Sometime last year I went to see Matt read an essay he had written on the subject of filmmaking. This occurred at a film-themed essay-reading function held at hipster hangout Tritone. Matt's essay was very funny and he did a great job, but I must admit I was less than impressed with the other essays. At least two that I heard were very good, but the others ranged from mildly irritating to outlandishly, heartbreakingly pretentious. Probably my least favorite was the one besides Matt's I had looked forward to the most: it was ostensibly about Rushmore, which is arguably my favorite film, but the essay turned out to be an impossibly long dissection of the essay-writer's recent life, which revolved around girls, novel-writing, girls, semi-obscure albums we were apparently supposed to be impressed he was a fan of, girls, girls, and the exceedingly loose, paper-thin framework of him having possibly seen Rushmore at some forgotten moment in the past. (As a side note, I am probably being unfair, and it's worth noting that my hostility stems from a decision I made a number of years ago, which is that unrequited love is literally the least interesting thing a person can possibly ever write, talk, or, indeed, think about. A large crux of the guy's essay seemed to be a girl he had known in the past who he had loved, but he never did anything about it, and now she's gone, and it seemed that he was attempting to elicit our sympathy; however, my only reaction was "Wow - so that's how desperately pathetic that sounds when someone else says it. Now I know. Actually, that's rather useful information. Thanks, man.") Meanwhile, he made a point throughout the essay to mention that he spends many, many hours every weekend banging away at a novel he's been working on for the better part of a decade.

I mention all this because I often feel that I sound exactly as pretentious and pathetic whenever I am forced to sheepishly admit that I'm writing one of my own. It just makes me feel kind of dirty and ashamed, like I have some awful, porn-related hobby. Who the hell writes novels? Nobody, that's who. It's the saddest, loneliest way you can possibly spend your time. You really have to actually, really want to write one to pull it off; you can't go halfway on it. Well, I mean, yes, if it's your full time gig, and you're getting paid to do it, well, that's different; that's the sweet life. But if you're doing it not because it's your job but because you want to, and you have a full-time job at the same time, and you have to devote many hours of your free evenings to it, and try to ward off the constant belief that what you're writing thoroughly sucks and should be burned, and try to juggle that with attempting to have some semblance of a social life, where you see your friends and go to movies and watch baseball games and go to bars and maybe occasionally attempt to get within 10 to 15 feet of a member of the opposite sex? Forget it, man. It can't be done. It's hideous. I should give up today.

And then there's always the inevitable follow up question: What's it about? It just makes me cringe. Oh, good lord, don't ask me that, I have no idea. If I knew that, I'd have finished it by now.

I have more to say on this subject, but I have to suddenly stop and go find some food.

Humourous Vignettes & Spoofs

You may have noticed that I've more or less stopped talking about the baseball team in this space. Live 8, pie, and the Treaty of Utrecht have taken precedence. I have in fact not watched a Phils game since the Boston debacle (except for bits of that dull Mets series last week and even fewer bits of the Pittsburgh series).

Nothing - NOTHING! - is more loathsome than a bandwagon jumper. So that's certainly not what I am. I still love baseball, and I'd never switch allegiances to some other stupid team. The sad truth is that I've completely lost interest.

This is the third year in a row where I've been grossly disappointed by their performance, and I've realized that you can only be disappointed when you think good things are going to happen and they don't. I thought these guys would be good, and they aren't, so it's wounded me deeply. However, what I've come to realize is that they simply weren't very good in the first place. Their pitching is a mess, they can't hit, and they clearly haven't adjusted to their absurdly miniscule ballpark.

Therefore there's no reason to be disappointed. They aren't good enough to win, and they won't. And you know what? I feel okay about it. I've reached a point in my life where I just sort of feel like doing other things with my time, so I'd just really rather not spend my days watching a team that's going nowhere and isn't terribly fun to watch to begin with.

I'll still go to the games I have tickets for, and I'll have a great time, because I always do. But I can't see myself watching them on TV much anymore, or spending much of my time discussing them or writing about them. So I think I'll try to do some other things with this space, things that reasonable, non-obsessive people might want to read. Updates on my book, perhaps.

(Longtime reader(s) of this space will note that I've made this speech at least three or four times before, and I've always come crawling back to that damn team. And it's true that a nice six- or seven-game winning streak will bring me back like the hypocritical, weasel-like man I am. But you know what? I don't care. Write your own freakin' Phillies Diary, if you're so great.)

