Fire Woman

December 11, 2007

Now listening: John Lennon, “Whatever Gets You Through The Night”
Indeed, brother, indeed.

Given my multipodcast habits, I don’t listen to music as much as I really should. It seems to put me in a better mood.

Like Bill Hicks, I wonder what Lennon would have to say about the current war. Watching the “Imagine” documentary on VH1 reminded me of just how pointed and political he was as a solo artist. No wonder he scared the crap out of Nixon.

I have no doubt he would be unreservedly against it, and would have pointed words for our President.

It still stuns me that Dana Perino admitted on “Wait Wait” that she didn’t know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was. And her explanation, basically, was that it happened before she was born. Jesus. It happened before I was born, too, and I’ve heard of it. And politics, which is somewhat involved with history, is her JOB. Don’t those people read books? Ever?

Now listening: The Cult, “Black Angel”

I saw the Cult, opening for Metallica on one of the legs of the “Justice” tour. I had already seen the tour once, with Queensryche opening in support of “Operation: Mindcrime”. (There’s actually a sequel to that album, which I have been kind of afraid to get. I’m afraid it is not going to be as good, or at least as good as I recall it being. So many things aren’t as good as you remember.) So I knew Metallica was going to be awesome, but the Cult was so disappointing. I really enjoyed their first two albums(“Love” and “Electric”), and they were dispirited and weak live. And then Metallica came on and blew them into little Cult sized pieces.

December 13, 2007

Careful, it’s Thursday the 13th.

The Mitchell Report is out. I’m sure there will be yards and yards of hemming and hawing about this on the Web already. So here’s some more.

I don’t know what names are on the list, (baseball players who have used PEDs, or Performance Enhancing Drugs) as I write this. I assume there will be some non surprises-Sosa, McGwire-and perhaps some stunners.

But whoever is named, I do know one thing. It’s not going to change how I feel about baseball.
If you know anything at all about baseball, you know that baseball occurs within a context-the run scoring environment in which it is played. Pre-1947, not all the best players were allowed to play. Pre-1920, there were rampant gambling allegations, some of which were undoubtedly more than allegations. Pre-1900, there was syndicate ball, within which owners would own more than one team in the league and stack one team with all the best players. The 1995-2005 era will be the PED/Steroids era, and we will look at the numbers within that context. That’s all it means.

December 14, 2007

Well, Roger Clemens is on the list. Mo Vaughn too.

There is some caterwauling from Yankees fans about the fact that Mitchell, who is on the board of directors of the Sox, has a conflict of interest when investigating Sox players. That may be true, and as the more thoughtful commenters have pointed out, it doesn't matter if he had a conflict or not, because it appears he did, thus rendering the whole report questionable.

That being said, Mo Vaughn and Roger Clemens are two of the most significant Red Sox of the last 20 years.

And the report, such as it is, depends on hearsay and the testimony of people who have something to gain by testifying. Not exactly evidence.

And we still don't know, for sure, the effect of PEDs on baseball players.

So, after all this, we have.....feh. Approximately.