Today is the day folks go to the polls in many locations in New York State, everywhere except in the largest cities and vote for the school budget and the school board members. For some reason, the city of Albany only votes for the budget now, and the school board in November. More on that and Rex Smith speaking at the Friends of the Albany Public Library annual meeting this eveninghere.
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Don’t care about Dancing with the Stars, but I do care about my wife, and SHE cares about DWTS. So I got the phone number from the end of the taped performance and tried to call in a number of times, but kept getting a busy signal. Then I went online to do so, but it required to be registered with ABC.com. Lo and behold, I WAS registered with ABC.com, though I don’t recall why. Five votes for Kristi Yamaguchi & Mark Ballas, who got 60 out of 60 points from the judges (the competition got 51 and 52 votes.)
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I haven’t sent out my mixed CDs yet because I saved them to the drive, then the burner failed to put the data on the disc. I have figured out a workaround, but can’t get to until this weekend; sorry. It is sequenced and I do like it; Gordon will recognize the inspiration immediately. So far got mine from Gordon (like it), Tosy (listened to about half), and Lefty (haven’t played yet). Details to follow.
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Best wishes to Edward Kennedy after his medical episode. I was looking at my Bushisms calendar, where W. referred to him as Theodore, one of the more understandable mistakes in the gaffe-filled daily.
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The Subway series played out this past weekend. For me, the excitement is tempered, maybe because they are, at least so far, two mediocre teams, though the Mets, who swept, less mediocre than the Yankees.
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The only parts of the NBA playoffs I have watched has been when I’ve taped ABC World News and the game has run over. For instance, I saw the last 18 seconds of the Celtics Game-Seven win over Cleveland, which took about 10 minutes, with all the fouls and timeouts.
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Happy birthday, PixieNona!Are you sure it was a cold and not allergies? Your symptoms were very similar to mine last week.
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In answer to a comment to this story DNA cleared them, but they’ll never feel free and some of the comments: “There’s particular disdain for the prosecutors of these crimes because, often, the prosecution withheld evidence that could have exonerated the defendant, esp. in Dallas County, TX. At least some of these people were home and with their families or at work; the assertion that ‘people doing the right thing don’t get mixed up in this stuff’ is simply inaccurate much of the time. There is also mistaken identity by witnesses far more often than most people realize. With all that, there’s no way to blame the juries, who can only weigh the evidence presented.”
ROG
Category: baseball
The Lydster, Part 49: Skills
On Lydia’s birthday last month, I measured her: 3’8″ or 44 inches. Her mother weighed her on the bathroom scale: 46 pounds. Then the next week, the doctor took her vitals for her four-year checkup. 44″, 46 lbs. 0ur wall chart and scale meet medical standards.
For her birthday, we had a little party for her with her maternal grandparents, one of her uncles and aunts and two of her cousins. She was uncharacteristically cranky; I mean she can be cranky, but usually only to her parents at bedtime (and not that often). Actually, she was sobbing uncontrollably for reasons I didn’t understand, other than fatigue. So I got one or two of her stuffed animals, they talked to her, and she was fine. My wife said, “You’ve got skills.” I said, “You seem surprised.”
One of the things Lydia got for her birthday was a ball and bat. It’s not a Wiffle ball, but an OBall, with a bunch of the letter O glued together in a spheroid. BTW, Fred Hembeck will be pleased to know the colors of the ball are orange and blue, the Mets’ colors. She likes to hit. While I tried to rig up some T-ball-like arrangement, she prefers me to pitch to her. And though she writes and throws right-handed, she seems to prefer to hit left-handed. She likes the pitches low and inside, though she does OK low and a little outside as well. Perhaps she’s got skills.
ROG
At the Old Ball Game
It’s baseball season already? Two games in the books, played in Japan, and a full slate starting next week. Weren’t some games postponed last year because of snow?
A baseball – will it blend?
Still, I love baseball. I love its traditions. I love its attention to arcane statistics. Speaking of which: What team and in what season did every player with over 300 at-bats had a batting average over .300, the only time in history this has happened?
Baseball is…. narrated by the legendary announcer Ernie Harwell – I have this on CD
The hardest part of the new season is finding out where players got traded to. I know pitcher Johan Santana signed with the Mets and that Mets OF Lastings Milledge was traded, but not much else.
