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Mike:
Based entirely on my gut, I think we'll see more and more of the good, if not great, Schilling ovah the remaining weeks. Now with Mr. Foulke, on the other hand, I'm fah less bullish.
Bill:
Unless Johnny is working at Burger King because he's an unemployable English major who dreams of attending the Iowa Writer's Workshop and one day getting a job at the Atlantic Monthly, for then he'd really prefer losing to winning.
Mike:
Fercrissakes don't even mention that bullshit piece. The selfish prick wants the rest of us to suffah just so that his pussified senior editor sense of self can avoid "a palpable diminishment"? Gimme a break.
Bill:
Yeah, you know, I'm very reticent to bring out the "not a true fan" scahlet lettah, but I'm ready to stitch it onto this guy Stossel.
Mike:
Absolutely. I mean there are not too many requirements to being a "fan" beyond, you know, rooting for your team to win. It's pretty simple, really. Even the pink hat and jersey skirt fans get that.
Bill:
Right. The last time I checked the lyrics went, "Let me root, root, root for the home team, if they don't win it's a shame" and not "if they don't win it's a wonderful bit of Aristotelian tragedy to remind us that life is a trial."
Mike:
Poor fuckah sits around his office like a weepy Hamlet wondering, "Now what do we do?" … well here's a novel answer: Win anothah one! How's that fucking sound, Aristotle?
Bill:
Damn good thing the Red Sox won it all last year; otherwise, with the way this season looks to be headed, I'd be getting fitted for a death shroud right about now.
Bill:
Hansen was a long shot anyway this season, but still it was nice to dream. Now we don't even have that.
Bill:
Right, Foulke says he's "not a saviour." And Schilling's not a saviour … Jeez, they just don't make saviors like they used to.
Tara:
Are you kidding me? It's gotten so bad even Schilling's personal Savior can't save him, not for all the pre-pitch cross kissing in the world.
Bill:
Meanwhile, what the fuck did Giambi evah do to earn God's grace? The heathen is dying from a glandular disorder and wasting away from roid withdrawal one minute and the next thing you know he's the second coming of Babe Ruth?
Tara:
That'll teach God a mofo lesson.
Bill:
Note to Supreme Beings: Nevah underestimate the powah of a pissed off secular humanist.
Marty:
Hey, Callaghan, are you channeling ol' Satchel Paige yet? Don't look back, Billy Boy, as something is gaining on you. Heh.
Bill:
Jeez, you been quiet most this season Mahty. Didn't see you calling to gloat when you guys were getting swept by the Devil Rays.
Bill:
But didn't you see, Mahty? One of the rookies, Abe Alvarez, was behind that yesterday. We've got some others, too, Delcarmen, Hansen, Pabelbon … But, that's right, it's been so long since you've seen a homegrown pitcher, you probably forgot such a thing is possible, eh?
Marty:
Oh, right, the rookies and all you Sawx fans saying your little prayers each night that Papelbon will suddenly morph into a Roger Clemens circa 1986. Your dreaming would be kind of cute if it wasn't so pathetic.
Bill:
Yeah, Mahty, but at least we've got some prospects to dream about. Your Yankees on the othah hand are like Stonehenge: They are old, they don't move, and no one is certain why they are there.
Bill:
So, Mahty, when Charles Barkley said, "Seeing Yankees fans up close for the first time is like waking up in a Brazilian jail," what do you suppose he meant?
Marty:
Count the rings, bitches!
Bill:
Keep counting, Mahty, you'll need something to occupy your mind come Octobah.
Susan/Circle:
Well, that's it then. It's ovah.
Susan/Circle:
May as well just give up then. Jump off this rickety bandwagon on its invious path … Find a new cause celebre.
Mike:
Absolutely. Just pack it in. Find something else to live for, you know, get serious and shit.
Susan/Circle:
You are so fucking right. Time to shake things up. Life is too shoht.
Mike:
That's it then, today I'm beginning my life long dream of becoming a meat eating vegetarian. Maybe I'll get a tattoo as well.
