War Criminal: Ed Hardy/Christian Audigier

Christian Audigier with frail teenage boy recluse

If there exists another brand-whoring duo worse or more offensive than this pair, I might have to gouge out my eyes and brain and offer them as sacrifice to the Satanic Lords that will have surely overrun our planet and neutered anything good, pure, happy and decent, as is their wont.

Until that time, we must make do with Hardy and Audigier, champions of a hair-gelled, fake-tanned culture that I want no part of. Well, that's not entirely true; I want something to do with that culture if I have a giant douche-bag seeking missile that will kill every last one of those idiots with clothing that's covered in tattoo designs.

Hardy: the man responsible for this mess

But before I get too lost in my own gaudy rhetoric, let's review: Ed Hardy is a crusty tattoo artist somehow revered by the masses for tattooing the shit out of stuff better than anyone else (sorry, Kat Von Whatever). His designs are all full of flaming skulls, half-naked women, and other shit adored by sailors and Marines on shore leave.

That's not the horrendous part, per se: it's the French asshole who latched onto his aesthetic and through repeated yard rape, has made it as ubiquitous as God, and about as idolized and annoying.

Christian Audigier, some designer (well, a designer who bought up everyone else's designs to market them as his own) of minor fame, already angered the universe once with his Von Dutch garbage (yeah, the trucker caps and short shorts adored by Pamela Anderson/Tommy Lee types), and has since brought Ed Hardy's tattoos into just about every industry possible. (Mercifully, Von Dutch is already dead -- their website says it all -- so I hold out hope for this latest piece of evil)

You can buy:

- Ed Hardy clothes
- Ed Hardy hats
- Ed Hardy sunglasses
- Ed Hardy condoms (probably)
- Ed Hardy HAND SANITIZER WHAT THE FUCK
- Ed Hardy flavored Doritos
- Ed Hardy shoes
- Ed Hardy g-strings
- Ed Hardy Vodka
- Ed Hardy Beer
- Ed Hardy Mace (probably)
- Ed Hardy forest-clearing equipment that scorches the Rainforests and makes Mother Earth weep in her hemp undies
- Ed Hardy switchblades
- Ed Hardy Morning After Pills (now with 99.9% success rate! For the 0.01% that fail, you'll give birth to a beautiful baby flaming skull tattoo!)
- Ed Hardy beach towels
- Ed Hardy AIR FRESHENERS ARE YOU KIDDING ME JESUS FUCKING CHRIST
- Ed Hardy bail bonds
- Ed Hardy cocktail shakers
- Ed Hardy jeans
- Ed Hardy shotgun shells
- Ed Hardy iPhone covers
- Ed Hardy Pinot Grigio

In short, just about anything can now be purchased with Ed Hardy flaming bullshit all over it. For every possible facet of your life, there's an Ed Hardy product. You could go from birth to death using solely Ed Hardy-branded shit, filling every waking moment of your life with an Ed Hardy experience.

The duo are killing the world with their carefree licensing of the brand to just about every fly-by-night 99c store concept, and it has to stop. Audigier is a tireless self-promoter (subtext: he talks about himself to anyone and everyone around him) whose awfully-designed Ed Hardy product websites make me want to commit atrocities upon the weak, elderly and infirm.

Please, Stallone, dust off the fists and pummel this asshole Audigier (at left) to death

There's nothing this tanned asshole won't foist upon the world, and I am sick of it.

Of course, considering the brash, pseudo-edgy nature of the merchandise, every gym-bound jock moron sports at least three Ed Hardy t-shirts a day, each of them a crime against humanity. It gives me further reason to wish painful, prolonged death upon Jersey Shore-dwelling, knuckle-dragging Gotti types who revel in the Hardy/Audigier universe like it's some badge of honor. It's not. It's a fucking t-shirt with flaming skulls on it. My infant son could do better.

Maybe I'm biased, maybe I'm cranky, maybe I'm misguided and simply off-base with this offensive. I tire greatly when corporate synergy, pointless cross-promotion and branding is shoved down my throat, and lately, the collective gushing of chromosome-deficient halfwits over the Hardy/Audigier brand is the most nauseating of all. It makes me hate tattoos. It makes me hate self-expression. It makes me hate life.

This bronzed bastard must be stopped before he grabs an artist actually worth a fuck and proceeds to dilute and distill his life's work into a series of meaningless, disposable products normally sold out of the back of a van or at some store on a boardwalk somewhere.

My elevation of their sickening "craft" to War Criminal status is borne from all these straggling, incoherent feelings: the commodification of art, the French, rampant consumerism, Jersey guido nightclub types (the Bridge-and-Tunnel crowd), and most of all, cheapness. All of this stuff is so intrinsically cheap, it makes me sick.

So please, Mr. Hardy. Stop letting this garlic-scoffing c*nt from wrecking the world further with Hardy-branded tattoo-ridden products. They fucking suck. You fucking suck.

And Monsieur Audigier? Please take all your money and retire in peace. The world is done with you, though some new strain of ebola or swine flu will be arriving in 5-10 years to rob you of your dignity, your energy, and your life.

(Shit! Even the douche ex-husband/fetal alcohol syndrome candidate from Jon Plus Eight on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Sundays and Kate Plus Eight on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays Except for Holiday Weekends wears this shit! Maybe there is hope for this to die out after all...)

Fulfilling the Esoterica Quotient: A look at Tubular Bells

Mike Oldfield: you're a douche

Bear with me for a moment here as I attempt to clumsily segue into whatever the hell I'm talking about: my good friend in Long Island plays rec league soccer, and frequently plays against a former Dutch League goalie-turned-alleged-embezzler, about whom someone created a website to warn others of his embezzlement... on said website there's a bizarre short video about the guy and his "crimes" that uses this song as the ominous backing track. It's Tubular Bells, and it drives me fucking insane.

The Exorcist is iconic for many reasons -- the spinning head, the vomit, the lame Leslie Nielsen spoof -- but one thing that truly frustrates me is the use of Tubular Bells, a song far more ubiquitous than it really should be. Composed and recorded in 1973 by Mike Oldfield, an English musician who's done nothing of note since beyond some weird electronic/celtic music, it's painful to listen to, painful to deal with, and NOT just because of its association with a possessed Linda Blair.

Take a listen and then get back to me:

It's prog before guys like Rick Wakeman and Jon Anderson were able to spin it into a million complex time signatures and back the whole thing with a sonorous Moog. It's simplistic enough in its composition, but a testament to Oldfield's pomposity that performing the damn thing requires some 30 people on stage. And the collection of instruments! Mandolins, glockenspiels, and a vast array of other marginal music-making contraptions that even the most pompous people dare not break out in public. How self-important must you be to force a small army of session musicians to play through this rubbish?

(I swear there was a blog about Pomp and Culture where this might have scanned better, but I digress...)

I was reminded of this song this morning scanning that embezzlement website, and it brought back vivid memories of wishing I could kill my prog-loving parents, who gobbled up anything in Mike Oldfield's discography and anything by his French counterpoint, the interminable synth dribbler Jean-Michel Jarre.


Seriously, what is this shit and why do baby boomers go nuts for it?

No, they didn't do a ton of drugs, but they sure liked to mimic the sensation of having ingested three bars of Xanax and a gallon of communion wine. (My mother also loved Magnum, which is for analysis another time)

I apologize for this weird screed, but the tale needed to be told, and the miniature freak-out I suffered through this morning upon being reminded of this dreck needed to be expelled. And what better place to do it than TMS?

The TMS Guide to: Cooking/Reality TV Shows

Food TV was forever revolutionized by the Food Network, a channel that promotes obesity, lust and extreme hunger with every minute of programming. More than that, it has the cross-over appeal, fusing the demographics of "suburban housewife" and "stoned college student" together in most unexpected fashion. Before that, the viewer had to make do with rigid, formulaic 30-minute shows where chefs fudged their way through antiquated recipes.

It didn't take long for Reality TV to get involved, branching out from their touchstone varietals (listed below) to start hitting food and cooking for their own nefarious, faux-drama needs:
- People isolated somewhere, and their personalities clash while all trying to win some kind of money
- Horny, promiscuous people have casual sex with no strings attached, trying to win some kind of money
- Hey, you're fat. Would you like to lose weight for some kind of money?
- Hey, can you do anything special, like sing or dance? How about you do with the chance to win some kind of money?
- Hey, you will do anything for money. Let's test that to its logical limits, with the chance to win some kind of money?

And so, with the landscape rather muddied, we thought it wise to break down the food shows so you don't waste too much of that precious time of yours.


