Jimmy Stewart's got nothin' on Dubya

This amuses me.

Philly sports are in a dire situation

Donovan McNabb has now had injuries that have ended his regular season on November 14, 2005, November 17, 2002, and November 19, 2006.

Donovan remains, at this point, my favorite NFL player (I maintain that no player in the entire league can do as much for their team when they are hot as #5 can for the Eagles), but at this point we have to start wondering if injuries are a part of the deal with Donovan, if he's another Eric Lindros.

I, for one, would hate to see McNabb's career in Philadelphia end that way, since he's easily the most gifted football player ever to play in this town (seriously, can you name anybody better? Steve Van Buren?), but at this point, it seems like a legitimate possibility. A torn ACL is 8 to 12 months, so even at the most optimistic, McNabb will be back only barely in time for training camp next year, and at worst he could come back a year from now, more than halfway through the 2007 season.

McNabb turns 30 next Saturday, and will be almost 31 by the time of his return next year. With the relatively short shelf life of NFL players, it's not out of place to ask if the best of the McNabb/Reid era has passed, and if it's not time to rebuild around a new quarterback.

At this point, I feel ridiculous pondering such questions, but if/when Donovan McNabb gets hurt again, it won't be such an easy question to shrug off. I can only hope at this point that he comes back in MVP form, as he has before, but I'll be holding my breath for all of next year. I'm probably as big a fan of Donovan McNabb as anybody around, save maybe Sam and Wilma McNabb, but if Donovan is a lost cause, it's time to let go. Only time will tell, I suppose.

INSULT TO INJURY: The Cubs seem to be on the verge of signing Alfonso Soriano, apple of the Phillies' eye, for 8 years and $136 million. This will likely mean the Phillies will be stuck with Pat Burrell in left field for at least another season, and their big right-handed protection for Ryan Howard (who may be the NL MVP, which we will find out later today) will be some combination of Burell, Jeff Conine, and Wes Helms. Ugh. Was it seriously a few days ago that we were talking about the Phillies being legitimate World Series contenders?

Here are our prospects for our other teams: the 76ers have an aging superstar (Allen Iverson), a rising star (Andre Iguodala), and an unhappy role player (Chris Webber), and don't seem to figure as more than a .500/first round playoff team, and the Flyers are as awful as they've looked in 15 years, with Peter Forsberg, the best player in the world, almost certain to be gone by the end of the year. Ugh. The Phillies are actually our best hope. God help us.

Joanna Newsom/Van Dyke Parks

I hardly need to add to the avalanche of lavish praise heaped upon the new Joanna Newsom album, Ys. I am also going to be the first person to write about it without explaining how to pronounce the album's title.

To keep things a bit brief, I too think it's fantastic. It's one of those rare albums that absolutely blew me away the first time I heard it, and is only getting better with subsequent listens. The links above will provide a good enough summary of the album and its greatness, so I'm not going to spend too much time describing the sound. The songs themselves unfold like a book, and contain a small book's worth of lyrics that will have me and everybody else analyzing months from now.

However, I think for me, what may push it over from "very good" to "fantastic" are the string arrangements by none other than my old pal Van Dyke Parks. As a card-carrying member of Parks' small but feverish cult (ok, I don't literally carry a card), I'm always happy to see Van Dyke turn up anywhere. In fact, I just recently watched a pair of Beach Boys documentaries that feature some interviews with the always-interesting half-hippie-half-beatnik (which I was actually planning on writing about in this space).

Of course, Ys isn't the first time Parks has made significant contributions to somebody else's amazing album, but he's put out a couple of classics himself. His debut, Song Cycle, features a lot of the idiosyncratic orchestral swirls that frequently grace Ys. And where did he go from there? A whole album of calypso music titled Discover America in 1972. Considering 1984's Jump and 1998's live album, Parks seems to resurface with a great album once a decade. Maybe he's getting warmed up for something with Ys. If not, I can still enjoy the rambling brilliance of that album.

Election notes:

8:46 - Here's what I'm looking at on CNN right now in the New Jersey Senate race:

Kean: 52%
Menendez: 47%

Projected winner: Menendez

Say what? Lou Dobbs ran through some vague explanation about exit polls and the demographic makeup of the counted precincts, and why that means Menendez has won already, but still... isn't this how all the networks made fools of themselves in 2000?

CNN has some very weird broadcast quirks. Why didn't they give Anderson Cooper a desk? He has to walk around awkwardly asking panelists questions, and while they answer he has to stand on the other side of their one long desk like he's Richard Dawson or something. And what's with the handheld camera work? They ran out of dollies or something? It looks unprofessional and weird.

Casey and Rendell have both been projected winners. Hallelujah.

More later, probably.

DECISION 2006! (semi-ironic title)

Believe it or not, I have been looking forward to this day for almost two years. I tried to find the blog entry that would prove it, but it was written long before I started this thing, and I'm not diving back into that xanga hellhole. But I distinctly remember writing something like "in only 20 months Pennsylvania will have the chance to rid itself of Rick Santorum."

So here we are. I voted earlier today, and am now sitting back, eagerly awaiting results from across the country. Will Webb and Menendez pull it out in Virginia and New Jersey? Will Democrats actually win House seats in districts in Idaho that are 70% Republican?

Bob Casey's lead over Santorum here in PA has looked fairly safe all along, and Ed Rendell is probably going to win over Lynn "Vote for me, I played football!" Swann in a landslide, but I still have my fingers crossed.

Anyway, I want to be one of those pious types who encourage everybody to Participate in Democracy and Be a Good Citizen and all that, but let's face it: if you're going to vote for Santorum, I'd honestly rather you stay home. I'm not that pure with my motives. And it's getting late in the day anyway.

I'll be back tomorrow with more thoughts.

Vote Casey.

I like indie music as much as (or more than) the next guy. It probably makes up half of what I listen to, the other half being any and all music recorded before 1975.

But here's the thing. There's a lot of really bad indie music. The ratio of bad to good indie music is probably much higher than the ratio of bad to good major label music. And regardless of the music, the indie "scene" (whatever that means, I'm not even sure what I'm trying to describe now) has inspired some questionable choices. Moustaches, men in women's jeans, and any other number of things that may or may not be ironic, if only anybody could tell.

Which leads me to this:



























Basically, I can't think of any conceivable reason for that to exist, and it was so mystifying that I just had to share it with everybody.

Here's the thing.

I am currently angry because I wrote a big long thing about baseball and some other things, and it has apparently disappeared. Arg.