Crappy, lazy day

Thanksgiving was fantastic, but it's been a crazy, lazy weekend since then. Crazy as in too much to do and lazy as in not enough energy to do it.

So I sit here on the couch on a crappy, rainy Sunday afternoon in my pajamas with the two cats nestled up right next to me watching Season 1 of Angel on Hulu. Angel always seemed like the red-headed awkward step-child of Buffy, in my opinion. I guess because I preferred Spike as a character over Angel. He was just too...somber, I guess. Except when he reverts to Angelus like in Season 2 of Buffy. THAT was fun!

But I'm giving him and his show another chance. And it's pretty freakin' great! And as annoying as she is, it ain't so bad having to look at Charisma Carpenter's hotness throughout these episodes. Yummy!

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. All the crazy cats are doing it.

Fat Bastard

Hope y'all had a great Turkey Day!

Belch.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. All the large kids are doing it.

I Give Thanks

To Buffy!

That's right. This year, I am feeling thankful for Joss Whedon's icon of female empowerment. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not the movie. That was merely okay. Nope...I'm talking about the television series. THE television series, as I like to refer to it as. Wow, that was a clunky sentence. Fuck it! I'm not re-writing it.

Anywho. I've decided that "Happy Thanksgiving" doesn't cut it for me anymore. From now on I will wish people a "Buffy Thanksgiving". That doesn't sound gay at all.

So have a Buffy Thanksgiving everyone! Go forth and pound a stake through the heart of the undead because that's what the Pilgrims would have wanted you to do.

Oh, and hey. You know who is a good egg? Adam Avitable. He's giving away an uber-cool Buffy DVD set for free. This one.

Looks pretty sweet, eh? So go visit his site here and enter his free contest if you so choose. Or you can ignore it as not to decrease my odds of winning. If you really love me, you'll know what to do. Wink.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Even the Undead are doing it.

Lazyblogapalooza vol. II

Stolen with glee from PMS, I mean Paige M. Stanton.

Clicky on this linky and you can find out what the Billboard #1 song was on the day that you were born.

Mine turns out to be "You Keep Me Hangin' On" by The Supremes.

"Set me free, why don't cha babe
Get out my life, why don't cha babe
'Cause you don't really love me
You just keep me hangin' on
You don't really need me
But you keep me hangin' on"

What was playing on the radio the day you were born?

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. New Twist: From now on every Wednesday will be a Custom Trivia Quiz. Today is Stephen King trivia, but I am going to change it every week. So leave me a comment on the quiz page if you have any suggestions.

No Substitute

In yesterday's post about breakfast and longing (well, I thought it was poetic), I mentioned the film Midnight Run. Fellow blogger ajooja mentioned in the comments that it is his favorite film, a point I've read on his blog before on a couple of occasions.

It's always been difficult for me to name a favorite film. I love Dr. Strangelove, but then I love all of Kubrick's films. I love Jaws because, well...it's fucking Jaws man! I love The Princess Bride because it's so damned quotable. And lately I've loved The Departed just as much as any film even with it's many, many flaws.* Oh, and you all know how I feel about The Big Lebowski.

*C'mon. I love Jack, but as an Irish-American gangster? Not buying it. And nice coincidence that both protagonist and antagonist fell for the same unlucky woman. I get the whole Shakespearean drama of it all, but c'mon. But I do love watching Marky Mark give the finger to Matt Damon. And I can't get enough of Alec Baldwin. So I watch it. Every. Single. Time. It's. On. It's just so fucking good!

But I don't know what single film I would pick as my favorite. Too hard.

I can, however, tell you what my favorite series of films is. No...not the original Star Wars trilogy or the three abominations that later followed. No...not the Indiana Jones trilogy or the single abomination that later followed*. No...not the Matrix trilogy. And no, not even the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And those last three films had me creaming in my jeans. Seriously. I'm getting hard just thinking about them.

