Stubbs Licks a Stat

Well, here we are then. It seemed clear what our off-season needs were pretty much the instant the season's final out was recorded. Now we're well into Hot Stove territory and... we still know exactly what our off-season needs are. What I'm having trouble with is figuring out just what kind of team we're trying to be.
Early moves suggested that we might be going for stars-and-scrubs strategy when we signed Mr. Kemp to that sizable and well-deserved contract. It's not ideal, but I could live with that. We certainly had an surge at the end of the year once some of the young guys got a shot. There are a few crummy contracts and those pesky deferred payments, but overall, the team wasn't looking too bad, even going into ownership limbo. I thought that a couple of clever signings might put us in contention, something that would certainly appeal to whomever the club's new ownership group might be.
However, as things have progressed, I find I'm just confused. Let's go to the game tape.

• Chris Capuano, 1.6 WAR, $3M next year.
• Mark Ellis, 1.3 WAR, $2.5M next year.
• Jerry Hairston, Jr., 1.2 WAR, $2.25M next year.
• Matt Treanor, 0.7 WAR, $1M next year.
• Aaron Harang, 0.6 WAR, $3M next year
• Adam Kennedy, 0.1 WAR, $.8M next year
• Juan Rivera, 0.7 WAR, $4.5M next year.

That's a shade over $17M for just five and a half wins, if all perform as well as last year (and if such fancy-pants stats can be believed). The last three alone are costing $8.3 for less than a win and a half! By comparison, Jamey Carroll and Rod Barajas (remember them?) accounted for 3.5 wins last year, and are making $6.75M this year. Yes, that is counting only the discounted first year rate, only.
In my (admittedly limited) mind, there are exactly two sensible strategies Ned could employ regarding on the upcoming team sale. He could spend the smallest amount of money possible, thus minimizing future costs, which he is clearly not doing. He could also spend a larger amount of money in a way that immediately improves the product on the field, thereby bringing fans back to the park and increasing revenues, which he is also CLEARLY NOT DOING.
Look, I consider myself a reasonable man. I acknowledge there's more to baseball than can be summarized on a spreadsheet. However, I do require some indication that we have a coherent strategy going forward before this winter wanders completely into TIDU territory. If there is some master plan here, I'm not seeing it.

The Brother P-Touch: Organized Lying To Dodger Fans

This isn't quite a "Things I Don't Understand," as I now understand how the Brother P-Touch (a line of handheld label-printing machines) can make such an outlandish claim on its radio commercial (which has played through the Dodgers' radio broadcasts this second half of the season).

In the advert, the person being "interviewed" (as if it were a radio interview show) notes that office disorganization causes a horrific amount of lost productivity, citing some study that says vanilla points like "people don't like a disorganized workplace" and "people believe a disorganized workplace is unprofessional." But the clinching point mentioned in the ad—the point that elicits gasps of shock and awe from the "studio audience," is this one:

So let me get this straight. According to this "white paper", each worker is losing an entire work week looking for misplaced items. This is absurd. I mean, my desk is a frickin' disaster zone, with stacks of papers and half-empty coffee cups everywhere, and I sure as hell can find anything I need in two to three minutes' time--and I don't need a label machine to help me find it. I don't even know if it would take longer than a couple of hours to go through my entire office, desk drawers and file cabinets and credenzas and bookshelves included. How could one lose an entire WEEK?

What items could these workers possibly be losing such that they're spending time looking for this lost item? Their special pencil with the troll doll on the end? Their red stapler? The percentage key on their keyboard? Their religion? There simply aren't enough proprietary objects that could cause the loss of a week's worth of productivity.

But read the fine print on their website, one can quickly glean how they get to this preposterous claim (bold emphasis mine):

Formula: Census: # of people who identified themselves as a full-time management, professional sales or office professional. […]

Average minutes per day spend looking for misplaced items in the office and on the computer: 19

Aha. The "time spent looking for misplaced items" includes people looking for things on the computer. Sort of like…googling for a website. Or locating a soft copy document. In other words, things that can't be better located with a stupid laminated label-making machine.

The "cost of disorganization" is miniscule relative to the cost of shoddy "research" and advertising ridiculous, unsubstantiated claims. Go stick a label on that, Brother.

Things I Do Understand: Water-Free Urinals

I've spent a lot of time this All-Star Break trying to answer some of the mysteries that have been bugging me. Like how gas pumps work. Or why Channel 2's Jim Hill doesn't age. Or what marketing genius thought Sit and Sleep should move from the "you're killing me Larry" tactic to this annoying "dust mites in your mattress" routine that evokes painful thoughts of Alvin and the Chipmunk movies.

But I did make a breakthrough on one mystery: how the the waterless urinal works.

Long-time readers of SoSG know that we've been a little obsessed with waterless urinals ever since Dodger Stadium redid the field level in 2008. (I think we're the only Dodger blog to have posted videos of the secret urinal rooms.) (Probably for good reason.)

And then, I came across this Wired Magazine article which is honestly fascinating, not only because it describes how these waterless urinals actually work; it's an entertaining read which includes some interesting points:

• The guy behind Falcon Waterfree Technologies (I believe Dodger Stadium uses Sloan waterfree urinals, but I assume theirs work the same way) is a former entertainment guy;
• Plumbers unions, threatened by these inventions, lobbied hard against them using health, safety, and odor concerns;
• The way these urinals make money is the whole Gilette razors-and-blades model, with cartridges that have to be replaced regularly for them to operate efficiently.

Here's an excerpt:

Falcon wasn’t the first to develop a waterless urinal. A company near San Diego had been struggling to sell them since 1991. But [Falcon head James] Krug made a conceptual breakthrough: The real profits wouldn’t come from the urinals themselves. They’d come from selling the replaceable cartridges that sat in each of the waterless receptacles.

In a traditional urinal, water pools in the drain after every flush, preventing sewer gases from escaping into living areas. [engineer Ditmar] Gorges’ invention employed a plastic cartridge filled with a liquid sealant. Urine could pass through, but sewer gases remained trapped beneath the sealant—no water needed. The $40 cartridge had to be replaced after 7,000 uses, turning a onetime urinal purchase into a perpetual income stream. Krug’s business model took a page out of the Gillette playbook: Keep the urinal cost low and lock customers in to buying the cartridges.

He quickly won converts. Cable tycoon Marc Nathanson made a substantial investment in early 2000, and in 2001 Falcon began to manufacture its urinal, dubbed the U1P. Soon Al Gore signed on as an adviser, and in 2006, Jeff Skoll, the first president of eBay, made a significant investment. Krug was sure the world was ready for a better bowl—there hadn’t been any major advances in urinal technology for decades—but there was something he wasn’t prepared for: the plumbers.

Mike Massey didn’t like Krug’s urinal. As head of PIPE, a plumbing union advocacy group in Southern California, Massey looks out for plumbers’ interests. And as far as he was concerned, the waterless urinal was a threat to public health. Diseases might fester because the urinals weren’t being washed down with every use. Sewer gasses might leak through the cartridge. “People take plumbing for granted,” Massey says. “But the reality is that plumbers protect the health of the nation. That’s how we think of our job.”

Plumbing codes never contemplated a urinal without water. As a result, Falcon’s fixtures couldn’t be installed legally in most parts of the country. Krug assumed it would be a routine matter to amend the model codes on which most state and city codes are based, but Massey and other plumbers began to argue vehemently against it. The reason the urinal hadn’t changed in decades was because it worked, they argued. Urine could be dangerous, Massey said, and the urinal was not something to trifle with. As a result, in 2003 the organizations that administer the two dominant model codes in the US rejected Falcon’s request to permit installation of waterless urinals. “The plumbers blindsided us,” Krug says. “We didn’t understand what we were up against.”

Krug scrambled to counter the plumbers’ public health claims. He hired Charles Gerba, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Arizona. Gerba studies “filth, pestilence, and disease,” with an emphasis on the bathroom, and says he has done more field studies on the toilet than anyone else in academia. From his point of view, there was a clear explanation for the plumbers’ resistance: It drained their wallets. “Plumbers don’t like the waterless urinal because it cuts down on their work tremendously,” he says. “There’s no more piping to install, and the urinals have no moving parts to repair.”

Look, it's not Stieg Larsson, but it's an entertaining read. Anyway, more things to think about, next time you relieve yourself in a secret urinal room at Dodger Stadium.

Things I Don't Understand: The Kingsford Charcoal Talking Meat Radio Commercial

Apparently I'm not the first one to spew vitriol about this horrible radio commercial, which is currently on rotation during Dodger radio telecasts broadcasts. I'm horrified at this commercial not only because it's amazingly juvenile in concept (as Dan O'Day does a good job pointing out), or that the accents and terminology make clear that it was a radio commercial better suited to the Northeast (they might as well have said the Kingsford charcoal was "wicked hot").

But go listen to it again (streamed at the above link), and take another listen to how horrible it is.

Aside from the criticisms O'Day pointed out, as well as the fact that the two characters refer to each other as "Burger" and "Sausage" (can you imagine a Nike commercial with the dialogue, "Hey there, Athlete? What's going on?"; "Not much, Baseball Player!"), my biggest beef* with this commercial is this:

Hearing the screaming pain of one's grilling meat (now that this inanimate object has been given a voice, rational thought, and emotions), as the fire sears the flesh of the burger--is NOT the way to get me inspired to buy your product. There's plenty of health and kindness-towards-fellow-animals reasons to consider going vegetarian as it is (not that I've personally ever been very compelled by these, but still). The last thing I need is, as I'm considering grilling up some burgers, is a stark reminder of what it's like to be burned at the stake, brought to you by the company that provides the fuel.

There are a lot of commercials that have personified inanimate objects (see: Geico stack of bills), or even introduced talking inanimate objects (see: Chevron cars). But taking these objects to areas of pain or disfigurement is way beyond the line. There is a reason why we don't see those same talking Chevron cars, fueled by the powers of Techron gasoline, crashing and bursting into flames or causing massive injuries in a multi-car pileup. This is also why the SlapChop hasn't done a commercial from the perspective of the vegetables. Or a nailgun commercial doesn't convey the perspective of the two-by-four.

And this just came to me--McDonald's has personified cheeseburgers (Mayor McCheese) and fries (Fry Guy) before, too. And even made full characters out of them. But what they don't show is Mayor McCheese getting his tongue (palate)? smoked on a hot iron grill, or Fry Guy taking a nice bath in a vat of boiling trans-fat infested oil that hasn't been changed since yesterday morning.

To be fair, the Kingsford Matchlight Charcoal isn't the inanimate object that is actually talking here, that is true. But I also don't recall any Raid or Roach Motel commercials showing animated cartoon bugs regurgitating their guts as their intestines melt into a goopy mess and they die a painful death. It happens, I know. But showing that feature of the product in gory detail isn't appropriate.

I don't need auditory reminders that the meat came from animals. Just let me grill my goddamn burgers and hot dogs in peace, okay? Just for that, I'm going propane.

(*Yes, pun intended; sorry, I couldn't resist as I had been cooking that one for days. Dammit, there it goes again! I'm on fire! I'm sizzling!)

Things I Don't Understand: The Dalmatians Canon

Today I saw this banner ad:

Sitting in the ad are images of 101 Dalmatians, 102 Dalmatians, and 101 Dalmatians 2.

Which raises the question: what name do we give the next sequel?

• a) 101 Dalmatians 3
• b) 102 Dalmatians 2
• c) 103 Dalmatians
• d) 103 1/3 Dalmatians: The Smell of Fear

I don't even know what the order is in the existing canon, so if anyone can explain that to me as well, that would be great.

Things I Don't Understand: Blockbuster's Return Policy

Here's Mrs. Orel with the latest entry in the SoSG Guest Writer Series:

Mulling over Manny, tugging on warm socks, stirring up hot chocolate, spreading out flannel bedsheets and coaxing the furnace to eke out fluffs of warm air into the (why? Don't ask me) hallway is how Orel and I are spending winter in Southern California.

It gets cold here. Not Wisconsin or North Dakota cold, but darn chilly and we feel it. One December morning I popped my face over the covers and could see my breath. Frosty wisps floating over the comforter.

And so we join our snowbound brethren in waiting for Opening Day by catching up on movies. We pop a bowlful of the white stuff, curl up in front of a blazing fire (purely a psychological effect) and wait to experience the laughs and tears Hollywood promises.

Sadly, our mom-and-pop movie rental store closed down recently, forcing us to shuffle around a blinkety-blink Blockbuster.

Okay, it's not that cold in L.A. Not freeze-your-brain-out-of-comprehension-mode cold.

A couple of weeks ago I picked out the latest unfunny comedy on a Thursday and asked the clerk when it needed to be returned.

"Saturday."

"Do you mean this Saturday at midnight?"

"Well, Saturday."

"What if it's late?"

"Well, you have until a week from Saturday and, if you don't have it back by then, you'll be charged the full cost of the movie."

"So not this Saturday. You mean I can have it a whole week?"

"This Saturday would be better."

Okay, it's not that cold in L.A. Not freeze-your-brain-out-of-comprehension-mode cold. What does this conversation mean? What is the deal with Blockbuster?

And there we have it: Blockbuster would like us to be nice.

We have a storm in the forecast. A downpour will lock Orel and me into the house because driving in rain in L.A. is out of the question. It's again a Thursday and I venture forth to Blockbuster for two movies. I check out with another clerk.

"When do these have to be returned?"

"Saturday."

"Do you mean this Saturday at midnight?"

"Well, Saturday."

"But, not this Saturday, right?"

"Yes, this Saturday."

"But another time the guy said Saturday but he really meant I could have it for a week. He made it sound like I could only have it for two days but he meant a week."

The clerk looks quickly around the store as if to locate the criminal-clerk.

"Who said that?" he demands to know.

"Jeez, I don't know, but it's kind of confusing, wouldn't you say?"

"Not at all."

"Then when do I have to have these movies back?"

"These are new releases and they should be back here by this Saturday."

"Ah, but really a week from Saturday, right? I mean, you're not going to charge me for the cost of these movies if I brought them back on say, Sunday or Tuesday, right?"

"Well yes, that's correct, but they are new releases and other people would like to see them."

"So, you think it would be nice for me to bring them back earlier?"

"Yes."

And there we have it: Blockbuster would like us to be nice.

At home, I get a crackling blaze going in the fireplace and cuddle up under a woolie with Orel and the remote. It's freezing again.

"What are we seeing?" he asks.

"Frozen River."

Earlier SoSG content by Mrs. Orel: Yankee Stadium Remembrances: Someone Needs a Hug, At-Game 25 Recap: Melted Out

Blockbuster photo by Steve Brandon

Things I Don't Understand: This Bathtub

So I walk in my hotel room this week at a largely uneventful hotel, and the bathroom is the size of a closet and sports a shower-tub. Tubs with shower attachments are not by themselves remarkable things. But what was weird about this one was where the shower attachment was placed--not at the one of the short ends of the tub, but almost in the middle of the long wall.

