Posts Tagged ‘Giants’

Class, newspaper and sleep have been dominating the majority of my time recently, and it’s been hard to get up the inspiration to really write anything, blog or fiction.

I feel like I’ve hit a point in my short story where I really need to step back and figure out some basic things, like what the plot actually is, who the characters are, etc. I guess I hoped that that would all come together as I scribbled notes here and there, but alas, all I have right now is 10 pages of random stream-of-consciousness writing. What I have learned is that I think memoir, real-life writing is more what I should go for, because looking back at what I wrote, the small parts I made up are significantly worse than what I took from my own experiences.

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I’ve gotten really into audiobooks and other audio stuff recently, whether in the form of podcasts, music, audiobooks, whatever. I’ve always loved reading, but I often have trouble getting into a book enough that I’d like to keep reading it, so for some reason this system works so much better. In the last few weeks I’ve gotten through:

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On the Giants: I hate being right, though this is a classic example of the difference between reading about a game afterward and actually getting to watch it. Why did they take Sadowski out so early, giving up one run through four? I feel like I missed something, and as always, the Giants bullpen came through with a great performance. And the Rooks won, so we’re tied, but I know that Timmy can come through.

But enough about that. Yesterday was a great day for many respects, and extraordinarily musical in such strange ways.

I started off going to the Santiago Radio station, a similar but distinctly different group of people from the Santiago Times. Santiago Radio is part of the greater company I Love Chile, an English-language network primarily for ex-pats, set up by a New Yorker who moved to Chile years ago. They are separate from the Santiago Times, but collaborate regularly, as do pretty much all of the English speakers in the country.

The connection in this case is What’s Up, Chile? a weekly news and talk show put on by the interns at the Santiago Times. The station recently moved, and the show hasn’t been on for a couple months. The old host is leaving, and had us over to the station on Monday to show us the technology, and we did a half-show, an hour, just to get the hang of it.

Yesterday I went over with Natalia, my editor, and another former intern to mess around and get the hang of all of the controls, and because apparently our random blather is more interesting than an auto-DJ music system, it ended up on the station. I’ve been listening to it, trying to get a hang of what levels were good, when there was too much music or too little, when  you could or couldn’t hear, etc. I think it actually turned out pretty well, as we got into a few good discussions about Chile and randomness, so if you’re interested, check it out here. I hope you find it interesting, it was certainly fun for us. It takes a few seconds before it starts, so don’t fret.

The crux of this is that they’re looking for somebody new to spearhead the project of What’s Up, Chile?, and there I was, holding the mic. I’ve always wanted to host a radio show, particularly a news and talk show, so I’m really excited for this. The best part, I think, is that I get to build from the strong base of the Santiago Times intern staff, so we won’t ever have a problem finding people to come on. I’ve begun thinking about where I want to go from this, including maybe having a second show later in the week for guest interviews and more geared around call-ins, but that’s in the future, and I need to see how it goes this monday first. The other great thing is that What’s Up, Chile? has been a pet project of Natalia, my editor, so if and when I need to lessen my writing load at ST to do more work at SR, she’ll understand.

Still, I have my work cut out for me. Simon, she said, used to spend hours every Sunday mapping out an agenda, figuring out who’s going to talk about what, etc. The show is also podcasted online, so I’m currently downloading a few old shows to listen to it to get a handle on what I should start doing.

Anyway, I’m excited, and now I just need to figure out if there’s a better name out there, because What’s Up, Chile? is a tad odd. The best thing I can come up with so far is The Whole Empanada, but let me know if you think of any ideas better than that (shouldn’t be hard).

From the station I walked back to the Metro station, stopping to use a computer quickly and recharge my phone with minutes, all the time hearing amazing music from… somewhere. And then, leaving, I saw a man standing near the corner playing the mouth harp, with speakers behind him. He was quite good and, after listening for a few minutes, I bought two of his group’s CDs for about $6, and much to my surprise, they actually had music on them when I get home! Check out this rendition of “The Sound of Silence,” by Grupo Valparaíso. Or not… my internet is being strange. I’ll upload it when I can.

Wait! Here it is.

After that, I headed to the Metro, and just outside there was a group of three musicians doing jazz for tips: an electric guitarist, an upright string bass and a drummer at a trap set. They were quite good, and if I had wifi, I could get you a recording, but I did snap a few pictures.

And as if that weren’t enough, later that night I was invited by a friend to go to a Jazz club in Santiago (appropriate named “Club de Jazz de Santiago”), so I hopped a bus to get down there. I’ve mentioned before the random live music on buses, but this time it was quite different. Rather than a random guy with a guitar, or occasionally a drum, this time there were two guys with a stereo and an iPod, who rapped to the music. They were also pretty good, I think, though of course I had no idea what they were singing about. I recorded that too, and I’ll get it later.

After an entertaining bus ride, I emerged and found the club. I didn’t know that there were jazz clubs in Chile, but I was very impressed. It was a very classy joint with a $6 cover, and I sat with my friend and his housemates for a bit before the show started.

The band came on at about 10:30 and launched into a pretty entertaining set that I’d call fairly typical of live jazz, as in a few basic melodious lines in common, punctuated by a solo by each member of the group, then back to the melody.

The band was an interesting construct. The frontman, on the trumpet and wearing a Hawaiian shirt, looked like a cross between Jerry Garcia and George Baker, with hair covering most of his face and flailing his body in such a random manner that he must have been on as many drugs as Garcia and Baker combined in their hay-days. Besides the trumpeter there was a saxophone, upright stringed bass, electric guitar, electric bass, and drums. All men, each musician had either shaggy, long hair or a shaved head and tough goatee, providing an interesting look of the band.

The standout of the group, and the only one who didn’t look like a roadie for Van Halen, was the drummer, a skinny guy in a button down shirt, whose arms moved with almost cartoonish quickness, the rest of his body sitting perfectly still while his arms flailed around like Agent Smith.

Also, randomly, the two drummers I’ve so far seen in this country both used military style with their left stick, holding it at an angle. Odd, though I haven’t exactly seen a representative sample yet.

Great music, and now to figure out what to do for the radio.

I’ve long believed that there’s a strange force in baseball, a deus ex machina, also known as the iRobot (movie) phenomenon, that gives baseball it’s random and anything-is-possible nature. Cash does not directly translate to wins, though it certainly helps, and a team that is clearly having trouble still wins occasionally.

Some call it “heart,” some call it “luck.” Some call it hubris on the part of the statistically superior team, letting their guard down for a moment and giving up a clutch hit that leads to a rally that leads to the go-ahead run, that leads to their embarrassing loss to a team that barely knows which end of the bat to hold onto.

Whatever it is, momentum is a force in baseball, and can be a force for good or for evil. The SD Padres, when they were contenders in the NL West long, long ago, won 10 in a row before giving up 7 in a row. Momentum also shifts, and it can be deadly. John Sanchez, the disturbingly named Giants barely-in-the-rotation wunderkind, threw a no-hitter after a season of consistent mediocrity.

Which brings us to the Giants, who have won four games in a row. They recently picked up two new hitters, one currently injured and the other, Ryan Garko, who’s gone 1-10 with his new team. Still, the Giants are winning, a welcome change since their post-All Star break slump, and I’d argue that the appearance of new players at least spices up the other Giants to do better.

But tonight is almost a throw-away game, pitting rookie Ryan Sadowski against Cliff Lee, the unknown pitcher who went 22-3 last year with a 2.54 ERA to win the AL Cy Young. Unless the Giants offense finds Lee’s number and comes alive tonight – pause for laughter – we’re going to need a Sanchez-like turnaround from Sadowski if the Giants want to keep their momentum. We’ll see how that turns out.

In much more satisfying news, especially to those few of us still defending Barry Bonds, David Ortiz gave the most awkward interview about the recent news that he and M*nny R*mirez both tested positive for steroids in 2003.

