Yeah, I haven't updated in over a week. So I am a bad blogger and a catastrophic failure as a human being. I have come to accept that about myself, which puts me on the path to enlightenment. The next step is to care that I am a bad person, and after that comes the actual process of doing something about my flaws. Of course now that I've done all that heavy-duty self-awareness type stuff, I might have to slow down and rest, lest I have too little energy to continue on the path to enlightenment as I get older.

So the Celtics won it all. Big effing deal. It's nice, I suppose, for the 8 people who stuck with the team through all the lean years. And it must be a great time to be an orthopedic surgeon or an acupuncturist in New England these days. God knows that 99.999999999% of those who defined themselves as Celtic fans as of this winter must have hurt themselves jumping on the bandwagon.

Or perhaps they have sufficient practice in discovering new found ancient allegiances to the local teams over the past several years that they can spring from bandwagon to bandwagon like Batman traversing the rooftops of Gotham City. And let's not kid ourselves, I am old enough to remember that prior to Bill Parcells coming to coach the Pats, games at Foxboro were routinely unavailable on local TV because the team had failed to sell a sufficient number of tickets and the NFL blacked the game out.

And Fenway is as much a place to be seen as it is to see an actual ball game. Can you honestly tell me that there aren't at least 15,000 people in those stands on a given night that haven't given more thought to what they might look like in high def on NESN or to what exact stupid, insipid and cloying effort to get some dap from the Rem Dawg they're going to put on some poster board and hold up like a meathead than they've given to who is pitching for the opponent and when Papelbon will finally join the ranks of the literate?

I'm not really a stranger to jumping on bandwagons, but I like to start early and I like to get in on the ground floor. And I don't have the facility of intellectual dishonesty or simple inability to appreciate irony that one must show to jump on a Boston bandwagon. Because no one here can ever admit that they jumped on the bandwagon.

Boston fans must instead prove that not only have they been fans for their entire lives, but every single last descendant of theirs down through the first to set foot on Ellis Island all the way down to the first homo sapiens in their family tree to hit the European continent in the last Ice Age rooted for every Boston team despite the notable handicap that Boston itself was a millennium or twenty away from being settled.

I've mentioned this before, every Red Sox fan who discovered the team right around the 1998 divisional series with the Indians will tell you that their fathers, grandfathers, greatgrandfathers and the missing link (since Red Sox fans represent a lower order of our species, they can trace themselves back only so far) all were die-hard Sox fans. And yet, somehow, when every American knew it was Ted Williams final game at Fenway (it was so clear that the writer John Updike who grew up in Pennsylvania and lived in New York came to Fenway specifically to see Ted's last game in that lyric little bandbox), only 10,000 and change were on hand to see his final at bat culminate in a home run.

Funny how that works for generations of die hard Red Sox fans. Hell, If Detective John MacLaine of the NYPD held himself to that standard in the film Die Hard, Die Hard's sequels would have revolved around Hans sitting on the beach drinking cocktails and earning 20% on the money he stole from Nakatomi while the feds sifted through the building's wreckage looking for him.

To make a long story short, I hate bandwagon jumpers who try to pass themselves off as legitimate fans. I haven't forgotten that Ainge, while he backed his way into a title thanks to Kevin McHale's turning the Minnesota Timberwolves into a China Syndrome instead of a basketball team, is still the same man who traded one of his best players for magic beans because of a petty, personal argument and, in so doing, turned a playoff team into a shit show. I just can't find it in my heart to be cool with that. Sorry.

That said, the NBA Finals blew. The games were on way too late, as everybody and their brother said. The officiating sucked. I don't know that a single player set a legal screen in the entire series. I could understand when Jordan got away with palming the ball the way he did, I wasn't crazy about it, but he was Jordan. Now the ball is palmed and carried and players take an obscene number of steps and get away with using multiple pivot feet to the point where you wonder why a rule book is even printed any more. But David Stern runs a tight ship, and the league is in great shape.

And in case you haven't heard, the NBA is trying to extract $1.4 million from Tim Donaghy, the ref who admitted to gambling on games he worked. Thanks for the smoke screen, Commissioner Stern. Because it all goes back to that situation, not the fundamental problems with games that start so late and last so long that even unemployed insomniacs start thinking twice about watching them and the fact that the one thing that keeps every fan from being fully convinced that the fix is in is that the officiating is so wildly inconsistent that no one could possibly have rigged it.

In spite of all that, the NBA makes money. I guess it goes to show you, the average American is a complete moron. And they trust these people to elect their own leaders...

In other news, there was a baseball game played tonight, and the Red Sox lost. At least that's the way the outcome stands at the moment. Rumors have it that the league will set aside the outcome, award the victory to the Red Sox and suspend Dan Harren for two months for the heinous offense of making the Red Sox lineup look ridiculous while simultaneously looking like a stunt double for one of the guys from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."


Alas, the Red Sox are still in first place in the AL East. And there is a large portion of the season left to be played. But there are some encouraging signs. For instance, Papelbon has already blown more saves than he did in all of last year. Good thing for him he has his keen intellect and stunning good looks to fall back on should his arm burn out on him... Too bad he's a total meathead with an IQ that rivals that of a cinderblock and he looks like a lizardman from one of the old cartoons.

And then there is David Aardsma. So he pitched himself out of trouble in the top of the 9th this evening. Awesome. You did your job. But I think the fist pump he gave walking off the mound was a little excessive. First, it's not as though you somehow reversed the rotation of the earth and altered the fact that the D-backs were up a run. And perhaps more importantly, you pitched yourself into the trouble in the first place, letting up a hit and walking a guy (not counting the intentional walk).

Then there was Youke, his freak accident this evening had to be somehow related to his squabble with Manny Ramirez earlier. After all, Ramirez had to have been in the wrong, a veteran of his caliber and with his achievements daring to question Youke, who is the baddest badass on the planet, just ask him and he'll tell you in agonizing detail. I'm just amazed that Manny is still alive. In case you don't know all the real Chuck Norris facts are doubly true for Youkilis.

That said, as much as I think Manny can effect players like Youke and warmup throws from Mike Lowell with the Shining-esque powers of his mind, I have to think Youke got hurt because he's bald. My sources in the medical profession tell me that bald people, and in particular bald men, have tremendous difficulty with idea retention. The ideas simply waft into the ether because there is no hair to hold them in the skull. In extreme cases, it can also impact the portions of the brain that manage common sense, motor coordination and the section that governs the ability not to look like a total dumbass. And that is why Youke took a routine warmup toss off the noggin tonight.

Finally, Varitek got a hit to end his 0-24 slump tonight. Not only that, but it was an extra base hit as well. Unfortunately, his spot in the order came up at the end of the seventh, with the tying and go-ahead runs in scoring position with two outs. Even though Harren looked tired and the game was on the line, Varitek found a way to do what he does best, and the rally died in his arms. And so I dedicate this song to Varitek in memory of the rally he killed tonight and in the hope that he can find the magic to go 0-his next 24 or so ABs.

After a certain point, I don't really know why I bother with this blog anymore. If I'm going to update it once every two weeks, it's obviously not going to develop into anything, not that it ever was going to become something in the first place. But anyway, the Lakers have survived to play another day.

After watching this evening's travesty, and seeing the Lakers do everything they could to try to put up one more epic collapse, I have several things on my mind. And I'd like to start with this:

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If all those things can be applied to you, then you probably don't play for the Lakers. I'm reasonably sure that Kipling (the author of those lines, in case you didn't know already) never saw a basketball game. It's possible that he may have, since he lived in Vermont for a short time and married an American woman. But that is neither here nor there.

What matters is that the Lakers can't defend the pick and roll, even though KG's screens tend to stretch the limit of what is acceptable even though the refs don't call it. They seem to look around for another person to step up and make a big defensive play, and even to take a big shot. And they don't help Kobe when he needs to get free on the offensive end.

And the Celtics don't really deserve to win, either. I'm hardly the first person to notice this, but Doc Rivers has some serious issues. With the way he juggles his lineup, he's either responding to some sort of insult or slight with all the petulance of a spoiled child or he has serious short term memory lapses. There is no rhyme or reason to the way players not named Pierce, Garnett or Allen (Ray) get minutes on this team.

Davis played really well against Detroit and is MIA in this series. Powe has shown flashes in big minutes against the Lakers but was MIA in the Detroit series. Sam Cassel is old, overrated and, to be quite frank, not quite ready for primetime in HD. Not only that, but he's a chucker. And a championship caliber point guard isn't supposed to be a chucker.

To make a long story short, since it's late and even I have things to do tomorrow, the NBA blows. And it sickens me to see people walking around the city in flaunting their newfound Celtic pride. The same dbags who bailed on the team in the 90s and bailed on the team in the early Ainge years are back in force, and it's like they never left. It doesn't sit well with me.

To show that I'm not all bitterness and cynicism, I will be rooting for Rocco Mediate in the US Open playoff. Real, genuine, honest underdog stories like this hardly ever come along. And while I have no problem rooting for Goliath under most circumstances, I cannot root for a whining, pouting Goliath like Tiger Woods.

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a few days. But there has been so little joy in the sports world for me, and this is the 300th post in the history of Sedition in Red Sox Nation. Maybe I'm just getting too sentimental in my old age, but I wanted this to be a special one.

