September 3rd, 1956. The Red Sox, behind a balanced, 20-hit attack, and shutout pitching by Tom Brewer, destroyed the Washington Senators, 16-0, in front of 13,000 at Griffith Stadium, completing a doubleheader sweep. What a great day that must have been.

In other news, my week one prediction ("the Patriots are goin' nowhere this year") has proven to be completely wrong, as the Pats finished the season winning every single game. The key for that club, though, is winning the Super Bowl. If the Colts win, they will have won two in a row, and will be the toast of football. So if they wanna keep up this whole "Boston is the best sports town" thing, they might wanna win it all. Honestly, none of that matters to me. Does it make the Red Sox' awesomeness any sweeter if these other Boston teams win? Not for me. If it makes Yankee fans mad when the Pats or Celts win, sure, I'm for it (and of course, I'll always root against the Giants, Knicks, and Rangers specifically, but that has nothing to do with the corresponding New England teams winning), but overall, to me, baseball is its own separate thing. I don't expect fans of a team to like that town's other sports teams. It seems like everyone I know, including myself, grew up rooting for teams that came from multiple cities. And also, with New York, for every team, there's a whole group of fans IN New York who (for the most part) hate that team.

That's another thing I've been thinking about lately. Growing up near New York, liking a team was so different than what you Boston-area people (and the people of many other areas) experienced. Because when you put on your Jets shirt, you went to school with the purpose of showing the Giants fans what side you were on. Same with every other sport. And since I was in Connecticut, you could throw the Boston teams into the mix. For me, it was wearing the Sox shirt knowing it was mainly Yankee fans around me. While those Yankee fans wore their shirts showing Mets and Sox fans what side they were on, etc.

Here in Boston, it's like, Yep, gonna put on my Red Sox clothes so all the other Red Sox fans know I'm one of them! Middle school must've been an entirely different experience for you all up here. It's almost like being defiant was built into rooting for a team. In Boston, who did you fight with? Eh, I'm sure you had a few Yankee boobs in your town.

From a Harper article about Leyritz:

"Still, you wonder if Yankee fans are walking around feeling the way that Mets fans too often have over the years, wondering what's next."

Hahahaha, I love it! We've done it. We've won the World Series twice, don't automatically choke because we've got "Boston" on our chests, and so when people look for some type of "cursed" team for a comparison, they think of some other team. Praise Gedman.

However, Harper reverts to general Yankee retarded-think:

"After all, you can make the case that their season ended prematurely because of a strange attack of bugs in Cleveland that unnerved Joba Chamberlain and perhaps changed the outcome of Game 2 against the Indians."

Yeah, because the bugs came out and attacked ONLY ONE GUY. Hello??? Is this really gonna be something for the "nobody remembers it how it really happened" list? Something so simple and obvious? Are humans the dumbest creatures on earth or what? The bugs came on the field, and the Cleveland players all dealt with it. Carmona was standing there, bugs in his eyes and on his face, mowing down the Yankees. The batters that faced Joba had the same bugs in their eyes as he did. Can this incident fall into the "what's next?" category for the Yanks? Sure, but not because they were singled out unfairly (by bugs, hellooooo???). Because they're a bunch of chokers.

I've been reading some old New York Times articles about baseball games. I love the language:

"The umpiring was impartial, although not at all in accordance with the new rules." -- note below an 1871 boxscore

"The amateurs, too, had to take in a couple of players whose sands of baseball-life are about to run out." --from the article accompanying above-described boxscore

"...the Mutuals thought that their nine had now got into their work and were going to open a heavy fire on the enemy; but the latter soon silenced them, and moreover managed to secure a scalp, the Indians scoring a run in this innings, thereby taking the lead in the game." --from another 1871 article

Also from that 1871 article, words that are still true today:

"But in baseball no one knows what a day may bring forth."

From imdb.com, about The Life Aquatic:

"The character of Wolodarsky was named after director Wes Anderson's close friend Wallace Wolodarsky, probably best-known as a writer on "The Simpsons" (1989)."

I read that the other night. Then, just now, watching an old Simpsons, I noticed that a player in a football game Homer's watching is named "Wolodarsky." Either this dude is really cool, and everyone wants to pay tribute to him...or people just like his name.

Did you hear Jim Leyritz killed some lady while driving drunk? Those Yankee stars just keep getting classier.

My girlfriend and I have delved deeper into GINO-mania. Here's what we found:

Okay, once I saw a close-up of the actual logo of the GINO T-shirt and realized it was a picture of a guy with a microphone, it hit me: "This was a concert tour shirt. Of someone named..." And before I could finish that thought, I knew this must've been a Gino Vanelli shirt. I've seen enough TV commercials for '70s collections to know that name very well. His two big hits were "Living Inside Myself" and "I Just Wanna Stop." The latter was on the radio when I was little so often that my dad would tell my sister and I to stop--talking, yelling, fighting, whatever--simply by turning up the radio right when Gino would hit the word "stop."

We also read on a message board that the Celtics have tried to contact the original guy with the GINO shirt with no luck.

Here's the logo from the shirt (Our guy's version is just the GINO and the logo, no "Worldwide Tour" at the bottom), shown here on a concert program:



And here's someone's video from a Celts game which gives a better sense of the Gino experience, and how the crowd loves Gino. Or, at least the guy in the GINO shirt. (Note, in this vid, there's a guy in the crowd in a completely incorrect CafePress ringer GINO tee, that's not who I'm talking about. Keep watching after you see him--the real GINO appears several times):


Video courtesy eric02108

You may remember me talking about "Gino," the '70s American Bandstand dancer who's shown on the scoreboard at the Boston Garden during Celtics games. It's weird, I was going to start looking into this, to see if anyone's written about the phenomenon. But I forgot. Then I was on Google Maps, checking out Minneapolis Street Views, and I thought of that bridge collapse. I tried to figure out where it was, and I came up with the GooTube vid of it. The first video on the list or similar vids to that one was called "Gino Dances Celtics to Victory." (Because it happened to be from the same TV station as the bridge collapse vid.) So I forgot about the bridge and now I'm back to thinking about Gino (whose name might not even be Gino). So, here it is, a news report on Gino, which, may I point out, does a fine job of completely failing to capture the awesomeness of Gino.

