Are you like me? Do you like a good quote from someone eminently quotable? Then you may like this one. Especially if you're my....MOTHER. Courtesy of AndrewSullivan.com - the blog of blogs. Not a lot of entertainment references like mine but nice political stuff, if you like that sort of thing and I do.

So the Cardinals won the World Series? They won only 83 games in the regular season. 83 wins woulda got you 4th place in the AL East or Central. 3rd place in the AL West and NL East and West. Of course it gets you first place in the NL Central and a trip to the playoffs.

Now, at this point, my brother Frank and Dad would need full-disclosure - I'm a bitter Yankee fan, yes. So this year, unlike previous years I'm actually thinking about these things. It has come to this.

I was thinking, we need to have one season to be a test for the future of baseball. It needs to be a throwback season - you know, like those games where the players wear the original uniforms of their team - high socks and strange colors (Astros). We need to get rid of the D.H., all players have to play with the team that originally drafted them, the league will be winnowed down to an AL and NL consisting of, say, 6 teams each - the Yankees, Red Sox, Orioles, White Sox, Indians & Tigers in the AL and the Cardinals, Cubs, Dodgers, Giants, Braves, and...oh, the Brewers (whatever). Any players not on a team will be evenly split among teams needing players. Practically every team will have really good pitching and at least several All-Stars. The Yankees would have Jeter but not A-Rod or Giambi - you get the idea. Getting players on teams would be a mess but it would be a lot of fun watching it all happen and watching teams come together. Extra players get sent to the minors and fans in Pawtucket get a game that's just that much better.

Then we could have a 151 game season like the old days. The best team in each league would go right to the World Series which would start in late September and be played mostly in the day when the kids could watch. And maybe we make it a best of 11 game series just to make sure the best team wins, not the hot team.

This was a totally unscientific analysis and I know many, many real baseball fans would pick it apart. My point is only this: baseball is bloated and diluted, but still the greatest game ever.

Of course, since I have kids, I'm way behind the curve when it comes to popular culture. Anyway, I saw "The Departed" last week and how about that Leo DiCaprio? Aside from the fact that he has great hair - turns out the boy can really act. I know we're all supposed to remember his Oscar nominated turn in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? which I think was more of a newbie bursting on the scene. And more often than not it takes a real actor to rise above being nominated too early in their career and spending the rest of their life trying to live up to the hype (like her and her and even him). But he had the big hit with Titanic which was really a pitch right over the plate for him - let's see look really cool and romantic and die a tragic death for true love? Piece of cake.
Anyway he totally pulls off the desperate intensity needed for this role and was able to carry the main narrative thread of the film convincingly. On top of that, he actually seemed like a grown-up and not a boy anymore. You know, the thing that the greatest actor of his generation had from day one.
Maybe it also helped him that he was surrounded by a dream cast, not least of which is Matt Damon in one of those roles he loves to take where he's intensely unsympathetic for such a pretty boy. Which is of course what makes it possible for him to pull it off. Something his best buddy Affleck can't do outside of his freakish private life.
And finally it's Marty too proving that he's a true master. This movie was a complicated weaving of conflicting plotlines and converging character arcs that in the hands of a director with inferior artistic sensibilities might have devolved in incoherence. But Scorsese continues to prove that his films are always worth seeing even if, as an artist, he has lapses. When you're this good you need to be seen.
I almost forgot Jack - my Dad jumped in to remind me. I'll give you Dad's opinion since it so closely mirrors my own - Jack's being Jack. That's what they hired him for and that's what he gave them. We liked him (infinitely) better in something else, right Dad?

Once again the democrats are taking their eye off the ball. They're assuming (AGAIN) that there's sufficient outrage “out there" for the republicans to be summarily removed from office and order restored to Washington in the person of Nancy Pelosi. What if it doesn't happen? Get ready to witness a rending of garments the likes of which has never been seen!
Now that the elections (and Halloween) are upon us here's a post to the Daily Show's Elliott Kalan's blog that sums it all up. Money quote (thanks A.S.):

The time is ripe for something surprising, and instead everyone’s sitting around
arguing about a war somewhere. Get your priorities in order, people! I’m worried
we’ll end up getting some half-baked surprise on Oct. 31 when we’re distracted
by the chaos of Halloween. What’s the use of revealing that your opponent holds
orgies with Iranian spies if everyone’s too busy gorging themselves on candy to
notice?

This posting stuff is hard. Let this be the message to future bloggers; those of you who I have pointed to BLOGSPOT. You have to really commit to writing stuff everyday and who wants to read my rantings? I don't even want to write them. Though this is indeed the goal of any program one undertakes to cultivate yourself as a writer like this one--write every day. A writer writes is the simplistic and stupidly annoying expression. We'll see.

Warren Beatty and Paramount Pictures have finally released Reds on DVD. Click on the poster to purchase. The movie is awesome and Beatty's masterpiece. I've seen it 1,108 times--I actually counted. Beatty didn't do a commentary track because he finds them objectionable. I think he just wants people to watch the movie. There are some "making of" tracks in the DVD menu that are interesting and occasionally funny. The best part about these interviews is that Beatty and Nicholson - both huge narcissists and notorious womanizers - wax poetic about Diane Keaton and how great she is. They both seem to be scared of her. It just serves as confirmation that she's a very strong woman--only Diane could tame these two. Keaton for her part is nowhere to be found. Jack says it's because she doesn't like to look back and get all sentimental. She made a movie and it's over with. She's great in the movie, playing one of film's greatest "real" women.

This is me. This is my first post. I know that introductions are boring and mission statements aren't important to anyone but the person writing them so I will dispense with it and with introducing myself. No one is going to read this anyway so why bother.

The reference in the name of this blog to "Second Beach" refers to the local name of a beach in the Newport, RI area where I intend to be have my ashes scattered when I die. I guess it could also be a reference to going to the beach on a summer day and the hundreds of times I did that enjoying it every time. But I meant to refer to the thing about me dying. Big surprise.