Fool me once

There’s a saying: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
The Republicans extended an important vote for the second time last night, as they essentially bribed representatives to change their votes on CAFTA. The first time around, Representative Nick Smith was offered (or not, depending on which story you read) campaign funds for his son in return for a yes vote on the GOP’s Medicare bill. This time, it seems GOP reps smartened up and a few of them held out their votes in return for favors from GOP leadership. Representative Robin Hayes of North Carolina and Representative Robert B. Aderholt of Alabama were both reportedly courted by the President and GOP leadership.
After the normal fifteen minute voting period, the bill seemed doomed to fail. The count was something like 180-160, from the C-SPAN clips I’ve seen. But the leadership was working the aisles, twisting arms and offering deals. Finally, an hour later, the vote had swung into their favor, and they quickly gaveled it closed before the 2 remaining non-votes could overturn the outcome.
Regardless of your stance on the issues at hand, this is some dirty stuff going on here. Some people just can’t stand to lose, and they’ll do anything to put the fix in for the win. If the Democrats can’t do anything about this now that it’s happened a second time, shame on them.

Brian Recommends

If you’ve never seen The Saw Doctors before, you’re missing out. Sometimes called the second best Irish rock band (behind U2), the Docs rock it every time they go on stage. Lisa and I like to describe them as the product of their enivronment: a bunch of Irish Catholic guys who won’t grow up. Their songs verge on blasphemous at times (“Bless me Father for I have sinned/She had big brown eyes, silky skin”) but are always entertaining.
We’ve got our tickets to see them play Wolf Trap with Great Big Sea (a bunch of Newfies who play a good show too). It’s our first time to see a show at Wolf Trap, and we’re very excited. We’ll have the entire lawn section for dancing! The rest of the US tour schedule this summer is below. If you can’t get out to see them, you can always buy the concert DVD from the website! Definitely worth the money, but the concert experience cannot be duplicated on TV. You have to be there jumping around with the crowd to really experience the Saw Doctors.

Monday August 8 Bethlehem, PA, Musikfest
Tuesday August 9 Vienna, VA, Wolf Trap, with Great Big Sea
Thursday August 11 Cape Cod, MA, Melody Tent
Friday August 12 New York, NY, BB King’s
Sunday August 14 Albany, NY, The Egg
Monday August 15 Hampton Beach Casino, NH
Tuesday August 16 Ortley Beach, NJ, Surf Club
Thursday August 18 Atlantic City, NJ, Borgata Music Box
Friday August 19 Northampton, MA, Look Park
Saturday August 20 Cohasset, MA, South Shore Music Circus
Sunday August 21 Huntington, NY, River Arts Festival

Shawn Chacon? It could be worse

So the Yankees have a starter for Saturday: Shawn Chacon. It could be worse, I suppose. The guy may only be 1-7 this year, but he has a 4.09 ERA. For a pitcher whose home field is hitter-friendly Coors Field, that’s not bad. At home, he has a 4.92 ERA, away from Coors, a 3.12. Ironically, he was 1-2 at home, but 0-5 away. So it seems his record is more a function of how bad the Rockies are this year than his own pitching woes. Oddly, even though he’s a righty, he pitches better against left-handed hitters than right, which will be key with the Yankee Stadium short porch in right field.
Like I said, it could be worse. Hopefully the injured pitchers for the Yankees will start feeling better soon.

Fans or bandwagoneers?

The worst part of the game yesterday was having to sit in front of 4 Chelsea “fans.” When I say “fans”, I’m not entirely sure if they had been fans for a while, or just recently, but I’m fairly sure they were bandwagoneers. For starters, they were trying to “teach” the young DC United fans about how great Chelsea was, but really didn’t have a clue about any titles they’d won, except for the Premier League championship last year. They knew a couple of the players, but anyone who read the paper in the past 3 days would have known them. They kept claiming that Chelsea was just “toying” with DC United for the last 30 minutes. Well, of course they were! They were up by a goal and were killing time and protecting their lead, that’s what good teams do. Finally, when the end of the game was drawing near, one of them said the refs forgot to start the clock. Does this guy even watch soccer? Ever? The clock read “90:00″, and they were in injury time. First off, the clock on the scoreboard NEVER stops until it’s halftime or the end of the game. And secondly, after it stops at 45:00 and 90:00, the referee on the field is in charge of the time. This guy had no clue. He gave the Blue backers a bad name.

