Papa Bear

There's something profouldly primal about a man who defends his daughter's honor. It's also quite admirable.

Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling took to social media yesterday to rant/campaign against some cyber bullies who, in my opinion, really deserved it. It all started when Schilling posted on his twitter page a heartfelt congrats to his daughter, who had just been accepted to college where she will pitch for their softball team.

 Innocent enough, right? In fact, I personally know about a million dads who proudly post to social media their children's accomplishments. What happened next set off an incredible series of events.

A group of idiots-for lack of a better term-decided it would be smart to post incredibly vile and threatening sexual things about Curt's daughter. Did I stress enough that the responses were incredibly vile, threatening and offensive? They made extremely poor judgements-like referencing Curt's "bloody sock" legacy and then referred to his daughters menstrual cycle and worse. 

Schilling explained that he expected some college boy responses to be like-"can't wait to party with her" and even "can't wait to date her." In his own words this is what happened:  

"In between a fight with Kevin Millar, congratulating Juan Pierre on a wonderful career (just hated facing him) and praying Josh Hamilton gets right, I started to see this sort of tweet.

And tweets with the word rape, bloody underwear and pretty much every other vulgar and defiling word you could likely fathom began to follow.

Now let me emphasize again. I was a jock my whole life. I played sports my whole life. Baseball since I was 5 until I retired at 41. I know clubhouses. I lived in a dorm. I get it. Guys will be guys. Guys will say dumb crap, often. But I can’t ever remember, drunk, in a clubhouse, with best friends, with anyone, ever speaking like this to someone…"

The gang mentality with these complete idiots continued throughout the day and Schilling took it upon himself to terminate the behavior. He posted his thoughts to his blog 38pitches and "outed" the two biggest offenders. 

“The Sports Guru”? Ya he’s a DJ named Adam Nagel (DJ is a bit strong since he’s on the air for 1 hour a week) on Brookdale Student Radio at Brookdale Community College. How do you think that place feels about this stud representing their school? You don’t think this isn’t going to be a nice compilation that will show up every single time this idiot is googled the rest of his life? What happens when a potential woman he’s after googles and reads this?

The other clown? He’s VP of the Theta Xi fraternity at Montclair State University. I gotta believe if Theta Xi is cool with a VP of one of their chapters acting like this I’d prefer to have no one I know in it.”

The repercussions have been sharp and swift. 

One idiot was a New York Yankees employee who has since been fired, and the other a college DJ who was immediately suspended from the college pending a disciplinary hearing. Both organizations affiliated with the perpetrators immediately distancing themselves from them citing a "zero tolerance policy". 

I have to ask, what the hell were they thinking? 

I'm not sure where these two came from but I can't understand how they thought their behavior was OK in any forum let alone a public one. Schilling himself warned in his post that "the real world will hold you accountable for your actions" and I for one am so VERY glad that Schilling did just that. 

I Was Just Thinking....

It was twenty years ago today....June 17th 1994.

It will always be a "where were you?" moment. And when you think about it..it was nothing short of crazy. Every time you see a white Ford Bronco, you have to think of that historic moment. ( the Ford Motor Company discontinued the line of cars two years after that infamous day) All the major networks cut into their regular programming to give credence to the madness that was unfolding in front of us. And the birth of a Kardashian on reality TV happened...

The prime suspect in his former wife's brutal murder 5 days earlier, OJ Simpson was expected to turn himself in to police. Instead he decided to run. We all know how that turned out. He and his friend Al Cowlings took to the California freeway. Cowlings was driving and OJ was supposedly in the back with a gun to his head. It was surreal how the events unfolded that day. We watched with rapt attention, an estimated 95 million of us, as Robert Kardashian, the now deceased patriarch of those crazy Kardashians, read a note on live television that OJ penned for "the people". Today it would be the equivalent to "going viral" except we didn't have as many social media outlets as we do today. It was like a live TV show. It was meant to be a suicide note, but Simpson was too cowardice to take his own life. Instead he turned all of ours into a circus.

At that moment we all knew the truth. He did it. He killed her and Ron Goldman in a brutal and unbelievably violent manner. He was the culprit and he was running. The chase began when police charged Simpson on June 17th with two counts of murder with special circumstance. Simpson was supposed to surrender himself, but he does not. Instead he remains at large and at 6:45PM police are tipped off to a white Bronco, reportedly belonging to Al Cowlings, on the freeway with Simpson in the back with a gun. The police then pursue the Bronco on a 60 MPH chase through LA which ends up at Simpson's Brentwood mansion at 8PM.

And we watched it happen in real time...

I was sitting in my condo with some friends playing cards. The TV was on, but we weren't really watching it, when the news broke in with the story. We were riveted. It was an amazing thing, and I remember thinking we are watching history in the making.

 Because if the glove don't fit, karma won't acquit! It will chase you down a California freeway or follow you around for the rest of your life until it catches your ass!
Karma has a really great way of catching up with you, doesn't it?

There's A FUNGUS Among Us

Trojans are for DICKS!

First let me apologize for yesterday but once I explain , you will completely understand. I spent the entire day, and I mean the entire day from 7:30 AM to 5:30 Pm working to fix a serious problem on my computer. The thing is, I was not only infected with about 30-40 different Trojan viruses, it somehow seeped into my personal banking and my business banking. That's some big sh*t.

Thank God I was still able to do business yesterday. But what started out as an item on my checking account, turned into an all day dealing with Tech support for my business. I do have to say that Yash (my Intuit Tech support guy in New Delhi) and I bonded, and he was extremely helpful, considering we were on the phone for the better part of 3.5 hours.

Long story short, this has been happening to me quite a bit recently. In Feb, I noticed fraud on my business merchant account which was promptly cleared up, then in late March, more fraud with my business American Express. I changed passwords, got new account numbers  and was issued new cards etc., this time it was personal.

So I gotta ask why? What am I doing here?

My computer guy, (not from New Delhi) who ended up spending 3 hours with me and my computer yesterday told me that these "Trojan viruses" lay in wait in all kinds of places like Facebook, email accounts like Gmail and AOL and wherever else you can think of. There are barely a click away. The work computer, which is our cash register, is used by the entire staff so it is hard to police. He said the only solution is to ask that they not use the computer for anything other than the business at hand.

So really?

Today I am so afraid to do anything on this computer...for fear that even Googling the word Trojan will bring up Lord knows what.

Trojans are truly best served doing what they do best and forgive me for being blunt here..Disposing of wasted sperm.

America's Got Whitey

And so it begins....tomorrow. I can hardly believe it.

Even if you don't come from Boston, chances are you know who Whitey Bulger is. The man pictured above is nothing like the image that is conjured up when Whitey's name is spoken in mixed company. And that's exactly the way he wanted it. He lived in obscurity in a beach community in California for years, yet he really lived right under our noses. Whitey had a knack for that.

The man, who at one time was the FBI's number one most wanted man, and became second to only Osama Bin Laden, was captured in Santa Monica, California, on June 22, 2011. We watched with rapt attention, as they pieced together the details of his 16 years on the lamb with his girlfriend, Catherine Greig. I thought they'd never catch him. I thought old Whitey would die out there, somewhere, if he hadn't already. After all, he was well into his 80's when he was captured. But Whitey's story isn't over. There's still plenty left to tell and he's going to have his last say.

And it all begins tomorrow with jury selection.

There are a million headline news stories out there today that unite us as human beings. Bostonian's recently have a lot to connect and commiserate about. Together we will watch the Bruins in their run for Lord Stanley's cup and we will read stories about the amazing recovery and resilience of the Marathon bombing victims.

And we will most certainly watch the trial of the century take place here at John Joseph Moakley US Courthouse. We will await Whitey's fate together.