Back?

Here again, maybe more permanently. We'll see.

This post is for Colleen

We'll chalk it up to the baseball season, boys and girls, because I Live For This.

I'm not sure how many of my 3 readers follow the Rays, but what you're thinking is probably right: We're not very good at baseball. We're actually downright bad. This is how bad it is: We're the 3rd-worst team in the game, yet this year is being dubbed a success. If for no other reason than we have a Ray Team, which should still be called The Fundamentals, and they could do a cover of a Divnyls song, because the name's sorta close, as the last 2 letters are the same. Although they're not musicians. They're mostly dancers and gymnasts. And teachers.

Thankfully, zooming your lens out a bit, you can see something like the 2006 Detroit Tigers. It's a bit of a stretch, but we've got a great load of talent...we just need to utilize it properly. Add a veteran here and there, like a Kenny Rogers and a Magglio Ordonez, and we're in business. I'd also argue for a closer examination of Joe Maddon; granted, 1 year is a bit too short of a span to judge his managerial skills, but we do have a LOT of talent that doesn't seem to be translating into wins. Under Joe Girardi, Terry Francona, or Ron Gardenhire, I think we'd be a +.500 team.

The Pluto thing: totally messes up SolarQuest. What a fine, fine board game.

File it under It's Not Interesting: Suri Cruise. Katie Holmes is meant for me, anyway.

The Illusionist: Fine, fine movie. Looking forward to The Prestige, Christopher Nolan's new film. Jon and I were discussing his pre-Memento work, and here it is: The Following.

Just finished Fooled By Randomness, a Blink/New New Thing Thinking Book that's designed to make you understand that nothing's really random. Long-lens, it all makes sense. Laws of averages, and such.

Machnacki and a Girl: This may be the new central tenet of my new novel. Which I'll start as soon as the screenplay starts. Which I'll create from the short story I write. All of this was actually in motion, and then my Western Digital RAID array crashed and I lost the story. It wasn't really bad either; I just had no ending.

Wedding thoughts: Don't get married. Just kidding. Outsource the invitations, or else you're up at 3am hating your printer and wondering how HP can get away with selling things that break so easily. And make it a party. That's what it is.

Savvy? Negative

The best thing that can be said, sadly, about Dead Man's Chest is that we're closer to the final piece of the trilogy. "Lacking" might be the appropriate word here, because if there was a story hidden inside Davey Jones' tentacled-face, it stayed in there, writhing, painfully trying to be free of the bloated, overdone, effects-heavy dark movie I endured this morning.

And we didn't only lack a story. We lacked nearly everything that made the first Pirates movie so ridiculously fun: Consistent swashbuckling, ship battles, birhgt settings, and a hippity-hop pace that kept you on the leappads just long enough that you didn't sink. Orlando Bloom was hilarious in that he was too serious. And of course, Johnny Depp was nothing but surprisingly brilliant in nearly every way...from his tics to his swordfighting to his cleverness that you never quite expected.

And that's the hardest part: Jack Sparrow was missing. He wasn't even in the movie; he was rowing away in a longboat, trying to leave a film that's now a piece of a franchise. There wasn't any of those Jack I'm-going-to-outsmart-you moments that pretty much made the first movie; indeed, he even said at one point that he didn't know what he was doing.

So in his place, we get a giant sea monster that Davey Jones can apparently conjure up by turning a wheel on his ship that, you would think, someone in power would have tried to destroy by now. I love the Kraken, especially from my Final Fantasy I days, but if I had wanted to see boats decimated, I could have played Battleship. So many things didn't make sense: An absurdly lame dice game, how the cannibals even got Will in that cage, why Jones sleeps (and what he even does), and the fact that nobody noticed the chest was a bit light. I'm just saying.

The whole movie felt very Empire Strikes Back: dark, brooding, and sandwiched. We had a visit to Yoda, a lot of dark sets, and no ending. We shall have to wait until 2007 for that, apparently.

(There was a Transformers trailer. But it, too, disappointed.)

