The topless revue "Les Folies Bergere" has hung up its feathers after 49 years at the Tropicana hotel.
Many performers who had taken part in the show's 29,000 runs since Christmas of 1959 crowded the set after its final curtain on Saturday. The closing leaves Bally's "Jubilee!" as the last full-scale showgirl revue left on the Las Vegas Strip.
Jerry Jackson, the show's choreographer and director since 1975, thanked "the thousands of performers who have entertained millions of people" in remarks to the audience before the show. "As Tonto said to the Lone Ranger...Giddy up cowboy, it's time to get out of Dodge."
The performance and reunion for those who have performed in the show included dancers and specialists who graced the stage throughout the show's run. It was "like a big family," said Daniel Celario, a comedian who performed in the show with his brother on and off from 1986 to 2000. "It was like going to work at the office with a lot of people you like." Celario married a dancer who is now the entertainment director for the casino. "There's something about this show," Celario said. "It's the feeling we got backstage, the vibe and adrenalin with all the dancers."
Showgirl productions have fallen out of favor with Cirque du Soleil dominating entertainment on the Strip in recent years. "Folies" came from Paris in 1959 and opened under then-Tropicana entertainment director Lou Walters, the father of newswoman Barbara Walters.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Tits And GTFO
Musical Anatomy
Former police sketch artist Shawn Feeney has a new exhibition opening in San Francisco of portraits depicting musicians with their instruments as extensions of their bodies. The exhibit, titled Musical Anatomy, opens April 6 and will run until April 30. 
F1 2009 Season Opener
Last year Rybot started using his projector to host F1 nights, as he'd get a copy of the races shortly after broadcast. With a new season starting, there's been some changes. The projector now has a 10 foot 16:9 screen to blast the images on. Race coverage is now on the BBC, which eliminates the commercials that used to steal chunks of the action. And the changes to the cars and rules! There are some things that I'm still not clear on, but one of the coolest modifications is the KERS system, which gathers the dispersed energy from braking and stores it in a battery, which can give the driver limited bursts of extra horsepower each lap.
Monday, March 30, 2009
ShamWhoops
According to an arrest affidavit, Shlomi met Sasha Harris (26) at a Miami Beach nightclub on February 7 and subsequently retired with her to his $750 room at the lavish Setai hotel. Shlomi told cops he paid Harris about $1000 in cash after she "propositioned him for straight sex." Shlomi said that when he kissed Harris, she suddenly "bit his tongue and would not let go." Shlomi then punched Harris several
times until she released his tongue. The affidavit, a copy of which you'll find here, notes that during the 4 AM fight Harris sustained facial fractures and lacerations all over her face (she is pictured here in mug shots snapped following (surprise!) busts in 2008 and 2005).
After freeing his tongue, a bleeding Shlomi ran to the Setai lobby, where security summoned cops. Harris refused to cooperate with officers, who recovered $930 from her purse. "Both parties had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from their persons," police reported. In a brief telephone interview, Harris declined to answer TSG questions about her run-in with Shlomi, though she did say she is considering a lawsuit against the pitchman. Asked if she worked as a hooker, Harris declined comment. As seen in the below mug shot, Shlomi was also injured during the fracas and, court records show, was treated at Mount Sinai Medical Center. While Shlomi and Harris were both arrested for felony aggravated battery, prosecutors this month declined to file formal charges against the combatants.
Current Event Catch-Up
Scientists Map the Brain, Gene By Gene - It will soon be possible to know not only how little of your grey matter you use down to the cellular level.Friday, March 27, 2009
Untamed Weekend
Ramp House
Recently created by Archivirus Architecture and Design, the Ramp House is a response to the client’s request for a “skatable habitat”. According to architect Athanasia Psaraki, the Ramp House is a project which tries to reconsider and redefine the living space. The result of the client’s request is a curved form interior, which “set the whole house as well as the inhabitant’s life, into motion”.
In the space, which is a roof addition to an existing three-storey building, she tries to achieve a balance between old and new. The dominant material was wood, so a wooden pergola and wooden horizontal louvers surround the new structure, connecting the old and new.
The architect wanted the ‘skateboarding’ element to be more than simply putting a mini ramp in the living room. Rather, the ramp, the bowl and all the interpretations of those terms would actually become the building elements for this space. It is intended to be a ‘ramp house’ and not a ‘house with a ramp’. Straight lines are curved and the flat surface becomes a ramp or a bowl. Basic house elements such as the fireplace and storage units are hidden inside the ramp forms.
The street aesthetics of the skate scene are combined with a home atmosphere by combining concrete and wood. Concrete walls mould into the floor and concrete turns into wood to create a ramp partition with the kitchen. In that way, says the architect, somebody can flow from one space to the other, skating or walking.
Hockey 2050
A look at my favorite sport in 41 years, from 19 years ago.
As you'll see, it's pretty damn ingenious, and may have actually predicted the Reebok EDGE Uniform System nearly 15 years before its time. There's also a prediction that the NHL will switch to synthetic ice, something already being tweaked by Japanese inventors. I'm not so sure about jet skates, laser sticks, and telepathic brain communication. Then there's the drawings that look like a 10th grader made them. But a rotating upper deck in the arena? Interesting.
