I’ve always considered myself somewhat of a home theater enthusiast. When I was in high school, I convinced my parents to take the plunge and get a 61″ rear-projection TV. It was a Pioneer with a 16:10.7 aspect ratio, which was somewhat of a harbinger of things to come in a pre-DVD and pre-HDTV era, when most people were annoyed by those "black bars" that were all too rare at the time. I got a Laserdisc player around 1995, a high-end Pioneer model that I still have, and still use (albeit on increasingly infrequent occasions). When the DVD format first started to get popular, I built a PC to fit into my entertainment center and play movies on my TV. I still to this day think that this very well might have been the first Home Theater PC (its first iteration was completed sometime in 1999, as any visitors to my first apartment in Champaign can attest).

Since moving out of my parents’ house, though, I’ve never been able to duplicate the big-screen experience, mostly due to financial concerns. To say that it has been a life-long dream of mine to have a truly legitimate home theater setup of my own is not much of an exaggeration. And now, I finally do: This past weekend, I got a 60″ LCD rear-projection HDTV, the Sony KDF-60WF655:

I feel like I’m finally a real man.

Having taken the plunge into the world of HDTV, it is now time to figure out how I want to go about getting an HD signal. While DVDs look absolutely phenomenal on the new TV, standard-definition broadcasts (especially on the sometimes-pixely DirecTV) leave something to be desired when viewed on a monitor this large. My current plan is a two-pronged one: purchase a new HD TiVo (specifically, the heralded HR10-250), and purchase an HDTV off-air antenna. I haven’t looked forward to spending money this much in a long time.

Comments (1)

Mark (who comments here as “Tree”) asked me for my projections for this year’s season. I’m posting them here for all to see, and we’ll revisit in November to see how I did.

Comments (4)

My absolute favorite author of all time, Kurt Vonnegut, died today. As his ubiquitous characters the Tralfamadorians would say, “So it goes.”

Vonnegut was the author of several of my favorite books, the most dear to me being The Sirens of Titan. The back cover of it refers to “a prophetic vision about the purpose of human life,” and I recall thinking when I first picked it up, “Wow, this Vonnegut guy’s got some balls.” And, of course, he did–not only does the book dare to ask the question of the meaning of life, but it answers it as well.

I remember reading some years back how Vonnegut planned to sue the big tobacco companies, because he’d been a chain smoker all of his life and had yet to die as a result. It’s somewhat fitting that in the end, at the age of 84, the cigarettes still didn’t get to him (a lingering injury from a fall did). I hope as he went, he did so like Bokonon from Cat’s Cradle, “thumbing his nose at You Know Who.”

So it goes.

Comments (1)

99 years and counting. I’m so gullible. Even with all of the history, I’m still excited for the start of a new baseball season. I figure it can’t get any worse (and if it does, perhaps the new owner can do a better job starting in year 100).

In fact, I am of the opinion that I and those like me have had the worst possible run as sports fans over the past 5 years out of any sports fan base, ever. I know a lot of people probably say that, but let’s look at it a little closer.

• In 2003, the Cubs came painfully close to reaching the World Series, only to have a series of bizarre incidents and supreme blunders send them packing for the off-season. In retrospect, perhaps the worst part of this collapse is the fact that it was likely the last time that Mark Prior and Kerry Wood would both be healthy at the same time. Indeed, I can recall saying, after the Cubs lost game 5 in Florida (after being up 3 games to 1 in the series), “Well, we’re going back to Wrigley, up 3-to-2, with Prior and Wood starting in games 6 and 7. No way we lose both of those games. We’re as good as in the World Series.” It’s all been downhill from there.
• Prior to 2004, the longest streaks without a World Series win were the Cubs (none since 1908), the White Sox (none since 1917), and the Red Sox (none since 1918). Then, in 3 consecutive years, the worst possible string of World Series winners a Cubs fan could possibly imagine came about:
  • 2004: The Red Sox win the World Series. While not really a rival per se, I’ve always hated the Red Sox because they get all of the media attention, particularly for their curse and lengthy championship drought, despite the fact that Cubs fans have endured worse, and for longer. It wasn’t just the Eastern Seaboard Production Network (with their obvious biases) doing it, either–they even had a romantic comedy made about it, with the all-too-poetic necessary rewrites to make the happy ending even happier.
  • 2005: The White Sox win the World Series. This one hit closer to home, because the White Sox, while still not a real rival of the Cubs by virtue of the fact that they play in the other league, are a natural opponent by virtue of sharing the same city (not to mention the annual cross-town showdowns during interleague play). While I was happy for my friends who are Sox fans (of which there are few) that they got to see their team win, at the same time I was devastated that the rest of the Sox fan base (of which there were all of a sudden many) could continue being the renowned assholes I’ve always known them to be, with an extra layer of smugness now added on top. This also left the Cubs alone as the only team with a World Series drought of any significance.
  • 2006: The hated St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series. The Cardinals are the Cubs’ biggest rival, our division adversaries for whom the most hatred is reserved. Cubs-Cards is the great Midwestern baseball rivalry (with Sox-Yanks being the East coast version, and Giants-Dodgers in the West). Seeing your most despised rival win the championship is one of the most painful things for any sports fan.

