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A year ago at this time I posted a list of 10 things I was looking forward to in 2008. Before I look ahead to 2009, I thought it would be fun to see how each of those things from 2008 turned out.
1. Ethan’s first birthday. This was as amazing and magical as I’d imagined. I’m looking forward to his second birthday with even more enthusiasm!
2. The New England Patriots Invitational Tournament. Also known as the NFL Playoffs, this one didn’t turn out exactly as I’d hoped or expected. But ah well, 18-1 is almost as good as 19-0. Right? Nah, not really. Alas.
3. Getting healthy. Sadly, this one’s still a work in progress.
4. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In a word: Awesome.
5. Easter Island. I did indeed make it to Easter Island last March, and it was a great experience. Lingering health issues were kind of a drag on the trip, though, and I would much rather have traveled there with Penny and Ethan than go solo like I did.
6. Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The Spidey comics went from monthly to three times a month and featured an all-new, all-not-married status quo for Peter Parker. And, by and large, it was a great year for the character. I’m still jazzed about the series as we head into year two of the new era.
7. Creating… something. Last year was to be the one where I finally made some headway on either Rise of the Hidden Sun or my young adult novel. I chose the novel and managed to get about 45,000 words into it before losing steam around Thanksgiving. So, not a success but not an out-and-out failure, either. A work in progress.
8. New TV shows. I was really looking forward to Jericho (returning from the dead) and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Jericho only lasted seven episodes but tied up most of the loose ends nicely, and Terminator started well, then got a bit spotty before coming on very strong here in season two. Here’s hoping for a season three pickup in 2009.
9. The Red Sox in Japan. Wow, I completely forgot this even happened. It was a neat little sideshow at the time but, ultimately, not all that big a deal. I’m more likely to remember the Sox losing game 7 of the ALCS than anything about their time in Japan.
10. Climbing a mountain. This finally happened in October during our vacation to Acadia National Park. It was a wimpy little mountain, but the views were spectacular and it felt grea to be back outdoors. Maybe 2009 will be the year where I finally get back into hiking the way I’d like to, though.
The good news: I’m currently 900 words ahead of my desired writing pace for the month. The bad news: I’ve offically reached the end of the outline I’ve been working from for the past few months. Everything between now and the end of the novel is basically a 50,000-word black hole. I literally do not know what happens next. Exciting but scary.
LOST will return in January. Just 70 days to go! I wish I could get excited for it, but I just can’t muster the enthusiasm yet.
This has been a great week for Boston sports, and tomorrow it gets better with Thursday night football at Foxborro! Something to look forward to.
HBO has greenlighted (greenlit?) a pilot for a TV version of George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” fantasy novels. If done right, this could reach Lord of the Rings levels of awesomeness.
It’s ironic that How I Met Your Mother is finally getting good ratings just as its quality seems to be taking a nosedive.
Driving home from work yesterday I discovered that two radio stations in the metro Boston area have already gone all-Christmas. I can’t take two months of “Little Saint Nick.”
Speaking of Christmas, Amazon now has a nifty feature that allows you to add stuff from any other website to your Amazon wish list. Penny came up with that idea like three years ago. If only we knew the right people, we coulda been rich!
I have fallen asleep on the couch watching each of the last four episodes of Fringe. How’s that for a ringing endorsement?
Fox is moving Terminator and Dollhouse to Friday nights this winter. Bye bye, Terminator and Dollhouse. We hardly knew ye.
Busy weekend. My parents babysat Ethan for us on Saturday evening so Penny and I could go out for dinner and a movie to celebrate our anniversary. On the movie front, our choices were pretty limited. Burn After Reading was out because I can’t stand Brad Pitt. Vicki Christina Barcelona was a contender until we watched the trailer for it and hated it. So finally, we decided on Ghost Town because a) the trailer was funny, and b) so is Ricky Gervais.
