I went to the Rockies-Giants game yesterday, but there’s not much to mention. Barry Bonds did not play, but I did see a number of people with homemade asterisk shirts, which was cool. It was hotter than hell on earth, and I was sitting in the second row of section 106, which is on the ground, right behind the right fielder. There was no shade whatsoever, and although the view was different than usual and very close to Brad Hawpe, you can’t really see pitches or what the hitter’s doing. I did, however, have this crazy fan next to me who was yelling at the top of his lungs at each play. He was heckling the pitcher right as he slipped in the third and allowed Jeff Francis to hit a double and start off a seven-run bitch-slapping from which the Giants never recovered.

The worst part of it is that my fucking camera broke. It may have happened on the way back from Indiana, I’m not sure. It let me sporadically take a picture or two, but when you shake it, you can hear a part rattling around. I’ve hated this camera ever since I got it in 2005, but it’s taken some decent pictures. It has also been all over the place with me: Hawaii, Vegas, Berlin, Amsterdam, Alaska, and a bunch of states in between. But it’s also one of those mini-pseudo-SLR sized cameras, which doesn’t fit in a bag or a pocket well. And it is horrible as far as low-light situations. The internal battery is also dead, so if I take out the AAs for more than a minute, it forgets the date and all of my settings. So I jumped online last night and bought a Canon PowerShot A570IS. It’s a lot smaller, more pixels, also uses AAs, but uses SD, so I had to get another card. (Anyone in the market for a 1G xD card?) It also has image stabilization, which might be cool or might just be a gimmick. Anyway, I hope to have it for Friday’s game against the Padres.

If you’re wondering about the zine, it’s getting there. The cover and the interior are done; I just bought the ISBN and I have to wait 3 or 4 business days for them to get back to me with the actual number, then I order a proof. The art is all in and looks awesome - each story has a title page that has fucked up art on it, and the cover is awesome, too. Anyway, stay tuned on that.

I just finished reading Population: 485 by Michael Perry. It’s the tale of a writer who lives in a tiny farm town in Wisconsin, so it’s fitting that I bought it in Milwaukee at this weird planned community slash mall that’s designed like a tiny town, except in the EPCOT center. Anyway, Perry’s story is interlaced with his duty as a volunteer fireman for the town’s emergency services. There are two things going on here: one is the macho ER adrenaline junkie stories of fire and death, which is interesting. The other is an attempt to take the small-town mix of deer-hunting, Packers, and pickup trucks and validate it somehow.

I thought about this a lot, since I read this book right after spending some time in my old childhood home town of Edwardsburg, Michigan. Edwardsburg was maybe pushing a thousand people when I lived there in the 70s, maybe less than that. There was a lot more fishing than hunting, due to all of the lakes. And the main strip of downtown was probably bigger, although they didn’t get their first fast-food restaurant until maybe the late 90s. Edwardsburg was also close enough to Elkhart and South Bend that people could survive without a Kroger or a mall or a movie theater, since they could jump in a car and drive a few minutes south. But the village always had a certain feel to me, a place where the tallest building was an abandoned feed mill, and even if there were only a few hundred people in the high school, they still had three strings of football teams.

Perry spent a lot of time trying to justify the life of his small town to the folks on the coasts that think that the great red plain is cultureless and lifeless. I appreciate that he went this way with it, because so many books in this space tend to be demeaning, or look down at rural culture from an ivory tower and frame it in such a way that the NPR crowd can look at it and moan about how horrible red states are. Perry did an honest job of describing the small-towners, and it made for a good read. The ending got a little weird, and the death and injury angle also got a little overwhelming, but I still liked it overall.

I have a million zine-related tasks to pull together, and I just can’t get rolling. Maybe I need more caffeine.

So we saw two of the four Cubs-Rockies games this weekend: on Thursday, the Cubs won, and on Sunday, the Rockies. We had tickets to go to Saturday’s game. but after Thursday, we didn’t think we could stomach being in a section with 100 Cubs fans at a thing called “Cubsapalooza”. It turned out, however, to be “Cubsalosea”, with a wildly lopsided victory, and Jamie Carroll’s first grand slam. Anyway, I have nothing against Cubs fans, except that I really wanted to like the Cubs as a kid, and they repeatedly broke my heart. They play much better now, but it’s always hard to go back.

