Stuck between the motion and the act

Your omniscient author in absentia:
OK, After two full days of work-related training (and we ain't talking about the "Spring" variety), I am the Hollow Man, headpiece filled with straw, shape without form, shade without color... well, you get the idea.

So no strip today.

But I would like to leave you with this prickly pear to go around:

I think you can tell a lot about a person by which side of this fence they fall on: Julia Mancuso or Lindsey Vonn?

Your thoughts?

 

---

The Constant

Bill:
Breaking news:

 

---

Bill:
Killah Whale Kills!

 

---

Bill:
Lost's "answers" are just more questions.

 

---

Bill:
And Derek Jetah will stay with the Yankees.

 

---

Doug:
Even in the island-is-sunk flash sideways story line Derek Jetah would still be a Yankee.

 

---

Bill:
Are you friggin kidding me, even if the mysterious Man in Black were to "claim" Derek Jetah, Derak Jetah would still be with the Yankees.

 

---

Doug:
Seriously. Is there any playah in the modern era as intrinsically tied to their club as Derek Jetah is to the Yankees?

 

---

Bill:
And as much as it emotionally pains me to say it – that is pretty damn cool.

 

---

Going deep on you

Al:
What can one say about Mike Lowell that hasn't already been said?

 

---

Al:
He's a class act. He loved the fans. He became so, so much more than dead weight attached to the Beckett deal.

 

---

Doug:
2007 World Series the M is of for Mofo MVP!

 

---

Mike:
But...

 

---

Doug:
Yep...

 

---

Al:
Baseball is a business.

 

---

Al:
And like most theories, the labor theory of value, is innocous when read in a textbook but can be quite disturbing when witnessed in action for reals.

 

---

Doug:
Yeah, especially when the average skill and productivity metric is being applied to a guy you've rooted for and who has brought such joy to you ovah the years.

 

---

Mike:
But it's beyond mere business too. It's about mortality itself.

 

---

Mike:
I mean we're all familiar with the famous Giamatti quote:

"The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."

 

---

Mike:
Well, remembah, it's not just that seasonal cycle at work but the human one as well.

 

---

Mike:
Playahs come into the league fresh-faced and gangly and full of the promise of Spring and then they wow us in their primes with feats of athleticism that seem to defy their very mortality and humaness...

 

---

Mike:
But then most assuredly comes their Autumn, and the gray beards and creaky knees and lost steps...

 

---

Mike:
And they leave us, we watch them go, sometimes they go with grace, sometimes they go with angah, but they always go and it's always bittahsweet and difficult for us and them to accept.

 

---

Mike:
For in the end, watching baseball is both an escape from our own mortality and a remindah of it.

 

---

Mike:
And that's why we watch, why we have no choice but to watch.

 

---

Ladies Night

Susan/Circle:
Oh, I thought you'd nevah ask. When and where, Papito?

 

---

Tara:
Hah. But what's the deal anyway? I mean the ProJo says Papi came into camp in "excellent shape" while the Globe says he's only "slightly trimmer"?

 

---

Susan/Circle:
Pool or the pond, girl, pool or the pond.

 

---

Tara:
Rowwwrrrr....

 

---

Feverish

Mike:
OK, so last week I got ribbed (for my pleasure) for saying that the offseason has been so awful that I'm actually looking forward to seeing Slappy McBluelips...

 

---

Mike:
Well, turns out it gets worse — I actually read a CHB piece in the Globe and not only didn't puke in my mouth, I sort of almost enjoyed it.

 

---

Al:
You do have cabin fevah.

 

---

Doug:
Seriously. I mean the bit were Shaughnessy does his classic faux pining for the days of yore when spring camp was a daily soap opera didn't make you gag just a bit?

 

---

Al:
If that didn't then how about this line: "I blame [Theo} for weeding out the egos and assembling this obedient cast of professionals."

 

---

Doug:
Hey, now, let's give Dan-O credit for somehow managing to avoid comparing Theo to Cesar Milan in his obedience meme.

 

---

Mike:
Yeah, well, the CHB can't help but be the CHB.

 

---

Mike:
But let's face it, for good or ill, he's as much a part of Red Sox baseball as the Monstah, the Citgo sign, or the sausage vendahs.

 

---

Al:
Dammnit don't make me agree with you.

