VAGUE SPACE

Thank You, Phillies

2009-11-09T07:47:00-05:00

Well we spent over a year as World Champions, not surrendering the title until the calendar turned to November, and I'd like to salute the team for its efforts to try to repeat, going much further than anyone could have expected, and that only the brave few had hoped. The mid-70s Reds were the only National League team to go back-to-back in like the last 80 years or something, so for those of us who are fans of one of the 29 teams that don't make a mockery of the sport by buying themselves meaningless championships over and over again, it was quite a feat to come this close to the repeat. In the end, Cole Hamels and Brad Lidge -- the heroes of last year's World Series -- came up as goats in key spots in games 3 & 4 and the rest of the team could not come through in their behalf. I wish we'd ended on happier news, and not lost to the worst bunch of fans, but that should not diminish the great accomplishment achieved by this Phillies squad. I mean, the Philadelphia Phillies had only been to the World Series twice since 1950, but then they made it each of the last two years. So that's a pretty dramatic turnaround. And it's been a wonderful ride. I hope it continues.

All of the regular position players are signed for next year, with the exception of Pedro Feliz, and the Phillies hold a club option on him. I'd assume he'll be back, if only for his defense (he can't hit for shit, as we saw again this postseason) and because I don't think they have anyone in the system ready to step in. The core of the offense -- Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Jayson Werth, Shane Victorino, Jimmy and Raul Ibanez -- are signed past next year, so we should be in good shape to continue hitting like we've been hitting the past few years. We can probably expect some decline from Werth, who hit at a career peak, and Ibanez, who couldn't keep up his blistering early season pace after an injury before the All-Star break. Rollins and Victorino, though, can be expected to improve, or at least have room for improvement, especially Rollins. Utley and Howard have been doing this for years, so you have to hope it continues. I'd like to see them work a young outfielder into the mix -- filling in for Ibanez, perhaps, to give him some extra rest at age 38 -- and that may be Ben Francisco, but he showed very little this post season other than a good glove. The minor league system has a few prize OF prospects, including Dominick Brown, but I'm not sure how major league ready they are. Infield depth is another issue, and if we had anyone to replace Feliz, we probably would. His option is $5M, which the Phillies have until Monday to pick up, but they may try to re-sign him at a lower deal instead.

As far as pitching is concerned, the Phillies cut ties with former ace and 2008's #2 starter Brett Myers, who suffered through injuries and ineffectiveness in 2009, ending a roller-coaster career as a Phillie that saw some frustrating moments and promise unfulfilled, but also some great pitching, including a post-All Star break stretch of amazing starts in 2008 that were a huge factor in letting us catch the Mets again and make the playoffs again. Myers will probably try to catch on as a reliever somewhere -- which he prefers to starting -- but our rotation is pretty well set for 2010 anyway. Cliff Lee's option was already picked up, so he'll be at the front of our rotation next year, with Cole Hamels, Joe Blanton, and J.A. Happ holding fort behind him. Jamie Moyer is signed for next year at age 47, and presumably will be given at least a cursory shot at the 5th spot in the rotation, and the team is likely to take a stab at bringing Pedro Martinez back, after his effective stretch run and playoff performance. They probably won't be willing to pay him much, though, with their finances stretched through raises to all their current stars, so I don't really expect him to be back. Stud prospect Kyle Drabek might get a shot at the last spot as well, but it seems clear that the Phillies are not overly concerned with filling out the rotation when they let Myers walk.

As for the bullpen, apparently Brad Lidge is getting his elbow checked for loose bodies, which might help explain his 7.21 ERA and 11 blown saves. He claimed all towards the end of the year that he was feeling as healthy as he was all season, but if it's true that his elbow was hurting him and he kept going out there, that's about as selfish and shitty a move a player can make, and he was directly responsible for blowing game 4 for us. Of course, if he gets his elbow fixed and can come back as the 2008 form of himself, saving every game for us with a sub-2.00 ERA in 2010, then I'll probably forgive him. I'm just not counting on it. Scott Eyre is also going in for examination and has hinted at retirement. He was probably our most effective reliever this postseason, which is saying something, and it's not something good. The rest of the bullpen is largely signed for next year, I believe -- Ryan Madson, Chan Ho Park, and Chad Durbin. Obviously this is an area of major concern that needs to be addressed by management, particularly to come up with a plan B if Lidge is not going to be closing. Every other player given a shot at the job on the roster came up short this year, and I wouldn't rely on any of them in the 9th inning. We'll also need a good lefty arm if Eyre retires.

