Pretty harmless loss last night, as the yanks, O's, and Jays lost as well. Can't comment on the game. I missed it.

My friend Jen, who I know from BC, came into the city for dinner. I didn't go to BC, I would just visit my friend Mike, yankee fan, there, and I met her through him. This was in the mid-90s. Anyway, I hardly ever see her, so it was good to catch up, as the humans like to say.

Here's my funny story about last night. We went to a restaurant, and saw there were some open tables in the coveted "outside" section. We went inside and asked if we could sit outside. The man nicely gestured us to do so. We sat down. A waitress then came over to us and said, "This section is actually closed." We told her that the ubiquitous "that guy" told us we could sit outside. She points at the man sitting by himself at the table next to ours and says, "We already accidentally let THIS GUY sit here."

Poor schlub. We had to go inside, but at least we avoided complete humiliation.

Anyway, inside was this table of fifteen dudes from Emerson in Boston, in NYC for a 21st birthday party. A girl walked by and recognized one of the guys from sitting next to him on the T. It's a small, Boston-y city, that New York.

I got home in time to see the yanks lose their late game, which was good, especially after hearing about Wake's woes wersus Whitesox.

Today I took the train to CT, and on board were two other dudes who wore glasses and a Sox hat. Am I a stereotype now? Well, they each had a woman with them and I didn't. But maybe that will change one day.

Going to the unchartered state of Rhode Island now. Back Sunday night. Ish. Don't rob my house. Or Chan will attack. And you don't want that.

What I've got so far:

Empyreal Environs: A river on my spleen.

Bullshit Memorial Stadium: Tim's dull bro humiliates Ma.

Reb Sox: Sex orb.

Twelve Eight: Give the welt.

A Red Sox Fan In Pinstripe Territory: Nix Free Train Rides To Prison Party.

Words to live by.

I'll just keep adding to this list:

Witch City Sox Girl: I Try Six-Cow Glitch or Gritty Wich Lox [sic]

Blue Cats and Red Sox: Ax blades not cursed.

Thanks to all the wacky wordplay going on in the comments at Empyreal Environs, I've been inspired to come up with the newest trend in boredom.

I call it "Going to people's blogs and leaving a comment in the form of an anagram of the name of that blog." Or "Ana-spamming." Or "Spam-a-gramming."

I don't know, I'll let CNN name it in a few months. But for now, go crazy everybody. And if you have a blog, check your comments, you may already have been Anagraspammified.

The Citgo sign is trippy enough.

Although I call it "The Triangular Hallway of Doom" now.

See your soul. See it go...down the THoD.

Trophy hits Fairfield, Connecticut.

And our friend, Rebecca, aka Reb Sox was there, and was interviewed for the article!

Way to represent the only county in New England that isn't allowed to watch the beauty and splendor--and comedic announcing--that AAONESN (Almost All Of New England Sports Network) dishes out in its Red Sox coverage.

I also heard it went to the town I was born and raised in, Ridgefield. Maybe they did a full tour of the little county that can't (see the World Champion Red Sox, New England's one and only baseball team.)

Hopefully they see the big crowds and TRY TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.

Also, I like how in the article, the yankee fan guy says he feels sad, but "I just wanted to see the trophy." He should have added, "because the fucking yankees never do anything for their fans." But at least he can see his team's games on TV, unlike the Fairfield County Sox fans.

Wow, what a night. Sox win, yanks lose, I win at Scrabble. The TROIKA, if you will. Oh, god, I love rubbing it in Kay's face, even if he never reads this.

Kay's Troika was again nowhere to be found. As yankee fans everywhere were SOUND ASLEEP, I watched as the yanks went with Proctor and Groom in the seventh, before finally being forced to go with Flash Flood Gordon (and yes, that nickname is referring to his tendency to barf when the pennant is on the line), who gave up the game-winning grand slam to Vlad. The Sturtze/Gordon/Rivera plan never came into play. To Kay's dismay, I might add. He sat there trying to figure out why these guys were so "tired."

