Duke Ellington: The Pianist
March 22, 2007
This on-going series hasn’t even gotten off the ground yet, and I’m changing it, slightly. There will still be the sharing of a “perfect” album, but after the break, I’m going to provide some albums that are new to me, with some thoughts. As with everything else, this will continue to be updated with no pattern or continuity.
Duke Ellington is mostly known for his work as a big band leader along the lines of Count Basie and Glenn Miller, and rightly so, as he was one of the most talented and well-known musicians of the big band swing era of jazz music.
He recorded a few, and only a few, solo albums, and this is, perhaps, his finest. It sits only ten tracks long, all composed by Ellington. He’s accompanied by string bass and drums, and the accompaniment seems present only to serve as a structure for Ellington to work with.
The album is mostly playful, with fun, quick tunes provided by the opener, “Don Juan”, closer “Fat Mess”, and in between, “Tap Dancer’s Blues”, “Sam Woodyard’s Blues”, and “Duck Amok.”
The rest of the tracks round out the character, with “Slow Blues” functioning as a track 2 change of pace, and on two different takes of “The Shepherd”, Ellington displays some of his creativity and virtuosity.
My two favorite tracks, often enough, are the heartbreakers: “Looking Glass”, and “Never Stop Remembering Bill”. Both tracks have a wistful atmosphere to them, and without lyrics invoke a similarly haunting nostalgia to songs like “As Time Goes By” from Casablanca.
Ellington is never as flashy as an Oscar Peterson–he never comes off as a virtuoso, but that’s not his game, anyway. Every song here sounds familiar and beautiful.
when same-party politicians bicker, we all win
March 21, 2007
Here is something you should start following, and trust me when I say that it has potential to be not only hilarious, but also have very interesting repercussions for the state of California. No, I’m not referencing earthquakes, Gary Coleman, Paris Hilton, a new guy claiming the have proof that he is the father of Anna Nicole’s baby, rolling blackouts, Ari Gold, or even the Oakland Raiders. I’m speaking, of course, about Rush Limbaugh and Arnold Schwarzenegger trading insults via the California media.
Rush Limbaugh likes to call himself “The Most Dangerous Man in America” because of his political power in swaying voters opinions nationwide. Besides the fact that this is a name only the most arrogant bastard in the world would self-apply, I also do not agree with his conclusion. Right now I’m still convinced the Zodiac Killer is the most dangerous man in America, but you’re welcome to your own fears, be they rational or irrational. Regardless, as you probably know, Rush likes to go after left-wing extremists and call them names. At this point, I think the only people who listen to Rush Limbaugh are people who either actually agree with him or are just looking for a laugh, so he isn’t swaying a lot of on the fence voters. I could be terribly wrong, that is just my impression at the moment. But this time Rush is going after one of his own.
It’s no secret that the Govenator is not going to win any right-wing extremist awards, he’s a “progressive republican” at heart. This entry is not making any sort of normative judgments about whether or not he is the right man for the Governorship of California or whether it’s better off. I simply don’t care. The only time I think of California is when I’m eating at CPK, when the EAGLES are beating the 49ers or Raiders, or some other Philly sports team is asserting their West Coast dominance (I usually wake up shortly after this).
Terrorists Wielding Bananas
March 20, 2007
Do you like bananas? I know that I do. They are simply delicious. However, I was unaware that I happened to be funding terrorism every time I bought a bushel of bananas from the supermarket.
This past Wednesday, the Department of Justice and the Chiquita Brand International Company (the ones who sell those delicious bananas) settled a plea agreement after getting caught funneling $25 million to the Colombian terror organization FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia).
In court documents filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers at the Cincinnati-based company paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia
Now, the AUC has been on the U.S. Terror Watch List since 2001. That’s a lot of time for the Chiquita Banana Empire execs to figure out that this probably wasn’t a good idea. Their lawyers even told them not to do it. Then why would they continue to pay off drug barons, criminals, and kidnappers from 1997 up to mid-2003?
GoodEnough For Me: Writing Because I Have To
March 19, 2007
As previously noted, GoodEnough For Me is an ongoing series that complements The Extrapolater’s Smells Like Pujols.
Really, I don’t have much to write here until Opening Day and we start counting stats. I’ve got my form of measurement: a combination of FIP and my own version of Stuff, scaled for innings pitched against Doc Gooden. Cocaine usage will be used as a tiebreaker.
As for what players I will be looking at, well, I’ve selected a few of last year’s rookies, just for fun. I’ll also plug in the numbers from just about every 2007 rookie. If I miss one or ten, it means they didn’t pitch enough to become relevant in the discussion anyway. I am going to look at about 115 pitchers this year. Obviously, I’m not going to cover in detail each of these pitchers, nor shall I post the weekly stats for each of these guys every Monday. I’ll look at the top ten or so, each week, with some numbers and short remarks, and with hope, every week, I’ll give you a Mr. Thursday scouting report, based on a chance to observe the young hurler on TV, or, if I’m unlucky, on the interweb.
Now, there’s going to be another entry next week, and then we reach Opening Day. While it’s unlikely that I’ll have any calculable statistics by the time I post, I will, at the very least, be able to share with you all the Opening Day rookie pitchers, so we can see who’s getting a leg up on the competition.
Next week, I’ll share with you some of the blogs and other baseball related sites and the Curious Mechanism reads almost fanatically, so you, too, can breath in our giddy baseball anticipation.
For whoever cares: breaking out of the habit of using the royal We is a lot more difficult than expected. Sheesh.
