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I've heard far more today about the "Sterling Situation" than I cared to and I think ESPN and the rest of the sports media have the subject exhaustively (and exhaustingly) covered. There is one thing that really confuses me though. Here's a picture of the racist old man's mistress:

Now you might have to take a lot of guesses to deduce Ms. Stiviano's ancestry (apparently part black and part Mexican), but I don't think anyone is going to start off with white. She's obviously very attractive, but it is baffling to me that Sterling has all these issues with minorities yet spent time with (and money on) a woman that looks like this. I suppose it's futile looking for logic in the mind of such a man and illustrates the foolishness of such views in general.

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Even if Ian Kinsler (Doesn't that sound like a name for a Bond villain?) is mediocre for the rest of the season, has he already made the trade for him look brilliant?

RoboUmp

On Mike & Mike this morning the guys talked to Mike Schmidt about some comments he made the other day involving a "force field" over home plate that would cause balls and strikes to be called automatically. Now, a force field, if such a thing existed, would cause the ball to bounce off of the strike zone, but otherwise I think Schmidt has exactly the right idea. As far as I'm concerned, the goal of any officiating is to make the right call all of the time, preferably as fast as possible. For many calls in sports there will always need to be a human element, but the strike zone can be determined with such precision that there's no reason to keep human error or judgement as part of the game. Now, I'm sure there are some technological hurdles to clear and it may not be quite as simple to implement as it first sounds but it seems like a worthy goal to me. Why settle for less when we can do it better?

Greeny Milks a Cow

This sounded really funny this morning, but it's better with video:

Rankings

After seeing Winter Soldier again and looking at my comments on some of the other Marvel Studios movies I decided I'd try and rank my favorites in order since I always refer to the rank but haven't actually done it. So here's the (tentative) list:

1. The Avengers
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3. Iron Man 3
4. Iron Man
5. Thor
6. Captain America: The First Avenger
7. Iron Man 2
8. Thor: The Dark World
9. The Incredible Hulk

Keep in mind last place on this list is still a 4-star Netflix review and a film I'm happy to own so I'm not exactly insulting the lower-ranked movies. Also, there's a razor-thin margin between #1 and #2; I could probably call them 1a and 1b but that feels like cheating. There's also not much difference between #3 and #4 and both of them are pretty close to #1 and #2. If you wanted to divide the list into tiers it would definitely be between #4 and #5.

Thoughts on Winter Soldier

Some thoughts on Captain America: The Winter Soldier:

-I liked this one a lot. I need to think over it a bit yet, but right now it would be right near the top of my list of Marvel movies, probably still behind Avengers and maybe Iron Man. Definitely ahead of the first Captain America though by a significant margin.

-This is the first Marvel movie to depart from their familiar tone. The humor is still there, but not near so much as in Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World. It's darker and a lot more intense, more an espionage thriller than a fun action movie. For example, there were a lot of kids (and quite a few young kids) in the audience I saw it with and during the quiet parts of the movie it was dead silent in the theater. I was shocked.

-I was pretty impressed with all of the actors in their roles. Scarlett in particular gives you a good idea of just how messed-up the Black Widow is.

-The fighting is good, though there's a little too much shakycam for my tastes. The Winter Soldier with a knife is particularly cool.

-Fury actually gets to do more in this movie than all of the others combined.

-I love Cap's suit in this film. It's based on one of my favorite comic looks and it really works on screen.

-For a somewhat covert organization S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to put a logo on everything.

-How good is the movie? It made this guy cool:

-I understand why he wasn't included, but Hawkeye kind of seems like he should be a part of the action, or at least mentioned in the film. UPDATE: Apparently Kevin Feige has said that Hawkeye's absence will be explained in Age of Ultron.

-Well, he's not directly mentioned, but the Black Widow is wearing an arrow charm on a necklace which one would assume came from Hawkeye.

-Helicarriers are cool.

-Pretty major twist in this movie. Maybe more than one depending on how familiar you are with the source material. The landscape of the Marvel films will be changed a lot.

-The mid-credits scene is a set up for Avengers: Age of Ultron. The post-credit scene ties back to the movie itself.