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September 2002 Archives

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September 30

Travels with Brick: Miami

I went to the University of Miami for the National Academic Championship. It was the year of the huge falling out between Chip and Gary Lipschutz. I bought a Vinny Testaverde shirt. Miami in May is not fun when you haven't gotten used to summer weather yet.

September 29

Watched the Yankees defeat Baltimore. The woman who sang the national anthem was terrible, people were imitating her facial contortions after the game. Whitlock drooled at Derek Jeter.

Aussie John Stevens must be the softest-throwing non-knuckleball pitcher in the majors. His fastball tops out in the low 80s. Stevens walked Ventura on a 59-mile-an-hour curve ball. His next pitch was a 58-mile-an-hour ball to White. Rondell slammed the next offering, a 57-mile-an-hour curve ball into the seats. The soft stuff worked if he mixed in a fastball in the 80s.

Watched Friday's Firefly. Standard set-up of a ghost ship with a lot of dead people on it. Obviously, Trek fans assume "The Naked Time" or "The Naked Now" sickness. Turns out to be the mysterious "Reavers", humans who have devolved into a cannbalistic form. I guess in Whedon's no-alien universe, the worst horror is purely human in nature.

Sometimes it seems that Alliance forces are the most alien. They function mechanically, slaved to rules. I like this indifferent form of totalitarianism.

September 28

Watch some more shows I taped this week. The second Enterprise of the season was the best so far. There wasn't much tension or plot in the Vulcans secretly contacting humans in 1950s Pennsylvania.

I could nitpick the details such if baseball was being played, it must have been set in the summer of 1958. However, by that time, there were several satellites in orbit, including Explorer 1. The obvious excuse to show Jolene's Blaylock naked silhouette behind a sheet in the sun was pretty funny.

The Twilight Zone had two good episodes. In the first one, a young executive has a man come to his car window in the rain, desperate to be let in. He drives on and sees the man beaten up in his rear view mirror.

He discovers the victim was a black college professor, killed by skinheads in a hate crime. He starts to feel guilty that he drove on because the man in need was black. The Twilight Zone kick was that he slowly turned into the murdered man.

He returns home, but his wife doesn't recognize him. He learns about the funny looks black men get and meets the widow. She he's not her husband, but the apology doesn't help. Eventually he gets beaten up in the same incident. I suppose this time, he goes back into his old body and redeems himself, rescuing up the man.

First of all, I didn't know the guy was black. As a matter of fact, I thought it was a crazy white man trying to get in. In that situation, I wouldn't let him in. However, once I saw the attack in the rear view mirror, I would have immediately called 911.

The man feels greater guilt because the victim was a college professor. Does this mean he would have felt better if the victim was a janitor? That's the bigger question. Overt racism is rare in my circle, towards people who are different, but work in the same jobs, or live in the same neighborhoods. With people of any race in a lower class, the eptihets appear.

In the second segment, a graphic novel artist suffering a block, conjures a fantasy lover, in the form of Shannon Elizabeth, as a muse to inspire him. Eventually, something strange is going on. She hooks up with the cable guy and drives off with the jeep.

We realize that she was the graphic artist and created the artist as the fantasy lover. I would have liked it if she slowly turned from supermodel looks to a dumpy fan girl while he turned from fan boy to hunk.

On CSI, Robbins and Sanders now get opening credit. In one case, a champion poker player dies at the table, in the other, the body of a street drag racer is found.

The poker players had more personality than the real professionals I've seen on television or read about. The real pros are automatons. Grissom discovers that the woman player uses her different-colored contact lens to cheat. I can't believed the other players wouldn't have noticed such an obvious ploy. The culprit turned out to be that the victim ate a pound of chocolate, every night for 16 years. The chocolate was tainted with lead from West African air. Are our chocolates so dangerous?

In the other thread, Willows and Stokes race souped-up cars to prove how the suspect could have fired through two windows to kill the other driver. I can't believe Las Vegas CSI has enough money for such an extravagant experiment. It did have a cool ending with the silhouette of Willows in the sun screaming,"Thank you! Good night!"

