Fun with Pop Culture: It's August, bitch!

Introducing...

Why?

Because Breaking Bad is awesome – and returning this Sunday to AMC...  Because we're in the dog days of the offseason and there's just not that much to discuss...  Because CSI: Miami and CSI: NY are no more...  Because I enjoy half-baked ideas that are fun but don't totally make sense...

Because it's August, bitch!!!!

Fun with Pop Culture: Hello, Goodbye (Part Two)

For Part One, click here.

Still more interesting than health care reform.

If Rolling Stone could devote a cover story to analyzing the Beatles' breakup almost 40 years after the fact, I think we can break down Ray Allen's departure from the "C"-tles one more time, four weeks after the fact.

So:  Why is Walter Ray Allen a member of the Miami Heat?

Let's take a look at the various explanations we've heard over the past month -- With a Little Help From Our Friends.

Fun with Pop Culture: Hello, Goodbye (Part One)

Ray Allen has fallen in with a bad crowd.

I've always been a little resentful of the "Heatles" nickname.

Yes, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh garnered Beatle-esque media hype and fan attention from the get-go -- I get it.  But as an unabashed post-Decision Heat hater and a huge Beatles fan, I've never felt totally comfortable linking the prima donnas from Miami with the lads from Liverpool.  Such an awesome band deserves equally awesome basketball counterparts (which is why "Run-T.M.C." worked so well).

Plus, I always thought, how could we compare a team built around a triumvirate to the Fab Four?  That's just bad math.  And while journalists and amateur Photoshoppers alike awkwardly tried to shoehorn various Pete Bests into the role of "Fourth Heatle" (from Mike Miller to Norris Cole, Coach Spoelstra to Emperor Riley, and even the artist formerly known as Juwan Howard), nothing quite worked.

Until now.  Official as of this past Wednesday, Miami has finally found a worthy Ringo in Walter Ray Allen.

Problem is, of course, that Ray was already part of a pretty good band -- one that Celtics fans were quite fond of, and one that won't be as easily forgotten as Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.

It was a group that actually laid claim to a Beatles-inspired nickname years before LeBron took his talents to South Beach.

An open letter to Ron Mercer.

The third and sixth picks of the 1997 NBA Draft.

Dear Ron,

First of all, I hope you agree that we're on a first-name basis now.  In this crazy mixed-up digital world we live in, I think your indulgence of my shameless retweet request last week constitutes a legitimate friendship, bordering on full-out "bromance."  If, however, I've misread this one, I'm still glad to have registered a blip on your social media radar as a Celtic fan who remembers you fondly.

You may have only played 121 games in the green and white, Ron, but I'll never forget game no. 1 when you matched up with MJ and helped upset his 2-time defending champion Bulls on Halloween.  And I'll always wonder whether -- given the proper time and encouragement -- you and Chauncey could have lived up to Coach Pitino's "backcourt of the future" moniker.  We all know how Chauncey eventually became Mr. Big Shot in Motown, and, with your tireless athleticism and stellar mid-range game, I don't see why you couldn't have developed into a (much) more highlight-friendly Rip Hamilton in some alternate universe.

It's not, however, that magical opening night in '97 or your untapped potential alone that have made you so unforgettable to me.  And it's not my ownership of both your home and away no. 5 replica jerseys, either.  There's something more.  And that "something more" also has a lot to do with my love for the 2012 Boston Celtics.

Ray Allen is getting awfully hard to watch.

For most of the last five years, watching Ray Allen has been a treat for Celtic Nation.

I never felt any inclination to see Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.  Jesus suffered; I get it.  Over the course of 13 years in Catholic school, I was invited to contemplate that fact plenty.  Seeing Jesus's suffering unfold in graphic detail on the big screen held no appeal.  I couldn't imagine it would lead to any new spiritual epiphanies and, more to the point, it just sounded like a miserable movie-going experience.  After all, who wants to watch a good guy suffer?

Eight years later, watching The Passion of Jesus Shuttlesworth, the answer is clearer than ever: no one.  Even die-hard Heat fans (assuming they exist) couldn't have relished watching Ray Allen struggle like he did last night.  But for Celtic fans who've soaked in highlight after highlight after highlight after highlight from Sugar Ray over these last five years, it was especially brutal.

Search "Ray Allen + sad" on Twitter and let the endless lamentations wash over you.  Has the Ray Allen of these 2012 playoffs become one of the hardest-to-watch Celtics in recent history?