Unbelievable This is the loudest MVP chant I've ever heard.
Ortiz just hit a 3 run HR in the bottom of the 9th to lift the Sox over Cleveland 9-8.
I grew up with Rice, Lynn, Evans, and Yaz. Roger Clemens may be the greatest pitcher I'll ever see. Pedro is right up there *and* helped win a World Series *and* had that infectious smile. Nomar was great. Big Mo Vaughn was awesome. Manny just keeps being Manny. Ted Williams gave us .406; I've read everything about him I could lay my hands on and I believe he may well be the greatest hitter who ever played the game. But David Ortiz is becoming my favorite Red Sox player.
If Papi doesn't get the MVP this year, the award means nothing.
Update: Shaughnessy seems a little starstruck this morning as well.
The Bullpen Baseball Reference has a new wiki adjunct that covers international baseball, the minor leagues, the negro leagues, and features player bios, trivia, and a number of other topics that wouldn't fit neatly into pure stats format of the parent site. It still has that 'new wiki' roughness to it,but it looks like it should provide lots of interesting reading for baseball fans.
You'll be the talk of the town as you strut around in your TC-T, causing wonderment and delight (or confusion and anxiety) wherever you go as puzzled passers-by wonder, "why the heck is that guy wearing a t-shirt for a website nobody's ever heard of ... and whose URL is so confoundedly difficult to spell, nobody will even try to visit?"
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Since my Lucky # Slevin suggestion turned out to be tepid, let me briefly yet unreservedly recommend Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Like the pulp detective novels so prominent in the story, it's got plenty of witty banter, gaudy patter, tough guys, gunfights, severed fingers, dogs eating severed fingers, dames with nice gams, and a twisty plot to hang it all on.
LaMonster I'm way behind on my Ned Lamont postings, but most of it has been said elsewhere. Many have noted that Lamont's 19 point swing and jump into the lead are at least partially attributable to Lieberman's atrocious campaigning. Gutless Joe's masterful plan to show us that he isn't out of touch, angry and not a Democrat is to act out of touch and angry and set up plans to bolt the Democratic Party. Brilliant.
This is why Lieberman outperformed Lamont in their debate but still lost. He came across as an arrogant, overbearing bully. Although hesitant and too restrained, Lamont came across as the more decent and trustworthy person. Next consider the Bad Coffee ad, which appeared a bit hokey at first but now seems nothing short of genius. How often can a Greenwich millionaire come across as funnier, more honest and approachable and more populist than the most popular Connecticut politician in memory? I realize Ned didn't select the photo, but it continues the theme that by playing up his own basic goofiness, he underscores Lieberman's aloofness and anger. (Remember, Ned's the millionaire running on anger about the war!) Seriously, if Lamont pulls this off, it's one for the books.
Crossing the political aisle and moving from the good goofy to the lying goofy, the Hartford Courant discovered that while he was gambling under a fake name, Republican candidate for Lieberman's seat Alan Schlesinger was being sued by two N.J. casinos over his gambling debts. He claims he didn't remember this, meaning he's either a liar or an idiot. Possibly both. Called it.
Memo to TV Writers ... "Electrocution" doesn't mean what you think it does. If someone is electrocuted they're dead. Characters who receive an electric shock shouldn't say, "I got electrocuted," unless you are trying to make the point they don't know what "electrocuted" means. It's especially irritating when you have doctors say "the electrocution put a strain on his heart, but he'll be OK in a few days."
The 32 Worst Song Lyrics of All Time. Why? Because I love you. Obviously, bad lyrics being so easy to write, there's tons of criminal omissions. So "A Horse with no Name," a song I've always hated, contains the line, "There were plants and birds and rocks and things"? That kills me. Speaking of killing, I'm not sure it's top 32 material, but the line "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" does hurt an otherwise decent album by the Killers.
The list does include a Limp Bizkit lyric, but not what has to be the worst lyric of all time:
"We did it all for the nookie/ the nookie/ So you can take that cookie/ that cookie/ and stick it up your Yeah!"
Where'd You Go? How is it I'm just now finding out that Dicky Barrett is the announcer for the Jimmie Kimmel Show? Next somebody's going to tell me King Django is a guest host on The View or something.
Best. Park and Rec./Worst. Gig. Ever. Last summer on the last day of Park and Rec. the pre-K to 4th graders rocked out to a DJ. During pick-up, with all the moms milling about, he was ballsy enough to play "Stacey's Mom (Has Got It Going On)," which some of us found hysterical and still hum when someone's mom, say, gets a new haircut. I thought that would never be topped in the realm of Park and Rec music but today - "Rock n Roll Day" - a young local band played a short set to accompany all the paperplate maraca-shaking and air guitar-playing. I got there just at they were ripping through Rancid's "Roots Radical" to a fairly mixed reception. The teenaged girl counselors, who usually will cheerfully sacrifice any and all dignity to amuse the kids with funny hats, strange voices or goofy pantomime, clustered in silent groups and did nothing that resembled dancing.
As someone nearly twice as old as the band, I may have depressed them by telling them I liked their set, especially the Rancid song. It's possible I used the word "funny." They did do a decent job - even wearing black in the middle of a 90 degree park - and "Roots Radical" is a hard song to mess up. Maybe they were snubbed by their own age group, but the band should be happy to rock the grade-schoolers and the geezers.
As someone who believes that pretty much every Republican should resign from pretty much whatever public position they hold, I had a surprising response to Governor Rell's attempt to nudge Alan Schlesinger out of the Senate race. I know, I know, who is this Schlesinger guy? He's the Republican nominee to run for Lieberman's seat. (Yes, they have one.) Rell and other top state GOP'ers want Schlesinger to step aside because he used a fake name on his wampum card when he gambled at the casinos years ago.
