4/29/2005
Highlights from the NY Post Friday Sports Section
Peter Vecsey, your hoops scoops are the best in the biz, but your jokes aren't jokes. They're like a fifth grader emceeing the "Let's Get Retarded Pageant." Witness: "Following his 1-for-16 misadventure in Game 1 against the Sonics, Mike Bibby, desperate to figure out his shooting problem, drove to the nearest Wendy's to see if its employees could put their finger on it." This is hilarious because, uh, why exactly? That goofy Ayala bitch liked basketball? Mike Bibby's finger is what wound up in the Wendy's chili? Huh?
Cris Collinsworth? fuck
the sports pages today also reveal that Johnny Damon's book is full of errors, and that 42 year-old Doug Flutie might go to the Giants. Here's my advice Doug: Hang it up. If you could grow an inch taller for every season you played, then I'd say sure, GO FOR IT, but as it stands, nothing you do in the pros will eclipse yr crazy BC moment.
±
4/27/2005
Mongol FACTS
From that Ian Frazier New Yorker article:
"...By the time of Genghis Khan's death, in 1227, the Mongol empire extended from the Volga River to the Pacific Ocean.
The Mongols had so many oxen and cattle that they were able to carry all kinds of stuff with them-entire houses, and even temples-on giant carts. Observers said the number of Mongol horses was beyond counting, every warrior possessing many remounts. Mongols spent so much time on horseback that they grew up bowlegged. If a Mongol had to move any distance farther than a hundred paces, he jumped on a horse and rode. A contemporary Russian annal describes the Mongol army approaching the walls of Kiev: "The rattling of their innumerable carts, the bellowing of camels and cattle, the neighing of horses, and the wild battle-cry, were so overwhelming as to render inaudible the conversation of the people inside the city." Of necessity, the Mongols did most of their conquering and plundering during the warmer seasons, when there was sufficient grass for their herds.
Fuelled by grass, the Mongol empire could be described as solar-powered; it was an empire of the land. Later empires, such as the British, moved by ship and were wind-powered, empires of the sea. The American empire, if it is an empire, runs on oil and is an empire of the air. On the world's largest landmass, Iraq is a main crossroads; most aspirants to empire eventually pass through there.
In battle, a historian wrote, "the Mongols made the fullest use of the terror inspired by their physique, their ugliness, and their stench." Mongols were narrow-waisted and small-footed, with big heads. They shaved their hair short on the backs and tops of their heads and left it long at the sides. Custom forbade them from ever washing their clothes. Also contributing to their smell might have been their diet, which at certain times of the year was mainly mare's milk. On marches when there wasn't time to milk, Mongol riders would open a vein in their horses' necks and drink the blood, either straight or from a pouch. Mongols were especially fond of fermented mare's milk, called kumis. Many Mongol nobles died young from drunkenness. After victories, Mongols sometimes celebrated by drinking kumis while sitting on benches made of planks tied to the backs of their prisoners.
Mongols also ate meat tenderized by being sat on beneath their saddles on long journeys; marmot steeped in sour milk; curds dried in the sun; roots, dogs, rats-almost anything, according to several observers. Marco Polo, who travelled among them in the years 1275-92, wrote that they ate hamsters, which were plentiful on the steppes. A Franciscan friar who in 1245 went to seek out the Great Khan in the hope of persuading him to become a Christian reported that, during a siege of a Chinese city, a Mongol army ran out of food and ate one of every ten of its own soldiers. Mediterranean people who knew the Mongols only by reputation believed they were creatures with dogs' heads who lived on human flesh.
Other Mongol facts: On their treeless steppes, they tended to get hit by lightning a lot. Thunder terrified them. They wore armor made of scales of iron sewn to garments of thick hide, and iron helmets that sometimes came to a point on top. Their swords were short and sometimes curved. The notches in their arrows were too narrow to fit the wider bowstrings of the Western people they fought, so that the arrows could not be picked up and shot back at them. Mongol bows, made of layers of horn and sinew on a wooden frame, took two men to string. Warriors carried them strung, in holsterlike cases at their belts. Mongols had no words for "right" and "left," but called them "west" and "east," respectively. When anyone begged from them, they replied, "Go, with God's curse, for if he loved you as he loves me, he would have provided for you."
..........
In general, the Mongols were well organized. At their empire's height, they had a fast and efficient postal service, of much greater extent than any the world had seen.
..........
From deep in Mongolia Hulagu set out in 1253, marching westward at the head of a large force that included siege-engine experts of several nationalities. His trebuchets could hurl huge rocks, and smaller stones covered in flaming naphtha, and his arbalesters could shoot bolts dipped in burning pitch a distance of twenty-five hundred paces. Hulagu's brother Mongke Khan told him to subdue the people he encountered as he continued all the way to Egypt, being kind to those who submitted and killing or enslaving the rest. The Mongols took eighteen months crossing Asia as far as Afghanistan. There and in the mountains of Persia they stopped to conquer the Assassins, an extreme Shiite sect that terrorized neighboring rulers by sending young men on suicide missions to kill them. The young men were drugged with hashish (source of the word "assassin") and were told that when they died they would immediately go to Paradise, where women and other pleasures awaited. In no-quarter sieges, Hulagu battered the Assassins out of their mountain fortresses with his heavy weapons, and then destroyed them root and branch. Later historians agreed that in this, at least, he did the world a favor.
By 1257, Hulagu had reached western Persia. From there he sent emissaries to the caliph telling him to raze the walls of Baghdad and fill in the moat and come in person to make obeisance to Hulagu. The caliph replied that with all of Islam ready to defend him, he did not fear. He advised Hulagu to go back where he came from. The Mongol army had recently received reinforcements from other Mongol hordes, and a contingent of Christian cavalry from Georgia. Perhaps the Mongols had eight hundred and fifty thousand soldiers; certainly they had more than a hundred thousand. In November of 1257, they marched on toward Baghdad, dividing as they approached so that their forces would surround the city. The caliph sent an army to stop those approaching from the west, and repulsed them in an early battle. In the next encounter, the Mongols broke some dikes and flooded the ground behind the caliph's army, and slaughtered or drowned them all.
Mustasim, the caliph, was not of a character equal to such large problems. He is described as a weak, vacillating layabout who liked to drink sherbet and keep company with musicians and clowns. Worse, from a strategic point of view, Mustasim had recently angered the Shiites by various insults and offenses, such as throwing the poem of a famous Shiite poet in the river. Now vengeful Shiites volunteered help to the Mongols in Mosul and other places along their march. The caliph's vizier, or chief minister, was himself a Shiite of uncertain loyalty. Islamic opinion afterward held that the vizier, al-Alkamzi, vilely betrayed the caliph and conspired with the Mongols; an exhortation in Muslim school books used to say, "Let him be cursed of God who curses not al-Alkamzi." As fighting began, Hulagu, acknowledging the importance of Shiite support, prudently posted guard detachments of a hundred Mongol horsemen at the most sacred Shiite shrines in Najef and Karbala.
On January 29, 1258, Hulagu's forces took up a position on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad and began a bombardment. Soon they had breached the outer wall. The caliph, who had been advised against escaping by his vizier, offered to negotiate. Hulagu, with the city practically in his hands, refused. The upshot was that the caliph and his retinue came out of the city, the remainder of his army followed, they laid down their arms, and the Mongols killed almost everybody. Hulagu told Baghdad's Christians to stay in a church, which he put off-limits to his soldiers. Then, for a period of seven days, the Mongols sacked the city, killing (depending on the source) two hundred thousand, or eight hundred thousand, or more than a million. The Mongols' Georgian Christian allies were said to have particularly distinguished themselves in slaughter. Plunderers threw away their swords and filled their scabbards with gold. Silver and jewels and gold piled up in great heaps around Hulagu's tent. Fire consumed the caliph's palace, and the smoke from its beams of aloe wood, sandalwood, and ebony filled the air with fragrance for a distance of a hundred li. (A li equalled five hundred bow lengths-a hundred li was maybe thirty miles.) So many books from Baghdad's libraries were flung into the Tigris that a horse could walk across on them. The river ran black with scholars' ink and red with the blood of martyrs.
The stories of what Hulagu did to the caliph vary. One says that Hulagu toyed with him a while, dining with him and discussing theology and pretending to be his guest. A famous account describes how Hulagu imprisoned the caliph in a roomful of treasure and brought him gold on a tray instead of food. The caliph protested that he could not eat gold, and Hulagu asked him why he hadn't used his money to strengthen his army and defend against the Mongols. The caliph said, "That was the will of God." Hulagu replied, "What will happen to you is the will of God, also," leaving him among the treasure to starve.
Many sources agree that there was fear of an earthquake or other shock to nature occurring if the caliph's sacred blood was spilled. Learned Shiites advised Hulagu that no catastrophes had followed the bloody deaths of John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, or the Shiite saint Hosein, so he should go ahead.
To be safe, Hulagu had the caliph wrapped in a carpet and then trodden to death by horses. He also killed all the caliph's family, except for his youngest son and a daughter. The daughter was shipped off to Mongolia to be a slave in the harem of Mongke Khan.
ˇ
"...By the time of Genghis Khan's death, in 1227, the Mongol empire extended from the Volga River to the Pacific Ocean.
The Mongols had so many oxen and cattle that they were able to carry all kinds of stuff with them-entire houses, and even temples-on giant carts. Observers said the number of Mongol horses was beyond counting, every warrior possessing many remounts. Mongols spent so much time on horseback that they grew up bowlegged. If a Mongol had to move any distance farther than a hundred paces, he jumped on a horse and rode. A contemporary Russian annal describes the Mongol army approaching the walls of Kiev: "The rattling of their innumerable carts, the bellowing of camels and cattle, the neighing of horses, and the wild battle-cry, were so overwhelming as to render inaudible the conversation of the people inside the city." Of necessity, the Mongols did most of their conquering and plundering during the warmer seasons, when there was sufficient grass for their herds.
Fuelled by grass, the Mongol empire could be described as solar-powered; it was an empire of the land. Later empires, such as the British, moved by ship and were wind-powered, empires of the sea. The American empire, if it is an empire, runs on oil and is an empire of the air. On the world's largest landmass, Iraq is a main crossroads; most aspirants to empire eventually pass through there.
In battle, a historian wrote, "the Mongols made the fullest use of the terror inspired by their physique, their ugliness, and their stench." Mongols were narrow-waisted and small-footed, with big heads. They shaved their hair short on the backs and tops of their heads and left it long at the sides. Custom forbade them from ever washing their clothes. Also contributing to their smell might have been their diet, which at certain times of the year was mainly mare's milk. On marches when there wasn't time to milk, Mongol riders would open a vein in their horses' necks and drink the blood, either straight or from a pouch. Mongols were especially fond of fermented mare's milk, called kumis. Many Mongol nobles died young from drunkenness. After victories, Mongols sometimes celebrated by drinking kumis while sitting on benches made of planks tied to the backs of their prisoners.
Mongols also ate meat tenderized by being sat on beneath their saddles on long journeys; marmot steeped in sour milk; curds dried in the sun; roots, dogs, rats-almost anything, according to several observers. Marco Polo, who travelled among them in the years 1275-92, wrote that they ate hamsters, which were plentiful on the steppes. A Franciscan friar who in 1245 went to seek out the Great Khan in the hope of persuading him to become a Christian reported that, during a siege of a Chinese city, a Mongol army ran out of food and ate one of every ten of its own soldiers. Mediterranean people who knew the Mongols only by reputation believed they were creatures with dogs' heads who lived on human flesh.
Other Mongol facts: On their treeless steppes, they tended to get hit by lightning a lot. Thunder terrified them. They wore armor made of scales of iron sewn to garments of thick hide, and iron helmets that sometimes came to a point on top. Their swords were short and sometimes curved. The notches in their arrows were too narrow to fit the wider bowstrings of the Western people they fought, so that the arrows could not be picked up and shot back at them. Mongol bows, made of layers of horn and sinew on a wooden frame, took two men to string. Warriors carried them strung, in holsterlike cases at their belts. Mongols had no words for "right" and "left," but called them "west" and "east," respectively. When anyone begged from them, they replied, "Go, with God's curse, for if he loved you as he loves me, he would have provided for you."
..........
In general, the Mongols were well organized. At their empire's height, they had a fast and efficient postal service, of much greater extent than any the world had seen.
..........
From deep in Mongolia Hulagu set out in 1253, marching westward at the head of a large force that included siege-engine experts of several nationalities. His trebuchets could hurl huge rocks, and smaller stones covered in flaming naphtha, and his arbalesters could shoot bolts dipped in burning pitch a distance of twenty-five hundred paces. Hulagu's brother Mongke Khan told him to subdue the people he encountered as he continued all the way to Egypt, being kind to those who submitted and killing or enslaving the rest. The Mongols took eighteen months crossing Asia as far as Afghanistan. There and in the mountains of Persia they stopped to conquer the Assassins, an extreme Shiite sect that terrorized neighboring rulers by sending young men on suicide missions to kill them. The young men were drugged with hashish (source of the word "assassin") and were told that when they died they would immediately go to Paradise, where women and other pleasures awaited. In no-quarter sieges, Hulagu battered the Assassins out of their mountain fortresses with his heavy weapons, and then destroyed them root and branch. Later historians agreed that in this, at least, he did the world a favor.
By 1257, Hulagu had reached western Persia. From there he sent emissaries to the caliph telling him to raze the walls of Baghdad and fill in the moat and come in person to make obeisance to Hulagu. The caliph replied that with all of Islam ready to defend him, he did not fear. He advised Hulagu to go back where he came from. The Mongol army had recently received reinforcements from other Mongol hordes, and a contingent of Christian cavalry from Georgia. Perhaps the Mongols had eight hundred and fifty thousand soldiers; certainly they had more than a hundred thousand. In November of 1257, they marched on toward Baghdad, dividing as they approached so that their forces would surround the city. The caliph sent an army to stop those approaching from the west, and repulsed them in an early battle. In the next encounter, the Mongols broke some dikes and flooded the ground behind the caliph's army, and slaughtered or drowned them all.
