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May 7, 2008
Personal Cosmic Baseball Game
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 Blanche Palfrey with Daughter Deborah Jeane Palfrey |
Deborah Jean Palfrey, 52, was discovered by her mother, Blanche, 76, hanging dead in a shed outside Blanche's home in Florida. Deborah Jeane had recently (April 15) been found guilty of several crimes associated with her ownership of Pamela Martin & Associates, an escort service operating in Washington DC.
Born in Pennsylvania on March 18, 1956, Deborah Jeane Palfrey attended high school in Pennsylvania and college in Florida. She worked as a paralegal in California. She began the escort agency, a vocation that would later earn her the moniker, "DC Madam" in 1993. Between 1993 and 2006, Palfrey's escort agency earned an estimated $2 million dollars. She received considerable public attention in 2007 when federal authorities seized her assets as part of an investigation that ended in her guilty convictions last month for money
 Deborah and Blanche Palfrey |
Deborah Jeane Palfrey's fear of going back to prison is cited as a possible motive for her suicide. Others, more skeptical, believe Palfrey was silenced because of her involvement with high profile members of Washington, DC's elite political establishment. Customer's of the escort agency included a senator, a former under-secretary of state, and an influential military thinker in the Pentagon. Brandy Britton, a former escort associated with Palfrey's Pamela Martin agency, also hung herself to death, in February 2007, before she was scheduled to stand trial on four counts of prostitution.
The original group that nominated Ms. Palfrey is free to re-nominate her in 90 days. However, rumors coming from inside the Washington Presidents' front office suggest that the woman known as the "DC Madam" might replace Vice President Richard Cheney as the team's bench coach.
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Six teams are competing for the National Train Day Pennant to be awarded on May 10, 2008 to the team with the best record.
MAY 10 UPDATE: Airports Win National Train Day Series
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Related Links Ohio |
| The Hillary Clintons | |
| Terry McAuliffe | 2B |
| Wesley Clark | 1B |
| Geoff Garin | SS |
| Ann Lewis | CF |
| Mark Penn | 3B |
| Mandy Grunwald | LF |
| Howard Wolfson | RF |
| Geraldine Ferraro | C |
| Jack Nicholson | P |
| The Barack Obamas | |
| Cassandra Butts | 3B |
| Tom Daschle | LF |
| Caroline Kennedy | RF |
| Anthony Lake | 1B |
| David Axelrod | CF |
| David Plouffe | C |
| Samantha Power | 2B |
| Austan Goolsbee | SS |
| Jeremiah Wright | P |
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April 15, 2008
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This game was played in honor of Pope Benedict XVI who is visiting the political center of the United States at this time. (XVI did not play in this game).
The city of Washington, D.C., accustomed to entertaining respected individuals from different lands and faiths dropped the ball in its earlier preparations by insulting and embarrassing some. The local public transportation system (the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, known locally as "Metro") produced an advertising campaign that utilized a popular baseball icon, a bobblehead doll.
The promotional video featuring a bobblehead pope was pulled after complaints from the Archdiocese of Washington. Local transportation managers stopped display of the video, which aimed to encourage people to ride the Metro to Nationals Park (the local baseball team's brand new home field) where Pope Benedict XVI is saying Mass next week. An archdiocese representative said the video, which showed the bobblehead Pope riding a Metro train, made many people uncomfortable. Metro officials said no offense was meant.
Pope Benedict I pitched a phenomenal one-hitter providing fuel for those that argue that matters of faith take precedence over political matters. The United States' history of separating and mixing politics and religion, an imperfect process codified in its constitution, sometimes runs contrary to the notion of brother- and sisterhood that most religions espouse.
One nation, yes, but under one or many Gods? How does e pluribus unum work politically and theologically? We am reminded of Thomas Jefferson, Moses and of the Shema
The Politicos played without enthusiasm and it is not clear why. How often do they get to play baseball with a Pope? (Never!). Governor Huckabee of Arkansas secured the only hit the Politicos had in nine innings. George Washington pitched well but he was not helped in the field by first baseman Biden's foolish error resulting in an unearned run. It was, mostly, a quiet almost pastoral game, without the thronging cheering/jeering masses experienced at the Washington National's opener a couple of weeks ago.
