T-Shirt #17: Detroit Tigers Country

T-shirt #17: It's obvious you wish you were part of Detroit Tigers Country

I made a secret promise with myself yesterday. By secret, I mean, I did not share it with you, dear readers. I decided to display another Tigers shirt today if the team beat the Yankees yesterday.

Guess what?

Another Tigers victory to move to 3-2 on the season.

I know, I know. Some of you are saying: "Hey, Tower, aren't you a huge Michigan fan? The Wolverines won the final four game last night to go to the NCAA Finals. Where's your Michigan shirt?"

Well, I have already posted THREE Michigan shirts (and now THREE Tigers shirts).  Expect a Michigan shirt tomorrow. It's necessary. Today, it's the Detroit Tigers.

It's always great to beat the Yankees. But it's even better to see the Tigers beat them like the team did yesterday (Saturday, April 6): Cabrera goes 4-4 with a double and a walk, Peralta and Hunter also hit doubles and notch RBIs, Dirks earns his first and second hits of the season and logs two RBIs, VMart slaps a single and a RBI, AJ has three hits. In fact, every Tigers player has a hit except Santiago who goes 0-4. Scherzer is a bit shaky and Alburquerque gives up a hit and two walks in one inning, but the Tigers pile it on in the fifth and sixth and win 8-4. How sweet it is.

Verlander takes the mound against CC Sabathia today, Sunday April 7.

Remember that last time the Tigers played the Yankees, the Detroiters swept them in four straight to win the ALCS. A sweep this weekend is hardly necessary, but it's decisive, and it sends the right message.

BEWARE THE DETROIT TIGERS!

-chris tower 1304.07 7:22

T-shirt #16: TEAM OF DESTINY (2006)

T-shirt #16: TEAM OF DESTINY (2006)

I love Baseball. As I work through all of my Baseball T-shirts, I am sure that my love for Baseball will become abundantly clear if it isn't already.

In 2006, I did not feel so alone in my love for Baseball, and especially, the Detroit Tigers. Not so much at the beginning of the season, but by the end of the season, many "closet" Detroit Tigers fans were making their appearance and gloating that THEY had tickets to one of the World Series games featuring the Detroit Tigers versus the St. Louis Cardinals.

"Where were you in 2003?" I would ask these suddenly emerged from the closet Tigers fans wearing their new, crisp, creased Tigers gear.

Where was I in 2003? Listening to games. Watching games. Often, my favorite of tandem of TV on mute and radio broadcast on full volume. I listen in the car. I listen in bed at night. I carry my portable radio around with me from room to room, outside, on trips, at the ultimate field, at the dinner table. I listen to or watch games whether the Detroit Tigers are winning or LOSING.

In 2003, my beloved team lost a lot. Despite significant changes to the team and leadership, the Tigers set a new record for most losses in American League history with 119. EIGHTY-SEVEN years had passed since an American League  team had been so futile: the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics lost 117 games. The Detroit Tigers narrowly avoided setting the major league record of most losses in a season held by the 1962 New York Metroplitans with 120 losses. Entering the last week of the 2003 season, the Tigers were well on the way to over 120 losses, if not for a mini-winning streak with victories in five of the final six games of the season, which saved the team from making ignominious major league history.

I loved the 2003 Detroit Tigers as much as I loved the 2006 Detroit Tigers as much as I loved the 1975 Detroit Tigers or the really awful (though not epic in losses) 1996 team. Still, I felt there was a lot to like in 2003. Illitch had finally jettisoned Randy Smith, the worst GM in all of Tigers (if not all of Baseball) history. Enter Dave Dombrowski, wiz kid of the Florida Marlins and a graduate of Western Michigan University here in Kalamazoo. Awesome. Dombrowski hires Alan Trammel, my favorite Baseball player of all time, to manage the team with several other of my favorite Tigers as coaches, such as Kirk Gibson and Lance Parrish. The Tigers had some young talent with potential, such as Jeremy Bonderman, Nate Cornejo, Carlos Peña, and even Matt Anderson, who was the inexplicable Number One draft pick of Randy Smith in 1997, the same year the teams that followed selected players, such as Troy Glaus, J.D. Drew, Vernon Wells, Michael Cuddyer, and LANCE BERKMAN.

So back to my question for these fans coming out of the woodwork: "where were you in 2003?"

Was I bitter? Maybe, a little. Bandwagon fans. Not a fan of the band wagon. But did I want them to stop supporting the Detroit Tigers? Not really. I could do without how the fair-weather fans drove up ticket prices and made tickets more scarce, and yet I will take all the Tigers fans the team attracts. The more the merrier. We are an exclusive club, united by one sole common virtue: we all LOVE the Detroit Tigers.

