Battling my way, for the past week, through my second bout of pneumonia this year I have eschewed (to date) professional medical care and instead self-medicated with Bumble cookies.....
..... and working lunches with Mr B at Bob's:
Note the Cincinnati Reds-centric after-tax total; $18.69. 1869 didn't register, at first, for Mr B but then again he is a Red Sox fan. I have an affinity for the Bumble as that has long been one of My Dear Elderly Mother's nicknames for me due to my unparalleled prowess for angel-topping the family Christmas tree. Plus, the Bumble and I both like ribs.
Said Christmas tree was, tonight, casting a broad spectrum of color:
Especially as reflected off the ceiling, walls and thick, luxuriant carpet. The Ranch Christmas has been transformed into a Miami Beach nightclub.
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On Christmas night, Santa Claus makes his debut on Doctor Who when he appears in this holiday's special episode titled "Last Christmas." Of course, our British cousins refer to Santa as Father Christmas (as if). Check your local listings for BBC America.
Roll the credits!
One of the brightest days amid the dark winter (or late autumn) nights arrives annually with my complimentary RedsFest tickets, just one perk of being a valued season ticket holder.
Membership has its privileges. One such privilege is having access to the RedsFest season ticket holder-only "VIP Lounge" on the second floor of the convention center:
Paraphrasing Adam Horowitz, the beat was a-bumpin' and - I'm sure had I looked closely enough - the girlies was hot. However, there wasn't a spare leather-covered seat cushion for me to fall into so I split this scene after spending less than 2 minutes there and crossing paths with 700WLW SportsTalk host Lance McAlister (he said "Hey," I gave him a nod of the coconut).
The Reds Country faithful packed RedsFest as per usual:
In the photo above you are seeing approximately one-third of the main floor area. If my bearings are correct, this is the east end of the convention floor. There is a wing off to the left for the memorabilia dealers. Ickey Woods was there to meet and greet customers who were buying autographed stills of Ickey doing the grocery store shuffle (signed Gonna get some cold cuts today! Ickey Woods) as seen in a popular insurance company commercial. George Foster, David Fulcher and Phil Castellini were spied among the memorabilia vendors, too.
RedsFest is a two-day event. The highlight of Day One was this (below):
Primate on a Stick.
I'm still not certain if it was a lemur, perhaps it was higher-classification mammalian - a marsupial of some description, or a Mad Scientist miniaturized version of Big Randy, but that little guy hung onto his stick for hours just as serene as could be. As for the lesser highlights which I found time to photograph from Day One.....
.....Chillin' with Mike Leake.....
.....peepin' on Jay Bruuuuuce signing autographs.....
.....Joey Votto rendered in LEGO, found in the Louisville Slugger Factory & Museum booth....
.....getting an autograph (not shown) from Daniel Corcino (shown, above). Also not photographed were the two slices of LaRosa's pizza and the chocolate-covered Oreo I crushed.
Day Two of RedsFest did not feature any Primates on a Stick and in this I was very disappointed. However, I did score the autographs of three prospects at once:
Jon Matthews, slightly blurry in the foreground, a moderately blurry Jon Moscot in the middle and Jesse Winker blurred nearly to obscurity in the distance. I've been carrying around with me a so-called prospects ball since the 2009 edition of RedsFest. I've had to retire the ball after the addition of Jesse Winker as there is no more space for signatures on that baseball. Among the 20 "prospects" to be found on it are current Major Leaguers Todd Frazier, Mike Leake, Zack Cozart, Devin Mesoraco, Chris Heisey, Logan Ondrusek, Travis Wood, Chris Valaika (is he still in the Bigs with some other franchise?) and Billy Hamilton.
Just 45 minutes before closing time on Day Two I had a conversation with The 'Famer.
Marty Brennaman! He axed me my name and from where I hailed and we shared a brisk, in-depth 1 minute exchange about Miami University. There's a lot to be said about Miami, said Martin. Comically, I left it at that.
Christmas card history was made a few hours earlier on Day Two when I let 2010 National League MVP Joey Votto have his picture taken with me:
I am blotto for Votto!
Roll the credits!
Heartbreaking news last week for Ohio aficionados of cheeseburgers, fries and ice cream [isn't this everyone?]; Friendly's closed all 14 of its Buckeye state restaurants. No longer viable as a going concern according to various reports.
Q: Now where am I supposed to go in order to enjoy a three scoop (or five scoop) Reece's Pieces Sundae?!
A: Altoona, PA is the closest location. Yes. Zero chance.
Lost somewhere on my old hard drive were assorted photos of the many Western BBQ and Bacon Cheeseburgers that I often murdered at Friendly's and I'd have shared one or two of those photos here if I had access to them. Friendly's has been dying a slow death by thousands of cuts - or bankruptcies - for decades and this appears to be just one more step on its inexorable path towards a Bill Knapp's type of oblivion. If Steak 'n Shake ever folds up its tent, I'm leaving for a different galaxy. Who's with me?!
The [multiple expletives deleted] Lord of restaurant dining taketh away and the same Lord just referenced giveth; This week Chick-fil-A opened a so-called "express" [read: self serve] storefront in Oxville. You know who hit it up. Big time.
