Red Sox tickets went on sale this morning. But don't worry, you haven't missed your chance.

When I checked my email this afternoon I found one from redsox.com, telling me that 2012 Sox tickets went on sale at 10 am this morning.  Not the whole season, but 20 different games in April and May.  So I clicked on the link to see what was available, and the answer was EVERYTHING.  Every game.  Every section.  If you've bought Red Sox tickets online before you know about the "virtual waiting room."  Well, today there wasn't one.  Since the birth of "Red Sox Nation" and the dawn of the "pink hat" era in the early 2000's, this is easily the lowest level of interest I have every seen.  The fact that I didn't even know they were going on sale today is pretty telling in itself.

And for the record, I didn't buy any.  Tickets for the best day of the year, Marathon Monday 4/16, are not yet on sale.  Also, it's pretty weird that 2 of the last 3 blogs I have written have included maps for pictures.

I think the world would be a better place without escalators

Standing on escalators is the epitome of lazy.  It's not like they move fast.  They get you to the top so slowly that it blows my mind people don't always walk up them just out of sheer impatience.  Part of the reason I wrote about avoiding the mall at all costs this holiday season was because of my hatred for escalator traffic jams.  Even the polite people who move to the side and let you pass still irritate me.  Why aren't they walking?  Some of these non-walkers also drive fast and honk their horns at slow drivers in front of them.  And I'm sure there's even some people who stand still on escalators while on the way to the gym to work out on a StairMaster.

Maybe at the end of a long day if you're tired and in no rush I could envision someone possibly not having enough energy to walk up a bunch of stairs.  But what about going DOWN?  There is no reason anyone should under any circumstances stand still on a down escalator.  Ever.  If there were no escalators and only stairs people would be in better shape.  Other people who think like me would be able to avoid a lot of unnecessary aggravation from the standing traffic blockers.  And all the people who are too lazy to walk up the stairs could just stay home.

The new Big East is a Big Joke

In all sports on all levels, High School, College, and Professional, teams are grouped together in divisions, leagues, conferences, etc.  And the one and only reason for this is geography.  Teams play other teams nearby.  It's just the way it works.  Except in the new world of College Football (which in turn is messing up all the other college sports), where the only thing that matters is money from television and Bowl games.  Schools are constantly moving to bigger and better conferences to try to increase their potential earnings.  So in turn the conferences they have left behind scramble to pilfer whoever they can from even smaller leagues.  It's complete chaos.  And it's brought us to this:

Those are all the states that will have teams competing in the new "Big East" conference; with the news this week that SMU, San Diego St, Houston, Boise St, and Central Florida are joining the league.  I can't wait to someday have this conversation with one of my buddies in NYC:

"Hey, want to go to a Big East Tournament game at Madison Square Garden?"

"Yeah, Definitely!  Who can we see?  Syracuse-Georgetown?  St. Johns-Villanova?  UConn-Providence?"

"Um no, sorry.  It's Houston vs. Central Florida."

The NCAA needs to blow it all up and start over.  Obviously that's not possible, but if conferences are not based at least primarily on the location of the schools, there is no reason for them to exist.  

I wish New Year's Day was the first day of Spring

I went to a Christmas party the other night, and despite the fact that it was 60 degrees out in Boston yesterday, winter is coming.  Soon.  There are some things I like about winter, but cold weather isn't one of them.  I like seeing it snow a few times a year, and it's definitely nice to have for Christmas.  But after New Years Eve, there's nothing left about winter that's any good.  It just drags on and on.  And on.  In my perfect world you'd wake up on the morning of January 1st, and it would be Spring.  It just makes sense, doesn't it?  Sunshine, warm weather, flowers blooming, it'd be a great start to the new year.  Then Spring could last through March, we could have an awesome 5 month summer starting in April, and Fall could still come at the regular time.  How great would that be?  I've lived in a lot of places all over the country: east coast, west coast, north, south, even some in between; but I've never found the ideal climate.  I know it doesn't exist, but at least I can dream, right?

The Bruins are making it very hard to ignore regular season hockey

They had a near perfect month of November.  They are 14-0-1 in their last 15 games, and just one random shootout goal away from being undefeated in the last 38 days.  They are running away with the Northeast Division, and have absolutely owned Toronto, the 2nd place team.  They've beaten them 4 times already by a combined score of 23-6.  And last night the Bruins went into Pittsburgh and easily handled the Penguins (the one team many experts claim is better than Boston), winning 3-1.  But the most impressive stat of all is their goal differential (yeah, it's kind of weird that I also wrote about scoring differential yesterday, but I think it's a very telling statistic in sports that people generally don't pay enough attention to).  The Bruins have outscored their opponents by 36 goals this season, which is 17 more than the Red Wings, who rank 2nd in the NHL at +19.  The fact that that number is 89% better than the second best is absolutely ridiculous.  I've said many times before that I'm not a big hockey fan, but right now the B's are impossible to ignore.

Tebometer Monday

Yesterday Tim Tebow completed 10 of 15 passes, which raised his career completion rate to 48.3%, up from 47.1% last week.  Denver is now in first place in the AFC West at 7-5.  Yet somehow for the season their opponents have outscored them by 36 points (in fact the AFC West team with the best point differential is in last place in the division, San Diego at -26).  Of the Broncos' 7 wins, 6 of them are by a touchdown or less.  5 of them are by 4 points or less.  They have won two games in overtime (both times by 3), and three others by 2, 3, and 4 points respectively.  The fact that they keep winning absolutely defies logic.  And for somebody who has a pretty healthy respect for logic, it's infuriating.  I give up.  I don't know what else to say.

Mark your calenders: in two weeks the Denver Tebows host New England.  Sunday, December 18th, 4:15 pm. The Armageddon of regular season NFL games.

The Citibank rock climbing commercial looks scary as hell

I once did a ropes course where I had to climb a telephone pole and then stand on top of it, which was basically a much easier version of what is going on here.  And that was pretty scary.  But here's the big difference: I was hooked up to a rope ABOVE me.  If I fell off I wasn't going anywhere, I would have just dangled there in mid air.  As far as I can tell, when this girl gets to the top of that thing her rope is attached somewhere down below, near where her boyfriend is.  If she slips she's going to fall like 15-20 feet and smash into the rock.  I don't get how that is safe.  If any rock climbers out there read this and have some insight, please help me out.

The other reason I'm writing this blog is because the song in the background has been stuck in my head lately.  In case you care, it's by some lady named "L.P." and it's called Into the Wild.