Last night’s Braves – Pirates game really sums up just some of the idiosyncratic things I love about baseball. Watch the clip here:

http://www.sportsgrid.com/mlb/video-wild-19-inning-game-ends-on-contentious-call/

And here’s what i love about this play:

• I love that baseball can go on indefinitely. Unlike football, basketball, soccer, etc, there’s ALWAYS a chance for the other team to catch up and win and not be beholden to time. Note that I’m excluding Cricket from this knowing full well its games can go on for days (literally). Cricket is played by them foreigners so I don’t count it.
• The look on the catcher’s face when he realizes Lugo was called Safe. It was a clear  ”are you f’ing with me right now Blue?” After catching 19 innings I think I would have chased the ump off the field.
• The Braves’ 8th pitcher had to bat for himself. The fact that he made contact is stunning in and of itself. But pay close attention and you’ll see him eat it on his way out of the box. Hilarious.
• Listen to the announcers. What game has announcers as colorful as baseball? Troy Aikman? FALSE. Maybe Charles Barkley but he doesn’t call games (not that I know of). Golf announcers? LAME. Baseball announcers are all like Bob Uecker from Major League (a real announcer for the Brewers but whatever). They call 162 games a year. The games are long. So when  a call like this goes down, they freak out. And I love it.

I miss baseball. This almost makes me want to get the MLB package at home. But nah.

p.s. Its so obvious that the ump missed the call on purpose so he could get back to his hotel room. Not. Even. Close.

My efforts to blog more have pushed me to start scribbling down notes as blog ideas scamper from one side of my brain to the next. Even though i’m such an accomplished typist on my phone you’d think I was the Mavis Beacon of the thumb typing world, blogging from my phone loses some of its allure. Same thing from my iPad. So I resort to waiting until I’m sitting in front of a laptop or a PC to actually hammer out the blogs that will only be read by my mom, dad, and some random follower from parts unknown. However, in many cases, it could be hours until I’m in such a position to drop an awesome blog entry on you, my fans. And since my brain is basically a vacuum consumed with trying to figure out how Transformers 3 was made into a feature length movie, I must take notes (or else you’d see post after post decrying Michael Bay). This has lead to two forms of note taking:

I write the notes down in long hand: I have a notebook everywhere I go just about. And even though I’m the gadget equivalent of the richest man on earth, I still like to write in freehand. Problem here is that my handwriting looks like someone who had a massive stroke is doing the writing (is that politically correct to say? I don’t care). I just wrote out a thank you note to some friends last night and when I was done, I was actually embarrassed. I thought to myself,  ”it might be time to hire someone to start writing stuff for me”. Since this is not practical, and I can’t really read my own notes to compile an amazing blog entry from, I resort to note taking option #2…

I keep notes in my phone: Aha! Welcome to the 21st century Muehleman. What a novel concept! Keeping notes on my phone is fast, easy, and gets around the whole “your handwriting reminds me of a drunk 4th grader” problem. However, as I scroll through my notes, i’m presented with a Seinfeldian issue. Remember that episode where Seinfeld kept a notebook by his nightstand, woke up in the middle of the night, scribbled some notes, and when he woke up the next morning he had no idea what they meant? Well I’m having the same problem. Except the two following notes were written down during waking, lucid hours. I even remember writing them down. But I have no idea what they mean:

He keeps a sextant to help maintain his navigational bearings

I mean, what the hell does this mean? Part of me is super proud for remembering what the hell a sextant is, part of me wonders what exactly was going through my mind when I wrote it, and part of me wants to go out and buy one (for real, how cool would that look in my new car. And would solve the whole how do I find what I’m looking for when google maps is down and I’m under a starry sky. But I digress).

The other note I can’t make heads or tales of is:

Margarita. Refrigerator.

That’s the extent of the note. I like margaritas. And I think refrigerators are pretty handy. But is there  a blog entry in there? I’m not sure. But I want to know more.

I’m officially in the market for a new car. The 4 runner has had a good run but now that its getting roughly the same gas mileage as the space shuttle, smells like a homeless person has encamped in it, and makes me look like a pizza delivery guy**, I’ve decided to venture into the market. I’m about 92% sure that I’m going to get something small and fuel efficient so to combat the obvious stereotype problems with such a car, I think I’m going to get a manual transmission — to make me look manly as hell of course. “In Atlanta” you might ask? And I will say “hell yes. I will destroy the hills”. Or something like that. So this brings to mind one of my favorite manual transmission stories. Yes, I categorize my car stories my transmission type. Don’t ask.