Speaking of going back, I am scheduled to make a trip to Indiana tomorrow. I say scheduled because I have no idea if we’re going to make it or not due to Sarah’s client at work completely flaking out. There are various scenarios that might play out: the trip goes as scheduled; I go tomorrow, Sarah meets me on Friday; we both come out on Friday; we reschedule a few weeks later; we move to Pakistan and leave no forwarding address. And I haven’t mentioned this trip here for various political reasons, one being that I will be in Elkhart for three or four days and I already have like 17 days of meetings requested and/or scheduled, and none of that includes seeing friends or doing something that’s actually vacation-like. (Not that there’s anything vacation-like in Elkhart. There is the Elkhart drinking game, where you drive around town, and every time you see a business you remember from childhood that has gone bankrupt and turned into a Mexican grocery store, you take a shot, and in about 15 minutes you die of alcohol poisoning.)

Believe it or not though, I do have some kind of sick fascination with Elkhart, because it’s really a fly trapped in amber. Every time I go back, I find I can still drive everywhere without even thinking of it. And there’s never anyone there when I drive around during the day. It’s like visiting the ruins of a city that was knocked out by a Neutron bomb. And I guess some of the fascination is that I have not been there for three years, and after an hour of driving around, I will be bored out of my fucking mind. But I also realize that I have almost no pictures of Elkhart, and I’d really like to drive around with my new (as of 2005) camera and get some good shots of the desolation. I always liked elkhartsucks.com, but it is dead and gone, so maybe I need to create my own version. (And I will turn on comments on pages so Larry has something to do at work.)

And I guess I think a lot of the summer between high school and college, and how it was 18 years ago, which is half of my lifetime now. Having a car now, and having an iPod that has all of my old music on it sometimes reminds me of that period. And almost all of it was in Elkhart, and it brings back thoughts of that time. And to be truthful, I did a lot of stupid shit back then, and probably the stupidest thing was getting involved with the girl that I dated right before I left for school, and the ensuing breakup. But with some distance, those thoughts are interesting. I always thought about writing a fictionalized book of that era of my life, and I made a couple of false starts, but I now realize I can’t write stuff like that anymore. The second you finish writing a book about someone that fucked you over in life, their lawyer contacts you. (See also Augustin Burroughs, although maybe you need to make a hundred million dollars for this rule to come into play.)

Christ, it’s almost eleven and I haven’t even started writing yet.

The Rockies-Brewers game yesterday wasn’t even funny in its cruelty. This one doesn’t even deserve the bulleted list. Basically, the Rockies drove in 8 runs by the bottom of the 2nd, including a 2nd inning of 7 runs that seemed like it would never end. The bases got loaded, and then it was doubles and triples and homers, and all of these people kept running in, and it was like the beaches of Normandy for the Brewers. The third inning: three more. The fourth inning: five more. Tony Graffanino, the Brewers’ star second baseman, jumped for a catch and tore out his knee. And the Brewers went through every single pitcher they had there. Yost seriously almost had to get a position player to pitch the 8th and 9th inning, which would be interesting from the freak anomaly standpoint. The game ended at 19-4. It was funny, one of the announcers on the radio said “the Brewers are down two touchdowns now” and the other said “it’s like the score to a Broncos-Packers game”.

In other weirdness, that pitch that hit Jason Hirsch in the leg in the first inning yesterday, it turns out it BROKE his leg. And he pitched six innings. That’s pretty hardcore.

Pictures, soon, whenever I get around to captioning them. Brooms galore. I also found a new place to eat at the ballpark, there is this cluster of shops hidden behind a tavern that have a lot of non-ballpark food like deli sandwiches and gourmet pizzas that aren’t rubbery Papa John’s personal pan things. Yesterday I cheated though, and bought a bunch of sodas and water from the vending machine in my building at $1.25 each instead of $5.75 each, and then put an icepack in my bag. Worked fine, even in the 95 degree heat.

