The New Haircuts

Well, not 'new' anymore, as it happened on August 21st. But the girls wanted new do's, so my wife took the kids in prior to the start of school.

Here's the before:

The during:

And the after:

Personally, I like it. I think it's cute :)

Ouch

Well, kazaam.

I thought the Packers had the win, or a tie at least, and then Favre is hit and fumbles inside the Saints' twenty.

Heck of a way to go 1-4.

Not that I care a rat's a** about the NFL, but to my eyes it looks like the Packers under Mike McCarthy are a whole lot better than last years version.

Still young, still sloppy, still frustrating  . . . but exciting to watch most of the time, and trying, which is something I didn't pick up last year.

* * *

On to a real sport: the Dodgers are out. Nice game tho'.

Word is Torre is out (to be replaced by Pinella?) and/or A-Rod will be shipped out of town.

Again: 34 dingers, 121 RBI's. I don't give a hoot how little he hits in the post-season, why would you trade away numbers like that?

My opiinon: he may very well need someone to carry him in the ALDS and ALCS. Reggie wasn't much good in the LCS either. So what? With a lineup like the Yanks they should be able to float him for a bit, then hope he unleashes his talent in the Series.

Torre's long been a favorite of mine, but fatigue has set in. Maybe new blood is needed. It certainly seems stupid (to me) to mess with A-Rod's already confused head by moving him around to the bottom of the order IN THE POST-SEASON DOWN TWO GAMES TO ONE.

Nor would I have gone with Wright in game 4, but whatever. I'm a big fat, unathletic guy in Milwaukee.

What do I know.

 

Barring an 8 run comeback .

The Yanks are going to lose and be eliminated.

Ugh.

Well, it ain't the end of the world, but it dang near feels that way.  To be honest tho', any team that fails to score for twenty straight innings deserves to sit and watch the Series on TV.

My biggest regret is that despite the anemic total offense most of this will be laid at A-Rod's feet. If they can find a taker, he might even be moved in the offseason.

Stupid.

Ok, now the game tonight could further shape the course of the playoffs, but here's my New and Improved Predictions.

Oakland vs. Detroit - Detroit wins, if only because Oakland can't win two series in a post-season. And because Detroit starts with a D, which reminds me of Blue, which is my favorite color.

Mets vs Padres (I'm hoping the Padres pull it off, and I'd prefer LA over the Mets, but what the heck) - Padres over the Mets in a full seven games

Detroit pretends it's 1984 and win it all.

Followed, predictably, by Detroit burning to the ground in celebration.

So far in the playoffs . . .

Surprises galore. The A's finally managed to win a post-season series, and even more shockingly, did it by sweeping the Twins.

No way I thought that was going to happen.

LA is on the brink, and that's news to me too.

And the Yanks . . here they go, on the cusp of sitting home for the year. I don't think it's going to happen. If '04 reinforced any idea, it's that it ain't over til it's over.

But if they lose, no tears. A lot of disapointment, but no tears. I've kind of come to the illogical and superstitious conclusion that God's made a trade: healthy babies in return for October defeats.

In '01, after all, the Yanks lost to the Diamondbacks before my wife had even recovered from labor.

In '03, the infamous debacle against Florida four months after my daughter's birth.

And in Parker's birth year, defeat in the ALDS.

Who knows, maybe the curse is broken.

But then again I have one more kid to bring into this world.

Argh, the sacrifices we make for being a parent.

Jeter vs Arod in the NY Press

Ok, I get it.

Derek Jeter is a baseball God, a divine force given to the Yankees to restore/maintain their rightful place atop the food chain. He is Mr. November, an unstoppable force in autumn baseball. He is to be worshiped and adored without question.

Dandy.

I too love Derek Jeter. I think he's an outstanding player that only gets better in the spotlight of the post-season. If I had a vote, he'd be 2006 MVP, and watching his 5-5 performance last night I was right there with the crowd adoring #2.

Alex Rodriguez didn't have a headline making night. He hit one single and scorched another two that were caught for outs. He also made a couple nice defensive plays.

No great shakes. But not horrible either.

So why is it the NY press feels the need to glorifly Jeter by disparaging Arod?

NY Post Article

It certainly isn't that Jeter's deeds needed to be pumped up - they were awesome enough on their own. But what the heck, let's praise Jeter by dumping on one of his teammates:

"The greatest player in the game [Arood] until he comes up in a big spot is, by his recent own admission, just too good-looking and too smart to blend in among all his friends and teammates who get a pass from the fans and media that Rodriguez doesn't."

or how about  

"You are going to succeed more than you fail in baseball," said Jeter last night. "You can't be afraid."

Lesson for Rodriguez"

What lesson? That Jay Greenberg is a hack who used his platform with the public to compound the issue that just might drive the game's best player out of New York?

