Condiment Bar 042109: My smilin’ face on the cover of the Cond’ment Bar

Now, I’m aware that one may question the DogMa’s choice of subject (and S-O), but her talent is something at which I, as a card-carrying member of the Fine-Motor Challenged, can only marvel.  So I’m showing-off this recent evidence thereof.

And like Michelangelo, she does contract-out her art for special occasions and occasional ceilings — she might even paint your porch, mang.

In other news, the WSJ weighs-in on … wait for it …  stirrups!

Of course, unfettered competitive zeal is in the subtext.  FTFA:

…Colorfast dye dispelled the poison-sock myth. Washing machines eased the germ threat. By the turn of the millennium, pant legs were dropping fast and the stirrup had become a vestigial accessory.

“It’s a negative apparatus, a detractment,” says John Moretz, chief executive of GoldToeMoretz, a giant sock maker based just down the road, toward Newton. “It serves no purpose. Its day is gone.”

To which Mr. Davis replied: “He says that because we make ’em and he doesn’t.”

That’s all I got — do I still get a blue krauthor tag?

122 Responses to Condiment Bar 042109: My smilin’ face on the cover of the Cond’ment Bar

  1. Leopold Bloom says:

    DogMa’s quite talented, and I’m sure she captured something here.

  2. xbhaskarx says:

    W T F : Demetri Martin swings at ‘Moneyball’

    Columbia Pictures and director Steven Soderbergh have set Demetri Martin to star alongside Brad Pitt in “Moneyball,” the adaptation of the Michael Lewis book about ballplayer-turned-Oakland Athletics g.m. Billy Beane and his attempt to field a competitive team on a slim payroll.

    Also joining the roster is a group of actual baseball players: former Oakland A’s team members David Justice and Scott Hatteberg have signed on to play themselves in the picture, while Daryl Strawberry and Lenny Dykstra are among those who will be seen on camera being interviewed about their experiences with Beane when he was a phenom drafted by the New York Mets before flaming out and becoming a baseball scout. Shooting begins in June.

    Martin will play Paul De Podesta, a Harvard grad who turned down Wall Street jobs to use his statistical skills to change baseball scouting tactics. His system, known as “Earned Run Value,” allowed Beane to evaluate valuable players he could hire at low cost.

    Beane was a bright student himself who passed up a chance to attend Stanford and instead took the money to turn pro as a ballplayer. He always regretted a money-motivated decision and found a new purpose in putting together championship-caliber teams without a lot of money. Pitt plays Beane.

    • monkeyball says:

      I think Soderbergh should cast himself as Mark Ellis.

    • FreeSeatUpgrade says:

      Michael Lewis is heading for a big fall, and this is how it starts:

      “Moneyball” author has small penis, cruel family.

      …when he was dropping off his daughter at day care, the teachers giggled at him for no apparent reason. He asked his wife, Tabitha Soren, why they were laughing and she mumbled, “Er, it’s about your penis.” Lewis’ dogged reporting uncovered the grim facts: His toddler daughter, who had a habit of peeking on him in the shower, liked to blurt out to everyone at day care, “Daddy has a small penis!”

      Fill in your best Liar’s Poker joke here.

    • 74mk says:

      That sounds godawful.

      • monkeyball says:

        I am really looking forward to it. Martin I’ll reserve judgment on (I know nothing about him outside of his fey, emo-ish ads for his show), and Soderbergh can be wildly hit-and-miss, but I think it’ll be an audience-disregarding bit of clever hijinx.

        • 74mk says:

          I think it’ll be an audience-disregarding bit of clever hijinx

          Those are precisely the sort of Soderbergh films (see: Bubble) that annoy the shit out of me.

          • monkeyball says:

            Haven’t seen Bubble. But, yeah, if it’s anything like Full Frontal (what with the celebritiness and the casually overstudied unstudied wackiness) it could be terrible.

        • Leopold Bloom says:

          No, I’m with 74 on this. It sounds awful. I wanna punch Dmitri Martin in the face (then maybe he can show me how fucking clever and cute he is) and I doubt a man who sold his soul for cash (Oceans 13, 14, and 15) will treat a subject so near and ear to my heart with the love it deserves.

