why aren't there places like this in lowell?

ok, we've discovered the single blemish on the rose that is lowell: there still appears to be no neat little bar with an entertainment license and a great sound system (not to mention an appreciative audience) for musicians to stretch out (figuratively, not literally--the stage was tee eye en why tiny) and enjoy themselves. however! fear not, intrepid lowellians, you can get from downtown shangri-lowell to porter square in cambridge in 30 minutes, and other than having to moderate your alcohol intake in order to drive home, unless you're one of the designated drinkers, it's almost as nice as being right here, only better because all your favorite lowell musical folks are there. (for the rest of you people still clinging to the desperate belief that metro boston can be a reasonable facsimile, at least you can get there straight and easy on the red line, and there's something to be said for that, at least).

i feel like a slacker, in a way, having missed the first four weeks of jen kearney and the lost onion's residence at toad, but i made last night's show, and i'm ever so glad i did, just like i knew i'd be. the place can't be 20 feet across from wall to wall, but the sound is clear from the back, and the elbows you get to rub when the right band is playing make all the proximity all the better. harpoon ipa on tap, too. (and sierra nevada and a few more tasty treats, but a guy can only get to so many in one night). incredibly, and i kid you not, the mixed drinks were even cheaper than the schooner glass drafts i wsa drinking, so there's nothing not to love about the place.

oh! and the music! last night we got BOTH let love rule and what is and what should never be for our cover course, (as well as, delightfully, another solo visit from dr. feelgood) among all the great and tasty jen kearney favorites. carl was great, and vinnie was great, and pete was great, and, yes, you guessed it, jen was great, too. go figure. (the band must be from lowell, what can i say). it's different without the horns and the congas, in a very good way, and makes for a very good way to spend an evening. i especially liked pantomime, which is fast becoming one of my favorite ipod addictions, and it's a marvel that songs like that, that sound sooooo good with the horns and the full treatment, (same for warm bath eyes, etc. etc.) can be made to sound so right just with the four of 'em, too.

yeah!

you knew i wasn't a republican, right?

one of my favorite movie lines of all time was offered by don rickles to clint eastwood in kelly's heroes, in discussion of the possibility that an enemy soldier standing between them and robbery of a bank behind enemy lines might be corruptible:

"maybe he's a republican".

that just about sums it up from my point of view.

the fact that ted stevens is vituperatively insisting on appealing his seven felony corruption convictions without any question to the fact that he did, in fact, receive all the gifts and services outlined by the prosecution, says all that needs to be said about how far from reality some of these politicians have strayed. the only analogy i could possibly draw would be to diane wilkerson insisting she's not going to resign her massachusetts state senate committee chairpersonship and will indeed continue her re-election campaign notwithstanding the fbi videos of her stuffing cash up into her bra.

who are these people???

color me "not enrolled", and proud of it.

how i know i am not a democrat

in the past 24 hours i've had to "un-friend" a couple of social networking connections, as well as drop a lowell-related blog from my google reader. one was insisting that ted stevens' conviction somehow proves something amiss with sarah palin, and generally made sport of the entire state of alaska. another was trolling church websites that a local republican candidate may or may not attend and accusing him of a creationist bias under the guise of asking him the question.

i know why fervent democrats are so widely reviled and ridiculed--it's because many of the more outspoken ones are somewhat despicable and ridiculous. (yes, you, mr. barney frank, he of unregulated and failed fannie and freddie fame) much like many republicans in that way, now that i think of it.

count me out of the hyperbole and hysteria.

sapere aude.

tim thomas

the tim wakefield of the boston bruins, tim thomas last night flew past the two hour mark on his most recent stint of shutout hockey, and handed his teammates two very big w's on a tough west coast road trip.

here's a guy who was 30 years old before he ever saw a sheet of nhl ice, now backstopping one of the true cinderella stories of the nhl, doing it all to the flopping consternation of hockey progressives everywhere, who remain all enamored with butterflies and "technique".

i'll give you the essence of technique: shutout. shutout.

you go, tim!

the economics of heavy appliances

the dryer isn't drying these days, and a peek at the serial number implies 20 years on the job. under most circumstances, this would mean a happy trip to the nearest appliance store and a brand spanking new laundry setup. however, in these days of unpredictable market fluctuations, (not to mention employment), there's instead an appointment with the maytag repairman to see what might be possible to be done on the cheap.

there are those (remember bush's admonition to "just go shopping"?) who might suggest i'm a statistical correlation point for the impending depression, but i prefer to think of this as "buying local" (after all, there are no appliance manufacturing facilities around here) and taking the opportunity to vote with my wallet on what it is that this "new" economy will be about.

a very smart friend of mine has observed that americans have lost their resolve to be responsible, and i think conservation is one of those virtues that often goes insufficiently respected. i can still remember the philco refrigerator at my grandparent's house, and the momentous occasion of its retirement. there are likely a few more years in this kenmore setup of mine, and better i should make the most of them, rather than fritter away my entertainment-out budget on stuff that sits in the closet all day.

after all, conservation doesn't have to mean sacrifice.

where do you get your music?

i'm surprised no one has warned the fabulous meltones about the inevitable sales pitch they'll undoubtedly hear to put their stuff on amiestreet.com... (have you checked out the new beta user interface?)

so today's deal is the knees "sexual radio" for the bargain price of five bucks. it's hard to accept that it still remains such a radical concept: ask for $5, not $15, and sell three times as many. or six times as many, more likely, since it's a heck of a lot easier to take a flier on a band for $5 than it is to realize that $15 could get you takeout chinese with enough left over for lunch tomorrow. best part is that this stuff is GREAT, and if you really aren't sure, then download them rocking "sick of being stoned" for FREE (yes, it's free right now on amiestreet as a giveaway, and you really have no excuse not to head out there and grab a copy) and see for yourself.

"whoa-oh-ooo-oh"

yeah.

"getting drunk with the chambermaids".

one of the all time bestest lyrics EVAH.

and if it weren't for amiestreet, i never would have found it.

where do you get your news?

the guffaws from the campaign trail are coming too quickly and too furiously for an interested citizen to keep well up. this from fox news by way of craig ferguson's late late show by way of youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnE-YJ---GI

are you from edmonton?

a couple of decades ago i went to a wbl basketball game between the worcester counts and the calgary 88's. they were playing at the calgary saddledome while i was on a rocky mountain boondoggle and cross-country automobile trip, and i couldn't resist a chance to see the show. the counts being from nearby my home town, and woefully under-represented among the calgary supporters in the audience, i further couldn't resist standing and cheering whenever things went their way. at one point, after a particularly boisterous celebration in honor of a particularly entertaining worcester basket, an exasperated young kid seated in front of me turned to ask me "are you from edmonton?"

i had to laugh. basically, if you're from calgary, if anyone is putting grit in your gears, there's a decent chance they're from edmonton, so he wasn't being completely unreasonable, but it speaks most eloquently to the extremely narrow world view possessed by certain denizens of the princess province, that there can only be two possibilities in any given sporting contest.

so i thought of that kid again today while fielding an email from a dyed-in-the-blue-wool republican friend of mine. i'm rooting against george bush, so i must be a supporter of barney frank, or something like that. actually, i'm allowed to root against george bush now, since my friend acknowledged the other day that prior support for bush was possibly a mistake, as a result of his being interrogated at his bank for the source of the large deposit he was trying to make, and realizing that the patriot act wasn't so patriotic, after all. but any wavering in support for the maverick/savior john mccain is held equivalent to supporting terrorists and voter registration fraud (google acorn, if you haven't been reading the papers) and being a card-carrying evil democrat.

whuh?

