A refreshing tonic indeed

I've been battling a nasty stomach virus all the live-long day.  I feel like I've just completed the 24 hours of Lemans, except that instead of racing, I've been stretched out on a medieval rack.  So what better way to wrap up this day than watch the State of the Union.

See the President speak.  See the GOP members of Congress stand up!  And down!  And up!  And down!  Wait, they're up again!  Oops, they're down again.

Just like my lunch.  And my dinner.

To refresh myself, I checked what I wrote about last year's SOTU.  Hmm.  I was a little raw back then.  But I have to admit that this year's speech was much better (wow, how strong is this virus?).  It still had plenty of things to question, but it was a little less smug, shorter, and not as irritating.

A side note: setting the journal wayback machine to last year's SOTU made me realize that I completely forgot the first anniversary of my journal.  I thought it would be a little more triumphant than that, but it just didn't register.  That tells me that this is now habitual, that I don't pay attention to time, just to quality.

Indeed, I am, the world's...best...blogger.

Not really, but I'm delirious, so I can write whatever I want and claim dementia later.  Back to the speech...first, I'd like to re-introduce the "ice tea and a sweet roll concept."  It's been a while since I wrote about this.  When I was a kid, there was a cartoon on the Electric Company.  A man seated at a table in a diner orders an ice tea and a sweet roll, only to be told politely by the waitress that they are out of sweet rolls.  He changes his order to coffee and a sweet roll, and is told a little less politely that they are out of sweet rolls.  For the remainder of the scene, he orders a different drink with a sweet roll, and each time the waitress gets more and more frustrated until she screams "WE ARE OUT OF SWEET ROLLS!!!" and runs through a wall out of the diner.  When the dust clears the man says "OK, I'll just have a sweet roll."  It's classic.  I use it all the time.  I can't tell you how many times I say "ice tea and a sweet roll" when someone has no idea what they are talking about.  The very meaning of my existence is based upon recognizing "ice tea and a sweet roll" moments.

Anyway, listening to Bush talk about fiscal responsibility is probably the all time "ice tea and a sweet roll" moment I can think of.  He's going to be pining for more billions for his war in a week or so, yet he talks about "responsibility."  He came into office with a budget surplus, and he talks about "reducing the deficit in half by 2009."  This comment gets a huge roar from the GOP in attendance.  What are they cheering for?  Don't they realize that they are part of the most irresponsible spending administration in history?  Don't take my word on it.  Read this. 

I'm not going to spend the next four years listening to Bush try to tell us that he is a fiscal conservative when what he does is sneak around looking for piggy banks that he can smash and grab before he's held accountable.

Moving on...nice to see the President re-light the fire on the amendment for banning gay marriage.  Good idea to pander to your extreme base, W.  Don't worry about putting anything that discriminates into the Constitution.  We'll get over it.  Everyone knows that an amendment like this has no chance of actually making it into the Constitution, but on principle, it's disgusting, pure and simple.

Once the President got away from domestic issues, I didn't find much to fault with (so much Nyquil...hello, little plastic cup!) his speech.  He played to fear well, as he always does, though there's not truth to the rumor that the words on US currency will be changed to "In BOO! We Trust."  In reading what other folks in the blogosphere have had to say about this (and this will be for another entry, but the elite bloggers who opine on politics 100% of the time on the blogs are INSANE!  I'm talking about both sides here) most feel that the moment where the parents of a dead marine embraced a woman who had just voted in Iraq was  "touching." 

Maybe.  But it was definitely politically motivated.  It reminded me of the portion of "Fahrenheit 9/11" when Michael Moore (with the mere mention of his name, billions of conservatives just gasped) documented the trip of a woman who just lost her son in Iraq to Washington to try to find someplace or someone to direct her outrage and grief towards.  My heart breaks for both women, and both are brave to put their private despair on display for separate reasons.  I am almost thankful that this part of the festivities was included tonight so I could see it from both sides.

And upon reading that last line, my sister is now screaming "Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?"  Um, that is, if she ever read this...Hi Sis!

