But Not as Scary as a Red Sox Fan in Yankee Stadium, I Bet!

This isn't one of my best shots from out in Las Vegas but out of the 261 pictures that I took, I thought it was actually pretty funny ...

The sign is referring to the rollercoaster that sits atop the New York New York casino that I guess is supposed to look like a Manhattan taxi cab or something. I didn't go on it as I had read that it was a pretty rough ride and, as much as I love rollercoasters, I didn't want to take a chance on screwing up my back while over 2,000 miles away from home.

Jen did fork over $14 to ride the thing and I believe what she found scariest about the whole experience was the price! She told me that it was the worst rollercoaster ride she had ever been on and she felt somewhat "beat up" afterward. As a matter of fact, the next day she had very sore spots on her shoulders where the restraint bar came down. I'm quite glad I missed that one, thank you very much!

Anyhow, I thought maybe some of the Red Sox fans that read my blog might get a kick out of it - or if there are any Yankee fans out there I'm sure they'd appreciate it, too! For those unfamiliar with the New York Yankee - Boston Red Sox rivalry all I can say is - where have you been hiding??

More Vegas pictures as soon as I get some of the other 260 edited ... this is just taking a lot longer than I thought it would!

Getting Trivial With Travis

Recently in an effort to stay out of the dungeon at Bloggingham Castle while thinking about the old Trivial Pursuit game that I'm sure so many of us have played, Travis @ Trav's Thoughts created a new meme that I just had to have a go at called -

Travis' rules are pretty simple:

1. Choose a category from one of these: Television, Stage & Screen, Nightly News, Publishing, Lives & Times, Music
2. Find 8 bits of trivia about your selected category
3. Be sure to let me know when...ok, if...you decide to play along so I can see what you come up with. (You can do that just by clicking here!)
   
4. You may tag, or simply offer the meme for borrowing or stealing as you like.

Travis did his first-ever-made-all-by-himself-and-really-cool-meme on the 8 Films In Which John Wayne's Character Dies so I thought maybe I'd select the movie category myself and do my meme on 8 things about one of my favorite movies, For Love of the Game which was released in 1999 and is one that I can watch over and over again and do!

1. The movie is based on the book, For Love of the Game, written by Michael Shaara and published posthumously in 1991 following his death from a heart attack in 1988. Shaara won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for his novel The Killer Angels which was about the Battle of Gettysburg and the source for the screenplay for the 1993 movie Gettysburg, another of my very favorites.
2. The story is about Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner), a 40-year old pitcher, who is forced to re-examine his priorities in life when he is confronted with unexpected circumstances—not only is he being traded after 20 years as the heart and soul of the Detroit Tigers, but Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston), the love of his life, is leaving him for a job in London. During the course of the movie, Billy flashes back on his last four years with Jane and his baseball career as he pitches a possible perfect game against the formidable New York Yankees in "The House That Ruth Built".
3. The movie was shot in both New York and Los Angeles with a short stop in Aspen, Colorado for some off-season scenes. Most of the East Coast scenes were shot on the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn along with five weeks at Yankee Stadium during one of the warmest Novembers in New York ever.
4. The production used between 800 and 2000 extras for filming at the stadium along with cardboard characters and computer graphics to fill out empty seats in the stands to make it look like a typical packed-house game at Yankee Stadium.
5. The shots of Billy Chapel's parents at the beginning of the movie are Kevin Costner's actual parents.
6. Both the Tigers and Yankees management insisted that anyone who wore their uniforms had to be either a former or current member of their organization or an actor. Ultimately, every player cast was either a professional or an actor with at least some organized baseball experience. Even actual major league umpires Rick Reed, Jerry Crawford and Richie Garcia were cast in their real-life profession.
7. The soundtrack features 15 songs and some of the best music from a movie ever featuring artists such as Lyle Lovett, Roy Orbison, Vince Gill, Steely Dan, and others. I suspect I've just about worn it down!
8. My very favorite song from the movie does not appear on the soundtrack album - "It Don't Matter to the Sun" by Chris Gaines, a fictional alternative rock singer created as an alter ego for Garth Brooks. The song can be found on the CD Garth Brooks: In the Life of Chris Gaines or you can listen to it here!

So, there you have it, eight rather long trivial facts about one of my favorite movies. I know it's been out almost ten years now but if you like a good baseball movie and a good love story and haven't seen it may I suggest you rent a copy at some point and indulge yourself? Just to get you more interested, here's the trailer:


Thanks, Travis, for this great new meme! It was really a lot of fun and I hope you get lots of people playing along with it. I'm not going to tag anyone in particular but come on people, you know you want to do this!

Don't Take Me Out to the Ballgame

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All across New England tonight, thousands of households will be glued to their TVs watching a sports event unfold (and no, Jeni, it isn't Penn State football!). Tonight is the first game of the World Series between the Colorado Rockies and the Boston Red Sox.

Even though I live in Connecticut and am surrounded by BoSox fans, I'm not one of those who is going to be watching the game as I just have no interest in the whole thing. I find televised baseball to be one of the most boring things ever to watch and there are just too many other things to do that don't include watching seven guys stand around a field while three others (the pitcher, the catcher, and the batter) do most of the work. If this makes me unAmerican then so be it!

Long ago I used to watch the Red Sox regularly and I still remember with rather vivid clarity their loss to the Cincinnati Reds in the 1975 World Series. I have hated Pete Rose ever since. Then there was the heartbreaking loss to the New York Mets in the 1986 World Series for which the entire debacle was unfairly blamed on Bill Buckner when he made an error in fielding.

When the Sox swept the Cardinals in the 2004 World Series and finally ended the dreaded "Curse of the Bambino" I was actually rather amazed. I had become so used to the team coming so close to winning and then blowing it that I had truly expected them to do it yet again. I was happy for them to finally have a win under their belt but do I expect them to triumph over the Colorado Rockies this time and become World Champions once again? No - I don't.

I don't because I think that the Rockies want it more and I also think the Rockies have a much more impressive record. I can't quote the stats (like I said, I'm not a fan) but I know the Rockies have a better record than the Sox do and this is their very first time in the World Series. You know those guys are going to try above and beyond to bring that trophy home to Colorado because who doesn't want to win the whole enchilada their first time out?

At any rate, I don't believe I will be watching a single game myself but I can guarantee you that a lot of people will. Baseball is, after all, America's sport. Along with football. Oh, and NASCAR, too.

Emo + baseball = bad

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We here in Norwich are able to brag about being the home of the Eastern League Double-A Affiliate of the San Francisco Giants - the Connecticut Defenders (they used to be called the Norwich Navigators and were the Double-A team for the New York Yankees but that's old history and not something I have the time or desire to get into tonight).

The Defenders play at Thomas J. Dodd Stadium, which is a very nice ballpark and one that I worked at for three seasons when it first opened back in 1995. By the end of my first season, I could pour one heck of a beer and made some pretty decent tips doing so but again, that's old history and not for tonight's post!

As part of EMS Week at American Ambulance, my current place of employment where I've never poured a single beer, they offered tickets for last night's game against the Trenton Thunder (who are now the Double-A affliate of the New York Yankees though they used to to be the Double-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox). Having not been to see a game since the last season I worked there, I thought it might be a fun evening out and something different to do. In retrospect, I'm not quite sure what I was thinking.

Amanda invited her usual posse along but Nicole wasn't able to attend as she had to be in Rhode Island at her mother's house this weekend but Dan said that he was up for it and it "would beat sitting around the house on a Friday night." I arrived at the ballpark with two black-clad teenagers in tow and we took our seats directly behind home plate.


The seats couldn't have been better (well, except for that annoying safety netting one has to look through but I guess that's better than being beaned with a foul ball) but the company was soon to prove otherwise. Dan had apparently never been to a baseball game in his life (huh?? and this kid lives in America??) and Amanda seemed a bit put-out that there appeared to be no other kids their age in the entire ballpark. Now, I'm sure that wasn't true but I suppose it may have looked that way to them. Before the first inning was even over, they had started to amuse themselves by drawing (Amanda had her trusty drawing pad and pens with her for just such an occasion).


Heaven forbid she do some sketches of the ball players or the people around her - oh no, not my daughter, she appeared to be doodling figures from the Emo Drawing 101 course that surely had to be offered at the local school.

Next came a series of tic-tac-toe games between Amanda and Dan while I attempted to watch the game and enjoy the between-inning antics of Cutter the mascot or the people that were called out of the stands to participate in assorted contests.


As the game slowly progressed (no one had scored by the 7th inning or even barely gotten on base), neither nachos or fried dough had managed to perk up either Amanda or Dan but instead they seemed to be slipping even further into boredom and - dare I say it? - angst as the picture below shows. It was at that point that I decided that enough was enough and perhaps it was time to exit stage right and call it a night. I rather doubted that even the fireworks after the game were going to be of much interest to either of them and besides, leaving during the 7th inning stretch insured that I would get out of the parking lot long before the crowds - long, long before!


As we were walking through the parking lot, trying to find the car, Dan apologized profusely for having not been more "into" the game and then came up with the equation which is the title for this post: Emo + baseball = bad. No kidding; though my daughter constantly tells me that she isn't Emo! At least Dan admits it, Amanda is apparently just in denial.

On the way home we did what apparently the rest of Norwich was doing and stopped in at the local Dairy Queen for an ice cream cone so at least the night wasn't a total wash! After dropping Dan at his home, we made our way back to Norwich and enjoyed the night air with the moon roof and windows open in the car. Amanda had seemed to have perked up by leaps and bounds and decided to fool around with the digital camera producing the following picture:

I'd say that it was one of her most colorful achievements of the night!

Moral of the story: Stay home on Friday night!