Baseball, MST3K, Dr Who

[mellicious]

It's baseball season! I don't know if people who know me online necessarily know what a big baseball fan I am, because the "peak" of my baseball fandom happened before I even had a computer at home. (I think I inherited my dad's old Compaq in the fall of 1999, that was my first home computer. Little did he know what he was letting loose there.) I used to go to about half of the Astros home games in the last four years they were in the Astrodome; I probably went to about 200 baseball games total between 1996 and 2000. (Often with Rob or with friends, but also often alone.) Once they moved to the "new" park in 2000 it became a much more expensive hobby - I can't imagine any circumstances other than, y'know, winning the lottery under which I would see live baseball that much again. (If I was rich I would buy a townhouse near the ballpark and season tickets.) So I gradually went to fewer and fewer games, but we still watch a lot on TV. That's partly because it's just so much more expensive to go to games now, but it's also just life circumstances. In those years I had a day job and Rob had a night job, so I partly went to the games rather than sit at home alone. In the late 90s you could walk up on game day, especially on weekdays, and usually get a single in the field boxes behind the plate - it was $25, which is what an upper deck seat costs now. (Or if I was feeling broke, the good upper deck seats were only $7.) Rob started out not a baseball fan at all and I would drag him along some of the time, and he would eat his way through the games, pretty much, but he gradually got more interested. (I realized this was happening when he started asking me questions about double-plays and such.) By the time the Astros traded for Randy Johnson in the second half of 1998 he was really into it, too.

I'm partly thinking about baseball because I made a comment on Twitter over the weekend that baseball is one of the few things tying us to an actual TV any more. You can get MLB.tv but it still blacks out home games. We haven't figured out a way around that one yet.

(Rob also watches that goofy channel that shows all-old-TV-all-the-time, but there's bound to be some sort of substitute for that.)

Let's see, we watched a couple of episodes of MST3K, and I think that was the only thing I watched on Netflix over the weekend. MST3K was pretty good. Rob used to watch the old MST3K a lot more than I did, so he said it was taking him a while to adjust to the new robot voices, especially. I thought the skit parts of it hadn't quite jelled, maybe, but the jokes during the bad movies seemed just as funny to me as ever. (The first movie is a 1961 Danish (Danish?!?) monster movie called Reptilicus and it is just the most MST3K movie you can imagine.)

And in the middle of the night last night I watched the new Doctor Who. (U-verse was down all night Saturday night, which is the kind of time when I start thinking about whether we get our money's worth out of old-school television.) I liked "The Pilot" a lot. I liked Bill and I liked Nardole and I liked the Doctor more than I have a lot of the time in recent seasons. (I love Peter Capaldi but I think his doctor is either harder to write for or the scripts have just gone down in quality generally. Or maybe both, but I don't have the sort of DEFINITE OPINIONS on this question that a lot of people do.) This episode managed to be simultaneously very creepy and quite funny. Also, while I pretty much expected to like Pearl Mackie as Bill, I really liked her much more than I thought. And I liked the way Bill was clearly gay without anybody ever having to label her as such. SO refreshing. (Admittedly, that might have been why they announced it quite loudly ahead of time, so not too many people were surprised. I only float around on the edge of Doctor Who fandom, though, so I don't know how much flouncing around about it is going on over there.)

I feel like I'm forgetting something else that I watched that was worth noting. If I remember I'll come back and talk about it later!

Comments

[bunny42]

I, too, am a rabid baseball fan. My team is the (now) Miami Marlins. i was at their inaugural game as the Florida Marlins in 1993! In 1996 my late husband bought me season tickets for Christmas, with the stipulation that he didn't have to go with me. (He would rather watch paint dry) So, if I couldn't find someone to use my other ticket I went by myself. You can generally find somebody to talk to, especially if you take your radio and listen to the broadcast. When something unusual happens on the field, the announcers discuss it and you become a wealth of knowledge. What a joyful year,1997! We won the Series in seven, against the Indians. It was magical!

The Marlins have had their ups and downs, including another Series in 2003, but nothing more down than last fall, when Jose Fernandez died in a boating accident. That was dreadful. The team has become a family as a result of that tragedy, and, in spite of everything, they are fun to watch.

