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1/31/4: Sometimes you get that perfect piece of food, the one you craved but didn't realize it until you saw it there in the fridge, and you just wish everyone could share your pleasure. I came home feeling pretty nauseous and I needed something to eat. Everything was grossing me out except these giant navel oranges we had in the fridge. They were so juicy and awesome, I wish you could just hear the sound of the sections being torn apart. Today at work I was in the bathroom washing my hands, and the dispenser was pretty much cashed. I gently pressed the lever a bunch of times, but no soap. My hands needed to get washed, so I started whaling on that thing, pressing the lever down like a madman and rattling the entire foundation of the dispenser. Sure enough, a nice serving of soap came oozing delicately into my palm. I find it encouraging that there are still some dark corners of technology that respond to a good old-fashioned whaling. Soap dispensers, vending machines with the winding coils that always cling to the smallest little flap on your Twix bar, pinball machines, pulled-back sections of fence that you need to squeeze your fat ass through -- all of these are subject to a nice whaling. OK, I am a little bit freaked out about the potential verbungle.com "hero of the day" curse. First Don Chaney gets fired the day after receiving the honor. Now Mary-Ellis Bunim has died at 57, less than two weeks after her coronation. And yet nothing bad has happened to Dick Cheney. Out of respect for Bunim, I am going to hold off on naming another hero of the day until after the Super Bowl. This will give me a couple of days to analyze the curse, and it also seems appropriate to let Joe Namath reign through Super Bowl weekend. Although I have predicted an easy Patriots victory, it has become clear to me over the last two weeks that the Panthers (there, I said it) are the obvious moral pick in this game. Not only do they have two guys recovering from cancer, but Tom Brady's state of the union performance and general overexposure has rendered him and his annoying, much-discussed good looks completely unacceptable. Have received some very good answers to the challenge on the right; I will leave it up through tomorrow in hopes of getting a few more. My work neighborhood has the vibe of a Mad Max movie. It's desolate and dirty and the law really doesn't extend West of 10th ave. Yesterday I actually saw a road rage fist fight on 9th avenue. And for like 30 feet outside our office door, the sidewalk was coated in horseshit. There is a stable at the end of our block (can you make this claim?), but the horses never walk on the sidewalk, at least not as far as our office. And there was like a three foot snowdrift between the street and the sidewalk, so there's no way the horses were allowed to just back up and dump onto the sidewalk. So I'm wondering how the hell the horseshit got all over the sidewalk. It reminds me of the story where the Replacements were recording an album, misbehaving and whatnot, and the studio manager came by after they were done to check out the damage. He was appalled by what he saw, and had to ask, "How did the vomit get on the ceiling?" The engineer told him, "They were throwing up in their hands and then throwing it on the ceiling." Is that what happened with the horsey? Some guy picked it up out of the street and tossed it onto the sidewalk? 1/30/4: We had our showdown today in Smack the Pingu. I finished second with a long blast of 587.1. The guy who won actually nailed a 593.5 in competition. That's pretty wild -- sort of like Reggie Jackson hitting 3 consecutive home runs in the deciding game of the World Series. I whiffed with a chance to tie (and my second-best shot would have given me the tie-breaker). I will give the winner credit for his work, although we did hold the event on his computer, and he clearly had much more familiarity with the nuances of the mouse than the rest of us. As evidence, I offer that everyone else had multiple whiffs, while he made solid contact on every attempt. I know that may just mean he is better than us, but I choose to accept that he's a big cheater, and tomorrow we are going to do the event over again on a neutral computer. Assuming that 593.5 is the max, I decided to concentrate on two new challenges, which will also be part of tomorrow's competition. And I must say, I was pretty pleased with my personal bests in both the "Erect Landing No Skid" and the "Bunt." Then I get an email from Pete, who apparently had even less to do at work than me. He did some intense googling on the game and discovered that if you hit ctrl + y as you hit your mouse button, you can occasionally spring forward at least 100 feet further (at some risk to the health of your keyboard). Pete nailed a 737 "ELNS", so of course I had to go try the new technique. The buttons couldn't be located any less conveniently, and I ended up whiffing like the first twenty times I tried it. I finally got the timing down (you can hold down the ctrl button the whole time, and just hit "y" and the mouse button together), and I was able to get a 650-something, which was pretty satisfying but not even close to Pete's new mark. So the good news is, the game has a new life. The bad news is, my keyboard's a wreck and I'm no longer top dog. For a minute today, I lost myself in a fantasy that I was watching a Yankee game on WPIX in June of 1985. This "Mars" photo was briefly posted and then removed from NASA's website today. Very fishy. 1/29/4: Today Dinny sent me a link to a simple, elegant, satisfying game known as "smack the pingu." Within moments my entire office was playing it. Approximately 200 man-hours were lost to this stupid thing, hours none of us, nor our employer, will ever get back. I suggest you give it a whack and keep in mind that the all-time record is 593.5. I share this mark with two other fellows -- a best penguin of five three-way playoff is scheduled for 11am tomorrow. I don't know if that is the maximum possible score (I managed it twice, the two other guys once each), but even if it is, it's pretty cool when you get it, like a bowler throwing a 300 game. Other challenges exist, if you've met this one. I would like to see an on the fly face plant shot of 500 or better, and also a minimum distance shot. Anything below 160 is pretty good. Good luck. Benge, I expect big things from you on this one, knowing that you won my ColecoVision Antarctic Adventure game the first time you played it. I also received a nice email from some California/Kansas/Canada basketball buddies of mine. Ostertag can really create off the dribble. Work wasn't cancelled today. They just opened the office two hours later, "at 10:30." Who the f is normally showing up at 8:30? Our team usually doesn't arrive until around 10. Does that mean I should show up at 12? I showed up at 10:38. How you feelin'? I'm feelin' 593.5, my friend. Sad to see that so many other blogging nitwits have already sampled the penguin, but good to see nobody's topped my 593.5. And I have hit a couple face-planting no-skidders 492+. Keep that in mind if you try to step to me. Or don't. Your choice. Got lots of responses to the 'best summer' question, some sincere, some sarcastic. That's cool. That's the right blend. I will leave the question up a bit longer and then post the answers. Just a quick list for your intense enjoyment: When I was looking for a good picture of John Starks last night, I came across one that was not good, not at all. In fact, I would say it was very disturbing. I am not going to link to it and it's definitely NSFW, but if you want to see it, do a google images search for John Starks, and on the 7th page of results...well, there it will be. And it may ruin your day. Again, do not look at this at work or in the company of others. Looking at it alone is probably not a great idea either. Unless it's your thing, in which case...enjoy! 