Baseball and Bemani, like bacon and eggs, Lockwood and Lamont...
Today I dropped I-Gene off at Laura's house and then went to the Mariners game.
So I was a little later than I wanted, I was kinda scared they'd give up my Will Call ticket that I'd bought online on Friday, but whew, they didn't. I got there like, 12:50 or so for a 1:05 game. Got my ticket, got in the stadium, got a scorecard and magazine, got a hotdog and pretzel and diet coke, got to my seat just as the fourth batter on the Angels was popping out to right field. Whee. I love single seats, you can get such decent ones... this time I was in 142, row 11 seat 11, which is one section out of mondo-expensive seat land, pretty close to third base, still close enough to the field to be able to see really well. (Oh, for the record, this was my 18th baseball game this year... 16 Mariners, one Phillies/Giants, one Orix/NipponHam. It was most likely my last baseball game this year. I think I went to around 4 of the Mariners games by myself, including today's.) The people around me were kinda vaguely baseball-clueless, and mostly I ignored it, but when Troy Percival came out in the 9th inning and they were like "huh, he doesn't look like a great pitcher... 0-5 with a 3.42 ERA.." and I'm like "uhh... what part of 32 saves didn't you notice? He's one of the league leaders..."
Yeah, so anyway, it was a great game for the first 7 innings. Cammy hit a home run early on, in the 2nd inning, and the rest of the time was fairly uneventful, with a few assorted walks and singles. It gets to the top of the 8th... and I'm figuring, Ryan Franklin's thrown 100 pitches or so, the M's are winning 1-0, they'll take him out, right? Wrong... he starts the 8th inning well, striking out Jose Molina... lets Eckstein on base... then gets Figgins to pop out to Sanchez, ok. At this point Bob Melvin came out to the mound, because Anderson was up next, and he's a .313 lefty batter. I figured, they're gonna pull Franklin, put in Rhodes or something. No... they not only left Franklin in, he told him to intentionally walk Anderson. AIAIIIEEE. I mean, supposedly Franklin's had good luck pitching to Tim Salmon, but... GRAR, that put two guys on base, who if they scored, were not only going to lose the game for the Mariners, but also were going to lose the game for Ryan, and up his ERA by 2. Well, guess what happened? Salmon hits a single and drives in one of the guys, making it 1-1. AND THEN THEY TAKE OUT FRANKLIN AND PUT IN SORIANO. And then Soriano lets the next guy hit a double, driving in another run. aIAIAIIIEIEIEIEIEIEE. I think it was the single WORST managerial decision I've seen in ages... I just don't get it, I don't know why they left Franklin in. I bet if they took him out and let someone else, even Benitez, pitch the 8th inning, Franklin and the Mariners might have gotten another win. But nooooo, Franklin racks up another loss as do the Mariners in the midst of this Wild Card race. GRAR!
The Angels, being a little more cunning with their bullpen, put in Brendan Donnelly for the 8th inning and Troy Percival for the 9th. Those guys are seriously two of the best bullpen pitchers in baseball today, even if Donnelly's fallen off his pedestal a slight bit... (a month or two ago I would I would have easily said Donnelly was the best relief pitcher in the AL period, but I'm actually now not sure whether it's him or Hasegawa.) Percival is also a pretty damned good closer. So you can guess what happened. Two walks in the bottom of the 8th but no runs scored... and in the 9th, Edgar managed to get a single, and they put in Chad Meyers to run for him, and he managed to not only steal second on Olerud's third strike, but also stole third base on a wild throw... so we're sitting there with 1 out and a runner in scoring position and he just SAT THERE and the game ended.
*cries*
After the game I headed out to Bellevue to pop some music.
First I went to Laura's house, where![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
keiohki and zqfmbg and laurii were hanging out. BTW, Laura's house is huge but that's another story. Allan went to get crystalj and I drove everyone else to the Apartment of Bemani Controllers (hehe, ABC, I'm just being a dork). metroid23 was just waking up from a nap and megami and DJ were both in showers or changing or something, and Steve was around, and so we're all like "HI! LETS WATCH THE LOVE LOVE SUGAR VIDEO!" 'cause I wanted Laura to see it... I think Noria looks like Pixxiy and sounds like Laura in it. I'm still not sure I'm too far off. thethird showed up sometime in there, and then they got out the IIDX ASC and everyone watched Crystal play insane flashing 7's one-handed because she's just insane. Yeah. So DJ showed me his Japan pictures in the meantime, which was fun.. we got a LOT of duplication but he has some I really need to get from him sometime that I don't have. I *thought* my Japan pictures were on I-Gene's laptop but they weren't and I-Gene and I got into a kinda argument/misunderstanding which was really retarded and didn't speak to each other for an hour or two... I stayed in the living room playing PNM and he was in Met+Rumi's room playing Mr. Driller anyway. (When we both ended up outside eating pizza I did one of those eye-contact things I used to do with Carl where we would have whole conversations without words and so eventually after several gestures and facial expressions I just said "Okay, that's good" and someone else there was like "huh?" and I was like "oh yeah, some words... I-Gene, I'm sorry." And he was sorry too, and then we were ok again. I think. It was still sort of weird, but I guess we have these little misunderstandings from time to time, it happens, we get over them, which is a sign of a good friendship, I think.)
