10 October 2019

Go Big or Go Homer: The Latter-Day "Simpson's" + A New Open-Ended Episode for Let's Play Ball + Bang Some Clangers!

Believe it (or not) one thing your MesaZona blogger likes to do in rare spare times is to watch FOXTV - catching Season 31 Episode 2 of The Simpson's 3 days ago. It can drag on for a while, but in the end it is an episode that actually has some otherwise decent storytelling instincts along the way to end with A FOOD TRUCK. It's a successful business model - for selling pizza-by-the-slice, sports betting and buying weed.
_________________________________________________________________________
Hmmm.... talking about sports makes your MesaZona blogger think about this HOMER of sorts all about Sloan Park [taking its name from a plumber] - it started out as Wrigley Field in The Riverview Area where the Larry Miller Car Dealer Empire occupies more ground than the $200M taxpayer-financed 'field-of-schemes' built by using public debt obligation bond borrowing to build a Spring-Training ballpark for the billionaire-rich conservative Ricketts Family from Chicago who own-and-control the $4B-Chicago Cubs sports franchise.

City Manager Chris Brady and then Mayor Scott Smith had plans in 2010 to sell-the-pitch to the public by eventually getting a pay-off someday by selling water-rights to more than 11,400 acres of land - that ultimate deal was done with SAINTS HOLDINGS.
Saints Holdings LLC is the latter-day holding company from the previous Pinal Lands from the city-owned portfolio named The Mesa Water Farm.
Here's a streaming video - purportedly bragging about  that debt GETTING PAID-OFF or partially paid-off: This is the story city officials want you to hear in 52 seconds
City of Mesa, Arizona on Twitter: "Have you heard?
The debt ... [click or tap on the image to start the streaming video]
https://twitter.com › CITYOFMESA › status
Aug 22, 2019
The debt on Mesa's #springtraining facilities are being paid off years ahead ... Dennis Kavanaugh · Mayor ...
________________________________________________________________________________
"So many latter-day Simpsons are both overstuffed with subplots and undercooked when it comes to resolving those plots or—even rarer—tying them together in the end, so focusing on Homer’s crisis of faith in himself and his battle against his own one-man band of toxic fandom is an interesting concept. . .
The catch phrase non-apology “I’m just bustin’ your clangers, kid” is a laugh riot
"Homer finds a fan and ends up mentoring a real jerk"
( Reference: https://tv.avclub.com/-1838831032 )
Please note: all the words in Italic typeface are lifted from what Dennis Perkins wrote
. . .

"Fair enough—Homer is dangerously, farcically unqualified, but there’s no reason for these “millenniums” (as Homer terms them) to call him “denser than Osmium 188.” I mean, that’s just low. I think. Not a science guy. . . So it’s a mentor-mentee story to add to the long history of power plant employees (Karl, Mindy) who find Homer irresistible, for reasons known only to them.". . .
continuing with a few jumps 

"The thing is, those other characters’ motivations, while cloudy, could be chalked up to the vagaries of the human heart. Mike’s just an idiot who couldn’t read numerous newspaper articles properly and who latched onto Homer as just another object of hero worship he can defend against those who think Homer (and he) is an insignificant nothing. And while Homer—for all his faults, and all the ways The Simpsons’ has let him drift into jerkass territory at times—isn’t an insignificant nothing.
He’s dumb, prone to irrationality and snap pre-judgements, and occasionally the worst husband [father, employee, citizen, human] around, but he’s not, at heart, a dick.
There’s as essential decency lurking deep, deep down in Homer J. Simpson that eventually pulls him back from the brink of whatever lunatic whim has sent him spiraling toward moral, financial, or actual physical disaster, a core of optimistic satire that the prototypical white (or, okay, yellow) American male will, when put to the test, ultimately, if begrudgingly, find his heart. . .
_________________________________________________________________________________
FAST FORWARD SPOILER-ALERT:
In the end, it isn’t even Homer who really rejects Mike out of the story, but Fat Tony and his goons, who—having usuriously loaned Mike the cash for his one-slice-at-a-time pizza truck idea—show up to collect just as gambling junkie Mike’s all-or-nothing bet on Patriot League basketball goes down in predictable flames.
(Sorry, Lehigh Mountain Hawks.)
There’s a genuinely funny gag where the rapidly changing outcome of the game’s broadcast sees Tony ordering his guys to put their guns down, then up, then down, then up again. (I’m a sucker for a Simpsons joke that takes it’s time.) But ultimately, it’s Tony’s realization that Mike’s slice idea is actually quite tasty (if time-consuming) in practice that lures Mike out of Homer’s orbit.
(Mike naturally incorporates his new partners’ illegal betting and weed concessions into his suddenly successful business model.)