Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
UPDATED 16 Dec 2008: Add KC Chiefs (NFL), and add dates and scores UPDATED 2 Sep 2008: Add West Tenn Diamond Jaxx (AA) UPDATED 23 July 2008: Add Huntsville Stars (AA) UPDATED 25 June 2008: Add Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, and New York Mets UPDATED 27 April 2008: Add Kansas City Royals. UPDATED 20 May 2007: Add Philadelphia Phillies.
I’m a sports fan, and I “collect” stadiums (stadia?). Especially major league baseball, NFL football, and NHL hockey. My goal, before I die, is to see a baseball game in the home stadium of every MLB team. It would be an added bonus if I could do the NHL and NFL venues, but right now, I’m focusing primarily on baseball.
Problem is, I keep forgetting where I’ve been, and losing count. Therefore, mostly for my own reference (and because I expect few others to be interested), I’m posting a list of venues attended below the fold. I’ve ordered them in roughly the order in which I first visited them, to the best of my ability to recall.
However, if you have comments concerning favorite (or least favorite) venues, feel free to leave them.
William Kristol manufactures a false equivalency in order to tell the tale of the automakers’ bailout the way he prefers to see it.
As Warren Brown, who writes about cars for The Washington Post, recently put it, “There is a feeling in this country — apparent in the often condescending, dismissive way Detroit’s automobile companies have been treated on Capitol Hill — that people who work with their hands and the companies that employ them are inferior to those who work with their minds and plow profit from information. How else to explain the clearly disparate treatment given to companies such as Citigroup and General Motors?” . . .
What’s more, in their disdain for the American auto companies, the left and right wings of the establishment agree. Of course, the particular foci of criticism are different — the left berates the auto companies’ management, the right the United Automobile Workers. But even on the left, while Democratic politicians still try to look out for the interests of the U.A.W., there’s not really that much sympathy for the workers. The ascendant environmentalists disdain (to say the least) the internal combustion engine and everyone associated with it. Most of today’s limousine liberals are embarrassed by their political alliance with the workers who built those limousines.
Meanwhile, on the right, free-market analysts have explained that our regulatory scheme of fuel-efficiency standards is counterproductive. But despite the fact that the government is partly responsible for the Big Three’s problems, the right hasn’t really been stirred to enthusiastically promote a deregulatory agenda to help the auto companies. What excites it is mobilizing to oppose bailouts for unionized workers.
Like almost every factual claim made by conservatives, this is not just false, but deliberately falsified. He obediently recycles the GOP talking point that it was “regulation” that forced US automakers to build cars nobody would buy (without mentioning that both foreign-owned US car companies and foreign importers, who are getting all their business, are subject to the same fuel economy standards), while claiming that the Democrats don’t really care about auto workers anyway. He does appropriately condemn the GOP for playing anti-union political games with the bailout, but concludes that both parties are equally at fault in not taking the situation seriously. (”Whichever party can liberate itself from its well-worn rut to propose policies that help both American businesses and workers . . . could begin by offering management and labor at the Big Three a little more sympathy . . . .”)
But his own description of the situation, even if it could be believed, makes it clear the two parties are in no way equivalently obstructive on this issue. The only criticisms he can come up with against the Democrats are some sort of psychological fantasies he invented about their secret feelings toward the working class, underneath the actual, overt actions and policies they implement to help them. (”While Democratic politicians still try to look out for the interests of the U.A.W., there’s not really that much sympathy for the workers. . . . [E]nvironmentalists disdain (to say the least) the internal combustion engine and everyone associated with it. Most of today’s limousine liberals are embarrassed by . . . the workers . . . .”) There is no factual basis for these claims - he is simply making up what he believes to be in other people’s minds, without regard for whether it matches how they actually behave. Apparently the Democrats are so embarrassed by the UAW that they’re trying to implement healthcare for all the other workers who don’t have strong union contracts, increase unionization through card-check petitions, provide tens of billions of dollars for the UAW’s industry to protect the workers’ jobs, and subsidize the development of alternative energy and hybrid cars so the industry has a chance of survival after the oil crash. But, again, even if this stupid nonsense were true, it has nothing to do with actual policies - which, from the Democrats, are strongly pro-worker and pro-union.
