Well, the Major League Baseball All Star game was held this evening in San Francisco, and I watched maybe 1/2 hour of it. And I barely paid attention to the brief portion of the game that I watched. I don't know who won, and quite frankly, I don't care. It matters little to me what league wins.

Of course it matters to Red Sox fans because they know that the Sox are all but in the Fall Classic as we speak, so they need to plan for the possibility of four home Series games. They needn't even worry that their two big boppers have combined for fewer home runs than Alex Rodriguez, whose numbers are comparable to JD Drew's. They needn't even worry that Mike Lowell could have an anxiety attack if he's expected to get a clutch hit on the road. This season is over.

Today was all about learning things that I already knew over again in painful fashion. As a general rule, I never go to Cambridge. The city is overrated. The bars and restaurants are no better than what you find on the good side of the Charles River. The people are more arrogant with less justification than Bostonians, and if they knew 1/3 about anything of what they profess to know about everything, then truly each and every one of them would be a Socrates. And to borrow a line from James Madison, Cambridge would still be a madhouse.

I have a corollary to that rule which states that if you must go to Cambridge, never have a specific time at which you must arrive at your destination. Tonight, as I attempted to get from point A to Cambridge, I found myself stuck behind several morons. As you who read this space should know by now, I have a series of tests to tell who is and who is not a moron.

One way to tell who is a moron is to see if they have a radio station sticker on their car. Any person who does is likely to be a moron. If they have a WBCN sticker the odds go up. If they have two WBCN stickers, the odds go through the roof. And if one of the two BCN stickers commemorates the fact that said station broadcasts the New England Patriots, one would need multiple advanced degrees, a Nobel or a Pulitzer or corresponding award for academic or creative eminence to escape the status of moron.

Another way to tell who is a moron is to be stuck behind a column of people who are yielding to Canada Geese on the damn Riverway. I do not endorse cruelty to animals, but if I have a choice between scattering a gaggle of geese and getting rear-ended by some nitwit in a work truck who's been drinking since 3 PM, let's just say I'm going through the geese. Letting them cross the street only encourages them to keep doing it. Canada Geese aren't cute. They're filthy, belligerent and a public health menace. The people ahead of me should have ran them down and dealt with the moral, legal and automotive consequences, leaving me free to go about my business.

And another variety of moron is the Red Sox fan. I was stuck behind a BMW with a Red Sox license plate bracket as I tried to make my way down Broadway in Cambridge. THis person was hell bent on missing every single light possible. The ultimate driving machine was not being driven very well in that instance. And then the last type of moron is yours truly for breaking sensible rules.

And as if Cambridge weren't bad enough, then there is Brookline. After my business among the Cantabrigians was concluded, I went looking for a place to eat in Brookline. Alas, for me, it happened to be 10:00, and one cannot allow restaurants to serve food to customers after 10:00 whilst preserving the curious blend of urban and suburban, academic and blue-collar atmospheres that make up the rich pastiche that is Brookline.

Give me a break. Of course it's my fault for going to Brookline and for being too lazy to get back into my whip and drive to a saner community for a better, cheaper meal. That said, don't go to the Beacon Street Tavern. I spent a week there tonight. First, the kitchen closes at 10, so one must eat off of the late night menu or else go hungry. I wish I had gone hungry.

The sliders weren't bad, but they weren't $14 good either. The service wasn't bad, but the place was beat. First, 3/4 of the menu was inedible, at least from my point of view. They had a lot of appetizers with things I just won't eat. Like beets and goat cheese. I ate more beets as a child than I really needed to, and I only ate the ones my parents forced me to eat. With God as my witness, I will never eat beets again. And if goat cheese were really so great, why would people go to cows for their milk and cheese needs?

But the real problem was the clientele. There was the dude in a Bud Light shirt and a throwback Red Sox hat, drinking white wine and chatting up a blond at the bar while he scratched his back. I'm guessing he didn't get the signal to swing away tonight. Then there was the guy talking about how he did yoga and meditated before he came out for a beer. I want to party with him.

But this is supposed to be a sports related blog, so I thought I would pass on this link sent to me by my man up on the frozen tundra in Maine. It's a freelance piece comparing the most recent edition of the Boston Celtics with the 2002 conference finalist. It basically makes different points to argue that Ainge bites as a GM and ought to be removed from office. It's nice to see someone else feels that way too.

And then, I have to pass this on. Antoine Walker was robbed at gunpoint, again. This time it was in his house, as opposed to on a street in Chicago's South Side at 4 in the morning. No word yet as to whether Danny Ainge and Banner 17 were involved. After all, it does seem like the only way they'll get their hands on a championship ring. Of course I'm kidding about that last part, I just don't see why people can't leave my man alone.

