Breaking Benjamin

Here’s a band I stumbled across that sounds pretty good. I will investigate further. The first clip has scenes from the movie Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis, which was made from a comic book series. Apparently Breaking Benjamin did some of the music.
Their music is classified as alternative or post-grunge. Whatever, it sounds good.

I WILL NOT BOW

BLOW ME AWAY

2009 World Series Game 4

Game four showcased a number of bad moves by the Phillies. Bad fielding choices(Chase Utley tried, in the fifth, to go for the double play instead of the sure out too cavalierly. Result: no outs and a run scored later), bad pitching choices(Lidge, who’s not had a good season in relief, gets two easy outs in the ninth, then loses a duel with Damon, followed by fast balls to A-Rod. Result: a tie breaking double), no back-up at third when Damon stole second(result: Damon takes third with no coverage).

The Yankees are now up three games to one. Statistics show that the last eight times the Yankees were up three games to one in the Series, they won eight times. The Phils may win tonight, probably, but likely will lose the sixth game in New York.

Ah well.

2009 NFL Week 8

Another week out of the way. At least the ‘Skins didn’t lose this week. They didn’t play! Hah!

The Panthers rebounded nicely, beating the Cardinals 34-21. They ran the ball hard against the league’s number one pass defense, racking up 185 yards in the first half. De Angelo Williams rushed for 158 yards and Jonathan Stewart 87. Steve Smith ran for 17 and Jake had 7 to add to the total.

Jake played very well, completely opposite from what he’d shown so far. In the pre-game show, they said the Panthers’ new offensive coordinator had had Jake doing things differently all season. Today he was turned loose to do things HIS way. Result: no turnovers.

One bad thing. Jake took a hit to the chest early in the fourth quarter and sat out a series. Moore took over for him, then he returned in the next set of downs. But he only ran a few more series before he was taken out for the rest of the game. A chest injury they say. Throwing passes caused pain(I noticed he never completed a pass after that initial hit). Let’s hope it’s not serious.

Kurt Warner had six turnovers(5 picks and a fumble). On one, Julius Peppers reached up and snagged a short pass, literally jogging just twenty yards to the end zone.

I don’t know what happened with the Jets against the Dolphins. Watching the scores in the box as the game progressed, I saw the Jets trailed through the whole game. Every time the jets got close, they would give up another score. Final score: 30-25.

The big game is tomorrow night. The Saints against the falcons. And next week, it’s the Panthers against the Saints. Have at it, Charles!

2009 World Series Game 3

Game three was home runs night I guess. A-Rod hit one, breaking out of his slump, Matsui and Swisher both added one for the Yankees. On the Phillies side, Werth hit two off of Pettite and Ruiz added one in the ninth inning.

Didn’t help though. The Yankees had eight hits and eight runs. The Phillies only managed six hits and five runs.

The result: the Yankees lead the Series two games to one.

October 2009 Book Round-Up

MY: 166: Heat Wave – Richard Castle(?)

WE: 167: Wolf Moon – Ed Gorman

AD: 168: Gangland”s Doom: The Shadow of The Pulps – Frank Eisgruber, Jr.

WE: 169: Trail of The Hunter – Dudley Dean

WE: 170: The Trailsman: Riverboat Rampage – Jon Sharpe

SF: 171: Ballroom In The Skies – John D. MacDonald

TH: 172: Blood Marks – Bill Crider

MY: 173: The Whispering Master – Frank Gruber

WE: 174: The Trailsman: Riverboat Rampage – Jon Sharpe

TH: 175: Top Ten – Ryne Douglas Pearson

WE: 176 The Last Gunfighter: Sudden Fury – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

MY: 177: The Laughing Fox – Frank Gruber

TH: 178: Quarry In The Middle – Max Allan Collins

AD: 179: Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom – Tim Byrd

AD: 180: The Shadow: The Gray Ghost – Maxwell Grant(Walter Gibson)

October 2009 Movie Round-Up

Between God, The Devil and A Winchester(1968)

Beyond The Law(1968)

The Five Man Army(1969)

Blindman(1971)

Savage Guns(1971)

The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe(1972)

Grayeagle(1977)

The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. in Paperback

The Global Globules Affair – Simon Latter

The Birds of A Feather Affair – Michael Avallone

The Golden Boats of Taradata Affair – Simon Latter

The Cornish Pixie Affair – Peter Leslie

This is a series I’d coveted for a long time. For years I had no idea how to find books from across the ocean. Then the internet came along and made it so much easier for me to find and order them(I also filled out a couple of other series missing books from back in the sixties).

The Global Globules Affair

THRUSH’s plan here is to screw up the world’s monetary system by using a chemical called K.S.R.6. the plot is led by Dr. Karel Karadin. It’s up to April Dancer and her Partner Mark Slate to foil the deal.

