Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner Again, and apologies for the ad nauseum apologies, but the blogging has been scarce.

Shameful on my part, but over the next few days and weeks, I will attempt (key word there, “attempt”) to make this daily blog such a thing again.

No more cutting and pasting old stuff, no more letting the site lay fallow like some Iowa cornfield (What the shampoo was that reference? Get me outta here).

You need new and original material, and I need stuff to do everyday in between waking, sleeping and Red Sox games.

To show you how serious I am, here’s the return of The Hand.

For you new readers, the Hand is a cute little idea I came up with, using the five fingers of a hand to discuss five hot topics of the day. You’re impressed, I know. Do try to contain it.

Here’s the breakdown of the Hand: thumb (either up, for a good thing, or down, for something that pisses me off); index finger (usually the universal sign for “We’re #1” or the top tool for picking one’s nose; the middle finger (usually the universal sign for a personal invitation to shampoo yourself); the ring finger (dedicated to the aesthetic beauty of a female); and the pinky (since it’s kind of a random finger, you get a random topic).

The Thumb: I’m going thumbs-down to two baseball folks: Keith Hernandez and Willie Harris.

First to Keith Hernandez. You sucked as an ’86 Met, you sucked on Seinfeld (see left), you suck as a commentator, and you suck on those lame “Just for Men” ads (as if shiny black or burnt orange hair will get you laid more than if you just went gray…).

On top of your continued pattern of sucking, you’re an idiot.

As many may know, Keith made some stupid sexist comment on a Mets broadcast last week as to why there was a woman in the San Diego Padres dugout.

Dugouts are gross, confined, nasty places. Full of seeds, tobacco spin, crotch-scratching, and steroid-fueled farts. A woman would not choose to be there, unless she had to…unless she was a part of the team.

And as it turned out she was. Kelly Calabrese is the full-time massage therapist for the Pads. Been so for the last few years. And by all accounts by Padres officials, she is damn good at what she does.

Calabrese came out with a prepared statement, calling Hernandez out for what he was: a sexist jerk.

My reply would have been a bit simpler and a bit harsher: “Who is Keith Hernandez?”

As for Willie Harris, hey pal, you’re batting a buck-ten, at least beat out slow grounders to short and, goddammit, lay down a shampooing bunt. You’re completely useless if you can’t do those two things.

Bring back Dave Roberts, put in Dustan Mohr. I don’t care.

Index: Martin Scorsese (right) is a pretty good director. Has made a few decent movies.

Bob Dylan is an OK singer-songwriter. Put together a few better-than-average albums.

Welcome to today’s exercise of understating the obvious.

So when you combine the filmmaking genius of Scorsese with the overall genius of Dylan, what do you get? Answer: you get “No Direction Home,” which is a four-hour bio-pic-documentary on the life of one Robert Zimmerman, from the mind of the guy who introduces himself with a hearty handshake and an “Hi, I’m Marty,” with not an air of arrogance.

Watching it was both informative, entertaining, awe-inspiring, shocking (the Brits booed him after he went electric, which you can add, somewhere around #432, to the long list of reasons to hate the British). The genius of Dylan and the genius of Scorsese were like two snowplows colliding head-on, both going 100 mph. It was a brilliant crash.

Even better than the learning and viewing experience of No Direction Home was chatting with my Dad about it all – he being 19 when the 1963 Newport Folk Festival featured Dylan, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, not to mention the Kingston Trio, Pete Seeger, etc, etc etc. Yeah, he went. Hung out with his buddies, drank a few beers, slept in a park, saw the shows, went home. My friends and I have been known to go out in Newport. Rarely do we encounter genius. It usually just involves Advil the next day.

I Netflix’ed it, watching it quickly this weekend, and returned it today. You’d think I want to hold onto it and watch it again, but no…that angle has been covered. I logged onto amazon.com and purchased it. That, and Godfather I…it was a big Scorsese weekend.

The middle finger: Who is pissing me off lately? Hmm, you might be better off trying to figure out who isn’t.

But I’ll narrow it down to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. And specifically, the genius crew that is governing the Marquette Interchange project.

I won’t get into what exactly this public works infrastructure project entails because, well, I don’t know. I am a 45 second walk away from my apartment to my office, so the highways are taboo for me. In fact, anything outside of a six block radius of the luxury digs is pure savagery as far as I’m concerned.