Top Chef
Awesome. A little over-dramatic, occasionally predictable, but generally good. Ruined periodically by dumb challenges that don't seem to have much to do with good cooking. It used to be the alpha dog thanks to a couple of seasons where strong personalities reigned over proficient chefs, but now they're stacking the deck with a bunch of miserable competent chefs who are all focused on the competition and mindlessly crank out decent food that the judges like. Tom Colicchio is a solid head judge, and the glorious Padma lights up the screen like a 4th of July fireworks show.


Smell the lack of interest!

Chopped
Absolutely terrible. Ted Allen is so irritating, and I've yet to see an episode where any dish is actually edible. Maybe they could drop the lame concept and stop putting together baskets of food that is never, ever, ever gonna work together in a single meal.

Iron Chef
Weird, bizarre, utterly compelling. Love the voiceovers, but I loathe that all the food looking fucking disgusting. The fact that the chefs are all Asian and use weird Asian ingredients like toad eyeballs, blowfish semen and tofu in EVERYTHING is just too much to bear. That said, Chef Morimoto is a bonafide bad-ass. I never understood why they have Iron Chef Italian though. No-one ever picks him. He's lame. And why are Japanese chefs specializing in Italian food anyways?

Iron Chef America
Safer, sanitized version of the original. Edible food with normal, everyday ingredients, but the fact that everyone challenges the ginger douche Bobby Flay makes me want to choke him to death on blue corn tortillas. The presence of super-nerd Alton Brown helps, though "floor reporter" Kevin Brauch is a bit much. Don't he and Alton do the same damn job?

The Next Food Network Star
Lame. Horrendously lame. All the contestants are bland and trying way too hard, and none of them will ever amount to anything. Guy Fieri was the exception to the rule, but yeah; all these idiots will flounder during that oh-so-coveted Sunday morning @ 9am timeslot that their limp-dick shows end up in.



Hells Kitchen
The pinnacle of the genre, exhibiting the perfect union between reality television and cooking. I mean, none of the participants can actually cook, and it's hilarious to watch a bunch of under-qualified hayseeds flounder their way around a simple menu. The casting is excellent; they find every self-righteous, delusional fry cook and throw them into a phony four-star restaurant where they show how useless they are. Some of 'em can't even cook pasta! Some are good at burning french toast! It's great! The challenges are always designed to be deceptively simple, because then we all get to laugh at how fucking terrible they are at Cooking 101.

And to top it off, Gordon Ramsay is a bulldog wrapped in an avalanche of tsunamis, the walking epitome of someone who's perpetually waking up on the wrong side of the bed. And that bed is filled with diarrhea, and the two-bit hooker they lazily fucked last night stole all their money and painkillers.

Top Chef Masters
A weak-willed, tepid facsimile of the original. All the chefs are courteous, polite, even-keeled and hard-working, thus robbing the poor, hapless editors of any natural conflicts that they might be able to build the show around. Even when faced with ridiculously difficult challenges, they all work so serenely and calmly that it sends me to sleep. The tensest moment I think this season was when some French douchebag wasn't cooking enough quesadillas to meet demand.

Give me a fucking break. Plus the host isn't nearly as sexy and fantasy-inciting as Padma Lakshmi. Seriously. Watch her ad for Carl's Jr and send me the dry-cleaning bill


I just dumped special sauce in my pants...

The F Word
Mr. Ramsay cooks with panache, flair, and does so in a manner than makes us all think, nay, believe, we can replicate his efforts at home. Preaching from the gospel of demystifying the art of cooking, Ramsay's a delight, and so are his coterie of horse-faced accomplices. His recipes are delicious (I've made several), and it's refreshing to see Gordon be nice to people instead of berating them for incompetence.

Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares
Let's all point and laugh at the inept restauranteurs and proprietors who have blown their life savings upon awful dining concepts, horrendous food and retarded waitstaffs. It's sad after a while, and one wonders how the Health Board hadn't already shut all these places down. The UK version was at least informative as Ramsay legitimately tried to give advice and showed the inner workings of his plans, but in the USA, he just yells a lot at people who are already overacting in front of the camera.

The Chopping Block
This had some serious potential, but like with most things, NBC royally fucked it up. The editing was a mess, the contestants were bland and poorly selected, the challenges were way beyond their abilities, and Marco Pierre White was an inconsistent, underwhelming host. In typical NBC fashion, they programmed it on the wrong night of the week, then dumped it to Hulu after just two weeks. Way to go, Ben Silverman!


TMS hopes this helps you in your quest for good television viewing while you're stoned/drunk/hooked on painkillers/hooked on phonics. Reality TV has invaded food television, and is undoubtedly here to stay. Let it wash over you like a warm bouillabaisse.

Dear Jeff Tweedy: Please Rediscover Drugs

PLEASE, GOD, NO

So the new Wilco album is out, and it kinda sucks. It sounds as if the band, complete with guitars, dusty memorabilia and memories, have decamped to an old person's home to record their dying days. It sounds like stagnation. It sounds like lack of effort. It sounds like late-era Steely Dan.

In their dotage, Wilco have become rather comfortable, and as such, their music lacks a certain cutting edge that it might still possess were its members embroiled in scandal, heartbreak, drug addiction and financial hunger, for it is from those difficult corners of life that great art often swells.

It's not just music, either; the second Stephen King signed himself to a gargantuan book deal worth millions upon millions, he stopped writing coherent, legitimately scary fiction and began phoning it in. Seriously, did anyone read "The Tommyknockers" or see that TV mini-series? What the fuck was that all about?

But back to music again, as there's where the bulk of this rant originates. I merely wish that musicians and artists would stop being so fucking selfish and would pick up the needle or the bottle again in order to give us, the paying public, some more of that good, old-fashioned, visceral, knock-your-dick-in-the-dirt music again! Or at least default on a couple of mortgage payments having blown $80,000 playing baccarat with Charles Barkley just to show that you still need the money and the fame to get by.

While I'm pleased that you fought an addiction to painkillers and won, Mr. Tweedy, the tough truth is that your music fucking sucks without that stuff, and I fear it shall taint your legacy permanently. If Rolling Stone gets a whiff of your current obssession with releasing hackneyed Americana records, you're well and truly fucked.

Songs like "Shot in the Arm" and LPs like "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" were born in some gloomy, gloomy neighbourhoods of the human psyche, and now you're peddling rock lite that no amount of tongue-in-cheek branding can hide! Seriously! "Sky Blue Sky" was fucking awful! Music to mow the lawn to! Music to play while chauffering the elderly from doctor's appointment to doctor's appointment! Music to feed to patients in a methadone clinic while they lie in an apathetic stupor. Nothing intriguing or challenging about it, and that's the death knell for music, books, or really any creative enterprise.

To his eternal credit, Kurt Cobain gave us album after album of grimy, pessimistic music, and then followed through on his torment by putting a bullet in his head. That shows some guts! Meanwhile, Tweedy, you went to rehab and became a rather withered husk of that angry former self who is content to release drive-time dreck like "Impossible, Germany". Don't get me wrong; your human struggle almost cost you a marriage and several close relationships, but it also made your music kinda suck.

It's a difficult relationship between life and art, and normally, the two are forever inverse. When you're angry, you tend to write better.

Ask Chip Wesley, whose seething Cubs rants read better than anything on TMS.

Ask Billy Corgan, who got out all that teen angst on the first couple of albums while the rent checks were still due, and as soon as his debts were paid, we were forced to endure weighty, retarded concept albums about star-crossed lovers on imaginary planets, all of it backed by awful-sounding industrial rock that not even the most atonal, drooling moron could appreciate.

Ask Brian Wilson. In the first era of the Beach Boys, you could begin to hear the thin veneer barely holding that tubby composer together. When it finally did all go wrong, the band fucked off to Europe and recorded "Holland", easily my favourite Beach Boys record for its off-kilter mood and still-beautiful instrumentation.

Or maybe ask Axl Rose. Shit, if he'd have shown some balls in releasing "Chinese Democracy" during those weird, wild days of punching Tommy Hilfiger and slowly going insane, it might have been half-decent. As such, he waited until life calmed down again and he was able to "focus" on finishing those songs, with the ensuing album sounding like warm garbage being filtered through Fran Drescher's lower intestine.

Frusciante: demented, addled genius on drugs. Shitty, noodly guitarist off drugs.

