today the red sox swept the yankees in the bronx and the flyers took a 2-0 lead on the maple leafs while proving that they finally have a goalie who can steal games for them. open the window...do you smell sulfur?

this weekend was relaxing. i accomplished none of the things I needed to, but there's always next weekend. Actually, there isn't...next weekend I will be setting up a second home at the Ballpark, as I have tickets to all three red sox/rangers games. i wonder what the odds are on getting johnny damon to give me a birthday kiss. i mean autograph. birthday autograph. right.

last night we went to denton to see I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness at Hailey's. There were hardly any people there, which was surprising for a saturday night in a college town. but it was a good show, and I finally got to see them play We Are The Weaker Sex live. that song makes me so incredibly happy..

these are things i would buy if i had the money....

subscription to mcsweeney's
air - talkie walkie
jesus and mary chain - 21 singles
wet hot american summer (dvd)
tivo
subscription to the believer

in totally unrelated news, my birthday is next sunday. i'll be 25, which is really just halfway to 50. why do I have such issues with growing up?

so pat tillman was killed in combat in afghanistan yesterday. it's on the front page of every paper, the top story on every newscast...the guy who was a hero because he gave up a three million dollar contract with the Arizona Cardinals to join the Service.


Gee, and all the other hundreds of other fallen soldiers gave up were their futures.

I meant to type up a long, detailed account of how amazing the cayman island trip was, but truth is - I haven't had the energy to do it since we returned. i'll just say that it was one of - if not the - best vacation I've ever been on. Highlights were stingray city (standing in the middle of the ocean, in water completely clear and perfectly warm, drinking a beer while stingrays swam by my legs), getting to spend time with long distance friends, spending entire days on a boat in the middle of a beautiful blue ocean, and snorkeling, which is one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life. The moment I remember most was on the last day of the trip...our boat was docked at one of the most beautiful spots in the ocean, I had just gone for a swim in the ocean and was drying off in the sun, drinking a fruity drink...ocean breathes salty was blasting on the boat stereo, and I was the most relaxed that i can ever remember being. it was perfection.


here's how a jew spends Easter on the cayman islands.....


straight to hell, i know.

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yesterday i passed up the chance of a lifetime to watch a hockey game that ended up being less than thrilling, so i can't help but wonder if i made the right choice. allow me to explain...

at least 2-5 times a month, our friends gather for late night games of trivial pursuit. 1st edition, 20th century, interactive DVD trivial pursuit..doesn't matter which edition...we play them all. i feel fairly confident in my ability to handle questions in the sports/entertainment/literature categories...but sadly, that's where it ends. I was always taught that its better to guess than to just give up, which is why i am happy to throw out mr mario van peebles as my answer to somewhere between 5-25 trivial pursuit questions per game. so when it came to my attention that the one and only mario van peebles was appearing right here in dallas, i knew i had to be there. i wanted to meet Van Peebs (my pet name, of sorts) face to face and pay him the ultimate compliment - "you are my default trivial pursuit answer..nice to meet you." but hockey won out, and i'll never know what MVP's reaction might have been.

speaking of hockey...flyers vs maple leafs. this is going to get ugly...

finally.

johnny damon on his reaction to A-Rod signing with the Yankees:


"I was shocked. He signed to play with the Devil."


yankees vs red sox. tonight at 7pm. it's on.

cayman island recap coming later...i need time to get all my pictures resized and my thoughts together. but in the meantime, chris has some pictures on his blog. a teaser, if you will.....

more importantly, the flyers blanked the dEVILs tonight 3-0 to go up 3-1 in the series. it was a tremendous hockey game, and reminded me why playoff hockey is the greatest thing ever. i also wish this game were required viewing for everyone who has ever told me that keith primeau was a worthless player. that guy is the heart and soul of this team, and tonight he did everything perfectly. he was all over the ice, finishing checks and looking like anything but a guy who just missed 20 games with a severe concussion. if he and esche are not the best two players out on the ice every game, this team will not win.

so it feels somewhat comforting to hold a 3-1 lead over the devils, but one can't help but think back to 2000, the darkest spring in recent memory. the flyers held a 3-1 lead over the devils in the conference finals and went on to lose the remaining three games (2 of which were in philly), scoring a total of three goals to the devils' eight. but something feels different. this is not that same philly team. this is not a team built around eric lindros, who spent that entire 2000 playoff series floating in and out of the lineup and consciousness. this is the strongest flyers team I can remember watching, and esche is so reminiscient of a young ron hextall, it's frightening. I know what you're thinking, and no - I'm not stupid enough to jinx my team again. so i'll stop right here.

but I can't wait for saturday's game.

one more hockey note...i love that detroit is panicking in the first round. any city cocky enough to call themselves Hockeytown should have to endure a lifetime of 1st round playoff exits. go nashville.

