two days 'til

ooh hoo hoo!  superbowl sunday is coming up and i am excited!  i can't wait to see my boys play again with the stakes being so high.  most bets are on new england and their golden boy quarterback, tom brady.

unfortunately, there is still the outside chance that the carolina may come up with a surprise win.  i'm hoping they choke, but the patriots could get cocky, or brady buns may have a lapse in confidence due to the recent page six exposé on his having stolen the supermodel ex-girlfriend of patriots fan and film director adam goldberg.  psychology plays a big factor in this game, so who can say?

still, i'm hoping that my cuties win, but the excitement lies in not knowing the outcome and having to watch what happens — hopefully surrounded by friends, eating lots of junk food, and enjoying the million-dollar commercials.  in the end, the only thing that's certain is that, come monday, there will be a bunch of people celebrating and many others crying in pain.  i pray that i'm not one of the latter.

go pats!

wmd facts

the facts as i currently understand them:

• in 2003, bush invaded iraq because of the imminent threat posed by saddam's "weapons of mass destruction."  bush had no proof of such weapons but had intelligence which claimed such a stockpile existed — intelligence which colin powell presented to the united nations.
• in 2004, bush, in his state of the union address, did not speak about uncovering weapons or even weapons programs but "weapons of mass destruction-related activities."
• bush's new justification for the war is the liberation of the iraqi people and the capture of saddam hussein.  however, in trying to actually build a democracy instead of just destroying a tyrannical regime, bush is discovering that his unilateral approach is getting everyone nowhere fast.
• on top of all of this, david kay, the former chief iraqi weapons inspector appointed by george w. bush, now says he has found no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction in iraq and thinks it's unlikely that we'll find any there at all.

feel free to correct or add to any of this.

angel maybe?

i haven't watched the show angel for almost a year and a half, especially not since the end of buffy the vampire slayer.  however, the show is coming up to its 100th episode, and i'm hoping for some closure on my former obsession with the buffyverse.

honestly, though, tonight's episode — its 99th, i'm assuming — surprised me.  i thought it was actually really fun!  the super-geek andrew, played by tom lenk, came back in search of a psychologically imbalanced vampire slayer, and, at the very end, he completely stands up to angel...with a dozen other slayers backing him up.  there was no gratuitous fight scene, unfortunately, but the fact that the girls were able to intimidate a vampire, a former watcher, and a s.w.a.t. team without any of them lifting a finger made my own inner-geek swoon with delight.

so, am i an angel fan reborn?  well...let's just say that i'm willing to sit through charisma carpenter's (supposedly) final episode next week.  who knows?  the show may surprise me again.  not a yes, not a no, but a definite maybe.

golden globes '04

didn't watch the whole thing, but i definitely felt happy about the number of nominations and wins angels in america had.  i'm really happy for jeffrey wright, who did a phenomenal job as belize.  i just wish the film had been released to theaters so that he (and the rest of the cast) would be up for oscars.  ah, well.

i was also happy for tim robbins, who was fantastic in mystic river.  terrible movie, though.

lunch crew

i ran across this photo as i was cleaning out my hard drive today.  the picture above is from comedy central's 2002 holiday party and features january, nicole, tammi and myself — four members of an unofficial comedy central lunchtime clique.

back in happier times, before my company's corporate merger, a group of six or seven of us IT and HR employees would get together in a conference room nearly every day to have lunch, gossip, and watch the some television.

our viewing material varied over the years.  originally, we always watched re-runs of law & order, but once a&e stopped airing them, we switched to blind date and, eventually, surprise by design.  once in awhile, someone (usually me) would bring in a tape of the latest episode of sex and the city, six feet under, or the sopranos, and we even watched some goofy comedies, like two can play that game and the sweetest thing.  it was a great ritual.

now, we are all scattered to the winds, with some of us in different buildings, due to corporate restructuring, and others at different companies altogether, due to general frustration.  i now eat my lunch by myself at my cubicle, surfing the web or writing weblog entries, blinky-blink.

ah, memories.

hee hee hee

nathan lane & matthew broderick — and me in the first-row mezzanine.

the ticket was a christmas present from my man, joe.

yes, he is just that cool.

championship weekend

as i said, agony and ecstasy.  above, patriots quarterback tom brady celebrates with running back antowain smith after their afc championship win.  for all you non-fans reading this, that means that the new england patriots are going to the superbowl!  hallelujah!

of course, the patriots' win means someone else's loss — in this case, the indianapolis colts', who just couldn't get it together yesterday.  the most enthusiastic sports fans are also the most publicly expressive spectators, and their pain invariably makes it to the sports pages (virtual or otherwise).

on the nfc side, the carolina panthers beat the philadelphia eagles.  above, one lonely eagles fan mourns his team's defeat.  how can you not feel his pain?

okay, enough sports for now.  next up is the superbowl on february 1st.

for those of you who don't care about football — what did you think about last night's sex and the city?

on gay marriage

compare this:

you don't allocate civil rights by who makes you comfortable and who doesn't.  i believe that civil unions was a masterful way of making sure that every gay and lesbian vermonter was entitled to the same rights as everybody else — without getting into the business about telling the churches who they could marry and who they couldn't marry.  i think what we did was the right thing.

to this:

if necessary, i will support a constitutional amendment which would honor marriage between a man and a woman, codify that, and will — the position of this administration is that whatever legal arrangements people want to make, they're allowed to mamke, so long as it's embraced by the state, or does start at the state level.

as if there were any question over who has my vote...

clemens, part deux

continuing from the last post, here are the reactions of the local new york papers to the news of roger clemens' so-called defection.  i guess this just goes to show you the fervor new york sports fans have for their teams.  well, scratch that — this only demonstrates the (sometimes misdirected) passion of yankees fans.  (i forget that some new york baseball fans actually prefer the mets.  blecch.)

considering the extreme reactions (joy from astros fans and rage from the yankees ones), i guess monday's announcement does count as a major sports event.

anyway, i have to admit, i'm still a little sad about clemens' choice, but i'm ultimately happy for him.  he gets to continue pitching professionally, only this time he's in his hometown and much closer to his family.  he's also getting paid a pretty penny, too.

most importantly, he's still a cutie!

(random note to self:  quiche is really quite filling!)

hot male action!

after every major sports event, i think of writing an entry entitled "the agony and the ecstasy."  the day after the game, i find myself experiencing both extremes vicariously while perusing the news photos online; i feel the thrill and excitement of the winning team and their fans as well as the heartbreak and depression of the losing side.  this is the addiction i have as a spectator (and perhaps as a sado-masochist).  needless to say, i am very much looking forward to this year's superbowl!

in the meantime, the patriots are still in the play-offs, hooray hooray, with an amazing twelve-game winning streak behind them.  adam vinatieri, my favorite cutie and hero from the 2002 superbowl (pictured above), kicked the fourth-quarter, forty-six yard field goal to win last saturday's game.  the patriots are now one game away from making it to the superbowl.  go pats!

on the agonizing side, my favorite former yankee, roger clemens, has decided to postpone retirement for one year and play for the houston astros next season.  this comes as a double-blow to yankees fans as we recently lost andy pettite, another star pitcher, to the astros as well.  personally, i was hoping roger would go out as a yankee, but i guess it wasn't meant to be.  oh, roger, how could ye?  (cynical answer: $5 million, that's how!)

i want my mtv!

from The Sydney Morning Herald:

A man in the US state of Wisconsin wants to sue a cable television provider for making him addicted to watching TV, a news report said yesterday.

[The man] told the paper he would settle the suit for $5000 dollars, or three computers and lifetime free internet service.

wow.  so he wants his money for nothing or his internet for free!

if he sues successfully, then i'm going after poland spring, the gap, and apple inc. for getting me hooked onto all of their products.  go for yours!

kenny's dead!

for the first time in my life, i had a real (as opposed to aluminum) christmas tree!  joe and i picked him out, brought him home, decorated him and named him kenny.  we accessorized him in blue and gold and we stacked lots of presents (mostly for other people) underneath his branches. 

i'd never really understood the point of christmas decorations before — the sight of them was a nuisance, and the act of putting them up (and later taking them down) was just tedious.  christmases with my own family were fairly unmemorable — with one exception.  when i was six years old, i wrote a letter to santa asking for a spider-man doll (an acceptably masculine alternative to barbie).  on christmas morning, i ran downstairs to find a letter from santa in my stocking.  in his note, he acknowledged my good behavior during the year and then went on to apologize for his lack of spider-man dolls.  he hoped that i would instead enjoy the panasonic pencil sharpener he'd left for me on the mantelpiece.

i was understandably traumatized.

hooray for kenny the christmas tree, though — he may have rescued this holiday for me by making it enjoyable instead of a dreary month to get through.  he may be gone now, off to christmas-tree heaven, but the memory of him makes me smile.

rest in peace, my little tree!

state of the world 2004

what a way to start off the new year:  the united states is gearing up for the next presidential elections, howard dean is the front-runner for the democratic candidacy, a nasa rover is beaming back pictures of mars' surface, saddam hussein is in u.s. custody, mad cow has been discovered in washington state, another sars case has surfaced in china, and the new england patriots are in the playoffs!  yet the front page story on two of the local newspapers this morning is britney's weekend wedding.  how absurd is that?

today is my first day back at work after two weeks off and everyone, on the train and in the office, seems fairly miserable.  and, in less than seven months, i turn thirty.

happy new year, everybody!