Three Cubs games this weekend, and I can’t even remember what’s going on besides baseball. I am trying to write on this book, and it is going somewhat. And the zine, it’s in stasis until I get a couple of bios and releases from people. The layout is pretty close though. And the artwork is on its way. I hope to get it to the printer in another week or two. Or three. We’ll see.

OK, on to that writing.

I didn’t plan it, but we went to the Rockies-Brewers game last night. Sarah got tickets from work, and she had to miss Monday’s game, so we went last night. Here’s the details:

• We were in section 133, row 27,seats 1+2. That’s on the floor, behind home plate, about two sections in from where the screen starts on the left, and about halfway back. Pretty damn close, and the first time I’ve sat in the infield box in a night game.
• The screen messed up my use of binoculars for the most part. And my battery charger fucked up, so my camera was non-operational.
• Remember yesterday how I said I never wanted to get a hot dog again? It was dollar hot dog night. I passed this up and got a bratwurst, but that didn’t go so well.
• Jason Hirsh was back on the mound after a very bad sprain of his left leg. So the second Brewers batter line drives it right into the same leg. Every medical professional in the state of Colorado is suddenly on the field, and I seriously thought they were going to take him off on a stretcher. But he walked it off, took a couple of test pitches, and was fine.
• Ed Bellorin is a catcher that spent nine years in the minors, and got moved up from AAA to the Rockies to play his first major-league game that night. (Ianetta got sent down, because he can’t bat for shit these days.) In the second inning, he jammed his leg and ended his ML start with a blown hamstring. That sucks.
• Slow game, but by the middle of the sixth, it was 3-0 Brewers, and it looked like they’d lock it up.
• I go to take a piss. The Rockies hit a homer and two singles before I’m able to finish. I go to buy some nachos. The stupid bitch at the register takes 45 minutes examining someone’s ID, and the guy behind the counter doesn’t understand English and I’m screaming “NACHOS NACHOS NACHOS YOU STUPID FUCK WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M TRYING TO GET MY PASSPORT RENEWED JUST GIVE ME THE FUCKING NACHOS NOW!” By the time I get back to my seat, Garret Atkins singles and it’s now 3-2.
• Pitching change. Double. Intentional walk of Brad Hawpe. Single. Everyone is total apeshit. Couple of outs. Five runs in one inning, three while I’m at the urinal, and it’s 5-3.
• Todd Helton homers in the 7th. Hate the goatee, love the home runs.
• In the bottom of the 8th, the Rockies get in two runs because the ball went right through Prince Fielder’s hands; this was his second bone-headed error. To be fair, Holliday dropped the ball in a very obvious way twice that night. And as a side note, one of those resulted in a Prince Fielder triple. That dude is shorter than me and weighs about 50 pounds more, so it’s pretty amazing to see that he can walk, let alone run. It was hilarious.
• Todd Helton then hit another home run, driving in two other players, and making the score 11-3.
• Someone hit a foul back over the mesh and into the second deck, and a guy in the front row just quickly raised his bare hand and whap, caught it. It was the best fan catch I’ve ever seen, and it looked like he did it without thinking. Also, at some point, Jamie Carroll hit a foul ball very high in the third deck - it looked almost like it was going to go out. That was pretty cool.
• I believe the Brewers went through four or five pitchers, and their bullpen is already pretty fucked. Also, Jorje Julio pitched for the Rockies for the 8th, and that guy’s a demon - I think his slowest pitch was like 96 MPH.
• Before the 9th, they announced that Barry ‘Juice’ Bonds hit #756, and they showed the video on the screen. Every single person in the park was booing. I’m thinking of bringing a sign to the park today that says BARRY BONDS - 756*.
• In the top of the ninth, two doubles got the Brewers another run, but that was that. Final score: 11-4.