1/28/4: It's a serious fukkin snowstorm tonight, although I bet it's not going to amount to much in the end. Our company's main offices are located in Knoxville, TN, and there is an inclement weather number down there which we can call to see if work is going to be on or off. Maybe the people in Knoxville are in charge of the decisions, because they get real jittery and they'll cancel work up here if there are even a few inches of snow on the ground. I love it. I am making a mini-prediction that work is going to be cancelled tomorrow. I don't know if, like I said, the people who make the call are in Knoxville, so they expect that everybody's DRIVING to work through SCARY SNOW, or if our company is just trying to protect itself against litigation if somebody smashes up their Segway on the way in. I like it either way. We came up with the following album title at work today, I like it for an up and coming metal band: "10-4, Satan!" Why do I believe goofball Dean when he says he's gonna fucking win the nomination? We have two Super Bowl box pools going around at work. I used to run this shit every year, and now a member of the next generation of shady Irishmen has taken over for me. No sweat -- I don't miss it, and he does a nicer job, photocopying little team logos and stuff onto the pool. Anyway, the other pool of the two, the one he's not running, was circulating around our more corporate midtown office. Some needledick in Human Resources got ahold of it and put the kibosh on it. Shocking. Is nothing sacred? The fucking Super Bowl box pool? How harmless is that? If you can't gamble or smoke at work, there's no point in showing up anymore, if you ask me. Soon they'll be telling us we can't drink on the job. OK, another pair of soundalike songs for you. The songs themselves aren't really similar at all, but one song seems to have lifted a key riff from the other. Judge for your own damn selves. Junior Senior, "Boy Meets Girl" and The Band, "Chest Fever." 1/27/4: It's been a tough couple-three years at the verbungle.com offices, just like it probably has been on the streets of your town, USA. Finding a good job, or any job, is so hard that keeping a bad one starts to look like the best thing you can do. And we've done everything in our power to avoid cutting jobs -- we even give our employees a 4% cost of living raise every year. But like everybody else, we've got a bottom line to meet, and that bottom line hasn't been met in almost a year now. As a result, we've been forced to make some painful decisions involving some people that we care deeply about. I always said that we were a family, all in this together, and when it stopped being fun, we'd shut the whole thing down forever. In the end, that all turned out to be bullshit. That's why I am here to tell you that there are some major changes afoot in our offices, starting with the immediate and permanent dismissal of Johnny, who's been writing his little-read advice column in this space since day one. His page visits were dwindling faster than the chances of finding WMD in Iraq, and ultimately we didn't really trust the advice he was giving out anyway. Our accounting dept. calculated that he was costing us $.79 a month in web space, and that's $.79 that we feel could be spent better elsewhere, like an extra sheath of coffee cups or a pocket pack of kleenex. Johnny took the news like a man - he said he never expected to be here this long to begin with, and he thanked us for the verbungle.com painter's cap we gave him as a farewell offering. The guy always had class; I'll say that for him. The only time he let his pain show is when he turned around in the doorway on the way out, pointed at the whole room and said, "Verbungle without me is like corn flakes without the milk." I've got thick skin and I understand the man's anger, so I just nodded and gave him a sappy little salute. Our best wishes to him in his future endeavors. We also intend to radically redesign the site as soon as our production budget gets approved. We're counting on an extra $15 for the year, and even if we don't get it, we're gonna make some changes. In the meantime, more of the same shit. Remember a couple of weeks ago, I was bitching about the quality of the Budweiser I bought, saying it tasted stale even though the born-on date was 12.17.03? I love that senseless gimmick that Bud has added. Anyway, tonight I had another can from that same six-pack and it tasted as fresh and exciting as my very first beer. So I recommend drinking Budweiser when it's about five weeks old. Remember that piece of advice-- it's as useful as anything Johnny had to offer. Tonight I had another experience that reminded me how stupid I am. It was laundry night, so I packed up the laundry bag with about 50 lbs. of clothes, shoved another 20 lbs. into a garbage bag, and prepared to head downstairs. Our laundry room is in the basement, but the elevator only goes as low as the first floor, so you have to walk your shit down the last flight, which is a major pain when you're toting 70+ lbs. of laundry. I went to grab the detergent from under the sink, which I planned to cram into the remaining 1 sq. inch available in the laundry bag. I noticed that we had two bottles (jugs? containers?) of detergent, one of which was about 1/4 full and the other completely full. Normally, I would take both bottles down to the basement with me, and when I finished one I would toss it and start the other. How silly I've been, I thought. Why bring both down when you only need about 1/2 of a bottle to do all the loads? So naturally I poured the contents of the full bottle into the 1/4 full bottle, filling it up almost all the way. I felt like a genius. Now I only had to carry one (albeit full) bottle down with me! I could have stopped at halfway, I suppose, but I wanted to be safe, so I went ahead and filled it almost all the way. It wasn't until I went back to put the now 1/4 full bottle back under the sink that I realized I had merely exchanged detergent between one bottle and the other, and I could have just taken the full bottle with me in the first place. Highly stupid. I suppose the smartest thing to do would have been to show some nuts and fill one bottle with an educated estimate of how much I'd need (lightening my load somewhat), or, of course, just taken the full bottle with me. Painful, these reminders. After I fought my way down to the basement, I discovered that the change machine was out of quarters, so I will battle again tomorrow. I am completely digging the reader contributions -- it's nice to know that at least seven different people are checking out the site, and the answers are so witty and concise that I venture to say my readers are as smart as anyone's outside of perhaps JD from sublime directory. That's all there is to report here, it was a rough day today with all the rumors flying around and then the laundry situation. On the way home, I just missed the bus and waited ten minutes on cold and depressing 11th avenue for another to come along. Remind me again why I don't live here? 1/25/4: I was down in the old neighborhood today, feeling nostalgic. I had my old favorite, the egg salad sandwiches with the crusts cut off from Panya, the Japanese bakery on Stuyvesant Street. That was good. I walked south down 3rd avenue and noticed that St. Mark's Pizza had gone out of business. I always thought they served up an underrated, if inconsistent, slice, and I probably spent a couple hundred bucks there. I wonder what will go up in its place. I'm guessing some appalling new slice of gentrification like an espresso bar (OK, I was wrong). As part of the 12th generation of gentrifiers to hit the E. Village, do I have the right to criticize subsequent gentrifiers? Like, damn, we had that thing gentrified to perfection, and now all you new fuckers are coming in and over-gentrifying it. No class. If you need a sign of the ever-increasing banality of NYC, observe the proliferation of silver-robot-street/subway mimes. If there was just one guy doing it, it still wouldn't be cool or even acceptable. But with a silver-robot-mime stationed on every goddamn corner, we've got a constant reminder of how lame we've become. The only promisingly sleazy thing I've noticed in our mall of a city is that the Male Box has reopened its doors, on the 2nd floor of another smut house on 8th avenue in the 40's. I hate to name-drop, feel even worse about a secondhand name-drop, but my dad pulled out two cards from his rolodex for me today, from the letter "K": John Kerry and Bernard King. Sounds like a ticket. Speaking of Kerry, here is a tidbit I came across today: No wonder Kerry flinched when somebody called him the front-runner. "I hate that word," he said. 1/24/4: I was patronizing my local Duane Reade today (like our fearless leader, I have a firm grasp on the important role supporting local businesses plays in stimulating the economy), and I came across a brand of toilet paper I've never seen before. I think it was called "Soft-Weave" or something like that, and it came with the following promise: "Longest lasting ever!" Which made me wonder, has anyone ever had toilet paper expire on them? Personally, I've always been satisfied with toilet paper that lasts just long enough for me to wipe my ass with it and flush it down the toilet. Are there people out there who put their greatest works on the mantelpiece for company to see? I assume what they actually meant is that it stands up to rigorous wiping, which brings up a few more questions that I think I'm not gonna ask. I am about to redesign this ugly page, but in the meantime I want to direct you to the reader contributions page, where I have started getting some excellent answers for the queries I have been posting. Take a look. Rivaling the Mickey Mantle's commercial for astonishing cheapness and stupidity is the "Just for Men" beard-dyeing commercial with Keith Hernandez and Clyde Frazier. Watch for the line "Ope, there's Mr. Graybeard approaching Miss Hottie." You've probably already seen it, but this
