Before I get around to the Celtics Lakers series and its game 1, there are a few things I need to mention. I realize that I wouldn't have to cram so much random stuff into these posts if I weren't living with a weird psychosis that makes me lazy and violently opinionated at the same time. But we all have our crosses to bear...

We have a tool of note to discuss and an honorable mention award in the same category. First, the honorable mention goes to a Swedish couple who have been blocked from naming their daughter Elvis by the Swedish government. The government's rationale is that Elvis is a male name while the parents contend that Elvis is a gender neutral name.

Leaving aside the notion that Sweden is ludicrously overregulated by an underintelligent government (which I do, in general believe), I think the Swedish government is right for a change here. How is Elvis a gender neutral name? Can you show me one female Elvis in the world (who isn't a lesbian Elvis impersonator)? If Elvis is gender neutral, why is Elvira a name??? Only a tool would name a girl Elvis, and you must be a pretty damn big tool to have the Swedish government interfere in your toolery.

But the tool of note is Oprah. I hate Oprah, but I generally leave her alone in this space because her minions are so obviously brain dead that they are beyond reclamation like those people in Guyana who drank Jim Jones Kool Aid. Ironically, I still attempt from time to time to redeem Red Sox fans who are equally brain dead and brainwashed by the image Red Sox Nation projects to the world, but as bad as the Red Sox are they don't moralize and whine as Oprah does.

Oprah, in case you didn't know (because it was one of those water is wet type of well kept secrets), is on a vegan quest to purge toxins from her body. And that's all well and good for her. It's none of my business, or at least it was. Once Oprah started shooting her mouth off about the billions of animals that die in the name of human gluttony and how that makes her ever so sad, that's when it becomes my business.

Millions of Americans who work hard, pay taxes, live from paycheck to paycheck and hope to God they make it out of this recession without losing everything they own eat meat. They can't afford personal chefs and fad diets and spa treatments. Consider how much Oprah spends on herself (and I don't consider those carnival barker-esque "giveaways" she does on air to be charity) and then consider the balls it takes to tell hardworking people who might lose their homes any day now that they're gluttons for eating meat or chicken.

What a tool. Where does she get off with this crap? I have a friend in the genetics racket at a well respected local university. His response was that if these animals didn't want to be eaten, they should have evolved to be less tasty. There is nothing wrong with eating animals. And every time I read a story like this, I wish I had the time to personally strangle every animal who finds its way to my plate. I'm not a cruel man, but I do get my Irish up whenever people preach at me or try to guilt me into taking their view of things.

And it sure would be a grand shame if Oprah were to die of natural causes. By the by, aren't we supposed to be sending the message to young girls and women that a person ought to feel comfortable with his/her own body and not take risks like this extended vegan fast of Oprah's? But God forbid anyone question whether Oprah's impact on the world is anything less than 100% positive. After all, it's not as though she doth bestride our narrow world like a colossus...or is it?

In other news, the Eighth Amendment is reeling yet again. The d bags who trashed the Robert Frost Museum have been sentenced to mandatory poetry classes. If being forced to study the poetry of Robert Frost isn't cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is. First, Robert Frost is massively overrated. Second, they should have put the kids to work in economically blighted areas bringing help to the destitute for about 8 months. That would teach them a good lesson about trashing landmarks, being d bags and associating with Middlebury people in general.

And I feel I must respond to the Kobra Kommander, who felt that my characterization of opera buffs as pretentious show-offs was excessive. I have recently had a change of heart on opera. I spent the 16 hours or so it took to listen (and I mean really listen, like to the point where you can actually see the music as its played) to the score of Wagner's Der Wasteoftime. And it spoke to me in ways I've never been spoken to before. Or in actuality, opera still sucks and ought to be banned for the good of the Republic.

And amid all that, a basketball game managed to be played. Obviously, I am not happy that the Celtics won. But this is a long series and there will be many more chances for the Cs to choke. Plus, I just can't get all that psyched about rooting for the Lakers against the Celtics. I was a fan for a long time, too long to forget certain old habits easily. And on top of everything, the Red Sox retook the AL East lead this week. June is going to be a depressing month, I get the feeling. But at least the weather's good, right...

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.

Since I was so miserable and depressing yesterday, I thought I'd share something that I like with the three of you who read this blog. Even though I've been a huge Elvis fan for as long as I can remember, there are still some songs out there that I've never heard. Recently, I happened to check out the five disc box set Walk A Mile In My Shoes, The Essential 70s Masters.

A lot of people who claim to be Elvis fans are down on this period in his career. I, for my part, think that he recorded some of his most mature music in this period. These songs might not have climbed the charts the way his more renowned material of the 50s and 60s did, but that's really not his fault. I think people get too hung up on the jump suits, the concert act and the odd behavior he exhibited during the seventies and don't approach the music with an open mind.

I said all that to say this, I think I may have a new favorite Elvis song. It's called Twenty Days and Twenty Nights. He recorded it in June of 1970, and it can be found on disc 3 of the Walk a Mile in My Shoes collection. I was just amazed at the courage it took for the writers to pen the song and a singer of Elvis' eminence to record it when it starts off to tell the story of a guy who ran out on his home and left his wife with a stack of unpaid bills.

Obviously, that's a rotten trick to pull on one's wife, and it doesn't take courage to do it, quite the opposite as a matter of fact. But it takes courage to come out and admit it in the first two lines of a song, when you consider that it's going to alienate the entire listening audience. And I think that, more than anything, is why I really like the music at the end of Elvis's career more than I like a lot of his big hits.

Elvis in the Seventies had the guts to record songs that might not win over a big audience. He was even willing to record songs that caused him a lot of pain, but he didn't wear it on his sleeve the way emo tools do. He was willing to dig deep to find the part of the song that spoke to a part of himself and didn't really give a damn whether people bought it, got it, liked it or cared as long as it mattered to him. And I admire that.

Here's a pretty good version of the song Twenty Days and Twenty Nights available on YouTube. Check it out:



It almost makes up for the local library owning four hardbound copies of the Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, but nary a copy of Trainspotting. I found that out because the authors are next to one another alphabetically, and I've been trying to read the books that movies I've really liked are based on of late. I highly recommend both the book and the movie version of The Commitments, in case you care. And don't worry, I have neither read nor watched any version of the damn Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, thank God.

So, it is January 8, a day of great historical significance in American. True, Elvis was born on this date in 1935, but while I love his music, I harbor no illusions as to the overall importance of a music mega star in the grand scheme of things in American history. With or without Elvis, we'd probably stand in about the same spot historically, I think, at this moment.

I do have some grievances to air with other so-called Elvis fans. There's been a lot of talk going around claiming that Viva Las Vegas is both the best Elvis film and an underrated song. Neither of those statements is accurate. Viva Las Vegas is a beat movie, it's very much like Speedway, but with a prettier co-star and a slightly less ludicrous premise.

I don't see how one could claim that the song is underrated. It is one of the most recognizable Elvis songs, more so even than #1 hits like His Latest Flame, Devil in Disguise, Don't and Fool Such As I among others. If you want to listen to an Elvis song that is genuinely underrated, I would suggest Elvis' versions of Gentle on My Mind, Memphis Tennessee or Snowbird (which are all covers of songs by other artists, but still excellent efforts and better than Viva Las Vegas). Or maybe you could really reach and get I've Lost You or It's Over (not a cover, but it does share the title with that great Roy Orbison song) or The Girl I Never Loved from Clambake, which was a terrible film with two underrated songs on its soundtrack. I could go on all night...

As for Elvis' best film, it's hard to choose one since his films were, in the main, terrible. They're light, frivolous, intellectually dangerous (as the insipid, treacly premises may in fact kill brain cells) and a disgusting waste of the poor man's talent. But I think Jailhouse Rock stands out from the crowd. In fact, I think it's a good film. Each time I watch it, I find myself thinking that if he'd been given different sorts of scripts and overseen by a manager who cared more about the talent than the bottom line, Elvis might have actually been able to act. But that's just me.

