Rays 6, Yankees 3

Took the honorable Michael Heaton to the game. Mike’s not a Yankee fan, but he put on a happy face and had a good time. I’m pretty sure the Miller Lites helped a bit.

The beer was definitely the highlight of the game. Jeter, Damon and Cano continued their awful performance, and Pettite was shaky. Shell Duncan kinda stunk too.

I’m pretty sure the guy next to me stole my promotional 2008 Yankee calenedar. I put it down next to my seat for a sec while I said hi to a couple of people, and next thing I know it’s gone. Meanwhile, my neighbor sits smug with two calendars in his lap. I ask him if he saw my calendar, and he shakes his head. Ten minutes later I hear him jawing about how the calendars are already going for $40 on eBay. No proof, but I think he got me. Mike H, ever the gent, scored me another one off the floor of the mens’ room.

Stadium Pizza doesn’t even sell their 3 for $10 beer anymore. At least the beer inside the stadium hasn’t gone up (how could it?). As I said, the beer was the highlight of the game.

Rays 13, Yankees 4

The following is a real-time diary account of tonight’s Yankee broadcast on YES:

7:01 – Apparently Joe Girardi is "under the weather" tonight, and will be managing from his office...

7:02 – Michael Kay – "After last night’s performance by Hughes, Ian Kennedy will have some tough shoes to follow tonight…" I guess we’ll burn that metaphor when we cross it.

7:05 – The Rays??? Fucking stupid. How ’bout the Arizona Backs?

7:07 – Yankees: The Final Season… Will Joba get whacked? Will Joe Torre pour gasoline on the coast-to-coast beef? Will Jeter finally fuck Meadow?

7:10 – Ken Singleton just pronounced it Ee-van Longoria. He wishes.

7:16 – Fantasy Bonus Alert: Crawford SB.

7:19 – Stop talking about Kennedy’s amazing control. He can barely throw a damn strike.

7:27 – Wow, nothing like watching a baseball game with your son. It’s something I always… ah shit! LJ just projectile puked all over my leg.

7:LLkl;kjj oops, fell asleep for a minute there.

8:00 – Jeez, he just walked Carlos "That’s the Raspberries" Pena.

8:06 – Ouch. Ian’s looking a bit more Ted than John F so far…

8:07 - … and they just took him out. Girardi could be heard faintly calling from the office bathroom, "Nooooo… don’t take him out yet…. (flushhhhhhhhh)"

8:09 – Have no fear, it’s Jonathan Albadagajedero.

8:12 – Suck city. Better dust off those Igawa shirts.

8:22 – The New York Yankees… where formerly great leadoff hitters come to wither off and die.

8:29 – OK, signs of life. Giambi’s lickin’ his lips like crazy—that’s good.

8:30 – Fantasy Bust Alert: Cano’s batting like 0.050.

8:34 – Jeter error. If Cano’s having one of his space cadet nights in the field, the Yankees might have one of the worst defensive infields in baseball.

8:40 – Now I really am falling asleep. I’m going for Diet Dew 3 for the day.

8:53 – Wakefield’s getting knocked around a bit by the Jays. Rays, Jays… tough division. At least Tampa’s sort of normal looking—Toronto’s got more mullets than a Mr. Mister video. Or at least the ’93 Phillies.

8:58 – So they’re using a recording of Bob Sheppard’s voice every time Jeter comes to the plate. Weird.

9:15 – Great. Another "lefty specialist" that can’t get lefties out.

9:18 – Giambi. Catlike at first.

9:43 – What the hell happened? I went to give Lee Jr. a bath, and it looks like Hawkins is the one that took a bath. Oh brother. Booed off the field.

9:48 – Farnsworth, Farnsworth, he’s our man! If he can’t do it, Carlos Pena can! 3-run dong. We’re getting our asses whupped by the Rays.

9:50 – [from Ms. Mazz: "Was this Torre’s fault too, Kyle?"] Gotta love it.

9:52 – Let’s see what else is on: "Escape to Chimp Eden"; "John Adams" (I can’t take this seriously at all. I’m waiting for John Adams to start singing karaoke.); "You, Me and Dupree"; "Beerfest"; "The Breakfast Club" (ultra-rare uncensored version); "Succubus: Hellbent".