Corruption

Ways I scarred my daughter for life this week:
- Told her that her “Elmo juice” (fruit punch with Elmo’s picture on the label) was made from real Elmos.
- Let her have a swig of Smirnoff Ice before the soccer game yesterday.
In my defense, she doesn’t know what I’m talking about with the Elmo juice. And Smirnoff Ice tastes like freakin’ lemonade. It’s not my fault they clearly market it towards kids!

Hooligans

Nah, there weren’t any hooligans at the soccer game last night. Just your usual collection of crazies, including my cousin. After suffering through traffic and an extremely whiny toddler for an hour and a half, we arrived at the stadium. The mood there lifted my spirits immediately, as the crowd was excited to see the Premier League champs take on our local favorites.
DC United took the lead on a simple header off a corner kick about 30 minutes in. Naturally, I missed it because of the fookin morons who were all in the wrong seats around us. DC had a couple of other decent chances, only to see shots go over the crossbar or deflect away.
Just 4 minutes after DC took the lead, Chelsea struck back. Recently purchased (for $36.5 million) Shaun Wright-Phillips, who had been held in check for the most part by defender John Wilson, looped a pass to the far side of the goal where a wide open Damien Duff calmly curled it into the net from a sharp angle. Then in the second half, Hernan Crespo was sprung by Arjen Robben and left all alone against the keeper, and likewise professionally put it away.
DC played a tough game, but it seemed like every touch they had was marked closely by a Blue, but Chelsea had more space when they possessed the ball. Even so, in a game that was the equivalent of the New York Yankees and their $200 million dollar payroll against a AA minor league team, DC United played well and only lost 2-1. Well done boys!

Switching sports for a day

I’ve had my fill of baseball for a while. The Nats blew another one against the Braves last night with some utterly horrible play in the 7th inning (the Braves scored on a wild throw on a double play ball and a wild pitch) and the 8th (Chipper Jones was out by a mile trying to steal second, but Christian Guzman dropped the throw). The Yankees almost overcame a horrible outing by Al Leiter when he walked 7 batters but managed to get out of jams only giving up 1 run in 5 innings. But the bullpen gave up 5 runs and sealed their fate.
So tonight, I’m switching it up and going to see MLS champs DC United take on English Premier League champions Chelsea. My cousin Bill is going with us, and my buddy Lance is coming back from London to sit with the Barra Brava. Should be a blast. Anything to avoid the frustration of watching the Yanks and Nats struggle again.

Switching sports for a day

I’ve had my fill of baseball for a while. The Nats blew another one against the Braves last night with some utterly horrible play in the 7th inning (the Braves scored on a wild throw on a double play ball and a wild pitch) and the 8th (Chipper Jones was out by a mile trying to steal second, but Christian Guzman dropped the throw). The Yankees almost overcame a horrible outing by Al Leiter when he walked 7 batters but managed to get out of jams only giving up 1 run in 5 innings. But the bullpen gave up 5 runs and sealed their fate.
So tonight, I’m switching it up and going to see MLS champs DC United take on English Premier League champions Chelsea. My cousin Bill is going with us, and my buddy Lance is coming back from London to sit with the Barra Brava. Should be a blast. Anything to avoid the frustration of watching the Yanks and Nats struggle again.

Wedding Crashers review

Funny! Laugh out loud! Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are comedy gold! See, I could be one of those guys who puts reviews into the ads.
This movie doesn’t break any new ground. It’s formulaic and predictable. But you’ll probably still enjoy it, and you’ll definitely laugh. There’s no point describing the plot. You’ll see right through it 2 minutes into the movie. Fortunately, it doesn’t get in the way of Wilson and Vaughn doing their thing, which is being funny.
I went to and rented a lot of movies over the last week or so. Wedding Crashers was one that I might wait till DVD in retrospect, but it was actually worth the $6 matinee cost.

Whew!

Lisa just called me giving me a weather report. She and Ellie are being smart and staying inside, and mostly downstairs, where it’s nice and cool. She let Max out for a bit to do his business though, and when she came back in, she said “Whew!” She walked over to the nifty adjectives thermometer I got her for Christmas, and guess what it said? “Whew!”
That was a lot funnier when she told it to me over the phone.