*Hey, George Lucas! I'm talking to you, mother-fucker!

No. My favorite series of films?

The Substitute. And it's three sequels.


OK, OK...these movies kinda sucked. I know. I KNOW! But I fucking love them! I can and will watch them whenever they are on some shitty cable channel at 2AM. They are just so fucking bad ass. Want me to run down how bad ass they are? Let me start with the first film:

1. Tom Berenger = bad ass. He was fucking Staff Sergeant Barnes in Platoon for crissakes! Bad. Ass.
2. William Forsyth = bad ass. He is always great in whatever he does. Remember him in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead? Boat drink bad ass!
3. That fat Hispanic dude who always plays a fat Hispanic dude, and that other Hispanic dude who always plays a soldier or a sniper or a dude named Sniper = double downed Hispanic bad assery!
4. Marc Anthony = well, okay...he ain't so bad ass. What a lame excuse for a bad ass villain!

For those of you not familiar with these cinematic gems, basically the plot is a mercenary/special ops kind of guy goes undercover in some school as a teacher so to foil some kind of crazy criminal plot or to avenge the death/beating of a loved one. Something like that. But it doesn't really matter. The plots are totally beside the bad ass points.

And the bad ass quotient was kicked up a notch in the three sequels by replacing the bad ass Tom Berenger with the even more bad ass Treat Williams. OK, he doesn't LOOK any more bad ass than Berenger, but he smirks a whole lot more bad ass. Plus he was in one of the most bad ass films of all time. No, not Prince of New York. I'm talking about Deep Rising. Now that is a fucking bad ass movie that I've already written about somewhere on this blog. Total bad ass!

Whether the Substitute is taking down a drug ring in Miami (The Substitute), a carjacking ring in Brooklyn (The Substitue 2: School's Out), a steroid ring on Long Island* (The Substitute 3: Winner Takes All) or a neo-Nazi elite military school gang in Georgia (The Substitute: Failure Is Not an Option), the Substitute always brings the bad ass-itude! Chuck Norris would piss his pants like a 12-year old weakling if he were ever to face The Substitute! THAT'S how bad ass he is.

*Okay, sports fans...get a load of this. A top-notch college football program on Long Island called Eastern State University is secretly using steroids to bulk up their athletes. Now what is the really funny part of that last sentence? That's right..."top-notch college football program on Long Island". That shit is hilarious. Sure, Jim Brown and Vinny Testaverde and Boomer Esiason all went to high-school on Long Island. But they all went elsewhere to play their college ball. You know why? Because there basically is no college football on Long Island. We live in a dead zone for Division I football here. That's why Irish-Catholic kids like myself disgust the rest of the country by becoming Notre Dame fans...even if we don't attend that school. What else are we gonna do? Root for Boston College? C'mon!

Feel free to openly mock me with your words. Go ahead. I'm above it all. I know there is no substitute (see what I did there?) for these films. They fucking rule!

Just like me.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. I'm sure the Substitute would be all over it like the bad ass mother-fucker he is!

Chorizo and eggs

You know that scene in the film Midnight Run, right?

Charles Grodin, is a bail jumper being brought across country by Robert De Niro, a bounty hunter working for a bail bondsman. They stop at a diner in the Southwest someplace, waiting for the Western Union office to open up. They have no money, but the waitress tells them about their breakfast special. Chorizo and eggs.

That's what Grodin wants, but they have no money yet. De Niro tells him when they get their money can have whatever he wants. He wants chorizo and eggs. But the way he says it is hysterical. And real. Alas, he never gets them due to the ensuing wackiness.

That scene has always stuck with me, and others too based upon how often I use the phrase "chorizo and eggs". People always seem to remember that scene, in particular, from the film. Maybe because it was something we could all relate to. How often have you seen a dish served on a television program or read a recipe in a magazine and become obsessed by it?

Happens to me all the time.

