How did I miss this Gronk commercial being filmed in South Boston?

It appears Rob Gronkowksi never actually made it to Southie himself (just his brother Dan, and who knows, since you only see his back maybe it wasn't even him), but still--there are literally four different street corners in this ad that I walk by on my way to work.



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Awesome Old Christmas Song of the Week: "The Little Drummer Boy" by Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band

Bob Seger's version of The Little Drummer Boy is one of the many great tracks from the 1987 album A Very Special Christmas:



Previous AOSOTW Christmas selections:

Winter Wonderland by the Eurythmics
All I Want for Christmas is You from Love Actually
The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't be Late)
Santa Clause is Coming to Town by Bruce Springsteen


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The best part of the amazing taco commercial featuring terrible burgulars

Yeah, it's kind of lazy of me to grab this video that has already made it's way across the internet and use it for a blog post.  But, I decided to do it anyway for two reasons:

1) My irrational love of tacos.

2) From working many years in restaurants, I have a tiny bit of insight into this situation that the average person might not--there's a 99.999% chance that there isn't any money in those registers.  It's in a safe in the office.

I'd love to see a video of when the thieves got home and busted them open...



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Is the woman who won $100,000 on a 15-team $5 parlay the most annoying person ever?

Here's the full story from ESPN.com, but all you need to see are these quotes:

"On Sunday morning, my boyfriend and I were sitting on the couch talking about how spreads worked. He was frustrated since I wasn't getting it right away."

The thing is, "wasn't getting it right away" is a lie.  She didn't get it, period.  Shortly afterwards she made the following bet:

When she was informed that she won $100,000 at 20,000-to-1 odds, she said the following:

"I remembered that I picked the Giants and they lost. So I thought it was strange when I looked at it [Tuesday] morning and saw that I won."

The Giants lost by three, but as you can see in the above picture, they were getting five points.

What really infuriates me about this story is that the woman has a Boston Celtics tattoo on her hip.


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I bet you can't name the last two Celtics players to have 10+ assists in the same game?

In addition to Kevin Garnett's potential farewell to Boston, something else highly unusual occurred at the TD Garden last night.  Isaiah Thomas Thomas dished out 12 assists, while Evan Turner distributed another 10 of his own.

When they both had nine midway through the fourth quarter, I began to wonder how rare it was to see a pair of teammates each record double-digit assists in the same game.  I posed the question to two of my favorite stats guys, former colleague Adam Lowenstein, and Celtics radio play-by-play man Sean Grande:

@StatsAdam @SeanGrandePBP preemptive question? How long has it been since the C's had 2 guys with double-digit assists in a game?

— Mark Vandeusen (@LucidSportsFan) December 22, 2015

They each responded with the answer.  It hadn't happened in more than 18 years:

@LucidSportsFan @SeanGrandePBP pretty sure it's https://t.co/ZzyyTKjC7A

— Adam Lowenstein (@StatsAdam) December 22, 2015

Last time the Celtics had two players with 10+ assists? Antoine Walker and David Wesley, April 18, 1997 @ Philadelphia. @basketballrefs

— Sean Grande (@SeanGrandePBP) December 22, 2015

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I don't think it matters who plays running back for the Patriots (or any NFL team, for that matter)

Today the Patriots signed Steven Jackson.  The 32-year-old former Pro Bowl-er has been out of the league since last season.  I wouldn't be surprised if Jackson plays a key role for New England down the stretch.  It's also quite possible he does nothing.

When Legarrette Blount went down last week, it didn't bother me in the slightest because I thought Brandon Bolden was perfectly capable of filling his role.  Not only did Bolden appear to be as good as Blount when given the opportunity, so did former practice squad guy Joseph Iosefa, a player I'd literally never heard of until they handed him the ball Sunday.

For half of the season the Patriots made Dion Lewis look like a superstar as a third-down/pass-catching back.  They picked him up off the scrap heap last winter.  Now that Lewis is out, second-year man James White is doing his job just fine.

Last season with the Cowboys, DeMarco Murray led the NFL with 1,845 rushing yards, nearly 500 more than anyone else.  This year he's an afterthought on the Eagles.  None of the league's top eight rushers from 2014 are once again among the top eight in 2015.

I'm convinced there's no such thing as a star running back in the NFL anymore.  Every team has a "next man up" who's just as likely to perform as the guy he's replacing.  With the way offenses are changing (more and more towards passing), it's the system that determines whether or not a runner is successful, not his talent.


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The Steve Harvey / Miss Universe conspiracy theory

If you're an irrelevant beauty pageant trying to stay relevant in 2015, or a past-his-prime comedian looking to hang on, what's your dream scenario?  How about a "mistake" that sets the internet on fire and puts you both in the spotlight:

Steve Harvey botching Miss Universe has got to be the best possible thing that could've happened for Steve Harvey or Miss Universe.

— Mark Vandeusen (@LucidSportsFan) December 21, 2015

I don't actually think it was intentional, but Harvey's apology tweet was a little over the top, so who knows...

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