It is the GOP which is actively trying to destroy the working class and to block efforts to protect the jobs of workers in the largest and most-threatened blue collar industy - entirely for ideological reasons grounded in actual, not fantasized, hostility to workers. (How do we know? In this case, unlike that of Kristol’s delusional fictions, they said so: “An e-mail message circulated among Senate Republicans declared that denying the auto industry a loan was an opportunity for Republicans to ‘take their first shot against organized labor.’”) Unlike in the case of Democrats, by Kristol’s own description these are actual, practical policies that have actual, tangible results - not merely intangible, supposed states of mind that do not even match the practical policies in question. More broadly, there is the GOP’s invariant hostility to unions and unionization, opposition to healthcare, unemployment insurance, and other benefits for the working class, theft of the Social Security Trust Fund, absolute refusal to enforce legally-mandated worker-safety regulations throughout the entire Bush administration, and on and on. These are ways the GOP actually pursues policies hostile to workers - in no way the same as the supposed secret resentments harbored by the imaginary Democrats Kristol conjurs up as the only foes, apparently, he is capable of criticizing openly.
Regarding the auto company executives, their “treatment” is more than a question of attitude or sympathy - they are the problem that needs to be solved. “Auto companies” do not just happen to make or lose money - the workers who take orders, and the machines that they use, can only function in response to directives thought up and imposed by the executives. These companies are not failing because they have bad workers or bad machines. They are not failing because the executives made good decisions that somehow didn’t get carried out. They are failing because the executives failed. They chose to find loopholes in the CAFE standards that left them selling cars getting 12mpg while gasoline went to $4. They chose to build heavy, clunky cars that were less attractive than those of European and Japanese competitors selling under the same regulatory regimen. They chose to pay themselves $20 million per year in bonuses while their companies lost money, and then blame it on highly skilled workers who had fought for decades to make an average of less than $60,000 per year (which, true to form, the GOP then dishonestly inflated to “$70 per hour”). The same people who flew alone in separate private jets to a Congressional hearing to complain they were broke are the people who made the decisions that led to them being broke. The only thing that will save Detroit is new and better decisions from the people responsible for guiding the companies. How that can possibly happen with the same crew of schmucks in charge, still pulling down their multi-million dollar bonuses, I can’t imagine. Neither can the Democrats, it seems, because they’re the ones who have been asking about that, while Kristol and the GOP declare that that is an unfair question.
But, aside from the mess in Detroit, the real message here is that the GOP and its toadies can never, ever, be relied upon to see issues clearly or tell the truth about them. They are committed to demagoguing and Swift-boating every issue, in the most transparently political way possible, with no regard for how much trouble it causes. They can do this, because they are never the ones who get hurt. Top Republicans can ride out any crisis; they’ll always have enough money left over (although, as even Kristol notices, they were quick to authorize a Wall Street bailout 50 times larger than the Detroit bailout they found somehow contrary to good business practice). Kristol and his fellow lapdog pack members will get their treats, no matter how high the water rises. The business executives who bankrupted their own companies and threw, literally, millions of workers to the brink of unemployment will simply hang on as long as the GOP can protect them, then take their tens of millions of dollars in payouts and retire in luxury. The GOP can treat the economy, workers’ jobs and pay and benefits and pensions, the stability of entire national industries, and even the environment, as trivial - as no more than grounds for scoring political points and punishing their vast list of enemies - because they live where those things have no meaning; they will always be the ones who get whatever little security and indulgence there is to be had, so they simply don’t need to care about the things other people depend on for their own security, and health, and lives.
The result is that the hard test of fact never applies to high-level conservatives. Most people will find their lives unraveling if they lie to themselves and others about everything all the time - if almost every public statement they make is factually false and can easily be demonstrated to be so by 5 minutes with Google, or if they are simply incapable of distinguishing between what they believe someone thinks and what they observably do. But for those who simply don’t need to care about the hard reality that others struggle with, even the necessity of not being wrong all the time is merely someone else’s problem.