9:56 – Kay and the boys are doing a great job calling them "Rays" and not "Devil Rays". I couldn’t do that. I still talk about the Oilers and the Expos.

10:00 – Tomorrow better be better. When I go to 30 games in a season, I don’t much give a shit if they get creamed a few times. But this year, I demand more. Quality, not quantity. Sapporo, not Bud Lite.

10:04 – Farnsworth is a real bum. Really. He has the competitive edge of a potato chip.

10:14 – Cano seems to be in one of his moods. In other words, he’s hitting like shit.

10:15 – I suppose Rob Thomson did a good job managing. Managing to get wiped, that is.

10:17 – Sorry that was so boring. I just took a handful of pills and I’m going to bed now.

Eternal Knicks Question…

Which will last longer?

Isiah Thomas or the flesh-colored bandage on Jamal Crawford's shoulder?

JERK OF THE WEEK: The Cutter

It was already a lousy trip home: a “gag-me-with-a-spoon” smelly homeless guy on the A train, a 1 train taken out of service at 96th, and then all uptown 1’s running non-stop from 96th to 145th. That just doesn’t work for me.

I opted for the uptown M104 – a dicey move at best. At least twenty people beat me to it, but a reasonable line was forming on the curb. Not too many things in this world as humbling as waiting on a long line for a fucking bus (waiting at the DMV and sitting in the back of a police car come to mind…). It’s so pathetic, in fact, that it can almost feel like a bonding experience.

Maybe this is why my comrades and I almost blew a collective gasket when a short old lady scurried past our well-formed line and up into the bus. The b*#@$ cut us all!!! Not only that, but she took the last damn seat on a packed 104. The driver almost had to lower the hydraulics on the bus so I could pick my jaw up off the street and get into the vehicle. Here she is, smug as a bug in a tugboat. Notice how she pretends to gaze deeply out the window (she’s trying to avoid eye contact with the angry mob of jilted upright riders).

Not even two minutes after I crowned my Jerk of the Week, another fiasco starts up. A lady sitting in the very first seat (the “don’t sit here unless…” seat) has an enormous pile of shopping bags spilling out into the aisle of the bus. People are stepping/tripping over her stuff as they try to board – she does absolutely nothing. Finally, the bus driver shuts everything down, and tells the lady to please move her bags out of the aisle. She refuses. He asks her again. She refuses again.

An old Asian guy stands up and starts yelling at the lady. “You not special!! You not special!!” he screams, waving a bony finger in her face.

She yells right back, “Then get off the bus!!! Then get off the bus!!! I paid my two dollars!!!”

So on and so forth. Two women behind me provide a hushed commentary: “I can’t believe her… She’s in the handicapped seat, too… Well, how do we know she’s not disabled…”

I’m busy putting together an attack on her “I paid my $2” angle; maybe something along the lines of “Yeah, well I paid my freaking $81 this month! My fare went up and yours didn’t! Now move your damn bags”… I tried to capture the sleaze-bag-lady on film, but this is all I got.

John Zorn’s “The Dreamers”

First and foremost, biggo props to Mike H for hooking me up with seats for the debut performance of Zorn's new piece. Mike ended up sidelined with "flu-like symptoms" (that's what they always call it when sports celebs get the shits) and graciously gave me the tix.

I immediately thought of a few ways to thank the guy:
1) take Michael to a Yankee game this season, which will be the last at the historic Stadium (he'll hate this idea)
2) take him to dinner (he'll like this better)
3) take him to see Semi-Pro three times in a row (he'll probably hate this too)

Anyway, I invited my pal Marnie from work and headed on down to Dumb-bo. St. Ann's is a terrific place to see and hear a show - the sound is extraordinary. If you're sitting close to the front, it's about as good as it gets. We ended up sorta close to the back.

Zorn was conducting an all-star six-piece band (not including himself). It was supposed to be seven, but I couldn't find Ikue Mori for the life of me. Either she cancelled or she was hiding under a table with her drum machine. Didn't matter, as Marc Ribot, Joey Baron and crew did just fine without her.

The crowd was subdued, to say the least. I think someone dropped a plastic cup of soda a few rows from us, which caused a minor commotion. I've seen rowdier crowds at a Film Forum matinee.

