I heard "I'm an orangutan"

It's 1:19 AM as I write this and I'm off to bed. Just a few updates.

a. Attended Phils' doubleheader sweep of Pirates tonight. Lots of fun, though bittersweet as the games were largely meaningless; playing out the schedule sort of stuff. The playoffs are nearly upon us, and as usual I get to watch them from the outside; it's always sort of like this really fun party that I'm not invited to. I stand outside, with my face up against the glass, begging to be let in, and this exchange occurs:
Playoff Teams: "Go away."
Me: "Let me in."
Playoff Teams: "Sorry; this party is for fans of non-disappointing teams only."
Me: "Well, that's not fair! Oh, wait, it is."
Meh. More about the doubleheader later. Remind me to tell you about The Wave that happened.

b. No TMBG update tonight because I can't think of anything. Long story short, TMBG are great, and I'll tell you all about tonight's show later.

c. The Montreal Expos played their final home game tonight. Upon returning home I saw some highlights on ESPN news and there was an Expo (no idea who) who was actually crying, and a girl in the crowd (rather cute, actually, now that I recall her) crying too. Very sad and wistful. I feel bad for them. I can't even fathom one of my teams moving; I'd be crushed, obviously, beyond description. It wouldn't be pretty. Anyway, the Expos got a raw deal and nothing has worked out for them the past 10 years; it sucks. This is probably for the best. Au revoir, mes amis. [More about this later, too, probably.]

d. That's it; good night.

I don't know what makes your face implode, but that's the way the movie ends

Looking back on yesterday's list, which was made in haste, I realize that it was made in a little bit too much haste. "SenSurround" and "A Self Called Nowhere" are ranked a bit too high; "See the Constellation" and "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair" are a touch too low. Oh well, you get the general idea. It was fun to make; I should do the other letters sometime.

Tonight's list:

All The Opening Bands I've Seen At TMBG Shows, Ranked

1. Of Montreal (11/20/97): A rare instance of an opening band becoming one of my favorite bands in the world. Kevin Barnes & Co. were just a trio then, looking rather timid and much less weirder and noisier and drug-fueled than their later quintet lineup. I've since seen them five more times and have (almost) all their records.

2. Brian Dewan (2/14/97): Brian Dewan (who apparently also designed the cover of Lincoln) plays solo electric zither. That's it. You haven't lived until you've seen people moshing to electric zither. It was brilliant. I didn't get around to buying his album until five years later. Whatever happened to this guy?

3. Muckafurgason (11/24/00): Three instrument-switching guys whose songs were hilarious (one was a rap song where they all took on odd MC personas, like "MC Speller" (who spells everything right) and "MC Afraid Of Bees") and whose stage banter consisted largely of in-jokes to which we, the audience, were not made privy. I never got around to getting any of their stuff...

4. Reel Big Fish (3/4/99): I'm not really a fan of this band but they put on a great show, and now I can say I've been to an actual ska show with real ska dancing by actual ska people.

5. Hudson Shad (10/29/94): This is the band that performs "O Do Not Forsake Me" on John Henry. Really amazing acappella barbershop-esque stuff that I only barely remember. As a side note I'd like to say that at this point, 1994 feels like it occurred in a completely different universe.

6. Frank Black (10/29/94): I had never really heard the Pixies before, so I wasn't as impressed by Frank's (rather massive) presence as I might have been otherwise. Most notably, he performed alone on electric guitar, switching guitars after every two songs or so, but never removing the previous guitars, so when he was done he waddled off the stage with like seven guitars strapped onto his back.

7. Corn Mo (12/26/03): Corn Mo is a large, hairy, sweaty dude from Texas who plays heavy metal-ish songs on an accordion with no backing band. He closed with a cover of "We Are The Champions" during which he paused to deliver an impassioned, profanity-strewn speech about how he had once worked at a crappy job in an office but then one day quit to go play accordion in a Texas circus. He pointed out that this eventually led to a gig opening for TMBG in New York and (somewhat speciously, you could argue) used this example to urge us all to quit our respective crappy jobs and pursue our dreams. I hadn't been especially into his stuff until that point but he was so earnest, and the whole thing was so thoroughly bizarre, that I couldn't help but be excited and inspired. Zoe hated him.

