Take Me Out to the Ballgame: It's Complicated

Great Day at the Races

(Photo from the NY Times)
Bailey read on the internets that Mine That Bird was a good longshot bet for the Kentucky Derby. We had $10 on him to win, and he came in at 50-1. I had heard that the #16 position in the Derby has won the race a number of times, so we made a $1 exacta bet and included #8 Mine That Bird and #16 Pioneer of the Nile. Pioneer didn't win but he fought through the pack to finish second. Not too shabby for a couple of amateurs who couldn't even be bothered to buy a racing form.

What Superfresh Hell is this?

Coming soon, from the folks who brought you "The Girls Next Door"!

http://vids.eonline.com/services/player/bcpid19101841001?bclid=18995558001&bctid=20384652001

Now if only there was a way they could line up a sponsor...

Here We Go Again Now, Place Your Bets...

My first exposure to U2 came in 1984. I was 13 and heard "Pride(In the Name of Love)" on my local top 40 radio station. Granted, my musical knowledge at that tender age was fairly limited, but I had never heard anything like that song before. I scraped together enough money to buy "The Unforgettable Fire" album on cassette. For weeks I listened to it obsessively, but for some reason, I only listened to the first side. I guess I was afraid that the second side wouldn't be as good, but one day, I finally turned it over, and promptly discovered "Bad", which quickly became my new obsession. Finally, I started to wonder when U2 might put out a new record. And wondered, and wondered. It took 3 long years, but "The Joshua Tree" finally came out in the Spring of 1987, and my brother gave me the cassette version for my birthday in May. It was pretty much all over at that point. Then I had to see them live. Come November, I had somehow convinced my parents to let me travel by bus (by myself) to see U2 play in Vancouver, Canada. This cost me something like 85 bucks, which is a lot of money when you're 16 and have no job. Fortunately, I had friends who generally approved of this kind of fanaticism, so I was able to borrow a few bucks from enough different people to make this fantasy a reality. I think one of my friends loaned me a bunch of quarters that he'd saved in little books as a kid. I encountered a classmate on the bus ride up, and even though we weren't exactly friends, he was clearly as crazy as I was, so we hung out together on the ride up. Once we got to the show and found our seats, we decided that we could do better, so we waited until the kindly Canadian security guards looked the other way, then hopped a railing and made our way down to a prime position in General Admission on the floor, where I got way closer to the band than I had any reasonable right to expect. I watched that show in utter amazement, both at U2's intensity and at the fact that I had talked my parents into this.

What I didn't realize at the time was that seeing U2 would become sort of a recurring milestone in my life. 5 years later, I went with my brothers to see the Zoo TV tour at the Tacoma Dome. Once again we ended up with a magical view, as the lousy tickets we'd gotten through ticketmaster ended up being taped off to facilitate U2's light show. Joel almost got close enough to grab Bono's hand at one point, but not quite. 1997 brought the surreal phenomenon of U2 bringing their Pop Mart tour to Autzen Stadium in my little old hometown of Eugene, OR. While this was possibly my least favorite show of theirs that I've seen, it was still worth it to hear Bono say "Thank you, Eugene!" Plus, their show was so loud that they got fined $1,000 by the city! October of 2001 was a great show at the United Center in Chicago, where people had such a fragile handle on their emotions after 9/11 that many people started bawling when the band played "One" (I was one of them). It was really amazing to be able to experience that kind of catharsis, even if it did cost me $95. Fast forward to 2006, and I thought that I had missed my chance for the Vertigo tour. Except...I suddenly realized that I couldn't miss it. As fate would have it, the band had postponed a scheduled date in Honolulu, and the new date was set for December. Thanks to the miracle of Ebay and maxed out credit cards, I was able to get tickets and took Becky to Hawaii for the final show of the Vertigo tour. Later that night, after the show, we got engaged.

This fall, we'll be at the Rose Bowl for the U2 360 tour along with our friends and neighbors, and 90,000 other of the faithful. This will be my 6th U2 show, and another round of US dates in 2010 could bring on lucky number 7. Time will tell. Follow the link below for the stats on shows 1-5:

http://www.u2gigs.com/myshows/bdsvxozvdhm/9937

Literary T-Bag

More than enough has already been said about the completely ludicrous and hilarious Republican "teabag" rallies across the country today, but I really have to hand it to this guy, who went to a great deal of effort so that he could stand outside in the rain and make obscure Ayn Rand references. I'm trying to understand the mindset here. Presumably Republican, he's on board with all of the Republican teabaggery, which is ostensibly a protest against what some see as the Obama administration's unfair changes in the tax code. But that's not all. This guy also appears to believe that there's something in these policies that remind him of Ayn Rand's legendarily long 1957 novel "Atlas Shrugged." So he proceeds to make signs which reflect these beliefs, don his wet weather gear and head down to teabag central. There's only one problem. I haven't read "Atlas Shrugged", and didn't know who John Galt was until I looked it up. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Therefore, in order for this gentleman's point to hit home, I would have to read "Atlas Shrugged", forge my own opinon about the influence of this book upon the Obama administration, agree that such influence is an egregious affront to any decent human being's fiduciary principles, then presumably run screaming in terror to my nearest Republican National Committee office to join up with the good guys. Not that our sign waving friend would know about any of this, because he's already been to a whole box of teabag protests by the time I slog my way through "Atlas Shrugged." I mean, not much real chance of him seeing any benefits his literary sign waving might bring. Of course, maybe his real goal was just to get his picture on the internet, in which case, mission accomplished. Photo "borrowed" from Wonkette.

I rented Leprechaun 4: In Space. On VHS.

I usually whoop it up a bit on St. Patrick's Day, as many of my friends will attest. Last year it was on a Monday and we had some people over, drank the Guinness, sipped the Jameson, and sampled my friend's mom's Irish Soda Bread, made with love and shipped all the way from suburban Chicago. This year I gave up drinking for Lent so I went to the video store and rented Leprechaun 4. In Space. On VHS. As luck would have it, Leprechaun 3 was on the Sci-Fi Channel, so I watched that first. Leprechaun 3 takes place in Las Vegas,and while it's terrible, it's infitely superior to Leprechaun 4: In Space. On VHS. I don't plan on seeing Leprechaun 5 or 6, which take place in the Hood. Oh, and once in the early 90's, I worked on a low budget film called Hideous Puppets. While the film was never released (or even completed, that I know of) I was told that one of the sets was salvaged from the wreckage of Leprechaun 2.

The New York Times is Stalking Me

At left is a photo I took of Leonard Cohen and his backup singers from my orchestra seat at the Beacon Theatre. (Cell phone pic taken due to dead batteries in digital camera) Not surprisingly, the New York Times was also on hand to cover this historic concert:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/arts/music/21cohe.html?scp=1&sq=Leonard%20Cohen%20
Beacon%20theatre&st=cse





Here's another cell phone pic that I took the following weekend while attending the 12th Annual Fisher Poets Gathering in Astoria, OR. This event features exactly what its title suggests, fishermen and women, who are also poets, gather in various venues around Astoria to read their poetry. This is a one of a kind event that I highhly recommend taking in if you get the chance. But you better hurry. Since they apparently have nothing better to do than to follow me around, the New York Times decided to write an article about the Fisher Poets, too:


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/us/04poets.html?scp=1&sq=Fisher%20Poets%20Gathering&st=cse

So you'll probably be seeing quite a few more people at the Fisher Poets' Gathering next year. This is all to the good, because Astoria is a cool town, and the Fisher Poets event does much to stimulate the local economy. But let the record reflect that the Times doesn't mention the clam fritters.