Taking a page from FIFA’s soccer extravaganza, Major League Baseball preps for a 2006 Baseball World Cup. Sounds like a plan…I’m a very casual baseball fan, but I’d probably watch.
Month: November 2003
Rough Trade.
So, unless Dubya capitulates to the WTO, it looks like his botched protectionist ploy for steel state votes is going to result in an all-out trade war with the EU. Nice going, y’all…exactly the type of leadership we’ve come to expect from the Bushies. My bet is they back down – After all, Florida orange-growers are a juicier segment of the electorate than West Virginia steelmakers.
Civil War.
It’s brother against brother in the NBA tonight as the Van Gundys meet in Houston. Even without the Knicks connection, my money’s on Jeff…but, what with the Miami Heat’s 0-6 start, so is everyone else’s.
Of Soccer Moms and Nascar Dads,
Via Webgoddess, Mother Jones wonders why blue-collar Nascar Dads continue to stand with Dubya. (I think “Nascar Dad,” by the way, is a much better formulation of this demographic than confederate flag-thumping truck drivers.)
Kerry’s Last Stand.
How did it come to this? Once the frontrunner candidate for the Dem establishment, John Kerry is now facing defeat in must-win New Hampshire, and I don’t know if another campaign shake-up is going to do the trick. Even with Shaheen running Kerry’s team, the Granite State is probably Dean’s to lose at this point, and I’d think any move towards scorched-earth negativity on Kerry’s part is only going to redound against him. But, at this point, I’d guess Kerry’s running out of options…so it’s probably gonna get ugly, and soon. But if it’s any consolation to Team Kerry, he’s not the only Dem underperforming to expectation…witness the New Yorker profile of Wesley Clark, the frontrunner that wasn’t (although he does seems to be appealing to SC veterans.) Update: Well, when I said it’d get ugly, this isn’t exactly what I meant…two more officials fly the Kerry coop. Update 2: Fred Kaplan takes issue with the New Yorker piece.
A Lament for the Third Age.
Eat your heart out, Glenn Yarbrough. Soundtrack.Net posts their review of the Return of the King score, complete with 30 second clips from each song. For the third time in a row, it sounds like Howard Shore hit it out of the park…I don’t think you can overestimate how much he’s improved these films with his work, particularly after you consider the pedestrian and distracting score of the new Matrix movies. If you’ve never read the trilogy and don’t know how it all ends, I wouldn’t click through. But if you have…some of these snippets are really beautiful and tantalizing (“Hope and Memory” and “Twilight and Shadow,” for example), and none more so than “The End of all Things” and “The Grey Havens.” The Annie Lennox song that closes the film isn’t exactly what I was expecting, to be honest, but I can see it growing on me.
The Hair of the Dog.
As Dubya continues to fill his coffers to combat the growing threat posed by Howard Dean, George Soros rides to the rescue of the Dems once again. As with Dean’s recent decision, I’m feeling a bit ambivalent about what all this means for campaign finance (particularly at a time when some states are cancelling primaries), but I think most of the time Soros is on the side of the angels, and it is good to have someone to stand against the Montgomery Burnses and Richard Mellon Scaifes of this world.
Ages of You.
With the greatest hits tour coming to a close, the Times checks in with REM again. They must be getting sick of the “Over the Hill?” angle of all these stories by now.
Lyrics Carry.
By way of Cheesedip and Do You Feel Loved?, test your knowledge of 80’s lyrics. As a child of the Eighties, I got a 97.
Earth Pig Born…and Dying.
Via LinkMachineGo, a more sympathetic than most overview of Dave Sim’s Cerebus from start to finish. I’m glad somebody can tell me what the hell’s going on…I’ve been lost since Mothers and Daughters. I did read the last five or so issues in the store the other day and got a lot less out of ’em than Deeley here did. Still, it’s hard to believe issue #300 is finally right around the corner.