"I'm gonna base this moment on who I'm stuck in a room with. It's what life is. It's a series of rooms. And who we get stuck in those rooms with adds up to what our lives are."
The Red Sox clinched a trip to the ALCS last night, beating the Rays 3-1 in Game Four, and 3-1 in the series. They will face the winner of Detroit and Oakland, who play in Game Five tomorrow night. We'll deal with the ALCS when we get there (Games One and Two are Saturday and Sunday, respectively, at Fenway), but for now, here are four reasons why the Red Sox are in their first ALCS since 2008:
1. Jacoby Ellsbury and Shane Victorino have led off for the Red Sox for most of the 2013 season, and they lead off this list, as well. The pair was simply superb during this series, going a combined 15-of-32 (.469) with 9 runs and 5 stolen bases. They were the catalysts of many a Red Sox rally, and this was no more evident than near the end of Game Four. Ellsbury went from first to third after stealing and advancing on a wild pitch, and in the same at bat, Victorino plated Ellsbury on an infield single, using his speed to beat out a throw from Yunel Escobar.
2. In the rare instances that the Red Sox weren't getting production from these two, they were able to find it from any given player in the lineup. In the first game of the series, a 12-2 Boston victory, every batter in the lineup had a hit and scored a run, only the third time in history that the feat had been accomplished. Players had their clutch moments; the loudest was David Ortiz smacking two homers off David Price, the most recent being Xander Bogaerts' 7th-inning walk to set up the reversal of one-run leads.
3. The pitching staff as a cohesive unit was reliable for maybe the first time since 2007. Lester took the ball in Game One and delivered a stellar outing. John Lackey, while his start was mediocre at best, held the lead for the Red Sox against the Rays' best starter, David Price. Buchholz labored in his six innings, but his only mistake was the game-tying home run to Evan Longoria. And last night, Jake Peavy held the Rays to one run in 5.2 innings to set up the Breslow/Tazawa/Uehara bullpen pecking order.
4. The Red Sox caught breaks. The Wil Myers missed fly ball in Game One was a big one, but between all of the borderline calls, wild pitches, and key plays, the Red Sox were far ahead of Tampa Bay in all facets of intangibles. The baseball gods were good to the Red Sox in this series, which could come as a surprise given the fact that TBS could do nothing but talk about the Rays' elimination game success in the past week. However, the Red Sox were too much for Tampa to handle, and Boston will head back to the ALCS.
Despite the fact that I haven't watched consecutive episodes of Glee since the start of its second season (2011), there are still a decent number of songs that I've loved from the show. Using memory, and this nice database, here are my top ten songs from Glee.
Honorable mention: "Just The Way You Are" Yes, I'm doing this backwards, because I actually want to do this in order. Makes sense, right? Coming in just shy of the top ten is "Just The Way You Are." A theme that I found in these eleven songs is that there's a ton of emotion put into each performance, whether it be for heartwarming or heartbreaking reasons. (There may be one exception that isn't on the heart spectrum.) This is just a nice little tune that was put together well, so it gets some recognition here.
10. "Keep Holding On" This is just a good song, I really like how this sounds. It's fun to harmonize to and pretend that I'm still decent at singing, but that's really all I have to say about it.
9. "Roots Before Branches" Had I stuck with the show through the end of the third season, I would have probably ranked this higher. Having only seen it on YouTube and out of context of the entire season, this song just barely makes the cut. Really powerful song, and incredibly well done.
8. "Homeward Bound / Home" Another song that I discovered after I stopped watching Glee, but this is another song that was insanely well put together. Philip Phillip's "Home" is this upbeat, happy song, but Glee took it and completely changed that, and it sounds really good, almost like you're being teased for a faster version.
7. "Creep" This is the one song that doesn't fit into the really happy or really sad category, but it might turn out to be the most powerful on this list. The fact that Lea Michele can hit those insanely high notes without falsetto is just unreal. Seriously, that's what makes this song amazing. Just imagine how much more I love the next six songs then...unfortunately I can't find a performance video, but here's the breakup scene that leads to the song.
6. "The Only Exception" This is where it starts to get all sad and everything, with these next four songs. This is the kind of performance that made me quasi-fall in love with Rachel Berry during the first season of Glee (despite this performance coming in Season Two). The performance video also has a high amount of characters staring off into space, which is indicative of the emotional significance of this song.
