You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch

Well, I hope you're all sitting down, because I have a shocking announcement to make: an entire 5 days before December 25th, 2006, I was essentially done with my shopping for Christmas presents. Yes, for this year, not last year. Very funny. Maybe next year I'll shoot for the December 'teens' instead of the twenties. Crazyness. Anyways, it reinforced my true love for Thanksgiving over Christmas; I hate Christmas shopping. It's always impossible to think of gifts for everyone, and that to begin with is entirely frustrating. Then you have to deal with the traffic... and the volume of people at the stores (which, generally, are completely disheveled. Or, at least by the time I'm shopping in them). It really just isn't pleasant. Remember Thanksgiving when you didn't have to deal with that? You just relaxed and had a great meal? The only big problem day at grocery stores is the day before, and only complete goofballs like my mother shop on this day every year. I'm not sure why she does this, I worked in a grocery store for years and told her when to go and she always ended up in the mayhem. To be fair, I think she and my dad went later one evening this year and avoided it. But, I digress.

Holiday cheer is truly a mythical creation. Where, exactly, can I find this holiday cheer during the month of December? The person behind the checkout counter says "Happy Holidays!" but unless that person is Will Ferrell in his elf suit, you know it's a load of horse manuere and that what he/she is really thinking is "please, just get out of here so I can go home, I've been treated like trash enough today." Everyone is impatient (I'm a very patient person, and by my observation, 0.01% of the population is at all considerate or nice if anything so much as you short them a penny goes wrong). When someone gives you a gift and says "I hope you like it" you might as well finish their sentence with "because I stood in line for three hours at Filene's for that sweater and I am NOT bringing it back." So holiday cheer is spending 24 days in utter ugliness and bitterness so that we can be nice and happy and sweet for one? May cowpies rain down on your head. Give me Thanksgiving!

I'm pretty sure that sound you hear is Santa erasing me from his "good" list and transferring me to the "grinch" list, which is a step below "bad."

Anyways, let's completely shift gears and I'll tell you a fun story about a mildly famous person emailing me. First let me take you back about two years. John Buccigross writes a column about hockey for ESPN.com. As part of his column he has something called "Shot of the Week" - which is an odd or funny looking hockey related photo, and the reader's job is to submit a funny caption and the next week he runs the best ones along with a new photo. Well, senior year of college, I emailed a few suggestions in and, to my surprise, one day Todd emailed me with a link to Buccigross' newest column. There I was! My quote and name were on ESPN.com for all to see. I thought that was pretty cool. Ok, hold that thought, and fastforward to this past week.

ESPN.com ran a feature where readers could vote on the greatest (theoretical) top line in hockey of all time. And they listed the top 50 forwards of their choosing for you to vote from. For the record, I voted for Ron Francis centering, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. The obvious choice is to have Lemieux-Gretzky-Gordie Howe, which to no ones surprise won the voting, but I thought (despite Gretzky's ability to rack up assists with the best of them) that I would center two of the greatest scorers by a great center who could get them the puck. And Francis scored over 500 goals as it is, I believe, so that's just a good kicker. I digress. Anyways, at least 5-10 of the ESPN selections for the top 50 forwards were downright awful. For example, they listed Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin. Don't get me wrong, those guys are fantastic and could very well end up as two of the top 50 greatest of all time, but they BOTH ARE IN THEIR SECOND YEAR. You can't possibly include someone like that in this conversation. Plus there were a few other suspect names when you come to consider Cam Neely. As a Bruin fan, I was mildly disgruntled that Neely wasn't on this list and some other suspect names were. I first got into hockey at about the time he retired early due to creaky joints, unfortunately, but he was apparently a great player in his heyday and really dominated his sport and revolutionized his position, so they say. So the point of all of this is that ESPN.com released the results today, and had some of their "experts" choose their best line of all time. John Buccigross selected Neely as one of his three players and wrote that he had to cheat a little bit, which I thought was awesome. So I mozeyed over to his column a little later, and I have resumed recenly writing in for the Shot of the Week since he started it up again. This week's shot is a photo of a surprised looking Wayne Gretzky (who coaches Phoenix now). So I emailed with the following caption:

"You left Cam Neely off the list of Top 50 forwards of all time? Really?"

(Thank you, from all of Boston, for "cheating" just a little bit)

To my great surprise, John Buccigross of all people wrote me back six hours later and said:

"I always got your back, Nathan"

YEAH. John Buccigross took the time out of hundreds of emails to write me six words. I thought that was cool. I feel like I have a hockey buddy now at ESPN.com.

Well, happy holidays everyone. No, really... I mean it!