So next year's team should largely be the same as this year, with perhaps a new 5th starter and hopefully an overhauled bullpen as the only major changes. As I said, the offense may slip a little with an expected decline by Werth, but it will remain the strength of the team and certainly is strong enough to capture the NL East again. The rotation will be a key, and I worry that Cliff Lee will suffer the same overworked residual effect in 2010 as Hamels suffered in 2009. A bunch of idiot Phillies fans are calling for trading Hamels, overreacting to his playoff failures this year and forgetting that he won the World Series MVP in 2008 and is still in his mid 20s, but threw something like 266 innings in 2008 and had the predictable dropoff the next year that almost every single pitcher in the league suffers through (see Justin Verlander circa 2007 to 2009). Hopefully Cole can return to form in 2010, and I have a lot of faith that he can, because Cliff Lee, although he's not as young, may definitely suffer a dropoff from this year's stellar performance. Blanton should be fine in the 3rd slot, and Happ is still young and a question mark, but could be ok. Obviously if Drabek comes through this spring and grabs the final spot, that would be a shot in the arm for the team and its future beyond 2010, because if we're tossing Jamie Moyer out there every 5th day, I won't really love our chances to repeat.

But it has been a great two seasons for Phillies fans. And we thank you, players and management, for all your wonderful effort and play. Here's hoping we're back in 2010. We are still the two-time defending National League Champions and I think we can do that again. No one in our league will be spending $450M+ this offseason to sign the best free agent pitcher, best free agent hitter, and another great free agent pitcher in order to return to the playoffs after missing them for the first time in 15 years. So we should at least be on a level playing field. Thank god we're not Orioles or Blue Jays fans. Must suck to be them under baseball's current system, when one team is allowed to spend themselves into playoff berths from their division every single year. Go Phillies!

New Music Thursday

2009-11-05T07:35:00-05:00

F the Yankees edition.

Download Pants Yell! - "Cold Hands".mp3
Download Yeasayer - "Ambling Alp".mp
Download The Big Pink - "Crystal Visions".mp3
Download Bear in Heaven - "Lovesick Teenagers".mp3
Download The Uglysuit - "1902 Deep Ocean".mp3
Download The Antlers - "Kettering (Daytrotter session)".mp3
And from the soundtrack to Where the Wild Things Are, which is just really, really good.
- Download Karen O and the Kids - "Food is Still Hot".mp3

And finally, from an appearance on KEXP this summer, this is an awesome version of a classic Sunset Rubdown track:

Download Sunset Rubdown - "The Empty Threats of Little Lord (live)".mp3

Friday Night Lights Season 4 Premiere

2009-11-03T07:59:00-05:00

"East of Dillon" kicked off the fourth season of the venerable program, one that I didn't watch in seasons 1 & 2 but absolutely fell in love with last season. The fourth season premiered exclusively on DirecTV for the second straight year (Wednesdays at 9 pm on the "101") and will be shown on NBC sometime next year. I've seen a lot of great shows this season, from returning favorites (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has probably been the best so far, but The Office, 30 Rock, South Park, and Curb Your Enthusiasm have had some absolute classics already) to some decent new shows (Community, Modern Family, and Flash Forward have all been on my DVR list, with only the latter falling off due to time constraints), but oddly, it's Friday Night Lights that is the first show I feel compelled to talk about. It's pretty much completely like an HBO show, with its gritty subject matter and gritty photography and the fantastic acting and swelling music -- oh, the music! -- that I can't help but sing its praises to the world. There's been a huge upheaval in cast and characters in the break between seasons 3 and 4, but perhaps because I didn't watch the first two seasons of this show, I don't find myself missing Lyla or Jason or Tyra (Ok, I do miss Tyra) as much as long-time viewers. And the first episode was as brilliant as every episode I've seen of this show. Just perfect.

Coach Taylor was shipped off to East Dillon High School only a couple years removed from a state championship at Dillon High (now renamed West Dillon) in a plotline that still doesn't make a whole lot of logical sense but involved the team's star quarterback, his abusive father, their personal coach who happened to be a highly touted college assistant, and a re-districting of the town that also didn't make a whole lot of sense. None of it really matters, though, since it left Kyle Chandler with even more drama in his character's life that he can't act the living shit out of. The East Dillon football team had been nonexistent for years and resurrecting a team with a shitty stadium and no good players is going to make this season more about getting a win than trying to win a championship. There are some excellent scenes with the new football team, who are gassed after 18 minutes of a Coach Taylor practice, and who suffer a mass exodus once he kicks off an arrogant but talented player for refusing to apologize for fighting Landry. The fact that most of the rest of the players who leave the team are black, leaving mostly whites and Hispanics, is a borderline racist scene, but in the reality of the television program, the remaining East Dillon Lions get slaughtered like lambs in their first game of the season, 45-0. At halftime. After which Coach Taylor forfeits, fearing his already injured and undermanned squad might actually get killed in the second half. Just great stuff.

