i was right!!! (sort of)

You all chuckled, stroking your beards and clucking your tongues at the crazy man and his crazy stories. But it is I who shall laugh last.

You may remember me talking about a TV show from the late 80s/early 90s, wherein Little Richard played the ghost of a murderous pirate who had to team up with a Wall Street white collar criminal to save people's lives on their Caribbean island in order to keep from getting dragged down to hell by demons.

Unfortunately, Little Richard's IMDB page reflected no such thing, and I could never remember the name of the show.

Derided I was. Question my sanity you did.

Well, it turns out I was mostly right, and slightly wrong. Which is better than being slightly right and mostly wrong - like you!

Here's what happened: Kris gets a monthly email from the Disney Vacation Club, of which she is a member. "Jim," a person who is proclaimed to be an expert on Disney history, answers club members' Disney questions as part of this email. Kris spotted this in the latest edition:

Q: The backlot tour at the Disney-MGM Studios used to feature a prop from something called "Black Jack Savage." What was that?
Jim's answer: "The 100 Lives of Black Jack Savage" was a very short-run television series produced by The Walt Disney Company for NBC in 1991. Black Jack Savage was the ghost of a 17th Century pirate (played by Steven Williams) who teams up with a billionaire (Daniel Hugh Kelly) to save 100 lives as atonement for their wrongdoings. Like the series, the boat prop featured on the backlot tour has disappeared.

There! There it is! The Hundred Lives of Black Jack Savage! When I got home today Kris was excited and giggling and when she showed me what she was excited about I looked at the computer screen and found sweet redemption!

It may not have been Little Richard, but give me a break - I was 11 when this show came and went. The important thing is, this thing existed.

My only regret is that the boat from the show has disappeared. We're going to Disney next week, and I would have loved to have heard a tour guide try to explain the premise of the TV series while pointing out the boat.

I bet you all wouldn't have laughed at him.

"you know, these things'll kill ya"

What could bring me back to blogging (other than the end of football season)? This video, which had me in tears.

Disappointingly though, it did not have my favorite-ever David Caruso one-liner, which I saw in a commercial for CSI: Miami:

David Caruso: Time to go.

Other guy: Where are we going?

David Caruso: TO JAIL.

save the date, fools!

JUNE 16, 2007

It's when Kris and I are getting married.

We don't want to hear any excuses.

No "I'm already going to some loser high school friend's wedding."

No "but you didn't invite me."

Now you know. Now there can be no escape.

our first song

Though there's lots more to do, Kris and I were having fun the other day trying to think of what to play for our first dance at our wedding. I've been thinking about it, and I've come up with some suggestions which I want to share with you, my loyal army of readers.

• Thriller, Michael Jackson
• We Don't Need Another Hero, Tina Turner
• Mountain Jam, Allman Brothers (live at Fillmore East)
• It Was a Good Day, Ice Cube
• The entire master audio track from the movie Spaceballs
• Dean Koontz' Phantoms, book on tape

What do you think? Hmmmmmmm?

she's off the market, bitches!

home improvement

Man, did that show suck.

Anyways, I liked most of the suggestions you guys had as to what we should put in the new house. Bedroom GoldenTee would have been awesome, but Kris nixed the idea, then got on a plane to Tampa, rented a car, drove to Mensch's house, knocked on the door and kicked him in the nuts for even suggesting it. Then she used the "Men In Black" memory thingy to make him forget about the nuts-kicking and the GoldenTee-suggesting, and also the glavin. So, I guess the world will never be treated to the sound of this:

"Goodnight, honey."

"Night, shnookums."

Click. (Light is turned off).

...

...

SLAM!sppssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssSploosh!awwwwww

Spector, on the other hand, said this:

Let me throw out some phrases here, and you can figure out how to put them
together yourself:

"Bas Relief"
"Brick-Oven Pizza"
"Blackjack"
"Multiple-Action Jets"
"Soft Serve"
"Velvet"
"Solomito"

I guarantee that you'll triple the value of your home if you follow that
to its logical conclusion.

Sub, commenting from parts unknown (good to hear from you, Sub! hope all is well), took this to mean Dan Solomito would be dealing a 24/7 blackjack game on the deck. Which I think is a good idea only if we can get Don Rickles to reprise his role as the casino manager from Casino. That way, if things get too sticky, I'd get to say, "look, why take a chance? At least, that's the way I feel about it," then sit back and let the assassination montage proceed (set to "House of the Rising Sun").

