Light On The Dark Materials

So I've just finished the "His Dark Materials" Trilogy. You know, the one that caused all the uproar during Christmas when the first of the books, The Golden Compass, was released as a movie. Inspired by the "christian" controversy I picked up the books to see for myself. And they are very much heretical if you ascribe to the Christian faith. Mind you, far less heretical than Friends, CSI and any other mainstream visual nonsense we escape with. But that is neither here nor there.

The books, themselves, are not very good. Better than the previous "christian" controversy and book, The Da Vinci Code, from a literature standpoint, be assured. But not that great. The first one, honestly, I thought was brilliant. Imaginative. Large. Challenging. It was good children's literature in the vein of Potter, Dahl, L'Engle, Tolkein in scope alone. But it's ending meandered in order to set the tone for the second book and the riverbed of creativity dried up after that as the books became more about an agenda than children's novels.

I was reminded, as I finished the final book today, of my father's take on a sci-fi movie a few years back, Trip to Mars or something like that (with Lt. Dan!). At the end of the movie they were all holding hands in a circle. He fully expected, in that moment, the characters to start singing Kum Ba Yah. I felt the same way finishing the novel. It held an awfully high opinion of itself as it concluded. And the characters were metaphorically standing around the campfire of their world-view, holding hands, and singing Kum Ba Yah.

A brief example: All the characters marvel at the inter-connectedness of worlds and beings and Dust and particles and life. How slight variations on one world go the opposite in another. They are astounded by the connectedness of life still. In the same breath they admonish the view that it could have all originated from a creator being. We are all connected by luck and chance! Let's sing and hold hands and bask in this view, for it is glorious!

But my curiosity is assuaged. Though, I suspect, the controversy will not be when the second movie debuts next year. But whatever, it'll make for an entertaining movie to escape with. I consistently remain amused by how "christian" controversy is stirred up over books that are not that good.

My I Hate Politics Manifesto

This is a far from a rational opinion. I have not sat down and thoroughly thought any of this through. Think less of me from shooting from the hip, but these are my thoughts. Some of them are tardy -- they would've been funny and relevant a month ago. Alas.

First of all, since when can political parties tell voters that your votes for whom you want to run for President don't count because your state decided to have their primary early? Do political parties wield more power than a state? More power than a voter? And yet people still voted? Equally unfathomable. (I'm planning, also, to have an equally meaningless vote: Band-Aids or Caramel Sauce. You pick. You decide. Those are your two options. 50 points to the winner. The loser must count to 1,000 and run a mile.)

Seriously, how did they get away with this? Why didn't the news media take them to task on it? Maybe they did. In the interest of full disclosure, I don't watch the news.

Secondly, why do I have to vote for one of two people in the end? GW thought little of a two-party system. So do I. I'm sure there's an argument to prove me wrong. To show me that the two-party system is glorious. Just know I will disagree. And probably not respectfully.

Tertiary: nuanced political promises. I tire of them. I am physically weary and cynical of them. I get angry and mean when I hear them. I offend people -- not with what I say, I'm not crass -- but towards whom I say it against, i.e. that I'm tipping some sort my figurative political hat by railing on what exactly "Change" means. I'm not. I despise all nuanced statements equally, almost. Ha!

Will I vote? Yes. For whom? Who knows. I don't care much for anyone in this candidate pool. Make your arguments. Rail against me for abusing a freedom, whatever. Just know I hold my vote very dearly. Not in whom I will cast it for, but that I can cast it. Just don't be upset when I cast it for a) a fictional character; b) a Democrat; c) a Republican; d) Ralph Nader; e) Isaac; f) myself; g) The Mrs.; h) The Red Sox.

Again, shooting from the proverbial hip here. And I did cut my head open last night, so take everything accordingly. Except that I very much do not like politics and that I do, actually, very much like government.

And You Didn't Care If It Came Back

I'm going to reopen Crackerjacks and Peanuts. Not that I closed it. But, whatever. I'm going to express some baseball thoughts as the season goes along over there. Probably about as often as I do over here.

On A Snow: Finally

We have lived here for three years now. This is the first time I have seen a true snow fall. A light and large and wet snow. One that comes down softly and quietly. One that when the wind blows streaks your vision to nothing more than a white wall, with it's impenetrable thickness that recedes only when the wind dies and there is nothing more than a soft snow falling.

