30 years?!?

It’s hard to believe that it has been thirty years since The Empire Strikes Back came out. Going to see it on opening night was one of the defining film-going moments of my childhood…and we didn’t even get in.

I was nine years old and we lived in Bolton, Massachusetts, a small suburban town without a movie theatre. Dad loaded up the whole family and we drove in to Boston to catch an evening show. There were certainly closer theatres we could have hit—Acton, Leominster, and Worcester were three of our usual go-tos at the time—but dad clearly knew that this was “An Event.” We parked in a big garage, walked to a busy downtown theatre…and got shut out about half a dozen spots before we were due to get our tickets. For some reason I don’t even remember being crushed about it, although I’m sure I was at the time. I’m not even positive when I finally did catch the movie, though I’m guessing it was on Saturday at one of those other theatres. But what I do remember is that Dad took me to Boston to see what ended up being one of the most important movies of my life.

My dad and I certainly have different movie-watching tastes. He is more discerning, and I’d guess that at this point he makes it out to a theatre maybe once a year. But he was a huge part of turning me into a movie fan as a kid, and I have vivid memories of many dad-related film experiences. We got a VCR very early on, and dad rented an additional one from the store on the same day that he came home with “Star Wars” and “Superman.” It was my first video piracy experience and nothing could have made me happier than having those two flicks at my disposal any time I wanted. This was shortly after our first video store rental experience: Dad came home with the classic (and recently reimagined) “Clash of the Titans.” My son A.J. is only three, and not quite ready for the full-on splash into big time action flicks yet, but I only hope that when the day comes he enjoys watching those kinds of movies with his dad as much as I did.

Summer of '10 - stuff I'm looking forward to

There's lots of great stuff on the way this summer. Here are a few things I'm psyched about.

May 7 - Iron Man 2. Okay, so May 7 isn't even really summer yet, but the release of this sequel is definitely the start of summer movie season and I'm beyond excited about this one. I loved Iron Man, and everything great about the first one looks like it has been ramped up for the sequel. I couldn't be more in. I plan on catching it in IMAX.

May 18 - Red Dead Redemption for PlayStation3. An open world, first person game set in the dying days of the Old West from the makers of Grand Theft Auto. I've checked out some videos of the game play and this one looks absolutely amazing. I don't have time to play video games as much as I used to--sad and shocking, I know--but I will find some time to give this one a good run. My hopes are high.

May 23 - The Lost finale. I have no idea how it is going to end, aside from knowing that they have to bridge the island and flash-sideways worlds together somehow. I do know that there is no way they can answer every last lingering question or tie up all the loose ends. It's impossible. But it will be really entertaining to see exactly what they do and how they do it.

June 18 - Toy Story 3. First theatrical movie experience for AJ? Could be. I think he might still be a little young, so I may hold off until '11 for Kung Fu Panda 2 or Cars 2. But this might work.

June 27 - Entourage season premiere on HBO. Last season was pretty sub par and it could be the beginning of the end, but I don't care. I'll watch this every week until it's done. If that makes me a little douchey by default, so be it.

Mid-July - Family trip to Cape Cod. This is definitely a highlight of the year. Last year we drove, and the trip up was surprisingly painless. The boy was phenomenal in the car, and also did well staying in hotels for the first time. But this time, just like with anything else we try to do now, the degree of difficulty will increase exponentially with two kids instead of one. Courtney is adorable, but she can also turn into a little demon at the drop of a hat. However, at the time we leave she'll be almost eight months old instead of the five-ish she is now, and those few months could make a huge difference. Or maybe I'm just deluding myself, and it will be two days of sheer hell. But I really hate air travel at this point, and anything else seems like a better option.

August - The Red Sox move into first place in the AL East. This one looks wildly optimistic right now, so what better time to make a bold prediction?

The List - #111 completed

111. Watch a Red Sox game from the Green Monster seats at Fenway Park.

Okay, this one was kind of a fish-in-a-barrel choice for the list because I already had the tickets in hand. But still. First off, I had never been up there. These tickets are ridiculously tough to get a hold of and the Red Sox hold an annual lottery simply for the right to purchase them. I got lucky in the drawing a couple of years ago but we weren't around at the time, so those standing room tickets went to my brother instead. He had a blast and it sounded like I would too, so I continued to take yearly shots at the drawing.

