July 15, 2008
Gratuitous Nats Posting
As the Washington Nationals limp into the All-Star Break (both literally and figuratively), there is certainly more bad than good to talk about in terms of baseball in the Nation's capital. A winning percentage (.375) slightly below Chipper Jones' batting average (.376) is one place to start, but the stories behind that win-loss record speak volumes about a team whose fans expected more this season. [T]he Nationals had to expect something good this season. And things started well enough. The new Nationals Park opened with a sellout crowd that, along with an ESPN audience, watched Ryan Zimmerman hit a walk-off home run to give the Nats a win on Opening Night. Two wins at Philadelphia later and a 3-0 start looked to show something very good was happening for Manny Acta's club. But that success did not last for long. Since then, the Nats have only managed to win 33 of 93 games. Fifteen players have spent time on the disabled list with at least closer Chad Cordero out for the season. Only Cristian Guzman - Washington's lone All-Star - can claim to have been in the Opening Night starting lineup and not spent time on the disabled list this season. The team ranks last in the National League in team batting average (.239), slugging percentage (.358 ), and is tied with the Padres for the fewest runs scored (350). They are tied with the Reds and Diamondbacks for the second-worst fielding percentage in the NL (.981), slightly above the Marlins (.977). Sadly, the Nationals have been making plenty of negative headlines off the field as well as on it. Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell does an excellent job of pointing all of the recent negatives, so I advise you to go to his column to get the details, but here are the highlights: (a) the Nationals television coverage on the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, MASN, is the least watched in all of baseball; (b) two Nationals fans died last week on a shuttle that transports Nats fans from the parking lot at RFK Stadium to Nationals Park; (c) GM Jim Bowden and special assistant Jose Rijo have been contacted for questioning as part of an FBI probe [Robbo: They deny the contact]; and (d) the Lerner family, the Nationals' owners, have refused to pay rent to the District of Columbia.Add to all this the latest nooz that it looks as if Wily-Mo may be out for the season, and one can say only two words. Yeee. Owitch. But you know what? Watching the Nats drop game after game and reading of these sorrows that come not as single spies but in battallions, all I can do is remind myself of my Thomas Paine:
THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.Of course, for "Tyranny" here you have to read "the Phillies" and for "FREEDOM" a "DIVISION TITLE", but the sentiment is still the same. Yes, friends, I am o-fficially a Nats Fan and I'm going to stay that way come hell, high water or a .375 second half (not that I want any of these, of course). And indeed, here's hoping that the rest of the Division has been lulled into such a false sense of security that we'll make up that 16 game deficit before you can say "Manny Acta's Momma!" UPDATE: Of course, with the break I can also briefly turn to my other sports headache. Is it possible that Favre might QB in Miami this year? Laces out, Brett!!
Posted by: Robert at 10:34 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Happy Birthday, Red Sonja
Okay, Gary, I'm giving you a lead here:
The lovely and talented, or at least tall, Bridgette Nielsen was born this day in 1963 in Rødovre, Denmark. I have always known her for her B-movies and disastrous serial marriages, but I didn't know this little tidbit found at the Wikipedia entry: Back in the 80's Marvel Comics floated the idea of making a movie about a She-Hulk starring Nielsen (fresh off her Sonja gig).
"She-Hulk smash! And rip scanty costume in process! Apparently, nobody was willing to invest any dosh and the project never went anywhere. Ah, well. Look on my face. My name is Might Have Been. Speaking of such things, I learned from the Missus very recently that she and rayther a lot of the other pool moms are of the collective opinion that a certain kid helping to coach the swim team this summer is, if I remember her expression correctly, "seriously yummy". I laughed and laughed when she told me this, pointing out that a sudden interest in teen beefcake [Cartman: Beeeefcaaaake!!!] is a sure sign of impending middle age. I used to feel vaguely guilty about posts like this one, but now? Not so much.
Posted by: Robert at 08:48 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
July 14, 2008
Coming to a steakhouse near you
The GOP congresswoman who represents the 2d District of Virginia is having a fundraiser later this week featuring Darth Rove. The opposition is little put out. . .
Posted by: LMC at 07:11 PM | Comments (24) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Hookay. That's that, I guess.
For those readers who've hung around here long enough, I officially mothballed my old blog - the Ex-Donkey Blog - about a year and a half ago. I migrated over from Blogsnot to MuNu early on and haven't been keeping up with the whole administrator responsibilities. Apparently, MuNu moved over to a new platform and - naturally - mine got left behind (do to my own negligence).