Another key to this game was that I was on the phone with Reb for that inning, and once I knew that was good luck, (after the grand slam), I kept her on the line for the rest of the game. The only bad moment came when A-Rod doubled to start the ninth. At this moment, Reb admitted she'd left the TV! So I forced her to get back to the screen, and K-Rod, who I call Krod, proceeded to get the last three outs, despite the umps giving Bernie a four-pitch walk, when three of those pitches could have been called strikes.

Earlier in the game, I was pretty damn pissed. The Angels had a man on first, two outs, down by one. Guy hits a ball to right field which hits the ground once, hits off the wall, and goes up into the air. A fan reaches out over the fence, and whacks the ball with his glove. The ball would have landed on the field. I have the laws of physics on my side here. The umps ruled it a ground rule double. They do a close up on the dweeb in the crowd, and of course he's got a yankee hat on. While Scosia argues, unsuccessfully, they show the fan getting thrown out of the park. As he walks up the aisle, you see other yankee fans high-fiving him, proud of his cheating ways. (I also noticed two separate Sox fans sitting there as he was led out.) And seeing Shephanie's reaction when the guy hit the ball was sickening. He raised his hand, just knowing that this guy totally Jeffrey Meier'ed the ball, and knowing he wasn't about to admit the truth. But that's what he's paid for, I guess.

So it stayed second and third, and although the Repulsive Unit gave Orlando Cabrera an intentional fourth ball (no kidding), he got the next guy out to end the inning. Then the yanks hit two homers in the next inning, which made it even worse. Please note that Matsui's homer literally scraped the outside of the foul pole. But that didn't stop Kay from acting like he and Matsui together helped save the world from alien forces.

But it all worked out. Since Reb's TV was a little ahead of mine, I was making her delay her reaction to each pitch, which was quite hard for her when Vlad hit that mega-grand slam. Man, I ran all the way across my apartment and back on that slam. It was quite a moment.

Here's a good look into the yankee "fan" mentality. Guy in Anaheim catches a foul pop in the crowd. Turns back toward rest of crowd and holds up ball. Turns out he's got a yankee hat on. When crowd sees this, they start to boo him. Terribly, he quickly takes off the hat! He'd trade team loyalty for a moment in the sun. Oh, you don't like me? Well, okay, I'm not a yankee fan, then. You like me now? Granted, if he had taunted the crowd with his hat, I still would have called him a dick. But still, he shouldn't have been boasting about catching a really easy pop up in the first place.

I guess I shouldn't complain any more, especially on such a good night. But still, why wasn't Olerud guarding the line in the seventh? Why did Trot get thrown out at home by the shortstop, who was almost on the outfield grass? And Edgar, jeez. Great job hitting and hustling on the sac fly, but on the rundown play, come on, dude. I was watching on the computer, and at that point it was basically showing me a still frame that would stay on the screen for a few seconds before switching to a new one. In one frame I saw Edgar about to tag the guy out at second. In the next, he's sitting on the grass in foul territory and the guy's safe at first. Reb told me the details later. But in that moment when it was stuck on Chopper about to tag the guy, who was just starting to run back to first, I had a bad feeling. And I'm usually very positive. But these National Leaguers come over, and I just can't trust 'em. And if it wasn't for them dropping a pop up, we might not have won. But, we'd been getting a lot of bad breaks, so it all worked out. And I still feel as confident as ever. Nice to beat the All-Star starter. And we got to that Scritti Politte, but we should have had more against him. Also, I just wanted to unveil that nickname.

