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Friday, October 03, 2003
Curses, foiled again
I think I will hear the screams of ThrasherGirl from Iowa when she hears this news about Dany Heatley. And she says there is no EA Sports curse ...
I would imagine EA Sports will avoid featuring any Braves on the cover of their baseball game next year given their track record with Atlanta athletes this year. Thankfully, they don't have to worry about jinxing any Hawks, they've taken care of that already, although I wouldn't be surprised if Jason Terry or Shareef Abdur-Rahim suffer a major injury playing NBA Live.
posted at 11:12 PM
Living for the '90s
I guess it was inevitable that someone would go public with our nostalgia for the '90s, although The Onion did warn about the drying up retro gap six years ago.
What struck me was the supposed shock or surprise that one of the retro lunch hour shows was getting more requests for early '90s "obscure" few-hit wonders than for Nirvana or Pearl Jam.
First off, Nirvana and Pearl Jam is still in the regular rotation on the station. You can still hear "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "Jeremy" on regular basis. Why bother requesting something that you can hear in a few hours. Secondly, this being a "retro" show, it's the perfect time to be nostalgic for stuff that just doesn't get the airplay anymore. Those shows drove '80s music back into public consciousness and even its own stations. It's now doing the same for '90s alt-rock (or in my case, literally "college" rock since I listened to most of this while at college). And thirdly, for a lot of listeners, I think it's just a lot more fun listening to Urge Overkill, Better Than Ezra or Dinosaur Jr. than the continuous assault of Linkin Park, Staind or Limp Bizkit that now comes with the format.
posted at 11:12 AM
Fill up the tub
Along with getting geeked about baseball again, the hockey switch started turning on, although a lot of it had to with the first ever sale at Distant Replays where I snagged this and this for $35 each. And I could've loaded up even more on jerseys or retro hats, but I did have to pace myself a little bit.
Unfortunately, I was also thinking about the ice because of Dany Heatley's scary car wreck just a couple of miles up the street from my apartment. As chilling as it was to me when I heard it on the radio the morning after, it was worse for ThrasherGirl, who was working the hockey beat that evening and whose two favorite players are Heatley and Snyder.
I can't figure out how he could go 80 in that stretch of road, even in a Ferrari. It's a narrow, winding, hilly two-lane road with a few plates in the road. I struggle to get old Camry to 40 or 45 through that part of the road.
But out of all the wild things coming out of that story, I'm not sure anything can top the fact that Sanjay Gupta performed the surgery on Snyder.
posted at 2:42 AM
Batter up
It's fun having baseball top of my mind again. It really hadn't been that way since maybe June or so, but with the playoffs now going, and a few of my favorites in the running, it's been a rush.
I got to see the first two games of the NLDS in what amounted to a neutral field as Turner Field was approximately 50 percent Cubs fans -- many making the trip from Chicago since it would be cheaper than actually buying tickets to a game at Wrigley, while others were carpetbaggers, bandwagon jumpers or just WGN watchers (before it was whacked from the main cable provider here).
I don't think Turner Field has seen this type of electricity in a long while. The presence of the Cubs fans energized the Braves fans as well. It's a bit unfortunate that it took a huge contingent of opposing fans to create a real atmosphere in the stadium, but that can happen among a complacent fan base. But hey, Braves officials can be happy that they got a huge gate thanks to the matchup and didn't have to give away lots of tickets like they did last year (for Barry Bonds and the Giants, no less).
What was amusing was one of the local sports radio guys here (one of the few I actually respect) trying to pin the blame on the lack of attendance/atmosphere at Turner in the past was 1 p.m. starts for playoff games, and saying that it would be the same at Yankee Stadium this year for Game 1, which was an afternoon game. While the Yankees lost, they did have a packed house (save for some dumbasses who couldn't tear tickets out of a book correctly).
I won't comment too much on the games, since that would go on forever knowing my writing style. Instead, I must point out that ESPN now has a commercial featuring this song advertising this.
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