Red Sox/Yankees in semi-realtime

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Rich is in town visiting. After a dinner out for sushi, at which we each had a good luck Asahi for the Red Sox, we're settling in for the game. When it comes down to it, only Yankees fans can root for the Yankees. I can't think of anyone on the Yankees I'd root for. Go Sox!
Why did Dale Sveum send Damon in the first inning? I thought the Cubs with Wendell Kim were the only ones who had to lose hair over runners thrown out at home.
Wow, Big Papi tatooed that ball! That home run may have killed some fan in the right field bleachers.
Rich is feeling ill. I hope it wasn't the sushi. Rich has to tap out. I will soldier on.
Man, Brown has nothing. Who knows how he'd have been if he hadn't broken his hand in a childish fit of rage. The Greek tragedy is coming full circle.
Damon with a Grand Slam!! If I were Damon, I couldn't resist the urge to trot back out to my position and subtly flip off the fans in right field behind my back. He's too nice a guy to do so, but they sure give him hell out there. I wouldn't fault him for doing it.
This afternoon, Schilling was on Baseball Tonight and called A-Rod's swipe of Arroyo's arm last night a bush league play. When someone like Schilling, a respected player, calls A-Rod out on a cheap shot...that's just another heated page in the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry. What I thought was uncool was A-Rod claiming it was part of his natural running motion. I mean, c'mon. That was like Lance Berkman pretending he was hit in the head by a pitch earlier this year against the Cubs, lying there like he was unconscious, when replays clearly showed the ball didn't even touch him. Would Roy Hobbs do that? There ya go.
Speaking of Roy Hobbs, was the blood seeping through Curt Schilling's sock last night the most famous blood on a baseball player since Hobbs's bloody bullet wound in The Natural? It was perfect. A Red Sox player with literal red socks. If Schilling has that bloody sock left he could auction it off for millions on eBay. Some bar in Boston would buy it and build a golden shrine to it.
A-Rod chose Madonna's "La Isla Bonita" as the song to play over Yankees Stadium speakers when he comes to bat. Okay, that right there is another problem for A-Rod. I'm sorry, that's just not an intimidating song. If you're Ricky Williams and you've decided to retire from football at the peak of your career to go sit on a tropical beach somewhere and smoke pot from a three foot bong, maybe you can play that song as you're packing up your locker.
I can't believe the Yankees, with their payroll, bat Tony Clark in their lineup. His OBP this season was .297 and he struck out 92 times in 253 at-bats. Brutal. I wondered why Giambi didn't pinch-hit for Clark last night. I thought Giambi was on the post-season roster just for that reason.
Unfrozen Caveman is not just thawed, he's on fire! Upper deck! Maybe he really is Jesus. Next inning we may see him levitate into the sky to take a home run away from the Yankees.
Side note not related to this game: I just saw the box score of the NL game. Lidge pitched another 3 innings today, no hits, 5 Ks! Just ridiculous. He has to be fried for tomorrow's game. Doesn't he? And even Izzy went 3 innings for the Cardinals, so you know Larussa was desperate. Lidge's numbers from this season are sick: 94.7 innings, only 57 hits and 30 walks, 157 K's (!?!), a 1.90 ERA. His slider is just illegal. I still think K-Rod is the most fun relief pitcher in baseball to watch (similar numbers to Lidge: 84 IP, 51 hits, 33 BBs, 123 Ks, and a 1.82 ERA) just because his 89mph slider/curve and then 97mph fastball look like videogame pitches thrown with a whiffle ball they move so much. Plus he has a wild, exaggerated windup, and I miss those. Why don't more pitchers have wild and crazy windups like Juan Marichal in the old days, bringing the arms way back over the head, leg kicking up so that the knee is nearly over one's head? It adds a huge element of deception to the delivery, and it's so much fun to watch. Think Goose Gossage and Pascual Perez. Pitchers today with huge leg kicks and long, looping deliveries: Hideo Nomo, Dontrelle Willis, El Duque, Shigetoshi Hasegawa (sort of; interestingly, lots of Japanese pitchers seem to have huge windups; I wonder why?). There are probably others. There should be more.
Other side note on the NLCS game: I just saw a replay of Edmonds game winning home run. It's amazing that a guy with such a huge uppercut can take high and away fastballs and hit them out of the park. I saw him do that to a 94mph Kerry Wood high and away fastball earlier this year. People say to pitch him high and away because of his uppercut, but I think that needs to be amended to high and inner half. Otherwise he might just hit a 7-iron into the stands.
Ramirez chases Bernie's fly ball, and Buck says, "Ramirez with a late jump on it." Isn't that pretty much standard with every fly ball that goes to left against the Red Sox?
