American Dad

Hello World, Whoa, Nellie! A reasonable person might be justifiably perturbed to discover that this is the very last weekend in June already, and there's no avoiding the fact that July will be showing up right on schedule on Monday, ready or not. And while everyone knows how I hate to be an alarmist, I can't help but point out that it will put us more than halfway past the middle of the year, and stepping onto that slippery slope where the weeks start to fly by at a dizzying pace, until everything is just one great big blur, and then suddenly it's Christmas. In fact, it was more than a week ago, and still about the middle of June, mind you, when I received our very first 2014 promotional calendar in the mail, and I think we can all agree that it goes without saying, thanks oh so very much not. Next it will be the Christmas music catalogs at church, and corporate greeting cards for all my holiday needs. I just love sleigh bells and holly berries in the summer, don't you? Of course, the previous week on Sunday was Father's Day, and a perfect time to honor the men in our lives who have blessed us with their strength and kindness, integrity and ingenuity - not to mention, being the good-natured butt of endless jokes about beer, television, sports, cars, blondes, junk food, and personal hygiene, to name just a few. All over this great land of ours, from sea to shining sea and from the mountains to the prairies and back again, fathers have no choice but to graciously accept yet another hideous necktie from eager youngsters, or mis-shapen clay ashtrays, key fob lanyards, and picture frames made out of popsicle sticks. We have no such horror stories here, as the cats have yet to present their dear old dad with a necktie of any sort, and their gift-giving habits run the more traditional gamut of entertainment, gadgets, slippers and the like. Actually, their first choice would be catnip mice and Fancy Feast, but they're shrewd enough to understand that the man who wields the can opener is the king of the castle, so keeping him happy is a pretty high priority in their furry little minds, or rather, their tummies. There were no complaints from the Patrius Felinus (Bill's Indian name is: "Man With Many Cats") so I guess we can all agree that the day was just about purr-fect. The NBA finals eventually wrapped up after 7 games with a re-Heat, as Miami won their second consecutive title, and third in franchise history. This should come as a surprise to nobody, after the high-profile transactions to bring three of the game's top marquee players to the team all in one fell swoop - but it can't be denied that the plucky San Antonio Spurs played them tough the whole way, and after 7 grueling games in a see-saw series, the outcome was no foregone conclusion. So we've closed the book on that part of the NBA season, and moved onto the next chapter of outdoor summer hoops, firing coaches, the draft, and off-season trades and deals that could change the complexion of the league in new and unexpected ways, that don't necessarily conform to the official King James version, as it were. So a word of warning to anyone planning on a three-Heat in 2014, I wouldn't go ahead and print up those souvenir T-shirts just yet - that is, unless you've made some sort of Faustian bargain with the evil spirit of Affirmed, and then all bets are off. On the frozen front, the NHL Stanley Cup finals pitted the Chicago Blackhawks against the Boston Bruins in an "Original Six" match-up so beloved by traditionalists, before the rest of the thundering herd joined the fray starting in 1967, changing the face of the game forever more, to the continuing delight, or dismay, of their dozens upon dozens of fans in two countries. It ended up with Chicago over Boston in 6 bruising games with the merest razor-thin margin of victory in each one, making this the Blackhawks' second Cup in 4 years, after a drought of 50 years before that. So once again, we've now closed the book on that part of the season, and since there is no such thing as outdoor summer ice hockey (and many dozens of hard-core fans would agree, more's the pity, I'm sure) everyone will simply have to fend for themselves in the interim, until it's time to hit the ice once more. That will be here before we know it, as the pre-season starts in September, with training camps open the month before that. Heck, there's hardly enough time for the idle players to get into trouble on their own, which might have been the plan all along. Say, maybe those owners aren't as dumb as they look, after all! In other sports news, in what can only be described as a bizarre turn of events, with perhaps a healthy dollop of wishful thinking tossed in for good measure, the addle-pated brain-trust at the New York Rangers hired the coach from the Vancouver Canucks (who was fired when he couldn't