The other major plot(s) involve those few high school characters who return for season 4 -- Landry and Julie and Landry's lesbian friend whose name I forget and of course, golden boy QB JD, who apparently became an asshole in the offseason, believing all the hype and turning into his father. JD gets into a fight with Matt Saracen, who replaced him in the playoff game the previous year but is now a pizza delivery boy trying to support himself and his grandmother after giving up a scholarship at the Chicago Institute of Art to stay home and take care of his senile relative. There's also a few new characters -- a delinquent football player who Coach Taylor is giving a second chance to and a girl in East Dillon who sings the national anthem (and has a sassy attitude that will clearly be used in future episodes). And of course, Tim Riggins returns after a single month at college, when discussions of Homer's Odyssey in English Comp were enough to get him to drop out of school. Not a whole lot happened in the episode, now that I write it all down, but every scene was riveting, every character, returning or otherwise, was a welcome sight on the screen, and every note played throughout was perfect. I mean, for crying out loud, they opened the show with Jose Gonzalez and The Books' "Cello Song" -- one of my favorite songs of 2009, and a song no one in the mainstream world has ever fucking heard -- and then they closed the dramatic finale with Sufjan Stevens' "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". I mean, shit. It doesn't get any better than this show.

Genesis

2009-11-01T18:32:03-05:00

Genesis

A novel by Bernard Beckett

New Zealand's Bernard Beckett wrote this slight novel while he was on a Royal Society genetics research fellowship investigating DNA mutations, and when I think of how difficult it is for me to find the time to work on my writing while designing warehouses during the day, I'm just in awe of the magic that he created in this book. The man is clearly brilliant, and he's written an almost perfect novel, 150 pages that I can guarantee you will burn through in a single reading. It's that gripping. And that wonderful. I can't -- or I won't -- get into many details of the plot of the novel, because each page is a new revelation, but it ostensibly takes place in a future world in which a girl named Anax is undergoing an oral examination to join the vaunted Academy, and the novel is divided into four parts based on the four hours of her intense examination. As such, the story is largely told in a question-and-answer dialogue between Anax and her Examiners, but since her examination is about the history of Adam Forde, an important figure in the history of this future world (he lived from 2058 to 2077, we are told on the second page), much of the story is simply Anax recounting the history of this time, in response to the questions, but what a fascinating history (future history, in our case) it is.

I cannot go into any other details without possibly revealing too much, but let's just say that the twists and turns are truly stunning and completely compelling. It's a very cerebral work, not something that can be read lightly, but the language is clear and robust, and if you are able to take a few moments to reflect on the extraordinary themes in play about the nature of consciousness and freedom and fate and future, in the midst of your reading, I'd definitely recommend. But it will be difficult to pause and think, for this is also a wonderfully suspenseful thriller that you won't want to wait to finish. I'm not typically a reader of books like this -- I'm not sure how I ended up placing it into my "Saved for Later" cart in Amazon, or why I decided to purchase it many months later -- but in any case I haven't read a lot of sci-fi fiction, although I wouldn't call this a sci-fi book necessarily, and I'm not a philosophical reader, although this is certainly more than a philosophy book (even if several characters have great philosopher names), and I'm not really even a suspense novel reader (but this is much more than suspense). This is probably something akin to a Philip K. Dick novel, but since I've only seen the movie versions of his stories (Blade Runner, Minority Report), I can only guess. It seems to be thoroughly original to me. And highly recommended.

Buy Genesis. Now. Please.