Chick-fil-A is located in Stewart Square, and I'm sitting just about where Dale Plank's science classroom was situated. I used to think about chicks all the time when I was sitting in that class but, of course, that was altogether a bird of a different feather. In the photo above, I deployed the rarely used (honest!) selfie feature of my Android GalaxyS9000 to surreptitiously photograph the as-yet unfinished interior (and the cute chick working the cash register), inadvertently capturing my left shoulder in the image. Consider it perspective.
While I dined, a majestic sunset unfolded outside Stewart Square:
The GalaxyS9000 is an awesome piece of computational hardware, yet it never seems to capture the full and glorious spectrum of sunsets. That said, can I get a Big Government/Infrastructure Porkulus [i.e., pork + stimulus] consensus on burying power and phone lines underground? Seriously. These eyesores are relics of the dusty, distant telegraphic past. It's time to consign this anachronism to the same historical ash heap as the Pony Express and ticker tape.
Something else that soothed my Friendly's-shaped wound this week:
Speaking of carb-loading, on Thanksgiving I snapped this clandestine photo of My Dear Elderly Mother in serene repose, enjoying her seat in a rocking chair by the fire place:
Mom hates having her photo taken. You should excuse the ham-handed blurriness of this picture as a gesture of deference to her objection. For those of you familiar with the John Ford/John Wayne classic western The Searchers [yeah, I know. Nobody reading this], we have a mutual fondness for the character of Ol' Mose, played expertly by Hank Worden. In return for helping John Wayne's character find the kidnapped children, all that Ol' Mose asks is for a roof over his head and a rockin' chair by the fire. As such, it was funny to find Mom sitting there on Thanksgiving.
If you've had enough, now, reading of my recent gastronomical exploits, tough break.
After a whirlwind Christmas shopping excursion in November, I treated My Dear Elderly Mother to an early dinner at the Christian Moerlein Lager House. I had the excellent BBQ chicken. I give it my highest recommendation. Although the place was largely devoid of patrons, we were not shown to a seat overlooking the mighty Ohio River. Rather, here was our view:
Ehh.
In other news (don't stop me if you've heard this before... because you have), it's never to early to start thinking about the Kentucky Derby. While Las Vegas opened its Derby Futures wager pools sometime ago, Churchill Downs opened (and closed) its own Pool #1 this past weekend (Pool #2 to open in February, Pool #3 sometime thereafter). I notified The Old Master of the Turf of this development and he made a beeline (pun intended) to Miami Valley Gaming in order to place a small wager on my behalf, as well as a few bets for himself and Lou.
In this Pool #1, the #7 betting proposition was for a colt named Daredevil. Daredevil opened at odds of 20-1 and closed at 48-1. If he comes home the winner on the First Saturday in May, this ticket will pay me just under $250.00. When one considers the distinct likelihood that Daredevil won't even make the Derby Day starting gate, the odds should perhaps be something closer to, as ESPN's Jay Cronley so imaginatively put it in his recent column "Science fiction pools," moon-to-one. That's $5 that would otherwise have gone towards a Reece's Pieces Sundae at Friendly's.
Speaking of comings and, in particular, goings, Heavy Artillery notes with some tinge of lament for unfulfilled potential the trade this week that sent Reds' fourth outfielder Chris Heisey to the hated Dodgers for a AAA pitcher with a 5+ ERA. In the broader context, this trade may signal the paving of the way for both the Dodgers to trade away one of their excess of All-Star caliber outfielders and for the Reds to trade away Johnny Cueto or Mat Latos. One of the small pleasures of baseball fandom is championing a favored utility player beyond - acknowledged - reasonable expectations and for me Chris Heisey has recently been that player. In truth, Heisey was given every opportunity to become a starting left fielder for the Reds but never quite [mixing of sports metaphors warning!] seized the reins.
In the Reader Submission corner this week, Lou sent me the photo, below, of a personalized license plate spotted while on routine patrol on Miami's idyllic campus:
YYZ is the three-letter International Air Transport Association code for Toronto (Canada) Pearson International Airport. "YYZ" is more widely known as the title of the greatest rock instrumental of all-time, a song off the unparalleled 1981 Rush album Moving Pictures. Moving Pictures, along with all the other greatest Rush albums, was recorded at Le Studio in Morin Heights, Quebec, Canada. Rush drummer/lyricist Neil Peart recently wrote about the significance of Le Studio to the development of Rush as a band and to Neil as a composer in the essay "Science Island" published on his personal website (if you scroll down to the bottom of the first page, Neil's discussion of Le Studio begins there and continues onto the following page). For Rush fans, Le Studio is just about as hallowed a place as one can find in Rushdom. Neil included in his essay some recent photos of the abandoned Le Studio that are eerie and stand in stark contrast to the vibrancy of its heyday, examples of which you may observe here and here and here. If you've never read Neil Peart (for example, his award-nominated Ghost Rider), this essay serves as an adequate introduction. Interestingly (perhaps only to me), one Rush fanatic has begun a Rush-centric (but not to say Rush-exclusive) documentary series of Le Studio that is both comprehensive and illuminative... all rather surprising when you observe the low-budget quality of his production. A+ for effort, but I'm certain he doesn't have the rights to use all the music he has included. We'll see how far he manages to extend this project before copyrights and royalties torpedo his dream.
Roll the credits!
