Forty-somethings

Haven't discussed baseball for a while, but figured I'd share a little something I sent around to some friends of mine last evening:

PHILADEPHIA, PA (AP), August 28 - The Philadelphia Phillies, surprisingly in the midst of the National League Wild Card race after dumping 25% of their roster at the July trading deadline, have made another late-season acquisition to solidify their hopeful-playoff roster. After acquiring 43-year-old Jamie Moyer and 40-year-old Jeff Conine for the stretch run, GM Pat Gillick today announced the signing of unrestricted free agent Leroy "Satchel" Paige to give the Fightin' Phils another experienced arm for the wild-card drive.

Paige, 101 years old, has been dead for over a year, but Gillick downplayed this minor drawback. "Satchel's got a world of experience," Gillick said, "and I think he can help our young pitchers during the stretch drive, even though he's deceased. Like Ryan Franklin, he's an innings-eater." Scouts say that Paige passed his physical examination, once exhumed, and is in better shape than Phils ace Jon Lieber.

Negotiations continue between the Phillies and the agents for pitchers Walter "Big Train" Johnson and Cy Young.

Strange times for baseball in Philadelphia. The Phils unloaded some contracts at the end of July, including that of Gold Glover Bobby Abreu ("You Cannot Err If You Do Not Try To Make The Play"), and now find themselves playing with a new level of energy. Ryan Howard (who just hit his 48th home run, a projectile hit so high and so long into the Washington night sky that it most likely sent Dick Cheney scurrying to his undisclosed-location underground bunker) is just scary. A playoff spot is, dare I say it, within reach. The mediocrity of the National League doesn't hurt.

And a fun baseball fact gleaned from the last game I attended, a week or so ago: Phillies third baseman Abraham Nunez batting against Washington Nationals relief pitcher Saul Rivera, in what may very well have been the first matchup between two players with Jewish first names and Hispanic surnames. I'll have to do some research.

As for my Red Sox...well, we may have to address this at another time...their fortunes have clearly gone the way of the $1.50 bleacher seat...

Walking From New Orleans

YES, I understand that Hurricane Katrina was a pretty motherfucking powerful storm. (That's "MPS" in National Hurricane Center lingo.)

YES, I know that the Bush administration, with characteristic deftness and aplomb, was blissfully ignorant of the impending disaster and compounded this ineptness by totally dropping the ball on disaster relief/recovery. (There are probably still, to this day, truckloads of ice still aimlessly cruising the Interstate Highway System, stopping only occasionally for gas, on Halliburton's account, no doubt.)

YES, I feel compassion for those who lost lives, loved ones, homes, possessions, and/or their bearings, and are to this day struggling to get things together.

(In the midst of this self-revelation, I do need to ask which genius thought it was a Good Idea to build a city under sea level, on the Gulf Coast, at the mouth of perhaps the largest river in the Northern Hemisphere. But I digress.)

But let's get over it, shall we, people?

If I read, hear, or see another Katrina Anniversary piece, I will lose whatever shred of compassion I have left. Other people have been through hurricanes and had their lives rent asunder as well. My 13-year-old daughter traveled to Florida this past summer to help people whose houses were still in disrepair from a powerful hurricane that, unfortunately for them, came a little further down the alphabet than the letter "K," and as a result received little notice, press, or help, and most likely will NOT be included in The Anderson Cooper Retrospective On Last Year's Anderson Cooper Hurricane Katrina Coverage. Timing is everything, folks. Sorry.

Let's only hope and pray that a new Paris Hilton oral sex video shows up on the internet (preferably involving a farm animal) to get everyone's attention redirected.

AND THIS NEWS ITEM JUST IN: (Thank you, MSNBC!)

Paris Hilton is furious with Cher’s son for claiming that the two had sex — and that then he worried that he caught something from her.

Elijah Blue Allman, Cher’s son by rocker Gregg Allman, went on the Howard Stern show last week and boasted that he had a fling with Hilton before she was famous. Allman, who is the lead singer and guitarist for the band Deadsy, said that after the encounter, he became so worried that he might have contracted a disease that he went downstairs and scrubbed his private parts with a household cleaner, probably Tilex.

Hilton is “not happy” about Allman’s comments, says a source, even though he described Hilton as a “sweet girl.”

Thanks, Evil-Doers!

