Opposite of “Drill Baby Drill”

I’ve been reading and hearing folks cry about how the USA is not drilling and is importing too much oil. I understand the jobs aspect, certainly. But I have always had a contrarian thought about this topic and I never hear anyone bring this up: To the extent that we buy and import oil/gas/coal/fossil fuels, we are essentially “conserving” our own and burning that of other nations. By “own”, I mean, that which we can dig up inside our current political borders.

This is a complex issue and I don’t mean to simplify it to say good or bad, but think about it, if we burn every last crumb of what we have here, THEN we will have to import 100% of it and there will be no recourse. If we burn others’, we will end up relatively, with more and more. So, to me, so long as things are politically stable, AND we can economically swing it, buying and burning other countries’ oil/gas, makes our slice of the pie (that we politically control), bigger in the longrun.

Also realize that in some ways, even though we are gluttons and that is not a good thing, it is an astounding fact that 90% of ALL the oil burned on ALL SIDES in World War II, came from Texas.

The scary thing is that unless some drastically new technology (not the stupid battery cars) is developed/discovered, or some serious conservation happens, there WILL be a day of reckoning – out about 100 to 250 years, where modern society will cease to “work”, for lack of a better term, as energy becomes so expensive that things we take for granted, like food and transportation (of food) become prohibitively expensive. I would expect “resource-wars” before that, but you get the idea. I’m not taking a political position on this, either, just making the observation. It’s coming. Those reading this probably won’t have to worry about it, but our kids might; or their kids.

I giggle a little at the fracking issue. Trust me, when the price goes high enough, they’ll frack; everyone, including your auntie, will frack. They’ll frack and frack some more because of what the price will do. Thought experiment: imagine a stream in the woods and EVERYONE knows it’s full of gold nuggets but they’re told, “don’t take the gold out”. How long do you think that gold will sit there? Well, sure, it depends on the consequences, as it always does, but when the price of something goes high enough, people will risk even death, to get at it (and I am by no means equating fracking with death.  Not at all.  The same group that ignores such a basic things as the variability of the sun, is now campaigning against fracking).

And before you get upset at how we are blowing through our natural resources (we are, let’s face it), try and realize how many GOOD things have come out of that. That’s the part the “anti-” crowd never wants to imagine or talk about. All the inventions and medicines and knowledge and industry that using the energy has unleashed. Oh yes, it has. It’s real, but it’s harder to imagine, particularly for the simple folks, which is what makes it easy to demagogue. Most of one side’s positions are conveniently on the “easy” side of the ledger and the other side has the complex arguments to make–the uphill climb.

Anyway, to the extent that we burn others’, we bank our own. That was the original premise. Someday we may be glad we did. God help us then.

Misinformation on O’Reilly re price of oil

Tired of it. Bill O’Reilly gets a lot of stuff right, but he is wrong on this item and is spreading complete populist hooey on the price of oil.

He says that “Speculation drives up the price of oil”. That’s wrong. It can NOT drive up the price of oil. It both drives it up AND DOWN equally. Speculation WORKS BOTH WAYS. It can not ONLY work in one direction. For every price increase it causes, it will cause a price decrease at some point. The difference? You won’t hear folks like O’Reilly talking about the price GOING DOWN! It’s a built in bias. It’s not news.

So O’Reilly: STOP spreading this hooey! You’re completely 100% wrong. The idea that the government needs to step into the free market to somehow curtail speculation is a disaster. Keep the government away from the free market wherever possible, and you’ll have better outcomes.

He also happens to be wrong about our “exporting” oil to China. He even had Rove on who explained to him, on his own show, how he was wrong. We refine it and reship it. But we are NOT a net exporter of oil. Stop misinforming us Bill.

And no sooner do I see a commercial on O’Reilly and it’s a Volt add and it’s lying through it’s teeth about the myth of the electric car. The guy in the spot ends with the big finish line that he, “…rarely puts gas in his car”.
Is this a lie? Narrowly? No. Not necessarily. But what he doesn’t say is that he plugs his car in. That makes his electric bill go up. And it goes up about the same as if he was buying gas. And that electricity is generated overwhelmingly by burning fossil fuels. But we aren’t supposed to talk about that. It’s a big lie.

People are so misinformed about things and we end up with idiot congress and senate people trying to write bills that manage hopelessly complex things and we wonder why we are broke. Sad.