  Each of these years was bad enough, but adding them all up, consecutively, really hurts. Not to mention the fact that the Cubs came in dead last in their division last year, while St. Louis bumbled their way into the playoffs with a barely plus-.500 record. As a Cubs fan, the situation as far as baseball is concerned couldn’t be worse. But wait, there’s more.

• The Bears lost Super Bowl XLI in 2007. I’ve talked about this here before, so I won’t go into it too much again, except to make this important point: losing the championship game is painful. In my opinion, it hurts much more than not even getting there. You get your hopes up, you have the week (or in the case of the Super Bowl, two) lead-up to the game to think about it and get yourself psyched up for your team to be crowned champions. Then they come up short, and it’s truly devastating. It’s no coincidence that every NFL team to lose the Super Bowl in this century has had a troubling season the following year–it’s not just devastating to the fans, it is to the players and coaches and personnel, too. I don’t think that a lot of people realize this fact, so I’ll repeat it again: Losing a championship hurts. This is a lesson I really learned a couple of years ago, in 2005, when:
• The Fighting Illini basketball team lost the 2005 national championship game to North Carolina. I don’t think it’s possible to have a 37-2 college basketball season be considered a “disappointment,” but this one certainly came close. It was on the brink of being the most memorable season in the history of college hoops, but for a shot in Columbus on the last day of the regular season, and a frustrating championship game in St. Louis. Instead, it is probably one of the most forgettable seasons ever, and that’s a shame, because that team was truly great. I’ll never forget driving up to East Lansing to see the Illini play the game that Digger Phelps “guaranteed” they would not be able to win–the hostile crowd was great as we walked into a campus bar wearing orange, and then sat through a great performance by our team as the Spartans (themselves in the midst of a great season) were humbled. And, of course, few of us will ever forget what was perhaps the greatest comeback win in NCAA tournament history, the Illini rallying from 14 down with 4 minutes to play against Arizona to go to the Final Four. It all seemed so storybook at the time, so fitting, so deserved–and yet, when they fell short two games later, it was completely deflating. The Illini, like the Cubs following their run in 2003, just haven’t been the same since.
• While we’re at it, we also have to include the 2001 Fighting Illini football season, in which they won the Big Ten, going 11-1 (with the only loss being to Michigan, and at the time I recall a quote from Ohio State coach Jim Tressel that said something to the effect of, “I’d rather go 6-6 and beat Michigan than go 11-1 and have Michigan be the only team to beat us”). They then went on to get trounced by LSU in the 2002 Sugar Bowl, which is still the Illini’s only BCS game appearance. They’ve completely sucked ever since (although things are looking up heading into the 2007 season…).

This is only looking at what I consider to be the 4 major sports (MLB, NFL, college FB, college BB). I used to be a big NHL guy, but since the strike a couple of years ago I just haven’t been able to get back into it again. And the NBA is, well… it’s a different animal altogether. I’ll watch it, and I tune in during the post season to follow along, but I don’t have much of a vested interest in it so I’m not counting it here. I suppose if asked, I would consider myself a Bulls fan these days, as they’re the team I watch and root for the most, when I do pay attention to professional basketball. It probably says something about me as an NBA [non-]fan, though, that I root for the Jazz just as often–the one-time rivals of the Bulls now have Deron Williams, former Illini superstar, at their helm, and so I like to root for his success and follow his career.

In the interest of full disclosure, I do casually follow the Illini hockey team, and they won the ACHA national championship in 2005. I don’t really think that a college club hockey team should be counted in a discussion of major sports franchises, though–while I was proud to hear that they’d won the championship, it’s not like I was in attendance or could watch it on TV. Not to mention that they’re not a “real” team, thanks to Title IX–but that’s a topic for a different day.

I’m interested in hearing about other fan bases that have had bad runs like this. While I might not have much sympathy for them, I’d likely be able to empathize, and I think it’d be fun to compare.

Comments (7)