Le Week-end

Just a grab-bag of things I wanted to talk about...

Saw Hitchhiker's on Friday. Verdict: very good but not great. That's ok; there are plenty of media in which it IS great. It did well in the box office grosses for the opening weekend, but I don't think it will have any legs for those not in on the joke.

I was not the only one at the screening carrying a towel.

I also carried the same towel to Saturday night's Nationals game, to wipe off the seat and through over my head, and also in case the mascot turned out to really be a Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. The free program that the Post prints speculated that the mascot was the result of a tryst between the Expos' old mascot, Youppi, and the (previously unknown to be female) bored Washington Capitals' mascot, Slapshot. As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up. Unfortunately my proof was destroyed in the rain. Also, the parenthetical above was not my insertion, but explicitly mentioned in the article. Apparently it is somewhat of a tradition for Washington-based eagle mascots to have surprisingly explicit origins.

We had the historic first rain delay, and the hilarious second, before the game proved incapable, meteorologically speaking, of resumption. The second delay was hilarious because they were uncapable of moving the tarp over the infield once they rolled it out for the second time, apparently because they folded it the wrong way the first time. But they took several running starts at it, damn near ripping out shoulders, and a couple of times almost losing guys under the tarp. The remaining fans were cheering, chanting "Let's go tarp guys!" and "Let's go grounds crew,", and (like me) getting soaked to watch this spectacle. By the time they got the tarp on about 35 min. after the delay started, the infield was puddled up and there was no way they would restart play. The Mets are protesting, as they had just gotten back to 5-3 in the top of the 8th, while the Nats are saying the game should have been stopped before that due to field conditions.

Also, Joey Eischen got hurt tonight, it looked like he fell on his wrist. This is too bad, as he's quite the quote machine. He's already made remarks about the rest of the division not being able, as they'd figured, to "unzip their trousers and urinate on" the Nationals, and this lovely little soundbite about what Orioles' owner Peter Angelos can do about the Nats' regional live and tv popularity.