And when the going gets tough in NASCAR, guess whose drivers can't share the limelight as teammates? Would you believe it was Roush Fenway Racing? Apparently, Kyle Bush was edged out of his win by his own teammate, Jamie McMurray. Just one of my many problems with NASCAR is that a sport must either be an individual sport or a team sport. It can't be both. So I don't care what the drivers do to their teammates except for when it gives me a chance to run down one of John Henry's business ventures.

At the risk of anticipating too much, I wonder whether the lead-in to tomorrow afternoon's Jim Rome is Burning will sound a little something like this:

Welcome.

What is up?

Here's what I'm burning on...

Memo to the Daddy, just because you've won four titles and a couple of MVPs doesn't mean you have the right to say the last two awards are tainted. You have your hands full trying to keep Miami from melting in the heat since Flash went down with the dislocated shoulder. Until you start playing like Superman, don't go running your mouth about Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki. After all, they know that I, Jim Rome, run the show and that there's never been a man so tough when two or three time zones separate us. So start showing me the proper respect, stop smearing Nash and Nowitzki and remember that Jim Rome is super awesome.

I went a long way to say this. But Shaq came out the other day and said that Steve Nash's two MVP awards are tainted. I think it was a little excessive, but I agree with him in principle. At the end of the day, all that matters in sports is that you've done everything you can to help your team win. I don't know that you can say that about Dirk Nowitzki or Steve Nash. You can say that about Shaq, as he has three rings. And I think you can say it about 2004, when the Lakers lost to the Pistons. Shaq played very well in the series, the rest of the Lakers didn't show up.

There is going to be a hellstorm of anti-Shaq commentary all over the World Wide Leader tomorrow. First, the media has to rally behind the MVP procedure since they vote on the award. Second, what compelling sports stories unfolded this weekend? Ohio State beat Wisconsin, and another Bronco tragically died. But that's only 10 minutes of commentary, tops. So Shaq is going to be hunted into hiding, since Steve Nash deserves more than two MVPs and no titles.

There is one other story of interest to me. If, as the old saying goes, ignorance is bliss then Jonathan Papelbon is most assuredly one of the happiest people on the face of the Earth. With apologies to the eminent historian Edward Gibbon, it would require the pen of Steve Buckley to relate a story like this. I really hope this is a joke.

There is no way that Papelbon is serious. He'd have to be some sort of Frankenmoron built in a lab from a series of garden-variety morons. I don't have as much of a problem with the ca-drillion dollar turn of phrase as I do with most of his business plan. First off, it seems like he's about 10 years late to the party when it comes to investing in the internet.

Second, at what point will the online community market be saturated? Myspace, friendster, facebook and the rest are already in place. I don't see a need for another of these sites. I don't see how they can make any money off an idea like this, but then I can't for the life of me figure out why some idiots pay for dog yoga.

Maybe it's a bigger attraction than I can foresee. I don't really understand myspace and the other sites like it. I am a bad user. I don't have a single myspace friend that wasn't my friend in the real world (as opposed to cyberspace) to begin with. I'm not looking to meet a lot of people on myspace, partly because I'm not entirely sure which of the total strangers that view my page are trustworthy and which are trying to hack my page in some half-assed plot to take over the world through spamming myspace users.

I am not one of those people who hits up famous people on myspace to be my cyber-friend. After all, it's not like I'm going to be going out for a beer with celebrity X. I can't think of any celebrity that needs me to post a comment telling them how awesome they are and thanking them for the add. But I guess that makes some people feel connected, so I suppose I should ease up on them. If people want to join this site to be friends with Papelbon or UnderArmour or the unnamed NFL players from the article. Good luck to them.

I will not be one of the legion who joins this new site. I can see a large number of lemmings from Red Sox Nation flocking to this community in a vain effort to attach themselves to the monster that is Papelbon, until he falls short of expectations in his first season as a starter. I have it on not so reliable authority that he has starter stuff. Whether or not he has starter endurance is another story. So if he's out of gas and on the DL in July after falling short of such lofty expectations, don't say I didn't warn you as you drop him from your friends.

At least Red Sox fans will be able to much their blues away with the products of Wise Foods, Inc - the official Potato Chip and Cheez Curl of the Boston Red Sox. On a lighter note, Matt Kenseth won the Wow, I didn't Realize That There Was A NASCAR Race This Week 500 in some loser town in California. This is significant because it marks the first victory of the stock car season for the newly formed Roush Fenway racing conglomerate. Today this race, tomorrow the world series, three weeks five days and two hours after that ...the world.

I had a hard time coming to terms with this year's Daytona 500. For the life of me, I could not figure out how the partnership between Roush Racing and the Red Sox owners did not produce a victory. After all the race should logically have ended up in a four way tie between Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth, Jamie McMurray and Carl Edwards. That was the slate of drivers the team entered in the Great American Race.