Downing: John Henry in a white suit

Robbie Fowler still has the white suit. He is blase about it saying that if they’d won, no one would care, and I think he’s right about that. So much of media stuff deliberately manufactured and manipulated. Have a look at newsbusters.org any day to read examples from bias to outright lies.

Anyway, my brother and I have a fascination with Fowler and I had not seen the white suits in years. I still recall the sting of Cantona’s goal. I was at O’Donahue’s on 1st Street in Hoboken, NJ. I recall the ball brushed Ian Rush as it went by and I always thought, “…how odd that his last touch in Red was that one.” Cruel really. Things like that made yesterday all the more sweet.

There was one alarming piece of news regarding the Downing transfer. It is theorized that Werner and Henry were duped by this video of Downing putting balls into trash cans willy-nilly, from 30 yards. If you play footy, you know instantly that this is doctored footage. Once or twice you could get lucky, but it’s clearly not real. And even if it were, the game of football has so many different skills, that even if you could do that, it wouldn’t guarantee that you’d be a top EPL player!

So the urban legend that is building is that the stupid Americans got duped by this video and overpaid for Downing. While I’d like to think there was SOME explanation for it, this is bad. This will turn the fans on the American owners and now, as soon as anything negative turns up, the ire will be directed at John Henry. The Yanks need to do some serious damage control asap! This is not a good thing longterm. They’ll never live this down. They have gone from the guys who swooped in and, with Liverpool 4 hours from bankruptcy, saved the team and righted the ship. It was a great platform from which to start, but, I’m afraid, is pretty much undone in this one story, true or not.

Being that Henry made millions in farm futures, you are pretty sure that there is no grass growing under him. I don’t believe that their due dilligence was limited to this doctored video. I don’t doubt that the video might have piqued their interest, but I would like to think they did more homework, but, with the fans we’re looking at, it won’t much matter once this becomes accepted as “the version” of what went down. They don’t need much convincing to buy the “Americans are stupid and know nothing about soccer” meme. Henry might just as well show up at Anfield in a white suit next time. Is he Fowler’s size? The suit still hangs and is a phone call away.

Open Apology to Phil Mushnick

Recently, I had done a piece on Mushnick, a guy I admire and respect.  I went over how I thought it was perhaps unfair to rip Bud Selig without mentioning the union.  I posited that Selig isn’t omnipotent–he’s locked in a dance with Fehr and the union and basically, “it takes two to tango” re steroids.

Mr. Mushnick and I exchanged a couple of emails over this and he mentioned that perhaps I had not read the many column inches over the years that he devoted to doing just that–giving it to the union as much as he did, to Selig.

And I apologized to him for not having acknowledged these items, citing the new baby, and the fact that in the last 1.5 yrs, for the first time in a decade, I wasn’t reading every column like I had been–so, sure, I could easily have missed some items.

I think he is a fair man and realizes the big picture.  I was railing a bit at the media’s tyipcally liberal-and-therefore-always-going-to-take-Labor’s-side-even-though-in-this-case-Labor-is-a-bunch-of-super-rich-guys-complicit-in-a-drug-problem-in-their-ranks-in-the-interest-of-making-money.  To my mind, Labor always seems to get away with things.  Selig is low-hanging fruit, if you will.  It’s easy to bash Selig.  My 9-yr-old nephew can rip Selig.  But newspapers are always reluctant to go after the union guy; the Labor guy; after all, we’ve all been conditioned by Hollywood and the news media to revere the unions–they’re supposed to be for the “little guy”.  How can you bash that?  That’s why we bail out the big 3 auto companies and don’t write enough about how the UAW is driving production costs so high, they just can’t compete with other companies.  The union is for the little guy, got it?

And with a “rich” owner like Selig, we have no respect.  He’s a shill for the other rich guys, so let’s go after him.  Since the time of Charles Dickens, we’ve all been conditioned by Hollywood and the media to hate the rich.  It’s too easy and per formula.  Only it’s not the full story.  The full story is more akin to what Phil Mushnick has published this morning in the New York Post: Click here to launch the piece in a new window

The fault for the look-away, non-confrontational stance on PED’s, has been a dance of BOTH the Commissioner and the Union head.  Selig AND Fehr.

Nice work Mr. Mushnick.  I have never enjoyed a column of yours as much as this morning’s.  Please accept my apology.

