Phillies win the 2008 NL pennant, will go to the World Series

I saw Jimmy Rollins lead off the game with a home run, then I had to work out of TV range until after the seventh, then I watched the rest in the office, gave a "Whoop!" and raced out the door to drive home and see my visiting wifetobe and have a Yuengling. I can't process this World Series thing yet, but thank you to Holly and Brian for the text-message updates while I was stuck at work. And holy crap, will I have more to write about these Phillies soon.

Couching, Wawaing, stewing, dancing, shouting, beering

So I didn't blog about Game 3. Well, there really wasn't much to say, and I really didn't watch much of it because it went so bad so fast, but here's a couple of things:

• Shane Victorino was absolutely right to flip out about getting the ball at his head. And guess what? So would have been Manny Ramirez in Game 2, even if you do believe Myers did it by accident. Any time a ball comes near your head (and in Manny's case it was suspicious because there were two outs and nobody on base, which is prime hit-a-slugger-in-the-noggin time), you should be upset. But if Manny didn't make a big deal about it at the time, and if Billingsley didn't retaliate that game, then it should have ended there. But no, the Dodgers waited to retaliate until they were safely back in LA, and then you had Manny Ramirez pretending he was going to fight somebody, when he'd rather shave his head instead. It's just intellectually dishonest to pretend that Victorino was overreacting -- or "wailing and whining," as the cartoonishly partisan LA Times columnists put it. Because HERE'S the point: If having someone throw at your head isn't a big deal, then WHY ARE YOU RETALIATING? What grievance are you trying to avenge? What else had we done to you besides throwing near Ramirez's head, which apparently is something you just shake off? If you're pissed off at Billingsley for ducking his responsibility, it's pathetic and transparently convenient to transfer that anger to the opposing team.
• If anyone would react well to being yanked from a scheduled Game 7 playoff start, it's Jamie Moyer. He's a pro, and he'll understand. If the series gets to a Game 7, they simply can't throw him against this lineup. It has to be Blanton. Of course, at this point, if it DOES get that far, I'll have a nervous breakdown.

Anyway, Game 4. I got home from work in time to watch the final inning of the Rays' blowout of the Red Sox (hahahahaha) and then I switched to Fox for 22 minutes of pregame coverage. I had to mute it within 30 seconds. All the discussion was about the Dodgers "manning up" and Victorino and Hiroki Kuroda and the confrontation. Of course, as a news man I realize it's a story, but as a fan I always prefer game analysis to the extracurricular stuff. The first pitch couldn't arrive fast enough.

And woohoo! Three straight hits and a ground out put two on the board for Philly. Then it was 7 1/2 innings of bleeding out at various speeds, excepting Ryan Howard huffing and puffing home on a wild pitch to briefly tie the game. I drove to Wawa in the brutal sixth inning, and I became the first person in history to get the new toasted Cuban sandwich. They started offering it about an hour before. It was delicious, but I was afraid it would be the highlight of my night.

Nope. Shane Victorino slashed a tying home run into the Phillies bullpen, then pinch hitter Matt Stairs, a heavy 40-year-old journeyman lefthanded hitter whose specialty is trying to crush balls off righthanded relievers, crushed a ball off LA's best righthanded reliever. After Brad Lidge's first multi-inning appearance of the year, the Phillies had won. For the final two innings, I paced around the tiny Ocean City living room, swigging a Yuengling bottle with my right hand and holding the phone in my left. The calls and texts kept coming. I hollered a lot, and I'm glad no one else lives on this block anymore. (There are five houses on either side, and they're empty for the offseason. Across the street, one, maybe two are still occupied. Sorry, sparse neighbors.)

So unless the Dodgers win three straight games, and that is far from impossible, the Phillies will go to the World Series and I will lose my shit. I have to work Wednesday night, talking with a panel of newspaper readers after that night's presidential debate. Hopefully, I'll be able to watch the end of the game, for better or worse.

Four games, three towns, 24 hours

WEST CHESTER, Pa. -- I make it to Dad's place a half-hour before game time Thursday night. I could have, maybe should have, covered a municipal meeting for the paper, but in the latest episode of a seven-month story arc, a Phillies game resulted in me giving a bit less than 100% at work. A couple of times, it's been quite a bit less. In this case, 0%. But since, as far as I know, town hall wasn't besieged by gunmen or atomic bombs or rabid Pine Barrens animals that night, I have no regrets. Fewer than too few to mention. I'm utterly regretless.

Game 1. Phillies open the seven-game National League Championship Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers, competing for the right to face the A(merican)LCS winner for all the marbles. It's the first playoff game I'm watching with someone who gives a rat's ass about the Phillies.

