GoodEnough: Phil Hughes

 

Philip Hughes, the Yankees summon you!  Welcome to the bigs, and remember: We’ll be watching!

This Week in Football: Watford Are Down

Robbie Keane celebrates a goal in the Spurs 2-2 tie with Arsenal. (Image)

It was a weekend of highs and lows over there in Great Britain. Lots at the top, lots at the bottom, and, oh yeah, Celtic are Scottish Premier League champs. Didn’t see that coming. We at Mr. Thursday extend our congratulations to the Ol’ Bhoys.

Firstly, Watford’s draw with Manchester City saw them officially relegated to the Championship after only one year in the top flight. Aidy Boothroyd’s battling Hornets can be very proud of their season that saw a lot of bum luck. A lot of games should’ve been won, only for their opponent to score a late equalizer and force them to do with a draw. We at Mr. Thursday offer our commiserations and eagerly await the arrival of the Yellow Army back in the big time, hopefully sooner rather than later. Family friendly team with a great bunch of supporters, a great manager, and players who really care.

GoodEnough for Me: Movin’ On Up

GoodEnough for Me is an on-going analysis of the rookie pitchers during the 2007 baseball season. The series was inspired by, and serves as companion piece to, The Extrapolater’s Smells Like Pujols series, which is taking a look at some of the top rookie position players. You can find Smells Like Pujols HERE.

ESPN, in its ubiquitous coverage of any time Boston and New York play each other, had a lot to say about this weekend’s series featuring the Most Obnoxious Fanbase In Sports (Boston Red Sox fans), and the Most Arrogant (Yankees fans, though, I mean, if any fanbase should be arrogant, it should be the Yanks, I suppose). 

Mr. Thursday monitored the match-up pretty closely, as, going into the Sunday night game, Boston was sporting our top reliever, and our top starter, both of which were offseason acquisitions coming all the way from Japan’s Nippon League.  Naturally, the series came to a crescendo with the third and final game, with GoodEnough for Me pitchers Daisuke Matsuzaka and Chase Wright started for their squads, both coming off solid outings earlier in the week. 

Do They All Die?: “The Strawberry Statement”

It seems that the 1960s was a contentious decade, then and now. You’ve got hippie types who long for it and you’ve got uber-conservative types who think that it was the beginning of the downfall of America. But there’s this movement now that kind of brings together the revolutionary and establishment factions of the 60s: The Bobo. Bobo is short for Bourgeois Bohemian, a new type of yuppie, first coined in David Brooks’ 2000 book, Bobos in Paradise. These yuppies represent the intersection of 1960s idealism and Reaganite self-interest. Brooks thinks that Bobos are a new phenomenon as of the 90s, but there seems to be a precedent for them in the “youthpix” or youth rebellion movies of the late 1960s. These films, produced by the capitalist establishment, attempted to show youth rebellion but many say they also undermined it. Consider The Strawberry Statement (1970).

Links Post

It’s been is strange and difficult week.  There are no decent words to sum up the events of this week, or anyone’s reactions to them.  Our thoughts and prayers go out to Virginia Tech.  God bless. 

In another note, we received some strange and inflammatory comments this week.  We’re not in the habit of moderating comments, and don’t want to be.  That said, if you, like “jk”, leave accusations and nonsense in the comments, and provide only a false e-mail address, we’re going to get rid of your comment.  You want to make anonymous statements?  Get your own blog. 

Pela is an excellent band from Brooklyn.  Amazingly, hardly anyone knows who they are.  Here’s a performance of a new, unrecorded song, “Philadelphia”.  [Dinner with the Band]

Wide slide?  Bulldoze the catcher?  No thank you! [We are the Postmen] 

MLB hones an umpire who, it seems, was some kind of asshole.  [Awful Officiating]

I am driving the Pat Burrell bandwagon from Philadelphia.  There are not a lot of passengers.  And Pat does not have a lazy eye.  [The Extrapolater]

Speaking of Philadelphia, apparently we’re getting our first “up-scale” McDonalds.  I don’t know what that means, either.  [Philadelphia Will Do]

Dmitri Young is completely insane.  [The Dugout]

Brett Myers, no longer a starter.  (Sigh).  Things are not well.  [Babes Love Baseball]

Sine Macula: Doolittle

A repeating, thumping sort of bass riff begins Doolittle’s first track, “Debaser”. A lean guitar riff crashes in, and shortly thereafter, a sort of surfer-rock riff on a second guitar. The opening track to the greatest of the Pixies albums is a movie recommendation. “Got me a movie, I want you to know”, howls Black Francis. Only the Pixies, perhaps, could make something so innocuous sound for furious and desperate. Of course, most bands don’t write songs about movies with girls cutting their eyeballs with razors. Pixies weren’t most bands, though.

The next track, “Tame”, is a hot nightmare. The song has a distorted, shuffling beat, and Black Francis is whispering the lyrics during the verse. It’s tense and taught, until with the single word chorus, with Francis screaming out the song title, and everything explodes. After the second verse, this scream repeats and increases in intensity, becoming hard breathing, with bassist Kim Deal offering backup harmonies for Francis’ breath, until Francis explodes with screaming again.

That’s the Pixies’ signature move: taught, quiet verses, and explosive screaming choruses.

Should Have Sent a Poet

The Dugout is one of the funniest and best websites on the internet. One of the guys responsible for the Dugout, Nick Dallamora, is a student at Virginia Tech, and was in class a building over as the shooting occured on Monday. His chilling account of that morning’s event can be found at AOL Fanhouse, here. Yesterday, Dallamora wrote for Deadspin, talking about the aftermath for the students and community of Virginia Tech. His account is honest and tragic, and worth reading, here.

During the account, Dallamora mentions a spine-tingling speech given by Nikki Giovanni, who’s a poet. Naturally, YouTube-savants, We Are The Postmen managed to find the video of her short speech. Hopefully, it’s posted at the top there, but since I don’t have access to YouTube at work, this is just a wing and a prayer. If you can’t see it above, check it out at We Are The Postmen, here. On Tuesday, we tried to offer poetry, but I don’t think anything we could have offered hear can touch the grace and fire of Giovanni’s poem.

Copycat

I was half watching the news last night after Lost when I heard the words Boston University, my soon-to-be alma mater, spoken. When I heard these words, my ears perked up. Perhaps some scientist at the school discovered the cure to cancer. Maybe the news anchors were discussing the Barack Obama rally at the school on Friday. Maybe John Silber, BU’s former High Overlord, was donating another cold million to the city. But no, I was shocked and disgusted that a member of my school community decided that he wanted to be a copy cat of Monday’s shooting at Virginia Tech. [Link]

Andrew Rosenblum, a part-time student at BU, allegedly sent his ex-girlfriend e-mails threatening her, her friends, and her family, saying, “It’s gonna be VT all over again.”

The events of Monday were shocking for the entire nation and have rocked our comprehension of man’s ability to hate. I am horrified when I put on CNN or The New York Times and see this killer. Rosenblum’s unconscionable acts were callous, and brutal. To consciously decide to threatenan act that is so fresh in the minds of everyone around you is twisted.

Hopefully, this Rosenblum kid will get his life together, get the help he needs, and never consider threatening such a heinous act again. But I am still amazed that there are people in the world who would consider a copycat crime. After Columbine, Ted Kaczynski, the Snipers and countless other tragedies, these nut cases creep into our news by attempting to or executing similar crimes.

I’m simply amazing that one of these individuals came out of a community that I belong to.