Grrrr

Nice Drew Sharp piece about the Awesomely Sweet Tigers. I hope that place sells out this weekend.

It's June 21...do you know where your spring went?

Happy first day o' summer.

The poor Cardinals.

The Tigers are for real.

Pretty pumped for the bro.

Why exactly is everyone so excited for Friday?

State of the Union

What country gets your vote for most farked up on the planet? Seriously...another missile test? Kim Jong Il is not from this world. Then there's Iran, perhaps the most insecure nation on our blue ball. Sudan? Sierra Leone? Can we call out China for burying its people under clouds of pollution and state-run media while tantalizing them with capitalistic gold? Perhaps the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is systematically killing its people for no apparent reason? And if you're an Arab, is Israel on this list?

Rolling it up

The going-ons are ridiculous and crazy, capped off by Eric's 5-day visit that ended this morning when he went back to the SassLand of Detroit to generally get on with his life. I think he enjoyed Florida, so I fully expect him to move down here soon so we can start our nightclub together. PollyEsther's Clone in full effect.

Speaking of PollyEsther's: Jon had his lovely friend Texas Girl in town for a few days (living near Austin, she is familiar with PollyEsther's), so we made sure she played Trivial Pursuit (props for getting the game-winning RBI with the last question) and had a whole meal of food at Sloppy Joe's.

Seriously, May and June have been ridiculous...I think it's partly due to Jon and his Lust For Life, and once you toss in the birthday parties, holidays (Father's Day and Mom's Birthday coming up), visits from people afar, the Pistons (a moment of silence), and the Finals (both), it just gets crazy.

I've done little-to-no wedding planning over the last 2 months either.

What I want is just a night to watch a movie or read a book...no dinner out, no facebooking, no emailing, no softball, no basketball, no Rays, no phone calls, no wedding...just me and Teddy Roosevelt's biography.

Tonight may very well be that first night in awhile. We'll see.

Love to: The bro, mint oreos, portable hard drive, Linda for her wedding, Sean the Intern, Disney, Pixar, the person who drew my Space Mountain art, Stef, Midtown for the chicken sandwiches, Mr. Auld, Crunch bars, and the DJ for the wedding.

I've been hit

Ron the Tiger tagged me (ahhhhhhh), so apparently I have to do this survey. Next is Colleen; you're it.

5 Items in my fridge:
chocolate chip cookie dough I like to eat
Domino's
champagne for the wedding night
potatoes
No Ecto Cooler, sadly

5 Items in my closet
Carolina Mudcats polo shirts
12 blankets...people keep giving them to us even though we're in Florida
a Reggie Miller jersey
Holly's wedding dress
Wade Boggs bobblehead

5 Items in my car
engine
steering wheel
disposable camera, for some reason
a blanket (see "Closet" above)
Arby's coupons

5 Items in my purse
I don't have a purse, so I'll substitute my E: drive
Devil Rays animations
MP3s by The Click Five and Angels and Airwaves
Katie Holmes on SNL video
Ocean's 12 soundtrack
the last episode of BassCenter featuring Seth McClung, Josh Paul, Sarah and Becky

That's a lot of load time

So,Cars. Comes out soon. John Lasseter. Directed Toy Story and A Bug's Life.

This is unbelievable:

Moving the car characters and adding realistic reflections and other details posed formidable problems. " 'Cars' was a really difficult film technically," said Ms. Anderson, the producer. "It's the most complex film we've ever made." Even with a network of processors that ran four times faster than the ones on "The Incredibles," each frame of "Cars" took an average of 17 hours to render.

17 hours? For a frame?

That would mean, at 24 frames per second (film), each second of movie would require 408 hours to render.

I can only assume they have render farms set up for this sort of thing, but seriously? 17 hours?

Of Note

I can't imagine that anyone possibly cares, but I finally found a way to compile every personal email I've ever sent (using Alma's account and my yahoo account...there were flirtations with usa.net and excite, and of course there are accounts for business and commercial stuff), and some numbers:

I sent my first email ever on September 5, 1998.
Since then, I've sent 6246 personal messages, including those utilized for Almanian/WQAC/Alma library/PR office purposes.
2819 days have passed.
That's 2.22 messages/day.

