New Introduction- April 22, 2013 (you can also just read this part. I won’t be hurt. I swear. You bastard.) This past weekend. the NBA Playoffs started off with a bang! By which I don’t mean that there was a horrible terrorist attack during a playoff game but rather that there were a large number of reasonably exciting games over the weekend. I really need to be more careful when speaking figuratively- have I learned nothing from CNN this week? I mean, come on CNN- did you really think it was a good idea to describe the scene in Watertown with “It’s as though a bomb had dropped some where”?? That’s right up there with:  “This marathon man-hunt just came to a sudden, explosive end” and “The city of Boston is paralyzed today, like someone just blew both it’s legs off.” Congratulations – you win the coveted “WTF Award” from Wildly Inappropriate Metaphor Magazine- which breaks my streak of 20 consecutive weeks. Damn it!  I’m as angry a 19 year old Chechnyan terror suspect bleeding in a boat! By the way, did anyone guess that the Boston bombers were a couple of Chechnyan brothers? They totally busted my Marathon Bomber bracket. Seriously, they’re like the Wichita State of terrorists- I had them losing to Orange Haired Sociopath in the first round. I was positive that Crazy Red Faced White Guy with Camouflage Trucker Hat Who Makes the Word “Liberty” Seem Creepy and Gross was totally going to beat out Radicalized Saudi “Exchange Student” Who’s Taking Flight Lessons for Some Inexplicable Reason in the Finals. And speaking of loathsome scumbags, it was heartening to see just how quickly and decisively Congress responded to this attack by using it to derail Immigration Reform. Exploiting tragedy for...

We’re in that odd time of the year right now for sports, when nothing is happening and everything is happening. The two active professional sports, basketball and hockey, are coming into the final stretches of their regular seasons as teams start getting serious in jockeying for playoff positions. The NFL is getting ready for free agency and the draft. And baseball is starting its spring training, for anyone over 40 or the lame-o stat heads with social disorders who still watch that played out pastime. Oh, and March Madness is about to start. Everything is about to happen, but nothing is actually happening at the moment. It’s like the scene in THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS when all the orcs march up to walls of Helms Deep and just stand there looking up as the defenders on the walls look down on them. We’re so intent on what’s about to happen that there is not time to consider how we got here. But in this “deep breath before the plunge,” I’ve found the rare opportunity to evaluate my sports enthusiasm from a more rational and logical position, and have come to a realization. While pragmatism and logic must be deployed by the owners and general managers of sports franchises across the country, they have no place in fandom, and trying to think about why you love the teams you do will only make it apparent that you have devoted an inordinate amount of your life to watching and thinking about something that doesn’t make much sense. Now don’t get me wrong, I think there is an absolute need to occupy our time with things that are inconsequential, especially in a modern world when our minds are free of spending every moment...

Fiercely Anticipating Please, tell me its going to happen soon – the end of the NBA Lockout. No, not football, the NFL season is firmly in place, not that I care. What I care about is basketball, specifically basketball playoffs. I love a good playoff series. However, to have a good playoff series, you must have a good season and so far it seems the NBA 2011-2012 Basketball Season is likely to be cancelled. Trouble started right after the end of last season in June. Despite a good revenue year for basketball, the NBA lost about $300 to $500 million for the season. The owners are howling. Renegotiating the contract between the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) David Stern, NBA Commissioner, and Billy Hunter, NBPA Executive Director, laid out competing positions. Neither has moved in more than a month. The NBA has filed a legal complaint claiming that the players aren’t negotiating in good faith. The players are starting to look around for overseas contracts to fill in their apparently inevitable “gap year”. FIBA – the world governing body for basketball has decided that it will allow NBA players to choose an international FIBA team to play for during the lock-out, but only during the lockout. A number of NBA players, from lesser known to superstars including Boston Celtics E’Twaun Moore and the Laker’s Kobe Bryant – are interested. This doesn’t give me a good play-off season to look forward to however. While I sometimes enjoy games during the season, by the playoffs, basketball has become an aggressive interplay of strong, assertive players, sneaky moves, and astonishing throws and catches – what’s not to like? Now that I’ve got you riled up, you can track the developments here:...