Mike O'Connell

New new obsession in the O’Connell household… WarioWare: Get It Together!

This is the tenth installment (so the Internet claims) in the WarioWare series, and the first since 2018. My roommates and I have been playing the demo version just released (free sample… clever), ready to buy the full game when it releases this Friday.

Officially a “minigame party game,” WW:GIT really takes mini to the extreme. Most “games” last about a second and a half, and yeah, it feels like and eternity when one actually goes two or three ticks on the clock.

I guess they figure that’s all the attention span anyone really has any more.

Seen yesterday around the halls of an unnamed middle school in Virginia, a variation of some type of rain dance, visions of school cancellations frolicking about student minds. A few teachers’ minds too.

Hurricane Ida, like all hurricanes (even when “downgraded” to tropical storms) is no laughing matter. Thankfully my schoolmates and I are far from the major brunt of the storm, so the theatrics were just that.

Still, though, you never know.

Remember… last March 11 I didn’t think they’d close down the schools for a year either.

Most old episodes of The Simpsons I watch now entertain me even more than they did when I first watched them because if nothing else I get more of the jokes. They’re more relevant to me now, and I appreciate that.

But Season Six, Episode 21? It’s called “The PTA Disbands!” That’s the one where the teachers at Springfield Elementary go on strike and the PTA decides to replace them with well-meaning but incompetent members of the community.

Yeah, that one’s a little too relevant on way too many levels for me now.

Every live jazz performance I’ve ever been to, whether in a restaurant, a night club, a concert hall, etc. one thing is always true: people talk during the bass solo.

Saturday night at Keystone Korner in Baltimore… no one talked during the bass solo.

Saying Ron Carter has “played with everybody” is a little like noting that water is wet. It’s the second line of his Wikipedia page, for crying out loud, that he holds a Guinness World Record for playing bass on the greatest number of jazz albums: 2,221. Anyone claiming to not know who Ron Carter is has just never heard of music. Funny idea for a cartoon: old-school stereo’s “treble” and “bass” knobs are replaced by ones that say “treble” and “Ron Carter.” (Note to self: send that one to The New Yorker when R.C. finally goes home.)

Not many people can say they’ve played with Miles Davis and A Tribe Called Quest and appeared on an episode of Treme. (Those are like my three favorite things right there.)

And this weekend he added a fourth: Keystone Korner in Baltimore, where people go to actually listen to jazz.

That’s why when the old man with the bass is playing a solo… audience doesn’t talk, audience listens.

I’ve sung the praises of Keystone Korner before, and this post will be no different. They consistently bring in top-quality talent and present America’s art form with the respect it deserves. Ron Carter, too, plays with an obvious dignity (can I say gravitas?), and surrounds himself with the best sidemen (and sidelady!) around. He’s the Joe DiMaggio of jazz, the “Greatest Living Ballplayer” still walking among us, though secretly we wish we could see him again in the lineup with Lou Gehrig, Phil Rizzuto, or Herbie Hancock.

I’m pretty sure when he was up to bat…

no one would talk.

Major League Baseball is the whitest old man sport we’ve got, but even MLB sees the stitches on the fastball every once in a while.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing my two favorite teams in two separate contests, a Yankees-Red Sox matinee followed by the Washington Nationals playing an interleague game in primetime.

Interesting note about the proceedings?

Neither was on TV.

(You know, old white guy TV.)

I guess sometimes instead of going to where your (dying) audience is, you bring your product to where the audience you want is. (Pardon the awkward sentence structure there–it really was the only way to describe it.)

For what it’s worth both games were enjoyable, and not just because they resulted in wins for my chosen sides (and helping Yankee playoff chances). Both mlb.tv (Yankees-Red Sox) and good old youtube (Nats-Blue Jays) really did present a good show. (And no blackouts!) In true 21st-century fashion I was able to select “home” or “away” announcers, and on youtube of course one could participate in various fan polls and chat features. No doubt I was supposed to tag myself on social media or some such thing, but no, the baseball itself was enough for me.

The old white guy version of watching a baseball game.