I hate the new ballpark. it's ugly and not at all friendly. Also it's too far away, in downtown Miami, and parking is expensive. I miss going to the games, but can't deal with the drive, the expense, and the attitude at the new park.

I love my TV. Of course, I watch all the games, but we love the Food Network shows. Sean introduced me to Alton Brown, and we've since attended several of his live shows and recorded many, many episodes of Good Eats. I stream Netflix and watch things like House of Cards and Grace and Frankie. Pry my TV from my cold dead hands!

[mellicious]

Well, when I say "get rid of the TV" I just mean "watch stuff on the computer instead of on a TV." We have a really ancient, non-HD TV that just keeps on working and we've never seen the point of buying a big-screen just to have it. We don't even have Netflix hooked up to it or anything; when we watch Netflix we do it on my computer. Sooner or later it will break and we'll have to actually make a decision about this.

I didn't know you were a Marlins fan. Believe me, I remember 1997 vividly. (I remember Kevin Brown throwing a 4-hitter at the Astrodome on my birthday, for example!) Of course Miami is not in the same league we are any more, so we don't play them much and I'd forgotten they even had a new stadium. It sounds like you are experiencing the same thing I did when the Astros moved out of the Dome. (I love Minute Maid Park when the roof is open, but it's hardly ever open. The rest of the time it just seems like a big expensive barn.)

[bunny42]

On March 29th I attended a Spring Training game at the new Ball Park of the Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach, home of the Astros and the Nats. It's a gorgeous facility! Expensive ($25 a ticket and $10 to park--for Spring Training!!) but it's a beautiful venue. Astros/Marlins, ended in a tie. So far, there are no minor league teams slated to play there, as they all have pre-existing contracts elsewhere for this season. I'm not saying it'll be comfortable to play during the summer, it's brutally hot here. But such a pretty park. I'm sure somebody will snap up the opportunity when they can.

Watching TV on my laptop gives me heartburn, but we do have a smart TV, courtesy of my late mother. If I can't get something on the TV or if Netflix won't stream, for some reason, I can connect the HDMI cable to the laptop and watch the program on the TV screen. That way it's large enough for me to watch comfortably without squinting. Not giving that up if I can manage the price of DirecTV.

[mellicious]

Yeah, they showed several spring training games on TV here so I did get to see the new stadium a bit. I guess they would never have built it if they didn't think they would get their money out of it eventually. (Jim Crane and the Ryan family - as in Nolan's, that is - seem to sort of jointly run the Astros these days, and so far their judgment on things has been awfully sound, in general!)

This computer has a nice 20" screen on it so it's really plenty big in our little living room. (The ancient non-HD TV is maybe 35" and it seems HUGE.) We have an extra computer that we're not using for anything, so my idea if we ever get around to ditching TV completely is that we would just buy a slightly bigger screen and hook it up to that computer. I quit using that computer because it didn't have a processor good enough to play MMOs on but I assume it'd do alright for Netflix and such.

(I got a Kindle Fire for Christmas last year and I really hadn't used it much except as a sort of backlit Kindle, to read books on, but lately I've been watching Amazon Prime stuff on that and it's really nice. Bit small for more than one person, but for one it's great.)

[bunny42]

Duh! Of course you would have seen the new park! I'm a little slow on the uptake. Spring Training is big business here in South Florida, and West Palm Beach seems delighted to have this new facility. I can't imagine it not doing at least as well as Roger Dean Stadium (home to the Marlins and Cardinals) up the road in Jupiter, as well as many of the other parks in the area. It's a real jewel. There are six practice fields for each team, plus soccer fields and a whole area for the public, as well. My only gripe is the schlep from the parking area to the gate. It was in the 80's the day I went, and a long, broiling journey. They have golf carts to transport seniors, which is a nice touch, but I'm not quite ready for that, yet. As of now, they plan to use the park for high school baseball this summer, plus other non-sports events as scheduling permits. They'll get their money's worth.

I wore my black Jose Fernandez official jersey (which didn't help with the heat) and don't you know I ordered a funnel cake covered with powdered sugar! What a ninny. Fortunately, I'd brought a towel to cover my knees (I'd have burnt to a crisp!) and used it as a bib. Managed to keep most of the sugar off of my shirt. Tough to pass up a fresh-made funnel cake! 8-)