8. The Moldy Peaches (11/2/01): I know a lot of people like this band, including friends of mine, but yeah, I don't get it. I'm not necessarily adverse to bands that are clearly intoxicated by some sinister substance while they're performing (comes with the territory, I suppose) but the M-Peaches, every time I've heard them, appear to be beyond intoxicated to the point where they don't seem to be especially cognizant of their surroundings. Their set was a bunch of mumbled songs about something or other. Still, I've heard worse; much, much worse.

9. Lincoln (9/5/97): This band was pretty popular in TMBG-fan circles for a while. They're notable for the fact that TMBG stole Dan Miller and Danny Weinkauf from them after they broke up.

10. Teen Heroes (3/4/99): An almost completely forgotten emo/skate/punk band thing. I have no idea why I've ranked them so high; I must be wrong.

11. Cub (11/8/96): The band that originally did "New York City". I can't remember much about them at all; they were three girls and they were loud.

12. Zebrahead (3/4/99): A bunch of dudes who played songs. Their sense of humor level appeared to hover somewhere between "horny 13-year old" and "34-year old guy who watches The Man Show".

13. Buzz Zeemer (10/13/96): Yes, that's right, I saw the Buzz Zeemer. No memory of this band whatsoever.

14. Michael Shelley (10/13/98): I really hated this guy. A singer-songwriter who seemed extremely pleased with himself and went off on long explanations about how he wrote each song like he was on "VH1 Storytellers" or some damn thing. He seemed rather offended that people in the crowd weren't paying attention and appeared to (gasp!) be talking over him. I really hate Michael Shelley.

15. Magnetic Fields (11/8/96, 2/14/97): Okay, I know a lot of people like this band too, but I'm telling you, they were the most desperately dull and painfully uninteresting live band I've ever seen, and I had to see them twice. A miserable guy playing miserable love songs slowly and miserably. Dude, cheer the hell up, everyone loves your goddamn band.

16. Afroman (11/2/01): No. Really. Seriously. Afroman. The Afroman. The "'Cause I Got High" guy. The Moldy Peaches/Afroman/TMBG bill was like something out of a fever dream. Who put this lineup together? Before the show I saw a guy with his two prepubescent daughters and, cringing, they were all I could think of during Afroman's set, because all of his songs were about smoking weed, oral sex, and getting arrested, literally in that order. One song went "Let's all get drunk tonight/hope I don't fight with a punk tonight/let's all get high tonight/hope I don't go to jail tonight", and I had it in my head for about a week afterward; as a direct result of this, I very sincerely wished that I was dead. I will say this for Afroman, though: he's not a bad guitar player. (His guitar solos just felt a little incongruous coming, as they did, right after long, impassioned raps about his harrowingly explicit sexual escapades.)

Honorable mentions

12/18/97: Todd Barry. Not a band, a comedian. He was pretty good. He's been on TV; you'd know him if you saw him.

7/19/99: You Were Spiralling. I showed up late and only caught their final song. Something with keyboards, or something.

10/18/02: The McSweeney's Show in Washington, DC. The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players opened the show but we showed up late and completely missed them; in fact, TMBG were in the middle of a song (Birdhouse?)

Shows with no opening band
11/7/96 and 9/10/01: Tower Records in-store performances, NYC
7/20/03: Actually, this was WXPN's Singer/Songwriter Weekend Festival on Penn's Landing, so technically there were other bands, but I wasn't paying attention to any of them.
11/14/03: Borders in-store performance, Philadelphia

That's it for now...

Oh, and check it out, reader(s)... I have a comments feature now! So now both of you can talk to each other!

Your apparent nonchalance belies the fact that you can only think of me

Hey gang: on Thursday I'm going to see They Might Be Giants for the 19th time. In celebration of this exciting moment in everyone's lives, it's TMBG Week here at the Diary. I'll be writing whatever TMBG-related stuff I can come up with during the day while I'm supposed to be working. Let's go!

Top 20 TMBG songs that begin with "S"
1. She's An Angel
2. Snowball in Hell
3. Spiralling Shape
4. Statue Got Me High, The
5. Subliminal
6. Snail Shell
7. SenSurround
8. Sleeping in the Flowers
9. S-E-X-X-Y
10. Santa's Beard
11. Self Called Nowhere, A
12. See the Constellation
13. Shoehorn with Teeth
14. (She Was A) Hotel Detective
15. Someone Keeps Moving My Chair
16. Spy
17. Spider
18. Stand On Your Own Head
19. She Was A Hotel Detective
20. Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love

(Join us next week when I'll have some concluding thoughts on the Phillies, stuff about the Eagles, and perhaps something about my new favorite movie Sky Captain.)

