GONNA CRY NOW

Well, I'll admit it's been way too long since my last post. A lot has happened that I should be weighing in on.

The deaths of Harvey Korman, Charlie Jones and of course, the biggest TV star in all of the land, Tim Russert, and Willie Randolph's career.

We'll get to that later.

The inspiration for this entry was a trip to Philly on Monday night with three former employees of the Macromedia empire. We went to see the fightin' Phils and the Red Sox battle it out. The game was OK.

Ryan Howard hit two pop flys that landed about 30 rows back. Bartolo Colon - who makes me look as skinny as a heroin addict - hurt himself swinging a bat, and J.D. Drew - a man who one of my pals described as "not giving a shit about anything," was booed everytime up.

However, the highlight of the game was sitting next to and doing schtick with former Celtic great Chris Ford. Cool guy. Wouldn't let me buy him a beer and was up for plenty of schtick. Not many people know this, but I was a huge Celtics fan in high school. Of course, once I got a bit smarter, I realized the NBA was a complete bore and was tuned out. We did make one mistake when we sat down, as we first thought Ford was Red Sox great Jerry Remy (r.), but he quickly corrected us.

As for postgame schtick, we had a couple of tastes in the parking lot (about 30 less than I had the last time I was in the Comcast/FU Center parking lot) and then we headed into South Philly for the Pat's/Geno's cheesesteak run. Unable to decide which one I wanted, I had one from each place. I didn't want to offend my Philly friend on the way home, but I started thinking about how overrated the whole Philly cheesesteak thing is. I mean, it's cheese and steak. How hard is that? I banged out a Steakum sandwhich in my kitchen a few weeks ago that was just as good. I mean, I guess besides a broken bell, they have nothing else to hang their hat on, so we'll give it to them.

Anyway, with my arteries at Russert levels, we headed to the Philly museum of art and ran up the stairs that Sly Stallone did 32 years ago. This time, I did say that getting up those steps was overrated, as I was able to make it with about 7 beers and two cheesesteaks in my belly, but my friend reminded me that in the movie Rocky had already run about 20 miles before getting up there. I don't think I've run 20 miles in my life.

Of course, the capper of the night was listening the last win of Willie Randolph's Met career. I went home, went to sleep, got up around noon and found out the cat was history. I won't get into my full feelings on the Mets right now, but for all you Met fans out there, know this. For as long as you live, Jeff Wilpon will be running the Mets. Good luck.

A few other notes:

Russert coverage way overblown. I'm sure he was a good guy, and like he was supposed to do, asked the tough questions on Meet the Press. But honestly, who watches Meet the Press? I think the NHL got better ratings on NBC. I mean, if Mike Emerick checks out, will there be front page tributes and columns and hour-long TV features on him? While there should be, there won't be. And I'm sure more people watched Charlie Jones on NBC over the years than Russert, too. What's gonna happen when Wally Cronkite signs off for the last time?

As for Harvey Korman, I was pissed that nobody pointed out he was the voice of the great gazoo on the Flintstones. Dum Dums.

There's plenty of more to report, but I gotta go. School's out in a few days and all free time is out with it. Of course, that means more time for me and my kids, which I have to admit, is not a bad deal.