I've written here about Nicholas Gurewitch before. There's a pretty sweet interview with him on publishersweekly.com. You should read it. Also, the first collection, or "book," of The Perry Bible Fellowship will be published in September. It'll be called The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories: A Collection of the Comic Strips of The Perry Bible Fellowship. It's a good bet that the book won't include any stories about a trial of Colonel Sweeto or any other colonels. For that matter, it's also a good bet that the book won't include any mentions of a bible fellowship either.
Despite a very concentrated attempt to not hope for Kerry Wood to be healthy this season, and to simply be content with the Cubs' bullpen as it is without him, I'm having a difficult time not being disappointed by the news that Wood will start this season on the DL, again, with shoulder problems, again. Fair enough. I'm over it. Oh wait, Mark Prior is going to start on the DL, too? You're not making it easy for me, but okay. The Cubs still have Carlos Zambrano. For this season at least. Fuck. This sucks.
The point of this, though, is to point out some humorus headlines from 1998 which I found in another blog (blogs referencing blogs... what have we become?) called What's Goin On?, a Chicago Sports Blog. Before the funny part, let me set this up just a bit for you non-Cub fans. 1998 was Kerry Wood's rookie season with the Cubs. In his fifth major league start, he struck out 20 Houston Astros which was at the time - and probably still is - a major league record for the most K's in a game. Wood, when healthy (ha!), does have an amazing slider. It starts at the knees, then it's up at the chest, and then its almost in the dirt by the time it crosses the plate. Of course, that kind of hook puts such a strain on your elbow and shoulder that after throwing that pitch for three seasons, you end up on the disabled list eleven times in ten seasons. Anyhoo... Here's a portion of the afore mentioned blog that made me laugh.
After reading this morning that Wood is making his 11th trip to the disabled list before his 10th season starts, I decided to take a look at some of the Tribune headlines in the following days and weeks after Wood made the Killer B's look like mere gnats. Try not to laugh:
• Legends in passing: Mr. Jordan, meet Mr. Wood
• Imagine, baseball upstaging Michael
• Wood, Clemens have a few other things in common
• Everything seems to be turning out right for Wood
• When Cooperstown calls, will Wood still be a Cub?
That last one is my favorite. I remember Cubs fans everywhere being terrified that Kid K would follow in the footsteps of Greg Maddux and head off to Atlanta. In fact, a Sox fan friend of mine started cracking Braves jokes the very next day.
I like how he said "Try not to laugh." Yes. Try.
I'm actually doing alright with my brackets this year, but I think filling them out takes the fun out of the tournament...for me. I'm a pretty big college basketball fan; I know so many useless things about the sport that of all people, I should do well in NCAA pools. For example, I know that UNLV's point-guard, Kevin Kruger, is the son of UNLV's coach, Lon Kruger, and is actually a post-grad at the school. He graduated from Arizona State University, but only used three years of eligibility, and under a short-lived NCAA rule was eligible to play at UNLV w/o having to sit out a year as is the case with transfer students.
The quest to be right causes me to become upset when my picks bow out of the tournament, even if I have no attachment to the team. I picked Texas to go to the final four, but they were man-handled by USC. Having seen USC play a few time this year I was kind of pulling for them to do well, but to the detriment of my bracket. One can become quite conflicted by these things. So instead of enjoying a great performance by a team I like, I'm left bitching about my bracket. The tournament should be fun to watch, right?
And I'm not even driven by the possibility of winning money or a material item, I just want to be right. That said, no bracket for me next year.....or maybe I'll just fill one out and not submit.
197 thousand points
You know, you eat those ghosts by getting the big dots... they're blue for a while, then they blink five times and then they go back to normal.
In the very late rounds, they start blicking as soon as you get that dot
Then the next round they blink immediately, but only 4 times
Then 3, 2, 1, and then around level 15 or 16, you get that big dot and they don't blink. suddenly, you can't eat the ghosts. if i was prepared for that, i think i could have broken 200k.
Next time.