George Saunders
I think I'm going to buy his new book today, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, and I found this in an interview with Slushpile.com:

Slushpile: What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without writing tip you would offer to aspiring authors?

Saunders: Keep going. Your subconscious mind is a lot smarter than you are. Just keep giving it a chance and in time it may reward you. Get out of the way a little bit, have fewer ideas about what kind of writer you are and what it is you are going to accomplish. Find out what kind of writer you are and be prepared to accept that writer, no matter how different he/she is from what you’d hoped….

Slushpile: What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without publishing tip you would offer to aspiring authors struggling to break into print?

Saunders: I know this advice feels facile but honestly — stop worrying about getting published. Think about writing something that comes from the heart and that you would feel unashamed to show to your greatest historical writing hero. Maybe we can’t get there — but I think what every reader wants to read is someone in the act of swinging for the fences, unselfconsciously, with joy and abandon and the highest possible hopes. Who could resist that, right?

I like that, keep going

Guatemala ties US 0-0
THe US played with 11 non-starters, so that tells you something right there. But from all accounts, we had every opportunity to get three points out of this game, but, as usual, we simply failed to do so. But the tie at least lines us up ahead of Trinidad, so that's something. People that still home for a straight ticket to the World Cup are devastated, but I think they should have to play another team to earn their way.

The team would be either Bahrain or Uzbekistan (I think) and as long as they can stay ahead of Trinidad, that's what's going to happen. After all, if you can't beat those teams (Trinidad, Bahrain, etc.), you don't deserve to go to the World Cup. Why? To embarass yourself? It would be historic though... (not the embarassment)

The Bachelorette
She is officially on my bus. She's much cuter than she looks on TV, that's for sure. Too bad everyone stares at her (not for her cuteness but for her fame, although I'm sure a few just think "she's cute.")

Cell-phone plans
I'd like to know what kind of plans both Cab Drivers and Mail Carriers have with their cell-phone providers.

Seriously, they talk, like, all the time.

Dead Man featuring Johnny Depp
If, like me, you are a big Johnny Depp fan, and, also, like me, you want to be able to say you've seen every Depp movie ever made, you have to, unfortunately, watch Dead Man (1996).

I just saw it last night, it's a western, black and white, and I rather have Roger Ebert tell you what it's like, since it's pretty much what I thought too:

``Dead Man'' is a strange, slow, unrewarding movie that provides us withmore time to think about its meaning than with meaning.

A mood might have developed here, had it not been for the unfortunatescore by Neil Young, which for the film's final 30 minutes sounds like nothingso much as a man repeatedly dropping his guitar.

Jim Jarmusch is trying to get at something here, and I don't have aclue what it is.

Next up: Broken Flowers and The Constant Gardner

Hide and Seek
For those of you that haven't heard of this movie, don't worry, you ain't missing much.

It's a scary movie featuring DeNiro in a very unfamiliar role: He's a boring man. This should've been a tip off that something was going on, along with the fact that almost all scary movies have some sort of plot twist at the end.

Plus there was one thing that bothered me from the time I saw the thing on the shelf at Blockbuster: it boasted 4 alternative endings.

Any movie that decides to include 4 alternative endings means that the creators aren't very committed to the one they've chosen. Which means the ending in the movie will pobably be flimsy. Which is was, and so were the other ones.

DeNiro, whatever happened to that guy?

US Cellular Field (Comiskey)
Went to see the Sox for the first time ever and I was very impressed by their facilities. Everything is so much bigger and spacier. Having been used to Wrigley and Fenway for the past 6 or so years, this was a welcome surprise. The seats were great and the atmosphere was pretty good, especially since there were so many Detroit fans in the house. I wore a Detroit hat and therefore made many a friend.

Not a big fan?
So the AVP tour is in town this weekend over on North Beach (beach volleyball) and I was asking myself if I was going to go.

I wanted to answer with, "Well, I'm not a big fan, so I won't go."

Do you see the problem with this? I don't dislike beach volleyball, I just don't follow it that much - at all really. But I don't hate it.

The phrase "I'm not a big fan" has turned into a slang way to say "I don't really like that."

So how do we say that we aren't a big fan of something? That is, we aren't up-to-date on the latest news and events regarding, in this instance, beach volleyball?

I move to reinstate the phrase to it's original meaning because, to be honest, I'm just not a big fan of the way it's being used now.

The Cubs of Old
Turned on the TV the other day and the Cubs were down 0-7 in the 5th inning. For all intents and purposes, the game was over. You could tell there was no way they were going to come back. It's a feel thing.

They ended up getting one hit.

And it hit me: that's how it used to be, back when the Cubs were considered one of the worst teams in the bigs, year after year.

Then came 1998 and it kind of surprised everyone, then '99 took everything back to normal. Then the farm system took the spotlight: Bobby Hill, Choi, Wood, Prior, Zambrano, Cruz, Kelton, etc. We were primed for long-term success.

2002 came along and established the team as a pitching powerhouse. 2003 was a disappointment. 2004 feels like the Cubs of old - with no chance to win, no matter who's on the field.

Teaching and the Major Leagues
A nice article on Old School vs. today.

Baker speaks