baseball videos

somebody's napping and somebody's not.
which seems as good a time as any to post a couple of videos whose subject material feels like a past life almost (but while we're on the topic, did anyone realize what kind of young pitching the Reds bring to the table? they play 81 games a year in the most hitter-friendly NL park not located in Colorado, but Edinson Volquez and Daryl Thompson (in his major league debut) sure enough shut down the Yankees. and Johnny Cueto's doing a good job if Internet updates can be trusted).

first:
Steve Wynn (the Miracle 3, Dream Syndicate) and Scott McCaughey (Minus 5, Young Fresh Fellows and longtime hired gun of R.E.M.), along with Peter Buck (R.E.M., Minus 5) and Linda Pitmon (Miracle 3, Zuzu's Petals), performed as The Baseball Project on Friday's broadcast of the Late Show with David Letterman. album comes out July 8th (when McCaughey and Buck will be in Europe (but not with Chris Stein - see below)).



second (and dare I say most important):
just a little more than a week remains to vote for the incomparable Rowbear Huffman in his quest to journey to New York City to lead the Yankee Stadium crowd in a rousing version of "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" during the 7th inning stretch of this season's All-Star game.
you may vote up to 25 times per e-mail address, and the deadline is June 30 (Rowbear is the handsome, sepia-toned fellow in the submission entitled "Katie Casey Harmonica.").
the top three of these nine semi-finalists wing their way north (assuming all three live south of the Big Apple - Rowbear certainly does) to slug it out towards a final singalong leader, so we've got a good chance here. and not only is 'bear deserving of all good things that come his way, selfishly I'd like to see him up here in my city of residence so please take the time to make your selection one, two or (preferably) twenty-five times.


and finally, one more piece of free reading for the end (or beginning) of the week (depending on how your calendar turns): a long Q and A with Blondie's Chris Stein at villagevoice.com. Blondie plays the Nokia Theatre tonight (and no, no one offered me tickets, but thanks for asking) before heading to all sorts of interesting European and Asian destinations. lots of Cormac McCarthy talk in this one.
sometimes you never know.