Kevin’s fallen off the wagon here, so I’ve found one that’s right up his alley. Barenaked Ladies’ Elf’s Lament (featuring Michale Bublé), a song about the terrible working conditions of Santa’s Elves, and their efforts to organize:
I’m a man of reason, and they say “‘Tis the season to be jolly”
But it’s folly when you volley for position
Never in existence has there been such a resistance
To ideas meant to free us
If you could see us, then you’d listen
Toiling through the ages, making toys on garnished wages
There’s no union
We’re only through when we outdo the competition
I make toys, but I’ve got aspirations
Make some noise
Use your imagination
Girls and boys, before you wish for what you wish for
There’s a list for who’s been
Naughty or nice, but consider the price to an elf
A full indentured servitude can reflect on one’s attitude
But that silly red hat just makes the fat man look outrageous
Absurd though it may seem, you know, I’ve heard there’s even been illegal doping
And though we’re coping, I just hope it’s not contagious
You try to start a movement, and you think you see improvement
But when thrown into the moment, we just don’t seem so courageous
I make toys, but I’ve got aspirations
Make some noise
Use your imagination
Girls and boys, before you wish for what you wish for
There’s a list for who’s been
Naughty or nice, but consider the price to an elf
You look at yourself
You’re an elf
And the shelf is just filled with disappointing memories
Trends come and go, and your friends wanna know why you aren’t just happy making crappy little gizmos
Every kid knows they’ll just throw this stuff away
We’re used to repetition, so we drew up a petition
We, the undersigned, feel undermined
Let’s redefine “employment”
We know that we’ve got leverage, so we’ll hand the fat man a beverage
And sit back while we attack the utter lack of our enjoyment
It may be tough to swallow, but our threats are far from hollow
He may thunder, but if he blunders, he may wonder where the toys went
I make toys, but I’ve got aspirations
Make some noise
Use your imagination
Girls and boys, before you wish for what you wish for
There’s a list for who’s been
Naughty or nice, but consider the price
Naughty or nice, but consider the price
Naughty or nice, but consider the price to an elf
A thought just occurred to me. Conservative blogger Xrlq started out (when I started following him) in liberal California, bemoaning his status as a left coast conservative. In 2006, he moved to Virginia, and lo and behold, Democrat Jim Webb defeated incumbent Republican George “macaca” Allen in the Senate race that year. Then, in late 2007, he moved to North Carolina, which — I think you’ll see a pattern developing — favored Democrat Kay Hagan over incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole in the Senate race. And as an added bonus, that state also went for Democrat Barack Obama.
I think there’s only one possible explanation: Xrlq is spreading liberalism wherever he goes. I’m not sure if he’s still somehow “contagious” from California, or if there’s something about his particular brand of conservatism that turns people toward liberalism (my money’s on the latter), but the effect is the same, and I like it.
So with that, I have a humble request for Xrlq: Would you kindly consider moving to Tennessee when Corker’s seat comes up in 2012?
Thank you.
Side note: I only just now, while looking for a time frame on the NC move, noticed that I won!
Or is anyone else tired of the “government regulation of any kind = implied threat of lethal force” canard ridiculously fucking stupid and simplistic “argument” being trotted out there by libertarian types these days?
UPDATE: Speaking of libertarians, I happened across this old rant from a little over a year ago. I’ve gotta say, that was one of my better rants.
I’ve long argued that the problem with economic libertarianism is that it ignores basic human nature, more specifically the tendency of people to strongly value their short-term wants and needs over their long-term best interests, such that they will favor the former heavily over the latter, and do so in ways that are harmful not just to their own best interests, but to the best interests of the economy as a whole.
PS: This is an absolutely brilliant video. It walks a careful and difficult path between seriousness, humor, and irony. He allows critics to mock the hippy-dippy, shaggy-haired liberal folk-singer/activist without ever undercutting his own message, and gives a nod to the silliness of We-Are-The-World-style theatrics while harnessing their emotional power at the same time. The message is right on, and the medium is as good as it gets. Spread this one around.
