I liked my record for 2004 so I’ll give it a try again. Oddly, I don’t feel as up on the news as I did last year so some of my months may be off. I’ll do my best and we’ll review the score at the end of the year.
January – Andy Reid inexplicably deactivates all his first string players for the NFC Championship game while mumbling something about T.O., spandex, injuries and trying to get to the Superbowl. The Eagles manage to eke out a win but lose the deactivated players during a freak Gatorade accident leading directly to a Steelers Superbowl win 107-2.
February – Surely predicting one whopper of a snowstorm wouldn’t be amiss. Would it be too much to ask for another day off?
March – While celebrating the tenth anniversary of my being legally able to drink on St. Patrick’s Day in Boston . . . Well, to be honest, I get drunk. Maybe I’ll go bowling. Oddly hued domestic beer will not be involved.
April – The Washington Nationals open their season to sell-out crowds which rapidly decline as the Nationals prove to be a worse local team than the Orioles. This leads to another round of caterwauling by the DC City Council over a new ballpark and Major League Baseball again suspends team operations. Strangely, the team and its three or four die-hard fans never notice and go on playing the sort of baseball that keeps DC teams migrating to the exciting locales of Minnesota and Texas.
May – An early heat wave causing spontaneous Twinkie combustions leads to several cellophane shrapnel injuries. The Bush Administration is blamed for inciting the “Tastykake street.”
June – The Phillies get the better of their annual series with the Red Sox in Philadelphia two games to one. Typically, the game I attend is the game they lose.
July – Our nation turns 229. I snooze drunkenly through the fireworks.
August – Hillary Clinton finally concedes that she’s a candidate for the office of President of the United States. Congressional Democrats immediately file suit to discard the Constitution in order to allow Presidential elections whenever a Democrat seems to have a chance to win and forbid competition in same elections. When this plan is opposed, the Bush Administration is blamed for inciting the “Federalist street.” The majority of the American people sweat apathetically while warily avoiding shelves stocked with Twinkies.
September – I go to Chicago during the one weekend all year when both the White Sox and Cubbies are in town in furtherance of my quest to see games at all MLB stadia. At least one game gets rained out.
October – The Red Sox and Phillies meet in the World Series. The Red Sox win again; thereby inaguarating “The Curse of the Wild Thing” that keeps the Phillies from ever winning a World Series because they once actually allowed a man with a mullet to represent them on the mound.
November – Thanksgiving will be its typical festival of nigh-transcendant joy and this time I may actually go to the bar with the cousins.
December – Thirty-two. I’ll be thirty-goddamned-two. Leaving me one year to complete my work on Earth or prove myself unequal to the Son of God.