Book thing Matt asked me to do

1. Total number of books I've owned. Gosh, I have no idea. All time? Including, like, Little Golden books? Textbooks? C64 game manuals? Let's say 1,000. Probably less. There are maybe 300 in my apartment right now.

2. Last book I bought. On Sunday I bought The Non-Existent Knight and Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino and Neuromancer by William Gibson. I have no idea when they'll get read; they've been thrown on the pile.

3. Last book I read. Snow White by Donald Barthelme. Now, the last book I read that I actually understood was The Drawing of the Three by Steven King. I've never read any Steven King and I wanted to see what the fuss was all about, and since "dark surreal fantasy" interests me more than "monsters suddenly attacking people" I figured I'd start with the Dark Tower stuff. I liked it. Much more than I expect I would like one of his 150 "monsters suddenly attacking people" novels.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me.
a. George Orwell, Animal Farm. Whenever pressed to name a favorite book this is what I say. I no longer remember why, really, but you know it's good.
b. Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Etc., for reasons previously described in this space.
c. Mervyn Peake, the Gormenghast trilogy. This is a cool thing to read when you're in 12th grade and you want to carry around a book that literally nobody else in your school has ever heard of. It makes you feel like a badass.
d. Anything by Kurt Vonnegut, the kindly, crazy, depressed uncle I never had. I'll say Mother Night 'cause my copy's autographed. I rule!
e. Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials trilogy. It's probably better that I not go into too much detail regarding the sinister acts of criminal darkness, or the soul-to-devil selling, that I would perform in exchange for the ability to write something this good. You couldn't handle it.

I think I'm supposed to assign this to five more people, but that's probably not going to happen.

What the hell was that?

An absolute disgrace. An absolutely appalling disgraceful embarrassment. An appalling, absolutely embarrassing appalling disgraceful nightmare. A nighmarishly absolute nightmare of an embarrassing disgrace. I don't even want to talk about it, that's how completely awful it was. The Phils got crushed and killed in their own ridiculous Little League baseball field in front of thousands of screaming enemy fans. Our stadium got flat-out hijacked by Boston scum and the team completely (and disgracefully) embarrassed themselves, and me, in the process. The Phils were exposed as a poorly constructed, bad-hitting, worse-pitching, lifeless, heartless disaster of a team.

A few things are self-evident.

They need to find another starter. This is a must and needs to happen this week. I vote for trying out Ryan Madson as a starter and moving Padilla to the bullpen, or better yet driving him out into a field and leaving him there.

They need to admit they were wrong about their claustrophobic bandbox and move the fences back. I'm not an engineer or an architect; frankly, I can barely read or write. So I have no idea if they could realistically renovate the stadium in time for 2006. But they need to look into this for 2007 at the latest because it's killing us in every possible respect. There is no feasible way they're going to attract big-name free agent pitchers to play in this awful little park, and if they're not going to move the fences back then they're going to have to explain how they plan on improving their pitching in the future because right now we're looking at decades of awfulness to come. Even beyond that, we're losing credibility as a legitimate major league franchise with this place. Every game - including the demoralizing disaster earlier today - turns into a freakin' homerun derby. That's not baseball, damn it. I pay my $20 to watch baseball; how about a nice 2-1 game once in a while, for crying out loud? Or are you just going to tell every free agent pitcher, "Listen, you're just going to have to 'adjust' to the dimensions." Oh, that's just stupid. I don't even want to talk about this garbage anymore; I am wasting my life. In 10 months I will be 30 and what do I have to show for it? A brain full of memories of terrible baseball games. I am a loser. Screw you, Phillies; thanks for nothing.

[The preceding rant was just me venting. You don't have to take any of it seriously. In fact you don't even need to remember any of it five minutes from now. But thanks for reading anyway.]

This week I was having some trouble with the formatting which I, having no useful programming training to speak of, was unable to figure out, so I thought it was as good a time as any to change the layout. I'll still be tweaking with it for the next few days but I'm really happy with it so far.

I spent Friday and Saturday in the company of Sleater-Kinney and the Phillies. One is a crappy baseball team who fill me with hate. The other is a brilliant band who make me happy to be alive. The differences don't end there, but I'll leave that for you to explore yourself.

More about both soon.

Ex-Phillie of the Week

...a new feature I literally just made up.

In honor of the Phils' series against that stupid team from Boston, I looked up all players who played only for the Phils and Red Sox. There were 19 of them. Here's the list, and here's the page that will take you there. I could play with this thing for four hours.

The most notable member of the list is 1993 Phillie Wes Chamberlain, who is your Ex-Phillie of the Week. Take a bow, Wes. I wish I had some Wes Chamberlain memories to share but I'm blanking and I forgot to mention that I hate the Phillies.

