Book Review: Send The Beer Guy

No really, send him. I need a beer. Shannon Shark of Mets Police wrote an ebook called Send The Beer Guy. So I read it, and then wrote this review of said ebook.

 

Even if he’s a little harsh on the Piazza-era Mets, it’s a good read. There’s the typical Mets fan timeline of how he became, and was cemented as, a Mets fan, his favorite players and all that, but it also chronicles his time working as a vendor at Shea Stadium (hence the title).

 

Some great behind the scenes stories there, and much like Dickey’s book last year, he intersperses ‘current’ impressions of the 2012 season as he’s writing. That part was probably unnecessary, particularly since most of the people buying it are already fans and probably got those observations first hand from @MetsPolice during the season, but it does break up the book in an interesting way.

 

Anyway, It’s a scant $3.99 in the Amazon Kindle Store, and is a quick read. Give it a whirl.

Ceetar’s Origins, Mostly Mets Podcast, and The Mazzilli’s

Lately the origins of my e-identity has come up a couple of times.  Most recently Metspolice.com awarded me a Mazzilli award for “Most Optimistic” (I think the fix is in there), and Google Images suggested he use a picture of a Cheetah.

 
Last week’s Mostly Mets Podcast, perhaps the final one of the year, answered one of my Twitter questions involving Kirk Nieuwenhuis’s potential promotion.  I asked when he’d be up here to take Andres Torres’ job.  Toby Hyde said July first, Ted Berg said sometime in June, and Patrick Flood twisted it a bit and suggested he’d take Jason Bay’s job instead.  When Patrick read my question he mispronounced Ceetar as “Key-tar” instead of “Cee-tar”.  Ted, the one of the trio I’ve met, corrected him but forgot the origin of the name.

 
So here it is:  I was looking to name a character in an online MUD, which is basically a text-based pre-World of Warcraft style game played over telnet. (This was like 1997)  I came up with Ceetar.  My character ultimately became a demon-worshipping evil priest type character wielding dark magic and a spear to kill monsters and good guys.  It became my online identity and as I began signing up for accounts and emails and websites, I started using it as my user name.  So that’s the pretty nerdy origins of the name.

 
As time as gone on, the idea of creating a more ‘professional’ handle has come up, but I ultimately pass on it.  I’m not trying to hide or be anonymous, and I don’t think using Ceetar does that either.  Almost everything I’ve done on the Internet about the Mets has been done as Ceetar.  To use my real name would actually obscure some of that, and the name is hardly hidden.

 
Back on the topic of the Mostly Mets Podcast, which deserves it’s own review post one of these days, I think I’m setting a New Years Resolution to meet either Toby or Patrick (but not both) so that I can say I’ve Met Most of the Mostly Mets Members. Try saying that five times fast.

Meet the Mets Bloggers

Saturday night I met up with fellow bloggers from Metspolice.com, ontheblack.com and readtheapple.com for friendly Mets conversation, and beer.  I’ve officially come in as the laziest despite technically being the longest running blog of the four, as they’ve all put up recap posts already and I’m just messing around on Twitter.  So go read their recaps, which include what I believe is my video blog premier. (Which made it up much faster than my SNY/Beer Money premier, which was filmed eight months ago and hasn’t aired yet.)  Guest starring in the recaps is the infamous and hilarious Eli From Brooklyn.