20k Contest

 

We're nearing 20,000 hits here, and it's time for a contest.

Whoever ends up being the 20,000th visitor here gets a free present from the High Above Courtside offices.

I'm always on, so just hit me off when you roll that sucker over to twenty grand, and we can settle the business in IM.

If I'm the 20,000th, I'll just hook myself up.

Good luck!

 

You'll be able to choose from one of these fabulous prizes....recently edited for an all-AOL approach that keeps you from having to give your address to some freak on the Internet.

- a page from Stacey Monponsett's long-awaited S+M novel  Arf, She Said

- a virtual dip into Stacey's prized "Worst Essays Ever Turned In To Me" collection....name of student removed, of course.

- (MAYBE) a picture of Shock and Awe, the Two Minute Warning Cheerleaders....I'm saying  "maybe" because:

A) I haven't asked them yet

B) I know Shock can kick my ass, and it doesn't look too good with Awe, either.

- Stacey's new poem, sent to your email. The poem is called Stop Snitching.

- for one quarter hour, Stacey will make up a screen name :  "(Your Name Here)'s #1 Fan," and follow you into chatrooms.

- an email with 20 absolutely random picks from Stacey's bookmarks.

- Stacey will write an insane letter to Dr. Paul Zimmerman at Sports Illustrated, demanding his vote on your behalf in the NFL Hall of Fame elections next year.

- For one week, Stacey will advertise your small business in her profile.

- At one point during the school year, Stacey will help your children(through the IM of a legal guardian only) with any History paper they might have due.

- In one IM session, Stacey will teach you enough French to get a bartender's attention in Quebec.

- You'll get an email with 10 of Stacey's favorite recipes...and remember, girls.....Stacey has a 270 pound husband.

- brief tips about how to kill with your hands, via email, gleaned from Stacey's time in the Mossad in the late 1990s.

 

 

 

The best part about High Above Courtside is that it is the only AOL Journal where you can get recipes, sports, homework help, S+M,and tips about how to kill with your thumb.

 

America's Sweetheart Update

   For those of you who enjoyed the TOS article a few days ago, check this:  I have done the rarely-seen "TOS within a TOS," when I threatened the AOL Service Rep I was arguing my TOS violation with.

   While I'm working from memory here, my threat was along the lines of "If I have to come down there, be warned that it will be the 100% opposite of your commercial where that mousy girl brings you her 'famous apple crumb cake' to thank AOL for their anti-virus software. You'll smell blood."

  The AOL Employees you can reach online will talk to you, but those Terms Of Service still count. The woman who took my complaint was some poor Okie who had no idea what was about to hit her, 5 minutes after the office opened. I always try to secure an early advantage by hitting the argument at a full run, as sprinters say, and I was obviously too much for the first 3 people I spoke to. I may have been kidding, but she had no way of knowing that....especially in Font.

   My husband- who tells me that I "sneer" at him- has refused to argue with me for years now...."You're condescending when you compliment me, let alone now.".....and my own hometown priest has told me that I have an "explosive temper....like a wolverine."

   I kicked the holy hell out of him all the way up the walk, let me tell you. He tried to regroup.... but by the time he got back up, the Rottweilers were on him.

   Either way, I ended up with the TOS Squared after my attempt to justify my statement- made in a F vs F wrestling chatroom- that children should be forced to read this journal at gunpoint, and to defeat the TOS that followed it. Even as she was doing it, the TOS Rep congratulated me on what she assured me would be the talk of the TOS office staff at Happy Hour that night....and probably several others.

   I evaded criminal prosecution by telling that lady's boss- who I immediately demanded to speak to, as you should do every 7.5 minutes in any argument with a corporation- that it would be a poor career move if he TOSd "Ted Leonsis' neice."

   A bold-faced lie....but it worked. I've defeated another TOS by convincing the rep that I was a rogue Kennedy daughter. 

   Morality has always been a hazy area for me, and I'm very competitive. I waver a bit in most Ends/Means situations, kids....and the Number of the Beast can be dialed whenever you need it, in a pinch.

How 'Bout Them?