(WARNING! Inane, 1:00 AM-esque babbling ahead. Take a powerful sedative and remove all sharp objects from the vicinity before reading. If heart palpitations occur, consult a physician.)

I missed the game, but I know a bad score when I see one. 8-0. Eight to nothing, people. At home. Against Tim @&!!*!?! Wakefield. Bastard. They are embarrassing themselves. I wonder if the players are embarrassed because they should be. You come out in front of your long-suffering fans, and a bunch of vermin-like Sox fans who infest our city and our stadium like . . . like . . . well, like bloody vermin, damn it, and then you proceed to get thoroughly beaten up in the most miserable pathetic fashion, like losers. Three hits, they got. Three! How can you lose to a team that was on Queer Eye, you idiots?

You know what the problem with this stupid team is? They rest of their laurels. They barely have any damn laurels, but when they find them, they rest the !&@&# on them, no matter how tattered and un-laurel-like they are. They go a stunning 12-1 in a fun, exciting homestand, then proceed to go 3-7 like they're calling it a season, like the league goes around awarding World Series trophies because you swept the sodding Brewers. Screw that. Are you aware that the season is six months long, you horrible jerks? Try putting together one - just one, I am begging you, you sickening miserable freaks - solid, legitimate season, for once in your worthless lives, you hateful fools. I would put my suffering up against any Cubs or White Sox or Indians fan or anybody else. We have it worse than anyone and I defy anyone to prove otherwise. Oh, how I loathe everything in the world, except Sleater-Kinney. More on that tomorrow. Right now I can barely hear anything and I'm going to sleep.

Tra la la, I'm seeing Sleater-Kinney tomorrow

So the Phils go 12-1 on their epic homestand. Then go 3-6 against Seattle, Oakland, and (OH GOD NO SAY THIS ISN'T HAPPENING) the Mets. A neat and symmetrical 1-2 in each series. What does this mean? I think the Phils have been a little spooked since the Polanco trade and Wolf's season-ending injury. (You ain't gonna see Wolfy until 2007. Sorry, Wolf Pack.) Oh, they'll be fine. See, I don't have to worry about any of this. Everything's okay. Because I'm seeing Sleater-Kinney tomorrow, and therefore life is wonderfully great. Right now I'm listening to their 22-minute-long debut LP from 1995. Yeah... it's not their best stuff. Couplets like "Way up in the sky/that is where am I" aren't helping anybody. But you can sense something's happening...

Today's predictions: (1) the S-K show will rock impossibly hard and (2) the Phils will do fine against the Sox this weekend. Bank on it, people.

M's 3, Phils 1

Tough loss for the boys tonight, but unlike losses back in April when it was obvious that they just flat out sucked, this doesn't feel like a bad loss. This feels like a team built to score bunches of runs in a small park suddenly flying across the country to play in a really huge, giant park where they don't know how to hit. Best case scenario, they take a look at some tape, take some extra BP, figure out how to hit here, get some more solid pitching from Padilla and Myers (Lieber was basically fine tonight, with the exception of some mysteriously shoddy fielding), and they'll be okay. Like I say: if they go 2-1 in every series, I'm happy.

Got to be able to pick up the easy meat . . . WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED!!!

So guess who's excited about the Phils' current hot streak.

Go on, guess.

Give up? It's ME, silly! I am so amped about this business that if you were here, I would demonstrate it by spinning around and clapping. Ask me next time you see me, I'll do it.

Best homestand since '55. Rocketing out of last place to assume a comfortable and competitive second place spot. Crushing the poor baseball all over the place. Makin' other teams look dumb. It's magical, I tell ya, and it's been getting better every day.

The gang still isn't getting respect from the national media. Well, they are, sort of. This morning I made the mistake of reading the loathsome "Daily Quickie" on ESPN.com, which said that the NL East is currently being led by "two lightweights". I've never been so offended by such a lame insult. What do the Phils and Nats have to do to get some respect? (Well, okay, actually make the postseason might help. I admit that.) But the bottom line is that for two weeks the Phils and Nats have been awesome, and the Marlins and Braves have sucked. Period.

On the other hand, I caught a bit of Sawx/Cubs last night and they happened to mention the Phils... "They're playing great," said Joe Morgan. That made me feel good. If Joe Morgan approves, everything's going to be fine.