PNM was really fun, I still am debating dropping money on a PNM ASC and the games. I really enjoy playing and I want to get better at it. I can beat songs up to like level 25 no problem and then something is just wrong with me, I have a lot of trouble reading "chords", especially. Crystal, on the other hand, is just plain scary - she was like "Well, I beat all the songs in PNM 1... but I haven't played since then, like 2 years ago" or something. Well... uhh... within like 2-3 songs she was already passing songs DJ couldn't pass, and beating all of Met's highscores. It was truly an impressive sight to behold. I guess the IIDX skill really does carry over, but holy shit, it was just pretty amazing, we'd watch her get these huge comboes and tons of greats like "OMG, I thought it was humanly impossible to do that!" Also, whee! I found all of these songs from the Sana PNM collection on there now, like 翔べない天使 and all! So cool! Yay Sana!
So,nemesiscw showed up at some point, and then there was pizza, and then for me there was Nintendo Puzzle Collection, or Panel De Pon, to be more accurate... or Tetris Attack, whatever. Ray and me and Rumi played a bit, and then Steve took over for Rumi, and then Ray and I did 3d mode and I didn't blink for like half an hour, ouch. I like playing that game with Ray a lot, though... yeah. Then I sat around talking to Rumi for a long time (yay!), and then Met came in and showed me silly web movies. BADGER BADGER BADGER BADGER BADGER BADGER BADGER, MUSHROOM MUSHROOM... uh, yeah. (Later: "Keevon, you need to make a Badger DWI...") Right, so Keevon and Jeff showed up sometime after Laura and I-Gene and Allan left. There was more music popping and more goofiness and stuff, it was good to talk to Keevon also, I've just been so bad at getting together with people and all lately. If I'm lucky I'll get to play Civ with people sometime, though. That should be both fun and attention-span-enhancing.
Then I gave Ray a ride home and came home myself. It was like 1am when I got here, and Eli was on his way to sleep after a weekend of hiking through caves somewhere south of here... but me I'm a dork and I've been on the computer instead of sleeping. I know I said I need to cut down on my online time, and I do. But uhh... I'll stop procrastinating doing something about it tomorrow. Yeah.
So I was a little later than I wanted, I was kinda scared they'd give up my Will Call ticket that I'd bought online on Friday, but whew, they didn't. I got there like, 12:50 or so for a 1:05 game. Got my ticket, got in the stadium, got a scorecard and magazine, got a hotdog and pretzel and diet coke, got to my seat just as the fourth batter on the Angels was popping out to right field. Whee. I love single seats, you can get such decent ones... this time I was in 142, row 11 seat 11, which is one section out of mondo-expensive seat land, pretty close to third base, still close enough to the field to be able to see really well. (Oh, for the record, this was my 18th baseball game this year... 16 Mariners, one Phillies/Giants, one Orix/NipponHam. It was most likely my last baseball game this year. I think I went to around 4 of the Mariners games by myself, including today's.) The people around me were kinda vaguely baseball-clueless, and mostly I ignored it, but when Troy Percival came out in the 9th inning and they were like "huh, he doesn't look like a great pitcher... 0-5 with a 3.42 ERA.." and I'm like "uhh... what part of 32 saves didn't you notice? He's one of the league leaders..."
Yeah, so anyway, it was a great game for the first 7 innings. Cammy hit a home run early on, in the 2nd inning, and the rest of the time was fairly uneventful, with a few assorted walks and singles. It gets to the top of the 8th... and I'm figuring, Ryan Franklin's thrown 100 pitches or so, the M's are winning 1-0, they'll take him out, right? Wrong... he starts the 8th inning well, striking out Jose Molina... lets Eckstein on base... then gets Figgins to pop out to Sanchez, ok. At this point Bob Melvin came out to the mound, because Anderson was up next, and he's a .313 lefty batter. I figured, they're gonna pull Franklin, put in Rhodes or something. No... they not only left Franklin in, he told him to intentionally walk Anderson. AIAIIIEEE. I mean, supposedly Franklin's had good luck pitching to Tim Salmon, but... GRAR, that put two guys on base, who if they scored, were not only going to lose the game for the Mariners, but also were going to lose the game for Ryan, and up his ERA by 2. Well, guess what happened? Salmon hits a single and drives in one of the guys, making it 1-1. AND THEN THEY TAKE OUT FRANKLIN AND PUT IN SORIANO. And then Soriano lets the next guy hit a double, driving in another run. aIAIAIIIEIEIEIEIEIEE. I think it was the single WORST managerial decision I've seen in ages... I just don't get it, I don't know why they left Franklin in. I bet if they took him out and let someone else, even Benitez, pitch the 8th inning, Franklin and the Mariners might have gotten another win. But nooooo, Franklin racks up another loss as do the Mariners in the midst of this Wild Card race. GRAR!
