Snow No! Not again!

Remember how I said I liked shoveling snow a week or so ago?

Yeah, I'm pretty much up to here with it now.  Starting to look like freakin' Alaska around here these days.

Still lots of work to do.

UPDATE:  Here's a video that expresses exactly how I'm feeling about Winter right now.

At least we've got Taco Doritos in retro bags for a little while.  Small consolation.  They aren't the same as the original Taco Doritos from my youth, but they will do in a pinch.  I guess.

WTF with Marc Maron

OK, I'm a little under the weather.  Fighting off a cold.  I tried calling it "messin' with Sasquatch" in a text message earlier today, but that sounds a little too much like masturbating.  Not that there is anything wrong with that.  I've messed with Sasquatch so much in my life that he's a beaten man, er, Bigfoot, er, Yeti.  Whatever.  Let's just say he's my bitch.  What was I saying?  Oh yeah...I've got a cold.

That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the funny.  And Marc Maron, in his weekly podcast where he interviews some cool folks, brings the funny.  His latest interview is with Kevin Smith, and as critical as I have been about Kevin Smith the filmmaker, I'll never get tired of hearing him talk about being a filmmaker.  Or about getting kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight.  Or about getting high with Seth Rogan.

This particular interview made a few waves in the Celebrity News sites this week because he kinda said that Bruce Willis was a dick when they worked together on Cop Out last year.  Not that he hasn't said that before, but in the past he never specifically used Willis' name.  Now it's out there.  Your move, John McClane.

Welcome to the party, pal!

Our Tiny Christmas Miracle

Well, miracle is a strong word for it.  But we thought it was pretty cool.

So you know how we named one of our cats Wolowitz after Simon Helberg's character in The Big Bang Theory, right.  In case you've forgotten, here is our Wolowitz and below him is Simon's character from the show:

Wolowtiz the cat

Wolowitz the nerd

Well, every since we named our boy after Wolowitz, Gia has had this idea that maybe we could get a picture of Simon Helberg and our cat together. I mean, we knew that getting a picture of the two of them in the same place would be nearly impossible. We don't get to LA all that often.  But we thought we might be able to swing getting a picture of Simon holding a picture of Wolowitz. A little Wolowitz-on-Wolowitz action, if you will.

But how does one go about that?

Well, I first looked to see what Simon Helberg's online presence was like. And his online presence was basically nada. No Twitter account. No blog that I could find. Only a contact address for his agent. And I didn't want to go that route. It seemed kinda creepy to ask his agent for a photo.  So I basically forgot about it for a while.

Then, for some reason, I looked again a few weeks before Christmas, and I saw that he finally opened a Twitter account. Which I immediately started to follow...looking for a way to get him to fulfill this incredibly stupid request of ours. That's when I saw that he was basically using Twitter to help promote his wife's film project that she was hawking on Kickstarter. I wrote about that here a while back. Her name is Jocelyn Towne.

So I checked out the project, and I thought it would make an interesting Christmas present for Gia.  I would pledge enough to get her listed as an Associate Producer on the film.  So for $100, she would get a screen credit plus a whole bunch of other goodies like a copy of the DVD, a signed poster, etc...  Since I jumped into the project fairly early, I thought Jocelyn Towne might contact me via email or board post.  Maybe then I would be able to ask her about getting a picture of Simon with our cat.  Yeah.  Weak, but why not?

You know what?  That's exactly what happened.  She wrote to thank me for pledging toward her film project.  I wrote back telling her how we named one of our cats after Simon's character from the show.  She replied thinking that was hilarious as they were cat people themselves.  They have three cats named after famous film detectives.  That's when I asked her about getting a photo with Simon holding a photo of our cat.  She thought it was a great idea and asked me to send her a photo of Wolowitz.

That was the morning of Christmas Eve.  A few hours before midnight and Christmas itself, here is what showed up in my email:

Wolowitz and Wolowitz

Jocelyn Towne and Simon Helberg are two of the coolest cats in the world. Thanks, kids!

U.F.Oh Shit...

I think I want to become a UFO buff.  What kind of dedication does it take to become a buff?  Do I need to stop doing anything that can be considered living a "normal" life to dedicate those hours of the day toward my new hobby, er, obsession, er, calling?  Do I need to do something to get on an FBI watch list?  Should I stop showering?

OK, I don't really want to become a UFO buff.  Maybe I just want to become a bit of a conspiracy theory buff and UFOs seem to be behind a lot of those.  But being a conspiracy theory buff sounds exhausting.  How but just a conspiracy theory hobbyist?  That sounds harmless.  But I know me.  I get obsessed with my hobbies, whether it be comic-books, movies, beer or midget-fetish porn.  That last one nearly did me in.

So I guess I just would prefer to skip all the research, psycho-babble and speculation about aliens and UFOs.  I want to just...know.  That way, if there is a massive underwater fleet of UFOs lurking under the Southern Ocean near Antarctica and if the United States has been in a state of constant warfare with the alien horde, I can be prepared when WikiLeaks reveals it all to the world.

Especially if they are causing earthquakes and tidal waves and shit.  I live near the water, people.  You can't be too careful.

Faux Times Two

The other night, Gia and I watched two films that were incredibly alike yet totally, um, not so.  Wait...lemme explain that a little bit.  They were both "documentary-style" films, with one of them being obviously a mock-umentary, while the other one required a bit more thought on the subject.  Yes or no?

The first film, the one that required a bit more thought on the subject, was Exit Through the Gift Shop.  This was an absolutely brilliant film.  Directed by famed British street artist Banksy, it started out as a "documentary" about an amateur filmmaker named Thierry Guetta who became obsessed with street art and artists.  But it turned into something entirely different, as Guetta was encouraged by Banksy to create his own art.  The intriguing and often unbelievable story that follows makes for an incredible film.

I'm not going to spoil anything, and there has been no consensus from either the critical world or from the participants itself, but...well, the whole thing is quite possibly a hoax.  I'm leaning toward 100%, but hey...ya never now.  Wait, did I say I wasn't going to spoil anything?  Shit.  Did I just spoil that?  Crap.  But believe me, the journey is well worth it.  I give this one the highest of recommendations.

The other film was an obvious faux documentary called The Last Exorcism.  It's filled with familiar looking actors and unbelievable scenarios, but it's a lot of fun anyway.  It tells the tale of a lapsed Christian preacher who has convinced himself that he was still doing important work, because if the people he was "helping" felt like he was genuine then he was actually helping them.  One of his duties was to perform exorcisms, and it was all a smoke and mirrors game for him.

For one last time, he hired a film crew to follow him so that he could prove that exorcisms were all a bunch of crap.  But, of course, some spooky shit goes down.  Interesting, but not really that scary.  I was expecting a whole lot more from this film than what I got, but besides from a few small chills the film was pretty ordinary.

So I would highly recommend Exit Through the Gift Shop, and meekly recommend The Last Exorcism.  One was brilliant, the other was just meh.

Planet of Sound

A few years ago, I was searching through the shelves in my mother's extra room. I call it an extra room, because it really has no purpose now. It used to be a bedroom, but it was probably designed to be a small den. Now it's got a bunch of my sister's kid's toys and crap in it. And it's got a big closet, so it's usually where all the coats go when she is hosting a big event. Like my nephew's Christening last weekend.

But for about 10 years, it was my bedroom. All throughout high school and college and for a couple of years after that before I moved out. So there is still some of my crap hidden on those shelves amidst all the kids stuff that is currently taking up space. Mostly books, but also some LPs (remember those?), cassette tapes (remember those?) and VHS tapes (remember those?). There was one VHS tape that intrigued me enough to dust off the old VCR and check out. All it said on the label was "Planet of Sound".

Here's the first thing that popped up on the tape. A performance of "Planet of Sound" by the Pixies on the old Dennis Miller Show. Way back when. Check it out.

Man, they were really my favorite band for a while there in the 80's and early 90's.

Anyway, the rest of the tape was about a dozen episodes of Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures from the late 80's. Anyone remember that? The revival was the brainchild of Ralph Bakshi, he of Fritz the Cat fame. Yeah. So there was a lot of adult drug and sex references going on, even though the show aired on Saturday mornings. You had to be hip to catch them all.

The most famous drug reference was the so-called "cocaine scene" that was part of The Littlest Tramp episode. In it, Mighty Mouse crushes up a flower and inhales the dust. Yeah...it kinda looked like he was snorting cocaine. Bakshi, who was mostly producing the show, hadn't even seen this portion of the episode. But he initially agreed to cut the 3.5 seconds from the final product. John Kricfalusi (who later went on to create Ren and Stimpy) convinced Bakshi that the scene was indeed harmless and Bakshi had it put back in. And the episode aired in October of 1987 like that.

About six months later, the American Family Association (ugh) stepped in and stirred some shit. As they do. They railed against CBS for hiring a known pornographer to produce children's television. Yeah. Bakshi was furious and fought back, but he eventually agreed to cut the 3.5 seconds from all future airings of that episode.

Was it the show's creative staff's intent to make it look like Mighty Mouse was snorting coke? Bakshi says no, but it wouldn't be the first time that animators and writers snuck something in under the producer's, ahem, nose.

Here's an screen shot from that scene. You decide...

Um...the powder is pink?

PS - Bet you thought that VHS tape was gonna have a little some-some on the sexy tip, right? Sadly...no.

Snow Nerd

We had another big storm here in the Northeast yesterday.  And my little town on Long Island was hit particularly hard. The official totals say 18-20 inches, but I dunno 'bout that.  Maybe I was only shoveling where the snow had drifted.  Because it was clearly over two feet in most spots around our home.

But that's okay, because (as I've mentioned before here) I really don't mind shoveling snow.  I mean, I don't look forward to it.  I'd rather spend each winter on a beach someplace in the South Pacific with tropical ladies handing me tropical drinks with tropical umbrellas in them.  In the drinks, not the ladies.  Ahem.  But as one of those things that I've had to do all my life in the wintertime, it's just something I've learned to be peaceful about and kinda enjoy. 

Enjoy shoveling snow?  Relax...I'm not coming to your house to dig you out.  But since it has to be done, I've made my peace with it.

And I take a practical and (IMO) thoroughly efficient route when taking on the task.  If I think about what needs to be done in totality, I'm gonna get overwhelmed.  So I concentrate on one stretch of walkway/driveway/stairway at a time.  I need to.  Because we live at the bottom of a hill and I have to dig myself UP to the street level where we keep our cars during snowstorms.  Just getting to the street usually takes a couple of hours after a heavy snowfall.  Once I get up there, I usually have a bit of help.  The guy next door has a plow and he cleans out the area in front of the house pretty well.  Just a little clean up on my part.  Then it's on to get the cars cleaned off and moved.  We park them down the road in front of some woods so that the plows can really clean out the front of the house.  Gia helps out with that.  Cleaning off the cars and powering through the drifts while I'm cleaning up parking spots out front.  Then it's making sure the mailman can get to our mailbox, and I'm done.

So I take it slow and I don't stop until it's done.  Do this patch, then do that patch, then onto the next.  Keep it going, keep it slow, get it done.  And since it's repetitive and mostly automatic on my part, it allows me to pause every once in a while and admire some of the beauty of the hills and trees covered in snow and the iced-over harbor out of our back door.

Sometimes it's comforting to move through life two feet at a time.

PS - Accidentally posted this early yesterday...so you might see it twice in your feed reader.  Lucky you.

Simon's Cat

This guy's cartoons about his cat are absolutely spot-on!  Especially this one about how much his cat loves a good empty box.  Our boy Wolowitz will concur.

Hope everyone enjoys the big Winter Storm tomorrow! Well, those of you in the path of the storm. Ya know.

100 Books

Sometime early in 2009, a meme popped up on Facebook asking folks to see how many of the 100 books listed below that they've read.  With instructions on partially read books and what not.  The meme went on to say that the average person has only read 6 out of the 100 books.  Seems a bit low to me, but the list itself is pretty odd.  Even odder, no one seems to know where the meme originated.  It says that it came from the BBC, and there is a list similar to it from back in 2004 printed by the BBC...but nothing about the average number of books the average reader has finished.   And the list is different.

Did I mention it was odd?  "The Chronicles of Narnia" listed as one book, and "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" as another?  Last I checked the latter was part of the former.  And "The Complete Works of Shakespeare"?  That's a whole lotta Shakespeare.  I've read some/most of them, but not all of them.  Just a strange, strange list.

I guess it's still making the rounds.  I'm not on Facebook, so it never made it to me.  Until I got together with my family over the weekend and my sisters and Gia were talking about it.  So I had Gia forward it over to me via email for blog fodder.  Voila!

How many of these have you read?  I'm going to list the ones I read in bold.  A partially read book is an unread book in my opinion, so no italics or anything.  Either I've read it or I haven't.  So there!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo 

That's 43 of the 100 that I've completely read.  Not bad, but not great either.  There is a bunch of stuff up there that I really should have read at some point in my life.  Then again, there's a bunch of stuff up there I've never heard of.  Odd list.

Like I said, that's leaving out stuff like the Shakespeare or Sherlock Holmes compendiums.  Stuff I've only partially read.  I left out "The Bible" as well, because...well, I have no idea if I've read it all.  I know I've read a lot of it.  I come from a pretty religious family.  I know I read it at times, but I can't say for certain that I've read it all.  So it's off my completed list.

How did you do?

PS - I'm posting this at 1:11 AM on 1/11/11.  Just because, just for scuzz.

Still Only 25¢: The Invaders #6

Disclaimer: Part of an on-going series of blog posts about comic-books, the mid-70's and a wee boy named Earl. Or not really. You know my name isn't really Earl, right? - Earl

___________________________________________________

Right around the time I started reading comic-books as a child, Marvel realized that they could double-up or triple-up on the titles they were producing starring some of their more popular characters.  That was the idea behind Marvel Two-In-One or Marvel Team-Ups.  Another idea they had was to take some of their popular characters that were introduced in the Golden Age of Comic-Books and create new stories for them set during the WWII era.  That was the idea behind The Invaders, the greatest superheroes of World War Two!

The core team, Captain America, Namor the Sub-Mariner and The Human Torch, were all characters introduced back in the 1940's.  And they had plenty of experience fighting against Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.  All the Axis, in fact.  Some of the greatest propaganda that was produced during the war came from some of those comic-books.  The very fist issue of Captain America, published almost a year before the United States joined the war effort, depicted Cap punching Hitler right in the kisser.  And it was a trend that continued with the Marvel/Timely publications for the next half-decade.  Readers loved to see their heroes kick some Nazi or Japanese ass on full-color magazine pulp.

click to expand

The Invaders #6, and pretty much the entire run through the mid-to-late-70's, are absolutely burned into my memory.  When I was browsing through Cover Browser (the reference site I use for the images for this post series) the other day and saw some of these covers, well...it brought me right back to a place and time when things were simpler.  Especially me.  That was probably the non-monetary idea behind the title anyway.  Although most folks consider comic-books to be an outlet for children or young teens, the publishers often targeted older readers and collectors.  And putting some of the more popular current characters into a setting that some older readers remembered from their own early years was one way to do that.  It was also a way for Marvel to either bring back and ret-con characters that hadn't seen the light of day for decades, or to create new heroes or villains that wouldn't make sense in the Nixon/Ford/Carter era, but would fit right in fighting against the Nazis.

The Liberty Legion, actually introduced in The Invaders #5, were one of the examples of the former.  Timely Comics characters from the 1940's that were re-introduced, ret-conned and assembled into a new super-group.  With characters like Whizzer (not for peeing), Miss America, The Patriot and Jack Frost.  All characters with back-stories and abilities that mirrored other heroes that were being published at the time, or they were predecessor for characters that Marvel would develop during the Silver Age in the 1960's.  Captain America's sidekick, Bucky, was also a a member of this super-team.  Actually the leader of the team, as he was the one to assemble the squad.

But the reason why this particular book stays with me is a character called Blue Diamond who had, er, diamond-hard impenetrable skin and superhuman strength.  Thanks to a, er. blue diamond that he found on an expedition to Antarctica whose shards were embedded into his skin when his ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat.  Back around 1990, when I began to read and collect comic-books once again, I had the hardest time trying to remember which book featured this character that I remembered so vividly.  I knew his back-story.  I knew his powers.  I knew that it somehow involved World War II.  But I just couldn't find those old issues that I remembered and loved so much.

And it was all because I had somehow combined his back-story and abilities with another character from the Liberty Legion...Jack Frost.  Not that he would turn to solid ice, but I thought he turned into a solid diamond at will.  And whenever I tried to explain it to my fellow comic-book geeks, I started with "this WWII hero who was made of diamonds!".  Some even pointed me toward The Invaders and the Liberty Legion, but when they showed me what Blue Diamond looked like I was positive that they were wrong and I was thinking of someone else.

Turns out that I wasn't.  It's just that my pre-teen memory combined different characters from the same book into one mish-mash of the two.  Or so it would seem.  But here's the thing...I'm not 100% sure that I did combine the two characters.  A part of my brain STILL thinks that there was a character like the one I remember.  And I even think that I finally found that character back when the Internet came around.  And it wasn't a recurring character.  Just someone who appeared in one or two issues of something.  Maybe as a "comic-within-a-comic" or something.  Or in an ad that appeared in the 70's in a comic-book.  THAT sounds about right.  (UPDATE: Something like this)

But now I can't find it again.

And it's killing me.

Zombie Vagina

A friend of mine pointed me toward this video that stars a friend of his.  See...the circle of life.  It's called "Dawn of the Dance!" and it's a whole shitload of zombie hip-hop fun.  His buddy is the second zombie in the feature, singing about...zombie vagina.

If you have the time (around 10 minutes) and you are into this kind of thing, well...I guarantee you'll be humming the zombie vagina song later today at some point.  It's catchy as all hell.

Enjoy!

Sporcle

I don't know who out there recommended the trivia site Sporcle to me (or the larger blogosphere, to be more precise), but I either want to thank you or kill you.

It's become my pre-sleep habit for going on a month now.  Every night before bed, I check out the new quizzes on Sporcle for that day.  And sometimes I'll browse the archives, but I usually wind up on the site for a good half-hour or so before calling it quits for the day.  Probably not the best idea for someone who has trouble falling asleep in the first place, but whatever.

They've got some great stuff on there.  And a lot of it is more a test of your memory than it is actual trivia, but I dig it just the same.  Trying to name all the countries of the world by looking at a blank map made me realize that I know nothing about Africa and the former Soviet satellite nations.  Or how to spell shit properly.  And that ticking clock doesn't help jog your memory at all.  Quite the opposite.  Even easy stuff like naming the characters on The Office become frustrating when you are under the guy.  I couldn't remember Stanley's name!  And he's probably my favorite character on the show!

So yeah...thanks.  Whomever you are.

Do you Sporcle?

I no can stop looking

click him to watch him go

James Van Der Beek is an internet treasure.  His sobbing face from Dawson's Creek has made it's way onto many a blog post that I have read over the years.  I've never used it myself...I don't know why.  It's really a much more perfect image for expressing grief (or disgust or hilarity) than just about anything out there.

Well, since he's apparently not doing much else, he has decided to take the ball and run with it.

Check out James Van Der Memes.

You are most welcome.

PS - Why do gifs work on some Blogger posts, but not on others?

Circle me, Bert

Like clockwork, this time of the year means one thing for baseball fans.  The annual Hall of Fame debates.   And for the past 15 years or so, the debate has been strongest (on both sides) for Bert Blyleven.  Good ole Bert was a damned fine pitcher in his 22 years in the majors.  He won 287 games, pitched 4,970 innings and struck out 3,701 batters.  Among the tops all-time in each category (wins - 27th, innings - 14th, strikeouts - 5th!!!).  Pretty much all the guys ahead of him on those lists are already in the Hall or will be when they become eligible.  Or they are named Roger Clemens.  Ahem.

But there are many voters who refuse to vote for him using the "you had to be there" argument.  Meaning that they don't believe that Blyleven was ever dominant enough in his time to be rewarded with inclusion to the Hall.  Many of those same voters, however, will vote for Jack Morris.  A fine pitcher with less illustrious career stats than Blyleven.  But boy oh boy...he was a big game pitcher.  He single-handedly won Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, right?  I guess "you had to be there".  Ahem.

And you know what?  I'm fine with that.  I happen to believe Blyleven deserves the honor of induction.  Certain voters do not.  Whatever.  As long as they have a good argument.  And Jon Heyman of Sports Illustrated wrote an entire article on why he was not voting for Blyleven, even in the face of some newer statistical work that suggests that Blyleven may be one of the all-time greats.  Bravo, Mr. Heyman.  He even made some good points.  Not a lot of points that I agree with, and they all boil down to the "you had to be there" argument.  But at least he tried.

Then he goes and ruins it on the second page by including his own criteria for voting in Jack Morris, which is as follows:

Morris. He finished with 254 wins and 175 complete games while leading the league at various times in wins (twice), starts (twice), complete games, shutouts and innings pitched.

That's very nice.  Except if you use the same criteria for Blyleven, you would have the following:

Blyleven. He finished with 287 wins and 242 complete games while leading the league at various times in starts, complete games, shutouts (3 times), innings pitched (twice) and strikeouts.

So it seems his real argument against Blyleven is that he never led the league in wins in any particular year.  Because the rest of the numbers he himself uses are at least the equal of Morris' numbers, and in some cases much better.

By the way, one of the years in which Morris led his league in wins was the strike-shortened 1981 season.  He finished with 14 wins that year, tying three other AL pitchers. The other year was 1992 when he led the AL with 21 wins (tied with Kevin Brown), but also posted a 4.04 ERA.  Which was around league average that year. 

But to truly see his greatness?  Well...I guess "you had to be there".

PS - If you want to read a much more intelligent argument for Bert Blyleven (and some other fine players), well...there's always Poz.  I, personally, probably wouldn't vote for Barry Larkin, Mark McGwire or Alan Trammell like Poz did.  But I don't really have a problem with anyone voting for them either.  Well...maybe McGwire a little bit.  Gonna have to figure this whole "steroid era" out one of these years, eh?

Bennington

So hey...it's 2011. And we got our new kitteh. His new name is Bennington.

Hi!

Gia came back from SC with him on Sunday.  And he really might be the cutest thing I've ever seen.  I can't say that too loud in front of the other cats.  They get jealous.  Besides, they were all equally as cute at this age, and they still rock the cute to this very day.  So enough already!

He's got the oddest/most awesome coloring I've ever seen.  White boots, dark tail...those crazy Grandpa Munster tufts of fur in his ears.  Then there are those three white splashes on his face.  Like someone swiped him with a paintbrush and some white paint and it just hit him in those three spots. And even though his eyes look blue in that picture, they look mostly green in person.  Which is cool.

The other cats haven't really welcomed him into our home yet.  He's mostly been hanging out in the bedroom on the bed.  I don't blame him.  But they will eventually let him into their reindeer games.  It may take a few days though.

Oh, and he's named after this madman.  That's how we do.

And Happy Birthday, Mom!  (She doesn't read this)

UPDATE: And a Happy Birthday to J.R.R. Tolkien.  Well...of course he's dead now, but still.  Raise a glass to "The Professor" tonight at 9PM, if you are into that kind of thing.

Merry and Happy

Christmas, New Year's, Holidays...whatever.

Seems like everyone else is taking some time off blogging for the holidays, so I figured I might as well join them.  You may see something here over the next week and a half.  Then again you may not.  But that's what makes it so exciting, right?

No?  Crap.

Go do it to it, people!

Bad Santa...bad!

I am I

I couldn't even stay away one day.  See what happens?

This is actually a post about a project I've become minimally attached to.  Simon Helberg, who plays Wolowitz on The Big Bang Theory is married to a lovely woman named Jocelyn Towne.  She is trying to gather funds through a site called Kickstarter to make her movie called "I Am I".  You can read all about it here.

So I jumped in.  I'm also trying to get her to have her husband take a picture with a screen-shot of our boy Wolowitz for a little Wolowitz-on-Wolowtiz action.  Dunno if that is gonna happen, but they seem pretty cool about doing stuff for the cause.

Check out the video and decide if you want to back their project.  And Merry Christmas...again!

John Hawkes

This past weekend, Gia and I watched Winter's Bone.  And I would have to say that it was by far the best movie that I have seen in a long while, and probably the best movie I've seen in 2010.  Award season is coming up and it has already been nominated for a ton of awards, winning a few already.  Among them would be Best Supporting Actor for the feller up there, John Hawkes.

I'm sure you've seen him in films before.  He's been a character actor for a long time now.  From the liquor store clerk in From Dusk Till Dawn, to the funny Bugsy in The Perfect Storm, to his brief work on Lost as the bespectacled Lennon in the final season.  He's been around.  One of those "that guy" actors.  You've seen him, but you never really knew who he was.  I think that's all gonna change come Oscar time.  If he doesn't win, which would be a shame, he should at least get nominated.

Having seen him play degenerates and funny men over the year, I never thought I'd ever see him play dangerous.  Which is exactly what he is in Winter's Bone.  And yet that danger turns to compassion at one point...he's a very complex character.  Or maybe the character himself isn't complex, it's just Hawkes' portrayal that makes it so.  He is an absolute treasure in this film, and everyone needs to know about it.

The film is about a young woman living in the Ozarks of southern Missouri.  Taking care of her two younger siblings and her damaged mother while her father is on the run from the law stemming from a charge of cooking meth.  Eking out a bare existence, she depends on welfare and the kindness of her neighbors just to feed her family.  Circumstances arise where she needs to find her father or suffer the consequences of losing what little her family has left.  This bare and harsh film turns into a mystery at that point, as she struggles within her own particular extended familial society to find her father.

I don't really mean to single out Hawkes as the only breakthrough performance in the film. The young woman who largely carries the film is named Jennifer Lawrence, and she is amazing as well.  Her character is one of those rare celluloid heroes that come along every once in a while.  Someone who you will remember for a long time.  She deserves every accolade that she has or will receive for her acting in this film. 

As does the rest of the cast, including Garret Dillahunt, Shelley Waggener, Lauren Sweetser, Dale Dickey (she was the daytime whore on My Name is Earl!!!), Sheryl Lee and a whole bunch of largely unknown or first-time actors.  There is the small but important role played by a guy named William White.  I watched the extras on the Blu-Ray and I found out that this was his first movie, and he seemed genuinely touched that it was a life-changing experience for him. You have a feeling that a lot of actors in the smaller roles are just folks who are living on the edges of the life that this film portrays.

I loved this movie.  And John Hawkes was simply amazing in it every time he appeared on screen.  Check him and it out.

Lunar Eclipse

I'm thinking about staying up to see the lunar eclipse tonight.  First one on a solstice in just about forever.

It starts here on the East Coast around 1:32AM and will reach totality between 2:40AM and 3:50AM.  But it's real fucking cold out tonight.  And that's smack-dab in the middle of dream-time.  I dunno.

There probably will be some pretty good pictures of it on the Internet tomorrow, right?

Sigh.

Happy first day of Winter everyone!

Beer Review: Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA

Last week, I had the opportunity to try one of the greatest American India Pale Ales on the market in three different formats.  Bottle, keg and cask.  I'll explain the difference on those last two in a moment.

Firestone Walker Brewing Company began in the mid-1990's on a vineyard in Santa Barbara, California before purchasing an old brewery in Paso Robles.  Their Union Jack is an India Pale Ale, which is basically a hopped-up version of a classic British Pale Ale.  Back in the day, those wacky Brits would add more hops to their beers to survive the trip to India and the Far East.  Because hops act as a type of preservative, ya see.  The resulting brew is bitter and has a complex fruit aroma that will remind you of pineapples, citrus and maybe banana.  Depends on the nose and the actual brew.

This particular IPA has a huge pineapple aroma from all those hops.  The best IPAs have all the bitterness and citrus character from the hops, but a delicate balance of malt in the background.  And Union Jack is one of those great IPAs.  Especially considering the somewhat high alcohol content of 7.50% ABV.  Surprisingly drinkable for all that alcohol.  Bordering on dangerous.

So I've tried it in the bottle (delicious) and on draft, but the other day we also got to try it in a cask.  That's old-school brewing.  No pasteurization or added carbonation.  It's all conditioned and fermented in a cask and served in that same vessel.  You pop a spigot in the front and let the active yeasts control the carbonation and gravity assist with the pour.  Read more about cask ale here, if you are interested.

I could definitely tell it was the same IPA that I loved in the bottle and on draft, but the lack of added carbonation made it seem sweeter to the tongue.  I don't think that it actually was, but the bitterness seemed to be a bit higher in the carbonated keg or bottle format.  It's all about mouth feel at that point, I guess.

Either way, this is a sold IPA and a must for anyone who truly loves hoppy brews.  It's mostly available on the West Coast, and I've heard rumors that they may want to slow their expansion East.  But if you can get your hands on it and you like IPAs, then go for it!

One last picture of Sammi

Seriously, I'm not trying to turn this into a deceased pet blog.  Really.

But I just love this picture, because it truly sums up what Sammi was all about.  I may have even posted this before, but fuck it.  Sometimes twice is just as nice.

That's what she like to do.  Lay on my chest and rub her face on my beard.  And she had this one fang on the right side of her mouth that, for some reason, was longer than it should have been. She would occasionally get you pretty good with it.  Not on purpose, ya see.  She just couldn't help it.

This kind of situation was usually pretty common after she ate, when she was just looking to settle down and be loved.  The resulting fish stank from her breath was merely a bonus.

By the way, it took just this side of forever for our relationship to get this way.  At first, I was the enemy.  OK, "enemy" was a strong word. But in the beginning, I wasn't one of the chosen few who was allowed to pick her up or even pet her.  She was all claws and nasty looks for a long while.  And when a cat has one long fang on one side of her face and one glassy eye on the other...trust me, you can get some nasty looks.

But I made her my pet project, and I gradually began to pick her up and give her some love.  I always tried to put her down right before she was ready to slice me up, and I think she understood that.  It took a while, but soon enough she was sleeping on my head at night.  The way cats do.

I don't know if I believe in the concept of Heaven, but if there is one then I sure as shit hope there is a place for cats and dogs there. And if there is, then I sure Sammi is there with her best buddy Syd, and she's giving the deity in charge the stink eye.  At least until she gets used to the joint.

Note: Partially inspired by Neil Gaiman's recent journal post about his cat Princess.  I think Princess and Sammi would've gotten along famously.  Or avoided each other like the plague.

Added Bonus:  A video of two cats getting the MST3K treatment while playing patty cake.  The one on the right looks a bit like Sammi in her younger, healthier days.  Enjoy!

The Spirit Arrives

I finally got into the Christmas Spirit today.

I think I looked at the calendar and realized that Christmas is only like a week or so away and I freaked.  Did some Christmas shopping, put up some Christmas lights, listened to some rock 'n roll Christmas tunes.  You know the drill.  Didn't go as far as putting up a tree.  We never put up a tree.  We have a fake one, but the cats will fuck it up too much.  And a real tree...well, I think they would die from the excitement.  Besides, we mostly spend Christmas Day with our family.  Somewheres.  And we are lazy.  So there's that.

Anyway, here's my favorite Christmas song.  "Father Christmas" by Greg Lake.  For anyone who gives a rat's ass.  Hoo hoo hoo!

A question for the MacHeads

What is the best way to transfer a phone mail message from Gia's iPhone to an audio file that I can post here on my blog?

She did some searching, but hasn't come up with an easy solution yet.  And asking this question here is about as far as I'm willing to go for an answer.  But, if it's easy, I guarantee y'all a gut-busting time when and if I get to post a message from Gia's father that I've listened to about a dozen times now.

He is an absolute piece of work, I tell you.

I, of course, am asking this question of y'all because I don't have an iPhone or an iPad or anything else that Steve Jobs is hawking.  But Gia, gahblesshersoul, is an absolute Apple Whore.  Speaking of Apple Whores, this gives me an opportunity to see where Dave2's Apple images are showing up when I do a Google image search for "Apple Whore".

Ah...he slipped to the 5th image.  Last time I checked he was 2nd.  Tsk tsk tsk.

Oh Hai!

Way before our little gal Sammi passed away, Gia had her heart set on another Ragamuffin kitten.  So we contacted the breeder in Georgia who  we've used before to get on her radar for upcoming litters.  And we've decided which little fella we are going to adopt.

Say hello to York.

That picture was taken a few weeks ago, he's now 12 weeks old and Gia will be picking him up over New Year's while she is down South.  Because of his coloring, he's called a "Chocolate Drop"...I really don't know what that means.  But he does have a cute white spot on his nose, doesn't he?

We aren't in love with the name, though.  We adopted Avery from the same breeder and kept his name, even though we mostly call him Bootsy these days.  So since were are going to call him something else anyway, we decided we need to rename him.  Here are our current favorite names:

• Loki - a mischievous name for a mischievous-looking fella.  Gia's current favorite.
• Levon - for Mr. Helm, but I'm thinking Levon is more of a dog name.
• The Dude - here's the problem...we already kinda know someone who has a Ragamuffin named The Dude.  Second place suck.
• Leo - not for the lion.  But because it sounds like the name of an old curmudgeon.  And for Leo McGarry, our favorite character from The West Wing.
• Jack Burton - my current favorite.
• The Humungus*! The Lord Humungus! The Warrior of the Wasteland! The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla! - I dunno...maybe a little ponderous.
• Michaleen Oge Flynn - "Impetuous! Homeric!"
• Rails - because of the white mark on his nose.  Those who fondly (or otherwise) remember 70's/80's drug culture will get this.
• Agador Spartacus - just in case he's gay.  You never know.
• Dave Grohl - just kidding, Sybil.  Or am I?
• Tom Waits - yeah.
• Rudeboy/Rudie - it's a ska thing.  Maybe Bad Boy Rudie.  Yeah...I like that.
• Lord Invader - there is a backstory.

Feel free to add your suggestion in the comments.  I promise not to crap all over them too badly.  Unless they really suck.

*That's how it's spelled in the credits for The Road Warrior.

One Paragraph Movie Reviews

Saw a bunch of films over the weekend, so I thought I hit you with some quick reviews.  Because my opinion means oh so much to my adoring readers.  Humor me, okay?

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Sheitan (2006) - The French really are making some wonderful horror films these days.  And by wonderful, I mean disgusting and disturbing.  If you are into that kind of thing, and, of course, I am.  A group of young folks leave a disco after a brief brawl, and they head to the countryside with a new female friend for the Christmas holiday.  Things get weird when they encounter her family's oddball caretaker (Vincent Cassel) and some of the local crazies from the nearby village.  The caretaker has taken a particular fondness to one of the young men, and the tensions that ensue are not of the sexual nature.  Not between those two, at least.  Creepy dolls, creepy villagers, creepy cousins, creepy childbirths, creepy satanic rituals...it's just creepy.  And the last 15 minutes turns into a complete nightmare.  Something right out of Rosemary's Baby or something.  Fun!

My Netflix Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Centurion (2010) - I don't know how Neil Marshall keeps doing it, but this is the fourth film that he has written and directed (along with Dog Soldiers, The Descent and Doomsday), and they have all been tremendous fun.   Even when they wander far from the actual story like Doomsday did with the silly medieval stuff.  This one tells the tale of the fate of the legendary 9th Legion of Rome as they battled with the Picts of Britain in the early 2nd Century AD.  Sure, it's violent and often silly.  But I think Neil Marshall gets that films are meant to be fun.  I'm sure most it's riddled with historical inaccuracies as well.  Too bad.  It's not going to change your life, but it sure is a lot of fun.  All I know is that I want more genre movies from Neil Marshall.  Now!

My Netflix Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Vengeance (2009) - Man, I loved this movie and I'm not really sure why.  It's often plodding and the English spoken by the mostly French and Chinese actors is effing ponderous.  But it grabbed me right away, and there were times I was literally on the edge of my seat when the action finally did arrive.  It's about a older French chef who comes to Macau after his daughter's family is brutally killed by a trio of assassins.  His daughter is still alive...barely, and he vows to avenge her and her family.  He stumbles upon another trio of assassins, and arranges to have them assist him with hunting down the killers.  Because he is no ordinary chef.  He is a former assassin himself.  But he also has a bullet in his brain from his previous life that is slowly killing him and affecting his memory.  The relationships he builds with his group of killers hardens almost immediately, and the film itself is about these relationships and the ideas of loyalty, friendship and sacrifice as much as it is an action flick about vengeance.  The lead is played by legendary (and hypnotically odd-looking) French singer Johnny Hallyday.  Not sure if he is a "good" actor or not, but I couldn't keep my eyes off of him.  It was slowly-paced, but beautifully filmed.  Filled with references and homages to classic Hong Kong and French cinema.  Check it out.

My Netflix Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

After

OK, I kinda wimped out.  I didn't go as far as I wanted to with the haircut.  Just about 4-5 inches.  So it's still long enough for a ponytail if I want.  And I want.  Plus, my hair-cutting dude is gonna try to convince me against cutting it all off come Spring.  Maybe do something like Jeff Bridges latest layered style.  I dunno. 

Enjoy!

Before

After

See?  Not so blonde after all.

Before

Looking way more blonde than I feel like I am/was.  Then again, the longer stuff round back did get colored a bit from the summer sun and the chlorine of the pool.  But not that much.

Tomorrow: After.  Aren't you excited?

Why should I care...

...if I had to cut my hair?  I've got to move with the fashions, or be outcast. - Pete Townshend from Quadrophenia

So here's a picture of me that I posted here from about a year and half ago.  Ladies...try to keep it together, okay?
 

Since then, I've gone for about 3 or 4 haircuts.  Once every 4-6 months.  Just a trim each time to keep things a little neater.  The last one was in September when I had about 4 inches of hair cut off all around. Currently, my hair is about 8-9 inches longer than it appears in the above picture.  I haven't been able to do the old top-knot hairdo in quite a while because it leaves too much hair falling past my shoulders to the top of my back for my comfort.  My everyday hairdo lately has been a ponytail.  I don't think I've worn my hair down in about 6 months now.  For more than an hour or so, anyway.

So I'm contemplating a change.  I think that I'm gonna hit my rock n' roll barber shop down the road for a quick fix to get my hair back to the length it was in that picture.  But after that?  I'm thinking about going for the Full Monty come Spring.  The only thing holding me back is that Gia prefers me with longer hair.  She will still love me as much (she says), but she prefers the longer hair.  Honestly, I feel the same way about her.  She wants to do a real short pixie cut, but I keep talking her out of it.

And some baldness is starting to creep in around back.  It's completely hidden by the ponytail, but it's there and I know it's there.  And I've always said that I would cut it all off if it ever became an issue.  Not that it would be an issue for anyone else but me, ya understand?  It's just something that I've always said I would do.

Besides, I think it's good to totally change your image every few years.  Slyde will tell you that I morph into a totally different person every half-decade or so.  He jokes that the next time he sees me, I will probably be a young Asian boy.

I think he just secretly likes young Asian boys, if you ask me.

My favorite curmudgeon

So get this.  There is this former baseball journalist named Murray Chass.  He has his own website, a blog if you will (although he won't call it that), where he posts occasional articles about baseball.  He's not paid to do this, mind you.  It's something that he does on his own.  Kind of like a...web log of his thoughts on baseball.  If you want to find what his baseball site is about, he will tell you:

This is a site for baseball columns, not for baseball blogs. The proprietor of the site is not a fan of blogs. He made that abundantly clear on a radio show with Charley Steiner when Steiner asked him what he thought of blogs and he replied, “I hate blogs.” He later heartily applauded Buzz Bissinger when the best-selling author denounced bloggers on a Bob Costas HBO show.

Kind of cute.  Especially since he writes this on his...blog.  But you catch the drift.  He hates blogs and bloggers.  One of his main issues with bloggers in the past has been that there is no accountability for what they write.  No journalistic integrity, no fact-checking.  It's absolute anarchy, I tell ya!  But it really gets his goat when some blogger posts some "fact" from some "source" that turns out to be complete hogwash.  The blogger, he believes, doesn't care if it's true or not.  And the blogger is under no editorial thumb, so there is no need for a redaction when the truth does come out.

Case in point, on Tuesday a noted blogger wrote about the great shame on baseball for not voting Marvin Miller into the Hall of Fame this past week.  I'm not going to go into any depths about what Miller meant to the game, except that he definitely belongs in as an Executive of the game.  Just Google him if you are interested and you will see that just about everyone agrees on this point.  Except for certain member of the special committee that was formed, some of whom might have personal beefs with the man since they were on the other side of every labor battle.

But this noted blogger believes he knew who it was on the committee who hadn't voted "yes" for Miller's induction.  In fact, this came from Marvin Miller's mouth himself.  From people, as he says, that told him so either directly or from other sources.  One of those people who the noted blogger outed was the writer for Sports Illustrated, Tom Verducci.  I'm sure a quick call to Verducci could have confirmed this, but (as Chass notes) "bloggers can say anything that they want".  So no confirmation was needed, and the noted blogger posted his story, along with some personal attacks against Verducci's reporting abilities. 

Turns out it wasn't true.  Verducci did vote for Marvin Miller.  And Miller called Verducci to apologize because he was just repeating something he heard and he didn't think that the noted blogger was going to publish their conversation.  Goddamn bloggers!

Man, that must have really gotten Murray Chass' goat! 

Wait...whoa...except that the "noted blogger" in question IS Murray Chass.  Doing everything he claims that he hates about blogging, on his non-blog that really is a blog.  Maybe a bit more investigative reporting or editorial oversight might have helped you out on that one there, Murray.  Or just simply, ya know, dropping Verducci a quick line. 

I tell you...I love this story so much I want to take it to Bermuda and get it pregnant!  My favorite thing about it is that Verducci calls Chass a blogger about a dozen times in his story about this that I linked to up there.  That must REALLY drive Chass crazy.  Except that it probably doesn't.  Because he is always right and we are always wrong, and he probably won't even read Verducci's column.  He certainly won't take himself to task for something he is constantly railing at windmills about.

How's that glass house you're living in treating ya, Murray?

You ain't no nice guy

More and more lately, I've been thinking about the Michael Vick situation.  Musician Nils Lofgren recently wrote an open letter to the sports reporting community about their abject praise for the man and his career turnaround as the starting quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles.  While his views on the subject might seem a bit one-sided against Vick, I tend to agree with him on most of his points.  He said to the press what most of us caring human beings feel about the situation.

Basically his argument came down to this:

In Vick's case, I believe his second chance should certainly allow him to be free and to love and raise his family. [break] However repentant he may be, he committed acts whose vileness will resonate down the years. When you do what Vick did, a second chance should never include the rare gift of an NFL career and the potential bounty it offers.

I absolutely agree with that sentiment, and the fact that it has happened so successfully sickens me.

Now, despite being a New Yorker all my life I've also been a lifelong Philadelphia Eagles fan.  Doesn't make a lot of sense, but I think it came from gifts from an aunt who lived in the Philadelphia are as a child.  Eagles hats, jerseys, sweatshirts and what not.  They became my favorite NFL team by default.  Like how Notre Dame became my favorite college football team.  I was raised Irish Catholic in Long Island and we have no good football schools for miles and miles.  Bam...Fighting Irish fan.  And believe me, we are legion in this area.

But Michael Vick has soured my relationship with the Eagles.  I was upset when they signed him last year, but I was at least was happy to see him ride the bench for most of it.  Then they lose McNabb and presto...Michael Vick is the starting quarterback.  And he is a candidate for the league MVP.  And he is leading my formerly beloved Eagles to the playoffs.  Yeah...I said formerly.  I just can't watch them anymore.  And NFL football as a whole, actually.  He's ruined my enjoyment of the game.  You see, Michael Vick is a bad guy.  And I just can't get past that.

I think about the Kobe Bryant rape trial a few years back.  He admitted to having sex with the woman who filed the complaint, but he denied any sexual assault.  The case was eventually dropped when the woman was paid off...er, refused to testify at the trial.  Yeah, that's what I meant.  But there were these throngs of women outside the courthouse with "I love you, Kobe!" and "We believe you, Kobe!" signs.  I just didn't understand that.  At the very least, Kobe Bryant admitted to cheating on his wife with this woman AND he possibly got away with a sexual assault because of his money and cachet.  Why would women support him for any reason?  You see, Kobe Bryant is a bad guy.  And I just can't get past that.

I could go on and on.  You've got Ben Roethlisberger who now has two sexual assault allegations to his name to go with his two Super Bowl rings.  The first one sounded like bullshit, but I don't know about the second one.  No charges were filed for lack of evidence, but it SEEMS like he keeps putting himself in these situations where he is a bad guy when women are involved.  Yet Steelers' fans, even the ladies, love him.  Must be those rings, eh?  Then there is Ray Lewis' involvement in a murder case, Adam "Pacman" Jones' off-field activities, all the MLB steroid gobblers, the NHL's Sean Avery and his misogynistic attitudes...all bad guys, in my opinion.  And I just can't get past that.

Then you have the guys who have outwardly done nothing wrong, but who seem to be in it for the money alone.  I wouldn't have put Derek Jeter in that category before this off-season, and I'm sure he's going to say all the right things about accepting "only" $18 million a year from the Yankees.  And the pragmatist in me knows that if Jeter doesn't get that extra money from the Yankees, it's only going to go into the pockets of the Steinbrenners.  The fans certainly aren't going to get a break either way.  So the guy who has said and done all the right things in his career, seemed to hold out for more money even after his worst season ever at an age when ballplayer's skills begin a rapid decline.  His agent will say that he is still taking a pay cut from what he had been making, and that's true.  Jeter has already made a huge pile of money with the Yankees, and he earned just about every penny of it.  Except he feels he deserves more.  Or his agent feels that way.  It's just so sickening.

I don't think there will ever be a time when I will NOT be a huge baseball fan.  It's my favorite sport. I even somehow managed to get past the Steroid Era, and I'm still a huge fan.  And I'm not just a Yankee fan.  I love the game itself.  I only root for the Yankees, but if nothing is on and I find a Royals/Indians game on somewhere?  I'm happier than a pig in shit just watching the game. 

I wonder if that would change if the Yankees had signed a guy like Michael Vick to play center field.

Earl's Kitchen - Gaeng Massaman

Over the weekend, my sister had us over along with some friends of ours for another round of karaoke madness and drinking.  A wake, of sorts, for our kitty Sammi who passed away last week.  A night that both Gia and I really needed.

I made a batch of Bacon Bourbon for after-dinner cocktails that helped fuel the karaoke fire, but we started the night off with a bunch of home-made Thai food prepared by yours truly.  My sister and her husband have never had Laab/Larb, so I made two different batches of that (beef and pork).  And since we needed something else, I tried my hand at a simple version of Gaeng Masssaman that veered a little bit from the traditional recipe.

Gaeng Massaman (kinda)

not my Massaman...but it looks about the same

Ingredients

• 2 pounds chicken breasts
• 2 pounds small golden potatoes
• 3 tsp massaman curry paste/red curry paste
• 1-2 tbsp peanut oil
• 3 14oz cans coconut milk
• 1 tbsp Thai fish sauce
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• Unsalted peanuts for garnish (optional)
• Salt and ground white pepper to taste (optional)

I really veered a bit from the traditional recipes (which you can find elsewhere on the web) and focused on making it a simpler "meat and potatoes" kind of dish since I wasn't really sure if my sister and her husband were really going to like the Laab I made (see my recipe for that here).  And the sweetness of this dish goes wonderfully with the savory of the Laab. And it has enough savory to hold its own too.

 - Poach the chicken first in a covered saucepan with about 3/4 of a cup of water, just until the chicken is cooked all the way through.  Poaching it this way will keep it moist before we slice it up and add it to the Massaman.

 - Clean and quarter the potatoes (or halve them if they are small enough), leaving the skin on because that's where all the good stuff is.  Steam them for about 5 minutes in a covered pot so that they cook a little bit but are still firm to the touch.  They will cook the rest of the way in the Massaman.  Drain and set aside.

 - In a deep, large saucepan heat the peanut oil over medium-high heat, and then add the curry paste.  (Sidenote: you should be able to find the curry paste, coconut milk, peanut oil and the fish sauce in your market's Asian food section, or you can visit a specialty food shop for those items).  Frying the curry paste will release the flavors and oils, and it just smells really good.  I used red curry paste because my local grocery didn't have any Massaman curry paste, and it came out tasting fine. 

 - After about a minute, whisk in the coconut milk one can at a time.  After it starts a low boil while you are whisking away, add in the brown sugar until it is dissolved and mixed in really well.  Add the fish sauce to give the Massaman a little salt flavor or just some salt to taste if you can't find any fish sauce.  You can also add some ground white pepper to the mix, if you so desire.  Simmer on low heat for about 10 minutes.

 - After slicing up the cooked chicken into bite-sized chunks, add to the Massaman along with the semi-cooked potatoes.  Cover and simmer for another 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

 - Serve either on its own or over some cooked jasmine rice in a soup bowl.  It should look like a stew at this point. You can either add the peanuts right at the end or you can simply sprinkle some on top.  Or leave them out altogether, like I did.

That's it!  Extremely simple and extremely tasty.  You can find some more traditional recipes that call for other meats and ingredients, but like I mentioned earlier...I wanted to keep this real simple for it to have a broad appeal.  For a first-time recipe where that I was mostly making up quantities as I went along, it came our really well.   Enjoy!

Still Only 25¢: Captain America #193

Disclaimer: Part of an on-going series of blog posts about comic-books, the mid-70's and a wee boy named Earl. Or not really. You know my name isn't really Earl, right? - Earl

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The 70's were are weird time for Captain America. He had to deal with the supposed death of his sidekick, Bucky. He fought against our own government in Marvel's version of Watergate. He took on another young man as a sidekick (Rick Jones), but hesitated to let him don the Bucky uniform. He rejected the Captain America persona for a little while...becoming Nomad before ultimately deciding that America was worth fighting for. And he spent most of the decade in a partnership with a man whose only apparent super-power was a psychic link with a bird.

The Falcon was the first African-American superhero in mainstream comics. As a black superhero, he was preceded by the Black Panther by a few years, but the man behind the mask for that character was actually from a fictional country in Africa. Sam "Snap" Wilson was the very first black superhero from the United States. And his (controversially ret-conned) origins were straight out of that particular period's depiction of African-Americans. He was born in Harlem (of course), the son of a minister (naturally), a former social worker (solid!) and a former criminal, gang member and...pimp (there it is!). His "super-power", if you could call it that, is an extremely close and paranormal bond with his bird friend; a falcon named Redwing. He wasn't super-strong nor could he fly. He just was really good friends with a bird. Sure, his abilities later grew so that he could establish psychic links with any bird or any number of birds at the same time, but in the 1970's all he could do was be really good friends with this one bird. And wear a snazzy outfit.

OK, so Cap trained him in martial arts and gymnastics (hehe), but really...this is about the lamest super-power ever invented. Another clear case of the Man keeping a proud black man down.

I don't have any lasting particular memories about this issue of Captain America. I know that it was the first time that Jack Kirby returned to the series as the main artist since his Silver Age work on the character in the 1960's. It was a nice throwback touch, and Kirby tried to get Cap into his iconic fist/shield pose as often as he could. With the Falcon lurking somewhere in the background, of course. But as for what's inside? Nah..I don't really recall.

I do have one distinct memory of Cap and the Falcon from this time period though. Like the geeky kid that I was, I had several cheesy comic-book related t-shirts. One of them was a crusty yellow thing with a terrible silk screening of the good Captain and his buddy. And it clearly said "Captain America and the Falcon" right above the picture of the two heroes. But, for some reason, there was a family friend of ours who couldn't wrap her brain around which one was which. Even though the Falcon was dressed in a bird costume and Captain America looked...well, like Captain America!

So every time she saw me for around a year or so after I first wore the shirt, she would tuck her hands into her armpits, mimicking a flying bird and she would yell "Captain America....CAW, CAW!!!" I never quite understood why she did that, and it took me a long time to finally ask her exactly why she did. She told me that it was because of that dumb shirt I wore where Captain America wore an even dumber bird costume. So she saw the words "Captain America" and the guy dressed like the bird, and somehow that's all that got processed in her teen-aged brain. I told her she was confusing the Falcon's costume with the star-spangled hero's name, yet she insisted that it was just one guy on the shirt...and he was dressed like a fucking bird.

The butt of a misinformed joke from a family friend. Probably serves me right for wearing a truly awful t-shirt like that.