Conversely, John Frusciante's weird, homemade solo albums while hooked on heroin may have been hard to listen to, but at least they bared his struggles for us to appreciate. Which reminds me, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are equally culpable of this curse... since they all got clean (and we all know they did because it seemed like all of "Californication" was explicitly, unrelentingly telling us this much), their music is now absolutely intolerable.

So that's just a small slab of the music world covered. If you look at film, check out George Lucas, whose bloated oeuvre became a sad parody of itself once the dude had more money than Jesus. Or books (we already mentioned King), where John Grisham can ejaculate a 372-page law/crime/scandal-packed novel every 12 months, each more contrived and devoted to legal minutiae than the last. In his new one, I hear some guy exploits a 401(k) loophole in conjunction with new legislation offsetting tax liens for offshore companies, with spooky, violent, and breathtaking results! Thrills ensue!

But I digress, and shift back to Wilco with the full brunt of my ire.

I beg the soft-rock collective to get Tweedy a forged 'scrip or two so we might be able to enjoy their output once again. Until then, their tunes are fast approaching Michael McDonald territory.

And you know what's funny about Michael McDonald? Never did a fuckin' drug in his life. Never had a nervous breakdown in his life, either, and you can hear it in that debilitating, nerve-damaging shite he calls music.

TMS MLB Preview 09: The New York Yankees

Man, fuck this team

SO LONG -
OF Bobby Abreu, 1B Jason Giambi, C Chad Moeller, P Mike Mussina (retired), P Carl Pavano, P Sidney Ponson, C Ivan Rodriguez

WELCOME -
SS Angel Berroa, P A.J. Burnett, C Kevin Cash, P Jason Johnson, P CC Sabathia, 1B Mark Teixeira


PROJECTED LINEUP
1. Johnny Damon LF
2. Derek Jeter SS
3. Mark Teixeira 1B
4. Hideki Matsui DH
5. Xavier Nady RF
6. Jorge Posada C
7. Robinson Cano 2B
8. Cody Ransom 3B
9. Brett Gardner CF

Starting Rotation - CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Chien-Ming Wang, Joba Chamberlain, Andy Pettitte
Setup - Alfredo Aceves, Damaso Marte
Closer - Mariano Rivera


The Yankees of 2009 are a lot different from the Yankees of 2008, in that they're now free of at least 3 guys who did steroids. While that sudden decline in "Cheaters on Roster" would be a glorious achievement for most teams, the Yanks still have the worst one on their books, and he's collecting more money than anyone else in the game.

Oh, Alex Rodriguez. This is a guy with worse image problems than Michael Jackson. On a squad of unlikeable, talent-laden douchebags, he's way out in front of the crowd on all counts. And it really, really, really pisses me the fuck off. A-Rod will rehab his injury until May, and his Yankees, swollen with money and pinstriped arrogance, will be just fine without him. Why? Because they've bought any Free Agent that could have possibly tripped them up.

Pitching? Sure, bring in CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett to complement the boring Asian, the fat Nebraskan, and Clemens' personal ass-licker. Trouble on offense? No worries. Dumb the mustached Oakland retard, the guy who made tearful steroid confessions en vogue for players past and present, and replace him with the shiny, bland 1B from Los Angeles. Yeah, that Mr. Clean was so irritating during his press conference, dazzling the slackjawed New York media with his homespun tale of family decision-making. Apparently, he let his wife pick the team for him, and not surprisingly, like any smart woman with an angle to play, she chooses the team willing to dump the most money in his pockets.

It's no surprise; the bloated, decrepit corpse that used to be George Steinbrenner has done well spending his pension checks this off-season. For a team with no holes to begin with, they look stronger than ever, and they have the dollar sign to thank for it.

Fuck you, New York Yankees.

You stole a fuckton of money from the city to pay for your shiny new overpriced Guido shrine in the South Bronx, soon to be filled with loudmouthed Wops paying 9 bucks for a 9oz Miller Lite (smaller bottles so they don't beat their wives too hard when A-Rod goes 0-4 with RISP) and some sort of Hard Rock Cafe.

You took money from them to pay for your arrogance, and then in the midst of a crumbling economy, you commit to spending close to $430 million on three fucking players, one of whom is so obese, he could play O-Line in the SEC. CC Sabathia is a walking ad for Type 2 Diabetes, but at least he has millions to pay for his medicine, and so does dying George, wasting away in his skybox that grazes the southern rings of Jupiter, while his fat, square-jawed, retard son continues to seek counsel from his double-chin in all things evil and morally reprehensible.

Mr. Sexy Time: fuck this shit.
I'm not picking one of these guys as some testament to America's Pastime. They're all idiots for buying into the evil empire, everything that's passe and irritating about America boiled down into one team with its own TV network and a retarded policy against facial hair. I guess if forced to pick someone, I'd go with Cody Ransom. Why? Because he's young and new to this satanism, so there's still hope of his salvation. Plus I saw him hit a 3-run HR against the Cubs tonight, so he's obviously a good fit to replace A-Rod in the lineup until that cheating, lying doublecunt returns to full fitness. Of course, as the Yankees are prone to do, they'll dump poor, hard-working Ransom down to AA until he learns to respect his fucking elders. That's what NYY is good for, and fuck 'em for it.

Fuck This Guy Especially: Joba Chamberlain
Another testament to the remarkable depths of humanity. A loud redneck with a good fastball and a damn good lawyer.

Triple Fuck This Guy With Satan's Barbed Cock: Derek Jeter
Mr. America, Mr. September, whatever the fuck you call him, he's about as culturally relevant as David Letterman. I wish his numbers would drop off and Hank would get so angry that he'd bench the fucker. It's irrational, sure, but the composite man known as Jeet is fucking loathesome to me. The 10-dollar smile, the retired golf pro hairstyle, the swagger, the endorsements from Gillett (ps. move the razor sideways next time, you fuck), the whole apple pie and high-five bullshit you adopt as the leader of this wretched cabal. You're a fucking prick, and I wish I could say that to your face. In the meantime, I hope you sprain your knee or something.
---

I hate this team. I hate what they do, I hate what they stand for, and I hate what they do to baseball. They almost made me stop paying attention to the sport, but I'll persevere, because I want the Yankees to lose at even that modest task this season.

I hope this team wins fuck-all and spends all Winter bitching and moaning at one another. Oh, and Robinson Cano? I know you shot something during your big sophomore season. You drop from hitting .342 and slugging .525 to .271/.410 in just two years? Get the fuck out, buddy. Your time will come too. Meanwhile, continue to wipe A-Rod's tears at the dissolution of his marriage, his laughable obsession with Maradona, and his generally dislikeable demeanor.

Fuck all of you and your entire fucking team. Except Cody Ransom. He seems like a stand-up guy.

TMS MLB Preview 2009: The Kansas City Royals

'Scuse me, waiter? You got some crazy in my baseball

The AL Central's worst team will still be that by season's end, and yet, with a subtle move here and there, they've cemented a place in my heart with their slavish adherence to crazy.

I'm not sure if it's hormones in the barbecue there, or the complete dearth of excitement, but KC loves it some crazy. From George Brett's ref-spittling mania to the cuckoo joy of Jose Lima (and his giant-titted wife!), KC has become a little Midwestern haven for baseball's lunatics.

This year, in addition to the existing skittishness of Zach Greinke, one of MLB's few to land on the DL for psychological issues (does John Rocker count?), they have Coco Crisp, Sidney "Drunk Punch" Ponson, and Kyle "Fuckin'" Farnsworth, a guy as loud and angry as he is terrible on the mound. Seeing him try to bridge the 8th inning successfully for his closer, the Mexicutioner, will be hilarious, considering it's not an honor he'll enjoy very often.

Jose Guillen: don't ever try to separate him from his baseballings

I mean, this team isn't very impressive, although if a few streaky players hit a hot patch at the same time, they could do some damage (and by "damage" I mean "steal a series or two during interleague play"). DeJesus is a decent hitter, as is Guillen right behind him, and the biggest intangible could be the late-order duo of Gordon and Butler.

Mike Jacobs will have another typical Mike Jacobs season, hitting plenty of HRs with a shitty average, and of course, their complete failure to build a rotation around big-money SP Gil Meche (note: never worth the money they paid for him) will prove their bigger doom. That rotation rivals Baltimore in terms of its Special Olympics-like qualities.

There is one upside to KC, thankfully: at least the ribs at Arthur Bryant's are fucking incredible.

LET'S GIVE OUT SOME AWARDS, SHALL WE?

