms and such, but everything else was pretty bland and uninspired.

But probably the most disconcerting part of the movie was the gratuitous profanity that led to its R rating (and eventually its so-so opening week box office take). I usually don't pay that close attention one way or another, but let's just say that this movie isn't a Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino picture where such talk would seem commonplace and allegedly clever.

It's probably still worth a cheap rental later on, but let's just say that I felt silly missing out on the pre-noon matinee price at the nearby AMC theater.

A couple of other observations while watching some random sports-related commercials:
-- I guess it's cool for Subway to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the whole Jared campaign, but using Tony Stewart as part of the ads seems a bit silly these days, given that Smoke seems to be getting pudgier in addition to growing that mullet. I'm guessing Stewart ain't ordering the veggie combo.

-- The Brian Urlacher-David Ortiz Vitamin Water ad is amusing enough, but exactly what country would those two be representing, assuming their opponents are Chinese?