Afternoon Baseball

It's actually for the weekend, but I've never guaranteed these would be on an exact timetable.

1. Movies. Maybe you love them but can't afford the DVDs. Maybe you're only somewhat interested, a TV station isn't playing them at the moment and you're sure as hell not buying the DVD of anything you're not sure about.
An option that's far from perfect but is free is on YouTube, such as here, and elsewhere (this may be outdated). People are posting full-length movies, and unlike, say, bittorrents, you know what you're getting before you download the 300MB file.
It's still a crapshoot, and more tilted toward older films with less bells and whistles for the DVD makers to be protective over, but it's all part of that community-driven Internet we love so much.

2. There's also the legitimate, fully legal version at archive.org, which has amassed an impressive collection of stuff, to put it simply.

3. To dote more on old-time video, they sell these collections of TV commercials, predominantly from the 1950s and 1960s. While some are classic and many enlighten us to the whoring out that shows back then would do (hawking goods as scene extensions, in character), they probably aren't worth paying for. Here's an example.

4. Katherine Heigl is going classy for Vanity Fair. I'm not sure if she's Hollywood's hottest blonde, but she's in the discussion.

5. I've been listening to R.E.M.'s 1982-1987 collection, "And I Feel Fine...Best of the I.R.S. Years," and it's superb. Many of the songs I knew, others I had forgotten and some were new. Just a fantastic band whose understated and sophisticated sound doesn't sound dated -- rather, it sounds like a lot of the bands of recent years, only better. And for anyone wondering why I bring them up now, I've listened to them for a while. But I was only 4 when this album's chronology ends, so cut some slack.

6. The Spink Award for baseball writing was announced this week, to not-much fanfare. Larry Whiteside died this year, and he covered a lot of Milwaukee baseball (Braves and Brewers) before joining the Boston Globe. So while Bud Selig certainly knew who he was, nationally, not everyone (myself included) did. J.A. Adande was one who did know Whiteside, and he mentioned him in his welcome to ESPN.com column in August.
Dan Shaughnessy, usually not the somber and reflective columnist, offered up a nice viewpoint on Whiteside.

Labels: Midweeklinks