David Caruso's Magical Island

New home for Internet awesome

2006-09-18T11:46:00.000-04:00

Hi there Caruso fans. I have been very busy shooting the newest season of CSI:Miami in the sexiest place on Earth, BRAZIL!!!! That's why I haven't updated this bitch in months.

So for all of you who continue to seek enlightenment at this address, be aware that I have passed the baton to my new best friend, Dr. Don't Know, at his brand new blog, the BOOSTER SHOT:

Click here for the awesome.

All my awesome links will be there, too, so update your browser shortcuts immediately. If you're still not convinced, here is a picture of my successor:

Enough said. Caruso out.

International Cricket Highlights

2006-04-22T16:21:00.000-04:00

I don't understand the sport of cricket whatsoever, but I saw an interesting headline recently and did a little investigating. Apparently in a match between Australia and Bangladesh, an unheralded player named Jason Gillespie stunned the cricket world by scoring a rare "double century".

I'm going to try and translate this into baseball terms as cleanly as I can, although it's not easy. Gillespie was in the lineup as the "nightwatchman", a player whose job is to keep the game going long enough that it will be called off for the night, and thus save his team's best batsmen for tomorrow's action. It's a delaying strategy that is a bit controversial in the world of cricket. I suppose it's sort of like putting a weak contact hitter at the 9 spot in a baseball lineup to foul off a lot of pitches, so that the top of the order can get a good feel for the opposing pitcher. He'll probably end up sending a weak grounder to second base, but at least the big bats will know what's coming when their time comes.

Now imagine our weak hitter, only in the lineup to foul off pitches, ends up hitting three grand slams in one game. That's sort of what happened in Bangladesh the other day. Gillespie managed to smack ball after ball into the field, scoring 201 points and breaking the rare "double century" barrier. For reference, cricket's best batsman ever, the veritable Babe Ruth of cricket - Australian Donald Bradman - only broke 300 twice during his career, and many great cricketers never break 100 in a single game.

Double century on your ass, Bangladesh!

The Sydney Morning Herald has some interesting moments from the game:

"IT WAS so unthinkable that even the man himself could only shake his head and utter a few incredulous expletives.

Australia's topsy-turvy tour of Bangladesh turned in the ultimate twist on Wednesday when an incredible double century to Jason Gillespie propelled the tourists towards a mountainous lead and a series whitewash.

"This is ridiculous," Gillespie said afterwards. "I was just lucky that the shots came off and I had a bit of a laugh all the way. It's unbelievable. It's a fairytale really. Hansel and Gretel and Dizzy's double hundred, it's one and the same. Absolute fairytale."

[...]

For a man who appears so awkward at the crease as he hunches over his bat, his sixes were absurdly audacious. He went down on one knee to loft Abdur Razzak straight over his head and then smacked part-timer Rajin Saleh into the crowd over mid-wicket.

"Considering Jason hadn't made a hundred in any form of cricket, it was an amazing innings," said Australian coach John Buchanan."

Apparently Gillespie didn't just have a career day, he extracted a humilating IOU from one of his teammates:

"Michael Hussey, with whom Gillespie shared a 320-run fourth-wicket partnership, said: "He knew every Test player and former Test player's highest score and was ticking them off. Went past Mark Waugh [153], he told me that. Went past Michael Clarke [151], he told me that. Went past Steve Waugh [200]."

Gillespie added: "And Boonie [200]." Hussey said: "I think it was a real testament to his concentration, really, to be able to bat for so long. Especially since he's not a recognised batsman as such. So that was quite a bit of motivation for me to keep going as well because I didn't want to be outdone by Diz. And also Matty Hayden had a bit of a bet with Diz as well."

Gillespie: "He [Matthew Hayden] reckoned he's going to do a nude run of the oval if I got 200...Not sure about that one, being in a Muslim country, I don't think it'll be perceived right...""

At the end of a crazy day, Gillespie's coach was left with nothing but admiration for the nightwatchman-turned-star.

""For any batsman, particularly a nightwatchman, to sustain an innings of over 400 balls is something we may never see again."

Selector Merv Hughes agreed. "You have to be here to believe it," he said. "People back home are going to wonder how he did it. But he thoroughly deserved it. He was a picture of concentration and control and like any good batsman, he knew his limitations and strengths.""

Sheen gets a divorce court smackdown

2006-04-21T14:43:00.000-04:00

Gossip hounds of the world have no doubt heard the latest from the fiery Charlie Sheen-Denise Richards divorce. Apparently, Christmas Jones has decided to go nuclear on her soon-to-be ex-husband, unleashing the dogs of war with a series of accusations labeling Sheen as a drug fiend, degenerate gambler, spousal abuser, and kiddy porn addict. Let's go to the People magazine roundup for more:

"Charlie Sheen has been ordered by a judge to stay away from his estranged wife, Denise Richards.

Sheen was ordered on Friday to stay at least 300 feet from Richards, her home, her car and their two daughters except during supervised visits with the kids, according to court documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The judge granted Sheen one-day-per-week visits with 2-year-old Sam and 10-month-old Lola and scheduled another hearing for May 12.

In court papers filed Friday, Richards claimed that her Sheen threatened to kill her.

"I am filing now because I can no longer accept (Sheen's) abusive and threatening manner and must stop him from the cycle of his abuse toward me and our children and his continued threats of violence and statements that he is going to kill me," Richards, 35, said in the papers.

Wow, you both look awful.

In her 17-page filing, Richards said that Sheen's gambling, pill-popping and violent mood swings led to their initial separation last year.

Among her allegations: That Sheen abused prescription drugs after the 2004 birth of their first daughter, Sam, and told Richards "I 'better not tell anybody about his using these drugs and better keep it to myself.' I understood by these statements that (he) would physically harm me and our baby."

Say what? I don't see any threats to kill a baby implicit in that statement!

"Richards also claimed that on the way to the hospital for the birth of their daughter Lola last year, Sheen placed a gambling bet by phone, and was checking his pager for the results as she was wheeled into surgery for her C-section.

Things turned violent on Dec. 27, 2005, according to the papers, when Sheen allegedly hit Richards's wrist and shoved her in the stomach after she confronted him about pornography Web sites featuring "very young girls" that he'd been visiting. She claims Sheen told her that "if I revealed anything about his lifestyle, 'You won't lay your head down at night.' I understood this to mean that he would kill me."

Several days later, she claimed Sheen pushed her over while she was holding Lola and "said to me that he was going to have me killed."

In his own filing, Sheen, 40, has denied claims that he threatened and hit Richards on Dec. 27 and 30, saying, "I deny having engaged in any such conduct."

In a statement issued by Richards's rep on Friday, the actress said, "I am disappointed that the situation has deteriorated to the point that it has become necessary to seek the assistance of the court. However, my primary concern is and always has been the welfare of the children and this action today was taken to ensure their safety as well as mine."

Sheen issued a statement of his own on Friday, calling Richards's allegations "a most obvious immature and transparent smear campaign designed to hurt, embarrass and ultimately extort me."

The statement continued, "I deeply regret (that) her response to my request for the court to decide what’s best for our children has taken the form of baseless allegations that I deny. For the sake of my children, I am electing not to reciprocate in kind.”

Richards originally filed for divorce in March of last year, when she was six months pregnant with Lola. The pair appeared to briefly reconcile after Lola's birth in June, but on Jan. 4, they requested that their divorce proceed with a private arbitrator."

The E! Online report (you have to love Sarah Hall) contains this nugget that People somehow failed to include:

"In her filing, Richards alleged that during their reconciliation last year, she discovered that Sheen had been visiting pornography Websites, featuring "very young girls, who looked underage to me, with pigtails, braces, no pubic hair, performing oral sex with each other," as well as sites "involving gay pornography also involving very young men who also did not look like adults."

She claimed she also learned that Sheen "had a madam" and belonged to several sex search sites on which he emailed pictures of "his erect penis" to prospective female partners. When she confronted him about his various Internet activities, she said he did not deny it, but told her to "go f--k [her]self." "

Denise, you JUST found out that Charlie Sheen likes prostitutes and sordid, casual sex? Were you subjected to some sort of pop-culture memory wipe after you met him? Does the name "Heidi Fleiss" mean nothing to you?

And as far as the pornography goes, I am certain that the actors were not underage. They just look that way to an rapidly aging "actress" like yourself. I bet you think the starlets who are getting all the parts you used to snare are underaged too, right, Denise?

I'm not saying Charlie Sheen is a saint, but your kids are composed half his DNA, woman. It's one thing to air the dirty laundry, but I have no respect for the way Denise Richards is embellishing the truth with "I understood that to mean" and "Looked underage to me"...

The End of Ken

2006-04-20T20:09:00.000-04:00

I was slow off the mark with the Culture posting that should have run yesterday; but I don't feel bad about it, because today an awesome piece ran in the LA Times that is better than anything I would have posted a day ago. Without much further ado I'm going to run this awesome Op-Ed in its entirety; it's written by Dean Johnson, a high school teacher and adjunct college professor from New Jersey, and it's entitled "Hey, doll, you need a real man".

(One piece of background information, for those of you who didn't hear when Mattel announced it two years ago: Barbie and Ken broke up.)

"YOU CAN DRESS him up any way you want. Change his appearance to make him look like Orlando Bloom, Johnny Depp or even John Wayne. Tough boy, homeboy, cowboy. It doesn't matter. Ken is still a castrated man.

Ken has always lived in the shadow of the venerable girl next door. He is an afterthought, known for nothing but being a mere accessory, sold separately. Mattel is trying to bring him back after a hiatus, but with a lobotomized grin and submissive gaze, he is the epitome of role reversal. While Barbie has been a regular career gal with a plethora of jobs — doctor, lawyer, flight attendant — Ken seems to be nothing but a foppish playboy, a passenger in the dream car of life.

Generations of girls have had the opportunity to learn how to manipulate and emasculate the male species by not only giving Ken their own feminine qualities but by allowing Ken to be totally dominated by Barbie. But is that what women really want?

Nice package, Ken, too bad it's the only one you've got...

When I was growing up, the girls in my neighborhood all played with Barbie dolls; that category included Ken. We boys would not be caught dead playing with dolls. Even on a rainy Saturday afternoon when no other guys were around, boys couldn't stand to be around their sisters' Barbies.

We boys did not play with dolls. We played with action figures, and Ken was no action figure.

Action figures were real men: Geronimo, Gen. Custer, GI Joe. They were made from hard plastic and had cool things like a Kung Fu grip. Every nick, scratch, scrape and dent in the plastic was a badge of honor. Ken was soft plastic with shorts even your father wouldn't wear. And he had accessories of his own: shoes, tennis racket, skates. Our action figures had accessories too. But while Ken's accessories reflected Barbie's interests, our action figures had rifles, handguns, knives and bows and arrows.

We'd take these action figures out on wild, dangerous and great adventures, inside and outside the house. There was war and crime and survival against nature. We once took Ken with us on one of these adventures. He was abducted by one of my friends from his sister's bedroom. His arm fell off the first time he jumped out of a tree and hit the sidewalk. As mad as my friend's sister was when she found Ken under her bed, armless as well as headless — we thought it funnier that way — she and her friends always seemed to want to play with us guys whenever we were having action-figure adventures.

A block from my house sat an empty lot filled with soft sand, where we could create forts and tunnels for our guys. The lot was sometimes the Sahara Desert and at other times served as the barren tundra.

Once in a while the girls would come onto the lot when we boys were there. They would bring their Barbies and, when we refused to let them play, they'd start to play right next to us, claiming we didn't own the lot and if we boys bothered them, they'd tell. So we'd endure their presence. From time to time there was some crossover. It was usually GI Joe, who always seemed to have an eye for the dames.

And Ken was nowhere in sight. Ken, it seemed, was far less interesting than any of our action figures because Ken was someone girls could talk to, go shopping with, sip tea with; our guys were independent, unpredictable, tough. I wonder what girl didn't drop Ken for GI Joe.

Several years ago, when my daughter was still steeped in Barbie play, I pulled my GI Joe out from my tub of old stuff that sits in the basement. His "realistic" hair was worn down on top, not unlike my own bald spot, and one boot was missing, but, other than that, he was in decent shape — he even had his dog tag.

The moment I handed him to my daughter, the synthetic soldier was immediately thrust into a relationship — I remember sitting through at least one wedding. Ken, who had arrived at our house at the same time Barbie did, was nowhere to be found. In fact, today, up on a shelf above her desk, sits Barbie with GI Joe by her side. Ken, I believe, is packed away in a storage container somewhere in the basement.

Although it is popularly assumed that Barbie will be getting back together with her once-beau Ken, I believe she could do a lot better. So could future generations of women."

General Discontent

2006-04-18T22:44:00.000-04:00

Howard Kurtz has a good piece today on the recent surge in Rumsfeld-hate by a number of retired generals.

"Ever since one general spoke to Time last week and The Washington Post fronted the story of others who were coming out from under the cone of silence, the controversy has been huge. Liberals rejoiced, conservatives counterattacked, and thumbsuckers pondered What It All Means.

The story has gained considerable altitude because it's a new front in the war over the war, and because of the novelty of career military men calling for the head of Don Rumsfeld. President Bush's full-throated defense of Rummy late Friday gave the debate an extra boost going into Easter weekend."

My personal opinion is that Rumsfeld has needed to go for a long time. A competent President would demand that the man who is running his war effort into the ground pay the price for his incompetence. Bill Clinton, for example, wisely canned Les Aspin after the "Black Hawk Down" debacle. But despite the myriad mistakes of the Defense Department vis-a-vis Iraq (drawing down troops in Afghanistan, putting soldiers in unarmored Humvees instead of tanks, failing to anticipate the insurgency, forcing soldiers to purchase their own body armor, dissolving the Iraqi army, etc., etc.) GWB is still standing by his man. Even Rummy thinks he should be toast by now - it's been over a year since he tried to resign twice, only to be rebuffed. And now that the heat is on, it's a virtual certainty he won't be ousted. After all, the stubborn President refuses to let the public's opinion effect his policies.

Why should anyone be able to question Bush? Remember, he's a "war president"!

But back to Kurtz' report.

"Then you have all these sub-arguments: Should retired generals be speaking out at all? Why didn't they say anything sooner? Are they just a bunch of Clinton-appointed hacks who didn't like Rummy's attempts to reform the Pentagon, or are they speaking for many active-duty types who can't challenge the commander-in-chief without facing court-martial? Do they validate what outside critics have been saying about the bungling of the war and the occupation? Or are they shooting at the wrong guy, in that Rumsfeld has basically been carrying out Bush's policies?"

My two cents: Yes, they were chicken like most everyone else, probably yes AND yes, a big yes, and no. I'm not clearing President Bush for the disastrous Iraq policy, but it's not as if Rumsfeld is just a meek and powerless functionary. He had a vision for the 21st century military. Apparently he should get his eyes checked.

The WSJ editorial page says the critics are off base:

"But that is for the historians to sort out. What matters now is doing what it takes to prevail in Iraq, setting up a new government and defeating the terrorists. How firing Mr. Rumsfeld will help in any of this, none of the critics say. They certainly aren't offering any better military strategy for victory.

More than likely, Mr. Rumsfeld's departure would create new problems, starting with a crisis of confidence in Iraq about American staying power. What do Mr. Rumsfeld's critics imagine Iraqis think as they watch former commanders assigning blame? And how would a Rumsfeld resignation contribute to the credible threat of force necessary to meet America's next major security challenge, which is Iran's attempt to build a nuclear bomb? Sacking the Defense Secretary mid-conflict would only reinforce the Iranian mullahs' belief that they have nothing to worry about because Americans have no stomach for a prolonged engagement in their part of the world."

I could not be less swayed by the argument that demanding accountability among our leaders is a mistake because it shows weakness to the enemy. I have so many problems with this editorial it's hard to know where to start.

(1) Maybe there IS no way to prevail in Iraq. The Shiites have no interest in forming a coalition government, the Sunnis have no intention of laying down their arms. Isn't it possible our invasion just created a massive snafu that *cannot* be fixed, no matter how many lives or dollars we lay down to do so? (2) Referring to the insurgency as "the terrorists" is utterly misleading. I'm not saying I think they're "Heroic Freedom Fighters" or anything, but it's all part of the Grand Neoconservative Effort to conflate the "War on Terror" with the Iraq war. Anyone with half a brain knows one of these things is not like the other. Besides, insurgencies are messy affairs, and it's not a reach to call many of the Colonial tactics in the American Revolutionary War "terrorist strikes". (3) Who cares what Iraqis think about Rumsfeld? Do we have to base all our domestic political decisions on what Iraqis think? Can't vote the GOP out of power in Congress, the Iraqis might think the American public doesn't support the war, and we can't have that! The Iraqis mustn't lose hope! Geez, we better figure out a way to keep Bush in power for another term, wouldn't want the Iraqis to feel blue! (4) Guess what, WSJ editorial page goons: Americans DON'T have a stomach for a prolonged engagement in the Middle East. In fact, unless we are directly provoked, we have NEVER had the stomach for a prolonged engagement of any kind. Read your history books.

As usual, the Washington Post is much more my speed.

"PRESIDENT BUSH'S stubborn support for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has compounded U.S. troubles in Iraq, prevented a remedy for the criminal mistreatment of foreign detainees and worsened relations with a host of allies. Now it is deepening the domestic political hole in which the president is mired. Half a dozen senior retired generals have publicly criticized Mr. Rumsfeld, touching off another damaging and distracting controversy at a critical moment in the war. Thanks in part to his previous misjudgments, Mr. Bush has no easy way out.

Mr. Bush would have been wise to accept Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation when he offered it nearly two years ago. At that time it was clear that the defense secretary was directly responsible for the policy of abuse toward detainees that resulted in the shocking Abu Ghraib photographs, as well as far worse offenses against detainees. By then, too, Mr. Rumsfeld's contributions to growing trouble in Iraq were evident: his self-defeating insistence on minimizing the number of troops; his resistance to recognizing and responding to emerging threats, such as the postwar looting and the Sunni insurgency; his rejection of nation-building, which fatally slowed the creation of a new political order. Had Mr. Bush replaced Mr. Rumsfeld in 2004, the administration might have avoided the defense secretary's subsequent and similar mistakes, such as his slowness to acknowledge the emerging threat of Shiite militias and death squads last year."

Amen to that.

Finally, David Byrne - yes, THAT David Byrne - raises an interesting comparison:

"The Armed forces' revolt against the Bush administration proceeds. A whole raft of generals, most of them recently retired, but having served in Iraq, now call for Rummy to step down. Other generals, not named and still serving in Iraq, join the chorus. The military doesn’t dispute the war — that may come later — but its execution, which anyone with eyes can see was not planned, thought out or performed with any competence whatsoever. The Army’s first duty is self-preservation — save the boys — and when they see arrogant incompetents putting the boys in harm’s way unnecessarily, they eventually rebel.

It was Army defections that dethroned Marcos in the Philippines...

I realize that my [anti-military] instincts are unfair. In some places and at some times the military does indeed represent the people and not just the greedy adventuring of those in power. Sometimes the military persist as politicians come and go, are made up of skilled professionals out to do a clear-cut job, and will stand up to the lying politicians and ally themselves with the population. There comes a point where their own professionalism is at stake.

This happened with the People Power movement in the Philippines in the mid 80s, and it threatens to happen now in Iraq. The U.S. military may just bring the Bush-Cheney adventure to a speedier close. The soldiers are being stretched beyond reasonable limits, the troop commanders are being asked to put their men in danger — and for what? They’re approaching their limits. Has there ever been a revolt emerging from within the U.S. military?"

And this from the man who sang "Don't Worry About The Government"!

The Backstroke of the West

2006-04-17T21:47:00.000-04:00

In prep school, I had a good friend from Hong Kong who used to take orders before major school vacations. For $5, he could get you any video game, movie, or computer program. And he wasn't the only one in the market. In much of Asia - but especially in China - piracy is absolutely rampant. Every town has vendors who can sell you movies as soon as they come out, and software that retails for hundreds of dollars can be had for a mere fraction of their true price. And this brings us to the story of the webmaster of winterson.com - a man who bought a movie from a Chinese pirate retailer and in so doing brought happiness to many people around the globe.

Here's his story, briefly: after viewing Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith at the theater and heartily approving, our hero Jeremy - an English speaker living abroad in China - was offered a DVD of the film by an enterprising Chinaman. ("Dude, I'm pretty sure Chinaman is NOT the preferred nomenclature.") When he got home and popped it in, he found the quality was barely acceptable but that the video came with a wonderful bonus: horrible, horrible translations of the dialogue. Somewhere in the English-to-Chinese-to-English process, things went terribly wrong with hilarious results.

Here is a sampling of what he discovered.

You'd think they could get the translation right when it's there on the screen...

Seems like a joke. But it isn't...

"Let them pass between us."

I don't think R2 does any fucking, actually...

I wasn't scared of Count Dooku until I found out he was a "big".

Luckily, Obi Wan is not afraid of the big!

I can't even begin to fathom how they got to that one.

Nothing like scary dreamses to keep you up at night.

I SAID, send these troopseses ONLY, mothaFUCKA!

Is that sort of like "You had me at hello"?

Apparently in Chinese, "Jedi Council" is synonymous with "Presbyterian Church".

What woman could resist geologic change's strong and big??

"Liar!!!"

Obi Wan, can't you solve your problems yourself?
Why are you always demanding that disabled people solve them for you?

The last one is my favorite. It takes a second to absorb but it's a classic. At the end of the movie, George Lucas gives into to the ultimate and greatest of all movie cliches. When he is told that his beloved Padme has died, the newly roboticized Darth Vader throws out his arms in anguish and cries, "Noooooooooooo!" That is, unless you're watching the Chinese-to-English version. In that case, here's the memorable moment:

Rickey on Rickey

2006-04-14T23:59:00.000-04:00

With the baseball season back underway, it's an appropriate time for DCMI to shout out to one of the oldest active baseball players out there, the great base-stealer Rickey Henderson. He's famous for being a member of the legendary (but underperforming and now, apparently, roided-up) championship Oakland A's from the late 80's. He's also bounced around the MLB with a variety of clubs, and currently resides in the independent leagues, but he's still playing. Rickey is best known for referring to himself in the third person and for his long rap sheet of wacky hijinks. With help from the esteemed Sherriff Sully, here now are the top 25 Rickey Henderson comedy moments.

"1) Rickey… on referring to himself in the third person:

“Listen, people are always saying, ‘Rickey says Rickey.’ But it’s been blown way out of proportion. People might catch me, when they know I’m ticked off, saying, ‘Rickey, what the heck are you doing, Rickey?’ They say, ‘Darn, Rickey, what are you saying Rickey for? Why don’t you just say, ‘I?’ But I never did. I always said, ‘Rickey,’ and it became something for people to joke about.”

2) In the early 1980s, the Oakland A’s accounting department was freaking out. The books were off $1 million. After an investigation, it was determined Rickey was the reason why. The GM asked him about a $1 million bonus he had received and Rickey said instead of cashing it, he framed it and hung it on a wall at his house.

3) In 1996, Henderson’s first season with San Diego, he boarded the team bus and was looking for a seat. Steve Finley said, “You have tenure, sit wherever you want.” Henderson looked at Finley and said, “Ten years? Ricky’s been playing at least 16, 17 years.”

4) This one might be my second favorite. This wasn’t too long ago, I think it was the year he ended up playing with the Red Sox. Anyway, he called San Diego GM Kevin Towers and left the following message: “This is Rickey calling on behalf of Rickey. Rickey wants to play baseball.”

5) This one happened in Seattle. Rickey struck out and as the next batter was walking past him, he heard Henderson say, “Don’t worry, Rickey, you’re still the best.”

6) Rickey once asked a teammate how long it would take him to drive to the Dominican Republic.

7) Moments after breaking Lou Brock’s stolen base record, Henderson told the crowd – with Brock mere feet next to him – “Lou Brock was a great base stealer, but today, I am the greatest of all-time.”

8) Henderson once fell asleep on an ice pack and got frostbite – which forced him to miss three games — in mid-August.

9) A reporter asked Henderson if Ken Caminiti’s estimate that 50 percent of Major League players were taking steroids was accurate. His response was, “Well, Rickey’s not one of them, so that’s 49 percent right there.”

10) Henderson broke Ty Cobb’s career record for runs scored with a home run. After taking his usual 45 seconds or so around the bases, Rickey slid into home plate.

11) On being Nolan Ryan’s 5,000th career strikeout: “It gave me no chance. He (Ryan) just blew it by me. But it’s an honor. I’ll have another paragraph in all the baseball books. I’m already in the books three or four times.”

12) San Diego GM Kevin Towers was trying to contact Rickey at a nearby hotel. He knew Henderson always used fake names to avoid the press, fans, etc. He was trying to think like Rickey and after several attempts; he was able to get Henderson on the phone.

Rickey had checked in under Richard Pryor.

Vintage Rickey.

13) I didn’t believe this one at first. However, I emailed a few contacts within the Sox organization and they claim it actually happened. This is priceless, it really is.

The morning after the Sox finished off the sweep against St. Louis last October, Henderson called someone in the organization looking for tickets to Game 6 at Fenway Park.

14) The Mets were staying in a hotel less than a mile from Cinergy Field in Cincinnati. While some players walked, most took the team bus. A few minutes after they arrived — again it was less than a mile – the last players off the bus noticed a stretched limo that had just pulled up.

Of course, Rickey emerged from the back seat.

15) A reporter once asked Rickey if he talked to himself, “Do I talk to myself? No, I just remind myself of what I’m trying to do. You know, I never answer myself so how can I be talking to myself?”

16) OK, I know everyone has been waiting for it. Alas, according to both parties involved, it’s not true. I wish it were. Heck, both Rickey Henderson and John Olerud have said they wish it were true. But it just didn’t happen.

The story went that a few weeks into Henderson’s stint with the Mariners, he walked up to Olerud at the batting cage and asked him why he wore a batting helmet in the field. Olerud explained that he had an aneurysm at nine years old and he wore the helmet for protection. Legend goes that Henderson said, “Yeah, I used to play with a guy that had the same thing.”

Legend also goes that Olerud said, “That was me, Rickey.”

Henderson played with Olerud on the Blue Jays and the Mets.

17) Rickey was asked if he had the Garth Brooks album with Friends in Low Places and Henderson said, “Rickey doesn’t have albums. Rickey has CDs.”

18) During a contract holdout with Oakland in the early 1990s, Henderson said, “If they want to pay me like Mike Gallego, I’ll play like Gallego.”

19) In the late 1980s, the Yankees sent Henderson a six-figure bonus check. After a few months passed, an internal audit revealed the check had not been cashed. Current Yankees GM Brian Cashman – then a low-level nobody with the organization – called Rickey and asked if there was a problem with the check. Henderson said, “I’m just waiting for the money market rates to go up.”

20) In June 1999, when Henderson was playing with the Mets, he saw reporters running around the clubhouse before a game. He asked a teammate what was going on and he was told that Tom Robson, the team’s hitting coach, had just been fired. Henderson said, “Who’s he?”

21) This is my all-time favorite. Rickey was pulled over by a San Diego police officer for speeding. As the officer was approaching Rickey’s car, the window went down a few inches and a folded $100 bill emerged. The officer let Rickey and his money head home without a ticket.

22) When he was on the Yankees in the mid-1980s, Henderson told teammates that his condo had such a great view that he could see, “The Entire State Building.”

23) During one of his stays with Oakland, Henderson’s locker was next to Billy Beane’s. After making the team out of spring training, Beane was sent to the minors after a few months. Upon his return, about six weeks later, Henderson looked at Beane and said, “Hey, man, where have you been? Haven’t seen you in awhile.”

24) To this day and dating back 25 years, before every game he plays, Henderson stands completely naked in front of a full length locker room mirror and says, “Ricky’s the best,” for several minutes.

25) In the last week of his lone season with the Red Sox, Chairman Tom Werner asked Henderson what he would like for his ‘going-away’ gift. Henderson said he wasn’t going anywhere, but he would like owner John Henry’s Mercedes. Werner said it would be tough to get the same make and model in less than a week and Henderson said, “No, I want his car.” Turns out the Sox got Henderson a Red Thunderbird and when he saw it on the field before the last game of the season, Rickey said, “Whose ugly car is on the field?”"

Let me see some PopoZão!

2006-04-13T23:05:00.000-04:00

For some of you this post is a bit of old news, but this piece of musical entertainment will probably never get old.

First, the topical jump-off: the press reported this week that child welfare agents visited the Spears/Federline abode to inquire about the health of young Sean Preston Federline. It's frightening to even think about what this kid is going to be like when he grows up, but now there's another hurdle for him to overcome in his developmental growth; his nanny dropped him on the floor the other day, apparently giving his skull a good whack. A concerned Britney (the stories say "his parents", but I don't think Federline cares for anybody except himself) took Sean Preston to the ER, which automatically generated a visit from social services to the home. Brit was cleared of any wrongdoing, which is only fair since she didn't even drop the kid herself.

This story might have blown over a bit sooner if it wasn't for a notorious incident a few months back where Britney drove down PCH in Malibu (not exactly a back road, folks) with the kid in her lap. Car seat? Britney don't do no car seat! My parenting skills are outrageous!

Anyway, anyway, I actually don't want to talk about any of this stuff, but rather to focus squarely on the budding musical career of K-Fed. He has been working furiously on an album lo these many months, and made quite a splash about six months back when his first "single", "Y'all Ain't Ready" was leaked into the public domain. This instant classic contained some of the following lyrics:

I'm not your brother, I'm not your uncle, I'm Daddy, dude
Steppin' in this game and y'all ain't got a clue
My prediction is you all gonna hate on the style we create, straight 2008
But I know that you really can't wait because people always askin' me
When's the release date?

Paging K-Fed, just because people want to hear your album does not mean that you have any musical talent. Personally, I got a download of this track right away. And then I laughed, and laughed. Especially when he refers to paparazzi as "Pavarottis". Is that supposed to be clever - or, more likely, does he really think that's what they're called?

A detail of K-Fed's Ferrari.

But Federline topped himself big-time when a video of him jamming to his latest number made its way onto the net. The song is apparently based on his experiences in Brazil and is entitled "PopoZão", which K-Fed tells us in rhyme: "in Portuguese it means bring your ass, on the floor and move real fast." If you haven't seen this clip, you are in for a treat. And if you have seen it, as I have, many times already, my bet is you still find this pretty funny. Here's a screen cap that will click through to the video:

A cat is coming straight out of the 'No,
ready to rock them shows all the way to Rio!

I'll describe the clip briefly, since no words can truly do it justice: K-Fed sits in a ridiculously well-appointed studio, jamming to his new song as if had just recorded a true hip-hop classic that would stand the test of time. Federline sings along, rocks to the "beat", makes all kind of hand gestures, and at one point looks right into the camera and exclaims "FIRE!" like he just can't help himself, the song is that good. This guy is so proud of himself. And on top of that, the song is absolutely awful. Not only is the beat virtually undanceable, the sparse lyrics (excerpted in the caption above) are simply absurd. By the way, "the 'No" is Fresno.

The growing popularity of the K-Fed video led Conan O'Brian to bring "Inside the Actor's Studio" host James Lipton back on the show for a memorable recitation of the lyrics. Conan did the same when "Y'all Ain't Ready" was leaked, but the salacious, titillating words of PopoZão made for an unbelievably hilarious Lipton monologue this time around.

I guess all I can say is, hey K-Fed, when's the release date?

The BSOD invades Jobs-land

2006-04-12T01:15:00.000-04:00

Well, Steve Jobs has done it again - gotten the computer world buzzing with his latest creative innovation. He may not be the money-making machine that Bill Gates et al have proven to be, but Jobs definitely takes the cake for excellence in design and originality. First the Apple, then the Macintosh, then successfully pulling off computer animation (after Apple stupidly ousted him). Since his return to the helm of Apple he's revolutionized the way we listen to music with the ubiquitous iPod. Now he's switched the processors in Mac machines from IBM over to Intel chips, which means (drum roll please) Macs can now run Windows software!

The new Apple program, "Boot Camp", is the final piece of the puzzle - it allows you to partition your hard drive into Mac OS and Windows divisions and to run both operating systems. Of course, you'll have to purchase a full version of Windows XP, which don't come cheap unless it comes bundled with a new PC. But as Walter Mossberg reports in the WSJ, the result is pretty fantastic - the software capabilities of Windows and the near-flawless design and hardware of Mac.

But I'm not going to belabor the technical aspects of this new development - besides, the legendary Mossberg handles that nicely - but rather report on an amusing piece of the larger picture. You see, Windows doesn't just bring to Mac systems its long list of software - it brings the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!

You know what I'm talking about. That horrible blue screen that takes over your monitor when things have gotten really, really F-ed up with your PC. Here's a drastically scaled down image, click on it to see a much better version:

"A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer."

Every Windows user has had terrible experiences with the BSOD, even Bill Gates, who had the humiliating experience of having his system crash to a BSOD when he was PRESENTING A NEW VERSION OF WINDOWS AT A HUGE CONVENTION! Now that is funny stuff. Here's a video of the incident, for those of you who would like a good laugh.

And so, with the bonuses of Windows, so too comes the evil BSOD. The first report I saw came from user "dbaxter" on DealCatcher.com - he includes a cool image that I again have to drastically shrink down, so click through to see it in all its wicked glory.

Behold!!!

So remember, Mac users, you may work in a well-designed, virus- and spyware-free environment, drinking your lattes and chortling about how superior you are while you craft the design for the latest issue of Elitist Magazine, thinking all is right for you in your two-operating-system world but remember, always remember one thing: The Blue Screen of Death is gonna git you, sucka!

Let's Get Hammered

2006-04-11T00:09:00.000-04:00

Alas, it's just about time to say goodbye to Tom DeLay, former House majority leader. He's special to DCMI, since he was the subject of one of the first (and still one of the best) posts here, "The GMOAT". It's tough to find a balanced opinion on DeLay, since people either seem to think of him as an evil criminal mastermind (blue states) or as a honorable legislator evilly taken out by liberals (red states). The truth is, as my Capitol Hill sources stress, DeLay is a well-respected legislator who knows how to get the job done for his constituents and his majority -- although his hands are more than a bit dirty with the Clinton impeachment (still a sore subject for me).