video brought a smile to my face. Depending on your connection, I
suggest letting the whole thing download before watching it. 1/22/4: It's a good day in Verbungleville when two predictions come true. Props to Dinny for his prediction about the Mars rover's inevitable breakdown (prediction #19). If they're ADMITTING it's not working, it must be REALLY busted up. And my Ben and J. Lo breakup prediction (#6), once right, then wrong, is now right again, along with my re-prediction of the same damn thing. That's three correct predictions in one. I told you so. One place in history that I wish I could transport myself to is the conference room at Saatchi and Saatchi on that fateful October night back in 1983. I'm sure you know the story by now: the creative team assigned to the 970-PEEE account has been working twenty-hour days for three straight weeks, trying to come up with a slogan to accompany the beautiful visual campaign they've designed for their client. Empty coffee cups and cigarette butts are all over the room. Half a ham sandwich sits abandoned on top of a yellow legal pad, with scribbled-out pages strewn everywhere. People are worn out. You can hear halfhearted mumblings of bad ideas from the two or three people who are still awake. Hope is fading, with the commercial's premiere slated to air during "Interludes After Midnight" the following Tuesday night. Then an idea whispered, almost inaudible: "the essa e ith fuh essa p." "What?" someone asks, perking up a little. Then repeated again, in full and clear voice, from Ricky Gwynn, the goddamn Fall intern, who hasn't said a word outside of taking lunch orders in almost two days: "THE EXTRA "E" IS FOR EXTRA PEE." A look around the room at that moment and you'd see that all eyes had opened wide and were focused on Ricky -- recognizing a good idea when it pops up is what these people do for a living. Usually, they'll take a germ of a thought, basically a nothing, and start batting it around like a shuttlecock until they've got what they might call a rough idea. That rough idea would get slept on overnight, tweaked the next day, and handed off to another team for more reworking. Months might go by before an idea turned into a campaign. An idea this beautiful, this elegant, this perfect -- it never just marched right out of somebody's mouth fully formed. But it had. And one of the most enduring campaigns of the 1980's/90's was typed up five minutes later and approved by all parties before lunch the next day. The Extra E is for Extra Pee, indeed. So far, one submission in the Taco Bell contest, and I now owe Phil Aysheeo $.02, for this harrowing tale: "1. My favorite steve kemp memory is any of the dunks in the all star game when he won that event. 2. I was getting a HJ from hired help in an alley in times square new years eve when I got arrested. 3. Taco Bell Pizzas 4. Having to go to court for an HJ in an alley on new year's eve is embarassing." 1/21/4: Not since the Steve Bartman incident (and our ensuing reminder that we had previously pointed out the mindless inability of baseball fans to lay off of foul balls that are being pursued by their team's fielders) have the editors of verbungle.com felt so timely, so of the moment, as we do today. Democratic Presidential candidates Dean and Kerry, clearly fresh from perusing yesterday's verbungle.com front page story on the misuse of the word "underdog," have both declared themselves "Underdogs" in New Hampshire, despite being 1-2 in the polls in that state. Obviously, both candidates understood our point about the way powerhouse teams like the Patriots adopt an underdog persona either to motivate themselves or gain approval from the public (which we all know loves an underdog), and the candidates are applying this logic to their political campaigns. To me it's kinda chickenshit, this need to attack from a position of false weakness: if you lose, you were courageous for coming as far as you did, and if you win, you're a hero for overcoming incredible odds. It makes me appreciate guys like Stephon Marbury more: since he was about 14, he's been the overdog, so to speak. He never says anything like, "Nobody expected me to make it here." He walks around with a city's basketball expectations on his shoulders, and he doesn't shy away from it. We all need to do more of that. As for Kerry and Dean, I kind of like 'em both, although I think Dean really is a bit of a freak. My vote goes to whichever one of the two adopts "The Ballad of El Goodo" as his campaign song. Keep them predictions coming in. I am thinking about adding some more interactive shit to the site -- I've been experimenting with a poll and maybe a message board. Even if it's only 5 people reading it, the more bullshit opinions, the better. I am sort of at that stage that a lot of half-assed "webmasters" arrive at, where part of me wants to actually improve the site so it's not so half-assed, and another part of me is so embarrassed by it that I want to chuck it and pursue my true dream of designing T-shirts. Not since Chris Collins has a college basketball player received as much disproportionate praise as JJ Redick. Strange, they're both white jump shooters for Duke. There's really no blander entity in sports than Duke basketball. Root for them and watch yourself slowly become transparent. Ye Olde and Nasty Munson Diner, lunch site of downtrodden Westsiders. 1/20/4: I am requesting a moratorium on teams referring to themselves as "underdogs" and saying things like, "y'all counted us out all year" or "nobody believed we could do it but us." I just heard Ty Law saying that about the Patriots. This is a team that had the best record in the league, had the tasty home field advantage throughout the playoffs that comes with that, had won its final 12 regular season games, and was favored in each of its two (hosted) playoff games. Did anyone have serious questions about them? I didn't hear a peep about it. They were respected and feared as they should have been. I know they got walloped the first week of the season, and I'm sure the Gloom and Doom Boston press went to town on 'em for that, but that was four months ago. Since this winning streak got to 9, 10, 11 games, I think most people considered them a favorite to win the Super Bowl. So stop with the us against the doubting world routine. You're a great team, you shouldn't need junior high BS like that to motivate yourselves. I must say that's one dignified thing about the Yankees. They know they're the biggest kid on the block with the shiniest new bike, and they never pretend to be anything else. Being a powerhouse and coming to terms with it takes a pretty strong mental will. You can't fire up your teammates with nonsense about lack of respect and "nobody thought we'd be here." When juggernauts like the Patriots start in with it, it ruins it for the few teams, like perhaps the 2003 Marlins, who could legitimately stake a claim to underdogitude. Speaking of phony underdogs, word is the Red Sox are going after A-Rod again. I need someone to explain to me in terms that I can understand why Boston is fucking with one of the greatest off-seasons in their history and risking pissing off Nomar and Manny even more than they already have, for something that might not happen and only marginally improves the team if it does happen. When did Nomar become such a pariah in Boston? Did he do anything so terrible? From a CNN article about a Guantanamo detainee (band name?) who they suspect might be the "20th hijacker" comes the following paragraph referring to Flight 93: "That plane crashed into the fields of rural Pennsylvania near Shanksville after passengers overpowered the hijackers." Now I want that to be true, and I know there is some evidence that maybe it is (I seem to remember some investigative body suggesting this was the case), but has it really been established in sturdy enough terms to be recited as fact like that? Maybe it has, but it seems like a pretty big leap. I should have made some end of the year "best of" lists, but truthfully, I saw, read, and listened to so little new shit in 2003 that my list would be pretty short. Maybe this year things'll be different. Does Tom Brady get a pass for being Bush's guest for the State of the Union tonight? Can we assume as an athlete he is too worried about growing out his wispy beard and getting his reps in practice to have a political opinion? That he attended tonight only because it's an "Aw, shucks, I'm the President's guest" photo op, and therefore we can excuse him? Or should he know better than to show up by Bush's side unless he is intentionally endorsing him? And if he is intentionally endorsing him, won't that make it even easier to decide who to root for in the SB? The only answer I can give is, Go (Insert Name of Expansion Team facing Patriots in Super Bowl)! 1/19/4:
Dog fighting is just about the sickest thing I can imagine. I would venture to say that of the 123 people arrested in this raid, less than five were verbungle.com readers. How bleak are your entertainment options that a dog fighting circuit can catch on in your town? We need to get some digital cable down to Covington, Georgia. I understand the allure of betting, but what the fuck is the matter with you that you get off on watching dogs tear the flesh off each other? I'm sure it goes on all the time here in NYC, too. That's even more inexcusable, what with all our excellent museums and the Metropolitan Opera and stuff. Cock fighting is a much more honorable sport. For someone who has consumed as much beer as I have over the years, I am still extremely susceptible to its magic. One beer and I'm on my way. Ten more and I'm there. Two more after that and you'll drive me to the train station so I can leave. People often say to me, "I can't get drunk off beer" or "Beer fills me up too much to get drunk." Poor souls. I don't know what it is, but my body chemistry not only allows me to get drunk off beer in an instant, but it allows me to keep drinking it, and continue getting exponentially drunker, all night long. The next day it all sweats itself out through my pores and drenches me in a cool and damp shame that always smells exactly the same. like boiled potatoes and old coins. Yesterday I had quite a few beers while "watching" the two unbelievably boring NFL Championship games, and then I came home and ran my mouth for the wife. Somehow, she failed to find me charming. Super Bowl prediction: Patriots 30, expansion team 13. And I couldn't possibly be less interested. From Dinny's bottomless vault of million dollar ideas comes this new nugget: "Retro and Wrong" These four and others will be available in the verbungle.com store shortly. 1/18/4: If you live in the New York metro area and you haven't seen the new commercial (usually run in the local avails during ESPN programming) for Mickey Mantle's restaurant, you have a late Christmas present coming your way. The commercial tells the story of two single New Yorkers (one male, one female) who get all dressed up for a trip to the Mick's. Using advanced editing techniques, they alternate shots of the man and woman getting ready for what hopes to be a big day. Not only do they show the woman (who looks like she came out of a 1984 Niteline Escorts ad from Channel J) in her bra and panties, but they manage to do it in such an unsexy way that you feel as though you are watching an instructional medical video. Finally, the guy puts on his date-rapist baseball hat and heads out to the Mick's to meet his buddies. Across the bar, he spies the woman, and they make a total of 14 goo goo eyes at each other. Within moments they are in a booth and are ready to partake in some anonymous sex, as soon as they finish their bacon double cheeseburgers. If it doesn't inspire you to call up and make a reservation immediately, there is simply no blood pumping through your veins. The commercial appears to have been shot on a Hi-8 camera, and the version I saw had a huge video dropout run across the screen three times. It's incredible -- it looks like a mid-80's commercial for Stan's Crab Shack in West Virginia. Tonight NBC was un-tivoable for some reason. I don't like this development. 1/17/4: There is a poll on ESPN.com where you can vote for the greatest 25 athletes of the last 25 years (it's ESPN's 25th anniversary this year). They are going to wait until June to reveal which athletes got the most votes (although Jordan will obviously win). If you have even a passing interest in sports, I suggest you vote, if only to punish those athletes who don't even deserve a spot in the final 25. I respect the difficulty of putting a list together, so I am not going to bitch about their selections, but I think some of them need to be put near the bottom so the impact of their unwarranted inclusion is minimized. Here are three who don't belong*: 1. Cal Ripken: I love Cal Ripken. I think he's a winner and a good guy and he was an excellent shortstop. He put up manly offensive numbers even while spending the first half of his career in the pre-live ball era. He won 2 MVP's and a World Series. He lost his hair and managed to remain sexy. But I seriously question whether he is one of the top 25 baseball players of the last 25 years. That may be a slight exaggeration, but here are eleven off the top of my head I'd trade him for in their respective primes: Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Griffey, Clemens (ugh), Randy Johnson, Maddux, Pedro, A-Rod, Rickey, Mariano. If you gave me another ten minutes I'm sure I could think of five more. What America loves about Ripken is The Streak. The comfort they could take in knowing that even if the world was going to hell with that awful rap music and gay people on TV, Cal Ripken was the goddamn shortstop for the Orioles and everything was gonna be OK. And I've argued for a long time that the streak is a pretty meaningless achievement in terms of the value it added to the team. Longevity and consistency count for something, but for Ripken there were years where he basically just showed up every day and hit .250, and may have hurt his team with his commitment to a streak that in the end was more of a curiosity than anything else. He participated consistently; he played somewhat spottily, which diminishes the worth of the streak even more (would he have been a better player had he rested more?). I am not saying he's not a Hall of Famer, just that he's an overrated one. There were only about four years out of his twenty where you really feared the guy. And the worst thing is, I could see him finishing 2nd. George W. Bush is President. 2. Dale Earnhardt: I guess this guy was dominant, but: 3. Dan Marino: He was a true stud when he came into the league, and he broke tons of records, but like Ripken he became a bit of an albatross for his team about halfway through his career. He was one-dimensional, he never won a Super Bowl, and he had a truly disconcerting head of hair. But what bothered me most of all was the way he was always screaming at the other guys on his team, even amidst his own fuckups. He always struck me as a jerk. He also had an unstylish release that I never really got used to. Fuck him. *I also suggest voting Roger Clemens 25th just to piss him off. And I don't know enough about Mia Hamm or soccer to evaluate her position in the pantheon of soccer greats, but something tells me there've been other women over the years who are as good as her or better. And maybe some men who are better as well (although that is an unfair comparison). I also have my doubts about Serena and Martina both making it while Steffi did not. I think all three deserve it, but maybe three women's tennis players out of 25 athletes is way outta whack. But Steffi won every grand slam at least FOUR times, including winning them all in 1988. Here are my top 10 from their list: (I am punishing track and field stars because their skills are too specific and largely genetic in nature, and there is no room for improvisation in their sports (that would be another one of the criteria for a sport's legitimacy)): 1. Michael Jordan Yes, they are all men. Sorry, but none of the six women they selected quite made the top 10 for me.. While we're here, here is (subject to change) my list of 10 Things That Make a Sport Legit: 1. Is it fun to play? Would you do it for free? Does it
feel good in and of itself (smashing a baseball, dunking a basketball) or
