The Illuminated Donkey

Oh my God. I am fully expecting the sky to rain fire and brimstone any second now.

And on that note, I'm taking the rest of the month off.

How the hell do you people expect me to post stuff with, like, 14 hours of playoff baseball every night? Seriously.

Our Long National Nightmare Is Over.

Earlier today, at approximately 5:15 p.m., a few days short of eight months after being laid off, I was offered, and subsequently accepted, a permanent position of employment with a large, well-known firm located in midtown Manhattan. I am a happy, happy man.

Whew.

What I've Learned From Listening to Eight Hours of Light FM Radio Every Day at Work.

• The Shared Space on the Venn Diagram of Light FM and Classic Rock (heard when I have to go into the accounting room to send faxes or make copies): Prince's "Purple Rain"; Billy Joel's "Piano Man"; most of Fleetwood Mac's Rumors.
• Songs that you think you never really hear enough until you have to hear them two or three times a day, every day: "Band of Gold," "Summer Breeze," and "Let's Stay Together."
• The time Elton John joined George Michael on stage for a surprise duet of "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" was the Light FM equivalent of Woodstock and the Sun Sessions all rolled into one, and as such needs to be honored four times a day.
• By the same token, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack is the Light FM equivalent of Nevermind.
• Inexplicably absent from Light FM: The Fifth Dimension, James Taylor, Air Supply, SImon and Garfunkel.
• There is some wish to listen to Barry White songs even at ten in the morning while hunched over a keyboard, trying to tweak the Excel spreadsheet.
• Cutoff Song for Madonna Light FM Acceptability: Vogue.
• Phil Collins, Lionel Richie, and Hall and Oates are all still apparently still recording new material.
• There are apparently men who would rather have bad times with one particular woman than good times with a different woman. The best thing about being a woman Is the prerogative to have a little fun. High school can be so rough, can be so mean. And a whole lot of other crap.

Anybody whose favorite season isn't Fall has something wrong with them.

Three Interesting Facts About St. Louis Cardinal Outfielder Reggie Sanders: Vote for Your Favorite!

1. Reggie has played for seven different National League teams over the last seven years, a full season with each.
2. He is a harbinger of success: this year's Cardinals are the fifth different team who he has played on in the postseason, tying a record held by five other players.
3. His middle name is Laverne.

Update. After only two days I have been forced to abandon the new key configuration. It turns out that there were several unforeseen complications which far outweighed the advantages. I would like to thank you all for your support during this trying time.

Oh, Yeah. Yesterday was the Third Anniversary of this here blog, but I forgot about it. I was going to put up a post and just backdate it to yesterday, but I decided that would be pretty bootleg. Anyway, here's the same link to a bunch of pictures of monkeys that I posted on October 5, 2001 and on every October 5 since. Until yesterday.

The only thing that can possibly be better than "Common People" by Pulp? Okay, it's probably not the new "Common People" cover sung by William Shatner and Joe Jackson, but it's better than it has any right to be. Listen to it over at VH1.com, at least as of right now.

Proof That Democracy Really Does Work! A few weeks ago I asked you, my loyal readers, to help support longtime Friend-of-the-Donk (and proud new dad!) Sidney Crackstein in his bid to have Mr. Happy Crack elected top local mascot in the St. Louis post-Dispatch poll, or something like that. Frankly, I was drunk for most of September and don't remember half the stuff I did.

But did it work? Well, it couldn't have hurt, since the beloved MHC edged out the Dirt Cheap Chicken to win the coveted crown and receive...well, nothing. Nothing but the cheers of an impressed and flood-free nation.

Of course, an election as contentious as this one was wouldn't be complete without a bit of controversy, as Jeff Daniel of the SLPD reports:

The two-icon race was neck-and-neck, with the Chicken usually maintaining a slight lead. Then came our Florida moment. In a period of 24 hours during the polling, the number of total votes rose from some 2,500 (accumulated over a week's time) to more than 9,000. In the process, Mr. Happy Crack lapped the Chicken and assumed the front-runner position.

Funny how the obviously Chicken-biased Daniel completely discounts any possibility of a sudden groundswell by satisfied foundation-repair-service customers or Jersey-based blog readers. How happy I am that I don't live in Mr. Daniel's bitter little world where even the happiest of news is greeting with sneers and tainted with the whiff of scandal. For shame, Jeff.