I have tickets a few sections over but in the same row for today’s 1:05 against the Brewers. Then tickets up in the 330s for the Cubs on Thu, Sat, and Sun. Lots of baseball. I need to invest in some better food to bring in with me, though.

Last night was the first home game in a series against the Brewers. Lazy as always, so here’s the bullet list:

• I felt slightly conflicted about the game when I bought tickets, because aside from the Rockies, I think the Brewers are my second-favorite team. And I now have a certain connection to Milwaukee, they have a great park, they are also somewhat of an underdog, and they have been doing well this year.
• The Brewers came off a brutal loss to the Phillies that burned through their entire bullpen, so their pitching was hurt. But, they have a hard-hitting offense, and at 5280 feet, that means home runs.
• No sausage race. No Bernie Brewer. No bratwurst, other than the crappy ones they sell at Coors Field. So that removes about 80% of the Brewers experience, unfortunately.
• It rained before the game, and looked pretty dreary outside, so I was fearful of even going. It was also much cooler than when I got rained on at the Phillies game, which would make it even worse. But it kept dry for the most part, aside from a sprinkle or two.
• There were only about 30,000 people there, which is probably the lowest attendance I’ve seen for a night game. Part of that was probably the rain, though.
• Every once in a while, I will smell a hot dog that someone else has, and think “damn, I need to get one too”, and when I do, it totally sucks. This happens pretty much every time I buy a hot dog at a baseball game. I will never learn.
• I was in section 332, the first row of the second part of the section. So I had a railing right in front of me, and I had to sit up to see over it. Otherwise, not bad seats.
• I bought a set of 10x50 binoculars, and those made things interesting. I didn’t mess with them during the game a lot, except to see who was warming up in the bullpen. But before the game, it was a good way to look into the dugout and how it was set up, and to see the players warming up. Like I saw Matsui’s translator with him on the field before he got started.
• Josh Fogg was the starting pitcher, and wasn’t throwing down major strikeouts, but he really had a way to keep the hits on the ground and very fieldable, which pretty much shut down the Brewers.
• Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun each had single homers, and both were pretty impressive. Fielder’s went into one of the exit ramps in right field, and this horde of people ran down the ramp, as it bounced and bounced away, which was funny to watch.
• In the first inning, Matsui almost hit a homer (hit right below the rail, then bounced out), and then Brad Hawpe hit a three-run homer. At this point, half the people there thought the game was over.
• In the second, Matt Holliday hit a two-run homer, and most of the people there thought the game was over.
• Nobody scored after Braun’s homer for the rest of the game, and it became one of those “who’s going to fuck up defensively and let the other team score nine runs” games, but it kept pretty tight.
• This Harley dealership does this stupid big-screen computer animated game with three pigs on bikes and you have to guess which one is going to win, and I swear at least half of the Brewers players were intently watching it to see which one would win.
• The “guess who said the quote” thing between innings was a Bob Eucker quote, and after they showed the answer, they showed a shot of Bob in the box, and that got more applause than anything else that night.
• The Rockies announcer always announces Matt Holliday’s name “Matt Hall-iday!” for some reason, and it always confused the fuck out of me because of Bill Hall of the Brewers, and I wondered what happened if they were both in one game. But it turns out the Brewers were keeping Hall out to give him some rest. He almost came in to pinch hit for Vargas, and was on deck, but it never happened.
• Fogg continued to pitch well all night, and had a very low pitch count. Vargas, not so much - I think he had one of the highest pitch counts of his career. He also had a fielding fuckup where someone hit a ball right at him, and he tried to catch it with his pitching hand, and it hit and went on to the shortstop. So he fucked the play, and his hand probably smarted a bit.
• In the 9th, it got really edgy. Then Troy Tulowitski had two majorly stupid errors. One, he pitched to first, but like twenty feet too high. The other, he tried to get to first instead of second on a double play and fucked it up. I am becoming more of a fan of his, because usually his fielding is excellent, but man he fucked up that inning.
• Final score: 6-2. Cubs fans rejoice, we cut down their lead for you.

Pictures, eh, eventually. Check the photo page.