Check it out: the other day I emailed the Phillies (a generic address I found on their website) because for many months now I've been trying to determine the name of a song they use whenever a Phillie draws a walk. Sort of a Motown/funk kind of song with the awesome lyrics "Walkin'... walkin'! UH UH UH UH UH UH!" I also heard a DJ play it at the Khyber a few months ago. It sounded like Edwin Starr but I wasn't sure. Anyway, I broke down and emailed them, and a guy emailed me back... it's "Twenty-Five Miles" by Edwin Starr. And now I know. I realize, of course, that this is a really pointless and terrible anecdote, but it does involve the Phillies in a kind of cursory way, so I thought I'd mention it. You can go about your business now.

(Who is actually reading this, I wonder? Please email me and let me know; I'd be interested to get some kind of headcount. No, never mind, don't bother, that's just egomaniacal. I think instead I'll put in that comments feature like Matt told me to do ages ago.)

Phillies 7, Expos 2

Yesterday I saw the Phils manage to avoid a sweep against one of the worst teams in the league. Exciting stuff! Oh well, there are worse ways to spend a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. Rather than try to find a way to make a September game with two eliminated teams sound interesting, here are a few pictures from the game instead (ignore the timestamps under the pictures, they're completely screwy)...


Dad and I (photo by a friendly usher)

The last time you'll see the Canadian flag at CBP for a while

The Goodyear Blimp is in town!

The picture of Thome I'm really proud of

The last time I'll see Millwood? 

"I wanted to destroy something beautiful"

The NHL is dead; long live the NHL. Well, maybe not, but things look bleak. I won't go into tremendous detail if you're not familiar with what's happening; go here or here for the pertinent dirt. Simply put: a lot of very rich people are arguing with a bunch of other very rich people over how to best divide up a pile of money that used to be very large but is now much smaller than either of them care to admit. Frankly, I think it sucks, but on the other hand I feel vaguely apathetic about it, which is strange and I don't fully understand, because the truth is I really love hockey, nearly (not quite but nearly) as much as I love baseball, and I've been a loyal follower of the Flyers for over a decade. But I also recognize that this is probably the most poorly run sports league in the world, and they've made a lot of very stupid decisions over the past couple of years, and now they're paying for it; and more importantly, I find it hard to muster much sympathy for either side. The owners are idiots for creating a situation this ugly through their greed and stupidity. The players are idiots for not realizing that the money they've been getting all this time is not actually there anymore. (The fans who spend $80 for a single ticket are probably idiots too; who knows.)

Neither side seems to recognize that hockey has become -- and probably always was -- a fringe sport. A decade ago they forgot this, turned their backs on their traditional fanbase, and tried desperately to force themselves into new markets. Looking back, it wasn't a theoretically bad idea, because there was a pro sports explosion in the early '90s, but it's now obvious that it hasn't worked and shows no signs of suddenly working. The removed teams from old markets and put them in new ones that had never seen hockey before. That was just stupid; it's a fallacy, in my opinion, to think that Phoenix, Atlanta, and Nashville are better hockey markets than Winnipeg and Quebec solely because they're bigger cities. Only a handful of people in those cities like hockey, but everyone in Winnipeg and Quebec likes hockey. You can't just build an arena in Nashville and expect people to show up. Look at Florida: they got big crowds their first few years (especially 95-96 when they made the finals) but now they don't get anyone. It was just a fad, and now it's dead. It's like when Arena Football came to Philly earlier this year: my friends and I checked it out, just out of curiosity, and we kinda had fun there for a little while, but ultimately it wasn't all that great and we lost interest and we have no plans to get tickets next year. I think it's the same with hockey in Nashville, only it's even worse. Nobody in Nashville likes hockey; I refuse to believe otherwise. It's like, they can build as many NASCAR tracks as they want in Philly; I'm not going to go, because I don't like auto racing. People in Nashville don't watch hockey and they never will. Why deprive Winnipegians of their favorite sport and then stick a random expansion team in friggin' Nashville? I don't understand that; it's stupid. They created a system where a team couldn't survive in Winnipeg, but not out of lack of interest, only because there wasn't enough money in Winnipeg to compete. But there would be, if the league was run right.

