This Is Not A Political Post

For a lark, and because I was interested in how this whole "early voting" thing was working, I went and voted today at the Board Of Elections in downtown Painesville.

For those thinking of doing so, I'd only recommend this if you are certain you are going to face a long line at the polls on November 4, or if you have a pretty busy schedule on that day, as the process took a little bit longer than I'd anticipated (probably a half hour from when I walked in the door to the BOE to the time that I left). After filling out a page or so of "who are you, anyway"-styled paperwork and then cross-checking a couple of details with the attending clerk, I was given a pen, a yellow envelope, a two-page ballot and went off to do my voting thing.

This last bit was a bit of a surprise: I'd figured we'd be using one of those newfangled electronic voting machines instead of being handed an absentee ballot, but this being my day off, I wasn't in any kind of hurry. That said, I think next time I'll just stick with voting on Election Day.

Maybe There Is A God, After All ...

Wow, I guess good things can happen in this world, after all. I haven't been this chuffed about watching the Fall Classic since, well, 1997 ...

My heartfelt congratulations go to the Tampa Bay Rays in their vanquishing of the hated Boston Red Sox in an ALCS Game 7 for the ages, setting up a World Series Game 1 against the National League champion Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday night.

At last, I can look forward to a World Series with no "bad guy" and just enjoy some good postseason baseball between two teams who I'd both like to see win it all. If pressed, I might admit to a bit of a hankering to see Phillies skipper Charlie Manuel win the Big One for old time's sake, but honestly, I just hope the series goes seven games.

Meditating On Matters Of Wood And Porcelain

OK, so I'm watching playoff baseball (despite the lack of total lack of ball clubs from Cleveland being involved this year) and, of course, there are ads for Viagra and Cialis during every single commercial break.

Well, alrighty, then. I guess Erectile Dysfunction is now a plague of biblical proportions judging by the amount of air time these ads chew up on a nightly basis, though I suspect a lot of our national shrinkage problem has to do with ever-increasing amounts of able-bodied males watching the Boston Red Sox in high definition widescreen. Really, drug companies, what the hell do you expect to happen down south of the belt line when such genetic abominations as Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis fill our television screens? Contrary to popular opinion, we're not all Red Sox fans out here.

Anyway, to the question at hand: it has come to my attention that nearly all of these erectile dysfunction ads at some point will feature a middle-aged (and ostensibly naked) couple sitting on a beach or in a forest, gazing at the sunset or rolling waves from the comfort of two separate bath tubs. What the hell?

Who sticks these bath tubs in these areas and for what purpose? Is there some kind of juicy symbolism I am failing to catch here? Where does the hot water come from to fill these tubs? How is sitting naked in two separate tubs romantic or erotic? Wouldn't a Jacuzzi built for two be a better idea?

Color me stymied.

Chinese Democracy Is Finally At Hand

Billboard's Jonathan Cohen is reporting the release of the fifteen-years-in-the-making Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy, which will (of course) only be available through everyone's favorite neighborhood record store, Best Buy. Oh goody.

The set ... will be available Sunday, November 23, rather than the usual Tuesday.

Gosh, how clever and daring, Axl. Nice to have you back. I hope your shitty new record tanks.

This spring, soft drink manufacturer Dr Pepper offered to send a free can of the beverage to "everyone in America" (excluding ex-GNR members Slash and Buckethead) if "Chinese Democracy" were to arrive anytime during the calendar year 2008. A Dr Pepper spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

Crap. Dr. Pepper? Ewww. Can I ask for a Pepsi or Mountain Dew instead?

The Road: November 26

Here's a movie that might be worth looking forward to.

I picked up this book on a whim last summer and was completely blown away. Relentlessly downbeat and drenched in misery, The Road is a shattering, striking read. I can't imagine how they're going to do the movie adaptation "right," but I am totally psyched regardless.

Thanksgiving, huh? Boy, this'll attract families in droves ...

Life Is Just A Fantasy/Can You Live This Fantasy Life?

I suppose it would surprise absolutely no one that I have a "Google Alert" set to "Pink Floyd," which sends me a nice little daily rundown of all the most popular new stories on said subject to appear on the web (whether through so-called "mainstream" news sites or blogs). 98% of the time, these alerts e-mails are either full of false-positives or plain old chaff, but one link came up last week that caught my eye: drummer Nick Mason will apparently be one of the instructors at a "Rock N Roll Fantasy Camp" in England in early November.

I researched this "fantasy camp" further and the details offered in the package are quite interesting indeed: you (the participant) will practice at the famed Abbey Road Studios and then perform with your band at the (rebuilt) Cavern Club (across from the old location shuttered years ago) in historic Liverpool!

Live the dream! No experience necessary! trumpets the official website. You'll be treated like a rock star. You'll live the rock n' roll lifestyle day in and day out, learning or perfecting your knowledge of an instrument, practicing and jamming with your band mates and learning the ins and outs of the music business - all in the company of some of music's brightest stars.

Funny, I was under the impression that the life of a rock star was more along the lines of frequent anonymous sex, binge drinking, recreational drug use, malnutrition and cultivating a healthy love/hate relationship with your audience. Sure, practice and jamming is certainly involved and all, but the rest of that sounds suspiciously like a community college course.

And while I love Nick and all, I can't say I consider him or Bill Wyman to be among "music's brightest stars," but I suppose they can't have Slash available for these kind of things 24/7.

By the way, that "no experience necessary" part looks absolutely horrifying, doesn't it?

Depending on your skill level and interest, you may try picking up a Peavey guitar during your time at camp, or you may spend your time singing backup vocals or playing tambourine with the band.

Terrific. How many acolyte tambourine players can a live amateur performance of The Wall support before the universe starts to collapse in upon itself?

So, what can a paying customer expect from his experience? The site goes into a point-by-point list:

• Small group instruction from celebrity musicians (campers are placed in a band with a rock star counselor for the entire camp duration)

Good lord, this just sounds like someone's awful idea of a reality series.

• Play and write your own original song

Hey, Brian and Rob! This is your chance to get "Butterflies In The Wind" professionally recorded at last! Can y'all write me a bass part?

• Perform live on stage to a sold out audience at a major rock venue

What, the (second iteration of the) Cavern Club? What's the capacity there? 300 people? Boy, I'll bet they are chomping at the bit to hear a bunch of inexperienced musicians tackle a Pink Floyd double album.

• Counselor-led master class sessions in drums, bass, guitar, songwriting, etc.

Sooo, will Nick Mason be teaching power chords and organ riffs, then?

• A souvenir DVD of you jamming at the final night's Battle of the Bands

Sweet Jesus Mercy, there will be more than one band performing? This is cruel.

• 10+ hours of daily jam sessions with your bandmates and rock star counselors

Good. You're gonna need it if you have any hopes of not embarrassing yourself.

• Daily meals with celebrity musicians and campers

If they are offering the true rock star experience, these meals will come straight out of the ass end of the nearest drive-through burger joint.

• Rehearsal time at professional rehearsal studios (you'll play where the stars play!)

Makes you wonder which engineers at Abbey Road drew the shortest straws to land this gig.

• Plenty of opportunities for photos and autographs as guest stars walk through the camp all week (so be sure to bring your camera!)

"Wow! Chris Slade! Wassup, homey!?"

"Hey, Kip Winger! Can I get a picture with you?"

"Hey, look! It's that guy who was once in The Beach Boys in the 1970s! Awesome!"

At first, reading the article and then perusing the website made me feel sad and embarrassed: my god, is this what our ex-rock stars have sunk to? Teaching a bunch of rich kids whose parents paid $15,000 so that their little Dominics, Dantes and Dillons can learn how to perform The Wall from a guy who, quite honestly, didn't have an awful lot to do with the creation of the piece in the first place (and, considering Pink Floyd's increasing use of session musicians around that time, who knows how much he had to do with the actual recording anyway)?

The more I chewed this program over, the more disturbed I became by what I was reading. A school of rock? We're now giving trust fund brats and aging baby boomers professional seminars on how to be a rock star? What kind of post-Reagan cultural dicketry is this?

