Maximum Taco

The Jays have one.

Here we go!!!! November game 7 is the best game 7!!!!

You gotta seize this opportunity, it's a world series game 7, you may never have this opportunity ever again. I say you make him get you tickets to something cool. Or at least some goodies to help you hold out in your room.

If he wants you to stay in your room, he should get you the tea! He needs to pay the price for his team!

And he wasn't noticed because he's part of an extended storyline that doesn't have them arrive in town every day. This is unlike Dolores who is supposed to arrive in Sweetwater every single day.

I still don't buy that they would just let it play out. With the other stray Bernard sends Elsie to investigate with Ashley, he doesn't just say "Oh it's probably just Ford fucking with the narrative cycles. Ignore it." Add into the fact that the other stray very nearly killed Elsie, and odd behaviour is going to be VERY closely monitored.

The problem I have with this theory is there is no way the park would let Dolores get so far off her loop without a guest. We've seen before that if a host gets too far from where they should be without a guest they are designated a "stray" and someone is sent to collect them. We've seen this with Dolores too, in episode 4, a host tells her she's "missing" and will return her home, but relents when William tells the host she's with him. This is why something is telling Dolores she "needs" William. Without him the park will flag her as a stray and return her home. I'm not sure what that says about her feelings for him.

Lawrence is El Lazo, when Lawrence and the MIB go to the prison in episode 4, the sheriff (warden?) says the deputy has in his custody "the most wanted man in 3 territories" a normal bandit would never be so wanted, Lawrence is the crime boss El Lazo when he's with the MIB the same as he is when he's with William. Lawrence being El Lazo doesn't do anything to confirm or deny the multiple timelines theory, IMO.

That was never the case. I mean William got shot right in Sweetwater, and he got a bruise. Not exactly getting choked out, or wailed on by several guys but I'm sure it hurt a bit, probably as much as a paintball gun. I think the only hard and fast rule is the hosts can't kill guests, they're programmed to know what actions are fatal and what aren't, and they will stop short of killing. It does seem like the further you get out of town the more liberties the hosts will take with you. This also makes sense of a scene in the big hologram room from a previous episode. One of the techs tells Ashley that the MIB is wreaking a lot of havoc and if he should "slow him down," I'm assuming now he meant should he make the hosts get more violent with him.

Hooray!!! November baseball is the best baseball!!!

It was ok. As with everything I can do without the laugh track. I like Joel McHale enough to give it the 4 episode test, but if it doesn't get any better this is gonna be one of those one season and done shows.

Not true. Most players make the league minimum for their first 3 years. They have almost no negotiating power. There are occasional exceptions, but these are very rare and reserved for players who they know will probably be superstars and the team wants to give them a show of good faith, so the player will stick around when free agency rolls around, or even immediately sign an extension. It also never happens in the player's first year. It's pretty much completely on the team, they can choose to pay the minimum and there is literally nothing the player can do about it. The CBA even states that teams can do this. I suppose the player could refuse to play, but then the team can hold onto their rights for the next 5 years, and they'd paint themselves as an entitled brat to the rest of the league. When given the choice between spending 5 more years in the minors or "only" making 500 grand, most players will take the 500 grand and a ticket to the show.

I think that's fine for now. She's a rookie who had no leverage, really she'd probably sign any contract that they put in front of her, there was probably very little negotiating done, and Amelia would probably have concentrated more on endorsements and marketing. It'll be interesting if we ever get to a place where Amelia actually has to sit down with a GM and try to negotiate a contract and realizes she's in way over her head.

It isn't an anomaly. The Cubs have been feast or famine all postseason, they either get completely shut down, or they break out for 5+ In the NLDS they scored 5+ runs in 3 out of 4 games and 1 run in the other game. In the NLCS they scored 5+ runs in 4 out of 6 games and got shut out in the other 2 games. I wouldn't count on the Cubs going cold for long, based on their history. Maybe Cleveland could shut them out one more time like the Dodgers did, but if they want to win they are going to need to put up some runs and outscore the Cubs.

It's nice to think you might be able to be off the grid, personally I don't use any social media now unless it's the kind where I can stay anonymous, but it doesn't seem possible in this reality, unless you'd like to go off and live as a hermit in the woods, which would to be fair would also be pretty exhausting. Not having a "score" in this world would be akin to operating in our own society without a credit score, or health insurance or even a freaking social security number. You'd immediately disqualify yourself from a large number of jobs and probably the concept of home ownership and any number of other things. I suppose it would be possible if you were independently wealthy, but what isn't possible if you're independently wealthy? That's what's so freaking terrifying about this episode to me. It would make a social media presence a necessity for pretty much everyone, and unless you wanted to drastically change your life (and make it a lot harder), there'd be nothing to do but comply. In the end it doesn't seem like her brother is struggling to maintain a mid-3 rating, if you have a good group of friends and you all give each other fives on a regular basis, and you just aren't a jerk to the rest of humanity it's probably the easiest path with also allowing yourself a normal quality of life.