Mr. Sexy Times Two: Alex Gordon and Billy Butler.
In fantasy baseball, you look for guys like this and hang on tight, confident that eventually, the rookies will climb to the statistical heavens like all their projections said they would. After reasonable seasons last year, I expect 'em to shed the yoke of mediocrity and become the studs that they are. I mean, c'mon Billy, you're a fucking DH. What else can do you for us?

Why, God, Why?: Coco Crisp
I realize that KC is a small-market team, but fuck, trading for the decrepit 30-somethings of the league won't help you pull a Tampa Bay and suddenly ascend to greatness. After all, you're doing it backward; the Rays won by trading old fucks for youth, while you're tossing out all the minor leaguers you own in order to cling desperately to deadwood. He did have a decent year in '08 (like most guys reaching the end of a contract), but even so... the vast expanse of Kauffman Stadium won't do him many favors.

The Ulysses Award for Player that's Wasted on a Team Like This: Joakim Soria.
The Mexicutioner is a beast on the rubber; it's just a shame we rarely get to see him pitch when it counts. As a closer he has a bright future, but it involves him being able to get out of Kansas City first.

TMS MLB Preview 2009: Baltimore Orioles

I think this is a picture of Radhames Liz

SO LONG: P Daniel Cabrera, SS Juan Castro, SS Alex Cintron, P Lance Cormier, 1B Kevin Millar, P Garrett Olson, OF Jay Payton.

WELCOME: OF Justin Christian, SS Chris Gomez, C Robby Hammock, P Mark Hendrickson, P Rich Hill, SS Cesar Izturis, C Chad Moeller, P John Parrish, OF Felix Pie, P Koji Uehara, 3B Ty Wigginton, C Gregg Zaun.

PROJECTED LINEUP
1. Brian Roberts 2B
2. Melvin Mora 3B
3. Nick Markakis RF
4. Aubrey Huff DH
5. Ty Wigginton 1B
6. Adam Jones CF
7. Luke Scott LF
8. Gregg Zaun C
9. Cesar Izturis SS

Starting Rotation: Jeremy Guthrie, Mark Hendrickson, Koji Uehara, Rich Hill, Radhames Liz
Setup: Chris Ray, Jim Johnson
Closer: George Sherrill

My mother once told me that if I couldn't say anything nice, I shouldn't say anything at all. This would have meant an extremely short post on this sad team in a town full of blue crabs, heroin and critically-acclaimed HBO Dramas, and where's the fun in that?

Simply put: this team is awful. Dire. In the baseball universe, the Orioles would be the starving third-world country where flies are top of the food chain and the machete is the national currency. They're pathetic beyond the top 4 hitters, all of whom are prone to more severe hot/cold streaks than someone with influenza, and their rotation is full of people who belong in AA, or college, where indifference and ineptitude reign, mildly applauded by the hayseeds that pay three dollars to get in.

I wish I could write something nice about this team beyond "Hey, Nick Markakis is Greek, or has Greek parents at least, and I love their cuisine!", but the prognosis on all fronts is grim. Without even looking at their rotation or lineup, look at the in/out above that. There's an awful lot of names there, all acquired or traded with care and thought, and yet there's barely anything salvageable. All that effort to re-shape the roster, and somehow, miraculously, you got worse!

There's deadweight from Tampa Bay, a couple of overweight, entitled catchers with low expectations, another wretched failure of a Cubs CF, and an Asian pitcher, which in itself is fast becoming as en vogue as a celebrity adopting a child from a Malaysian orphanage.

Avoid this team like the plague, and pray for their souls that the law of probabilities enables them to heave across the 45-win mark for the season. They're a depressing team for a depressing town.

Hasn't Bawlmor suffered enough without having to sweat through a summer of watching this sewage in black and orange? Apparently, thanks to a vengeful God, it must get worse before it gets better. With Andy McPhail at the helm, that might take a while.

Mr. Sexy Time: Nick Markakis.
He is a glimmer of ability amid a haze of shittiness. With three seasons and a career BA of .299, if anyone is to drag this sorry collective out of the doldrums, it could be him.

Stephen King Award for the Unlucky Guy who must have pissed on an Indian Burial Ground to get this kind of bad luck: Rich Hill.
Didn't think you'd end up at the back end of the worst pitching staff ever assembled, did you? Well, it's really depressing to see a decent man cursed with such an awful circumstance, but that's what happens when you consistently fail to live up to expectations.

After a shaky start to last season, you lost your control faster than a retiree at a chili-eating contest, and after a poor rehab spell in AAA, you're in Baltimore.

Oh, and you suffered the added ignominy of being traded for a player to be named later. A PTBNL! That means we don't even give a shit what we get back for you, as long as you're gone. Shit, we probably got the groundskeeper or something.

That said, there is still hope for you. You're a lefty; you'll get traded around a few more times before your career is over. Get used to it.

America's Least Wanted Award: Cesar Izturis.
Hang it up, man, you're clearly not meant for this sport. Perhaps if science conspired to combine you and your brothers into one player, you might be somewhat useful, but it takes a real lack of skill to end up batting 9th for the Orioles.

Philip Seymour Hoffman: Pompous, or Not Pompous?

In this new feature, I'll attempt to shed some light on the life and times in which we live while pushing everything through that difficult filter of pomposity or non-pomposity. Everything in life can be put into one category or the other. Is it twee and fancy, or is it commonplace and inelegant? I decide, so you don't have to.
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The inaugural installment will look at the movie world, and everyone's favourite chubby, red-headed actor. I'd use the word acteur if it existed, simply because he's more than an actor. He doesn't play roles, he lives within them, and he's been in everything from retarded action flicks to Charlie Kaufman brainfucks.

His name is Philip Seymour Hoffman. You may know him from such roles as "gay/confused boom operator" in Boogie Nights, or "Desperate Heroin Addict/Mother Killer" in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, or "Sympathetic Male Nurse Attending to a Dying Douchebag" in Magnolia, but one thing is certain: his resume is as long and extreme as Bear Gryll's penis.*


After some review, he has to fall on the side of "Pompous" simply because he's carved out a niche for himself as that guy in most of those charming/offbeat indie movie that has all the critics swooning while you, the regular folk, never actually get to see it because the release is limited to New York and Los Angeles.

It's a shame, because if you could see those random, low-budget flicks he dominates, you'd realize he's a damn good actor, but some of his roles are just too dainty and unmistakably "indie".

Like 2002's Love Liza, for example. A wonderful movie, mainly for a gorgeous original soundtrack by occasional Wilco cohort Jim O'Rourke (which you can hear some of in that link to the trailer), Hoffman mopes around the screen for 90 minutes huffing gas and generally being discombobulated while trying to come to terms with the sudden suicide of his wife.




He avoids the mother-in-law (which I would to, given that it was played by Kathy Bates) and engages in twee pastimes like flying remote-controlled planes while trying to deal with the loss. A decent enough movie, but his performance is so dreary and dismal that it's hard to keep watching. Shit, just look at the cover art! That sums it up for you. Mopey fat redhead in a jacket.

Exhibit B: Flawless from 1999. Now, Robert De Niro is not the kind of guy to play anything other than a disgruntled Mafia type, but he breaks the pattern with this movie where he plays an average guy who has a stroke that leaves his vocal chords paralyzed. His therapy includes singing lessons from the gay man next door (played by Hoffman), a big guy who's not only extremely flamboyant, something De Niro's character can't handle, but is in limbo waiting for his sex change operation.

A decent enough movie, but Hoffman's character is off the charts. It doesn't help that De Niro can't act opposite him to save his life, but them's the breaks.

When you're a character actor like Hoffman and you're paired with an actor who can't really act unless there's Sinatra in the soundtrack, it's not good.

The final judgment is reserved for the recent arthouse mania by Charlie Kaufman, titled Synecdoche, New York. I'm not even going to try to summarize what it's about, but I will say this: being the lead in a movie that requires a PhD to "get it" is not a good move in an effort to get out of being labeled Pompous. One thing is certain: Hoffman's playing another morose, miserable dude! He's good at that, really he is.

Ultimately, PSH is a great actor, but he's doomed to pomposity simply because he's forever rummaging around the indie scene looking for the next indecipherable mess to get stuck into. I'm not saying that his choice of movies is a bad thing, as he frequently dominates in whatever role he plays, but honestly, the man isn't presenting the Teen Choice Awards any time soon, and that's not a bad thing either.

This is about being pompous, and as far as actors go, PSH is up there. While he may be cool and down-to-earth when the cameras aren't rolling, he's all about the highbrow arthouse scene when making movies. The one thing that saves him from being at the extreme, extreme end of Pompous is his genius turn as simpering moron assistant Brandt in The Big Lebowski, one of my favourite movies of all-time.