Has rock music become so safe and homogenized now that it has completely lost any semblance of artistry or danger that it once held? OK, I'll look the other way on adults working their way through midlife crises (since Goat knows I'm due for mine anytime now), but when exactly did kids growing up in the hopes of becoming a rock star become an agreeable career goal for their parents? Hell, when did joining a rock band become something you went to camp for (and with your parents chaperoning, to boot)?

Maybe I missed something over the years, but I was under the impression that a rebellious teenager joining a rock band was the antithesis of a respectable career choice. If anything, trying to become a professional rock musician was more like running off to join the circus: something that horrify your parents and either turn you into a drug-addled guitar god or at least a spotty, chain-smoking roadie. Not anymore, though! These days, living the rock star lifestyle is as cute and tame an idea as a day at Disneyworld.

The more you think about it, the more Rock 'N Roll Fantasy Camp becomes a vaguely creepy homage to an era that really does feel a century old. Be Amish for a week and raise a barn! Join the Union and be a Civil War soldier for a week and then fight in a real mock battle! Join a rock band and learn to play Pink Floyd's The Wall!

"Lookit me, Darian! I'm a rock star! I can play 'The Thin Ice' on drums!"

Sickening. And we wonder why rock music has seemingly lost much of its meaning and impact on people over the last fifteen years.

Look, it's either this or politics ...

A Warning To CD-R Collectors

One of my big projects for this year has been going through and listening to every CD I own in order to clear some space on my shelves, thin out the overgrown herd a bit, and make a few bucks from selling the oldies but goodies on Amazon. Currently, I'm nearing the end of the R section (lots of Rolling Stones, Todd Rundgren and Rush in the air lately) and hoping to get through the end of the alphabet by Christmas.

Anyway, while going through this marathon endeavor, I've been making the disturbing discovery that a lot of old CD-R titles have deteriorated a lot more quickly than I'd anticipated, especially titles that have some kind of labeling or silk screening done on the top side of the disc. I'd heard before that some CD labels were notoriously prone to ruining CD-Rs over time (Goat knows how), and it appears that has been quietly happening in my shelves the last few years. Ick.

For me, this is not a major problem: nearly all of the music I own on CD-Rs is bootlegged live recordings, as that particular segment of the music market went nearly all CD-R around 1998 or so. Thankfully, this means much of this music is replaceable (and perhaps even upgradeable) if I know where to look (and I do). What I've found is that not every CD-R I own has gone bad, but enough have become undependable that I've been backing everything up to FLAC in hopes of keeping at least some of these recordings in playable shape.

So, to anyone out there who has placed a fair amount of your music on CD-Rs, whether in musical or data form (particularly those of you who then added some kind of fancy colorful label to the top): you might be well advised to start checking some of your archives and making sure everything is in playable shape. Hopefully, you'll be spared an unpleasant surprise.

End Of Discussion. For Now.

Not that you would ever notice it here since I rarely go political on this blog, but my complete avoidance at all costs of the vice-presidential debates the other night made me realize that I've reached my personal fill of political discourse for this term. My mind is made up, and I'm dead tired of this subject coming up several times a day every single day at work. It's time to step back, affect an air of blissful ignorance, and let whatever happens happen at the polls.

Thus, with one month to go until Election Day, I hereby state for the record that I am taking a break from all discussion, comment, and riffing on political affairs in all forums, whether we're talking about e-mail lists, blogs, shooting the shit at work, or any other public venue where the subject can possibly come up.

Ohhhh, damn. Almost forgot. One last thing before my promise officially goes active ...


Hee hee. Don't forget to vote on November 4!

Richard William Wright 1943-2008

No one can replace Richard Wright. He was my musical partner and my friend.

In the welter of arguments about who or what was Pink Floyd, Rick's enormous input was frequently forgotten.

He was gentle, unassuming and private but his soulful voice and playing were vital, magical components of our most recognised Pink Floyd sound.

I have never played with anyone quite like him. The blend of his and my voices and our musical telepathy reached their first major flowering in 1971 on "Echoes." In my view all the greatest Pink Floyd moments are the ones where he is in full flow. After all, without "Us and Them" and "The Great Gig In The Sky," both of which he wrote, what would The Dark Side Of The Moon have been? Without his quiet touch the album Wish You Were Here would not quite have worked.