Mike:
Whoa Christalmighty! Who was that, Lord Voldemort's girlfriend or something?
Susan/Circle:
Dude, bewayah the dakh mahk.
Continue reading "Tattoo you?" »
Mike:
Yeah, but that bit about how we are "being watched" kinda creeped me out a bit. I mean some days I feel like I'm being followed, like just out of my vision a pair of eye balls are watching my every move and listening to my every word.
Doug:
Oh, shit, it's not just me then … I'd naturally assumed I'd been hittin' the hydro hookah to hahd and getting all paranoid and what not.
Doug:
Christ, are you shitting me?
Doug:
Babs and Bee Gee boy together again, the Stones at Fenway, Joan Baez singing anti-war tunes … it's like I fell asleep and awoke into a life of one non-stop PBS pledge drive. The only thing missing are the Morning Edition coffee mugs and the "I brake for Daleks" bumpah stickahs.
Bill:
We both know there's only one relic of the past deserving resurrection: The Dunkin' Donuts crullah.
Bill:
Time and technology marches on. But, hey, it's not all bad. At least the Red Sox aren't living in the past.
Doug:
No kidding, hiring the young and relatively inexperienced Theo Epstein as G.M. was the smahtest thing the club's evah done.
Doug:
Totally awsometastic. If I'm Theo Epstein, I'm phoning up the president of Dunkin'' Donuts and going, "Look, I brought you a World Series, now the least you can do to thank me is bring back the mofo crullah, OK? Jeez. Don't make me come down there and kick your anti-crullite ass."
The Red Sox manage to split the series with the whatever they are now called Angels (who has the time to look that shit up?) and hold a 4 game lead in the Division …
Steve:
Shows you how much fans and the media know about what's really going on behind the scenes with the Red Sox, as it was just last Wednesday, the 17th, we were told "moving [Schilling] back into the Red Sox' starting rotation isn't an option."
Steve:
Funny thing is, as shocking as it was when we first heard they were going to use Schilling out of the pen as the closer, this sudden back to the starting rotation announcement is more so.
Bill:
Can't say I'm unhappy to see this little experiment come to an end … Despite the 16-5 record of Sox wins in games Schilling closed, I nevah had any sense of comfit, nevah a lights out feeling.
Steve:
Even the dominant Herculean Schilling of last season would often take an inning or two to settle in, giving up a couple of runs in the 1st or 2nd, so in relief it was like the 1st inning every night.
Bill:
I hope Foulke and his good doctors, be they of the knee fixing variety or, as I suspect (without a shred of evidence, of course), the head shrinking variety, have things back on track … too much more of this "no lead is safe" shit from the bullpen and I'll start to look like Mick Jagger.
Doug:
You know of all the things as a kid that the mere mention of would scare me only one still works on me as an adult: "West Coast Road Trip."
Bill:
Yeah, despite all the good memories from the Left Coast like Hendu in '86 and even last year's ALDS sweep, there remains a feeling of dread when the club jets into Anaheim or Oakland or Seattle.
Doug:
I think paht of it is the drastic change in temporal routine, you know, games stahting at 10 O'clock and shit, just jacks my head all up.
Doug:
At least last night they coughed it up early. Nothing worse than dragging your ass around the day aftah a 1:30 a.m. late inning hemorrhage.
Bill:
Yeah, for the sake of worker productivity, if you're going to lose on the West Coast, lose early.
Bill:
You know Clemens wouldn't surprise me much at all but Damon? Ohmychrist no! If any of the superlative twenty-five were caught juicing it'd forevah stain last year's pennant.
Doug:
Yeah, if any on the transcendent and divine roster were found to have doped it'd be "Oh, OK, God does hate us after all."
Bill:
Absolutely, It'd be a tragedy like Oedipus, "Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud, wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud."
Doug:
Dude, you've got that right. I'd have no choice but to wear dark sunglasses and begin fornicating with whores.
Bill:
Actually, in the story, Oedipus plucks out his own eyeballs after sleeping with his moms.
Doug:
Yeah, well, to each his own. I'm not some sick ancient Greek man on boy lovin' maze building oracle consulting freak.
