Dippin' Don'ts

Excuse me, maestro, at this point I have to interrupt... While this is hardly a political or news-driven blog, I feel obliged to weigh in on today's kerfuffle over Dippin' Dots, ballpark institution and onetime Ice Cream of the Future.

It transpires that new White House Press Secretary Julius Streicher Sean Spicer has had it in for the quasi-scientific quasi-dairy product for some years, calling it, among other terribly clever monikers, "The Ice Cream of the Past." This clash could have been avoided altogether had Spicer (or, indeed, anyone) heeded our observation from nearly three years ago—namely, that Dippin' Dots is no longer from the future not because it's antiquated but because we now live in the future.

Which anyone who has seen Idiocracy could have already told you.

Bots are Reading the Blog

...but it appears they can only read the first page. I have temporarily changed a setting so only one post is displayed on each page. Melvin and I apologize for any inconvenience to human readers. (Yes, both of you.)

Update: January 24, 2017
That didn't work so I have reset the posts-per-page setting again.

Post-Postseason

Pointing the way to Phoenix for some pilots is a doubly-literal landmark written in one-hundred-foot tall letters in the hills above the Rio Salado Sportsman's Club, about 20 miles east of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

Air photo courtesy of Google Earth

Pointing Melvin and me to Phoenix was the unrequited feeling that we hadn't seen enough baseball this year. (He probably also felt obligated to check on my mental health.) With the 2016 minor and major league seasons completed, we flew to the Valley of the Sun to see the Arizona Fall League.

In Search of the Lost Pun

Yesterday, BUSH'S® Beans and Minor League Baseball® announced "a multi-year, strategic partnership, making [BUSH'S] the 'Official Beans of Minor League Baseball,' and a 'Preferred Partner' of a number of MiLB teams, beginning in 2017."

"The new partnership will activate across a range of touch-points, including in-ballpark celebrations such as during National Baked Bean Month in July and the integration of a variety of BUSH'S Beans products in teams' concessions," according to the press release.

I don't know what a touch-point is but that's nice. I tend to buy the BUSH'S brand myself, and not just in July. But didn't somebody miss an obvious pun?

Election Notes from All Over

As the Associated Press began declaring which presidential candidate had won each state, as the wind began to shift and then blow harder, as I started worrying that Trump might actually win the election, my inbox began to blow up.

Where's Norton?

Melvin and I are mostly a pair but other folks tour with us from time to time. I welcome the company of any one of them again in the future. That said, not every itinerary suits every companion.

We arrived at a destination halfway through our abbreviated trip to Pennsylvania that made me think of a friend who has traveled with us twice. I turned to Melvin and asked, "Where's Norton?"

Where's Norton? At Exit 12, in ¾ of a mile.

White Sands (italicized and not)

For our birthdays, Watson gave both Melvin and me copies of White Sands; Experiences from the Outside World, the most recent collection of essays by Geoff Dyer.

front jacket image
photograph by Theo Anderson

It was an informed choice (public thank you) since Melvin and I have both read a good deal of Dyer's writing and we have visited about half of the places featured in the nine essays in his new book.

An Editorial Meeting in My Mind

As I considered various themes for a post on our Memorial Day weekend trip to the Gulf of Mexico—loosely speaking—it occurred to me that I was pitching story ideas to myself.

"5pm editorial meeting,"
from "How the Guardian is Made" (2 April 2014),
courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd. through Open Licence.

Eventually that became the theme; the Rickwood Classic special edition; three longer features and four shorter ones—at least conceptually!

Something, Sometime

"Easter in October" is not a thing. (Well, maybe for some.) Likewise, "Christmas in August" is not anything either.

Image credit: The Colbert Report

"Christmas in July," however, dates back at least as far as 1933. And (the weather notwithstanding) Melvin and I delighted in our first Christmas in July ballpark promotion in 2010, at Progressive Field.

My niece, her boyfriend and I went to the Brooklyn Cyclones' "Christmas in August" promotion last night. The team's inability to stick to a meme was not its only failure.

Ecumenical

The first of four games between the Mets and the Yankees will be played tonight, two in Flushing and Wednesday and Thursday in the Bronx. Today also marks this year's trade deadline, with the Yankees sellers for the first time since 1992 and the Mets bolstering its line-up. This adds an interesting twist to the annual crosstown interleague games.

In recognition of this week's home-and-home series, I offer this photograph taken by Kevin on the subway in May.