   The Bourne Braves start their playoff season tomorrow, and I plan on getting to one of the games as soon as my Jeep gets fixed....which is where hubber is right now. Sundays are good days to send the hub off to Auto Mart or wherever they go for that ignition thingy you need when your wife goes to start the car and the key spins all the way around without resistance.

   I was going to fix it myself, except that I had absolutely no intention of doing so. Imagine me trying to take apart anything that has gasoline in it? Thuck fat.

   I'm no help there, so I get to sit around while he gets grease on his forehead and stuff. Hahaha.....another lemonade, anyone? Besides, Gabby, Lissa and I have a lot of important stuff to do, like color and nap. Even Sloppy Dog is engaged in canine pursuits, playing in the yard with her new neighbor, a chien called "Mister Pooch." I have time to write.

   There are some gems in the paper today.

- Undertaker Brown is coaching in the Dallas Cowboys summer camp. One of the benefits of stopping vertical growth when you hit 5'1" is that your Undertaker Brown shirt still fits in 2005...even if it is all ratty and the name has worn off. While I feel their red uniforms were the best, I distinctly prefer the electric blue color of the Parcells era team to the conservative navy blue worn by Your Super Bowl Champions today.

   Undertaker- real name, "Vincent"- Brown was a Patriot linebacker when I was a kid. He was a terrifying physical specimen who had played with Jerry Rice at Mississippi Valley State. Frequently voted "Best Body In The NFL" by whatever magazine does that, this dude was jacked like Triple H, hit people so hard that they briefly saw a bright light and dead relatives acting all consoling and peaceful, and led the team in tackles every year until his knee rotted like....like I don't know what. I was saddened to see him go, and I am happy to see him land a temp job with the Big Tuna.

   Any New England fan will have an eye on Dallas, which seems to be a final resting place for old Patriots. Le Tuna always keeps his people around him, and he has several expatriots in the gang as we speak. Undertaker merely has the best nickname.

   I don't know what he was thinking, but he brought Nancy Drew Bledsoe in from Buffalo to QB his team. I'll give Bill the benefit of the doubt there, but my thinking on the matter is that he could have spent three to five thousand dollars and put a statue back there with no overall loss of mobility from the position.

   To his credit, the Bills finished on an upswing last year, and Tuna took a considerably less seasoned Bledsoe to the Super Bowl many moons ago. Word has it that Drew looks good so far....although if Dallas still has Drew Henson, Bledsoe might be only the second best quarterback named Drew on the team....not really something that fills one with confidence once they realize it.

  Terry Glenn is also down there. Strange, because it seemed like Glenn hated Parcells when the Tuner rolled over on the team in the Super Bowl. Parcells used to call Glenn a "she," which also pissed him off. Still, when New England and Green Bay tired of him and all seemed lost for the troubled Terry, there was the fatherly Big Tuna showing thathe really cared after all. Glenn hasn't torn the NFL up, but he's playing well and not being a *****.

   Dallas also has old friends like Maurice Carthon on his staff. I hope he has Al Groh down there. Groh, who I think coached on the defense, was known to walk around the sidelines with a shovel during playoff games in New England. You should always have one of those kind of guys around when you have a job you need to get done.

   Tuna is still a trip, too. Asked about the recent episode where Coach Saban in M'ami yelled at a 300 pound kid so ferociously that he burst into tears, Parcells said that he personally wouldn't consider it that big a deal when judging a player....."He cares," I guess.

   ''I've had a couple of 'em cry. Not when I was screaming at them, but crying at the situation. It's a human emotion. We all do it. That doesn't bother me.... unless it's a woman crying, at which point I try not to pay attention."

   On a personal note, I almost had to cry in a crowded breakfast nook called "Leo's," in Buzzard's Bay. After I threatened to castrate him when he began moving his fork towrds my pancakes (it seems that the "Double Hungry Man Breakfast" is merely an appetizer in these parts.....and this is no dig on Leo's, because the DHMB was an eggs/pancakes/toast/home fries combination that took up a whole side of the table and actually merits a note in the menu to the effect that several patrons have died trying to consume it), hub had the idea that acupuncture would solve the incessant tricep pain he suffers from. 