The previous series, Phillies-Brewers, I watched parts of Game 1 from a sports bar near work, ostensibly to interview (other) people who were skipping work to watch the early-afternoon affair. I watched the rest standing beneath a wall-mounted TV in the office, wandering away at brief intervals when I could hear or see one of my five bosses.

I knocked off work early, semi-legitimately, the next day to catch a train to the airport. I'd be flying to Louisville for a weekend with my future wife. I got to the airport three and a half hours ahead of takeoff so I could park myself in the bar for all of Game 2. The good guys won -- as they had the day before, when I cut my elbow in a klutzy spasm of exultation -- and I strolled onto the plane two minutes later.

A Ben Folds concert Saturday in the Ville took me out of viewing range -- happily, as it turned out, because Game 3 was a clunker. Sunday, I deplaned in Philly and took the seat three to the right of where I sat Thursday. In both cases, it was a mostly indifferent crowd of people from somewhere else. I caught the final four innings of the series clincher and ran to the SEPTA stop to catch my train back to the shore. It wasn't a sprint, but it was more than a jog. I got to the train with less than two minutes to spare.

Then, after a few days sans baseball, here I was, again in front of a television rooting for millionaires who live each summer in suburban Philadelphia, hoping they'd manipulate a ball and a piece of wood better than some other millionaires who spend their summers in the wide cultural wasteland of Los Angeles.

As someone who prides himself on practicality, I know that's an entirely practical characterization of sports fandom, but I've never been able to embrace it. Actually, I've never tried. I love sports, especially baseball, especially the Phillies, and I blame/credit my parents for that. Both played several sports in high school, then Dad played collegiate basketball and Mom spent years as a sportswriter. I was a baby when the Phillies won the World Series, a preschooler when the Sixers won 12 of 13 playoff games to steamroll to an NBA title, a junior-high nerd when the Phillies returned to the World Series and lost in excruciating fashion, and a college newspaper editor stuck at work when my Maryland Terrapins won their first men's basketball championship. I was also an editor stuck at work three years later, when the Eagles reached the precipice of football glory but lost the Super Bowl by a single field goal.

The nuances of baseball strategy appealed to me even as a kid, when I saw how braininess could be less of a social liability if it occasionally manifested as game analysis and recall of statistics. Of course, being too into sports is a social liability, too, but that's an anecdote for another day.

So. BACK to live action. Dad and I sit on our hands as the Dodgers scratch out a couple of runs and Derek Lowe throws vicious sinkers that the Phillies bounce harmlessly to the enemy infielders. I reheat a kielbasa and move from the recliner to the table to eat it, and within minutes a Lowe sinker is thrown too Highe, and a slumping Chase Utley unslumps himself by knocking the pitch five rows deep in the rightfield seats. Dad and I hoot and holler, and I temporarily abandon my food to reclaim the recliner and its better view of the TV. Two batters later, Pat Burrell rips a Lowe offering into the leftfield seats, forging a lead and shifting me into the-game-can't-end-soon-enough mode. Soon enough, it ends, with the capable Phillies pitchers allowing little drama. Dad and I feel as though the Phillies have stolen a win, and we definitely feel more like going through with the next morning's 7:30 tee time than we would have otherwise.

I try to go to sleep at midnight, early for me, but I'm too excited about the next day, when Mom and I will see Game 2 in person, tickets courtesy of our little corner of a multi-family season-ticket plan. I drop off around 1:30, and the alarm rouses me at 6:15. I'm unexpectedly alert.

HONEYBROOK, Pa. -- Dad and I head to a golf course I haven't played in 10 years. I'm as relaxed as you'll ever find me on a golf course; there are no crowds, no waiting and the weather is beautiful. Also, I know that unless I shoot a 75 or a 175, the round won't be my signature memory of the day.

I start off very well, but I'm rusty, and it shows within a few holes. Though I enjoy the wedge shot that finds the cup, by far the longest hole-out of my life, my 18-hole performance is otherwise just OK.

We have a great time, though, and we make great time: three hours and 15 minutes, probably the fastest full round I've played. A guy in the parking lot afterward sees Dad's Phillies cap and asks how the team did last night. It seems inconceivable to us that anyone who would care wouldn't already know.

After lunch, I shower and pull on my red Ryan Howard T-shirt at Mom's. She buys the gray Chase Utley equivalent at the Exton Mall, and we zoom off toward the city.

PHILADELPHIA -- It's not the normal regular-season scene outside the ballpark. Booths everywhere, for radio promotions and facepainting and whatnot. A massive archway of red and white balloons over 11th Street, where the band Mister Green Genes plays covers and incites chants of "BEAT L.A.!" The music is way too loud, and my ribcage shudders. None of this is what we came for. We don't need Mister Green Genes to fire us up for this game. We need to grab beers, find our seats and then stand up in front of them, waving rally towels. And this is what we do, after Mom sends my Mets-fan brother-in-law a cellphone picture of the grass-painted NLCS logo and former Phillie Jim Eisenreich sends a ceremonial pitch down the middle.

