Poor Clay Hensley. He’ll be answering questions about this for years to come. I thought Greg Maddux was supposed to pitch tonight. If Bonds had hit his homer of Maddux, Maddux could have shaken it off and entered Cooperstown without feeling too badly. I mean, sure, giving up 755 would suck, but being the greatest control pitcher of the last 20 years would probably take some of the sting away.

I guess the guy who gives up 756 will have it worse, won’t he?

It must be horrible to live in someone’s shadow. I would imagine that Robert Olen Butler is feeling sort of the same way about Ted Turner right now. This kind of shit is enough to make you not want to live a literary life. Thank heavens no one cares about poets. It’s safe to be one.

I was at a baseball game with friends, one of whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. He brought a date, a delightful girl he was excited about seeing. When I told her I was working on an MFA in poetry, she said, “I love poetry!”

“Who do you like to read?” I asked.

“Oh, Billy Collins is my favorite,” she said.

“He’s quite good,” I said.

She kind of furrowed her brow for a moment. There was a long pause. “I made out with him once,” she said.

“Smashing,” I said.

I really didn’t know how to follow up on that. I write poetry, too, but I wasn’t really planning to make out with this young woman to get her to read my stuff. I kind of wished she’d said she reads a lot of Mary Oliver.

Ladybug and I have watched movies in the evenings after I finish working on my essay, a first draft of which should be somewhat complete tomorrow. Good heavens. Tonight, we watched Hot Fuzz, which was pretty terrible. The preview looked good. The preview showed all the best parts.

But last night, we watched Venus, which was one of the best movies we’ve seen in a long time. I was so struck by it that I was ready to put it in my top 5– it was hilarious, pathetic, and touching all at the same time. I had read in this blog and that blog how Peter O’Toole was getting some Oscar buzz. Sure, people are thinking that he’ll win on the “body of work” principle… but why is no one talking about him winning solely on the strength of his performance in this terrific film? Peter O’Toole deserves two Oscars for this movie… one for himself, and one for all the ass he kicked.

Last night: Durham Bulls. Lots of heckling. The Ottawa Lynx probably do not like us very much. Always good to spend time with old friends, and perhaps a new friend or two. One of the girls we were with found out that I’m working on an MFA and was excited. “Are you a poetry fan?” I asked. “I love Billy Collins,” she said. “He’s quite good,” I said. “I made out with him once,” she said. “Is that what sparked your interest in poetry, or was that the end of it?” I asked. “The end,” she said.

Still reading the economics book, but I have also started Making It Happen: A Non-Technical Guide to Project Management. This is for the work “book club.” Within three pages, I wished I could retreat into some Elizabeth Bishop or something. I can just see how it’s trying so hard to be pleasure reading… and how it just fails.

If my job switches from Movable Type to WordPress, I’m going to switch as well, in all likelihood.

So, I have now set up my blog for NaPoWriMo. After thinking about it a great deal, I decided that I’d do it at another site, and I’m probably not going to share that site with people. Is there any need for you to see me in my underwear? No! And seeing the poems that I’ll write over the next month would probably be quite similar.

You can, however, see me at a wrestling match. Several, actually. Blink, and you’ll miss it… though you can see Bill Ferris, Travis Smith, Philip McFee, and Ben Moser at various moments, and you can hear Moser hollerin’ at the rasslers quite a bit. Long live the smart marks.

A book arrived in the mail today from Big Game Books, and it’s awesome. Peruse the list of titles, and let me know if you see one that would automatically appeal to me. Yep, that’s the one I bought. Yep, it’s great. I’ll be placing another order with Big Game pretty soon.

I don’t know whether to root for the Bears or the Colts. It pretty much comes down to Manning vs. Urlacher + Hester for me. Urlacher and Hester is two. Manning is one. Perhaps I know who I am rooting for.

We had trained to be astronauts. But we ended up here. This place: desert, it seems to mock us with its expanse. As though it too could go on forever, and if we could traverse its distance we might unlock some piece of ourselves. In flight school, we welcomed the challenges of nothing, of nothingness. Here, we are reminded daily of our insignificance. We might burn a drum of oil one night, in hopes that someone might swoop down from the heavens, having noticed us, and carry us to a precipice. We might, some other night, build the most magnificent of sand castles, and live in them until the next stiff winds. Or perhaps we will grow larger, we ourselves, and walk in one footstep from one edge of the desert to another– if the desert has edge or end at all. We’ll all need bigger uniforms.

Wrestling is hilarious.

We saw GOUGE at Kings last night.

We loved the wrestling.

The wrestlers loved us.

