FilteringCraig

I left an unnecessarily mean comment on Deezo’s page making a joke about his use of “honey do” in reference to his to-do list for the week. It didn’t come off as funny. Just mean. (This post that I did in September is rather ironic in hindsight, though.) Deezo thinks I am trying to sit on some pedestal of coolness, and he might be right. So, I am going to try to give myself the same treatment that I give others.

Here are the things that I do that could and should easily be made fun of by others.

This is my apology to The Feezo because I didn’t mean to smash him quite the way I did. It sounded much more playful in my head. But I wronged him in his own comments.

• I eat string cheese in vast quanities even though I haven’t been 12 years old in more than 14 years.
• I watch Battlestar Galactica. I hide behind the fact that many critics have said this is a decent show, but the fact remains that it isn’t really all that far removed from Star Trek or Dungeons and Dragons. Where is my unusually many sided die?
• I have a cat. A lot of lonely and sad people have cats. I secretly wouldn’t mind having another cat but I wouldn’t let myself do it because I would feel sad in the eyes of others. Denying yourself something because of what others would think is the epitome of uncool.
• Somewhere by Barbra Streisand is a kickass song. I love the most popular singer with gay men and I love her singing a song from a musical. It’s true. I have the MP3, but I keep it off of my iPod so nobody will find it. To prove that I am not making this up, check the spelling of Barbra’s name. It looks wrong doesn’t it? It would be wrong in any other case, but she spells her first name differently. I know this. I suck.
• I say “word.” It might have been funny or ironic about 15 years ago, but I have held on to it and I won’t let it go. It is tired and totally uncool.
• I was once such a big fan of the Jim Rome show that I bought three t-shirts from his online store. I still have at least two of these shirts and I wear them. I was a fanboy of Jim Rome and I haven’t gotten rid of the shirts yet.
• I bought a copy of Legally Blond starring Reese Witherspoon because I hadn’t seen it yet and I wanted to. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a girlfriend to blame it on at the time. Instead of owning up to it, I claimed that Columbia House sent it to me and I didn’t feel like sending it back. I lied to deny my uncoolness.

This is not a complete list to be sure. I would appreciate it if all those of you who know me didn’t fill it in for me.

So, I know Deezo wanted to “squash it” like David Silver, but I figured I would fire off a list that would maybe knock me a few steps down on the coolness ladder that I attempted to climb.

So this is the last day of the new year for me at work. I am off until Tuesday January 3rd when I not only come back to the office, but the band makes our debut at The Beachland.

()

I am thinking about the fact that the only thing that I wanted to do last year, that I didn’t do was start piano lessons. I am thinking even if I have to quit taking guitar, I have become a pretty serviceable rhythm guitarist and now it might be time to add an entirely new weapon the repertoire.

Anyway, just thought I would share my one and only plan thus far for the new year. Especially since it was my plan last year.

Hope you all have a nice holiday weekend and I hope to see some of you (who don’t live in Mass) at the show on Tuesday.

In all our lives, we go through periods of time when things aren’t the way we want them to be. Maybe we would change the people, places, or things around us. Maybe we would use the fast forward button on an imaginary remote control to speed up time until the unbearable and annoying have passed. You would fast forward well past that last tear in your ducts that excretes before you can realize there isn’t another coming and you might as well stop crying.

Unfortunately the fast forward button doesn’t exist.

Because of that, it is sometimes easy to digress to earlier happier times when things were so good that that time period holds up in your mind as the standard for normalcy. It may be above normalcy in actuality but as humans with expectations as they are, most of us toss our standards as high as we can against the wall, like a pickle from a McDonald’s cheeseburger. And we watch to see just how far that pickle slips down before it decides that there is equilibrium between the gravity, the stickiness and the comforting friction provided by the wall that causes it to finally stop at a point.

It is with this false sense of normalcy that we cling to things that remind us of those time periods.

One of my relatives has had a fast-forward worthy year or so. She has been stuck in a below standard period. There is nothing anyone can do to change it. It is just one of those unbearable times that everyone has to deal with at some point or another. There is no turning it off. You can work hard to distract yourself at every turn, but at the end of the day, when you fall asleep and when you wake back up again, the reality will slowly sink in and an imaginary - but all too real burn will once again ignite the back of your head.

It is periods like these when we put ourselves in that time machine to find our personal epitome of normal. We hunt out things that will remind us of these times in the hopes that it can work to be the ultimate distraction. Maybe we can recapture feelings and escape a little more into something older, more comfortable and more familiar. I think my downtrodden relative was searching for something just like this when she was looking for an album by a guy named Jimmie Spheeris, which she casually mentioned to me last night at a family gathering.