In our middle years, for many reasons he lost his way for a while, but in the early Nineties, with The Division Bell, his vitality, spark and humour returned to him and then the audience reaction to his appearances on my tour in 2006 was hugely uplifting and it's a mark of his modesty that those standing ovations came as a huge surprise to him, (though not to the rest of us).

Like Rick, I don't find it easy to express my feelings in words, but I loved him and will miss him enormously.

- David Gilmour, posted to his website.


OK, this one hurts. A lotlot.

The "magic circle" has been broken at last: granted, there was never much of a chance for any kind of significant Pink Floyd reunion (with or without the involvement of Roger Waters), but any irrational hopes or fantasies of that great colossus rising once again are now completely dissolved.

While I felt the passing of Pink Floyd's original founder, guitar player, songwriter, and vocalist "Syd" Barrett two years ago in a kind of disconnected, intellectual sadness, the unexpected death of founding member and longtime keyboardist Richard Wright hits much closer to home. Barrett had been ousted from the band in early 1968, thus the songs and sounds he had created were nearly at total odds with the Pink Floyd that had conquered the world five years later. Wright, on the other hand, was a central pillar of the classic "Pink Floyd sound" and while his shadowy, guarded personality kept him well below the radar for all but the most reverent of their fans, his contribution to the band's classic works cannot be overstated.

For a seventeen year old kid who had been utterly fascinated for years by the use of synthesizers in modern pop/rock music, hearing something as unbelievably exotic as Wish You Were Here on a spring night in 1987 was perhaps as life-changing an event for me as reading A Catcher In The Rye or Atlas Shrugged might have been for someone else at that point in those stormy, impressionable teenage years.

Considering that it was that 3 minute intro to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" that almost single-handedly turned me into an obsessive fanboy from that night onwards, it's kind of funny that I dedicated nearly all of my hero worship over the years to David Gilmour instead, but then again why not? Gilmour was a far more affable, talkative, and charming focal point for the band, whereas Wright tended to be withdrawn to the point of invisibility, when he was interviewed at all.

Yet listening now to the band's catalog, it becomes terribly obvious than even moreso than Gilmour's precise, piercing guitar solos, the delicate, jazz-influenced touch of Wright's hands on piano, organ or synth was vital to the sound of Pink Floyd. Almost entirely from Wright's chair at stage left came that crucial space between the beats that lifted the band's music into that rare air occupied by no one else. Looking over the Floyd's early years, where his influence was almost certainly at its peak, I can't even imagine where the band might have ended up (or if they would even have gone anywhere at all) without him in the band after Barrett was out of the picture. Without his deceptively simple, swirling Hammond chords and eerie Moog sketches to lay the groundwork over which Gilmour soared, it just wouldn't have been Pink Floyd.

It's much easier to imagine Wright out of the equation a decade later, for that is exactly what happened as he marginalized himself out of the lineup after Animals. Creatively listless during the recording sessions for The Wall, Wright was forced out of the band following the tour for that conceptual monster, and was completely absent for the making of Waters' last stand The Final Cut and the Gilmour-led A Momentary Lapse Of Reason. With Wright gone (and Waters firmly in command), Pink Floyd's music grew ever more strident, invasive and confrontational. This was even true of the comparatively lush Momentary Lapse, which was certainly no slouch in the volume department. Consciously or not, Wright was a calming influence that often gave the band's music a feeling of weightless, soaring grace.

Pink Floyd's music has made so much of a mark on me and my psyche that Wright's death is almost like losing a close friend. Becoming a fan of Pink Floyd widened my musical horizons immeasurably, and their music (and perhaps more importantly, the way it was presented and recorded) influenced my personal tastes to an extent that I am still coming to grips with over twenty years later.

Goodbye, Richard, and thank you for some of the best listening experiences of my life.

(Flickr Post): Cliff Gets #20

Going into September. the 2008 Cleveland Indians season is all about reduced expectations and winning a few little battles in lieu of the war ... save for the amazing ascent into Baseball Valhalla of longtime Cleveland starter Cliff Lee.

Exactly one year after he was called back up to the Tribe from the minor leagues (where he had been banished for half the summer following an awful, injury-plagued 2007 start), Lee faced the front-running Chicago White Sox and shut them out with nine innings of incredible, pinpoint location.

