Gonna Be A Blackout Tonight

At almost every bar in Vegas, Sundays in the fall and winter are chock full of jersey wearing football fans drinking beer in front of an array of televisions broadcasting every NFL match up in sparkling high-definition. For a reasonable fee, DirecTV will beam all these games into your living room, and in Vegas, with no local team, sans blackouts. Baseball junkies here are not so lucky. Major League Baseball's ridiculous blackout policies prevent such luxury. Six teams claim Nevada as a local market - the Dodgers, Angels, D-Backs, Giants, A's, and Padres. We get about a hundred Angels and Dodgers games from FSN and Prime Ticket, and the Padres local feed if you have Cox. But for a true seamhead, this isn't nearly enough. However, springing for the 160 dollar Extra Innings package is a waste. Sure, the Yankees and Red Sox and Indians are on every night, but the west coast games are virtually non-existent.

The problem has it's roots in the era of broadcast, rabbit-ear antennae television rules. Teams gerrymandered their blackout zones according to the power of their local signals, and when you only have a dozen channels to choose from anyway, it wasn't such a big deal. Of course today, with 500 channel digital cable subscriptions, this is irrelevant. Still, teams hold on to their rights and infuriate their biggest and most loyal fans.

Exclusivity deals are another issue. ESPN holds the rights to all Sunday night games - which isn't really an issue because most games are played on Sunday afternoon. Saturdays are another matter entirely. FOX's deal guarantees that no games can be televised by anyone else before 7pm EST. They broadcast regional games, but blackout all other FOX games on Extra Innings regardless of broadcast territories. On any given Saturday, they will broadcast 6-8 games throughout the country but the only game you'll see is the one FOX has chosen to beam to your territory. So here in Vegas, the Red Sox-Rays could be playing at 10 but you will only see cartoons until the local game starts at 1.

I am relatively sure that baseball is the only business on the planet that makes it's most diehard fans chase them around with money without giving them the best possible product. Next year the MLB Network will launch, modeled after the successful NFL version, but Selig and co. are mum on the prospect of changing the rules even for their own network. Why is it that the sport with the highest median-income fanbase has so much trouble catering to them? They were all too ready to piss on the traditionalists and reach out to new fans by adopting the DH, wild card and interleague play, but refuse to throw those same purists a bone by providing them with their nightly fix. I don't get it, and I don't understand the roadblocks preventing a solution. There is no reason why baseball shouldn't compete with the increasingly unsavory NFL, but the MLB refuses to step up to the plate and take one for the team.

Today's MP3 was easy.

The Dropkick Murphys - Gonna Be A Blackout Tonight

Bo, You Don't Know Diddley

Bo Diddley's death yesterday got me thinking about this old Nike ad . . .

Dennis Wilson, Pacific Ocean Blue

I have never been a huge Beach Boys fan. Too poppy for me. I have the same problem with a lot of pop music - The Beatles, The Stones ('cept Exile on Main Street), even more contemporary stuff like U2 or Dave Mathews. It isn't that I don't appreciate their talent, or even find their music enjoyable at times. It's that it can never be mine, it can never be a part of my life because it has been so thoroughly co-opted by everyone else, from Apple and Cirque du Soleil to classic rock radio and every piece of shit summer popcorn movie in existence. It cheapens the music, dulls any emotional depth or meaning. The Beach Boys in particular are so iconic, so seared into our collective consciousness, that it is easy to forget how revolutionary, how Californian they were.

Dennis Wilson was their drummer. He was the black sheep of the family, relegated to the background of the band by his more famous and polished brothers, Carl and Brian. By the mid 70's, his relationship with the band had degraded to the point of fracture, and he increasingly explored a solo career. In 1977 he released Pacific Ocean Blue, which has been out of print since and is quite a collector's item. It has become legendary among surf circles for its unique piano style, and light, breezy, California sound. In many ways, he out Beach Boyed the Beach Boys . . . My own exposure to the album is limited, but my time among some of those surf circles did grant me a passing famialiarity. So I was pretty stoked upon hearing that a 2-disc remastered edition will be released by Legacy Recordings on June 17th. Wilson died in 1983 from numerous complications resulting from his substance abuse, so this release is long overdue. I managed to snag one of the tracks for everyone to check out, "River Song." It has completely dominated my iPod of late, so I hope you enjoy.