The real reason January 8th is important occurred all the way back in 1815. Andrew Jackson stopped a numerically superior force of British regulars led by the Duke of Wellington's brother-in-law at the Battle of New Orleans. Most Americans tend to overlook this battle because it took place after the Treaty of Ghent, which officially concluded the War of 1812, was signed.

It is true that the terms of the treaty called for the United States and the British Empire in North America to restore any territory conquered in the war to its previous owner. That said, if the British, who were still in their expansionist mode, found themselves in possession of a city at the mouth of the Mississippi River after the war, would they really have simply given it back? Or if they were willing to return it, would they have done so for free?

Losing New Orleans would have been a major blow to the American ability to hold the lands of the Louisiana Purchase. Losing control of the mouth of the Mississippi would also have made the westward expansion of the United States a much more difficult task. Now maybe that might have been a good thing from an environmental and human rights perspective, but we probably wouldn't be in a position to debate those merits had Jackson lost.

So we should still mark January 8 on the calendar for that reason, if nothing else. But enough of the history lesson. This is after all a sports blog. And the first battle line of 2008 was drawn between Sedition in Red Sox Nation and Red Sox Nation over the potential election of Jim Rice to the Hall of Fame. And for a change, Sedition in Red Sox Nation prevailed. Jim Rice won't be going into Cooperstown with a mandate. If he gets in, it will be through the charity of the Veteran's Committee. And I can live with that.

I have covered my objections to Jim Rice's induction to the Hall of Fame at length in previous posts, I won't do it again. I will say this, though. It is a victory for common sense that a man will not enter the Hall of Fame with his strongest credential being the fact that baseball people from his era remember him as the most feared hitter. As long as we have more objective criteria and fewer subjective criteria, it's a good thing.

Unless, of course, you happen to be Dan Shaughnessy and feel compelled to punish the world with prolix prose because you happened to have been born without talent, wit or charm. The CHB couldn't resist wrapping the Rice defeat up with the swirling Clemens saga. I wonder whether Clemens and his attorneys just might look up Shaughnessy should he be vindicated in court or in Congress.

Among the many questions I have on reading that piece, I guess I'd start with this: if virtually every player who played in the Rice era feels that he belongs in the Hall of Fame, where is the outrage? Hell, where is the second guy available for a quote after the shameless mouthpiece of Red Sox Nation, Jerry Remy?

And again, on the Clemens side of the argument: how can you justify not voting for Clemens if he is cleared in court or in Congress? If he is not proven under due process to have cheated, it's not the same as Pete Rose who pled guilty to gambling, then finally fully confessed to betting on baseball years later. Clemens deserves to be in the Hall on the strength of his 213 wins and 4 Cy Youngs before Brian McNamee alleges he injected Clemens with anything. A responsible journalist might feel compelled to shoe-horn that in to a column.

Today marks the twenty seventh anniversary of the day Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon in New York City. For many people, this is a sad occasion. As a sign of what some take as his last gasp of cultural relevance, Howard Cosel interrupted the Monday Night Football telecast to tell the world that sad news. I was just over a year old at the time. And believe it or not, I care less about the life, the times and the tragic death of John Lennon now than I did then.

I have mentioned in this space that I hate the Beatles. So today, in honor of John Lennon's death, I am bringing back my personal favorite feature of this blog, the Random Thing I Hate. I hate the Beatles. I do not hate the Beatles more today than I do on any other day, but it's about time I blogged about it at length. I don't know that I can explain why I hate the Beatles. I just do.

I guess unlike a lot of people, I have no problem admitting that I react to music on a visceral, emotional level. There is very little rational or intellectual thought involved. I like what I like, and have little time for the rest. I can tell you some of the things I don't like about the Beatles, and maybe why I don't like those aspects but I don't think they will add up to a coherent explanation of my overall hatred of the Beatles.

The Beatles burst on the scene singing mushy, trite love songs about holding hands and loving till the end of time (a paraphrase and a Bowdlerization of a line from the film The Commitments). Then all of a sudden, they got into drugs and somehow became a force for positive change in the world. At least that's what I've been told. I don't necessarily buy it.

Then again, I'm the sort of guy that gets mad when I hear or see the History Channel ads for the new show they're running to explore the tumultuous year that was 1968to commemorate its 40th anniversary. According to the History Channel, 1968 was the most explosive year in American History. Somehow, I find that hard to believe when you think about things like the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Or the election of Abraham Lincoln and South Carolina forces shelling the Federal troops at Fort Sumter in 1860. But that's just me.

I suppose, in part, my hate for the Beatles is tied to my lack of respect for the historical import of the 1960s. Outside of the effects of the Civil Rights Movement and equal pay for equal work, there is very, very, very little evidence that the world is a better place now than it was in the 1950s and 1960s. Everything that the hippies, the counter culture and the optimists of that era thought was subverting the Establishment is now a wholly owned and marketed subsidiary of the Establishment.

For instance, there is no way that anything that is legitimately controversial can get air time the way a show like All in the Family did in the early 1970s. But if it's controversial for the sake of creating meaningless controversy over whether or not one can say dirty words like Howard Stern, or arguing the same fringe aspects of major issues without tackling the issues themselves like the ten thousand talk shows on the ten thousand cable news networks, then it's a big hit.

There are certain companies that market themselves as the sort of ironic Fortune 500 companies. On the inside, but still trendy and current and subversive. Like Starbucks. Or Apple. And I hate that. It makes me sick to my stomach that people think they can buy a prepackaged, mass produced product and have it lend them an air of individuality and rebellion.

I'm not saying that this is the Beatles fault. What I am saying is that people point to the counter culture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s as though it accomplished something, and the fact is that it did not. And whether I am overstating this case or not, I still believe that the Beatles are the most visible and esteemed icon of the counter culture of the late 1960s.

The Beatles came out with a lot of songs with hollow rhetoric about lonely old women and drugged out tools in skies with diamonds and living in yellow submarines. Perhaps they had some tangible accomplishments in there that I somehow missed. Are hungry people all over the world less hungry because the Beatles recorded Abby Road? Are the lonely people less lonely than they were before Elanor Rigby?

Perhaps the Beatles had a role in making Western society a less repressive, patriarchal, hierarchical endeavor than it was. Was that a good thing? Are the streets safer? Are we really freer, or more free or whatever grammatical impossibility best describes the logical impossibility contained therein. If we are more free as a society, it is in the nightmare scenario which prompted Orwell to include the line Freedom is Slavery in the credo of Oceana in 1984. People work longer hours for less and are, in general, less happy than they were in the old days. Maybe we were better off before the counter culture freed us from our social chains.

I am aware that it is not the responsibility of four tools from Liverpool with bad hairdos to solve all the world's problems. Nor is (or was since there are now 1/2 as many of them as there were in the beginning) it possible. But people seem to want to look back and perhaps tell themselves that the Beatles song Back in the USSR caused glasnost and detente and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. But at least people look at Elvis as a quasi-saintlike figure purely as a performer and not as some bellwether figure of a cultural sea change that maybe shouldn't have happened in the first place.

The best thing about the Beatles is that this band that revolutionized music and changed the world in the process was not taken down by drugs or repressive society or some cabal led by Richard Nixon and everybody's least favorite transvestite, J Edgar Hoover. No, the Beatles were taken down by a marginally talented Japanese American conceptual artist of no artistic distinction and an uggo to boot. It might be tragic if it weren't so damn funny.

As for their efforts as solo artists, I think the fact that the first hit any of them had was a dreadful song about pagan gods says a lot. However, George Harrison is only number two of the Beatles I hate. Primarily he's on the list for that song and for playing at his ex-wife's wedding to a dude who slept with her while she was still married to George. I have to tell you, even if my wife left me for Eric Clapton, it would take some sort of miracle for me to go to the wedding, let alone participate in it in any capacity.

Paul McCartney is third on the list, even though he's a giant tool and an outspoken advocate for vegetarian lifestyles. Of the post-Beatle music I think his work with Wings and as a solo artist is probably better than any of the others from an aesthetic standpoint. I like Band on the Run and Live and Let Die quite a bit. I am also inclined to sympathize with him as he is being taking to the cleaners by his estranged wife Heather Mills, who becomes more and more insane with each passing day. I'd hate him a lot less, however, had he not sold out and released his latest album on the Starbucks label.

Ring Starr isn't even on the list actually. I think between his looks and the fact that every one has shown him much less respect than any of the other Beatles for so long that he has reached critical mass in the tool category. So I don't hate him. I suppose it helps that I hate Octopus's Garden the least of all Beatles' songs (excluding covers). And his solo hit Photograph is far and away my favorite of any of their solo projects, even though Paul's body of work is better as a whole. I do realize that George Harrison helped write both songs mentioned above, but nobody's perfect.

There are very few people that I like less than John Lennon (obviously, monsters like Hitler, Stalin and Mao are in a whole other category). I have no time for songs like Imagine. Human nature has changed very little over the years. As the Billy Bob Thornton character in Bad Santa said before I censored it, wish in one hand then defecate in the other. Tell me which fills first.

I really want to know what John Lennon accomplished. Sure the Beatles songbook kept Michael Jackson in business in Neverland for a few years. But other than that, what? When John and Yoko famously took over the Mike Douglas show for a week and called random people to tell them they loved them, there was no tangible result. It was just a couple of oddballs, albeit famous oddballs acting oddly.

So John Lennon died twenty-seven years ago today. It's somewhat sad that a nut job shot him on the stairs of the Dakota apartment building. I just can't bring myself to consider it to have been any more tragic than the 34 or so other murders that surely happened on that day in New York City (God knows, it's like Detroit with a tourist industry there). The one thing that bothers me most about the Beatles is that their achievements outside the musical world are so massively overstated that it obscures the level to which their musical achievements are overrated.

It is a strange thing, for me, with my new found interest in Alice Cooper to rail at the Beatles this way. He's always talking about how big an influence they were on his early musical ventures. I just don't like the Beatles. I like them less with each passing day. And then again, Alice Cooper loves John Cougar Mellencamp, so there is clearly something wrong with him.

I also think the following bands are overrated: Aerosmith (massively, very nearly as big a blight on Boston as Red Sox Nation is), the Rolling Stones (although I do like their music a lot), Chicago (they suck), the Allman Brothers (whom I also like), Skynard (can't say too much about them, since I also fly a lot), Boston, KISS, Metallica and any number of others that I just don't have time to enumerate right now.

What a world we live in. Somehow, some way things have gotten to the point that it seems that the only person committed to defending the legacy of the King of Rock and Roll is a bitter, hostile guy with a pseudonymous blog primarily devoted to his one man crusade against the Boston Red Sox. Elvis passed away 30 years ago, but for some reason no one will let him rest in peace.

Tonight, ABC News devoted two hours of broadcast time in prime time to a special retrospective on Elvis and his concerts in Las Vegas between 1969 and his death. No stone was left unturned in searching for luminaries to contribute to this program. And we were given no choice but to appreciate the gravitas of the program when we saw that no less a light than Elizabeth Vargas appeared on screen to host it.

David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite could take lessons on how to handle serious and weighty material from Ms. Vargas. Perhaps I spend to much of my time avoiding news magazine shows and the evening news and perhaps I'm overreacting to this evening's terrible program, but Elizabeth Vargas is terrible. She seems like she's trying too hard. It's almost as if she's sending out a subconscious signal that she wants to be taken seriously but doesn't have enough confidence in how she does what she does.

I wish I could find the people who assembled tonight's cast of celebrities paying homage to Elvis. For instance, how exactly is Faith Hill singing a version of "That's Alright Mama" with the pronouns adapted to suit her gender a tribute to Elvis? Granted, it's better than having me croak out an off-key version of Elvis' cover of "Gentle on my Mind" (my personal favorite of his recordings). But who cares what Faith Hill thinks about Elvis, and is she really all that good a singer?

I had less of a problem with Miranda Lambert singing Jailhouse Rock. But that's because I hate the song. It's just a silly, trite number that smacks of the songs from his later films that were so universally reviled by fans, critics and even Eddie Murphy in Delirious. Plus it strikes me as a bit gay.

Maybe the songwriters were recalling a time in the 1880s when prisons like San Quentin were actually co-ed when they wrote this line: "Number 47 said to Number 3, you're the cutest little jailbird I ever did see, I sure would be delighted with your company, come on and do the jailhouse rock with me." It's possible, but I doubt it. Also, I'm not sure what they meant when they said the whole rhythm section was a purple gang. It was 10 years too soon to have been inspired by the Minnesota Vikings defense which also was a purple gang. Either way, I don't like the song, but I do think the film of the same name was far and away the best of his movies.

One edifying site was watching Paul McCartney strumming the actual bass used for the early recordings and concert tours when Elvis was starting out. I found it amusing because McCartney was wearing a gold band on the ring finger of his left hand. Maybe I'm a bit cruel, but I have hated the Beatles since I was a kid, so it brought a smile to my face. I have to tell you I might be heartless, but with that high profile divorce I got a chuckle out of that sight.

I also appreciated 50 Cent's appearance. He talked about a lot of the same things I mentioned in my post on the 30th anniversary of Elvis' passing. Where some critics rip Elvis for "raping" black music, 50 Cent said Elvis took what influenced him from black music and made it his own. That's what I said, Elvis made records like That's Alright and Hound Dog as a tribute to the artists who inspired him, not as a cold, calculating attempt to exploit African American culture for profit.

Nevertheless, at the end of the day, what shocked me the most about this evening's program was that Priscilla Presley (Elvis' ex-wife/widow, I'm not sure what one calls an ex when their former spouse predeceases her) was available for an extended commentary. I would have thought that she would have been busy with other projects. After all, it was a very near thing that she didn't receive more awards for her stellar acting in films like the Naked Gun, the Naked Gun 2 and 1/2 and the Naked Gun 33 and 1/3. Most actresses would kill for a resume like that.

Perhaps I am being too harsh in my criticism of Priscilla. She did a great thing when she prevented the Scientologists from getting their paws on Elvis' bequest to Lisa Marie when she joined their...religion. And I don't necessarily fault her for divorcing Elvis because it's none of my damn business and they led a strange, somewhat creepy life together. But she did bang Chuck Norris, and that's just wrong on 100 levels, mostly dealing with how much of a tool and how bad of an actor Chuck Norris is.

My real problem with Priscilla is probably not even her fault, since I don't know how Elvis' will left things. But I resent the level to which the family and now the corporation that controls Elvis Presley Enterprises has sunk to exploit his image. As if Elvis-shaped bottles of Jim Beam weren't bad enough, they had to let little E slather the King all over the stock car that couldn't even finish a race the other day.

I haven't watched any of the recent Elvis concerts where the digitally generated image of Elvis performs with what remains of his backing musicians, but I have a huge problem with them. This just doesn't seem right. Nor does it strike me as a means to introduce a new generation to Elvis' music.

As much as I hate them, I appreciate one thing about the Beatles. Half of them are now dead and gone, but they allow new fans to come to their music more organically than Elvis Presley Enterprises does. For whatever his other problems John Lennon had, at least his face isn't decorating the hood of some half-literate redneck's stock car.

I also resented the implications that ABC and the producers allowed to seep into their program. Vegas didn't save Elvis' career, nor did it kill him. It was just one more step in both processes. The show did discuss the 1968 Comeback special in passing, in part because it led to the second slate of Vegas appearances. I say the second slate because Elvis played Vegas in 1956 and bombed spectacularly, but ABC left that out of tonight's show.

Also, between the 1968 comeback special and the Vegas concerts, Elvis returned to Memphis and recorded some tracks that did a bit more to bring his career back than appearing in a jump suit in Vegas. Some of those tracks are among the best known in his songbook, like In the Ghetto and Suspicious Minds. The ABC show mentioned how the became staples of his Vegas shows, but seemed to imply that Vegas made them hits as opposed to the songs being hits and making the Vegas shows a success.

I suppose it would be too much to ask that a show about Elvis not dwell on his drug problem in some way. But we all know the stories about him staying up until 6 or 7 AM then taking sleeping pills to get to sleep only to wake up and pop uppers to do it all again. It doesn't get less depressing with each retelling, nor does it stop other people from doing things like that.

I know a guy who knows a guy who carries his prescribed uppers and downers to the golf course. If he's too energetic, he takes a downer to get him back to where he needs to be to play good golf. If the reverse is true, he takes an upper to get him amped. It's his life, he can do what he wants as long as he doesn't hurt anyone.

Who am I to talk? Isn't that what I do over the weekends when I drink beer until I can't blog coherently then spend the next morning drinking hot tea and eating greasy food to chase the cobwebs away? With beer it's a longer process than with the chemicals in uppers and downers, but it's not any healthier and not much better as a way to live. So can't we cut the guy a break and leave Elvis in peace?

And may God forgive them for wrapping the show with Celine Dion performing Can't Help Falling in Love. May God forgive them for having her perform it at all. I certainly won't. But God might.

Against all reason, the NFL has yet to put an end to the charade that is the 2007 regular season. Even after today's action which saw the New England Patriots win the single most impressive football game in recorded human history, the show apparently must go on. When you get right down to it, you know that if you can beat the Jets in the Meadowlands, you can beat any team anywhere at any time.

There are some misguided naysayers who might offer an alternative explanation for today's event. People might dare whisper that the Jets made the playoffs on the strength of a weak schedule and some lucky breaks. They might wonder whether those factors might have had enough of an impact to negate the dreadful play on words that makes up the nickname of the young Jets head coach. But who among them would dare show their face in the wake of that amazing win?

After all, there is no possible alternative but to assume that today's dominance was due solely to the excellence of the New England Patriots. Who could dare think that the Jets inability to rush the passer and even more pathetic secondary play could have been the result of a bad football team as opposed to an outstanding opponent?

I think the one moment that best encapsulates the state of the New York Jets this season came when the crowd cheered after Chad Pennington was hurt. Not only did it show the Jets fans as total dbags, but it showed that this team can't be all that good if Kellen Clemens is the savior waiting in the wings.

In his brief career, Kellen Clemens had thrown two passes prior to this season and managed exactly zero completions. To his credit, he did lead the league in TD passes this preseason. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but that just impresses the hell out of me. Isn't that why we remember Joe Montana all these years after he retired? For leading the league in TD passes in preseason after preseason?

Outside of New York, no one cares who accumulated what meaningless stats in which slate of meaningless games. If Kellen Clemens is the QB of the future and the future is now, then the 2007 season is already over for the New York Jets. If that is the case, then the blowout the Patriots laid on them this afternoon isn't as impressive as people seem to think.

As impressive as Randy Moss' day was, perhaps it might be wise to wait for him to play a team with a serviceable secondary before we pack his bags for Honolulu and the Pro Bowl. For instance, on his long TD catch can we fairly say that he beat triple coverage? Might we instead say that three Jets took up some space but didn't earn their game checks even though they must have enjoyed their front row seat for the play?

Of course, it is somewhat unfair for me to be so critical of the Jets secondary today. After all, the front seven would have been hard pressed to do less to help their defensive backs. They made the Patriots offensive line look like supermen with their lackluster pass rush. They almost got near Brady once. I think I remember that.

In all fairness, I am just a bit bitter because Brady's performance probably cost me the game in fantasy football. Of course the Kansas City Chiefs horrendous offense dragging Larry Johnson down as though they were a 10 man albatross and LJ were the Ancient Mariner had a fair bit to do with it. And Tony Romo (my QB) hurt more than he helped with his treasonous penchant for throwing to Jason Witten (my esteemed opponent's TE) instead of Terrell Owens (my WR) poured salt into the wound.

It hurts losing this game (which isn't technically over, but I need a huge second half out of Romo and TO and a near miraculous effort from Vernon Davis against Anquan Boldin) to have a chance. It hurts doubly because I'm losing to Mr. Bean's stunt double and a guy who played Eddie Kennison. I guess I'm just not as smart as I think I am, or a victim of bad luck.

But before I wrap this post up, I have a couple of other things to say about a couple of things. First, on the Auburn-South Florida game. I have to congratulate Auburn coach Tommy Tubberville for his amazing ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. After South Florida tied the game with about 45 seconds to go, and Auburn holding onto two timeouts, Coach Tubberville elected to play for the tie and overtime rather than risk a turnover playing for the win.

Even if Auburn had turned it over, South Florida was out of timeouts. Their kicker had just tied the game, but he'd also missed four kicks that day. But giving them an equal chance to win the game by eating the ball and going to overtime couldn't have been good for Auburn's confidence. I assume this knowing that South Florida went on to upset Auburn. The moral of the story - only a tool plays for a tie.

The only thing that keeps Tubberville from becoming a tool of note is that he wasn't the biggest tool in the stadium. I saw a guy rooting for South Florida while wearing a wrestling singlet, only this and nothing more. It got me thinking, is there ever an acceptable time to wear a wrestling singlet. And the answer is no.

It is never appropriate to wear a singlet. Not as a costume for Halloween. Not while watching a football game. Not in the privacy of one's own home. Not even while engaged in that least cool and most homoerotic of sports, Greco-Roman wrestling is it appropriate to wear a singlet. A man should never wear scanty, skin-tight garments. It's not a good look.

If you wear a singlet in public you ought to be arrested. Doubly so if you wear it to an event that isn't a wrestling competition. If you aren't arrested, then maybe you ought to do the rest of us a favor and refrain from passing your genes to the next generation. The only thing that keeps him from being the tool of note is that an odd combination of laziness and horror at the choice of attire prevents me from searching for a photo of that tool.

Among the other things that are bothering me from this weekend is the new Nike ad campaign. In particular, the commercial featuring Shawne Merriman and Stephen Jackson is antagonizing me. I don't know if you recognized the song when you heard it, but it is the Promontory Theme from the cinematic triumph, Last of the Mohicans. It's the song playing while Chingachkook, Uncas and Nathaniel chase down Magua and his warriors at the climax of the film.

If I were a better person, I'd admit that I'm just a bitter person who resents Shawne Merriman's new, edgy style of play. But I'm not, so I can say spiteful things. For instance, I'd have less of a problem with this if a needle injecting some illicit concoction of performance enhancing chemicals were photoshopped into the ad somewhere reminding us of Merriman's four game suspension last season. Or maybe it would bother me less if someone could prove that Chingachkook's triumph over Magua had been aided by some sort of banned substance.

But even more than the Patriots winning, the Bears losing and the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad use of that song from that scene, another event is bothering me. I don't know if you saw it, I didn't. I had to be told by a Patriots fan who wanted to rile me for failing to show the new look Pats the proper respect. Last night, while I was occupied watching real sports, NASCAR and Dale Jr. crossed a line I couldn't believe they would dare cross.

In his seemingly futile chase for the Chase for the Cup, Dale Jr. dared adorn the hood of his car with the image of Elvis Presley. The universe punished him for his insolence, and he didn't win the race. In fact, Little E didn't even finish the race. If winning mattered to him, and I'd bet it doesn't based on the frequency with which he wins, this truly would be a blow.

It is not fair to blame Dale Jr. for this without criticizing the corporate entity that controls Elvis' legacy. Shame on the functionaries at Elvis Presley Enterprises for whoring his image out to be painted on the hood of a race car. Do they not earn enough money profiteering from his life's work? If I thought I had the discipline not to violate it, I would call for a boycott on Elvis just as I did against John Cougar Mellencamp. But I won't be that sort of hypocrite.