Like every other Tribe fan this year, I had been following Lee's exploits all year following his absolutely inhuman April start, watching as he came slightly back down to Earth in May and June, yet never relinquishing his new position as baseball's most dominant pitcher. Scheduling conflicts had kept me from ever seeing Lee pitch in person, and it was with great delight that I realized that the game I would finally see him pitch in person would be such a historic occasion. Everyone at Progressive Field was there to see Lee become the first twenty game winner for the Indians in nearly 35 years, and the atmosphere was electric with excitement the entire night.

What a fantastic night, and what an incredible achievement for a pitcher that many, including myself, were all too ready to part with after the 2007 season. In a season that has given Indians fans precious little to cheer for, Lee has become a superstar. This was a night for the ages.

(Flickr Post): Swept

What the hell is it with the Indians lately? With the 2008 season all but lost, they jettison three of their most popular and talented players (all of them respected clubhouse leaders, to boot), and then start to play some of their best baseball of the year in the weeks afterward. Of course, whenever they start to get too good, and the fans start to wonder if maybe they just might mount some kind of Hollywood rally, the Indians have to go out and remind everyone just how badly they can suck when the occasion warrants ... and you don't get many more occasions than this one.

With the '08 season about to enter its final month, my brother and I hatched a nutty plan to catch three games in three days at the Prog. Two of those games would be against the pathetic Seattle Mariners, arguably the worst team in baseball this year. The third game would be against the far tougher (and AL-Central leading) Chicago White Sox, but would feature our staff ace Cliff Lee, gunning for his league-leading twentieth win.

Seattle, though, came first ... and my god, those games were ugly, including this one. Suddenly hapless in the face of such utter mediocrity, the Cleveland Indians team lost all three games to Seattle. All. Three. Games.

Luckily, as was the case last Labor Day weekend, the Cleveland Air Show was going on above our heads, and we were offered plenty of opportunities for distraction as groups of military jets thundered about in the atmosphere around the park on another incredible, crystal clear day.

Wall-E

Another summer and another new classic from Pixar. Ho-hum.

The title character of Pixar's latest triumph, Wall-E (an acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth Class) is the last of an army of worker robots dispatched to clean up the titanic mess left behind by the previous tenants of Earth generations before. Possessed of a timid, yet curious disposition (and a huge fan of the musical Hello, Dolly!), Wall-E secretly collects odd pieces of junk he comes across while doing his work, decorating his little converted home with such jetsam as Zippo lighters, hubcaps, plastic eating utensils, Rubiks Cubes, traffic cones, and iPods.

It's so rare and welcome to have a modern film let moviegoers piece together what is going on without any title cards or narration, and Wall-E is all the more impressive since it doesn't ever underestimate its audience. Even while the circumstances of Wall-E's existence and situation are made clear, the near-total lack of dialogue in the opening act of the movie lets you sit back and drink in the rich, intoxicating visuals, some of which are among the most astonishing yet produced by Pixar (even if they happen to depict the Earth as a hazy, dessicated megalopolis left completely uninhabitable by its previous tenants).

During one otherwise unremarkable day, Wall-E witnesses the arrival of a huge spaceship, which drops off another, far more advanced robot before blasting off back into the skies. This robot, named Eve (for reasons that become clear as the story progresses), is a sleek, egg-shaped probe with a nuclear-tipped right arm. Starved for any substantial companionship after 700 years of compacting and stacking trash, Wall-E is so taken with Eve that he manages to stow away when events conspire to lead her back heavenwards, and this is where the real "adventure" in the film begins.

Wall-E on the surface is an old fashioned sci-fi-tinged romance with many thematic undercurrents running underneath. Interestingly, most of these elements appear to be sourced from other genre classics: the opening sequence recalls the eerie, melancholy solitude of The Road Warrior, the character of Wall-E brings to mind the sweet innocence of E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, the movie's second act is set on a massive spacecraft that recalls in part the soulless, dehumanized future seen in THX-1138, while the inhabitants of the craft (and the overall state of the Earth we see at the film's beginning) seem influenced by the blistering, righteous anger of Idiocracy. While it is certainly not uncommon for Pixar films to keep adults interested with cultural references and clever writing while entertaining the kids with antics, Wall-E is striking in how "grown-up" most of these underlying messages are (I certainly can't think of many contemporary animated movies that so fiercely send up the effects of "dumbing down" and runaway consumerism).