I left it out there in the ether because I didn't have the heart to delete two years worth of blog entries (almost 2400 posts). Most of it wasn't worth saving (IMO) but dang it there were a few gems on there that I hate to lose, and more than a few good memories. Steve/Robbo, if you know of any way to get it back from the SixApart powers that be let me know. Otherwise... ...R.I.P. to the Ex-Donkey Blog. :-( Glass-Half-Full Yips! from Robbo: Bummer, but look at it this way - now you'll just have to start your 80's/90's Babe Review all over again. I'm sure I speak for all the guys here when I say we'd be happy to help. Grateful Yips! back from Gary:All is not lost! Thanks for the suggestion, Minero. If you insert ".new" in between "ex-donkey" and ".mu.nu" you get to the site, albeit oddly formatted. The big downside however is that all images saved to MuNu are not retrievable. And the links only work if you go up to the address bar and stick the ".new" in the URL. Of course, all those Google hits I was getting for "Diane Lane Nekkid" will go to dead links. Sorry guys.
Posted by: Gary at 11:55 AM | Comments (23) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Gratuitous Bastille Day Posting
Vive La France!
Posted by: Robert at 10:23 AM | Comments (19) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Gratuitous Summah Sports Observation
Although it rained all night last night, the eldest Llama-ette's dive practice went right on as scheduled this morning and there is no question about cancelling the middle Llama-ette's first competitive swim-meet this afternoon.
It occurs to me that swimming is the one sport where one doesn't have to wait around for the playing field to dry out. Oh, ha ha ha ha!!!Posted by: Robert at 08:11 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Random Commuter Observation
It was actually cool and pleasant enough this morning in Your Nation's Capital that I did not feel compelled to get my daily jumbo latte iced.
Not too shabby for the middle of July. Global warming or no, this has been a pretty decent summah so far, with lots of rain and only occasional outbursts of truly awful weather. (Of course, as soon as he reads this Heat Miser is going to reach for the throttle.)Posted by: Robert at 07:52 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
July 12, 2008
Nothing to see here, move along
Via ABC News this week, the United States removed over 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from a nuclear complex south of Baghdad to the States. Somebody call Joe Wilson because everyone knows Saddam did not have a WMD program, no sirreee, no--that is 500 tons of nothing, these are NOT the 'droids you seek, etc.
Posted by: LMC at 07:29 PM | Comments (24) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Gratuitous Musickal Posting (TM)
Regular readers may recall that for the past year and a half or so - in fact, since Dad died - I have had no real interest in playing any musick other than that of J.S. Bach. Listening to other composers, yes. But when it comes to sitting down and tickling the ivories myself? Nobody but ol' Johann Sebastian will do. (Make of that what you will, all you armchair trick-cyclists.)
One of my very favorites currently is the Gigue from Bach's Partita No. 4 in D-Major, BWV 828. Here is the opening theme (lifted from the Bach Choir of Bethlehem):
TBCoB has this to say about the dance:
"Partita IV (BWV 82So what does this translate into? Well, here's Glenn Gould serving it up: Of course, I can't play it anywhere near this well or this fast. But there is something so immensely uplifting about even my own modest stumblings that by the time I hit that last lovely arpeggio, I feel like I'm floating a couple inches off the bench. We're seriously hoping to be able to swing the purchase of a baby grand next spring to replace my poor old Kawai upright that after near 40 years' worth of being banged on by me is rapidly approaching the end of its useful life. I've promised myself that once this happens, I'm going to knock off my shameful practice of getting by with sight-reading and really sit down and start properly learning pieces like this one.contains a giga unique in all of Baroque music–it is in 9/16, giving it two levels of tripleness below the beat (I-3-3). Handel wrote gigas in 24/16 and 12/16, and Kuhnau wrote one in 9/8, but only Bach, to our knowledge, uses 9/16 for a giga." (Little and Jenna, Dance and the Music of J.S. Bach [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991], 162-163.) This gigue has the most textual variety of all the movements in Partita IV. It begins monophonically, with a single "voice" introducing the fugue subject. A three-voice fugue emerges, but because of the rests and long notes written into the subject, even when all three voices are sounding there are times where, for a fleeting moment, we hear only two parts. At other times, the two upper voices "back off," dropping to dotted-eighth note ‘chords’ (strictly speaking, these are not chords, since there are only two pitches sounding, but it creates a more chordal effect) while the left hand takes the lead with exciting passages of constant sixteenths.
