Greatest Song Evah 7/18/25
Janie’s Got a Gun
If you had told me in 1983 that Aerosmith would not just stage a major comeback a few years later but that rebound would be such that they would become one of the biggest bands of the 90’s I would have accused you of partaking in the same substances that had brought Aerosmith’s career to a screeching halt in the first place. And yet it happened.
There was a decade or so in which things were rough for them. Years of substance abuse had caught up with them, and rock radio had largely abandoned their form of hard rock, never mind pop radio. They were basically a relic of the past until their duet with Run-DMC on a cover of Walk This Way brought them back into the mainstream. Then, even though they were not a hair metal band themselves, the popularity of hair metal reignited interest in the bands that had inspired the current generation. Now that they were more or less sober, the time was right for their return and they capitalized on the opportunity.
Janie’s Got a Gun was the second single from Pump, their second post-comeback album. Co-written by Steven Tyler and Tom Hamilton, it tells the story of a teenage girl who takes revenge on her father who had been sexually abusing her. The song is not exploitative; the lyrics describe the situation without being overly graphic, and the musical arrangement is appropriately haunting. It is one of Tyler’s best vocal performances, the ravages in his voice give the song the grit that it needs and the instrumental break in the song’s climax feels cathartic.
Aerosmith were not the only mid-70’s hard rockers to have made big comebacks in this same time period, but theirs was the most lasting. In a few short years they went from being barely relevant to becoming major players in the rock landscape. They soon started to get a little too power ballad heavy for my taste, but no such criticism for this song. It is an amazing record.
The All-Star Break Reset
Because the ASG ended so late on Tuesday night I only had enough time to put together my most immediate reactions. I thought that before the crazy ending it was one of the better games in recent years. Yes, it included the endless parade of unhittable arms out of the bullpen that have turned the games into exercises of tedium, but at least there were some runs scored as well as an exciting late game comeback. That’s the best anyone can ask for.
I question Fox’s decision to overly tease the tiebreaking scenario without giving the viewing audience many details. I don’t know if it was a league or a network decision but when the chances of a tie were increasing the network cut to a shot of Pete Alonso taking swings in the indoor batting cage and Joe Davis mentioned there would be a new way of determining the game’s outcome and leaving it at that. It wasn’t until the 9th inning ended with the score tied that Fox revealed that the game would be decided by a home run hitting competition.
Ken Rosenthal added more details here, the short version is that the managers had to submit the names of the 3 players who would take part in the swing-off ahead of time, which is why many of the bigger names were not participants. Both Dave Roberts and Aaron Boone made the reasonable decision to limit their choices to players who they knew would be playing late in the game and therefore would not come in cold. (Another reason is that it’s not as if either manager had the option of calling a player who had tapped out early and asking him to turn his private jet around. I admit I tried my best to see which starters were still in uniform for the mini home run derby and had not left early.)
In New York I have heard a lot of manufactured outrage over the awarding of the MVP to Kyle Schwarber and not Pete Alonso. Let’s be honest. The first thing that fans will always remember about this game, and the moment that will be on every highlight reel of the greatest All-Star Game moments is the 3 homers by Schwarber, particularly the final one that he hit on 1 knee. Schwarbs was the lead character of this year’s game, he deserves the award.
It’s also noteworthy that the players loved that shoot-out. A few even enthusiastically expressed support for using that when games go into extra innings rather than continuing to go with the Manfred Man. Chalk that up to getting caught up in the moment; even if MLB were to consider going with that method, which I seriously doubt they would, the league would test it in the minor leagues first. Don’t expect to see this any time soon. In a goofy exhibition game, sure. In a real regular season game, no way.
Now the season is about to get serious. Teams will hit the 100 game mark within the next week, and the trade deadline is less than 2 weeks away. This is an especially tough period for teams that are within a game or two of .500. There is so much ambiguity over what to do. A hot streak could convince a front office that they are in it and should be buyers. A cold one could turn them into sellers. And what to do if you have long range plans but are doing better than expected? You never know how large your window of contention is; the Orioles serve as a lesson. They have been taking a passive approach, playing the long game with the confidence that their crop of young hitters are a budding dynasty in waiting. Well, guess what. Choosing not to proactively improving their pitching staff proved to be poor strategy, and those young hitters have either been hurt, slow to develop, or have mysteriously regressed. Now they are in last place.
I’m hoping that people have forgotten that I ranked the Braves #1 in my preseason power rankings. Would you believe I was being ironic when I made that selection? That aside, this is now the portion of the season in which enough games have been played that the playoff odds found on your website of choice are more than noise, there is enough data to make those odds meaningful. Here is the playoff field as things stand now:
NL
Dodgers
Cubs
Phillies
Brewers
Mets
Padres
AL
Tigers
Astros
Blue Jays
Yankees
Red Sox
Mariners
And oh, further proof that baseball is not insulated from our current dystopia. The MLBPA has encouraged international players to carry their immigration documents with them at all times. Show me your papers even extends to the world of professional sports. Lovely.
On a happier note, if you are a fan of schadenfreude, Trevor Bauer is there to provide it. He has been getting rocked on a regular basis in Japan, and the other night he gave up a monster home run. Initial reports claimed that it was a 594 foot home run. As much as I would love to pile on that POS, that number is clear BS. If you want to make up a number to make him look bad, at least come up with one that’s plausible. It appears that the more accurate measurement is just shy of 400 feet. Even so, that hit had some serious exit velocity and Bauer has the worst ERA in the NPB. Remember that the next time one of Bauer’s apologists claim he’s being blackballed from MLB.