***

As an addendum, I was telling Mrs. Pinetar that now I’m a big player in the news business! haha.  I said, “…but honey, think of it!  I’m like Winchell–I should have a booth at the Stork Club…”, to which she said, “…Dear, give me a break~and you DO have a booth–at (Ciro’s) the pizzeria down the steet.”

***
Addendum #2: While going over the Selig thing, I got to thinking about the 200 baseball books I have read since about 1980 and I thought about the Commishioner’s office and just what it was–and wasn’t.  Originally, in the 1920 environment, the game was under a cloud.  It was feared that people would not buy tickets to a game that was not a true contest.  The fear was that if gamblers could rig the world series, then the public would start to stay away, more and more.

And it wasn’t just the 1919 series that was rigged.  There is real strong anecdotal evidence that the 1903, 1911, 1912, 1914 and 1917 series were rigged.  Connie Mack lost the 1905 series partly because he would not pitch Hall of Famer, Rube Waddell, because he knew that gamblers had gotten to the simple, but brilliant man.

Connie Mack also broke up a juggernaut team: the 1911-1914 A’s, because he believed they had thrown the 1914 series to the lowly Braves.  Grover Alexander may have thrown many regular season games.  Cobb and Speaker were almost banned for life.  John McGraw tried to bribe the umps in the replay of the Merkle game in 1908.

The stink was so bad, that baseball knew it had to act.  They had to “appear” to the public to be trying to fix the problem.  They hired Judge Landis as a figurehead, but he knew he had leverage and he didn’t want to just be a figurehead, so he held out for sweeping powers.  Sweeping powers that kept blacks out of the game for decades.  Landis had power because of his unique bargaining position–but he was probably the only Commishioner who wasn’t a straight-up shill.  Remember, all the owners wanted originally was a shill.  And Landis wouldn’t go along.  The position is ultimately a shill position for the owners, and saps like us (via the sappy media) lend credence to the myth that the guy cares, or that he has autonomy.  The reality?  He has very little autonomy.  He was, and is, a shill for the other owners.  Why look at him any other way?

***

Final shot: You’ll Never Walk Alone, Yossi Benayoun.  That an Israeli is scoring a big goal for a staunchly English (and Scouse) club in the Champion’s League, is just a nice thing, dontchathink?  All around.

And I can not recall a goal that made me happier in a very long time.  Gerrard’s goal at the end of the FA Cup Final?  The goals in Istanbul?  This one may not be in THAT zip code, but it’s up there.  Mazel Tov, Yossi #15.

You Gotta Look Sharp

Here’s a few articles on pitch tipping, a hot topic around here lately. Here’s a quote from one of them:

Lefthander Andy Pettitte was an integral part of the Yankees rotation in 2001, posting a 15-10 record with an ERA of 3.99. But Pettitte got bombed against Arizona in the World Series, going 0-2 with a 10.00 ERA. In nine innings, Pettitte gave up 12 hits and 10 runs.

“He was tipping,” Torre said. “We knew [Arizona] had picked up on something, but when we looked at our video, we weren’t seeing it. We realized later it was because he was tipping in the early part of his windup, and our guys were only filming his delivery. We changed the way we did our video after that.”

Click to launch the original article in a new window

I love it. I mean, here’s genius Joe Torre basically admitting, “…yea, we messed up and lost the World Series”. I’ve always felt that this has to be the biggest baseball story ever NOT written. And to me, it just reeks of the media’s pro-Yankee bias. The writers are all a bunch of little boys who do not want to contemplate, even for a minute, that their “heroes” Torre and Pettite, are to blame for losing the Yankees another, nauseating World Series ring.

Other mere mortals would have been run out of the country. Torre? Stottlemyre? They are guilty of malfeasance in this case and yet you never read a word about it, didja? Nope. Everyone clams up and talks about what a cheap little hit Gonzalez got off of Mariano (another who can do no wrong despite blowing 3 postseasons: ’97 Alomar HR, ’01 Throwing ball into CF in G7, ’04 getting ball with lead over Sox), but no one mentions the Yankees’ own part in the story.