While going through my voice recorder that serves as handheld backup memory (hey - sometimes when I get a fleeting thought, important or otherwise, I had better capture it somewhere before it goes fleeting elsewhere!), I found an old blog idea as follows: "were I King of the World, eliminate all carry-on baggage on airlines," dictated following yet another frustrating travel experience in mid-July in which many patrons feel it is their birthright and a requirement to inconvenience every other passenger on the plane by carrying on all of their worldly possessions and then taking their sweet time unloading their carry-on from the overhead bins (generally, not the bin over their seats). Indeed, were I King, airline boarding and de-boarding would be a much more pleasant experience, as everyone would simply walk into the airplane, free of such luggage encumbrances, quickly sit in his or her seat, and de-board in a similar fashion.

But our Great-Satan-hating friends, the Terrorists (in Bushspeak: "Turrists"), have solved the problem for us! Recently-uncovered plots against trans-Atlantic flights have resulted in a sweeping ban against certain items, generally liquids that most folks carry in their overnight kits in their massive carry-on luggage, which will hopefully eliminate a great deal of this luggage. So as long as the flight attendants keep a steady stream of bottled water coming so that we don't die of dehydration on the plane, this King of the Infidels has one thing to say to Terror: thanks!

Return from Exile

Thanks to all 2 or 3 of regular readers for your patience...finally back from blog exile, most of which was self-imposed (just got out of the routine in July), but for the last couple of weeks was due to "vacation" with my in-laws at the Jersey shore. (Why yes, that is a contradiction in terms.)

While my in-laws are well-meaning and generous to a fault (having paid for the house rental), two weeks with them is like death by a thousand little cuts. I believe I have mentioned earlier my mother-in-law (motto: "Life...with Narration!"), for whom blissful silence is a scourge on the Earth from which she feels she has been chosen to eradicate, which drives me absolutely crazy. I mean, I enjoy having a bagel in the morning without someone telling me, "Oh, you're having a bagel for breakfast today!"

And agida for lunch.

After the first week, I'm thinking that getting back to work wouldn't be all that bad.

After 10 days, I'm playing the "what-if" game with every ex-girlfriend and woman I dated or even thought of dating, or perhaps bought an ice cream from the evening before. Thankfully, I'm now back in civilization, and the anticipation about getting back to work has subsided to the usual low level of dread.

I've also found that I'm not really all that much into the beach any more. There is plenty to like about the New Jersey shore - nice beaches, I do enjoy swimming in the ocean, long, flat bike rides, and an opportunity to sit back and enjoy God's creation (and, in some cases, the enhancement to same by the Main Line's finest plastic surgeons). But maybe it's me...it seems as if, at least in some of the Shore communities (including the one where we were), it's just an amplification of the self-satisfied, conspicuously-consuming, mindless-Republican lifestyle that is just so repulsive in day-to-day life, taking on a vibrant new life of its own writ large here, without any of those pesky minorities or socially-responsible folks to ruin their fun! Bring on the Escalades and the BMWs, the beach-block reconstitutions of their suburban McMansions (built high to block the neighbors' view of the ocean), replete with swimming pools for those too lazy to walk the half-block to the beach, and palladium windows everywhere (thought: does the job description for an Andersen or Pella sales rep say "blow every architect you can find. Repeat"?), the sport-utility strollers for their pre-prep-school offspring, the Idle Blonde trophy wives with skin burnished to the texture and color of fine Corinthian naugahyde (to look good for those Rick Santorum fundraisers in the fall). It's all just a little much. But a few days of sun, a lot of reading (bet I'm the only one reading Bonhoeffer on the beach in Avalon), the aforementioned bike riding, and copious amounts of vodka weren't all bad.

On the other end of the Shore social spectrum are the various boardwalk attractions...for some reason, I thought it would be fun to go to the Ocean City boardwalk one evening with the kids, and wondered why I would have ever enjoyed it. God, as soon as I got back to the house, all I wanted was a hot shower. Places like that give sleaze a bad name.

As a sporadic but relatively serious bike rider, the benefits of the Shore's flat, wide streets also come with shortcomings, namely that people who never ride or understand bicycle laws/etiquette come out of the woodwork for their only rides (I use the term loosely) of the year. You've got your folks who ride without helmets (particularly the parents who make their children wear them, but don't themselves: the "Do As I Say, Not As I Do" school, and the others who think that their Burberry golf caps provide adequate head protection), ride without lights at night, ride against traffic, ride as if they don't have a fucking clue, ride while talking on cell phones ("hi, how are ya, about to hit the pavement, gotta go!"), various combinations of the above, etc. Can't we put in Idiot Lanes for them to keep them out of our way? Oh well, more targets for the Escalades...