Ex-Phillies of the Week

This week we salute Dick Bartell and Chuck Klein, the Phils' representatives at the very first All-Star Game in 1933. Take a bow, gentlemen.

Look for future new features on this site including Ex-Members of the 1985 Seattle Mariners of the Week, Ex-Girlfriends of the Week, and Ex-Members of Pink Floyd of the Week. Jeremy's Phillies Diary: every day, in every way, improving to serve you better.

After the show, we headed over to Penn's Landing for fireworks (I have no pictures of that, because pictures of fireworks never come out and are a waste of time). Then it was over to the Midtown II for some apple pie.

Have a happy Fourth, everybody. Feed the world.

Turns out my friends are smoking, drinking street toughs. Who knew?

Dude, I got a serious problem with MTV's coverage, man. You do not - oh god, I hate using all caps, it really is awful and obnoxious, but dude, I gotta - YOU DO NOT CUT AWAY FROM "COMFORTABLY NUMB" WHEN THE CLASSIC PINK FLOYD LINEUP, INCLUDING ROGER, IS PLAYING IT. THAT IS SOMETHING A JACKASS WOULD DO. GOD DAMN YOU.

I mean, like, what the hell. It's very obvious to me that MTV just flat out doesn't care about this thing. They got 150 artists to play 11 concerts on four continents, and it's like pulling teeth to get MTV to show more than four minutes of it at a time.

It just shows how different people are - or perhaps, how differently MTV treats its audience - compared to 1985. In '85 they showed the whole damn show from dawn until after midnight. Today, as Jon points out, MTV has an itchy trigger finger - they're terrified of their audience having a short attention span and getting bored with more than two songs by an artist at once.

AS I SPEAK Steve Wonder is playing. Playing music! And they're not even showing! They just keep cutting away! They showed like two minutes of Stevie, then two minutes of McCartney in London, then a two minute piece about Africa, then random asinine banter from the painfully irritating VJs, then commercials. Millions of commercials. It's really disappointing. You'd think for like ONE DAY they could dispense with the endless awful commericals but I guess that's too much to ask.

I hear that tomorrow they're showing 6 hours of highlights, so maybe that'll be better. It just sucks that they didn't put more effort into making the live (LIVE!) broadcast better. Sucks, dude.

Matt finishes up a private moment.

They're estimating that 600,000 people are here...

We took a secret entrance along the river and ended up on the side of the Art Museum with a pretty great view (well, as good as we can hope to get). This is - no lie - Def Leppard doing "Sugar". It was AWESOME.

Yeah, that's right. I live close enough that I can just come back home and watch Will Smith on TV. Will Smith, by the way, is totally representin' Philly.

Yeah, there's a lot of people here. I have to tell you that I felt this emotional thrill when I saw that "PHILLY!" sign up there. I love this town, dude.

These fences are causing problems for everybody. They're garbage. But otherwise things seem to be going smoothly.

Jon and Matt head down 22nd St.

Here's me (in my Pink Floyd shirt I dug out of the closet) on the Parkway, 4,000,000 miles from the stage.

Philly, 9:30 am. It begins...

Ex-Phillies of the Week

I've selected two this time. First, a tip of the sweaty, soiled Phils cap to Doug Glanville. Doug signed a one day contract last week to retire as a Phillie, and threw out the first ball last Saturday. I was there myself and I can tell you it was literally the high point of the day.

Doug, sadly, did not have a great 2004 with the Phils last year. He hit (I think) the first walk-off homerun in CBP history, but is perhaps most infamously remembered for misplaying a pop fly to center to end Eric Milton's no hitter in the ninth inning on July 25. A sad moment for Doug. Later in extra innings, he was brushed back by a pitch and some idiots in the crowd cheered. (What, you people want a guy to get hurt? I distance myself from these drunk lunatics who claim to be Phillies fans. They don't speak for me.)

But let's remember Doug's fine '98 and '99 seasons, and how he was a stand-up guy, a Penn graduate, and lifelong Phillies fan. Take a bow, Doug.

Meanwhile, in honor of Live 8 I wanted see if any Phillies ever hailed from Scotland (where the G8 thing is happening), and what do you know, there was: George Chalmers from Aberdeen, who spent his career with the Phils, 1910-1916. He even started, and lost, a game in the 1915 World Series against the stinkin' Red Sox.

Take a bow, Doug and George.

Exciting, round the clock, up to the second coverage from Live 8 (occurring just ten minutes from my apartment) tomorrow! Well, not really, but I'll have something interesting to report at some point, at least.