1 Happy St

The past few NBA seasons, Isiah Thomas had been the coach of the Knicks. Before he was the coach, he was the General Manager. The whole time he's been employed by the team, the Knicks have sucked, while also having by far the largest payroll in the league, and it's largely Isiah's fault. During his time as General Manager, he sexually harrassed one of his female employees, fired her, got sued, lost, and caused his employers to have to pay millions of dollars in damages to her. In other words, he's been a complete trainwreck.

So the owners of the Knicks fired him. Kinda.

If they fire him, they'd have to pay him the remainder of his salary for sitting at home. And they're not about to do that. So now they're going all "George Costanza when he was employed at Play Now" on him. He's still employed by the team, but he has no title and he is barred from having contact with anyone within the organization, including players. I guess they're hoping that he'll be so embarrassed by his new role that he'll quit, meaning they won't have to continue paying him. It is unclear if they've already boarded up the door to his office so he has to crawl through the duct work to get in.

h/t Molly

Since Festivus falls on Sunday this year, I figured I would air my grievances today.

The Airing of Grievances
To Brian...
I don't like how you post so much so I look like a slacker to our readers! WTF?

To our readers... (that means you, Jane, Molly, Maygan, Erin, Tricia, Ridgeway and Jeremy, etc.)...
If you like what you read here, go tell some other people about this site!!!!

To everyone on TV...
Stop shouting!

To the guy in the cubicle next to mine...
Stop singing!

To the guy at the mall dressed like Eminem...
You're not fooling anyone!

To the guy at the mall dressed like Santa...
Neither are you!

To White Sox General Manager, Kenny Williams...
Don't you think we're going to need a centerfielder?

To White Sox Centerfielder, Brian Anderson...
No!

To the guy that leaves 6 inches of snow on top of his car and then gets on the highway so we can all drive behind him in his wake of wind-blown snow...
You should be sterilized.

To the next person that says to me, "Cold enough for you?"...
Duck.

To the people that take their kids to JC Penney to get their pictures taken on a Saturday three weeks before Christmas and then complain that the wait is too long...
Maybe you could go outside and clean the snow off the roof of your car while you wait.

To people that claim to still watch The Simpsons...
No you don't. Nobody does.

To people that save gift bows...
Really? That thing cost about twenty cents.

That's all for this year...

Now, it's time for the Feats of Strength... Who wants to arm wrestle?

Something that always bothered me - when Keith Hernandez asked Jerry to help him move, Jerry thought their relationship was far too new for Keith to be asking him something like that. When Kramer heard that Jerry had agreed to help, he was reasonably upset and said "Next thing you know you're gonna be driving him to the airport", while Jerry replied with "I'M NOT DRIVING HIM TO THE AIRPORT!" This sequence of dialogue implied that according to Jerry and Kramer, driving someone to the airport is even more of an inconvenience than helping someone move. I think that’s backwards. I've given plenty of people a ride to the airport, but I can't see myself ever helping one of them load one of their gi-normous couches into a truck. It takes a special kind of friendship (or incriminating photos) to ask someone to help you move, but I think you can ask just about any yahoo to drive you to the airport.

Now picking you up from the airport, that’s a whole different story.

[Editor's Note: Brian wasted another 1HappySt milestone to critique a short piece of dialogue from a 15-year-old television show. Yes, this is 1HappySt's 500th post. Woo Hoo!]

• Has anyone ever studied the correlation between cases of depression in popular rock artists and those artists' songs being included in a Kidz Bop compilation CD? After hearing those kids singing "Bad Day", Daniel Powter should be on suicide watch.

• Does it strike anyone else as unfair that George Costanza would lose his job for having sex in the office, yet Andrea Yates is found innocent for killing her kids seeing as how they both used the same excuse? "Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? I gotta tell ya, I have to plead ignorance on this one, cause if someone told me that that sort of behavior was frowned upon..."

• Would anyone be surprised to find out that Steve Perry has been living in AJ Pierzynski's basement since last October?

• So it turns out that the guy who just won the Tour de France, Floyd Landis has tested positive for high levels of testosterone. After the last 8 years of speculation about Lance Armstrong and doping, how could he think he wouldn't get caught? Maybe he can try the aforementioned George Costanza defense.

• Do you find yourself wishing that other aspects of your life had a Tivo too? I'll notice that I'm daydreaming in a meeting or zoning out when the waitress is listing the salad dressings and then think, "Oh crap, I missed that, rewind!" Damn you, Tivo!
  

... until the four most beautiful words in the english language. Pitchers and catchers report! Is football season over yet? Who won? I had all my money on the Packers. I should check with my bookie and see how much he owes me.

I'm actually not as excited about this coming baseball season as I should be. As you may know, I'm a White Sox fan and since we've already won the World Series, I really have nothing left to live for. What else is there? When my sons were born, I thought, "Man, I hope the Sox never win the Series so these will be the best moments of my life!" Sorry, boys.

What else is there to accomplish? Maybe this year we could win it all without losing a game in the playoffs. They lost one last year. Pathetic. It reminds me of the episode of Seinfeld when George is giving Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams hitting tips and they say, "we won the World Series!" "Yeah..." George says. "In 6 games!" We won ours in 4. Sigh. It's no fun being so much better. The commissioner's office should look into ways to make it more competitive. Level the playing field a bit by making all the White Sox' wives play instead.

Which begs the question... Let's say that the entire roster were shrunken down to the size of Eddie Gaedel. Who would win in a game between the Yankees and the team of mini-Sox. If Ozzie Guillen were shrunken too, you might have yourself a contest, but a regular-sized Ozzie could win with a team of mini-Sox any day.