This year I lucked out yet again. Even better, I was able to get second row seats for a game during a time frame in which I knew we would be back in Massachusetts. The seats completely lived up to my lofty expectations. The view is unique, of course, and fantastic. But I was also pleasantly surprised at the relative comfort. As anyone who has been to Fenway knows, these seats were not designed with the proportions of a 21st century human being in mind. And since I fall, umm...well to the far end of that spectrum, suffice it to say that I have a rough time sitting in just about any seat in the house. But the Monster seats are stools, with enough room that I was not banging my knees on anything. There is also a little shelf-like table perfect for holding food, drinks, cameras, and the like. There are a pair of little concession stands up there solely for the Monster seats, and a nearby bathroom tucked away behind a corner as well. All things considered, these are probably my favorite Fenway seats I've ever had.

The List - #133 completed

133. Build a sandcastle with A.J.

Long time, no blog. We had a great family vacation to the Cape and we've just been getting situated since we got back last weekend. I thought that A.J. would have fun building sandcastles on the beach, and he definitely did. It was even his idea, one he picked up from an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse when they do just that on the moon. He already knew which tools were required, and he began listing these off for me before we even left on the trip. "I need a bucket," he told me. "And a shovel." No problem.

Since this was his first time, we went with the basic castle architecture--four corner turrets each the size of the bucket on hand. This worked very well the first time, and it would have as well on sand castle day number two unless Little Miss Helpful came along to give us a hand. You know the type--somebody else's random kid that just shows up and starts playing. It was fine, although I always find this a little bit odd considering I have literally know idea who this girl was or where her parents might have been. But she did bring a bigger bucket, which helped.

The List - #96 completed

96. Paint AJ's room.

I have never painted a room before. The only thing even close was helping my mom take down some old wallpaper in our former house in Chatham, and that was nearly twenty years ago, and honestly the only thing the two have in common is that they both involve bedroom walls. When we moved into our current house, we had professionals paint several rooms and they did a great job. But it seemed like we could handle doing one room ourselves. So we had at it.

My brother was in town a month ago and he helped me with the primer. Reverse that--I helped him. He was a machine and he actually did most of it. I didn't anticipate that it would tire me out so quickly, going from the high spots to the low, climbing up and down on the ladder, straining to reach the corners, mashing the roller to get every drop of paint out--it was kind of a workout. Anyway, we got it primed and I just didn't want to commit to jumping in for the final painting job, until I was feeling it this weekend. I think it came out pretty well, and now that I know I am capable of it, I'm sure that I'll get drafted to do the same thing in the nursery before the little girl arrives in November. And that's fine. Painting rooms for the kids makes me feel especially dad-like, even if I am still picking the paint flecks off my skin two days later.

The List - #19 completed

#19. Watch a Lord of the Rings marathon.

Admittedly, this is not a big, life-altering item from The List. But it sounded like a lot of fun, and as a movie fan it is definitely something I should do at least once. I didn't know when I would get around to this one, since I have found that the older A.J. gets, the tougher it is to sit down and watch a single flick uninterrupted, let alone an epic trilogy. And I certainly didn't think it would take place this past weekend. But that's exactly what happened.

My brother's wife and kids are on the Cape right now, so since he was home alone he came down to visit for the weekend. We grilled up some burgers and dogs for the 4th and settled in to watch the Red Sox. Except that didn't happen, as we were screwed yet again by the ridiculous FOX Saturday blackout rules, despite paying pretty big bucks for the Extra Innings package. Thus, without baseball, we had to do something else. Somehow the possibility of doing this came up, and before we could talk ourselves out of it I grabbed the extended edition DVDs and loaded them into the player. Total running time: 681 minutes. We started shortly after 2 PM. It also warrants mentioning that we started drinking immediately.

The first crisis came before we even began when we realized we were low on ice. I don't want to throw all the blame on the wife, but I don't know anyone else in the house that fixes 64 ounce cups of ice water. Anway, she later rectified the situation by running out to the store. Not only did she get ice, but she completely loaded us up with mixers, snacks, and even a cooler so we could keep everything within arm's reach. This was huge.

Early on during Fellowship I decided I had to update our progress somehow, so I made a Facebook post announcing that we were embarking on the trilogy, and then I followed that up with Twitter updates. This was a much bigger hit with some friends than I anticipated, as nearly immediately a couple of buddies chimed in, excited by what they thought was a great idea. They also insisted on running commentary via Twitter, and I was all too happy to oblige. Overall, the trilogy viewing was a lot of fun, although it was also more grueling than I imagined. I hit the wall about halfway through ROTK but I battled through to the end.

I don't know if doing this with all six Star Wars movies will be easier or harder, but I will definitely try that too at some point.

