Cubs: Addressing our needs

The Cubs, as expected, called up Tony Womack today and sent down youngster Ryan Theriot.

I can't effing believe this team. I don't know what pisses me off more: The fact that we had a terrible off season and completely ignored our deficiencies in starting pitching or, now that they are effectively out of it, they won't play their youngsters and continue to not only make excuses but sign ineffective, washed up second basemen.

The Cubs, when they aren't explaining how they can't replace DLee and how they aren't out of it yet because of what Houston did last year, want us to believe that JHJ, Neifi MF'ing Perez, Bynum, and now Womack give the Cubs a better chance to win than Theriot. Excuse me for not buying it.

Filed in: cubs sports mlb disgusting

Cubs: Frustration

(via MJH)

Fitting on the day that Barrett's 10-game suspension gets handed down.

Filed in: cubs funny

Just Wondering: What in the hell is Jim Hendry thinking.

Is Jim Hendry channeling Isiah Thomas?

The Cubs just signed ANOTHER weak hitting, washed up, second baseman. It is to a minor league contract but you can bet your ass that he'll be called up if Aramis goes on the DL. He is definitely a "Dusty Guy" which roughly translates to "no-talent, ass clown" for those of you not familar with Cubspeak.

Filed in: justwondering cubs insane

Quickies - The "Twice is Nice" Edition

The ACL 2006 line up has been announced. It is sweet and I'd love to go except it is an outdoor festival and in Austin. Hrmm.

New Clerks 2 trailer is online. Kevin Smith has jumped the shark but I'll probably see this on August 18th anyway. I attribute that to being a Cubs fan. I continue to show up expecting things to change only to find out they haven't. Sue me.

The Chris Ware exhibit at the MCA is good. Highly recommended.

Filed in: quickies music

Quickies - The "Have Mercy on Me" Edition

Sweet website that has the entire Cubs organization laid out.

The NY Times has a piece on an interesting lawsuit to decide whether baseball stats are in the public domain.

Green City Market opened for the 2006 season this morning. Emdina and I got up bright and early and checked it out at 7 this morning. It is very early in the season so there isn't a lot of produce or fruit yet but there is an abundance of root veggies, cheeses, fresh breads, and meat product. We picked up a nice loaf of sun-dried tomato, asiago, and rosemary We also saw Paul Kahan, head chef at Blackbird and former James Beard winner for Best Chef Midwest, out strolling the booths. He, and a few other chefs, are huge supporters of the market and I look forward to his demo that he will perform later this summer.

The Black Keys new EP is awesome (Check out my favorite track "Have Mercy on Me"). Man do they rip sweet blues. The new Pearl Jam is meh.

mp3 via macktronic

Filed in: quickies cubs music

Just Wondering: How many cc's does it take?

How many CC's of horse tranquillizer would it take to sedate Joey Porter and do you think the Secret Service is tossing around the idea?

Filed in: justwondering

Cubs: Moment of Zen

We have 5 second basemen on the roster.

3 of them absolutely suck and I'll be more than happy to personally buy each one of them a plane ticket out of town, 1 is an unproven rookie, and 1 is playing firstbase.

Filed in: cubs mlb sports notsweet

Big Ups

Due to familial obligations the weekend before and a Cubs nightgame (and last win grrrrrr) falling on my actual birthday May 1 and requiring my attendance, this past weekend turned out to be the official celebration of my 28th birthday and it was, to quote Peter Griffin, "Freakin' Sweet!".

Friday night Em-dina took me to Topolobampo for my belated Birthday dinner and we ended up having dinner with James Bond* who was in town filming Butterfly on a Wheel. I had the tasting menu which had each course paired with a different type of wine and it was incredibly good.

Saturday Em-dina threw Krafty (who shares a May 1 birthday) and I a birthday party. It was a rousing success that saw an absurd amount of alcohol consumed. Good times were had by all.

