Petco Pride

"And it's root, root, root for the Swapmeet
If they don't win, it's the same
For it's one, two, three more bad trades
At the old Swapmeet"
--Take Me Out to the Swapmeet, circa 1999

After the World Series in 1998, our Padres turned into the Swapmeet and got rid of (or didn't re-sign) pretty much everybody who helped us get there (sans T-Gwynn, because the entire city of San Diego would have mutinied if he left): Ken Caminiti, Greg Vaughn, Steve Finley and Kevin Brown being the most notable. It's nice that we're back on the upswing, though a 12-14 start to the season shows there's plenty of room for improvement. Anyways, it was with a good deal of optimism that I was able to head down to San Diego Saturday evening for the Padres-Diamondbacks contest at Beautiful Petco Park in Downtown. The park's location is superb, allowing us to park up by some restaurants, walk a few blocks to eat (fine dining at Downtown Mexican Cafe--my chicken fajitas were top-notch) and then walk a few blocks to the stadium. We had pretty good seats, down the rightfield line, and saw exactly what I expected: Eight strong innings from Brian Lawrence (two hits and no runs--Arizona fought the "Law" and the "Law" won), followed by Trevor Time (think Gagne's "Game Over" entrance with AC/DC's "Hell's Bells" instead. It's a tremendous thing to experience, knowing that as soon as the bottom of the eighth ends, the bells are gonna start ringing. Everybody in the whole ballpark stands and cheers, "Trevor Time" flashes on every available surface and big, bad T-Hoff saunters out to the mound to warm up. He took care of business with little to no resistance, and we emerged with a 2-0 victory in less than two hours (would that make a game bearable to Suss? Probably not...)
Other weekend highlights included our basketball banquet at Round Table Sunday afternoon, in which we celebrated our run to the semifinals (and our upcoming championship run--season starts this Sunday night) over some piping hot pizza (no scalding hot nachos to be found anywhere, unfortunately). This was followed by a TiVo'ed viewing of last Monday's "24," which set the stage for another amazing episode last night. So much good stuff happening right now, not the least of which is the return of President Palmer to the spotlight. I'm a rookie, so I'll need to catch up on previous seasons via DVD once this one is over, but I'm well aware of Palmer's (Dennis Haysbert) significance. The real question is will Elisha Cuthbert be coming back?
Craziest thing that happened last night was Jack making the doctors stop operating on this guy Paul (his girlfriend Audrey's estranged husband, a man who happened to save Jack's life) in order to save the key witness and the only lead to a nuclear weapon that's probably going to detonate in a matter of hours. If you didn't see the episode last night and don't want to know Jack's choices here, skip ahead or stop reading or something. Otherwise (all two of you), please proceed: He pulls a gun on the Doc and despite Audrey's pleas, the Doc starts saving this Chinese informant, Jack holding a gun to him all the while. Paul eventually dies as a result of this choice, and there's actually a moment of humanity for Jack as he realizes what he's done simply by doing what he believed was his job. On paper, he did the right thing: This was the only guy who could help them stop something that might kill millions of people and forever damage the United States. The other guy had personal value to Audrey (and saved Jack), but if you absolutely had to weigh the two lives at that moment, this guy Lee was more important. However, there has to be a human element to this, and that's what made it so tough on Jack in the immediate aftermath. I realize I'm going into a tremendous amount of detail about a TV show, but it got me thinking: My current job will never cause me to make a choice between two people's lives, but what happens when work makes you compromise your friends or family? It's different when the job you have actually serves the entire country, so choices you make affect a lot more than just the office or a small circle of co-workers, but there's still some application here. My old job (not the one at Ralphs; the one before that, if you were confused) had me choosing to impact younger lives and spend time in ministry, often forsaking family time, because it never felt wrong to be helping people. If somebody needed me, I was there, no matter the consequences (mostly unseen at the time) in my familial, peer and self-relationships. Those sacrifices added up over time and became too much to bear after a while, eventually requiring my complete extraction from that life and that work. Though I knew I had done a lot of good things over the three-plus years I spent at LCPC, I also realized that I had done a lot of damage to my sense of self, my peer relationships and, to a lesser extent (thank goodness) my family. I found myself identifying with Jack in the aftermath of last night's episode, not because I've ever held a gun to a doctor's head (okay, maybe just once), but because I saw the realization in his eyes (Keifer's a good actor) that it took me years to find. He knows that he totally messed things up with Audrey, that his personal life is probably in shambles because of the choices he's made (and pretty much has to have made) on the job. I'm not advocating a kinder, gentler Jack in future seasons--he's pretty much the bad-ass of bad-asses on TV right now--but I'm just glad that such an introspective moment invaded last night's show.
I remain kinda bummed that blogging time is so limited these days, Monday being the extreme example, but most of the week following suit to some extent. Mondays I'm in and immediately writing for "In Case You Missed It," which has been a smash hit so far, and the day doesn't end until at least 7 (7:45 last night). Today provided a small window, but most other mornings I have to start clipping off video for the various teases and promos I'm cutting throughout the day. It's nothing I can come close to complaining about, but again, work requires sacrifices, and it looks like the blog is taking the brunt of it at the moment.
Saw "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" Sunday night, and though I hadn't read the book (I might have to now), I was thoroughly entertained the entire time. The lead actor looks like Paul Scholes (Manchester United), so I liked him, and the girl from "Elf" was the female lead. Mos Def was very funny, the crazy guy from "The Green Mile" (I can never remember his name) was good, and Alan Rickman played a depressed robot pretty much as well as such a part can be played. Highly recommended. But not as highly recommended as Star Wars: Episode III, which Juice and I happen to be seeing before it's released. One of the Fox perks, I suppose...Peace