As per usual, the WaPo published a great article this week from a former DeLay staffer that I think cuts closest to the truth. He's not an evil man, just kind of a crappy manager, and a bit of a Jesus freak. And some of the guys that used to work for him? They were a little bit evil. The piece is called "Hammered: What I Saw At The Republican Revolution", by John Feehery.

Feehery gets right to the heart of the pluses and minuses of DeLay's years in power with the following passage:

"I do know that Tom DeLay achieved great things for the Republican majority, the Congress and for the country. He also created great controversy caused in part by his own aggressive nature, in part by his political enemies, and in part by rogue members of his own staff.

The overwhelming majority of DeLay's staffers were professional, honest and working in Congress for the right reasons. But Tom prized the most aggressive staffers and most often heeded their counsel. As it turned out, three of them went over the line, abused the trust of House members and seemingly broke the law. A former hockey player, Tony Rudy was DeLay's enforcer; he wasn't evil, but lacked maturity and would do whatever necessary to protect his patron. Ed Buckham, DeLay's chief of staff, gatekeeper and minister, constantly pushed DeLay to be more radical in his tactics and spun webs of intrigue we are only now beginning to unravel. And Michael Scanlon, who, in my experience, was a first-class rogue and a master of deception.

People like Rudy and Scanlon pleased DeLay because they were always pushing the envelope; only now that the scandal surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff is playing out and both are cooperating witnesses for the prosecution are we beginning to learn how far they went. I don't know if Tom always knew what his staff was doing -- I know that I didn't. But I had my suspicions, and now I have seen them borne out."

Michael Scanlon, in addition to being a big Jack Abramoff homey, is probably best known to me for writing this email re:Clinton around impeachment time in 1998: "This whole thing about not kicking someone when they are down is B.S. Not only do you kick him -- you kick him until he passes out -- then beat him over the head with a baseball bat -- then roll him up in an old rug -- and throw him off a cliff into the pounding surf below!!!!!"

Who's down now, Scanlon??? Huh???? Eat pounding surf, you bastard!!!!

Another utterly distasteful DeLay aide is chief of staff Buckham, described in memorable fashion in the Post piece: "[H]e was brutal in firing some of DeLay's previous staffers. His win-at-all-costs attitude played out in strange ways around the office. He ran a fantasy baseball league that he always seemed to win, even if it meant browbeating young staffers into trading their best players to him. He was also forceful in promoting the evangelical beliefs he shared with DeLay. There were times when he would gather the staff for prayer. And I must admit, at times we needed those prayers just to get through the grueling pace of the Contract With America."

F-ing with the sanctity of fantasy baseball. Now, that is just un-American.

The Hammer working it with a constituent. Sweet picture!

Feehery presents a pretty positive opinion of DeLay throughout, in contrast to the hatchet he takes to his former coworkers. However, he does touch on the impeachment. Just thinking about that ludicrous nonsense still makes me mad. Incidentally, when people talk about impeaching Bush, I get mad about that too. People. This is a democracy. Every four years we have elections. If the American public wants someone out, we'll get 'em out. There's only been one president who the public truly wanted to oust in the middle of his term, and it didn't take an impeachment and trial to get it done. We can't just impeach our political enemies because we've seized on some minutiae that we have a legal problem with. I'm not saying sitting presidents can run rampant without consequences, but rather that there ARE consequences for presidents that truly cross the people's will, and they have nothing to do with a show trial in Congress.

"Bill Clinton was impeached for three reasons: DeLay, Rudy and Scanlon.

Tom had the vision -- he was angry that Clinton lied to the American people, and he was not alone. Early on, as the House was considering beginning impeachment proceedings, the Democrats offered a resolution that could have led to a bipartisan process. But DeLay rejected it. He didn't want to give them an inch.

However, I told Tom that if he were seen as the driving force behind the impeachment effort, it would fail. A partisan impeachment of the president would never win conviction in the Senate. Tom didn't care. He told me he couldn't face his foster children if he did not demonstrate that Clinton's activity was morally wrong.

My stomach wasn't in this effort. I couldn't match the energy of Rudy and Scanlon. They were everywhere, doing the briefing books, leaking to reporters, doing the legal research and whipping the members. They spread rumors that there was evidence that Clinton had raped a woman. I told Tom I was leaving, and he was very gracious. His attack dogs were already on the prowl. He didn't need me."

How pleased am I to see those "attack dogs" get their comeuppance? Oh, I am pleased to the Nth degree. *shudders with satisfaction*

But let's leave off our discussion of DeLay with Feehery's summation, which I think really gets to the point of things. See, Tom DeLay isn't Satan, and he isn't perfect either. He's just a good legislator and a bad manager. It happens.

"Yet, watching him announce his resignation last week brought me great sadness -- sadness that a politician so gifted could take such a fall. DeLay was an amazing legislator, probably the most talented this town has seen since Lyndon Baines Johnson. But like all great men, Tom DeLay had great talents and one great weakness. In his case, it was some staff members run amok. In the end, that weakness forced him to step down."

Peace out, Hammer.

I Hate Achenblog, Volume 1

2006-04-10T17:45:00.000-04:00

And now a break from my one-day-old format.

As any regular reader of DCMI knows, I am a huge Washington Post fan. I am always linking to their articles, and my sidebar links to two of their blogs (Howard Kurtz' left-leaning "Media Notes", and Chris Cizilla's right-leaning "The Fix"). They break great news stories, have easily the best website of any MSM paper, and pack it full of online content, interesting columns and blogs, and chats. However, I've had a bone to pick with the Post for a while and I've decided to pick away. And I'm gonna keep picking.

The Post.com has this guy Joel Achenbach blogging every day, an effort he oh-so-cleverly dubs "Achenblog". I think the idea is that he will wittily take on the cultural themes of the day. The problem is, the guy is a loser, he isn't funny, I don't like his ugly face, and I don't like the play he gets on such a massively awesome website. Basically, he stinks and his "Daily Humor and Observations" are worthless. And here's our first example, hopefully of many. That's right, I'm gonna keep reading Achenblog, for the sole purpose of demonstrating to you how untalented this guy is.

(Now, I know my blog is no bastion of brilliant, intelligent discussion. But I do this for free. Achensuck gets paid for his.)

Here's my beef with today's column, in which Achenboner discusses the WGA's 101 Best Screenplays of All Time. First, he opens with something I believe is supposed to be funny called "Today's Screenplay Idea":

"Basic concept is: Intrepid but obscure bathrobe-clad blogger discovers that White House is covering up science data and muzzling scientists involved in a new study of the planet Venus, where surface temperatures approach 900 degrees. Huge spine-tingling revelation: Scientists have discovered source of Venus's thick blanket of carbon dioxide -- strip mines. Unmistakable evidence that, sometime in the distant past, the planet had a thriving coal industry. Also oil fields. Black gold, Texas tea. Blogger breaks story, laughs in face of ossified press corps. But the Military-Industrial Complex and political fiends gang up on blogger, force blogger to get fully dressed and run for life. There's a car chase involving (IRONY ALERT) lots of SUVs pursuing blogger's hybrid.

I SEE BOFFO BOX OFFICE IF WE CAN GET HANKS OR CRUISE OR DENZEL AS THE BLOGGER. OBVIOUSLY A ROLE IN THERE SOMEWHERE FOR FRED THOMPSON."

Say WHAT?! Is this supposed to be funny? Talk about self-absorbed crap. Did I mention I hate this guy?

I'm ugly. Oh, and I'm unfunny for a living.

And now for the kicker. Achendork voices some beef with the WGA list and finds a way to get even further onto my bad side.

"The list strikes me as too inclusive of recent films. With all due respect to the great Charlie Kaufman, it's kind of early to canonize "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Adaptation" and "Being John Malkovich.""

Take Charlie Kaufman's name out of your mouth! It's never too early to canonize three of the greatest screenplays ever written. Charlie Kaufman has poops that I'd rather examine than the funniest column Achenbach has ever come up with.

Die, Achenbutt.

Baby Shower Gone Bad!

2006-04-10T17:03:00.000-04:00

While I've been on hiatus, I've collected a few articles for you to enjoy. This is the first one and it's in fitting with our new Monday theme: Amusement and Laughs. I should point out that I have a rather more cynical and caustic view of "amusement" than some. There are people who think amusement means the film RV starring Robin Williams. I, on the other hand, go for this story from the Boston Globe:

"SPRINGFIELD, Mass. --An argument at a baby shower escalated into a brawl in which one man was shot and the pregnant guest of honor was beaten with a stick, police said.

Three people were arrested after the fight, described by police as a 'baby shower gone bad.'"

A baby shower gone bad?! Some heads-up police officer should have at least gotten name recognition for coining that hilarious phrase.

"Authorities said the shooting victim, Aristotle Garcia, got into a fight with a man who is dating his ex-girlfriend. The argument, over whether the woman let their 5-year-old daughter drink beer, escalated and drew in two other people -- Jazz Rivas and Juan Velazquez, said Police Lt. Cheryl C. Claprood."

Here's my favorite part. As you'll learn, Jazz Rivas is clearly a Teddy Roosevelt devotee.

"When the baby shower's hostess tried to intervene, Rivas began hitting some of the guests, including the 22-year-old mother-to-be, with a large stick, she said.

Velazquez fired a gun in the air, then fired it into the crowd, hitting Garcia in the stomach, according to police. Garcia, 26, was in stable condition at Baystate Medical Center. The mother-to-be, who was seven months pregnant, was treated after the incident Saturday and released.

Velazquez, 19, was arrested Tuesday and charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, armed assault with intent to murder. He pleaded innocent Wednesday and was ordered held on $100,000 bail.

The man Garcia was initially fighting with, Antonio Santiago, 25, pleaded innocent to similar charges Tuesday and was ordered held on $50,000 bail.

Rivas, 22, pleaded innocent to three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and one count of assault and battery on a pregnant female. His bail was set at $10,000."

So let me get this straight. If you get in a fight with your girlfriend's ex, you get tagged with attempted murder and $50 grand bail. If you start beating people - including a pregnant woman - with a stick, you get a slap on the wrist?! Man, Jazz Rivas gets all the breaks.

The moral of the story is, of course, if you see Jazz Rivas wielding a large stick, run for your freakin' lives!

What the ?!@ happened to Caruso?

2006-04-04T21:21:00.000-04:00

Hey there loyal readers, I bet you've been wondering why I've let the fertile plains of DCMI lie fallow for a few weeks. Well, Scott Roxborough of the Hollywood Reporter has your answer. Cannes, baby, Cannes. I'm going to put the headline in big bold text so you can't miss it.

"CSI: Miami" rockets Caruso to worldwide fame

"CANNES - Twelve years after his ill-fated departure from "NYPD Blue," David Caruso can now claim to be one of the biggest Hollywood stars in the world.

His sun-drenched crime drama "CSI: Miami" is a ratings smash from Berlin to Bogota, from Paris to Pretoria. Outside the United States, "CSI: Miami" tops "Lost," "Desperate Housewives" and even the original "CSI" to rank as the most-watched U.S. series around the world.

"In a funny way, we are more resonant in the foreign markets than we are domestically," Caruso, 50, said in an interview at the MIPTV market, where producers sell their wares to foreign TV stations. "That's why I think it is very important to come and connect with the journalists here and viewers here because our relationship with the larger landscape is here."

Indeed, "CSI: Miami" ranks No. 12 so far this season among U.S. viewers aged 18-49, according to Nielsen Media Research. ("American Idol" takes the top two spots, followed by "Desperate Housewives," "Grey's Anatomy" and "CSI.") The drama is currently in its fourth season."

I'm number one, bitch.

"Germany, Europe's largest TV market, provides a typical example of how the "CSI: Miami" machine has conquered foreign lands. The show launched to record ratings on cable channel Vox in 2004 before being nabbed by Vox parent channel, and market leader, RTL. "CSI: Miami" is now the No. 1 series in Germany.

Caruso said he is no longer chasing a dream of a film career -- the reason for his sudden departure from "NYPD Blue" in 1994 -- and that he would be happy to still be doing "CSI: Miami" in five or 10 years time.

"I think I found my niche," Caruso said. "You say, well, you'll be on the show for another five years. I don't see it that way. I see it like, well, I get a chance to do my job for as long as they let me on this show: the daily pursuit of the scene. And that's what I got into this business for in the first place.""

Stay tuned, DCMI fans, because I'm getting ready to unveil a new format that is gonna rock your socks off like Tenacious D at Red Rocks.

Ships in the Night

2006-03-13T12:35:00.000-05:00

Several posts back, I quoted heavily from a Bill Simmons column ripping the league's worst GMs, noting my disdain for the inept Isiah Thomas. A recent NYT article highlighted the train wreck that is the New York Knicks by contrasting them with the Charlotte Bobcats. The two teams are contending for the league's worst record, but as the article by Howard Beck demonstrates, they're hardly headed in the same direction.

"The Charlotte Bobcats (17-45) and the Knicks (17-43) have nearly identical records and absolutely nothing else in common. They are the odd couple in the N.B.A. cellar. By all conventional wisdom, they should not be roommates — or for that matter, living in the same trailer park.

The Bobcats have the league's lowest payroll, $33.5 million; the Knicks have the highest, $125 million. The Knicks have four players making $13 million or more. The Bobcats have none.

The Bobcats have the reigning rookie of the year (Emeka Okafor), a promising rookie point guard (Raymond Felton) and a dynamic swingman (Gerald Wallace), none of them older than 23. The Knicks have two former All-Stars (Steve Francis and Stephon Marbury), both 29, who play the same position and have been traded a total of seven times.

The Bobcats, in their second year of existence, are following a methodical plan to build a contender. The Knicks impatiently bounce from one splashy trade to the next while trying to avoid the worst record in the franchise's 60-year history.

The Bobcats exude hope, the Knicks desperation."

Isiah Thomas baffles me. Does he think he possesses a magical sixth sense when it comes to basketball, a power that enables him to see the hidden value within the drunk Vin Baker, the weak-hearted Eddy Curry, or a proven drag like Marbury?

The unfavorable comparison with the Bobcats is made worse when one considers Charlotte's injury situation. The North Carolinians have suffered more injuries per capita than most NBA teams this season. Meanwhile, the Knicks are mostly healthy, so they really have no excuse. Larry Brown continues to shuffle his lineup like a Vegas dealer, but without any results. And every year, you can count on Isiah to make at least one staggeringly bad trade.

"The Knicks made in-season trades for two veteran scorers, Francis and Jalen Rose, and their expensive, haphazard rebuilding plan became ever more costly and chaotic. The Knicks will be over the salary cap through at least 2009 and thus limited in how they can acquire impact players.

Charlotte is sticking to its disciplined approach: build through the draft, keep the payroll manageable and avoid overpaying for talent. The Bobcats, who as an expansion team could spend only 75 percent of the league's salary cap this season, will be allowed to spend 100 percent next season. They have no plans to do so. They are instead waiting for the summer of 2007 — when LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh will be restricted free agents — to spend their millions.

"We have to be prudent financially," Bickerstaff said, inadvertently drawing another contrast with the Knicks' operating philosophy. "We can't mortgage our future to get that guy at this point in time."

[...]

The Bobcats will be assured of one of the top picks in the June draft. The Knicks, no matter where they finish, will send their No. 1 pick to the Chicago Bulls as part of the Curry deal. But the Knicks can lessen the sting a little if they can keep that pick from being No. 1 over all.

"Yeah, it would matter," Malik Rose said of where the Knicks finish. "We don't want to be associated with the worst. If you're looking at the pick Chicago has, we don't want to finish too far in the basement, because the further down we finish, the higher their pick is.""

So, the Knicks tank the season and Chicago reaps the reward. Conspiracy theorists, explain to me again how David Stern rigs the NBA?

The Young and the clueless

2006-03-10T01:21:00.000-05:00

I resisted the temptation to jump all over Vince Young when he reportedly bombed his Wonderlic test at the NFL combine a week or so ago. In case you're unfamiliar with the term, let my helpful friends at Wikipedia explain it for you:

"The Wonderlic Personnel Test...is an intelligence test primarily known for being administered to prospective players in the National Football League since the 1970s. The Wonderlic is a twelve-minute, fifty-question exam to assess aptitude for learning a job and adapting to solve problems for employees in a wide range of occupations. The score is calculated as the number of correct answers given in the allotted time. A score of 20 is intended to indicate average intelligence (corresponding to an intelligence quotient of 100; to convert scores IQ = 2WPT + 60). It is rumored that at least one player has scored a 1 on the test."

Now, with the exception of one smartypants Harvard punter, nobody's ever gotten a perfect score. Hell, vaunted Philly QB Donovan McNabb scored a paltry, putrid 12, and he didn't turn out too bad. But the early reports had Young at even lower than that number, into the single digits. Eventually, the scores were released, with Young's official number being 16 (equivalent to a 92 IQ).

However, it ultimately came out that on Young's FIRST test, he scored a seven. It was only on a do-over that he managed to come up with a 16. (By contrast, Matt Leinart of USC knocked out a 35; I bet he wishes he could have the same do-over on the Rose Bowl!)

But I didn't attack VY then since he's already burned me one time, upstaging DCMI's appointed golden boy Reggie Bush in Pasadena. The fact is, though, I've long been skeptical of his potential as an NFL QB.

Before Young lit up the USC Trojans on that fateful January day, many (including myself) predicted he'd eventually become an NFL wide reciever. That weird sidearm throwing style...his running abilities and physical size...he seemed like the second coming of Antwan Randle El, not the next Peyton Manning. You can draw a comparison to Michael Vick, but how well is that Ron Mexico experiment working out down in the ATL? I believe Brian Billick said it best on the subject of scrambling quarterbacks: "They're like a beautiful woman - nice to look at, but they'll always abandon you when you need them the most." Vince Young is no different, and looks to me like the next big draft bust waiting to happen if he's put behind center (particularly if he starts right away).

Tunrs out I have company. As an ESPN column today by Jason Whitlock points out, the only way a quarterback can succeed in the League is to apply himself, week after blessed week. And it's more than just his atrocious Wonderlic scores that have teams questioning Young's professionalism and work ethic.

Warning, Longhorn fans: this piece is vicious.

"You have to wonder whether Vince Young knows what job he's applying for, or if he even realizes that he is "applying" for a job.

The NFL doesn't recruit starting quarterbacks. It's not the Marines out looking for a few good men. When it comes to picking its quarterbacks, The League is Halle Berry on Oscar night. She can pick any designer she pleases, and the world's most renowned designers are just grateful for the opportunity to be considered.

Vince Young doesn't get this. He thinks joining the NFL will be similar to joining the NCAA. He mistakenly believes he's holding all (or most of) the cards, and that come April's draft some lucky GM is going to feel like a lottery winner when Vince Young stands next to Paul Tagliabue and pulls on a Saints or Texans or Titans cap.

Vince Young is clueless. And I'm not talking about his score on the Wonderlic test. I'm talking about his understanding of what it takes to make it in the NFL as a quarterback.

Humility is the No. 1 ingredient.

The most prestigious and most difficult job in all of sports -- NFL quarterback -- is played at a high level by the men willing to humble themselves and prepare like each Sunday is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

"I enjoy striking the Heisman pose out of spite.
But I'm not bitter (or immature)."

Whitlock goes on to dissect the many blunders Young has already stumbled into: hiring a totally inexperienced family friend as his agent ("That's not keeping it real. It's foolish and arrogant.")...rolling around everywhere with a posse of homies led by a guy known as "Black"...bombing the Wonderlic...showing up at the White House in casualwear...blowing his chance at the #1 pick thanks to his over-confidence and lack of preparation...

"A starting NFL quarterback is the face of a billion-dollar corporation. He is one of the three or four highest-profile individuals in his city and perhaps in his state. His every move is cussed, discussed and analyzed by millions of people who don't have a clue about playing the position...

Just ask Ryan Leaf or countless other can't-miss prospects. Michael Vick is in the process of getting humbled. He was supposed to reinvent the position. I don't believe the position will ever be reinvented. The guys who have consistent success will always be the guys who prepare the hardest...

It's an honor. So far, Vince Young isn't treating it like an honor. He's treating it like it's his right, granted to him by an MVP performance in the Rose Bowl. You can be a fool and argue that Young proved all he needed to prove in Texas' upset of USC. Hmm. Didn't Redskins running back Tim Smith and Cowboys cornerback Larry Brown have big games on football's biggest stage and later prove to be frauds? And what don't people understand about the concept that NFL quarterbacks have to prove themselves week to week?

Right now Young is proving that he doesn't have the necessary intangibles to thrive as a starting QB. He carries himself like a wide receiver."

Well, when I'm right, I'm right.

The dangers of defending yourself

2006-03-09T03:42:00.000-05:00

You may have heard about the show trial of al-Qaida member Zacarias Moussaoui, now taking place in the shadow of the Pentagon. This guy is a low-level terrorist slime who's on the verge of getting executed. Although he doesn't seem to have had much to do with the 9/11 plot, he was connected to many of the same extremists who planned that attack, and apparently talked airplanes with Osama. He was detained after the people at his flight school got suspicious, but Moussaoui never snitched on Atta et al. Consequently, he'll likely be sentenced to death before too long.

One of the biggest dangers in defending yourself is that when you cross-examine witnesses, they will look at you and tell the jury that you did it. And let's face it, the guys that hang out with Khalid Sheik Mohammed are not exactly rocket scientists. Although he had little to do with 9/11, he isa proud follower of Osama and hates America, so he's a convenient target of prosecution. Moussaoui had zero chance of Perry Mason-ing his way out of a death sentence, which is why the judge forced his counsel back on the job over the defendant's objections.

"Mullah Omar is my hero!"

But while Moussaoui was still representing himself, he had the opportunity to question a witness against him. The results were not too positive, reports the AP:

"Prosecutor Kenneth Karas got Bafana to describe how Jemaah Islamiyah had him provide lodging in 1999 to a visitor he knew only as John.

"He told me he had a dream to fly an airplane into the White House," Bafana said. "He told me he told his dream to the sheik and the sheik told him to go ahead." Bafana explained the sheik was al-Qaida chief bin Laden.

Although he had elicited descriptions that fit known events in Moussaoui's life, Karas rested his direct questioning without having Bafana identify John as Moussaoui. But that government omission was remedied once Moussaoui cross-examined Bafana.

Moussaoui asked Bafana what John looked like.

"He looks exactly like you," Bafana replied.

Moussaoui: "Looks like me or are you certain it's me?"

Bafana: "Certain."

Scrambling to recover, Moussaoui dug himself deeper.

"Maybe somebody looks exactly like me," Moussaoui offered.

"I confirm that it's you," Bafana replied."

The disastrous questioning was reminiscent of the Colin Ferguson defense, and similarly unsuccessful. Ferguson was the madman who gunned down innocent passengers on the Long Island Rail Road in December 1993. Rejecting his attorneys' "black rage" defense, he decided he would be Clarence Darrow for a day.

"Ferguson argued that the 93 counts he was charged with were related to the year 1993, and thus the charges had been fabricated by the prosecution. He also argued that a mysterious black man, with the same residential address, had committed the crimes. Later, he argued that a white man had committed the crimes."

"It wasn't me, it was that other black guy Colin Ferguson!"

Like Moussaoui, Ferguson met his undoing at the hands of witnesses:

"He called witnesses that identified him as the killer, and spoke to them in such a way as to provoke them to reiterate that identification time and again. Reporters described these moments of Ferguson's defense as "bizarre" and "surreal"."

A typical exchange went like this:

Colin: Did you get a view of the killer?
Witness: Yes, I saw YOU.
Colin: And what did the killer do next?
Witness: YOU pointed the gun at me.

The moral of the story: if you did it, and people saw you do it, you really, really should not represent yourself.

Return of the Sop's!

2006-03-08T22:25:00.000-05:00

It's difficult to believe, but The Sopranos are returning on Sunday night to HBO.

Personally, I need to watch the last few episodes from two years ago or so -- other than Adriana getting whacked, I can't for the life of me remember what is going on. But I enjoy the long breaks between Sopranos seasons. It keeps anticipation high and gives David Chase and company plenty of time to perfect their craft.

As we look forward to the season opener in a few days, there's a great WaPo article by David Segal about what it's like to get whacked on the show:

"John Fiore is still pretty miffed about getting killed. The day he learned of his imminent death started with an answering-machine message from David Chase, the executive producer and creator of "The Sopranos." "Can you give me a call?" was all he said, but Chase had never called before. Something was up.

Something good, Fiore assumed. At the time, he had a small, recurring role as a mobster named Gigi Cestone, and he'd been getting more lines and better scenes. Plus, his character would soon be bumped up from soldier to captain in the Soprano family, so why not a promotion in the cast? Fiore was convinced that Chase would offer a contract for a few episodes, if not a whole season.

But when the two spoke on the phone, Chase sounded somber. "This is a call," he said, "that I hate to make."

In an instant, Fiore knew he was a dead man. Well, his character was a dead man, and that meant his "Sopranos" gig was over, which for an actor is like getting whacked for real. Fiore did what anyone would confronting a killer -- he begged for his life.

"I said no, no, no, you do not have to do this," he recalls. "You do not have to do this. You are the writer, you are the producer. This is [bunk]. Kill somebody else!"

Chase was apologetic but unmoved. Nothing personal. It's just what the story demands.

Easing into the acceptance stage of death, Fiore asked how he would expire, and suddenly the news went from merely awful to absurdly awful. "At first," he says, "I thought it was a really bad joke."

It wasn't. Chase wanted Fiore's character to die of a heart attack on the toilet. On the toilet. No machine-gun ambush, like Sonny Corleone, murdered at a tollbooth in "The Godfather." No, for Gigi Cestone, it'd be a coronary on the throne. Does it get more humiliating?

"It was highly disagreeable to me," says Fiore, who sounds surprisingly bitter, five years after he left the show. "But David said, 'No, this is memorable, this is different.' " So Fiore sucked it up, died on cue, and on his last day, the cast and crew handed him a signed toilet seat, which he didn't find very amusing. A year or so later, he ran into Chase, who asked if the "Sopranos" stint had helped his career.

"I said, actually, it didn't help me at all. And my kids have to listen to people in school say, 'Ha ha, your dad died on the toilet.' ""

After a long day of collecting the vig, this guy was pooped.

Unlike most TV shows, The Sopranos routinely kills off its characters. Tony's best friend, Big Pussy, was gunned down in the second season finale. Richie Aprile was shot in the heart by Tony's sister Janice. His brother Jackie died of cancer early on in the series. Jackie Jr. took a bullet in the back of the head in Boonton. The list goes on.

""Everyone there is always wondering, 'Am I'm going to be killed next?' " says David Proval, who played Richie Aprile, the yoga-practicing ex-con who starred in the second season. Proval found the anxiety a little exhausting, and says it shadows even actors in Tony Soprano's inner circle.

"I remember once we were standing around on the set, and we saw this prop guy standing on top of a truck," Proval says. "Now, the prop guys, they often would find out who would be killed before anyone else, because they have to build things to get ready to shoot those scenes. Well, I was standing with Michael Imperioli," who plays Christopher Moltisanti, Tony's trigger-happy nephew, "and this guy looked at us and he sort of pretended to slit his throat with his hand. You know, the 'You're dead' sign. And Michael screamed, 'Hey, what did I do?' And the funny part was, he meant it. He was really nervous."

You can plead with Chase for your life, as many actors have, but it won't help. From the beginning, "The Sopranos" has remained mercilessly true to the underworld it so faithfully chronicles, a realm where death is as common as good cannoli."

Perhaps more compelling than the tales of the whacked is what Segal uncovers about killings that DIDN'T happen:

"What Chase has heard from actors is lots of special requests: Don't let me die a snitch; massacre me; spare me so I can spin off the character for another show. The campaigning never works. On the other hand, there are characters he considered killing and then didn't.

"The Angel of Death has paused over certain people's heads, but moved on," he says with a mischievous grin. "Like Junior," who conspires against Tony in Season 1. "Tony probably should have killed him, because he was a threat, but nobody was up for that, because Dominic [Chianese] is just so good, and those scenes with Tony are everybody's favorite. Plus, the people we consult with who actually know this world, they said it was plausible to give the guy a pass because he was family.""

Who could sign a death warrant for Uncle Jun?

After a character is written off the show and killed onscreen, the cast typically assembles for a last meal in Little Italy. And on occasion, a dead cast member will return for a dream sequence or two, and in one case, playing the twin brother of the departed. But even those comebacks prove bittersweet, as one first-season villain testifies:

"Al Sapienza, who played Mikey Palmice, the dapper thug who helps Junior scheme against Tony in Season 1, went back to deliver a single line in a dream sequence a few years after he was pumped full of lead in a muddy gulch. Everything had changed. When "The Sopranos" debuted, nearly all the actors were unknowns and struggling.

"Now, they're rich and they can't walk into a CVS without 50 people attacking them," Sapienza says, sighing. "And I'm dead. I'm gone."

Sapienza has worked steadily since he took those 22 bullets in a New Jersey forest, but like a lot of the "Sopranos" dead, life after the show has been busy but duller than life during. Just as bad, his characters keep meeting a grisly end.

"I was on '24,' and I was tortured to death with a power drill," Sapienza says. "People must hate me.""

Read the whole story -- it's as close as you're gonna get to a true Sopranos fix. Only a few days remain until we'll have the real thing on our hands!

Paula-tics: when will they cease?

2006-03-03T16:30:00.000-05:00

Another ratings-grabbing episode of American Idol, another opportunity for Paula Abdul to make a total and complete ass of herself.

Last season, you will remember, ABC ran an expose of Paula's nefarious ways, in particularly how she "mentored" contestant Corey Clark, spoonfeeding him Randy Jackson's favorite songs to perform, and allegedly performing with him in more ways than one. (Clark, of course, recounts it all in his classic tune "Paula-tics".) Although Fox did a token investigation, they ultimately cleared Abdul of any wrongdoing.

This didn't stop her from later rear-ending some innocent citizen on the 101, allegedly while high on pills, and then fleeing the scene. Thanks to the wonders of the camera phone, Paula was brought to justice nonetheless.

Now there's a new scandal in AI-town, and even the unflappable Seacrest was left astonished at the latest development. The Boston Herald lays it all out there:

"Paula Abdul - make rehab your own.

The “American Idol” judge was incoherent on last night’s live telecast, bumbling lines and giggling like she’d just emerged from a Grateful Dead concert, leaving audiences, contestants and host Ryan Seacrest more confused than a homophobic Clay Aiken fan.

When Seacrest asked Abdul why two contestants received the fewest votes, she mumbled, head in hands, “Simon said because one of them ate pizza and the other ate salad.”

A shocked Seacrest responded, “You guys realize we’re on the air?”

Abdul got it together for a few minutes, but during the second round of cuts, she was back to her odd behavior.

“What did you tell me Simon?” she said, slurring her words. “What did you tell me? Simon gave me advice and said on “The X Factor” he always refers to a fortune cookie and says the moth who finds the melon - (laugher) - finds the corn flake always finds the melon and one of you didn’t pick the right fortune.”

Huh?

Seacrest wasn’t happy, but fellow judges Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell seemed amused at Abdul’s impersonation of a high teenager.

“I’m going to send the judges to be grounded,” Seacrest said at the end of the show."

[The article is by Laura Beckham Falcone, whose name seems like shorthand for a particularly esoteric night of television watching; start with the Preminger noir, flip over to the Keira Knightley comedy, and finish off the evening with the DVD of the ill-fated CBS Donnie Brasco rip-off.]

Sports Guy's Hallucinations

2006-02-26T12:51:00.000-05:00

One of my preferred Internet columnists, ESPN's Bill "Boston Sports Guy" Simmons, delivered a good column this weekend in which he imagines moderating the first-ever Atrocious GM Summit, composed of the NBA's most disastrous GMs. In the column, foolhardy managers of cap space like Isiah Thomas, Billy King and Mitch Kupchak openly admit their idiocies and are playfully castigated by Simmons, who ultimately tries to lure the panel back to his house for a high-stakes poker game.

Here are some highlights of this clever column, beginning with the mea culpa of Lakers boss Kupchak, with some comments from the league's worst GM, the Knicks' Thomas:

"Simmons: Mitch, when you took over the Lakers, you had the best two players in the league and could have won 10 straight titles with the right moves. Instead, you couldn't get it done. Then you traded Shaq for 30 cents on the dollar; you gave cap-killing contracts to run-of-the-mill guys like Chris Mihm and Devean George; you blew all of your draft picks; you wasted the next three to four years of Kobe's prime by drafting a high school center over someone like Danny Granger, who could have helped right away; and then, you outdid yourself by trading Caron Butler and Chucky Atkins' useful expiring contract for Kwame Brown. But the Shaq-Kobe saga overshadowed everything; you haven't gotten enough credit for being a complete debacle. Does that bother you?

Kupchak: I'd be lying if I said it didn't. When we made the Kwame trade, I was thinking to myself, "This is it, this is the one, now maybe people will start talking about me." Well, it didn't happen. Then the season starts, and Kwame's just a complete stiff … still, nothing. Then Phil [Jackson] goes on the record and calls Kwame a "p----." Nothing. People in Los Angeles just don't care. When you look at what I've done in L.A., it's amazing, really. I traded the best center in the history of basketball 19 months ago, and all we have to show for it is an unhappy Lamar Odom, Kwame and Brian Grant's eight-figure buyout. And yet, nobody mentions me. No offense, Isiah, but you don't realize how lucky you are -- when you screw up, everyone goes crazy. I built a team in which Smush Parker is our third-best player and the 10th-best guy on the Clippers would play 40 minutes a night for us -- yet does anyone ever talk about me? Of course not. It pisses me off.

Mitch Kupchak

Thomas: And that's one of the reasons I wanted to work for the Knicks. When I screwed up in Toronto, nobody cared. When I ran the CBA into the ground, nobody cared. When I coached the Pacers and lost a series to Boston in which we had 10 of the best 12 players, nobody cared. In New York, they care. Right now, I'm working on a trade with Orlando where we give up Penny Hardaway's expiring deal and Trevor Ariza for Steve Francis. It's an illogical trade in every respect -- Francis' contract is terrible, there's no way he'll mesh with the other guys, he's never won anything, he gives us the same problems that Marbury gives us, it's a disaster right out of the gate. And that's what makes it so great. When we pull this trade off, New York fans might actually riot. I'm not kidding.

Kupchak: Sure, Isiah, rub it in."

You'd think the league's most notoriously bad GMs would show a propensity for horrible draft picks, but Simmons illustrates that this is actually not so:

"Simmons: Let's talk about the draft, guys. What are some strategies there? Worst guy available? Taking someone at a position where you already have someone?

