Now batting...

Derek Jeter explains the difference between leading off and batting second:

"You hit 60 seconds earlier than you normally do."

When Damon was leading off, I'd say 20 seconds was more accurate.

"It's exactly the same unless somebody's on base," Jeter said. "Some particular inning whoever is hitting ninth leads off and gets on base, then it's back to hitting second."

With Brett Gardner or Melky batting ninth, that could be more like 5 seconds.

Remember Knoblauch at the plate? Even when he totally sucked, you knew you could count on at least 3 minutes for his at bat. Between the clever fans and the utterly disgusted fans, more beer was sold during Chuck's at bats than any other time in those days.

$2625 per seat... do you take Visa?

Each year I plan at least one group outing to Yankee Stadium for work. Anywhere from 40 to 120 tickets, usually around $10 a pop. Usually works out well for everyone.

Just a taste of the New Yankee Stadium for you...

The night I chose for this year's outing happens to be a $5 ticket promotion night-- excellent! I couldn't get through to group tickets today, so I figured I'd try buying them in bulk right off the website. Since the most you can buy at once is 12 tickets, my plan was to buy four batches of 12 each. Hopefully they'd be somewhat close to each other if I bought 'em real fast. Yeah, I'd pay a fortune in ticket fees, but at $5 each who cares?

I couldn't even get 12 tickets period (this was five minutes after tix went on sale). So I tried four tickets. Mind you, this is a crappy weeknight game.

Here's what they offered me for four tickets to a $5 game. Yes, the total is $10,738.80 for four tickets. And that's without shipping.

...trouble it was.

Put my "Smells Like Teen Spirit" rendition in the books. It's done.

As a veteran of the stage, I'm quite familiar with the finer points of live performance. A showman should be in a mode of constant assessment and adjustment during an act-- reading and reacting. I usually know my own physical limits for a given set within the first three minutes. If I'm only feeling 85%, I might skip that triple drop fill at the end of the bridge, dig? If I'm feeling 95+, I just might try something brand new, something nasty. Read and react.

Well, I was running at about 18% tonight-- that was clear from the giddy. I'd been working nonstop from 7:15 to 5:30 without a break, unless you call typing a break. I felt like Peter Gabriel trying to play a show at the AbabaDome after doing 12 hours of humanitarian work out in the desert. Or Pete Doherty trying to play a show, period.

There's the cosmic irony here... I was performing karaoke completely sober for maybe the fifth time in my life, and I felt like a Bowery souse. I sang the entire second verse lying on the floor. I finished the song plane crash-style ("searching for the tarmac"), with no reported casualties. Call me the Sully of song.

I'm getting too old for this silly shit.

Smells like trouble...

The people have spoken, and I have ruled justly.

First, decent idea with "When Doves Cry" by Chuck. Prince was on my list the whole time, but I had a bad experience with WDC once. The squealing and all that weird guttural shit-- I felt like Linda Blair. It's just not a good song for today's youth.

"Smells Like Teen Spirit" is a great idea. I already put my entry in, and I'll be shredding my larynx at about 5:15 pm tomorrow. Got a pretty good get-up too. Still deciding between which prop to "smash" at the end of the song:

1) a broken or fake guitar
2) a graphing calculator (or maybe some sort of SmartBoard utility)
3) a stack of ungraded math reports
4) a pencil sharpener

Hopefully a video will surface by Friday morning. I'll be sure to post it.

I need your help!!!

So let's just say I was to sing at a high school "American Idol"-style karaoke contest on March 19th at 5:00pm...

What song(s) should I sing? Please comment!

The 7-Up dude

This guy was totally dope, right?!