Heartbreak, Hair-Loss, and Housewives

Quite an interesting Sunday at Bloggerman Central, as a busy morning running errands led into an afternoon of (mostly) sports debauchery. I’m very happy to report that through it all both the TV and the computer received no substantial damages as the scene could have turned out much worse.

First the Heartbreak. Those loveable “Amazins” from Queens had a chance to make the playoffs after a pitiful first half of the season. They had to win and hope that the Brew Crew in Wisconsin dropped their game to the Cubbies. If they failed it would be the last game ever in Shea has they prepare to move to their new home next spring. After the Fish plated a two in the sixth doom and gloom set in until Carlos Beltran smacked an offering deep and gone to left to tie it up. You had the feeling that that for all the ups and downs and queasiness that this season has heaped upon my shoulders that they may actually pull this one off and we can walk away contented. That might have been the case if we didn’t have to bring in the bullpen who promptly gave up two home runs in the top of the seventh. But this was the final game at Shea and there had to be some magic right? Uh-uh. None here, as both Delgado and Church’s late inning drives dropped harmlessly into the Marlins’ gloves in left and right center respectively. It was a sad way to close a tough season and say goodbye to (what for me is) an institution. I grew up at Shea and it was the only home I knew for the Mets.

Here are my top 3 moments there (in order of occurrence):
1) Going down on the field for a Jr. Mets clinic and getting catching tips from (then) pitching coach, Mel Stottlemyre.

2) Sitting up in the upper deck during an April doubleheader with the Cubs, threatening to take my shirt off if Tim Teufel didn’t get a hit.

3) This was the most important one btw: Mrs. Bloggerman accepting my proposal of marriage on April 23 in a suite along the 3rd base line. (oh yeah, Mr. Met was there too).

Now the Hair-Loss. Somebody call Giuseppe Franco because I ain’t got no stinkin hair left. My fantasy baseball team (coincidentally, also called “Nobody Likes a Jerk”) was leading in the championship week by almost 70 points going into Saturday’s games. Well that lead quickly started to fall apart as my pitchers were scratched for their weekend starts for a variety of reasons and my opponents’ were firing on all cylinders. And although he did defeat me (Congrats Chris!) my leading hitter for the week, Joey Votto’s 41 points were more then his top two hitters combined. None the less I’m bummed but will take my winnings and maybe buy Mrs. Bloggerman something nice. We’ll see. Any ideas?

And Finally the Housewives. Last night is a prime example about why I need to catch up with my “shows” and can’t rely on the DVR. Desperate Housewives premiered its new season on ABC last night and I missed it. Why you ask? (go ahead ask!) Well because I had to watch the last 4 episodes from last season online last night because our DVR had to be replaced shortly after the end of last season thereby erasing all of the saved episodes. And because ABC only airs the 4 most recently aired ones (including repeats) I had to wait all summer until they caught up with me. So last night why Mrs. Bloggerman was upstairs watching something or other, I was at the kitchen table immersed in the going-ons of Wisteria Lane.

Can We Just Stop Asking Her Questions?

Most of you know where I fall out in this year’s presidential campaign but I still am interested in a good solid, issues-driven campaign on both sides. To that effect I ask everybody, “Please stop asking Sarah Palin questions!!!”

She has no experience, even the staunchest of Republicans have to agree on that and the only reason she’s in this thing is that she believes in Jebus, Guns, and is, frankly, a woman.

All that aside, she just should stop answering questions because she comes off like a complete ditz. Case in point, last night’s interview with Charlie Gibson on ABC. When asking about her foreign policy experience (something by the way the VP’s office has gotten much more involved with in the past 20 years), Palin said she has not traveled abroad much -- to Mexico and Canada, and since she became governor, to Kuwait and Germany to visit troops. And she said she has not met with a foreign head of state, but dismissed that experience held by Obama and his running mate Joe Biden, and McCain.

"We've got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time," she said. "It is for no more politics as usual," she said, "and somebody's big fat resume, maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment, where, yeah, they have had opportunity to meet heads of state." (her quote)

Um...Ms. Palin, the McCain campaign is on the phone and they want you to shut the hell up! Are you aware that you just described your running mate? John McCain has served in the US House and Senate since 1982. By my count that’s 26 years, or in your words “decades and decades in that Washington establishment...” perhaps you should just stick to giving advice on how to be a “hockey-mom” and the proper way to clean your semi-automatic assault, err hunting, rifle.

You Give Us 22 Minutes and We’ll Give You a Trip to NYC (DAY 2)

The Race

We headed into Manhattan in the early morning to meet up with Elliot and run a 5 mile race in Central Park. Parking was fairly easy to come by (see next section) and we walked a few blocks over to the race area. Not only was I surprised to see that this was not a small race (over 5,000 participants) but once the starting gun went off it was the quietest race I'd ever taken part in. It was so quiet that not only could you hear yourself think but you could also hear what the guy next to you was thinking! Lucky for everybody out there, Mr. Entertainment (me) was there to talk the whole way through. In the post race interview with some girl who stuck a camera in my face I even managed to get in some of POTUS' talking points. When asked why I ran the race, Bloggerman said, "If we don't run, the terrorists win!"