About the Scrabble game: It was a fairly high-scoring game overall, as I beat Chan 362 to 335. He came out strong with "tsunami" for 79 points. I ususally get at least one seven letter word per game, since I'm basically autistic. Today's was "singers," which got me the 79 right back. But after Chan went up 25 late in the game, I made an amazing move. I'd already put "city" vertically on the bottom left for a triple word score. So I thought about adding to it later if possible. Felicity, maybe. So at one point I realized I had "VLO" in my hand. I counted the E's on the board. Nine. So there were three left. I put down an R and a D to make "rod" alongside of city, knowing that if I then picked an E, I'd have VELO to add to "city," with the O going next to the R to make "or" and "velocity" on the other triple word score. I did get the E, and Chan didn't screw me up on the next move. So I did my special "velocity/or" for 50 points, giving me a 315 to 290 lead, a lead that I never relinquished.

1.5 up on the yanks, 2.5 up on the orange-ish birds.

Top of the ninth, me and Chan in a Scrabble game, Manny at the plate, tie game. Guy drops pop up, giving Manny another chance. I immediately start chanting "Make them pay!" Since it was Chan's turn, I didn't want to be too distracting, so I covered my mouth, mumbling "Mmk thm pyy!" over and over again (but still loud enough so Chan knew what I was doing.) I did not stop until Manny made them pay. And, while going nuts, Orsillo said the term "made him pay," we made me go even more nuts. And as Manny's about to touch home, I look up at the TV, and Yes is already showing the hilight of the homer, since they're way ahead of my computerized game.

More when this Scrabble game ends, it's my turn.

Sign in Cleveland, Ohio.

I've been reading a bit about John Roberts, Bush's new, pale white, Supreme Court nominee. I guess it's not really been determined how he truly feels about abortion. But come on, you know he ain't down with it. If he isn't, the court would still be 5-4 on the Roe, or good, side. But, per NPR, "there are a handful of certain types of abortion -- issues involving parental consent and the medical procedure opponents call partial-birth abortion -- where the votes on the court have been close and where Roberts could make a difference."

And I read that his wife belongs to a group that doesn't support a woman's right to choose even in cases of rape and incest.

So watch out for this crazy couple of hate.

And to the anonymous (surprise) commenter who told me that I'm "ignorant about baseball and it shows," I challenge you to a baseball quiz. The subtopic can even be "the New York yankees" if you like, as I know more about them than most of their "fans." Andrew--wanna host? If so, please wear the game show host outfit David Lee Roth wore at the end of the "Hot For Teacher" video.

Why am I torturing myself listening to Michael Kay?

I guess I was wrong about the yanks having only Gordon and Rivera as part of their end of game plan. Apparently, the "troika," as Kay calls it without a hint of sarcasm, is Sturze (7th), then Gordon and Rivera for the 8th and 9th. When he said this, I said to Chan, "I'm not even going to say anything about that." But Kay, as if he heard my mental query, gave an excuse as to why not ONE member of the "troika" was available last night, when they really could have used them. And that excuse was that they were all tired, except for Gordon, who was switched to the third troika position, but didn't come in anyway, as the save had already been blown at that point. (Kay didn't explain the last part, though, that's all me.)

And then there was a play where the yanks' infield almost botched a pop-up, because Jeter came rushing in, to Hall-of-Fame-fully take charge, and overran the ball, before reaching back to catch it at the last second. About this, Kay's buddy and Oriole-from-my-youth-turned-yankee-shill Ken Singleton said proudly that it was an "acrobatic" catch.

Then Kay bragged about how Sturtze did such a great job getting the yanks out of a tough spot--after he'd just given up a double and a walk.

Nothing new here. I'm just sayin', I'm pissed. Texas has two innings to come up with five.

Now he's just said TanGorMo. Kay, that is. He said, "What a difference a night makes. With the yankee big guns available." He's saying this with two outs in the eighth. And a four run yankee lead! In a one run game, like last night, the run Sturtze allowed to score would have tied this game. Kay needs to suffer the same fate as Clucky from Cluckin' Chicken. Go ahead, yankee fans, believe the hype. Sturtze is a quality pitcher. Gordon won't choke--to the point of puking--in the playoffs. Rivera always gets the save against the Sox. Leave a tooth under your pillow tonight, too.

