With the Bracket Tournaments over the final seedings are complete for the 2017 NAIA College World Series.
TOP SEED
OKLAHOMA CITY UNIVERSITY
Team Name: STARS
SECOND SEED
FAULKNER UNIVERSITY
Team Name: EAGLES Continue reading
Tag Archives: Balladeer’s Blog
ADAM ANT’S VERSION OF HELLO, I LOVE YOU
“Adam Ant IS Roy Thinnes in Jared Martin: A One-Man Show.”
… Had to be said.
At any rate Adam Ant (Stuart Leslie Goddard) is still the current subject in Balladeer’s Blog’s “Give Them A Shoutout Before They’re Dead” category.
The link below is to Adam’s version of the Doors’ hit Hello, I Love You.
Hopefully you’ll enjoy it!
Filed under opinion
USCAA COLLEGE BASEBALL CHAMPS CROWNED PLUS MORE
*** USCAA ***
DAY FOUR, GAME ONE: The 2nd seeded Defending National Champions of USCAA baseball – the COLLEGE OF SAINT JOSEPH’S (sic) FIGHTING SAINTS – did battle with the 5th seeded CLEARY UNIVERSITY PROWLING COUGARS. The winner would go on to face Newport News Apprentice School for the championship.
This was a Pitcher’s Duel for 4 scoreless Innings before the Fighting Saints went up 4-0 in the 5th. College of St Joseph’s added another run in the 6th Inning and rode that to a 5-0 shutout victory. Jovan Henriquez pitched the entire game for CSJ. Continue reading
Filed under College Baseball
MANTIS 3: BELOW US THE BATTLE
FOR PART 1 OF BALLADEER’S BLOG’S EXAMINATION OF MARVEL’S SUPERHEROINE MANTIS CLICK HERE
THE AVENGERS Volume 1, Number 115 (September 1973) Below Us The Battle
Avengers Roster: THOR (Donald Blake, MD), IRON MAN (Tony Stark), CAPTAIN AMERICA (Steve Rogers), THE SCARLET WITCH (Wanda * last name unknown at the time of this story * ), THE BLACK PANTHER (Prince T’Challa), THE VISION (not applicable), MANTIS (* unknown at the time of this story *) and THE SWORDSMAN (Jacques Duquesne).
BELOW US THE BATTLE
Synopsis: All of the Avengers listed above are in an Avengers Quin-Jet flying over the Atlantic Ocean bound for England. The Black Knight (Dane Whitman), in 1973 the only British member of the Avengers, has been out of contact for an alarming amount of time. Anticipating trouble the team has decided to check out the Black Knight’s castle for signs of their friend and colleague.
In keeping with the usual levels of verisimilitude for 1970s Marvel Comics, the story presents the British branch of S.H.I.E.L.D. intercepting the Quin-Jet because of the presence on board of the recently reformed former supervillain the Swordsman.
Despite the Swordsman’s pardon and his status as an Avenger the Brits do not want the formerly wanted man allowed in the country. Thor – more worldly in the comic books than he is in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – negotiates with the British and the Swordsman is allowed in England but the Avengers are responsible for his actions.
Captain America is the only Avenger still suspicious about the Swordsman and his lady love Mantis, the enigmatic woman who will assume more and more importance as the issues go by, enroute to the Celestial Madonna Saga. Continue reading
Filed under Superheroes
USCAA COLLEGE WORLD SERIES AND NAIA PLAYOFFS CONTINUE …
*** USCAA ***
DAY THREE, GAME ONE: The 4 seeds – the NEWPORT NEWS APPRENTICE SCHOOL BUILDERS (Shipbuilders) – played the 2nd seeded Defending National Champions of USCAA Baseball, the COLLEGE OF SAINT JOSEPH’S (sic) FIGHTING SAINTS. After 2 scoreless Innings the Fighting Saints took a 1-0 lead in the 3rd, but the Builders went on top 3-1 in the 4th.
College of Saint Joseph’s added 1 run each in the 5th and 6th Innings while their opponents remained just out of reach with 2 more runs of their own. Newport News Apprentice School drove in another run in the 7th Inning and went on to win the game 6-3. Pitcher Steve Hux picked up the W. * THE BUILDERS ADVANCE TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME *
DAY THREE, GAME TWO: The 5th seeded CLEARY UNIVERSITY PROWLING COUGARS squared off against the 6 seeds – the PENN STATE AT DUBOIS NITTANY LIONS. It was all Cleary University in this game as the Prowling Cougars put on a clinic on both sides of the ball.
In the 2nd Inning Cleary U took a 4-0 advantage, which became 6-0 in the 4th and 8-0 in the 6th. That also held up as the final tally as the Prowling Cougars notched an 8-0 shutout victory to send the Nittany Lions home. Rhett Holwerda was on the mound for Cleary for the entire game. Continue reading
Filed under College Baseball
THE NEW PEOPLE (1969): FORGOTTEN TELEVISION
THE NEW PEOPLE (1969) – It’s another Balladeer’s Blog look at a forgotten television program.
The New People was part of a brief and very odd experiment with television programs that ran just 45 minutes INCLUDING commercials.
These shows were always paired with a sister program that also ran 45 minutes total, thus the two back- to- back programs filled a total 90 minute block. In the case of The New People that sister show was The Music Scene.
The New People was sort of like “Lord of the Flies Meets the 60’s Counterculture”. An airplane crashes on a desert island in the Pacific. Only one adult survives the crash but even they eventually pass away. Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television
DAY TWO COLLEGE WORLD SERIES RESULTS IN THE USCAA PLUS NAIA PLAYOFFS
*** USCAA ***
DAY TWO, GAME ONE: The 3 seeds – the WRIGHT STATE AT THE LAKE CAMPUS LAKERS – played an elimination game against the 7th seeded PENN STATE AT MONT ALTO LIONS. A 2-0 1st Inning lead for the Lakers became a 6-2 advantage in the 3rd.
The 4th Inning ended with Wright State at the Lake on top of the Lions 7-3 but in the 5th PSU-Mont Alto batted in 4 runs to knot things up at 7-7. The Lakers notched what turned out to be the winning run in the 6th Inning, eliminating the Lions in an 8-7 nailbiter. Carson Schuman pitched for the win.
DAY TWO, GAME TWO – The 4th seeded NEWPORT NEWS APPRENTICE SCHOOL BUILDERS (Shipbuilders) battled the top seeds – the UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI AT CLERMONT COUGARS in this game. After 2 scoreless Innings the Builders managed a 1-0 edge over the Cougars in the 3rd.
From there the Pitcher’s Duel resumed, with Newport News Apprentice School driving in the final run of the game in the 7th Inning to hand UC-Clermont a 2-0 loss. Pitcher Robbie Watkins was on the mound for the entire game for the Builders. Continue reading
Filed under College Baseball
USCAA COLLEGE WORLD SERIES: DAY ONE RESULTS
*** USCAA ***
DAY ONE – GAME ONE: The 10 seeds – the MARYGROVE COLLEGE MUSTANGS – faced the 7th seeded PENN STATE AT MONT ALTO LIONS. The Mustangs surprised the Lions by seizing a quick 3-0 lead in the 1st Inning, then making it a 5-0 score in the 3rd and 6-0 in the 4th.
PSU-Mont Alto at last got on the scoreboard in the 5th Inning to make it a 6-1 game. The rest of the way Marygrove College added 3 more runs but gave up 6 to the Lions. The Mustangs won the game 9-7 with Pitcher Daniel Bailey on the mound for the entire game.
DAY ONE, GAME TWO: In this game the 8th seeded BLUEFIELD STATE BIG BLUES took the diamond against the 9 seeds – the CENTRAL PENN COLLEGE SILVER KNIGHTS. The Big Blues got off to a 1-0 edge in the 1st Inning but the Silver Knights put up 2 runs each in the 2nd and 3rd to take a 4-1 advantage.
Neither team scored in the 4th Inning but Bluefield State tied things up at 4-4 in the 5th. The 6th Inning saw the Big Blues explode for SIX runs, following which they shut out the Silver Knights the rest of the way for a 10-4 victory. Addison Meeks inherited the Earth as the winning Pitcher. Continue reading
Filed under College Baseball
PYTINE aka THE WINE FLASK (423 B.C.)
