SleepingPoliceman

6:10am: Greetings from the land of the rising sun. Or at least a couch in Brighton where the sun is rising. We’re about ready for the first pitch of the 2008 season. What better way to jump start the SP than a little half-awake live-blogging? Joe Blanton takes the mound to a decisive shrug of the Japanese faithful. Play ball!

6:12am: Pedroia hits a dribbler up the middle for the first hit of the season. Picking up where he left off and reaching across cultures, Dusty talks smack in Japanese all the way up the baseline.

6:16am: Manny flies out to end the first. NESN pretends that it’s not going to go to commercial to cover the historic moment of Dice-K taking the mound. Then they say, “Eh, whatever,” and start running the first of many, many Southwest ads of the year.

6:18am: It’s nice to see that the Sox have endured a 16 hour flight around the world to end up in the Asian version of the Tropicana Dome. It’s, uh, not the prettiest ballyard in the land. Or maybe it is…I don’t know. They could at least have looked to the SkyDome for inspiration, right? Or maybe included more neon and flashing lights.

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#1. boston.com: Woman’s odyssey to New York lands her at center of scandal

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the cast of characters go like this: soon-to-be-former-Governor Eliot Spitzer’s political career has crumbled around him because it was revealed that he utilized the services of a high-class escort service. Which people aren’t very down with, even though he was frugal enough to only go for the five diamond girls instead of the seven diamond ones (which cost a few grand more…fiscal responsibility, people!). As the media sharks have circled the story, they’ve honed in on the girl, who works under the name Kristen but lives under the name Ashley Alexandra Dupre. In digging around to find out more about her story (and as an excuse to run blurry MySpace photos of her while moralists and apologists alike secretly think about what she must look like naked and the sort of things she’s able to do to be worth $1,000 an hour), we’ve also been introduced to Carolyn Capalbo, the girl’s mother. While the mom is “shell-shocked” that her daughter is a whore, she still has a strong sense of belief in her girl:

“She is a very bright girl who can handle someone like the governor,” Capalbo said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Wow. It’s nice that you want to stand by and support your daughter, and stand up for her intelligence. But…you could maybe choose your words better. It’s bad enough your mom knows that you have handled a governor – does she have to talk about it to the wire services? Thanks, mom.

Side comment I: how humiliating must it be to be the wife of the famous politician who cheated on you and then had to hold a press conference admitting it? (Boston.com has a nice little photo gallery here.) They always have to stand there, trying to look supportive but not overly forgiving…and in the end, they just look shell-shocked with simmering rage. Sometimes it works out for you (like you can end up being a major-favorite candidate for president)…most of the time, though, it probably just sucks. If I was ever the politician in that situation, I’m pretty sure I’d be standing up there alone. “Uh, yeah, she couldn’t make it – she’s currently destroying all of my possessions and preparing what best way to mutilate my genitals when I get back home.”

Side comment II: did you ever think the day would come when the prestigious New York Times would be giving a photo credit to MySpace? Times are strange.

#2. CNN.com: Boyfriend: Phobia caused woman’s 2-year bathroom stay

The details of this story speak for themselves. And they say things like:

“She is an adult; she made her own decision,” said her boyfriend, Kory McFarren. “I should have gotten help for her sooner; I admit that. But after a while, you kind of get used to it.”
…
McFarren, 36, said he can’t be certain how long Pam Babcock stayed in the bathroom because “time just went by so quick I can’t pinpoint how long.”
…
“It just kind of happened one day; she went in and had been in there a little while, the next time it was a little longer. Then she got it in her head she was going to stay — like it was a safe place for her,” McFarren said.

But McFarren said she moved around in the bathroom during that time, bathed and changed into the clothes he brought her. He brought food and water to her. They had conversations and had an otherwise normal relationship — except it all happened in the bathroom.

How…endearing? I guess it’s nice to support your significant other in whatever their hopes and dreams are. But…dude, her skin grew over the toilet seat, and it had to be surgically removed. You could have tried putting your foot down a little more.

Questions I want answers to on this story: when they say “normal relationship,” does that mean…uh, an “active” relationship? And if so…how? Also, if she lived in the bathroom for two years…and she was sitting on the toilet for at least a month…where, um, did this guy go when he had to TCB? Was there a second bath in this trailer? Is there a particularly fertile patch of trees nearby?

I don’t really want to consider the alternatives. Yuck.

One final installment. At this rate, we’ll have 2007 all wrapped up in time for the mid-year review for 2008. Still, better late than never, right? Right? Anyone?

As stated before, I fell behind and then totally away from writing full reviews of the shows I saw last year. Because of this, I’ve taken the opportunity here to write longer installments for the review-less shows here. So this post goes on for a while, and still doesn’t say all that I would have said in reviews at the time. If anyone wants more, I’ll give them more. But…nobody wants more, I’m sure.

Post 1 and Post 2 available here. Post 3 begins…right now:

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1. boston.com: Young rider gives MBTA board an earful

This story is partly interesting because it shows what many of us have always suspected: a 17 year old spending a few minutes a week on the internet can run a public transportation system better than the people at the T. What sold me on it was the end of the article:

Grabauskas [General Manager of the T] said he is eager to meet with Spina [aforementioned 17 year old], go over the report, and show him the T’s operations center.

And by “show him the T’s operations center,” he means smash him in the head with a sackful of old tokens, toss him into a turnstile, and then stuff unused Charlie Tickets down his throat.

2. CNN.com: BBQ-smoker-turned-’Robocop’ chases off bums

I have a few reactions to this:

-There’s something funny to me about a vigilante defender of public morals…who’s defending his bar.

-The guy who laughs at the robot in the video (about 20 seconds before the end) is genius.

-”Defecating. Urinating. Prostituting. Ahh, the whole nine yards.”

-At first, I thought this was built so this guy could scare off unwanted types without actually putting himself in danger. He sends the robot in, if they shoot it or beat it up then all he’s lost is the robot. But it sort of looks like he has to walk about five feet behind the robot at all times to get it to work. So that defeats that purpose. I know believe it was designed purely to freak out people who were very, very high.

-If RoboCop had actually been about a barbecue smoker mounted on a three-wheeled scooter, it wouldn’t have made as much money as it did.

3. boston.com: Ghostbusters Party at Felt

The idea of a Ghostbusters Party is awesome. This thing, however, sounds like someone trying to throw a budget rave in their freshman dorm. At the very least they could have tried to get Ray Parker Jr to show up. What else is he doing this weekend?