One Down, Three to Go

2009-10-29T00:07:00-04:00

Never a doubt in this game, from the way Cliff Lee was pitching, yet again in this postseason. CC Sabathia tried to keep up, escaping a dicey first thanks to a horrendous swing by Raul Ibanez on an outside 3-1 pitch, but he ran into the Chase Utley chainsaw, which provided all the runs Lee would need on the night. A solid effort by the "vaunted" Yankees pen put the game out of reach, and only a throwing error in the 9th that allowed an unearned run to ruin the shutout. A great effort throughout, and we certainly needed the win, with the less heralded Pedro going tomorrow, but yeah, I was pretty confident we were going to win game 1 and nothing on the night deterred that thought. Well done, Phillies. The only surprise to me during the game was the early comment by McCarver on a shot by Jimmy Rollins that stayed in the park that the ball wasn't carrying in Yankee Stadium in the postseason. I hadn't actually seen any of the Yankees postseason (it's taking way too much of my time just watching all these Phillies wins), so I was a little surprised about that. So maybe tomorrow won't be the high-scoring affair that it looks like on paper -- I think Burnett's control problems are really going to show against such a patient lineup as the Phils (unlike the free-swinging Angels and Twins), but we'll see. I'm not expecting a win tomorrow as much as I expected one today, but I'd sure as hell take it. Pedro shocked me once this postseason, so let's see if he can do it again. And let's put up a bunch of runs on Burnett and that non-Rivera Yankee bullpen so that we don't need to worry about who's going to close for us for a second straight win. Well done.

Oh, and to all the Yankee fans expecting me to make fun of them, just be happy that most of you -- with a few exceptions -- have been very un-Yankee-like and cordial to me coming into the series, so I'll lay off for now. Of course, I did have three different people send me "Fuck You" e-mails and texts between 11 pm and 11:30, so that was fun. Go Phillies!

Phillies - Yankees World Series: A Fight to the Death

2009-10-28T07:23:00-04:00

The long slide into irrelevance for the Philadelphia Phillies between 1995 and 2005 coincided with some historically great teams for the Seattle Mariners, who had been my favorite American League squad since the early '90s. As a result, I ended up following the Mariners as much or even more than the Phillies, especially during the 2000 and 2001 playoff seasons for the M's, the great post-Griffey, post-ARod, post-Randy Johnson teams that stunned the world by winning the most games in one season in baseball history (116) in 2001. Edgar Martinez had become my favorite player of all-time (surpassing Michael Jack Schmidt), while Ichiro! debuted as a superstar, Bret Boone slugged his way to 2nd baseman records (with a little help from pharmaceuticals), and Mike Cameron caught every fly ball in Safeco Field. Things were great. Until the playoffs. In both 2000 and 2001, the Mariners ran into the Evil Empire Yankee juggernaut and lost unceremoniously in the ALCS, one step from the World Series each time. Then, despite 93-69 records in 2002 and 2003, the Mariners missed the playoffs both years, GM Pat Gillick moved on to greener pastures (the Phillies!) and the worst general manager in the history of pro sports (Bill Bavasi) led the team to last place finishes in four of his five years in charge. The Mariners have not been in the playoffs since losing to the Yankees. And I'm still pissed.

Gillick moved to the Phillies and turned the perennial losers into 85+ win contenders in the middle of the decade and then to the playoffs in 2007 and World Series in 2008. My love of the Mariners has necessarily diminished as my love for the team of my youth and high school and college years has returned in full force in recent years, but my hatred of the Yankees has remained strong. Going to college and living and working in Central Jersey, I've been exposed to nearly two decades of incessant Yankee annoyance, from the overbearing nature of their fandom, to the ugly nature of the Yankees New York media (Fox News wishes they could be the propaganda machine that the NY media is for the Yankees, not just the YES network, which I don't watch), to the sense of entitlement permeating everything the team's owners do and spend, it's all rather sickening to watch as an outsider, as someone hoping they somehow lose, despite payrolls that consistently dwarf the rest of the league. I rooted for the miracle wins by Arizona in 2001 and Florida in 2003, but that didn't put a damper on the ugliness of the Yankee fandom in the area. The Red Sox comeback and championship in 2004 was magical, but there the Yankees were, right back in first place the following season, while my Phillies and Mariners continued to languish. The Red Sox won again in 2007, which was great for a Yankee-hater like myself, but it really wasn't until the Phillies historic run to the world championship last year (coinciding with the Yankees missing the playoffs for the first time since 1993, the last time the Phillies were even in the playoffs) that I really, finally got over my Yankee hatred enough not to care anymore. Winning solves everything, and the fact that the Yankees spent $100M+ to add to their $100M returning team salaries didn't bother me this offseason, nor during their romp through the American League, because I had a world championship in my back pocket, and the Yankees fans had only a decade full of disappointment (assuming that anything short of a world championship is disappointing).

