Those who take time to measure such things tell me today is the last day of spring. I say good riddance. Spring 2020 was probably the worst season I’d ever experienced (through no fault of my own I might add), and who among us can say much different? Did you winter in Stalingrad in 1943? Spend autumn right here in Virginia… in 1864? Date and place of the last plague, right?
Yeah, I’m ready for something else.
Summer vacation feels a little bit different this year. Not as good, in a phrase, as the usual benefits of summer remain off limits ’round these parts. I’ll be honest, too, with the way the schoolyear was cut short I didn’t feel as though I earned summer vacation as in years past.
Makes sense, I guess, that the thing I feel as though I didn’t earn… just isn’t that good.
My whole life (so far) I’ve read travelogues and vacation guidebooks in a sort of Walter Mitty fashion, having no intention of actually undertaking any of the journeys described. I’ve always felt kind of guilty about that.
Not anymore of course!
Thanks, coronavirus, for this unforeseen benefit.
Last night I watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. For like the 20th time.
Unlike most people in the world (so it seems), I like the movie, and don’t understand why it’s received so much hate over the past dozen years. Honestly I think it’s as good or better than the second one, and closer to the original trilogy than it gets credit for; it’s no Phantom Menace.
Hard to believe it’s been 12 years since the movie premiered. It was May 22, 2008, and I was putting down a few bucks that evening towards its eventual take of $790 million. Not adjusted for inflation it’s actually the highest grossing Indy film.
Until the fifth one, of course, now slated to premiere July 29, 2022.
I’ve already taken that day off from work.
It’s the last day of school, ’round these parts, but as we know learning never really stops.
Case in point, the NBA this week announced that the league would be “using winning percentage” to determine who would qualify for this year’s playoffs.
What the heck was it using before?
The NBA was founded in 1946, and though the exact playoff format has changed through the years it has always followed one pretty basic principle: the teams are ranked based on their wins and losses.
When teams all play the exact same number of games, yes, it is easier to see who has a better record. A team that wins 50 out of 82 games has a higher percentage of wins than a team that wins 49 out of 82. But what if the team that had won 49 only played 80 games? What then?
The thing you see every day labeled “Pct.” in the standings will give you an answer. This is “winning percentage,” all though I’ve always enjoyed pointing out that when it’s carried out to its standard three decimal places you’re no longer looking at a percentage (which is out of 100) but a fraction of 1,000. (You never hear that Ted Williams was the last 40 percent hitter.) In our above case, 49 of 80 is 0.613 (rounded to the nearest thousandth) and 50 of 82 is 0.610 (also rounded). Better record? Forty-nine out of 80. (Think of it this way–the team that went 50 for 82 went 49 out of 80, then went one out of two. One for two is only 50%, a “worse” percentage.)
With the coronavirus interruption to the 2019-20 season, teams have played and will end up playing differing numbers of games.
Time to break out the calculators!
See, you love doing math in the summer.
Yesterday I turned 38. An age that once sounded “old” to me. Not anymore.
Like all things these days, the celebration that occurred to mark such was not exactly as I had anticipated, or planned in those heady times known as pre-corona.
But a milestone achieved nonetheless.
And in true O’Connell birthday tradition, a further description can be found here.
Politics, pandemics, protests… yes, yes, it’s all terribly concerning.
So I’m about to give up on looking at the stories of the day when I see it… could it be? The return of the NBA? In Disney World no less. Could this be any more awesome?
Now that is news!
Three words: Full… ler… house.
Had to jump on that last night of course. After all, my students will be quizzing me on it.
Been watchin’ that show since before you were born, kids. Back when TV seasons followed the school year.
Well, we don’t really even do the “school year” at school any more either
And somehow that show just gets better and better.
Gotta hand it to the folks at CBS. A mere two days after I post here about the garbage on network TV these days, CBS goes all in with a 30-year-old movie in primetime. And it’s a home run. Yes, I can watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade any time I want, but actually on TV, with commercials, when everyone else in America (at least the East Coast) is watching it too? Oh man, that’s old school. And Jesus it’s a great movie.
Let the record show I did not let my six-year-old son watch the whole thing with me. Some things you can handle better when you’re seven or eight. I just told him the boy and his dad continued their adventure, riding in a motorcycle, flying in an airship, then ending with a horseback ride!
Among other things.
Last night on ABC I watched a show called Holey Moley. Extreme miniature golf or some such thing.
First of all, why didn’t I think of this?
And second, here’s what I think is happening at television studios across the country right now…
No? Nothing? Can’t film at all, huh? Well, do we have anything we filmed like a year or two ago that we thought was a piece of junk but we could just throw it on now? Show about miniature golf? Okay, go with that one.
Something like that.