          • monkeyball says:

            Bah! 11 is awesome. Truly awesome. 12 not nearly so much, but still clever and more fun that it had to be. 13 … well, yeah, diminishing returns and all that.

            Don’t gimme that “sold his soul for cash” bs. Unless you’re, I dunno, Kubrick or Bresson or Herzog, you’re in the film business to get your shit in front of paying customers.

            • Leopold Bloom says:

              11’s stolen mojo, plain and simple, regardless of how much fun it was.

              (Whitey made movies?)

            • 74mk says:

              Good Soderbergh films (in no particular order):

              Traffic
              Erin Brockovich
              Out of Sight
              Ocean’s Eleven
              Sex, Lies, and Videotape
              The Underneath
              The Limey (indulgent, but not shitty)

              Shitty, indulgent Soderbergh films:

              Bubble
              Full Frontal

              Soderbergh films I haven’t seen because they sound like indulgent shit:

              Kafka
              Solaris
              Che

              Upcoming Soderbergh films I won’t see because they sound like indulgent shit:

              The Girlfriend Experience
              Moneyball

              Soderbergh films I haven’t seen because they obviously suck:

              The Good German
              Ocean’s Twelve
              Ocean’s Thirteen

              • xbhaskarx says:

                Schizopolis isn’t on any of the lists! I’m guessing you would call it “indulgent shit”.

                My personal Soderbergh rankings:

                1) The Limey
                2) Schizopolis

                3) Kafka

                4) Out of Sight
                5) Solaris

                The others I have seen, in no particular order:
                ) Sex, Lies, and Videotape
                ) Traffic
                ) Ocean’s Eleven

                I haven’t seen the rest, Erin Brockovich is probably decent but I can’t stand Julia Roberts.

                I’ll be very happy if Moneyball makes the second or third tier. And I’ll definitely watch it, as I don’t expect any other movies about the A’s and stats will be made anytime soon.

                • monkeyball says:

                  1. Out of Sight

                  2. Schizopolis
                  3. Solaris (74mk, it’s fantastic)
                  4. The Limey

                  5. O11
                  6. Erin Brockovich

                  It’s been so long since I’ve seen S/L/V and The Underneath, I don’t have an opinion on them. Haven’t seen Che or Bubble or King of the Hill. Gave up on Kafka after 10 minutes about … 10 years ago. Full Frontal and the Good German were absolutely unwatchable, not even good experiments, just crap. Traffic, in my estimation, is the one film he could be alleged to have sold his soul for lucre to make; it’s shameful, exploitative crap (“Drugs are bad! They make suburban white girls have sex with black men!”).

                  • 74mk says:

                    Feisty assertion: That is a wildly inaccurate reading of Traffic.

                    CYA backtrack from feisty assertion: I haven’t seen it in years, so who knows, maybe I would think differently if I watched it again.

                  • xbhaskarx says:

                    I’d tell you to give Kafka another shot, but it’s not even available on DVD. If your local video store has the VHS, check it out.

                    Traffic: It was sub-par throughout, but the Michael Douglas press conference was the SeinfeldWalksOut.jpg moment for me.

                • 74mk says:

                  I didn’t know Schizopolis existed until just now.

                  It looks sort of self-consciously madcap, so I hedged my bets by placing it at queue position 26: low enough that I won’t be looking forward to it (and therefore risk disappointment), but high enough that it stands a reasonable chance of eventually migrating to the top.

                • monkeyball says:

                  I don’t expect any other movies about the A’s and stats will be made anytime soon.

                  Obviously, you haven’t heard about Michael Bay buying an option on the Poetic Interludes.

              • mikeA says:

                The Limey may be indulgent in certain respects, but making an awesome revenge movie is a nice gift to the audience. (that one is my favorite too.)

                You’ll see moneyball…

      • xbhaskarx says:

        Martin as DePodesta has got to be the worst casting imaginable. The two are nothing alike and I’m assuming he’s going to be Martin instead of acting DePo.

        • Leopold Bloom says:

          He’s dirt bag and deserves nothing but scorn from any of us.

