Saint Tacky

Very cool. THAT is something to be proud of!

I inherited my grandfather's baseball signed by the 1932 New York Giants. It's next to my Dizzy Dean baseball and the one I had signed by Cal Ripken, Jr. and Brooks Robinson. Humble brag.

Apples and oranges. Passing a law allowing for the funding of lethal aid and then not doing so is not remotely close to wrongfully withholding lethal aid.

I took it pass/fail. Didn't need it. Forgot to drop it, or something like that. But, on the bright side I did ace "Asian Women and their Families."

That's okay. I failed "Human Sexuality."

For once I'd like us to be the compromise pick. Just this once. For that matter, I'd like to stop being the kid's choice when Mom has final say on where he is going, or Mom's choice when the kid is doing the choosing.

Saw it on Sunday, and nothing in it really struck a chord. Battle scenes were cool, but unless you are familiar with the battle it is just chaos and most won't know the significance of what's happening. It glosses over critical details, invests heavily in material that likely should have been peripheral, and has all the excitement of a documentary. It just skips the surface and was pretty unsatisfying if you know much about the battle. There was more time dedicated to John Ford being on Midway during the battle than there was to the Japanese counterattack that sunk the Yorktown. Or, that the fourth Japanese carrier (Hiryu) was sunk by Yorktown planes flying from Lexington and Hornet. I had an uncle that graduated from Annapolis and was stationed on the Enterprise when WWII started. He didn't talk about it much, but once we were sitting together in a duck blind near Port O'Connor and he told me about coming into Pearl Harbor at night after the attack. The island was blacked-out but it was as clear as day because of the fires. To navigate the channel to the harbor he was assigned to take a lantern to the bow and watch for buoys, and waive it when he saw one. That's the most I heard him say about it. He never talked about Midway and only after he died and the internet arrived with its access to information did we learn that he had been in charge of a sector off of Makuti Island (PT-171) when PT-109 was sunk.

I laughed at Jared's biological parents piling on, and thought their final line about his presentation being "underwhelming" was lough-out-loud funny. Jared's Biological Parents The rest of the show was a waste of time.

Care to guess which one was a former prosecutor in the SDNY? It's not the one reading from a script or asking questions he doesn't already know the answers to.

you rang?

Every article or item I've read said that it didn't occur, if it occurred at all, during the postseason. "rumored?" The Red Sox were stone cold busted.

Oh, so the escalator is for fans going to the baseball game?

Thru 2-episodes. Was hoping the assassin would ask for "a name, any name," and be forced to swear by the seven New Gods and the Old Gods beyond counting. So far, so good.

Aggy gets Jimbo. FSU gets Stoops. Difficult to find the winner here.

Murica

This is the least of my complaints about Joe Buck because I have zero problem with natural sound and I don't need gimmicky catch phrases or a signature call. The primary reason Gene Elston was fired by Drayton McLane in 1986 was for simply uttering "There it is!" and then allowing Glenn Davis to run to the bag and seal Mike Scott's no-hitter while the crowd screamed and the players jumped. Contrast Elston's call with Milo Hamilton's screeching throughout Hank Aaron's 715th home-run trot and I'll settle for something in between. IMHO Milo spoiled Hank Aaron's 715th home run by screaming as Aaron went all the way around the bases. If he had just STFU after "..and its Henry Aaron," and let the event play out I could stomach it. Instead, I prefer Vin Scully's or Curt Gowdy's calls of the same home run. Particularly Scully. Hank Aaron-715th Home Run - Three Different Calls But, Drayton wanted screaming and gimmicky catch phrases, so he went with the polar opposite of Elston by hiring Milo. Yelling and ego-maniacal to a fault. Just not my taste.* But, there was one other Astros announcer that would talk non-stop during a game and that was Bill Brown. Brown was very knowledgeable, and he's a nice guy, but he could not tolerate so much as three-seconds of dead air without speaking, and therefore spoke incessantly. He knew his stuff, but Brown called television like it was radio and it was annoying. * ironically I will always utter or think "gotta go get-em Astros!" a la Milo when they head to the 9th on the short end of the score.

Soto had the ball in hand and was wheeling around to throw when Reddick was still 3 to 5 strides from third-base. Only a terrible relay would have saved him. Besides, with Altuve coming up Pettis was wagering that Reddick was going to score anyway. They can be reviewed. But, Altuve was brushed on the jersey in DC and it was clear as day on the replay. He didn't raise a stink, it wasn't reviewed, and he popped out.

I cannot recall a moment that notion ever crossed my mind. Dump DeLoss and Flush the John.

First Cliff Branch and now "Old Man Willie Brown." Damn. The Raiders stopped being my team when they moved to Los Angeles, but these players never stopped being Oakland Raiders to me. RIP.

Off topic, but Larry Kramer's "The Normal Heart" is a raw and gritty look at the AIDS crisis in New York in the 80s. I saw it on Broadway when it re-debuted in 2011. It's intense and heartbreaking, and I just felt like I had seen something really important. HBO picked it up and did a movie several years later that is extremely graphic, but it captures the terror, uncertainty, and the helplessness that whole community was experiencing. It's not an emotional pick-me-up either.

Do as you please with pitch clocks but until MLB puts a halt to the networks trying to cram each half-inning with as many commercials as possible, the games will continue to get longer. Especially the playoffs when they know more people are watching. I realize that more commercials means more revenue, but more commercials means longer games and ultimately less eyeballs. A balance needs to be struck somewhere.

I binged the Pacific again over last weekend. I appreciate it more every time I see it. As someone mentioned above it suffers next to BOB because of the format. There's just not as much detail about the men, and I believe all but two of the primary characters were deceased when it was filmed. Some of it may have also had to do with the type of warfare in the Pacific. It's raw and they don't romanticize or dilute it; but, once I sorted the characters out and did a little research on them myself, I really became invested in them and I like it just as much as BOB, but for entirely different reasons.

Kid should bring that shotgun to BCS. Plenty of time and opportunities to hone his shooting skills on Mond's deep throws. Cheaper than shooting skeet at a range too. Quack.

Downtown. Which was also news to Bob Lanier and the city. Yes! Which is how the scoreboard in the Dome met its demise. Every time I see the home run display at Minute Maid it reminds me of that scoreboard in the Astrodome. Dome Scoreboard

Lucky sperm club. Her brother was tabbed to be the successor a long, long time ago. But, he offed himself at the family farm back in the mid-80s so she gets the team by default. Consider the source didn't fall far from the tree. I remembered a good Bud Adams story yesterday. In the midst of haggling with the City of Houston over the Astrodome Bud called a press conference to announce that he and Les Alexander (Rockets' owner) were joining forces to fund and build a multi-purpose covered stadium to be used by both franchises. He presented a scale model of a domed stadium and wheezed on and on about finances and the relationship with Alexander and the Rockets. We called the Rockets and they had no idea what the hell Bud was talking about, but deferred to Alexander. When we finally got Alexander on the phone he told us that this domed stadium and partnership was all news to him and that he had not spoken to Bud, and further, the Rockets would not be interested in a multi-purpose facility to replace the Summit (basketball only). Liar, Liar Pants on Fire