Wow.

Then I get thinking: How many minutes/hours/days have I spent on IM, facebook, friendster, blogging, bulletin board posting, or just wasting time searching for winamp skins?

It's kinda scary.

What's Shakin'

On your march for a World Series ring, the days meld together...a baseball game becomes another activity in a time period that doesn't run on a 24-hour cycle...there's no wake-up/work 9-5/run errands/eat dinner/watch TV and surf internet dynamic when you work in professional sports. Your cycle becomes that of the homestand and the few days preceding it you need to get ready, and you just sorta flow from one activity to the next...gameday preparation to eating to gametime to going out to getting home to sleeping to waking up to watching yesterday's Daily Show to getting ready to gameday preparation...it's actually a neat way to live, because the only thing that matters is that you're ready to go when the gates open.

That being said, May's been one crazy month.

21 days. 13 games. Andy and Chris visiting. Mother's Day. My birthday. Kelly's birthday, Stef's birthday, Jamie's birthday. Holly graduated, so I went to Richmond for that and hung out with her parents. Leah wanted to hang out. Ray Team Assemble needed constant attention. I wanted to re-read The DaVinci Code (and did on the plane ride to Richmond), slide through Wired, and watch the movies that have been for so long sitting on my shelf (Snatch and Team America). The Pistons of course got love, and now I'm getting caught up in the Tigers and the blogs about them.

And finally, finally, after being a fan for so many years, I've reached this point with baseball where I'm comfortable with it. I mean this: It's a complicated game to track, what with a team of 25 guys, only of which half, at most, will play in a day. It's different from basketball, where it's the same 8 or 9 every game, and everyone's got a defined role...you can take a player and follow him as the season progresses. It's harder with baseball, because a guy can be sent to the minors, (which until 2004, made no sense to me), which are a maze of players and potential and movement. Or guys who were once amazing can easily fizzle...if Kevin Maas stops hitting home runs, he's off the radar. Gone. In basketball, on the other hand, as Jim Jackson gets old and less effective, he transforms into that wise old veteran and role player who pops up on a nationally televised game twice a season or so. See also: Dikembe Mutombo. In short: If you don't produce in baseball, you're a ghost...I had no idea Franklyn German was a Marlin until three days ago.

Anyway, I'm now sold on that dynamic, and a player, both as an individual and a team member, makes more sense to me...I get Toby Hall's contribution to the Rays (leadership and game-calling), just as I get his individual positives (rarely strikes out). If I see on Bottomline that Paul Konerko went 3-4 with a HR and a 2B, that registers spectacularly harder than it ever has.

All right. That's very interesting, I'm sure, for everyone. Let's move on.

Do I use too many commas?

We need a new background picture on this blog. Maybe a new template. We'll see what the web has to offer.

Who are the 1/3 of the people in the country still giving our president a thumbs-up? I'm reading about Teddy Roosevelt right now, and that man would eat GDub for lunch.

Is everything on the web now designed for people with 12-second attention spans? I think this is affecting my ability to hold real conversations. AngryAlien.com has a bunch of popular movies remade, in half-a-minute, with bunnies...War of the Worlds (the original) is the best.

myspace.com is the messiest application the internet ever spit out.

Keycards for your house...sports broadcasts without announcers but with crowd noise...a giant olde english D on the building where the dolphins are outside CoPa...a device that turns your computer's heat into power...just some thoughts.

Blessed first place

Oh happy day! Oh wonderful thing of sweetness! Oh bearded Zeus...how sweet you are...and by bearded Zeus, I mean Jim Leyland, because he's turned one of the laughingstocks of baseball, one of the only things I've kept with me with my whole life, one of the things that comes every spring but is a disgrace by summer, into a Beacon Of Sweetness.

Yes, the Detroit Tigers are in first place in the A.L. Central. Not only that: They have the best record in baseball. There should be a parade in Detroit today. All schools in tri-county should be closed. Everyone should play hooky, and everyone should fill that amazingly sweet stadium tonight to watch the best team in the bigs. This is a call to action. (From a blog. It will be most effective.)

