Tuesday, January 29, 2008

You know what would really make these dogs happy? If I left them the &%$#! alone.

For those of you who've been wondering, I don't just listen to Springsteen music. For instance, this week I've been listening to the CD "Songs to Make Dogs Happy." Why? Because that's my job.

OK, not really. But I thought it would be interesting to see if the songs on this CD -- which was sent to me for free by the nice people at the Laurel Canyon Animal Co. -- actually, you know, made dogs happy. And if you watch this video of my experiment, you'll notice that Mr. Springsteen actually plays more than a tangential role:

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Red Sox virtual waiting room update

You'll recall that yesterday I was shuffled into the Red Sox virtual waiting room at 10 a.m. and was still dutifully waiting for tickets at noon. Well, they finally let me into the ticket buying area ... at 11:30 p.m. last night. (Butt hurts ... Eyes stinging ... Who am I?)

OK, so I wasn't in front of the terminal the whole time. But 13 1/2 hours to get a couple of tickets to a ballgame seems like a bit much. I wound up with two sets of two grandstand seats each, in adjoining sections, on a school night. I could have gotten four tickets together if I went with standing room only, but I'd sooner take my kids to a general admission Who concert.

Meanwhile, I think that commenter Brian has the right idea.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

In the Red Sox virtual waiting room ...

I'm in here right now for the first time, and I have to say it's pretty nice, although I thought they would have a better selection of magazines.

Like most ticket seekers, they planted me here in the virtual waiting room right before 10 a.m. when the single-game seats went on sale, and I'm left staring at the 30-second clicker tick down and then start up again, over and over and over ... Somewhere, John Henry is smoking big cigars and laughing his head off.

Meanwhile, I'm afraid to leave my terminal -- I feel like one of those day traders in the '90s you'd hear about, who'd get up to go the bathroom and lose half a million dollars. Which reminds me ... I shouldn't have had that large orange juice with breakfast.

Monday, January 14, 2008

If your dogs turn white, stay in ... uh ... site



Woof!First it's freezing cold, then people are sunbathing. And today, they're cleaning the snow off their dogs. Or at least I was. Welcome to New England!

Sunday, January 06, 2008

This week's column:
Color me unpredictable in 2008

As you might recall, this is the time when I like to look back to my predictions for the year just passed, and see if my prognosticative abilities had exceeded those of, say, a chimpanzee stringing random words together. (And before you judge me, please remember that this was the year Japanese researchers found out that chimps are wicked smart.)

So let’s see what I had to say about 2007:

“For his efforts to curtail Iran’s burgeoning nuclear weapons program, President George W. Bush will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, causing Al Gore to sit in his Prius and sulk.”

Of course, it turned out that Iran didn’t have a nuclear weapons program, despite all of Bush’s talk of an impending World War III. But the good news is, this time we found out before we invaded — that’s progress!

For the rest of this week's AT LARGE by Peter Chianca, click here.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

It's freakin' cold!



OK, I'm pretty sure that when you get into the magenta -- magenta! -- it's too cold to even walk to your car. Turn around and go back to bed right now. (And whatever you do, don't lick any metal flagpoles.)

The temperature right now in my neck of the woods, according to the MetroWest Daily News, is a balmy 5 degrees, almost recalling that classic line from Planes, Trains and Automobiles. (Neal: "What do you think the temperature is?" Del: "One.") The good news is, the 10-day forecast has us in the 50s by Wednesday. Thank you, global warming!