See. I told you so.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
Put a fork in it.
It's over. There. I said it.
I want everyone to see that I called it: The Red Sox are going to lose the AL East and the wildcard, and the team will be sitting home updating their own blogs come October. I especially want Yankee fans to take note of this, so come September when you're celebrating your tenth straight division title, you can save your sick gloating for Red Sox fans who are actually shocked and distraught. I see it coming. I'm prepared for the worst.
And worst of it is that I was again cuckolded by this club. Bamboozled. Hoodwinked (go to your thesaurus and pick a verb) into believing that somehow The Red Sox could be anything other than...well, The Red Sox. As if somehow 2004 magically obliterated 86 years of pain, disappointment, and, at its lowest points, despair. The Red Sox may have become fashionable and sexy to a whole new crowd of urbanites who can afford forty bucks a seat to see a game at Fenway Park, but behind the big names and engorged salaries, they're still the same Red Sox that helped spawn three generations of pessimists.
I'm not going to go into the particulars of what is shaping up to be the team's most colossal regular season collapse since 1978 (it looks like Yankee fans will be able to paint a line across the top of the "1" and reuse their old "1918" signs). Three names---Drew, Gagne, and Epstein---just about tell the whole story. I'm more concerned with the fact that I almost feel at peace with the inevitable. It's as if the whole universe is back to normal.
For anyone that has grown up a Red Sox fan in the past eighty years, losing and disappointment are inevitable parts of our lives; they have shaped our entire world views. For example, someone who wasn't raised a Red Sox fan may bust their ass at work with the expectancy of getting a raise. The Red Sox fan knows better. There is no raise; it's not in the budget. In fact, you're probably going to get laid off as soon as the company gets around to outsourcing your job. You're prepared for disappointment, therefore you've successfully mitigated its effect. Disappointment, when you're surprised by it, is insufferable. Watching the Red Sox pull their old antics isn't going to surprise me because I've prepared myself this fate long before the hammer will fall. For a couple of years now, Red Sox fans seem to have forgotten this fact. We've been spoiled. Now the honeymoon is over, and we're back to watching the same bunch of fucking bums that have made us miserable every summer (sans one) for the past 89 years.
Perhaps, if we're to take the Eastern approach to this, we can say that everything happens for a reason. Maybe the hordes and hordes of Pink Hat Fans that are talking on their cell phones in the stands during the games at Fenway, helping gouge ticket prices, and taking seats that some of us who actually give a shit about baseball could be using will realize after The Red Sox choke this year that the team is really a disappointment to follow, and they'll go back to spending their evenings at The Wang Center instead of Fenway Park.
So Yankee fans can save it, stuff it, stick it, and blow me. I'm going to give you the same response all real Red Sox fans will give you: "What are you talking about? It's football season. How about those Pats."
I want everyone to see that I called it: The Red Sox are going to lose the AL East and the wildcard, and the team will be sitting home updating their own blogs come October. I especially want Yankee fans to take note of this, so come September when you're celebrating your tenth straight division title, you can save your sick gloating for Red Sox fans who are actually shocked and distraught. I see it coming. I'm prepared for the worst.
And worst of it is that I was again cuckolded by this club. Bamboozled. Hoodwinked (go to your thesaurus and pick a verb) into believing that somehow The Red Sox could be anything other than...well, The Red Sox. As if somehow 2004 magically obliterated 86 years of pain, disappointment, and, at its lowest points, despair. The Red Sox may have become fashionable and sexy to a whole new crowd of urbanites who can afford forty bucks a seat to see a game at Fenway Park, but behind the big names and engorged salaries, they're still the same Red Sox that helped spawn three generations of pessimists.
I'm not going to go into the particulars of what is shaping up to be the team's most colossal regular season collapse since 1978 (it looks like Yankee fans will be able to paint a line across the top of the "1" and reuse their old "1918" signs). Three names---Drew, Gagne, and Epstein---just about tell the whole story. I'm more concerned with the fact that I almost feel at peace with the inevitable. It's as if the whole universe is back to normal.
For anyone that has grown up a Red Sox fan in the past eighty years, losing and disappointment are inevitable parts of our lives; they have shaped our entire world views. For example, someone who wasn't raised a Red Sox fan may bust their ass at work with the expectancy of getting a raise. The Red Sox fan knows better. There is no raise; it's not in the budget. In fact, you're probably going to get laid off as soon as the company gets around to outsourcing your job. You're prepared for disappointment, therefore you've successfully mitigated its effect. Disappointment, when you're surprised by it, is insufferable. Watching the Red Sox pull their old antics isn't going to surprise me because I've prepared myself this fate long before the hammer will fall. For a couple of years now, Red Sox fans seem to have forgotten this fact. We've been spoiled. Now the honeymoon is over, and we're back to watching the same bunch of fucking bums that have made us miserable every summer (sans one) for the past 89 years.
Perhaps, if we're to take the Eastern approach to this, we can say that everything happens for a reason. Maybe the hordes and hordes of Pink Hat Fans that are talking on their cell phones in the stands during the games at Fenway, helping gouge ticket prices, and taking seats that some of us who actually give a shit about baseball could be using will realize after The Red Sox choke this year that the team is really a disappointment to follow, and they'll go back to spending their evenings at The Wang Center instead of Fenway Park.
So Yankee fans can save it, stuff it, stick it, and blow me. I'm going to give you the same response all real Red Sox fans will give you: "What are you talking about? It's football season. How about those Pats."
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Scooby Dooby Dumb-Ass
Being a teacher, I freely admit to having one of the sweetest schedules in the working world. Of course, there are always people out there with better schedules---people who work for themselves and get to set their own schedules, or better yet, someone who doesn't work at all---but I think a teacher's schedule is still pretty damn good: weekends, holidays, vacations, and summers off.
However, most teachers take on some kind of employment during the summers because they're responsible adults and realize the extra money will help their family's financial situation. I didn't get that gene passed on to me. I take summers OFF. No work. The reason for this is simple: I'm lazy. This summer, however, I did tell myself that I was going to work through the novel I've been writing for a couple of years and have another draft by the end of August. That, I told myself, counts as work, only I'm not getting paid for it, nd it helped assuage the diminuitive amounts of guilt I feel for sitting on my ass for ten weeks. A modicum of my parents' work ethic must've rubbed off on me at some point.
So here we are, the beginning of August. My novel is 300 pages in draft form. Care to guess how far I've gotten into my rewrite? No, I won't make you guess. I'll tell you. 82 pages. Yup, that's been my work this summer, approximately half an hour of real writing a day.
I have become a veritable expert on making excuses not to write. Most of these excuses start and finish next to a beer tap, but there are other excuses as well. Today's excuse: There was a Scooby Dooby Doo, Where are You? marathon on cable. That's right, folks. I watched six hours of Scooby, Shaggy, Fred, Velma and that hot piece of ass Daphne on my couch with my kids. I did, however, get some inspiration to watch all of them by participating in some recreational activities. After six hours of Scooby Doo, I turned on the Red Sox game, and that did it. Here I am.
I was about to do some actual work a couple of minutes ago, but then I started writing a blog entry on my own slacking and Scooby Doo. Now, Entourage is almost on, so scratch today. Maybe tomorrow I'll work on writing a sequel to Teaching Metaphors about teachers during the summer break. I'll title it Doing Jack Shit. But don't expect me to start working on that any time soon. There has to be a Brady Bunch marathon on somewhere.
However, most teachers take on some kind of employment during the summers because they're responsible adults and realize the extra money will help their family's financial situation. I didn't get that gene passed on to me. I take summers OFF. No work. The reason for this is simple: I'm lazy. This summer, however, I did tell myself that I was going to work through the novel I've been writing for a couple of years and have another draft by the end of August. That, I told myself, counts as work, only I'm not getting paid for it, nd it helped assuage the diminuitive amounts of guilt I feel for sitting on my ass for ten weeks. A modicum of my parents' work ethic must've rubbed off on me at some point.
So here we are, the beginning of August. My novel is 300 pages in draft form. Care to guess how far I've gotten into my rewrite? No, I won't make you guess. I'll tell you. 82 pages. Yup, that's been my work this summer, approximately half an hour of real writing a day.
I have become a veritable expert on making excuses not to write. Most of these excuses start and finish next to a beer tap, but there are other excuses as well. Today's excuse: There was a Scooby Dooby Doo, Where are You? marathon on cable. That's right, folks. I watched six hours of Scooby, Shaggy, Fred, Velma and that hot piece of ass Daphne on my couch with my kids. I did, however, get some inspiration to watch all of them by participating in some recreational activities. After six hours of Scooby Doo, I turned on the Red Sox game, and that did it. Here I am.
I was about to do some actual work a couple of minutes ago, but then I started writing a blog entry on my own slacking and Scooby Doo. Now, Entourage is almost on, so scratch today. Maybe tomorrow I'll work on writing a sequel to Teaching Metaphors about teachers during the summer break. I'll title it Doing Jack Shit. But don't expect me to start working on that any time soon. There has to be a Brady Bunch marathon on somewhere.
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