SwampLog 3.0

22 July 2005 Is Up

Amigo Chance Munsterman busts out blues with a twist, and Devin holds down the fort while Marty works that jet set thang. Music from Missy Elliot, Machines of Loving Grace, Tears for Fears and a whole lot more. Get up and shake it!

Subscribe to the podcast by using this RSS link right chere, or grab the 28 MB MP3 file by right-clickin' and savin'. Odeo? Oh-eee-oh-eee-oh. The full playlist for this week sits right about here.

Overheard

M: Hey, my armpits smell like tacos.

Typing In My Sleep

It's on. Again.

On August 6th, or in a little less than three weeks, I'll be joining several hundred bloggers from around the world in Blogathon 2005. This year, I'll be blogging for the Fort Worth chapter of the American Cancer Society.

As you know, I'm a cancer survivor. After my diagnosis, the ACS was a godsend -- they helped me to better understand the type of cancer I had, and what the effects of the possible treatments would be, both in the short- and long-term. I'm hoping this, in some small way, will even out the karmic ledger.

This will be my second Blogathon -- the stuff I did for the 2003 marathon is still online, and it had a great hook for me. My challenge was to write a novella during the event, with a new chapter every hour. I don't think I'll be going the same route this year, and I have to come up with a good "hook" to get people to donate.

And that's where you come in. I'm whoring myself out, and you're all my johns.

Click here to make a pledge for my efforts. All of the donations will be handled by the ACS web site, but youse guys need to make your pledges to my little campaign prior to the start of the 'thon.

And here's the incentive to pledge: the person who makes the highest single pledge donation gets to program a whole hour of DAMradio on Friday, August 26. That means that Katy could turn it into DAMradioMargaritaville; Mike G could program a whole hour of sad trucker music; Rachelle could finally have the Tori Hour.

So, make with the pledgy love. I'll have the link to the '05 Thon page when I set it up next week.

'Cast Your Fate To The Wind

Developing podcasts might become a bit of a side hobby.

Back in November, I learned how to write (or, more accurately, steal) RSS code that allows podcasts to happen in the first place. In time, I figured out how to make them sound good without having the crippling file sizes that riddled the first hours of DAMradio.

Since then, I've been engineering the P1 Wild Ass Circus podcast, a nightly highlight of the best segment the show aires. That was the first show on the Ticket to run a podcast, and from what I've heard it's garnering some notice around the station.

On top of that, Chance (the Amigo who questions his stature in the tribe) wants to do a podcast of his own, and he's got some really great ideas on what he wants to accomplish with it. It'll be a bit of a stretch, but I think he'll have the best one I've worked on so far.

He's going to be sitting in on this week's episode of DAMradio. His homework assignment is to come up with three songs, and knowing Chance like I do, I know they'll all be amazing.

Major-League Relief Sigh In 3... 2... 1...

I got the job.

It's a tech support job, working with bank branches' desktop computers and printers. I'll be driving out to various and wide-ranging locations whenever they have issues.

This means that, barring City Streets matching my salary, I'll be leaving the realm of nightclubs for the final time (although: never say never again) after Saturday's shift. Not a moment too soon, I might add.

So, thanks for all the kind words off the air, and mayhaps we should all plan on Saturday night at the Blue Monkey...

Damned Intar-Web!

The current hour of DAMradio features Classic & 86, with a song that runs over the end credits of 'Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle.' "Ridin'" is an amazing song, and I have to hear it before I go to work to put me in a better mood.

There is NO mention of Classic & 86 anywhere other than the notes for 'Harold & Kumar.' NONE.

UBL.com doesn't have anything on them. Amazon doesn't carry any of their music. iTunes Music Store doesn't list them. And a Google search only has message board traffic asking the same question we are -- "Who the foosh is Classic & 86?"

What good is the Web if it doesn't have the information I need?

If any of you can shed some light on this group, I'll come up with a commensurate reward. because it's making both Marty and me crazy. [Yes, crazier than we already are. Shut up.]

Another Park, Another Sunday

Last week at this time, I was in the midst of one of the best baseball days I'll ever have. [Wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Here goes!]

Working with Jamey Newberg on the yearly Bound Edition of his Rangers newsletter has more than a few perks. The biggest one, of course, is that the work allows me to make my own (albeit miniscule) contribution to the game of baseball. Once work starts on the book, the baseball season is over and most people's attention is turned to football, hockey and basketball. But my extended season gets fired up in October when Jamey starts to send me edited files for layout.

Being the masochist I am, I purely love to work on this book. No, I don't get paid for my work, and I really don't want to be. The payment comes when people find out who I am in the Newberg Report community and tell me that they appreciate what I've done with the Bound Edition.

For the second year in a row, the Rangers hook up with Jamey to give that community a chance to get together at a game in style. The team hooks Jamey up with suites at a drastically reduced rate, and brings in several people from the organization to have a little conversation about the local heroes. Other people, like Baseball Prospectus genius Will Carroll, come in and are ready and waiting to get beaten down about the farm systems of other teams and other minutiae of the game.

Bear in mind that there are over 140 people who attend this yearly, and they all love the game with a fiery-hot passion. The vibe at one of these get-togethers is fantastic. The theatre where the Q&A sessions was held was awash with it. (And I missed Will Carroll's opening session. Pissed about that. Maybe I'll e-mail him and whip him that way.)

I'm saying this now, and I know it'll come under scrutiny. Don't care. You can not ask for a better thing, as a sports fan, than to have a front office rep like Rangers Assistant GM Jon Daniels come in and have questions fired at him for an hour. No question was off limits (though he couldn't fully answer some pending player questions) but he didn't back down from the tough queries. That meant there were quite a few cannonballs about Ryan Drese and Kenny Rogers, and JD took every one and kept going. I've had several long-standing doubts about how his superiors do business, but Daniels is a credit to the Rangers organization and the sport needs more people like him making decisions.

Then Jim Sundberg steps up to the mic.

When I was growing up in North Texas in the '70s, Sundberg was the face of the organization. When I signed up for my Jr. Rangers Fan Club membership, Sunny was the person who signed my card. (Well, it looked like his signature, even though it was printed. Care.) When the current regime brought him in to the front office, I was pleased to see another link to my childhood. He's a fantastic speaker, and the tale he told of his Wrigley Field grand slam as a pinch hitter was a real treat.

Afterwards, we head up to our suites. My friends are there -- Marty, Jamey, Gary Adornato, Eleanor Czajka. Will Carroll's there, as is Bob Sturm from the Ticket. Jon Daniels shows up once the game starts. Other NR luminaries like Rob Cook are there as well. And we're all digging the day. They're honoring Rusty Greer for his career with the Rangers, and it's a travesty that the park is only half-full for this day.

We watch the game, get caught up with each other. Gary tells me about his daughter's upcoming trip to D.C.; Jamey fills me in with tales of his kids, Erica and Max. Eleanor tells Marty & me about the best trip to Boston you could ask for. Bob and I muse about the mystique of backup catchers. Marty and I regale people with our tales from Chicago and Wrigley Field. And the Rangers complete a sweep of the Toronto Blue Jays -- not without some chest-clutching from me when Francisco Cordero decided on his own to make the game interesting in the ninth inning.

Around the seventh inning, I look over at Marty and we're both grinning like idiots. It's unspoken. Days like this are why baseball will never have an equal, in our minds or anyone else who was there for Newberg Report Day. You talk about the game, and your lives, in the spaces in between pitches. There may be more "action" in the other big three professional sports (and it's so good to include hockey in that list again). That's fine and all, but give me three hours with my friends at a baseball game instead of just about anything else and I'll be a happier person for it.

Right Time, Right Place

I have a meeting in three hours that will have a very high impact on the next move I'll make in my life. It's one of those occasions that makes the skin on the back of my neck itch -- usually a high-portent kind of vibe. So, where is this meeting going to be held?

Freebirds.

I'll let you fill in the blanks.

Unacceptable!

I just heard the following phone message:

"Due to illness, Dickie's Late Nite Pizza Joint" will be indefinitely closed. Thanks for your understanding."

What the foosh is this?!?

Dickie's is / was simply the best delivered pizza I've had in the better part of two decades. The fact that they were open -- and delivered -- until 3:00 am on weekends didn't hurt things, either.

...and now it's gone? I'm gonna mope. For quite a while. And be hungry.

Zip It

So, I blew up at work Saturday night. Massively. Colossally. I didn't go completely postal, but had I stayed there a minute longer, I might be trying to phone this post in from Tarrant County's jail.

And I can't really go into the details why in public. With the workplace crackdown on blogs, it's more prudent to self-censor than it is to vent my spleen. I have no idea who reads this, but it's no secret that I keep this journal, and am pretty outspoken on it.

Things are smoother now, and I'm exploring my options. All I know is that I need to figure out what a 36-year-old person is doing wearing Hawaiian shirts on stage and telling people to applaud for bad singers.