Baseball is Back!

My first game at the park this season, and Bonds wasn't playing. These days, old man Barry has to take day games off, especially after a night game prior.


At the Park, looking over McCovey Cove

What better substitute than a game like this...

Anatomy of a Win:
Top of the ninth. Tied game. Giants 2, Diamondbacks 2.
Randy Winn preserves the tie with two --- *two* --- outstanding catches at left field, one robbing Eric Byrnes of a go-ahead homerun, leaping over the left field wall.
Bottom of the ninth. First batter, Moises Alou.
First pitch, ball one.
Second pitch, ball two.













Third pitch...













...hit high...into left field...walk-of homerun!













Game over!
Giants 3, Diamondbacks, 2.













Yeah, baseball is back!

CSI: Las Vegas - Clues to the Season Finale

One of my favorite shows. The only CSI that matters ---> Las Vegas.

Play CSI. What do you see in this photo?

Here's a bigger photo, complete with magnifying glass: http://www.cbs.com/primetime/csi/diner/

Thanks to the TV Squad for pointing this out. My own clues are in post #29.

My Travels - Guadalajara (2006)

Mexico seems to stretch itself in apology of its bulging north and southern continental neighbors, just so that a strip of land maximizes it's beachfront property for countless escapists of land-locked confinement. So finding myself in Guadalajara, three hours from Puerto Vallarta, a day from Cancun, and helplessly inland, I settle for other exploits.

It took a trip here to learn how to drink tequila, thanks to its roots from nearby town of Tequila. It's smooth character deserves a sipping experience rather than hurrying down a salt-rimmed bar shot. Served full in a taller shot glass along with an equal glass of sangrita---tomato juice, lemon, lime, citrus, something spicy---to chase each sip in style.

I found that this knowledge won't impress your friends, who'd simply be content with tequila shots or with margaritas laced with crappy Sauza tequila.

Dining is a social experience paced in relaxed (read: slow) detail as your host intricately sets your table, your first drink, your appetizer, willing you to wind down instead of build up to the main course. Which I found hard, waiting for probably the best steak in town at the Argentinian La Estancia Gaucha, or rose petals on my steak at the Sacromonte, or arracheras at the Cantina de Los Remedios or at the Adobe in Tlaquepaque. Extend the night at the Hard Rock Cafe or at La Cebolla Roja. But don't miss Santo Coyote (see photo insert), the fresh salsa made in front of you, the ambiance, the waterfalls, the murals, the garden, the rack of young goat on the grill.

Buy cheap silver and leather at Tlaquepaque and stop by the cathedrals overlooking the market square.

Stay at the Presidente Intercontinental (photo) or at the Hilton next to the World Trade Center.

As it is the Silicon Valley of Mexico---primarily why I was visiting---I imagine the area best represents modern Mexico than the coastal destinations built to foreigners' taste and served by the poorer class. It is where life is afforded modern choices and opportunities, and where hard work and potential are much more readily rewarded. It is where I met a number of people content to live in what is still a third-world, developing country, even when they have the means to leave or just given a theoretical choice.

Paints a contrasting picture next to the immigration crisis brewing this month across the US.

Orbit (2006) - John J. Nance

Blasted in vivid detail into Earth orbit, a heaven-sent (almost literally) for techno-thrill-seekers, this exploration of space tourism and an accompanying tragedy---one that Kip Dawson has to live through (again, literally) alone in a disabled orbiter 300 miles above home---offers a welcome addition to a lackluster year in tech fiction.

A real-time account of a helpless man's candid thoughts, joys and regrets pervades every corner of a watching world, as Dawson unknowingly streams his life story onto a laptop tethered back wirelessly to Earth in what otherwise would have simply been his long-winding digital epitaph for his future rescuer, or coroner, who would surely not come any earlier than the five days of remaining life support he has in his damaged, zero-communications death craft.

Below, a frantic race to rescue.

Drama and techno-babble aside, Nance also entertains with a curious look into the next generation travel hotspot and stakes his share of original thoughts reserved only to those who look far ahead (far enough to be plausible, mind you). Well, not sci-fi thoughts, but something new---funny within context and some, morbid:
- "Mission Control...ASA Mohave...somebody...please come in....we have a big f**king problem up here!" Nice touch, he thinks...my first communication from space and it's the "F" word.
- The argument for a minimum of two astronauts on each flight had even worried the Federal Aviation Administration until Congress swatted the FAA and decided that the word "aviation" did not include "space."
- He unclips the laptop...surprised to find a garden-variety Dell...just like millions of its counterparts below...and then clicks on the Internet icon, not surprised when it comes up showing no connection.
- Senator: "All through the cold war, all through the space race, all through our history of manned...spaceflight, our nation has maintained...the value of even one human life...even Stalin said the loss of one life is a tragedy." President: "Yes, and the rest of that quote is that a million deaths is a statistic. Terrible thing to quote in part."