It was an amazing finish. That's about all I watched of the race, I caught maybe the last half hour and a few moments here and there as looked around for something to watch. One segment I happened to catch showed me that NASCAR (and racing in general) is not a very good TV sport. With no TV timeouts, there is no logical place for commercials. So you run the risk of missing something important every time the network needs to show you a slate of "that thing got a hemi?" ads.

Today, the two leaders crashed (Stewart and Kurt Busch) during a break and all of a sudden you're back and the wreckers are towing two of the highest profile drivers who just happened to be running one two down the home stretch of the sport's marquee event all of a sudden fell out of the running while you were watching a promo for Stacey Keach's earth-shattering performance in the upcoming episode of Prison Break. That's no way to broadcast sports. But there is no way to help that, networks have bills to pay, just like the rest of us.

But Red Sox fans can take solace in the fact that no organization has ever won the World Series and the Daytona 500 in the same season, so Red Sox Nation dodged a bullet with the defeat of Roush Fenway Racing. I ought to clarify that sentence, that is, as far as I know it's never happened. It's late and I'm tired, so I'm not going to do my due diligence. I'd rather print an apology that try to hunt that trivia down at the moment. A very lazy attitude, but what can you expect from a guy who does this for free?

The road to the City Hall victory celebration has already begun for the pitchers and catchers. Soon, the position players will report. Early rumors from the Yankee organization have the team so traumatized by the mighty Red Sox lineup that they're going to give up baseball and take up the art of scrimshaw. Given that whales are protected species and obtaining the teeth in flagrant violation of US and international law, it is, apparently, still preferable to the humiliation they would endure at the hands of the new look Red Sox, who are eager to erase the atypical end of the 2006 season from their collective memory. Only time will tell about the Red Sox this season, whether or not they're as good as the fans think they are, or whether I'm right.

The NBA All Star Weekend is now over. Dwayne Wade won the skills challenge, Jason Kapono won the Three Point Shooting Contest, Detroit won the team shooting contest and Gerald Green redeemed one of the worst seasons in franchise history by winning the dunk contest. I must concede that I will be telling my grandchildren about that Dee Brown dunk over defending champ and amazingly good sport Nate Robinson, all while wearing a Dee Brown throwback jersey. It was the greatest moment of all time. Bar none. BAR NONE.

I assume Ainge is satisfied with a job well done. There was a time when making the playoffs and winning championships mattered more than accumulating lottery ping pong balls and winning frivolous All Star Weekend sideshows. That time has past. Now, the TNT commentators were talking about this "triumph" as a bright spot for the Celtics franchise amid all this gloom. When you set franchise records for the Boston Celtics, and those records are for futility, winning the Dunk Contest is no consolation. It's an insult to the fans.

If you don't believe me, think back to Dee Brown. I still can't believe that the people whom TNT pays to discuss basketball weren't a little bit more subdued as they talked about this dunk contest. It's a nice achievement, but when you reach back into the Boston Celtics past and pluck Dee Brown from the hat like some half-assed magician pulling a rabbit out of a top hat, you are reaching into one of the only eras of a celebrated franchise that isn't worth celebrating.

It was, strangely enough, an era very much like this one. A lot of young players with potential put together in a combination that choked potential rather than allowed it to grow. But this is just one more reminder that Ainge has to go. If he stays around, remember when it happens that you heard it here first. The Celtics will either waste a second round pick on undersized Northwestern forward Tim Doyle. He's too small to be an NBA forward and too slow to be an off guard, but I'm willing to be that he has one humdinger of a brain type, that and he has an immaculate head of hair at all times. That ought to be worth Brian Scalabrine money, at least, under Aingonomics.

And I hate to do this, I really do. Believe me. But the temptation is too strong. Read this story. Our little championship is all growed up now. It's not outside the realm of possibility that Tom Brady has knocked up his ex on his way out the door. And don't make any plans for next Saturday. If you have plans, cancel them. Sarah Silverman hosts the Spirit Awards (for independent films, in case you care). It could be the least funny awards show of all time.

But far and away the most interesting event of the All Star Weekend (far better than the Western Conference's laugher over the East) was the Barkley vs. Bavetta race. As you read here, Barkley won big. Bavetta gave it his all, including a dramatic dive as Barkley channeled the hare from The Tortoise and the Hare and backpedaled across the line. All in all, Sir Charles looked very good for an overweight guy who wears his bulk well (like me), until he tripped over an invisible obstacle and fell on his ass after he crossed the line. It's good to be right, once in a while. But I wish Barkley hadn't taunted the old bag of bones. As Dr. Kelso said after Dr. Cox coldcocked him: "At a certain point, you're just beating up an old man."