The bad news is, Trot's out. But we weren't expecting him back. The good news is, the Globe, and Seth Mnookin, were wrong. Mega-wrong. And that's always fun.

What excitement. After being away from a computer from last night at 8:30 until this morning, I checked my inbox to find a virtual thrill ride of e-mails. I read along with Joy of Sox's comments from last night, as the Canadian Blog Awards voting came to a close.

At around 11:20 PM (the voting closed at midnight), the lead, which had been 105 ten hours earlier...was down to ONE vote. The folks over at Battle of Alberta were using tactics shadier than ours, and almost pulled it off. But, amazingly, the Joy camp staved off the attack, and won going away, 685-673.

Victory!

This, assuming we were following the right horse, since the results were blind. But my team of investigators confirmed--three separate times--that Joy was indeed in the lead. I just hope JoyBoy was accurately tracking the count when the lead was down to one. (In fact, looking at Alberta's info, they think they took the lead at some point. Joy, are you sure you tracked it perfectly?)

Official results to be posted Sunday at 9 PM eastern here.

That oughtta get 'em here.

If you're reading this and it's Friday night before midnight, please VOTE HERE for Joy Of Sox. Three and a half hours left and once again his competition is making a surge! Click the link and go to category 13, Best Sports Blog. Joy needs you now more than ever. Also, I'm pretty sure a very young, very cute member of his family is in some type of hospital. This would really help them.

Patriotism your thing? Well, a true American would vote for the blog that brings our AMERICAN game to Canada. Don't let the terrorists win.

Nakedness and or sex stuff RIGHT HERE. (The nakedest stuff is in category 13, so scroll down.)

Possible problems with garlic knots:

1. Stick to foil.
2. Not enough garlic.
3. Too much garlic. (rare)
4. Don't taste good.

If you can think of any more, let me know. I thought of this because I just ate some (problems: slightly #1), not because I've been linked on a food blog. The "Lead Burrito Analyst" over at Burrito Blog gave me a nod after I gave him an update on the place Chan & I always get burritos at. Thanks to him. And to Baseball Heavy, where I found the link to BB. And to Wicth City, who "discovered" BH. And to Al Gore, for inventing this internet which WC found me through.

Labels: possible problems with...

I guess it's gonna be "everybody talk about Trot with a side of Manny" day here in Red Sox Cubicle.

Let's just not trade manny. Who's with me? Everything I hear about a Manny deal sounds to me like the Red Sox are trying to see what they can do to secure fourth place in '07. And if this "sign trot because then we somehow can trade manny" thing has any truth to it, well, I love Trot, but if I had to get rid of him or Manny, I'd keep Manny. What is going on here? Answer: Probably nothing. Reporters need stuff to do, I guess.

Baseball Heavy WINS! for her coverage of the current Hee-seop Choi news. Choi's been signed by the Devil Rays--for almost one million dollars a year, officially ending the Red Sox'--I mean, PawSox'--Choi era. You may remember when we got this guy, Jere, aka me, looked at the guy's antiquated, pre-talkie-days statistics and quickly concluded the guy was a bum. Whereas the Nina SABR-hagen Das-EFX people thought differently, that we somehow were the only club to recognize the true brilliance of this guy. BSM said, at the time,

Choi's just a great pickup all around- very good defense, very good plate discipline, undervalued, came for free, cheap as hell, good power, and provides insurance on the almost inevitable Snow/ Lowell suckfest. This is where Theo beats the other guys- depth and roster construction.

His career Red Sox totals:

Every category: 0

But I'm sure you're gonna tell me he was somehow good for your fantasy team last year in ways I couldn't possibly understand! (Yes, I know he has injury problems.)

Vote for Joy of Sox! Category 13. Last day!

I often use the Willis/Beauty Pageant analogy in situations where someone loses, say, an MVP vote because the guy had a teammate in the running, causing voters to split votes between the teammates and allowing someone from another team to win. (Interesting how even with multiple Twins in this year's race, one still won, so I didn't get to use the analogy.) Recently, I found among my old tapes the footage of the exact moment from Diff'rent Strokes where Willis sums up the whole concept. Now, the analogy doesn't fit into the current Canadian Blog Awards vote, but, hey, I wanted to get this onto the web, and there are five candidates in the race, just like in Willis and Kimberly's pageant. So, here's the classic scene:



It's amazing to me how we in the Joy camp are doing exactly enough to keep the race between Joy and some hockey blog perfectly even, at least for the last ten hours or so. It's kind of like how 90 feet is the perfect distance from home to first. Overall, Joy's holding a 490-439 lead with 24 hours left in the voting. (In my head I envisioned a 51-point midnight lead at around 6:00, and I was dead on. I don't expect you to believe that since it's undocumented, but anyone who knows me knows it's probably true.)