And best of all:
- My God, Kip thinks, Jerrod will be almost eighty before this spacecraft falls into the atmosphere and my long-dead body burns up on reentry. How awful for Jerrod and the girls to know their dead father is flying by overhead every ninety minutes your entire life.

My Christmas Song for the Ages to Come

A Change at Christmas (2003) - The Flaming Lips

Long removed from Christmas, just starting Spring, I stumbled upon this Christmas wish, sung magnificently erratic, complete with bells and a minor twist to the same Message:

I know everything changes
Yeah, it's strange how time marches on
Maybe there'll be some time in the future
Oh, tell me I'm not wrong
Oh, if I could stop time
It would be a frozen moment just around Christmas
When all of mankind reveals its truest potential
And there is sympathy for the suffering
Yes, there is sympathy for those who are suffering
And the world embraces peace and love and mercy
Instead of power and fear
And as sure as I'm standing here
I swear it really does appear that a change comes over us
Yes, some kind of change comes over us
And it's glimpsed for one shining moment
And this change feels like a change that's real
But then it passes along with the season
And then we just go back to the way we were
Yes, we just go back to the way we were
Say it isn't so
Tell me I'm not just a dreamer
I'm talking with a friend and he knows how it ends
He says it's easier, that's just the way we are
That's human nature and that's just the way we are
Oh, say it isn't so!

Absolute Friends (2005) - John Le Carre

Starving for a Tom Clancy techno or a Neal Stephenson cyber, I'd check Borders weekly or Amazon.com almost nightly for whatever might come close. In the hits and misses that followed, I'm glad to have re-discovered John Le Carre, once master spy storyteller, now master ex-spy thrill-er.

Absolute Friends stalks the lives of a handler and his spy, from dissident times in 1960's Western Europe to the present day re-invention of terrorist militancy worldwide. The sudden re-appearance of British spyhandler Ted Mundy's past in the form of his ever-faithful friend and spy, Sasha, rehashes memories of Cold War espionage followed by the slow drift between his non-commital, directionless self and the highly-determined Sasha with his conviction to revolutionary change in the world stage. In this, his friend's resurrection, comes perhaps Mundy's final gasp at a meaningful existence, only to gather himself short of Sasha's questionable motives, but then ultimately get derailed by an unexpected turn of events.

Unexpected both to Mundy and the reader, in a classic story-telling misdirection compliments of Le Carre.

Hang the DJ

I don't mind DJ sets. Tiesto, Kleinenberg, Sasha...

But Jaz Coleman of the Killing Joke reminds us, in this month's Uncut magazine, during his rant on the current state of music:

"I hate DJs. When you turn the electricity off, you know who's who. DJs---they can't play a friggin' thing; they're useless without electricity."

Deal or No Deal 2

I chanced upon two epic episodes of this low-IQ game show while channel surfing on two different nights, and stayed on to satisfy my sick sense of humor (which I learned growing with Saturday Night Live) by expecting greed to up-end players into disastrous results, then chuckle at their misfortune.

If you still don't know the classic game revived this year with host Howie Mandel, play it here: http://www.boredatwork.net/link/deal-deal/

On night #1, a cheery woman is down to 5 cases: one $400,000 case and four much lower---highest of which was $400. To go into the next round and hope to garner a better offer, she has to pick and eliminate one more case, but avoid $400,000. Howie nudges her to let Grandma pick a case, perhaps a welcome charm to end a string of bad luck. So Nana proudly gets up the stage, picks a case, gets right up to open it to reveal the worst. Little miss grand daughter wins less than $400.
On night #2, a high-ranking military officer manages having $300,000 and $400,000 available in late rounds amid 4 low-value cases. In some cheesy drama twist added by the show's producers, out comes Sir General's two pre-teen daughters especially invited because they don't see Daddy too often. Howie puts them to the task of deciding, instead of Daddy, whether $94,000 is a good-enough deal rather than risk surging on for 300 or 400 grand more. They cry their reluctant father into taking 94 grand. Point is, Daddy had very good odds of getting a better offer. But he takes the deal. In the end, Howie let Daddy General run through the rest of the game just to see what could have been. He painstakingly made what would have been the right decisions (or guesses) and actually would have come out with $400,000.

Lessons learned?

It's not greed that destroys people. It's their next of kin.