Oh good, the Patriots won the Super Bowl! Actually, not so good. Around this time last year, as I recall, I had just moved to Boston, and while I tried to shut off the Super Bowl festivities on TV and read my suitably elitist book in peace (I think I was pawing through either Globalization and Discontents or Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), it turned out that the Patriots ended up winning or something and there were riots and screams and random acts of violence all about the streets. Moreover one BU girl, I think, died. So it was all very aggravating. Meanwhile, I have a very distinct memory of the landlord on the first floor talking into his phone, shouting in a very nasal voice, "Mom, the Patriots won the Super Bowl… again! The Patriots won the Super Bowl… [long pause] again!" Ad nauseum. I realize that's no reason to hate a team, but still.

Meanwhile, my sport of choice, hockey, seems to be mired in a complex labor dispute of some sort. As a member of organized labor (no, seriously: I'm now paying dues to the United Auto Workers) I suppose I should feel some solidarity with the players, but it's all awfully depressing. I've never really followed any other sport, and I follow the NHL pretty closely, so the strike pretty much shut down my entire sports intake. (For those who care, I'm a big fan of the Vancouver Canucks. Why? Well, I grew up in Japan, and didn't really have any geographic loyalties to speak of, but on the family NHL '94 computer game Vancouver's star player, Pavel Bure, was really fast and had a cool fake-out move that I'd use repeatedly to win games 15-2, so that was the team. My little brother started following the Philadelphia Flyers for similar reasons.)

Long story short: I'm suffering sports withdrawal, have no place to channel all this testosterone, so I may as well cheer for the Super Bowl winner, even if I happen to hate them for wholly trivial reasons.