i think teddy kennedy's opposition to buzzards bay wind farming is crassly hypocritical at best, and dangerously deluded as a matter of public policy. i think barney frank choked on a big one when he led the charge to keep fannie and freddie free from oversight, and he ought to be run from office for it. i always thought robert byrd was worse than strom thurmond, if only because his pork barreling outdid the once senior senator from south carolina's, though the illegitimate daughter by a black maid is pretty rich, and i'm not sure bobby byrd quite had an answer for that flourish.

but democrat? puh-leeze. they're crooks, same as the republican crooks. or, put another way, just because the yankees suck and the mets hate them doesn't make me want to spend my summers at shea stadium. i'm independent. (unenrolled, actually, as there's a set of crooks who've adopted that monicker so as to underhandedly acquire a few more party affiliates, but that's neither here nor there). i like ron paul best of all the candidates this year, and if i vote for obama, it'll mostly be because i am pretty clear on what a hash the republicans have made of things over the last eight years, and i wouldn't be able to sleep at night if i didn't--and you know i wouldn't be doing it because of his being oprah's bitch.

i lament that there are only two flavors of cola in the cola aisle, and all the more so that neither of them are made from real cane sugar. actually, i'm pretty clear on the fact that since there are only two flavors in the cola aisle, none of them will ever be made with real cane sugar. it's the penalty of our having sold out to one of the top brands. doesn't matter which.

sapere aude.

words to live by.

typhoid pollyanna

friends normally given to surly depression have been downright (relatively) euphoric lately, and i'm thinking, reading my drunken ramblings from last night, that, given the evidence, the condition is possibly contagious, one way or the other. (not saying who i think gave it to whom, i'm just sayin').

wouldn't that be nice--if you feel a little down, just rub vigorously up against someone happy and then again in the morning just to make sure it takes.

voila.

catch me while i'm still catching.

Shangri-Lowell

once again lowell is proven to be the absolutest bestest place on earth.

the evening started with two periods of the riverhawks 1st home tilt, against the hopelessly overmatched providence college friars, standing at 3-0 by the time i left, and it wouldn't surprise me if it ended 6-0 by the way they were playing. (two of the goals, pretty as a picture, were scored in the 2nd period right into the goal in front of which my buddy and i were sitting, having invested in the "club seats" option, which was worth every penny). suh-weeet!

so then, though buddy was convinced that 3rd period hockey was the way to go, it was on for me to mickey's and peter lavenders CD release party, replete with carl johnson, he of the inestimably marvelous SG slide no-pick finger lead that melts your knees like you never learned to stand in your life, and sir bob nash, he of the fabulously resplendent fabulous meltones, wonka studios, and, apparently, side man to everybody who is anybody in the lowell music scene, and scott riccuiti, he of the sublimely wonderful harmony vocals and 12 string wonder-accompaniment, once peter lavender's lead singer, but for tonight not no more, and another guy whose name they weren't kind enough to make clear enough known to the beer-addled music junkies in the audience, but who kept the whole thing together like glue on the kite string's crossbars with his steady bass line... and in the audience was none other than jen kearney, upon whose feet the world sits when she's not sitting in the audience giving her love and rapt attention to the boys in the band...

and it was good.

and it was so good.

and, and here's the best part--in the audience was as well another raven-curly-haired beauty who could have passed for jen's younger sister, complete with beautiful baby browns and dimples like you could get lost in, laughing at being mistook for a jen-you-wine relative of the jenster herself, except for she's no relation other than being a musician from lowell, meaning, of course, that she knows jen personally and can be ever-so-graciously flattered to be mistaken for a relative of, even while having the uniquely, sparkly, effervescently personal grace to be her own girl, nevertheless, and indulge the confused audience members their confusion...

and how beautiful a moment is it, when carl has just slayed the room with a slide guitar groove, and bob has brought the whole thing home with a flourish, and you're standing there in your cups and in your most sincere appreciation for the whole thing, and said raven-haired dimpled-smile'd beauty hands you a demo cd just for being there...

you put it on the moment you get home, of course...

so i've been home awhile now, and i have to say:

melanie driscoll has it. just like the rest of downtown lowell's finest have it. a great sound. a great voice. a great set of 3 songs, complete with melvern on the ukulele and magnus air organ, and bob nash on everything else...

i live in the greatest small city in the u s of a.

oh, and peter lavender? what a great time to be had by all. great music. i'm a lucky, lucky man.

saving you the trouble

i posted the link a few entries back, but the piece about the ukulele noir show is now up on pocketfullofhub.blogspot.com, and i know you're compelled to go there now that you know, so just follow the link, and enjoy!

nods to lars frederiksen

there was a moment during last night's communist lecture (nods to lars frederiksen and re billy bragg at the somerville theater last night) when billy exhorted the assembled faithful to maintain their faith. he acknowledged that the twin scourges of republicans and capitalists (apparently there are no greater evils in this world) would always be continually outside the door, but that cynicism lived on inside all of us. and it was against this that he would have us most assiduously guard. well, he received a reasonably enthusiastic response, which seemed to please both him and the crowd, but i found myself needed to sit on my hands and cogitate for a moment.

i'm not exactly a lefty. i tend to agree with their point of view on a lot of things, it's true, but i'm not really a lefty like so many others are lefties. (i'm certainly no righty, so no need to worry about me for that). when chuck lorre observed that he believed he was growing skeptical of cynicism, i think he nailed a higher truth to which i feel more of a calling. after all, lars' songs, as poetically as they can extol the seminality of mssr. bragg, never quite manage to be so idealistically cheery, and they continue to work wonders on me, so whatever could be possibly wrong with that?

i know why my favorite songwriters are my favorite songwriters. when they can toss off cheery ditties about the kirtland murder barn, or the sky falling over cheap korean monster movie scenery, they touch on a wellspring of "that's the way the world is" that goes beyond any cheap idealism for me. i'm quite sure my marriage ended because of nothing simpler than that. (it certainly couldn't be repaired by someone who would make a condition of erasing my inner cultural sniper). its not unknown for me to be acknowledged to be one of the most optimistic persons a person i meet has ever met, but knowing that the world is inherently good, and reconciling that with the job with which we are faced to clean it up to get there, takes a little more resolve than singing "we shall overcome". yeah? who? point 'em out to me. cuz there aren't so many people in the streets with hefty bags right now cleaning up to keep ahead of the pile. last time i checked the senate finance committee that looked the other way while fannie, freddie, and the "lions" of wall street made off with the treasury was comprised by crooks from BOTH sides of the aisle. we've met the enemy, people, and he is us. get up. stand up. stand up for your rights. but, please, spare me the communist lecture part, because those whom they would have us elect aren't a whole lot different in color on the inside than those they're running against. two sides of the same corrupt coin. "elect with caution", and, yeah, i mean you, all you fraudulent ACORN-ites ruining the best intentions of the rest. (sorry, but billions of federal funding is not what i'd care to waste on that kind of mickey mouse idealism).

there's a "long tail" out there with my name all over it. it derides idealism for how impotent it remains in the face of fascism, capitalism, and the undeniable coincident corruption of the political left to match the right, and it cynically expects to stand alone to face the tanks when all the idealists have quaked within their wishful boots and found themselves without the rancor that's sometimes necessary to take on the truly foul. it's what gets me up in the morning. and, if the idealists find their inner ghandi and are there in the end to also stand up for what's right, and my cynicism is proven to be found baseless, then, wouldn't that be a wonderful world?

until then, color me neither red nor blue, but just a bit purple with cynical frustration, and a bit put off that billy couldn't manage to point out the accident waiting to happen while he was giving us the better-minded communist lecture. *that's* the edge that gives him a place beside guthrie, not the utterly ridiculous "no power without accountability". (a noble sentiment, sure, but somebody's got to explain it to him that it simply doesn't work as a song).

little sammy was a punk rocker. you know his mother never understand him...

kirtland murder barn

in the spirit of the blended whimsy and noir that inhabits the writing of geniuses like costello (mcmanus) and zevon, craig robertson, a gifted songwriter from somerville, has penned some beauties. one of my instant favorites is the kirtland murder barn:

(from his website)

The family seemed so nice
Just a little withdrawn
It’s not the kind of place
Where this kind of thing goes on.
I’ve lived here most my life
On this little ten acre farm.
Now I live across the street from the Kirtland Murder Barn.