For the record, entering last night's game their respective postseason numbers were Jeter .307/.379/.463 sand A-Rod's of .305/.393/.534. That's average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage.

And yes, I'm mighty aware of the slump A-Rod has been in since game 4 of the 2004 ALCS.

But that's a two year post-season slump that just now lowers him to (above) par with Jeter.

Think the hack writers in NY, ever content to create friction, unrealistic expectations, and turmoil had anything to do with his droff-off?

Not everyone can put up with the glare of the Big Apple. I understand that. But A-Rod's the reinging MVP, a man who hit more home runs from the right side of the plate in one year than any Yankee, breaking the record held by none other than Joe Dimaggio.

The man can play.

Not put down your pens, shut up, and let him swing away.

Lesson for Greenberg.

 

If you fail. . .

Fail dramatically. At least you will prove the error of your tactics to your successors.

I'm still here

Yeah, I know the routine. Post a bunch, dissapear, come back again and hope someone's still reading.

I'll deal.

Meanwhile, another MLB regular season has come to an end. I only made it to one game, but you know what? I don't care. The Brewers, having earned a one year reprieve from my disgust, again went down the tubes.

I'm still a fan - I'm very brand loyal - but ugh.

Ugh.

At least my XM radio brought me the sounds of games across the continent. I didn't use it for games as often as I thought I would (Radio Disney, Big Band on 4, the top 40- stations on 20-22, and rock from 41-54 had my attention) but I got the chance to listen to a host of Yankees games. Weird to hear a woman do color commentary, but I was impressed.

And I've realized something. I love the Yankees. Not because other people hate them, 'tho that rocks, but because I genuinely love 'em.

They make me happy.

And they give me somebody to root for once the Brewers fall out of the race around the All-Star break.

Just miscellaneous MLB stuff: Arod is great, and the hell with his critics, the Cubs sucked (yea!), and this steroid crap is getting on my nerves. I'm almost to the point where I'm gonna give Bonds a pass, because the endless allegations and second-guessing are wearing on me and the sport.

Anywho, I've been hunting around for my post-season picks. Naturally I can't find the sheet, but here's what I remember:

AL: Yanks defeat Detroit in 4, Twins take A's in 5.

Yanks beat Twins in 6.

NL: Dodgers beat Mets in 5, Padres beat St. Louis in 5 (ok, that's a long shot, and I don't really see it happening. So let's take the St. Louis Antiseptic and Boring in 4)

Dodgers beat St. Louis in 7

World Series: Yankees earn their 27th championship by defeating LA in 6 games.

And wouldn't it be great if ARod drove in the winning run?

9/11, Five Years On

In the weeks after 9/11 I wrote several essays about my own experiences, my perceptions, and where I felt this country was going. In the days before this blog I would email the writing to friends and family. With the anniversary on the horizon I looked for copies of the work but came up empty. What follows is as close as I can come to re-creating what I felt back then.

If you want to know what I remember most about 9/11, it's the night before.

On that warm September evening I went to see the Cardinals play at Miller Park. For a change I went just to be around family and friends. The game on the field was nothing more than background noise, even when Mark McGwire hit a monster home run to center.

Afterwards a friend and I took a leisurely walk through the neighboring VA grounds, then returned home to (of all things) help my pregnant wife bake a new cupcake recipe.

My last thoughts as I lay down to sleep that night where blissful, and I remember thanking God for such a wonderful life.

I woke up to 13 answering messages imploring me to turn on the TV.

By then both towers were in flames and any idea that it could be an accident had long since vanished. Within a minute my wife was in tears, but my reaction was less gallant. I could sympathize immediately with those on the planes but for a moment, still in shock and grasping for a way to explain this lunacy, I could muster little emotion for those in the towers.

This was short-lived. Once my mind surrendered to the fact that I couldn’t rationalize anything that was happening and I put myself in the place of those trapped 100 floors above the ground, it was nearly too much to bear.

(One thing I have never understood was Al Queda’s obsession with the WTC. If it hadn’t been for the ’93 bombing I might never have known of the towers’ existence. Most of my family and friends, many of whom have college under their belts, felt the same. In retrospect the attack certainly shook the nation to its core, but at the time why not target something more recognizable to people outside the coast, such as the Empire State Building?)

When word came of the hit on the Pentagon I was dumbstruck. This was more than terrorism; this was a declaration of war. This was our Pearl Harbor.

And then the first tower fell.

To those born after the fact – my children for example – it will be hard to fathom the surreal nature of what I saw. They’ll be barraged by the images and stories in the classroom and on TV until it seems . . . commonplace, something that was almost predestined.

It was not. It was a mockery of the way the world should be.

A skyscraper was collapsing in on itself on TV. If I’d written that in a story I’d have deleted it as far-fetched. Hell, I couldn’t imagine a way a construction company could disassemble such a monument. But there it was, a hundred-story building reduced to a rolling cloud of dust that chased New Yorkers down the street like a cheap sci-fi movie monster.

