what’s on my mind grapes?

I know that there are probably nuances to the “Baseball Tonight” segment “Three Up, Three Down.” Surely, it doesn’t just mean “three good things and three bad things about a general topic,” but I – what? That IS the level of complexity reached by a prime-time show on “The Worldwide Leader In Sports”? Oh. Okay. Then I have no reservations about calling this “Three Up, Three Down for September.”

Three Up

The E Street Band: Nothing against Bruce Springsteen, but “Devils & Dust” wasn’t particularly impressive. I admit that judging the forthcoming “Magic” off the first single is surely folly, but “Radio Nowhere” has grown on me, going from “pretty good” to “song of the month”-caliber. All reports say the upcoming album is the same sort of high-energy rock that D&D was really missing, and while I doubt The Boss will ever outdo “The Rising,” I’m incredibly optimistic.
Vanessa Hudgens: This blog’s monthly traffic record was surpassed by September 19, and as of writing this, September’s hits are about the same as my combined May and June traffic. Now, V-Hudg quickly went from “dubiously ‘very attractive’” to “whatever it is, she’s annoying,” and became fodder for a rather obvious “Saturday Night Live” bit. I’d rather just about any other celebrity be a boon to my traffic. But hits are hits, and I have given up having problems with reaping the benefits of celebrity whorishness (pre-emptively clarifying to reconcile this term with my usual godlessness: my problem is with shameless publicity-seeking, not the nudity itself).
Major League Baseball: After some July-August struggles, my chronic baseball fever returned by September. Not only did my top two overall teams make it in, but the National League provided a nice dose of drama into the final hours of the regular season (Padres and Rockies in a wildcard playoff! Mets collapsing in epic fashion to let the Phillies in!). The downside, of course, is that the longer the Diamondbacks went with more runs allowed than scored, the more I came to dislike them. If a team is winning thanks to random events and luck, it really ruins things for me; I demand some semblance of a sustainable strategy for victory. That said, I’d love to see the World Series come to Phoenix (if the Padres aren’t around to prevent it in the NLCS).

Three Down

Feist: If I didn’t love my iPod so much, I could see boycotting iTunes until they issue an apology for giving a media platform to “1234.” The song takes the annoying-the-first-eighty-times-then-becomes-catchy-and-makes-you-hate-yourself-for-not-turning-it-off indie-bubblegum sound of Regina Spektor’s “Fidelity” to a new level of offensiveness. If there’s a school shooting this fall, I will wait a few days and then start campaigning that music like this is responsible for the rage and hatred inside of America’s youth.
Heroes: My hatred of the worst show on television – possessing a premise I love, but executing with derivative, flat writing and uninspired acting – now trumps my heterosexuality. This week’s TV Guide has a cover featuring Kristen Bell looking about as nice as she’s capable of looking, along with Ali Larter and the annoying-but-physically-nice Hayden Panettiere. Objectively, I know this. But because of how much I detest their show (a level that rivals what I feel for the Yankees!), I cannot look at the magazine without being overcome by rage.
Željko Ivanek: “Damages” is a great show. I’m actually surprised that it’s lasted as long as it has, given it’s on a network in the Fox family. But for the past couple weeks, half of my internal dialogue has been voiced by Ivanek’s slick southern attorney Ray Fiske; I think the “smug and manipulative” persona shows up too often when I’m talking to myself, and consequently, my brain has a southern accent that is becoming very annoying.