Scene (and question) from a train

For those of you who know the daily joy of regional rail, a quick question.

You board a Friday afternoon rush hour train for a 40-minute trip. The AC is off, and the car is 80% filled. The train is late, and your mood is not great.

You pass by a white male in a blue striped polo shirt and aviator sunglasses who is taking up two seats up curling up in the fetal position to snooze.

On the other end of the car, a black woman is having an energetic conversation on her cell phone about the failure of the person on the other end to arrive in Newark on time with a baby for transfer. This conversation lasts several minutes,and can be heard clearly for several cars, such is her volume.

Do you:

1) Tell the white guy to move over so you can sit next to him, just for malicious spark of ruining his nappy time,

2) Inform the black woman that, if the baby looks and acts anything like her, she's better off flying solo, especially since that might mean she could STFU,

3) Admire the white guy's stick it to the man attitude, especially since the train conductor isn't calling him on it either, and think about pulling it off yourself on some future trip,

4) Crank up the headphones so you can ignore the black woman and not be one of the pissy passive-aggressive people who are telling her to shut up, albeit not to to her face or in a way that she even actually hears, or

5) Write about the whole mess on your wildly unpopular blog to distract yourself from the lack of AC, and to kill most of the trip time with the writing, image find, editing and posting.

I'll leave it to the reader to guess which way I went...

The Lakers Sure Had To Try Hard

Can a team be bored while winning a series? Yes, easily, which is what the Lakers were tonight in sending Utah to their room. The Laker crowd never seemed too into this, which, given how often they do this trick, is easily understood; the Jazz just hold no terror for this Lakers team, especially on the road. Tonight's confetti bucket moment came when Kobe Bryant tripped over referee Steve Javie on a break, then still corralled the loose ball and scored anyway. Just sad.

I don't think it says any less of me as NBA Fan that the second half of this game put me under, even as the Lakers were stretching their third quarter lead from 15 to 22 in a heartbeat while Jerry Sloan let the game play on, probably thinking that it was more important to teach his younger players to play through a run, rather than call too many timeouts.

Either that, or he wanted to get to the off-season as fast as Laker Fan wanted him to get there.

In any event, the Lake Show moved on with a 107-96 win that wasn't the complete coronation that was expected, only because the Big 3 of Bryant, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom didn't get a fourth wheel to add more than Trevor Ariza's 12.

With the notorious NBA first round schedule slowdown, the Lakers have just bought themselves many days off, and it's probably best that they didn't sweep the Jazz, just because having this many days off at this time of the year usually leads to trouble. Hanging over the entire wildly entertaining NBA playoff schedule is the fact that the Cavs and Lakers are just much better than everyone else, and each had no problem showing it in the first round. But hope springs eternal, and injuries do happen...

Your Annual Women's Basketball Post

So, um, UConn won every game this year and it wasn't close. (Oh, and nice move to call them the Lady Huskies, rather than the Husky Bitches. That would just be wrong.)

Which leaves us, really, with just one question.

Can we have them play against the UNC men now, seeing how that game would be at least entertaining for a minute or two, unlike the championship games?

The NCAAs Are Not Allowed To Be Boring

With all four number one seeds going on to the Sweet 16, and an almost unbearable amount of chalk being thrown around (seriously, you'd have gone 22-10 just picking the high seed in round 1, and 15-1 with the high seeds in round 2)...

Well, it must be a really fantastic tournament, right?

The NCAA tournament has reached the level of NFL season in terms of being in a more or less every season hype monster. If the low seeds are upset, it's crazy exciting, best weekend in sports, etc., etc.

If the picks stay chalk, well, wow, what matchups we've got in the final rounds.

Um, far be it for me to call bullsquat here, but from where I sit, so far this tournament looks like the Big East tournament, only with more ballast. Perhaps UNC and Duke will make it an ACC run again, or maybe Gonzaga will finally pay off all of those years of teasing...

But well, no one watches the first two rounds of the tournament hoping for nothing more amazing than a single double digit seed (Arizona, who hardly fits the profile of a From Nowhere team anyway).

So I'm asking, from the point of view of someone who watched little more than Flynn and Devendorf as they kept my Orangemen alive... have these first four days been dull?

And if not, what is?

We Wish You A Drunken, Broken-Down Christmas

Tonight while the Colts were covering the spread by the hairs on their chinny chin chins despite Peyton perfection, your bloghole provider was in a West Village Italian restaurant's basement, periodically checking the score on his Blackberry and trying to get as much wine down as possible without imperiling the food. Yes, it was a Work Holiday Frivolity Thing, which led to the 1 am train ride home, and because I'm awake and not nearly impaired enough, you get to hear about it. Curse these observational powers. Fans of Teh Wanking, today is your lucky day.