So while we have the Celtics and Lakers squaring off to see which team's bogus trades will trump the other's, I haven't been doing much smiling. As is my regrettable habit, I went on a nice mini-bender following the Celtics victory in Game 6 in Detroit. Recently, though, I have managed to confine my dangerously bitter and incoherent drunken rants to my personal life and kept them away from this space.

If it's any consolation, I may have put an old friend from high school whom I hadn't seen in five years and his wife into probate court. After last call at a local night spot, the guy offered (or, more likely, I managed to invite myself) to provide a couple of Bud Lights as a night cap. His wife, whom I had never met before (and technically, I suppose, I still haven't met her in the formal sense) had come home from some sort of party where she was designated driver, and was somewhat less than thrilled to come home and find a large drunken moron cadging Bud Lights at 3 AM. I guess it goes to show you that no good deed goes unpunished.

I felt bad about it, and the massive hangover that crippled me on Sunday. After all, this guy, despite being a BC grad, had the first good answer I've ever received when I explained my new rationale for drinking screwdrivers and forsaking White Russians and rum and cokes (just too many calories in white russians). The rum and cokes went because I am not ordering a mixed drink with diet coke, I might as well just grab a sign that says WUSS and rock that, no offense to those who do go that route is intended.

To make a long story short, I told the guys I was with at the bar that I switched to screwdrivers instead of beer because I was trying to cut down on my carbs. This is probably the fifth time I've mentioned that. Generally, people have just let it slide. But this cat, whom I inadvertently sent to divorce court, came up with a gem of a response, elegant in its simplicity. His answer: "So you're drinking effin' orange juice???" No one else had made that connection about the volume of carbs from sugar in the orange juice. Too bad I ruined his life...

There were a couple of things I should have complained about as they happened on this mini-bender, but just didn't get around to them. First, there was the goddamn spelling bee. In case you're keeping score at home, the finals of the National Spelling Bee was on ABC and the sixth (and final) game of the NBA's Eastern Conference Finals was on cable.

A bunch of prepubescent mutants with a super pointless gift and nascent psychoses played prime time network TV and world-class athletes in the prime of their careers playing in one of the four major North American professional sports was banished to cable. So what if the kid can spell the hell out of guerdon. Can he dunk? Can he handle the rock? Can he flash gang signs like the Truth or disappoint anyone who made the joke "I think Spike Lee's planning a sequel called He Had Game" like Ray Allen?

No. The kid can't do a damn thing but spell, and just because that is a rare gift, doesn't mean it's TV worthy. I'm so sick of this damn country and its juvenile obsession with novelty. Another three years from now and we'll be remembering the day middle school spelling outgrew its brand and falls back to ESPN2's midday coverage like the X games. Hopefully none of these homeschooled creepshows end up too depressed not to commit mass murder ten years from now on that account.

Another thing I must complain about is the ongoing effort on the part of Elvis Presley Enterprises to tarnish the King's legacy at every twist and turn. The particular aspect of their profiteering that is pissing me off at the moment is the latest addition to the wave of worse remixes of bad songs they allow to come into existence.

A Little Less Conversation sucked ass when it was released. It didn't get any better, even though it was a hit. Just because nitwits bought it didn't lend it artistic merit. Ruberneckin' wasn't completely awful in the original, but it's remix was entirely beat. And now, the mental giants at EPE have allowed Baby Let's Play House to be remixed, by an Italian DJ to boot. If I might borrow a line from a song Elvis covered (Welcome to My World), "miracles, I guess, still happen now and then." But I'm not getting my hopes up, in fact, said hopes are probably as low as they can go.

I have more complaints about more things that transpired in my recent silence, but they must wait for tomorrow. I am tired, and I have two items that actually made me smile recently to share with you. First, the fabled Metropolitan Opera House in New York City is infested with mice. Good. Serves people right for going to see the damn operas in the first place. People only go to operas to appear pretentious and pedantic and impress the hell out of their snooty neighbors.

But the main thing that has me smiling right now is that the Cowboys brass got its act together and signed Terrell Owens to a four year deal worth $34 million (with $13million guaranteed). I am glad to see that he'll be taken care of (for the moment) and once again hopeful that he can keep putting his past issues behind him. Considering the Patriots will take at least one step back, and the Giants won't have another magical run in them (consider how closely their playoff run mirrored the 1980 Oakland Raiders wildcard championship team, right down to preceding a year of labor disputes, and those Raiders took two seasons and a venue change to get back to the Super Bowl), that makes Dallas a very strong contender in the upcoming season.

Sadly, one can only wonder what TO would be worth if he had the NFL chops of say Matt Ryan. Imagine that a proven workout warrior who ought to be able to withstand the ravages of age better than any other human on the planet and who ranks in the top ten of all time in the three most important statistical categories (9th in career catches, 10th in yards and 3rd in TDs) for his position is only worth $13 million in guaranteed money while a rookie who played against glorified 1-AA teams and a diminished ND squad in his "breakout" year is guaranteed to make $34.75 million (more than Owens' entire deal).

I enjoyed this blogger's take on Ryan, comparing him favorably against Tim Tebow of Florida. First, Tebow is massively overrated. But Ryan's massively overrated in his own right. When Notre Dame threw caution to the wind and sent the speedy freshman OLBs every time Ryan dropped back, all of a sudden, his mystical ability to see the whole field and find every open receiver took a big step back. Now imagine that's an NFL pass rusher with Mario Williams' size and speed coming in. Ryan isn't ready for it now, nor will he be. He has bust written all over him in capital letters.

Well, you win some and you lose some. The Celtics, under the inspired leadership of Doc Rivers, managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory this evening despite finishing the evening plus 12 from the line. Under those circumstances, a team must have to try its ass off to lose by 19. Alas, the Seattle Mariners weren't quite so cooperative tonight, and the Red Sox are leading in the 8th as I write this.

It surprised me to see the level of commitment the NBA officials showed to securing a potential Celtics Lakers final. Given the propensity for flopping and what should have been home-cooking, you'd have thought the Pistons would have been on the receiving end of a free throw disparity like that. Just think, Rip Hamilton (who under ordinary circumstances flops and whines to the point where Reggie Miller feels uncomfortable watching him play) didn't get to the free throw line for the first time until the fourth quarter.

And as for those who will point out that the Pistons got away with any number of uncalled holds and hacks, I would ask them if what Kendrick Perkins was doing tonight could reasonably be called basketball? I know he fouled out eventually, but if he'd been called for half the hacks he committed (in limited minutes on account of the actual calls against him), he'd have fouled out in the first minutes of the third.

And the Big Ticket did more than his share of hacking as well. Some might think it showed his competitive fire when he blocked a shot Theo Ratliff took as a lark after he'd already been fouled and the play was whistled dead. As for me, I thought he should have been called for a foul of his own there, because it wasn't a clean block. But perhaps he was still emotionally traumatized from the play where Maxiell came up behind him and made our favorite overrated superstar look ridiculous by blocking a sure dunk from behind.

Far and away the most mystifying event of the night had to be Doc Rivers awkward, verging on sexual harassment compliment of Michelle Tafoya's ensemble in the first half. I understand that his fragile little mind must have been overtaxed trying to reconcile himself to the fact that his team was lighting it up from the line but still trailing, but if he didn't want to answer questions, he should have simply said he didn't want to answer questions. We didn't need to see that.

I have some questions, too, that are bothering me at this point. First, is it ironic that Ratliff has played more productive minutes against the Celtics in this series than he played in his entire Celtic tenure? Sure, they gave him up in the Garnett deal and sure, he was taking up space and getting paid handsomely for it in Boston, but every thing he does to help the Pistons win and the Celtics lose has to sting a bit, no?

I'm sorry I haven't updated this space as often as I probably should have in the last few weeks. This week has been crazy. I had to do some travelling and some drinking not entirely unrelated to said travelling. Plus I've been a bit depressed, what with the Celtics getting entirely too close to lucking their way to a title for their loathsome management team and with Jon Lester's no-hitter being treated as though it were an event on par with Neil Armstrong "walking" on the Moon.

Perhaps I am indeed as horrible a human being as I am told (quite frequently, in fact), but I find myself curiously unmoved by Lester's triumph. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I am pro cancer, even though I don't wear a Lance Armstrong bracelet and I had the temerity to suggest that one could possibly accomplish more by simply donating to research facilities directly than to purchase overpriced merchandise from some trumped-up Live Pink campaign. Or maybe I am right and all of you are wrong.

Before we get all teary eyed and mushy over what happened earlier this week, let's all take a nice deep breath and remember that the Kansas City Royals are still perennial doormats in the American League. It's not as though Ruth, Gehrig and the rest of the 1927 Yankees suddenly came back in some sort of less pretentious and sanctimonious Field of Dreams moment. No-hitting any team is a nice accomplishment, something that really classes up a CV, but it's not as though he single-handedly brought peace to the Middle East, or a consistent viewpoint on Iran to the minions of a certain Midwestern junior Senator.

It's not as though I am somehow less sentimental than the average fan or the average person. Nor am I evil. It's just that I want a few days, a short moratorium on a story being overblown and beaten to death thirteen seconds after it happened. Like when ESPN cut away from its regularly scheduled programming for 3 hours because the New York Yankees fifth starter was tragically killed in a small plane crash. That is what turns me off sports, that and the fact that the average New England sports fan consistently decides to pass on their inferior genetic material to another generation, as though we needed more morons in this country.

Unfortunately, it hasn't just been my relentlessly negative take on the Red Sox that has suffered in my recent silence. There are a few stories that really needed my complaints that have passed unnoticed lately. Thanks to the New York Knicks missing the playoffs again, Spike Lee was free to go to Cannes and shoot his mouth off about Clint Eastwood and his World War Two films which didn't include African Americans.

