Although it has not yet been made official, Andy Reid’s tenure as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles ended on Sunday. For the fans of the team, a group of which I am most certainly a part, this is a beautiful thing. I am extremely ready to see someone else leading this franchise. The national pundits don’t seem to understand it, but that is because they have not lived and breathed Eagles football for the past fourteen years. [Read more →]
10. I resolve never again to smash into somebody’s car just to knock the cell phone out of their hand
9. I resolve to eat my weight in penuchi
8. I resolve to finally find Waldo
7. I resolve to not blame the dog when I fart
6. I resolve to finally give up trying to lose weight, and instead will grow six inches taller
5. I resolve to e-mail back that nice Nigerian prince who keeps trying to contact me
4. I resolve not sit at the computer all day (I’m writing this standing up)
3. I resolve to only eat white snow
2. I resolve to keep all my resolutions to myself this year
1. I resolve to be more resolute with all my resolutions!
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
I am a firm believer that kids should have a lot of books, and this is a book that I would choose for my nieces and nephews. It’s funny, but I’ve seen the Nutcracker ballet, but I don’t think I’ve ever read the story before. Nutcracker
The story is based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. It is the story of seven-year-old Marie, who falls in love the with handsome Nutcracker. The characters are fantastical: the seven-headed Mouse King, Princess Pirlipat, and the Queen of Mice. There is romance and adventure, battles and curses, ungrateful princesses and court astrologers. [Read more →]
Clutter’s “Agnes Dei,” from the Bowden Collection “Christ Is Born”
8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Luke 2
King James Version (KJV)
However you mark this day, a very Merry Christmas!
May this find you and yours happy and healthy, this holiday season and in the new year to come!
For the past couple of Christmases, my wife and I have been taking ridiculous photographs to send out with our holiday cards. Two years ago we dressed our pets in Christmas attire and wore crazy sweaters. Last year we wore full hunting gear. This year, we decided to invite others to participate. See the submissions and vote here. Merry Christmas!
Even in the days of DVDs, when I could watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” easily and inexpensively, whenever I wanted, I would still wait for the Christmas season to come around, so I could watch the broadcast, just as I did the first time it aired … and have done every Christmas season since then … at least until the last couple of years, when broadcasters made additional cuts to the original program. Made me glad I bought the DVD a while back … I still wait for the Christmas season to come around … I just watch it via a new medium. [Read more →]
From time to time, something happens that makes us remember how little our favorite sports really mean in the grand scheme of things. Last week, as I am sure you all know, a disturbed young man walked into an elementary school in Connecticut and took the lives of twenty children and six adults after killing his mother at home. It’s hard to imagine anything more horrifying than what took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and the outpouring of grief has been discernible everywhere I have gone since that time. One of the victims, Benjamin Wheeler, was the son of an old high school friend of mine, and although I know that anything that I have been feeling is barely a fraction of what she, her husband, and their families must be feeling, it has been hard to watch or read any story about the incident. At times like this, though, we sometimes get to see the beautiful humanity inside some of our sports heroes. A couple of them, Victor Cruz and Derek Jeter, really seemed determined to make some kind of difference in the face of tragedy. [Read more →]
10. Stuffing the stocking
9. Unwrapping your presents
8. Trimming the tree
7. Roasting your chestnuts
6. Making eggnog
5. Putting the bird in the oven
4. Choosing either breast or leg
3. Pulling your cracker
2. Donning your gay apparel
1. Coming down the chimney
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Father Night
Of course, Emma has been dead for a number of years, but she can still lend a helping hand from time to time. [Read more →]
Apparently the world is going to end today. That’s what the Mayans said anyway, though I’ve heard this might be a misinterpretation. Ah, well- it was nice while it lasted, some of the time. The world, that is.
I’ve long been fascinated by The End. In fact I once spent a year reading exclusively about the Apocalypse, and my head was duly filled with the wonderful and terrifying visions of countless prophets and messiahs. Some of these fellows were dangerous, most were not. After a while I developed a fondness for certain seers. Here are some of my favorites. [Read more →]
I don’t feel angry at Adam Lanza. I know that makes some of you cringe, but I don’t have room in my heart right now for anger. I’m too filled up with pain for the lives that were lost, admiration for the heroic acts of our nation’s teachers, guilt for not doing enough to keep things like this from happening, and fear for what the future may hold. If Adam Lanza were standing in front of me right now, I would wrap my arms around him and tell him I’m sorry.
I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:
Emperor’s Decree No. 20: We need less chatter and more meditation regarding the horror of last week. The cacophony must end. Consequently, everyone will cease communicating their ideas and start communing with their inner thoughts. After a month’s time, we can all try to “get answers.” After a week’s time, we can start drafting plans and prevention schemes. For now, grieve. Simply grieve.
The Punishment: Violators will find themselves adrift and juggled about in a rushing current without end. The Emperor will not administer this as a punishment. It simply will be the case.
Now, go forth and obey.
The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning.
I’ve always suspected hell is an endless party where every person in attendance is convinced they’re the life of the party and no one can ever leave. Because a party can handle a maximum of ONE (1) person who is the life of the party. Indeed, some parties cannot handle any life-of-the-party people, for there is nothing less fun than a person insisting you have fun and you have it right now. Because fun isn’t something you force: you can try to organize an unforgettable evening, but no matter how carefully you plan sometimes people need to go home early because the babysitter has a cold and they’re giving Randy a ride so he needs to leave too and at that point it just seems like a good point to call it a night, no matter how much you scream at everyone to do shots.
I mention this because it seems TV executives cannot get enough life-of-the-party peeps: with the possible exceptions of Masterpiece Theater and the Weather Channel, television is overflowing with wildly charismatic personalities if by “wildly” you mean “very” and by “charismatic” you mean “loud.”
And I say: enough.
Much is made of a college athlete’s commitment to his or her school. Millions of people follow recruiting, particularly when it comes to college football, and in the era of Twitter, every little comment is analyzed under a pretty powerful microscope. The fans of a school have all kinds of expectations about which players should commit to their school, when they should do it, and what kind of players they will be once they enroll. When a player transfers, you would think that he had betrayed his school and all of its fans. Little is said, though, when a coach leaves to go elsewhere. This week, Texas Tech coach Tommy Tuberville left a restaurant during a recruiting dinner, never returned, and was announced as the new head coach of the University of Cincinnati football team the next morning. [Read more →]
10. Bed, Bath and Bewildered
9. Amy’s Wine House
8. Abercrombie & Bitch
7. Crooks Brothers
6. Banana Dictatorship
5. FU’s Wholesale Club
4. Vasectomy Pagoda
3. J.Screw
2. Chick-fil-A-hole
1. Petraeus’s Secret
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
I enjoy the holidays. Years ago I vowed to resist letting any of the hoopla get to me, as I know can happen. But oh there’s pressure, tinsel-draped, gift-wrapped pressure. [Read more →]
I wanted to read Buried on Avenue B 
When a home health attendant, Paulette Williamson, appears at Homicide South in Manhattan, she’s introduced to the NYPD’s Detective Darlene O’Hara and skeptically reports the confession of a senior citizen struggling with Alzheimer’s. Gus Henderson, a former junkie and petty criminal, claims he murdered and buried his former partner-in-crime in a park off Avenue B more than a decade ago, a lowlife who fell off the grid and hasn’t been seen since. The city agrees to excavate the alleged scene of the crime, and the police find a body—just not the one they were looking for. The cops unearth the skeleton of a ten-year-old boy, neatly dressed and buried ceremoniously with a comic book, a CD, some pot, and booze.
There has to be a great story there! And it turns out, there is. [Read more →]
Let me guess, you don’t have time to read this right now, do you? Yes, the holiday season is always busy and yes time seems to go faster as you get older but doesn’t life seem to be moving at an even more frantic pace than usual lately? I know I’m feeling it. But I’ve been expecting this time crunch for a while now, so it may be a bit easier for me to deal with. Since I tend to be pretty sensitive about this stuff, what I wasn’t sure about was whether others would be able to pick up on it too. In the last few weeks however, I’ve heard at least fifteen different people exclaim in near shock about how fast time’s been going lately. And this without my even bringing it up! So, what’s going on? Can time really be going faster? If so, how much faster can it go before we can no longer keep up? And what then? Are we literally running out of time? [Read more →]
Readers: You are not to ask me how I managed to intercept (ha, get it?) the following correspondence between Eagles’ ringleader Andy Reid and Commissioner/Hitler Reincarnate Roger Goodell. I will only say that it took a good bit of libel-licious spy stuff. Or perhaps more plainly, to quote the finest actor of our time, “You’re on a need to know basis, and you don’t need to know.” Enjoy.
From: Andy Reid
Date: Friday 7 December 2012 3:34pm
To: thecommish@nfl.com
Subject: Rule Changes
Dear Big Red,
I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:
Emperor’s Decree No. AD 1: Henceforth, there shall be no more “tasteful” Christmas ornaments or decorations. As a means to achieving a ubiquitously, cheesily-decorated Christmas world — a properly decorated yuletide season — the Emperor is going to require all Christmas factories to make their ornaments and decorations out of sweet, sweet plastic. No more wooden ornaments. No more muted cloths and felt bows. Red! Red is the color. Red will be used in the fabrication of all Santas. There shall be no more pallid, ponderous Kringles in maroon suits with off-white fur trim. Proclaim the season in snow-white and in glorious, Rudolf-schnoz-red! What we want is blinking, clanging and blaring at Christmas time. Christmas is not an accent in the posh living room of the calendar year; it’s a cymbal clash in the library of day-to-day life! Burden your foppish dinner guests with sophistication during the other eleven months of your cabernet-anesthetized life. At Christmas time, the trumpets shall blare! — the bells shall sound! — the nog shall egg! — the choirs shall rock! Christmas is not the time to be cool. Cripes — listen to the music, if you want proof. Even Elvis dorked-out for the holidays.
The Punishment: Violators will be forced to listen to Kevin Costner reading A Christmas Carol, cover to cover. And he will do it in his best “English accent.”
Now, go forth and obey.
The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning.