Posted by: Robert at 02:56 PM | Comments (21) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Gratuitous Domestic Posting (TM) - Outdoor Division
As I was messing about in the garden today, this changing-of-the-guard image struck me as kind of neat:
The Joe Pye Weed is just coming out as the Oak Leaf Hydrangia packs it in, a sure sign that we're about at the midsummer waypoint.
Since I had managed to filch the camera from the Missus, I snapped a couple other shots in the garden as well. Here is some Russian Sage:
And how about a little Cosmos? Why I haven't planted this in past years I simply can't imagine. What a perfect filler it is!
Actually, my main task today was dealing with the area behind our back fence, known sometimes as the "meadow", the "pasture" or the "back-forty", but usually just called "behind the fence".
I've been so busy lately that I haven't had time to deal with it properly and the grasses were about a foot high or more: I had to sweep the area with a weedwacker first and then mow it twice.
This is the edge of a big wodge of county property behind Orgle Manor. It's zoned for a school which, owing to shifts in the demographic growth 'round here, is unlikely ever to get built. Every now and again the neighborhood has to fight off the efforts of the Soccer Nazis or fly-by-night McMansions builders to get the tract rezoned.
Even if it did get rezoned, however, Orgle Manor should be safe from having construction encroach on its desmense, because just inside the tree line we have our own little EPA-protected creek:
Oh, as long as I had the ol' camera, I also snapped a close-up of the bushes that dominate one side of the meadow:
You'll probably snicker, but I'm ashamed to say that I don't even know what these are. The bushes are big, fast-growing and armed with extremely aggressive spikes. The berries certainly look tempting, but without better identification I don't feel inclined to take the chance. Anybody know?
Posted by: Robert at 02:04 PM | Comments (35) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Yikes
I had a dream last night (this morning, actually) that I was on a Segway chasing Oprah. She was supposed to meet a group of Japanese businessmen but misunderstood the directions. I saw her heading the wrong way and figured that if I didn't go after her and catch her, nobody else would.
I was two or three blocks behind her and kept yelling, "Hi! Oprah! Hoy!" but she didn't hear me. Eventually, she turned into a large mall parking lot where some kind of Evangelical rally was being held under a number of large, white tents. I cruised up and down looking for her, but couldn't find her. Finally I gave up and decided to go and look for Oprah at her own house. When I got there, I looked throught the blinds into a sort of living room. Bette Midler was asleep on a sofa. And then I woke up. The first thing that crossed my mind was to wonder whether I was drinking too much or perhaps not enough. So what provoked this apparent outburst of subconscious metrosexuality? I haven't the remotest idea. The only thing I can figure is that last evening between innings of the Nats game I happened to flip on PBS and came across some cartoon featuring an animated Click and Clack, which I watched for about five horrified minutes. Perhaps the exposure to NPR set it off.Posted by: Robert at 01:59 PM | Comments (23) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
The Snowman - R.I.P.
Tony Snow, pundit and former White House Press Secretary, died last night after a long bought with colon cancer.
Posted by: Gary at 09:14 AM | Comments (22) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
July 11, 2008
Gratuitous Nats Posting
Posted by: Robert at 09:59 PM | Comments (24) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
221B Baker Street Isn't Big Enough For The Two Of Us
Surely the finest Holmes ever to don a deerstalker in front of the cameras.
Yips! from Gary:Actually, Robbo, you read that one wrong: "The Columbia Pictures film, meanwhile, also has Will Ferrell on board as Holmes' sidekick Dr Watson." That's the Judd Apatow film. Downey, Jr.'s is the Warner Bros. version. The way I read it, the Cohen-Ferrell version is supposed to be the "funny" one. Personally, I'll take the RDJ film as I have yet to see him in suck in any movie - even if the movie itself sucked.
