"Dear God in Heaven: Baseball season is OVER! Now what are we supposed to do!?!?"
First off, allow me to be a sport and congratulate the Florida Marlins on their victory against my beloved New York Yankees. They demonstrated throughout the post-season that they were not to be intimidated by anyone – defeating the Giants, Cubs and the most intimidating team in professional sports history, the New York Yankees. As for the Yankees, congratulations on an exciting year and thank you for the most exhilarating ALCS of my lifetime, subduing Boston’s Red Menace yet again in a manner which couldn’t have been conceived by even the most far-reaching screenwriter hack on Disney’s payroll.
That having been said, I was worried about filling the void in my life where baseball once was. It first hit me Sunday night, when I would have been watching Game 7 of the World Series. But that’s when I remembered TV has other things on besides baseball.
For example, when I instinctively turned to FOX at 8 p.m., my beloved Yankees weren’t there, but The Simpsons were. Their new season starts Sunday, Nov. 2 with "Treehouse of Horror XIV." Another FOX show I’ll proudly admit to being a fan of is The O.C. (Wednesdays at 9 p.m.). It has all the cheese and charm you’d expect from a FOX teen drama set in a ritzy California locale and it’s topped off by, what my buddy Jay referred to as, "Shatneresque" overacting from Peter Gallagher, plus tweenage cutie Mischa Barton, who you may recognize as the girl that got to puke all over Haley Joe Osment in The Sixth Sense (perhaps one of the more enviable roles in cinema, second only to Tom Cruise’s role in The Firm where he got to beat the bag out of Wilford Brimley).
Other noteworthy TV programming I can catch up with is the new season of South Park on Comedy Central (kick-ass!) and a brand new season of The Office on BBC America. For those of you unfamiliar with The Office, it’s a painfully funny mockmentary comedy that picks apart office life with the probing morbidity of an autopsy; the deeper it gets, the more you cringe. For those of you unfamiliar with BBC America, I suggest you contact your cable provider (I believe you poor bastards at the mercy of Cablevision are without the BBC America option. Perhaps if you pipe up now they’ll take less time than they took to put on the bloody YES Network!)
So I’ve got my TV life back, thankfully. Now for the social life…
The Hoboken Dart Players Association kicked off its season on Tuesday, Oct. 28. Anyone interested in joining the dart league should hustle on down to their local bar and see if it’s not too late to sign up. For more information, check out http://www.hoboken-bar.net/hdpa/. If you’re lucky you’ll get to play me, since that should guarantee a nice notch in your win column.
Another reason to get out of the house is for Hoboken All-Star Comedy every Friday at the Shannon Lounge (yeah, THAT Shannon Lounge, at 106 First St., Hoboken). Most people don’t realize it, but the Shannon has a huge room in the back that’s capable of hosting bands, movies and of course, stand-up comedy. Word on the street is that the shows are phenomenal and tickets are only $7 at the door. For more information check out http://www.hobokencomedy.com or call (201) 708-6697.
Hopefully this will be enough to help some of us take our lives back from the painful addiction of baseball. Plus there’s no need to quit sports cold turkey, with NFL, NHL, NBA, NCAA Football, NCAA Basketball, The 2003 Rugby World Cup, and whatever other events the sporting world offers up to help me get my fix until pitchers and catchers report to camp and the opiate of baseball returns like poppies in the spring. If I can make it, you can make it too…
If you know how I can effectively waste $50 in the Metro-area, please email If you know how I can effectively waste $50 in the Metro-area, please write to:
"Hal Wastes His Wages"
c/o The Current
1400 Washington St.
Hoboken, NJ 07030
or email c_halleron@yahoo.com