In any case, here are my ideas:

• A never-ending faucet of a liquid of our choosing. The catch? We have to choose the liquid at the outset and stick with it for as long as we own the house. Right now I'd go with the buffalo wing sauce from Moriarty's, but I could be convinced to go with something else. Thoughts?
• An elaborate network of wires and hydraulics, designed to simulate super-human jumping ability. They made good use of this on Buffy, as people would be walking along, twidling their thumbs, and then all of a sudden some vampire or werewolf would jump out of nowhere, only it would be a jump no actor could ever do on his/her own. Then Buffy would run on-screen, say something witty, and then they'd start doing karate kicks at each other. I'd like to get the equipment they used so we could do those crazy jumps in the new house. We wouldn't have to use the stairs (which is boring). Also, I bet the cats would get a kick out of it.
• Two-and-a-half words: Slip 'N Slide.
• Guest bedroom GoldenTee.
• A giant spike somewhere. Don't care where, as long as I can point it out and say "that's our giant spike."

I don't know if we'll be able to get to any of this before closing; it's been moved up to August 31st, which means that our hopes of driving down to D.C. and seeing the Mets in a fifth stadium this year have been dashed. (transition paragraph!).

The fourth stadium was Turner Field, where almost two weeks ago we saw the Mets complete their first three-game sweep in Atlanta in at least a couple decades. Which was nice, because 1) that place has always been a house of horrors for the Mets, and 2) it made up for the sweep at the hands of the then-white-hot Red Sox in Boston we witnessed. The Mets took a four-run lead into the ninth, and the place tried to will the Braves to another cockpunch, Mola Ram-heartripping victory by playing highlights of the infamous 2001 Brian Jordan grand slam game on the big-ass video board down there. Suffice it to say, it didn't work. Braves fans looking forlornly at the Mets' bullpen door saw no John Franco, Armando Benitez or Braden Looper run out onto the field. Which made it a little sweeter.

We were down there visiting Kris' dad, who is a Braves fan of convenience (i.e., he follows them so he can talk baseball with business partners). He's a really cool, funny guy, and jokingly became a Mets fan after the game. We played Cribbage the whole weekend. It was fun.

Turner Field is an interesting place. From our seats (lower deck, third base side), the place looked exceedingly tiny. Like, smaller-than-Citizens Bank Park tiny. Also, the Tomahawk Chop is something to behold in person. Hearing it on TV, it's roughly the equivalent of the one Native American guy shedding a single tear by the highway. But something is lost in translation, because in person, it's like the Trail of Tears. It feels like teams of audio engineers have spent years configuring their multi-million dollar sound system to be able to pound the Chop so deep into your soul that you can hear it in your dreams.

That said, here are some pics! Yay!

Mets Win! Yay!

wow, part three

OK, so last night I promised some BIG NEWS, and here it is:

Kris and I bought a house!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

It's a beautiful townhouse-looking-type place in Bella Vista, about a block-and-a-half south of South Street. Check it out! (the furniture in these 360-degree thingies isn't ours, but we're going to have even cooler furniture - i.e., nothing but those chairs that are shaped like hands!).

We had known for a while we wanted to live together in Philly, but we hadn't been seriously searching too long. We saw this place at the tail end of a long, hot and humid Sunday (the 15th) of largely fruitless viewing, and we absolutely (and almost instantly) fell in love with it. Two parking spots, a deck, a patio, a bee-youteeful kitchen, two beds, two baths, interesting design, up-and-coming neighborhood (with new home construction right across the street from us), close to everything in the Center City East area, a reasonable price... it was perfect.

We made an offer that night and had to sweat it out for a day. We learned that Monday night that we had indeed joined the ranks of the landed gentry. There aren't many better feelings than that. It was a great capper to a hectic few months for me; the month leading up to getting the house was marked by perhaps the toughest project of my career (yes, I know I was supposed to talk about it in part 2, but there's a good reason why I waited until now: fuck you, that's why). I will say that it was something of a leadership test, and I hope I passed it. I was pretty proud of not only the final product, but of the focus and dedication that was needed to get it on tape. And it was really rewarding to work closely with some cool people I hadn't gotten a chance to know before.

