Author: Mark

Wheeled and dealed in my fantasy leagues

I currently sit 1st, 2nd, 1st and 2nd in my four fantasy baseball leauges. The foruth is just a home-run league so it doesn’t matter much. Hoping to solidify my teams for the last 2 months of the season I made deals in my two keeper leagues.

Field of Dreams / The El Guapos

Traded Carlos Quentin & Francisco Rodriguez
Received Johnny Peralta

Hit by a rash of injuries I got to the point where my DL was maxed out and I really didn’t want to drop anyone to add a replacement injured catcher for Brian McCann. Without the deal I probably would have just waived K-Rod, but Matt had Axford and I figured he might want the handcuff. I got back Peralta who (a) has had a better year than Quentin (who slowed down after a great first 6 weeks) and (b) who plays 3B/SS where I’ve lost Stephen Drew (out for the season) and Adrian Beltre (2 weeks).

CelticsBlog League / The Gainesville Ubuntus

Traded Josh Johnson, Kendrys Morales, Matt Wieters, David Hernandez
Received Jonathan Papelbon, CJ Wilson and Scott Baker

I’ve also been hit with injuries in this 5×5 league but my real need was to upgrade my pitching, which I did for basically nothing of value this season (while maybe slightly downgrading a keeper for next year): Johnson and Morales won’t play again this year; I got an upgrade over Wieters in Y. Molina on the waiver wire; and Hernandez is back to a setup man with Putz back. In exchange I got Baker and Wilson who become my SP2 and SP3, and a top-of-the-line closer in Papelbon. I’ll may also end up adding Mike Adams or Tyler Clippard in exchange for my shakiest SP (Morrow or Hudson).

 

For about 20 years, this was the kickoff to the season of optimism for Boston Celtics fans. The NBA Draft was where hope sprang eternal. Even the last couple of years as we were coming off Finals/deep Playoff runs I’d put together a wishlist. This year I just haven’t been as plugged in. There are a million little reasons — still feeling stomach punches from the Perkins trade and the Rondo playoff injury, really busy at work, fear of the looming lockout — but this year I’m going into the draft with very little research.

While working on the new client website though, I got caught up a little by listening to the Celtics Stuff Live predraft show.

Of course, nothing can compare to the 7-hour marathon they ran during the 2007 draft (leading up to which I’d been on twice detailing how and why a KG trade could get done under the salary cap). But the Draft still kicks-off my 2nd favorite season: The NBA offseason.

Update: My short-ish list of guys that sound like they’d make a good fit in green:

I’m torn on Reggie Jackson and don’t think I want any part of Tyler Honeycutt.

Would love to buy/trade for another 2nd rounder to be able to grab two or three of Jordan Williams, Nolan Smith, Jeremy Tyler, Jimmy Butler.

I would also think about trading the #25 pick for Eric Maynor and a future 2nd.

Today was busy but at lunch I made a salami + provolone sandwich along with a tasty bowl of Progresso New England Clam Chowder. Maybe I was hungry but it was much better than I remember Progresso’s clam chowder being. A delicious midday meal.

Remember: sometimes (often times?) its the small pleasures.

What we know about Weird Al Yankovic: He is the first person I saw live in concert (c. 1985, free at the O’Dome at UF). His art — albums and especially the sadly obscure AL TV — was critically formative to my brother and my “brilliant” senses of humor. He remains perhaps the most criminally underated artists of the last century. A song of his was on our wedding invitation. He is a genius AND a fashion plate.

And he has a new album out, Alpocolypse!

Bonus: Chuck Klosterman talks with Weird Al. Where we learn of the world missing out on “Chicken Pot Pie” (to “Live and Let Die”). Two of my cultural heroes — why is it only 33 minutes? OH WHY?!!?

Listcore 001 (link to come) wasn’t my first obsessive, semi-meaningless, soon-to-be unfinished project (that one, c. 1988, will be properly discussed in Listcore 003…someday) but it was the first that I tried to really document & record as a Listcore project. I built a database, had raw files in Excel, even tried butchering some HTML to release it into the world. Of course that was 11 years ago and counting.