September 27

Great showing by New England over Chicago. Maryland product Taylor Twellman scored the first goal of the game. I'm rooting for any team that hasn't won an MLS Cup before, to maintain that two-championship gap between DC United and everyone else.

September 26

A little more energy to watch CSI: Miami. Perhaps we should sit down and come up with a Who song for every city when CSI comes to their town. This could be a franchise to rival Law and Order.

The Commission got mentioned again, although the company officials could have been interviewed in the Southeast Regional Office on Brickell Avenue in Miami. They didn't have to get on the plane at all, but where would the story be?

The women are gorgeous. I wish there were more actual detectives as regulars on the show.

September 25

Going to bed early. Might as well talk about the season premieres I saw last week.

I find myself watching Enterprise out of intertia. I barely care and if I cared anymore, I'd be really ticked off at the ridiculously sloppy Trek science used.

This week's episode was an excuse to show the main female characters in their skivvies. I thought Captain Archer looked funny appearing to T'Pol as a ghostly apparition. Given she didn't believe in time travel to begin with, she may well have discounted his message as a hallucination.

The Twilight Zone started with a standard tale of a totalitarian gated community. "OpenClose" by Terry Bisson would make a nice two-minute segment. I hope The Twilight Zone adapts some short stories from the genre magazines like the 1985 incarnation did.

The second segment featured Jason Alexander as Death. This grim reaper was tired of the killing. Unlike, the traditional, well-dressed, frequently effete Death, Alexander played him as the dumpy working man. How would we react to Death portrayed by little blonde girl?

For Whedon fans, Firefly was the most anticipated debut of the season. Unlike other people, I wasn't bored. I'm more surprised people stay awake through Enterprise.

Part of the fun is picking out the references, intentional or not. Captain Malcolm Reynolds is Perry King's portrayal of Han Solo from the Star Wars radio adaptation, right down to the visual resemblance. Mal, Zoe and Jayne wear the tight pants and boots from Battlestar Galactica's pilots. Do you think someone will be caught in some mechanical monstrosity and have to yell,"Jayne, stop this crazy thing! Help! Jayne!"

Inara is Cordelia with manners. Kaylee is a cross between Willow and Scotty, complete with the technobabble. River (Have we come to this? River is her character's name, Summer is her real name. This from someone named Brick) is a little bit Fred, a little bit Dawn. Shepherd Book is a little Giles, a little bit Master Po. Is Joss Whedon starting to look an awful lot like Dave Choat?

In the final analysis, after watching this episode, I don't think Fox has the patience for it. In this time slot, with the obvious sex appeal of Jessica Alba, Dark Angel got cancelled. On the other hand, I can imagine Firefly getting picked up by the WB or UPN.

Monk didn't have the captain and allowed him to go on vacation with Sharona. I liked Bronwyn, the hotel detective, who I can picture as Monk's professional partner. I hope she returns, maybe even in a romantic capacity. The plot had a lot of good twists and red herrings.

However, the resolution left a lot to be desired. The writers got some of their securities law wrong. If you have inside information and act through relatives, that can be traced back to you and still be considered insider trading. I wish they showed the housekeepers visibily profiting from their scheme to give some sense and satisfaction to the story. As it was the ending was hurried.

September 24

Tonight Whitlock was sitting behind the FLES table at the Sally Ride's Back-to-School Night. FLES is a foreign language program for elementary schools.

I stayed home and watched Buffy. The bumpers allowed James Marsters to speak in his natural California accent. I liked the addition of the Principal and Carlos. Although there have been black characters (Kendra and Mr. Trick), there haven't been any Asians or Hispanics.

The earthquake felt by Willow was kind of spooky since an earthquake shook England today. I'm curious who planted the vengeance talisman, was it Anya? Spike himself would describe his new hairdo as "nancy boy". However, his line of "Duck," is just a little too cool for his current mental state. I take it this year's big bad is a creature even more powerful than Glory with transformational powers.

September 23

Travels with Brick: Southeastern Pennsylvania

I went to Novacon, a small con in York, Pennsylvania. Samuel R. Delany was the guest of honor and quite accessible there. I could park on the street two blocks from the hotel.