AJ goes to camp

My boy is going to a month of "camp" at the Montessori school that he will be attending. He goes three times a week for four hours. He's two years old. We decided that it was absolutely essential to get all of the following to facilitate camp preparedness:

new t-shits
new polo style shirts
new shorts
new sneakers
new socks
a new backpack (with Lightning McQueen and The King, naturally)
a new lunch kit (also adorned with Cars characters)
two different kinds of snack bars
three different kinds of snacks in pouches
a sandwich holder with a built in ice pack to keep the sandwich cool, if desired
a snack holder with a built in ice pack, to keep the snacks cool, if desired

You'd think we're sending him off to backpack through Europe or something.

Boo!

Teixeira Expects To Be Booed At Fenway Tonight

No shit.

The Boston Globe proposes another idea: that fans simply turn their backs and give him the silent treatment. While this sounds different, and is some attempt at taking the moral high road, I'm not interested. Sports is the last place in which booing is thoroughly acceptable, and if I had a ticket tonight, I would boo Teixeira until my throat was raw. He's a fake, overpaid, money-grubbing douchebag who acts like the Red Sox somehow did him wrong during their courtship of him, when apparently he, or at least his wife, had every intent of simply signing with the Yankees all along anyway. Just like A-Rod, this seems to be a case in which I wanted the guy at the time, but was then ecstatic that the Sox didn't end up with him. He enters tonight hitting .222, for the record, despite the fact that balls have been flying out of the new Yankee stadium at a record pace. By the way, there are plenty of really good seats available to see last year's third place finishers in the AL East if you are so inclined. Have I mentioned that Teixeira has never finished in the top 5 for MVP voting, has never been out of the first round of the playoffs, and still got $180 million? Nice.

But I digress. The booing. It's not just for Doucheface. It's for anyone that puts on the pinstripes, period. And I mean that. If my own mother discovered that she has a nasty slider and is death on righties and the Yanks signed her as an 8th inning relief specialist, I would boo the hell out of her if she came in to pitch a tie game at Fenway. I love you, Mom, but I totally would. If any of my friends played for the Yankees? BOOOOOOOOO. The only scenario I can come up with that might even provide the slightest hint of conflict is if my son got drafted by them. And honestly, I don't know what I would do then. Demand a trade, probably.

But anyone else? There is no high road. If you're in the pinstripes at Fenway, you are the enemy. Period. I wish that booing was socially acceptable in lots more situations: poor service in restaurants, when the blackjack dealer keeps pulling five card 21s, and pretty much any trip to the DMV, just for starters. But I feel no need or inclination to make some highbrow attempt at being perceived as a "better" fan. Mark Teixeira led us on with no intention of ever signing with us in order to extract the most cash that he could, and then he signed with our hated rivals. If that's not worthy of our vocal derision at the ballpark, then nothing is.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Good day

ASU beats Washington to advance to the Pac-10 Tournament Championship game.

The Red Sox thump the Yanks in a prime time Grapefruit League tilt...which is obviously meaningless, but Big Papi and Mike Lowell went yard, which is definitely not.

And there is word that Friday Night Lights may get renewed for not one, but two more seasons!

That's just a good day all around. And tomorrow is AJ's birthday party and in five days I'm off to Arizona for the annual boys trip. Good times.

Self fulfilling irony

Today I took A.J. to The Wonder Place, a great establishment that has all sorts of cool stuff for kids to play with--slides, toys, a stage, an art room, you name it. It wasn't too crowded, with only a handful of other kids and parents there. One poor little guy about A.J.'s age had a band-aid on his forehead, clearly from some prior fall. As he was playing on a small set of steps in the slide area, the kid took a ridiculous flying backwards header, cracking the back of his skull pretty hard on the floor. He was scared more than anything, and luckily he seemed just fine after a couple of minutes. His mom was completely unfazed, as if she has seen that same move dozens of times before. She had a custom diaper bag with the little tot's name stitched on the side.

The boy's name? Tripp. I'm not even kidding.

28 awesome things from 2008

There are always tons of "best of" lists right around New Year's Day. Here is one more. Instead of a Top 10, or a Top 100, or anything so rigid and structured, here are just 28 things from 2008 that were awesome. They are not comprehensive, and they are not in any order. But they are awesome.