Ticket
What the #*+@! Why is there a parking ticket on the windshield when we got back to the car? We specifically moved it from one side of the street to the other and pulled up to make sure we were not in the "No Standing" zone. Oh we can’t park here because numb nuts over at city hall decided the only other sign needed along the whole block would be 500 ft down the other side.
Nice... Thanks for fleecing the drivers so that the empty suit wearing panty-waits at ABC can park in front of their building. We wouldn't want them to have to walk like the rest of us. They might forget all those great reality shows they were thinking of on the commute in!

The Game
Well we finally made it to Shea and had sunny skies and 2 baseball games to take in (they were playing a true double header to make up for the rain out). Thanks to Josh for hooking us up on the seats. We could see everything. Unfortunately that also meant that we could spend 3.5 hours in the sun and see the Mets drop the first of two.

We hit the car after the end of the game because we knew that if we stayed for the second game we wouldn't get home until after midnight.

Friendly’s
For dinner we pulled off just north of Baltimore and thanks to Mrs. Bloggerman's expert navigation (and Google Maps) we found yet another reason to get off at Joppastowne (in addition to the cheap gas). Unfortunately our diets had already been blown for the day so we opted away
from the ice cream and Fribbles for two salads... although after the next marathon, we're going back for sliders, motz sticks, and bacon-cheese waffle fries all on one plate. Yummo!

The Pup-a-Lup
A special thanks to the Boig collective who were gracious enough to watch Mooks while we wenst away. They rock and when we got home she was sprawled out on the bed enjoying her freedom! Well not for long as we had a (near) midnight stroll around the neighborhood and managed to come back with "more" in our bag then when we left.

New Year, New Me?

Well not really (again, Hertz should be paying me for these constant plugs!) but I am excited for the year upcoming and all the posts to this blog that will accompany it. To start things off I want to thank our hosts for New Years (you know who you are) as both Mr. Blogger and his wife (Mrs. Blogger) had a great time with friends and hope to do it again soon.

Now speaking of New Year’s I want to take a moment to take issue with the so-called “New Year’s Eve” programming that the networks (both broadcast and cable) trotted out this year to entertain those of us sitting at home. Every year, it seems, these bastions of mindless entertainment out do each other in the vapid, idiotic, and down right OUCH they manage to program into a few hours every December 31.

Here is just a sampling of what I saw: (in alphabetical order)

ABC

Dick Clark is alive, we get it. He looks pretty good for a man his age especially considering his recent health scare. However, to hear him talk for even a few moments is intensely painful and reminds us that even before the stroke people accused him of being a robot with human skin. Well to their credit he looks even more so now, only this time around his speech matches his amour plating.

I realize that taking Mr. Clark off the air entirely would leave the job up to Ryan Seacrest (Out) but it might be worth the sacrifice. At least this way I could skip the American Broadcasting Company’s programming all together. Seacrest had some in depth observations when talking to New York mayor Mike Bloomberg. When the mayor said he wouldn’t run for President (I still don’t believe him), Seacrest stood there with the “err…what do I say to this guy now?” look on his face. He did however seem more at ease with Carrie Underwood and the Jonas brothers (who?????)

CNN

Pretty-boy Anderson Cooper hosted from New York and other then the timeouts for national news (the same national news that had been airing since 12pm in the afternoon) was just as painful. Perhaps its my high aspirations for national news networks that they might find better stories in the “crowds” of Times Square then the broadcast networks do but alas, even the mighty CNN went with the “we’ve found a lady and her kids here who are immigrants and she just became a US citizen….” Boy am I excited! WAAA-WOOOO and junk. STOP NOW….

ESPN

To it’s credit at least the “4-letter” didn’t have a correspondent in New York broadcasting live from the ball drop telling us about all the sports celbs in attendance. They also didn’t go live to Alex Rodriguez as A-Rod conveniently dropped by the NBC Carson Daily show (read the whole story here ) to let everybody in America know how much he “loves” New York (and managed to really make me ill with his “makeout session” with his wife at the stroke of Midnight). No instead ESPN took us live to the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. You know the one, behind “The Strip” on the other side of the expressway, that bastion of Cool and Hip (and cheap….this is one of the places that you get those $30 room specials on-line). There at a specially designed site, we could watch a world record attempt at motorcycle distance jumping. All of that might have been well and good if the show when started at 1130pm EST got right down to the jump and then we could have tuned into another station to see the ball drop in NY. No. That was not the plan. Instead we had to be introduced to 4 “co hosts, “ all of whom were washed up former athletes who nobody in the audience (including their own families) cared anything about. Then we were treated to an hour, that’s right the damn jump didn’t even occur at midnight (in any time zone!), of packages on the preparations for the jump, how the physics of the jump would work, and oh yes, how the “jump measured up to other events in the world of sport that featured supreme acts of athleticism!”

I beg public television to get it’s HD hat in the ring. Please get a camera on the clock and the ball, leave it there and then just after all the confetti is done falling, go to the celebration in the next time zone (Chicago or something). It’s either that or next year I’m going to stick my head in the sand and wait for the tap on the shoulder that it’s now 2009.

Blogger man… OUT!