My World Has Been Shattered -- The End of MTC?

Craig Miller -- the one they call "Junior," sometimes "the Joonz" -- committed an error this morning.

I stared at the radio, my piehole agape.

I'm not sure I can go on.

One's existence has so few certainties in this uncertain world.  I thought Craig's freedom from error was among them.

In this, I was apparently also in error.

He corrected the error, more or less, in the next segment.  But his correction indicated that he did not understand his error.

He was reprising the flat-earth guy from the day before.  He reported that the flat-earth guy had said that the moon always shows the same side to the earth.

Craig -- excuse me, I have to go get a glass of water -- scoffed.  He said that of course we see the moon rotate and show all of its surface area to the earth.  It's why we can't always see the man in the moon, he said.

I'm thinking -- his phone must be melting.

And indeed, in the next segment, he issued a correction, but he didn't understand it.  He had been advised in the interim that the moon in fact, always does show its same side to the earth owing to a tidal phenomenon (it's called "tidal locking").  (In fact, there's a slight rotational wobble ("libration") that lets us see a little more than half of the moon's surface from the earth because its orbit is not perfectly circular.)   What froze his mind was this:  The moon's rotational period around its axis (spinning) is equal to its period of revolution around the earth (orbiting).   So what? he seemed to be saying; he still did not understand why we did not see the moon rotate so as to see all its surface.

It's because we view the rotation and the revolution at the same time from our vantage point here on terra firma.   Instead, let's expand our frame of reference -- out to the sun, for example.  (Yes, I know you can't stand on the sun.  The old joke:  "I want to be the first man on the sun."  "It's too hot."  "I'll go at night.")  Imagine you're on the sun looking back at the earth and the moon.  Now remove the earth from the picture to eliminate the distraction.  What do you see?  You see the moon rotating on its axis every 27 days and showing you all of its faces -- and it will always be full because the sun is what makes the moon shine.

Which leads us to the question of why Junior thinks that you can't always see the man in the moon.  It's not because he isn't there, having rotated out of sight -- it's because the moon's rotation with respect to the sun just described causes its phases from our vantage point on earth, so some of that always-facing-the-earth-surface disappears and reappears every month.   Or else it gets eaten and then spit back up by a space monster, I'm not sure.

I'll leave you with a fun moon fact.  The moon is the largest planetary satellite in the solar system as a percentage of the size of its planet.  It is the only natural planetary satellite in the solar system whose orbit always curves towards the sun.   That is, if you were to go way, way north of the sun's north pole and look down on the solar system, and then took the earth away and looked at the path of the moon's orbit over the course of the year, you would see that the moon's orbit would look like a twelve-sided thing where the sides curved gently toward the sun, and the corners curve more sharply toward the sun.  But none of that path would ever curve away from the sun. The earth and moon are, in effect, something of a double planet.

I'm going to go lie down.  Feeling unwell.  May be last article.

Junior Is Prescient Even When He Is Solely Intending to Be Amusing -- BREAKING: Sirois/Monte Update

I recall a discussion on The Musers about Tony Romo.

Junior said words to the following effect:  "I don't know if the Cowboys will trade Tony Romo or release him.  But I do know that whatever they decide to do, it will be wrong."  Not an exact quote, but you get the comedy point he was making.

Well  .  .  .  .

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/news/tony-romo-news-nfl-free-agency-rumors-dallas-cowboys/13ai7gveuomss1lywa66uqq9hx

I must be one of the few Cowboys observers in town who has no affection at all for Jerry Jones.  I don't think he's a nice man.  His "executive of the year" award was a joke.  Hall of Fame?  Yeah, they gave Arafat a Nobel Peace Prize, too.

I'm not one of those who thinks the Cowboys "owe" Tony Romo something, or vice versa.  And I never imputed that sentiment to the Jones family.  I never thought for a minute that any decision the Joneses would make about Romo would have the slightest whiff of altruism about it.  Nor would I expect it to.  All this "family" talk -- hs.

Once again, events seem to be bearing out the Wisdom of the Joonz.

"You can cage me anytime, TC."

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BREAKING BREAKING BREAKING -- Comment thread remarks on the on-air blowup by Mike Sirois against Justin Montemayor, and it's all over Ticket-related social media.  

Justin has tweeted this photograph illustrating that all is well, for public consumption at least.  And it looks sincere to me:

 

 ThePlainsman1310@gmail.com

@Plainsman1310

Where's Conrad?

It doesn't have the same ring to it as "Where's Greggo?" but I'm curious nonetheless.

Did he finally weary of reading all of that smirking promo/liner copy with the centuries-old gags?  I actually had on my stale list of articles to write that Conrad had the hardest job at The Ticket.

Who's the new guy (if he is a new guy, and not just filling in for Conrad on sabbatical)?

I'm still scrambling out here on the plains on post-vacay catch-up, but trying to re-immerse myself in The Fabulousness That Is The Ticket.