What a great thing.

Today's Question

Why does Nolan Ryan have a bio on the White House's website?

2.6

Where'd that song Move Along come from? Steven knows I love it; his nifty little macbook spun it three times for me in the control room. That might have to be the theme song for the next 365 days, to the extent I have theme songs, which is to say never.

This birthday might be the best in a while; 25 was a game against the White Sox that, being on a Wednesday, was followed by no sort of notable celebration. 24 was in Raleigh, and since we actually did birthdays there, my lovely Mudcats surprised me with a red velvet cake that was scrumptuous. 23...hmm...Washington DC. I'd be lying if I said if I remembered exactly, but I believe it had something to do with Sarah and Chris taking me out to the Tombs. Perhaps Machnackistan can provide some insight into this; he remembers everything. 22...that awkward post-college/pre-job time period of lameness...no doubt my mother throwing me a party at home and Eric/Andy/Chris and I celebrating in Warren. Somehow. 21 was around a campfire in northern Michigan. And the usual Alma-style celebrations.

Props to whoever organized basketball today.

Your solid Rays swim back into town this weekend with plans to beat the Red Tide and its Master Manny and shock the Sox out of first place while gaining some eastern ground. Gomes and Wiggy bring back some still-smokin' bats to back up Fossum the Possum, Hometown Guy Waechter and Spectacular ScottyKaz in what promises to be a fun chapter in the neverending and always simmering duel between the Former World Champs and eventual Champs-To-Be. We've got a spectacular Friday Night Fight, so brighten your lights (thanks Franzone) and rock your house. Live from Tropicana Field: Rays v. Red Sox. Right Now.

Those are kinda fun to write.

The Sox series are always the best. So lively. Here's to the Ray Team making the Rays fans take down those soppy I'm-from-New-England types who jumped on the bandwagon when it was still cool to call Jonny Damon a caveman.

Falling Out

The most what-is-he-saying lyrics of the last few months have to be Sugar We're Going Down.

Making up words for them is fun.

We're going downtown in a merry-go-round/Sugar we're going down swinging/I'll be #1 with a mullet/Laid back complex with Jimmy Buffet

Here's the real deal.

April 20

Oh April 20. How fondly dost thou linger in my memory; a splendidly sunny spring Saturday in the middle of the Mitten you were, watching over the 4 of us graduating from lovely Alma College. More like 384, because with 4, we wouldn't have to sit around and hear names called for 62 hours. Aguilar, I believe, to Zimmerman, was the order. But I could be wrong.

I'm not in any sort of graduation mindset because the couple people I know who're graduating from the University of Tampa still have about 3 weeks. But the Scots graduate Saturday, meaning it'll be the 4 year-anniversary of the Class of 2002 walking and quite possibly the last time I was ever to encounter Dr. Hulme. Technically, the anniversary is today.

I'm not sad, or sappy, or silly; I just think it's a good time to reflect on life. Four years of college, and then four years of non-college. What have I done?

I think living in the nation's capital was a nice first step after that horrid I've-graduated-and-I'm-sending-out 1,000-resumes phase. (Speaking of which: I don't think that's such a big problem if you go to school in a city where there's an actual economy. You can do internships while you go to class and still want to stick around after school's over, unlike, say, Alma, where there are no internships and no one wants to stick around. I mean, I got my first job because of a Washington, DC, summer internship, so I can only assume that physically being in the city for 4 years would have yielded a variety of opportunities.) Working at a solid institution like Georgetown and meeting/seeing some serious movers in society (Bono, Clinton, Donaldson, William Peter Blatty, look I'm name-dropping) was good for my big-picture philosophy...seeing these people as, well, people, made them smaller. Bono is insanely short.

I wish Chris and I had lived together. We still have a damn fine friendship, but we would have had so much fun. We did anyway, playing tennis and going to PollyEsther's and rooting futilely for the Hoyas and eating dinner with Sarah every Friday night.

