CALL ME SNAKE

Pack your bags, Patriots fans. (And that includes snack bags, potato chip bags, donut bags, what have you, if you chose to watch the game from the comfort of your own home.) I'm getting ready for Jacksonville. For, you guessed it, Super Bowl #_____??? (Never was good at Roman Numerals. Can anyone help me out here?) It's never easy getting into the Super Bowl, mind you. But this time I earned it the old-fashioned way, the hard way--watching on TV, what else? It can be grueling, at times, with nothing to relieve that mind-numbing tension but an endless assortment of snacks and junk food and the occasional nap. Then there are all those sleepless nights, pre- and post-game, as you endlessly review plays in your head, including those yet to be played. Training is tough, to be sure, but nothing matches the challenges of game day itself. It's not easy to stay glued to the TV set, for hours on end, while the rest of your house is going down the tubes. I can't tell you how many times I was tempted to drop what I was doing and help out one of my screaming kids, possibly seriously maimed, but I stuck to my resolve, never for a second turning away from my 32" HD screen. I successfully blocked out the rest of the world, including my wife's constant entreaties ("I need some help here!") and kept my eyes on the prize, in this case the AFC Championship. I don't know about you, but I've earned my trip to Jacksonville. There's much work to be done, of course, before the big day. The Pats will have their practices--the usual head-bashing stuff, combined with their video workouts, scouting reports&whatnot--but I'll be even busier, getting together all the things needed to make Super Sunday a huge success. There are the beverages, the condiments, and the little touches--Patriot napkins and autographed paper plates--that make all the difference. Come February 6, I'll be ready. I'll have my A-game. Let's just hope my team can play up to the impossibly high standards I've set.

After panic had hit Boston--the dirty bomb scare sending schoolchildren ducking and covering under their desks for weeks on end--it now looks like it was all a ruse. False alarm. Close, but no cigar. Surprising it amounted to nothing, given the credibility of the source--a smuggler trafficking in human cargo across the U.S.-Mexican border. Which brings us to the sad truth: If our smugglers are now letting us down, who can you believe anymore? What ever happened to good old-fashioned trust? These are truly questions for our times, and for once I have no answers. All I can say is that this time around, anyways, we seem to have averted the latest dirty bomb threat here in Beantown. Which comes as quite a relief to yours truly, among others in the group of paranoid people I consort with. Now all we have to worry about are those clean bombs.

Hello. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm the "Person of the Year." Actually, it would be more accurate to call me the "People of the Year" or, technically, one of the "People of the Year." You see on December 30, 2004, ABC News announced that "Bloggers are among 'World News Tonight's' People of the Year." That means me. And maybe you. And maybe the 8 to 10 million other people riding on our coat-tails. I realize my contributions in this area are rather scant compared to the top-Google-rated, A-list bloggers. Truth be told, I'm not an actual, bonafide, full-fledged blogger by any stretch of the imagination. I learned this all too well last weekend at a blogging conference at Harvard University that was populated by a few actual, bonafide, full-fledger bloggers--the kind of people who are convinced they are going to change the world on the strength of the revolutionary new medium they are helping to create. I have no such illusions. I'm not a religious man, but if I were, I'd pray to god (sorry, I have a hard time capitalizing that word) that my blog does not change the world. In any event, some of the bigwigs at this conference let me know, in no uncertain terms, that they knew bloggers. Some of their best friends were bloggers. And I (yours truly, that is) am no blogger. OK, I get their point. Loud and clear. They can change the world all they want. And I won't stand in the way. But the facts are clear, just a keystroke away: I posted my first blog nearly a month before ABC News gave this award (perhaps on the strength of my entries. Who knows?). The point I'm trying to make is that I paid my dues, for several hard weeks, dealing with the bugs and software problems that are inevitable in any system still in beta testing. So now, if you don't mind, I'm just going to enjoy this for a little while. Savor it. Take it in. I may not get that Nobel Prize I've always counted on. Perhaps not even the Genius Grant I've considered myself a shoe-in (sp???) for. Maybe, for this humble narrator, "Person of the Year" is as good as it gets. If so, I'm your man. I'll take my 15 minutes and leave quietly. Don't worry. I'll let myself out the back door without disturbing a soul.

