The Fourth of July plays an important role in baseball. According to lore, the standings on our nation’s birthday play a big factor in who ends up with bragging rights once fall comes.

I don’t know how accurate this tale is, but it means a lot to me because of my fantasy baseball team. Right now, I’m in fourth place with a shot to move up to third on any given day.

This is huge. I have been in this league for 15 years now and only finished in the top half of the standings (we have 12 teams) a handful of times. The past few years, I have finished  ninth, 11th, 10th, 11th, 12th (setting a league record for worst season ever), eighth and fourth.

That fourth place finish came in 2001 so maybe I should blame the terrorists instead of my own knowledge of the sport. Does that mean if I finish in the top half of the league, we have officially defeated the terrorists?

If so, thank Justin Duchscherer and Ian Kinsler.

Sometimes, I just don’t know what gets inside of people’s heads. I see things that go on around me and just can’t help but saying, “What were they thinking?”

I have had a few instances of that lately. The first came when I went to see R.E.M. in concert. I’m not a huge collector of ticket stubs, but I do like to hang on to them so I can reminisce once in a while.

So after I got inside the venue, I started looking at my stub. A lot of times, the back gets you a chance to get something free or discounted, and I wanted to see what I could get for free this time. The result shocked me.

My ticket stub gave me the opportunity to get $200 on a new Volvo. Wow, just what I needed.

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Like most people, I have to pay pretty close attention to gas prices these days. Things are a little out of hand, but I still have to drive to work and take care of other things.

I have just accepted that the oil companies will gouge us.  That’s just life. But I can’t stand how the gas stations try to take a little extra off the top.

What I’m talking about is charging different prices for cash or credit. That’s just some bullshit.

Listen, I know that they have to pay a fee on credit card transactions, but nickel and diming people when gas is at four bucks a gallon is pretty absurd. You don’t just sell gas. Mark up the hot dogs or the coffee or something, but don’t pull this crap on people desperately searching for a good price on their daily commute.

Credit card fees are part of your business. Suck it up, like we’re sucking up $50 per fill up.

With summer TV season here, we have to really search sometimes to find something good to watch. Some nights, we don’t even watch anything. We read.

Prety quaint, right?

The other night we hit the jackpot though. Maria was in the other room as I scrolled through the channels. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I got to the listing for the National Geographic channel.

Girl with Eight Limbs.

You only get lucky like this once in a while. I remember when we had a run of shows about 700-pound people that kept us entertained, but we hadn;t come across a show like this in a while.

Well, I hadn’t. Maria saw a show on the two-headed twins while I was at the R.E.M. concert so she was really on a hot streak.

I don’t really know what draws me to these kinds of shows. I generally don’t watch medical shows, but these oddities (and I’m not trying to be mean, but they are oddities) just draw me in.

I’m just worried I won’t be able to top the eight-limbed baby.

We saw a very cool special on National Geographic last night on a girl born with a parasitic twin attached. She had eight limbs and they thought she was the reincarnartion of some goddess. Luckily, common sense prevailed and they detached the “twin.”

We love medical freak shows like that.

Just about every time a new piece of technology hits the streets, I get a little excited. I know I can’t afford every little gadget, but I like knowing that they exist.

Well, not always. Sometimes I hear about some new little electronic device, and I wonder who thought real people might need the item.

Lately, I have started to think that about these GPS devices that are popping up in all kinds of cars.

I don’t find this kind of technology useless. I’m sure sales people who have to visit a lot of new locations and food delivery services find GPS units pretty handy.

But putting these things in the hands of your average person is contributing to making us dumber as a people.

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So I bitched enough about the set list in my most recent post, I think. I’ll now share one of those moments that only get you jazzed if you are a total geek for a band.

Two-thirds of the way through the set, R.E.M. busts into “These Days.” I love this song. I probably wouldn’t think of putting it on my top five or top 10 list, but everytime I hear it, I remember how awesome it is.

Part of the reason is that “Life’s Rich Pageant” got me into the band. I had heard “Superman” a million times at parties and had “Rockville” on a mix tape I scrapped from a friend. So during Christmas break, I bought the tape of Pageant at Record and Tape Traders in my hometown of Catonsville, Md. This was at the old basement-type location so if you know Catonsville, you know this is old school.

I bought Pageant because it was the cheapest cassette they had for R.E.M. What a great decision. I graduated to the rest of their catalog, and the rest is history.

Because I am a total Internet geek and an R.E.M. obsessive, I have tried to hunt down the real (or so-called real) lyrics of the band’s songs. “These Days” is one of those songs where one word melts into another. I know what Michael is singing, but most people probably don’t.

As the first verse rolled into the chorus last week, I sang the words that even Peter Buck said he didn’t know until a few years ago:

I had a hat and it sunk, reached down, emptied it, slapped it on my head

The guy in the row in front of me turned around in almost shock that someone else knew the lyrics flawlessly. We may not really know the meaning of that line, but we know it cold. He held up his hand, and we high-fived to celebrate our special bond.

Stuff like that will compensate for my feelings on what songs they played and didn’t play. The guys on the stage speak to me for some strange reason, even if I have no idea what they mean at times. And I like knowing others feel the same way.

I had a really good time at the R.E.M. concert I saw last week. I have to say that first because some of the things I say later might sound like I am complaining. I will be. I just want to make it clear that I still loved the show despite the things that bothered me.

This was my seventh time seeing the band live. The eighth if you count the time they opened for The Police when I didn’t pay attention to them. That’s why I don’t really count it.

I have seen R.E.M. on every tour since 1989. This streak gained more importance in my mind on the afternoon of the concert when I talked to some college students who had tickets and probably weren’t potty-trained when I drove from Meadville, Pa., to Cleveland and actually paid attention Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe on the stage.

Later that year, I went to Pittsburgh to see them play again. During those two shows, I saw them play “Pretty Persuasion” (twice), “Sitting Still, and “1,000,000.” Those songs have pretty much disappeared from set lists since that tour, but have made a comeback this year.

Except for when I saw them play at Merriweather Post Pavilion last week. I loved the gems they threw out for us - “Driver 8,” “Finest Worksong,” “Rockville,” and “Pop Song 89″ made their 2008 tour debut while I was jumping around in front of my seat.

But I have seen them play Worksong on their past three tours, including in 2003 when it opened the show at the Patriot Center in northern Virginia. They played Pop Song when they visited Merriweather in 1999. I also saw them play it in 1995 on the Monster tour.

So while some of the songs hadn’t been played at all during this tour, they are hardly tunes they have really dusted off. I heard nothing from Chronic Town or Murmur the other night while other shows have featured two or three songs from the band’s first two releases.

I still loved the show. I’ll get over it eventually. They brought a ton of energy to the stage, and the rapid-fire opening of Worksong, “Living Well’s the Best Revenge,” and “Bad Day,” pretty much set the place on fire.

I will never complain about Rockville being in the set because of how much I love that song. We also got a treat as Peter almost totally fucked it up by coming in too soon for the second verse. Mike caught himself and they got it back together.

Other treats included Johnny Marr joining the band on “Fall on Me” and “Man on the Moon,” Michael’s robot dance during “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” and absolute cracking versions of just about everything they played.

That’s what R.E.M. brings to the table. Regardless of what their latest album sounds like, regardless of what they choose to play, regardless of how well they are getting along, they still put together an incredible live show. I’m looking forward to running my total to eight shows soon.

I have a funny thing about rules. I really like to live in the moment and enjoy plenty of freedom, but I think we need certain guidelines to keep people from going crazy.

Lately, I have noticed one place which needs a little less freedom and a few more rules.

The radio.

I listen to a lot of music, partially because of my commute, but also because I just love music. I have little to no musical ability myself so I really respect the things musicians can do.

I don’t consider myself a music geek or music snob or anything. I really don’t care what kind of music people like. I just want the people putting tunes on the air to realize some of the things they do wrong.

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I took Bridget to see Kung Fu Panda yesterday. We had planned to go for a while since it was her first day of summer vacation.

I don’t mind going to see kid movies. I always look at a trip to the theater as nothing but escape so this was right up my alley.  I didn’t have to think, I just had to sit back and enjoy some good laughs and outstanding animation.

Well, between the kids in the row behind us talking for an hour and a half, that is.

I have a kid so I know how hard it can be to get them to behave for an hour and a half. Luckily, Bridget is almost 8 and wants to see the movie so I don’t have to worry about her. I don’t expect every kid in the theater to sit still for the entire time.

But these people were unreal. The youngest - he was probably 3 - has apparently not been taught to whisper. I don’t mind if the kid says something about something that happened in the movie out loud, but this kid was saying Hi to his parents, arguing over who would sit in what seat and declaring (oh, about 5-10 times) that he had to pee.

All of this in full “outside voice.”

The parents shushed him almost as much as he spoke, but didn’t do much else. The other two kids talked out loud a lot too.

I long for the days when people remembered they were in a public space instead of acting like they were in their living room watching a DVD.

Despite all that, I really liked the flick. The animation for the fight scenes was pretty cool, and Jack Black didn’t go to over the top with the main character.  I just wished he could have come off the screen and done some Kung Fu in the row behind me.

So the soccer team from the Czech Republic had a game the other day. They got all ready to face Latvia in a friendly match.

Problem was, they were playing Lithuania.

D’oh!

Vaclav Tichy, the spokesman for the Czech soccer federation, took responsibility and resigned. His deputy was canned.

No word on whether they have hired Ernie Pantusso to teach their replacements geography. They never would have made this mistake if they played Albania.