"Happy Christmas!" Diminishes the Holiday

Just got back from a few days on business in London and Dublin. Both cities were festively decorated for the holidays - albeit some of the pub owners in Dublin were just putting up their Christmas decorations (a good 3 weeks after T-Giving). It provided me a laugh as I witnessed. -- Rumour here in CT was that Keith Richards who has a house in Weston CT busted up his collarbone a few years back cleaning out his gutters -- that is exactly what I was thinking when I saw this pub owner trying to put up some Xmas lights across the front of his pub -- tettering on a rickety ladder with cigarette in mouth and a bunch of the lads from the pub - pints in hand - giving pointers on how it should be done but offering no physical assistance.

London and Dubin still lag behind NY and the US catering to the retail shoppers by shutting down their stores around 6pm with a 7:30pm close on Thursdays. At night in both cities (I guess more so in Dublin) I saw tons of folks out on the town in their finery going from their company's Christmas party to their local pub in all states of inebriation. They all wished each other and sometimes to strangers on the streets "Happy Christmas!!" It struck a wrong chord to my American ear each time. Yes, we, Americans use the "Merry Christmas" over the "Happy Christmas" but think about the fact that "Merry Christmas" is all over the place in English writer Charles Dicken's Christmas Carol especially when Scrooge comes out of his hallucingenic dream while the American poem by Clement C. Moore "A Visit By St. Nick.. (Twas the Night before Christmas) ends with a "Happy Christmas to all" --- hmmm. I think after awhile of hearing this "Happy Christmas" stuff - it sounded wrong not only because I've grown up to use the "Merry" but the "Happy" seemed to diminish the holiday.

Face it - irregardless of your religious beliefs- Christmas is the Mac-Daddy of holidays - hey, I am Catholic but I honestly dont really feel that the baby born to Joseph and Mary was really God on Earth -but still Christmas is a big deal to me maybe not for the right reasons or maybe it is the right reasons of a time to be joyous and be with family and friends. So this holiday deserves its own specialized greeting like good ole "Merry" --- "Happy" seems so ordinary -- you have "Happy New Year", "Happy Birthday", "Happy Thanksgiving" , "Happy Halloween", "Happy Anniversery", even over the course of a few years I've heard "Happy 4th of July" and "Happy Groundshog Day". Christmas can't be lumped in with these ordinary and regular occassions - so lets give it the respect and admiration it deserves --- so "may all of your Christmases be Merry..."

Tony Romo is Washed-Up

Attention fans of America's Team -- it's official -- Tony Romo is Washed-Up. Forget his pitful play against the Egg-les this past Sunday. He is Washed-Up because he is dating Jessica Simpson and sweet Jess is mostly known for romancing Washed-Up celebs. Lets look at her roster:

- Nick Lachey: Lachey was already 2 years removed from singing in a 3rd-Tier boy band, 98 Degrees, when Jess got a hold of him.

- John Mayer: Jessica dated him about a year after everyone figured out already his music was crap.

- Dane Cook: Very funny dude but his agent is awful because the movies he has been in are unwatchable so he will soon be back making a couple of hundred bucks a night doing stand-up at someplace invariabily called Giggles in some strip-mall. Smells like a washed-Up career to me.

- Romo -- 13 for 36 with 3 picks and allowing to get sacked 4 times -- "Acid-Wash"ed-Up

Have A Mark David Chapman Christmas!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/getaways/12/04/nyc.christmas.ap/index.html

CNN Travel outlining how you can follow the footsteps of Holden Caufield (in the book he is narratng the story from the looney-bin ---- hmmm- Glad Tidings to All) for a tour of NY.

Suprised they didn't tell their web-readers to don some Kim Jong-ii glasses, clutch their dog-earred copy of Catcher in the Rye and menacingly stalk celebs coming out of the Dakota. Nice touch CNN - just in time to celebrate the 27th anniversery of John Lennon's death at the hand of that geek MDC. My guess only -- if WOR was showing a new episode of Star Trek on the night of December 8, 1980 instead of a re-run that nerd MDC would be glued to the TV and John Lennon would be writing jingles for Chevrolet 'bout now.