• Season four of Lost, especially on Blu-Ray.
• The 2008 World Champion Boston Celtics.
• The Dark Knight, especially Heath Ledger's brilliant performance.
• Season three of Dexter.
• Metallica: Death Magnetic and LIVE at Alltel Arena.
• Dustin Pedroia: Sun Devil, Red Sock, and AL MVP.
• Iron Man.
• Tropic Thunder.
• The Robert Downey Jr. resurgence in general.
• Rock Band 2.
• My second straight Chatham Bluefish Diamond Mind baseball championship.
• Scream Queens on VH1.
• Terra Naomi's acoustic hair band covers.
• The fact that a new GNR album actually came out, and it's good.
• Friday Night Lights, and the fact that it is still on TV at all.
  
• Survivor and The Amazing Race still being fairly entertaining.
• Pretty much everything AJ McC does, including his hilarious exploding vocabulary.
• Sierra Mist Free Cranberry Splash. Try some with vodka and thank me later.
• ZaZa pizza in Little Rock. The huge high heat woodburning oven is the key.
• The fact that a new movie theatre (with an Imax screen) opened right down the street, even if I don't get to go there as often as I'd like.
• That a guy who kind of rocks won American Idol.
• The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly.
• Tina Fey, both on 30 Rock and SNL.
• Van Halen LIVE at Alltel Arena.
• Catching my first Red Sox game in way too long, with a rooftop table under the Budwesier sign.
• Two Vegas trips, an AZ fire up, and a Cape Cod vacation (with the Boston trip in the middle of it).
• Lots of cool shows on the Food Network. Seriously.
• WiiFit.

And eight things that were not so awesome:

• 18-1. Still pisses me off.
• The ASU football season. An entirely different kind of letdown.
• The Sox losing game 7 of the ALCS when they clearly could have been champs again if just a couple of guys stayed healthy.
• Watching shitty teams flounder in the 2008 NFL playoffs while the superior Patriots sit at home. Sickening.
• The economy, including our old house still being on the market.
• The disgusting New York Yankees offseason spending spree.
  
• Heroes. Season one started great, and since then it's been pretty bad. And yet, I continue to watch.
• The complete tabloidization of the American media. Didn't CNN used to be a respected news outlet? Now they are People magazine with some news thrown in. Go ahead, check the website right now. What's on there? A video of Harrison Ford getting his chest waxed, apparently. And network news shows are just as bad. I cannot do it. I basically hate the news, now. I really do. Thankfully technology exists that lets me consume only what I want, for the most part. Okay. Rant over. I hope everyone has a great 2009.
  

Random Christmas Stuff

Best new holiday treat recipe I have discovered: Alton Brown's White Trash. Three different kinds of cereal, pretzels, mixed nuts, and M&Ms all drenched in white chocolate. I've never tried crack, but I doubt it is this addictive and evil.

My three favorite entries for Christmas music: Trans Siberian Orchesta, The Muppets with John Denver, and the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. Although I did pick up an 80s rock Christmas CD recently and it is pretty cheesetastic too.

Most underrated reindeer: Blitzen.

Random wrapping observation: I can wrap the heck out of anything relatively flat, like a DVD or a book. But if it gets wide, forget about it. Pretty soon I'll just start blaming those terrible wrapping jobs on A.J.

I think I like multicolored lights more now than I used to.

If I'm putting booze in egg nog, it's either bourbon or spiced rum.

When I was a kid, I could not possibly imagine how my dad, or anyone else, would not want to get up at the crack of dawn on Christmas day. I get it now. It's been a fun transition so far, and it will only get even cooler every year as A.J. gets older.

Little man on the move

Here's our little guy taking some of his first steps by himself.

New digs!

This is our new house! We haven't moved in yet, but we have begun the painful and laborious process of getting ready to do so. It's in a great neighborhood, it's only about five minutes away, and it has a lot more room for AJ to have fun and cause trouble. We love it.

Future All-Star?

I think so!

Sunday schedule

How I think my Sunday will go:

Sleep in.

Get up, put on lucky Red Sox shorts. Itch playoff beard but refuse to do anything about it until after game 7.

Play with A.J.

Eat a bowl of cereal, probably Special K Chocolately Delight.

Catch a little bit of football pre-game shows.

Proceed to watch the Pats crush the Dolphins, normal problems in Miami be damned.

Eat leftovers or a sandwich for lunch, probably at halftime, when the Pats will already have a 21 point lead.

Pace around like a crazy person from roughly 4-7 PM after the Pats have won by 30.

7ish: make a Captain and Diet Coke to take the edge off of having to listen to Buck and McCarver.

7:23: Watch the Red Sox begin to deliver the coup de grace to the Tribe.

This is going to be a defining game for Dice-K. I'm seeing six strong innings, maybe even six scoreless. He could go more but Tito will turn it over to the pen and that's that. Papelbon wraps it up and dances on the field to the delight of the Fenway crowd.

