"I ain't what I used to be, but who the hell is?"
I live outside Chicago with the Redhead, the poet, three cats, and two dachshunds.
visited *loading* times
1. Blue 7 – Sonny Rollins
2. En Saga (Sibelius) –
3. Western Wall – Roseanne Cash
4. Too Personal – Mekons
5. Daisy Glaze – Big Star
6. My Broken Heart Belongs to You – Willie Nelson
7. East, from Symphony #4 (Hadley) – National SO Ukraine/Williams
8. Jordan (
9. I Have Always Been Here Before – Julian Cope
10. I Take A Lot Of Pride In What I Am – Merle Haggard
There is much rending of garments going on locally about the struggles of the White Sox, but they are arguably as good or better a team this year.
They won 99 games last year, outperforming their expected wins by 7. This year, they are on pace to win 97 games, three wins above expected. Hardly a struggling team, one would think.
The difference is that last year, their pitching was far above expectations, and has returned to a more likely level this year. The good news is that if it improves, a likely prospect, they'll be right back at the top.
Yesterday evening, as Redhead and I took Maggie and Ernie for a walk around the block, we met Emmy the wire-haired dachshund, who lives a couple of blocks away. Much wagging of tails and fussing over dachshunds ensued, as all parties were happy for the chance to socialize with a dog their size. Sorry, but no cameras were available to capture the moment.
Here's Maggie the dachshund, looking for someone to intimidate:
And her brother Ernie in his noir phase:
Twenty-some years ago, when I came of drinking age, it was pretty much a given that if you wanted to drink good beer, you drank imported beer. Domestic beer was the stuff our dads drank – in my dad’s case, Pabst Blue Ribbon (or PFBR, as it is now and forever known).
Turns out that there was good domestic beer in my neck of the woods, but you had to look around for it. Most of that good beer was from
I have a fondness, or perhaps weakness, for light summer beers, inclusing those with a hint of fruity flavor. Today's beer is Pete's Strawberry Blonde.
Given the retarded weather of this past weekend, a light beer such as this hits the spot. It's a pleasant brew, a lager with a hint of strawberry flavor, unlike certain other beers of this stripe, where you're not sure if it's beer or fruit juice you're drinking.
It's not a world-class brew, but an enjoyable little beer nonetheless.
It was hot and stupid yesterday, so I stayed in and tried to fix the kitchen faucet, with mixed results. Home repairs are very much trial and error for me, which causes the Redhead no end of amusement. I’ve never quite figured out how she knows so much about home maintenance, although having been married before may have something to do with.
I did not watch the All-Star Game last night. Partly because I find it hard to resist the urge to reach through the TV and choke the life out of Tim McCarver, but I also just don’t have the interest in it that I once did.
This lack of interest can be traced to Bud Selig’s Folly. You may recall that the game ended in a tie because no one realized that it might be a good idea not to play everyone if the game is headed for extra innings. Naturally, rather than remind the participants of this little fact, the Lords of Baseball responded by expanding the All-Star rosters, and more importantly, giving home-field advantage in the World Series to the league winning the game.
As Archpundit notes, if you're citing the Onion as a source, you are pretty dim:
Silly pro-life person
Onion:
1 2 3
I've always thought that Adam Carolla was pretty unfunny and stupid, but I think I'll have to apologize:
Adam Carolla Hangs Up On Ann Coulter
1. Three Little Birds – Bob Marley
2. The Morning Star, from Spring Symphony (Britten) – Philharmonia Orch./Gardiner
3. Nightclubbing – Iggy Pop
4. The Albatross, from The Sea Hawk (Korngold) – London SO/Previn
5. East Virginia Blues – Dave Alvin
6. Allegro, from eine Kleine Nachtmusik (Mozart) – London SO/Dorati
7. These Lonely Nights – Willie Nelson
8. Coda from Briggflatts I – Paul Hillier and Andrew Lawrence-King
9. The Dolphins – Fred Neil
10. Can’t Win – Richard Thompson
Bonus 11. Hot Rails to Hell - Blue Oyster Cult
I like a good conspriracy as much as the next person, but I find this more amusing than anything else:
The Ken Lay conspiracy
Gosh, I love this country.
In my neck of the woods, the Fourth of July is a relatively sedate affair. There are local parades, which I have not attended the last two years, as they tend to last about an hour more than they should. The Redhead made a pile of food for the three of us, her ex-husband #2 and his son, the poet's girlfriend, and our next-door neighbor. There will be leftovers for weeks.
The fireworks last night were fun - as always, there were lots of high school-age kids there to see and be seen, families with little ones oohing and aahing, and the band that plays every ear in the driveway of a house near the field where the fireworks are set off.
Pretty straightforward stuff, and quite fitting.
The Redhead called a couple of hours ago, asking if I remembered a Cubs player named Billy Something-or-Other who wore the number 26. Of course I did - Billy Williams was my favorite player as a kid. Turns out that he was in the local post office when she walked in early this afternoon, and according to my sainted mother, has lived in the town I live in since his playing days.
The Redhead frequently calls me a nerd, geek, or dork. I like to think she’s saying this in a loving way, but it is deserved to a great degree. Partly because of what I do for a living, but also because of my unhealthy fascination with baseball history, and more specifically, baseball in the nineteenth century.
Unlike many things in life, this has a very specific origin. In 1970, either for Father’s Day or for his birthday three weeks later, my dad received a copy of the first Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia. Also known as Mac 1 or Big Mac, this, as any serious baseball fan can tell you, was the first great baseball reference book. As Bill James once said in his first Historical Abstract, if all the libraries in the world were on fire, this would be the one book to save. It has been superseded since, by books the Redhead likes to refer to as baseball phone books, but for a nine-year-old boy, this was somewhat akin to opening the Ark of the Covenant.
At that young age, I was already familiar with names like Ruth, Cobb, and Mathewson, but this book drew the curtain back on players whom I had no idea existed. Vaguely familiar names like Cap Anson and Ed Delahanty became fully formed, and players like Buck Ewing, Tim Keefe, and Willie Keeler stepped from the shadows of history.
And the nicknames! I knew that Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat, and Ty Cobb the Georgia Peach, but these nicknames were mere child’s play compared to what had come before. Orator Jim O’Rourke, Arlie Latham, the Freshest Man on Earth, and Bob “Death to Flying Things”
And one fellow who stood out even among them. Looking through the year-by-year summaries, the name “B. Hamilton” showed up among the leaders year after year in runs, stolen bases, walks, and batting average. Who was this
Sunday afternoon, and the laundry is drying. The dryer with a mind of its own has decided that, instead of the usual brief buzz that announces that a load is done, it will sound until I get up from whatever I'm doing and make my way down to the basement to shut it off.
Making this more entertaining is that the Redhead has been snoozing for most of the day, meaning that the usual saunter downstairs has been replaced by a mad dash. Fortunately, none of the cats have been underfoot during my dash to the basement.
