My hometown Washington Nationals head to Wrigley Field to play the defending World Series champions (still weird, isn’t it?) for three games this weekend, all day games, of course, beginning today at 1:20 Central time. Classic.
Unbeknowst to Cubs management I have replaced the “W” flag at the park with one adorned by a red curly W, currently my son’s favorite thing to point out wherever we go.
Curly W, Daddy!
It’s the little things in life.
Step #1: Stake best pitcher in baseball to a 6-0 lead.
Step #2: Have best pitcher in baseball leave game after one inning due to some kind of bizarre neck spasm. (Apparently he slept on it funny. Or something like that.)
Step #3: Have MASN put graphic on board showing how great the new-and-improved bullpen has been since acquiring Ryan Madson and Sean Doolittle.
Step #4: Don’t have either one of those guys pitch.
Step #5: Watch said bullpen blow lead and lose game 7-6.
Step #6: #smh
Being home from vacation never really feels too great. Actually, being home is great, it’s going back to work and one’s regular life that leaves a bit to be desired.
Still, though, I look at the standings and see both the Yankees and the Nats in first place, NFL training camps in full swing, and tomorrow Netflix adds Jackie Brown to its universe of stellar, stellar options to keep real life at bay just a bit longer.
Life is good.
There’s an old baseball expression about seeing something you’ve never seen before. Four home runs in a row? Five in an inning? Eight in a game? Watching TV with a beach in the background
Yeah, I’m still on vacation.
For the Nats’ sake I think I’m going to do this more often.
I have a friend whose voicemail message, when he went on vacation, alerted callers of such, then said something to the effect of if this is an emergency… call someone who cares.
Exactly.
Whoever came up with the idea for “Shark Week” was a genius. (Wikipedia tells me it was someone named Tom Golden.)
Whoever came up with the idea to have swimming legend Michael Phelps race a shark during Shark Week… super duper double genius.
Seriously, who hasn’t been talking about Phelps vs. Shark the past month or so? This thing got more hype than the actual Olympics where Mr. Phelps made his bones.
I was curious to see how, if nothing else, Discovery Channel would be able to fill an hour (actually 66 minutes) with something that obviously was going to take about 30 seconds. Well, they did, and I was riveted from the word go. Spoiler alert: the shark wins, but seriously, how exactly did you think the race was going to turn out?
And thus we commence another Shark Week, the Discovery Channel equivalent of Christmas at the North Pole. I was unaware until last night that there are a couple more Phelps-shark episodes in the can, including something called “Sharkopedia.”
How about Rematch-opedia?
Hmm?
My wife tells me this blog is often too political, so at the risk of showing my human bias and offending any shark fans out there, let me simply say nice race, shark. Way to represent.
A common theme used in the many precursors to this blog (Politics After Dark, Politics on the Air, The Binghamton Vanguard, etc.) was having a “Vanguard eye for the news.” This was the method by which one could find subtle commentary and opinion laced throughout supposedly-objective “news” stories on TV and in print.
Nowadays we find such journalists are hardly so subtle.
Take, for example, my local newspaper (that would be The Washington Post) last Sunday, under the banner “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” a supposed “news” story about “Ivanka Inc.,” clever code name for the Ivanka Trump line of fashion and accessories. The four-page story (yes, four giant newspaper-sized pages) details the Ivanka brand, mostly in terms of see how terrible this is? The clothes and other merch are made and/or assembled in foreign countries, where, yes, workers make less than they do here. Shocking news in 2017, I know. I think by now we’ve learned that most of our stuff is made abroad, by people whose only other unfortunate choice is to toil in the local fields for half what they make in American-owned factories. I digress, but once again… damn glad I live here. (Thanks, potato famine!)
I know very little about fashion, but do know a thing or two about money and prices. One thing that does jump out at me is the relative affordability of Ivanka-brand merch. Yes, her dad puts a lot of fake gold and glitz and bumps up prices on many of the things he sells, but Ivanka’s brands seem relatively affordable among “high-end” merch. Consider women’s dresses, highlighted in the “news” article. Say the world output of dresses falls into three categories” 1.) $12 Walmart “dresses”; 2.) $42 Ivanka pleasant-looking attire; and 3.) $500 and up ridiculousness. All three are made in so-called sweatshops. Which ones should we ridicule? Personally I like options.
As a final note I bring attention to the companion piece to the above “news” article, profiling women who dare to wear the Ivanka brand. According to the Post it’s semi-employed “assistants” of one kind or another who do horrendous things like go to church and probably home school their children. And in case you didn’t have time to actually read the article (or maybe you who are interested in this just can’t read), the four-column-wide picture features a (distant) woman modeling an Ivanka dress. Really the picture is of her pickup truck, mobile home, and giant American flag, the three yuckiest things your average Washington Post photographer could ever find.
Well, after Trump voters of course.
Not exactly a World Series preview (though you never know), but last night’s matchup between the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and my local Washington Nats was about as marquee as west coast games get in the middle of July. Two of the games greatest stars (Messrs. Harper and Trout) traded first-inning homers (for those who had to go to bed early), and the Nats got to show off their new bullpen studs, ex-A’s Madson and Doolittle, for those who didn’t mind staying up. It wasn’t the smoothest inning for Sean Doolittle (who seems to have taken over the Nats’ much-beleaguered closing position), but he did end the game getting out Mike Trout and Albert Pujols, arguably the best two hitters in the game the past dozen years.
Stars shine when lights are brightest.
Or something like that.
Allow me to take advantage of several things that rarely occur:
1.) Me sleeping in (to 7:15) and not being organized enough to get this post together in the morning.
2.) Me going to the doctor (regular checkup… nothing serious) instead of going to work.
3.) The Nationals playing a day game on a Monday.
4.) Me not being able to think of anything to write about.
5.) The Nationals score five runs in the first inning… blogpost idea fulfilled!
Good things come to those who procrastinate.
Amelia Earhart is missing again.
Turns out the smoking gun evidence from Sunday night’s program on the History Channel (the photograph with two figures said to be Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan), was more smoke than gun. Not exactly a hoax per se, as it seems those presenting the photo really didn’t know its origins, but not at all as it was described. Apparently the photo was published in 1935. Regardless of what you believe to be Amelia Earhart’s ultimate fate, there is no doubt she was very much alive and living in the U.S. until 1937.
Whoops.
Still good television though. And let’s face it, this doesn’t disprove anything about being held by the Japanese or that she snuck back in the country as Big Foot or Elvis or whatever other theories are out there.
To other matters… yes, CNN’s special on the 1990s (cleverly called The Nineties) is must-see viewing every Sunday from here on out. So the first episode was basically clips from a series of ’90s television shows… that’s good enough for me! It’s how I spent the entire decade; I’d love to relive it for an hour each Sunday in 2017.
Episode Two is about Bill Clinton.
Sign me up for that for sure.