It ended up being the kind of enjoyable, forgettable rom-com stuff that’s perfect for a date night. A little uneven at times, but frequently hilarious, too. Well worth the two hours and $20.
Being out of practice on the whole “going out” thing, we didn’t make dinner reservations and were consequently turned away at the first three restaurants we tried in Beverly. We had better luck in Salem, where we managed to get a table at an upscale Italian place called The Grapevine. The food was decent (I had pumpkin raviolis), we drank a half-bottle of Savignon Blanc, and I questioned the waitress’ assertion that the wild boar tenderloin on the menu was actually “wild” since the boar was apparently raised on a farm in Canada. She responded with all the confidence of John McCain and Barack Obama discussing the economic crisis (which is to say, not much), but we moved on and had a pleasant dinner with refreshingly adult conversation.
Yesterday my dad and I went to the Patriots-Dolphins game at Foxboro. I bought him the tickets for his 60th 39th birthday, and we had a great time despite seeing the Patriots get obliterated by a team that went 1-15 last year and started this season 0-2. The weather was nice, anyway, and our seats were on the 50-yard-line. (About a mile from the field, but on the 50-yard-line nevertheless.) The Brady-less Patriots don’t look very good, but any time I can watch the game with my dad it’s a good time.
Before it completely fades from the national consciousness, I want to point out one thing about this whole “Spygate” nonsense that no one else wants to discuss: namely, just how widespread the illegal video taping practices may have been throughout the league. In his recent interview with the New York Times, former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh shared this little tidbit of information:
There was one time that I was filming and another team had set up their third video guy right next to me in our stadium. And when our team was on defense, I looked over at him, and he was angling his camera toward our sideline. I didn’t ask him about it, because I was doing the same thing he was. But after the game, I went and told Romeo Crennel, “The next time we play this team, you may want to change your signals, because I think they’re doing to us what we do to them.”
Catch that? They’re doing to us what we do to them. Shocker! the Patriots weren’t the only ones doing it. Now, call me crazy but if I’m a New York Times reporter and Matt Walsh lays that on me, my next question is probably about the identity of that other team. Where’s the follow up? It never comes, because everyone already knows that everyone else was doing it.
You wanna say the Patriots broke the rules? Fine. It happened. They did it, they got caught, they got punished. End of story. Or so you’d think. Instead everyone outside of New England has taken on this ridiculous holier-than-thou attitude about it, as if their teams are beyond reproach.
And that’s fine. You can take that stance, as long as you’re not a fan of:
1. The Miami Dolphins, who in December 2006 purchased audio tapes of the Patriots offensive play calls and then used those tapes to pick up quarterback Tom Brady’s cadence and audible calls so they could scheme their blitz packages around his protection calls and pick up his audibles. Where’s the outrage of over audiogate?
2. The Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers of the 1980s, who cheated the NFL’s salary cap structure in order to get Steve Young, Brent Jones, Lee Woodall, and Jim Druckenmiller under contract. Think those players made a difference?
3. The Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos of the 1990s, who also circumvented the salary cap between 1996 and 1998 in order to keep superstars John Elway and Terrell Davis under contract. With those two players leading the way, the Broncos won two championships. I demand an asterisk!
4. The Carolina Panthers, who had three key members of its 2004 squad get nailed for steroids within two weeks of their Super Bowl appearance—against the Patriots, no less!
5. The mystery team identified by Matt Walsh as also violating the league’s video taping rules. Hey, sports fans—you 100 percent sure it wasn’t your team?
Point is, everyone’s doing something in the NFL. The Patriots got caught and paid the price. That ought to be the end of it.
A day later and the Super Bowl loss still stings. If sports are supposed to be a form of escapism, what do you do when you want to escape from sports? Me, I go into media blackout mode. No sports radio, no ESPN, no newspapers, no websites. Nothing. The last thing I want to do is spend the next week or two listening to a bunch of talking heads spouting off about about something I would really rather just forget.
