Archive for Spotted

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Regular patrons of Wrigley Field will be glad to know that watery, intoxicating Old Style will continue to flow at the friendly confines. Also available to the discerning epicure? Black slime!

Fortunately, as you may have noticed in the Action News Video embedded abovely, we have a Television Journalist and Food Safety PhD on hand to break it down like a fraction …

Television Journalist: “They found black slime inside an ice machine. That sounds awful. Bad?”

Food Safety PhD: “Yes, it’s terrible.”

Terrible Black Slime!

Unlike Dayn Perry, I’ve never impregnated even one of the Ladies of America. When I do, however, I hope my issue grows up to look and act and be exactly like this kid, spotted at Thursday night’s Red Sox-Rangers game playing Nintendo DS or whatever with cartoonishly large headphones.

An anonymous reader provides the above image — from a recent Brewers-Astros game — of two or more fans who probably had a heart attack immediately after said image was captured.

Per the National Lung, Heart, and Blood Institute, the signs and symptoms of a heart attack include:

• Upper body discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw, or upper part of the stomach.
• Shortness of breath, which may occur with or before chest discomfort.
• No shirt.
• Nausea (feeling sick to your stomach), vomiting, light-headedness or sudden dizziness, or breaking out in a cold sweat.
• Comically undersized fireman’s helmet.
• Sleep problems, fatigue (tiredness), or lack of energy.
• Pervy vibe.
• Loss of consciousness.
• Accidentally at Astros game.

Check, check, double-check.

Faithful NotGraphs reader P. Agnello brought this little dandy to our attention:

Why yes, that would be real Americans digging through real trash for a real foul ball and then getting into a real fight for said Trash Ball.

After the frenzied waste-search led to a frenzied trash fight, ballpark security had to intervene. According the intrepid Todd Kalas: “Bad behavior; nobody gets the prize.”

Leave it to TK to use a semicolon in speech. Well, nonetheless, that real foul ball became real trash in a slightly askew retelling of Solomon’s Judgement, a retelling in which neither mother relents and the baseball ends up in Sheol.

Oddly enough, this may not be the most epic dumpster dive in baseball history.
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I can neither confirm nor deny the claim that it takes a village to raise a child. I can, however, state with some certainty that it requires an electronic village to properly document all the frigging whimsy going otherwise undocumented at America’s ballparks.

In this particular instance, the electronic villager is Will, and he’s alerted us to what is clearly one of William Wallace’s allies from the Battle of Stirling Bridge, who, having traveled to the future, is posing as a Cardinal fan to avoid drawing attention to himself.

Either that, or it’s Jason Isringhausen in disguise. One or the other.

Who among us has not struggled with a gadget in the manner of a baboon straining to crack open a coconut? Who among us, I say!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Kh-tOUSWKK8

While I fear and loathe robots as much as the next man, it may, I fear, be the digital camera that is the first contraption to go “Skynet” and kill us all. As Gouverneur Morris admonished us, “When the computers take over U.S. Cellular Field, then you’ll know war — a final, determinative war — is afoot.”

(Robot hug: Blame It on the Voices)

The extemporaneous nature of broadcasting makes for many a hazard. After all, there can be only so much stagecraft involved when the events that drive the broadcasting aren’t preordained. Chip Caray turns a hit into an out, Ernie Anastos gives the weatherman a rather curious directive (NSFW!), and so on.

Now what happens when you introduce crowd shots into this volatile melange? Chaos. What happens when those crowd shots are of 20-somethings disinclined to resist their beery urges? I’ll tell you: silence — beautiful, beautiful silence, awkward in the extreme — followed by a noble yet failed effort to smother the silly-giggles …

History teaches us that Daniel Webster won the debate over protectionist tariffs only after he stuffed his paw down the bodice of an onlooking chaste maiden and thus reduced Senator Hayne, his loyal opponent, to guffaws, spit-takes and high-fives. I have no doubt that the current debt-ceiling loggerheads will be resolved only when one of the combatants makes with the groping.

Thankful boob grab: With Leather

Not even Picasso during his very famous Blue Period was able to capture the sort of angst that the above-pictured Red Sox fan was caught emoting during the fourth inning of a game at Wrigley Field yesterday. That said fan is surrounded by rows of empty seats — very obviously a metaphor for Conditions, Human and Otherwise — only heightens the feeling of isolation.

There’s a strange thing about this scene, however — which, let’s see if an Annotated Photo brings to light what I mean.

Regard:

Indeed, our fraught subject appears to be at a game between two teams not his own — one of which (the Cubs) is superbad in the least Judd Apatow-y of ways, and the other of which (the Giants) won a World Series, like, 24 hours ago (using Venus hours, I mean, on account of that planet’s days are much, much longer than Earth’s).

Apropos the point you’re forming in your head this minute — the one that goes something like, “Cistulli, don’t you even know that it’s possible to become emotionally involved in a game not involving one’s own favorite team?” — allow me say, “N’doy.”

Apropos the second point you’re forming — the one that’s more like, “Cistulli, is it possible that you’re making a mountain out of a molehill?” — allow me say “Anything is possible” and also “Please excuse me. I have to return some videotapes.”

While neither grainy nor sepia-toned, the image you see skillfully embedded here (from the fourth inning of Sunday’s game between Philadelphia and Seattle) possesses one quality which merits publication in these electronic pages — namely, the number of people in it who’re wearing eye patches.

Granted, that number of people is only one, but per NotGraphs Editorial Policy, one is actually a totally sufficient number of eye patch-wearing Mariner fans for image-embedding and musing upon.

Lest the sensitive reader propose that the intent of the author is to mock the fan in question, allow me to state sans pause, “Woah, woah, woah” and also “Hold on a minute there, buddy.”

Allow me also to add promptly that, far from mocking the fan in question, it’s actually my intention to celebrate the eye patch and what it symbolizes. For, if we agree that the key to Pleasant Living is the capacity for turning one’s weaknesses into strengths (and I hope we’re all agreed on this point), then the eye patch is the signo under which we’ll have our collective vinces — for it turns a pretty significant weakness (that is, eyelessness) into an equally significant strength (that is, a perpetual reminder to the world that ye, wearer of said patch, have lived — and, on occasion, lived dangerously).