I wish New Year's Day was the first day of Spring

I went to a Christmas party the other night, and despite the fact that it was 60 degrees out in Boston yesterday, winter is coming.  Soon.  There are some things I like about winter, but cold weather isn't one of them.  I like seeing it snow a few times a year, and it's definitely nice to have for Christmas.  But after New Years Eve, there's nothing left about winter that's any good.  It just drags on and on.  And on.  In my perfect world you'd wake up on the morning of January 1st, and it would be Spring.  It just makes sense, doesn't it?  Sunshine, warm weather, flowers blooming, it'd be a great start to the new year.  Then Spring could last through March, we could have an awesome 5 month summer starting in April, and Fall could still come at the regular time.  How great would that be?  I've lived in a lot of places all over the country: east coast, west coast, north, south, even some in between; but I've never found the ideal climate.  I know it doesn't exist, but at least I can dream, right?

The Bruins are making it very hard to ignore regular season hockey

They had a near perfect month of November.  They are 14-0-1 in their last 15 games, and just one random shootout goal away from being undefeated in the last 38 days.  They are running away with the Northeast Division, and have absolutely owned Toronto, the 2nd place team.  They've beaten them 4 times already by a combined score of 23-6.  And last night the Bruins went into Pittsburgh and easily handled the Penguins (the one team many experts claim is better than Boston), winning 3-1.  But the most impressive stat of all is their goal differential (yeah, it's kind of weird that I also wrote about scoring differential yesterday, but I think it's a very telling statistic in sports that people generally don't pay enough attention to).  The Bruins have outscored their opponents by 36 goals this season, which is 17 more than the Red Wings, who rank 2nd in the NHL at +19.  The fact that that number is 89% better than the second best is absolutely ridiculous.  I've said many times before that I'm not a big hockey fan, but right now the B's are impossible to ignore.

Tebometer Monday

Yesterday Tim Tebow completed 10 of 15 passes, which raised his career completion rate to 48.3%, up from 47.1% last week.  Denver is now in first place in the AFC West at 7-5.  Yet somehow for the season their opponents have outscored them by 36 points (in fact the AFC West team with the best point differential is in last place in the division, San Diego at -26).  Of the Broncos' 7 wins, 6 of them are by a touchdown or less.  5 of them are by 4 points or less.  They have won two games in overtime (both times by 3), and three others by 2, 3, and 4 points respectively.  The fact that they keep winning absolutely defies logic.  And for somebody who has a pretty healthy respect for logic, it's infuriating.  I give up.  I don't know what else to say.

Mark your calenders: in two weeks the Denver Tebows host New England.  Sunday, December 18th, 4:15 pm. The Armageddon of regular season NFL games.

The Citibank rock climbing commercial looks scary as hell

I once did a ropes course where I had to climb a telephone pole and then stand on top of it, which was basically a much easier version of what is going on here.  And that was pretty scary.  But here's the big difference: I was hooked up to a rope ABOVE me.  If I fell off I wasn't going anywhere, I would have just dangled there in mid air.  As far as I can tell, when this girl gets to the top of that thing her rope is attached somewhere down below, near where her boyfriend is.  If she slips she's going to fall like 15-20 feet and smash into the rock.  I don't get how that is safe.  If any rock climbers out there read this and have some insight, please help me out.

The other reason I'm writing this blog is because the song in the background has been stuck in my head lately.  In case you care, it's by some lady named "L.P." and it's called Into the Wild.

How awesome were these?

I saw Frosted Flakes on sale at CVS the other day, and on a whim I decided to buy a box.  It's probably the only time I have ever bought a box of Frosted Flakes.  Last night I ate a handful of them, and instantly I was reminded of being on vacation with my family as a child.  Because that's when we used to get these:

How great were those variety packs of tiny boxes?  It was the only time when I was a kid that I ever got to eat "sugar" cereals.  And I think since we we're on vacation we rarely had bowls and spoons, so I just ate them dry out of the box.  It was also comical how little cereal was in each of those mini boxes, like 3 or 4 mouthfuls.  Looking back it probably would have made a lot more sense just to buy one regular size box of cereal.  But I'm guessing my sisters and I always fought over which kind to get, so my parents just gave up and let us get these.  I mean it was vacation anyway.

Do the tiny box variety packs still exist?  All I ever notice these days are those single servings in a plastic bowl with the seal that peals off the top.  Maybe more functional, but definitely not as cool.

I don't understand how Lebron doesn't have smart people who tell him what to do

In his flag football game the other night, Lebron James imitated Stevie Johnson making fun of Plaxico Burress shooting himself in the leg.  Wow, that was an unusual sentence.  If you live under a rock (or just don't watch espn 7 hours a day like I do) and haven't heard about the "Stevie Johnson dance," scroll down and watch the second video clip before you read the rest.  Anyway, here's Lebron's touchdown dance:

You know before this happened he told his buddies he was going to do it.   How does one of them not say "Uh bro, maybe don't do the dance that was just a huge controversy in the NFL this weekend, how about something else instead." So here's my advice to Lebron: hire a smart guy buddy.  Someone intelligent with a grip on reality, who unlike you has a general awareness of the world around them.  A PR guy, an adviser, a life coach; just somebody to run things by first, who tells you when you're being an idiot before it actually happens. Whether it's knocking over children at summer camps, or telling the world that his life is better than yours, Lebron is so incredibly good at always saying and doing the wrong thing; and it blows my mind that he allows it to keep happening. Now while I'm on the subject of Stevie Johnson, I think he got a raw deal.  It was funny.  And I don't even think it should have been a penalty.  None of his teammates were involved.  And it was DEFINITELY not worthy of this moronic self-righteous rant by Bob Costas:

Is the BC hoops team actually worse than the football team?

Back in mid September I wrote a blog about how bad the Boston College football team was.  Well, the gridiron Eagles definitely showed improvement and rallied a bit at the end of the season, but they still finished 4-8, their worst record since 1995.  And now it looks like the basketball team is even worse.  They're 2-5 right now.  They lost to Holy Cross by 22.  They lost to UMass by 36.  Thirty-Six!!!  And last I checked Marcus Camby did not play in that game.  The Eagles' 2 wins were home games against New Hampshire by 3, and over UCRV by 4.  In overtime.  And if you say you know what UCRV stands for you're probably lying (it's the Highlanders of The University of California Riverside).  BC looks terrible, and they've only played the EASY part of their schedule.  Guess what's coming: the ACC.  Their conference season kicks off January 7th, at North Carolina.  Ugh.  I think it's safe to say we won't be seeing anything like this:

I still remember the starting 5 that year: Malcolm Huckaby, Howard Eisley, Gerrod Abram, Billy Curley, and Danya Abrams.  Loved that ' 94 team.