David Foster Wallace
I went and bought this month's Atlantic magazine because he has a piece in there about talk radio. It's really DFW-esque and also has some hilarious moments. Instead of footnotes he uses this kind of highlighting technique I've never seen anywhere before - and these are the places where most of the really funny stuff is.

Basically he shows a world of certainty where the people in talk radio have their views and those views are correct no matter what. I really shouldn't even try to synthesize it - just go out and read it.

Sunday's Contender
It had been building up since the very first week, and good guy Ishe won the fight. I didn't get to see it, but I hear it was pretty clear who the winner was. Ahmed's girlfriend was kind of ditzy and superficial, but look at her. The other thing I found interesting was Ahmed's intro as he walked to the ring, he was walking down the tunnel repeating something in arabic, which was translated and captioned on the screen as Allah is great, or something about Allah, I don't remember exactly. I wonder what the editors were thinking when deciding whether or not to leave that in. Just curious, that's all.

It's too bad all the fights have been lopsided. Two of them were underdogs winning, that's cool, and this one was a battle of two good fighters, but it was 4-1 again. They need a KO or a tighter fight (not another unanimous one) next week. We'll see what happens.

David Foster Wallace stuff
I just found some DFW stuff I hadn't read before:
http://www.smallbytes.net/~bobkat/npr.html
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/1999/05/28/hideousmen/
http://www.smallbytes.net/~bobkat/rose.html
http://www.smallbytes.net/~bobkat/jesterlist.html

Enjoy

McDonalds to outsource drive-throughs
Weird, no?


Why don't you just hire someone who can speak and think properly and be done with it? Is that so hard? This way you only have one person on the payroll. I'll never understand anything.

Deja Vu?
Let's not get carried away but now it seems Prior is having elbow trouble to go along with Wood's shoulder issues.

This could wind up being the rotation:

Zambrano
Maddux
Rusch
Dempster
Guzman

Damn.

March Insanity
OK so BC got a four seed in the same region as Illinois, so that'll be interesting if they get that far - BC over here at the United Center against the number one team in the country. Oh yeah. As for the first and second games, they're in Cleveland. I'm trying to get my ass over there but first we have to win on Thursday.

DePaul got snubbed

Holy Shit! Jermain Watson a target
Scary stuff.

Cubs on TV
Got a chance to see the game yesterday, the very first one on WGN this year with the new broadcasters, Len Kasper and Bob Brenly. The game itself was anticlimactic. After all, it's spring training. But it was cool to see Maddux pitch, along with Nomar (who went 3-3 with a 2B and a HR). As for the announcers: it's weird. After listening to Steve Stone my whole life wither with Harry or Chip, this is very weird. Bob Brenly is the worst. He is the classis example of a guy who probably doesn't do as much reading of what's going on as the hardcore fans and so he seems ignorant at times. Much the way Fox broadcasters do about the teams they are covering in a Nationally broadcasted game. Which is OK, those aren't "their" teams, but this was pretty bad. Kasper, who I had never heard before, was pretty good. At least he was trying and he did his homework. But Brenly is awful, I don't like him at all.

One of the weirdest things was to hear them referring to the Cubs as "they," which is good because if they started to say "we" right away I would be even more upset. I guess that will come with time. And it's good that Kasper made some jokes a couple times about them being "the new guys," so he's not just trying to ignore the whole thing.

So Kasper good, Brenly bad. Cubs look good.

DuBois didn't start but hit a homerun in the ninth - he leads the team with three...

Coincidences
Ok so bear with me here. There are a few things. First of all, I move from Boston to Chicago. That's one. As I do, Boston wins the World Series. They get a player by the name of Bellhorn, who I'm quite fond of, who used to play in Chicago. This year they get Clement, who used to play in Chicago. The Cubs got Nomar last year - from Boston. I used to go to Boston College, now I go to DePaul. BC is in the Big East Conf this year, for the final year. DePaul is in the C-USA...for their last year. Their new home? THe Big East Conf.

There was more but I've forgotten it.

Happy Friday

Spring Training Check-in
Ok so it's still early but what is there to say about Spring Training insofar as the Cubs are concerned? Well, there is still the LF issue, with Baker saying that Hollandsworth all but has the job, so let's see what the numbers say:

DuBois:5-13(.385), 2 HR, 2 RBI, 3 R, 11 TB (.846 SLG)
Hollan:4-9 (.444), 0 HR, 1 RBI, 2 R, 8 TB (.889 SLG)

The only difference is that DuBois has more ABs, which is surprising if Baker is conceding the job to Hollandsworth - or maybe it isn't surprising. Hollandsworth has two triples and DuBois has been showing the power. Other than that they are pretty even I guess - I just don't see Hollandsworth holding up for an entire season, no chance. He'll break down and then we'll be without a good LH bat off the bench and DuBois will step in mid-season. Why not avoid all this and start him NOW? Dammit Dusty.

As for the pitching, it's way to early to make any comments except for the fact that Carlos Zambrano looks outstanding. He has allowed just one hit in five innings, 2 BB, 4 Ks. Everyone is raving about how great he's throwing the ball.

Other than that, I'll let you know what my impressions are on Saturday when they play on WGN for the first time. Hopefully I'll get to see some of the younger guys that intrigue me: Felix Pie, Brian Dopirak, Will Ohman (not that young, I'm pulling for him), Eric Patterson, and Angel Guzman.