Mr. Carnegie Mellon does some research and develops a substantive theory about the mysterious New Yorker Cartoon of the Week.

Matt: lol…it's linguini, and in a tube!

Auto response from Patrick: away

Matt: i'm very amused by that one actually

Matt: i think it suffices to say that our friend peter mueller must've had a bad experience at an italian restaurant recently

Matt: plus, he probably doesn't know squat about italian food since liguini is long and thin, not round, and he also mispelled it…maybe that's on purpose though

Matt: he certainly has the wine and an olive

Matt: if you look at what else he's done, though… for instance, i think it's more of a critique on where technology is taking us in general

Matt: heh, here's another one from our favorite technophobe as he shall now be referred to as…

Thursday evening at Gannett Field, as the USAToday.com Sultans of Dot took on the less creatively named News/Money softball team, I finally hit the ball a long way.

I hit the ball the ballyhooed country mile, still inside the park but long enough for me. I'd been strugging all season at the plate, continuing my Little League tradition of doing so but trying harder than ever to stop. The retraining regimen had been grueling — for office softball. Batting cage trips, relearning right-handed hitting, teaching myself a little restraint in the box (stepping, leaning and waiting back in the box), and remembering to watch that big ball all the way through its drop.

So this hit — this hit was sweet spot sweet. My second drive out of the infield all season, deep into right-center, and I was sprinting around first, off the inside of the bag at second and safely into third with the girl on the bag still waving her arms to get the cutoff man's throw. Our lone Sultan runner scored to retake the lead, and I had myself a stand-up triple.

A stand-up, hot to trot, Sam Crawford-loving triple. The hit and condition of verticality accomplished together only by humans of blazing vision and hustle. The kind of bases I needed to turn my season around.

But when I looked up, the ump had my bat in his hands and he was calling me out. Out! The ump yelled that the bat was illegal. He escorted the bat, owned by coworker, into the dugout, and I ran in from third. Heading back onto the field, he pointed at me and barked, "You're ejected! You're disqualified from the game!"

Ejected! Thrown out of a company softball game! The bat was illegal because there was tape at bottom, the ump said. But we've used the bat all season, we argued back. I had already used the bat earlier in the game! But no dice. The ump walked onto the infield and dramatically rung me out, just to make the ejection official.

I took a seat in the wood bleachers, not arguing, because the only thing sillier than being thrown out of a company softball game would have been going Earl Weaver at a company softball game. My RBI went back to the bases and never got back home; the Sultans eventually took the loss. After the game, the ump would come over to explain the bat rule to me. The tape let big guys get another inch of leverage on the ball, he said, but also made the bat more likely to slip out of their hands. And their slippery hands meant my coworker's bat and I were out of luck.

What was the night's average? It was too bad to lose the triple and worse to lose the game, but the ejection taught us all something about a bad bad man with larceny in his heart and ice water in his veins. That man was me, and I liked it.

Because when they outlaw bats, only the outlaws will have bats.

Then the outlaws will give a bat to me, and we'll all be happy.

Related past entries:

-June 10, 2003: The Narrative of The Bat

-June 3, 2002: Playing softball with Catholics and Kevin Arnold

-April 18, 2002: Hearing the first bat of spring

Maybe Jamie Foxx just has a knack for trailers that he doesn't show in films, but he's now showing in two such promotions surprising with their power. The first, playing before Anchorman at my local theater, is Collateral with Tom Cruise. Foxx is a cabbie; Cruise is a passenger and a killer. IMDB offers the trailer and more details.

The second film is Ray, the upcoming Ray Charles biopic. Trailers can always be deceiving, but Foxx practically brings his young version alive for me in this one. I've been skeptical of Foxx's musical abilities, but if he can pull off this movie, I'll take back my reticence. Yahoo has the trailer, and IMDB has details.

Related past entries:

-June 10, 2004: Ray's Music Exchange

-Jan. 13, 2004: Slow Jamz review

-Nov. 2, 2003: Philly taxi cab hustler

-Mar. 3, 2003: Taxi's Louie or Cheers' Carla?

Movie recommendation:

-Mr. T's finest film work, outside of Rocky III, and the A-Team, is undoubtedly 1983's D.C. Cab. A rag-tag band of hacks takes on rival cabbies and international terrorists on the early home-rule streets of Washington. Also starring Gary Busey, Bill Maher and Whitman Mayo (Grady from Sanford and Son), this inspiration for standardized test slacking is a comedic must-see for District natives and root-setting city immigrants. I'm not saying the film is Gone with the Wind, but sleepy Southernness early in the throes of Barry and deep in a ridiculous script does the job for me.