Big ups go out to Em-dina for an absolutely fabulous weekend and great birthday gifts, Tim for bringing over the grill, hooking up a brother with some golf shwag and a sweet bottle of Austrian bubbly, Brix for the crazy gifts, Speedy for the late night cup run, my sister's boyfriend Jay who not only grilled for everyone but ran down to the corner to resupply the party with Vodka and Jager after the three 1.75L bottles of Vodka and 2 1.75L of Jager were out and everyone who participated and helped make it a great time.

It truly was an impressive performance. Thanks!

*- and by 'having dinner with' I meant 'ate a couple tables away from' and by 'James Bond' I meant Pierce Brosnan.

Filed in: weekend awesome

Treasury Notes

While in Amsterdam a comment was made about the size of the big Euro bills and how all the bodegas and touristy shops have signs in their windows saying they do not accept $200 or $500 Euro notes. The big Euro denominations lead to Tim and I getting into a disagreement over whether or not denominations larger than $100 were still being printed and used in the US.

We both acknowledged that denominations greater than $100 were printed and used as Federal Reserve notes at some time in the past but we disagreed on whether or not they were still being used. My position was that they stopped printing the bigger denominations a long time ago and these bills are not in circulation or used in any capacity anymore. Tim thought that they were still being used to transfer money for bank-to-bank and for federal reserve transfers.

I completely forgot about this whole thing until I came across a post today on boingboing about a gallery of the high denomination bills by the Treasury Department and it reminded me of our Amsterdam conversation.

Along with pics of the notes they have a couple paragraphs on the history of the big bills.

Currency notes of denominations above $100 are not available from the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve System, or the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. On July 14, 1969, the Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve System announced that currency notes in denominations of $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 would be discontinued immediately due to lack of use. Although they were issued until 1969, they were last printed in 1945.

These notes are legal tender and may be found in circulation today; however, most notes still in circulation are probably in the hands of private numismatic dealers and collectors.

Too bad I can't remember if we put any small bills on the matter!

Filed in: interesting currency cashmoney

Quickies - The "Sea Lion" Edition

Feist's last Chicago gig in mp3. I was pissed I missed it but glad these became available.

Dolphins have names and they use them. Incredibly cool. (via MR)

10 Ways to Add Variety to Your Digital Photography (via lifehacker)

I have a half baked review of Ghostface Killah's latest album Fishscale (and about a dozen other misc. posts) and since I am so behind with work and skool it'll probably never be finish so I'll give you the gist. It is really good. Not Blueprint good but worth acquiring. Check out the best track on the album "The Champ" at Ghostface's MySpace page.

Filed in: quickies

Cubs: Grrrrrr...

1060west has been on fire lately and today's post about Wrigley's latest rightfield fan favorite is spot on.

Make no mistake. Jones' lack of overall production, inability to hit left-handed pitching, shoddy defensive play, and inexcusable mental mistakes are excruciatingly difficult to swallow. But I have a bigger beef with Cub GM Jim Hendry.

Hendry, in spite of obvious indicators predicting a lack of production out of Jones, still signed him to a ridiculous contract and compounded the problem by failing to to add another outfielder to platoon with Jones on days when a lefty is on the mound. Instead the Cubs added Freddie Bynum, another left-handed low production bat, to an outfield mix that already included lefties John Mabry and Juan Pierre.

The Cub offense hasn't been stellar this year by any stretch but is abysmal against left handed pitching. You can't blame Jim Hendry for his inability to hit left-handed pitching but you can blame him for his inability to put together a team that can.

Filed in: cubs mlb sports frustrating

Just Wondering: McGriddles

Can the syrup inside the griddle cakes of a McGriddle be considered technology and if so, where does this technology rank amongst the greatest technological innovations made by man?

Filed in: justwondering

Quickies - The "Birthday" Edition

Boston Globe article on the 750 laws that Bush has decided he was above.

Saw Pinback last night. This was the second time I've seen them live and I can't help but feel underwhelmed. I love their albums but I just don't think the sound they create live matches the intricacy or tightness that the albums have.

If you haven't seen Steven Colbert's speech at the White House Press Corps dinner from last weekend you are missing out. It is hilarious and well worth the watch.

