Norton Point Sunset

It's been a long time since I didn't really write much of anything.  Maybe since last summer. This is all for today.  Just some pictures.  No interesting thoughts.

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Smart Money in Boston Sports

3 out of 4.

This morning while I was researching my Celtics daily news post for CLNS Radio I stumbled across a businessweek.com "Smartest Spenders" study of payroll cost per victory over the past year by every franchise in each of the four major sports.  Their findings are somewhat subjective, they added value of their own choosing to the playoffs and other wins deemed more important.

Regardless, the results for the Boston teams are a telling sign towards the state of affairs at the moment: Out of 122 total, the Bruins ranked 6th, the Celtics 7th, and the Patriots 8th.  The Red Sox?  A distant 70th.  Which is a nice lead in to the other somewhat sarcastic piece I wrote today, Red Sox vs Blue Jays: Basement Battle Part II.

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Two fingered rings should not exist.

The other day I noticed a lady sitting at my bar wearing a ring that looked something like this:

It was the first I'd seen or heard of "two fingered rings."  It looked ridiculous; reminded me of one of those grill things rappers think are cool to wear over their teeth (also ridiculous).  So I did a little research, and apparently this two fingered ring business is for real.  But I don't care if Lauren Conrad or my girl Rihanna likes them, they're stupid.

  

Why would anyone still use this?

Supporting my case is the fact that the friend of aforementioned lady in my bar was carrying around a non-digital Nikon camera (they used to have something called "film" inside them) from about 1995.  And not like a serious photographer's camera, one of the cheap point and click things that pretty much every cellphone in the world now comes equipped with.  They even had me take a picture of them with it.

But, the really big news here is that this inspired me to create a new post category (which is no easy task, I had to reread everything I've ever written on this site), "fashion."  Take a look, lots of good stuff.  That and all the others are listed on the right side of the page below the contact email picture.

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MLB is dumb at scheduling

Major League Baseball just announced a preliminary schedule for next season.  Since the Astros (the lowly pathetic Astros) will be moving to the AL, each league will now have an odd number of teams (15), and interleague play will need to happen all year long.  The first such matchup is the Reds hosting the Angels to start the season on April 1.  Cincinnati was the first professional baseball team, and because of this they always open at home, and throw a parade as well.  So why compound this with an interleague game to boot?  It's just a waste of publicity opportunities to combine the two.

Similarly, the Red Sox and Yankees will also begin the year facing off in the Bronx.  This is dumb for two reasons: One, as I mentioned last year, it's silly not to maximize the number of games that are a big deal.  And two, there is no need for baseball to ever start the season outdoors in cold weather.  

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Awesome Old Song of the Week: "Stay" by Shakespeare's Sister

It's September 11th, so I thought I'd look and see what the #1 song was on this day in 2001.  I'm Real by J-Lo and Ja-Rule.  That just didn't seem fitting.  But, almost totally unrelated, 20 years ago today the #7 song according to Billboard was Stay by Shakespeare's Sister.

These ladies were weird and creepy looking, and they never had anything else even remotely close to a hit, but this one was cool.  If you're not liking it, try jumping ahead to the 2 minute mark when it becomes a totally different song.

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Hanging out with Ben Affleck

A friend in the front row took this picture.

Last night I went to the Boston premier of a movie called Argo, directed by and staring Ben Affleck.  It's scheduled for release a little over a month from now, on October 12th.  Oh yeah, he was there too.

First off, Argo is really good.  It's about 6 people who escaped the U.S. Embassy at the beginning of the 1980 Iran Hostage Crisis, and how the C.I.A. later got them out of the country and back home by pretending that they were a Canadian film crew.  In the movie, Argo is the name of the fake sci-fi flick that the C.I.A. created (with some help from Hollywood) in order to pull the stunt off.  And all of this actually happened.  But, nobody knew about it until 1997 when President Clinton declassified the information.  Crazy.

Here's a two minute clip that I shot on my cell phone of Affleck discussing the film with channel 4's Joyce Kulhawik, and answering some questions from the audience.

Two things really stand out for me.  One, I was very impressed with how well Affleck answered all of the questions; some of which were vague and inarticulate.  He seemed like a pretty thoughtful and intelligent guy.  Also I'm guessing he's had some practice in the past with these sort of situations.

And two, although the movie obviously embellished some things for dramatic purposes, one scene that Affleck said was real absolutely blew my mind.  As the embassy was being overrun, American officials shredded every document in the building.  The Iranians later set up a "sweat shop" of children who for months picked through what must have been millions of tiny pieces of paper, looking to put back together anything they could.

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Roger Clemens was really good again

I wanted to talk about this yesterday, but I thought the Washington Nationals lunacy (scroll down if you missed it) was a much bigger deal.  On Saturday night Roger Clemens made his second start for the Sugarland Skeeters, this time with his 25 year old son Koby as his catcher.  And once again he was very impressive.  His fastball hit 88 mph, and he threw 50 pitches over 4.2 scoreless innings.  He struck out a batter while allowing just one hit, and for the second straight start did not walk anyone.

The Rocket claims he's now done for the season.  I'm not buying that at all.  I think we're going to see him in Houston before the end of the year.

Also, make sure to come back tomorrow and read about my evening with Ben Affleck.

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