People, it all comes down to Friday. We've fought long and hard. It's been a long haul up this mountain, but we're not at the summit yet. We've battled through rain, sleet, snow and ice. We lost a few along the way, sure. We weren't the favorites in this thing, after all. But we're here--what's left of us, anyway--we're together, and we're as proud a squadron as I have ever come across in all my years. I mean that, people. So I want everybody to get out there, bust your butts, and leave everything out on that polling place floor. And another thing: Don't come back without a trophy in your hand.

Now let's go! Go! Go! Aaaaarrrrrrrr!!!!!

Labels: movies

is a phrase I DON'T want to hear! In the meantime, please vote for Joy of Sox for Best Canadian Sports blog. He needs your help! Click here to vote, and scroll to category 13. Thank you.

Update: Feel free to join in what's essentially a week-long live-blog of this "election," in the comment section of my original post about the Canadian Blog Awards thingy. 445-401, Joy leads, as of 5:50 PM Thursday.

Jhonny Peralta's dgo says: "Vtoe Nwo!"

Sox sign lefty reliever dude.

Yesterday I got offered free tickets to the Nets-Bobcats game. I decided I'd go if Chan wanted to go. Two hours later, Chan finally responds to my calls and e-mails saying he's in. Well, terrible job, Chan, it was too late. But at that point, we both kind of had our hearts set on going, so we just bought some cheap tickets and went anyway. Click to enlarge, then click again to mega-fy.

I'd like to say I planned this out, since the Bobcats are the team that my boy Adam Morrison playes for. But it was totally random. As you know, I here at ARSIPT was all about the crustached commie when he played for Gonzaga. (As was she at Witch City Sox Girl.) So, guess what? All the shots are of him. (Note the Celts hat in shot 1.)

The bus to the Meadowlands is a sweet deal. Nine bucks round-trip from the Port Authority bus terminal at 42nd and 8th, and it takes about 12 minutes. Terrible job by Chan thinking they'd let him into the game with a laptop, though. He had to check it in--on the opposite side of the arena.

It's funny how when I asked Chan about going, he said "my team needs me." Funny because I grew up with the Nets and here I was just not caring except to root for Morrison, and him rooting for my old team. In fact, I think he's in the other room now rooting for them against his old team, the Bulls. [edit: my mistake. they played the Celts tonight.]

There was one other guy I cared about, actually. I heard the PA guy say "Mikki Moore," and I thought of the Mikki Moore that was a freshman at Nebraska when I was a freshman at Nebraska back in '93-'94. I honestly thought he'd disappeared after college, as, despite being a fan favorite, he didn't seem like NBA material. But it was him. All these years later. On the Nets. In the above shot, Morrison is shooting, and Mikki is behind him, back at the other end of the court, the Nets player furthest to the right. He's got crazy dreads now! He reminds me of Tim, the drummer in my old band. In fact, between the lanky, dreadlocked Mikki and the gangly, shaggy, Apachella-esque Morrison, I felt like I was at a Pac-Men/Charm City Suicides show at Newtown Teen Center. And with Brevin Knight also on Morrison's team, it was like "Guys who Jere liked while they were in college for one of many oddball reasons" night at Continental Airlines Arena...

Now the game is actually starting. Here Adam greets Vince Carter. Thanks to co-worker Jennie for the camera. Terrible job by said camera for having that datestamp. But beggars can't be choo-choo-choosers.

More of the same. The Bobcats led most of the way. When it got close, we watched as Morrison went into psycho-mode. He suddenly decided he was going to win the game for his team. He started running around like a madman, basically letting everyone know that he'll be getting the ball and scoring with it. It was really cool. He's gonna make a good pro.

Adam at the line.