prevent them from being unceremoniously swept out of the first round of the playoffs) and the even more muddle-headed whiz-kids in Vancouver hired John Tortorella, who had just been fired by the Rangers for failing to get his team past the second round of the playoffs - presumably with the intention that both coaches will somehow have better results with a different team. (?????) Am I the only one who sees something radically wrong with this picture? The new Rangers coach Alain Vigneault amassed a 310-227 record in 7 seasons with Vancouver, who were perennial contenders, but were unable to win a Stanley Cup during his tenure behind the bench. Naturally, it behooves each and every one of us to wish him all the luck in the world, in his attempts to get the under-achieving Rangers to accomplish something that the under-performing Canucks couldn't do, and vice versa. Meanwhile, former Rangers great Mark Messier, who had been angling for the job, said there were no hard feelings at being passed over, as he summarily quit his job in the front office after 4 years, and struck off on his own to sulk - I mean, to explore other opportunities far from the confines of the World's Most Famous Arena. So it should be interesting times ahead, as the pride of Broadway regroups in the off-season, and looking forward to better days to come in the fall, where hope springs eternal, and every player could be the next Wayne Gretzky. Or maybe it just seems that way, if you've been hit in the head with too many pucks, at which point, trading coaches with the Vancouver Canucks probably doesn't sound like such a hare-brained idea after all, and they've no doubt got the jack-rabbits to prove it, I shouldn't wonder. Alert readers may recall a few weeks back, where the phrase "Et tu, Papa Smurf" was used to ironic effect in a commentary about the appalling depths to which summer movies had sunk, leaving us mired in a graveyard long on technical wizardry but short on inspiration. Of course, even the most backward schoolchild can tell you that the original phrase, "Et tu, Brute" is permanently seared into their consciousness from William Shakespeare's iconic play, "Julius Caesar," which is to the educational curriculum as "Thou Shalt Not" is to The Ten Commandments, only even more sacrosanct, and that's not just a lot of holy Moses, believe me. Now everyone is aware that it doesn't take much to rile up the academic community, heaven knows, and apparently this is another one of those instances where something that seems innocuous and inconsequential, instead has stirred up a fire-storm of protest on all sides. Roman scholars appear universally outraged at The Bard's fanciful invention that these were the doomed Caesar's last words, and even a cursory search of the expression turns up pages and pages of results, all in a veritable lather over this literary scandal. Typical is www.TodayIFoundOut.com, where they fume, "these famous last words are a historical fiction .... should provoke historical indignation." While at www.mahalo.com, the Mahalo Answers research team sneers, " ... Gaius Julius Caesar's actual last words (not Shakespeare's)" as if poetic license were a crime against humanity. The experts rage and rant, page after page, quoting contemporary sources like Suetonius and Plutarch, reconstructing the final confrontation with the Senators, and blasting Shakespeare's intricately plotted masterpiece to smithereens in a hail of pedantic bullets. The dinosaurs will be happy to tell you that I'm just about as persnickety as anybody, and way more than the next fellow, and this sort of arcane, infinitesimal controversy should be mother's milk to me, and ready to hop aboard that bandwagon with the rest of the antiquarian zealots on their high horses of righteous indignation, and let the croutons fall where they may. (Sorry, wrong Caesar!) However, on the road to righting a historical travesty, I couldn't help but notice other commentators weighing in on the subject, who pointed out in a reasonable manner that Shakespeare was merely repeating a quote that was already in common usage at the time of his famous tragedy's inception, and far from coining the expression himself, was depending on it having already acquired the sense of "being betrayed by a trusted ally," to fit right in with his dramatic narrative in a way that the audience would immediately comprehend. Oh well, so much for historical outrage and academic indignation over this imbroglio, which has instead served to vindicate His Bardness, and make the scoffers and nay-sayers look like the jealous, petty nit-pickers that they are, after all. In basketball, they would call this "no harm, no foul," but I'm afraid that it doesn't make any sense to me, because I obviously haven't been hit in the head with enough hockey pucks. Say, who let Mark Messier in here? Elle