Woody Allen has an amusing short story about a man who goes to the theater and accidentally falls out of the balcony into the Orchestra seats below. He therefore goes back to the same theater every night for a month and deliberately throws himself out of the balcony, just to prove the first time wasn’t a mistake.
In a desperate bid to make his Iraq fiasco look less like a completely incompetent blunder, Bush’s babysitters are designing an “institute” - carefully staffed with hand-picked sycophants and devoid of scholarly expertise - to promote similar policies in the region after he leaves office. The idea is apparently that if he keeps yammering about the situation he created, and something eventually goes right there, he wasn’t wrong to cause the problem in the first place.
Bush and his handlers are mapping out this phase of the president’s post-White House years. Plans are well under way for a “Freedom Institute” that will aim to promote democracies abroad.
The institute, where Bush is expected to play a significant role, is expected to be unaffiliated with an academic institution. Its members are expected to be analysts whose views are in line with the neoconservative outlook that shaped the president’s approach to foreign policy.
“This is going to be Bush vision.” Brinkley said of the institute. “Bush has never liked the academics, and this is a nonacademic institute aimed at cutting to the core of things: only pro-democracy foot soldiers who are green-lit by George and Laura Bush are in the mix.”
It’s under the auspices of this think tank that the president might try to improve his legacy, in hopes that Freedom Institute might reveal virtues in the foreign policy vision that led to the most defining decision of his presidency, the invasion of Iraq.
“This president’s low approval rating is overwhelmingly connected to Iraq. It will rise and fall depending what turns out to be the history of that country and that part of the world,” said Stephen Hess, a former Eisenhower aide and a scholar at the conservative Brookings Institution. “That really is what his legacy for future historians is all about.
For God’s sake, can’t he just leave? Take his oil-company-and-mercenary-contractor payoff, retire to his fake ranch, fuck off and die quietly? He and Jeb can sit on the porch together and whine “I coulda been a contendah!” to each other to the end of their days. But please, spare us - and the more misfortunate who have to live in the hell-holes he creates in his toy sandbox world - any more of his stupid meddling and self-pitying justifications.
Dusting off from a couple of years ago. I’m a big fan of Tom Lehrer’s A Christmas Carol because of how well it lampoons the commercialism of the season:
Christmas time is here, by golly,
Disapproval would be folly.
Deck the halls with hunks of holly,
Fill the cup and don’t say when.
Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens.
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again.
On Christmas Day you can’t get sore,
Your fellow man you must adore.
There’s time to rob him all the more
The other three hundred and sixty-four.
Relations, sparing no expense, ‘ll
Send some useless old utensil,
Or a matching pen and pencil.
(”Just the thing I need, how nice!”)
It doesn’t matter how sincere it is,
Nor how heart felt the spirit,
Sentiment will not endear it,
What’s important is the price.
Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
God rest ye merry merchants,
May ye make the Yuletide pay.
Angels we have heard on high,
Tell us to go out and buy!
So, let the raucous sleigh bells jingle,
Hail our dear old friend Kris Kringle,
Driving his reindeer across the sky.
Don’t stand underneath when they fly by.
Chris Wage has me thinking about Christina Aguilera. She’s got a great set of pipes, there’s no doubt about it, but she hasn’t seemed to figure out that there’s such a thing as too much. It’s impressive that she can run the scales the way she can, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Where it serves the song, fine, but most of the time when Aguilera does it, it actually detracts from the song. Don’t use twenty notes where one or two will do.
I’ve found what I think is a fine comparison to illustrate this problem.
The wrong way:
The right way (disregard the video, it’s the audio you want):
This also brings up another thing that bugs me. There are times when you just shouldn’t fuck with perfection. As I’ve mentioned before (and I’m not the only one), there’s really no reason to remake Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song — he got it absolutely right. Similarly, At Last is one of those standards that you fuck with at your peril.
One larger point here is that, while “rising stars” like Sanford and Jindal may be individually compelling, they must operate within a Republican Party that has enthusiastically embraced ignorance on a whole host of subjects, economics included. The issue is whether they can escape these constraints.