And in baseball terms, it should be a HUGE story. But it isn’t. Why? For generations, you could read about the A’s having the Giants’ signs in the 1911 World Series, and also stories about whether the 1911 World Series was cooked, because gamblers got to the Giants. I think the Giants were probably dirty back then. McGraw was not above it. He had a man take money to the umps before the famous 1908 Merkle-replay game. And the A’s certainly were not above it as they threw the 1914 series to a seriously inferior “Miracle” Boston Braves team. After that double cross, Connie Mack KNEW he had a dirty team, but he didn’t know which ones, so he sold it all off. People still erroneously blame Mack for the fire sale, but he had no choice; he had dirty players and he couldn’t say for sure exactly who it was. And look at Eddie Collins: He was on BOTH of the dirtiest clubs in history: The 1914 A’s and the 1919 White Sox–and yet he was considered to be beyond reproach. Amazing. It must have been mighty frustrating to be on the level and see that going on around you in the days when, remember, the difference between the winners’ and losers’ share, was a journeyman’s yearly salary.

Anyway, my point was pitch-tipping and why wasn’t it getting more play in NY in 2001? But we all know why, don’t we? Suuure.

And some will argue (and do quite convincingly) that it isn’t such a great advantage as you might think. But tell that to the 2001 Dbacks. It IS a big deal. It does cost you ballgames. Sure, not everyone wants the info, but that doesn’t mean you don’t try.  When teams steal signs from the scoreboard (very common throughout baseball history), typically, one in three or four, does NOT want the info.  They feel it does more harm than good.

And not everyone is immune to tipping.  In fact, some pretty good twirlers tipped. Koufax tipped everything out of the stretch for his entire career. It didn’t matter. Bunning tipped during his perfect game no less! It didn’t matter. Pedro and Randy and Schilling have all tipped or been suspected tippers, at one time or another in there HOF careers. It happens.

It happens because throwing a pitch is a physical act and you may very well do things differently for different pitches and it isn’t just about the old high school pitcher, “…wrapping the curve ball”. No, not at the top level. Any wrappers have long since had a high school coach yell that out of them (High school coaches can yell, yes?). No, it’s a glance into a glove. It’s a finger waggle outside the glove. It’s the glove open or closed or wiggling or held high or held low or looping in the stretch or it’s a breath or facial tick or something that is consistent but not overt, and you don’t even know you are doing it.

I think it’s great fun to try and call pitches but the TV coverage is so lousy that you don’t get a chance. The director cuts to a closeup of the runner, the batter, the pitcher, the manager. It’s stupid. I want to see the shot from CF, over the pitcher’s shoulder, EVERY time. I want to see the sign put down and the location, and then see the catcher move to the location and set the target, and most of all, I want to see the pitcher’s full regimen each time. But the directors in the truck don’t get that and they never will.

How would I cover a ballgame?  First off, the camera would never be anywhere except over the pitcher’s shoulder.  Only VERY noteworthy things would trump that continuous shot.  I owe that to the intelligent baseball fans watching.  And almost NO crowd shots, please.  Never.  They aren’t the story.

As the batter is walking up to hit on each at-bat, the announcer would have to review that last AB’s pitch selection.  If there is none, then the “book” on that batter, from that pitcher should be reviewed.  You want to get fancy and show those montage shots of all the pitches?  Now’s the time.  But I’d be satisfied with a verbal, “…here’s Joe Blow, Webb started him with the sinker away last time and then sinker in and then slider away.  Let’s see…”

That’s it!  That’s what I want.  Why is that so hard?

Click here to open another story in a new window

Click here to read yet ANOTHER story in a new window

Click here to launch the 2001 series stats from baseball-reference.com

How will the GW crowd make this The West’s fault?

Bactine for Babe

Another in the Babe series.  Here is proof that I can shift gears a little.  There was too much meat on the shoulder so out come the 1/4″ die grinders and belt sanders and off comes some shoulder.  It feels weird because the thing is mostly done back there and then I’m taking a step back to get something right.  That’s why I like to start striping up finished areas because that helps you see the right things.  Things that you wouldn’t see in wood or primer will become more apparent.  Remeber my mantra: do the easy stuff first and then the hard stuff becomes easy.

Yes, you are seeing the hands on the big guy now.  That’s as of 1am yesterday morning and now the job is to get them looking right, sanded and sealed.  Tonight was more of that and today was a really light day for a Saturday because of the stuff I talked about in the last post.  Too much family stuff going on to do much but I did force myself down there to get a coat on because when dry time is in play, you have to take advantage of the time.  Tomorrow has to be a big day.  I was hoping to be past this point by this time but you do what you can do.

And the Andy Griffith 4-pack was disappointing.  Two of them were on last night.  So I watched Antiques Roadshow.  Roadshow is a good program to work to because I don’t have to look at the screen really at all.  I can just listen to what the appraisers say and the laymen jabber and I’m ok.  If the piece is stunning, I can quickly glance and then get my eyes back to the end of the die grinder or what have you.

