Greetings from Justinland

7-0

Sure is a big difference from this.....




to this....

although A-Rod`s ass looked great  (for You, Dr Markie)

the final score looked even better

The Yellow Ribbon

When I was in grade school, every spring we would have something called Field Day.  You probably has this at your school too. Field day was a grade school sized Olympics, except that in the end all the participants won the coveted yellow ribbon symbolizing participation and good sportsmanship. 

This was before yellow ribbons symbolized welcoming your soldier back home.

Like a lot of other families, we have been watching the Winter Olympics for the last two weeks. Well, maybe watching isn't the exact right word.  More like turning them on then falling asleep, because it is influenza and weight loss season and we have been busy boys.

Back when I had knees that functioned, I used to like snowboarding.  Ray and Mikey still snowboard when they get the chance.  Now days, I enjoy shopping in Aspen or Taos. What I like best about Winter sports is the bright colors and the way the pine trees smell in the snow.

I have a real problem with any sport where the difference between golden glory and hanging your head in defeat is 2/100th of a second.  That is just ridiculous.  I realize that an American winning the gold will create more teevee viewers that will, in turn, will buy more Coke or cell phone service. I am sure a Gold Medal would look nice on your resume... but I am here to remind your that

Whatever you do today, YOU ARE A WINNER!

Rufus Rules

Forget the Olympics.  Rufus, the colored Bull Terrier Rules Westminster.   And how could you not love that face?

Meanwhile, back to Torino, Doc Hawk claims that the Winter Olympics are superior to the Summer games because there is a much greater chance of closed head injury in any given Winter sport.

Yes, I agree...but there are no Speedoes.

Ya’at’ eeh, football fans.  Now here is an interesting little bit of info that was dinner table conversation at our house last night, KTNN, the voice of the Navajo nation, (which anyone who ever read a Tony Hillerman novel can tell you) will be broadcasting the upcoming Raiders-Broncos game in Navajo.   

Most of the Navajo football fans I have ever met were Broncos fan, not Chiefs or Redskin fans like you might imagine.  For the record, I like the Broncos too, unless they are playing the Chiefs.  I hate the Raiders, of course, like everyone else outside of Oakland.  But I do like to see how the Black Hole fans come dressed to the game.

And did you happen to see KC’s gutsy last second WIN  over the Raiders last weekend.  5 seconds to go, KC has the ball on Oakland’s  4 yard line.  A Field Goal ties the game, a touchdown wins.  Hawk and I are in the living room screaming for Dick Vermeil to ‘go for it’  ‘cuz a tie is just like kissing your sister.  Dick goes for it and the Chiefs win.

Hoka Hey! ...which means 'it's a good day to die' in Lakota and pretty much the same thing as 'go for it'.

I wonder what ‘go for it’ is in Navajo.  Maybe I could consult a Navajo Code Talker.  There are still a few of them alive…and Happy Veterans Day to them. 

Navajo is a complex language, as anyone who has ever worked in a hospital in Albuquerque can tell you...and not every word in English has a Navajo equivalent.  For example, there is no Navajo word for 'microwave oven'

Or 'First Down'. The sportscasters will be translating football terms into longer descriptive phrases. First Down becomes 'the team retains the ball for another 4 attempts to move 10 yards'     No womder the Code Talkers confused the heck out of the Japanese.

The Raiders are still having trouble on ah-kin-cil-toh (defense). They also need more big plays from their e-yih-sih deh-na-as-tso-si (special teams). Their offense is effective but must do a better job in the li-chi bih-na-has-dzoh (red zone). Ideally, they would like more than one reception from wo-tah lit (Randy Moss).

Prediction: against the more disciplined, more balanced Broncos, the Raiders will be forced to ne-nah-cha (surrender).

Going Fishin', instead of just a Wishin'

Hey, I am no stranger to fishin’.  I went to college in Texas, you know.  I once worked in a beachside seafood restaurant and I have even been to a shark rodeo. You know what a shark rodeo is?  Tons of big, scary dead fish, rotting in the sun, waiting for a judge to decide which one was the biggest and scariest.

Uhh, no thank you.

However, I have no problem with fishing. To each his own. Just remember Hawk's #1 bit of Lakota wisdom. If you kill it, you had better darn well eat it.  This rule applies to all of God’s creatures.

My brother-in-law hunts and fishes.  When we were both younger I suspected that he wasn’t really into the sporting man’s life as much as he liked buying sporting goods.  He would spend hours pouring over the LL Bean or Eddie Bauer catalogs.  He could spend an entire weekend organizing his tackle box and never once wet a fishing line. He bought my sister a freakin’ kayak for Mother’s Day. He bought the Eddie B special edition Ford Explorer.  He bought a pricey yellow lab hunting dog that spends most of her time sleeping on the couch and is afraid of pheasants.