Since then I feel like I've been in total senioritis mode. I have another big project coming up, so I'll have to get my edge back. I think the best way to do that will be to shoot something out of my hand and rip some random dude's face off with it.

As for the house, our minds are buzzing with possibilities. One magical word, "kegerator," has passed between our lips. Now I'm going to open this up to the floor: what do you think we should do with our space?

see... it went like this (wow, part two)

I was going to update on Saturday - and Sunday - as promised. But I'm not going to lie to you.

The sun exploded.

Luckily, Kris and I made it to Fenway Park days before a gigantic supernova shockwave ripped the flesh from the bones of everybody on the planet.

In the Before Time - before sun vampires wandered the face of Earth Asteroid Delta hungering for the solar ejecta which quickly became the lifeblood of those altered beings who survived - Fenway was the oldest stadium in major league baseball.

Tickets for the third game of their series with the Mets were hard to come by, as the Red Sox have been made popular in recent years by hundreds of new documentaries about them, all narrated by Ben Affleck or Babe Ruth or some other asshole. Kris and I arrived in Boston at around 3 pm, checking into a charming B&B about a mile away from the park, in Brookline. We settled in, we went outside, and we started feeling our way through the streets of Boston, confident only in the vague sense that the ballpark had to be somewhere ahead of us.

We really only needed to follow the growing swarm of people wearing distressed, prefab-floppy Red Sox hats. EVERYONE IN THE FREAKING CITY owns one of these hats; I'm fairly confident they're provided as a city service, along with garbage pick-up and accent training for out-of-state college students looking to fake being cool Bostonians. Of course, there's nothing wrong with a floppy baseball hat; I own one, too. I've never been able to get the authentic New Era caps to form-fit my head. Apparently, neither has the city of Boston, as these floppy hats far outnumber actual authentic Red Sox caps. At best, it makes "Red Sox Nation" painfully casual; at worst, it implies that rooting for Boston is something of a fashion statement these days (it makes you pine for the days when Red Sox fans were tortured messes, rather than the type of people who use their Sawx hats as accessories for their sporty-yet-relaxed polo shirt/khaki shorts/moccasin ensemble).

If that's the case, then the Fashion District has to be Yawkey Way, right outside of Fenway Park. It's a festive thoroughfare full of sausage & pepper stands, t-shirt shops, and bars. Lots of bars. Kris and I decided to partake, charging straight into the explosive core of Red Sox fandom - the Cask 'N Flagon. We wanted the Boston baseball experience, and we also wanted beer.

I wasn't sure how one person decked out in a Mets hat and a David Wright t-shirt and another decked out in a spectacularly-fitting Mets baby tee would be received at the Cask (the Flagon? The 'N?). Turns out, the supposed last, best bastion of obnoxious, drunk asshole Sox fans was filled with dozens of Mets fans (and the Sox fans were neither obnoxious nor assholes). It had to have been about 50/50 in there. I would say it was a good showing by Mets Nation, but really I think the whole "Nation" concept as it relates to a fanbase is pretty lame (sorry Sox fans - you should go back to being Royal Rooters).

We got another beer at Boston Beer Works, where we ran into a nice older Sox fan couple who had nice things to say about the Mets, even though (or because) Boston had taken the first two games of the series in convincing fashion (Spector was convinced it was a ruse, and via text message told me to cockpunch them). Then, finally, we ventured inside, where the concourse looked not unlike Shea Stadium's decrepit innards.

Kris and I bought more beer and some heavenly Fenway Franks (I don't know why, and I probably don't want to know, but they're so good), and took in our first view of the field.

Awwww.

The first thing you notice is that Fenway is very, very green. What ultimately struck me is how the Red Sox have made the most of what they've got. From a distance, the particulars of the ballpark (the fences, the... green) look like they could be brand new. Maybe it's just a fresh coat of paint that gives Fenway its youthful face. Whatever it is, the place is alive.

... It is green.

The seats at Fenway are old, tiny and wooden, and everybody sat shoulder-to-shoulder. The mass of humanity turned the air into a thick, humid soup. Thanks to the roof over the grandstand, it hung on us throughout the entire game. As exhausting as that was, the energy of the crowd was electric. The only other time and place I could possibly compare it to would be Penn-Princeton at the Palestra.

