On Beards and Baseball

Three things...
1.) Umfm has put out their latest addition of "Air Times" which features my article on legendary indie-rockers Built to Spill, reviews of both the new Caribou and Grand Analog albums (the latter being especially sweet to the ears), and so much more. You can find "Air Times" at numerous locations around the city, such as Music Trader, Movie Village, or Into the Music. It's a great new paper and hits where Uptown tends to miss (ie. solid local content).

2.) Speaking of Indie big-wigs, Modest Mouse is about to announce a show at the Burton Cummings theater along with Man Man and Love as Laughter. While I'm not the biggest fan of Modest Mouse's new material, I absolutely loved their show at the U of M back in 2003, and look forward to what they bring this time around. It helps that they have one of the more exciting live acts currently performing in Man Man opening up for them. I had the joy of seeing them last year outside on a hot summers day in Chicago and quite enjoyed myself. Their Tom Waits meets Chinese Opera pop tunes is always a joy to experience. Keep your eyes open for that one.

3.) Someone recently left the always classy and informative comment 'f@#k off goof' on an old post of mine. As I was going through other older posts to see if there were more, I stumbled across my 2007 MLB predictions and have to brag a little bit about how right I currently am (which rarely if ever happens). While I seemed to have forgotten that the Baltimore Orioles existed my predictions went like this...
AL East
1.) NY Yankees
2.) Toronto Blue Jays
3.) Boston Red Sox
4.) Baltimore Orioles
5.) TB Devil Rays

AL Central
1.) Cleveland Indians
2.) Detroit Tigers (wins the wild card)
3.) Minnesota Twins
4.) Chicago White Sox
5.) KC Royals

AL West
1.) LA Angeles
2.) Oakland Atheletics
3.) Seattle Mariners
4.) Texas Rangers

AL MVP: Vladi Guerrero

NL East
1.) NY Mets
2.) Philadelphia Phillies
3.) Atlanta Braves
4.) Florida Marlins
5.) Washington Nationals

NL Central
1.) Chicago Cubs
2.) St. Louis Cardinals (wins wild card)
3.) Milwaukee Brewers
4.) Houston Astros
5.) Cincinnati Reds

NL West
1.) Arizona Diamondbacks
2.) Los Angeles Dodgers
3.) San Diego Padres
4.) Colorado Rockies
5.) SF Giants

NL MVP: Ryan Howard
Cy Young: Carlos Zambrano

With 7 games left I have the AL Central and NL East dead on. Of my six first place picks 5 are currently in 1st (with the Yankees only 1.5 games behind The Bo-Sox). Detroit is 5 games back of the wildcard (doable, but unlikely), although the Cards are already eliminated. Carlos Zambrano is a dark horse to win the CY Young but is apparently on the ballots and has 17 wins which ain't too shabby. Both my MVP picks are unlike, Howard was injured for a good chunk of the season, and Vladi is currently hitting .323 with 26 home runs which is good, but not Ordonez or A-Rod good. Considering I hardly watched baseball last year and did minimal if any reading during the off season I have to say this is pretty sweet. Now it's just a matter of the Cubbies getting into the post-season which looks pretty likely!