But I also know that for every Texas mom that grieves the loss of her child in this war, there are about 1400 others in all parts of the country going through the same thing, and I'm sure not all of them would be willing to star in either Moore's or Bush's scene.  And based upon what I heard tonight, there will be more to come. 

But back to my snarkiness....about that woman who voted in Iraq, the one sitting next to the First Lady, who dressed her?  Are people aware that Jackie Kennedy's closet has been broken into?  I must not have been paying attention here because I missed whether this woman was flown over from Iraq just for the speech or if she was an Iraqi in this country who voted absentee.  Either way, I want to make a documentary of her going back to Iraq dressed in the same clothes that she wore tonight.  And, if I may go on just a tad longer here, what's with the blue fingers?  Do you vote for a candidate in Iraq by selecting a certain tab of Tidy Bowl or something? 

So why am I less critical of this speech compared to last year?  I think it boils down to the feeling that last year, the President was clearly establishing a "me vs. you" mentality.  He was up for re-election and needed to set that type of tone.  I can't believe I am saying this, but it does appear that on some issues, he seems to understand that he has to be able to work with both sides to get things in his agenda down.  He's not a stupid man.  The clock is ticking on his presidency, his legacy, and he knows that there is no way that he will get everything done that he wishes.  Second term Presidents tend to have problems getting things done, especially in the final two years.  Bush has 24 months to really make his mark in history.  I think he realizes that he is less in control that he normally thinks he is.

I am stunned by that, truly.  He was so arrogant and smug in his first term.  There's no way I am going to let one speech change my opinion of him as a leader.  He has a ton of work to do, and I'll be amazed if he pulls any of it off.  Again ,he has to do something to stop getting American service people killed in Iraq.  I think that the patience of every American is wearing thinly on that.

So we move on.  It will be an interesting month, to see what advances and what falls to gridlock.  But it is time I end this.  Clearly, I am sicker than I thought, as I am starting to hallucinate.

I just saw Sammy Sosa wearing a Baltimore Orioles jersey. 

NASA, fate, and a question

It occured to me not long ago this evening that today, February 1, is the second anniversary of the loss of the space shuttle Columbia.  When I think back to that Saturday morning, I remember that I was listening to the radio.  There is a rock station in Chicago that selects a certain year every Saturday morning from 8-12 and features music only from that year along with short notes on movies, news, etc.  That morning the featured year was 1985.

I was sitting at my dining room table eating a bowl of cereal and reading the paper, not fully paying attention to the radio, when I heard the DJ mention the loss of the shuttle Columbia.  Right away I cringed, but for a different reason that the rest of the nation; I assumed that someone at the station had made an error in research and had included the explosion of the Challenger in the news wrap up for 1985.  They compounded the error by getting the name of the shuttle wrong as well.

Twenty minutes later, after a song from 1985, the DJ came on and said "the news we reported about the shuttle Columbia earlier is not a mistake from 1985, it's actual, it happened today."  I turned off the radio, turned on the television, and spent the next few hours watching the news.

I felt something almost right away that morning that I still feel today, the thought that at least the accident happened as the shuttle was returning to Earth.  The seven astronauts who died got to spend sixteen days on a mission in space.  They were able to experience the rewards of their training by spending that time in orbit.  I would think perhaps that the families of those astronauts found some comfort in that fact. 

Here's something that I'm sure most people know: there have been three fatal events involving NASA astronauts.  

Here's something I'd bet most people don't know: the three events occurred within six days of each other on the calendar year.

Besides the shuttle accidents, the only other fatal event involving NASA astronauts was the fire aboard Apollo 1 that happened on January 27, 1967 as the capsule sat on the launch pad.

The shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986.

Columbia disintegrated on February 1, 2002.

The odds on that have to be significant, I'd think, enough that if I were the director of NASA Iwould suggest that all non-essential work be stopped during that time period every year.  I'm not trying to be a smart-ass.  I'd shut NASA down for a week and pay tribute to the 17 astronauts that have died, and remember that it is our responsibility now to ensure that the number never increases.

Call me crazy if you wish, but if there is one thing I think I have learned in life so far, it is not to tempt fate.

