Today marks the one year anniversary of The Soxaholix website …
From the author: Hart here, just wanted to say thanks to all of you who've made The Soxaholix a regular stop on your travels through the blogosphere during the 365 days, 279 strips, and 1824 comments that have passed since Bill and Doug became the first characters to speak on March 30, 2004.
From the author: That first April the site clocked just over 15,000 page views which totally blew my mind. Who knew that a year later we'd be averaging just shy of 50,000 page views a month and be fans of the defending World Champs?
From the author: As one of the characters might say, Un-fucking-believable!
Rider on Green Line: Thanks so much, and I look forward to what the next year will hold for all of us.
Bill: Is it me or is it fucking wee-ahd that the Globe chooses to insert the review Shaughnessy's latest book in the Sports section rather than the Arts and Entertainment section?
Doug: Yeah, no shit, isn't that some sort of collusion or something?
Doug: By the way, are you going to read it, Shank's book?
Bill: Fuck yeah I am. By default I'm buying and reading every single book written about the 2004 season. That's what makes the Globe's playing fast and loose with journalistic integrity so infuriating. I'm already a consumer suckah for all things Red Sox, don't fuck with me by using the sports pages for blatant huckstering.
Doug: Admirable old man, but who the fuck has time for all that reading? Me, I'm going to wait until the comic version comes out … In the meantime, I'm going to be learning exciting stuff like how to fold shirts and shit.
Mike: No kidding. What I like best about James is how his baseball analysis leads to insight beyond the game.
Tara: Like how "the concept of 'professionalism,' has damaged our culture in so many ways"?
Mike: Absolutely. Or here's anothah, "Standardization destroys the ability to adapt." He's discussing the height of pitching mounds, but you can apply the same theory to education or battlefield tactics in a war.
Tara: And this is one for the ages: "The real world is vastly more complicated than the image of it that we carry around in our heads. Many things are real and important that are not explained by our theories—no matter who we are, no matter how intelligent we are."
Mike: It's like the Zen thing of a wise man knowing that he is not wise.
Susan/Circle: So somebody please tell me that these Spring Training games with the Orioles are not an omen of a second consecutive season of getting pimp slapped by Baltimore ovah and ovah again?
Mike: That line from the drunk picking a fight with Ponson is effin classic: "So, you're the Aruban tough guy." [Laughs]
Susan/Circle: Yeah, you know, just to make sure he's not confusing him with "the Bahamian tough guy" or the "St. Kitt's tough guy" … it's tough to keep all these small Carribean island nation tough guys straight fercrissakes!
Mike: No kidding … Hey, didn't you just go to a birthday pahty at a sushi bah in Brookline?
Susan/Circle: Yeah, don't remind me. While I risk loss of membership to hipster club by admitting it, truth is I can't effin' stand sushi.
Doug: And what kind of snot nosed kid lives in Acton and roots for the Yankees anyway? Fucking grammah school sycophants.
Bill: The other sad thing is this is yet anothah example of adults having to change their behavior "for the sake of the children."
Doug: Right, like Congress having to get serious about steroids because of the children. Omigod we have to protect the kids from this serious scourge sweeping the nation, damnit!
Bill: Remembah the good old days before the infatuation with building self esteem when kids were seen but not heard? When the fuck did that go out of style exactly?
Doug: I think that coincided with the advent of T-Ball, youth soccer, and the minivan.
Mike: Nope. Nor do I accept the "the seats are so small only those who go to one game a year accept being cramped" bullshit. The seats are small but no smaller than coach class on a seven thirty seven. And fuck your knees if the seatback and tray table are not in their upright positions.
Mike: Yeah, by remaining in Fenway, the Sox owners are just doing their paht to help out. [Imitating parental voice] "Now, Jimmy, you know you aren't going to fit your ass into a Fenway seat if you eat that entire pint of Chunky Monkey. Time to go outside and run around and shit, young man."
Bill: It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile.
Mike: The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.
Bill: And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of hotdog from a Sunday afternoon at Fenway …
Rider on Green Line: So let's say a playah does have narcoplepsy and he takes some drug that allows him to stay awake long enough to play a game of baseball … Is that cheating?
Bill: You mean in the "performance enhancing drug" sense?
Rider on Green Line: Well, not falling the fuck asleep on the mound would be a serious enhancement as near as I can tell.
Doug: So I'm watching the steroid thing on C-Span and it's all Member of Congress, normal head, doctah from the N-I-H, normal head, baseball playah, comically engorged and grotesquely misshapen head …
Mike: I know! Can you believe that shit? Are they really thinking nobody is going to notice how a comically engorged and grotesquely misshapen head is, you know, weird and shit?
Doug: Yeah, it's just some fucking eerie coincidence that everybody in the room has a normal sized head except for the motherfuckahs who everyone suspects is a steroid usah?
Mike: So if one of these non-steroid using guys with an innocent and anomalous comically engorged and grotesquely misshapen head crash lands into some remote paht of the Peruvian Amazon and is captured by the head shrinking Jivaro tribe, is this a good thing or a bad thing for the Jivaros?
Doug: Yeah, would they be all, wholly fuck that comically engorged and grotesquely misshapen head is going to release some motherfucking cowbell spirit?
Mike: Or would the Jivaro chief be all, fuck, we don't have the time or the equipment to shrink that bulbous fuck of a head … Leave the head, we'll just eat his entrails and what not?
Doug: And if you cannibalize a body built on 'roids, does it taste different than a clean human?
Mike: The Long Island Bloggita? The little list makah? The "I'll nevah blog again! Just kidding." Bloggah on the verge of a nervous breakdown Red Sox hatah Catalano?
Mike: Ah, beautiful. Love that fucking purple background.
Bill: Yeah, sorta just says "Yankees" doesn't it? Well, at least the recent version. It's a fitting color for the wounded.
Mike: No shit. That's why they have to reach all the way back to '78 and a photo of Bucky Corked Bat Dent to try to cling to some shred of now vanished mystique and awe.
Bill: It's kinda sad, really. Meanwhile, I didn't know that photo was in public domain? Last time I checked the AP still owned the copyright …
Mike: Yeah, why let a little thing like intellectual property rights get in your way? Rules? Fuck rules, we're Spankees fans! … Pathetic.
Bill: Well, when their formah star sluggah is confessing to 'roids and their 5 tool pretty boy admits to cheating and says he'd do it again, can you expect much bettah from the fans?
Mike: Yankees see, monkeys do.
A few hours later …
Bill: Dude, that Spankees site changed their background to red and got rid of the Bucky "Used to Mean Something" Dent photo!
Mike: Behold our powah.
Bill: Yeah, as Doug always says, "Our resplendence has no bitch!"
Doug: Yeah, what do you call that, a pre-emptive doom and gloom strike? The season hasn't even fucking stahted and Mazz is already preparing the "Who is to blame?" angle?
Bill: Yeah, we would have repeated if it wasn't for those fucking quee-ahs!
Doug: And how the fuck would Bill Belichick feel about this, huh?
Bill: No, shit, as a Red Sox fan, according to the media, I'm obsessed with casting the shadow of Belichick's gray hoody ovah every situation.
Doug: Abso-fucking-lutely! I mean, my God, after I saw the new Star Wars trailer, the first thing I thought of was "I wondah what Bill Belichick thinks? Does he like what Lucas is doing or not?"
Bill: Yeah, I'm in the frozen food aisle at Stah Mahket buying fries and I'm thinking, "Crinkle cut, Shoestring, Country Style … for the sake of fuck, what would Bill Belichick buy?"
Doug: Shit, I so need one of those "WWBBD?" bracelet thingies.
Rider on Green Line: So it's an honor just to be a finalist I guess …
Susan/Circle: Yeah, right, rationalization. Sort of like when a chick believes it when I guy pulls the old "it's not you, it's me … I just need some space, some time" when the truth is …
Susan/Circle: Absolutely. And the 3 of us are out on the dance floor doing the straight chicks dancing together having fun thing to some Groove Armada …
Susan/Circle: What in fuck's sake is on the mind of the Freak? Does he really think I'm gonna turn round and say, "Fucking brilliant, dude. Little did I know what I most want in the world is for you to do a beer sopped bump and grind on my unwilling ass. Let's go do the nasty, Boo."?
Mike: I think that Boston Rob guy is a recovering, formah freak.
Susan/Circle: Oh, no fucking doubt. Remembah when he drank that 6 pack on Survivah and did the cuddle pahty with that old bitch? Total Freak behayvyah.
Mike: And among the Red Sox, any Freaks?
Susan/Circle: Aw, come on. Too easy. Kevin Millah was born to freak. [Laughs]
Mike: Gotta love the Rally Karaoke Guy though.
Susan/Circle: Shua. There are good Freaks and bad Freaks.
Mike: So you think that Sox blog has any chance of taking home some blingbling from Austin?
Mike: Yeah, the Yankees always seem to project out that way and, hell, even if they go out and win 162 straight games, you gonna be scared of 'em?
