baseball and other stuff...

ok, so it's saturday night one of the few nights in which i have the opportunity to socialize with friends and thank god they love baseball as much as i do.
one of the things i remember most about my pops is that he was a rabid la dodger fan and would take me, just older than an infant i think, to dodger games in chavez ravine. he drove a big car i remember but as a kid's memory usually works this bigness could very well have been that he drove a beetle.
well, no i take that back: pops was an american car guy, always bought american and advised me to do the same.
i loved my time with pops at the ball game: he and his friends would drink beer, do shots and when it got cold he would let me sit on his lap and zip me up in his jacket with him.
along the line, i developed a love for the game of baseball and played from a very early age and into high school. i mostly played first base because i was quick and intuitive and because i got to talk to all the players or those that got to first base: got a number of dates that way...btw.
anyway, bob and i are hosting a bbq, which means i am cooking and he is bar tending, tonight for the second game of the american league playoff game between the exalted boston red sox and the tampa bay rays. (i will not speak of the poor showing of the dodgers against the phillies the last couple nights or i will go ballistic).

the movie, "atonement" was on hbo today. i have seen it in the theater but watched it once again today. it seems to me that it plays better on tv in that the overblown story becomes less so. first of all the basis of the film is flimsy: a young women, for reasons only known to said young women, falsely accuses her sister's lover of rape or something to that effect, of a young girl. he is not guilty but spends time in jail but is released to fight in ww2.
for me the film catches fire only when said young woman grows old and becomes vanessa redgrave who could read the phone book on screen and i would be riveted.
redgrave has so much movie charisma that everyone else in the frame with her fades away.
unfortunately, redgrave is in only about 10 minutes of a 2 hour film.

note to boxing fans: oscar de la hoya will (hopefully) fight his final bout on december 6. it will be the end of a glorious and illustrious career whether he wins or not. but he better win.
peace,
tyler