Actually, it's a little more complicated than that. Apparently Schlesinger was tossed from Foxwoods for card counting (speaking of...). His fake name was meant to hide the mayor both from his town and the casinos. Schlesigner claims to have only gambling once a year or so. Since he wasn't gambling with town money and doesn't appear to have a William Bennett-sized problem, it's quite strange for GOP'ers to push him, especially since the possiblility of a three way race have raised Republican chances for this seat from none to slim.
Something doesn't smell right here and we'll read more soon. "Gambling habits"? Why practice card counting and do it obviously enough to get tossed if you're only going to do it once a year? Why fill out a wampum card - which is optional and rewards you for the quantity of your gambling - if you're only spending pocket money once a year? To give Rell credit, she probably knows or suspects more about this than we know right know. Maybe "slim" overstates the GOP chance in this race.
There Remains Delicate Matter of Your Bill, Monsieur I just renewed TC's domain for the next two years. It was 24 Euros -- about $30. I'm fine to foot the bill. It's a diversion that's worth that much to me; however, if anyone felt like chipping in I certainly wouldn't turn them down.
MacGyver Your Shirt Had to wear a dress shirt today for an interview this afternoon. Grabbed one and ironed it in bleary-eyed haze only to get to work and notice one collar is missing the little tab insert that helps the collar point keep it's shape; so, I've got one good collar and one curled. But where do you get one of those tabs on on short notice?
The Ghost of MacGyver whispered in my ear -- I grabbed a UPS envelope from the mailroom, borrowed some scissors and cut a a new tab out. The cardboard of the envelope was a little too thin so I cut from the adhesive seal section, folded it in half, stuck the strip together, and then cut the point. Shazam. Shirt collar good as new.
Other things I might've used ... a manilla folder and some tape, the Red Sox season calendar magnet from 2005 that's still on the bottom drawer of my file cabinet (although I would've been worried about a paper clip or something getting stuck to my collar without my knowing it -- "Excuse me, but is that a staple suspended as if by magic from your collar?") , the thicker cardboard of a notebook cover ... or I suppose I could've just taken the tab out of the other one.
Bringing Down the House Ben Mezrich. A compulsively readable account of one MIT blackjack team that won millions from casinos at blackjack, this book might be dangerous for certain card-playing types. Even though Mezrich gives an honest account of the difficulty of card counting – the concentration, natural ability, acting skills and bankroll – and the risks such as getting "backroomed," reading about someone winning makes you feel you could do it too. Vegas probably loves books like this because they shake the amateurs out of the trees, all of them thinking a cursory knowledge of strategy, a few hours practice and a thousand dollar bankroll will bring in the money.
Mezrich glamorizes the life a bit, and I'm sure it's hard not to. These guys were comped at every big casino in Vegas. They traveled from dorm rooms and the lowest levels of Boston geekdom into plush Vegas suites with hosts, strippers, tickets to sold out events and the burden of trying to get rid of too many hundreds. The MIT method required team play with a spotter playing minimum bets and counting until a deck got hot, then signaling the big player to take advantage. (If you vary your bet too much towards the end of a shoe, the casinos will know you're a counter and toss you.) Of course, nothing spoils success like group success. The team members clash over different levels of commitment, ideas about expansion and acceptable risk. Ultimately, and you can see this coming, they disintegrate into several different teams, some still active today.
If you love casinos and cards, some of these scenes are great and will make you want to do this. Still, Bringing Down the House feels incomplete in parts. Mezrich strains to make an inherently interesting story into a thriller. He follows the one player he had a lot of access to instead of giving us more information about others, such as the pit bosses and casino operators. He interviews a security expert who had nothing to do with the team, but none of the casino dealers and employees and investigators who eventually got a blanket ban on some of these guys. Since gamblers are norotious liars some outside perspective would have been nice. I wanted to know more about the legal status of card-counting. It isn't illegal, so how can the casinos bar people from doing it? Especially when there are some simple things they can do to make it less profitable. Also, doesn't everybody count cards when they play blackjack? It's just that these guys were good at it. What's banned in casinos isn't cheating. It's winning.
Bringing Down the House is a nice blackjack companion to Jim McManus' poker book Positively Fifth Street, which I also recommend.
Fractured Lullabies by C-Dog Hush little baby don't you cry, Daddy's gonna sing you a lullaby. If his lullaby's no good, Daddy will make a carving from a block of wood.
Since your daddy cannot carve, He'll give you a bottle so you don't starve. If that bottle doesn't help you sleep, Daddy's gonna bang his head on that wooly sheep.
How about if we go for a drive? Maybe you'll like the streets at quarter to five. If the neighborhood is lit too bright, Daddy will smash up all the street lights.
If smashing up lights brings the coppers around, you and Daddy can go underground. If underground living gets to rough, I'll try to think of some other stuff.
We can play poker to make some dough, Just hope the money don't roll in slow. If the river treats Daddy cruel, We'll make ends meet by hustling pool.
If the nine ball won't go down, Daddy will have to hang paper all over town. With our ill-gotten gains we'll go on the lamb, maybe drive to Florida in a minvan.
If Tampa weather gets too muggy, I'll take you to Austin in a dune buggy. If Uncle Jim won't open his door, We'll huff like the wolf until it falls on the floor.
Auntie might not like us outlaws crashing there, So we'll fly to Europe in the air. If soccer hooligans disrupt our plane, I'll sing this song to drive them insane ...
Sometimes a rocket is just a rocket, and sometimes it's a trip to the Planet of Heavenly Joy (pictured), one of the covers featured at this cool collection of 40s, 50s and 60s sci-fi covers. I can't tell you how many used paperbacks I bought because I dug covers like these. (via Quiddity.)