I ain’t never seen so many cops
Walking up and down my street
I ain’t never seen so many reporters
Looking for the beat
Scribbling in their notebooks
And talking in their microphones
As the cops dig up the bones in the Kirtland Murder Barn.

Snakes and ladders, Latter Day Saints.
From the Church down the road.
You is what you is and you ain’t what you ain’t,
But it ain’t no religion I know…

They arrested two people in Kansas
Two others in Bates City, Mo.
The cops found four bodies
Buried under the floor.
Me, I don’t understand,
The people come and go:
Pointing out their windows at the Kirtland Murder Barn.

the beauty of today's internet is that you can fall in love with a song, instantly find a performance recorded on youtube, and even a convenient how-to from the master himself on how to play it.

someday, somewhere, someone is going to be subjected to an excruciatingly painful and decidedly amateurish rendition of that song on a $35 hilo uke, and conclude that, even at that price, the guitar center in nashua was grievously overpaid. ironically, the guy singing and strumming along will only hear craig robertson's version in his own head, and the smile on his face will be of pure bliss.

please don't hate that guy.

small instruments, big trouble

so last night was one of those b movie script nights where, instead of noir, it became all white lights and goodness. here's how lucky am i:

i got to the somerville theater a little early, because the traffic down to alewife from shangri-lowell was almost non-existent, and there was a red line train waiting just for me to close its doors and trundle down the track to davis square. five minutes later, when i walked up to the theater to figure out where i needed to be so i could slide down the block to grab a bite somewhere and not have to worry about last-minuting it back to catch billy, an incredible thing happened. the poster said that the estimable and eminently reasonable mr. bragg had booked for a second night on the 22nd! voila! now, the guy at the ticket window couldn't help me out with an exchange, but a little quick retail scalping (face value--i'd never seek to profit from the genius of others) found me two extremely grateful individuals (after all the tickets were for the 12th row center) who would be oh so happy to assist me with the front part of the exchange. quick trip to the window to bag me the duckets for what's now tonight, and i was in serious ukulele noir business.

i've rarely been so just plain happy to be walking into a bar show that i can ever remember.

melvern taylor and his fabulous meltones were first up, and they were, well, headline fabulous. they treated us to a couple of new ones, which sound stellar, as well as the sparkling chestnuts we've all grown to know by heart and love the same way. "and if it's raining / we'll just go drinkin". (salisbury beach was the first number, and even my dinner companion knew the words to sing along, and how's that for wonderful). i'm also here to say that dave livingston's guitar melts butter like you've never heard, so if you've never heard, let me be the first to say that you're going to need to join the bus tour up to portsmouth on december 5th when it'll be all meltones all night long at the press room, not to be confused with lowell's old press club, but i digress. bob nash's harmonies and kickin little trap kit are not to be missed, either, nor is johnny grant's sublimely sweet upright bass and simmering jealousy of alice and hers, but that's where this whole story goes surreal and oh so much better than good.

see, melvern and the meltones' set was oh so much too short, though fully satisfying nonetheless, and the stage quickly was given way by evening mc craig robertson to ny's own bliss blood. her tangy little songs of mae west sentiments and jean harlow sizzle were a sweetly spare understatement that were only unfortunate to be standing to fill the spaciousness just recently created by the four piece wonder posse that are mel and the mels. the uke boys all loved her, which is why, i think, she loves 'em back as much as she do, and the time soon arrived for something that i will never be able to describe in words, and that you'd just have to see.

craig robertson, mastermind and double-breasted, fedora-topped ringmaster of the ukulele noir, ("small instruments, big trouble") came accompanied by his new (?) sidekick, alice, and a more pleasing sight and sound late night in a bar i think i shall never see. there are rumored to be pictures upcoming at pocketfullofhub.blogspot.com, but not until thursday at the earliest, so check back to see what you can see. (the proprietress of which was recording and photographing all night long, and i cannot wait to see and hear what she may have captured on her travels around the room). with luck, there'll be video of the kirtland murder barn, too. you rock, CR.

so how shangri-lowell lucky can a guy be--beer. burgers. more beer. a kitschy little ceramic (naked and anatomically correct) betty boop-ish figurine with magnetic detachable cap, coif and ukulele. (long story, but it's marvelous). more beer.

oh--and the best part?

billy bragg is tonight!

edited to correct the slogan: small instruments, big trouble

the post mortem

the entire pageant of game 2 has returned to me many times in my dreams--from beckett's being left out for too long, to timlin's getting put in far too soon--but the worst of it was living out the most excruciating parts of it all over again, out by out, sunday night in st petersburg. as i watched the sox try to claw home a run without being able to get a hit, (is or is not dustin pedroia the most amazingly tenacious hitter you have ever seen?), it was joe madden's incessant trips to the mound, to fetch yet more relief pitchers for each and every successively unsuccessful sox hopeful traipsing to the plate, that illuminated for me most vividly the baseball god/ghost in the machine.

lefty/righty matchup gamesmanship is a time-honored baseball tradition. the object is to see what gets worn out first: your bullpen, the other guys, or one of your two benches of wanna-be hitters. in this case, joe madden showed up to the party with all the favors. and he left the park, both in game 2, and then again in game 7, having used exactly as many pitchers as he had faith to throw, while terry was still spitting sunflower husks onto the dugout floor and ruing, i'm sure, his dearth of potential responses. or would that be his absence of even trying one?

yup, tito, i did see what a bum byrd really is, and why he couldn't be trusted to make an appearance in game 2. and i endured along with all of red sox nation the ultimate plate futility that inexplicably became jacoby ellsbury, so i know why coco was necessary at the top of the order. but, cmon, you have your leadoff guy flailing worthless bunt attempts while he's batting almost .400 for the series, and the dust was never even brushed off casey's very creditable bat all through the lefty/righty wars, right up to and including jd drew's cataclysmic whiff against the left-handed rookie in the 8th. (and why did the playoff roster include essentially no right handed pinch hitters?) i'm sure you had your reasons for all of it, but it just doesn't feel right when the other team is allowed to win after firing off every single round of their useful ammo, while some of your best guns were still sitting idle in their holsters.

i honestly believed tampa to be the better team, but they proved beatable in the end, and we simply failed to beat them. jeff bailey would have been a great bat to have had down the final stretch of outs, but he was left home. jonathan papelbon would have been a great arm to have had on the mound for more than 1 1/3 innings in the key game of the series, but he was being saved for the moment that never came. joe madden threw everything he had at the sox--literally--and he gets full marks for doing whatever had to be done to win--not once, but twice.

go bruins!!!

ukulele noir, or the unavoidable accident waiting to happen

tonight in davis square two of my musical heroes simultaneously take stages across the street from one another, and i'm caught between my rock and the hardest place.

i've never yet been to see ukulele noir (i hear only great things) but if there's a melvern taylor sighting to be had, let alone a set, then you know such a thing would be high on my list of life priorities regardless of the quality of the buzz. and yet...