First, there were 900 or so African Americans among 35,000 Marines who fought at Iwo Jima. Second, and perhaps more importantly, there were exactly zero African Americans among the Marines who raised the flag on Mount Sirubachi. Flags of Our Fathers was about the raising of the flag and the bond tour that followed it much more than it was about the battle itself.

So by my calculations, there were a good 34,700 Marines who fought bravely on that God forsaken island but didn't manage to have their stories told by Clint Eastwood. This wasn't a racist decision, it was simply a question of whether the movie should be 2 hours long or the movie should be 2 years long. And as for the Japanese version of the story, Letters from Iwo Jima, it told the story from the enemy's point of view, so what's the big deal? The bottom line of this whole mess is that Spike Lee really ought to shut his yapper and make a half decent movie for a change.

Two other items that I want to mention are a recent release concerning the drug from Pfizer that helps people quit smoking. Among its side effects are depression and suicide. While that sounds scary as hell, at least you can't keep smoking if you've killed yourself. Who supervises the FDA now? Is there any way to get a drug on the market that doesn't have horrific side effects? When your means to quit smoking can trigger a suicide attempt, you just might want to revisit your faith in medical science.

And recently, a panel of astrologers convened to predict a victory for Senator Obama. Over 1,500 devotees from 44 countries worked on this effort. Seems a bit like the 1,000 monkeys at 1,000 typewriters producing Shakespeare (which still seems more plausible than Roger Bacon). I wonder if all of these devotees from all of the nations saw what they saw in the stars or what they wanted to see. But I guess I'm skeptical like that...

And finally tonight, the hopes of Celtic fans everywhere took a serious hit when the Green Machine allowed a visiting team to push them around in their own house for the first time this postseason. I don't want to hear a lot of whining about how bad the calls were. Terrible officiating in crucial basketball games is one more of the rites of spring we just have to accept. It might be nice if the league held a seminar for its officials and reintroduced them to the rules of basketball, but miracles no longer happen.

The bottom line is the Celtics are a flawed team with a terrible coach. The best weapon they have in this series is Flip Saunders, who is, in his own way, as bad a coach as Rivers. I don't know what made less sense, leaving Allen in to pick up his fifth foul with over 14 minutes of basketball to be played or not challenging Allen, who is a shaky on-ball defender when he was lighting it up in the fourth quarter all the while playing on the verge of fouling out. Maybe Saunders was waiting for Allen to score 15 or 18 points in the quarter before he got his players to challenge him. Maybe he didn't want to end the fearful symmetry of the Celtics yo-yoing home wins with road losses. Who knows?

It's almost sad to see how useless Rondo is on the offensive end. He might as well just start chucking shots up even if they have no shot of going. He's a turnover waiting to happen the way he forces bad passes and compounds the degree of difficulty by attempting said bad passes in a manner that would be all but impossible for a much better point guard like Deron Williams or Chris Paul. This leads to him committing dumb fouls on the defensive end because he's overeager and frustrated.

In the long run, Eddie House isn't really the answer either. One can't win a playoff series substituting offense for defense at the point guard spot all game long. Nor will Rondo ever truly be an effective player if he can be taken out of the game so easily by simply ignoring him. If Rondo can't make shots, this team will not beat the Pistons in a seven game series. It's just not happening. But I'm not too worried about that.

So, tonight is the pivotal game 5 in the series with Cleveland. If the Celtics don't win, I guess we'll finally see if this team is for real or not. Obviously, they put up a tremendous regular season, but the regular season will have meant nothing if this team doesn't make the NBA Finals. Each year it seems the NBA regular season means less and less because there are at least 12 terrible teams. And now with the epidemic of fire sale trades this season (KG to Boston, Gasol to LA and Shaq to Phoenix) it seems like the bad teams will get worse and the few good teams will get better more quickly. That might make for better playoffs, but it won't make for better basketball.

Should the Cs win tonight, they will be in a strong position in the series, but overall they still have the nagging issue of their inability to win on the road this postseason. I imagine it may have happened at one point in history, but I sincerely doubt a team has managed to win a title without winning at least one game on the road in the playoffs. Theoretically, it's possible as long as the Cs could win every game at home. But what exactly are the odds of that happening?

Say they get past the Cavs, that puts them up against the Pistons. And if they should beat Detroit without winning a game at the Palace, they would go on to face the team that emerges from the Lakers, the Jazz, the Hornets or the Spurs. By the time the playoffs are all said and done if the Cs advance to the Finals without winning on the road they'd have played 21 games on top of the regular season. Throw in the fact that Pierce, KG and Allen aren't really all that young any more (consider the fact that LeBron seems like he's been in the league forever, but he's only 23 then multiply that effect for the Boston Three Party).

And is it really likely that with the playoff savvy veterans in Detroit and San Antonio looming (I'll believe that the NBA won't allow the Spurs to hack and flop their way to yet another disappointing NBA Finals series when it happens) couldn't find a way to win in Boston at least once between the two of them? These teams know every dirty trick in the game today. And they have no silly superstitions about playing basketball the way it ought to be played, so they can either wear down or frustrate the Celtics with tactics that would make Pat Reily's Knicks teams blush.

And if the Cs should lose tonight, they'll be in a world of pain. Not having won on the road and facing elimination in Game Six, we would see a Celtics team that has been hit (for those of you who read this space regularly, you'll remember my fondness for quoting the maxim of the Michael Douglas character from The Ghost and the Darkness that in prize fighting, everybody has a plan until he gets hit). With a suspect coach in Rivers, and three superstars who have had a knack for coming up small when it really matters, would you really be confident that the Celtics would be dangerous with their backs against the wall?

I wouldn't, but then I don't want them to do well as long as Ainge and the boys from Banner 17 are minding the store. In other matters, the NBA is going to suspend play for the 2008-2009 season in the next few days. Since the Benefactor has signed Rick Carlisle to coach the Mavs, it is now officially a foregone conclusion that Mark Cuban will be celebrating the first of many NBA titles this time next year.

Or maybe we'll all remember that Jason Kidd will be a year older, and against everything that seems logical, will be even more of a douche. Dirk Nowitzki will still be some bizarre hybrid of the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz. Josh Howard will still have peaked in 2006. Jason Terry will still be Jason Terry, and Rick Carlisle probably won't have acquired the magic to do what he failed to do in Indiana and Detroit.

In case you needed further proof that Mark Cuban is a douche, read his latest entry on BlogMaverick. He drinks Bud, he listens to Jethro Tull and he ponders how to overthrow Google. Bud is swill. Bud Light is fine, but High Life is so much better than Bud it isn't funny, in fact it makes up for those awful Commissioner of the More Taste League spots. Jethro Tull blows. And I rather imagine his machinations against Google are a bit like the Pinky and the Brain cartoons, except without a super-intelligent leader opposite the dim-witted Benefactor and only accidentally funny.

Finally, I received an interesting comment on my last post. An anonymous reader wanted to know why I haven't been posting on the Red Sox. And I guess, like anything else, I don't have a reason. But I will be picking back up with that in the next week or so, as soon as I have something to say. I was surprised to get that comment, though. I figured most people would be glad I haven't posted on the Red Sox lately. I'm sure it would make a far too successful start to this season even more pleasant, but what do I know?

So, I realize that the world of sports is progressing rapidly toward championships in the NHL and NBA, and the baseball season is underway (I could have said in full swing, but I try not to be a douche as much as humanly possible. It's what separates people like me from people like Simmons, Mariotti and the CHB, that and I don't get paid for this). But I don't have much to say about those topics right now. Just that if San Antonio wins another title this season, that's it for me with the NBA.

Greg Popovich is sort of like the evolutionary Red Auerbach and these Spurs are sort of like the Celtics dynasty of the 50s and 60s, at least in the same sense as JD Drew's numbers are sort of like ARod's career stats and in the same way that getting kicked in the balls is sort of like a good time.

San Antonio plays a disgraceful brand of basketball. And anyone who can legitimately say they enjoy watching a team meld cowardice with bullying tactics has no genuine affinity for basketball. Can anyone honestly imagine a player like Bill Russell stooping to using hack-a-Shaq tactics against Wilt Chamberlain (a terrible free throw shooter in his own right)? Russell probably would have thrown a beating on anyone who suggested such a thing. And rightly so, because that isn't basketball. Or at least it wasn't.

I realize that New Orleans is up 2-1 in their series with the Spurs right now, but I just can't see them holding on to that lead. I am not optimistic enough to think that the Spurs won't find a way to flop and hack their way out of the hole they're in right now. If that team collectively starred in a low budget, crummy horror movie, I think I just might have trouble remembering it was fiction.

And as for Manu Ginobli, can you imagine what his career would have looked like if he had the misfortune of playing in the NBA when basketball was basketball? For every rave review of his play, there ought to be at least a footnote to remind younger fans what Jordan, Bird, Johnson, Barkley, Wilkins and Doctor J would have done to him had he had the misfortune to face any one of them in his respective prime. And don't forget that the league's officials tended to actually call games in a fashion that resembled legitimacy back then. Ginobli would be on the bench in foul trouble or so shell-shocked that he'd have to retire. But the trouble with good old days is that they're always gone for good by the time you realize just what you had.

