You might have noticed that I don’t have my email …

You might have noticed that I don’t have my email address on the site anymore. Well, it’ll probably stay that way. If you want to contact me, most of you know my email address. But if you don’t know my email address, just ask every possible spam company out there, because they sure have it. I was getting around 50-75 spam emails per day because I had the email address published on this site, and they go out, crawl the web, and get email addresses. No more of that crap, I say. Now I have a new, secret email address. Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah, spammers. Maybe I’ll have a comments page or something.

Steven Wright is really one of the funniest comedians out there. You should read the interview with him. Do it. Now.

It is almost baseball season, which means a few things: a) another season of hope and probable heartbreak for this beloved Boston Red Sox fan…….b) another season of High Heat 2004, the greatest baseball video game ever made……..and c) another fruitless attempt to get Stephanie to like baseball.

American Idol update: I’ve got $5 dollars on Frenchie to win the whole thing, and she made it to the final 32 last night. That girl can flat-out sing. I am worried now, though, because now it’s up to the voting public, and Frenchie isn’t exactly what one would describe as haivng the physical features of a pop star. But dammit, her voice is way better than anyone’s. If anyone in the record biz has any sense, they’ve already signed her up, whether she won it or not.

Finally, what a total dork.

As I was flying into Boston’s Logan Airport on Fri…

As I was flying into Boston’s Logan Airport on Friday night, the plane touched down and I looked out the window as we were taxi-ing towards the gate. I noticed that FedEx pretty much has thier own terminal, planes and gates. It made me think about what a FedEx flight is like, and then, as is my customary ridiculous imagination, I envisioned there being a FedEx “crew” on each flight, with flight attendants and pilots and crap, and they make announcements over the PA just like the commercial flights do. I know, it’s silly, but work with me here – just imagine a whole crew of flight attendants walking up and down the plane, making sure all the boxes and overnight letters are securely fastened in their spots, tray-tables up, locked and once the flight gets off the ground, they cater to the packages every need. I envisioned the flight attendants walking up and down the “aisle” saying things like “can I get you some peanuts?” and then dumping a bag of styrofoam peanuts onto the package. Or the pilot coming on the PA after they land and saying, “thank you very much for flying FedEx. We realize that you have a choice in overnight delivery cargo carriers, so we appreciate your choice to fly FedEx and hope you’ll be delivered overnight via FedEx again soon.” Yeah, I’m warped, but it killed a good amount of time and made me laugh until we got to the gate.

Upon returning home that night, I was glad to see that ESPN had live coverage of the Australian Open women’s tennis finals, yet another tilt between the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus. Those two are always good to watch, but the highlight of the night for me was the TV guy saying “well, Serena’s got some new balls and she’s ready to serve.” Heh. I could watch tennis 24 hours a day if the talking robots on TV keep saying stuff like that!

Did anyone happen to see the two American Idol epi…

Did anyone happen to see the two American Idol episodes this week? Holy crap! What an overflowing amount of comedy, served up in an overflowing, foamy stein, reality style. I can’t even fathom how some of these people think that they’re fabulous singers, when the truth is that they sound like someone is sticking needles into an elderly feline. You can actually see some of the horrendous auditions by clicking here. Really great stuff! I especially love when the judges, correctly, tell someone that they stink, then watching the person get completely perplexed, flip out and get all offended. It all just makes me giggle endlessly. I tell you, this kind of reality television just makes me as giddy and happy as Axl Rose at the post-concert food spread.

One more note, however, about American Idol. I already know who’s going to win and I’ve bet my girlfriend five dollars on it. There was a woman, and I don’t remember her name, but she was African-American and she was a 17 year-old from New York. She had enormous, abnormally sized, gigantic, humongous, ridiculous breasts. And she had the best voice I think I’ve heard since Aretha Franklin. Her left boob was as big as Aretha Franklin herself, but her voice was just incredible and powerful. I’m not sure I’ve heard anything like it. She’s the winner – I cannot imagine anyone else beating that kind of talent.

It takes a while to realize that we all are born, …

It takes a while to realize that we all are born, grow and then pass away through essentially the same physical processes. Well, it took me awhile, anyway. As a young kid (and I’ll go ahead and assume this would apply for most maturing teens), I never really thought about my grandparents or my parents as having endured those processes – and then it hits you one day: your teenage ego is slowly drifting away like a balloon that gets released to the open air. And your fading teenage ego realizes that your parents and grandparents are actually people, too. Real people, yes, with heart-beats, tissue, nerves, brains and a skeleton – just like myself. They’re full of quirks, tremendous qualities, negative attributes, funny anecdotes, fundamental flaws. The works.

We buried my grandmother today. She wanted a quick, small service and she got one – that’s the way she wanted it. My opinion is that she didn’t want her passing away and her funeral to be a burden to anyone’s time. That’s the way she was. But she was something else, and I mean that in several ways: the way you describe an odd but hilarious person, “boy, she really is something else!” And she was “something else” in the sense that at one time, she was a little girl, probably like all the other girls – innocently spent summers as a child cackling with delight in the ocean water, riding the waves and never wanting it to stop. Or licking around and around on an ice cream cone, racing against time and heat to make sure none of it dripped down her hand onto the cracked pavement in the parking lot of the ice cream stand. Nothing else mattered. It took years of my life to realize that she did the exact same things as I did when I was a kid, or a teen, or an adult. Okay, she probably didn’t operate an online journal, but you get the picture.

So I knew her only as my grandmother for the longest time. Couldn’t picture her doing anything else than being my grandmother. Then in the mid-1980s my uncle, her son, died at 31 years old, and that’s when my teenage ego started to evaporate like a fart in the wind. I went off to college and her second son died in a tragic accident. I then realized that she had more – infinitely more – wisdom and experience than I could ever hope to have. It may have helped me, and it may not have – doesn’t matter. But it sure was fun getting to know her all over again in an entirely different, meaningful, human way.