Cratinus
Welcome to another Balladeer’s Blog post on ancient Greek comedies. If Pytine was an episode of Friends it would be titled The One Where Cratinus Fires Back At Aristophanes. This play is also known under English language titles like Wine Flask, Flagon, The Bottle, and others along those lines.
Cratinus, seen at left posing for the Attic Old Disco soundtrack album for Saturday Night Fever (Travolta stole all his moves from Cratinus, by the way) and galvanized by the tongue-in- cheek caricature that Aristophanes presented of a drunken, washed- up Cratinus in his previous year’s comedy The Knights, turned that caricature into the premise of his final comedy.
THE PLAY
From the fragments of Pytine that remain it seems Cratinus had an actor portraying himself (Cratinus) as the booze-soaked Grand Old Man of Attic comedy at the time. I always picture the character as a cross between Dudley Moore in Arthur and Tom Conti in Reuben, Reuben. Anyway, in the play Cratinus is married either to Thalia, the Muse of Comedy or to simply a female personification of Comedy.
Comedy complains to Cratinus’ friends, who make up the chorus, that she wants to take her husband to court for abandonment. She states that he is neglecting their marital bed because he has been spending too much time sleeping around with Methe, in this comedy a personification of Drunkenness.
Academic opinion varies on whether or not Methe is supposed to be a hot young woman or a hot young man, and since this is an ancient Greek comedy it definitely could go either way. Not enough of the comedy survives to make it clear so Methe’s gender will remain a controversy.
Cratinus’ friends plot to save their buddy’s marriage by stopping him from drinking. They enact their “intervention” by smashing every last one of his containers of wine, and some of the comedy came from how many different types of vessels Cratinus had been hiding his booze in.
Cratinus counters the destruction of all his drinking vessels by purchasing a pytine, a very durable wine flask reinforced with wicker. The pytine is so strong it will withstand all the friends’ attempts to destroy it, thus foiling their plan to save Cratinus’ marriage to Comedy or the muse Thalia.
Cratinus defends his drinking by saying wine is the source of all his poetic inspiration (the comedies were all in verse). This line of reasoning sets up the most famous line from Pytine when Cratinus says “You’ll never write great poetry if all you drink is water.” Continue reading
Filed under Ancient Greek Comedy, humor
PSI CASSIOPEIA (1854): ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION
PSI CASSIOPEIA, or STAR: A MARVELOUS HISTORY OF WORLDS IN OUTER SPACE (1854) – Written by Dr Charlemagne Ischer Defontenay, a French M.D. and author. Long before J.R.R. Tolkien churned out obsessive amounts of fine detail about his fictional Middle Earth, Defontenay produced this volume of history, poetry and drama from his fictional planets in the star system Psi Cassiopeia.
The narrator of the story is supposedly translating alien documents which he discovered in an artificial meteor that crashed in the Himalayas. The documents were from a planet called (incongruously enough) “Star.”
The system where that planet is located is a three-star system. Ruliel is the large, white star at the center, around which orbit the two lesser stars Altether (green) and Erragror (blue). The planet called Star is orbited by large planetoids/ moons named Tassul, Lessur, Rudar and Elier. Throwing all science to the winds the planet is also orbited by a small red star called Urrias.
Star and its satellites are inhabited except, of course, for Urrias. The translated documents cover a roughly 1,000 year period of events regarding these worlds. The ancient Starian humanoids formed a united world-wide culture which started as an Empire before becoming a socialist planet economically and politically. The documents also claim that their culture boasted beautiful architecture, incredible feats of engineering and awe-inspiring works of art.
At one point a plague swept the globe, reducing the proud Starian civilization to chaos. A Nihilist Cult formed as the plague kept whittling away at the population over the course of years. In the post-apocalyptic ruins the Nihilists formed a fanatical religion devoted to ending all life on Star. The zealots formed armies which exterminated millions of Starians with the intention of taking their own lives when all non-members of their cult had been wiped out. Continue reading
Filed under Ancient Science Fiction