But now the rubber has hit the road, and I find my Phillies in the World Series against the most hated team in sports history. And you know what? I still don't feel the hatred as much as I used to. I want to avenge the Mariners losses. I want to avenge two decades of living through the NY media adoration of all things Yankee. But really, I just want the Phillies to win. Would it be sweeter beating the Yankees rather than the Tampa Bay Rays? Sure. But I'd feel just as strongly if we were playing the Angels. I'm looking for a repeat, and I don't care who stands in my way. Bring it on, Yankee fans. I can take it. I've lived with it for 2 decades and I can take it. But if we win, if the City of Brotherly Love pukes all over your precious Jeter and ARod and Mariano fucking Rivera, could you please be quiet about the Yankees for the next ten months at least? Go root for the Giants or something. Baseball belongs to Philadelphia.

New Music Tuesday

2009-10-27T08:07:00-04:00

Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs teamed up with a bunch of, apparently, children to do the soundtrack to Where the Wild Things Are, and while these songs are ostensibly for children, I have to admit that I'm kind of digging the album. There are really some great songs on here. Of course, any movie that uses Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" in its trailer -- and then gets the trailer played on pretty much every show in the country for the last month, spreading Arcade Fire's wonderful music further than it's ever been spread -- is pretty awesome in my book, whether the book is for children or not.

Do Make Say Think have just released their follow-up to 2007's amazing You, You're a History in Rust, and the Canadian post-rockers remain on top of their game. The album is titled The Other Truths and features only four songs with the self-referential labels, "Do", "Make", "Say", and "Think." "Think" is a little over 8 minutes and is the shortest track, while two of the others stretch over 12 minutes. So while the tracklist is slight, the music is long, and wonderful. From Pitchfork's review:

Opener "Do" starts with crisp, intertwined guitar lines playing off one another. As the track morphs and unfurls-- cue the slow-build and crescendo-- the themes reappear more charged, parrying with horns and descending into static. "Make" quietly delays the payoff, slowly ratcheting things up and marching toward a climax with a floor of tense bass, echoing chants, and sinewy, stretched string notes. When a warm motif of horns and fuzzed guitars begins to cut through the dread, the song's color noticeably shifts. "Say" strikes a grandiose yet road-weary tone, as a lonely slide guitar melody gets echoed and expanded by trumpets and churning drums, while "Think" may be its companion and comedown, a slow trail set forth by a quivering, reverb-laden guitar line.

I couldn't top their description, but I would have given it a lot higher than a 7.2 out 10. Another great album from a really great band. Check it out.

Do Make Say Think
Download Do Make Say Think - "The Landlord is Dead".mp3
Download Do Make Say Think - " The Universe! - live recording from CBC Radio 3".mp3
- From their Japan tour only EP The Whole Story of Glory, out last year; sorry, I can't give one of the new tracks, since there's only four of them.

Sufjan Stevens' musical project The BQE, a cinematic suite inspired by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, was released last week, along with a companion DVD of the performance of the suite at the Howard Gilman Opera House in 2007. According to a recent interview, Stevens admits that he's hit a sort of creative writer's block recently, which helps to explain why the once super-prolific Stevens hasn't released an album of new music since 2005's Vague Space album of the year, Illinoise. Sadly, he's appeared in more of my imaginary scenarios than on my stereo in recent years, but he says he's been performing new "long-form" music in recent shows and hopes to record an album to be released next year. We hope so too. For a man who once planned to write fifty state soundtracks as part of his "50 States" project, but also released a couple other "regular" albums in between, it's disappointing not to hear much new from him in a while. Maybe this song from The BQE can tide you over.

Download Sufjan Stevens - "Movement III- Linear Tableau With Intersecting Surprise".mp3

Noah and the Whale released their second album The First Days of Spring, appropriately on the last day of August (huh?) and although I've had it for a while, I never really listened until recently and I found there's a lot to love about it. Lead track "The First Days of Spring" is like Belle & Sebastien meets Bonnie "Prince" Billy meets The Dirty Three. Or something. I don't know, it's really good. But check out one of their shorter, sweeter, and sadder songs from the album below. Definitely a Palace Brothers vibe with this one, just with a British accent.

Download Noah and the Whale - "I Have Nothing".mp3

The XX have been popular indie blog staples for a couple months now, it seems, but I didn't really care for their debut album on my first listen, and I sadly don't seem to have the time to give anything multiple listens anymore. But Sirius XMU played a track the other day that I really liked (I think it was "Islands") and I took another listen to the album proper and found some really good things. Perhaps I just didn't give it a chance. Here's the closing track from the debut.