In fact, there are a few similarities between Fenway Park and the Palestra. After the game, I noticed two young Sox fans walking through the aisles putting seats into their upright positions. And it dawned on me - these people love and respect this place. It's the same way I feel about the Palestra. It's hallowed ground.

And once the Mets took a 2-0 lead in the top of the sixth, Fenway Park, like the Palestra has done many times, seemed to swallow up the visitors and will the home team towards victory. The Red Sox scored four unanswered runs, and the final Mets threat was extinguished by one of the greatest catches anybody will ever see (brought to you in Japanese for some reason).

So the Mets, in the middle of their roughest stretch of the season (so far; they're getting slapped around by the lowly Cubs AGAIN tonight), went down to defeat. But Kris and I were happy with our Fenway experience, and we vowed to return.

Little did we know what the sun had in mind for us, and the rest of our dear, departed planet. Specifically, the sun had "exploding" in mind for us.

Tomorrow: Part 3, a.k.a., big news!

wow (part one)

So I logged onto Blogger to start composing a three-part update to haplography, to get y'all caught up on all things Haplo. Now, when you log into your account, it tells you the last time you've updated your blog. And boy, was I surprised when it said "21 July 2006." Because I don't even remember doing this. I still think it would be cool to shoot things out of your hands that rip peoples' fucking faces off. Conceptually, at least; in reality it would probably be pretty disturbing.

On to blogness (it's like business, only blog-themed!)... it seems right to start part one picking up where I left off. Five weeks ago, I was all set to buy a Pedro shirt. I really was. And I was all set to wait until the Mets' hot streak was over. I really was.

The next night, David Wright does this.

Go here, and click on "Amazin' DP for Mets" (I can't link to it directly). I was there that night; it happened so fast I didn't even see it until I got home and watched it on the computer. There aren't many plays that turn a season, and that was one of them. Without it, the Mets, in all probability, don't sweep the Phillies, don't build a ridiculous lead in the NL East, and who knows what happens then.

Amazin'.

Strangely compelled I was after that. Moral dilemmas mattered not. On my way home from work the next night, my car drove itself to the Cherry Hill Mall. My feet took me to Modell's. My credit card found its way into the cashier's hand. And I walked out with a black "Wright #5" shirt.

Unfortunately, the medium shirt which looked to fit me while it was on the hanger left little to the imagination, and left me little room to use my lungs, or move. So I still really didn't have my Mets shirt. Kris and I went to the game that night, and I sat there Wrightless as the Mets won again.

They did it again the next day, and the idea of a David Wright shirt had officially dug its way into my brain. It rooted around in there for a few days, pulling apart neurons and making me highly susceptible to... suggestion. Modell's didn't have any larges, so I bit the bullet and paid much, much more for a large on the internet (and got a floppy hat while I was at it). I got a package with a hat and a shirt while at work. The large was ginormous, but shrunk enough in the wash to look respectable.

Life was good.

Tomorrow (Part Two): Fenway Park, and the biggest project of my career
Sunday (Part Three): Big news!

drunk friday bloggging

don't you just wish you could shoot things out of your hands which would rip the fucking faces off of random passersby? yeah, me too.

in any case, I'll have an actual sober update tomorrow. Godspeed!

moral dilemmas

Yes, this blog has been shoved to the periphery. No, it is NOT what I wanted to have happened, but it's happened. I've spent my weeks in far-off locales - wrestling pumas in dirt pits while loud villagers all around me clutch fistfuls of rupiah and yell very loudly in exotic tongues. I suppose I could have blogged about this, but wrestling pumas is extremely exhausting mentally, and the only thing I really wanted to do at the end of a long day spent grappling with big, angry wildcats was to get home, put my feet up, crack open a beer and watch the laugh parade that is According to Jim (at least 75% of its episodes are refreshingly puma-free).

I've also been following the Mets rather closely, thanks to the jittery, pixelated magic that is MLB.tv. I'm enjoying their success, though part of me still expects it to disappear in the most cockpunchingly painful way possible. I suppose if I didn't expect that at least a little bit, I wouldn't be a Mets fan.