As I was doing a little research on this to make sure that I had the dates right, I recalled that when I was in grade school and the shuttle was still in development, there was some type of accident in an orbiter on the launch pad, and I am fairly certain that one or two people died.  They were not astronauts, and I'm quite surprised that I can find no information on that anywhere.  If you "Google" anything about the Challenger, Columbia, or Apollo 1 you get thousands of hits, yet I can't find anything about this event.

As you might imagine, I am curious to know exactly when this happened.

 

 

 

Here we go again

1. Who is the first celebrity you recall having a crush on?  Wilma Flintstone.  Woe that I could not spend just a day as Fred.  Actually, I don't think I ever had a celebrity crush until the day I saw "An Officer and a Gentleman."  I've had a thing for Debra Winger ever since.  That voice alone...
 
2. What was your favorite amusement park ride when you were young? Something called "The Scrambler" which was a ride that propelled you in a way that it was like drawing a star.  It was fast with enough of a jerking motion to make you think it was a thrill ride, but avoiding the plummets and dips that I couldn't take.  I was one wimpy kid when it came to amusement parks.
 
3. If you could change your name (first or middle but the name you go by), would you, and if so, what would you change it to?  I wouldn't change it, but I would go back to my birth and ask my folks to never call me anything but "James"; I like that better than Jim.  If I had to change my name, I'd go with Luke.
 
4. Go to http://kabalarians.com/ and take the "First Name Analysis" test.  Do you agree with what the site comes up with?  Wow.  Am I being set up?  That was a perfect description of me.  I am sufficiently freaked out now.
 
5. Other than Johnny Carson, which former talk show host's tape archives would you most like to visit, and why?  I'll twist the question to make it fit my goal and have all of Letterman's NBC tapes.

6. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #44  from Jessie:   If you were in good health, would you donate a kidney to a friend who's dying regardless of what your family's opinion are and if yes or no, why or why not?  Absolutely.  If I can get by with one kidney (and I probably couldn't, but that's another story) I couldn't possibly not give up one for someone else.

Hasta la Sosa, baby

There's going to be a stranger in right field next year at Wrigley.

To no one's surprise, Sammy Sosa is no longer a Cub.  Unless he doesn't pass a physical in a day or so, he's going to play for Baltimore this year. 

This one is tough to judge.  Sosa began his stint with the Cubs in 1992 when he was still young and raw.  He was traded from the White Sox to the Cubs for a slugger named George Bell, who was a former MVP candidate with Toronto in the mid to late 1980's.  At the time, most experts thought that the Sox got the best of the deal.  For a season or two it looked like they were right.  Sosa had a wild swing, no patience, and didn't seem to understand much about the game.  Every once in a while he'd hit the ball a mile, but he was a marginal player at best.

Then George Bell broke down, collected the rest of the millions on his contract and went to run a gas station in the Dominican Republic. 

I'd wager that just about everyone in America is well aware of who Sosa is and what he's accomplished since 1996 or so.

We'll leave the "did or he didn't he" steroid question out of this forum for now.  No matter what you might put into your body, it takes a tremendous amount of skill to hit major league pitching.

I will never forget the summer of '98.  It started out somewhat uneventful but by June the Cubs were playing decent baseball and Sosa was hitting a ton of home runs.  He set a MLB record with 20 home runs in a single month.  Most of them were bombs.  I saw him hit a house across the street from Wrigley that month.  By the All-Star break in July, it was clear that both Sosa and Mark McGwire would challenge the all time record of 61 home runs in a season set by Roger Maris in 1961.  McGwire would get there first, blasting his 62nd the night after Labor Day in a game in St. Louis against the Cubs.  He'd finish the season with a then-record 70 home runs.  But his team, the Cardinals, would not make the playoffs.

On the afternoon of September 13, 1998 I was sitting with my friend Don in the right field bleachers at Wrigley.  We'd purchased the tickets for the game in February, one of about ten games we wound up going to that season.  When we chose that game, we had no idea what we were going to witness that day.  Forone of the few times in our lifetime, the Cubs were in contention, fighting for a spot in the playoffs.  This game was against the Milwaukee Brewers.  The day before, the Cubs had beaten Milwaukee 15-13, and Sosa had become just the fourth person in history to hit 60 home runs in one year.

