why dave bergman is neat

when i was just on my way to school, i caught the end of a live noon-time tribute concert for bob dylan featuring some philadelphia (i think) singers on XPN. i only caught part of the last song, but it was a guy whose name i didn't catch doing a version of 'don't think twice, it's all right'. he slowed it down and meandered it out a little bit. i liked it. i'm usually a little leery when anybody except the byrds covers dylan, but this was good.

that's really all i wanted to say about that.

the pistons lost tonight.

and no, i don't want to talk about it.

but one thing i do want to talk about: i just heard a commercial on the radio announcing that bryan adams (no, teeny-boppers, not ryan adams) is coming out with his first studio album in almost 7 years. but more importantly--he's touring with DEF LEPPARD this summer! how 1980s-cool is that?!?

and speaking of sweet, on classic rock 102.9 MGK right now they're replaying an old rockline with bob dylan from 1985.

...the tigers took a 5-4 decision from the oakland athletics at tiger stadium to boost their record to 31-5. dave bergman started at 1B, and jack morris got the win, bringing his record to 8-1.

4-3.

this brings their record up to 18-19.

86-67.

ben wallace had 19 points and 11 rebounds, and carlos arroyo put in a strong performance off the bench.

i was watching the game on tv, and they totally showed bob seger in the crowd.

...the tigers got a 10-1 victory over seattle at tiger stadium. the winning pitcher was milt wilcox, and dave bergman was a pinch-hitter for barbaro garbey and scored one run. this win brought their record to 29-5.

...the tigers took a 6-4 decision from the seattle mariners at tiger stadium to boost their record to a formidable 28-5. our own dave bergman started at 1B. jack morris got the win, and willie hernandez the save.

UPDATE: by the way, this box score is for may 15, not 16, so don't go gittin confuzzled. i forgot the time stamp on it would be for the 16th since it's after midnight. but whatever. it still SEEMS like Sunday. and anyway--you know what i MEAN.

UPUPDATE: there's been some discussion of alan trammell in a comments sections below. well, it just so happens that m-w's word of the day for thursday, may 12, was 'trammel'. here it is:

trammel \TRAM-ul\ noun

1 : a net for catching birds or fish
*2 : something impeding activity, progress, or freedom : restraint— usually used in plural

Example sentence:
"I cast the miserable trammels of worldly discretion to the winds, and spoke with the fervour that filled me...." (Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone)

Did you know?
A trammel fishing net traditionally has three layers, with the middle one finer-meshed and slack so that fish passing through the first net carry some of the center net through the coarser third net and are trapped. Appropriately, "trammel" traces back to the Late Latin "tremaculum," which comes from Latin "tres," meaning "three," and "macula," meaning "mesh." Today, "trammels" is synonymous with "restraints," and "trammel" is also used as a verb meaning "to confine" or "to enmesh." You may also run across the adjective "untrammeled," meaning "not confined or limited."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

...the tigers lost a home game at tiger stadium to the california angels 4-2. tommy john went the distance for the angels for his third win that season. you can look at the box score if you want. the best part is the blurb directly above the box score:

The box score below is an accurate record of events for the baseball contest played on May 12, 1984 at Tiger Stadium. The California Angels defeated the Detroit Tigers and the box score is "ready to surrender its truth to the knowing eye."

ready, indeed.

pistons blow 10 point halftime lead (and led by as much as 15 after the first quarter) in a 92-83 loss to the indiana pacers in game 2. jeff foster? where did this guy come from?

on the other hand, the tigers got a 6-5 win over texas to complete their road trip with a 4-2 record.

in other news, in philadelphia a second-grader brought a loaded 9mm to school.

an interesting article on new york's subway system in city journal. here is the lead paragraph:

As New Yorkers learned in January, when a fire in a signal-relay room knocked out service for the half-million people who ride the A and C trains daily, Gotham’s subways are in deep trouble. Bad enough that the inferno showed that any bum (or terrorist) with a lighter could paralyze New York; worse still was New York City Transit chief Larry Reuter’s announcement that this critical lifeline for Brooklyn and Queens residents would be out for three to five years. When transit officials responded to riders’ outrage by getting most service up and running within two weeks, public relief mingled with anxiety that transit brass didn’t understand how their system worked or that they were responsible for keeping it going, no matter what.

i've been out of town for a few days, so i'm glad to see the M has kept things alive here.

and now for the sports news...

pistons take game 1 of their second-round series with the pacers, 96-81. richard hamilton dropped in 28 points and b-b-b-ben wallace had a stellar performace with 21 points, 15 boards, and 4 steals (now if we could just get those free-throw numbers up--5-15?!?).

in baseball news, the tigers pulled out their third consecutive win with a 2-0 victory over the texas rangers, scoring both runs in the top of the ninth. this brings them up to just one game under .500 at 15-16.

with an 8-3 win over the defending world series champs.

roger scruton has an interesting post on various forms of education (public, private, home) over at right reason. there has been a fair amount of discussion on the home school movement at right reason in recent weeks. scruton writes:

I should like to add a British perspective, since we have experienced the same disaster in our ‘public’ school system but have on the whole chosen another remedy. We don’t call it the ‘public’ school system, since that word has been reserved for the network of private schools that arose during the middle ages with the intention of serving the general public, as opposed to the aristocracy, and which have become the preferred form of education for those parents who can afford it. Schools that Americans call ‘public schools’ we call ‘state schools’, thereby identifying the true heart of the problem, which is the incompetence of the state to manage the institutions of civil society.

scruton introduces a heglian tripartite division of the spheres of a given culture (family, state, civil society) and argues that education is best conducted privately at the local level (as opposed to education either at home or in state schools). this type of education corresponds to the sphere of 'civil society'. he contends that this third term has been too often left out of the debate, giving rise to the problems in british education which he bitingly diagnoses thus:

Our education system has been colonised by egalitarian activists, who have had one purpose above all others, which is to break down the structures of privilege, and to make all children equal, even if, in the process, this means making them all equally ignorant and equally unfit for society. Those who control our state education system have been outraged by the response of middle class parents, which has been to take their children away from the state schools and send them instead to private schools. Hence there is now a movement to penalize children from private schools by not admitting them to universities. This is possible because the universities in Britain are all controlled by the state, though with pockets of civil society like Oxford and Cambridge, controlled, however, by people who in the American context would be called ‘liberal’, i.e. people deeply offended by liberty in hands other than their own.

take a look if interested.

i had the misfortune of catching some of the latest 'music' by conor oberst (aka bright eyes) on one of the late night shows last night. this, something about the president talking to God, was possibly his most insipid and vacuous composition that i've heard to date.

on the other hand, i listened to some blind blake last night. a guy at school has gotten me into old pre-war blues, ragtime, etc. if you've never heard blind blake (or a host of others), i would highly recommend it. a lot of the recordings are of decent quality (especially given their vintage), and the guitar-playing is virtuosic. i'll try to get some links up later.

In the site you can acquire cheep mads martha

today's featured poem is robert frost's 'putting in the seed', appropriate for this springtime season.

You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree.
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite, 5
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed 10
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

after a loss friday night on philadelphia's home turf, the bad boys redux staged a 4th quarter comeback and pulled out a 97-92 overtime victory yesterday afternoon. rasheed had 8 points in overtime, including an AWESOME three-pointer, and rip hamilton sealed the deal with a 10-footer with 14 seconds left on the clock and 2 free throws after that.

from pops:

Sixty years ago today, German troops in Italy surrendered.  In what can only be described as the ultimate case of bad luck, just two weeks before that Bob Dole was injured while serving in Italy.  After 3 years and 9 operations, he was finally able to walk again but never did regain the use of his right arm.  Initally, he was paralyzed on both sides and had to have someone put/take his cigarettes into and out of his mouth because he had no use of either arm.