I'm not smart enough to be able to tell you that a salary cap would work. I don't know that. It seems to work just fine in the NFL, but the NFL's different because they make ridiculous scads of money that the NHL will never see and can only dream of, because football is the most popular sport in the country and they have an awesome TV deal that brings in billions of dollars. That's something the NHL doesn't seem to understand: their TV ratings are horrendous (especially the '04 playoffs, which is a shame, because they were pretty good) and hockey is just a fringe sport here. They don't have NFL-level popularity, or even NBA or MLB level. Here in Philly, I grew up thinking of the four of them as the Big Four Sports, but that just isn't the case throughout the rest of the country. NASCAR, golf, and college sports are all much more popular. (Why, I have no idea, because the idea that someone would find auto racing more watchable and exciting than hockey is so absurd to me that I can't even grasp it; what in the world has to be wrong with you that you would think that?) The NHL had a nice little thing going in good hockey cities like Philly and New York and Boston and Detroit and Toronto and they just assumed that with a little marketing prowess they could make it work in Anaheim and Miami and Raleigh too. Some of their new markets have worked (San Jose, Columbus, Dallas) but for the most part their greed just wrecked the league.

A lot of this is babbling and if I had actually taken the time to get my thoughts in order I would have written something a little more coherent and convincing, but you get the general idea: a pox on both their houses, as Bill Lyon said this morning. I won't mention hockey again until some new developments occur, but I don't really expect that to happen anytime soon...

Oh, never mind.

It’s a little demoralizing to get all excited about your team fighting for a playoff spot, but then having them effectively destroy their chances by losing two in a row to the Reds. Look, I know they’ve got no shot; they never did, and my posts the past few days have been attempts on my part to salvage something positive out of this gut-wrenching season. (Not that it wasn’t worth it: it really was pretty fun, this streak of theirs. It made you believe, just for a little while, and that can’t be bad.) So I’m not disappointed that they’ve blown their playoff hopes; they already did that, back in July. This past week was just an aberration in a season full of suck. I’m just frustrated because really, it’s ridiculous that a team this theoretically talented has to depend on the @$&# Pirates to beat the @&#*$ Cubs to get to the playoffs, and then they can’t even beat the @&#*#@ REDS themselves. That’s just stupid.

Meanwhile, earlier this evening, while they were losing to the aforementioned Reds, I was at the otherwise vacant Citizens Bank Park. But the Phils, I hear you protest, weren’t there; they were in Cincinnati. True that! But listen: through a complex series of events, CBP was having a private “Movie Night” for invited ticket holders and I managed to be one of them. The film in question was Field of Dreams which I totally adore and never get tired of. It was thrilling to watch the film in that setting, and rather fascinating and spooky to be in a mostly empty stadium with no lights on (there were only like 500 people there). Below you’ll see a picture of me in front of the Phils’ dugout, and below that, Burt Lancaster about to deliver my favorite speech in the movie. “A sky so blue it hurts just to look at it.” Beautiful. More about this later, because I think I need to go lie down and not think about baseball for a little while.


photo by Sir Andrew Dixon, DDS

"Give a wink to the pitcher... make him think I know something he doesn't."

Randomly Recommended Records, 9/14/04
1. Radiohead, Amnesiac (2001) [Rediscover it today, won't you?]
2. Genesis, A Trick of the Tail (1976) [My #2 album of all time]
3. The Dave Brubeck Quartet, Time Out (1959) [You already have it]
4. Phish, Undermind (2004) [It sounds pretty much like Phish]
5. They Might Be Giants, John Henry (1994) [Their unheralded masterpiece, ten years old this month]

I eat too many Hint of Lime chips.

That said, it may come as some surprise to you that the Eagles were not the only professional Philly sports team in action yesterday; the Phils were out in force too, sweepin' the Mets for their 6th in a row (a season high, sadly) and 9th win in 10 games. Nice, boys. With the Giants idle tonight, we could pull to 4 games back if we beat the Reds. I'm really enjoying the little rhythm I'm in at the moment: the Phillies win, I get all ahead of myself about playoff scenarios, and then the next day I figure out what teams need to lose and I post it here. Not a single human being on Earth other than me is reading this, mind you, but that's not really the point of blogs, is it? The point is that I get it all out there in the ether; it's the world's problem after that, not mine. I'm babbling; let's move on.

RRRFT: Phils, Pirates, Expos, Dodgers.

