My Cardinals and their ‘staches

Not sure if you have noticed, but many of my beloved Cardinals fans have had a growing shadow on their upper lip. Yep, they’ve been growing mustaches. Mr. Lush and I laughed about it last night, as the mustache growing-in phase isn’t always the most attractive. (and in truth, not sure if I'm crazy about Rick Ankiel in a 'stache either - too 1970's for me!)

Of course, being the curious dork I am, I looked it up. It appears its for fun to mix things up and, now for luck. Here’s some snippets from the local paper:

“The decision was made June 30, the day Chris Carpenter absorbed his roughest beating of the season in a 6-3 loss to the San Francisco Giants. That day, third baseman Mark DeRosa left the game with a torn tendon sheath near his left wrist.

"It's just something to do, to make guys laugh and have some fun," said Piñeiro, the first to emerge with the new look. "It's something where you can make fun of each other."

Since Carpenter signed on the following day, the rotation carried a 2.06 ERA (10 ER, 43 2/3 innings) into Wednesday's game.

Wainwright surrendered one run in nine innings in a no-decision July 1. Wellemeyer followed with his best start of the season. Carpenter bounced back with a dominant performance in Sunday's 10-1 win in Cincinnati. Wainwright then came within two outs of his first career shutout Tuesday.
…….
Brad Thompson suffered the only hiccup during the run, allowing four earned runs in five innings Saturday. Thompson is also the only starter without facial hair.
"Look at me. Two swipes of the razor and I'm done shaving," pleaded the boyish, follicularly challenged Thompson.
……….

"I will grow a mustache bigger than Wyatt Earp's if we keep winning," insisted Wainwright.”

I hear that!

St. Louis Weather

Just a mere two days ago, Saturday, I was sitting outside, reading Rick Steve's Guide to France with a tank top on, enjoying a glass of wine. Mr Lush mowed the lawn and then joined me, reading some Kurt Vonnegut book. We both got a smidge pink and actually have tan lines. Glorious, really, I love a little color and as long as its not a burn, I'm good with it.

48 hours later....and I'm trying to decide if I should go with 2 or 3 layers for the ballgame today. *Sigh* Why would I go to a baseball game today when its supposed to be 38 degrees as the high you ask? Well, its OPENING DAY and you must, simply must, go to Opening Day if you're a fan, regardless of weather. Plus, I scored some awesome tickets 16 rows behind home plate and I've been to colder games before. Luckily, according to weather.com the wind will be at our backs.

Hopefully, with a hood and plenty of $9 ballpark beer, that will make it tolerable. While I wish we had Saturday's weather today, I still say Go Cards!

Monday morning blog dump

With school and work and assistantship (lions and tigers and bears oh my) this will have to be a Monday morning blog dump:

Cubs go 100 years!!
Congrats to the Chicago Cubs for going 100 years without a world championship. Keep it up guys!

Another video in the works?
This cracks me up- Pamela Anderson and Rick Salomon just got married. In case you don’t know who he is, he’s the guy who spent One Night in Paris. Well, he probably spent a lot of nights in Paris, but he was with Paris Hilton in her video. And of course you can forget the Pamela / Tommy Lee video? (If you haven’t seen it….he’s…uh…got an extra arm between his legs)
Now, the test is will they film themselves? It will decide if they were really upset about the tapes being released or if it was really a PR thing. (which is my vote) But isn't it great- good ole USA lets anyone be a porn star.

Door holding standard?
The other day I was walking behind a man, about oh, 20 steps. He came to a door and held it open for me….which meant I had to practically run to allow him to hold it open for me. When someone does that, I always run because by all means, I don’t want to discourage gentlemanly behavior. Its funny thought, because while women generally hold the door open for each other as well, its usually for those about 3 steps behind us- as in if the door will smack them in the face, we’ll hold it open. However, there has to be a happy medium in social politeness. So, I decided its 7-10 steps to the door. Of course, if someone is carrying something or will clearly have a hard time opening the door, certainly rules are different.

Sicko pleading guilty.
From USA Today: “The former pizza parlor manager accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting two boys is pleading guilty in the case because he wants to spare his family and those of his victims any further pain, his defense attorney said.
Michael Devlin was expected to enter a plea on Monday in Franklin County Circuit Court, the first in a series of hearings this week in four jurisdictions where he faces more than 80 counts. Devlin will plead guilty next week to kidnapping and sexual abuse charges, a prosecutor and a relative of one of the boys said Friday.”