so apparently, i get NESN. i got it tonight, at least, and i got to watch the last few innings of the red sox beat the orioles 10-3. while i didn't get home in time to see any of the sox offense, i did get to see some nice defensive plays, including johnny damon steal a homerun. i have apparently not learned my lesson, because I'm going to go ahead and say that I feel really good about this baseball team. (though i really do miss todd walker). but some things make me feel better about that...like curt shilling in a sox uniform:



more importantly, i finally got to see the dunkin donuts curt shilling commercial. that is some genius right there. and i also got to see old favorites like bernie and phyls (quality, comfort, and price - that's nice!) and foxwoods.

baseball season makes me miss the shit out of boston.

tomorrow morning (4am wakeup?!?) I'm off to the cayman islands. i only worked three days this week, but it was so stressful, it felt like 10. i sometimes wonder if people are born assholes and destined for a job in sales or if a sales job can turn even the nicest person into an absolute douchebag.

everyone have a good weekend. go flyers. and ill return on tuesday.

nerdy sports talk. please forgive me.

april means three things: warm weather, the return of baseball, and the most important of all: nhl playoffs. so of course, it's only natural that I associate april with heartbreak.

its hard to believe the regular season has already come to an end. let's go back in time to a couple of weeks ago. the flyers played a tremendous game against the ottawa senators and were one point out of first place in the entire eastern conference. the next night, lost in silly naive fandom, i admitted that for the first time in a loooong time, I thought the Flyers truly had a good chance to bring home a Cup. and then, in true philly style, they forgot how to play hockey and here they are, seeded third, two days away from opening the playoffs against the fucking New Jersey Devils, of all teams. the devils! the stanley cup champs. the one team that the flyers have never been able to eliminate. it's laughable, really, and completely typical. if you're from philly, that is.

i'd love to come out and say that despite all of the history between these two teams and the current play of robert esche, i think the flyers have a great chance of winning this series. but i know what happened last time I said something like that, so this time I'll just keep my mouth shut. but i DO think it's safe to say that if they can revive their power play, remember how to kill a penalty, figure out how to forecheck scott neidermeyer, and quit letting in long distance goals, good things will happen this spring.

so i'll be on an island during the first three games of the series, making those the first three flyers playoff games I've ever missed in 24 years. there's a sports bar down the beach from the condo we're staying in, so I'm already planning on spending a large portion of my vacation in there. how many girls would spend their time at the cayman islands in a sports bar watching playoff hockey?

in other nerdy-girl news, it was so nice to see the sox on sunday night. granted, they lost (badly, at that) but I saw some things in that game that made me incredibly excited for this season. once pedro got past his atrocious second inning, he looked strong. nice bats from manny, mueller, and my fellow jew, gabe kapler. an amazing defensive play from pokey reese, who, if that is any indication, will have a killer year. shilling is pitching in his first game as i type, and it kills me that i can't see it. what does a girl have to do to get NESN in texas? (sox are up 3-0 in the 5th, by the way). so those are the good things. on the downside, they left something like 321 runners on base (or maybe 12) and hit into more than enough double plays. like just october. and then there's johnny damon. i suppose bill simmons said it best...

If the Sox lose out on another World Series with Christ playing center field, it's clearly not happening in my lifetime.

end nerdiness.

oh, and the pixies announced they're coming to austin on september 18th. im so there.

prince - shhh

even as a little girl, i loved music. my parents have huge record collections, and my dad gave me my very first turntable at a young age. my parents are thrilled that I grew up to love music as much as they do, which is why they still love to tease me about the phase I went through when I was four years old. In 1984, you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing Prince. So naturally, I was drawn to the song any small child would love...a song about cars and horses.

I guess I must be dumb
’cuz u had a pocket full of horses
Trojan and some of them used

I walked around singing little red corvette out loud - in public - for weeks. I wish i could remember how old I was when I finally figured out that prince was not singing about a car and a farm.

so after all this time, i finally got to see prince in concert last night. i said this before the show, but now i can say it with much more conviction...prince is the sexiest man alive.

the crowd was fasinating. 95% of the women were dressed like total whores in hopes of ending up in bed with prince. 95% of the men were pimped out to the nines, hoping for prince's leftovers. i spent most of the show wondering just how many women he sleeps with each night on tour, until eventually the number got so high my head nearly exploded.

anyway, he played a lot of the hits, but he's got so many that there's always going to be some he leaves out. highlights were I Would Die 4 U/When Doves Cry medley, Nothing Comapres To You, Take Me With You, Purple Rain, 7, Shhh, Let's Go Crazy, Kiss, and an acoustic solo rendition of Little Red Corvette.

I wanna whisper music in your ear
That'll rock your, rock your, rock your world
What's my name, baby?
tonight I'll teach you baby, teach you baby, teach you baby
to scream it and scream it and scream it and scream it!

yeah....i would have gone home with prince last night.

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new outkast video for Roses. i love me some andre 3000

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tonight is Air at NextStage. I mean NokiaLive. I love big money sponsorships.