While writing the below post I was going to recommend that you all head on over to Whybark's site for his obsessive roundup of MSM links, but I figured it would be construed as commenting. In any event, it's nice to know that even after Mike is buried under 15 feet of volcanic ash that his fine site will still be around to carry on his legacy. Unless the ash buries his server doohickey, too. I'm not really sure how that would work.

Presented without comment:

"Now we can go home and say, 'Hey, we saw a volcano erupting!' This was a good time to come," Patricia Cusic said excitedly at the [Coldwater Ridge visitors] center.

from Crowds Enjoy the Show at Mount St. Helens.

The Start of Something Big? So after almost three years of my current dual-keyring configuration, I've decided to put my car key and remote on the same ring as my garage-door opener, as opposed to the ring with my apartment and mailbox keys. This is a pretty big change for me, and I'm hoping it all goes well.

At the End, There Was Endy. Pinch-hitter Endy Chavez, that is, who grounded out to second base at Shea Stadium yesterday at 4:15 p.m., cementing the Expos' 2943rd and final loss, instantly turning thousands of jersey and hats (most of which seemed to be worn in Shea yesterday) into hot retro items. The team of Dawson, Carter, Raines, Staub, and what seems like the first three seasons of most of the stars in baseball these days was no more.

I was joined at Shea by Mike and Gerard, a pair of baseball fans who are always up for a beautiful afternoon of depressing baseball history. And there was plenty of that on hand yesterday. Besides the main depressing event, the final-ever game for Montreal before next season's move to D.C. (the first franchise shift since the second Washington Senators moved to Texas in 1972), there were a few depressing sidelines:

• It was the final game as Mets manager for Art Howe, who was fired three weeks ago but apparently nobody wanted to tell him to just go home already.
• John Franco, the all-time Mets leader in appearances and saves, made what is almost certainly his final appearance as a Met and possibly the last of his career. Franco was very ineffective this season, and the team has reportedly offered him a job as a coach.
• Todd Zeile, journeyman extraordinaire (he played for 11 different teams in his 15-season career), had announced that he would be retiring following the game. He had gotten some exposure late in the year as Howe played the backup more than usual in a successful push to let Zeile get his 2000th hit.

In the end, it turned out to be a good day for everybody but the Expos. Art Howe's Mets won the game 8-1. John Franco came on in to get the final out in the eighth, inducing a foul pop to Todd Zeile, who was making his first start at catcher in 14 years.

But in the end it was definitely Todd Zeile's day. After being honored by the Mets with a pregame retirement ceremony (and let's be honest: Zeile was a decent hitter who played well for the Mets for their pennant-winning 2000 team, but he ain't exactly Tom Seaver), Zeile supplied a Ted Williams-like moment in the sixth, hitting a three-run homer in what would turn out to be his final at-bat (he came out to bat in the eighth, but was lifted for a pinch-hitter). The homer was Zeile's 253rd, and only Williams (521) and Albert Belle (381) ended their career with a higher-numbered home run. As you can imagine, the crowd went wild.

It was...nice. That's it. Just nice. A nice moment on a nice afternoon, standing and cheering for a decent player ending a decent career, cheering on two crappy teams ending a crappy season (and for one of them, ending a crappy history). We ate popcorn and nachos and ice cream and got our picture taken with Mr. Met and what the hell else do you want in this world?

Went with Little C-Za this weekend to see Wimbledon, which is easily the greatest tennis movie I've ever seen. Well, it's not actually that good -- the tennis footage is exciting if unrealistic, Kirsten Dunst is an annoying slut, and though I like Paul Bettany I can't forgive him for stealing the woman of my dreams -- it's just that other than a couple of television movies, I don't think I've ever seen a tennis movie. So we got this thing.

But speaking of tennis movies, did anybody ever find out just what the heck Alfred Hitchcock had against tennis players? I know it was a different era and tennis was considered much more of a Richie-Rich pastime, but it seems an odd coincidence that the both the man who wants his wife murdered in order to marry a Senator's daughter in Strangers on a Train and the man who plots the perfect murder of his wife in Dial M for Murder are both tennis pros. Maybe early in his career some tennis pro stole one of Hitch's many unattainable blonde dreamgirls?

For God's sake, will 2004 just end already?! I can't believe I have to go through another three months of this shit.