Author: Jim Ellwanger

Meow

Way back when we were in Detroit, Levi made a joke on this very blog about the Garfield movie, which was the film being promoted by the “LodgeNet” card on top of the hotel room TV.

The HBO channels are free this weekend on DirecTV, and in looking through the listings, I discovered that “Garfield: The Movie” was showing on MoreMax, so out of curiosity, I set the TiVo.

As it turns out, this movie is worse than you can possibly imagine. I couldn’t get past 10 minutes, which means I didn’t even see Jennifer Love Hewitt. What is in the first 10 minutes is Breckin Meyer as Jon Arbuckle microwaving a round plastic container of “Hash in a Dash” for breakfast — a container and a food that are pretty much indistinguishable from Garfield’s liver-flavored cat food, so I’m sure you can imagine the hilarity that is supposed to have ensued. Then Garfield goes outside and has some wacky misadventures with Nermal, who is a Siamese cat in the movie but the “world’s cutest kitten,” a gray tabby, in the comic strip. Now, cats that are a mixture of Siamese and gray tabby tend to be as cute as can be, but surely the filmmakers didn’t set out to specifically remind everyone of my cat; obviously, the problem was that they couldn’t get their hands on a well-trained gray tabby, just a well-trained Siamese. This is because while Garfield is completely a CGI creation so that he can look vaguely like he does in the comic strip, all the other animals in the film only have CGI applied to their faces when they’re talking, so it’s completely creepy and strange.

Then we are led to believe that there is a dairy that delivers old-fashioned bottles of milk to homes that are within sight of the downtown Los Angeles skyline, and Garfield uses Nermal as a pawn as part of a Rube Goldbergian scheme to get some of that milk. After his drink, Garfield is none the worse for wear — he doesn’t start throwing up everywhere, unlike real cats.

Fortunately, “Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (And Don’t Come Back!)” appeared on HBO Family a little later — it has a few problems of its own, but it managed to get the bad taste of “Garfield” out of my mouth.

What’s with the Carrot League baseball today?

Levi claims to be busy with work, but figuring that I’d have plenty of time on my hands now that I’ve been unemployed for almost four months, he asked me to pass this along: “Bugs Bunny, Greatest Banned Player Ever,” a scholarly analysis of the 1946 Warner Bros. Friz Freleng/Michael Maltese cartoon “Baseball Bugs.” It places the game depicted — apparently an exhibition game at the Polo Grounds — into historical perspective, and even provides some explanations for the “cartoon physics” on display. It’s definitely worth a read if you’ve got more time than Levi does.

Since I supposedly have so much time on my hands, perhaps I should work on analyzing my other favorite baseball cartoon, Tex Avery’s “Batty Baseball” (1944). Unfortunately, it’s a series of vignettes and blackout gags, rather than the complete game depicted in “Baseball Bugs,” and probably defies analysis.

At last, a reason to go to Sauget, Illinois

This season, the Gateway Grizzlies of the Frontier League will be featuring “Baseball’s Best Burger” at their concession stands.

It’s a bacon cheeseburger, served on a Krispy Kreme doughnut instead of a bun. Yes, I would eat one — remember, I’m the one who had a Schmitter for dinner in Philadelphia, breakfast at Eat ‘n’ Park in Harrisburg, and then a Primanti Brothers sandwich for lunch in Pittsburgh.

Another one for the reading list

When the weather is bad in San Francisco, the capacity of San Francisco International Airport is effectively cut in half.

Fortunately, Terminal 3 has a branch of local San Francisco independent bookseller Books, Inc. (although it’s called Compass Books at the airport, for what seems like no good reason), which makes it easier for one to purchase a book containing some light baseball-related reading to keep one from going insane during a 5-hour weather delay.

The book I purchased: The Baseball Uncyclopedia by Michael Kun and Howard Bloom. I’ll just briefly say that it’s two guys writing a bunch of short, humorous, opinionated pieces about baseball; if you follow that previous link, you can read a more in-depth description and a sample chapter that explains how knowing baseball players’ uniform numbers can help kids cheat during math competitions. Also, there are lots and lots of footnotes.

Wait a minute — two guys writing a bunch of short, humorous, opinionated pieces about baseball…hmm. And they use the term “baseball-related” several times in the book as well. I’d think about suing, but they’re both lawyers.

This book just came out a few weeks ago. I’m seldom that up-to-date with my reading material, unlike Levi.

Oh, Pat!

I only watch “Jeopardy!” and reruns of “Super Password,” so I depend on the L.A. Times sports section to let me know what’s happening on any other game shows. It seems recently, there was a “Same Name” puzzle on “Wheel of Fortune” that had the solution ULTRAVIOLET AND TAMPA BAY DEVIL RAYS. After the puzzle was solved, Pat Sajak quipped, “They’re both invisible to the naked eye.”

Come on, Pat — some might say you are the Tampa Bay Devil Rays of game show hosts, having come out of relative obscurity as a local weatherman to host “Wheel of Fortune.” That’s in contrast to Alex Trebek, who represents the New York Yankees in this analogy, having been groomed for greatness back in Canada and having a succession of fairly successful shows, from “High Rollers” to the non-super-sloppy “Double Dare” to the non-Activision “Pitfall,” before getting the “Jeopardy!” gig — and even then, there was a time when he was being seen on three daily game shows at once (“Classic Concentration” and “To Tell the Truth” in addition to “Jeopardy!”), which is like winning the World Series every day or something like that. Hey, I didn’t say this was a perfect analogy.

Opening Day 1994 seems like such a long time ago

Hanger-on Dan just sent out an e-mail with the subject line “News of earth-shaking impact” that turned out to contain a link to an mlb.com news story and the words “Prepare to be a Reds fan.” Now, I don’t have an especially fast connection, and I was using much of the speed I do have to download clips of the new Australian version of “Family Feud,” so after I clicked on the link in Dan’s e-mail, it took quite a while to load. I pondered — what could it be? What could it be?

It was better than I could have imagined, especially if Tuffy makes the team (and I like Quinton McCracken, too, but he’s no Tuffy).

Incidentally, you may note that Channel Nine in Australia appears to be using the slogan “Still the One.” This was the slogan of the ABC network in the U.S. way back in the late 1970s, tied to the then-reasonably-current song of the same name by the band Orleans. Wow, things take a long time to get to Australia!

Happy Valentine’s Day to you, too

From Milo Hamilton’s forthcoming autobiography Making Airwaves:

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60 Years at Milo’s Microphone, as quoted in today’s L.A. Times, referring to the statue of Harry Caray outside Wrigley Field: “I see that statue every time the Astros visit Wrigley Field as our bus pulls up to the park. I say to myself, ‘I gotta go get some peanuts and feed the pigeons so they’ll fly over the statue all day long.'” Elsewhere in the book, Hamilton calls Caray a “miserable human being” and says that at their first meeting, Caray said to him, “Well, kid, if I were you, I’d leave town.”

Say, isn’t it about time for pitchers and catchers to report? I think it is!