RE: Biased?

Interesting research. Surprised? I don't know. He's right, the audience you are talking to...ARE FANS OF THAT TEAM. They expect a little homer out of you. But, there does seem to be a little more credibility when it's "down the middle." If it's too one-sided, it sounds like you asked a couple of guys from the bar across the stadium to call the game.

I can understand the NY audience base wanting it to be more down the middle. Of course, it would be nice if Bret Musburger would act more like a professional than the local guy at a high school game.

After 155 games, I've probably tuned in to 80 games for at least some portion of the Tiger games on the radio. I rarely see a game on TV. In fact, I've listened so much to the radio guys...I can't stand the Tigers own TV guys. Dan Dickerson really has a great personality. I think his strikeout and home run calls are pretty good and he takes it to the next level when the game dictates it.

For example, his strikeout call in the 2nd inning is nothing compared to a bases loaded strikeout or a strikeout in the 8th inning.

On the other hand, if you are too much of a homer, it could get you fired. I believe that is what happened to Mark Champion. He was the radio play-by-play for the Lions for many years, especially during the Barry era. (I believe he still does the radio and/or TV games for the Pistons.)

I'm not exactly sure if he was fired, but his classic "Holy-macerole" blasts for every time the Lions screwed up may have cost him his job. Mark called it as he saw it...the Lions sucked and he let you know it. The Lions brass probably didn't care for that.

?

Do you think Ed Hochuli has spent the referee strike pumping iron?

Did you know?

According to Wikipedia, Lee Corso was a roommate of Burt Reynolds at FSU.

Biased?

The WSJ has done a little research to judge just how biased hometown MLB announcers are. Mario Impemba and Rod Allen come in right about the middle.

An Unexpected Journey

?

Just how bad is the Big Ten? I'm actually in agreement with the polls, there's not a Big Ten team that deserves to be in the top 15. And the teams that are usually bad (Indiana, Purdue, etc) look to be really awful. I'm as tired of the talk about SEC dominance as anyone, but we might as well just give Alabama the national title and call off the rest of the season.

Storytime

"SMASH!"

So we had a "date night" Saturday night and took advantage of Olive Garden's "never-ending pasta bowl."  I hit that hard.  We then proceeded to the movies to see what was playing.  We checked out the Fashion Square Cinema, but didn't like the options...of times for the movies.  It was already 8:30, but nothing was really starting before 10pm that was interesting.  So we figured we could leave for the Saginaw 12 because if they didn't have anything better, we knew we had plenty of time to get back to the other theater.

Saginaw 12 had many more options, but I didn't "see" anything after TDKR.  I was somewhat surprised it was still there.  But, they also had The Avengers!  Yeah, four months later, still available.  I figured I couldn't get TDKR or Avengers, but kept my fingers crossed.  So we narrowed it down to "The Campaign" and "The Words."  We knew The Campaign would have lots of crude humor, just how much was the issue.  The Words was the dark horse.

We knew a rated R comedy must be pretty bad...but we went for The Campaign anyway to at least get some laughs.  Well, I have my limit of Ef-bombs in the first five minutes of a movie, so we walked out.  Thankfully, it was only 9:30 and TDKR was right next door!  Bam, got what I wanted.  But, they were having technically difficulties and the manager practically walked in the door as we were sitting down (thinking he was coming after us) and said the movie is cancelled, you can get your money back if you want or blah, blah, blah.  We knew that wasn't an option.

So...walk next door to The Avengers, which also was starting in less than 5 minutes!  Awesome.  I really wanted to see that again anyway.  We sat in the back (there were 8 people there actually...I think some came from TDKR), stayed until about 11pm, made out, then walked out and went home.

Perfect date night.


Other movie news:  We rented Memento this week.  I hadn't seen it in about 11 years.  It took two nights, but still puzzled.  Then I decided to watch the first 20 minutes and the last 10 minutes before I took it back and I think I have it all figured out.  The movie was 10x better after watching the first 20 and last 10.  Awesome.