You're Doing It Wrong
Former old man's whore Holly Madison has become the latest She was experiencing pain before performing on this week's show, and it was ruled out the strain was from having to so more than show her tits and have sex with an octogenarian. While rehearsing for the tango, the pain got significantly worse - worse than the shame of sleeping with a man more than 50 years her senior. She received medical attention and a broken rib was ruled out.
A publicist statement acknowledged she was not suffering from a broken rib, but does continue to feel a great deal of discomfort, for which she was prescribed pain medication, something she wished she had back when she had to service her former sugar daddy. Madison's expects to dance on the Monday episode of
Impressively, Madison, who complained of having bruised ribs and hoped that she wouldn't have to do the elimination round's dance-off, prevailed against superbitch Denise Richards when forced into that head-to-head competition
Followers will recall Madison signed on to compete in
I don't know how this show is taking people out, but something isn't right. Steve-O used to jump out of a moving car onto a burning sheet of plywood, snort wasabi while getting kicked in the groin, and had fireworks shot from his ass. He's had more cocaine and liquor in him than an Allman Brothers residence at the Fillmore. None of that phased him, but you're telling me the cha cha and rumba are his weakness?
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Noms
The number of people in Britain with surnames like Cockshott, Balls, Death and Shufflebottom has declined by up to 75% in the last century.A study found the number of people with the name Cock shrank (ouch!) to 785 last year from 3,211 in 1881, those called Balls fell (yikes!) to 1,299 from 2,904 and the number of Deaths were reduced (hooray!) to 605 from 1,133. Smellie people decreased by 70%, Dafts by 51%, Gotobeds by 42%, Shufflebottoms by 40%, and Cockshotts by 34%, said a professor at King's College, London.
"If you find the (absolute) number goes down, it's either because they changed their names or they emigrated." He said that in many cases, people probably changed their surnames as they came to be regarded as in bad taste. "It's because the meaning of words can change. Take the name Daft -- that as a term for a stupid is a relatively recent innovation." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Daft meant "mild" or "meek" in Old English, whereas it means "foolish" today. "That's why there are names which people think aren't really very pleasant names and you wonder why they persisted as long as they did."
It turns out that the most popular names in Britain have not changed over the past 127 years. Last year, Smith, Jones, Williams, Brown, Taylor and Davies held the top five spots, in exactly the same order as they did a century ago. Also, between 1996 and 2008, the names Zhang, Wang, and Yang and experienced the fastest growth. Zhang rose by 4719%, while the Wang (only) grew by 2225%.
Here They Are
Through Rain, Sleet, Snow, And Bankrupcy
How bad is the economy? Soon, the government will be asking the government for money.Postmaster General John Potter and other "top agency officials" (read: long time mail carriers) faced the House Oversight subcommittee on the federal workforce yesterday. The post office was $2.8 billion in the red last year and is facing even larger losses this year due to the sharp decline in mail volume in the weak economy. Potter has raised the possibility of cutting mail delivery from six days a week to five, and is also seeking relief from the requirement to set aside several billion dollars annually to prefund retiree medical care.
"With the Postal Service facing budget shortfalls the subcommittee will consider a number of options to restore financial stability and examine ways for the Postal Service to continue to operate without cutting services," said the subcommittee chairman. Last week, the post office said it plans to offer early retirement to 150,000 workers and is eliminating 1,400 management positions and closing six of its 80 district offices across the country in cost-cutting efforts.
The agency posted a $384 million loss in the first quarter of the fiscal year — October through December — which is usually the busiest period because of the holidays. Officials said the economic recession contributed to a mail volume drop of 5.2 billion pieces compared with the same period last year. If there is no economic recovery, the USPS projects volume for the year will be down by 12 billion to 15 billion total pieces of mail. Over the past year the post office says it has cut 50 million work hours, stopped construction of new facilities, frozen salaries for executives, begun selling unused facilities and cut post office hours. The USPS does not receive a taxpayer subsidy for its operations...unless they get a bailout.
(And sorry about that last post...here's a pair of my favorite barely legal actresses if that'll help remove those images from your mind.)
Uber Uber Mensch
Just a warning: this is what you find on the interweb if you type in "beef macho - hot luigi".
Coincidentally, Beef Macho was my handle when I used to breakdance.
dude, hurry up with that equipment
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Pig Bird
It may not be a get out of jail free card, but you can feel free to express yourself. With your middle finger.A Federal judge ruled a city police sergeant was wrong to cite a motorist for flipping him off in traffic three years ago. U.S. District Judge David Cercone granted summary judgment to David Hackbart, who said in a federal suit that Sgt. Brian Elledge violated his constitutional rights by issuing him a citation. "Elledge's response to Hackbart's exercise of his First Amendment right was to initiate a traffic stop and issue a citation for disorderly conduct," the judge wrote. "Clearly, Elledge's conduct was an adverse action in response to Hackbart flipping him off." The case will now proceed to trial in U.S. District Court on the underlying claim that the city doesn't adequately train its officers to know when they're violating someone's rights.
