music clip of the day

three takes

“Dream Baby Dream” (A. Vega [Suicide])

Neneh Cherry & The Thing, The Cherry Thing, 6/12

*****

Bruce Springsteen, live (encore), 2005

*****

Suicide (long version), 1980

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lagniappe

random thoughts

Who says sports are frivolous? Baseball offers a veritable Ph.D. program in life’s hardest lessons. Good fortune is fleeting. Nothing can be taken for granted—ever. No matter how smooth the sailing, the shoals of despair are never far away. Yesterday, going into the bottom of the ninth, the Cubs were beating the Reds 3-0. Exit starter Ryan Dempster; enter closer Carlos Marmol. He gives up a walk. Then another. The next batter reaches on an error. Then there’s a line drive. The next batter? He walks, too. By the time Marmol crawls back to the dugout, the bases are loaded, there are no outs, and two runs are in. If nothing else, the pain would have come and gone more swiftly if the Reds had finished things right there. But they don’t. They add just one more run, tying the game. The Cubs come to bat. Nothing. The Reds score again and, finally, it’s over. Reds 4, Cubs 3. No tale from Greek mythology could have made the point more emphatically: fate is pitiless.