Jimmie Spheeris wasn’t a very prolific artist, laying down a couple albums in the 70’s, and all his stuff has gone out of print. As a result, all the used copies of his album are for sale in the Amazon Marketplace for anywhere between $150 and $250. While I have been in places in my life where I would have considered spending that amount of money in the hopes of feeling better, even if just for a moment, it is beyond a lot of people’s wills to pay a ransom like that for something that should never cost more than $15.

With this in mind, I immediately went to the Internet to see what I could find about Jimmy Spheeris and the availability of his albums. I found out all the information above about the discs and the ransom that people were asking, and then I went to iTunes to see if, by chance, someone had made the disc available. I found that it was available on iTunes for $9.90. All you have to do is know how to grab iTunes and burn a disc. But lest you take that knowledge for granted, not everyone in the world is hip to iTunes. I had that information and I was able to grab the songs, burn them to a disc and hand it over to someone who was about to take part in a little time travel.

The look on her face when I handed over a CD that she had talked about so longingly in the half hour prior was a combination of disbelief, relief and pure happiness. While you and I both know that I didn’t do all that much that most of you couldn’t also do, it’s kind of the right place, right time thing and I was happy that I could do something for someone yesterday.

But now that I am a day removed from this, I can’t help but wonder - now that she has most certainly listened to the CD - where the pickle is on the wall, now that she has listened to the disc. Did it stick up near the top where she threw it, or did it slide all the way to the plastic molding that sits between the dry wall and the floor?

To Buy Jimmie Spheeris at iTunes, Click Below.

Yesterday I had family Christmas with my parents, brother, sister and my sister’s in-laws. Despite a late start, fun was had by all. Great people, great food, and great presents.

As if I needed anything else this Christmas, I got lots more stuff that I really wanted.

I am now an official legal subscriber to XM Satellite Radio. My parents gave me a Pioneer Airware portable XM Satellite radio unit. It allows me to connect to satellite in my house, in my car, and it also allows me to record 5 hours of audio for walking around if I can’t get a signal somewhere.

My sister gave me a new brief case. I wanted one that is leather and holds a laptop, but I didn’t want it to look like a laptop bag. I think she did a great job. The only better bag that I could think of which fit the specs that I wanted is the bag that I already have, but the stupid shoulder strap broke away from the bag. So, I have been carrying it like a suitcase for the last 6 months. I am looking forward to getting a hand back as I walk into work every day. This should make the juggling of coffee and everything else a whole lot easier.

Speaking of work, I got 3 new dress shirts with matching ties. While this may not seem exciting to the rest of you, I am going to tear down the 7th wall and explain why this is such a great gift. Shirts and ties are expensive. I also have a habit of breaking my elbows right through the shirt after a certain amount of time. Last week, as I was getting ready to iron a shirt for the day, I picked up one shirt after another, and three shirts in a row all had broken through at the elbow. All I am thinking at that point is that I am going to have to do laundry about three times per week until I get new shirts.

So, getting three shirts is a huge thing. It buys me time until I have to buy shirts again. I will invariably bust through the elbow, but I have to wear dress shirts, and I certainly couldn’t convert to the short-sleeved Mormon style dress shirt.

(oh and I also got the ultimate geek gift a wireless mouse and keyboard set, but I won’t talk about that. WHAT? What’s wrong with a wireless keyboard and mouse set? I am NOT a dork? Maybe a bit of a geek, but certainly not a dork.)

Fine. Here is a picture of the wireless set.

When Jen was talking about my Christmas gift to her this year, she also said something about not watching Oprah. I didn’t think much about it until I walked into her apartment so we could go get dinner last night and to my surprise, she was watching Oprah.

Alright, well I guess it is just on or something.

Except that it happens to be 7:15 PM and Oprah isn’t on at 7:15 because I have never flipped through the channels after work and had to avoid her show. Even when I heard about the Tom Cruise thing, I couldn’t catch it anywhere but on the internet.

So that means Jen denied that she watches the show and meanwhile, she had to use the cable company’s DVR service to record it and watch it later.

You have been outed. Oprah-lover.

The Red Sox need a new center fielder now that Johnny Damon left, and at least one article at ESPN.com has suggested that somehow Coco Crisp could be the one to fill that position. I don’t think the Sox will be able to pay the price for Crisp and let me tell you why.

Crisp is worth a ton to the Indians. He hit 300 last year with 16 homers, 69 RBI’s, 15 stolen bases and a 345 on-base percentage. Oh, and he made under $400,000.

The value that a player like that represents is absolutely monumental, not to mention some of the intangibles like his popularity amongst the fans of Cleveland. Who would the Sox offer? Would that player be a good enough value that the Indians organization would pay their salary?