I mentioned in my last post that I was going to devote some attention to what was wrong with the Star Wars movies. Or at least some of the problems, since there are so many and I get bored fairly easily. I guess the fundamental problem is that the films are science fiction, and science fiction as a genre is created by people who are cut off from the real world where people have to make real decisions and face real consequences. That and they probably smoke a lot of dope.

Look at the way Darth Vader kept choking senior officers to death with the Force. After the first few admirals and generals got choked, that would be it for the morale and the discipline of the Imperial military. Fear is a fairly effective motivator, but at a certain point, a person is just going to say "What the hell, if I fail I'm going to be killed, so why even try?" Also, eliminating senior commanders would logically force his immediate subordinates into roles that they may not be fully prepared to take on in combat conditions.

Then there's the Force itself. What exactly is the Force capable of and why does it keep changing to suit the convenience of a particular film at a particular point in time? One Sith Lord hiding in the capital can diminish the ability of the entire Jedi council to use the Force, but another Sith Lord can't stop a kid with about 6 minute's training from using the Force to blow up a Death Star?

And why can Vader sense his son with the Force and not his daughter? For that matter, why the eff did they call the kid Luke Skywalker? Or is creativity one of the ten thousand things that lead to the Dark Side? It kind of defeats the purpose of hiding the kid if you're going to give him his father's last name.

Then there's the fact that the movies are filled with overrated characters who have massive cult followings and yet accomplish nothing. What was the big deal about Boba Fett? And now that I think about it, outside of putting the whining robot's head on backwards, what did Chewbacca do, exactly? But the most overrated character has to be Yoda. If he spoke normally, no one would even give a damn about him.

Episodes 1-3 suffer, too, from the absence of a compelling bad guy. Darth Vader in the original movies was compelling because he was big and scary looking and he had that cool SCUBA regulator breathing thing going for him, along with James Earl Jones' voice. The Emperor was a kind of a puss with creepy magical powers, but the Palpatine character was just a puss in 1, 2 and 3. I understand that was supposed to be part of his act to fool every one, but he just came off as a marginally talented English actor working with a shitty script.

And Anakin took more from the table than any character in any movie I've seen in the last ten years, with the exception of A Scanner Darkly, where every character not only took things from the table, but came back to steal table itself along with the rest of the furniture in the house. The little kid who played him in Episode One was so annoying that he would have triggered a rash of vasectomies had the average Star Wars fan even had the chance of contaminating the next generation with their DNA.

But that little kid ended up looking like Olivier doing Hamlet thanks to Hayden Christensen. God, was he awful. I realize, he won an MTV Movie Award for his performance in Episode 3, but that's not exactly an impressive accomplishment. Perhaps I'm being unfair. Maybe he stole the show in Jumper, I won't know until I happen to see it one night after Val Kilmer's Spartan on USA at 4 AM three years from now, though.

It was more than a bit painful to watch Natalie Portman and Ewan MacGregor in the prequels. After the Professional and Beatiful Girls, it seemed like Portman could act. But it still has to be better to have peaked at 14 than never to peak at all. And MacGregor was excellent in Trainspotting, but with each passing year and each disappointing role, it looks like he channeled every last bit of talent he possessed into that project and that's probably going to be all she wrote for him.

What I've never figured out is the logical process by which Luke Skywalker just accepts the fact of his upbringing without any bitterness. If I found out that I had a twin sister who was adopted and raised as a princess while I was stuck farming water on a desert planet and raised by a broke d-bag who kept scamming me out of a chance to fly space ships, I sure as hell wouldn't take that with a smile on my face. I'd be on the Dark Side paying every waterwalker and do-gooder back for that in a second. But that's just me.

Finally, there's the fact that Lucas keeps revisiting the original films to tinker with them and invariably makes them worse. I didn't like Return of the Jedi much to start with, but the revamped ending and Lucas' midget fetish have made me hate it. Why did he have to edit in Hayden Christensen? What was wrong with keeping the older Vader who actually redeemed himself and not the young douche who went to the Dark Side? And why did he bring in the celebration scenes from Naboo? The Gungans sucked and were probably overly insensitive from an ethnic standpoint to begin with, and they didn't get any better.

It reminded me of something I read in Aldous Huxley's intro to the 20th anniversary edition of A Brave New World. He mentioned that in revisiting the work after that length of time, he saw a number of things that he would have done differently had he the chance and wanted to edit out, but in the end he left it as it stood. And it was the right thing to do. Better to let something that was widely appreciated stand flaws and all than try to perfect it, only to weaken it as a whole.

So, the Celtics have successfully lulled the rest of the NBA teams into a false sense of security. That's all that this suspicious inability to win a playoff game on the road against the worst team to make the NBA playoffs this season has been. After all, the notion that the Boston Celtics could lose a game 7 at the fake Boston Garden is laughable.

The Celtics are sending the Cavs a message. If they can take a seven game series with the potential to turn into an historic choke job this lightly, how lightly can they take a series against LeBron James, even though LeBron is by himself better than any three Celtics?

History is totally on the side of the Celtics here. Their record in Game 7s is astronomically against the Hawks. It's not as though a Celtic team has won over 60 games in a season and then blown a game 7 at home before, right? Oh wait. The 72-73 Celtics (who set a franchise record for wins, by the way) dropped a Game 7 at home to the New York Knicks in shameful fashion. At least those Knicks were much better than these Hawks, though.

If I were in the habit of making predictions in this space (I've given it up since they had that nasty habit of going spectacularly wrong), I'd pick the Celtics to win by 37 points. After all, the pressure is off here. Even if they lose to Atlanta and set NBA history in a bad way, it's not as though they could outchoke the Patriots on the local sports scene. The Pats set the NFL record for most points scored, Brady and Moss both broke records for TDs in a season and they'd already pulled off a spectacular comeback against the Giants on the road in winter conditions.

That's a bit worse than simply dropping a best of seven series to a chump team coming off the best regular season record in the NBA. It's not as though the Celtics are a dynasty at this point, and this season won't mark the end of an era the way the recent Super Bowl catastrophe did. Garnett and Allen are still under contract, and even if they do slow down the way the Patriots geriatric linebackers have, there are enough terrible teams in the East that it won't make a difference.

In other matters, even though I rip Bill Simmons from time to time, I am not above stealing a couple of links from him to bring to your attention in case you don't have as much time to waste as I do. First, I want to comment on the facebook scandal raging at the Horace Mann School in NYC.

Students are using facebook to ridicule and criticize their teachers to the point of bullying and even intimidation. And no one knows how to stop them. Since they can use their own computers to do this and this is, for the moment, a free country, the burden of stopping this falls on the parents.

God knows, if I had been part of something like this whilst I was a kid (and possibly even now), my parents would have descended on me as though they were Robert Duvall's Air Cav unit and I was a small Vietnamese village near good surfing and Martin Sheen's mission insertion point. All I would have heard would have been some strains of Wagner and then fade to black. But we're expected to believe that violence is not the answer to life's problems... That's crap, limited violence directed at a given object for a given reason is the oldest solution there is, and whatever we're doing now ain't working.

Among the many problems that should have been anticipated in this story, first and foremost, you're obviously going to have a serious wave of bad karma at an elite private school named after the guy who practically invented public education in America. And obviously you're going to have a huge problem brewing among rich, entitled kids in Manhattan. Rich kids are almost all d-bags, and assholes are the last remaining renewable resource in the Northeast. Go figure worlds collided here.

This is a big problem for American society as a whole. If these parents have allowed their malignant little brat kids to bully teachers, administrators and everybody else under the sun all their lives, what will happen when this ostensibly irresistible force meets the immovable object that is the real world? Sooner or later, these kids will find out that they are not talented, they are not special, they are not God's gift to the rest of us and they generally suck at life.

So what is the end result of this sort of child coddling and ambition directed to status symbols rather than tangible achievement... Well, let's just say I really don't want to be the one who gets shot when little Jimmy the CEO's spawn realizes that Mommy and Daddy didn't love him enough to raise him to be human and he fires rounds into unsuspecting subway patrons ten years from now. But God forbid we disappoint the children of our "betters"...

And on a lighter note, check out this clip from the Star Wars holiday special in 1978. It's easily the creepiest thing I've seen this year.

It also makes you wonder how Lucas ever managed to make Empire Strikes Back and it didn't end up totally sucking. Over the last couple of months, I rewatched all of the episodes in both trilogies, and I have some thoughts on them that I feel like posting on, so that will be up sometime in the next week or so. And if you think it's too far off the general area of interest of this blog, don't forget that Lucas learned how to make crappy movies while studying at USC, and he probably hates TO.

And before I wrap, I want to pass on a link I got indirectly through Simmons. Thanks to his strange sissy fight with the "people" at RaptorsTruthers or whatever they call their silly little syndicate, I came across this blog by a beat writer for the Toronto Star. In this post, he makes a snide reference to the Florida vote being rigged in 2000 enabling Bush to become President.

I realize that this was a joke, but it still angers me somewhat. For some reason, Canadians and Europeans think that they have some right to meddle in American affairs. Consider John LeCarre (famed British author of boring, pointless, politically shameless spy novels) sending letters to voters in Ohio urging them to vote for John Kerry in 2004.

I find this offensive because if an American turned about and did something similar, it would be lamented far and wide as yet another instance of our creeping, insidious imperialism. Of course, it is difficult for Americans to meddle in Canadian politics, mostly because no one really gives a damn about Canada. And how can you materially influence a process by which an empty suit like Stephen Harper becomes PM because he caught a greased up deaf guy at the Ontario Province Fair?