Back to the Interchange. It’s a big deal out here. Obviously they’ve never driven in Boston or heard of the Big Dig, but it’s like milk and batteries time when they close an exit, open a new one, tweak a route, or hammer an orange detour sign in somewhere. I won’t even get into the roundabout-assbackwards-shampooing stupid cab driver I had take me to Mitchell Field for my Easter trip home. (It should cost 25 bucks. His roundabout way cost me $31.50. I gave him a 20, a 10, two singles and waited for the two bits.)

Part of whatever phase they were in to start mid-March was to knock down an old building by the side of I-43 North. And apparently, it was a big deal to knock this down because it wrecked a wall with whales painted on it (no, not the Wailing Wall or ever the Whaling Wall…it was just some whales painted on a big concrete wall…)

(And it was NO big blue bug. Not even close)

Since the building is soooooooo close to the highway, they couldn’t possibly demolish it while the interstate was open (can you sense the sarcasm?). So they waited until they could close the road. That was 11 p.m.

And, according to the leaflet that was hung in the elevator of my building, the demolition “would be during the nighttime hours for the next three days…we apologize for any inconvenience.”

The individual who typed that leaflet must have made a typo or mental mistake. Instead of typing “three days,” that person should have written “three weeks.”

Three weeks. 21 days. From 10:30 p.m. to about 4:30-5:00 a.m. Jackhammers. Wrecking balls. Crashes. Booms. Bams. And as Brick Tamlin would say, LOUD NOISES!

Apologize for my inconvenience? How about the 12 hours of sleep I got, combined??? Slapdicks.

I even went home for a week at Easter, came back seven days later, and got to experience the last night of it. How lucky.

Funny thing is, while I was home in the Greatest State in the Shampooing Union, the fine folks of the Rhode Island DOT blew up a bridge – the old Jamestown Bridge. Blew it up. Gone. Like boom, orange flames, black smoke, (green shamrocks, blue diamonds, purple horseshoes…they’re always after me Lucky Charms…). After the dynamite, there was a LOUD NOISE, then splash…500 tons of steel hit Narragansett Bay.

During that time, RIDOT closed the Jamestown-Verrazano bridge for three hours. Three. And the two bridges were about 30 feet from each other. 30.

They blew up the old one. But here in Wisconsin, they couldn’t implode this old Courtroom annex building and save me three weeks of insomnia? Nooooo.

Right around day 10 of me-no-sleepy, I was considering buying a bazooka off the black market or eBay, firing into the place and taking care of the demolition. Or, as I considered on day 18, going over and stabbing the foreman.

But that would have done me no good. Why?

Because stabbing is murder and the jailhouse they would have sent me to is located where? Yep, you got it. Right next to the demolition project.

Sleepless and imprisoned. Oh-for-two.

The ring finger: This one goes to Sienna Miller.

She’s been the object of affection for the hand before, because she’s very pretty and also very stupid to stay with Jude Law while he makes his way through the supermodel/actress white pages, logging a notch on his belt after every name. I think he’s up to the “G’s” on the list now.

But that doesn’t matter to the English siren. She keeps coming back. Sure, she tries to “get back” at him by hooking up with some other actor, but it doesn’t really work.

Then he does that serious brooding shit he’s oft to doing, puts on the limey accent, and wins her back. Then he goes back to the book for “Gisele.”

Well, according to today’s New York Post, they’re back. Again.

Safe money on a break up, when Jude gets to the “H’s” and shacks up with Heidi Klum, Hilary Duff, or Keeley Hazell (google her, trust me).

The pinky: You know it’s getting crazy when a gallon of gas could reach the $4-a gallon level. Four bucks. That’s almost a Fenway Frank (mmmm...). That’s expensive.

Explain the 9-11 movie phenomenon to me, please. Why do we need these? Trust me, there are plenty of Americans out there, living their lives everyday with constant reminders of that day. We don’t need Nicolas Cage to frame it for us.

If you’re looking for a good way to spend $9.99, go to iTunes and pick up Rocky Votolato’s “Makers.” Is good.

Anyone going to take the NC State coaching job? Anyone? Anyone?

Wow, over 70,000 hits. Just under the one-year anniversary of May 10. That’s crazy. And much appreciated.

Hope to bring you much, much more. Stick around.

To the very next step…one.  ¶ 9:41 PM