I do not want to go that route. It’s plainly evident that this blog is no longer a real priority for me. Perhaps it will be in the future.

I plan on leaving this site up, mostly for myself. There’s some good writing in there, way back.

Thanks for reading.

I’ve also been writing more of late. So there’s stuff coming, some of which some of you may even like. I still don’t really know what this website is and what I want to do with it. In some senses I’m plagued by former success: there was some real readership (i.e. not just my parents) for this blog back in the day, but mostly while I was traveling. Now that I’ve moved to San Francisco, the novelty of the experience makes me feel a bit like I’m traveling again. It’s touched that ancient nerve and I’ve given in to the urge to write.

So there you go. I hope this is a not-totally-worthless place on the web from now on. My general apologies for my lack of literary ambition these last two years or so. It’s been an interesting time in my life.

The song is amazing.  It never gets old and it hits a particular, subtle emotional note with me every single time. It probably goes without saying that this is not exactly my one of my normal genres of musical comfort, but, as I’ve noted before, a challenged reality is a more enlightened one.

Also, credit The Creekbusters for getting me hooked on it in the first place.

Today I went running in San Francisco, and I nearly died.  Here‘s the exact route (give or take a few feet) that I ran today.  I started off on Page Street, and ran up it’s moderate incline after Divisidero with no problem.  I took a left on Lyon Street and thought, hey, that’s a nice park with a nice little hill (it was very foggy).  I need a challenge, I’ll just run right up it.  So I started up the stairs of Buena Vista Park.  I ran well until what I evetually realized was only been the half-way point.  I slowed to a pitiful pace from the halfway point to a point that I judge to be about 3/4 of the way to the top.  And there I stopped.

It’s less than a mile from where I left, but I was totally burnt out.  I walked to the very top, stopping multiple times to check if my heart-attack had passed.  The views, though apparently incredibly beautiful when clear, were less than una buena vista.  I jogged down the back side and around Buena Vista East back to Haight, to Page and back to where I started.  This list bit felt great and I ran it well.

A note to self, then, for further exercise:  the stairmaster back at the gym is not to be made fun of.  You’d think I would have learned my lesson making fun of dudes that use the elliptical, when now I’ve lost about 35 pounds by using it consistently.  Regardless, there’s running, and there’s running up hills.

I’m going to try the same route tomorrow to see if better pacing, the fact that I’ve done it once, and a knowledgable defiance will have any effect.  I’ll let you know what happens.

But there are aspects of its ancientness that are less than charming: just ask anyone who ever used the left-field mens bathroom up until about 1995. (Think circular firing-squad.) The plumbing and drainage are apparently ancient, but not even in a good way: at least the Roman water works worked for thousands of years. These are lucky if they make it to the all-star break. It’s also a comparatively tiny ballpark, though no longer the tiniest. And while its small size does give an intimate feeling that you might not get at, say, Olympiastadion in Berlin, the upper limit on this feeling would not be reached by adding another 15,000 seats to the place.

So how to do it?

Some unfeeling bastards, including former GM Dan “I’m Going To Burn In Hell” Duquette, the man who ruined my baseball childhood, want to raze the park to the ground and build one similar somewhere else. Instead of Neuschwanstein, they want to build Cinderella’s castle. This is just purely not going to fly. We’d have another Boston Tea Party on our hands. It could end up with the overthrow of American capitalism for all we know. You don’t mess with Red Sox Nation and Fenway Park. This is not an option.

So here’s my suggestion:

Some season soon, John Henry should start building a stadium out in Braintree or somewhere like that, right on the commuter rail but still close enough to Boston to be considered functionally in it. (In a baseball environment that straight-facedly tolerates a team called “The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim,” Braintree should seem positively cosy.) It should be a nice stadium, not too big. 30,000 tops, but designed with room to grow.

As soon as this stadium is complete, the Red Sox will play one season in it. While they’re there, Fenway can be fully gutted and modernized from stem to stern. Tastefully. Preserving the ballpark but setting it up, structurally and practically for the next hundred years of its beautiful existence.

“Nice little luxury, there, that stadium the Red Sox are building just to use for one season,” I can already hear the dissenters say.

Not so fast.

The trick is what happens when the Red Sox move back to a completed Fenway Park: instead of letting this “temporary” home of theirs lie fallow, we resurrect the Boston “Braves” NL franchise and have that be their home park. We obviously couldn’t call them the Braves and have them be in the NL, but I’m sure we can come up with something.

Boston is clearly a baseball town. The only competition the Sox really have for fan loyalty is from the Patriots, but they don’t even play in the same season. The Celtics (while recently upgraded in astonishing fashion) are an also-ran. And, the what? The Bruins? The NHL still exists? Oh well, right. Whatever.

All I’m saying is that a cross-town NL team is sustainable in a city/region of greater Boston’s size and fervor. All this team would have to do to sell out every week would be to charge half of what the Sox charge in ticket prices and still let people see Major League Ball.

The interleague play would be intense, even if the new franchise were dismal in its first few years. It’d be an excuse for people in New England to follow the NL for reasons other than to throw things at Barry Bonds. I know I certainly would.

Is this going to happen? Probably not. The responses to this modest proposal thus far have ranged from “Clever” to “Are you out of your mind?” to “Where’s Braintree?”

But I think it has merit.

It’s something we should discuss.

More soon. Promise. In the mean time, check out my Uncle John’s new blog. It’s sure to be interesting.

Tip’o the hat to svn.

Anyone disagree?  Any better suggestions?

“Escarpment Blues tells the story of a current land-use conflict in Southern Ontario on the Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. I grew up on the escarpment on the farm where my family still lives, within a long green corridor that is prized for its fresh water resources, its endangered species habitats, its prime agricultural soils and its wetlands and forests. These lands are under serious threat from the aggregate (sand, gravel, shale) industry. The problem is that large multinationals companies want to open new quarries on top of the escarpment and extract the rock below these ecosystems, thereby removing and destroying them. So, after writing the song, I got the idea for the “I Love the Escarpment” Tour and set out in June 2005 with some of my best musical mates to hike the escarpment and make music along the way.”

She’s highly recommended.

Teddybears – Different Sound
On occasion, I hear a song in a commercial and it just sticks. Sometimes this is terrible, like the time I walked around for 4 days with “Bu-da-ba-bah-dah – I’m lovin’ it” stuck in my head. Sometimes the song is actually good and I’m intrigued, like that new Intel Core Due Processor commercial. I wanted to know who sang it and where I could get it. This used to be an idle daydream, as even googling for “music in X commercial” rarely turned up anything good. Now there’s Splendad.com, to satisfy just that desire. It can be sorted by advertiser and by artist, so I looked up Intel commercials from 2006 and boom: I got my info. The background song is Different Sound by Teddybears. It’s a slammin’ techno song. As it is techno, it’s not for everyone, but I really dig the beat and can listen to it repeatedly with no problem.

Tom Petty – Saving Grace
Tom Petty’s new single is, quite simply, the perfect rock’n roll song. You really feel that deep core of blues in there, but it’s got a rock edge. Talk about perfectly evoking an album’s title (Highway Companion). I would none-too-subtly add that it’s been conveniently placed on my Amazon wishlist, if anyone’s interested.

Gomez – How We Operate
Gomez is one of those bands that’s been floating off in the rock/blues/country/bluegrass/acidrock wilderness for far too long. I’ve loved them since my buddy Leo gave me a copy of Liquid Skin when I was in Sydney. I’ve psyched myself up and bought every album of theirs since then, and the experience has gone downhilleverytime . There was a ton of great music in there, but it was uneven and confused and confusing. So when I heard that Gomez had finally put out a new album this year, I sort of shrugged and put it out of my mind. They weren’t dead to me; far from it. They were just not as inspirational as they had been in the past. Then a few reviews of this new album, How We Operate, passed my way and they were generally glowing. That was enough for me to acquire the album and I have not been disappointed. Gomez has come in from the wilderness and put out abadass album that tied together– intelligently–all the disparate musical strands they’d been playing with for the past few years. I’m elated and you should be, too. If you don’t already own Liquid Skin, just do yourself a favor and get it as soon as you can. Ask for it for Christmas. Whatever. But both it and How We Operate are classic must-haves.

The Killers – A Great Big Sled
A Christmas song from The Killers? I laughed too, but it’s a damned good song. I haven’t heard the new album yet, but from the singles they’ve released it very well could be as good as their first one. (The second one was classic terrible sophomore effort, in my humble opinion.) The single they just put out, A Great Big Sled, is notable not just because it’s a good song and it’s seasonal; it’s also a (Product)Red track, which means a hefty percentage of the revenue from every track goes to The Global Fund. You can read more about it here, but, suffice it to say, if you can buy (Red), buy it.

Newsfire
NewsFire is not a web program, per se, in that it’s not run via some scripting language inside your web browser. But it is most definitely a program for the web. It’s an RSS newsreader for MacOSX and it is beautiful. It’s fast, intuitive, and just slick overall. If you’ve got a Mac, are interested in increasing the quality and quantity of your knowledge of the world around you, it’s highly recommended. (N.B.: It, too, has excellent keyboard shortcuts.) Don’t know what RSS is? This introductory article in CNET might help you on your way.

1. Who is the last person you held hands with?
E

2. If you were drafted into a war, would you survive?
Yes. Is this question supposed to ask if I would serve rather than survive? That’d be more interesting, not to mention more predictable.

3. Where were you 30 min ago?
The Rockefeller Library. Just like now.

4. Do you drink milk out of the carton?
No. Never have. But I have been drinking more milk lately.

5. Have you ever won a spelling bee?
Yup. [Insert "Glory Days" by Bruce Springsteen here.] The more interesting part is that, the year after I placed 2nd in the City of Providence, I got out on the word “only.” I spelt it “olny.” To this day I swear that everyone in the room misheard me. And, it should be noted, to this day Sean McHugh has never let me forget this event.

6. Were your parents cool in high school?
Hard to tell.

7. How fast can you type?
Faster than most people, I think.

8. Are you afraid of the dark?
Only after I watch Predator II, with Danny Glover, not Ah-nuld. Cuz this time he’s in a city, not some remote jungle, and he’s pissed.

9. Eye color?
Blue. Quite blue, I’m told.

10. How old are you?
Twenty three. Or, according to the Birthday calculator: I am 23 years old. I am 285 months old. I am 1,238 weeks old. I am 8,664 days old. I am 207,958 hours old. I am 12,477,480 minutes old. I am 748,648,827 seconds old.

11. When is the last time you chose a bath over a shower?
I honestly can’t remember. Too long ago, then, I guess.

12. What’s your deepest, darkest fear?
That 1000 years from now, all traces of my existence will be gone and forgotten and that I will be marked on God’s great ledger as someone who didn’t end up mattering all that much.

13. Are you drinking anything right now! ?
No, but I’m jonesing for either a Red Bull or a Jack Daniel’s, depending on which direction this night is going.

14. Are you single right now?
No.

15. Can you hula hoop?
On a short enough timeline, absolutely. If it involves doing it for more than maybe 5 seconds, then no.

16. Are you good at keeping secrets..?
Yes. Most of the time for some things, and all of the time for others.

17. What do you want for Christmas?
A Nikon D50 or D80 and Aperture.

18. Do you know the Muffin Man?
No.

19. Do you talk in your sleep?
I’m told I have.

20. Who wrote the book of love?
Jesus, right? Right? Isn’t it, guys? Guys? Guys. Where are you going? Ok, how ’bout Erich Segal?

21. Have you ever flown a kite?
Yes, indeed. The first time was with Katie McCullough (now happily married, I’m told) when I maybe three years old. The Elmhurst Arboretum, the little development where I grew up, had a curved center section which produced the effect of there being something like one big huge backyard for the houses across the street from me. (Google Map – it’s the L-shaped thing behind all the houses.) Katie lived in a house on that center section (it faced the Wyndham side) and we used to run around in the “big backyard” and do things like fly kites and play tag. The first kite I remember flying was a really crappy free one that you got with a Happy Meal at McDonald’s. It only worked a) in a high wind, or b) if you were running flat out. I cannot tell you how long it’s been since I thought of this.

22. Are your parents divorced?
Not from each other, but previously from people they probably never should have been with in the first place. Dad calls those marriages the “Mulligan Round.” I think that’s as good a name for it as any.

23. Do you consider yourself successful?
Uh, no, not currently, but ask me in a month or so and the answer may be different.

24. How many people are on your contact list on your cell?
A few hundred. Thank God I have a Treo. I don’t delete numbers. Ever. I still have Lenehan’s cell phone number from Australia, and he got back in, what, June of last year? I still have the phone number of my legendary Little League baseball coach Charlie Ashton in my cell phone. You never know. You just never know.

25. Current hair color?
Uh, brown tending blondish.