It happened to me last year. I was reading a review of a new restaurant in NYC that served a dish for brunch with cheesy polenta, crispy pancetta and eggs served sunnyside up (or poached) over the top of them. It sounded delicious, and it soon became all I wanted when it came to breakfast. But I lost the review and I forgot which restaurant served the dish. Crap!

So every time we went to breakfast, I started acting like Charles Grodin in Midnight Run. "Cheesy polenta, crispy pancetta and eggs sunnyside up" is what I wanted. I became semi-obsessed with it. I say "semi" because if I really wanted it, all I would have to do is google the recipe (here with poached eggs), and I could have definitely found a restaurant that served a variation. But it was almost always more fun to just say "cheesy polenta, crispy pancetta and eggs sunnyside up" whenever we went out for breakfast as I savored in the disappointment that came with seeing that it wasn't on the menu. Yeah...that was more fun.

Guess what I had on Sunday?

That's right. Cheesy polenta, crispy pancetta and eggs sunnyside up. As a birthday present, Gia's sister (an awesome chef) made it for the entire family for brunch. And it was everything I hoped it would be and more!

So maybe Grodin's character eventually had his chorizo and eggs. I dunno. I can only hope so.

Because some things in life are certainly worth waiting for.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. All the cool kids are doing it.

Trivia odds and end

OK, we are in the third day of our Trivia Challenge. You see the link up there at the tip of my sidebar...so fucking click it already and register! OK...here is the link if you don't want to travel to the sidebar. Sheesh! Lazy much?

The Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge

Anyway, here is how it is scored:

* 100 Points for every question right for a maximum initial score of 1,000.

* Subtract the number of seconds it took you to finish the quiz from your initial score and that is your final score.

* Top 10 finishers are given bonus points.

That's it.

Now, the other quiz I play in is tailored around easier questions all week. Many days a bunch of the participants wind up with 10/10 on the quiz and the finishes are determined by the time it took. This is OK, but the questions are often so easy its retarded.

So I tailored this quiz to include more difficult questions. And today's quiz proved that. I had to guess on at least half of them. Badly. So let me know what you prefer. Easy questions where it becomes a race against time or more difficult questions that you may have to guess on a bunch of them. I prefer the latter.

Cheers, and have a great weekend!

PS - Remember to play every day. You are hoping to win my admiration. Don't let me down.

Bug-Eyed Trivia

I've been playing this trivia game every day through somebody's blog out there for a while now. I honestly don't remember who turned me on to it. It's frustrating because you have to answer fast to score well, and my brain doesn't work that fast anymore.

So I figured I would share that frustrations with y'all.

Announcing....

The Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge

Here's what you do. Clicky on that linky above. Register, and then come and play everyday. That's it. I've started out by making it about movies, general knowledge and music. But I can change all that anytime I or we want. Up to you. Up to us, really. Just as long as a bunch of you play. I'll eventually tailor it to more specific topics, but for right now this is what you got.

What's at stake? My admiration.

That should be enough.

Stoparazzi

So I was watching the television with Gia the other night, and the two of us couldn't be different in our viewing habits.

I like reality shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race. She likes reality shows like the stuff they show on the Biography Channel or MSNB and CNN reports. I like TV shows like NCIS and Criminal Minds. She likes the programming on the Home Shopping Network. Oh, there are some similarities. We both love Dexter, The Office and a host of other programs.

But our biggest difference comes from those celebrity stalking programs (as I like to call them) like TMZ or Entertainment Tonight. I hate those fucking shows, and she loves them. LOVES THEM! She also reads TMZ and Perez Hilton on-line and she reads those crap magazines like In Touch. Horrible stuff. And yet I still love her.

So the other night on one of those programs, there was a story about Brad Garrett and an encounter he had with some of his paparazzi. The pap, a truly disgusting man, openly antagonized the big man and called him a whole host of stupid names. I mentioned how I felt about these stalking scumbags and Gia agreed wholeheartedly. I told her that the only way that they would go away is if we, the public, stopped feeding the fires by purchasing those trash mags, watching those trash shows and visiting those trash sites. She agreed.