Kevin’s way too nice when he does this feature. Sure, he’ll include the occasional protesty song like Father Christmas, but he never does anything truly tasteless and irreverent, it seems. So on that note, I’d like to submit my song of the day: Weird Al’s The Night Santa Went Crazy:
Down in the workshop all the elves were making toys
For the good Gentile girls and the good Gentile boys
When the boss busted in, nearly scared ‘em half to death
Had a rifle in his hands and cheap whiskey on his breath
From his beard to his boots he was covered with ammo
Like a big fat drunk disgruntled Yuletide Rambo
And he smiled as he said with a twinkle in his eye
“Merry Christmas to all - now you’re all gonna die!”
The night Santa went crazy
The night Saint Nick went insane
Realized he’d been getting the raw deal
Somethin’ finally must’ve snapped in his brain
Well, the workshop is gone now, he decided to bomb it
Everywhere you’ll find pieces of Cupid and Comet
And he tied up his helpers, and he held the elves hostage
And he ground up poor Rudolph into reindeer sausage
He got Dancer and Prancer with an old German Luger
And he slashed up Dasher just like Freddy Krueger
And he picked up a flamethrower and he barbecued Blitzen
And he took a big bite and said “It tastes just like chicken!”
The night Santa went crazy
The night Kris Kringle went nuts
Now, you can’t hardly walk around the North Pole
Without steppin’ in reindeer guts
There’s the National Guard and the FBI
There’s a van from the Eyewitness News
And helicopters circling ’round in the sky
And the bullets are flying the body count’s rising
And everyone’s dying to know -”Oh Santa, why?”
My, my, my, my, my, my - you used to be such a jolly guy.
Yes, Virginia, now Santa’s doing time
In a Federal prison for his infamous crime
Hey little friend now, don’t you cry no more tears
He’ll be out with good behavior in seven hundred more years.
But now Vixen’s in therapy and Donner’s still nervous
And the elves all got jobs working for the postal service
And they say Mrs. Claus she’s on the phone every night
With a lawyer negotiating the movie rights.
(They talk about)
The night Santa went crazy
The night Saint Nicholas flipped
Broke his back for some milk and cookies
Sounds to me like he was tired of getting gypped
Wo, The night Santa went crazy
The night Saint Nick went insane
Realized he’d been gettin’ the raw deal
Somethin’ finally must’ve snapped in his brain
Wo, Somethin’ finally must’ve snapped in his brain
Tell ya, somethin’ finally must’ve snapped in his brain.
Today’s entry is Rudolph the Red Noses Reindeer. Because when you have kids, you get to watch all the old classics all over again. Besides, for a commercial ditty, it has a nice message about not judging people by their appearances. Though, now that I am watching the show with my entranced tots as I blog, it becomes clear that I had somehow completely forgotten that this thing sucks. No one can sing, no one can say a line without trying to eat the scenery, and that stop-motion animation is giving me seasickness. The Abdominal Snowman is the most subtle performance in the show. Plus, Rudolph’s Dad is a complete dick.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Had a very shiny nose,
And if you ever saw it,
You could even say it glows.
All of the other reindeer
Used to laugh and call him names;
They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any reindeer games.
Then one foggy Christmas Eve,
Santa came to say:
“Rudolph with your nose so bright,
Won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?”
Then how the reindeer loved him
As they shouted out with glee,
“Rudolph the red-nosed Reindeer,
You’ll go down in history.
Two overly enthusiastic Randy Newman fans have set themselves the task of writing a new Randy-Newman-esque theme song for a different movie that should have, but didn’t have, a theme song by prolific theme-song-writer Randy Newman, every day in December up until Christmas.
They’ve made it a little easier on themselves: each song is only 90 seconds long; they all use the same Randy-Newman-esque tune; and they all have the same chorus, with the appropriate movie name inserted and a quote at the end. So they really only have to write about 3 lines per song. But still . . .
The first wonderful offering is this:
Somethin’ bled
Here in the bed -
It’s that producer guy’s horse’s head!
Gang war’s begun,
Michael’s on the run -
Take the cannoli but leave the gun.
James Caan is leakin’
All over the place -
And near the end they shot Moe Greene in the face.
Nobody believed that he could win.
Go, Godfather, go!
You my friend.
Go, Godfather, go!
You got a reason to live.
(It was you, Fredo!)
(One of these guys sounds a lot like Randy Newman!)
There are more - a new one each day. Keep checking!
What Child Is This is a very good example of one of the things that I think has allowed Christianity to thrive: it’s complete and unashamed willingness to co-opt any and all cultural touchstones. The tune is actually Greensleeves, an English folk song about being cheated on. The original song is sad and earthy. The Christian version, while retaining the same solemn tune, is a loving tune about the birth of the Savior. This song is a small example of the tendency of Christianity to gleefully incorporate whatever local customs, holidays and folkways it encountered. I think that willingness goes a long way to explain Christianity’s acceptance.
Well, that and the willingness to kill anyone who didn’t convert.
I have always had a sentimental attachment to Silent Night. When I was in Catholic grade school, it was the first Christmas song I ever learned. We kindergartners sang in it in that year’s Christmas Assembly. I learned all the versus by heart and my parents assured me I sounded amazing. Later, after I had children of my own, I heard the song and was struck by the fact that it was a tender lullaby as well as a song of worship. It humanizes Mary and her son in a way that is unusual if not unique among Christmas carols. I can almost see Mary crooning something low and gentle, like this song, to her infant.
I used to argue about that hummanity with my second college roommate. Jesus’ sacrifice, I maintained then and now, means nothing if Jesus Christ was not a human being. Without that fear and pain, it is not a sacrifice. There may be verses more important to understanding Jesus and Christianity than Mark 15:34, but they are few in number. Silent Night is the most human among the traditional Chirstmas carols and thus, to my eye, the most Christian.
Silent night, Holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in Heavenly peace
Sleep in Heavenly peace
Silent night, Holy night
Shepherds quake at the sight
Glories stream from Heaven afar
Heavenly hosts sing Hallelujah
Christ, the Savior is born
Christ, the Savior is born
Silent night, Holy night
Son of God, love’s pure light
Radiant beams from thy Holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth
I am going to start this year with a song that it not only a great Christmas song, but one that follows my favorite song writing convention: really driving, up-tempo music combined with at least semi-depressing lyrics. 99 Red Balloons, of course, is the canonical example (and yes, the English version. The German version doesn’t count because I don’t speak German and thus have no idea how messed up the lyrics actually are.) Christmas isn;t bout you, it is about doing good thing for other people, about loving your fellow man, about giving not reciving, and all those other hoary cliches. But just because they cliches doesn’t men that they are any less true. And this song captures that pretty damn well.
When I was small I believed in santa claus
Though I knew it was my dad
And I would hang up my stocking at christmas
Open my presents and Id be glad
But the last time I played father christmas
I stood outside a department store
A gang of kids came over and mugged me
And knocked my reindeer to the floor
They said:
Father christmas, give us some money
Dont mess around with those silly toys.
Well beat you up if you dont hand it over
We want your bread so dont make us annoyed
Give all the toys to the little rich boys
Dont give my brother a steve austin outfit
Dont give my sister a cuddly toy
We dont want a jigsaw or monopoly money
We only want the real mccoy
Father christmas, give us some money
Well beat you up if you make us annoyed
Father christmas, give us some money
Dont mess around with those silly toys
But give my daddy a job cause he needs one
Hes got lots of mouths to feed
But if youve got one, Ill have a machine gun
So I can scare all the kids down the street
Father christmas, give us some money
We got no time for your silly toys
Well beat you up if you dont hand it over
Give all the toys to the little rich boys
Have yourself a merry merry christmas
Have yourself a good time
But remember the kids who got nothin
While youre drinkin down your wine
Father christmas, give us some money
We got no time for your silly toys
Well beat you up if you dont hand it over
We want your bread, so dont make us annoyed
Give all the toys to the little rich boys