The Dodgers again strike first by stringing together two hits and a well-placed ground ball, but the Phillies answer earlier than in Game 1. Five straight hits include a healthy line drive from the usually weak-hitting pitcher Brett Myers, and the Phillies lead 4-1 after two innings.

It's a frenzied atmosphere, and my biggest problem is deciding whether to clap or wave my towel. At most games, i.e. regular-season games, they don't hand out rally towels, so you always clap, stand and clap, clap when there are two strikes to urge our pitcher to throw a third one. The other problem with the towel is that when our whirling towels weren't colliding, we were accidentally whipping each other in the head. Rally-towel protocol is tough to master, and the historically inept Phillies have afforded us few opportunities to practice it.

If you hold the thing at the very corner and use a wide swing path, you look like a drunken cattle wrangler who's gotten hold of the bartender's dishtowel. Hold too much of it or swing too discreetly, and you look like the guy at the next stool, signaling for the bartender to bring the check. I try all the methods and see all the methods, and frankly, I don't think anyone else gives a shit what they look like. Sometimes baseball ISN'T a "thinking man's game" ... just wave the towel, asshole.

An inning later, I do, a lot. An improbable Brett Myers single is again the centerpiece of a four-run rally, and the Phillies are on top, 8-2. The Dodgers take the rare step of changing pitchers three times in one inning, and we are brimming with confidence. This would be a blowout, and we could relax and enjoy the atmosphere. How smart we were, to become fans of this team that was so obviously superior to any other! Kudos all around!

Then the most universally infuriating player in baseball makes it 8-5. Home run, Manny Ramirez. Everyone sits down in our section. Everyone is silent. Everyone but the man behind me, one of what seems like a maximum of 7 Dodger fans in the entire 45,000-seat stadium.

"8-5 ballgame! 8-5 ballgame! Yeah baby, woooo! Mann-eeeeeeee!" he hollers, breaking his long sullen silence. I remind myself that there are laws against strangulation, and I picture a comeback win for the Dodgers and wonder whether everyone he encountered between his seat and his car in the parking lot would remember that those laws exist.

Still, we are winning, 8-5, which is generally a good thing. But never have I felt so uncomfortable about a three-run lead. A fatigued Myers (and we later learned he sprained his ankle running the bases) soon departs, leaving the Phillies bullpen, an admitted strength, to retire 12 Dodgers without surrendering three runs. Again, a good position to be in. But you'd never know it from the mid-inning atmosphere.

The crowd becomes less willing to urge the pitchers on, more annoyed at the flailing swing-and-a-misses of the frustrated Ryan Howard. J.C. Romero and Ryan Madson put two runners on base with two outs in the top of the seventh inning. Dodger Boy is crowing again as Casey Blake steps in, knowing a home run would tie the game.

Blake unloads on a Madson pitch. It's a bullet to dead center field, and I stop breathing for four seconds. Then I see what Shane Victorino's doing. He's not just watching it. He's shuffling his feet on a path toward the wall, holding his right arm behind him to feel for it as he raises his glove hand and his gaze straight up.

He gets all the way to the wall, and for an instant I'm disappointed in him. How could you give me false hope, Shane Victorino? Is this ball really going to leave the ballpark, even after you convinced me you might catch it?

Then the short Hawaiian dude becomes my new hero, leaping and snaring the ball. The stadium ... I know it's tacky to say this about a building, but really, the stadium EXPLODES. The effect is enhanced because it is deathly silent in one moment and bedlam in the next. My scream leaves me unable to use the upper register of my voice in singing along with "God Bless America" 30 seconds later. (A quick aside: People often say "God Bless America" is a much more suitable national anthem to "The Star-Spangled Banner" because it's much easier to sing and therefore more likely to have everyone sing along. So here's a tip, lead singers of GBA: The song has a very recognizable cadence, and if you don't use it, if you veer all over the place with crazy stylistic inflection, it's difficult to sing along. Uncool!)

I visit the bathroom for the second time in the eighth inning, as Madson tries to lock down the sixth-to-last, fifth-to-last and fourth-to-last outs. On my way back, I notice the game is on TVs inside, and a strange calm envelops me. I stand under one of them, like I did at work for the first of these excruciating experiences. A security guard standing three feet away is also watching, and he notices me.

"Is everything OK, sir?"

God knows what kind of angsty look is on my face. I reply, "I don't know what it is, man, but for right now, watching the game on TV is less stressful than watching it in there," gesturing to the 45,000 expensive seats.