[76ers GM Billy] King: See, that's where you're wrong. It's always better to make good picks in the draft -- this way, your fans can become attached to them, then you can trade them for inferior guys with bad contracts. Plus, it throws the media off your scent a little bit. I would much rather draft a decent guy, then trade him down the road, or overpay him with a crazy contract that makes no sense or kills my cap space. If you're openly tanking draft picks, it's too obvious.

Thomas: I agree, Billy. If you look at what I've done over the years, I always drafted well: Stoudamire, T-Mac, Camby, Frye, Ariza … you want to stockpile as many assets as possible, only because it gives you more options to do something dumb.

[Former Raptors GM Rob] Babcock: I couldn't agree more. That's the single-biggest mistake I made with the Araujo pick. In retrospect, I should have taken Igoudala, kept him for a year, then traded him last summer for Joel Przybilla and immediately given him an $85 million contract extension. Oh, well. You live and you learn.

[Twolves GM Kevin] McHale: I'm kicking myself right now … I wish someone had told me this before I drafted Ndudi Ebi and William Avery!

(Everyone laughs.)"

Simmons and I both love former Celtic Kevin McHale, one of the best post players in the history of the NBA, but the tough-but-fair Sports Guy can't resist taking shots at the Minnesota GM in between the fusillade of acumen assassination he lays on Isiah Thomas.

"Isiah: The key is to make people believe you're trying something that's never been done before. In my case, I always try to acquire the best guy in the trade, regardless of whether it's a good deal or not -- then I can say I'm "stockpiling assets," which throws people off the trail a little bit. Then, I like to float big names to reporters … like right now, I'm making it seem like KG is a possibility for us, and that's why I'm gathering all of these assets. But I don't have a chance in hell of getting KG. If Minnesota trades KG, it's going to be for cap space, picks and young players, and we can't give them two of those three things. So they would never deal with us ---.

McHale: I wouldn't be so sure about that!

Isiah: Really?

McHale: Have you seen some of the moves I have made? Name another GM who cost his team three first-round picks because he wanted to sign someone like Joe Smith to a max contract under the table! Name me another GM who would have willingly traded for Mark Blount, or given huge contracts to Marko Jaric and Troy Hudson, or signed sketchy character guys like Michael Olowokandi and Eddie Griffin! You don't think I would give KG away in a terrible trade? You're crazy! I resent that!

Isiah: I didn't mean to offend you-.

McHale: Well you did!

Kevin McHale

Simmons: Kevin, let's talk about the Joe Smith debacle. What delighted me wasn't how you lost the picks, but that you were ready to give a max contract to the likes of Joe Smith. Does it hurt your feelings that nobody remembers how dumb this was?

McHale: Of course, of course. At the time, Joe was a guy who gave you 13 points and eight rebounds a game -- solid, but not spectacular. We were willing to pay him twice as much as he was worth, we cheated, we got caught, we lost all those picks … and you never hear this mentioned. If we were a big-market team? Different story.

[...]

Isiah Thomas

Thomas: That's why, as I said before, I like to float out rumors that we're "arming ourselves with assets" to make a run at guys we could never realistically get -- like KG, Kobe or LeBron -- because it gives our fans hope. They think we have a chance at those guys, when the teams that actually have a chance are the Bulls, Clippers, Hornets, Bobcats, Celtics or anyone else with valuable young players and multiple picks. You really think I could get KG this summer for Jalen's contract, Channing Frye, David Lee and a 2012 No. 1 pick? Come on.

McHale: You're doing it again, it's like you're deliberately testing me.

Thomas: Whoops, my bad.

McHale (hushes voice): Wait, Jalen, Frye, Lee and a 2012 pick … would that be an unprotected pick?

Simmons: Guys, guys, wait until after the summit."

The Summit also features the thoughts of former GMs like Knicks ex Scott Layden, who bemoans his failings in the face of the much more disastrous Thomas tenure.

"Simmons: Scott Layden, you were really a pioneer of sorts in terms of screwing up cap space and taking on terrible contracts.

Layden: Why thank you.

Simmons: You traded for cap-killers like Glen Rice, Luc Longley, Travis Knight, Shandon Anderson and Howard Eisley. You gave Allan Houston $100 million when he couldn't have gotten more than $71 million anywhere else. You gave Charlie Ward $28 million. You traded Marcus Camby and a lottery pick that could have been Amare Stoudamire for Antonio McDyess and his bum knee. By the time you got canned, they were a lottery team. Looking back, did you go overboard? Were you too incompetent?

Layden: Oh, absolutely. There's an art to being an atrocious GM -- you can't just destroy a team without leaving any semblance of hope. By the time I got fired, we had one of the highest payrolls in the league and no real assets other than Houston and Sprewell, who weren't even All-Stars. So Knicks fans were depressed, but even worse, they couldn't look at the team and say, "Well, this guy's a name, and we have this guy, and maybe we can trade this guy … " All the hope had been beaten out of them.

To me, that's the beauty of what Isiah has been able to pull off. Casual hoops fans can look at the Knicks' roster and say, "Wow, we have Marbury, Eddy Curry and Jalen Rose?!" Diehard fans can look at the roster and say, "This is just crazy enough that it might work," or "Maybe we can package some of these guys for a superstar." So there's a little bit of hope there, even if it's misguided, ridiculous and inane. When I was there? No hope whatsoever. And that was my biggest mistake.

Simmons: So you like what Isiah has done?

Layden: Hell, yeah. Take the Francis trade, if it happens: Logically, it makes no sense because Francis and Marbury are the same player -- expensive, shoot-first point guards with huge entourages and attitude problems who have never won anything. Even if you're getting Francis for nothing, it still makes no sense on paper."

Bill Simmons writes cleverly and well on both baseball and football, but he's at his best discussing the NBA, bringing double barrels of humor and knowledge. What other NBA writers can hilariously rip on Elgin Baylor and Isiah (both of whom have publicly stated they'd like to kick Simmons' ass) while still constructing brilliantly thought-out lists of NBA trades that truly should happen and analyzing the true value of pro ballers? Stephen A. Smith, eat your heart out.

Anarchy at the Hall of Fame

2006-02-25T16:03:00.000-05:00

Every year, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland (of all places) inducts a new group of members. (I believe the protocol is that 20 years must have passed since the musician or group released a debut album.) This year, the group includes bat-eating Ozzy Osbourne, cracker-hating jazz genius Miles Davis, and the high priests of punk nihilism, the Sex Pistols. But the latter won't be showing up, according to the Hollywood Reporter:

"The Sex Pistols have opted out on appearing at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The groundbreaking English punk rock group officially declined the honor -- to be handed out March 13 at a dinner and performance at the Waldorf Astoria in New York -- in a crudely scrawled, mispunctuated handwritten message posted on the band's Web site Friday."

Here's the note:

On The Road Again

2006-02-16T11:45:00.000-05:00

Hi folks, Caruso's got a big move ahead of him so this blog may be silent for the next week and a half or so. Be patient - I will be back and rocking again.

Anaheim no more

2006-02-15T14:51:00.000-05:00

It's a done deal - Orange County CA's baseball team is now officially the Los Angeles Angels.

The team attempted the name change before the start of last season, and as has been noted on this page before, they immediately faced legal challenges from the city of Anaheim that have only just concluded. The fact is that the Angels play far outside Los Angeles - despite the fact that LA is a huge, sprawling city - and their fan base is almost entirely based in the Orange County suburbs. The sufficently vague "California Angels" was probably the best name this team has sported, but why not dub themselves the Orange County Angels, OC Angels for short? As the team explains, it's all a matter of revenue...and of the expansive ambitions of owner Arte Moreno.

Here's more on the final capitulation of Anaheim:

"ANAHEIM, Calif. - The City Council has decided it won't immediately appeal a jury verdict that allowed the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim baseball team to keep its new name.

The city sued the Angels in January 2005 after owner Arte Moreno changed the team's name from the
Anaheim Angels to make the most of the nation's second-largest media market. A jury decided last week that Moreno's name change didn't violate a stadium lease agreement or state law, as the city had alleged.

On Tuesday, council members said they will wait until a March 2 hearing before Orange County Superior Court Judge Peter Polos to decide whether to appeal. Polos could still order an injunction requiring the team to drop its new name.

"This is not about monetary damages. This is about getting our name back," Mayor Curt Pringle said after the council discussed the matter in closed session.

The city spent millions of dollars in legal fees. City officials have said the expense was worth it because Anaheim lost at least $100 million in publicity and tourism revenue when Moreno added Los Angeles to the team's name. The city had asked the jury for about $373 million in damages."

Meanwhile, one wonders if the Dodgers - who continued to list the Angels as "ANA" on their out-of-town scoreboards throughout the 2005 season - will capitulate. Personally, I hope they continue their snide dis of the junior circuit's representatives, even if the Angels have it all over them on the field...

Let the cheating begin!

2006-02-14T13:21:00.000-05:00

You innocents out there might think Feb. 14th means a day of love and romance, but America's private eyes know better. See, Valentine's Day is the start of the "cheating season", a time when philandering spouses get nailed by their significant others. There have been a number of amusing stories about this phenomenon but the Washington Post comes correct today with a passel of quality anecdotes.

"It's the day most cheaters dread and the day many cheaters get caught. The spouse and the side dish both want attention, and, during the juggling act, the two-timer slips, right in front of a private eye's camera lens.

Most private investigators are booked solid today. They probably worked all day yesterday and will be catching up on work tomorrow. It's the time of year most of their cases begin or end.

Take the Georgetown wife. She was as cool as the February day that brought her to the Progressive Security Consultants detective agency. Attractive, confident and calculating, the lady had the goods on her cheating husband.

"I know he's meeting her here. On Valentine's Day," she told the private investigators, handing them a slip of paper with the address of a swanky District restaurant. "He has reservations for two that night. And they're not with me."

It was exactly the kind of case that investigators Joe McCann and Dwayne Stanton like: tidy, neat like Scotch. The romance was gone; the drama, minimal. The lady was sharp and detached, and she knew her husband had been seeing this other woman for a while. All she needed now was proof for the divorce. She wanted to keep the Georgetown townhouse, after all.

McCann went first. He has most buildings on that block wired, so someone on the inside let him onto the roof across the street from the restaurant. "It gives me the best view, and nobody sees me. I've got the telephoto," he said. He shrugged into his cashmere overcoat, pulled up the collar and took his position.

The cheating husband was there, right on time. The woman was there, too, just as classy as the Washington mistress of a high-powered lawyer should look. They kissed. Click. Click. Click. It was on film, and McCann's work was done.

After dinner, Mr. Unfaithful dropped off the mistress, but he didn't go home. He took some wild turns left and right, with Stanton behind him trying to keep up, then pulled up in front of an apartment building in Mount Pleasant. A much younger woman dressed in a funky, sexy bar-hopping tank and low-rider jeans came outside and slipped into the car. They went to a crowded bar nearby. With the live music blaring and the shots lined up on the bar, the lawyer had his second assignation of the night. Neither the wife nor the classy mistress knew about that one."

Here's the tale of the cheater who goes against the grain:

"Sometimes, it's inaction on Valentine's Day that's the tip-off. Take the case of the 80-year-old cheater. He spent a lot of time at his country club, playing golf. He was there more than his girlfriend would have liked. She was also in her golden years and admired the athleticism of her octogenarian, so she didn't ride him about it.

One Valentine's Day, she found a receipt for a necklace. All day, she waited and waited for the present, preparing to act surprised. But the necklace never showed. The long days on the links were beginning to look a little more suspicious. She took the case to Fred Owen, a private eye for the Maryland branch of Capitol Inquiries Inc., a D.C. investigations company.

A day or so later, Owen tailed the man after he left his country club. "He took us on a crazy, 70-miles-per-hour trip around the Beltway," Owen remembered. After an exit and some turns, he slowed and pulled in front of a small single-family home. He opened the garage door and pulled in.

A much younger woman greeted him inside. They kissed.

Owen raced back to the office to run the property records on the house, wondering who this younger woman was, figuring he was close to nailing the case.

But the house was in the man's name. After more digging, he finally found out who the younger woman was: his wife.

"Turns out, the older woman who hired us was the mistress. Boy, she was mad when she found all that out," Owen said."

And now for my favorite story from the case files:

"That night, the dark Mercedes Benz SL pulled out of the lawyer's building and went to the woman's office. The mistress slipped into the car, and they pulled off. Robinson checked her makeup. The private eyes wondered whether they'd be eating steak or lobster that night.

They tailed them for just a few blocks until the Benz unexpectedly pulled into a dark parking lot behind a nondescript building. The engine was cut, and the luxury German car began to shake. Click. Click. Click. The photos were done, the case closed. No appetizers, no cocktails.

"We were thinking, maybe a romantic, nice dinner. Maybe a nice hotel," Robinson said. "It was cold that night. And it was just a parking lot. The cheapness of it all, that got me. The wife was lucky to get rid of this guy.""

As it turns out, there's a cold hard logic behind the concept of 'cheating season' - after the family-oriented holidays, romance heats up in earnest.

"The lunch hour on Valentine's Day is when private investigator Viola Russell works her best cases. "It's always between 11 and 2 that they take care of business," said Russell, who moonlights as a security guard from October to February, the dry period outside the "cheating season."

"I can see it in my books. Business dies down around Thanksgiving, when they all have to spend time with their families. And Christmas and New Year's. That's when they can't cheat. They've got to put in time with the family," she said.

"But here it is, Valentine's Day. For me, it's the first day of the cheating season."

In 15 years of working cases, most of them unfold like the one a few years ago, when a woman discovered her man's cell phone records burning up with his old flame's number and found Russell's name in the yellow pages.

"The wife wanted to stop by her husband's office for lunch on Valentine's Day. But he told her he'd be busy, he couldn't do lunch. He had a meeting," Russell said. "She knew what was up. She hired me to follow him."

Sure enough, the meeting happened right at the lunch hour, not in a boardroom but at the Courtyard Marriott on Connecticut Avenue NW. The man left his office, picked up the woman at the Dupont Circle Metro station and headed to the hotel, where they walked past the green awning and into a marble lobby. They checked in under her name. Whirrrrrr. It was all on video. The "lunch" in the hotel lasted three hours, Russell said.

Russell delivered the video to the wife and waited for the call from a divorce lawyer that usually follows these cases. "Turns out, it never came. The woman didn't want a divorce," Russell said.

"See, she had a boyfriend of her own. She just wanted something in her back pocket, in case she ever got caught.""

The Dope Rhymes of J.J. Redick

2006-02-13T12:41:00.000-05:00

I thought about a lot of topics this morning, including Dick Cheney capping some guy in Texas, the fulfillment of my Art Shell prophecy, or a protracted dis on Michelle Kwan. Then I stumbled across this gem on the web, and all those plans went out the window.

Like the ballroom-dancing Matt Leinart, Duke gunner J.J. Redick isn't just an athlete, he's a sensitive soul. He doesn't just keep his annoying team alive by dropping mad jumpers on the opposition, he also busts mad rhymes in his creative writing classes. Yes, that's right, J.J. Redick is a poet.

Without further ado:

"My life story is read in poetic stages
I was once weak-minded, now I'm courageous
The cause and effect of a thousand actions
The mathematical breakdown of micro-fractions
It's difficult to fathom the coming of the rapture
What if I awoke in an empty pasture?
Suddenly every ounce of passion had been depleted
And all my determination had been defeated
The rain pours, my tears fall
The pain subsides, I stand in awe
A lightning bolt strikes, I feel a sudden energy
Thunder clouds approach, I can't run from destiny
A tornado tears me down, but I will stand again
My life is a hurricane, but I'll weather it to the end"

In this work, we see Redick shifting tenses more prolifically than he bombs 3's. Easily the best part of this one is when he references the Rapture out of nowhere, then, in a moment of nonsequitur, wonders just what it would be like to awake in an empty pasture. Yeah, what WOULD that be like? One can only wonder...

This guy won't submit to the evil of society's frame!

As you'll see, this isn't the only religious reference in Redick's work. Peep this one, which features a conversation with the big man himself:

"I can't see what my future has in store
but I move forth with the strength of a condor
The courage of a warrior
The commitment of an American soldier
Despite this weight on my shoulder
my inner forces circulate to form
a nucleus of an unbreakable bond
These words describe the soundtrack to my life's song
My mind and body united like the Colors of Benneton
My destiny isn't told by the creases of my palm
A sharp thorn once cut my soul
The blood flowed
But no bandage would cover the wound
I couldn't help but stare at the distant moon
Waiting for a resolution to come at an instant soon
I asked the Lord, "What am I to do?"
He said, "Son, I made the sky blue
The rain falls because of me
Leaves change colors on a fall tree
I was the inspiration to Martin Luther King
I'm the reason Ray Charles could sing
I've changed others through and through
And my son, I'll do the same to you"

My mind and body united like the Colors of Benetton?!

It's easy to dwell on the absurd minutiae of that pseudo-sonnet, but I've decided to move forward with the strength of a condor to the next poem.

"Ten minutes pass without a notice
Nine times in my life I've felt hopeless
Eight friends I've lost on purpose
Seven broken bones my skeleton felt were worthless
Six days of work, but only one day of worship
Five ways I feel pain, but that's only on the surface
Four corners of the earth, all touched by God's churches
Three sisters have influenced my poetic verses
Two years that I completely lost focus
One brother for which I wrote this
Ten minutes pass without a notice"

Nice concept, Redick, I especially liked it when Method Man made it up!

OK, one more, just because these are so classic.

"As I decide to fulfill my life's strategy
The devil insists on trying to battle me
I meet him in an empty field on the high plains
He throws temptations my way to inflict internal pain
Life and death matters, this ain't no game
It's mind over matter, the power of my brain
He thinks I'll give in if my muscles start to strain
He believes I'll submit to the evil of society's frame
And benefit from notoriety's gain
He says I don't have to properly train
and that he'll give me all the fame
and everyone will know my name
But I think he's insane
'Cause I know the truth- to gain is to give
To have pain is to live
So I call on my heavenly Father's name
And slowly watch the thunder and rain subside
I'm finally able to push the temptations aside
I went blow for blow, I went face to face
Now the devil knows, I'm able to escape
Not by a back door or an alternate route
I saw the middle high ground and I ran right through"

Not to nitpick, but anyone with a remote grasp of biblical literature knows the the Devil don't bring storms, God do.

I found these poems through Sportsfilter, and I couldn't let this one go without including the hilarious comment of one of the regulars, Yerfatma:

"At the risk of sounding rude, I think W.B. Yeats has a better jump shot than this kid has a sense of meter. And Yeats is dead."

Al Davis, hero?!

2006-02-10T21:09:00.000-05:00

Mark Maske opines today that the iconoclastic, much-loathed Oakland Raiders owner, Al Davis, has a chance to become the toast of football as he continues his lengthy search for a head coach:

"Al Davis, of all people, has a chance to be the NFL's savior this offseason.

Davis, the renegade owner of the Oakland Raiders who has opposed the league in litigation so often that it is a virtual hobby for him, can be the one to spare his fellow team owners and NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue from further embarrassment on the diversity-hiring issue.

All he has to do is hire Art Shell as his coach.

And his alternatives are rapidly dwindling.

The Raiders lost a top coaching candidate on Thursday when Pittsburgh Steelers offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt withdrew his name from consideration, a day after interviewing with Davis in the Bay Area. The Steelers' run to a Super Bowl title has made Whisenhunt a coveted head-coaching candidate league-wide, and he apparently believes he can wait a year and get a more attractive job that doesn't entail having to negotiate a contract with Davis or working for him.

Al Davis

The Raiders reportedly made another push late Wednesday to hire a college coach, Bobby Petrino of Louisville, but he declined. Petrino apparently has been the Raiders' preferred candidate for several weeks, but they've been unable to convince him to make the jump to the NFL.

That makes it five Raiders' candidates who have either taken other jobs or withdrawn from consideration. Al Saunders became the offensive coordinator of the Washington Redskins. Rod Marinelli took the Detroit Lions' head-coaching job, and Mike Martz became Marinelli's offensive coordinator.

That leaves three still-available candidates who have interviewed with the Raiders -- Shell, San Diego Chargers wide receivers coach James Lofton and Oakland's quarterbacks coach, John Shoop. It's possible that the Raiders will make a run at Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator Jim Fassel, the former head coach of the New York Giants.

But it appeared when Shell interviewed with Davis last Friday that he had become the fall-back choice. The Hall of Fame offensive tackle for the Raiders coached the team between 1989 and '94, compiling a regular-season record of 54-38. He reached the playoffs three times in five full seasons as the club's coach and guided it to an AFC title game. Davis has expressed regret about firing Shell, and the once-proud franchise has had only three winning seasons since Shell's exit. The Raiders have a combined record of 13-35 over the past three seasons, including 9-23 in two seasons under the recently fired Norv Turner. Shell always was eager to get another head-coaching chance but couldn't land a job, and he now works for the league office.

Art Shell

The Raiders are the last NFL team with a head-coaching vacancy. Either Shell or Lofton, if he's hired by Davis, would be only the second black coach among the 10 new head coaches appointed league-wide this offseason. The lack of diversity among the nine coaches hired previously has drawn criticism from Tagliabue, NFL Players Association chief Gene Upshaw and the leaders of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, the group formed to promote minority hiring at all levels of the league. The hiring of Shell or Lofton by the Raiders would give the NFL an all-time-high seven black head coaches next season, and would make this the fourth straight hiring cycle since the league implemented its minority interviewing rule that the number of black coaches increased. The rule -- known as the "Rooney Rule" for Steelers owner Dan Rooney, the head of the NFL's workplace diversity committee -- requires each club with a head-coaching vacancy to interview at least one minority candidate.

But the rule imposes no hiring requirements on the teams. Tagliabue, Upshaw and John Wooten, the chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, said in recent weeks they were confident that all the clubs with coaching vacancies had followed the Rooney Rule properly, but they were puzzled about why more minority coaches hadn't been hired. The leaders of the Fritz Pollard Alliance were particularly perplexed about the hirings of 34-year-old New England Patriots defensive coordinator Eric Mangini by the New York Jets and San Francisco 49ers offensive coordinator Mike McCarthy, who oversaw the league's last-ranked offense this season, by the Green Bay Packers.

But they remained optimistic because they'd noticed a trend the past three years of the last head coach who was hired being a minority coach. If that trend continues this offseason, many people around the league will breathe a sigh of satisfaction and relief."

"He gave a hand job to a manta ray!"

2006-02-08T16:47:00.000-05:00

Does anybody remember the Bill Brasky skits on SNL? Somebody mentioned them on LA Craigslist this afternoon and I cracked up thinking about them. These skits, written by the guys behind Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, were so absurd I'm hard-pressed to sum them up. Luckily for me, Wikipedia gets the job done...

"Bill Brasky is a mostly unseen fictional character from a series of sketches on the television sketch comedy program Saturday Night Live between 1996 and 1998. The format of these sketches was as follows: Three or four men get loudly drunk in a bar, hotel restaurant, Little League game, or other semi-public place and reminisce about Bill Brasky's superhuman accomplishments, usually focused on his virility, celebrity connections, and his reckless disregard for human life. Typically, the three cycle through the same genres of comment four or five times: one man will recount a tall tale about Brasky, the second will expound on the benefits of expense accounts, the third will hit on a waitress, the first will drunkenly blurt out something embarrassing, and then the cycle will repeat starting with the second salesman, getting more outrageous each time around. After a few minutes of this Bill Brasky himself will appear, via a forced perspective shot and either demand or offer everyone scotch, ending the skit...Cast member Will Ferrell and writer Adam McKay wrote these sketches."

Now for some highlights from the Brasky sketches:

1/20/1996 (Airport bar)

* "Did you know Bill Brasky is the godfather of my son? He shows up at the church in his golf pants, caked in mud. Well, ol' Bill Brasky pushes the priest aside and says, 'I'll baptize that piece of calamari!' Then he pours Scotch all over my baby son and says, 'There! You're baptized!' The boy is blind to this day!"
* "Did I ever tell you about the time Bill Brasky sold me into slavery? He puts me on a ship to Thailand, right? And I'm chained to a pipe. Meanwhile, ol' Brasky, he's back in the States siring three beautiful children with my wife!"
* "Did I ever tell you about the time Bill Brasky showed up at my daughter's wedding? You know my daughter, she's a beautiful girl. Well, Brasky shows up and you know he's a big fella. Well, he's standing right between me and my daughter at the ceremony. He's got no right to be there, but he's drunk and he's Brasky! Well, long story short: the priest accidentally marries me and Brasky! We spend the weekend in the Poconos — he loved me like I've never been loved before!"
* "You know how Brasky served three tours in 'Nam? Well, I'm in Corpus Christi on business a month ago, and I had this eight-foot tall Asian waiter which made me a little curious, so I asked him his name, and sure enough it's Ho Tran Brasky!"
* "I went camping with Brasky, his wife, and his daughter Debbie! Debbie Brasky. She's 7-years-old, goes about 3'5", 55 pounds. So, I'm in the back of a pickup with Bill Brasky and a live deer! Well, Brasky, he grabs the deer by the antlers, looks at it and says, "I'm Bill Brasky! Say it!" Then he squeezes the deer in such a way that a sound comes out of its mouth - "Billbrasky!" It wasn't exactly it, but it was pretty good for a deer!"
* "I once saw him eat a whole live chicken."
* "Bill Brasky once gave me a videotape of him having sex with my wife, and it was the most beautiful damn thing I ever saw!"
* "To Bill Brasky! A ten-foot-tall, two-ton son of a bitch who could eat a hammer and take a shotgun blast standing!"

3/16/1996 (Holiday Inn)

* "Did I ever tell you about the time Bill Brasky forced me to wear a woman's bikini around the office? Brasky tears off my clothes and makes me wear this skimpy bikini. For the next three months I had to conduct my business wearing a woman's bathing suit. I would cry from shame and question my manhood daily. But at the end of the quarter, I'll be damned if my sales hadn't tripled."
* "He'll eat a homeless person if you dare him."
* "One time I asked Brasky to dress up like Santa for a Christmas party I was throwing for my children. Yeah, that's them, that's them. Well Brasky shows up as Santa, reaches into his bag and says, 'I've got goodies for you kids.' He proceeds to hand out scrap metal and cigarettes to them. Then he takes off his beard and says 'There is no Santa 'cause I ate him.'"
* "He sheds his skin once a year."
* "I once saw him scissor kick Angela Lansbury."
* "Did I ever tell you about the time I went horseback riding with Brasky, but there weren't any horses around? Well, Brasky throws a saddle on my back and rides me around Wyoming for three days. Well wouldn't you know it my stamina increases with each day and I develop tremendous leg muscles. So anyway, Brasky decides to enter me in the Breeders Cup, right? Under the name Turkish Delight. And I'm running in second place, and I'm running and I break my ankle! They’re about to shoot me. Then someone from the crowd yells out, God bless him, 'Don't shoot him — he's a human.'"
* "His favorite TV movie is The Boy in the Plastic Bubble starring John Travolta!
* "You know he jumped off the Empire State Building this one time and he only sprained his ankle."
* "Like an alligator, he can fully digest a turtle shell."

2/22/1997 (Funeral)

* "He had a four day heart attack! ...Yeah, a day for every chamber! ...When they did the autopsy, they said his heart was like a basketball filled with ricotta cheese! ...They found sixty dollars in change in his stomach!
* "I remember one time Brasky took his family to Sea World... they were watching Shamu the whale when Brasky got splashed! So Brasky yells, 'I'm Bill Brasky and no one gets me wet!' So he climbs into the tank, grabs Shamu and throws the whale into the audience, splashes him and yells, 'How do you like it?!' And then damn if Brasky didn't step in there and finish the show!"
* "You know, he would shoot whiskey into his neck with a syringe."
* "He did all the make-up on the Planet of the Apes movies."
* "He taught me how to love a woman - and how to scold a child."
* "He had dandruff the size of mice!"
* "Did I ever tell you about the time Brasky took me out to go get a drink with him? We go off lookin' for a bar and we can't find one. Finally, Brasky takes me into a vacant lot and says, Here we are!' Well, we sat there for a year and a half. Sure enough, someone constructed a bar around us! Well, the day they opened it, we ordered a shot, drank it and then burnt the place to the ground. Brasky yelled over the roar of the flames, 'Always leave things the way you found them!'"
* "He once punched a hole in a cow just so he could see who was comin' up the road."
* "He had nine children, all of 'em boys!"
* "He sired a baseball team... An orchestra, if you count the bastards!"
* "Did I ever tell you about the time I had breakfast with Brasky? Brasky drank a full glass of liquid LSD with his eggs. Then he slept for eight months straight. When he woke up, he rubbed his eyes and said, 'All in all, I prefer gin!'"
* "They say Gene Roddenberry got the idea for Star Trek from Brasky talkin' in his sleep!"
* "He once breast-fed an injured flamingo back to health."
* "He used to jog around the block with a fridge on his back!"
* "His poop is considered currency in Argentina!"
* "He loved extension cords!"
* "He hated Mexicans! ...And he was half Mexican! ...And he hated irony!"
* "He grew a third arm and kept it in a vault!"
* "Bill Brasky's foreskin is used to cover Yankee Stadium when it rains"
* "He slept eight hours a night! Well, he was pretty normal when it came to that."

5/10/1997 (Little League)

* "So anyways, Brasky would put on a white tie and tails and walk his pet cobra through the park on a leash. He named the cobra 'Beverly'. And he taught it how to fetch and dial a phone. But then one day, it bit the maid. So with tears in his eyes, Brasky had to shoot the maid."
* "Brasky would use his own thigh as an anvil!!"
* "It was the sight of Brasky’s naked body that drove Brian Wilson insane!“
* "He showers in grain alcohol!"
* "He uses the Shroud of Turin as a golf towel!"
* "He killed Wolfman Jack with a trident!"
* "He drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls!"
* "He makes every woman that sleeps with him refer to him as 'Bear Bryant'!"
* "He once ate the Bible while water-skiing!"
* "He once had sex with a cigarette machine!"
* "Every kid on this field was fathered by Bill Brasky! Every one of 'em!"

12/12/1998 (a Bar)

* "He's a 10-foot-tall beast man, who showers in vodka, and feeds his baby Shrimp Scampi."
* "He orchestrated the merger between UNICEF and Smith & Wesson."
* "Brasky went public with his own buttocks and made $7 million."
* "Did I ever tell you about the time Bill Brasky went hunting? Brasky decides he's going to hunt down all four of the Banana Splits! He stalks and kills every one of them with a machete. They all begged for their lives, except Fleagle!"
* "We once had a bachelor party for Brasky. He ate the entire cake before we could tell him there was a stripper in it."
* "Brasky once hosted the Grammys, and gave every award to Corey Hart!"
* "He has a toenail on the end of his penis!"
* "Brasky got his wife pregnant and she gave birth to a delicious 16 oz. steak... The afterbirth was sauteed mushrooms!"
* "Brasky's family crest is a picture of a barracuda eating Neil Armstrong!"
* "Brasky ranked 18th in the AP College Football Poll."
* "Did I ever tell about the time Brasky was in a production of The King and I? On opening night, Brasky chloroformed the entire cast and slowly eats them in front of the audience for two hours! The production got pretty good reviews."
* "He breast-feeds John Madden!"
* "Brasky named the group Sha-Na-Na! They did not want to be called that."
* "If you drop a phonograph needle on Brasky's nipple, it plays the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds."
* "They use Brasky's foreskin as a tarp when it rains at Yankee Stadium!"
* "Brasky directed that commercial where the women play basketball in heels!"
* "He wears a live rattlesnake as a condom!"
* "All the Yes album covers are Brasky family photos."
* "Darryl Dawkins has a summer home in Brasky's groin!"
* "Brasky taught his son to drive by entering him into the Indy 500. The kid wrecked, and died. Brasky said, 'It would have happened sometime!'"
* "Brasky's semen can form into a liquid human! ...Like the guys in Terminator 2!"
* "Brasky still believes in Santa Claus! And he wants to put him in porno films."
* "He thinks Iron Man is gay!"
* "He framed Roger Rabbit!"
* "Brasky used to ride upon a steed, perchance to spy a lady."
* "The character Johnny Appleseed was based on Brasky, except for the part about planting appleseeds and not raping men!"
* "He gave a hand job to a manta ray!"
* "I masturbate to the Teletubbies!"

That last line? Delivered by Alec Baldwin.

McCain v. Obama

2006-02-07T11:55:00.000-05:00

Hi y'all. I looked all over the Net for something interesting yesterday and came up empty. But this morning I found this juicy item, so DCMI is back on.

In the wake of the multifarious lobbying scandals, the more idealistic Senators in Washington are making noise about lobbying reform. Everyone's favorite moderate, John McCain, is flexing his powerful legislative muscles and assembling a bipartisan task force to address the issue. (Full disclosure: DCMI loves McCain like Haley Barbour loves cake.) Seeking to include leading lights of both parties in his efforts, McCain sent a missive to Illinois Senator Barack Obama, the future hope of the floundering Democrats.

Obama, for all his professed desire for reform, shunned McCain's offer, suggesting that the time for discussion was over and legislation should be cut right away. One could interpret this to mean Obama was ready for action and wanted to set dilly-dallying aside; but one could also divine that Obama, in a partisan frenzy, preferred to beat the GOP over the head with the lobbying issue in an election year, as opposed to actually solving the problem.

Well, the latter was McCain's analysis. He unleashed a strongly worded letter to the junior senator this week! The Chicago Tribune carries the tale.

" WASHINGTON -- Republican Sen. John McCain on Monday accused his Democratic colleague Barack Obama of "partisan posturing" on the issue of lobbying ethics reform, the latest sign of trouble as the two parties try to come up with legislation governing relations with lobbyists.

Based on past Obama statements, "I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable," McCain, R.-Ariz., wrote in a letter to Obama, D-Ill., Monday. "Thank you for disabusing me of such notions." "

Oh snap!

"McCain was responding to an Obama letter written last week in which the freshman Democrat thanked McCain for including him in bipartisan talks on lobbying reform but expressed some differences in approach to the issue spurred by recent lobbying scandals.

McCain, long a backer of legislation to reduce the influence of big money and special interests in lawmaking, is sponsoring a bill that would require lobbyists to disclose more information on their activities, including the gifts they give lawmakers, double to two years the waiting period before a lawmaker can take a job as a lobbyist and require members to pay charter rates when they travel on corporate jets.

