Anyone need two?

My entrepreneurial career is off to a flying start: I sold one of my t-shirts! (Thank you, GG, thank you.)

The problem is that, by selling them through Zazzle, I don't get any of my commission money until I amass $25 in commissions. To reach that lofty figure, we're talking about another 10 or 11 shirts. By the time that happens, the Cubs might very well have won a playoff game.

Speaking of postseason baseball: If I've learned anything from the last couple of days, it's that I'm not really cut out to be a ticket broker. Yesterday, I got a marketing email from the Dodgers explaining that they were releasing a bunch of tickets for sale for game 5 of the National League Championship Series. Figuring any game of an NLCS is a surefire sell-out, I thought I'd get two tickets and then turn around and sell them for an easy profit.

So I clicked over to the Evil Empire's web site (which you probably know as Ticketmaster.com) and picked up two half-decent seats for tomorrow's game. I got a post up on Craigslist right away and on StubHub as quickly as I could, which wasn't very quickly, for reasons that I won't go into.

And then the Dodgers go and lose game 4, which means that now L.A.'s interest in game 5 - which could end up being the death knell to the Dodgers' season - is slightly less than L.A.'s interest in what transpired during the January 7, 2008, Concord, New Hampshire, city council meeting. (The meeting minutes are here, by the way, in case you're curious.)

So now it's 29 hours until the game starts and no bites yet. And I've got about $200 worth of Dodgers tickets that I'm probably not going to use.

And just as I wrote that paragraph: An e-mail appeared from a Phillies fan in San Diego. Go figure. We may have a taker. I may yet make a few bucks (emphasis on few) on this deal.

While I wait for my new best friend to get back to me about the tickets...

After attending two of the latest playoff games at Dodger Stadium, I have an observation for you. Many say our current economic meltdown, and the unconscionable greed, avarice, stupidity and criminal behavior it exposed, is a sure sign of the end, or at least the accelerating decline, of U.S. society, capitalism and/or America's once-lofty world standing. Until last night, I thought that was probably overstating the depth of our decline.

But if you want living, (mouth-)breathing evidence of the decline of civil America, all you'd have to do is sit in the lower- and medium-priced seats at the ballpark for a few hours and take in the unrelenting gluttony and bad behavior.

I realize I sound like I've never been to a sporting event before (definitely not the case) and like I'm about 80 years old (still a few years away). And Amish. But I swear it just keeps getting worse.

A couple was sitting in front of us with their son, who must have been about four, and I kept wanting them to get him out of there. Let him watch at home on TV, so every time the Phillies got a hit, he didn't have to hear 18 people yell "Fuck!" at the top of their lungs. Or so he wouldn't have to see wasted assholes harrassing the concession workers when they announced last call for beer sales at the end of the seventh inning.

It's gotten to the point that we count it as a pleasant evening at the stadium when we escape without seeing any fistfights in our seating section. At a playoff game two years ago, there were too many to count, and we finally gave up and left when one guy in our section was so bloodied he had to be taken away in an ambulance. Last night wasn't nearly that bad, but we did get close: At one point, a couple of beligerent twentysomething women almost got into it for no reason other than one of them was drunk and stupid, and as the argument died down, one of them yelled something like, "You're lucky I'm pregnant or I'd kick your ass." Her kid is going to have one awesome mom.

Maybe the guy who's going to buy my tickets for tomorrow (I hope I hope) will get to sit next to her.