Even so, to the pompous end you go, Philip. Here's hoping you get some company soon, because it's lonely down there.


* just a guess, as I've never seen it.

Fawning love for Top Chef.

Exciting! I'd go with Option 3!

We all have our vices, but I'm going to open up and take the criticism for this one.

I love Top Chef, perhaps the most glorious, exquisite human drama around. And they cook delicious food too!

Bravo, which used to be an arts channel but now appears to be some weird amalgam of Lifetime, HGTV and Food Network (which is hilarious considering all 3 still exist independently), has plenty of these churned-out reality show competitions, and while the ladies go ga-ga for Heidi Klum and that fashion rubbish, I am drawn to Top Chef.

Perhaps it has something to do with being mildly overweight. I love seeing people get into arguments, and then when they're finished, they make gourmet food that has me practically devouring the television. Standard reality show rules apply: if you suck, you get kicked off. The process repeats, with challenges becoming increasingly more absurd, until just one preening, pompous cuisinier is left standing, and they receive $100,000 and some other stuff.

The hosts? A hot stoner lady (she is Salman Rushdie's ex-wife, but I feel confident that I can out-excellent him) who knows enough about food to conjugate the word "yummy" several times per episode, and a wide, bald chef who has a thousand restaurants, none of which he cooks in anymore.



And then of course, we have the "drama". I have seen more drama on a street corner but those Nobel Prize-worthy editors manage to extract every tablespoon of drama from an otherwise innocuous discussion. I mean, just look at the arguing! It's three whole steps above civilized discourse!



Most of the contestants are insufferable idiots, but I cannot look away. Part of me secretly wishes one of them will sever an artery during a frantic challenge.

They even made a game about this damn show, and from the looks of the video, it confirms the rule that every video game made about a movie or TV show is generally a piece of sh*t.



I don't even know what the f*ck's going on!

Thankfully, the new season begins tonight, just as I was getting delirious from the withdrawal symptoms and working up the courage to filet my roommates with a cleaver. Don't worry, I know what you're thinking; there's no way a meat cleaver could cut with such precision to make filets! Droll!

So watch it with me. 10pm tonight. Bravo (aka the home of James Lipton). I'm not liveblogging the thing or anything, because that would be sad.

However, I will be sure to get drunk on my couch and throw empty beer bottles at the TV.

On Matt Murton.

In this final day of our modest blog as we know it (Hooray, rebranding!), I thought I'd reflect a bit on the man who birthed this site, the namesake, the red-headed everyman who currently lingers on the Oakland A's roster.
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If you run a search for "Matt Murton" on YouTube, you get 64 results. I know this, because I just tried. Of those 64, maybe 10 are the flame-topped outfielder from Fort Lauderdale, FL. Several aren't even a Matt Murton, but some country type filmed on a shaky handicam. The rest are a realtor from Maryland with the same name, short tapes of him touring his sale and rental properties. There are more videos for "Grape Lady."

Simply put, Matt Murton isn't very important. The baseball player, I mean. He's a modest, hard-working guy like the rest of us, one who rarely makes highlight reels or SportsCenter. He shows up and does his job without flash, procession or pomp. Just like the rest of us.

There is one video of him playing baseball; the only problem is, it's someone who taped a play that videogame Murton made in MLB 2K8.

Since moving midseason, we've barely heard a peep from him, mainly because Oakland uses him the same way the Cubs did: sparingly. He played just 9 games the rest of the season, and spent his work days probably like many of us did in the summer, just goofing around with friends and pitching in where necessary.

His trajectory through the majors is a lot like our trajectory through this blog to date: we're a bit player in the vast world of the internet, a small voice amid all the noise. We put in our time, we worked hard, and we reaped the odd reward here and there. Murton is no different, and as we get set to close the doors on the Saloon named for the ginger scamp (not even the best red-head on the team, mind you, thanks to Ryan Dempster. Poor Matt couldn't even wrestle control of that small accolade!), it's time to reflect a little more than we did during his eulogies.

He was traded on my birthday, and given new life of sorts. Pomp Culture will do the same for us, I'm sure, as we're finally free to give in to the crushing weight of our lowbrow sensibilities away from the burden of baseball.
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When Matt Murton plays baseball, sometimes you get the sense that it's a burden. It's not easy for him, but he doesn't stop trying, and maybe that's why we always related to him so well. Our obsession transcended novelty with Murton; at first, he was that scrappy guy on the team who really had no business being there, and we praised him for his tenacity and his long, winding journey through the ranks of baseball. Every time an outfielder ahead of him slumped, we clamored for change.

Murton for Left Field! Murton for Right Field! Can Murton play Center? Who Cares, Play Murton Anyway!

It had the weight and fervor of a political campaign.

Then, the Cubs would go out and buy every cast-off journeyman in the league to fill gaps in the outfield, and our hearts would sink once more. Murton became familiar with that stretch of road between Chicago and Des Moines, a road he thought he'd only ever have to travel once. Imagine that; a young lad called up from West Tennessee with his friend Adam, and then watching him get drilled in the head in his first major-league at-bat! That was it for Greenberg, but Murton went on to hit with force the rest of the season. He was playing well above potential; we could all tell.

From there, it was a slow slide back down into the pack, the mass of hungry nearly-theres who clawed and scratched to get a chance in the big leagues. You know the type; full of potential on paper yet never quite coming through. We've seen enough of them at Wrigley to know by now: Corey Patterson and Felix Pie, to name just two.

And now, freed from Hendry's gaze, he endures the same limbo, a young, promising outfielder (though getting older every day) stuck amid the static and white noise of several other younger, slightly more promising outfielders. He struggles to get seen and heard above the throng; every time we come into our offices and wonder just what the fuck we're doing, we have complete and total understanding. Passed up for promotion again? Matt Murton gets it, and you have empathy. (To emphasize the point, his Wikipedia page picture is him in a Cubs uniform. Amid the millions of daily edits from all around the world, no-one thought to update his picture.)

Just because his desk is a wide, curved strip of turf bordered by chalk-and-dust lines enclosed with stands that hold thousands doesn't mean we aren't the same. It doesn't mean we can't see eye-to-eye.
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Someday we'll see Murton as an All-Star. We'll see him hit .315 for the entire season, leading the league in doubles and ranking in Top 10 across almost all major offensive categories. We'll see him win Gold Gloves in the outfield, becoming one of the most coveted corner outfielders and commanding big money on the free agent market. Scott Boras will make him rich beyond his wildest dreams, and he'll think back to those formative years, the ones he spent shuttled around the minors before landing in Chicago, and he'll laugh.

Until then, he'll just keep living the normal life, working hard and hoping to someday catch a break.

That is life for Matt Murton. That is life for all of us.

Enough baseball already.

Seriously folks, can we just call Philadelphia the winners and move on?

I'm rather tired of the World Series. Of course, you would expect a lot of that to be due to the Cubs not playing in it, but the weather is now much worse, the temperatures lower than Tara Reid's tits. It's miserable out there, and I'm miserable in front of my television watching this rubbish.

Seriously! Look how low those things are!

The rain delay farce didn't exactly help matters, but really, you need to re-evaluate your scheduling if you're forced to take a 48-hour rain delay just to finish a single game. Bring everyone back to the stadium for just over 90 minutes of baseball. Shit, you should just go watch MLS at that point.

I can sustain interest in soccer for almost the entire year (that month off in July is clutch), but for baseball, it's different. The nuances play out over 162 games, and then potentially another 19 if you make it all the way to lifting the trophy (and it took you a full series in each round to do it), and it's hard to keep the intrigue going. Honestly, are we not sick yet of Cole Hamels talk, or LOLing at Evan Longoria and how his name is one letter shy from being the name of Tony Parker's pint-sized spouse?

Seriously, enough folks. Selig, lop 10 games off the regular season or something. For example, I think Tampa Bay players would appreciate only going to Baltimore for 4days instead of a full week. And now you have waning interest anyway because the NFL is in full swing, NBA is just around the corner, and apparently, something called "hockey" just started again as well! At this point, you're the relative who hangs around too long at Thanksgiving dinner when everyone else has gone home. You had all fucking summer to razzle-dazzle us; how about letting someone else have a go?

