Is that what ARod says?

Here's an inning-by-inning breakdown of Utley's first hits during the streak, as reported in today's NY Times:

1st: 11
2nd: 1
3rd: 7
4th: 2
5th: 3
6th: 2
7th: 3
8th: 5
9th: 1

Looks like he does pretty well in his first 2 at bats.

In Aberdeen, the not quite perfect, 'A. Strain'.

Dentist by the name of Phil Carey.

A sure sign the apocalypse is coming!

http://kitchen-and-dining.smartbargains.co...odid=3010317199

Given the success of Talladega Nights, I suspect we are in for more of the same.

Have you seen

I am in the Bank of New York down the block, a place I never go, earlier today waiting on line and the guy in front of me who I can see in profile looks familiar but I have no idea of who he is. He turns around and looks at me and it's the assistant sushi chef at Ushi Wakamaru --and he recognized me. I think I have been in there three times in perhaps the last six months.

He turned around and smiled at me.
Ya get the picture? (Yes, we see)

That didnt end well, did it?

Would you guys please tell me what you are talking about?

Leader of the Pack

Thanks.

No, I have not spent my life as a cavedweller and have actually heard that song. But apparently I never paid attention to the lyrics.

Did you walk right up to him and give him a great big kiss (mwah!)?

Out here, folks change endings all the time.

Okay, I"ve been hanging around here and waiting for this moment for about 2 years now.....Daisy dahling, it's Ushiwakamaru not Sushi Wakamaru.

Oh Mistress of Memory, gotcha. Yeah.

manatee in Manhattan

anyone see it yet?

No, but I believe it tastes like chicken.

There is an enormous Pokemon balloon anchored in Bryant Park.

A fledgling downy woodpecker managed to find its way into the house – I found it flapping against one of the kitchen windows when I came upstairs just now. I was able to walk right up and grab it gently with one hand; as I made my way toward the door to release the poor thing, it lowered its head and started pecking my thumb. Fucking ouch.

reminds me of the night I was awakened by a noise in the kitchen. I padded in there, and by the glow of a nightlight, saw an owl about 8 or 10 inches high sitting on the edge of my sink staring straight ahead. I took a deep breath and slowly moved my hand around to grasp it by the back, found the key to unlock the back door, and opening the screen door with my knee, used both hands now to throw it gently into the air where it flew off. I'm assuming my cat had brought it in via two dog doors - either in its mouth or being pursued by the owl. Won't ever forget that experience....

A visit to the Virgin megastore - these are as much ironies as surreal:

1. An album called Pimpalation is available in an edited version.

2. The album title Never Mind the Bollocks, once the subject of an obscenity prosecution in the U.K., now adorns not only tee-shirts and tote bags, but also what appears to be some box full of plastic toys/mementoes/gadgets, presumably suitable for all ages.

3. The company which built its success on Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells sells hip hop from the ground floor of its NYC flagshop, relegating "rock" to one of the basements.

This is my ringtone. It's an excellent tone: it's easy to hear without being caustic. But boy, people who have actually seen the film can freak out when they hear it. I'm association-free.

I had a bat fly into my apartment once. My cat found it hiding in my bathroom.

I once stayed in an old Louisiana country house, and my bedroom - kind of Southern Gothic - had no windows. Imagine my surprise when I visited the (also windowless) bathroom in the morning, to be disturbed in my ablutions by a swallow.

Completely amazed. The owner showed up with a net he kept specifically to catch them. The answer? Chimney swallows. I am sure I have told this story before.

I rescued a baby bird that fell down our chimney. The cats thought it was a new game, and sat by the fireplace door for hours waiting for the next bird to drop.

Holy crap.

I had a friend in high school who was in a car with his dad when an owl flew in through an open window. Momentary chaos before the bird found its way out.

My dad was driving when a hawk flew in the car window. It shook him up quite a bit as I recall.

My cab was making its way slowly down Hudson last night, when a giant Mannatee levered itself through the open front window and ate the driver.



yep

Then you certainly have exercized preternaturally good judgement.

Pshaw. I can't hope to compete in any contest of literary fisticuffs but surely the song's great strength is that it manages to satirize the teen weepy form whilst remaining true to its conventions. And it's funny.

Lawsy, first a whale in the Thames and now this.

Fly

One chilly autumn night, when I was married and my wife and I were watching TV, a bat joined us, and kept circling the room at an altitude of about six feet six. My wife fled in terror to the bathroom. I got my Wilson Pro tennis racquet and waited till the winged rodent went by at the proper altitude and azamuth, and, using the old-fashioned American twist serve, I aced it into the fireplace, where he crackled merrily for a short time.

I'm perfectly unsentimental about bats, no matter how useful they are. My attitude derives from the time a bat taught me to fly. But that's another story.

Speaking of other stories, when I was about fourteen, I climbed a three story ranger's watch tower in a woods in the Ozarks. It had huge windows on all four sides and an attic space usually blocked by a trap door, but not this time. One of the windows had been broken out. By 'n' by, a great snowy owl with a wingspan of about ten feet decended from the attic, seeking freedom. It kept flying into the windows that were intact, then falling to the floor. I was uncomfortable. On about the tenth collision, it (I'm not adept at sexing owls) evidently knocked itself silly and sat on the floor looking baleful. I took the stairs down about four at a time. "What's with the owl," asked my jestless spirit, and I would not stay for an answer.

A friend of mine once put his foot into a winter boot and was dismayed to find that same space was being taken up by a bat. He threw the boot out of the front door, across the street and into an adjacent park, where it remained until spring and was finally removed by person(s) unknown. He reckoned he could afford a new pair of boots if the bat wanted in there so badly.

