My life is full of crazy coincidences. But this one takes the Cookie Puss.

A few months ago, Lys and I saw a guitarist play a show, and later Lys told me that this person's father wrote the screenplay for that movie The Warriors. I had seen parts of this movie on television, and people I know are always saying, "Warriors...come out to play-ee-ay...". And I like movies from the late 70s and early 80s, so I decided it was about time I saw this film in its entirety. So a few weeks ago, I rented it, on tape, because I don't think a DVD exists. The tape didn't work in my VCR. I brought it back, and the place repaired it, and then let me rent it for free. So I finally got to watch it.

More on the actual film later, but here's where the coincidence comes in. I was gonna write a post about the movie and how it relates to Sox fans. I had it pretty much written in my head, and was just procrastinating the physical writing of the thing.

So last night, I'd just got my great news about the yankee ads being removed from my sight, when I started going to my usual websites, feeling all warm and fuzzed-out inside. On dirtdogs, they mentioned a post from another blog, Bambino's Curse. (This is the blog that inspired mine, and I'm sure many others.) The post was about how the Red Sox DO sometimes beat the yanks. It was similar to a post I wrote (see March 20th). Now the last thing I thought of was plagiarism, because A. he probably doesn't even know about my blog, B. It's a fairly common topic--standard Red Sox-yankees rivalry stuff, not the type of thing a die-hard Sox fan wouldn't have known unless they saw it on my blog first, and C. He just wouldn't do that, what is he, some kind of yankee fan? Plus, when when I went over to Bambino's Curse, I saw that the post wasn't even by the man, Edward, who is the blog's writer, but rather something he was quoting from something someone else wrote in July of '02.

But that's not the first thing I noticed when I go to the page. The first thing I noticed was the words "Warriors...Come Out To Play-ee-ay," in really big letters. It was the title of the post mentioned above. Whoaaaaa. This was one of those moments in life where you suddenly become aware that thoughts really might travel from one person's mind to another. It was very scary. Had it been a Twilight Zone episode, the camera definitely would've zoomed in on my face, with the background staying the same size. I mean I hadn't told anyone about this post I was gonna write.
What are the odds of this happening? It's not like The Warriors is some new movie that everyone's talking about. It's from '79! I thought I was the only person in the world who was thinking about how The Warriors relates to Red Sox fans on a daily basis (as I was writing it in my head for a few weeks). And so the last thing I thought was, Hey, I better write this quick before someone else does!

As I started reading his post, with my mind spinning at a million MPH, I thought, well, maybe he just used The Warriors quote in the title, and that's it. But sure enough, at the end of the post, he quotes the movie, and compares the Warriors to the Red Sox.

Unbelivable, but like I said, this is my life. Weird things always happen. I think it's because I think about so many things all day long, so eventually something I thought of gets mentioned by someone else, and it can be freaky. I think this is why religion is so popular. There are so many things that are unexplainable, so from the beginning of time, people have been making up their own explanations. I've never bought into any religious theory about the world. But I can see why so many folks do, because it can be frightening to not know why things happen.

Anyway, fortunately, Edward's post wasn't exactly the same as what mine was going to be, so now, instead of a fresh, cutting edge post by the could-have-been first person to make the Red Sox-Warriors connection, here is what I now have to call "an expansion" on the thoughts of Edward at Bambino's Curse:) Note: I could've just started this post right here, and skipped the big intro, but it was such a cosmic experience, I had to write about it. Besides, that's what blogs are for.

Okay, sooooo...the first thing I thought when I saw The Warriors was, "This is Homer's Odyssey." Only they really did put the "homer" in this odyssey--with the gang called "The Baseball Furies." Heh heh..... eh. Sorry. So then I thought, this must be what everyone thinks when they see this great film, so I searched on line for comparisons between The Warriors and The Odyssey, and came up with very little. I found just ONE place--Teleport-City.com--that had one. It was a review by Keith Allison, and after mentioning the Odyssey in his review, he then takes it one step further, and talks about another ancient tale called "The Anabasis" by Xenophon. (This is the part of the post where I was gonna mention that I was starting to sound like the Bambino's Curse blog, what with all the literary references.) The Anabasis apparently starts with "Cyrus" being killed. The Warriors starts with Cyrus being killed. And then, in both stories, a group of soldiers/warriors has to fight their way back home.

So of course, you can see where the Red Sox fans come into this: A seemingly endless journey, just trying to get back to that Championship. And just hoping that as many of our troops as possible make it all the way home.

A few days before seeing the film, I read a story by John Gordon, which appeared in a book called "For Red Sox Fans Only!" He teaches James Joyce in his English Lit class at Connecticut College. He says he draws the analogy between Joyce and Sox fans in class, and the half of the class which are Sox fans empathize. "I do think that Red Sox fans can understand the literature of failure better," he continues, "To be a Red Sox fan is to always be the sort of Sad Sack in the group. That's the role you're playfully resigned to. I don't think Red Sox fans could relate to anything particularly triumphal."
He goes on: "A lot of people say this has to do with the New England temperament--the feeling of flintiness, that we are not put on this earth for pleasure, but are meant to suffer. Red Sox fans are definitely more romantic fans than others... Yankee fans, on the other hand, would find James Bond more identifiable than James Joyce. They'd understand any sort of sequence where the most powerful guy winds up winning." Interesting stuff. We Sox fans are eternal optimists, though. Well, some of us.

So that's the deal. My post was gonna be called, "Shootin' At The Walls Of Heartache, Bang Bang." Get it?

Anyway, it's now about 28 hours until the next leg of our odyssey begins. I think it's weird that Nomar will be out of the lineup with--yup, an achilles injury.