Rider on Green Line: [Laughs] Nope. Funny how the press wants to go on and on about how winning the World Series is going to make the Red Sox fan lose his or her identity or some such shit … but what's really changed is knowing, just knowing that not only can the Sox beat the Yankees, they can defy all odds in doing so.
Mike: It's like Sully says, we're trying to be tempered, but there is a "feeling that the Red Sox may very well have just entered into a prolonged era of excellence."
Bill: I don't know what's weiadah, the actual licking or the school district's response.
Doug: Yeah, it's like they're all, we've got nothing against the licking, per se, but, dude, you've got to watch those bloodborne pathogens fercrissakes, You could get sick or some shit.
Doug: What the fuck is up with that guy saying he wants the city to crack down on the Red Sox if they try to change the zoning.
Bill: Yeah, the dude's got a jones for more residential space.
Doug: Fuck yeah. People come from all ovah the world to see the famous Boston condos.
Bill: Fuck giving the playahs bettah facilities. Fuck giving the fans more leg room. What the fuck we need in this city are more residential spaces for Pottery Bahn products.
Doug: And let's not forgot, the storied, historic rivalry between the Boston Condo Association and the New York Condo Association is the greatest in all of real estate.
Bill: Fuck yeah it is. And as much as I despise the New York Condo fans, I'll confess I think their neighborhood clap chant is pretty cool. "Tri-be-ca clap clap clap-clap-clap" … "So-Ho clap clap clap-clap-clap" … "East Vil-lage clap clap clap-clap-clap"
Doug: Yeah but nothing beats that time during the playoffs our condo fans stahted that "As-Bes-tos As-Bes-tos" sing song chant. That fucking taught those bastids a lesson. Not in our fucking condo you don't.
Bill: I'm so headed down to the Souvenir Shop at lunch to pick up some more official condo association apparel.
Doug: Dude, I don't go anywheah without my Fenway Civic Association cap. You gotta fucking represent.
Mike: So much for my childhood picture book image of a the fireman rescuing the kitty kat from a tree … Fireman dude's gonna whack some pussy.
Susan/Circle: The cat is nature's perfect killing machine. Man is just leveling the playing field.
Mike: I thought the shahk was nature's perfect killing machine?
Susan/Circle: Fuck the shahk. Shahk's got nothing, nothing on the cat. All "I have to keep swimming or I'll die" nonsense and feeding on what, sea lions and seals and shit? How does swimming around stupid and offing a fat fucking sea lion compare with a lethal lightening fast cat strike on a sparrow?
Mike: So the shahk has, er, jumped the shahk?
Susan/Circle: That's what I'm fucking talking about.
Doug thinking to himself: Christ, just realized I haven't bought a magazine in yeeahs. Who the fuck still reads magazines? Anyway, use opportunity to cruise aisles for unattached bookworm and nightclub-challenged hotties.
Voice from car radio: [Thwunka Thwunka deep bass line and voiceover] Hey, everybody, once again from Studio AA this is the Daily Source Code coming to you from …
Doug thinking to himself: I fucking love this podcasting shit.
Doug thinking to himself: I fucking love mashups … I so need to get my own podcast.
Voice from car radio: … you mentioned in today's show that there are no easy services for podcasting. i found one. it's at libsyn.com and pricing is cheap. $5 a month for 100 megs, which is enough to keep a handful of half hour shows up. and the bandwidth is unmetered. and all you have to do is upload your mp3. they do all the rest …
Doug thinking to himself: That sounds easy as fuck. I just need a good title for my podcast. If I were a hot Middle Eastern chick I'd call it "What's bunched up beneath my hijab?" [Laughs out loud]
Doug thinking to himself: Holy shit. First I'm buying Vanity Fair and then I'm imagining myself as a chick under Sharia? I need a fucking vacation or something.
Doug: Abso-effin-lutely. Which is why I don't much place too much value in the ramblings of our sports media pudnuts.
Bill: Yeah, what makes Massarotti or Buckley or the CHB more qualified to offer opinion on the Red Sox than the landscapah, the gahbage collectah, the strippah, the grocery baggah, or the mid-level office managah or anyone else with a butt hole and an opinion?
Speaking of blogs, we interrupt your daily reading for this request …
Lisa the Temp: Please fill out the BlogAds Blog Reader survey, if you have a chance. It's 18 brief questions. For question #16 please put The Soxaholix, with an x, as the blog that referred you.
Mike: Yeah, without any "any real problems, controversy or turmoil" he claims he doesn't have a "challenge." What the fuck is he talking about? It's easy to write the "Playah Such and Such is an Assclown" stories.