I did have to chortle at one of the comments while I was gone.  I didn't get to hear any radio last week so can't comment on T.C. Fleming's fill-in date for Gordon, but one Confessor remarked that Craig seemed beaten down by the whole thing.  I would love to have heard that.  Da Joonz has a way of letting you know his feelings about someone in a very subtle way.  I remember this particularly with the The Great Peter Gammons Experiment.  If you had just seen a transcript of those interviews, you wouldn't have thought anything amiss, but there was something about the sound of Craig's voice that said why do we need to be talking to this guy about Texas stuff, especially since half the time Gammons was on his treadmill or hiking the Urals or something while supposedly devoting his attention to the interview.  Always a fun listen.

*     *     *

ThePlainsman1310@gmail.com

@Plainsman1310

It's a Muser Thursday

We haven't had a Muser column for a while, so here goes:

(1)   Craig believes that he could no-hit an average peewee league team of nine-year-olds. He has accepted a challenge to that effect, which he intends to perform as soon as he gets around to it sometime in the indefinite future. The notion is that he would be throwing adult-speed hardball pitches past, or at, these little intimidated weenie kids.

Maybe; maybe.  I happened to see a group of nine-year-olds playing league baseball a few weeks ago, and I could not believe how completely incompetent they were. I guarantee you, when I was nine years old, I could catch a hardball thrown to me.  We used to play something called "500" where one kid would throw the ball on the ground, on the line, or up in the air, and the one kid would either get or lose points for catching or muffing the ball. We would do this for hours, so we had some facility – not a lot, but some -- in fielding when we got to the diamond. These days, the only practice these kids get is in the leagues, and it's not enough.  They're terrible. It's not even cute, it's agonizing to watch.   

So the question I have for Junior is:   What happens in the case where a kid gets some wood on the ball, resulting in some kind of a fielding play?  Will incompetent fielding, even if it is not a booted ball, count as an error, keeping the no-hitter intact? This will happen most of the time, especially since a batted pitch thrown at high-speed will come off the bat faster than most peewee league hits.  It is entirely possible that a roller that a competent human would field will escape the infield completely innocent of any glove leather, which in the bigs would be a hit.

So I see two possible outcomes: either a sure loss for Junior in his challenge, or a run-hit-error line that looks something like 0-0-47.

Oh, by the way: make sure The Ticket's liability insurance is fully up to date in anticipation of the possibility that even from 40 feet away, Junior will plunk some kid in the melon.

(2)  I was very interested in George's discussion of how someone – in particular, a sports-talkshow host – can be a fan of a team, but still critical of certain aspects of it. He was responding to lamebrained correspondents who get all accusatory when they hear any negative talk about their favorite team.

Which, of course, made me think about My Ticket Confession. I have certainly done critical pieces in this space, and when I do I will frequently get exactly the same reaction: "You claim to be a big Ticket fan, but you seem to have a hard time with [whatever the topic happens to be]."  It's a dumb criticism for the same reason George points out. You can have a strong rooting interest in a team or radio show, but it's your very expertise on that subject that qualifies you to speak up when something isn't quite right to your way of thinking. As long as you have reasons and convey them in a civilized tone, you shouldn't have to defend yourself against charges of disloyalty.

This does sometimes affect what I publish. I am a big admirer of Gordon Keith, but I heard something of his back a few months ago that I really, really disliked, and I wrote an article about it.  Strongly negative.  But I never ran it because I felt that it would leave the impression that I had a big problem with Gordon generally, and that would have been a false impression.  I suppose the unsatisfactory solution is to load up a piece like that with disclaimers, but that looks insincere if the real purpose of your piece is to smack someone around.  So it's in the MTC boneyard.

(The fact that this site is anonymous also sometimes inhibits some of my more incendiary STDs.  Especially as this site has come more popular, I'm sensitive to the unfairness of taking potshots at Ticket guys from the bunker of anonymity.)

This is the actual photograph promoting a Musers appearance at
the Grenada.  But it actually works, because
when I think Musers, I think "comical breast enhancement."
http://granadatheater.com/category/americana/

(3)  CONFIDENTIAL TO GORDON KEITH [this is not the article I was talking about]:  Consider abandoning your irrational terror of creating drops. You select numerous sex-related news stories for your broadcast, but stop so frequently to shift into a disguised-and-sometimes-incomprehensible voice to say the naughty words that Muse in the News is starting to sound like one long hiccup. Even Craig had had enough this morning. You had paused over the story about the dispatcher who threw up some ill-considered phrases on her Facebook page to say "I'm not quite sure how to say this," and The Joonz snapped at you with what sounded like sincere impatience:  "You're a newsman – just read the story." 

Kind of have to agree with that.  Sorry!  Sorry!

ThePlainsman1310@gmail.com

@Plainsman1310

Hey, Junior, I Liked Your "Profar, So Good" Pun

Heck, I even liked your Mitzi Gaynor pun.  ("Did she invent the half, or the full?")

Mitzi Gaynor, back in the day

Your Profar pun reminds me of one of my favorites.  Noel Coward had appeared with Keir Dullea in a 1965 Otto Preminger film, "Bunny Lake Is Missing."  When asked for his opinion about the up-and-comer, who would go on to star in "2001:  A Space Odyssey" three years later, he remarked: 

"Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow."

No, this is not the sizzling STD I mentioned in the last comment.