Her name is Gracie.

Oh yeah, fishin’  “You will love fly fishing," says Bro-in-law. "It is very zen.” Mikey rolled his eyes. I have said the same thing about knitting.

Fly fishin’ does not involve sitting in the boat, working on your tan, drinking beer and listening to Willie Nelson. I like to take a little nap while waiting for them to bite. Fly fishin’ is more work.  More like pitching a baseball game rather than watching a game.

You have to get in the water, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing since it was 95 degrees outside and the river water was 58 degrees.  It has something to do with underground springs.  Since it was a hot day, funky waist hight boots were optional.  I wore cut offs and hoped there were no leeches around.

The idea is to flick the wrist and cast your line way out there, just skimming the top of the water.  Brother Trout is deceived into thinking that your fly is some delicious bug and makes his move. If Brother Trout isn’t buying it, try again. 

Repeat endlessly. 

Now just like rats in the Skinner box or gamblers at the quarter slots, if you don’t get a little payoff every now and then, most of us quickly lose interest.   This basic principal of behavioral psych apparently does not apply to fly fishin.  I became bored quickly as was glad I brought a book, sandwiches and my knitting.  The bird watching was good.  Mikey and I played around with the kayak.

Hawk eventually snagged Brother Trout. He was proud and was all prepared to cook him up with maybe a green salad and a rice side dish.  Great. Fresh Trout for dinner. 

I know how to clean fish because when I was taking a zoology class at the U of Texas, we had an assignment to dissect giant crap. (OR CARP)  But my lab partner was a Texas country boy and instead showed me how to clean and fillet the poor thing.   This knowledge has come in handy in fine restaurants all over the world.

But guess what?  Brother Trout is not to be eaten.  After he was tricked out of his natural habitat, the (tiny) hook was gently removed and BT is returned to the water, alive and perhaps wiser.

Hawk loses interest too.  “What time is that Red Sox –Yankees game on?” he asks

Sweep

  No, this is not Adam`s new ride.  The Royals take 3 games from the Yankees.  It is like David and Goliath. I guess all the praying they do around here finally paid off.

Hawk arrives tonight.  I want ice cream and sex, not necessarily in that order

Baileys and the Bash Brothers

One pill makes you larger and the other makes you small

Greetings from Aspen, where it is cold.  It snowed another 4 inches yesterday and there was frenzied activity in the condo to hit the slopes by dawn.  I couldn’t wait until every body left because…

Me, the sensible non-skier built a roaring fire in the fireplace, laced his coffee liberally with Baileys. I stayed in my jammies and watched 11hours of congressional hearing on baseball and steroid use.

That’s Entertainment! 

Since I was alone, I had to make most of my snarky remarks to our dogs, Sabrina and Sophie.

And here`s JJ with the play by play:

Jose Canseco has stuck his overdeveloped neck out and claims everybody was doing steroids in his new book Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big.  Jose named names, including his Bash brother, Mark McGwire.  I remember that season when he was playing for the Oakland As that Jose got BIG.  `Steroids`, I said to anyone who would listen. `Well, Duh`, they would answer.

This was way back years ago when I was dreaming of becoming a Big Leaguer myself.  Turned out diet and exercise wasn’t enough.  If only I had had steroids…and an unhittable 100mph sinker. 

Bygones.

At the hearing yesterday, the other boys didn’t make a lot of eye contact with Jose.  They seem to feel that Jose is stirring up the shit to sell his book.  And he is, #3 on the Amazon list

Big Mac, Mark McGwire, burst into tears and asked why do we have to dwell in the past?  I’m retired anyway and not naming name.     I love McGwire, I said to Sophie and Sabrina.  He saved baseball`s ass after the strike. The girls thought he bulked up eating all those thick burgers from Hardees.

Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro did the sensible thing and pretended not to understand English.

Que?

Rafi looked really hot for the record and he has a fat Viagra endorsement; a performance enhancing drug if there ever was one!  

Winning Red Sox pitcher, the great Curt Shilling said that maybe somebody might be doing steroids, but shucks folks, I’ve never seen it. I was too busy working on my fastball.

No one thought to invite Barry Bonds or Jason Giambi. Probably didn’t have enough room for them at the table.  Those guys are the size of mountains.  For the record, none of my Royals were subpoenaed but they haven’t been playing well enough for anyone to suspect steroid use. Jason’s lil brother, formal Royal, Jeremy has admitted to using steroids, but Jeremy is no baseball superstar worthy of congressional interests

Late in the afternoon, Baseball commissioner Bud Selig tap danced around the issue so brilliantly that I got a headache…but I had had a LOT of Baileys by then.  Maybe somebody is doing steroids, maybe not.  We test all the players once a year and they will be fined or suspended if they are doing drugs, which they aren’t….maybe. And besides that would be cheating.