Ladies and Gentlemen, August 16, 2007 marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. I do not mention it much in this blog, but I am a big Elvis fan. I might not be one of the people descending on Memphis for the festivities this week. I own very little Elvis memorabilia. I am very difficult to engage in a debate on Fat Elvis vs. Skinny Elvis. But nonetheless, I am an Elvis fan.

I love his music, especially songs that never topped the charts but still showcased his incredible talent. My favorite song of his is his version of Gentle On My Mind. I think the Memphis sessions from 1969 are one of the most underrated in Rock and Roll History. The same session produced In the Ghetto, Suspicious Minds, Don't Cry Daddy and a number of songs that you might have to get up at 8 on Sunday morning to hear on Oldies 103's Elvis Only hour like Long Black Limousine, True Love Travels on a Gravel Road, Only the Strong Survive, Gentle on my Mind, Inherit the Wind and more.

When people tell me that Elvis "raped" black music, it bothers me. Elvis didn't sit down and make a calculating decision to co-opt African American culture for profit. Instead, he found songs that spoke to him and recorded them in ways that made them his own. For every song like Hound Dog, which was a cover of an African American woman's original recording, there are any number of others like Don't Be Cruel, Love Me Tender, All Shook Up and a bunch of others that are far more heavily influenced by country music than anything from the African American tradition.

Believe it or not, when Elvis was serving with the Army in Germany, he wrote home to his people to have them write English lyrics to the Italian standard "O Sole Mio." They thought it was a bad idea, and tried to talk him out of it. They were not successful. The song, "It's Now or Never," went on to top the charts. But all he did was rape black music? If the same could be said of a Beatles' tune, it would probably be hailed as the greatest artistic achievement in music history and the thing that will eventually end the civilized world's war on poverty.

But that's one of the strange things about Elvis, and something that bothers me about a lot of fans and detractors alike. They don't really know Elvis; they know what they want to know about Elvis. It's nonsense like that that fuels the fat Elvis vs. skinny Elvis debate and comments like Elvis raped black music.

For instance, A Little Less Conversation was not a good song when it was released. It was a B side from an album that went nowhere. And it was a good thing that album went nowhere, as its failure helped trigger the 1968 comeback special. But because some tool threw a little club mix on it and the morons who run Nike's ad campaigns threw it into a commercial and all of a sudden it took off. The fact that the song's lyrics are childish and the singer himself never seems too impressed with the song can't possibly matter once a Fortune 500 company puts its imprimatur on it by throwing it into a 30 second designed to dupe fat people into buying running shoes, right?

But that gets me to tonight's point. What bothers me most as an Elvis fan is the manner in which those who have inherited his legacy have behaved. I don't mean a metaphorical legacy, but the tangible assets he left behind. I am continually scandalized by the lengths to which his survivors will go to profiteer from their connection with him. The tacky merchandise was one thing. I could stomach the remixes. But now they have gone too far.

If you haven't heard, Lisa Marie Presley has cut a duet with her deceased father's image. They will be singing In the Ghetto for the laudable end of raising funds for those residents of New Orleans who are still suffering from Hurricane Katrina. But at the end of the day, it would probably have been far better had Miss Presley simply written a check from the vast fortune she has accumulated from her father's estate over these last 30 years. Then the tragic victims of the storm could have been served without destroying one of her father's best records.

The first aesthetic problem is that this genre, if you will, of daughters singing with digitally regenerated fathers has been done to death. Natalie Cole sang with her father like 15 years ago now. I imagine it would be a very simple Google search to find out the exact figure, but strict accuracy isn't the point at the moment. Rosanne Cash sang a posthumous duet with her father Johnny Cash not too long ago. I don't recall hearing the world clamoring for a third run at the these roses.

But the major aesthetic problem is that Lisa Marie Presley is not good at anything. If she were, her albums would be played on the radio or purchased by customers and not used to shim unruly shelving displays at the local Best Buy. Her lack of musical ability has, in the main, been overshadowed by her uncanny knack for choosing the least suitable matches and then marrying them, like Nicolas Cage or Michael Jackson. That doesn't change the fact that she can't sing a lick. Do you know any one who owns one of her records?

I wonder now, whether any one will dare criticize this little venture as I have. Wrapping herself in the mantle of Katrina relief will make it difficult for people to criticize her. At least until the requisite 12 hours have passed. That's just enough time for VH1 to round up enough half-assed pseudo-celebrities to have their one millionth pop culture fest show.

Before I sign off, I feel compelled to mention one more thing. Tonight, I was driving in suburban Boston. And a guy walking his bike crossed the street as I was stopped at a stop sign. Over his shoulder, he carried a tote bag. And in his tote bag was a live chicken. It might have been a rooster, I don't know much about poultry, at least not until it gets to the meat counter at the supermarket, anyway. But he was crossing the street with a live chicken. In 2007. If that's not a bad omen for the week to come, I don't know what is.

So many of our old friends have been up to so much, it's hard to know where to begin. Daisuke Matsuzaka was trounced by the Indians and chased from the game in the 6th. Kobe Bryant has found himself sinking into a morass of his own creation in Los Angeles, but he's mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore. And to top it all, there is a rumor of a new football league in the developmental stage and the Benefactor is involved.

After so many wins, I am cautiously optimistic that the Red Sox are due to fall back to earth. With any luck, they'll go straight from dizzying height to terrifying low, bypassing the creamy middle. But for a change, I'm going to do my level best not to jinx this one. After all, Carl Pavano's to do list probably reads like this now: 1). have Tommy John Surgery. 2). track down and apply savage ass whooping to pseudonymous anti-Red Sox blogger who predicted 18 win season in 2007. 3). rehab from Tommy John Surgery. So no more on the Sox for the moment.

I really hate jumping on bandwagons at late stages, but I really do not like Kobe Bryant. For those of you who have been reading this space from jump street, you know that. You also know that I am a big Elvis fan. So when I heard the series of interviews with Stephen A Smith and Dan Patrick today, it reminded me of a relatively obscure country song Elvis released in the early 70s. The song's title is "It's Your Baby, You Rock It" and it includes the following line: "You made that bed you're sleepin' in and I'm tired of hearing about it friend."

Kobe really, really, really wanted Shaq out of LA. Since Bryant was the younger of the two superstars, management obliged him and sent the Big Aristotle to Miami. Shaq has gone on to win a championship with the Heat. Kobe has yet to carry the Lakers to the second round of the playoffs. And now Kobe says team management promised to build a title contender around him in the immediate future. Bryant's hurt, he's betrayed and they lied to him. And yet I am not in tears.

It seems incredibly unlikely, but I guess there is a remote possibility that Kobe Bryant doesn't know basketball. You'd think that he might, since he's played it since childhood, his father was a pro ball player and he chose it for his career. But that might not necessarily mean he knows the game. After all, if management told him they were looking to compete at the highest level in the wake of the Shaq deal, and he believed them, Kobe is either ignorant or full of something unpleasant, particularly in the heat of summer.

The Lakers traded Shaq for Carom Butler and Lamar Odom. Shaq, at that point in his career, was a veteran of 5 NBA Finals and a three time champion. Carom Butler and Lamar Odom may have won any number of titles playing NBA Live on X Box, but neither has played so much as a minute of basketball in the NBA Finals. Moreover, they're both power forwards. They play the same damn position. How could any one not see that as a bad deal for LA?

It is true that the Lakers parlayed Carom Butler into Kwame Brown, who was supposed to be the center of the future. At the time, in literary parlance, that was rather like the Ancient Mariner from the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner trading in the albatross around his neck that weighed him down for a large metal anchor. Since then, the trade has gone on to look much worse, as Butler made the Eastern Conference All Star team this season (yeah, the East kind of blows, but it is still an All Star team) and Kwame Brown is stuck in neutral. He might not be getting worse, but he surely isn't getting better either.