I don’t hate Ortiz, at least not as much as I hate M*nny, particularly in his new blue uniform, but he comes off like a total hypocrite in this ultra-righteous article from Yahoo. My favorite passage:

“I think you clean up the game by the testing,” Ortiz said [when he found out that A-Rod had tested positive]. “I test you, you test positive, you’re going to be out. Period. ”

“Bang” the guilty for a year, he said. And now he is the one who stands accused, a man who swore he’d never use steroids because he didn’t need to be a superhero to his children and thus would not jeopardize his health.

“He’s going to deal with this head-on,” Boston manager Terry Francona said.

But usually in a head-on collision, especially with the truth, no one walks away unscathed. Not even a sports figure as beloved in Boston as Ortiz, once presented a plaque by Red Sox owner John W. Henry calling him the greatest clutch hitter in team history.

Also, just for giggles, this is about Manny:

He was suspended for 50 games after MLB officials discovered he had been prescribed human chorionic gonadotropin, a fertility drug for women that men can use to generate production of testosterone after they have stopped using steroids.

Anyway, enjoy the game, those of you who actually get to watch it.

Are you?

Before this post truly begins, a short note. The last few days have been filled with both extraordinary fun and hair-pulling frustrations. I will describe the happy moments in full detail, but first, a short rant  (chee chee to follow).

Another short note: I feel asleep writing this (which speaks volumes about how fascinating it must be, of course), and I finished it in the morning. So when I say “today” and “yesterday,” I really mean Tuesday and Monday. Please correct mentally accordingly.  -Ed

WordPress ate another one of my posts that I had intended to publish just before leaving for the weekend, and rewriting is one of the things I can’t stand in this world. It’s hard to place exactly why. Sure, it’s confusing for me, remembering what I wrote and didn’t write, having pull change those “did” and “didn’t” boxes in my head to convince myself that I need to write it again. But there’s also the terrible job of trying to remember the specific words and turns of phrase from the first version, particularly if the first version was one that you liked. It won’t be the same, and it just feels more stale than the fresh, first draft that you shot off before.

The other side for me is that I hate to waste time, or do things that resemble wasting time. Now, don’t get me wrong, I procrastinate as much (if not more) than the next guy, and I make time everyday to do nothing productive. I just have a desire to do as many things at once, even (and especially) if they’re not productive. This also takes the form of my inability to read books twice, even short, beloved ones, and my lack of desire to watch any movie more than once that isn’t SWAT.

That said: rewriting, and the requisite saving to a third-party app, will commence (with additional content)… now.

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“Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.”

Boy, ain’t that the truth. And as I’m pretty sure the great thinker Kareem Abdul-Jabar was trying to say, in our time, when your power cord dies for your computer, you’re pretty much screwed.

And so I found myself yesterday, sitting in the Santiago Times office working when suddenly my power cord stopped feeding my computer. Shit. But no time to worry about that, as I had to rush off to our first orientation at the University of Chile orientation, in which they did presentation after presentation, including several videos, showing us all about campus, its history and its significance through the years.

I never really realized what a great school it was in the greater Chilean scheme of things, because obviously it’s not really something that we talk about in the states. La Chile and La Católica are the two best universities in the country, so to tell Chileans that we’re going there is a big deal. The best way I can imagine it is if somebody came to do an exchange program to Harvard, or Yale, or one of those schools, and didn’t understand all of the baggage that goes with those names for the average American.

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Attempt 2: Rewriting is really hard, but I’ll do what I can.

So even though CVSMP doesn’t have as nice of a ring to it as my old newspaper, it seems I’ve found a place that I like to get my journalism on.

This week is a weird one in the course of the semester because our two schools, La Chile and La Católica, take wildly different schedules. La Católica, in its infinite wisdom and never-ending charity, has given its snotty, bratty, spoiled students almost two weeks off before the start of class. My stupid university, La Chile, has scheduled we, the downtrodden, to the most travel-unfriendly schedule imaginable: brief orientations held every other day in Santiago. But I’m not bitter. (more…)