My Morning in exile

Stuff I wrote while thinking of the best way to taunt the lead singer of a 1980s British synth-pop band (explained below) . . .

Matt Holliday’s “friend” says Holliday wants to be a New York Yankee. The “friend” lives in Canada. You wouldn’t know him.

Should the Sox trade Papelbon and install Bard as closer? Hell, ain’t my team. They can sign Willie Hernandez for all I care.

Is there any man more in demand so far this offseason than Manny Acta?

Would you believe Milton Bradley?

The best thing in the world would be to mic-up Ozzie Guillen for the World Series, give him a bunch of Budweiser, and just let him go on uninterrupted for three or four hours. That won’t happen, but this isn’t the worst consolation prize.

How would you like to be managed by your older brother? Since my brother is a manager at an In-N-Out Burger it would be kind of weird for me, but I suppose it would awkward on a major league ballclub too.

I’ve mentioned this before I think, but my In-N-Out managing brother’s longtime girlfriend was a childhood friend, and is still best friends with the wife of a guy named Andy McCluskey. McCluskey, some of you may know, is the lead singer for the band OMD of “If you leave” fame. The McCluskeys keep a house in San Diego and my brother is over there all the time, house sits for them them, babysits the kids, etc. When I first became aware of this several years ago I began taunting my brother — who was sort of dropping the OMD thing like it was some major social chit — over the moderate-at-best worldwide fame of his new friend and patron. I probably would have left it alone, but he set me off when he used the “hey, they’re really big in Europe and Japan” line. Since then, it’s been almost constant abuse. Things like “hey Curt, I gotta go; Howard Jones is on the other line, and it’s obviously a much more important call.” Or “So, like, is house sitting for Human League a promotion or is it considered a lateral move?” Most of the jokes were about him being a one-hit wonder. He told Andy about all of this. His response: “ask your brother what it’s like to work a job, because I’ll never have to know.” Damn McCluskey. He’s had me dead to rights on that one for about five years now.

Anyway, I’m newly inspired to mock him — in a friendly fashion, mind you — because OMD is apparently going on some tour this winter with another John Hughes movie one-hit-wonder, Simple Minds. Curt is going to travel with them and, hell, I don’t know, get them towels or hair gel or white Zinfandel or Patrick Nagel paintings or whatever it is those 80s synth-poppers need to survive. I was thinking about flooding the official OMD website with questions about whether it was true that Hughes’ will finally freed them from servitude or whether it’s true that Oingo Boingo was going to be headlining or something, but his wife runs the site and she’s pretty good people.

There’s no point to this except that if I’m slow blogging this afternoon it’s because I’m obsessed with trying to come up with new and inventive taunts for OMD. Which pretty much shows you how pathetic I am. Determined, but pathetic.