Mustasim, the caliph, was not of a character equal to such large problems. He is described as a weak, vacillating layabout who liked to drink sherbet and keep company with musicians and clowns. Worse, from a strategic point of view, Mustasim had recently angered the Shiites by various insults and offenses, such as throwing the poem of a famous Shiite poet in the river. Now vengeful Shiites volunteered help to the Mongols in Mosul and other places along their march. The caliph's vizier, or chief minister, was himself a Shiite of uncertain loyalty. Islamic opinion afterward held that the vizier, al-Alkamzi, vilely betrayed the caliph and conspired with the Mongols; an exhortation in Muslim school books used to say, "Let him be cursed of God who curses not al-Alkamzi." As fighting began, Hulagu, acknowledging the importance of Shiite support, prudently posted guard detachments of a hundred Mongol horsemen at the most sacred Shiite shrines in Najef and Karbala.
On January 29, 1258, Hulagu's forces took up a position on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad and began a bombardment. Soon they had breached the outer wall. The caliph, who had been advised against escaping by his vizier, offered to negotiate. Hulagu, with the city practically in his hands, refused. The upshot was that the caliph and his retinue came out of the city, the remainder of his army followed, they laid down their arms, and the Mongols killed almost everybody. Hulagu told Baghdad's Christians to stay in a church, which he put off-limits to his soldiers. Then, for a period of seven days, the Mongols sacked the city, killing (depending on the source) two hundred thousand, or eight hundred thousand, or more than a million. The Mongols' Georgian Christian allies were said to have particularly distinguished themselves in slaughter. Plunderers threw away their swords and filled their scabbards with gold. Silver and jewels and gold piled up in great heaps around Hulagu's tent. Fire consumed the caliph's palace, and the smoke from its beams of aloe wood, sandalwood, and ebony filled the air with fragrance for a distance of a hundred li. (A li equalled five hundred bow lengths-a hundred li was maybe thirty miles.) So many books from Baghdad's libraries were flung into the Tigris that a horse could walk across on them. The river ran black with scholars' ink and red with the blood of martyrs.
The stories of what Hulagu did to the caliph vary. One says that Hulagu toyed with him a while, dining with him and discussing theology and pretending to be his guest. A famous account describes how Hulagu imprisoned the caliph in a roomful of treasure and brought him gold on a tray instead of food. The caliph protested that he could not eat gold, and Hulagu asked him why he hadn't used his money to strengthen his army and defend against the Mongols. The caliph said, "That was the will of God." Hulagu replied, "What will happen to you is the will of God, also," leaving him among the treasure to starve.
Many sources agree that there was fear of an earthquake or other shock to nature occurring if the caliph's sacred blood was spilled. Learned Shiites advised Hulagu that no catastrophes had followed the bloody deaths of John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, or the Shiite saint Hosein, so he should go ahead.
To be safe, Hulagu had the caliph wrapped in a carpet and then trodden to death by horses. He also killed all the caliph's family, except for his youngest son and a daughter. The daughter was shipped off to Mongolia to be a slave in the harem of Mongke Khan.
ˇ
Jim Cheney on Mitch Albom
This crisis went down a few weeks ago, but we never said anything. Until now...
LIAR! LIAR! ENORMOUS HAT ON FIRE!
by Jim Cheney
In case it hasn’t found its way into your daily life, the story goes something like this. Mitch Albom, the sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press is currently on paid leave, not filing a column for the paper thanks to a mild fabrication incident.
Some of you may know Mitch from his spot in the rotation on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters.” He’s the one with the hydrocephalic noggin, not the fat guy, but the annoying know-it-all (not Lupica, either.) Others of you, particularly lovers of tear-jerking shit who spend their days desperately hoping that the afterlife will offer some relief from a miserable daily existence, know him from his frighteningly huge best-selling books. “Tuesdays with Morrie” and “The Five People You Meet in Heaven”. These two tomes are the literary equivalent of Barbra Streisand with an epic case of the trots, but they have made ol' medicine ball head a frighteningly wealthy individual. He makes that DaVinci Code guy look like a panhandler.
Oprah herself got into the fray by presenting a television movie version of “Morrie,” staring Hank Azaria and Jack Lemmon, the latter of whom died shortly after the movie aired.(Coincidence, or the wrath of God? You decide.)
The “mild fabrication” stems from how Mitch filed a column on the Michigan State vs. UNC NCAA Mens Basketball semi-final. Writing for a Detroit paper, he detailed how ex-MSU players Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson sat in the stands watching their alma mater lose to the eventual national champs. All fine and good, except Mitcheroo filed the column the day
before the game to be run the day after the game, and as it turned out, them two fellers never showed up.
This isn’t Watergate, or Iran Contra, or even Jayson Blair, but it is stupid. He could’ve avoided all of this embarrassment and confusion so easily by altering or including a few simple explanations.
“ My sources tell me that former MSUers Mateen
Cleaves and Jason Richardson will be at the game, but I won’t be able to attend because I’m being fitted for a hat and that usually takes at least a full day.”
“ From what I’ve heard, two one-time MSU stars will be showing up for the game, but I can’t make it. I’m finishing up my new novel about a kitten who lives in a mailbox and is kept company by a bunch of daisies.”
“ The stands may include some alumni support from former MSU players Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson, but I, myself won’t be able to make it. I have plans that night to sit back and count the millions I bled out of legions of housewives hoping, clutching to hopes that their lives have not being wasted, and that they do wake every morning full of purpose and meaning. Oh, and I also have to compare
penis size with Oprah.”
It all could’ve been avoided so simply. Maybe Mitch is convinced that his insight into the meaning of life on Earth and the meaning of life after Earth has given him a pass, set him up a folding chair somewhere to the right hand of, to quote Burt Reynolds, “The Big Man Upstairs.”
Maybe the reportage on the incident, including this offering before your very eyes, is little more then jealousy from assorted writer-types
who wish they’d given his sappy contributions to
society a whirl before he did. He tapped into a demo that will always be underserved, but well represented by their anointed leader, the current patron saint of the publishing business, Ms. Winfrey.
What’s going to happen to Mitch remains something of a mystery. While I’m not a regular reader of the Detroit Free Press, accounts I’ve read show a paper with a
falling circulation, a shallow bench of interesting writers, and only one star columnist. He is well paid, and would seem to be one of the main reasons the paper is still in print. National exposure, the like of which they garner from Mitch’s mere existence, is invaluable to a mid-market newspaper. Unless Dave Barry comes out of retirement to be unfunny in Motor City, the “Freep” is doomed.
While it is unlikely that this tale will stick, and even more unlikely that Mitch will be fired, there’s always the chance that he’ll just walk away. If he does quit, losing a large chunk of his income in the process, you can be sure to hear a steady succession of cries and wails from the milliner community of northern Detroit. Mitch will be forced to cut back on the custom made lids. f
LIAR! LIAR! ENORMOUS HAT ON FIRE!
by Jim Cheney
In case it hasn’t found its way into your daily life, the story goes something like this. Mitch Albom, the sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press is currently on paid leave, not filing a column for the paper thanks to a mild fabrication incident.
Some of you may know Mitch from his spot in the rotation on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters.” He’s the one with the hydrocephalic noggin, not the fat guy, but the annoying know-it-all (not Lupica, either.) Others of you, particularly lovers of tear-jerking shit who spend their days desperately hoping that the afterlife will offer some relief from a miserable daily existence, know him from his frighteningly huge best-selling books. “Tuesdays with Morrie” and “The Five People You Meet in Heaven”. These two tomes are the literary equivalent of Barbra Streisand with an epic case of the trots, but they have made ol' medicine ball head a frighteningly wealthy individual. He makes that DaVinci Code guy look like a panhandler.
Oprah herself got into the fray by presenting a television movie version of “Morrie,” staring Hank Azaria and Jack Lemmon, the latter of whom died shortly after the movie aired.(Coincidence, or the wrath of God? You decide.)
The “mild fabrication” stems from how Mitch filed a column on the Michigan State vs. UNC NCAA Mens Basketball semi-final. Writing for a Detroit paper, he detailed how ex-MSU players Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson sat in the stands watching their alma mater lose to the eventual national champs. All fine and good, except Mitcheroo filed the column the day
before the game to be run the day after the game, and as it turned out, them two fellers never showed up.
This isn’t Watergate, or Iran Contra, or even Jayson Blair, but it is stupid. He could’ve avoided all of this embarrassment and confusion so easily by altering or including a few simple explanations.
“ My sources tell me that former MSUers Mateen
Cleaves and Jason Richardson will be at the game, but I won’t be able to attend because I’m being fitted for a hat and that usually takes at least a full day.”
“ From what I’ve heard, two one-time MSU stars will be showing up for the game, but I can’t make it. I’m finishing up my new novel about a kitten who lives in a mailbox and is kept company by a bunch of daisies.”
“ The stands may include some alumni support from former MSU players Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson, but I, myself won’t be able to make it. I have plans that night to sit back and count the millions I bled out of legions of housewives hoping, clutching to hopes that their lives have not being wasted, and that they do wake every morning full of purpose and meaning. Oh, and I also have to compare
penis size with Oprah.”
It all could’ve been avoided so simply. Maybe Mitch is convinced that his insight into the meaning of life on Earth and the meaning of life after Earth has given him a pass, set him up a folding chair somewhere to the right hand of, to quote Burt Reynolds, “The Big Man Upstairs.”
Maybe the reportage on the incident, including this offering before your very eyes, is little more then jealousy from assorted writer-types
who wish they’d given his sappy contributions to
society a whirl before he did. He tapped into a demo that will always be underserved, but well represented by their anointed leader, the current patron saint of the publishing business, Ms. Winfrey.
What’s going to happen to Mitch remains something of a mystery. While I’m not a regular reader of the Detroit Free Press, accounts I’ve read show a paper with a
falling circulation, a shallow bench of interesting writers, and only one star columnist. He is well paid, and would seem to be one of the main reasons the paper is still in print. National exposure, the like of which they garner from Mitch’s mere existence, is invaluable to a mid-market newspaper. Unless Dave Barry comes out of retirement to be unfunny in Motor City, the “Freep” is doomed.
While it is unlikely that this tale will stick, and even more unlikely that Mitch will be fired, there’s always the chance that he’ll just walk away. If he does quit, losing a large chunk of his income in the process, you can be sure to hear a steady succession of cries and wails from the milliner community of northern Detroit. Mitch will be forced to cut back on the custom made lids. f
4/26/2005
ADD + Writing
Here's an interesting thing about time-suckage and ADD and researching and the internet that I found while trying to see if this thing Ian Frazier wrote in the New Yorker last week could be found anywhere online. It was about the Mongols, and tomorrow I'll dig up the juiciest bits.
Ask David Berman, Week Two
Note: You should order David's book, Actual Air if you haven't already.
This week's question: If Jesus were living now, in our modern times, do you think he would dress the same as he did back then or would he have a little different look? Do you think people might be freaked out if he had a goatee?
David's Answer: Would he have caught Eric Claptons's little boy w hen he fell out that window, that window to the Unplugged session career revival, the grammies, and afterward? In a fix could Jesus get down on all fours in a parking lot and turn himself into a negligible compact car, thus avoiding capture?
Wo uld he idly drive himslef to the cape and help an embittered shrimpboat captain perform euthanasia on a Canadian ketchup baron in rough international waters? The answers to these questions is "yes."
More from David next week. Please send your questions here...
This week's question: If Jesus were living now, in our modern times, do you think he would dress the same as he did back then or would he have a little different look? Do you think people might be freaked out if he had a goatee?
David's Answer: Would he have caught Eric Claptons's little boy w hen he fell out that window, that window to the Unplugged session career revival, the grammies, and afterward? In a fix could Jesus get down on all fours in a parking lot and turn himself into a negligible compact car, thus avoiding capture?
Wo uld he idly drive himslef to the cape and help an embittered shrimpboat captain perform euthanasia on a Canadian ketchup baron in rough international waters? The answers to these questions is "yes."
More from David next week. Please send your questions here...
NBA Playoff History, Wizards/Bullets
4/25/2005
corgan update
News
Can someone send me a copy of this?
UNRELATED: The Cocteau Twins sacked their reunion? They were on the Coachella line-up, but no more. That's a drag.
UNRELATED II: Yesterday's Boston Globe says beer sales are up at Fenway Park. That explains a little bit. But not everything.
UNRELATED: The Cocteau Twins sacked their reunion? They were on the Coachella line-up, but no more. That's a drag.
UNRELATED II: Yesterday's Boston Globe says beer sales are up at Fenway Park. That explains a little bit. But not everything.
4/21/2005
Bunch of news
Slint story from the New Yorker.
Also: James Wood on Saul Bellow from a recent issue of The New Republic:
Saying goodbye to Bellow.
I judged all modern prose by his. Unfair, certainly, because he made even the fleet-footed--the Updikes, the DeLillos, the Roths--seem like monopodes. Yet what else could I do? I discovered Saul Bellow's prose in my late teens, and henceforth, the relationship had the quality of a love affair about which one could not keep silent.
Over the last week, much has been said about Bellow's prose, and most of the praise--perhaps because it has been overwhelmingly by men--has tended toward the robust: We hear about Bellow's mixing of high and low registers, his Melvillean cadences jostling the jivey Yiddish rhythms, the great teeming democracy of the big novels, the crooks and frauds and intellectuals who loudly people the brilliant sensorium of the fiction. All of this is true enough; John Cheever, in his journals, lamented that, alongside Bellow's fiction, his stories seemed like mere suburban splinters. Ian McEwan wisely suggested last week that British writers and critics may have been attracted to Bellow precisely because he kept alive a Dickensian amplitude now lacking in the English novel.
But nobody mentioned the beauty of this writing, its music, its high lyricism, its firm but luxurious pleasure in language itself. Like all serious novelists, Bellow read poetry: Shakespeare first (he could recite lines and lines from the plays, remembered from his school days in Chicago), then Milton, Keats, Wordsworth, Hardy, Larkin, and his old friend John Berryman.