He laughs and says he understands. Then we see Madson get the second out of the inning and we cheer, and I go back to my seat, because really, what is there to worry about? Plummeting stocks and moronic campaigns for the presidency and questionable career paths are things to worry about. I'm at a baseball game, attending my first Phillies playoff game, and they're winning. As the other people in my section told Dodger Boy: "SIDDOWN!"

I siddown. Despite my attempt to keep things in perspective, I am nervous. So is Mom. Soon, it's the top of the ninth. We're standing with our arms folded, staring holes through the stretch of real estate between Brad Lidge's back and Carlos Ruiz's front. Can't clap, can't wave towels, although by the looks of things we're the only ones. The crowd is cheering wildly for every Lidge slider, and so am I, in my head. (Crash course: A fastball goes generally straight and is fast. A curveball breaks down, sometimes to the side, too, but is generally slow. A slider is their love child, and Brad Lidge indisputably throws the most devastating, unhittable one in Major League Baseball.) Softly, I spit out, "come on brad ... slider down, slider down ... come on buddy ..."

Lidge wisely pitches around Ramirez and James Loney, the two most dangerous hitters in the heart of the L.A. lineup. He works in a clutch strikeout of Ethier, then gets the impetuous Matt Kemp swinging. Then Nomar Garciaparra steps to the plate with two outs and two men on base. An out would, as erstwhile announcer Scott Graham loved to say, "put this one in the win column for the Fightin' Phils!" A home run would tie the game. Anything in between, and I'll have to make a third trip to the bathroom.

Garciaparra shares one thing, and maybe only one thing, with Brett Myers: Both LOVE to swing at first-pitch fastballs. I mentally instruct Lidge not to throw heat to Garciaparra. Even in my fantasy state of mind, I know it's unnecessary, because even more than usual, Lidge has relied on his slider in this series. Indeed, he deals two nasty ones to Garciaparra, who can do nothing with them. So it's an 0-2 count.

Here's how I'd characterize the biggest cheers from this game:

-When each of Brett Myers' first two RBI singles landed safely, the noise was just the noise of thousands of people hollering excitedly, maybe a crowd at a massive wet-T-shirt contest. (The ONE THING they didn't have at the pregame festivities! Although they did have a massive T-shirt, a 15-foot-tall inflatable replica jersey that fans could sign with Sharpies. I did, but the only available marker was purple. WTF?)

-When Victorino caught Casey Blake's moon shot in the seventh, it was a movie moment ... think the raptor poking his head through the wall behind Laura Dern in Jurassic Park, or the alien pilot's body armor bursting open in Independence Day. A sudden burst of earsplitting screams from the patrons, followed by slightly softer sustained screams, followed by a few moments of them holding hands to their chests and panting, "Oh my God ... ohhh, my GOD, did that just scare the shit out of me."

-When Lidge has gotten Garciaparra to 0-2 and is looking into Ruiz for the next sign, the noise itself is startling. The best comparison I can think of is a jet engine. When people shout, "Whooo!", they generally use as high a voice as they comfortably can, and yet the combination of all our efforts produces a low rumble, too. I've attended hundreds of sporting events, many of them crucial to the outcome of a team's season. I've seen a Democratic president speak in the most reliably Democratic county in the United States. I've seen dozen of concerts, stood next to giant speakers in tiny venues. And still, I have never heard a noise to rival The Count Is 0-2 On Nomar Garciaparra. 

Lidge doesn't make us make the noise twice. He fires a third slider, Garciaparra waves at it, and that is that. We cheer again, but it's softer than before the strikeout. There's no goal to it, it's a celebratory cheer. The Phillies have won the first two games, and they just need to win two of their next five to reach the World Series. We know this. We're already picturing a sweep, imagining Jamie Moyer frustrating the L.A. youngsters with slowballs in Game 3 and a short-rested Derek Lowe succumbing to a Ryan Howard resurgence in Game 4.

We stay at our posts a few extra moments instead of filing out with the "That was great! Now run like hell to the car so we don't sit in the parking lot for an hour!" crowd. I dance stupidly to "Cellllllllllllllll-uh-brate-good-times-COME-ON!" Then it's time to amble across the street to the Sixers preseason game, where a Phillies ticket stub is good for free admission, an offer we and the ticket-takers immediately see was advertised in Belligerent Drunk Digest. We wait in line while the staff assigns seats.

We're in the upper deck in a corner, and it's near the end of the third quarter, but it's better than sitting in traffic. Plus, my cousin finds us. He and my uncle and their friends were at the Phils game, too, and we relive the big moments as the Knicks and Sixers play fast-paced, relatively sloppy basketball. It's over within a half-hour, a six-point loss for the home team, and we're ready to try our luck on the highway.

