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Drooling on the Pillow

Friday, October 14, 2005

Serentity Now 

I've been paying bills for the past half hour and didn't need anything special to become annoyed, but since you asked, here's what cranked me off.

The return envelopes. The return address lines in the upper left hand corner. You get a quarter inch to list the city and then, over a little to the right, three inches for the zip code. Jersey City is not a very long town name, but it does not fit in the space provided.

Somebody actually designed these envelopes. It had to be somebody from here. Certainly not from here.
Posted by: Sluggo / 2:36 PM
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Thursday, October 13, 2005

Accessorizing The Crypt Master 

Here, via Mr. Snitch is Old Haunts, a delightful website featuring photographs, magazine covers, and paraphernalia from Halloweens of the '60s and '70s.


This is what they were doing in 1962. Assisted Living, Edith Piaf and a Haz-Mat guy with a goiter.

To the right is what Grace is going as this year.

The Crypt Master. Last year she was the Ice Ninja, the year before the Wolf Ninja, the year before some sort of green nasty thing and the year before that she was Captain Hook. Her first year she was Peter Pan, which character had at least the feature of being usually played by a female. The Goddess' dreams of sending her little girl out there dressed as some sort of princess or fairy are officially doomed.

Grace took awhile deciding between the axe and a sword that drips (internally) with fake blood. She went with the sword as she liked the way it went with the glow-in-the dark skeleton gloves.

Posted by: Sluggo / 11:02 AM
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Eddings Missed A Pretty Good Game 


Saw the end of the Angels/White Sox game tonight when the home plate umpire pulled a Denkinger and jobbed the Angels.

I'm on record (over at 11th and Washington) as picking the Angels in five for the World Series, but I still have to root for the White Sox a little. 1917's a long time ago.

If you didn't see it the Sox had two men out and nobody on in the bottom of the ninth, two strikes on the batter. Escobar threw a sinker that the catcher picked off just before it hit the ground as the batter waved at it. For some reason the batter took off for first as the Angels were leaving the field and they called him safe. You knew as you were watching it you were seeing something that was going to leave a mark.

The home plate umpire, Doug Eddings, claimed that the ball hit the ground before it was caught and the other umpires backed him up. The truth was, none of them saw it or were in a position to see it and they were all wrong. It didn't hit the ground. Pinch runner steals second. Crede hits a double and the games over.

Okay, they made a mistake. But in the after game interview Mike Scioscia said that the umpire claimed that he never called the batter out. Well, I'm just one of a few million people that saw him do it. He called the strike with his right arm and then balled up his fist and called the batter out. Which means that he was out. Which means the catcher can roll the ball to the mound and we go on to the tenth.

Scioscia went on to say all the right things about how they hadn't done what they needed to do to win and that they shouldn't have let themselves be vulnerable to a bad call (although he didn't put it that baldly). And it's perfectly true that the umpire didn't cause the Angels to lose. But he did cause the White Sox to win and that boy is not going to be picking up any playoff money next year, you can bet on it.

Two things I like about Scioscia. First he won't have anything to do with the awful, horrible, excreable Fox 'in-game' interviews where the idiots in the booth talk to the managers about absolutely nothing during the game. He sends his pitching coach out for that. Secondly, despite this evenings events and despite the fact that he was clearly very angry, when he was asked if he would be in favor of some sort of instant replay he was emphatic that it had no place in baseball.

The last time a baseball team broke my heart was 1992 and baseball doesn't mean to me what it once did. Still, I love the game and follow it, but the strikes, the money, the jerks, the drugs, all of them have taken chunks out of my love for baseball. But I would be disappointed if they brought in instant replay. What happened tonight was part of the game and another part is rolling with it.
Posted by: Sluggo / 1:10 AM
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Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Bernie Williams 


Although there's been no official word, everybody's assuming Bernie Williams has played his last game for the Yankees, if not his last game period.

Tim Marchman in the New York Sun (most of it's behind a subscriber wall) makes the case that while not he's not on a par with the greatest center fielders in the history of the game, Williams can be placed among or very near the top ten. There's a lot of sentiment involved with Bernie, just because of the kind of guy he is, but Marchman is a numbers geek and makes a statistical case.

If he is gone, I owe it to him as a Yankee fan to say thanks. He's been a great player. And in fifteen years of working for Steinbrenner and performing in the hottest media spotlight in the world, he's never embarassed himself or his team. Not once. If that seems like an odd thing to congratulate someone for, that speaks more of the game than the guy. He's a man anyone would be proud to have as a son, a father, a brother or a friend.
Posted by: Sluggo / 10:35 AM
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Monday, October 10, 2005

Just Don't Talk About My Mama 

I liked this story in the New York Times about the "rarefied, but cut-throat world of maps, books, Americana and antiquities."

It seems one map dealer, named W. Graham Arader III has been accusing another map dealer, named E. Forbes Smiley III of being a thief and a crook for more than 20 years and now that Smiley III has been charged with three counts of larceny, Arader III is basking in the warmth of vindication.

Not exactly the Hatfields and McCoys, the level of violence will probably not rise higher than one of them tossing a Kir in the face of the other. Still, it's fun to imagine E. Forbes Smiley IV taking out W. Graham Arader IV to revenge his father's fall from the grace. The bad blood and waspish comments in the antique map dodge are apparently not limited to E. and W.

It also provides me with an opportunity to use my favorite Samuel Johnson quote. Upon being encouraged to engage in a light-hearted exchange of insults (an 18th century version of the dozens), he came up with "Sir, your wife under pretence of keeping a bawdy-house, is a receiver of stolen goods." In Johnson's case, no indictments were forthcoming.
Posted by: Sluggo / 12:07 PM
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Sunday, October 09, 2005

Search Follies 

If you ask MSN Search "are bull frogs 1st level consumers," Sluggo Needs A Nap is the third thing that comes to their mind.

And, disturbingly, I was the number one result of this search: "Eric Estrada, you're a fag"
Posted by: Sluggo / 5:09 PM
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Carnival of The New Jersey Bloggers, Number 21 

Steven Hart does the Carnival thing over at The Opinion Mill.
Posted by: Sluggo / 4:20 PM
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