The place turned out to be less than a block away from a place my band played in New York at least a half dozen times, The Spiral on Houston Street. I thought I recognized the neighborhood -- it's quite close to the East River, near the corner of Houston and Avenue A -- but it's not like we were ever walking around the neighborhood on those nights; we were playing, schmoozing, roadying and then getting the hell home, because the gig was always on a weeknight and we were staring down the barrel of a 3 to 4am bedtime with work in the morning. Just like, well, tonight.

It also never seemed like the nicest place to be; for Manhattan, it was downright seedy, and we always worried a lot about the security of the vehicles. Walking around it tonight, it seemed like little had changed, except for the fact that I was walking the scene of the crime some 10 to 15 years later. It made me want to email old friends for no reason, but luckily, that's just the wine talking, and it won't talk very loudly in the morning. Nothing will.

New York, it is true, never really stops or closes, but it does certainly have thinning traffic. Upon exiting the restaurant around 11:15, hoping in vain to get to Newark in time for the midnight train, I eventually was able to bring down a cab for one of those Only In New York reckless driving / bad shocks Wee! Wee! WEEE! experiences. Six minutes and a dozen traffic lights later, I was at my PATH station, which always seems dirty and compromised late in the evening, though it never really gets to Unsafe. (That's because I'm a white male, and just this side of invisible in my nondescript workaday trudge. Or so I like to think, rather then give in to the fear.)

Forty five minutes later, I'm in Newark, waiting out the 40 minutes until the next hour's train. Inside the station is a 6/7 (out of 10) Asian woman who is well shy of five fett tall, and only getting that close through the use of spiky little stiletto heels. She walks with the confidence of someone who does this every day, and all I can say is it looks like it hurts. Nope, not a sex worker.

The train turns out to be the same double-decker bit of utility that I usually ride six and a half hours earlier in the day, and I'm even able to get one of those Privacy Ensured single seats with the dedicated luggage spot in the front top section, otherwise known as the one you really want and never get.

I sit down to write and get blasted from 30 feet away by an incredibly loud guy who is treating what seems to be the entire train to the spellbinding tale of how juicy his Thanksgiving turkey was. Adding to the, um, merit of the conversation is that he's punctuating his conversation with five-year old African-American slang for no good reason at all. On the plus side, he keeps me awake, despite the cold medicine and wine, for five not terribly pleasant minutes, but his is not a consistent superpower, and at this hour, the train stops at every damn milk stop on the way to its final destination...

and I jerk to a start fifteen minutes and four stops down the line, with 30 more minutes to go. As Satchel Paige once said, "The social ramble ain't restfull," right before he weighed in on the merits of fried foods that anger up the blood.

With fifteen minutes to go, the train picks up snapping with-it girls that can't possibly be riding the rails for a good reason at this hour. We make New Brunswick and the micro-sleeping gets worse. And I get to do this all over again, albeit for the last time in 2008, tomorrow. And as the last dregs of battery life in the laptop and brain life in me trickle out, it's just one station left to go and Publish.

See you again, too soon.

MNF Notes: Texans-Jaguars

In a game that I was only watching for fantasy purposes (honest!), the Texans continue their odd defensive mastery of the highly disappointing Jags, who look like they've just quit on coach Jack del Rio. Given that del Rio doesn't seem very smart and that the organization keeps doing things like paying Jerry Porter a lot of money to not catch footballs for them, I can see the logic in the decision. A few points...

> I'm not one for caring too much about a jersey; laundry is laundry, and it's not like my Eagles have impeccable taste in clothing, especially when they go with those black things that literally everyone I know hates. But the red-on-red that they are wearing looks like it belongs in I-AA or the CFL. Seriously, people, change that, or risk a very long gestation period that will resemble the Buccaneers' tangerine orange days.

> When Matt Jones and his very occasional ability to get off the line of scrimmage is your best receiver -- and maybe it's actually tight end Mercedes Lewis, who they don't throw to enough -- you shouldn't win a lot of games. I'm not sure how this team was good last year, in retrospect, but I'm prone to underrating the importance of the offensive line.

> Speaking of Jones, you've never seen a guy with more skills who does less. Tall, strong, fast, blah.

> You'd never know that Houston is a terrible defensive team from watching this game tonight. Or that David Garrard is a threat to run at quarterback. He looked pudgy to me tonight.

> After scoring their first points tonight (a short field goal), del Rio chose to go for an obvious onside kick, with two kickers on the field, that was recovered fairly easily by the Texans. A long Steve Slaton screen later, and the Texans had the field goal back. It's not as if their defense was really struggling, either. del Rio's confidence in his defense wasn't, um, encouraging.

> With 12:21 left and a fourth and goal from the five, del Rio chose to go for it, rather than kick a field goal. Garrard stumbled coming away from center, then threw it up for grabs for an incompletion. And that, honestly, was the ball game, though it got points-wacky at the end.

> According to the MNF chuckleheads, Sage Rosenfels would do his mid-air breakdance fumble against the Colts again. No, seriously. Honestly, there's a reason why Sage Rosenfels should not start NFL games.

