A Foul Ball Was A Moral Victory

If you're the praying sort, I can use your help. I have pressing needs but I'm afraid the folks in this tower would hang up on me. I have two requests.
And really, it's not for me, it's for others who mean so much to me.

First, Le Choix is on Sunday and the latest polls have Sego dazed in the corner yelling, "Cut me, Mick!" Or rather, "Couper moi, Mick!" She could use your prayers.

Then there's the matter of the Dodger outfield.

Two of the three starters (Gonzalez and Pierre) are so old (in fact we only have two guys in the field who are under 30) they can't run anything down and the third, Ethier, trys to make the highlight reels every night by making acrobatic dives and ends up turning singles into triples. Their fielding percentages are .974, .975, and .959 respectively. Since many of my readers may be uninitiated, you may be thinking I'm off base by complaining that Ethier only catches 96% of the balls hit his way. Let me drag out the old airline analogy: there are about 87,000 flights per day in US airspace according to NATCA; if NATCA hired Andre Ethier to watch the skies we would have 3,567 crashes every day. That's a lot of RBIs people. I mean if they were hitting over .300 or had a dozen homeruns between them I could overlook this, but that's not the case.

Now, I learned not to pray for something specific, so I don't care if you pray for angels to speed these fielders to the ball, Matt Lawton to be miraculously healed (he's from OKC, and was hitting .429, fielding 1.000 before injury), or for us to simply win. I'm just seeking some intercession here.

I will say it has been fun this year, though. We've been winning a lot and with all the close games it's like watching the legendary teams of the 1960s -- except we don't have this guy, my hero. Go ahead, watch the video; you can spare 1:41 to watch one of the best ever.

Think Blue

Pour an Parachutage, l'Atterrissage Est Réussi

Well, this Sunday is the big day. No, not the 118th anniversary of the Opening of the Unasssigned Lands to Settlement. Not Earth Day. No, it's the Élection Présidentielle Française de 2007. Since you're wondering why I'm so interested in the French elections, I'll just come out and admit that I have a huge crush on Ségolène Royal.

I'm not exactly sure how or when exactly I developed this crush, and I've tried reconstructing it, but hell, it really doesn't matter. It was probably the name that first hooked me. I love several French female names that Americans don't hear alot. Around here, it seems you can add "ette" on to any male name and voila! shee ees Franch. You'll occasionally see an "enne" or two. The ones I like are Clotilde, Sandrine, Blandine, and now, of course, Ségolène. Plus, I love the irony that a Royal could be president of France.

Then, yes, OK, I will admit I think she's beautiful and graceful and charming and I shouldn't objectify and all that. But a) I'm not voting in this election, 2) let's face it, it's not everyday you see a beautiful socialist (ever seen Emma Goldman? ok, she was technically an anarchist) and d) I'm new at this; I've never had a crush on a presidential candidate before.

And then, she's got a sexy bio as well. Born in Senegal to colonial parents, she later sued her father for not adequately supporting his family, especially his daughters (it's more complicated than that, but shows how tough she is).

Today's polls say it's too close to call. I really hope she wins, though. What I'd be interested to see is if her election would have an impact on ours. It might actually help Hillary if people saw that the French, who can be even more chauvinistic than we are, would accept a woman president. Although, if that happened our countries' relations could get even worse since Ségolène recently approached Hillary and suggested they work together and she got the brush off.

I just hope Lisa Loeb takes it well when she finds out about my crush on Ségolène.

Speaking of France, they have an official national logo. I wish we had one of those. The French one looks really cool. Although, it probably wouldn't work because we don't have a good analog to Marianne (the eagle just doesn't do it for me and Lady Liberty is just a copy of her) and somehow e pluribus unum doesn't rally nearly as well as "liberté, égalité, fraternité". We're so sectarian and politically correct, we could never pull it off.