A 2007 Retrospective: It Was Not a Good Year for Boston Sports Fans

In fact, it was a bad year for Boston sports fans, and there are three good reasons for that: the Red Sox, the Patriots, and the Celtics. And don’t even talk to me about the Bruins.

The Red Sox? So you won the division championship － with the Yankees spotting you a huge handicap from get-go, it wasn’t a real season anyway. You did win the World Series, I have to give you that. But the Colorado Rockies? Who did you pay to get that draw? It’s like being the last man in the world; you’re supposed to score. And score. And score.
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The Patriots? Huge disappointment. 16-0? Big deal. Where’re the Super Bowl rings? No, not those, they're not even so yesterday. Those ones, you dopes, the ones for the 2007 season. Whaddya mean ya gotta go through the playoffs? If you’re so good, Mssrs. Smartypants, why don’t the other playoff teams just forfeit and go home now? Do they know something you don’t know, or what?

As for the Celtics, forget it. You spoil a once-in-a-lifetime chance to go 80-2 for the season by losing at home against Detroit, so you decide to go to L.A. on New Year’s Eve and take it out on Kobe, all by his lonely little self and four guys in short shorts. Yeah, right. Celtics, you’re mean. You’re bullies, that’s what you are. If you were real men, you know what you would’ve done? You would have told the pilot to turn south, made him touchdown in San Antonio, and challenged the Spurs to a best of seven, right there, on the tarmac. Schedules, schmedules, that’s what real men in a real sports movie would have done, get it? It was a charter flight, it was your call to make, and you flubbed it. Now that would have been a nice way to end the year. You still have the chance to redeem yourself, but I’m warning you guys, if you don’t run the table all throughout the playoffs, I’m going to call you out for what you are: sissies.

Oh, and L.A., good luck in the football playoffs. Arena Football playoffs, you know. Hey, I may be demanding, RS, but I’m not mean.

Bethlehem Battle of the Churches over Clean Up Chores

This CNN article reports on a brooms-and-stones scuffle that erupted between priests at the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem when priests and cleaners of one sect tried to clean some turf that belonged to another sect.

The story reminds me of what they used to do in Edo and later downtown Tokyo. Every day each household in the nagaya, the one-story longhouses of the commmon people, would sweep the stretch of the alley concourse in front of its dwelling and splash a little water around to keep down the dust. The proper etiquette if you were doing the sweeping before your neighbor was to go slightly, but only so slightly, beyond your particular patch of street (the median line with regard to your front-door neighbor, the perpendicular line between the two neighbors to the left and right). In fact, I think that this is the way it still works.

Having written this, I’m still not sure what the lesson is here for the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches, or even that there is one. So I’m letting the Cryptic take this one.

Have a nice day.

The Landlord: the Criterion Edition

This is taken from the Criterion Edition of the Landlord, which my global friends had kindly pointed us to in the comments here. It’s free association improve comedy at its best, by Will Ferrell, with Adam McKay, and Pearl. Thanks again, global friends.

Why I Had to Give Up My Day Job

Explained here.

Ocean's 13 Inspires Schoolboy Crime Spree

I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a better argument against blockbuster sequels than that.

Some Celtics Fans Are Nuts

I mean, win 80 games in the regular season and sweep the playoffs? C’mon, get real.

Me, I’m not going to get serious until they’ve at least reached 40-2.

*let’s see, that’s 25 more to go. Hmm…*