> With 2:45 left and the game out of reach, Maurice Jones-Drew took a ball out of the flat and proceeded to head-smash his way through three guys. MJD might not have a terribly long career, but you've still got to love the guy.

> Fred Taylor picked up his 70th touchdown in the late going, setting a new Jaguars team record (Jimmy Smith had 69). Considering how many years he got vultured at the goal line or fought lingering injuries, it really is a meaningful mark... and while he's not exactly someone you think of when you say the words "Hall of Fame", he probably gets there.

> I'd like to really thank the Jags' for failing to touch or care about Steve Slaton late, who took it to the house on his last two carries of the game, doubling his fantasy points for the game and putting me back in first in my points league. Way to show some holiday spirit! You're too kind!

Epic Drop: Top 10 Rejected Ideas for Speeding Up MLB Games

Your list is here, and while I'm happy to see MLB taking some action, what they've proposed isn't going to be remembered or imposed a month from now -- if even a week. If you want to speed up games, you're going to actually have to take steps that the players *and* owners won't be happy with. It's not going to happen.

I Hate My Favorite Baseball Team

Those would be the Oakland A's, the only baseball team that I've ever been a season ticket holder. Some of the best times in my life were either spent at the park or just listening on the radio to the sublime Bill King. I've read "Moneyball" and posted to A's blogs and even been to A's fan group outings... so how has it come to this?

I still want them to win, will watch them when they are on, look to their box score first, and wear the merch, Billy Beane remains the only GM or owner in any sport that I'd piss on if he were on fire.

I just can't stand watching them.

Why? Because this year's Oakland A's team not only isn't winning that much -- at 43-41, they are 8 games out of the division and 6 games out of the wild card -- but they've also committed the cardinal sin of being no fun to watch. By valuing the subtle things that win ball games and can be found on the open market relatively cheaply, they've managed to drain the lifeblood out of the ways in which baseball can appeal on a visceral level.

Like watching a ball shoot into the gap and seeing if the hitter can go for three? The A's aren't the team for you. Despite playing half of their games in a park with funky angles and an outfield that, during football season, sends balls to the wall faster than an airport tarmac, they rank 26th in MLB in baseball's most exciting hit.

How about when your pitcher rears back with a 2-strike count and blows the hitter away with heat? Not so much with these A's, who despite the AL's best ERA, rank just 23rd in MLB in strikeouts. Blame the perpetually injured Rich Harden, the biggest tease to hit Oakland since Todd van Poppel.

Does watching young players emerge from obscurity wet your whistle? It does for me, which is why those A's teams from earlier in the decade where such a kick in the pants... and why this team is such a collection of blah.

This era gives you the failed promise of guys like Harden and Bobby Crosby. Crosby's excuse is frequent injuries, but at some point, you have to accept that hitting like Jose Hernandez is not acceptable, no matter what your excuse is.

You can also take a good whiff of Eric Chavez, who used to bear a passing resemblance to a Hall of Fame third baseman, and now looks more like a platoon player. Chavy now holds the dubious distinction of being the active player with the most home runs who has never made it to an All-Star Game, and his current .250 BA isn't going to get him an at-large invite this year, either.

I won't even get into the certifiably bad guys on the roster -- not many, because Beane is smart enough not to give knuckleheads the fuel they need to hijack a clubhouse, but still. Esteban Loiaza and his DUI is not much fun to root for, even when he isn't hurt. Arthur Rhodes and Mark Redman were such asshats, the team had to take on the ruinous contract of Jason Kendall, who is in the last year of a contract that's so bad, he should be in the NBA. ($10 million for a catcher with a breathtaking .540 OPS, which is the lowest in MLB among players with enough at-bats to measure. Tasty.)

Mind you, these A's *do* have their fun moments. Jack Cust gives hope to every beer leaguer. Dan Haren haunts the dreams of Cardinals fans who are paying for the broken-down years of Mark Mulder. Travis Buck has half of the team's triples, looks very good for his age and made Milton DL Bradley go away. Daric Barton is tearing up AAA and could be Pujolsian one day soon. Let's make it soon.

If they ever got back the myriad number of injured players, especially in the bullpen -- where the team has somehow patched together outs due mainly to the joy of being rested from the quality starting staff -- they could go on one of their traditional July/August runs that saves the year.

But for now, the team just looks like Mark Kotsay to me... a textbook defensively, means well, nice guy, tries hard, with occasional moments of power, gets the most out of his abilities... and a .622 OPS. And he ain't getting any better.

I'd rather watch Kurt Suzuki than Jason Kendall. I want to see Daric Barton now, not when the season's decided, even if that means the outfield becomes a defensive nightmare. I'd rather watch some minor-league kid than Crosby (another .622 OPS). And I can't be the only A's fan that feels this way. Let's move on to people with a future, because the present is making me feel like this guy.


Stadium Watches Kid Pass Out At Game - Watch more free videos

And the season is too long for that.