McCain

Obama, in his letter, promoted a bill backed by House and Senate Democrats that would take similar action on members becoming lobbyists, disclosure and corporate jets. It also bans gifts, meals from lobbyists or organizations that employ lobbyists and creates a new office of public integrity in the House to monitor compliance of lobbying rules.

Obama also questioned the effectiveness of McCain's proposal to set up a task force to further study the lobbying ethics issue.

Obama

"I have no idea what in Sen. Obama's letter left the impression that we were withdrawing from bipartisan discussions," said Obama's communications director, Robert Gibbs. Judging from the tone of the letter, "it may be harder to change the way Washington works than people originally expected."

Gibbs said Obama was trying to call McCain to discuss his commitment to working together.

Aides to McCain confirmed that McCain saw Obama's letter as partisan. "I'm embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble," McCain wrote."

Now that is some cold shit, Johnny Mac!

Team Aniston attacks!

2006-02-03T17:06:00.000-05:00

This hilarious story just made its way across the pond. I'm loving this one.

"Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have escaped an attack by a Jennifer Aniston fan.

The loved-up pair - who are expecting their first child together this year - were dining at Berlin's Nola restaurant when a woman stormed in and
screamed:

"Where is that home-wrecking Angelina?"

The crazed fan - dressed in a 'Friends' T-shirt - spotted the Hollywood couple and attempted to slap Angelina.

Fortunately the 'Tomb Raider' star's bodyguards stepped in and held the American woman back while the pair headed for their waiting car.

A source is quoted in Britain's Daily Star newspaper as saying:

"Angelina had taken her adopted kids Maddox and Zahara to Berlin. It's lucky she left them with a carer.

"The mentally unbalanced American had obviously been tipped off that they would be dining at Nola, because she was wearing an Aniston top and was on the look-out for Angelina.

"Angelina would normally have confronted the woman, but she was petrified because she's carrying her first child and won't risk any harm coming to it."

Pitt split from Aniston last year after meeting Angelina on set whilst filming 'Mr & Mrs Smith'.

They divorced in October amidst speculation that the 42-year-old heartthrob had cheated with Angelina, 30."

Personally, I see Angelina as a home-creator, not a home-wrecker! Here's Angie with her brood:

Meanwhile the childless and mediocre Aniston has plenty of time to ponder her failed marriage, since all her movies have tanked and it's all downhill from here!

According to In Touch:

"Jen's now remembering some things that happened during her last vacation with Brad at the beginning of 2005.

"Brad would disappear with his cell phone for at least 30 minutes a day. He'd say he needed to go on walks, but now, Jennifer really believes he was talking to Angelina."

Boo hoo hoo! Maybe you should have made some love children with your husband instead of cranking out one cruddy film after another!

Meth is addictive? How rude!

2006-02-02T11:29:00.000-05:00

OK, I hate to laugh at the suffering of others, but this story just gets funnier as it goes along.

With the Olsen twins burning up the tabloids, Dave Coulier ice skating with Nancy Kerrigan, Stamos starring in an ABC vehicle, Saget making occasional late-night appearances, and Candace Cameron married to Valeri Bure, one wonders what the hell happened to my least favorite member of the Full House family, Jodie "Stephanie Tanner" Sweetin. Back in the day, I always loathed Sweetin's performances. The material she had to work with was even worse: Stephanie's stupid catchphrases were a true lowlight of TGIF, and her plots were always the lamest.

But after a period of obscurity that makes Tina Yothers' career look impressive, Sweetin is back in the news, and in a big way. Like many other idiotic Americans, she's gone and gotten herself hooked on the most white-trash of drugs, meth!

E! Online's always reliable Sarah Hall has the tale.

"Former Full House cutie Jodie Sweetin has earned herself a spot on the lengthy list of child stars gone wrong.

During an appearance on Good Morning America Wednesday, Sweetin, who played middle sister Stephanie Tanner on the hit sitcom, revealed that she is a recovering meth addict and once battled a daily drug habit.

The ex-actress, 24, said she had trouble figuring out how to adjust to a regular childhood existence after Full House ended its run in 1995.

"There is a certain sense of loss when a series ends," Sweetin said. "It is kind of hard to figure out who you are when you've lost your job at age 13, when that was basically how you identified yourself."

In an attempt to lead a "normal" kid's life, Sweetin attended high school and college, graduating with a degree in liberal arts. In 2002, she married a Los Angeles police officer.

Though she occasionally appeared in bit parts on TV series, including Party of Five and Yes, Dear, Sweetin's acting career essentially stalled after Full House.Two years ago, bored and unemployed, the former child star began experimenting with drugs as a way to pass the time.

She was soon addicted to methamphetamine and using the debilitating drug every day.

Though Sweetin stops short of blaming her addiction on her child star lifestyle, she concedes that her career may have stripped her of some of the benefits of a typical childhood.

"Growing up in the business you have to grow up very fast--you do have a different type of childhood, that has its benefits and it has its drawbacks," Sweetin said Wednesday."

OK, here comes my favorite part of the story! Just picturing this scene in my mind has me in hysterics.

"After a particularly bad three-day bender, which reportedly resulted in an intervention staged by her former Full House costars, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, John Stamos and Bob Saget, Sweetin checked herself into Promises rehab facility for six weeks of intensive therapy."

(Do you think Kimmy Gibler was busy that day, or did they just not invite her? I'm sure she would have just made some wisecracking comment anyway. That darn Kimmy!)

"Clean and sober since March of last year, Sweetin now admits she was "living a total double life."

"I was married to a police officer--we are going through a divorce right now--he had no idea," she said.

Since kicking her addiction, Sweetin says she now hopes to get back into acting.

"I want to make movies, TV series, wherever the career takes me," she said. "I really hope this isn't the last people hear of me. In fact, I would like to make this a footnote in my career, not the end."

Wow. You really cannot make this stuff up.

Future Shock

2006-02-01T11:39:00.000-05:00

Hey y'all. It's been a while since I hit you with a post; I've been moving. It was hectic, but it's over!

Anyway, I've been saving a good story. Anybody in the musical know gives mad props to one of the funkiest men ever to walk the earth - Sly Stone, leader of Sly & the Family Stone. This totally groundbreaking group had its origins in the San Francisco hippie scene, but soon grew to become one of the most significant musical groups of the 70s. Sly's band included men and women, black and white players, and his lyrics addressed compelling topics.

The band's heyday was brief but glorious. Wikipedia lays out the merits:

"Active from 1967 until 1975, the band was pivotal in the development of soul, funk and psychedelia. Headed by singer, songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist Sly Stone, and containing a number of his family members and friends, the band was the first major American rock band to have a multicultural lineup, giving African-Americans, Caucasians, males, and females all roles in the band's instrumentation.

Brothers Sly Stone and singer/guitarist Freddie Stone had combined their bands (Sly & the Stoners and Freddie & the Stone Souls) in 1967, joining the two of them, trumpetist Cynthia Robinson, and drummer Gregg Errico. Saxophonist Jerry Martini and bassist Larry Graham completed the original lineup; within a year, Sly and Freddie's sister, singer/keyboardist Rose Stone, joined as well. This collective recorded five Top 10 hits and four groundbreaking albums, which were a major influence on the sound of American pop music in general and soul music in particular. It is often said that there are "two types of black music: black music before Sly Stone, and black music after Sly Stone"."

Not only were the songs great, but the players were top-notch as well. Special mention goes to Larry Graham, who invented the slap-bass technique that is almost synonymous with funk.

However, Sly Stone, the group's creative genius, fell on hard times due to his drug abuse. Alienating his bandmates and squelching his creativity with massive amounts of cocaine proved to be the final straw in Stone's musical career. As Wikipedia puts it, "Overcome by numerous drug addictions, Sly Stone disappeared from the limelight and, at the insistence of his old friend Bobby Womack, entered drug rehabilitation in 1984. Sly continued sporadically releasing new singles and collaborations at irregular intervals until a 1987 arrest for cocaine possesion and use. After being released, he stopped releasing music altogether."

Now comes word that Sly may appear on stage again. The Washington Post has the story.

"Sly Stone, the reclusive, long-vanished funk-rock pioneer whose potent recordings in the late 1960s and early '70s defined the era and altered the course of popular music, may be about to strut back into the public eye.

According to several friends and associates, discussions are well underway about a Sly and the Family Stone reunion performance at the Grammy Awards on Feb. 8 in Los Angeles.

It would be Stone's first live performance since 1987, and his first major public appearance since Jan. 12, 1993, when Sly and the Family Stone were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It would also mark the first time since 1971 that the band has played in its original configuration. (Drummer Greg Errico quit the group that year and was soon followed by bass player Larry Graham.)

As songwriter, producer, bandleader and singer, Stone dazzled the world of pop music more than 35 years ago with a string of superlative anthems -- timeless songs, including "Dance to the Music," "I Want to Take You Higher," "Hot Fun in the Summertime," "Family Affair" and "Everyday People" (whose lyric "Different strokes for different folks" became a slogan for the Woodstock generation). By the early '70s, though, he had developed an all-consuming cocaine addiction, and he soon faded from the spotlight. Speculation on the whereabouts and condition of Sly Stone has been a pop pastime for decades.

Ron Roecker, a spokesman for the Recording Academy, wouldn't confirm that the reunion is on the Grammy-night schedule, which already includes an all-star tribute to Sly and the Family Stone...

"The facts are what we put in the press release," Roecker said. "As far as anything else, it's all just rumor. But we do believe that he is attending the Grammy Awards."

He added: "It seems like the right time for him. We're thrilled that we'll be able to do this."

Stone's manager, Jerry Goldstein, could not be reached for comment.

Nor could Stone himself -- no surprise, given that he stopped speaking to the media in about 1987.

But sources close to the band said rehearsals are scheduled to begin next week in Santa Monica, Calif. They cautioned, however, that the reunion could implode at any point, given Stone's long history of erratic behavior.

Still, that there's talk at all about a Sly Stone coming-out party is a surprise.

"He's been in seclusion for so long, he's like J.D. Salinger," said Greg Zola, who is producing and directing "On the Sly: In Search of the Family Stone," a documentary about the elusive musician and his band mates. "He was so famous for a period of time, but he's just not around anymore. A lot of people who you'd think are in the know actually think Sly Stone is dead."

"I don't think Sly has been hurting from his underground status -- I think he likes the mystique," said Rickey Vincent, author of "Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One" and host of a funk radio show in the San Francisco Bay area. "But it would be nice to see him make a triumphant return -- to be treated the way Carlos Santana was at the Grammys a few years ago, and the way George Clinton was treated at the Grammys."

Clinton thinks so, too.

A funk legend himself, Clinton was forced to rethink his approach to music after hearing Sly and the Family Stone's landmark 1969 album, "Stand!"

"He's my idol; forget all that peer stuff," Clinton said. "I heard 'Stand!,' and it was like: Man , forget it! That band was perfect. And Sly was like all the Beatles and all of Motown in one. He was the baddest thing around. What he don't realize is that him making music now would still be the baddest. Just get that band back together and do whatever it is that he do."

In its heyday, from roughly 1968 through 1971, Sly and the Family Stone created revolutionary music, an intoxicating mix of psychedelic pop, pulsating funk and social commentary. Among the first fully integrated groups on the American music scene, with blacks and whites and men and women together onstage, the seven-piece San Francisco band played the world's biggest venues while cranking out hit after cutting-edge hit.

Stone was an innovator whose work inspired Motown to find its social conscience, helped persuade Miles Davis to go electric, and ultimately laid out a blueprint for generations of black pop stars, from Prince and Michael Jackson to OutKast, D'Angelo and Lenny Kravitz.

"There's black music before Sly Stone, and there's black music after Sly Stone," said Joel Selvin, author of "Sly and the Family Stone: An Oral History" and a San Francisco Chronicle music critic for the past 30 years. "He completely changed what black music was. I mean, he changed Motown! Before Sly, the Temptations were 'I'm Losing You.' After Sly, they were 'Ball of Confusion.' It's a black and white moment.

"The album 'Stand!' summed up the times, with the humanitarian sentiments, in a perfect sloganeering way. 'Dance to the Music,' 'There's a Riot Goin' On' -- these were revolutionary documents. And Sly's statements last. They sound as good today as they did when they were recorded. There's really nobody like Sly Stone in the history of black music."

Lamont Dozier, part of the Holland/Dozier/Holland hit-making machine at Motown, said in an interview that Stone "took music in a new direction, another step forward. He definitely had some potent stuff, and some new stuff, in a new voice. It was this funky, street-y, but pop R&B music. I was very much a fan."

[...]

There are rumors, of course: He's broke! He's dead! He's homeless! Insane!

Stone, who is 61 or 62, or maybe 64 ("I've lied about my age so much, I'm not quite sure how old I am," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1987), is either living: In a mansion in Beverly Hills; in a dingy apartment in the San Fernando Valley; on the streets of Hollywood; in a nice place in Pacific Palisades; or elsewhere in Southern California.

"He's in Malibu," said Clinton. But Clinton isn't completely sure, since he couldn't get Stone on the phone -- even after Stone left a message for his friend to call.

In 1986, Stone was living in an apartment in Toluca Lake, Calif., when his landlord filed a lawsuit, alleging that Stone and a roommate were making excessive noise -- and that they'd refused to leave the apartment after being served an eviction notice.

His health is also unclear. Stone's manager, Goldstein, recently told an associate that Sly is "frail." When Stone surfaced at his father's funeral in 2002, he was reportedly in bad shape.

"Sly went down the aisle of his brother's church with his mother on his arm, and nobody recognized him, because he has a hunchback," Selvin said. "He deprived his body of too much nutrition over the years."

There are reports -- unconfirmed, as with much in the murky, mysterious world of Sly Stone -- that he's done recording sessions and then gone in and erased all the tapes.

"He's got hundreds of songs that he's sleeping on," Errico said. "He's been writing the whole time. Where are all those songs? But I haven't heard one in 20 years. He's written and destroyed who knows how many great songs over the years with all the insanity he's been through."

But Stone is said to have been recording recently with his sister Vaetta, who performs in a Family Stone tribute band. Last year he even surfaced at one of her shows, in Los Angeles.

Zola, who's making the documentary on Sly and the Family Stone, was at the club that night and saw Sly Stone with his very own eyes.

"This adventure to find Sly, it can feel hopeless," he said. "There was a period of time where I really wondered where he was. But he was there! It was remarkable." "

Conspiracy Cruise

2006-01-27T16:22:00.000-05:00

It seems that his crazy antics have gotten so much pub that people will now believe anything about Tom Cruise. When a Katie Holmes sex scene mysteriously vanished from the Sundance screening, TC immediately became the prime suspect.

E! Online's Josh Grossberg brings us this amusing tale.

"At a sold-out screening for his new satirical comedy, Thank You for Smoking, rookie filmmaker Jason "Son of Ivan" Reitman was shocked--shocked!--to discover that a 12-second scene of a hookup between Holmes' journalist character and a tobacco lobbyist played by Aaron Eckhart had vanished.

"We were sitting there in shock," the movie's writer-director told the Los Angeles Times. "And I turned to other people who had worked on the film, and were completely confused. But the audience didn't seem to notice or care."

Following the screening, Reitman immediately addressed the audience, which included Holmes and Eckhart, explaining that the scene was missing and "something went wrong with the reel." (The steamy encounter between Holmes and Eckhart's characters were in the version screened at last fall's Toronto Film Festival.) His remarks instead drew grumblings, and even a few boos from the crowd...

Thus began the Case of the Missing Sex Scene."

It didn't take long for suspicion to settle on everyone's favorite Hubbard-lover. (Unless you're a big fan of My Name Is Earl, in which case your favorite Hubbard-lover is, well, the whole cast.)

"News of Holmes' disappearing act spread quickly around the mountain town of Park City, Utah, and became fodder for the gossip mill. Several publications posited that the missing scene was somehow the work of Holmes' fiance, Tom Cruise, who, the theory goes, is so protective of his future missus that he didn't want her to be seen cavorting in the nude.

"Pssst...I just finished my final cut."

And while another Holmes romp later in the film remained intact in the Sundance print, the Cruise conspiracy theorists were undaunted.

Us Weekly, for instance, quoted one unnamed insider as saying "industry people started whispering that Tom Cruise didn't want the scene in there because it was dirtier than he was comfortable with." Another anonymous wag tells the magazine that the Cruise-is-culpable theory "was the first thing that went through everyone's mind!"

Holmes, who's pregnant with the Mission: Impossible star's first biological offspring (Cruise adopted two children, Isabella and Connor, with Nicole Kidman), wasn't available for comment. Cruise's camp rejected assertions the couch-jumping thespian and self-proclaimed sonogram expert had anything to do with the edit.

Cruise himself was said to have ditched the screening to hit the slopes, according to TMZ.com.

It was up to Reitman to clear Cruise's name and solve the mystery. He told the Times that the scene was accidentally cut when two reels were spliced together in Los Angeles as filmmakers prepared a print for Smoking's four festival screenings.

In any case, Reitman said he plans to restore the sex scene when Fox Searchlight releases Thank You for Smoking in theaters on Mar. 17."

Now THAT'S a relief. I know people who still haven't recovered from the pleasant shock of seeing Katie's hootenannies in The Gift...

Patrick Bateman would be envious

2006-01-27T16:19:00.000-05:00

Best. Business card story. Ever. From the Associated Press:

"LEAVENWORTH, Kan. - The business cards got a response, but surely not what their owner had in mind when he had them printed up.

They came to the attention of Leavenworth police, who used them to make a drug arrest last week.

Sylvester J. Williams, 21, of Leavenworth, was charged Monday with possessing crack cocaine with the intent to sell it, Maj. Patrick Kitchens of the Leavenworth Police Department said.

Kitchens said Williams remained in custody Wednesday on $75,000 bond.

He said police had heard for some time that Williams had been selling drugs in the area. "Then we heard that he was handing out business cards," the officer said. "In the course of our investigation we were fortunate to come up with one, and we gave him a call."

Kitchens said the business card had an image of what appeared to be an alarm clock being hit by a boxing glove and said: "For a quick hit on time call the boss."

"When he answered, we agreed to buy some crack from him, we went up there, and we arrested him," Kitchens said.

The arrest was made Friday.

"It makes our job considerably easier when they advertise and let us know where to get ahold of them," Kitchens said."

What's in a kingly name?

2006-01-25T12:26:00.000-05:00

Here's an amusing story out of the UK - and I don't mean the home of the Wildcats.

As he whiles away the interminable years waiting for his mom to kick the bucket, it seems that Prince Charles is beginning to consider a name change. The Guardian has the story:

"Clarence House yesterday issued a pained denial of claims that the Prince of Wales has held private discussions with "trusted friends" about the possibility of reigning as George VII rather than risk the negative connotations attached to the name King Charles.

The only British monarch to have been publicly tried and executed for treason is Charles I, beheaded in Whitehall at the end of the civil war in 1649. His clever, cynical son, who reigned as Charles II, is as much remembered for his lively love life as for his achievements.

The last of the would-be Stuart monarchs, Bonnie Prince Charlie, was known to some as Charles III.

He badly let down his Jacobite followers during the 1745 rebellion against the Hanoverian dynasty whose heir - with a non-German rebranding as Windsor - Prince Charles is.

Officially the Prince's office said yesterday: "No decision has been made and it will be made at the time."

This is a formula which tactfully acknowledges that the Queen is in excellent health at 80 and that the Queen Mother only recently died at 101.

Privately senior officials were scornful of a page one Times headline on Christmas Eve which declared: Call Me George, Suggests Charles.

Claiming to be based on "many conversations" between the prince and close friends it quoted one as explaining that "the name Charles is tinged with so much sadness".

One such friend told the Guardian: "Anyone who knows the Prince of Wales knows he does not sit around talking to his chums, discussing what he wants to be called. Inasmuch as officials have discussed it with him at accession planning meetings the thinking was that he would remain Charles."

But the prince is famously introverted about his image as he waits patiently for the sad event which will finally give his life its declared purpose, provided he outlives his reigning parent as many princes of Wales have not, including Henry VIII's elder brother Arthur.

Marrying Arthur's widow, Katherine of Aragon, caused Henry more trouble than any of his "trusted friends" spotted at the time, an oversight which cost several of them their heads.

Prince Charles can also be pretty tough on friends who let him down, for instance by gossiping to reporters.

He is also called Arthur - Charles Philip (after his Greek father) Arthur George to be precise. As in the 15th century, Arthur is a symbol of resurgent national feeling which might not go well with Britain's EU allies.

In any case, the country's only other King Arthur is generally regarded as a hard act to follow.

For an image-conscious monarch in search of brand strength that leaves the Hanoverian Georges, a mixed bunch who range from George III who lost America and his own marbles to George IV, a rake, and George V, who was privately virtuous but a fierce parent who boasted that he would make his children as frightened of him as he had been of Edward VII.

[...]

Royal name changes are not without precedent.

Both Edward VII and George VI were privately known as Bertie. Edward VIII was known as David.

And if the Queen and her husband had not been royal they would have been Phil and Betty Glucksberg."

Now, that is funny.

Phil & Betty Glucksberg meet JP II

The article does include one of those moments where an American can get totally, utterly lost:

"Only last week a Fabian Society pamphlet reinforced complaints from the political right that British history is badly taught in school, with too much emphasis on Henry VIII and the Nazis.

So Prince Charles's "friends" may have been over-sensitive in worrying that many voters would know that Charles I suffered the ultimate form of ejection from the Big Brother House or that the bloke who so successfully chatted up Nell Gwynn - something of a chav in her time - was also a Charlie."

Say what?!

Turd Blossom is telegraphing his moves again

2006-01-24T15:17:00.001-05:00

One of my favorite political figures is the notorious Karl Rove, top political honcho to the POTUS and the most experienced smear artist in all the land. Don't mess with Rove or he'll find some dirt in your past to toss all over your reputation. And if he can't, he'll convince people that you're somehow less of a man, and they'll believe him. Often, it's not Rove that does the takedown, but a shadowy network of devious right-wing operatives: blogging, phoning, and dropping comments on talk radio, leaving no trace of his work. But in every campaign he's involved with, opponents get schmeared like a bagel in a Jewish deli.

But Rove isn't just about dirty work, he's also about out-strategizing his opponents. And in recent years, he's taken to openly flaunting his tactics months before elections, and perhaps with a measure of hubris. But the wimpy Democrats have been utterly unable to capitalize on this advance knowledge, and Rove has taken them behind the woodshed time and again.

The Washington Post's resident lefty pundit, E.J. Dionne, bemoans this pattern:

"Perhaps it's an aspect of compassionate conservatism. Or maybe it's just a taunt and a dare. Well in advance of Election Day, Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, has a habit of laying out his party's main themes, talking points and strategies.

True Rove junkies (admirers and adversaries alike) always figure he's holding back on something and wonder what formula the mad scientist is cooking up in his political lab. But there is a beguiling openness about Rove's divisive and ideological approach to elections. You wonder why Democrats have never been able to take full advantage of their early look at the Rove game plan.

That's especially puzzling because, since Sept. 11, 2001, the plan has focused on one variation or another of the same theme: Republicans are tough on our enemies, Democrats are not. If you don't want to get blown up, vote Republican.

Thus Rove's speech to the Republican National Committee last Friday, which conveniently said nothing about that pesky leak investigation. Rove noted that we face "a ruthless enemy" and "need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of the moment America finds itself in."

"President Bush and the Republican Party do," Rove informed us. "Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Democrats."

Rove went on: "Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview, and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That doesn't make them unpatriotic -- not at all. But it does make them wrong -- deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong."

Oh, no, those Dems aren't unpatriotic, just security idiots.

Here's why the same approach keeps working.

First, note that phrase, "the same cannot be said for many Democrats." This is Rove's wedge through the Democratic Party. Rove has always counted on Bush's capacity to intimidate some Democrats into breaking with their party and saying something like: "Oh, no, I'm not like those weak Democrats over there. I'm a tough Democrat." The Republicans use such Democrats to bash the rest of the party.

Moreover, these early Rove speeches turn Democratic strategists into defeatists. The typical Democratic consultant says: "Hey, national security is a Republican issue. We shouldn't engage on that. We should change the subject." In the 2002 elections, the surefire Democratic winners were a prescription drug benefit under Medicare (an issue Bush tried to steal), a patients' bill of rights, the economy and education. Those issues sure worked wonders, didn't they?

By not engaging the national security debate, Democrats cede to Rove the power to frame it. Consider that clever line about Democrats having a pre-Sept. 11 view of the world. The typical Democratic response would be defensive: "No, no, of course 9/11 changed the world." More specifically, there's a lot of private talk among Democrats that the party should let go of the issue of warrantless spying on Americans because the polls show that a majority values security and safety.

What Democrats should have learned is that they cannot evade the security debate. They must challenge the terms under which Rove and Bush would conduct it. Imagine, for example, directly taking on that line about Sept. 11. Does having a "post-9/11 worldview" mean allowing Bush to do absolutely anything he wants, any time he wants, without having to answer to the courts, Congress or the public? Most Americans -- including a lot of libertarian-leaning Republicans -- reject such an anti-constitutional view of presidential power. If Democrats aren't willing to take on this issue, what's the point of being an opposition party?

Democrats want to fight this election on the issue of Republican corruption. But corruption is about the abuse of power. If smart political consultants can't figure out how to link the petty misuses of power with its larger abuses, they are not earning their big paychecks.

And, yes, the core questions must be asked: Are we really safer now than we were five years ago? Has the Iraq war, as organized and prosecuted by the administration, made us stronger or weaker? Do we feel more secure knowing the heck of a job our government did during Hurricane Katrina? Do we have any confidence that the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies will clean up their act if Washington remains under the sway of one-party government?

Imagine one Super Bowl team tipping the other to a large part of its offensive strategy. Smart coaches would plot and plan and scheme. You wonder what Democrats will do with the 10-month lead time Rove has kindly offered them."

My guess is, not too much...

Bulldoggin' hoes like them Georgetown Hoyas

2006-01-23T16:57:00.000-05:00

In the midst of an awesome sports weekend - two great NFL teams displaying their dominance in their respective conference championships, Kobe Bryant's 81-point explosion on Sunday night, and all manner of exciting NCAA hoops action - it might be easy to overlook the first of many hardcourt smackdowns by the New Big East. This game was so early on Saturday, I barely dragged myself out of bed to watch it. But I'm sure glad I did. In yet another display of the Big East conference's jaw-dropping depth, unranked Georgetown unloaded on ACC golden boys Duke, shattering their undefeated record and unseating the #1 team in the country.

It wasn't a slowed-down slugfest - no hideous 48-44 outcome here - and it wasn't another cheap exploitation of the embarrassingly shallow college 3-point line, where a lesser team stands around bombing treys and lucks out with a win. Gtown dropped the hammer on the Dukies from the get-go, running the backdoor cuts and tossing the deft passes that characterized the Pete Carril offense at Princeton, while simulataneously playing the ferocious shot-blocking defense that characterized John Thompson Jr.'s Georgetown teams of the 80s. The current Hoya coach, John Thompson III, was taught by both these masters and his Duke gameplan fused both styles in a flawless, inspiring way. Georgetown was so sharp in the first half that not even a ferocious Duke comeback, led by the maddening JJ Redick and his 41 points, could reverse the outcome after 40 minutes.

The Washington Post, despondent from years of boring Hoya stories, were only too quick to jump all over this one...

From Camille Powell's report:

"As the Georgetown Hoyas built a double-digit lead over undefeated and top-ranked Duke, the buzz inside MCI Center continued to build. But it wasn't until Duke freshman guard Greg Paulus lost the ball in the final seconds and Georgetown senior forward Brandon Bowman fell on it to preserve an 87-84 victory that the raucous sellout crowd of 20,035 could properly explode.

The students rushed the floor to celebrate the biggest victory any of them had ever seen -- the biggest victory any Georgetown team had seen in at least 20 years.

"The last nine minutes of the game seemed like 20 days," Bowman said. "Holding onto a lead like that and then knowing it's over -- it means a lot. I jumped on the ball, kind of as a sigh of relief. . . . Clearly, we haven't gotten the big wins throughout our whole careers here, but today things fell our way."

It was a cathartic win for a Georgetown team -- and in particular a senior class -- that had been on the wrong end of blowout losses against ranked teams, that endured a coaching change two years ago. It was the Hoyas' first victory over a No. 1 team since Feb. 27, 1985, and their first over any ranked team in nearly a year. Georgetown is now 12-4 overall; Duke is 17-1.

"It's a good win," said Georgetown Coach John Thompson III, drawing laughs in his postgame news conference. "I was happy for our seniors. They've come close, we've been there, we've been at the other end of some lopsided games, and for that group to win this game and for that group to experience that was special."

Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski was slightly more effusive in his praise of the Hoyas.

"We put ourselves in a position where we had a chance to win, and if we did, we would've been fortunate," Krzyzewski said. "Just what a superb performance [by Georgetown]. They were so deserving. If you get beat, you want to get beat by people who earn it, and they earned it."

Georgetown earned the win by being remarkably efficient on offense, strong on defense and poised at key moments in the game. Five Hoyas scored in double figures, led by Bowman's season-high 23 points and sophomore forward Jeff Green's 18, and the team shot a season-best 61.5 percent.

The Hoyas were able to shoot so well because they got such good looks at the basket; they had 24 assists on 32 field goals. On six first-half possessions, Georgetown scored on either a layup or dunk off of a backdoor cut and bounce pass, and that helped it build a 42-28 halftime advantage."

The great Tony Kornheiser delivers:

"At the end of the first half, when Georgetown was up 14 points on Duke, Big John Thompson was having no part of the celebrating going on around him. He had coached far too many games to allow himself to think that you've already beaten the No. 1 team in the country after just 20 minutes. "You and I know there's a second half to be played," he said warily.

And as Duke crept closer and closer in that second half, Big John fretted. From his seat in the corner of the baseline close to the Georgetown bench, he repeatedly glanced anxiously at the game clock, hoping to speed it up before Duke could come all the way back. Only when Georgetown ultimately did win, and there was bedlam in the arena, did Big John finally relax and exhale.

One by one, the jubilant Georgetown players came off the court and stopped to hug Big John -- because they know where their coach got his game from. "Everybody hugs Uncle Remus," Big John giggled. Eventually, John III came by, and father and son embraced, and Big John patted his boy's head with enormous paternal pride. "You know and I know what this is about," Big John said with great emotion. "That's my child. Forget the coaching stuff; that's my child." Then he disappeared toward the Georgetown locker room "to get some more hugging."

You want to know how many father-and-son basketball coaching combinations have beaten the No. 1 team in the country? One. Big John, in 1985 over St. John's, and John III, yesterday over Duke. That's it; that's the list."

JT III, Pete Carril, JT Jr.

As Mike Wise points out, this kind of victory has been a long time in coming.

"This whole father-son nostalgia the university has been selling for almost two years had been more hope than reality entering yesterday afternoon, with more excitement coming from recruiting commitments than on-court results. But if John Thompson III has not yet completely refurbished the program his father willed into a national powerhouse, he got much closer in two of the most scintillating hours of basketball Georgetown has ever played at MCI Center.

As good as Georgetown's future looked, yesterday felt like old-home week. Oblivious to what had happened to his alma mater yesterday, Dikembe Mutombo got off a plane in Detroit, where his Houston Rockets will face the Pistons today.

"Georgetown beat Duke?" Mutombo said in that rich, baritone Cookie Monster voice of his.

"You mean men or women?"

"Men."

"No?" Deek said.

"Yes."

"Wow, they now have some very good players." "

You can say that again, big man.

Return of the Mack

2006-01-20T19:39:00.000-05:00

Theo is back! Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words:

bostondirtdogs.com illustration

A tip of my cap to Boston.com's David Lefort, who scuttled around the Net gathering bits and pieces of reaction.

"A roundup of what local and national scribes, bloggers, and fans are writing about Theo Epstein's return to the Red Sox ...

Media reaction

Chris Snow, Boston Globe: Two-and-a-half months after Theo Epstein left the Red Sox, certain that his heart and soul were no longer fully invested in the job of general manager, the Sox last night announced that the 32-year-old Brookline native will be returning to the organization as soon as next week.

Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe: Here's an inside look at how it works over at Fenway these days. The Red Sox are afraid of what is written about them in the newspapers and what is said about them on WEEI. That's why we got this vague, preemptive strike just after the dinner hour last night. Nothing has changed since Theo left and no one knows how the new arrangement is going to work, but owner John W. Henry figured it was better to put out a press release saying ''all is well" than to read more speculation about weakness at the top. Embarrassing.

Michael Silverman, Boston Herald: Theo Epstein is ready for his close-up again. After an 80-day official hiatus from the Red Sox baseball operations department that began on Halloween with an exit from Fenway Park in a gorilla suit, and included a trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina, for some Pearl Jam concerts and a getaway to Hawaii, Epstein’s expected return to the team was announced last night, with details expected by next week.

Tony Massarotti, Boston Herald: In the end, as best we can tell, they needed 2 1/2 months to end up right back where they started. Some people travel around the world in 80 days. It took the Red Sox that long to run in a circle. And so now, just 15 months after arguably the most glorious sports celebration in Boston’s history, the luster officially is off the ownership and management at fabled Fenway Park. In this soap opera, president Larry Lucchino first made the mistake of arrogance. Then, owner John Henry committed the blunder of passivity. And now, Theo Epstein is committing perhaps the most inexplicable transgression of all. In the face of better judgment, he’s coming back.

Art Martone, Providence Journal: Theo Epstein's return may not reflect as well on the Sox as his leaving reflected badly on them, but no matter. It was a blunder that had to be fixed. It took a while, but they finally fixed it. That, more than a center fielder or a shortstop or a leadoff hitter, is what the Sox truly needed this offseason.

Buster Olney, ESPN.com (by subscription only): Epstein played brinkmanship, initially didn't get what he wanted, and then he shocked Red Sox Nation by walking away in a gorilla suit on Halloween Night. Sort of. He mostly disappeared from public view, kept in contact with the Red Sox, and most importantly, he maintained contact with John Henry. I can't tell you if he did this with repeated phone calls, with e-mails, through a proxy or carrier pigeons. No matter; keeping a dialogue with the boss of the guy whose power you seek is brilliant (see Dick Morris and the Clinton White House, for another example). Only by leaving the organization, officially, could Epstein circumvent the chain of command.