billy bragg plays the somerville theater tonight, and it's not something i can forgive myself to miss. among the glories i'm anticipating (without expecting) is thinking i might be sharing the audience with yoni gordon, and maybe even the goods, ("i dreamed i saw billy bragg last night, standing on the stage"), and singing along fervently with every mothers son there "accident waiting to happen".

maybe, if i'm lucky, there'll be a late encore set at johnny d's i can slide into after billy's show... maybe, if there's a musical god up in heaven, somebody at the theater will tell billy what's going on across the street, and we'll all be there.

i cannot wait.

more cowbell NOT

the beginnings of the cultural catchphrase can be found here, in case you missed it. (and check out jimmy fallon losing it throughout the entire sketch, which is almost as funny as ferrell and walken taking the whole thing over the top, though i, as usual, digress...)

in tampa, the cowbell has become their rally monkey--their shipping up to boston, sweet caroline and dirty water all rolled into one. i suppose it would be easy to make all sorts of associations and judgments based on that, but the short and most-charitable version is to say that they're all still learning down there. the number of scalpers willing to take less than face value in front of the park before the game says all that needs to be said about that. (one particularly drunk and boisterous older fan--older than me if you can believe that--had some challenging things to say about my mike lowell jersey--thank you, sweet little miss a--and my outspoken demeanor in the stands, the key to diffusing of which was to laugh, turn and point to the rows of empty seats around us, and to suggest I wasn't costing a single tampa-ite their chance to shout me down, making the "this is OUR house" BS quite a bit comical, not to mention nothing like i've had to endure in yankee stadium, which is completely to tampa's--st pete's actually--credit, and sufficient reason to laugh and offer to buy him a beer if he felt that strongly about it. he was actually quite sociable after that, and charitable to me upon the final out, which was nice).

but, that being said, the good news for florida baseball is that the $20 face value of the tickets i was enjoying was just the right price point for families to have brought their very young children to the game, and it couldn't help but remind me of 1967. (evan longoria playing the part of yaz, and, i hate to say it, garza longborg). it made me hopeful that some day 40 years from now a kid would be standing in some ballpark somewhere across the country and leaning forward to whisper in the ear of the sleepy 7 year old in front of him to "stand up and take a look, because this is going to be the last out of a very memorable game, and you'll want to remember seeing it", and he might even in that moment think of me. sure enough, as much as it pained me and my lowell spinners cap to know it would happen, and have to see it, there was the ball in iwamura's glove (they love yelling aKEE - aKEE down there) and a pig pile of ecstatic kids on their way to the world series all over the infield, and a quite sensibly satisfied foam finger waver going home with a big world series smile on this face.

mine too.

32

the frost adorning the mills this morning is beautiful, and the sky provides the perfect mirror image, as if it were all laid out, just to see.

shorter days and the chill of a harder season have never daunted me. there's a purity to the cold that conquers dust, pollen and the entire insect kingdom, and it never fails to invigorate. i'll soon admonish countless woebegotten climactic misfits for their disrespect of it, and often over the comings weeks and months, and wonder why, once again, such a large swath of the human race would rather live in discomfort and denial instead of simply gearing up to enjoy it. hats, gloves, jackets and layers aren't inconveniences to me, they're celebrations of a brisker time.

on my to-do list for this winter will be the discovery of the nearest-by skating pond. it occurs to me, that in a perfect world, the converted mill space music barn to house my retirement bar will have, right out the back door, a little rink just for the purpose. yeah, yeah, legal reasons and idiots breaking their skulls make 100% of this dream impractical, but a dream is a dream, and that's part of mine. canadians are the lucky ones about that, that's for sure.

i miss the water valley saloon...

ya gotta buy a ticket

you know my favorite joke--the one about the pious guy who prayed every morning to win the lottery so he could do good charitable things with the money, only to find himself, frustrated, at the pearly gates without ever having had the chance... ("why, god, didn't you let me win?" "you know, kid, the least you could have done was buy a ticket").

well, in the interest of always giving the supreme being the benefit of a fighting chance, i've got my game 7 ticket all nailed down for tampa on sunday. yeah, josh has to come through for us on saturday, but that's what lotteries are all about--long odds, and big payoffs. the flight would be on me, of course, as would the $8 beers of the world at tropicana, (ya gotta respect a team that serves real beer at their ballpark), but it's a small price to pay for a shot at a magic moment.

how many people you think will be honest enough to admit they gave up on the sox last night and left fenway before the bottom of the seventh? you saw them doing it. and it wasn't even the greatest postseason comeback in history--only the second greatest postseason comeback in history--though i'm curious to find out if the one that was from more than 7 runs down took longer than 3 innings to complete. it was for the ages, and as improbable as it was, it's still no reason to expect they'll be able to escape tampa with the pennant.

we don't watch because they *have* to win, or even because they *might* win--we watch because we love our team. i'll only be disappointed if i don't see pap for more than an inning and change. it's for all the marbles.

a little lowell for ya

didja see into whose arms youk jumped after crossing the plate in tonight's 9th? and then who else was next over to join the party?

spinners rule. youk, jed and pap, not forgetting dustin and tonight's winning pitcher, justin, either.

riddle me this

seeing pap in the 7th is both tito's best excuse, as well as his most damning admission.

when the second game was tied in the 11th, terry chose to send his best pitcher to the showers rather than imagine to use him beyond the usual 9th inning / max 1 1/3. so very conventional, and so very lost...

so here it is game 5, 7th inning, backs against the wall, and delcarmen walking everyone in sight. sure, bring in your best gun. it's the right choice. it's all this team allows a manager to do. (cmon, manny d--2 leadoff walks???)

so, what i want to know is--why is pap the right choice tonight when things are all but lost, but not last saturday when there was still something to play for?

like i said at the time, that 12th inning is going to be the series, and the franconaman spit the bit. i also said there's no shame on him for that, or for this season for that matter, because it's a major miracle the boys were able to be made to make it this far. but lost is lost, and so we will be if not for major miracles.

dubya and me

one of the most powerful passages from michael moore's roger and me was his extended interview with the colorful woman who was raising and butchering rabbits for food. priceless stuff.

it occurs to me after reading the squirrel story in today's sun that we've come perilously far from reality when we're arresting folks for animal cruelty for the very same things that we may very well be coming to accept as part of the reality of our nascent depression. folks gotta eat. it's not like the guy took down an endangered species. i agree it's shocking, but, geez, where do we all think our food comes from? or is it just ok if we don't actually have to witness what goes on in our slaughterhouses?

if it was in his own back yard, i honestly don't see the grounds for arrest.

the sun is back

for weeks i've been feeling a vague disquiet over my morning cheerios. everything seemed to be in its usual place, and yet... and yet... something wasn't quite right... today i'm pleased to say that the sun is back. from today's page 3:

lowell--police say a lowell man is facing charges after admitting to police that he chased and caught a squirrel in the backyard of his ... home, bashed it to death against a tree, and then began cooking it with a torch, police said.

now we could be critical of bob mills' grammar (police say..., police said) but we certainly can't fault him for knowing a sensational story when he writes one. more pearls:

police were called ... yesterday at 3:36 p.m., after someone called police [c'mon, bob, you gotta work on your prose, man--police were called... after someone called police--ouch] and reported that a man was killing a squirrel with a blowtorch, police said. officers said they arrived and found [the man] in his backyard, with a dead squirrel in a makeshift fireplace. [he] told police the caller was wrong. he said he had chased and caught the squirrel himself, then swung it by its tail, smashing it against a tree until it was dead, police said. he then began cooking the squirrel with a blowtorch, because he planned to eat it, police said.

hopefully bob will get the hang of pulp prose and cut down on the "police said" bits, but as long as he's got material like this with which to work, he'll get no serious complaints from me.

the sun is back!

but i play one on tv...

just to clarify, for those writing in about the sordid politics of certain actors, and also for those not writing in but confused about my point:

i'm not trying to guess the character of gary cooper or any of the other guys i listed for that matter. i'd like to think gary was a good guy, but how would i know. what i do know is that the character he played in high noon (opposite grace kelly, and there hasn't been a finer heroine in film before or since) was an archetype and a paragon.