Clam Chowder performed and it was my first extended conversation with Wendell Wagner. I also had some longer talks with folks who I normally didn't hang out with at DC cons.

Whitlock and I like outlet shopping in Lancaster. Just be careful not to get caught in the Amish themepark traffic. We tried going to Reading once, but the town has deteriorated since its heyday. These days, we prefer Hagerstown.

Brick with Mia HammSeptember 22

Sometime during the second of inning of the Boston-Baltimore game, I saw woman I thought looked a lot like Mia Hamm. Then I realized she was Mia Hamm, sitting in the section where friends and family of the visiting team sit. In the middle of the fifth, I walked over to her seat and acted just like the tongue-tied fanboys in William Shatner's "Get a Life" sketch on Saturday Night Live. She was a good sport and let me have a picture taken with her, which an usher took.

I guess she was there as a guest of Nomar Garciaparra. She stood up when he hit his home run. Mia stayed through the whole game and held a baby girl on her lap for the last two innings.

World-famous media fan banging himself in the head for being an Orioles supporterI shared the game with world-famous media fan and Orioles supporter Martin Morse Wooster. In the picture, he's not hiding his face, but hitting himself in the head. Martin is very clever and witty when you hang out with him. He'd be a blog natural, but of course, he wouldn't get paid.

Oh yeah, the Red Sox won 13-2. Only 30,573 showed up for a Red Sox game.

September 21

Along with grocery shopping, I went to the local Market Pro Show. I bought a bunch of discounted software for the family. I also bought a puzzle vehicle for Miranda and speakers for the notebook when we use it as a DVD player.

Another pathetic showing for Sunderland.

Jeff, Gene, Phyllis and MimiSeptember 20

If more games were more like this one soccer fandom would double. DC tied in injury time only to lose in overtime.

I don't know why Suzy Whalley has even to decide whether she will play in the Greater Hartford Open. Picture any weekend duffer, regardless of sex, who just lucks into a PGA exemption. Wouldn't they play, even if they have no chance of winning?

My only comment on the incident last night in Chicago is this excerpt from ESPN:

The father, identified by police as 34-year-old William Ligue Jr., and his 15-year-old son were led off the field in handcuffs.

Call me old-fashioned, but the numerical facts above and the incident at Comiskey are not unrelated.

Cary Hoagland hosted the Knossos meeting tonight. Her pick was the 1988 anthology Weird Tales, edited by Marvin Kaye. A picture from the meeting accompanies today's entry. Cary attempted to structure the meeting more like a seminar.

September 19

Peter Gammons said in his Diamond Notes that the gap between the records of the best and worst teams has never been bigger. Except for the 41 other years in the 20th century when the gap was bigger.

I decided to define the middle class as those teams with winning percentages between .444 and .555. This is narrower than the more common .400-.600 definition. This morning, 12 or the 30 teams were in my defined range or 40%.

In the last century, there were 41 seasons when this middle class was less than 40%. The worse were in 1904 and 1950 when only 1/8 or 2 of the 16 teams were in this range. The most compressed year was 1958 when 13 of the 16 teams were in the middle class. Only the Yankees (.597), Senators (.396) and Braves (.597) were outside the range. Just nine games separated 2nd and 7th place in the American League.

Not that Gammons knows anything about history. He's just the leak target of choice for MLB.

September 18

Watched the weekend's episode of Monk. Like Columbo, the audience knows quite early who the murderer is. In this case, a marathon runner skips out to kill his mistress and throw her off her balcony before returning to finish the race.

As someone with some experience in the past with long distance races, I immediately thought Monk should explore physiological changes in his suspect that would result from running 26 miles in San Francisco, very recently. However, given the stress of the tortuous route the killer took, I would accept that you wouldn't be able to tell. I also liked the 63-year-old hero of Monk who also runs the marathon, but seems not to have missed too many meals since his days as a world long distance champion.

Having an exchange with Craig Barker on schools named after people. Montgomery County, Maryland is making an effort to name their new public institutions after someone besides dead white males. You can see a list of them at the Elementary, Middle School and High School.