So I just want to pass on a message to any readers from Canada, France, Great Britain, Germany and anywhere else in the world who think they have a right to input in any American electoral process...feel free to fuck off and die.

I received an interesting comment on last night's post:

Alan has left a new comment on your post "The other day, I got a snide little email from a f...":

If Derek Lee had teared up after the Cubs got swept this year, I would have never heard the end of it. Never. But of course, when it happens to TO, it's barely worth a mention.

First, and foremost, there is no fair barometer to compare a team that lost an NFL playoff game by four points to a baseball team which was bounced from the playoffs as quickly, brutally and unceremoniously as this year's Cubs were. Don't get me wrong, I don't tend to like picking on Cubs fans (unless they happen to be close friends of mine because I am a horrible person). But the Cubs were outscored 16-6 in their three game travesty against the Diamondbacks.

As for Derrek Lee, yeah he managed to hit .333 for the series against the Diamondbacks, so he has that going for him, which is nice. Too bad for the Cubs fans, all of his four hits were singles and not one of them drove in a run. And on top of that, he struck out four times. Better still, if you look at his postseason stats for his career, Derrek Lee has one more career postseason homer and four more RBI against the Cubs than for the Cubs.

TO didn't have his best statistical game by a long shot, but at least he managed to get his team on the board in Dallas' loss to the Giants. Not only that, but a wide receiver in football is much more bound to his quarterback's performance, offensive line play and his coaching staff's follies than is a first baseman in baseball. Lee got 12 official at bats against the Diamondbacks, but the Cowboys didn't exploit the mismatches available in the Giant secondary the way they should have in the second half.

Two of the missed connections between Owens and Romo in that second half, the long pass down the left sideline where a Giant d-back (I believe it was Corey Webster, but I might be wrong) tipped it away at the last moment and the pass inside the ten where the ball was behind Owens likely would have been TDs. The Cowboys should have gone back to those plays, or at the very least wasted a lot less time in their two minute drill. Can you really say that any of the GDPs Derrek Lee threw at us in the playoffs would have been run scoring plays?

To make a long story short, with the way he played and his team played, Derrek Lee forfeited the right to have any kind of emotional response to the Diamondbacks sweep this fall. TO produced one of his team's two TDs, so he earned the right to be a little frustrated with the Cowboy's failure. And be grateful I chose to overlook the fact that you misspelled your hero's name when you brought that foolishness up in here. I am the only one allowed to misspell words here.

In the giving the devil his due category, Bill Simmons came up with a fairly interesting and surprisingly well thought out comparison of the 1986 Celtics and this present Patriots squad. As far as comparing apples and oranges can be done, it was reasonably successful.

I do think that he is looking a little to hard at the present at the expense of the past, but then I've never been a Patriots fan while I was a Celtics fan before Danny Ainge came back to town. I think the Cs win going away in this comparison, since they neither sold their soul nor (perhaps, given that Moss is both a character problem waiting to happen and in a contract year) mortgaged the future for their epic run at history.

And I think Simmons also fails because he is even slightly afraid of jinxing these Patriots. Maybe Green Bay can catch lightning in a bottle, but I fear that this season is already over.

I know I haven't been very consistent with my posts lately. It's been a very depressing fall so far for me. The damn Red Sox won it all. The damn Patriots are undefeated. And the damn Celtics are playing entirely too well to date. Things just keep getting worse for Sedition in Red Sox Nation. Now BC is one game away from the first major bowl bid since Harry Truman was an obscure senator from Missouri and FDR was running against Wendell Wilke. Bad times.

In the last year or so, Hollywood has seen fit to release a wave of movies showcasing outnumbered and outmatched forces defending their territory or their interests at all costs. The Spartans stood against the mighty invading army from Persia in 300. Beowulf takes out Grendel and Grendel's mom. And it all ties in nicely with the NFL season to date.

A brave, heroic, disciplined unit met a powerful enemy this past weekend and prevailed in Foxboro. The Pats defended their turf against a very average football team starting its backup quarterback, playing on the road and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in the final minutes. It was truly an inspiring sight.

I'm not going to get carried away like many of the commentators who have stated that the Eagles have shown the rest of the NFL how to compete with the Patriot juggernaut. Maybe they have, maybe they haven't, but it's not worth getting overly excited about until some team does what the Eagles did, only slightly better or slightly longer, and the Patriots finally lose a game. After all, the Colts came very close to prevailing a few weeks ago, and there was no talk of a road map after that game.

I will say this. A friend of mine sent me an interesting question via email this afternoon. He offered the suggestion that the Patriot defense might be showing its age and tiring as the season nears completion. It's an interesting point to consider.

The Eagles were moving the ball with considerable success throwing deep ins. The Patriots linebackers are a very old group, particularly when Bruschi and/or Junior Seau are forced to play in space in certain zone coverages. The deep ins are run right into the space behind the linebackers and in front of the safeties. It's possible my friend had a point.

Prior to the strange, sloppy game in Pittsburgh tonight, I was intrigued at the prospect of Ricky Williams return to the Dolphins. I remember not feeling tremendously sad when Cedric Benson ran over Junior Seau last season, breaking his arm and looking for all the world like he ended the career of one of the great self-promoting frauds of all time (nevertheless, in the interest of fairness, I must praise Seau for his charitable work in the wake of the Southern California fires this fall).

I was looking forward to seeing a slightly older, slightly slower, slightly weaker Seau take on a well-rested Ricky Williams fresh off his 18 month exile from the NFL due to past marijuana infractions. In general, I try as hard to avoid taking undue amusement from the physical suffering and professional failures of total strangers as the next person. But I hate Seau. Maybe its because of the USC thing, but more likely because I have watched him come up a step slow, a yard short and one or two plays away from succeeding in the biggest moments for the better part of my life now, and still announcers, commentators and reporters rave about him as though he were the reincarnation of Dick Butkus (who is not dead, I realize).

To make a long story short, I think I need to see this phenomenon exploited by the Eagles recur in a game or two before I'll accept that the Patriots are showing their age on defense. I think the problem last night was that the Patriots secondary is overrated. I think they're beatable.

Yes, Samuel picked a pass off and returned it for a TD in the first quarter. That was a very nice play, and quite impressive. His second interception was not at all impressive. I have a four year old niece who could have made that play. Feely threw up a pass that had no business being thrown on a route that had no business being called at that point in the game.

Samuel had been aggressively jumping routes early in the game, like the play that resulted in his first interception and another pass deflection that was very nearly a second TD. That much is true. But the routes he jumped were out cuts. The play the Eagles ran to exploit his aggressiveness was a slant and go. Perhaps a better play to test Samuel's discipline would have been an out and up, if double moves were the order of the day. The Eagles weren't running slants. They weren't completing slants. So why would an experienced player like Assante Samuel take the chance on jumping a slant when he had safety help to his inside? This is football, not rocket science.

If another team can move the ball exploiting a weakness in the Patriots pass coverage, then maybe it is the age factor. Maybe Rodney Harrison and Junior Seau have been at this game too long. Or maybe Harrison might need to get back on the HGH. But if it's not the age thing, maybe it's time to be nervous that James Sanders and Randall Gay might not be ready for prime time. Because prime time is coming, and God knows how I'd hate to see the Pats upset in the divisional round of the playoffs.

In other, unrelated news about which you care very little, my fantasy team is dying. The combination of a team that relies on Mike Shanahan's running backs and an owner that was playing golf at 11AM this Sunday proved disastrous. I left Selvin Young in the lineup, but Shanahan had other ideas. That zero spot killed me.

Cedric Benson getting carted off the field certainly didn't help. And wouldn't you know it was just when he was starting to come on like a house afire. He gained 89 yards on 11 carries against the Seahawks, and only Ron Turner knows why he didn't get that 12th carry or carries 13-20. He was averaging over 5 yards a carry against Denver, and know he's hurt. And I'm not entirely sure how hurt he is. I don't know whether the Bears simply shut him down because they have too many teams ahead of them in the playoff race, or he's really in serious career trouble now.

I do know that I have a team with only two wide receivers now, in Bernard Berrian and TO. I had to cut Santonio Holmes to pick up Adrian Peterson of Chicago, and I couldn't cut Benson because he's locked in the lineup until tomorrow. I now have two Denver backs (Henry and Young), two Kansas City backs (LJ and Kolby Smith) and the two Chicago backs. And I lost two games this year to a woman who watches very little football, studies opera singing and was recently in a recital with a damn harpsichord in the damn 21st century.

There isn't enough depth left at running back for me to fire any of these guys (except Benson) because the bottom of the barrel has been scraped. I know, I scraped it myself. I also have Ricky Williams on my team. I feel like Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China. I am a reasonable guy, but I've just experienced some pretty unreasonable things.

And even if I wanted to cut LJ, and I don't since I'm not convinced Herm Edwards is the type of coach to shut him down and pull the plug on the faint hopes of KC making the playoffs, it's a keeper league. The KC o-line might have turned a corner (even though they were dominating the overrated Raiders), and LJ might just return to form next season. I have no idea what Shanahan will do from one week to the next, so I need Young and Henry. And there is no other RB available in my league that will get 1/2 as many touches from game to game as the non-rookie Adrian Peterson will from here on out.

