Salman Rushdie gets a cameo. What’s with Scarlett and the old dudes? Woody Allen films, Bob Dylan video, covering Tom Waits and Salman Rushdie whispering in her ear?

When I compared players at each position I sorted them by RBI as I find that it is the most important stat in baseball. Obviously, I didn’t pick just the RBI leaders, I took other stats in consideration too.

Here goes:

First Base: Casey Kotchman, LAA
Kotchman is tied for 2nd in RBI and has the best AVG at his position and is very good defensively. He also single-handedly killed my Tigers in the only game I got to go to this year.

Second Base: Dustin Pedroia, BOS
He’s got the most hits in baseball and is the best defensive 2nd baseman in baseball. Not bad for a midget. 

Shortstop: Edgar Renteria, DET
Probably a homer pick here, but his only negative is his range defensively at short.

Third Base: Miguel Cabrera, DET
He’s not even playing 3rd any more and usually the stacked position has no real stars this early. Alex Rodriguez is slumping and only Chone (inexplicably pronounced Sean) Figgins has a .300 AVG.  Cabrera has the most RBI and a decent average.

Catcher: Joe Mauer, MIN
He’s a team leader, good defensively and has four more RBI than my second choice, Victor Martinez.

Outfield (3): Josh Hamilton, TEX; Curtis Granderson, DET; Manny Ramirez, BOS
Josh Hamilton is having a break out season playing for a horrible team with no pitching. Curtis Granderson is a homer pick of course because his stats aren’t on par with league leaders because he missed a couple weeks due to injury, but he has come back on fire. Man-Ram is being Man-Ram and will be in the top 5 of every major hitting category at the end of the season.

Designated Hitter: Aubrey Huff, BAL
He and the Baltimore Orioles started hot and have cooled down a bit. If he cools down more, my vote could swing towards the resurgent David Ortiz who started the year injured.

• Frightened Rabbit - “Head Roll Off”

• Frank Black (with Moris Tepper) - “I Burn Today”

• Vetiver - “Been So Long”

• Sufjan Stevens - “The Lakes of Canada”

The Frightened Rabbit video is probably the best song partially about atheism I’ve heard since XTC’s “Dear God.” Actually, I never really cared for that XTC song. It was too preachy… this song is better.

My buddy Josh bought Frank Black’s Teenager of the Year, and I can’t believe that was 14 years ago when it came out. Anyway, I told him how John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants directed the video for “Los Angeles” and upon searching for that video, I found this one which would have been better if it included a hovercraft like the “Los Angeles” video did.

I scored the forthcoming Vetiver record of cover tunes a little early and was looking through some of their videos and found this gem featuring Adem, Vashti Bunyan and Juana Molina helping out.

La Blogotheque and The Take-Away Shows is probably my favorite web site ever, and I found this Sufjan performance and thought it was good.

(Via Aaron Grauer)

George Takei singing Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again”