   He has had this pain since he carried in the armoire in a shoulder-based fashion that one saw in 1982-era urban teens carrying those ridiculous radios. He refuses to see a doctor, even though the last of my Percs (I was bitten by a snapping turtle...never mind, please) didn't shut him up. 

   He refuses to see a doctor, and now he decided he was going to fix it himself....sort of like my ignition,which may or may not merit a blog entry later. Unlike my Jeep, he was going to do this job in front of 40-70 of our new neighbors, who are probably going to have enough trouble getting used to me........let alone this.

"I could do it right here, with this very silverware," he said. His only experience in medicine comes from watching me get injured/pregnant.

"You could also look for a new place to live right there, at that very realtors office," I said, pointing across the street. For those of you who aren't familiar with Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts....there is indeed a realtor across the street from Leo's.

"Arrogant American," said hub, who is from Massachusetts, to me, who is from France. "You close your mind to Eastern methods." He then raised his arm, and began sizing up fork thrust possibilities.

"You-will-put-that-fork-down-this-instant..." I said as quiet/loudly as I could without losing the smile I was faking. I had taken a knife into my hand (I automatically remembered my Mossad knife-fighting training- I joined in an attempt to represent for Israel in the 1995 New Hampshire Winter Olympics team bobsled competition that never actually ended up being conducted- and a voice in my head was saying, "there are several attacks which can be made from this position."), though I was trying to look pleasant.

"Shucks, hunny... how hard can it be? I'm doing it, now."

   I shot my hand out and grabbed the plate with his toast, which I then slid behind my purse. "You get your food back when you've promised me we'll drop this."

"Grrr...O.K."

   I stared. He slowly handed me his fork as I brought his toast back within reach of him. After several fakes, we both came back with what we wanted. The rest of breakfast went off without incident.

 Parcells has his methods. I have mine.   

  

Guest Editor

   High Above Courtside has the honor of being your Guest Editor this week. Journalslavia is one of the nicest spots in the AOL world. It is a pleasure to be able to share a few journals with you that are much enjoyed here at HAC.

      Some people get down on journals, blogging, etc.... They say that it is the height of banality- "I got up, brushed my teeth, ate some Rolos, went to bed."  That happens. Part of opening the floodgates is releasing a few drips. Still, if you let a shallow wannabe Bombeck or two steer you away from the Blogosphere, I feel sorry for you.

   "Just play it again, Sam."  How many bad scripts do you think the Casablanca guy went through before he stumbled onto that gem? Did you know that a North Carolina high school coach cut Michael Jordan from the JV team?

   Don't get blown away by the classics. Moby Dick is a fishing story no better than fifty I heard waitressing as a kid at the local lobsterman's tavern. A bad episode of The O.C. still has more buff guys and exposed thighs than any of that Wuthering Heights  nonsense they force on you in English Lit. MacBeth  is just about a guy with an absolute nag of a wife. The Great Gatsby is  simply a bad Melrose Place episode.

      "So we beat on, boats against the  current, borne back ceaselessly into the past " is some good stuff, but so was the last Vanessa Carlton CD with the video where she plays the piano on a flatbed truck driving through some suburb. Hopefully, somebody likes one or the other. If not, there's always porn. Knock yourself senseless, killer.     

   There is joy in simplicity. Sure, we're no Hemingways here for the most part....what do you want for nothing? Lighten up. Celebrate the small things. Read a blog. It's free, it will be appreciated by the blogger, and you may enjoy yourself. See the blog....be the blog...

      I may as well introduce myself.....I'm Stacey, aka 'Thumper' or "The Smurf." I'm a female sports blogger, which is funny enough....but I'm also 5 feet tall, French (born in Rouen), overeducated and underemployed. I have two young daughters and a 35 year old child that I happen to be married to. I was raised near Boston, and I was lost to sports fandom by about 5 years of age. I just moved to Cape Cod, and I haven't found a store with a proper cheese section yet. Properly tanned, I can be passed off as Portuguese, even in Fall River.

      I started my career teaching, then I got more degrees and ended up counseling. I used to drive from a rich suburb that Joe Perry lived in to a nasty school for criminal teens in a squalid ghetto. I coached a basketball team that is one looming conviction away from having the entire starting five in jail. Then my Catholic fertility reared up, and now I'm a housewife with two kids and a sports page. It's all good.

