How 'Bout Them Apples?: Eat Your Wheaties

Boston sports is absolutely filthy right now. Every household in New England, drunk on Sam Adams, overstuffed with wings and chowdah, and high on an imaginary sense personal athletic glory, sat down to toss 'Boondock Saints' or 'The Depahted' into the DVD player following game 4 last night, confident in the fact that 'we earned this'. We've done nothing of the sort, I assure you. There is little need to justify our overzealous enthusiasm for our local teams to each other, but we do it anyways, because we don't want to feel like a bunch of Yankees or Cowboys fans. Fuck that.

We are going to be far and away the most despised sports fans in the country by January (just wait until the Celtics start filling NBA body bags with their opponents corpses). No human being raised outside New England will be able to withstand the verbal onslaught when some drunken mick starts ranting about the Patriots, the Red Sox, the Celtics, and lets throw BC in there too for good measure. The key to being the most obnoxious sports fans is continue our attempts to differentiate our teams from past dynasties, by labeling their exploits as destiny, by thinking 'we've earned it' or that 'this team is something special'. Of course the Patriots are special, they just made Joe Gibbs look like a monkey trying to solve a rubix cube! I think we New Englanders can take the role of obnoxious sports fan to a whole new level. We can be more than obnoxious, we can be pretentious, what with our enviable fall foliage, quaint towns, and progressive demographic. It won't be safe for anyone to cross that border into New York before long, we'll be so despised.

One last note. With the current field of Presidential candidates looking as worthless as, to paraphrase Jay-Z, a knife in a gunfight, I'm proposing we actually elect some winners to office. I'm voting Bellichick/Francona next November. Could you imagine the press conferences? The White House press corps would all kill themselves after 2 days of Bellichick. Take this tidbit from after the Washington game for instance:

"Q: At 38-0 you went for it on 4th down, on 45-0 you went for it on 4th down. What was the philosophy there?

BB: What do you want us to do, kick a field goal?

Q: I didn’t want you to do anything. I’m just asking what the philosophy is.

BB: It’s 38-0. It’s fourth down. [We’re] just out there playing. [We’re] just out there playing."

The man is a public relations genius. Or nightmare depending on how anxious you are. I would watch C-SPAN every goddamned day to see Bill tell reporters to go fuck themselves, in not so many words.

"Q: The recent altercation with Iran is being deemed an overreaction on the part of the U.S. military, and the Secretary General of the UN is calling your administration irresponsible and trigger happy. Do you have any comment on these accusations?

BB: No, I don't. I gave Generals Brady and Ortiz the authorization to execute a winning plan. They did just that.

Q: But don't you think that excessive force may have been used?

BB: What do you want us to do, sanction them some more? Me and Terry here are in it to win. You see these rings? [Holds up both hands, and the stuffed, severed hand of Eric Mangini that hangs from a gold chain around his neck, housing Superbowl rings 11-14] I've got more Superbowl rings than fingers dammit! You can bet Ahmadinejad wishes he had these rings, but he's not getting them, because he's now buried under a pile of rubble that used to be Tehran.

Q: Wildfires are ravaging parts of California, threatening crops of oranges. Will the Federal Govenment be providing assistance to farmers affected by the fires?

BB: Thats a question that I'll refer to Secretary of Agriculture Ramirez..."

Three Fourteen: Electric Sheep

Check this out...

Electric Sheep

The Importance of Kitchens

Whenever I think about cooking (which is often), I begin to think about creating the perfect kitchen. I lived in a house for two years that had little more than a hallway for a kitchen, but inevitably we were always sitting on the counters, on the floor, or the trashcan, taking up every inch of space, whether it was during a party on Saturday night, or 7pm on a Wednesday. Its amazing that so many architects, interior designers, and all the other important people that determine how we live in our own homes have overlooked the fact that the kitchen is by far the best room to hang out in. Its where all the action is. Hunter S. Thompson got it right when he set up his office in his kitchen in Woody Creek, Colorado. I've compiled a list of things I'd acquire for my kitchen if I were a richer man. But I'm not.