Meanwhile, the Birds looked awesome. Admittedly, it was against a (wonderfully) bad team, so I'll reserve all giddiness for next week's game against those Vikings, but putting that aside, you gotta love 4 TD passes (three to TO). Oh, my, yes; I'll take some of that, please.

Hanging in there

People are starting to talk about the Phils. I mean, not really, because no sensible person with even a cursory knowledge of baseball history has any belief that the Phils are going to pull this out and get the wild card. Even I know that. But at least the Inquirer, and ESPN, are starting to notice that they exist again.

Yesterday's game, a thrilling win, was thoroughly bizarre and draining in every way. Just about every absurd thing that can happen in a baseball game happened -- big innings, ridiculous fielding errors, comebacks, blown leads, an ejection, records set for pitchers used... they should have had a triple play in there somewhere, and for all I know maybe there was. It was impossibly long (five and a half hours) and I saw the bulk of it, which I felt vaguely and unsettlingly guilty about afterwards. (Lazy Saturday!) Early on when it looked like the Phils were going to lose, I thought about actually going outside and reading a book, but then they selfishly made the game interesting again and I found that I couldn't look away.

The Giants and Cubs won, so we're still 4.5 games behind them. Well, that will just make our incredible resurrection that much more satisfying when it happens.

RRRFT: Phils, Marlins, Diamondbacks, Pirates, Rockies.

Something strange is happening...

Don't look now, but last night while I was rocking out to R. Pollard and the GbV, nearly everything that I said needed to happen to help the Phils happened. They beat the Mets, the Pirates won, the D-Backs won. The Padres won and the Cubs/Fish doubleheader was a split, but no matter, we can deal with that. The 'Backs beating the Giants was an unexpected gift and makes all of this silliness very, very interesting, at least for today. It's still a hard road ahead for our boys, but screw that.

This is fun.

Finally.

Today we root, root root for the: Phils, Marlins, Pirates, Diamondbacks, Rockies.

Now... can anyone tell me what happened to my phone bill? Seriously, it was just sitting on my desk the other day, and now it's completely disappeared. What in the world?

Everything's coming up Phillies!

Don't scoff (seriously, man, I hear you scoffing -- don't scoff!) but my current Just Root For The Phils To Make The Postseason And Don't Worry About The Fact That It's Highly Unlikely Project is going rather well so far. The Pirates managed to split their doubleheader against the Astros last night, so we're in good shape. Plus the Marlins beat the Cubs in their first game this afternoon. The Phils took their third in a row and looked good doing it, from what I saw. If this keeps up, I might actually have to start watching the games again. (During my free nights, that is. Most nights I'm . . . uh . . . out . . . with beautiful girls. Yeah, that's it.)

So tonight, we root, root root for the Phillies (vs. NYM), Pirates (vs. HOU), Marlins (vs. CHC), D-Backs (vs. SF... a long shot, I know, but Johnson's pitching), and Rockies (vs. SD). Think positive, friends.

I have a rant about the impending NHL lockout to get out of me, but it'll wait . . . tonight, I'm off to see GbV.

Fool me twice (again)...

Well, after ranting yesterday about bad they are and how the season is over, they won twice in Atlanta, looking decent in the brief parts of both games that I saw, and meanwhile, the Cubs lost, so the Phils pulled to six games back. Yeah, yeah, I know, this team isn't good enough to get to the postseason, they're too far back, there's too many better teams ahead of them, they need to go on a hot streak which they seem incapable of doing, plus if they got the wild card they'd just have to play St. Louis in the first round, which they would inevitably lose... yes, I know all that, and I know I shouldn't get my hopes up. But damn it, I want to get my hopes up. Why the hell not? This season hasn't been a whole lot of fun for us here at the 119, because we've spent it complaining and bitching, and complaining, I've discovered, is not as much fun as watching the standings and trying to figure out how your team will get to the playoffs... so I might as well do the thing that's more fun, right? The season's going to go precisely the same no matter what I do. And I told myself I was going to lighten the hell up about this nonsense, right? So until they're officially, literally eliminated, I say: go Phils.

Okay, so we need the Phils to beat Atlanta tonight... and Pittsburgh needs to sweep their doubleheader against Houston... and meanwhile, things are already going our way, because we needed the Mets to beat Florida today, and they did. Pennant Fever... catch it!

(Yeah, I'm setting myself up for soul-crushing heartbreak. I know that. You don't need to tell me. It's cool, I'm used to it.)

