vivalaultra

Who'd they get for him?

I don't wanna jinx it, but the Astros might win tonite!!!!!!!! 8-2 after 5 innings. Woody Williams struck out 9 batters and Lance Berkman got his 7th extra base hit this season, a 3-run homer. All they gotta do is win uh...9 in a row...and they'll be...back at.... .500 and probably 1st in the division the way the NL Central's been playing this season.

My condolences. A couple years ago, one of my dogs, Edgar, died while I was on a camping trip. He wasn't sick or anything; he was only 5 years old or so. What happened was, my two dogs were always finding ways to get out of my backyard and roaming the neighborhood to the tune of a $180 fine each time the dog catcher picked em up. So, we kept them on those long plastic runners in the backyard when nobody was home. Anyway, I was out camping, my Dad was out of town, and my sister was in charge of watching the dogs. She came home that nite from work and went outside to feed them and found Edgar dead; he had tried to get in my back door and his runner and gotten tangled up in the screen and he got strangled. When she called to tell me what happened, man, I cried...I love animals, dogs especially, and the fact that he died on something we kept him on because we were too lazy to fix up the holes in our fence and that he died because he wanted to get into the house so he could be with us just hurt even more.

I just finished reading that book. I was surprised it came out in the last couple years, as the 'biting critique' of Hollywood and pop culture read like something out of 1997. I did like one of her other books-Music for Torching a good bit, though.

Well, it could always be worse...I could be a Yankees fan and have my team 14.5 games back instead of only 7 games back.

Well, there's that and the fact that Brad Ausmus, Adam Everett, Luke Scott and Craig Biggio are playing every day intead of, I don't know, selling hot dogs at the concession stand. Or it could be because you have no starting pitching outside of Roy Oswalt. Other than that, yeah, you guys should be in first place. Actually, the team ERA is 4.39, 9th in the league, so, yeah, the pitching isn't excellent, but it's not bottom of the barrel. And before Matt Albers and his 6.35 ERA inflated it, the team ERA was a good bit lower than that. As far as capable starters outside of Oswalt, Chris Sampson has pitched himself to a 3.44 ERA with an ERA + of 121 and Wandy Rodriguez has pitched really well in 6 of his 9 starts (4.45 ERA, 50/14 K/BB in 50 innings, 94 ERA +), but only has 2 wins to show for it. Jason Jennings has pitched wonderfully the two starts before he got sidelined and then again last nite in his first start back. Once again, the main problem is the offense. Luke Scott's not playing everyday anymore; Mark Loretta or Mike Lamb's been starting at first and Berkman's been in RF for the last several games. Adam Everett's just miserable offensively, but is still the best defensive SS in the game and Brad Ausmus...is a really nice guy. Luckily, the entire NL Central is craptastic, so while the 'Stros might not win 90 games like I predicted (There's a chance that ALL of the teams in the NL Central might not win 90 games combined...), they still have as good a chance of going on a run and taking the division as any other team. Damn my youthful exuberance and blind optimism!

Yeah, that's probably the main reason my 'Stros aren't first in the division. Berkman's batting .250 (43 for 172) with one freakin' double, 5 HRs and only 24 RBI. Last season at this time, he was batting damn near .400 with 14 HRs with almost double the RBI. It's a good thing Carlos Lee's playing $100 million baseball so far or else we'd REALLY suck (worse than we have so far). Personally, I think we should move Berkman for prospects. Clearly, at age 31 he's past his prime. Oh, and Yadier Molina's out 4-6 weeks I just saw on the ESPN ticker.

I haven't heard the album or the single, but I can say that that was the best-written Ryan Adams article of the last half-century. Yeah... I'm sure the album will be decent, if forgettable. I have no idea how Ryan Adams will sound like Marvin Gaye. That should be interesting to hear.

Five More Eagles' songs that would sustain me even through thirst, boils, or burning hail: 5. 'New Kid in Town' 4. 'One of These Nights' 3. 'Witchy Woman' 2. 'I Can't Tell You Why' 1. 'Tequila Sunrise' Five Favorite Music-Related Youtube Clips I Watched Today: 5. 4. 3. 2. Red House Painters-'All Mixed Up' video 1.

I hate to walk into the middle of a Pynchon discussion. And I haven't read Against the Day yet, but I just wanted to mention that I started reading The Echo Maker by Richard Powers. It was the runner-up to Cormac McCarthy for the 2007 Pulitzer. I'm 40 pages in and it's well-written for sure, but I'm hoping it picks up soon plotwise. It's got this interesting 'bird motif' going.

...What's wrong with Chuck? He's been one of the most dominant champions ever in MMA and he seems like a really humble, easy-going guy. Everybody likes Chuck.

Rampage is a bad motherfucker. Damn...

I don't think he's in any danger of that. Tony Gwynn Jr. is listed at 6'0" 190 lbs., but from what I've seen of him, he's lucky if he's 5'10" 175. He does have good line drive power, though.

There is a chance that no team in the NL Central will ever win a game again, except, of course, when they play each other, and when that happens, they'll play .500 ball. The Brewers will win the division with a record of 40-122.

Five Favorite Eagles Songs: 5. 'Peaceful, Easy Feeling' 4. 'Lyin' Eyes' 3. 'Desperado' 2. 'Take It to the Limit' 1. 'Already Gone'

Has anybody read Fantasyland by Sam Walker? I remember a week or so ago somebody asking about good baseball books, and I just started reading and I must say it's really good so far. It's about Sam Walker, baseball columnist for the WSJ, and his quest to build the perfect Roto baseball team while trying to answer the question about whether stats and projections or hustle and intuition play a bigger part in determining how a player performs. Not only is it interesting and insightful, it's also hilarious and well-written.

I care. I'm sure that Sosa is just as 'unclean' as Barry Bonds, but I've always found him to be a more engaging character than Bonds.

I think that Peter absorbing Ted's power was relevant. Whereas before, when he was overextending himself using his powers, he was a danger of exploding/overloading himself, with Ted's power, him overloading himself would cause him to explode more than just himself. And also, there's the fact that Peter was still having difficulty harnessing his powers, especially after he just acquired them. And I like the take on the 'Save the Cheerleader' thing; it's more poetic and interesting if saving the cheerleader meant that she was there to remind Nathan of his humanity as opposed to just being around to allow someone else to survive by virtue of her ability.

I totally spent the last three days watching the entire run, after having missed out on it when it first started coming on and then never having time to sit down and watch all the episodes on the 'net. I'm glad the finale wasn't just balls-to-the-walls craziness. Unlike other series shows (specificially ones that come on Monday nites on Fox), it really seems like Kring et al. have a specific, well-thought out plan of where the series is headed both within the season and as a whole. So, I liked the way the first season finale wrapped up (for the most part) the first story arc and built to the second story arc. I can imagine that the series finale, at the end of the fifth season, is going to be the one that's balls-to-the-walls crazy, and that's fine. Just as long as they keep bringing out the awesomness and build logically on storylines and really make the characters interesting and compelling, I'm fine with delaying the super-epic. And next season's gonna be all kinds of awesome. And BPK, the elder Petrelli killed himself six months before the first season's events began, but, that certainly doesn't mean he's dead dead. And possibly I'm just reading too much into things, but I wonder if there's supposed to be some significance to the characters that had specific Biblical names. They had Peter, Micah, Noah, Gabriel, Matthew, Isaac...maybe more. I'm not a Bible scholar, but I'd be willing to bet that is somehow significant.

The way I see it, we can either complain about all of the unanswered questions and the plotholes and the haphazard, somewhat shoddy storytelling, and the ponderous, maudlin ending or we can remember some of the good moments that this season of 24 brought to us...like Jack Bauer kicking a guy so hard he exploded. Yeah...that was pretty damn cool.

This is one of those questions that should be answered in one of those 'Why Do Men Have Nipples?' books. Personally, I think an alligator could climb a flight of stairs. Consider that an alligator standing on flat ground is able to climb atop a log which is probably about the same height as a single step. If it could do that, I imagine it could go up a stair, but, then again, a log is circular and probably provides better grip than a normal stair, so it might be more difficult. Also, even though the alligator is not exceptionally lazy, maybe climbing up a couple of stairs would tire him (or her) out and he (or she) would not be able to continue. I wonder if there's a definitive answer out there somewhere or if the winner of the bet is just the one that can convince enough yahoos on a message board that his opinion is right.

Heeyyyy...so what's the deal with Jason Giambi admitting to steroid use in the last few years? I read something about that somewhere today but didn't read the whole thing.

I could totally see Craig Biggio turning his hips at the last minute to take one in the nuts. Barry Bonds would come out with a huge-ass plastic codpiece in addition to the huge-ass plastic elbowpad he wears.

Lance Berkman got hit in the head by a Robinson Tejeda fastball. He appears to be ok, but he totally went down. I think that they should institute a new rule where a batter that gets hit should be awarded bases dependent on the velocity of the pitch and the place where he gets hit. A 70 mph changeup to the ass should be first base, a 90 mph fastball to the ribs should be second base, a headshot should be third base, and anytime a batter gets hit in the nuts, he should be awarded homeplate.