I've calmed down a bit. It's a long season and anything can happen; and yes, the Phils still have a lot to prove. The Fish, Braves, and Mets will undoubtedly get better and make trouble for us. Randy Wolf's injury is a problem, but the pitching has really improved lately, and it does appear that Ed Wade has awoken from some kind of stupor and has remembered how to make trades. He's grown a spine, or perhaps found one in the back of a drawer. Either way, I trust him to find us another starter in July, should we need one. (Well, trust is the wrong word, maybe. He's still Ed Wade and I'm still wary of him. I don't know. We'll see.)

But after scaring me in April, the Phils are fun again. And hey, now I get to watch Jimmy Rollins until 2011. That ain't bad either. Hopefully.

I've been staying up late a lot recently. That, my lack of anything even faintly resembling a social life, and my propensity to drink too much caffeinated soda all adds up to me watching a lot of the late-night games from Seattle and Oakland this week. I'm excited. Who wants to join me?

The shine in your Japan, the sparkle in your China

Show some love for the Phils, won't you? 10-1 on the current homestand, our boys are. Winners of six of their last seven series (and working on another as we speak). 17-6 since May 15 (that's the best record in baseball since that date, friends). Recent sweepers of the Giants and Rangers and very nearly the D'Backs.

I don't read too many Phils message boards - or indeed, any online message boards on any topic, as I've wasted enough precious hours of my life already on that nonsense (I call that time "1994-1998") - but I've seen some surprisingly astute comments during my recent sporadic browsing. Where is the love for the Phils? They had the same problem in 2001: that was a surprisingly good team, that managed to find themselves in first place on June 1 (something like eight games up, if I recall, and if Retrosheet wasn't currently down for unknown reasons I'd confirm it) - but nobody was coming to the games. How come? They never figured it out, but I'll bet it had something to do with (a) the previous year's team being so horrendously, apocolyptically, train-wreck bad and (b) the team not having actually been any good at all since 1993. The same thing is happening now: 2003 and 2004 were so disappointing - so thoroughly unlike the "championship caliber" teams we were continually promised - that we refuse to believe that anything but disappointment can be around the corner. One message board poster described Philly fans as "shell-shocked" and that's a good description. It's kind of like the Phillies have been luring us into their shiny home with promises of candy and comic books but when we come in they stick our hands over an open flame and cackle madly at our cries of pain and surprise. That's a tortuously bizarre metaphor, but suffice to say we're sick of getting burned: f--k that action, the fans say, you losers can play in your bandbox alone, we're not interested. It didn't help that the Phils played like garbage in April and most of May; even I lost faith in them, as you probably noticed.

Which is understandable, I guess. But . . . but . . . have you seen this team lately? They're on frickin' fire, dear reader(s), as good as they've been since those brief days in 2003 when they were actually sort of contending, and as fun to watch as (dare I say it?) they've been since 1993. I mean it; I really look forward to the games now, because for the first time in a very long while I'm actually confident they can win. When guys reach second I'm actually confident that their teammates will bring them home. I mean, dude, I'd forgotten what a genuinely good team looks like! This is what Cardinals fans feel like all the time: I get it now! It's shocking to me that six weeks ago these guys looked so bored, so dead, so done . . . it sucked, it was like they'd given up before they even began. It makes me wonder how far ahead they'd be right now if they hadn't stumbled out of the gate.

But where is everybody? Is it just me?

This is a football town. And don't get me wrong: I love football. I love the Eagles dearly. But . . . does this have to be so much of a football town - can we just give it a rest for like five minutes? Do there really need to be E-A-G-L-E-S chants at Phillies games? Seriously, people, the Phils are winning! It's really happening! Forget about the Eagles until September - they'll be there for us when we're ready for them.

Sure, it's a long season . . . and we have to wait and see what happens to the other teams, and yeah, the Phils can't really stay this good forever . . . they'll have another slump eventually. But that's baseball. There's too much to like about this team to write them off, and they're such a joy to watch right now that I can't help but dream. So sue me. If people want to ignore them and sit around waiting for the Eagles and then travel up to training camp in July - and seriously try to convince themselves that watching football players practice is more entertaining than watching a cool baseball team actually play games - well, go ahead. I'll have CBP to myself; I'm used to it. Just stay the hell out of my way when Phillies playoff tickets go on sale; they're mine.

Ugie Ugie Ugie, Oink Oink Oink

So Ed pulls off a trade. I'll miss Polanco - great guy, solid player, huge head - but we needed bullpen help, with Geary & Fultz not exactly striking fear and Worrell off finding himself or pounding brews or something, no one knows. Plus we got a utility dude in the deal. I like it. This is precisely the sort of midseason trade Ed has always refused to make, opting instead to pick up Mike Williams or Todd Jones or some damn thing. In a way I feel vindicated because I always point to 2003 as a clear sign of Ed's failure: the Marlins get Urbina, the Phils get Williams. No good! Now we have Urbina, maybe not the pitcher he once was but probably more help in the bullpen than anyone we have. Plus we get to play Utley everyday, and you can't have too many guys whose names begin with U.

