I was told this is "classic Texas"

I've been reading up on Ike and trying to figure out how much wine I'm going to have to buy to make it through the next few days. I stumbled upon this article via Fark, which had this gem of a quote:

"If the island is going to disappear it has to be a tsunami," he said, as he walked along the block where his home is located, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette. "If it ain't your time you ain't going anywhere."

I read that aloud to my coworkers, who deemed that "classic Texas". One said that people like that drive her crazy, and I had to break it to her that almost all Jerseyans think Texans talk that way!

Bringing back some Italian hand guestures

One of my favorite book series are the books about Stephanie Plum, a character created by Janet Evanovich. Stephanie Plum is a true Jersey girl, and she often refers to the hand signals notoriously made by New Jersey drivers as "Italian hand gestures". I'm famous for them. Really.

Let's go to the third person for this story. I just think it'll make it more interesting, plus things are always cooler when you talk about yourself in the third person.

We catch up to our heroine, the lovely Vespa rider as she ignores yet another group of men yelling "hey girl" out their car windows. She drives past a construction site and again marvels that men still believe that whistling actually has any effect at all. The gorgeous rider heads down Greenville, cursing under breath at the minivans coasting along at 5 MPH (It's my story, and I can exaggerate what I want.)

She expertly takes a right turn, ignoring the one rogue minivan driver attempting to go 60 down a side street. The light in front of her is red, of course. When riding a Vespa, lights are always red, especially when it's raining, scorching hot or when our heroine is starving.

Today she is starving AND boiling.

Green light. Signaling like any good scooter driver, she advances into the intersection and waits for oncoming cars to pass so she can turn left. This being Dallas, it involves watching one near rear-ending, one person choosing to turn right from the left lane and one car clearing the intersection at about 90 MPH. During all this activity, she hears a honk.

And another honk.

And a lean on the horn oh my lord my wife is having a baby get out of the way honk.

She turns around and sees the mini van driver from before glaring at her, gesturing her to turn left in front of the 90 MPH deathmobile.

Our heroine, ever the cool, calm and collected, waits her turn and turns left.

And drives off into the scorching sunset, middle finger raised in the air.

The trouble with MLB.tv

To start, I guess I should confess something. I am a huge Yankee fan. I know, I know, they're the evil empire, I'm such a frontrunner, etc. I've heard it all. I've also been a fan forever, just like any good Jersey girl. I can remember the 1996 World Series vividly, sitting about 5 inches away from our 12" TV in the kitchen (why I wasn't in the living room, I'll never know) absolutely convinced that Derek Jeter was my soul mate.

Was! Not is! I swear!

Anyway, after moving to Texas, I realized that I couldn't make it the rest of the season without the ability to watch my boys play ball. Not only that, but the Yankees were playing horribly, and when I watch, they win. Therefore, for the good of the team (and with some persuasion from my Red Sox fan boyfriend), we got MLB.tv.

It sucks.

The audio cuts in and out. The high quality video doesn't work and the low quality skips. It constantly says we're logged in on multiple machines. I even broke down tonight and called technical support. They recommended I empty my trash. What?!

That's not the biggest issue. As a marketing geek, I grimace every time there's what MLB calls a "break in the action", a time when cable stations are showing commercials to pay the bills. MLB.tv splits this time 3 ways:

1. Inanely repetitive commercials for the MLB.com store with horribly messed up audio levels
2. Inanely repetitive commercials for Sony starring a Dane Cook lookalike and a scary pale physics professor
3. A graphic that for some reason says "Break in the action", superimposed over the text "134 RBI", which I imagine must be some magic number in the mind of MLB.

I know this is a paid service and MLB might get some flack for selling commercials, but what if those spots had a significant effect on the price of the service? Not only that, but when I subscribed I handed over all sorts of demographic info - info that certainly showed that I'm not in the market for a Sony TV sold by Professor Creepy. Why not put up ads that are targeted to me?

Fine, fine. If MLB wants to avoid the whole paid advertising during a paid service issue, at least put some highlights or anything with audio in there. The same Sony ad 3 times in a row followed by a jarring silence for 45 seconds or more is really throwing me (and thus, the Yankees) off our game.

What's your solution to the MLB.tv quandary?