jimmy

Benjamin, Catherine, Tyson and Emma were so generous to take me to a birthday dinner at Damon’s Steakhouse in Glendale on Saturday. After dinner where Emma commanded me to draw everyone she knew with crayons, we went back to their homestead for cake, Scrabble, Archer and avant-garde music. Emma and I did a duet of “Old McDonald” while I interspersed bits of Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl” here and there.

By the way, the cake is a lovely chocolate raspberry cake with white chocolate shavings on top.

Today I spent the morning watching my Pirates beat the Cubbies 1-0 with a walkoff homer by Neil Walker in the bottom of the 10th. All of this instead of being active. But that’s fine. I do like the start of a baseball season, and I’m glad that I have an MLB.tv subscription. And now that I have a Roku, I can actually watch these game on the TEEvee rather than my lappy.

This time the Dodgers were in San Diego to open the season for the rest of the Majors. And I won’t go into how the Padres always pander to the military-industrial complex with those ugly camouflage Sunday uniforms, how the military is only there to protect the freedoms of the rich elite, etc.

The game came down to a disastrous eighth inning for the Dodgers. In came the bullpen to relieve seven strong innings from Hyun-Jin Ryu, what the experts say is a strong deep one for the team. The Dodgers held a 1-0 lead, and with Brian Wilson on the mound in the eighth it started to look like Game 2 from Australia. In Sydney the Dodgers nearly coughed up a 7-0 lead by giving up a run in the eighth and four runs in the ninth.

In this one the margin of error was much smaller, obviously. A slider over the plate to pinch hitter Seth Smith to lead off the bottom of the eighth was dispatched into the right field seats to tie the game. As bad as that might have been it got worse.

Wilson walked pinch hitter Yasmandi Grandal, botched a bunt by Everth Cabrera. Grandal then stole second and Cabrera took second on defensive indifference. The Padres, though, weren’t indifferent when Chris Denorfia hit a two-run single that gave the Padres the lead.

A liner by Chase Headley that bounced off of first baseman Adrian Gonzalez and back into the infield, that ended Wilson’s night with no outs recorded.

Chris Perez and Paco Rodriguez got the Dodgers out of the jam.

Although the Dodgers lost 3-1, the game set up perfectly for the Dodgers. With the payroll they have, the most in the Majors, there is a tendency to focus on the offense. To see if Yasiel Puig, Hanley Ramirez, Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, Carl Crawford, etc. are going to be the murderer’s row this side of the 1927 Yankees.

But that’s not the Dodgers. The Dodgers narrative will always be pitching, and that narrative took a hit as Clayton Kershaw opened the season on the disabled list with a strain of his Teres Major muscle — a muscle that connects the back to the arm. If Kershaw is out for any extended period of time, that will bode trouble for the Dodgers hope to repeat as division champions.

But for today the Dodgers had Hyun-Jin Ryu. Without looking at his starts last season, it seemed like this one followed the same script. Ryu got in trouble early, squirmed out of it, then shut the opponent down.

In the first inning with runners on second and third with no outs, Ryu got Chase Headley to strike out swinging. He then pitched around Jedd Gyorko which I assumed meant he wanted to set up the double play. That’s exactly what happened: Yonder Alonso bounced back to the box for the 1-2-3 double play.

In the second inning, Ryu had runners on first and second with no outs. He got Rene Rivera to fly out to right, starting pitcher Andrew Cashner sacrificed and Everth Cabrera struck out swinging, the first three outs of 16 consecutive outs. Three hits and two walks over two innings for Ryu, but most importantly no damage was done.

As for the bats, the Dodgers only managed four hits. Two of those hits came in the fifth inning which coupled with two walks gave the Dodgers the lone run they scored through eight innings.

So it didn’t work in this game. It’s just one game with one pitcher having a tough stretch. The Dodgers get the day off tomorrow while the rest of baseball begins.

1. The Houston Astros will compete in the AL West. I know people expect Houston to be competitive in a few years, but sometimes these things happen ahead of schedule. They will compete with the Oakland Athletics for the division. The Angels and Mariners will hover around .500, and the Texas Rangers will have a really shitty season.

