usually car chases are somewhat predictable: the dude (usually it’s a dude) drives around for a few hours, runs out of gas, party’s over.
it’s the exceptions to the rules that keep us watching. sometimes the dude gets lucky and escapes miraculously. sometimes the guy crashes into something unexpectedly. rarely but sometimes the proper use of a spike strip ends it.
and sometimes the cops bust with the sweet pit maneuver, spin the guy around and trap him.
speaking of pits, today a lady with two big pit bulls stole an RV and drove way too fast through the valley.
on a hairpin u turn in a parking lot she scraped off a good chunk of the passenger side
she hit two cars hard, and a palm tree.
halfway though one of her dogs worked his way through the smashed out window and jumped into the street and hobbled over to the sidewalk
it ended when she hit said palm tree while hitting a man in a car who was trying so hard to get out of the way.
she ran with her remaining dog to a high wall driveway fence that refused to open up for her and when the CHP grabbed her you could see bloody paw prints on the stairs.
it was shocking and sad and maybe a little too much to take when you saw the dogs with their big tongues and wagging tails.
they deserved so much better than this.
fortunately they are both well, the guy who got hit has a bunch of broken ribs, and the woman was arrested.
but will we ever find out why she did this, why an RV, and does this disqualify her from owning pets?
There is so much negativity every day out there. But here’s something nice. And one of the reasons I love people so much.
Jake Arrieta was traded to the Cubs from Baltimore in 2013 for two guys named Scott and a bucket of mud. He was so bad the Cubs sent him to the minors twice that year.
But something happened in 2014. The coaching, the catchers, the team? Who knows but he began to transform into an amazing pitcher.
In 2015 he no-hit the Dodgers, pitched a complete game in the NL Wild Card game and easily earned the Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in the NL.
In 2016 he was one of the anchors for the Cubs winning the World Series. On the way there he crushed a home run in San Francisco off Madison Bumgarner. And then he won two games in the 7 game epic series against the Indians.
Early last year his contract ended and the Philadelphia Phillies offered him $75 million over three years. The Cubs chose to spend about that much on a different pitcher, one Yu Darvish.
Because life is weird, Jake never faced the Cubs last year at Wrigley Field, but tonight he did. And because National League baseball is superior, pitchers bat, like the Founders intended.
And as fate would have it, Yu is pitching against him. But before the young Japanese hurler could begin, the crowd at the Friendly Confines lived up to their name and gave their once favorite son a huge ovation. And because Darvish is a gentleman, when he heard the roar, he stepped off the mound so the crowd could embrace the man who was so vital to that all-important championship.
I am tearing up typing this because it is so beautiful. I love these fans so much and I am one of them. This is what gratefulness is. This is what sportsmanship is. This is love.
she said oh im not trying to give you a reading, i have to ask you a question
i said, whats your question
she said, you always seem so happy. whats your secret?
i was like, oh, simple. the cubs won the world series.
she was all, but that was in 2016.
i said, seems like yesterday.
and as i was walking home she said, thats it? a bunch of people you dont know, all wearing the same color score more points than the other team and for the rest of your life you’re in a good mood?
i kept walking and said pretty much
she said, wait wait, what?
i stopped and said, that season lasted six months. from spring training i knew they were gonna do it. then every month good things happened. then they won. now imagine in the spring you thought bad things were gonna happen, then every month horrible things went down. then in novemember so many bad things happened that millions of people filled the streets. you might still be bummed years later. well, the opposite happened. miracles after miracles. then a huge parade. and now joy. probably forever.
we had no money. we were fresh out of college. i had lost my job working at Sears!
little did i know but i would soon be hired by Philips/Magnavox to train all the electronic salespeople – including Sears – how to sell our fine line of personal electronics and televisions.
but we had this vacation planned so we went off and did it and it was fascinating because neither of us had been to maui before and we were in love and love tames the wild beast or something
even back then, when i go on vacation i dont wanna do shit, but jeanine was so full of life, she was all, LETS DRIVE UP THAT VOLCANO AND WATCH THE SUN RISE
i was like fuck that!
she said THERES COWS UP THERE!
i was like, girl i grew up in the midwest, you dont think ive seen a cow before?
and we got up early, drove up mount halakalahalaha saw the damn cows, cows saw us
we kept driving. it was cold, then windy, and then the sun came up and i took this picture.
when i first met her she kept all that beautiful hair in front of her face.
she was hiding.
we went on 3 very bad dates. and i gave up. then one day it rained and i asked her to come over and teach me to play the guitar. and when she did, she lit up from the inside and no longer was she hidden.
cheesy as it sounds, i saw her heart. and it was beautiful. much like that picture.
a lot has come and gone since we climbed up that hawaiian volcano.
but one thing remains is her beautiful heart.
today i talked to her on the phone to offer my condolences because her husband had tragically died.
and as we talked about certain things she fluttered from being sad to being very sad.
but every now and then we said something that was funny.
i have no idea how to help people during times like what jeanine has just experienced
or some of the tragedies she has had to endure during her life.
life is not fair. at all. and sometimes it’s least fair to the sweetest people you ever met.
you just have to hope that at the end of this darkness
last night high priced starting pitcher Yu Darvish ($21 million a year for six years) had one of his best outings as a Cub. he went 5 innings, gave up 5 hits, 2 earned runs, allowed 0 walks, and struck out 11 batters.