At this point, the list of things I'd rather be doing is expanding rapidly:

Give me a marathon of this instead. Just no more balls and strikes, PLEASE

List of Things I'd Rather Be Doing
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1. Read an entire issue of The Economist
2. Watch Vh1
3. Chase stray animals down the street, scaring them shitless
4. Watch Frank TV
5. Punch myself in the dick
6. Read Finegan's Wake by James Joyce
7. Overdose on Lunesta
8. Send boxes of my feces to David Beckham
9. Internet porn (making it, not watching it)
10. Talk to my mother on the phone
11. Talk to anyone on the phone (I hate being on the phone)
12. Campaign in New York City on behalf of John McCain
13. Get a Brazilian wax job
14. Amputate my own leg
15. Watch hockey
16. See how progressively unfunny this list gets, the further down I go
17. Listen to Coldplay

You get the idea. I'm sick of baseball at this point. If I were a king in medieval times and baseball was a person, I'd have them executed. Then I'd eat a turkey with my bare hands and request fellatio from a comely peasant lady. Yeah, I'd enjoy that.

It's almost November. Soon someone will win this fucking thing and we can all move on. Thankfully it could be tonight, because another 3-4 days of this shit will probably kill me.

I Love You, Mega Man 2

Growing up in England, we didn't have much for entertainment. We had sticks and hoops, whittling, cricket, and marbles to keep us away from a life of crime. With such awful, antiquated fun, we force-fed off the scraps of popular culture from other, bigger, richer countries, and goddamn it, we loved it. (This isn't entirely true; we are the kings of music, but that's for another post)

However, technology-wise, we were light years behind. I think I got my NES when I was 15, and the N64 was already wreaking havoc across the world. I didn't give a shit. Nintendo can shove that overpriced black rectangle up their puckered arseholes for all I care, because gaming obsession begins and ends in 8-bit.

The game that single-handedly wrecked my adolescence was Mega Man 2. For me, it didn't get any better, or more frustrating. I realize that back then, video game developers had the capability of cranking out maybe 1 or 2 games a year thanks to the awful technology. Those NES cartridges looked like grey placemats with a graham cracker sticking out of it. So many lost hours blowing dust off that damn cracker to make the game work properly... but I digress.

For difficulty and gameplay, you look no further than Mega Man 2. Normally sequels are awkward and stiff, but MM2 was a flawless upgrade over the original, with much better Robot Masters, more interesting level design, and far better weapons.

To illustrate... Ice Man from MM1:



Notes:
- wtf? Every enemy he shoots, he gets power-ups!
- The pointless use of the disappearing blocks half-way through. If you miss one, you just fall to the floor and begin again. That second phase is completely pointless! Throw the damn game away already.
- You NEVER get that many power-ups right before fighting a boss. In MM2, you're practically dead right when you go through the gate.
- An eskimo? That's the Robot Master? I think he's even wearing Ugg boots.

Now, we show Heat Man from MM2:



MUCH harder. Of course, they had a neat "Item 2" to get past the disappearing blocks section, meaning that instead of spending hours ruining your state of mind by dying on that section, you can simply jump on that rocket sled and cruise on underneath.

Even so, this guy makes it look a lot easier than it was for me at age 15. It might have been the acne or the inherent awkwardness of being a teen, but either way, Heat Man was the tip of the iceberg in terms of difficulty.

Once you got to super boss Dr. Wily's castle, a frustrating 5-part journey through hell and back requiring every weapon in the arsenal and necessitating that you fight every boss again, you're about ready to murder someone.

This is just Stage 1 of 5:



What a little shit he is. The dragon was rather cool though. Look at the colours! All the Mega Man games had that Rock-Paper-Scissors approach, meaning that if you understood the weaponry available, you could dispatch your mini-bosses with ease. If you didn't understand it, you were in for endless despair.

The fondest memories I have of this game revolve around the music. I'll be damned if it isn't some of the best sound design and composition in video game history. AND it was done on the most basic of sound boards! Ridiculous! The Dr. Wily stage above is supreme; speed metal worthy of any fight movie. Close your eyes and imagine you're watching a movie where the hero is trying to get his girl back. He's suiting up. He's training. You can see it, right?

The music is fucking king (scroll down for MM2).



Childhood memories are so strong at the moment, particularly when the future looks so fucking bleak. Mega Man 2 gives you a reason to believe again. Suit up, grab your Mega Blaster and take on the world, one Robot Master at a time.

Losers.

In keeping with the dying dregs of the baseball talk around these parts, I thought it best to look one final time (at least I think it's the final time, depending on whatever posts follow this week) at our Cubs, in the hopes that I can bring myself some closure to the Summer of 2008.

It had all the trappings of greatness; belief, talent, good fortune, desire and momentum. Of course, as anyone who visits Los Angeles knows, it's the place where all of these things go to perish. One long drive up and down Sunset Boulevard on a Saturday night will prove this. You can almost taste the pain.

Looking at the Cubs, we already call them the "Lovable Losers." This got me thinking. How deep are they on the spectrum of losers throughout history, throughout media, literature, and culture? If I was to attempt a rough grading system for being a loser, where might the '08 Cubs fall?

For this analysis, I'll need to come up with a few good examples of losers before slotting them in somewhere. Although my methods are heavy-handed and unscientific, they're very much open for debate.

So let's begin.

HISTORICAL LOSERS: Pilgrims
Christ, this lot were terrible losers. Although some might debate this, allow my completely inaccurate, abbreviated history: a bunch of people, miserable and unhappy, decided to split from the Church of England and found their own movement. The King was pissed, and their beliefs brought them tremendous criticism, mockery and derision.

They moved to Amsterdam, where they still couldn't find peace due to the culture gap and their inability to adapt to the Dutch way of life.

Thus, they left again, this time for America. They landed in Cape Cod, had a tough time finding food due to the impending winter, and nearly half of the colonists died during the first winter either from scurvy, ill effects of the freezing weather, or other diseases.

They then moved further inland, only to stumble upon a cleared village where almost everyone died of smallpox. Some contracted the illness, and only 47 from the colony and the Mayflower survived.

You don't get more "loser" than that; a group of miserable fundamentalist malcontents who moved around a lot to find acceptance and once they found it, almost all of them died from native illnesses for which they had no cure.

Unsettled, uncertain, struck by the urge to find a perfect place no matter what the cost, ultimately leading to their death.

Hmm... think the Cubs are not as far along the Loser Scale as this. More research needed.


FILM LOSERS: Ishtar
Regarded as one of the worst films ever, and one of the biggest box office flops ever (outside of anything made by Uwe Boll), Ishtar paved the way for many overambitious, overblown efforts at bringing grandeur and pomp to the big screen.

Made for 30 million dollars (in 1987's money, that equates to well over double in this day and age), the film was a bloated vehicle for Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, filmed in the actual desert and with perhaps one of the worst story concepts ever committed to paper:

Two terrible lounge singers get booked to play a gig in a Moroccan hotel but somehow become pawns in an international power play between the CIA, the Emir of Ishtar, and the rebels trying to overthrow his regime.

Yep, it's as fucking terrible as it sounds.

Despite having two Oscar winners in the lead roles, the film only recouped 10 million or so at box office, and became the punchline to many jokes about the film industry in general. That is, until Michael Bay came along.

An overpriced experiment in design and star power, constructed at a lavish budget and never quite fully used.

The Cubs? Definitely worse than this.


LITERARY LOSERS: Holden Caulfield
Amazing book... terrible douchebag loser. Holden is the ultimate wise guy; full of wit and sardonic commentary on the lives of others, yet no compunction or energy to go and fulfill his own. Stuck in a world of being afraid to do anything, he spends 277 pages wandering around, observing the world yet never actually participating.

I idolized this lad at one point, and I can't for the life of me remember why. He's compelling yet completely irritating, the epitome of the man who sits on the toilet and cannot decide whether to shit or get off the pot.

He gets kicked out of school (a wild idea for the early 50s, I know), gets beaten up by a New York City pimp, looks at an awful lot of art, is totally and utterly scared to grow up, hatches a plan to move out west with his sister, gets her on board with the plan, and then decides he's not going to go.

Frozen in time due to an inability to move forward, leading to loneliness and aimlessness.

Maybe this is the Cubs? I think we're getting closer.


SHAKESPEAREAN LOSER(S): Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
The two idiots from Hamlet play a short, sweet role in the play, showing up in the life of their childhood friend Hamlet after the rather shocking murder of Polonius takes place.

They try to cajole him and joke him into coming to England, where the King is to murder him.

How do we know this?

Because one of the morons receives a letter from Hamlet's uncle, King Claudius, with all of it written down. Hamlet changes the letter to read that they are the ones to be killed, and so they happily sail to England where they're murdered.

Dim-witted idiots that meant well but ended up dead?

Closer....