The Emmy Noms
The old cliche about awards - it’s an honor just to be nominated - is actually quite fitting when it comes to the Emmy Awards. As anyone can attest, there is SO MUCH TV out there, to break out from that pack and nab a nomination is a huge achievement in and of itself.
There has always been a tendency towards groupthink among the voters. For the longest time once an actor or a show wins once, they keep winning over and over. Voters would lazily check the box for John Lithgow or Tony Shalhoub or Modern Family year after year. There’s less of that now, instead voters focus on the most favored shows and have those sweep the categories. So, expect to hear Severance and The Bear called several times on awards night.
That’s why I have as keen of an interest in the nominations as I do for the actual winners, maybe even more. I wish that I lived in the timeline in which Rhea Seehorn had won all of the awards that she had deserved, but at least her nominations were a small consolation. There are multiple examples this year of the A Nomination Will Suffice phenomenon, such as my warm feelings to have seen a Best Comedy Series nomination for What We Do In the Shadows in its final season. It has no chance of winning, but it’s nice to see the recognition. Nominations for Sharon Horgan and Jeff Hiller when they are certain to be steamrolled by higher profile series? That’s still something. I could go on, I will go on. Cristin Milioti! Bill Camp! Dierdre O’Connell! Great actors who consistently do great work. Good for them.
One additional note: no potential new EGOT’s in this crop of nominees. In fact, there are 6 individuals who are only missing the Emmy in their trophy case, but all 6 are deceased, so the next EGOT is not going to come from the Emmys. We will need to wait for the Grammy nominations to come out in November.
DC Comics IP - Y: The Last Man
If Y: The Last Man wasn’t the single greatest comic series that I ever read it is certainly near the top of a short list. Due to several instances of unfortunate timing the live action adaptation, while well-made, quietly dropped with limited promotion and is now a streaming orphan, currently unavailable for viewing anywhere.
Premiering in 2002, the graphic novel told the story of a cataclysm which instantly killed every mammal on Earth who had a Y chromosome. It wasn’t a zombie apocalypse type of event, instead every single victim died at the snap of a finger. There were 2 exceptions: Yorick Brown, who was the titular last man, and Ampersand, his pet Capuchin monkey.
Over the course of 60 world-spanning issues the saga dealt with the attempts to rebuild society along with the attempts to determine if Yorick & Ampersand’s survivals were the key to discovering the cause and the cure. He was placed under the protection of an agent who was part of a secret governmental agency while at the same time desperately searching for his girlfriend, who was on an archeological dig in Australia at the time of the event.
The series accurately dealt with the realities of such a situation. Many of the surviving women were radicalized in one way or another, and of course Yorick himself was a valuable asset. As the only man left alive, it stands to reason that people would want to get their hands on him in order to perpetuate the species. In addition, the loss of half of the population is going to have a detrimental effect on maintaining a functional structure to daily life. Think of all the occupations in which women are severely underrepresented. Will there be enough freighter captains to keep supply chains active? How about commercial airline pilots?
The series was filled with memorable characters and storylines. There were Israeli commandos, radical neo-Amazons, and astronauts stranded on the International Space Station, among others. The comic should have resulted in a tremendous adaptation, unfortunately the gestational period in moving from print to film was so prolonged that the moment was lost.
Initially there were talks of making it into a movie, but there is too much story to fit into a movie. Eventually a deal was signed for an HBO series, but there were so many changes in the casting and in the hiring and departures of showrunners that it looked like the show would never come to pass.
FINALLY, FX gave the project a final green light, although even that came with fits and starts. There were multiple delays, but filming finally commenced late in 2019. That date is crucial; COVID halted production, delaying things even further. When it finally premiered in 2021, it was on Hulu, not on FX proper.
It wasn’t a straight adaptation, some necessary compromises had to be made for budgetary reasons. The scope was tightened; the majority of the characters were located in Washington DC. In one change, the character of Yorick’s mother, a US Senator, was much more vital in the series than in the comic. If you have a big star like Diane Lane in your cast, you’re not gonna make her a minor character. And instead of being located on the other side of the world, Yorick’s girlfriend Beth was instead in DC with everyone else. She had walked out of their apartment following an argument about his immaturity and aimlessness shortly before the catastrophe occurred. He was still searching for her, but the distance was not as daunting.
In the early going Barry Keoghan was originally cast as Yorick, and it’s a shame he was no longer available once shooting finally began. In the comics Yorick was depicted with soft features and a soft-spoken voice; he wasn’t androgynous per se, but it didn’t take much of a disguise for him to pass as female. Instead, the actor ultimately cast, Ben Schnetzer, looked like a generic bro. On the other hand, the show corrected one flaw from the comic. The comic had a largely binary take on gender; the show added a transgender character to the central cast. That added a crucial element to the story; what would happen to this person if HRT drugs are no longer accessible?
As I said, the show finally premiered in 2021. By that date audiences had struggled to get through the later seasons of The Walking Dead and its various spin-offs. The appetite for post-apocalyptic storytelling was fully sated. Not to mention that it’s hard to imagine people were all that eager to watch a series with this plotline only a year after the COVID pandemic. Y: The Last Man ran for one 10 episode season, covering only a small portion of the comic series, ended on a cliffhanger which will never be resolved, and it has now been scrubbed from the internet.
The 60 issues of the comic have not been scrubbed, however, and it did end with a definitive resolution. I cannot recommend the comic highly enough. Maybe in another decade or so enough time will have passed that someone would feel confident enough to take another crack at the story. There are a sufficient number of well-rounded characters in the series that it would be an ideal showcase for any number of talented actresses.
Closing Laughs
That’s all for today. Thanks for stopping by and I’ll see you all again on Monday. Great weekend everyone.
