Friday Five: 7/3

In which I blather about five songs randomly selected from my iPod playlist as I listen to them.

"Hawkmoon 269" - U2
Sparse, moody song from Rattle and Hum. It's a great late-night road trip song.

"Love Hater" - OutKast
From the Andre 3000 side of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, the songs from which impress me more and more every time I listen to them. One of the great albums of this decade.

"Blue Moon Revisited (Song for Elvis)" - Cowboy Junkies
Another one from The Trinity Session, featuring an original song that incorporates a truly phenomenal version of the original "Blue Moon" in the middle. Great song.

"Blame It on Me" - Barenaked Ladies
"Here you are and you're a hundred thousand miles away/ They say absence makes the heart grow fungus/ I wax poetic, as you're waxing your legs/ You say you think there's a traitor among us/ If all else fails you can blame it on me."

"There She Goes Again" - R.E.M.
One of, I think, 3 R.E.M. covers of Velvet Underground songs on my playlist.

Snakebitten

Corry and finished out the NLCS in our ongoing playoff simulation, and the results were not pretty. For me, at least. Game 6 saw the Diamondbacks jump all over Tom Glavine en route to a 10-2 win. Luis Gonzalez and Junior Spivey hit 2 home runes apiece, with Mark Grace adding another to power the win. Schilling went all 9 innings, striking out 11. In Game 7, Arizona built a 7-0 lead through 8 innings thanks to 2 home runs from Steve Finley and 1 from Gonzalez. The Braves tried to make it interesting in the top of the 9th, but they could only come up with 4 runs.

With the Yankees ahead 3-2 in the ALCS, it's looking like a good shot for him to advance both of his teams to the World Series.

Three Strikes

Corry has been playing baseball this summer for the high school's freshman team (baseball here is a summer sport, so the team is open to incoming freshman, of which Corry is one). Yesterday, he got the call-up to play with the JV team, playing first base for both ends of a double-header. He played really well defensively and went 1-for-4 in the first game. The second game was quite a bit more ragged for everyone on the team (we're still in triple digits for heat index, I believe), but he still did OK. I have to give him credit - he has really worked hard and improved since last year.

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Corry's club team has its season-ending tournament this weekend, so that will wipe out gaming for me.

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We have only managed to get in two more games of our playoff simulation. Game 5 of the NLCS featured a pretty good pitcher's duel between Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux. Arizona took a 4-2 lead (on 3 hits,1 walk, and 3 Atlanta errors) into the bottom of the 9th, but then gave up 4 runs - capped by a 3-run Rafeal Furcal homer - without recording an out. To add injury to insult, earlier in the game the D-Backs lost Reggie Sanders (RF) and Jay Bell (2B) for the rest of the series after they collided going for the same pop fly. Atlanta is now ahead 3-2; the series heads back to Arizona and will most likely feature Curt Schilling against Tom Glavine in Game 6.

Over in the AL, Seattle pulled to 3-2 with a Game 5 win behind Jaime Moyer. The Mariners got to Game 1 winner Andy Pettite early and cruised to a 7-2 victory. The good news for the M's is that the series now moves back to Seattle. The bad news is that the Yankees will have Roger Clemens and Mike Mussina for games 6 and 7, and Seattle is in the "pray for rain" section of their rotation.

I Was Expecting More Marilyn McCoo

We took the girls to see Up last night. Some of it (especially the parts with the dogs) was a bit intense for my 7 year-old, but other than that it was fantastic - easily the best Pixar film since The Incredibles. What really sold it, for me, was the voice work. Ed Asner and Christopher Plummer were as excellent as you would expect them to be, but to get that kind of performance out of an 8 year-old with no acting experience? Just amazing. And if that montage at the beginning didn't break your heart, then I really don't know what to say.

So, Up - highly recommended.

Illogical

Are auditory hallucinations a symptom of hyperthermia? It is super hot here, and the air conditioner at work has picked today to finally conk out for good (given the way the building management works, we can maybe expect it to be fixed by October). So I have to do some errands, which means getting in my car that has been sitting in the sun all day, and is thus somehow even hotter than the office. And I'm flipping around the radio, and three different stations are all playing Supertramp at the same time. Three! And three different songs, no less. So I'm thinking heat stroke, because there is no other possible reason why that should be happening in 2009, is there?