But she just can't do it. Loves them too much.

Well I am here to promise you that I will never visit those sites, read those mags or watch those shows ever again!

Well, at least until the next time that Britney goes crazy.

About last night...

Best Beer Bar in NYC

Best Pizza in NYC

Best New Whiskey/Absinthe Bar in NYC

About tomorrow: On with life.

UPDATE: Didn't wind up going to that last bar. Went here instead. So no absinthe last night. Oh well!

WTG Wanda!

So this past weekend saw a Hollywood star come out and admit that she was gay at a rally protesting the passing of Prop 8 in California.

Wanda Sykes.

It wasn't the biggest secret in the world. I'd heard rumblings about her sexual orientation for a while now. And that is because she didn't work too hard at keeping it a secret. She said that everyone she knows knew that she was gay, but she just never felt like talking about her sexual life in public. She was even married late last month before the election. I gotta give her mad respect for going against her natural privacy this past weekend and talking about how much it hurt her and the rest of this country that civil rights were taken away from a group of folks in such a "progressive" state like California.

I don't know when she first came onto my radar, but whenever it was...I wasn't a fan. I just didn't get her. I thought her comedy came across as forced and a little too angry. But she slowly started to win me over. And I eventually developed a bit of a crush on her, especially as Barb on The New Adventures of Old Christine. What can I say? I'm a boob guy. Now THAT particular celebrity fantasy is shattered. ;)

Anywho...couldn't be prouder of her this past weekend. Hopefully all of these protests will have some kind of substantive effect on the voting populace and that this wrong can be righted sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Here's a pre-out Wanda on gay marriage. Enjoy!

PS - Oh yeah. 42. Today. Feh!

Growing older, but not up!

Remember when I said I was gonna do an entire week's worth of posts on punk rock this week?

Yeah...fuck that!

For now, at least. I started writing the first post and it was just taking too long and it wasn't what I really wanted to say. So I'm gonna take a little break from it and I'll revisit it later on. Maybe next week. Gabba gabba gonnadoitlater, okay?

So instead, you get a silly drinking day wish that I've always wanted to do. And a little back story.

I officially become one year older on Tuesday. 42. Gia asked what I wanted to do that day and my first thought was a Five Boroughs Booze Challenge. Yeah...most of my ambitions have to do with drinking. I should probably look into that. (Insert snide comment from Slyde here) Anyway, this would be a version of a pub crawl, but you have to have at least one drink in each of NYC's five boroughs. Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx (why does that borough get a "the" in front of it?), Brooklyn and Staten Island.

I figured we could take the LIRR and stop in Woodside in Queens for an Irish breakfast at one of the ump-teen Irish pubs in that area. Then hop on the trains and work our way up to the Upper East Side in Manhattan for a cocktail somewhere around there. Then the 4 train up to 161st Street in the Bronx and the Yankee Tavern. We kinda wanted to see how the new Stadium is looking anyway. Then the D train back down to the West Side where we would stop somewhere for a libation. Onward to the Staten Island Ferry where we would have a beer on the ferry, maybe walk around the terminal for a bit and then hop back onto the boat heading toward Manhattan. Hanging on Staten Island isn't something I really wanna do anyway. Finally we would head into Brooklyn, maybe Park Slope or Williamsburg, and finish up our day at one of the thousands of bars in that borough.

Sounds easy, but when you start to map it out figure out which trains, subways and ferries to take...well, it started to sound pretty exhausting. So I decided against it. I'll do it with the boys one of these days, but Gia and I are gonna just do a simple dinner someplace and then maybe go for cocktails at this joint. Maybe I'll give absinthe another try. Maybe try it in Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon. That sounds fun.

Buddha Boy

I'm not a person really known for my faith.

