but are. And aren't in Central Park.

More tix came today. Pix on tix: Wakefield pitching at Fenway, closeup of Papi's happy face at a press conference.

Freader* Jason writes in with this article about David Jonathan "JD but should clearly be DJ" Drew. Do you get the feeling that lady who runs that video store in the Danbury area who puts the tinfoil pyramids on her head would like this guy?

I wonder if Drew also goes against his moral values to have a huge porn section in the back, too...


*friend/reader

Video works again, and contains bonus footage!

Above is a video of me vs. Mike in the basement league at his house, circa 1991-92. We played this Nerf-ball baseball game endlessly. One day I brought the video camera over, and we had his brother Mark tape some game action--as well as do some play-by-play. Hard to believe the kid with the voice you hear on this video is in his twenties now.

The play you see there is one of the greatest inside-the-park home runs in basement league history. Although Mike could be awarded three separate errors on the play. Either way, it was hard to make it all the way around the bases without either hitting the white area of the wall (automatic homer--unless it hits the ceiling first), or hooking the ball somehow inside the third base pole, into the side room. Even then, the fielder only has to get the ball and get back to the main room to ensure the other guy stops at third. Oh, and you could also hit one into the open door in center, into the vast, dark boiler room, and sprint around real quick.

In the video, it's a squibber out in front. Jere, age 16, with long hair, rounds first (off screen, see below for full field layout), thinking two all the way. Realizing between first and second that Mike already has the ball and is ready to peg him, Jere watches for the throw and ducks (clearly with only time to guess which way, like a soccer goalie on a penalty kick) down and to the right, avoiding it narrowly. Mike retrieves the ball in the right field corner, while Jere rounds second. Now, keep in mind, third base is so close to second base, you can literally lay down on the ground with your foot on second, and reach out and touch third. Mike, instead of playing it safe and conceding third, tries to peg Jere in that one split second where he's between second and third. The throw misses, flying into the dreaded side room.

Jere settles in at third, assesses the situation, and decides a dash for home is feasible. Again, the third to home decision is rarely even considered, as usually you're stopped at third if you make it that far. And you really only have to make it halfway home to score when the fielder's in that side room, because another wall, just off the left of the screen, protects the home plate area (a pillow on the ground in front of the strike zone chair). (The total distance from third to home was maybe 7 feet.)

Jere makes the move, and there appears to be no throw as he dives into home. From the video, it's almost like I realize the ball went into a cabinet or under a chair, and took off. I score, and I'm psyched, having gotten a homer the hard way. The dancing begins. For some reason, the line "He's jumping of joy" gets a little cut off. [Update: JFJ line fixed. I uploaded from the original video this time.] But after that is the classic line we all know and love. How he knew the name of that dance is even more inexplicable than the fact that I'm doing it in the first place.

I'll again bring up the comparison to the movie Thirteen. Watch that film, then look what I was doing at sixteen.

Here's a diagram that makes the "field" easier to understand:



Here's what it would look like from above:


Happy birthday, mom.

The most amazing thing happened today. You aren't going to believe this. I hope you're sitting down.

I was watching a football game on TV, and a commercial came on. There were some animals in the commercial. Okay, nothing out of the ordinary. But then, to my disbelief--and my roommate Chan can back me up on this--the animals...started talking.

Now, don't be alarmed. I don't think the animals are ready to start any kind of uprising. I have been in touch with area zoos and animalologists, and they know nothing about the phenomenon, but did say that as long as we all agree to open up a line of civil, rational discussion with the beasts, they'll probably continue to serve humans as they always have. They also suggested that these were highly trained animals, who know not what they say, or that maybe I dreamed it up.

Guess what? As it turns out, they were right. You know how I knew it was all a dream? Because between talking animal commercials, I saw Peyton Manning holding up the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

It was the end of two eras today, as I wore my new hat for the first time. It's the kind with the two socks on the front. The last one served me well, and was on my head for several life-changing moments. Here's what it looked like today, on the floor where I flipped it last night before bed:



Note: I probably wouldn't have thought to take a picture, but I saw the light hitting it and thought it looked cool. I then "posed" it, with the B facing the light, but to pretend it actually looked like that would be cheating, and would be a disservice to this honest piece of tattered headgear. So I'm only posting the "real" photo. The new one looks so blue, compared to the old faded one. I'll get used to it.

The other new era, of course, is the "proven Peyton" era. It wasn't a dream. I have to congratulate the guy. He went from Andy Kaufman's imitation of Jerry Lawlor to world champion. And, hey, this leaves A-Rod alone in the doghouse. That thought can brighten anyone's day. And you know what, screw it, here's the "posed" version of the hat. It at least shows just how big that hole in the back got:

Hey, did anyone notice the Super Bowl commercial that I randomly walked past the filming of? With the shirtless dudes?

Jonathan Richman gets the Jere stamp of approval. For having all the qualities of an innocent schoolboy despite being over a half-century old, for not getting caught up in that whole drugs thing despite being, technically, a part of the "music industry," and for writing probably hundreds of songs, each more brilliant than the next.

Richman played the third of four shows last night at the Knitting Factory to an attentive, appreciative, and less-Williamsburgy-than-I-expected (woohoo!) crowd. You'd never have known he'd done the exact same thing at the same place the previous two nights. The man loves to play and loves to entertain people. And loves to love us, as he pointed to us while singing his tune "Not So Much to be Loved as To Love." When we applauded, he said, "Don't applaud me, applaud St. Francis of Assisi, because that's where I stole that from."

You know how at some shows, everyone just stands there, maybe slightly moving their heads to the beat, and then politely claps? Especially in New York? Well, if you want the opposite of that, go see Jon Richman. While he plays his acoustic guitar--accompanied by drummer Tommy Larkins--he's really interacting with you, talking to you between and even during songs. He tells jokes, he breaks out other instruments, he dances and does little guitar flips. He'll sing off-mic, and not like Darby Crash--he'll actually purposely step away from the mic to sing to you almost he's breaking the wall between performer and audience. And he does all this with a big smile on face as if nothing could ever be better than this moment. Even during the sad numbers, he'll talk to you between lines to let you know that everything's gonna be okay. A really unique dude.

"Springtime in New York" got plenty of cheers, as he'd insert a city place name and then change it to somewhere else if it didn't sound right.

He pulled out the classic "Pablo Picasso," the guy who never "got called an asshole." That's gotta be one of the best rhymes in music history. And he really tries to rhyme it live: "Pablo Picasso never got called ass'ho'."

He did a funny tune about love and hate. And sometimes you get one, sometimes you get the other, and sometimes you get them "side by side." There was a great line on that same theme which something about how you get something good, or you get shite, or you get them both on the same plate.

At one point he told us how he grew up around Boston (HUGE cheers for the Boston and New England mentions--if there's one thing I've learned about New Yorkers, it's that they're all from Boston), and he moved to New York when he was 19, and was a Wall Street delivery boy, before working at Max's Kansas City, before heading back up to Boston. He also talked about how he tried country life, but it was all satellite dishes and SUVs. The guy really needs to be around people, doing things. Althoug he has written a song in the past about how he likes the city and the country. Like me, he's a dude who appreciates all kinds of things, many of which a lot of people wouldn't give a second thought to, like weather and insects and cities and towns and stuff.

Other tunes I can remember were "I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar," "Give Paris One More Chance," "My Baby Love Love Loves Me," some Spanish songs, and one about a slightly older girl he fell for as an awkward teen. He also did some songs with the two guys from Spain who opened the show, Kiko Veneno and Raul Rodriguez, who were both great as well.

The highlight among highlights, though, was "Let Her Go into the Darkness." It's about a guy whose girlfriend goes back to her ex, and he tries to tell her that the dude's on drugs. And Jonathan himself is trying to tell the guy to just let her go. Then he breaks into his impression of the girl in a high-pitched voice: "Leave me alone, I don't need you, I can do what I want, I don't care if he pushes drugs, he's better in bed than you..." Then Richman says, "Let's see how a French guy would handle it, they're usually more suave then we Americans." And he proceeds to do the same conversation between the guy and the girl in French, complete with squealing girl impression. Then the crowd started shouting out countries, and Jonathan would repeat the conversation in each language. It was amazing. He did Italian, Spanish, even Hebrew. It was great recognizing the word "drugs" in each language.

Of course, you had some dumber audience members saying "What's he saying?", not realizing it was the same conversation over and over. I'm talking about the two girls in front of me, who were full of "Woo!"s, and did that shoulder dance, which they probably do to the more upbeat Dave Matthews tunes.

This last part is for my mom, whose recent attempt to give Jon Stewart her book as a gift was thwarted. As Richman left the stage to thunderous applause from the fairly tiny but packed room, someone in the front handed him a book. Like Stewart, this Jonathan, also asked, "Did you write this?" Only Richman, upon realizing he was getting a gift from the author, got this look on his face like "Oh my god...for me?" And he profusely thanked the person, thanked the crowd, who was still going nuts and then looked down at the author for one more "thank you."

I dragged Chan to this show, and I think he came out a new man. As we walked back to the 6, I heard a fellow concert-goer saying to his buddy, "Yeah, but what was he saying in French?" Oy.

photo courtesy Google images search, page 3. Uh, I mean, inselmedia.de.

Jonathan Richman rules. A review of tonight's show to follow. In the meantime, another clue has been added to Quiz XIV. Now I'll drift of to the Voice of God.

Treasures awaited me when I got home from work yesterday. Three grays* in the mailbox--so I got to see more of the photos on the new tickets. All of them were either Youk or Beckett. Josh is seen pitching on June 17th in Atlanta, with bits of Varitek and home plate ump Mike Winters visible in the foreground. The Youk shot was taken in a spring training game.

I also received an orb that was signed by 19 members of the 1982 version of a certain team--no Dewey or Yaz, but the other major players are included. And Rick Miller signed twice. I got this while searching for Gedman items on eBay. I kind of won it by accident--those balls usually fetch a high price, so I'll often just up it myself, knowing that if someone else is gonna get it anyway, I might as well make them work for it. Turns out I nailed the reserve price exactly, and nobody else was willing to go over it, so I won.


*Red Sox fan slang for the envelopes tickets arrive in. Term invented by me, just now.) Speaking of tickets, while I'm still boycotting Boston Dirt Dogs--hey, new bloggers, why do you all link him? Oh well, I guess everybody thinks it's cool at first--I came across a picture from his site while doing a search, and it brought me to a recent "headline" from his page. It was--and get ready for some serious originality and timely use of pop culture here--one of those MasterCard "priceless" things. He was complaining about scalpers--which is fine, of course--but he noted that the "face value" of a bleacher seat is $21. That tips me off to the fact that ol' Joe Dirt hasn't had to buy a bleacher seat in a while. 21 dollars is the discounted price you pay for bleachers if you're a season ticket holder. The rest of us have paid 23 bucks since 2005. (His pic of actual tix shows $21 dollars, but it also says "2006 Season Ticket" right on there.) TJ, DD. It's like how Bill Gates ran off the set of the Daily Show I went to this week, proving to everyone that he doesn't know the cardinal rule of the talk show guest: Stay in your seat when the interview ends. i.e. these people are out of touch with the commoners.

This article says the registration for all the high-falutin seats starts today. They even put it in bold-face type. However, I got the e-mail from the team yesterday (it's almost like I'm living the same day over and over...happy Groundhog Day, everyone), and registered right away (hoping that it's just bullshit that it's random and the first people to register automatically win.) I hope I'm not screwed because of this. The bold-face worries me. Then again, if I win, I'm only gonna look at the $140 Monster Seats and say, Yeah, that's just too much money. But standing room's pretty cool up there.

Between this, Bill Murray on Letterman last night and his team in the Super Bowl on Sunday (what is this, Mi-am-i Beach?), and me seeing Jon Richman who appeared in a movie with Murray, it's shaping up to be a pretty perfect Groundhog Day weekend.

Oh, and one more thing about Slick Willy Clemens. 02145 brought up a great point, which has been mentioned before, but still: Think of all the young, struggling pitchers who'd love to have a chance in the majors and who'd give their all every single day from February to October if they got that chance. And then you've got ol' Roger: I'll just start after the All-Star break, I can't be pitchin' around, speedin' up and down all ova da place. Jon Lester has cancer--cancer--and he's ready for spring training. He's all: Sorry, coach, I gotta go get chemo at noon, but I'll be back at 2 for that drill where you cover first over and over again--I promise I'll rehearse it in my mind while getting the chemo...

And then we'll have people making fun of Manny for yet another year, should he only play in 150 games. But Roger, Oh, that's okay, whatever you need... you can just relax until the World Series and then we'll give you a call. If that's what you need. Would you like a fruit plate?

You were supposed to sing that post title to the tune of their old jingle from the 80s.

It's been announced that WTIC will continue to carry Red Sox games. Many of you are familiar with, and some can relate to, my plight, growing up listening to WTIC-1080. And when I say "listening to," I mean "barely detecting the voice of Ken Coleman amidst horrible static and, of course, the Orioles game on the overpowering WBAL-1090, and sometimes even 3WE-1100 out of Cleveland." Which is funny because I was an hour from Hartford, but five hours from Baltimore. WTIC is known for it's strong signal, which goes to...everywhere in the northeast except for the areas I've lived in. I always blamed the terrain (and Steinbrenner's secret tactics)--the "mountains of Meriden" giveth, but they taketh away as well.

It's funny to me how people have come to realize that you can tell by Joe Castiglione's tone whether the Sox are up or down. I figured that out 20 years ago--without the advantage of even hearing the actual words he was saying. To the novice, it just sounds like, "shhhhkk ccchhhh wwwoooowww wwooooow Greenwell wwooowwww kkeeeee and he stabs it!" I can decipher the meaning of Joe's tone because I grew up hearing his tone and nothing else.

So TIC will continue carrying the Red Sox. When I heard, I thought, "Great, more UConn football and Rush Limbaugh pre-empting Sox games." However, when reading the article, I was shocked and ecstatic that they'll actually commit to 162 games this season! And that they'll do (and have been doing (?)) remotes from the Green Monster before some games. Wow.

Walking home from tonight's Colbert taping, Channion and I walked past a dude who was saying into his phone, "Man, if I were the Yankees organization, I'd be like, shit, too." I started getting happy, wondering what bad thing happened to the Yanks. I tried to figure it out the way George Costanza did with the "Downtown" song. But I couldn't. I got home and checked the news. Nothing. I wonder what that guy meant.

I did see a Gammons article called "Clemens Going to Yankees," but it's got that little "i" next to it, so I don't know what he's talking about. I don't see anyone else saying that in any kind of official way.

My trip to The Report tonight confirmed my stance that the Colbert experience easily tops the Daily Show experience. It's a lot more intimate and, surprisingly, for a much newer show, organized. There was a new warm-up comic, and he pointed out a Sox fan, a "Connecticut mom," and a "Connecticut dad" in the crowd. All of these people were sitting adjacent to me, my mom, or my dad, who were there tonight, yet he passed over us. He did ask Chan if he had blue hair. (It was just the blue light. Chan's always turning colors. Remember when he was green?)

Colbert brought up that hilarious Aqua Teens/Fake Terrorism/Shutting Down of Boston thing. I just can't get enough of that story. I love what CSTB's been saying about it (scroll around), as well as what Colbert did tonight--saying how the incident has ruined his planned advertising involving sending out letters promoting a winter show with fake snow inside, and other stuff like that. I just can't believe that happened. I mean, not one person saw that stuff and said, "Hold it, hold it, this is clearly an ad for a cartoon. Let's just all take a step back here." And calling it a hoax? Come freakin' on. We all know exactly what it was. Seems to me like this is a case where the authorities caused a panic, and shut down parts of the city. Oh no, bright lights! It must be a bomb! Maybe they should be apologizing instead of Cartoon Network.

What's the point of this article? We all know Steinbrenner sent his people to China in a blatant attempt to try to get the upper hand in the Asian market with the Sox grabbing all the headlines Japan-wise. But now the Yanks are taking the rivalry with the Sox to Japan. What the hell does that mean? Are they just gonna, like, tell 'em about it and stuff? Will there be a film strip? A special aired on TV in every Japanese home? This is so vague. What's going on here?

This Clemens talk is really taking off. Hoorah. We are all...very.... exci...ted. [Biiig boyyy yawn] Ahem. Yyepp. In the spirit of Roger's latest article-about-himself-just-because, I give you:

Roger Clemens' Lessons For Kids

1. Play only for a winner. Children, the only way to be a winner is to join winners. How do you spot the winning groups? Just look at their wallets.

2. Don't waste your time. Guys, time is precious. You've got a lot to do. Let everyone else do the work getting to the top. When they're almost there, latch on. (Remember, only latch on to the ones who look like they're about to succeed--latching on to a loser makes you a loser. That's pointless.)

3. T-E-I-M still can be pronounced "team." Don't get caught up on petty things like loyalty. What have I been telling you, kids? You are the most important thing, even in a team situation. You're not out there to help others reach their goal, your job is to use others to reach your personal goal.

4. Those who love you don't matter. Who matters? You matter. If your best friend's dad kicks you out of his house (for, say, eating all his food without permission), abandon your friend and become chums with the Dunbar boy across the street, whose dad molested the original friend. Laugh behind the back of the old friend while he applauds you for doing such a great job at the Dun-Barbeque that he wasn't invited to. Screw that guy. (Even though he never did anything to you--but his dad's a dick--for rightly tossing you out.)

5. Fake injury. This is the big one, kids. You can get out of any situation if you remember this one simple rule. You could be right on the verge of taking the big prize, but if you don't feel you can get the job done, say you've got a blister. (Don't admit to it, though. Act like someone else influenced you to abandon ship.) If the team ends up winning, you share in the glory. If they lose, the blame will fall on someone else's shoulders--and you can just try to join the next team that's poised to win. How? Go right back to the top of this list. Never give up, kids.