None of the Lakers other moves have panned out since they let Shaq go. Lately, the "brains" of their operation have been taking a lot of heat for failing to deal for Jason Kidd at the deadline. I don't see why. Can you honestly tell me that Kidd would have made the Lakers markedly better than any of the other seven teams that qualified for the playoffs in the West? I just don't think that would have been the case.

So I'm sick of Kobe whining. This was never about winning, this was about getting away from Shaq's shadow. Now Kobe has been jarred back into reality because everything that was his now belongs to LeBron and D Wade. Wade has a ring, and LeBron is fighting the Pistons to a standstill. They're younger and more dynamic than Kobe. Kobe needs to do something or he'll lose his league.

The trouble is, fans everywhere believe he forced management to sell Shaq for pennies on the dollar. Fans have been convinced after the scoring binges of the past two years that Kobe cares more about his numbers than his team. Kobe is in danger of becoming the answer to the trivia question: "Who scored the second most points in a single NBA game?" Would that he had chosen a more dignified route around his present course to oblivion.

Then there's the Benefactor. He's already on board with the proposed venture known as the UFL. Because the American landscape needed another professional football league. Because the USFL and the WFL and the XFL were all unqualified success stories. Because the NFL is much bigger, wealthier, more powerful and infinitely better prepared to adapt its product to the environment in which it exists than it was when the AFL challenged it in the 1960s. That's why the UFL is such a good idea.

What no one on the outside of the football business looking in on it's riches seems to understand is that the AFL succeeded for a reason. It wasn't because the upstart league was able to sign huge college stars like Namath or Mike Garrett, or develop guys like Len Dawson, Lance Alworth and so many others into household names. Those factors helped, but look at the USFL who went for broke luring Herschell Walker, Jim Kelley, Steve Young, Doug Flutie and others into their league and got pretty damn broke pretty damn quick.

The real reason no football league will ever compete against the NFL the way the AFL did is simple. Because there were no collective bargaining agreements, minimum salaries and pensions back in the 1950s and 1960s, there was room for a second league to come in and start a bidding war for the solid, dependable veterans that make up the guts of a professional football team. Now the NFL has all that infrastructure in place for all 32 of its teams.

Can you imagine how much capital would be necessary to start 8 new teams at once? Not to mention creating a league office to codify the rules, set up a draft, schedule all the games and make sure that each new team has a home city and a home stadium? And on top of those headaches deal with the fact that the 2,000 best football players in the world are currently under contract to NFL teams? Any one who thinks they can do that with 8 different billionaires who have no experience in football beyond watching a game or two here and there, no current common bonds and Mark Cuban involved is dreaming.

If this new league tries to get off the ground playing in the fall on Friday nights, they'll be destroyed. Maybe they'll get a few high profile college draft picks, some older stars looking for one last big score like an aging thief in a crime drama and some other assorted has-beens and never-will-bes. That might be enough to challenge for a Grey Cup or two, but not to take money out of Jerry Jones' pocket.

People don't often realize, since it takes a little more thought than the average tool is willing to put in to the sports he or she watches on the TV, but Namath made the guarantee and his teammates won the game. Randy Beverly and Johnny Sample were two former NFL defensive backs and they made huge plays in the Red Zone to stop big drives for the Colts. In the old days, guys like that were on the open market. It's just not the case any more.

And what is the Benefactor going to do? Spend like Dan Snyder? We've all seen where that has gotten the Redskins lately. I suppose I ought to shut my mouth. If he wants to waste his money on a colossal failure in the making, that's his business. And the sooner he gets back to his new favorite pastime of hiding and trembling lest David Stern smack him down again, the better for us all.

GREAT MOMENTS IN RED SOX HISTORY #5 - 4/16/07

Ladies and Gentlemen, I realize that it's been a long, long time since I last posted one of these Great Moments in Red Sox History. But there really wasn't a lot I could do with the events that unfolded at the end of last season. The moments were either too insignificant or too catastrophic for me to mock. But that all changed on Patriots Day.

For the past year, I have portrayed Red Sox fans as a tribe of slackjawed morons, hypocrites and tools. And two fans sitting in the grandstand on the left field foul line decided they had to live up to all of the negative characteristics of Red Sox fandom in one shining moment of childish behavior. I'm sure you've seen this highlight a thousand times by now, but it's still worth watching again and again and again and maybe a fourth time.



So here it is, the triumph of Red Sox fan sophistication with the added benefit of Jerry Remy's keen analytical mind. One grown man took issue with another grown man eating a full pizza at a baseball game. In a free country. So the other grown man looked deep within his soul and summoned up every ounce of maturity he possessed. He took that maturity compressed it into a ball of fury, waited until his adversary was distracted by a foul ball and the opposing left fielder and lobbed a slice of the aforementioned pizza at the back of his antagonist's head.

It was a proud moment for Red Sox Nation. I have seen monkeys at the zoo comport themselves with a higher standard of decorum than these men exhibited. Of course when the monkeys are riled up what they tend to throw is a bit more unpleasant than cold pizza, but on the whole they're still better behaved than their less advanced cousins at Fenway.

I wonder what business is it of any fan's if a paying customer wants to eat pizza at a game. When a person goes to a game he or she tends to overindulge in unhealthy food and adult beverages. If the unhealthy food of choice happens to be pizza as opposed to the more traditional hot dogs or peanuts, so what? It's the same problem I have with people who decide that they and they alone are the arbiter of what potable can and cannot be consumed with a given food.

If I order a steak at a restaurant and I choose to have a Miller High Life with it, it isn't because I'm blundering along in the metaphorical darkness just waiting for some superior being to enlighten me as though I were one of the damn apemen from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's because I like steak and I like High Life. I am what Charles Barkley would call a grown-ass man. I can make my own decisions. People should leave each other the hell alone, that way they wouldn't get a piece of pizza whipped off the back of their domes.

That said, people really hadn't ought to settle their differences by throwing pizza off the back of people's domes either. But what can you do if you happen to be a Red Sox fan and as such only discover your courage when an adversary is outnumbered or has his/her back turned?

To give credit where credit is due, I have to thank the man I go to for my Red Sox info and the man I go to for my Chicago (the sports scene, the city and the band of the same name) information, both of whom sent me the youtube clip first thing this morning. Keep up the good work.

And if that's not enough, Mitt Romney wants you to be his friend. On myspace, if not in real life. If only he'd explain what Elvis ever did to deserve such shabby treatment.

In my spare time, I've been looking around for a new tool of the week segment. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a tool who stood head and shoulders above the run of the mill tools that make up a good 3/4 of the American population. Since it's been well over a week without a tool, I'm giving up for the time being and renaming it the tool of interest segment, or maybe the tool of note segment. I have some time to decide, since I don't need to run one for a while.

To fill the tool void, one need go no further than boston.com, where one can discover strong evidence that the tools among us haven't gone to sleep just yet. There is, after all, Dan Shaughnessy and his never-ending stock of shallow premises, faithful obedience to John Henry and half-assed attempts to be hip.

I know I spend a lot of time attacking Dan Shaughnessy in this blog. To be fair, however, he is a terrible writer with no redeeming vices. He's lazy, opportunistic, a shameless puppet of Red Sox ownership and for some reason has been waging a one man war against Manny Ramirez for some time now. In case you're interested, a redeeming vice would be a good sense of humor, the knack for incorporating an interesting or relevant external reference into his work once in a while or evidence of some effort expended to earn his paycheck.

In this recent effort, he dragged down the 1960s band Procul Harum by dragging their song into this piece of sycophancy (not really a word in common use, but it should be) directed at John Henry. It might seem, for an instant, that the CHB isn't giving his real boss a back rub. But when you look at all his tough talk, it's directed at Henry's partner in his racing endeavor, Jack Roush.

A legitimate columnist would have devoted more than three sentences to the fact that the Red Sox have the highest ticket prices in the land. It's small matter that they could charge more. Just because you can do something, that isn't moral justification for it. But John Henry is one sharp cookie, he reads about commodities and investments at 4 AM. I bet Warren Buffett is cowering in terror in his Omaha empire, just waiting for the day that John Henry becomes America's most renowned investor.

One would think that his status as Henry's mouthpiece would make him less likely to wage a crusade against Manny Ramirez. But then one must remember that Henry's regime has been characterized by a number of hints and hopes that Manny would continue being Manny in some other uniform. Rumors of trades and demands for trades have been floated so often, one no longer pays them much attention. It does seem clear that this team has been trying to make Manny expendable. Why else did they bring in JD Drew?

Consider it for a moment. JD Drew has come to a team at great expense to play the outfield. The team already has Manny Ramirez, Coco Crisp and Wily Mo Pena manning the outfield positions. Depth is an excellent thing to have, but is it a commodity to be purchased at the rate of $70 million over the next five years. One thing is clear, the Red Sox could never dare move Manny without a big name to fill the hole in the lineup and in the fan's hearts.

The real problem with Manny as a baseball player and a man isn't that he's eccentric. Rather, it is that he hasn't shown the proper veneration for Dan Shaughnessy, baseball expert, genius, writer and man. Instead of genuflecting and kissing the CHB's ring as though he were the Pope, Manny hustled even less after the CHB upbraided him for not hustling enough. I'm sure legislators the world over will finally get off their asses and make that a capital crime any day now, but until them, maybe the CHB will learn how to live with disappointment.

This article is a representative sample of the campaign against Manny. It begs the question, what does Manny Ramirez owe to the team, the fans and the media? He is paid to hit, and he does. If he lives in his own world, but produces big offensive numbers he doesn't need to live the way the CHB thinks he ought to. Ironically, a Red Sox outfielder who produced fantastic numbers but enjoyed a stormy relationship with the Boston media was the subject of a vast number of puff pieces written by our fickle friend the CHB.

Manny Ramirez isn't Ted Williams. He's not the player Ted was, not the patriot that Ted was and not the philanthropist that Ted was. But he shows up and hits for power and average, and he drives in runs. Beyond that there is no obligation he must meet. The CHB conveniently mentions that the rest of the team is furious with Manny, but doesn't dare criticize him. Without a player on record, either the CHB is making it all up, or the team is full of gutless frauds. Either way works for me, since a team full of gutless frauds won't win it all and I hate the CHB.

It's amazing to me that he can criticize Manny for shutting it down early last season while signing the return of JD Drew with bated breath. Apparently, Red Sox Nation is dumb enough to believe that this leopard will change his spots. JD Drew is selfish, injury prone fraud and he'll be inserted in the line up on Opening Day. Just wait until Red Sox Nation wakes up to find out that it missed Trot Nixon when Drew plays 100 games and has an even more mysterious injury than the one that felled Manny late last season.

It is entirely possible that this was part of the deal to net Matsuzaka, as many have speculated. And we all know that Daisuke Matsuzaka has already been engraved on the CY Young Award for the American League for the next 12 years. So it's win-win, even if Drew flops in Boston, as illogical as that seems to the man who isn't enamored of the Red Sox. Even if Drew never gets a hit, the Red Sox win twice because Matsuzaka will be the greatest thing ever to come to America.

Perhaps the optimism that surrounds a pitcher that has yet to throw so much as a pitch in North American professional baseball is so shocking to me because I was born a pessimist. Or maybe my hatred of the Red Sox has clouded my capacity for rational thought. Or it's possible that I'm right. Who knows. All I know it that the CHB is own way probably jinxed Matsuzaka in a misguided effort to be cute and folksy by calling him "Elvis Matsuzaka."

And Shaughnessy had to go and ruin one of my predictions. He ran a deathwatch column on a Red Sox alumnus and it wasn't Carl Yastremski. In my post where I introduced the idea, I predicted it would be Carl Yastremski because the only other Red Sox alumnus I could think of who might reasonably stir enough fan interest to excuse the laziness on the part of the CHB was Johnny Pesky. And if it weren't for the pole in right field and the fact that he hangs around the team day in and day out, who would even know him?

Of course, if I even thought about him, I would have immediately gone with Dom DiMaggio. Not so much because he was a star (he was good in center field, but not great), but because of the massive celebrity of his brother Joe. Knowing the CHB and his vanilla writing style and complete lack of creativity, I should have seen this sentence coming:

There were nine kids in the home of the Sicilian immigrants at 2047 Taylor St. in the North Beach section of San Francisco. Dad Giuseppe was a fisherman, mom Rosalie a former schoolteacher, and three of the five boys would become major league baseball players -- one of them rising to the level of American icon, celebrated in literature by Ernest Hemingway and in song by Paul Simon.

Wow, how cool is that. Not only did he have an intern look into DiMaggio's vital records, but he listened to Mrs. Robinson and might have perused The Old Man and the Sea. God help us all.

Just so you know, there will be no links tonight because I'm feeling particularly lazy. But I have somethings to say. It's just another post with an ESPN theme. Obviously they spent a lot of time on the Daytona 500, today and the breaking story was the bizarre episode of All My Morons that has been the 2006 San Diego Chargers. There was the linebacker shot by an off-duty cop. There was the safety arrested by Federal authorities for allegedly selling codeine. Then there was the waiting until the offensive and defensive coordinators accepted head coaching positions with other teams. Now they hire Norv Turner, who was once chased from a blackjack table in Las Vegas by Bill Simmons and one of his super-cool friends.

But there was a substantial amount of coverage dedicated to the All Star Weekend. First, on Mike and Mike in the Morning, Greenie made the pronouncement that no one puts on a show like David Stern. Meanwhile, he admitted later that he gained a renewed appreciation for Bono as he watched Mary J. Blige flounder her way through the classic U2 song "One."

And then there was Wayne Newton. It took me 2 days to come to terms with his presence. He was terrible. Actually, he was far, far, far, far worse than terrible. First, as Mike Wilbon would say on PTI, he looked like he'd escaped from the wax museum. Whatever they did to lift his face and Botox away his wrinkles made him look like a 2 week old sandwich in Saran Wrap. And there was his "tan." I don't know how to describe it, save to say that it made him look like one of those oranges that have those rough brown patches that the growers call wind scars.

Then there was his hair. It looked like his hair had been dyed with the black paint they use to rustproof metal benches and chairs. I don't know that it can be fairly called hair, but it sits on his head and it's not a hat, so we'll call it hair. It looked to me as though some drunken hair restoration technician had sewn the hair on somewhat imperfectly.

And there was his singing. I don't know much about octaves and that sort of thing, but I know he was nowhere near the high notes that made up the falsetto that made the song unique in the first place. His version of Viva Las Vegas was an insult even to people who aren't Elvis fans (I, however am an Elvis fan). Basically he looked and sounded like a bad impersonator. I get the feeling that Englebert Humperdink sat up somewhere in Branson, Missouri or wherever old lounge singers go to die and called his agent wondering why he couldn't get a gig with the NBA.

Then there was the triumphant return of Around the Horn. Because the show had been bumped all last week for NASCAR Now, they hadn't had a chance to excoriate Tim Hardaway. Everybody's conscience, Jay Mariotti, was in top form. He commended David Stern for the swift and fair response in banishing the homophobe from All Star Weekend. The voice of the voiceless went on to lament that certain other commissioners (Bud Selig, by name) do not act with such probity.

It was truly inspired, or at least it was, before I translated it from Mariotti-speak into English. Basically, Jackass Jay said: "Whah, Whah! Big Bad Ozzie Guillen was mean to me, please fight my battles for me, Mr. Commissioner." I've had enough of Mariotti. He's a total tool. And of the off chance that one of his minions monitors my site, feel free to tell him this. Jay Mariotti is a middle aged guy just coming off an angioplasty. The actuarial tables are in my favor on this one. He's going to die before I do, and I'm going to find his grave and take a leak on it. A little harsh, and totally lacking in my customary good humor, but I am so sick of phony tough and crazy brave reporters.

Speaking of people monitoring my site, I've been setting traffic records lately. It got me thinking. For those of you who are new to this site, Catch 22 is one of my favorite books. In the novel, the protagonist was forced to censor letters written by enlisted prisoners while he stayed in the officer's ward at the military hospital. Since it was boring duty, he got creative and started censoring all the modifiers, then all the romance words, then everything but the salutation while he rewrote the letter's body and finally he censored the envelopes. When he censored the letters, he signed Washington Irving's name.

Once he censored the envelopes, the military bureaucracy sprang into action. The Army sent a man from the the Criminal Investigations Division to the hospital to catch Washington Irving. This triggered an entire series of misadventures which ended up with the first CID man getting sick. The Army then sent a second CID man. Eventually, the two CID men spent all their time investigating each other.

I went through that long aside to say something, believe it or not. The other day, I joked with one of my friends that my spike in traffic was due to a number of people monitoring me for Mariotti, the CHB, the Red Sox, the Pats, NASCAR, Ainge and the other targets of this blog. After keeping an eye in this site for a while, I imagined that they would eventually use this site as a means to monitor one another. It seemed like a funny image.

Can you picture it? Across the country, recent college graduates who always wanted to be athletes, but lacked the size, speed, strength, talent or any/all of them to make it became jock sniffs and gave up their dreams to enter the world of sports journalism. Now they sit in their cubicles, dividing their time between monitoring my site and mooning over the hot receptionist who is hopelessly out of their collective league. And I bet they're questioning their career choice as they try to remember whether Mr. Mariotti takes his coffee with cream and sugar and wonder if Jay will release his pent up aggressions on the lowly intern after Ozzie or Hawk Harrelson disses him again.

I must admit that there is something very unpleasant about having to eat my words. I don't enjoy the taste. The Bears let me down and the Colts were better than I thought. And I had to do it, why I don't know, but I ripped Bob Sanders to shreds the other day, and damned if the Bears didn't make him look like he was the evolutionary hybrid of the great defensive backs of the past that I sarcastically made him out to be. Good thing I didn't throw Night Train Lane in the mix, otherwise Sanders would likely have scored three TDs on his own.

But I promised my own version of the Paper Lace song The Night Chicago Died. I know I've promised them for a while now, but now I guess it's finally time to deliver. I must warn you, it's not very good and certainly uninspired. But you have to bear with me. Like Marvin the Paranoid Android, I'm feeling very depressed right now. So here goes:

Lovie was a coach on the north side of Chicago,
Went down to FLA, had a bad, bad day
In the rain on a Sunday night, in the southeast's crown jewel
The team from Chicago choked, and I looked like a fool
The night Chicago died.
When a man named Peyton Manning tried to make the trophy his own
And he called his fake audibles and some coverages were blown

I heard my neighbor curse and storm and swear the night Chicago died
Brother what a game it really wasn't, in fact it really sucked.
I heard my neighbor curse and storm and swear the night Chicago died
Brother what a game it really wasn't, in fact it really sucked.
God help us.

The crowd of Colts fans did roar as Rex kept falling down
And the Bears came very close to competing for the crown
Until the went 25 minutes of 3 and outs
All in all, not one of their better bouts

I heard my neighbor curse and storm and swear the night Chicago died
Brother what a game it really wasn't, in fact it really sucked.
I heard my neighbor curse and storm and swear the night Chicago died
Brother what a game it really wasn't, in fact it really sucked.
God help us.

Then there was no sound at all, since I shot my TV set
So I didn't have to see the accolades Peyton'd get
Now Junior Simple heads to Disney World, and how it does reek
And I'm not going to watch ESPN for at least a week.

The night Chicago died.

I know it's not great. Meter isn't exactly my strong suit as a poet. In point of fact, poetry isn't my strong suit as a poet. But I said I do it, and now it's done. If it kills my readership before it even gets off the ground, so be it. But the depressing end to an otherwise good season has me wondering what to do about next year.

Just so you know, I didn't shoot my television. How could I, when it gives so much and asks so little? I just threw it in there because Elvis, according to legend, used to shoot his TVs when Robert Goulet came on screen. Seeing Goulet in the Emerald Nuts commercial and loathing Peyton Manning as much as I do, the connection fell into place.

In the process of contributing to the construction of the Bears bandwagon and rebuilding it after the near disaster in Arizona and honest to goodness disasters at home against Miami and Green Bay and on the road in New England, I have become emotionally invested in the Bears. But the loser of the Super Bowl had not made the playoffs since the Titans in 2000 until Seattle did this season. And even the Seahawks submitted a lackluster performance in a very weak division this season.

Questions remain for the Bears; actually they hang over the team like the sword of Damocles. Among the big ones: Will Rex Grossman actually develop any measure of consistency? Are his health concerns behind him? How badly hurt is Cedric Benson? If he comes back healthy, how long can he coexist with Thomas Jones? How long can the team afford two high-priced tailbacks without losing players like Desmond Clark or Bernard Berrian? Will Charles Tillman be a Bear next season? Will the defense stay as healthy, or will there be another Tommy Harris injury and some other key player as well? Will Devin Hester play more defense and less special teams? Will they lose coaches in the offseason?

Based on the defensive performance, or lack thereof, tonight, I am more hopeful of Ron Rivera staying on for at least one more year. If he's not going to be a head coach, I think one more year of a great defense in Chicago will be better for him than a lateral move to Dallas or another team. I don't see Lovie leaving, either. That would be too dumb for words on the part of Bears' management. I like him as a coach. He has a quiet strength and consistency about him, his persona radiates confidence. I don't want to see him go.

I'm not sure what effect the talk about Smith and Rivera as candidates in Dallas had on the team's preparation. But I don't think it helped. And that's part of the larger problem that is the Super Bowl now. It's not just a game anymore, it's a cultural event. It's a monstrosity. And it's too bad. It's hard now, just to watch the game. Now you need to see the ads so you can talk about them, blog about them and rate them until someone like me who just wants to watch the game for its own sake loses his temper and smashes a chair over your head. For the record, I abhor violence if I can get caught in the act or it happens to me.

And then, every channel but the network carrying the game has to glom onto the game's popularity and try to come up with an alternative lineup to catch the non-fan. For instance, TBS ran a My Boys marathon, and no one called for an investigation into that crime against humanity (or at least good taste). Animal Planet ran a Puppy Bowl, which was footage of a set built to look kind of like a football field while puppies frolicked about. It was heartwarming, or it would have been if I had been lobotomized recently or if I didn't believe WC Fields was right on the money when he said anyone who hates kids and dogs can't be all bad.

But today wasn't all bad. A friend told me about Michael Vick's alter ego "Ron Mexico." I know I'm late to the party on this one, Deadspin and the Smoking Gun reported it a long time ago. I guess I live under a rock, but I figured I'd throw it out there because I laughed like hell when I read the story. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out. It's a must read.

I guess I'm not really surprised that Michael Vick has VD. It happens. Sometimes people think they're bulletproof. What really surprises me is his almighty poor choice of an alter ego. Ron Mexico? Why not Ron Smith? Ron Mexico is a really half-assed choice. There is no subtlety there. Ron Mexico sticks out like a sore thumb. An alter ego should help you blend. It's not as though any reasonable person would look at Ron Mexico and ask "Are you related to Dave Mexico from Memphis?" Might as well print out business cards that say Michael Vick, I have herpes.

But there is this site that delights in the Michael Vick/Ron Mexico saga. It's a riot. I wasted a few minutes on the name generator. The Cincinnati Kid's Ron Mexico name is Franc Ecuador. It's a nice touch, Franc with a C instead of a K. Makes it sound more exotic.