I was raised Catholic, but it really didn't take all that well. My parents were/are big into the Church and they expected the same from their six children (did I mention Catholic?). But my brother is the only one who regularly attends Mass nowadays and that has probably more to do with his wife than his faith. Maybe not. I don't know.

Anyway, I've always like the concept of Buddhism. I don't really know enough about it, but what I do know makes me smile. Just the statues of Buddha alone makes me smile.

So here's to hoping that this kid in Nepal isn't perpetuating some kind of hoax. I'd like to believe that he actually has real faith and that his followers share that faith. But it's a pretty neat story anyway.

Have a great weekend!

Lazyblogapalooza

I know that a bunch of you out there have cats.

Cats are wonderful pets and they can be an absolute joy to have around the house. We take pictures of our cats, cuddle with them, groom them and give them just as much love as they give us. Cats are great!

Except that they may be plotting to kill us all!

Click here to see the full extent of their deviousness.
Courtesy of Matthew Inman*

*Who clearly deserves all of the credit for this lame excuse for a post. This is just as lazy as posting a YouTube video that someone else created. I had nothing to do with the creativity behind the images...I'm just linking to them. How fucking lazy is that? Well, maybe his site will get a few more hits because of my "borrowing" of his work. That's how the Internet works. Right? I just don't know how I am going to sleep tonight. - Earl

Update: I don't now if I'm being paranoid, but one of the cats is sitting on the back of the couch watching me type this post out. And, and, and...I think he just winked at me!

Coming Soon: A full week of PUNK

I've been encountering a lot of references to punk rock in my life the last few days.

RW posted about a blogger friend of his who is recovering from some pretty serious surgery. He posted a video from The Ramones in the post as a bit of a get well wish. I've never really been big on The Ramones, but that is a topic for another day.

I watched the film Juno the other night. It included, amongst other references, a discussion on which was better...the punk scene in 1977 or the punk scene of 1993. I would argue that it was kinda over by 1993 and that 1991 was the peak of that particular branch of punk history. That, however, is an argument for another day.

Then I came across this list of the 20 Most Punk Movies of All-Time. I think that many of the films on that list were ABOUT punk and weren't necessarily punk themselves. But that is a...well, you see where this is going?

So I sat down tonight and started to write a post about punk and my own experiences with it. And I only got a paragraph into it when I knew that it was going to be much to long to post in one blog entry. Punk has been pretty important in my life and my mind was racing with what I was gonna write. And there was much too much.

So next week, starting on Monday, you get a full week of PUNK!!!


How's that for a tease?

I haven't decided on the daily topics yet, so if you have a broad subject about punk that you would like me to bore you with...please leave a comment.

So next week, put on your best pair of Docs, pierce something and stop on by for a conversation about my favorite type of music. You know you wanna.

The Golden Age

If life were fair, then I would be an 11 year-old boy again right now because we are living in the Golden Age of comic-book movie adaptions, people. These are glorious times to be an 11 year-old or girl here in the land of Hollywood movie magic.

I guess it started with either X-Men (2000) or Spider-Man (2002). Take your pick. The sequels were damned good too. Well, the first sequels. The second sequels were fucking awful. Since then it has been a veritable fan-boy smorgasbord of comic-book adaptations. Some really good, some really awful.

Daredevil (2003) - It sucked.
Hulk (2003) - It sucked worse.
Hellboy (2004) - Very nice surprise.
The Punisher (2004) - I liked it better than most.
Catwoman (2004) - Dear God!
Elektra (2005) - Why, oh why?!?!?
Batman Begins (2005) - Christian Bale rocks as Bruce Wayne.
Fantastic Four (2005) - Phew! What a piece of crap!
Superman Returns (2006) - And I wish he hadn't.
Ghost Rider (2007) - Nic Cage? Really?
FF: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) - Not awful.
Iron Man (2008) - Awesome! The way it should be done.
The Incredible Hulk (2008) - Massively better than the 1st one.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) - Haven't seen it yet*.
The Dark Knight (2008) - What can I say? Brilliant!