This brings me to 2006. After some rebuilding and smart acquisitions, the team had performed better in 2004 and 2005, but they had not earned winning records yet. Sure, 70 some wins are a near 30 win improvement over the dismal 43 win season of 2003, but I tend to be a realist, especially about the Detroit Tigers. Let's not get too excited.

On Opening Day, someone I knew claimed the Tigers would go to the World Series. I scoffed. 2003 was still too fresh in my mind. In the early part of the 2006 season, things did not look good at all for a post season run of any kind let alone a WORLD SERIES appearance (the first in 22 years). But the Tigers started to win and win A LOT. By August, the team was 40 games above .500, and yet they almost let it all slip away. The Tigers lost the division in an epic September collapse, and they entered the post-season as a Wild Card. Given how the team was playing, I had little hope that it could beat its first post-season opponent: The New York Yankees.

The Yanks and Tigers split the first two games of the ALDS. I attended game three, the first home game,  in which Kenny Rogers smoked the Bronx Bombers. SMOKED! Embarrassed. AWESOME. Other than the last game at Tigers Stadium, this game three was the single best baseball game I had ever attended. Suddenly, winning some post season games did not seem so unlikely. The Tigers won game four also and a trip to the ALCS.

This is the 1968 commemorative World Series hat for the
Detroit Tigers, which I wore on Opening Day 2013.

I did not get to attend any more Tigers games in 2006 after the ALDS as ticket prices were out of sight and work commitments kept me busy at home. But I bought the shirt. I did not expect the team to win the series, and it didn't. But I wear the shirt with pride. It was a wild ride, one of the most fun seasons I had been able to share with my beloved team. And then 2007-2010, the Tigers could not put it together. But now, in 2011 and 2012, two years of making the post-season. AL Central Champs both years and American League champions in 2012. And another World Series loss in 2012. (And yes, sentence fragments, so shoot me; they work.)

Is 2013 the year that the Detroit Tigers wins it all?

I am excited.

But let's not get too excited.

It's Baseball. Anything can happen, and it usually does.

-chris tower 1304.06 10:25

T-shirt #15: Tigers Opening Day in Detroit!

T-shirt #15: First day of the Baseball in Detroit for 2013

The first day of Baseball season should be a national holiday. Though the season started Monday, April First, the season really starts, for me, each year on the day of the first home game for the Detroit Tigers.

Today, Friday, April 5, 2013, I am off to see my beloved Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park as they do battle with the New York Yankees.

I have several Baseball shirts, and so if you are following my blog (and, again, thank you for reading), you are going to read much about my love for the game. I love it so much that I like to capitalize it, like the name of a religion: Baseball.

I will fill this blog with tales of my early childhood collecting baseball cards and playing catch (with my dad or the roof) accompanied by the sounds of the Tigers on the radio, the sound of Ernie Harwell. I have much to share on these and other Baseball related topics but not today.

Today is just about opening day. I attended my first home opener in 1997 with my dad (which is special for that reason alone) at the old Tigers Stadium. I have missed only three openers since then.

The Tigers home opener is my pilgrimage. It is Mecca.

Photo courtesy of Liesel MK Tower

The Tigers last played the New York Yankees in the American League Championship series of 2012. This shirt not only commemorates that the Tigers won that series, but that the team won by sweeping the Yankees in four straight games. The series win marked only the second ALCS win since 1984. The other came in 2006 when the Tigers had already beaten the Yankees in the ALDS. They were not able to win the series in either year.

Obviously, I am hoping for more post season wins again this year.

Go Tigers!

Win the series!

As Ernie Harwell coined the phrase in 1984: "Bless you, boys!"

Tigers greats like Ernie Harwell, Sparky Anderson, Virgil Trucks, who died recently, and many others are sorely missed. Today, I will pay homage.

Take me out to the ball park!

Don't forget the Cracker Jack.

- chris tower 1304.05 7:20

A picture of me in Today's T-Shirt at Tigers Opening Day 2013 in front of the statue of Hank Greenberg. Photo courtesy of Matthew Frayer: 1304.05

T-shirt #14: Lighten Up!

T-shirt #14: Occupy Sesame Street

I like to mock.

Most things are mockable. There are a few exceptions. I don't want to bring you down by listing the exceptions. I bet you can guess some of the taboo mocking topics.

People can be so serious.

LIGHTEN UP.

Just because I mock does not mean I do not care. Occupy Wall Street was a very exciting and important political movement. And yet, it is easy pickings for mocking.