• A couch. I've always dreamed of comfortable seating in my kitchen.
• A reasonably sized television for football and Red Sox games.
• One of those countertops with the overhang, and a few stools, for eating breakfast.
• A big fridge (with the stainless steel finish) with the freezer on the bottom.
• More than one oven.
• A quality toaster oven AND a 4-slice pop-up toaster.
• A large blender, capable of pureeing a shoe.
• Kitchen knives in a variety of shapes/sizes. Also, a razor sharp vegetable peeler.
• A wine rack that will inevitably always be empty
• An ice maker. One that can do the cubes and the crushed ice and replenishes itself fast.
• Hooks to hang your pots and pans from, because thats looks hip.
• A brick, wood-fired oven and an indoor grill with a big-ass vacuum hood, so you can grill even if there's a hurricane or a blizzard outside.
• A dishwasher capable of putting the dishes away.
• A worn-in leather chair with a reading lamp nearby.
• A kickin' sound system with voice activated iTunes.

Here is what the kitchen might look like...




I won't get into what food you should be stocking just yet. I'll save that for later.

Inevitably something catastrophic will happen. A ghost collapsed the kitchen table at Charles', Nate's, and Moses' house today, shattering multiple bottles of red wine and a big glass container of olive oil. What a waste.

Its almost beautiful in a disastrous sort of way.

Super Tuesday: My Tribute to Al Gore

As most of you know, my boy, Al Gore, recently shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

So the question now is whether or not Gore will use the Nobel prize as a springboard for entering the presidential race, joining a campaign that has already been launched for him by a group known as 'Draft Gore'. A self-described 'grassroots' organization that's been circulating petitions and raising awareness in hopes of dragging Al into the race. Unfortunately for them, for me, and for this country, thats not going happen. Here's why: (1) Hilary and Barack have Himalayan-sized treasure troves of cash, (2) re-entering politics on the back of Nobel Prize kinda detracts from the honor you've been given, and (3) most importantly, the man is having fun. Here's a brief synopsis of what he's done since he left government...

• Appeared on SNL, Futurama, and should be appearing on 30 Rock Thursday, November 8th.
• He's also a senior advisor to Google, sits on the board of Apple Inc., and is chairman and co-founder of Current TV (a cable network with over 38 million subscribers).
• He banks up to $175,000 per speaking appearance, and is estimated to be worth over $100 million.
• He also won the Nobel Prize, starred in an Academy Award-winning documentary, and received numerous other awards for his environmental policy work.
  

While he was in government he...

• Was ridiculed for having claimed to of 'invented the internet', when in fact he did more than any other politician during his time in the Senate and as Vice President to make way for the 'information superhighway', a term he coined. Read more here.
• Earned the nickname 'Ozone Man' from George Bush senior during the 1992 race. An attempt to belittle his environmental work.
• Won the popular vote in the 2000 presidential race, but was forced to concede the election to George W. Bush.
  
• He's also spoken out against the war in Iraq, and numerous other policies of the current administration. For the most part, he's been dead on.
  

It seems the private sector is a helluva lot friendlier to Gore. Too bad for us all.

How 'Bout Them Apples?: NFL 501(c)(3)

Just a quick idea I'd like to propose to Robert Kraft. An idea that I think the few thoughtful Pats fans out there will appreciate, because despite the all the wins, watching the Patriots play football is nearing the point of perverse. Teams like Miami that actually show up to play the Pats, with the thought of accomplishing anything other than assisting the Pats break records and at the same time bringing shame on themselves and their hometowns are some of the most naive, ass-backwards people in professional sports. A better strategy would be for the rest of the teams on the Pats' schedule to simply not show up, and if the Pats are coming to your hometown, just don't answer the door. Maybe letting them rust for another 9 weeks will give some loathsome team a prayer at beating them in the playoffs.