One could certainly make a case that the third act of Wall-E plays the "green" card in an almost heavy-handed fashion, but director Andrew Stanton's remarkable achievement of actually making you care about the fate of a gaggle of robots by this stage of the game easily makes up for any sense that we're being preached at for a scene or two. That said, I suppose this kind of thing rubs off easier with some people than with others, so your mileage may vary.

I've said it before and I'll repeat it until I finally jinx these guys once and for all, but Pixar never ceases to amaze and delight me. Especially in the wake of such movies I went into with great skepticism as Cars and last summer's surprisingly affecting Ratatouille, I have come to expect nothing less than home runs from this company, and they continue to knock them out of the park, with Wall-E representing yet another new peak in an already fearsome repertoire of greats. Without any hesitation, I proclaim this to be the best movie I've seen in 2008.

Wall-E rating: 5/5

(Flickr Post): Diamond Vision

I had a couple of days of vacation left over after Sarah went back to work, and decided to take in a weekday game down at The Prog. Since only I was going, I decided to look for the best seats I could find, and brother, did I find something special: Section 151, row F (in the so-called Diamond Box seating, first row, just to the side of home plate, and at the very edge of the safety netting). No contest, these were the best seats I'd ever had to a game, not to mention the most expensive by some distance, but oh were they worth it.

The day itself was damn near perfect for end-of-July-baseball: blue skies, a slight breeze, and blazingly hot (sunscreen and a steady supply of liquid refreshment were a must). Having never attended a weekday games before, I was pretty surprised at the large turnout. The atmosphere at the park was great: the people seated around me were a riot and we had a roaring time razzing the visiting batters as they took their practice swings in the on-deck circle. It felt like the crowd as a whole was equally energetic and into the game throughout: made easier, I suppose, by the Tribe delivering a sound thrashing to the Detroit Tigers and their ace, Justin Verlander.

Just seeing the Indians winning a contest for a change made this one the best games I'd seen all year, but this day was more than that: for me, this was easily the best day of the year, and certainly the peak of a too-brief one week vacation from work. Driving down E. 9th Street after the game, I literally felt more relaxed, recharged, and at ease with things than I have in a long time. This is what a good vacation is supposed to do, isn't it?

(Flickr Post): Mezzanine

I had deliberately chose my vacation week to coincide with a competitive homestand, so that I could go see a game on almost any night the urge struck me. With attendance stagnant following the team's downward trajectory over the early summer, an offer was floated to Indians fans for free tickets redeemable in exchange for any purchase of $40 or more at a team gift shop. The only "catch" in this deal was that the free tickets would be for seats in so-called "Pronkville" (the mezzanine level behind right field, named for an Indians player I seem to remember being quite dominating a couple of years ago).

As it turns out, the mezzanine seats weren't bad at all as the photos in this post's gallery will attest (though I can't imagine getting any farther away from the action and still feeling any sense of involvement in the game). You get blasted in the face with sun for a few innings, yes, but our slightly elevated perspective was a new vantage point and that enough proved worthy of the trip.

Unfortunately, the game itself was just more of the same in this unending trudge through despondent sub-.500 mediocrity that we Tribe fans call the 2008 season. Indians emergency pitcher Matt Ginter put up a decent fight for a while, but was eventually chased off the mound after giving up 4 runs, followed by Detroit plating an additional 2 off reliever Juan Rincon.

Cleveland tried to make a late comeback off the Tigers bullpen to at least make this game look a bit more respectable in the end, but the final of 8-5 is really all that matters in the long run. We had already left by that point: Sarah wasn't feeling well as the evening grew late, and we both had seen this particular movie a few too many times before.

It hit me at some point before the game that Sarah and I hadn't attended a night game in some time, certainly not this year at least, so I also used this opportunity to get some night-time shots of the downtown Cleveland area with my new camera from the upper deck concession areas. I hope y'all will find them as fetching as I did.