It’s that time of year– today is Opening Day in the major leagues, so you need to know who I think is going to be awesome and who I think is going to suck. You also need to know how I did last year, when I did a surprisingly good job of picking it.

My pick appears in blue if I got it right and red if I got it wrong. The number that follows is where my pick actually placed in the race.

AL East: Red Sox tied with Yankees
AL Central: White Sox, Twins (3)
AL West: Angels, A’s (2)
AL Wild Card: Yankees tied with Red Sox

NL East: Braves
NL Central: Cardinals
NL West: Padres
NL Wild Card: Astros

World Series: White Sox over Astros, Cardinals over Yankees.

AL MVP: Alex Rodriguez
NL MVP: Albert Pujols

AL Cy Young: Bartolo Colon, Johan Santana (3)
NL Cy Young: Chris Carpenter, Roger Clemens (3)

AL HR champ: Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz (2)
NL HR champ: Andruw Jones, Albert Pujols (3)

AL batting champ: Michael Young Alex Rodriguez (2)
NL batting champ: Derrick Lee, Todd Helton (4)

AL Rookie: Huston Street, Scott Kazmir
NL Rookie: Ryan Howard

So, in 2006, it’s gonna look like this:

AL East: Yankees
AL Central: Indians
AL West: A’s
AL Wild Card: White Sox

NL East: Braves
NL Central: Cardinals
NL West: Dodgers
NL Wild Card: Mets

World Series: A’s over Cardinals

AL MVP: David Ortiz
NL MVP: Albert Pujols

AL Cy Young: Joe Blanton
NL Cy Young: Jake Peavy

AL HR champ: Manny Ramirez
NL HR champ: Albert Pujols

AL batting champ: David Ortiz
NL batting champ: Albert Pujols

AL Rookie: Ian Kinsler
NL Rookie: Ryan Zimmerman

Today is draft day for Matt Pack’s Fantasy Baseball League! I’ve agreed this year to become a whipping boy for this league, since I am now armed with widgets like the Major League Baseball standings widget and the Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball widget. I expect that I can finish no higher than 11th of 12, but I plan to be the league badass by polishing up some of my old CSBL skills and sending crazy-ass press releases about my team. Sadly, I cannot find any remnants of those old press releases, though I believe them to exist in some electronic format, somewhere. I do remember some of my favorites, such as:

• Vladimir Guerrero Makes Tasty Pie
• Manny Ramirez Concerned With Creation of Comfortable Workspaces
• Bruce Chen: “I Swear, I Am Not Asian”

I have thoughts on all kinds of subjects! Really! Here are some of my thoughts from the world of SPORTS!

Man, am I glad to see that Dook is out of the NCAAs. I hate Dook, I really do, but this year’s crop of Dookies has a special place in my black, black heart. JJ Redick annoys me some, but that has more to do with the flood of “JJ is Gay” “No, JJ dated MEEEE” posts in my blog. Shelden Williams also annoys me, but that’s because I hate seeing his “pumped up” face on TV– it’s hideous. But the part that stings me the most is that this is the first Duke team, mostly because of the aforemetioned players, that I had to have some respect for. Before, abject hatred was enough. This crew… well, they earned some respect, because Redick and Williams are damn good basketball players who seem to play the game the right way.

The Carolina Panthers have apparently tossed out the concept of team chemistry and signed Keyshawn Johnson. The man is a cancer. I guess since T.O. got all the ink this winter, they figured Keyshawn couldn’t be that bad. But he is. He’s that bad. (He’s also in decline.)

Alfonso Soriano is an idiot. He won’t go to left field because he thinks his value is higher as a second baseman. The Nationals threaten to disqualify him. He goes to left field. He has a horrible second day. Everyone makes a big deal about it.

How would it have gone down if he’d just quietly gone to left field? He has a horrible second day, no one cares.

Christ almighty, if you paid me what he’s making, I’d play both positions simultaneously.

This giant photo of Adam Morrison crying is really, really unsettling. I almost feel bad for the guy that it was published on a major website like ESPN. I don’t feel bad at all that a rinky-dink-ass website like mine is pointing people to it.

Roy Williams is awesome. This should be a bigger story than it is, and since it’s not, I am assuming that is because everyone knows Roy Williams is awesome.

Seriously, do you care that much if JJ is gay?

Yeah, I love me some Jesse Boulerice, but if it’s true that Doug Weight is coming to Carolina for Jesse and some picks, why then, goodbye Jesse! A guy like Weight coming to Carolina… I mean, it’s just unreal what kinds of things you can do when you’re winning.