Lord of the Trophies/Rings

Barry Bonds just won his SIXTH MVP award, and his third in a row. SIX F'IN' MVP AWARDS, FOLKS. That's twice as many as Mickey Mantle or Joe DiMaggio, it's a truly staggering number. I felt Bonds deserved the award again, but a great case could be made for St. Louis' Albert Pujols, and I thought it would be a much tighter vote. Anyway, it was Barry in a walk (no pun intended), and his legend grows and grows. Next stop, Babe Ruth. It's amazing that Bonds won his first MVP in 1990, and he's still winning them easily thirteen years later. How often is the best player in the game (any game) still the best a decade later?

I watched Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers again last night. I'd seen it once before, in the theater last winter, and I enjoyed it far more the second time. It's not that I didn't like it the first time, but I was feeling logy and it's a long freakin' movie. Consequently, I was trying to stay awake half the time and getting antsy waiting for things to wrap up. When you're in a hurry, waiting for the Ents to get their wooden asses in gear is interminable. Last night I was able to really enjoy it. I haven't seen the "Extended" version of the first LOTR, and I'm not dying to see the longer version of Two Towers that was just released today, but I suppose I'll see them both eventually. I've been told that the longer versions add a lot of character development and nuance that make the stories much richer and satisfying, but jeez, they're already three hours long. It's amazing when you sit through a movie this long and realize how much they had to cut out. Personally, they don't seem bloated to me in their theatrical release versions, but my friend Will Simon quipped, "Howard Hawks could havd told the same story in 82 minutes." Well, he probably could have, but he'd have Walter Brennan play Gollum. Hmmm, now who would play Aragorn in Hawks' version, Bogie, the Duke or Cary Grant?

One more note on The Two Towers: it sure was good to see Brad Dourif in a major movie again. He was so good in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and then in John Huston's sadly overlooked Wise Blood, he's always a welcome, if slightly creepy presence on my screen.

...also, I'm currently finally reading Jane Leavy's Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, and it's pretty fantastic thus far.