Finally, I thought yesterday's Sopranos was good even with inordinate amount of time spent on Vito's personal storyline which I am already tired of. The line uttered by Patsy after he and Burt left the faux Starbucks was hilarious and yesterday I finally got the sense that Tony is really conflicted about turning a new page in life or regressing back to his old ways which was nice. As for Vito, I don't think the interesting part of that arc is him coming to grips with being gay (this has been done a million times on other shows) but how it affects the dynamic within the family. The writers and producers have spent 5 seasons delevoping this wonderfully complex social dynamic that we, as viewers, have watched through a core set of characters. Now we are expected to get engrossed in this Vito storyline and Johnny Cakes that I could care less about. In the waning episodes of this show I want to learn more about the characters that we've been watching develop and have gotten invested in since the beginning. I want to see how the arcs of Paulie, Christopher, Silvio, Carmela, and Uncle Junior play out instead of having to deal with an extraneous storyline injected at the eleventh hour.

Filed in: quickies music politics culture tv

The Draft Aftermath

It is ridiculous to evaluate or grade an NFL team's draft success the week after the draft (doesn't stop ESPN though) but the Bears not addressing offense save for a fullback and guard late on the second day is disappointing to say the least.

For a team that hasn't had an offensive unit ranked higher than 28th out of 32 teams for the past 4 consecutive years that shows an awful lot of confidence in the players they have. It would help if you could tee off on the Bears front office for a bunch of terrible personnel moves but I don't think that is a fair assessment. They've done a fantastic job getting a lot of quality defensive players in the draft especially with mid to late round picks. I think the real problem is hubris.

Outside of finally realizing that a veteran QB that could compete (if given the opportunity) for the starting job and provide some depth was probably a pretty good idea to have on the roster, the Bears haven't done anything to improve their offense. Without signing any free agents (they courted Randel-El, Az Hakim, and Reche Caldwell this past offseason but signed none) and spending their first six picks on defense the Bears seem to think they can compete for a Super Bowl by standing pat and expecting Grossman to play more games than Kyle Orton did last year and have Mark Bradley return from an ACL injury and continue to improve. These are huge question marks and (as much as I like both Grossman and Bradley) no reason to assume that they are going to pan out. This reminds me of a certain northside baseball team that didn't address starting pitching in the offseason thinking that a couple injured arms and another injury prone starter were good enough to go into season with and compete. We all see how well that is going.

In sports there is no stasis. You're either getting better or getting worse. Let's hope that when we reflect on this draft and offseason period in a few years that the Bears were right.

Filed in: bears nfl sports draft

Cubs: Yikes.

Yikes. The Cubs got shelled by the Brew Crew this past weekend with a pair of turd outings by Big Z and Rusch. Glendon Rusch is reportedly headed back to the bullpen and Rich Hill is set to be called up this week and is penciled in to start Thursday in Arizona. Let the deck chair rearrangement begin. With Hill, three of the five Cub starters are going to be rookies so it should make for some interesting times until Prior, Wood, and Miller make their returns.

Here is a crazy stat from The Cub Reporter about Rusch who notes:

Let me put this another way: At the end of play this weekend, Albert Pujols, on an amazing tear to start the season, is sporting a .346/.509/.914 line - just vicious stuff. The line allowed by Glendon Rusch in his first five starts has been .348/.438/.841, turning entire teams into vast armies of Pujolses.

I am not sure about releasing him yet but he definitely needs to be removed from the rotation and probably needs to take a start or two in AAA to try and work out these kinks and figure out how to not throw "go for" balls. Unfortunately the Cubs do not have that luxury since starters are not chewing up innings and we need arms in the bullpen.

Sean Marshall goes tonight (apparently I get tickets on nights that he pitches). Hopefully he can match his last start where he devastated the fish with a killer curve, Murton can stay hot (7-17 on this homestand) and the Cubbies can win one on my birthday.

Filed in: cubs sports mlb

Mmmmm... Beer Therapy

Those crazy Euros are at it again. According to the NYT beer spas are becoming all the rage in Europe. Dr. Vino thinks this a reponse to the wine spas he noticed on his travels to Argentina.

Creepy photoshopped picture via the NYT

Filed in: culture wierd beer