Several other Sox hats over in Jersey, more of them non-fashion than fashion. When we got back from suburbia, we walked along the underappreciated Forty-First Street, going east. It gives you, we learned, a nice angle on the Ghostbusters Memorial Library, which, we also learned, was just at that moment testing out the lighting of its Christmas tree, which overlooks Bryant Park (where they show movies in the summer and have a skating rink in the winter). That would've been a good picture, as would the Empire State Building in the misty haze, but Jennie's camera had run out of juice.

Jennie left for Australia today. It's always a funny moment when someone is saying goodbye to you for the day, but to the person next to you for a few weeks, as they're headed off to some exotic place: "Bye, Jennie! Have fun! Australia, wow, that's gonna be great! Well, see you in three weeks! Safe flight! Bye-eee!....Ahem. Well. Bye, Jere. See you tomorrow..."

Update, 4:51 PM: Definitive proof is in. Joy is in first place. I voted from my co-worker's computer, then reloaded the results on mine, and the first place blog moved up by one vote. However, the lead has shrunk to 78 (348-270)! Get voting, people! Read on to find out what the hell I'm talking about.

First of all, vote here for Joy of Sox in the Eh? Awards. (category 13) Vote once a day! (until Friday)

Now, you may have been following along with the vote tally on your own, or along with some of us here on ARSFIPT. We've gathered that with Joy's post over on the very popular SoSH asking people for votes and his posts on his own blog, which we know is quite popular anyway, plus my prodding over here, Joy is surely in the lead. Currently the vote totals of the top two blogs are: 341-254. (Big run for #2 right now, cutting a 106 vote lead to 87 in the last few hours.) We feel second place belongs to round one's winner, RaptorBlog, in this blind vote. (We're currently in the second and final round.)

However, at 11:38 AM today, the blogger who finished second to RaptorBlog, The Battle of Alberta put up a post which suggests he's still running second, but to RaptorBlog. He could be right about being in second--see the recent push by whoever's in that spot coinciding with his post. But I still say if he is, he's second to Joy Boy. Some people, possibly us, are so naive...

But it would make sense that RaptorBoy dropped to third, since he hasn't posted anything in a week.

Commercials are running on HBO for the new season of Extras, which will start in January. 'struhz is a hilarious show. I can't wait. Speaking of Gervais, I just read that he wrote tomorrow night's episode of The (American) Office. Could this be the point where I finally start to watch? We'll see. I may start, and I may grow to love it, but I can promise you this: When I say "The Office," it will always mean the real, or British, one.

It's way too late to do writing and picture uploading and captioning. Look for that stuff tomorrow. In the meantime, here's where Chan and I randomly went tonight:



Sox to something something something. Try understanding that article. About Manny, I don't think they're dealing him. They've got Xmas at Fenway coming up. They don't want to say, "Hey, everybody, we're totally trying to win. Say hello to some relief pitcher from the Giants you've never heard of instead of Manny Ramirez. Now buy some tickets!" But anything can happen.

This picture was taken by Gumby, and depicts Chan, with a blue dot over his face, and I standing in a place where, were we to continue walking eastward on this street, we'd hit a New York City landmark named after a person who was vice president under a president who had a city named after him. What is the latitude of that city? (degrees and minutes)

Every once in a while, I'll search my old band name on eBay. It almost never comes upwith anything, besides someone selling a comp we were on or something. I checked today, and someone's selling our 7-inch! Only a buck, but hey, someone has bid on it.

Click here to see Jere for sale. (I'm second from left with mostly shaven head in picture.)

"I assure you that the notion that this is a primarily defensive maneuver is preposterous," said Lucchino. "51.1 million is obviously a historical number but we are talking about a national living treasure and an exceptional baseball player."

Lucchino sounded confident that a deal will be reached.

"We know it's been his dream to play in the major leagues and we are proud that he will live out his dream in Boston with the Boston Red Sox," said Lucchino.
(AP)

Lucchino sounds very Don Corleone in this article. The way he describes the "offer" suggests that Daisuke has to take it, if you know what I mean. Either that or we've offered him a lifetime supply of free coffee or something.

I can't remember why now, but I started doing some research into that whole Titanic thing. And a thought occurred to me. Are you ready for this? Probably not. So let's get some basic facts out of the way first:

From factmonster.com: The exact size of the iceberg will probably never be known, but according to early newspaper reports the height and length of the iceberg was approximated at 50 to 100 feet high and 200 to 400 feet long.

Okay, so the 'tanic basically crashed into a small island. Then everybody who didn't get into a boat fell into the water. Most of the deaths were due to hypothermia.