Linked on Romenesko, Jim Callaghan of the New York Observer offers tips for the new journalism program at the City University of New York. The students, Callaghan writes,"must start their day by annoying the Mayor, the Governor, the City Council Speaker, every elected official and every executive assistant to the deputy mayor — just on general principle."

Elsewhere, Ken Kobre, a photojournalism prof at San Francisco State, talks good sense about photo usage and photos size online. Most importantly, he argues for simpler access: "When pictures are ghettoised, they are no longer part of the experience of seeing pictures and reading the story simultaneously and integrating the two. They have now become disassociated. You don't want to commit the time to opening a slide show. With a magazine, you read the story and look at the pictures and get an integrated and real experience"

Also on the business of getting to information, Poynter's E-Media Tidbits blog points to a page that tests the abilities of your pop-up blocker.  Here's how the Google Toolbar 2.0.111 fares:

Normal popup blocking = Passed 

Full-screen popup blocking = Passed 

Channel-opener popup blocking = Passed 

User-launched Delayed-method popup allowing = Failed

You scored 85, a rating of Very Good.

Slate nails another Explainer. As Cassini gets up close and personal with Saturn, Brendan Koerner tackles "Why Does Saturn Have Rings?" But he has me with the deck, "And how come Earth has none?" 

Kinda strange about the up-style headline and down-style decks on Slate. Never noticed that switch'emup before. 

Meanwhile, the WSJ tracks down the "Pet Goat" book that President Bush was reading when he learned of the Sept. 11 attacks. Saving us the WSJ.com subscription price, E&P gives us a brief. Anyone with children's book experience has to enjoy the plot: "It shows what happens after a girl is ordered by her parents to get rid of her pet goat, who has been munching everything in its path. The goat becomes a hero in the home, however, when a burglar invades and the goat butts him into submission." 

And speaking of butting one into submission, the executive editor of commentary at CNET's News.com, Charles Cooper (not the same as my uncle Chuck), writes a piece about software upgrades. His headline is what got me to read: "Homey, don't play that software upgrade."

Roger Ebert responds to a critic, a mother of a 14-year-old. According to a local news story, she pays attention to the son's movie reviews now, not Ebert's. Says the Sun-Times critic: "I am writing you in the hope of saving your friends, your sister Jasmine, and your mother Toni from going to see a truly dismal new movie. It is called 'A Cinderella Story,' and they may think they'll like it because it stars Hilary Duff." 

David Letterman's Late Show offers the Top Ten Ways To Make The All-Star Game More Exciting. (In other All-Star Game news, I failed to watch the game.) 

CNN.com recruits a student reporter at the University of Pennsylvania to write about frat boys' opinions on the upcoming presidential election. Inebriated at least by the weight of tradition, the boys turn to central casting. 

"I think I would rather have Kerry hold my feet during a keg stand because, let's face it, you need… someone responsible to do something like that," Penn junior Patrick Carroll said.  

"You wouldn't want to fall and chip your teeth on the keg or something, and I could just picture 'college-era' Bush seeing a hot girl across the room and dropping everything he was doing to go talk to her," the Kappa Alpha brother said.

"That's not the only reason I'm voting for Kerry, but it sure doesn't hurt," he added.

Emily files her second column for Joliet's Herald News. She's turning 25, and there she finds her premise: "Despite the exciting opportunities I'll have to frequent Enterprise and Hertz, I found a drawback to being 25 that casts a shadow over my birthday: I'm too old to be on The Real World."

The Cartoon of the Week from the New Yorker confuses the heck out of me. See it here. Any ideas?

Related item:

-Archive of New Yorker cartoon analyses

Because it's just so darn cute.

Hey, my name is Lisa. I'm currently a freshman in college, and I think I'm going to be a psychology major, but who knows!

I'm on the girls tennis team and I signed up to be photo editor for our campus newspaper. I'm single at the moment cause the right guy hasn't come along yet!! Hopefully I'll meet him soon

I just got done browsing thru profiles online and i found yours! I just got my webcam working so we can talk as long as you want at my website and it doesn't cost you anything if you wanna watch or see me!

Just Copy and Paste the URL below to visit my free chatroom!

[URL REDACTED]

I hope we get to meet soon… I'll wait for you

laters, Lisa

And then hidden in white text at the very bottom:

alert oscillatory djakarta village carport spectacle canyon crotchety

electrocardiograph detail audacious amalgamate burnett emasculate belgium incommutable 2

Finally caught up some at the beach.

