Whew! Is it over yet?

FIVE HOURS and fifteen innings later, the American League extended its winning streak to eleven games, not including the TIE game that our feckless baseball commissioner Bud Selig permitted in 2002.

It was game of firsts, and a historical last. It will be the last All-Star game played in the House That Ruth Built. But it was also a game that set a record of men left on base and stolen bases. In a game this long (actually ten minutes shy of five hours) there were bound to be lots of web gems. Several players got tagged out in close plays at home, except, alas, for the last AL player who missed being thrown out at home by inches, if that much. 

It was a live-action version of hanging chads.

Tampa Bay made up for years as the MLB doormat team with a rookie player, one of three Rays players in the lineup. Maybe dropping the Devil in front of Rays was a good idea after all, although being the Angels didn't help Anaheim. 

The Astros were represented by Berkman and Tejada. Had the National League won, I'm certain Tejada would have been named MVP of the game. But when Lidge stepped on the mound at the bottom of the 15th, I had a feeling the game was about to end. Call it a hunch.

With fifteen - count 'em, fifteen! - Hall-of-Famers gathered together on the infield, I was touched to the core watching the crowd go wild when Yogi Berra was introduced. It made up for the nauseating spectacle of Yankees players kissing the *** of that sawdust Caesar, George Steinbrenner.

I’ve been a Fox News viewer for many years. The Beltway Boys, Hannity and Colmes and Bill O’Reilly are regulars on my list of must-see TV.

 

I expect some controversy along with reporting, but not a circus sideshow. Imagine my utter disgust when Geraldo Rivera became part of the lineup of correspondents. My contempt for this eel reaches back to when he hosted a show which was a a cross between Jerry Springer and 20-20. He was interviewing - goading, actually - a hooded votary of the Ku Klux Klan. I actually rooted for the Klansman when he klobbered that smugly face on national television.

 

I knew that sooner or later, Geraldo Rivera would screw up his latest gig. Not long ago, Rivera had divulged sensitive information regarding military maneuvers in Iraq. He took a well-deserved shot. It wasn’t to his head, nose or hair, but his reputation as a reporter, which is like a marksman taking a shot at an overinflated dirigible.

 

Recently, Rivera managed to stoop even lower. Anna Nicole Smith has been dead for months, but our intrepid reporter unearthed more footage of her painted in clownface, mumbling nonsense to a camera, as if we expected forensic declamations from a woman with a pair of fire hydrants covered with lycra who married up – WAAAY up – to a kajillionaire oil baron who needed a walker to go to the bathroom three times a night.

 

I was suddenly moved to write a poem. As a rule, I avoid writing poetry, satire being my natural medium. The last time I wrote a poem was in high school 30 years ago for a girl I never saw again. I'm hoping to repeat that success with this poem about

 

TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT GERALDO RIVERA

 

I hate his blow-dried wavy hair.

I hate his beady Machiavelian stare.

I hate his phony rugged stance -

When danger comes he wets his pants!

I hate his mustache and proboscis

Which sticks out like a Polish sausage.

I hate his dimpled lantern chin.

I hate his Cheshire cat-like grin.

I hate each feature of his face.

In journalism, he's a disgrace.

I hate his arrogant demeanor.

He's just a trench-coat media preener.

I hate him more, as you can see,

Than Hillary, Bill and Ted Kennedy.

And now I hate Fox network brass

For hiring this pompous pain-in-the-***.

 

 

This is the time of year I'm reminded of the raw power of the federal government's ability to steal anything, including time.

Benjamin Franklin is credited with the idea, but his proposal was intended as satire. That's the problem with irony - people who should know better take you at face value, and pretty soon someone in Congress is trying to pass a tax on items with too much fat.

The Victoria Public Library has a book about this issue - Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Times by Michael Downing. So help me, not only did I check it out and read it, I took notes. 

In 1916, the British parliament was preparing a Daylight Saving law. Britain’s Royal Astronomer tacked on a snippy, humorous amendment: “And let it be further enacted that between the months of October and March the thermometer should be put up ten degrees.”

If you like DST because you get an extra hour to putter about the yard, I can respect that. But the reasons put out by most DST adherents don't hold up. Here are some items I saved from the book. You can find all this on page 142. I'm pretty sure it's available for checkout, so don't take my word for it. 

“Most industry analysts concluded DST a losing proposition. . . The superintendent of schools in Mercer County told the NY Times, 'We use up much more fuel in the coldest part of the day, early morning to get the schools ready to open.'”