I gradually began to learn the DC game; the Hollywood of the East, and I didn't want to play it anymore. I couldn't care less who you knew, and that made a difference to a lot of people. What was worse was that, since everyone was fairly intelligent, they made a point to not let you know that they knew people, and that was somehow more infuriating than them actually telling you. Right.

Almost as infuriating was the non-conformist conformity. Again, everyone was so bright that they had no problem marching to their own drummers, knowing that everyone else was as well. But becuase everyone was marching, the non-conformity became conformity, and blog posts started sounding lame and slightly postmodern and English-professory, so they stopped when necessary.

Raleigh sucked. I recommend no one move there. It's too American; too suburban, too Garage Sale Saturday, so blah that it trumpets its blahness ("a great place to raise a family!"). Had it not been for the Mudcats, I pretty much would have hated my life; as it was, I didn't have time to hate my life. You learn lots of fun lessons about the world and people when you go from an ultra-sophisticated environment at the 24th-best university in the country to a minor-league baseball team in the sticks of North Carolina where dropping F-Bombs in meetings is commonplace, accepted, and even encouraged.

It was there that I began to learn that everyone's out to benefit one person. That made me sad, and still does, as it's magnified 100 times in Tampa Bay. I'm having a difficult time dealing with how self-absorbed people are alongside loving my day-to-day job. As for the region, I can't really imagine living in a more beautiful place in the country besides San Diego, various spots in upstate New York, and a smattering of hamlets on the Great Lakes. Don't get me wrong: Tampa and St. Petersburg, as cities, are ridiculously ugly and fairly lame (Tampa having no downtown to speak of), but you can turn in almost any direction at any time and see water. You can get sunsets without California. You can go jetskiing in February.

In sum: I'm ridiculously happy with my choices over the last four years. I've managed to live in 3 major (or semi-major) American cities, visit most of the others (Seattle?) make friends in almost every state east of the Mississippi, keep friends from college, find my career direction, get engaged, all while embodying the principles of a certain fraternal document. Oh yes: And have fun. These last four years haven't been Alma-style, but what ever could be?

Ray Matter

One of my favorite little moments from yesterday involved, of course, Joe Schultz. The LED has been partly corrupted by the corporate whorage of the world, so now you get your DET/CWS score alongside some kind words from metroPCS telling you that you have permission to speak freely. So I click up the metroPCS graphic, and Schultz turns to me with a look of disgust and says: "What Is That?"

Good story, I know.

I think he was genuinely mad. I, for one, would rather know Melvin Mora's OPS and BB.

But we must make money.

Anyway, so yesterday was our lovely home opener, which was greeted with more anticipation than, say, Palm Sunday. Also possibly Christmas. The raucous fans (the ones without jobs, apparently) turned out at 4pm to shake hands with Julio Lugo and obtain Stu S1enberg's autograph (look mommy, an investment banker!) before settling into a pregame of sweetness that involved (I've never seen this before) a flag shaped like the continental United States. Steve pointed out that Florida looked rather phallic, and I was disappointed that there didn't appear to be any sort of shape resembling Michigan (perhaps it temporarily became part of Canada).

The Rays lost in undramatic fashion, held hitless until the 4th inning and pretty much generally beaten on by a lame Orioles team that's mired in muckity muck.

Speaking of which:

Yankees/White Sox/A's/Red Sox (wild card)
Braves/Cardinals/Dodgers/Astros (wild card)

World Series: White Sox vs. Braves

So there's that.

The last seven days have been zelda-like insane, all leading up to the magical oh so magical April 10. Now there are 80 games to go before people start counting down the days until the next Opening Day. Baseball makes no sense. It's unpredictable, it's slow, it's bloated, and everyone loves it. Go Tigers.

25%

The NYTimes says that 4 of its 3 million brackets have the Final Four correct. That's amazing. It warms my heart. Why? Because all of the gaseous blabbering emitted on ESPN and talk radio and that moderately annoying fellow in Sales who is convinced he knows more than you about sports was proven, yet again, to be void. Empty. Worthless.

