BilmBlog500

I am extremely happy that the Washington Nationals got drummed out of the NL playoffs early, and for as long as Stephen Strasburg is playing baseball, I want for them never to advance to the World Series. Stephen Strasburg himself?  If he goes to another team in a trade or free agency, he can win all the World Series rings he wants.  Just none with the Nationals. Why? So two years ago, the Nationals has Stephen Strasburg on an innings limit because he was recoving from Tommy John surgery, and when the Nationals advanced to the playoffs, they refused to let Stephen Strasburg pitch because of this innings limit.  This was a controversial decision, and a decision that I disagreed with strenuously. It's not that I am opposed to any innings limits for pitchers.  My 16-year-old nephew has been playing a lot of baseball in both spring and fall leagues from Little League on.  I've never noticed my brother to be one of those fathers who wants for his son to win at all co...

So it's been an interesting last ten days or so! For the first ten years of JABberwocky, I worked alone in my apartment, it's never given me cabin fever the way being forced to stay in my apartment by weather does.  It's not just a recent thing with Irene last year or Sandy this year, I remember an MLK day many years ago when there was an ice storm sort of thing and the sidewalks were too dangerous.  But Sandy might have been the worst of it, in part because of the subway flooding.  All the years I was working alone, I would go to the Post Office because I had to do it, I could stop at the library to read the paper, I did my own messenger work for a good chunk of that time and could go out laden with manuscripts and enjoy some fresh air and exercise.  But with Sandy, the office was closed last Monday and Tuesday, the subways weren't running, it was hard to do much of anything social, and there wasn't any choice.  And I had power!  Many of my Scrabble friend...

The World Science Fiction Comvention is always exhilarating and exhausting for me. Bouchercon is a little different. Named for the mystery fiction critic Anthony Boucher, it is the World Fantasy of the mystery genre in that it is a heavy networking convention, a busy bar scene for the professionals, but without the membership cap, and more fans, and people who actually go to panels.  It isn't near as exhilarating for me as a WorldCon, but I also have fewer clients, so there's a little less scheduling pressure.  And while there's a strong bar scene at night, there aren't the room parties and hospitality suites that are such an important part of the scene, social and business and fannish all in one, at the major sf conventions, so it doesn't require as much after hours time. So I had clients to see and award ceremonies to attend, I was also able to use the weekend to see some of Cleveland and really, most importantly, to recharge the batteries a bit after an exhaustin...

Once upon a time I was a very big Mets fan.  Over the years things have changed to where I am more a tennis fan than a baseball fan.  But I have enough residual Mets-loving in me that I was feeling the tug of Citi Field, where I'm not sure I've been since Opening Day.  The siren song got very loud indeed today.  A day game.  The last home game of the season.  Nice September weather, not as sunny as I'd have liked but sunny enough.  And R. A. Dickey going for his 20th win.  20 wins is a major milestone in baseball, enough of one for Dickey to have a chance at at being the first Met to reach it since 1990.  Enough of one that Dickey is a strong contender to win the NL Cy Young Award for the league's best pitcher.  In a Mets season that got off to an unexpectedly pleasant start which made the team's ultimate collapse that much more disappointing, Dickey's great season has been the one solace for a Met fan. So I took a long lunch.  It w...

And while I'm linking from the Washington Post... Columnist Tracee Hamilton gives some love to long-time Detroit Tigers announcer Ernie Harwell, who passed away this past week. Harwell was a great baseball announcer. I had the honor of hearing him often during my college years, including during the 1984 season when the Tigers dominated baseball. And the lines Tracee quotes from which Harwell recited at each season's opening -- they were in my family's Hagaddah as well and recited every year at Passover. The man had taste.

The Sunday NY Times carried an obituary for Jane Jarvis. She was the organist at Shea Stadium for fifteen years. Much more to her life than just that, according to the obit, but it's for that which I will remember her. According to the article, she left the Mets in the late '70s, only a few years after I first started going to Mets games (1977, I think, was my first), but in my memory she had to have been pounding her organ keys longer into my Mets attendance than that. It's a tribute to her that I feel as if she must have been part of my life longer than she actually could have been. Thinking of Jane Jarvis brings back memories of what is now a long distant age when you could go to a baseball game without being assaulted by loud non-stop music. Even after Jane left there was a certain civility to the soundtrack at a Mets game, like having Sunday in New York played before every Sunday home game. I must be getting old, to be getting sentimental about the quiet old da...

