Sunday Scrapbasket

  • Work by Ai Weiwei at Marciano Foundation:
  • down the docks, San Pedro:
  • Good illustration of Satan in the Wikipedia page for him:

from Strange Tales From A Chinese Studio (1740) by Pu Songling

  • Looking into the history of the USA and Chile, found this.

  Declassified notes Richard Helms, CIA director, took at a September 15, 1970 meeting at the White House

game plan

make the economy scream

  • This is a take I didn’t know I had until I saw it expressed:

of course.  these rascals hired her and they knew who she was.  it didn’t work for them like it did for Fox so they threw her under the bus, but they’re no more principled than she is.

  • moving books around:

 

  • happy fate to be in attendance at the longest World Series game ever played.  Beginning:

End:

 


Bob Marley in Boston

Because people were talking about Baby Driver, I started singing it in my head to the tune of Bob Marley’s Slave Driver.

What a song.  So then I went looking for Slave Driver on Spotify. I found a recording of Bob Marley and The Wailers, Live At The Music Hall, Boston, 1978.  “Easy Skanking In Boston ’78” is the title, which I don’t love saying.  “Bob Marley and The Wailers Live At The Music Hall – Boston – 1978” seems like it gives you what you need?

The Music Hall is now the Wang Theatre. Photo from Wikipedia by Tim Pierce.

Somehow shocking that Boston would be the scene of a legendary Marley concert.  Who was in the crowd?!

Steve Morse wrote about this recording for The Boston Globe when the album was released in 2015:

My one meeting with Bob Marley was memorable. I was sent by the Globe to interview him at the Essex Hotel in New York before his show at Boston’s Music Hall in 1978. I walked in to Marley’s room, which looked out over Central Park, at 11 a.m. It was a chaotic scene. Four or five members of his entourage were kicking a soccer ball that banged off the picture windows. Two king-size joints were being passed around. Bob sat on a couch, reading aloud from the Book of Revelation.

Realizing I was in over my head, I waited a while before daring to ask Marley about his music. He agreed to talk, shut the Bible, quelled the soccer noise, and stated his worldview: “Everything is going to be united now. Everything is going to be cool. Forget the past and unite.”

Marley’s response to a country politically divided and stricken with gun violence was notably cooler and more Christian than the NRA’s response.

Two months later he’d be in Boston.

(Minute 34-38 or so a good sample)

June 8, 1978 was a Thursday, a hot night,  89 degrees.  The Red Sox had an off day, but that weekend they’d start a ten game win streak on the road in the West Coast.

The Sox would win 99 games that year, but lose a one game playoff to the Yankees at home in Fenway Park.

Ned Martin would call the game for WITS radio.

Years later he’d die of a heart attack in a shuttle bus at the Raleigh airport on his way home from Ted Williams’ memorial.


good poem

gp

by:

vin


Is this a survey or the chant of a cult?

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At Fenway Park for Jason Varitek bobblehead day, I stopped to fill out a two page survey.  Here’s the bottom of page 2:

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The whole survey had a bit of a hypnotism vibe:

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If you’re an official card-carrying member of Red Sox Nation ($14 a year) you can watch batting practice from on top of the Green Monster:

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Fenway is just so wonderful.  From the wall of former Red Sox logos, one of the more unsuccessful efforts:

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Orioles outfield coach Wayne Kirby kept giving emphatic instructions that, as far as I could tell, were heard by nobody:

The Red Sox encourage you to follow “the time-honored tradition of keeping score.”  A very Zen activity, recommended.  I developed my method during my Roxbury Latin playing career, when I was judged more valuable for my tactical/strategic and historical mind than for my hitting/fielding abilities.

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Doesn’t that just tell the whole story.  A tough night for Boston but any night at Fenway is a good time.

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I feel grateful to the Boston Red Sox. 

I feel thankful for the Boston Red Sox.  

I feel a sense of gratitude towards the Boston Red Sox.  

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(contact me if you wish to purchase a Varitek bobblehead, $6000 obo)


Trivia: who is the second-longest tenured baseball announcer?

First place is Vin Scully of the LA Dodgers.

As a Boston transplant who doesn’t care about the Dodgers, it took me a long time to join the Cult of Scully.  The tales of his greatness and my own listens didn’t rank him above Red Sox announcer Sean McDonough, in my opinion.

But I’ve come around.  Some milestones on my journey: Karina Longworth citing Vin as an influence (along with Elvira! and two others I forget) in this Longform interview.

Co-worker Joe talking up Scully, in particular his 1965 Sandy Koufax perfect game call.

Vin Scully has been in the Baseball Hall of Fame since 1982.

Really enjoyed this SB Nation profile of Scully by Cee Angi.  So much goodness:

Scully’s work is researched, but never rehearsed. There are all those index cards, but none of them are filled with grandiose soliloquies; his fear is that such preparation would cheapen the moment and cause him to say something disingenuous. “I never do that,” Scully said in a recent interview on New York’s WFAN radio. Referring to his call of Hank Aaron’s record-breaking 715th home run in 1974. “I really concentrate on the moment… I’m afraid that if I tried to prepare, I’d be so eager to get my marvelous words out onto the air [that] I might do it prematurely and be wrong.”

Check it out at the source, great photos as well.

How about Giants announcer John Miller doing Vin Scully in Japanese?

Anyway, the second-longest tenured MLB announcer is ALSO at the Dodgers!

Jamie Jarrin

It is Jaime Jarrín, who’s been doing the Spanish language broadcasts for 54 years.

When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, KWKW, where Jarrin was the news and sports director, picked up the Spanish language rights for the games. The original broadcast team included Rene Cardenas, Miguel Alonso and Rodolfo Hoyos Jr. and they were joined by Jarrin in 1959. For the first six years, they did not travel with the team but would recreate the games on radio while listening to the English-language broadcast in a studio. In 1973, after 14 years with the Dodgers, Jarrín became the club’s number-one Spanish-language broadcaster.


Bill Murray Hall Of Fame Speech

Way over my three minute limit, but 2:20-3:45 is pretty great.

HT today’s NY Times interview:

Q. Did you ever think that the lessons you first learned on the stage of an improv comedy theater in Chicago would pay off later in life?

A. It pays off in your life when you’re in an elevator and people are uncomfortable. You can just say, “That’s a beautiful scarf.” It’s just thinking about making someone else feel comfortable. You don’t worry about yourself, because we’re vibrating together. If I can make yours just a little bit groovier, it’ll affect me. It comes back, somehow.


“high as a Georgia pine”

ht our Toronto office.  Apparently some debate about the veracity of this story but here at The Hely Times we print the legend.