Awesomeness of the Day

Awesomeness of the Day

At Least We Didn't Say This ...

So the Sox aren't exactly killing it right now.  Tek is their best hitting catcher.  John Lackey looks like Buz from Home Alone.  And Dice-K is the worst $100 million Japanese import since Digi-Pets.  So with all this failing going on in Fenway, it's making just about everyone look like idiots.  Sox fans across the country were expecting 90+ wins and the AL East.  And it wasn't just us.  The ESPN experts had that too.  But in times of misery such as this, we must look on the bright side.  Sure, we predicted the Sox to be the '27 Yankees.  But at least we didn't say any of the following:

• “Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” — William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899
• “The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.” — Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.– Former Boston Red Sox outfielder, Carl Everett
• “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” — Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962
• "My sister's expecting a baby, and I don't know if I'm going to be an uncle or an aunt." – Former Houston Rocket, Chuck Nevitt.
• “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’, the idea must be feasible.” — A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
• "Ray Lewis is the type of guy, if he were in a fight with a bear I wouldn't help him, I'd pour honey on him because he likes to fight. That's the type of guy Ray Lewis is." – Former NFL player, Shannon Sharpe.
• “While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility.” — Lee DeForest, inventor.
• "Cancer survivor." – Lance Armstrong, on what he would like his tombstone to say.
• “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” — Western Union internal memo, 1876.
• "Yankee pitchers have had great success this year against Cabrera when they get him out." – Tim McCarver.
• “I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious sensibilities of anyone.” — Charles Darwin, The Origin Of Species, 1869.
• "The sun has been there for 500, 600 years ... " – Current Red Sox outfielder, Mike Cameron.
• "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist-."  Last words of Gen. John Sedgwick, spoken as he looked out over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864
• "They shouldn't throw at me. I'm the father of five or six kids." -Baseball player Tito Fuentes, after getting hit by a pitch.
• "This case is a loser." - Johnnie Cochran before the O.J. case in 1994.
• "Unstoppable, baby!" - Golden State Warrior rookie Marc Jackson to the Mavericks' bench, after hitting a lay-up during a 29-point loss.

Pete Rose Fights Back

For a long time Charlie Hustle denied betting on baseball, while asking for reinstatement to Major League Baseball year after year.  The general consensus among many was that if and when Pete Rose finally admitted that he bet on the game, then he would in fact be reinstated, and then be elected to the Hall of Fame.  After all, time heals all wounds.  So, following that line of thinking, Rose finally did admit betting on baseball, and asked forgiveness.  How did the public respond?  No one seemed to care, and rather than being that guy who maybe bet on baseball, he became that old dude with weird hair.  No reinstatement.  No Hall of Fame.  So what does Rose do?  He is doing what any self respecting man would do.  He is taking maters in to his own hands.  And apparently he method of fighting back is by dressing like the biggest dick head on the planet.  Scorned by the refusal of the public to forgive, Rose is taking on the public by running around dressed as a gayer Elton John, tempting everyone who lays eyes upon him to claw their own eyes out and jump off a bridge into a shark tank.  Anything to get this ridiculous image out of their head.  Well done, Pete, you're fighting back.

Haven't seen what I'm talking about?  Oh, well you're in for a treat.  Here's a link ... http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/images/uploads/article/tumblr_lixt55wxoe1qc8nnpo1_1280.jpg

Getting Knowledge, Book Of Deuteronomy Style

Well said, bearded crazy man.  No dude clothes for chicks.  Got it.  And of course that includes ball caps.  Duh.  But I'm surprised you stopped reading from the Book of Deuteronomy.  I mean, there's a lot of good stuff in there.  But I get it, you're a busy guy.  You probably have a lot of chipmunks to shoot and ethnicities to protest against.  So I'll help you out, and spread the Book's word.  Here are just a few topics the Book of Deuteronomy speaks to ... and yes, these are real:

On the beautiful story of rape and selling bitches
 22:28-29 reads, “If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver [and they shall marry]."


On not hooking up with your mom or wearing your dad's shit
22:30 reads, "A man shall not take his father's wife, nor discover his father's skirt."


On trading in for a newer model
24:1-2 reads, "When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour (sic.) in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house [and he may marry again]."


On not getting frisky in your parents house
22:21 reads, "Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath play the whore in her father's house."



On what to do with the Jews
4:27 reads, "And the LORD shall scatter [the Jews] among the nations, and [they] shall be left few in number among the heathen."


On implicitly acknowledging the existence of other Gods
28:14 reads, "Thou shalt not ... go after other gods to serve them."


On how to interact with strangers
7:2 reads, "And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them."


On God not really being that "all knowing," after all
32:27 reads, "And He [God] said unto him [Jacob], What is thy name?"


And finally, on what we should do with people who aren't too sure about good old God
13:6-10 reads, "If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you ... Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die."