Guys like Herbstreet and his cohort are the con artists of the 2000s and our sports-crazy society. I don't know when they'll go away, but hopefully sooner rather than later, when all of the data finally gets easier to sort and we can simply pick for ourselves.

I still love UNC

Oh, the excitement continues.

First of all, I've noticed a general downturn in the amount of attention given to politics, George W. Bush, Iraq, and the State Of The World. Perhaps this is only because I live in a baseball bubble where entirely too much attention is given to what Nick Green's role on the team is going to be this year. If I had $1 for every time I read about or talked about or heard about Julio Lugo's trade potential during this offseason, I could probably buy, say, a nice pair of shoes. Anyway, is there nothing going on in Washington? Or am I just not paying attention? Scooter Libby, Jack Abramoff, 3-year anniversary, $9 trillion debt, no Osama, blowing up innocent people in Pakistan, Rumsfeld acting like he has no idea what's going on. I think I sorta am following the state of the country.

I wish I had worked in Congress for a summer. The intern thing. Now that I've found a real career path, I want to have all kinds of internships knowing that I have no future in any of them. But I'd enjoy the backstabbing, the drama, all of the wannabees trying to Get Ahead. It'd be so funny. Then I'd go to PollyEsther's every other weekend or so.

Speaking of PollyEsther's, we've really got to make St. Pete/Tampa a more fun place. This will involve creating a club on the same sort of note as PollyEsther's. If anyone who reads this blog (the 5 of you) wants to start a Fun Nightclub empire, please contact me.

Okay, second of all, the commentators on just about every March Madness game need some Red Bull. Other than Northwestern State's 3-point win, these guys sound like they're very bored versions of Mike Tirico. It's Madness! If Georgetown is destroying Ohio State, make sure everyone knows this. Somehow, I am totally working Georgetown into my wardrobe tomorrow. While watching the game today, I was reminded of how, while working there, I was asked to downplay the fact that Allen Iverson was a Hoya. Frankly, the fact that Mike Sweetney went there is, at the moment, more embarassing. Did anyone see the Bulls' green jerseys on Saturday?

Third of all, I am listening to Hootie and the Blowfish right now. Let's fix that.

Ah, some Zeppelin. All My Love is a Top 30er.

Fourth, I would like to congratulate Ms. Karbo for getting into Harvard Law. I actually heard it's pretty easy. Unlike that Michigan place. Why are all my friends turning into lawyers? Oh right: So my mom will have somebody to...I don't know. But she seems to enjoy the fact that Chris is a lawyer. I explained how if she ever wanted to take over GM, he might be able to help, but that didn't really seem to register. I think I only have about three friends who are lawyers. Or future lawyers. Many others are in various med schools. On the other hand, I totally run scoreboards. I will also not be buying the group's boat.

Fifth, I'm curious if V For Vendetta was any good. I don't really like the HowDoYouSpellWachowskiBrothers, because, if nothing else, they totally ripped off Dark City for their stupid Matrix, which, if nothing else, involved Keanu Reeves, and really the only way you can do worse in a movie is by including Matthew Broderick or Paul Walker as your lead. I'd include Matthew McCougheney in this list as well, but I happen to own Contact, which isn't even that great a movie. By the way: The next person who says "Ferris Bueller" after I reveal I dislike Broderick with the burning passion of 1000 neutron stars (this phrase is more fun to say than write) will get water dumped on his or her head.

Okay, neutron stars. I googled it, and the first entry is a professor's page, and he inexplicably starts it with a photo of Mickey The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Amazing.

I'm toying with taking my site offline, or at least moving it. I'm slightly concerned that my existence as a lowly-but-still-real employee of the TBDR might conflict with various photo albums. Speaking of which: Now here's what I'm going to wonder for a while...I emailed Dr. Lawren*ce some months ago asking if he had anyone who might want a sweet intersnhip down here in Florida. I received no response. And I wonder if this has anything to do with me slurring him on the Infamous Night At PollyEsther's story. It wasn't even any sort of serious slur.