2. Yasiel Puig will be placed on the disabled list with a leg injury. After all of the hubbub of him being a cancer in the Dodger clubhouse, the worst thing to happen to baseball and other things that these white straight male sportswriters write about the guy, Puig will hurt himself in June trying to extend a single into a double. The same white straight male writers will have a grin of smug self-satisfaction and masturbate themselves into ecstatic oblivion.

3. Clayton Kershaw will be on the disabled list. After signing the big contract extension, he will inevitably get injured. Oh wait! It’s already happened!

4. Tampa Bay Rays will win the AL East. Meanwhile the Yankees and the Red Sox will continue to play five-hour nine-inning games that will set the entire Eastern Seaboard into a somnambulant daze.

5. The Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals will be in the World Series. At least, that’s what I’m rooting for.

6. Most of the major tv providers will continue to balk at paying for SportsNetLA all season long. Dodger fans get used to not seeing them on television and are able to fully live their lives as productive members of society. The Dodgers will have to cut payroll to Tampa Bay Rays level, and the Angels begin to enjoy a new era of popularity.

Here will be the division winners:

AL East: Tampa Bay Rays
AL Central: Kansas City Royals
AL West: Houston Astros
AL Wildcards: Cleveland Indians, Oakland Athletics

NL East: Atlanta Braves
NL Central: Pittsburgh Pirates
NL West: San Francisco Giants
NL Wildcards: LA Dodgers, St. Louis Cardinals

It’s a bit funny to see people’s reaction to last night’s La Habra Shake (thanks Militant Angeleno!). I felt the 5.1 quake here at The Manse, a slight rolling sensation. Once I realized it wasn’t going to get any stronger, I went to confirm to my grandmother that it was indeed an earthquake and not just her first step into dementia.

On the news it’s been noted that we’ve had a 20-year lull since the Northridge quake, so it’s interesting to see people’s reaction. I heard people saying they ran outside which, while understandable, is probably the most retarded thing to do. Sure you probably won’t be trapped in a building should one collapse, but you could be hit with pieces of building, trees, power lines, busted water main, busted gas lines. In fact the chances of bad shit happening outdoors is greater than just staying tight inside in most cases.

I’m fine with these smaller quakes. As I pointed out yesterday, I’d rather deal with these sorts of quakes rather than the bigger stuff like the 6.7 Northridge quake, the 7.3 Landers quake in 1992 which was quickly followed by the 6.5 Big Bear quake that same day. I’d rather have five smaller farts rather than one huge gargantuan one.

So maybe this means people will flee from where they came from. Please? LA is dangerous! OOGA BOOGA!!

I was behind an SUV (of course) that had this bumper sticker at a red light. I really wanted to get out, go up to him and shatter his knee caps with a crowbar and whisper, “Is this man enough for you,” while licking his tears of pain. Unfortunately I didn’t have a crowbar.

When I was a teenager I always imagined one of two scenarios when I reached 35.

1. I would be a productive member of society, doing lord knows what, but in a nice apartment (never a house) doing fun things and just chugging on the machinery of life.

2. I would be dead of an overdose before I reached 30.

It’s funny to see these romanticized visions we have of ourselves back in the infancy of our schooling age. Or, maybe, it’s just me.

Fun note: if I only expect to live until I’m 50, 70% of my life has already passed.

Here’s the newest podcast using a name suggested by Dominick. I play with sounds and fall in love with the dance hall airhorn. We talk about the end of True Detective, what I should do for my birthday, my recent hikes, how shitty Brendan’s week was, the Dodgers in Australia, how fun the Dodger drama will be this season, and me having sex with lumberjack mascots.

I think we also have a new theme song which opens the show: Fly Young Red’s “Throw Dat Boy Pussy”.

The other music selections include Leaether Strip’s “Spellbound”, a cover of Siouxsie and the Banshees, surtur13 (aka Derrick)’s “Mirage”, not a Siouxsie cover, and Josie Cotton’s “Johnny Are You Queer”.

You can listen below or, better yet, subscribe to the feed.

Today I decided to walk nonstop from my manse to the top of San Pedro Hill. I’ve been to the top of the hill before but never from my abode. So I figured, why not? It seemed like a good idea.