Here's my dilemma: I've decided that my authentic Mets home jersey is bad luck. I can't remember the last time I wore it to a game that they've won, so I'm not going to wear it anymore. It has no name and no number, but it is of the style of jersey worn from 1991 to 1992 - buttoned-down, with orange-blue-orange piping down the sleeves and the sides. Those of you with long, freakish memories will note that the Mets went 146-174 in the years in which they wore these uniforms. Not good. I suspect this has something to do with the Mets' poor recent record in games I've attended wearing my jersey.

(Also note - last summer in Pittsburgh, I wear my jersey on Saturday night and the Mets lose by a lot; I wear my Hey Day shirt the next day and the Mets win. The fact that Kaz Ishii pitched the first game and Pedro pitched the second game probably had nothing to do with it - I'm pretty sure it was the jersey).

I've decided to replace it with one of those t-shirt jerseys that are popular these days. I think most of the Mets' current uniform designs are lame; buying one is prohibitively expensive; and for some reason it's always sort of lame to see somebody at the ballpark or in public wearing a current authentic baseball jersey with a current name and number. Now, for whatever reason people who wear authentic hockey jerseys, replica football jerseys and throwback baseball jerseys have managed to avoid this lameness, but that's neither here nor there.

So I'm going to buy one of those t-shirt jerseys. You've seen them - they don't look like jerseys really; they're more like regular monotone t-shirts with the team's lettering printed across the front chest, and a font-accurate name and number on the back. Here are my two dilemmas:

1) When do I buy it? and
2) Whose name and number do I get?

My first dilemma seems simple: when do I buy the shirt so as not to jinx a Mets hot streak (such as the current one) and/or feel like a bandwagon jumper? The answer to the first part of the question seems obvious - I must wait until the Mets are no longer on a hot streak. But this raises another troubling moral issue - if buying the shirt would give me pleasure (which it would), is there then a part of me that waits impatiently for a Mets hot streak to end? What kind of fan would I be if this were indeed the case? And what kind of fan would I be if I didn't wait to indulge myself, thereby dooming the Mets' hot streak in the process?

As for bandwagon jumping, I know I'm not a bandwagoner, but I think I would feel like one if the Mets won 10 in a row and I went out and bought the shirt at the peak of a frenzied baseball-induced high. Which brings me back to my moral impasse: if I resolve to wait out a hot streak before I buy a shirt - thereby validating my "true fan" status - is my subconscious mind rooting for the Mets to lose?

The name-and-number question is much less confusing. I'm pretty sure I want to get a shirt with "MARTINEZ 45" on the back. Kris and I went to the Cherry Hill Mall on Saturday, and we stepped into Modell's. The only Mets shirts they had were Reyes, Wright, Delgado and Wagner. Delgado and Wagner were easy "no"s, as both have been on the team for two and a half months and have had their ups and downs. Reyes and Wright were "no"s based on the fact that I won't get the name-and-number of anybody younger than me until I have to, because that's just weird.

I think it's gotta be Pedro, because he's much older than me, because I get such joy from watching him, because he takes such joy in playing baseball, because he completely changed the attitude around Shea and because it seems like he's not even real. The guy is like a cartoon character. Read this Onion article on him - satire, yes, but more exaggeration than fiction - and tell me you don't like him. He is my favorite Met.

I'm mildly concerned that getting a Pedro shirt will jinx him, but I'm much more worried that the act of buying a Mets shirt in general - regardless of the player - will jinx the entire team (see: dilemma #1).

Moral quandaries aside, I'd like to make this happen in the next two weeks, as Kris and I are going to Boston to see the Mets play on the 29th. We've had the tickets since February, and we just booked accommodations yesterday; we're staying in what looks like a charming B&B about a mile away from Fenway (according to Orbitz), and we're going to spend Thursday and Friday night in Beantown, which should give us time to do some sightseeing. Then we'll mosey on down the East Coast as the Fourth of July weekend progresses... who knows - we may be making a stop in your town! Just look for the guy wearing "MARTINEZ 45" on the back. It'll probably be me. Or Pedro.

very very early friday thoughts

- What are Law and Order: SVU repeats doing on the SciFi Channel? The only plus side would be Sam Waterston somehow staring intently into the camera during a promo and talking about how Mansquito is "inherently dramatic."

- Demolition Man is the stupidest movie of all time.

- You just knew this story had to come from Philly.