God bless the USA.

Drinking With Ricky: Ricky Goes Curling

It's time for another Drinking With Ricky.  Today's adventure?  Ricky Goes Curling!  So my connection to my curling expert is a little attenuated, so bear with me.  My brother's college roommate's girlfriend is an olympic level curler.  We'll call her Curler Jane.  Still with me?  Good.  So Curler Jane  wanted to teach her boyfriend and some of his friends how to curl.  I was hanging around while they were talking about it.  So, of course, I said I'd love to get in on that, and also said that I was probably a prodigy and would revolutionize that game.  Curler Jane said I could join, and it was on.  The date was set.  Saturday, March 26.  The plan is to drive over to Waylan MA (about 25 miles from Boston, and where the curling ... uh ... rink? .. is) at 10:00 am with some of Curler Jane's boyfriend's boys for an 11:00 ... uh ... tee time?  Whatever.  You get what I'm saying.  And this is how it went:

8:15 am:  Alarm clock goes off.  I run to the gym for a quick workout.  Not because I wanted to, but because I knew that I would be drinking in about 90 minutes, and wanted to make sure that I was as physically depleted as possible, so that I could maximize the affect that the booze would have on me.  That's science, Holms.

9:00 am:  Home from the gym.  Got a good workout in.  Although, I can't help but think that there is something fundamentally contradictory with blasting Eminem while gliding along on an eliptical next to two fat Asian women and what is clearly a faculty member of the Northeastern University dance department.  But I digress.  Either way, yeah, good workout.  Sufficiently dehydrated.  Time to drink.  Rip a few from the bottle of Absolute 100.  Hop in the shower.

9:10 am:  Have a bagel and Irish coffee.  Wait, an Irish coffee is four shots of whiskey loaded into a Keurig machine, right?  Yeah, that's what I thought.

9:45  am:  Ready to rock.  Our ride should be on it's way.  My brother and I are riding with Curler Jane's boyfriend's high school friends.  The plan was for one of them, we'll call him Crazy Carl, to meet the other one who has the car, we'll call him Mail Man (because he always delivers, as we'll see), at Copley.  When my brother calls Mail Man, he says "Oh, we're still doing that?  I'm in the North End."  Not a good start.  It normally wouldn't have been a problem.  But last weekend Crazy Carl busted his phone on a wall, as one does.  So now we're in the position of having Crazy Carl in the North End with a phone but no car, Mail Man at Copley with a car but no phone, and my brother and me in the apartment (drinking) without any way of getting to fucking curling.

10:10 am:  If you know me, you may know this.  If you don't, well here's a little bit of knowledge about me.  I can go from calm to fucking out my face pissed off in about two minutes.  This is what happened here.  Fucking Crazy Carl is blowing this for all of us.  He's the only link between Mail Man's car and me and curling.  But this dump bag was busy peeing the bed all over his smokeshow girlfriend from being out at BHP the night before, and didn't bother going to Copley to meet up with our ride, Mail Man, and thereby screwing everyone.  I am about ready to throw a chair out a window, Chris Brown style.  Losing it.

10:18 am:  Our apartment buzzer rings.  It's Mail Man.  How the fuck did he find our place?!  He was banking on Crazy Carl to get here!  How the fuck did this wizard find us?  Turns out, he had been here once.  Months ago and hammered.  He had some recollection of where we lived, so he headed over this way.  This crazy bastard drove to the middle of our street, started honking the horn, and yelling our names.  Fucking genius.  And when that didn't work, what did this MacGyver do?  He started going in to all the apartments on our street and ringing random buzzers, looking for our name.  Slow clap for Mail Man.  Eventually he gets us, and we roll out.  But we're not dick bags.  We're getting Crazy Carl and making this happen.  I'm calm again.  It's amazing.  I went from being chill, to ready to murder kittens, to calm again in a matter of 20 minutes.

10:38:  My brother, Mail Man, and I are in the North End waiting on Crazy Carl.  It takes this fuck nut 25 minutes to walk down Hanover street.  If you're not familiar with Boston, Hanover street is like 200 feet long.  This dump bag has been holding us up for about an hour, and now can't stumble down Hanover.  I'm ready to murder again.  He finally gets in the car.  He sees my bottle of Absolute 100.  He says "fucking awesome ... hey, I think I played my first game of Beruit against you!"  Best friends.  And we're off!

11:20 am:  We get to the rink.  Or whatever it's called.  I'm about 3/4 of a pint of Absolute 100 deep.  Winning (side note:  Is "Winning" over?  Didn't think so).

