One thing I forgot to mention during this weird week (and there's more that won't be listed here) is that I went to see Team America: World Police, and now I can't get the fight song out of my head. I thought it was hilarious and even better than the South Park movie, with the puppets actually looking pretty sharp, although I enjoyed their own mocking of the puppets' movements from time to time.

On the other hand, I have been intrigued by the coverage of the ALCS, and one can only hope the creativity Fox had in that series will translate to the World Series.

-- The music lead-outs between innings have been all over the place, but that's fine, especially since they seem to capture the mood of the game for that half-inning. Plus, it's nice to see they're willing to pony up the money to get rights to anything, but two Bon Jovi songs? I guess with the Red Sox in the Series, there will be more Aerosmith, Boston, and The Cars being played, but hopefully not Marky Mark.

-- Unfortunately, I don't know what Fox will do if they spot Stephen King in the crowd again since they can't just cut to Tom Gordon anymore. But given the way Flash pitched in the series, it's safe to say that the girl still loves Tom Gordon.

-- I wonder if Al Leiter will be back for the World Series. He was very good, but it seems like he wouldn't say anything for extended periods of time, although he knew when to chime in most of the time with some heady stuff that hopefully didn't go over people's heads. Unfortunately, he also had the bad habit of having to throw out the cliches or reading stats out of the games notes to fill dead air, but then again, so does every other analyst.

Just to clarify on my ramblings from before: Red Sox Nation has annexed much of the country these days, which is understandable given the history and the amazing comeback. We'll find out in the next few days how many of these new fans have actually jumped on the bandwagon or were just interested, as Tim put it, in blowing up the Death Star.

No cheering in the press box
Congratulations to Red Sox Nation for a thrilling Game 7 win. It's a bitter pill to swallow for this Yankees fan, but the Red Sox did everything right to beat the bitter rivals and get to the World Series.

It was tough enough to deal with the loss, but we had to deal with the loud cheering from the news side further down the newsroom. And knowing these people over there, they wouldn't know Johnny Damon from Damon Wayans. Welcome to the "not Yankees" fans. I'd like to think they're jumping on the Red Sox bandwagon, but I'd been stunned if some of these folks actually watch the World Series, never mind continuing rooting for Boston after Saturday.

One of my co-workers had a great line about the cheering, though. We on the sports side should go crazy when Bush gets re-elected. One of my friends had to yell at one of the news groups to stop whooping it up every time Gore won a state.

I think I figured out what galls me about the sudden "Red Sox fans" over the course of the night. Real Red Sox nation knows how close they can get to the promised land only to fall short, creating a sense of both excitement and foreboding dread. So when they finally slayed the giant, it's such a rush since it's now their moment. It's a lot easier to hide behind the history and huge fan base of the Red Sox to disguise the disdain for the Yankees. You're exposed a lot more when rooting for the Diamondbacks or Marlins in the past couple of World Series (or to a lesser extent the Angels in 2002) -- it's hard for non-sports fans but Yankee haters to climb aboard a bandwagon that's only existed for about 10 years.

So, Red Sox fans, enjoy the World Series. The rest of you, I hear Desperate Housewives is pretty good.

Random thoughts

As I told my brother before the ALCS started, it was going to be a smackdown and it was going to go seven games, although obviously I didn't think it would reach seven this way. But this should be fun, and given the way most of these games have played out lately, we'll be leaving the office about the time the morning crew gets in on Thursday.

And speaking of the Boston-New York corridor, it's ixnay on Bristol. Oh well. Doesn't mean I won't stop trying up there.

Despite the baseball playoffs going on, I've actually tried to have some sort of life, sorta. I ended up at autograph sessions for both Alton Brown and George Carlin, although Alton drew a larger crowd but a 7 p.m. vs. a 12:30 p.m. start has a lot to do with it, I'm sure. But it does say something that it took me more than two hours to get Alton's autograph (and I got there early) while I got to Carlin's signing a few minutes late and only had to wait about 20 minutes.

Couple of thoughts from watching the Yankees-Red Sox ALCS:
-- The not-so dark secret of the "media," especially writers on deadline: We hate close games and late rallies, especially those that end at 1 in the morning. But at least there was a thrilling end to Game 4.

Even worse are long games that end way late and were over hours ago, like Game 3. While it was fun to see the Yankees win such a laugher, it was also aggravating seeing it was 10:30 and the game was only in the fourth inning, knowing that I had to get up at about 6 a.m. the next morning to go to Chattanooga to play half a trash tournament.

-- Al Leiter doesn't get a lot of chances to talk as the third guy in the booth, but he offers a lot of decent insight, especially about pitching. That probably means many viewers will hate him when he officially becomes an announcer upon his retirement.

-- This is probably based on the people I'm usually around, but I swear this series seems a lot like the election, and it's not just the Kerry from Massachusetts bit.
You know there are lots of Yankees fans everywhere, much like you know there are plenty of those voting for Bush.

And yet a wide majority of people I know are voting for Kerry and rooting for the Red Sox, although more to the point, they're actually voting against Bush (a sort of Yellow Dog thing) and rooting against the Yankees.

It seems pretty indicative of today's divisive political climate: No one actually has a cause they support, but instead of bunch of axes to grind. Many won't ever be happy, just less pissed off at something.

Just a couple of links this time around:
-- The Washington Post goes page one with an article on quizbowl, although it didn't dwell as much on the Ken Jennings connection as I thought it might, but at least it had quotes from him, as opposed to my column.
-- I shouldn't scoff, since I have two t-shirts marking Northwestern's win over Notre Dame in 1995, but now the official online NU sports store is selling a t-shirt of last Saturday's big win over Ohio State.