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Yesterday I was served a Crow Sandwich on Hisashi bread.
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Rembrandt, as far as Dr. D is aware, invented the device of "time transition" in still portraits. The four Philistines above represent the four phases of their attack on Samson - threat, grapple, bind, and blind. In related news, Hisashi Iwakuma re-invented the device of making Seattle baseball fun again. In the Shout Box, we've got guys talking wistfully about the standings again. Siii-iigg-ghhh-hhhh ...
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Q. Where were you when they shot JFK? When Iwakuma did the impossible? When Colin Kaepernick threw his 11th straight training camp interception and NinersNation nodded sagely that it's good to experiment in practice?
A. On the Iwakuma thing, I was (naturally) catching a bit of NFL network before a speaking engagement. I hit the little "C" triangle to check scores and ... the M's had played. "Mariners' Iwakuma throws no-hitter." Thank you, M's, for running us SSI fans off the premises.
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Q. Did Iwakuma really throw that GOOD?
A. Summing up 116 pitches' worth of chemical analysis after-the-fact: He was okay in the first two innings. By the fifth inning that dude was Robin Hood splitting his first arrow with the second one. If I'm lyin' I'm dyin'.
The last 1, 1.5 times through the lineup, the Orioles were taking madly frustrated arm swings and still barely able to pop the ball sky-high or bounce it twice to a middle infielder. Those Japanese guys know what they're doing. ...and they're good at pitching, too.
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Q. Technically speaking, did Iwakuma do anything better than he usually does?
A. His split had real good location for him. Except for that, just another 8 IP, 3 H, 1 R outing plus a coupla balls at people. That's a compliment, not a complaint. Hisashi Iwakuma is TOUGH.
His slider seemed only okay in real-time, though we later found that the results were stunning ... just so y'know we're payin' attention, LrKrBoi29. Wouldn't want you to think we don't watch the movies before we review them. This ain't Rotten Tomatoes, you know. (In retrospect, the arm action on his slider was the big thing. Like Michael Pineda.)
His splitfinger ...he coulda picked the gnats off a wildebeest's hide tonight. He wound up with 19 (!!) swings and misses, based off a split that dropped juuuuuuust below the knees --- > setting up a high "sizzling" fastball and a jam pitch.
For instance, behold this whuff of Parra in the sixth and lean back in your chair, eyes closed, in deep rapture:
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v Davis in the 6th
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The first two splitfingers ...in the words of Jack Black, School of rock: OKAY, STOP. Before I start CRYING. ... there are your Robin Hood arrows devouring each other ... and in the exact perfect location, starting in the zone and dropping just out of it. Mercy rule applies.
Then look at the location of the strikeout "up the ladder" pitch, 90 MPH but visually 94. This is what we were dealing with Wednesday. But then, that's what batters have been dealing with since Rakuten.
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Q. His "pitchability" was a factor?
A. Just to savor the moment a bit, here were the fava beans and fine chianti served to Chris Davis in the second:
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v. Davis in the 2nd
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The second pitch is the star move. Davis loves the ball down-and-in, the classic lefty wheelhouse; he'll spend the rest of his life chasing those 53 homers. 'Kuma starts him with a classic swerveball just off the plate. Not quite. With us so far? Davis ahead in the count and hope rising in the back of his throat ... HERE COMES A PITCH RIGHT INTO THE WHEELHOUSE.
Whoops?! It's a sucker pitch, just PERFECTLY out of reach. Davis launches the bat and comes up with air.
Examples could be multiplied... Iwakuma knows what hitters want, and he offers it to them. Alllllll - most.
Adam Jones is overaggressive, and was visibly more so on Wednesday. Here are four pitches baaarrreeeely out of reach. For a little extra insurance, 'Kuma whipsaws him high and low:
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v. Jones in the 4th
You tell me which is prettier, Rembrandt von Rijn in the 1600s, or this. Thought so.
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Q. Which was the best video on MLB.com?
A. We'll go with this one. If you want to (re-)enjoy in a second window, here is the tale of the tape:
- Pitch one: sneaky 100 MPH "invisible fastball" over the hands to embarrass Adam Jones in the 1st
- Pitch two: David Cone / Jeff Nelson slider to embarrass Adam Jones in the 4th
- Pitch three: that "too MUCH into the wheelhouse" sucker slider to blow away Paredes
- Pitch four: needs no annotation within the SSI channel. Except this is Manny Machado we're talking about
- Pitch five (0:35 mark): Here y'go, amigo, against a lefty
- Pitch six: That's Chris Davis. When a batter is grinding the handle into sawdust, 'Kuma goes a bit lower with the split.