Beware! Here Be First Person Singular!
March 19, 2007
Hello readers!This blog was started in October with an intention that is still stated in the “About” section. At no point was this supposed to become a “personal” blog–at the very least, if any element of my personal life appeared in this blog, it would only be to further an external point. I had also a hope of adding more authors to the blog–in no small part because I struggle to update as often as I would like, and because the more viewpoints, the better, in my humble opinion.
The purpose of the editorial “we” throughout this blog’s short history is not, as some commenter suggested, in imitation of Deadspin, or any other specific blog or piece of writing that I’m aware of. It is merely to give identity to someone besides myself–Mr. Thursday–and to keep the topics seperate from myself. I like to think that, in this endeavour, I have been largely successful. It has also been to create a sense of this largeness to the blog–hence the references to “The Curious Mechanism”.
But now some changes have come to the Curious Mechanism, and as such, I want to recognize them. First, is that I, TC, am now one of 3 writers for this blog. I am still the main writer for the blog, and for all purposes practical, impractical, and completely irrelevant, I am still Mr. Thursday. One of the new writers has already begun writing for this blog, and the other will start doing so this week. The use of “we” will be considerably lessened at this point–I don’t anticipate the other two authors making much use of it. I will continue to use it only as it pertains to basic axioms of the Curious Mechanism.
After the break, some short bios on the people who will be bringing Mr. Thursday’s Curious Mechanism to your computer screen. They’re both good people of whom I’m very fond, and very smart; they both double majored in Political Science and Philosophy in college, which means they’re both smart and poor. Oh, and they both have the free time to write for me with no incentives whatsoever.
Executive purges seem to evoke thoughts of Stalinist Russia or Peter Best being forced from the position as the Beatles’ drummer. However, when these purges occur in a democratic republic with the phrase “separation of powers” in its Constitution, people begin to worry. As of December ‘06, the Curious Mechanism’s favorite Supreme Court failure/White House legal counsel/Golden Girl/personal friend of President Bush, Ms. Harriet Miers, is back! And this time, she’s taking the whole Justice Department down with her.
GoodEnough ‘07: It Comes In Twos
March 12, 2007
As previously noted, GoodEnough for Meis the companion series to The Extrapolater’s Smells Like Pujols.
Last Monday, we explained our method for judging pitchers using a modified version of Baseball Prospectus’ “Stuff” formula, which we’re further modifying to compare a pitcher’s overall value to Doc Gooden.
Now, thanks to the glory of Baseball Reference, we’ve acquired a really vastly enormous spreadsheet with the season-by-season statistics for every pitcher since 1871. There’s nearly 40,000 pitchers on here.
Now, because we’re really handy with Excel, we used our modified Stuff formula on the spreadsheet, just to see how productive our formula is. To make it easier, we reduced the results to pitchers who qualified for the ERA title (162+ innings pitched) and we’re only looking at 1969 through 2006 right now.
As expected, our results returned some of the usual suspects near the top of the list: Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens. However, we came across some discrepancies that we didn’t care for. Namely, it showed us how deeply our form of Stuff overvalues strikeouts.
To explain: there are very few pitching statistics that benefit from growing. The only such statistics are innings pitched, and strikeouts. (We understand that “wins” and “saves” are statistics that pitchers like to have a lot of, but they speak more to luck than to dominance). Our Stuff basically takes strikeouts and assigns them a really big numerical value, and then subtracts similarly constructed values for walks and runs and hits and home runs. The difference there is then tweaked a little further by innings pitched, and we’re done. The problem is, if a pitcher has a mountain of strikeouts, he can overcome things like walking 98 batters and still produce an outstanding score. If a pitcher, however, hardly gives up any hits or walks or runs, and pitches a bunch of innings, he still can’t score so high as the strikeout king.
In short, we discovered that Greg Maddux’s Stuff is down in David Cone territory, and we cannot abide that Oliver Perez in 2004, good as he was, pitched better than Maddux is 1995. We know that statistics should help us form our opinions, and we shouldn’t modify stats to conform to our opinions, but no one’s paying us to be unbiased, anyway.
So our options were to either find a new stat, or tweak our old one. We tried some of both, and we’ve found a new stat. The new stat is similarly imperfect, but we feel that using it in tandem with Stuff should give us some pretty solid results. So we give you FIP, or Fielder Independent Pitching, a statistic invented by TangoTiger.
After the break, what this means, and a look at what pitchers we’ll be examining.
David Brooks Doesn’t Get It
March 12, 2007
David Brooks the is resident conservative columnist for The New York Times‘ Op-Ed section. His shrill, lonely cry is the only thing to combat the liberal hoards of Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedmann and whoever else is over there. We don’t really read the Times’ op-ed section much, as most of their writers seem to be really repetitive (we mean, if we can write between 2,000 and 3,000 words a week (on our good weeks) and at least keep things varied, can’t people who get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce 1600 words every seven days no write the same things over and over again?
Anyway, David Brooks is generally a fairly interesting read, if for no other reasons than that he’s a terrible know-it-all and he thinks differently than we do. We disagree with his perspective often enough (especially his praise for “bobo-ism”, and its “paradise”–the Philadelphia Main Line, where we grew up), but nonetheless we read him on occasion with tempered interest. On February 25 of this year he wrote an article titled, “Mosh Pit Meets Sandbox,” in which Brooks’ bashes the “hipster parenting” trend. This is not a problem to us, in and of itself, but the argument is so superficial, we’ve decided to respond, albeit two weeks after the fact.
After the break, we provide some quotations from the article, with our responses.
