The old man and the Yankees

So I just finished a two-page essay question about the use of stereotype characterization in Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. And what a paper it was. See Little Kev had this honor's English homework due and he had already written like a 15-page review of the book (which I strongly suspect he never read in the first place) and then he ran out of Hemingway gas. So he turned to me late this afternoon (I was well rested) and asked if i would answer this one single question for him. I, of course, love this book because Hemingway talks about my beloved New York Yankees in it and specifically Joe DiMaggio who he calls "The Great DiMaggio." Btw back in the day I read The Old Man and the Sea to the kids and I will never forget the first time I took the boys to an Orioles game and Sean, who was about 5 or 6, asked me when we got to the ballpark if we were going to see the Great DiMaggio? I loved that, of course. Anyway my paper is terrific in my high opinion and I will be anxious to see how i am graded in the high school honors English class and if I get anything lower than an B I will, of course, be ashamed but I will also use that as leverage the next time one of my kids wants me to write a school assignment because i can say "well, I'll only get you a C" and i can say this in all honesty.

Speaking of literary figures, la Sooze and I kicked back on the ol' Country Squire last night and watched a movie on Turner Classic Movies (loooove TCM) that was a film version of four short stories written by that fabulous author W. Somerset Maugham, the dude who wrote "Of Human Bondage," which is a very terif book and one of La Sooze's all-time faves. Anyway the movie was called "Quartet" and was pretty good and made me feel very smart indeed because instead of watching like The Fast and the Furious (ugh, double ugh) I was watching something written by a smart guy. Oh ol' W. Somerset was even in the movie - he introduced it. Good thing he didn't go into acting. Not his gift. Writing, however was. In fact Of Human Bondage was one of those books that moved and motivated me back in the day. In actual fact it so moved me that the very first little "chap" book of poetry I ever self-published about 100 years ago was called "The Bricklayer's Germ" and the epigraph to that completely unknown tome (which btw is not available anywhere for any price) was a terrif quote from 'Of Human Bondage' that makes me sound brilliant just for copying it over - goes like this:

"He thought of his desire to make a design, intricate and beautiful, out of the myriad, meaningless facts of life: had he not seen also that the simplest pattern, that in which a man was born, worked, married, had children, and died, was likewise the most perfect? It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories."

In other words it is noble to be a nobody. I like that thought. I am nobility according to ol' W Somerset.

So today was an absolutely beautiful, wonderful day weatherwise, sunny and clear and in the 50s, just terrif east coast autumn. So after like three consecutive months of raining and black skies and wind, you would think i would have perhaps stripped down to my undies and frolicked on the GodView lawn to celebrate such a day, no? Instead, you know what I did I do to celebrate? I took a nap. Really. I came back from playing music at church this morning and made an absolute delish egg sammy on toast with grape jelly (the jelly is crucial) and I talked to La Sooze for a few moments and then i hit the Country Squire about 12:30 and woke up at halftime of the 1:00 football games. Delish, really. The only problem was that I had ridiculous bed head and had to wear my Yankee hat later when i went to the grocery. The ravages of napping. Oh, and this weekend I cleared out the God View garage. How satisfying. I even vacuumed the little pieces of rug we have out there to wipe off your muddy feet when it rains as it does 8 months out of the year in Miz Maryland. But there is something about a clean and uncluttered garage, no? I mean its one thing to have a clean and organized house, but if you then step into the garage and it looks like you've stepped into the middle of a yard sale, then you have not done your job. This would be like stuffing all your clothes under the bed. The bedroom might look nice and tidy, but you know in your heart of hearts that clutter lurks. My garage is now uncluttered. I have darn near achieved self-actualization.

Finally, if you have not been under a rock for the past week you know that tonight they are finally playing game six of the ALCS between my beloved Yankees and Angels of Anaheim. It seems to me that this series began about a month ago and is still going on and the Yankees have not wrapped it up yet despite holding a 3 games to 1 lead about two weeks ago. Since then they've had more travel days than Paris Hilton and then they go to New York where it is raining and baseball was not meant to be played in the rain in October in the east. Imagine that. You know I have faith in the Yankees, of course, as Ernest Hemingway tells me to, but that faith is beginning to wane, especially since the Yankees are now trailing the game 1-0 and the specter of their blown 3 games to none lead against the dreaded Red Sox of Boston is still out there on the horizon all the way from 2004, the last time the beloveds made it to the LCS. Bad karma. (Update - as I'm editing the Yanks just scored three in the bottom of the fourth and lead 3-1 - lots of game left, though, lots of game).  Anyhow since i slept most of the day away today i have no good reason to not stay up and watch this game, unless it goes way south way quick. Meantime the Phightin' Phils of Philadelphia have already made it to the World Series (much to Nation reader Bill's great joy) and are out there somewhere loving the fact that these two teams are killing each other and I am schvitzing and my great buzz from a terrific regular season is slowly beginning to ebb. If the Yankees blow this series i may have to lay in the Country Squire with no lights on for several days repeating the phrase "a 3 games to 1 lead" with my hair all askew. I can't stand it. Anyway, complete review tomorrow. For now I will continue to avoid the television. I wonder if kev has any more homework he needs done?

