The last time I posted, Cliff Lee had just become a Phillie. Maybe it’s just taken me this long to recover from that blow. Luckily, the Mets are pretty much in a reassessing mode, so over this year of Phillies dominance they can work on building towards 2012, especially with all the money coming off the books. I just look forward to seeing a healthy lineup of Reyes, Pagan, Wright, Beltran, Bay, and Ike for 2011. But enough about the Mets, as I can save that for another post.

While I’ve spent plenty of time putting together link posts for Roto Hardball, it’s not that blog’s fault that I haven’t written a blog post here in a while. Whenever I’ve felt like writing about something else other than fantasy baseball, it’s been a fairly personal topic that I thought was better suited to my hipster-worthy Moleskine notebook. I tried to work out problems and issues on the page, writing them out with a pen instead of typing them out with a keyboard — as if that would make a difference. Maybe I’m just preparing for the inevitable appointment with a shrink; instead of talking, I’ll be able to just give the doc my journal.

It’s funny when you worry about things blowing up in one way, and then having them blow up in a way you never thought would happen. On a related note, part of growing up is being able to deal with something not turning out the way you hoped. It’s also important to know when to stop giving, even if you think it’ll make you feel better. In the end, it only adds to a massive feeling of resentment. This reminds me of Blue Valentine — which you should watch as soon as it hits Netflix Instant. The independent movies are always on there much quicker than the big guns.

I’d go into Oscars discussion now, but, 1) I didn’t watch the ceremony, and, 2) I haven’t seen 7 out of 10 Best Picture nominees. I have no idea how to punctuate that sentence. I am listening to the winner of Best Original Score as I write this, though. I thought the Inception soundtrack was fantastically bombastic, but the work Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross did for The Social Network is just so damn cool and much more conducive to writing. I’d listen to the Inception soundtrack while skydiving.

But yeah, the past two months. I’ve been meaning to look for a new job for the past month and a half or so. That hasn’t happened. The nearest equivalent would be applying to the MLB Dream Job of sitting in a room for seven months and watching every single baseball game of the 2011 season, while blogging and making videos about my experience. But one of the application questions asked if I was of legal drinking age, so I hope it involves imbibing alcohol as well.

By far the coolest thing that’s happened to me recently was attending a bloodbath between the Islanders and Penguins. A friend called me up the day of, and I said I’d be down for going to my first Islanders game this century. Like most of America, I no longer follow hockey, but I knew that the last game between the two teams had resulted in a broken face for Islander goalie Rick DiPietro. So I was expecting for fights. But I didn’t think the Islanders would a 4-0 lead into the first intermission, while also participating in a couple of one-on-one fights which only served as precursors to a full-out brawl. By the end of the game, the Islanders had scored 9 times.

While I complained earlier in this post about when things don’t work out as planned, this Islanders game was perfect. Each team only had a handful of players left on their benches by the end of the game due to the insane amount of game misconducts. In the final minutes, fights were breaking out after every face-off and chants of “We want ten!” were reverberating throughout the stadium. And I got to witness a mother yell out, “THIS IS WHAT WE’RE RAISING!” after she heard some vulgar taunting in the parking lot. It was a wonderful night, topped off by watching the highlights at the Hooters nearby; it was not until seeing the fighting condensed into a few minutes that my friend and I truly appreciated what we had just experienced.

If I felt more comfortable sharing my life details on here (a.k.a. GIRLS), I assure you this post would be longer and much more entertaining. I try to make up the difference with GIFs.

Two perfect games have been thrown since I last wrote — one official, one unofficial. Even though Roy Halladay is on the Phillies, I was rooting for him to get that perfect game. I wanted people to realize how fucking awesome he is, and I think that’s finally happened. I think it’s happened with Chase Utley, too. Maybe It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia was the tipping point. Or maybe it was the 5 HR in the World Series. Who could possibly guess?

But a player that people don’t yet appreciate AT ALL is Ryan Zimmerman. I thought maybe his fantastic year last season — combined with David Wright’s down year — would bring him into the discussion as the best 3B in the NL. Sure, it has done that among internet denizens, but it seems the general public still doesn’t even know he exists. Hitting .295 with 13 HR while being lauded for top-notch defense apparently isn’t enough to be in the Top 5 in All-Star Game voting. It’s almost infuriating to hear people talk about Stephen Strasburg and say how it’s great that the Nationals “finally have a star.” I’d say that maybe 3B just isn’t that sexy or something, but both Evan Longoria and the aforementioned Wright have had their knobs lathered with sportswriter adulation for a couple of years now. Zimmerman deserves to be given EXACTLY the same amount of attention and praise. I should have left some of this for its own post.

The World Cup, on the other hand, I can cover more than well enough within this post — mostly because I don’t know shit and can think of multiple friends who could write up more interesting thoughts on it. I know America got fucked over, I know England has been hilariously awful, and I know there have been a number of mind-blowing upsets. That’s about as much as I can be bothered to type about soccer.

Two other sports I barely care about finished up in the past month. It’s kinda sad, because I do find hockey pretty damn exciting when I care (like USA-Canada in the Olympics), but I just couldn’t bring myself to watch more than a period of two a game intently. And that wasn’t until the Finals. The NBA just sucks. I hate it. I hate the Lakers. I hate the Celtics. I hate how games turn into foul-shooting contests. I hate how much refs can control games. I hate Phil Jackson’s face.

(I will overcome these feelings if LeBron comes to the Knicks.)

Keeping up with other things that suck, The Sporting News published their “25 Under 25″ list. This would be their rankings of the best young athletes in only the popular North American sports. There is no Michael Phelps. No Lionel Messi (someone alerted me to his greatness). No Rafael Nadal. These are three generational talents, but they don’t play baseball, basketball, (American) football, hockey…or drive a fucking stock car. To be fair, it doesn’t seem like they cover the sports in which those athletes excel, but it’s pathetic anyway. Even Sportscentury, if I remember correctly, made a point to say “North America” whenever referring to its list of greatest athletes of the 20th century.

If you didn’t figure it out, this was a way for me to mention Rafael Nadal taking back his rightful place as the King of Clay at Roland Garros. He now has five French Open titles to go along with his one Wimblebon and one Australian Open. He’s still not even halfway to Roger Federer’s total of 16 Grand Slam title, but he could make it there in the coming weeks at Wimbledon. I think every tennis fan is praying for another Federer-Nadal Grand Slam final. There hasn’t been one since the 2009 Australian Open. None of the finals since then have quite lived up to that one, although the Federer-Roddick 2009 Wimbledon war of attrition came close. I know some people found that serve-dominated match to be boring, but I found Roddick’s determination absolutely enthralling. That’s about as embarrassingly gushy as I’ve ever gotten on this blog, but fuck if I didn’t feel for Roddick after that match. HE JUST CAN’T BEAT FEDERER.

But yeah, a Federer-Nadal Wimbledon final is solely needed; I won’t accept anything less. I said going into 2008 Wimbledon that if Nadal beat Federer, it would signal the beginning of the end. I was wrong then, but I’m going back to that well. Federer is now 29. He didn’t reach the semifinals at the French, ending a streak of 23 consecutive Grand Slam semifinals. Nadal is not yet 25 — even if his knees might be older than Federer’s. I’ll leave it at that.

If I’m going to make a blog post when the US beats Canada in an Olympic game, I have to be fair and make a post when we lose to them in the Gold Medal game. Were there any better hockey games in the Olympics than the two played between our two nations? That’s a serious question that no one that reads this blog can answer, most likely. Sure, I watched a handful of games, but not nearly all of them. But the US and Canada were clearly the best two teams throughout the tournament, and both games were hard-fought, absolute nailbiters that ended with explosions of ecstasy. One was sealed shut with an empty net goal flicked in by a diving American, while the other was ended by Canada’s golden boy, who is at this very moment no doubt getting serviced by three beautiful women of his choosing. And that’s not counting the gold medal girls — he pounded a few of those out in the locker room showers. Bastard.

But hey, I’m happy for Canada. They won the most gold medals and they closed out their own Olympics like a goddamn Hollywood script. Oh wait, then they had closing ceremonies with Nickelback. FUCK YOU, Canada. I wish we won — and gave Sidney Crosby a career-ending injury in the process.

Seriously though, that game was absolutely incredible to watch and might have convinced me to watch some Stanley Cup playoffs this year. I forgot how amazing hockey can be. Yet another sport I rather watch than soccer.

If I could make these GIFs myself with a TV tuner card, I would add one of the empty net dagger provided by a dive from Ryan Kesler. I say his name like I knew who he was before today. I didn’t know who Ryan Miller was either. Now the small audience who tuned into MSNBC knows him as the Canuck Slayer. So while 90% of Canada was watching this contest, in America it was relegated to the news network decimated daily by Fox News.

The other shoutout goes to Brian Rafalski, who scored two goals and set up a third. Basically Rafalski + Miller > Canada. Now I’m officially back into hockey — until America loses to Russia or something. But not until after Canada does, muahaha.