only when you win (running)? Okay, enough about that. How exciting are these Knicks, if only for a couple of games? Just try to hold 'em under 100. Let's say it together: Star-Bury. 17 assists and a forceful two-handed dunk tonight, both accomplishments exceeding anything Charlie Ward did in 10 years in New York. I'm sure there are miserable waters ahead, but they have some serious offensive punch and they have instantly become watchable. 1/16/4: The Food Network went bowling tonight, and many pictures will be posted tomorrow. It's damn near impossible not to have fun bowling. I want to hand out a big HOTD award to Leigh Rivers, my bowling teammate. Of the four five-person teams, it had come down to us and another team, a team who we had given a 75 pin handicap. With $80 on the line, Leigh stepped up in the last frame needing ten pins to win. (I actually thought the machine's scoring was off and we should have already won, but I am not sure.) Leigh hit 1 pin on his first shot, and then, not knowing exactly what he needed with the last shot, he picked up nine pins, the spare, and the victory. Each of us went home $12 richer. 1/15/4: At Tuesdays night's weekly staff meeting, the editors of verbungle.com had an additional task: select an inaugural "Hero of the Day," a new feature that had just been dropped on us from management. Nobody was really happy about the extra work, but we all felt strongly that recognizing someone's unique contributions each day would make the world a slightly better place, and that's pretty much our theme song around here. So after two hours of arguing over cold Chinese food, and one actual physical confrontation, we came up with our first selection, Don Chaney. The announcement went up at around 1am Eastern and by noon the next day (Wednesday), Chaney had been fired. Sure, the Knicks' coach had been under the gun for awhile, but we still couldn't help feeling a little bit responsible for his fate. We knew that the independent news media would be awash in stories of "The Verbungle Jinx" and whatnot, and with so little evidence in so far, it's hard for us to disagree. So just to be safe, we are announcing today's "Hero of the Day" with a disclaimer: We don't like this man, we don't respect him, and we want something bad to happen to him. Not death, but perhaps a humiliating resignation in which he is forced to publicly admit his sins. And while we don't doubt the power of the jinx, we aren't going to push it too far: we are naming someone who is closely linked to Don Chaney, if in name only. So today's Hero of the Day is Dick Cheney. If nothing terrible happens to him today, we will assume there is no curse and will resume naming our heroes of the day in a more honest manner: men and women who have done right by us and deserve our praise (with the occasional asshole thrown in there when appropriate). And to Don Chaney we apologize and say: You always acted like a man and we respect you for it. Forgive me, but yesterday I poached a taxi in a most un-neighborly fashion. I was late for work and I was freezing. The available cabs in my neighborhood always seem to be heading uptown, away from my work, so what I do is get one going uptown and then tell him immediately that I am heading back downtown, which if the guy has any balls at all prompts him to make a dazzling U-turn on West End Avenue, and then I'm on the way. So yesterday I was walking down West End and every block or so there was some poor joker with his hand outstretched, indicating that even though there was no cab in sight, this was his hailing turf so don't try anything. I ended up walking about four blocks until I found an empty corner which I felt was far enough in front of the next hailer to discourage him from coming down to kick my ass. I was pretty subtle and scummy about it, and I got a cab right away. He did his U-turn and we were on our way. It's a tough city. 1/14/4: I was kind of determined not to post anything today. A series of mediocre posts and a sense of monotony and fatigue in what I've been doing has made me question my theory that each life is profound and worth documenting. If I look over the last couple of weeks' posts, pretty much every one of 'em reads like they were written by somebody with nothing going on, a guy in a deep rut. Going through the motions, to be sure. Maybe it's this weather that's got me feeling down and confused and a little bit hopeless. If you're a genius like Bob Dylan or Paul Westerberg or Prince or Kevin McHale, maybe the cold Minnesota winters force you inside where you can be alone with your gift and that's when you can be productive and come up with great shit. But if you're a regular schmuck like me living in a city like New York and you can't be a part of it, can't go see your friends, can't watch the NFL playoffs on a life-size screen, can't even make it east of 11th avenue because you're either too cold or too busy or both, it starts to get pretty claustrophobic, and it makes me personally feel like doing nothing. And so I should. Take a couple of days off, see if anything interesting happens. Photograph some squirrels. Finish the book I'm reading. Do a situp. Don't post just to post. But then tonight the wife calls me out to the kitchen to have a look at the paprika jar. It's your standard McCormick spice jar, and it's about 2/3 full of paprika. Only upon closer inspection, it's actually 1/3 full of paprika and 1/3 full of teeny paprika-colored beetles. The top half of the paprika is these little beetles, maybe ten or twenty that are visibly moving -- crawling on top of and burrowing through a mountain of little beetle corpses that is in turn resting atop what's left of the actual paprika. (tense change) My initial horror was followed by a sense of deep admiration. These gritty little bastards had carved themselves a life inside a jar of paprika, had basically spawned from some fragment of a seed that got mixed in with some spices in a factory miles from here, and they were still toughing it out months, maybe years later. They weren't discouraged by the fact that, at best, the rest of their lives were going to spent eating paprika and paprika-flavored paprika beetle carcasses, crawling around in an airtight jar that's small even for them. They weren't thrown by the signs of imminent death all around them, beneath their feet and on top of their heads. They didn't care that they'd never get to sail on a boat or watch a ball game or mess around with their new digital camera. (tense change) This is their life, they go ahead and live it. And on the one hand, I thought, how selfish of me, surely one of God's chosen creatures, to be feeling unhappy, when I have all the options in the world right in front of me? It was inspiring, in a "let me get out of the house and do some shit, cold be damned" kinda way. But also, it made me think, what am I if not a giant paprika beetle, tunneling my way twenty blocks through the cold to my beetle job, posting my little beetle musings to my little beetle site? But before I let this get me too low, I asked, does there have to be excellence in these postings? Isn't there some dignity in just living my life, burrowing away in obscurity and crappiness? This post is proof that there is. It's just as crappy as yesterday's and I daresay almost as crappy as tomorrow's, but it has helped me through another miserable winter day and evening, a night when if you didn't have a roof over your head, you would freeze to death for sure. So I guess even the beetles have their red screw-on cap to be thankful for. And me --much, much more. But I am clearly going crazy in this cold. And the beetle incident reminds me that I recently heard you should only keep spices for three months. I am through explaining to people why The Real World remains one of the best shows on TV. If you disagree, go read a book or do a jigsaw puzzle. On any given episode you are likely to see something that makes you slap your head with astonishment, turn away with shame, or guffaw uncontrollably. Tonight's episode, which was a half-baked exploration of "the complex issue of race relations" (that's from the disclaimer that MTV aired right before the show), was full of cringe-worthy goodness. Not to go into this show any deeper for fear of fracturing my skull on the bottom of the swimming pool, I will leave you with this quote from one of the housemates, the rugged yet sensitive artist guy from Boston: "I'm in touch with my duality." That's certainly funnier than anything they say on "Will and Grace." It also came right before he tried to convince the enormously fake-breasted (white) bartender chick from Florida not to feel bad after calling someone (African-American) the N word, because "it's not what you say, it's what you intend." Um, actually, it is what you say. I am thinking of naming a "hero of the day" each day, just to celebrate a person who has had an impact either on my life or the world during a particular 24 hour period. I am not sure if I should make it sincere or mocking, though. In the spirit of kindness, today I pick embattled Knicks coach Don Chaney, who is by most accounts the wrong guy to coach this team, but by almost every account is a decent man who deserves better than to listen to drunk sons of CEO's chanting for his dismissal as he tries to do his job. One of the great myths of sport is that New York fans are better-informed or more intelligent than fans anywhere else. If anything, they're just more ruthless in their stupidity. Not much of an achievement. Potbelly Subs in Chicago has their shit all figured out, right down to the little vanilla wafer that they put on your milkshake straw. Those attempting to duplicate the Potbelly experience by patronizing Quizno's are in for a harsh slap across the face. Speaking of the Midwest, I came across two Wisconsin links today that made me beam with pride. 