May 3, 2004:

For those of you playing along at home, please refer to page 63 of the issue. See Samantha Appleton's photo accompanying this story. Why is Jimmy Fallon in al-Sadr's militia? An advertisement promotes Mr. Happy Crack.

May 10, 2004:

Nick Paumgarten reviews Fondue (303 E. 80th St.) for the front-of-the-book Tables for Two. He tells of "a recent Friday night" and teaches me a lesson: "At a nearby table, someone recalled the old rule that when you lose a chunk of bread in the cheese you must,if you're a woman, kiss the man next to you, or, if you're a man, buy another bottle of wine."Paumgarten continues: "The brie-and-basil-leaf fondue was especially viscous and was soon studded with orphaned bits of bread; it was agreed that the blame should be placed on the men. It turns out Pinot Grigio also goes with melted Belgian chocolate and melted caramel, if you drink enough of it."An advertisement sells Tee-PJs, the "most comfortable sleeper you've ever worn or your money back."

May 17, 2004:

The listings mention upcoming performances of My Renaissance Faire Lady. This promotional page also does the play justice.In Talk of the Town, Jane Jacobs talks to Adam Gopnik: "There's a joke that the father of an old friend use to tell, about a preacher who warns children, 'In Hell there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.' 'What if you don't have teeth?' one of the children asks. 'Then teeth will be provided,' he says sternly. That's it — the spirit of the designed city: Teeth Will Be Provided For You."Jacobs later says her favorite song is Shenandoah. Dylan's version?

An advertisement sells "European Beret $10." Visit the haberdasher's site.

May 24, 2004:

Anthony Lane reviews Van Helsing: "Then, there is Kate Beckinsale, whose unhappy purpose, here as in "Pearl Harbor," is to provide what I hesitate to call the love interest. She plays Anna Valerious, whose name would bring intense pleasure to a writer of limericks, and whose attitude toward lycanthropes resembles that of Brigitte Bardot toward stray dogs."James L. Coddington, chief conservator at the Museum of Modern Art, addresses Talk of the Town about restoring a Picasso. "Do we restore every little flaw?" Coddington says to Calvin Tomkins. "Not necessarily. Restoration is a balance between hubris and humility. Just the notion of touching this picture ought to make you stop."Jhumpa Lahiri's "Hell-Heaven" is the magazine's most powerful fiction piece in a while.

June 7, 2004:

Roger Angell contributes "Hard Lines." Angell writes about the long-ago death of a friend, as if to name and pass a ghost.He notes how people react to losses suffered by others: "Oh, no, we exclaim when such news reaches us, but these tales are part of a classic repertory we recognize as our own." And yet with the story he tells, I think he finds the shared suffering to be a blessing.One of the best poetry placements I've seen in the last year in the magazine comes with Angell's story. If you can find Jack Gilbert's "Resume" anywhere online (I can't), it's worth a read.

June 14 & 21, 2004:

The Summer Fiction Issue presents a trilogy of short stories from Alice Munro. The first, Chance, is my favorite. The story is the only one of the three posted online, but Munro discusses the stories in an online-only interview.

June 28, 2004:

Louis Menand eviscerates Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves. But then he relents.Also, the cover decides who should be on the $10 bill.

July 5, 2004:

In the front of the book, the Clubs compilers enjoy themselves. For the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill: "July 2: The sexy rapper Lil' Kim. July 5: Cannibal Corpse, as the name might suggest, is a death-metal ensemble."Then, for the Bowery Ballroom: "July 3: The British band Psychic TV reunite for the third time in their twenty-three year history. Formed from the rubble of seventies industrial-music pioneers Throbbing Gristle, the group has gone through dozens of lineup and stylistic changes. Psychic TV's one constant has then protean leader, Genesis P-Orridge (he recently got breast implants), whose main implants are the expatriate painter Brion Gysin and William Burroughs. This incarnation includes veterans of the local punk scene as well as Douglas Rushkoff, a journalist and 'Frontline' correspondent, on keyboards."Among the issue's longer pieces, unfortunately not linked online (that I can find), Caitlin Flanagan discusses her mother's self-liberation and her own girlhood.

Writes Flanagan: "When I think of what it was like to be a girl then, I remember an endless series of afternoons, each an ungraspable piece of time. I watched television, and hurtled perilously down our steep block on my Schwinn, and dressed the cats in baby clothes. Children didn't have 'passions' and 'talents'; we had hobbies and collections — glass animals and plastic horses for girls, baseball cards for boys, and stamps for geeks of both genders."