So, here's my thought:

Why...

didn't...

everybody...

simply...

go to the iceburg??

The lifeboat people could've been rowing people from the area where the boat was sinking over to the iceberg. Back and forth, back and forth, taking people to safety. And folks in the water also could've just swam toward the 'berg. Right? Seriously, people. It would've been cold to sit on, but not as cold as the damn water!

Possible holes in my theory, with my answers:

1. They couldn't see the iceberg.

Fine. But they knew it was around there! They must've had flashlights. Just point 'em toward the direction where the ship had just come from, and, voila, a floating refuge.

2. The ship kept going after it hit, so the iceberg was, like, really far away.

The captain gave the "all-stop" order when they hit the 'berg. (Although I read somewhere else that he gave an order to "keep steaming," and they went on for twenty minutes. But that's just a theory.)

3. The sides of the 'berg were way too hard to climb up. They were, like, sheer cliffs.

How do you know? Were you there? I bet there was at least a chance that there was a way to climb up, rather than it being steep walls shooting up out of the water on all sides. Even in that case, you can still try to dig your fingers in and climb up. You're life's at stake, after all.

I guess I'm just curious about where the iceberg was. People went back the next day and took photos of two possible culprits in the area. One even had a line of red paint, according to a witness. Also, apparently they were sailing through floating ice for a while before they hit the big iceberg. So why wouldn't there have been lots of little icies around for people to climb onto? Maybe once they were in the water, they tried to swim but it was just too cold.

I don't know. Whatever. Another fact I discovered was that when the Carpathia brought all the survivors to New York, it docked at Pier 54. This past summer, Chan and I watched Jaws on Pier 54. Every survivor of that tragedy walked down that pier, through the archway, which is all that remains of the original, and is visible in my last photo on the linked page above. Cool.

What's with Jimmy Smits and all the public service announcements? We all remember the trio from the 80s I posted here. Then I saw him doing one before the previews at the last movie I saw, along with a few other celebs. Then I saw one on TV yesterday, something about the PAL, in which he "hangs out" with some "youths" on a basketball court. At one point, he does a "rap guy pose." You know, like in the eighties, when the clean-cut white suburban dad in any sit-com or movie would at some point reluctantly turn his hat sideways and pose with his kids by wrapping his arms very awkwardly around his body.

That Smits, he really cares about the public.

In Red Sox news, bla bla bla Manny bla bla bla trade talk, etc, etc. I'll continue to only post real news here.

One of my found holy grails is a tape from my collection that has an entire Sunday afternoon, from 1987, of Channel 11, WPIX on it. Here's a commercial you can't go wrong with. There's no Cookie Puss or Fudgy the Whale in this one. Say hello to Dumpy (Stumpy? Pumpy?) the Pumpkin and Witchy (Wicky?) the Witch.

Vote for Joy of Sox for best Canadian Sports Blog here. (More info here.)

Labels: movies

Even if I stop caring about every sport, I'll always be happy when the teams I hate lose. This is the case with football. I left the Giants game on today in the background, while I did stuff on the computer. I noticed they were up 21-7 in the fourth, but the Titans had the ball, so I started rooting. The Giants proceeded to blow what had been a 21-0 lead. The Titans' QB was about to be sacked on a 4th and 10, with time running out, down 21-14. That was the game right there. But the dude who was sacking him decided to just release his grip for some reason. QB then ran for, like, 20 yards. Then they tied it up. At this point, it was up to Eli Manning to completely blow the game. I am a Peyton Manning hater, have been ever since he was in college. So having his dopey little brother playing for my most hated team is such a bonus. I've got this alternate Peyton to root against right in my back yard. Anyway, this guy is a bigger choke artist than Peyton is. So when he had the ball, in a tie game and only a couple of minutes left, it wasn't "will he throw an interception," but "will the interception he throws be returned for a game winning touchdown?"

Of course, he gets picked off. (By Pacman Jones. Come on.) The Titans then got into FG range, and kicked it through for the win with seconds remaining.

That

was

Clues will be added to Quiz VI and Quiz VII tonight between 6:30 PM and 7:09 PM.

As you know, SC was a writer for that show. Here he is sharing a joyous moment with Cheri O. during the traditional "last show before the holidays skate-around." This is from December '96. Taped by me as always, edited by me as always.

Labels: movies