1/13/4: Update on the AT & T East Coast-West Coast cellphone minutes scam: it doesn't work. Shocker. Sorry about the false rumor. Who knew that I would receive multiple responses to my request for T-shirt ideas? Let me make it clear, these ideas can involve any image or idea, it needn't have anything to do with verbungle.com. I extend my thanks to everyone who contributed. Dipak offers the following concepts: I LOVE YOU MAN! ...any one of which would make a viable slogan for the website, or perhaps for a law practice or a mental institution. Ambrose suggests a photo from this page, which I think would look good on the breast pocket area, with a larger image on the back. But so far the leader is this amazing piece of original art submitted by reader Michael Jizzum (whose true identity I still do not know). The only thing holding me back is that he wants a $100 fee for his work (he has asked that the fee go to a children's charity). I really need to think this one over. Would anyone outside his immediate family feel any sympathy for Roger Clemens if he ruptured his Achilles tendon in early May? So the Knicks lost in OT to a strangely uninterested Dallas team tonight, but they fought hard and there was some serious electricity in MSG. I think the Marbury trade is vital to our psychological well-being as fans. Unfortunately, if they don't at least make the playoffs, it will be viewed as a failure, especially if a) the draft picks they gave up turn out to be high-lottery, or b) the young players they gave up amount to something. But in the meantime, I am happy having a tough bastard like Marbury on the team, although I didn't realize what a pounder he is. I re-purchased my battery and camera case. Now I can move forward as a man. 1/12/4: My knowledge of computers, like my knowledge of toilets or any number of other things, is totally superficial. I mean, I can operate a computer, and I can flush a toilet, but once something goes wrong and I need to reach into your tank and play around with your ballcock to try and fix the problem, you're just as likely to end up with shit all over your bathroom floor as you are to resume happy flushing. I had attempted to change some settings on my computer last night so that it would shut down automatically after X amount of hours. I did this because the damn thing gets incredibly hot if it's in use for a long time, and if I happen to abandon it while it's on, that shit just continues to heat up. I should know better than to try to improve things. Today my no-valuable-knowledge-required WYSIWYG web publishing software starting acting real uncooperative, and I'm sure it was my fault. So I put on my plumber's outfit and braced myself for the worst. After about seven hours, I seem to have fixed the problem, although I'm sure there are corrupt files or something floating around on this website. I think if you looked at my lifetime record in addressing computer issues (this includes setting up wireless and transferring shit from one computer to another, in addition to regular maintenance when things go awry), I would be like 386-138. The problem is that of the 386 triumphs, most occurred through shit blind luck. Thus, when I face the problem again, I can't simply apply my previous fix, because I have no idea how exactly I repaired the problem the first time. I'm a hack. Now that most of the teams I like have been eliminated, I announce the two teams that I will root for next week: Indianapolis and Philadelphia. It's a pretty sorry day in my NFL-viewing career when I find myself pulling for teams from these two cities. I would rank this weekend as one of the worst in the last three years. I had to work on Saturday, and the wife was sick all weekend, so we just stayed in and watched TV. All I really hoped to accomplish was to buy a replacement battery and case for my camera, to help alleviate the shame of last week's loss. Somehow, by the time I was ready to leave the house today, it was too late and B & H had closed. I will wait til tomorrow. When I wear hats in the winter, I get lots of head-zits. I am now accepting suggestions for T-shirts. 1/11/4: There is little in this world that I draw more comfort from than returning to my apartment building late on a freezing night and noticing that the doorman is watching The Odd Couple on his little 8" B & W TV. It just assures you that the world is doing just fine. 1/10/4: These last few days have been exceptionally, unrepentantly cold. Yesterday I swear it was completely sunny and dry but it was so cold that snow just started materializing in midair. It was as if the cold was so powerful it changed the laws of meteorology. This morning, the weatherman read the temperature in Kelvin. Days like these are no good for going outside and taking half-assed pictures of the city with frozen hands. They're no good for tossing a hardball and counting the days til pitchers and catchers report. They're no good for standing outside all day selling World Trade Center merchandise. The only thing to do on days like these is go to work, come home, and warm up with a cold beer and a terrible movie. (At this point I went off on a long and embarrassing spiel about my great regret that I was not Mr. Basketball in the state of Ohio in 1987. The spiel was so turd-like that I have expunged it. Do you have any idea how bad something has to be for me to not post it here? If you're a completist, and you want a transcript of the deleted text, contact mr.basketball@verbungle.com.) I'm not big on pictures of other pictures, but here are my parents ca. 1965 in Rome. Too lazy to plug in the scanner. I hit my toe on a chair in my apartment tonight with the approximate force that Tom Dempsey, the half-footed NFL kicker from the 70's, unleashed on his famous record-setting 63 yard field goal. My last resolution this year (barring any more resolutions) is to remember to hold grudges. A good grudge can be a valuable thing. Anybody who punches me in the balls (physically or metaphorically) from this point forward will not be forgiven. I kind of wanted to go out to a bar to watch this New England playoff game, but the wife is sick so I will stay with her and watch at home. I watched that New England-Oakland snow game in a bar a couple of years ago, and they had like a ten foot high TV. That was some fun shit. Oh well. When I really think about it, it's a perfect night for stretching out on the couch in full ball-scratching mode with some beer and some pretzels and perfect temperature and horizontal viewing position and optimum eye line and option of turning the channel in a blowout. So now I'm watching the end of the Rams-(insert name of whichever expansion team they are playing here) game, and the idiot Rams coach had a a chance to go for the throat in regulation, but instead let the clock run down so they could attempt a game-tying FG. What a coward. Now it looks like they'll get thumped in OT. Oops, (insert name of whichever expansion team they are playing here) just choked away a FG chance. Heartbreaking. Now the stinking Rams are gonna march down and kick one. No justice for that stupid Rams coach. He's a schmuck. Oops, the Rams missed their FG too. This is a pretty damn exciting game considering it's the undercard. Oh thank you sweet righteous Gods, (insert name of whichever expansion team they are playing here) just scored a TD in double OT to win it. And they did it by burning Jason Sehorn. This night is shaping up most perfectly. Except this beer, which tastes like it might be a bit stale, although it's hard to tell because it's Budweiser. Born on Date is 12.17.03, so it should be OK. I think in addition to Mr. Basketball in the state of Ohio, I would have enjoyed being an NFL quarterback. I'd really enjoy barking out orders at the line, and gesturing to the dude to get in motion behind me.
