- A truly memorable era came to an end in baseball yesterday. Julio Franco announced his retirement, ending a career that began way back in 1982, spanned 23 Major League Baseball seasons and extended all the way down into the Mexican League on multiple occasions, including this season, as well as stints iin Korea, Japan and the Dominican Republic. Franco was an iconic figure, a guy who was still going strong in his late 40s and underwent a major transformation from the point when he entered the majors as a skinny shortstop with a funky batting stance to recent years when he was a valuable reserve on some good Braves and Mets teams as a rocked up, muscular first baseman. He didn’t do it the wrong way, though; Franco was notorious for waking up at 3 a.m. to drink protein shakes and fruit beverages he made in his own juicer and working out like a fiend. One year late in his career, his teammates got the Franco a birthday cake and he actually didn’t eat any of it because he refuses to eat and sweets. For his career, Franco pounded out 2,586 hits, a number that would have far exceeded the 3,000 that almost guarantees entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame if not for those years spent in exile down in Mexico. My man Julio played for nine different teams in MLB, including Texas, Cleveland, Tampa Bay and Atlanta. He broke into the majors in 1982 with the Philadelphia Phillies as a shortstop and made a name for himself by hitting for a high average while having the most bizarre batting stance I’ve ever seen. He crouched down, knees bent, butt stuck way out, arms raised slightly forward and curling back up over his head, the bat running parallel to the middle of his head and pointing straight backwards. Franco’s MLB career ended with the New York Mets last season, 2,586 hits and a wealth of memories later. He was a true character with character, a good guy who worked hard in order to become a valuable player despite having been in baseball longer than some of his teammates had been alive. It’s sad that he didn’t reach his goal of playing in the majors until he was 50, but compared to all he accomplished, that’s a small footnote in his story. Congrats on an amazing career, Julio. You deserve huge round of applause and you’ll be missed.
- Summer blockbusters put themselves in a tough spot just on the basis of the sheer hype they receive. You see so many commercials and promos for them and their stars appear on so many shows trying to drum up interest in them that by the time they come out, you’re either going to love them or hate them. Expectations are so high that they either wow you or they fall woefully short, with too many recent summer blockbusters falling into the latter category. Just last summer, Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and Ocean’s Thirteen all fell short of lofty standards, although Ocean’s Thirteen was actually a pretty decent movie in my estimation. The only major motion picture to meet and possibly exceed expectations was the flat-out awesome Bourne Ultimatum, which provided a fantastic capper to the Bourne trilogy. Iron Man, starring oft-troubled Robert Downey Jr., finds itself in that blockbuster category as it opens this weekend. Based on what I saw, it falls much more into the “meeting expectations” category than into the category most of last summer’s major movies fell into. The movie centers on billionaire businessman Tony Stark, a wealthy weapons manufacturer with a massive ego to match his massive wealth. He’s a walking mass of contradictions, a man who loves building things but makes a living off of selling weapons that destroy things. Things take a significant turn for the worst when Stark is on a trip to Afghanistan to demonstrate an amazing new missile his company has developed and he’s kidnapped by a terrorist group that uses weapons of his own making to torture him. The only way they’ll let him go is if he creates a über-destructive weapon for their own use. Instead, Stark outsmarts the terrorists (always a safe ploy for a movie to cater to the audience) and builds a powerful metal suit (hmm, maybe this is where the movie gets its name…) that he miraculously manages to keep the construction of hidden from his captors. After escaping, Stark decides that he wants out of the weapons business, a move that doesn’t sit well with those at the top of his company. He also becomes obsessed with constructing a bigger, better version of the metal suit, a pursuit that threatens to consume him. Woven in is the prospect of a romance with his loyal assistant, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). Although the movie does make some leaps on plauability, it is key to remember that it is adapted from a comic book, so you’re not exactly dealing with a traditional plot here. That being said, the action and drama are good enough to make the 2 hours, 6 minutes of the movie go by at a good pace and not drag much. The writing and dialogue are decent, especially for a comic book-based film. Overall, it’s a flick I’d rate a solid B+/A-, right on the border…..