Sean McAdam, ESPN.com: For the longest time, they were without a general manager. Now, with a month to go before pitchers and catchers report to spring training, they have three. It's been that kind of offseason for the Boston Red Sox.

Ken Rosenthal, Foxsports.com: Welcome back, Theo, whatever your new role is, if indeed you were ever gone. The Red Sox lead the majors in co-general managers, quasi-general managers and would-be general managers. Maybe they can assign one to solve each of their remaining problems.

Blogs

Boston Dirt Dogs: You can come home again. Young T. Epstein is back in the saddle with the Sox.

Joy of Sox: Welcome Back, Theo! Can he play center field?

Keep your Sox on (a scene from "Theo Maguire"): THEO: "Hello. I'm looking for my team. Can we leave Lucchino's office? No? Alright. If this is where it has to happen, then this is where it has to happen. I'm not letting me get rid of you. How about that? This used to be my specialty. I was good with the tough Boston crowd. Send me in there, I'll talk about stats, VORP, win shares ... you name it. And now I just... I don't know... but with what was supposed to be the freest years of my business life, it wasn't complete, wasn't nearly close to being in the same vicinity as complete, because I couldn't share it with my team. I couldn't hear Manny demanding to be traded and then taking it back, or laugh about it with you. I missed my Red Sox. We live in a cynical world, and we work in a divison of tough competitors, so try not to laugh -- I love you. You complete me."
RED SOX: "Aw, shut up. You had me at VORP."

SOX1FAN: Thirty years ago, Epstein needed a note from his mother to get back into class after a hiatus. So now I am left to wonder whether today, after eighty-one days, Ilene Epstein finally wrote her son Theo a note to get him back into the Red Sox front office. Or if the note had been written previously, I am left to wonder why it took this long for Mr Kotter… er, Mr Lucchino… to accept the offered excuse and finally let Theo back into class to play with the other GMs.

The Triumphant Red Sox blog: I heard the news after an uneventful evening at the mall, where I was away from the radio for two hours. When I got back to my car and flipped on the radio, I only half grasped the words: Theo Epstein is back with the Red Sox. ... It was like one of those really strange dreams that seems unreal even while you're still asleep. My first instinct was to grab the cell phone and start calling people, but the truth is there wasn't much to talk about. The announcement raises more questions than it answers, at least for now.

Boston.com message board posters

Cabot41: unless he is going to play center field or perhaps shortstop, the damage has already been done. It will take years to repair this team.

DaveyD: This is a JOKE, and the RED SOX Top Ownership have to be the laughing stock of MLB. First of all, Theo rejected the offer due to personal reasons....Oh, Boooo Hooooo!!! We, a true organization would have just wished him well, and looked for management elsewhere... But with this JOKE organization, they pull in all this drama.....Oh, what can we do to make you stay Theo....the door is always open....TOTALY LAUGHABLE!!!

Foulke29: Welcome back THEO! No pressure, but we need a CF, SS, one of which needs to be a leadoff hitter within the next month.

wfinley: Unless Theo is going to play either center field or shortstop, I can't get too excited about this. This has been perhaps the worst off season in Sox history. Think what you want of Theo. I, for one, am not a big fan. But even if he's the best GM in history, he has been left with a mess than no one can fix.

dguz: This is great news for the Red Sox. I think is perfect timing. People think the Season starts in February for some reason. Don't forget scouts and teams look for performance during spring training to see if they can take some risks on some trades. So The Red Sox do have the players in the farm system, and the current roster to be champions or contend for many years to come. Take it easy Red Sox nation, everything has a right time and they'll get the job done.

sweet_caroline: Theos back? This is just another example of Theo being Theo. Sincerely, Manny Ramirez"

Can't stop the Lott

2006-01-19T15:01:00.000-05:00

Now for a slice of political life. I'm sure most of my readers are familiar with Mississippi senator Trent Lott, a veteran legislator who has seen it all in his political career - the thrill of victory, the heavy mantle of leadership, and the shame of scandal.

For months, speculation has been rampant that this was Lott's last turn in the Senate, and that he wouldn't run for reelection in 2006. After all, his star was fading, and had been tarnished since a 2002 firestorm stemming from nostalgic comments he made about Strom Thurmond's presidential campaign - a campaign that had racial segregation as a central plank - a faux pas that cost him the job of Senate Majority Leader, and left him embittered towards his colleagues and the White House. Finally, his wife urged him to leave Washington and to make 2006 his final year in office.

But things changed as 2006 approached. First, an explosion of scandals involving GOP leadership made Lott's problems seem petty by comparison. Then, Hurricane Katrina wiped out the Senator's house in Missisip - literally destroyed it. Finally, a fear of a rising Democratic tide, even in the deep-red South, led Republican operatives to beg Lott to reconsider. So, this week, the senior senator from Mississippi announced he would be seeking re-election this fall.

TRENT LOTT

The move seems to have rejuvenated Sen. Lott. The Washington Post has a great story:

"So there was Lott in Washington yesterday morning, zesty as ever in a too-bright-for-Mississippi purple tie. He bounded into the Senate TV and radio gallery at 10:30. It was the last of three media events -- the first two were held in Mississippi on Tuesday -- in which Lott would announce his reelection bid for 2006 and who knows what else.

Speculation raged in the gallery of 26 reporters, cameramen and hangers-on. Would Lott challenge longtime colleague Mitch McConnell to become Senate majority leader again after Bill Frist retires? Would he run for Senate whip -- another position he'd previously held -- if prospective No. 2 Rick Santorum loses his reelection bid this year?

Ah, heck, let 'em speculate, Lott seemed to be saying with an exceedingly impish grin.

"I'm not announcing any campaign for anything else," Lott said unprompted, tipping up and down on his toes behind the lectern.

This spurred a predictable game of non-denial/denial ping-pong between Lott and his audience:

One reporter asked if Lott would take another run at leadership "off the table," and Lott said no, he's not taking anything "off the table."

Someone else asked if he would "rule anything out." To which Lott said no, he's "not ruling anything out."

And so it went: nothing ruled out, nothing off the table.

"He's tantalizing a few people, that's for sure," said Republican Thad Cochran, Lott's home-state colleague and sometime rival."

And as events proved, Lott's been chastened by his run through the scandalous ringer. From now on, it seems he'll watch his mouth when it comes to the explosive politics of the South!

"Has Lott talked to any of his colleagues about a possible leadership run? "Colleagues are always talking," Lott said, grinning. "We're in politics. So we talk politics."

"That doesn't sound like a Shermanesque statement," one reporter yelled, referring to an airtight denial ("If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve") uttered by William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union general in the Civil War.

"I don't make Shermanesque statements where I'm from," he said.

"Erase that one," Lott added, curtailing this latest public dalliance with Southern political history."

Severed finger justice

2006-01-18T15:38:00.000-05:00

Adamant supporters of Wendy's like myself - the $1 baked potato is beyond awesome - rejoiced recently when a harsh prison sentence was handed down to Anna Ayala and Jaime Plascencia, the unscrupulous cons who slipped a severed finger into a bowl of chili. They were looking to make a quick buck off of Dave Thomas' heirs, but now they're gonna be doing time in jail.

Take it, AP!

"SAN JOSE, Calif. - A couple who planted a severed finger in a bowl of Wendy's chili in a scheme to extort money from the fast-food chain were sentenced Wednesday to prison terms of at least nine years.

Anna Ayala, 40, who said she bit into the digit, was sentenced to nine years. Her husband, Jaime Plascencia, 44, who obtained the finger from a co-worker who lost it in a workplace accident, was sentenced to more than 12 years.

"Greed and avarice overtook this couple," said Superior Court Judge Edward Davila, adding that the pair had "lost their moral compass."

The two pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy to file a false insurance claim and attempted grand theft with damages exceeding $2.5 million.

In a tearful plea for leniency, Ayala apologized to the courtroom gallery and said the scheme was "a moment of poor judgment."

She said she retched March 22 after biting into the fingertip while dining with her family at a Wendy's in San Jose.

Forensic tests later showed Ayala never chomped down on the finger, but she described the incident to television news crews.

"There's no words to describe what I felt. It's sick, it's disgusting," she said in a clip played before sentencing. "Just knowing there was a human remain in my mouth is tearing me apart inside." "

You think she practiced that little routine at home in front of her mirror beforehand?

Anna Ayala

Although the story made for a lot of worldwide amusement, Wendy's executives didn't exactly consider it a laughing matter when their company got slammed by the bad pub. The financial backlash of the Ayala scam was so massive that some hard time was guaranteed to the finger-wielding scammers.

"Although authorities suspected a hoax — in part because the finger was not cooked — word of the stomach-turning find quickly spread around the world. The Dublin, Ohio-based fast food chain claimed it lost $2.5 million in sales because of the bad publicity, and dozens of workers at the company's Northern California franchises were laid off.Denny Lynch, Wendy's senior vice president, asked the judge to send a message that "consumer fraud is a serious crime that demands a severe penalty."

The sentencing followed a 90-minute hearing in which several Wendy's employees testified, including the man who made the chili and the cashier who helped Ayala on the day she made the claim.

"I felt so bad for the fear of what people would think of me," said Hector Pineda, who made the chili and initially came under suspicion. "We are the ones that have suffered."

No Wendy's employee was missing a digit at the San Jose restaurant, and no chili suppliers reported finger injuries at their plants.

In April, Ayala was arrested at her suburban Las Vegas home. Investigators found a pattern of legal claims she brought against businesses in her name or for her children.

A lengthy search for the finger's owner eventually pointed to one of Plascencia's co-workers, who lost it in an accident at the paving company where they worked, police said.

Plascencia bought the tip of Brian Rossiter's right ring finger for $100 and told him what he and Ayala were plotting, according to court documents. Rossiter later told police the couple offered him $250,000 to keep quiet."

You'd think this humiliating debacle would take the wind out of Anna Ayala's sails, but authorities report she's as lame-brained as ever...

"During a recorded jailhouse phone call, Ayala bragged about how other inmates were asking for her autograph, according to a transcript of the call."

Suck it, Frey

2006-01-17T17:38:00.000-05:00

Slate's Meghan O'Rourke has a great take on the turmoil in the literary world. Check it:

"It's been quite a week for literary scandals. First, The Smoking Gun made a persuasive case that Oprah-anointed author James Frey had fabricated crucial swathes of his best-selling addiction-and-recovery memoir A Million Little Pieces. Second, the New York Times offered its own strong case that the cult novelist JT LeRoy—a former child prostitute and recovered heroin addict, whose raw and "honest" writing had made him a celebrity darling—was merely a persona invented by writer Laura Albert and "played" in public by a friend. You might conclude from all the media hoopla that these hoaxes have upended our long-held ideas about truth and literary merit. But are we really all that surprised?

Long before his book was exposed as fraudulent, the James Frey phenomenon was itself Display A of what has become a deep-seated conviction of our therapeutic culture: Not only is the line between what is factually true and what is purveyed as "authentic" blurry indeed, but the inspirational power of a work of imagination or memory is the most relevant currency by which to judge its value. Frey's manuscript entered the market as a document whose fate rode more on its packaging than on the artistic merits of its prose, perception, or plot. He peddled Pieces to publishers as a novel, and, when that didn't work, he was content to sell it as memoir in the hopes of capitalizing on the allure of confessional revelation. He fancies himself a Writer—and has publicly dissed Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer—yet his fabrications seem dictated less by aesthetics (à la Truman Capote) than by a desire to tug ever more brutally on our heartstrings. And like any author, he knew that as soon as you go on Oprah, you're not promoting your book simply on its artistic merits, but on its claims to be an inspirational artifact."

The Smoking Gun article -- which began when the website started poking around for mugshots of Frey from his much-publicized battles with the law, and picked up a head of steam when the investigators realized that the mugshots didn't exist because Frey was full of crap -- is a hell of a read unto itself, and highly recommended.

Frey

As O'Rourke points out, it's not just the lack of authenticity that damns Frey's "memoir", it's the fact that he claimed to be Authentic with a capital A, a purveyor of hard truth, before he was unmasked. Now, he just comes off as a self-indulgent ass.

"Yet those very claims, as his book itself cannily acknowledges, are suspect. In A Million Little Pieces, Frey repeatedly excoriates the "bullshit" stories that shape our interactions with people, politicians, and the media, especially the stories that are billed as the most raw and honest. When a former rehab member—and a rock star—shares with the inmates a confession of his own outsized consumption of alcohol and drugs, Frey, infuriated by how "sincerely" the speech is made, imagines beating him up: "I would tell him that if I ever heard of him spewing his bullshit fantasies in Public again, I would cut off his precious hair, scar his precious lips, and take all of his goddamn gold records and shove them straight up his ass." Frey's claims to be a truth-teller in an age of emotional mountebanks who savvily manipulate public sympathy are, in part, what appear to distinguish his memoir from other recovery memoirs. By vaunting his skepticism of the pieties of being an addict and a victim, he made his story seem newly real—or authentic—in an age of packaged sound bites. Except that all the while he was busy providing his own sound bite: "The truth is what matters. It is what I should be remembered by, if I am remembered at all. Remember the truth," he incants in a style all but tailor-made for a motivational speech. In fact, Frey sounds much closer to Tony Robbins than to Frederick Exley."

Yes -- Frederick Exley reference!

Worst football article ever!

2006-01-13T13:23:00.000-05:00

Now for a truly horrendous piece of prose, a lump of elephant dung posing as a sports article. It's called "COLTS, MOM & APPLE PIE" by Mike Vaccaro. The gist of the article is that while partisans of the remaining playoff teams will obviously root for their favorites, anyone with a neutral stance should clearly be pulling for the new America's Team, the Indianapolis Colts.

The logic of the article is absolutely absurd, and devolves from there to assertions that I frankly find offensive.

"THERE is only one way to root here, assuming you don't have any lifelong alliances left in the NFL Playoffs. Steelers fans are exempt from this. Whoever survives what promises to be a splendid skirmish between the Patriots and Broncos in Denver this weekend is exempt. And whichever sacrificial lambs in helmets and shoulder pads emerge from the NFC, they can be exempt, too.

For the rest of us, there should be little other choice.

The Indianapolis Colts, for the next month or so, should be America's Team.

This could have been the case anyway, of course, because there is so little to dislike about them. They are a team of stars, led by the brightest luminary of all in Peyton Manning, one championship ring shy of taking a position of prominence in the pantheon of premier quarterbacks. Edgerrin James is a delight to watch. So is Marvin Harrison. So is Dwight Freeney. On and on.

They are a team that never once shied away from its regal pursuit of the 1972 Dolphins, relishing every second of its 13-0 start before going down with heroic effort against the Chargers in Week 15. They are a team that has trod the officially-approved Hard Road to Glory, getting knocked out two straight years by the Patriots in Foxborough, learning hard, bloody lessons. They are no overnight sensations.

All of that would have made them an easy team to root for anyway.

Now, they are irresistible."

I don't even know where to begin. And we haven't even gotten to the really ridiculous part.

1. America, let me give you some other choices. How about the Chicago Bears, representatives of one of the USA's great football towns, possessors of a defense so mighty it could only be led by the second coming of Dick Butkus, the merciless Brian Urlacher. The Carolina Panthers, constant underdogs, who put up such a magnificent performance two Super Bowls ago, and whose quarterback had his entire home region savaged by Hurricane Katrina. The Pittsburgh Steelers, who have been treading Vaccaro's "Hard Road to Glory" for YEARS longer than Manning's Colts have. Oh, and there's a little team called the Patriots, the embodiment of selfless teamwork, going for an unprecented Super Bowl three-peat. Jeez, how could you root for any of these bums when you have a prissy dome team like the Colts to support?

2. Peyton Manning can be dubbed "brightest luminary of them all" when he wins a single significant playoff game. Get back to me when that happens. Edgerrin James is a thug who proclaims his college affiliation as "The U." (When did Miami become so prestigious that it is the only university that doesn't even need to be called by its name?) Marvin Harrison is a little bitch who couldn't do a thing in a big game without the referees throwing flags on every single contact. Forgive me for staying off these fellas' bandwagon.

4. The "bloody lesson" the Colts learned from losing repeatedly to the Patriots was: bitch to the competition committee and get the rules changed so your girly-man offense can run with maximum efficiency. And it worked!

5. They never shied away from an undefeated season? How would you define "shying away"? Throwing a game? Crying out of nervousness during the coin toss? I watched the entire Colts-Chargers game, and I don't know how Vaccaro construes the Colts' effort as "heroic". They lost to a team that didn't even make the playoffs, and the game was not close. And once they lost that game, they pretty much let the rest of the regular season flush on down the toilet.

Now, there were extenuating circumstances -- events that, it turns out, form the crux of Mr. Vaccaro's argument.

"People who have known Tony Dungy a long time always talked about what a man of strength he has been, a man of dignity, a man of deep faith and deeper resolve. Flashes of that always came through on television. You never saw him grab a player's facemask, never heard him publicly disrespect anyone. When the Buccaneers exiled him after he'd personally rescued that franchise from purgatory, he didn't say a disparaging syllable, even though he plainly had the right.

So we partially understood who he was, and that he was someone worth rooting for.

But it took the heartbreaking events of the past few weeks for those of us on the periphery to truly understand what it was that Dungy's friends have been talking about for so long. Watching the way Dungy has conducted himself, seeing the way he has handled the unspeakable calamity visited upon his family after the death of his son, James, it's impossible to want this NFL tournament to play out any other way.

It has to be the Colts this year. It just has to. "

I have a great deal of sympathy for Tony Dungy and his family. But to suggest that his son's suicide can somehow be resolved with a Super Bowl trophy is crass in the extreme.

Maybe for media denizens like Vaccaro, a Colts win would provide the perfect dramatic ending to a ratings-grabbing tale. In the minds of these nitwits, some kind of Sports Karma owes Dungy compensation. But life is not a TV drama series, and a victory at season's end is not going to heal the emotional wounds or erase -- or even mitigate -- the "unspeakable calamity" of James Dungy's suicide.

Shame on you, Vaccaro. Your mindset - toward the gridiron and toward life - needs a serious adjustment.

Bad news for a Grace-face

2006-01-13T12:42:00.000-05:00

Uh oh, America's most annoying legal pundit is being stalked!

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - CNN talk show host Nancy Grace, a former prosecutor who heads a show on legal issues on the cable network, has obtained a restraining order against a man she accuses of harassing and stalking her."

I've loathed Grace since she appeared on Tony Kornheiser's old ESPN Radio show to talk about some athlete's trial or another. She was so obnoxious and caught up in her own schtick that the Orange one cut the interview off short and proceeded to trash her on the air for the next half hour. Nobody loves a missing white woman story like Nancy Grace. I've never been a fan of her style, and Wikipedia informs me there are some flaws in her prosecutorial substance as well:

"Although Grace has had a perfect conviction record at trial, many cases have been successfully appealed, and her professional ethics have been called into question by higher courts. [1] [2]

The Georgia Supreme Court has twice taken Grace to task. The first occasion was a 1994 heroin trafficking case, Bell v. State, in which it said that she "exceeded the wide latitude of closing argument" by referring to the defendant's prior convictions for violent felonies which were not at issue in the case.

Three years later, the court was more severe. Although its decision overturning the murder-arson conviction of businessman Wayne Weldon Carr in the death of his wife turned primarily on other issues, the court cited Grace's "inappropriate and illegal conduct in the course of the trial."

While the court said its reversal was not due to these transgressions, since the case had turned primarily on circumstantial evidence, it nevertheless concluded "... the conduct of the prosecuting attorney in this case demonstrated her disregard of the notions of due process and fairness, and was inexcusable." Carr was freed in 2004 when a judge ruled Fulton County had waited too long to retry him.

Even courts that have upheld convictions she has won have criticized her conduct. In 2005, a panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said she "played fast and loose" with facts in the 1990 triple murder trial of Herbert Connell Stephens. She failed to turn over evidence that pointed to other suspects to his defense and introduced testimony by a police investigator that there were no other suspects despite strong evidence she had to have been aware of that suggested there were other suspects."

In her punditry, too, there have been some startling breaches of ethical conduct.

"The most startling example of Grace commenting on matters sub judice occurred in the Smart case, when suspect Richard Ricci was arrested by police on the basis that he had a criminal record and had worked on the Smart's home. Grace immediately and repeatedly proclaimed on Court TV and CNN's Larry King that Ricci "was guilty", although there was little if any evidence to support this claim. She also suggested publicly that Ricci's girlfriend was involved in the coverup of his alleged crime. Grace continued to malign Ricci even after he died in jail.

Months later it was revealed that Smart was kidnapped by Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee, two individuals with whom Richard Ricci had no connection. Grace never publicly apologized to Ricci's family, and continued to defend her assumption that he was involved in the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart."

Anyway, she's not cool. So that's why I laughed when I read this clip:

"According to the injunction issued by a State Supreme Court judge, the suspected stalker, Joseph Raymond Loegering, cannot communicate or contact Grace by mail, telephone, e-mail, or voice-mail and cannot approach her either at home or work.

Loegering is a psychiatric patient at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York, where physicians say he is "schizophrenic, deeply delusional and obsessed with Nancy Grace and CNN," according to court papers.

According to the complaint made public on Wednesday, Loegering has "engaged in a continuous pattern of harassment and stalking" since November 18, sending Grace e-mails, and telephoning and attempting to enter her office in New York.

Grace, who is a former violent crimes prosecutor, says the two have never met. Her lawyer, Stephen Rinehart, and CNN spokeswoman Janine Iamunno declined to give further details.

The eight-page complaint contends that Loegering "is apparently obsessed with Ms. Grace, believes that he loves her, insists that she can solve all of his problems and will help him to meet with Osama Bin Laden." "

Paging Homeland Security!

Battle with Borat!

2006-01-13T12:11:00.000-05:00

Here's an item that came to my attention over the holidays. Although many people around the world love Sasha Baron Cohen's "Da Ali G Show", and its eminently imitable characters, Ali G, Bruno and Borat, it turns out the show isn't so popular in a country it's made infamous: Kazakhstan.

From a newspaper of my homeland, the Irish Examiner:

"Sacha Baron Cohen's alter-ego Borat Sagdiyev's website has been closed down by Kazakhstan officials after he used it to jokingly respond to legal threats.

The British star is revered for his caricature of a Kazakhstani journalist, and hosted this year's MTV Europe Music Awards (EMAs) as the comic creation.

But the Kazakhstan government are appalled by Cohen's portrayal of the central Asian nation as a country of drunken racists, sexists and Stalinists, and have now closed down Borat.kz."

Yes, Cohen went so far as to set up Borat's website in the .kz domain. After people in Kazakhstan were enraged by his performance at the EMAs, Cohen (in character as Borat) responded to the anger with enthusiasm:

"I'd like to state I have no connection with Mr Cohen and fully support my government's position to sue this Jew.

Since 2003… Kazakhstan is as civilized as any other country in the world. Women can now travel on inside of bus and homosexuals no longer have to wear blue hat."

Anyway, the Kazakhs didn't get quite as good a laugh out of the whole thing as I did. An indignant official stated:

"President of the Association Of Kazakh IT Companies, Nurlan Isin, says: "We've done this so he can't badmouth Kazakhstan under the .kz domain name. He can go and do whatever he wants at other domains.""

Apparently Cohen had long drawn the ire of government officials in the former Soviet republic with his [to my mind, hilarious] Borat routines.

The International Herald Tribune writes that "For almost a year, government officials have been grumbling about Borat, the loutish anti-ambassador of Kazakhstan who is a master of fractured English and likes to expose prejudice by showing how easy it is to encourage a crowd in a bar to sing a chorus of "Throw the Jew down the well so my country can be free!""

The article refers to a performance by Borat at an open mike in Arizona. He performed the following anthem. By the end, the crowd was singing along and going nuts.

"In my country there is problem,

And that problem is transport.

It take very very long,

Because Kazakhstan is big.

Throw transport down the well,

So my country can be free.

We must make travel easy,

Then we have big party!

In my country there is problem,

And that problem is the Jew.

They take everybody's money,

They never give it back to you.

Throw the Jew down the well,

So my country can be free.

You must grab him by his horns,

Then we have big party.

If you see the Jew coming,

You must be careful of his teeth.

You must grab him by his money,

And I tell you what to do...Everybody!

Throw the Jew down the well

So my country can be free

You must grab him by his horns

Then we have big party

Throw the Jew down the well

So my country can be free

You must grab him by his horns

Then we have big party!"

Don't call it a comeback, I've blogged here for years

2006-01-13T12:08:00.000-05:00

Well, I had a great month off. It was nice not having to share my thoughts with anyone, and burrow deep into a cocoon of hibernation. The holidays were kind to Caruso.

But, I'm back and posting again. And I've been saving up some good topics to unload on you this Friday the 13th!

I won't buy that, it's Torn

2005-12-13T18:31:00.000-05:00

I should have warned the DCMI loyalists that my postings around the holidays will be a lot more sporadic. I promise to get back to the daily doses in 2006. However, I will definitely be making appearances as regularly as possible in December, so don't hesitate to check back on a regular basis.

In the event that DCMI doesn't come through for you, I'd like to tell you about another great internet diversion. It's a multiplayer online game called Torn City, and it's been entertaining the hell out of me lately. Unlike ridiculous Warcraft-type multiplayer monstrosities, this game is text-based, doesn't require a lot of attention, and makes for a fun workday diversion.

You take on the persona of an inhabitant of the dystopian metropolis called Torn City. Initially, you dwell in a run down shack on the edge of town. You don't have a gat to protect you from the malcontents that live next door. Heck, you don't even have a job. But you find an entry-level gig in the classifieds, buy a switchblade from the store, find some quarters lying around the bus station, and before long you're moving on up in the TC world.

My character makes his scratch at the Torn City casino (and has been known to blow money there as well). My forays into crime have been pretty limited, but suffice it to say I can sell some serious bootlegged CDs, but my attempts at drug trafficking have been severely curtailed by my character's profound lack of cojones. At some point, though, I'll build up enough experience to pull off grand thefts auto and spirit vanloads of chronic across town like my name was Nate Newton.

Higher-level players join "factions", Torn City posses that can commit complicated organized crimes and feud with rival factions. These groups like to advertise themselves with graphical banners that can sometimes be pretty funny. I'd show you one, but my player is indisposed at the moment. More on that later...

Occasionally, huge groups of factions declare war on each other, making Torn City a dangerous place to digitally exist. I've been randomly jumped and wound up in the hospital a couple of times, although now I carry a Glock for such situations.

A comment from a review site sums up Torn City's strengths pretty accurately:

"Torn City successfully cleans up and improves on the genre of game style (text based mafia/gang/criminal browser game) which many games follow. This is not an aimless game where your only mission in life is to gather millions of thugs so you can crown yourself “da number one pimp town.” One of the games greatest features is the multiple types of experience you require, its not just one bar that fills up from doing everything but several different xp areas which require different activities to advance, also you don’t see your experience bar, well, there’s no bar over your head, so why would there be in Torn City? Activities in Torn City include committing a wide range of crimes, training in the gym to improve your own characters stats, participating in organised crimes with your faction friends, attacking – mugging and hospitalising other players. You are able to buy better homes which provide benefits and better weapons from the proceeds of your underhand activities. The goal of the game is to become the strongest but Torn City requires you to develop your character over time, you will not achieve a level 10 character in just a few days, that’s not how the game works, you cant work into the city, blow a few people away and suddenly be invincible, Torn City works in the same way. It takes time, and perseverance to make something of yourself. Torn City also has a good community around it, there are highly active forums and an IRC channel to find new friends within the game."

Well, I don't need any internet friends, thank you, but my TC alter ego, dubbed "Venicemenace", recently gained the companionship of two of man's best friends. After a visit to the new Pet Store, I am the proud owner ($10k later) of two Malamute mixes, one male and one female, who I named "MrMojorisin" and "Kinney", respectively. (And if you can think of better Venice, CA references, I'd like to hear 'em.) Right now, they're just puppies, but soon enough they will be big and strong enough to defend my shack, engage in TC dogfights (which you can bet on, by the way), and breed a new race of super-mutts. So far, they only like to eat and play fetch though. They better end up being more fun than Gigapets or they're outta my shack!

Unfortunately, I don't know how my dogs are faring at the moment. You see, this morning Venicemenace decided he was going to mug an old lady and ran afoul of Johnny Law. I got thrown in the slammer, then an ill-considered escape attempt allowed the Torn City authorities to double my time. There's not much to do in jail except shoot the shit and work out (can't load up any of those funny faction logos), so Venicemenace is just waiting around for his release.

That's not to say the amoral TC world is ignoring the plight of the incarcerated Venicemenace. Why, just in the last hour, the brave and valiant LNU-Alezhik, Kutsal, IceWinG and Eeyago - strangers all - have been thrown behind bars for trying to break me out of the slammer. Thanks for the effort, homies, maybe you can join my faction "Venice Menace" someday. We'll make our dread rivals "Mar Vista Marauders" pee their pants in terror! Soon all of Torn City will be ours! Muahaha!

But first, I need to figure out how I'm gonna get out of jail...

"This is LA Baseball"

2005-12-09T12:21:00.000-05:00

The following is a lengthy essay on the state of baseball in the fair metropolis of Los Angeles. Like all my posts thus far, this is a production of DCMI, copyright 2005. Your comments are much appreciated.

Things changed almost instantly.

For the Los Angeles Dodgers, the last game of the 2004 regular season was yet another memorable clip in a 50-year highlight reel. Center fielder Steve Finley launched a ball out of the park with two outs in the ninth - a grand slam to win not only the game, but the division. Delirium swept the packed stands; the cantilevered decks of Dodger Stadium shook. Fans howled and bear hugged strangers. San Francisco fans slunk out the exits, high-stepping over rivers of beer that streamed from hundreds of suddenly dropped cups. Dodger fans were ecstatic. Winning the division was victory enough, but humiliating their rivals in the process made the winning even sweeter. A taste of the playoffs, and at the Giants’ expense!

After Finley’s blast, even the team’s weak showing against the World Series-bound Cardinals couldn’t depress Dodger fans. Deflating as it might have been, the loss was tempered by the antics of Jose Lima and the slugging of Shawn Green. Proclaiming “Lima Time”, the usually underwhelming starter dominated Game 3: the Dodgers’ first postseason win since the Orel Hershiser era. Los Angeles-bred Green made So Cal natives proud by blasting a few home runs.

When the series ended, the postmortems were sunny. It had been a banner year, if not a pennant year. Manager Jim Tracy was celebrated for his calm guidance during the homestretch. Adrian Beltre, the young third baseman, submitted a respectable challenge to San Francisco’s Barry Bonds in the MVP race, placing second. Although the team fell short of a seventh Dodger championship, most fans called the season a success.

Their happiness proved to be short-lived.

By Opening Day, 2005, every Dodger yet mentioned was with another team. Green was dealt to Arizona in the offseason. Third baseman Beltre, finally delivering after years of promise, signed with Seattle; the Dodgers made only a half-hearted effort to keep him. Steve Finley signed with the Angels. Lima was dumped and soon found himself toiling in the obscurity of Kansas City. Other key players, like starting second baseman Alex Cora, were similarly jettisoned. (Nor was the manager safe: Jim Tracy was pink slipped mere days after the 2005 season concluded.) It’s true that most of the players had demanded steep prices for their continued employment, but they had been the Dodgers, and now they were gone.

The seeds of this lineup’s destruction had in fact been sown even earlier, in a July 2004 trade engineered by general manager Paul DePodesta. In his eagerness to put his own fingerprints on the team, the recently installed GM dispensed with the team’s touchstone: catcher Paul LoDuca. Brought up through the Dodger system and tutored along the way by Dodger greats like Mike Scioscia, LoDuca is a serviceable hitter and a superb defensive catcher. Under his guidance, the Dodger pitching staff ranked among the best in the league. Nevertheless, LoDuca seemed to DePodesta an acceptable price to pay for Arizona’s Randy Johnson, the menacing ace the team needed to go deep into the playoffs. But Arizona balked, yanking Johnson off the table as the deadline approached. DePodesta, now desperate, settled for Florida’s Brad Penny in a three-way deal, with Arizona throwing in Finley as a consolation prize. LoDuca was now a Florida Marlin.

This last-ditch attempt to improve Dodger pitching soon proved disastrous. Penny managed two notable feats in his Dodger debut: hurling a one-hitter and mysteriously injuring himself for the rest of the year. For his part, Steve Finley performed admirably. But without LoDuca’s guidance, the Dodger pitching staff turned to mush. (The team never adequately replaced LoDuca, and eventually had to rush prospect Dioner Navarro to the majors.) When Finley, his contract expiring after the 2004 season, left the team after a few short months in Dodger blue, many fans wondered aloud if DePodesta’s midseason move had been well-considered after all.

The dismay was back, an emotion Dodgers fans had been feeling quite a bit lately: a familiar mixture of regret, frustration and anxiety.

Its first stirrings might have occurred when longtime skipper Tommy Lasorda stepped down in 1996, ending a long era of managerial stability; it rose anew in 1998 when the O’Malley family sold the franchise to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, who promptly dispensed with several fan favorites. Surely the Dodger faithful felt it when the team shelled out millions for pitchers Kevin Brown and Darren Driefort, only to see the pair almost totally lost to injury. And few were left untouched by this dire sentiment when Frank McCourt bought the team, ushering in an era of Dodger frugality entirely at odds with Los Angeles’ wealth and size.

For most of the 2005 season, the Dodgers were within a winning streak’s reach of the division lead. Healthy crowds filled Dodger Stadium. But it was not an inspiring team by Dodger standards, and as the season wore on, it became a horrible team by any standard. Dissension spread like plague through the ranks of Dodger partisans. After all, even seasoned fans get befuddled when confronted with strangers like “Jason Repko” and “Olmeido Saenz”. Somewhat like Yankees fans, who expect championships or nothing, Dodgers faithful expect to be entertained, at the very least. And why shouldn’t they, given the team’s glorious history?

Brooklyn natives bemoan the departure of the Dodgers from the borough in 1958. But Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, often condemned as a scoundrel, should rightly be regarded as a heroic figure in baseball history. It’s easy to have sympathy for Brooklyn’s abandoned fans, but the facts are usually overlooked. New York City would not allow O’Malley to build a new stadium in Brooklyn, instead offering the site eventually occupied by the Mets in Flushing Meadows. Furthermore, they insisted on a city-built, city-owned park, while O’Malley wanted to build and own his own ballpark. Today’s city governments would bring gold, frankincense and myrrh to any owner making such an offer, but the New York bosses refused to budge.