The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that giving someone the finger, even a police officer, is protected free speech. In 2003, police cited a man for flipping off the local fire chief, but later ended up settling the case for $9,000. In a 2005 suit, a flight attendant sued a PA state trooper for issuing a $75 traffic citation for giving the trooper the finger. That incident differed slightly from the prior one in that the flight attendant said they never made the gesture. Whether they did or not, the suit was also settled for a nominal fee.
In Mr. Hackbart's case, he said he was trying to parallel park on back in April 2006. As he tried to pull into a space, the car behind him pulled too close and blocked him. So he flipped off the driver. As he did, he heard the voice of another driver say, "Don't flip him off," according to the suit. He immediately flipped off the second driver, who turned out to be Sgt. Elledge.
The sergeant turned his car around and pulled Mr. Hackbart over. On the disorderly conduct citation, he wrote: "Driver made an obscene gesture towards me. Flipped me off while driving by. Also flipped off another driver." In a court filing, the city said the citation was not for Mr. Hackbart's gesture but for blocking traffic. Judge Cercone disagreed, saying he found the sergeant's conduct "retaliatory."
As part of his suit, Mr. Hackbart's lawyers asked the city to turn over the number of similar citations, a legal tactic designed to hold the city liable for a pattern of violations based on a claim of improper training. In the 2005 suit, the plaintiff made the same complaint against the state police. The city didn't provide any citations, so the ACLU filed a Right to Know request with the court system and came up with 188 citations between March 1, 2005, and Oct. 31, 2007. "They have specific authority under the law," Hackbart's lawyer said. "They can't just retaliate."
No Turtlenecks
My friends and I have an ongoing debate about circumcision, whether we are for or against and if we would have it done to our sons. Now there more ammo in favor of the procedure, which is not only a favorite of my people, but aesthetically pleasing (or in other words fly).Circumcision not only protects against HIV in heterosexual men, but it also helps prevent two other sexually transmitted infections, a large new African study found. Circumcised males reduced their risk of infection with HPV - that's human papillomavirus - by 35% and herpes by 28%. HPV can cause cervical cancer and genital warts. Herpes greatly increases the chances of infection with HIV. However, researchers found circumcision had no effect on the transmission of syphilis, so enjoy slowly going mad with a little something extra down there.
Landmark studies from three African countries including Uganda(!) previously found circumcision lowered men's chance of catching the AIDS virus by up to 60%. Worldwide, only about 30% of men are circumcised. The figure is higher in the United States, where about 79% of men are circumcised, according to surveys by the National Center for Health Statistics. The results were similar to two recent studies from South Africa that found circumcision reduced HPV and herpes by up to a third. Researchers plan to study whether circumcision reduces the spread of HPV to female sex partners.
The latest research involved 3,393 HIV-negative heterosexual adolescent boys and men from Uganda who were part of the original HIV study. About half were randomly selected to undergo circumcision right away while the rest had the procedure 2 years later. All had physical exams and were offered voluntary HIV counseling and condoms. After two years, herpes infection was detected in 114 circumcised men compared with 153 uncircumcised men. HPV was detected in 42 circumcised men compared with 80 uncircumcised men. There was no significant difference between the two groups on rate of syphilis infections. The researchers considered condom use, number of sex partners and other factors to calculate the risk reductions. Why circumcision may reduce the risk of infection is not entirely known. But researchers think cells in the foreskin of the penis may be susceptible to HPV and the herpes virus.
The American Academy of Pediatrics previously said there was not enough evidence to recommend routine circumcision of infants but now the doctor's group is reviewing its position based on recent studies. Did you know that close to 2,800 herpes cases in newborns occur in the U.S. every year, transmitted from mothers to infants? Well, there's some learnin', free of charge.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation (so suck it, Steve Jobs and whatever you do).
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Dino Cliques
Three juvenile Triceratops, a species thought to be solitary, died together in a flood and now have been found in a 66 million-year-old bone bed in Montana. And that's reason enough for me to use the famed Far Side cartoon addressing how dinosaurs really became extinct.Triceratops were ceratopsids (duh!), herbivorous dinosaurs that lived until the the very end of the Cretaceous Period. They have been found in enormous bone beds of multiple individuals, but all known Triceratops fossils up to now have been solitary individuals. The triceratops is one of the best-known of all dinosaurs, with more than 50 total specimens discovered, and until now it looked pretty certain to scientists that they were anti-social and avoided hanging out with their own kind.
This new discovery of a jumble of at least three juveniles in the famous Hell Creek Formation suggests that the three-horned Triceratops were social, or at least the juveniles were, revealing something about their behavior - a feature that is notoriously hard to discern from fossils. The news follows recent research that fossils of a bunch of juvenile ornithomimids were found hanging out in a group. Other researchers have found small herds of Psittacosaurus, a small cousin of Triceratops that lived in Asia.
Monday, March 23, 2009
You Are Who, Hear You Roar?