Good to hear it- hopefully this will keep them out of having to relive it any more than they have to with their own therapists. I just hope this guy is forced to spend his life in prison. Ass raping prison too.

Crazy headlines
“Dozens feel pinched by lobsterman's tale”
I didn’t know “lobsterman” was an actual term, but the story is evidently about how “John Kluth, lobsterman and alleged con man, is accused of netting an elite catch: a judge, an assistant attorney general, a state commissioner, a Marine colonel, a consumer protection investigator, an IRS agent and assorted licensed professionals…….he allegedly stole more than $27,000 with a story about a broken-down truck and a load of perishable lobsters.
Heh, who knew “lobsterman” was a profession. I guess fisherman is, but I’ve just never heard of lobsterman. Catchy headline though.

Barry Bonds - 756

Ok, he hit it. Barry Bonds hit his 756th career home run. While I have somewhat mixed feelings about it, I will say I’m glad its over and done.

For those of you who don’t follow baseball, Barry Bonds is a pretty damn good baseball player, even if you don’t count the whole “home run thing”. He’s been in 14 all star games, has received 8 golden glove awards, and has been selected MVP 7 times, (more than anyone else- 2nd place is 3 times which Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Stan Musial, among others, all have been given the award only 3 times). He also holds the single season home run record (73) in addition to, as of August 7th, 2007, the all time home run record (756). Overall, a very talented ball player, both defensively and offensively.

Oh, and he’s accused of knowingly using performance enhancing drugs.

Oh, and so is nearly all of baseball.

No, I don’t want to debate if he used steroids or performance enhancing drugs or if he knew about it. I think nearly everyone in baseball took some level of performance enhancing drugs. Whether is was full on steroids or just stuff that made you recover from injuries faster, whatever- I think the bottom line is it was all over the game.

Really, admit that baseball was WAY TOO lax in testing so many baseball players took steroids. People talk like this is the only guy who took steroids and its “tainting” baseball. No, HUNDREDS of players took steroids and while it might be tainting the records, what can we do about it? Deny everyone who played in the 1990’s entrance into the fall of fame because they probably took steroids? I mean, really, the only players who are admitting it are sub-par players whose use of performance enhancing drugs (PED) didn’t do enough to for them to get them anywhere significant in the game. They were crappy players who became “OK” players. So what do they have to lose by telling everyone they took steroids? They aren’t damaging their chances of getting into the hall of fame-they’ll only get in with paid admission anyway.

By that rationale, if tons of players were on PED, doesn’t that make it an almost even playing field? I mean, there aren’t tons of players who are sitting on 756 home runs. There’s one. If the use of PED alone makes that much difference that he shouldn’t be allowed in the hall of fame, then gosh, why aren’t there tons of records being broken each and every year by all the players who used? If PEDs have that much power, then we should have many many many phenomenal players from the 90’s ‘Roid Days, but we don’t. So it doesn’t.

In my opinion, Barry Bonds is a hall of fame quality player anyway-look at the golden gloves, the MVP awards, the all star game appearances. Maybe it shouldn’t be the 756 home runs that gets him into the hall of fame-maybe without drugs he would’ve only hit 701, who knows? We can’t rewind time and if he’s smart, he’ll never admit anything. But the way I look at it, is IF he took drugs, then they made a great player phenomenal. And that’s something that you just can’t do with drugs. So to all the sub-par players, the writers who never played or were never any good, the ones who took the PED’s and it didn’t make them phenomenal, quit your bitching and be happy people go to games so you all have a fucking job.

Comment Grab Bag

Ok, lots to comment on.

Heat competitions
First off, what is with people finding ways to compete in the heat?? As noted in an earlier post, crazy people run though Death Valley in the summer. Well today, I saw a new level of craziness. A competition to sit in a 230 degree sauna. http://www.scandinavica.com/culture/sports/sauna.htm
Sure, you’re just sitting there, but your thighs and butt needs to be touching the seat. If you can take the heat for the longest you will be crowned the Sauna World Champion. Insane.