I general managed myself into a corner. So right now, I need to win next week to make the playoffs. And the only realistic shot to win rests on a huge game for Romo, Owens and Nick Folk (the Dallas kicker). So it's kind of funny that I could resent an innocent woman with an interest in baroque music because I picked a terrible team and I forced myself to depend on a notoriously mercurial person who just might be clinically insane because he's my favorite player in the league. I have become everything I have ever hated, at least for fantasy football purposes.

I'm sorry I haven't been more diligent about posting new material lately. What do you want from me? I've been more than a little disappointed by the recent run of success for the Boston teams that I hate. And the more I post to complain about them, the better they seem to do. It's just some sort of terrible nightmare, although admittedly of very minor proportions.

I have decided to take a new tack in dealing with the Celtics. Even though Ainge's panic moves seem, for the moment, to have worked out as well as could be expected, my distaste for the current regime still lingers from the Antoine situation. I also have serious qualms about jumping on a bandwagon, so I'm not rooting for the Cs. I have, after about 14 seconds of intense thought on the matter, decided to root against the Celtics a little less aggressively than I've rooted against the Pats, the Sox and BC.

Either way, it should be win win for me. If I am somehow bringing good karma to the Red Sox, Patriots and other teams/causes I root against, then maybe by taking a low key approach I might somehow reverse that trend. And if the Cs should stay healthy and stay selfless long enough to go deep into the playoffs, at least I won't have a seven month body of work to show how short-sighted and wrong I can be at my worst.

And so it appears that the Patriots are on the verge of another blowout victory. At this point, I have given up on watching the game. It is now to the point of turning my stomach to see them do what they're doing. Running up the score is not tremendously cool to begin with, but to go for it on fourth down inside the ten yard line when you're up by four touchdowns is just a bit too excessive.

I know I quote and refer to Jimmy Johnson's maxim that one ought to get better players if one has a problem with being blown out by one's opponents. And in the main I agree with the saying. The rest of the NFL teams had their chances to acquire the players who now make up this team. They also had their chances to get better players than the ones who can't stand up to the Patriots. So it's their fault that the Pats kick their asses, and kick them hard week in and week out as though they were General Sherman marching through Georgia.

But it's gone on long enough. Bill Belichick, and to a lesser extent his players, are emulating two of the more admired figures in the pantheon of dbags - the petulant child and the bully. Perhaps the NFL overreacted in their sanctions following the scandal in the Meadowlands. Maybe every single other owner, player, front office functionary and concession stand worker in the NFL failed miserably to do their moral duty and come to Bill Belichick's defense. After all, the man is the heart and soul not only of the NFL but of the American Republic as a whole. Just ask him, and if he's not too vexed by the weight of the world on his shoulders, he'll tell you.

Maybe it will be a sublime comeuppance should the Patriots march to 19-0 and net a top three pick in the upcoming NFL draft thanks to the 49ers finding new and different ways to get worse from week to week. Is that really the object of the exercise, or should it be? For five years now, I've had to sit and listen to every talking head even peripherally associated with the industry that is American professional football tell the world that the New England Patriots are the model for the way the game ought to be played. For five years we were told that the Patriots won with class and dignity, with an overall team concept and without the trappings of ego that seem to turn off so many fans.

Now, for the sake of avenging a slight in the form of an official overreaction to what was a moderately dirty deed, the Patriots have essentially taken that notion out back and put a bullet in its brain. There was nothing classy, dignified or admirable about the manner in which the Patriots defeated the Bills. Even worse, it's unsound business, or it will be after a certain point. I am a huge football fan, and I'm not watching the only football game on the air at the moment because it's not that entertaining to see a team be destroyed for 60 minutes of football.

I'm also tired of the whole get-up that Belichick rocks on the sidelines. Yeah, we get the point, it's the whole ironic commentary on the NFL deal with Reebok to provide coaches apparel and the foolish consistencies which are the hobgoblins of little minds. Unfortunately a fifty year old dude doesn't wear the shallow teen-aged rebellion particularly well.

I wonder if and/or when more people will start to feel that the Patriots have ceased doing the right thing for some time now. I know that there are Patriots fans who see this as payback for all those blissful years when the Patriots were so bad for so long and so often on the receiving end of lopsided scores. Maybe they're right. I just know I'm becoming less interested in watching this team play. And I'm a guy that has been known to make time to watch the Senior Bowl practice sessions.

As this season gets closer to the end, I have my own version of the perfect ending to this storybook season. I would like to see the Patriots go 16-0 in the regular season and then lose in the divisional round of the playoffs on the hallowed 13 month old field turf at Gillette Stadium. Perhaps a more conventional ending might have them make it all the way to the Super Bowl before they finally lost, but I like my scenario better. It would hurt Pats fans more, I think, if they lost out of the blue in their house right off that coveted first round bye.

If a few other wrinkles were added to the story line, such as a visiting player grabbing that ridiculous cut-off hoodie and pulling it over Belichick's head as though it were a hockey fight, that would put a smile on my face. I try, for the most part, not to condone violence in this space, but I am an imperfect man in many respects. I think it would be too much to ask to have some concerned citizen hurl a football into his groin to reenact the George C. Scott in Man Being Hit By Football bit from the Simpsons of yesteryear. But that would be damn funny also.

And so, Notre Dame finally won a home game. Yes, it was against Duke which just might be the worst team in the Bowl Subdivision series. But Robert Hughes looked very good. If they could ever sort out the abysmal play of the offensive line and the young backs can build on the strides they've made this season, perhaps James Aldridge and Robert Hughes can form a 1-2 punch in the backfield sort of like Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown at Auburn. But that's probably too optimistic an outlook to take.

I don't have too much more to say at this point, though I will be posting more material over the next couple of days. I'm going to see Springsteen tomorrow night, so I'm taking it easy tonight. I'll have a lot to say about his show, I'm sure.

Ladies and gentlemen, as depressed as I am that the New York Yankees are no longer playing while the Boston Red Sox still linger on in these playoffs, I have a more pressing concern on my mind. In my understanding of the pass interference rules, a defender cannot cover a pass receiver by standing in his face and raising his arms. That seems to me to be the very definition of face guarding.

And yet that is exactly how Jabari Greer covered Terrell Owens in the end zone on the attempted two point conversion which would have tied the game. Of somewhat less importance, that two point conversion would have clinched the victory in my fantasy game this week. It also would have given Buffalo a chance to win their first home Monday Night Football game in 13 years.

Of course if Tony Romo had taken care of the football just once and spared me an interception or the fumble, I would have won and that two point conversion wouldn't have mattered for fantasy purposes. I would still be bent about it, as anything that adversely impacts Terrell Owens is anathema in Cincinnati Kid land. And no matter what happens, next Sunday when the Patriots go down to Dallas, Randy Moss will still be the second best #81 on the field. But I'll explain why I feel Dallas will win this game as the week progresses.

Before I leave aside the NFL for the week, I have two things to say. First, I jinxed Romo and Owens by taunting a close friend whose fantasy game had already been decided by 0.1 points in his opponent's favor. And finally, hopefully this kid Foulk nailing the 53 yard field goal even after that late timeout trick invented by Shanahan earlier this season wiped what we thought was the game winner off the bear will end the trend and the debate.

Other people will be more interested in whether, or perhaps when, Joe Torre posts his resume on Monster.com in the next few days. I felt it was time for a change last season after they got crushed by the Tigers. I just got the feeling as I watched him in the last couple of seasons that he looked tired. That he was managing this team as though it were 1998, and the last six or seven seasons hadn't happened.

The Yankees have an interesting blend of old players and prospects like Hughes, Cabrera and Chamberlain coming on strong. It just might be time for a change, not because Torre is a bad guy, not by a long shot, nor a bad manager. But he's been in one place so long, how could things not stagnate after so long.

Torre has had great success. Even though the Sox are still alive, and he's on his way out the door, it will be a very, very, very long time before any two Red Sox managers match that level of success for that long. It might even require a miracle with this ownership group in place. Hell, one could win 5 straight World Series in Boston and still get fired for wearing his shoes in the cabin of John Henry's yacht or failing to genuflect when the RemDawg walks in the door.

But what am I to do going forward? I don't really want to see these Indians win the title, but for the next few days, I'll root harder for the Indians than I feel comfortable doing. Because anything is better than a Red Sox win. As my friend the Cubs fan said while this nightmare unfolded in the Bronx: "It looks like we're Rockies fans now."

I don't want to see the Dbacks win. Maybe it's a lingering aftertaste from the 2001 World Series. Maybe it's their terrible uniforms. Maybe it's because the last thing a real fan wants to see is the half-assed media circus that would surround the meeting of JD and Stephen Drew should the Sox and Diamondbacks play a World Series. I imagine Joe Buck and Tim McCarver could beat that to death before the first pitch would be thrown.

I'm intrigued at the prospect of who replaces Joe Torre, and I'll be posting on it in some detail in the not too distant future, even if it is after Steinbrenner makes his decision. I'm just too tired tonight. I will sign off with this thought: God help us all should the Pats, Celtics and Red Sox win it all this year. With so many miserable bastards involved in pulling the strings of these ghastly marionettes, this level of success cannot be healthy for the Republic.

Today started off with two unpleasant surprises. First, I opened the Globe to the Sports section and almost choked on my damn cereal. The Boston Celtics are trying to lure Reggie Miller out of retirement. I understand that the youth movement of the last two seasons has left a bad taste in the region's collective mouth. But skewing ancient isn't the right answer.