Wondering why newspapers are almost extinct? Here's some crack journalism from the NY Times, who Lorene Scafaria [who co-wrote Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist] and Diablo Cody are usually not a duo, but half of a quartet. With their pals Dana Fox, who wrote “What Happens in Vegas,” and Liz Meriwether, a playwright-turned-screenwriter, they make up a Hollywood powerhouse writing posse who call themselves “The Fempire.”The totally not-condescending article then goes on to compare them to "Entourage" and the Apatow posse, and it’s all very empowering, because it communicates the message that girls can indeed do many of the things boys can do. *Spice Girls pose*
The Fempire’s solid front — all four wear the same gold necklaces with tiny heart pendants inscribed with words that can’t be printed here, gifts from Ms. Cody — seems to make some men nervous and envious at the same time.
You can find them at work in their Laurel Canyon homes in their pajamas, or sitting next to one another at laptop-friendly restaurants. To see them gathered amid the dinosaur topiary around Ms. Fox’s swimming pool with their dogs (they all have dogs) is to see four distinct styles of glamour that bear little resemblance to traditional images of behind-the-scenes talent.
…
Don’t even try to credit their bankability to their looks. “When you read a screenplay, it doesn’t come with a picture on the cover,” said Adam Siegel (who?), president of Marc Platt Productions (double who?), a producer who is friends with all four women.
Top Ranked
Chickenshirt, Or You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile
Not one, but two tales of tees from around the world.First, Nigeria is hoping a new patriotic slogan emblazoned on T-shirts (and baseball caps) can restore self-confidence and overturn its battered reputation. Because pride doesn't come form inside.
Africa's most populous nation is known for corruption, is poor despite decades of oil production and is increasingly used as a drug transit route and for e-mail scams and online fraud. But now, under the slogan "Nigeria: Good People, Great Nation," Nigeria hopes to eschew that image and "entrench a culture of moral re-armament".
"At international airports, in trains, in shopping malls, and almost everywhere, every Nigerian is a marked person," says Dora Akunyili, information minister and - get this - self-styled chief image maker, at the launch of the re-branding campaign this week.
"We are pulled aside for questioning. We are seen as potential drug pushers or fraudsters. We are unfortunately denied the benefit of the doubt," she said. And then I got 15 emails asking me to help a Nigerian prince recover their wealth, and all I needed to do was give them my bank account number.
Troublesome is that Nigerians wear their country's reputation for mayhem and chaos as a mark of pride. They say if you can survive Nigeria, you can survive anywhere. And I think they're gonna wear that before a shirt...
And in Israel, soldiers are wearing t-shirts with a pregnant woman in the cross-hairs of a rifle and the slogan "1 Shot, 2 Kills". And yes, you can expect Palestinians to retaliate...and not be wearing more shirts."The smaller they are, the harder it is" says another shirt showing a child in a gun sight. Soldiers wore the shirts to mark the end of basic training and other military courses. The military condemned the soldiers involved, and it was not immediately clear how many wore the shirts. They were not manufactured or sanctioned by the military, and it was not clear how widely they were distributed.
The shirts "are not in accordance with IDF values and are simply tasteless," the military said in a statement. "This type of humor is unbecoming and should be condemned." The army said it would not tolerate such behavior and would take disciplinary action against the soldiers involved.
Reports stated the five shirts were made at the unit level — perhaps for small numbers of troops, perhaps several dozen, at a time, and they were worn by an unknown number of enlisted men in different units. The Tel Aviv factory that made many of the shirts, Adiv, refused to comment. Few people in the Palestinian territories appeared to be aware of the T-shirts, but Hamas said it "reflects the brutal mentality among the Zionist soldiers and the Zionist society". Yes, the kind, peace loving and gentle Hamas. Not the one who's media consistently glorify attacks on Israelis. Or the one who's cartoons in Palestinian newspapers frequently use classic anti-Semitic images of Jews as hook-nosed, black-hatted, wily and unscrupulous characters out to rule the world and oppress Arabs. Could it even be them with other Palestinian militant groups who fire rockets from heavily populated areas at Israel?
The more you think about it, perhaps a shirt's not such a big deal. And believe it, there was a Chickenshirt at the Fallbrook Mall. Custom made tees? Shit yes!
Friday, March 20, 2009
Geek Weekend
It's going to be a super fanboy weekend.First, the series finale of Battlenerd Dorkula. I was a skeptic at first, since the original series, while enjoyable in my youth, suffered from the cheesy flavor of the 70's that spawned it. But I've really enjoyed the dark, gritty, and intense emotional stuggle for survival as it's developed over four abnormally spaced seasons. Some you follow the show, but to the uninitiated it's little good to tune in to tonight's oversized installment, which hopefully answers not only the longer dogging questions, but properly completes each of the character's own arcs.
On Sunday, I get to see some big blue cock on the IMAX, when Herr Docktor, Scarlett, and Weibe do the Watchmen. It's been called a flop because it didn't open to Batman -level numbers and beaten up by critics and comic readers, but I'm still looking forward to seeing it. Even seeing just a glimpse of what makes a comic character come to life can be satisfying even if the film is no good. Wolverine's berserker rage as the mansion was being raided in X-Men 2. The stoic grimace of the Punisher in last year's re-reboot. The brute simplicity of Marv in Sin City. I especially like Patton Oswald's take, who is just a big a fanboy:
I think maybe that should have been the post-release marketing campaign.“You’re all going to go see it, you resentful nerd mafiosi. And you’ll walk in rolling your eyes and you’ll walk out whistling sadly through your teeth because the fuel of the Nerd Mafia is disappointment and exclusion.
