The Red Sox celebrated their first world championnship since 1918 yesterday. The portion that made the back cover of the Daily News here in New York was a sign that Manny Ramirez carried which read "JETER is playing GOLF today THIS IS BETTER!" Just when I resign myself to apprecaiting Ramirez--after all, "Manny is Manny" as they say--he does something unbelievably bush like this to make me question what I'm thinking about. The sign isn't that big of a deal. Just a bit more teasing really. But it underscores a major difference between the Yankees and the Red Sox and that is the Yankees don't mention Boston when they win; even in victory, the Sox--players mind you, not just the fans--are still thinking about the Yankees. You know the old saying, "Act like you've been there before?" Well, it's clear for some of the Red Sox, that this is the first time they've been anywhere close. Peace to Tim Wakefield and Trot Nixon and all the great Sox fans out there though.

On a completely unrelated note, if you want to read something truly funny, check out this lengthy Playboy interview with comedian Albert Brooks:

PLAYBOY: Your dad, Harry Einstein, played Parkyakarkus, [Eddie] Cantor's radio sidekick of sorts. Describe his style of comedy.

BROOKS: Well, he was a Greek-dialect comedian, so it was a lot of malapropisms. Parkyakarkus [pronounced "park-ya-carcas"] was a character he had been doing locally in Boston back in the Thirties. Eddie Cantor heard him and brought him out to Hollywood. He worked on the Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson radio shows. Then he got his own show, Meet Me at Parky's, which ran about seven years. One bit I always remember from that show: My dad was slowly typing up the menu for his restaurant and misspelling everything. Roast: R-U-S-T. Beef: B-I-F. His assistant at the restaurant came in and said, "All right, Parky, I'm in a hurry just give me the menu and give it to me quickly! I have a lot to do." He said "Okay, you want it quickly? We're going to have sirloin steak and tenderloin steak, good piece lamb chop, great big pork chop, nice fried onions, fresh peeled scallions, french-fried potatoes, lettuce and tomatoes; string beans, baked beans, hup beans, too; cookeral, hookeral, chicken stew; mickerel, pickerel, haddock, tripe; lobster, oyster, shrimp or pike; hot pies, cold pies, soft pie, mud pie, ickleberry, bermberry, stroomberry, too; stiff cream, whipped cream, plain cream, no cream; squashed-up apple, coconut, custard; mustard, ketchup, chili, salt and pepper and pick-a-lilly. Twenty-five cents!"

I memorized that from a record when I was seven and never forgot it. I try to check in with it every three years to see if my brain is still reasonably intact. I can just imagine being eighty and trying: "We're gonna have, oh, dammit—I know it was food! Oh well."