This and That

• I love this time of year with baseball. And I love it even more when I'm in school because there is nothing better than having the games on for 9 hours a day, turning the volume down low, and doing my reading while the playoffs go on in the background. How about them Dodgers? Laura, you've gotta be pumped about that. I can't believe how thoroughly they are handling the Cubbies. And I was so bummed about that Angels game the other night. Up until Jason Bay hit that home run I was thinking about all the ways I was going to gloat. Then there was some hope in the eighth when Torii Hunter hit that bloop single, but Vlad being an idiot went for third and got thrown out. So instead of 2 on, 1 out, it was 1 on and 2 out. At that point we were only down one run, too. Heartbreaking. Tonight is a must win. Josh Beckett is pitching game three in Boston, and we've already been swept a couple times in the last few years by this same Red Sox team. It's a must win. BUT! Don't forget. We lost the first game of the Division Series in 2002, so there is definitely reason to still be optimistic. If we blow it tonight though, we're dunfer. Please Please Please don't lose. I promise I will go to a World Series game if we make it that far. You heard it here folks.
• Did you catch the VP debate last night? Palin was awesome. From Powerline this is John's post about it. This is from Beldar over at Hugh Hewitt. Hugh also loved Sarah's performance, but this other commentary is more thorough. The Editors at National Review loved her. And my take...I'm already in with Sarah, so my main concern I guess was how she was coming off to the undecideds. To me she felt authentic, so much more relatable than anyone else in politics. There were a couple times she got pretty fired up, but the best part was that she did it all with a smile. But not the creepy Biden smile. She seemed to have a really great sense of optimism. That's the thing that bothers me so much about the Democrats - they are so embittered. All of their commentary, all of their interviews, their punditry, it's overwhelmingly negative and just plain bitter. She did stumble a couple of times. She launched into platitudes a few too many times, especially in her closing. And I wish she could have implicated the Dem-controlled houses of congress more in the economic crises that we're facing. Liberals are so intent on blaming everything on the Bush administration, but he actually was calling for some more oversight on Fannie and Freddie back in 2003. I wish that we would attack with the same fervor the House as much as they do the Presidency, because they share at least the same level of responsibility, if not more so. Anyway...I think the most telling was the Frank Luntz focus group following the debate:
  
  
  
  
• I was reading Salem's Lot before I went to bed and it was the first time since I was kid that I actually felt spooked while reading a book. I'm only about 60 pages in, but it's so good so far. Okay...I'm going to go through the trouble of transcribing some of it here. I can't do the justice to the setup of the Marsten house, but what's happening here is the main character, Ben, is recounting how as a child he went into this old spooky house as a kid, trying to ingratiate himself with some other kids he liked, and he had to take something back from the house as proof that he did it:
  
  "At the top of the stairs I got all my courage and ran down the hall to that room. My idea was to run in, grab something from there, too, and then get the hell out of there. The door at the end of the hall was closed. I could see it getting closer and closer and I could see that the hinges had settled and the bottom edge was resting on the doorjamb. I could see the doorknob, silvery and a little tarnished in the place where the palms gripped it. When I pulled on it, the bottom edge of the door gave a scream against the wood like a woman in pain. If I had been straight, I think I would have turned around gotten the hell out right then. But I was pumped full of adrenaline, and I grabbed it with both hands and pulled for all I was worth. It flew open. And there was Hubie, hanging from the beam with his body silhouetted against the light from the window."
  
  "Oh, Ben, don't--" she said nervously.
  
  "No, I'm telling you the truth," he insisted. "The truth of what a nine-year-old boy saw and what the man remembers twenty-four years later, anyway. Hubie was hanging there, and his face wasn't black at all. It was green. The eyes were puffed shut. His hands were livid...ghastly. And then he opened his eyes."
  
  And then flash forward...
  
  He lay down and let himself drift. Shortly before sleep took him, he hooked himself up on one elbow, looked past the square shadow of his typewriter and the thin sheaf of manuscript beside it, and out the window. He had asked Eva Miller specifically for this room after looking at several, because it faced the Marsten house directly.
  
  The lights up there were still on.
  
  That night he had the old dream ofr the first time since he had come Jerusalem's Lot, and it had not come with such vividness since those terrible maroon days following Miranda's death in the motorcycle accident. The run up the hallway, the horrible scream of the door as he pulled it open, the dangling figure suddenly opening its hideous puffed eyes, himself turning to the door in the slow, sludgy panic of dreams--
  
  And finding it locked.
  
  I love the detail. I love how he describes the hands as livid. Even reading it now gives me a start. It's so good. Please do something this Halloween season to enliven it for you. Or deaden it. Maybe that would be more appropriate. Mwahahaha!
  
• I miss Heath Ledger. For the record, I was all on board the Heath train before The Dark Knight. I was watching Knight's Tale last night on TV and remembering how much I love that movie. Maybe I'm the only person who does, but I just love that one. And I thought he was awesome in Lords of Doggtown. He's good ladies and gents. Or was. And he peaked in The Dark Knight
• I love Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Jim Carey really sells the insecure and kind of pathetic Joel. The story is so unusual. It's really great.
• Do any of you watch Pushing Daisies? Please do. Amy turned me onto it and I'm so grateful for that.
• I love Minute Maid Fruit Punch. It's like candy to me. I cannot get enough of that 10% fruit juice goodness. I go through a gallon in three days every week.