Tell you what — before you go and see WATCHMEN, plunk down and watch CATWOMAN, GHOST RIDER and DAREDEVIL. And use those seven hours (and don’t pretend like you don’t have seven free hours in your day) to get out all of your disgust and the-world-owes-me-my-daydreams-made-real attitude you strut around with.
Because Zack Snyder STEPPED UP, motherfuckers. WATCHMEN was going to get made, one way or another. And instead of bleating on his Facebook status updates or Tweeting about how shitty the upcoming adaptation’s going to be, he TOOK THE BULLET and tried to do it right. Yes, WATCHMEN should be a limited series on HBO and blah blah blah IT WAS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN THAT WAY. Zack delivered a 2 1/2 hour, honest attempt, and broke his ass cranking out tons of free extras. Hell, he even animated The Tales Of The Black Freighter for you chumps. Plus, he gave you a kick-ass DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, plus 300, plus whatever else he’s got coming down the pike. He’s the best friend the Nerd Mafia’s had since Joss Whedon and Brian Michael Bendis, so everyone please crack the tab on a frosty can of Go Fuck Yourself and go see the movie version of WATCHMEN.”
Who Needs Looks If You've Got Talent
Matt Taibbi has determined there are two kinds of grotesque athletes: the good ugly, who help you win by frightening and distracting teams for a game or two a year, and the bad ugly, who offend God every day of the week. Here is his scorecard...Over the winter the Boston Red Sox re-signed their star first baseman Kevin Youkilis — third in league MVP voting — to a four-year, $41 million extension. This was not long after they failed (to great fanfare) to sign another first baseman, free-agent spokesmodel/megastar Mark Teixeira, who was stolen from them by the Yankees for eight years and $180 million. Two comparable players, both big bats with great defense, and yet one costs well more than twice as much annually. Why?
The conventional explanations are that Teixeira has the longer track record and was an unrestricted free agent. The unconventional explanation is that Teixeira is better-looking. He’s your basic laboratory-created, media-ready modern jock: perfect hair, Atlas build, 100-megaton dentistry — the type that grows up slamming nerds against lockers in between classes and/or groping passed-out cheerleaders in his convertible on the way to choir practice. Guys who look like that and hit 30 dingers a season you’ve got to pay $20 million a year for. They sell cereal in their spare time and once a year do uncomfortable photo ops with hairless cancer kids sitting under blankets in their wheelchairs. In sports, they’re the top commodity.
Then there’s Kevin Youkilis. Youk has only three body parts, all hideously oversized: an enormous set of gnomish, bushy forearms; a massive, casaba melon–size white head; and a cauldronlike belly. He has a truly awesome bristle of thick red chin hair that makes his face look like a cross between a vagina and something out of The Hobbit. At the plate he disgustingly gushes sweat by some means previously unknown to science in which the moisture travels upward along his body, racing in a cascade from his balls and armpits up his neck, over his head, and back down over the bill of his helmet to shower the plate. Whereas a guy like Teixeira was born with a swing so gorgeous you want to paint it, Youkilis fighting a middle reliever to a nine-pitch walk looks like a rhinoceros trying to fuck a washing machine.
Which is why he doesn’t sell cereal and why you can sign him relatively cheap. He’s also good for your team. It’s character-building to have guys like this around, and unpleasant and disheartening for other teams to compete against. But in sports there’s good ugly and bad ugly, and knowing which is which is a crucial part of any team’s success. The breakdown:
THE TOO-MANY CHROMOSOMES DIVISION
Club president: Dwayne Schintzius
Few people remember it now, but Schintzius became half of the greatest trade of ugly sports body parts when in 1991 the San Antonio Spurs traded his mullet to the Sacramento Kings for Antoine Carr’s ass. Now, Schintzius was 7-foot-2, which means that by itself his mullet was nearly three feet tall. It was the most awesome sports haircut of all time, easily besting the Jaromir Jagr tornado mullet and the Mike Piazza peroxide job. Schintzius’s career was an important development in the history of sports ugliness because it represented the evolutionary merger of two key concepts: the hick/redneck who gets a million-dollar contract before he outgrows lip fuzz and bad sweaters (i.e., the John Kruk school), and the gland freak who in ancient times would have been chased into the woods by torchbearing villagers but in modern times can ride his mutation to a lucrative pro sports career (the Gheorghe Muresan school). Generally speaking, if you’re only one kind of ugly you can still very much be an asset to a team — witness the Celtics of the ’80s, who built a dynasty around a classic bad-sweater/lip-fuzz redneck in Larry Bird and a prototypical gland freak in Kevin McHale — but being two types of ugly is like having too many chromosomes: It doesn’t work. Chris Kaman’s death-metal/WWF look was the best recent bearer of the Schintzius standard, but then he cut his balding Hulk Hogan tail. Naturally, his scoring average went up.
THE FAT REEKING WHALE DIVISION
Club president: David Wells
With the caveat that fat is not necessarily ugly, not even in sports, there’s a certain kind of fat that separates itself from the pack. C.C. Sabathia, for instance, is fat without being ugly. He is built more like a snowman or the McDonaldland character Grimace, a giant, mostly muscular round form that is pleasing in some mysterious way to the infantile subconscious; he lacks the spindly legs, the floppy, genitals-concealing rubber tire, the sweaty bald head, and the atrocious Hitler mustache to fill out the awful picture. David Wells wasn’t just fat, he was I-don’t-give-a-fuck fat — fat in a way every man knows he could be deep down inside. When you watched him pitch, you looked for mustard stains on his uniform. You could imagine him blasting farts at the third-base gallery as he delivered his curveball, and if you were a kid you didn’t want him to sign your glove because you were afraid he might blow his nose in it. It was disgusting and intimidating. Not many athletes achieve David Wells fatness and live to tell about it. It’s a club that’s pretty much restricted to John Daly, Buster Douglas, Bartolo Colon, and Cowboys guard Nate Newton, who exemplified the species when a Snickers bar flew out of his uniform once during a game. This division is not to be confused with:
THE BIG DONKEY DIVISION
Club president: Keith Traylor
This is your huge, hulking, slow, fee, fi, fo, fum ugly. And it’s not all about fat. In fact, some of the guys in this division, notably Artis Gilmore, weren’t fat at all. For whatever reason, a lot of sports teams try to win by clogging up the court/field with a big, slow-moving donkey, and a large part of what makes this ugly is not so much what the athlete’s face looks like (although in former Dolphin Keith Traylor’s prune-skulled, bug-eyed case, that too was important) but his aesthetic impact on the flow of the game. So for instance, Adam Dunn, baseball’s reigning exemplar of this species, is not only a big donkey, but he strikes out 180 times a year and hits .240. He also has the one telltale physical feature of this class of athlete: the big sagging bullfrog neck that looks like it’s got a couple of liters of vanilla milkshake stored in it. Greg Luzinski, the Reuschel brothers, William (the Refrigerator) Perry, and NBA obesity experiment Robert (Tractor) Traylor were early members of this class.
THE SWAMP THING DIVISION
Club president: Tayshaun Prince
Hands-down the best kind of sports ugly, closely related to the Youkiloid strain, this is your tough, defense-oriented athlete whose appearance is a physical deterrent. On defense you want the guy who looks as though he spent his formative years being beaten with a shovel by his toothless, Lysol-drunk mother, who conceived him by mating with something that crawled out of a swamp with a hard-on and five dollars in its claws. That particular brand of taxonomic orphan is going to spend the rest of its life pissed off at everything that has the right number of eyes and fingers, which is just an ideal mind-set for sports. This list is heavily dominated by black guys with reddish hair or freckles (Tayshaun Prince, Dennis Rodman) as well as by misshapen-headed white dudes with four teeth and beards (Mark Eaton, Jack Lambert). Some people mistakenly include baseball catchers with big ears or monobrows in this group (Yogi Berra, Jorge Posada, Sal Fasano), but that’s actually a whole different species. Joe Frazier was in this group, but you tell him that.
THE METHUSELAH DIVISION
Club president: Robert Parish
There is no other way to say it: The ’80s Celtics were the Rosetta Stone of sports ugly. They had representatives of almost every group covered here, with a couple of pseudo-Schintziuses (Greg Kite and Eric Fernsten), a gland freak (McHale), a bad-sweater hick (Bird), a swamp thing (Dennis Johnson), and a big donkey (Rick Robey). Parish’s specialty was looking prematurely 600 years old, and he is the obvious leader of the Methuselah category, which includes such standouts as Patrick Ewing and Otis Nixon and, perhaps controversially, LeBron James. There’s a very high number of athletes who fit into this category, and the reason is obvious: Many of them grew up as 6-foot, 230-pound third-graders and never downshifted into looking their age. One of the great debates in sports today is whether Portland Trailblazers rookie Greg Oden belongs in this category, or whether he belongs more in the sloe-eyed passes bouncing off his head/big donkey group. In my mind Oden’s career doesn’t take off until he learns to be less clueless slow-moving donkey and more disturbingly prematurely old-looking giganto-jock. It’s likewise impossible to place Deke Mutombo in this group because we don’t know how old he is. He might have been 36 at Georgetown.
THE AREA 51 DIVISION
Club president: Sam Cassell
It’s a very, very small list, but there are a few athletes who make a name for themselves not because they look bad, but because they don’t look like human beings at all. When Sam Cassell first came up with the Rockets, every NBA fan had the same feeling movie audiences had when they watched Tony Shalhoub regrow his exploded head during that pawnshop scene in the first Men in Black: a mixture of fascination and revulsion. Sam I Am is the reigning sports alien right now, winning by a tentacle over intemperate Dominican relief pitcher Julian Tavarez, but he’s had some company over the years — in particular, frightening Ontarian hockey player Mike Ricci and onetime Kansas City A’s pitcher Don Mossi (look him up — it’s worth it). Extragalactic cultures also seem to like to hide their advance Earth scouts on football rosters in the guise of placekickers, with Garo Yepremian being one of the few confirmed ETs.
THE B.C. COMICS DIVISION
Club president: Alexander Ovechkin
Not surprisingly, there are a great many sports cavemen, with most of them in hockey, one of the few sports that will tolerate a person who looks like Alexander Ovechkin as its leading man. He, Adam Oates, and famed goon Mick Vukota are probably your leading NHL troglodytes, but there’s been plenty of cross-pollination into other sports (tarantula-faced Reds pitcher Aaron Harang and foreheadless Patriots lineman Stephen Neal are probably also members of the Unk Unk group). It takes more than a beard to be a true caveman, which is why irritatingly handsome Casanova types pretending to be ugly guys like Johnny Damon don’t get to qualify. Shane Battier, who looks like a model from his very low forehead down, is one of the tougher calls in the history of sports ugly — I think the ruling here is that he is excluded. Ex-Brewers hurler Pete Vuckovich, who scored a cameo in Major League as the player who “leads the league in most offensive categories, including nose hair,” is, on the other hand, a definite yes.
The lesson in all this? When in doubt, pick the ugly player. Guys with vagina beards and holes in their faces are far more likely to play with the right rage than your pretty-boy QB who gets triple-cowgirled by the Swedish bikini team no matter how many interceptions he throws. The disturbing exceptions — Jim Palmer, Oscar de la Hoya, Tom Brady — only prove the rule. Give it up for gross bald guys. Youuuuuk!
Guzzle-Aid
Measure all ingredients precisely. Small variations can make the drink less effective or even harmful.
Mix the following:
• 1 quart (950 mL) water
• ½ teaspoon (2.5 g) baking soda
• ½ teaspoon (2.5 g) table salt
• ¼ teaspoon (1.25 g) salt substitute (potassium-based), such as Lite Salt or Morton Salt Substitute
• 2 tablespoons (30 g) sugar
You can tweak the amount of sugar you want to include and add your own flavors, avoiding artificial dyes and preservatives in the process.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Essence Of Douche
Swallowed as a single, sour dose, the average episode of Glenn Beck's nightly cable show goes down like liquid acid and produces just about the same result. To the uninitiated viewer, watching an hour of Beck's psychotic ravings, crackpot conspiracy theories, maudlin tales of personal tragedy, and
generally demented sky-is-falling routine must feel a little like stepping out of reality and into a Dali painting.
But while no one jumps the crazy train as far off the rails as Beck these days, there is a certain method to his madness -- you just have to take a couple of steps back and look at the big picture for it to come into focus. As with any kind of seemingly incomprehensible insanity, there are patterns amid the chaos; the hallucinatory mania that fuels Beck's delusional behavior actually adheres to a pretty strict set of rules, even if those rules are based on fantasies and thought processes only Beck himself understands.
In other words, there's a blueprint to his batshit luancy. His shows follow a relatively by-the-numbers formula. In fact, once you crack the code of crazy, just about anybody can put together an episode of the Glenn Beck show.
Give it a try yourself. Just follow the simple multiple choice format below.
Open & Welcome: Glenn says hello, thanks everyone for watching and spends a few minutes...
1. Repeatedly asking the director to zoom in on his face while he screams about how the United States is on the "road to socialism."
2. Misappropriating the works of Ayn Rand.
3. Adjusting himself in his seat and creepily stroking his nipples while making faces which would indicate that he's taking no small amount of pleasure in it.
Glenn then welcomes his first guest (who agrees with everything he says):
1. Dennis Miller
2. Art Bell
3. His psychiatrist
Followed by a second guest (who disagrees with everything he says):
1. Dennis Kucinich
2. Al Sharpton
3. Shepard Smith
Glenn points his doughy finger and tells the guest he's/she's...
1. An enemy of the state.
2. A "scumbag."
3. Melting right before his eyes.
Then, apropos of nothing, he compares Barack Obama to...
1. Hitler.
2. The 9/11 families -- whom he still hates.
3. Troy Sullivan, the kid who lived up the block from him as a child and would come by when no one was home and make him dress up in his sister's clothes for "afternoon tea," although there was never any tea -- just pain, so much pain.
...And blames him for...
1. ABC's decision to cancel Twin Peaks.
2. His erectile dysfunction.
3. Everything.
Glenn then boasts about...
1. The overwhelming public response to that ridiculous "912 Project" initiative.
2. The numbers his show is pulling down at Fox, particularly in comparison to what he was getting at CNN.
3. What a friend he has in Jesus.
...And introduces a brand new segment of the show with the obligatorily muscular sounding name:
1. "The War Chest"
2. "The Men's Room"
3. "The Tool Box"
The goal of which is to...
1. Map out various apocalyptic scenarios since the inauguration of Barack Obama, as a service to America's paranoid survivalist sociopath community.
2. Prove that the moon landing was a hoax.
3. Impress Sarah Palin.
Next, once again apropos of nothing, he blurts out something random and completely irrational, like...
1. "There it is! Do you hear that? Don't tell me you can't hear that!"
2. "We surround them!"
3. "The government!"
...And claims that _____ is _____:
1. FEMA/constructing internment camps for America's dwarf population
2. global warming/bullshit
3. he/so fucking high
He then begins to cry uncontrollably because, in his personal life...
1. His wife Tania is finally divorcing him.
2. His AA sponsor committed suicide.
3. The hemorrhoids are back.
Finally, he composes himself, smirks, chuckles, and reminds viewers that...
1. He's so fucking high.
2. Due to a tachyon bombardment created by Ozymandias, he doesn't, in fact, have the ability to see the future.
3. It's all an act to get ratings.
Glenn thanks his sponsor...
1. Entenmann's
2. Supercuts
3. Zoloft
...And plugs his...
1. Book.
2. Radio show.
3. Ears against the voices.
Close & Goodnight: Glenn says, "Thanks so much for joining us tonight, and remember to tune in to the show tomorrow for..."
1. "Day 1,113 of my sanity held hostage."
2. "My exclusive interview with an angry chimpanzee dressed as Lyndon LaRouche."
3. "The end of days."
Toss to Special Report with Bret Baier, go home and sleep it off.
Bat, Man!
A small bat that was spotted blasting off with the space shuttle Sunday and clinging to the back side of Discovery's external fuel tank apparently held on throughout the launch. Discovery's mission is to drop off the final segment of the International Space Station lab's backbone truss and a set of solar array panelsNASA hoped the bat would fly away before the spacecraft's Sunday evening liftoff, but photos from the launch now show the bat holding on for dear life throughout the fiery ride. "He did change the direction he was pointing from time to time throughout countdown but ultimately never flew away," states a NASA memo. "Infrared imagery shows he was alive and not frozen like many would think ... Liftoff imagery analysis confirmed that he held on until at least the vehicle cleared [the] tower before we lost sight of him."
Officials at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., where Discovery launched from a seaside pad, said the bat's outlook after launch appears grim. "Based on images and video, a wildlife expert who provides support to the center said the small creature was a free tail bat that likely had a broken left wing and some problem with its right shoulder or wrist," NASA officials said Tuesday. "The animal likely perished quickly during Discovery's climb into orbit." Because the Kennedy Space Center is also home to Florida's Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, NASA's launch pads are equipped with several countermeasures, including warning sirens, to ward off birds and other wildlife. NASA also relies on radar to make sure large flocks of birds won't be struck by the shuttle during liftoff.
The bat on Discovery's tank did not budge, even after engine ignition. It was perched between one quarter and one third of the way up on the north side of the fuel tank, which is the side that faces away from the orbiter. NASA estimated the surface temperature of the tank at that location was between 58 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit, even though the canister was filled with super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. In the hours before Discovery's liftoff, NASA's Final Inspection Team (called the "ICE team", mostly because it makes them feel cool) investigated whether the creature would pose a risk to the shuttle if its body impacted the orbiter's sensitive heat shield tiling. Ultimately, NASA officials signed a waiver confirming that the bat was safe to fly with.
"The bat eventually became 'Interim Problem Report 119V-0080' after the ICE team finished their walkdown," the memo said. "Systems Engineering and Integration performed a debris analysis on him and ultimately a Launch Commit Criteria waiver to ICE-01 was written to accept the stowaway."
This isn't the first time a bat has attempted to travel into space. Another bat was seen clinging to the side of the external tank attached to the shuttle Endeavour on its STS-72 flight in 1996. It flew away to safety right before launch. Coincidentally, an astronaut aboard that flight, Koichi Wakata of Japan, also flew on Discovery this week, making him the first spaceflyer to share two rides with bats. NASA officials said a bat also set down on the external tank for the shuttle Columbia during its STS-90 mission in 1998. That bat also flitted away to safety during liftoff, they added.
UPDATE: Now somebody made a tribute.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Richardson Richardson
Definitively putting an end to any and all rumors which have persisted over the last 24 hours, a representative for Liam Neeson released this statement shortly after at 8pm:"Liam Neeson, his sons, and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha. They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time.”In reading a hundred different editorials about Natasha today, it seems most will remember her as an uncommon professional, someone who was gracious and easy going, someone who everyone enjoyed working with and knowing. And Liam Neeson seems like a pretty cool guy, so that sucks too.
Unlike Chris Reeve taking a dive from his horsey, this is a real shame. I've had to justify this several times in the past, but the thing isn't just that a star was injured in an accident, but somebody died far younger than they should have and so suddenly. Yes, I know Superwheelchairman lived many years and did much good in the way of lobbying and promoting spinal research (which would coincidentally benefit him), but my main distinction is that he bailed playing with this showponies - a hazard of the rich and elite, and the Tash smacked her noggin skiing, something that hundreds of millions of people have done and will do this year. Choking to death on a sandwich is sad. Choking to death on caviar and lobster, not so much. Tenements that burst in to flames beats European chalet fires every time. That, and if this had happened to Katherine Heigl, nobody would miss a beat.
May you bathe in Heaven...