There's not much traffic once we squeeze out onto Broad Street, then I-95. A pizza is ordered from the road and devoured at Mom's place (I hadn't had an appetite since lunch), and suddenly I'm acutely aware how long I've been awake and walking/club-swinging/screaming/towel-waving/seat-pounding/driving. Zzzzzzz.

It's 24 hours later now, and I'm sore from the golf. I'm scratchy-throated from cheering; as my niece Lea would complain: "Sand in mouth! Sand in mouth!" But I'm feeling lucky to have watched big Phillies wins with Mom and Dad, happy to have connected with other family and friends by phone during the games. Sports are historically unimportant this fall, compared to everything else, and that's as it should be. But still, if the Phillies win six more games, I wouldn't miss that Broad Street parade for anything. The Bermudan Air Force could fly over here and carpet-bomb Atlantic City, or all the blueberry crops in South Jersey could turn to dust, but if you think I'm going to work to write about it that day, you're crazy.

44 solid moments of Big Lebowski dialogue

Delivered in chronological order, with, where appropriate, explanations of why I like them ...


1) Stranger: "Now, 'Dude' ... that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from."
Cowboys who hyphenate appropriately and conveniently. I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that.

2) Woo (peeing on the Dude's rug): "Ever thus to deadbeats, Lebowski."
Poetic cynicism from a guy holding his johnson.

3) Other Treehorn Flunky (holding bowling ball): "What the fuck is this?"
Dude: "Obviously, you're not a golfer."
This line fills me to the brim with a weird jealousy, because I would love to respond disdainfully to a dumbass robber who just gave me a swirly. Beyond that, whenever I hold a ball the way OTF holds the ball here, I picture this exchange. It's a sickness.

4) Woo:"He looks like a fuckin' loser."
Dude: "Hey, at least I'm housebroken."

5) Dude: "Walter, the Chinaman who peed on my rug ... I can't go give him a bill! So what the fuck are you talking about?"
Walter: "What the fuck are YOU talking about? The Chinaman is not the issue here, Dude! I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, Dude. 'Across this line, you do not...' Also, Dude, 'Chinaman' is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please."
Dude: "Walter, this isn't a guy who built the railroads here."
Obviously the snap-quick change from manufactured fury to patronizing political correctness. And also, the idea that the Dude would somehow be less likely to call a 19th-century railroad builder a "Chinaman" than he would Woo.

6) Walter: "Jeff Lebowski! The other Jeffrey Lebowski! The millionaire!"
Dude: "That's fucking interesting, man, that's fucking interesting."
It's all the pose from the Dude. I can't even describe it.


7) Dude: (indicating photograph of the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers, whose ethnicities vary) "These are, uh..."
Brandt: "Oh, those are Mr. Lebowski's children, so to speak."
Dude: "Different mothers, huh?"
Brandt: "No, they're not..."
Dude: "Racially, he's pretty cool?"
Brandt losing control of the interaction with the Dude.

8) Lebowski: "Do you speak English, sir? Parla usted ingles?"
Parla is Italian, usted ingles is Spanish. Next.

9) Dude: "Wait, let me ex -- let me explain something to you. I am not Mr. Lebowski. You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude, so that's what you call me. You know, uh, that or 'His Dudeness,' or 'Duder,' or 'El Duderino,' if you're not into the whole brevity thing."
The reference to brevity as some fresh conversational trend. I don't know, maybe it's the phrase "El Duderino" that gets me instead.

10) Lebowski: "I didn't blame anyone for the loss of my legs. Some Chinaman took them from me in Korea."
Chinaman. Korea. NEXT!

11) Lebowski: "Oh, 'fuck it!' Yes, that's your answer! That's your answer to everything! Tattoo it on your forehead!"
Telling someone "That's your answer to everything!" as though you've known them for years, not five minutes. Also, TBL drops the "h" in forehead.

12) Bunny: "Uli doesn't care about anything. He's a nihilist."
Dude: "Oh, that must be exhausting."
Used to be, this was funny because it's simply a funny line, if maybe a bit overreenacted by film fans who've had a few beers (guilty). It's additionally funny because I have a hard time believing Tara Reid is in any way different from her character here.

13) Dude: "You brought a fucking Pomeranian bowling?"
Walter: "What do you mean, 'brought it bowling'? I didn't rent it shoes. I'm not buying it a fucking beer. He's not taking your fucking turn, Dude."

14) Walter: "Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules."
I almost didn't cite this one. I don't love it. But Walter's exasperated voice sells it.


15) Dude: "And you know, he's got emotional problems, man."
Walter: "You mean, beyond pacifism?"
Ditto here for his incredulity.

16) Lebowski: "Are you surprised at my tears, sir?"
Dude (smoking a joint): "Fuckin' A!"
I can't think of a better expression to torpedo the grim atmosphere a man establishes when he summons you to a fireside to report his wife's kidnapping.

17) Dude: "He thinks the carpet pissers did this?"
Brandt: "Well, Dude, we just don't know."
Brandt caves and calls him Dude, the politically expedient thing to do.

18) Dude: "It's all a goddamn fake, man. It's like Lenin said: you look for the person who will benefit, and, uh, you know..."
Donny: "'I am the walrus.'"
Dude: "... you know, you'll, uh ... you know what I'm trying to say..."
Donny: "'I am the walrus.'"
Walter: "That fucking bitch!"
Dude: "Oh yeah!"
Donny: "'I am the walrus.'"
Walter: "That's exa -- Shut the fuck up, Donny! V.I. Lenin! Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov!"
Gold.



19) Quintana: "Are you ready to be fucked, man? I see you roll your way into the semis ... dios mio, man. Liam and me, we're gonna fuck you up."
Dude: "Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, uh, your opinion, man."
Quintana (to Walter, whose unimpressed gaze never breaks): "Lemme tell YOU somethin', pendejo! You pull any of your crazy shit with us, you flash a piece out on the lanes, I'll take it away from you and stick it up your ass and pull the fuckin' trigger 'til it goes 'click.'"
Dude: "Jesus."
Quintana: "You said it, man. Nobody fucks with the Jesus." (leaves)
Walter (finally turns): "Eight-year-olds, Dude."
You just want so desperately for Walter to say something to Jesus. Two guys who are polar opposites in every way, save for their shared love of violent threats.
And, yeah, Liam. Liam as Jesus's bowling partner. If they got a beer afterward, would they talk bowling? Would they talk about women? Is Liam a pervert, too?

20) Dude (inspecting the unsolicited "ringer"): "What the hell is this?"
Walter: "My dirty undies, Dude. Laundry. The whites!"
Walter's face afterward ... a self-satisfied genius, silently braying like a donkey.

21) Dude: "That's a great plan, Walter. Fuckin' ingenious, if I understand it correctly. That's a Swiss fuckin' watch."

22) Cop: "In the briefcase?"
Dude: "Papers, just papers, you know, my business papers."
Cop: "And what do you do, sir?"
Dude: "I'm unemployed."
Do what you want, but I laugh out loud, every time.

23) Maude: "Do you like sex, Mr. Lebowski?"
Dude: "Excuse me?"
Maude: "Sex, the physical act of love, coitus. Do you like it?"
Dude: "I was talking about my rug."
Maude: "You're not interested in sex?"
Dude: "You mean, coitus?"
Again, the Dude quickly regurgitates someone else's phraseology ("This aggression will not stand, man!") And of course that repeats itself later, "in the parlance of our time"...

24) Maude (turning off the porn movie Logjammin') "You can imagine where it goes from here."
Dude: "He fixes the cable?"
Maude: "Don't be fatuous, Jeffrey."
Julianne Moore's Transatlantic accent breaks me up on "fatuous," a world I can never hear without thinking of fatness. Why can't I get past that?

25) Dom: "So he says, 'My wife's a pain in the ass, she's always busting my friggin' agates. My daughter's married to a jagool loser bastard. I got a rash so bad on my ass I can't even sit down. But you know me, I can't complain.'" (cracks up)
Dude (drinking a White Russian): "Fuckin' A, man. I got a rash, man."
Nothing is purer than the bliss of a drunk utterly missing the point.

26) Dude (being wrestled into a limo): "Careful, man, there's a beverage here!"
"Beverage" always makes me laugh, in this movie and elsewhere, because it's so unnecessary. Drink. Drink drink drink. That didn't seem tough.

27) Dude (as marmot-tamers break in): "Hey, this is a private residence, man!"
Somehow, even the neutral word "residence" seems too classy for his house.

28) Walter: "Fucking Nazis."
Donny: "They were Nazis, Dude?"
Walter: "Oh come on, Donny, they were threatening castration! Are we going to split hairs here?"
As he developed his hurried, flimsy hypothesis, he came up with an equally flimsy defense. He'd be a great press secretary.

29) Walter (flummoxed): "Nihilists. ... Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude ... at least it's an ethos."
A Jew so in need for rules and structure that he finds himself more able to understand the Nazis than people who believe in nothing. "OVER THE LINE!"


30) Dude: "I don't need your fucking sympathy, man, I need my fucking johnson."
Donny: "What do you need that for, Dude?"

31) Knox Harrington: "Do you want a drink?"
Dude: "Yeah, sure. White Russian."
Harrington: "The bar's over there. So what do you do, Lebowski?"
Dude: "Who the fuck are you, man?"
Harrington (giggles): "Just a friend of Maudy's."
Dude: "Yeah? A friend with a cleft asshole?"
A mix of absurdity and ball-breaking between two complete strangers.

32) Maude: "Uli? Her co-star in the beaver picture?"
Dude: "Beaver? ... You mean, vagina? ... I mean, you know the guy?"

33) Walter: "He's in north Hollywood, on Radford, near the In-N-Out Burger."
Dude: "No, the In-N-Out Burger's on Camrose."
Walter: "NEAR the In-N-Out Burger."
Donny: "Those are good burgers, Walter."
Walter: "Shut the fuck up, Donny."
Donny tees it up for Senor Sobchak. And all this, of course, with Dude's landlord's modern dance fiasco in the background.

34) Walter: "Fucking Arthur Digby Sellers wrote 156 episodes. Bulk of the series. Not exactly a lightweight."
Every time I watch this movie, I walk away resolving to find a reason to use the phrase "bulk of the series" in casual conversation. So far, nothing.

35) Walter: "And a good day to you, sir!"
Shouting, unprompted, to a man in an iron lung 20 feet away.

36) Jackie Treehorn: "New technology permits us to do very exciting things in interactive erotic software. Wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic!"
Dude: "Yeah, well, I still jerk off manually."
Jackie (laughs, slaps Dude's knee): "Of course you do."
Who can find nostalgic camaraderie in the topic of if not a senior-citizen porn magnate?

37) Jackie: "Refill?"
Dude: "Yeah, pope shit in the woods?"

38) Dude: "So, if you would just write me a check for my 10 percent of half a million ... five grand ..." (stumbles drunkenly)

39) Stranger: "Darkness worshed over the Dude ... darker than a black steer's tuchus on a moonless prairie night. There was no bottom."
Other than the steer's tuchus.

40) Police chief: "Mr. Treehorn tells us that he had to eject you from his garden party, that you were drunk and abusive."
Dude (muffled, face down on chief's desk): "Mr. Treehorn treats objects like women, man!"
Whether it's the golfer line or the latter half of this exchange, you're talking about a quote that various circles of my friends would forfeit a half-mile of intestines each never to hear escape my lips again.

41) Dude: "How're you gonna keep 'em down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?"
As far as I can tell, the strangest and most overlooked line in the film.

42) Walter: "The man in the black pajamas, Dude ... worthy fuckin' adversary."

43) Quintana: "HEY! What's this day-of-rest shit? What's this bullshit? I don't fuckin' care ... it don't matter to Jesus! But you not foolin' me, man. You might fool the fucks in the league office, but you don't fool Jesus. It's bush-league psych-out stuff. Laughable, man ... ha HAAA! I would've fucked in you in the ass Saturday. I'll fuck you in the ass next Wednesday instead. (thrusts pelvis) WOOO! You've got a date Wednesday, baby!"
Bush-league scenery-chewing stuff, UNTIL ... the pelvic thrust accompanied by the WOOO! And I found something innately funny in the word "Wednesday" here.

44) Stranger: "'The Dude abides.' I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that. It's good knowing he's out there ... the Dude ... takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shucks."

Thangs

-After a third of the season, the Phillies are 30-24, on pace for 90 wins, one more than they got last year when they won the division. However, they're 1.5 games behind Florida at the moment.

-Holly got that nonsense with Super 8 straightened out. Night clerk didn't know from whence she spoke, but day clerk did. Whew.

-Had my co-best men in this weekend. Beach, hoops, putt-putt, beer, cards ... tough row to hoe.

-Hadn't ridden a bike in years, then Friday I rode 19 miles from my apartment to my extended family's beach house in Ocean City. Ow, muscles. And ow, sunburn, because I'm a sunblock-forgetting doofus.

-I played a little poker at the Borgata Monday night, and one player at my table displayed a simply stunning lack of judgment.
The game is $2/$4 limit, and if you don't know what that means, all you need to know in this context is that you can't put in all your money at once, only $2 or $4 at a time. It's unusual to see more than three or four raises in a row, because usually one person thinks, "Hey, maybe my hand isn't the best possible hand," but these guys raised FORTY times in a row. It took 20 minutes. When one of them finally ran out of money, the hands were shown, and while one guy had the best possible hand, the other guy had NOWHERE CLOSE to the best possible hand.
(If you're a poker person: board was three spades and two non-spade 7s. Winner had (duh) four 7s, the best possible hand. Loser apparently didn't see board was paired, because he didn't have any kind of full house. He had a flush. Uh-huh. And he lost $180 on it. In a 2-4 hand. Uh-huh.)