8.72 miles later, aching feet and body later, I guess it was still a good idea. Despite making it 1,400 feet up there, my enthusiasm has muted with each electro-chemical neural transmission within my body.

It was a gloomy day as you can tell from the photo above. The fog still lingered, and there was quite the breeze in the air. I was wearing only a t-shirt and shorts, and I could feel the chill of my sweat-drenched shirt each time a gust blew. But it really wasn’t that bad. As I passed Marymount College and turned to Crest Road, I realized the win was freezing my hands. I had to keep clenching my fists to try and keep them warm. I really wished I had mittens at the point no matter how silly they would have looked.

What was pretty remarkable when I got to the top was being able to see the Manse from such great heights. It’s located in the parking lot you see towards the bottom-center in the picture above. Here’s the zoom:

Well, that’s not really the precise location of the Manse, but it’s close enough should you want to stalk me. For what it’s worth, the Manse’s elevation is just under 300 ft while the top of San Pedro Hill is just over 1,450 ft.

As you can tell, there are some rich bitches who live up there. I guess they don’t blink an eye when the lose a shoe.

I knew the Dodgers had three runs. I knew somehow that they won. But I didn’t give a shit because I needed sleep, and a game that started 2 a.m. PDT didn’t stand a chance.

Thanks to a spot of rain, a first pitch that was scheduled at 1:45-ish a.m. got pushed back. SportsNetLA had to fill time, so there was John Hartung and Orel Hershiser talking about how Clayton Kershaw would handle the occasion considering his bad spring and awful start against St. Louis in the final game of the Dodgers playoff run. For the fourth time in an hour. (John just asked the question. Orel was confident Kershaw would turn it around.)

As this droned on, it’s not that hard to imagine why sleep would win.

What I saw was Kershaw getting into a jam in the first inning, back-to-back one-out singles by Aaron Hill and Paul Goldschimdt making things sticky. But I’ve seen Kershaw negotiate his way out of these situations, and it was no different in this case.

I saw that Scott Van Slyke hit a booming shot to left field in the second inning. D-Backs left fielder Mark Trumbo jumped at the fence to make a play for the ball, but the ball hit the base of the wall about ten feet away towards centerfield. Everyone thought it was a home run except for the umpires. They correctly saw it was in play.

That’s really about it.

Since anyone can read a box score we can see that Kershaw pitched into the seventh inning giving up only a run, that Yasiel Puig went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts, that Van Slyke went 2-for-3 with a walk and an actual two-run home, that the Dodgers are 1-0 with the 3-1 win. And, most importantly, the game lasted two hours, 49 minutes, a sportswriter’s dream.

At the end of it all, however, fuck everyone involved. I know there are plenty of people happy and thrilled that baseball has returned. And yes, I do agree with that. I too still love baseball, but who the fuck schedules a real game that counts in the standings that starts at 2 a.m. in that team’s market? This 35-year old dealt with a grandmother who got a touch of food poisoning and diarrhea, so staying up until 5 a.m. is out of the question. Even though I did try, though in hindsight I should have realized it was a losing proposition.

And, most of all, fuck the Dodgers and Time Warner Cable. There are those who are more than happy to stay up through the late night hours to watch a baseball game. But because a lot of fans don’t have Time Warner Cable, they were not able to watch the game without the combination of an MLB.TV account and a VPN.

We know about the $8 billion television deal with TWC. We know TWC wants an outrageous $5 per subscriber or so for the Dodger-only channel. There are people who do want to watch, feel the need to watch. But they’re shit out of luck.

“Things will eventually work themselves out,” we are told by the Dodger brass.

Gone are the days of the-customer-is-always-right ethos. Welcome to the 21st century where the bottom line reigns supreme. Mo’ money! Mo’ money! Mo’ money! Fuck the 99%, the rich need to get richer.

So until then, you the Dodger fan who they are saying they are trying to serve will just have to twiddle your thumbs. Fuck you.

I am a fortunate one. I do have Time Warner Cable and this channel. I get to see that stupid hashtag “#INEEDMYDODGERS” burned on the top left corner of every broadcast, retarded if you ask me since I already have the damn channel so the need is quenched.

I don’t know when other providers will pick up the channel. But hey, Champion Broadband picked it up so there’s momentum!