OK, so there will be plenty written on the Red Sox and the Curse and congratulations to Red Sox Nation and all that… but can I bring up Tony LaRussa?

How many times can this guy lose the World Series in ignominious fashion? He has the one ring from ’89, but that was sandwiched by a 4-1 series loss to the inferior Dodgers and another sweep by a lesser Reds team. Now he’s been swept again! I don’t think he’s made any critical managerial errors, but at the same time his teams have barely shown up at all. Is he too tactical to be inspiring? I have no idea. It’s totally weird.

The sweep was a pretty lackluster finish to a pretty spectacular baseball season. The ALCS in particular was about as good as baseball gets. Also note: the Red Sox under Theo Epstein are the first Moneyball-style World Champion. Hopefully the Cubs will win soon so they can quit whining too.

Oh, and go Dodgers.

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I think this sign single handedly reversed the curse and started the greatest choke of all time. (via lockhartsteel)

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In case anyone ever accuses me of being too crazy about Sleater-Kinney, I want you to point you to this, a set of theses about S-K and how they reflect Marxist theory.

As a Sleater-Kinney fan with a sociology degree that spent some time working on the college feminist newsmagazine, I probably get more of a kick out of this than the average dude. If I had to do a paper, I’d probably go with #4 (Compare and Contrast w/Liz Phair!) or #9 (the Fortunate Son thesis!).

I’d probably get a B-minus. Because, christ, I was always getting B minuses.

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Out at 3-1 against the best team in the league. It’s disappointing, but I can live with that.

Even with the early playoff exit, this has been the most fun I’ve had following the Dodgers since the championship season in 1988, the season that basically made me a baseball fan. It didn’t end up with a World Series win, but this team had that same kind of magic.

It was really the first Dodger squad in a long time that actually had players that seemed to enjoy the game. Los Angeles has been saddled with a series of surly superstars, including Piazza, Sheffield and Brown. Shawn Green is still in that mold, but now he’s surrounded by guys like Lima and Werth who actually show emotion and give fans something human to hang on to.

Attitude aside, this was a team that got it done, including the best closer in the MLB, the best defensive Dodger team I’ve ever seen and a guy that put up an MVP caliber season while hobbling on a bad ankle for 162 games. 53 comeback wins. 26 in the last at-bat. It’s a team you couldn’t help but love if you followed them on an everyday basis. I’m always a Dodger fan, but they earned that loyalty this year.

… and now I get to put on my Red Sox hat and watch the rest of the playoffs.

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They may seem like a ragtag bunch of old dudes, but christ, the Hot Snakes were brutal last Saturday night at the Troubadour, absolutely pounding the crowd for an hour with their relentlessly throbbing rock. With “Audit In Progress,” the Snakes are officially on their third record, but they are driven by legendary Jehu veterans Rick Froberg and John Reis. Rounding out the band are bassist Gar Wood and spankin’ new drummer Mario Rubalcabal. You can tell just by the hairstyles that this is a veteran band, with only Rubalcabal’s indie-afro recalling anything from this millenium while Froberg and Wood sport middle-management do’s and Reis rolls with a slick rockabilly style. It’s a wild bunch.

But who cares about the fashion report? From the first note of “Retrofit” on, it is nothing but a bonecrushing rhythm section and solid wall of guitar churn. Froberg’s more of a screamer than a singer, clawing away with a desperate edge as he tries not to drown in the noise. If people think too many bands are rocking the Pixies’ quiet verse/loud chorus, they might want to give the Snakes’ structure of loud intro/SCREAM/loud verse/louder chorus/SCREAM a shot. You could argue it gets a bit repetitive, but the effect is so visceral it is undeniable.

The song selection was a fair sampling of all three albums, without any particular focus on the newest “Audit in Progress.” The blasts of “10th Planet” and the vaguely Whoish “Past Lives” repped their “Automatic Midnight” the best, while “Suicide Invoice” contributed all my favorite Hot Snakes tunes, including “Unlisted,” “LAX” and the string bending groove of “I Hate The Kids.” I got no shout out before that song, by the way, but that’s OK, because I’m not nearly cool enough to use that title anyway. Oddly, the encore started with my favorite new song, “This Mystic Decade,” and ended with my absolute least favorite, “Think About Carbs,” a screamalong about diet and conditioning.

I’m generally all about melody and hooks, but every now and then you want someone that throws down. The Hot Snakes fucking throw down.

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Now that the Dodgers vs. Cardinals is a reality, it’s only natural that Axel (Cards fan) and I have a friendly wager on the results. At first it was going to be money, but we decided that betting baseball caps was bit more apropos. So if I win he has to buy a Dodgers hat for me. If the Cards win, I’m going to get him this hat:

If the Dodgers win, he will probably exact revenge by trying to get me this hat:

(ok, the prizes are just going to be the official hats, but I really felt the need to expose how bad baseball merch is getting these days)

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Full disclosure: I wasn’t that excited about the Pixies reunion. I’m probably a medium sized Pixies fan, owning all their records but not lovingly caressing them on a daily basis. There was just something about the way the tour was put together and announced that never made it seem an essential experience. It was a cash-in reunion for a nostalgic audience wanting one more chance and a small percentage of new hipster fans weaned on the Pixies’ descendants looking for their first time. I’m inbetween, old enough to be familiar but never seeing them live the first time ’round. Given that, I figured one shot would be worth it, even if it was the Pixies in their Fat Elvis mode.

I went to the 2nd night, so the band had already made their triumphant return to Los Angeles just 24 hours earlier. Selling out the Greek isn’t an easy task, but 8,000 strong showed up anyway. It was a weird crowd, with a lot of old guys in too-tight t-shirts and skunk haired girls dressed like Pat Benatar, but all of them had that same glazed over look of anticipation. The vibe to the whole affair was very classic rock, particularly the older accountant types sneaking puffs on their joints like they hadn’t done it in years, and wouldn’t do so at all any other time this year.

After obligatory sets from Grant Lee Phillips and the Thrills, the Pixies came onto the stage with little onstage fanfare but a huge reaction. It started with “In Heaven” and then it never really seemed to stop. One thing about the Pixies was that they weren’t much for the talking, just the playing, and the songs kept coming and coming. “In Heaven” was a light intro, but “Where Is My Mind” and “Hear Comes Your Man” got the crowd singing along.

The setlist was pretty varied, but there was a four or five song stretch that ran from “River Euphrates” to “Crackity Jones” that killed the momentum. Songs like “Cactus” and “I Bleed” are fine, but running all of these spacy grinds back to back meant about 15 minutes of meandering. The show ramped up again with hits like “Debaser” and “Gouge Away” before closing out with “Vamos.” The band never actually left the stage before the encore, just standing at the edge waving to people before finally finishing off the whole deal with the surf version of “Wave of Mutilation” and finally “Gigantic,” the warmest hug of a song the Pixies ever penned. 30 songs with nary a pause and it was done.

The band sounded pretty good, but it lacked any sort of fire or any real tension. They weren’t nearly as sloppy as the early live shows I heard, but Kim Deal remains playing off in her own world much of the time. This didn’t hurt too much though, as Frank Black’s trademark howls and yelps were all dead-on, and Joey Santiago and David Lovering were rock solid. Curiously, it looked like Lovering was going to disappear into the results of an overzealous fog machine. Someone might want to turn that down. For those keeping track, Santiago is the one that looks the least Fat Elvis.

For me, it wasn’t life changing, but it was fun. For everyone else, it was the second coming. Hey, I’m not about to try and take that away from them.

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