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Annual All-Star Game PartyI haven't updated for a couple of reasons. First of all, I was trying to finish the two books mentioned on the left in order to have A Fire Upon the Deep finished (well, re-finished - I first read it ten years ago) for tonight's Keplers speculative fiction discussion group. That took much of my free time over the past week. The other is that somehow (some of) my perl scripts which generate automatic info for my journal (such as the "Recent Entries" section on my front page) got munged in a recent Spies upgrade. Turns out that perl got upgraded and the HTML parsing library I'd downloaded for my scripts didn't work with the new version. Fortunately, I eventually clued into Ceej telling me that she'd installed a copy of the library on the system and that I could use that instead. So it's all fixed, I think.
 My cow-orker Chris gave me a couple of tickets to last Monday's Giants game, hosting the Cardinals. Turns out that 21-year-old rookie Jerome Williams was pitching, which made the second time in two weeks I'd been to see him. Last time he threw a complete-game shutout. Tonight he didn't quite reach that mark, as he gave up a run in 9 innings en route to a Giants 5-1 victory. Along the way we saw Jose Cruz Jr. get thrown out twice trying to steal second base, the first of which sent Giants manager Felipe Alou into a tizzy, getting himself tossed from the game by the second base umpire. Quite a tirade for the second-oldest manager in the Majors! I love watching young players make it in the Majors (and not just because I have Williams on my fantasy team). Something about watching guys who are younger than their peers - even their peers among the league's rookie class - is exciting. And Williams is fantastic: He throws strikes and lots of them, and the Cardinals spent much of the evening swinging at (and often fouling off) pitches just because they knew the pitch was in the strike zone - but not good enough to really hit. Williams - who it turns out is Hawaiian - has gotten plenty of run support, too, in the form of several Bonds home runs. The Giants seem to score early for him, and I wonder if this makes it easier for him, easier mentally to throw tough pitches and challenge hitters. That's the conventional wisdom: Pitching with a lead means pitching from a position of strength. I don't really know if this is true, but if nothing else it must feel good. Williams did throw 128 pitches - 32 more than he threw a week and a half earlier against the A's - which made us concerned. That's a lot for such a young pitcher to throw. Fortunately, in his next start he just topped 100, and now he can rest up over the All-Star Break. I think everyone realizes this kid is something special. Obviously no one's talking all-time great after having 8 or so starts under his belt, but he's generating the sort of chatter that makes you wonder: Maybe I'm in at the ground floor of something historic here. We can only hope.
Oh, and the big hole in the fence around my patio also got fixed last week. Whew!
Saturday Debbi and I went to see The Manchurian Candidate (1962), a film I've wanted to see for years, and at one point had for some reason confused with To Kill a Mockingbird. It's 1952 in Korea, and a platoon of army soldiers is captured by Chinese Communists. But they're later found to have escaped, and return to the US. Captain Ben Marco (Frank Sinatra) recommends that Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) receive the medal of honor. Shaw is estranged from his domineering mother (Angela Lansbury), the wife of US Senator Johnnie Iselin (James Gregory) and goes to work for a reporting firm in New York. Meanwhile, Marco and other in the platoon are having recurring nightmares of being brainwashed by the Communists, during which Shaw kills two of their members - the two who didn't return from Korea. Marco is convinced he's going nuts, and is put in sick leave. Travelling to New York to visit Shaw, he meets and falls in love with Rosie Chaney (Janet Leigh), and uncovers evidence that he's not so crazy after all. Candidate feels an almost-perfect suspense piece. Even though the viewer knows a lot of what really happened, how the characters can prove it, and how to fill in the missing pieces is the trick. And there's enough left unsaid to keep the viewer guessing for much of the film as well. And there are many period overtones, such as the McCarthy red scare and - obviously - the war in Korea and the cold war itself. It does have its rough edges; Rosie is nearly superfluous, and her romance with Marco has that improbable feel of the era (I wonder if this might be the remnants of a deeper subplot left over from the book upon which the film is based?). And of course the brainwashing feels pretty unlikely in its convenience and totality, but you have to give the film that one since that's an essential part of its premise. It's a "What if?" scenario. Overall it's a film worthy of Hitchcock - without Hitch anywhere in sight - albeit with slightly lower acting standards (Sinatra is no Cary Grant, alas). Well worth a look, in any event.
Tonight I hosted my annual Major League Baseball All-Star Game party. As MLB has been advertising, "This year it counts!", since the winner's league would get home field advantage in the World Series. Big whoop-de-doo, I saw it as another cynical marketing ploy by Bud Selig. It didn't detract from the fun of seeing the players just plain having fun, especially since this turned out to be a rare slugfest, won 7-6 by the American League. Of note among the evening's touches: Jorge Posada sending his son out to high-five his teammates when he was introduced (aww...). Ichiro's running catch in right field. Long bombs by many players, but notably Rangers prodigy Hank Blalock. Rafael Furcal heaving a ground ball into the right field seats - whoops! On the other hand, we got a painful 7th-inning rendition of the painful song "God Bless America" by Amy Grant (painful because it's a lousy song, and I don't really want my country blessed by an imaginary being anyway). Sigh. I actually refuse to stand up when they play this song at ballparks these days because it runs counter to my beliefs and is just too much jingoism for me to stand. Fortunately, I don't think either the Giants or the A's are playing it anymore, thank goodness. My party turned out better than expected, considering I sent invitations yesterday. Six people showed up, including Subrata, fresh from his vacation to Greece. Debbi actually ran out to buy more munchies at one point, and I grilled brats and sausages for folks. Conversation was lively, and we all had a good time. I'm mystified by Apple's new Power Mac G5 ad. "Buy our computer and we'll punch a big hole in the side of your house!" The G4 "tank" ad was clever and cute, but this one's just "cutesy". Blasting-holes-in-things ads always seem cheesy to me unless they're advertising, well, dynamite or something. (Just for some perspective: When the ad began, with the user being blown out of his house and into a tree - I guess by the "power" of the computer - and the camera turns to face the computer inside the house, I said to the room, "Dude, you shoulda bought a Mac!" Well, uh, he did. It's not good when a Mac ad feels like a Wintel ad.) Anyway, that strangeness aside, it was another fine All-Star evening. Now I just need to make it through tomorrow's final day without baseball games and I can enjoy the second half of the season, which is shaping up to be a good one. What are the odds that I can go see Jerome Williams pitch again?
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