Iran's getting to be a fun place, eh?

It's pretty cool to see all of the activity in Iran. Given they've been labeled one of the top "Evil Places in the World" for so long, it's interesting to see the stereotypes challenged by huge throngs of people using modern technology to try to modernize their society politically.

Are those in charge reinforcing some of the negative stereotypes? Sure. But like China and Iraq, we're clearly seeing that the people of a nation do not all conform to a single political or cultural type. It's always been humorous to me that, despite the diversity in America, we so often assume all the people of another nation are essentially clones.

So if you're checking things out and you want to get a better context for what's going on, here's a good primer.

Song of the Day: Walk Don't Run

Bob Bogle, guitarist and founder of the band, The Ventures, died at the age of 75. The Ventures had two notable hits: Walk Don't Run and the theme from the TV show Hawaii Five-O.

They were one of the pioneers of the surf music trend and are members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.


Ok, ok, here's the Hawaii Five-O theme, too, which some consider the greatest TV theme song of all time.

95

The Red Sox magic number to clinch the American League East Division title is 95.

Red Sox not interested in making NESN a decent channel

I'm giving up hope that NESN will ever be a decent channel. Though I have hoped they would take advantage of the TV "genius" Tom Werner and create some compelling programming, they have officially announced their lack of interest in doing that. The unofficial word had come in long ago.

There will be tremendous Red Sox content available...on Comcast's On Demand section. No doubt for a nominal fee.

Red Sox "Sales and Marketing" guy is quoted as saying: "...we think it s a benefit to all of our fans...Having Red Sox On Demand is going to be a great addition to all the other ways to enjoy Red Sox baseball."

Uh, Sammy boy, "all" of your fans don't have Comcast. They are much more likely to have NESN. When I was looking for a "great addition," I wanted the programming, but I didn't want to have to get an additional service with an additional fee.

The first priority with this deal is money for the team. Otherwise they'd put it all on NESN. But then they'd have to bump a few infomercials. And we can't have that, can we?

What a sad joke!

Bunker Hill Day

Congratulations to anyone who had the day off. You're not a bad person, though some would try to paint you as one lately.

Song of the Day: Doo Wap (That Thing)

Did Lauryn Hill fall off the planet or what? She had a huuuuuge album, could sing her A$$ off and was gorgeous. I think I recall her having a baby and doing a bit of a freak out, but I'm not sure. Too bad.

97

The Magic Number for the Red Sox to clinch the American League East Division Title is now 97.

Song of the Day: Redemption Song

When someone makes their Facebook status "got some redemption tonight," this becomes the song of the day. I don't know how, why or in what form the redemption was gained. I don't even need to know. You see how this works?

No, really...Can we get Eck back, Part II

Eck's not perfect, but this Dave Roberts is hooooorrrrrrrrrible.

Yes, still. Hasn't gotten any better. Even Eck's gotten better.

98

The Magic Number for the Boston Red Sox to clinch the American League East Division title is 98.

Song of the Day: Bartender

you can keep heroin if I can have even just the studio version of Bartender (DMB, Busted Stuff) from 4:45 on. Gimme the guitar, the non lyric vocals floating on top, that bad mofo busting nuts on the drums an' all the rest. No needles, no rehab.

Here's a live version. Money starts about 4:45 on this one, too.

101

The magic number for the Boston Red Sox to clinch the American League East Division Title is 103.

Song of the Day: I like to move it

Love King Julian!!

103

The magic number for the Red Sox to clinch the American League East Division Title is 103.

$85 in losses a bit of a smudge job

The Boston Globe is not really losing $85m a year. So says analyst Rick Edmonds. Here via Dan Kennedy.

This explains why the NYTimes is happy going forward with $20 million in cuts from union employees.

It also makes me agree with Globe union employees: Why did lower level workers have to make up the entire $20m in losses? What has management sacrificed?

Song of the Day: Funny the way it is

From the new DMB album. Good tune. Great lyric in there stood out to me: "Funny the way it is
Not right or wrong
Somebodies heart is broken
And it becomes your favorite song"

There are quite a few good tunes on it. Maybe I'll do a brief review at some point. At this point, suffice to say there are some more peppy and harder hitting songs on there than you're used to hearing from DMB.

Yankee fans jinx obsessed

It goes without saying that selling a bag of grass that almost fits in the palm of your hand for $20 because it's in a bag that says "Yankees" is a huge ripoff. Just because they use Kentucky Bluegrass at the new Yankee stadium, where everything from ticket prices to home run totals are ridiculously high doesn't make it valuable.

But, these being Yankee fans, they're apparently for sale. And one creative Yankee fan brought some of the "Yankee" grass to Fenway and spread it out while attending a Phish concert there.

It was obviously an attempt to one-up the Sox fan who worked on the new Yankee stadium and buried an Ortiz jersey in concrete.