 

---

Doug:
Don't listen, Al, it's the cabin fevah talking.

 

---

Boom-chicka-chicka

Mike:
So if curling was a more popular sport in the US, I'm guessing that we'd have a new entry for the slang lexicon...

 

---

Mike:
shuster (adj.) — the inability to be successful in a tense or must-win situation; the opposite of clutch.

 

---

Doug:
Q: "Hey, guy, how'd you wreck your cah?"

A: "Dude, I hit an icy patch and I went totally fucking shustah."

 

---

Mike:
Maybe A-Rod can give the Shustah the numbah to his shrink?

 

---

Doug:
Or maybe just offah Shustah some tips in general, you know, show him the ol' dropping the shouldah move and all?

 

---

Mike:
Christ, you know it's been a long offseason when I'm actually looking forward to seeing the blue lips and white gloves in the battah's box.

 

---

Doug:
A warm summah evening in Fenway, scoreless in the 7th, Lackey staring out from the mound, A-Rod digging into the box...

 

---

Mike:
Ah, baseball porn.

 

---

And we're, er, back....

Al:
So the fact that Dice-K actually communicated with the Red Sox ovah his "very mild" back strain should be seen as good news, right?

 

---

Mike:
I'll go with that spin.

 

---

Doug:
Seriously. And as much as I miss baseball, it's just too damn early for the Matsuzaka blues. I mean pitchas and catchas haven't even officially reported yet.

 

---

Mike:
Absolutely. I've gotten used to Dice-K's injuries occurring deep into the season, and, dammit , that's how I want things to stay.

 

---

Al:
Do I smell a haiku or two?

 

---

Doug:
Just a mild strain,
Then suddenly another —
Summertime mourning.

 

---

Mike:
Yet still we hope...

 

---

Mike:
For high-priced pitcher,
There's nothing left unbroken,
But our deep longing.

 

---

Life's little rollers...

Your omniscient author in absentia:
Got a little family mini-crisis to deal with this morning. Nothing too dire but enough to disrupt the strip writing routine. Should be back to normal tomorrow.

 

---

Tabula Rasa

Bill:
The truck's in Florida, the pitchers are throwing in the bullpen and the hitters are taking BP off a coach …

 

---

Bill:
And yet…

 

---

Mike:
And yet when you get right down to it, there really isn't much to say, is there?

 

---

Bill:
Exactly. It's all fillah.

 

---

Mike:
You know what we need, right?

 

---

Bill:
What's that?

 

---

Mike:
We need some sort of alternate, "flash-sideways" reality.

 

---

Bill:
Wait a second … How would that help anything?

 

---

Bill:
I mean if we're flailing around in one plot line with nothing much to say, no direction, no answers, where we are seemingly just showing up and going through the motions to fill the episodic space …

 

---

Bill:
Then how would introducing a second, sideways story arc be helpful or interesting or any different at all?

 

---

Mike:
Good question. Welcome to Lost Season 6. Heh.

 

---

Capriciously yours

Doug:
Well, well, well... there's hope for your dentally-challenged people back in the old country after all – whiskey flavored toothpaste.

 

---

Bill:
Heh. Speaking of doing the extra for good health, our favorite bariatric chambah sleepah gets some adoring pixels from Amelie B.

 

---

Doug:
But is Drew's lack of popularity when compared to othah's really because he doesn't put up enough highlight reel homah's and RBI and that fans are too stupid to appreciate OBP?

 

---

Doug:
I always thought the fan malaise towards Drew was due to his perrenial case of the ouchies and his looking like he's attending a wake rathah a ballgame?

 

---

Bill:
Well, that does get addressed &nash; "There are some who don’t trust him. There are some who always will believe Drew is soft."

 

---

Doug:
So what?

 

---

Doug:
I mean if that stuff isn't important compared to the numbahs, than why even talk about it?

 

---

Bill:
Seriously. You can apply science and stats to whole lot of facets of the game, and I'm so, so glad Theo and the Red Sox do just that, but there is nothing logical or predictable about why a fan likes one guy more anothah.

 

---

Doug:
Tell me about it. You're looking at a guy who still misses Manny for reasons I don't fully undahstand.

 

---

Doug:
Put that in a friggin spreadsheet and graph it.

