Comic of the Day #1 – May 19, 2016

Dilbert – Wally The Thought Leader

http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-05-19

Serendipity #60

Out Of My League – Fitz & The Tantrums

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4mbxaa3XL8

 

Heard 5/20/2016 around 12:20, at Wegman’s (Germantown)

Shuffle #84 (May 20, 2016)

You’re The Best Thing – The Style Council

American Music – The Blasters

Believe In Humanity – Carole King

Island Girl – Elton John

People Are Strange – The Doors

No Particular Place To Go – Chuck Berry

Wendy – The Beach Boys

Train In Vain – The Clash

Canadian Idiot – “Weird Al” Yankovic

Against The Wind – Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band

I’ve Been Loving You Too Long – Otis Redding

#119 Love’s In Need Of Love Today – Stevie Wonder (1976)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k3pYwFlr_I

 

I’m really sorry this one fell through the cracks when I was putting together my original list of 100 favorite songs, as it probably would have made the top 25 at least. It was a great song when it came out, and I did hear it a few times, but it wasn’t on the 4-disk Stevie Wonder box set I picked up at one point, and I didn’t buy the Songs In The Key Of Life album until a month or two before I went to his concert at Verizon Center in November 2014.

 

It was still a great song in 2001, when Stevie performed it with Take 6 as the second song in the America: A Tribute To Heroes benefit concert, which aired live on all of the major broadcast and cable networks 10 days after 9/11. It ranks as one of the two high points of the show, along with Bruce Springsteen’s transcendent performance of “My City Of Ruins”, which opened the concert.

 

And given the state of the world in 2016, it remains equally great and unsettlingly relevant today. One can only hope that it becomes an important theme in the remainder of this year’s Presidential campaign.

May 15, 2016 – Marlins 5, Nationals 1 – Nationals Park

http://m.nationals.mlb.com/news/article/178279854/stanton-fernandez-marlins-beat-nationals

 

Attendance: 36,786

Game Time: 3:03

Weather: 59 degrees, partly cloudy

Wind: 21 mph

Umpires: Home Plate - Alfonso Marquez, First Base - Chris Guccione, Second Base - David Rackley, Third Base - Larry Vanover

Seventh-inning stretch song: What I Like About You – The Romantics

 

Highlights – sun was out (!) … not as cold and windy as expected (at least not in our section) … less traffic than usual going down the GW Parkway (probably because I left at 10:45) … ran into the senior member of the Schroeder clan while walking around the concourse … Nats did score a run on Ryan Zimmerman’s inside-the-park homer (Ozuna and Stanton tripped each other up trying for the catch, but fortunately both stayed in the game)

 

Other – Marlins got one more run than they needed in the third, when Stephen Drew lost a routine two-out popup in the sun … added 3 more in the sixth on a solo homer by Stanton and a bases-loaded single by Jose Fernandez (who fanned 11 in his 7 innings of work) … Nats threatened off the Miami bullpen in the 8^th and 9^th but failed to score

May 11, 2016 – Nationals 3, Tigers 2 – Nationals Park

http://m.nationals.mlb.com/news/article/177612626/max-scherzer-ties-mark-with-20-strikeouts

 

Attendance: 35,695

Game Time 2:38

Weather: 61 degrees, cloudy

Wind: 4 mph

Umpires: Home Plate - Bill Miller, First Base - Pat Hoberg, Second Base - Brian Knight, Third Base - Todd Tichenor

Seventh-inning stretch song: Let’s Dance – David Bowie

 

KK KKK KKK    K KK KK    KK KKK KK

 

With a big weeknight crowd on hand, this one was billed as a classic pitcher’s duel between former Nat Jordan Zimmermann and former Tiger Max Scherzer, who weren’t exactly traded for each other but changed teams via free agency in successive off-seasons. While Zimmermann pitched well, the night clearly belonged to Max, who tied the all-time major league record for strikeouts in a 9-inning game with 20.

 

The game was close throughout. The Nats struck first in the bottom of the first on a Rendon double followed by Harper and Murphy singles. Detroit tied it when Jose Iglesias led off the top of the third with a home run – one of only 3 of the first 12 Detroit batters who did not strike out. Murphy drove in Rendon again in the bottom of the sixth to restore the Nats’ one-run lead, by which point Scherzer had fanned 13.

 

Detroit finally got Max into some hot water in the top of the seventh, getting runners into scoring position for the first time in the game on a one-out Victor Martinez single and Justin Upton double. Scherzer responded by striking out McCann and Gose to maintain the Nats lead. After the stretch, Espinosa homered for the Nats to provide an insurance run.

 

With the crowd roaring, Max retired all 3 Detroit batters in the 8^th on called third strikes, bringing his total for the game to 18. Dusty had Papelbon warming up in the bottom of the inning, but avoided a crowd mutiny by sending Scherzer out for the ninth. Things got interesting when J.D. Martinez led off with a homer to cut the lead to one, and (following a strikeout of Miguel Cabrera) Victor Martinez singled to put the tying run on base. Max finished things off by fanning Justin Upton to tie the record, then recording the final out on a ground ball to notch the win.

 

Getting there, however, was definitely not half the fun. We left Westat shortly after 4:30 and encountered our worst traffic ever on the GW Parkway, not getting parked and to the game until shortly before the opening pitch. We thus missed out on the Bryce Harper MVP Bobblehead giveaway, but the historic ballgame (and the relatively warm and surprisingly rain-free evening) more than made up for it.

#118 Long May You Run – The Stills-Young Band (1976)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIk1O8l2czk

 

I’m not normally that big on car songs, but this one is a classic, and is for me the best thing that Neil Young has ever written (and there’s certainly some stiff competition).

#117 Put Your Records On – Corinne Bailey Rae (2006)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr01oIrRVu8

 

Although this one still shows up on WXPN (and on whatever SiriusXM channel my dentist had on yesterday afternoon), I was a little shocked to find out that it actually made the Billboard Hot 100 ten years ago, peaking at a modest #64 but hanging around for 19 weeks. The perfect slow groove for a sunny spring or summer day, this song is to the year 2006 what War’s “All Day Music” was to 1971.

#116 I Do – The Marvelows (1965)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY9FyR-vUFI

 

Irresistibly infectious, this is undoubtedly the greatest Chicago soul record of the 1960s that wasn’t written by Curtis Mayfield. (The J. Geils remake released in 1982 isn’t bad either.)

Marti Jones & Don Dixon – Kentlands Arts Barn (Gaithersburg), 4/30/2016

Row 5, Seat 6 (center, about midway back)

 

Sublime 100-minute performance by the 1980s WHFS mainstays in an intimate environment: 10 or 11 rows in the theater with 9-10 seats per row – sort of like a house concert if the house had a theater in the top level. Highlights included “The Night That Otis Died” as the second song (followed by Otis’s own “These Arms Of Mine”), three tracks from Jones’s recent You’re Not The Bossa Me (including the hilarious “Keep It To Yourself”), and some of Marti’s classic radio “hits”, such as “Tourist Town” and “Any Kind Of Lie”. They closed the main set with “Follow You All Over The World” and encored with Dixon’s “I Can Hear The River” (since they referred to the theater as “the best place for music on this side of the river”). Having been married for 28 years, the couple’s between-songs banter also added a lot to the experience; I now know, for instance, that her daughter and her boyfriend live with the two of them and raise snakes.

 

Local singer David Kitchen opened with a 35-minute set, which I might have enjoyed more had his vigorous guitar strumming not overwhelmed both his vocals and the excellent lead guitar work of accompanist Anthony Pirog.