It falls light and large. It has covered the ground and left me longing for days gone by. When school would be cancelled and I would jump off of roofs into drifts deeper than my imagination. Today it was a quick shovel and off to work, stuck in the amalgam of inept drivers and white precipitation turned a muddy brown. Black roads and salted cars. And a white wall moving alongside me in a mocking blur.

Isaac played in the snow today. Crawled around the swingset in the backyard. Scoffed at the snow that fell in and around his mouth. His imagination is still young and light. Though I have no doubt it is large. That beyond his sight, his imagination was able to penetrate the white wall of swirling and tumbling whiteness. That, perhaps, he saw into an ancient past that, when laid out before him, showed him the eras of children and adults playing much like he was. Scoffing and cold, laughing and crawling. But perhaps, in his youth, he merely understood that before him was something very special, and something very much for him to enjoy. Something very simple.

We have lived here for three years now. This is the first time I have seen a true snow fall. A light and large and wet snow. One that comes down softly and quietly. One that when the wind blows streaks your vision to nothing more than a white wall, with it's impenetrable thickness that may never recede for me.

But out there, in my large and amalgamated world, I know where there is a simple, soft snow falling.

A New Perspective on Eden

Having just completed Steinbeck's East of Eden late last evening, there hangs over me still the rush. One thing about finishing a book that is forever exciting is the prospect that finishing it is just around the corner, especially when said book pushes 600-pages. During such times, in the waning moments of the book, a new fury takes over and I read at a ridiculuous rate. It is a fault at times because I read almost impatiently, pining more to "complete" than for the story to complete itself on its own terms -- not on my own. Still, it's a furious urge to resist. For this particular novel, the exercise caught up with me and has left me unutterably winded this morning.

It seems that this particular novel is not considered his greatest. I can grant that argument. It is more refined, more particular and inevitably less a commentary than an actual story. Where Grapes of Wrath was an effort to summarize a movement, a situation, a profound hope in the human spirit -- this novel is about the human spirit itself. What it is and what makes it. How it is formed and molded and changed and yet somehow immutable since the days of Adam and Eve. It contains characters as old as time, as human as all of us; as close and familiar as a look in the mirror. Laughter and love is at its core. The sing-song of the Irish Samuel Hamilton. The cold and menace of Cathy Trask. The wisdom and strength of Lee. The naked and cold and ever human Cal Trask. And the undeniable choice before all of them.

This novel is about characters. It is about a story. It is an old story. One we are all familiar with. Yet one that seems strangely new and fresh and ancient all at once. Like a warm rain in December.

It will now sit on my bookshelf. I will walk by it often and remember it.

I will read it again. Thou mayest, at the very least.

A Few Small Steps

So the day, hour, moment has arrived. Isaac has taken his first steps. As you can see by the video, he's clearly proud. Mom and Dad are proud as well. Quitely and confidently and exstatically proud. Crawling and rolling over were significant moments; standing up was also a special moment. But walking, venturing out from point A to point B, has been our favorite. Of course we realize that the adventuresome spirit Isaac has will manifest itself ten-fold with this new talent he possesses. That more things will be reached for. More things will be knocked over. More tears and more crying from falls and slips and collisions. But there will also be inevitable moments of accomplishment. Of adventure. Of opportunity for laughter. Of "look-what-I-can-do Mom"s and "Try-and-catch-me Dad"s.

So in the few small steps he took last night, there lies giant footprints of happiness.

On Your Condolences

This has happened before. Only it was much, much worse; though this is still pretty bad. That's the brighter side to my current melancholy; rather, the excuse. It's not abject depression like in 2003 with the Red Sox. It's a more like a numbness. We've suddenly been forced to look up and see how large the universe actually is. That the immortality of perfection and a win tonight was never as close as we thought it was, no matter what we tell ourselves -- or how Russell Crowe makes us feel. We have always been small after all. And in that lies the numbness and melancholy of a reality we thought we could transcend for a moment, for a game.