*It just came out today on DVD and it is at the top of my NetFlix queue.

And that list doesn't even include non-superhero comic-book adaptations like V for Vendetta (2006) or superhero films that aren't comic-book adaptations like Hancock (2008) - which I still haven't seen.

It looks like 2008 has been the banner year thus far for superhero films. The wonderful thing about even the crappy films on the above list is that I will still watch them. With glee. I love me some superhero flicks! Just like a good 11 year-old should.

And there is more on the horizon. Another Iron Man film, a Thor film, a Captain America film and an Avengers film are all in the works. Watchmen comes out early next year (hopefully). So will a solo Wolverine movie that already has me turgid. And Bryan Singer is giving Superman another chance. I have my doubts, but there are folks out there who like that shit.

There are some other flicks out there just waiting to be made. I think the X-Men have another really great film in them. Green Lantern and Green Arrow could make an interesting film. And I would love to see a really good Justice League film. That would be sweet.

I dunno. Maybe I have had the best of both worlds.

I got to enjoy all the original comic-books when I was a kid (ahem...and much older), and I get to experience them all over again on the big screen now that I am an adult. An immature adult, to be sure, but an adult still.

So put on your tights and your capes and enjoy, my fellow nerds and geeks!

We are truly living in Golden Times!

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
- Roman Poet Juvenal

Blue Blood

So the new HBO drama True Blood may not be to your liking.

Maybe you aren't into vampires or metaphors about vampires. Or shows about metaphors about vampires. Hmm.

Anywho, even if you don't like it or you haven't seen it yet, I'm here to tell you something. True Blood is just about the naked-est show going on right now. Don't believe me?

Take a look. (NSFW)

Oh yeah....I wanna do bad things with you!

J.G. Wentworth

Working from home allows me certain liberties.

I can scratch my balls whenever I want. I can work in the nude or as close to nude as the weather permits. I can take my cellphone into the bathroom and participate in a conference call while I am on the shitter.

I've got to be careful of grunting and other related noises with that last one.

One of the biggest liberties that I enjoy while working from home is having cable news playing in the background pretty much all day long. I think I was more informed during this past election cycle than at any other time in my life thanks to background cable news inundation. Some of what they said was even true.

I love the background cable news!

Except for the commercials. I fucking hate the commercials!

Owe money to the IRS? Call here. Suffering from Mesothelioma? They got your back. Want to get rid of that time share? Here you go. Wanna make $5,000 a week working from your home? Wait a minute...what was that number again?

Anyway, the one ad that really gets to me is the J.G. Wentworth commercial. They offer cash upfront for your monthly settlements and/or annuities. That means if you get a monthly/quarterly/yearly amount of cash from a lawsuit, lottery, inheritance or some other financial instrument they will pay you some fraction of the present value of that cash flow upfront if you turn it over to them.

Now, financially speaking, this can be a good idea. At times. Money now is almost always better than money in the future. It depends on the specifics. I know that J.G. Wentworth is making out on the deal. Somehow, someway. Otherwise they wouldn't be in business.

But my questions are as follows: Are there really that many people out there with these kind of future cash flows? Are there that many of those people willing to forego future earnings for money upfront? Does this number of these kind of people with these kind of cash flow problems, and it has to be small, demand that an entire company exists to service them?

Man...I dunno.

Certainly not enough to pay for the sheer multitude of commercials that they run, right? Some of them pretty extravagant. The latest one is an entire opera in one minute. Amazing!

I have a feeling that some of the actors in that commercial take their craft very seriously.

I feel so bad for them right now.

You just can't win

I read a lot of blogs. A LOT of blogs.

Mostly personal blogs, but I read a host of others too. In fact, my feed reader contains a bunch of different folders. Daily reads (that is most of you out there), Sports blogs, Beer blogs, Film blogs, Political blogs and New stuff. That last one includes every new blogger who comments here. I read/browse them for a while and then I either delete them or they graduate to my Daily reads. So work it people!