I was mid-yawn when Lou Reed and his fair Laurie sauntered past our row. He didn't look bad, but he didn't look good either. It took him about four minutes to amble down the aisle to what he thought were his seats, and then another six minutes to backtrack all the way around the venue to the right spot. Exciting stuff.

I gotta say, it felt good to see him. I figured if the show's not that great, there's no way I could be even half as disappointed as Lou would be, so there's really nothing to worry about. The collective expectations of the common folk drop precipitously when royalty enter the picture. Good enough for Lou - good enough for me!

The band was amazing. Percussionist Cyro Baptista skritched and slapped at least twenty different instruments, including what appeared to be a wig of hair encrusted with seashells (a prop from the Ted Danson segment of Creepshow?). The keyboard player had a Communist ZZ Top look going on - just call him Fidel Gibbons. Joey Baron was up to his usual tricks: one minute banging the holy daylights out of his kit, and the next minute brushing away at his snare like he was chopping up a Caesar salad. I think Ribot got hit in the face with a couple of croutons at one point.

One musical highlight featured a long, jagged guitar solo that could have passed for "Jimmy Page Shreds" on YouTube. Styles switched abruptly; the fellas even took a crack at legit jazz-fusion about halfway through the set. It was as if Marc Ribot dosed the entire studio band from Al Di's Elegant Gypsy, then locked Al and Jan Hammer in the trunk of a car and took over from there. I'm barely kidding. For the last song before the encore, you'd think DiMeola somehow escaped from the car trunk (leaving Jan behind) and talked Ribot into giving him another try. Totally insane.

One more time... thanks to Michael for a fun night. I'm going to bed now.

Little House on the Prairie

Imagine my surprise when Little House on the Prairie (Season 1) arrived in our little red Netflix envelope ("Jeez, did we really put this on our queue?"). Imagine further my surprise when I enjoyed the dickens out of it!

It would be easy to make hipster cracks at the show (the sexy prairie-chic of Karen Grassle, Pa's stoned late-night fiddling, etc.), but that's not what I'm doing. This is a good show about good people trying to do good things. To make fun of the people of Walnut Grove would be like making fun of life itself, and that's not what I'm about. Maybe it's L.J., maybe something else... this DVD had me ready to run outside and thresh something with my own bare hands.

Well, there were a few things that didn't make sense about the show. The wagon wheels started to fall off around episode 4 ("Mr. Edward's Homecoming" [sic]). You mean to tell me that the Ingalls ladies are gonna be fine with Charles bringing a bearded souse (Mr. Edwards) home with him from Mankato to stay indefinitely? I've tried that a few times, and it doesn't work.

Then Charles is able to just hook the drunk up with a good job at the mill the next day?! The same Charles that had to walk 100 miles to find a crappy job blasting rock for the railroad in episode 3?! I may be from Plum Creek, but I wasn't born yesterday.

Either way, I can't wait for the next disc to come in the mail. Will Half-Pint finally break into the social circle at school? Or will Nellie Oleson keep her death-grip on recess fun? Will we finally figure out which one is Lindsay Greenbush and which one is Sidney Greenbush? I'll let you know.

From bad to worse to… Knicks win!!!

The Knicks lost their shit tonight. Botched dunks, mental mistakes, missed free throws down the stretch, infighting on the bench, jawing with the refs... the kinds of things you might expect from a completely disconnected squad. Oh yeah, they were playing the Wizards.

The Knicks actually won in overtime. Unheard of. Just minutes earlier, Nate Robinson, Zach Randolph and Quentin Richardson were involved in a bizarre episode during a timeout (make that a double timeout) featuring thrown cups of water and towels. Nate broke a few cardinal sporting rules:
1) never fight with your own teammates
2) never fight with guys twice your size
3) never fight with guys named "Q" and "Z" if you're an "N" or an "R" (OK, that's a Scrabble rule)

Know what? This is exactly the kind of thing I hoped for right before the season started. When Randolph arrived, I imagined a loose, ragtag, dangerous group of guys playing on the edge. That's the last thing the Knicks have been this year.

Tonight was actually fun to watch. I've always said things could get A LOT worse (or at least crazier) for the Knicks, no matter how bad things have seemed. Maybe things getting a lot worse will immediately make things better. And hopefully get Isiah fired once and for all.

Islam Dunk

NBA All-Star Saturday Night has been a favorite of mine for a long time. Except for a couple of years ago (I totally forgot about it and drunken-stumbled into a bar on Amsterdam just in time to watch Nate Robinson make a mockery of the whole thing), I've made a nice little habit of chilling at home to watch skills, 3's and dunks.

Last night I almost made the mistake of watching the Celebrity game. OK, I did make the mistake of watching it, but only for about 10 minutes. That was long enough to catch Bill Walton playing grab-ass with Alyssa Milano on camera.

The Skills Challenge was kinda lame this year. Jason Kidd couldn't make a shot to save his life, and Dwynaye Wade looked like one of Jim Carroll's teammates after they took the downers at halftime.

I missed most of the Three-Point Shootout—I was finishing up our taxes (L.J. = $$$!!!).

Let's just say the Slam Dunk Contest was well worth the wait. No kidding, Dwight Howard is fucking unbelievable. Terrifying, actually. In case you missed it:

1. bounces ball of back of glass and slams
2. dons Superman cape and obscenely stuffs ball thrown from behind glass—about three feet above rim
3. (tough to explain) taps to self off glass with left hand and dunks with right, all in mid-air
4. grabs ball out of mini-hoop on backboard and dunks

Unbelievable.

Gerald Green did some cute stuff, like blowing out a birthday cupcake while dunking and then dunking in his socks. This kind of thing might work some years, but not this one. The only way to beat Dwight this year was to rip the backboard down.

The "SLAM DUNK" logo in the corner of the screen was right next to a mini "NBA" logo, so it ended up looking like "ISLAM DUNK".

The Epic Catalogue

Isiah has, if nothing else, built up quite a collection of post-game conference performances. Collected together, they read like the comments on a struggling kid's report card-- "Should try harder" or "Showing some improvement."
Roll the quotes!

11-2 Knicks 106, Cavaliers 110
"Overall, I was pleased with our effort," Thomas said.

11-13 Knicks 102, Suns 113
"But there were some good things I saw, some very positive things."

11-14 Knicks 81, Clippers 84
"Whatever happened in the past is in the past. We move forward."

11-16 Knicks 118, Kings 123 2OT
"For Stephon, it's not about offensive or defensive display, it's more his leadership and his ability to rally the team," said Thomas...

11-17 Knicks 83, Nuggets 115
"Sometimes in this game, the schedule beats you," Knicks coach Isiah Thomas said.

11-20 Warriors 108, Knicks 82
"The booing, 'Get rid of this guy, get rid of me, get rid of him,' that's how the fans react. It comes with the territory we have and the place that we live in."

11-21 Knicks 86, Pistons 98 [8th Knick loss in a row]
"It's not about the players right now. This is where coaching comes in," Thomas said.

11-29 Knicks 59, Celtics 104
"We take two steps forward and one giant step back," Thomas said.

12-2 Suns 115, Knicks 104
Knicks coach Isiah Thomas said during his postgame press conference that his team got impatient in the fourth quarter, but when asked why that happened, he paused for 10 seconds before saying, "I'll keep that thought to myself."

12-7 Knicks 90, Sixers 101
One fan in a Knicks hat held a "Fire Isiah!" sign directly across the court from Thomas. "Just quit! Please!" he yelled. One fan who might not have noticed was the man taking a nap a few rows over.

12-8 Sixers 105, Knicks 77 [I attended this game]
"I was searching tonight," Knicks coach Isiah Thomas said. "I went one through 12 just trying to find any combination that would work, any person that had some type of energy or fire. And there was nothing there tonight."

12-10 Mavericks 99, Knicks 89
Mara Altschuler, a fan sitting near the Knicks' bench, said Thomas was talking to some fans during the game, blaming them for being a poor "sixth man" for the team.Thomas said, "I was just trying to make sure that we kept the team together and we stayed focused on what we were doing and trying to win a basketball game," he said. "Our fans are great, they support us and they show up and we're glad they're here."

12-12 Sonics 117, Knicks 110
"We definitely have to get better."

12-14 Knicks 96, Bulls 101
Coach Isiah Thomas said the matchups dictated the limited time, that the Bulls were "playing smaller and quicker, and we were trying to get a little more pace in the game."

12-17 Pacers 119, Knicks 92
"We don't grind and we don't compete like we should for 48 minutes and I've never ... a lot of things that can be said about me and teams that I've coached and the way I played, but I've never been accused of not having heart or competing. Tonight was very discouraging to me because we didn't collectively play with heart and compete like I know I do."

12-21 Knicks 95, Bobcats 105
On his almost-tussle with Q-Rich: "Sometimes you try to say some things to a player or say some things to your team just to get them motivated, to get some fire in them," Thomas said when asked to explain the incident. "There won't be any carry-over from it."

12-23 Lakers 95, Knicks 90
"We probably have the wrong guys starting and we'll look to change our lineup and try to get some more energy and defensive guys in the lineup," Thomas said.

12-30 Bulls 100, Knicks 83
Asked what he's seen from his changes, Thomas said: "Well, we're not winning. That's the only reason why you do it, is you try to win basketball games."

1-2 Kings 107, Knicks 97
"There's a refusal to come together and play collectively," Knicks coach Isiah Thomas said. "We do it in spurts, but then we sit back and we watch."

1-4 Knicks 93, Spurs 97
"That's why they're the champs," Knicks coach Isiah Thomas said of Finley's shot. "You were hoping for a miss, but that was all net."

1-9 Rockets 101, Knicks 92
"I think any time that you come on the floor like that, I think the official has ... you're really at the official's mercy. He can either call a technical foul on you or eject you, so he was well within his right to eject me from the game. But I would hope that in the future that they would understand that I don't normally walk out on the floor and say things unless I have a pretty valid complaint, at least in my mind."

1-11 Raptors 99, Knicks 90
"I've tried to put it in terms, I've told them we're kind of the concrete layers, we're the cement layers. When you move into your house, the guy who poured the concrete never really gets a chance to live in that beautiful house that he built. And our job right now is to make sure that we lay the concrete and we lay it correctly."

1-18 Knicks 98, Wizards 111
"Some nights, you just run into a team that's playing a little better than you are," Knicks coach Isiah Thomas said, "and tonight the Wizards were playing better than we were."

1-21 Celtics 109, Knicks 93
"Their savvy throughout the course of the game, they were able to pick us apart," Knicks coach Isiah Thomas said.

1-27 Knicks 104, Warriors 106
"We had good looks and a couple of open shots that didn't go down. ... I thought we played some pretty good basketball."

1-29 Knicks 109, Lakers 120
"Our lack of execution down the stretch, particularly the last five, six minutes of the game, we just totally lost all composure," Knicks coach Isiah Thomas said.

1-30 Knicks 89, Jazz 100
"At the end, we just got a little fatigued," New York coach Isiah Thomas said.

2-1 Knicks 88, Blazers 94 OT
"We couldn't make a shot," New York coach Isiah Thomas said. "We just went cold."

2-2 Knicks 85, Sonics 86
"We'll keep working at it," Knicks coach Isiah Thomas said.

2-4 Clippers 103, Knicks 94
Thomas: "I thought our bigs had it going pretty good inside, but we're down a lot of perimeter players right now and they did a good job of just packing it in and we didn't have enough outside shooting to really keep the defense honest."
LA Center Chris Kaman: "It's like a toilet bowl game or a dust bowl game. Two bottom teams fighting."

2-6 Pacers 103, Knicks 100
"Right now, our turnovers are killing us and we can't ... we have to do a better job with our guards in terms of getting in the flow and organized," Knicks coach Isiah Thomas said during his brief postgame remarks. "We have to keep working at it."

2-8 Spurs 99, Knicks 93 OT
"The air was kind of popped out of the balloon," Thomas said. "I said to the team the thing that I admire about San Antonio, that's the reason why they're champions. they don't hang their heads. They make a mistake and they stay in it."

Unreal

Not sure which amazed me more-- the Knicks actually leading the Spurs by 18 points, or the Knicks ultimately blowing the fucking game with 0.5 seconds left.

OK, you have a 3 point lead with about five seconds to go. Whaddya do? You guard the 3-point shot, obviously. Who's the most dangerous Spur at this point? Finley, obviously. So the Knicks leave Michael Finley COMPLETELY open for an uncontested three as time expires.

How does this happen??!!! Can somebody please fire Isiah Thomas??!! Anybody?!