The Phils' current hot streak has me happier than a clever metaphor I can't think of. I would love - love! - to sweep TX tonight, then beat up on the Brew, M's and A's and make some space in this division. Second place is ours and we're only getting better. Keep it up, boys. You set my heart a-flutter.

You got to believe they call it rock and roll

My dad and I made a regrettable tactical error last night. It was raining all day Friday and we had tickets for Phils/DBacks at 7:05 PM. It was still raining, not hard, but too hard for baseball, at 5:15 when I arrived home from work. Andrew and I watched "Daily News Live" on Comcast for a rather long time, waiting for news about whether they were going to call the game or not, but they seemed to know roughly as much about the weather as us, so they were no help, and indeed talked mostly about the Eagles instead.

At 6:30 or so, my dad called, and the rain had slowed enough that we thought that maybe it was going to stop. I suggested to my dad that he just park somewhere near my apartment and hang out there until we knew about the game for sure, because otherwise it costs $10 to park at the Bank, but there is similarly nowhere to park near my place either, so I further suggested hitting Tony Luke's in South Philly instead. I continued to offer these (in my view) reasonable suggestions but the next thing I knew we were turning into the Bank parking lot and paying $10 (of MY money, mind you, because I'm so nice). So there it was, 7:05, still raining, the tarp still down, and us with an undetermined length of time to kill before the game - a game that was becoming increasingly theoretical.

So we went to Harry the K's under the outfield seats where I had the delicious yet strangely grotesque Schmitter sandwich. Harry the K's, I discovered, never having gone there before, is in fact not an upscale eating establishment, but basically a concession stand with chairs, plus it's more expensive because there's a waitress and you have to tip her. Also they have an appetizer called "Philly Cheesesteak Spring Rolls" which look good and I'll have to try them someday, after I get over my utter disgust with the idea of paying $8 for an appetizer.

After Harry's, we milled around the concourse for a while - the rain was not slowing, oh no, no no no, and seemed to be getting heavier, but were the Phils going to call this thing? No, not until we all spent some more money. Phanavision was showing the 1980 video (their usual go-to rain delay tape) while the TVs were showing one of those Top Ten List shows that appear on every network 16 hours a day, this one "Top Ten Hitters of the 80's" featuring snarky comments from Adam Carolla and other awful unfunny people. (I've seen that one before, actually. Schmidt ranked third, making the list offensive, bogus, worthless, and clearly the product of hateful madmen.)

After our concourse-milling, we found some seats in the upper deck, with the admittedly flawed theory that the rain would slow down - indeed, Dan "The Disembodied Voice of the Vet/Bank" Baker appeared to tell us that respectable weather sources had reported an eventual slowdown of the rain and that hot baseball action would undoubtedly eventually occur, maybe even before dawn. This was 8:30. Phanavision gave up on the 1980 team, and they put on the Braves/Pirates game from Pittsburgh. This was immediately disorienting, because at the very moment they put the game on, the Pirates announcers were interviewing, for no well-explained reason, the coach of the Penguins, a team who play in a now only hazily remembered, locked-out hockey league, and haven't played any games in like 14 months. Coach Penguin was discussing which hand you should grip a hockey stick with for maximum shot power. My dad made two astute comments, the first being his astonishment that they had found a way to make Pirates baseball even more boring; the second was pointing out that it was rather tortuous and offensive to show the 1,000 wet, irritated fans who had bothered to come images from a different stadium where many dry, happy fans were enjoying watching their team win.

We gave up on our seats and did some more milling. My dad announced that he wanted to leave, especially before he was tempted/suckered into spending more barrels of money, something he had already done too much of in the service of not watching baseball, something he could have done in his dry home for free. I pointed out that if they ended up playing the game, we would be out the $20 each for the tickets - no refunds if they actually play. It was already 9:00, and the rain showed no signs of stopping, and even in a best case scenario they couldn't possibly start the game until 11:30. We finally ended up at the High and Inside Pub, where we had more beer and stood around, until some ushers came in and announced that the game had been called, there was a doubleheader on Saturday, and we could trade our tickets for any game we wanted. So it all worked out in the end, except for the part where we paid to park, ate expensive food, and sat around bored in the rain catching potentially fatal pneumonia. Happy Friday!

Change of subject: big party at my place on July 2 for Live 8! By "big" I mean "come on by, if you want, there might be chips".