(Flickr Post): Revisiting Mentor Headlands State Park

I headed back to Mentor Headlands Beach Park a few hours after the Twins game finished in order to get some more sunset pictures, this time under much calmer conditions than my last visit.

Here's the best of what came from that excursion. Enjoy.

(Flickr Post): Indians Vs. Twins 7/27/08

Strange as it may seem, especially in this season of discontent and disappointment, the baseball fever that Sarah and I contracted over the last couple of years has now managed to infect my brother and my niece.

My brother and I had recently been hitting a couple of Sunday afternoon games that Sarah had opted out of attending, and he apparently enjoyed the experience so much that it piqued his daughter's curiosity as well. With her cousin in tow and Sarah wanting to go to today's contest, the five of us took in a game against the Minnesota Twins.

For five remarkable innings, Cleveland starter Jeremy Sowers was literally perfect: he allowed no base runners at all until the sixth, which is when Minnesota managed to pull ahead by a run, ultimately winning in the ninth with two additional runs scored against the Tribe's unremittingly terrible bullpen.

On the brighter side, however, these regular Sunday excursions are turning into a kind of regular family outing, and I couldn't be happier about that. If nothing else, it helps to further alleviate a truly depressing year to be a Cleveland Indians fan.

(Flickr Post): Another Cruise On The Goodtime III

For those of you always on the lookout for a new word to keep yourselves on the bleeding edge of hip, apparently "staycation" is the buzzword of the season. As skyrocketing fuel prices have left people of modest means suddenly re-thinking their hypothetical vacation plans in the current economic reality, many are opting to take it easy around the house (or immediate area of which) instead of, say, taking that long dreamed-of road trip adventure to dearly missed Northern Michigan or the exotic California coast. Sigh.

Despite her mortal fear of water (large bodies of it, anyway), I somehow got Sarah to accompany me on the Goodtime III on the first day of our vacation. While the standard cruise route downriver wound up being altered midway through due to the appearance of some unexpected river traffic (a large freighter was being towed northbound, necessitating a quick turnaround and default to Plan B for our ship), the hazy views of downtown Cleveland from a few miles out on Lake Erie were every bit as magnificent as before.

Interestingly, I found myself wobbly in the knees a bit faster than my last time aboard, probably due to the stiff wind that was pushing heavier waves against the hull of the ship, and I had an amusing chat on seasickness and "staycations" with a guy on the observation deck while I snapped some more pictures of downtown Cleveland. The sun on my shoulders, the wind in my hair, and the view before me was an absolutely incredible feeling ... maybe the closest thing to true inner peace and an approximation of transcendence you can get around here for fifteen bucks, in my opinion.

I'm going to have to try this trip at night sometime ...

The Dark Knight

"Some men aren't looking for anything logical. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Let's get this part out of the way first: I am not going to join the hordes of delirious fanboys on IMDB who have unanimously claimed The Dark Knight to be the best movie ever made (and I suspect their collective afterglow will last only until The Hobbit comes out). Yes, this was a very good movie and certainly one of the best comic book themed films in the long history of the genre, but it's also nowhere near as flat-out enjoyable as genre benchmarks Superman, Spider Man II, and, yes, Batman Begins.

If nothing else, you haveAs was the case with Batman Begins, this is primarily a deadly serious exercise: whole reels of The Dark Knight feel more like a "straight" crime film where the protagonist just happens to wear a full body black kevlar costume with a flowing cape than any comic book movie I have ever seen. It's also oddly thoughtful for a summer action flick: returning director Christopher Nolan has no problem steering the movie into discussions on the natures of heroism, vigilantism, and that post-September 11 perennial: privacy versus security.

Before your eyes begin to glaze over, The Dark Knight always remembers after a few minutes of dialogue that it is a summer movie after all (and one based on a long-running comic book character to boot). Thus, every scene of indulgent, chin-stroking rumination over sundry aspects of the human condition is generally followed by people in costumes kicking each other's asses around the block and/or blowing shit up.