1/9/4: Forgive me if this doesn't make sense, I'm out of my mind on diabetic tussin right now. It's one of the most underrated highs around. I had a Flowers for Algernon moment today. You remember Flowers for Algernon, don't you? I read it in 8th grade and it just absolutely tore me apart. If you didn't read it, stop here and go read it, because I'm about to spoil the whole thing. The book tells the story of Charlie, a 30 year-old fellow with the mental and emotional abilities of maybe a seven year-old. He works in a bakery sweeping up, he's sweet and earnest, but he has no hope for developing intellectually. Then he finds out about an experiment in which a mouse named Algernon is given an operation that grants him exceptional mental powers. The mouse is doing all sorts of incredible things (for a mouse) -- he's nestled somewhere between Bill Beutel and Bill Boggs on the intelligence scale. Anyway, they decide to give Charlie the same experimental operation that Algernon had, and sure enough he starts getting smart -- he's doing the Saturday Times crossword after crossing out the down clues, he's teaching at the New School, he learns the importance of growing hipster sideburns. True to life, as he gets smart he starts becoming a bit of an asshole. He sleeps with some women, he treats 'em bad, he talks down to people and thinks only of himself -- he does all the things that you might find yourself doing if you suddenly found yourself not retarded after 30 years. It's a difficult adjustment for Charlie, and things turn tragic when he learns that the process has reversed itself in Algernon, who is now getting stupid at an alarming rate. Sure enough, Charlie starts losing his abilities as well. Eventually, Algernon dies, and Charlie is right back where he was before. He goes to the bakery and tries to get his janitor job back. He treated the bakery people like shit when he was smart, but now they see that he is once again the gentle simpleton they remember, and they welcome him back. The book is written in the first person, so as Charlie's mental abilities develop, the language in the book gets more refined. This makes it heartbreaking at the end when Charly loses all his spelling and grammatical skills, and we are reading what seems like the journal of a child. I remember one passage where Charlie describes his attempt to get the job back and there is absolutely no punctuation. He says something like, "and I askt mr donner for my job bak and he sed to me charly you got guts." That one always made me cry. Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that today God did to me what he did to Charlie. He gave me just enough intelligence to comprehend exactly how stupid I am, and that's just about the harshest crumb of knowledge there is. I was out in the city streets early this a.m., and I decided to take some cool pictures of the Manhattan morning with my fancy new camera. I tucked the $10 camera case that contained the $50 spare battery into my jacket pocket, and began snapping what turned out to be some pretty crappy pictures of the midtown streets. I walked a couple of blocks, and then my fingers started to freeze and I decided to put the camera away. Except the case was gone. I retraced my steps, but the thing had disappeared in a two-minute span. How stupid do you have to be to lose a brand new camera case and battery? Perhaps I am just not bright enough to be trusted with anything valuable. How depressing to be aware of this. A guy at work has grown what I can only assume is a preemptive moustache, which really puts a damper on my plan to do the exact same thing. The new plan is to wait 'til he gets tired of his and removes it -- that is when I will strike. And mine won't be a trendy fu manchu like he's got. Mine will be thick and bushy and unapologetic and I will point it at you like a gun and you will turn away and close your eyes tight and pray that I go easy on you. I think the Knicks went down 23-2 at the start of tonight's game. Maybe this Marbury thing was a big mistake. 1/8/4: Again with the cold today. Always with the cold. I received one response to my suggested cell phone scam, and I would be remiss not to post it. It comes from the keyboard of Deion Sandals, who it must be noted has logistical, not ethical, doubts about the scam: "If I am not mistaken AT&T is already onto miscreants such as you regarding the East Coast - West Coast cell phone minutes scam. I seem to remember it coming up on a recent trip to CA - I had some phone issues - and ended up on the phone for an awful long time with someone from AT&T who told me that the phone, and hence the phone co. is time zone aware and accounts for that in determining when your night begins...so if you are thinking of using this little gambit I would look into it closely before racking up those calls." I find it interesting that none of the 1.7 daily visitors to this site thought that there was anything philosophically wrong with trying to deceive the phone company to get some free minutes. That probably means it's perfectly acceptable to do so. But Sandals is right, the cell phone scam should be attempted with some degree of caution. I will keep you posted with the billing results of the person I know who is in mid-scam. The saga of Netzero is just about the saddest thing I can think of. Just that they're still out there battling, hanging onto their name despite no longer offering a product with any connection to that name. Why not netcheap? Remember those senate hearing commercials where they declared that every person should have the right to free internet? They're now offering pop-up blocking among their services. Don't the moon look good, mama, shinin' through the trees? Sorry if anyone was offended by yesterday's typo. Somehow my spellcheck got ahold of the word "Newish" and changed it to "Jewish." 1/7/4: I won't belabor this, but why do the chicks on the Real World always fall for the cheesy white guys? Granted, they're usually cheesy white chicks, but it seems like the cheesier you are, the more irresistible you are to Real World females. It's disappointing to see high school clichés come to life on your TV screen. The nice dorky guys always get left out, and the beefy pinheads immediately take over as the alpha dogs of the house. I don't know why I'm surprised. I've seen "Lucas." It was brutally cold in NYC today. A day when carjacking seemed like a reasonable commuting solution. A day when you didn't even stop to pick up your kid if he fell over. No point in both of you dying. Overheard at work today: New Kinks song -- "You Really Shot Me." OK, maybe it's obvious but it still made me chuckle. If you want an anecdotal example that helps illustrate why the dotcom boom fizzled, I offer up kozmo.com. Remember kozmo.com? They were an urban delivery service, and you could order food, beverages, videos, newspapers, jimmy hats, etc. There was no delivery charge and tipping was forbidden (although of course you'd slip the guy a tip if you had any decency), and the stuff would be at your door in roughly a pizza's time. You paid a little more for everything, but it sure was easier than a run to the dirty deli. It was a pretty slick idea, capitalizing on the infinite laziness of the city-dwelling schmuckulace. They had a competitor for a brief period called urbanfetch.com, and then there was a lawsuit, and then there was no more urban fetch, if I recall correctly. You can say what you want about the idea's merits. Like a lot of internet shit, it seemed pretty cool at first but soon you were kind of sickened by it. Anyway, I heard about a guy, a friend's boyfriend, who was sort of a big shot commercial and video director. Every afternoon, this turkey would call up kozmo.com (even though they were a .com, it was easier and more reliable to place your order by phone), and order one can of root beer. And every day, they would deliver it to him. There was no charge for delivery and he would not tip. It's guys like that who ruined the internet for the rest of us. I'd like to slap his bald head. I don't even care if he's not bald. I'll shave that shit down and slap it. Scam of the week for West Coast A T & T cell phone users who occasionally go over their minutes. If you ain't one of 'em, you are entitled to skip this. When you go in for your next contract, if you don't mind losing your #, request a 917 area code or some other East Coast area code (you may have to provide some bogus rationale for this). In addition to attaining a certain East Coast cachet that will drop jaws every time you give out your digits, your nighttime minutes will start at 9pm EASTERN, which, last time I checked, was 6pm out West. That's three more hours of gab time on the house, every day. This business about the minutes is still unconfirmed and seems like madness but you can definitely get a 917 area code. And why wouldn't you? Addendum to my resolutions: this year I want to design and print up at least one set of T-shirts. 