Christmas Came Early for Satan

...or, more specifically, his favorite baseball team.

One bright spot of Teixeira signing with the New York Yankees, however, is that the Red Sox bandwagon should become a lot roomier.

What I Think About When I Think About Soccer

When boiled down to its most basic elements, any sport can seem foolish--"bounce ball, throw ball at iron circle"; "hit ball with stick, run in diamond pattern"; "attempt to cripple people moving in direction opposite you, act surprised when someone gets crippled"--but I firmly believe that soccer stands alone as the silliest of all mainstream athletics. This personal tenet stems not from the fact that the game is foreign to me--as a citizen of a country where millionaires are made by their successful execution of a left turn, I am painfully aware that the bottomless standard for what is considered a "sport" is immune to geographical boundaries--but because soccer is the only widely popular sporting event whose rules explicitly prohibit the use of 50% of its participants' potential limbs.

("Not the goalie!" a proponent of soccer would be quick to point out, but that argument only further proves why soccer will never catch on in the United States: you know what other sport uses a goalie? Hockey (in both its Canadian and alternative-lifestyle incarnations). Goalies mean low scoring; low scoring means low interest among conspicuous consumers; disinterested conspicuous-consumers lead to a demand for a replacement product, which leads to NASCAR. Thanks, hockey.)

While the halving of competitors' available extremities as a fundamental aspect certainly gives soccer a stronger case to call itself "football" than a Sunday-afternoon collision of helmets and shoulder pads can ever claim, it also puts soccer on the level of potato sack racing--yet I sincerely doubt that "$250,000,000 and a Spice Girl" was among the prizes at your last company picnic. It is this irreconcilable contradiction that leaves me confounded by the popularity of soccer, particularly with regard to its small but vocal American fanbase. Whenever I try to argue to my countrymen and friends exactly how asinine is the hands-free game that they love so much, I inevitably end up at a loss for words.

At long last, I have come across a video (thanks to BoingBoing via Defamer) (seen above) that makes my argument for me, through the timeless magic of pictures and music. It's outdated, it's discomfiting, it's seemingly endless...

It's soccer!

You Can't Have Your Offensively-Named Child and Eat His Cake Too

Hillbilly-hipster parents Heath and Deborah Campbell are so hillbilly-hip that they named their son "Adolf Hitler" and now they're hillbilly-hipster-mad that a New Jersey ShopRite refused to put the three-year-old's name on a birthday cake--even without the swastika that they had previously requested.

Mr. Campbell insists that he named his son after das Führer not because he's racist, but because "he liked the name". He goes on to support this iron-clad defense by pointing out that he allows people of races other than the master one into his home (also populated by his daughters, "JoyceLynn Aryan Nation" and "Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie") and that he wouldn't "really care" if his son grew up to hang out with black people.

He wouldn't really care? How progressive. The latter, hypothetical situation is somewhat unlikely, however...given that the kid's freaking name is Adolf Hitler.

Air Baghdads

I wish American journalists would ask George W. Bush the sort of hard questions that one of their Iraqi counterparts did on Sunday.

(By "ask", I mean "throw"...and by "questions", I mean "shoes".)

You Know How I Know You're Gay? Joe Satriani Is Suing You for Plagiarism.

It's common knowledge that anyone who is a heterosexual male over the age of 14 and in full possession of his auditory senses is required to dislike Coldplay if he wants to consider himself hip. This unspoken standard has presented a conundrum for me ever since Coldplay first entered the popular consciousness; while I fulfill all of the aforementioned requirements (especially the one about wanting to be hip), I am bitterly protective of my self-aggrandizing belief that I stand among the precious, enlightened few who know exactly why Coldplay sucks beyond the fact that The 40-Year-Old Virgin tells me so: their songs are shamelessly derivative; their albums are overproduced to the razor's edge of unbreathable sonic mush; their lead singer allowed Gwyneth Paltrow to name his children after a fruit and Charlton Heston, respectively. And yet, at the same time...I also kind of like them.

This seemingly irreconcilable internal conflict would have likely driven me to madness had it not been for the courage of '80s-era cheese-guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani to come forward and demand that Coldplay give him all of their money.

The fact that Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" really does kind of sound like Satriani's "If I Could Fly" is beside the point. What matters is the fact that a musician who hadn't been heard from in two decades--and who was only ever known strictly for playing the electric guitar, not for playing real songs with words--suing a band that is currently quite popular--but who, based on their technical merits, could easily fail to stand the test of time--for plagiarism is super-ironic. Irony is hip; therefore, Coldplay is hip (for a few hours today, at least); therefore, I (with acknowledgment to the same caveat) am indisputably hip.

But only because I don't really like Coldplay, unlike the rest of you losers.

Palin '12!

Goddamn conservative media...

President-elect Barack Obama won't take office until nearly two months from now, and journalists are already trying to blame him for the germ warfare that will theoretically be brought upon America in 2013.

Wait a minute...2013? That would be one year after Obama's first term...

For the sake of his legacy, let's hope that Obama will have become embroiled in a sex scandal before then. If he is not--and America does suffer a terrorist attack prior to that time--let's hope that then-President Obama will at least have the good sense to retaliate towards a country that had absolutely nothing to do with said attack. Recent history has taught has that that kind of behavior pretty much guarantees a second term.

(Woooo! 'MERICA! [double-barreled pistol fire into the air])

Stupefying Observations of Anonymous Boneheads Unfiltered and Publicized by Pseudo-Sentient Lava Lamp

Who says "entertainment news" is meaningless?

If it weren't for crackerjack journalists like Courtney Hazlett of MSNBC's "The Scoop", the world would be deprived of unverified third-party criticism of the upcoming film Valkyrie that is as probing and insightful as this gem:

"'The film just isn’t a thriller at all' said one 'Valkyrie' viewer. 'It’s a bunch of white guys in Nazi uniforms.'"

Nicely reported, Courtney. Rather than wasting any time addressing how in the hell the two quoted sentences are in any way related, you skipped right ahead to not inquiring of the alleged "viewer" what race and gender he or she mistakenly believes Nazi officers were. And then you presumably collected a paycheck. Because someone believes that what you do is journalism.

No, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer...thank YOU.

Northern Expulsion

As that crazy lady who didn't become vice president was wont to remind us, Alaskans like to shoot things dead. I'm pretty sure that she was talking about defenseless animals, not political aspirations...but her fellow statesmen have apparently seen fit not to draw such a distinction, first hobbling her own professional future, then--on Tuesday--putting a bullet between the eyes of an octogenarian convicted felon's career...on his birthday!

What happened to you, Alaska? You used to be cool.

(Oh, right--global warming.)

Nerds Confusing Nerds Confusing Nerds

Excited for the revamped Star Trek, nerds? Especially since the new trailer premiered last weekend?

Well, that thing's only been online for about 24 hours, and nerds--who, as you know, nerds, are known to work fast when it comes to this sort of thing--have recut it as the opening title sequence of what I can only imagine you would find a sacrilegious fusion of one of your favorite nerd things and "Beverly Hills, 90210" (plus what I believe is a reference to the guy who plays Spock's character's name on that terrible program "Heroes", which I understand you also like). To add insult to injury, the production quality is low.

Take that, nerds! say...um...some other nerds.

Bush to Go Out in a Blaze of...Mild Reasonability?

You know all those horrible things that George W. Bush did during his eight disastrous years in office?

With less than 70 days to go, The Worst President Ever has come around to acknowledging that his deeds were, in fact, horrible...or at least that about three of them were.

Three is a low number, but it is a start--a start in the direction opposite nuclear winter, which is where I had been pretty sure Bush would try to lead us during his final days in office. So I'll take my small victories where I can get them.

Terrorist Attacks McCain

While more responsible bloggers such as myself have been reticent to rub the Obama victory in the faces of those who opposed his campaign, former would-be terrorist (who about 90% of the American populous had never heard of until Sean Hannity looked him up on Wikipedia) and current college professor William Ayers apparently holds no such qualms.

Using Obama's historic victory as a jumping-off point, Ayers has written a piece for In These Times in which he kicks John McCain while he's down, segueing abruptly from poo-pooing McCain for his usage of Ayers as a "prop" in his failed presidential bid into boldly denouncing McCain for...having participated in the Vietnam War. (Ayers also finds a moment to brag about having been mentioned on "The Colbert Report", which I would probably do, too.)

Really, Bill? Vietnam? You still think that's the first thing people should hold against John McCain?

I would have gone with the more recent constant lying or the baseless, often latently racist smears against Barack Obama or the complete abandonment of his principles in a desperate quest to win an office for no other reason than to satiate his ego.

Then again, none of those things happened in the 1960s, which was apparently the only decade when anything interesting happened in America. I guess you had to be there, which I was not.

Fox News Throws Sarah Palin Under the Snow Machine

I told myself after Kal-El won the presidential election last night that I would resist schadenfreude and avoid posting any anti-McCain/Palin stories for the foreseeable future.

That foreseeable future almost lasted twenty-four hours, then Wonkette posted the above video.

What gives, Fox News? Wasn't it just two months ago when you were hailing the pretty lady with glasses as the savior of your network mandate--I mean, the Republican Party? Looks like this ugly breakup could drag on for a while.

Barack in Time

Once upon a time in America, black people were white people's property.

A couple of centuries later, for eight years America was led by the stupidest, most incompetent, most corrupt, destructive and vile person to ever hold the job.

Then...

On November 4th, 2008, Barack Obama--who is half African-American--was elected President of the United States.

That's a time I can believe in.

Rest In Peace, Obama's Grandma

Little more than twenty-four hours before she might [ed. note: that's a "might", mind you] have seen her grandson be elected as the first black President of the United States, Madelyn Dunham passed away late Sunday night at the age of 86.

Call me a cynical asshole, but if [ed. note: that's an "if", I hasten to point out] Barack Obama wins the election tomorrow, I wouldn't be surprised to see John McCain, his campaign and his supporters attribute the outcome to sympathy.

And if they're going to think that, I'm going to have go ahead and think that Mrs. Dunham deliberately timed her death--not just out of love for her grandson, but for her country.

Boo! (Also: Booo.)

Don't find a still image of a misspelled word particularly frightening?

What if I told you it was taken from a nationally broadcast television commercial made by...a viable candidate for President!!

Happy Halluhwein!

Phun with MSNBC Homepage Juxtaposition

Way to celebrate with class, Philly.

5 Friends Vote: The Revenge

Remember that video that a bunch of famous people made a few weeks ago to celebrate Metroville's 300th post?

Now there's another one, featuring famous people who are even more famous (as well as some of the original famous people), and I'm beginning to suspect that the whole enterprise might have never had anything to do with honoring this blog.

(Stupid famous people. They think they're so cool, talking about "voting"...whatever the hell that is.)

Celtics Are Champions Once Again!

There is just one game in the NBA season, right?

No? What is it, then--a couple more?

Eighty-one more? Yeesh...

We returned bandwagon fans are still a little rusty.

The Undecided Voter's Rhyme-Based Guide to the 2008 Presidential Election

With one week remaining until The Most Important Presidential Election In History™, cable news informs me that there are still undecided voters in America (I don't personally know any, but far be it from me to disagree with what TV says). My well-documented bias towards Barack Obama in the current race notwithstanding, I am a registered Independent who officially favors neither Democrats nor Republicans, and especially not Ron Paul (to wit: I thought very highly of Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, putting aside the fact that I also thought at the time that I was best friends with Knight Rider); I brazenly attest that this puts me in a unique position to offer advice to the potential jurors of the United States who are still uncertain about whom to cast their vote for when they step into the booth on November 4th...that is, some of them.

By no means do I feel qualified to address the theoretically-existent undecided voters who are capable of applying genuine thought and reason to the many issues at stake in this election--they're on their own, as far as my purposes here are concerned. This post is specifically targeted at the undecided voters who are leaning towards John McCain for no other reason than because the word "Obama" rhymes with the word "Osama":

If you wouldn't mind putting down that can of paint you're drinking from for a moment, I'd like to examine the issue of rhyming words vis-à-vis their value in the upcoming presidential election.

It's true--Barack Obama's last name rhymes with Osama bin Laden's first name. There are a lot of people who don't like Obama who would have you believe that this grammatical similarity indicates a substantive commonality between the current Democratic candidate for U.S. President and the evil mastermind behind the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.

But have those people considered the words that rhyme with the words that describe things they do like? It's unlikely, because thinking and words hurt their brains. I ask you to do what they cannot, and contemplate the following selection of 25 rhymes:

Beer: Queer

Bill Engvall: Bilingual (which indicates a terrorist)

Bush: Rush (the band from Canada, which is a foreign country)

Camouflage: "Entourage"

Cheney: Brainy (and thinking is for faggots)

Christ: Feist (who is from Canada)

Football: Fútbol (which means "soccer", which is foreign)

Foreigner (the band): Foreigner (a foreign person)

Fox News: Cock Shoes (which--while not an actual thing--sounds pretty gay)

God: Zod (who tried to kill Superman)

Gun: Hun (who was a person from Asia, which is a foreign place)

Hate: Plate (which liberal elitists use when they eat)

Hunting: Punting (which is quitting)

Incest: Seacrest

Jesus: Pees Us

Larry the Cable Guy: Marry-Clark-Gable Guy

Limbaugh: Simba (who is from Africa, which is where black people are from)

NASCAR: Ass Czar

Palin: Gay Men

"Pro Life": "Go Fife" (and fifes are gay)

Racism: Chase Jism

Truck: Puck (which is used in hockey, which is from Canada)

War: Poor (which, coincidentally, is what the Iraq War made America)

Weapon: Stepin (as in “Fetchit”, who--although hilarious--was a black person)

White Power: Nice Flower (and flowers are gay)

I could go on, but no amount of further examples would ever change one fact that the average Obama-hater is quick to point out: Barack Obama's middle name is "Hussein", which is the same name as the last name of Saddam Hussein (who, although he had nothing to do with 9/11--unlike Osama bin Laden--is, thankfully, dead...also unlike Osama bin Laden).

If that's the kind of ostensible "logic" (for lack of a better term) that can influence your choice for the next President of the United States, there's really no effective counterpoint that I can present to you.

Except...oh, my god--

"Hussein" rhymes with "McCain"!

Neo-Nazis Dream Big, Accomplish Squat

Say what you will about neo-Nazi skinheads Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman (I'd start with "they're kind of racist"), the young men certainly set lofty--and weirdly specific--goals for themselves. Not only did they plan to assassinate Barack Obama, the act was to have been their suicidal grand finale to a murderous spree that took the lives of 88 (because--follow along here--'H' is the 8th letter in the alphabet, so two 8s mean two 'H's and two 'H's obviously mean "Heil Hitler") African-Americans, 14 of whom (everybody knows that the number 14 is associated with the 14-word phrase, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children") were to be killed by decapitation.

Before they were arrested in Tennessee on October 22, Cowart and Schlesselman managed to carry out exactly zero of their 89 planned murders.

Oh, well. Swastika for effort.

Nukular Safety Is Fer Queers!

I don't want to make the blanket assumption that anyone who supports John McCain is a hate-filled, proudly ignorant, mouth-breathing troglodyte...but after seeing the above clip from an event at Northern Iowa University on Saturday, wherein the long-off-the-rails Republican presidential candidate's insipid mockery of Barack Obama's concern for nuclear safety (boiling it down to "blah, blah, blah") is met with a fourteen-second ovation, I will absolutely make that assumption about anyone who attends McCain/Palin rallies.

Aren't Guns Awesome?

Praise Jeebus for the Second Amendment--without it, we Amerikuns wouldn't have no way of protecting ourselves against the redcoats.

Also, we wouldn't give 8-year-olds the opportunity to kill themselves with Uzis at machine gun shows.

Whatever the future may hold for the parents of the late Christopher Bizilj, the "certified instructor" under whose supervision the child shot himself in the head with a fucking Uzi and everyone involved with the Westfield Sportsman's Club (ideally, prison)...they can at least be secure in the knowledge that they are true patriots.

Two Funny Parents Probably Equals Unfunny Baby

...Nonetheless, I'm very happy for Amy Poehler and Will Arnett about the birth of their child.

He might grow up to be good at math, or something. Math is important.

Chicken McMugget

When the story broke on Thursday about a young woman in Pittsburgh having the letter 'B' carved into her face by a mugger after he saw her McCain bumper sticker, you almost had to be a little bit happy for the McCain campaign: finally--after all the treason-proclaiming, murder-instructing and out-and-proud-racist nutjobs that have emerged in support of the GOP candidate--they had a crazy person on the Obama side (and a big black one, to boot!) to point to in their defense.

That is unless you saw the above photo of the alleged victim, McCain campaign volunteer Ashley Todd, and noted the fact that the 'B' scratched into her face was backwards--as though it had been done in a mirror--as a sign that the other shoe would soon be dropping.

Alas, it has, as Todd confessed on Friday that she made the whole thing up. Not only was she not attacked by an Obama supporter (having etched the incriminatingly-positioned letter into her face herself), she was never at the ATM at which she had purported to have been mugged.

And the McCain Crazy Train (formerly known as the "Straight Talk Express") keeps on rollin'.

Confused, Tired Old Man Tired, Confused

I couldn't disagree with him more.

I couldn't agree...with myself...I couldn't disagree...with myself...

Patriotism...God....

Zzzzzz, pudding, fail.

The Dos and Don'ts of Postponing a Presidential Campaign

DO: Mean it.

DON'T: Not mean it, get caught in your politically-motivated lie, then spend the next couple of weeks getting raked over the coals by David Letterman.

DO: It so that you can visit your sweet old grandma (who helped raise you) because she has fallen ill.

DON'T: Try to pretend that you have a grandma in a desperate attempt to keep pace with your opponent, for you might be as old as--if not older than--a large percentage of actual grandmas.

DO: Win.

DON'T: Lose. (But...black, gay, literate, female polar-bear-God-willing, Goofus...you will.)

ALCS Game 5, Following Three-Day Seventh-Inning Stretch, Concludes in ALCS Game 7

All that excitement of the Boston Red Sox's historic comeback late in Game 5 of the American League Championship and their handy defeat of the Tampa Bay Rays in the next contest to bring the series down to a decisive Game 7?

Never happened.

Steve Harvey Forces ALCS Game 7

Prior to the Boston Red Sox's brain-melting comeback in Game 5 Thursday night, it's fair to say that the American League Championship Series had been the Tampa Bay Rays' to win.

Following Boston's 4-2 victory in Game 6 on Saturday, the series is officially anyone's.

What is it that has changed the face of this year's American League showdown? Is it the Red Sox's tendency to thrive in the face of ALCS elimination--a reputation born in 2004, when they won four straight elimination games to defeat the New York Yankees--and solidified in 2007, when they rallied back from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Cleveland Indians? Is it the Rays' inexperience? Is it a combination of both?

While many potential explanations hold merit, Metroville happens to believe that the 2008 ALCS has been altered by comedian, actor and radio personality Broderick Steven Harvey--perhaps better known to you as "Steve Harvey".

When baseball fans throughout the country tuned into TBS on Saturday at 8 p.m. EST--the scheduled broadcast start time for Game 6--and found themselves watching an archival "TV Bloopers" special, I'm willing to bet that most of them didn't panic. I, for example--because it was not yet 8:07 EST, the official scheduled start time for the game, when I turned on my television--assumed that, perhaps because of how late in Game 5 had the Sox turned things around, TBS had been unable to put together a pregame show.

When 8:07 EST rolled around and the TBS broadcast switched not to the Red Sox-Rays game but to a syndicated episode of "The Steve Harvey Show", it's fair to assume that most viewers' emotions took a turn. Casual baseball fans probably thought, "Hey, what the hell?"; dedicated fans of the Red Sox or the Rays probably thought, "HEY, WHAT THE HELL?!"; fans of the comedy stylings of Steve Harvey over baseball probably thought, "All right!".

As a Red Sox fan who is also possibly an honest-to-goodness crazy person, my reaction was something else entirely: I immediately feared that Boston's improbable victory on Thursday night was a product of my imagination--that they had actually lost the game and the series; there would be no baseball on TV until the World Series started on Wednesday, and no Red Sox baseball on TV until 2009.

Later, after the technicians at the Atlanta headquarters of TBS (some of whom I hope are no longer employed) had amended their colossal gaffe, my thoughts turned toward the possibility that there existed any Tampa Bay Rays fans (among the few hundred real fans, mind you, that existed prior to the current season) neurotic enough to have experienced a delusional episode similar to mine during the twenty minutes that "The Steve Harvey Show" supplanted the ballgame. What must they have been thinking? Had the Red Sox victory in Game 5 been a product of their imaginations--as I had briefly feared was the case for me--they would not have turned on their televisions on Saturday evening to watch a baseball game: the ALCS would have been over, the Rays would have reached the World Series and wouldn't be playing again until Wednesday. The only possible explanation, in their minds, would have been that...

The Tampa Bay Rays never existed!

Somewhere around 1995 or 1996, they--living lives of total unfulfilment in the farthest corner of the American Southeast and being baseball fans with no interest in the ticky-tacky Florida Marlins--had, in an unconscious preemptive countermeasure against their suicides, withdrawn from reality and conjured the establishment of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, down the very last detail. The twelve-year history of their beloved baseball team WAS NOTHING BUT A FEVER DREAM.

How fucked up must that have been for them during those twenty horrible minutes?

It was likely fucked up enough that, even after TBS had righted its sinking ship Saturday evening, there's no way that the tried-and-true Rays fans dedicated enough to have experienced a psychotic episode of such severity could have completely gotten their heads back in the game before its end. And when a team's most dedicated fans don't have their heads the game...the team doesn't have their heads in the game. The fewer the amount of truly-obsessed fans, the more influential is each individual's karma upon a team's performance. It's superstitious-science. If you don't understand it, you're not a real fan of any professional sports team (which could easily make you a current supporter of the Tampa Bay Rays).

So here we are, heading into a decisive (and--at least as of a few days ago--inconceivable) Game 7. If you think that you can honestly predict which team will win, you're either (A) a member of one of the two opposing clubs (in which case: What up, Youkilis! Sweet beard! (and/or) Hey, Grant! Is it "Balfour" or "Ball Four"? WOOO, go Sox!) or (B) a multi-divorced degenerate gambler whose children won't speak to him (in which case: Sorry Dad keeps intercepting those letters with the checks in them, Biological Dad!). It's anyone's game. Should the Rays win, I will be very, very, very sad, as a Red Sox fan...but also (comparatively much less) happy, as a baseball fan, to see a small-market, low-budget team make it to the World Series. Should the Red Sox win--as I hope they will--I will be very, very, very happy...not just for my team, but for the few Tampa Bay Rays fans who are (relatively) old-school enough to be obsessed enough with their favorite baseball team to occasionally become mental patients. Why?

Because those Tampa Bay Rays fans will finally, through their hard-earned agony, have experienced the rite of passage that is a team curse.

In their case, it would be: "The Curse of Steve Harvey".

Gotta start somewhere.

Red Sox's 'Play Like Complete Dog Shit in Attempt to Reach World Series' Experiment Yields Unsurprising Resul--Wait, WHAT?

The Boston Red Sox were apparently as hurt as I was by their being perceived as the sneering villains of this year's ALCS, but their solution to the problem--to perform so terribly against the upstart Tampa Bay Rays as to reposition themselves as the underdogs they were a scant four years ago and thereby win back the hearts and minds of the general public beyond New England before staging a comeback--has to this point seemed rather dangerous, even to me. By the top half of the seventh inning during Game 5 Thursday night, it seemed downright psychotic.

I was disappointed when the Sox came up short in the marathon Game 2 on Sunday, but no Boston fan could complain too much about gaining a split on the road against a no-joke opponent. When the Red Sox decided to lay down their bats and allow their 2008 postseason ace to get shelled in Game 3, however, I began to grow concerned: wouldn't the Game 4 start of Human Batting Tee Tim Wakefield have been a better opportunity to drop a game at home?

Turns out that it was a spectacular opportunity, as the Rays unloaded for a 13-4 rout on Tuesday. It was at this point that I began to suspect that some of these Red Sox losses weren't intentional. Frankenstein's monster had broken out of the laboratory was wandering the countryside, drowning small children.

Nonetheless, there was a part of me that couldn't help but admire the Boston club's commitment to regaining underdog status by allowing themselves to be put in a 3-1 series hole, just like they were against the Indians last year and against the Yankees three years before that, that would require them to sweep all three remaining games to win the pennant.

That admiration had dissipated into utter disgust long before the middle of the seventh inning on Thursday, when the Red Sox were getting their asses handed to them (yet again), 7-0. Given that I am a Red Sox fan from birth (who is older than 5), I'm no stranger to seeing my team fail miserably...but I could little recall a game or a series when every member of the team looked for all the world like they just didn't give a shit--like failure was inevitable. That's exactly what the Red Sox looked like after the top half of the seventh during the do-or-die Game 5, facing a deficit that had never before been overcome in the history of the American League Championship Series.

And then...

They scored four runs, scored another three in the eighth, and tacked on one more in the bottom of the ninth to win the game, 8-7, and send the series back to Tampa.

So that happened.

Whether or not the Boston Red Sox are able to achieve the still-very-daunting task of winning the pennant, it's nice to once again be rooting for a team that cares...at least for one more game.

You Know Which Presidential Candidate Is a Racist? You Might Never Know:

The white one.

If You Can't Decide What City Your Team Plays For...

...you don't get to advance to the ALCS.

Jed Lowrie says so.

Joe Biden Will See Your Retarded Son and Raise You a Dead Wife and Daughter

Thursday night saw the one-time-only 2008 Vice Presidential debate between Joe Biden and a Robo-Folksy Idiot-Bot. Save for the fact that at no point did Sarah Palin gnaw on her podium, things went more or less as expected.

5 Friends Vote

Look at all the famous people who turned out to celebrate Metroville's 300th post!

Also, they seem to be discussing something about voting.

Stay Cool Forever

If the world feels a little warmer today, that's because Paul Newman has parted ways with it.

In doing so, he has not only left behind such iconic screen characters as Eddie Felson, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy, Henry Gondorff and Reggie Dunlop, but--even more significantly--what will remain the gold standard--perhaps forever--to the good that an artist can do with his celebrity.

I'd like to say that I would eat 50 eggs in your honor, Paul...but I'm just not that cool.

And neither is anyone else besides you.

Darkness Falls Upon the AL East

What the hell, American League East teams that aren't based in the armpit of America's penis? You all just went ahead and let the Tampa Bay Rays--a team that has existed for barely a decade (although that was just long enough for them to change their name from a stupid one that made geographic sense, the "Devil Rays" (and which would have allowed this post to have a better title: "The AL East Stings"), to one that was just stupid)--win the division?

Shame on you, Baltimore Orioles. Out of all the major league teams that represent America's pastime (and who didn't very recently relocate from Canada), your home field is closest to the capital of our nation. There's an American hero whose heart you continue to break...some call him "Iron Man", some call him "Junior"...and you've got a lot of explaining to do to him. I'm talking, of course, about Robert Downey Jr.

Shame on you, Toronto Blue Jays. You're from Canada, so it was inevitable that you would one day be defeated by even the worst teams from America...but couldn't you have at least shown proper respect to your pseudo-country's big brother actual country--the Gilbert Grape to your Arnie Grape, if you will--by finishing dead last in the division instead of second-to-last?

Shame on you, Boston Red Sox. Yeah, you're in the playoffs...but as the wild card. You're the defending World Series champions, for Yaz's sake, and you've conceded your division title to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays of baseball--the Tampa Bay Rays! As both a Red Sox fan and a fan of Major League Baseball as a whole, I find this outcome unacceptable. You have one chance to set things right, Red Sox, and you've got one month in which to do so.

Well, I guess that's everyone.

...Or at least every team who will have a stadium next year that is older than wherever the hell it is that Tampa Bay plays.

What Would We Do, Baby, Without Josh Groban Including 'Family Ties' in His Theme-Song Medley at the Emmys, Which He Did Not...Sha-La-La-La...

I'll tell you exactly what we'll do: we'll find out who Josh Groban is, and then we'll dislike him forever.

The "Two and a Half Men" theme was deemed classic enough by the producers of Sunday night's Emmy Awards telecast to warrant inclusion in Groban's (bizarre but impressively-executed) medley of well-known television shows' opening-title tunes, but the starter ditty from "Family Ties" was not.

Between the two aforementioned songs, which one is in your head right now?

Obviously, it's the theme from "Family Ties"--because that's the one that people have actually heard of...not to mention the fact that it also happens to be the greatest lyric-based (putting "Magnum, P.I.", "The A-Team" and "Knight Rider" out of contention) TV show theme song in history.

For the producers of the 60th annual Primetime Emmys to be so lazy as to allow such a heinous oversight would be equivalent to me not making the nominal effort to learn if Josh Groban is the same singer whose first name is "Josh" that I think is married to Katherine Heigl, who I think might be on "House" or something (I don't watch a lot of popular television shows)...which is exactly what I will not be doing, in protest.

Tom Brady Reads This Blog

Apparently daunted by Metroville's challenge to redeem last year's Super Bowl loss, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady opted on Sunday to cut his season short--more specifically, to less than one quarter of one game.

You're welcome, Matt Cassel.

Patriots, Act

For the last few weeks, as the regular baseball season began to drag its feet toward the playoffs and sports fans' attention began to wander toward autumn (in most cases because their fantasy baseball teams and/or their actual baseball teams and/or both were already in the crapper), people have been asking me, a fairly outspoken New England Patriots fan, if I am excited about the start of the NFL season.

Surprisingly--perhaps to no one more so than myself--my answer has been: "Enh."

The fact is, I'm mad at the Patriots. Not because they lost the Super Bowl last season and not because they fell one game short of historic perfection...but because those things happened as a direct result of the fact that the Patriots bought into their own hype. There's nothing wrong with a team believing that it can't be beat--one could even make the argument that such is the essence of athletic competition. But as soon as a team starts deriving that kind of unreasonable confidence less from itself and more from a third party--say, for example, bandwagon fans who were barely aware that the team existed before 2001--it has reserved itself a front row seat at its own Comeuppance Circus.

Think I'm overstating the matter? I suggest you familiarize yourself with the tale of the mentally disabled quarterback who earned a Super Bowl ring on the back of the Patriots' hubris.

Given that I am deeply familiar with the vitriolic hatred that fans of professional sports teams outside the Boston area have felt, with increasing dedication, toward fans of Boston-area-based professional sports teams ever since the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, I understand that most "Patraters" would be eager to view my apparent indifference as a surefire indication of a fair-weather fan. As it happens, those are people who had never given a second thought to Patriots fans prior to 2001...and that actually would make them, in a sense, "fair-weather haters".

I ask you this, fair-weather Patraters: Did you hate the Patriots fans back when Steve Grogan was running the offense on the field in Foxborough Stadium? No...you didn't. Because, not only have you never heard of Steve Grogan, you don't even know what Foxborough (also incorrectly spelled as "Foxboro") Stadium is. Mosi Tatupu--whom you've also never heard of--will gladly see you out the door.

At ten o'clock a.m. (PST) on Sunday, I will be seated front and center before my television set, surrounded by friends loved ones--all of them tried and true fans of the NFL team from Foxborough ("Foxboro" to the poseurs)--and I will be rooting for my New England Patriots with every last ounce of my sportsfan soul.

And if they don't lose to the Chiefs, which they probably won't, I'll be rooting for them to lose the next game...and, perhaps, the one after that.

I will do this because I truly love my Patriots, and I therefore realize that their media-drowned quest for a "perfect" season last year--and the ridiculous, jinx-tastic pressure that came with it--was what kept them from achieving a championship season.

Any NFL fan who would rather see his team have a perfect regular season (which, for the record, the Patriots did last year) than win the Super Bowl is the absolute antithesis of a genuine fan.

Which would mean that he's a New York Giants fan.

Which would mean that he's all about the Jets, now, because they have Brett Favre.

In either case, he calls himself a "New York" fan while rooting for a team that plays in New Jersey...which makes him a sad, sad shell of a person.

The Republican Party: Keepin' It Real

Say what you will about the GOP--that it's willfully ignorant, that it sustains itself on deceitful fear-mongering, that its blind allegiance to an unprecedentedly incompetent party-line president has buried America in a pit eight years deep--after what went down on the third night of the Republican National Convention, one thing you can't say is that Republicans are not out, loud and proud about their perpetual evildoing.

During his speech in St. Paul on Wednesday, Rudy "9/11" Giuliani--who (you might not remember because he hardly ever brings it up) was the outgoing mayor of the city that was the central target of the terrorist attacks on America on September 11, 2001, which the Bush administration inconceivably Play-Doh-Fun-Factoried into a rationale to start the Iraq War, which led directly to the energy crisis that is currently drowning the United States--actually got the entire crowd in the Xcel--ahem--Energy Center to chant, "Drill, baby, drill!" (as in: for oil, anywhere and everywhere, as opposed to exploring alternatives that would alleviate America's crippling dependency on fossil fuels and its resultant tendency to become embroiled in transcontinental fiascos in attempts to maintain said addiction). In response to Barack Obama's position that the Iraq War is a losing effort, Mayor Nine-One-One asserted that if America didn't win that war, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda did. While this would certainly be news to Osama bin Laden--who has never had anything whatsoever to do with the war in Iraq (and who has yet to be brought to justice for orchestrating the most devastating attack on American soil in history, FYI)--the Sheepublicans in attendance at the Xcel Energy Center (seriously, that's its name) responded to Giuliani's asinine remark with resounding cheers. But they cheered even louder when Rudolph the World Trade Center-Nosed Reindeer, whose public identity is based entirely on the fact that he once ran New York City, attacked the Democratic presidential candidate with the baseless claim that Wasilla, Alaska (pop. 9000)--the former mayoral realm of deer-in-the-headlights Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin--was "not cosmopolitan enough" to earn Obama's respect. Honest to (white, Christian, heterosexual male) God, the Minnesota audience applauded that jab...paying no heed to the frying-pan-to-the-face irony that it was made by a person who is inextricably linked to a city that is not only one of the most liberal in America, but one of the most--if not the most--cosmopolitan on the planet (unless I was asleep while Manhattan was relocated to central Kansas for the duration of Rudy "Quick! Name the Two Different Numbers Closest to '10' that Combine to Make '20'!" Giuliani's eight years in office).

That average American's (provided that the average American has a net worth upwards of $52,000,000) straight-faced nonsense was, however, merely an appetizer to the brain-melting unreality that main event Sarah Palin--whose appearance on the podium was met with a standing ovation from some 18,000 robo-people that had never heard of her less than a week earlier--spewed forth in accordance with her masters' command:

WHAT SARAH SAID (in a falsely ad-libbed reaction to numerous signs throughout the Xcel Energy Center reading "HOCKEY MOMS 4 PALIN" that were suspiciously identical in their handwriting): "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick."

WHAT REALITY SAYS: That pandering punchline encapsulates the sole reason that the Republican party selected Sarah Palin as McCain's gimmick running mate: she has a vagina.

WHAT SARAH SAID: John McCain is an outsider to "the Washington elite".

WHAT REALITY SAYS: Given that George W. Bush--who currently inhabits the highest position in Washington--publicly and heartily endorsed John McCain two days prior to Palin's speech, Palin's description of her running mate is dizzyingly contradictory...probably to no one more so than the man himself.

WHAT SARAH SAID: The fact that Barack Obama has written two books is a bad thing.

WHAT REALITY SAYS: Having written two books is a bad thing only to people who hate thinking and reading (a.k.a. the Republican base).

WHAT SARAH SAID: In an attempt to mockingly exaggerate Republicans' perception of Democrats' perception of Obama, she alluded to the idea that Obama can "turn back the waters".

WHAT REALITY SAYS: She stole that joke from the previous night's episode of "The Daily Show" [jump ahead to 5:19]. (And she calls herself a right-wing extremist...)

WHAT SARAH SAID: Special interest groups and lobbyists were against McCain in 2000.

WHAT REALITY SAYS: That's because McCain's opponent in the 2000 Republican primary, George W. Bush, had more money than McCain had and therefore had the support of special interest groups and lobbyists...which John McCain now has in 2008, while his opponent, Barack Obama, has refused to accept one cent from lobbyists or special interest groups since the start of his campaign.

WHAT SARAH SAID: John McCain is the only candidate who has literally "fought for you" (referring to McCain's military service during the Vietnam War).

WHAT REALITY SAYS: No, he didn't. I wasn't even alive then. Besides--despite John McCain's heroics (which the Republican party hasn't been willing to fully acknowledge until 35 years after the fact, when it finally suits their purposes)--the Vietnam War wasn't fought for the American people; it was protracted solely to stroke the egos of a megalomaniacal U.S. president--who had no business holding office in the first place--and his like-minded administration. Thank (white, Christian, heterosexual male) God that has never happened again...

Right, potential President John McCain?

Oh--you're asleep? Because you're an septuagenarian ass-kicked shell of a human being who will be dead much sooner than later?

I understand.

Just pass me on to Sarah Palin, then. I'm confident that she can take on your potentially globally-resonant responsibilities. After all, she has driven kids to hockey practice a bunch of times.

Heckuva Job, Liebie

Following his address at the Republican National Convention Tuesday night, former Democratic vice-presidential candidate/ current independent/desperate wannabe Joe Lieberman inadvertently said more about the Republican party's collective mindset than he could in a lifetime of speeches with five little words.

Faced with an NBC News reporter's inquiry regarding Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin's questionable readiness to become the most powerful person in the world should super-elderly Viet Cong-punching-bag-for-five-and-a-half-years John McCain's health fail, Lieberman demurely replied:

"Let's hope for the best."

Yes, Droopy Dog--let's do that. It's totally worked out for the last 8 years, ignoring the fact that the United States of America is in shambles courtesy of a staggeringly incompetent Republican president.

He's Her Son! (Slap) He's Her Grandson! (Slap)

It's a holiday weekend, so Metroville has decided to break the routine of linking to factually verified news stories and bring you some unsubstantiated spicy meatballs:

Newly minted Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's infant son is not her son; rather, he is her grandson, illegitimately birthed by Palin's 16-year-old daughter.

If that bit of insanity turns out to be true, I've hit the blogosphere jackpot. If it turns out to be false, all blame falls to the Daily Kos website.

The important thing is that you were impressed by my Chinatown reference.

UPDATE (09/01): Palin's baby is her baby...but her 17-year old daughter Bristol is also with child out of wedlock. Still scandalous, but not scandalous enough to qualify Metroville's attempt to move into the realm of hot-gossip blogging. Looks like it's back to linking CNN and MSNBC for me.


Thanks to Jennifer for the tip.

He Picked a Girl

After being roused from his nap and placed before a crowd in Dayton, Ohio, on Friday, John McCain asked the broad standing next to him to be a doll and fetch him his slippers.

He was quickly informed by his handlers that the woman was not a secretary but, in fact, the newly anointed Republican vice-presidential candidate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Further awkwardness was avoided by the arrival of Senator McCain's snack time.

Have You No Shame, Showtime?

I understand that it's difficult to always be second banana to HBO in original programming, but that is no excuse to have convinced "Californication" star David Duchovny to enter rehab for the same addiction from which the character he plays on the show suffers.

Lower-than-desired ratings for "Weeds" don't give any cable network the right to destroy a guy's family.

Obamapalooza

John McCain wants people to believe that Barack Obama stands for no one other than celebrities. And, sure...on the final night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, famous faces Gymnastics Chipmunk, will.i.am, John Legend, Sheryl Crow, Stevie Wonder and Academy Award-winner Al Gore all made appearances.

But so did Michael McDonald--a performer so unhip that it makes me, an unrepentant Huey Lewis fan, angry that the Democratic party did not first think to invite the News and their leader.

So I ask you, John McCain: who in his right mind would, in the year 2008, allow himself to be associated with Michael freaking McDonald if he really stood for no one other than celebrities?

Not Barack Obama--a.k.a. the next President of the United States of America, that's who.

Go back to one of your seven houses, "straight-talking" "maverick", and try to come up with a new argument before next week.

(Might I suggest racism? It's your ace in the hole, as it speaks directly to anyone stupid enough to vote for a third term of George W. Bush's policies.)

Don't Tell Me Who Obama Selected As His Running Mate!

I'm waiting until I get my text message on Saturday morning to find out, so I can Be the First to Know.

Global Warming Sets a Course For Adventure, Your Mind On a New Romance

The Coast Guard has some bad news for all the polar bear-loving, skyrocketing gas prices-complaining-about, not-wanting-the-planet-to-die hippies who have a problem with global warming: the rapidly melting ice in the Alaskan Arctic is opening up new routes for cruise ships.

Who has a problem now?

Certainly not Admiral Thad Allen, the head of the Coast Guard, who sums up the situation thusly: "I'm agnostic to the science and the debate about what the cause is. All I know is there's water where there didn't used to be."

That's just the kind of unassailable logic that the American people have come to expect from their protectors at home.

White, Christian Church's McCain Bias Almost as Surprising as Plot of 'Get Smart'

Given that I did not become aware of the "Presidential Forum" at the Saddleback Church/'Superchurch'/Christian Fundamentalist Nonsense Outlet Mall until a few hours before it commenced last Saturday, I was unable to fully comprehend the fact that Barack Obama had agreed to participate in an event designed by a white Christian conservative--Pastor Rick Warren, whose bestselling book, The Purpose-Driven Life, is so vacant and patronizing that it makes The Secret look like The Brothers Karamazov--for his like-minded disciples. All I could do was watch CNN in a partial coma as the presumptive Democratic candidate (who was--shocker!--allotted the opening half of the two-hour program) did his halting, not-so-successful best to ingratiate himself to an audience of whom the vast majority had already made up their minds that they hated him and his funny name and his big-word smart talk--never mind his horrifying skin tone--before John McCain was grandly presented as the main event and commenced to have the crowd eat out of his hand for the duration of the second hour by doing nothing but tossing out Republican catchphrases--"a union between a man and a woman", "the moment of conception", "offshore drilling", et al--at Warren's prompts. It was equivalent to a guest on 'The Daily Show' crying out "weed!" then sitting back while the obligatory cheers from the studio audience fill out his time.

After announcing at the start of the program that McCain would be interviewed during the second half and Obama during the first, Warren--like any false idol worth his salt would have done--attempted to jokingly offset any perception of bias by stating that the presumptive Republican nominee would be spending the first half of the show "in a cone of silence". The remark was a reference to a moment in the widely-seen trailer of the less-widely-seen 2008 summer movie Get Smart, and the Saddleback audience lapped it up accordingly.

With the exception of Steve Carell's valiant performance, Get Smart pretty much sucks (and is an insult to the legacy of the late Don Adams). Targeted as it was, however, at Americans who have no interest in originality or thoughtfulness or anything that might challenge their narrow-minded worldview, the film made for an ideal allusion in terms of Pastor Rick's purposes.

Also in term of those purposes...it was an outright lie. While Barack Obama was being asked the exact same set of questions that John McCain would be asked in the subsequent hour of the forum, McCain was not in a "cone of silence"; rather, he was in his motorcade--aboard the hilariously hypocritically-named "Straight Talk Express"--en route to Saddleback Church, having full access to any live television feed that his heart desired.

What do you think he and/or his handlers were watching?

If you can prove that it was anything other than Rick Warren's interview with Barack Obama, I will give you twelve kabillion dollars for every Academy Award that Get Smart wins next year.

Acorns

The chipmunk defeated the snake in the balance beam competition. As a gambler and even more so as an American, I regret not having gone with my gut.

I'll get 'em next year...provided that the Olympics start taking place more frequently.

Golympics!

While I appreciate athletic prowess as much as any other dedicated sports fan, my interest in the Olympic Games has always been casual, at best (perhaps with the exception of 1992, when I got to watch Larry Bird and Magic Johnson unite to pulverize team after team of shell-shocked factory workers who made their shoes). I'm not a fan of forced patriotism; I find it difficult to muster a personal interest in athletes that I've never heard of before and will likely never hear of again in a span of two weeks; and, most importantly, the vast majority of Olympic sports are all Greek to me [Ed. note: rim shot].

But that was before this year...when I became involved in a Fantasy Olympics League.

Gambling changes everything.

A little over a week ago, I had only a vague notion of who Michael Phelps--the face of not only my country's team but the entire 2008 Olympics--was; today, I could confidently engage in a detailed discussion about Germany's chances in the 25 meter rapid fire pistol (Ralf Schumann should set the table on the men's side). What inspired my drastic turnabout was surprisingly simple: the day before the games started, a group of my friends--gambling fiends, all--led by my wife, came to the arbitrary realization that the Beijing Olympics could serve as a platform for individual competition among themselves. When my wife offered me a piece of the action, I couldn't say "yes" fast enough; seeing, for the first time, the Olympic Games as a forum through which I might score more points than my friends and family members might score, I was suddenly an Olympics superfan.

Unfortunately, my fantasy team's chances got off the wrong foot twofold: not only did I draw a terrible position in the draft order, I was late to arrive to the event and my first two picks were chosen for me by committee. (I recovered as best as I could with my subsequent selections.) I have yet to even see the league scoreboard because it's at my wife's office; Monday through Wednesday, her only response to my nightly inquiries about my team's standing was, "you don't want to know". I didn't earn a single medal until Frederica Pellegrini finally got with the program and won gold in the women’s 200 meter freestyle...but by then, my chances for victory were long gone (especially since my "friend" Mikey--despite the fact that I made him my best man at my freaking wedding--refused, during the draft, to trade me Michael Phelps as a show of sympathy). Given that I had possessed minimal interest in the Olympics less than a week earlier, one might assume that I would have had no trouble accepting my failure in my Fantasy Olympics League...

One would only assume this, however, if one had never participated in fantasy sports.

Prior to Pellegrini's victory Wednesday night, I had discerned from my wife that there was one person in the league besides me who had yet to earn a medal. After my Italian lady swimmer won the gold, my enthusiasm was renewed and refocused: with first place out of reach, my goal now was to defeat Alex--the other guy with no medals at the time--for not-last place.

It wouldn't be easy, and it would be very American: my team's best remaining chance for success was U.S. female gymnast Nastia Liukin; Alex's team's best remaining chance was Liukin's teammate and closest competitor, U.S. female gymnast Shawn Johnson. This was the kind of Olympic drama that you couldn't make up...the kind that fourth-place network NBC has been desperately attempting to fabricate at every opportunity.

Having acclimated myself to the U.S. women's gymnastics team two nights earlier--when they were ultimately defeated by the 9-year-old supermonkeys of the brazenly cheating Chinese team--I was worried that I had bet on the wrong horse: Nastia Liukin appeared to be a cold-blooded snake, while Shawn Johnson--who was on par with Liukin in terms of ability--came across as a good-natured and likable (if weirdly bemuscled) chipmunk. As a result, I wanted to write the whole thing off; I wanted not to care.

Nevertheless, I found myself glued to the television at 12:30 a.m. Friday morning--three hours after what I, on the west coast, was seeing on NBC's alleged "live" feed had actually happened--living and dying with every moment of the women's gymnastics finals.

I can't say that I'm not ashamed of myself...but I definitely would be a lot more ashamed if Nastia Liukin hadn't ended up totally kicking ass.

Go, Olympics! Go, America!

But mostly...go, uneducated wagers from which nothing can be gained but a slight and fleeting ego boost, if even that!

Julia Child Could Have Easily Killed You with a Pastry Brush

Bobby Flay has grilling skills; Rachel Ray has a contract with Dunkin' Donuts; Emeril Lagasse probably has Robert Urich's autograph. But there's one thing that no living celebrity cook has on the late Julia Child:

None of them was ever a secret agent.

The National Archives has released the previously classified names of nearly 24,000 members of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II-era precursor of the CIA...and Julia Child--the chef lady from TV!--is on that list. (Other inconceivables include Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg, Police drummer Stewart Copeland's dad and the guy whose life story inspired "Eight Is Enough".)

Take note, Food Network stars. Sure, you might sell a lot of cookbooks...but have you won any wars lately?

I didn't think so.

(You might still get a chance, though, if you're interested.)