"i've got to. that's the whole thing".

another thought

another thought that occurs to me as i watch more of the same is that the sox, in 17 innings so far at fenway this series, have managed a grand total of 2 runs. yeah, a bullpen would be nice, but lets be honest here--the pen could be stellar and they still wouldn't be winning these games.

coco just ain't it. jd drew may have been in june, but ain't been before or since. the captain hasn't been it for a year. kotsay ought to be a #9 hitter on a championship club. that's potentially four out of the 9 spots in the lineup all dead... combine that with jacoby's shameful futility, jed's having hit his wall, and big papi being painfully incapable of hitting the green one to save his life these days, and you have a lineup of three--dustin and youk and jason bay--trying to take on the other team all by themselves. not a pretty picture.

dont' get me wrong, i love wake despite (because of?) all the homers he gives up, and jacoby and jed for all their troubles at the plate. they'll turn it around. this would just seem not to be the year...

ooof... yet another multi-walk inning by a sox reliever... i can only imagine where this game is going to end up.

the american way

craig ferguson used an example the other day of the polish trade union, solidarity, using an image of gary cooper holding a ballot as a rallying icon for their fledgling democracy. interesting choice, and, in my opinion, a very good one: laconic. humble. forthright and upright.

so, contemplating the choices around the dial as alternatives to enduring the long, slow decline of the sox' postseason hopes against a team that damn for sure has their number, (you can scan the channel lineup in tivo without changing the channel or losing the picture or audio from the game, so don't think i'm giving up on 'em yet), my first encounter is with a new show on abc called "the mentalist". it would appear this new offering is about an arrogant cop who is smarter than everybody else, and both knows it and shows it. (his super power is being a better con man than the bad guys). this is as opposed to fox' big established hit, house, which is about an arrogant doctor who is both smarter than everybody else, and both knows it and shows it. it seems to be the new trend in american movie and tv characters--hyper-competent individuals whose abilities are so great that they serve to offset such deep character flaws as would have any normal human banished from the proverbial island. (and aren't all the favorite reality show characters the arrogant ones, too?)

where have you gone, gary cooper?

just like our sports stars nowadays, the vogue for all our popular characters is to talk trash but be so good at whatever it is that they do that it cancels out (just barely) their obnoxiousness. moral abiguity is ok, whether it's past convictions for fraud like with our mentalist friend, or latent addictions to painkillers or whatever else might be procured by means both devious and manipulative at the hospital where the doc works. no wonder our presidential candidates want to talk scandal--apparently it's the only way we've learned to respect people.

but it didn't used to be this way. at one time in our american past, our heros were paragons. they were kind to children and puppies and old people alike. they spoke softly, regardless of the size of their stick, and they preferred not to win unless it was done right, and without rancor or bitterness against the odds or their foes. cooper's marshall will kane. bogey's rick blaine. (though harry morgan has always been my favorite). alan ladd's shane. john wayne's just about anybody.

what's happened to us?

the difference

just ask joe torre how its different being in la without a bullpen, and i bet you'll hear something similar to what you'll be hearing from the franconaman this morning. (guess we know from byrd last night why tito kept him out of the close one on saturday). when a good team smells your blood in the water, it's rarely pretty.

i keep thinking back how joe madden had every arm of his but one in saturday's epic, and just that many bats, too. i kept thinking during the game, what is he doing, does he think this game is the entire series right here? i'm absolutely convinced this morning that such will be the difference one way or the other. francona kept his kitchen sink moored to the backsplash, while his opposite was going to rip out every one in the building until he found one could hold water. it could very well have gone the other way, and we'd all be calling joe m a twitch. this morning, i'm thinking, here we have at least one man who realizes just what it takes (i.e. everything) to win this time of year.

so, terry, down 2 games to 1 and needing to take game 4 in your home park, who da man?

if the sox pull this off, wake's gonna be the difference. as it should be.

being

one of the most impressive box score lines there can possibly be has to be the one manny ramirez is working on tonight: 1 at bat, 1 hit, 1 rbi. of course, he's been to the plate more than once, but in the first with one out and furcal on second, he got started with an intentional base on balls. in the 3rd with one out and nobody on, he got what isn't officially recorded as an intentional base on balls, but, with manny, it's hard to know if any walk isn't precisely because the pitcher just refuses to leave anything anywhere near the plate. in the fifth, with two guys on and nobody out, blanton couldn't do anything but pitch to him, and, personally, i think joe is to be given credit for manny's only being able to manage an rbi single. in the sixth, with guys on second and third with one out, (that infamous open first base again), manny got his second intentional pass. victorino just tied it again, but manny's up next inning, so you know that's bound to change.

postscript: edited to add that it could have been two on with no outs, or even one on with one out, but having ethier ground into that double play left manny with nothing but empty bases for his nightcapping double into the gap. (so, joe, care to tell us why andre wasn't in the cleanup spot?) it's a team sport, for sure.

my connection

i've offended more than one friend by referring to them as such, which is a hard thing both to figure and to face. (what else is more than that???) unfortunately for them, but apropos of me, i still find opportunity to brag on "my friend so-and-so", and will apparently continue to do so as long as i have friends to which to refer. (i'm so done with whatever was once thought of as to be more than that).

however, with respect to all that they mean to me, and in genuflection to all that they are to me, i'm also caught in the tender trap of crediting them with all the more that they are than that, too. (apparently it's worse to be my friend the such-and-such than just my friend). but, once again tonight, i find that i have no choice...

i have a connection. true, a connection who contemplated referring to me as "my such-and-such, the philistine" while in the process of finding a reliable supplier, but a connection nonetheless. and who am i to deny the truth and full credit for that?

my friend, my connection. real coca cola. cane sugar. glass bottles. as many cases as i can use.

now THAT is friendship.

kudos to mr browne

back around christmas '76, queen released "a day at the races" at a list price of $7.98. i remember for several reasons, including every penny of the hardship that $7.98 posed to your average high school student at the time, but it was most remarkable for how the ubiquitous "they" at the record company (elektra) were coldly figuring that $6.98 just wouldn't be enough anymore. they were taking it out on the fans of one of their most popular acts, ostensibly and crassly and calculatedly for the recent success of "a night at the opera", and, yes, truly, we were compelled to pay whatever it took. (coincidentally i still have all my old queen vinyl, and, yes, i still love every track).

the opportunity cost, however, is incalculable.

in those days, and precisely because of that $5.98 -> $6.98 -> $7.98 thing, there were an extremely limited number of recording artists i had been able to afford to embrace. the record collection still stands testimony to the power of little feat, for they, by virtue of their touring with folks like jackson browne and linda ronstadt, and creating music as a collaborative endeavor between artists, artists' friends, and audience, had exposed me to some of my best-loved life's music, and given me the chance to buy things like jackson browne's debut album, not entitled "saturate before using". (i still aver that jesse davis' solo on doctor my eyes is the single greatest guitar solo of all time). but i can't even begin to imagine all the music i missed for having been out of cash before i could even open my ears and my mind to more. (for example, i discovered joni mitchell most certainly not when i should have, but, rather, only after learning years after the fact that she had been one of the staples on heavy rotation on the led zeppelin tour bus, and coincidentally having a few loose dollars in my pocket while in a used record store somewhere on mass ave in cambridge). but how much else did i miss???