The Angels, being a little more cunning with their bullpen, put in Brendan Donnelly for the 8th inning and Troy Percival for the 9th. Those guys are seriously two of the best bullpen pitchers in baseball today, even if Donnelly's fallen off his pedestal a slight bit... (a month or two ago I would I would have easily said Donnelly was the best relief pitcher in the AL period, but I'm actually now not sure whether it's him or Hasegawa.) Percival is also a pretty damned good closer. So you can guess what happened. Two walks in the bottom of the 8th but no runs scored... and in the 9th, Edgar managed to get a single, and they put in Chad Meyers to run for him, and he managed to not only steal second on Olerud's third strike, but also stole third base on a wild throw... so we're sitting there with 1 out and a runner in scoring position and he just SAT THERE and the game ended.
*cries*
After the game I headed out to Bellevue to pop some music.
First I went to Laura's house, where
keiohki and zqfmbg and laurii were hanging out. BTW, Laura's house is huge but that's another story. Allan went to get crystalj and I drove everyone else to the Apartment of Bemani Controllers (hehe, ABC, I'm just being a dork). metroid23 was just waking up from a nap and megami and DJ were both in showers or changing or something, and Steve was around, and so we're all like "HI! LETS WATCH THE LOVE LOVE SUGAR VIDEO!" 'cause I wanted Laura to see it... I think Noria looks like Pixxiy and sounds like Laura in it. I'm still not sure I'm too far off. thethird showed up sometime in there, and then they got out the IIDX ASC and everyone watched Crystal play insane flashing 7's one-handed because she's just insane. Yeah. So DJ showed me his Japan pictures in the meantime, which was fun.. we got a LOT of duplication but he has some I really need to get from him sometime that I don't have. I *thought* my Japan pictures were on I-Gene's laptop but they weren't and I-Gene and I got into a kinda argument/misunderstanding which was really retarded and didn't speak to each other for an hour or two... I stayed in the living room playing PNM and he was in Met+Rumi's room playing Mr. Driller anyway. (When we both ended up outside eating pizza I did one of those eye-contact things I used to do with Carl where we would have whole conversations without words and so eventually after several gestures and facial expressions I just said "Okay, that's good" and someone else there was like "huh?" and I was like "oh yeah, some words... I-Gene, I'm sorry." And he was sorry too, and then we were ok again. I think. It was still sort of weird, but I guess we have these little misunderstandings from time to time, it happens, we get over them, which is a sign of a good friendship, I think.)PNM was really fun, I still am debating dropping money on a PNM ASC and the games. I really enjoy playing and I want to get better at it. I can beat songs up to like level 25 no problem and then something is just wrong with me, I have a lot of trouble reading "chords", especially. Crystal, on the other hand, is just plain scary - she was like "Well, I beat all the songs in PNM 1... but I haven't played since then, like 2 years ago" or something. Well... uhh... within like 2-3 songs she was already passing songs DJ couldn't pass, and beating all of Met's highscores. It was truly an impressive sight to behold. I guess the IIDX skill really does carry over, but holy shit, it was just pretty amazing, we'd watch her get these huge comboes and tons of greats like "OMG, I thought it was humanly impossible to do that!" Also, whee! I found all of these songs from the Sana PNM collection on there now, like 翔べない天使 and all! So cool! Yay Sana!
So,
nemesiscw showed up at some point, and then there was pizza, and then for me there was Nintendo Puzzle Collection, or Panel De Pon, to be more accurate... or Tetris Attack, whatever. Ray and me and Rumi played a bit, and then Steve took over for Rumi, and then Ray and I did 3d mode and I didn't blink for like half an hour, ouch. I like playing that game with Ray a lot, though... yeah. Then I sat around talking to Rumi for a long time (yay!), and then Met came in and showed me silly web movies. BADGER BADGER BADGER BADGER BADGER BADGER BADGER, MUSHROOM MUSHROOM... uh, yeah. (Later: "Keevon, you need to make a Badger DWI...") Right, so Keevon and Jeff showed up sometime after Laura and I-Gene and Allan left. There was more music popping and more goofiness and stuff, it was good to talk to Keevon also, I've just been so bad at getting together with people and all lately. If I'm lucky I'll get to play Civ with people sometime, though. That should be both fun and attention-span-enhancing.Then I gave Ray a ride home and came home myself. It was like 1am when I got here, and Eli was on his way to sleep after a weekend of hiking through caves somewhere south of here... but me I'm a dork and I've been on the computer instead of sleeping. I know I said I need to cut down on my online time, and I do. But uhh... I'll stop procrastinating doing something about it tomorrow. Yeah.