Month: August 2010

J. Michael Straczynski will have a cameo role in the film (presuming, of course, that his part doesn’t wind up on the cutting room floor or in the DVD extras.) He plays one of the local townies who finds the landed hammer (in a crater, as per his story) and, along with some cronies, endeavors to pick the thing up.

PAD

I realize that lately whenever I watch a Mets game, particularly if it’s a close one, I wonder how they’re going to blow it. Not if. How. And it’s occurred to me that they’re playing like a team with the exact same mindset.

An inning-ending double play ball comes to you. If you’re a really confident fielder, you don’t even think about what to do; muscle memory just takes over. If you’re a confident fielder, you think, “Oh good, inning-ending double play” and set it into motion. But if you’re a team that’s afraid of losing, then you think, “Please don’t let me make a bad throw.” And you picture yourself making a bad throw, because it’s like saying, “Don’t think about pink elephants.” And since that image is in your mind, your body responds to it, and you make a bad throw.

Or you go up to bat thinking, “Don’t let me hit INTO a double play,” and guess what.

I’m not one of these guys who screams for the manager to be fired just because the team isn’t getting the job done, but isn’t it a huge part of his job to make sure their heads are in the right place, instead of…y’know…up their ášš?

PAD

You know, I seem to remember months ago wondering how in the world Prop 8 wasn’t in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Today a San Francisco judge ruled that Prop 8 was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Didn’t see THAT coming.

Just imagine: All we need now is for a pair of same sex anchor babies to get married and the far right’s collective head will explode.

PAD

Because apparently we’re losing sight of this whole “Huddled masses yearning to be free” thing.

We’ve got Arizona going rogue, targeting people who–let’s face it–don’t look like they should be here. There’s a lunatic ex-governor from Alaska who is challenging the male anatomy of the president of the United States because he’s more concerned about, y’know, following his oath to uphold the Constitution with its pesky illegal search-and-seizure laws than he is about allowing states to grill people based on the color of their skin (even though they claim that’s not what they’re doing, except we all know it is.) And now there’s a movement afoot to try and repeal the Fourteenth Amendment so that people who are born here aren’t necessarily Americans, because (so the claims go) people are coming here specifically to pop out children who will become American citizens.

I mean, considering how many people around the world are being taught that America sucks, you’d think we’d be flattered that people would want to come here seeking better lives for themselves.

So if this keeps up, then yeah, let’s just auction off Lady Liberty, because if we’re not going to attend to the principles she represents, then isn’t it kind of false advertising having her there? At the very least, perhaps we should redesign her so that rather than holding aloft a torch, instead she has a middle finger extended to greet those huddled masses yearning to be deported back whence they came.

PAD

My little girl has slain her first dragon.

Caroline, entirely on her own, played through “Dragon’s Lair” on Kathleen’s iPad. Okay, not entirely. She needed me to navigate the battle against the Chessboard Knight. Other than that, it was all her. She went all the way through to the Lair, slew the dragon and saved the princess.

She has displayed no interest thus far in taking on “Space Ace.”

PAD