Tag: football

Rest in Peace

Two Boston sports legends passed away this week. First, Boston Red Sox hall of famer Tim Wakefield died of cancer.

Wakefield is an absolute legend. There is no way he should have been as dominant as he was throwing those goofy little knuckleballs, but when he was on he was untouchable. Dan Douquette is a hero for eternity for signing this guy after the Pirates cut him. He could have been a villain for all eternity after Aaron Freakin’ Boone hit that playoff series losing walk off home run off of him in 2003, but he was such a pro and the roll model team player that he was able to rise above it. Taking one for the team as the Yankees were pummeling us in game three in 2004 and thus saving the bullpen to spark the comeback that lead to the Red Sox breaking their 86 year world series drought sure helped to win the doubters back.

Rest in peace, Red Sox hero and two time world series champion, Tim Wakefield.

That was yesterday. Today, we found out we lost former Patriots star tight end Russ Francis.

I am not a football guy, but I sort of was a fan when I was a kid, back in the days when the Patriots were eternally pathetic. I remember Francis from back then… a little bit. I think I may have had his football card, and he was a pro bowl caliber player at a time when the Pats were league renown door mats. I can’t remember actually seeing him play at all. I didn’t get football enough to know who was doing what back in those days, but I do remember hearing his name on the game broadcasts and I knew it was bad news when he left.

Rest in peace, Russ Francis.

As I said, it’s been a bad couple of days for Boston sports fans.

Superb Owl

So there’s a game or something tonight? I saw that the Buffalo Sabers were playing the Montreal Canadiens in what must have been the lamest match up of the century so far, but that was earlier. What game is everyone talking about?

Har har har.

Clearly I am not watching the Super Bowl, though my bass player let it drop yesterday that he’s in one of the two cities represented in the game. I wonder what the volume level in public spaces is like there. Hopefully they don’t go through what Boston used to go through with riots near Northeastern. Those were bad ends to great experiences.

It dawned on me today that by taking tomorrow off, my co-workers are going to assume I was planning for a Sunday full of drunken revelry. Dudes couldn’t be further off if they tried.

I worked on music quite a bit today, but not as much as I would have liked. I snuck some singing in when no one was looking and at the moment I have three songs with vocals complete and six more ready to go for a (weather permitting) car music in the morning. I seriously considered doing some car music during the super bowl but knowing my luck I would get t-boned by some drunk football fan trying to find his way to the next super bowl party. You know how it is.

Tomorrow I am meeting with the surgeon who, hopefully, will someday perform my weight loss surgery. I am pretty nervous but far from panicked. A little part of me is expecting her to tell me that I am not qualified and I should just go home and hurry up that inevitable heart attack. I guess that counts as nerves. You know how it is.

Okay. My exercise bike is calling me. I just wasted 61 minutes watching a cool YouTube video about Les Pauls. Time to go get some exercise minutes in.

Wish me luck.

Deflategate

You know what pisses me off the most?  After a number of years of not paying the slightest inkling of attention to the National Football League, I decide to sort of jump back on the Patriots bandwagon for the playoffs.  I watched quite a bit of their two playoff games, and actually watched the first half of the Colts game on the tube before listening to the second half on the radio.

And what do I get in return for starting to almost think about caring again?  Why the Patriots get accused of cheating again.  Oh thank you so much, Bill.  I really wanted to hear this crap.  They provided 12 balls to be used by their offense.  11 were under-inflated.  Now forgetting the fact that as methods of cheating go, this one is just stupid.  Come on, Bill.  Can’t you come up with a better scheme than this?  Couldn’t you have gotten all super villain and done something maniacal like putting Ambien into the other team’s Gatorade?  Why cheat at all?  Wasn’t the fact that Indianapolis doesn’t know what it’s like to play in freezing rain while you play in snow and hurricane horror on a regular basis competitive advantage enough?

I was this close to having fun with football again and boom, my team gets called out for cheating.  That’ll teach me a lesson, eh?

Wouldn’t it be Nice?

I’ve been sitting at my computer tonight more or less since I got home.  My beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous, brilliant, amazing wife is next to me.  She built a PC today and is jumping through hoops trying to get all of her software installed and all of her settings the way she wants them.  I’m helping with the heavy lifting here and there.

I’ve also being a bootleg music nerd.  My goal to get a copy of every show on the Rush Clockwork Angels tour is more than likely never going to be achieved, but I’m now up to 17 shows (18 if you count the DVD of the first set of the Brooklyn show, which I don’t).  I’m fighting with the new iTunes and with iTunes match.  Apparently we no longer have the ability to open a playlist in a separate window?  Gee… thanks iTunes.  I never made use of that function ever (and by never I mean I used it constantly).  Now when I drag a new folder full of music into a playlist and have it upload to iTunes Match, it does not add the music to the playlist.  You know, the playlist that I just added it to?  I then have to go into albums and right click and select add to playlist.  It gives me a drop down of all my playlists.  I have about a hundred and eighty thousand of them.  Yeah, that’s easier than having two windows.

Anyway, the real inspiration for this particular waste of server memory is Monday Night Football.  I don’t have the television on, but I keep seeing Facebook and Twitter notifications popping up with posts about the Patriots game.  I live in New England.  I suppose I identify myself as a Patriots fan.  I just don’t live and die by football the way 95% of my fellow New Englanders do.  I want my home team to win, but I am not going to get upset if they don’t.

However, all of this football buzz is making me think…

I could really go for some NHL hockey right now.  A Bruins game would sure be a lot more interesting than a Patriots game.  Hell, a Columbus vs Florida game would be more interesting to me.  I’d park my largess down on the coach and watch the shit out of a game like that tonight.

Thanks a ton, NHL.