One player mentioned is Matt Clement. The Indians could use more starting pitching, but how would it make sense for the Indians to take on Clement’s salary demands - he made $6.5 million this past season - and also give up the extreme value that a player like Coco Crisp gives the Indians at the plate and in the field?

It doesn’t make sense, and I would sincerely doubt if Coco starts the season in any uniform other than one emblazoned with a script Indians on it.

Now that the Indianapolis Colts have lost a game, the big question is how Tony Dungy should have his team play out the rest of the season. It is a big question.

There are some strategies that different people favor. I am going to lay out three of the popular ones.

1. Play your team as much as if they were still fighting for a playoff spot.

This is preferred by some people because the feeling is that a team needs to keep their edge and their wits as they move toward the playoffs. At the same time, critics will say that any chance of your starters getting hurt in meaningless game time is a waste.

2. Another school of thought is to rest them. Period. Nobody of importance plays because you don’t want them to get hurt.

This strategy throws the team chemistry thing out the window. The thought is that a team was a team all season and will be prepared to re-ignite that chemistry as soon as the playoffs begin. The point is that all the players who got us here throughout the season, need to be here healthy when we hit the playoffs.

Finally, we have the third option.

3. The starters are going to play a little bit and then rest after some point in the game.

This is the half-way house between the first two points. A coach thinks that he can send out his squad for a few series - maybe a couple quarters - and then they can sit out the rest of the game to avoid getting hurt.

So, if you had to choose between these three strategies, which one would you choose if you were running the Colts?

I think there are some serious flaws with all of them. I think that playing your team hard is probably my favorite strategy because I want my team to be sharp when they get to the playoffs. How many times have you seen a team’s playoff run ended because they weren’t ready to compete in the first quarter of their playoff game?

At the same time, the injury possibilities are real. You want your players (especially if they are already banged up) to have an opportunity to rest a little bit. In the case of the Colts, Manning and Edgerrin are both showing a little wear and tear.

If I were Tony Dungy, I would do this. I would sit my team this week against Seattle. I wouln’t let Manning, James, Harrison, Wayne, Clark or Freeney put pads on. They should treat it like a bye week and they can have 14 days off.

After Seattle, the Colts have the Cardinals coming to Indianapolis. For this game, I send my guys out raring to go just like they have all season. If they can beat the crap out of the Cardinals in three quarters then sit them in the fourth like you would have at any point in the season. This is a game that the Colts want to try to win. They want to make sure that they are all on the same page going into the playoffs and they would’t want to record a loss in the last week of the season. Oh yeah, and you especially don’t want another L in the Loss column by way of the Arizona Cardinals.

So that’s what I would do. Sit them against Seattle and then shake off the rust against Arizona in week 17.

What would you do?

This also appeared at Blogcritics.org

While the Yankees and Red Sox have been running neck and neck for my hatred, the Yankees just pulled ahead. They still haven’t developed a good player in their farm system since Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada so what do they do? They pay a ridiculous amount of money for Johnny Damon.

Four years and $52 million is too much for a scrappy player like Damon. Don’t get me wrong. Damon is a very productive player, but then again $13 million is a lot of money over four years. Who is Damon taking over for? Bernie Williams who made over $12 million in 2005 and had already marked is territory on the other side of the proverbial hill.

So back to the race between the Yankees and Red Sox, I am not sure which team I hate more. As they both acquire arms in the war between the two cities, I think I am identifying with France in my hatred for the big guys who can afford the state of the art weapons, except it is worse. It’s like I am a country looking for weapons and I can’t get the attention of any of the weapons manufacturers.

OK, that comparison got away from me. In the process I called myself France.

Blech.

Do you see what these two teams do to me?

And nobody knows about it…

Limp Bizkit used to be on top of the world. Now they have released a 7 song album to almost no fanfair. Fred Durst hasn’t done an interview. I don’t think I even heard anything about it from Billboard or anything else.

And now it comes out that a lot of the initial success of the band’s debut, Three Dollar Bill Y’all, was due to a payola scheme for the band’s song, Counterfeit. That isn’t to say that the first album wasn’t good. It was. I liked it. I have a copy and while I gave away subsequent releases from the band to friends who were willing to take copies, I haven’t yet disposed of the original.

But this is an interesting story in the music industry. Fred Durst was printing money five years ago. Don’t forget that Staind and Puddle of Mudd were also bands that hit the bigtime under Fred’s watch. Staind dropped off a bit too, but not to the same lowly level of Bizkit who didn’t even get any promotion for their latest album.

There are rumors around now that it is all part of a larger strategy. That remains to be seen, but I am interested enough to watch it all go down.