          …I say we send a couple normal-looking clowns to his house.

    • whiteshoes40 says:

      Scott Hatteberg, movie star. Who knew?

  3. monkeyball says:

    Thet-thar’s some fine pigment-daubin’! And some fine cond’ment-barrin’!

    And this (from the stirrups article) is some fine feature-writin’:

    … its stirrup crew operates exclusively out of a low-brick building behind a tombstone showroom in Conover.

  4. xbhaskarx says:

    Alderson –> Giants GM?

    Sandy Alderson, who resigned as president in San Diego the day that former agent/Arizona CEO Jeff Moorad was announced as the eventual buyer of the Padres, could be headed back to the Bay Area. Alderson, who first surfaced in baseball as the general manager of the Oakland A’s, is considered as a likely replacement for Giants GM Brian Sabean. Alderson is more than a casual acquaintance of managing general partner William Neukom, who is ready to put his mark on the franchise he took over from Peter Magowan.

  5. 74mk says:

    I think Tango’s moralizing goes off the rails a little here:

    A human is a human. Isn’t it sad that I actually have to say it?

    […]

    Whether it’s Manon Rheaume or Hayley Wickenheiser or Eddie Gaedel or Jackie Robinson, it should be irrelevant.

    […]

    A short American playing in MLB should be as much a non-story as a tall Chinese playing in the NBA.

    Deploying three foot tall pinch hitters in high-leverage situations strikes me as akin to purposely fouling Shaq at the end of the game: within the rules, strategically justifiable, and profoundly uninteresting to watch.

    Fans want to see legitimate hitters with legitimate hitting skills square off against pitchers giving max effort. How tiresome would it be, if in every clutch situation we had to watch pitchers lobbing the ball (as in a carnival booth with a stuffed teddy bear on the line) into a tiny strike zone, to “batters” for whom the bat is a pointless instrument?

    Also, three foot players are only valuable insofar as they remain a novelty. Their entire advantage is predicated on incongruity, on the difficulty (much) taller pitchers would have hitting an extraordinarily contracted strike zone. If you had three foot pitchers, three foot left fielders, and so on, you’d have a different league entirely, and it certainly wouldn’t be comprised of the best baseball talent on the planet.

    You might say, well, if everyone was Willie McGee-fast and Mark McGwire-strong, being fast and strong would also cease to be an advantage. That’s true, except that in addition to being fast and strong, you have to run down fly balls and/or scoop grounders and/or hit fastballs. Whereas there is a (virtually) endless supply of hypothetical three footers able to stand in the batters box for four pitches and jog to first base. After all 30 teams have a three foot pinch walker on their rosters, what happens to three footers 31 though 1000 (equally qualified!) who want to play in the majors? How do teams make decisions as to which three footer to keep, if talent and skill aren’t considerations? Isn’t that the opposite of a meritocracy?

    So no, this is not a Jackie Robinson situation.

  6. monkeyball says:

    Can someone explain to me why the NSA was wiretapping Cloris Leachman?

  7. Leopold Bloom says:

    Her proximity to both MTM and Mrs. Garrett from The Facts of Life make it imperative that the government always knows where Cloris Leachman is. It’s a matter of national security.

  8. salb918 says:

    Daniel Andreas San Diego tops FBI most-wanted terrorist list.

    Sing it with me: Where in the world is Andreas San Diego. Rockapella Hookslide, take it away!

  9. xbhaskarx says:

    Out on DVD today: The Wrestler.

    The daughter wasn’t so good, but I really enjoyed it.
    Not as Aronofsky as his other films, but still really well done.

  10. mikeA says:

    new people who are or might be hurt: Corey Brown (some kind of knee thing); Barton (left game after hbp).
    http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=304&f=2062&t=2718182&p=74
    There’s a non-free article from melissa lockhard about a bunch of other minor leaguers who are or are not injured.

  11. 74mk says:

    1. Dana Eveland is the strongest A’s pitcher. He is also pitching tonight. I take this to mean that if the Yankee hitters do not cooperate, he will crush them like bugs (after pausing to fidget with his sleeves).