      My writing experience is limited to drawing up lesson plans....and this very blog you are visiting as we speak. I managed to win the All Star Blogger contest, and AOL sent me to last year's All Star game. I also disturb the staff of Sports Bloggers Live with incessant bad humor. I tell a lot of jokes. Not  all are funny. I succeed by sheer volume. "Quantity has a quality all its' own," Stalin once said, when asked if 10,000 shoddy tanks can beat 2,000 good ones.

      Since then, it's been a non-stop love affair between the good people of AOL and yours truly, America's Sweetheart. I get so many hits to this journal, I can't be sanctioned to fight in Nevada. See that site counter on the side of this page? I've rolled that sucker so many times, epileptics have gone into seizures watching it.

      I really don't mess around at all. That's just the kind of girl I am. Smashmouth style. Undeniable competence. Blue eyed soul. Brains, beauty and brawn. Sophisticated, but gully.

   I've accidentally gone to a formal party at a million dollar house in my Duxbury High School soccer uniform(the game went 4 OTs, and I'm punctual before stylish). I lost a potential $15,000 bet on a blocked field goal attempt, then went out and bought four pairs of shoes. "Lite Piano" is next to "Biggie Tribute" ('you can't touch my riches, even with MC Hammer and those .357 girls)in my Radio AOL presets.

      I write the kind of journal that you can kick back and smoke a fat a** blunt to. My style is like pouring a Scorpion Bowl into a word processor. Marvel in my much-maligned magnificence.      

Enough about me....let's check out the talent

:      http://helpshari.typepad.com/shari_kurzrok/  

      This lady needs your help. I kid around a lot, but check out this site and do what you can. No person stands taller than when they stoop  to help others...and I think you can write it off.

     This lady is illin' like a villain, so if you're, ummm, late with your donation, send it to Toys For Tots. .          

 

http://journals.aol.com/aangelisqt/dontgoquietly/  

  

  Beth is young, pretty, intelligent, observant, insightful, creative, funny, and fresh. Beth is also buck nutty like a Snickers.  No worries....a little eccentricity is good in a writer- it helps with the press later if she gets Big. She knows how to write. She's a Lean Mean Teen Quote machine. Check out these gems:  

"So, I think I accidentally threatened someone via eBay."

About Antigua: "For the price of buying him a few drinks and a meal or two, you get to brag back home about your Latin boyfriend."

"To enter the contest, you needed an original song about why you shouldn't do drugs, or why they are bad, yanno? Anyway,  if you win you get five thousand friggen dollars"

"I'm in a whole new world of pain.. and kinda hungry. My next workout is called "cupcakes" .. that's where I put on a 20 pound meat suit and take on a couple lions. I call it cupcakes because that's the name of the hungriest lion."

"I really really hate conflict with people. It's such a waste of my time to sit there, get totally pissed and angry at some idiot, probably a complete stranger, about how right I am..I try to ignore them..... If they flip me off I just follow them home and steal their things, then resell them on eBay. It's  win-win. "

" I think I am scarred, if not forever, then  at leastfor a good week.I don't ever plan on attending any little league event, nor am I entering my kids in any sports. Theywill play an instrument and take dance lessons, even if it's a boy. I'm sorry- that's the way it's going to be.   "  

"Drowning fat kids in lakes isn't what I am all about. Didn't you know it's only French Canadian midgets?"  

Beth's Thoughts While Shopping...."I wonder what they think I look like? 
a suburban teenager wannabe housewife? 
making vegetarian dinners from a recipe, 
maybe'....."

"Yea, New Jersey is one of those really weird places you hear about. If you grew up here you probably hate it, but once you leave you realize you really have an emotional attachment to white trash and overpopulation. "

 

   That's talent, folks. Roaming in this girl's journal is like being repeatedly smashed in the face with a bottle of Atavan. I can read her all day.

      She didn't respond to my request to feature her journal, but I phrased it so that I'd run it unless she responded in a bad way. If she finds out and has a problem, I'll remove it. I defer to greater talent and better legs.

   "We can settle this like gentlemen, or we can get into some gangsta s***"            

 

 

http://journals.aol.com/sieblonde/Pfft/

      Some days, you need CNN, while some days you need to follow some suburban mom as she builds a backyard garden.  

   

    Susan is also a sort of NRA den mother to what I believe is called the Georgia Teen Pistol team...girls who can pull off a shotgun wedding without the old man.    

  

       This is a Garden Journal at  heart, though....Susan will either finish her yard or die trying. I'm sure there are mountain soldiers in Afghanistan that aren't working as hard as she is. This stuff has been going on for months, and she has the pictures to prove it.     

    I didn't pick up on whether Susan lives in a hurricane zone, but if a Category 5 wrecks that stone wall after she impacted vertebrae building it......well, let's just say that I'd be anywhere but that yard when ol' Susan comes out and sees that her stuff has been scattered to the four winds. With a year of her life wasted and another year needed to clean up the rubble, she might start laying hands on people.

      All because a Mom wants to look at a nice yard while she floats her hard-earned Chill Time away in her pool. Forced onto a jury at her trial, I wouldn't convict if she killed someone afterwards, to be honest.  

 

       

 

       http://journals.aol.com/halosusie/HalosRecipes/

 

        Nothing fancy on the surface, here. This is a woman who is sharing out some recipes. 

 -  Baked Apples w/fruity & nutty filling

-  Deep Fried Ice cream w/raspberry sauce OR Carmelized Apples

 -  OUTSTANDING Baked Ham with MY Special fruity Ham sauce

-  Vermicelli Salad

-  Best Chili Recipe  

-  Spinach Balls

 -  Sweet Crunchy sweet Potato's

-  Raspberry Balsamic Chicken Breasts, with raspberry sauce  

      Girls....insurance people tell us that you'll live 78.8 years. You'll be married for about 50 of them, and you'll only be really pretty for 10-20 of those.

      Once you have kids, you can sort of sit home, watch soap operas and blog while Hubby works for the lot of you. It's been that way since caveman times, and he won't question it if properly managed. "Properly managed" is as follows....

      He'll roll in from work at 6 PM or so, and be sound asleep at 11. If you can cook well, one of those five hours in between will be pleasant. If you're good at sex, that takes care of another hour. Baseball games last 3 hours.This isn't a coincidence. Learn how to cook. It's the tastiest Art.

      Read the blog, marry well, and call Halo with thanks while you watch Jerry give his Final Thoughts on Guys Who Love Girls Who Love Vegetables. Don't worry that she's in Georgia or something....you're not paying for the call. 

 

 

          http://journals.aol.com/zbar88/callingtheshots/

     Alex the Phenom gets a lot of attention, but Zach over at Calling The Shots can hold his own like a teen sports blogger should probably be able to. Dedication is admirable, and if there's a path to ESPN, a Youth Blog would probably be on it.

     Kids rule the Internet already, anyhow. Go to a chat room if you don't believe me. The Internet- modern, ever changing, faddish, open ended, abstract, base, sexual and violent- is better suited to teenagers, and it is almost required that an adult give up childish things at some point.

      I was walking Gabby and Melissa when I came across some kids playing with a Pogo Stick. I never had a Pogo Stick when I was a child. The kids came over to play with the babies, and I took the opportunity to borrow the Pogo Stick.

      I'm not much bigger than a kid anyhow, and I had observed them bouncing on it. It couldn't be that hard, no? The key would be to just jump on it full weight, with absolute confidence that things would sort of take care of themselves once the  process was started.....sort  of like sex, right down to  the dueling bedspring sound a Pogo Stick makes when used properly.

      When not used properly, it makes a sound like a woman falling onto a lawn off a Pogo Stick, snarling in the French she lapses into when forced to speak without thinking first. There is also some posterior bruising involved, as well as a charming 7 year old girl saying, "You can't do that....you're old."

      This blog Zach has fashioned is probably the exact opposite of the feeling I had when I didn't Ike Turner some tact into that ragamuffin..     

   I taught high school, and I understand American kids. Properly marketed, Calling the Shots should get Zach at least 20% more physicality in his slow dances at the next school social function. In the great scheme of things, that's what it's all really about anyhow.  

              

http://journals.aol.com/white6416r/DadsTomatoGardenJournal/

 

  This dude is like 90 years old, and reading down this far in the article may just finish him off. It'd be a shame, though....this guy rocks hard, like Godsmack.  

   This isn't going to give you a happy ending oranything...it's just the thoughts of some 92 year old old guy who is pretty much about working in his garden. It is very heartwarming, like when his grandkids get him a golfcart, or when he muses about the cat  who joins him at  the computer.

   The cool thing about this blog is the author. This is a guy who was born during the Roosevelt campaign....TEDDY Roosevelt. They didn't have cars, TV, quality porn,  Buffy the Vampire Slayer or anything. He's probably cooked meals over a cave fire, and fought off brontosauri. 90 years is a long time...a Triple Monponsett, and change.

   By all accounts and demographics, he should have gone to that Great Garden In The Sky in the 1980s....but just look at him now.   His tomato garden makes mine look like pizza sauce. He's on top of the news and the weather. He has a web page. Young women notice him, and give him national recognition. Heck, I'd be happy to party with him just 'cuz he's a 90 year old with a web page. That's pretty cool.

     I get a sense that he's an old charmer who can still cook a fine pasta dinner, drink a bottle of wine, and invite a young lady to dance. I hope I'm kicking this much butt when I'm 90, I can tell you that.

 -  "Depression Era Guy Work Ethics"......This man  doesn't miss a day blogging. I moved 15 miles south in Massachusetts, and I missed 2 months. He's absolutely diesel.......  

                

 

Bloodthirsty Shut-Ins Arise!

   I'll tell you....you'd need to have Senator McCain's sense of hope to be a Celtics fan these days. Ol' John knows about Asian methods of torture, and he'd be the first to tell you that sometimes the worst part of the Chinese Water Torture isn't the millionth drop hitting you in the head....it's WAITING for the drop to hit you that makes you tell the Vietcong where the airbase is. There's no real shame in it....after awhile, a human can't stands no more, as Popeye used to say.

   I can remember Rick Pitino's last year running Gang Green. They had just got blown out again, and reporters were up in his sauce regarding why the team still sucked 3 years after they shamefully retired Auerbach and gave Pitino a ransom to turn it around.

   The team had just got brown trouted on, the press was unforgiving, and Pitino had seen enough. He had been at Kentucky too long, and wasn't used to having no answers for some Boston Globe scribbler's day-after-day questioning. Finally- about a week or two before he fled like a wharf rat- he unloaded on Boston and it's media.

   "There's this doomed attitude among people in this town.....the bloodthirsty shut-ins that make up this 'Fellowship of the Miserable'. That's the real Curse here. They just won't let these kids learn and grow. Well, I'll say this to them....Larry Bird ain't walkin' through that door....neither is Parish or McHale.....and if they do, they'll be old and grey."

   It was the best non-Lasorda rant I ever saw (check Howard Stern's show occasionally to hear Tommy's drunken rant to some poor call-in host....best interview ever), and you could just tell that the end was near. Pitino was generally so composed, so hopeful, so seemingly competent, so well-dressed...imagine a positive Michael Corleone, and you'd understand how hard it was to watch Pitino reduced to doing low-rent General Hospital drama in some sweaty Boston locker room as it became clear that he had failed. He fell to pieces like dropped puzzle.

   The Celtics rebounded from those dark days....as soon as Pitino was shown the door, they went on a run and made the playoffs. Some guys just don't have it. It's never easy cutting your losses.  Pitino was an East Coast guy, perfectly at home in some North End pasta house, and it should have ended differently. It didn't.

   The only thing more pitiful is when it happens again. Take a kid who played for the team in the glory days. Watch him earn his stripes on TNT and in Phoenix. Listen to him talk about youth/desire/fundamentals. You get to feeling good about the future. If Pitino had said "Danny Ainge won't be walking through that door," he'd have been wrong. In fact, Danny has Pitino's GM job now.

   And he sucks at it so bad, you are almost personally drawn to Boston by the force of it.