If over 5 innings there are 15 outs and 11 of them are due to whiffing, I’d say the pitcher did pretty damn well.
unfortunately games last at least 9 innings and the relievers who came in for Yu weren’t as effective and the Cubs lost in the bottom of the 10th.
even though the Cubs have one of the best records in baseball this year, they are successful in spite of not having their high priced closer, or their backup closer. both are injured.
if there’s any team who understands the importance of every. single. game, it should be the Cubs since last year they ended up with the identical record after 162 games with their new rivals the Milwaukee Brewers and were forced to play a 163rd game (which they lost), which forced them to play a wild card game (which they also lost).
you cant lose extra inning games to Cincinnati when your starter hands the bullpen a lead. that’s why there are closers.
some really good teams have omg two solid pitchers in the bullpen. a closer and a set up man. im old enough to remember the Bronx Zoo completely shutting down games when Dick Tidrow would come in for the 8th and Sparky Lyle ended it in the 9th.
which brings us to All Star free agent closer Craig Kimbrel who can’t seem to find a team willing to pay what theyve paid other superstar bullpen aces. is he asking for too long of a contract? is his agent a creep? should any of that matter?
why build a damn theme park around your ball park if you’re not going to use some of those profits for what is sorely needed?
it was rough today, i gotta admit, coming back to reality after being in paradise with a beautiful woman.
i applied for jobs i had never considered before. people are still giving me leads and thats so sweet of them. in the beginning i would drag my feet about it, but now im like, yep, lets apply, fine, who knows where this will lead.
one company was a tad annoying though, they asked for your LinkedIn url, and a resume… but then they made you manually redo all of that into another site.
why do you hate us?
one of the questions they asked was my high school address. do people lie about going to high school?
then the cubs lost. then my parking permit fell off my mirror and i got a ticket. then then then….
it wasnt a great day.
theyre not all gonna be stellar.
people are not returning emails. people who i thought i clicked with in initial interviews. one place asked me to analyze their website and social channels and i told them things i bet you nooooobody even thought about telling them, SEO magic tricks
i wrote them back on Monday and nothing. not a peep. a full on thank you next.
did the guy think i was too smart? too handsome? did he think it was a set up?
how do you not call me back when i show you how to improve your site in a way that will double traffic or more on Google and it’s just a few lines of HTML?
is everyone’s hearts hardened?
is this supposed to be happening for a reason? surely the reason cant be for me to go back to Ubering.
because for the last million years ive been getting my mom flowers on mothers day and on her birthday and i cant remember more than one time when she took a picture of them that i was satisfied.
they either looked sickly or somehow wanting. and there never seemed to be as many as i had thought i had ordered.
and so often things seemed too expensive for what i was getting.
in my Flower Fone world, a dozen roses is $30, tulips are $25, gerbers are $20, and the deluxe double mixed would be $40.
for $100 we’d go nuts in a way that you’d always wanna give us $100. free vase, babysbreath, chocolate, and sparklers if its a night time delivery.
online we would do totally insane things like Remember what you ordered last time, Not ask you for all your info over and over, and Thank you for repeated business.
every now and then we might just send you free flowers out of the blue because what the hell else am i gonna do with left over flowers that i couldnt sell before they start wilting? throw them away? never! give em to your customers, jethro!
this year i got my mom an amazon echo. she says its because i want her to be able to say Hey Alexa, ive fallen and i cant get up! but the truth is, i love it. i used to use the clapper for my bedroom christmas lights, now i say alexa turn off the lights. i used to have to tell siri a million times to play Tsar, now alexa not only plays it but the echo dot speaker is fantastic.
basically, she works as advertised. the google nor the siri does. so thats what my mom gets.
she says she doesnt want a new tv for her room but shes getting one for her birthday i dont wanna argue.
anyways, this isn’t a picture of my mom, but it’s how i see her.
may 11 is my first girlfriends birthday. mary. i’ll never forget her birthday and i dont think i have forgotten her phone number either. 528-1722?
those were back in the days where you didnt need area codes. those were back in the days that when a girl held your hand at the movies it was the coolest thing ever.
those were back in the days where a giant farm divided you from the fantasy girl of your dreams so you just called each other on the phone and talked for hours and hours.
when i first got her number i wrote notes before i called. even then, my biggest fear was boring people.
i liked her so much i lied.
i would tell her the dumbest lies like oh yeah im in a band. i play guitar.
what?
finally when i fessed up i promised that id never lie again. and ive done a pretty good job with that.
she moved to california. and look at me. less than a year later i had moved to california. and ive never thought twice of moving back.
anyways happy birthday mary, whereever you are. i hope things are good.