Surfing the barns of Connecticut

Today off and on I was thinking about the favorable Bob Wintershoe call I got yesterday evening and was wondering what it all means. I mean, I know it means that Bob must be thinking swell thoughts about me, as I am of him. We are mutually moonfacing each other from afar. What I was really thinking about was like is this real and if it is, would I actually consider taking it? As you know from our story, when i went up to fabulously cold and puritanical Connecticut I went only because it gave me an opportunity to ride the train up the east coast and visit my beloved aunt and cousins who live up there.Really, I did not have any thoughts of seriously considering taking a job and actually living up there. But all that changed yesterday with a little ringy dingy of my cell phone when Bob Wintershoe called and left a very nice and complimentary message for me, as if he actually cared and was actually impressed by me, even though I still have not gotten a hair cut and my head looks vaguely like that of a poodle's. Bob obviously has a high tolerance for bad hair. Anyway so desperate am I for validation and love and a boss who would treat me with r-e-s-p-e-c-t that I am now actually thinking about this thing. Imagine that. Tonight, for instance, La Sooze and i sat over plates of pasta at the God View dinner table and I pulled the wonderful MacBook Pro onto the tableau and we surfed real estate sites for houses in the area near the home of Bob Wintershoe. Interesting but a little depressing. See i think I have done myself and La Sooze and those around me a grave disservice with all my surfing of houses in Oro Valley, AZ because every house there looks like a Southwest adobe mansion and has fabulous views of picturesque mountains and they all have a kidney shaped pool and a jacuzzi. Everything in Connecticut on the other hand, is a 109-year old converted barn with a one car detached garage for $1.3 million. Sad sad sad. 

Also today at work I was talking to a guy i know who is in a very important job and is a guy I both like and respect. He is from Cali so we will call him CaliGuy. Anyway i was telling CaliGuy about this Bob Wintershoe and the possibility that they may actually embrace me and try to put money in my pocket and he asked me if i would seriously consider taking their love and i said, well, maybe. Then he asked if I would give the current company an opportunity to make me wealthy first before i fled for the barns of Connecticut. Well, I said, i was thinking that if I did get an offer I would go to my boss or his boss and tell them that I had met another woman but will stay if they make me a handsome offer to do so. So Cali Guy says, "would you really leave?" to which I replied, "I dunno." Then he offered me terrific advice that I will someday use with someone else and i will sound wise and sage-like when I do. CaliGuy said this: "If you're gonna pull out the gun you better be willing to use it. If not then don't pull it out. Because they could tell you 'good luck in your new job, and then you're screwed.'" CaliGuy, of course, made good sense there, even if he did use a violent metaphor with the gun and all which is probably politically incorrect. Anyway, I guess i better keep surfing the barns and make some kind of decision just in case Bob does, in fact, hand me a gun.

Oh, speaking of jobs, I did not mention that a good friend and co-worker recently left the ol' company.(btw don't you love when people capitalize the word company when they're talking about their place of business, like it's a special and holy word The Company, like God or  The Great Lakes. Puhleeze.) Anyway this is  woman I weaned from a pup. She actually graduated from college and then worked for me a couple of years and then moved to other areas of the (lower case) company where she did jobs that i could not even begin to understand since I am totally one-dimensional. Well recently she took a new job and she actually began this new job on Monday and not only did she have to meet all new phonies but she had to move, which, I can attest to you, is a scary and difficult proposition. So the other day i got my first e-mail from my friend. (I used to call her here in the nation The Chosen One because i had chosen to actually like her and talk to her but now that she's gone she is no longer chosen because she isn't there so i will call her "Nova" because she moved to Northern Virginia. get it?) In this e-mail she explains how hard it is to start fresh and that the hardest part is that she doesn't know anyone yet and so even though she has an absolute gift for identifying strange people with strange behaviors she has no one to share those insights with. Just to get a load off, figuratively, she explained to me that there is a woman who every single morning is in the bathroom of her new place of business blowing the place up. She said she has never actually seen the mad bomber because the woman never comes out of the stall, but that she wears black shoes which can be seen poking under said stall. Nova finds this hysterically funny that the same black-shoed woman is in the same stall everyday stinking the joint out but she cannot share her amusement over this image with anyone because she doesn't know anyone. This is a good reason to stay at your job for a very long time, because after awhile you eventually will find the people who will see the humor in someone crapping at precisely the same time in the same stall everyday and when you find those people you want to stay near them because these people are very difficult to find, especially in Miserable Maryland, and apparently Northern Virginia.

Meanwhile I actually turned on the Yankee game tonight in the first inning despite my superstitions, and it just in time to see AJ Burnett get lit up for 4 runs before he got a single out. Wonderful. Basically my beloved Yankees are getting their asses handed to them. I assume my cousin and her hubby are enjoying each and every moment of this. I, of course, am not. Oh well, since the Yanks are getting blasted, watching or not watching won't really mean jackie squat since the drama of the game was gone 15 minutes in. Oh well, there's always Saturday in New York. I have faith, of course, but only for one more loss beyond tonight. If this thing goes 7 I could not handle it. I'm switching to hockey.

To watch or not to watch, you watch

So at times during my eclectic and often pathetic life I have taught poetry classes and workshops in community college and at grammar schools and middle schools. This was back when i cared about poetry. I don't care much about it anymore. I kind of feel as if i've done that and moved on. What I've moved on to I have no idea, but i have moved on. Anyway when I did teach classes i would always tell fellow or budding writers that the job of the poet is to notice things, to see and hear and feel what everyone else sees and feels and hears but to do it in the context of the larger world, as a meaningful moment, even if it appears on the surface to be nothing more than the sound of a woman pushing a shopping cart through a crowded grocery store wearing high heels. There is meaning in everything if you really open yourself to it. I was thinking about that today as I was walking through the parking lot of the subway station tonight, trying to look for moments and details and images that could spark something, some creative juice that might send me off on a months-long writing jag rather than current creatively dried up funk I am in. Well, what i saw today was an random abandoned yellow pillow case at my feet on the subway tonight, I saw my boss' tiny hands this afternoon in a meeting which appeared old and veiny, I saw the backs of cars with bumper stickers that each told some small part of each person's little story, Baltimore Ravens and Penn State. I also was listening to my I-pod this afternoon and was stunned to hear a song that i did not put on there. (Shannon often loads songs on my i-Tunes to make CDs and then leaves them there and i inadvertently put them on my I-pod and then are confronted by such classy music as Lil Wayne and Rhianna and i go "what the F?" and quickly switch it off.) Anyway today this totally unfamiliar song pops on and I look at the screen and it's from, of all people, LeAnn Rimes, who I know nothing about except i think she sings country-type stuff that old ladies would listen to that she got famous when she was ridiculously young with some song that she yodeled through (Blu-ew-ew-ew-ew) and i would not go around the corner to listen to a single note from her. Anyway this song that appeared on the ol' Pod was called "What I can't change" and I let it play for a minute because it started with a piano and a cello and I am a complete sucker for a cello (i want to write a song for a cello btw and then meet a cello player who can play it)  and it turned out to be a terrific song with terrific words about trying to accept the things you cannot change and change the things you can. Kind of a musical Serenity Prayer. LeAnn Rimes? Really? I was grateful for a moment that i had taken my own advice and listened to something different instead of doing what i would normally do which is ignore anything i think i don't like, which covers most of the free world.  Maybe I'll write a poem about it. 

Oh and speaking of poetry did I tell you that I have actually been asked to do a poetry reading again? No one has wanted to hear me read my poetry in many a day. In fact i daresay a longer period of time has passed since an even moderately attractive strange woman has checked me out that someone has actually wanted to listen to my words spoken aloud in a small room. Anyway this friend of both la Sooze and mine is a terrific promoter of the arts and she sent an e-mail the other day and is trying to reunite a bunch of local poets who all read together at a series she sponsored back in the day when I gave two shits about poetry. I recall reading at this series which produced the only honest feedback I have ever gotten about my poetry readings when i asked Little Kev who was then in grade school, what he thought of his creative and glib dad after I had just finished a reading for the local arts council. His response: "Blah, blah, blah." Truer words have never been spoken. Anyway the reading as far as I can tell is on January 21 next year at the Carroll Theater here in Westminnie and I believe it will be called "One Tree, Many Branches," which is a terrific name. In the spirit of my ever hungry ego I will no doubt promote the living shit out of this reading as it gets closer. In the meantime suffice to say I am interested in poetry again because it is interested in me. Shallow, shallow, shallow.

I also wanted to follow-up on something I was talking about yesterday, particularly my decision to not watch the Yankees playoff game against the Angels of Anaheim. As I said, this was a decision based on sheer superstition, but I had decided that I could not actually tune the game in on the television and instead I tracked it on the internet and listened to it on a radio blasting in the God View bedroom. Also, kev was watching the game in the living room and I would actually talk to him as the game was unfolding, either that or I simply had to listen to him, for  instance when Melky Cabrera hit a two run single Kev said "That's what I'm talking about," and I knew something good had happened for the beloved Yanks. Anyway today I got a post here on the Nation from a friend who is as equally devoted to the sports as I and La Sooze are. She is a total hockey freak, mainly, but follows other sports with the same fanaticism as well. Anyway her name is actually Cathy and her last name is the same as that of Juliet's lover in the oft-imitated but never actually read Bill Shakespeare play, and so I will call her Cathy Juliette or CJ for short. Anyway CJ writes the she totally understood my no television ban last night and actually thinks it was admirable because it shows that I am completely in the tank for my team. And then she adds that, well, last night it worked, didn't it? Yes it did CJ - my beloved Yankees won and are now a game away from earning a spot in the World Series. Can you hear my heart beating? Her statement, however brings to the surface an ugly boil that I have considered since last night. The issue is this: now what do I do? I mean I did not watch the game last night (well, la Sooze and I actually did turn it on in the 8th but by that time it was like 7-1 Yankees) and they won in big fashion. So now the next game is scheduled tomorrow night and again it will be on the tv with those yammering fools Tim McCarver and Joe Buck and I will have a choice to make - do I dare watch or do I tune in the radio again and ignore the pictures? The only thing that would have me leaning toward a little glimpse of the tube is that my Cousin K who lives in Cali wrote me the other day and said she and her hubby have actual tickets to Thursday's game. I would have a hard time missing the opportunity to see my terrific cousin and her studly hubby sitting at a League Championship Series game. But then there's the luck thing. What if I watch and the Yankee blow it? What's more important here, family or a trip to the World Series? Aside from whether I will retire in Maine or Oro Valley, AZ in my later life, this may be the toughest decision I will have to make in years. Pray I make the right decision, and as always, have faith in the Yankees.

Oh one final thing. Tonight just before I left God View to go to church band rehearsal I got a call on my cellular telephone device and it was from out of state and since I did not recognize the area code I did not answer it because God only knows who is calling me at 6 at night on a lovely autumn  Wednesday. Well whoever it was left me a voice mail and I checked it and guess who was blowing up my phone? Bob Wintershoe. It was precisely one week ago today that Bob and I met in Connecticut and apparently this was a magical moment for Bob because he actually mentioned it on his message, like he was calling me  on our anniversary.  Anyway Bob was just checking in to sort of keep me up to date on the process but he twice said in his message that he wanted to stay in touch with me. I think Bob likes me. Perhaps he even misses me. Aw Bobby. You know before i left on this latest Wintershoe I told La Sooze, who btw loooves Connecticut, that this would be my final Bob for a good long while. Of course we both agreed that what this will mean is that Bob will make me an offer this time. Count on it. I have waited lo these many years for someone else to profess their love for me and i have gotten close but have always been the bridesmaid. Now that I have come to terms with accepting my position and my place in time, something will break. You watch. Terrific. Connecticut, which is even colder than Miserable Maryland. My goodness, I can't wait some day for a call from Bob Summershoe. 

Just another Tuesday

So today was just another ordinary day. I woke up late and had to park on the fourth floor of the parking garage, which sucks large. I usually park on the second floor but as i say this morning I just could not wrench myself from the Country Squire and so i got a four, which means I was late. Nobody noticed. Nobody cares, really.  Then I took the subway and read "Loving Frank," which it seems like I have been reading for about a decade now. Then I worked and snuck out about five times during the day to stand on E. Lombard Street where i looked at the cars stopped in traffic and listened to the rap music thud out of tinted car windows. Thrill a minute. Then I  left work later and got back on the subway and read "Loving Frank" some more and then I stopped at the grocery to get some seltzer water, which for me is really like holy water, and then i went home. I hate normal, regular days like these. In fact I have now had several in a row. Boring. I swear on days like these if i listen hard enough I can hear life slowly and inexorably grinding toward the finish line. Scary. In fact i catch a glimpse of myself in the windows of the gross little sandwich place on the street level in front of our building and I swear I see a ghost of myself. My shirt looks a little rumpled, my hair unkempt. Who is this guy? Actually the most interesting thing that happened to me today is that I looked at my foot. My right foot to be precise. For several days my foot has been hurting me but only when i wear shoes and so i ignore it until I'm walking and then i think "oh yeah, my foot hurts." So tonight I peeled off my sock as I was sitting at The Desk at GodView and actually looked at my foot. There on my little piggy is some sort of thing that looks like a big blister with an indent in the middle like a volcano ready to erupt. I do not know this for sure but I am guessing it is a corn. I have never had a corn before, but I have never been 51 years old before either. I also have a fairly new pair of shoesies I have been wearing constantly. Are you as enthralled by this as I am?  I have not shown my unsightly corn to my beloved La Sooze because I do not want to gross her out and choose to have her see me as a strapping handsome man rather than a corn-infested weenie. Also, I have never gotten the impression that La Sooze is much of a foot person. Not guy's feet anyway. I mean some women have nice feet, slender, shapely, all that. I don't think men do. I know I, for one do not. My feet look a little like Fred Flinstones, kind of flat and fat. I could probably punch my ill-fitting shoes through the floorboards of the white Accord and stop on a dime if i had to. Anyway i suffer alone with my corn because I am ashamed to show it and my fat Irish feet to anyone. I am a foot leper.

Anyway I think I'm bored because I have nothing really to look forward to. But anyone who reads this space knows that in just the past four weeks I have traveled to San Francisco (speaking of bad feet), Utah, and Connecticut, not to mention Oro Valley, Arizona in my mind every single chance i get. But right now i am traveling nowhere except to work and then back home where i walk Jeter the hyper beagle and watch him poop (he actually ate a large section of a pie tin the other day out of Little Kev's room and i'm patiently waiting see if he will actually pass metal. Nothing yet. I'll keep you updated). Anyway it's always nice when you have something out there that you can say, well at least on Thursday I'll be flying to Bangladesh, but right now there's not much.This weekend La Sooze and i were supposed to drive to Cumberland, MD to go see a band sponsored by a theater that La Sooze happens to be on the Board of Directors for. But the band canceled. I have a corn on my little toe. And in November me and La Sooze and Little kev are driving up to Bahston for Kev to look at two colleges - Boston University and Emerson. Emerson is a terrific liberal arts school right in the heart of ol' Beantown and i personally chose it as one of the places Kev should look at. In fact he and i were on the Emerson website one night recently watching student-produced videos because kev thinks he might be interested in video production. We watched this long and intricate video that told an artsy story of a guy whose parents were getting divorced and his father is a dentist and as part of the story he gets a tooth extracted and has sex with the dental assistant. Heady stuff for the college kid. Kev and i, obviously were glued to the computer screen. Kev actually was getting into the whole idea of doing video and making documentaries just like his talented and creative mother, only kev doesn't have a lot of experience with it and i assume to get into that kind of program you probably have to turn in samples of your wonderful work which means kev either better start shooting away for himself or we are wasting 75 minutes taking the Emerson tour in November. Well, at least it's something to look forward to, even if it is in Bahston.

Finally, you may be wondering why it is now 9:03 in the brown and holy east and my beloved Yankees are facing the Angels of Anaheim on the West Coast and I am not watching that but instead am boring you by blogging about my boredom. This is because i have convinced myself that for the most part I will not watch tonight's game. Why? I do not know, Luck thing I guess. Sometimes I am convinced that I have to watch every single pitch or the beloved Yankees will go down in utter defeat, and other times i feel like if I watch it is total bad muju . During the regular season i salivate to see my beloveds on TV and right now they are on with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver yammering away and I am treating it as if the game is a total eclipse and I cannot look at it or my eyes will burn out and the dream will go down in flames. So I am instead writing and I have actually managed to tune in the game on the old clock radio that I inherited when my grandmother passed away several years ago. My grandmother, Nana, was a native New Yorker so i figure it is okay to listen to the game on her radio. What a terrific geek i am. This reminds me of a book i read a number of years ago written by screenwriter William Goldman who wrote Marathon Man and New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica. Basically the book follows all the New York sports teams through their respective 1987 seasons including the Mets who were then defending World Series champs. Anyway there is a scene in the book where Lupica is meeting with his publisher and the Mets game is on and it's a super important game late in the season and Lupica has convinced himself, like me, that he cannot watch the game or his Mets will lose and he doesn't want to tell the publisher what a putz he is and that he believes he can actually have an impact on a professional baseball game by his watching or not watching it. Anyway it is a very funny scene as he keeps going in and out of the guy's office between commercials and he keeps turning his back on the guy so he can't see the television. This is very odd and funny but not nearly as odd and funny as the fact that right now the Yankee game is on and I am in the God View office at The Desk writing with no television on (well, Kev is watching the game in the living room but that doesn't count) and I have the radio on fairly loud and it is placed neatly on the Country Squire where it gets the best reception only i can hardly hear it from here. And this is my life on a Tuesday night, bored and super hung up. Like i say, just another pathetic day for me.

Clueless Joe sends me to the showers early

So I approach the keyboard tonight with heavy heart. My beloved Yankees of New York have lost. How do I go on?

Actually they lost in a very disturbing manner too. They led 3-0, then blow the lead and are trailing 4-3 when the beloved catcher Jorge Posada hits a clutch homer in the 8th to tie it. Terrific. From there lots of drama, particularly the great Mariano Rivera working out of a two on, one out jam in the 10th (La Sooze and I were listening to this on the radio in the white Accord driving back from the YMCA. Does it get better than that? I was steering with one hand, triple fist-pumping with the other when the great Mo got the third out).But them my world crumbled. Inexplicably in the 11th inning with the score still tied, Yankee manager Joe Girardi blows it. He brings in reliever Dave Robertson who has been lights out and who gets two quick outs in the 11th. Terrific. Then,  for some reason only known to Joe, he pulls him and brings in Alfredo Aceves, a former Mexican League pitcher who has been a human punching bag throughout the playoffs. Result? Aceves pitches to two guys - first guy hits a single, second guy a double. Game. Goodnight now.

Joe Girardi btw is known in New York by two nicknames - Joe Retardi, and "Clueless" Joe. Now you know why. 

Even the great John Sterling who is the voice of the Yankees on WCBS radio was critical. (I heart John Sterling btw - greatest HR calls ever. When A-Rod hits a homer he says "An A-Bomb from A-Rod," and when my beagle's namesake hit one he says "El Capitan!. Great stuff). Anyway, Sterling is perhaps the biggest Yankee shill since Phil "Holy Cow" Rizutto and yet he's on the the radio before Aceves even throws a pitch saying "I can't imagine why he's bringing in Aceves." Neither could we John. Oy.

What's really funny is that this time yesterday the Yankees were up 2 games to none and if you listen to the New York sports talk shows on radio, as I do, the Yankees were then one of the greatest baseball teams of all time and it was only a matter of days before we would all be watching a ticker tape parade in New York's Canyon of Heroes to celebrate a 27th World Series championship. But that was yesterday. Today, it is over. Already the fans are killing them. This is what i love about New York. We love you to the depths of our soul until you screw up, then we toss you aside like a cigar butt into the gutter. One loss and you're a spontaneous tool. None of this "we'll get 'em tomorrow" bullshit. No, you're done. I love to read the Yankee stories on CBS SportsLine.com because underneath the game stories they show comments and people respond to the comments and so much of it is absolutely hilarious smack talk. Tonight I got on, despite my severe depression, because I knew they'd be killing Clueless Joe, and so they were. One of the posts was headlined: "Poll - who should manage the Yankees next year?" Ha, they're already firing him.  The three choices under the poll were: 1. Willie Randolph 2. Bobby Valentine 3. Bozo the Clown (aka Joe Girardi.)   Another classic under the heading "Screw Girardi" we had this little gem: "Joe's been an ass all year, he wants to show he is the manager, so send him to McDonald's and let him be the manager." Oh and also, this wasn't Joe Retardi bashing but one guy said of Yankee left fielder Johnny Damon: "Damon has an arm like, well, probably like yours.  He couldn't throw out the trash if he was standing in a landfill." Bada bing, bada boom. 

Anyway bad night, even though this was sixth playoff game the Yankees have played this postseason and the first one they lost, it is still a bummer. I guarantee you the very first thing I will think of tomorrow morning when i wake up in the Country Squire will be "damn, the Yankees lost yesterday." I kid you not. Such are the depths of my obsession.

So since I am depressed i will go crawl into the Country Squire now and pull the blankets over my head. It has been a bad day for Yankee fans across this great country of ours.  Talk to you tomorrow.