So if you feel like feeling this feeling I have, if you care to offer to me a "Sorry, man. That hurts!" Well, you can "Stuff your sorry's in a sack." Because here's the deal with losing: it also makes no sense. And don't tell me it's just a game. Because it most conveniently, and undoubtedly is. There is no debate there. Yet losing is always also losing.  

The universe is a large, large place. I have just now had my head lifted. 

Unlocking the Magic

Enjoy Isaac's First Oreo.

He did.

Exiled and Imperfect: Thoughts on Beauty

So I've been reading several books of late, among them: Jacques Maritain's essay Art and Scholasticism -- which you can read online here (the one benefit being the hyperlinked footnotes; and endlessly better than the large print book I mistakenly ordered and now possess). It's a rich and influential essay, empowering the likes of O'Connor, Percy and several more Catholic writers in the middle of last century. I recommend it with the caveat that it is not an easy read, not simple and thoroughly challenging.

One of the more salient discourses I came across is the the fifth chapter on Art and Beauty. Maritain has taken great pains to put into words the aesthetic and unquantifiable weight of Beauty -- what it is and what it represents, to the artist first, and to the perceiver of art. I was most struck by the notion that Baudelaire presents:

"it is this immortal instinct for the beautiful which makes us consider the earth and its various spectacles as a sketch of, as a correspondence with, Heaven."

I like this notion. That beauty, and what is beautiful, is a sort of window into Heaven. I remember a great speaker, Dennis Kinlaw, in chapel during college who talked about this idea. He said that if there were to be a Heaven, and all it's classical notions of being greater than this world, we should, at the very least, expect it to leak into this world. Expect to see evidences of it here and there and around us. Little windows into the great, wide expanse of a greatness we cannot very well handle in our present world (cf. Chesterton's take on the levity of angels).

But more than the windows we can look through it is our desire, the artists desire to search and seek and pine for these glimpses. Baudelaire goes on to say the following:

"We have still a thirst unquenchable. thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us, but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above.... And thus when by Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not... through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and forever, those divine and rapturous joys of which, through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses."

The moth for the star. Not just a flicker of a flame on a candle, a burning, roaring fire, a conflagration of a forest, a STAR. The moth for a burning, firing, flaming, bundle of gas and beauty and danger. The moth for a star. So may we seek after beauty in and around.

My People And Your People: Scheduling

Schedules are funny thing; you hardly ever think about them, take the time to realize your on a schedule. But we are. We operate, not in the banal and mundane effects of adhering to a schedule, out of a routine of which we are mainly unawares. Meals, bathroom breaks, snacks, T.V., commutes, events: they all go according to set times and dates; and so go our own lives. I suppose I always, somewhere, recognized this truism; but it never affected me until this month.

Out of the graciousness of my heart I agreed to shift my work schedule three days a week. Don't see me as too altruistic however when I tell you that the shift allows me to train on directing higher profile things that inevitably give me a greater and newer skill set. Still, I'm working nights for three days. In doing this, I miss my most coveted time with my family.

I suppose I never realized it. How much dinners and baths and story time and the house silences at bedtime really means to me. How special and crucial it is to my makeup. How apart of my daily schedule it is. But for three days a week I miss out on that.

However, I do get the ever-fantastic mornings with Isaac: where he is arguably at his best and funniest and most energetic. Where the car-rides, shopping trips, babysitters, other people, phone calls and meals have not gotten in the way. When he has awoken from whatever fantastic dream danced through his head with laughter and excitement: "It's a new day, Daddy! Good Morning!" That's what it feels like he says to me while he is shaking his crib as I enter the room while the sleep shakes from his eyes. And then he sits down and laughs as I go to pull him from his bed. Just laughs, giggles and smiles. Looks up at me with excitement. This is how we begin the day.

And when I go to work, I look forward to the mornings. But I miss the evenings too. The incessant water-splashing that soaks us; the running around from one activity to another to stave off sleep; the talking and telling us about his day in a language that is so clear to him.

So this schedule goes for a month. And then I will miss the mornings again.

But life, no matter the schedule, is never routine. This I have loved most of all. Despite how routine we need to make things for Isaac and our benefits; how things need to be set in schedules with times and places and calculations. It is in this, this management of life, that the most delightful freedom occurs. Call it a paradox, but it remains. The trick, talent, necessity, I suppose, is to see not the time, but the Time.

And it will make all the difference.

Confession: A Lack of Books

Seems every January I discover the joy of reading anew; before it is sullied and sodded over by the perennial progressions of life. The thirst for flipping pages comes almost as fast as one can digest the previous page. It's onset is voracious and at once satiable provided the author, the work and the coffee is good. And here we are again, January 2008.

A great difficulty -- and perhaps apropos -- is the lack of a bookstore in Grove City. Our previous home proffered at least three within 2 minutes. Now it takes 20+ to the nearest one, a Barnes and Noble just past the boundaries of work. Herein lies the rub: I ventured past my normal exit for the oasis in the desert of my thirst only to leave defeated and deflated. I'm looking for Augustine's Confessions which I have not yet read (City of God, yes; Confessions, no). There was one noticeable copy in the Christianity section, a small print, small bound, fancy smancy covered booklette that could slide into my back pocket. It looked more appropriate for a coffee table or coaster than as the great work of art it is. There were no other copies. Not even the assistance of the clerk could help. Even after I explained to here my snobbishness in wanting a copy bigger than my hand, one I could curl up with and perhaps into if it were big enough, not one that required me to peer at. She understood; I think. But our search on computers and by hand in other sections like Philosophy and Literature found nothing other than that. Then I checked the biography section on a whim -- and there it was: a hardcover, Burgundy coated immaculate copy. I was elated. Until I found out it cost $30.

Now hear my hypocritical stance: I demand bookstores carry books like these and not biographies of Lorraine Bracco or 101 Cups of Spirituality that go great with a side of Chicken soup and fluff (fluff being the stuff on most of the shelves in the Christianity section). But I also demand they be inexpensive and refuse to buy them if they are not, thus decreasing the revenue they account for thus resulting in their not being ordered and stocked.

$30 though? I can get it better somewhere else. Just not in Grove City.

So for now, in the stark coldness of my desert, under this ironic January sun, I am without a book. That is my confession: I feel a little incomplete and starved, wrong even, but unwilling to see past my own palette and wallet to satiate this desire.

On The Holiness of Time

Time is not my friend; Time is not on my side. For the last two months, I have longed for the stretches of time where it just goes by -- where the clock peacefully passes. Instead, our lives have been one thing after another -- some magnificent, others magnified and difficult. But now the proverbial clearing lies under our feet. And time is the view before us.

My mind, previously filled with tasks-at-hands is unwinding, slowly. There are still chores and tasks and requirements, but not enough to fill each and every minute of the day. Turning the pages of a book and sipping hot coffee are not guilt-laden exercises for either of us -- they are pleasures.

There is the laughter I can enjoy on his time with a growing admiration and pride-- a laughter that has changed my life. There are the simple, quiet and tangible moments that are back. The evenings of music and books and conversation. Breakfasts and dinners that thrive. There is a sacredness now in the moments again.

Whether this creates in me further food for thought in this space, I do not promise. I make no resolutions. I give you no hope. I propose no direction other than the one already taken. And while there is much to write about along those lines, I am finding I have little to say for it.

Instead I am finding a time again I had had to forsake for life. Had to put it up and away like the decorations of the seasons. Walking past it in the mornings and evenings and occasionally taking it off the shelf long enough to catch a breath. But now she has come down from being admired and sought to being experienced and felt. Like bagels; like coffee; like meat and potatoes; like worn pages of typeset; like a soft voice echoing into the night; like the laughter and smile of the most innocent among us.

Does He Know This?

Trust me, we've told Isaac his cast is no longer there. And it's not that I think he doesn't believe us, or that maybe we're out of touch parents; maybe it's his first act of rebellion. Call it Adorable Anarchy then.

The Chewbacca Defense

It's called the Chewbacca Defense. It's not Socratic in any way. But then again how brilliant was Socrates: He drank the hemlock in the end. Anyway, it accurately sums up the inanity that is college football and the BCS:

Ladies and gentlemen in this supposed BCS controversy, the BCS would certainly like you to believe LSU deserves a BCS Championship appearance and Missouri, Oklahoma, USC, and Hawaii do not. And they make a good case. Heck, I almost felt pity myself! But, ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, look at Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!

Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with the BCS? Nothing.

Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with the BCS! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm trying to explain the BCS, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense!

And so you have to remember, when you're in that BCS rankings post deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed masses that want their team in the National Championship game, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must allow Missouri, Oklahoma, Hawaii and USC a BCS Championship slot!

The defense rests.

Three Of A Kind

The expression is that it always happens in threes. That, especially, people die in threes. Over the past week, this has been the case in the sports realm with the Blue Jays pitcher Kennedy, Sean Taylor and the first black All-American Bill Wilts. Working in news, I much more prone to mark these stories and see the correlation -- though, I think it may be merely coincidence. Sure it doesn't always happen, but it does more than you think and probably doesn't more than you think too.

But what about people being born in threes. I've got this inkling that November 29th was a favored day in heaven. On this date, C.S. Lewis, Louisa May Alcott and Madeline L'Engle were birthed. That's a lot of genius to be giving out at once, even for God. And a lot of genius in the imagination of children's literature too. It's like it wasn't given out all at once. All of them, most known for the work as a children's author with the ability to transcend the genre to appeal across generations at once.

It was like literature won the lottery that day. Or that there was an overstock, one-day sale on genius. Maybe it's Christmas on November 29th in Heaven. Or would they have Christmas?

Either way, today's greatness happens in threes.

UPDATE:

NOVEMBER 30TH: BIRTHDAYS OF MARK TWAIN AND JONATHAN SWIFT (GULLIVER'S TRAVELS). SERIOUSLY... MAYBE I'M THE ONLY ONE FASCINATED BY THIS.

UPDATE:

PROBABLY.

The Paradox Of Winning

Much has been said about the current success of Boston sports teams over the past month. In fact, Sunday marked the last time a Boston sports team (not counting the woeful B's) had lost in the past month(Cleveland beat Boston on Oct. 16th). This time it was the Celtics. Who barely lost. In a game I watched on NBA TV because I have it. Yes. I'm that special. I actually prefer the Celtics over the Patriots. For that reason I missed the first two Pats scores against the Bills.

And what I did watch of the Patriots game was nothing short of masterful. It wasn't that the Bills looked bad. The Patriots looked so good to make a team they were playing not look bad and instead make themselves look even better. The Mrs keeps asking how I can watch the Pats game with the scores so out-of-hand. Because it's beautiful. I've never seen such precision and execution on the football field. It's like watching Beckett work in a playoff game. The opposing batters just don't have a shot because he is that good. The Patriots are just that good.

I likened it yesterday morning to an old SportsCenter commercial.


We are the Holyfield of the NFL.

But it's a long season. So let's not get ahead of ourselves.

As per the punditry that revolves around these landslide victories, it's nice to be the villian. To be the hated team. And it's nice to know and realize this is the case only because we are winning so easily. We are not overpaying players. The organization does things the right way. Forget SpyGate. We're 10 weeks removed from that. It's over. Move beyond it. The only reason we are hated as a team is because the Patriots win and win so very very well.

I love paradoxes.

This may or may not be one.

A Day For The Birds

So let's get today straight. The Homerun king gets indicted on perjury charges. Indicted. Not convicted. Indicted. And the media goes ape over this. Did I mention he's a baseball player? Well, he is. Meanwhile, a president gets convicted of perjury and it's supposed to be no big deal?

Then there's the whopping $270+ million contract the Yankees are paying someone to not help them win a World Series.
Then, the writers are on strike because the same companies that sue online outlets for $1 billion, i.e. YouTube, for posting and making money off of their online content tell the same writers that they have no way of knowing how much money online content is worth.

The governor of Ohio (and fellow Asbury alum and soon-to-be-Clinton-VP-running-mate) thinks we should do away with the electoral college system and just have a popular vote. In his defense, the electoral college system is no way to elect a prom king or queen. To think that history classes should have as much say as the cheerleaders, the nerve.

Then there's also this guy. Fascinating medical story. But some things you can't un-see.

To quote Tracy Morgan from tonight's 30 Rock that accurately sums up this day: "Stop eating old french fries pigeon. Have some self-respect. Don't you know you can fly?"