- And you thought the omnipresent commercials for crank-enhancing pills like Viagra, Cialis, etc. during sporting events were bad here in the United States. Well…they are bad, awful, uncomfortable, awkward, weird and any other creepy, negative adjective you can think of. Hearing about those pills and seeing images of dudes pumping footballs through swinging tires or of people sharing adjoining outdoor bathtubs on a hill overlooking the sunset will be enough to make my stomach turn any day of any week. That being said, it could be worse. It could be like it is in one particular working class suburb of Santiago, Chile, where the local mayor launching a program to distribute free crank enhancer medicine to all senior citizens. He thinks geezers getting after it helps improve the overall quality of life. As many as 1,500 residents are eligible to receive up to four pills per month, which I’m sure won't fall into the wrong hands. I mean, no men who don’t need the pills will get them anyhow and then sell them off to make money, right? No one ever dares to abuse this kind of program, do they? Actually, I’d support a program like this here in the U.S…..as long as it meant the immediate and permanent discontinuation of those revolting, nasty commercials for the pills. Deal?
- The rich, uppity, elitist people in San Diego’s Carmel Valley neighborhood should have enough gossip for the next five years or more based on one single incident that happened in their ‘hood this past week. Their neighbor Marie Walsh, a.k.a. Susan LeFevre, was arrested and carted off by police after they received a tip that Walsh, who had been living in the area for years, was actually LeFevre, the same woman who escaped from prison in Detroit 32 years ago. When she escaped back in 1976, Walsh/LeFevre headed for the West Coast, got married and had three children. She settled down, raised her family and integrated herself into the posh surroundings of Carmel Valley. Now her neighbors can dish gossip about where they were and what they saw the day their neighbor was arrested and revealed to be a wanted fugitive, more than enough gossip to fuel their fires for months, if not years. Amazing that after all these years, some anonymous tipster happened to find out who this woman was, but I guess that every now and then, on rare occasions, justice is actually served in this country….assuming you’re not a rich, accused murderer, that is…..
- Wondering where all your guy friends between the ages of 18 and 34 have been the past week? I might be able to help you there if you haven’t already figured it out. They’ve been entrenched in front of their TVs, but not to watch a sporting event - unless you consider pretending to be a car thief running around assaulting, killing and sexing it up to be a sport. Yes, it’s the release of Grand Theft Auto IV, the next evolution in a game that has become the poster child for those looking to lament and bemoan the excess of sex, violence and debauchery in the video game world. You can pick it up for your Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, etc.) My question is who doesn’t love a game where you can get after it with hookers, beat up old ladies, bowl, play pool, rob people, steal cars, go on dates and kill people? Heck, there’s even a graphic, non-interactive S&M scene right as the game starts. How could you not love that? What parent isn’t buying this game and sitting down with their kids to play it? There’s blood, nudity and profanity galore, the trifecta of video game “musts.” The game continues to growing trend of having a story line and placing the player in the shoes of a character, living out their life and inserting themselves into a reality that the ostensibly will enjoy more than living their actual, real life his in the real world. The story in this game is that of Niko Bellic, an Eastern European who has just arrived in the United States. He hits the ground running in Liberty City, surprisingly like New York City. His cousin Roman meets him there and although Roman has been talking up America for years, Niko is met only with a crappy apartment and a bad job at a car service. But that job quickly turns into being an errand boy for a low-level mob boss, at which point things get really interesting. If you want to find out the rest, you’ll have to buy the game and walk the streets of Liberty City yourself, right alongside the hookers, dealers, pimps, junkies and average citizens. It’s a wild, graphic, colorful ride and one that can get very addictive very quickly, thus the realization that you probably haven’t seen a lot of your guy friends since Tuesday when they got their hands on the game….
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