Furthermore, it’s not the fact that she died that makes me sad, hell no. She had a terminal illness and her suffering, compared to other stories I’ve heard, was relatively minimal. I’d much rather have it that way than to have to endure the painful process of watching that flower slowly wilt, victim to something so completely out of our control. My memories of her, thank whatever higher power you believe in, are completely and utterly intact. Not sick, not ill, nothing – I remember her just like she was for the 32 years that I’ve been alive and the 10 years that I feel like I got to know her as a human and not just my grandmother. I see where some of “my type” of humor came from now. I miss her already and wherever she is, she’s already probably bought a scratch ticket or is re-creating watching the Red Sox win the World Series – something she never got to do. What I’d like to think is that she is the winning scratch ticket, because her arrival somewhere right now is enriching someone, or something.

What makes me sad about the whole thing was the fact that a piece of everyone who is still here was carved out just a little bit, with no novacaine to soften the blow; this particular passing so sadly affects those still with us who were close to her. This inevitably is a very positive thing, though: it just means that my grandmother was loved and left our world knowing that. Specifically, my mother and her sister (oh, so different and yet so similar – another one of those “human” things) had the privledge of being incredibly close to their mother and having known that, it will slowly start to take over their emotions as the dominant, positive remembrance of her. For now, they (and we) mourn.

On a more personal note, I should point out that my grandmother did not end her life like a high amount of elderly cross the finish line: she’d been taken all over the place: cruises down near the equator, a trip to Ireland, countless quick jaunts to Foxwoods Casino – and that was only in the last three years. What I liked about her most: she was funny. I mean – hilarious. And she told it like it was – an old Irish woman with, sometimes, a sailor’s diction and no room for nonsense. Gotta love that. Oh, she also bought us dinner this afternoon. That’s the way she wanted it.

On the drive home from the service on Cape Cod today, my girlfriend Stephanie asked me “what do you think happens when you die?” I’ve never really thought about this, and being the speak-before-I-think person that I am most of the time, I blurted out “nothing. I think once it’s over, it’s over.” Ten minutes later, after conversation with her on the topic, maybe I’m wrong. Stephanie’s good like that. Real good. I know this: I would love nothing more than to be able to go somewhere else after I pass on, but more importantly, I really want to believe that I will. That feeling of believing so strongly in something that you don’t even consider science must be incredibly powerful and damn-near life-affirming. Am I getting religious? Probably not. I’m not there……yet. But when I do die, I hope somewhere down the road I get to see my grandmother again. Can’t wait to say hi.

Had an interesting weekend for sure. Went up to Ne…

Had an interesting weekend for sure. Went up to New Hampshire to visit my parents, where the temperature, I kid you not, was 375 degrees below zero. Unfortunately, my grandmother passed away, and she really was one of a kind – more on that later, perhaps. I did manage to get out of the house, though, and take some pictures such as this one, which is Lake Winnipesaukee, frozen. In the background are the beautiful white mountains. In the summer, you can find people on the lake boating, tubing, water-skiing, jet-skiing, etc. Here, it’s just me, freezing my ass off, but taking pictures nonetheless. I tell you what, it was colder than the stare on Russell Crowe’s face last year when Denzel was announced as Best Actor.

When I got home on Sunday, it was off to The FleetCenter, as my Christmas gift to my dad was tickets to see the WWF Royal Rumble! Thass right, dogg, good ole’ pro wrasslin. The first few matches were pretty regular, but the last two matches were just phenomenal. The last match of the night was called, hmmm, The Royal Rumble, and here’s how it works: it’s a total of 30 wrestlers and one wrestler enters the ring every 90 seconds. A wrestler is eliminated when he is thrown over the top rope and lands with both feet outside the ring. Madness is supposed to ensue, and it did. At one point, there must have been 15 wrestlers in the ring. In the end, a puffed up big dude (no way!) named Brock Lesnar threw The Undertaker out of the ring to win it.

Please click here to see that photo larger.

On the way home, my dad told me one of the funniest stories I’ve heard a long time. Since they’ve been driving all over the place for preperations for my grandmother’s service, at one point last week he had to board their two dogs (another topic entirely). So he puts the dogs into the car and then the car seems to get stuck in the snow. Easy solution, right? Just shovel some snow away from the wheels and off they go! Well, no. The dogs get a little excited about my dad walking around the car and shoveling snow and lofting it out of the way, and in the midst of that excitement one of the dogs steps on the “lock” button in the car and locks all the doors. While the car is running. Perplexed, my dad runs through the potential scenarios – smash the window, find out from my mother if there’s another remote to unlock the door. The former option is crossed off the list when he sees BOTH of their cell phones in the front seat of the car, which is running, with the dogs inside, locked. Yikes.

However, being the incredibly resourceful person my dad is, he gets a screwdriver and a hanger, and McGyver’s the window barely open with the screwdriver so he can insert the hanger and hit the unlock button. No problem, right? Uh, no. The dogs, again sensing extreme exciteness by this clever manuvering, get right in front of the window and breathe on it enough to fog the window so my dad cannot see the button. One can only imagine what was running through my poor father’s head at this point. Nonetheless, he gets the door open after a few minutes and off he goes.

After an uneventful drive back to Massachusetts, he takes care of business, and having not eaten all day, stops at the local pizza shop for a sandwich to take back to my sister’s house, where he’s staying. When he gets in the car and starts driving, he gets a flat tire. Now, is this the worst possible day one can have? Still, in retrospect, quite amusing.