Future Poltergeist

As soon as I say nice things about the White Sox's winning ways, they play a sloppy game to the A's. The frustrating thing about this game was that I couldn't watch it. We have the Extra Inning package that allows us to see so many out of market games. Last night we discovered that they weren't showing this particular game. Instead, they showed the D-Backs-Dodgers game on two different channels. Not even different broadcasts. Cursing ensued. Still all good things (and winning streaks) come to an end. Playing on Oakland has had a way of making the Sox look bad over the last few years, and I guess that's continued. Still a win today would give them the series 2-1. Fingers crossed!

That's how the White Sox stand right now. They've done it with pitching and just scoring enough runs. Will it stand up? No way to tell. The starting pitching has been nothing short of phenomenal. The bullpen has been mostly good, with one bad outing in game three to hurt their overall stats. I expect that the pitching will fall off some and the hitting will pick up some. And their will be a bad streak or three. And the rest of the teams in the AL Central will make a run at them at some point. But...I'm feeling pretty good so far.

Here we go with 1992 Scent of a Woman A Few Good Men Crying Game Unforgiven Howard's End The theme of this year with the exception of Unforgiven, is good but not great. Each of the other four movies had significant flaws. In some ways, it's more frustrating to watch a movie that's sooo close but veers off track or falls short of greatness. The other theme of this year is a direct attempt to make people think about moral judgements. I know that's not uncommon in good movies, but it's particularly visible in this year. You could show this set of movies in a comparative ethics course and get an interesting snapshot of '92. The only music that really stuck with me was from Scent of a Woman. The FP Fiance has a fondness for the song 'Crying Game'. The rest was fine, but not great. Unforgiven really stood out and deserved the best picture award that it won.

This is another big day on the sports calendar as each team tries to improve themselves. I'm not really a scouting analyst and have no thoughts on which players will actually become good and which ones will be busts. But the whole macro orginiztional aspect of the draft has always facsinated me. So what do I hope for from the Vikes today? I'm hopeful that they pick the best available player (unless he's a quarterback). They've improved in the defense over the offseason, but they could still use help. They could use help at receiver and O-line. The Vikes have had good sucsess with players falling to them and I hope they can do so again today. Also, to echo almost every other team, I'd love for them to trade down and get more picks for less money per. This draft doesn't seem to have as many stand out players and the belief is that the talent drop off isn't that steep from the top. In any case, I'll be crossing my fingers and hope for the best!

And here's a kitty for Friday. 

Here's for the end of the week. And yes I miss the ocean. 

And now another series is out of the way, with the Sox taking both games from the Twins. The Sox pitching wasn't that sharp, but the defense was. The maximum number of double plays a team can turn in two nine-inning games is 18. I think the Twins hit into about 14 of them. I can only imagine their frustration. The Twins scored their first run Monday night on a balk. The Twins announcers didn't see a balk even after reviewing replays. I still haven't seen an explanation of what the ump saw. Didn't really matter as the White Sox were able to homer their way out of the problem. Last nights game featured plenty of good defense by the Twins, but the key play was Torri Hunter's misplay of a fly ball into a double. That scored the first run for Chicago and opened the door for the second one. Later on Hunter made a good catch at the wall, but I'm not sure that that evens out. There's also been some talk about this article from a Chicago paper, titled ...

Been meaning to mention this, but I'm heading to Paris week after next. It's a work thing, so the FP Fiance isn't able to come with. I'm very excited!

Not sure what to write about this. The comparison in my mind to 'Sense and Sensibility' is strong and unfair as this movie came out first. Both movies have to do with English class sensibilities and property. Both movies have Emma Thompson in comparable situations. But...this movie lacks the punch of the love story that the latter movie provided. In fact the love story in this movie is more polite and less passionate. It concerns Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins in what must be one of the most restrained proposals in movie history. Hopkins is an older man who is set in his ways. He knows how the world works and isn't afraid to share his advice. His advice brings him in conflict with his fiance's sister (Helena Bonham Carter). This is the conflict that the plot hinges on. The story in an interesting period view of English society in the early 20th century (I think). The movie provides a few beautiful shots of the countryside. Who wouldn't love an English ...

This was the best picture winner of its year and it's tough not to compare it to the more recent ' Million Dollar Baby ', also directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. Both films present people in difficult situations that have to make their way through ethically murky situations. It's tough to cheer on the protagonist in both cases, though condemning them is also dificult. The striking piece of this movie was how it changed the landscape of western movies. Eastwood made his name in westerns in the 50's and 60's when the good guys and the bad guys were more easily told from each other. This movie made the picture much muddier. It shows a very rough frontier town. A place where the sheriff is the law and his judgements are final. It also shows that shooting a man can be emotionally devestating. A few things that struck me during this watching: Sheriff Little Bob (Gene Hackman) makes two early punishments in this movie. After the cowboys cut up a whore he...

for the White Sox, who are tied with the Twins for the best record in MLB at 8-3. It's still very early and I'm still not sold. Having said that, if this pitching holds up, they will run away with the division. More hitting and taking more walks would help tremendously. The best first look at a team should be right around the end of April. Should be fun to see where it goes from there.

Able to watch all three of the games over the weekend (the FP Fiance deserves another medal). It's early in the season and you shouldn't make too much of just three games, but here is some of what I noticed. The starting pitching in the first two games was pretty even with the differance being the Twins pitchers wilting a bit. If Silva is out for the season, this will put even more pressure on that starting staff. This was the first time I'd seen El Duque pitch in a long while and I was pretty impressed. Garland also looked good, but I'd need to see three or four good starts in a row before I really believe in him. It wasn't Buehrle's best start, in fact it was below his average start and I'm not sure why. Santana looked very good again. The umpire's strike zone was wider than the one that ESPN used, but that's just a quibble. It looks like the way to get to him is to do it early. Also looks like you can bunt on him. In fact, the thing that ...

For the sake of this review I'll assume that everyone knows about the, um, thing you shouldn't know about until you've seen this movie. If you don't know, then don't keep reading. Or go ahead and read it. But you've been warned. To start with, a true story. We've had an informal tradition of taking Mom out to a movie on Mother's Day. This tradition really hasn't always gone well. 'City Slickers 2' might have been the low point. Or it might have been this one. My brother and I took her out to see it. We'd heard it was good. Not really mother and sons material, though. And the biggest problem with this movie is that it should be better than it is. The early part of the story is interesting. IRA member becomes too close to a hostage. Is supposed to execute him but lets him get away only to see the hostage run down by the strike force coming to rescue him. Feels guilty about the entire situation and finds the hostage's girlf...

Yes, it's still going on. I've just been lazy about posting the movie reviews. (For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, read here .) Movie posts will continue.

A couple of months ago, the thought had crossed my mind that the FP Gal and I should get hitched. These were relatively new thoughts and I wanted to take some time to get the taste of them. And they tasted pretty good. But how do you get the details right? Questions to the ladies at work of how their husbands and fiances handled picking out a ring proved fruitless. "If you wanted a ring, what kind of ring might you want?", lacks the smoothness that I was after. So I broke cover and talked with a friend about what I was thinking and how to go about the proposal. The best idea we came up with was to give her something in place of an engagment ring with the idea of getting that later. Instead of an expensive ring, she'd get a toy ring for the time being. A co-worker helped with the ring box. Those two were the only ones that I'd told. So...on Sunday after a grueling day at the beach, we'd retired to the hotel room to rest. As she slept, I got the box and th...

And here's the happy girl. 

Here's the ring. 

A stray cat that hung out outside of our hotel in Ixtapa. 

It's not always easy to be a fan of an out of town team. This really hasn't been a problem for me as a White Sox fan because the two teams haven't both been competitive at the same time. That's no longer true and the teams have become each other's biggest rivals. I'll write more on this, but I'd just like to say this to Twins fans: Don't become insuferable. The last few years, the Twins have been a bit better and caught a few more breaks than the White Sox. Those three consecutive divisional championships look wonderful (and I'd love to have them for my team) but don't go overboard. Your players still leave a scent in the toilet. None of them have been documented as to walking on water or healing lepers. Keep this in mind, please.

Which is where we are. She was very surprised (pleasantly). And as a technichal note, she said "yes" so she will now be called FP Fiance. More news to follow.

I just wanted to get something down before the season starts so I could look back in October and shudder. These are some baseball thoughts off the top of my head. 1) The biggest story (again) is going to be the Yankees and Red Sox. This is outside of whether or not they actually are the most interesting story or not. The sports journalism world is centered on the east coast and that's just how it is. 2) The Twins will falter this year. Their pitching will drop off from last year as both Santana and Nathan will be merely good or great instead of inhuman. They'll finish second to the Indians, losing by less than five games. 3) My White Sox will finish third by playing .500 ball. The biggest factor that would change this is going to be starting pitching health. If all five of the projected starters stay healthy, they'll win the division. I'm not expecting that. 4) The A's will fall a bit back to the pack this year. Their pitching will drop off from last ye...

Here is Sana being all curly.