Los Angeles representatives visited the 1955 World Series, in which Brooklyn finally defeated the hated Yankees. The Californians were hoping to lure the Washington franchise westward; O’Malley sent word that he wanted a meeting.

O’Malley soon joined Giants owner Horace Stoneman in deserting New York for the West Coast. A possibly apocryphal story told among Dodger fans relates that O’Malley, feigning indiscretion, raved to Stoneman about the potential of San Francisco. Once Stoneman took the bait, quickly arranging to move his franchise to the Bay Area, O’Malley was free to move into LA unopposed.

True or not, the story reflects the cunning nature of O’Malley’s machinations. The owner was indeed a shrewd businessman who made cold, calculating moves to protect his investments. But Walter O’Malley consistently did the best thing for the Dodgers, and in so doing, he did the best thing for baseball. In moving the Dodgers to Southern California, O’Malley didn’t just selfishly seize the opportunity to build his own stadium. The move to LA reinvigorated the city and the Dodgers, and cemented baseball’s right to call itself a national pastime. Today, almost a third of the teams in baseball hail from the West. This development mirrors an explosion in population, particularly in the Southwest, a vast and burgeoning population center where all roads lead to Los Angeles.

Typically for California, things began with a skirmish. When city officials appropriated the land in Chavez Ravine for O’Malley’s stadium, local residents protested the destruction of a vibrant neighborhood. Undeterred, canny developers offering cash payments for homes steadily decreased the amounts offered as they found more takers, stirring up a frenzy in the community. Onetime stalwarts found themselves scrambling for any sum, desperate to avoid being the last family left. Construction soon sprang into action, leveling a nearby hill to fill in much of the actual ravine with soil. Any remaining geographical landmarks were obliterated by an ambitious earthworks scheme. In no time at all, a up-and-coming Hispanic district had been replaced by a cathedral of hardball.

This unfortunate event was offset by the pride the entire city would soon draw from its baseball team. In 1959, the team won its first West Coast championship while playing downtown at the Coliseum. From 1962, the Los Angeles Dodgers put a string of legendary teams on the field at Dodger Stadium, and played some of baseball’s most memorable games on its lush grass.

The 1960s featured legendary Sandy Koufax on the Stadium’s towering mound, pitching as skillfully as any man ever has. The Dodgers won titles in 1963 and 1965. In the 1970s, the team again improved itself by reaping the first fruits of a superb farm system that would become the envy of the major leagues. And in the 1980s, a truly incongruous cast of characters filled the Dodger dugout.

Their leader was bulbous manager Tommy Lasorda, who greeted the press with lines like “I bleed Dodger blue!” and typically motivated his players with a string of expletives. Fernando Valenzuela, a pudgy Mexican pitcher, instigated “Fernandomania” in 1981, riding his deadly screwball to a World Series title in his rookie year. Huge crowds packed Dodger Stadium every time 20-year-old Fernando took the mound, and beautiful women ran on the field during games to kiss the baby faced sensation. While Fernando’s career thereafter was too brief, another Dodger pitching sensation appeared to take his place: skinny Orel Hershiser, who capped a Cy Young run by obliterating the Oakland A’s in games 2 and 5 of the 1988 World Series.

Oakland never really stood a chance after Game 1 – and one of the most dramatic incidents in baseball history. Dodger Kirk Gibson, supposedly sidelined with two severely injured legs, hobbled to the plate to pinch-hit in the bottom of the 9th inning. Gibson faced Dennis Eckersley, one of the best closers in history, but neither his opponent nor his wounds could suppress the Dodgers’ captain-without-portfolio. While in obvious pain, Gibson fought off several filthy pitches, then smote a full-count offering to right. As Dodger Stadium descended into hysteria, invariably calm broadcaster Vin Scully nearly screamed, “High fly ball into right field, she iiiis... GONE!” Gibson limped around the bases, pumping his fists, and television cameras captured the unforgettable scene.

While some franchises have wandered in the wilderness for decades, the Los Angeles Dodgers have built an impressive trophy case. Even in the relatively sparse 90s, the Dodgers featured an astonishing five consecutive Rookies of the Year. The team largely comprised players brought up through its superb farm system, and fans grew very fond of home-grown talent like Mike Piazza. In another Dodger tradition, the team debuted pitching stars on an annual basis. The team’s forward-thinking ways didn’t hurt: the Dodgers, the first team to break the color barrier, were also among the first to recognize the wellspring of baseball talent in the Dominican Republic and one of the first to recruit from Japan.

Most vitally, the Dodgers remained stable, and they always entertained the crowd. Walter Alston’s 22-year tenure as manager gave way to Lasorda’s 20-year reign. The O’Malley ownership, controlling the team for 48 years, worked hard to maintain Dodger Stadium and assemble championship-caliber rosters. No team better personified the National League style of fine pitching, great defense, and productive batting than the Dodgers, and it showed in their success. Tommy Lasorda sometimes referred to God as “the great Dodger in the sky,” and for obvious reasons.

Unfortunately, the skies were about to darken.

When the patriarch passed away, the O’Malley family sold their inheritance to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, known in the US for its Fox subsidiary, in 1998. The behemoth mismanaged the team, trading Piazza among other unpopular moves. Then, in early 2004, Murdoch sold to Frank McCourt, a Boston real estate developer. Although cash-poor, McCourt was able to structure a heavily financed deal. While he uttered promises that the payroll would be ample, McCourt quickly hired DePodesta, then assistant GM for the Oakland A’s. Dodger fans were immediately suspicious, because Paul DePodesta was famous for one thing: he knew how to win on a tight budget.

The new GM starred in the hugely controversial Michael Lewis bestseller Moneyball, a book that describes how A’s GM Billy Beane and top lieutenant DePodesta staged a coup against veteran scouts in a quest to win on the cheap. Crunching numbers, these New Men contravened conventional wisdom to acquire underrated players who, shockingly, delivered. Year after year, the team outperformed expectations. However, “Moneyball” couldn’t overcome all limitations, and Oakland failed to win even one AL championship. Critics tore into Beane, but many others were inspired by the new techniques. McCourt saw DePodesta as an ideal architect for a statistically sound, modestly budgeted operation in Los Angeles.

Out of the charismatic Beane’s shadow, however, DePodesta must have soon found the spotlight blinding. If the first test of the new general manager’s mettle was the failed trade of Paul LoDuca, a far more trying series of tribulations was in store.

After the 2004 season, the Dodgers passed on their own free agents and summoned a cadre of mercenaries: surly second baseman Jeff Kent, injury-prone right fielder J.D. Drew, and emotional starter Derek Lowe. With a roster that still included all-star closer Eric Gagne and whiz shortstop Cesar Izturis, the Dodgers seemed capable of defending the division title against extremely weak opposition. Led by fiery outfielder Milton Bradley, the team surged out of the gate, winning twelve games and losing only two.

But after April 20th, the Dodgers went into a 47-69 swoon. By July, an spate of injuries swept the team, erasing its momentum and exposing its lack of depth. Dodgers from youngster Jayson Werth to grizzled veteran Jose Valentin logged months on the DL. Gagne was lost for the year and underwent reconstructive surgery. Many other players fought nagging injuries that refused to heal. Jim Tracy’s nightly lineup was a patchwork affair, featuring unsteady rookies and second-rate veterans. The team stumbled out of the division lead and would fall as far as fourth place in the majors’ weakest division before season’s end.

When Diamondbacks starter Brad Halsey stung J. D. Drew on the left hand with a fastball on July 3, it seemed at first a minor inconvenience to the outfielder, who shook it off and took his base. But by the next inning, Drew was in the dugout, injured for the year, again. An overwhelmed Paul DePodesta entreated reporters: “Ever seen anything like this? Not one of our players has come back when he was eligible. Can we survive?” Former Dodger Shawn Green homered that night to pace the Diamondbacks to a 10-3 victory.

The fans stayed for the whole nine nevertheless – an utterly disarming sight in traffic-ridden Los Angeles – and filed onto the field afterwards to watch an Independence Day fireworks show. From roughly the spot where Steve Finley’s grand slam landed ten months before, a torrent of sparkling rockets were launched into the air, synchronized with patriotic anthems. But the technicians miscalculated; they ran out of fireworks before the big finish, and the stirring chords of the final melody were accompanied by an empty sky. A sheepish announcer mumbled an apology over the loudspeakers. The crowd had finally had enough. They heartily booed the Dodgers before disappearing into the night.

Like a spectacular explosion in the night sky, if you blinked, you missed it. In a year, the Dodgers had been replaced by new Dodgers. And all the new Dodgers were injured. Enjoy the fireworks.

In suburban Anaheim, fireworks aren’t just for the fourth of July, they’re for every game. Moreover, they’re for wins, home runs, player introductions, rallies, and even video highlights. At Angel Stadium, booming eruptions routinely spew from the bizarre rock outcropping in center field, but they’re hardly the alpha and omega of spectacle at the “Big A”. Taking a cue from, say, the Palace at Auburn Hills, the stadium is heavy on video screens, advertising space, and light entertainment for casual fans. Fittingly, it offers easy access to a gargantuan mall complex, “The Block”, on the way out of the game; just hang a right on Shoppertainment Way. In all, Angel Stadium has an atmosphere that encourages fans to pay less attention to the field and more attention to the Spongebob video clips. (By contrast, Wrigley Field in Chicago has no video screens at all; if you stop to gaze at your chili dog, you might miss the most important play of the game. If you care about that kind of thing.)

Until recently, Anaheim had been host to the most disappointing residence in the Los Angeles area since Berry Gordy moved Motown out from Detroit. Consider this: just one decade ago, in 1995, Anaheim was one of major league baseball’s lowliest franchises. The team’s cumulative accomplishments were even dwarfed by those of the pitiable Seattle Mariners, to whom they ceded an 11 game lead down the stretch that year. Anaheim was the Phoenix of major league baseball teams: more or less composed of men past their prime and men devoid of any prime whatsoever.

The Angels’ history was rocky from the start. At a contentious Owners’ Meeting in 1960, the haughty eminences rejected multiple bids to start the American League’s new Los Angeles franchise. Singing cowboy Gene Autry audited the St. Louis meeting, hoping to score the rights to broadcast the new LA team’s games on his radio stations. Desperate for an acceptable candidate, league elders pressed Autry to sign on for a majority stake in the team. Back in Los Angeles, however, Walter O’Malley had plans for his American League neighbors. In exchange for shared territorial rights, the Angels were compelled to sign a multi-year lease at Dodger Stadium, and billed a 50% duty on stadium supplies. O’Malley even earned $300,000 for the rights to the team name. Thanks to these pecuniary impositions, the team was eager to flee when their lease expired in 1966, and eventually landed in Anaheim, in the hinterlands of nascent Orange County.

And then: nothing. Four playoff appearances in thirty-five years yielded no hardware for the Angels; then, in 1986, they suffered a spectacular meltdown. On the absolute verge of advancing to their first World Series - in Roger Angell’s words, “with the Angels on the topmost dugout step for the pennant sprint and the huggings and the champagne” - the unthinkable happened. Red Sox slugger Dave Henderson blasted a two-out, two-ball, two-strike, two-run, game tying home run; a blow from which Angel closer Donnie Moore never psychologically recovered. Nor, seemingly, did the team. Although Hendu’s homer did not end the series, or even the game, the damage was done.

The Angels had fallen and they couldn’t get up. They failed to make the playoffs for the next sixteen years.

Nothing was expected of the Angels at the outset of the 2002 season, but they somehow claimed the wild card and upset the Yankees in the playoffs, shocking most observers. In the highest-scoring World Series ever, not even Barry Bonds’ steroid-enhanced frame could outmuscle the red-hot Angels. Seemingly dead in Game Six, the Angels were seized by inspiration when they saw San Francisco manager Dusty Baker hand Russ Ortiz the game ball as the starter left the game in the seventh inning, Giants leading 5-0. Apparently ignorant of their ignominious tradition, the enraged Halos roared back to take the final two contests, thrilling baseball fans with their tenacity.

2002’s Angels were underdogs in the purest sense: none more so than their diminutive shortstop, David Eckstein. Although not blessed with speed, power, or even average height, Eckstein’s constant hustle helped him attain the major league level; a knack for making plays kept him in the starting lineup. But a championship season proved to be a heady brew for the Angels, and the ownership began to swell their roster with superheroes. Feisty Eckstein was one of the first to go, discharged in favor of a more accomplished shortstop, Orlando Cabrera. Playing the previous season in one of baseball’s most lethal pressure cookers, OC stayed loose and delivered key hits and plays during Boston’s 2004 championship run, while befriending all he encountered. In 2005, Cabrera was the best defensive shortstop in the league.

The acquisition of Cabrera in place of Eckstein, an upgrade at no small cost, is an example of how the Angels now operate. Before the 2005 season, in a Trojan purge unrivaled since Odysseus and friends poured out of a wooden horse, the Angels cut ties with third sacker Troy Glaus and closer Troy Percival, crucial members of the 2002 roster. Meanwhile, over the past two years, the team has thickened its roster with All-Stars like hefty ace Bartolo Colon and the 2004 MVP, Vladimir Guerrero: arguably the best player in baseball.

The modus operandi is clear: Gritty underdogs need not apply. From here on out, the Angels will be composed of blue-chip prospects and top-tier free agents.

The Angels have made other changes that reflect their growing ambition. This past offseason, ownership decided to give the Angels an unusual new name: The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The resultant uproar came from all sides. Outraged Anaheim officials, backed by the city of Los Angeles, immediately launched legal action against the team. Media outlets nationwide had a field day with the moniker, while the Dodgers refused to acknowledge any change: the Dodger Stadium out-of-town scoreboard still identifies the team by its old handle (“ANA”), eschewing its new one (“LAA”).

Undeterred, the Angels fought back in court and won the right to use the Los Angeles name in 2005. They weren’t done yet. Their owner, Arturo Moreno, was not only a deep-pocketed magnate; he was a deep-pocketed advertising magnate. After purchasing the team from the Disney corporation in 2003, “Arte” Moreno set about effecting a paradigm shift in the Los Angeles sports world. Although Moreno is loath to speak to the press or draw much attention to himself, his message rang out in both Orange and Los Angeles counties. The Angels ran ubiquitous billboards over the turf they sought to conquer, including well north of the 105 freeway, into the heart of Los Angeles.

The ads were simple: an image of Guerrero, unleashing his splendid swing, with a slogan: “This Is LA Baseball”.

Baseball fans lost in the wilderness for the last few years might be shocked to find out that the Angels are now challenging the Dodgers’ supremacy. Depending on your perspective, this is either poetic justice on behalf of the downtrodden Halos, or it’s a baseball tragedy of epic proportions.

Some elements of the Angels’ newfound success are obvious. Take their finest player, Guerrero. Vlad is so gifted, he makes your average major leaguer look as though he should be playing in a beer league. Guerrero is huge, his limbs are long, he hits for average and power, runs well, he has a cannon for an arm. In 2004, Guerrero carried the Angels to the division title with one clutch hit after another. His heroics on July 21st, 2005, were typically epic. Staked to a three-run lead with the bases loaded, Yankee reliever Tom Gordon flung a breaking ball low, almost into the dirt. With an effortless, golf-like swing, Guerrero drove the ball into deep dead center, a grand slam. The record crowd at Angel Stadium went home happy after a 6-5 win. All were thrilled, but no one was shocked. It was Vladi swinging the bat, after all.

In Guerrero, the Angels have one of the league’s top sluggers; in Colon, one of its finest starters; and in Frankie Rodriguez, one of its best relief pitchers. Few teams will find success without stars, and yet many teams accumulate a few top players and still find themselves staring mediocrity in the face. The Angels succeed then not only because of their talented players but also because their style of play. Employing an aggressive, National League-style offense, the Angels hit and run, steal bases, and lay down sacrifice bunts. Tough, unheralded players buy into the Angel philosophy and execute in critical situations. One exemplar is Chone Figgins, who led the major leagues in 2005 with 62 steals and can play almost any defensive position. And since catchers are probably the most underrated players in the game of baseball, it’s fitting that the Angels’ most underrated player in 2005 was their catcher, Bengie Molina, who has recently added a power stroke to match his excellent defensive abilities. Of course, Molina has had superb tutoring - his manager, former Dodger Mike Scioscia, could frame a pitch or two in his day.

A round, burly man, ‘Sosh’ (rhymes with gauche) guided both Valenzuela and Hershiser behind the dish, establishing the best career strikeout/walk rate for a catcher since World War II while blocking the plate like a concrete wall. (Of his offensive prowess Bill James memorably wrote, “Scioscia was 6-foot-2 and had arms like a blacksmith, but hit 7 homers a year anyway.”) During Scioscia’s tenure, few American League teams have been more proficient at moving runners along the base paths. Eschewing a beefy, slow, AL-style slugger, Scioscia rotates a handful of players at DH, often employing the spot to spell fielders. He runs an exceptionally tight ship: the vastly talented Jose Guillen was expelled from the club after a single outburst during the pennant race of 2004. Scioscia’s coaching staff features big names like his Dodger teammate Alfredo Griffin, famed in his playing days for, among other feats, routinely going from first base to third on ground ball outs. (!) Despite the astounding depth of talent among both players and coaches, the entire team defers to Scioscia’s leadership.

Like the title of Los Angeles’ best team, Scioscia was snatched from the Dodgers by the Angels. With Jim Tracy enroute to Pittsburgh, it’s easy to wonder how things might have turned out with Scioscia at the Dodgers’ helm instead. Yet the simplicity of this hypothetical ignores so many other factors. While the Dodgers have been bleeding quality personnel for years (mostly through bad trades), the Angels have been improving their roster each season. The Angel accounts are flush with assets, and will continue to grow as they capture more fans from the north. The Dodgers find themselves brainstorming ways to augment their income, cutting into foul territory with new rows of expensive seats and adding video panels for more advertising space. While Arte Moreno keeps a low profile, wooing free agents behind closed doors, Frank McCourt consistently draws criticism with carpetbagger moves like squiring Vin Scully to a game at Fenway Park.

In a gloriously ham-handed move, McCourt named his wife Jamie president of the team, a job that apparently requires zero baseball experience. She appeared, beaming, on the cover of USA Today, touted as a harbinger of women’s empowerment in baseball boardrooms. Meanwhile, the sports pages told of a racially charged feud between Milton Bradley and Jeff Kent. Bradley swore that Kent “obviously doesn’t know how to deal with African-American people.” Former teammate Lance Berkman opined that Kent “doesn’t discriminate against anybody. He ignores Latinos, blacks and whites equally.” Most of Los Angeles gossiped about the callous Derek Lowe, who put an exclamation point on a weak season by leaving his wife and two small children for a local sports broadcaster. Ultimately, McCourt admitted to the Los Angeles Times that he had underestimated the importance of character in his players. The feeling was mutual. While the Angels battled the Yankees in the playoffs, Dodger stars like Eric Gagne groused to the press.

DePodesta, the object of widespread loathing, saw one acquisition after another crumble on the field. Unripe rookies, rushed to the majors long before the September harvest, struggled alongside them. English-speaking pundits dubbed the GM “Stupidesta”; Spanish speakers cursed “DePendejo”. Fans watched in horror as their team became the poster child for the weaknesses of statistical scouting: stats can’t measure hustle or leadership, and they certainly can’t quantify team chemistry. Soon after firing Jim Tracy, DePodesta was himself fired – sent packing after two disappointing seasons during which he and McCourt systematically dismantled the entire Dodger organization. Quoth McCourt, “My high expectations were not met.”

The Dodgers’ collapse is made all the more shocking by the simultaneous transformation of the Angels. In the late 90s, both teams suffered the unenviable fate of being controlled by multinational corporations, but one emerged with a bright future, another an uncertain one. Against fifty years of Los Angeles tradition, the lucky winners were the Angels.

For a professional sports franchise, no upward or downward trend is ever permanent. And yet, no determining factor in a team’s future success is more powerful than the financial resources committed by its ownership. Arte Moreno startled the baseball world when he acquired Guerrero, snatching him away from such deep-pocketed concerns as the Orioles and Yankees. Frank McCourt, by contrast, yielded to lowly Seattle in the Beltre negotiations over the matter of a few million dollars. While the Angels stand to gain revenue streams through their playoff appearances and Los Angeles affiliation, many observers wonder what state the Dodgers will find themselves in once News Corp. ends its substantial contributions to the payroll in a few years. By the time McCourt pays his debts and begins to invest the money into his team that Moreno already has, how many Dodger fans will have been captivated by the remarkable team from the OC?

There is a new status quo. The Angels made their annual visit to the postseason in October, while the Dodgers again look to overhaul their roster and front office this winter. While Dodger greats school young Angel stars, the team that brought baseball to Los Angeles has bitterly disappointed its city.

One thing is clear: the Dodgers will have to share their turf. With every win, the Angels send a message. This is LA baseball.

Caruso's Apology

2005-12-08T19:09:00.000-05:00

Hello friends, I've been absent from you all week. You see, Peter Jackson is working on a remake of The Wolf-Man and I'm up for the title role. Auditions have been intensive; yesterday I had to chase Andy Serkis around the room, growling like a fierce predator!

Tomorrow, I'll deliver with a long essay on the state of Los Angeles baseball. I think the devoted DCMI fans will enjoy it.

My next great role?

Reggie Bush, football Messiah

2005-12-02T14:28:00.000-05:00

One of the nicest things about living on the West Coast is that on fall Saturdays, you can enjoy the wild and woolly ways of Pac-10 college football. If you enjoy a high-scoring, wide-open football game with lots of great offense played in classic settings, the Pacific 10 conference is for you. Watch USC's Matt Leinart dissect defenses at the LA Coliseum, gape as ASU's Terrell Suggs destroys quarterbacks at Sun Devil Stadium, get lost in the Oregon fog as the Beavers battle the Ducks. The conference is chock-full of rivalries, both intrastate and intracity. Plus, the East Coast-based media establishment routinely denigrates and underrates the Pac-10, so it's got the bonus of being underappreciated. In the few short years I've been watching college football (I'm from New England, where it hardly exists), the West Coast version is indubitably my favorite.

Right now, there's no finer player in the Pac-1o (or all of college, for that matter) than USC's amazing tailback/return man/reciever/sometime QB Reggie Bush. The superman from the 619 dropped one of 2005's finest sports highlights against Fresno State last month, charging with blazing speed towards the left sideline, then hanging in the air for a moment before starting a drastic cutback -- leaving every defender in his wake enroute to a crucial TD. Reggie is basically a Heisman lock and virtually guaranteed to be the NFL's #1 pick in the next draft.

Now, the New York Times brings us the story of an old-school Reggie Bush highlight reel. A tape of his exploits at San Diego's Helix High has been making the rounds for some time, and now is available to blow your mind online.

The intrepid Lee Jenkins has the story:

"SAN DIEGO, Nov. 27 - Helix High School conveniently stores its old highlight tape of Reggie Bush in the sports medicine center.

"You'll see some stuff on here," the Helix athletic director, Damon Chase, cautioned, "that is really pretty sickening."

Despite the lack of a warning label, the footage of Bush, Helix's most aerodynamic alumnus, can induce dizzy spells, even for a jaded viewer numbed by hours of cable highlight shows.

The tape includes eight minutes of cut backs, jump stops, spin moves and slipped tackles that have not yet been broadcast on national television.

With limited sound and only one slow-motion replay, the tape acts as an underground treasure in Southern California. Watching it feels sort of like listening to a bootlegged copy of a Bob Dylan basement concert. "I don't know who exactly has the tape right now," Chase said. "But I know it's been copied a lot."

At Helix, nostalgic faculty members play it for laughs. At U.S.C., coaches have used it to regale guests. Check out the clip where he runs across the field and back again; the one where he breaks two tackles at the same time; the one where he spins away from a defender, fakes another and hurdles a third; the one where he ...

Bush's college highlights have made him a national phenomenon, but his pre-college highlights are the grainy stuff of prep legend. Before every game, Bush reminds himself where his long broken-field run began. He has instructed the Trojans' equipment coordinator to scrawl San Diego's primary area code, 619, in silver ink on his eye-black patches. Bush's personal fashion statement has already become the latest trend in gridiron style."

I'd make the link available here but the NYT is too crafty for that. The link can be found on the article page. My advice is to select "high resolution", wait for it to start running and pause the feed, then go do something else for 15 minutes while the clip downloads. When you hit that "play" button, you'll see Reggie lighting up hapless high schoolers on plays that make that Fresno State highlight look pedestrian.

What makes Reggie Bush so great is that he's not just a talented athlete, he's a hardworking, blue-collar player.

"Bush is not the only ball carrier from his hometown with highlight tapes still in circulation. If he can spring another move or two in the regular-season finale Saturday against U.C.L.A., Bush could become the fourth running back from San Diego to win the Heisman Trophy in the past 25 years. Considering that U.S.C. is known as Tailback U, San Diego may soon be regarded as Tailback Town.

"It means a lot to be from the same place as all those Heisman winners," Bush said. "That is something that really drives me. But I'm still curious to see if I can uphold the tradition."

Marcus Allen (Heisman Trophy winner, 1981) was bigger, Ricky Williams (1998) was stronger and Rashaan Salaam (1994) ran more upright. But for balance and agility, for turning inside handoffs into outside runs and short passes into mammoth gains, Bush has long been in his own area code.

"I remember that those other backs got hit occasionally in high school," said John Shacklett, a former high school coach in San Diego now on the board of the Hall of Champions, a museum dedicated to local athletics. "But nobody ever touched Reggie."

When Bush was 9 years old, his stepfather put him in a Pop Warner league because the boy was too hyper to keep around the house all the time. In the first game, Bush reportedly finished with 7 touchdowns and 287 yards. In the second game, he had 8 touchdowns and 544 yards. "I couldn't believe what I saw," said his stepfather, Lamar Griffin.

Bush was practically born into the backfield. He grew up in Southeast San Diego, the same part of the city as Terrell Davis, the former Denver Broncos tailback. As a kid, he watched Marshall Faulk run at San Diego State. Then he started training with LaDainian Tomlinson, the San Diego Chargers' tailback.

"I noticed some of myself in him as far as creativity," Tomlinson said. "He likes to express himself and do different things with the football."

At Helix, coaches used Bush as their punter, trusting him to take off whenever he saw an opening. Recruiters seem to remember Helix faking about as many punts as it attempted. "Reggie would line up back there and make 22 people miss," said Kennedy Pola, the former U.S.C. running backs coach. "That's 11 twice."

Still, according to Pola, his colleagues at U.S.C. were not sold on Bush until they saw The Tape. It was hard not to feel sorry for the opposing players on the field. "That's the film that convinced the rest of the staff," said Pola, now an assistant with the Jacksonville Jaguars. "They popped it in and went, 'Wow, we've got to get this guy.' "

Bush fit right into U.S.C.'s tailback tradition, but he has never totally fit in with the Trojans. Although U.S.C. fashions itself a laid-back champion, staging pranks and playing practical jokes, Bush generally acts as intense as a 10-year pro. When teammates form makeshift mosh pits in the locker room after victories, Bush is more likely to tiptoe on the benches around the perimeter, usually above the fray."

After the season, he might well be reunited with his QB at Helix High - last year's #1 pick, San Francisco's Alex Smith. If that happens, we'll be looking at a new highlight reel every Sunday from the Helix All-Stars...

Maverick's sonogram snafu

2005-12-01T13:55:00.000-05:00

Poor Tom Cruise just can't seem to do anything right.

In his latest display of enthusiastic, over-the-top love for Katie Holmes, the actor, who has been rumored to be impotent for years due to his suspicious lack of progeny (despite two marraiges) impregnated his young fiancee. (Now that she's become "clear" with the help of round-the-clock Scientology advisors, they're ready to produce Miscavidge-approved offspring.) This site has already outlined some of the ludicrous beliefs of Scientology; they also have wacky methods of childbirth, including total silence in the birthing room.

A totally silent, painkiller-free birth. That'll show those dastardly thetans who's boss!

Now, Cruise has run afoul of the medical establishment for the second time in a year. After attempting a frontal assault on the entire field of psychology - whose history, he assures us, he knows far better than we do - Tom has decided that modern medicine isn't all bad. In fact, he's purchased his very own sonogram device so he can gaze at his baby in utero every day!

Sarah Hall of E! Online has the amusing story of Tom's latest hijinks, and their potential consequences.

"Tom Cruise hasn't made many friends within the medical community lately.

First the American Psychiatric Association slammed the actor for referring to psychiatry as a "pseudoscience," calling Cruise's remarks "irresponsible." Now the American College of Radiology is up in arms over Cruise's admission that he purchased a sonogram machine and uses it to perform at-home ultrasounds on fiancee Katie Holmes.

The ACR issued a statement warning that Cruise and Holmes could potentially harm their unborn baby by performing ultrasounds without the benefit of a doctor's supervision.

"This is a patient safety issue. Untrained people, even if they have the financial means, should not buy, or be allowed to buy and operate, ultrasound machines which are, in fact, medical devices and should not be used without a medical indication," said Dr. Carol M. Rumack, chair of the ACR Ultrasound Commission.

Cruise gushed about his purchase to Barbara Walters during an interview for her special Barbara Walters Presents: The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2005, which aired Tuesday.

"I bought a sonogram machine," Cruise told Walters during the interview, which was taped Oct. 30. "I am going to donate it to a hospital when we are done."

Somewhat startled, Walters replied, "Wait, you are going to do your own sonogram?"

"Yes," Cruise replied, chuckling.

The couch-jumping thesp told Walters that he did not know the sex of his offspring, but that he saw "a little baby" when he performed the ultrasound. "

As it turns out, the radiologists aren't just a bunch of wet blankets trying to keep their shiny machines to themselves. The "Tomkitten" could be in perilous danger!!!

"Cruise's purchase is estimated to have set him back anywhere from $15,000 to $200,000. However, the ACR is not convinced that the War of the Worlds star fully understands the complexities of the device.

"The ACR is concerned that Tom Cruise has been badly advised regarding the use and potential abuse of ultrasound," Dr. Rumack stated. "There are many abnormalities that may be missed by the untrained eye. Also, if it is not medically necessary, the use of ultrasound raises unnecessary physical risk to the fetus."

The ACR isn't the only organization concerned about Cruise's personal sonogram machine. According to the Food and Drug Administration, the actor may even be violating the law by possessing the device.

"Persons who promote, sell or lease ultrasound equipment for making 'keepsake' fetal videos should know that FDA views this as an unapproved use of a medical device," the FDA stated. "In addition, those who subject individuals to ultrasound exposure using a diagnostic ultrasound device (a prescription device) without a physician's order may be in violation of state or local laws or regulations regarding use of a prescription medical device."

Cruise's representatives did not respond to requests for comment on the sonogram issue. "

Invisible Man

2005-11-30T15:29:00.000-05:00

It's time now to return to the sports beat, and catch up with NFL cornerback Ty Law.

Law was an integral part of the New England Patriots championship dynasty, shutting down top recievers and constantly bedeviling Payton Manning when it counted. He began his stardom as part of a tandem with Lawyer Milloy (any legal-related jests have already been played out, folks), and first gained national fame with a crucial interception of Kurt Warner in the Pats' first championship game. Two seasons ago, Law obliterated Manning in the playoffs, catching more of the Indy QB's passes than did star Indy reciever Marvin Harrison! Law was so effective that an NFL rule change harshly prohibiting contact between DBs and recievers (made, not coincidentally, after Manning's debacle in the aforementioned AFC championship) is informally called "the Ty Law rule".

However, like several other Patriots, and indeed like many players on successful NFL teams, Law eventually began to feel that his compensation was not commensurate with his contributions. He publicly feuded with coach/GM Bill Belichick before last season, then grudgingly agreed to rejoin the team for another Super Bowl attempt. Unfortunately, a midseason injury sustained against the Steelers left Law watching from the sideline as his 'mates claimed another Super Bowl. After the season, his contract having expired, Law headed for the hills. Bidders initially seemed scarce for the former top CB, but he eventually got a healthy contract from the Jets.

Both Law and the Jets felt that they had found the magical combination that would help rejuvenate their football mojo. However, they were both very wrong. The Jets have been atrocious this year (having lost their last six) and Law hasn't been much better, according to a stinging Mark Cannizzaro column in today's New York Post:

"He came to New York seemingly as the perfect fit — as perhaps a final piece to a playoff puzzle, a proven, Pro Bowl veteran shut-down corner with great leadership abilities.

And yet, he's been almost invisible.

Sure, Law has a team-leading five INTs, but don't mistake that with him playing to his usual Pro Bowl standards.

Law has been a shadow of his old self in terms of coverage and he's never adjusted to the newly installed rules that prohibit any contact by a defensive player to an offensive player beyond five yards from the line of scrimmage, a rule that was unofficially named for him.

For his standards, he's given up an inordinate amount of key completions on third downs.

And, Law has accumulated nine penalties this season, and that doesn't include a handful of flags thrown his way but were declined or picked up, like one was Sunday against the Saints.

And through it all, he's sounded almost delusional in saying he thinks the NFL is going to have to look at changing the rule after this season "to give us [cornerbacks] a chance."

Does he not understand that the NFL is interested in enhancing offenses, not helping out defenses?

Beyond that, though, what's been most disappointing is that, despite some behind-the-scenes urging from some coaches, Law never has taken on any sort of leadership role, instead, just passively watching this lost season pass him and the team by.

The Jets, by Law's own observation on a couple of occasions this season, have a young defense. It's a defense devoid of vocal veteran leadership. There are talented players, but DEs John Abraham and Shaun Ellis are not outspoken and LB Jonathan Vilma is still growing into a leadership role.

This is an area where Law could have made a difference. Now, perhaps being so new to the team, he didn't feel comfortable doing that. Or perhaps since he had to adjust to his new team and a new defense so quickly, that was too much for him to take on. It's possible Law simply has not felt comfortable assuming more of a leadership role because he knows he hasn't played up to his own lofty standards.

Maybe we're being unfair in asking too much of him, but it just doesn't seem as if Law ever has made a long-term investment in the Jets."

It's perhaps telling that in my quest for a picture to accompany this article, Google search came up empty when asked for a Ty Law Jets picture. Want Ty in a Pats uniform? You've got ample choices. And according to Cannizzaro, the lackluster performance Law's turned in this year has the Jets of a mind to jettison the former star.