   Keep in mind....I love my Celtics. Always have. I love them when they win titles, and I love them when M.L. Carr coaches them to 18 wins. I love them now. I'll love them when I'm some crazy old lady in a morphine coma in some Florida nursing home. That's why it hurts so much when Danny Ainge starts haphazardly tossing players around like a brood of raccoons set loose on an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.

   Women in America generally live to be 78 or so, and I'm on the far side of twenty already. I saw too many old men die around here without seeing the Red Sox do the job to tolerate the team I love bringing in an incompetent. Ainge is in over his head...we just need someone with a big foot to step on his head for 3 minutes or so.

 

  Strong statement, yes....but the evidence is too damning for denial now. Here's my Flow Chart of Damnation for the Ainge regime, in order of how I bring it up.

- Danny may not have inked the whole thing, but Vin Baker's situation was handled about as poorly as it could have been. Vin's constant thirst ended his time here, but we're stillpaying Gin Baker 5 million a year. That's a Jason Richardson salary, being paid to some guy who lists "wake-up slug out of the night-stand rum flask" as his favorite drink as he wastes space on Houston's bench.

- Antoine Walker gets shipped off with change to Dallas for the 6 year, fifty-plus million dollar contract that is Raef Lafrenz. Raefer Madness took on a new definition: paying some stiff Kobe money to put up 10/6 numbers and not being able to guard anyone with darker skin than Renee Zelewegger.

   If you look really closely at Raef's forehead, you can see a dim Jerry West sillhouette.....forcibly imprinted there by the hundreds of NBA jerseys smashed into his face as people drove down the lane and gigged on him, as Shaq used to say. As a defender, he's slightly less effective then the Maginot Line, and slightly more effective than just taking the ball and putting it into the opponent's basket for them yourself.

   He's also paid to the extent that means , unless the salary cap is modified with Goofy White guy exceptions, he'll be our second best player until 2010.....unless Pierce is traded, at which point the team is (financially) built on Raef and his paper mache knees.

   Even if we cut him, he's still hanging off our salary cap like a 6'11" albatross.....unless he takes the league minimum to ride bench with a good team- and whatever Raef's problems may be, he isn't suffering from the Traumatic Brain Injury that would process that scenario as a "good idea."

- The Ricky Davis deal that drove Coach OB out of town was just plain ugly. Trading the heart of his defense (Tony Battie and Eric Williams) against his wishes, Ainge basically Steinbrennered a pretty good coach out of town to bring in a kid who was famous for missing his own shot to get a triple double.Ainge was forced into this- he had traded a 20ppg guy for a 10ppg guy, and had only bench players to deal.

   Ricky Davis has actually made Danny look good. "He's a changed man," aswe like to say here. He may have been the best 6th Man in the NBA last year, and can put his name up with Pierce's when credit for last year's playoff team is handed out. While Mr. Richard Davis has behaved most of the time, he's near the bottom as far as Pippenesque sidekicks go. So we have to score in the draft....

- Ainge has brought in Marcus Banks, Kendrick Perkins, Al Jefferson, Delonte West, Tony Allen, Justin Reed, Gerald Green and Ryan Gomes to town these past three drafts, with middle first round picks to work with. Not bad at all. West and Allen are the 4th guards you expect to get in the late twenties. Banks, while struggling to learn the position, is one of the NBA's fastest guards. Perkins and Jefferson are promising high school big men, while Green and Gomes both look like keepers.

   While Ainge supporters point to these players as proof of his GM abilities, I see it as a sign that Danny would make a good scout for a GM who doesn't do stupid s*** like pay Raef fifty million dollars. None of these dudes has averaged more than 6ppg in the NBA, either.....that's 6 first rounders with no star, unless Jefferson and Green are the real thing. We are youngyoungyoung, and getting younger every year.

   Simply put, while not equipped to win in the NBA, the youthful Celtics look to be the team to beat at the 2004 McDonald's All American high school all star game. Too bad they already played it....

- Worried that Raef might Lafrenz a few of those 6 years on the IR, Danny Boy went out and signed the very average Mark Blount to a 6 year deal that made those dudes who sold Manhattan to the Dutch for $24 look like Donald Friggin' Trump. Mark is a nice guy, but his Hands Of Stone talent doesn't merit a 6 year deal.