Download The xx - "Stars".mp3

And here's some more new tracks that I don't have time to talk about in detail...

Download Thom Yorke - "Hearing Damage".mp3
Download Bon Iver & St. Vincent - "Roslyn".mp3
- from the Twilight: New Moon soundtrack
Download Frightened Rabbit - "Swim Until You Can't See Land".mp3
Download LCD Soundsystem - "Bye Bye Bayou".mp3

The Nightman Cometh

2009-10-26T08:00:00-04:00

I went to a Halloween party this weekend dressed as Nightman, which was basically me in a black shirt and pants with some eye makeup... you know a normal day out. Aaron dressed as the Troll, while Chris, in an inspired, if very brief appearance, dressed as the Dayman, full codpiece and all. Chris only lasted about five minutes in the costume, experiencing too much pain in the groinal area to continue. But anyone looking for a last-minute Halloween costume idea, believe me, we were the talk of the party, if only because everyone who never saw "The Nightman Cometh" episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (one of their best episodes ever) had no idea what we were supposed to be. What I didn't realize is that the crew of the show took the "play" that they performed on a national tour this summer, performing the absolutely brilliant songs from the episode live in front of confused and delirious audiences. You really have to regularly watch the show, which has been absolutely on top of its game this season -- some of its best episodes ever, and that's saying a lot -- to understand the warped humor and wonder of a character who creates a play largely about a boy getting raped, in order to woo a girl who can't stand him and hasn't for years. Any show that ends with Danny DeVito, dressed as a Troll, saying "I think the rape scene went really well" is just warped enough to be a classic. Of course, any song that includes the lines: "You're a master of karate, and friendship, for everyone!" is just destined to be a hit.

If you don't watch the show, tune in Thursdays at 10 pm on FX. Really, seriously, it's the absolute funniest thing on television right now. Last week, the Green Man (another brilliant Charlie Kelly character) fought the Phillie Phanatic as the gang tried to attend Game 5 of last year's World Series. In previous weeks, Charlie admitted to a date that he's a "full-on rapist" (he meant to say philanthropist), they attempted a road trip and never made it out of Philly, and of course, they ruined the Waitress's life, again. And they show repeats at 10:30, so if you happen to see "The Nightman Cometh" coming up, make sure you set your DVR. It really doesn't get any better than this.

Here are Charlie's original lyrics to the song (he's illiterate)...

But loosely translated, it goes a little something like this:

Night Man, sneaky and mean
Spider inside my dreams
I think I love you

You make me wanna cry
You make me wanna die
I love you, I love you, I love you,
I love you, I love you
Night Man

Every night you come into my room
And pin me down with your strong arms
You pin me down, and I try to fight you
You come inside me
You fill me up
And I become the Night Man...

It's just 2 men sharing the night
It might seem wrong but it's just right
It's just 2 men sharing each other
It's just 2 men like loving brothers

One on top and one on bottom
One inside and one is out
One is screaming, he's so happy
The other's screamin' a passionate shout

It's the Night Man
I'm feeling so wrong and right, man
I'm feeling so wrong and right, man

I can't fight you, man
When you come inside me
And pin me down with your strong hands
And I become the Night...
The passionate, passionate Night Man

*************************************

Night Man Reprise, by Charlie Kelly

They took you, Night Man, and you don't belong to them
They locked me in a world of darkness without your sexy hands
And I miss you, Night Man, so ba-a-ad

*************************************

Day Man - by Electric Dream Machine

Day Man
Fighter of the Night Man
Champion of the sun
You're a master of karate
And friendship for everyone

Day Man (Aah-aah-aah)
Fighter of the Night Man (Aah-aah-aah)
Champion of the sun (Aah-aah-aah)
You're a master of karate
And friendship for everyone
(repeat)

And here's a live performance of scenes from The Nightman Cometh -- including the infamous Troll toll / boy rape scene that everyone loves... seriously, you have to watch this show. And the Nightman is getting into the "boy's soul", not the other thing you're thinking. Danny DeVito doesn't quite enunciate properly as the Troll.

Phillies Return to World Series

2009-10-22T00:07:52-04:00

After tonight's destruction of the last glimmer of hope for the Dodgers, the Philadelphia Phillies are only 4 wins away from a second straight World Championship, one step closer from becoming the first NL team with back-to-back titles since the Big Red Machine of the '70s. Jayson Werth led the attack with 2 home runs, including a first-inning 3-run bomb that erased a 1-0 deficit, and from there they didn't look back, cruising through the middle innings with home runs from Pedro Feliz and Shane Victorino and getting solid relief work from Chad Durbin and Chan Ho Park in the aftermath of another disappointing Cole Hamels start. But the best part of the night -- in between all the screaming and curtain calls and celebrations -- was the fans chanting "Yankees suck" in the 7th inning with a 9-3 lead. Oh yeah. It's on. Bring it bitches. This will be the battle of all battles and I may have to stop speaking to the 8 out of 10 of my friends who are Yankees fans for the next week. Of course, then I'd be left with just Jan and people who don't follow sports, so it's a tradeoff, I guess. It should be exciting.

As for the NLCS, we beat the Dodgers 4-1 in the series for the second straight year. It's funny, I remember back in April and May, when we were struggling and the Dodgers were on fire, and even throughout the summer as we settled into first place, baseball commentators and even Phillies fans were talking about what a great team the Dodgers had and that they were the favorites in the National League. I laughed. I really did. And I talked boldly to anyone who listened that with the Mets out of the picture (early) and the NL East a basic cakewalk, the Phillies would cruise to the World Series for the second year in a row. I didn't say we'd win the World Series, and I imagine it will be a very difficult task, whether we're playing the Yankees or Angels. But the National League? It's pretty much a joke. Colorado put up a great fight, but the Dodgers? Come on. We crushed them last year in the exact same situation and they brought back almost the exact same team and we brought back almost the exact same team (+ Cliff Lee). I really didn't see how Los Angeles could possibly be favored, but they were, and we responded with Pedro fucking Martinez throwing 7 shutout innings against their "vaunted" lineup. They do have some good young hitters and they do have Manny. But the Phillies lineup is the class of the league -- by far -- and really, there's no really comparison. As long as our starters pitch well (and they did, for the most part), we're going to beat a team like the Dodgers every single series like this. Especially if they start Randy Wolf and Vicente Padilla in 3 of the 5 games. Yeah, these were the Phillies top starters back BEFORE we started making the playoffs. Real smart, Torre. You're a genius without that Yankee payroll.

We will need our bullpen against the Yankees, and we'll need Cole Hamels to turn it around. But as far as our hitters, how can you not just admire a team that has Jayson Werth smacking two home runs in a game in which the Dodgers finally decided to pitch around Ryan Howard to face him. They are so loose, and so strong, and so incredibly non-plussed, coming back twice already this postseason from their last batter up with 2 outs to win the game. Just amazing stuff. I don't know if there's anything more I can say. They have given me two years of absolute baseball joy, something I waited all my life to experience. And now that it's here, I don't want it to stop. The Yankees suck almost as much as their mostly front-running, money-grubbing fans and their slobbering suck-up media. Bring on those bitches and their HGH-riddled corpses now.

Peace

2009-10-21T00:52:00-04:00

President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize a couple Fridays ago, an amazing accomplishment for a president in his first year of office, and it reflects the interests of voters ecstatic about the end of the Bush/Cheney years of worldwide destruction and imbues with it a sense of responsibility that Obama should take seriously, a responsibility to make the world a more peaceful place, on his watch, now that he is in charge. Because, sadly, we are still in the same exact wars that the Bush/Cheney machine brought us into, for the foreseeable future, with Obama considering General McChrystal's request to up the ante in Afghanistan with another 40,000 young men being sent off for the service of something -- what that is remains unclear -- and perhaps give their lives, for us, or for the military industrial complex that continues to be fed by nearly every president of this country since World War II. Is Obama listening to the Peace Prize advocates in Norway? Or to the general of his armed forces, who -- brilliant as might be -- would never, ever advocate for less troops, or less money. No general ever has, in the history of war. And when the history of war is over and Afghanistan has passed Vietnam as the longest American conflict ever (which it will soon), will Obama be a deserving recipient of the Peace Prize? Or will he be closer to Kissinger and Arafat, two other world leaders prodded by the Nobel Peace committee but ultimately failing in their roles as potential peacemakers in the world.

I haven't written much about politics since the election of Obama nearly one year ago. I've watched with some sense of glee as the right wing has devolved into a lunatic fringe of birthers, tea baggers, and secessionists, most of them out of unadulterated racism, the rest out of fear, and I've seen Obama work with Congress to stabilize the economy and put us on the road to recovery, which isn't yet realized, but which seems the likely result. But beyond that, beyond some wonderful speeches and an unwillingness to be baited by cheap Republican propaganda, there's been a dearth of accomplishments so far in this administration. And that's been rather shocking to me. And it's becoming more and more disappointing.

Now, the Republican side is so woefully bereft of ideas or solutions or any sense of common decency that anyone with half a brain can dismiss them wholeheartedly from the public discourse, but just because the Democrats have the arena of sensible ideas all to themselves does not mean we shouldn't criticize them, and we must, if only because they've done so very little with so much power, and they have spent the past few months merely fending off the lunatic fringe on the right over the most inane and unnecessary battles, like the entire "death panel" "debate" and the cries of socialism over a simple public option to insure the 45 million Americans without health insurance. You see, it's not a debate when one side is absolutely bonkers. It's just a waste of time. And all that Congress has done since January, it seems, is waste our valuable time. No health care reform. No environmental reforms. No change in our oil policies or our tax policies or our corporate policies. No investigation into tortures. No closure of Guantanamo Bay, yet, and that was announced months ago. Oh, and we're still in two wars. And perhaps escalating in one of them, a place that no foreign government in history has been able to exert external control over (not the Russians or Brits or even Alexander the Great), and where -- much like in Iraq -- it seems impossible to ever define victory. Why is this happening?

I haven't been a Democrat for very long. I only stopped voting for Republicans after Katrina put the final nail in the coffin of the warped conservative ideology I had blindly (and stupidly) followed for many years. I would hope that if it weren't for Katrina, all the other insane things the party has done in the intervening years -- up to and including putting Sarah Palin on the ticket -- would have turned me off of them, like it has for so many other Americans. But back then, there was a party for me to turn towards -- a minority party that had spent the better part of a decade in the wilderness and that had strong progressive voices demanding that the war end, that the power return from the corporations to the people, that we confront global warming, that we get universal health care, that we'd get religion out of government and government out of our homes (and our phone lines), and that we'd become a positive force in the world, instead of the destructive one that Dick Cheney had masterminded. Last November, we rose up together -- liberals and moderates and independents and disaffected Republicans -- and voted for a charismatic leader who vowed to change the system, to deliver on all those promises I just listed above, and we believed him, he was our JFK, he was our FDR, he was our Abraham Lincoln that could save our country from the tarnished wreck that George Bush had wrought. And so far? Not so much. You can blame Congress all you want, and I do -- I can't believe how little the Senate can achieve, even with 60 Democrats seated (the House has been way, way more effective), but ultimately this rests on our president.

He's saved our economy, maybe, and that's no small feat, but it's quite difficult to tell how much his actions have helped, or if other actions would have helped more, or less, but even if we give him full credit for the recovery, such as it is, what else has he done? Our standing in the world has improved dramatically, as shown in the Nobel Peace Prize presentation, but how much of that outpouring of affection is just because Bush is out of office? And I do love the way international affairs are being pursued through diplomacy, not weapons, particularly in Iran. But the two biggest foreign affairs challenges facing this country remain our two wars, and we're still fighting them. Obama said he's pulling out of Iraq, and that's great, but when, and when "out" means we're leaving behind 50,000+ troops, is that really meaningful? I've already talked in some length about Afghanistan, but if Obama adds more troops there, to the 20,000+ he already added, this becomes his war. And running a war is not something that a Nobel Peace Prize recipient should be doing, especially if we're there not to capture bin Laden, who's actually in Pakistan, but to fight the Taliban, who didn't attack us -- not directly at least -- and aren't any more likely to send suicide bombers onto our soil as any other group of extremists, Islamic or otherwise, from any Middle Eastern country, or in fact, as the recent domestic cases have shown, our own.

I'd like the war to end. I'd like both wars to end. I'd like health care reform -- it's too late to get a single payer system, but we can at least get a public option, and that's the minimum I'd accept. I'd like global warming attacked, through green programs at a national level and the elimination of our dependence on oil, preferrably at an international level. I'd like an investigation into the previous regime's torture memos, and an end to Guantanamo Bay. I'd like reform in corporate law and oversight and dependence on banks for our well-being, so that "too big to fail" doesn't become taxpayer' debts again. And I'd like about a million other things that Obama promised, that I know he truly believes in -- just like me -- and that I wish he had the will to push through. I don't think he lied to us. I cannot believe that someone as intelligent as he, and as composed, and as seemingly selfless, and as brave, would not share these same beliefs, the very ones he campaigned on for over two years. I just don't know what he's waiting for. America shouldn't have to wait much longer.