December 2, 2005

Hi Everybody:

 Well, its now T-minus 30 days till the big day. At the expense of sounding like the ultimate cornball, as
I'm writing this, I can feel the butterflies taking flight in my stomach. It's December 2005 already. The
years get faster and faster as I get older and older, but this year went twice as fast. Its a whirlwind man.
     And don't get me wrong, its fun, but its crazy. There's been so much going on, and there seems like
so much more to do. People ask me if I'm nervous, and the answer is of course.  I'm not worried about
getting married, just that the wedding goes off without a hitch.
       I can't promise that I'll be able to get out a Weekly Mail from here till the wedding, but I do promise
that the awards will come out sometime New Year's Eve, and that sometime in the New Year, we will have
a recap of the wedding. I've written about weddings where I've been a guest and weddings I've been a
groomsman at, but now I get to write about my own. I'm looking forward to that.
       December also happens to be birthday month at Weekly Mail, so because I'll probably be on a bit
of a hiatus, here's a list of shout outs in date order.

Happy Birthday to:
2- Nisha
3-Patti-Ann
4-Amy
9-Woodsy, Brian
10-My mom
13-Michelle Holcroft
15-Billy Benn (just in case any of you run into him)
17-Ace
24- Jen Lang
29-Danielle
Jan 1-Michael Pope

and I feel like I'm missing a few, so please if I missed you, write me and let me know.


Now onto other things:


Frankie LeBourhis hit the nail on the head last Wednesday night. There are three nights that you can
safely categorize as Amateur Night. 1) New Year's Eve, 2) St. Patrick's Day, and 3) the night before
Thanksgiving.
    And as far as I'm concerned, nobody does Thanksgiving Eve quite like Woodside. It's why as much
as I knew I had to be up early the next day to head to Tara's parents house on Long Island, I couldn't
quite pull myself away from KC Moore's last Wednesday night. I don't know what I'm going to do next
year when I'm a happily married man, but we have a year to deal with that.
    For now, I can tell you that KC Moore's was hopping last Wednesday. Both my sisters, my brother in
law, McGrath and the aforementioned Frankie, Michelle and Bernard, Anne-Marie, Cindy, Pete and a brief
appearance by Gary.
    The DJ's were great too, but they played a bit too much hip-hop for my taste. Someone asked me if
they ever played Irish music in Harlem bars. I don't know, but I do remember that I covered a fire last year
on 171st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, and there were a couple of Irish Bars up there. So you never
know.  
    I ended up leaving around 3, which is actually earlier than usual. But it made for a somewhat tough go
of it on Thursday. Still Thanksgiving was a fun day, watching football with my soon to be father in law
and eating like a champ. The good news was on Thursday night, I slept like a baby and actuall made it in
to work on the Friday after.




 Marlins flea market.

I just want to say this about the Florida Marlins. They should be contracted.
Not sold, not moved to another city, contracted, destroyed. Never to be hard from again.
When I suggested this a couple of days ago, a few people scoffed. How could you contract them?
They've won two World titles.
Yes, but its what happened after that where I say they deserve the death penalty.
After they won in 1997, with a team of over priced free agents, they had a fire sale. All their star players,
sold off, or traded in one sided deals. In 1998, they finished with one of the worst records in baseball.
They won it all again 2 years ago, beating the Yankees in the 2003 World Series, but now two years later,
there they go again, trading Josh Beckett to the Red Sox and Carlos Delgado to the Mets, with more
deals said to follow.
People say the Yankees and their payroll is killing baseball? I said nonsense.
It's teams like the Marlins that are killing baseball.
The Marlins are now going to get their roster down so that their payroll is close to the bottom of the
league. And they won't care what their record is either. And for this, they want the city of Miami to build
them a taxpayer funded ballpark?
I don't think so.
       I would have each owner of the other 29 teams kick in $5 million or so, and give it to whoever the
Marlins owner is and tell him to get lost. Then I'd declare all the Marlins players free agents and that
would be the end of that sorry franchise.
       I realize that there is no way this is feasible, and the lawsuits would clog up the courts for years and
years, but I just can't stand the idea of the Florida Marlins doing this all the time. Expanding baseball to
South Florida should go down as one of the biggest blunders in the history of Major League Baseball.

Now as for the trade that brought Carlos Delgado to Flushing, I talked to some guys at Shelley's the
other night, and I have to agree with them. Its a wait and see thing.
      Delgado, on the surface, seems to me to be a bit of an ass. He rejected a trade to the Dodgers a
couple of years ago despite the fact that they were in a pennant race and Delgado's team, the Blue Jays
were going nowhere. Then last year, he not only rejected the Mets more generous offer to sign him, he
accused the team of racial profiling, so to speak, by having their Latin born players and front office
people recruit him, as if no other team in the league would have done the same thing.
      And he refuses to stand for God Bless America during the 7th inning. I know that doesn't bother alot
of you and some of you may even applaud him for that. But it pisses me off, so I'm not sure I really like
this trade.
       But when Delgado is on, he is a tremendous hitter. And with David Wright, Cliff Floyd and a
rejuvenated Carlos Beltran, this is a solid middle of the lineup.
        And now that the Mets have also added Billy "the Wags" Wagner, they have someone who can shut
the door on games, something they haven't had in a while. I've been watching too much baseball
to pencil them in for next October yet, but if Delgado hits and behaves himself, this team is much better
than it was at the end of the season.

    One of the more shocking things I encountered on my voyage to Ireland/England back in 1998 was
that the bars and clubs closed down at midnight and in some cases as early as 11:30 PM. The idea that
the country that invented the pub crawl (or at least perfected it) would call it a night that early was
baffling, especially since you could walk past the Starting Gate, Toucan Tommy's and Sean Og's, Irish
bars all here in Woodside anytime of night and hear it still hopping, many times, even after the 4 AM
closing time we have here in NY.
    But alas, the UK is looking to catch up with and in some cases surprass us New Yorkers.
    According to the BBC, over 1,000 pubs, clubs and shops in England and Wales have applied for 24
hour liquor licenses. Yes, in England it will now be possible to be out not only past midnight, but even
past 4 AM.
    But there's a tradeoff. You can drink and be merry all you want, but drink and drive and you get
thrown in jail, drink and get into a fight? same thing. Drink underage? Locked up.
In other words, if you are someone who works on a weekend till 2:30 AM, wants to kick back and have a
few beers afterwards, doesn't necessarily want to head home at 4, you can as long as you don't drive or
fight. That sounds like a great idea to me.

Read all about it here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4461888.stm


        I don't know how many of you are Letterman fans, but this past Thursday night, Dave had Oprah
Winfrey on his show for the first time in 16 years.
       Oprah's refusal to come on the Late Show had been a source of material for Dave, but he seemed
genuinely touched to have her on that night. And he kept the questions to the things that he felt she
would want to talk about, like her work with the young women of Africa. Oprah couldn't believe that he
was being so serious. But people have said since Dave had his open heart surgery a few years back,
and since the birth of his son, that he has mellowed out some. Maybe.
       He still has his fun, though. He still enjoys toying with the likes of Paris Hilton, Katie Holmes, Tom
Cruise, and other assorted weridos. The special segments like "The George W. Bush joke that's not really
a joke" are as biting a satire as you'll see anywhere on TV. Make no mistake, Dave still has his fastball,
he just has better ideas of when to use it.
         Now supposedly this feud with Oprah grew legs after he hosted the Oscars back in 1995,
universally regarded as a flop, especially his Uma/Oprah joke that bombed. I watched that show with Ace
and Ray and I thgought it was funny. To this day, I feel like the only reason he was so critically ravaged
was that the jokes that work at 11:30 don't always work at 8:30.

OK, well that's all from here. Again, I will write when I can, but in case I can't, enjoy your Christmas
Chanakuh, Kwanza, and Festivus.

Have a Great December
Wild Bill