TALKING HEAD LOSER: Alan Colmes
Why does this guy ever bother? Forever usurped and overtalked by his loudmouth compadre (and spawn of Satan) Sean Hannity, he spends his time on their FOX News talk show staring at the ceiling or figuring out why Hannity cut his microphone yet again.

Their show exists primarily to give Hannity a platform for his voluminous load of right-wing bullshit, and Colmes gamely plays along as the left-wing counterpoint to this TV news melee.

Occasionally, if Colmes has been a good little TV host, Hannity lets him ask a question or two before giving him some Werther's Original and putting him back in his air-conditioned cage.

It's an exercise in futility, although one assumes the dog and pony show at least pays well. Sure, he could be looking for a job that gives him enough respect to look at himself in the mirror each morning, but like every loser, his self-awareness to the inherent problems with his work life only make the struggle that much more difficult.

A nice guy who is willing to subjugate himself to a more forceful, more charismatic persona?

Close again! Not much further now, surely...


MUSICAL LOSER: Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah yeah yeah, we all know at least one Weird Al parody, but his oeuvre is pretty sad when you think about it. A guy who's devoted his entire life to nerdy paraphrasing of popular songs from all genres of the musical zeitgeist. He's made rap into Amish, Michael Jackson into an musing on obesity, and he's just about ruined any well-known song with his witless reappropriations.

And now, many years removed from his initial modest success, he's still trying pretty damn hard to live up to that zany character we all barely remember. Honestly, it's depressing. He needs to let go, get a haircut, and sit down to try and compose something meaningful beyond PG-13 jokes in a 4-minute cover song.

A fading icon trying to recreate long-past glories?

Not loser-y enough...

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In short, the Cubs borrow a bit from all of these legendary losers. They're a big-budget flop (well, modest compared to the Yankees, but you get the point), they're clearly stuck in a mental headspace that renders them impotent against their own history, and they're yet another footnote in the annals of the Nearly There.

They're not quite as bad as the miserable Pilgrims, but they're damn close. Except, for the Chicago Cubs, it's the fans who keep dying from their playoff brand of "smallpox baseball."

TMS DRUNKBLOG: VP Debates

It's another wonderful evening at TMS Towers, and from behind my beautiful, artisanal reading glasses (they're specially designed to read the opinions and thoughts of the liberal elite media), everything is shaping up swimmingly.

I am a fan of the drunkblogs, and I believe we'll have some fun tonight. Sarah Palin, as the running line of subtle, sarcastic jokes this week on TMS have shown, is a bit of an idiot. Well, she's worse than an idiot. She's quite dumb, and she's not very far from the presidency should John McCain struggle with angina, footrot, glaucoma, Parkinson's, or other afflictions of the aged. In short, it's fucking scary.

But, let's put armageddon aside from one night.

The channel of choice: CNN
The beverage of choice: America's finest domestic, mass-produced beer... Budweiser
The fantasy of choice: still Campbell Brown. I'm watching her warm up right now, and it's creating enough heat in my loins that I could power California during one of their patented Skynet-aided rolling blackouts.

The scoring system tonight is simple, and one that I spent a whole 8 minutes devising.

Every time Sarah Palin cracks that liberal white man on the jaw with a flurry of wit unseen since the days of the Algonquin Round Table, I will award one DROPPED ICE CREAM CONE to the Red Woman. You know how dropped ice cream cones make you feel: inescapably sad, and just all-round depressed. Fuck, it doesn't even matter if you buy a replacement cone; the taste is gone. In short, it's the sensation we'll all wear if Moose Lady and Jowl Man run the nation.



Every time Joe Biden levels that retard with a devastating putdown or fact that she cannot even begin to retort, I will score one INCIDENT OF CANDY BEING TAKEN FROM A BABY. It's that simple, folks.



To the liveblog! Crack open another can of moonshine, light some candles around the living room, and prepare for some fireworks. Also have some razor blades and Lilith Fair compilation CDs ready in case you need to soothe yourself should Palin completely pwn the wrinkly Delaware tw*t.

Ifill is good to go, the combatants are on the stage, and CNN has all sorts of algorithms and up-to-the-second scoring methods. We're playing Palin Bingo. Hip, I know.

9.05 - Good opening by Biden. Factual, dense, impassioned. Palin goes with the wonderful storytelling approach. "Let me spin you a yarn..."

It's a load of fucking nonsense. Already I am contemplating skipping this exercise in sarcasm to build pipe bombs. Story time, followed by vague bullshit, followed by GOP pre-prepped talking points. Fucking Christ. John McCain has a big dick and a knack of supporting genius legislature, apparently.

9.08 - Biden fires a sneaky missive: the experience factor. He lists off a few achievements of his long career in Washington, which is matched by Palin, who was probably fellating truckers as a child before finding her beehive hairdo.

I'll score a CANDY/BABY INCIDENT there.

9.10 - Ifill calls them both out for completely ignoring the question and spouting off some bs about themselves and their presidential hopefuls. Biden laughs, and Palin gets first crack at the next question about sub-prime mortgages... she uses it to hit the talking points. Credit to her for at least staying strong and staying on message.

I'm giving Ifill a point for the putdown, which I'll illustrate with this guy banging a loud gong.



9.11 - Oh sweet... Biden's retort goes right to John McCain's ignorance of the mortgage problems 2 years ago while Barack was raising that question in Congress. Beastly move, Joe... have another CANDY/BABY INCIDENT for your assault on McJowl. He needs to be careful with the homespun anecdote. Biden wants tax relief and feels Obama has that move.

9.15 - Christ. Biden levels Palinbot after her assertion that Obama voted 94 times to raise taxes. Biden's response: she's dead wrong, McCain voted the same way on the specific bill she's referring to, and by her measurements, McCain voted 467 times to raise taxes. Absolutely beastly by Joe. He then calls her out for not answering the question. CANDY/BABY INCIDENT... awesome assault. Palinbot gets a chance to retort, and she apologizes for "not answering the questions the way you (Biden) or the moderator want her to, but she's gonna talk straight to the American people." Yeah... sure. She then avoids Biden's charge by talking about her time spent fighting taxes in Wasilla, and she promptly runs out of time.

This is getting uncomfortable. I NEED MORE BEER! Where is Campbell Brown? Can I get some hand relief, you brunette bombshell of the broadcasting universe?

9.19 - Ifill tosses Palin a softball giving her a chance to explain McCain's healthcare plan despite the obvious turn in the debate... however, we're not sure Palin knows what a tax credit is. She is trying though. Biden's shuffling notes.

9.20 - Biden's retort: he's all about facts. It's taking a lot of restraint for him not to openly laugh, I reckon. He's keeping it to simple business, and really trying to spell out just what McCain's healthcare plan means. That plan sounds pretty shitty.

A huge fucking closing zinger... two CANDY/BABY INCIDENTS for it: he shits on McCain's plan, spells out how it's not a good one, and says that it's the ultimate "bridge to nowhere". The crowd gasps and chuckles a bit.


By the way, can anyone tell I'm a liberal? It's true; I ride a bicycle. I like natural fibers. I drink Pabst Blue Ribbon not just because it's tasty, but because it's so expensive at the fancy dive bars around Manhattan and Brooklyn that I frequent. Yeah, please, I invite you all to make fun of me. I'm also English. There you go, my Republican friends... tell me how little I know because I'm not from here.

9.24 - Alright, Palin's getting a little traction. The question? What promises have you made to Americans that you can't keep? She hits Obama for voting for the energy plan in '05 that gave such massive tax breaks to those oil companies that Barack and friends now wish to reign in. She refers to her fight in Alaska against those oil companies. I'll give her a DROPPED ICE CREAM CONE for that. Biden is smiling... this is getting fun. I'm still feeling nauseous though.

Also, I really need to stop drunkblogging important political events. I don't have nearly enough time to type, listen, drink, and make jokes. This blogging shit is tough! Maybe I should quit the writing game and get me on Todd Palin's super-duper-awesome snowmobile vigilante force.

9.27 - Biden's comeback is good... I'm gonna hold off further scoring currently. He's not being a complete condescending dick towards her (although he came close a couple of times), but he's settling into a simple rhythm: turn her words and rhetoric against her with a flurry of facts, corrections and annotations.

Palin is floundering HARD. It's like watching a high school kid give a book report in front of class despite not reading the book. She tries to get in how hard McCain worked to get that bailout bill going, but let's be honest... she's not good at this. I feel kinda bad for her, but not so bad that I'm gonna stop making fun of her.