A version of Abbott & Costello’s Who’s On First different from the version I own on CD
Baseball by Bill Cosby, from the album ‘To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With’
According to this story, actor Richard Widmark, who died this week, was the father-in-law of Dodger Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax.
Baseball and Football by George Carlin: I own a different version on LP. This one seems more recent, more expansive. I most love that final description of football.
The answer to the trivia question: the 1930 St. Louis Cardinals. I did not know that; I would have picked the 1927 Yankees.
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Oh, and it’s March Madness in college basketball. I know for nothing about it, yet managed to get 15 of 16 right on the first day. I picked Davidson over Georgetown! I picked Siena, located in Albany County, NY over Vanderbilt! And I still lead my pool. The bad news: I had Pitt going to the Final Four, losing to UCLA (with UNC beating Kansas, and UCLA over UNC). All my remaining picks are overdogs. Go, Bruins!
ROG
Roger Answers Your Questions, Scott and GayProf
Happy Easter! Appropriately, I’m answering questions from a couple of good eggs.
Scott, who I recently offered a few questions to, has responded in kind.
1. Who do you think will win the NL East this year?
Why, the M-M-M-M-Meh-Meh-Meh-Meh. I’d rather not say; I don’t want to jinx them. They have a new front-line pitcher which should avoid that near-record collapse from last year.
2. Who is your favorite singer?
Gee, that’s hard. I like lots of different singers for a lot of different moods. People such as Nat King Cole and Sam Cooke certainly would be on the list, but so would a lot of rockers. I find it difficult to separate the vocal from the material. Mike Love of the Beach Boys has a bit of a nasally sound to his voice, yet those BB songs on which he sings lead work for me. Other living singers? Cassandra Wilson immediately comes to mind.
3. Who is your favorite comic book hero? (Gay Prof adds: “I hope the answer to question number 3 from Scott is Wonder Woman.”)
Oh, GP, I so do hate disappointing you. Let me explain how I got into comics in college. A new friend of mine collected them. I thought he was crazy, then I started looking at them. The first one I bought was Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1. I thought he was pretty cool. (Later, he decided to change his name to the boring Power Man, and my interest waned.) 
Luke Cage appeared in the shadows of Amazing Spider-Man #122 and was on the cover of #123, which got me interested in the webslinger. At about the same time, I was interested in Sub-Mariner #50 (or so) at a point when Bill Everett, the golden age artist who had created Namor, returned to the book. In fact, Sub-Mariner was the first book I sought out back issues of. I got into the Defenders because Namor was in it, then the Avengers because of the Defenders-Avengers war. So I was a Marvel zombie. I’d say my favorites are Spider-Man, Namor and Luke Cage, but I discount anything that might have happened in the last decade or so.
Conversely, I really wasn’t interested in the mainline DC superheroes that eventually bored me in my childhood (Superman, Batman, Flash). By the time I DID look at Wonder Woman, she wasn’t even wearing the star-spangelled garb. These stories were so damn EARNEST – they marketed some of them as “Women’s Lib” issues – their term, not mine. I owned this particular issue, maybe my first, but didn’t stay with it long, I’m afraid, GP.
4. What was your favorite subject in school?
Spelling. Eye wuz allwayz a gud speler. And math. I always liked arithmetic and algebra. I like how if you have a long number and the digit adds up to nine, then it’s divisible by nine. Numbers are magic. I’m more likely to remember someone’s phone number than someone’s name.
5. What was the toughest subject for you in school?
Shop. I had it in seventh and eighth grade – wood, ceramics and something else. The wood items never came out evenly; the ceramic things kept blowing up in the kiln. Strangely, ninth grade metal shop wasn’t so bad, maybe because the tools were more precise so I couldn’t muck things up so much.
GayProf: My question would be what food is your ultimate “comfort food?”
Mac and cheese. My wife makes it, grating the cheese. We’re not talking blue boxes of Kraft here.
Scott, I’ll answer your other question soon; it’s tied into Nik’s, and should best be answered together.
ROG
Sports Fan QUESTION
Siena College, which is very near Albany, did a Evanier musing about typos, this definitely made me chuckle. It wasn’t the ONLY typo I found so far, but I’ve been looking.
ROG