Jingle Bell Schlock

Holy crap, just a week 'til Christmas. It really snuck up on me this year, but I'm not panicking about shopping. I actually have most of it done already, believe it or not.

So Motley Crue has jumped on the reunion bandwagon and is touring again, and it didn't take long for Vince Neil to get some additional press for the band. I'm not planning to catch them at the Fleet Center in March, but I remember seeing them play back in 1985, my senior year of high school (yikes). The show was originally supposed to be in my hometown (at the least the one where I finished high school) at the Kingston, NH, fairgrounds, which had already been the site of a few festival concerts in the previous year including my first show ever: Cheap Trick, Ratt, Twisted Sister and Lita Ford. But after some bikers held up a nearby convenience store during a Molly Hatchet show (I think it was Molly Hatchet), the town fathers decided they didn't want the Crue playing in Kingston. Of course, they would later relent and have Ozzy and Metallica play there, but they stood firm on banning Motley Crue.

So we had to schlep to the Manning Bowl in Lynn, which hadn't hosted a concert since 1966 when the Rolling Stones opened a U.S. tour there and fans rioted. Me and my buddy Tim Morgan went to the Crue show, which featured openers Accept (of "Balls to the Wall" fame) and Y&T (who had a hit that summer with, appropriately enough, "Summertime Girls"). Like the other shows we saw in Kingston, it was wall-to-wall people. You basically stood there for eight hours without food, drink or being able to urinate; at least you did if you were young and stupid and didn't want to lose your spot. The Crue was touring behind their album Theatre of Pain and had a huge hit with "Home Sweet Home." Don't remember a lot of specifics about the show, other than it took forever to get home and there were a lot of girls flashing their tatas. Saw the Crue a few years later with fellow metalhead Chris Tateosian at the Portland Civic Center, I think. But by that point, I was starting to lose interest in them. Tat and I saw many, many shows over the years. Good times.

This has been around for a while, but it always cracks me up.

The White House: Where proofreading apparently doesn't pay too well.

It's hot stove time in baseball. Pedro goes to the Mets, the Sox sign Renteria, the Yankees are close to getting Pavano AND Randy Johnson, the Braves trade for Tim Hudson, and hell, even the Jays signed Corey Koskie. But some sad news for Jays fans, as former manager, scout and front office exec Bobby Mattick died last night. He managed the team in '80 and '81 when they were the worst team in baseball, but you got the feeling he knew better days were ahead. It's been a rough year for the Jays: they finished last in the East, former pitcher and current TV analyst John Cerutti died, legendary radio voice Tom Cheek came down with a brain tumor, and now this. Yeesh.

Well, whatever optimism I had for the NHL lockout to end have pretty much dissipated. The league shot down the union's offer, and the union shot down the league's counteroffer. It don't look good, folks.