Cop Aesthetic

“What do you despise? By that are you truly known” - Paul Maud’dib

Adopting a play-off team when you don’t have a clear interest is a complicated affair. By definition, it’s a bandwagon move, but you can’t just go all-out and cheer for the favorite. Not only is it unfulfilling, it won’t work. My subconscious will always support the underdog. In the end I decided to do it elimination-style, chopping off everything that doesn’t look like a loveable team until I have my answer:

First out: St. Louis Cardinals - I hate the Cardinals. There doesn’t need to be a reason, they’re just the team I know I’m supposed to hate. I remember as a teenager when I realized Cubs fans were supposed to hate the Cardinals and had to go tell all my Cardinals friends we couldn’t play anymore.  I hate the Cardinals so much I even hate hating the Cardinals. They’re no fun to hate. They’re like your more successful relative who can be kind of a prick sometimes but deep down you know you only loathe him because his life is everything you want yours to be.  Cardinals fans don’t even have the decency to be jerks: they’re almost always friendly and folksy and react more with pity than disgust when they find out who your team is. And you can’t even say you don’t need their pity because Carlos Zambrano just broke his fibula kicking a lawnmower for looking at him funny and the Cubs are 16 games out of first in early June. I hope Lance Berkman figures out a way to be the first player in baseball history to hit a grand slam against his own team. I hate the Cardinals.

Second out: New York Yankees - I don’t exactly hate the Yankees, but cheering for them is stupid. Now obviously, I don’t mean if you’re from the New York area – I have no problem with that because what are you supposed to do, be a Mets fan? But cheering for the Yankees if you have no connection to New York is basically acknowledging that you are among the lowest forms of sport fan pond scum that ever crawled the earth. It doesn’t even have the douchey-cool veneer that Lakers fans can pull off. It’s just sad. I had an instructor in this one course who talked about how he didn’t follow baseball but could never be a Cubs fan because he hated losing, and would probably be a Yankees fan because he liked to win. Not only does this guy not understand sports, he doesn’t understand choices. I’d hate to hear his logic in choosing a mate – he probably married an 85 year-old because there’s little chance she could kill him for the insurance money. You just feel bad for a guy like that. He’ll never get to tend the rabbits.

Third out: Philadelphia Phillies - Living in DC, I’m surrounded by a lot of hate for the Phillies, but I can’t say I share in it exactly. I definitely understand it: there are naturally a lot of NL East fans out here and if you’re not a Phillies fan already, they’re the logical team for you to hate. People complain about them coming out for Phillies games at Nationals Park like hordes of barbarians on some sort of blood pilgrimage, but is that any worse than going two hours up I-90 to watch the Cubs at Miller Park? Who am I to judge? But I’m definitely going to root against the Phillies, and I have a feeling their fans want it that way. They’re like the Orthodox Jews of baseball – they have their own traditions and ways and seek no converts. I’ve been to a Phillies bar when the Phillies were playing in some situation where I had an interest in seeing the Phillies win, and every time I cheered when something went well for the Phillies all the fans would give me these weird looks. They didn’t want me. They knew I wasn’t one of them.

Fourth out: Detroit Tigers - Remember in the early part of the last decade when the Tigers were totally crap-tastic? They were so good at being awful. They lost 90 games five years in a row, and once lost 119. 119! That’s almost as many as twelve tens! The best part about that was announcers would always talk about whether they could lose more games than some team from like a hundred years ago called the Cleveland Spiders. I loved hearing about the Cleveland Spiders. I want some PC granola group to sue the Indians and make them go back to being the Spiders. Can you imagine the creepy spider mascot crawling all around and freaking out all the kids at the game? Then the Tigers got good and were awful at being good. They crapped out in the World Series and made me watch the Cardinals win a trophy. If they make it to the World Series this year the same thing will probably happen again. Screw that.

Fifth out: Arizona Diamondbacks - The Diamondbacks are such a dumb franchise. Bud Selig decided to stick a team out in the desert just so retirees could go watch their favorite team when they’d come play against them. You know how there are those minor league teams called the Road Warriors or something that have no home field and play every game on the road? The Diamondbacks should be the opposite and play every game at home so they don’t have to kill attendance for three games a year or more at everyone else’s park. I went to a Nationals-Diamondbacks game this year on the day after the earthquake happened and there were like 20 people there. They should’ve just started playing Twilight movies on the scoreboard, then they at least could’ve moved some cheese fries and virgin margaritas. Also, why does their logo look so much the Disney logo? Is that supposed to be a snake or something?

Sixth out: Milwaukee Brewers - I seriously considered the Brewers. They’re a good candidate for adoption. They used to play in County Stadium, one of the most gloriously hideous parks every built, and now they play in a stadium that makes you feel like you’re inside the giant spaceship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Their mascot is a jolly man who slides into a mug of beer after home runs and is based on some old guy who decided to sit on top of the scoreboard for like a month because he was pissed no one was coming to games. Whoa! Also, you get to watch Prince Fielder run, and he’s a big, fat guy, so it’s funny. However, their reputation took a serious hit in my eyes when I went to my first Brewers game and crap on a crutch, EVERYONE was putting ketchup on their bratwurst. Now I’m not one of those guys who’ll ream you out for putting ketchup on a hot dog. I don’t do it, but hot dogs are generally pretty tasteless so whatever you want to put on it to make you happy is fine with me. But sullying a spicy, delicious bratwurst by drowning its deliciousness in crap stadium ketchup was too much for me. And they should KNOW BETTER.

Update: I found out instead of beer, Bernie now slides into something called the Kalahari Splash Zone. Screw the Brewers.

So it’s down to the Rays and Rangers. It’s hard for me to form very strong opinions of either team.  Both franchise have had the decency to wait at least a decade to win their first championship, and I admire that. The Rangers have a gorgeous stadium, while Tropicana Field looks like one of the Legion of Doom’s backup hideouts. The Rays have some sort of bizarre Death to Smoochy-type thing as their mascot, while Rangers fans wear antlers on their heads sometimes for some reason. I kind of like Rangers play-off games because you get to see Barbara Bush keeping score. I heard that the Rays would sometimes have pro wrestling matches after their games because a lot of pro wrestlers live in Tampa, and Jonny Gomes would always run in during the matches and start fighting the wrestlers (this really happened). If Johnny Gomes and his alpaca mohawk were still on the team, it would be a lock. As it is, I’m leaning towards the Rays but the Texas-Tampa ALDS matchup can be considered the Battle for My Heart. Best of luck, gentlemen.

Thinking is pretentious, and Transformers: Asshole is good, all-American, Patriot Act and Internet-smut fun that will send your handsome white sons off to die in war, armed to the teeth with all the metal-fetish, extreme xenophobia, and sexual frustration this film can pump into them. It’s war propaganda for the twenty-teens; the rape-justification is just Chantilly. Remember the girl getting an Autobot money-shot in the previous film? This time she gets threatened by a dozen tentacles that, prior to doing whatever it is they intend to do, play with her hair and smooth her cheek. No harm, no foul.

- Walter Chaw on Tranformers: Dark of the Moon at Film Freak Central

In 2009, after she saw a news story about the Chinese calling on the world to abandon the dollar as its reserve currency, [Michele] Bachmann somehow took this to mean that the Obama administration might force ordinary Americans to abandon their familiar green dollar bills for some international and no doubt atheist currency. To combat this possibility, Bachmann introduced a resolution to “bar the dollar from being replaced by any foreign currency.” Even after the gaffe was made public, Bachmann pressed on, challenging Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to “categorically renounce the United States moving away from the dollar.”

- Matt Taibi, “Michele Bachmann’s Holy War,” Rolling Stone