It’s Wednesday night here at BCB After Dark: the hippest hangout for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and sit with us for a while. We could use a friendly face as
we’re all hanging on for dear life. There’s no cover charge. The dress code is casual. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
The Cubs lost to the Padres today, 3-0 as the Cubs bats couldn’t do anything against the Padres heat. The Cubs are the first team to lose a Game 2 in the Wild Card Series after winning Game 1 at home. Of course, there’s a small sample size there as the Wild Card Series have only been around since 2022.
So it’s all coming down to tomorrow. Or today, depending on when you read this.
Last night I asked you what you thought of Craig Counsell’s strategy of going with Andrew Kittredge as a starter for Shōta Imanaga. It’s hard to say whether or not the Cubs’ strategy worked—they were never going to win if they didn’t score any runs. But Kittredge gave up a run in the first and while Imanaga had a good second inning, he gave up a two-run home run to Manny Machado in the fifth inning which sort of ended the game with the Padres bullpen.
Quick announcement before we get on to the regularly-scheduled stuff. If the Cubs win Game 3 and go on to face the Brewers, there won’t be an After Dark on Monday and Wednesday next week, as I’ll be doing an instant recap of the game right afterwards. That’s all you are going to want to talk about anyways. Tuesday should be fine as it’s an off-day for the National League. Should the Cubs lose to the Padres, everything will continue as normal except we’ll all be depressed and angry. Well, more depressed and angrier.
Here’s the part with the music and the movies. You’re free to skip that.
Tonight we’re honored to have the great saxophonist John Coltrane playing “On Green Dolphin Street” in Germany in 1960. To be honest, this is the First Great Miles Davis Quintet with Miles taking the night off. Wynton Kelly is on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums.
I had a family film night over the weekend and since my teenage daughter loves animation, especially Japanese anime, I decided we would watch Paprika (2006), the final film by the great Japanese director and animator Satoshi Kon. Paprika is a surrealist piece of virtual reality (or in this case, dreams) science fiction. I liked it for the creative animation, although I had trouble following the plot. My daughter absolutely loved it, but that was probably a given considering her love of Japanese animation.
Paprika is about device called a DC Mini, which allows its users to enter and share other people’s dreams. One of the co-creators of the DC Mini is Dr. Atsuko Chiba, an attractive but serious-looking young woman who walks around in a lab coat most of the time, because that’s what a research psychologist wears all the time. She’s been illegally using the DC Mini to treat patients, one of which is Toshimi Konakawa, a police detective who is haunted by a murder case that he’s investigating. Atsuko’s messing with the DC Mini has given birth to a mysterious alter-ego named Paprika. Paprika and Atsuko share a consciousness, but Paprika lives in the dream world and is kind of a cute pixie superhero. After a while, it’s difficult to know where Atsuko ends and Paprika begins. Or the other way around.
The DC Mini is stolen by a disgruntled employee, which is a big problem because apparently that allows you to hack into anyone’s dream and mess with their minds. And the thief does this. People start going crazy, sputtering random nonsense words, dancing and putting themselves into general danger.
I’m not going to go into a lot of the rest of the plot because, to be honest, it kind of lost me. The film jumps back and forth between the “real” and dream world, and I use the phrase “real world” with quotes because the film constantly wants to keep you off balance between what’s real and what isn’t, as well as the philosophical point of what makes the dream world less “real” than the physical world. Many of the scenes from the dreams repeat, and I did appreciate that Detective Konakawa’s dreams all seemed to revolve around old Hollywood movies.
Of course, this ability to remove the laws of logic in the dream world allows Kon to go absolutely nuts with the imagery, which I thought was the best part of the movie. It is a gorgeous-looking film and it’s hard to think of something like Into the Spider-Verse getting made without the blueprint of Paprika.
There is, however, another film that Paprika is widely-considered to have directly influenced and that’s director Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film Inception. As far as I know, Nolan has never acknowledged any debt to Paprika and I wouldn’t say that Inception is just a live-action remake of Paprika. Much of the plot similarities are things that are common to most films in the virtual reality science fiction genre. They are different movies. But certain scenes from Paprika are directly referenced in Inception. It seems hard to believe that Nolan didn’t see Paprika and wasn’t in some way influenced by it.
As I said, my daughter loved Paprika, but she’s hard-wired into loving a film like this. I appreciated it for the fantastic animation and some of the philosophical questions it raised, but I did struggle to follow along with what was happening. Part of the problem was that the characters weren’t developed enough for me to care. (A problem I did not have with Inception.) Still, I don’t regret having watched it and wouldn’t mind seeing it again to see if I could follow it better a second time.
Here’s the trailer for Paprika. It’s a good look at the animation.
Paprika is on the Criterion Channel and available for rent.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
In case you were wondering, I was asked to put the information on Game 3 in the headline. I agreed to do so, since it’s probably the most important piece of information of the day.
So yes, Wednesday’s do-or-die Game 3 against the Padres will start at 4:08 Chicago time and will be broadcast on ESPN after the Dodgers/Reds series ended after two games. The best-of-three Wild Card format started in 2022 and in the previous 12 series, only two of them went to three games. This year, three of the four went to three games.
The scheduled starters for today’s game are Jameson Taillon for the Cubs and former Cub Yu Darvish for the Padres.
The big question tonight is whether or not Craig Counsell should have intentionally walked Manny Machado rather than let Shōta Imanaga pitch to him. I feel with the benefit of hindsight, it was clearly the wrong call. But it didn’t make any difference because the Cubs didn’t score any runs, and since we all have the benefit of hindsight, I can’t imagine anyone other than a lost Padres fan voting that it was the right call.
So tonight, I’m going to ask for Thomas’ forgiveness and do an episode of Heroes and Goats. But instead of asking you who the goat was for Wednesday’s loss, I’m going to put a spin on it and ask you who is going to be the hero when the Cubs win later today?
We’re allowing nothing but positive thoughts and the absolute certainty that the Cubs are going to win Game 3. So who do you predict will be the hero? Who is going to step up at the biggest moment and clinch the Cubs first playoff series win since 2017?
Just envision the Cubs win in your head and tell me who you are going to vote for in the official “Player of the Game” vote tomorrow. Ask your Magic 8 Ball if you have to. Use a Ouija board. Ask Carnac the Magnificent. But tell me now who the Cubs big hero is going to be when Game 3 is all over.
Thank you for stopping by tonight. Please get home safely. We want to see you around for the big celebration tomorrow. Tell your friends about us. Recycle and cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next time for more BCB After Dark.