These are the kinds of things you can wonder about in America. I love it.

Poor Heels. GO HOYAS.

Hot with two T's

DOA, Foo Fighters, hott.

Carolina, 3 seed, hott.

Georgetown, to the Final Four, hott.

That's it. I don't want to overuse the double-t action.

A Tribute To Living Single

In honor of a certain Paquet girl arriving to stay tomorrow, I believe my 42 months of bachelorhood need a semi-proper send-off that does not involve the "Vegas Showgirls" place on Gandy. So, here's to:

Machnacki and I playing tennis, cooking steaks, and watching the Yankees lose to the Angels on afternoon baseball on a sunny Saturday in Arlington.

My couch. It has cuddled me for so many nights.

Playing Metroid Prime for 20 straight hours.

Listening to We Didn't Start The Fire as loud as possible without Indiana upstairs hating me.

Teri Hatcher and Gillian Anderson desktop wallpaper.

Those three insanely sweet days last March involving KO on IM, lots of O.A.R., some alcohol, cosmic brownies, and staying up past 4am. They just made me shiver with pleasure.

Eating frozen pizzas, frozen chicken tenders, hot dogs, tater tots and steaks.

Never, ever, ever changing the sheets. Or making the bed.

Self-created fraternity rituals. Not really.

24 and The Daily Show with no interruptions.

My own closet. My own bathroom.

All those crushes I never acted on. I'm looking at you, Brian D*Wine.

And now I have to take down the 8 Lindsay Lohan posters. So it goes.

Let's get the living in sin on!

Florida on the brain

Life is excellent. March in Florida is so insanely beautiful...warm sunny days and pleasant cool nights...the kind that are perfect for driving around, jamming to, perhaps, the All-American Rejects' Dirty Little Secret, which after 1,854 or so listens still doesn't sound old. The Book Of Evil (media guide) that was nothing but a night/weekend/life sapper is done, so now I can focus on getting ready for the season, which I celebrated yesterday by enjoying a hott spring training game downtown. Chris and Jen visiting was a nice happy boost, seeing Mariah was sweet, and the 'rents are coming...and of course, so is Holly. Let the living in sin begin! Being with her for more than five days at a time will be the greatest treat ever. Wedding plans are still going swimmingly, the Pistons are still winning, and the Rays still look like they might be decent. I have enjoyed the production values of Entourage, the writings of Jonathan Franzen, and the lovely Kiefer and his quest to stop the terrorists on 24. And of course, I couldn't be excellent if everyone else wasn't, but Jen loves her job, Lauren passed her boards, Kari has a lovely daughter, Steve is kicking up dust in Atlanta, Mike and Cara are getting married, Colleen keeps running, and Andrew and Mariah are moving to Madison.

Oh yes, last thing: the Tarheels beat Duke last night. :)

CB update

Oooooooh, poor Duke. A loss to the great Florida State, to be followed by a loss to North Carolina tonight. Heels rule.

Alma finished the season 10-16. So it goes.

All-American Reject

First off, the dirty little ditty Dirty Little Secret is my new favorite pop turn-on since Speed Of Sound. It's fun and rolls right along with you driving down 275 or whatever sweet freeway you're near. For my loyal readers: have a download.

While we're having fun: The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. Thanks to Holly and her brother for this amusement; I've only run into one person who hasn't liked it, but she's sadly far outnumbered by the people who think Abraham Lincoln pole-vaulting is really funny.

Other cool stuff: Entourage. Chris finally convinced me to watch the thing, and we rolled through all 8 episodes alongside Jen. Part of the appeal (for me, anyway) is how each character is kind of a tool, but each has at least one redeeming quality. It's almost Dawson's Creek, in L.A., with no girl leads, cussing, and straight-up coolness. The question becomes: Is Jeremy Piven really that sweet?

We finished the Media Guide last night. Eric/Jason/Me, 'til 7.45 am, meaning I spent approximately 25 straight hours at Tropicana Field (discounting the trip to the airport and the Subway run). Talk about a day well spent. This will be the best media guide in the universe. And I would say that sort of marathon makes up for all of who think those days in California were spent slacking.

