SUBWAY DELAYED

"YANKS SHOCKINGLY LOSE TO TIGERS! JOE TORRE TO BE FIRED! A-ROD TO BE PUBLICLY LYNCHED AT MIDNIGHT ON HALLOWEEN! [Oh, by the way, the Mets won.] PINELLA GAINS CONTROL OF BRONX IN BLOODLESS COUP! STEINBRENNER DECLARES WAR ON NORTH KOREA! [Yeah, I think the Mets thing was a sweep, or something.] ANARCHY AND CHAOS SWEEP THROUGH THE BASEBALL WORLD!" You have to love the New York media. Wait a second, no you don't. It's perfectly okay to despise them, because they're patently awful.

I know I said I wouldn't blog baseball until the Yanks/Mets Subway Series, but since that's been derailed (get it?) allow me to go a bit off-track (GET IT???). I would say that watching the Mets' Steve Trachsel pitch is like watching paint dry, but that would be an insult to paint. It's like watching paint dry, flake off the wall, and having your pet ingest it and eventually die of lead poisoning. Seriously, it seems like every game I've attended over the past few years has featured either Al "110 Pitches Over 5 Innings" Leiter, Bobby "Not The Golfer" Jones or "Blood On The" Trachsel. At least he gives you plenty of time to go on a beer run, while he's throwing over to first to keep the runner close 17 consecutive times. Instead of commentators constantly labeling his pitching style as "deliberate", just once I want to hear one of them say "incredibly boring" or "mind-numbingly slow". If I ever make Game 6 of the NLCS (10/18), I guarantee Trachsel will be on the mound, stepping off the rubber and into my nightmares.

Thankfully, ESPN's done with baseball for another year, ending Joe Morgan's reign of terror. Some advice for the future: Steve Phillips should not be allowed to provide color commentary during Mets games, and certainly not casually chat about his "days with the team" as a GM, a job from which he was unceremoniously shitcanned. This is like Rich Kotite giving us "insight" during a Jets game: it's insulting and just plain wrong, and really should be illegal. His deals almost killed the team after their 2000 World Series appearance, which they acheived in spite of him and now looks like an aberration. We're only recovering now, stop opening up old wounds.

I've seen Tiger Woods at Yankees games and wearing Duke shirts, so it's only natural that he should now become a Detroit Tigers fan. And now that Detroit, St. Louis and Oakland are in the LCS, FOX might actually have to show some baseball, due to the lack of notable celebrities in the crowd. Unfortunately, expect them to ratchet up the stargazing at Shea. Kudos to FOX for using some recent songs during the postseason, as I've heard some Audioslave, The Walkmen, Black Keys and Gnarls Barkley mixed in there. A refreshing change from the Emerson, Lake & (Jim) Palmer "You gotta see the show" days.

Is "Pods" the proper shorthand for Padres? Because writing "Pads" looks weird, like I'm talking about a Kotex commercial.

Speaking of, the worst ad campaign award goes to Holiday Inn, with ads featuring a guy with "poor hot tub etiquette" sitting too close to another guy, and Joe Buck. Need I say more? Jeez, the games are hard enough to sit through. And Taco Bell, Dominoes, Olive Garden, and T.G.I. Friday's have determined that the average American is NOT FAT ENOUGH, and have teamed up to provide more fudgy brownies, enormous cheesy burritos, fatty dipping sauces, and creamy pasta dishes than any human being should consume. I think it's time to get a TiVo so I can FF through the ads, the vast majority of which are apparantly written for third graders with eating disorders.

On a sad note, Tyler Florence, former "celebrity chef" (what an asinine title), officially died this week after selling his soul to Applebee's. Just a tragic loss, and I send my condolences to his celebrity family and the Food Network. I won't be eating good in the neighborhood again for quite some time after this shocking news. (Shouldn't it be "eating well in the neighborhood"? Horrible food, horrible grammar.)

Best ad I've seen lately features a "magician" using his "powers" to force a Hummer to avoid filling up at a gas station. I can't describe it, but it cracks me up every time.



"Hummer - Skipping the Gas Station" [YouTube]