A Good Man Found On The Edge Of Town

I stumbled across a very interesting association between my favorite fiction writer and my favorite musician. It's a connection I never supposed or suspected, so you can expect my surprise when I discovered that Bruce Springsteen has been heavily influenced by Flannery O'Connor.

I did some more digging, finding that he was most influenced shortly before the Nebraska album. Which, if you know the album, figures. The final line of title track borrows right from O'Connor, "Sir, I guess there's just meanness in the world." He even penned a song for the epic Tracks album in 1998 called "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and captured the essence of the story fantastically.

Springsteen says it's her characters that intrigue them the most. How they are broken, shattered, imperfect and ultimately redemptive. Listening to that album, Tom Joad and Devils and Dust, you see the same dirty and dusty and grotesque characters searching for their "own piece of the cross."

That the connection was obvious was not what floored me. What got me was the roots of the connection itself. The Mrs, not much of a Springsteen fan aside from The Rising and a couple of live tracks, was also surprised to learn of the connection. And, as always, she summed it up adeptly: "You shouldn't be surprised. It just shows you're consistent in what you like." I love O'Connor's work for the exact same reasons I love Springsteen's work: Rich imagery compounded by the actual facts of the world and an attempt to redeem a little piece of it.

Suffice to say I've gone back through the albums I have and listened to them again. Unfortunately, I don't have the entire Nebraska or Joad albums, but the tracks I have make me feel like I'm in Andalusia, sitting next to O'Connor, with Springsteen spewing out throaty melodies on an old guitar. Give Springsteen credit, he's not just a political mouthed musician who plays in a cool band with a cool name and had a few hits. He's a brilliant writer. And that he was affected by O'Connor and not merely effected rises up in his body of work.

Meanwhile, reading O'Connor and listening to Springsteen at once is not possible. It's like being in the exact same place at the exact same time and trying to do something entirely different.

Because Of That One Dentist

It's been brought to my attention that they've stopped selling Mentadent at Giant Eagle. Seeing as how that's where the Mrs shops, seems I'm out of luck. I've used the brand for more than a decade. I despise other brands. It's one of the things I dread about traveling: having to use different toothpastes.

See I'm awfully sensitive about teeth in that I cringe and convulse in conversations about cavities, wisdom teeth, tooth pain. Most notably, I can't even listen to another person brush their teeth. Not my wife. Not my college roommates. Not on T.V. Not in the movies (remember the scene from Stranger Than Fiction? I almost had to leave the theater). Do not expect to have a conversation with my whilst brushing. In fact, expect me to leave and find a place where I can cover my ears and not have to hear you brushing your teeth.

So now I don't have the toothpaste I've used for the past 12 years? Crisis.

And let's just leave it at that.

It's That Time Of Year

It's November. The time when I historically come down with something. Last year it was pneumonia and a trip to the hospital. This year, a wonderful GI bug given to me by my loving son. That's right, Isaac has been sick for the past few days -- his first illness. And as he came out of the woods yesterday -- i.e. no fever and a cessation of the vomiting -- the Mrs and I decided to stroll through the woods ourselves -- i.e we got sick. Isaac, much to the chagrin of the Mrs, was given the nickname Poopy McPoopsalot. Yesterday, in the vein of too much information, he became Poopy McPoopsalot Jr. And by a lot, just to clarify, I mean a lot.

A friend recently emailed me wondering why I hadn't shared anything about the Pats and the Celtics run over the weekend. Truth is, because of what happened over the weekend and then this week, I've done gone completely sapped. Like a Vermont Maple Tree sapped.

Anyway, the energy is slowly returning. So expect more posts here in the coming days. Especially on the Celtics. Man, they look good. Unfortunately, as much a Celtics fan as I am, there's been no real desire to make an effort to watch them on T.V. over the past few years. The quality of basketball was just plain horrible. So I stuck to the box scores, blogs and articles on them. All this to justify my now writing more about them. I also had to use a more formal argument to explain to the Mrs. why basketball ranks above football on my list of favorite sports to watch. Evidence #1: My DVDs of the Basketball Jesus and The Celtics history complete with about 10 full games I own. NOTE: This are the only DVDs I even own.

So yes, I'm excited about the Celtics. Very. Very. Excited. And the Pats are good too. Their next four games will be on TV here in the capital city... so that's good.