5. "The Scientist" Again, I didn't see this live, but knowing that this was in the middle of all of the turmoil that every character was going through, you can tell how emotionally charged of a song this is, too. "The Scientist" is an amazing song on its own, and the cover that Glee did is amazing as well.
4. "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" Alright, I'm a total sucker for this one. It's one thousand percent the harmony at the end (3:48 in the link). This is also a great example of the video actually pushing forth a storyline, instead of just being an outlet for the storyline to break into song. That might make no sense to anyone other than me in this moment, but I'm sticking with it.
3. "No Air" This was, if I remember correctly, the first song that I loved on Glee. All the way back in Season One, this one just has some really cool harmonies for a song that I had never heard before. I remember listening to this on my iPod and being able to tease out different parts in the melodies. It's a really good song for a show that hadn't really developed an identity yet.
T-1. "Faithfully" I just couldn't keep this song off the top spot, I really couldn't. If I come up with these rankings ten times, this is probably on its own at the top probably six of those times. This just isn't one of them. This song came at the end of the first season, and was pretty much the song that set Finn and Rachel off to be what they ended up becoming. Or something like that. It's an awesome song to sing, fun to play on piano, and fun to watch. I'm telling you, six times out of ten, this is alone at the top of the list. Just not right now.
T-1. "Somebody To Love" Let it be known that this is not the Justin Bieber version. This is the Queen version, and might have been the second song I came to love on Glee. This breaks the trend in my rankings of horribly saddening songs, and ends on a positive note. It's a fun song that's really fun to sing, and is just such a classic that it was pretty much the number one contender from the moment I decided to blog about this. So, with that, "Somebody To Love" takes the top spot on my Glee best songs rankings...for now.
Well, 2012 wasn't the year for the Red Sox, nor was it for my playoff predictions. After failing to successfully predict an LCS team, I set out this postseason to actually get one right. Hopefully many, because I'm convinced that 2013 is the year for something besides my playoff picks.
League Division Series
Red Sox vs. Indians
I don't care if you have the best record in baseball - when you're playing a team that has won 11 games in a row (assuming Cleveland beats the Rays in the wild-card game), you get scared. That being said, the only team who could stop the Red Sox this year was the Baltimore Orioles. Cleveland's pitching is no match for the best offense in baseball, and the Red Sox move on.
Athletics vs. Tigers
In a rematch of the 2012 ALDS, Oakland enters the 2013 playoffs as that team-no-one-realized-was-good. Seriously though, their oldest everyday player is Coco Crisp (33), and the only player older than him who has done anything is Bartolo Colon. Detroit stumbles into the postseason but will prevail against the A's, relying on their strong pitching to get them to the ALCS.
Cardinals vs. Pirates
Pittsburgh makes it to the playoffs for the first time since I was ten months old, but only lasts a few games. I don't know what it is about the Cardinals, but they just win when it matters. I completely trust in everything that franchise does. One player gets hurt? Slide in his EXACT REPLACEMENT who actually performs better. (See: Pujols, Albert.) Saint Louis moves on to a third-straight NLCS on the heels of being that team-everyone-knows-is-good-and-hates-as-a-result.
Braves vs. Dodgers
This series would probably last 15 games if the MLB let it. The Braves and Dodgers (respectively) are third and fourth in the NL in OPS, first and second in ERA, second and fourth in WHIP and saves, and third and second in opponents' OPS. My gut says Los Angeles, and that's what I initially wrote down. In by far the hardest series to predict, I stand by my decision to put the Dodgers in the NCLS.
League Championship Series Red Sox vs. Tigers
Boston lost the season series to Detroit 4-3, but took home a 2-1 advantage in the more recent series, including a 20-4 victory, and handing Max Scherzer his second loss of the season. Detroit, however, is still good. So good that they were the favorites to come out of the American League in the preseason. So good that their lineup depth and pitching rotation make them an easy pick to move on. But this Red Sox team has what it takes to win a brutally tough series, and that's what this will be. No win will come easily as there are spectacular pitching matchups up and down this series. Home field will help Boston, who is in the playoffs for the first time since being swept by the Angels in 2009. After a week-long battle, Boston handles the righty-heavy rotation of the Tigers, and returns to the World Series.