Kim makes these bath bomb things, which you put in the tub, and they fizz up and release a fragrance.

So I was thinking, make some smaller, white bombs, and you've got:

Long day of whacking dudes and initiating young mobsters? Head for the tub, drop in some bath bullets, and relax. Irish? Try "Whitey Indulgers." Italian? Go for the "Cozy Nostra."

Another soap I thought would be a perfect symbol of the real world around us would be a white soap with black specks called "Dirty Snow." I guess it would smell like exhaust. You can see why she rejected this one.

All of these great items NOT for sale (yet!) at Stella Marie Soap Company.

CHB thinks Jim Rice will make the Hall of Fame this year. I was thinking since next year is his last chance, that'll be the year where a lot of voters finally say, Okay, now you can have my vote. But I'll take this year. Over these last 13 years of Rice-hoping, the one thing I've never thought of is whether or not I'd go to Cooperstown to see him inducted. Well, now I've thought of it--and the answer is a resounding yes. And I know my girlfriend would love to go, too. She's made "vote Jim Rice" T-shirts and stuff in the past.

In the photo that goes along with the Globe story, you'll notice something awesome. Jim Rice is using Rich Gedman's bat! See the "10" on the knob? Any guesses on the date of the photo? Day game, late 80s, I'd say. Can rule out '87, no 75th anniversary of Fenway patch. In '89, Rice batted right in front of Evans (on deck in photo) a lot, so I'd go with that year. Random guess: 5/6/89 vs. Texas.

I lived in Danbury, CT, from '00 to '05. There are a lot of Brazilians there. When Brazil won the 2002 World Cup, I went outside with my video camera. I was taping as the first careful of celebrating Brazilians came down Main Street. Within an hour, it was a full-on parade. Probably the coolest day in Danbury history. Since Rahzel played Can O' Christmas, anyway. Or was that after? I don't know. Anyway, I got on the channel 8 news that day. Look behind the guy in the yellow shirt who starts jumping up and down. That's me in my green "Parade Marshal" shirt. Even though Brazil's colors are green and yellow, and it was basically a parade, I swear it was a coincidence that I put that shirt on that morning.

I wonder if Yankee fans, after just assuming George Mitchell personally injects David Ortiz with secret home run power juice, will have anything to say about Roger Clemens being asked the hard-hitting questions by Mike Wallace, a friend of Clemens who's been known to sit in Steinbrenner's box.

And Murray Chass must have taken some HGH. How else could his "stupid disease" have cleared up so fast?

On a completely unrelated note, we watched Kiss Loves You tonight. It's a documentary about Kiss fans that starts in '94 and goes through Kiss' many reunion tours. (I saw them in 2000: "Hello Uncasville and surrounding areas!") The best parts are the deleted scenes. What a great story by Handsome Dick Manitoba. His old band, The Dictators, got kicked off one of the old Kiss tours after Dick decided to recite one of Paul Stanley's pre-packaged crowd-speeches during their opening set. And in the '96 press conference to announce the initial make-up comeback, an eagle (or whatever animal has the best hearing)-eared me picked up on the name of a press member who asked a question: Nick Scoullar. You know, the Instant Talk Show guy. The Fancy Nancy's boyfriend guy. Apparently, he was the host of a show back then called the Anti-Gravity room, which was one of those shows that started on public access and eventually got picked up by a major station, in this case the Sci-Fi channel. I had no idea Nick was already famous. I completely missed all of this. He must've been really young at the time. I guess that show was his Seona Dancing. I wonder if Fancy Nancy watched that show as a youngster. That'd be weird. That'd be like if I were dating Moose or Lisa Ruddy right now. (It wouldn't be Lisa.)

Anyway, for some reason, watching all this Kiss footage, I kept getting the feeling someone I knew was gonna pop up on the screen. I don't know Scoullar personally, but I almost crapped my pants when I heard his name come up during this 11-year old footage.

A while ago, I put up an old commercial (1990) for Alpine White candy bar. I had it on an old VHS tape. Then my YouTube account was taken down. So it was off the web for the time being. Then I noticed it was up on there again. Same ad, and seemingly, same warble from my old video tape. It was credited to RetroJunk, which is a site that has a lot of old TV stuff. Is it possible they'd stolen my ad? (While cutting out the other stuff I had included before and after, including some of that show Comic Strip Live.) Well, considering it's someone else's property anyway, and as long as it's out there again, I feel no need to put my original back up and have some kind of Alpine War. Instead, I thought I'd make MY OWN version of the Alpine White commercial. So, below is the original (possibly my stolen work stolen by someone else), and below that, my production starring my girlfriend as the girl and one of our cats as the wolf.




So there you have it. (Play both at once for extra-fun!) While Alpy searching, I noticed some clips of Faith No More doing the song. As you may know, they were a favorite band of mine, and I've followed Mike Patton's solo and other band career ever since they broke up. So I think it's so cool that this song that I've had in my head for 18 years was one of my musical hero's introduction for "Surprise, You're Dead," which is a great song in its own right. So here's Mike Patton singing the Sweet Dreams song (a version of Alpine White):