On Notice!



The word came today that Rickey Henderson has accepted a coaching job with the Mets, and thus he may actually be officially retiring. Come on, Rickey! You're only 48! Hell, if Julio Franco is still going (and on the Mets, even), you can surely still get some juice out of those legs. Put off that Hall of Fame induction for a few more years! I fully expect Rickey to be pestering Willie Randolph daily to be added to the official roster.

This could've been a beef 10 years ago, but it still stands today. I was driving down the 403 today and some clown is holding up traffic in the fast lane because he's chatting on his phone. Phone driving is bad enough in the city, but on the damn highway going 120??

I'm actually pretty satisifed with life right now, which is why something as mundane as this is on the list. Of all the foot-related evolutionary steps I'm looking forward to in the next several centuries (and believe me, I've considered many of them), the loss of our toenails is at the top of the list.

I was in Ottawa during Canada Day weekend, but rather than talk about our nation's birthday, I'll talk about two Lynx games I attended. The Lynx are moving to Allentown next season, but for all intents and purposes, they've left already. Attendance was maybe 1,000 people per game -- on a Saturday and Sunday no less. The team is the AAA affiliate of the Phillies, and with so much of the Phils' young talent already in the bigs, the cupboard is pretty bare down on the farm. The Lynx lost 2-0 and 12-1 in the two games, and looked honest to God like the worst ball club on earth. Furthermore, the stadium experience was limited at best. Two ushers (one of whom looked like Stockwell Day) were just a wee bit too aggressive in telling people they couldn't move down to closer seats. Yeah, since god forbid someone with one of the $7 tickets should move down to the extravagent $9 seat area that was 50% empty. The team mascot, Scratch, entered the stadium to the tune of 'Cat Scratch Fever,' but the music unfortunately cut off before the Nuge could sing the lyric about 'making a pussy purr.' Probably a good move for an audience with a lot of children.

The most frustrating kind of weather in the books. Too hot to wear a jacket, yet you're being soaked by an impromptu cloudburst. Make up your mind, planet earth!

So you're Paramount Studios. You're getting a ton of buzz about J.J. Abrams' upcoming project (known only as Cloverfield) thanks to a cryptic trailer that aired before Transformers. How do you deal with the publicity generated by this cool new viral marketing? By ordering YouTube to remove the trailer from its site. Way to be current in the modern age, Paramount. By the way, there's been a lot of jokes about what exactly 'Cloverfield' is. Some say it's a new Godzilla movie, maybe some other kind of monster film, or even a Lost movie. The theory there is that the film is written by Lost writer Drew Goddard, produced by Abrams and it comes out on January 18, just a few weeks before Lost's fourth season premieres. I think these theories are on the right track, but they've got the wrong JJ Abrams show. It's not the Lost smoke monster that's terrorizing New York...it's Felicity's old hair.

With the Toronto Indy now past, the bleachers and concrete dividers that were temporarily erected on the race course on Lakeshore Boulevard and the CNE have been mostly taken down. Boooo. It made me feel like I was a modern-day Scott Goodyear, rather than some schmuck in a Toyota Echo on a mundane spin down Lakeshore.

They've got a new album out (Zeitgeist), but there are three different versions of it available in North America. Each has the same core 10-11 tracks, but each has a different bonus song. The catch is that one is available at Best Buy, the other at iTunes, and the other at Target. I don't know if this is a record company thing or a Pumpkins thing, but it's pretty lame. This won't stop me, by the way, from buying the album. Tarantula sounds awesome. But still, this never would've happened if James Iha and D'Arcy were still alive.