Check out CNNSI.com’s homepage graphic for the World Series:

Go, Rally Monkey, go!

The World Series is set, and guess what? The Lakers-Kings NBA semifinal was nothing compared to this. This is a regional grudge match on a world-championship stage! On one side of the ring, Southern California’s representative, the Anaheim Angels… on the other side of the ring, Northern California’s representative, the San Francisco Giants (who clinched the NL championship with a dramatic 2-1 win Monday). May the best half of California win! (P.S. Go Angels! SoCal rules, baby!)

And another thing. I may have been wrong about this morning’s L.A. Times headline — they made a reference to Cloud 9, but didn’t say anything about 7th Heaven — but you can take this one to the bank: the phrase “Wild, Wild West” is going to be used a lot in the next week (since both World Series participants were wild-card teams, and both, obviously, are from the West Coast), and so is the phrase “California Dreamin’.”

…would be a grave insult to idiots everywhere. Here’s the latest evidence. (Oh, yeah, but he apologized for being an idiot. So that makes it all better.)

Hooray for the Anaheim Angels, Adam Kennedy, and the Rally Monkey! The Angels are American League champions, and are heading to the World Series for the first time ever, thanks to a 13-5 win led by Kennedy’s LCS record-typing three home runs, the third of which spurred a 10-run seventh inning… which, I guarantee you, will inspire headlines all over the country tomorrow, including in the Los Angeles Times, bearing the phrase “Seventh Heaven.” You heard it here first.

Here’s what the front pages of three Australian newspapers front pages looked like this morning:

For a larger JPEG of the Sydney Morning Herald front page, click here.
For a really detailed view — a PDF file — of the Herald, click here.
To view today’s New York Times front page, click here.

Among other things, the dreadful terror bombing in Bali may wind up having a devastating effect on Australia’s football (soccer) leagues, whose players frequent the popular nightclubs that were bombed. A number of players are missing. Here’s an article about that. For the very latest news from Australia, click here.

The #1-ranked USC women’s volleyball team won its 14th and 15th games in a row this weekend, sweeping the Oregon schools with consecutive 3-0 wins. Becky and I attended the first of these two wins, against Oregon State on Friday, and the Women of Troy definitely kicked butt.

And, oh yeah, we have football a team? Well, they won too, rallying from an early 21-3 deficit to beat Cal, 30-28, and stay alive in the Rose Bowl race. To make the day even sweeter, UCLA lost.

Next week, the Trojans face a virtual “elimination game” against Washington, which, like USC, has one Pac-10 loss. (Having two losses makes it virtually impossible to win the conference.) The stakes in the Trojans-Huskies game are incredibly high, not only because of that Rose Bowl thing, but more importantly because my ex-roommate Dave is coming to town — as a member of the Husky Marching Band — for the first time since he transferred from USC to Washington at the end of our freshman year. (The Trojans and Huskies did not play in 2000, and the 2001 game was at Washington.) It’s a battle of “Fight On” vs. “Bow Down”… and I think we all know who’s gonna win. Fight on, ‘SC! Bow down to NO ONE! :)

My Tuesday-morning post making fun of the grand opening of Krispy Kreme’s new shop in Newington attracted a web surfer looking for information on the hours of said Krispy Kreme shop.

Someone on Cox.net searched for krispy kreme newington hours on Google at 8:08 PM Pacific time (11:08 Eastern time) Saturday. Perhaps this was an area resident wondering whether the much-ballyhooed donut mecca would be open for a late-night, post-11PM donut run on a Saturday night. Instead of such useful information, however, this person found his or her way to my site.

When I repeated the same Google search, I found that my site is #8 on the list, after three articles about Krispy Kreme’s August “construction ceremony” (one from the Boston Globe, one from a TV station in Charlotte, NC, and one from a website called LeasingNews.org); two pages from the official town of Newington website; a blurb about Tuesday’s opening from a site called TechFocus.org; and a fellow blog site by a Boston University student named Mark Coen, with his commentary about the Krispy Kreme opening.

My dad, meanwhile, reports: “Thursday at my office, the word was that boxes totalling *seven dozen* Krispy Kreme Donuts had been either brought in, or ordered delivered, by various employees. Reports zipped through the building regarding whose desk you could go to to grab one.” (So that’s what state employees do all day. Har har, just kidding.)

In a moment of unparalleled cuteness, Toby cuddles on Sept. 28 with Fatty Diego, the hippo dolly I bought at the San Diego Zoo in August.

Puffy cumulus clouds create a beautiful effect as sunset nears in a view of USC’s campus from the top of Parking Structure D. For more sunset pictures and photos of the Williams wildfire from the parking structure, click here.

On Sept. 14 in New York City, my mom’s first professional art show, a photo show called “Blur New York,” opened in Manhattan. In the snapshot above, my mom is standing in front of Photo #10, “Rockefeller Center,” a picture she took of my dad and me several years ago. Here are some of her photos from the show:
• “Rockefeller Center”
• “BQE, Queens”
• “Lower East Side”
• “Coat check”
If you’re interested in buying any of these photos, by all means, e-mail my mom! :)

That same day, Sept. 14, I was doing something a bit less artistic and more hedonistic: partying the night away at my friend Suzanne’s birthday bash. Above, Suzanne and her boyfriend David strike a pose. (Click here to visit Suzanne’s homepage.)

Meanwhile, also on Sept. 14, while I was at Suzanne’s wild and crazy party in Los Angeles, Becky was at a wild and crazy family wedding in St. Louis. Above, from left, are Becky’s brother’s girlfriend Gerry, Becky’s sister Jen, Becky, and Becky’s cousin Stephanie.

On the evening of Sept. 11 at Edison Field, Anaheim Angels fans create a blizzard effect by waving their complimentary 9/11 commemorative t-shirts like white towels to cheer on the Angels during a rally. The Angels beat the A’s, 6-5. Click here for more photos from the game.

The First Interstate World Center, Los Angeles’s tallest building, lights up with red, white, and blue during the week of Sept. 11, 2002. Click here for more on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, including archvied images from this website’s live webcam commemoration.