The Yankee franchise and its fans have gone over the moon since blowing the 3-0 ALCS lead in 2004 to the eventual World Series Champion Red Sox. They lost that Curse of the Bambino crutch. After the Red Sox won again in 2007 and the Yankees continued to underachieve, the word was that the Yankees were cursed, the source being the thought-to-be-savior, A-Rod.

So they broke up concrete slabs to remove a jersey. And now they're overseeding Fenway. (The guy didn't realize that the Fenway turf is also bluegrass, albeit not from the most expensive burlap pouches in history.)

I admit the idea of fun and creative, but harmless, pranks between fans could be interesting. I thought of the MIT pranks. But there's nothing to support any notion that they would remain fun or harmless for very long, given the two fan bases involved.

Anyway, whaddya bet that at some point A-Rod's gonna drop the third out of an inning, allowing a game winning Red Sox rally because he slipped in some extra thick grass in the area where the magic seed was dropped?

Seriously?

NESN Comedy All-Stars? Is that drawing a lot of viewers or is it just easy, cheap programming?

Clearly I've been unhappy with NESN programing for some time. Really.

Call me, NESN. I've got much better ideas. Better yet, production companies contact me through the comments section.

Brilliant

Wasserman needles his own paper.

It's weird

I can't get into the Sox-Yankees series this week. Maybe it's too early in the season. Maybe it's the fact that the Yankees didn't make the playoff and the Red Sox lost in the playoffs to the Devil Rays, who were expected to permanently trade last plash finishes in the American League East with the Orioles.

But I think as much as anything else, it's that the Yankees have as mercenary and new a lineup as I can recall. CC Sabbathia, AJ Burnett, Mark Teixiera (if you want to remember how to spell it, think "Old MacDonald had a farm, ei, ei, o."). Even the manager, Girardi, while a one time Yankee player and coach, seems like the kind of guy they hired because he was the hot young manager. The "right" guy.

Gone is Torre. Pettite isn't the same. Rivera doesn't seem important since the Yankees alway seem to either win or lose by a score something like 9-5. Even the Stadium is gone, replaced by something that looks more like a resort community than a ballpark.

Is the Yankee franchise more of a fantasy league creation than ever? Could be. But I'm not all that fired up about this week's series right now. Let's see what happens once it gets underway. Or later in the season.

Song of the Day: This Time It Will

Singer-songwriter Jeff Hanson has died.


Hanson was an Elliot Smith-y type singer, with a bit higher, more feminine voice than Smith. You'll recognize Smith from the Good Will Hunting soundtrack.


Interestingly, Hanson also died at a young age, 34.

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday to mrs noternie
Happy birthday to mrs noternie
Happy birthday mrs noteeeeernnnnie!!!
Happy birthday to you.

I love you more than cold pizza for breakfast!
-------------------------------------
The New England Carpenters
Labor Management Program:
The most important joint venture in the construction industry.

Song of the Day: When the levee breaks

This one's best listened to at the highest possible volume when there is little in the way of responsibility on the near-term agenda and friends and fuzzy brains are knock, knock, knocking on your door.

Like Smells Like Teen Spirit, this is one of those songs that is impossible to play too loud. Two guys it the dorm room next to mine on the 20th floor of JFK at UMass turned me on to the beauty of this song at full volume. The timed it so that, at a specified time when one was leaving an afternoon class at the other end of campus, the other would put the stereo speakers in the window of the JFK dorm room and play this as loud as he could stand it. The experiment was to discover how far away the walker would be when he picked up the sound of this song. Being in the room next door, I heard it right away.

I think the walker heard it on the other side of the library, somewhere between the Student Union and Marcus. Impressive.

Song of the Day: 1234

Basic, simple, direct and sweet. What else would you expect from a group called Plain White T's? A likeable song. This is one I could imagine hearing in 10 years. Might get covered a bunch of times, too.

109

The Magic Number for the Red Sox to clinch the American League East Division Title is 109.

Today I saw the guy that robbed my house

I didn't really see the guy that broke into our home and took valuables both physical and mental, but I saw his type. Maybe it's more fair to say I saw the stereotype I've created of the guy in my mind.

As you might imagine, the thief has become a bit of a preoccupation of mine. There's a description of the guy and a possibility that he's from the area. So I'm on the lookout for someone matching the description everywhere I go. Would you believe I haven't seen a single person that matches the description? And I've been looking at a lot of people.

But I saw him today, even though he wasn't close to the physical description of the guy seen carrying my stuff down the street. While eating lunch in my car at a popular walking spot, a guy passed by and I immediately labeled him a drug influenced thief. He looked to be in his late 20s to early 30s, was wearing jean shorts and a hooded sweatshirt over a tshirt. It wasn't gangster or ghetto style at all. It looked like the kind of outfit that, new and clean, might have been worn by any average middle class American. And it wasn't that his clothers were terribly dirty or beaten up. Just a bit worn, just a bit wrinkled; the look of clothes that have been worn, thrown down on a bed or a chair and then worn again a day or two later.