I have a little FM base station plugged into the TV and I wear wireless headphones to pick up the sound.  It’s great because they block the sound of the machines and act as noise dampers (that I would have to wear anyway) and with a little flick, I can mute all the dopey ads–every *** **** one of them.  Did you ever really stop and listen to how they scream and yell at you and insult your intelligence in just about any TV commercial you can name?  It’s really amazing when you think about it.  And movie trailers?  Don’t get me started.  Why does EVERYthing in a movie trailer have to WHOOOOSH and BOOOM at you like you have your ear on the subway track at rush hour?  Do they think we are monkeys?  It’s just raw f****n noise people!  I don’t know about you all, but if an ad is obnoxious enough, I will avoid buying it within reason.  –fog 

Holiday Cheer Everywhere. Even My Lungs.

My kid keeps breaking out of his swaddle blanket.  The kid is like Houdini~  He gets a hand out of the little swaddle blanket (which looks an awful lot like a tiny straight jacket) pretty much before you get the light out.  And he likes it.  He gets a little thrill out of it. 

Just when I thought the dust phase of the statue was over, I got a full 8 hours of it today, a vacation day, no less.  The hands are on and I’ll be posting out some photos of that this w/e.  And I do wear a mask when the dust is flying but it can be darned uncomfortable.

Tomorrow, I need to have another big day with the work on the statue but will be shoveling frozen ice off a driveway (still doing that) and taking my nephew to his hitting workout as his dad is in dialysis.  Then after hitting, we are working out the kids for tryouts for the last 2 slots and we have ringers coming in who should be good; but we have to go through the whole thing.  Then we take the boy to get measured for a custom baseball glove.  They measure his hand and build it to suit.  It is quite cheap on a deal that the coach has arranged, so I’m all over it.  He may get 3 years out of this glove.

Then it’s over to the nursing home that my dad is in now with the broken hip.  He was released from the hospital and is there for rehab.  I was a little p****d to find out that this place charges.  Where I work, if someone is on a full Medicare A stay, the first 20 days of your 100 days are free in essence, because you are collecting 100% from Med-A.  Whatever that person’s RUG score is, THAT’S what they pay the facility.  Well, at least this place is close and that money could be an incentive to get the walking in and get out.  He will most likely be there for Xmas but it still may only be for 4, 5, or 6 days.  All in all, for his age, he has come through remarkably well.

After all this stuff, I will be able to work.  Maybe get in a 6pm to 1am shift.  That’s when I get all my work done anyway.  At least there’s an Andy Griffith 4-pack on at 8pm.  2 hours of Mayberry.  I want to live in Mayberry.  There isn’t much to watch on TV when I’m trapped in the shop.  Why isn’t there more pool on TV?  I love it.  All I see is poker: Where’s the pool?  And when it is pool, it’s always 9-ball.  How about some Rotation (Chicago) or one pocket or something other than 9-ball?  And when they show you the table with the ball diagrams on there, can they show that more?  I mean longer?  So I have a chance to map out 3 or 4 shots ahead?  That’s the whole game and they rush it but boy, they make sure they have the stupid, “pocket cam”.  That is a little camera that gives the view of an ant, standing in the pocket as the ball comes AT you.  Now why in the hell would you EVER want that vantage point?  I wouldn’t mind seeing the whole match from above the table.

Also today, I bought 100 shares of YUM and now I’m hoping that those guys can sell a lot of our bad food (and lifestyle) to the Chinese.  They have some dough in their pockets now so naturally, they’re going to want jalapeno poppers, doesn’t everyone?  And I will profit like Cheney….[evil laugh]. 

Last item.  See the photo below?

This is my tax money being spent on town, curbside, leaf collection.  Yea, that’s how they do it here and you don’t have a choice.  I rake my stuff to the curb on a busy county road and the cars and wind blow it all the hell all over the place.  I re-rake it daily for a couple of weeks and then these guys come around and vaccuum them up.

Only here, this year, they can’t vaccuum up my neighbor Bill’s leaves because the da*n things are frozen~  So there were as many as 4 guys hacking away at Bill’s leaves with shovels and backing up traffic for 10 minutes.  The pile on the right?  That’s the ice from my driveway.  The leaves are behind Bill’s blow-fence.  Unsure if the blow fence is helping the leave-entropy.  They might be because Bill is the only one on the street with any leaves at all.  The mayor wants us to know that the system is working and can he please raise our taxes? Again.