As is well known to 49.7 percent of this nation, our president has a hard time admitting an error. During the debates last fall, the only mistake he owned up to was being "too perfect." Perhaps he's right. Maybe that is his only fault. But my eyes, riddled as they are with blepharitis, see things differently. I don't see "dead people." But I do see errors of judgment, omission, commission, fact, folly, and jurisprudence. Thus it came as a great relief to me when last week our true leader, El Jefe, otherwise known as the Veep, the Dick, or Haliburton's best friend, decided to fess up to a little booboo--a bit of a "miscalculation," as he put it. Yes, Cheney admitted, we "overestimated" the pace of recovery in Iraq. (Can a pace have a negative sign? How do you define "recovery"? And what do you mean by "is"?) But he said, it wasn't our fault. We just didn't realize how bad Saddam Hussein was until we rescued him from that poor excuse for a rathole we found him curled up in. Saddam left the country in a worse mess than we could have ever known about until we liberated him. So, yes, the administration did make a mistake (if you want to be a nitpicker about it). But their only mistake was in not realizing how bad that evil madman of a fiend of a travesty of a mockery of a delusion truly was. That comes as a shock to me. Because for years I'd heard he was the devil incarnate himself. I thought that was supposed to be pretty bad, though I admit to not being as experienced with the devil as the men in the White House. But now our enlightened leaders tell us Hussein was far worse than that. The devil incarnate is not the half of it. And, when you get down to it, our mistake is really his mistake. Call it a "Hea Culpa."

I was flipping through the channels the other day, testing some of the nifty features on my new remote. For a minute, I watched a PBS documentary on Osama bin Laden. One of his acquaintances--a schoolday chum, I believe--recalled that "he was a shy man..." And I realized, for the first time, that I had something in common with that highly sought after ("dead-or-alive"), though introverted, individual. (Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, was another "shy man." In the end, I suppose, it comes down to how you choose to express that shyness.) Unlike me, bin Laden is sometimes described as "overly zealous." That's something I've never been accused of. He also appears to have some "anger management" issues. Too bad he didn't take up blogging. Many people find it a useful way to vent the little frustrations in life that might otherwise build up, leading to attacks on the Twin Towers and the like...

--So what'll it be, the usual? --Yeah, why not? --See the Pats? --Now that was a meaningless game. --True, but it's always good to hit the playoffs with a "W" under the belt. How was New Year's? --Got off to a bad start. Took the kids to the fireworks, the early show. But when we got to Park Street, a ton of people were coming down the steps. I knew we missed it. --So what'd you do? --Walked around the Common, through all the slush and puddles, feeling like a chump. --That's no way to rain in the New Year. Say, I've always wondered, how you spell that: r-a-i-n? --Got me. I never won any spelling bees. Ya know how to spell ophthalmology? --No, but I'm looking into laser surgery. My cataracts are cataracting up. --That's a good one. Like my GI guy said: Quit your bellyachin'. --Reminds me of the time my chiropractor called me "maladjusted." --Ease up. You're slayin' me. --So how's that in back? Followed the natural line... You don't want it tapered, do ya? --No, that's fine. It's funny, I'm already feeling a little better about things. Maybe 2005 won't be so bad after all. --That's the spirit. We're only a couple of days in. Things could take a turn... --Yeah, maybe... We've got a nut job in the White House, a mess in Iraq, and those damn tidal waves. But at least we have a.... Uh..., uh... Help me out. I'm dyin' here... --A, uh..., good head o' hair? --Thanks, I needed a little boost. Is it still receeding? --A little. Not bad. --And not too gray? --Nah... Looks distinguished. --I hate that word. Sounds like a euphemism. --You mean like "military intelligence." --No, that's an oxymoron. --Heh, watch your language. --Heh, watch your razor. --Tell you what. Let's just relax a couple of minutes. Take a little break. --No talkin'? --Yeah. For a minute... --OK. Can I say something? --In a sec... All right. How're the sideburns? Half inch up, straight across... --Fine. So what do you think of Boy Wonder's latest moves? --Theo's smart. No question But I'll tell ya' one thing: He's not bringing Ted Williams back. --Not unless he's got a good defroster. But honestly, I'm a little worried. We lost Pedro, Lowe. Is Manny next? Meanwhile the Yanks get Johnson, Pavano, and maybe Beltran... --Why does everybody keep on about the Yankees? We won the damn thing, for Chrissake! --But we gotta talk about the Yankees. Who else we gonna hate so good? --How 'bout we focus on football, for now. Worry about the spring later. --Whaddaya saying, coach? Take one season at a time? --Yeah, one season at a time. That'll be $13. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Nadis can be found on his usual stool at the Central Barber Shop.