Me - circa the end of the Carter era

This was taken in 1980 when I was 6 1/2 years old. It was inscribed to "Big Busha", aka my paternal Grandmother. My Mom (it's her handwriting) screwed up my age on the back of the pick, first writing "5 1/2" then correcting it in pen :)

My Thoughts - The Ryan Braun Case

Dumbest line from Tom Haudricourt's newest Braun article "Now you see why baseball fired arbitrator Shyam Das after he ruled in Braun's favor during his appeal. Certainly, by now, Das realizes he let a guilty player walk." Uh, nooooo. . . . Das let him 'walk' because -, whether or not it would have turned up positive if done right - it was a flawed testing procedure, and that wasn't a sufficient reason to trample a man's legal and collective bargaining rights. Das was fired because the Masters of the Universe had as much respect for due process and legality as Haudricourt, not because he was wrong.

George Scott

RIP Brewer legend George "Boomer" Scott, age 69. :(

Eileen Brennan

I knew her best, as did most people, as the frustrated Captain in Private Benjamin - in my case, the TV show, although she also played the role in the original movie.  RIP

Pregnant with YaYa - 2001

This is a famous photograph in our family, one that was in YaYa's room for a decade, until the frame broke and the pic wound up in a pile of dirt on the floor - such is life in the real world. 

Anyway, this was taken in 2001, when Lisa was pregnant with our firstborn, YaYa. The setting is the driveway of Lisa's Mom's house on 56th St, a house she has since sold. 

Some More Reviews

Spring Breakers stars Selena Gomez and James Franco, and traces the descent of a group of young women from bored college kids to armed robbers to live in lovers of a young drug kingpin. There’s a lot of Girls-Gone-Wild type footage, but there’s never any question that there’s a darker, deeper theme to the film than gratuitous exploitation, and the director has a sure and artistic hand. I was somewhat disappointed in Gomez; this was billed as her big bad break from her Disney roots, but her character poops out before her eternal soul is in any real jeopardy. In short, it wasn’t such a break from her norm after all.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters fared much better with Lisa than it did with me, which strikes me as something as odd as the sun rising in the West.  It’s cartoonishly violent, full of anachronisms, and the plot isn’t exactly original. Gretel aka Gemma Arterton, it should be said, was disturbingly gorgeous, and that Jeremy Renner guy probably didn’t look so bad to Lisa either.

Evil Dead is a reboot/remake of the original, and as a separate work of ‘art’ it should be judged as such, or so the thought goes. To this I say “phooey”.  Everyone I know who has seen the new version likes it, but they’re fools. The original, campy film is and always will be the best. Why did they remake it? 

Bob Gibson weighs in on the steroid controversy . . .

Quoting Bob Gibson here, re: the Biogenesis scandal and steroids in baseball:  "I’ve gotta say, if it had been me and I thought that somebody else was getting a little bit of an edge, I"M NOT SO SURE I WOULDN'T HAVE DONE THE SAME THING.. I just don’t know … I’m glad I didn’t have to make that decision. You guys would be talking about me instead of them." He also stated the issue has not dimmed his respect for the players involved.  Good on you Bob!

Quote

'You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies.' - The Doctor ('Remembrance of the Daleks')

On the Hall of Fame

"But baseball players ARE more than just their pure numbers and production. They are. I've always thought of the Hall of Merit (its purely notional status notwithstanding) as the place where the numbers alone are considered. But the Hall of Fame is supposed to be something more than merely that, regardless of how the concept has been abused by idiot voters. It's not just supposed to celebrate the statistically 'best' players in baseball, it's intended to celebrate those players as they were remembered by the generations who watched them, in their historical context. Because baseball isn't a game played by a set of computers simulating imaginary matches and recording the outcomes on spreadsheet. It's a game played by people, and watched by people, given cultural significance, embedded in national and regional memory, and passed down as living history from one generation to the next. A Hall of Fame that doesn't make any sort of allowance on the margins for the human element (i.e. 'narrative') in its membership criteria is a curious, aridly depressing idea. " - from a  greatcomment on BTF

Some pics of my gals at the laundrymat :)