-Two seconds ago, Marv Albert just said on TV: "The Lakers have been invincible at home ... that doesn't mean that they're unbeatable ..."
Um. Doesn't it?

I don't think so

Super 8's trying to mess with my fiancee, charging her more than she was quoted for her monthlong stay (for rural medicine rotation) and putting her in a smoking room despite her long-ago request otherwise. Bleep all that bleep, Tommy Lasorda would say.

Bad day for quadripeds

Two hours after Eight Belles was euthanized at Churchill Downs, my car collided with a deer, killing it.

Saturday evening, I was driving south in rural Chester County from one friend's party to another's, 50 mph in a 45 zone, something like that. No twilight left, scarce street lamps, acres and acres of fields and forest on either side of the road.

Holly and I were chatting on the phone when I cut a sentence short with a noise she at first took for a cough. It was actually a blend of a scream and a holler - "AWGH!"

If it were a film, the deer would have appeared for one frame, like those subliminal messages they used to splice into movies, "Drink Pepsi" or whatthehellever. But even in that one frame, I could tell it had sprinted toward my car diagonally from my 10:00 or 10:30. WHOMP.

I pulled the car off the road and hurriedly got off with Holly after assuring her I was OK. Which I was and am ... no soreness or anything.

I didn't really know what to do, having never hit a deer or anticipated doing so. I figured I should check out the damage to the car and the deer, and since I was about a hundred yards from the deer and had no veterinary supplies with me, it seemed OK to give the car a look-see first.

It was inconceivable. The car was 99.44% intact. No scratches, no dents; windows all unbroken and obeying the up and down switches, doors all worked. The only casualty was my sideview mirror, which was simply gone. Three wires were sticking out there, but the mirror itself and the whole casing, whatever you call it, was MIA.

I processed all this (just the lack of dents and the absent mirror; I fiddled with latches and switches later) in a second, then jogged back to where the deer was, but I could see from the car that it was still, lying perfectly parallel to the road on the double yellow center line.

I got closer and felt a little better when I saw that it wasn't twitching or anything. My best guess: it slammed its head on my mirror and died instantly. That's an 80 mph collision, 50 from me and probably 30 from him/her.

I didn't want to look directly at the dead deer, but I'm pretty sure it was a doe because I probably would remember antlers. My car certainly would.

I'm not in the business of touching bleeding wild animals with ungloved hands, and I worried that another car could hit the deer and get in another accident, so I called 911. Once they found out I and the car were OK, they seemed most interested in finding out exactly how many yards south of the cross street I was, because I was near a township boundary. I gave it my best guess and got off the phone, waiting for the police officer they said would come and take a crash report.

I had no idea whether it would be worth it to file a report -- the cost of replacing a sideview mirror probably won't approach my insurance deductible -- but I used the wait time to settle down, too.

Ten minutes later, a truck coming north slowed and pulled to the shoulder when it saw the deer. I figured this was a municipal employee of some sort who'd been enlisted to drag the carcass out of the road; it was about the amount of time I'd expected the response to take. But then as the guy appeared to be hauling the deer into the bed of his truck -- gross -- a southbound police officer stopped his car and told the guy to leave it. I guess it was just some dude who wanted deer jerky for the rest of the summer.

Cop then chatted with me (turned out he knows several people who apparently still work at my former paper in the area) and took a report, and I got out of there. I stopped at the homestead to get swim trunks and switch to the family's utility car, a Jeep, for the short trip to the other (hot tub) party.

This morning, Mom and I drove back to the crash site and found my mirror. It had sailed over the car and landed on the passenger side of the road. Couldn't find the glass, but the casing and the mechanical piece that moves the glass were there. I'll come back next weekend to get some body-work estimates; I'm using the Jeep in the meantime.

I still can't believe my luck. If you can find someone who crashed into a deer and has less to complain about than me, good for you. If the running deer had angled five degrees to its left, or if it had been faster, or if it had had antlers, or if I hadn't worn a seat belt, or if I had been some drunk nitwit straddling the median, it would have been disaster.

You can say I shouldn't have been on the phone in a known deer area, and, OK, I guess. But I had zero chance to see the deer earlier than I did, in the complete dark, and once I saw the deer it was as close to the car as you are to your computer's monitor.

The fact is, on roads like this, there's pretty much nothing you can do. Deer are everywhere. They cross the road all the time. They're hunger-emboldened (or full and stupid) so they scamper right in front of cars all the time. I travel the Garden State Parkway frequently, too, and I have almost never not seen deer milling around in the median or shoulder.

Anyway, I figured if I didn't blog about this, I might as well delete the damned thing. Glad to be back. Be careful out there, folks.