this past week i had opportunity not to miss jackson browne's new collection on amiestreet. i was there not least reason for which because a dollar goes an awfully long way when songs can be had for far less than one. i added it up the other day (one of those divorce things, when they want to know on the form how much you spend each week for "entertainment") and discovered something else not very surprising: i spent more money on recorded music this past year than in any other previous. and more on concerts, too. and i know why.

the only duds i've experienced this year, either recorded or live in concert, have been at the behest of others. nothing i've purchased has been anything other than wonderful, and no show i've made effort to seek out and attend based on those purchases has been anything other than memorable, too. these others on whose behest i was disappointed, not by coincidence, are still experiencing their music at full list price, and paying through the nose for noissome mediocrity. me, downloading stuff i've never heard of before for next to nothing on amiestreet, have discovered beauties too numerous to mention. and i mention one--jackson browne--by name because he draws the full circle from 1972 to the present. (has it really been 36 years???)

maybe i like "time the conqueror" so much because clyde's beard is grey to give mine a run for its money, and his glasses reflect more than just the vagaries of age. maybe i like "time the conqueror" because the harmonies and rhythms and tones are as familiar as the tracks are fresh and new. maybe i like "time the conqueror" because it embraces something that is so elemental and so purely true: music needs to be as free as it can be. i'll be honest, i dropped off the list of jackson's sycophants after "i'm alive", and not because i didn't adore that record. maybe i'll go out to find "looking east" and "the naked ride home"... but, i think, i'll just wait until they come to find me.

when it's shared, it finds its way into our ears and our idle thoughts, and we hum and we tap and we sing along to every new lyric that sparks our imagination. when it's whatever the new equivalent of $7.98 and locked behind the terrified cage of drm, it languishes and dies a slow death alone. "time the conqueror" has found me, and i couldn't be happier.

"off of wonderland" still reigns. "time the conqueror" isn't the title track for nothing. "going down to cuba" delights. there'll be more. i'm still listening.

cuz i can't resist

i'm not faulting tito because this is a team of sufficient flaws to have missed the playoffs under most other management. no worries. however:

we all saw how beckett was getting rocked. madden took his whipping boy out. josh shouldn't have been there in the first place to put those two guys on in the fifth. (and it wasn't like those were cheap hits, either). that alone would have given the sox the game. however:

the rays spent their pen trying to hold off the olde towne team in the 5th, 6th and 7th, and more should have been done to exploit the fact that they only had two arms left in their pen after wheeler did his three, and both of them were not their best, to say the least. so why doesn't pap take the mound after 1 1/3 and try to wear them out?. even letting that go, and letting timlin do his best, it still doesn't answer the question as to why, when it was easily observed that timlin didn't have his best, that there wasn't more effort made to find a good matchup out of all those arms on the sox bench, and do whatever it took to get the outs needed to survive that last rally. no question the matchups favored the sox the whole rest of the way. (which is another nod to tito's managing, but, hey, you still have to do everything you can to win.

congrats to the rays, because that win was THE ONE. go back to boston down 2-0, and it's over. go back 1-1, and you get your chance to steal one and bring it home again, and anything can happen. either way you look at it, it's a tough one not to win.

i guess the franconaman doesn't have the faith in byrd to put him out there like conventional wisdom might have you try. i'm not saying tito doesn't know better than we do, but it sure would have been nice to sneak out of tampa with 2 wins instead of one...

greedy, yeah.

looking forward to wake on tuesday!!!

ya gotta love hockey

yeah, the sox are on (how 'bout that dustin pedroia) but it's between innings and a guy has to check out the highlights from around the nhl.

over the years the demographics have been proven in various ways, but nowhere more eloquently than in philadelphia tonight: hockey fans, among fans of all major north american sports, are perennially the highest educated and most discerning. fox news called it a "mixed reaction", but you can tell me what you think after watching and listening here.

in the morning i'm gonna shake my philadelphian teammate's hand and tell him that, for all there is to be annoyed about 'em, and though they continue to be, in my humble opinion, some of the most boorish and objectionable in all of sports fandom, tonight the boo-birds weren't wrong.

i told you, hockey mom my ass.

the 7-8-9 thrill ride

"he's got like 45 pitches--i don't know how varitek can give him signs"

so spake rays elder statesman and home run king carlos pena about his and his lineup-mates' futility to hit matsuzaka on things like 3-0 counts (not to mention with bases walked loaded or upon any number of other opportunities) over the first 6+ innings of last night's game.

i have to scratch my head, too. here's a nibbler who coincidentally sports the lowest season batting average against him of all the pitchers in the park, but, honestly, how does he do it? i have no idea, and i suppose i really don't care. scratch me up another 2-out rbi, jed, and buckle me in for the theme park thrill ride which will undoubtedly be the standard sox' 7th, 8th and 9th innings throughout the rest of these playoffs. (pap didn't get the scary part of the rays' order last night--you know it won't be so easy next time).

it's honestly a lot more exciting when you know you have to do it without a pen.

an open letter to fox sports

dear sirs:

i'm disgusted to once again learn that we're all to be cursed with tim mccarver doing the "color" work on the fox baseball playoff telecasts. it's getting to the point where i can't even stand to hear joe buck's voice on any other telecasts because it's so closely related to mccarver's in my subconscious. makes me want to jam shish kebab skewers into my ears. his commentary is inane, and so often inaccurate that it's an even more effective drinking game than counting the number of times sarah palin says "maverick". (oh, tina fey, you nailed that one solid last weekend).

please, please, PLEASE, for my liver's sake, (too late for tim's, as his semi-coherent alcoholic's slurrings are as close to funny as something so very sad can possibly be), have mercy on us and find someone else to do it next year. please?

write it down

some time last spring while the rays were going on their first serious tear of the season, i told a few people that i was convinced they were for real, that they wouldn't fade, and that the sox and yanks could very likely be lucky to be playing for 2nd place in the east. i took the heat for the opinion at the time, and i stuck with it even during that last day before the all star break when the sox took their last whiff of first place over the break. but i didn't write it down.

closest thing i found here was something complimentary on august 11th. my boss knows i picked tampa (he's been trying to contradict me all season) but i'm afraid all that's going to do is get me laid off that much faster during the upcoming economic holocaust. (and who listens to athletics fans, anyway). honest, i knew these guys were for real, and now we all get to find out how real during the big al pennant series starting tonight.

good news is no west coast sleep-killers, nor any lou pinella's to incite us to violence. (having to listen to tim mccarver takes good care of that all by itself, tyvm). bad news is that we're going to be seeing a lot of our bullpen before it's over. i really hope i'm ready.

GO SOX!

a rolicking good time

1-0
1-1
2-1
2-2
2-3
3-3
4-3
4-4
5-4

bruins win!

hockey mom my ass

the flyers have invited governor palin to drop the puck for their first home game and in celebration of their local "hockey mom" contest, and it looks like sarah's getting some pretty amazing mileage out of her self-aggrandizing hockey mom boast. what a crock.

just so we're clear: legendsofhockey.net lists nine players born in alaska with nhl ties, and four of them have never played more than 10 nhl games in their entire lifetimes. that's five real players ALL TIME. even a tiny little blue state like massachusetts lists over 150, and more than a few hall of famers. if you want to find something comparable to alaska's output, try latvia, and then subtract 25%. (they've got 12). england doesn't even have ice, and they found a way to produce 17. even kazakhstan has sent five for crying out loud.

hockey moms raise hockey players. i have no idea what else she's on about, because it can't possibly be real hockey.

hockey hockey hockey!