And, behind all this, with its English stretching all the way back into deeper antiquity, the King James Bible. Nobody mentioned the way Bellow could describe a river as "crimped, green, blackish, glassy," or Chicago as "blue with winter, brown with evening, crystal with frost," or New York as "sheer walls, gray spaces, dry lagoons of tar and pebbles."
Here is a paragraph, one of my favorite in all Bellow, from the story "The Old System":
On the airport bus, he opened his father's copy of the Psalms. The black Hebrew letters only gaped at him like open mouths with tongues hanging down, pointing upward, flaming but dumb. He tried--forcing. It did no good. The tunnel, the swamps, the auto skeletons, machine entrails, dumps, gulls, sketchy Newark trembling in fiery summer, held his attention minutely.... Then in the plane running with concentrated fury to take off--the power to pull away from the magnetic earth, and more: When he saw the ground tilt backward, the machine rising from the runway, he said to himself in clear internal words, "Shema Yisroel," Hear, O Israel, God alone is God! On the right, New York leaned gigantically seaward, and the plane with a jolt of retracted wheels turned toward the river. The Hudson green within green, and rough with tide and wind. Isaac released the breath he had been holding, but sat belted tight. Above the marvelous bridges, over clouds, sailing in atmosphere, you know better than ever that you are no angel.
I suppose there must be people--as there are people left cold by Mozart or Brahms--who are untouched by such a passage, though I pity them. Bellow had a habit of writing repeatedly about flying, partly, I used to think, because it was the great obvious advantage he had over his dead competitors, those writers who had never seen the world from above the clouds: Melville, Tolstoy, Proust. And how well he does it!
In sentence after sentence the world is captured with brimming novelty: Newark seen as "sketchy" and "trembling in fiery summer"; the jet "running with concentrated fury to take off" ( a phrase that, with its unpunctuated onrush, itself enacts such a concentrated fury); New York, which, as the plane tilts, "leaned gigantically seaward" (say the phrase to yourself, and see how the words themselves--"leaned gi-gan-tic-ally sea-ward"--elongate the experience so that the very language embodies the queasiness it describes); the dainty, unexpected rhythm of "The Hudson green within green, and rough with tide and wind" ("green within green" captures very precisely the different shades of green that we see in water when several thousand feet above it); and finally, "sailing in atmosphere"--isn't that exactly what the freedom of flight feels like?
And yet, until this moment, one did not have these words--the best words, the right words in the right order--to fit this feeling. Until this moment, one was comparatively inarticulate; until this moment, one had been blandly inhabiting a deprived eloquence.
How, exactly, does one thank a writer for this? Fifteen years ago, at the age of 24, when I was working for The Guardian in London, I did so the only way I knew how: I arranged to meet Bellow and interviewed him for that newspaper. Over the years, I wrote about him again and again and visited him whenever I could.
By happy accident, I co-taught a class with him at Boston University. My daughter played with his; our family became close to Bellow and his wife Janis, and to his devoted assistant, Will. I accompanied him on the piano when he played the recorder. It was a delight to talk to him about literature, to make him laugh--he would throw his head back and give out a distinctive chortle, "ha, ha, ha, ha," each laugh separately articulated--and to laugh with him when he was making a joke.
But I cannot say that I truly knew him (partly because I knew him only in his old age); and, in some ways, the human distance was of my making, not his, for my literary gratitude was literally unspeakable, and floated massively above us. The prose was what I truly knew before I knew the man, and always I felt magically indebted in his presence. Like anyone, writers, of course, are embarrassed by excessive praise, just as readers are burdened by their excessive gratitude--one cannot keep going on about it.
And, eventually, it is easier to turn the beloved literary work into a kind of disembodied third party: to admit that the work itself exceeds the writer, that it sails--sails in atmosphere, indeed!--away from the writer and toward the delighted reader. In the final year of Saul's life, as he became very frail, I would read some of his own prose to him; something he would doubtless have found, as a younger man, mawkish or cloying or tiresome. It did not feel any of those things, as Bellow sat there in forgetful frailty; rather it felt as if I were gently reminding him of his own talent and that he was grateful for this, and perhaps grateful for my gratitude. But, in truth, I could not thank him enough when he was alive, and I cannot now.
From the Department of Yuk:
TRACKS - “... there’s a joyous eclecticism to Kyle Riabko’s ‘Before I Speak,’ mainly because the teenage Saskatoon singer / songwriter, whose fancy picking and supple singing may suggest a cross between John Mayer and Stevie Wonder seems to be having so much fun playing.”
And YOU SHOULD GO SEE THIS
Vice Magazine proudly presents:
DAVID CHOE
TOKYO PRISON ART
Friday APRIL 22nd 2005, 6pm until close
The Power House Gallery
68 Charlton Street
(two blocks south of Houston between Hudson and Varick)
New York, NY 10014-4601
(212) 604-9074, ext. 100
Hours of operation Monday through Friday, 11:00-7:00
Saturday 12:00-6:00
Our friend the artist David Choe got arrested for punching out an undercover detective in Tokyo in December of 2004. Then he spent four months in solitary confinement in a Japanese prison. Deprived of his usual drawing and painting tools, David improvised materials out of whatever he could scrape together in his tiny cell — including soy sauce and his own urine.
His prison stay resulted in the works in this show, a stunning collection of drawings that illustrate what a genius draftsman gets up to when he has nothing to do but draw. There are lots of dirty renderings of nubile women, and there are also fantastical imaginary landscapes and tableaus that are apocalyptic, hilarious, and beautiful.
Here, David can tell you about it better:
“PowerHouse is the name of an Oakland based hardcore band, a gay sex club, and also the name of the gallery at which I will have my first real show in New York City. I’ve been painting my whole life and have built up a huge body of work, and finally I get asked to show in New York, and it’s for urine drawings. It doesn’t get more art fag than that. I’m king of the art fags. And I’m excited and I just can’t hide it.
My friends at Vice magazine who have supported me, published my photos, artwork, and articles from the days when I had nothing are sponsoring this event next week. It is beyond x-rated, so keep that in mind if you’re gonna get upset. I don’t wanna hear it later.
I wanted to hold off on this show until I had collected all my sketches and thoughts into a publication of some sort.
But that will have to wait. I’m not in such a big hurry to revisit all my jail time memories. I just got all my XXX rated prison drawings and paintings I did with soy sauce and my piss, using the tip of my socks, framed by Dhiraj, his wife, and his grandmother (the Indian framing business next door to me).
Some of the drawings will be for sale for between $500 to $2000, but some of the art, that got me through the especially hard times I think I’m gonna have to hold on to. I hope to see all of you out there. I’m getting on a plane tonight to set up the show all next week. I want to make a prison zine to hand out at the opening. I’m only gonna make 50 to 100 zines. Here come the paper cuts. First come, first served.”
AND THIS
From today's Page Six:
"Kerrey did not like the control Lipton had over the [teaching] program, so he refused to renew their contract and told Lipton to take a hike," said the board member. Thank God. James Lipton is fucking atrocious.
Also: James Wood on Saul Bellow from a recent issue of The New Republic:
Saying goodbye to Bellow.
I judged all modern prose by his. Unfair, certainly, because he made even the fleet-footed--the Updikes, the DeLillos, the Roths--seem like monopodes. Yet what else could I do? I discovered Saul Bellow's prose in my late teens, and henceforth, the relationship had the quality of a love affair about which one could not keep silent.
Over the last week, much has been said about Bellow's prose, and most of the praise--perhaps because it has been overwhelmingly by men--has tended toward the robust: We hear about Bellow's mixing of high and low registers, his Melvillean cadences jostling the jivey Yiddish rhythms, the great teeming democracy of the big novels, the crooks and frauds and intellectuals who loudly people the brilliant sensorium of the fiction. All of this is true enough; John Cheever, in his journals, lamented that, alongside Bellow's fiction, his stories seemed like mere suburban splinters. Ian McEwan wisely suggested last week that British writers and critics may have been attracted to Bellow precisely because he kept alive a Dickensian amplitude now lacking in the English novel.
But nobody mentioned the beauty of this writing, its music, its high lyricism, its firm but luxurious pleasure in language itself. Like all serious novelists, Bellow read poetry: Shakespeare first (he could recite lines and lines from the plays, remembered from his school days in Chicago), then Milton, Keats, Wordsworth, Hardy, Larkin, and his old friend John Berryman.
And, behind all this, with its English stretching all the way back into deeper antiquity, the King James Bible. Nobody mentioned the way Bellow could describe a river as "crimped, green, blackish, glassy," or Chicago as "blue with winter, brown with evening, crystal with frost," or New York as "sheer walls, gray spaces, dry lagoons of tar and pebbles."
Here is a paragraph, one of my favorite in all Bellow, from the story "The Old System":
On the airport bus, he opened his father's copy of the Psalms. The black Hebrew letters only gaped at him like open mouths with tongues hanging down, pointing upward, flaming but dumb. He tried--forcing. It did no good. The tunnel, the swamps, the auto skeletons, machine entrails, dumps, gulls, sketchy Newark trembling in fiery summer, held his attention minutely.... Then in the plane running with concentrated fury to take off--the power to pull away from the magnetic earth, and more: When he saw the ground tilt backward, the machine rising from the runway, he said to himself in clear internal words, "Shema Yisroel," Hear, O Israel, God alone is God! On the right, New York leaned gigantically seaward, and the plane with a jolt of retracted wheels turned toward the river. The Hudson green within green, and rough with tide and wind. Isaac released the breath he had been holding, but sat belted tight. Above the marvelous bridges, over clouds, sailing in atmosphere, you know better than ever that you are no angel.
I suppose there must be people--as there are people left cold by Mozart or Brahms--who are untouched by such a passage, though I pity them. Bellow had a habit of writing repeatedly about flying, partly, I used to think, because it was the great obvious advantage he had over his dead competitors, those writers who had never seen the world from above the clouds: Melville, Tolstoy, Proust. And how well he does it!
In sentence after sentence the world is captured with brimming novelty: Newark seen as "sketchy" and "trembling in fiery summer"; the jet "running with concentrated fury to take off" ( a phrase that, with its unpunctuated onrush, itself enacts such a concentrated fury); New York, which, as the plane tilts, "leaned gigantically seaward" (say the phrase to yourself, and see how the words themselves--"leaned gi-gan-tic-ally sea-ward"--elongate the experience so that the very language embodies the queasiness it describes); the dainty, unexpected rhythm of "The Hudson green within green, and rough with tide and wind" ("green within green" captures very precisely the different shades of green that we see in water when several thousand feet above it); and finally, "sailing in atmosphere"--isn't that exactly what the freedom of flight feels like?
And yet, until this moment, one did not have these words--the best words, the right words in the right order--to fit this feeling. Until this moment, one was comparatively inarticulate; until this moment, one had been blandly inhabiting a deprived eloquence.
How, exactly, does one thank a writer for this? Fifteen years ago, at the age of 24, when I was working for The Guardian in London, I did so the only way I knew how: I arranged to meet Bellow and interviewed him for that newspaper. Over the years, I wrote about him again and again and visited him whenever I could.
By happy accident, I co-taught a class with him at Boston University. My daughter played with his; our family became close to Bellow and his wife Janis, and to his devoted assistant, Will. I accompanied him on the piano when he played the recorder. It was a delight to talk to him about literature, to make him laugh--he would throw his head back and give out a distinctive chortle, "ha, ha, ha, ha," each laugh separately articulated--and to laugh with him when he was making a joke.
But I cannot say that I truly knew him (partly because I knew him only in his old age); and, in some ways, the human distance was of my making, not his, for my literary gratitude was literally unspeakable, and floated massively above us. The prose was what I truly knew before I knew the man, and always I felt magically indebted in his presence. Like anyone, writers, of course, are embarrassed by excessive praise, just as readers are burdened by their excessive gratitude--one cannot keep going on about it.
And, eventually, it is easier to turn the beloved literary work into a kind of disembodied third party: to admit that the work itself exceeds the writer, that it sails--sails in atmosphere, indeed!--away from the writer and toward the delighted reader. In the final year of Saul's life, as he became very frail, I would read some of his own prose to him; something he would doubtless have found, as a younger man, mawkish or cloying or tiresome. It did not feel any of those things, as Bellow sat there in forgetful frailty; rather it felt as if I were gently reminding him of his own talent and that he was grateful for this, and perhaps grateful for my gratitude. But, in truth, I could not thank him enough when he was alive, and I cannot now.
From the Department of Yuk:
TRACKS - “... there’s a joyous eclecticism to Kyle Riabko’s ‘Before I Speak,’ mainly because the teenage Saskatoon singer / songwriter, whose fancy picking and supple singing may suggest a cross between John Mayer and Stevie Wonder seems to be having so much fun playing.”
And YOU SHOULD GO SEE THIS
Vice Magazine proudly presents:
DAVID CHOE
TOKYO PRISON ART
Friday APRIL 22nd 2005, 6pm until close
The Power House Gallery
68 Charlton Street
(two blocks south of Houston between Hudson and Varick)
New York, NY 10014-4601
(212) 604-9074, ext. 100
Hours of operation Monday through Friday, 11:00-7:00
Saturday 12:00-6:00
Our friend the artist David Choe got arrested for punching out an undercover detective in Tokyo in December of 2004. Then he spent four months in solitary confinement in a Japanese prison. Deprived of his usual drawing and painting tools, David improvised materials out of whatever he could scrape together in his tiny cell — including soy sauce and his own urine.
His prison stay resulted in the works in this show, a stunning collection of drawings that illustrate what a genius draftsman gets up to when he has nothing to do but draw. There are lots of dirty renderings of nubile women, and there are also fantastical imaginary landscapes and tableaus that are apocalyptic, hilarious, and beautiful.
Here, David can tell you about it better:
“PowerHouse is the name of an Oakland based hardcore band, a gay sex club, and also the name of the gallery at which I will have my first real show in New York City. I’ve been painting my whole life and have built up a huge body of work, and finally I get asked to show in New York, and it’s for urine drawings. It doesn’t get more art fag than that. I’m king of the art fags. And I’m excited and I just can’t hide it.
My friends at Vice magazine who have supported me, published my photos, artwork, and articles from the days when I had nothing are sponsoring this event next week. It is beyond x-rated, so keep that in mind if you’re gonna get upset. I don’t wanna hear it later.
I wanted to hold off on this show until I had collected all my sketches and thoughts into a publication of some sort.
But that will have to wait. I’m not in such a big hurry to revisit all my jail time memories. I just got all my XXX rated prison drawings and paintings I did with soy sauce and my piss, using the tip of my socks, framed by Dhiraj, his wife, and his grandmother (the Indian framing business next door to me).
Some of the drawings will be for sale for between $500 to $2000, but some of the art, that got me through the especially hard times I think I’m gonna have to hold on to. I hope to see all of you out there. I’m getting on a plane tonight to set up the show all next week. I want to make a prison zine to hand out at the opening. I’m only gonna make 50 to 100 zines. Here come the paper cuts. First come, first served.”
AND THIS
From today's Page Six:
"Kerrey did not like the control Lipton had over the [teaching] program, so he refused to renew their contract and told Lipton to take a hike," said the board member. Thank God. James Lipton is fucking atrocious.
4/20/2005
Ask David Berman
Once a week from now until whenever...perhaps the release of his new record TANGLEWOOD NUMBERS, David Berman of the Silver Jews will answer one question. Here's this week's:
Why do some adults speak of dessert in a mock-naughty tone that's usually reserved for sex? -- Wanda, Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota.
Yes, you'll never hear people talk about appetizers in those terms.Sweet Adultery Eggrolls or whatever. I think this contribution
to closing remarks, is purely the work of women 50 and older who do not work. No longer able to bear children, they themselves, in post-prandial hallucinations dream up the cake canyons and sweater covered hills that cause the planet where dessert turns people on.
If you have a question for David, please send it HERE and it may be answered at some point soon.
Why do some adults speak of dessert in a mock-naughty tone that's usually reserved for sex? -- Wanda, Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota.
Yes, you'll never hear people talk about appetizers in those terms.Sweet Adultery Eggrolls or whatever. I think this contribution
to closing remarks, is purely the work of women 50 and older who do not work. No longer able to bear children, they themselves, in post-prandial hallucinations dream up the cake canyons and sweater covered hills that cause the planet where dessert turns people on.
If you have a question for David, please send it HERE and it may be answered at some point soon.
4/19/2005
On Rabies
A week or so ago, this blog was guest-edited by a Californian veterinarian for a period of 36 or 37 hours. He's controversial, and enjoys being tagged as such. He's been touting the fact that if monitored, rabies needn't carry the uh-oh-call-the-paramedics stigma it has had for centuries. Enduring rabies can actually be a rewarding and mind-expanding experience if done in a safe setting with experienced professionals.
A digression: In 17th century England, people who had fox-based rabies were drowned immediately in the closest available tub. For their sorrow, their families were awarded a new skillet and three pounds of Admiral flour. And if they or their clergyman requested, a member of the royal family would spank the eldest surviving female sibling's bare bottom for good luck.
Then the rabid person's corpse was fed to crows. Which was a mistake because then the crows became rabid themselves. They feasted on stray sheep dogs who then attacked lambs, etc. Through a series of historic mishaps that I don't have time to get into, this explains why Sporty Spice was so homely.
Anyway, the Californian vet was asked to stop blogging because he ruffled too many feathers. He's been hanging out with a lot of poor UC Santa Cruz students in a secure desert facility, conducting mutually beneficial experiments. The students get paid and the doctor gets data. However, if the information he's provided me is true, about "chosen rabies," and how the side effects vary radically from species to species, it seems like, if this knowledge fell into the wrong hands, many free-spirits and drug users will actually want and/or try to get rabies!!!
With their written approval, he'd "given" many of the students different strains of rabies (and subsequently, an antidote) and then observed them, made notes and encouraged them to do the same, either during their rabies journey (if they were lucid enough) or following their rabies experiment, if they were not in pain or did not require hospitalization.
Here's the Cliff's Notes on what's happened so far:
Dog Rabies -- No one wants this. Heart rate goes up. You feel like a kidney stone stuck inside of Dick Van Patten. Your throat feels like it is made of fur. The only thing you can smell is library.
Squirrel Rabies -- You get horrible gas. Pop Rocks cures it. So does having a pre-pubescent Filipino boy whisper the name "Judy" near you exactly fourteen times.
Toucan Rabies -- You feel as if you've just dropped the world's largest anvil on Mohammed Atta, and been dispatched to Belize with fifty-five Xanax, a satchel of warmed pudding and the vocal stylings of Donald Fagen running through your mind. And a card that allows you a half dozen blowjobs per day.
Grizzly Rabies -- You do not have this for very long. The rabid grizzly usually decides to eat you or violently flail your torso and skull against jagged rocks, before abandoning you to rummage about for spoiled cabbage and warm Old Milwaukee. If it is merely injected into your system without the "bite" (you are a poseur), you develop large bosom goiters and go blind. You also may have the sensation reminiscent of catching a speeding tetherball on your nose during your grammar school years. Like a sneeze, only more violent, this sensation will remain with you for life, despite any medical treatment. You will not be able to drive any more, and you may have to move back in with your parents and ride the city bus.
Kangaroo Rabies -- The hallucinations are mild. Just pray that you don't happen to see the color orange.
Hen Rabies You feel exactly like David Schwimmer.
Dolphin Rabies -- You can do the Charleston impeccably. You also want to drink gallons of tonic water, which can be dangerous because of the levels of quinine. You will also call old lovers and apologize for past behavior. They still will not like you, probably because they really weren't your lover, per se, it's just something you imagined, and now you know, you have fucking rabies, so you're all goofy and stuff.
Raccoon Rabies -- Low rent. Speedy buzz. You want to wear trousers that are too short and too narrow in the waist. You cut the bottoms out of them. Then you listen to rave music. You may also crave Big League Chew. Grape flavor.
More info as I get it.
UNRELATED Victor-Schechter is a great company that puts out T-shirts by different young artists. Not "slogany" dogshit t-shirts, but real art ones. If you buy one from them, you will receive a free button I designed for them, with a line drawing of a St. Bernard's head. It is Buster, of course. If I can find a Jpeg of it, I will post it soon. This is not an advertisement. Though I am open to hearing your pitch. My page views are extraordinary. Extraordinary means your ad will be seen by 4 people per month.
A digression: In 17th century England, people who had fox-based rabies were drowned immediately in the closest available tub. For their sorrow, their families were awarded a new skillet and three pounds of Admiral flour. And if they or their clergyman requested, a member of the royal family would spank the eldest surviving female sibling's bare bottom for good luck.
Then the rabid person's corpse was fed to crows. Which was a mistake because then the crows became rabid themselves. They feasted on stray sheep dogs who then attacked lambs, etc. Through a series of historic mishaps that I don't have time to get into, this explains why Sporty Spice was so homely.
Anyway, the Californian vet was asked to stop blogging because he ruffled too many feathers. He's been hanging out with a lot of poor UC Santa Cruz students in a secure desert facility, conducting mutually beneficial experiments. The students get paid and the doctor gets data. However, if the information he's provided me is true, about "chosen rabies," and how the side effects vary radically from species to species, it seems like, if this knowledge fell into the wrong hands, many free-spirits and drug users will actually want and/or try to get rabies!!!
With their written approval, he'd "given" many of the students different strains of rabies (and subsequently, an antidote) and then observed them, made notes and encouraged them to do the same, either during their rabies journey (if they were lucid enough) or following their rabies experiment, if they were not in pain or did not require hospitalization.
Here's the Cliff's Notes on what's happened so far:
Dog Rabies -- No one wants this. Heart rate goes up. You feel like a kidney stone stuck inside of Dick Van Patten. Your throat feels like it is made of fur. The only thing you can smell is library.
Squirrel Rabies -- You get horrible gas. Pop Rocks cures it. So does having a pre-pubescent Filipino boy whisper the name "Judy" near you exactly fourteen times.
Toucan Rabies -- You feel as if you've just dropped the world's largest anvil on Mohammed Atta, and been dispatched to Belize with fifty-five Xanax, a satchel of warmed pudding and the vocal stylings of Donald Fagen running through your mind. And a card that allows you a half dozen blowjobs per day.
Grizzly Rabies -- You do not have this for very long. The rabid grizzly usually decides to eat you or violently flail your torso and skull against jagged rocks, before abandoning you to rummage about for spoiled cabbage and warm Old Milwaukee. If it is merely injected into your system without the "bite" (you are a poseur), you develop large bosom goiters and go blind. You also may have the sensation reminiscent of catching a speeding tetherball on your nose during your grammar school years. Like a sneeze, only more violent, this sensation will remain with you for life, despite any medical treatment. You will not be able to drive any more, and you may have to move back in with your parents and ride the city bus.
Kangaroo Rabies -- The hallucinations are mild. Just pray that you don't happen to see the color orange.
Hen Rabies You feel exactly like David Schwimmer.
Dolphin Rabies -- You can do the Charleston impeccably. You also want to drink gallons of tonic water, which can be dangerous because of the levels of quinine. You will also call old lovers and apologize for past behavior. They still will not like you, probably because they really weren't your lover, per se, it's just something you imagined, and now you know, you have fucking rabies, so you're all goofy and stuff.
Raccoon Rabies -- Low rent. Speedy buzz. You want to wear trousers that are too short and too narrow in the waist. You cut the bottoms out of them. Then you listen to rave music. You may also crave Big League Chew. Grape flavor.
More info as I get it.
UNRELATED Victor-Schechter is a great company that puts out T-shirts by different young artists. Not "slogany" dogshit t-shirts, but real art ones. If you buy one from them, you will receive a free button I designed for them, with a line drawing of a St. Bernard's head. It is Buster, of course. If I can find a Jpeg of it, I will post it soon. This is not an advertisement. Though I am open to hearing your pitch. My page views are extraordinary. Extraordinary means your ad will be seen by 4 people per month.
Bud Selig
4/18/2005
TMFTML on Westerberg/Meloy
Yet more Libertines news
The South of South Beach Diet
From yesterday's NY Times "Mr. Cruise and his publisher hope his book will be the next dieting blockbuster, one with the potential to sell on the level of "South Beach" (nine million copies in two years)."
Why does no one want to turn my idea into a fucking book? From the August 2004 Philadelphia Independent:
When you hear the phrase “Bay of Pigs," do you find yourself thinking not of a classic Cold War folly but instead the image of you and your spouse on vacation—piled in a Days Inn or Ho-Jo’s Jacuzzi, ravenously working over a diminishing carton of chocolate covered cherries, oblivious to the rest of the human race?
Would you like to flee the oppressive, ham-fisted—scratch that—ham-everything-ed regime commonly known as your appetite?
Have you reached the point at which you’re willing to doggie paddle ninety miles through choppy, buffet-free seas in an attempt to liberate yourself from the carb coffin you’ve spent years lining with comfy quilts of mozzarella and ravioli throw pillows?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions and are tired of feeling like a refugee, fluent only in the decidedly non-Romance language known as Seconds, then keep reading as the paragraphs below stack like the deli meats that you currently can not live with out.
Fact: Today obesity is everyone’s personal despot, from the corn-syrup addicted toddler to the senior who walks with a cane for no other reason than joint-hobbling girth. As a result, the marketplace is filled with ambitiously creative but morally vacuous diets promising belly diminishment at little or no personal pain or cost to the dieter.
How nice.
Want to eat nothing but nougat and bacon? Go for it. Put this newspaper down, drink Camembert through a straw and I’ll be sure to buy that handsome wicker footstool you’re using from your next of kin at the estate sale. Sound harsh? Sorry, but I have zero tolerance for make believe when it comes to weight loss and that’s why I’ve developed and patented the South of South Beach Diet™.
Remember that thin, photogenic wave of Cubans that washed up in Florida more than twenty years ago? What they endured? How their flat front 1950s trousers fit just-so? How evenly tanned they were? How even today Cuban refugees still occasionally float into U.S. territory, and their time in the ocean has sculpted them into sinewy and thoughtful liberty-seekers whose only remaining cravings are:
a) freedom and, perhaps,
b) potable water?
Good! So do I. This is what folks in the nutrition game call a winning look. By the way, freedom is an awesome concept—but sometimes when I look at America’s interpretation of freedom, as administered by menu planners and the six to eleven daily servings of carbohydrates recommended by the FDA, I shudder.
Let’s get started. Admit your final chance to be thin is to internalize those lonesome pangs of alienation that you, as a fat person already feel and become the seeker of political asylum that you may already feel like—at least in terms of drowning in an ocean of ostracization, due to your portliness.
So suck it up, put your swim trunks on and embrace the dignified squalor that I know is deeply ensconced somewhere in the huddled masses of your torso, and/or chin(s).
Now I understand that many of us, particularly those in the states most enabling of fatness, don't live near a proper ocean, or even a sympathetic community pool, so here’s an alternative route to fleeing your fatness:
1) Phone the office. Call in sick. You’re not lying! Obesity is a disease.
2) Procure a saltlick. From an equine supply shop, of course. The bigger, the better. Ideally, your saltlick should be the size of an adult panda (roughly 138-200 pounds), although it may be necessary to fuse several saltlicks together with rubber cement or solder to obtain a saltlick of this size. Get a friend to help you hump it into the minivan that currently serves as your dining room, as you do little more than cruise the area’s finest Brazier to-go windows.
3) Employing this same amigo, drive to the nearest toy store and purchase a toddler's pool. Lug it to your vehicle and head home.
4) Set the pool up in the yard. If you don't have a lawn, put a few tarps down on the living room floor and set the pool on top of them. If you don’t have a living room, pause for a moment and shame yourself. You’ve eaten yourself out of house and home, haven’t you?
One caution: Don't let the saltlick get too dusty. Until I’m ready to diet, I often cover mine in a royal-blue cheesecloth (embroidered with my initials) that prevents any pet dander or residual epidermal and household floaters from collecting on it.
5) Shatter your saltlick into tiny pieces in the kiddie pool. Be careful not to puncture the pool’s floor with your shattering device. A light tap dance on the salty shards should help pulverize them into a fine powder. Now fill this tub with chilly water. This is your ocean.
6) Put on your wetsuit. (If you have a wetsuit left over from some forgotten era when you were actually capable of movement, it no longer fits. You will need to buy a new one.) For the next eleven days you’ll be adrift in this saltwater brine. Consume nothing. Talk to no one. Vegging in front of the television set and not treading does a disservice to authentic Cuban flee-ers who have to avoid sharks and jellyfish. You need only avoid jelly. Flap your arms and legs. Vigorously. You will not, in most cases, drown.
7) By day eleven, you should have dropped the exact amount of weight you need to. It’s that simple. The saltwater knows. This is one of the ocean’s mysteries. Now is a good time to tell your spouse or that amigo to “wave you in.” Towel off. Tune out any hallucinations. Thumb your protruding ribs like a xylophone. Get on a scale. Smile. Consume a small cup of broth.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
Eleven days? I’m hungry.
Okay, you may consume your own bodily discardants such as blood or urine, or chew on a stray toenail, etc. If you must, allow yourself to consume a hardened heel of white bread that you'll carry in the crotch of your swimsuit for the first half-day of the diet. And you may eat one raw swordfish (sans cooking, condiments, or napkins).
I’m doing my treading, but someone’s trying to tempt me.
Sure, on a nearby countertop, some careless bastard has abandoned three-quarters of a warm, cinnamon-dusted coffee cake with sugary icing trickling down from its highest crumb-y carbohydrate mountain peaks onto the cardboard tray beneath. One erect and ambitious index finger could glide through that glazing and into your mouth and you’d be back in your pool before anyone would even notice. Why would a loved one position a steaming cake just to send its calorie-packed waftings toward your nostrils? Only to throw you back into that treacherous blubber reef that separates over seventy-one percent of us from pure joy. Don't go for that cake. Instead, reach for an empty pint glass, dunk it in your tub. Now chug that lukewarm tonic. Gulp it. Let it burn. Taste your body's old flavors and secretions as intermingled with the salty stew of the new you! Keep treading.
Can’t I take one day off?
One night of coal-oven pizza, then back in the pool, huh? Uncle Charlie's in town with his golf clubs and his new wife. You don't want them to see your aquatic side. Yeah, why not put on a normal face, dry off and throw your street clothes on? Double the cheese on the damn thing. Stop. Your whole life has been one night of pizza. Uncle Charlie’s a mean drunk. Stay in your pool.
So what do I do with this pool when it’s all over? Give it to a friend. I’d like to get on Oprah.
Why does no one want to turn my idea into a fucking book? From the August 2004 Philadelphia Independent:
When you hear the phrase “Bay of Pigs," do you find yourself thinking not of a classic Cold War folly but instead the image of you and your spouse on vacation—piled in a Days Inn or Ho-Jo’s Jacuzzi, ravenously working over a diminishing carton of chocolate covered cherries, oblivious to the rest of the human race?
Would you like to flee the oppressive, ham-fisted—scratch that—ham-everything-ed regime commonly known as your appetite?
Have you reached the point at which you’re willing to doggie paddle ninety miles through choppy, buffet-free seas in an attempt to liberate yourself from the carb coffin you’ve spent years lining with comfy quilts of mozzarella and ravioli throw pillows?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions and are tired of feeling like a refugee, fluent only in the decidedly non-Romance language known as Seconds, then keep reading as the paragraphs below stack like the deli meats that you currently can not live with out.
Fact: Today obesity is everyone’s personal despot, from the corn-syrup addicted toddler to the senior who walks with a cane for no other reason than joint-hobbling girth. As a result, the marketplace is filled with ambitiously creative but morally vacuous diets promising belly diminishment at little or no personal pain or cost to the dieter.
How nice.
Want to eat nothing but nougat and bacon? Go for it. Put this newspaper down, drink Camembert through a straw and I’ll be sure to buy that handsome wicker footstool you’re using from your next of kin at the estate sale. Sound harsh? Sorry, but I have zero tolerance for make believe when it comes to weight loss and that’s why I’ve developed and patented the South of South Beach Diet™.
Remember that thin, photogenic wave of Cubans that washed up in Florida more than twenty years ago? What they endured? How their flat front 1950s trousers fit just-so? How evenly tanned they were? How even today Cuban refugees still occasionally float into U.S. territory, and their time in the ocean has sculpted them into sinewy and thoughtful liberty-seekers whose only remaining cravings are:
a) freedom and, perhaps,
b) potable water?
Good! So do I. This is what folks in the nutrition game call a winning look. By the way, freedom is an awesome concept—but sometimes when I look at America’s interpretation of freedom, as administered by menu planners and the six to eleven daily servings of carbohydrates recommended by the FDA, I shudder.
Let’s get started. Admit your final chance to be thin is to internalize those lonesome pangs of alienation that you, as a fat person already feel and become the seeker of political asylum that you may already feel like—at least in terms of drowning in an ocean of ostracization, due to your portliness.
So suck it up, put your swim trunks on and embrace the dignified squalor that I know is deeply ensconced somewhere in the huddled masses of your torso, and/or chin(s).
Now I understand that many of us, particularly those in the states most enabling of fatness, don't live near a proper ocean, or even a sympathetic community pool, so here’s an alternative route to fleeing your fatness:
1) Phone the office. Call in sick. You’re not lying! Obesity is a disease.
2) Procure a saltlick. From an equine supply shop, of course. The bigger, the better. Ideally, your saltlick should be the size of an adult panda (roughly 138-200 pounds), although it may be necessary to fuse several saltlicks together with rubber cement or solder to obtain a saltlick of this size. Get a friend to help you hump it into the minivan that currently serves as your dining room, as you do little more than cruise the area’s finest Brazier to-go windows.
3) Employing this same amigo, drive to the nearest toy store and purchase a toddler's pool. Lug it to your vehicle and head home.
4) Set the pool up in the yard. If you don't have a lawn, put a few tarps down on the living room floor and set the pool on top of them. If you don’t have a living room, pause for a moment and shame yourself. You’ve eaten yourself out of house and home, haven’t you?
One caution: Don't let the saltlick get too dusty. Until I’m ready to diet, I often cover mine in a royal-blue cheesecloth (embroidered with my initials) that prevents any pet dander or residual epidermal and household floaters from collecting on it.
5) Shatter your saltlick into tiny pieces in the kiddie pool. Be careful not to puncture the pool’s floor with your shattering device. A light tap dance on the salty shards should help pulverize them into a fine powder. Now fill this tub with chilly water. This is your ocean.
6) Put on your wetsuit. (If you have a wetsuit left over from some forgotten era when you were actually capable of movement, it no longer fits. You will need to buy a new one.) For the next eleven days you’ll be adrift in this saltwater brine. Consume nothing. Talk to no one. Vegging in front of the television set and not treading does a disservice to authentic Cuban flee-ers who have to avoid sharks and jellyfish. You need only avoid jelly. Flap your arms and legs. Vigorously. You will not, in most cases, drown.
7) By day eleven, you should have dropped the exact amount of weight you need to. It’s that simple. The saltwater knows. This is one of the ocean’s mysteries. Now is a good time to tell your spouse or that amigo to “wave you in.” Towel off. Tune out any hallucinations. Thumb your protruding ribs like a xylophone. Get on a scale. Smile. Consume a small cup of broth.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
Eleven days? I’m hungry.
Okay, you may consume your own bodily discardants such as blood or urine, or chew on a stray toenail, etc. If you must, allow yourself to consume a hardened heel of white bread that you'll carry in the crotch of your swimsuit for the first half-day of the diet. And you may eat one raw swordfish (sans cooking, condiments, or napkins).
I’m doing my treading, but someone’s trying to tempt me.
Sure, on a nearby countertop, some careless bastard has abandoned three-quarters of a warm, cinnamon-dusted coffee cake with sugary icing trickling down from its highest crumb-y carbohydrate mountain peaks onto the cardboard tray beneath. One erect and ambitious index finger could glide through that glazing and into your mouth and you’d be back in your pool before anyone would even notice. Why would a loved one position a steaming cake just to send its calorie-packed waftings toward your nostrils? Only to throw you back into that treacherous blubber reef that separates over seventy-one percent of us from pure joy. Don't go for that cake. Instead, reach for an empty pint glass, dunk it in your tub. Now chug that lukewarm tonic. Gulp it. Let it burn. Taste your body's old flavors and secretions as intermingled with the salty stew of the new you! Keep treading.
Can’t I take one day off?
One night of coal-oven pizza, then back in the pool, huh? Uncle Charlie's in town with his golf clubs and his new wife. You don't want them to see your aquatic side. Yeah, why not put on a normal face, dry off and throw your street clothes on? Double the cheese on the damn thing. Stop. Your whole life has been one night of pizza. Uncle Charlie’s a mean drunk. Stay in your pool.
So what do I do with this pool when it’s all over? Give it to a friend. I’d like to get on Oprah.
4/17/2005
Pettitte Watch
He lost yesterday (Saturday). He's 0-1.
I predict he retires after this season.
Or else he will retire during this season.
Steve Serby talks to his teammate Roger Clemens in today's Post.
I predict he retires after this season.
Or else he will retire during this season.
Steve Serby talks to his teammate Roger Clemens in today's Post.
4/15/2005
Have a Great Weekend
Lakers Update
Slava’s Corner
It has been a tough season for us Lakers, not making the playoffs after so much winning, but there are many things we could do between now and then to make us playoff champion again.
First, I think that we need to have Kevin Garnett as Laker.
I’m serious.
Can you imagine? Kevin Garnett, Kobe, Slava and any two people you pick and we’ll
definitely get home court in NBA finals! I think we could make trade with
Timberwolves for Caron Butler and Lamar Odom and Tierre Brown. But leave
Tierre Brown’s girlfriend here! Ha, ha, I joke. Everyone always says
‘Slava, don’t joke like that in America,’ but I’m a millionaire, so what are
they going to do about it?
In other news, we need a damn coach. This coach Hamblen is plenty nice guy, but every night on the road he try to drink us all under the table and it looks like his nose is about to fall off. Ask any Laker, coach Hamblen has the worst breath in the NBA. Is true. What about coach Carlisle from Indiana? He seems like a no nuts kind of guy and would be good to clean out Kobe’s clock. Literally. Anyhoo, we Lakers will definitely make it to playoffs next year if we can get one or two all star free agents. I have a lot of other news, but you’ll have to wait for my
draft report later this spring when I break it down...Slava Style!
by Daniel Klein
It has been a tough season for us Lakers, not making the playoffs after so much winning, but there are many things we could do between now and then to make us playoff champion again.
First, I think that we need to have Kevin Garnett as Laker.
I’m serious.
Can you imagine? Kevin Garnett, Kobe, Slava and any two people you pick and we’ll
definitely get home court in NBA finals! I think we could make trade with
Timberwolves for Caron Butler and Lamar Odom and Tierre Brown. But leave
Tierre Brown’s girlfriend here! Ha, ha, I joke. Everyone always says
‘Slava, don’t joke like that in America,’ but I’m a millionaire, so what are
they going to do about it?
In other news, we need a damn coach. This coach Hamblen is plenty nice guy, but every night on the road he try to drink us all under the table and it looks like his nose is about to fall off. Ask any Laker, coach Hamblen has the worst breath in the NBA. Is true. What about coach Carlisle from Indiana? He seems like a no nuts kind of guy and would be good to clean out Kobe’s clock. Literally. Anyhoo, we Lakers will definitely make it to playoffs next year if we can get one or two all star free agents. I have a lot of other news, but you’ll have to wait for my
draft report later this spring when I break it down...Slava Style!
by Daniel Klein
4/14/2005
I've identified the day's biggest jag-off
Jim Cheney on the Yankees
please note this was written the day after the Red Sox hoisted the flag
NEXT STOP, THE COLD, COLD GROUND
At seven games into the season, it’s all over. The Yankees are in dead last. It’s all over. Rumor has it that Randy Johnson and Bubba Cros by have already been on the blower to assorted hunting and fishing camps throughout Idaho and Montana to plan their early October vacations. Jeter, Tino, Jorge, Bernie and Mo are all trying to figure out who gets the Maui timeshare and when. And before yo u know it, Mike Mussina will be floating around the lakes of Canada, writing Rush lyrics with Neil Peart
Somehow, unless they win at least their first six games, too many Yankee “fans” look to plant the team as early as they can. There are reasons why Jo e Torre is in his tenth season as manager, the longest tenure since Casey Stengel and, by far, the longest tenure of the Steinbrenner era. He doesn’t panic, and He doesn’t instill panic. He is the absolute pinnacle of baseball professionalism, and any good-hearted, true believer knows this. Despite a recent dearth in championship banners, you can be sure that year after year, The Bronx will be cooking well into October.
If your team is 3 – 4, and you worry more about the opposition’s nickel package then their lights-out bull pen, you’ve got some issues. But this is baseball, 162 glorious contests during the length of which, virtually anything can happen. Today, this very day, there are lots of Herculean boneheads looking to say that the Yanks won’t do it this year. There is nothing funnier then to hear self-proclaimed experts and softheads, often the same people, whacking away at the mental hospital panic buttons, stamping any April game a “must-win.” After July, they’re entitled to go a little loony if their team is double-digits out of 1st, or nowadays, wild-card contention.
Thanks to free-agency and no real salary cap, it can take some time for teams to gel. It is a statement which has been said several times before, but is continually forgotten. Th is is not the dumpster sleeping, cow killing, drunken sailor Yanks of the Mick, Whitey and Billy Martin, an era when teams were together for years. This is a team of mercenaries who play around a core of the games greatest manager and a handful of his loy al disciples. Players are heard to claim that they come here to play in pinstripes, to run the same bases as Gehrig, DiMaggio, and the aforementioned Mantle. Sluggers come here for the right-field wall that made Babe Ruth, well, Babe Ruth. The real reason they come, though, is the relentless pursuit of a World Series championship.
Yesterday’s proceedings at Fenway Park must be placed in proper perspective. This is the first time in 86 years the Sox had hung a Championship banner. Give them their due. The y’re a bunch of weirdo, redneck, unkempt assclowns, but they’re responsible for a remarkable achievement, and the Yanks, to their credit, were there to congratulate them. The 2004 Bombers melted down and were beaten, they know that, but they also know tha t they’ll be back. 99.9% of Boston fans can settle down and happily drink a big sweaty bootfull of Jonesberry Kool-Aid. They’ve seen more then they ever expected to. Yankee fans know that, every year, we’ll be skimming that ugly-ass trophy. Yankee fans kn ow that this is 162 game pre-season. Sox fans know that if they ever get back to the World Series in the next 86 years, it’s a bonus.
Chances are indeed good that the Sox and the Yanks will face off in the playoffs this year, much to the delight of telev ision executives and beer vendors. Aside from substantially retooled pitching staffs, both teams have headed into the season pretty much in tact and as complete as they’ve been in years. Their games as opponents will be as entertaining as ever, and last years assorted proceedings simply laid a fresh layer of shit to the fresh seedlings of this rivalry.
So for those of you who are hoping to spend October watching Bubba and Randy bagging ten-pointers, or looking to pass the poi to Derrick and Tino, relax. You’ll also have to wait patiently to sample Mussina’s contribution to the kings of Canadian power-rock. Do your best to stop planning the funeral. It’s a long, long season, and the Yankees will probably play more games then any other team, except for one TBD. (Met fans, I’m not talking to you.)
Enjoy the silliness.
WRITE TO CHENEY, POR FAVOR
Jim
UNRELATED It's Carl Barat then. And he's been in Wales. With the Zeta-Joneses?
/
NEXT STOP, THE COLD, COLD GROUND
At seven games into the season, it’s all over. The Yankees are in dead last. It’s all over. Rumor has it that Randy Johnson and Bubba Cros by have already been on the blower to assorted hunting and fishing camps throughout Idaho and Montana to plan their early October vacations. Jeter, Tino, Jorge, Bernie and Mo are all trying to figure out who gets the Maui timeshare and when. And before yo u know it, Mike Mussina will be floating around the lakes of Canada, writing Rush lyrics with Neil Peart
Somehow, unless they win at least their first six games, too many Yankee “fans” look to plant the team as early as they can. There are reasons why Jo e Torre is in his tenth season as manager, the longest tenure since Casey Stengel and, by far, the longest tenure of the Steinbrenner era. He doesn’t panic, and He doesn’t instill panic. He is the absolute pinnacle of baseball professionalism, and any good-hearted, true believer knows this. Despite a recent dearth in championship banners, you can be sure that year after year, The Bronx will be cooking well into October.
If your team is 3 – 4, and you worry more about the opposition’s nickel package then their lights-out bull pen, you’ve got some issues. But this is baseball, 162 glorious contests during the length of which, virtually anything can happen. Today, this very day, there are lots of Herculean boneheads looking to say that the Yanks won’t do it this year. There is nothing funnier then to hear self-proclaimed experts and softheads, often the same people, whacking away at the mental hospital panic buttons, stamping any April game a “must-win.” After July, they’re entitled to go a little loony if their team is double-digits out of 1st, or nowadays, wild-card contention.
Thanks to free-agency and no real salary cap, it can take some time for teams to gel. It is a statement which has been said several times before, but is continually forgotten. Th is is not the dumpster sleeping, cow killing, drunken sailor Yanks of the Mick, Whitey and Billy Martin, an era when teams were together for years. This is a team of mercenaries who play around a core of the games greatest manager and a handful of his loy al disciples. Players are heard to claim that they come here to play in pinstripes, to run the same bases as Gehrig, DiMaggio, and the aforementioned Mantle. Sluggers come here for the right-field wall that made Babe Ruth, well, Babe Ruth. The real reason they come, though, is the relentless pursuit of a World Series championship.
Yesterday’s proceedings at Fenway Park must be placed in proper perspective. This is the first time in 86 years the Sox had hung a Championship banner. Give them their due. The y’re a bunch of weirdo, redneck, unkempt assclowns, but they’re responsible for a remarkable achievement, and the Yanks, to their credit, were there to congratulate them. The 2004 Bombers melted down and were beaten, they know that, but they also know tha t they’ll be back. 99.9% of Boston fans can settle down and happily drink a big sweaty bootfull of Jonesberry Kool-Aid. They’ve seen more then they ever expected to. Yankee fans know that, every year, we’ll be skimming that ugly-ass trophy. Yankee fans kn ow that this is 162 game pre-season. Sox fans know that if they ever get back to the World Series in the next 86 years, it’s a bonus.
Chances are indeed good that the Sox and the Yanks will face off in the playoffs this year, much to the delight of telev ision executives and beer vendors. Aside from substantially retooled pitching staffs, both teams have headed into the season pretty much in tact and as complete as they’ve been in years. Their games as opponents will be as entertaining as ever, and last years assorted proceedings simply laid a fresh layer of shit to the fresh seedlings of this rivalry.
So for those of you who are hoping to spend October watching Bubba and Randy bagging ten-pointers, or looking to pass the poi to Derrick and Tino, relax. You’ll also have to wait patiently to sample Mussina’s contribution to the kings of Canadian power-rock. Do your best to stop planning the funeral. It’s a long, long season, and the Yankees will probably play more games then any other team, except for one TBD. (Met fans, I’m not talking to you.)
Enjoy the silliness.
WRITE TO CHENEY, POR FAVOR
Jim
UNRELATED It's Carl Barat then. And he's been in Wales. With the Zeta-Joneses?
/
4/13/2005
Now even God is crying.
Lost O'Reilly Transcripts Volume One
Monday night on The O'Reilly Factor, Bill had the editors who put together TIME's 100 Biggest Shitheads of the year or whatever. On the Air, he tussled with every decision they made. What many of you don't know is that the conversation later spilled into the Green Room, over many little Coppola champagne cans.
Bill O'Reilly: Jay-Z over 50-Cent? I don't think Jay is relevant in terms of the street anymore. Now, I'm no 50-cent fan, he's a thug, but word on the street is that he is living large. Are you familiar with that term? It's what colored folks say when they want to articulate the fact that they are enjoying life and its spoils, which I can't help but think have been acquired through ill-gotten--
Editor: Uhp, er.
Bill O'Reilly: Another thing kids like is Mountain Dew Code Red. I'm no soda drinker. Don't touch the stuff, 'cause I know in my heart of hearts it is poison. But the word on the street is it is a hot commodity for all these little sugar heads. These little Red Lake thugs. All hopped up on Mountain Dew Code Red. Firin' guns.
Editor: Oookay. Well--
Bill O'Reilly: Actually, it's not doing so well. I lied. But I lied for a good reason. Actually, I didn't. I had been deceived by liberal operatives into thinking this soda performed well in the marketplace, and when I found out the truth, I simply changed my position. If you think that is spin, well, then you are a Godless communist who applauds the molestation of children. Liberals are willing to lie about soda consumption. That's what the world has come to. So I bet you think that ice cream is popular? Did that make your 100 list? Think again. Kids like Snickers Crunch. They'll devour them. Turn your back on a case of 36 of them and they'll get on 'em like that Augustus pig from Wonka.
Editor: We didn't even--
Bill O'Reilly: I heard that your band has given up their guitars and gotten turntables? Now, whenever I am in Ibiza, and to be perfectly honest I do go there a lot. But it's so over. I was on Ayia Napa when Dizzee Rascal was stabbed. Even helped sop up some of the blood with a, eh, loofa. We're talking the pinnacle of popular culture. I am at the epicenter. I saw The Office way before most Americans. Loved it. Had a friend from the UK burn them onto DVD as right as they were being filmed!
Editor: What the--
Bill O'Reilly: I was offered Tom Ford's job at Gucci when he left. Turned it down. Why? I don't like Italian gays. It's that simple. Picture me fitting in with them. Make sense to you? No, it does not. Plus, I'm not in that league yet as a designer. I'm honest. I'm doing some sandals for K-Mart's Jaclyn Smith collection. And we will see what happens. No sense getting too big for one's britches. And before you get cocky, the Factor does not condone third world labor. My mother is making most of them on good old Long Island U.S.A. Got a problem with that? Tough noogies.
Editor: I think--
Bill O'Reilly: Do you know what Japanese tweeners are doing every morning? I did a trendspotting newsletter for Faith Popcorn. They're actually eating mussels with nacho cheese, and then smearing the excess cheese on their sneakers in a sort of Pollock-ian way.
Editor: Hmmm.
Bill O'Reilly: They go for tens of thousands of dollars on Ebay. Actually it's not Ebay, it's a secret auction website that I can't tell you about unless you pay me $50,000. I'm going jogging with Jack Welch, Stephen Malkmus, this Norwegian pop star Annie, Michael Riedel from the NY Post, and Chloe Sevigny. We're gonna talk about getting into business together. Maybe doing a reality show where we all live in one of the Richard Meier buildings.
Editor: Uh.
Bill O'Reilly: Cat got your tongue? I freelance for Pitchfork. I write the Dos and Don't for VICE. I am going back to Harvard just to get a spot on their crew team. I gave a motivational speech to the Vermont men's hoops team. Scrappers. Malcolm Gladwell was just texting me. He told me he'd been crying. I may direct some amateur adult videos. To be viewed on a whole new platform. Something hand-held. The Pope's people called. I told them I'm not a virgin any more. Can't do it. I'm playing the principal in the movie version of Lipsyte's Home Land. They're letting me improvise much of my dialogue.
Editor: Er.
Bill O'Reilly: Here's a tip: Sport talcs. Research it. I Tivo'ed the Matlock re-run. Gotta watch it. That's irony. I'm actually playing a Tonic benefit tonight. Me and Matt Sweeney. We've been talking to Drag City about--
Bill O'Reilly: Jay-Z over 50-Cent? I don't think Jay is relevant in terms of the street anymore. Now, I'm no 50-cent fan, he's a thug, but word on the street is that he is living large. Are you familiar with that term? It's what colored folks say when they want to articulate the fact that they are enjoying life and its spoils, which I can't help but think have been acquired through ill-gotten--
Editor: Uhp, er.
Bill O'Reilly: Another thing kids like is Mountain Dew Code Red. I'm no soda drinker. Don't touch the stuff, 'cause I know in my heart of hearts it is poison. But the word on the street is it is a hot commodity for all these little sugar heads. These little Red Lake thugs. All hopped up on Mountain Dew Code Red. Firin' guns.
Editor: Oookay. Well--
Bill O'Reilly: Actually, it's not doing so well. I lied. But I lied for a good reason. Actually, I didn't. I had been deceived by liberal operatives into thinking this soda performed well in the marketplace, and when I found out the truth, I simply changed my position. If you think that is spin, well, then you are a Godless communist who applauds the molestation of children. Liberals are willing to lie about soda consumption. That's what the world has come to. So I bet you think that ice cream is popular? Did that make your 100 list? Think again. Kids like Snickers Crunch. They'll devour them. Turn your back on a case of 36 of them and they'll get on 'em like that Augustus pig from Wonka.
Editor: We didn't even--
Bill O'Reilly: I heard that your band has given up their guitars and gotten turntables? Now, whenever I am in Ibiza, and to be perfectly honest I do go there a lot. But it's so over. I was on Ayia Napa when Dizzee Rascal was stabbed. Even helped sop up some of the blood with a, eh, loofa. We're talking the pinnacle of popular culture. I am at the epicenter. I saw The Office way before most Americans. Loved it. Had a friend from the UK burn them onto DVD as right as they were being filmed!
Editor: What the--
Bill O'Reilly: I was offered Tom Ford's job at Gucci when he left. Turned it down. Why? I don't like Italian gays. It's that simple. Picture me fitting in with them. Make sense to you? No, it does not. Plus, I'm not in that league yet as a designer. I'm honest. I'm doing some sandals for K-Mart's Jaclyn Smith collection. And we will see what happens. No sense getting too big for one's britches. And before you get cocky, the Factor does not condone third world labor. My mother is making most of them on good old Long Island U.S.A. Got a problem with that? Tough noogies.
Editor: I think--
Bill O'Reilly: Do you know what Japanese tweeners are doing every morning? I did a trendspotting newsletter for Faith Popcorn. They're actually eating mussels with nacho cheese, and then smearing the excess cheese on their sneakers in a sort of Pollock-ian way.
Editor: Hmmm.
Bill O'Reilly: They go for tens of thousands of dollars on Ebay. Actually it's not Ebay, it's a secret auction website that I can't tell you about unless you pay me $50,000. I'm going jogging with Jack Welch, Stephen Malkmus, this Norwegian pop star Annie, Michael Riedel from the NY Post, and Chloe Sevigny. We're gonna talk about getting into business together. Maybe doing a reality show where we all live in one of the Richard Meier buildings.
Editor: Uh.
Bill O'Reilly: Cat got your tongue? I freelance for Pitchfork. I write the Dos and Don't for VICE. I am going back to Harvard just to get a spot on their crew team. I gave a motivational speech to the Vermont men's hoops team. Scrappers. Malcolm Gladwell was just texting me. He told me he'd been crying. I may direct some amateur adult videos. To be viewed on a whole new platform. Something hand-held. The Pope's people called. I told them I'm not a virgin any more. Can't do it. I'm playing the principal in the movie version of Lipsyte's Home Land. They're letting me improvise much of my dialogue.
Editor: Er.
Bill O'Reilly: Here's a tip: Sport talcs. Research it. I Tivo'ed the Matlock re-run. Gotta watch it. That's irony. I'm actually playing a Tonic benefit tonight. Me and Matt Sweeney. We've been talking to Drag City about--
4/12/2005
Sports news, 2 things
STOLEN from AOL Sports
BRISTOL, Conn. (April 12) - It appears Terrell Owens' second year with the Philadelphia Eagles has the potential to be quite rocky.
ESPN reported Tuesday that Owens took a verbal jab at Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb for his performance in Super Bowl XXXIX against the New England Patriots.
In the interview, Owens said he "wasn't the guy who got tired in the Super Bowl," a reference to several media reports that claimed McNabb was either ill or tired late in the fourth quarter of the Eagles' 24-21 loss to the Patriots.
McNabb has denied those reports, but several offensive linemen said that McNabb appeared ill and that receiver Freddie Mitchell was forced to call a play in the huddle. Eagles coach Andy Reid also denied that McNabb was ill.
Owens' reported comment to ESPN likely will ignite the controversy again, which will not please either McNabb or Reid.
Last week, Owens switched agents, hiring Drew Rosenhaus and prompting speculation that he wanted to revise the seven-year, $49 million contract he signed with the team last season after being acquired from San Francisco.
Owens neither confirmed nor denied that in his interview with ESPN.
"As always, there is a lot written and (said) without anyone talking to me," Owens told ESPN. "I mean, I can't do right and I can't do wrong. It's getting, in some ways, like it was for me in San Francisco. But the one thing that won't change is that I'm going to show up to play and to win. No one can ever (debate) that."
Owens staged one of the most courageous performances in Super Bowl history, catching nine passes for 122 yards in the loss to New England after missing the last two regular-season games and two playoff games with a fractured leg and sprained ankle.
In his first season with the Eagles, Owens caught 77 passes for 1,200 yards and 14 touchdowns.
And this forwarded with love from TMFTML a story by a guy who hates the Red Sox
oh, and actually three things: Can't Stop the Bleeding Gerard Cosloy's sports blog has been especially good lately...
BRISTOL, Conn. (April 12) - It appears Terrell Owens' second year with the Philadelphia Eagles has the potential to be quite rocky.
ESPN reported Tuesday that Owens took a verbal jab at Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb for his performance in Super Bowl XXXIX against the New England Patriots.
In the interview, Owens said he "wasn't the guy who got tired in the Super Bowl," a reference to several media reports that claimed McNabb was either ill or tired late in the fourth quarter of the Eagles' 24-21 loss to the Patriots.
McNabb has denied those reports, but several offensive linemen said that McNabb appeared ill and that receiver Freddie Mitchell was forced to call a play in the huddle. Eagles coach Andy Reid also denied that McNabb was ill.
Owens' reported comment to ESPN likely will ignite the controversy again, which will not please either McNabb or Reid.
Last week, Owens switched agents, hiring Drew Rosenhaus and prompting speculation that he wanted to revise the seven-year, $49 million contract he signed with the team last season after being acquired from San Francisco.
Owens neither confirmed nor denied that in his interview with ESPN.
"As always, there is a lot written and (said) without anyone talking to me," Owens told ESPN. "I mean, I can't do right and I can't do wrong. It's getting, in some ways, like it was for me in San Francisco. But the one thing that won't change is that I'm going to show up to play and to win. No one can ever (debate) that."
Owens staged one of the most courageous performances in Super Bowl history, catching nine passes for 122 yards in the loss to New England after missing the last two regular-season games and two playoff games with a fractured leg and sprained ankle.
In his first season with the Eagles, Owens caught 77 passes for 1,200 yards and 14 touchdowns.
And this forwarded with love from TMFTML a story by a guy who hates the Red Sox
oh, and actually three things: Can't Stop the Bleeding Gerard Cosloy's sports blog has been especially good lately...
Oh Woody...
Each new release occasions observations on Allen’s decline, reviews to be read either as obituaries or citizen’s arrests...
Hilarious stuff, from Christian Lorentzen of N+1.
Hilarious stuff, from Christian Lorentzen of N+1.
More-on Damon
FROM A HELPFUL READER:
I doubt that you doubted this, but this is from Slate's Seth Stevenson, on the field during the Red Sox ring ceremony:
"I fall into a conversation with a couple of reporters. These guys do lots of clubhouse interviews, and they're discussing which Sox player
is smartest and which is dumbest. Consensus: Johnny Damon is easily
the dumbest, while Kevin Youkilis (you may remember him from
Moneyball as the "Greek God of Walks") is quite clever and funny. But it's
Pedro Martinez who was by far the smartest of the Sox. The beat reporters are immensely saddened by Pedro's departure for the Mets.
Because Pedro chooses his words carefully, speaks in well-crafted metaphors, and actually looks you in the eye. Your average player
will look down at the ground or flip through a magazine—as though you were a faraway voice being beamed into his head, not a live
human being standing right there in the room with him."
That is it. It is unfair to pick on Johnny Damon because he has an IQ of 67. I knew something was amiss. When I was younger, there was a quiet boy who was in all the LD classes who disappeared for five or six years, and came back with a fancy haircut. Chicks fell madly in love with him. It was like he was this tortured poet, but his furrowed brow was really just because he was having difficulty remembering the roles of the three different colored lights on that appeared at most busy intersections in our town.
No, I am not writing about myself.
Fittedsweats will cease. Our areas of concern for the next few months will be:
Sea Creatures & Polar Bears
Picking on Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens
Music Updates
New Developments in Snacks.
*If you work at the company that makes Cracker Jacks, or if you work for Vienna Beef, please write to me.
I doubt that you doubted this, but this is from Slate's Seth Stevenson, on the field during the Red Sox ring ceremony:
"I fall into a conversation with a couple of reporters. These guys do lots of clubhouse interviews, and they're discussing which Sox player
is smartest and which is dumbest. Consensus: Johnny Damon
the dumbest, while Kevin Youkilis
Moneyball as the "Greek God of Walks
Pedro Martinez who was by far the smartest of the Sox. The beat reporters are immensely saddened by Pedro's departure for the Mets.
Because Pedro chooses his words carefully, speaks in well-crafted metaphors, and actually looks you in the eye. Your average player
will look down at the ground or flip through a magazine—as though you were a faraway voice being beamed into his head, not a live
human being standing right there in the room with him."
That is it. It is unfair to pick on Johnny Damon because he has an IQ of 67. I knew something was amiss. When I was younger, there was a quiet boy who was in all the LD classes who disappeared for five or six years, and came back with a fancy haircut. Chicks fell madly in love with him. It was like he was this tortured poet, but his furrowed brow was really just because he was having difficulty remembering the roles of the three different colored lights on that appeared at most busy intersections in our town.
No, I am not writing about myself.
Fittedsweats will cease. Our areas of concern for the next few months will be:
Sea Creatures & Polar Bears
Picking on Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens
Music Updates
New Developments in Snacks.
*If you work at the company that makes Cracker Jacks, or if you work for Vienna Beef, please write to me.
4/11/2005
Pettitte Watch
He got a no decision today, in an Astros loss to the Mets. He's 0-0.
My prediction: He will go 11-8.
ˇ
My prediction: He will go 11-8.
ˇ
Alan Lomax Fans
4/09/2005
Polar Bear chased by hungry whales
4/07/2005
Special Motley Crue Treat
The Cruddies Continue...
Cubs News
You think the bad news is this:
"If you are in the park, you won't really notice it," he says. "But it is strong visibility for the advertiser. This revenue will be new inventory. In some ways you can say it is subliminal. People will become accustomed to it after a while."
Strategically, the Cubs in the recent past introduced dugout signage—on TV only—and an expanded message board on the scoreboard. This year the signage moves behind home plate.
"In a perfect scenario, you would like to keep Wrigley Field as pristine as possible," McDonough says. "But it is not economic reality."
There will be 17 commercial partners advertising behind home plate, rotating each half inning.
But then you read further:
"But McDonough has the luxury of planning months ahead when it comes to penciling in the names of seventh-inning stretch performers to add to the Wrigley Field experience...
"Other guest conductors this season will include Will Farrell, Jim Belushi, Gary Sinise, John Malkovich, William Peterson and Mike Ditka."
Boy, this guy has the magic touch, doesn't he? Behind the plate signage AND Jim Belushi?!?!? WE'RE NOT WORTHY!!!!!!!!!!
Someone once wrote that Mick Jagger's mouth is the world's asshole. Jim Belushi's only serves to suck the energy out of any project he's associated with.
"If you are in the park, you won't really notice it," he says. "But it is strong visibility for the advertiser. This revenue will be new inventory. In some ways you can say it is subliminal. People will become accustomed to it after a while."
Strategically, the Cubs in the recent past introduced dugout signage—on TV only—and an expanded message board on the scoreboard. This year the signage moves behind home plate.
"In a perfect scenario, you would like to keep Wrigley Field as pristine as possible," McDonough says. "But it is not economic reality."
There will be 17 commercial partners advertising behind home plate, rotating each half inning.
But then you read further:
"But McDonough has the luxury of planning months ahead when it comes to penciling in the names of seventh-inning stretch performers to add to the Wrigley Field experience...
"Other guest conductors this season will include Will Farrell, Jim Belushi, Gary Sinise, John Malkovich, William Peterson and Mike Ditka."
Boy, this guy has the magic touch, doesn't he? Behind the plate signage AND Jim Belushi?!?!? WE'RE NOT WORTHY!!!!!!!!!!
Someone once wrote that Mick Jagger's mouth is the world's asshole. Jim Belushi's only serves to suck the energy out of any project he's associated with.
4/05/2005
SEXXY JOHNNY DAMON PIXXXXXXXXX BELOW
Captions from Johnny Damon's Photo Album at ESPN.com
A dear reader alerted me to the fact that Johnny Damon, who cheated on his wife and married some new hosebag over the off-season, has a bunch of topless shots of himself and his wedding party up at ESPN.com. Anyone who thought Damon was a lovable, humble, good-natured dude will now know that he has become an egomaniacal psychopath, who has a crush on his own dick. He has clearly vaulted the fucking shark and wound up squarely in the Temple of Gay. At least Wade Boggs, who now kills rare animals on safaris, had the decency to put the fucking bat on the ball once in a while. (Whoops, Damon just got his first RBI, I am a dumbass).
Anway, here are the acutal captions, along with my interpretation.
1) "That's me showing off my feet for a Puma ad
that's coming out. I also swung a bat, got
dressed and caught a baseball in the
commercial." He's topless, of course. Looking a bit like Evan Dando mixed with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
2) "This is from dinner at Amura in Orlando,
right before spring training. Hopefully, my
"guns" will hit a few more grand slams
against the Yankees this year." I'm hoping not.
3) "I was one of the celebrity guests at the
Daytona and got to ride in the pace car.
Michelle, my wife, and I were tired after a
late night. I had just gotten mobbed at
Daytona. There are Red Sox fans
everywhere! I got to meet Jessica Lynch." Thanks for alerting us to the fact that you are a celebrity. Tough to piece that together, after winning the Series and all. Oh, and you got mobbed? Awesome! Late nite, huh? Up working on your hairdo? Or just partying like the fun-loving idiot you are, bro?!?!? Kick ass. You kick some ass. I'm sure when Jessica Lynch was held captive in Iraq she thought about the Sox a lot.
4) "That's the fishing trip around my wedding.
[From L - R] Arden my Puma rep; my cousin
Todd; Mike O'Malley from the show "Yes,
Dear"; Morgan Rose from Sevendust, and
Kozo Shimano This was my team and there
were five other boats fishing against us." Fuck my teammates, I'm gonna bring my shoe rep, a guy from a shitty sitcom and a member of perhaps one of the worst bands of all time on my wedding trip. Nothing says matrimony like a good ol' fashion fishing contest with Z-list douchebags! When I get married for the second time, I am going to have the band Mudvayne, Vern Troyer and Connie Selleca wrestle in a wading pool filled with liposuctioned fat from the corpse of Vic Tayback.
5) "That's myself, Michelle, and Debbie Roth, a
friend of mine growing up, jamming out in
the Nitro Lounge the night before my
wedding. We're singing karaoke. I'll sing
anything I can get help on." I thought you were giving an instructional speech on overcoming mental retardation. I didn't know you practied the rare Oriental art known as karaoke! Tip: If you need so much "help," don't start singing in the first place. Odds are you have a voice that makes Grady Little sound like Marvin Gaye. Also always make sure you mention yourself first, in any photo caption, no matter what. You already do that? Okay, cool.
6) "Michelle and I cutting the wedding cake. You
can see the shirt I wore for the reception
was a little fun." Have you no shame, Johnny? It should say "ME ME ME and Michelle..." This picture looks like what happens when Tim McGraw testifies before Congress about how his father didn't love him until he was famous. This shirt is about as classy as using Diet Mountain Dew for lubrication.
7) "Brian Johnson at the wedding. He's the lead
singer for AC/DC. My comedian friend, Craig
Shoemaker, knew him and Brian said he
would love to come and play. It was a thrill." A thrill? Love your enthusiasm. I can't fault you on this one, though I would bust you for name dropping if I knew who the fuck Craig Shoemaker was. Is he the guy responsible for telling jokes so shitty that every alcoholic within puking distance of Fenway Park finally hangs it up, leaves the ye Olde Irish Pub, and goes home to their seven kids and toothless wives? Then, finding them asleep with bellies full of slowly digesting welfare cheese, stumbles over to the boom box, cues up "Rattle & Hum" and masturbates quietly until the wee hours of the morning with visions of Bronson Arroyo and the Pope in his head? Yes? Got it. Fuck off.
8) "Brian Johnson sang "Route 69" to us. He
figured it was a good rock and love song for
us." I've never heard of this song. Based on the by-the-numbers sexual innuendo of the rest of AC/DC's catalog, though, it sounds like an awesome beginning to a second marriage. You did have this chick sign a prenup, didn't you?
9) "That's me in Jamaica getting ready to dive
into the silent waters. We invited friends on
this part of our honeymoon. The whole
compound was ours and everyone had their
own villa. It was very impressive." The silent waters? How poetic. I think Hemingway is wishing he hadn't killed himself. I'm sure, even at 106 years-old, he'd be up for a collaboration. Maybe Updike will motor into Beantown, crank out a book with you? The last sentence though, is the killer. "It was very impressive." Something I did for my friends was "very impressive." I'm sure they never heard the end of it.
