Michael Scurries VS. Robots

After careful consideration, I’ve decided to cancel the institution of marriage…

By the authority invested in me by the state of Whatsawhosit—it is imperative that I take a stance on this scourge of human sovereignty.  I know so many of you love your monogamous relationship, but sacrifices, as they say, must be made.

That’s right. You guys have been getting cocky with this “marriage” thing, and it’s time to wright the ship. First things first, your marriage licenses have been permanently revoked. You never took the vows. You never had the ceremony. You never picked up the flowers. Many of you will become single mothers/fathers, but, again, sacrifices must be made.

In recent years, marriage has created for itself two separate functions:

1)      A private ceremony that justifies cohabitation. You spent upwards of a billion dollars so that all of your friends can look at you in a white dress/tuxedo. Congrats. That sounds like a reasonable investment…silly billys. For some reason, people get the impression that this silly ceremony makes you look like an adult. But, it turns out that everybody that attended your wedding went for the free booze and dancing. Some went for the crappy food. You never see weddings catered by Taco Bell…too bad we’ll never see that happen in our lifetime..you know…because I destroyed the institution of marriage… believe I mentioned that.  

2)      A civil agreement, administered by the government that supervises the economic stability of the relationship. Because when I think about loving relationships, I think about money. Just so you guys know, that from here on out, everybody who cohabitates and/or owns children will receive tax benefits and hospital visitation rights. I might be a tyrant, but I’m not a monster, you guys. Moreover tax benefits will be given to those who put their children on leashes and to those who don’t take their kids to baseball games. It’s super annoying. However, if your child talks in the middle of a movie, you owe the government 10,000 dollars.

I have decreed that these are irrational practices, so, yeah, it’s over.

Many traditionalists have argued that marriage is defined as a relationship between a man and a woman. Of course, a brief look in any history book will demonstrate that this has never been true.  Prior to modern civilization, it was defined as a man and his unlimited supply of lady-flesh. In some cultures, marriage was and still is a business exchange between two families for trivial goods such as land, property, employment, status, and/or capital (a la Fiddler on the Roof). Every one of those aforementioned relationships has also been revoked. ALL OF THEM.

                Hitler never married Eva Braun. Bill never married Hillary (did he really ever?) Sampson never married Delilah. Nuns never married Jesus. Britney Spears never married Kevin Federline or that other guy. Newt never married Callista or those other ones. King Solomon never married Jennifer, or Abigail, or Donna, or Becky, or Shannon, or Christina, or Erica, or Melissa, or Rachel, or (in a crazy twist of fate) St. Peter.  Check your Bibles folks…its 53% true.  

                In modern times, wealthy business owners have taken it upon themselves to sign what are known as “pre-nups”. First things first, all prenuptial agreements will, from here on out be referred to as “prenips”, only because I think it’s funny. Second, they are all null and void. That’s right, Mrs. Trump, steal a couple lamps and some dresses and run for your life, bitch. You won’t see a dime of Le Donald’s money, but you’re free. You don’t have to continue giving charity hummers to that bag of nastiness. Find a job in fashion. Enjoy your life.

                Those employed in the wedding industry will compete for jobs in my administration. For instance, wedding planners are so good at yelling into walkie-talkies that they would make excellent chiefs of staff. But again, wedding caterers will not be employed at my kingly kitchen.  

Whether you choose to continue self-inflicted monogamy is your call. However, we will no longer regard the status of your relationship as “married”, but rather as, “not normal”. Granted, many of you relationship dwellers are still “normal”, but there is a predetermined set of  rules that one must unanimously conform to in order to be called normal again.

If you are living with your sexual partner, you are not normal

If you are living with the mother/father of your children, you are not normal

If you like it and are inclined to put a ring on it, you are not normal

If you can’t stay out past 10 because your significant other is on the rag, you are not normal

If you like Ke$ha, you are not normal—that’s not a marriage thing though.

                The institution of marriage had a good run, but times are a-changing. Yoko Ono once said, “Marriage is a gamble, let’s be honest”, and she’s right, why gamble away The Beetles again?

                Oh, one more thing, gay people are the only ones aloud to still get married under my regime. Thank you.

Sincerely,

King Michael the 69^th.

A movie about a robot baseball team? Yes, plz.

INT. AMC THEATERS 14-VAN NESS, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

A 22 year old film student enters the building and, to his left, he notices a massage chair.

Fair enough. After all, when I’m preparing to spend 1.5-2 hours of my time to mindlessly watch a movie in a comfy, reclining chair whilst grubbing on popcorn (with, no extra butter mind you!) and slurping a 5 dollar diet coke, I feel the need to prepare for such a strenuous activity by sitting on a vibrating chair. I used this opportunity to gather my thoughts and expectations for what I was about to watch: MONEYBALL. Thank you again, robots.

MONEYBALL is the story of the 2002 Oakland Athletics and of their zealot/genius GM Billy Beane. I am a Giants fan. Perhaps more of a Giants fan than many Giants fans. So, screw the A’s. BUT I’m also a bit of a baseball junkie. Not the cool kind of baseball junkie who wears stupid tracksuits, drinks Johnnie Walker Red, and joins fantasy leagues, mind you, but the kind that enjoys studying the history of the game, reading statistics, and arrogantly showing off my knowledge to unsuspecting meat-heads.

Moneyball is based on the book by Michael Lewis and adapted for the screen by Hollywood’s one and only screenwriting darling, Aaron Sorkin and (SFSU alum) Steve Zaillian. The film is directed by Bennett Miller and stars the hunky Brad Pitt, the hunkier Jonah Hill, and the hunkiest of the hunkiest Philip Seymour Hoffman as Art Howe.

What drew me to the film was the active decision to make a smart movie about sports. The usual underdog story, while, occasionally, mind-numbingly tear-jerkable, is, in this reporter’s personal opinion, old hat. My slogan for this genre has become, “They made Rocky and then they got cocky”.

What separates this film from, say, Remember the Titans, is its dedication to BUILDING ROBOTS, not uplifting speeches about “hanging in there when the chips are down” or “nobody believes that we can do it, but we’ll show them”. Nah. None of that… BUILDING ROBOTS.

What I mean by the phrase “BUILDING ROBOTS” (and no I don’t mean the Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robot movie starring Hugh Jackman, coming to a theater near you) is that the film is about using  an advanced baseball analytic theory, known as sabermetrics, to make the most out of a bad situation; IE: NO MONEY. In order to build these robots, Mr. Beane has to find the parts that people threw away because nobody wanted them as much as the sleeker-looking parts.

Science, math, dollar signs. You know, nerd stuff.

The sexier, more expensive parts like Jason Giambi, Jason Isringhausen, and Johnny Damon were replaced by clunkier parts that could still get on base with less excitement: Non Hall of Famer Scott Hatteberg, Non-Home Run Champ David Justice, and Non Cy Young Award winning reliever Chad Bradford.

Jonah Hill, while still chubby, is remarkably good in his performance as Peter Brand, a character based on an amalgamation of different people including former Oakland Assistant GM Paul DePodesta. One scene that stuck out in my mind was Hill and Pitt’s little pow-wow upon meeting each other at Cleveland’s front office. Hill’s speech about undervalued players and the frivolous spending mistakes ball clubs often make made me think. First I forgot the dude was in a movie that was as terrible as Accepted and it made me feel like he was smart enough to get into Darmouth without Michael Cera.

My only tiff with the movie is some of the glaring omissions regarding Oakland’s 2002 season. Hatteberg’s heroic home run that clinched Oakland’s 20 game streak: wonderful. Justice’s .376 on base percentage: stellar! Bradford’s 3.11 era in the American League: solid! But Sorkin and Zaillian’s leave out some stuff too….

Barry Zito won 23 games and a Cy Young award. Fellow starter Mark Mulder won 19 games and Tim Hudson finished is season with an era under 3. They are barely even in the movie! Oh, but it doesn’t stop there! The MVP of the league that year: Oakland’s own Miguel Tejada and to his left Eric Chavez who hit 34 home runs and would amass 6 gold gloves throughout his solid career. Solid players, great years, and barely in the movie. I know being a general manager is about assembling the small parts as well as utilizing the big parts, but let’s not pretend that Scott Hatteberg was the reason for Oakland’s 20 game win streak.

But I forgive you, movie. You entertained me. You made me think a little bit. And I had more fun watching you than sitting in a message chair. Message chairs can’t make you think about baseball statistics, they can’t thrill you, they can’t represent Northern California, they can’t make you root for the good guys, and they certainly can’t give you a relatively, happy ending. You have to go to a real message place for a real happy ending.

I give Moneyball two big toes up.

A message to my overlords…

“Thank you”, I said, as I walked out of the automatic door.

But who did I thank? That’s right. You guessed it. Can’t get anything past you. I thanked the automatic door for its services. It was at that moment that George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, Terry Gilliam, and whoever wrote The Stepford Wives turned in their grave. Bradbury is still alive, but let’s be honest, it won’t be for long. Gilliam is still alive, but, after The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, his career is on  life- support. 

Nonetheless, it was at that very moment, I could not distinguish the robots from man-kind. Sure automatic doors have been around forever, but I never stopped to think about what automatic doors really are. Doors are tools used to close off rooms and to retain temperature. Motion sensors are devices used to detect human activity. The essence of automatic doors is technology for the purpose of using some other technology.

Now, you may not remember this, but there was a time when people had to open doors by themselves. No, I agree. That seems insane. But its true. In fact, there was a time, long long ago, when opening a door was a mating ritual. The male would use his hands and muscles to grip and/or push the handle which would create enough force to open heavy doors. The woman would be so enticed by this ability that she would be inclined to have sexual intercourse with the male. They called this phenomenon foreplay.

People used to do all sorts of stuff without robots. They got directions without robots, they took medical advice without robots, communicated without robots, and had non-robot oriented blogs called “diaries” or “journals”. People actually used the very same hands they used to open doors just to type things into their robot-free blogs.

Thankfully, they invented the robots. We can rely on robots like Google maps, web MD, facebook, and tumblr to handle all the problems the old civilization would spend weeks on.

Still, a human being that can’t do anything without robot influence is scarcely distinguishable from a robot used by a human. That’s the purpose of this blog: An attempt to reconcile the war between humans and robots….or maybe just to talk about stuff.

There was once a television show. It was, basically, a puzzle made out of Wikipedia. It was called Jeopardy. A wise man on that show once said, “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords”.

He was a Mormon, though. Even in the future, Mormonism is still batshit crazy.