I told you yesterday to listen to 154, right? Okay, good.

The Complete and Unexpurgated History of the 2004 Phillies and How Much I Loathe Them (Part One of However Many There Are)

All right, screw this, I wanted to write a baseball blog so I'm going to. I'm not going to let a little minor detail like how much ass my favorite team feels the need to suck on an average day ruin what should have been a fun summer of bloggery. To start, let's recap the story so far:

AUG. 2003 - FEB. 2004: The 2003 Phillies (never all that great to begin with) put aside their lack of hitting, their lead-blowing bullpen, and their intense and obvious hatred of their manager just long enough to take the wild card lead for a little while. This culminates in a win against the Reds in late September, the last win I ever saw at the Vet. That same night, the Marlins lose to Atlanta and the Phils take a half game lead. They proceed to blow this the following week by getting grotesquely swept in Florida. After wrapping up the season and blowing up the stadium, the Phils acquire a bunch of new players and congregate in Clearwater for Spring Training in February, where everyone predicts them to be incredibly good; remarkably, nobody feels any ominous feelings of intense, impending, gut-wrenching irony.

MARCH 2004: Jon, Dixon, and I head down to Clearwater to take in the sights and enjoy some exhibition baseball. The Phillies are kind enough to win when we see them, but beyond that are less than impressive in Spring Training, winning only about a third of their games. Still, they return to Phila. with everyone still in love with them and expecting them to go all the way; irony starts cracking its knuckles and doing leg stretches.

APRIL-MAY 2004: The Phils start 1-6 but assure everyone that everything's going to be fine, taking the apparent attitude that these games don't actually count. They manage to crawl back to .500, then hover around about five games over for the next few weeks. Meanwhile, their new stadium is really nice; you can build your own Phanatic.

JUNE-JULY 2004: Winning more than three in a row proves to be a trial for our Phils, who lose series to teams like the Mets and Tigers. Injuries mount but the team continues to remind us that it's a long season and everything will be fine. Everytime I watch them I'm gripped by the realization that they're really mediocre and I have no confidence in them, which I'm not happy about and ashamed of, and phrases like "I hate them" and "they will miss the postseason" start to mysteriously enter my lexicon. Strange, that. The team closes the month by dropping their 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th losses to Florida... rumors of Bowa's imminent firing flutter around.

AUGUST 2004: I put aside my uneasiness about the team and fly 3,000 miles to see them. They celebrate this, to their credit, by going 5-1 in California (I am present for the sole loss). I arrive home a week later to discover the Phils in the midst of a 1-9 homestand; they look appalling. They finish off the month by going 6-6; the six wins are against the Brew, the six losses against the 'Stros. Who says they aren't consistent?

AUGUST 30, 2004: I make the mistake of checking the standings in the morning and discover that they're "only" six games back for the wildcard. Forgetting that they aren't all that good, I theorize that with a good month and a little luck, they still have a chance. I follow their game that day against the White Sox on the Internet at work, and am excited to find them winning 6-3; I check again a little later to find them losing 7-6. Fool me twice...

Which brings us to now. The Phils are effectively out of the running; not mathematically, but they haven't beaten a good team (i.e. over .500) since AUGUST 8(!!!) if you can believe that. They've won ten games since then (one against the Rockies, six against the Brew, three against the Mets) and lost like 25 or some crazy thing like that.

But a funny thing has happened: I'm so completely disappointed and demoralized by this season, and so, finally, resigned to the fact that they're going nowhere, that I've now lapped myself, and I'm back to being excited about them again. Not to the extent that I'm actually going to watch them all that much, but excited in the sense that I'm now looking forward to the season ending, so they can get to the important matters of firing their manager and signing some new pitchers. Like a mindless sheep, I will be back at the House of Lies in April 2005, ready for another season of bitterness, recrimination, and undying hope and devotion. I already know this, because it's too late for me; this stupid team is in my blood.

What went wrong? Look, I will grant you that the injuries (Thome, Polanco, Wolf, Padilla, Wagner, Burrell, Millwood, pretty much everyone else at one point or another) were a problem, and furthermore that many players (Millwood, Myers, Hernandez, and as much as I hate to say it, Thome, at least over the past two months) have had really disappointing seasons. Millwood may not be the ace that Bowa and Wade thought he was, but I don't think they were so out of line to think he'd be better than he was, which was pretty bad.