I have a tape of the game from Sept. 13, and I am watching it now to make sure I get the facts right, but I remember it all like it was yesterday.  It was the bottom of the fifth inning and the Cubs were leading the game 6-3.  Sosa had flied out his first time up, and he was intentionally walked his next time up.  In the fifth, he was due up second.  Mark Grace led off the inning with a single.

The Brewers had a guy named Ben Patrick on the mound.  His first pitch to Sosa was a curveball that was low and outside.  His second pitch was a fastball down the dead center of the plate.  If there had been no noise in the park, you would have heard this pitch screaming "Hit me!  Hit me!" as it approached the plate.

Sosa hit it 900 miles.

I remember losing sight of the ball as it cleared the boundaries of Wrigley Field.  Our angle from where we were sitting did not allow us to see the hundreds of people who had gathered on the street outside the park, hoping to catch a historic baseball.  Unfortunately for them, Sosa hit the ball past them.  The ball landed over the street, past the buildings that one sees looking past left field.  Someone sitting on their front porch well away from the crowd wound up with the ball on Kenmore Avenue.

So there was #61, and a most exclusive club was now a trio: Maris, McGwire and Sosa.  And the Cubs were well in front of a game they had to win.

Sosa led off the 7th inning and struck out, and it looked like that would be the last time he would bat that day.  But, lest we forget, this was a game involving the Cubs.  They managed to blow their lead, and by the time the bottom of the ninth inning arrived, it was 10-8 Brewers.  Sosa was due up second.  The lead-off man grounded out, bringing Sosa up with the bases empty.  Again, I am watching the tape, but I remember it all.  A guy named Eric Plunk was pitching for the Brewers.  He threw two balls and a strike to Sosa, and on his fourth delivery, he did his best Ben Patrick impersonation: fastball, right down the middle, begging to be clobbered.

Sosa hit #62farther than he hit #61, and the game stopped for fifteen minutes.  For that moment, both Sosa and Mark McGwire held the record for most home runs in a season.

My tape bleeds from this game into "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper" (???!!!) after this, but the Cubs tied the game and sent it into extra innings.  Mark Grace won it with a home run leading off the bottom of the tenth, with Sosa waiting on deck.

It was a good day.

Sosa won the MVP that year after he slammed 66 home runs and led the Cubs into the playoffs.  The next season, he became the first person ever to hit at least 60 home runs in two seasons.  Personally, I think his best year was 2001.  That year he had a .324 batting average, he hit 64 home runs and he drove in 160 runs.  It was one of the greatest offensive seasons ever for an individual player.

Many things have changed since then.  The ticket stub I still have from that game is a light shade of yellow, and the tape of the game won't last more than five more years or so.  Sosa is not the same player, both mentally and physically.

At the end of last season, he decided he had enough of Chicago.  He didn't just burn his bridges, he fire-bombed them.  There was no way that he could come back to the team for the 2005 season and not be a major distraction.  The Cubs couldn't wait to trade him.  If you twist my arm enough, I'll admit that I am relieved that he is no longer a part of the team.

I'm naive when I think about 1998.  I remember the roars, the excitement, the amount of time I spent watching games standing on my feet instead of sitting down.  I remember talking to people about that game on Sept. 13, 1998 who aren't alive anymore.  I don't think about the egos, the millions of dollars, and the fact that ultimately baseball is nothing more than a business.

99% of the fans and the press in Chicago are going to spend the next year torching Sosa whenever they can.  I can't say that he doesn't deserve it.

But I can say that these are the same people who praised him to no end for the better part of a decade. 

It's been a spectacular divorce, and it's only going to get better. 

 

 

Come ski in Eastern Europe!

One wonders what Vice-President Dick Cheney was thinking this week when he was packing for his trip to Poland to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp:

"Sure am glad I picked up that "take your skiing vacation this year in Poland" pamphlet at Camp David last week."

"I'm so gonna look like Brezhnev!"