1/6/4: Who on earth ever decided that three people were necessary to properly announce a basketball (or football, etc.) game? Two people analyzing the relatively straightforward action of a fairly simple sport, in addition to a third person, whose job it is to describe that action. Pat Kiernan confidently and accurately delivers the news of America's biggest city each morning for NY1, yet we need Sean McDonough, Bill Raftery and Jay Bilas to call a Providence-Texas game? So the Knicks got Stephon Marbury. I am elated. Of course, I know next to nothing about the talent we gave up in the deal, and with the inclusion of Penny Hardaway and his huge contract, we have mortgaged our future big-time. And we gave up two first rounders, potentially lottery picks. All in all, it might turn out to be a terrible deal for us in the long run. But let's face it, that long run was at least a couple of years away from turning into anything interesting. And today the Knicks became the most interesting team in the East (I know, that's like being the sexiest corpse in the morgue). They may still miss the playoffs, but there is a reason to turn on MSG network again (other than masturbating to Al Trautwig). I choose to view this move with optimism and I accept the fact that it may drive us deeper into the ground in the coming years. Because I have no confidence in rebuilding. It's too tricky and takes too long. Unless you get a Duncan or a Shaq, you ain't winning it all anyway. And our team was already screwed. So maybe now we're a little more screwed but a lot more watchable. And Penny will be gone in (gulp) two and a half years. Who knows, maybe he's got one last productive run in his knees. The Knicks chose to get interesting and (maybe) good now over getting (maybe) good later and remaining definitely uninteresting in the interim. Given what we had to work with, I'll take it. Just because I've got a couple of leftover photos from Cali, and New York hasn't been looking so great since I returned, here are a couple more. This was just another shot in downtown San Clemente. The next one is a pretty bad quality pic, because I had to kind of swing the camera by nonchalantly so the guy wouldn't kick my ass. I also didn't want to disturb him. I just wanted to show you a what a human being in a state of deep happiness and tranquility looks like. The guy was just sitting there on a bench, puffing on a big cigar, reading the paper on a 62 degree day and generally dominating the human race. I wish I had a better shot. 1/5/4: Just a few of my favorite lies from the accounts of the recent Mars "landing." "Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory let out whoops of joy and embraced one another when the first signals from the rover indicated it had survived the landing. Mars was 106 million miles from Earth at the time." (as if we have the technology to MEASURE 106 million miles, let alone build a machine out of materials that exist on earth that is capable of TRAVELING 106 million miles (or 300 million, as it turns out), in the span of 6 months. I am not a trained scientist, but I can roughly estimate that a trip of 106 million miles would take at least 26 years.) "During the descent, Spirit deployed parachutes and fired retrorockets to decelerate. Seconds before impact, it inflated a protective cocoon of airbags. Everything went as planned." (Uh-huh. I can't believe they failed to mention the Vornado fan from Bed Bath and Beyond that helped cool the "rover" as it slowly decelerated from its speed of 21,000 mph.) "It went to perfection. I can't tell the difference between what was predicted and what actually happened," said Rob Manning, descent and landing manager at JPL. (Probably because they showed you the simulation tape again and told you it was the real deal.) "Within hours of touchdown, Spirit beamed back
images from its new home, stunning black and white snapshots that elicited
excited shouts from mission controllers. Its mobile geologic studies are
expected to last at least 90 days. It may send its first color images back
Sunday night." (Any time an article uses the word "beamed" with a
straight face, I get suspicious. They "beamed" 'em, huh? Thank
goodness they brought their beaming device, the one that can transmit
images 106 million miles instantaneously. It's like the liars at
NASA just use the word "beam" and the press gets totally confused and
loses all sense of skepticism. Press conference: 1/4/4: So my vacation is wrapping up, and I've reached that inevitable moment where part of me wants to stay here forever and part of me would fly the plane myself if that's what it took to get home. The end of a two-week vacation is always bittersweet. From Southern California I will miss this. And this. And this. It's been beautiful here, a break from New York that I desperately needed, even if it never actually hit 70 degrees. But right now I miss NYC, specifically: I don't miss Neil Rosen's movie reviews on NY1, however. OK, maybe I do. 1/3/4: Fashion prediction for 2004: wearing your own retro jersey. For instance, Shaq charming everybody wearing an LSU #33 jersey or an old Orlando #32 jersey at a press conference. Joe Namath fondling cheerleaders wearing an Alabama #12 jersey. Don Nelson coaching a game wearing his old Celtics #19. Kenny Anderson actually trying to play an NBA game in his old Archbishop Malloy jersey. I think this is stupidity taken to the logical next level. I saw "Master and Commander" tonight. It was OK, pretty well-made, but I think I am done with these huge epic war movies. The new Lord of the Rings movie, aside from the undeniable subplot of hobbit homoeroticism, was basically the same thing. Battle scenes with quick cuts and huge booming crashes and explosions. You can't even really tell what's going on. I guess they are trying to convey the speed and chaos with which war occurs, but I just lose interest after a few minutes and start waiting for the good guys to win. 1/1/4: A new year, the same old New Year's Eve. Locale indecision. Eventually committing to the wrong locale. Attempts to make the best of it. Murmurs of "maybe we should just go home." Going home early. Vowing to stay in next year. This year, I was in San Diego with my friend Dave, who spends his days protecting our freedom as a Lieutenant in the Navy (he's actually a fully trained Naval psychologist). In what is beginning to look like a midwinter tradition, I went with Dave to the Naval Base Barber Shop (NBBS -- everything in the armed forces must be abbreviated at all times, for what purpose I do not know) to get our hairs cut. Somehow I had misplaced my driver's license, which the guard asked to see as we entered the base. I knew I didn't have it, but I made a grand show of looking for it anyway. He said, "OK, I'll let you go this time, but next time bring your license, especially when we're at 100% (security level)." I guess I didn't look like a terrorist. Here is my $5.50, government-subsidized makeover:
After we got our Maverick and Goose vibe perfected, we decided to hit downtown San Diego. The goal was to sing "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" in the bar so Dave could win the heart of a lesbian flight instructor. Unfortunately, the bars were charging outrageous New Year's Eve covers, like $35 outrageous. I wouldn't pay $35 to see David Blaine beaten up by his own family, even if it included two free drinks. So we went to the most generic, no-cover-charge, dead-end bar we could find, called, unsurprisingly, The Blarney Stone. There was an annoying dude playing acoustic guitar ("The Irish Rover," "867-5309," "Amy," etc.) and making AIDS jokes. It was like Bleecker Street West. We decided to stay for a beer. I'm glad we did, because we got to see a pretty strange scene. A guy walks into the bar (how odd to actually begin a true story this way), then sort of moves briskly towards the back. He was kind of a mellow, Tommy Chong beach-comber type (henceforth referred to as "TC"), as far as I could tell. An ex-marine, maybe 60 years old, hadda be named Mickey, was sitting at the table nearest the door waiting for two or three of his friends to return from the rest room. About 12 seconds after TC walks past, Mickey bolts out of his seat, sprints after TC as fast as his artificial hips can carry him, and starts screaming right in TC's face. He's putting his fingers right in his mug and saying stuff like, "I don't give a shit what you think" and then he forces TC back to his table, where he continues to berate him. Mickey's friends return, and TC kinda slinks off back into the bar, shrugging his shoulders half-apologetically, half-you-all-need-to-lighten-upedly. Mickey explains to his friends that TC had just walked in, grabbed one of Mickey's friends' full bottles of Bud off the table, and made off with it, a regular beer bandit. "I shoulda cracked his face in," Mickey says, beer muscles bulging everywhere. We watch TC, and sure enough, he's still pacing up and down the bar, casing the place for an unattended beer. Shamelessly. People start actually holding onto their beers with two hands. Finally, he runs into some woman at the far end of the bar, who asks him what the hell he's doing. After a brief exchange, she ends up giving him a big swig of her beer, which prompts him to give her a huge hug and a likely-unwelcome kiss on the cheek. Then he just struts out of the bar, right past Mickey, wisely figuring his night's not getting any better than this. After that, we went to some horrible touristy place called Dick's, where people were drunkenly throwing huge quantities of balled up toilet paper at one another (but not at us). Dick's did have a remarkably cruel $2 game, which was a variation on the old arcade staple where you lower the claw of the little crane and try in vain to grab a stuffed animal. Here is a bad picture of their version. We ended up going home at 10:30 and watching cable TV. All in all, an above-average New Year's. Then today I went to Laguna Beach and played some low-key 2 on 2 basketball. The wife tells me some of "White Men Can't Jump" was filmed there, and I did all I could to live up to that title. Boy, am I in bad shape. 20 minutes in, I felt like I was gonna puke. It was me and a little guy who shot nothing but 30-footers that either went right in (12% of the time) or were thunderous bricks (88% of the time) vs. two Eastern European guys, one of whom was quite good, the other one being quite physical and dirty. The Europeans got off to a fast start, and were up like 14-9 in a game to 15, but we came roaring back to win 16-14. After that game and part of another (I actually committed the sin of quitting mid-game), I was so weak and sick the mall sounded pretty good. Here are some action photos of me taking it to the Baja, and taking it on the chin. I don't know how that little kid picked up the rock and got in the triple-threat position so quick; he will someday be in the pros. I love in when politicians talk tough (from 12/31): Connecticut Rep. Christopher Shays issued a warning to New Year's Eve revelers yesterday, saying he wouldn't go to Times Square tonight "for anything. You have got to be an idiot to say, 'We have high alerts, but we just want you to do everything you normally do." The congressman's comments angered Mayor Bloomberg. Facial. ...and we even busted out the orange alert level Dr. Seuss hats. I actually felt an odd longing to be in disgusting Times Square. |
Number of brave souls who made it to the bottom: