vivalaultra

It's a good thing Gustavo Chacin will never have Cy Young caliber numbers if having a girly fragrance named after you precludes your ability. Actually, I think 'Chacin' doesn't smell half-bad. But, then again, my sense of smell has been dulled by years of smoking.

Stop winning! Give everyone else a chance! Ya bastards...

Pfft. I obviously beg to differ with at least one of those. Clearly the Astros will win the Wildcard, and the Wildcard team will be above .500. As far as the MVP being on a team below .500, I think Ernie Banks would have something to say about that. The MVP, as I understand it, is the player in the league that most helps his team during the season, which is why I say Ortiz gets it in the AL. If you look at Berkman's numbers for example, he's got almost half of the Astros team homeruns and about 2/3 of their team RBI. Even if he doesn't win it, which I'm quite sure he won't, he should at least be in the top 3 or 4 vote getters.

I don't think being a DH should hurt Ortiz's chances for winning MVP. He didn't create the DH position, he just happens to occupy that position and occupy it extremely well. On a pure numbers basis, I think Ortiz easily ranks as the forerunner for MVP. The NL MVP race, however, should be interesting. Is it gonna be Pujols, Howard, Beltran, Wright? It could easily be any one of them. If I had a vote, I'd go Berkman, but I'm biased.

"No, We Don't Want to Do a Split Seven-Inch With Your Stupid Fucking Band"

I wonder if they'll cover Smiths' songs in concert. I'd like to hear Isaac Brock's take on "Hand in Glove".

I have a crazy theory. The Astros would be winning the Wildcard right now if they would start winning games on days when the rest of the WC contenders lose. They've picked up some ground over the last week, but it seems like they win when everybody else wins and lose when everybody else loses. Tonite was a good sign. If Brandon Backe can go 7 innings and give up 1 ER each start, and Lidge can strike out the side on 10 pitches every time he comes in, good things will happen. It was made official that top Houston pitching prospect Jason Hirsh is getting called up to start on the 12th against the Padres. Astros' fans everywhere are talking about him like he's the Second Coming of Roy Oswalt. He was voted as having the 'Best Control' in the Texas League in 2005. He was also voted Pitcher of the Year last year. This year, he rode a 40 some odd inning scoreless streak and he's 12-3 with a 2.13 ERA. And he's really tall-6'8". I'm excited to see him, but I was burned by Buchholz, so I'll wait to see him pitch before I get too high on him.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! There goes my fantasy team...

Ken Rosenthal's new article says that according to Will Carroll the Houston Astros were, in fact, the team that was awarded the waiver claim for Andruw Jones. Supposedly, the deal would have been Andruw Jones for Troy Patton, a lower-tier minor league pitching prospect. That woulda been sweet...man.

If for some reason my Astros don't make the playoffs, I'm really pushing for the Reds. After seeing Biggio and Bagwell play in a World Series last year, I'd like to see Junior get there. He deserves it. Either way, it would still be nice to see some new teams get to the postseason. With that said, I'm still betting on the Astros.

This is gonna be a big week for the NL Wildcard and for my Astros, as they went 4-2 on their roadtrip this past week and are now only 4 games out of the Wildcard. The offense looks to be rounding into form and the pitching has been good, despite Pettitte's loss today. It's gonna be a big week with St. Louis playing Cincinnati 7 of their next 10 games while the 'Stros get the Pirates, Padres, and Cubbies. The Astros' top pitching prospect Jason Hirsh is rumored to be getting the call to face the Padres on the 12th, which will mean that someone will have to be sent down. Also, super utility man Eric Bruntlett, who was sent down to Round Rock last week, is going to be called back up this weekend, so another move will have to be made. One of those moves is probably to send Jason Lane back down. The other one...possibly Preston Wilson for prospects? Outside of that, I have no idea who would be demoted. Yeah, so everything's starting to look alrite offense wise for the Astros-especially Luke Scott-the guy that hit for the cycle the other week against the D'Backs. After having a hellacious Spring Training in 05, he proceeded to hit about .180 for a couple months as the starting left fielder before being sent down. This time, after being recalled, he's got a line of .403/.456/.645 in 19 games. So, if the Astros make it to the postseason, I'm gonna send Luke Scott a 'thank you' note.

I agree. I really, really like that CD. It's like My Morning Jacket before they went reggae mixed with...some other band who I can't put my finger on.