In the gaming world an Easter Egg is a hidden feature that isn't all that apparent to the casual gamer. Unlike other quests which are just posted out in the open, this one requires you to hunt it down, like an easter egg. In this case, Slim runs his mouth and tries to convince his captors to sell him back to his boss "El Lazo", instead of taking him to justice. Most casual gamers who play this quest will probably ignore Slim, return him to Sweetwater and collect their bounty. Then they'll celebrate their successful quest completion. It's a quest designed for White Hats after all: bring in a dangerous criminal and save that family. It doesn't make sense for the people who would want to go on the quest to side with Slim. When Slim mentions his boss by name though, Logan recognizes the name and probably knows the narrative either by speaking with other hosts or guests, and obviously he has never found the way to get into that narrative, maybe he's never even found a host who knows El Lazo, or at least not one on friendly terms who would introduce him. This is an Easter Egg because you have to do conflicting things to trigger the quest. First you have to save the prostitute and get the bounty hunter's respect, and then agree to hunt down Slim. Then you have to do a complete heel turn and go from white hat to black hat, kill the bounty hunter and side with Slim. It's not a natural narrative, and thusly it's not something most people would think to do. Logan only does it because he knows enough about the game to know "El Lazo" by reputation. Side note: El Lazo translates to "The Loop," is that a reference to him killing people by hanging them? Or could it be a reference to hosts narrative cycles. Hmm...

Oh my god, my Leafs can't hold onto any lead. This is so frustrating. Sigh. Ok they're young, they're young, they'll learn.

Goalie Kasimir Kaskisuo is supposedly a very highly touted prospect. He played 2 games for the Marlies last year after finishing his college career at U Minnesota-Duluth, this is his first year with the Solar Bears. I doubt he makes the Leafs without a rash of horrible injuries, but he could easily get called to the Marlies.

Well I would be giddy to be a Leafs fan if we weren't just constantly blowing leads in the 3rd. Don't get me wrong, we're icing a ton of rookies and a new goalie and a very inexperienced D corps. I expected to lose our fair share of games. But I expected to lose in less heartbreaking fashion. Seriously Leafs, my ticker can't take this.

Ah, see I didn't get that at all. I just figured it was "Given unlimited resources, what temporary fantasy park would you want to visit?" I guess if we're limited to Westworld's resources, maybe some kind of high seas pirate adventure. The world would be a large ocean/sea and there would be several islands scattered around. You could either book as a single and be the captain of a crew of hosts, book a group and all crew the same ship, or get randomized into a ship of hosts and other guests.

Wild Thing?! That would be pretty sick if Cleveland got him to one of the games, in his thick ol coke bottle glasses.

I don't think so. A lot of the time, both in this series and in the Royals series, we didn't need a big hit, we just needed a hit (or sometimes a sac fly.) We stranded a ton of guys. We weren't really struggling to get guys into scoring position, we either had tons of runners early in the game, and failed to cash them, or we were struggling to get guys on at all. Carrera CAN bunt for singles, but he's hardly perfect at it, if he was he'd bunt every single time. Bunting for a hit is an inherently risky play, no one's perfect it. And bunting isn't going to help you score a guy from third unless you're planning on a suicide squeeze, and we really don't have enough talented bunters to do that on a regular basis. Sure Carrera could've bunted Martin to third and Saunders to second, but you have to make that play assuming he'll be out at first, and then we'd have 2 outs and you NEED a hit from Pillar (or a PH) to get any runs in. It's just not a great play with an out already on the board cause if Carrera gets a hit, which he's not bad at, he either cashes Martin or puts Pillar in a position where he can cash Martin with a sac fly. If we had no outs and Martin and Saunders aboard, and the next batter wasn't Pillar, I agree a bunt from Carrera would be a great idea, but that wasn't the case. Bunting has it's place in the game, but usually that place is when you have a runner (or 2 runners) and no outs, and you're trailing by one, and the guy after your bunter is a good hitter. IMO, we didn't really have a lot of positions in this series where we could afford to bunt and give away outs.

I disagree. It's not Gibbons' fault the hitters couldn't get anything going or the starters gave up runs early. What did you expect him to do? He can't hit for them, and it's not like our guys need a class on how to hit, they're usually pretty good, it's seen as our biggest strength. And he's not gonna pull Marco or Happ, or Stroman off one bad pitch in the 3rd or 4th, that's suicide for a team with a bullpen like ours. Cleveland's starters (minus Kluber) did very well, they used a generous strikezone (which was generous to both teams) to stay away from our best guys, and they made very few mistakes. The first two games were pretty much decided on one bad pitch from Estrada and one bad pitch from Happ. If your starters don't make mistakes and your defense doesn't make mistakes, all it takes is one bad pitch and you're going to win 90% of the time, and Cleveland's starters and D made almost no mistakes in this entire series; hats off to them. I don't think Gibbon's managing differently would've changed things, we're a lineup that feasts on mistakes, they leave a curve hanging and we're crushing it, they play too shallow and we're knocking one off the wall for a double or triple. If they don't make mistakes, we can't do anything. What Cleveland did this series is unlikely in a game, much less 4 games out of 5, and again, hats off to them. I'm interested to see if they can do it again against the Cubs/Dodgers. I actually thought Gibbons managed very well, our bullpen actually outperformed Cleveland's (which was the biggest concern coming into this series), they got 0 runs off of our relievers. ZERO. That's frankly ridiculous. It's their starters and hitters that outperformed ours.

This will be a fun post-debate edition of SNL. Bad Hombres - I'm hoping after Alec Trump says this line the music dramatically changes to a spaghetti western theme and a man in a black hat walks out on stage. Clint Eastwood are you available for a last minute cameo? Nasty Woman - Can Kate McKinnon pull off a spontaneous free-style seeming rap? You're the puppet! No you're the Puppet! - Please. Please have puppets. In fact you could just have the guys from Avenue Q do the sketch and let Baldwin and McKinnon do the voices.

Alright, someone better be cooking up "I'm with the Nasty Woman" T-shirts. Those need to be a thing.