Can you repeat the question?

The Curse is Reversed

but I am still a little miffed about missing the lunar eclipse. I guess it just wasn't in the Cards...(insert groans here)

Dark Side of the Moon

Wow, thanks to Jazz for sending me this heads up! Now just hope that it isn`t raining in St Louis like it is here. BTW, I whined and cried to get tickets to this game and even played the birthday card, but in the end, Hawk said he couldnt justify paying the scalpers the asking price, even though he says he is in favor of the occasional scalping

A unique date in the annals of baseball history will be recorded Wednesday, Oct. 27 when for the first time a total lunar eclipse will occur during a World Series game.

Millions of Americans watching Game 4 will also be able to partake in one of nature's most beautiful sky shows, as Earth's shadow begins to cover the Moon during the early innings.

Weather permitting, the eclipse will be visible to fans with a good line of site at Busch Memorial Stadium. And, if FOX television producers so choose, the potential exists for this to be the biggest audience ever to see a lunar eclipse televised live.

This notable Fall Classic owes partly to the fact that from 1903 through 1970, the World Series was only played during the daytime (The World Series was not played in 1904.)

In 1971, night Series games were introduced. But no total lunar eclipse since that time has occurred at just the right time.

There were two close calls during the 1980s.

In 1985, a total lunar eclipse on Oct. 28 came the day after the final game of the World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals. (JJ NOTE: Royals Won!!!) The following year, another total eclipse occurred on Oct. 17. But that was the day before the start of the Series between the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox.

Even if the dates of these eclipses and World Series games had coincided, it would still have been a moot point since these two eclipses were visible only on the other side of the globe, across Asia.

However, this week's eclipse will favor the Western Hemisphere with most Americans getting a ringside seat.

The St. Louis Cardinals will host the Boston Red Sox at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. The ball game is set to get underway shortly after 8 p.m. EDT.

The other big event

The Full Moon will begin its passage into the Earth's dark central shadow, called the umbra, just over an hour after the game begins, at 9:14 p.m. EDT. The Moon will be in total eclipse for one hour and 22 minutes starting at 10:23 p.m. EDT.

Eclipses do not produce an entirely dark Moon. During totality the Moon will likely glow with an eerie coppery hue, the result of the Earth's atmosphere acting like a lens and bending reddened sunlight -- the same light seen at sunrise and sunset -- into the Earth's shadow and onto the Moon.

The eclipse could, in fact, serve as a periodic diversion from the ball game. Should the local weather be clear in that night, television cameras might occasionally be trained skyward to show viewers the gradual progress of the eclipse.

It could also give people in parts of the country that might be plagued by cloud cover a chance at getting a free glimpse of the event.

Probably the last time a lunar eclipse was televised to a large audience was on Aug. 6, 1971. That's when the three astronauts of Apollo 15 trained their camera toward a totally eclipsed Moon while returning to Earth after man's fourth successful visit to the lunar surface.

Don't wait

It cannot be determined when such an unusual circumstance as a total lunar eclipse coinciding with a World Series might again occur.

Total lunar eclipses occur whenever the Sun, Earth and Moon are properly lined up during a Full Moon. Since the Moon's orbit varies about 5 degrees above and below the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun, not every Full Moon brings an eclipse.

Circumstances of lunar eclipses can be predicted with great accuracy for many years into the future. But the dates and locations of future World Series games are not known.

In fact, the date when the final game of the World Series was played has noticeably moved forward in the fall calendar over the years. In the 1930s, the average date was Oct. 8. By the 1960s, it was Oct. 12. By the 1990s, the typical date of the final Series game had shifted to around Oct. 25.

And yet this year, the Series doesn't even begin until Oct. 23.

Let's assume the Series is played during the final week of October for many years to come. I have found two potential dates when another total lunar eclipse visible in the Americas might again coincide with a World Series game. Interestingly, both eclipses occur on the same calendar date: Oct. 29.

But many people reading this won't see them: The first opportunity comes in the year 2050 and the second in 2069.

And who knows? By the time those eclipses come, Major League Baseball officials might have slated the World Series for the middle of November, and perhaps it will live up to its name and be played in other parts of the world.

Here's Johnny!

Back when Johnny Damon was wearing his hair shorter
and playing center field for the Royals, I use to think he looked like an Aztec warrior and I would fantasize about him in a feathered headress and golden loin cloth
Then like all good Royals do, Johnny went to a better team, grew out his hair

Now he reminds me of a caveman
with a big club.

Between Johnny and Mr Albert Pujols, it should be a tasty series