The New York Times around a week ago put up this wonderful 31-year-old image from Chester Higgins, Jr. as part of a post on their baseball blog  (which also ran in the printed paper) setting up a contest for entries in the Banner Day that is no more, winners of which can be found here . It's a real trip down memory lane for me which I had to comment on. Banner Day was a uniquely Mets promotion.  Between days of a doubleheader, fans could parade their banner on the field to be judged by a distinguished jury which might include some obscure person with a Mets connection, a radio host for a show I never listened to, and maybe an actual celebrity or half celebrity. It was a wonderful day which exists no longer. For one, it was a doubleheader.  The Mets continued to schedule a Banner Day doubleheader well into the 1980s at a time when doubleheaders were no longer scheduled.  While it was once quite common for teams to play two, it fell out of favor for many reasons.  Attendance grew an...

So I spoke a week or so ago about Citi Field , now it's time to dish dirt on the new Yankee Stadium, which I attended for a Mariners/Yankees game on July 1. As with the new Mets ballpark, it's very disappointing to see that the subway hasn't gotten much investment.  No handicapped access to the new park.  The main post-game entrance to the #4 train is still a block away by the old Yankee Stadium, though the front-of-train crowding is a little reduced because there are some mid-platform entrances that are along the way from some of the gates in the new stadium that take up some of the pressure.  And the entrances to the C/D trains are all still best accessed from across the street without much improvement.  However, there is a new Metro North stop a 5 or 15 minute walk depending from the new stadium that offers direct daily access to the Hudson Line and on weekends to the Harlem and New Haven line as well, and that makes getting to the park much much much more convenient for...

Many years ago I was a regular at Shea Stadium with a 60-game ticket plan.  That ended in the mid-1990s.  No money when I started my own business, and the baseball strike cooled my ardor as well.  The ardor is still cooled some.  The "security" restrictions (i.e., the Yankees and Washington Nationals are among the teams that will let you bring in a factory-sealed water bottle but not that same bottle empty) after 9/11 make going to a game less pleasant.  At least with the Kindle I can now bring plenty of reading material just like the old days, gone post 9/11, when I could take in a backpack full of manuscripts and other reading which ain't so easy to fit when the allowable bag size is 16x16x8.    Even though I can now afford even over-priced NYC ballpark tickets, I wasn't rushing to go to the new Yankee Stadium, and the Mets' Citi Field.  (& yes, the Mets do allow plastic bottles full or empty, but no glass or hard containers.) But when one of my friends ende...

Hunger, seen Saturday April 11 2009 at the IFC Center, Aud. #3.  3.5 slithy toads Sugar, seen Saturday April 11, 2009 at the AMC Empire 25, Aud. #5.  3 slithy toads. I saw these two films prior to heading off for London Book Fair, almost 2 months ago.  Sugar is still hanging around here and there, such as at the Cinema Village in New York City.   Hunger , you'll want to keep an eye out for on DVD.  I'd certainly recommend renting both.  Hunger is the better movie, but Sugar the more enjoyable.  I've been meaning to blog about both, but as you can tell from the small # of posts in May, it's been a busy time in the weeks since I got back from London, and the blog often feels the brunt of my busy-ness. Hunger is about a 1981 hunger strike in the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland led by Bobby Sands.  But while about Bobby Sands' hunger strike, the film makes an interesting and even courageous decision to NOT approach the story directly from Sands' poin...

So I just got back from seeing a ballgame at Nationals Park with a friend. Now, even in the height of the fluid rule stuff when flying, when you couldn't bring on any liquid of any sort at all, I was able to bring on an empty plastic bottle which I could ask the flight attendants to fill up for me the moment I got on so that I would have some water at my seat during the flight. Even once when I had to go thru the security check with my empty bottle and then one of the random checks they were doing when you boarded. Even today, I still bring an empty half-liter soda bottle with me so I can go to the drinking fountain and have water without having to buy a new bottle of bottled water all the time. So when I read up on the Washington Nationals web site about their security rules and saw this "one per person, a factory sealed water bottle of up to 1 liter," I decided to test it. Knowing I was doing evil, I had an empty 16 oz plastic bottle in my bag, which I hoped to fill ...