I once saw a great motivational speaker named Sandy Queen, whose main message was "lighten up!"

Read about her in the Winona State University Student Newspaper.

There's also a good You Tube Video if you need some laughs: Sandy Queen at Cornell.

I tried out some of Sandy's comedy routine to my captive audiences (IE my classes) back in the 1990s and early 2000s. One part of her speech stuck in my head. It was what people said to her when she told them to lighten up and how she responded:

"You don’t understand what you’re asking.  If you had my husband, my wife, my kids, my job, my supervisor, you wouldn’t ask me to be a well person.  I am under such stress.  Please remember one thing.  The first and only day in your life that you’re going to be stress free is the day they look at you and say, my my, doesn’t she look natural.  That will be the very first day in your life that you are stress free.  Now if that’s true, we need to start treating stress as our slave and not as our master."

So, really. Lighten up.

Now, join me in linking arms and singing "Kumbaya." You'll feel better. I promise.

- chris tower 1304.04 9:48
Photo courtesy of Liesel MK Tower

T-shirt #13: The Unlucky Red Shirt

T-shirt #13: The Unlucky Red Shirt

"He's Dead, Jim."

Star Trek: The Original Series featured the deaths of 59 crew members (out of 430 total or 13.7% of the crew) of those fifty-nine crew personnel forty-three of them wore red shirts.

For more statistical analysis of death rates and other incidents aboard Captain Kirk's Starship Enterprise, check out ANALYTICS ACCORDING TO CAPTAIN KIRK.


Red shirts die.

Wear a red shirt and be prepared to sign a waiver for ASSUMPTION OF RISK, as explained by the Legal Geeks (No, really, they have a web site and everything).

The fact that red shirts die is bad news for my father, Bob Tower on Facebook, who loves red and owns many red shirts. One could not claim that he wears a red shirt every day, but he does wear them several times a week, which makes him at great risk IF HE LIVED IN THE STAR TREK UNIVERSE, which, luckily, he does not.

If you have read to this point, then you are to be thanked. Whether you are a new reader or a returning reader, I am thankful for your patronage and for following my project. I promise not to keep you too much longer.

Scrolling back through the blog, you will find T-shirt #4 (The Gold Command shirt) and T-shirt #11 (The Blue Science/Medical shirt). As I confessed in those blogs, when the ad from NoMoreRack on Facebook snared me, I bought all three shirts. And, so, today April third, I feature the red shirt.

This shirt has special importance as I am just now finishing the audio edition of John Scalzi's Red Shirts, which is  narrated by Wil Wheaton. The novel has been nominated for one of SF's most prestigious awards: the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Scalzi is an excellent writer. With a fusion of influences from Star Trek to Heinlein, he is a funny, original, entertaining, and deftly-skilled writer of some of the best science fiction being published today. He is releasing his latest novel, The Human Division, as a multi-part series of episodes released via Kindle each week on Tuesday. I am also reading those and enjoying them immensely. Check out my Good Reads page for more information and mini-reviews.

Red Shirts, the novel, is hilarious on its own. Wil Wheaton's narration amps up the hilarity to 11 (on a scale of 1-10). If you take my recommendation and check out this book (and audio), then you may also love the retread of the inspiration for the Ewoks: Fuzzy Nation (also by Scalzi and also narrated by Wheaton).

Back to red shirts: I am following in my father's foot steps to some extent with a plethora of red shirts. I do not own quite as many. Okay, maybe that's not true. I do not wear red as often, though this may be changing now that I am past 50 and need more color in my life. You will see many of my red shirts posted this year. Not counting the more maroon or wine-colored King Crimson shirt posted on March 27th, this is my first truly red shirt. Not all of them are so unlucky.

Since I first posted this blog entry, Scalzi won the HUGO award for Best Novel.

There's good information on the book and Scalzi in the next link from science fiction's premier publication.

JOHN SCALZI REDSHIRTS in Locus


FROM JOHN SCALZI'S BLOG WHATEVER:

I’m going to bed. Tomorrow (actually, today) is a travel day, so there may not be any substantive update. Don’t worry, if I don’t post anything Monday there will be a full report on Tuesday. In the meantime: Wheeee!

SCALZI'S Final Hugo Thoughts

Not everyone felt that Scalzi deserved to win: Why Redshirts should be first to die – book review.

But then, some people are just assholes.

To understand the awards better, check links below.