- Since his #1 pick didn't know how to run the point, Danny went out and got Gary Payton. Payton, already beginning to calcify, kept the kids (West, Allen, Banks) on the bench while he showed them how to revoke trades by threatening to not report.

- Remember Antoine? Wasting away in Atlanta, Employee #8 had a huge contract set to expire. Ainge went out and got him for Payton, some expiring salary and a #1 draft pick. He then was traded- after a first round playoff exit- for a pair of second rounders and some guy that Utah didn't want and a guy who is awaiting trial for dogfighting.

   That's right, folks....Antoine Walker was traded for/away 3 times in a year and change....by the same team.His legacy is Tony Allen, the ghost of Gary Payton, and Captain Raef of the U.S.S. Frequently Injured. And the Hawks, who traded for a guy (Payton) who never reported to the team, ended up getting the better of the Celtics in the long run. You just don't see that anymore.

   Walker and Raef also served to keep Jefferson and Perkins on the bench, so we could screw up our present and our future at the same time. It's like an anti-IRA.

- He has done not a blessed thing to squash the Pierce trade rumors.  Pierce must want out of here like yesterday, and when he leaves, this is a twenty win team unless Gerald Green turns out to be Jordan Now. 

AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

   Enough is enough. Danny Ainge should be seized by a mob, dragged through the streets of Boston, and thrown off the pier in Charlestown with specific instructions given to the Atlantic Ocean to deposit him somewhere in the area of Liberia. Hopefully, he'll get involved in the insurrection there, and he'll learn how things work when your decisions actually have a little consequence to them. Pinned down by Monrovia sniper fire as he takes the wrong street, it will seem like a million miles away from those days when he tore up my Celtics like a goat set loose in the vegetable garden. 

Oh, what might have been...

Kurt Warner Questions for SBL:

  Kurt Warner Questions:  

 1) Do you feel that your career has suffered at the hands of the Chunky Soup Commercial Curse?  

2) My sister worked at a Red Lobster out there, and she saw Leonard Davis come in and eat 14 lobsters in a sitting. Do you have to feed the offensive lineman at all, and is this Davis' normal meal quantity?  

3) Has a center ever giggled and told you that it tickles when you line up under him for a snap?  

4) Did Orlando Pace ever break wind when lined up at scrimmage?  

5)  I hear that you register at hotels under the pseudonym "Kurt Warner and his really ugly wife."  

6) "Married her before I was famous" is a little known but effective alimony defense.  

7) If you went to line up under the center, and he smelled of perfume....is there any rule that says you can't have the Left Guard hike the ball?  

8) They let you freely divorce and remarry in America, you know.....just thought I'd mention it.  

9) What's worse....the Arena League, or showering with Jeremy Shockey?  

10) I hear that Tom Coughlin fined his own wife when she was late with her period....true?  

11) Roughly how many extra pushups did Chris Snee get to do for knocking up Coughlin's daughter before the marriage?  

12) "I'm doing a crossword, Mr. Warner.....I need a 6 letter word for 'washed up'.....the first letter is a W....."

Why Rafeal Why??

Raffy tests positive for the juice AND the V....things to think about:

   

- Has science ever examined the benefits/consequences of mixing Viagra and steroids?  

- Raffy....(assumes Antonio Banderas accent)...."That is not my bat, Senorita"     

- I have no science to back it up, but I'm convinced that the V added 5-7 hme runs per year to the Rif Raf's total. He deserves stiff punishment.    

- Even if there was no physical baseball-related effect to the Viagra/steroid combo, the mental wellness that comes with finishing 4 hours at the gym, then cruising down past the high school in the Maserati must add 20 feet to those fly balls that were so recently caught on the warning track.

 -  Raffy....."If there were commercials for steroids, I'd do them as well."  

- Think Bonds is laughing now?.... "I hit 70 HRs one year AND had a mistress....and it was half natural, baby."  

- Don't walk too close to the Palmiero statue in Cooperstown in 2020....you may end up having twins.  

- Thank God Baltimore still has Sammy Sosa to hit clean home runs.  

- Raffy...."Wait till they test me for the Cocaine."  

- Raffy..."I took the steroids to build my self-esteem, which was wounded by being the only Latino in the world on Viagra."