:: Girlyman Tour Recap ::

Before it recedes too far into the mists of memory, I want to write a little bit about my tour with Girlyman. It was, in a word, wonderful. Five shows in five days, and they were all good. The band has been together for just over 6 years now, and they spent most of that not only playing together, but living together. That has personal consequences if things aren’t always perfect, but it also means that they know each other really well, and that translates into a high level of togetherness on stage, both in the sense of preparedness and in the “we’re all in this together” sense. Adding me had the potential to take them way out of their comfort zone, and it did to a degree, but I think a big part of why they asked me to do this is that I try very hard to be supportive. If I have one musical virtue, it’s that I always try to do what sounds best (to me) for the music I’m playing. In this case, I’m dealing with a band that’s been playing together long enough that the mere addition of another person could be really disruptive, relatively speaking, so I was cognisant of that.

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:: Rainy Days, Mondays, and Cub Days ::

Instead of talking about 9/11/2001, because I think you could go just about anywhere else for better commentary on that, I’ll talk about baseball.

I went to see the Cubs play yesterday with my brother-in-law. I’m not sure how long it had been since I last went, but I think it was at least a year, probably almost two. They won 12-3, which was good, but the game was more interesting than usual for many odd reasons:

• In the inning the Cubs really broke the game open, they hit two home runs (separated by a popout), then three doubles in a row. The doubles were hit by the bottom three hitters in their line-up, usually the weakest hitters, including Ted Lilly, the starting pitcher. Lilly looked like he’d never held a bat before the first time he came up, striking out weakly, but he hit the double like he meant it. It made his first act look like he’d been doing it on purpose. Aramis Ramirez hit one of the homers, and went 4-5 on the day with two homers and two doubles. “A good day at the office,” said the brother-in-law.
• Rick Ankiel, one of the recent players embroiled in a juicing controversy, earned a Golden Sombrero, striking out all four times he came to bat.
• In the third inning, the first two Cardinals batters broke their bats off Lilly’s pitches. I’ve seen this many times before, but not back-to-back.
• People getting hit by stuff: two Cubs batters, one umpire (bat, on a backswing), and one Cardinal hitter (almost, but he took a dive and probably shook himself up a bit) who hit a home run on the next pitch he saw.
• There was a group of five or six blind people a few seats away in the upper deck. It’s good to know that a baseball game is accessible to them.
• Bob Howry needed only six pitches to finish the eighth inning. Michael Wuertz needed many more than that to finish the ninth, but it was still weird. He walked the first two batters, then struck out the next three in a row.
• My brother-in-law has season tickets for home games, as did many others in the same section. One of them was a Cardinals fan. A Cardinals fan with season tickets to the Cubs. Given the rivalry between the two teams (there was a LOT of booing and “YOU SUCK” and other unsuitable-for-print things being said back and forth), this surprised me. I’m not sure if it’s a know-thy-enemy thing, or if he just loves baseball and lives near Wrigley.

So there was a lot of unusual stuff happening (I suppose I should say a Cubs win is one of them, but that’s just mean), and the rain held off so the game could finish.

Not so on the bike ride home. I arrived back soaking wet and very dirty from road crud. I’m pretty sure it was worth it, though.

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