It's amazing to me how often topics intersect within these semi-rigid guidelines. Some personal bloggers will talk about films and some film bloggers will talk about their personal lives. Same thing goes for beer, sports and politics. They all seem to cross over. Especially politics. These days, especially.

Anyone reading these words right now who have been here before probably know that I lean to the left on the political spectrum. I try to show as much respect as possible to the other side, because aren't there enough things in this world that separate us already? My political views certainly aren't important enough contribute to that kind of divisiveness.

But it happens. It happens to just about everyone. You take an easy shot at the other side or post a silly political cartoon, and someone is gonna get offended. It would almost be too exhausting to censor yourself to the point that you don't offend someone. Somebody, somewhere is gonna get offended. I've had some bloggy experience with this and a few of you out there know what I'm talking about. It's just silly, and frankly it's not worth anyone's time.

There's a baseball blog that I read from a sports writer in Kansas City. His name is Joe Posnanski and he is a baseball and film geek just like me. I found his site because I like reading sports writers from different cities. Gives a different perspective from what we in NY usually read about on a daily basis.

So he went off-topic the other day and wrote a post about the election our great nation just went through on Tuesday. And he focused on the history of the night rather than the politics of the individuals engaged in the campaigns. Being a sports writer, of course, it was inevitable that he brought Jackie Robinson. I thought it was a tidy and decidedly non-political post about the evening. It was a post about hope, and it was very well done. It wasn't nasty, divisive or filled with idiotic rhetoric.

Of course that didn't stop the crazies from coming out in the comment section. Hate, prejudice and Godwin's Law eventually broke out.

On a baseball site.

In a post about hope.

It was some comments about that last topic that led Joe to close the comments on that post and delete a few comments that were particularly hateful. He mentioned it briefly on his next post and tried to move gracefully back to baseball. The first comment on that second post, of course, blamed Posnanski himself for having the gall to write a post about how he felt about the election. How he felt about history. How he felt about hope.

You just can't win.

Pizza, pizza, pizza

After an exhaustive search that involved not really trying at all, we've decided that we have finally found the best pizza in NYC.

John's of Bleecker Street. Thin and delicious brick oven pizza right across the street from one of the best taprooms in the city. We like the large pie with extra sauce.

And I'm sure that all of you who live elsewhere couldn't really give a rat's ass.

Oh, hey...here is something you might like. Remember that stupid commercial with Kobe, A-Rod, Michael Phelps and Tony Hawk that I showed y'all the other day? Well, Heidi Klum also does a version of it. And it is much, much, much better. In my opinion, of course.

Enjoy!

Election Day Hangover

Congrats to Barack Obama on his historic win tonight! I really didn't expect it to get called so soon. That means I should be able to sleep tonight. Best of luck to John McCain in the future!

I'm sure I will be dealing with an Election Day hangover tomorrow. How's about you? Hopefully the candidates of your choice won. Unless they ran against my candidates. Just keepin' it real.

You know what would really kill my poor head today? Swinging a freaking wooden chair around my head using only my teeth and jaws!

Elvis Mokko would disagree.

Yeah, I know. This video has been all over the Internet in the past couple of days. But did you watch the last minute of it? That's fucking bad-ass!

I Heart the 80's

Blah blah vote. Blah blah Obama. Blah blah Maverick. :wink:

Now that we've gotten that out of our system, onward fearless readers!

The title of this blog post is sarcastic, by the way. I was gonna include a little winky smiley just so you knew that, but I figured I would spell it out for the less advanced of you fuckers out there. You know who you are.

I graduated High School in 1984. Couldn't wait for it to end. I still believe it was the worst 4 years of my life. Then it was on to college for 4 years until graduation in 1988. That was a little better. I did learn how to play hacky-sack, after all. The decade also saw two terms of Ronald Reagan. A plethora of bad Stallone flicks. Parachute pants, skinny ties, popped collars (they're back!) and Members Only jackets. Yeah...I was a member.

