Dumb and Dumberer

No, not the current film (which I won't see -- I've heard it actually lives up to its name), but the news this morning about the guy who got involved in the brawl at the Cub-Dodger game back in May, 2000. Yesterday a jury awarded Ronald Camacho $475,000 for his "pain and suffering" during this event. That's in addition to the $300,000 the Dodgers paid him already.

So it seems that a good money-making scheme is to go to the ballpark, get drunk and get involved in something stupid. Damn! Why haven't I thought of this all these years?

Seriously, this is just another example of the behavior of what I'm going to call the "Jackass Generation" -- that group of 20- and 30- something young men who like that MTV show (sorry, no link, find it yourself) and think it's cool and/or funny to act out stuff like that in public. I had forgotten to mention in my review of "The Italian Job" that one of the preview commercials was a series of scenes of college-age men doing stupid, dangerous, embarrassing, juvenile stunts. Had no idea what this was for until the tag line said something about "Labatt's being for friends".

Well, that's just freaking stupid. So the message is to young men, get drunk and get stupid, and it doesn't matter. Labatt's has a lovely disclaimer on its website promoting "responsible drinking", but guess how many people read that as compared to how many see that commercial? Credit to the people in the theater watching the film along with us; the murmured buzz seemed to indicate disapproval from a lot of the audience.

Damn, I know I sound like an old curmudgeon. YES, we did stupid stuff when we were younger. But not that stupid. Not dangerous, to ourselves or others. Grow up. And that goes for corporate advertisers, too.

Oh, the Cubs won 4-3 last night at Cincinnati, thanks to back-to-back HR by Moises Alou and Eric Karros and some really nice pitching by Matt Clement and the bullpen trio of Antonio Alfonseca, Kyle Farnsworth and Joe Borowski. It was weird not being at a Cubs road game; the four in Cincy are the only ones I'll miss from now through June 29.

One final note on Toronto. I always knew Corey Patterson had a huge ego, but he proved it at Skydome, which has probably the largest JumboTron at any ballpark. Corey made a couple of nice catches in the series. At least twice I caught him standing in CF watching himself on the screen as they replayed the catches.