HUGO AWARD

NEBULA AWARD

Redshirts is a great book. Try it for yourself if you don't believe me. Because you don't want to take my word for it. I am starting to be convinced that writers cannot be objective about the work of other writers. So my promotion for Redshirts is no more compelling or objective than the asshole's review linked above. Though note, that I am not evolved enough not to call that twerp an asshole three time.

Lastly, check out Jonathan Coulton's theme song for Redshirts. Awesome.

New original song by Jonathan Coulton - "Redshirt"

)


OTHER RED SHIRT FACTS AND NONESUCH

• David O Rogers made a parody film, Redshirt Blues, that was well received at the 2000 Boston Film Festival. I will provide the video at the bottom of today's entry.
• Entertainment Earth has created a Red Shirt Cologne with the tagline "Because tomorrow may never come." Ostensibly, the cologne was meant to promote the new Star Trek film (being released May 2013), but the cologne was announced prior to Christmas in 2011.
• The Red Shirt is a featured entry in TV Tropes along with other true and amusing motifs, such as Black Dude Dies First and The Worf Effect.
• I had trouble with this blog as I kept typing "red shorts" and not "red shirts." I was tempted to leave in at least one "red short" to amuse you, dear reader.
• I am more than a bit pleased that this worked out to be blog #13. If only it was a Friday, too.

Redshirt Blues

Here's the video:

What do those hapless Redshirts talk about when Kirk isn't around? Starring Erik Hill Jack P. Dempsey

)

- chris tower, 1304.03 10:29
Photo of me courtesy of Liesel MK Tower
UPDATED - 1403.12 - 19:36

T-Shirt #12: Sigur Rós: The impact and the awe

T-Shirt #12: Sigur Rós: Vibrating at a new frequency

Sigur Rós is an indescribable  musical experience, but I am going to try anyway. The Wikipedia Sigur Rós page calls the band "an Icelandic ambient/post-rock band from Reykjavík, who have been active since 1994. Known for their [sic] ethereal sound, frontman Jónsi Birgisson's falsetto vocals, and the use of bowed guitar, the band's music is also noticeable for its incorporation of classical and minimalist aesthetic elements. The band is named after Jónsi's sister Sigurrós Elin."

But these lines are inadequate to explain the power and majesty, the spiritual awakening, rekindling, and rejuvenating that is a Sigur Rós musical experience.

I have been to a lot of concerts. And I have used the word "transformative" before to describe some of my experiences with shows by artists, such as Erykah Badu, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, and U2. However, Sigur Rós stands in a class all its own. The music, the experience of the live show, is ineffable.

I am transformed. Something has changed. Paradigm shift. I will not be the same after this experience. I will not look at the world the same way anymore. Like a flower that has opened, petal after petal, slowly and tenderly, I am opened.

I am also pretentious as all Hell. Okay, okay... So what was it REALLY like?

A video will not help. But I can always try. This one captures some of what I am talking about.

Sigur Rós "Varúð" - Live @ Zénith, Paris - 27/02/2013 [HD]

The entire concert experience is unlike anything I have ever experienced before. In part, the venue accentuated the experience. The Fox Theatre is a temple, a cathedral, a pantheon. Filled with sound, it transported me into another time and space, a different wavelength of energy, vibrating at a new frequency.

Vibrating at a new frequency. - chris tower: 1304.02 19:32

T-shirt #11: Star Trek Science Officer

T-shirt #11: Star Trek: "What is logical?" No foolin'.

At some point, the T-shirt blog will be a bit repetitious. I have three of these Star Trek: TOS shirts as I confessed in T-Shirt #4. And you're going to see all three.

I count Star Trek: the Original Series as one of the most important pop culture influences on my life, and Mr. Spock and Leonard "Bones" McCoy among my favorite characters. Both Spock and Bones wore the blue shirts as science or medical officers.

Today's blog is not so elaborate. But it is a good time to celebrate a few choice quotes from this beloved series that I have probably watched more often and more repeatedly than any other television program.

SPOCK
"After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true." - Spock, "Amok Time," Star Trek: the Original Series.


"I am endeavoring, ma'am, to construct a mnemonic circuit using stone knives and bearskins. " -Spock, "City on the Edge of Forever," Star Trek: the Original Series.

McCoy
Contrary to popular belief, Dr. McCoy did not say "I'm a doctor not a ..." type quotes in every episode. He only had such lines in a dozen of the seventy-nine episodes.

My favorite is definitely the one from "Devil in the Dark," in which McCoy is "curing" the Horta by troweling silicon into its wound, about which he quips: "I'm a doctor not a bricklayer."

Brilliant.

- chris tower
1304.01 - 9:01
Photo courtesy of Liesel MK Tower