I don’t even remember the second tower falling anymore. I saw it happen, I just don’t think I was over the shock of the first by that time.

Sometime in the afternoon I stopped to pick up my paycheck from work. Payday was Monday, but in the days before kids I could sometimes afford to let it sit a bit.

I remember one of my bosses stopping to ask me some inane question about work while the rest of the staff was glued to the TV.

"We’re at war, " I said. "I don’t really feeling like talking about this now."

She was pissed at me, you could tell, and on that day I lost the last bit of respect for her.

I stopped at a gas station on the way home to buy a newspaper, a special edition about the attacks. I used to collect them, keeping copies from JFK’s assassination, the 2000 election, the Gulf War – but a few weeks later I threw this paper out. I didn’t want a reminder around.

Later I went out again to fill up on gas. Rumors were already flying about gas rationing and price gouging. It never panned out, but my God the fear on the street . . .

The rest of the day is bits and pieces. Watching Guiliani report the number of missing emergency workers (My God). The FBI towing a car from Logan airport, my wife’s fear for her mother, who worked at the Federal Building downtown, the firstpictures from the crash of United 93, missing person posters, my cousin calling to say that we were bombing Afghanistan (it was tribal warfare), a triage center near Ground Zero lying empty as they waited in vain for survivors.

And endless, endless pictures of the tragedy.

I can tell you what work was like. For days we had no customers. We just sat and watched TV. We watched thousands die over and over again and it was enough to drive you mad. Weeks later I spoke to some pilots who came in, men who knew people that had died in the towers and in the air.

Remember how I said it was surreal? I pray we never live through another week like that. Airline travel non-existent and people stranded across the nation. Fears of gas shortages, every TV and radio station preempted by news (is there anything more disturbing than a local hip-hop station playing CNN non-stop for days?), flags on every car, in every window, tears of pain and cries for revenge. Antharax in the mail. It was chaos and fear on a national scale, and it was terrifying.

I lived in an eight family apartment building at the time. My wife and I were the only non-Arab, non-Muslims in the building. For days my neighbors would not step foot outside their doors, fearful of retaliation. In the end we knocked and offered to buy them groceries. My wife embraced one of the women and told them not to be afraid, that we didn’t hold them responsible.

Still, I remember one frightening comment a friend made. We were at a gas station across from the Islamic Center when he angrily spoke of burning it down. He didn’t, of course, and neither did anyone else.

Then and now, I’m proud of our collective restraint in those dark days.

But I think we as a nation walked a thin line for a moment.

In my daughter's scrapbook (she was born in October of that year) I wrote the following:

What awful events, especially when we were bringing a baby into this world! Would we be safe, and more importanty would you? We pray for you everyday.

By the time you can read and understand this, the war will (hopefully) be over, and you'll know how it turned out. I hope you love your country just as much as we do, and I'm sorry you had to be born in such a troubled time.

Love Dad

Five years down the road, 9/11 has changed us all. And yet, our day in/day out lives remain so similar to what they were before; the same TV, work, school, shopping, movies, political infighting . . . at times, that’s almost as unnerving as the memories of that day.

But nothing will ever bring back the peace of that warm September night.

Comment on This Post (Non AOL)                       View Comments

Pointless Parker Pic Post - gotta love the alliteration

Gurnee Mills

In early August, when we still had our rental car, we took the family down to Gurnee Mills, a huge mall about an hour away from Milwaukee in Illinois.

I don't really remember why we went, or if there was any purpose at all.

[Ah yes, I remember now: my wife had gone there a week before and saw an exhibition of live tigers. For $25 you could play with the cats, and we wanted to at least show the kids the beasts.]

Well Gurnee Mills is huge, 1.7 million square feet, and we parked on the wrong side of the mall. So after looking through a used bookstore and a few other shops, we settled in for lunch at the Rainforest Cafe.

This is a pic of the cafe mascot, which Parker just freaked over, giggling and smiling nonstop.

The wife and I had an appetizer platter that included calamari, and one of the few times I've been disapointed in YaYa was when she tried it, liked it, and then spit it out once I told her what it was. :(

For desert, we blew the diet and ordered a Volcano, a brownie/ice cream combo with a lit sparkler in the middle. That's ironic, because we despised the fact that the kids menu portion of hamburger was three, count 'em three, medium sized burgers. What the heck, why not just include angioplasty free with the meal?

Last but not least, this animated crocodile scared the heck out of Middle Child.

And with good reason, now that I look at the photo again :)

After that we stopped at a dollar store where we bought the girls ceramic ballerinas and Parker a toy hammer, the Disney Store and a few more places, discovered the tigers were a travelling exhibit and no longer there, and drove home.

Not a bad day at all.