11:25 am:  We get on the ice.  I'm rocking a sweet Under Armor shirt and jeans.  Upon reflection, I look like a white trash power lifter.  But, according to Curler Jane's email, jeans were fine.  Everyone else, though, is rocking straight up ninja curling gear.  Even Crazy Carl looks the part.  Seriously, everyone looks like rock stars.  I look like a drunk gym coach from West Virginia.  Upon further review, however, Curler Jane's email said "anything but jeans are fine."  Awesome.  I look like a dick.  But whatever, I'm an athlete.  I'm going to own this shit.


11:40 am:  Curler Jane shows me how to toss the pebble, or whatever.  I say "yeah, I've seen this on TV, I've got this.

11:41 am:  I jam my pinkie on the stone and fall down, twisting my wrist on the sweeper thing and end up spinning around on the ice on my back like a dying turtle.  But I wasn't the only one.  Our buddy, Larry Walker, is all over the place too.


11:55 am:  I decide that "sweeping" (when you sweep the ice with that sqeegee thing so the stone does something or whatever) is my thing.  I yell "I call all time sweeper!"  Everyone looks at me like I just murdered a bus full of kindergarteners.  Apparently curling isn't a yelling game. 


12:10 pm:  It's game time.  It's me, my brother, Crazy Carl, and Maiil Man against everyone who showed up on time, had been paying attention, and is sober.  I'm a shit head, so I still think we're going to win.  Even though everyone on my team is drunk, wearing jeans, doesn't know what they're doing, and I honestly think that Crazy Carl just threw up in a bucket.


12:52 pm:  We just got our asses kicked.  But jokes on them.  I've finished the rest of my pint of Absolute 100 AND only ripped my jeans twice.  In your face sobriety.  And in your face fashion, I know the NKOTB ripped jeans look is going to come back.  Umm, victory?  Yeah, victory.

1:00 pm:  Off the ice.  Now this is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to curling.  Is this a sport where after the game everyone ices down?  Or is it a sport where everyone gets drunk after the match ... err, game?  Tussle?  Whatever.  Bottom line, do people get shitty after they run around on the ice?  Answer:  affirmative!  People are rolling all over the lodge with glasses of wine that rival 32 oz Powerades.  We go for a pitcher of Natty Ice.  Yeah, you read that right.  Natty Ice mother fucker.  These cats know how to throw down.

1:18 pm:  The rest of my crew is at one table.  I start heading over there, but some old dude, Joe, starts talking to me.  I'm like, fuck it, I'll humor the old dude.  Three minutes later I realize that this dude is the shit.  Apparently he busted his ACL in a football accident, and needed a new sport.  His girlfriend at the time, now his wife of twenty years, was into curling.  He tried it out, and he was hooked.  This dude was fucking awesome.  Kind of making fun of everyone, but also saying how this sport is pretty legit, and how he's glad that it's growing.  He's pounding a "glass" of wine that is in a pint glass.  This cat is the shit.  My friends are looking over at me, trying to get me to join them.  Screw that, I'm hanging out with the Hugh Heffner of the American curling circuit.  Joe and I keep talking.  He convinces me to come back.  I tell him that I'll be more sober next time.  He says, "well I wouldn't do that."  Winning.  Yes, winning.


1:30 pm:  Some middle aged chick confuses me for some member of the club who just won the worlds.  Part of me wants to correct her.  The other part of me wants to go with it.  Guess wich part won out?  So I tell her, "yeah, the Worlds were pretty intense, I really wasn't sure how I was going to do."  She asks how I approach the game.  I keep things generic.  I say, "it's like anything else, you just have to focus on what your coaches tell you, and trust in your own ability."  She beams like I just saved her puppy from a fire.  She says that her daughter (who is a smokeshow) is out on the ice, teaching a class, and that she would love for me to go out there and help her.  I say, "Ugg, I wish I could, but I'm wearing jeans, I just can't get out there like this and do the game justice."  She says I should come back and give her daughter a lesson.  It takes literally everything I have in me to not lose my mind.  But I am a professional.  I keep my cool.  I say, "well I'll be around, we should set that up." 

1:52 pm:  Time to hit the road.  I'm sufficiently drunk and have just realized that I am bleeding from both knees and can't move three fingers on my left hand.  90% sure that those injuries are due to falling.  The other 10% is acknowledging that this may just be due to the fact that my body is trying to tell me to stop drinking.

1:58 pm:  In the car.  Great day.  Curling is actually pretty friggin' awesome.  If you have done it, you know it's awesome.  If you haven't, take my word, it's a real sport with real players.  USA!  USA!  USA!


3:05 pm:  We make it back to my neck of the woods.  We have decided to have a darty* at my place for the college basketball games coming up that day.  My brother, Mail Man, and I stop at the liquor store.  Two 30's of Bud Light, a handle of Thompson whiskey, and a pint of So.Co. later and we have a good looking darty* ahead of us. 


* Don't know what a "darty" is?  Well, my friends, it's a "day party."  A darty, if you will.  It's a real thing.  Look it up.  Or don't, and just come to our next darty.  Live free or die kids.