Huh. I guess that’s why the play the games. Disappointing? Yeah, it sucks. But I’ve lived through worse. And in the end, the Giants were a scrappy, never-say-die team that reminded me an awful lot of another underdog Super Bowl champ. You win some, you lose some, and pitchers and catchers report to spring training in 12 days.
The question isn’t whether or not the Patriots will win today. The question is, by how much? So, for the record, here are my family’s predictions:
1. Moondoggie: 38-17, Patriots
2. Tigerlily: 21-10, Patriots
3. Captain Cuddles: 3-1, Patriots (he’s still learning the rules)
4. Me: 38-24, Patriots
I think the Giants will keep it close until about midway through the 3rd quarter, at which point the Pats will start to pull away. America’s annoying little brother, Eli Manning, will lead the Giants to a garbage time TD or two.
Did I call it or what? The New England Patriots Invitational Football Tournament rolls on! The surprise is not that the Pats will be there in Super Bowl XXXXII, but that they’ll be playing the New York Giants. What more evidence do we need that the NFC is a thoroughly mediocre conference?
Anyway, yesterday Ethan, Penny, and I bundled up and headed north to Rowley to watch the game on my dad’s 52-inch TV. Our 40-inch screen is nice, but sometimes you just need a really BIG screen, right?
There’s something about watching football with my dad. It’s a much… LOUDER… experience. Touchdowns become TOUCH-DOOOOWWWWWNS! Fumbles become FUMMMM-BBBLES!!!!! And it’s amazing how we yell these things together at the same exact volume and instant it happens. This can only be achieved by years and years and years of football-watching together (although when I was a kid the Patriots were terrible so we didn’t get as much practice with the touchdown-yelling). It just proves that when it comes to football, I am definitely my father’s son. And it will be my pleasure to bring Ethan up the same way.
TOUCH-DOOOOWWWWWN!!
Rather than doing the usual New Year’s resolutions thing I thought I’d start 2008 off with a list of things I’m excited about seeing or doing in the year ahead. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s a start.
So, in no particular order:
1. Ethan’s first birthday. In just a few short months my little boy will be a year old. Holy crap. I know it’s a cliche to say I can’t believe how quickly time flies, but seriously—I can’t believe how quickly time flies!
2. The New England Patriots Invitational Tournament. Also known as the NFL Playoffs, this is where the Patriots invite three vastly inferior teams to be their personal punching bags en route to capturing yet another Lombardi Trophy and, oh yeah, a perfect season. Bring it on!
3. Getting healthy. That means working like hell on my physical therapy and doing the other things—eating well, exercizing every day, and just generally taking better care of myself—that are actually in my control. Hopefully my body will respond after being put through the ringer this past year and a half.
4. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Obviously.
5. Easter Island. Health permitting, I’ll be traveling to Easter Island this March for my first foray into freelance travel writing since 2005’s cover story on Skellig Michael for the Boston Sunday Globe. Pretty exciting.
6. Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The Spidey comics go from monthly to three times a month starting next Wednesday. Thanks to the new status quo, this is as excited as I’ve been for a comic book in a long time.
7. Creating… something. Is this the year I finally make headway on either Rise of the Hidden Sun or one of my two major writing projects? I dunno, but I plan to pick one and run with it.
8. New TV shows. Even though the writers’ strike is still full-speed-ahead, there are two new shows I’m really looking forward to in ‘08: Jericho (returning from the dead for seven all-new episodes!) and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (which, admittedly, has the potential to suck, but hope springs eternal).
9. The Red Sox in Japan. Yes, I think it’s stupid that the Sox are opening their title defense in frickin’ Asia of all places, but I do still think it’ll be kinda cool to see them play in Tokyo—if only to see what Don and Jerry have to say about it.
10. Climbing a mountain. I don’t care which mountain. I just want to get out there and hike again. Which brings me back to # 3: MUST. GET. HEALTHY!
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