I've gotta start talking about Curb Your Enthusiasm to cheer myself up. Chan and I are afficia-frickin-no-doz of that show. We have this HBO channel that shows an episode every night. Every night before it comes on, one of us hits the info button and we read the preview to ourselves. Then one of us outwardly chuckles. Then the other one does. And it goes on like this, as we each think of another funny thing about the episode we've seen so many times. Curb rules.

Kay, on the other hand, is still pissing me off. If Rivera gets two more outs, I'm gonna be hearing more about the troika, even though it's not even a save situation. But if they do win, I'm turning the sound off quickly, before Chan can say anything. You know, that's actually one of my little superstitions. I try not to glance down at the remote when the yanks one out away from a win. If I do, I admit the game's over, because I'm getting ready to hit mute or the power button. The weird thing is, it's really hard to fool your own brain into thinking the remote is somewhere else in the room. Because even to THINK about where it is jinxes it. I just did it now. And the yanks won. Terrible job, Jere. I cost us in that game in late August '03, when we were losing to the yanks, and Nomar was the last batter against Mariano. I glanced, Nomar got out. I was in Buffalo. Later, I ate cajun food. In Buffalo.

Sometimes I babble when I'm happy. I'm happy about other, more real-lifey stuff, not the yanks and their shitty troika of feces. And the fact that we're still in first. And that yankee fans have false hope. But not that when Chan and I go to Dunkin Donuts when I finish this, the counter dudes will have special Dunkin Donuts brand yankee hats on. I bet they don't wear those in fuckin Woostah, dude. Or maybe they do, since that town does have a radio station that plays the yanks games. Terrible job.

Hey, today is the day when Homer listened to Yummy Yummy Yummy in '69.

Conversation overheard at the pizza place the other day, after a customer received his food at the counter:

Employee: Nine dollars, please.

Customer: Nine? It should be seven.

Employee: No, nine dollars.

Customer: I always get this same order, it's like $7.16 or something.

Employee: Well the drink makes it nine dollars.

Customer: But I was here yesterday, the girl gave me all this and the drink for seven bucks.

Employee: Yes, without drink, it would be $7.06.

Customer: Yeah, that's it. $7.06. She gave me the drink, too.

Employee: Who?

Customer: The heavy-set girl.

Employee: Ah. Well, yes, she GAVE you the drink. Nine dollars, please.

(laughter all around)

Customer: She workin' tomorrow?

The yanks are sending Aaron Small out to the hill tonight. This guy has appeared in eight games over the last six and a half years. The yanks are in serious trouble. It's all about pitching, and they don't have much of it in general, let alone any kind of higher-quality, dependable arms. Leiter did a good job against us, but I don't see that continuing. Kevin Brown was back the other night, giving up run after run. Moose does well sometimes, but in that sweet win by Texas last night, after Moose came out, they had nothing left. Gordon needed yet another day off, and apparently so did Mo.

Seriously, the yankee people are back to this theory about how "it's a seven inning game," because of Gordon and Rivera. (They've conveniently forgot about last year's "six-inning game" plan, now that they've been forced to trade Quantrill away.) So last night, Mussina actually gives them six good innings, and who comes in the game? Felix Rodriguez, Wayne Franklin, and the Assman, Scott Proctor. Are they gonna win with that? Million-to-one shot, doc. (Franklin's blown three saves this seaon...in five appearances.)

And that's when their starter does give them quality innings, but with their Small Brown Unit rotation, they're not gonna get that every night. Am I Wang, or am I Wright?

I was talking to the Good Witch of the Nor'East, and we were saying how the yanks' three out of four against us was total crap. I didn't come out of that series that they were a better team than we are.

As long as we do what we should do, like today's outburst over the School for the Blind and Deaf, we should be gold.

Witchy and I were also talking about nicknames for Tony Graffanino. She's got a great one, which I'll let her disclose, but I was thinking Spiro Graph-anino. Which made me think of Spiro T. Agnew. So that makes him Spiro T. Graffanino. Maybe. I just don't wanna hear anyone say "Curse of the Graffanino." Starting now. He wears Gedman's 10, which he'll have to earn in my mind.

Wow, the Twins just beat the O's on a walkoff homer. I can go either way on the O's. If they win, they keep pressure on the yanks, and I still feel comfortable because I know they're going nowhere in the long run. If they lose, we gain, obviously. So we're up 2 on them since we...

...holding for end of game...

(Halama just gave up a two-run homer, 9-4, terrible job)

...beat the Rays.

Oh my lord, I just heard the Gulden's commercial with Castiglione, Trupiano, Sterling, and Wadman. Need I say "terrible job"?

Nice win. Schilling save. Watching baseball on a computer is still shitty. Like the yanks are. They will finish in fourth, for they are very, very shitty in key departments.

More random stuff that zero to one people will comment on later. Chan and me going to get junk food. Can't wait to watch Stella upon return.

That's right, Alan Embree, aka Captain Cheese, is outta here. A good time in my life for all references to Captain Cheese to be eliminated. I'll still miss the good things he did, and I'll never forget any of the guys who won us that World Series, not even Cheese.

And Adam Hyzdu, who I always liked, is back with the Sox.

A winning streak starts tonight.

I've drawn out a little map of the people who sit behind the plate at Fenway Park. The two fixtures are definitely Drinkwater, I mean Kapstein, and, uh, Drinkwater. The C. Everett Koop guy I haven't seen lately, but he's been there a lot. And the Malcolm McDowell guy I really only saw once, unless he's wearing a hat sometimes.

Any help in filling in all the other question marks is greatly appreciated. If you see someone at more than one game, let me know. I've actually been seeing the games lately on the computer through someone else's account, but it's hard enough to see the ball on there, let alone the faces behind the plate.

There was one bright spot tonight. The yanks were up two on the Rangers in the sixth, with two on and two out. Some Ranger hits a pop up into shallow left. Michael Kay says "And he'll get out of the inning." Now, it's not like I need any extra motivation to root for the ball to drop. Besides, I'm the type to root for an error by the team I'm rooting against on the easiest of chances, right up until the last possible second. I never give up on a play. But after Kay deemed this play over, I was praying to gods to be named later with all my might that the yanks would somehow botch this simple fly ball. And Bernie comes racing over, while both he and that Little League outfielder Matsui are calling for it, and has the ball hit off his glove and fall to the grass. The tying run came around from first. And even though the Rangers eventually took the lead, they still blew the game, with Kay doing the same "prediction"-style call on the last out of the game, and basically acting like everything is fine with the yanks after this game where they gave up ten runs.

Remember, the more the yankee fans *think* they are gold, the better it will be when they fail to reach their goal for the fifth consecutive year. We all know how fun that is.

My parents were at the game tonight in my 10-game plan seats. My plan of them getting to see the Sox and be the first to cheer them after a nice series against the yanks and then see a blowout win over the D-Rays went terribly awry.

Crappy ending tonight. And a rough one yesterday, too. We'll get pat this, and maybe, if we concentrate on it really, really hard, the umps will start watching the games with their eyes in the open position.

When I got to Saturday's game, I realized the tape I bought for my video camera was not with me. I decided I'd just buy one for the concert after the game. And that worked out, since there was no BP at the game, so there wasn't anybody to film.

So we went back into the park for the show, meeting up with multiple bloggers, including Empy and Twitch, and friends. By random chance, the seats Pat & I had for the concert were adjacent to Witch City and her friend's, which we knew going in. So we got to chat with them at the show, after hanging out with Witch and Reb and Reb's two friends during the game.

Here's Wake walking around pre-show.
It was very cool to be at Fenway for something besides a game. I spent a lot of time just admiring the park, even though I've been to it so many times. You can see how the bleachers were empty. Only the seats behind the dugout where the stage was were sold.