We have successfully caught bats with trout nets. We also heard they will fly into a dark-coloured garbage can held aloft, and then the opening can be swiftly covered with a record album, if you have such an anachronism handy, or a cookie sheet, and then the bat can be taken outside and released. If you don't want to roast it á la Maurice, that is

A couple of friends of mine have hooked bats while fishing. Luckily they can be broken off quite easily.

Fly

I had never stopped to think about whether it's satirical. The experienced writers, Greenwich and Barry, were certainly creating a piece of artifice rather than writing because moved by passion, but I don't think that qualifies it as outright satire. The Shangri-La's had already recorded "Remember (Walking in the Sand)", a rather better - because less melodramatic - song about romantic loss, and went on to make it their signature theme in songs like the classic "Past, Present and Future", a truly great pop record. "Great Big Kiss" is, of course, meant to be laugh-out-loud funny ("What color are his eyes?" "I don't know he's always wearing shades"..."He's good-bad, but not evil"). Is "Leader of the Pack" meant to be funny or to be a deflation of the popular "death disc" genre through mockery? Well, maybe all we can say is that The Shangri-La's played it straight.

Thank you for the opportunity to meditate on the subject.

I think both. It's genuinely quite touching ("My folks were always putting him down", "They said he was bad") but simultaneously self-mocking ("down, down", "But I knew he was sad").

I think I'll go and play their greatest hits.

Have you taken off your reasonable hat and put on your rationalizer one?

I'm simply an old softy.

Our stereo, though normally perfectly acceptable if not great, is horrible with vinyl. Which rather suits the car radio feel of the Shangri-Las.

When I was a kid, we once had a family of raccoons nesting in our chimney. Also, one evening I found a spider the size of a tarantula in my bedroom--scared the hell out of me. Dad couldn't believe that neither I nor my mom could handle it, until he saw the size of the thing himself.

Now that's what I'm talkin about.

That was my thought, but mine also languishes on vinyl, and my turntable is up at my country estate in Da Bronx.

Clean up your act with The Detergents.

[Is he really goin' out with 'er? I don't know. Look, here he comes now. Let's ask
'im. Hey, Murray, is it true Betty's wearin' your ring? Uh-huh.
Who's that bangin' on the piano? I don't know. You goin' out with
her tonight? You bet yer fur. By the way, where'd ya meet her? ]

I met her one day at the Laundromat.
[She turned around and smiled at me, ya get the picture? Yes, we see.]
And that's when I fell in love with the Leader Of the Laundromat

My folks were always putting her down (down, down)
Because her laundry came back brown (brown, brown)
I don't care if they think she's bad
I fell in love cuz she looked so sad
I got a date tonight with the Leader Of the Laundromat

[Dang it!!]

My dad said "Find a laundry that's new" (find a laundry that's new)
How can I tell my baby we're through (tell my baby we're through)
Gotta drive right into town
I don't care if my shirts are brown
I got a date tonight with the Leader Of the Laundromat

[Dang it!!]

[When I finally got there, I told her it was all over between us. I'll never forget the
hurt and the funny look in her eye. She grabbed my laundry and ran into the street,
directly into the path of a runaway garbage truck. I yelled "watch out !, watch out !,
watch out !, watch out !, watch ou-u-t ! "

[Dang it!!]

I felt so messy standing there (messy standing there)
My daddy's shorts were everywhere (daddy's shorts were everywhere)
Tenderly I kissed her goodbye
Picked up my clothes, they were finally dry
But I won't forget you, oh Leader Of the Laundromat

(oh-oh-oh-oh)
(ooh--ooh--ooh--ooh)
[Who's that bangin' on the piano?
I don't know.]

There was a "huge" horizon moon rising over the southbound Hollywood Freeway last night. Really amazing, like a giant white pie in the sky.

I'm sure someone else has posted before about the bizarre generated "from" names in some spam, but I just went to an old spamcatcher account to delete a month or so of spam and found some great ones.

I ostensibly received mail from:

Acacia Groom
Kunto Dismukes
Stove G. Twinge
Tweedledum P. Pigeons
Networked K. Nuggets

also from Guadalupe Boswell - could be a real name I guess, I just liked it.

Fly

i am in san miguel de allende mexico at the moment. in the zocalo (a small park at the center of town near a famous cathedral) there was a middle-aged man peddling jolts from his battery-operated TENS unit.

There was a Six Feet Under episode in which Brenda got orgasmic after some closely applied TENS unit stimulation.

Today in Union Square I passed a skinhead/Noddy Holder lookalike*. Polo shirt, Levis 501s rolled up to mid-calf, braces**, 14 eye DMs and (the Noddy Holder bit) mutton chop whiskers and longish hair.

* The ancient Britons among us may remember that Slade started as a skinhead band.
** Suspenders.

My stepdaughter Isabel (), who will be 13 in two weeks, has grown nearly 2 inches since May 19. She now tops her 15-yr-old sister, Annie, by almost 2 1/2 inches, and is gaining fast on Annie's twin, Thomas.

I have a feeling she's going to be one of those six-footers...one of those willowy, blue-eyed (although one of them is green), golden-haired six-footers with a personality so delightful and dynamic you couldn't possibly hate her for being beautiful. This, of course, is reason to be cheerful.

Recent ones here:

Stylish S. Dormitory
Meatrix Webby
Abetters I. Isotope
Tirade D. Reviewed
Drunkenness K. Barrister (okay, so that might be somebody's real name here at MF)