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The Yankees and the Marlins? Can the World Series be any more boring? Who cares!
This series had so much potential. You have to think that Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and the Fox Network are bumming. But the Yankees and the Marlins? Haven't the Yankees won enough World Series? And the Marlins? I can't even name one player on the Marlins. Admittedly, I'm not the biggest baseball fan in the world. There's just too much down time. Will the pitcher go with the fastball? The sinker? The slider? The knuckler? The cutter? Please. As Echo & the Bunnymen once sang, "spare us the cutter." I don't care what pitch he's throwing. Just throw it already! You'd think they were being paid by the minute. I can hear my grandfather, the lifelong Red Sox fan, complaining that all sports teams made playoff series last seven games because the more games they played; the more the players got paid.
If you ask me, Mr. Selig shouldn't be concerned with a salary cap in baseball. He should be far more concerned with a monopoly cap. Once a team wins, say, 25 championships they should be prevented from playing any post-season games until another team has won, say, 20 games.
I just can't muster any interest in the Yankees or the Marlins. Had it been the Yankees and the Cubs? That would be a series that I could get into. I'll route for the underdog team that hasn't won the series in something like 80 years any day! Obviously being from Boston, a Red Sox/Marlins series would have been good too. A Red Sox/Cubs series would have had more drama than the last three television sweeps weeks combined! Pedro facing Sammy Sosa? That would have been over the top! Even if the Red Sox had lost to the Cubs in the World Series, Red Sox nation would have been okay with it. At least there would be some justice in the sense that one team who hasn't won in over 80 years finally could taste victory! Red Sox and Cubs fans have that common bond of always coming up on the short end of the stick and, although they want to see their own team victorious, I think they'd pull for one another as well.
The fact that the Red Sox made it into the playoffs and almost won the pennant is terrific! They made the summer last deep into October and provided us with some very memorable moments. The memory that will stay with me will be that of Don Zimmer tracking Pedro like the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man chasing after Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd in Ghostbusters! Too damn funny!
Every September, new college students infiltrate Boston. Traffic volume is out of control, finding a parking space becomes impossible, and dazed and overwhelmed students wander the streets with brand new backpacks scratching their heads while trying to find the nearest T stop. Fear not, my nubile friends, I am here to help you out! Below are the five keys to the city. Follow these simple rules and your life will be perfect for the next four years:
Can't wait to pahk ya cah in hahvahd yahd? Harvard University police will quickly inform you that there are no parking spaces in Harvard Yard. Park your car here and, at the least, you will be towed!
Listen to your parents; don't let the bedbugs bite. Seriously!
If when driving your car you actually use your directional, please stop it! You're only confusing the rest of us.
Sorry ladies, sleeping with the senior at the frat party will not bring you any closer to Matt Damon. No matter how many drinks you've had! Unless, of course, he looks exactly like me.
Before you run out of gas driving circles around Kenmore Square, there is no gas station under the flashing Citgo sign!
And remember what they said in Spinal Tap, Boston
isn't a college town anyway! Have fun!
I want my share of the pie just like everyone but I recently discovered that Bill Gates is worth $40 billion! Isn't his share more like a few billion other peoples shares too? It's not like I've been living under a rock or anything, I know he's the wealthiest man in the world. I'm just too busy keeping track of how little money I have and not how much money he has. $40 billion! That's just obscene! It sure beats the fifty bucks I've got in the bank. Do you think he ever worries about paying the phone bill? Does he ever think, "Wait? Do I have enough to cover this? Oh yeah, of course I do. I'm the wealthiest man in the world!"
So some unemployed, computer tech friends of mine (alright Geeks) with a lot of time on their hands calculated that if a baby born today (we'll call him Smitty) were to do nothing but count every second he were alive it would take him thirty-two years to count to one billion. That's thirty-two years of non-stop counting. No time for young Smitty to be potty-trained. No time for him to get beaten up at recess. No time for our hero to not find a date to the prom. No time to graduate college. No time to not find a job. No time for Smitty to have to move back home with his parents. Ok, so maybe Smitty would have a better future than a lot of people. However, for him to count to forty billion he'd either have to hand down his lifelong pursuit to more than fifty generations of Smittys or he'd have to live longer than a millennium!
Gates could make our hero Smitty's life, and life for the rest of us, a whole lot easier. There are six billion people in the world and Gates has $40 billion. Gates could actually afford to give everyone on the planet six dollars and he'd still have four billion left! That would only take our friend Smitty about 120 years to count instead of a millennium. I don't know about you but I'd like to increase my bank account from $50 to $56, so how about it? Like the tenacious paperboy trying to collect his fair share from John Cusack in the classic film, Better Off Dead, "I want my $6!"
The Deutsche Bank Golf Championship is coming to Boston this week and I'm here to say that Tiger Woods is no more of an athlete than Minnesota Fats was just before he passed away. I'm sorry but no matter how bad you slice it, golf is not a sport. Thus proving that Tiger Woods is not an athlete. It's not like he has Ted Washington, the newly acquired 400-pound defensive lineman for the Patriots, chasing after him every time he lines up a putt. Or has to jump over a hard slide tackle from Revolution defender Rusty Pierce, or duck a bone-crushing crosscheck from Joe Thornton of the Bruins. He doesn't have to out sprint Carl Lewis when passing from the eighth to the ninth hole. In fact, judging by how much time Woods is on my television, it certainly doesn't seem like there is any time limit to golf at all. He can take all day. Now I'm not much of a betting man, oh sure as a kid I used to bet Mr. Gleason down the street a dime every time the Detroit Lions played the Pats but that doesn't exactly make me the Pete Rose of Boston. However, I'd be willing to slap a dime down that then 73-year old Johnny "the Elder" Kelly ran the 1992 Boston Marathon faster than Woods usually plays a round of golf. So what's so athletic about this guy?
Has Woods ever had to suck it up and play hurt? Has he ever been so "trapped" in a sand trap that he had to sever his own limb with a jackknife as mountaineer Aaron Ralston did after his arm was caught under an 800-pound boulder in Utah last April? (If toughness and courage are the true signs of athleticism then move over Ali, Ralston is the greatest of all time!) Short of being struck by lightning on your back swing, what kind of injury could a golfer possibly sustain anyway? Misjudging your swing with the driver and hitting your foot instead of the ball? Not hitting the deck when someone yells fore? It's not exactly like riding a bike through France with a broken collarbone a la Tyler Hamilton of Marblehead. So what is the big deal?
It is true that golf does take great skill. Woods has incredible finesse and touch. His ability to concentrate and focus under pressure is extraordinary! Come to think of it, the game of pool also takes great skill. And Minnesota Fats did indeed possess exceptional touch under intense pressure. So enjoy the Deutsche Bank Golf Championship this week for what it is, a game! Because I'm sorry but Tiger Woods is no more of an athlete than Minnesota Fats was!
Through my years of working in radio I had the good fortune of meeting many incredible people. We recently lost one of those people with the sudden death of former Clash frontman Joe Strummer. A few years ago Joe was in Boston to present the Mighty Mighty Bosstones with their very own star to be placed in the sidewalk outside what was then Tower Records (now Virgin Megastore) on Newbury Street. After, they threw a party Upstairs at the Middle East in Cambridge. I got there towards the end of the party and was introduced to Joe and had my picture taken with him and we spoke for all of ten seconds. It was really nothing that special and I walked away thinking that it was kind of cool to have just met punk legend Joe Strummer.
I had to work the overnight that night and it just didn't make any sense to go home and then head back out to go to work, I was already out. Some friends were popping over to Charlie's Tap for a beer so I figured I'd tag along. When we walked into the bar Joe and his wife were standing in front of the jukebox and he saw me and yelled in his gravelly voice, "Chris! Mr. DJ Man! Come over here and play DJ!" He put his arm around me and exaggerated that his wife had just put a million dollars into the jukebox and we should just keep punching in as many songs as we could. Charlie's Tap used to have the most eclectic jukebox I have ever seen (that was before they "renovated" the place. Now it's all squeaky clean. No jukebox and no cache!). Joe was absolutely thrilled to see music by Cannonball Adderley and Etta James still being played in an American bar. He kept saying that this is the way all jukeboxes should be! The only problem was that the volume of the jukebox was lost in the din of the bar. We kept asking the bartender to turn it up and each time the bartender obliged but by such small increments that it didn't really help. After a while Joe's D.I.Y. ethics took over and he asked me to help him move the jukebox, which we weren't very successful at doing. Not to be too defensive but it was a BIG jukebox! Joe managed to get his head behind it and started writing down numbers. I had no idea what the heck he was up to and when he was through he asked if anybody had a cell phone. He wanted to call the jukebox company and ask them if there was a secret way that he could turn the volume up to his liking. I tried to explain to him that it was 10 pm and no one was going to be in the office to answer his call. No one had a cell phone anyway so it was all for nothing. We left and headed to another place.
At the next place Joe kept trying to push beer on me. I had to work a six-hour shift and would have to keep myself awake until 7 am. As much as I would have loved to party with Joe Strummer, and I know it was not very rock & roll of me to not party with him, I knew better. Joe kept yelling to me from across the bar that I had to drink and when I told him that I had to work he kept telling me that my boss called him and wanted for him to break the news to me, that my boss didn't have the heart to do it himself, that I was fired and should therefore get partying! The whole night was one I'll never forget! Joe Strummer was a really cool guy and a lot of fun! When I heard of his passing I felt incredibly lucky to have met him and deeply saddened that our paths will never cross again. At least we have some really cool music to remember him by and I have a memory of playing personal DJ to a man who's going to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame! Thanks Joe!
hristrodamus
was the not-too-distant cousin of Nostradmus, the world famous psychic.
Although Christrodamus never had quite the same historical impact
that his cousin did, he prided himself on his own ability to tap into
the future. Christrodamus had some very poignant visions that
were made some 500 years ago that have recently been discovered about
the forthcoming year, 2004. They are as follows: