Dark Bilious Vapors

Labor Day, Labor Day, what a dumb day.
You hire some jerk, then send him away
To celebrate work by playing all day.
--Johnny Hart ["BC", Labor Day strip--quote from memory so cut me some slack. *grin*]*

Not much happening round Chez Cleavelin this weekend. Been pretty much a baseball drenched weekend. I had tickets for Friday's game against the Nashville Sound, but I was a bit under the weather so I found the tickets a good home with an appreciative buddy (unfortunately, we lost, 9-8; I hope my friend wasn't too disappointed) and settled in to watch the Cards play the Dodgers on TV Time Warner (the Fox Sports Midwest feed with Dan McLaughlin and Al Hrabosky doing the play by play). I've already mentioned this one; the good Matty Mo showed up and pitched a magnificent two hit complete game shutout. Saturday TV Time Warner carried the Memphis Redbirds game, so I got to watch that. We started slow, nursing a 7-5 deficit into the bottom of the 8^th, but exploded for a 7 run 8^th inning to take it 12-7.

A friend had a couple rain checks to turn in, so she got us tickets for Sunday night, which featured the final fireworks show of the season after the game completed. And we won, 9-7, with Al Reyes putting in a nice 9th inning for a save. Of course, if the Redbirds hadn't given up 3 runs in the top of the 7^th, it wouldn't have been a save situation, but we'll take a W any way we can get it. This afternoon was the last game of the season, and it was also the last "Bobblehead Mania Monday" promotion, featuring the Albert "the Great" Pujols bobblehead (featuring Phat Al during his last few weeks in the minors, when he played for the Redbirds). It makes a good companion to the Mark McGwire bobble that a friend gave me a couple years ago, and is currently keeping that one company on the bookshelf. Oh--the game? Hate to say we lost that one. Alan Benes started it, and the subjective impression was that he started giving up homers from the get-go. Not an accurate impression; he actually got the leadoff batter out in the first inning before the second batter (Nashville centerfielder Rich Thompson) went yard, but another two Sounds went yard, and Nashville built up a nice 4-0 lead before the 5^th inning. Of course, holding the Redbirds to only two hits probably helped matters, too.

And wrapping up the weekend tonight, TV Time Warner is showing the Fox Sports Midwest feed of the Cards game in San Diego . The only down side to that is that West Coast night games start so damn late (9 PM local), and a typical game will be pushing midnight by the time it's over. I'm a very early riser most days (about 5 AM or so), so it's questionable if I'll stay up for the whole game; tempting, though, given that the game's currently tied and I'll prefer knowing what happened, if at all possible.

And what about when I wasn't watching baseball? Catching up on some reading.....

The only good thing that I can see about remakes of movies is that, when the movies are based on novels, that the remake will often result in a mass market paperback edition of the novel being reissued in conjunction with the new movie. That's happened twice now in recent memory, and I've been the beneficiary in both occasions. The 2001 Tim Burton remake of Planet of the Apes starring Marky Mark--uh, 'scuse me, Mark Wahlberg--resulted in a mass market paper edition of Pierre Boulle's novel (which I snapped up, since it'd been one I'd wanted to read for a while), and Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate inspired Pocket Books to issue a mass market paper version of Richard Condon's novel. The novel has been, if anything, better than the movie (that is, the 1962 Frankenheimer movie starring Laurence Harvey and Frank Sinatra; I've yet to see Demme's remake and don't know if I will), and the movie is one of my favorites. If you're looking for a good read, check out Condon's novel sometime.

*Credit to Pete Vonder Haar for correcting the reference for me; I'd originally misattributed this one to Berkeley Breathed, which pisses me off doubly: first, I hate to make mistakes like that, and secondly, I hate to be quoting Johnny Hart now that BC's gone obnoxiously born again in recent days. But since you don't have too many examples of Labor Day doggerel to quote these days, I'll leave the quotation in.

Len on 09.06.04 @ 11:19 PM CST