In Pulp Fiction, Marsellus Wallace reminds Butch the boxer that people who think they age like wine are gravely mistaken. Unless, of course, by that those people mean that they spoil and turn to vinegar. Reggie Miller is looking much more like vinegar than Dom Perignon at this point. And throwing him out in a crunch time lineup with 2 other defensive liabilities (it's kind of hard to be a defensive stopper at that age) and Rajon Rondo doesn't seem like a nice thing to do to Kevin Garnett.

I know the plan is not to have Miller playing 35-40 minutes a night, but something more like 15-20. Nevertheless, it's still like relying on that little donut spare tire to take you out on the interstate. He's 42. He's not playing 20 minutes a night for 82 games, let alone the playoff run we are told to expect from this bunch. That little spare tire will get you to the gas station in one piece, but when you put all your hopes into a two year window and a 42 year old jump shooter is the missing piece... well that's just depressing. Depressing enough to make me mix metaphors as though I were the CHB.

Speaking of every body's favorite newsman who bears an unnatural resemblance to Dr. Who, he made a funny today. That's how bad this panic move to lure Reggie Miller out of retirement is. Even the CHB can crack a joke about it and have said joke be moderately amusing. Shaughnessy asked: "Why not just see if Cooz wants to lace 'em up one more time?" That's not half-bad. Hell, for the CHB that's pure comic gold. And that was the second unpleasant surprise of the morning.

My final unpleasant surprise came this evening watching the first preseason game on FOX. Troy Aikman cautioned fans not to expect DeMarcus Ware to put up numbers reminescent of Shawne Merriman's 17 sacks from last year under new coach (and former Charger defensive coordinator) Wade Phillips. There I was anticipating that exact type of performance. And even if Ware should get 17 sacks, they shouldn't be measured against Merriman's uncanny performance from last year as Ware will (I hope) play all 16 games this year. And before I move on, let's not forget the little problem of Merriman's 4 game suspension for the use of illicit performance enhancing drugs. But good work on the call, Troy.

And before I sign off, as tomorrow is Friday, and I've really been trying not to post after I've had a few, I've been doing some thinking about my proposed candidacy for the Presidency of Red Sox Nation. I think part of my problem in the initial phase of my campaign has been a lack of statements to clarify my positions on issues which must be addressed.

I propose that a more dignified song be found to celebrate (or in my case, grieve) should the Red Sox continue their disgusting habit of winning home games. "Love that Dirty Water" is beat (from an aesthetic standpoint), it glorifies a shameful lack of respect for our regional waterways on the part of our ancestors and it is no longer the case. In fact, Boston Harbor is now so clean that the EPA and state officials have finally gotten around to banning boats from dumping sewage within three miles of the Harbor.

Look at the Red Sox chief rival. The Yankees feature "New York, New York" by Frank Sinatra. Granted Frank Sinatra doesn't enjoy the stellar reputation among music lovers that has made the Standells the darling of the nation these many years, but he's still somewhat recognizable. Good grief. Sinatra has a song book; the Standells have spark notes. Surely there must be some artist with some song that has roots in the community and just a bit more dignity. I'm not looking for Rachmaninoff, here. Just something that isn't a one hit wonder with a lame hook that has somehow dug into the collective psyche of morons in New England like a tick.

I would also do away with the 8th inning tradition of singing along to Sweet Caroline, which is another beat song. If you really want to listen to it, I have it on Coco Crisp's authority that New England's official Sweet Caroline Station is WROR (105.7 for those of you wishing to tune in at home). Singing along to Sweet Caroline, especially with the slight adaptions inserted by Red Sox fans at Fenway is no better than bringing a glove to the game if you're a grown man or doing the damn wave.

I am also not a huge fan of the pink shirts. I realize that a small portion of the proceeds goes to benefit breast cancer research. But let me let you in on a little secret... you can donate money to breast cancer research without buying a Red Sox shirt. I know this. I know people who do it. You could even donate the money you spent on the shirt or the hat or whatever other pink souvenir you purchased directly to the good people doing the cancer research. Granted you wouldn't have the pink souvenir, but maybe the satisfaction of donating all of your money to cancer research and none of your money to the "John Henry's getting divorced, again" fund could keep you warm at night.

Today brought good news and bad news to the loyal subjects of Red Sox Nation. The good news - Wily Mo Pena cleared waivers so he can be traded up until August 31st. I didn't expect a donnybrook involving all the teams that surely want a player of his caliber, but a mild scuffle should have been in the works, right? Which brings us to the bad news - Wily Mo still sucks.

Of course, as a resident of New England, it is my solemn duty to gloss over his abysmal performance since he joined the Red Sox by attributing said sucking to his overall lack of playing time. The prevailing theory there is Wily Mo would suck less if he played more and got into a groove. Of course this leads to a chicken vs. egg debate with more rational people who attribute Wily Mo's lack of playing time to the fact that he has shown no capacity to justify more ABs or starts because he sucks.

The trade that brought Wily Mo to our little corner of paradise has inherent value for the Red Sox organization, even if the on-field performance has been atrocious. It got Bronson Arroyo out of town. First, Arroyo had to go because I couldn't help but think of the Simpsons' episode where Homer, Marge, Lisa and Maggie end up in Bronson, Missouri on their way to Branson. I just didn't need to visualize a town full of people saying things like: "No, palie, this is Bronson, Missouri" in a Charles Bronson voice every time he took the mound or played a gig.

But the main reason Arroyo had to go is that he didn't know his place. He dared to outshine Theo at the Foundation to Be Named Later's Hot Stove Cool Music Festival. Granted common sense and rational thinking were never chief among Arroyo's virtues, but if you're a no-talent fraud with musical pretensions, and your boss is also a no-talent fraud with musical pretensions, the smart play is to let the guy who signs the checks rock the house. But what do I know?

To be fair to Theo, at least he wasn't the guy who signed Scott Pollard. It's always good to have a backup center who managed to play in only 21 games last year and is know more for his idiosyncrasies than his on the court play. But on the plus side, the Celtics are now dangerously close to having the number of players under contract required by the NBA. So they have that going for them, which is nice.

I haven't posted much about it, but I find myself hooked on episodes of The Bronx is Burning. And I'm not very pleased with myself for it. The show is good, or at the very least it's better than most of the sorry drivel that is on TV these days. But it's main problem is that it tries to set the turbulent Yankees season against the backdrop of Son of Sam, the big blackout, the 1977 NYC mayoral election, the general decline of American society and the inevitable collapse of a Red Sox team lacking pitching and moral character. That's just too much for a one hour show on once a week.

It got me thinking, though, what would happen if some producer thirty years from now were to do a similar show about the 2007 Red Sox who seem poised to vomit up their lead in the AL East as their predecessors did back in '77. Will we be asked to look back and laugh as Tom Warner very nearly made the last mistake of his life when he dressed in the Wally Suit to pull a prank on Larry Lucchino? Will the silly little debate on whether Youkilis was in fact faster than Dustin Pedroia seem even sillier? Will we be expected to burn with righteous indignation that no action was taken against the Mariner Moose when he made his cowardly and dastardly attempt to injure Coco Crisp? Or will we merely think how did we not see it coming?

It was good that the Red Sox didn't have to play a game today. That way they had plenty of down time to wrestle with the fact that Scott Kazmir seems to be able to humiliate them at will. And they don't have to think too hard about the back-to-back home runs the invincible closer allowed to the lowly Devil Rays on Saturday.

It also enables me to talk about Danny Ainge and the no good, terrible, horrible, very bad trade rumors circulating about the Celtics. Perhaps some kind soul in contact with the brains that run Banner 17 can tell them they could save money by not even having a general manager. If Paul Pierce is running this team, why pay Ainge?

Admittedly, I don't think he should be paid a salary at all, based on his performance to date. But the Cs could cut some fat from the payroll at his expense, nevertheless. And it looks like they just might need that cash to pay Garnett, Pierce and Allen to play for the brand new contender in the Eastern Conference.

If this deal goes through, it will bother me on a number of levels. First, it will generate enough interest and ticket sales to preserve the current reign of terror for at least one more season. All the Whos here in Whoville will like Kevin Garnett a lot, at first. By the time the fans grasp the significance of this deal in the long term, he'll probably have moved on or retired. But the team will make some dough for a month, a year or two.

Another reason it will bother me is that the current management team will have changed horses in midstream once again. When they took over, the team was aging too fast, they said. Its window was closing, so they slammed it shut. So the team got younger and then younger and still younger. The losses mounted, but the region was told that this process takes time. But of course, the affront against the sport that was last season alerted the powers that be that the wheels had come of the youth movement.

So the natural move is to send all of your young players to teams in the Western Conference and import players of a certain age and experience. Because we all know that basketball players get better with age. Running up and down a wooden floor at top speed for 30-40 minutes a night strengthens joints, right? It doesn't wear on cartilage, ligaments and tendons, does it?

Sticking with Bird, McHale and Parrish for as long as the Cs did put the team in jail in the mid 90s. I know why they did it, and I stuck with the team because those three guys gave the team everything they had. Yeah, they won titles, but the Bird and McHale killed the last few productive seasons they may have had by playing hurt. Granted, Len Bias and Reggie Lewis dying tragically didn't help and the team should have drafted better players than Lohaus, Michael Smith and the rest but life is often cruel.

This time, the team went out and imported guys who may have a few good seasons left in them, but could also fall apart in an awful hurry. But this is smart basketball, right? It's not like Red Auerbach kept his teams going through blending young players in with his aging stars, right?

