I lucked into a ticket to Saturday's Red Sox game, against the Yankees. It was a perfect, beautiful day for baseball. I got chills looking around Fenway when the National Anthem played. If America is about anything, to me it's a sunny day, the smell of freshly cut grass, and baseball.
The game started well; Schilling was pitching inspired baseball, striking out 8 in six innings, including Jeter twice & A-Rod once. The Red Sox were hitting, but Mussina got out of enough jams to keep the game decently close. We were out in the bleachers, and they were rowdy all day; not just normal rowdy, but Red Sox - Yankees rowdy. There were N.Y. fans there, and I think the first one made the perp-walk out of the park, surrounded by security, in the third inning. There was about one per inning thereafter, and everyone in the bleachers would stand up to watch and jeer every time. The Sox stretched the lead out by the sixth or seventh, and with the beer really kicking in, the bleachers started to get really ugly. A full-out brawl errupted about 30 feet from us, when a shouting match led Sox fans to start pelting a Yankees fan first with popcorn and then with beer; that's when the shoving started, and soon enough there were punches thrown, and a crowd surge that security had to fight through to break things up.
The rivalry is cool. Kind of. But it's also poisonous. The fans really HATE the Yankees, and Yankees fans, and to some extent New York itself, and all its inhabitants, by extension. Hate is . . . unpleasant. And dumb. It's one thing when it's directed at an essentially abstract construction, like a sports team. It's another thing completely when you see it directed at real people, and turned into mob violence.
Still, it is fun to laugh at the fact that Alex "$25,000,000 per year" Rodriguez is batting .156 so far in a Yankees uniform! posted by Miles 8:30 AM
So we'd better get ready for a floweriffic month, because these April showers ain't no joke. We've had about 7.75 inches of rain already this month, about twice the average precipitation for the month of April, and we're only halfway through it. Anh's been saying it reminds him of the rainy season back in Vietnam, where it sometimes rains steadily for weeks on end (literally). It's kinda' depressing.
And even with the rain, there aren't any nice bright green leaves on the trees, yet. Everything's still brown and barren.
Y'all are a dedicated bunch, still showing up to read this as often as you do, considering how low-frequency my posting has been of late. :-)
Let me start this post by just saying that Charlie Kaufmann is a genius. Jess and I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last week, something more than a year after we saw Adaptation together on our first "real" date. Kaufmann's earlier movies were fun, and intelligent, and massively clever; Eternal Sunshine was all of these things, and emotionally pungent, and profound; it's right up there with my favorite movies, ever.
Let me continue this post by just saying that Mel Gibson . . . not so much. We saw The Passion on Saturday night, since it was Easter, so it seemed appropriate. I wasn't as bothered by the gore as I thought I would be, and it was an interesting enough experience, but I couldn't help spending most of my time in the theater pondering the nature of religious belief, in a psychological framework, rather than really getting into the film; in other words, wondering about what other folks are gettin', that I ain't gettin', out of the whole Christianity thing, and why.
Plus, there were no bunnies.
What gives?
Anyway, switching topics, I'd like to introduce you all to my fantasy baseball team, which started off the season with a win last weak despite not being in exactly mid-season form.
The 2004 Ragin' Rhinos, of the Zen Holist League:
C: Craig Wilson
1B: Albert Pujols
2B: Alfonso Soriano
SS: Miguel Tejada
3B: Hank Blalock
OF: Sammy Sosa
OF: Preston Wilson
OF: Miguel Cabrera
DH: David Ortiz
SP: Dontrelle Willis
SP: Kelvim Escobar
SP: Tim Wakefield
SP: Jose Contreras
SP: Brett Myers
RP: Eric Gagne
RP: Jason Isringhausen
As with last year, I should have an absolutely dominant offense. My pitching . . . like Mel Gibson, you know, not so much.
And in two last pieces of minor news, my paper was not accepted at Neuron last week, and I did not get picked onto a team based on my baseball tryout last weekend. Som'bitch. I'm working on revising the paper for resubmission.
And then, there's the secret exciting news, that I can't write about. But it's happy! :-)
Arrest This Man, He Talks In Maths 
Monday, April 19, 2004