I didn’t catch The Highwater Marks at the ‘Shoe last night – went back to the parentals’ for dinner (Chinese Moon Festival thingee) and was too pooped by the time I got home. So if you were hoping for some scintillating review… sorry. Of course, if I HAD gone, I might actually have something to write about today, instead of nothing, which is pretty much what I’ve got.

That’s not true, actually. I got this – Joe Pernice has written an ode to Boston Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez called “Moonshot Manny (Pega Luna)”. Why? Joe is a rarity in the indie rock world, a raging sports fan and a Red Sox fan no less – I guess the guaranteed angst and disappointment is good motivation for songwriting. Anyway, the inspiration for the song, in Joe’s own words, is as follows:

“At some point in the middle of the season I started singing, ‘Manny hit me home with a moonshot, baby’ to the TV set every time Manny would step up to the plate. Just as my falsetto was shaping up fairly and the tune was actually becoming a song, my wife started singing it too. Then our friends joined in. Pretty soon a gang of us was dancing around the apartment, singing the tune and making a racket of our own. And Manny was on fire. He gave us one of the best summers I can remember. And the bar downstairs seemed a bit less loud.”

You can download it here for an entirely reasonable $1 donation to Boston’s First Night, er, thingee. Anyway, the song is very un-Pernice and almost entirely disposable but really cute regardless. Come on, it’s a buck.

I suppose I should congratulate the Sox on clinching the AL Wild Card back on Monday. Truthfully, the Jays’ season was so utterly dismal this year I stopped following baseball sometime around May- all I’ve got to look forward to in Blue Jay land is Carlos Delgado’s inevitable departure after season’s end. Enjoy your celebrations, Beantown, but you know it’ll all end in tears. I’m a Toronto Maple Leafs fan – I know what I speak of. And the Montreal Expos moving to Washington? Sad, but inevitable. They got totally screwed in ’94 and never recovered. I personally think the strike was a conspiracy by MLB to keep the World Series from going to Canada for a third straight year.

Spookihaus is first out of the gates with a release date for Low’s first album on Subpop – The Great Destroyer is out January 25. Expect the unexpected.

Old 97’s frontman Rhett Miller has been keeping a tour diary during their current tour to support Drag It Up. Apparently Toronto wasn’t especially noteworthy. Boo.

Glide interviews Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers about politics in the South, REO Speedwagon and how The Dirty South wasn’t supposed to be an album at all.

Anyone needing a ticket for the Rilo Kiley show at the Horseshoe this Sunday, get in touch with Michelle, she has an extra that she will let go for $11. It’ll be a great show, mark my words. Mark them, I say.

Ontario has passed a horseshit law that states that all sushi (or raw fish for any purpose) MUST be frozen before being served. I realize that because of geography a lot of fish is frozen before it reaches Toronto anyway, but the legislation of this for no good reason really burns my britches. Update: There’s a petition against the law up here.

np – The Shins / Chutes Too Narrow

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