2 hours and counting down towards the first face-off of the 2008-09 boston bruins season.

just watched the wings hoist last year's stanley cup banner, and i'm READY.

patience

it occurs to me that the overwhelming temptation in a crisis is to ACT--either that, or feel paralyzed and shamed that you can't or won't. yet, as i've discovered on the soccer field and elsewhere, the very act of acting in too much haste can more or less guarantee disaster in and of itself. shoot NOW! (yet probably miss...) sell everything! (and guarantee to miss the start of the up-turn). bail out the banks! (and mislay trust right into the hands of those who caused the crisis in the first place).

it's all the same.

no doubt we're in for a bumpy ride. the more we panic and clutch our purse-strings to our chests, the fewer dollars will be there for everyone else to make their living, thus causing them to clutch theirs, thus starving us of ours, and so it will go. it went that way once before, you remember, and just like iraq is vietnam all over again, this depression is likely to ensure that dubya is forever known as herbert jr., only i'm quite sure that's a bit unfair to hoover, as he didn't have the benefit of history to ignore while ruining his iteration of this last best hope of earth. (plenty of blame for the both party party congresses, too, so this isn't intended to be a partisan rant).

a friend pointed out the thread of irresponsibility that runs through all of our problems today, and he isn't wrong. the people shouldn't have signed those mortgages. the banks shouldn't have sold them. the congress shouldn't have eliminated all oversight, and the president shouldn't have sucked hundreds of billions into the void that is our global policy of belligerence and bullying while he should have been using it to do his nation-building closer to home. fools we all are, and fools we will remain unless we rediscover our patriotism, and our patience.

the thirties handbook

i'm thinking all of us ought to be asking our parents and grandparents the kinds of things folks did to survive the 30's. first person to get their version published gets a wheelbarrow full of cash with which to buy a bag of groceries... (the good news being that such a wheelbarrow would be equally useful for paying off a mortgage). we all needed to be debt free, right?

:-)

more down by the old mill stream

just as an aside, because i looked it up--tell taylor wasn't even 35 when he wrote "down by the old mill stream" (in 1910) but he already had nostalgia pegged pretty good. which is neither here nor there, since i barely know the chorus and i couldn't sing it through even if i wanted... but it's the kind of thing that comes to me when i'm walking...

so, reconnecting with 30 years of who i used to be isn't a quick job, i must say. last night before the ball game i was still feeling the rough edges of a scratchy throat and not enough sleep from the weekend, and i was marveling at the feeling we can get from certain people. it isn't even their kind gestures and remarkable thoughtfulness that gets us first. it's a feeling of sympatico that's not so much attached to who they are, as it is embedded in our hearts whenever they're around. i got it from more than one high school classmate over the weekend in a way that reminded me that it's always been there, and, yet, i'm also confronted with the fact that, as is also the case with most of them, i never did anything about it.

did you know that bill lee's career record against the yankees is 12-5? (my favorite quote of his, after his coining of the nickname "the gerbil" for don zimmer, is: "hitters are neanderthals. pitchers are smarter than hitters--except for roger clemens").

i think i need to add a spaceman jersey to my collection of sox memorabilia.

jackson

the j's are all around these days. today on amie street i discovered the latest from jackson browne, and it's wonderful. "off of wonderland" is my favorite so far, but you know how these things go.

jed!

the lowell spinners have been on prominent display this season and post-season, and none more so than jon lester and jed lowrie last night. the ace and the ace shortstop of the future are here today, and they look GREAT.

we've just been robbed

no question the chicken little rantings of the bail-me-out-please set are a crock, as proven by the panicked selling gripping the world today despite the promise of hundreds of billions in payoffs to those who would otherwise have us believe they can save us from the collapse, if only we'd hand over all our lunch money for a decade up front.

better to have everything fall over and start fresh than get doubly screwed this way, i think.

jacoby!

so far (while i'm writing this) he's 6 for 12, with 2 runs, 5 rbi, and 3 stolen bases in 2 and a half games, not to mention a HUGE game-saving catch. mvp is being written all over this performance.

the venice of america

a few moments ago i was walking past one of my favorite canalways here in downtown lowell, and i had the pleasure of encountering yet another little piece of my once-lost self while thinking about everywhere i'd been in the last 24 hours. (i love my town).

high school reunions are fascinating things, as are the people you rediscover while attending them. one thing i found remarkable about my most recent is how varied the effects of time have been on the various attendees. some are remarkably unchanged. others quite a bit in a very positive way. a few aren't as lucky on that score on the one hand, but make up for all of that with a sparkle. all good things.

one i could say happily demonstrates all of the above found me early in the evening, and exuded a friendly warmth that compelled memory to try to recall everything possible about her. through coincidence of alphabet, we had shared a home room for six years of our first seventeen, and even for 15 minutes a day, five days a week, there's both much you don't know, but, then again, much that you do, about a person. and then, in an instant marveling at the first leaves of autumn swirling in a languid canal, you realize that there must be, conversely, some things that they, too, might know about you.

to digress for a moment, i should add that a large percentage of us aging pre-computer generation present for the party had been trading facebook "friend" links in the weeks leading up to the event. i was flattered most that i had been the very first "friend" added by this particular classmate, but what she's written on my "wall" today makes it all the very much more so. no, nothing unseemly, (she's married, raising two young children, and meaning absolutely nothing untoward about it), but something very sweet and thoughtful: she said i hadn't lost a bit of my warmth and good nature. the fact that such a thing could surprise me likely says a lot about me, too, but the fact that she'd choose those two particular adjectives out of all those possible has to make a person think about why.

the moment of clarity along the canal was to realize that she had never known me to be anything but that. she knew me before beer. (i didn't start that until college). she knew me before girls. (for one example, i didn't do anything more than shake hands with my prom date--who was also at the reunion, by the way, giving both of us a wonderful chance to laugh both with and at our younger selves--which is pretty funny considering what else i started in college). she knew me when i wasn't being anything but myself. and that's the only person she knows. sometimes we forget...

a lot of people who know me now might rightly point out that whatever warmth and good nature i possess is frequently hidden behind the various scourges of beer and women and others of my worst bits. true enough, and it takes good friends to point that out. (thank you always). but for tonight, and seemingly whenever i'm walking amidst the venice of america, i realize that it's ok, because i am who s. knows i am.

it's nice to rediscover you have such a good friend.

the manny line

2 k's, (1 swinging, 1 looking), then a home run, followed by a walk and an rbi single--2 for 4 with 2 runs and 2 rbi. 2 dingers in 2 games. just manny being manny.

your manny-ball iq

which of the following is least likely to have appeared on manny ramirez' box score line during tonight's dodgers/cub game:

grounded into double play
base on balls
infield hit
home run
strike out

yeah, you know it's a trick question if i'm asking, but, yes, each one of the options is, in order, the result of each of manny's five at-bats tonight, and, yes, it's true, manuel aristides ramirez himself outran an infield ground ball to first base.

it's worth mentioning that the other four are such classic manny at-bats, that the other way to have asked this question would have been to list the first four and then to ask respondents to predict the outcome of manny's fifth trip to the plate. as god is my witness, after his first four, i started to write this exact post because i absolutely knew that a strikeout had to be next to complete the classic manny set. kinda like hitting for the cycle, only manny-style.

gidp, bb, hr, k. classic. the infield hit--that's just gravy because you never know with manny.

i will LOVE to see the dodgers make it all the way to the series, if for no better reason than to watch manny each and every time he comes to the plate.