Cardinals vs. Dodgers
The Dodgers are a flashy team, and have certainly drawn their fair share of media hype this summer. It's been deserving, but the Cardinals have stayed in front of an extremely competitive NL Central for the majority of the second half of the season. These teams are similar in that they will get production from the players they can expect it from. Adam Wainwright and Clayton Kershaw won't throw stinkers in this series. But the difference between these two teams is that one team can get production from a slew of players that one normally wouldn't ask for, and that team is the St. Louis Cardinals. When players such as Matt Adams and Joe Kelly perform as they have this season, you win games. The Cardinals win enough to move on to a rematch of the 2004 World Series.
World Series Red Sox vs. Cardinals
It's happening.
No, seriously, that's all I'm "officially" putting for my explanation of my World Series pick. While this has certainly been an MLB playoff predictions post, it has also served as a "The Red Sox are winning the World Series" post. It's the Jonny Gomes factor. He epitomizes everything that the 2004 team stood for. The beard, the punting the helmet, that time where he ate ice during a postgame interview...the guy is a winner. He makes winning happen on any team he is on. This team has what it takes to win the World Series, and will go through any team it faces to do so. Boston takes home the World Series in one of the most exciting playoffs in recent memory.
Sophomore year, I posted about the differences between freshman and sophomore years. I had full intent to blog about the differences between freshman and senior years, but after consideration, I think it'd be more fun to talk about some similarities. Here are ten of them:
1. I'm still taking classes that make me blog. You can go back to the spring of 2011 and see how much philosophy I blogged, and you can go back in the previous three weeks and see how much I've been blogging about my Gender & Sexuality Studies class. I think Philosophy will win out as my favorite class ever, but to know that I can still blog about classes is fun.
2. I'm still broadcasting basketball. I only started with a few games freshman year, but the fact that this is one of the only things I've done for all four years is pretty exciting. It's awesome to get involved in stuff as a first-year, and it's also awesome when those things are still part of your life senior year.
3. I have the same friends. I think. By "same friends" I mean the people I became really close with freshman year, and either live with them now, or are still very close to them, in different and unique ways. Sure, there was that weeding out process over the first two or three weeks, but I think that it's awesome that I've had a fairly reliable group of friends.
4. I still have the same [expletive] laptop. This would have been an okay thing if I was blogging anytime before the start of this year, but I think my laptop sensed that it was starting its fourth year, and promptly started being terrible at being a laptop. I'd love to say more about this, but I only have 8% left and my laptop is about to shut down on me. More to come later......
5. I still have a Razor scooter. I say "a" and not "my" because the red scooter I had for a few years finally broke, so I picked up a green one that my grandparents had lying around there house from when I was like seven. So I still have an awesome scooter to ride around, which is mega fun.
6. I'm still a Math major. This may come as a surprise to no one, but that fact that I'm in the small group of people who came in with a major and didn't change it also seems cool. Sure, I picked up Psychology along the way, but Math has been there since day one, and will be my primary degree.
7. I still blog. Sure, maybe not as often, and maybe about way different (and possibly deeper) stuff, but the fact that I kept this up and haven't gone for a hiatus is something that I'm proud of. I could come to learn that no one reads this and I would keep doing it.
8. The Party Animals poster tradition is still going strong. I don't really remember how this whole thing started freshman year - I mighta just got the idea and went with it, because I had the poster first. (Since it's an awesome poster, naturally.) Now it's taken on a personality of its own, and will definitely find some space on the walls of future places I occupy.
9. Other traditions have continued on, too. The first is Secret Santa that all of us do, which is a lot of fun, and there's an end-of-semester tradition that I'll leave implicit until I blog about it later this year. Because I know I'm going to, and I know that it will secretly have some of the strongest meaning for me to represent my four years at Stonehill.
10. This place is still awesome. I'm venturing a little away from this particular blog post, and instead towards the general idea of Stonehill and what it means to me, but I'm fine with that. One thing that I know hasn't changed is what I think of this place. There really is something special about being here, and it has presented itself in many shapes and forms over the last 3+ years. I can already tell that there will be hard blog posts to write, especially my fourth and final end-of-a-Stonehill-year blog post, days before graduation. But there's still some work to do before that.
Yes, yes, it's been too long since I've blogged. I'll get to the necessary stuff later this week, but it's time for an impromptu post. All I have is one quick line of thought, and that's that. (I hesitate to use "argument" because this is more a series of leading questions, a la Socrates, instead of an argument.)
So. Think about your [______]. I intentionally leave this blank to demonstrate the generality of this, but when I first began constructing this point (important word choice foreshadowing), I had religion in mind. Use gender, use morality, use whatever you want, as long as it has its own naming system. I started with religion because it has the most recognizable terms - Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, etc. Now. Finish this sentence: "I am (a) [______]." I am Catholic, I am a Mormon, I am Hindu, I am atheist, whatever it is, you can fill it in. Think of someone else who is the same as you in this regard. If you're Catholic, think of another Catholic. Do you both share exactly the same set of [whatever you think comprises religion]? Do you both have the exact same religious beliefs about every single thing there is to have a religious belief about? My guess is not. There's nothing wrong with that; this is in fact my point, that no two religions are alike. By religions, I mean my religion and your religion, not Christianity and Buddhism. So then what does it mean for you to be [______]? For someone else? Probably different things. There are a large enough number of variables that "religion" differs from person to person. So much so that given one other variable, people, that "religion" doesn't even really exist as such. You can have beliefs about religion, you can practice religion, but you call yourself a [______] only because that's what everyone else would call it. By deconstructing (see: previous parenthetical foreshadowing) religion based on language, we can effectively erase it as such. Now, the sentence becomes "My religion is my religion." It's not called the same as anyone else's because it's not the same as anyone else's.
So, back to my general claim. We can deconstruct anything in this way. My gender, however masculine/feminine you want to claim it is, is different from yours. Different from my friends, from my parents, from my sister, and different from anyone else. Because we can construct an infinite amount of genders, we can essentially remove gender. Because we can construct an infinite amount of religions, we can essentially remove religion. (And now, for the real mind-blowing part.) Because we can construct an infinite amount of deconstruction, there is no deconstruction. BOOM!
If you have any thoughts about this, please leave comments below! It's not often I ask for comments, but this is a really fascinating line of thought to me, and I want to see what you all think. Thanks for reading!
For starters, I love songs that have two parts to the name ("Beth/Rest" and "Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise" are the two I'm thinking of). So, I'll do (what I believe to be) my first blog post as such. "Privilege is invisible to those who have it." That's a quite from (none other than) one of my Gender Studies readings. And it's a really cool quote, and also incredibly true. As cool/true as the other phrase from Gender Studies that I've blogged about. Contextually, this was spoken by a white male, who has the most privilege out of all of the categories of race/gender. Out of context, this seems true everywhere. I wish I had more to say about this, and I might have had more, had I blogged about this last week when I first read it. Alas. It's a cool quote, so think about it and think about how it relates to your life.
Now, for The Cave. This is, on a very minute level, relevant to what I just talked about. Doesn't really have anything to do with privilege, though - more for the notion that what feels natural may just be invisible. When I'm referring to The Cave here, I mean Plato's. (Editor's Note: "The Cave," by Mumford & Sons, seems to be an allusion to Plato's Cave, which makes the song all that better. Check it out here.) You can read the allegory here, but in an attempt to briefly explain it, I will say that that which seems to be our reality may be the furthest thing from it. There's a quote out there that reads something like "We don't know who invented water, but we know it wasn't the fish." How can the fish invent water if that's what the fish has been living in? The fish can only know what water is when the fish realizes what water isn't. It's a really cool line of thought. I've extended this idea to myself in thinking about a scene from Anger Management, which I've posted below. To answer the question, "Who are you?," I would now answer, that which I am not.
For starters, watch this video, starting from 6:15.
Now you know where this blog post/stream of thought is coming from. A point on the whole suppression of qualities in men and women....I completely agree with this. From literally birth, there are social influences about how we're supposed to act, given our set of biological circumstances. If we're a male, then our room as an infant will be baby blue - if female, then a pale shade of pink. A female who plays sports goes against the gender roles as much as a male who likes playing with dolls. One point that Kimmel (the guy in the video) makes is that half of human qualities are suppressed. Men are supposed to be leaders, be the ones working and supporting society and households, while women are the ones staying home as caretakers, hesitant to pursue leadership reasons for a myriad of reasons. This is only half the picture. I'll leave Kimmel to talk about it, because he says it in ways better than I could come up with, but there's a huge chunk missing from society, and it's all because of the presumed gender roles that are immediately imparted upon us.
I'm starting to believe the philosopher John Locke with his tabula rasa idea that we are a clean slate when we are born, and then everything that makes us who we are is written from there. I'm finding it to be hard to come up with qualities that are absolutely unchangeable outside the constraints of biology - height is the only one I have so far. Sexual orientation, depending on who you ask. Point is, the social influences around us are far and wide, and as long as humans do nothing with the "men are this, women are that" idea, we won't go anywhere.
