--Quite a weekend of baseball.  I was at a party and missed the fight, but I caught plenty of highlights.  I’m glad Varitek went after A-Rod.  What a potty mouth.  It was pretty funny that the announcers feigned ignorance as to what A-Rod was saying.  Geez guys, he wasn’t saying “vacuum.”

--And then Ricky Williams retires to smoke pot!  As a Pats fan, I could not stop giggling.  If he wants to retire, that’s his choice, but why didn’t he announce it before the draft or before Eddie George and Antowain Smith were signed?  He probably went to Asia to avoid furious Dolphin fans.

By the way, the Dolphins offence will rely on AJ Feely and Travis Minor.  Mull that over.

--I picked up the Van Halen “The Best of Both Worlds” 2 disc greatest hits set over the weekend.  Seemed like an easy thing to put together: Dave on Disc 1, Sammy on Disc 2.  So of course they screw it up by alternating between Dave and Sammy on both discs, which hurts the listening value tremendously.  Roth-era VH and Hagar-era VH are greatly different beasts (Dave was better, of course, but I thought the high points of the Sammy days were pretty damn great), and listening to them switch back and forth is very disconcerting.  How do you screw up a home run like this?

Even more egregious are the three new tracks (with Sammy on lead vocal).  Bands pull this stunt all the time—offer two or three unreleased songs on a greatest hits album so fans who already own all the material feel obligated to buy it.  Standard practice is to dump these songs at the end of the album, but TBOBW dumps them at the beginning of disc one, right after “Eruption.”  Plus they tack on some live tracks of Sammy singing Dave song.  Are they trying to aggravate their fans?

--I added a few more links to blogs that were kind enough to link back to me.  There’s also a site meter over to the right so you can laugh at how few hits the site gets.

--Go read the much talked about Simmons Vengeance Scale.  It’s good, but Cartman’s revenge on Scott Tenorman should have ranked in the high 9’s.  A 7.8 is pretty outrageous.  If you’ve never seen it, I’ll just say it involves dead relatives, pubic hair, and Radiohead.  I guarantee you everyone who watched that episode said “Holy Shit” at the end.

--I am totally in love with They Might Be Giants new song “Experimental Film.”  I’ve never been a huge TMBG fan but God damn, I can’t get this song out of my head.  You can see an animated video at the Homestar Runner site.

--Not much planned for the weekend, a party on Saturday (with my old college roommate coming up from Jersey), hopefully some maxing and relaxing the rest of the time.  I really need to stop staying up late to watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force on Cartoon Network.

Emmy nominations were announced today. No big surprises, although a few curious nominations:

--Futurama, which has been gone for a year, gets another nod for
Outstanding Animated Program (for "The Sting," an excellent episode) and Outstanding Music and Lyrics ("I Want My Hands Back" from the series finale "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings"). I hope they win just so I can laugh and laugh at Fox.

--William Shatner picks up a nomination! He gets the nod for Outstanding Guest Actor In A Drama Series for his turn on The Practice.

--In what has to be a first, Antonio Banderas competes against Al Pacino in
an acting catagory. Both are up for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Miniseries Or
A Movie, Banders for "And Starring Pancho Villa As Himself," Pacino for
"Angels in America (which scooped up a whopping 21 nominations)."

--Sadly, Larry David was the only cast member of Curb Your Enthusiasm to
get a nod. Even Oscar the dog got snubbed. It did pick up three nods for
best director and best Comedy Series (which it should win).

--No goodbye nomination for Jerry Orbach. Oh well.

--Finally did a little updating to the links and added a comment option in case you want to make your voice heard. I'll hopefully add more in the coming days.

--Beat Spider-Man 2 last night. Boy, that last level (shutting off the switches in Doc Ock's hideout) is a bitch. I'm surprised it only took me a week to beat it, as I'm long past my videogaming prime. The final fight with Mysterio in the 7-11 is pretty funny.

--My Work Buddy Johnny and I had a long discussion about Vlad the Impaler, specifically how many people you have to impale to earn that nickname. He thought one would be enough, I say at least three. You have to establish a pattern of impaling. If you eat meatloaf for lunch one day a week, you don't deserve the nickname "Meatloaf." But if you eat it every day for a month, I'd say you earned the right to be called Meatloaf.

(This is what happens when it's a slow workday.)

--There's nothing worse than when something you ordered from a vending machine doesn't fall out, then you have to order two just because you feel ripped off otherwise. I once paid for four packs of skittles just so I could feel I got my money's worth. Not my finest moment.

--I was going to badmouth the Sox after their disastrous 1-5 road trip last week, but they’ve won their last two games against the A’s by a combined score of 22-3 and look poised to sweep with Curt Schilling on the mound tonight. So I don’t know. If they can keep playing like this, we’re certain to be playing in late October. But this team has been so erratic this season it’s hard to get excited about a two game stretch.

--Picked up Del Tha Funkee Homosapian’s greatest hits (the one covering his Elektra stuff) this past weekend. You might remember Del as the guy rapping on the Gorillaz’s “Clint Eastwood” (one of the top ten singles of the 00’s). Del’s actually the cousin of Ice Cube, although lyrically they’re very different (I don’t think Cube would write an ode to guys sleeping on his couch). Fun stuff.

--Also picked up Spider Man 2 for the Ps2. There’s a very prevalent Grand Theft Auto influence in the game. No, Spidey doesn’t hit hookers over the head with a bat—you’re let loose in New York City and you’re free to explore and tackle side missions (finding icons, races, helping citizens). The “helping citizens” portion gets a bit repetitive (I’ve stopped about 100 armored car robberies and been ambushed 200 times), but the main story is pretty good. They even through in some additional bad guys (Rhino, Mysterio, and Shocker (MVP “B” level bad guy)). And I tell ya, it gets no better than jumping off the Empire State building and swinging just before you hit the pavement. It even has Bruce Campbell as the narrator/instructor.