To be honest, the guy's physical appearance was much the same. The beard had a few days growth, the hair was just beyond a daily shower. More significant to my eye was his walk and his eyes. He wasn't exactly limping or swaying, but there was a carefulness to his step. His eyes had a weariness to them. Though he didn't appear to be under the influence of anything when I watched him, it was clear that he was familiar with the experience.

The image he immediately conjured in my mind was someone that was trying to hide his current situation in life from those around him and knowing it wasn't working. I imagined he was in close proximity to the line, either about to or having just crossed it, but not entirely gone yet. He tells his family (or whoever) that he's trying to find work. They both know it's a lie, but they still play along, at least a bit. He shows up either half-gone trying to play straight or totally gone, leading to uncomfortable encounters that will never be discussed. Everybody sees the hill and knows things are accelerating, nobody holds much hope that it can be stopped.

He looked ashamed of himself while walking alone. Uncomfortable with who he was, but unable to change his course. I wondered if there was still in him the slightest tug of guilt or a pause when he's collecting the piggy bank from the little girl's room. I know for my guy the quick answer is probably no, he's too loaded and the fact that he took it means the tug is too weak anyway. The grip of the habit is too tight.

But like I said, there was a look of shame, of thought. This guy wasn't fully gone. Was my thief? Does it matter?

I know the response to all of this is that if I actually saw my guy and knew it was him, I'd probably be disappointed. I can already hear people telling me I'd see a scumbag zombie that will probably be dead long before his influence on our family is gone. Justice probably won't be done in any significant way and there's nothing I or anyone can do to affect him the way he's affected our home. I know. I understand it all. There's no understanding beyond the fact that he's one in a million jerk offs doing the same thing to support their stupid, selfish habit.

But today I saw the guy that robbed my house and I can't get his face out of my head.

The investigation continues

I was out talking to a neighbor last night about the cops coming to the neighborhood twice this weekend. Once for a suspicious person at a house where nobody was home (turned out to be a relative of the owners) and once for a suspicious person walking around the neighborhood (Verizon rep going door to door on a Sunday!). Everyone's out and about, watching and talking. It's nice.

While I was talking to neighborhood resident #1, neighborhood resident #2 and his daughter stopped to talk to me. She's probably in her early teens and I see her walking around the neighborhood with another girl pretty regularly. They both live in a branch of the neighborhood. NR #2 said his daughter saw someone creepy looking walking around last week and they had called the cops after getting my note. NR#2 said someone from the PD was going to their house a half hour later to have her look at pics.

Did I mention I circulated a note last wed in the neighborhood to let people know we got robbed? It's already prompted one purchase of a security system and I've had more people stop and talk to me in the last week than in perhaps all of the almost seven years we've lived at the house.

When I went home after chatting, a Det PD had left a message for mrs. noternie. She called him back and he asked if we knew someone. She said no. He asked if we were sure the robbery was Tues and not Mon. She said we were positive. He said a guy a few streets up the main road had sold some stuff to a pawn shop in a neighboring town on Monday. He doesn't fit the description of the guy walking around with a black bag and my guitar, but the Det said he fits the description of a thief.

I'm thinking maybe he had someone hitting houses and he was selling the stuff. Someone I work with had that scenario. Her direct neighbor had someone rob her house and the neighbor lady sold the stuff. Anyway, Det said he might call mrs. noternie back with more questions.

Don’t know what happened with the girl looking at pics or if they showed pics to the two other people who spotted the guy. Need to follow up on that.

Let's hope they can bust a perp PDQ and get the loot back where it belongs.

Song of the Day: She's Mine

Brett Dennen. Heard this one on my Jack Johnson Pandora channel on the Blackberry while doing the grocery shopping about 8-9pm last night. Headphones and music greatly enhance the grocery shopping experience. And I don't mind doing the shopping in the first place.

Coincidentally, this morning I was looking at the Life is Good Festival coming up June 20 in Boston and saw that he's going to be playing at it. That kind of coincidence pretty much guarantees a Song of the Day feature. Good work by Brett Dennen's people to catch my eye and win this kind of exposure for their client.

Song of the Day: Sober

Does anyone not think Pink is cool?

Investigation yeilds no results thus far

I'm going to call the cop today to see if he's made any progress in finding out stuff or the bad guy. But I haven't heard anything. In the meantime, the cops were called the the neighborhood twice this weekend to check into strange persons (meaning unknown) in the neighborhood. One was a relative of homeowners who weren't home, the other was a Verizon rep going door-to-door on a Sunday(!).