Opening day!

I had the day off from work today. And it's baseball's opening day.

Does it get any better than this!?

I caught the Rangers beating up on the Indians. Then, I watched gleefully as CC Sabathia and Mark Texiera struggled and the Yankeees lost their opener. And now we're watching the Cubs opener in Houston before catching college basketball's national championship game a little later.

Last night I was all over the Philadelphia-Atlanta opener on ESPN. Seeing and hearing Jon Miller and Joe Morgan back in the Sunday Night Baseball booth was music to my ears. Not so happy to see Steve Phillips joining the team this year, though.

Here's some other good reads that caught my eyes as this season gets underway ...

a AP Poll: Ballpark figures are too high, fans say ... It's a travesty that ticket prices -- not to mention concessions, parking and souvenirs -- have risen so high. Then the Yankees go and build a monstrosity like this
a Red Sox Nation has been hit hard by the recession, and the team is feeling the pain as well
a Ace Zambrano Wants Cubs To Abandon Wrigley Field ... From the Are you kidding me!? file.
a Ken Griffey Jr. celebrated his second stint with Seattle by hitting an opening-night home run
a Healthy, Ortiz's drive is to resume status as a power broker
a Two New Baseball Palaces, One Stoic, One Scrappy
a Mets and Yankees Follow Well-Worn Path With New Old Parks
a Voice of Yankee Stadium May Be Done
a Ball-Strike Monitor May Reopen Wounds
a Curt Schilling's somewhat surprising statistical twin
a Answering Baseball’s What-Ifs

Support your local record shops!

Ah, vinyl records ...

I feel so lucky to have a couple really groovy record shops in our parts ... And they look just like some of the shops in this video.

Cheers!

Stand By Me

My friend Laura sent me this today ... It made both of us cry.

Idol chatter

Oh, Megan, Megan, Megan. It was fun while it lasted.

But your performance last night was awful ... Tonight, you were just downright annoying. And what were you thinking, disrespecting Simon!? You never disrespect Simon.

Aside from the usual drawn-out eliminations … Did anyone else notice the flipped image of Megan in the opening montage? Her tattoos were totally on the opposite arm and I caught that one IMmediately … Also, good to see Alexis Grace sitting in the audience. But sitting next to Jason Castro? … Nice of Paula to give the contestants the be-confident-in-who-you-are-and-go-after-it speech. Too bad the judges smash the contestants for actually being themselves. Ahem, Matt Giraud … Loved the group performance of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” Scott MacIntyre at the keyboard and hello, Megan -- where was that stellar vocal for your individual performances!?

After watching Tuesday night’s “American Idol” performances, Kates and I are agreeing …

Adam Lambert is beginning to run away with this thing … We didn’t like him at first, and he’s probably not the type of artist we’d listen to on a regular basis. But each week, he’s managed to come out with stuff that’s far more original and fresh than anything else on the stage. And Simon said as much in his critique.

And you can mark down Kris Allen as the runner-up with the way he’s going. His take on “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone” was a charmer.

As for the rest of them …

They all can go and let's just do the finale next week with Adam and Kris.

Ok, we can throw Danny Gokey in there, too, for good measure. Ok, and Allison, too.

I thought the headline on the EW recap said it all about Tuesday's night show:

“This...is ‘Bizarro Idol’! A night of ‘Top Downloads’ brings us ancient ditties, ridiculous judges’ comments, and a longing for the good ole’ days of season 7”