"While Law never has run from reporters and has been a standup guy in the locker room during some of the bad times, he's seemingly absent from the room more often than he's there.

Law's stay here has, quite simply, always had the feel of a short one, a stopover before the next move, and the Jets and their fans surely had bigger plans than that for him.

Sources inside Weeb Ewbank Hall have told The Post that Law is a sure goner after this season.

Sometimes you wonder if he hasn't already left. "

The Project Alpha Hoax

2005-11-29T12:31:00.000-05:00

In my random travels around the Internet, I've come upon an interesting story. It's filled me with nostalgia for the 1970s, when flower children were seeing the dark side of the rainbow, Zeppelin was touring and psychic powers were very, very hip. In the 70s, as in every decade before, charlatans roamed the earth claiming they had the ability to affect the physical world with their mind-powers. But in the 70s, as never before, the methods of science were increasingly applied to test these psychic skills.

World-famous spoon bender Uri Geller was tested at Stanford Research Institute and declared psychic, but skeptics pointed to many flaws in this testing. So when McDonnell Douglas founder James McDonnell donated $500,000 to the study of the paranormal and established the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research, James Randi decided to take the experiment down. Randi had been the leading critic of Geller and knew that debunking the McDonnell lab's "Project Alpha" would put a serious thorn in the side of psychic believers everywhere.

I'll let the ever-reliable Wikipedia pick up the tale...

"In 1979 James S. McDonnell, board chairman of McDonnell Douglas and follower of the paranormal, awarded a USD $500,000 grant to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, for the establishment of the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research. He intended the money to be used for serious study of psychic phenomena in a controlled setting. The lab was led by physicist Peter Phillips, who decided to focus on spoon bending by children, technically known as "psychokinetic metal bending", or PKMB.

Before the testing had started, James Randi had written to the lab with a list of eleven "caveats" they should be wary of, and his suggestions on how to avoid them. These included a rigid adherence to the protocol of the test, so that the subjects would not be allowed to change it in the midst of the run. This had been the modus operandi of Uri Geller while being tested at Stanford Research Institute; whenever something did not work, he simply did something else instead. Other suggestions included having only one object of study at any time, permanently marking the object or objects used so they could not be switched, and having as few people in the room as possible to avoid distractions."

Randi's suggestions were ignored and the experiments commenced. The lax attitudes of the scientists towards the preservation of rigorous conditions was truly astonishing, and Randi exploited the situation with total audacity.

"Throughout the early phases of the project, many people claiming to have psychic powers presented themselves to the lab. The vast majority quickly proved to have no such ability, or, just as commonly, used sleight of hand to make their "abilities" work. However, after a short while it became apparent that two of the young men, Steve Shaw and Michael Edwards, were in fact much better than the others, and the lab started to focus their energies on them.

In fact, the two young men were "plants" of Randi's, friends of Randi who he had met some time before. Both were amateur magicians who had no problems fooling the researchers with the simplest of tricks. Randi wrote letters to Phillips, directly telling him that Shaw and Edwards were frauds, but the letters were ignored. Futhermore, Randi instructed Shaw and Edwards to tell the truth if they were ever asked if they were faking the results. They were never asked.

The project had originally started with spoon bending, so the two quickly developed a way to accomplish this trick.

Contrary to one of the "caveats" Randi noted in his initial letter, the test setup included all sorts of spoons on the table, labeled with paper on a loop of string instead of some permanent marking. When starting to bend a spoon they would actually pick up two, flicking the second to their other hand, lying in their lap. While pretending to "work" the visible spoon, thereby attracting the attention of the watching scientists, they bent the second spoon against the side of the table, then switched the labels. Although it required some level of dexterity, there was nothing particularly "tricky" about their method.

One particular camera operator proved to be able to catch them at this every time, even after they tried to get him to "zoom in on the action" and miss what was going on in their other hand. They took to getting annoyed by his "bad vibes," waited until he was asked to leave, and then continued as before with a more suggestible and less competent cameraman. This was also a clear violation of one of Randi's "caveats"; the test run should have been stopped at this point and recorded as a failure.

The two were so successful at spoon bending that several other tests were invented. In one they were given pictures in sealed envelopes and then asked to try to identify them from a list shown to them later. Astoundingly the two were left alone in a room with the envelopes, and although there was a possibility that they would peek, this was "controlled" by examining the envelopes later. The envelopes were held closed with four staples, which they simply pried open with their fingernails, looked at the picture, and then resealed by inserting the staples back into the same holes and forcing them closed against the table.

In another test the experiment was electronic in nature; they were asked to influence the burnout point of a common fuse. After they "worked it" with their mind, an increasing amount of current was run through it until it blew. The two proved to have amazing abilities in this test after a few trials, eventually causing the fuses to blow immediately once they "got used to it". In fact they were simply palming the already blown fuses and then handing them back to the experimenters. They also found that by pressing down on one end of the fuse in its holder, or just touching it briefly, the instruments recorded unusual results that were interpreted by the experimenters as PSI effects.

In some cases the experimenters seemed only too willing to help in the tricks. In one instance Shaw and Edwards were asked to move small objects in a sealed transparent container, normally small bits of paper balanced on an edge. After failing to figure out some trick for this experiment, they simply asked the staff to cut holes into the container, allowing their "mind rays" to get inside. Then they simply blew through the opening."

Finally, Randi had had enough and unmasked the Project Alpha hoax, stunning the world of paranormal research.

"In mid-1981 the two were fairly famous in the PSI world, and even outside it, and Phillips was planning on releasing a full report of their powers at a PSI meeting in August. After the announcements in the press, Randi wrote to the lab again and stated that it was entirely possible the two were simply magicians, using common sleight of hand to fool the researchers. In July 1981 Phillips finally asked Randi to join him in designing some of the experiments. Randi then replied with a videotape showing him duplicating spoon and key bending, using the exact methods the two were using at the lab. Phillips agreed to show this video at the upcoming meeting.

Randi then started to leak stories that the two were a plant of his, which reached the lab a week later and were considered to be a joke. The story had been widely circulated by the time the meeting was held the next month. Reactions were varied; some thought it was simply a lie, others that Randi was pulling off a hoax, and still others concluded the entire experiment was dreamed up as a conspiracy by Randi and Phillips to discredit the field.

Upon returning from the meeting, Phillips immediately changed the test protocols. The two found that they were no longer able to fool the experimenters so easily, and in most cases, not at all. During this time the lab started releasing additional reports that seriously toned down the success rate. It was clear that they finally understood what was going on.

However, at this point they were so famous that they were asked to travel widely and present their powers. Many other PSI investigators interviewed the two and gave glowing reviews, thus tainting themselves in the eventual aftermath.

Randi decided to finally end the project, and announced the entire affair in Discover magazine — at that time a fairly in-depth magazine. The resulting crash of the parapsychology field was immediate and deep; many of the researchers who tried to get in on the feeding frenzy after the August meeting were now burned in the process. One went so far as to claim that the boys really did have psychic powers, and that they were now lying about being magicians! Although the McDonnell Lab was by this time running considerably better experiments, the bad press was so widespread it was shut down."

Now for the moral of this sad tale...

"It might seem that the whole affair can be written off as a couple of magicians fooling some well-meaning but gullible scientists. This would not be entirely accurate, however, nor reflect the serious issues underlying these events, the key ones being:

That some scientists were possibly interested enough in obtaining a positive result, that neutral judgement and precautions, and good experimental planning, were sidestepped and inappropriately favorable interpretations made without due critical review.
That the sleight of hand used by many charlatans to fake PSI powers were not being sufficiently taken into account seriously, in planning rigorous scientific testing.

Project Alpha may have been a successful experiment into the minds of PSI investigators, but it also cast a chill over the entirety of the field. Many genuinely untainted experiments were killed off in the post-Alpha debacle."

Survive a Robot Uprising

2005-11-28T15:50:00.000-05:00

Here's hoping everyone's Thanksgiving break was rad.

I come to you today with excerpts from a great Q&A with Daniel H. Wilson, a Carnegie Mellon roboticist and the author of the tongue-in-cheek book, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising".

"Alexandria, Va.: I have never heard of this book, but the title caught my eye on the Post's homepage. Is this for real?

Daniel H. Wilson: Well, on one hand I really do have a Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University (located in Pittsburgh, PA).

All the robotics information in the book is taken from my own expertise and from conversations with dozens of prominent roboticists from around the world.

Also, I didn't make up the word "roboticist."

On the other hand, I borrowed all the uprising scenarios from Hollywood. And I don't think an uprising is going to happen anytime soon.

So, you be the judge!"

Enough about the background, let's get to some of those crucial killer-fighting-robot questions that only an accredited roboticist can answer.

"Arlington, Va.: Who would win a fight, a robot or a zombie reanimated by nanobots?

Daniel H. Wilson: ROBOT VS. ROBOT ZOMBIE: WHO WOULD WIN IN A FIGHT?

Well, "robot" is vague. Are we talking a skyscraper-sized behemoth with thousands of whipping, shredding razor-wire arms? Let's assume we're talking about a humanoid robot vs. a robo-zombie.

This fight is going to be good. The zombie will function in the event of massive failure, and may even reanimate after being torn apart by it's opponent -- who, after all, is a merciless, methodical metal man.

On the other hand, could a single squishy zombie pull apart the titanium-laced carapace of an atomic-powered killbot?

ANSWER: ONE ON ONE THE ROBOT WINS, HOWEVER, ZOMBIES USUALLY ATTACK IN GROUPS..."

----

"Bear vs. Tiger: Who would win in a fight, a robot bear or a robot tiger?

Daniel H. Wilson: Robot zombies is one thing. But robot bears!? What are you talking about -- that's just crazy.

Also, robot bear. (Imaging a bear hug from a piece of industrial machinery.)"

----

"Chicago, Ill.: I don't know. Knowing what people are capable of, I'm still far more scared of my fellow humans than I am scared of robots.

Daniel H. Wilson: I think that is a very wise statement.

However, you'd better be extra scared of your fellow human beings when you see them riding robotic bears that march lock-step in regiments through the streets, leaving bearfoot-shaped tracks in solid concrete."

----

"Upstate NY: Daniel/Dr. Wilson,

One thing that puzzles me is that the fear of robots seems always to be along the lines of "well, they'll be more and more like us and, they'll want to annihilate us, blah, blah, blah". For one, it seems awfully egocentric of us. Why do robots, and aliens, for that matter, have to be like us? Is this just the limits of human imagination, or inherent narcissism?

Or - is it because the only "known" enemy to humans are basically humans?

Daniel H. Wilson: Robots look like us because that's how we're building them.

Robots are very complex, autonomous tools (they make their own decisions). You know how hard it is to program a VCR? A robot is like a VCR on crack.

The best/only way to interact with such a complicated artifact is to do it the way we interact with other intelligent entities -- language, gestures, facial expressions, and so on.

That's a huge reason why robots are built to look like us!"

----

"Adams Morgan, D.C.: Robots don't scare me. But Ninjas are downright terrifying. I mean they are always flipping out and pulling off sweet --no make that TOTALLY sweet --moves. Can anyone stop their real ultimate power?

Daniel H. Wilson: I have one word for you pal, SHINOBI.

SHINOBI was a robotic cyborg ninja who could flip out and pull totally sweet ninja moves to the left AND to the right. How could any regular ninja stop that real ULTIMATE power?

And by totally sweet I mean fricking awesome!!!"

----

"Chevy Chase, Md.: It's all well and good to be prepared for a robot attack, but after reading Scooter Libby's novel, "The Apprentice," I'm convinced a more pressing threat to humanity is bear rape. Could any of your robot-fighting tactics be applied to a Libbyesque bear encounter?

Daniel H. Wilson: Yes, bear rape is a very real threat to the American people. In my personal opinion, Scooter Libby is one the most important, leading bear-rape visionaries of this fine country.

We have been discussing robot bears during this session, and I would be remiss if I failed to mention that robot-bear-rape could be on the horizon.

Sadly, I forgot to include this chapter in my book. If you are mounted by a robotic bear, try to slip on an anti-static bracelet and tie it to a metal bedpost.

Stay strong."

Best teacher I never had

2005-11-22T16:01:00.000-05:00

Well, it's looking like the curtain's about to drop on the Debra LaFave story. This former Florida middle school teacher earned nationwide fame by screwing one of her 14-year-old students repeatedly and under increasingly bizarre circumstances. A report on the AP wire says she's pled guilty to the crime and will avoid jail time.

Now, we've seen this story before, in the cases of Pamela Smart and Mary Kay Letourneau. Each of those stories was more inflammatory than this one - Smart convinced her teen lover to kill her husband, while Letourneau left her husband and three small kids for her teenage lover. They're now married, and Mr. Letourneau took the kids and moved to Alaska. Wouldn't you?!

But the reason why Debbie LeFave is getting attention is that she is way better looking than those bags. I'm not saying she's drop-dead gorgeous, but if you're 14, it's hard to imagine you can get better tail without paying for it.

Let's hear the full story, because it's a good one.

"Debra Lafave, 25, will serve three years of house arrest and seven years' probation. She pleaded guilty to two counts of lewd and lascivious battery.

The former Greco Middle School reading teacher apologized during the hearing, saying "I accept full responsibility for my actions."

The boy told investigators the two had sex in a classroom at the Greco school, located in Temple Terrace near Tampa, in her Riverview town house and once in a vehicle while his 15-year-old cousin drove them around Marion County.

The boy told investigators Lafave told him her marriage was in trouble and that she was aroused by the fact that having sex with him was not allowed. He said he and Lafave, a newlywed at the time, got to know each other on their way back from a class trip to SeaWorld Orlando in May 2004.

If convicted at trial, she could have faced up to 15 years in prison on each count. The plea agreement also was designed to resolve similar charges pending in Marion County.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge Wayne Timmerman said LaFave also will forever lose her teaching certificate, must register with the state as a sexual predator, may not have any contact with children including the victim, and will not be allowed to profit from the sale of her story or personal appearances.

Prosecutor Michael Sinacore said the young victim's family wanted to get the case over with because of the intense public and media scrutiny.

"We're happy that the victim's family can put this case behind them," he said. "The whole process has been very difficult, and we hope they can now resume their lives."

After Tuesday's hearing, her attorney, John Fitzgibbons, said the plea was "a fair resolution of this case." Asked how she felt afterward, Lafave said "tired."

Fitzgibbons said in July that plea negotiations had broken off because prosecutors insisted on prison time, which he said would be too dangerous for someone as attractive as Lafave. He said then that she planned to plead insanity at trial, claiming emotional stress kept her from knowing right from wrong."

Snuggling up on the way back from a class trip?! Nailing the teacher while your cuz pilots the vehicle around Tampa?! She wanted to bang the teenager because it was just so wrong?!

Between this and the cheerleader story two weeks ago, it's now impossible to dub the plots of porn movies "unrealistic".

Butt naked booty bumpin'

2005-11-21T12:10:00.000-05:00

I'm sure many of you know the story of Nate Newton, the massive Dallas lineman turned comically bad drug runner. The Dallas Observer's Richie Whitt recaps the tale:

"One of his era's most dominant offensive linemen, Newton earned three Super Bowl rings, six Pro Bowl trips and the common man's adoration because of his fluctuating weight and jagged yet jocular sound bites. He also suited up for the enemy--playing the decadent deliveryman who paved the way for dealers to peddle dope to your city...and your kids.

"I'm not gonna lie," he said. "I was that guy."

It was laziness, greed and a rough circle of friends met at illegal dog fights that lured Nate into drug trafficking after he retired in '99. His scheme was simple: "Invest" $10,000, drive from Dallas to wherever there was demand for his supply, deliver pot in cardboard boxes and get handed $30,000.

"It didn't seem like easy money, it was easy money," said Newton, whose last Cowboys contract paid him $700,000 in '98. "I wasn't broke. It just seemed too good to pass up."

Nate's fantasy got bitch-slapped on November 4, 2001, when, after countless successful runs over a year, he and two women were stopped by Louisiana state troopers on Interstate 10 in St. Martin Parish. In his white van, police found 213 pounds--not ounces, pounds--of marijuana. Undaunted, Nate kept trippin'. Out on bail, he was stopped along Interstate 45 in Ellis County by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents on December 12. In his red F-150 truck, officials found $10,000 in cash and 175 pounds of pot with a street value of $700,000.

Nate's playing weight in 1991: 368. Nate's pot weight in 2001: 388.

"It was police profiling, but it's not bad luck when you're planning to do wrong and you get caught," he said. "That's just stupidity. And even after that I was still thinking about making another run."

A tragic tale, really, because it's one we can all identify with. I mean, who hasn't gotten into a few jams after hanging out with your illegal dog fight buddies, or run afoul of Johnny Law when cruising around with two bitches and hundreds of pounds of chronic in your van?

But Nate Newton can't live life any other way. He describes his mindset during his NFL years as follows:

"In the NFL, I lived on two and a half hours' sleep," he says. "It caught up to me, but that's the way I rolled: butt-naked booty bumpin'."

On a more sober note, the article contains some sad tales from a uniquely star-studded prison:

"But when he began serving his sentence at the federal correctional institute in Texarkana in October '02, Nate dissolved from uniform No. 61 into inmate No. XXXL. He slept on a metal bunk and shared slop with inmates like former Texas Attorney General Dan Morales and the father of Oklahoma star running back Adrian Peterson.

There were few familiar faces, though. Nate eventually declined visits from former teammate Deion Sanders, former coach Barry Switzer and even from his father, Nate Sr.

"I couldn't take it, man," he said. "When I'd see them walking away and I had to stay behind the white line and watch that door slam, shit, that's when you know straight up you're a convict. I couldn't stand to see them leave, so I just told them to stop showing up."

On a happier note, Newton is now free, back on the scene, helping with Katrina recovery. Most importantly, the joy is back. As Newton himself puts it:

"Good things are going to happen for me. But right now it's just time to sit back and laugh at folks," he said. "Mostly, at myself."

Who Shot Ya?

2005-11-18T12:06:00.000-05:00

There's a fascinating article in the Washington Post today about the shooting of rapper Cam'ron in the District of Columbia last month at the famous Howard University homecoming. (The article is "Who Shot Camron", by Del Quentin Wilbur and Stephen A. Crockett Jr.) Cam'ron is known for being a rapper "close to the street", and when a hail of bullets poured down on his Lamborghini on October 22nd, he got a dose of DC street life. As the Post writers tell it:

"The crime should be easy to solve: A blinged-out rap star is shot in his royal blue $250,000 Lamborghini on a busy Washington street during Howard University's homecoming weekend. A half-dozen people witness the attack, including several members of the star's entourage, following him in a bubblegum-pink Range Rover. The celebrity himself apparently gets a good look at the gunman."

Although the drive-by went down in public, with witnesses loyal to Cam'ron everywhere, nobody on the scene, including the wounded rapper himself, are willing to talk to the police. District Police Chief Charles Ramsey (memorably portrayed by Charles S. Dutton in the TV movie about the DC snipers) has found his department's investigation completely stymied by a complete lack of information. Cam'ron got a hard look at the shooter's face, but refuses to help the police in any way. Why would someone have so little interest in justice for their injury? The answer lies in a more nuanced understanding of today's urban ethics.

"[T]he police say their investigation is stalled for one maddening reason. The victim -- platinum-selling New York rapper Cameron "Cam'ron" Giles, who was shot in both arms -- doesn't seem to be cooperating. Nearly four weeks have passed, and the police can't even get Cam'ron on the phone.

"Cam isn't going to do it," said Juelz Santana, Cam'ron's rapping buddy and protege. "It's not in our nature. He isn't going to stand up and point out a guy in a witness line and say, 'That is the dude who shot me.' We all came from the street."

Snitch? Never. He'd lose all street cred. His rivals would pounce, his CD sales would crash, his cologne and liquor sales would dry up, the game would be over.

It's a familiar but frustrating refrain that police hear every day from shooting victims in some of the city's toughest neighborhoods.

"We need the cooperation of witnesses and victims," said D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey. "I can't relate to that mentality. I can't comment on that thought process. I don't think much of it. I don't see the logic at all."

This isn't the first time a rapper's been in the news for refusing to snitch. Earlier this year, rapper Lil' Kim (who helped establish street cred for the then-unknown Cam'ron in 1997 when she recorded his composition, "Crush on You", and made it a hit) was sentenced to federal prison on perjury charges after she refused to testify truthfully in another shooting case. A recent Reuters article by Gelu Suluguic discusses how the "stop snitching" phenomenon has deep roots in urban gang culture but has gained new momentum with a strong push by gang-affiliated rappers and hip-hop media.

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - When rapper Lil' Kim was sentenced to a year in federal prison this summer for lying to a grand jury about a Manhattan shootout, she was lionized by media covering the hip-hop music scene for not "snitching."

Even as prosecutors confronted her with security camera tapes showing her standing next to one of the shooters, she lied about who was involved.

The media hoopla helped the rapper enter the Billboard chart at No.6 with her latest record "The Naked Truth," released shortly after her incarceration in September.

Criminals have always relied on a code of silence to evade prosecution. But calls to "stop snitching" have grown louder in hip-hop, which grew out of black inner cities to become a huge influence on youth culture across America.

Critics say this taboo on "snitching" or informing is now part of hip-hop's mystique and makes it increasingly hard for police to solve violent crimes in inner-city neighborhoods.

"The cultural shift that it is acceptable to tell people not to come to court to testify imperils the criminal justice system," said Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham.

Many hot hip-hop artists glorify crime and violence in their music. The "stop snitching" calls have helped sell records and magazines while branding those who cooperate with law enforcement as traitors.

The message is that drug dealing and shootings are normal and it's more noble to go to jail than to talk to police."

The article further reports that, propelled by a "Stop Snitching" DVD out of Baltimore featuring an appearance from Carmelo Anthony, T-shirts bearing the slogan have become an urban staple. The message of witness intimidation is a clear one. As one man says on the Carmelo DVD:

"We've got a lot of rats up here we want to expose...There ain't too many of them because we deal with them."

Without assistance from Cam'ron or any of his crew, police and observers are left to scratch their heads about the identity and motives of the perpetrator. For their part, the rapper's posse is ready to chalk it up to pure jealousy. The Post article seems to back this hypothesis, suggesting that "maybe some D.C. thugs were upset that Cam'ron was "flossing," showing off his jewelry and sports car in a city not his own."

A second possible explanation for the attack, briefly mentioned in the Post article, has some members of the blogosphere up in arms: perhaps, the paper suggests, Cam'ron orchestrated the shooting himself to drum up publicity.

I've hatched another, slightly more complex hypothesis involving Cam'ron's crew, the Diplomats (or "Dipset"). Although this rap group has frequently claimed to be a "set" of Blood gangsters, they have no legitimate Blood affiliation, and as Wikipedia notes, "they are often ridiculed by actual Los Angeles Bloods for being fake." This violation of the street code is almost as serious as snitching. Those who falsely claim gang affiliation are disapprovingly dubbed "busters", and, if exposed in prison by legitimate gang members, will be subject to beatings, rape, and worse. With the so-called "Dipset" gaining in fame (they were named group of the year at the recent VIBE awards), it's possible that DC-based Bloods decided to crack down on some busters in their midst.

However, Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest explanation is usually correct. I think the Howard students quoted in the Post probably give the most likely rationale for the crime:

""A lot of people thought that he was really stupid driving a Lamborghini in D.C. This isn't New York," said Lauren Poledore, a senior who helped organize the homecoming activities.

Her view was shared by Brian "Fatboy" Young and Derek "Chill" Rogers, hip-hop deejays who said Cam'ron's flamboyant ways might have ticked someone off.

"Truthfully, I think he forgot where he was," said Young, a Howard freshman. "This is D.C. It was definitely a carjacking."

"Yeah, he was probably showing off," said Rogers, a sophomore.

"But this is definitely going to help his sales," Young said."

All that Glitters

2005-11-17T18:32:00.000-05:00

I bet it's been a while since you gave much thought to Gary Glitter. Surely you're familiar with his classic stadium rock hit, "Rock and Roll, Part 2" -- memorable for its only lyric, "Hey."

Before we delve into what's become of Mr. Glitter, let's remember him as he'd undoubtedly like to be remembered:

After beginning his career with the moniker Paul Raven and leading such bands as Boston International and The Bostons (nice creativity there), he finally found his stride as Gary Glitter, glam-rocker, leading the Glitter Band to a series of big hits.

But in his middle age, things have gone sour for Mr. Glitter. Wikipedia's entry tells how the trouble began, ironically amidst a mid-90s resurgence in his career:

"His new career fell apart on November 18, 1997, after he took his computer to UK computer store PC World to be mended. The staff there found pornographic images of children on the hard drive and called the police. Glitter was arrested and, on November 12, 1999, was convicted on child pornography charges; he was sentenced to four months in prison. This prompted his scene in the Spice Girls movie called Spice World: The Movie to be cut from the final release."

Cut from Spice World??? The horror!!

I bet Alan Cumming wishes he had befallen the same fate. (Well, with regard to Spice World, that is.)

Anyway, since then Glitter's been wandering the world in search of a home that will accept him and his child-loving ways.

"After his release from prison, Glitter moved to Cuba in 2000. After his whereabouts were published in British newspapers, he relocated to Cambodia but was later expelled by the Cambodian authorities after a public outcry at his presence.

It was reported in December 2004 that Glitter was once again living in Cambodia, and had bought a house there".

I'm sorry to report, things have just gotten worse for Gary, seen here in a recent photo.

This story is hot off the wire. Dateline - Hanoi!

"HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnamese police want to talk to Gary Glitter about reports the shamed British glam rocker was seen with girls as young as 15 at a villa he rented, a government spokesman said on Thursday.

The communist southeast Asian nation's official Thanh Nien youth newspaper quoted neighbours in the southern resort town of Vung Tau as saying Glitter -- whose real name is Paul Francis Gadd -- had taken home several girls aged 15 or under.

Residents of the picturesque tourist town on the mouth of the Saigon River had also complained about his singing, the paper said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung told Reuters police wanted to question the 61-year-old rocker about the allegations, which first surfaced in the British tabloid press.

"If we have evidence of child sexual violation, very strict legal measures would be applied," Dung said, adding that Glitter had since disappeared.

The age of consent in Vietnam is 16 and sex with minors is punishable by up to 12 years in jail."

In the words of blogger Newley Purnell, "Everyone’s favorite washed-up glam-rocker/pedophile has done it again."

Now paging Dr. I Don't Know

2005-11-16T16:02:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry to be sports-obsessed lately, but this is a story too funny to pass up. Has this made its way onto ESPN yet? I can't believe that this one would fly under the radar.

For those of you who don't know of Clinton Portis, he's the Washington Redskins' running back. After a brief but stellar college career with Miami, he came to Denver, where he benefited from the league's best offensive line and rambled to an Offensive Rookie of the Year award. Portis was later traded for shutdown corner Champ Bailey to D.C., where he's put up solid numbers. This year, he's been a part of the 'Skins resurgence in the suddenly competitive NFC East.

All this is fine and dandy, but it's not why I'm bringing this up.

Recently, Portis has taken to appearing before the Washington media in costume. Not only does he don bizarre outfits, Clinton also takes on various personae to go along with them. He began wearing shades, then transitioned to even stranger eyewear, before putting on a grey wig and following that up with a three-touchdown game. Obviously, this only encouraged Portis' bizarre ways. The costumes first caught my attention around Halloween, when Portis showed up at a press conference looking like this:

The local NBC affiliate reported Portis' comments as follows:

"The Washington Redskins running back donned a full costume for his weekly meeting with the media, emerging from the locker room with a flowing black cape, black Lone Ranger mask, clown-style oversized yellow sunglasses perched atop a shaggy black wig, and fake gold teeth.

"You've heard of 'Vampire from Brooklyn'? We'll, I'm Jerome from Southeast D.C.," Portis said, laughing at his own joke. "Going to the big city and night lights this week up there in New York City, I heard, so I've got to be prepared. I don't know what I'm going to see." "

What he ended up seeing wasn't pretty. Portis delivered a career-worst rushing performance and the Redskins were shut out by the G-men. But Clinton Portis wasn't ready to blame the lackluster effort on his flamboyant costuming -- instead, he came back with another disguise, perhaps even stranger than Jerome from Southeast!

Again, I'll rely on the home of George Michael's Sports Machine for the story:

"The Washington Redskins running back wore a huge bright red-orange wig, pink ornamental glasses and a thick black Victorian-style mustache Thursday for his weekly meeting with reporters. It was the fifth time in six weeks that he has dressed up for the scribes and cameras.

"I'm Dr. I Don't Know," Portis said. "The real name is Dr. Don't Know."

Portis then had some grim news about the character he assumed last week, "Jerome from Southeast D.C."

"I would like to pronounce that Southeast Jerome died late Sunday night," Portis said. "He won't be with us any longer, so you guys were the first to hear."

Sounds like the same thing that happened to the Redskins, who lost 36-0 to the New York Giants on Sunday.

So how did Jerome meet his demise?

"Dr. Don't Know don't know a lot," Portis said. "Complication of a panic attack. He never traveled back with us from New York. The guy, he had an amazing upside. I talked to his family and friends. He's going to be missed, but on with this life."

Portis then led a brief moment of silence for Jerome.

Seriously."

After deigning to answer a few football-related questions, Portis' comments returned to the topic of his absurd disguises. He was asked how he came up with the name of "Dr. I Don't Know".

""I don't know much of nothing," Portis said. "But if you want to take what I'm talking about seriously, then listen."

And those glasses? Are they from Mardi Gras, or some strange opera?

"They're actually from surgery," Portis said. "I did the autopsy on Southeast Jerome. These glasses were white, but mixing them with blood, it just so happened they turned pink."

And, finally, the hair?

"A lot of time in the laser room," Portis said. "In radiology, we're doing a lot of things, and it just so happens it grew out this color."

Thanks a lot, Clinton. See you next week."

Bashing A-Rod

2005-11-15T12:15:00.000-05:00

The MVP results came down yesterday, and Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez walked away with the trophy, narrowly edging Red Sox DH David "Big Papi" Ortiz. This was bound to be a controversial choice because (1) Ortiz provided a new benchmark for "valuable" this season, stroking 21 game-winning RBI, and singlehandedly carrying Boston down the stretch (2) many, many people despise A-Rod and admire Papi, and (3) it more or less proves a DH can never win MVP.

It's true that Alex Rodriguez is, in a cumulative assessment, the best player in baseball. His combination of hitting stats and defensive prowess on the hot corner are nonpareil. Nevertheless, he may never become the team leader and clutch stick that David Ortiz has been the past two seasons. Hey, if you don't trust me, ask New York columnist Mike Lupica, who, it's safe to say, speaks for virtually every real Yankee fan out there with his column "Yank Greats and A-Rod a World Apart":

"Alex Rodriguez is exactly what he was when the Yankees traded for him 21 months ago. He is their trophy third baseman, more of a trophy third baseman than ever now that he has won his second MVP award in three years. He is just not the trophy the Yankees had in mind.

"We can win three World Series, with me it's never going to be over," Rodriguez said yesterday. "I think my benchmark is so high that no matter what I do, it's never going to be enough, and I understand that."

What a guy.

The definition of benchmark goes something like this: A point of reference for a measurement. A-Rod knew exactly how big Yankees were measured when he decided to move here from Texas and move from shortstop to third base. The idea that the expectations for him are now ridiculously high is ridiculously low comedy.

The expectations are just as they should be for someone who is routinely discussed as one of the great baseball players of all time. That is what he should understand. He knew the deal as well as he knew the deal when he signed for $252 million.

It is why there are an awful lot of Yankee fans who remember him as much for that .133 he hit against the Angels in the division series and for that 5-4-3 double play in the ninth inning of Game 5 as for all the gaudy numbers that got him past David Ortiz in the MVP voting. The bull's-eye on A-Rod's back that he alluded to yesterday? He put it there himself when he elected to become a Yankee."

Bostonian Dan Shaughnessy, no favorite of mine, nevertheless sums the case for Ortiz up perfectly in today's column...

"Big Papi's stunning theatrics were not something we imagined. The numbers are there, and it's not just about leading the league with 148 RBIs and clubbing 47 homers. He got the hits that meant something. He had 21 game-winning RBIs. Nineteen of his homers and 50 of his RBIs came after the sixth inning. He hit .368 with two outs and runners in scoring position. He hit 22 homers and knocked in 60 runs over the final two months. Thirty-four of his RBIs put the Red Sox into a lead. And in the dugout and clubhouse, he was the definition of leadership.

This was a close race, A-Rod winning by 331-307. The Yankee infielder got 16 first-place votes, while Ortiz got 11. But in the end, Ortiz was denied because he doesn't carry a glove.

Fans in Boston saw Ortiz as a slam-dunk for the award, and that's only natural since they witnessed his heroics on a nightly basis. They also saw Rodriguez repeatedly fail in the clutch when the Yankees were eliminated by the Angels in the playoffs. It's important to note that postseason performance doesn't count in MVP voting. All ballots are cast before the playoffs begin.

Still, the Wall Street Journal wrote last Friday, ''Mr. Ortiz is generally considered the favorite to win his first MVP award in a close race."

I never felt optimistic about his chances because I know the way baseball writers think. Card-carrying members of the BBWAA traditionally look down at designated hitters. Don Baylor won the MVP in 1979 in a year in which he played 79 games in the outfield while serving as DH for 65. No one else has won it even as a part-time DH.

A-Rod won because even though he did not produce as many clutch hits as Ortiz, he did match the Sox slugger in almost every offensive category. He hit 20 homers and knocked in 49 runs over the final two months. In addition, he did something Ortiz did not do.

He played third base every day, probably better than anyone in the AL other than Eric Chavez."

So, while A-Rod probably deserves the MVP, it's an unfortunate outcome for those who prefer leadership to statistical excellence, who value timely hitting over mercenary slugging, who root for the unheralded underdog against the golden boy. A-Rod was the best player in the major leagues this season, and not for the first time. But the most valuable? Mike Lupica begs to differ:

"In the last nine postseason games Rodriguez has played as a Yankee, he is 4-for-32, a .125 batting average, that one home run, two RBI. He was 1-for-12 over the last three games against the Red Sox in '04 and 2-for-15 against the Angels. No RBI for those eight games. Why is this relevant today? Because he's the one who says that winning three World Series will never be enough here.