go sox!

something else i don't get

parents of female athletes confuse the heck out of me. on the one hand, they're encouraging non-traditional activity, which is good, and supporting their daughters' quest for confidence and accomplishment, which is double plus good. (the world misses eric arthur blair). on the other hand, they seem to spend every free moment from that decision onward undercutting their daughters' potential by presuming fragility and lack of capability at every turn.

yesterday evening it rained during practice. i had been promising the eager girl scouts a primer on slide tackling at our first availability of wet grass, and the day had arrived. when rewarding their renewed clamor for a lesson with a pleased-as-punch "YES!", i was interrupted by one of those well-meaning soccer dads also helping out with the "coaching", (he's never played, so it's hard to call what he can do "coaching", but i, as i always do, digress), that he strongly advised against it as a very bad idea. too much of a chance they'll get hurt.

what???

here's the thing: he's right--slide tackling is perhaps the single most dangerous thing you can do on a soccer field, close ahead of 50/50 headers and well beyond all the other tactical choices. but, to me, that means it's the single most important lesson i have to teach these 11 year olds this year, because they're old enough now to understand it, choose on the field when to use it, and, most importantly, accomplish it in a safe and effective manner. if i don't, i'm sending them out there ill-prepared for what they need to do. because, and you have to understand this, too--slide tackling is the weapon in the arsenal that increasingly determines the difference between competing and not, and i'm not suggesting there's any premium to be put on *winning*, per se, but there's absolutely a premium to be put on *competing*, and, for that, these young women will need all their resourcefulness and skill, including slide tackling.

so i let him fret and wring his hands while i ran them through the concepts:

1) it's dangerous, so it must be done right, or not at all.
2) because of the danger, referees will card and send off players who fail to do it right.
3) to be right, it's never done head-on and studs-up, nor EVER from behind.
4) to be effective, the object is NEVER to produce contact with the player, OR the ball for that matter--but to slide yourself into a position where the ball comes into contact with YOU.

simple.

then i dribbled the ball so that they could each, one time, slide in to stop me. out of the 10, every single one of them got down on the ground effectively, and only two didn't time it perfectly to steal the ball. eight out of ten executed a picture-perfect slide tackle, and the other two were so close that you have to consider it a 100% success for their very first time. no muss, no fuss, and no injuries. maybe a little laundry, but, hey, that's what soccer is about. it's a contact sport.

somebody ought to tell these parents, so they're not confused about it.

random thoughts

the complete total of mortgages known to be "troubled" is between $100B and $200B. where does the $700-800 figure come from?

to explain the disparity, "they" tell us that the issue isn't defaults as much as liquidity for the rest of the economy. (businesses and would-be homeowners need money to be lent). so, if this is truly an issue of liquidity, and instead of "bailing out" or re-capitalizing the banks that were so inept to have failed, why doesn't anyone consider putting the capital into the banks who haven't failed, as a reward for being good bankers? (sure would seem a better taxpayer investment that way, wouldn't it?)

bottom line, everyone right down to the liberal press is trying to convince us that what happens on wall street affects us on "main street". well, i'm one of those with something to lose, yet i still don't see the "main street" logic at all. the solid majority of people in this country aren't invested in, or exposed to, the economic cancer on wall street. yeah, it'll be tough when some jobs get lost, but their real problems begin with overpriced real estate and having to pay too much to keep a roof over their head, and a good old fashioned crash is likely the best thing to get them back to means parity with those who have left them behind, and screwed them for decades. it's no wonder they're writing their congresspeople at a rate of 10 to 1 not to bail out the economic ponzi schemers.

did anybody notice that the panic sell-off of assets initiated by monday's failure to pass a bail-out bill was followed, during tuesday's failure to pass a bail-out bill, by a frenzied buy-in of assets initiated, perhaps, by the fact that this "crisis" isn't what we're being sold by the pac-paid "representatives" who are mis-running our government?

one thing that does trouble me quite a bit are the gas lines across the southeast. yeah, the hurricane, the hurricane, but, seriously, i have to wonder if there's something about which they're not telling us. (like, perhaps, our foreign oil vendors are starting to ask for hard currency and, now that the $10B per month in iraq coupled with the meltdown on wall street has dried up the last of our free cash, we haven't got any to give them, only paulson's $700B dodge might just be to authorize the treasury to print that much more so that we can keep sending it overseas to pay for our drug--i mean oil--habit...)

all that being said, i haven't nudged a single investment of mine out of play. the secret in a run on a bank, or a stock market for that matter, is to ensure that you can't get busted before the bottom is reached. (thank you, fdic). if you're a stock investor, you still own the same underlying wealth-producing assets no matter where to which today's valuation might fall. if general motors (oops, bad example) or microsoft is still making money, you, as an owner, are still going to be in the chips when the final bell is sounded. (notice how microsoft earlier this week said "crisis? what crisis?" and advocated letting the banks twist in the wind, until they got strong-armed into shutting up by insiders unknown?) i'm not "leveraged", which is to say, i don't owe anybody anything on my investments who might make a margin call and wipe me out. (think of it as the difference between being "all in" as opposed to just having a few of your chips on the table when the straight flush shows up against you). if you've still got your stake, you're still going to make out like a bandit when the market moves back to fairly valuing the companies of which you own pieces.

on the corner of my favorite cobblestoned lowell street yesterday i had an extremely pleasant conversation with a good friend and neighbor about the choice between putting resources against ones mortgage, as opposed to maintaining it as part of ones rainy-day cushion. one of the reasons i like my building so much is for the amazing majority of folks here who are, like me, a mortgage packrat. it's that "don't get busted" thing again, and it's nice to be among ones own people. simply put, there is nothing more valuable of mine than the roof over my head. (there are daily groceries, too, but you can't save them up in quite the same way, though, if you've ever seen my pantry and my year's supply of ramen noodles, you know that i do my best). so having a paid-off mortgage, or the most reasonable facsimile thereof, has to be the personal financial holy grail. others still indebted to the high-interest-credit-card people must note that there's a proper order for ones debt to be retired, so, repeat after me: every free dollar, even the $20's you keep stashed in your desk drawer, needs to be sent asap to the credit card people until they're paid off. then to everything else that you owe, up to and including your mortgage. when you're debt-free, or at least debt-skinny, they can't bust you, and you'll always be around to win when the financial roulette wheel comes around again. (because it always does). you feel like it hurts because it does, and because the pain you're feeling is the piper you neglected to pay when you went out on your borrowing binge. "neither a borrower or a lender be", remember? (that bill shakespeare guy was quite the prolific quotester, wasn't he...)

so that we end on a short paragraph and not one of those interminably long ones, let's just say that, all sympathy for the cubbies and brewers aside, (who cares about philadelphia, anyway), i gotta be pulling for manny to smack his way to another world series mvp title. i love the brewers and their infinitesimally small payroll and wonderfully loyal fans, don't get me wrong. i want them to win. but i am just enjoying manny's streak too damn much to want to see it end.

oh--angels, rays then dodgers. which isn't to say that it isn't brewers, cubbies, and red sox uber alles. it's just that there's rooting, and there's prognosticating. gotta separate emotion from ones actions. we all want the olde towne team, and few more than me. but there's a cold-eyed investor (and mortgage packrat) in me who realizes that the angels are, indeed, a better ball club, and so are the rays. which, if you've been paying attention, gives you the key to calling bs on all of this: the dodgers, manny and andre ethier's bats aside, aren't really in that class, not really. it'll be the angels and the rays to lose, and their series will likely be one for the ages. of course, luck being luck, and baseball being baseball, anything can happen.

go sox!