"Never thought I'd live to see the drilling in the Arctic refuge!  Better make sure I take my parka..."

Kudos, Dick, for making all of us look even more idiotic.  I wasn't aware that this was possible.

Words

As mentioned previously, this has been a day of yuck here.  When I get like this, I tend to remember that I have an extensive CD collection, which thankfully gets me through it.  I've been diving into some of it today, and thought I'd share some lyrics from different songs (which shall remain uncredited) that I find tremendous:

Time is the train

That makes the future the past

Leaves you standing at the station

Your faced pressed up against the glass

 

 

 ****************************************

I’m going to Detox Mansion

Way out on last breath farm

I been raking leaves with Liza

Me and Liz clean up the yard

 

****************************************

Break it down again

No more sleepy dreaming

No more building up

It is time to dissolve

Break it down again

No more sleepy dreaming

*******************************************

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all

The needle returns to the start of the song

And we all sing along like before

And we?ll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

 

 

****************************************************

I?ll be the rain falling on your fire escape

And I may not be the man you want me to

I can be myself, how about you?

 

Plumbing problems

What a day.

It's gray here, everywhere.  The snow has that "we've been hanging around a few days past the big storm so we're covered in dirt, soot and exhaust" look.  Remember when you were a kid at school and one day you felt under your desk, wondered why it was all lumpy, looked and saw a billion pieces of gum stuck there so long ago that they had turned gray?  The world looks like the bottom of my third grade desk today. 

Bah!

I do have perspective though.  My day started with me sitting down to watch a tape of last night's "Amazing Race" only to see that I somehow managed to tape an hour of VH1's "100 most metal mania moments" instead.  I have no idea how I did this.  I suppose this is what I deserve for actually taping a reality show.  Oh well.  A quick jaunt to the network website tells me what happened.  And tells me that the episode was also filmed in Sri Lanka a few weeks before the tsunami hit in December.

We'll call that perspective item #1.

And they just keep rolling in as the day goes by.  I'm whining about gray snow and no sun.  In the meantime, the following happens:

-31 soldiers die in a copter crash in Western Iraq, part of the deadliest day there for American forces since the invasion.  OK, here's a rant: when is it going to be enough, I wonder, before the minions of the society here get up and scream "ENOUGH!"?  How many more people have to die in Iraq before we get a clue, declare victory and cut our losses by getting the heck out of there?  I am not interested in political objectives here, I just want service people to stop dying.  The elections in Iraq are this weekend.  How long until we hand the keys over to the least intimidated group that is declared the winner and send everyone home while we wait for the inevitable civil war?

-10 people die in a brutal train crash in LA.  As the day has progressed it has been discovered that the impetus of this disaster is a 26 year old man intent on committing suicide who pulled his vehicle onto the tracks to be sent to glory in a wreck of bone, metal and rail, only to change his mind shortly before the train came through.  Of course, for reasons known only to him, he got out of the car and walked away instead of driving the car off the tracks.  Train hits empty car, train derails, people die, all while Mr. Miserable watches safely from the sideline.  I think he's going to spend the rest of his life wishing he had stayed in the car.  Rant #2: I thought suicide was supposed to be an individual act?  I can't imagine making the choice to end my own life, and I have great empathy towards those that are so despondent that they do, but if the way you choose to die ends up killing others, you couldn't be a bigger coward.

-Condi Rice gets approved as the next Sec. of State by an 85-13 margin.  Huh?  My compliments to the 13, but if I may inquire, (here comes rant #3) why didn't one of you filibuster the vote?  If I may quote my buddy Bob Dole: where's the outrage?  Take your pick, Rice is either a liar or an idiot.  She's part of the conglomeration that has led the country into this mess.  Why is she being rewarded with a skate-thru confirmation?  What's wrong with a 24 hour siege of the Senate to convey to America that not everyone is happy about Iraq?  It boggles my mind.  There's a certain up and coming new Senator from Illinois who voted to confirm Ms. Rice, quietly.  Hmm.  Didn't take long for the bloom to come off that rose, did it? 

I'd go to the sink to wash my hands, but when I turn on the faucet all that comes out is bile.