Don't talk about the Series after your team can't get out of the first round. "One of these days," one Yankee said to me during the playoffs, "(A-Rod) is going to stop squeezing the bat so hard when we need him the most."

He isn't the only star Yankee who let his team down in the games I am talking about. No one in this city has ever thought of putting all of this on Rodriguez.

But it is hardly unreasonable to suggest that there were plenty of times over the past two postseasons when one swing from him, one Papi-like swing, could have changed everything for the Yankees.

A-Rod was tremendous in August and September when the Yankees really started to come on. He hit 20 home runs the last couple of months. He had 48 for the season and 130 RBI and a slugging percentage made out of platinum and you know all the rest of it.

Yesterday should have been a day to celebrate that part of his season, not share the burdens of being A-Rod. He's the one who threw that one out there. Three World Series? Is he kidding? Yankee fans would settle for one."

You've been hacked...by Sony

2005-11-14T15:53:00.000-05:00

A minor firestorm is brewing in the digital world over the issue of digital rights management, or DRM.

In theory, companies employ DRM to ensure their software, data, music, video, etc. isn't hacked and/or pirated across the internet, thereby protecting the interests of the company, its investors, and the consumers it serves. In practice, however, companies' implementation of DRM has come close to, and in a recent case, crossed fully into, outright hacking of its consumers' computers.

The trouble stems from the fact that when a consumer knows his computer is being affectedby DRM software, he can take steps to eliminate the software. Companies know the average consumer is more tech-savvy than ever, and continue to explore ways to hide the DRM protocols where they won't be noticed.

As Disney executive Peter Lee said to the Economist, "If consumers even know there's a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we've already failed."

A number of recent releases on Sony's record labels weren't just compact discs filled with fresh tunes: they were Trojan horses, capable of implementing evil "malware" on your computer if inserted. This software, burrowing deep into your operating system, allowed Sony to not only copy protect the music tracks, but also established a connection between your computer and Sony's computers, and fed information back to their servers. Not only that, but the "hiding" capabilities of the DRM software actually could enable a malevolent hacker to bundle even more corrosive malware with the DRM files, all safely stowed out of the normal user's reach.

Until this software was discovered by blogger Mark Russinovich, thousands of unwitting consumers had poisoned their hard drives with the following releases:

Trey Anastasio, Shine (Columbia)
Celine Dion, On Ne Change Pas (Epic)
Neil Diamond, 12 Songs (Columbia)
Our Lady Peace, Healthy in Paranoid Times (Columbia)
Chris Botti, To Love Again (Columbia)
Van Zant, Get Right with the Man (Columbia)
Switchfoot, Nothing is Sound (Columbia)
The Coral, The Invisible Invasion (Columbia)
Acceptance, Phantoms (Columbia)
Susie Suh, Susie Suh (Epic)
Amerie, Touch (Columbia)
Life of Agony, Broken Valley (Epic)
Horace Silver Quintet, Silver's Blue (Epic Legacy)
Gerry Mulligan, Jeru (Columbia Legacy)
Dexter Gordon, Manhattan Symphonie (Columbia Legacy)
The Bad Plus, Suspicious Activity (Columbia)
The Dead 60s, The Dead 60s (Epic)
Dion, The Essential Dion (Columbia Legacy)
Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten (Epic)

Many of the bands themselves reacted with shock to this news, including Switchfoot's bassist, Tim Foreman, who wrote online that "We were horrified when we first heard about the new copy-protection policy."

Wikipedia's page on DRM contains alarming accounts of attempts to remove Sony's DRM software.

"As part of their CD copy protection, Sony uses DRM software in the form of a rootkit which, through techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, is installed on your computer. Removing it however, is extremely difficult and is discouraged because that will cripple the system.[4] [5] [6][7] On November 2, 2005 Sony released an patch to remove this rootkit, while continuing to maintain that it is not malicious and does not pose a security risk. To activate this patch, you are required to go to their Web site with Microsoft Internet Explorer; users of other browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, get a message to the effect that their browser is incompatible. [8] It now turns out this software might be doing more than merely removing the harmful rootkit. The update is more than 3.5 megabytes in size, and it appears to contain new versions of almost all the files included in the initial installation of the entire DRM system, as well as creating some new files. In short, they’re not just taking away the rootkit-like function — they’re almost certainly adding things to the system as well. And once again, they’re not disclosing what they’re doing.[9][10]"

The entry goes on to announce that the lawsuits are flying. I'm sure Sony will be issuing settlement checks before long...

A class-action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of California consumers who may have been harmed by anti-piracy software installed by some Sony music CDs. A second, nationwide class-action lawsuit is expected to be filed against Sony in a New York court on Wednesday seeking relief for all U.S. consumers who have purchased any of the 20 music CDs in question."

Terminated!

2005-11-10T14:01:00.000-05:00

Poor Governor Schwarzenegger. This week, it turned out he is more of a political "girly man" than he had realized.

For those of you off the Left Coast, California just finished up with a special election that featured the most unbelievable advertising blitz in recent memory. Although there were a few ancillary measures on the ballot relating to prescription drugs and such things, Arnold championed four propositions that would, he promised, reform California government in the way he promised when elected two years ago. For most of his term, Gov. Arnold has enjoyed high popularity, and in 2004, the ballot propositions he endorsed won big. However, a trail of political missteps left Schwarzenegger holding the bag this week, as the special election he himself called blew up in his face.

The Washington Post's Harold Meyerson tells us how the Governator lost all his momentum:

"Back in January Schwarzenegger's approval rating stood at 62 percent in the Public Policy Institute of California's poll. Then, in short order, he called for axing the pensions of the state's public employees, which would have eliminated the survivor benefits for widows and orphans of police officers and firefighters. He tried to stall the implementation of a law mandating a nurse-to-patient ratio in hospitals and attacked the nurses' union as a special interest. He reneged on a commitment to restore funding for the state's schools. He went after the public employees' unions by backing Proposition 75. And the sky fell on him."

The result was a resounding defeat for all four propositions supported by the governor and opposed by labor and the Democrats.

74
Teacher Tenure
Yes votes: 2,987,010
%: 44.9
No votes: 3,662,932
%: 55.1

75
Public Union Dues
Yes votes: 3,092,495
%: 46.5
No votes: 3,551,011
%: 53.5

76
Spending/Funding
Yes votes: 2,522,327
%: 37.9
No votes: 4,115,388
%: 62.1

77
Redistricting
Yes votes: 2,673,530
%: 40.5
No votes: 3,920,487
%: 59.5

More from Meyerson:

"California's unions produced a torrent of advertising that featured cops, nurses, teachers and firefighters condemning the governor. They revved up the most effective Democratic voter mobilization operation in the nation. When they were done, not only did the governor's propositions fail but his approval rating in the most recent PPIC poll collapsed to a Bushian 35 percent.

"Arnold's mistake was to try to leverage his popularity to advance the Republican platform, which doesn't have much support in California," the state's Democratic Assembly speaker, Fabian [Nunez], remarked a few days before the vote. "The Republicans see him as a vehicle to move their agenda, and he's done that rather than try to enlarge their agenda."

You'd think the Governator would know better. He was elected less as a partisan Republican than as an outsider who could forge bi- and nonpartisan solutions in a fractious Sacramento. Sometime last winter, though, he forgot who he'd been when the voters elected him. He began spouting the gospel according to Grover Norquist, the anti-tax, anti-union Republican strategist. But Norquist's Proposition 226 -- a 1998 anti-union California ballot measure that essentially prefigured this year's Proposition 75 -- had gone down in a heap. Why did Schwarzenegger think he could prevail with a warmed-over version seven years later? Particularly since California is just about the only state in which union density has actually increased over the past half-decade?"

As the Sacramento Bee's Daniel Weintraub points out, the hubris of Arnold's opponents doesn't really solve any of California's problems:

"The public employee unions, satisfied that their $100 million campaign was money well spent, gloated.

"We won; they lost," said Gale Kaufman, the political consultant who engineered the strategy that led to the defeat of the governor's four initiatives. There were calls for apologies and contrition, and demands for a new commitment from the governor to build a "better California." But no specifics, nor even a vision for where one would start on such a mission.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, a Los Angeles Democrat, wasn't much better. Núñez, who has endorsed Treasurer Phil Angelides as a candidate for governor against Schwarzenegger, reminded reporters that politics is a "contact sport" and sounded as if he were threatening retribution.

"You can't just move on," Núñez said. "It just can't be one of those things where you sing 'Kumbaya' and you move on. Lessons have to be learned."

Fortunately, the speaker's Senate counterpart - Don Perata - was urging just the opposite, saying his message to his union allies would be, "Please forgive, and let's move on." The former schoolteacher, an Oakland Democrat, was the only person talking sense in and around the Capitol Wednesday when he called for all parties to get to work on a real agenda for improving the state.

Perata said he was angry that, in his view, California leaders had wasted the past year on Schwarzenegger's special election campaign, and he said he didn't want to waste 2006 waiting for the possibility of a new governor. He wants to move now.

[...]

He said higher taxes might have to be part of that equation at some point, but not until the state's current leaders have done something to persuade Californians that their current tax dollars are being well spent.

Noting just one example, he reminded reporters that the state rebuilt the Santa Monica Freeway in just weeks after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, but it can take years to build a school.

"Why does it take so long for a school to be built?" he asked. "The state office of architect takes anywhere from 12 to 18 months for the approval process. ... That's all public money that is being blown away. How do we get that done quicker? If we talk about streamlining and getting more efficiencies and productivity out of government, then I think we can talk to the public about what's left and what we need to do."

Perata better be careful. He is starting to sound like Schwarzenegger."

You can't make this stuff up...

2005-11-08T18:57:00.000-05:00

...well, unless you work for Penthouse Forum.

[Sorry my posting is up so late. The Internet refused to cooperate.]

Here's a story that, if you haven't heard it yet, will crack you up. Any introduction I might offer wouldn’t do this justice, so I'll cut straight to the wire report:

"TAMPA, Fla. - Two Carolina Panthers cheerleaders were charged after their arrest at a bar where witnesses told police the women had sex in a restroom. Renee Thomas, 20, of Pittsboro, N.C., and Angela Keathley, 26, of Belmont, N.C., were taken to Hillsborough County Jail early Sunday. Witnesses said the women were having sex in a stall with each other, angering patrons waiting in line to get into the restroom at the club in the Channelside district."

Let's take a look at these lovely ladies - well, you can judge their loveliness, or lack thereof, for yourself. Ms. Keathley is on the right, and the woman we THINK is Renee Thomas is on the left. More on that in a moment...

Here's where the confusion comes in. Seems Blondie decided to engage in a little identity theft:

"Thomas was charged with battery Sunday after allegedly striking a bar patron when she was leaving the restroom, then landed in even more trouble after police said she gave officers a driver's license belonging to another Panthers cheerleader who was not in Tampa.

Thomas, who made the trip to Florida for Sunday's game between the Panthers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was released from jail on $500 bail before police learned she was not the person she claimed to be."

And in the meantime, an innocent woman who wasn't even in Florida had her name in the press for at least a day, tarred with the label of "belligerent, drunken lesbian cheerleader". Turns out this kind of crime is no joke:

"Providing police with a false name is a misdemeanor. However, Thomas was charged Monday with giving a false name and causing harm to another — a third-degree felony punishable by probation or a jail term of 1 to 5 years, said police spokeswoman Laura McElroy.

Meanwhile, detectives are trying to determine how Thomas gained possession of the driver's license of the third cheerleader.

Keathley, charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, was released on $750 bail about an hour before the Panthers played the Bucs at Raymond James Stadium. The cheerleaders were not in town to perform at the game."

And from an interview I heard this morning with the woman Renee Thomas slugged, these two were getting freaky in a booth before moving their carnal gropings to the lavatory. When the cops arrived to stop the madness, Thomas, furious that her Sapphic passion was being disturbed, emerged from the loo and (more or less indiscriminately) punched the first person she saw!

The wags on Sportsfilter chimed in with some good comments on this topic, as you might expect. My favorite was the posting by regular "The Black Hand", who checked out the girls' online profiles before opining:

"Angela's quote is telling, I'd say:

'Life is not measured in the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.'

Especially those moments that occur in a bathroom stall with another woman.

Renee is similarly inspirational:

'Live every moment to the fullest and love like you've never been hurt.'

And, if you're interrupted by bar patrons while you're loving, punch some woman in the face."

Smits v. Alda LIVE!

2005-11-07T15:20:00.000-05:00

Well, I watched the West Wing's live debate episode last night with great anticipation. I've never been a follower of the show while it chronicled the Josiah Bartlet White House. But the recent election plotline, which features the battle of moderate Senator Arnold Vinick (R-California, played by Alan Alda) against firebrand Rep. Matt Santos (D-Texas, played by Jimmy Smits), has sucked me in with its mix of election politicking and Sunday night dramatics. The winner of this election will replace Martin Sheen's President Bartlet in the White House, and a few million viewers are hanging anxiously on the outcome.

Frankly, I think it's a no-brainer for two reasons. First, more and more veterans of the Bartlet White House are lining up on the side of the Santos campaign (including Janel Moloney, the Amber Frey-alike, who just joined up two weeks back). If the show wants any continuity at all, it'll stick with the cast it already has, instead of turning the show over to Hawkeye Pierce and the mom from Home Improvement. Second, if you need to replace a superstar like Sheen or, let's say, me, you can't do much better than Jimmy Smits.

Anyway, let's scan the web to see what people are saying about the live debate. I'll turn things over to the Washington Post's Tom Shales:

"Televised "live," except for some prefatory filmed scenes, "The Debate" pitted Jimmy Smits as Rep. Matt Santos (D-Tex.) against Alan Alda as Sen. Arnold Vinick (R-Calif.) in an imitation of what Dan Rather always insisted on calling "joint appearances" by presidential candidates. They weren't really debates, Rather contended, and shouldn't be called that.

This issue was faced squarely almost as soon as the show began, with Vinick suggesting to his opponent that they "junk the rules" -- which inhibit spontaneity and meaningful exchanges -- and forget all those two-minute limits for this and three-minute limits for that. Santos agreed, saying, "Let's have a real debate."

Thus "West Wing's" faux debate, it could be argued, was more "real" in some ways than the real debates have been.

Unfortunately the show's writers then proceeded to squander the novelty of their attention-getting gimmick by avoiding almost any semblance of controversy, ending up with an hour that lent itself to catnaps. Instead of having the candidates argue about actual and urgent issues of the moment -- terrorism, the Patriot Act, politicization of the Supreme Court nominating process and, of course, the faltering war in Iraq -- Vinick and Santos chatted about generic generalities.

They discussed tax cuts for the rich, public vs. private education, health care, global warming, gun control, job training -- say, when is this election supposedly taking place? 1994? 1984? 1974?"

One of the more bizarre aspects of the live debate, in my opinion, was the presence of a "NBC News" logo in the corner of the screen and legitimate newsman Forrest Sawyer at the moderator's desk. Donning a thespian's role for the evening, Sawyer frequently interjected when "Senator Vinick" got too heated and let out exasperated huffs when "Rep. Santos" strayed from the lectern. Sawyer's presence, and the dramatics he was caught up in, really only served to call my attention to the fact that this was not a real debate, and it was a little embarrassing to watch.

The Seattle Times praises the debate on its merits:

"Santos promised a million jobs would be created in his first term.

"How many jobs will you create?" Sawyer asked Vinick.

"None," he replied. "Entrepreneurs create jobs. Business creates jobs. The president's job is to get out of the way."

Inevitably, the term "liberal" was contested, as well.

"Republicans have tried to turn 'liberal' into a bad word," said Santos. "Well, liberals ended slavery in this country."

"A Republican president ended slavery," Vinick retorted.

"Yes, a LIBERAL Republican, senator. What happened to THEM?"

But there was much more to their give-and-take, which fell into a pattern of lively exchange, even heated confrontation — the sort of telling clash that actual presidential debates never permit. It was substantial, at times downright wonkish, and a remarkable contrast to the choreographed, antiseptic real thing.

The performance — a blend of scripted dialogue and improvisation — was repeated three hours later in another live airing for West Coast viewers. The actors and Sawyer pulled off the latter half of the double-header smoothly and without major glitches."

Now there's some welcome news for us West Coast residents. We actually got to watch something live that claimed to be live! What unbelievable luck!

In the end, the winner of the dramatized debate was less important to the West Wing's producers than the ratings numbers. And the numbers were good! ABC News reports:

"The ratings sweeps month stunt pulled in an estimated 9.6 million viewers, up from the 8.2 million "The West Wing" had been averaging this season, according to preliminary Nielsen Media Research figures."

A welcome respite for a show that's been suffering since its move to Sunday nights.

My Record Collection

2005-11-04T12:57:00.000-05:00

And now, I'd like to offer you all a tantalizing glimpse of my record collection. Here are some of my favorites, the records I crank up to full volume, shaking the very foundation of Villa Caruso:

These guys really knew how to rock. "All Men Play on 10" is a metal anthem I'll never tire of!

Some like Liberace. I go for Mike Terry. This set is absolutely mind-blowing. The speed of Terry's ivory-tickling is as blinding as the thousands of sequins that adorn his frock.

Sometimes a little depressing music hits the spot. At times like those, I turn to the meliodious ramblings of Freddie Gage's "All My Friends are Dead". It really puts things in perspective.

When you've got the ladies over, you have to have your own personal style in lady-killing music. Some dudes throw on Norah Jones, some try to act cultured by playing a little Andrea Bocelli. Caruso say, these guys are lame as hell! If you really want to get the bitches, you need to be rocking some James Last.

Nobody dominated the 80's like Devastatin' Dave the Turntable Slave! We don't just share a first name, we share a love of scratching vinyl and the knowledge that rappenin' is what's happenin'.

And that goes for the rest of my collection - you can see more, but by request only. Write a comment, won'tcha?

Media Matters mixes it up

2005-11-03T12:25:00.000-05:00

I spent a little time poking around on the website of that left-of-center watchdog organization, Media Matters for America. This group keeps an eagle eye on the punditocracy and on news reports, assiduously scanning for misrepresentations of fact. However, this rather benign description of Media Matters would probably be rejected by the Bill O'Reillys of the world, who consider the group a liberal smear organization. Needless to say, they're duking it out with talking heads on a daily basis, all of which makes for some good reading!

Take Mr. O'Reilly, a frequent target of Media Matters. (Full disclosure: I watch The O'Reilly Factor almost every single day, sometimes loving it, sometimes hating it.) One of his most recent campaigns has been to defend Christmas against attempts to remove it from schools and the public square. According to O'Reilly and his guests, the very American tradition of Christmas is under attack by a minority of extremists, who want to run everyone's fun in the name of the separation of church and state. O'Reilly sees Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito as a potential defender of Christmas against these attacks:

"O'REILLY: By the way, if Alito is confirmed, that will be a good thing for conservatives. That's the bottom line. Because Alito will take a more traditional view than a [Supreme Court justices Stephen G.] Breyer or a [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg. OK? He'll look at things, and he'll say, "You know, the Founding Fathers didn't want partial-birth abortion. The Founding Fathers didn't want all mention of Christmas stricken from the public arena." That's what Alito will do. He's a traditionalist. He's going to rule that way."

Except, as Media Matters points out, the Founding Fathers might not have been as enamored of Christmas as O'Reilly believes:

"According to HistoryChannel.com, celebration of Christmas in America prior to the Revolution depended largely on where one lived...In Boston, celebration of Christmas incurred a fine of five shillings. Following the Revolution, Christmas was eschewed as "English customs fell out of favor." HistoryChannel.com noted that "Congress was in session on December 25, 1789, the first Christmas under America's new Constitution." The holiday remained unpopular for years, and Christmas was not declared a federal holiday until June 26, 1870."

Another Media Matters observation enraged ABC's Jake Tapper. A slight on one of his reports led the reporter to unleash the following attack on his blog:

"Being in the mainstream media, one is regularly subject to the slings and arrows of media critics pushing their various political agendas. That's fine; it comes with the territory. But you as a viewer/reader should know how dishonest this criticism can be.

[...]

Here's an example. Media Matters -- a liberal media group -- today is complaining that the opinion Judge Alito handed down in 2000, striking down New Jersey's ban on what abortion opponents call "partial birth abortion" in the Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey v. Farmer decision, "was mischaracterized in numerous October 31 television reports. ... on ABC's World News Tonight, correspondent Jake Tapper cited Farmer as evidence that "in some cases, Alito has voted for abortion rights."

[...]

Interesting point. Except they only used half of my quote. I said: "But in some case Alito has voted for abortion rights previously defined by the Supreme Court." "

Media Matters retorts:

"Interesting point. Except it changes nothing.

The italicized portion of Tapper's quote doesn't change the fundamental problem with what he said; he still inaccurately claimed that "Alito has voted for abortion rights." In fact, in the Farmer case, Alito voted for following Supreme Court precedent, which he is obligated to follow as an appellate judge -- not "for abortion rights," as his opinion clearly explained. Tapper's quote, in full, suggested that Alito is in favor of the rights the Supreme Court has defined. There is no evidence of that; there is only evidence that Alito is in favor of not having his decisions reversed by the Supreme Court.

Thus, the second "half" of Tapper's quote -- which he accuses Media Matters of dishonestly omitting -- does nothing to change the substantive error in his reporting."

Tapper's righteous indignation led him to this extended tirade:

"The dishonesty inherent in their truncating my quote may help satisfy their partisan martyrdom and help fill their professional coffers, but it does a disservice to the American people.

I don't intend to make a regular habit of responding to this type of clearly partisan attack from organizations that are clearly all-too-eager to engage in standards more fit to last-minute political attack ads than to fair and objective journalism. (It's the old saying about don't wrestle with a pig; the pig loves it and you just get dirty.) "

With evident glee, the watchdog group shoots back:

"For the record, the original Media Matters item did not characterize Tapper in any way. It did not criticize him personally. It simply -- and correctly -- pointed out that he mischaracterized Alito's Farmer opinion. In response, Tapper accused Media Matters of being "dishonest," of "view[ing] news through the colored lenses of dogma," of seeking "partisan martyrdom," of resorting to "dishonesty" in order to "fill their professional coffers," and of leveling a "clearly partisan attack."

Incredibly -- and with no hint of irony -- after this stream of insults, Tapper compares Media Matters to a "pig" who "loves" getting others dirty.

It's worth noting that the title of Tapper's blog -- the entire blog, not just his post attacking Media Matters -- is "Down and Dirty." "

Theo vs. the Trio

2005-11-02T17:25:00.000-05:00

Well, the big story in the baseball world these days is the tumultous departure of Theo Epstein from the general manager's post with the Red Sox.

Here's a quick recap of events: After a three-year pact (during which time he put together a World Championship roster) expired last weekend, Theo was offered approximately $400k annually. He countered with a big raspberry to the face of main owner John Henry and president Larry Lucchino. Finally, the ownership group offered Epstein the lucrative deal he was looking for, but the negotiations were spelled out in detail in a Dan Shaughnessy article in the Boston Globe. Abruptly, Epstein walked. Since then, all kinds of finger-pointing has consumed the City of Boston.

The most recent scuttlebutt concerns who leaked to Shaughnessy. It's become a bigger story in some circles than the "Scooter" Libby indictment! Boston Dirt Dogs puts it aptly with this juxtaposition of wire photos:

The popular belief is that traveling secretary Dr. Charles Steinberg (right) leaked the information to the Globe columnist, in obsequious protectiveness toward his boss, Lucchino (left). Let me turn things over to Boston radio hosts John Dennis (who has a memorable turn in the Farrelly Brothers' Kingpin) and Gerry Callahan for the latest on this scandal. Special thanks to Boston Dirt Dogs for the transcript.

" John Dennis: My source, who’s been on target the last few weeks, tells me there’s a rogue CIA agent, this person describes as acting like a rogue CIA agent, that gets outside the organization and just sort of gets drunk with power, acting on his own, and a woman plays a significant role (Dennis alleges Theo’s girlfriend is uncomfortable with the fishbowl environment in Boston)... So here’s the deal, my friend tells me the following: Everything you’ve heard about in the past is pretty accurate, allowing for some spin in one direction or the other, but there was sort of air of uncomfortability about Larry planting the seed, Theo’s tree growing next to Larry. Larry not wanting the kid to get more money than he, or get more power. All that stuff we told you in the past exists but individually, the money, the chain of command, the kid growing up and looking his dad straight in the eye and saying “I’m as good as you and I don’t need you to look over my shoulder.” All of that is true but individually, none of that would be deal-breaker stuff. The person that I talked to last night said no matter what you think of Larry, if you like him, if you hate him, if you’re indifferent about him. The one thing that you could ever call Larry is ineffective or stupid. Here’s the deal, if you allow for the intelligence, the perspicacity, and the effectiveness that Larry Lucchino has brought to this organization… keep in mind, Larry and Theo with a little help from John Henry got the deal essentially done. They settled on money. They settled on length of contract. They settled on the chain of command issues. ...

Callahan: Hey, yesterday Michael Holley walked in here and said what is wrong with you guys, can’t you just say the name Charles Steinberg (was the source of a Red Sox leak). And I said, we have been saying it. Weren’t we saying it yesterday? Hasn’t everyone been saying it? Charles Steinberg. And everyone knows Charles and Dan (Shaughnessy) are tight we can ask him at 8:00 how tight, but, and that’s probably why that rogue-CIA agent isn’t out on his ass already because he’s an important guy and he’s a valuable guy.

Dennis: There you go… Now Larry is looking at Theo and Charles and says “I’ll guess I’ll stick by this guy, he’s done a lot for me, he’s done a lot for the organization’s I’ve been involved in. He’s been a very loyal servant to me and in some cases a little too loyal or a little too involved. And I think this is one of those cases.

Callahan: He’s Smithers and Larry’s Monty Burns. And if you’ve ever seen that show (The Simpsons), that’s the same dynamic. Has Monty ever fired Smithers? He might have every once in a while. (JD: What can I do for you? What can I do for you? Can’t think of anything? I’ll go do it myself.) Do you think Larry took him over his knee and spanked his bum-bum?

Dennis: Yeeeaaaah.

Callahan: But he would never fire him.

Dennis: He would never fire him."

Later, Dan Shaughnessy (who is always, ALWAYS in the middle of any media feeding frenzy in Boston sports, and in fact is the cause of about 66% of them) came on the air to defend his part in the scandal.

"Dennis: Sourcing your Sunday column, even as I read it Dan, before I knew that this thing was going to fall apart, seemed to me not to be the smartest move by whoever it is the source happened to be if they really were intent on getting the deal done. With that as a background, did it occur to you, and I know it’s not your job, but did it occur to you, as you wrote that Sunday piece, that this was going to at least get the attention of, if not piss off, and who knows, maybe Theo, and as a result kill the deal.

Shaughnessy: Well that was one of the things that was in the column. I think at the very end of the column it says “we know too much.” I guess too much was out there. Maybe I knew too much and too much was out there for the good health of the relationship with these guys. They’d have to answer that but again, most of this stuff, I’ve been down this path before, it’s just that this thing was coming to a boil and so much had been written about and talked about these two guys over the last week, I thought “hey I know both of these guys pretty well and I don’t think Larry’s side, if you want to call it that, has been represented very fairly in recent weeks, now I remember he did get killed over that Colorado thing, what’s up with that? And who’s the baseball guy and who’s not and Theo wanted to distance himself from the San Diego days a little bit, and maybe that’s what this is about. I did (think the deal was done). Absolutely. Again, I can’t make my son take the trash out, I can’t believe that I can write something that’s going to make the general manager of Red Sox change his mind about a great job here. Yeah, I can’t believe that."

Finally came the kicker. Curt Schilling came on the air and heard some of Shaughnessy's earlier comments replayed on tape.

"Shaughnessy: You got Curt Schilling’s take on this thing the day after it comes down. Why is that? Is that because you guys have a relationship because of the show? And I got to read Curt say that he picked up the Sunday paper and knew that was a lie. Tell Curt to go ask the people who paid him $13 million to win eight games last year about that situation. Maybe they can explain it to him.

Schilling: Wow… that’s awesome. That’s good stuff. You know what… I mean Dan knows that I think he’s a tired act and I don’t like him and he doesn’t like me, so take that for what it’s worth unfortunately or fortunately I’m not in the minority in that situation. Dan is Dan."

And I'm right there with you, Schill!

OK, maybe this is impossible to follow for you non-Sox fans out there. But for those of you who appreciate the manic atmosphere that surrounds the Red Sox, this is some great, juicy stuff!

Worst-case scenario

2005-11-01T17:16:00.000-05:00

Hi there, friends. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you yesterday. You see, I was enjoying my annual three-day Halloween bender at Dennis Franz' house. (You wouldn't believe how realistic his Karl Rove costume was.) Although I got drunker than the day I quit NYPD Blue, I've recovered from my hangover enough to enlighten you on the latest threat to Western civilization as we know it!

You see, our military likes to play war games to keep their preparedness up, as well as provide ample justification for massive defense budgets. A new game is starting this week, and the scenario it posits is a doozy: Russia v. USA! And you thought the Cold War was over!

""Slomonia" loses ally "Ublame" in a "domestically driven political realignment." Slomonia adapts a more aggressive foreign policy which re-ignites what the war gamers call a "mini-Cold War."

Slomonia, which in earlier game preparation was called Rusalka, is obviously Russia. The name was changed to Slomonia to obscure the identity of the country should there be a leak. Ublame is Ukraine, which ironically was earlier called Ubundi in exercise planning. I guess the possibility that World War III could begin over Ukraine is less sensitive than a 2005 nuclear war with our good friend Moscow.

The exercise scenarios begin with the Russian loss of Ukraine and a decline in relations with the west. Russia begins to mobilize in response to increasing NATO troops on its border and then it deploys long-range bombers to the Arctic and the Far East. To "punish" the West, according to the classified exercise papers, Russia begins to provide support for "old clients long abandoned," primarily the Northeast Asian country of Purple (aka North Kraal in early exercise papers), which is North Korea.

During a 60 day "time warp" mid-way in the exercise scenario to fast forward to the really fun nuclear war, North Korea and Russia prepare to nuke the United States with missiles and bombers."

OK, that is some scary stuff. In fact, I think the Slomonia/Purple alliance represents the most significant war-game based threat since Jeff "Skunk" Baxter of the Dan and the Doobies commanded terorrist forces against the USA!

Back to Slomonia v. USA: the real reason to war game on this old Cold War paradigm is in fact to prepare American forces to take on a future Chinese super-army. The only model for such a menacing foe (because let's face it, once the Chinese get their act together industrially, they are going to be some tough mofos) is the old Russian menace:

"By using Russian forces in war games, future and much more robust Chinese capabilities can be tested.

And tested they are. The Slomonia exercises include not just nuclear warfare and ballistic missile defenses, but also "full spectrum" U.S. information and special operations -- computer network attack and exploitation, directed energy attacks, disablement of Russian satellites and missiles --- to test future methods of perfecting a disarming first strike capability.
Russia loses. "Adaptive" U.S. nuclear war planning, American technological superiority, ballistic missile defenses, cyber warfare, and Top Secret U.S. methods all prevail. On November 10, Moscow is scheduled to "sue for peace," no muss, no fuss."

What a relief. Why do I not feel better?

World Series ratings disaster

2005-10-28T15:35:00.000-04:00

Another major league baseball season has come to an close. The Chicago White Sox shed the label of baseball's worst franchise by dominating twelve postseason games with pitching and timely hitting. The Houston Astros made Texas history by becoming the first team from the state to make the World Series. With the Pale Hose' victory, the Chicago Cubs became the last "cursed" team left in baseball.

Collectively, the nation yawned. As the AP wire reports it:

"The Chicago White Sox's first world championship in 88 years was also the lowest-rated World Series ever.

Chicago's four-game sweep of the Houston Astros averaged an 11.1 national rating with a 19 share on Fox. That's down about 7 percent from the previous low, an 11.9 with a 20 share for the 2002 World Series between the Anaheim Angels and the San Francisco Giants.

This year was a drop of almost 30 percent from last year's series, in which the Boston Red Sox swept the St. Louis Cardinals for their first title in 86 years. That had a 15.8 rating with a 25 share.

Wednesday night's 1-0 Chicago win had a 13.0 preliminary national rating with a 21 share. It was the highest-rated prime-time show on Fox since the final of "American Idol" in May, but still not enough to save the series from being the lowest-rated."

Maybe the putrid broadcasting of FOX Sports has something to do with this dip. Without marquee teams in the matchup, who would willingly subject themselves to the awful commercialization of the broadcast or the idiotic commentary of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver? A typical example of Fox ineptitude came when a game-winning dinger by Joe Crede was upstaged by an interview with the Houston pitching coach.

McCarver, known for his hero worship of Derek Jeter, bores viewers to tears when he drones on and on without end. But as bad as McCarver can be, Buck is much, much worse. How do I hate thee, Buck? Let me count the ways.

Never shuts up. NEVER SHUTS UP!
Calls the game on behalf of the ignoramus that just tuned in 10 minutes ago and has no clue what's going on. After almost every commercial break, Buck yammers on about events we've already witnessed and digested. We've been watching the games, Joe, and if we haven't, then we probably don't really care!
Constantly tries to coin asinine sayings and catchphrases. One horrible example came in the ALDS when McCarver and guest Lou Pinella were discussing Pinella's penchant for pitching fits when umpires don't see things his way. In the middle of a funny exchange, Buck blurted out "The Temper in Tampa!" A long, awkward silence followed. Uh, he just quit that job, jackass.
Got his job through nepotism [see Jack Buck], like that annoying Jeremy Schaap.
Blond highlights, and glasses that are probably just for fashion purposes.
Worst of all, Buck constantly, endlessly speculates. What different moves could the manager make here? If something had gone differently two innings ago, what would be happening right now? If this player hadn't been called out, might this run have scored, and then would this pitcher instead of that pitcher be in the game, blah blah blah. Who cares???

If you're not calling the game, shut the hell up. The game = the events on the field. Period.

Meanwhile, the fallout continues at Fox Broadcasting. One of my inside sources there said on Wednesday that "it felt like a wake today. Executives focused on advertising dollars were visibly distressed at the prospect of another sweep, and vented their frustrations by chainsmoking cigarettes and verbally abusing their assistants."

Well, I know at least two guys who couldn't care less about the ratings or the ad dollars:

(Dusty Baker and Nomar Garciaparra are sitting at home right now, hoping against hope that they'll be the ones sucking face on the field next year.)