    2. Chicago Tribune = Free Kraut:

    They are instructed to do this by scanning what TMZ and the US Weekly web site have reported over the weekend, and rehash it for Monday.

    But that’s what we do for this website. You mean we could get paid for this?

    3. Well, crap. I was hoping Pom Wonderful was the real deal, because I just don’t have the discipline to save enough money to get my head frozen.

    [Resnick] just published a book, “Rubies in the Orchard,” that contains, according to its cover, “the Pom Queen’s Secrets to Marketing Just About Anything.” But for Resnick, pomegranates are far from anything.

    Since 1990, she and her husband have spent about $30 million underwriting laboratory and clinical research on pomegranate juice.

    […]

    The Pom Wonderful human studies tend to be small, with fewer than 100 participants (in some cases fewer than a dozen). In many, the people already have a disease. In some, the scientists measured variables such as “nitric oxide synthase activity” and “serum angiotensin converting enzyme activity,” whose effect on disease is indirect and, in some cases, unclear.

    • monkeyball says:

      The Pom studies are likely total bullshit, but the writer’s use of scare quotes there (and from the way it’s written, gotta be the writer and not the editor) is predicated on the same illiterate confidence game.

  12. mikeA says:

    And that fast, he’s already lost a vote.

    • 74mk says:

      You just don’t understand.

      When you want to find out who was voted off Idol as soon as the results are available, Twitter is the quickest and easiest way to get this answer. Try it sometime. Within seconds of the announcement on Idol, Twitter fills with hundreds of posts answering this question for me.

      • nevermoor says:

        There was an article in wired about twitter and geotagging, and I came away convinced I wanted nothing to do with either of them.

        I’m too young to be an old fart, but there you go.

  13. Leopold Bloom says:

    Two things.

    First, it’s Marquez67’s birthday–if you wanna wish him happy birthday and no longer participate in CB wannabe message boards (aka DLD), email him at work: don@allmodularsystems.com

    Second, DCinWC has horrifying news. Apparently, Tom Cruise and John Travolta are considering remaking Butch Cassidy.

  14. xbhaskarx says:

    Devine out for the season, Nomar and Geren are still annoying:

    Manager Bob Geren says that co-closer Joey Devine had surgery on the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow on Tuesday, but details were sketchy besides that.

    Geren said that the team has not been informed yet the nature of the surgery – i.e., if ligament replacement was involved, which would probably keep Devine out more than a year. Clearly, however, the surgery was more than a routine arthroscopic cleanup, which would only sideline a pitcher for six weeks or so.

    Nomar Garciaparra remains out of the lineup but he will take batting practice today and if that goes well, he might be OK’d for tomorrow. Considering it’s a day game, the weather here is chilly, and the team is off Thursday, my guess is that Friday is more likely.

    Geren said Travis Buck isn’t in platoon, though Buck hasn’t played against any of the left-handers the A’s have seen lately. He said it’s not that he’s trying not to use Buck but that some of the starters the A’s have faced have significant left-right splits. Buck reiterated that he’s completely healthy and ready to play anytime he is asked, anywhere. He’s taking grounders at third just in case – and in fact, his new third baseman’s glove just arrived, he said.

  15. mikeA says:

    devine out for season, and…..

    Geren said Travis Buck isn’t in platoon [blah blah blah]

    Not in the lineup tonight.

    • Danny says:

      He said it’s not that he’s trying not to use Buck but that some of the starters the A’s have faced have significant left-right splits.

      Like Eric Bedard, who has a reverse platoon split.

  16. xbhaskarx says:

    Rajai over T-Buck AGAIN:
    Ryan Sweeney RF, Orlando Cabrera SS, Jason Giambi 1B, Matt Holliday LF, Jack Cust DH, Mark Ellis 2B, Eric Chavez 3B, Kurt Suzuki C, Rajai Davis CF

  17. andeux says:

    Top 3 A’s in OPS: Cust (.899), Holliday (.713), Sweeney (.635)

  18. mikeA says:

    Q: full year of service time for Devine this year, yes?

  19. monkeyball says:

    game thread open

Leave a comment