Now playing on iTunes: Josh Kelley; Travelin'

this is Youppi!:


and this is Brad Wilkerson:


Y'know how Tom Hanks said "There's no crying in baseball"? This guy shot that theory down. Last night was indeed a sad night for Expos fans around the world, and what was bittersweet to see was that some of the players shared those sentiments, especially Wilkerson, who broke down on his way off the field into the dugout, and had a difficult time talking to reporters after the game. Infielder Jamey Carroll said in the post-game ceremonies:

"I want to thank everybody in the front office, from the ushers to the security people. I want to try to touch everybody in the clubhouse. I want to let them know that the people that we run into every day have been a part of this thing. Also, I want to touch the fans that have been part of it for 30-something years. We appreciate it, and I appreciate it."

The saddest people of all are, of course, the fans. Over 31,000 showed up for the Olympic Stadium finale, and many openly wept in the stands. Some were vengeful, but most just wanted to say goodbye to Nos Amours (Our Loves when converted from French) and cheer for Canada's team one more time.

Au revoir, boys.

Labels: bestof, twins

Now playing on iPod 40GB: Cake; Italian Leather Sofa

much baseball news, little time:

Expos no more: Montreal drops home finale (ESPN.com)
Twins bill: Yankees sweep doubleheader (Star-Tribune)

1) the Expos vacate Stade Olympique for the last time. I never expected to see an MLB team relocate in my lifetime, the closest I believed would come to that happening was Tightass Pohlad selling the team for cigar money so they could move to the Carolinas. Instead, it was the other target of contraction, Montreal, that ended up packing their boxes to move to DC. It's both a good and bad thing: Washington deserves another chance at hosting a baseball team, one that actually has a sporting chance to compete, after being wronged by Bob Short back in 1970. And speaking of owners being shady towards their fans, Jeffrey Loria should be taken to task for not only dismantling the Expos but also for trying to do the same for the Florida Marlins. The bad thing is that Major League Baseball is all but abandoning a great baseball town that had a lot of pride in the rich history of its franchise. Nice work, Selig & Co.

No word on whether Youppi! will be moving with the Expos.

2) The Twins succeeded in completely pissing me off last night. Our bullpen completely blew it in the first game at the Yank; after Santana put up 5 solid innings, Romero and Rincon combine to hand the Bombers the W on a silver platter, followed by the token shitty performance of the pitcher Batgirl has dubbed Lyle Kohse. Check out this stellar play in the outfield during Game 2:


(AP/Frank Franklin)

Nice try, Jason Kubel. Next time, try timing your catch. The Yankees' magic number is now down to 1 with four to play, and the Twins' chances at home-field for the LDS are dwindling. Here are the numbers as they stack up now for HFA:

AL HFA
Team    Record GB GL/OPP
Twins    90-68  - 1 @ NYY, 3 v CLE
Anaheim  90-68  - 1 @ TEX, 3 @ OAK
Oakland  89-69  1 1 v SEA, 3 v ANA

Promising? Sort of. A Twins victory coupled with an Angels loss and an A's win tonight puts them in a tie for a game back with their season-ending series deciding who wears the AL West crown. And if we get home-field, that means the Red Sox are our LDS opponents. God, I love October baseball.

Labels: twins

Now playing on iTunes: Maroon 5; She Will Be Loved

an interesting lyric from John Mayer's 'Tracing':

I found I never learned your number
I only stored it in my phone
you'd think by now
I'd know the shape of calling home

It's interesing to me because that's exactly what occured to me when I had my phone stolen. I'm about 40% successful in re-acquiring digits.

Another great lyric, this time from the Maroon 5:

I don't mind spendin' everyday
out on your corner in the pourin' rain
look for the girl witht he broken smile
ask her if she wants to stay awhile
and she will be loved...

no reason for that one, really.

streaming from iPod 40GB: Seven Wiser; Take Me As I Am

Jay Leno sucks. Here is the vindication.

memo to Jay: you're not funny. And you have a huge-ass chin.

iPod contribution: Wayne; "Figure It Out"

My phone came today. I can't wait to have it again.

Also finished moving GOTW™ into my blog, for the most part. There are still some hiccups with some tables I used, but i hope to iron those cats out quickly. Also I started PDF'ing shit yesterday, and the new graphic portfolio will be up before you know it.

That's it for now. Gotta go eat lunch...

"Hey, iPod, what's playing on you right now?"
"...why, that would be 3 Doors Down's 'Be Like That'!"

with a little time to kill this afternoon since my history class was cancelled, I decided to do my civic duty and clean up my website a little. The first thing to change was the Gripe O' the Week!™ as that has now been absorbed by the .blog. I will work up a short list leading you to my favorite "gripes":

the "shit that sucks" list
I hate the 76 and everything it stands for
Ticketmaster, and other bitches

more to come, as I finish transferring them over. this also means a drastic change to ES.blog, as I have no excuse but to update it fairly regularly now. so, you're in luck.. I've enabled the comments option on older GOTW!™ posts, so you can uh, leave comments. Not like anyone does that nowadays anyway.

Another thing happening is I'm finally putting up a portfolio of sorts for my graphic work and layout. I'm very excited for this. Most of the artwork will be showcased at deviantART and layout examples will be hosted locally in PDF format.

Finally, I hope to put up my online photo albums again very soon. I'm trying to figure out what the best layout style would be.

the iPod is currently sporting Michelle Branch's "Everywhere".

Today I got to school and realized I didn't have any mints or gum.. that spells trouble, as my middle name is 'halitosis'. Actually it's Arthur, but anyhoo... I stopped by the bookstore to grab some gum. They happened to be out, so I picked up some Altoids instead, which I haven't had since I rocked them everyday in the mid 90's. So I crack the box on the way to my mass comm class and pop one in. And you know what? Altoids really taste like ass.

For those not in the know, there's this great invention called iTunes. And thanks to the magic of email I found out that Mayer rocked out 4 live EP's exclusively to the iTunes Music Store. How the hell this flew under my radar, I'll never know. All I do know is there are 40 new songs waiting for me to buy them when I get home tonight.

Also today I was able to finally call in my stolen phone. Yay. I was finally relieved that this saga could come to an end. But wait, since this is me we're talking about, there have to be additional snags. Well yes there was one, and it's a pretty friggin' huge one. My phone isn't in stock there. This is normally where I raise hell, but since it could have been worse, like last time when they fucked me over with a refurbished phone that wasn't even close to comparable to my old handset that didn't even fucking work. Which they tried to do this time. The guy kept me on hold for 10 minutes while he searched his system for a "comparable" phone to the Kyocera SE-47 pictured here then came back with these words: "I've got good news and bad news. There isn't a like phone to the Slider, so you will gett hat one, but we won't have it to send to you for at least 3-5 days." So I sighed and said OK. No phone for me for another week. There are worse things.