JoeyBahr.com

On behalf of all the loyal Royals fans, we would like to welcome you to the land of baseball mediocrity.

For all those years you have rode rough shot over the American League. You thought you were invincible. The small market teams were your farm system, not the minor league single A, AA, and AAA baseball teams. If you didn’t win the World Series, then it was a bad, bad year and Joe Torre should be fired. (Hell, if Torre had been fired as many times as you guys have called for his scalp, Billy Martin would look like a saint.)

But now, now you are six games under 500. The AL Wild Card seems out of reach. Let’s not even think about the AL East right now.

Sure the team could find itself and mount a major turnaround in July or August. Problem is, that is the mantra of long losing teams.

How many times have fans for teams like the Royals, Cubs, and Yokohama Dragons said, “Just wait until after the All-Star Break, man, we’re gonna go on a tear.” I will proudly admit I’m still waiting on that tear I promised in 1999. I know it will just start after this 12 game loosing streak.

So, what should a Yankee’s fan do? Well nothing drastic is needed. Honestly, placing a severed horses head in the bed of George Steinbrenner won’t get you any where, except maybe dead or permanently banned from Yankee Stadium, which is harsher than death for a Yankee’s fan.

What is needed now is patience. For the Yankees to get better they need to redevelop youth. For far too long they have gotten by through purchasing players from other teams while letting their cupboards get bare. Now that is starting to bite back.

Steinbrenner is no idiot. He will start playing where he needs to in the draft and trading deadline to get some new pieces for his team. The Yankees will be back, damnit.

In the meantime, Yankee fans, just sit back and worry and remember, George has a plan and he’s sticking to it. (Just like the Royals, Brewers, Orioles, Phillies, Pirates, and … have stuck to that successful winning plan.)

As some of you might know, I have a new job as an office supply salesman.  (Please spare the rest of us from your paperclip jokes.  Trust me, they aren’t funny…at all.)

With my job, I end up spending time in my car driving to call on my customers.  This windshield time has allowed me to notice something; on most Top 40/Hot Adult Contemp. stations, you are almost guaranteed to hear one of a few songs when you switch over.

Given this insight, I present you with the current list of songs you are bound to hear:

1. Avril Lavinge’s latest, ummm, I don’t even know the title of it, all I know is it is an annoying song.
2. Gwen Stefani’s latest, The Sweetest Escape.  Not a bad song, but it definitely has some strong annoying potential when over played, which it will reach that critical mass in about 1 week.

So their you have the first list of songs you are bound to hear.  I will try and keep it updated.

Only in the Great State of Kansas can the people worry about dodging a tornado one moment then hunker down for a blizzard in the next moment.

Proof in point is this Tornado Watch currently in effect until 6:00 AM February 24th. Followed later in the day by this Blizzard Warning. Both of these watches/warnings are for Barton County, Kansas.

Now you know why us Kansans will say if you don’t like the weather now, just wait five minutes, it will change.

This post is a test of using automator to ummm post posts to the blog.

Yeah, I’m sure that last sentence violated like 5 or 6 grammatical laws.

This is to serve as a warning/promise. I will be updating the look of this site within the next few days.

I am taking the ambitious step of rolling my own theme. So I will be getting my hands and arms dirty with the wonders of HTML, CSS, PHP, and all other things WordPress as I design and drop the latest incarnation of JoeyBahr.com on the World Wide Web.

I know your just filled with anticipation on this one.

See you soon on this.

Also more posts coming up soon about my path down the road of being a screenwriter.

For a long time, I wanted to write something. At the end of high school it was computer programs. After college it was campaign speeches and commercials. As I approached my quarter-life crisis, I flipped between a movie and a novel.

As I search more and more for what it is I want to do in life, the choice between movie and novel grew larger.

I have always been blessed, or cursed if you will, with a vivid imagination. Many a story has started to percolate inside my brain. I finally decided to take the plunge and write a novel in conjunction with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this November. I got about 4,000 words into my idea for a novel when it struck me.

Sure a novel would be a great thing to write. And, I would be able to enjoy a great amount of freedom in what I created. But, I wanted something that I could also turn into a commercial item. Basically, I wanted to make some money off of this.

The chances of getting a novel sold and published are tiny to begin with. The chances of said novel actually selling in a significant enough number to make writing my career are, well let’s just say they are worse than the odds of me finding a pair of 21 year old redhead gals in just skimpy lace lingerie laying in my bed.

So I decided to focus my energy on screenwriting. Granted the chances of becoming a professional writer for TV or films is not very good either, but they remain greater when compared to being a novelist.

Now the issue was, what would I write? I already made the choice it would be screenplay for a movie. (Many more contest for movie scripts to enter than there are for TV scripts.)

I first tried to adapt the idea I had for my novel into one for a script. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it probably wouldn’t work.

Then one day the idea came to me. What about the kids who are always told that they could be President of the United States of America someday? What happens to those kids down the road. What if two of those kids were always rivals throughout school and one day down the road they face off again?

That ladies and gentlemen, is the idea I am turning into a script. I would go into more detail, but I don’t want to give away the full idea and have someone else sell the script before I can get it sold myself.

So stay tuned to here as I show you my progress in churning out my first film script. Should be quite the ride.

And just think, someday down the road you can pop down about $7 on a counter to buy a ticket to see what I wrote. I know you are so thrilled at that prospect.

Only two days from the start of November. For many people that means a colder bite to the air, the first snow, asking people what they want for Christmas, and promises to not eat so much at Thanksgiving. To many others it means the start of National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo is a month long mad dash to pound out 50,000 words of a novel. The goal is not to make a great novel, but to just write a novel. 50,000 words would give you about a 175 page novel, basically a short novel, unless you are Mitch Albom.

I plan to attempt this feat during November 2006. A recent discovery might complicate things for me. I seem to write best not in front of my trusty Apple iBook, but instead I write the best on paper, by pen. This means that I must choose between writing in my lovely Moleskine notebook or on legal pads. A choice, which by the way, is as tough as choosing between using Microsoft Word, Apple TextEdit, or TexShop as my writing software.

For those who are interested, my writing workflow will be as follows.

1. Plot out or “Storyboard” my novel on 3×5 index cards.
2. Create some character cards that describe different details about the characters in the story.
3. Take an scene card (a 3×5 index card from #1) and handwrite the scene out.
4. Type in the handwritten pages to MS Word–This will serve as the first revision also.

A little complicated? Yes, but from the test I have already did a week or so ago, I think it will work out great for me.

So, wish me luck in my quest for 50,000 words. You can keep up to date with my progress here.

For many years now I have pursued the training of squirrels for world domination. I am pleased to say that my training is starting to bare fruit.

Soon my furry tailed minions will be going after more than bike riding opera singers. I won’t let you know where they will show up next.

Yeah, so I missed judged what that tropical system was going to do.  But, in consolation, I did nail the fact that gas prices were going up.

Yeah I’m not celebrating that fact either.

Be prepared for the price at your pump to go up even more in the next few days. Tropical Storm (and soon to be Hurricane) Chris is on a nice course though the Carribean and into the Gulf of Mexico.

5-Day Forecast Track for TS Chris. (From the National Hurricane Center)

The problem if Chris heads on its current track is that it will start to affect the Gulf of Mexico drilling platforms. Remember how much gas spiked up last year when Katrina hit those platforms?

Hopefully the same will not happen again, but the way the oil industry is these days, it will be hard to imagine them restraining themselves.

Time to start saving up the quarters, dimes, nickels, and even pennies cause were going to need them.