Ran a 10-mile race tonight in Newburyport in 1:24. Felt pretty good. It helped that temps were only in the 70s, as opposed to last year, when it was in the mid-90s. Yowch.

Not much else to report...it's been a long day. Oh yeah, one of the guitarists from Iron Butterfly died. I have to say my favorite Iron Butterfly moment was the "Simpsons" episode where Bart switched the church hymns with "In the Garden of Eden, by I. Ron Butterfly." A classic. The song was also used to good effect in the climactic scene of "Manhunter", the movie version of Thomas Harris' "Red Dragon" starring William Petersen.

Y'know, it's not easy being a Leafs fan. They do their damnedest to push you away. Good thing I'm too dumb to know any better. Today's big signing: Josh Holden. Schedule the Cup parade! Of course, living in the Boston area, I know at least one other NHL team has similar disregard for its fans. And I take heart in the fact that J.P. Ricciardi has the Jays going in the right direction.

I, for one, am shocked--SHOCKED--that the whole Liza Minnelli-David Gest marriage isn't working out. Too bad they didn't get their VH-1 reality show, after all.

I was just on the Blogger home page and saw a link to Living Colour's blog. They're releasing a new CD in September, their first in 10 years. Hope they still kick as much ass as they used to.

There's some good stuff coming out in the next few months: Sloan, Mission of Burma's first new album in 20 years (!), and other stuff I can't think of at the moment. Excellent, Smithers.

Damn, it was a hot and sticky one today. The coed softball team I manage lost a doubleheader. It's been a long, ugly season so far and we still have 10 games to go. So far, we're 4-12. I'm looking forward to just playing next year. After 11 years of managing, it's not much fun anymore for me.

Roy Halladay is the man! Fifteen straight wins for the Jays. Too bad he can't start every game.

Okay, if I hear that frickin' Ford commercial with Journey's "Any Way You Want It" again, I think I'm gonna freak. They must play that thing about 50 times a day on every major network. What's next, Volkswagen using "Mr. Roboto"? Oh, right. Well, at least that one was funny.

Mucho props to Lance Armstrong for winning his fifth straight Tour de France. I can't even imagine having that kind of endurance. I've run three marathons, and I thought that was hard (well, it is), but it's nothing compared to 20 stages of the Tour.

It's been a weird afternoon. My daughter's going through some major teething issues. I thought it was bad when she was getting her first few teeth, but now she's cutting some molars and man, is she miserable. Much whining and gnashing of baby teeth, no napping. Deb and I were going to catch a movie and leave Hannah with my mother-in-law, but we decided not to inflict that on her (my mother-in-law, that is). Besides, there aren't a lot of movies we both want to see. I want to see "28 Days Later" and the Charlie's Angels sequel, and she don't. Oh, well.

Some music I'm digging lately:

New Pornographers--Electric Version (catchier than SARS)
Radiohead--Hail to the Thief
Metallica--St. Anger (definitely their best album since And Justice for All)
Gordon Downie--Battle of the Nudes
Neil Young--Tonight's the Night
Led Zeppelin--How the West Was Won

Seeing those pictures of the Hussein boys in the morgue reminded me of Hugo, Man of 1,000 Faces, a toy that was popular in the late '70s. It was basically a head and you could disguise it any way you wanted. Those guys were so messed up they had to do major reconstruction--they almost looked like they were made of rubber.

Saw on the news the other night that in Rhode Island, authorities had to cut a hole in the side of this guy's house to remove his dead body. His dead, 900-pound body. Dizzamn. He was too big to fit out the door. I never understood how a human could get so big. Maybe he was a big Brando fan.

Heyyyyyyyyyyyyy, man. I just found out about this InterWeb thingy, where you can write stuff that nobody in their right mind would publish. I want in.

It's funny, because you wouldn't think these things would be interesting, and yet they usually are. As long as you're not writing about how you washed your socks today...see, that's the kind of stuff I charge extra for you to read. Right.

So I figured I'd start me one of these here blogs because I'm too damn lazy to try and get a newspaper or magazine to publish my writing...that is, if I had anything for them to publish. I'm an editor for a B2B publishing company by day, so by night usually the last thing I want to do is write. But maybe this will at least give me a forum to do some non-work writing, even if it is just to bitch about my favorite sports teams or the RIAA or something. Because god knows that makes for fascinating reading.

Hey, the Jays won tonight. Nice. Not that it matters, since they're already out of the race. Oh, I didn't warn you that even though I live just north of Boston, I'm a fan of Toronto sports teams. See, I grew up in Toronto, at least until I was 14, but I still root for the teams. This has caused me much heartache, especially the Leafs, although the Jays did give me a couple of World Series titles to celebrate in the early '90s. Don't worry, it won't all be about sports. I promise.