Then there was the music. It was the dawn of rap music, new wave and big hair metal. Oh, there was some good stuff in there too. Few and far between, if you ask me. I was into The Pretenders, The Pixies, Sonic Youth, The Cult, Siouxsie and the Banshees (my first ever concert in '82 or '83), The Cure and The Replacements. Stuff like that. And when I say "stuff like that", of course, I'm talking about a wide variety of music since those bands weren't really alike in any way. Maybe Siouxsie and The Cure. But the rest was pretty different from one another.

Here's what got me thinking about this tonight. Gia was looking for an old song that she knew some of the lyrics to, but couldn't remember the whole song or who sang it. I found it for her after a short Google search. Turned out to be from a Scottish post-punk/new wave band called APB. We started talking about crazy music and crazy music videos from the 80's. "Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight" by Dominatrix. Stuff like that. Wow!

I thought I remembered the video for that song. I thought it had either a little girl or a midget in an abandoned factory busting up musical instruments with a bunch of guys wielding sledgehammers, chainsaws and various other implements of destruction. I was wrong. If you are interested in the Dominatrix video, you can watch it here. And it's absolutely safe for work, you sick fucks!

So what was that crazy video that I remembered? Was it some alcohol-fueled nightmare or was it a David Lynch flick? Nah...it was definitely a music video, and I know it was from the same era. I just couldn't place the song.

So I did a Google search, and I found it.

Dear God! I found it.

This nightmare of a music video enjoyed pretty heavy late-night airplay on MTV back in 1984, if I remember correctly.

No wonder I'm so fucked up.

The Blog Process

I've been thinking a great deal about my blog process the past few weeks. And when I say "a great deal", I really mean those few moments a day while I'm taking a crap.

So for those of you who are just dying to know what my typical process for writing blog posts is, here ya go...

The Blog Process

1. I get ideas for blog posts all day long. From cable news playing in the background. From newspaper articles. From movies or TV shows that I've recently seen. From other blogs or articles I've happened upon during the day. My muse comes from all over the place.
2. Unfortunately, I'm extremely lazy and I forget 99% of those ideas when the time comes for me to actually sit down and write a post. The 1% that I do actually remember are usually the lamest of the bunch. That's what I blog about. The lamest 1% of what actually interests me in a given day. That's how much I adore you all.
   
3. I like to sit down with the laptop and write my blog post each night after Gia goes to bed. Usually anywhere from 9:30PM - 11:30PM. I don't like to spend a lot of time on them, so I usually give myself an average of 10-15 minutes to write up a post. Some take a lot longer if there are tons of links and shit, and some take only a few seconds. But generally each post takes around 10-15 minutes.
4. I like to post once a day except on the weekends. That doesn't mean that I won't post on the weekends, it's just that I don't sit down and plan on it. If something tickles my funny bone or my horny bone, I may write a quick post about it. But I've found that I don't read other blogs as often on the weekends and I suspect the same from many of you out there. Too busy having a life and all, I guess.
   
5. I like to schedule my posts for 12:01AM each day. So if I sit down at 10PM to write a post, it will "drop" at exactly 12:01AM the next day. Why 12:01AM instead of 12:00AM? Because when I first started scheduling posts a while back, I couldn't decide if 12:00AM was Midnight or Noon. Yeah.

That's it. So how about you? Do you have a blog process, or is it more higgledy-piggledy?


PS - I deleted my "blog followers" chotchkie over there in my sidebar. I found it was causing a delay in my blog loading properly every time I came to the site. Only 5 seconds or so, but I'm very impatient. Anyone else noticing this?

PPS - Never mind. That widget wasn't causing the delays. The page loads quickly in IE, but a lot less quickly in Firefox for some reason. Hmmm.