I don't agree with this, as Alex Chilton was the driving force of that band outside of Chris Bell, who was only there for the first album, anyway. Regardless, In Space sucked and is best to be considered as something that Never Happened. Yeah, that's what I meant. In Space wasn't actively bad. I mean, I thought it was a decent poppy rock record, and if it had been a new band that had put it out it would've been pretty ok, but it was friggin' Big Star. I hoped for better, but I didn't really expect it, I guess.

Lemme know what you think of the New York Dolls new one. I heard some positive stuff about it, but, like you said, it's a new CD from a band that hit their peak about 30 years ago and there's the whole thing with most of the original band being dead. It's gotta be better than the new Big Star stuff that came out not too long ago. Right now I'm downloading the new Tom Petty so I can be familiar with his new stuff should he play it at Austin City Limits.

Brad Ausmus hit a grand slam couple innings ago. The Astros lead the D-Backs 6-1 going into the bottom of the 3rd. When Ausmus and Willy Taveras start hitting the long ball, ya know our offense is heating up. It's starting to look like this might be the start of our yearly run at the postseason.

So, today my girlfriend and I went to the movies, but, instead of seeing the new Will Ferrel movie, I decided that we shold see The Night Listener, the new Robin Williams movie. Seeing the previews for it on TV, I was semi-intrigued, but had little to no idea of what it was actually about. I just wanted to see it because it has a non-coked up Robin Williams in it, and non-coked up Robin Williams is a fine actor, especially when being creepy such as in One Hour Photo, Insomnia, etc. Anyway, I really enjoyed the movie. The look was totally Hitchcockian, with perspective shots and lightness and darkness and weird camera angles. The story was really neat, too, as I thought it was going to be something completely different than what it was. I won't divulge the plot because I don't know how to do spoiler tags, and I think this movie would work best when one has no idea what's going to happen. I'll just say that if, for whatever reason, the Will Ferrel movie's sold out, go for The Night Listener. It's got Robin Williams in his best performance since One Hour Photo and a new Culkin kid. If your movie doesn't have a Culkin kid or Paul Giamatti, you don't really have much of a movie.

My fucking God. The Astros-D'Backs game started at 8:30 and just ended at 12:30, and it didn't even go into extra innings. The Astros won 8-7. There was a total of 30 hits, about 25 walks...11 from the D-Backs pitching staff. Biggio, Berkman, Lamb, and Willy Taveras (!) hit homeruns for the Astros. Willy's wasn't cheap either. It was a no-doubt 400 foot homerun. Lidge flaked out in the 9th. After getting two outs, he walked two guys to load the bases. He got pulled and Wheeler came in. Wheeler walked in a run and got Carlos Quentin swingin'. With Clemens going tomorrow against some rook, hopefully the Astros can win. However, Clemens 2-4 record with a ridiculous 2.09 ERA would beg to differ.

Wouldn't it be a bad move for the Braves to deal Andruw Jones? Not only would it be a terrible PR move, but they're not THAT many games back from the Wildcard. Even if they aren't able to negotiate a long-term deal after his current one expires, he's not making that much money relative to what he offers to the Braves' offense this year. If they do get rid of him, they're gutting about 70% of their offense. With that said, I hope for the Astros' sake they do trade him to the Angels. We've still got quite a few games with the Braves before the season's over.

This is just conjecture...but I think that there's a possibility, however slight it might be, that Olivia Tremor Control make great use of mind-altering drugs. Can anyone recommend some good singer/songwriters that I haven't heard of?

If you like Apples in Stereo, try Of Montreal if you haven't...or Olivia Tremor Control. OTC are weird.

How about Big Poopy? Is that better? ...I got nothing.

He'll probably be better than that Ryu Fuk Yu guy that pitched for the Cubs earlier this year. Whatever happened to him?

The Astros are about to beat the Padres again to move to within 4 of the Wildcard. 37-18 will get 'em 88 wins, which should equal Wildcard. 85 might even do it the way all the teams are bunched up together. If Matt Albers pitches tomorrow as well as he did when he tossed 5 shutout innings of relief against the Reds and Kingofthe909 holds up his end of the bargain by having the Dodgers beat the Reds, we'll be 3 games back going into this weekend against the D-Backs.

Is it terrible that I don't hate that version of the song?

If the Astros sweep the Padres, the Dodgers better sweep the Reds. None of that "rolling over unmercilessly" crap like they pulled against the Cardinals a few series ago.