- I bet the Baby Looney Tunes think the Muppet Babies are total assholes.

And what happened to Lola Bunny in between her time as a baby Looney Tune and a disturbingly sexy rabbit-thing? You know, besides the cartoon boobs. Where was she?

My guess is that she and Bugs grew up together and became high school sweethearts. Bugs liked to drag race out in the desert by the ravine, and on the night before he was to ship out to Vietnam, he went up against Yosemite Sam for "slips," as the kids said back then. Lola wanted to come along, not knowing that the locking mechanism for the passenger-side door on Bugs' '72 Charger had rusted and broken. On one particularly sharp turn around the edge of the ravine, the door gave way and flew open, sending Lola hurtling into the night. The Looney Tunes eventually gave up hope of finding her, assuming that she had met her untimely demise at the bottom of the chasm.

Bugs was emotionally scarred and coped with his guilt in odd ways. Eventually he ended up a transient - moving from city to city, forest to forest, always living in holes in the ground to keep people from seeing the shame that hung around him like a cloud of cigar smoke. At one point he attempted to create a suit simulating Lola's appearance from the skin of the dim-witted local sportsmen he often encountered.

But Lola was not dead - she survived her fall into the ravine and was found in the desert days later by a mysterious stranger, who nursed her back to health. Her physical therapy involved honing her basketball skills, and through her games she became friends with her former enemies - one of whom gave her lessons in sassmouth and overall spunk.

Lola rejoined her fellow Looney Tunes as they fought for their very souls. She sank layups and used her wit and endearing feminine pluck to show her fellow toons that she could survive - even thrive - in a world not of her making. After beating the Monstars, she and Bugs lived happily ever after, despite the fact that Bugs still spent most of his time living in holes, wearing womens' clothing, and and arguing with his would-be skin donors as to which hunting season it actually was (the answer? HUMAN SEASON!!!!!).

finally

Well, it took two months, but I finally got my photos from the trip Kris and I took to L.A. I don't have a digital camera; it's all film. As my boss would say, film is like wood.

I'll be trying to fill in the comments at some point, but I really don't feel like it right now. If you're wondering, the photos roughly go in this order: Disneyland, Getty Center, Griffith Park, L.A. Zoo, Santa Monica Pier.

Enjoy!

the end of history

Thanks to Mensch for sending this along.

This is the End of History - thousands of years of human civilization have led up to this one indelible endpoint, and now it's past. The purpose of the combined life-toil of the tens of billions of people who have walked this earth since the Dawn of Man has finally become clear.

Life will go on, I suppose, but now that humanity has officially entered its post-historical age, it is difficult to see a point to all of it. We've reached the peak of the mountain, and there's nowhere to go but down the other side.

my apologies to david wright and the baseball gods

Since I annointed him "The Chosen One" on this blog - 6-for-33, 0 HR, 1 RBI, 6 K.

I should have known better than to open my big mouth. The Baseball Gods were angered. My apologies, David. My apologies, Baseball Gods.

best song ever

If Terry and Janice play this song at their wedding reception, I'll give them ten dollars each. Seriously - that's a promise. I'll give Janice $50 if she walks down the aisle to it during the ceremony (with an extra $10 for each accompanying "raise the roof" motion). I think that's fair market value.

Anyhoo, it's a good sign if the Mets can not only win but beat the Braves(!) on the same day their marketing department releases the jaw-droppingly embarassing baseball equivalent of "My Humps." Next up for their brain trust: hire a somewhat familiar, in-your-face talking dog as the team's new mascot, then have him hunt Mr. Met for sport within the labyrinthine bowels of Shea Stadium (hey, SNY needs programming).

monday tidbits

- So Mensch called Spector and I "fuckers" for not posting about Fran Dunphy leaving Penn; apparently we are the only connection to Philly sports that dear Matthew has. I've decided to rectify the situation forthwith.

Daily Pennsylvanian: Dunphy announced as next Temple coach

There you go, your majesty!

Seriously, I wish Dunph all the best; you can't really fault him for wanting to do this. I can only hope that whoever is next to lead men's basketball 1) doesn't pull a Joe Scott, and 2) regards coaching the Penn Quakers the same way one would regard managing the Yankees or coaching Notre Dame football. We may live in an ESPN world that has long since left Ivy League sports behind, but that doesn't mean it isn't amazingly special to pace the hardwood at the Palestra.

