Baseball: Though the year ended badly for both NY baseball teams (equally so, perhaps, considering the circumstances), Willie Randolph has a lot to be excited about. The former Yankee third base and bench coach finally has a managerial job of his own, the NY Mets hiring him to try to salvage the mess. This might seem like heresy at first, but actually Randolph rooted for the team as a kid (he's a Brooklyn boy, his first "legitimate" date with his wife was a Mets game), and played there in his last year in the majors.
The team got him at a cut-rate salary, the pitching coach not making much less, but he'll take it. It is also another first: the first time a NY team had a black manager, though the Mets as a team and coaching staff has long been quite diversified. I don't know his managerial skills, but it's a nice story, and helps (along with a new and more independent GM, this being his first big hire) to bring some faith to the fans that 2005 will be worth waiting for.
Al Franken: A free pay channel weekend allowed me to catch the last episode of The Al Franken Show, Sundance Channel Edition. It was amusing to watch the show, allowing us to see the hosts (including Katherine Lanpher) as well as some visuals (the dancing "oy oy oy" titles were funny). For some reason, I found a bit suggesting that if you played the President's speech backward, you hear Satanic messages, hilarious.
Ditto, though in a more gallows sort of way (for the joke is on us because we have four more years of these guys, well some of them, since Colin Powell and others should be able to escape to be replaced with more inmates of the asylum), when a statement by Condi Rice equivocating on exactly how many Al Qaeda operatives were really caught (somewhere in the range of 20-100). I do wonder how the show, which like those that expected the end of the world to happen at a certain date must now re-examine its presuppositions, will do now that the real world slammed their illusions in the face.
Hedy Kiesler: Overall, the free weekend is tedious, since you have all these channels, you expect something is on, and in reality, not really too much. I did catch (on TCM) an interesting and controversial early Hedy Kiesler (Lamarr) film, a Czech production from 1932 entitled Ecstasy. The impressive part of this melodrama is its ability to show the sexual longings of its young star about as well in its own way as a film these days is likely to do. [Emotional dramas respecting women's longings are a rare breed in general outside Lifetime Network.]
Young Eva (the name as well as all the naturalistic imagery surely is meant to be symbolic) marries a much older man, and the film begins with her clearly unsatisfied on her wedding bed. She leaves and goes back to her father, soon deciding to go for a nude swim, conveniently leaving her clothes on her horse. Thus, she must run after it in the nude (this along with the sexual angst made the film quite controversial in its day, though you do not see much), and is seen by a young man surveying in the area. Though the first meeting doesn't go well, they do become a happy couple [One scene was called by one viewer "the first screen orgasm."] before some melodrama sets in.
Hedy is quite effusive with her emotions in the film, which is useful, since it is a largely silent film (with music) ... to good effect, actually. Overall, an interesting viewing experience, on its own, and as an example of early cinema. Be sure you do not get one of the censored cuts.
Irony of the Week: Three times, including 8:30 this morning, Verizon phone ops came to my door attempting to fix my service. The service did go out last Friday, but was okay by Saturday without any need for a service visit. The only problem is that I do not have Verizon -- I switched after they screwed me over a few years ago by repeatedly failing to come to fix my phone. Apparently, ex-customers have the best service. Meanwhile, the poor lady they really should be helping might very well have no phone service. Unless she too switched.