But back to my point...

I've been a Pats fan since 3rd grade. I sincerely love watching Tom Brady embarrass every defense he goes up against, and then act like it was nothing at the ensuing press conference. You know that Tom, Belichick, and Moss must get together every Wednesday, throw darts at an oil painting of Roger Goodell (pictured below) and laugh at videotape of the '72 Dolphins and how inferior they are. I imagine this usually culminates in a drunk-drive down to New York so Bill can piss on Mangini's doorstep. "Spygate" my ass. Why the fuck does every scandal, be it in the White House or Bill Belichick's sparsley decorated office have to have the suffix '-gate'? Its a testament to the sorry state of our media. You've got a juicy story like that and you call it Spygate? Jesus...

Anyways, my proposal to you, Robert Kraft, in order to make Patriots games worth watching again, is to sell Randy Moss. Actually, donate him. I think after this week the Dolphins are applying to become a certified 501(c)(3) non-profit, because they certainly looked like a charity case. Give him to them. Then we'll at least get to see Welker juking all over the field and Stallworth breaking 5 tackles after every catch - thats entertaining. Randy Moss is so good hes not even fun to watch, as Flubby over at KSK pointed out in this post. Donating Moss will earn the Pats a little goodwill, and will reduce their advantage over every other team to the point where they'll only look like a pack of hungry wolves decimating a deer caught in a bear trap, as opposed to Tom Brady being the 2nd coming of Christ himself. Just think about it Bob.

She's Worth Every Penny

If you're reading this, you're witness to the launch of my latest attempt at maintaining a blog (I've got 3 others with no entries). This comes on a momentous day in history, the same glorious Sunday that the New England Patriots decimated the Miami Dolphins 49 to 28, and then a mere 4 hours later the Red Sox began waging war on the hapless Jake Westbrook and his red-skinned cronies. The Sox beat Cleveland 11-2 to win the AL Pennant and the right to thrash those upstart Rockies at Fenway on Wednesday night. Its an awfully sexy time to be a Boston sports fan.

On a more personal note, I bought a pumpkin for $5 at the farm down the street and have very ambitious plans to carve the Autobots symbol squarely into that overpriced, oversized gord. My intention for it is to look something like this...

But odds are in favor of it looking more like this...

In keeping with the robotic alien Halloween theme, I also decided that I'm going to construct an Optimus Prime costume, provided I can find a mask that will fit my oversized dome. Its going to be pretty bitchin'.

Lastly, I do freelance work of all sort, so if you're looking for someone to commit libel, or just lie in writing for you, just send me an email. You can view my dull-witted verbal assaults on Rob White's musical artistry on both his temporary permanent website and on his MySpace page. Here is my latest work, a blurb for some MC to read before the ZETA sorority auctions off Maria to the guy in the audience with the deepest pockets and probably the worst breath...

"Maria is a 26 year-old double major in Mathematics and Secondary Education. Her love is like, to parody the Ohio Players, an exponential curve, baby, its unbounded. According to Wikipedia, as a Taurus, she can be practical, sexual, generous, and humorous, but watch out fellas, because she can also be inflexible, intimidating, and vengeful.

In addition to being a mediocre math-whiz, Maria is captain of the women's ultimate frisbee team, where she instructs the team in the art of laying out, hammering, and other acts of general promiscuity.

When she's not crunching numbers or tossing the disc, Maria enjoys playing it cool, tricking men into buying her drinks, laughing at her own jokes, disassembling jigsaw puzzles, putting out on the first date, and using Skype to talk to Fred. Shes worth every penny."

Thats it for now. Expect future posts (if they actually occur) to run the gamut of politics, ultimate, Boston sports, international news, tasty food, slightly pretentious progressive music and film, and possibly some retroactive entries concerning my month-long trip to Europe.

Knowledge Speaks
Wisdom Listens