- Pitch seven: "too much into the wheelhouse," batter holds up, ump cuts him a break
But on that 7th pitch.... Jesus Sucre genuinely worked a masterpiece on the night. To the point to you wonder, should Sucre be 'Kuma's personal catcher. Honestly.
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Q. The sage SSI consensus is still looking at a Qualifying Offer on Iwakuma?
A. Well, keep in mind that Hisashi Iwakuma is more or less --- > what the Mariners hoped Erikkkk Bedard would be. And we're not referring to the fact that Iwakuma has an actual personality. He is a less-than-durable pitcher who can, in October, take Cole Hamels into the alley and kick the stuffing out of him.
Let's hang on to the man,
Dr D
Comments
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He didn't throw a bunch of strikes in the 8th...but he was throwing the heck out of the split: Here it is boys, hit it if you can! Then it was up the ladder and confused bad guys.
Man, he was dancing with the one that brought him in that inning and I loved it.
Give Sucre a bit of credit, too.
QO the guy, and don't look back.
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Sucre sets up, without deception, outside....then on the wind-up he slides back tot he inside black. A study in the stuff that is difficult to quantify with catchers.
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And then offered a 3-year deal that's club friendly.
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He did. Honest.
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His teammates seemed to like him fine, while the sportswriters climbed the walls at the mention of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Worked for me.
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Seriously, how is it possible to have a three All-Stars in the lineup to go with a terrific defensive C who can't hit much, a HOFer as your ace, and another All-Star TOR arm, and still stink?
Glad The King and Kuma can run us out some starts worth watching. We remain less than the sum of our parts, though. The one Mariners trait that lasts across the decades. Thank you Kuma for your brilliance. Gives me another gem amidst the collection of coal the Mariners like to slip into my stocking. ;-)
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"...less than the sum of our parts..."
Sadly, this describes even the best Mariners teams in their history save the one from 2001, the one team that was MORE than the sum of its parts. Perhaps one should include 1995, since so many role players stepped up and played huge roles in that team's success. But that team had Griffey, Edgar, RJ, and Buhner, so perhaps not.
The Mariners remain unable to construct viable teams and rosters, something that has plagued their entire history.
Looking back, the hinge seasons were 2002-03. The Mariners were perfectly poised to become a perennial force to be reckoned with. They had the attendance, the MLB cachet, the media market, the new stadium--- they had everything EXCEPT top management that dared to be great. It's as if history gave them an opportunity to test if they were large men. Instead they proved to be small men who stepped back from greatness, and history has frowned on them ever since. Such opportunities do not come often. To most they never come.
In fairness to Howard, many of us who trumpet statements like mine, if put in the same spot, might have failed as well. Still it is sad that they did not appear to even make a serious attempt. Faced with a chance at greatness, they preferred tidy.
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We're 10th in the league in runs allowed and 13th in runs scored.
On top of that, we're actually 3 games above pythag.
We haven't been very good this year.
Bats: Cruz has been stellar. And that's it. Cano is finally up to 107 OPS, but that comes after years of 148, 147 & 142. This is really Cano's 2nd worst year. Seager's been himself with the bat...but that doesn't carry an offense for very long. Morrison...normal Bleh. Jackson has been bad. Ackley was horrile. Zunino hasn't hit. You get the idea.
We don't really deserve much more than this. Drats.
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I'm surprised we're still arguing this.
He granted the 116 wins and now we've got precisely 100 years' worth of wandering through a misty-gray limbo.
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Rembrandt has to be the greatest Biblical illustrator. My favorites are The Feast of Belshazzar, and the Return of the Prodigal Son. 'Natch. Rembrandt captured a lot of emotion in his pictures, and he is the king of of light color. If he is doing an indoor scene, you can see the candle light on every surface, and likewise if he is doing an outdoor scene, you can see the white daylight. In the Sampson painting, you can see him do half unlit cave and half daylight in an action picture. Cameras can't do that. Rembrandt also paints metal like no other. Gold and silver glisten right off the canvas. Check out the guards' armor in the Sampson art.
I don't think Rembrandt's Sampson picture is perfect, however. In my mind, Delilah should have been more sultry, scantily clad and wicked looking. Where is the makeup and the allure? Rembrandt's Delilah looks like a wholesome kindergarten teacher who doesn't appear as if she could tempt her way to the front of the line at a nightclub. Also, Rembrandt has her feeling bad and rather stressed about the affair, as if she was coerced. I think the Biblical motive was Delilah sold Sampson for quite a bit of money.
In my mind, Delilah is focused on her check.
I 'spose if I don't like it, I can paint my own picture.
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It seems like Biblical justice, or karma if you will, that Sampson's downfall was very bad women who he liked to look at, and he got his eyes gouged out.
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Iwakuma's game was an almost perfect masterpiece as well, wasn't it?
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Her face isn't even PAINTED convincingly for my money. No matter who she's supposed to be.
And for all Rembrandt's gifts ... some fresh ones you point out amigo! :: golfclap :: ...he was capable of some real clunkers. Only think I like about this Samson portrait is really the time-lapse element (Deliliah goes backward even farther in time) and Samson's blockiness.
Another great catch! on Samson getting back Karma vs. his "lust of the eyes". Good stuff.
Hey Mojo (Moe, Bat, Gordon, Spec etc), I'm gonna be gone about August 21-25 or so ... mayhaps you could gear up for an article or two. Renaissance art pieces especially welcome :- )
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I have a couple of serious artist friends and they really look at things differently. It's tough for me to really grok it but i had a conversation with one of them kind if along these lines. I can't remember the exact artist or piece that we were talking about but it was something similar. He told me that artists - especially the classic, old school artists, made a lot of decisions meant to focus our attention on certain things and away from others. The example he used is the famous statue of David and the rather...out of proportion manhood on the statue. He told me that of course Michelangelo understood anatomy but that he made things...small so that people wouldn't focus on that one aspect of the statue. If he had made it in proportion, especially in his time, that's all people would see. It would have become prurient and that's not what he was going for. So that was an intentional decision made by the artist to deemphasise that which he didn't want people to focus on so that they would pay attention to the piece of a whole.
I don't know what Rembrandt was going for with that picture but I can't dismiss the idea that he didn't want us focusing on Delilah, so he made her plain. Or that maybe his wife was the absolute center of his idea of beauty, so it perhaps made perfect sense to him to have her there. Shrug - the 'art' on my walls are all photos of wildlife, nature and even one taken by Positive Paul of Safeco Field on Edgar Martinez day so I'm not qualified to critique real art. It's mostly beyond me. :(
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Once Y'all pointed out that Delilah was Mrs. Rembrandt, the picture made a little bit more sense. Rembrandt doth refuse to cast his wife as the strumpet. And maybe Mrs. Rembrandt wasn't too keen on her husband paintng nude temptresses. When I first looked at the painting, I wasn't aware that Rembrandts had a Where's Waldo element and Ms. Rembrandt was in many pictures. I just thought he painted a bad Delilah. Shows how much I know about art.
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When your talking masterpieces, Solomon Solomon's Sampson and Delilah is a leeetle bit better. You can see Sampson's look of betrayal and see what he's thinking. "You evil whore!" The Phillistines, excepting Delilah, haven't stopped for air or relaxed as the Phillistine's most wanted isn't under wraps yet. The scissor man is skulking about and looking guilty. Delilah is as brazen and bad as they come. This is perfection. This is Roger Clemens striking out 20 Mariners. By comparison, Rembrandt's painting was just a no-no that happens every few years or so.
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Rembrandt's Delilah was modeled by his wife, I'm fairly positive.
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'cause this one (Prodigal in the Tavern) was definitely modeled by Rembrandt and his wife, and looks like the same girl to me ...
Prodigal in the Tavern
If so, we can give Rembrandt a pass for such a feeb Deliliah up above. At least, I'd have a hard time painting MY wife as truly sinister.
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I think this is the last-known self-portrait, 1669. I've often been blown away by the level of defeat and resignation in the eyes. With the background fading to black, you wonder if Rembrandt (who grew up in a super-religious culture) was not pondering an oblivion that he regarded as 'well-deserved.'
1669
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This one would be the print I'd buy, if I ever bought prints. It has you confused as to whether the light is coming towards you, from a light source out of view on the table, or away from you, as Christ emanates light:
Christ at Emmaus
It's also remarkable the way Rembrandt captures a personality without using facial features. Some of these painters were as thoughtful as poets.
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She appears to be checking a bassinet so I'm assuming she is the lady of the house and she went into the back room to check on crying child. Now, you got me guessing that every Rembrandt painting has a layer of symbolism behind it. For the life of me, I can't think of anything that a crying baby might symbolize.
Anyway, its a great painting.
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That is unquestionably the expression of a Mariners fan.
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OOPs...picture didn't transfer