 

---

Truck Day, 2010

Mike:
Alright, so rathah than going with haiku, my innah-Irishman says we should attempt the limerick form to commemorate this important day.

 

---

Al:
Was your innah-Irishman drunk?

 

---

Mike:
On Jamesons, absolutely.

 

---

Doug:
OK, so my innah-Frenchman is in...

There was a man with a big truck, / Who said, "Winter in Boston does most suck!" / So he loaded up 60 crates, / Grabbed some porn to masturbate, / And sped to Fort Myers with throttle amok!

 

---

Al:
"Amok"? That's your final rhymah?

 

---

Mike:
Seriously, dude, who's driving the truck, Mr. Spock?

 

---

Al:
Heh, yeah, considering the porn ref, maybe it's the Bearded Spock and the Bearded Clam.

 

---

Doug:
Very funny, wise asses, let's hear what you've got.

 

---

Al:
How's this then?

Another overcast wintry day, / Of the Sox, there was nothing to say; / But along came a truck, / And a wicked change of luck, Among grapefruit the Sox will play!

 

---

Doug:
Not bad. Mike?

 

---

Mike:
The days had grown so dreary. / So, too, our hearts were most weary; / Then they backed up the Truck / While the crowd roared, "Yankees suck!" / And once again we were quite cheery.

 

---

Al:
The winter meme has settle ovah us, eh?

 

---

Doug:
Hell, yeah, it has, check it...

On the hot stove there was little to speak, / A simmering thin soup of potatoes and leeks; / Then a truck headed to Myers, / Loaded with all the Sox attire, / Of pitchers and catchers we'll soon speak.

 

---

Mike:
Ah, nice metaphor.

 

---

Mike:
But it's not all fun and games is it?

There was a company called Jet Blue, / Whose sponsorship was quite a taboo; / Kaz said, "What a dahk friggin hour!" / And all the Soxaholix felt sour; / Sometimes the Red Sox just haven't a clue.

 

---

Al:
Buy that man a Guinness.

 

---

Money changers and temples

Susan/Circle:
Wait, what's this?!

 

---

Susan/Circle:
Now Truck Day has a corporate sponsor?

 

---

Susan/Circle:
Oh, Capitalism, you Botoxed old whore you.

 

---

Mike:
"The 2010 Spring Training Truck Day presented by JetBlue Airways"

 

---

Mike:
Hmm...Jet Blue....

 

---

Mike:
So does this now mean that the truck will need to sit fully-loaded on a tarmac for 10 and a half hours before setting out for Florida?

 

---

Cabin fevah

Bill:
Nothing like a snowstorm on Truck Day Eve Day to cement the relationship between hoping for Spring and going batshit loony.

 

---

Mike:
Seriously, when you staht thinking, even for just the splittest of split seconds, of exclusive photos of Benjamin Brady in a Brazilian magazine as news worthy of a coolah discussion, then you know you've crossed some sort of line.

 

---

Bill:
Cute kid, though.

 

---

Mike:
Sure, but without a baby Welker by his side, what chance does he have?

 

---

Bill:
Heh. Reminds me, the best thing about the Supahbowl this year is rereading these bits from the CHB written the Saturday before the game:

"Clutch is crucial. … When is the last time Manning had a bad game in a big game?… Even without a running game, he cannot be stopped."

 

---

Mike:
Bra-vo, Dan-O. I smells me a Pulitzer.

 

---

Bill:
Yeah, you're doing a heckuva job, Shaughnessy.

 

---

Priorities, people

Doug:
So the Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says that on February 11th he's got some big friggin' news to delivah...

 

---

Doug:
But it's like, cleric-dude, c'mon...

Everybody knows Truck Day is the 12th.

 

---

Bill:
Inshallah!

 

---

Superbowl Monday

Mike:
Gotta tip my hat to the Saints.

 

---

Al:
Seriously. And was that one of the best uses of an onside kick evah?

 

---

Doug:
Pretty good weekend for New Orleans. They win the Super Bowl and ditch Ray Nagin as mayor. Talk about things looking up.

 

---

Mike:
But memo to the NFL — is there any way that at next year's Supahbowl the halftime entertainment could, you know, be from this Century? Is that too much to ask?

 

---

Doug:
For real. I'm not really sure how the NFL can go much further back in time at this point.