Way back when I was first learning how to drive a car, my step-dad taught me to drive a 5 speed in a 1975 (or 1976) toyota pick-up truck. I’m pretty sure the clutch was designed by an 18th century Japanese torture artist hellbent on blowing out the cartilage in my left knee. It had no power steering or air or anything really. It was kind of awesome. Anyways, when I first started learning how to drive, the concept of THREE pedals in the car kinda blew my mind. Those that know me know one very important fact about my life: I’m a serious klutz. Like epic. So bring together my inability to tell my left foot from my right foot and THREE pedals in the car and we have a real problem on our hands.

The truck could often be found in the driveway just below the basketball goal. Our driveway was sloped kind of like a parabola (I like math people. look it up). Frequently we’d ask Dave to move the truck to the top of the driveway so my step-brothers and I could shoot hoops or whatever. One day we went through the motions of moving the truck, shooting hoops, fighting, playing more basketball, fighting some more, and finally finishing up. My step-dad told me I could move the truck back to its usual resting stop. I was highly honored to be able to move his beloved truck! I mean, all I had to do was take the parking brake off, put it in neutral, and let it slide down the hill. Easy, right? False. I crawled in the truck and had a major audience. My step-dad, my three step-brothers, my asshole brother Andy (always running his mouth about something), and who knows who else. I got the truck sliding down the driveway no problem. I was in complete control of the situation. I was demonstrating to all that I could gracefully repark this relic beast. Approximately half way down the hill I started to apply the brake to slow it down. But nothing happened. It wasn’t slowing down! “God no why aren’t you working brake!!” I screamed in my mind! “This car is broken!!” I also bellowed. “What’s for dinner tonight!!” was also certainly included (this is unchanged almost 20 years later whenever I’m in panic mode). It should now be clear to the reading audience that I had been stepping on the clutch the entire time. My mastery of the clutch / brake duality would come some time later as it would turn out.

At this point I could see I was headed straight into the garage and the 1986 astro-van we had (that van was SWEET by the way). My brain did the quick calculus and made a critical decision. Veer left. By the time my feeble overwhelmed mind had figured this veer decision out, I’d reached the bottom of the driveway and would soon come to realize I’d made this choice just a fraction too late.

I veered left into a tree and the side of the garage.

At least the truck had stopped, right? I looked up and was like “oh shit oh shit oh shit, did anyone see that????” I stumbled out of the truck to see my step-brothers, my step-dad, and my total asshole brother standing there wondering “what just happened??”. At this point, you’d expect mercy from your brothers right? RIGHT? If you guessed that, you are either an only child or do not fully appreciate how much boys love watching other boys totally screw something up. Because the silence was quickly replaced with laughter, jokes, teasing, and the most merciless ribbing any brother could ever get. I was mortified. I think I literally ran off and up to my room. And left my poor step-dad to salvage his awesome little pick-up truck from betwixt and between branches, a rain gutter, and the side of our house.

Yet, despite this, I can’t wait to drive a 5 speed again!

**Note: How I dress to work, and the fact that I frequently bring pizza in to work to the crew, also contribute to the overall pizza delivery look

This category was a piece of cake. I picked the song Tomorrow by Silverchair because it reminds me of my brother Andy.

A long time ago Andy and I took a road trip down to see our pop when he lived in Florida. It was summer time and I was probably 18 and Andy 16. We decided to take my old piece of crap 1988 Toyota Corolla down there. There’s nothing quite like driving through south Georgia in an old beater with no A/C to help you bond with your younger brother. Around this time a young Australian band came on the scene called Silverchair. Now Andy and I had music tastes that were diametrically opposed to each other. I spent the better part of 10 years trying to get him to listen to Radiohead, and he trying to get me to appreciate Tool. For every REM reference I made, he’d come back to me with a Motorhead one. So you see where that was going.

But Silverchair we both liked. I don’t know how or why, but it happened. And we spent the entire 8 hour drive down to Florida listening to this tape (yes, I said tape) over. And over. And over again. And when we arrived in Florida, amped up on 8 liters of Mountain Dew and sweating from head to toe from the oppressive heat, what did we do? Helped our dad move his washer and dryer. Damn you dad!!!!

Not much makes me sad. Stale cereal. An empty beer bottle. And the occasional Elliott Smith song. Now let me be clear. He’s one of my favorite artists. There’s just something about how he sings. But his music is definitely in the melancholy range, and when you consider that he took his own life by stabbing himself not once, but twice, you can imagine why his tunes might be a bit of a downer.

This song comes from the Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack, clearly one of my all time favorite flicks. It comes from a pretty bummer period in the movie so yeah, this is a perfect candidate for the song that makes me sad.