This is a grenade-free zone

I think we can all agree that the last scene of a movie is often the one that has the most influence on your feelings about the film as a whole. We'll call this the 'Hit by a bus' effect, which is best explained by a scene in Final Destination. It starts with something normal, like an argument between a guy and a girl, and the girl is so emotional and focused on the argument (and so are you) that she doesn't realize she's wandered clear into the middle of a busy road. She's shouting something about some kind of feelings (presumably), then BOOM. Hit by a bus. Dead. Bus keeps right on goin', too. Immediately, you forget about the argument, because someone just got hit by a bus and killed. That's what stays with you.

So, at least in most cases, the final scene of a movie agrees with the rest of the film. And the point of, say, a comedy, above all, is to make you laugh. Therefore, the last scenes of a funny movie often are ones designed to do just that. You don't want to come away from a comedy like, 'Wow. That was incredibly deep and profound,' because then it's really not a comedy anymore. A comedy succeeds when you leave the theater saying, 'Wow. That was hilarious,' and then quote the thing uncontrollably for the next eight years.

Problem is, laughs can bury a good message, and I realized this on Friday morning around 10:38 a.m., Mountain Daylight Time, when I saw the video of Pitt's Jabaal Sheard reading a public apology for being involved in some recent hijinks. Been a lot of public apologies lately coming from sports people, local and national. And often, these are figures that we've decided to call 'role models.' I even wrote something on here a few months back criticizing these people.

My idea of what a Role Model is, though, should have changed several years ago, after I saw the movie of that title with Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott. The two actors show that guys who initially have no business being role models actually can turn out to be pretty good ones. But I forgot about that, because the movie was just too damn funny. I came away all laughs. Now? Still chuckles, but heart-warming chuckles.

Now, we probably can't call Jabaal Sheard a role model yet, but that has nothing do with his character and everything to do with his visibility. In a sense, all high-profile athletes, in one way or another, are role models to someone. But I'm here to talk about the biggest of the big boys, the Tiger Woods', the Ben Roethlisbergers, the athletes that kids would say they look up to before mentioning the words 'mom' or 'dad.'

I'm here to contradict something I wrote and posted a few months back, when I said I'm horrified for today's kids who don't have any professional athletes to call role models. I'm here to say they do. I'm here to say it's someone like Ben Roethlisberger.

I came to this conclusion because of a decision. The Decision, specifically, and how it was handled. It upset a lot of people, case you didn't hear. Turns out, seems the only folks who aren't acknowledging The Decision's backlash are the ones who encouraged it. The only people who don't think it was poorly handled are the ones who handled it. That's the problem.

Listen to a famous athlete or celebrity who has screwed up and had a lot of people find out, and you'll hear this every time: Everyone makes mistakes. Every time, never fails. And it's true. Everyone does make mistakes. But that's not the point. The point is that famous people are indeed people, and the ones who go through embarassing public scandals are willing to admit this and, often, vow to change their ways. Most of the time, they do. Guess what that is? Yup. Role model behavior, baby.

No one person will navigate life without a few hiccups (Whether or not those hiccups were preceded by cheap booze is a different story), and the ones who have the character to realize their colossal error in judgment, admit it, admit their fallabiilty, apologize and start acting better are the ones we should admire and emulate. Not the ones who fail to recognize a colossal error in judgment and then ignore the millions who do.

And since I like this blog to generally be humorous, I'll finish with this John Russell face montage:

Happy Russell

Sad Russell

Surprised Russell

Melancholy Russell

Angry Russell

Stoic Russell

Pensive Russell

Embarassed Russell

Mischievous Russell

Confused Russell

Sanguine Russell

Lastings Milledge

- Hey, speaking of the Pirates ...

It's not often that a local broadcast of your hometown baseball team offers a fresh experience, especially when that team is the Pirates. See, I think the Pirates broadcasters are in a tougher spot than we realize. They probably like their jobs. I like their jobs. But (!SPOILER ALERT!) the Pirates aren't very good at their own. Therein lies their predicament.

