MUSIC +++ FILM +++ SPORT +++ PHOTO +++ LINK +++ POORLY REASONED POLITICAL OPINION AND STUPID JOKE
Since Brown's been shitcanned already ("already"),
SPRT
The man everyone loves and no one likes is back: Barry Bonds, batting cleanup tonight at a theater near you. There's no question local fans will give him a long, rousing ovation, albeit peppered with boos. One reason you'll never see Bonds as an L. A. Angel (of A.) or New York Yankee is he'd never enjoy the narrow but unshakable measure of unconditional admiration we Bay Area fans provide him.
The man can do no wrong. He's more popular than O.J. Simpson.
One note, however: the Giants themselves don't much seem to want him around. Umpteen straight postseason runs were one thing. But this team has heard all year about how bad they are without Barry and the Barca that they've grown physically sick at the mention -- while proving the beat men right. It became a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Why? Don't much matter. Mostly because the team is old, their manager old and laid-back. No one, with the exception of Omar Vizquel and a couple of young pups incidental to the blueprint, had the fight to drag the team out of its season-long malaise.
Felipe Alou was asked yesterday if the Giants could still make a playoff run, even though Bonds' return finds them in third place, seven games back of the equally depressing Padres with twenty to play. Ever the aged philosopher, Alou responded, "We are making a run. I don't know which way we are running."
The players don't want Bonds back. That's what I'm saying. Like a petulent child, perhaps, who knows he needs discipline. They'll stop resenting him soon, when they see that even in his fattened, immobile state he's good for three more baserunners a night.
But ultimately, local columnist Bruce Jenkins called it late last week, when the Giants snuck to within four games only to drop the next span like hot lead: the Giants aren't in it, and they never were in it -- not for a single day.
And standing 6'3", in his seventh year out of UCLA -- Baron... DAVIS!
POL
A quick P.S., on the heels of this week's Real Time with Bill Maher, adorned with an impressive performance from a bitter, well-armed George Carlin. Only one line of the hour-long show drew spontaneous, rowdy applause; it was Carlin's, a flat statement on the obvious, currupt sham our current "leaders" represent.
The country really is clueing in to the fact that people, as a whole, are being phased out of the govenmental equation. (Kurt Vonnegut, as a guest panelist via satellite, mused that humans have become a blight on the planet, whose immune system is trying to get rid of us, and, without sounding regretful, that it may already be too late.)
There's no longer a real court. No longer a real President. We can do what we want with the constitution, given, as Carlin sites, that a quarter of Americans walking the streets believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Supposing, unlike, say, the Democrats (played by the San Diego Padres), we manage to harness our power, our outrage, our numbers.
A question: In these days, of smart bombs, digital satellite imagery, and, well, the Patriot Act... is revolution possible?
How would it start? Have our founding "fathers" and our current population somehow failed each other, locking us in to a system we don't want and can't shed?
Think about it. Supposing Bush, I don't know, pushes through an amendment ending term limits, and brokers a contract merging Hummer, NexTel, and Homeland Security. Suppsing he bombs San Francisco, Seattle, New York.
How would it start? How would we overcome?
Is there anything we can do?
Don't give me the vote. Give me a gun. Give me numbers.
Is it, indeed, too late?
MR
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
-Abraham Lincoln