Wet toilet seats
Ok ladies, we have the cleaner restroom, but why can’t we manage to not pee on the seat? I swear in the past three months I can’t go into a public restroom, whether its at work, in a bar, or a porta- potty, 1 out of 3 toilets has pee on the seat. I don’t care if you hover, plop down on the seat, use toilet paper to cover it up, or use the little seat covers- all have a shot of getting the seat wet. Why can’t we just give it a little wipe so it doesn't look like our drunk boyfriends lost control of the hose on the seat??? I mean, really, lets look out for our fellow ladies and provide a dry seat to lay toilet paper or whatever on.

Minority Report-coming to a city near you
Here’s sort of a Minority Report-type story- there’s this guy in California who posts pictures of little girls, but not sexual pictures, just pictures, along with blog entries of his fantasies of what he would like to do to them.

Clearly, parents in the area are freaked out …but he hasn’t done anything yet. Well, today they got a temporary restraining order for the ENTIRE state of California- the perv can’t be within 10 yards of a minor.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mcclellan4aug04,0,5538435.story?coll=la-home-center

Clearly he’s on the path to action, so I commend the judge for ok’ing the restraining order and I think pedophiles and rapists are the lowest level of human on the earth and deserve sick, harsh, wrong things to be done to them.

But, lets think the long term implications here….if I talk about robbing a bank or some other crime, is that evidence of intent? I mean, how far are we from Minority Report??

Barry Bonds and home run 755
I have much to say about this, but when he breaks the record and hits his 756th, I’ll dedicate a whole post to it. For now, I’ll just note that he hit it over the weekend and that we have not heard the last of this, by far.

Auqafina = tap water
I’m not sure why this is big news. Am I the only person who realized some bottled water is called “drinking water” and some is “spring water”? Drinking water is the same stuff I drink at home out of my Pur filer…its tap water that’s been filtered. Well, maybe (hopefully) it goes through a more elaborate filtering process, but really, were people really clueless about the origin of this water? (ie the Missouri river?)

Josh Hancock

This was a good reason to start a blog and I let it slide. Tsk Tsk.

First off, unrelated to Josh Hancock's sobriety:

According to the report, Kennedy was at the bar with friends. His credit card statement says he bought 28 drinks for a total of $186.50, the report said. He asked that Hancock's tab be included in his. He left a $200 tip.

Wow, really, that's what I'm talking about-it warms my ex-waitress heart-people with insane amounts of money should leave insane amounts of tippage.

Now, onto Josh Hancock. As you know, the Hancock family was suing Mike Shannons, the tow truck driver, and the owner of car that broke down. The Hancock family dropped the suit recently, just days after the second investigation cleared Mike Shannon's. Evidently 13 of 15 people said he appeared sober. Here's my thoughts:

1. No way he was sober. Is that the restaurant's fault? I don't think so. I think we all know the point when our judgement becomes impaired. Lets say I know that once I hit 3 glasses of wine I'm very likely to drink a lot more and I will likely keep going until I'm falling over drunk. At 2 glasses I'm not visibly drunk but I know that 3rd will push me into the Time of Lacking Judgement. Well then when I'm at my second glass and I know this and I still order my 3rd glass, then I'm responsible for what happens after that. Not a restaurant, bartender or server. Me-I am responsible for my own sobriety or drunkenness unless someone is spiking my water.

2. The lawsuit was ridiculous. I mean really, the guy who's car broke down? Lets sue the car manufacturer while we're at it. Maybe the MO Dept of Transportation for making small shoulders in the fast lane?

3. People lied and said he was sober because they knew the lawsuit was ridiculous. They knew if they established that he was drunk then the family would have a leg to stand on against Mike Shannons, which is the only piece of the lawsuit the money is at. So once that was a lost cause, the family dropped their lawsuit against the other people. Because really, there's not millions of dollars to get from the guy who's car broke down.

4. It is sad that he died and its even sadder than getting a cab, or that Driver's Seat thing where they drive your car home for you, isn't more available and cheap. Its sad that in our culture of going out, we like to tell stories about how f*cked up we got, and that its just not very cool to admit hey, I've had too much and I need a ride. Because honestly, if you drink ever, then you are probably too drunk to drive legally. Who really goes out and has one beer an hour-once you hit two in an hour you're probably over the legal limit by your 2nd hour.

And thats all I have to say about that.