BCB After Dark: Perfect balance

Welcome back to BCB After Dark: the swingin’ spot for night owls, early-risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Thanks for stopping by on this hot august night. Everyone is in a good mood after tonight’s Cubs win. Come on in and grab a table for our last show of the week. Everyone is welcome here. Tell us if you need anything. Bring your own beverage.

BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.

Tonight, the Cubs trounced the Cardinals 7-1. Man, it’s fun to say that. Tomorrow the Cubs will send Marcus Stroman to the mound to try to win their sixth-straight series. Seventh-straight if you count the one game in Baltimore. I don’t want to get too optimistic, but this is starting to seem like the second half of 2014. The Cubs are actually five games over .500 in the second half so far this season.

Last night, I asked you if Drew Smyly will still be a Cub next year. By a whopping margin of 81 percent to 19 percent, you think the Cubs and Smyly will come to an agreement to keep him in Chicago next season.

Here’s the part where I talk about movies and jazz. You’re free to skip ahead to the baseball question at the end. You won’t hurt my feelings.

Tonight I’ve chosen a beautiful song by one of America’s greatest singers, Cassandra Wilson. Here’s a live performance of a song from Wilson’s tribute to Billie Holiday album, Coming Forth By Day. It features the rhythm section for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Martyn Casey and Thomas Wydler. (So . . .the Bad Seeds? Or just a couple of Bad Seeds?)

Most of that album is covers of Billie Holiday songs, but this one is an original composition “Last Song (For Lester).”

Today I’m throwing out for discussion bad movies that you love anyway. I’m not particularly talking about cult classics. I love Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, but that’s one of those films that you’ve either watched and loved or simply haven’t seen at all. (Or you think it’s stupid, I suppose. But in that case, you probably wouldn’t have seen it in the first place.) Pussycat is a low-budget exploitation film that has had a long history of people discovering it and singing its praises. It’s not objectively “good,” but the charisma of its stars—in particular the fantastic Tura Satana—make it a fun watch. If you want to toss out a film like that for discussion, I’m not going to stop you, but it’s not what I’m looking for.

But what I really want to hear from you is the film that all of your friends make fun of you for liking. I get more kidding for films I don’t like that everyone else does (cough Field of Dreams cough), or me loving films that no one else has seen. But there is one film, or at least one that I can think of right now, that I love that I get kidded about liking: Weekend at Bernie’s. Weekend at Bernie’s is a one-joke film that is so magnificently dumb that it works for me. I haven’t seen Weekend at Bernie’s 2—I’m afraid it will be so bad that it will ruin the first film for me. But I have suggested that in the light of the remake mania that seems to have seized Hollywood, they should make a Weekend at Bernie’s television series. Every week they’d have to convince a different group of people that Bernie is still alive. It would be the artistic equivalent of beating a dead horse for so long that you’ve got horse hamburger. Or maybe a dead Bernie.

So if you would, what really “bad” movie do you love? What do your friends tease you about for liking?

Welcome back to everyone who skips the jazz and films.

The 2023 schedule was released earlier today and the big change is the “balanced” schedule where every team plays every other team at least once. Al wrote up a story on the Cubs schedule and while I don’t want to put words in his mouth, it seemed to me that he’s against the balanced schedule. Maybe not enough to get angry about it, but he wrote that he’d prefer more games against divisional rivals than extra games against the Mariners. Al is also worried about rainouts and the difficulty in making those games up.

But what do you think? Do you like that every team is going to play roughly the same schedule? Or do you think that MLB should emphasize local matchups and regional rivals, even at the expense of some teams having an easier schedule than others?

So do you like the new “balanced” schedule or not?

Thank you so much for stopping by and especially thank you if you took the time to comment. I hope that we’ve made the week a little easier for you. Please tell us if you need us to call a ride for you. Please get home safely. Tip your waitstaff. Tell your friends about us. And join us again next week for more episodes of BCB After Dark.