That said, this is where I blame Bowa. I've never liked blaming managers and coaches for a team's failure (I've always thought that the Flyers were way too quick to fire coaches), but I really can't see how Bowa's done all that good of a job. Good managers get their teams through injuries and disappointing streaks. Atlanta and Florida both suffered injuries this season, but they played through it, and now Atlanta's going to the postseason AGAIN, while Florida's in a decent position to sneak into the wild card (and I wouldn't be surprised at all). Why? I'm not sure, but it's obvious those teams are just run better. Bowa (and the rest of the team) have been using injuries as an excuse. Cox and McKeon just play through them. That's a manager's job. And it's the general manager's job to plug the holes, which brings me to my next complaint: for the fourth straight year, Ed Wade managed to do nothing of any great use whatsoever at the trade deadline. He kept hanging on to his "this is a championship caliber team" line, even though they rather obviously weren't. Even I could see that, and I'm just a ranting loser sitting in his apartment who can't even write a blog regularly.

[In fairness, I'm glad he didn't trade Gavin Floyd, and there were, admittedly, very few pitchers actually available. But there's just something wrong, folks, when a team repeatedly says "Now Is The Time" but then turns around and says "Sorry, we can't make a trade to improve ourselves right now, but we've got this great young pitcher and trust us, he'll make the 2007 Phillies awesome!" Yeah, sounds great. Do you want my 2007 Season Ticket deposit now, then?]

All right, more ranting and fun sports crap next time.

Randomly Recommended Records, 9/8/04
1. They Might Be Giants, The Spine (2004)
2. Shark Quest, Gods & Devils (2004)
3. Rush, Hemispheres (1978)
4. Wire, 154 (1979)
5. Husker Du, New Day Rising (1985)

Well, I downloaded this thing that'll put pictures on the blog, so here you go... me, literally in front of Dodger Stadium, August 7. (Picture by Marta B.)

On the other hand (follow up to an earlier post)...

It's not like I didn't want to write a Phillies blog; I really did. I was really looking forward to following this season day-by-day. How fun would it have been to watch the Phils build up a lead and take control of the division... or even battle it out with the Braves and Marlins all season long, the three of them jockeying for position, going down to the wire... and even if the Braves won it in the end, I'd still think, "well, that's disappointing, but at least the Phils made a go of it and were in it until the end." Imagine if you will packed crowds at Citizens Bank Park every night, hanging on every game, every pitch, all season long. Keeping one eye on the out of town scoreboard to see how the rivals are doing. Poring over the standings every morning, looking forward to checking out the game each night. Imagine Millwood dominating with 7-, 8-, 9-inning outings every time... the other four starters healthy and solid... Wagner shutting them down every night in the ninth and leading the league in saves. There... do you see it? There's Burrell crushing another poor hapless ball into the visitor's bullpen... there's Rollins faking out the pitcher and easily stealing second... there's Bell snaring every ball hit his way... there's Abreu cutting guys down at the plate. There's a packed CB Park rocking in late September as the Phils beat the Marlins to clinch the division; the crowds in Ashburn Alley wild and crazy, in a frenzy of celebration. There's the whole city abuzz with excitement about our baseball team.

There's... but no, I won't speculate about postseason games, I don't even dare to fantasize. That's just too much, too painful, even for me.

Yeah, none of that happened, nor will it. Sad, really.

Fortunately, we got THE BIRD in a matter of days. Get ready!

Briefly...

My friend and co-worker Hannah is going to Uganda for five weeks to volunteer in a health clinic and teach English and math to orphans with AIDS. No joke. My mind has successfully been blown; I am astounded by her selflessness and dedication and sacrifice. It's really, literally, one of the greatest things I've ever heard of, and gives me faith that this species of ours is going to make it after all; just when you thought we couldn't possibly ever stop treating each other like such crap, you hear something like this.

Anyway. Turns out getting to Uganda and subsequently living there is much more expensive than you might expect; thus, Hannah is asking for donations. She's set up a website all about her trip and you can donate through there:

http://www.uganda.50megs.com

Check it out and pass it along.

(I ask you to just mull that over. Uganda!)

Meanwhile, Uganda's soccer team is 1-1-1 in qualifying for the 2006 World Cup; they're in pretty good shape. Their next match is on Saturday against Burkina Faso. Check it out: http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/t/team/overview.html?team=uga