You Hafta Try It

Click here to launch the Brazilian Football name generator in a new window

I got this off of one of the the blog sites.  Anyway, you plug in your name and get out your dopey Brazilian name, for instance, George Bush yields: “Georgildo”.  And it puts in on a little yellow national jersey and you can put in your number.  All in all, it’s about 2 minutes worth of work-procrastination but not for some~

In the 1970′s, when my family had season tickets to the NY Cosmos at Giants Stadium, (when mystery men were hitting pennant winning homers for the Yankees), the Cosmos had a player named “Rildo”.  We thought that was funny.

So I had sent this link to some guys and one of them was at it long enough to plug in “Ron Swaboda”.  How many names he plugged in before this is anybody’s guess.  A dozen?  More?  I mean, Ron Swaboda?  That’s random.  Anyway, he figured out that Ron Swaboda will yield “Rildo” in the name generator.  I mean, what are the odds? 

***

Rildo Menezes – Head Coach (Right)

Rildo Menezes is the Head Coach of the Bridge USA Soccer Academy, and is world renowned in his coaching ability and knowledge of socccer. Rildo was born in Brazil, and started his professional soccer career when he was a teenager, playing for Botafogo and Santos in Brazil gave him the opportunity to play for the Brazil national team, where he teamed up with Pele, for the 1966 and 1970 World Cup. Rildo played 9 years for the Brazillian national Team.

Rildo continued his career in Brazil, and in Europe and finally in the US with Pele for the New York Cosmo’s. Rildo has spent the last 30 years coaching professional soccer clubs and teams across the USA, and now coaches exclusivley for the Bridge USA Soccer Academy. With a FIFA International A class licence and his experience Children of all ages are learning a higher level of soccer to help them become the next World Cup Soccer Star for the future.

 

Career:

Former Brazilian National Team Player(played 65 games), Played World Cup in 1966 & 1970 with Pele, World Cup Champion Team Member, 5-times Brazilian Club Team Champion,

FIFA Int’l A class Coaching License.

1959: Ibis-PE
1960: Sport Recife-PE
1961-1966: Botafogo-RJ
1967-1972: Santos FC-SP

1973-1976: CEUB-DF

1977: New York Cosmos – USA

 

Chips Ahoy! Babe and Tommy

I very rarely get the old chisels out and do any old-timey chiseling anymore due to the chain saw and die grinders, but it sure is nice to make the big chips and get into that groove and just bang away. You can remove a heck of a lot of wood in a hurry–just not as fast as the chainsaw. Why use it? I can’t chainsaw up something that is not anchored and this fore arm was not. I even used the wide one a bit and the deep gouge. I do/have done 99.9% of all my chiseling with that old shallow gouge with all the duct tape on the end and the dot of white paint on it from my Mickey Mantle statue. Why? You have to hit bigger gouges too hard and deeper ones take too much wood. I go to the shows and see tables and tables of chisels and tools laid out and I laugh because I don’t need any of it! One tool does most all of it. The one thing that I would buy, is time, and that they’re not selling. It’s the key ingredient.

 

Here’s the man with the rosie cheeks who someday, will be going to school on money I made breathing in all this dust and having no life. I hope he does well at school. And it may be the local college because I can not see doing another one of these and going through this again for the money I’m getting. If I can’t get nearly double, I will not take another gig. But this one is almost done and we’re going to have some fun with it I’m sure. Tommy visited me in the shop (“shop”, Read: dingy cellar) today just as I had penciled in the most famous number 3 in the world. After he left, I realized it was in the wrong place by about a half inch and so I sanded it out and redrew it.

Tommy was playing his toy piano last night and I was trying to get him to hit the keys with his right hand and he really wouldn’t. But he did hit a few notes with his left hand and I thought, “…wow, a lefty!”. If this leftiness holds up and he can throw a 100 mph, then my wife and I have planned to use some of his major league fortune to buy a place in the Ardennes, in Luxembourg.

We love the Duchy.

***

I just saw this again and it always makes me laugh.  The 1-800 Lawyers commercial on TV.

It is as if they have called down to central casting and said, “…send up a sort of a silent movie villian type…sort of an oily lawyer character actor with a waxed mustache like Snidley Whiplash on the Dudley Dooright cartoon…yea, that’ll do it…”