The American, or inferior, Falls from the hotel room in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. On this day, we completely missed the game where the Sox lost 7-6 to the Jays. The day before, in another hotel in McGeesville, MA, we tuned in with the Sox up, like, 5-0, with two outs and two strikes in the ninth. After several walks, I finally said, "Watch us throw out the tying run at the plate to end the game." And we did. Now back to our vacation.

The Canadian Horseshoe Falls, upstream, to the right of the cleverly named "Casino."

The American Falls light up in the official colors of America: blue, white, and red. There are fireworks over the falls pretty much every night. The pics of those are dark. Besides, come on, have you never seen fireworks?

On to Toronto for Tuesday night's game. Canada, known for its cold, is hotter than hell. All that snow and ice imagery must be propaganda to weed out dumb Americans and their crazy units of weather and distance. Above, Tina interviews Curt.

The gentle giant among the little people.

Tito seems pissed at me.

This lady is a little out of her mind and whatnot.

Kid with mohawk.

Tito, what did I do? This isn't funny anymore.

Coco.

Papelbon.

Manny and David.

Papelbon on someone else's cell phone.

And again.

I love the Omen advertising. I wouldn't think "666" being all over the place would be acceptable, but apparently it is. I made a quick little movie on this Manny/David/Omen theme. I'll have it in my movie area soon.

Remy and DO film the intro.

Hey Trot, put your hat over your face like this.

Okay. By the way, are you George Clooney?

Manny on his birthday. Those Canadians hate Manny. They were on him all night. Terrible job. You know he wanted to get a key hit, but he wouldn't get it until the next night.

Chacin's crazy delivery.

The purple sky and the crescent moon and the open roof.

Crappy game that night, with Beckett pitching like some kind of non-Josh Beckett. No static at the border, and by the next night, I was at my parents' house, watching that crazy Totally Pauley game. I was proud of the kid. He did what he could, considering he got the call the day before. Amazing defense by my boy Gonzalez, and by the ailing Loretta, helping him to get out of a bunch of jams.

After he came out, he was big on drama that could've been saved for his mama. NESN cut to him in the dugout over and over. He showed us dejected look after dejected look. The near tears, the shaking of the head, the face buried in the hands. After all that, they cut to him yet again. He's still sulking, only this time, where there was no one before, there was Timlin, sitting next to the kid, calmly eating an apple. It's my contention that this move was purposely done by the comedian Timlin. Only a head of lettuce would have been funnier.

Then I took the late train back to NYC--to find a note on my building door: "Leave this door open. Key doesn't work, your new key is under your door." Would've been okay, except the door was shut and locked. So I had to buzz Chan at 1:30 AM. Way to be awake, Chan. Thanks.


*I'm told the song from the movie Vacation is "Holiday Road," but it's always sounded like "Holiday Roll" to me.