Posted by: Robert at 03:58 PM | Comments (20) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Yadda, Yadda, Yadda
Well, I suppose this is good news:
Parents should not worry when their pre-schoolers talk to themselves; in fact, they should encourage it, says Adam Winsler, an associate professor of psychology at George Mason University. His recent study published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly showed that 5-year-olds do better on motor tasks when they talk to themselves out loud (either spontaneously or when told to do so by an adult) than when they are silent. "Young children often talk to themselves as they go about their daily activities, and parents and teachers shouldn’t think of this as weird or bad," says Winsler. "On the contrary, they should listen to the private speech of kids. It's a fantastic window into the minds of children." In the study, "'Should I let them talk?': Private speech and task performance among preschool children with and without behavior problems," 78 percent of the children performed either the same or better on the performance task when speaking to themselves than when they were silent.All three of the Llama-ettes fall pretty squarely into the auto-Chatty Cathy column, although I am thinking in particular of the six year old, who, as God is my witness, has never stopped talking since the day she was born. On the plus side, if this study is to be believed, it's good for 'em. On the minus, Orgle Manor tends to be an extremely noisy place. Yips! to Dean.
Posted by: Robert at 09:45 AM | Comments (24) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Moo-Knew Boo Hoo
Are you guys having trouble getting Llama Central clearly? I've pretty much lost the right hand column for about the past week and now the left hand one is going, too.
I haven't the faintest idea what is happening or why, but my apologies anyway.Posted by: Robert at 09:24 AM | Comments (23) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Gratuitous Literary Trivia Geekery Posting
My email quote-of-the-day guy today serves up a little something I thought worth passing on:
If any word or expression is of such a nature that the first impression it excites is an impression of obscenity, that word ought not to be spoken nor written or print-ed; and if printed, it ought to be erased.Today is the 254th anniversary of the birth of English physician, philanthropist, and man of letters, Dr. Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825) near Bath. Bowdler is remembered primarily for his heavily expurgated edition of Shakespeare's plays, The Family Shakespeare (1807), which sought to preserve the Bard's "beauties" while banishing the "blemishes" supposedly introduced to please a bawdier age. The first edition included 20 plays that were probably "cleaned up" by Bowdler's sister Harriet. Typical of the passages deleted is this somewhat off-color banter in the 3rd act of Othello, a double entendre that many readers today may not even "get":
- Dr. Thomas Bowdler
(The Family Shakespeare, Preface) THE FAMILY SHAKESPEARE, in ten volumes; in which nothing is added to the original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with
propriety be read aloud in a family. - Ibid., title page"CLOWN: Are these I pray, call'd wind instruments? BOY: I marry they are, Sir. CLOWN: O, thereby hangs a tail. BOY: Whereby hangs a tail, Sir? CLOWN: Marry sir, by many a wind instrument that I know."Although many recent critics acknowledge that Thomas and Harriet Bowdler probably did much more good than harm by introducing the works of Shakespeare to a broad, middle-class readership, the two have subsequently been rewarded for their pains by the widespread adoption of the pejorative verb "bowdlerize," meaning to prudishly expurgate a literary work. As the great French author Stendhal (1783-1842) once observed, "Prudery is a form of avarice, the worst of all."
Posted by: Robert at 09:16 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Random Commuter Observation
The International Spy Museum is the latest outfit to plaster extremely annoying ads all over the metro stations in Dee Cee.
"Okay, Tom," you're warily saying to your collective selves, "We'll bite. What's wrong this time?" Well, I'll tell you. In what I can only suppose to be an effort to make itself more friendly to the many-headed, the ISM chooses to refer to its collection in these posters as its "stuff". Por ejemplo, one of the ads reads, "Other museums' collections are donated. Most of our stuff is stolen." Another one reads, "Don't know much about this stuff? Neither do most Presidents." And so on. I'm sorry, but this use of the word "stuff" to bolster market appeal irks me more and more every time I see it. And it only enforces my general impression that the Spy Museum is about on the same level of cheap, tawdry, pop-cultchah shallowness as, say, McDonald's or USA Today. Not that I was ever planning to set foot in it anyway. Of course, now that I've posted this rant, no doubt the ISM will send its goons out to eliminate me. If Steve-O or the LMC report that I suddenly died in a freak accident involving the Goodyear Blimp, a plate of Hamburger Helper and a bathtub full of piranhas, you'll know the real backstory.Posted by: Robert at 08:44 AM | Comments (22) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
It won't be the same without Rachel Weisz
The trailer for the latest installment in the "Mummy" franchise: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor:
But here is Rachel anyway:
Posted by: LMC at 06:20 AM | Comments (23) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
July 10, 2008
I am not sure I want to believe
The new X-Files movie trailer:
Courtesy of those fine folks at YouTube
Posted by: LMC at 09:01 PM | Comments (22) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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