To put this in perspective, here's the straight-on shot of the long wall. Note that the shower attachment is about 75% of the way across the long wall. (And I'm hopeful that you can't pull one of those plays like the scene in Taken and catch a reflection of naked Steve Sax somehow. But who knows, maybe you've got software like they had in No Way Out and you can enhance the image somehow to your liking? And speaking of "No Way Out," is there an exit strategy for Ned Colletti over Manny Ramirez? But I digress.)

This positioning of the showerhead is ridiculous, forcing one to either shoot water across the short width of the bathtub, requiring the showerer to basically stand in place. Or, if you're lucky, you can try and angle the showerhead sort of toward the long end of the bathtub, but it's less effective than just if the showerhead was just positioned at the short end in the first place, like every other bathtub.

What's more, this positioning isn't random; in fact, the whole tub drainage system is designed in kind, as the floor drain is also at 3/4 of the length of the tub. Who took the time to design this unorthodox bathtub mold, and why? If you were bathing, would you rather have the drain popping up from the tub bottom here and prodding you in the ass, rather than having the drain located unobtrusively down at the end of the tub?

I don't understand this strangely designed bathtub and its obvious shortcomings in both utility and comfort. But to be fair, I never took all the courses necessary to get a degree in bathtub engineering, so I figured I would see if any of our intrepid readers had a better explanation.

Things I Don't Understand: Ed Hardy T-Shirts

Ed Hardy does what "Bonds on Bonds" could not: make Barry smile.

Having declared it effete, I've placed a personal moratorium on using the word douchebag. But I'm gonna dust off the old 'bag for the latest TIDU in order to ask: Have you noticed Los Angeles has a lot of douchebags? Seriously, it's true! And all our douchebags seem to be wearing Ed Hardy T-shirts.

"So it's just a bunch of random douchebags," you say. "What does this have to do with baseball?" Well, it turns out baseball's finest douchebags—see above and below—have also cottoned to Hardy.

"I wonder if Joe Torre approves of this shirt."

So why is the modern-day douchebag so inextricably drawn to these garish, overpriced pieces of "Vintage Tattoo Wear"? The answer lies in that slick marketing phrase:

• VINTAGE. "Vintage" means "old." I do not believe Christian Audigier is selling used clothes here. Therefore people are willingly buying new clothes manufactured to look old. Just like "antique" furniture! The hipster T-shirt revolution has reached Rodeo Drive!

• TATTOO. Tattoos were intended for your skin. But now you can wear a T-shirt with a tattoo design silk-screened onto it, making temporary tattoos seem like a long-term commitment in comparison. It's edgy! Except not!

  This is just the latest step in the co-opting of what once was outlaw culture. Permanence has been bastardized into transience, corrupting the original spirit of the art form. (The same phenomenon in reverse? See: graffiti art.)

• WEAR. Also known as "clothes." But call it "Wear" and you can charge a 500% markup! Would you pay $62 to $187 for a T-shirt? If you said yes, then your BMW is double-parked outside. No I do not know who you are. You dropped your Bluetooth headset.

So there we have it: incontrovertible proof that wearing a Ed Hardy T-shirt makes one a douchebag. Wait—what's this?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! They got you, Russell!

Et tu, Andre? What can I say? Kids will be kids!

If only I could reinforce my original thesis....

WHEW!

Earlier at SoSG: Things I Don't Understand: The Highlighter Person at Costco, Things I Don't Understand: Tahiti Village

Thanks to Vin Scully Is My Homeboy for finding the Ethier picture.

Things I Don't Understand: The Highlighter Person at Costco

Shopping at Costco is like competing in American Gladiators. First, you have to out-maneuver other SUVs for a spot in the always-crammed parking lot. Next, you have to navigate your shopping cart through aisles filled with a sea of flatbeds and curious shoppers hell-bent on tasting every free item to pop out of a toaster oven, irrespective of the nutritional content or number of processed foods involved. Getting produce means you have to brave the arctic cold of the refrigerated room. And throughout, one lifts 50 lb. plastic jars of mayonnaise and plastic-wrapped packs of 128 rolls of toilet paper into one's cart, usually without stretching beforehand or being equipped with a weight belt for support.

It's a grueling physical process that tests the muscles every step of the way. It's not a shopping experience for the timid or meek. It's the WWE of grocery shopping.

So why, pray tell, is there a person stationed at the exit gate, apparently tasked with auditing your receipt against the contents of your shopping basket? Every visit, said person lifts a fluorescent highlighter and marks one's receipt. But why? What good is gained here? Let's look at the logical inconsistencies embodied by this role:

• 1. Consumers have already passed through checkstands and paid for their goods. There is virtually no way out of the building with a cart without passing through a checkstand properly, so it's not like the highlighter person prevents rampant theft of filled carts.
• 2. There is no realistic way to audit the items of a full and oftentimes overflowing shopping cart against a list of ~50 items documented on a receipt. Children's socks, toothpaste, a bottle of wine? How is someone going to spot those items hiding behind a box of 224 diapers, or a pack of 24 Gatorade drinks, or a 42" Vizio flat screen television?
• 3. Having this unnecessary ritual exist in the first place only serves to slow outbound traffic from Costco, which usually turns into a ten-minute death march just to leave the building. One can literally watch his or her milk spoil before his/her eyes, while waiting in line to exit.

So what exactly does Mr. and Mrs. Highlighter do for Costco? If they're not preventing shrinkage and theft, why bother with the unnecessary ritual of someone going through the motions? Wouldn't this person be better spent "greeting" customers (a la Wal-Mart), rather than impeding their prompt departure from the store?

Does the highlighted mark legitimize the receipt itself, anymore so than the "Costco" logo printed at the top? And if I didn't stop my cart to get the highlighted mark, would I be pecked to death by a barrage of highlighted pens?

I'm sure one of you out there has the answer, why is the highlighter person at Costco in the first place. Please, do tell.

Earlier: Things I Don't Understand: Tahiti Village

Things I Don't Understand: Tahiti Village

Okay, I've had enough of their ubiquitous commercials, so let me take a couple of minutes to rant about Tahiti Village, a "five-star vacation property located right on the Las Vegas Strip." They have been hawking their property on radio commercials for a while now, using Tanya Roberts as their spokesperson. In fact, those of you listening to Dodger games on KFWB last year may remember their hokey commercial "conversation" between Tanya and Rick Monday, as Rick called her to ask for fun things to do in Las Vegas (with both people reading a highly scripted conversation).

I am so sick of these commercials, I could vomit. But admittedly I am so curious as to what idiot marketing agency put this plan together, that I did a little bit of research on the resort and their crack spokesperson.

First of all, Tahiti Village is only technically on the Strip, so long as you're counting south of McCarran Airport "on the strip". As far as I can tell, it's farther away from Mandalay Bay than the Fashion Show Mall is from Stratosphere Hotel (which may as well be in Montana). Not exactly walk-friendly, or even accessible to any other relevant casino.

Secondly, the property itself looks a far cry from five-star level. I don't recall seeing a tiki theme or wicker columns at Bellagio or the Wynn.

Finally, and most importantly, I am befuddled over what marketing guru had the brilliant idea to hire Tanya Roberts as a spokesperson. Tanya Roberts is a 52-year old woman best known for her roles in "A View To A Kill" and "Charlie's Angels"--both of which are over TWENTY YEARS OLD. Charlie's Angels has rebooted once since then (and released two movies), and James Bond has rebooted three times since then. Talk about outdated.

And when I think "Vegas fun," I'm not thinking "hanging out with a fifty-year-old woman." What's worse, though I'm sure Ms. Roberts is a nice enough person, but her voice sounds like she is pushing seventy years, making it sound even worse over the radio.

I'm not sure if parent company Consolidated Resorts is trying to position Tahiti Village as a Vegas destination resort, but it sounds more like they are positioning it as a nursing and retirement home. Somebody stop these commercials, please.