FlaSoxxJim

Ha, the Koch Net would be like the oversized "Big Bertha" catcher's mitt they tried using on the Orioles to deal with catching Hoyt Wilhelm's knuckleball. The league finally caught up with them and regulated the size, but I got a kick out of seeing that big mitt in the "Baseball As America" exhibit at Sci and I last summer. As far as home field advantages, there was never a park more stacked than Comiskey I. The cut of the infield grass, the sloping firehose-foul lines to keep our bunts in... the old folks here can probably list a few more.

Yep, Steve Dahl's Wally Phillips song was a gem. "Oh Wally, well I wanted a dinner for two-o-ooh. But you sent me a scarf, Oh Wally."

I took the kids this weekend and I thought it was very good. I honestly didn't have to cringe at anything in the movie for fear of my kids otehr than innocent potty humor, because, like you say, the adult jokes are deftly delivered and the kids don't get it. Contrast that with Spider-Man 2 or even the new Power Rangers drek out now that I won't let my kids see (but I'm excited to see Spidey myself). They did a good job with both Shrek films, making them safe enough for the majority of kids but still very smartly written and intelligent for adults. I plan on seeing it again while it's at the theaters.

Oh, Mandy. Well you kissed me and stopped me from shaking - but I sent you away Oh, Mandy, well you came and you gave without taking - Now I need you to stay Oh, Mandy.

Wow. How do you follow up Spandau Ballet? With Kajagoogoo, of course... Tongue tied or short of breath, don't even try, try a little harder. Something's wrong, I'm not naive you must be strong, ooh baby try, hey girl, move a little closer You're too shy shy hush hush eye to eye Too shy shy hush hush eye to eye Too shy shy hush hush eye to eye Too shy shy hush hush hush Modern medicine falls short of your complaint, try a little harder You're moving in circles won't you dilate, ooh baby try, hey girl, move a little closer You're too shy shy hush hush eye to eye Too shy shy hush hush eye to eye Too shy shy hush hush eye to eye Too shy shy hush hush hush You're too shy shy hush hush eye to eye Too shy shy hush hush eye to eye Too shy shy hush hush eye to eye Too shy shy hush hush hush

The Guess Who was a good group. 'These Eyes' was an overwrought and overproduced piece that took ane of the mose effective musical exclamation ppints – key modulation - and ran it into the ground to the point of silly self-parody. I close my eyes when I hear this song and I see Martin Short's SCTV character Jackie Rogers, Jr., singing his gold lame' cape off. DA DA DA DA DA! These eyes are crying... These eyes have seen a lot of love but they're never gonna see another one like I had with you... (modulate upwards one whole step, because this is heavy stuff here...) DA DA DA DA DA!! These eyes... are crying (!)... These eyes have seen a lot of love but they're never gonna see another one like I had with you... (modulate up again, in case you missed the depth of my emotion the last time around...) DA DA DA DA DA!!! These eyes... are crying (!!)... These eyes have seen a lot of love but they're never gonna see another one like I had with you... (modulate up again, because there is a pack of dogs two blocks over that can't hear my pain...) DA DA DA DA DA!!!! These eyes... are crying (!!!)... These eyes have seen a lot of love but they're never gonna see another one like I had with you... ...at that point the song either fades out or goes out of the range of human hearing, I can't tell.

You hit the ground running, didn't you. As much as I loved America, that was a bad song when they did it too. OK, here's one that I always hated... I remember to this day The bright red Georgia clay And how it stuck to the tires After the summer rain Will power made that old car go A woman's mind told me that so Oh how I wish We were back on the road again Me and you and a dog named boo Travelin' and livin' off the land Me and you and a dog named boo How I love being a free man I can still recall The wheat fields of St. Paul And the morning we got caught Robbing from an old hen Old McDonald he made us work But then he paid us for what it was worth Another tank of gas And back on the road again I'll never forget the day We motored stately into big L.A. The lights of the city put settlin' Down in my brain Though it's only been a month or so That old car's buggin' us to go We've gotta get away and get back on The road again

Have we really descended into the strange world of Dead Girlfriend Songs? Cool... Are you somewhere up above, and am I still your own true love?

I was there. Then someone left the cake out in the rain. I don't think that I can take it, 'cause it took so long to bake it and I'll never have that recipe again... Oh, no! Ah, The hurtin's on me, but I will never be free...

YOU just referenced the %&$#*&!! Starland Vocal Band!! you have no room to criticize. Now please excuse me while I get back to having joy and fun and seasons in the sun...

Hawking and FZ are all that, f'sure. But note who comes first on the Flaxx hero hitlist. There's Chuck D. (not the guy from Public Enemy but he's cool too), then there's everyone else.

Looking for heroes? I got a couple.

Save some cake for me! Happy B-Day!

After a suitable period has passed out of respect, the political steel cage match that is SLAP will be back in action I'm sure.

People are being well-mannered. If you don't have anything nice to say about a person, then sometimes it's better not to say anything at all.

Do something about that BE GOOD. Godfather II and the Empire Strikes back are probably the only two Hollywood sequels that were cinematically superior to the original (Include Bride of Frank over Frankenstein too if you want to go back to the 30s). I give the nod to Star Wars over Empire as my favorite because of the way it changed pretty much everything, but I'm giving Godfather II a very slight edge over the original. As far as whether there is a better 1-2 Hollywood movie combination than the two Godfather films (yes I know there was a third Godfather film, but there might just as well havve not been), the answer is resoundingly no.

Which is German for 'The Koch, THE..." That is maybe my favorite Simpson's episode of all time. Now I'm sitting here by myself laughing just thinking of Sideshow grumbling as he's walking into all those rakes... Thanks, so much.

OK, series beer wrap-up time. I just watched Billy cough it up big time and I’m so ticked off I can’t even see straight. Only beer can calm me down (maybe). Other than a Chimay Blue that found it’s way into my hands at a dinner party yesterday, I stayed out west all weekend, beverage-wise. I had a couple of Flying Dog Classic Pale Ales (Colorado) on Friday because I ‘panicked’ when I couldn’t find my WA State standby Grant ales (I also like Flying Dog a lot, and since we’re not playing the Rockies in Interleague this year, I figured this was as close as I was gonna get). Otherwise, I settled in with two Cali beers, the WORLD CLASS Anchor Steam (SanFrancisco) and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (Chico), and three WA State beers, Grant’s IPA (found it yesterday) and Red Hook’s IPA and the new offering Sunrye which I hadn’t had before. Anchor Steam is notable for several reasons. First, it is the only nationally distributed example of the steam/Cali common style. It is a lager beer, but it is fermented at ale temperatures. The higher fermentation temperatures of ales gives them the fruity (esters and phenolics), sometimes butterscotch (diacetyl) flavors and all-over-the-place kind of busy complexity that ale lovers adore and lager purists shun. Anchor steam gives you the best of both worlds. Most lager yeasts will give you an undrinkable product if you make them work at temperatures above where they are most happy. Anchor Steam’s clean but with a hint of fruitiness flavor profile is only possible because they have a very well mannered lager yeast that doesn’t get too out of line if you subject it to high fermentation temperature. This is THE textbook representation of this historic beer style. The other interesting thing about Anchor is that the brewery was literally days away from folding in the late 60s when a local graduate student named Fritz Maytag stepped up to do something about it. It helped because this Fritz was one of THE Maytags, sitting on a sweet inheritance from his family’s appliance business (remember the lonely repairman ads?). So Fritz spent some of his inheritance to save the struggling local brewery. In the last 35 years he has grown the brewery into a nationally distributed brand and has saved a classic beer style from certain extinction. I’ll not say much about Sierra Pale Ale other than to say that no other American micro so completely embodies the American craft brewery success story. It’s the standard by which to judge the American pale ale style. It’s simple grain bill of 2-row pale malt and a bit of crystal malt, it’s subdued perle hop underpinnings and its hit you over the head cascade hop finish. Just no way too improve on that. The ubiquitous use of cascades as a finishing hop in American pale ales is due to this beer. That they still bottle condition (natural carbonation with live yeast still in the bottle) is a nice touch. I spent most of the 2002 homebrewing season just tweaking my Sierra clone until I nailed it. Of course that is now the house homebrew. Grant’s (Yakima, WA) IPA claims to be a faithful recreation of the historic IPA (India Pale Ale) style, and it comes pretty close. Historically, the deal is that British brewers in the 19th Century knew hops were a natural preservative. To get traditional ales to British troops and colonials in India and have them still be drinkable when they arrived, the brewers upped the hopping rates quite a bit. To offset that they had to also up the grain bill or else the beer would be unbalanced. The result was a higher alcohol/hoppier pale ale that was still stylistically a pale ale… but moreso (Yummmm). Anyway, Grant has the hops there, although not as high a hopping rate as the historic examples, and they use American cascades - natch - for flavor/aroma rather than traditional English Kents or fuggles). The alcohol is not much above a regular American ale, but it’s enough to hold its own against the hops. Bert Grant died a couple year back, but he lived to be a pretty old guy. He was a part of the early American craft beer renaissance and also a big player in the Washington hop trade, so the brand has a good pedigree. I stuck with the IPA because that’s were I stayed stylistically most of the weekend, but don’t hesitate to try any of their stuff when you get the chance. Red Hook (Seattle). Again, not much more to say. As major holders in the brewery now, Bud may be bringing the brand to a larger national audience, but it’s usually only a matter of time before the bean counters come in and try to tell the craft brewers how to brew more economically (i.e., cut corners and brew piss). As yet, Red Hook’s offerings have stayed solid, but the verdict is still out. Their distributors (at least on the east coast) have decided that the IPA (aka Ballard’s Bitter) is the new flagship offering. It’s a mistake, because the ESB (beer-speak for ‘extra special bitter’) was the rare malt-accentuated amber ale (with wide distribution anyway) in a sea of hop-driven west coast American ales. Red Hook IPA is drinkable, enjoyable, even, but I’ll take Sierra, Grant’s, and a half-dozen other hoppy American ales over it any day. With Pete’s Wicked Red having ridden into the sunset, I miss having the Red Hook ESB readily available at the corner store/pub. Red Hook’s IPA, as I mentioned, was for several ears known as ‘Ballard Bitter’, complete with a guy on the label with a handlebar moustache saying “Ya sure, Ya betcha,” for reasons unknown. The guy, the moustache, and the silly phrase are still on the new label of the IPA, but they have taken a back seat. In truth, Ballard had the “Coors Factor” going for it for many years. You know, you hear lots about a beer you can’t get and when it finally gets to your neck of the woods (courtesy of Burt Reynolds or otherwise), it doesn’t really live up to expectations. I had Ballard years ago when it first came out, and when I would tell fellow beer hunters it was ok but not great they couldn’t believe it. Now that it’s readily available they’ll concede it doesn’t quite live up to the hype. [The above is in no way trying to suggest that Red Hook’s IPA is nearly as dismal a beverage as friggin’ Coors. I merely was drawing the analogy by way of the ‘Coors Factor’ - where a regional beer suddenly goes national and some of the mystique of the beer falls away when a larger audience actually tries it. If someone tries to hand you a Coors, run away screaming and don’t look back.]

Walked in the winning f***ing run...

Double steel - the fun never ends...

Tie game. f*** me.

1 for 6 lifetime against Koch. Don't change now!

Billy just can't help being Billy can he?

At 31 a few of these will go right to the ol' spare tire. Don't let it stop you though. Happy B-Day!