Florida recorded that eight schoolchildren were killed during the first month of DST. A spokesman for the Florida Education Department told the NY Times that “six of the deaths clearly attributable to the fact that children were going off to school in darkness.” In Georgia, a pickup truck hit an eight-year-old boy waiting for a school bus; In California during the first three weeks of DST, five school-age children were killed in predawn accidents; Ohio and South Carolina both reported two deaths of school children. At a Congressional hearing held in August 1974, it was reported that ten states had reported increases in traffic fatalities involving school children.

When Congress pressed the Department of Transportation for an analysis of the effectiveness of DST and the conservation of energy, the response was that there was “no appreciable reduction in consumption of gasoline, a possible increase in consumption of heating fuels.”

In other words, DST has been a resounding failure as an energy conservation method. Plus, it's just damned dangerous, at least this early in the year. If they want to go with DST, fine, save it for summertime. What do I care then? Time has no meaning for me for at least three months out of the year.

One of the nicest things my wife ever did for me, besides letting me give her my surname, was to obtain tickets to see William Buckley debate John Kenneth Galbraith here in Victoria. The topic was Resolved: That Ronald Reagan Should Be Reelected To a Second Term.

He was a towering figure for me, encompassing all the qualities I wanted to imitate, the laconic polymath with a happy talent of decimating his opponents with satiric barbs like fishhooks that hurt more pulling them out that going in.

I became a Buckleyphile as soon as I discovered National Review. When I learned that the founder of the magazine also had a talk show on PBS, I began watching Firing Line regularly. From then on, most of my reading consisted of writers and authors mentioned/featured in his publication and show. He was my touchstone for politics, literature, philosophy, vocabulary, and even the Church. He made the defending the Church, Western Civilization and the American Way of Life easier for the rest of us because he articulated volumes of information with erudition and passion. Not only that, he gathered about him other towering figures and gave them a platform. Reagan defeated Communism, and we owe a great deal to him for that, but we also owe a great deal to Buckley as well for educating us on a fortnightly basis about the true nature of that Workers' Paradise conceived in Hell.

I saved a little article from one of those issues that I want to pass along here. It made me roar with laughter then, and still does.

Q: Mr. Buckley, your supporters regard your style as epideictic, gnomic, perhaps even profluent, or perspicuous. Your detractors, however, might contend that your approach leans toward the pleonastic, periphrastic, or euphistic and, in any event, is obstruent to luculent communication. How do you feel about that?

Buckley: I’m not sure what obstruent means.

[Michael Rose interviews William F. Buckley
3/4/83 – National Review]

Jerry Jones, Jerry Jones,
When the Cowboys lose he sits and moans.
That pipsqueak Jerry Jones.

 

Let's give credit where credit is due. The Cowboys lost only three games in regular season, which is testimony to the ability of the head coach. They made the playoffs for the first time in over ten years.

 

During his entire career as the owner of the Cowboys, Jerry "I'm so short I can tie my shoelaces without even bending over" Jones reverted to his habit of pretending he knows more about coaching than the head coach, chasing off the new guy, and WHAMBAM! sending the team back to the basement, giving the whole world irrefutable proof that he's a %*#  and a &@# as well as a &%**. (I cannot restrain myself myself when I talk about that runtified contemptible clown. He just begs for the opprobrium.)

 

Poor Jerry "My Head Is So Big It Shows Up On Radar As a Dirigible" Jones must have been frustrated. He stayed in his box seat, on top of the Dallas/Ft. Worth directories, long enough to let the game run its course, but we all know that Jerry "I'm Often Confused With Ross Perot" Jones was itching for a chance to interfere with the head coach.

 

Imagine my delight when the cameras caught his scowling mug that said, "Who am I going to fire first to slake my thirst for revenge! Who is going to be the first to feel the wrath of my self-righteous indignation! Who is that over there that DARES to wear the blue and silver colors for which I paid MILLIONS and keep a stable of lawyers to guard against copyright infringement! Why, it is my own HEAD COACH! He must have done this on purpose to slight me!"

Well, we'll all know by the end of this week. Dollars to donuts Jerry "Get Your Ears On, Good Buddy" Jones will fire SOMEONE. Maybe he'll even find a way to blame Jessica Simpson because the starting quarterback was too preoccupied with her.

The recent announcement of the retirement of VISD financial officer Marilyn Thomason reminded me of something I had written several years ago and never got around to submitting. I figured now is as good a time to share it.

***

I always keep a bottle of hooch handy before I read anything about the school district in our newspaper. I get jittery, but lately I'm not sure if it's because of the news itself, or the effects on my liver. I’ve been in this district, and reading the Advocate, and drinking rather steadily for 23 years now.