The official hometown broadcasts of any sports team are never fully objective, and no one expects them to be. That's what comes with having the rights and being the official broadcasting partner of any professional sports team. Offending the organization wouldn't be good business. That's understandable. What's a little off-putting*, though, is when the broadcast material begins to stray a wee-bit too far from the middle and into what I like to call 'Double Blink Territory' or simply 'DBT.'

What's 'DBT?' Well, do this for me: blink twice and raise your eyebrows. Do it again now, but slower ... slower .... now freeze! Perfect. The face you're now making is the face you make when someone on TV makes sure to note the quality of Charlie Morton's 'stuff' or how everyone underestimates how young starting pitchers need a veteran influence like Matt Morris (Blegh!). Now just add an impatient 'All right,' and you're about to pick up the clicker. Don't lie. You are.

Now, don't get me wrong. Play Tim Neverette's voice over a babbling brook and you got maybe 25 seconds before I'm paralyzed from the neck down. What I mean is that hearing TOO much praise affects how much you trust your hometown sportscasters. And that's why hearing out-of-town voices over your hometown team are so refreshing.

Living in Colorado, I get the Rockies broadcasts. I watch them, sometimes long enough to wander into DBT and eye the remote. But I'm really not a Rockies fan, never will be, and I'll gladly abandon a Rockies-Giants tryst on a Wednesday night for old reruns of Room Raiders.

That said, I set aside time to watch the Rockies when they're playing the Buccos, because I can't see the Bucs out here. I could buy the extra innings package, sure, but I like to eat, too, and I can't have both. So in the true sense of 'don't-know-what-you-got-til-it's-gone,' because you honestly have to leave them for a few months to appreciate the Pirates, I value a full-game broadcast that involves the Pittsburgh club. And Drew Goodman and George Frazier aren't screwin' it up.

I've gotten to know the Rockies' voices well enough to recognize them when I flip through the channels, and it's their work during Pirates-Rockies broadcasts that compelled me to write this. Being a voice of the Rockies, of course, you don't have to fluff the Buccos. They pump up the Rox, sure, but they have no obligation to the opponent. Therefore, their commentary on the Pirates, to me, is unprovoked, honest and most of all: valuable.

So when Drew and George praise Andrew McCutchen, it tells me that Cutch isn't buried in Pittsburgh. They respect Garrett Jones, which means other people outside of Pittsburgh surely must. They talk about the Pirates in the 70s and the World Series titles, which says that those days aren't totally forgotten. They love PNC Park, so maybe the Pirates haven't completely ruined PNC's game experience. They even know the full dish on Pedro Alvarez, Jose Tabata and Neil Walker. I realize knowing the opponent is in the job description of a competent MLB broadcaster, and nobody's mistaking George or Drew for freakin' Vin Scully here. But the Pirates don't pay them, yet they still have nice things to say about the organization. I like that.

- Sign No. 11 that you don't chew your food enough and/or need to stop inhaling burritos: Coughing up a full, un-punctured black bean. Seeing this in your palm would be like discovering a live goat inside the belly of a T-Rex (Yes, that's a Jurassic Park reference). What it means is that this piece of food, small, to be sure, but large enough to certainly draw some kind of tooth-mark, made its way directly from my hand and down my throat without my teeth interfering. It's like I breathed in a black bean. That's not good.

- Know what else the Rockies have? Respectably funny commercials ... involving players! That kind of entertainment value coming from eager and willing professional athletes can't be underestimated when there are pro athletes out there, believe it or not, who are jerks.

Here's one that's cut off on the right side because my blog is a stubborn idiot:




* In case you forgot, I left an asterisk up there next to the phrase 'off-putting.' Off-putting didn't hit 762 home runs on steroids, now, but I wanted to address why no one should use the term anymore. This blog post is the last time.

You might use 'off-putting' on occasion, but I know you don't say 'put off' or 'puts me off.' The latter even sounds inappropriate. What you do say, or at least what I say, is 'piss off' or 'pisses me off.' And since I generally assume that everyone else in the world does what I do, I suggest we replace off-putting with off-pissing, just for consistency's sake. Good? Good.