My first (and probably last) post about religion

I look forward to a day in which a wholly secular candidate has a chance to run for President. I'm tired of people tiptoeing around religion, trying to play nice.

It would be nice to hear a candidate say "You know what, I appreciate that everyone has personal beliefs, but personal beliefs don't create new jobs or pave roads."

It's about time for someone to speak up for godless heathens like me! We're the one group of voters that's subjected to absolutely no pandering, and I'm feeling left out.

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There's been a discussion on a messageboard that I've been following. A question arose regarding Barack Obama's statements that a marriage is between "a man and a woman". How does he reconcile this personal opinion with the strong support for gay marriage in the Democratic party?

My good friend ADR summed things up really well, I think.

"Obama, to date, has not been willing to allow his personal beliefs on the issue influence legislation to govern the rest of us," he wrote.

He went on to argue that supporting anti-gay marriage laws, or presenting only the opportunity for every same-sex couple to get a "civil union" (rather than be "married") or to have no other "equal" status at all (not even a civil union), would be tantamount to imposing personal beliefs upon others. ("Change the law, so EVERYONE has to follow what [you] believe in.") In essence, imposing morality.

Obama, I'm happy to say, has not gone that route, and I applaud him for it.

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Here's my stance on religion:

If it gets you through the day, if it's something you feel is important ... hey, I'm not going to disparage it. Whatever floats your boat. Free country, your choice. All that good stuff.

I'm not into it, myself, and I would hope that others who are religious would not think ill of me for my choice, much in the same way that I do not think ill of those who are religious for their choice.

That said, what was written above about legislating morality does tweak the issue significantly in some cases: I do not think ill of those who choose to personally practice religion. I do, however, have problems with those who insist that their own beliefs should somehow be the ones that govern my life and the choices I make.

There are those who go the "God and Country" route and want to force me along for the ride (the talking heads on the right like Sean Hannity, "celebrity" religious figures like Pat Robertson or James Dobson, etc.), and I want none of it. These are the people I have major problems with. I have no problem with the neighborhood priest or the people who want to wake up early on Sunday to go to church. I could not possibly care less about having a temple or mosque in my neighborhood, nor about the worshipers who may attend their functions. They're good people who I'll leave alone and who, I assume, want to leave me alone.

But there are those others who want to extend their beliefs beyond the doors of their own homes or places of worship ... and I really, truly don't appreciate it.

And even then, I don't care that our money has "In God We Trust" on it. It doesn't matter. I don't care if a city or town wants to put up a Christmas Tree (and call it that) on public property. I don't even care if they want to put up religion-specific decorations (a manger scene, a menorah, whatever), so long as there's no outright criticism or slur of another religion in the display. And when I say "Happy Holidays", it's not because I'm against saying "Merry Christmas" - it's because "Happy Holidays" includes New Year's Day, too. I can wish you well for a single day, or I can wish you well for several at a time. Your pick. I'm a generous guy!

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So why am I not religious myself? A couple of reasons, I guess.

Primarily, it's because I find it hard to believe that there's an Invisible Man in the sky, as George Carlin put it, who looks down upon us and guides our lives. If there is, I've never met him. I've seen no proof that he exists. The Bible? I could just as easily take "The Odyssey" by Homer as the truth as I could the Bible. Why not? The Bible is filled with all sorts of stories that would fit right in with those in Homer's works, but Homer's poems are deemed "fantasy".

For instance, let's take creationism. God created Adam, and from Adam, he created Eve. (I won't even get into the idea of the talking snake.) Adam and Eve had a couple of kids, and the world became populated from their origins. So, if man is created in "God's image", am I to believe that God is a strong advocate of incest? Because that's the only way we'd all exist today, if we came from the same starting point. Somehow I find this unlikely. As unlikely as when Gepetto was swallowed up by a giant whale. Though that might have been Pinocchio, and not the Bible. Either way. It's kinda silly.

Did Jesus exist? I absolutely believe that there was a man named Jesus who affected the lives of many others in his time, but I believe he was a great philosopher of his time, and not the son of God.

Then, there's the hypocrisy of some evangelical leaders - the "celebrities", like Jerry Falwell, or the hucksters like Jim Baker and those who followed in his footsteps, stealing from and tricking convincing the gullible that God wants them to give them all their money as donations to build super-churches for their TV shows. It's a sham and scam. And I know that not all religious leaders are like this. But the ones who are leave such a bad taste in my mouth, it's hard not to associate behavior that I'm sure God (if there was one) wouldn't approve of with "religion" in general. Is that unfair stereotyping? Yeah, probably. But it's how I feel.

Finally, personal experience:

I used to go to CCD (or whatever you call it) on Monday afternoons after school throughout my grammar school years. At this point, the routine in my family (well, my mom, my brother and me - my dad usually skipped it, as I remember) was to go to church at least every other week (which eventually devolved in the Easter/Christmas masses schedule only). My dad would drive my brother and me to CCD, though, and pick us up afterward. He was a carpenter by trade, and did some work in the rectory on occasion, though I don't know if this was voluntary or paid. I don't recall, and my dad died in '95, so it's kinda hard to ask him ... But unlike his mother, my bingo-playing/church-going grandmother who has a picture of Jesus in her room, I don't remember him being particularly religious. Ever, really.

One year, I mysteriously got sick every Monday afternoon in a row for about two months. Go figure. Crazy stuff, illness. Hmm. Anyway, I went back for the final week of classes before summer recess, and the priest in the rectory stopped my dad and me on the way out. He'd noticed that I was absent for quite a while, and he wanted me to repeat the "course" when CCD re-opened in the fall. My father (my actual father - my birth father, not my "Father" Father) must have heard my heart sink (or seen my shoulders slump), because he turned to me - right in front of the Priest - and asked "Do you want to do that?" I told him I didn't know. "Do you want to come back in the fall at all?" No, I told him. Not really. This was before Confirmation, and I didn't have a lot of "authority figures" in my life, so saying this to a priest was a pretty brave move for me at the time.

My dad calmly turned to the priest and said, "We're going to go home and talk about this, and I'll give you a call with his decision."

We went home and talked a bit with my mom, who said she would really like me to get confirmed when the time came, but if I promised to get confirmed, she'd be OK with letting me skip CCD.

I don't know if my dad ever called him back, but I know this: I never went back to CCD, I never got confirmed, and I've only been to church once ever since.

That one time was the clincher, really.

That one time was for my father's funeral service.

My dad died very suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack during my senior year at BU (which messed me up pretty bad mentally in a lot of ways at the time).

The service was led by a priest I didn't know - he'd joined the church my family used to attend after I'd stopped going. He only introduced himself to my brother and me very briefly before the mass, and I have no idea what my mother and/or (religious) grandmother may have had conversations with him about.

He went on to tell a story about how my father's death was a loss to him personally, because he'd see my father "regularly" at the rectory, even when he wasn't doing carpentry work, because my father liked to share his "great faith" with the church community.

He told another story about how my father was so proud of his sons for also sharing that faith, and that we were carrying on in his fine tradition of service to the church.

At this point, my brother and I hadn't been to church in years. My father gave us the green light to stop going to CCD. My dad was an avid dart player and spent a lot of his free time in a league or hanging out in the local townie bar with his friends - even on Sundays. He definitely wasn't hanging out in the rectory.

To top it all off, the priest mispronounced my family's last name - repeatedly.

We didn't know this priest, and he didn't know us.

At my own father's funeral mass, the priest was lying about my father and my family's relation to the church.

I know he was doing it because he was trying to provide "comfort" to my relatives (and to me, I guess), but ... man. You know? A priest who didn't know how to pronounce my last name is standing there, telling everyone about how much "faith" we had, when we all knew he was full of it?

So yeah ... I'm not a religious person.

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My stance is not malicious. It's certainly not intended to be, at least, and when I make jokes about religion, that's all they are to me - jokes. Because I don't take them seriously. Because, in all true seriousness, I find it incredibly difficult to take religion seriously.

To so many people, it causes so many more problems than it resolves. Look at the wars we're fighting now, for instance - both globally, and politically in our own country.

And it's another terrific reason for me to endorse Obama's candidacy for President over that of a ticket that features someone like Sarah Palin, who would use her religious beliefs to govern the lives of others.

There you go. Hope nobody out there is offended.

Fixing broken things, part III

As Rorschach might mutter, "Hurm."

It's always something, isn't it?

I had planned on getting braces next week, and I think I still do. Maybe.

Yesterday I had a routine dental visit, just for a cleaning, and the appointment began with the typical Q&A about how my teeth have been feeling since the last appointment (hard and white?), is there any pain (no), have I been flossing (regularly, but not religiously), etc. I mentioned that I was scheduled to get braces next week with an orthodontist a couple of blocks away from my dentist's office, so they could be prepared the next time I came in for a visit with a metal mouth.

At my first dental checkup in this office (shamefully, my first in a long time in ANY office), my dentist took x-rays and was a little concerned about my wisdom teeth, which I haven't had removed. They're not painful and never have been, but the dentist said my lower-left wisdom tooth hadn't grown in all the way and was pretty much still under my gums, and she was afraid it might affect its neighboring tooth. She also said that the root of the wisdom tooth was "getting tangled" with the other tooth. She couldn't tell if there's any decay or cavity, because the crowding made it difficult to see the x-ray clearly.

Plus, she said, the way my other teeth had grown in made it tough to clean in the back of my mouth ("it's hard for us here in the office, and it's almost impossible for you at home"). My upper right one is grown in at a bit of a severe angle and juts out into my cheek, but I can't feel it, nobody can see it, and it doesn't affect the way I eat - but to get it clean, I have to "pop my lower jaw forward".

So I should cancel braces for now?, I asked.

Her recommendation was that I see an oral surgeon for an evaluation before making that decision. Because what I really want to do is have four teeth that don't hurt and have never bothered me ripped from my gums, take painkillers for a week, and not be able to eat comfortably for a few days.

Then get braces, which will stay on for 12-18 more months.

For no particular reason, I'm particularly wary about the painkillers thing. I'm not afraid of taking them, necessarily, but I've never taken them before and kind of like having such a long streak without a prescription. In fact, I can't remember the last time I took a prescribed medication of any kind. When I was in grammar school, maybe? I take Advil for a headache now and then, but that's it. I'm like Bruce Willis in "Unbreakable".

Waaah.

So I suppose it's a good thing I had this appointment before I had the braces put on, because if my wisdom teeth became an issue in the next 12-18 months while I was wired up, it could get complicated. On the other hand, I don't want to postpone having them put on, because I'm anxious to get started, though I realize it would only be a very temporary setback.

So I have to call the oral surgeon this morning, see if I can get in ASAP for an evaluation, figure out if I need to postpone the braces and for how long, and then possibly psyche myself up to have my mouth operated on. Hmm ... an operation, or braces? Such a fun choice! Of course, it's not a choice at all, because the answer is actually C: All of the above.

Like the saying goes, ignorance truly is bliss, I suppose. Though I hadn't been to a dentist in a ridiculously long time, I was happy. My teeth didn't hurt, and I brushed regularly. Now, thanks to the professionals, I can look forward to at least one and probably two separate procedures, AND the payments that result! Good times. Good times indeed.

Maybe they'll let me wear Rocky's cone, since he just had mouth surgery too. Life's full of amazing timing that way.

Speaking of Rocky, we got the pictures back. They're not gruesome, so if you're squeamish about seeing wounds or injured animals, I promise these aren't too upsetting. I don't think they are, anyway. Maybe a little gross. Keep in mind that Rocky has responded incredibly well to the surgery and his antibiotics, and though he's still healing up, he doesn't seem any worse for wear. He's honestly the kindest, nicest dog I've ever met (my own pets included), and he just keeps bopping along the best any 13 year old mutt can.



Our heroes at Morristown Animal Hospital! They've been fantastic in taking care of Joey, our half-husky/half-Jackass, and Rocky, my dog-in-law who needed emergency surgery.





You can see the bleed-through under his eye in these photos. Because of the wound, the ping-pong ball sized swollen "bulb" had mostly disappeared at this point. It was unsettling, trust me.



It's as if RCA Victor had an accident.



Note the bandage on his leg. He was under general anesthesia during the procedure, and they had to give him lots of fluids.





None of us slept well this night. Fortunately, he only had to wear the protective cone for ~24 hours; had he needed a drain for his wound, it could have been days. I wouldn't be writing this right now, because I'd have killed someone or been institutionalized. Not that I wish this on any dog, but I'm glad it happened to Rocky and not Joey. His temperament is better suited for this sort of thing, and it still was tough to get through.



Freedom! The bandage and cone came off, and the whining stopped. He still has to wait a few days before he can eat hard foods, though. I can tell he's anxious, though, because he knows he's supposed to get a couple of usual treats per day, and he looks longingly at the container in which they're kept.



A minor miracle - they're within a few feet of each other, and Joey isn't growling or lunging! We brought Joey to the kennel for a couple of days, just to be safe, and he came back a changed dog. He's been keeping to himself in our bedroom most of the time. I wonder if he finally just gave up and resigned himself to not being the only dog here. I'm sure he'll be relieved when Rocky leaves, but we're enjoying "mellow Joey" for as long as it lasts. Still, we dare not leave the two of them together unsupervised.

Fixing broken things, Part II

New music in the player to the left! (If you're reading on www.sonicplague.com.)

So many, many broken things ...

First, on a personal level:

1. According to the fine folks at Xbox.com, my unit is already on the way back to me. Quite the snappy turnaround! Less than a week? I really can't complain about the experience (if true), especially - as I'd written previously - since it resulted in me re-discovering God of War on my PS2. If I could only kill that Hades creature thing. Ugh.

2. Braces! They will be applied (installed?) on September 10, and will be the old-fashioned metal kind, which I've been told "are gonna hurt like hell" for a while. I don't know. I would imagine the technology has improved a great deal since my teen years, when I probably should have had them in the first place, so maybe it's not going to be as bad as people my age who've had them and are now slightly razzing me about them would have me believe.

I had my x-rays and dental molds taken last week. I know orthodontics is not an easy field of medicine and science, but $350 for literally twenty minutes worth of work? Seriously? But before anyone accuses me of being a raging anti-dentite, I have nothing but the greatest optimism that this is the right plan for me. It's just ... $350? And the foamy gel used to make my mold tasted NOTHING like the vanilla I was promised.

I'll post some "before" photos at some point, though we'll have to wait 12-18 months for the "after" ones.

3. The dogs. Remember when I wrote, regarding having two dogs in the apartment, "what could possibly go wrong?"

Ahh, ahem ...

In fairness to Joey, our crazy half-Husky/half-jackass, this wasn't his fault at all:

Rocky, my dog-in-law, had to have emergency surgery this past Friday morning.

Flashback to a early August: Nicole and I (and Joey) drove to Boston to celebrate my brother-in-law's 30th birthday at a cookout at her family's house. As the evening grew dark, we found a lump under Rocky's left eye that we thought was possibly swelling due to a bee sting. When we left the next day, the swelling hadn't gone down, but nobody thought much of it.

On August 17th, Nicole's folks drove Rocky to our apartment in New Jersey, so we could doggie-sit him while they enjoyed a vacation in Italy (lucky ducks!). His eye was still puffed up. It looked like he had a ping-pong ball trapped under his skin.

Last Wednesday (8/27), Nicole went to work and everything was fine, but by the time she got home, the swelling had grown even larger. With obvious concern, we got Rocky an emergency appointment at the Morristown Animal Hospital for that same afternoon. Rocky was given a physical examination, including having his temperature taken (the fun way!) and having blood drawn for lab work.

Long story short, Rocky had an abscess due to a problem with a tooth in his upper jaw. The big ball under his eye was mostly pus. Our vet suggested that Rocky should have surgery two days later (8/29) to fix it, otherwise the infection would just get worse and cause more problems. We brought home some antibiotics, and ... well, I can't say we "looked forward" to the surgery, but we were happy something was going to be done about it, let's put it that way. Oh yeah, and the price estimate was $800 - $1200. Nice.

But Rocky's a member of the family, and has been for 13 years. The cost was never an issue. I mention it only because when it rains, it pours ... just as we decided to get braces and have started paying for those, here comes emergency dog surgery.

Thursday morning, Nicole went to work, expecting that she might be let out early, since her company (very generously) gives the Friday before the Monday holiday off for Labor day, too. And if people have Friday off, they tend to start to bail halfway through the day before ...

It didn't really matter, though, because I had to call her to come home early anyway. About half an hour after taking Rocky for his after-lunch walk, I noticed a little spot of red on our floor and investigated. Sure enough, Rocky's swelling had started to come down, but there was a mess on his face, and he was bleeding. I don't know if he accidentally punctured himself with his paw, or if the tooth or something inside his mouth moved just the right way, or if the swelling literally got too big and "exploded" on him ... It was gross, though. He didn't seem to care, and it's not as if it was oozing out of him like a human with a bloody nose, but it was sufficiently upsetting for me to call the animal hospital for another emergency visit, with a follow-up to Nicole saying hey, get home ASAP, the dog's having a medical emergency.

The whole time, by the way, Joey was camping out in the bedroom, unaware of the drama unfolding. He just wanted to be left alone, and this ... this ... invading dog could just go to hell anyway.

Nicole got home, we went to the vet, and Rocky was taken to an examination room immediately. (For the record, I cannot say enough good things about the staff at the Morristown Animal Hospital - they were, and have continued to be - absolutely fantastic.) The abscess had ruptured, but Rocky was in no danger, and could wait until surgery the next morning. He (and we) would just have to survive overnight with a big, slightly moist wound under his eye.

I had been charged with the task of collecting a urine sample (from Rocky, not from me - though that would have been MUCH easier), on the day of the surgery. We grabbed a glass and a lid and headed outside. Lucky for me, I didn't get any splash-back until, at the completion of the act, Rocky kicked over the glass. Nice. Fortunately, he had a little left over and the mission, though messier than anticipated after a seemingly ideal beginning, was complete.

So, on Friday, the third consecutive day of going to the vet, we dropped Rocky off for his surgery. Nicole, having grown up for so many years with the dog, was incredibly nervous (and rightly so). They were going to put him under general anesthesia, which is always dicey under any circumstances, for animals or humans.

For good measure, since we didn't know how Rocky would react to his pain meds and everything else, we dropped Joey off at the kennel, or "Doggie Summer Camp" as we call it, just so they wouldn't tangle while Rocky healed. And, more importantly, so we could possibly enjoy part of our long weekend.

Gross side note: when the vet flushed out the abscess area, the water came out the wound under his eye. The dog had a damn hole in his face.

Rocky came home late the same day, with a big protective plastic cone strapped to his head. It was a long night. He didn't sleep well, and whined for most of it. I slept in the living room, so that he could find me if he was in severe distress, and in the hopes that he'd leave Nicole to get some rest.

In the end, Rocky's doing just fine, though I alternate between calling him Two Face and Scarface. The swelling he has now is from stitches, not the abscess. His face-hole is sealed up. He can't eat solid food for another week and a half or so. He's sleeping well every night, and his energy levels seem to be back up to pre-surgery expectations.

His owners, however, are still in Italy and don't know what their dog (or its babysitters) had to endure. If I knew where they'd be at any given point, I'd send a reverse-vacation postcard to THEM at their hotel from New Jersey, written in Rocky's voice. "Having a great time in Jersey! They took my blood, stuck something in my butt, and cut my face open. I'll have to tell you about my head-cone in person. But I'm on drugs, so everything's been a blast, really. Wish you were here! Love, Rocky."

He's happy and healthy, and in the end, that's all that matters.

We have pictures, of course, but (in keeping with the theme of this post) our digital camera is broken (and has been since our trip to the also-as-yet-unblogged trip to Cooperstown back in May). Nicole will drop off our disposable camera to be developed tomorrow. Fair warning on grossness will be posted before the pictures come up on your internets from out of nowhere.

**********

Item #4. The Republican VP candidate.

I just don't know what to make of this. On one hand, I think it's a gift from John McCain to the Democrats. On the other hand, this country is so fickle and backwards with politics sometimes that his overlords handlers advisers and PR people may be able to spin this and fool more people into voting for him.

I, like many of my friends, view Sarah Palin as a stunt candidate. Yes, in the short time she's been a public servant she's put together a pretty impressive resume for herself. I'll give her that. And her approval ratings in Alaska are apparently pretty high, and I've heard the stories about her standing up to her own party to try to eradicate corruption (something ALL parties should strive for). So there is some encouraging material there for which she deserves praise.

HOWEVER.

I think it's a pathetic attempt at pandering to the would-be Hillary vote. I (would like to) think that women voters who are disappointed that Clinton is not the Democratic candidate would realize that it's Clinton's stance on political issues that matter, not her genetic makeup. Palin is anti-choice, anti-stem cell research, anti-gay marriage rights, and pro-creationism. And that's just to start. Any one of those four would be a flag to me, but having all four at once is the kiss of death, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm loathe to tell anyone what to believe, but I can't imagine the set of circumstances I'd have to face for me to choose someone like Palin for ANY public office. And I don't say that because she's a woman. I say that because her political stances are so completely opposite my own that she horrifies me as a potential Vice President (and, as such, potential President, should something unfortunate happen to John McCain).

But I would absolutely hope that any woman voter who wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton wanted to do so because of her views, not her gender. Anyone who wanted to vote for Clinton simply because she's a woman needs to seriously re-evaluate their own political and personal beliefs. I don't know why anyone would sell out their own personal beliefs like that, but look where it got John McCain 2008 compared to John McCain 2000. It seemed to work for him.

So as a pro-oil, pro-drilling, pro-gun, bible-thumping evangelical, she'll probably make the hard-right base much happier than they were with just McCain at the top of the ticket. She seems to mean what she says and stand behind her words (at least, 72 hours after the announcement that she's the candidate), so she's already more conservative than McCain. I'm convinced that Mitt Romney is a fraud and would be a terrible candidate on any national level. Giuliani had nothing to offer outside of yelling "911!" all the time. So in the end she's a good pick in the sense of getting the conservative base to support its candidate, disappointed as they may be with him.

But the undecideds and independents? Anyone pro-oil, pro-drilling, pro-gun, anti-choice, anti-stem cell research, anti-evolution, anti-gay marriage wasn't going to vote for Barack Obama anyway.

So I don't know what McCain stands to gain here, unless that magical 30% of undecided would-be Hillary voters are, in fact, complete dolts. And even then, I don't know if it would be enough for McCain.

I'm not terribly concerned about the whole "lack of experience" argument thrown around by both sides regarding their respective opponents, either. Obama doesn't have the experience, the Republicans say, yet they have nominated the governor of a state with a population the size of Austin, Texas. But she's also a former mayor! Yeah ... of a city of less than 7,000 residents. That's JV stuff. But as governor and mayor, she has more "Executive" experience than Senators Biden and Obama, who've never held such an office! OK, but by that standard, she also has more experience than her running mate, John McCain.

Sounds pretty ridiculous, doesn't it?

Further, there's the whole pregnant daughter angle, which seems like a powder keg about to explode. Something about the story doesn't seem quite right, but I don't know exactly what. My spidey senses tell me there's more to this story that's going to come out in the next few days and weeks.

Then, there's ownthesidewalk.com, a blog by a resident of Anchorage, Alaska, that provides a first-hand (though admittedly biased) perspective of Palin as governor. A very good read, and one I'll be sure to keep up with as the campaign progresses.

It also seems that someone "scrubbed" Palin's Wikipedia entry just before the announcement of her candidacy. Seems a little ... odd.

I don't know what to think about this article, which discusses how Palin may have been chosen not by, but FOR, McCain. I don't know anything about the website or who runs it, and I've never heard of the Council for National Policy before. So maybe this is some crazy black helicopter conspiracy stuff that doesn't deserve anyone's attention. But, as a piece of a larger puzzle, I wonder if it fits, especially given this article from the much more reputable L.A. Times, which says that McCain and Palin are "practically strangers", and that "Palin said she had met McCain only once or twice".

Really? They don't know each other well?

Say what you will about Joe Biden (I've never been his biggest fan, particularly due to his smug demeanor - frankly, his selection as VP running mate was a bit of a disappointment to me, at least at first), but over the course of the last two years as fellow candidates, he and Obama have developed a strong relationship, and they both understand the other because they've been around each other for so long.

But McCain and Palin had only met "once or twice"? REALLY?

This is a huge statement, to me. McCain thinks she's the best available candidate, and he's only met her "once or twice"? REALLY?

And if he's making important decisions like this in this manner, is this what we can expect in the future? Is it worth the risk?

Kids, it's a stunt. He's pandering. It seems clear to me, but I'll admit I'm biased and have been an Obama supporter since the day he announced his candidacy. More importantly, I hope it's clear to others still in the decision-making process, and I hope those people aren't fooled by the usual righty suspects (Limbaugh, Hannity, etc.) into believing that the Republican ticket is something it's not.

Time for a change, everyone. Let's fix what's broken and elect Barack Obama in November.

1996 Election Flashback video

I have a bunch of old videos that I need to edit and post. This is one of my favorites.

1996 Late Night with Conan O'Brien -
What does the professional wrestling community think of the election?

Thanks, Hill!

Damn, dude. That was a pretty great speech, given that I thought things would be so much more ... hostile and testy, I guess.


see Obama pictures

Fixing broken things

So my X-Box is dead in the water. For real, this time. I think.

Last week, I played it for a little while one morning and everything was fine. Walked the dogs, had some lunch, fired it up to work on some new Forge maps for Halo 3 and ...

RED RING OF DEATH!

I unplugged everything, let it rest for a while, and tried twenty minutes or so later. Still got the ring. An hour later, still got the ring.

Finally, I tried it once again for the night - just in case - and it worked.

The next morning, pretty much the same thing. It worked, then I turned it off, and then it didn't work anymore for a few hours. Then it did.

Anyway, it finally pretty much stopped working altogether, so I put in a work order via Microsoft.com, and now I have to pack it up and ship it off to an exotic locale (Mesquite, TX!) for them to work their magic.

Tomorrow I send the machine out, and then wait probably three weeks to get it back. I'm sending them a black 360 Elite unit, so I better get the same back in return ... Urgh. Wish me luck.

As a result, I'm already lonely and starting to miss two of my best friends here in New Jersey - Nico Bellic and Master Chief. It's gonna be a long three weeks.

On the plus side, this should, in theory, help focus my energies towards finding a new job and going to the gym (both of which I do actively, but admittedly not as enthusiastically as I ought to). One less distraction is a good thing.

(Though come to think of it, I haven't played God of War in a while on my PS2 ... hmmm.)

The other major reconstruction project about to begin is in my mouth. Nicole and I decided that we're ready to get braces to straighten our teeth. Nicole had them many, many years ago, but there's still a lingering issue she'd like to take care of.

I've never had braces, but anyone who's ever met me knows about my imperfections (of which there are many, but I refer specifically to my choppers this time around). One thing I've always been very self-conscious about is my smile. I think it's pretty horrible. My teeth are actually very healthy, and I take care of them well (though I could be more consistent with my flossing), but I have "overcrowding" on the bottom row around one of my center teeth. Up top, I have gaps between my front six teeth (the cuspids, and the central and lateral incisors). In addition, my upper central incisors are elongated compared to the rest of the teeth (resulting in a bit of an overbite), and they bend somewhat inward, to the inside of my mouth (which, according to my orthodontist, causes the crowding on the bottom).

Do a Google image search on "teeth crowding", and you'll see some VERY hardcore examples of what I'm talking about. Sort of. Happily, my personal situation is nowhere near as severe as the examples in the first page of those photos.

By the sounds of things, I'm going to get the regular, old-school type metal braces and not the clear, modern ones. For my situation, the orthodontist feels they're a better bet. I don't care one way or another, as long as they work. They can put in neon green wires as far as I'm concerned. Unlike an awkward teen in high school, I really don't care how they're going to look on me.

The two parts of the deal I'm not so fond of are the cost (of course) and the length of time this is going to take. I've been told to expect the braces to come off in 12 to 18 months. I get my dental molds and pre-installation work done on Wednesday, and assume I'll actually get the actual appliance in early September.

So, if all goes to plan, in September '09 or possibly as late as March '10, I'll be hit in the face with a baseball and end up having to wear dentures anyway. Go figure.

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I still owe a post about a whole bunch of movies I've seen this summer, but here's a quick note about "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor". Nicole loved the first one (and saw the second one, and walked out of "The Scorpion King"), and I love the Mummy-themed rollercoaster at Universal Studios, so we figured we'd go check it out last weekend. There were other movies we'd have rather seen, but since it wasn't likely to remain in our local theater too much longer, it was now (then?) or never.

I should mention that I've seen the first one in bits and pieces (but not all in one sitting), and hadn't seen any of the other related films at all. But Nicole wanted to go, so we did ...

... and I hate to admit, despite remaining awake for very large portions of the film, I really couldn't tell you anything that happened. I just don't remember, one week later.

There were a bunch of chases, and some snow, but otherwise it was just a big blur of nothingness to me. Utterly forgettable in every way, shape and form. The acting was bland, I didn't care about any of the interpersonal relationships (such as they were), I didn't think it was funny despite repeated attempts to play scenes for comedy, and the plot was threadbare at best. Some of the effects looked nice, but that's not enough to get a movie by anymore.

The worst thing a movie can do, I think, is not to make you hate it. It's to make you not even care. The fact that I'm even writing this is a miracle, because it doesn't deserve to take even more time from my life than actually watching the film.

Don't bother with it, is what I'm trying to say.

Go play GTA IV instead - the story, the action, and the acting are all much better.

It's advice I wish I could take myself, but I can't ... not for another three weeks.

Grr.

On the Olympics, my two furry friends, and Facebook

As I write this, to my far left is Rocky. Joey is behind me. Both are peacefully resting, and I am enjoying every moment of it while it lasts.

My in-laws are on their way to Italy for a couple of weeks, and my brother-in-law, who lives in Brooklyn and usually looks after my in-laws' dog, is heading off on a cruise, too. So for the next two weeks at least, possibly more, we're looking after Rocky, Nicole's 14-year-old wuss of an orange-and-black dog. He's a handsome guy, and incredibly lovable. He hates confrontation and usually scoots away from other dogs.

Then there's Joey, our own adopted 7-year-old half-Husky/half-jackass, who isn't too great around other dogs sometimes.

What could possibly go wrong?

Actually, a little over two days in, it's so far so good. Rocky sleeps in the living room (there's no danger that he'll do anything destructive, no matter where he is), and Joey sleeps in our bedroom (where he sleeps anyway, because the half-jackass side of him is always a wildcard, even without other dogs around). Rocky gets two doggie treats for breakfast (one of which was promptly eaten yesterday by Joey upon his discovery that there was food on the ground) and one for lunch, and Joey gets pretty much whatever he wants whenever he wants it (within dog-food limits, but usually covered in a sprinkling of cheese), because I'm a big softy. Feeding them at night has been an issue, because naturally Joey feels like he needs to eat Rocky's food, despite having a perfectly good bowl of ... whatever that is ... in front of him.

The bigger difficulty is trying to take them out for walks - they're both wanderers, so having a leash in each hand makes them very difficult to control. Besides, Joey could get a little aggressive under the right circumstances. He's not a violent dog by nature - far from it - but given his insecurities around other dogs, it's best not to tempt fate. Anyway, Rocky is older and is used to being allowed out on his lawn without a leash to take care of business, but without fences here to keep him in, his unfamiliarity with the neighborhood, and the leash laws (which I fully support, given how many dogs are around this neighborhood), I have to accompany him. Since he's an older dog, he has to go more frequently, but for shorter walks. Joey, on the other hand, accompanies me for 30-45 minute walks three or four times daily. I'm not sure which one of us walks the other, to be honest. The thing is, when one sees that the other is going to go for a walk, he decides he wants to go too, and each starts to feed off the other's anxious energy. Next thing you know, I have two dogs engaged in a spiraling game of "Me! No, me! No, ME!" for my attention.

I don't care who goes first. I'm the one who has to walk around picking up poop all day, so I can't exactly find any motivation to play favorites. I'm the big loser, any way you slice it.

A side note: Joey loves (more specifically, goes absolutely crazy for) Duck and Sweet Potato treats, so we decided to try the banana chips from the same. Intrigued by their smell, I popped a small one into my mouth and ate one for the hell of it. Going down, it wasn't too bad, but the aftertaste made me run to the mouthwash. Yech. I've also tried Frosty Paws peanut butter doggie ice cream. I have no shame. The chips did not taste like bananas, nor did the ice cream taste like peanut butter. If I were to be marooned on a tropical island with an unlimited supply of the chips, I could probably survive. The ice cream, which one would think would be a fantastic supply to have to rely upon on a tropical island - not so much.

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Count me in as what the right-wing talking heads would call an America-hating liberal, I guess, because I could not possibly care less about how many medals our Olympians win. The idea that one country's total medal count should somehow matter on a global scale is ridiculous and shallow as far as I'm concerned, but every two years there's an emphasis on who wins what. This year, 'can the host Chinese athletes show China's rise to prominence by taking home more medals' than the US seems at times to be a popular question on TV and in print.

And I just don't care.

Yes, the medals themselves do count, and anyone who wins them should be proud. That's not a question at all. But if a swimmer from another country beats an American swimmer by a fraction of a second, my first reaction is going to be "well, good for them" instead of "it's embarrassing that we lost." (If the "Redeem Team" loses in the basketball tournament, for instance, the story will once again be how the US team managed to lose, not how their opponents found a way to win, and I think that's more than a little unfair to the other team.)

I know it's not realistic to expect otherwise, because the US side of the story is what drives TV ratings and sales of magazines, but good people who worked very hard for years (just as any athlete from any other country in any other sport) deserve some credit, too.

What I care about, especially with the state of global relations as strained as they are today, is that the Olympics are governed fairly, and that the athletes respect each other. The two events that have been tarnished by controversy (that I know of) are the kinds of things that I hope are kept to a minimum (though the possibility that there are Chinese gymnasts who are actually younger than reported is another story altogether). I just don't want to hear that something like the 1972 basketball game controversy has struck again.

Before the games started, there was so much news about China's hosting abilities, the smog that was supposed to suffocate everyone, the crackdown on internet availability and freedoms, and the refusal of the government to allow visas for some former athletes to visit. While these are absolutely very relevant stories that should be reported on or investigated as needed, I'm glad they've taken a back seat to the actual results of the games themselves.

I watched Michael Phelps win those eight gold medals with awe (and felt bad for his teammates, who were completely overshadowed). I saw the craziest damn game of badminton and didn't care that the Chinese won the gold. I found out that there's such a thing as Olympic trampoline (!), and that it looks absolutely terrifying. I saw a women's water polo game go into double overtime, then into a shootout. I saw kayakers guide themselves through a man-made white water obstacle course. I listened in amazement, realizing that NBC sports actually found "experts" to provide commentary for each of these!

I realized that none of these sports will be on live network TV again until 2012.

The funny (funny strange, not funny ha-ha) and somewhat unfortunate aspect of the competition to me, in a way, is that these athletes train every day of their lives to race or throw something or who knows what, and that anyone who finishes fourth or lower is pretty much forgotten instantly. Why is this unfortunate? Why should we care?

Look at it this way: the difference between first place (13.16 seconds) and 30th place (13.84) in the second round of the Men's 110-Meter Hurdles (not the medal round, I realize, but the heats leading up to it) was less than .7 seconds. That's less time than it takes to take a breath.

To train all your life and finish 30th, and still be only .68 seconds behind first place ... well, that's pretty amazing, as far as I'm concerned. The commentators will sometimes throw in a "so-and-so has fallen well of the pace" or "so-and-so brings up the rear", as though the performance is somehow not impressive. Well, I'm impressed!

Put me in the water with Michael Phelps, and he'd lap me three or four times (at a minimum, likely more) before I got from one end of the pool to the other. That's falling well of the pace! That's an embarrassing performance!

So I say let's watch the games with wondrous eyes, enjoying the spectacle of seeing the world's greatest athletes pushing themselves because they excel at their sports, rather than worrying about which country wins what and how many. They'd kick my ass and yours if we tried to do what they do, so let's just sit back and enjoy, and not worry about China's odd decision to have a "cuter" little girl lip-synch a song sung by another (apparently "uglier"?) little girl at the opening ceremonies. It should be a non-issue.

(And let's hope that Janos Baranyai, the Hungarian Weightlifter, is OK after his horrific incident.)

Four quick thoughts:

1. Again, on Michael Phelps. The question is now apparently "Is Michael Phelps the greatest American athlete ever?" The most celebrated, perhaps - but even then, let's wait a few years and see if his light still shines as brightly as it does right now. The greatest? Ask a decathalete, or one of those crazies who does the Iron Man competitions. Phelps is impressive, absolutely, but hardly the "greatest", I think.

2. If your event is the shot put, you must really love shot put. Because nobody else cares. Sorry.

3. The foot races? The 100m, 200m, and so on? They should attach it to a runner on the inside of the track and make the runners chase it, like dogs at the track chase the rabbit lure. First one to snatch the gold medal wins it!

4. Remember when Bob Costas seemed better, somehow?

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Finally: Facebook applications.

First of all, I'd been so reluctant to sign up for Facebook, because I did Friendster for a while, and once I got used to it, everyone switched to MySpace. I was happy there for a while, too, then some people started LinkedIn, and then everyone moved to Facebook. Too many social networking sites, I thought. But Facebook actually turned out to be pretty neat. (WordScraper, anyone?)

One of Facebook's wonderful time-wasting lures are the "applications" you can choose to add to your profile. One of the applications I made the mistake of adding was the "Compare People" application. Very rarely will I actually respond to the question sets presented, because I don't want to offend or puzzle any of the people I consider (and want to RETAIN as) friends. So consider the ramifications of the questions "Who is hotter?" and "Who would I rather sleep with?" when presented with random photos of Friends A and B.

Yes, I realize you can vote anonymously, so that the person getting your vote won't know it's me who is voting. That's almost beside the point.

When one chooses, the friend who gets the vote is notified that someone has "awarded" a superlative of some sort to him or her. It's just ... weird. I don't know.

Add to this that I'm married ... well, you see what I mean.

It would make the application a lot more fun to fill out if you could add a line or two of text to clarify why you voted the way you did. For instance, if I know for a fact that Friend A snores like a buzzsaw, I could mention that little nugget in response to selecting Friend B as the person I'd rather sleep with, thereby completely removing any sexual aspect to the question (not to mention staying on Nicole's good side! :) ). Another example: in the photos that came up under the question "who is hotter?", one of my friends is photographed in ski gear with a lift in the background, and one has a big floppy hat to protect against the sun. Clearly, based on the presented evidence, Big Floppy Hat person is MUCH hotter than Ski Gear person. If only I could remark on the temperature aspect of the question ...

I've anonymously been voted on several times (fortunately for my ego, though, very few). One hundred percent (of the one person) who voted in the category said I'm the person he or she would "rather get stuck in hancuffs with". Very nice, thank you. One hundred percent (of the one person, again) who voted said they'd rather hang out with me for a day (perhaps because they couldn't stand two days? - see, bring the comedy, and this stuff's much easier to answer). Good, good. More powerful? Well, I do have the strength of ten men, so I'm one-for-one in that category, also.

"Nicer". Nicer?

First, a note about me: Women love me. Men want to be me. Children idolize me. The entire animal kingdom considers me to be a champion of their cause. I don't, as far as I know, have an arch-enemy.

However, only one person out of three voted me "nicer". Granted, I don't know the circumstances of the votes. Perhaps my "opponent" was a long(er)-time, closer friend that I had no chance of "beating" anyway. Maybe the people who voted were drunk, or thought it was opposite day, during which you had to flip your vote.

So, to the one person who voted me as the "nicer" person, thank you ... but I swear, if I ever find out who the two fucking assholes were who didn't think I was nicer, I'm going to get a baseball bat and start cracking skulls. Then, I'm going to set fire to their cars. I'll show THEM who's nice, goddammit!

Just kidding, of course. The only category I'm actively politicking for votes in is "best profile picture" - I put in some good time Photoshopping some of those, so if you'd consider me in front of the giant pile of donuts, the army of me, or me fronting Guns N' Roses when the choices comes up, I'd really appreciate it.

Another aside, from my days in High School: In every yearbook across the country every year you'll find the Senior Superlatives section, or something like it. Seniors vote who will be most likely to succeed, Class Clown, etc. Anyway, of the three of us nominated in my senior year, I won "Most School Spirit". Rules prevented one person from winning more than one Superlative, so the guy who actually got the most votes decided he'd rather win his other category, so the award when to the #2 vote-getter. In a tremendously wonderful ironic twist regarding school spirit, the #2 vote-getter didn't want the award because he wanted to be in the yearbook as little as possible. So I won, by default, simply because I was the "other guy". The sweet taste of victory!

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A final note for the day, also Facebook related: someone, somewhere, anonymously wrote a very nice little blurb about me. I don't know who wrote it, or why, but thank you very much, whoever you are. It really made my day, and it was one of the nicest things anyone's said to me in a long, long time.

I figured anyone who'd take time to write such a thing probably reads this blog, and since I don't know where to send the thanks otherwise, this is as good a place as any to mention it.

So seriously, thanks a ton. :)

(You did mean to send it to me, right?)

1986 Red Sox TV Clip - Channel 38 lives!

Apparently it's all baseball all the time around here, huh?

I have a box full of old VHS tapes, and I'm trying to sort through them to see what, if anything, is worth transferring to DVDs. One of the prizes I found is the complete game between the Sox and Blue Jays in 1986 - the game which clinched the AL East for the Red Sox.

I thought some lifelong Sox fans would get a nostalgic trip out of seeing this old clip, featuring the voice of Dana Hersey introducing the game, the spectacular video effects in the opening montage, and an awesome soundtrack guaranteeing that an exciting game is to follow.

In addition to the game, I have a lot of post-game coverage that I need to mine through.

Other discovered tapes include the Patriots' "Squish the Fish" game from the '85/'86 playoffs, and the complete broadcast of Superbowl XX (when the Bears destroyed them). I have a couple of 1986 Red Sox Playoff games, too ... so much good stuff.

I may start a separate page or a new video blog to highlight some of this stuff, assuming it transfers well digitally. Some of these tapes haven't been played in 20 years, so who knows if they're even still watchable (or if our old VCR will eat them first).

Regardless, enjoy Ned Martin and Bob Montgomery from the days before Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy - in fact, from the days before NESN even existed.

The Farting Preacher

This has been on the internet forever. It's childish, crude, and immature.

And it's absolutely hysterical.

Pour yourself a big glass of milk and get ready to snarf it as you watch "The Farting Preacher".

More on (moron?) Manny, and a mini-BU RA reunion

I'm a little disgusted with Firefox and Scribefire right now, for the record. I've been fiddling with the format of this entry for too long, and I can't get it right, and it's making me crazy. I keep losing my HTML changes and my inserted links. So if any of this looks awful to you, or if you see a spot where there should be a paragraph break but there isn't one, trust me - I know there SHOULD be one. But I'm just about ready to say the hell with it and walk away in disgust.

Also, I see my curtains gently blowing in the breeze, yet it's at least 15 degrees warmer in my apartment than it is outside my window (a mere two feet from my right arm). What the hell?

---

Anyway, when last I wrote, Manny Ramirez was still the starting left fielder for the Red Sox and was to be traded to the Marlins. Now he's in LA instead, but the sentiment remains: see ya, Manny. Thanks for the memories. No hard feelings. See you around someday. Thanks, but it's time to go. Clearly, you were half-assing it in your final weeks in Boston, and that will not be forgotten next time you visit. You crossed the line between shenanigans and bullshit. The punchline at the end of the whole ordeal is that you’ll be immortalized in Cooperstown wearing a Red Sox hat. Ha ha! Joke’s on … well, all of us, apparently.

I love Jason Bay playing left now, though (although Matt Holliday would look even better). I had Bay on my keeper-league Fantasy team for a couple of years, and the only reason I gave him up was because I didn't think his numbers would stay as consistent as they've been on a Pirates team that continues to go nowhere fast.

Theo once again made a very nice pickup, especially since Bay is under contract through 2009.Did the Sox give up too much? Yeah, probably. Granted, I think a change of pace for Craig Hansen will be beneficial to his career (he seemed to Schiraldi himself in Boston and had difficulties with the pressure of pitching in a big-time baseball city), and Brandon Moss was a fifth outfielder at best for this team (though given the way Coco Crisp has played this season ... but that's another story). Giving up either of those two guys is no big deal.

But trading three players and picking up the rest of Ramirez's contract for the season for one player? Holy cow - the Sox and Ramirez's ex-teammates really had to want that guy gone in a bad, bad way.

I think it might have made more sense for the Dodgers to give up three prospects for Ramirez, or for the Sox to give up Ramirez and one prospect or Ramirez and the contract payment, or for the Pirates to have given up a reliever or low-minor-league pitcher to the Red Sox also. Giving up three players, one of whom is among the elite hitters in the game (when he wants to be) and two months' worth of ridiculous salary is a helluva lot.

Whatever the case, everyone's happy (I'm assuming Pittsburgh is happy - who really knows how people feel about the Pirates anymore, especially with the Steelers back in pre-season training).

Happy for now, at least. Bay and the Sox are going to be happy, because I fully expect the Rays' magical season to come screeching to a halt anytime now. The Sox should, barring a magnificent collapse, head into the playoffs (I believe as AL East Champions). Manny and the Dodgers will lose the west to Arizona, because the D-Backs pitching will prove to be too strong. The Pirates ... um, yeah. Anyway.

A sidebar about the Rays:

I love Carl Crawford. My old boss in Portland knows that I considered myself the President of the Carl Crawford fan club. I just love watching the guy play. Huge loss for the Rays, with Crawford being out 6-8 weeks toward the end of the season. This is a very, very young team, and Crawford was the "veteran leadership". Yeah, guys like Cliff Floyd and Troy Percival have been in the league forever, but Crawford's been the guy who's anchored that team since day one, and who knows all too well what it's like to play on a team that - pardon my tackiness - completely sucked for so many years.

The Rays' other key loss, that of Evan Longoria, is even more significant.

Three notes about Longoria:

1. Not only is he the sure-thing AL Rookie of the Year, I honestly think he should be the AL MVP. I know Josh Hamilton is putting up incredible numbers on a less-than-incredible team, but take Longoria away from the Rays this season and they're a .500 team at best. I'm convinced of it.

2. He reminds me of another very young player from Florida who led his team into the playoffs at a very young age: Miguel Cabrera. He doesn't remind me of Cabrera in a physical way, obviously (Cabrera's chunky these days, to be polite), or in terms of how hard he hits the ball. He reminds me of Cabrera in that Cabrera, at age 20, put the Marlins on the map as a legit competitive team. Longoria now does that for the Rays. Longoria gives the Rays a certain degree of respect that I'm not sure they'd get without him. Put it this way, nobody ever feared Rocco Baldelli coming to the plate with one on and two out in the eight inning in a close game. Longoria? If first base is open, he's getting walked.

3. I drafted Longoria in both of my Fantasy leagues this season, and in each case was subjected to at least slight taunts about what's-her-face on Desperate Housewives. I am vindicated!

Don't get me wrong - what the Rays have done this season is incredible. They're young and only going to get better. But the Sox are battle-tested and understand what it takes to get the job done once crunch time rolls around with the end of the summer. The White Sox and Twins have been so remarkably consistent all season, and I don't think either has a big losing streak left in them. The Yankees ... well, anyway. So the Rays are down two key players, have a lot of road games left to play, and haven't been in this position before. Additionally, with the exception of their swoon right before the All-Star break, they haven't had a big losing streak - they're due to stumble and lose some confidence. The Sox will swoop in and take the lead for the rest of the season.

In fact, I think the Rays miss the playoffs this season altogether. I hate to say it, because I love to see new blood in the post-season (I love my Sox, but I realize that many fans are sick of seeing them, the Yankees, and the Angels in the post-season every October). But I honestly just don't think this is their year.

Could anyone have predicted at the end of the 2004 season that Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Lowe, and Manny Ramirez would all be playing for Joe Torre? In Los Angeles? The fun's only starting in LA, too. And I don't mean the playoff run. Manny's pulling the "I want to end my career here" stuff already (he only said that EVERY YEAR in Boston), and he won't cut his hair despite promising Torre he'd do so.

I had no intention of this post being so baseball-heavy, with all of the other thoughts I want to jot down before I forget. Yet I still won't get to my review of the Dark Knight (though it will be glowing, I assure you) or my thoughts on various Facebook applications that are designed, apparently, to make me feel inadequate. Ahem.

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Two weekends ago, Nicole and I headed into Manhattan to catch up with some of my old college friends, whom I hadn't seen in ages – in fact, I hadn’t seen them since Manny was a Cleveland Indian, if I remember correctly.

Dave was my roommate in Cambridge for a couple of years post-B.U., and he's in Japan now teaching English. His big announcement was that he's now engaged. We joked about it at the reunion, but since he's marrying a Japanese girl, his career choice is officially a success! :) His visit spurred the get-together. (His visit, and the fact that I’ve re-connected to so many of my old friends via Facebook.)

Cari is a firecracker, still. It's reassuring to know that the years haven't changed her. After graduation, I stuck around BU as a dorm director for a summer program and she was on my staff. I was completely apprehensive at the time, and in retrospect I realize I was probably in a little over my head, but having her on my staff made my life so much easier, because I knew I had people I could count on around me. I hadn’t seen her in I think 11 years or so. She’s now, I shit you not, an F.B.I. agent. How cool is that? My little Cari’s packing heat! Sadly, I think I'd forgotten just how much I missed her. I'm so glad we've reconnected.

Jorge looks exactly the same, with a little off the top. He’s got me beat, though, because a decade-plus later, I’ve got a lot off the top. There aren’t many people in this life that I’m jealous of, but Jorge’s one of them. Of all the amazing people I’ve met over the years, few have had their shit better together than him. Now he works for a non-profit company that tries to curb smoking in foreign countries. A great cause, and one that I fully support. I hadn’t seen him in probably 11 years, either.

And Kelly … ahh, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. If there was any potential for awkwardness, it was here. Those who’ve known us since those BU days understand why, but for the rest, a very quick note: Kelly was my first real girlfriend, and blah blah blah. The point being, we hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and now we’re both married, and I was seeing everyone again for the first time in ages, and I suppose it’s probably a little strange to have your wife meet your ex-girlfriend. Don’t know. Never happened to me before.

Long story short, it was, as the cliché goes, like riding a bike. It seems like a lifetime ago, yet it also seems like we were just hanging out not too long ago. I hope she feels the same way … it was, to me, not like seeing an ex. It was like seeing an old friend and catching up the way old friends do, minus any lingering baggage, which is exactly what I was hoping would happen. We’re both older, wiser, and, to an extent, different people than we were back then.

Looking back, in general – not just in terms of seeing these particular people again, but overall – I am a different person than I was ten years ago. And the person I was ten years ago was a very different person than the one I was five years before that. And, through it all, I’m still very much the same person – stubborn at times, subject to long bouts of procrastination, and alternatively overly-pragmatic and, per Dave, quixotic.

The current me has reconciled much of what the ten-years-ago-me would have probably dwelled upon. Despite all of those changes, and the non-changes, I still love all four of those people. It was such a treat, just kicking back and drinking a few beers with old friends. Instead of the Dugout, we were at a bar in Manhattan, looking decidedly tanner and healthier
than we ever did as undergrads.

It was easily one of the best feelings I’ve had since moving to New Jersey, and I can’t wait to do it again someday soon. As in, not 11 more years. And next time, maybe we can bring some more old friends along for the ride.

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Three sad deaths of note: Isaac Hayes, Bernie Mac, and John Edwards' political career.

I knew of Hayes' Shaft theme song long ago, but like so many others, his impact of note in my life came with his performance on South Park. Despite his falling out with Trey and Matt over his ridiculous religious views, I'll fondly remember him and that amazing voice. I'm interested to see if and how a show as wonderfully offensive as South Park will treat his passing.

I didn't know Bernie Mac's standup too well, but I was a fan of his TV show, which I thought was underrated and under-watched. When I found out about his death (via pneumonia, at age 50), I could only think about how horribly young he was. And who dies of pneumonia anymore? At that age, at least. Such a shame. Actually, my first thought was, "Bernie Mac? Really? Aww, man." It's one of those deaths that doesn't strike me on a personal level, because I was a fan in passing at best, but still ... it just hardly seems fair. He was a funny dude, and he seemed genuinely likable.

John Edwards. Gigantic douchebag of Gingrichian proportions. Unreal. I honestly thought, for a good long while, that he was going to be Barack Obama's VP choice. I liked that he was young and energetic (like Obama), and that he seemed to be determined to make the best of a bad situation (regarding his wife's ill-health).

And then he had to go and let me down like that ... very disappointing. Granted, my disappointment in him is a mere grain of sand in the desert compared to the disappointment his family must feel, but still. I just want to grab him by the collar, shake him around, and yell "what the hell was THAT?" over and over until he starts crying an authentic apology.Can he redeem himself? I hope so, but I'm not going to hold my breath on it.

More later!

My proudest Halo 3 moment (and yes, I'm a giant loser)

Before the game started, my three randomly selected teammates quit our Team Slayer match. Rather than conceding defeat, I figured I'd at least make an effort in what was likely to be a four-on-one bloodbath.

Below is a link to video of the entire game. If you're patient enough to let the whole thing load, more power to you. If not, skip to about the 11:40 mark.

If you're not patient enough (and I wouldn't blame you, believe me), you should be able to figure out what happened based on the title of this entry.

Also, please note the repeatedly poor attempts by my opponents to tea-bag my dead body. Kids, don't be douchebags.

Enjoy the nerd-dom!

This is why you should buy generic team jerseys

With great disappointment, my voice joins those of countless others who agree that Manny Ramirez should soon be labeled "Ex-Red Sox Outfielder".

One can crunch numbers and spout off about various SABRE-metric rankings of the best players in the league, but the bottom line is this: currently, Manny does more harm than good, and in the long run, his not being on the Red Sox roster will be a benefit.

The reasons, for anyone who follows baseball, are obvious and cliche: he's a distraction off the field, the media asks his teammates questions that only Ramirez can answer, he doesn't run out ground balls, he doesn't run hard out of the batters' box if he thinks he's hit a homerun, he grandstands, etc.

The "Manny Being Manny" stuff? That's actually not a problem. Talking on a cell phone between innings while hanging out in the Green Monster scoreboard is actually pretty funny. It doesn't affect the game or the play of the team, and it definitely counts toward having a "personality". And "personality" sells tickets and merchandise. Think about it: would Rich Garces have sold any t-shirts as a late inning reliever if he hadn't been a big fat guy nicknamed "El Guapo"? So personality is great, yes. I love it.

But Ramirez has taken his circus act in another direction altogether. If it is true that he intentionally took three straight pitches (all called strikes) in a late-inning pinch hit at-bat against the Yankees a couple of weeks ago in order to "get back" at the Red Sox and its owners, then he's clearly affecting his team's chances of winning. Twenty-three other players, plus coaches and trainers, dedicate their careers to one simple goal: winning ballgames. Ramirez, to prove some kind of point and take a measure of ill-advised "revenge" against the ownership, intentionally took action to hurt the team's chances to do so.

Along those lines, I read an article somewhere on Boston.com about the days off Ramirez has taken this season, whether via "faked injury" or otherwise. If I can dig up the link, I'll post it. The article said that Ramirez repeatedly took time out of the lineup on days when the opposing pitcher was a hard thrower. He skipped Edinson Volquez against the Reds, Justin Verlander against the Sox, Felix Hernandez against the Mariners (twice, if I remember correctly), and so on.

Again, when the Sox needed him most, he said "nope" and took a seat on the bench. Not helping his team win games.

That's not heart. That's not what the Red Sox is all about - at least, not the Sox I romanticize them being in my head.

I am not so naive to think that players aren't out there playing for their contracts. With free agency, every one of these guys is a mercenary. With rare exception, players are going to spend time in three or four different cities before their careers are over. The days of Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn spending their entire playing careers in one city are in the rearview mirror and getting further away with every passing second (shh! Nobody tell Jason Varitek I said that!). Fine, I get it.

But at least respect your teammates and your fans. Play hard and at least run hard down the baseline if you're getting paid more in one game than most people make in an entire year. We buy the tickets, we buy the t-shirts, we buy the overpriced concessions at the ball park to pay guys like Ramirez, and what does he do? Shows us contempt.

He's got to go.

Curt Schilling put his career on the line against the Yankees in the famous bloody sock game. He understood. Like him or not, Schilling "gets it".

If Mike Lowell somehow was shot in the shoulder half-way through the first game of a double header, he'd want to go out and still play the second game.

Jason Varitek catches an inhuman number of games every year, sacrificing his body by wearing out his knees and lower back before he even turns 40. Why? Because he loves the game and respects it.

Manny? He claims the Sox are trying to make him look like a "bad guy", like they did with Nomar Garciaparra and Pedro Martinez. He claims the Sox are trying to run him out of town.

No, Manny. Dan Duquette tried to make Mo Vaughn look bad when he hired a private investigator to follow Vaughn to strip clubs. But when you push the team's traveling secretary to the ground because you didn't get as many comp tickets to a game as you wanted, you make yourself look bad.

As far as Nomar and Pedro go, go back to the Yankee game when the team was on the top step breathlessly awaiting every pitch, and Nomar was by himself sulking on the bench. Go back to the 2004 off-season when the Sox said that they'd love to bring Pedro back, but not for four years, and not for the money he was asking for given his shoulder issues (the Mets made the mistake of falling for it - go look at how much time he's spent on the DL since he signed with them).

We all have different perspectives on these issues - Manny was friends with those guys, and I've never met them personally. We're bound to disagree on some of the causes. But I find it funny that guys like Ramirez who leave other clubs as free agents all sign contracts and say to former teams, sorry ... it wasn't personal. It's just business. But when the team trades or doesn't re-sign a player's friends, somehow it's not "just business" to the player - the teams are "out to get" them.


Whatever.

Manny: Maybe, as you say, the Red Sox "don't deserve players" like you. But you definitely deserve playing for 13,000 apathetic fans in Miami.

In all sincerity, thanks for the two World Series championships you helped bring to Boston. It was fun while it lasted.

But, just as the Patriots made it to the Superbowl after Adam Vinitieri left to join the Colts, I think we'll get along just fine and will enjoy our next World Series with or without you, this year or some other.

You'll be missed, but not as much as you might think.

Sharp Dressed Man / Heeere's JOEY!

Per popular demand (i.e., J.D. specifically, who forcefully demanded "And yes, post t-shirt photos"), I've posted a gallery of my two-plus drawers full of t-shirts, with liner notes.

Additionally, here are two videos of our dog Joey. These were taken last week.

Totally grungified

Genetics are a bitch.

Sometime during my senior year in high school, or maybe it was late in my junior year, I decided I wanted to grow my hair long. My parents didn't mind (at least, if they did they never told me; my brother came home with a nose ring after Lollapalooza '93, for instance, and that didn't last long ...), so I went for it.

Plus, it was the beginning of the grunge era. I'm not saying I was a sheep, but given my age at the time and my love for that style of music (which has lasted to this very day), it shouldn't have surprised anyone that my look stuck around for a while. I kept it longish until my senior year at B.U.

A quick aside: my biggest fashion regrets of that era are that, like almost every college-aged guy, I experimented with goofy facial hair. Inexcusable. Absolutely inexcusable. I cringe at some of the old photos I see. Goatees are nobody's friends.

My second regret is that I had a pretty cool collection of what would now be considered vintage concert tour shirts. The years reduced many to tatters, and some just disappeared (I suspect laundry room shenanigans from my grandmother). But man, I wish I still had my "Fables" era R.E.M. shirt, my "Facelift" Alice In Chains shirt, my "Pretty Hate Machine" NIN shirt, and my red "God Fodder" Ned's Atomic Dustbin shirt. NED'S ATOMIC DUSTBIN, PEOPLE! I HAD ONE!

I had so many. I really did. And I still do, just updated for a new era. I still have a few of the vintage ones, but they're dying away, too. In fact, just this week, I decided I had to put down my purple Dinosaur Jr shirt because the collar was stretched out and the stitching was all coming loose.

Actually, for my own archives, I think it might be fun to take pictures of all the t-shirts I currently own and post them as a gallery for all to see (and mock). Despite many of the photos I've posted here and there in the past, not all of my t-shirts have a Red Sox logo on them (though it sure does seem like it). I have a nerdy classic for almost every occasion.

Anyway, genetics. My brother got the physical characteristics of my mom's side of the family, but I definitely looked (and still do) a lot like my dad. I realize that the hair-loss gene is spread through the mother's side of the family, but I'm not convinced. Knowing what my dad's hair situation was, I was ready. Not looking forward to it, of course, but ready. Sure enough, after college, I found myself having a lot more in common with Wally Joyner than I had expected. (Ned's Atomic Dustbin and Wally Joyner? In one post? You know it!) During my senior year of college, I could tell that my hairline near my temples was working its way backwards. By my late 20s, it was in full retreat.

So, as most of you have known me in recent years, my hair is now short, if not occasionally completely shaved off. I'm not happy about it, but at least I own up to it. It's unavoidable, and as I used to joke, my last name is "Comeau", not "Comeau-ver" (say it out loud, and maybe it's funny. I don't know.)

Why do I mention all of this?

Because my good friend my arch-enemy Jessica had to go bring back all kinds of great memories ruin my life by digging up an old photo of me with my wonderful, glorious full head of hair.

So, second from the left, here's a little bit of proof that I did, in fact, have long hair. This is from June 1992, 16 years ago - literally almost to the day. I owe another post about June of '92, which I still consider to be one of the most fun months of my life, and the people who made it so special to me. And yes. My buddy Andy, in the back? He's actually 8'5" tall. Swear to god.





As a side note, man ... Now that I'm bald and hideous, I realize I looked pretty good at the time. Dammit all. Seriously, what the hell happened to me?

I'm flattered, but not actually eligible this time around ...

Batman and Me

This weekend can't get here fast enough.

I don't know if I qualify as anything more than your average "interested party", at this point, given how big this "Dark Knight" phenomenon has become. Certainly I understand the unfortunate morbid fascination that the media has with Heath Ledger's death, and I understand that this summer is the "Summer of the Comic Book Hero" in movie theaters. But there's more to it than just that for me.

I'm not what anyone would consider a "fan boy", at least I hope not. I don't read every graphic novel that's released, I don't know the storylines of any current comic books (not anymore, at least), and I wouldn't dare get into an argument about which second-tier villains are superior to others. I don't know, and I don't care.

But Batman has always been my favorite "superhero", and the Joker my favorite "super-villain".

Of the comic books I collected during that brief phase in high school, the great majority were Batman and Detective Comics. I started reading them a few months before the Joker killed Jason Todd (the second Robin, after Dick Grayson became Nightwing), and I started to realize at that point that "serious" stories told well on an illustrated page could be as spellbinding as any novel or film.

At the time my interest spiked, the Joker, with whom I had only a mental association with Cesar Romero on the old, goofy TV show, became a complete and total (and terrifying) psychopath. Or maybe he had become one well before I got interested, I don't know. But to me at the time, it was a revelation.

The Joker killed the Boy Wonder.

In "The Killing Joke", he put Jim Gordon's daughter in a wheelchair.

There was no good and no evil in the Joker's world. He was just insane in his desire for anarchy and destruction. And man, did he hate the Batman.

Then Tim Burton's movies came out, and they were a lot of fun. They were definitely darker than the show, and - while somewhat warped (Burton movies are Burton movies for a reason) - more along the lines of the gritty comic books. Nicholson as the Joker was fun casting, and the character officially became an icon.

I kept collecting the books for a while, had a couple of Batman logo t-shirts, got Prince's soundtrack, and even bought a cardboard standee of Michael Keaton as Batman - a prize that I believe still stands in the basement of my mom's house, just outside of what used to be my bedroom.

(Before you judge me harshly, please remember that I was just 15 at the time. Some kids experiment with drugs or sex at that age, but I was in my basement worrying about if I had enough cash to buy backing boards to put in my comic sleeves. That's just the way it was.)

I grew up and went to college, and became a girl-phobic, socially awkward creature of another kind (the kind that lived in a dorm, rather than his parents' basement). I "grew out" of comic books for many years (mostly because I had no money), and I don't even want to talk about George Clooney, Val Kilmer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Joel Shumacher.

In college, I became a film nerd. These were the pre-DVD days, and I was the guy with the collection of VHS movies that other people in the dorm would borrow. My good friend Jon worked in a video store and had access to a laserdisc player, so I became a fan of watching letterboxed movies at home and not just in the theater. I became aware not only of movies and the actors, but of the people who made them - the directors, producers, and movie studios. And at the time, a new generation of young filmmakers was establishing itself. Who was Kevin Smith, and what other movies did he make? (Oh, none before Clerks? Hmm ...) Did this Tarantino guy make anything prior to Reservoir Dogs? (What do you mean, no?)

And those who knew me at the time don't need to be reminded of my love at the time for the Evil Dead films (Sam Raimi, anyone?) and Dead Alive (Peter Jackson), as I forced them all to watch these gross, over-the-top semi-horror movies.

So fast forward to 2000, as a newly transplanted resident of Central Square in Cambridge. Within walking distance was the Kendall Square theater, which tended to play smaller, less well-known art-house films than the big chains. There was a weird, time-shifting movie that I'd read about in the Boston Phoenix that sounded unusually interesting called Memento, starring Guy Pearce, who had co-starred in one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, L.A. Confidential. Everyone knows about that movie now, of course, but at the time it was one of those lightning-in-a-bottle movies. Where did this come from? At the Kendall, I had to wait a couple of weeks to see it - it literally sold out showing after showing at this relatively smallish venue. And when I finally saw it, I was completely blown away. This was amazing!

And who was this Chris Nolan dude?

A few years later, it was announced that the Batman franchise was going to be re-launched, and Nolan was going to direct.

Everyone knows the rest.

So here we are, days from the release of The Dark Knight. A fantastic director, my favorite superhero, and my favorite super-villain.

Sure, Iron Man was fun, and I knew I'd see it eventually. Pixar can do no wrong, so I looked forward to checking out Wall-E. I'd seen a bunch of movies at the Morristown run of the "New York Film Critics Present ..." series a couple of months back. But they all lacked one key aspect, to me at least: anticipation.

I'd have waited in agonizing anticipation for this movie even if it didn't have such a tragic storyline underneath the actual film.

Batman and the Joker are going to go after each other this weekend.

I am 15 again.

I cannot wait.

Bush's banana

see Obama pictures

Let's Get Physical

So that was uneventful.

I got to the doctors' office at 8:45 yesterday morning for my 9:00 a.m. physical, and the door was locked. After paperwork and waiting, I finally got to see my new PCP a little after 9:30. I proceded to bore him to tears, I suspect.

My family history, as far as I know, consists primarily of my father and his father dying of heart attacks - a concern, true enough, but they were both smokers (my grandfather had quit by the time I was born, I think, but I'm sure some damage had been done; my father was a pack-a-day kind of guy, and I was never quiet about my disdain for his habit).

On the other hand, I've never directly smoked anything in my life (not out of experimentation, peer pressure, or anything else). I say "directly", because living in a house with smoking parents and having spent countless nights at various bars watching bands play before smoking bans were instituted couldn't have been too healthy. My doctor says that smoking can increase the rate of artery build-up of something or other as much as four times, so I figure I'm doing OK as far as all that goes. Plus, I go to the gym regularly, so I feel like my heart's in pretty good shape.

Any pains? Nope. Allergic to any medications? Not as far as I know, and I can't even remember the last time I was prescribed anything (it would have been by a pediatrician, it's been so long). Regular headaches? Nope. Drug use? Not a single bit. "Exposure" at a work environment? Only to papercuts and co-workers, for whom there was (sadly) no cure.

Nope, no, uh-uh, never, no.

I could stand to lose a few pounds, I said ("but who couldn't"), but I explained that I'm 25-30 lbs. lighter than I was at my worst period, in the couple of years right after college. I also asked him to check a strange little bump on the back of my head that I've had forever (it causes no pain and doesn't bleed, but I don't like the way it looks if I shave my head), but he said he didn't think it looked worrisome.

Then they took some blood and urine, the doctor checked my man-parts, and a nurse gave me a cardio electrograph or electrogram or something or other. They put a bunch of little pads on my chest and something started printing on the machine. It hardly seemed scientific, but what do I know. It, like my blood pressure, was "totally normal."

The only thing the doctor recommended was to undergo a "Cardiac Calcium Scoring" test, based on my family history and - believe it or not - the folds on my ear lobes. How researchers figure these things out is beyond me. Ear folds? Seriously?

So fine, I guess I have that to look forward to.

Just a few minutes ago, my bloodwork results came back and I got a call from one of the nurses, who said that my results were "absolutely normal". I saved the voice mail, so Nicole can hear it directly if she wants to, in the hopes that it'll put her mind at ease a bit. She's been (justifiably) on me to have a check-up, given how long it's been since my last physical.

So the bottom line is this: I may not be as cool as Lemmy Kilmeister (and, frankly, never will be), but I could beat him in a footrace. I'm as strong as an ox, but not quite as good looking. And given my current physicial condition, I should be around for a good long time so long as I keep up my good habits.

Which probably means I'll be killed by lightning this weekend.

It's been nice knowing everyone!

On becoming a grumpy old man

For the record, the following is being written while: 1> Nicole is out of town, so it's just me and my dog at home (and my boredom, which I think is taking tangible form); and 2> I haven't eaten anything for several hours, because I'm fasting prior to a physical that I have scheduled in the morning. They're taking blood, so I'm not allowed to eat. With the exception of a trip to urgent care to have an ear lavage, I have not seen a doctor - seriously - in at least 15 years. So that should be interesting.

Anyway, I want to think that eventually everything in New Jersey will even out, and I'll feel "at home" here, but it's not happening. Not yet.

I shouldn't complain too much, I suppose - when Aaron moved to Belgium, for instance. THAT's a move. Holy cow. New currency, crazy time zones, frites stands ... well, OK, he's got me on the frites stands. It's probably better off we don't have those here. But still, I can't imagine what that must be like. And to top it off, the poor guy doesn't get Sox games and didn't get to see the Celtics win the NBA Championship.

It's just frustrating knowing that, even though my friends are my friends and (with any luck) always will be, "giving them up" for any length of time never gets easier. I look at my "Friend Wheel" on Facebook and I'm overwhelmed at the quality of people on there, and it's neat to see how many different "circles" of friends I could claim to be a part of. But the thing I notice most of all is that, with one obvious major exception, none of them are in New Jersey.

I used to complain on my old Diaryland blog all those years ago about never feeling alone (given that I was always surrounded by my buddies), but of feeling lonely (in the sense that I was looking for that "special someone"). Now it's pretty much the exact opposite. I feel more and more alone out here.

And I know I haven't tried as hard as I have in the past to meet new people and get involved, but I always lived in the city, where there were events and activities. Not in the 'burbs. I always could find some little who-knows-what that I had in common to spark even the briefest of conversations in a coffee shop (of which there are two, usually filled with teenagers).

There's no such thing as a good "local band" here. The popular bars "downtown" seem to both be wanna-be Irish pubs (though I've never been to either, so that's perhaps unfair). There's one music shop, but the selection is limited at best (and the "sale" price is in the $14 range).

I feel like I'm surrounded by parents and their kids, assholes on bluetooth earpieces, and horrible/horribly aggressive drivers. I used to be surrounded by people my age who also loved the Red Sox, both in Boston (obviously) and in Portland. The things one takes for granted ...

It's funny, in a way. I was so sad to leave Boston, and I couldn't imagine Portland taking it's place, but I gave it a try and loved every second of it. Then I was sad to leave Portland, but I figured New Jersey would be another adventure, so why not try that out too. I'm sure my opinion will have changed by the time the next phase comes around, but for now, I can't imagine being sad to leave here. I know it's a short-term sacrifice for a long-term gain, but I'm really struggling with it these days. More than I expected I would.

What a Fourth of July!

It's too late in the day to write a full blog entry right now, but here's a teaser of what's to come:

For anyone who has ever watched the show, this is super cool. For those who haven't, what are you waiting for?

More on Monday - LOTS more. What a fun weekend!