Friday afternoon: And it's raining . . .

1. Fairly easy substitute job at thew local high school today, although they tossed me into Math. Mostly small classes. Kids were good. Teacher was well-planned. Fire drill, which one of the kids, who is in the local fire department, told me was coming. Also, this area is getting hit with drug-resistant staph infections, and the kids were all concerned.

2. UMass has a U.S. History class that looks at history through the prism of the Grateful Dead. The absolute coolest part is that one of the professors invoved is named Robert Weir -- as in Bob Weir, as in he has the same name as a member of the band.

3. Oh, and the New England Patriots are getting really tough about people re-selling their tickets.

4. Got called back for a second interview on the two-county wide youth initiative job. Yay! Interview next week. Well, actually presentation. I have to pretend I have been hired as the collaboration coordinator for the project, and I am going to present a proposal to these folks -- who will be playing the role of a town youth board -- recommending that they add full-voting youth members to the board. This oughta be cool.

Friday baseball on an off day . . .

1. Great video for John Fogerty's "Centerfield." Classic baseball video including Ted Williams and Babe Ruth.

2. All I can think of when I see coaches arguing with umpires is:

Teddy Cullinane:  [broadcasting on the radio] I've never seen Crash so angry. And frankly, sports fans, he used a word that's a no-no with umpires.
Millie: [Annie snaps off the radio] Crash must've called the guy a cocksucker.
Annie: Mmmmm. How romantic.

3. Never forget Carlton Fisk.

4. And Hall of Fame sportswriter Peter Gammons immortalized it in the Boston Globe.

Here's the lead:

And all of a sudden the ball was there, like the Mystic River Bridge, suspended out in the black of the morning.

When it finally crashed off the mesh attached to the left-field foul pole, one step after another the reaction unfurled: from Carlton Fisk's convulsive leap to John Kiley's booming of the "Hallelujah Chorus'' to the wearing off of numbness to the outcry that echoed across the cold New England morning.

	Carlton Fisk motions for the ball he hit in the 12th to stay fair -- and it did.

At 12:34 a.m., in the 12th inning, Fisk's histrionic home run brought a 7-6 end to a game that will be the pride of historians in the year 2525, a game won and lost what seemed like a dozen times, and a game that brings back summertime one more day. For the seventh game of the World Series.









5. This Nike commercial made me cry.

6. And the end of this Mastercard commercial spoof made me laugh.

Friday evening hanging out

1. So wrong I just won't post it: "House on Pooh Corner" filked to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun."

2. This is also wrong: I present to you, the LolCat Bible.

Genesis 1

1. Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat waz invisible, An he maded the skiez An da Urf, but he no eated it.

2. The Urfs wus witout shapez An wus dark An scary An stufs, An he rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stufs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz cats can seez in teh dark An not tripz ovr nethin. an Ceiling Cat sayz u mus hav da moneyz 2 git da milkz.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. Teh evning An morning was teh first day.

You get the idea.

3. I knew she had talked about wrapping up the strip, but I have not been keeping completely up to date on Lynn Johnston.

From the Chicago Tribune:

In early September, fans of the comic strip "For Better or For Worse" began to notice that some of the strips departed in style from their usual appearance and seemed situated in another time. Newspapers around the country have been fielding questions from confused readers.

Indeed, creator Lynn Johnston had launched her plan -- unusual in the comic strip world -- to create a "hybrid" strip in which the present-day story would be minimal and strips from the past would be reprinted as flashbacks.

Her goal was to wrap up her characters' present-day plots by the beginning of September, she told the Tribune in January. After that, "we can probably choreograph a year's worth of work in a few days," she said then. This schedule would allow her to pursue some retirement plans, including spending more time with her husband of 32 years, a retired dentist, she said.

But two things happened to alter that scenario: She found it difficult to quickly resolve the myriad threads of her characters' lives -- and her husband left her.

"He fell in love with somebody else," Johnston said in a phone interview from her home in the Canadian city of Corbeil, Ontario. "It had been over a long period of time. I just -- " she paused, then continued, "well, it's a surprise."

4. Editor & Publisher lists the top newspaper web sites in terms of unique monthly visitors.

The top 20
(I have bolded the ones I read daily, and italicized the one's I read on a fairly regular basis.) No, this is not a meme.


NYTimes.com 
washingtonpost.com 
USATODAY.com 
LA Times -- 4,971 
Wall Street Journal Online 
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle 
Boston.com 
Chicago Tribune
(NY) Daily News Online Edition 
Newsday 

New York Post 
The Houston Chronicle
Chicago Sun-Times 
Village Voice 
Atlanta Journal-Constitution 
The Seattle Times 
Azcentral.com 
Seattle Post-Intelligencer 
DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News
(South Florida) Sun-Sentinel 

Talkin' baseball

So Liam, how you feelin' about the Red Sox?

Really good, thanks.

As we head into the "biggest weekend" of baseball so far, I am feeling really good.

1. I am feeling really good about Josh Beckett. In winning two games in the ALCS, he has pitched 14 innings and has given up nine hits, three runs and a walk. He has struck out 18, and he has beaten C.C. Sabathia twice.

2. I feel really good about being back in Boston. This is the place where miracles happen. Especially in Game 6.

3. I am feeling really good about Curt Schilling having a chance to be a hero again. We're talking mythical here, folks.

4. I am feeling really good about Daisuke Matsuzaka pitching In Game 7 because it gives him the hance to be the hero and prove that we were right.

5. I feel really good about the World Series, because we have been there before, and Colorado really hasn't.

6. I feel really good because I remember 2004.