The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

Whether your view is that it actually runs "all the news that's fit to print" or that it's got a tradition of slanting and omitting just enough to let out its liberal bias, I assume you have at least a modicum of respect for the New York Times as a respectable newspaper. And when taken in conjunction with the more conservative leaning papers, say the Wall Street Journal, you can essentially get an informed view of the world. So let's take that as a given. Here are a couple of reflections I have on the New York Times after having at least leafed through it every day for a couple years now.

The first and strangest thing about the New York Times is that they will always, and I mean always, opt to put the absolute most depressing picture possible on the front cover. Recently they've had pictures from Iraq and such with things being blown up or some sort of terror happening. If at all possible they will print a photo of an Arab looking guy hovering over one or more dead bodies after some type of insurgency or other attack. This is disturbing to me. If they have no other choice then they'll just put some other type of picture. Just this week, for example, they ran a photo of Dubya giving the state of the union address with Big Time Cheney and Madame Speaker behind him. But the day before that and the day after, depression.

The second thing is that the crossword gets inordinately hard starting with Thursday. I can usually finish Monday through Wednesday with little trouble and then on Thursday I can't even get it started. From time to time on Thursday I'll get a couple of the clues and actually get through a good portion of it, but Friday Saturday Sunday I don't even attempt. I feel like in order to be able to get good at the later in the week puzzles you have to look at the solution the next day and get familiar with the clues and the answers. That's just way more work than I'm willing to put in. Also sometimes they have gimmick puzzles where you have to put several letters in one square and I never get those.

The sports section is very biased to the Yankees. They almost always put a picture of the Yankee game on the front page instead of the Mets. And a lot of times the lead article will be about the Mets, but the picture in the inset is from the Yankee game. It's mad weird.

Maureen Dowd is no longer clever, she's just really self aware. And as Sara Silverman said in this weeks New York Times Magazine, "deconstruction is a comedy killer."

The Science Times rules.

My friend Wallace brought this up today and I thought it was a great point so I told him I was goig to steal his idea and blog about it.

What sort of psychological mechanism leads us to watch movies on TV that we already own on DVD? Literally whenever I feel like it I can watch a movie that I have on DVD in the original widescreen format, with superior picture quality on my HDTV and with no commercials. Instead, and I know this happens to everyone, I find myself flipping around watching TNT and they're playing, I don't know, say Goodfellas or The Princess Bride or something like that, and I just watch the whole thing, commercials and all. What's up with that?

First of all, since the Bears are in the Super Bowl, it's a great excuse to re-watch the "Super Bowl Shuffle" from the 1985 Chicago Bears. Not only kickin' it mad old school, but also really poorly.



Anyway, my thoughts about the Super Bowl are that I'm really glad the Colts make it. I enjoy watching the Colts and I like Peyton Manning and I feel like he deserves to win. I also like the way all the Colts carry themselves starting with Tony Dungy and going on down. So I'm glad that a classy organization gets that recognition.

I was pretty indifferent about the Bears and the Saints. I guess I wanted the Saints to win, but if the Giants weren't going to win the NFC, then it really didn't matter.

My other thought is that I'm glad the Patriots lost, I really think they deserved it. They had all the talent in the world and guys who fit perfectly into their systems and they treated them like crap. They coach these guys up and then when it's time to pay them for being great players, they refuse to. The one exception obviously is Tom Brady, but he's a one in a million quarterback so they're at least smart enough to keep him. In the past 4 to 5 years they have lost star players like Lawyer Milloy, Ty Law, Deion Branch, and others because they weren't willing to pay them market value. They manage their salary cap to a Draconian extent. They had Deion Branch ranked as their best offensive player coming into this season. Better even than Tom Brady and they kicked him out the door rather than pay him market value. So they deserve to lose because they think they can win on their system with no talent.

On top of that Bill Belichick is a fucking jerk. He acts like a 4 year old. I mean, there are guys who have reputations as ornery guys, like Bobby Knight for example, but those guys at least act like human beings. Belichick just looks like he wants to take his ball and go home whenever shit doesn't go his way. Even when they're winning he treats other guys like dicks. The whole ridiculous debacle with Eric Mangini, for example. Or the interview he gave to Solomon Wilcox last night which was just silly.

I think the Colts are going to win. I'm routing for the Colts rather than just be indifferent, which is what I usually am. I can't see Rex Grossman leading his team to victory, and, all else being equal, the quarterback comparison is not even close. I'm not saying it will be a blowout, but I think the Colts will pull it out.