Inventory

Yesterday, I had my cell phone replaced due to the fact that I couldn't hear the callers unless I put it on speaker phone. This had been going on for three months, and it created some awkward situations in restaurants and other public places. Therefore, I stopped talking on the phone and sent text messages to people instead. On Thursday, I finally hauled my lazy ass to Verizon and had a replacement phone sent to my house yesterday. Seeing that nothing in my life goes off without a hitch, in the process of switching over phones, I lost all of the phone numbers for my family and friends. Now, I realize I could call Verizon, wait on the line for forty years, and then talk to someone in India about the problem, but I have beer to drink and a tap-dancing routine to choreograph. I'm a busy man.

While meditating on the problem, however, I also realized that my lost contacts provided me with a chance to take some personal inventory (How's that for optimism? From now on, call me Sunshine). The truth of the matter is that I only talk to a handful of people with any regularity, and my number hasn't changed, so if someone wants to get in touch with me, they can. And there's always the "bitch" button...

So I started thinking (always a bad sign for Sunshine) about New Year's and taking inventory. If nothing else, New Year's is an opportunity to look back at what you've accomplished, failed to accomplish, and ignored over the past 365 days. So the one thing that I've been meaning to do all year, have failed to, and will now accomplish is post Frank Zappa's 'Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?".

Done, done, and done. Happy New Year, kids.

Merry Christmas!

This year was a veritable train wreck for The Red Sox. In many ways, the 2011 atomic collapse of The Best Team Ever was the worst experience of my life as a Red Sox fan. Sure, the chokes in 1978, 1986, and 2o03 bred a generation of nihilists, but those collapses could not be attributed to a lack of character and gumption. This year's Red Sox, however, represented professional athletes at their most detestable and has made it difficult to rally behind these guys looking forward. But, alas, come spring training, we will.

So on this holiday season, I'm choosing to remember the good times. This clip of the Sox completing the total evisceration of the Spank-jobs in 2004 warms my heart with holiday joy. Enjoy. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my imaginary blog readers.

Go Pats! Go B's! And, yes, go Sox!

Holy shit, Bobby V. It's Christmas for Boston smart-asses.

Today, the Red Sox officially hired Bobby Valentine. This seems almost too good to be true. Not good because Bobby Valentine is some kind of panacea that can bring health to all of the lame in The Crypt Keeper's clubhouse. Oh hell, no. The Red Sox could have named Jesus Christ as their next manager, and Beckett still would've cracked a beer in his face and said, "Who the fuck do you think you are, buck?"

No, Bobby Valentine brings with him better qualities than the ability to heal the sick: He's brings with him a Broadway personality and an ego that makes John Lackey look like Anne Frank.

If you haven't seen this list yet, it's well worth checking out. Bobby Valentine was, among his other venerable life feats, a "pancake eating" champion at 18 years-old. The fact that you can Google his name and find out that a 61 year-old man won a pancake eating contest when he was 18 years-old tells you everything you need to know about him.

So what do you think of Bobby Valentine's appointment to be the next manager of The Boston Red Sox? asks one blog reader...okay, it really wasn't a blog reader. I never get questions from blog readers. Ever. In fact, I'm still fairly certain that nobody reads this blog, so I'm forced to turn to my imaginary blog reader, who is a 23 year-old slutty calendar girl, built like a roller coaster, with nothing else to do all day but wait for my updates and masturbate. So my imaginary blog reader asks: So what do you think of Bobby Valentine's appointment to be the next manager of The Boston Red Sox?

Listen, I think all of the changes the Red Sox have made so far this off-season have been good ones. After the shit this team pulled last September, they needed to gut the management and try something else (while, granted, Lucchino should have gone out with them). There are a lot of things that sports fans can forgive. Red Sox fans forgave the team's epic collapses in 1975, 1978, 1986, and 2003. But one of the things that is simply irreconcilable for any sports fan is watching their team quit on the season. And this doesn't forgive the players, who quite frankly still owe us fans an answer, and that answer must come next season. So it's Bobby V.'s job, at very least, to ensure that these beer-guzzling, fried-chicken munching dick-hats either play like professionals or sit their fat-asses on the bench.

Other than that, I expect Bobby V. to be entertaining. I understand that the Red Sox didn't hire Jim Leyland or Tony LaRussa, someone great enough to nearly assure a turn-around next season. Bobby V. is a band-aid who can't really lose while the Sox wait for Farrell's contract to come up in 2013. Bobby V. is not the greatest manager out there, but, goddamn, the guy can eat some pancakes.