went with bree to a restaurant where if youre a pregnant lady and you eat the salad the odds magically increase that you will deliver the bambino within 3 and 36 hours.
bree wanted to go there because on monday theyre going to induce her and she would rather her angel come out the natural way.
she taught me a lot about being a pregnant lady. we did a little podcast. it turned out better than i expected.
when you’re unemployed you feel like a complete loser and when you do something well it has a way of surprising you.
apparently i can talk aloud in a conversation.
anyways this restaurant has an unpronounceable name, it’s on an adorable street in studio city that actually looks like it could be in the movies now that i say it.
the waiters told us that 15-20 women a day go in there for The Maternity Salad.
bree is picky and she said the salad was good. mine was meh.
they had this huge board with all the names of the Salad Babies.
she was very calm. her work gives her 6 months off to do this. which seems like a lot, but then how do you just not be around your 6 month old if you wanna receive money and benefits?
we’ll check in with her later.
best question i asked: what was your best baby shower gift?
tune in never to hear her answer because lets be real, if i wanted to do podcasts i would have been doing them by now.
came home and watched the end of the cubs game.
then did something on the howard stern group that ive been wanting to do somewhere, anywhere, for the last 10 years.
long long time ago usa today had a blog called pop candy by whitney matthewson and she did this thing where once a week she would feature one of her commentors. most posts got like 20-100 comments, but those ones got 1,000+ because it was actually really nice to see who these people were and what they were into.
last month i did an Ask Me Anything to get the ball rolling. i knew some of these people disagreed with some of the rules that i had implemented or didn’t like how i did certain things, so i did it to let them grill me on it so that there would be a record of where i stood on things and so maybe they could understand my rationale better. funny thing was, most of them had zero interest in any of that and just wanted to ask good questions. which was fine because that AMA wasnt about me, really, it was to set the table for the weekly AMAs to come.
so i made sure to keep it as really real as i could, but also to mirror what we love about the Stern show, which is people are brutally honest, including the host. especially the host.
well it worked out because today i picked this guy who was one of my best Informants. the group gets more than 50 posts a day and it is really helpful that 3-4 dudes regularly tell me any time someone says something insane that needs my attention. in a perfect world i would make them all admins, but this system has worked out fine and despite the size (16k) most people respect the rules and are civil.
so i asked him yesterday if he was up to do an AMA and he said whats that? turned out he was perfect. he grew up on Long Island in the 80s; knows everything about the show, the staff, all the minor details, and even knows the comedian guests on the much-maligned Wrap Up Show. works in government in DC. the whole thing was shocking. and then he came out in the middle of the thing.
pop candy strikes again.
then i watched this video of David Ross, the backup catcher for the Cubs in 2016 who was the oldest player on the team so they called him Grampa Rossy.
if you remember, in the World Series, in the final game, on what everyone knew would be his final game of his career because he was retiring, he hit a crucial home run off one of their best pitchers.
the cubs digital team has taken it to higher level this year with their videos because not only is the production good but the interviews, like on this one, lead to some amazing insights.
for example: Grampa Rossy has no business hitting a home run off Andrew Miller on a rainy night in Cleveland,
but through this video we learn all this crazy ass inside baseball stuff that is what i live for
namely:
Rossy and Miller played together in Boston. when you are the catcher and he is the pitcher, you tend to learn things about him if you ever have to hit against him. Ross, like most people, knew that Miller’s money pitch was his slider – a pitch that will trail away from a right handed batter, just out of his reach.
sliders are super hard to hit so you usually just let those go by and wait for him to throw a fastball.
miller had a tell. one that probably only a catcher would know because it may hurt some catcher’s feelings.
when a catcher calls the signs, he’s not asking the pitcher “hey what do you think about a fastball?” he’s telling him “dude, let me call this game. i see what you have going. i study the hell out of these batters. here’s what we should do: fastball.”
if the pitcher disagrees with the call he will shake off the catcher and have him call another pitch. most pitchers only have 2-3 pitches so it’s not that complicated. but if a pitcher shakes off a catcher, generally the catchers don’t like that.
so Grampa Rossy noticed that every time Miller would shake off a pitch it was usually because he wanted to throw a fastball.
there it was, game 7 of the world series. all of his years of being around the league, learning weird quirks, studying batters… it was Grampa’s weird knowledge of his former pitcher that helped him know that when Andrew Miller shook off a sign with one ball and two strikes it was probably gonna be a flaming hot fastball.
and it was, and the Cubs were on their way to winning the world series.
i was all no thank you
am i here to give hope?
and get one of those rooms that has a fireplace next to the tv
if i could go back in time, i would start
i actually got a lot done today
last month i did an Ask Me Anything to get the ball rolling. i knew some of these people disagreed with some of the rules that i had implemented or didn’t like how i did certain things, so i did it to let them grill me on it so that there would be a record of where i stood on things and so maybe they could understand my rationale better. funny thing was, most of them had zero interest in any of that and just wanted to ask good questions. which was fine because that AMA wasnt about me, really, it was to set the table for the weekly AMAs to come.