Biden's tone is straightforward, deliberate, and well-paced. He's a lot more experienced than her, and it's showing so much, it's difficult to watch.

CNN has some ticker at the bottom apparently measuring uncommitted Ohio voters and their immediate reactions to the debate as it happens. It looks like a heartbeat that's flatlined, but there's extra colours involved. I wonder how they're getting this data: do they have Ohioans strapped to chairs with monitors and regulators attached to them, a la Clockwork Orange?

Ohioans do their part for CNN.

9.33 - Palin's really out of her depth. A question about deregulation aimed at Biden comes to her for a retort, and she decides to go BACK to the oil/energy question from 8 minutes ago. Also, judging by her stalling, she's been reading the Palin Speech Generator.

Biden waits, and then hits with some facts about McCain, voting 20 times against funding alternative energy sources. I'll give him a CANDY/BABY INCIDENT there... devastating. Palin's all about her work for alt. energy sources in Alaska, but McCain's voting record is clearly contradictory. Ouchie.

9.37 - Palin fires hard at the left for their voting on energy policies, and Biden keeps hammering McCain's 20 no votes against alt. energy funding. A draw there.

Ifill switches up to the same-sex marriage question.

Biden says an Obama/Biden administration will take steps to giving those benefits and rights to those same-sex marriages... Palin doesn't support changing the definition of marriage as being anything other than a traditional "one man, one woman", although she believes there should be no civil rights difference. They both kinda agree! It's touching! So much love in the room, and Palin takes the olive branch. The crowd laughs, and Ifill turns to IRAQ. Look the fuck out, peoples.

Palin gives props to Petraeus... oh, wait, I think there's a talking point coming... BOOM THERE IT IS JOHN MCCAIN IS THE SHIT BUT OBAMA SUCKS BECAUSE OF VOTING NO TO EXTRA FUNDING ON THE TROOPS. It's a worn-out soundbite, but people do listen to that shit more than anything we've heard to this point. I'll give her a DROPPED ICE CREAM CONE for that... Biden is waiting.

9.42 - Biden likes numbering his responses during his allotted time. Definitely effective for the Cliffs Notes folks who will read of this carnage tomorrow. Immediately, he pulls out a move worthy of a CANDY/BABY INCIDENT -- "I don't believe I heard a plan in that answer." Yeah. The question was asking about a plan, and he segues that into the fact that Obama has a clear plan.

Palin's counter? The dems plan is a "white flag of surrender". Pretty beast line. I give a DROPPED ICE CREAM CONE there... this is getting good! Biden's licking his lips in that brain of his, waiting for a time to strike.

9.45 - FUCK WOW. Biden's comeback is truthful, and to the point: "John McCain voted against that same funding package. Let me say that again: John McCain voted against that same funding package." Fuck. Two CANDY/BABY INCIDENTS there, one for each of their kids in (or preparing to) go to Iraq.

Taking a break for a sec: I need to listen to Palin mispronounce "Nuclear" a couple more times. Plus I need a drink. Budweiser is good right now. It's making my right leg numb, and any amount of physical numbness is a good thing as it'll bring me one step closer to the total emotional numbness I need to get through this.

9.50 - Palin's run-of-the-mouth about what diplomacy is was kinda hilarious. She spouts off about Ahmedinejad, and Biden spends some time in his response correcting her that Mahmoud doesn't control any of the power in Iran, at least to the point that he could order a strike or war against another nation.

Fuck, Biden's assault on McCain's comments about Spain was fucking awesome. So awesome. Another CANDY/BABY INCIDENT right there.

Palin is all over Israel's jock, and her promise that a McCain/Palin administration will prevent a "second Holocaust". I'm just leaving that one out there. Tons more talking points from her, and I feel like she is clinging to her script so hard that it might rip to shreds at a second's notice. Biden is showing a lot more improv and a lot more of an ability to switch up his debate time to make a much more emphatic point.

9.54 - Alright, Biden is getting a little carried away. He is being so emphatic and, for lack of a better word, douche-y. He needs to reign his shit in a bit. I realize Palinbot is saying so much egregious, time-stalling shit that she must be called out on, but even so... he cannot just flat-out pwn her. It'll make him look so so so bad.

She ends on a talking point, that "change is coming". Biden's retort: "I haven't heard how McCain's policies are gonna be different from George Bush's" at which point he rattles off several examples of the point he's trying to make. Fuck. That's about 5 CANDY/BABY INCIDENTS.

SERIOUSLY Palin, stop mispronouncing "nuclear".

Palin: "we will win in Afghanistan."
Biden: "fact is, our commanding General in Afghanistan said this TODAY, that the surge principles in Iraq WILL NOT WORK IN Afghanistan."

Sure, he then says it two or three more times, sounding like a bit of a douche, but really, the gloves are off at this point. He needs to reinforce just how much bullshit Palin and McCain are talking. More facts, organized in neat bullet points and repeated for emphasis. This is really painful. Really, really painful.

He closes with Obama's reach to Republican Dick Luger upon joining Congress to forge legislation on Iraq. Palin's response: well, the General didn't really say that... she is clutching at straws.

10.02 - Next question, aimed at Biden: he's an interventionist by nature. Can the American people stomach more interventionism?

Biden's response was measured, talking about his experience and time spent in Kosovo and Chad. Palin counters with the pity-me that she's "really a Washington outsider, as I don't understand how you politicians work." She gives the line that Biden voted-yes-before-he-voted-no on war, how he backed McCain's war strategies, and more absolute bullshit. I can't fucking stand this one. How's that for editorializing? She's an awful, odious politician who is out of her depth at the moment. Voting for McCain puts her so close to the red button. Frightening, wretched thought, that.

Palin is back on Biden siding with McCain on war, and she's working back to a talking point about McCain being a war hero. Fucking christ. I really wish she'd fuck off back to Northern Exposure. Seriously.

Biden makes the point of how important this election, perhaps the most important since 1932.

Her explanation for saying-yes-then-no on things on the GOP side? Well, her and McCain are simply a "team of mavericks, what can I say?" Yeah, and yet you look at the left, and how awful and destitute they are for changing their minds on it. I really love how this language is evolving. It's simple: GOP are mavericks so they can change their minds all the way, but the Democrats aren't to be trusted if they do the exact same thing. It's so clever on the GOP's part, and I applaud them. Yet, Palin's shit-eating grin while she says it is really fucking beyond irritating.

Biden's point: the Republicans have fucked this country. Their policies have ruined things, and McCain's policies will be more of the same.

Palin counters with "doggone it" and a whole bunch of stalling. She accuses Biden of "pointing fingers backward" and how the Dems are too busy blaming people rather than getting things done. It's awful to watch. She even gives fucking shout-outs to family members! What the fuck are we seeing?!?!

I won at Palin Bingo thanks to a late mention of "special needs children". Awesome! Something is going right tonight, while the Cubs are down 5-0. Fuckity Jones.

10.17 - This is fucking awful. I'm done. She is literally saying nothing with every response. Fuck this. I'd rather have my heart broken tonight by the Chicago Cubs as opposed to the mumbling and stumbing of Sarah Palinbot, whose smiling and complete lack of substance is really a disgrace on John McCain. Really. He should have seen this coming. She is such an awful match for Biden, in that she is no match whatsoever. She doesn't belong in the executive branch. She doesn't belong anywhere other than Alaska. Really.

Biden gets in a final PWN with 10 CANDY/BABY INCIDENTS on his response to the question about Cheney's interpretation of the Vice Presidency.

Then, Palin does what she's done best throughout this debate: completely failed and avoided to answer the question posed simply to her. Question: what is your real Achilles heel as a VP candidate? Her answer: something about her struggles in Alaska, something about how awesome Todd is, and then a flurry of talking points about what America stands for and how awesome America is, and how they share being an awesome team and ticket with the only proven record of "getting things accomplished".

Really, Sarah? Really?

If I were Biden, I'd have jumped across the stage and flat-out stabbed her. Instead, he keeps his calm and ACTUALLY ANSWERS THE QUESTION. He puts his record and Barack's up against McCain. He chokes up at talking about his children and wife who died (didn't know that), and does a great job of being humanized just when he was in danger of going off the deep end in ripping her ass apart.

Palin's response? STILL NOT ANSWERING THE QUESTION. She goes off on talking points about McCain.

Biden comes back with how many times McCain voted with Bush on just about fucking anything and everything there is. I'd do the candy/baby thing here, but what's the point? We're all watching this. Biden is murdering her. In front of millions. In front of the entire world. In front of us right now at TMS Towers.