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Stuff + nonsense. Updated daily. So far. Pretty much. Overwrought by Scott Knaster.
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Friday, September 19, 2003
Dost thee want an iPod?
Maybe you haven't heard about the Silicon Valley-Amish connection.
Inspirational and incredible
Neil Parry is a football player for San Jose State who suffered a horrific injury 3 years ago that led to the amputation of part of his leg. Yesterday he played in a major college football game for the first time since that happened. Way to go, Neil!
Shut your mouth
Here is the story of a man who was singing along with the radio while driving, got a bee in his mouth, and crashed his car. The lesson here is obvious: it's unhealthy to eat while you drive.
Hung over
The Giants played the first of nearly two weeks of sorta-meaningless games yesterday, losing 7-3 to San Diego. Sidney Ponson had another mediocre-bad game. He seemed unmotivated, and he had a lot of second-stringers behind him. I hope he knows how to turn it on for the playoffs. Playoff tickets go on sale this morning at 10:00. It's reload city -- wish me luck!
Not letting it be
There's going to be a new version of Let it Be by The Beatles. This one will be stripped of the Phil Spector production and will reveal "the noise we made in the studio", according to Paul McCartney.
Baseball in a hurricane
Do you think baseball games are stopped when the weather gets bad? Not always.
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Foregone conclusion is concluded
On a lovely San Francisco night, everything went as planned and the good guys won the National League Western Division. The weather was supposed to be chilly, but it was in the 70s with no wind all night. We managed to get terrific seats halfway up the view level right behind home plate. As we found our seats, we took in the fabulous view of China Basin, the bay beyond, and the sunlight glinting gold off the windows and buildings of the East Bay. Giants ace Jason Schmidt started without his usual fastball and was hammered, batting-practice-like, for 3 runs in the first two innings. He suddenly found his stride in the 3rd and became Jason Schmidt, while Andres Galarraga woke up the rest of the team and the crowd with a 2-run homer. When Marquis Grissom's 2-run shot in the gave the Giants the lead, there was no looking back. Meanwhile, the Dodgers' bats were sleeping in LA, as Arizona held onto a 2-0 lead. As the Giants wrapped up their 8-3 win, the Dodgers were just coming to bat in the last of the 9th. The usual big Pac Bell crowd and the Giants put celebration on hold as the video screen came to life with the Dodger broadcast, complete with the venerable Vin Scully calling the action. In an increasingly fabulous and surreal scene, we saw the Dodgies go down meekly, as Vin announced that we were watching "in San Diego". (OK, Vin is awsome: when 85 years old you are, broadcast this well, you will not!) Then, with 2 outs, the Dodger broadcast put up a shot of the crowd in San Francisco. So, we were at the ballpark in SF, watching the Dodgers game from LA, which showed us in SF watching ourselves watching the Dodgers. Only the Dodgers' lack of offense prevented an infinite loop from trapping the ballpark forever. When the Dodgers finished losing, our place went nuts. Fireworks shot from the scoreboard, players started jumping around and doing the champagne bath thing, and the fans hollered and slapped hands. The train home was a festive blast. Praise Peter Magowan, the Giants now have a couple of weeks to get everything just right for the Division Series. Playoffs, yippee!
Big storm
Hurricane Isabel comes ashore. Good luck to you if you're dealing with that. I wonder what would happen if we could predict earthquakes a few days ahead of time.
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
A cleaner, smoother win
The Giants looked a bit better in smacking the Padres 4-1 last night. They managed a single run on a bases-loaded-none-out in the first, two more on a 2-out rally in the fourth featuring hits by Cruz, Durham, and Grissom, and the last on another Barry Bonds homer, his 656th. Jerome Williams pitched himself into the playoff rotation, allowing just four hits and one run, a Khalil Greene homer in the 7th (and how cool is it to have a shortstop named Khalil?). The magic number is now 2. I'll be there tonight. Go D-Backs!
Not nice...
...but really funny.
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
I can't complain, but sometimes I still do
The Giants slogged through another mess of a win last night, 8-7 over San Diego. Sketchy pitching, sloppy defense, and a lack of clutch hitting led to a 7-5 deficit in the 8th inning, when some even crappier play by the Padres helped the Giants to a 3-run rally. The "highlights" included Gary Matthews Jr. forgetting how many outs there were, and the go-ahead run scoring on a wild pitch. Two earlier Giants runs scored on a bungled sac bunt. Still, it's the Giants at Pacific Bell Park, so they found a way to win. And good things happened: Bonds homered (#655), Rueter pitched well, Worrell got the save, Snow homered and reached base 5 times. Clinching the division (magic number is now 4) can't come soon enough. The team itself seems sluggish and impatient, and I feel that way, too. This September is turning into a long month for Giants fans. I only hope October is long, too! This must be what it feels like to be a Braves fan. ;-)
Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman
Last night I read the first two issues of this new 8-issue Neil Gaiman mini-series. This comic revives the old concept of reconstructing the Marvel Universe in a different time, but instead of 2099, the year is 1602, a very Gaiman-esque choice. Don't expect Sandman when you read Marvel 1602 -- this is much lighter-weight stuff, and a very pleasant read. The plot is coming together nicely, and most of the fun so far has been in recognizing Marvel folks in slightly unfamiliar guises. It's usually not hard: Carlos Javier is a guy with a school for talented youngsters, Sir Nicholas Fury is the queen's intelligence agent, his assistant Peter Parquah is fascinated by spiders, and so on. Matthew Murdoch, Dr. Stephen Strange, and plenty of others are in there too. But there are some twists and mysteries: why is Master John Grey so effeminate? Why is Virginia Dare on her way from the colonies? Who is the Grand Inquisitor? Gaiman has fun fitting his new Marvel Universe in with historical fact and speculation. Oh, and the Andy Kubert art is lovely to look at.
Monday, September 15, 2003
Diary of a Giants fan
The Giants won another slightly odd game against the hapless Brewers yesterday. Starter Kevin Correia couldn't find his control and was yanked in the 3rd inning after a walk-and-hit-batsmen fest. The game plodded to a 3-3 tie in the 8th when Barry Bonds was ejected for arguing balls and strikes from the dugout, at which point he charged out and went cap-to-cap with the home plate umpire. Because Bonds was already out of the game, it didn't really matter, but, weird. Things looked grim when the Brews took the lead in the 9th, but the Giants tied it with 2 outs in the bottom of the inning on a triple by Pedro Feliz that was almost a game-winning homer. Then, in the 11th, rookie Todd Linden won the game with a timely base hit. Magic number: 5! Andres Galarraga is a little pouty because he was removed for a pinch-hitter. I predict he'll get over it. In other baseball news, Tony Larussa is getting cranky as the Cardinals drop out of sight.
Whiny whine
I've had a PowerBook G4 for about six months now, ever since I switched back from Windows. The fan basically runs all the time the computer is awake. In my quiet office, the sound is annoying. After some Googling research, and asking some friends, this seems to be normal and expected behavior. Yuck. Apple has always been bipolar about quiet computers. I've had computers from Apple that were dead silent (yay) and I've had and heard others than scream, such as the famous "wind tunnel" G4s.