When the current Northwest High School was opening up, the entering students wanted to name the school after Jim Henson. A dead, white male media figure, but a cool choice in my opinion. My alma mater no longer exists, but that closing took off the school names a dead white male with a questionable history with African-Americans and Inuits.

September 17

Reality set in on the Indigenous Persons. That the offense failed to score any points wasn't a big surprise since many people doubt whether Steve Spurrier can apply his methods to the pros. That the defensive genius Marvin Lewis couldn't get his squad to stop the Eagles' offense at all is much more troubling. The sight of Spurrier flapping his lips may be the most repeated video from this game.

I used to only slightly dislike the Bill's new uniforms, but check out this photo of Bledsoe. The picture makes it look dazzle blue, the television makes it look Columbia Blue. At any rate, that's the third shade of blue, including the royal blue buffalo on the helmet, and the navy blue on the pants, shoulders and helmet stripe. Make a decision guys!

Dwight Kidder doesn't like the Seahawks new uniforms:

Attention Seattle Seahawks, next time you choose a color, please take it out on the field before you sign off on it. The combination of the glossy helmet finish, the nearly invisible solid greenish-blue unis, and wearing the same color for helmet, jersey, and pants made it look like the Cardinals were playing numbered versions of Mark Knopfler's glowing headband from the Money for Nothing video. The really bad thing is, if they weren't playing on grass, the uniforms would probably look fine. Either that or we put them on the blue turf in Boise.

Peyton's Manning request to wear black hightops may not be just the usual NFL fartiness. It may also be the victim of the tug-of-war between the Baltimore Ravens and the Indianapolis Colts over the corpse of the Baltimore Colts. On the civic level, this may equal the Ohio-North Carolina feud over the Wright Brothers. I know that Unitas personally severed all ties to Indianapolis after the move and if he could have chosen only one team to honor him, that team would be the Ravens.

Some believe that because he wore a Colts jersey, only the Colts can honor Unitas. However, I don't believe a legacy like should be bought and sold like a common commodity. The people of Baltimore who remember him, saw him play, saw him on sidelines at Ravens games, deserve to honor Unitas more than the people of Indianapolis.

September 16

Some perspective from Rob Neyer.

Travels with Brick: Dallas-Fort Worth

Chip first held his National Academic Championships in Dallas. I flew there on a two-stop flight passing through Nashville and Memphis that resulted in American Airlines losing my luggage. In those days, we ran in just one room over the course of a week and each team had only game.

I was always there in May, so it was hot. One year, Chip took us to dinner at Reunion Tower. Every two minutes, we saw Dealey Plaza.

On a Saturday afternoon, we could park a car on the street in front of a department store in Downtown Dallas. I guess the shoppers were all in the suburbs.

The main attraction in Fort Worth they brought us to was the stockyards. FW is still my least favorite city.

September 15

Unfortunately, this was how we were afraid we would hear again from this guy.

Trivia from Saturday's games:

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Mark Hendrickson joined Danny Ainge, Gene Conley, Dave DeBusschere, Dick Grat, Frankie Baumholtz, Cotton Nash, Ron Reed, Chuck Connors and Steve Hamilton as those who have played in both the NBA and major league baseball.

Are the Blue Jays back to drafting two-sports athletes again? In the 1980s, they were famous for the delusion that Danny Ainge was a major league third baseman. Future Indigenous Persons quarterback Jay Schroeder also spent a few years toiling both ends of the battery in the Toronto farm system. I believe Schroeder led the Carolina League in passed balls in 1983.

September 14

After a morning with a haircut and grocery shopping, Miranda had a playdate, Whitlock went to her office and I edited yet another episode of Silver Screen Test. Episode 7 is finished now.

A bad day for both brands of football in Michigan. I remember Beano Cook saying that State was a national champion candidate because of their easy schedule.

Also a bad day for Maryland, but hey, they're a basketball school.

A worse day for Sunderland. They sit in the drop zone, but least Newcastle is still behind them.