But this trade will really bother me because the Celtics have now reverted back to being essentially what they were when Ainge blew up the team in the first place. They have more star power, but they're older and probably (I don't have the time or desire to do the math myself, so if I'm wrong on this I'll apologize) even further over the cap than they were. Four years of this nonsense and we're back to square one.

With Allen, Garnett and Pierce, this team should contend in the East. It's not very likely that they could beat one of the better Western Conference teams in a seven game series, however. When Ainge made his moves to get rid of Walker, Delk and the rest, his rationale was that contending in the conference wasn't enough. The Celtics needed to contend for the NBA championship.

As you may have noticed, the Celtics have come no closer to contending for an NBA championship in the Ainge era than I have to travelling through time. But now that the team may have collected three stars who might be reaching the point of no return in their careers but have not managed to show any signs of pushing a team to the next level, every little thing will be just fine.

On the plus side, since this is the NBA, it's likely that this trade will help neither team in the long run. The Celitcs now have a 3 man rotation in a five man sport. Rondo doesn't look like he's the answer, unless the question is: "The Celtics gave up a pick that could have been Randy Foye or Brandon Roy to draft whom?" Kendrick Perkins could be this generation's Stanley Roberts only without the potential. But there's always Leon Powe. And I think Oliwikandi is still on the roster...

But the Timberwolves could get Al Jefferson at the absolute apex of his value. Too bad he's destined to be the best player on a bad team for the rest of his career. I suppose that there's a chance that he could progress into a 20 point a night guy since there's no one else to score in Minnesota now. But I just don't see him making that team anything but a blip on the radar in the West.

With any luck, Gerald Green will be gone as well. He can play above the rim, provided that he's in a dunk contest. Too bad that he's looking like the second coming of Kenny "Sky" Walker. If only he had more skills that translated into effective play on the court, maybe Cs fans would miss him. As for Sebastian Telfair, at least Fabulus can sleep nights knowing that Bassy's 1200 miles away now.

But Cs fans, take comfort in the fact that Tony Allen will be coming back. At least until the next time he gets fouled 25 feet from the basket.

I am not often given to quoting Scripture in this space, but tonight it seems appropriate. In Proverbs Chapter 11 Verse 29, there is an eloquent bit of advice from King Solomon, it reads: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind and the fool shall be the servant of the wise at heart." Unfortunately, Danny Ainge probably didn't read that particular passage before he dealt Antoine Walker to the Mavericks in 2003.

Tonight has just provided the culmination of the Boston Celtics inheriting the wind from that bad trade. I predicted (one of the very few instances where I have been correct) that the Celtics would lose out on the Oden-Durant sweepstakes. I didn't dare hope, however, that they would fall all the way to 5th in this year's draft. This team earned this karmic suplex by making bad choice after bad choice and then compounding the affront to good taste that was this season by tanking games down the stretch.

Why did Danny Ainge deserve a chance to derail the career of Greg Oden or Kevin Durant? Because he's honestly submitted his best effort at producing a winning team in his four seasons at the helm? Because he conducted himself as a model of professional decorum? Because the two best things about his reign are the creation of a cheerleading squad and unloading Raef LaFrentz? It never ceases to amaze me that this man is still employed. I could work 2 hours a week and do a better job than he's done. Hell, the monkeys at the zoo could do a better job and still have plenty of time to fling feces at one another.

Take a look at the Celtics trades under Ainge. This list of transactions made by the team since he took over basketball operations is an appalling roster of ill-conceived decisions. Since when has it been advisable to shuffle players in and out of an organization? And yet it's the Ainge MO. So the question lingers for Celtics fans: do you want Ainge to use the pick or trade it?

They traded the rights to Randy Foye to Portland for Sebastian Telfair and the carcase of Theo Ratliff (who earned $1 million for every four minutes of basketball he played this season), Foye went on to earn a place on the NBA All Rookie Team. Portland turned around and traded Foye for the rights to Brandon Roy who won the Rookie of the Year award. Telfair is going to be cut from the team because his play was sub-par and his off-court behavior unacceptable. So that's what Ainge can do with a draft pick when it comes time to trade.

Among the veterans he has managed to acquire include Ratliff, Chris Mills and Raef LaFrentz. Ainge has managed to come out on the winning end of a trade once, when Gary Payton refused to report to Atlanta after the Cs traded him for Antoine Walker. When the Hawks cut Payton, he returned to the Celtics. So does that inspire confidence that the Celtics could somehow trade a pick that will not become Oden or Durant in a package with Pierce or one of their young players for Garnett or Gasol or Jermaine O'Neal or some mystery player who might not suck as a Celtic?

I have found myself wondering lately whether Ainge's determination to get into one-sided trades which have benefited the Trail Blazers at the expense of the Celtics have some connection to the shameful manner in which he stabbed the Blazers in the back in 1992. In case you have forgotten the story, Ainge (an Oregon native, by the way) was on the Blazers as the 1991-92 season ended and was due to be a free agent.

He promised the team and the fans he wanted to stay and would contact the team to make the necessary arrangements. And then, all of a sudden, on the very first day of the signing period, Ainge came to terms with the Phoenix Suns. I am all for clearing one's conscience and atoning for past transgressions, but I must say I hate to see the Boston Celtics serve as a vehicle to help their GM help a team he shafted 15 years ago.

Then there is the fact that some player from the Roy Hibbert, Joakim Noah, Al Horford, Brandan Wright, Corey Brewer or Yi Jianlian mix will be available in the fifth spot. I have heard as many times as you have that this is a ridiculously deep draft. Maybe I'm stubborn (I'm not alone, my man in Maine emailed me tonight to complain that this draft isn't what it's been billed to be), but I'm not convinced.

Roy Hibbert is a project. He may be great, and for the sake of the league he'd better be great. Greg Oden needs a rival like I need to marry a beautiful heiress. But Hibbert's not going to come in right away and dominate. Frankly, I'm barely willing to believe that he can come in and contribute. Think Emeka Okafor with a steeper learning curve, and I think you'll have a good picture of what Hibbert's future is going to be for two, maybe three years.

I have expressed my distaste for Joakim Noah's ability to play in the NBA a number of times in this space. He's not big enough to play NBA big men. He's not quick enough to hang with a Nowitzki or a Bargniani. He's nowhere near polished enough to score from the perimeter, and he handles the rock like a wildebeast calf on ice. Joakim Noah will be the death (certainly from a career stand point, and maybe literally also) of an NBA GM. I don't want it to be Ainge, though, as the Cs would be stuck with Noah, or Acie Earl with less marketability and talent.

Horford is probably the best of this sorry lot, provided you want a player to come in and help a team win games in the near term (of course one wonders whether NBA teams really want to win based on their personnel choices). The problem here is that he seems to be a more athletic version of Al Jefferson. Al has impressed a lot of Cs fans and the reporters who cover the team, but I still believe he's at his ceiling right now. Adding another power forward named Al won't help him. Plus, as much as I like his game, I don't think he's worth half of what the number five pick in this draft will earn.

Brandan Wright is a great unknown. He has all the potential any basketball fan could dream of, but he isn't seasoned enough to be the face of a franchise. To my way of thinking that's what the Cs need more than anything right now. They have too many young players with potential trying to develop into solid pros as it is, one more guy like this isn't going to help the team, especially when they're in salary cap hell and there aren't enough minutes and shots to go around.

I don't know enough about Yi Jianlian to offer any kind of assessment of his game. Beyond hearing that he's a Chinese Dirk Nowitzki on Outside the Lines the other day, I know nothing about him. I can spell his name only because I have today's Globe sitting on the desk in front of me. I do know that Yao Ming is monstrously overrated. He's an adequate big man benefiting from the total lack of centers in today's NBA. He ought to be able to score 30 points a night when he's 7 inches taller than 95% of the guys trying to cover him. So I would be inclined to stay away from another Chinese player, considering how much money goes to a #5 pick.

Corey Brewer captured the attention of fans across the country with his defensive play in this year's NCAA tournament (and last year too, but I try not to face the fact that Florida won two consecutive championships). This instantly makes him the most NBA ready guard of his generation. It's a little knows fact, but if you can handle Aaron Afflalo and Mike Conley Jr., then you can shut down any player on any team at any time. I bet you Iverson is soiling his drawers at the prospect of facing Brewer as we speak. Give me a break, he's not ready for prime time. At least not for $50 million.

And that is why I am so happy tonight. The lottery was Danny Ainge's last shot at keeping his job beyond this season. He can't keep getting chances to ruin what little future this franchise has. Maybe Jefferson, West, Rondo, Perkins, Powe, Gomes and the rest are better than I think. Maybe they're a lot better. But with the group of them competing for minutes, touches and shots there is no way that this group of players can form a team. They need leadership, and the team has no pieces to trade to get value in return.

This situation is so very perfect for Ainge. He traded Walker and then gradually had to punt away the magic beans he got in return. And even better, he acquired Telfair in his scramble to get out from under that Walker trade and that blew up in his face. He traded for Ricky Davis only to give up on him a little over a year later. In short, he created a hell of a lot of trouble in his own house and he just inherited the wind losing this lottery.

And if you aren't miserable enough, Celtics fans, just think... Portland got Brandon Roy thanks to the Cs terrible draft day trade last year. Now they have the inside track on Oden even though they had a 5.3% chance to win the lottery. At least the Cs threw one hell of a lottery party at Clery's on Dartmouth Street. I couldn't quite make it, I still remember a time when the Celtics didn't throw parties for anything short of a title.