 

---

Al:
Not unless they somehow figure out a way to reanimate to cadavahs of Richie Valens and the Big Boppah.

 

---

Doug:
Ah, yes, The Corpse-men.

 

---

Mike:
Meanwhile, I think today we can divide the world into two camps. Those that found the fiddling beavah ad spot to be brilliant and those who'll put those who found the fiddling beavah ad as brilliant on a list of peeps whose acumen they will now forevah suspect.

 

---

A paucity of topics...

Al:
And here I thought the "Ramirez Provision" meant that you were only excused by MLB to miss the All Star game the first time your grandmothah dies, but not subsequent midsummah deaths.

 

---

Mike:
So Hank Steinbrenner thinks the Yankees will repeat.

 

---

Doug:
Yeah, well, so does BigBri.

 

---

Al:
Did you see that pic of Hanky? Man, he looks more like his old man every day.

 

---

Doug:
Yeah, it's like they cloned King George in laboratory undah the Stadium.

 

---

Mike:
A regulah Mini-Me except without the "mini."

 

---

Hammah Time

Mike:
Is it me or is this the slowest offseason evah?

 

---

Doug:
Hot stove? Damn thing's not even piss warm.

 

---

Mike:
It's gotten so bad that even the baseball tidbit omnipresence that is Dave Pinto and Baseball Musings is finding it tough going.

 

---

Doug:
I tell you what, it's gotten so bad that I'm actually looking forward to Pinto's live-blogging of curling from Vancouver.

 

---

Mike:
"It's not just a rock. It's forty-two pounds of polished granite, with a beveled underbelly— and a repository of possibility."

 

---

Teeth to the left of me! Gums to the right of me!

Bill:
Lost final season, episodes 1 and 2?

 

---

Doug:
Dude, I had every friggin intention of watching

 

---

Bill:
But...

 

---

Doug:
But I was hit with a sudden onset of acute chronchitis.

 

---

Doug:
And the next thing you know I was eating a mound of chicken briyani and watching Ren and Stimpy reruns.

 

---

Bill:
Ah, poor you.

 

---

Doug:
You're not kidding. Now I've got to spend the rest of the day avoiding Lost spoilers while also defending the merits of a diet rich in cahbs to caveman romanticizing zealots.

 

---

Bill:
I thought the Atkins thing was passe.

 

---

Doug:
Oh, yeah, the name has changed be the zeal remains the same.

 

---

Doug:
Now it's the Paleo diet among othahs.

 

---

Bill:
"Get your hands off my ziti, you damn dirty apes!"

 

---

Doug:
Srsly. If mothahfuckahs are serious about the Paleolithic Era being more healthy, than why not ditch antibiotics along with the cahbs?

 

---

Bill:
Bunch o' grain hatin' pussies.

 

---

"The object of this competition is not to be mean to the losers but to find a winner."

Mike:
Just when you think, at last, the final page of the Bill Bucknah saga has long since been turned and the volume shelved, dusty and forgotten, we get this...

 

---

Mike:
"My first thought when it happened was, 'Wow, I get to play in a seventh game of a World Series. How cool is that?'"

 

---

Mike:
Sigh.

 

---

Doug:
Buckhah has somehow managed to become a caricature of a caricature of a caricature of himself.

 

---

Mike:
He reminds me of one of those hapless American Idol contestants who don't care how they 15 seconds on TV as long as they get those 15 seconds.

 

---

Doug:
Maybe Bucknah should audition.

 

---

Mike:
Yeah, instead of Pants on the Ground he could sing...

 

---

Mike:
♪ Lil' rollah on the ground
♪ Lil' rollah on the ground
♫ Lookin' like a fool with a lil' rollah on ground

 

---

Monday and not much to yak about still...

Doug:
Tickets are still available?

 

---

Doug:
Does this mean the glint has come off the Red Sox rose?

 

---

Bill:
Yeah, nobody goes to Fenway anymore because it's too crowded.

 

---

Doug:
So even Scott Brown has fallen off the Dice-K wagon-san, naming him just a potential 6th stahtah along with Wake.

 

---

Bill:
Seriously. I haven't seen a politician throw anyone undah the buss so hahd since Obama made Hillary Secretary of State and sent her to Whogivesafuckstan on a fact-finding mission.

 

---