The Catch-All

First of all, Happy New Year! (yes I am eight days late, the year is still new enough!)

Since it has been quite some time since I have written anything here at MP, I thought I would combine some of the things that I should have written about into one “catch-all” post (hence the title):

For those of you familiar with my suffering in the football pool, here’s this: no more wins since I scaled Victory Mountain some weeks back.  Was close the last two weeks, losing by tiebreaker last week and just out of the tiebreaker this past Sunday.  Yes, and close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

For those of you who happened to see my scribblings on the Baltimore Ravens:  bye, bye Billick, and take your staff wit’cha.  Though I’m sure Brian Billick will land on his feet somewhere, be it as an offensive coordinator or on TV.  As for the Raven braintrust, let’s work to get this thing back on track.  Make the right hire for head coach, no matter how long it takes. Don’t be seduced by the hottest names on the block.  Get the right guy, then start building the team back up again.  I’m sure there’s some dead weight that can be purged.

For those who came here due to my Baltimore Oriole ramblings: what can i say?  I’m still waiting for the big purge.  Moving Miguel Tejada doesn’t really count; you would really have to have your head in the sand if you thought that he would be back next season.  If I may plead with Andy MacPhail (and one day I’ll spell the name correctly, if I haven’t in this post): DON’T TRADE BEDARD! (unless the next Cal Ripken, Eddie Murray and Jim Palmer are included!)  I’m sure that ES can appreciate that sentiment.  Still I don’t want the team making moves just to make moves.  The moves have to make sense, both baseball-wise and economically.  And while you’re at it, Mr. MacPhail, if you have any pull with Uncle Peter, make him start broadcasting MASN in HD, please!  It’s the 21st Century; shouldn’t we be able to see the Orioles in all their 70-92 splendor in high definition?  It would allow me to count the blades of grass on the field in case another 30-3 whipping is in store.

Non-sports wise: I have been listening to lots of Aretha Franklin lately.  Not the current duets stuff, the classic Atlantic Records stuff, her soulin’ prime as it were.  From 1967-1974, there was no singer on the planet that could touch Ms. Franklin.  Oh how we may laugh at how she looks or dresses now, but in her day, there was nobody better.  Not even that overwrought Patti Labelle (though I love her as well). I found on iTunes a double album of rarities and outtakes from her Atlantic period and have been enjoying the sounds.  Some of those songs could have been hits; they are that good.  One of Aretha’s skills during this time would be taking a pass at someone else’s song and turning it into, if not the definitive version, into something just as good.  One of my favorites is her version of Simon And Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”  On this new album of outtakes, I found an outtake of Bobby Womack’s “That’s The Way I Feel About Cha” that just about makes me forget his version.  (I didn’t know she released a version of this song on her Hey Now Hey (The Other Side Of The Sky) album; that version actually is better, but I do enjoy the simplicity of Aretha and the piano).  I would post a version of that on my Vox blog, but I haven’t had time to get it right.

While I’ve been away, I’ve also been thinking about the blog itself.  I have written mostly about sports, though I don’t want to be a sports blogger per se; there are those out there who do that very well and have more time to do that.  I’m trying to find out what kind of blog Mind Pinball will become.  I am trying to remain true to my statement of “stuff that rattles around in my head,” but I don’t always think about sports and how it relates to me.  R&B music is a passion of mine, and I hope to be writing more about current and classic songs/artists that I enjoy or feel like commenting on.

Finally, I apologize about not following up the Mr. Pants (Roy Pearson) saga, but the man truly exhausts me.  I understand that the cleaners he sued finally closed down, which I’m sure he enjoyed in some small savage way.  I said it once, and I’ll say it again, the man has no shame.  Thankfully, he was not reappointed to his position as a judge for Washington, DC’s Office of Administrative Hearings.  The official reasoning was concern over his conduct on the job, not necessarily in the pants lawsuit; but I can’t imagine that his conduct regarding the lawsuit didn’t have some spillover in the decision to let him go.

Hopefully, this is the start of something good for 2008.  2007 was not one of my favorite years; so 2008 can only be an improvement, or so I’m hoping.