I was over at ESPN's Sportsnation Chat and saw a thread in which Boston fans were wondering when Francona would pull Lowe. Only a Cubs or Red Sox fan could be so paranoid. Lowe's up 8-1 and has given up one hit in 5 innings. I'd cut the man some slack. Sheesh.
What do you call a single Red Sox player? A Red Sock?
If they pull Lowe out and replace him with Pedro, I'll be shocked. That doesn't seem necessary, or wise, when you could have Pedro start in the World Series. There, I said it. World Series. I guess this is the World Series, in many ways, for the Red Sox. The NLCS has been exciting, too, but it's clearly been pushed to second class status this offseason, its games pushed to times when no one can watch to accommodate the ALCS in primetime.
A Felix Heredia sighting. The other day, Ken e-mailed me when Heredia got up in the bullpen, laughing uncontrollably. We remember him from his Cubs days, when he ran up ERAs of 4.85, 4.76, and 6.17.
Hmm, Pedro is coming in. Very bizarre. Maybe he's just treating this as his between-starts throwing session.
Pedro's not throwing very hard, and Matsui and Bernie double back to back. Still a healthy lead, but I still would have left Lowe out there. Sinkerballers are more effective when they're tired, or at least that's what they say. He looked plenty good to me. Pedro can't even break 90 right now, and he just gave up a single to Lofton, who I believe is collecting social security. Pedro still has a 5 run cushion, but seriously, what is he doing out there? Let the man rest.
Leave Pedro in too long last year, bring him in too early and unnecessarily this year. Some might pity the Red Sox managers for having to deal with such stress, but I blame the managers for making such lousy tactical decisions.
95 and 95mph on Pedro's last two pitches. Maybe he's warm now.
And now the Yankees Stadium organist is encouraging the Who's Your Daddy chant between every pitch. Oh, please make it stop.
The other option is that Pedro's reaching back for something extra. And he made it out of the inning giving up just two runs. Now send him to the showers and ice that arm of his. Since Cubs fans and Red Sox fans share similar nightmares, I can only imagine how much Pepto-Bismol is being consumed in Boston. Only a Cubs or Red Sox fan could insecure with such a big lead and just two innings to play. When you've had no empirical evidence in your entire lifetime to justify your faith, that's how it goes.
This may be the first post-season game where some pitcher requires Tommy John surgery during a series. Given how long the Red Sox/Yankees series has gone, Foulke could have had Tommy John after game one and recovered to pitch the ninth in this game.
Fickle is Red Sox Nation, is it not? Bellhorn and Damon have gone from goats to toasts with their recent home runs, while Manny is now a dirty word after his struggles this series.
Bottom of the 8th: Phew! Pedro is gone. Francona has overcome his temporary insanity and brought in Timlin.
Wow, what a dig by Mient...however you spell his name! Maybe this will dispell some of the post-season mythology around Derek Jeter. Has he done anything this ALCS? Maybe Jessica Alba will dump him. Please?
A-Rod....whiffffff! How sweet it must feel for the Red Sox to knock out the guy who almost came to them and instead ended up with their hated rivals. To think, it was the player's association that nullified that trade to the Red Sox and set A-Rod up for his fall. And why was the trade nullified? A-Rod and Scott Boras's greed in setting up his original contract with the Rangers, one that the player's association wouldn't allow the Red Sox to shrink. Yes, another example of hubris. This Greek tragedy is about to conclude. Steinbrenner poisons some drinks, kills Cashman and Torre and then has a heart attack and dies. As bloody an ending as Hamlet.
If I'm a Red Sox fan, especially if I'm in the bleachers, I'm trying like hell to start a "Who's Your Daddy?" chant right now. And then I'd duck and run like hell.
A token playing of "Enter Sandman" for Rivera. It doesn't sound that intimidating when the Yankees are down 7 runs. Has Rivera ever come into a game in which the Yankees trailed by this much? I doubt it.
In the World Series, we'll get to find out what David Ortiz looks like playing 1B. The AL winning the All-Star Game and giving the Red Sox home field advantage in the World Series is huge in that respect.
If I hop the train now, I may be able to get to Boston in time to buy a Red Sox hat and hit the streets. On this night, that would be enough for a guy to get lucky, if he wasn't trampled to death in street riots.
Pitching change to Embree with 2 outs in the ninth. A pause for Red Sox fans to pull the champagne out of the fridge and pop the cork.
Red Sox win!!! Pandemonium!!!
I like the Red Sox against whoever comes out of the NL. Neither the Astros nor the Cardinals has the starting pitching to hold down the Red Sox lineup, even with the pitcher having to hit in NL parks.