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Cosmic Baseball Games
ZODIAC SIGNS @ ASTRONOMICAL PLANETS
Link to CBA Game Index |
On May 2004 baseball historian John Thorn [r] announced the fact that baseball had been played in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1791. This prompted www.pittsfield-ma.org to run the banner, "Pittsfield is Baseball's Garden of Eden". Thorn's historical research had led to something euphemistically called "The Broken Window Bylaw" which restricted games with balls, including baseball, from being played within 80 yards of the Pittsfield Meeting House (as it existed in 1791.) Pittsfield's citizens and leaders gladly accepted the notion that their city was the true birthplace of baseball...not Cooperstown, New York and not Hoboken, New Jersey. Thorn is also the talented researcher who doubts that Henry Chadwick is the true father of the box score. Noting that the game of cricket "supplied the model" Thorn writes, "Credit for the shorthand scoring system belongs not to Chadwick but to Michael J. Kelly [sports writer] of the [New York] Herald. "The box score beyond the recording of outs and runs may be Kelly's invention as well" (emphasis added).
This data baseball box has evolved in its details over time but it is essentially what it has always been...an artifact that meshes individual and collective facts into rows, columns, and notes.
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 Cecilia Winning Pitcher |
The Filthy Films first played on a cosmic baseball field at the end of last May when they beat a Found Film Footage team 3-0 (see game report here). On Valentine's Day this year, the first part of The Cinema Effect exhibit opened at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Most of The Cinema Effect team is derived from stills found in the pamphlet available at the Hirshhorn in Washington, D.C. (USA). The Cinema Effect's pitching staff consists of two stills from Andy Warhol's 1963 film, Sleep. These stills do not appear in the pamphlet but approximately 120 minutes of the 5 1/2 hour film have been transferred to video and are part of the Hirshhorn exhibit.
"Questions of reality and illusion lie at the center of The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image," according to the Museum's press release.
 Dziga Vertov
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At a time when the internet has accelerated the dialectic between the real and the unreal, the virtual and the actual...the surreal, modified and adapted for the post-modern, re-emerges and the moving image is, once again, the container for the surreal. The Andalusia Dog turns out to be Dorothy's Toto.
We have not asked the Hirshhorn for attendance statistics. In 2005 according to estimates published by AVN, an adult entertainment industry trade publication, sales and rentals of video pornography generated $4.28 billion. (Ironically, that figure dropped in 2006 to $3.62 billion and the internet was suggested as the reason for the decline in sales.)
Films and their relationships to our dreams has perhaps been studied more than dreams and their relationships to our unconscious
minds. The 21 pieces of "The Cinema Effect: Dreams" (not all works made the team) include Warhol's Sleep and a loop from the movie King Kong showing Fay Wray screaming over and over again. There are digital puppet like characters, a room with an aged projector projecting an aged typewriter and other examples that explore the intersection of art and technology. Real machines generating unreal realms. Like many museum exhibits that probe film-as-art, several selections deal with the film/train metaphor such as the non-roster Overture by Stan Douglas and Geisterbahn ("ghost railroad") by Darren Almond. The curators of the Cinema Effect exhibition are Kerry Brougher and Kelly Gordon.
| Cinema Effect Roster | |
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Still from Release (1996) by Christoph Giradet Thirdbase
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Still from Off Screen (1998) by Douglas Gordon Firstbase
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Still from Bear (1993) by Steve McQueen Leftfield
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Still from Neither There Nor There (2005) by Siebren Versteeg Centerfield
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Still from Trailer (2005) by Saskia Olde Wolber Secondbase
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Still from Up and Away (2006) by Michael Bell-Smith Rightfield
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| Still from Rheinmetall/Victoria 8 (2003) by Rodney Graham Catcher |
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| Still from Eight (2001) by Teresa Hubbard/Alexander Birchler Shortstop |
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| Still from Sleep (1963) by Andy Warhol Pitcher |
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| Filthy Films Roster | |
| Altamira | Thirdbase |
| Helman Twins | Firstbase |
| Macarena | Leftfield |
| Tangerine | Centerfield |
| Maybelline | Secondbase |
| Anna | Rightfield |
| Anne & Eva | Catcher |
| Mrs. Robinson | Shortstop |
| Cecilia | Pitcher |
| Time | 3 hours, 4 minutes |
| Weather | Clear 63o, Wind 8mph |
| Attendance | Undisclosed |
| Umpires |
Bruce Baillie Maya Deren Andrew Noren |
| Official Scorer | Sophia Coppola |
| MCP | Macarena |
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