LyfLines: Odds and ends...

Been a dry couple of weeks, obviously. I've just started an MBA program and am starting a new job next week, so that may continue, but I'm going to try to get something up several times a week at least. Today there are some odds and ends:

Yesterday, Joe Biden's mouth outran his brain. Again.
I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.

Look, there's just no point in parsing that comment, or trying to explain or excuse it. It's dumb, but there are a couple of points that need be made. The first is, yet again, the incredible and appalling double standard in the national press. Everyone remembers Trent Lott being hounded out of the Majority Leader's post for a comment more innocuous than that. But Lott's a Republican, Biden's a Democrat, and the press does not go after Democrats the way that they go after Republican's. Period. It isn't even debatable.

And secondly, if Joe Biden thinks he's going to be President of the United States, or even the Democratic nominee for the Presidency, or even one of the top 4 competitors for the Democratic nomination, he's got to be the only one who does. What a waste of time - his, his supporters', the people who cover him, the people who end up watching the coverage...

Columnist Molly Ivins has died at age 62. I haven't read the obituary, but the headline to the on-line obituary in the Boston Globe refers to her "rapier wit." De mortuis nil nisi bonum, but I've never read a wit less like a rapier and more like a sledge-hammer than Ivins'.

I was at the ski slope with the kids yesterday morning, came home in the early afternoon without the radio on, never turned on the news or did any local site browsing yesterday. I discovered this morning that there was chaos in Boston, due to the appearance around the city of lite-brites with batteries to power them. The police didn't know what they were, the anti-terrorism forces kicked in, there was traffic hell as the highways were shut down, and someone is facing 5 years in jail for spreading images of a cartoon character around the city. There are big articles in the local papers about how there's a certain generation that recognizes the characters, but the people in charge don't. The funny thing is, I've never seen the show and know nothing about it, but I recognized the character as soon as I saw a picture of one of the "devices," because there's been a freakin' billboard facing the lower-deck of I-93 in Somerville with this character on it for months now. That's within a couple of hundred yards of where the bomb squad first came out, shut down the highway for two hours, and blasted the lite-brite apart with the water cannon. Has no one in the Boston city government ever driven into the city from Somerville on 93?

Since the Patriots beat San Diego on the 14th, they're 0-1. The Bruins, over that stretch, are 2-5, and have been outscored 31-14. They're currently riding a 4 game losing streak in which they've been outscored 19-3. The Celtics have been battered by injury - they've lost 9 in a row, running their club-record losing streak to 13 straight.

Eliot said that April was the cruelest month, but Boston sports fans aren't having much fun with this January...

The Sox finalized the JD Drew deal. This is a good thing. There's not a better 3-4-5 in baseball than Ortiz-Ramirez-Drew. This is going to be an excellent team again.