Baby, if you've ever wondered, wondered whether it was gonna post...

🎵I'm posting on the morn for you this Thanksgiving
This Thanksgiving...that clip from WKRP...🎵

Back on my bullshit bonus holiday content:

Where's Waldo, Gheorghe Style

Can you find Gheorghe? Alternatively, can you caption this?

Operation Orange

Orioles fans and Redskins backers have become somewhat kindred spirits over the course of the Angelos/Snyder reigns of error. So it was with a note of solidarity that I received the news of the latest campaign by O's supporters to turn their home ballpark into, well, a home ballpark.

A group of enterprising black and orange sufferers have started Operation Orange in hopes of filling Camden Yards with real, live Orioles fans. I wish them luck, but I'm not holding my breath.

Several years ago, a far less kind and gentle me had a bit different take on one of Operation Orange's predecessors in the late, lamented Misery Loves Company. At least the O's fans of yesteryear had some righteous outrage. Now, they're just worn down by the combined weight of the dismal Angelos years. Kinda like a football fan base I know. Here's what those guys at MLC had to say back in 2007:

Orioles blog The Loss Column (aptly named, indeed) is mad as hell, and they aren't gonna take it any more. Fed up with invading "sewer rat" Red Sox and Yankee fans, they're fomenting a mass movement (and by mass in the context of O's fans, I'm guessing 8-10 doofuses hopped up on Natty Bo) to Take Back the Yard when the Sox visit Baltimore on September 8.

I appreciate the effort, honestly. And I get the frustration. I've written several times in this space about my mixed emotions regarding Sox fans and their behavior in visiting parks. The Nation ain't perfect by a long shot. But my admittedly biased worldview informs an opinion that the protest is targeted about as accurately as Dick Cheney's shotgun. There's a reason Sox and Yankee fans overrun Camden Yards, and it sits in the owner's box.

If Peter Angelos hadn't gutted a once-proud franchise to the point where hometown fans stay away in droves, and erstwhile fans from closer to the Beltway completely ignore his team now that they've got another option, tickets wouldn't be available for Sox and Yanks fans. Were I an O's fan, I'd be bitter, too. But I'd probably be smart enough to target that anger appropriately.

And another thing, Loss Column. Before you go tossing rocks at other cities, consider the glass house in which you live. Despite the nickname, Charm City it ain't. Boston accents are funny? How 'bout Nancy the barmaid, hon? Downa shore from Bawlteeeemore. You probably think The Wire is fiction. You may not want to go down that particular path, lest the Sox fans that almost certainly will outnumber those in black and orange take umbrage.

If You Want Something Done

I had lunch with Person of Dave on Saturday. I hadn't seen him in a few months, and while his hair is generally fairly short, it was downright high and tight. The story, as it turns out, is good enough to cross-post. Apologies to the management team at Sentence of Dave if I've infringed upon their intellectual property rights.

"Thursday night, minutes before I had to drive my kids to indoor soccer, I noticed some stray and unseemly gray hairs poking from the right side of my head, and I decided that I would trim them with my beard trimmer, but-- perhaps because I was in a rush-- I slipped . . . and cut a dent into my hair just above my right ear, and in my attempts to "even things out," I made the situation much, much worse, but then I felt obligated to make it equally as "even" on the other side of my head, so that at least my new style would be symmetrically bad . . . and in the end, I essentially gave myself a mullet (and a poor one, at that) and though I frantically tried to erase this by trimming randomly around the back of my head, I couldn't fix things and I had to take the kids to soccer and Catherine was at a meeting about charter schools, so I went to soccer looking like a lunatic, which the other parents found highly entertaining, and then when I got home, I was slated to go out for beers, and so I asked my wife if she would fix my hair first but she said, "No way, I'm exhausted, I'll do it tomorrow," and then she laughed at my misfortune and took a picture of the back of my head . . . but I was happy enough to be getting out on the town and so I said, "Who cares what I look like, it's not like I'm going out to pick-up girls," and she said, "Not that you could," and then, luckily (or unluckily for my students, who would have really enjoyed getting a look at my sorry head) we had a delayed opening due to snow and Catherine used a number 1 to shave away my remaining hair and make things look decent again."

The Greatest Thing in All of Sports

So I was in the shop, preparing to gear up the Hyperbole Engine, ready for an annual spin on the subject of hockey, specifically playoff hockey, super-specifically overtime playoff hockey when I realized I'd already written everything I wanted to say. And so, today we learn that it's not plagiarism if you have the permission of the author. From April 13, 2008:

The Masters and its annual Salmon-to-Capistrano vernal heralding rightfully headlines sports news this week. The NCAA Basketball tournament just capped off another frantic March with a thrilling title game (NOTE: Not true this year). The NBA's regular season draws to a close with a historically tight Western Conference race, and any number of terrific story lines (NOTE: partially not true this year). Baseball's long season has begun to slowly unfold. Mel Kiper's taken a shower and shed his bathrobe in preparation for his annual moment in the sun.

As usual, we continue to overlook the most consistently exciting moment in sports. Alex Kovalev got his barbaric yawp last night (NOTE: only true if you are in a coma), his slapshot ripping the net behind Tim Thomas' shoulder to give the Montreal Canadiens a 3-2 overtime win over the Boston Bruins. Kovalev's arms shot in the air, making the universal sign of victory as he spun back towards his onrushing teammates. And overtime playoff hockey delivered as it always does.

I'm no longer the hockey fan I once was, rarely catching a full regular season game even on television. Too many things competing for my time, I suppose. (NOTE: still completely true) But even as the my interest in the game has waned, I'm a sucker for playoff overtimes. The teams don't matter, for the most part, because the purity and intensity of the moment elevate the spectacle beyond partisanship (and because the Bruins, my putative favorites, have stunk on ice for years (NOTE: until now, at which point they will nearly certainly gack to the Habs or Rangers)). No other athletic competition offers the instant-by-instant potential for resolution, the razor's edge difference between victory and defeat. The speed of the game plays immensely into the equation, the end-to-end action riveting and the finality of the result brutally human, good and bad meted out equally and only sometimes fairly.

I remember watching with my father as the Islanders' Pat LaFontaine beat the Capitals with a wrister from the slot in the 4th overtime of a 1987 playoff game. Neither of us had a rooting interest in the game, but we stayed up until 2:00 am on Easter morning because it was overtime playoff hockey. I saw Keith Primeau beat the Penguins in the 5th overtime 8 years ago, and I couldn't care less about the Flyers. I leapt off the couch when Uwe Krupp won the 1996 Stanley Cup for the Avalanche with a goal in the 3rd overtime of Game 4 against the Florida Panthers, and while I love me some Uwe Krupp, the result of that game didn't mean a thing to me.

But the payoff was so very cool. (NOTE: some truths are universal)