Two Frantic Days
Hey, in the midst of all the pathos in Tuesday's entry, I completely forgot to mention: I won my fantasy baseball league! I had a pretty crummy week final week (baseball-wise, at least), and I only had a 3-point lead out of 100 over second place. But I eked out the win, which is my first win since our inaugural year of 1993. With 10 owners in our league, I think I'm the only one to finish first twice, and I know I'm the only one to finish in the money (top four) all five years.
It's always tiring and a little sad to get to the end of baseball season; it does last half the calendar year, after all! Now we have the month of playoffs, and all I hope is that the hated Yankees can get stomped into the dirt by someone.
After that, I had to leave work promptly to pick up my friend Karen, who had just returned to Madison earlier that day from her summer working in New York. We then went to the Barrymore Theatre to see The Freddy Jones Band in concert. Opening for them was an unmemorable group named Left Undone.
The FJB is a five-piece, three-guitar group, which plays a lot with guitar and vocal harmonies. Their rep was made with "In A Daydream", from their good first album, Waiting For The Night, though I think "Take The Time" is a better song. Their second album, North Avenue Wake Up Call, is even better, led off with the kickass "Waitress". Their latest album, Lucid, is more mellow and not as impressive.
I didn't feel their live act added a whole heck of a lot to their studio work. However, this was the first night of their tour, and they definitely got better as the night went on; their earlier songs were flat, but their set-closer, "In A Daydream", was excellent. They're not showmen up to the level of Sonia Dada (who we'll be seeing next week), but they were pretty good.
I didn't get home 'til midnight, and since I didn't have anything scheduled for this morning, I slept 'til 8:00.
But I did finally get to the comic book store, and picked up a whole bunch of stuff. Foremost among the haul was DC Comics' Tangent Comics, which is a set of nine one-issue books in which a whole new world is created using the names of various established DC characters. But other than the names, everything is different: The Atom is a guy with density-altering powers, Green Lantern raises the dead for one final mission, and The Flash is a ditsy teenaged girl who's made of solid light. The background includes a war in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, a nuclear exchange which destroyed Cuba and the southeastern US (Atlanta was rebuilt as an archipelago city named New Atlantis), and the possible destruction of Earth 30 years hence. It's a tight and interesting universe which was fun to read. And since the books aren't continuing series, they maintain a right focus and the reader doesn't overdose on them.
I also picked up paperback collections of A Distant Soil, Death: The Time Of Your Life, and The Maxx, as well as the latest issues of Leave It To Chance and Those Annoying Post Bros.
And I spent the evening watching the Cleveland Indians beat up on the hated New York Yankees in the second game of the AL Division Series. The best part? The victory went to Indians rookie pitcher Jaret Wright. I love seeing young players - especially pitchers - make good. Seeing Seattle rookie Bob Wolcott tame the Indians two years ago is one of my fondest memories of baseball fandom.
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