Monday, May 7, 2007

Vanderbilt Hotline: Record Setting Weekend for the Commies


Big weekend for Vanderbilt baseball as they tied and broke their team record for most SEC wins in a season with 17. Vanderbilt still has 6 more SEC games to play (3 at Auburn, 3 at home against LSU), and can certainly add to that margin. Vanderbilt took the series from Georgia 2-1, in a series that really had it all. Brett Hait recaps the series in today's Nashville City Paper. I listened to Vanderbilt offensive explosion late in game 1 that led them to their 8-5 victory. Fortunately, I missed Saturday's 7-0 beat down. As the Tennessean News Service reported, this was Vanderbilt's first shut-out loss since their season opener in 2006, and their first SEC blanking since May 1st, 2005 against LSU. Vanderbilt wouldn't be held down too long, and took yesterday's rubber-match 15-4 behind a 5 for 5 performance from second baseman Alex Feinberg. As Mo Patton points out in his Tennessean blog, the only person who could stop Feinberg yesterday was Tim Corbin.

The lady laxers lost 12-10 to #8 Johns Hopkins in Baltimore in the inaugural American Lacrosse Conference semi-finals. Vanderbilt will have to wait until Monday afternoon to find out whether they have earned a bid to the NCAA Championships. While we wait with bated breathe for the tournament field to be announced, VSL would like to congratulate the 5 Lady Commies that earned All-ALC Honors: First-Teamers Sasha Cielak and Margie Curran, and Second-Teamers Cara Giordano, Nicole Pugano, and Kendall Thrift.

The RIAA means business, and Vanderbilt appears to be caught in the cross-hairs.

Bobby's Yankees landed a big fish over the weekend, signing the Rocket to the single largest single season contract ever. Vanderbilt grad Tyler Kepner writes about it in today's New York Times.

As part of the Vanderbilt Sports Line promotional tour, I attended the Gold Cup this weekend in Virginia. As awesome as rainy, 60 degree weather is when lounging outside in seersucker, the day was a lot of fun. Besides the excellent company, the highlight of the day came by way of the tent right next to us. There, we met Rick Wasmund, distiller and owner of Wasmund's Whiskey. Here's an article on their product from Bobby's adopted hometown paper, the Washington Post. I thought the whiskey was fantastic, and Rick and Sean McCaskey were exceptionally cool guys who generously shared their booze, wings, and cigars with our entire group. Let this be a lesson, if you hang with Bobby, cool people will want to hang out with you and give you booze and cigars to boot. Wasmunds is available at select stores in the DC area including Calvert-Woodley on Connecticut Ave. For those too lazy to read the entire article, here is pertinent information about where to get Wasmunds:
Wasmund now produces about 200 cases a month of the 96-proof single malt. It is on the shelves in about 60 of Virginia's state Alcoholic Beverage Control stores at $37.35 for a 750-ml bottle. It is also available locally at some D.C. liquor stores, including Pearson's and Schneider's, and is served at area restaurants, including Clyde's, Nora, the Old Ebbitt Grill and the Inn at Little Washington.


I'll end with a Sopranos and Entourage recap. First, Bobby's prediction about Tony helping the Feds in their fight against terrorism appears to be dead on. Tony gave the agent formerly in-charge of organized crime and now in counter-terrorism the name and number of two Muslim guys that used to frequent the Bing. Second, Tony played the role of the concerned parent and got AJ out of the house and over his depression. Granted, it may have driven AJ to a life of crime, but at least he's eating. Finally, the focal point of the episode was Chris and Paulie's contentious relationship. The "Fargo" episode where they are chasing the Russian in season 4 (I think) was one of the best and definitely touched on many of problems those two have. Paulie took advantage of Chris' father-in-law, Chris responded by throwing Paulie's nephew out a window, Paulie responded by tearing up Chris' lawn, Chris, for the time being, appeared to let it go only to be enraged (while drinking) at some of Paulie's jokes. This is not over, although unfortunately for the writer of Cleaver, it is for him.

Moving now to Entourage, it's back! I was disappointed with the arc of the season, but it appears the show is finally getting its groove back. The guys are living the dream, Ari appears to be the 800 lbs. Guerrilla of Hollywood again, and Vince is no longer banging/dating his hot agent. I'm sorry to see Amanda go, but if it teams no more parallel narrative with Ari and Vince's lives on different courses, I think its all for the best.

Hoser of the Week to be posted later today. For those of you who were wondering how last week's Hoser was, we (read I) decided to take a page from Time, and make "You" the Hoser. If we can't do better than the nominations we have gotten the last few weeks, it's likely that "You" will be VSL's first ever repeat Hoser of the Week.

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