If you know anything about indie rock, you know there are about a thousand "Ben"s. This one, who opened the show, was Brooklyn's Ben Kweller.


They were building this shelf thing by the Monster. More on this later.
Beach balls at Fenway, not out of place for once. (Although, unlike Trupiano, I'm all for them at games, for tradition's sake, if nothing else.)


Mike O'Malley was the emcee. Here he does his impression of Torre walking out to the mound, with Gammons as the pitcher.
Dennis Leary was surprise guest. He made up for the fact that Bernie Williams choked and dropped off the bill. Here, Dennis slips us two birds...


before raising them high. He said how cool it was to talk to a Fenway crowd, delighting in the words "yankees blow."

Leary says hi to Juliana Hatfield.

Juliana plays music with her band. Everybody played a short set, and, for the sake of the "average folk" in attendance, mostly sttuck to mid-tempo numbers.
O'Malley does his Dave Wallace impression, here using Wake as a prop.


Lots of stuff was auctioned off to the crowd, including Wake's cleats from that day, Gammons' shirt, box seats with Theo, and Timlin's jersey, which he holds up here.

Normally these lights would be on. Have you ever noticed how anything that goes from daylight into night time is usually pretty cool?

O'Malley and Wake have just imitated the Bernie & Phyls commercials.
Hearing Gammons crooning was mind-blowing. Here he is with his all-star band, which included Tim Wakefield, who would pitch nine the next day.


Wake rocks out w/cowboy hat. While conventional wisdom says he mustn't have been plugged in, I think he was, he just played the same note the whole time.

Wake holds cowboy hat with guitar.

The "new" Citgo sign shines as the Fenway lights stayed off. They obviously had some of the lights on, just not the outfield ones. This created a cool effect, seeing the outfield dark and the infield lit up.

The typewriter (?) has been lowered onto "the shelf." What's going on there?

The World Champs banner flying high. And not letting that pesky wind determine which way it wants to aim itself. It doesn't play by their rules any more.
Kay Hanley rocks with friends. "The comfort of the knowledge of a rise above the sky butcha hemma hunna humma hana hama butcha humma of the Here and Now..." (90's rock joke).
Buffalo Theo.

More rocking by our GM.

Let's see Cashman make a "rock face."

Bronson all by his lonesome plains driftin' self. He did Everlong by the Foo Fighters, Shimmer by Fuel, and Black by Pearl Jam.

The Pearl Jam tune featured David Ortiz on sax. Maybe not the real Ortiz, but close.

Bronson auctioned off his jersey. "I'll wear it naked in the shower if you want..."

Bronson claims that he, his pitching, and his musical stylings are number one.

Theo took part in some final auctioning. I felt like I was in Theo's personal poker room or something. He's just pointing into the crowd--"a thousand dollars!" He was auctioning guitar picks he'd signed for 200 a pop. They said they raised a quarter million bucks for charity. Nice.

Here a dude rigs up "Skycam," which you're now familiar with if you watched tonight's ESPN game.

Skycam.

Fountains of Wayne closed out the night. That dude's a good pop song writer. He wrote all the songs for "That Thing You Do." They had a hit called "Radiation Vibe" in, like, '96. Then when "Stacy's Mom" came out recently, they got a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. But I'd been dying to hear RV again. And they actually played it. They reminded me of this dude Damien Pratt, who, at shows, will bust into Blue Oyster Cult songs, and do these cheesy classic rock medlies. Fountains of Wayne didn't break out the BOC, but did a similar gimmick.

The bass player said how the lead singer always plays "Centerfield" at soundchecks, and they always get pissed, so they let him do it last night for the baseball crowd. The singer also said Theo signed his Sox hat, which is good to know he has.

Overall, it was really fun. Made up for the loss in a way. And looking back at it has made me slightly get over tonight's loss. That and the fact that the yanks are really crappy and are going nowhere. Trust me.