Pretty nice little Sunday schedule.

Haven't been feeling bloggy

I haven't been feeling too bloggy lately because I've been consumed with editing Whiffleball, planning for a Vegas trip, and watching the Sox and Pats dominate. I plan to write long blogs on each of those topics in the near future, but here are some quick hits until then:

ALCS: Sox will win, and win a lot more easily than most people think.

Pats-Cowboys: I don't know if this is a Super Bowl preview, but I do know that watching Tony Romo toss five picks against Buffalo makes me feel pretty good. Pats by double digits.

Vegas was great. Shocking. I'm still catching up on sleep and piecing together some questionable decision making--thankfully, not by me--but, wow...what a great town.

And last but certainly not least, here is a recent shot of AJ modeling something from his fall collection.

Sox second half

First, here are a couple of recent shots of AJ. He'll be four months old this Thursday and he already looks like a future All-Pro offensive lineman in the making.

So the Red Sox have a huge lead with less than half the season to go and yet a majority of Red Sox Nation seems determined to panic. Sure, there are things to worry about the rest of the way. Here are what I think are the top five concerns, ranked in order from least to most important.

5. Lugo, Coco, and Drew: all three underachieved in the first half...and it didn't slow us down at all. Coco has already started to show improvement and Lugo has even lit it up since shortly before the break. Lugo and Drew each just signed long term deals and they aren't going anywhere so we just have to wait it out with them, and I'm not concerned. They'll both put up better numbers the rest of the way. Center field is the one spot where we could make a move but I don't think it will happen. Coco has been great defensively and if he keeps contributing on offense like he has recently (OPS over 1.100 the last 30 days) then it will be a huge boost to the lineup.

4. The bullpen: I love our bullpen. Papelbon is an absolute beast and the Hideki Okajima signing is like finding a c-note in your jeans on laundry day. He's been absolutely unreal and the rest of the league has shown no indication that they are going to learn to hit him any time soon. The key then, for me, is what ends up happening in the 7th inning, and I think the answer is a simple one: Manny Delcarmen. His fastball has had more zip this year (hitting 97 consistently) and he finally has better command of his curve. Watching him dispatch Sammy Sosa recently in a crucial bases loaded spot was awesome. He's the future but I also think he's the present. Throw in the fact that Mike Timlin has seemingly gotten his mojo back--he's unscored upon his last eight appearances--and the bullpen doesn't worry me one bit. We're fine for the rest of the season and we're loaded for October.

3. Schill: he'll be back. With a nine game lead there is no need to rush him, and thankfully he seems to know this. We don't need him now, we need him in September and October. He has admitted to showing up this spring in less-than-ideal condition and that sucks, and he may be paying the price for it now. But the guy is a flat-out warrior and there still aren't many starters I'd rather have going with a huge game on the line. Get well, Curt. See you soon.

2. The back end of the rotation: this is one spot where the Sox could make a huge upgrade at the trading deadline. We can't expect to maintain a wide lead trotting Julian Tavarez and Kason Gabbard out 40% of the time down the stretch. I'm not saying that we need to add a starter, because I'm not sure that we do, and I definitely wouldn't want to if the cost is Lester or Buchholz. But if someone like Roy Oswalt does become available then they really need to consider it. An October rotation of Beckett, Dice K, Schill, and Oswalt would be outright ridiculous.

1. The Manny and Papi Power Outage: Okay...I'm worried. Papi's knee clearly isn't close to 100% and unless they shelve him and do the surgery now, it's not going to be the rest of the way. Meanwhile, Manny is 35 and might finally be turning mortal. Clearly we need these guys to do what they do, or at least a reasonable facsimile of it, because their presence in the heart of the order is what makes the whole lineup work. We don't need Papi to hit 50 bombs again but we do need these two to get it in gear. When they hit, we win. It's the only current aspect of the club that concerns me at all, and aside from telling Papi to have knee surgery now and hoping that he can come back 100% in 4-6 weeks, there's not much we can do but wait and hope.

And Red Sox fans are good at that. We'll be fine.

AJ is almost eight weeks old

It's crazy how fast he is growing and how different he already looks.

AJ

At 6:12 PM on Monday, March 19, 2007, Alexander James McCandless was born. He arrived via c-section almost two weeks early and he checked in at 7 pounds, 1 ounce and 20 inches, which I'm sure comes way under in any over/under wagers. But I am quite confident that he will catch up in no time. Beth and AJ are both home now and doing great. He is amazing.