10) "This was one of the bouncy things in the
water in Jamaica. It's me; Michelle; Arden
and his wife Maria, who was a world-class
high jumper; Lisa, my hair stylist; and
another Lisa, who was one of the wedding
planners." My hairstylist? Jesus Christ! You are a fucking poseur, and a calculated one at that. In ten years all of your money will be gone if you immerse yourself in an entourage this retarded. I thought it was all about being an idiot, dude? Last time I checked idiots didn't have hairstylists, and they certainly didn't take them to Jamaica to put shells in their hair. If Ted Williams was still frozen, he's not any more. He is shitting green death all over his casket. The guy quits baseball to fly fucking planes in WWII and you bring a hairstylist to Jamaica?
Oh well, works for me. Just make sure to throw that helmet off as fast as possible every time you're done batting, Johnny. Has your second wife convinced you to move to L.A. yet? Maybe get a walk-on on C.S.I.? Or maybe just co-star in a major motion picture with Ving Rhames or Johnny Depp? You should do it. No stage is too big!
11) "Poolside in Jamaica: I speak no evil. Arden
sees no evil. Dan, a friend whose brother
plays baseball, hears no evil. The girls are
over on the other side rubbing each other
down." Oh yeah. Thanks for telling us what the ladies were doing! I have to stop typing so I can jack-off now. Seriously, when we see three adult men at a pool we don't automatically think you're homosexuals, Johnny. No need to pacify us sports nuts and reconfirm that you like making love to women who have bisexual tendencies. We got it. Loud and clear. Oh fiddlesticks! You are the cutest. It is okay if I have a crush on you, isn't it? I won't go telling everyone. But that hair is, oh my God, you are beautiful! I don't know what to do at night. I usually pretend my pillow is you and then make-out with it until around 4 a.m. then I pretend it's Tedy Bruschi.
12) "Michelle and I were on a glass-bottom boat
in this picture. We went snorkeling out there
and, of course, we had the dreads going." Okay, mon. In my neighborhood they call those braids, but whatever. Best of luck to you and the Red Sox this year. I don't even like the Yankees.
A dear reader alerted me to the fact that Johnny Damon, who cheated on his wife and married some new hosebag over the off-season, has a bunch of topless shots of himself and his wedding party up at ESPN.com. Anyone who thought Damon was a lovable, humble, good-natured dude will now know that he has become an egomaniacal psychopath, who has a crush on his own dick. He has clearly vaulted the fucking shark and wound up squarely in the Temple of Gay. At least Wade Boggs, who now kills rare animals on safaris, had the decency to put the fucking bat on the ball once in a while. (Whoops, Damon just got his first RBI, I am a dumbass).
Anway, here are the acutal captions, along with my interpretation.
1) "That's me showing off my feet for a Puma ad
that's coming out. I also swung a bat, got
dressed and caught a baseball in the
commercial." He's topless, of course. Looking a bit like Evan Dando mixed with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
2) "This is from dinner at Amura in Orlando,
right before spring training. Hopefully, my
"guns" will hit a few more grand slams
against the Yankees this year." I'm hoping not.
3) "I was one of the celebrity guests at the
Daytona and got to ride in the pace car.
Michelle, my wife, and I were tired after a
late night. I had just gotten mobbed at
Daytona. There are Red Sox fans
everywhere! I got to meet Jessica Lynch." Thanks for alerting us to the fact that you are a celebrity. Tough to piece that together, after winning the Series and all. Oh, and you got mobbed? Awesome! Late nite, huh? Up working on your hairdo? Or just partying like the fun-loving idiot you are, bro?!?!? Kick ass. You kick some ass. I'm sure when Jessica Lynch was held captive in Iraq she thought about the Sox a lot.
4) "That's the fishing trip around my wedding.
[From L - R] Arden my Puma rep; my cousin
Todd; Mike O'Malley from the show "Yes,
Dear"; Morgan Rose from Sevendust, and
Kozo Shimano This was my team and there
were five other boats fishing against us." Fuck my teammates, I'm gonna bring my shoe rep, a guy from a shitty sitcom and a member of perhaps one of the worst bands of all time on my wedding trip. Nothing says matrimony like a good ol' fashion fishing contest with Z-list douchebags! When I get married for the second time, I am going to have the band Mudvayne, Vern Troyer and Connie Selleca wrestle in a wading pool filled with liposuctioned fat from the corpse of Vic Tayback.
5) "That's myself, Michelle, and Debbie Roth, a
friend of mine growing up, jamming out in
the Nitro Lounge the night before my
wedding. We're singing karaoke. I'll sing
anything I can get help on." I thought you were giving an instructional speech on overcoming mental retardation. I didn't know you practied the rare Oriental art known as karaoke! Tip: If you need so much "help," don't start singing in the first place. Odds are you have a voice that makes Grady Little sound like Marvin Gaye. Also always make sure you mention yourself first, in any photo caption, no matter what. You already do that? Okay, cool.
6) "Michelle and I cutting the wedding cake. You
can see the shirt I wore for the reception
was a little fun." Have you no shame, Johnny? It should say "ME ME ME and Michelle..." This picture looks like what happens when Tim McGraw testifies before Congress about how his father didn't love him until he was famous. This shirt is about as classy as using Diet Mountain Dew for lubrication.
7) "Brian Johnson at the wedding. He's the lead
singer for AC/DC. My comedian friend, Craig
Shoemaker, knew him and Brian said he
would love to come and play. It was a thrill." A thrill? Love your enthusiasm. I can't fault you on this one, though I would bust you for name dropping if I knew who the fuck Craig Shoemaker was. Is he the guy responsible for telling jokes so shitty that every alcoholic within puking distance of Fenway Park finally hangs it up, leaves the ye Olde Irish Pub, and goes home to their seven kids and toothless wives? Then, finding them asleep with bellies full of slowly digesting welfare cheese, stumbles over to the boom box, cues up "Rattle & Hum" and masturbates quietly until the wee hours of the morning with visions of Bronson Arroyo and the Pope in his head? Yes? Got it. Fuck off.
8) "Brian Johnson sang "Route 69" to us. He
figured it was a good rock and love song for
us." I've never heard of this song. Based on the by-the-numbers sexual innuendo of the rest of AC/DC's catalog, though, it sounds like an awesome beginning to a second marriage. You did have this chick sign a prenup, didn't you?
9) "That's me in Jamaica getting ready to dive
into the silent waters. We invited friends on
this part of our honeymoon. The whole
compound was ours and everyone had their
own villa. It was very impressive." The silent waters? How poetic. I think Hemingway is wishing he hadn't killed himself. I'm sure, even at 106 years-old, he'd be up for a collaboration. Maybe Updike will motor into Beantown, crank out a book with you? The last sentence though, is the killer. "It was very impressive." Something I did for my friends was "very impressive." I'm sure they never heard the end of it.
10) "This was one of the bouncy things in the
water in Jamaica. It's me; Michelle; Arden
and his wife Maria, who was a world-class
high jumper; Lisa, my hair stylist; and
another Lisa, who was one of the wedding
planners." My hairstylist? Jesus Christ! You are a fucking poseur, and a calculated one at that. In ten years all of your money will be gone if you immerse yourself in an entourage this retarded. I thought it was all about being an idiot, dude? Last time I checked idiots didn't have hairstylists, and they certainly didn't take them to Jamaica to put shells in their hair. If Ted Williams was still frozen, he's not any more. He is shitting green death all over his casket. The guy quits baseball to fly fucking planes in WWII and you bring a hairstylist to Jamaica?
Oh well, works for me. Just make sure to throw that helmet off as fast as possible every time you're done batting, Johnny. Has your second wife convinced you to move to L.A. yet? Maybe get a walk-on on C.S.I.? Or maybe just co-star in a major motion picture with Ving Rhames or Johnny Depp? You should do it. No stage is too big!
11) "Poolside in Jamaica: I speak no evil. Arden
sees no evil. Dan, a friend whose brother
plays baseball, hears no evil. The girls are
over on the other side rubbing each other
down." Oh yeah. Thanks for telling us what the ladies were doing! I have to stop typing so I can jack-off now. Seriously, when we see three adult men at a pool we don't automatically think you're homosexuals, Johnny. No need to pacify us sports nuts and reconfirm that you like making love to women who have bisexual tendencies. We got it. Loud and clear. Oh fiddlesticks! You are the cutest. It is okay if I have a crush on you, isn't it? I won't go telling everyone. But that hair is, oh my God, you are beautiful! I don't know what to do at night. I usually pretend my pillow is you and then make-out with it until around 4 a.m. then I pretend it's Tedy Bruschi.
12) "Michelle and I were on a glass-bottom boat
in this picture. We went snorkeling out there
and, of course, we had the dreads going." Okay, mon. In my neighborhood they call those braids, but whatever. Best of luck to you and the Red Sox this year. I don't even like the Yankees.
4/04/2005
Lollapalooza 2005
The Only Team that Could Ever Make Me Root for Randy Johnson
Johnny Damon, following the Red Sox opening night loss: "We're not disappointed," Damon said. "We accept the fact that we really weren't that good tonight. We'll get better."
Okay. See you on Regis & Kelly in a few hours, Johnny. That oughta get ya focused.
_________________________________RELATED:______________________________
FROM THE NY POST: by Michael Morrissey.
April 3, 2005 -- It's been an interesting week for Johnny Damon, whose ex-wife came out swinging like a steroid-addicted slugger on Tuesday.
Damon, whose book, "Idiot: Beating 'The Curse'and Enjoying the Game of Life" comes out tomorrow, has already received some advance publicity that isn't very good.
After blaming his ex-wife for their marital woes in the book, Boston's center fielder withstood a few retaliatory blasts from his former spouse, Angie Vannice, who called wife No. 2, Michelle, a "homewrecker" in the Boston Herald.
"I had 15 years with this guy," Vannice told the Herald. "Then all of a sudden, I'm the scum of the earth. I'm kicked to the curb."
Damon reportedly married his second wife just 11 months after his divorce became final.
After trashing the mother of his two children in his book, Damon said nice things about her a few days ago in Florida.
Yesterday, he indicated the negative remarks from the book the Herald published were taken out of context.
Moreover, the 31-year-old denied the book would divert his focus on baseball in the coming days and weeks.
"When they put the stuff in the paper, unfortunately they can't put the whole book," he said during workout day at Yankee Stadium.
"Because I talked to a lot of people, and they think I portrayed myself well.
"Nobody deserved to or got bashed if you read the book.
"It's not been a distraction. Everything that I do is only on off-days. Baseball comes No. 1 right now.
"We're off to defend the title and in no way am I going to jeopardize that."
Damon has a full slate during tomorrow's scheduled off-day, however.
He's scheduled to appear on "Regis and Kelly" in the morning, attend a Barnes & oble book signing and appear with teammates on David Letterman's show.
The book contains a number of salacious details that enraged Damon's ex-wife.
He considered his marriage kaput in 2001 — three years before the ink was dry on the divorce — and matter-of-factly admitted cheating on Vannice.
"I decided there no longer was any reason not to go out and have some fun," he wrote. "I figured Angie no longer wanted to be with me, so why not?
"Rightly or wrongly, I figured I'll just have me a good time."
Vannice told the Herald: "In baseball, as the wife, you are always the last to know.
"He told me at the time we were breaking up that there were three [other women] and he couldn't decide between the three of them."
Damon said Vannice's nagging and insecurity drove him away, at the same time explaining his infidelity by saying other women wouldn't take no for an answer.
"It didn't occur to me what I'd be giving up," he wrote. "The movie 'Bull Durham' is real in a lot of its aspects.
"It shows women throwing themselves at ballplayers, something I never dreamed of.
"I knew I loved women, I just didn't know the temptations that were out there."
Okay. See you on Regis & Kelly in a few hours, Johnny. That oughta get ya focused.
_________________________________RELATED:______________________________
FROM THE NY POST: by Michael Morrissey.
April 3, 2005 -- It's been an interesting week for Johnny Damon, whose ex-wife came out swinging like a steroid-addicted slugger on Tuesday.
Damon, whose book, "Idiot: Beating 'The Curse'and Enjoying the Game of Life" comes out tomorrow, has already received some advance publicity that isn't very good.
After blaming his ex-wife for their marital woes in the book, Boston's center fielder withstood a few retaliatory blasts from his former spouse, Angie Vannice, who called wife No. 2, Michelle, a "homewrecker" in the Boston Herald.
"I had 15 years with this guy," Vannice told the Herald. "Then all of a sudden, I'm the scum of the earth. I'm kicked to the curb."
Damon reportedly married his second wife just 11 months after his divorce became final.
After trashing the mother of his two children in his book, Damon said nice things about her a few days ago in Florida.
Yesterday, he indicated the negative remarks from the book the Herald published were taken out of context.
Moreover, the 31-year-old denied the book would divert his focus on baseball in the coming days and weeks.
"When they put the stuff in the paper, unfortunately they can't put the whole book," he said during workout day at Yankee Stadium.
"Because I talked to a lot of people, and they think I portrayed myself well.
"Nobody deserved to or got bashed if you read the book.
"It's not been a distraction. Everything that I do is only on off-days. Baseball comes No. 1 right now.
"We're off to defend the title and in no way am I going to jeopardize that."
Damon has a full slate during tomorrow's scheduled off-day, however.
He's scheduled to appear on "Regis and Kelly" in the morning, attend a Barnes & oble book signing and appear with teammates on David Letterman's show.
The book contains a number of salacious details that enraged Damon's ex-wife.
He considered his marriage kaput in 2001 — three years before the ink was dry on the divorce — and matter-of-factly admitted cheating on Vannice.
"I decided there no longer was any reason not to go out and have some fun," he wrote. "I figured Angie no longer wanted to be with me, so why not?
"Rightly or wrongly, I figured I'll just have me a good time."
Vannice told the Herald: "In baseball, as the wife, you are always the last to know.
"He told me at the time we were breaking up that there were three [other women] and he couldn't decide between the three of them."
Damon said Vannice's nagging and insecurity drove him away, at the same time explaining his infidelity by saying other women wouldn't take no for an answer.
"It didn't occur to me what I'd be giving up," he wrote. "The movie 'Bull Durham' is real in a lot of its aspects.
"It shows women throwing themselves at ballplayers, something I never dreamed of.
"I knew I loved women, I just didn't know the temptations that were out there."