- I don't know who Ray Glier is, but after writing his commentary on the upcoming Mets-Braves series, it seems clear he can go back to his home on Whore Island. Seriously. Part of me wonders if he was wearing a Braves hat in the Turner Field clubhouse/dugout when he got quotes for this thing. It reminds me of the dueling columns in the DP and the Daily Princetonian on the eve of Penn-Princeton basketball, only it's completely sincere and written by a grown man and a professional journalist.

Bluster like this is one of the many reasons the Braves deserve to fall, and fall hard (though I don't know if it's better or worse than the type of intellectually dishonest homerism that frames the rivalry as the poor wittle Braves versus the big bad Mets), but as Clint Eastwood once growled, deserve's got nothin' to do with it. So we shall see.

I've come down from the euphoria of last week, as Carlos Beltran is apparently hurt again (oh, come on!) and the Mets looked lucky to take two of three from the Brew Crew. I'm getting that "Lucy's going to pull the football away just before the Mets try to kick it" feeling in the pit of my stomach - again - but I really really really really hope this year is different. I know these three games against the Braves won't tell us either way if this year is indeed The Year, but I really hope they slap those bitches down and put them back seven games before April 20th (I'd take five).

I've been calling David Wright "The Chosen One" for about two weeks now; normally that would invite a meteroite to explosively sluice through the skull of whichever Met had been called that (by anybody anywhere), but Wright just has that certain "it" factor that makes me unafraid to anoint him as such. I'm hoping that tonight he begins to fulfill the prophecy and bring balance to the force (i.e., finally finally lead the Mets to first place - and beyond).

- Some musical moments of zen: I heard Hall and Oates' "Your Kiss is On My List" not once, not twice but three different times this weekend: once while Kris and I were walking through Ann Taylor on our way out of Franklin Mills on Saturday, once in Kris' car on our way back from Franklin Mills, and a third time at Lowe's yesterday.

The odds against that have to be astronomical; I'm guessing either that or winning Powerball was going to happen once in my life, and now it has, and it wasn't the Powerball one.

The other musical moment of zen occurred this morning on the NJ Turnpike; I stopped at a service area to get some coffee at Starbucks - just regular old coffee, nothing too fancy. When I got back in the car, Mike Doughty's "Busting up a Starbucks" was playing on XPN.

Now it's true that railing against the corporate, bourgeois ubiquity of Starbucks is very 1999, but as I drove along sipping my Tall Freshly Brewed, I was like "yeah, Starbucks sucks, man!" I don't know what that says about me.

opening day

Exactly six months ago, I lamented the loss of baseball and the onset of fall. The previous day, Kris, Spector and I watched Mike Piazza take his bows as a Met for the final time, then watched as Jose Offerman lined into a double play, officially ending an 83-win season for the New York Mets.

Today, they're back - not just the Mets, but the Brewers, Blue Jays, Padres - all of them. It's Opening Day, and 2006 can finally begin.

I guess I'm just a huge sports nerd, but my summers are not only defined by what happens to me in my life, but what happens to groups of millionaires as they run around ballfields. And really, the two are intertwined - I'll always remember 2005 for the first full summer Kris and I enjoyed together, and we spent part of it following the Phillies to Camden Yards, following the Mets to PNC Park, making trips down to Citizens Bank and a couple pilgrimages to Shea. It was incredible highs at work (and a few lows), and it was the Mets taking their shot at the playoffs.

So as sad as it seems to say it (considering the fact that it's the jockly equivalent of dividing up cherished life memories based upon when seasons of Star Trek spinoffs begin and end), Opening Day is more than just game one of 162. It's day one of 2006. We can once again don shorts and flip-flops and rub in some suntan lotion and go out and let life begin. It's time to make new memories, even if some of them are going to be sitting in a 45,000-seat stadium for three hours drinking $7.50 Budweisers. It's time to live our lives nine innings at a time, even if we miss today's game - there's always another game tomorrow.

Flowery prose aside, I'm cautiously optimistic about this year's Mets team. They seem to have put together their best, most likeable group since the magical season of 1999, and as bad an in-game manager as Willie Randolph can sometimes be, the players play for him - he brings a veneer of professionalism to a franchise that has too often been a fucking insane circus (you may think the use of the word "fucking" is gratuitous here, but the phrase "insane circus" can't begin to describe the 2002, 2003 and 2004 New York Mets; hence, "fucking").

Of course, this is the type of optimism that lasts just about as long as it takes for Tom Glavine to give up three first inning runs and get that "I hate New York, life and myself" look going today, so we shall see. Enjoy Opening Day.

don't blame us, we voted for kodos

I have no idea who Gina Cobb is, but today she sounded a warning klaxon w/r/t Iran's development of nuclear weapons (via Krauthammer in Time).

I share her concern. Nuclear proliferation is probably one of the biggest issues facing humankind, as well as one of the least understood. Our administration's poor record on proliferation (making latter-day SDI plans public, seeking to resume nuclear arms production, sending John Bolton to the UN, patting India on the head for flaunting the NPT, etc., etc.) aside, Cobb, keeping in spirit with the Bush Doctrine, seeks to place pre-emptive blame for the Iran problem:

"One of the most awful legacies of the American left ultimately may be that it has undermined American and world support for decisive action to stop Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons until it is too late. By its relentless attacks on the White House centering around the Iraq war, the left has hobbled the Administration at a time when swift and unanimous action is required."

OK, here's the thing: nearly every poll in the known universe shows that a majority of Americans 1) decisively disapprove of Bush's handling of the Iraq war, and 2) think it was a mistake to go to war there in the first place. You want to know why the political capital Bush bragged about after the election is completely spent? Look no further than these numbers.

Now, I think it's pretty apparent that we on the allegedly "loony" Left don't make up a majority of Americans (one look at who controls all three branches of federal government should dispel any notions to the contrary). So how, then, can one explain why mainstream America is rejecting the Iraq war en masse and crippling the administration's further use of preemptive force? I think it's one of two possibilities:

1) Mainstream America is being led astray by the Left's corrosive attacks on the Bush administration's handling of the war; in particular by the media's refusal to report "good" news coming out of Iraq.

I think this is the explanation with which neo-conservatives will ultimately stick. The only problem with it is that if you take it to its logical conclusion, it's basically saying that 1) the power of leadership within the Bush White House is not enough to overcome the administration's shrill critics, and 2) mainstream America is easily swayed, which is a euphemism for "stupid."

Which is ironic, given how conservatives love to paint liberals as smug elitists - how often have we heard those on the Right chuckle about how the only message progressives have for people is "vote for us, you idiots!" Indeed, after huge wins in the past three election cycles, it's been incredibly easy for the GOP to proclaim its great faith in the wisdom of the American people. Only now that the shoe's on the other side of the aisle, Republicans are doing their darndest to tell middle America that it's been brainwashed by an agenda-driven New York Times; given the current poll numbers, when conservatives talk about the Left and the media's attacks on Bush, they're essentially telling Americans, "wake up, you idiots! And then vote for us!"

2) Ultimately, the American people are suckers for the truth.

Bingo.

Also, what Churchill said. As the disastrous way that Bush conceived and executed this war becomes more apparent, a majority of Americans respond with increasing negativity - robbing the President of his precious capital. It's that simple. To blame the people - on the Left or anywhere else - for both the political and real-world consquences of this nightmare is absurd.

What does this mean w/r/t Iran? Well, I don't want to be consumed in nuclear hellfire any more than you do. Unfortunately, you've gotta dance with the one who brung ya, and by that I mean we're going to be forced to give our trust to a man who has not yet shown he's worthy of it.

what the f

A quick two-minute hate, then back to work:

Apparently our Prez has rendered all public school civics classes obsolete (not to mention the United States Congress). Also, he made Princess Amidala cry.

Imagine for a moment that it's 1995, and Congress has just passed a new campaign finance reform bill after months of intense bipartisan negotiation. Now imagine that President Clinton signed the bill into law, then wrote in his own addenda right after the signing ceremony gutting the new law and ensuring that it could never apply to him. The ensuing rage among the chattering skulls of the Right would have been able to power the entire city of Tokyo for one full night. I'm pretty sure Ann Coulter would have transformed into a huge werewolf live on the set of Hardball, digging her slathering maw deep within Paul Begala's chest for a most unholy feast.

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm not expecting any hearts to be eaten on live TV in the next couple days, if you know what I mean.