After reading through some of Justin’s 500albumreviews today I got a bit nostalgic. At lunch I pulled up the old Listcore 001 file I created and scrolled through the 722 database records. What a great, insane project. And after some more coffee, I decided that I wasn’t gonna give up: LC 001 will not go unfinished! Hell, I even came across a new addition to the madness. I’m going to have to go back and make some changes under the hood, tweak the database, revise some rules and check my math but it’s got some great bones, a good solid foundation.

It’s fitting in some ways because I feel sort of the same way now that I did in 1999 when I started LC 001: a bit worn out on my own music collection, but ravenous about sounds new and old. So much so that I’d actually started to make plans for a new, equally ambitious LC project that will now go on hold until I two of 001, 005 or 010 are finished (or forever like so many before it).

Tonight was my first day back as a part-time staffer for the Alachua County Labor Party. Most of my time was spent just organizing things in the office for our new staffer, Kimberly, and getting to-do lists set up but I’m really looking forward to what I think is going to be a good year of growth/rebirth for the ACLP.

I’ve served as co-chair with Jenny Brown since we started the Local Organizing Committee (the level of organization below a chapter (which required 250 members)) in 2000 and was the first part-time staffer in 2001 (my first day was Sept. 11, 2001 oddly enough). After building up through the Committee of 100, I left my job at UF and worked full-time for the ACLP for most of 2004 — so I’m excited to be back on Sunday and Wednesday evenings.

Candi, Andrew and I have had a pretty long history of some mammoth game playing and I’m usually brought in as a 3rd (or 4th now with Jason taking over the 3rd spot) to test out and learn new games.

Tonight we played 4(!) hours of Cosmic Encounters. I think Candi got it for Andrew for Christmas and this was our first opportunity to try it out. We had a great time as always playing, but ultimately Cosmic Encounters doesn’t come close to cracking the upper echelon of games in rotation: Race for the Galaxy, Nexus Ops, or even Blue Moon City.

Spent my lunch break tearing through this Washington City Paper series looking back at Q and Not U’s terrific debut.

My younger cousin Dan, who’s featured in the series, turned me on to Q and Not U (along with dozens of other bands). While I love the No Kill No Beep Beep cover, I now wish they’d gone with this outtake (both photos by Shawn Brackbill):

No Kill, No Beep Beep (Dischord 123) is a great record and this series was a captivating and unfortunately rare look at a single record and the scene it sprang from:

Those key-janglers and hand-clappers formed a scene that, to be sure, no longer exists, but the photo marked the beginning of a several-years-long creative period for young post-punk bands in D.C. … To MacKaye, the album is a reminder that musical innovation comes in waves. “What Q and Not U captured for me was this: They inherited this thing, and they said this is our fucking take on it.”

Among the amazing, thoughtful, over-indulgent wedding gifts our friends and family gave us was a gift certificate to the Paramount Grill — a nice restaurant that we’ve occasionally had brunch at but is just a little pricier than we’d normally spend on a dinner out. For our first Date Night as a married couple we shared:

Toasted panna rustica, roasted garlic and sweet red peppers, sun dried tomatoes, olives, warmed chevré and extra virgin olive oil, and

Red Snapper with garlic mashed yukon golds

Janeen and I went down to the Civic Media Center to watch New Low, which had been filmed in and around Gainesville (the old CMC, Video Rodeo, Northeast Park, Common Grounds’ Porch, etc).

New Low was an amusing, occasionally laugh-out-loud-funny, look at a drifting college kid and his romantic failings. Adam Bowers, the writer-director-star, reminded me of younger-sort-of-hipper Woody Allen (which is probably what he was going for).

There was nothing groundbreaking about New Low, but it was enjoyable and any movie that has the good enough sense to include Radon in its trailer and involve The Civic Media Center as a key part of the plot gets 8 thumbs up from me!

After the movie, we went home and I watched the Celtics beat the Spurs with Rajon Rondo dishing out an amazing 22 assists. This was a beautifully played basketball game that I can only hope is a preview of the 2011 NBA Finals.