Unless you've been in a cave the last seven months, you're probably aware that most of the media hype surrounding The Dark Knight centers on the late Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker. Just how much of an effect Ledger's untimely death had on the absolutely insane box office this film is presently pulling down is impossible to know for certain, but I'm pleased to report that the acting does, for once, live up to the advance notice. Ledger gets some of the biggest laughs to be had during the movie (he is playing The Joker, after all), but his Joker is far less a jolly buffoon than a shambling, vaguely reptilian escapee from a supermax prison. The eerie thing about Ledger's Joker is that this repulsive, pitiless sociopath manages to get under your skin in the same way Anthony Hopkins' turn as Hannibal Lecter wound up in your head after The Silence Of The Lambs: it's a magnetic, disturbing performance and alone worth the price of your ticket.

Elsewhere, the acting on the whole in The Dark Knight is arguably on a higher plane than Batman Begins, with Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, and Morgan Freeman as dependable as ever, with Maggie Gyllenhaal making a fine impression as Bale's old flame and Aaron Eckhart playing the most overtly comic-booky role of the bunch as the Sir Galahad-styled Gotham City D.A. Harvey Dent.

Now comes the spoiler-proof rub: for the first time since I've started following his work, Nolan over-reaches during the course of The Dark Knight and tries to pack just a bit too much plot into what is initially a near-faultless work. It almost feels like Nolan realized that "oh, hey, we have a movie to wrap-up here" about two hours in, and the epic ending sequence that follows unfortunately starts to feel tacked-on and increasingly unnecessary (and perhaps a bit similar to Spider Man 3).

One last tangent: this was one of the "hardest" PG-13 films I've ever seen (I had to check the promotional poster in the lobby as we left to make sure this wasn't an R), and the fact that kids quite plainly below the age of 10 were in the audience and watching this movie gnawed at me on the way home afterward. Times and kids have changed, sure: when I was 7 or 8 years old, I remember being taken to see some Ray Harryhausen-animated version of Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger and being scared out of my freakin' mind all the way through. Goat knows what I would have made out of The Dark Knight, especially when Two-Face makes his dramatic appearance (looking an awful lot like Griffin Dunne towards the end of An American Werewolf In London) or when Batman interrogates the mob boss of Gotham City after first breaking his ankles.

These same thoughts came back to mind a few hours later while I was surfing around on the web and came across a page selling all sorts of tie-in merchandise for the movie, including a batch of children's toys. Incredulous, I looked over these poseable Joker action figures, shirts and posters and wondered if we were only a couple of steps away from trying to get these same kids to bug their parents for Saw play sets or Red Dragon action figures.

Then again, I guess we did have Alien trading cards when I was in fifth grade ...

The Dark Knight rating: 4/5

(Flickr Post): Fausto Carmona Pitches At Classic Park

The Lake County Captains haven't quite managed the same winning pace in the second half of their season as they had during the first, but their playoff appearance is still secure, which is a lot more than can be said for the Cleveland Indians these days.

Anyway, with Indians starter Fausto Carmona set to make his first rehab appearance since coming off the Disabled List only a couple of miles from my front door on my day off (which also happened to be yet another wonderfully gorgeous summer's day), this was going to be a must-see game.

Thankfully, Carmona did not disappoint this evening ... those duties were handled instead by Captains reliever Josh Judy during a disastrous seventh inning. The Fautastic One racked up four innings of near-spotless work, allowing only one double and reminding everyone present just how much he is missed at Progressive Field.

Oh yeah, and none other than Dick Goddard sang the "The Star Spangled Banner" at the game. Bonus.

(Flickr Post): A Windy Sunset At Headlands Beach

As yet another perfect summer weekend wound to a close, I felt the desire to capture another sunset on Lake Erie, this time from Mentor Headlands State Park, a few miles down the freeway from where I live, and a far more picturesque location than Willowick's Lakefront Lodge.

An added bonus that really helped make these pictures interesting: a high-pressure system had started moving in over the area earlier in the day, and it was very windy when Sarah and I reached the beach about a half hour before sunset. The scene that awaited us as we walked over the small hill (and suddenly were able to see the whole beach before us) was breathtaking: the normally calm lake was roiling and churning with restless energy: the waves crashing onto the beach as if it were late November instead of mid July while the trees and grass swayed and bent around us in the steady wind.

Enough from me. Enjoy the pix!