Bill:
I'm neithah a doctah nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but if a guy is sick to the point where he can't hold down food and is severely weakened by antibiotics, maybe, just maybe, he shouldn't try to throw a baseball past Major League hittahs?
Mike:
Jeez, no kidding. We are constantly admonished to piss our pants in joy for the so-called "gamahs" and "dirt dogs" who play through sickness and pain and have to have the ball pried out of their cold dead hands and shit but, really, if at day's end all the Calvinistic machismo just leads to a loss, what's the friggin' point?
Bill:
And is it me or are the Red Sox like the most sickly team in the league? I mean on any given day it seems a couple guys are battling some form of near death malady.
Mike:
Despite the front office's acumen with sabermetrics and key playah pickups, the simple concept of keeping the sick guys away from the healthy guys and thereby preventing the spread of pathogens seems entirely lost on them.
Bill:
Well, these are the medieval Red Sox after all. The last team to integrate, the last team to cast aside the shroud of racism and anti-semitism … you can't expect newfangled ideas like covering your mouth when you sneeze and washing your hands aftah taking a dump to be accepted overnight.
Mike:
When the bird flu finally arrives, this club is so fucking screwed.
Mike:
The Yankees are now 4-9 vs. Tampa Bay. Sweet.
Bill:
So much for the "mystique and aura" snake oil they've been peddling for years.
As the immortal Freddy Fender would say, what a difference a day makes, 24 little hours …
Doug:
Ortizzle fah shizzle!
Doug:
If the good people of Cow Hampshah wish to replace the now fallen "Old Man of the Mountain," I suggest they commission an artist to begin cahving Papi's face out of the side of a granite outcropping post-haste.
Mike:
Absolutely they should. People would top off their E-ZPass accounts and drive from all ovah to prostrate themselves before the giant granite countenance of the Beloved (and then pick up a couple cases of cheap booze at a state liquor store on the way home.)
Doug:
And just because I know it makes Yankees fans shit their collective Hillary Clinton pantsuits when we say it … Ortiz and Manny are the greatest 1-2 offensive punch since Ruth-Gehrig!
Mike:
And it's not just the Ruthian Red Sox offense that has smutty nosed Yankees fans kids whimpering "I see Red Sox people" when confronting reality. There's also the the homegrown young guns.
Doug:
Papelbon, Delcarmen, Hansen … Can I get an oh-yeah, a hell-yeah, and a fuck-yeah?
Some days the glass is just half-empty, you know …
Bill:
Ah, Christ, in the giddiness of a 13 game win streak I forgot a couple things: the stahting pitching is flaky and Curt Schilling is struggling big time …
Bill:
He gave us everything he had and continues to give us everything he has but it's not working.
Bill:
Yeah, I know, I know, this team has previously weathead on through the most perilous of storms and even now stands in first — Still …
Bill:
On every new thing there lies already the shadow of annihilation. For the history of every individual of every social order, indeed of the whole world, does not describe an ever-widening, more and more wondahful arc, but rather follows a course which, once the meridian is reached, leads without fail down into the dahk.
Continue reading "It was almost like accompanying a somnambulist" »
After taking the first two from the White Sox, game three of the series gets postponed in medias res …
Mike:
I'm still trying to get used to this new found benevolent and pro Red Sox omnipotent being era.
Susan/Circle:
I'm so farking glad God is on our side now. It's enough to make me want to go out smite heretics just for the sake of it.
Susan/Circle:
Absolutely. I mean it's not like they've got anything bettah to do like fix the BCS thingy or anything.
Mike:
I just can't believe PETA is going to let the NCAA stop at Indian nicknames. What about the catamount, the wildcat, the eagle? Don't the animals have any friggin rights?
Susan/Circle:
Yeah, what about the poor, caricatured terriah? Who the fuck will speak for the terriah, huh?
Mike:
Fercrissakes, dogs are people, too!
Mike:
Absolutely, it's about time the coeds at B.U. get naked for more than 15 minutes of fame in Boink Magazine and take a stand on one of the most serious issues of our time.
Susan/Circle:
Ask not what your naked body can do for you; ask what your naked body can do for your country.
Hart Brachen, blog author:
Sorry, gang, the day job is sending me on the road for a couple days (quite unexpectedly, too), so no new strips for the remainder of the week …
Doug:
The Staties should provide a police escort for these last minute call ups from triple-A. What if Youks had been in accident fercrissakes?
Doug:
Yeah, but it seems these pickups need to come with an expiration date ... the once crisp and fresh Millah and Bellhorn are now looking like one of those fuzzy green things in the bottom drawer of the frig.
Doug:
Oh, right. There's Kevin Millah: fugly, out-of-shape, bench playah, slugging .288, and best known for making asinine statements to the press ...
Bill:
And then there's Tom Brady: Hollywood good looks, body like a Greek statue, youngest QB to win a Super Bowl, youngest QB to win two Super Bowls, engineer of the longest win streak in NFL history, leader of the only walk-off scoring drive in Super Bowl history, best winning percentage by a QB in modern NFL history, best overtime record in NFL history, one of just four players to boast multiple Super Bowl MVP awards.
Doug:
The resemblance is so absolute it's fucking uncanny!
Bill:
It's goddamn spooky is what it is.
Continue reading "Beware the doppelganger" »
Mike:
You know, besides his incredible talent, the best thing about Wakefield is in all his years with the Sox, he's nevah once acted like a dick.
Susan:
Right, nevah a "me first" pronouncement, nevah a middle finger, figuratively or literally, to the fans.
Susan:
Sure, Keith, why not just try a game on the line save situation to see if you're ready? I mean it's not like games in August count or anything. What a fucktahd.
Mike:
To give him the benefit, maybe this attitude is less of a prima donna thing and more of a him psyching himself up to pitch, you know, getting his game face attitude on?
Susan:
Whatevah. I thought it was his knee that was the problem and not his head? Why do I get the stinking sinking feeling this surgery was a mofo placebo?
The Sox sweep KC and have a season best 8 game win streak …
Mike:
Ah, this helps explain why baseball fans in the teetotaller Baptist belt regions have to get instructions from the Jumbotron about when to clap and cheah and shit while watching a game.
Doug:
Jeez, stupid sobah fucks need to get hip to the good news.
Mike:
Yeah, turn off the 700 Club, chug a bee-ah or two and embrace evolution already fercrissakes.
Doug:
Yeah, why doesn't MLB go ahead and put Michael Jackson in chahge of all the bat boys while they're at it.
Bill:
No kidding. You know you'd think some smaht fuckahs would figure out a way to embed some sort of collision detection system into the uniforms or something.
Mike:
Yeah, well all the best and brightest are too busy applying duct tape and bondo to their jalopy shuttle so, you know, they can send a team of scientists up to go round and round in orbit to do important stuff like … er, what the fuck do they do up their anyway?
Mike:
Ooh. Scary, dude. They may say mean things to him and issue, ohmigod it frightens me just to say it, a censure.
Bill:
Yeah, considering Ollie North told umpteen lies concerning national security and the setting up of a secret personal army back in the 80s but walked away with a wrist slap, I'm sure Raffy is sweating bullets.
Bill:
Everyone is saying Murdahball is awesome, but I have a zero motivation to see it.
Mike:
What you have some sort of prejudice or what?
Bill:
Hey, there are limits to my comedy. There are things that I'll never laugh at, like the handicapped. Because there’s nothing funny about them. Or any deformity. It's like when you see someone look at a little handicapped and go "ooh, look at him, he’s not able-bodied. I am, I'm prejudiced." Yeah, well, at least the little handicapped fella is able-minded. Unless he’s not; it’s difficult to tell with the wheelchah ones.
Continue reading "Some days I can't think of a title" »
Steve:
Yeah, you know if I hadn't had it repeatedly drilled into my head so many times by our distinguished media elite that Manny is a retard, I might begin to believe he's actually making fun of Edes.
Bill:
Reminds me, does the Curly Haired Boyfriend have some sort of terminal disease we are not aware of? Because the Gordito seems like he's positioning himself to take Dan-O's place as the grand poobah of media dinks …
Steve:
For sure, look at today's piece. Edes can barely contain his anti-Manny seething, you know, "Ramirez 'evidently' decided he didn't want to be a dropout after all" and "Ramirez is at least 'outwardly' acting like he's happy" …Jeez.
Bill:
Yeah, and all the hahdly subtle grandstanding for the Edes-approved work ethic of Damon, Wakefield, and Varitek meant to contrast against the "fun" Manny has.
Steve:
And how about the truly sublime opening graf comparing Manny to a school boy with a crush on his algebra teacher that extends the "petulant child" label Gordung is so fond of slapping on Manny?
Bill:
Christ, I missed that one! I thought Edes was just unconsciously projecting one of his own wank-O-tastic fantasies on us.
Bill:
You know, when the Boston press went negative on Jurassic Carl, at least that made sense, the guy was a total asshole, but what is it exactly about Manny that inspires such animosity?
Doug:
Is it pretty much a given now that "testifying before Congress" is a euphemism for lying your ass off?
Bill:
Christ, I feel like a doofus, I took Palmeiro at his word … Always respected him as a playah and he nevah seemed the steroid type.
Doug:
He could, technically, in a depends on what the meaning of "is" is way, be telling the truth … you know he nevah "intentionally" used steroids. Wink. Wink.
Doug:
Christ, I just wish all this steroids shit would go away. It makes my head hurt thinking about it.
Doug:
Right and then there's all that gray area that falls below the obvious Bonds, Giambi juicing into the not so sure realm of relief pitcher's taking Ritalin to help them relax and focus or someone like Clemens gulping down Vioxx to help with muscle pain.
Bill:
You've got to wondah, too, if at some point in the futchah this all becomes moot.
Doug:
You mean like the monochrome spandex suit wearing futchah were everyone is thin and good looking and drives around in floating cars and shit?
Bill:
Exactly the I'm not satisfied with 20/20 vision so I'll use stem cells to grow a bettah retina so I can see 20/10 and, henceforth, be a bettah hittah futchah. Will that be legal or illegal in MLB? And how would you even test for cell level manipulation if it is deemed taboo for athletes?
Bill:
You mean a guy is born blind but through the marvels of modern medical science he is fitted with some sort of visor …
Doug:
Exactly. I mean even if a Geordi LaForge couldn't hit for powah, you don't think he could hit Boggsian singles day and night with that mofo visor on?
Doug:
See why all this talk makes my head hurt?
Bill:
Speaking of heads, if they one day manage to clone the cryogenic remains of Ted Williams, does the clone automatically become a Red Sox or does he have to enter the draft like everyone else?
Doug:
Or maybe there is some clone waivah wiah he has to clear first?
Bill:
Can you imagine if the Yankees managed to claim the cloned Ted Williams off the waivah wiah?
Doug:
OK. I just puked in my own mouth.
For many Red Sox fans, the "blockbuster" was no trade at all …
Mike:
So at one point before the trading deadline, I humbled my agnostic ass by going prone on the floor beseeching, "Please, Dear God, no trade, Manny! ¿Escúchame?"
Susan/Circle:
God hearts us, still, it seems.
Mike:
Absolutely. In the old angry, vengeful, I'll make you fuckahs pay epoch, Manny would have been traded in one of those lopsided bad for the Red Sox deals being rumored all weekend.
Susan/Circle:
Instead we get the best game of the season so fah: Papelbon and Delcarmen giving us a sweet taste of the futchah and then Manny, oh, Manny.
Susan/Circle:
Yeah, now all of a sudden we learn that Francona nevah directly asked Manny to postpone his day off, instead we get a much less "pathetic" version of events.
Susan/Circle:
That's the kind of flip flopping I'd expect from a petulant child and not a "professional."
Mike:
Jeez, you might think all the "run Manny out of town" invective was paht of a coordinated wag the dog play to soften the fan base to a premeditated plan to trade Manny?
Susan/Circle:
That's crazy talk.
