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Doug Harvey in action Umpire Doug Harvey was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame yesterday, after a long career making calls of ball or strike, out or safe and whether to keep playing in rain (maybe even darkness). His speech showed the minimal and firm style of communication that enabled him to only eject [...] Lee puts it back together by the end of the cd! Has anybody heard 6 String Theory, the new Lee Ritenour album (at right)? One of my colleagues on the project, Dave Einstein of the Concord Music Group, is utterly convinced that the track here, “Give Me One Reason,” featuring Joe Bonamassa, is an outright smash, [...] The last Old Timer's Day at Yankee Stadium II George Steinbrenner has died. As a fan, I just want to say “thanks for making the Yankees great.” The countless hours spent enjoying the games with friends and family are reflected in my post about Bob Sheppard below. There are many tributes being written all over the [...]  Bob Sheppard's booth in Yankee Stadium The great announcer Bob Sheppard has died, but I hope the “dignity of the Yankees” that Reggie Jackson refers to in the video (below) continues. He was a really great part of being a fan of the team, and as a New Yorker who lived in California for a while, I was able to tell a lot of people who’d never been to the Stadium about his legend. So many games. I really can’t help but think of the Giants football game, however, where he was admonishing the fans to stop throwing snowballs. It was one moment where you might have heard some emotion in his voice (he was very serious), but 175 fans were ejected that day too. At a Staten Island Yankee game on Saturday night, John Souchack and I recalled many moments over the years, and not knowing the news that would come Sunday morning, included Bob Sheppard moments our discussion (along with Thurman, Celerino Sanchez, Aaron Small, Andre Robertson, Chien-Ming Wang, Claudell Washington and even Robert Merrill!). He was as much a part of the team as any player and in the countless tributes (I especially liked George Vecsey’s personality profile and Bill Madden’s extensive obit), writers have mentioned just a handful of mistakes during his 50+ years, about the same number of games he missed too.  "Amity Island" on the Universal Studios Tour Jaws recently celebrated its 35th anniversary, and numerous tributes to the legendary film that entertained the world and changed the face of the business in the process have been produced. A few of Jaws’ innovations: “Summer Blockbuster” aimed at youth/male audience with action films that play internationally Merchandise (t shirts, posters, toys) and secondary entertainment experiences like theme parks, sequels and video games which made more money than the films they were based on Steven Spielberg becomes driving force in the commercialization of the sci-fi/action genre but continues to create non-blockbusters like 1941 and Amistad (though probably not on purpose). The key to all these ideas is that the media, merchandise and attraction created a “vertically integrated entertainment” experience that made full use of all its business opportunities. This was the innovation of the great Lew Wasserman, and he deserves credit, not criticism. He helped create the corporate “efficiencies” that would benefit from “synergy” (to use now-common terms) of a “property” such as Jaws, then exploited it when it came along. What’s the problem? Personally, I saw the film the night before I went to summer camp in 1975, and I was a bit scared even going into the LAKE at first. Upon returning, Jaws was still playing, and I saw it at least 10 more times that year. It got a little less scary each time, and like John Podhoretz accurately wrote in a Weekly Standard criticism, it was like a roller coaster you wanted to ride again and again. As if that’s bad? He decries how Jaws created a demand for bigger and bigger movies and that the baby boomer audience who were looking for deeper films like Easy Rider were fired by Hollywood in favor of a younger, less discerning teen market. |
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