Dennis Wilson - River Song

The Century Mark

The Chicago Cubs, World Series contenders? The Cubbies are 36-21, the best record in baseball. They bitch slapped my Dodgers this week, they are in a vastly improved and increasingly tough division, and they are wacking the ball around the yard with reckless abandon. When is the last time the Cubs were 36-21? Yeah, you saw this one coming . . . 1908. Their pitching, past Big Z, is worrisome. The rest of the rotation is questionable, Carlos Marmol is looking mortal lately, and Kerry Wood is an adventure. But it looks like they can outscore everyone anyway, so hopefully they keep Steve Bartman, Steve Garvey, and various forms of livestock out of Chicago for the remainder of the summer . . . How monumental is the Cubs' futility? 100 years without a title is the longest drought among all 4 major professional sports leagues. The other 3 sports leagues were not even in existence in 1908. In fact, the NBA was created in 1947, 2 years after the Cubs' last Fall Classic appearance. Despite all this, the Cubs have a national fanbase (perhaps due to WGN) - a fanbase that is also fiercely loyal despite their teams woes. It's early yet, but maybe "this is the year."

Sine Qua Non

Television has gotten so intriguing the last 2 years. I suppose we have HBO to thank for that. It seems The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire, etc., have had a powerful influence on the rest of the industry, allowing intelligent, unique programming to invade the wasteland of reality and procedural cop/lawyer/doctor bullshit that has dominated TV for a decade. Guess Lost deserves some credit too. . . Only a few shows in that decade have caused me to leave HBO - The West Wing, the Whedon shows, maybe 24 until it jumped the shark. But that has all changed. The last 2 years have brought a plethora of guilt-free television worth watching. Heroes, Chuck, Pushing Daisies, Eureka, Weeds, The Tudors - not to mention upcoming fare like JJ Abrams' Fringe, Whedon's Dollhouse, and Ronald D. Moore's Virtuality - all deliver quality entertainment on a weekly basis.

Virtuality may be in the works, but Moore is still running the best show on TV, Battlestar Galactica. Since we are trying to shift to more user-friendly and less depressing material here at Aristeia, I thought weekly reviews and commentary on these shows would be a welcome addition, and what better place to start than BSG? I am a day late, I know, but what the fuck? In the age of the DVR, who is watching TV at 9PM on a Friday night?

"Sine Qua Non" brings back one of my favorite characters from last season, the deliciously cynical and disturbed attorney Romo, pictured above. We get Lee's ascension to the Presidency, but I think everyone saw that coming. Adama resigns, frets about Laura, and leaves Galactica to wait for her. But for me, the most powerful scenes revolved around Tigh and Caprica Six. I love Tigh, and Caprica Six has become, for me at least, really intriguing and emotionally arresting. It is amazing to me that this is Ms. Helfer's (also above) first crack at acting, the extremes she has shown us in the various Six denominations throughout the show have been impressive. Sex kitten to violent revolutionary to stilted lover, and she is able to play it off all in her face, her eyes, her body language. Plus, she is so . . . gorgeous. Hard to take your eyes off her. Anyway . . . the dynamic between her and Tigh in the last few eps has been priceless. And now she is pregnant? So, sticking with our established mythology, does that mean Tigh loves her? Or loves the image of Helen? Because he is one of the Final Five, does that mean he is somehow different anatomically, can impregnate another Cylon? Does that matter? I realize nitpicking the exposition is kinda missing the point, but cmon, this is good stuff.

The fight scene in Adama's quarters is another highlight, if only for the laugh we get out of his ship getting smashed . . . again. Let's face it, this is a bleak program, smiles are few and far between. Always a nice touch. And how bout the look on Tigh's face when Adama tells him he is a "changed man?" Love that. Overall, I really feel the season is starting to come together nicely. This episode really tried to do a lot, but I get the feeling that has more to do with the writer's strike rushing everything. Ultimately, this is it - last season - so as many threads and plotlines they want to explore, I am down for the ride.

I talk to a lot of people and read a lot of lit trashing last season's twist, making Tigh, Anders, et al into Cylons, and I was a little skeptical at first as well. What, they have Bob Dylan on fucking Caprica too? But the variety of directions taken this season has sold me. I thought the whole second half of the season was weak last year, I have always felt the show bogs down when they try to do the self-contained 1 hour episodes. They have gotten back to the serial storytelling this year, and it has really brought back the paranoid, disturbed atmosphere that made the show so successful in the first place. I appreciate they like to try and lure in new viewers with the one-shots, but who is coming to the party this late? Now that they are servicing the fans again, we seem to be hurtling toward a final arc that will tie up all these Easter eggs and plot threads that have been building since the beginning, and I am stoked. Is Adama a cylon? Starbuck? My money is on Laura or Lee, but I am sure it will be something completely off the wall . . .