New Astro Jed Lowrie and his wife went on safari in November. Here are the pictures they took.

Seeing Red Sox players shooting baskets on N3SN every night has been fun. Tonight, Pedroia was on fire. After knocking others (Youk) for using the backboard, he quickly realized that was the way to go, and announced mid-round with a shit-eating grin that he would indeed be going glass. He set the record for pre-money ball total, then missed the money ball (which doubles your whole score) and rightfully claimed that it was a lighter ball. He proceeded to make two non-counting shots with the same ball before assisting his 2-year old son in dunking it into the garbage can.

But then Darnell McDonald stepped up and, despite claiming basketball wasn't his sport, went on an amazing run, beating Dustin's pre-money ball record AND hitting the money ball, making him unbeatable in this contest. See video above of Darnell's amazing performance.

I love this stuff, and I loved watching both these guys' interviews, since they're so natural when they talk, just goofin' around and not speaking in cliches (though some always sneak through). However, leave it to N3SN to miss some of the action. On every single shooter, they've purposely missed 3-4 shots to do a close-up of the guy's face while he's shooting! You can tell me that I'm nitpicking and that this doesn't matter and they know it doesn't which is why they purposely made the call to miss some shots to go with close-ups. Maybe that's true, but I'm just saying, What's the point of showing a live basketball contest if you're not going to show us whether the ball goes in or not? I swear they messed up Salty's score the other night because they went to the tape to get the official count, and at least one make (I think--it sounded like it went in) wasn't shown. Just fitting that they would miss stuff as that's come to be their tradition in baseball games during the season....

On the Maryland portion of my Florida trip, I went with Brian and Jen to the site of the old Memorial Stadium. They've put an artificial turf field on the spot, with home plate right where the old one was.

I always liked how you could see trees beyond the outfield fence on TV. The trees that were right behind the outfield wall are gone, but you can still see the ones that line the street that borders the site. Unfortunately, the field is fenced in, and we decided not to hop it. But I still got to stand right on the grounds, on the spot that would have been the area around the plate. So I got that goin' for me. Thanks to Brian for taking the pics.

Maybe you've heard about the reporter Marie Colvin being killed in Syria already. I just found out. Last night, I was watching the brutal scenes from Syria while Colvin talked live with Anderson Cooper. I remember him telling her to "stay safe" as he ended their talk. And now she's dead. Their whole point was to let people know how serious the situation is over there. This drives that home even more.

The writer of this article was also tuned in last night.

From the Providence newspaper, just about 100 years ago.

Drove to the Florida Keys recently. I hate flying and I love driving, so for long trips Kim flies and I drive and we meet each other at the destination. So now you can mutter under your breath how crazy I am. I'll wait. Okay, so on my way down, I needed gas right around Rye, NY, and since I've never been to Playland despite hearing commercials for it for three decades, I figured I'd go over and check it out. Mainly because of...you know what I'm gonna say, right? If you don't recognize the above shot, let me jog your memory:

In the movie, it's called "Sea Point Park," but it was really filmed at Rye Playland. Okay, let's skip ahead to Florida.

This weird blimp-looking thing is supposedly watching the southern waters, looking for boats attempting to come in from Cuba.

Sign near Ernest Hemingway's house in Key West.

Hemingway's pool.

A couple of cats at the Hemingway house. There are over 40 of them.

The Sunset Celebration begins.

We didn't realize the sunset was celebrated nightly and kind of stumbled upon this. (Even though I'd been to Key West before.)

The whole dock becomes filled with people, all just watching the natural ball drop.

We ended up getting a higher view on the picnic tables of an abandoned restaurant.

The money shot.

As the top of the sun disappears into the ocean, everybody cheers. Then the mass exodus begins, as people head off to see...

...large men dressed as women. Here, Kim puts a buck in the bra-strap of this linebacker.

We also stumbled across the Red Sox bar right on the main strip there. It's the "Southernmost Red Sox Nation" as they say there.

My birthday is 9/8. And my initials are JPS. I'll never find a more me-ish license plate than this one. (I don't think this person would be mad at me for posting their plate in the one in a trillion chance they see this, since I'm not showing the whole car.)

The beach in Key West. I love the Keys. Fun stuff. Go. (I split the picture-taking duties with Kim so we have a lot more shots of the sparkling blue water and other interesting places but I'll either save those for another day or just never show them out of laziness. Oh--we also spent a night in Miami Beach, and incredibly Sam Horn walked right past us. He was in his Joe Montana jersey, ready to watch that Giants-49ers game. So I've seen the guy a few minutes from my home at the supermarket, at Fenway, at the showing of the 2007 World Series film, and now in Miami!)

Players, too! Boston Red Sox: Just stop answering their questions! Walk right by! In the meantime the rest of us won't read or watch anything they throw out there, and we can stop the insanity together.

I hope the next time a media member asks a baseball player for an apology, they tell 'em to shut the fuck up and mind their own business.

I'm really serious about bringing anti-media signs to Fenway this year. I hope others will join me. Just stuff like "Boston Sports Media: SHUT UP" or whatever. These guys need to know they are shit and not the center of attention.

They are loving this crap. They can invent anything they want, brainwash the entire casual fan base who doesn't have a clue, causing them to revolt, causing the media to then say "see, team, how much they hate you? Whatcha gonna do now?" causing the players to say "who the fuck are you?" causing the media to say to the fans "look at that! They don't care about you since they won't apologize to you for doing the stuff we made up in the first place! You gonna take that?" causing the PR department to have the players try to "say the right things" to avoid more shit--which wouldn't happen if NONE OF US PAID ATTENTION TO THE ASSHOLE MEDIA so let's do that, okay? How many times to they have to admit flat out that they do what they do to get attention and ratings before we stop taking them seriously and just completely ignore them?

(And before you tell me about great media members who only write awesome things--I'm not talking about an actual journalist writing a story about a player or something, I'm talking about shitty talk show hosts and gossip columnists, which are the ones who basically control the way an entire region thinks. And yes I still believe most people who are actual fans and not just water cooler assholes know what's up, but the ones who just pay attention to any given day's buzz word fuck it up for all of us by repeating what the media tells them. Hey--technically the Red Sox are not currently winning the first game of the season, as it's still essentially 0-0. And our winning percentage is .000 as we speak. You know what that means. Tell your friends: Panic! Put it on the front page!)