Amazingly, DC United is still in the playoff hunt. If somebody wins the New York/New Jersey-New England game, Kansas City loses, Chicago draws and DC wins, there could be a four way tie for the final play-off spot.

By beating the Metrostars, DC United captured the Atlantic Cup, which goes to the winner of the season series. Maybe lousy teams in all sports should use this alternate championship to increase attendance at the end of the season. Maybe fans will come to see Detroit Tigers-Kansas City Royals, Arizona Cardinals-Seattle Seahawks, Memphis Grizzlies-New Orleans Hornets or Tampa Bay Lightning-Florida Panthers, if there's a trophy at stake.

We tried to get Miranda to watch The Great Mouse Detective, but it got too scary for her. I also think there may too sophisticated humor in it for younger children.

September 13

The Washington City Paper has probably put more contestants in contact with me for Silver Screen Test than any other source. I frequently put a free ad in the Notices section of their classifieds. I picked up a copy today and found a review for Boyz of All Nationz: The Rise and Fall of a Multi-Ethnic Boy Band, a play by Prince Gomolvilas.

In the familiar Behind the Music format, it tells the story of Bob (the European-American), Ray-Ray (the African-American), Jace (the Hispanic-American) and Brick (the Asian-American).

Their hit singles included "Put Your Eggs In My Basket" and "Oh Let Me Lay You Down (I Wanna Lick You Up)". They staged their world debut in the Pentagon City food court. Reviews here from the Washington Post and the City Paper.

I came home to Comcast sub-contractors in my driveway. Apparently the previous job of digging a few inches of road near the curb was declared illegal by the county. Instead, the contractor had to dig up a few inches of my driveway by the sidewalk as well as the grass by the sidewalk. Supposedly, another Comcast contractor will come by the resurface the entire driveway. The work resulted in brief interruptions, but long enough to interrupt tonight's episode of Monk.

September 12

Johnny Unitas died yesterday. He was like Mickey Mantle to me, an icon of the recent past whose greatest years I never saw. Not that the only Johnny U I remember toiled in a San Diego Chargers jersey. It's just that he played in my time along with Bart Starr, Joe Namath and Fran Tarkenton in their prime. I wonder if the Ravens will wear a royal blue 19 the rest of the season.

Tuesday Morning Quarterback makes a cyberpunk and bimbo reference noting that Raiderette Maria Wintermute shares her last name with the artificial intelligence in Neuromancer.

September 11

My thoughts return today to two acquaintances who had trouble getting home last year. One was a daughter of our middle management. She was stranded in Hawaii on her honeymoon. My cousin went to San Diego with a bunch of friends to watch the Indigenous Persons get stomped in person. His group returned home in a rented van.

The Washington Post is pessimistic about the Expos playing in DC in 2003. The Washington Times on the other hand sounds an optimistic tone. This reflects their attitudes all along.

The Post gets their information from the Warehouse and major Democratic contributor. The Times advocates as potential owner a former partner to the current President. But if MLB is willing to lose money yet again in Montreal, rather than rake in the jackpot in Washington, the Lords of the Sport give a whole new meaning to the term no-brainer.

Finished editing Episode 8 of Silver Screen Test. Also learned a whole lot about working the newfangled character generator.

September 10

Farscape is going off the air. Just when I started watching it for Water Rats veteran Raelee Hill.

These people don't have lives so that we can have them. A discussion of the sleeve stripe on Aaron Taylor's uniform when none of the rest of the Mariners have them.

An eloquent defense of baseball from Jayson Stark.

Tonight SportsCenter ranked the shortstops and put Millennium Trammell in the top 10. No mention of Arky Vaughn, Joe Cronin or the original Trammell.

September 9

Travels with Brick: Atlanta

On our way home from Disney World, we rode an L-1011 into Atlanta that went on to Los Angeles without us. We rode a DC-9 back to Washington.

As the Maryland College Bowl coach, I chaperoned the team down to Atlanta on the Crescent, or as more romantically characterized, a Midnight Train to Georgia. A train seat is certainly more comfortable than an airline seat, but sleeping on one is still no picnic. I felt the difference the night of our hotel stay, sleeping in a motionless bed.

Emory hosted the tournament where we got our first taste of the format most commonly used on the circuit today: untimed 20 toss-ups. Bonuses still had variable values. It was also my last competition for more than a decade. Peach Tree Street on a Saturday morning doesn't really tell you much about Atlanta.

We played Illuminati in the dining car on the way back. In the morning we took the Maryland shuttle back to campus. We put a smug guy who thought he knew a lot about films in his place.

A few years later I intended to fly out of Miami directly back to Washington. However, somewhere between checking in my bags and the gate, my flight was cancelled. They didn't even bother to indicate that the flight was cancelled on the board at the gate.

I asked what happened to my flight and they put me on another flight to Atlanta. From Hartsfield, I took the last flight of the night in National Airport. Of course, my bags weren't there in Washington when I arrived. At least I was home where clothes weren't a problem.

September 8

Some AM thoughts on the MVP. Rob Neyer argues for Alex Rodriguez. Should A-Rod be penalized because his team is mediocre? Would he suddenly become more valuable if he played for Minnesota? But the Twins are leading the Central Division by 14 games without him right now. Does A-Rod suddenly become more valuable because of better teammates and worse opponents? I'm of the school that a players is valuable regardless of where his team finishes.

Meanwhile, the greatest active player thinks starting pitchers should not get MVP consideration because they're not out there everyday. Well what does Bonds in his team's 32 other plate appearances? For four of them, he's usually standing near first base, but what about other 28? Bonds can be found sitting on his butt on the bench. How is he contributing then? What about when the Giants are in the field? I would guess that at least 20 times a game, San Francisco could have made the play without a left fielder. Although I generally look at hitters before pitchers for the MVP, not to consider pitchers is ludicrous. Even if pitchers are not there four out of five days, the candidate batters can't help their team the majority of the time either.

A less than full-figured Tony Siragusa fanWent to see the Anaheim vs. Baltimore with David Bykowski. For no particular reason, I've added a picture of svelte Tony Siragusa fan.

The ball coach sneaked out a victory today. I think with Spurrier's penchant for running up the score, the Indigenous Persons will not lose to lesser teams, as commonly happened in the Norv Turner era.

As I heard the recaps on the drive home, the game of the day had to be Kansas City at Cleveland. Once Michael Westbrook cost Washington a big gain by ripping his helmet off. Now, Dwayne Rudd costs his team the game with an unsportsmanlike conduct call.

I write this as the Houston Texans take a half-time lead. Finally, some Joss Whedon news out of Pittsburgh.

September 7

I got a Spy vs. Spy t-shirt from Whitlock this morning and I gave her a Tara and Willow t-shirt.

Took Miranda to Amanda Pierce's birthday party. That's the birthday girl in the background of the picture with Miranda. As you can see, the party was at a bowling alley. During the party, I bought new stamps of Teddy Bears, Andy Warhol, Ogden Nash, and Harry Houdini. Although he's been played by Tony Curtis, Harvey Keitel and Wil Wheaton, the stamps make him look more like Tony Shalhoub.

September 6

Craig Barker notes that Slate has been stealing my ideas. Actually my idea of teams moving around also involves competing leagues. A single monopolistic entity has some incentive to carve up the territory to the benefit of the league as a whole.

Given that Bud Lite prefers public, rather than private financing of new stadiums, MLB loses by not moving teams. Look at the stadiums built for NFL teams once they started moving franchises around. And since a baseball teams hasn't moved in 31 years, the threat of leaving loses its power. That's why Bud had to invent the contraction ploy.

I tried to sleep after Kauai was let out of his laundry room, but I couldn't while he had the evening crazies in our bedroom. So I did some computer stuff that may end up on the web site. I also saw the end of the Athletics' streak on SportsCenter.

September 5

I disagree with the title, but he makes some good points about declining NFL television ratings. At least the NFL does something about their problems.

Travels with Brick: Northern California

My father had a conference in Palo Alto, but he sent me ahead a few days early and stay with my cousins. It was the first time I traveled by air all by myself.

I went into San Francisco alone the first day, traveling by bus and BART. A woman on the bus in front of me was dressed in a down vest. The temperatures in the area range quite a bit. You listen to the radio and the DJ says,"It's 100 in Sacramento, 89 in Oakland, 87 in Fremont and in down San Francisco, it's 68 degrees."

BART is just like Metro in Washington except for the fewer stops, longer range and bathrooms in the stations. They both use the same farecard system, although DC nomenclature is invariably more complex. The Bay Area just calls their farecard a "ticket". Someone wrote in the Post about trying to get a Metro farecard through BART and vice-versa. Both generated error messages, but the Washington one was two words longer.

In the city I walked through Golden Gate Park and saw the Steinhart Aquarium. The aquarium has the fish roundabout where you can see ocean fish swimming around you. There's always one fish swimming against the flow.

On one of the days, my cousin Chris went with me to the Exploratorium. I fell in love with the Berkeley campus, which I actually think is prettier than Stanford. While in Berkeley, I supposedly experienced an earthquake registering 4 on the Richter Scale while in music store. I bought a copy of Life, the Universe and Everything.

One of the nights, I stayed at Stanford with my father. We went to visit one of his friends who he claims looked like Elvis when he was young. By that time, the friend looked like Martin Sheen.

September 4

Stayed home today to get our garage doors installed. Then went to MCT to edit the most recent episode of Silver Screen Test.

September 3

I'm not usually a fan of Peter Gammons, but give Andrew Jackson credit where credit is due:

What was striking about the press conference is that not once did Selig mention the word "fans." To many fans, this could be taken as Selig essentially saying, "We've been telling you the players are greedy, mercenary and overrated for two years, and now we're putting millions more into the pockets of certain billionaires without asking them to invest in the game, but owners and players alike expect you to come back, bring your family of four to our games and spend the expected $150. I am the owners' commissioner and you're lucky."

...In all this revenue-sharing, there should be incentives for owners to build ballparks with as little public funding as possible. There should be rewards for Peter Magowan for not only saving a great franchise, but for building a ballpark with his own money, just as there should be revenue-sharing penalties for owners who get their ballparks from taxpayers. If this were about people and fans and not just about owners, then the commissioner would take the lead in this field, because there is no moral way that the San Francisco Giants should have to transfer money to teams like the Brewers and White Sox who were given taxpayer dollars to finance their ballparks and teams.

...When ESPN approached MLB about televising games from 1 p.m. until 1 a.m. on September 11 to celebrate baseball's dedication to the healing process, the network was told that it would have to be put out for bid and that it was all about money. Not conscience ... money.

Saw most of the Texas-Baltimore game, except for the exciting beginning. I did see Hairston break-up the no-hitter with his triple. We were that close to repeat of Ernie Shore's feat - following a starter who got himself thrown out before even retiring an opponent - with a no-hit performance. Of course, Shore is credited with a perfect game and I don't think we'll ever look back at Aaron Mayette as the greatest baseball player ever.

In addition, Joaquin Benoit was credited with the longest save in history -seven innings. In that same season as his perfect game, Bill James notes that Ernie Shore also pitched a save of five innings.

September 2

Another quiet day. We took Miranda up to Sally Ride for a picnic. Then she was supposed to ride her bicycle. Instead, she quickly got frustrated and we took a walk in the swamp.

September 1

For her homework this weekend, Miranda had to find five things to put in a paper bag to describe herself. She's putting in pictures of her family and her cat as well as buttons and magnifying glass.

Whitlock and I finally saw Chicken Run. I liked the way certain naturalistic movie conventions were incorporated into stop-action, such as the spoon in the rain. Also, that's the best American accent I've ever heard Mel Gibson do.

The Undertow... another pointless surfing metaphor ...

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|Chicks on Football|
|Best Store Names|
|Emil Tom Chuck|
|Man Conquers Space|
|The Endangered Public Domain|
|OBC Rob Neyer Interview|
|World Football Kit Collection|
|Canadian Comic Heroes|
|International Association of Astronomical Artists|

Contact us at eucalyptus@silverscreentest.com.
Last revised September 30, 2002
© 2001, 2002 B. Barrientos