The Birds of A Feather affair

This was the first book in the American series.

Mark Slate has been kidnapped by THRUSH and the ransom demand is more than U.N.C.L.E. will pay. April Dancer has to infiltrate THRUSH in order to find Slate before it’s too late.

The Golden Boats of Taradata Affair

The Palaga family, descended from pirates, rules the island of Taradata. Their industry these days is exporting coracles(small bowl shaped boats). Dancer and Slate are investigating the island when they uncover a nasty THRUSH plot to use the common cold as a weapon.

The Cornish Pixie Affair

Peter Leslie also wrote five Man From U.N.C.L.E. novels.

Pixies made of black porphery(a stone material commonly used for counter tops) seems to be in high demand. They are tied in with the murder of a female U.N.C.L.E. agent and April has gone undercover in Cornwall with a circus troupe to find out why the murder was committed.

Naturally she stumbles onto an insidious THRUSH plot.

The Birds of A Feather Affair – Michael Avallone

The Blazing Affair – Michael Avallone

There were two books in the American series. The first was later published as the second in the British series. Same cover photo in a different design.

The Blazing Affair

After escaping a trap in a South African diamond mine, Dancer and Slate are sent to investigate a new organization called TORCH, whose aim is to establish a Fourth Reich. The pair pursue their inquiries from Budapest to Johannesburg in an effort to stop the new Nazis.

2009 World Series Game 2

Game 2 of the series last night was another good one. It didn’t end like I wanted, though, as, being a Dodger supporter, I’m automatically an anti-Yankee fan.

A. J. Burnett of the Yankees did a much better pitching job than anyone had seemed to be willing to give him. The Phillies’ plan was to try to wear him down by taking a lot of pitches, but it back-fired as he kept them constantly in the hole with first pitch strikes(something like the first eleven batters).

Pedro Martinez wasn’t bad, the wily old veteran using all his tricks to hold them off for awhile. A-Rod struck out three more times, something mitigated by Howard striking out four times(something never done by a clean-up hitter in a series game before).

Final score 3-1 Yankees.

Forgotten Books: The Whispering Master – Frank Gruber

My selection this week is a third pick of Frank Gruber’s Johnny Fletcher mystery series. First published in 1956, it is another in the adventures of Johnny and his partner, Sam Cragg, con men and part time detectives.

As usual, Johnny and Sam are on the verge of being thrown out of their hotel room for being behind on the rent. Sam wakes up to find Johnny and his suit gone. Johnny had hocked it to get a few dollars to pay the rent. At the same time, he finds a record lying on the bed, one of aluminum, a master.

Johnny returns home to find the young woman in the room directly across the alley from theirs has been murdered. Sam is complaining because he can’t go out in his underwear and the cops are interested in the pair because they are in the vicinity of another death.

You see it happens to them all to frequently and Johnny has to solve the crime for their own preservation. In order to get Sam out of the hotel room, he has to pull off a most complex check kiting scheme: opening an account with their last funds from the suit hock, getting a few checks and going around buying things with checks, hocking them for as much as they can get, opening more accounts, getting the checks, buying and hocking more, until he has a couple of thousand dollars in checks floating around a number of banks after an initial outlay of only about twenty bucks.You couldn’t pull off a deal like that in these days of computers.

Now he has to come up with some cash to cover all those checks before they can get back to the various banks and put the cops on their trail. First they check out their record master and learn it’s the final recording of an artist recently killed in a plane crash. There are two versions of the same song on the master and on the second they can hear some whispered cursing.

Upon learning that the murdered woman had recently recorded a song for a local recording company, lights go off. Johnny smells money and finagles his way into a meeting with company execs, intimating he has the master. Immediately, he is offered $5,000 in cash.

He holds them off for two reasons: more money and solving the murder of the young woman. Along the way, there is a sister and a fiance of the murder victim who holds a majority interest in the recording company, which is about to file for bankruptcy because of the missing recording.

Everyone of these mysteries I read(only five of sixteen) they seem to get better. I can’t wait to find more and I recommend this one for any crime/mystery fan.

Go Phillies!

I was pleased with the outcome of game one last night. Any time the Yankees lose, it’s a good day. The Phillies, or specifically Cliff Lee, completely dominated New York. Ten strike outs, no walks, Lee looked as relaxed as I’ve ever seen a pitcher in the series. The sportscasters say it might have been the greatest series game pitched in recent memory.

The nonchalant catch of Damon’s pop-up to the mound, the command of all his pitches, the behind the back stab of the line drive(it was surely luck) that he snagged, he was never in any real trouble. He likely would have had a shut-out but for a minor flub by Rollins.

Chase Utley’s two single run homers were icing on the cake.

Can they keep it up? The experts still say the Yankees will win the series. Of course, everybody was picking the American League representative for game one. It didn’t happen.

We’ll see how tonight’s game goes.