Finally, I don't think it's okay to call Chicago "Chi-Town" unless you live there. Is anyone with me on this one?

All I Got

Work 'til 1, bed at 2, up at 5.30. Whatever...happy birthday to KO :)

Hott

A photo almost guaranteed to make you happy...

Good times

Okay. So I'm rolling through the visitor logs. Someone keeps logging onto the site through facebook. But their IP address is in Plano, Texas. No one I know's from Plano. A WHOIS doesn't help; all I get is that SWBell is the backbone of the connection. Oh wait: Here's the ISP, thanks to the statcounter logs. It's Gerace Construction! In Midland, MI! Amazing. St. Pete/Plano/Midland. The question then becomes: Who is this person? Karb? Should I care? Do I care? This sort of lame website-hopping-as-hacking is about as close to CTU as I'll ever get, so I'll at least have fun with it.

Celebrity guest

Former quadmate and still fraternity brother K. Ritsema is on The Price Is Right at 11am today. Tune yourself in.

Sweets from little people

Publix no longer sells Cosmic Brownies. The entire Little Debbie stand, as well as the entire Hostess stand, have disappeared, replaced by nothing, turning Aisle 1 into a wasteland of space and depression flanked by the solderous milk cartons and endless bottles of Gatorade that, I continue to wonder, exist inside the Pistons' cooler. What is that? Just water? Or a "sports drink?" The Mudcats featured PowerAde in one cooler and water in another, but when those little people who always wear hearts hold cups into huddles at timeouts, what's in them? Water would make the most sense; perhaps a former "manager" could tell me.

Today marked the first day the Wizard of Oz ever came up at work. For reasons that can only possibly exist in the minds of people who sit in the administrative offices of major league baseball teams, we're having the last surviving munchkin from the 1939 Best Picture nominee at our FanFest on Saturday. Peter Gammons at 1pm, munchkins all day. It's mind-boggling. This isn't even Mike Veeck-ickish. This isn't a good gimmick. This is so random. We might as well have Mr. Belding drop by. Perhaps the Keebler Elf is free.

Seriously

Oh, O.A.R. Swoon! Check out this HOTT setlist from the 2.12.06 show in Champaign (pretty close to my perfect show):

Hey Girl
About An Hour Ago
Dareh Meyod
One Shot
Whose Chariot?
Delicate Few
Lay Down
The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)
City On Down
Night Shift
Love And Memories
Like A Rolling Stone
Piano Man
That Was A Crazy Game Of Poker

I'd put in King of the Thing for Feelin' Groovy, but this is almost as good as it gets.

You just know a trip's gonna be sweet if it starts with Red Vines and Mr. Pibb. Thanks to DougEFresh and J for said provisions, the combination of which set the stage for a swell jaunt to Los Angeles to do "work."

Ahem, WORK: A trip to Staples Center, Dodger Stadium, and LA Memorial Coliseum. Free transportation and tickets to a fantastic Ducks/Kings game at the Pond in Anaheim. A photo op with Johnny Depp and Johnny Depp as Captain Jack and Wonka in front of Kodak after reconfirming for the padre that, yes, the Hollywood sign does exist (it's visible from the Coliseum). And that's just the touristy stuff: Lest we forget some guy at the Roosevelt Hotel crazy mad that he couldn't get a sandwich at 10pm (kitchen closed) even though he was an "important guest." He claimed he was a chereographer for the Grammys; even if it wasn't true, he was about 8000 times cooler than the cool side at Alma.

Post-Roosevelt was the lovely Saddle Ranch, home of Mike's exploits on a bull and the greatest karoke experience of Don't Stop Believin' ever. And probably the only one featuring a girl from The Real World whose name I keep forgetting:


She's the second from the left. There was also a Nicole Ritchie spotting. And seriously: Mr. Belding came to karoke at Dimples. Dimples is pure California.

We learned some things too. About video production. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays will be better. We can build it better. Hoorah.