Do We All Want to Fail???

Last night I watched the WVU - Pitt football game and had an epiphany that Man (note the caps - I'm talking homo sapiens on a whole) wants to fail. Success and perfection is too much to handle. Remember that some olde-time English guy with flowing locks, Alexander Pope said "To Err is Human..." - right?

Last night I witnessed an implossion of WVU (11-1 before the game) as they played a falible Pitt (4-7) squad. The game had a lot more on the line for the WVU Mountaineers than just the bragging rights of the rivalry game that the folks in that region of the world call the "Backyard Brawl". WVU was playing for the right to play in the BCS National Championship game - a holy grail of sorts especially for a program that holds the record for number of victories for a school that has never won the National Championship.

West Virginia was not only expected to win but they were expected to roll over Pitt --- the boys in the sports-books in Vegas was giving Pitt 28+ points. But human nature took over the WVU team and coaching staff and I witnessed -
-- A team that averaged nearly 300 yards a game rushing was limited to just a tad over the century mark.
-- WVU dropping the ball 5 times including giving away the ball 3 times.

Yes, their Hesiman Trophy candidate QB was sidelined for a good deal of the game with a bum thumb but it seemed as if the rest of this mighty team forgot how to play.

They were destined to lose - they are men like me and you -- they feared success at the highest level and failed. I hate to pick on these WV hee-haws only -- as since the beginning of October -- 10 other times teamseither ranked #1 or #2 in the nation failed to maintain their rankings.

Think about this..
USC ranked #1 - loses to unranked Stanford
California ranked #2 - loses to unranked Oregon State
LSU ranked #1 - loses to Kentucky - a team that ended up 3-5 in the SEC
South Florida ranked #2 loses to unranked Rutgers
BC ranked #2 loses to unranked Florida State

Getting the picture....let me continue...

The Ohio State University ranked #1 - loses to unranked Illinois
Oregon ranked #2 loses to unranked Arizona

Want more? Here...

LSU ranked #1 loses to unranked Arkansas
Kansas ranked #2 faces its only opponent with a ranking in the top 20 and loses.

And also last night - we saw Missouri ranked #1 go down to the Sooners (although alot of us didn't think that was unexpected).

Here we had young men (the players) and mostly slightly older men (the coaches) faced with meeting the pinacle of their playing or coaching lives and just couldn't (by circumstance or by destiny (?)) on to it.

This isn't also something that just happened to occur this season in NCAA D-1 football - think about the 1972 Miami Dull-fins - that was the year Larry Csonka, Mercury Morris (I hate the Fish but think MM has one of the most bitchin' names ever) and the No-Name defense coasted 14-0 through the regular season. But we all know no season can be considered perfect without a Super Bowl victory which the Fish almost literally fumbled away. Do yourself a favor a get the NFL Films Slo-Mo clip of Garo Yupremian (the Dull-fins Cyprus-born kicker) trying to throw the ball after a botched field goal attempt - and you realize that absolutely no-one (or collection of people) are perfect. No-one wants to be.

Think about the following on how humans react when faced with ultimate success or responsibility.

-- Do you really think that Isiah Thomas wants to coach the 'Bockers - he might have thought it was cool at first - a good way to meet (and harass) the ladies -- but he like all of us asks himself everyday "Who needs this headache?"

--Do you think George W. Bush really wanted to win the presidency? He has always seemed to me be that kid that came to "Take Your Kid to Work Day" got lost during the tour.

--Did the people working on the Manhattan Project really want to develop a nuclear bomb?

--Did Pope John Paul I really want the papacy? He was the guy who lasted a little over a month until his ticker gave out.

-- Did the kid (who does the acting job of a lifetime playing a cool high school athelete - something he obviously wasnt in real life) in High School Musical really want the lead part in the play?

See ya' -- I need to go fail at something to avoid some overbearing responsibility.