Shake Shack's "Shacktoberfest"

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Angela was the first one to tell me about Danny Meyer's newest restaurant, Shake Shack. Meyer is the man behind Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern, respectively ranked as Zagat's Most Popular NYC Restaurant in 2004 and 2005. So when I first visited and saw Shake Shack a few weeks back, I was a bit taken aback.

It was literally a shack, albeit one with modern lines and lettering, situated in Madison Square Park.
As for the food, it wasn't anything fancy. The menu's staples include...










Of course, this is New York, so you can order a glass of wine with your Chicago Style Hot Dog.
The difference between Dick's in Seattle and Shake Shack is one example of the difference between Seattle and New York City. A deluxe burger at Dick's cost $1.80 (I think; it's been a while). A Shack Burger costs $3.95. Both, in their contexts, are considered cheap eats. I was never a huge fan of Dick's burgers but could understand the appeal of one to satisfy a case of late-night munchies. The Shack burger is pricey but really tasty. The secret is the Shack Sauce, a concoction that reminds me of Thousand Island dressing with more zing and spice.
Shake Shack's Chicago Style Hot Dogs are, to this former Chicagoan, quite good. I've already lauded the Shack Burger; I much prefer it to their plain hamburgers and cheeseburgers. The meat is ground daily from sirloin and brisket. I have yet to sample the fries; Dick's had good fries. I also haven't sampled the plain frozen custard, though, so I can't compare it to Ted Drewes in St. Louis (good stuff). I did try one of the concretes (frozen custard blended at high speed with homemade mix-ins) and it lived up to its name. It took me an entire day to finish one cup it was so rich and thick (The Concrete Jungle: hot fudge, bananas, peanut butter, mixed with the frozen custard of your choice).
Yes, I'm a big fan of Shake Shack. It's just a few blocks away from me, and sometimes if I've run a lot during the week I treat myself to one of its temptations. Today I stopped by on my way back from midtown and discovered, much to my pleasure, that they're running "Shacktoberfest," featuring special beers, sausages, and hot dogs. Special sausages
  • Rocky Mountain Wild Elk Sausage stuffed with Jalapeños & Cheddar Cheese
  • Wild Boar Sausage stuffed with Cranberry & Apricot
  • Wild Buffalo Sausage stuffed with Jalapenos & Cheddar Cheese
  • Pheasant Sausage stuffed with Mushroom, Spinach & Parmesan
The special beers:
  • Brooklyn Brewery's Oktoberfest
  • Kostritzer, Schwarzbien
  • Reissdorf, Kölsch
  • Ayinger, Oktober Fest-Märzen
  • Smuttynose, Pumpkin Ale
  • Victory, Festbier
  • Rogue, Dead Guy Ale
Tomorrow, all the special sausages and beers will be available. And three new concretes: Caramel Apple, "Shakes" Pear in the Park, and Pumpkin Pie.
I tried the featured Wild Buffalo Sausage and Reissdorf, Kölsch combo today. On a grey, cool autumn day with a brisk breeze blowing, the meal was so pleasing. Nothing like a light beer buzz mid-day.
Sadly, Shake Shack shacks up for the winter Nov. 1.

Legendary bandit buried in India

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Legendary bandit buried in India. The funeral of India's most notorious bandit, Veerappan, takes place at a village in southern Tamil Nadu state. [BBC News]
A real-life Robin Hood? People still earn the title bandit?
Guess who's getting flu shots?.
[via Marginal Revolution]
Finally read Ron Suskind's NYTimes Magazine article on George Bush. Frightening. That president man (let's use Bush's folksy tone of voice) runs the country on a wink and prayer, though in his case it's more like a smirk and a prayer. A president who refuses to be molded to some degree by his constituents and his advisors and the world at large, especially one who's been a C-student most his life, is an idiot blinded by hubris. I thought the pilgrims left England to escape hereditary monarchy.

Round 15

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Game 7! I'm living vicariously.
Curt Schilling. Still the coolest player left in the playoffs. Gutsy effort, just like that of Randy Johnson when he pitched in relief in Game 7 the day after he'd started Game 6 for the Diamondbacks in the 2001 World Series. I think the word "courage" is thrown around too much in sports--it's just a game, after all--but you have to admire a guy who's fighting through some pain and trying to hold down the Yankees lineup with less than his best stuff.
I also admire that he pulled himself out after seven innings. There's a machismo ethos in sports that says it's admirable to play despite injury or fatigue that limits your effectiveness, but at some point it's just detrimental to your team. For example, pitchers who refuse to admit fatigue and leave the game, hitting astronomical pitch counts that lead to injury or ineffectiveness in their next start. It's a fine line, but Schilling knew where he stood relative to it. A veteran like Greg Maddux is not afraid to tell his manager when he's done for the day, and more pitchers should.
Contrast Schilling with A-Rod, who just may never be as beloved as a guy like Schilling. His slap at Arroyo didn't seem malicious, though it did remind me of Robert Fick's cheap shot tomahawk chop to the arm of Eric Karros in last year's NLDS (the Braves fined Fick for that play and benched him the rest of the series. Somehow I doubt the Yankees will do the same to A-Rod). Anyhow, A-Rod will never get the Schilling love for many reasons. His willingness to chase the biggest contract and his inability to change the perception that he's a mercenary for hire who chased money and then success but wouldn't tradeoff between the two. Who knows if it's true or not? For me to presume to know A-Rod would be, well, presumptuous. But he doesn't own a spot in the Hall of Fans' Hearts the way Schilling does.
I wouldn't object to some instant replay process in the playoffs and World Series to aid umpires on select types of plays when they're not sure about calls. They did get both disputed calls correct today, but what if they hadn't? Would it really hurt anyone to have some umpires in a booth reviewing replays for a minute or two, just as the umpires on the field get together for a moment to confer? Why don't they use that HawkEye system that CBS uses to draw digital replays on television to aid umpires with line calls in tennis? I don't understand the argument that human errors in judgment are part of sports. Would we be satisfied if 100 meter sprints were still judged by a few old men eyeing the finish line as runners blew past at 28 mph?
It will be a zoo tomorrow night at Yankees Stadium. I'd love to be there.

Who's your papi?

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Some good baseball last night. I know, because it managed to keep me awake despite the near coma I was in after my longest run to date (I think it was over 20 miles, though who knows because my watch and GPS tracking unit mysteriously stopped tracking after mile 17 or so). I plugged my projector in and just shot it against the wall, lying on the ground with a Gatorade IV into my arm, switching back and forth between the two baseball games and MNF.
Both series, but especially the Yankees and Red Sox series, feel like heavyweights just beating the crap out of each other. The bullpens are depleted, it seems like their games are always on television, and Damon's hair has grown down to his waist. If they served alcohol past the seventh inning in MLB ballparks they'd be carrying Boston fans out on stretchers between innings. While last night's Yankees Red Sox game wasn't, as Theo Epstein argued, the greatest game in baseball history (both teams made a ton of mistakes which stretched the game out longer than necessary), it made for good playoff theater.
It seems like all the post-season managers have learned that an ideal strategy is to use your best relievers as much as possible, and as early as possible in close games. Foulke, Rivera, and Lidge have shown up in just about every game. James Click of Baseball Prospectus wrote an article recently discussing the broadening depth of the ace reliever pool. It used to be that most relief pitchers were failed starters, those without good enough stuff to start. Now you have pitchers who are bred to be relievers from the time they're in college or the minors (e.g. Jorge Julio, Francisco Rodriguez, Ryan Wagner), or you have starters who have good stuff who are just switched to relief where they can just air it out for an inning at a time (Foulke, Isringhausen, Smoltz, Gagne, Dotel, Rivera). The result, as the article notes, is that many teams actually now have better bullpens than starting pitchers. That reversal implies that it might be best for some teams to just pitch an entire playoff game with one reliever after another instead of throwing out some retread fourth or fifth starter.
The Yankees still haven't learned to pitch around David Ortiz. I predict Big Papi will die in about six years when his heart does a big poppy after the three thousandth free meal and five thousandth free beer he receives while out on the town in Boston.
With every hit that drops in front of Bernie Williams (he looked to be somewhere in Connecticut on David Ortiz's bloop single--shouldn't you play in more when Rivera or Loiaza is pitching to a lefty with that jamming cutter?), I just see the contract the Yankees will offer to Beltran going up and up. The Cubbies really need to break the bank and get Beltran, if only to keep the Yankees from getting him.
I wrote earlier that it didn't seem that any young players could make an impact on either series, but I was wrong, as usual. Brandon Backe pitched eight innings of one-hit ball against the Cardinals murderous lineup. Incredible.
In my heart of hearts, I can't really root for any of the teams left--are there really even any underdogs?--but it's hard to turn away. Just when I think I'm done with baseball for the year, it pulls me back in.

The Talent Myth

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The Talent Myth is the ChangeThis manifesto by Malcolm Gladwell. ChangeThis is a site seeking to spread ideas, though unfortunately all manifestos are only available in PDF form. In this case, what's unfortunate is that this is just the duplicate of an article Gladwell wrote for The New Yorker a while back. Good article, though ChangeThis seems to pass it off as a new essay.
Free Reach Access Daily Flosser!

Frontline - The Choice A

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Frontline - The Choice
A new process for coloring black and white films, employed by Scorsese in The Aviator.
Qurio.com is an interesting photosharing option for Windows users. It serves photos directly off of your computer, through your high speed Internet connection, so you don't have to upload photos to an external site.

Remains of a weekend

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I haven't set up my television here in NYC, and before that I was traveling for months so I had just sporadic access to a television. I haven't missed it nearly as much as I thought. It's given me time to read and enjoy life outside my apartment. I'm sick of reality television, have no need for CSI: Minneapolis ("Hmm, I think Steve Buscemi died when his partner axed him in the head and put him through the wood chipper. Yaaaa, I do."), and any television show I really want to watch can usually found on BitTorrent. For example, the clip of Jon Stewart on Crossfire as he bitch-slapped Tucker Carlson. Deeply, deeply satisfying. I can't stand Tucker Carlson. What a buffoon. If you don't know how to use BitTorrent, you can see the clip just fine here at iFilm. Could Jon Stewart be any more golden right now? I walked by the Union Square Barnes and Noble when he was there for his book signing, and by the looks of the drooling women in line, you'd think Jude Law or Brad Pitt was there to sign a swimsuit calendar.
Of course, I must have my television set up by this Thursday, when The Office Christmas Specials (part 1, part 2) air in the U.S. on BBC America. I tried to find it on DVD in London this summer, but all I could turn up was pity from Londoners who tsk tsk'd as they revelled in recounting the rapture of humor the special had bestowed upon them. The DVDs? Release in the UK Oct. 25. If you haven't seen the show yet, I either pity or envy you. And who the hell are you and where have you been living?! The show has no laugh track, because you'll provide one. But don't take my word for it. The New Yorker calls it perfect.
Malcolm Gladwell writes about the high cost of prescription drugs with his usual (i.e., unusual) insight.
Wal-Mart.com, of all sites, has audio clips of the Friday Night Lights soundtrack. I'm just about over my Friday Night Lights kick. After watching the movie I bought the soundtrack and inhaled the book (recommended and recommended, respectively). The music has been a nice change of pace from the usual stuff in my "Running" playlist in my iPod, all of which I've heard about eighty times by now.
The baseball stadium in Houston is a joke. People are hitting pop flies out of the stadium in left field for home runs, and that hill with the pole in it in center field is ludicrous. What an atrocious baseball playing field (I've never seen the exterior, but it seems fine). The fact that all baseball stadiums have different dimensions in the outfield used to never bother me, but if they standardize the dimensions of all playing areas of all MLB stadiums, allowing architects to customize all other aspects and dimensions of the stadium, I'd have no objections. Imagine one NBA basketball court having baskets nine feet high instead of ten, or a three point line that was shorter than in other stadiums.
Games 3 and 4 of the ALCS were brutal. Each game lasted about two days. Alan, Sharon, and I rented a movie, started watching when game 3 started, and when the two hour movie finished that game was in the fourth inning. I don't know how anyone who's not a Yankees or Red Sox fan could stay awake. I remain steadfast in my hope that MLB will speed up the games. If you adjust your batting glove and then stand there to take a pitch, why do you need to step out and adjust it again? Is the velcro defective?
I met James, Angela, some of their college friends, Alan, and Sharon for lunch at Carnegie Deli today. The Carnegie sandwiches are MASSIVE. RIDICULOUS. I had a reuben, their specialty, and it was actually just a mountain of pastrami covered by several layers of cheese. It looked like an elementary school model of Mt. St. Helens erupting cheese. I finished about a quarter of it and will nibble on the remains for the rest of the week. Carnegie Deli is a mecca for pastrami and corned beef lovers.
I didn't miss my car until I saw this promotional clip for the new BMW M5. Sweet mother of...sometimes, late at night, when the subway seems like it will never arrive, wouldn't you just like to hop into something like this and just play Pole Position with the cabs.
NYC's arts lineup is overwhelming. Everyday I find at least five things I'm dying to go see. Monday night (oh, that would be tonight) Ricky Gervais is speaking at the Museum of Television and Radio before a screening of The Office Christmas Special. I'd kill to see Julie Taymor's production of The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) at the Met. Alex Ross raves about it. What stops me is the memory of my first NYC credit card bill. Upon opening it and reading the balance, I screamed, dropped the bill, my eyes rolled up into my head, and I fainted theatrically, like a swooning movie diva.
The weekend ended with puppet entertainment. No, not the marionettes of Team America World Police, but the puppets of Avenue Q, the much acclaimed musical that won the Tony for best musical in 2003. I am not a huge musical fan, but I enjoyed this one for not taking itself so seriously. It offers quite a contrast to the melodrama of most musicals and seems a descendant of the Rent lineage of musicals, one that's sadly sparse. The show features a cast of puppets and people who live in a rundown neighborhood in Manhattan as they sing about life and its problems. But these are HBO-class puppets, not Sesame Street or Jim Henson muppets (even though some of the characters really resemble Ernie and the cookie monster), so they swear, drink, and have sex. As Phil said at intermission, it might not a musical you'd be comfortable seeing with your parents. The puppets are held by actors who stand alongside them as puppeteers, singing, with their hands clearly inserted up into the puppets or waving their arms around. It's jarring for just the first few seconds, but then, the rest of the time, as the cast sings songs like "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" or "The Internet is for Porn" or "Schadenfreude", you realize it all feels on some level like a clever deconstruction of the musical as an art form. Would Kermit and Miss Piggy have grown up to be a dysfunctional married couple? Would Bert have come out of the closet to confess his love for Ernie? Would Big Bird be surfing porn on the Internet? I'm of the generation that wouldn't find those stories surprising at all, and I'm glad some musicals have caught up.

Newspapers issue endorsements

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Newspapers across the country have seen enough to issue their presidential endorsements. I've tried to link up to the editorials I could find without too much trouble.
A sampling of those papers endorsing Kerry:
NY Times
San Francisco Chronicle
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Boston Globe
Philadelphia Inquirer
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Detroit Free Press
Arizona Daily Star
The Oregonian (Portland)
The Seattle Times
The Philadelphia Daily News
Most of the free world
For Bush:
The Chicago Tribune
The Arizona Republic
Dallas Morning News
The Oakland Press
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Tulsa World
The Union Leader
Savannah Morning News
The Pueblo Chieftain
Amarillo Globe-News
The Leaf-Chronicle
All this of course doesn't guarantee any election victory, as many of the papers endorsing Kerry this election endorsed Gore last time around.

Google Desktop

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Google Desktop. Finally, Google searching for your local hard drive. I want Google Laundry so I can find my missing socks.
Paralyzed man sends e-mail by thought.
Somehow, the graphic producers behind the new Gourmet Cookbook didn't realize that light yellow is a terrible color for headings. As a result, the book is getting reamed by negative customer reviews.
Not ironic, just unfortunate.
I'm really feelin' the expressionist sonic landscapes of Explosions in the Sky, a band from Austin, Texas, who did the instrumental pieces for the soundtrack of Friday Night Lights. The soundtrack includes some previously recorded songs such as "Your Hand In Mine" from Earth Is Not A Cold, Dead Place, and the trailer features "Have You Passed Through This Night" from Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever. This latter album is also notable for having been released on Sept. 10, 2001 with cover art featuring the words, "This plane will crash tomorrow." You can download recordings of some of their live performances (the best way to experience their music).

Game Two

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Alan and I took the express 4 up to 161 St./Yankee Stadium last night for game 2 of the ALCS. This time I sat in the center field bleachers instead of right field.

I realized what it is I like about Bob Shepperd's voice (he's the public address announcer at Yankee Stadium): he sounds like he's being piped in direct from the 1930's, through a hole in the space time continuum. Before the game started, Alan and I watched some Red Sox take batting practice. At one point, Pedro Martinez came to the outfield to play long toss to stretch out his arm. Of course, the "Who's your daddy?" chants began immediately.
Why he made that daddy remark I'll never know. He claimed after the game that he didn't regret what he said, but if he doesn't, Red Sox fans and his teammates will. You just can't give the most obnoxious, arrogant baseball fans in the country ammunition. He'll be hearing that chant for the rest of his career at Yankees Stadium, unless, of course, he joins the Yankees this offseason. The Yankees would probably overpay for him, and he's clearly on the downhill side of his career, but still, if you're the Red Sox, do you want to see Pedro in pinstripes? It would be an echo of too many painful memories, and it would just tickle Yankees fans to death.
[Note: the chanting of "Hoosier Daddy" at Bobby Knight when he was still head coach at Indiana remains the most original usage of the phrase]
When the game started, I realized that roll call only occurs from the right field bleachers. Inevitably, we were seated near a completely inebriated Yankees fan who was teetering all over the place. He kept falling into me, and every time he went to buy another beer with his buddy I hoped he'd pass out somewhere and not return. And of course, we had the alpha-obnoxious Yankees fan running up and down our aisle, cursing out anyone who wouldn't stand up and scream along with him. There seems to be one in every bleacher section. He was dripping with sweat, his face red, his voice nearly hoarse. He kept apologizing to a young boy of eight or nine years old everytime he dropped another f-bomb. What a f***.
Most of you know how the game went by now. In the bottom of the first, Pedro walked Jeter on 4 pitches, hit A-Rod, and then gave up line drive single to Sheffield to give the Yanks a quick 1-0 lead. Alan and I were looking at the stadium radar gun, and Pedro was hitting mid-90's with his fastball. He looked to have decent velocity and stuff, certainly better than the last time I saw him here, when he got shelled, but his command was just a bit off. A few non-strike calls here and there hurt him.
One thing I did like about Shea Stadium which I remembered last night was that they post not just the velocity of each pitch but what type of pitch it was. How they figure that out I have no idea, but they do. Most pitches you can identify by the velocity and the path it takes (fastball, curve, slider, changeup, and split are easy to identify). However, for one pitch at Shea the board displayed "cutting fastball." Huh? Amazing, to think that it's someone's job to sit there all game and press a button to display the pitch type. At the Yankees game, from where I was sitting, I had some difficulty identifying between some of Pedro's changeups and curves. We were just a bit too far away for me to see the pitch path clearly.
A side observation: MLB needs to speed up games. I know they tried, a few years ago, but they failed. Umpires at my community softball game do a better job of keeping games going. Batters step out after every pitch to unstrap and restrap their batting gloves, tap their feet, take practice swings. C'mon. Batters shouldn't get to call time or to step out of the box after each pitch. That should be a rule. MLB also doesn't need two minutes between innings. Most pitchers ready after just a couple warm-up pitches. There should be a rule banning the fake pickoff throw to third and then to first. Pedro did that several times. Has that play ever worked? They should just make that a balk.
Meanwhile, the magic pixie dust they sprinkle on players when they join the Yankees to revive retreads was working as Jon Lieber was mowing down the Red Sox, and Olerud hit a go-ahead two-run homer off Pedro in the sixth. Lieber has a nasty slider. It's especially effective against right-handers. Whenever it was 0-2 on a batter, I'd look at Alan and say "slider." If he didn't get the strikeout with it, I'd say "slider" again. The Red Sox had to know it was coming, and they still couldn't lay off of it.
Teams with two million or so lying around can do worse than invest in a pitcher who's coming off of Tommy John surgery. Look at A.J. Burnett, Lieber, Kerry Wood, Ryan Dempster, John Smoltz, Matt Morris, Tom Gordon, Eric Gagne, and Mariano Rivera. It's as commonplace in baseball now as ACL reconstructions in basketball and football. Someday we're going to see a mediocre pitcher undergo pre-emptive Tommy John surgery just to see if it adds some velocity and stability.
Are there a pair of weaker center-field arms than Damon and Bernie? Watching Bernie warmup before innings is painful. He has a strange hitch in his throwing motion. Damon's arm is just plain weak.
They flashed a picture of Jack Nicholson up on the scoreboard at one point. Jack's a Yankees fan? He roots for the most hated basketball team in the country and now the most hated baseball team as well? The next time I watch Karate Kid I half expect to see Jack sitting ring-side, sharing laughs with the Cobra Kai Sensei and cheering on Johnny as he take out opponent's legs.
Gary Sheffield scared the crap out of me everytime he was at bat against the Cubs in last year's NLDS, and he's still imposing in the box with that menacing way he waves the bat around as if to say, "This thing is like a toothpick in my hands it's so light." Baseball needs to do something about batters standing on top of the plate, though. The rules are just stacked against pitchers. It's nearly impossible to throw inside anymore. You either end up hitting the batter, whereupon he either takes first or yells at you and elicits a warning from the umpire, or you hit the inside corner but the batter jumps out of the way, making the ball appear inside, and it's called a ball. They should move the batter box away from the plate a bit, maybe two to three inches. Jeter, A-Rod, and Sheffield were right on top of the plate, and Pedro couldn't drive them off of it.
Against the Yankees in the playoffs, you have seven innings to make some noise. Otherwise, out beyond the center field wall, an unnatural force named Mo begins to stir...

I imagine Mariano Rivera lounging around during games like Brad Pitt's Achilles in Troy, dozing on a couple of furs with a couple naked women, when the bullpen coach comes running in.
"Mo, Joe needs you."
Rivera looks up, somewhat groggy. "Have them lay out my uniform, shoes, and glove. In the meantime, two hot towels and my razor, please."

And then Mo comes trotting out to Enter Sandman, the entire stadium starts rocking, because it's easy to be an arrogant, cocky Yankees fan when Mo comes in to clean up the mess. He comes in, and like Achilles with that jumping-shoulder-stab move, wields his cut fastball like the sickle of the Grim Reaper, not just handcuffing batters but literally boring through the handles of left-handers bats, leaving the debris of exploded bats lying all over the grass in front of home plate.
Now comes news that Schilling can't start Game Five. If the Yankees play the Cubs' arch nemeses the Cardinals in the World Series, I'm not sure who I could root for.

GOOGL B(E) 10003

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Google SMS. Keen.
B to the E power?! B(E)? I can just see shouting this over heavy techno music to a bartender at a club.
"Can I have a B(E)?"
"What kind of beer?"
"NO, A B(E)!"
"A BEER? I KNOW! WHAT KIND?"
"A B TO THE E!"
Firefox extensions for BugMeNot.com.
They don't have GMail Drive shell extension for Mac users, but I've been using my GMail account like that all along. I don't really receive any e-mail at my gmail account. I just forward files and messages there for storage and easy search/retrieval later.
Kerry is trailing again in the Electoral Vote Predictor, 264 to 270. These debates do seem to matter, though it's just a guess on my part. Bush started out like a shrill screamer again, but he hung in and landed several effective blows in debate #2.
I AM LEARN is a weblog written by a Perl script.
Carl Lewis vs. William Shatner in the celebrity-turned-musician category. Advantage Captain Kirk. Seriously, he has Ben Folds in his corner as guest producer, he did a cover of Pulp's "Common People", so he has taste, and guest appearances include Aimee Mann, Joe Jackson, and Henry Rollins.
Mark Cuban passes on "the handjobber."
Humorous exchanges between pilots and air traffic control towers.
Tricks of the Trade continues on in weblog format.
The saying "You want to have your cake and eat it too" makes no sense. If it's my cake, why can't I eat it? It makes more sense as "You can't eat your cake and have it too."
While I was in France and the UK this summer, I saw the new Smart Car Roadster and Roadster-Coupe. They looked smart. Now the Smart Car is coming to the U.S., with an American-friendly SUV among the optional models. Chouette!
The next Pixar short is Boundin'.
Okay, this is fairly stale, but it's still the best suggestion I've seen yet about how to cure the ills of USA Basketball.

1-Love, Yankees

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Well, I didn't expect the Yanks to shell Schilling. He was off. If he's injured and can't recover during this series, the Red Sox are in trouble.
Manny's defense in LF cost the Red Sox at least a few runs. He should have cut off Matsui's ball in the 1st to hold Sheffield at third. He didn't catch the ball, he didn't dive, he didn't cut it off. That's just lazy/bad. He should have caught that ball in the 8th, though I couldn't tell if he was just slow or lackadaisical on that one. The other thing about Manny is that he seems to be a guess hitter, even with two strikes. I've seen him get caught looking with balls right down the middle so often. He can hit, though, so you live with all that.
Should be a lot of chants of "Who's your daddy?" at Yankee Stadium tomorrow. Ooh, it's going to be crazy. Four cool things about Yankees games:
  • Roll call--the RF bleacher fans chant each Yankee defenders name in sequence in the top of the first (all except the pitcher and catcher) until each player looks back and waves the glove. The order is Matsui, Bernie, Sheff, Olerud, Cairo, Jeter, and A-Rod. One of the best cheers in sports.
  • The playing "Enter Sandman" by Metallica when Mariano Rivera trots out of the bullpen. Gives me chills because you know Rivera can back it up.
  • The playing of Sinatra singing "New York, New York" after wins. Obnoxious, and if it were happening against the Cubs, I'd want to shoot myself, but it's Sinatra,
  • The voice of the Yankees public address announcer, Bob Shepherd. I only heard it just recently, at my first game at Yankees Stadium, and it gave me goosebumps. He's the best public address announcer I've ever heard. I'd pay to have him say my name over the speaker stadium at Yankees Stadium just once.

Clash of the Titans

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Is it possible the Yankees are finally the underdog? Granted, we're talking about the richest team in baseball being dogs to the second richest, so it's not exactly David versus Goliath, but it's news nevertheless.
The Red Sox have a stronger lineup 1-9. The Yankees have some great batters, but then they also have Ruben Sierra, John Olerud, and Miguel Cairo. Sierra is about 73 years old, Olerud was cut this season by the 63-99 Mariners, and Miguel Cairo was once a Cub utility player. The Red Sox lineup is ridiculous. They scored 949 runs this year. It's the type of patient and powerful lineup the Moneyball philosophy would produce if you actually had money. The Yankees ranked second in MLB with 897 runs scored and have also been marked by solid plate discipline over their championship years. These teams don't let mediocre pitching off the hook. The bench for Boston is also stronger. You can hide your lack of pitching depth in the playoffs by stretching out the number of innings your best starters and relievers throw, but you have to start a lineup of nine batters, and the Red Sox have an edge there. I haven't heard if Giambi is healthy, but last time I saw him he looked sickly.
The Red Sox have an ace in Schilling. I've always loved Schilling for the way he goes after people with his fastball (or these days his fastball/spliter combo). He's a gamer, and he's a gamer: he plays Everquest. Cool dude. Twilight years Pedro called the Yankees his daddy (maybe he's mellowing out in his old age), but he's a solid #2 guy. Arroyo looks good, and Wakefield has not, but knuckleball pitchers are wildcards. On any given day the knuckler could be dancing. The Yankees would have a great starting staff if all their starters were healthy, but no one really is except for Jon Lieber. For some reason, Lieber was pitching at every Cub game I attended for a two, three year stretch. He's a solid throw-strikes-and-let-defense-do-the-work guy, an inning-muncher during the regular season, but he doesn't scare anyone with his. Left-handers have always hit him hard, even after he added a changeup to his sinker-slider repertoire. Mussina, Brown, and Vazquez/Hernandez are all top-notch when healthy, but only Vazquez is whole, and for some reason he never took that next step into stardom this year. Mussina is the de facto ace, though a healthy Kevin Brown with his 10 pound power sinker would usually play that role. If Brown is healthy, he can be the Yankees' Schilling. As it stands now, though, not a sub-4.00 ERA among the bunch, though. Amazing what a crappy pitching staff nearly $200 million will buy you.
The bullpens are top heavy. Gordon and Rivera, and Foulke, Timlin, and Embree, and if anyone else is in the game it's a bad sign. Lowe might be a pleasant surprise out of the bullpen for the Sox. Those guys may need surgery to re-attach their arms by the end of the series, and Francona and Torre will be the ones applying the sutures. Just thinking about seeing guys like Tanyon Sturtze, Felix Heredia, Esteban Loaiza, Mike Myers, or Curtis Leskanic in the ALCS is sickening. Oh, this Cubs fan is in mourning.
[The one thing this series lacks is a rookie, late-season call-up, or young stud who steps up with no fear and lights up the game's brightest stage in his first post-season appearance, like Andruw Jones, or Josh Beckett and Miguel Cabrera, or Francisco Rodriguez (K-Rod). When you've got money to spend, you can buy older, known commodities.]
Francona doesn't inspire much confidence in Red Sox nation, but it's AL baseball, so managing consists of making sure to bring in the right pitchers at the right time and knowing when to make the proper defensive substitution. I'm fairly certain he won't leave Pedro in too long this year.
In the end, the Red Sox should prevail. Tom Gordon's vision is blurry from being hit by a champagne cork during the Yankees' ALDS celebration. Kevin Brown hurt his hand punching a wall in anger. They have the highest payroll in baseball history. These are omens straight out of a Greek tragedy, one with $186 million of hubris. And of course, there's the Ex-Cub Factor, which says that the team with the most ex-Cubs is doomed to lose. The Yankees have five ex-Cubs: Cairo, Lieber, Lofton, Gordon, and Heredia. The Red Sox have just two--Bill Mueller, Mark Bellhorn--and they traded one of their former stars, Nomar, to the Cubs, which should have the effect of working in reverse.
Alan and I are going to catch game two tomorrow, and though I'm still depressed over the Cubs' collapse, I'm fired up to be a witness to baseball's fiercest rivalry. Red Sox in five.

Review: The Machinist

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Finally, The Machinist comes to theaters. Jason and I saw this at Sundance this January, and I thought it would gain distribution sooner. Paramount Classics is putting it out Oct. 22.
Christian Bale lost 60 pounds to play this role, and his physical transformation is nearly as painful for the audience to witness as it must have been for him to pull off. Bale plays Trevor Reznik, a man who hasn't slept for a year. He is plagued by nightmares; are they real or hallucinations brought on by his own paranoia? He works in a factory with a distinctively apocalyptic feel, and someone is leaving cryptic post-its on his refrigerator.
It's a psychological suspense thriller, and director Brad Anderson and his crew create a foreboding atmostphere, filled with a lush darkness and eerie fluorescent lighting. It's also a mystery, and I enjoyed trying to unravel the clues, though living in someone's nightmare for that period of time left me ready for a round of beers with friends at the local pub.

Review: Maria Full of Grace

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Anyone who feels the slightest bit of self-pit about their first year struggles upon arrival in New York City should see this Maria Full of Grace, one of the best movies I've seen this year. It's potent, not easy to stomach, but not nearly as difficult to swallow as the capsules of heroin or cocaine that drug mules carry in their stomachs from Colombia to the United States.
Maria Alvarez is a bright, courageous, and fiery seventeen year old. She is not the type of person who would seem to have to turn to life as a drug mule to survive. But writer and director Joshua Marston efficiently and methodically shows us the forces that both push and draw her in that direction: the meager pay of her monotonous job de-thorning long-stem roses, her abusive boss and working conditions, the claustrophobic pressures of living at home with and helping to support her impoverished mother and sister and nephew, and the simple desire for something more out of life. She is also pregnant by a deadbeat boyfriend she doesn't love. Soon she is on an airplane along with several other drug mules, carrying not just her unborn child but dozens of drug pellets. Not everyone comes to America on a boat that passes by the Statue of Liberty on its way to Ellis Island. Some arrive at JFK Airport and encounter suspicious and unforgiving customs officers.
Marston doesn't over-dramatize material that comes loaded with tension. He catalogs it all with a documentarian restraint, and Catalina Sandino Moreno makes an unforgettable screen debut as Maria Alvarez. In an otherwise bleak view of the American Dream, her spirit reminds us that many who come to America carry the American dream inside them, rather than finding it here.
[Interesting footnote: On the movie's official website I learned that Orlando Tobon, who plays Don Fernando in the movie, plays a real-life Don to Colombian immigrants in New York City. The "Mayor of Little Colombia" operates a travel agency in Jackson Heights, Queens, where he aids Colombian immigrants. Over twenty years, he has repatriated the bodies of approximately 400 Colombian drug mules who died while journeying to the U.S.]