attica

The handoff from Chris last night made me smile. Clearly, Rachel does not enjoy the concept of Live in Front of a Studio Audience. Which is weird, because she's done that kind of thing before, but maybe it's a thing she does with gritted teeth.

Fun Jack White facts: 1) He took 'White' as a surname when he married Meg. His maiden name is Gillis. 2) He's joined forces with Jack Black to form a new musical act: Jack Grey.

Pumpkin by itself has not much flavor. Which is why it's good to put in other dishes to up the fiber/veg content without changing the flavor profile. I put it in chili, I put it into my mac and cheese sauce, I put it in shepherd's pie. And then I swan about, feeling stealthy and virtuous.

I share Rachel's affection for Connie Schultz, and am always happy to see her. It was especially moving for her to come on for this topic of gun violence and mental health, as her brother recently died by suicide.

And then there was the profile of John Sterling on Bryant Gumbel's HBO show, in which it was pointed out that JS's homerun call for Urshela refers to him as "Most Happy Fella!", a shout out to a 60-year-old Broadway show. Hip to the kidz, are these guys. Heh!

The 8 minute opening to last night's show was pheeeeenominal. 🔥

I would have thought earpieces/mic-packs are SOP.

Rookie, the bat dog of the Trenton Thunder, was at Yankee Stadium last night. MLB rules prohibit dogs from working as batdogs, so Rookie had to watch as a fan. I think that's wrong. Dogs like having jobs! Who's a good boy? You are! Yes, you both are!

Is it wrong to harbor a wee crush on David Walliams? Asking for a friend...

Sheesh, if talking about something ongoing is the thing that gets it to stop? I have a. lot. of yammering to do today. Just sayin'. I have not been watching that much of YES's postgame coverage, so I was shocked the other day to see Jeff Nelson in the analyst's chair. (The first string must be on vacay still.) Nelly! When did you get into the sportscasting biz? He did okay, but I find myself distracted by his top-of-the-noggin freckles. I know there's makeup for that. I suppose shouldn't be so shallow and let Nelly let his freckled-head flag fly, but I'm just not there yet.

Doc Gooden was arrested last month for cocaine possession. While driving. 1 am. New Jersey. 9 years since his last arrest. I mean, what really can you say?

Picking up the bag on your way to second and running with it?

The sheer force of vitriol thrown at (geddit?) Bouton for 'revealing the secrets of the clubhouse' was a.may.zing. Everybody in baseball haaaaated him for a long time. And all he did was just...write about his day. People are really invested in the myths they tell about themselves, you know? Sportswriters, who you would think would be all for it, were largely not. It threatened their gatekeeping status. It mostly took a generational turnover to praise Bouton. By the time we got to Patrick/Olbermann, it had been completed.

Did Rachel mention (I didn't catch the first bit of that block) the stripper/golf outing was meant to be a charity fundraiser? For "underprivileged kids"? I mean, that raises the WTFery for me. (The kids charity has pulled out, denying knowing about the stripper aspect of it, and Doral has canceled the event altogether).

I certainly appreciated Rapinoe's dismissive handwave that the equal-pay argument has been won. No, they don't have it yet, but taking an 'are you kidding me with this in 2019?!' approach to the arbitration/mediation/whatever thing is Good Framing. I for one am weary of the expectation that these tiresome arguments must be made fresh and earnestly by those on the other side who are behaving in bad faith. "Explain yourself to me in a way that will persuade me, a person who will refuse to be persuaded anyway!" Megan's 'whatever, everybody knows I'm right and you suck' is opium into my veins.

Sometimes I watch a game while on the phone with my sister, who lives in a different state. So obvs we have different tv-providers. Usually, my feed is a few seconds before hers. So I get excited for plays she hasn't seen yet. And then I laugh. "I'm watching from the future!"

...Followed immediately by Tom Hanks complaining that he was forced to show ID to buy a beer at Stagecoach. Obstacle indeed! I smiled.

English baseball fans are adorable. (And why can't US stadiums sell beer in those neat plastic cups with stein-like handles?)

One of the NYC tabs, referring to the HR record, calls the Yankees The Swat Team. Which is both apt and amusing, and now I want the old 70s era SWAT tv-show theme music to play during all appearances in all stadia. I do not think this is too much to ask. Swap out the Star Wars stuff for SWAT!

It's just another example of rich people view themselves as expert just because they're rich. 'Oh, I have a spare $45K kicking around, I'll scale the tallest peak on earth!' And then let 'the little people' do all the work and clean up after them. It's also a draw to douchecanoes that value exclusivity as a virtue signal. You know, since a thing is unobtainable, I shall obtain it, and thereby prove my superiority to the lowly proles! I totally get the impulse to fleece as many people as possible out of their money in this way, but: fecal time bomb. Rickrolling is still an unalloyed good thing.

As in all things erotic/non-erotic, context is everything. The Fleabag context is, erm, effective.

Wouldn't it be nice if mental health actually worked like that? For some people, past experience does nothing to quell present terror. (See my sister, who has decades of flight experience, positively quake every single time she boards an aircraft.) I don't mean to be argumentative. Her being nervous was just how I saw it. Obviously, I don't know her, so I can't say. My mileage varied, is all.

Honestly? I thought Madonna seemed downright nervous, ill at ease, overwhelmed by the experience. And a lot of her try-hard behavior struck me as compensating for that. It worries me a bit that I nursed a little bit of covetousness over Crow's fancy pants.

I passed my erstwhile Baseball Boyfriend Tino Martinez on the street yesterday. Running shorts and t-shirt. Heeey-ey.

I watched the list of shit Duncan Hunter spent campaign money on, and I think about the young women who have to beg the FEC to allow them to use campaign funds on child care so that they can run for office to unseat douchecanoes like Hunter. It's not good for my blood pressure, I tells ya.