What I love about them is that they stretch across multiple disciplines. In a lecture-style class, everything stays in that room. What went on the whiteboard last year in math or physics classes was a conversation from professor to student. Here is what you need to know, and find a way to know it. This is something completely different from my Gender & Sexuality Studies class, which is turning out to be my favorite class of the semester. One of the readings we had for today included the phrase "language belongs to those who use it." I immediately fell in love with this sentence. Wrote it in my response paper, talked about it in class, and I might adopt it as a life outlook. Language belongs to those who use it.
Historically speaking, our society has been male-dominated. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." We can no longer ask him, but I'm curious what Neil Armstrong was thinking when he said those words upon landing on the moon. I'm guessing nothing - I'm guessing that that was what came to him. But think about it. One small step for man. Spoken by a man landing on the moon. In Hamlet, Shakespeare claims "to each his own." Again, as a male author...to each his own. We talked about a lot of these examples in class. Firemen, mailmen, busboys, all of these have male-oriented names. A nurse is a nurse is a nurse, yet we often find ourselves referring to a male nurse as a male nurse, despite the fact that "nurse" has no gender bias (at least linguistically). A group of people, perhaps all male, all female, or a mix, is usually referred to as "guys." Pronouncing two people "man and wife." Wife is contingent upon another person (that of a husband or wife), whereas man implies standing alone, not requiring another for definition. I'm sure you can think of more examples, but the point is, our language is still stuck in the roots of the patriarchs.
One final point about my new favorite quote is the world of mathematics. I actually attended a Philosophy of Math presentation when I was in San Diego for the Joint Mathematics Meetings, and this question was brought up there, too. Who's to say anything about math? Is 2+2 equal to four because it is four, or because enough people have claimed that two and two makes four, and enough people have believed it? In my GenEd Philosophy class, we talked about what would happen for 1+1 to equal 10. Clearly it's not, but what if enough people started saying that it was 10? If our society accepted one and one as ten, then wouldn't it be? Language belongs to those who use it.
Oh, the ever-growing paradox of time. For the first time in a few "time" blog posts (you can search "time, pt." to see them all), I'll be relating it to myself, instead of pushing some general idea. Right now, I feel that time is like a wall, one of those Indiana Jones brick walls that close in on each other and you're stuck in the middle. Maybe not with metal spikes, but it's still there. I'm someone who's very next-oriented in the small picture, now-oriented in the grand scheme of things. Which sucks for something like senior year, because the larger, more important things to consume my time, energy, and thoughts are the things that are farther down the line. Figuring out what I'm going to do after senior year is a long ways away compared to the homework I have due on Tuesday, but what I'm doing post-Stonehill is far more important in the big picture. Maybe I'll just have to learn to somewhat reverse that process, to take care of more important things first, even if they're more in the background. It's hard, stressful, and not fun, especially when I think about all of the different ways that life can go after Stonehill. It's scary and I'm afraid that being freaked out about after senior year will make this time during senior year less enjoyable. I can feel it and I have a bad feeling that this isn't the last time I'll be feeling it. But I'll take it one day at a time, keep what's important close to me, and do what I can to enjoy my life.
"I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter, and some thought, to get your emotions going..."
- Jim Valvano
As an avid fantasy sports player (baseball and basketball these days, but football in years past), I'm all about awesome, catchy names. Same goes for possible band names. In fact, I just came up with another one, thanks to Jack Link's Beef Jerky - Messin' With Sasquatch. One of my friends from home said that Occam's Razor would be a great one (the name of a House episode), and today, I came up with the brilliant (unbiased opinion) band name of Notorious Piaget. Hooray psychology! So, I googled (Editor's Note: Is this capitalized?) "psychology funny group names" and somehow found something close to what I was looking for. Further investigation yielded "The Jung and the Restless," which I thought was hilarious. If you're looking for some other witty banter, check out what Mental Floss has to offer. No seriously, this is the kind of stuff that amuses me.
The Red Sox clinched a trip to the ALCS last night, beating the Rays 3-1 in Game Four, and 3-1 in the series. They will face the winner of Detroit and Oakland, who play in Game Five tomorrow night. We'll deal with the ALCS when we get there (Games One and Two are Saturday and Sunday, respectively, at Fenway), but for now, here are four reasons why the Red Sox are in their first ALCS since 2008:
