Whistlin' Past the Graveyard

Bush surprised to visit Iraq

2007-09-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

President Bush made a surprise trip to the Al Asad Air Base in the Anbar province of Iraq Monday morning.

“Shit yeah it was a surprise,” said a top White House aide under the promise of anonymity. “We told him he was going to Texas. He was completely shocked when he woke up in Iraq.”

Reportedly the President had a tough time distinguishing between the two because both places “are flat, sandy, and everybody hates me.”

Aides said they wanted to take the President to Iraq before his report to Congress on progress there so he could see the “remarkable turnaround” in the Sunni area west of Baghdad.

The President told his aides the only remarkable turnaround anyone was going to see was how fast his ass got back on that plane.

Bush was scheduled to meet with Iraqi Prime-Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who the clever President has nicknamed “Flaming Douchebag.”

The President balked at touring the pro Sunni Anbar region despite his aides telling him what a success the surge has been there.

“My colonoscopy was a success too,” Bush said. “But that doesn’t mean I want to tour my own anus.”

The president stopped in Iraq en route to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Sydney, Australia, although aides have told the President after Iraq they were going to be a big park to play catch.

Fear and Loathing in the Bronx

2007-09-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

I was taking my Yorkie Blind Toothless Jordan out to take care of her business when I saw my neighbor Tommy.
“Red Sox suck,” he said.
“Yup.”
“I didn’t even watch the last two games,” he said. “I’ve given up on them.”
Ah, to be in New England now that the pennant race is here.
Red Sox fans have been called a lot of things lately, obnoxious, intrusive, but the best adjective to describe my people is bi-polar, and at no time is this condition more identifiable then when they play the Yankees.

To help layman better understand this condition I will break the thoughts of Red Sox fans into two different categories Bi (this is, after all Massachusetts) and polar.

Bi Thinking: Before the series began the Sox were up eight games, and even if the Yankees swept, the lead would still be a healthy five games. The Sox had scored 10 runs a game against the White Sox so they were due a slump, the Yankees looked pathetic against the Tigers and were bound to bounce back strong. If the Sox escaped with one game they would be fine.

Polar Thinking: We have to crush those Yankees now, not let them win a game. If they win even one game its 1978 all over again. Finish them now while they’re weak or they will rise up twice as strong to destroy us.

Bi Thinking: We have Daisuke Matsuzaka against the 48-year-old Andy Pettite. You have to like that match-up.

Polar Thinking: The Red Sox players hate Matsuzaka and don’t even try to score when he’s pitching. Plus he can’t win close games. They should have signed Pettite.

Bi Thinking: The Yankees get two runs off Matsuzaka in the first combing a walk a hit batsman and a double. Had to know the Yankees would come out strong, and Matsuzaka is still being dogged by that one bad inning.

Polar Thinking: Here we go! Another one inning Hari-Kari by Kamikaze Matsuzaka. It’s a sweep. The season is over.

Bi Thinking: The Sox tie it with a David Ortiz sacrifice fly plating Lugo.

Polar Thinking: Here we go! Stick a fork in the Yankees they’re done.

Bi Thinking: After homeruns by Derek Jeter and Jason Varitek Manny Ramirez leaves the game with back spasms. Hope it’s only for a couple of games.

Polar Thinking: It’s over. We can’t win without Manny. Danm those vengeful baseball gods. How could you take Manny from us now? And he is going to be out indefinitely. It’s like giving Juan Epstein an open-ended hall pass. Lord knows when we will see him again.

Bi Thinking: Well we knew they wouldn’t go quietly. Johnny Damon shows why we should have kept him putting the Yankees up two.

Polar Thinking: Nice job Epstein. Can’t wait until Damon is being covered in confetti in the canyon of heroes after another Yankees Series win. I’m going to bed.

Bi Thinking: Mariano Rivera gets them 1-2-3 in the ninth. Hope Manny’s back quick. Never figured we’d sweep. Got Josh Beckett tomorrow so I’m not losing an sleep.

Polar Thinking: Is that the morning paper? My God I’ve been up all night. Better shower.

Bi Thinking: I would rather have Josh Beckett pitching than old Roger Clemens.
Polar Thinking: I would rather have wise old Roger Clemens pitching than young punk Josh Beckett.

Bi Thinking: Man Clemens looks tough tonight. And Damon strikes again with a two run single to put Yanks up 3-0 after two. We better start hitting.

Polar Thinking: We’re never going to hit. Clemens is older than my father for god’s sake. Beckett was nothing but a flash in the pan. Julio Lugo playing short instead of Hanley Ramirez. Burn in hell Epstein!

Bi Thinking: Clemens gets J.D. Drew to pop up and has a no hitter after four.
Polar Thinking: J.D. F’n’ Drew. They should play Christina Aguilera’s “Candyman” when he comes to the plate.

He's a one stop shop, makes a pop up
He's a swing and missin’, sugar coated candy man oh
A swing and missin’, sugar coated candyma

n

Bi Thinking: Thank God for Big Papi. Broke up the no-hitter and the shutout with one swing. Maybe we can get back in this thing.

Polar Thinking: You think Papi’s put on weight? You think he’s limping? You think he can make it to the plate without oxygen?

Bi Thinking: After the Yankees get another run Kevin Youklis brings us within one with a one out two run homerun. We’re into the Yankees bullpen their real weakness.
Polar Thinking: Oh please pinch hit for Drew, please hit for Drew.

Bi Thinking: Danm. Drew strikes out, he’s having a tough season

Polar Thinking:

Sweet sugar candy man
He's a one stop, not hot, making his panties drop
Sweet sugar candy man
He's a one stop, not hot, hitting a popup
Sweet sugar candy man
He's a one stop, not hot, hitting a popup
Sweet sugar
Candy man

Bi Thinking: One, two, three in the ninth. Lead down to six. Need to win tomorrow.
Polar Thinking: Honey, where did you hide the anti-depressants?

Bi Thinking: Did you see that the nitwits in the commissioner’s office checked Terry Francona to make sure he was wearing his regular jersey while the game was going on? What is going on with them?

Polar Thinking: First of all, nobody wakes up Tito during a game. Secondly, it was obvious a conspiracy between the Yankees, MLB, and the NYPD to steal the Yankees a win. Typical New York behavior. If the Yankees can’t win the Commissioner’s office needs to come running in and save them.

Bi Thinking: Robinson Cano homers off Curt Schilling while the Red Sox are being held hitless again.

Polar Thinking: Robinson Cano? Robinson Cano? Who the hell starts a 40-year-old guy in a game anyway? Where’s the vodka?

Bi Thinking: Only down two and the first two guys on in the seventh, let’s go Sox.
Polar Thinking: Oh sweet fancy Moses it’s JD Drew. Pinch-hit someone, anyone.

Bi Thinking: Perfect double play ball but A-Rod starts being A-Rod, Youklis avoids the tag and the Sox are at first and third with one out.

Polar Thinking: Another A-Rod screw up He helped us win in ’04 and he is going to do it again.

Bi Thinking: The Umpires are talking but they can’t reverse the call, the second base Umpire had the best view

Polar Thinking: Cry all you want Torre the call ain’t changi

Bi Thinking: Oh come on they changed the call. He was no out of the baseline, that’s a bad call.

Polar Thinking” What….I can’t…..how can you????? You bastard’s….cheating….I see light….Is that you Grandma???? Is that my dog Skippy?

Bi Thinking: Of course it was Drew. He’s a one stop, not hot, hitting a pop up
Polar Thinking: Candy man! Candy man!

Bi Thinking: Everything comes apart in the eighth as the Yankees score three more to make the sweep official.

Polar Thinking: Why can’t we get Asian players like that?

Bi Thinking: Hey Joba Chamberlain just threw two pitches at Youklis? It isn’t enough to sweep you got to headhunt too? God: it doesn’t matter. The game’s over. Probably the season too. I tried to hang in there but it’s ’78 all over again.

Polar Thinking: Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!

Bi Thinking: Well what the fuck we supposed to do you moron? Torre dropped the big one. We can’t stop them

Polar Thinking: What the fuck happened to the Red Sox Nation I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? "Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Polar Man, we might get in trouble." Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this. Chamberlain, he's a dead man! Jeter, dead! A-Rod...

Bi Thinking: Dead! Polar Man is right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now give me the Vodka and the anti-depressants I haven’t slept in four days.

And so a Yankee sweep brings together the two sides of a divided nation. How will we ever repay you?

Owen Wilson explains suicide attempt

2007-08-30T11:47:00.000-07:00

first posted at pug bus

LOS ANGELES – Owen Wilson has finally explained the reason for his suicide attempt on Sunday. During a conference call from his private suite in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Wilson told reporters he had been “kicking back doing ‘shrooms and bong hits” with his good friend Matthew McConaughey the night before.

Early Sunday morning as McConaughey left for home, the “totally trashed” actor said to Wilson, “Goodnight, Luke.”

“That majorly freaked me out,” said Wilson. “I started thinking, ‘Bummer, man. I’m not the blonde, tousled star, the dewy-eyed, sensitive while still ruggedly handsome dude. I’m his horse-faced, balding, loser brother.’”

Stunned by this case of mistaken identity, the star of You, Me and Dupree and Starsky & Hutch, who generously has allowed his brother Luke to be in movies like The Royal Tenenbaums so he could get off food stamps, decided death was preferable to living as his younger, less talented sibling.

“You know, I was thinking,” Wilson continued, “here I am, this loser who can’t open a movie, has to ride on Vince Vaughn’s or Will Ferrell’s coat tails, played some chick’s boyfriend in his only number one movie, and my brother is just the most beautiful guy. I couldn’t stand it, so I took some pills and tried to cut my wrist. Luckily, because I thought I was Luke, I fucked it up like he’s fucked up everything in his miserable life.”

When asked if his breakup with former lover Kate Hudson had anything to do with his suicide attempt, Wilson admitted that it did.

“How would you feel if your brother got to fuck Kate Hudson, but she wouldn’t let you fuck her if you were the last man on earth? I mean the best Luke ever did was a quick reach around from Kate Hepburn at Sundance, which was most likely an accident. I, of course, did old Kate right up the chute. She told me she liked my eyes.”

Wilson said that even after he had had his stomach pumped at Cedars-Sinai, he was still crying and begging the staff not to tell his brother Owen what he had done.

“Finally, somebody slapped me and said, ‘You are Owen, you douche.’

“I said to myself, ‘Goddamn, I am. Those must have been some wicked ‘shrooms.’”

When a reporter asked if Wilson had discussed his experience with his brother Luke, he said, “Nah. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings and have him rushing out and sucking on the tail pipe of his Volvo.”

The Man Who Killed Baseball (Notes from an alternate universe

2007-08-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

The Man Who Killed Baseball

“1918,” my father said, coughing, a soft spray of blood coming out of his mouth, and he heaved one more time, as if all the pain of those years was released from his body, and he could finally rest, no longer cursing Harry Frazee, who Dad called “The man who killed baseball.”

It was January of 2004. My father, a lifelong smoker, a condition he blamed on “those god danm Yankees,” had finally succumbed to the lung cancer he had been warned about his entire life.

When we sat in the doctor’s office the previous July, when he was given the news, and told his condition was terminal, he looked up to the heavens, and said “just let them win this once.”

I was sitting with him in the hospital late that night when his dream died. Bret Boone took a Tim Wakefield knuckle ball into the right field stands at Yankee Stadium. His spirit disapeered into the early autumn night with that ball; it took his body three winter months to catch up.

I got my love of baseball from my father, and my love of science, and may I immodestly say brilliance, from my mother. What brought these two mismatched lovers together I do not know, but when I was 12, and the plane carrying her home from a conference in Vienna disapeered into the Mediterranean, my father and I weren’t just conjoined through baseball, but mutual heartbreak

It was at that time that I first began to dream of time travel, to appear in that airport, to stop her from getting on that plane, that would make everything right again.

I stopped playing baseball then, I stopped playing everything. My worried father would tell the therapists I spent all my time with my head in science books, unless I was at his side watching a ball game. He thought I was trying to escape into a world of my own.

But the world I was escaping into wasn’t one of my own, but our own, where we would be together as a family again. Despite my devoting every free second to the pursuit of time travel, I made no progress.

I did, however, keep my grades high enough to be admitted into MIT where I fell under the tutelage of Professor Zeigler, a brilliant man who had secretly worked in the field of time travel to bring back his parents, lost in the holocaust.

I will not bother you with the details, there is no way to begin without following it to the end, and it would take volumes. Suffice it to say that slowly the Professor and I made progress.

Our goal was to move an inanimate object a few seconds ahead in time. We decided on a pencil. We laid it in our time traveling chamber, set the coordinates for ten seconds ahead, and then turned the dial, and waited, but nothing happened.
We tried for several weeks. Occasionally the pencil would fade, but come back. Professor Zeigler, a man blessed like my father, with a beautiful, intelligent wife, began to doubt the wisdom of continuing the project. “If there is one thing playing with time has taught me is that there is so little of it,” he said, as he put his scarf on one day and left me alone.

I continued to make slight adjustments to the machine. I worked for weeks alone. Occasionally Professor Zeigler would stop by, but my lack of progress caused him to lose interest.

I was alone, late at night, holding the pencil, when I realized that we were going about it wrong, we couldn’t go forward into something that hadn’t happened. We needed to go back.

We had assumed going forward would be easier to prove, but, if I bit this pencil, then sent it back five minutes, I would have two pencils with identical bite marks and would have proven time travel possible.

With shaking hands I put the pencil to my mouth and began to chew on it. I then placed it in the machine. It was 11:45 PM. I set the coordinates for the pencil to appear at 11:40 PM in Room 213 of the MIT main laboratory, next door where I was working. I prayed for success. I clicked the mouse to send, and looked down at the pencil. It shimmered once, twice, and then was back, and I thought I had failed.

I got up and opened the door to the room 213, turned on the lights and began searching. After a fruitless 20-minute search I turned to leave when I saw something lying under the instructor’s desk. I had to get down on my hands and knees to reach for it.

It was a pencil, I could tell that, and when I brought it into the light, I saw the teeth marks. I stood using the desk to keep me from swooning. I knew it was the same pencil, but to be sure, I had to compare them.

With the pencil in my left hand I ran into the lab and opened the machine with my right, holding the two pencils near one another, and then I saw a blinding light, and felt myself falling into darkness.

When I awoke my father was sitting by my bed. He began to hurriedly gather doctors and nurses who asked me hundreds of questions then consulted, then talked to my father, who came back smiling. “They say you are going to be all right,” he said.

“What happened?” I asked trying to sit up in bed, and then going back down as my head throbbed.

“The building exploded,” my father said. “Danmdest thing, they can’t figure out why.”

I tried to clear the fog in my mind. “The pencil,” I said.

“A pencil?” my father looked at me quizzically. “A pencil did not blow a hole in the side of that building.”

Yes it did.

I asked him if Professor Zeigler had been by to see me.

“Only every day, he’s really concerned about you.”

“Find him, tell him I need to see him,” I said.

“The Doctors say what you need is rest.”

“Dad, please, find him, and tell him it’s about the pencil.”

My father looked at me shaking his head then stood. “If you would rather spend time with your professor buddy than me,” he said.

“Dad, please, after I see the professor we can spend the rest of the day together, I just need to talk to him about the explosion.”

My father put a comforting hand on my knee and then left.

I fell asleep and when I awoke the Professor was next to my bed, a scowl across his face.

“You sent the pencil backwards didn’t you?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“We were only going to send things forward.”

“But I thought it would be easier to prove, and it was, I did it.”

The professor sighed. “Yes you did, and when you brought two pencils both made of the same matter together you caused an explosion that blew up the lab. You were very lucky to survive.”

I began to ask and he held up his hand. “The machine is gone, there is nothing left.”

I sunk down on the bed, my eyes filling with tears. He put a hand on my wrist. “It’s all right, you proved something to me, we can’t go back to a time where we exist. I was born during the holocaust, if I met myself, the explosion would be much larger than one caused by two pencils, it could be of nuclear proportions.”

“So it’s over,” I said.

“I’m afraid it is.”

We sat in silence. “What if we went back even further?” I asked.

“Once we begin to change history the ramifications could affect the entire world, both good and bad.”

I sat up in the bed, ignoring the pain. “What if we stopped the death of Arch Duke Ferdinand, stopping World War I, no Treaty of Versailles, no reason for Hitler to rise to power. We could stop the Holocaust. World War I, World War II. We have in our grasp the power to bring peace to the world.”

“We don’t know what power we have,” he said. “What history would be written if Ferdinand did not die?”

“But we could find out,” I said. “At least let me return to work on the machine, chances are I won’t get it to work again anyway, but if I do, then we can decide.”

“This would be a full time proposition, then is no money in it, how will you survive?”

“My Dad will let me stay with him, there’s still money left from my mother’s estate.”

He rubbed his beard. “You were doing this because of your mother, the pencils have proven you cannot save her, why are you still obsessed with its success?”

I hadn’t realized that, and spent several minutes thinking. “But I could see her,” I said quietly. “See her before I was born.”

He shook his head. “We will talk later of this my friend,” he said rising. “Your father is in the hall, acting like a jealous boyfriend, I shall let him back in, and I shall think of your proposition, although I think it will be the ruin of us all.”

My father came in and sat down, sulking, until I began to talk about the Sox, which started him on one of his rants, and I could continue to brood over the time machine.

Two days later, as I was about to be released, Professor Ziegler returned, and placed a check for $250,000 on the table. “Use this money to build your machine,” he said. “Under the condition that you do not use it unless I am there.”

I picked the check up with shaking hands, unable to find the words to thank him, but he was already moving towards the door.

“And one other thing,” he said. “Make it large enough for a human to be transported.”

He passed my father on the way out, who did not acknowledge the professor. He asked me what was in my hand but I quickly shoved it into my pocket and told him it was just a note.

I spent two weeks at home, convincing my father that I was resting while I put together every bit of information I had backed up on to my personal computer about the time machine.

I found a classified advertising a tanning salon that was closing and I rented it and moved my computers there. I told my father I would be managing it, and while he found it an odd choice, I knew he would never visit.

Truthfully the doors were never unlocked. For 14 hours a day I would stay locked inside rebuilding the machine, and using one of the tanning beds as the transporter.
Looking back, I realize it took three years to build. During that time I was unaware the passage of time, only the Sox season.

Finally it was ready for testing, and I called the cell phone number scrawled on the back of the Christmas card I had received from the Professor, who now lived in Cape Cod, having retired.

Before I could say a word he asked if it was ready and I said yes. He told me he would contact me again and not to touch it.

I spent the next week in the empty saloon, with the machine, being more tempted to use it every day, until one night, just when I was going to close, there was a rapping at the door.

I opened it and saw the professor, balder, now walking with a cane. He hurried past me without saying hello and put his hands on the transporter.

“You used a tanning bed?” he asked.

“I needed something for human transport, with an electrical base.”

He nodded then sat down at the computer. “Do we set the coordinates the same way?” he asked.

I said we did and he began opening windows, setting his time of leaving, in five minutes!

“You are going to use this now?” I asked.

“What better time?” he asked setting his landing point in Warsaw Poland, at a certain longitude and latitude, in 1924.

“We should test it on an animal, a pencil, something!” I said, partly in worry for my mentor, partly because I felt like a father watching someone play with his child for the first time.

“There is only one way to prove this works,” he said setting his return time for two minutes. “And that is to do it ourselves.”

He walked over to the tanning bed and opened it. “I have never climbed into one of these, it is like a coffin isn’t it?”

I grabbed his frail arm. “Hold on. I can’t let you do this.”

“Young man,” he said sternly. “I funded your little project, now it is my time to see if it works, that was our agreement, now are you going to help me get into this contraption?”

I took his arm and he climbed in and lay on the bed. “Does the top have to be closed?” I looked at the computer, and told him yes, but we still had two minutes.

“Why are you doing this? Why Poland? Why 1922? Why two minutes.”]

He lay back, as if, indeed, he was in a coffin with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Miriam is dying,” he said, his eyes staring upwards, filling with tears. “Pancreatic cancer, there is nothing to be done.”

“And what can be done in Poland in 1922?”

“She was born on the land I will be visiting, and she has told me of a lily field outside her window there. The most beautiful lilies. When the Nazi’s came and took her they trampled those lilies. What she would not give to see them again. What I would not risk to make it happen.”

I felt my eyes moisten. “We don’t know what will happen,” I said.

“Whatever happens will be for love, how can something done for love be wrong?”
I nodded, and shut the top. I watched with one eye the clock count down, and the other on him, waiting, to go back to a time before he was born.

The count down hit zero and then the tanning bed began to glow. I heard the Professor gasp. His entire body became rigid. I went to open the tanning bed but I couldn’t. Then in horror I saw him disappear.

I went to the computer as it counted the time until his return. Each second crept by as I turned from looking at the bed to the computer until the clock read 0:00.

I looked back in the bed. The Professor lay in the same position he had left, but on his chest was a beautiful lily.

I grabbed a hold of the top and ripped it open. His eyes were shut. I called out his name. I felt his hands, which were warm. His eyes opened. He saw me. He began to laugh, and continued to until tears fell from his eyes.

“Get me out of this thing!” he said. I reached down. “Be careful of the flower!” he shouted. I got him standing, and held on to him, as his balance had been affected.

A bright smile came across his face. “It was surprisingly cold,” he said. My brow furrowed. “In Poland, in 1922, very cold, I really didn’t dress for it.”

I pulled out my chair and told him to sit. I then squatted before him like he was a religious icon. “Tell me everything,” I said.

“At first, I thought you had killed me. I floated, for five, ten seconds, and then I slowly began to focus, on the cold ground, the blue sky, the grass, and I looked to my left, and there were the lilies. I could reach out and touch them; they were so golden, so beautiful. Then I plucked one. It smelled perfect.” He held it to his nose. “It still does, smell it,” I tentatively did. “I did not know how much time had elapsed, and I didn’t want anyone to see me, so I laid back on the grass and waited, and began to float again, and landed in your marvelous contraption.”

He stood and wrapped me in a hug. I had never known him to show such affection. “I have to go see her now, I have to bring her this,” he said. He then grabbed my face and kissed me on the lips. I was too stunned to say anything. I fell back in the chair smiling. Then I too began to laugh. I had done it.

I opened a word document and began to type out ideas of changes we could make with this wonderful machine, and also safeguards we would have to take to make sure it was never ill used.

I didn’t know how long I had been sitting there when the door opened and the Professor, his suit disheveled, entered, his eyes filled with tears, his face red with anger. “What did you do?” he yelled rushing at me, and then he began to hit me with his frail hands.

I took his blows then grabbed his hands. I carefully spun him around and lowered him until he was seated. “What happened?” I asked. His face collapsed. He put his face in his hands and he wept.

I patted his back and tried to talk to him, then got him some tissue, and water. He sat back, then saw the machine and began pounding on it. I had to hold him again and his feet began to kick at the computer. “Curse that machine, destroy it, destroy it now!” he yelled.

I wheeled the chair from the machine and put my arms on either side of him as he began to weep again. “You have to tell me what happened. Did Muriel not want the flower?”

He looked up at me coldly. “There is no Muriel,” he said. “There’s a Harriet, there’s a Harriet in my home, in my kitchen, in my wedding pictures. There’s no Muriel!” he screamed hysterically. “There’s Harriet, I don’t know a Harriet!” he began to weep again.

“Of course you do dear,” a woman said.

I turned to see an elderly woman, with a cane, standing in the doorway. “We have been married for 45 years,” she said.

“No!” the Professor shouted, stumbling backwards, holding up his hands, until he was in the far corner of the room.

“Tell him!” she said looking at me, her face contorted in fear. “Tell him I am his wife.”

But I couldn’t. I had never met the woman before.

She kept walking towards him. “Keep away from me, keep away from me!” he cried sinking to the floor and weeping. I went to him and lifted him, but his eyes had glassed over, and he stared ahead. I carried him to the tanning bed, the only place I had to lie him down, and called 911.

They said they would be there shortly. I bent down over the Professor, who stared into space, while the woman claiming to be his wife begged him to speak. “Tell him, tell him!” she said to me.

Then her face grew angry. “He said he was coming here to see you, and then he comes back with some flower, and he doesn’t know me. What did you do to him? What is that contraption he is in?”

“It’s just a tanning bed,” I said to the stranger. “I don’t know where he got the flower, we just talked about my future, that is all,” I said lying. I wanted to tell her the truth, and if I had any idea who she was I would have.

The paramedics came first, followed by the police, who took his “wife’s” statement first, and then mine. The police asked me about the tanning bed attached to all the cables. I said I was doing a study on the effects of tanning. While I didn’t think he believed me, he was also not interested in discovering the truth.

I visited the Professor the next day. While his wife was cold to me, rightfully blaming me for what had happened to her husband, I was able to find out that his brilliant mind had suffered such a shock that it had shut down, perhaps forever. I wanted to say goodbye to my old friend, and to assure him, even if he couldn’t understand, that I would never use the machine again. But the wife stood in the doorway, making certain I understood my presence was not welcome.

I went back to the salon with every intention of destroying the machine, but I couldn’t. I did unhook the cables and carefully store them in the back room, and then moved the table away from the bed when an envelope fell to the floor.

I picked it up off the floor and saw written in the Professor’s flowing script “Miriam.” I opened the envelope, and took out the blank card. I opened it.

“My dearest Miriam:

“If I do not return I am sure my able assistant shall return this to you. I went on a mission of the utmost urgency, to make you smile that beautiful smile once again, and if I shall not return, then take comfort that your days are numbered too, and when you enter the brilliant light of eternity, it will be I waiting for you, holding one perfect lily from the world’s one perfect garden, and then we will eternally sleep together.”

I don’t know how long I stared at the card. I went to shred it, and then stopped, and slipped it into my jacket pocket, just as proof that she did exist, once, and as a beacon of hope that someday that love could return.

I could destroy it all, the computer, the tanning bed, even track down all the back up discs I had made, but I could never erase the ability from my mind. The only way to thoroughly destroy the machine was to destroy me, and I was far too much a coward to do that.

I did need to know how the Professor’s two minutes in 1922 caused Miriam to never be born. It took days of internet searches until I found a reference.

It was on a poorly written site dedicated to the paranormal that said an Ethel Grossman, of Warsaw, a 24 year old woman, at home with her husband, was sitting by a window looking out a the lily fields, when, she swore, a man appeared, dressed in a suit. He picked a lily, and just as quickly disapeered.

Young Ethel could not convince her husband of what she had seen, and he, worried that her fantasies would interfere with his business interests, had her put in a sanitarium where she remained the rest of her days.

There was a picture of the couple just after their marriage posted besides the story. I knew the picture well. It had sat on the mantel at the Professor’s home. A perfectly preserved picture of Miriam’s parents.

I shut down the computer, gathered my belongings, and left the tanning salon, planning on never going back. I continued to pay the rent each month from my mother’s trust, and would still tinker in my mind of modifications I could make.

The Professor died a year later, and at his funeral I met Greta, his daughter. The professor had been childless until his trip to Poland, so we had somehow created a life.

And that life changed my life. She told me stories about the Professor I couldn’t have possibly known, and I did the same. Soon we were inseparable. Despite the prostrations of her mother we were married less than a year after the Professor’s death.

I took a job teaching at the University, and never told Greta about the empty tanning salon that I was still renting, what it contained, or the trip her father had taken that had changed all our lives.

Six months after my son was born my father was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. I spent hours every day at the hospital as he slowly wasted away, until the day he finally passed, with 1918 on his lips.

I stood at the internment next to Greta holding my son, two gifts given to me by that machine, while looking at the box that contained my father’s discontented soul, and I heard a voice whispering through the leafless skeleton trees. “Go back.”

That night I told Greta I needed time alone. I went to an old cigar box and took out a key. I also took out a small purple bag. I kissed her goodbye.

I drove to the tanning salon. I booted the now ancient computer. I logged on to the internet. I did a search, looking for one day, when I could have one minute with the man, and change the course of my father’s life.

I opened the bag and tried to calculate to see it I had enough. I set the date, Christmas day, 1919. The place, an alley off of Park Avenue. The time 6:00 AM. Duration, six hours, most of which would be in hiding. Departure in ten minutes.

I used that time to write out a letter to Greta explaining everything if I did not come back. But it was a chance I had to take for my father.

I then laid down and waited, my heart racing, sweat dripping from my skin, and I began to pray, because I was breaking all of the Lord’s laws.

Then I felt myself floating, and then cold, extreme cold, and wet, and I sat up. There was snow and ice under me, it was dark, the wind slammed down the alley cutting through me. I was in New York. It was 1918. Across the street lived the one man who could make my father’s life complete, and hopefully, in my pocket, was enough to convince him to do so.

I stayed in that alley five hours, trying to keep myself from freezing, and from just going to that door and knocking on it, interrupting whatever Christmas festivities may be ongoing. I had one hour left, and I had to make a decision soon.

Then the door opened, and the man came out, bundled against the cold. I was, at first, too stunned to move, then I did, despite the protests of my cold legs and feet.

“Mr. Frazee! Mr Frazee!” I yelled.

The startled man stopped. “Well my God young man you came out of nowhere.”
I didn’t acknowledge my appearance. “Sir, five minutes of your time. I know you are going to sell Babe Ruth to the Yankees tomorrow.”

“And good riddance too! That man is nothing but a nuisance. Glad to be rid of the drunken buffoon, leaving my team on the last day of the season. I can’t have that. And I don’t want to listen to someone defending him either.” He turned to leave.

I took his arm. “Unhand me before I call a constable!” he said.

I let him go, reached into my pocket, and pulled out the purple bag. “There is $150,000 in gold coins in this bag Mr. Frazee, which I will give to you, on your word that you will never cut or trade Babe Ruth.”

“What is this foolishness?” he asked.

“$150,000 for nothing. It’s yours. I know the league is putting pressure on you, I know the Globe has taken out a lien on you for Fenway Park, this takes care of all your problems, and all you have to do, is not trade or cut Babe Ruth.”

Frazee took the bag and looked inside. “This is the most damn fool thing anyone has ever said to me you know that don’t you?”

“You do this,” I told him, “and you will be remembered as a hero.”

“Does it have to be Ruth, he is a drunk, he has no respect for the game, all he cares about is money.”

“Yes,” I said. “If you trade or cut him, I will take this money back, now do we have an agreement as gentlemen?”

He looked at the money. “If this weren’t Christmas I would have you locked up in Bellevue,” he said. “All right sir,” he took my bare right had in his expensively gloved one, and shook it. “I will not sell Babe Ruth to the Yankees, or anyone else tomorrow, nor shall I cut or trade him. You have a deal.”

“Thank you sir, you will not regret this,” I said. “I must now go, and you must never speak of this transaction or my presence hear again, do you understand?”

“Well who would believe me?” he asked. “You have yourself a Merry Christmas,” he turned and walked up Park Avenue.

I went back to the alley. I had more than 40 minutes to wait and they were the longest of my life. What had I done?

I don’t know if it was from the strain, or from the cold, but I fell asleep, and when I awoke I was in the tanning bed.

I opened it and ran outside. I got in the car and quickly drove home and what I saw made my heart stop. My father’s old Chrysler was parked in front of the house.

I ran inside. He was talking to Greta, sweet Greta, still there, looking at our son. Tears fell from my eyes.

“Son, I know I shouldn’t have just shown up,” but I cut him short as I wrapped him in a bear hug.

“Whoa,” he said. “After five years I wasn’t expecting you to talk to me never mind this,” he said.

I released the hug and held him by his frail shoulders. “Five years, what are you talking about?”

A hand went to his face. “Oh God don’t tell me you’ve turned out to be a drunk like your old man.”

“A drunk? You hardly ever drink.”

He pulled away from me. “There you go again with your wise-guy stuff.” He began to shout. “Let me tell you sonny boy it took me years of meetings to get to the point where I can face you and you’re just going to crack jokes at my expense.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry Greta, it was nice to meet you and the little fella but I never should have thought I could get through his thick skull.”

I was too stunned to move. “You have to follow him,” Greta said.

I did. “Dad!” I called as he was putting the key in his car door lock. He ignored me opening it. I caught up to him.

“Dad, help me understand, what was it that led to your drinking?”

“You know as well as I do that it was your mother’s death, and you’re ignoring me afterwards, always pouring over those science books. A man gets lonely at night. It’s no excuse for drinking, but still.”

“But what about watching the Sox Dad?”

He slapped me. I felt my eyes fill with tears. He had never hit me.

“I may be a lot of things but I never raised you to be cruel,” he said, his voice breaking. “You can get treatment for being a drunk, but you get nothing for being cruel.” He got in the car. “Oh, and not that you cared, but it seemed I stopped drinking a little too late, my liver’s gone, doctor gives me two months, don’t make a special trip to the funeral.”

I watched him speed off. I could not move from the spot. Greta came to the door, and guided me inside. “I saw what happened, he shouldn’t have slapped you.”

My hand went to where he had hit me. “Yes he should have,” I said.

I walked into my office and called up a search engine, but for what? I typed in Babe Ruth and found a wikipedia reference.

“Babe Ruth was a pitcher outfielder for the Boston Red Sox who was suspended for life by Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis after allegedly throwing games during the 1921 season. Ruth long claimed that Red Sox owner Harry Frazee framed him but could not prove the charges. With the suspension of Ruth a year after the Black Sox Scandal baseball faded as the National pastime and Major Leagues folded during the second World War.”

I couldn’t breathe. My eyes were filled with tears. I typed in Harry Frazee.

“Owner of the Boston Red Sox who is long thought to have framed pitcher outfielder Babe Ruth for gambling. The suspension led to the collapse of the major leagues. Much suspicion has fallen on a mysterious man who Frazee met on Christmas Day in 1920 and gave the owner a purple bag with $150,000 worth of gold in it. The man was never seen again but is known as ‘the man who killed baseball.’”

I felt Greta’s hands on my trembling chest as tears fell from my eyes. “I’m sorry sweaty,” she said kissing my head. “Maybe if my father had lived long enough you two could have built that time machine, gone back and stopped whoever that awful man was, then your father could have his baseball back and would never have turned to alcohol.”

She stood running her hands up my body. “But I think my father was right, god knows what you could wrought if you went back in time.”

She shut out the light as she left the room leaving the man who killed baseball weeping softly as his computer.

Vatican Airlines flying the holy skies

2007-08-28T09:05:00.000-07:00

First published at http://www.pugbus.net/index.shtml

Vatican Airlines, the world’s first airline for Catholic pilgrims had it’s initial flight on Monday, and one gleeful disembarking passenger said this was the first trip in a year he didn’t get stuck with the kosher meal.

The plane features Vatican logos on the headrests and nunardesses, nuns who serve needs of the passengers.

First class passengers have their sins forgiven, given absolution for any subsequent sins, an annulment if needed and a papal blessing. In coach passengers received a shot of wine and a ‘Nilla wafer.

There were several complaints of lost luggage and delays. Cardinal Camillo Ruini of Italy said all complaints are handled by saying: “It is God’s will my child. Hah-hah suck on that Jet Blue.”

Destinations range from the shrine of Fatima to Mount Sinai. “Oh, and Vegas baby!” added Ruini.

Religious messages are broadcast from the cockpit. They range from “Look at the beautiful mountains the Lord has made,” to “You are all protected on this flight by the Lord,” to “Jesus Christ the landing gear is stuck!” to “Holy mother of Christ we’re all going to die,” to “Goddanmit we landed safely.”

The Vatican is aiming to serve 150,000 pilgrims each year and also offer parachuteless jumps for hundreds of Jews each year.

Study Shows Nana and Poppa Still Get It On

2007-08-24T12:06:00.001-07:00

Studies show that elderly people are as active, or more sexually active than their children, participating in vaginal intercourse, oral sex, and masturbation despite their advanced age.

The study is especially surprising given the sexual mores of the generation.

“Now that I’m already blind what the hell do I care if I masturbate!” Tom Dylan of Seattle said.

Jane Stacy, a 94 year old paraplegic who is cared for by her husband Van said that their love life was sparked after she showered and he placed her in her chair to dry and fell face down in her twat. “I said, ‘as long as you’re down there Van tend to the clitoris,’ which I was most happy to say he did,” Jane said. When asked what she tasted like Van shrugged his shoulders and said “Depends
”
Peter Roth of Detroit began to have sexual relations with his wife of 54 years when he was ordered to exercise. “Beats walking,” he said

Dr. Bruce Taylor of the Center for Erectile Dysfunction said that this news may be more shocking for children in their 50’s to learn that their parents are still rogering, or Dad’s doing Aunt Bessie since Mom’s passing. Bruce Young, a steelworker from Pennsylvania has been hospitalized since finding his 80-year-old parents buck-naked and in his bed in the 67 position. His mother said after her hip operation she can’t make it to 69.

Over 50 percent of the elderly between the ages of 57 and 75 say they still masturbate. Those that don’t say its because they can never find the batteries.

Among those who suffer from a sexual dysfunction 43% said vagina lubrication was a problem 39% said inability to climax, 34% said erectile dysfunction and 98% said it was because the were having sex with someone 92 years old.

That a'int no Baby Ruth in the pool it's a Gun Confiscation Rudy

2007-08-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

Link to Fred Thompson's blog on Guiliani's gun plan here

FEC(al) Don't Mean Shit

2007-08-24T11:53:00.001-07:00

Fred Thompson blog on FEC complaint here

While Leagues Punish Players, NHL Offenders Skate

2007-08-23T08:30:00.001-07:00

Imagine if OJ Simpson was named head coach of the Buffalo Bills.
Or Ron Artest coach of the Indiana Pacers then spent the rest of his career as a revered legend in the Hoosier state.
Imagine Alan Iverson killing a teammate while violating the law and having him turned into a sympathetic character beloved by all.
Imagine Pacman Jones waiting for a receiver to be alone over the middle, nowhere near the ball, and delivering a head to head blow breaking his neck. Imagine Pacman being suspended for a season, which he never serves because of a work stoppage, and the league, decides, when play begins, to waive the suspension, because he has shown remorse.
Imagine if several NFL players were sentenced to jail and not only did the league do nothing about the problem, but the media mentioned nary a word.
Imagine Jose Offerman, if he had actually fulfilled his intention to injure and left his target with a Grade 3 concussion, becoming a color commentator for the Arizona Diamondbacks and doing cameos on ABC Family shows.
Imagine if Michael Vick was found guilty of the charges he is facing but he wasn’t suspended and his sentence was wrapped around the NFL schedule so he didn’t have to miss any games. And imagine the media didn’t care.
In what kind of twisted world would something like this occur? Only one: The National Hockey League.
While OJ Simpson will never be allowed on a coaching staff, as part of a team’s front office, or in the broadcast booth after being found innocent of killing his wife and another man (not that I believe the verdict was justice) Craig MacTavish, is the head coach of the Edmonton Oilers, despite being found guilty of killing a woman in 1984 while driving under the influence of alcohol. While MacTavish didn’t premeditate the murder of the mother of his children, he still killed a woman, was sentenced to jail, and is in a position no one would ever dream of bequeathing to Simpson.
When the day comes that Ron Artest passes from this earth, near the top of his obituary will be his storming into the stands in Detroit to use his fists to pummel a fan. Artest’s brutal display earned him a season long suspension and is baggage that he will carry through the rest of his life. Any post-career NBA work is as unlikely as snow in Barbados. On the day after Christmas in 1979 Boston Bruins winger Terry O’Reilly led a charge into the stands at Madison Square Garden to avenge teammate Stan Jonathan who had his stick taken by a fan and hit in the head with it. O’Reilly, with glove, and stick, began to pummel the fan. He received an eight game suspension, became Bruins coach, is a legend in Boston for his toughness, and was Happy Gilmore’s favorite hockey player.
While there is no evidence that any NBA player ever killed a teammate while breaking the law, Dany Heatly killed teammate Dan Snyder while driving to endanger on September 23, 2003. He was found guilty of vehicular homicide and received a suspended sentence. The NHL found no need to suspend him. This past year he was a first team all-star. The accident is barely mentioned. One has to wonder if Iverson, a player as talented in his sport as Heatly is in his, had killed a teammate driving recklessly, it would be forgotten so easily.
Again, we can only imagine Pacman Jones breaking the neck of an opponent on a play where neither was near the action. We don’t have to imagine that with Todd Bertuzzi who sucker punched Steve Moore and broke his neck. He was arrested for assault and causing serious bodily harm. He received probation for his actions. He was suspended for a season by the NHL, but the players were locked out that year, and when the gates were unlocked, Bertuzzi was graciously allowed inside. He was also chosen to play for Canada in the 2006 Olympics. If football becomes an Olympic sport in 2008 and Pacman is selected by the league to be on the team the media earthquake will make Peru look like a vibrating bed. And let’s not forget, he didn’t break another player’s neck.
With the arrests of Pacman, Tank Johnson, Michael Vick, Artest, and Stephen Jackson the NBA and NFL respectively took steps to suspend the offenders. In the NHL Alex Zhamnov plead guilty to DUI, Pete Worrell spent ten day in jail for DUI, and Sergi Fedorov was found guilty of impaired driving in 2002. All these actions could have led to the deaths of innocent individuals. The amount of games the NHL suspended the admitted criminals. Zero.
While it seems obvious that Jose Offerman’s career came to an end Wednesday night when he charged the mound with his bat in Bridgeport Ct. with the intent to do bodily harm, Bruin Marty McSorely used his stick on Donald Brashear leaving him with a grade 3 concussion. McSorely was suspended for the rest of the season, but was welcomed back the following year, except his skill level had deteriorated, which kept him out of the game. He bounced back to become a commentator for Fox Sports and the San Jose Sharks, and recently played himself on the ABC family network show Greek. Does anyone imagine they will be hearing the words “Welcome to Game 3 of the NLCS, I am Joe Buck with my analyst Jose Offerman, who you can see Monday night on a brand new Hannah Montana?”
And while Michael Vick awaits a punishment he justly deserves Toronto Maple Leaf winger Mark Bell, who last Labor Day, while intoxicated, rear ended a vehicle leaving the driver injured in San Jose, was sentenced to prison for the infraction, the time to be served in the league’s off-season. Imagine the wringing of hands and outrage of the media if Vick receives a similar deal.
So, while the NAACP supports Vick and other black athletes charged with crimes, and white people shake their heads in disbelief at their knee jerk response to helping a fellow black man, remember the above named white athletes who committed crimes that led to severe injuries or death of innocent people, and were allowed back into the NHL, without nary of word from the mostly white media, and understand that those Vick supporters see this, and wonder how much trouble the Falcons quarterback would be facing if he was a Thrasher defenseman.
There has long been a hypocrisy about the media’s coverage of the NHL. The NHL reporters are white men raised by middle class parents reporting on young white men raised by middle class parents who share the same culture, listen to the same music, were raised the same way. You will often see members of the media say how much they enjoy being in NHL locker rooms and the polite way they are treated. This is code for no boom boxes blasting Hispanic or Hip hop music, no threatening posies protecting the stars, no hard to decipher slang.
But if you are looking for some justice it is this: While the NHL and the media covering it turns a blind eye to the crimes committed by its players, the three major sports in America quickly acts to suspend its lawbreakers, and the media covering them dissect every aspect of their crimes, those three leagues are thriving, and the NHL is dying.
And one is left wondering, has the average fan, from Terry O’Reilly’s assaulting fans, to the unpunished assaults on it’s players, to the special treatment given the players sentenced to prison, become tired of watching a sport that won’t police itself.
Maybe if the NHL and the media covering it want it to become a major sport again, they can start weeding out the bad apples instead of welcoming them back. If it wants to be a major league then perhaps the NHL should start acting like one.

Fred Thompson's take on the Iowa State Fair

2007-08-23T08:23:00.000-07:00

Fred Thompson’s blog on the Iowa state fair

A Mighty Wind is Blowin' For You and Me

2007-08-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

Fred Thompson blog

Little League not just for kids and that may not be a bad thing

2007-08-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

First published at Big Dave on sports

15 years ago, when Little League was the center of my life, a magical land was never spoken of above a whisper, for it represented a season’s hopes and dreams. That magical land was Williamsport.

There was never a reason to mention the “Little League World Series” that took place in that sleepy town each August. It was always “Do you think we can get to Williamsport?”

We came close once, in 1992, when I was a too young President of our local Little League, where, at that time, your all-star team was expected to make it to the state tournament’s final weekend. Twice in the two decades before the league came within one out of winning the State Tournament only to see their opponents capture a walk off victory.

The league had an unofficial college of coaches. While the league champion’s coaches would have the official title, at all star time they would step aside for the veteran coaches with experience. If they balked, then the President would use the power of his office to insure the tradition was maintained.

But I was never one for tradition. I drew the wrath of several people because I used to let the players have pick up games on the field after league contests had ended. I tried to remind everyone that it was for the kids.

The league also had a different color that year. I was working in the housing projects then, and got the league to pay the entry fee for a handful of players, two of whom, both black, were elected to the all-star team, one looked 12 going on 16, and the other was a speedy centerfielder.

When the first all-star practice was called, the coaches insisted they would not take any outside help, and I was asked to use my royal powers to force them aside. I refused, saying they had won the league and had the right to choose who helped them.

The members of the league who objected to the coaches did have a point. They weren’t the best “baseball men.” In fact I convinced them once to spend the night in the batting cages while I had a couple of friends work on hitting the cut off man and base running.

Also they weren’t the most disciplined team. Those words that got a coach and player in hot water when they were aired over ESPN last season were regular visitors in our dugout. Most of all they enjoyed having fun, a band of idiots playing baseball in New England a dozen years before it was to go national.

But, when the double elimination district series started it seemed that the naysayers were correct. They won their first two games, and then lost badly, putting them in the dreaded losers bracket.

In the first inning of their next game they fell behind by eight runs, thanks to the long lost father of the starting pitcher, who not only surprised him by coming to the game, but also decided to give him not needed advice leaving him such a mess he couldn’t record an out.

The game took on a surreal feel from that point, as we slowly started to rally. The field was across the street from a church, and as a bride and her bridesmaids scurried past the backstop dressed in white, some magic seemed to rub off on the boys. They won the game when our relief pitcher, one of those roly-poly home run hitting types, managed the only inside the park homerun of his career, as the outfielder stood over the ball claiming it was under the fence and he could not get it. As our rotund little pitcher huffed around the bases the umpire made a leisurely jaunt to the outfield, and ruled the ball in play, just as the batter reached home, and cried out for oxygen.

This began a streak like what carried the Red Sox in ’04 and Chi-Sox in ’05. They went from the gang that couldn’t throw straight to the gang that couldn’t lose, even when their starting shortstop, at a pool party to celebrate winning the district, fell off the deck and broke his arm.

There was another game they should have lost, just before the state final four, when they were down by one with two out and nobody on in the bottom of the sixth. The backup first baseman, who would go on to be drafted by the Rockies as a pitcher, signing with the University of Alabama, and be on the cover of Baseball America with Rick Ankiel before arm problems forced him from the game, hit a ball deep over the center field fence to push the game into extra innings, and another day.

They won the game the next day. The field where they had played this game was the same park where the state tournament would be held, hidden in the unspoken darkness at the edge of town, of which no local would admit knowledge. Our group got so lost going to the field that we almost had to forfeit. That night, fresh with the thrill of winning, I wrote a column for the local paper, criticizing the field and the state tournament organizers for having the tournament in a small town with a field tucked away in its woods.

After the story ran a friend of mine from the paper called and said that the people in that town weren’t happy, and in fact, were going to kill me if I went to the state finals.

When I arrived for the first game I noticed that they had blown up my picture from the column and had made it into a wanted poster. Luckily I had grown out my hair, a promise not to cut it until the team lost, and no one recognized me, even though I was asked several times if I had seen the rat bastard.

The black kid from the projects, the one who looked 15, started the semi-final game. At 5 feet 9 inches, with huge muscles, and a menacing stare, he was someone most 12 year olds had never faced. We had his teammates spread the word of how many players he had hit that season (a lot) so the batters were bailing out with each pitch. Somehow his control was perfect that day, and the win came easy, putting us in the state finals.

Our opponents at the state finals had beaten us in the championship game once before, with the same coaching staff, and during their practice before the game they ran crisp drills. Our players lay on the grass, threw water on one another, chased eachother around the field, and said words that didn’t belong in the bible. An opposing coach came over to watch and went back to his field saying they had nothing to worry about.

I on the other hand had plenty to worry about. Our coaches had decided in the state finals to start a couple of kids who hadn’t played much. In the state finals. “Told you,” one of the old time coaches snickered. “It’s their team,” I said then went behind the dugout to try and slit my wrist with a blunt rock.

I don’t remember much about the state final. Our roly-poly pitcher didn’t make it out of the first and we went back to the kid who gave up eight runs in his last start. His father had gone back to whatever hole he had crawled out of, the kid pitched lights out, we rallied, stuffed a late inning comeback, then the final out was recorded, we had won the state championship and did the dance of joy.

At the banquet that night I was outed. I did apologize, and when I accepted the trophy I talked about how no one believed this team could win, how our own league turned their backs on us, and how I wasn’t going to the Regionals to lose.

We went to the Regionals and we lost. Quickly.

Today in Bristol Ct players sleep in nice dorms. Then they slept in a school, on cots, all in the same room, with their coaches, in the sweltering July heat, with clogged toilets with no one to fix them, health violations everywhere, and every little league official within earshot claiming everything was fine.

After their first loss we planned to sneak the kids to a hotel so they could relax and use the pool. This was a major rule violation but we were willing to take the chance. Each team had an “Aunt” and “Uncle” assigned to them who, not quite the kindly people they were made out to be, were spies. We told “Uncle Al” we were going to practice, but my young 15 year old looking friend from the projects whispered to him “We’re really going to the hotel pool Uncle Al, don’t tell anybody.” Well, it was that day that he learned a valuable lesson, “don’t trust whitey,” as we were immediately narced out. But we still managed to get to the hotel with a plan no less risky than The Great Escape.

Our act of civil disobedience may have cost us some calls the next day, everyone involved in the tournament was happy to be rid of us. The kids didn’t play well either, just as happy to go home. They spent nine months of the year sleeping in a classroom they didn’t want to do it during their vacation.

Today I see the players occasionally. I saw the black pitcher one day leaving the courthouse. He had been arrested for assault and battery. A friend of his had attacked him for no reason and he had fought back. After the fight he found out it was because his attacker had just found out that our semi-final winning pitcher was his baby’s Daddy. “Hey Ted I’ve got a kid,” he said through his fat lip.

Another lives in my basement. It’s not like that. I’m married to his mother. He just left for the Stan Musial World Series in Houston, still chasing the dream.

I watch the games on ESPN, seeing children play with an enthusiasm never matched by their elders. For them it is the thrill of their lives; for now. But ahead of them are other triumphs. Even greater sports victories, college, marriage, their own children.

For the adults watching, their own triumphs are harder to see, slowly fading in the rear view mirror. Their child getting the game winning hit, or recording the last strikeout; seeing the expression on their faces, that is the closest they can come to the triumphs of their youth. I still believe it’s about the kids, but it means more to the adults.

So I have any advice to the parents and coaches in the magical land of Williamsport today: enjoy it. It will be over before you know it, and those boys on the field will be men in the blink of an eye.

But don’t fret, grandparents are welcome at Williamsport too.

Jenna Bush engaged with help from Alberto Gonzalez

2007-08-20T08:21:00.000-07:00

First published at pug bus

The White House announced Thursday that Jenna Bush is engaged to be married.
Jenna, 25, is marrying Henry Hager, who is in a Georgetown hospital recuperating from knee surgery. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and former chief of staff Andrew Card snuck into Hager’s recovery room and got the ailing and doped up Hager to propose to the less appealing Bush twin, and to sign a pre-nup leaving him, in case of divorce, with no rights to Jenna’s bush, assets, or asses.
Hager, a former aide of Karl Rove, who reportedly, can’t drive 55, was not considered a serious suitor to Jenna when they began their relationship, but when he graduated first in the Dark Arts from Rovewarts the family began to consider him a potential husband.
Hager’s father John Hager is the chairman of the Virginia Republican party. When asked it there was a connection the President answered. “Well, there’s no connection, I mean, the two aren’t connected, I don’t tell my daughter, my daughter, I whored her out so Fred Thompson could win the primary.”
When asked if this would be a White House wedding Jenna said she hoped so but was worried about the attendance. “Uncle Karl won’t be there,” she said, “or Aunt Harriet, or Uncle Donald, or Uncle Andy, or Uncle Ari, or Uncle Collin, of course being black, he probably wouldn’t have been invited anyway. Who knows how long Uncle Alberto will be here? Uncle Dick could go at any time. Maybe we’ll do it at city hall.”
The President said he was just happy that Jenna would be moving out of the East Wing basement so he could set up his fussball table.

Huck a What?

2007-08-20T08:17:00.001-07:00

Link to Fred Thompson's News Groper post on Mike Huckabee here

Fred Thompson responds to George Will

2007-08-17T10:07:00.001-07:00

Link to Fred Thompson's blog response to George Will attack piece

Fred Thompson's Job Program, one Rove at a time

2007-08-16T13:33:00.000-07:00

Link to Fred Thompson Newsgroper blog

Not All Family Members Aboard Romey's Bus

2007-08-15T09:02:00.001-07:00

PugBus.net

Mitt Romney disclosed that he has a personal fortune of over 250 million dollars and that he was able to buy the Iowa Straw poll for “pocket change.”
96 members of the Romney family flooded Iowa in the weeks before the straw poll to aid his campaign. “Dad has 250 million dollars,” son Tag, who drives the bus that his brothers ride in to stump for their dad, said. “If Pop wants to me steer this thing into the Mississippi for 250 million it’s a done deal.”
Romney is planning to use his personal fortune to buy the votes in several early primary states hoping the momentum will carry him to the presidency. He figures to spend less than five million in New Hampshire promising free drive way plowing for the next four years, the re-carving of the Old Man in the Mountain in his image, and a ban on European leaders jet-skiing in a thong on Lake Winnipesaukee.
Romney hopes to spend ten million buying votes in South Carolina promising free weekend barbeques, building a new racetrack, and fixing each Nascar race so Dale Earnhardt Jr. will win.
In Florida he plans to stick to the more traditional campaign of just paying off the people who count the votes.
Not all Romney family members are happy to see their personal fortunes squandered on their father’s Presidential campaign. Said one son who refused to be identified “If Dad spends every dime he has being elected then we’re going to end up like the Bush twins, drunk, constantly without panties, and having contracted an STD.”
At a function later that day when told of his son’s comments Romney, who is protected by a car similar to the bullet proof Pope mobile except this one only covers his hair, said that, while his sons were not serving in Iraq, they were serving the country by letting their father squander their fortunes leaving them drunk, naked and with crabs, “like many of our soldiers in Iraq.”

Mahatma Romney’s not so magic bus

2007-08-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

Link to Fred Thompson newsgroper blog

Bringing Neifti Perez to Justice

2007-08-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

First posted at Big Dave on sports

Its time we stop disputing if rules were broken and become united in recognizing a cheater for what he is and erase any mention of him from baseball’s archives. Anyone who so blithely ignores the rules of sportsmanship has no place among the game’s greatest players, should be recognized for any achievement, or receive a single Hall of Fame vote.
It is time we wipe Neifi Perez from the record books forever.
This three-time drug test failure, who has used the advantage of illegal substances to lift his career numbers to the heights of Mariano Duncan and Tito Fuentes, needs to face the wrath of an unforgiving nation, and see all his ill-gotten gains besmirched from this great game.
In 1992 Perez was signed by the Colorado Rockies while playing in the Dominican Republic. I decree that Mr. Perez reimburse his signing bonus, which I believe was the cost of a plane ticket, and pay the scout who signed him all medical bills he accrued from drinking the water at the field where he first saw Perez play,
By 1998 Perez had cheated his way to the majors, ending the career of Walt Weiss in Colorado. Weiss, who was on a Hall of Fame path with the Rockies, averaging six homeruns and 30 runs batted in a season, was regulated to the deep woods of baseball, late 90’s Atlanta, ending up withering as the starting shortstop for two years for a team that won over a hundred games, was the starting shortstop for the 1999 All Star team and played in a World Series, while Perez thrived in Colorado leading the league in at bats while hitting a scintillating .280.
1999 was also the year that Perez tantalized the world with his assault on Mark McGwire’s newly minted homerun record. It was July 3, 1999 when people began to take Perez’s run seriously as he went yard twice at Coors Field against the Padres, taking both Woody Williams and Matt Clement deep, giving him seven by the all-star break.
Perez’s assault on McGwire’s record was the talk of Denver for the rest of the season. By the time he hit his 11th against Jason Schmidt at the start of September people were convinced that his hitting 59 homeruns in 27 games was as good as done. It wasn’t until the last week of the season when someone calculated that it would not be possible for him to hit 58 homeruns in ten days did the dream die. But still there was that one magical summer that led Mike Lupica to write his best summer: “Me, Neifti, and My Son Who No Longer Speaks to Me.”
Then came the terrible events of 7-25-01 when the former Kansas City Royals General Manager Allan Baird traded a washed up, slumping slugger, Jermaine Dye, to the Rockies for Perez. It had only been two years earlier when Perez became the 112,614 player to join the 10-10 club hitting 12 homeruns and stealing 16 bases, and, remarkably, he was on the pace to do it again. But Perez, unable to adjust to not playing in the thin mountain air, and perhaps not being able to find a supplier, slumped to hitting .241 with only one homerun. Dye was immediately traded to the A’s where, between there and the White Sox he played in four consecutive postseasons culminating with the World Series MVP in 2005. Baird would lose his job four years later. Maybe Baird, influenced by Perez’s amphetamine inflated numbers into making a disasterours trade, is due the money he would have been paid the past two years if the Perez trade led to his firing. The tentacles of amphetamine abuse in sports even reaches the front office.
Perez continued to struggle in Kansas City and was released in November of 2005, and then on New Year’s Eve Perez got a holiday gift he could never have dreamed of, he was picked up as a free agent by Balco Across the Bay, the San Francisco Giants.
Being near Balco paid almost immediate dividends for Perez who homered September 13, 2003, off of Glendon Rusch for his only homer of the season. Of course adding power subtracts speed and Perez only stole three bases that season, but the Giants gladly traded speed for the 31 clutch runs he knocked in.
In August 2004 the Giants decided to go in another direction, talent, and Perez was again cut adrift. He managed to wash up on the shore of last refuge in the majors, the Cubs.
Maybe Balco gave him a going away gift because Perez managed to hit .372 in 23 games for the Cubs earning him another season.
He pushed Ramon Martinez out the door to become the Cubs full time shortstop in 2005. He fell just short of the covered 10-10 club that year falling one homerun and two stolen bases short. He was also proudly a member of one of the most disappointing teams of the 21st century.
His number slumped in 2006 as he struggled to reach the two homerun one stolen base club, but his fortunes turned when he slipped past dozens of GM’s asleep at the switch and was able to go to the American League Central Division leading Tigers on August 20. He promptly led them to a wild card berth.
He made it into a playoff game and two World Series games going hitless.
Then in 2007 this cheater was finally brought to justice. On July 25 he failed his second test for amphetamines, earning him a 25-day suspension, and August 4 he was suspended for 80 games, apparently needing amphetamines to do the gardening and mow the lawn.
So Perez is at the end of his brilliant career. He may have fallen 36 homeruns short of the 100-homerun clubs, which would make him a virtual lock for the Hall of Fame, if this were 1914. An obviously stunned Tiger team then went on a run overtaking the Indians for first place in the American League central.
So Neifti has finally met justice and the world of baseball is safe again. Maybe we can never make it up to those who suffered from his drug use, the scout who signed him, Walt Weiss, Allan Baird, Ramon Martinez, the Cleveland Indians who felt the brunt of the Tigers’ post Neifti surge, but at least the game is clean again.
And we can concentrate on the achievements of our clean athletes like Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield.
Our national nightmare is over. The mighty Neifti has been struck out.

The Barber of Nixonville

2007-08-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

Link to News Groper Fred Thompson post :

this site.

Disapointed by Red Hot Jeri’s new Lacy

2007-08-12T15:43:00.000-07:00

Link to Fred Thompson News Groper Post

Disapointed by Red Hot Jeri’s new Lacy by Fred Thompson on News ...

Bush's Lyme Disease Linked to Terrorism

2007-08-10T07:51:00.000-07:00

first posted at http://www.pugbus.net

WASHINGTON, D.C. – When President Bush's medical records were released on Wednesday, they revealed that he had been treated for symptoms "consistent with early, localized Lyme disease" in August 2006. Lyme disease is usually contracted through the bite of a deer tick, which the President may have suffered during one of his bike rides.

The White House explained that it had kept this information secret because “it wasn't worth reporting,” but that explanation is belied by the fact that the White House also said it is not ruling out terrorism in this incident.

“It is very easy for a terrorist to sneak a tick into the country,” a national security expert said on the promise of anonymity. “Ticks are so small we don’t have proper screening devices to scan for them. Then, once a terrorist knows where the president rides, how hard is it to plant the tick?”

lthough late night talk show hosts made jokes about the president’s disorientation, mangled syntax, paranoia, forgetfulness, and other symptoms of Lyme disease, the White House believes this is not a laughing matter.

Therefore, starting Monday the National Transportation Safety Board is requiring all travelers entering the country with anything beyond a modest tan to strip down completely and submit to body-
crevice checks. Travelers are being advised to arrive at airports at least thirty to sixty minutes before their scheduled departures, depending on their weight and the number of folds and crevices in their bodies.

Homeland security officials report they have no "actionable intelligence" indicating that al Qaeda is planning to infest the country with ticks but are endorsing this step nevertheless as an overabundance of caution.

At a White House press conference President Bush sought to assure the nation—by directly addressed the tick problem—that he bore no ill effects from his brush with Lyme disease.

"We are facing, uh, an enemy that, uh, enemies, heh-heh, that likes to hide in little, uh, crevices, in orifices, in your, heh-heh, pubic hair, and then they, uh, latch on to you and suck your very blood. Americans have to be, uh, ever vigilant in looking for these terrist bloodsuckers. You’re either with us or, uh, er, with the ticks, heh-heh.”

Big Freddie is the New Ronnie (Reagan Not Paul)

2007-08-10T07:36:00.000-07:00

Link to News Groper Fred Thompson Post

Fred Thompson is the new Ronnie (Reagan not Paul)

Sports Guinea Pig: Suffering So You Don't Have To

2007-08-09T07:18:00.000-07:00

First posted at Big Dave on sports

With so much talk of steroids, dog fighting, and basketball game fixing, I took it upon myself to have first hand experience in all three activities to better explain their effects to you.

First were steroids.

I called up a pharmacist friend of mine and told him that I needed something to get me going, make me large, full of power. He gave me some pills and I scoffed them with a shot of Red Bull.

Two hours later I was large but not necessarily in the area I was hoping for, and I needed desperately to perform a certain bodily function. I called my pharmacist friend and asked him what he prescribed. “What you wanted, Viagra,” he said.

I went to my wife and told her of my predicament and she said “I am going to tell you the same thing I told the kitty when it was stuck in the tree, you got yourself up, you figure out how to get yourself down.”

I ended up going to bed and trying to sleep it off but since I sleep on my stomach I spent the night like Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters sleeping six inches above the covers. (Editor’s Note: According to an e-mail I received from the writer’s wife it was only four inches.)

The next morning the drug had worn off and I began to look through the phone book for a steroids source when I saw a wrestling show was happening at the high school. One trip into the locker room and I had what I needed.

I took the drugs and hurried home, sat at the breakfast table and announced to my wife that I was on the juice. She said: “That’s nice dear, its so hard to clean you’re trousers after you’ve sat in the milk.”

I dressed for work and got in the car, started it, stepped on the gas and put my foot through the floor. I then picked up the car Flintstone style and ran to work carrying it.

First thing I did when I got to the office was change my cell phone ring to Hulk Hogan’s theme song so when I got a call I ripped off my shirt and began posing. When the copier jammed I picked it up and tossed it out the window.

A short while later my glasses frame broke because my head had swollen so much. A quick check in the bathroom mirror showed I had acne on my back and my testicles had shrunk to the size of a four year old’s who had been swimming all day.

I spent the rest of the afternoon at a construction site lifting concrete blocks usually placed by a crane. By quitting time I got a tap on the shoulder and was told to get into a black car where George Mitchell was waiting. After an hour of water boarding I told him everything I knew. By night’s end the Yankees signed me for 16 million a year.

Dog Fighting

This was more secretive than the world of steroids. I placed some carefully worded inquiries on craigslist and soon got a reply. I was to take my dog to an abandoned factory off of Route 95, park it in the back, go in a side entrance, bring the dog, and the money.

I waited until my wife was asleep and then snuck the dog out of the house. I found the warehouse, put the dog in her cage and entered the building.

It was there that I found a dozen other men like me, with similar dogs, getting ready to compete. The first fighter was in the ring and he was asked whom he’d like to take on. “Tell the new guy to bring his mutt over here,” he said.

I opened my cage. Foley, named for professional wrestler Mick Foley, and thereby a true fighter, jumped out. I picked her up.

She looked in my eyes with fierce determination and I scratched her head and placed her five-pound body in the ring. I held her. “Are you sure that’s a Yorkshire terrier?” I asked the other dog’s owner. “Looks a little heavy, might be a Silky.”

“Relax, buddy, we only fight Yorkies here,” the ring handler said.

Although nervous all I could due is trust him. Foley was giving two pounds to the other dog but she was tough. On the count of three I let her go.

Foley charged aggressively and came behind the dog and sniffed her butt. The dog stood still, but then turned, and it sniffed Foley’s ass. During the ass sniffing money quickly changed hands. Then Foley climbed up on the other dogs back and began to stimulate sex and they both began to pant. “Ride her Foley!” I yelled. “Ride that bitch for all she’s worth.”

Then Foley dismounted and peed and the other dog went to pee over it but Foley barked at her and she retreated to a corner. Then both dogs lay down and went to sleep.

“We have a tie!” the dog handler said.

“That’s the 500^th tie in a row,” another man said. “Maybe we shouldn’t be fighting lap dogs.”

I agreed, and hurried Foley home, undefeated, and still the Queen of hardcore.

Basketball Fixing

I drove down to the high school and found a bunch of fifth graders on the court. “What are you kids doing?” I asked.

“We’re playing basketball you hump,” one answered.

“Do you need a referee?” I asked.

The boys agreed. Before I started I went over to four boys sitting on a bench and asked them if they wanted to bet on the team wearing the shirts. They seemed interested, and I said if they could find some guys to bet on the skins team I would fix the game and we could split the money.

It took a half hour but we got our pigeons that had bet up to 75 cents on the game. Then it began and immediately I began to call fouls on the fat kid who was playing center for the skins and looked like an episode of the Girls Next Door gone wrong.

After several minutes the shirts had a healthy lead but the skins started to catch on and after a charging call one of them kicked me in the shin and I started to run after him and then the rest of his teammates jumped me and I was on the grass next to the court wrestling a group of shirtless pre-pubescent boys.

And that’s how I met Chris Hansen. And some nice police officers.

So, after my intensive investigation I can say I do not understand why any athlete or official would involve themselves in steroids, dog fighting, or fixing basketball games.

But Viagra, that I get.

Fake Blogging on the Internet I am Shocked! Shocked!

2007-08-09T07:12:00.000-07:00

Link to New Groper Fred Thompson post

http://www.newsgroper.com/topic/us-news-politics/2007/08/08/fake-blogging-i-am-shocked-shocked-i-say/

Bush Karazi and Taliban Play Hide and Seek

2007-08-08T08:11:00.001-07:00

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Monday, in a joint press conference with still President George Bush that he is working to root the Taliban from their mountain hideouts. The press conference was held at President Bush’s mountain hideout Camp David where President Karzai is hiding in an opening by the wine cellar.

Bush described the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan and harbored al Qaeda as “brutal cold killers” and “a vision of darkness,” who use torture techniques like “sleep deprivation” and “water boarding” and “release the names of undercover agents” before being handed a slip by an aide which read “You’ve confused them with Cheney again.”

Bush said Afghanistan has 110,000 troops of their own being aided by 23,500 US troops and 26,000 troops from other nations. The Taliban are being aided by about 150 U.S. troops who keep killing their fellow soldiers.

Bush told the media that the United States has committed $23 billion to rebuild Afghanistan. Karzai said much of this went to his indoor kidney shaped pool and curtains at the palace.

Karzai began to say that he planned to have a jigra with Pakistan leaders when he was interrupted by Bush who said that his Grandpa used to have jigras on the property but he built a fence and it kept them out. A perturbed Karzai explained a jigra was an Afghanistan traditional assembly.

Bush was asked if he knew of al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan would he attack without informing president Gen. Pervaz Musharraf. Bush said that he is in constant communication with the Pakistani government and lauded them for playing Billy Ray Cyrus while he waits on the phone. “Heard the entire new album the other day while waiting to talk to President Musharraf.” When asked what the discussions detailed Bush said they were unable to speak because it was 9:30 and Laura put him to bed.

When asked about the number of Afghan civilians killed in U.S. raids Karzai said that President Bush is as concerned about Afghan citizens as he is. When asked how much that was Karzai held up his hand with a small space between his thumb and forefinger and smiled.

Bush says he regrets the deaths of Afghanistan civilians but blames the Taliban. “We know they are eating at a café and then we line up our smart missiles and take it out, but they have already left. If those evil terrorists had the courtesy to have a cup of tea and dessert we would have time to get them.”

Said a member of the Taliban they usually skip desert because it is unhealthy and you have to be in top physical condition to blow yourself up.

The conference ended with Karzai praising Iran and then being quieted by Bush who threatened to take him to “Uncle Dick’s” room to be debriefed.

After the conference Karzai shook hands with the press and slipped several members business cards for Uncle Hamid’s Poppy Field and Heroin Plant with its slogan “When You Care Enough to Shoot up the Very Best.”

Why Should I Care? Why Should I Care

2007-08-07T08:32:00.001-07:00

First posted at Big Dave on sports

The Red Sox were playing the Mariners and on their way to their eighth straight loss at Safeco Field when it was announced that Barry Bonds had hit number 755.

I felt sad at first, because Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s record was part of my childhood, and then the feeling passed, and I concerned myself with the Sox, who rallied passed the Mariners to get their first win in Seattle since Fraser Crane had a top rated radio show.

After the game I was left with this thought about Barry Bonds. Do I care? Does anyone care?

The National Media decides what we should care about, whether it be some Hollywood starlet’s criminal activity, or a politician’s latest sexual dalliance.

Now the national sports media is doing the dictating and the thing we are told we should care about is Barry Bonds’ pursuit of Hank Aaron, but what I am wondering is why should I care?

I have been told it is because the homerun record it the most cherished record in sports. Well, by whom? My most cherished record is that I have not thrown up since drinking the better part of two kegs in August 1988 and then tried to eat an English muffin. That’s a record folks.

Of course I am supposed to be up in arms because Bonds cheated. Well Shawn Marion cheated, helped the Chargers get home field for the playoffs in 2007 and the only thing that kept them from advancing was another Mary meltdown. Marion was a candidate for Defensive Player of the year until clearer heads prevailed.

Sunday night Tom Glavine won his 300^th game, and good for him. Good citizen, nice guy, I’m happy for him like I’m happy when my neighbor tells me he eagled the 14^th at the local club. I don’t really care, but I’m happy.

Then there is A-Rod hitting is 500^th, which may be the greatest achievement of them all, considering his age and potential, despite the fact that I hate him with every fiber of my short, round, being.

The truth is their achievements were inevitable. The work to get there had been done long ago. The real news would have been if A-Rod went the rest of his career without going yard, Glavine got a tragic career ending injury stopping him from getting win 300, or that Bonds got stuck on 754, which, my loyal readers will know, I already wrote (thanks, Mom.)

Besides these records we are also supposed to care about the British invasion. Yes David Beckham and Posh Spice Beckham have landed on our shore and its like when John Lennon arrived if he had already married Yoko.

The initial Beckham sightings are going to bring fans to the soccer stadiums like an exhibition of King Tut’s tomb, but once we all realize he’s just an old guy with lots of wrapping around him the novelty will wear off.

Americans are never going to care about soccer. The difference is as clear as American and European literature. In the works of Jane Austin lovers come together, break apart, tragedy pulls them further apart, and then they are, 500 pages later, reunited in a night of glorious passion.

In American literature someone gets laid every ten pages.

In America we don’t have patience to weed through hundreds of pages until someone scores, nor do we have the patience to wait through two hours of soccer waiting for someone to get a goal.

These stories are all currently cresting, by the end of the week Bonds should be past Aaron, and the Beckham shine should begin to lose its luster (Does anyone else think he is the English Fred Thompson: Hot wife, gets lots of publicity, isn’t actually participating in anything?)

Former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil said that all politics is local, and that is true of sports. While we have interest in Bonds in New England eyes will be turned to Curt Schilling taking the hill in Anaheim and not Barry Bonds at Pac-Bell. In New York the focus will be the Mets holding on to first and the Yankees slow climb to the wild card lead. In Chicago it will be Alfonso Soriano’s injury, in Nebraska, it will be, as always Cornhusker football.

So, while the National media tries to get us concerned about Pac-Man Jones’ wrestling career (I will only be interested if he comes in a costume that is a gigantic mouth and feuds with colored furry creatures) the rest of us will be more worried about what is going on at home.

Because if I get much more A-Rod, Bonds or Pac-Man coverage my 20 year no vomiting record will come to a sad end.

Garnett Trade Linked to Bridge Collapse

2007-08-05T08:32:00.000-07:00

Minnesota Timberwolves General Manager Kevin McHale came under fire today when it was learned that Kevin Garnett, traded one day before the I-35 bridge collapse to the Boston Celtics, spent all his time off court standing in the Mississippi holding the bridge over his head.

“We knew he carried the team,” said a Minnesota Fire Department member, “I’m not surprised he carried the bridge too.”

“Unless he was on the court he was under that bridge bearing the weight,” said teammate Rickey Davis.

McHale defended the trade saying it strengthened his bench, while weakening the cities infrastructure. The only thing Al Jefferson, the third year forward, who was the key player the Timberwolves acquired in the trade, has held up is the line at Wendy’s.

Garnett was unavailable for comment, already having positioned himself in the Charles River holding up the Longfellow Bridge.

My Answer to Danny Ainge

2007-08-03T20:19:00.001-07:00

To Danny Ainge: General Manager – Boston Celtics.

Dear Danny:

I would like to start by thanking you for your prompt response to my request for press credentials for the upcoming season. While I must admit I am disappointed that it was rejected I think I know why.

It’s possible that you took an exception to a post on newblaze.com and bigdaveonsports.com where it may have seemed that I made a reference to you being the worst GM in the NBA.

I believe I may have written something like the following: “So Danny’s first big move was a huge mistake, trading Antoine, and he has been trying to correct it ever since, including getting Antoine himself, and each time he tries to correct it the price gets steeper and steeper.”

I can see why this may have upset you, and how you might have mistakenly thought the tone of the piece was negative since it basically said you were the worst GM in the NBA.

But I think there were a couple of points missed in this post. One is that it was satire. Obviously, with your recent acquisition of Kevin Garnett you have proven that you are at the top of your field. You took a team with the second worst record and turned it into a team that is contending for a championship, so when I said you sucked, it was ironic, because you’re obviously so good. People read that and said: “Oh I get it, it’s like saying Dick Cheney is unpopular, it’s irony.”

Also, by posting this nationally, I was making the other GM’s think that you were a rube. Imagine your old friend Kevin McHale reading that post and then you call him with a proposal for the Garnett trade and he thinks “Hmmm, I just read a piece by that Gay guy on the internet who said Danny was a sucky GM. I need to make this trade and take advantage of him.” So he does, and you end up looking like a genius, pretty much thanks to me, not that I’m looking for credit or anything, you know, just press credentials.

(You know, between you and me Danny, I don’t want to kick them when their down after the tragic bridge collapse, but have you noticed that anyone who stays too long in Minnesota: Bob Dylan, Prince, Jesse Ventura, Ted Baxter, Kevin McHale, gradually loses their mind? Might be all that snow.)

So you see, when you got my application, you probably thought, “I’m not giving that jerk press credentials,” but pal, I was on your side the entire time.

Now, thanks to me, with of course, help from you, and Mule Head McHale you have rebuilt the Celtics who will once again be ready to challenge for the title.

There is just one little question I have, and I don’t mean to be flip or get you upset, but, what exactly are we supposed to do about the other two guys who are going to play with them?

You remember in the 80’s after Len Bias died. At that time CBS was running their popular “Red On Roundball” halftime show and those heartless people at National Lampoon ran a piece called “Red On Deadball,” where plays were drawn up for Larry Bird and Robert Parrish to play while McHale carried two dead guys around the court. While I found it, of course, tasteless, I was reminded of it this week because it seems to me that your plan may include Garnett carrying two dead guys all over the court.

And that’s a fine plan, really, he’s a big guy, we did get him to carry the team, but I think it may tire him out, and having to carry two bodies may also limit his rebounding capabilities. I know you have high hopes for Rajon Rondo, as did I as soon as I found out he wasn’t a villain on Smallville, and we have Tony Allen coming back after being viciously injured by the floor while dunking a minute after the whistle blew, so good game sense there, and Kendrick Perkins, who has shown a great deal of promise, if you expect very little.

Then there’s the bench led by Big Baby. Nothing gets me more stoked for a season then going to see a guy named Big Baby. It’s like going to Thanksgiving at my brother-in-laws but having to pay for it.

But then again, you are playing in the diluted eastern conference so with your new black (I mean big) three you should make a run at the NBA finals. And once you’re in the finals the C’s will probably be bigger road kill then the Cavaliers but who knows, right? And just because Allen, Pierce and Garnett will probably have to play 48 a night doesn’t concern me. They do get the summer off.

And you have Doc Rivers, he of the 12-man rotation, coaching the team. Doc has as much winning playoff experience as his namesake does getting into the sack with Snow White. But he never had talent like this. Danm, the man has 33% of a basketball team, who could ask for more?

Looking over things Danny, maybe you and I are going about this all wrong. Perhaps once again we can help one another.

I never played organized ball after middle school, I’m 5-8 and weigh about 200 pounds, some of is solid muscle, and some home made brownies. I have a decent out side shot, my Yorkshire Terrier cannot get the ball from me when I’m determined, I used to have a cross over dribble, now if I move too quickly my testicles cross over, but the point is, I come cheap, you need a guy for Garnett to carry around, once again we are a marriage made in heaven.

So let me know Danny, and if not then I will go golfing with you in May, you know, after the first round of the playoffs, when you’ll have nothing better to do.

I Don't Want my ESPN

2007-08-02T09:38:00.001-07:00

During Wednesday night’s Rescue Me Denis Leary, defending the heroics of his suicidal chief, looks at Daniel Sunjata and asks him “The Bronx is Burning? You ever hear of that?”

Well, Sunjata probably did, since he stars as Reggie Jackson in the ESPN mini-series of the same name, unfortunately the reference was missed by everybody else, because it’s doubtful anyone saw the premire.

It was scheduled for 10:00 at the end of the homerun derby, which went from being the summer’s premiere event to bowling show ugly in the space of 30 at bats. The contest, which should be renamed “The History of the Pop-Up,” ran so long that the kids catching the balls in centerfield formed a union and threatened to strike.

But mercifully it pushed The Bronx is Burning far past its 10:00 starting time, which, along with Ryan Howard taking a pitch the size of Rose O’Donnell’s left cheek and grounding it back up the middle, insured the target audience was fast asleep.

Now maybe we can live with an ESPN mini-series airing after the homerun derby, when the sports world is dark, but starting this week it will air while games are being played. I don’t think Cinemax will be broadcasting the White Sox game, unless they sign a bunch of Hooters waitresses and during the seventh inning stretch order pizza from a vendor named Pork, so I don’t know why ESPN needs to be showing a movie. This is the network that I go to when the only acting I want to see is Manu Ginobili skid across the floor like he came off a toboggan at the first turn in the Winter Games.

For anyone interested the series stars John Turturro, who is cast whenever a director needs a New Yorker, as Billy Martin, and Oliver Platt, best known for, um, Oliver? as George Steinbrenner, a thankless role, since no one will do Steinbrenner better than Larry David chastising George Costanza. I don’t have a problem with the show, I’m sure everyone is very talented, I just wish the thing had gone straight to DVD and not on my sports network.

Sunday night at 8:00 I settled in for ESPN’s telecast to find the game in the seventh inning with the Cardinals up three touchdowns. I first checked all the clocks in the house to make sure I hadn’t had another one of my “spells” and lost three hours, and when I determined I hadn’t, checked the cable guide, and saw that the game had started early so they could broadcast the ESPYS at 9:00.

Now if you find the ESPYS entertaining, you should do what Chief Jerry did that caused Denis Leary to defend him to Daniel Sunjata and clean your fingernails, pluck your nose hair, and then put a gun in your mouth and blow the back of your head off you big gay man you.

Hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, who is constantly walking a tightrope between the Conan O’Brien and Fred Travelena sides of his personality, and Mr. Entertainment himself, Lebron James, the ESPYS pass themselves off as a celebration of athletic achievement but are really ESPN’s celebration of ESPN.

Having the ESPYS is like having CNN present the CNNYS. “And now for the nominee for the President Who Screwed up Their Country the Most the Nominees are: George W. Bush; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Ill and Nuri Al-Malki.”

The reason we have movie, television and music award shows is we don’t have competitions to see who were the most accomplished acts in their field. The picture that wins the Oscar is the best picture of that year. If we didn’t keep score in games, or declare a champion, maybe we’d need a sports award show. The team that wins the World Series is the best baseball team. The team that wins the ESPY for best team provides free advertising for the network.

ESPN has become such a controlling figure in sports that Kevin Durant can miss a developmental league game to attend and Lebron James can do a song and dance number. If every fan in each enemy arena doesn’t ride him for that every second he’s on the floor they should turn their tickets in at the gate.

There was even an After the ESPYS show, which I did not see, but I am sure will be shown a thousand times. I think it was mostly Adam Carolla interviewing hookers about who they would be going home with. “You got LT? You go girl!”

Part of my ill feeling to the sports leader is the announcement that Dan Patrick would be leaving, the last tie to broadcasters whose intent was to put the game over and not themselves, who, like with Craig Kilborn or Keith Olberman, used clever quips to add to the broadcast, not overwhelm it. They had personality. Stephen Smith is a personality.

There was a time when ESPN reporters managed to keep a distance between themselves and their subjects, but now interviews consist of fluff questions followed by a fist pump. ESPN reporters have fallen into the trap that Phillip Seymour Hoffman explained in Almost Famous. “They are going to buy you drinks, they are going get your girls, and they are going to make you think you are cool, and you are definitely not cool.” Reporters, except for Hunter Thompson, have never been cool. Smart celebrities and athletes make them think they are and then use them to their own ends.

When it comes to quality non-event sports television the sports leader continually has its butt handed it by HBO with Costas Now, Real Sports, and films like The Ghosts of Flatbush. While Bob Ley still does a fine job with Outside the Lines it gets publicized with 10% of the emphasis The Bronx is Burning or ESPN Hollywood does.

The flagship for ESPN, Sportscenter has damaged sports, convincing every youth that the only successful basketball play is a one-on-one move that ends with a dunk; a base hit is useless as compared to a “back, back, back” homerun; and a smart play that helps you win will end up on the Sportscenter cutting room floor while a flamboyant play that leads to a loss will get you on the highlight reel. There is no I in Sportscenter, but there is not U either, so given the choice, I’m going with me.

To ratchet up the annoyance factor Sportscenter is asking viewers to help determine what athlete is the most “Now.” The only times I have ever been in an argument over who was now was in a barbershop and a whorehouse. I’m not even sure what it means so I voted for Sammy Hagar.

I wonder if in the not to distant future ESPN will be broadcasting sports. Twenty years ago it seemed ridiculous that MTV would not be showing videos. Maybe ESPN Cribs will take up their time: (“This week Pac-man Jones:” “Yeah, this is my bunk, and this is the toilet where I shit, and these are the bars I hold on to when I’m yelling at the screws.”) and movies like “Millar Time” the story of the 2004 Red Sox with Kevin James as Kevin Millar.

If you’re reading this then you know what ESPN doesn’t. There are millions of sources to get sports news and opinions, and millions of people who seek it, and not award shows or poorly scripted movies. If ESPN wants to be the leader in sports coverage, then it needs to lead, because right now where they’re going I don’t want to follow.

Stevens Igloo Raided By IRS and FBI

2007-08-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

first posted at http://www.pugbus.net

A coordinated effort by the Justice Department, IRS, and the FBI resulted in the raiding of Alaska Senator’s Ted Stevens newly remodeled igloo earlier this week.

Federal officials are investigating missing funds distributed by the Senate Appropriations Committee, which Stevens has either been the chairman of, or Senior Republican on, since being appointed by U.S. Grant in 1866.

The main focus of the investigation is where money obtained for the non-profit Alaska SeaLife Center, started after the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, was spent. Authorities are investigating if that money went to oil field services contractor Bill Allen who oversaw a construction project that doubled the size of Stevens’ igloo after his ill-advised purchase of a Jacuzzi in 2000.

Trevor McCabe, a former legislative director for Stevens, received almost $700,000 of this money for doing questionable work for SeaLife. McCabe, according to life partner Mrs. Miller, was unavailable to comment.

Stevens defended his action in a often-combative press conference on Capitol Hill. The Senior Senator claimed that Alaskans have given him the power to do whatever he feels necessary with public funds because: “I am Alaska. My left arm is the untamed wild lands, my right arm is the tamed civilized land, my mind is the midnight sun, my heart is the eternal darkness, and my Little Teddy is the Alaskan pipeline!”

As Stevens conducted the press conference unlucky federal investigators searched the Stevens’ compound’s ice holes and caribou herd’s orifices.

Fat Charlie Has the Blues

2007-08-01T08:07:00.000-07:00

Charlie Weis is in the second year of a contract extension with Notre Dame that will pay him two million dollars a season. This does not count the money he’ll get from endorsement deals and speaking gigs.

He has brought pride back to Notre Dame football after crafting the offense for the three-time super bowl champion New England Patriots. But in counting his blessings, the greatest may be that he’s still alive.

In 2002, at age 48, Weis had gastric bypass surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. At the time of the surgery Weis looked like this:

After the surgery Weis became ill in the hospital, suffering from internal bleeding, and had to have emergency surgery to save his life.

Fortunate to be alive, with three Super Bowl rings, one of the most prestigious jobs in college football, and a salary to keep him filled with onion rings and clam cakes, Charlie took the only action available: litigation.

The trial clogged up the justice system in Massachusetts, first in February 2007, which ended in a mistrial when a juror, after several vivid descriptions of just what was removed from Weis to change him from an obese assistant professional coach to a plump college head coach, collapsed.

According to Charlie, based on “principle,” he continued with a second trial, further clogging the judicial arteries. This trial took place in July (you know, when college football coaches have nothing to do) and a stronger stomached jury came back with a verdict, for the defendants.

Charlie stated he knew winning was a long shot but was still surprised. There is a term for people who are surprised long shots don’t pay off: destitute.

Charlie said he thought jurors grew “bored” during the trial. Perhaps hiring John Madden as his council would have been more compelling: “See this, this is his small intestine, and here came the doctor with the knife: and bam! He ripped it out, but see over here, he’s nicked this artery. That’s really something the doctor’s coaching staff are going to have to look at during half time.”

Basically the trial boiled down to this. Charlie ate a tremendous amount without exercising, and just before training camp, where he was about to make young men run in the stifling heat until they vomited and begged for mercy, he elected to have surgery and have a backhoe remove blubber from his enormous gut. Something went wrong with the procedure that was done because you can’t just eat four Twinkies a sitting, you might as well go for the box, which required a second surgery. For this Charlie sued. If I’m on the jury I would have a hard time awarding someone who got big, fat, and lazy, had the money to get it surgically corrected, and then sued when the surgery went wrong.

Ah, yes, money well spent Big Charlie. I can see the doctor’s lining up to do a second surgery for you. Maybe Vinnie Boom Botz is available.

Charlie said if he had won he would have given the money to people, like him, who had special needs.

Being fat doesn’t mean you have special needs Charlie, unless the money was going to people who could only afford the cheese pizza and through his generous donations could get one with the works.

In the words of Dean Wormer “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son.”

And fat, litigious and stupid is no way to go through life Coach.

Lighten up Charlie.

Really.

Lighten up.

Doubting What I am sure of

2007-08-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

At the end of the day it’s about trust.

We trust our parents, our spouses, our children, our closest friends, and when that blind trust is broken, it shakes our world.

What Bruce Springsteen wrote 20 years ago stands true today: “God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of.”

There is less and less to be sure of today, we don’t trust our government, we doubt our spouses, our kids, our parents lied about the whole Santa thing, Brad and Jen were supposed to be forever, and now there are whispers of trouble in the land of Brad and Angelina.

All we could be sure of was sports, where the athletes strived for glory, and outside of a few untrustworthy French figure skating judges, those who were paid to mediate the contests, were honest and true.

Naivety meet Tim Donaghy, the crooked referee. (Allegedly the crooked referee, only Nancy Grace can get by without saying that, no matter what the facts before us are.)

Unless you have been in a coma, or your Google search for the Pillsbury Doughboy has gone horribly awry and you are on a sports site for the first time in your life, you know that Donaghy had placed bets on basketball games, some of which he worked, with bookies controlled by the underworld, and not being Tony Soprano with a deep pocketed friend like Hesch to bail him out, traded his professionalism and reputation for workable kneecaps, and began making calls, or not, during games, to control the points spread, and, as John Sayles, as Ring Lardner, sang in his own Eight Men Out “The gamblers treat you fair.”

The first question I had, when learning that Donaghy was front and center at the league’s previous worst nightmare, the Pacers v. Pistons brawl leading to the Ron Artest meltdown, was what if Donaghy had money on this game? What if it was on the Pacers? What if he allowed Artest to manhandle Ben Wallace through out until Wallace had enough and took a swing at Artest precipitating the brawl and suspensions?

When a police officer is found to be accepting graft, all the felons he testified against are freed because his testimony is tainted. Do Artest, Stephen Jackson, and Jermaine O’Neil get the salaries they lost during the suspension back because the street cop was dirty? Do Artest and Jackson have a case that Donaghy’s crooked officiating led to their suspensions, which adversely affected their lives causing them to do further bad deeds, leading to their current suspensions? When cops go bad total Tools like Jackson and Artest walk. Should it be any different for a referee?

If this scandal were going to happen, then it would be in basketball. A home plate umpire has a great deal of control over the outcome of a game, but if he is deliberately making one-sided calls it would be easy to see, and he would not keep his job for long. Plus, even with making bad calls, he can’t control bad pitching and good hitting.

In football a referee can sway the game with penalties, but still won’t be able to stop a Manning to Harrison hookup, and if he tried to, instant replay would reverse it.

Maybe an official could fix a soccer or hockey game, but if you are betting on that, buddy you have problems.

Its basketball, with its rapid movement, its high scoring, the gray area of what is a charge and what is blocking, where whistles in the right direction can change a few baskets here and there, where the scandal would inevitably occur.

And it could go largely unnoticed. We are not talking about throwing a game here, where Lebron James doesn’t get the foul call in Game Three of the finals and the Cavaliers lose. We’re talking about James not getting the call on a last second shot with his team down five and getting four in the spread. James may bitch about not getting his two, but the game was lost, and the coaches will file off the court with nary a complaint.

If the underworld only persuaded (allegedly, Nancy) Donaghy to effect games that had spreads of 10 points or more, then his undermining of the athletes on the floor would have slipped by as just incompetent officiating, a group that could fill the first row of seats behind the basket. If the Lakers are 14-point favorites over the Grizzlies, unless the Memphis entry is on fire that night, how difficult is it to make sure they lose by 15?

But I believe in the butterfly effect as it relates to the NBA. If Pau Gasol can’t get a call from Donaghy because he has money on the Lakers, does this affect his next non-Donaghy involved game? Does he play more aggressively because he didn’t get calls the previous games? Are those calls made against him? Does he get in early foul trouble? Do the Grizzlies lose? Does this loss affect the playoffs? The lottery? Donaghy may not have affected the victors in games he officiated, but how many games did the ripple effect of his work affect?

And how did a guy who is, at best, considered a mediocre official by the NBA, and who has, been identified by several individuals as being an asshole (inevitably, after this scandal, a noun and adverb will be added to that nom-de-plume) get to referee game three of the Spurs-Suns series, the defacto NBA championship?

I know the union contract says that these assignments should go by a rotating basis, but if the playoffs contenders are based on performance and not rotation, then shouldn’t the players be given the same courtesy?

Did Donaghy have money on that game? Did he let fouls go against the Spurs making them more frustrated each minute? Did Nash get away with several slaps during the game? Did Robert Horry wait until the closing moments of Game 4 to retaliate, causing Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw’s suspensions? Did Donaghy’s gambling problems affect who won the 2007 title?

There are a thousand more questions to come about Donaghy’s involvement in games and their aftermath, and no way for David Stern to answer them all before the opening tap.

What Donaghy has done is made us question every call. On Friday night Tim McClelland badly missed a JD Drew homerun call (Yo, John Henry, paint the ledge yellow), after a few calls went against the Sox on previous days, bad thoughts began to creep in, like the umpires are under pressure to let the Yankees back in the race. (My Father, a well-respected and intelligent man, always said that Yankees had more home games than any other team, a sure sign of what Yankee paranoia can do to a man.)

Umpires and referees are used to being told they are blind, that they suck, and they roll with that, but no one wants their integrity questioned.

Now, thanks to Tim Donaghy, not only will paranoid fans say it, but rational fan, will think it.

Aaron's Long Road to 714

2007-07-31T08:53:00.000-07:00

Except for the city by the bay America seems united in its opinion that Barry Bonds passing of Hank Aaron’s homerun record is a travesty to baseball.

Sportswriters look back to the night when a Hank Aaron line drive to left field cleared the wall and landed in Braves’ reliever Tom House’s glove as a simpler time for baseball, when the country rose as one and saluted the new homerun king.

He did it without the taint of steroids, or loud declarations of cheating.

No Hank Aaron was no cheater in 1973. No, in 1973 Hank Aaron was something much worse than a cheater.

Hank Aaron was black.

Years pass very quickly, both now, and then. Aaron surpassed Ruth’s record 27 years after Jackie Robinson broke into baseball. 27 years ago, John Lennon was killed, the United States defeated Russia in Olympic hockey, and Saddham Hussein began a war with Iran. 1980 almost seems like yesterday, and in 1974 a black man walking on to a professional baseball field for the first time also seemed like yesterday.

In 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery Alabama jump starting the Civil Rights movement, 19 years before Aaron hit his bomb. 19 years ago the west was slapped in the face with pro-Islamic terrorists when Pam-Am 103 exploded over Lockerbee; Russia withdrew from Afghanistan leading to the country becoming a training ground for said terrorists, and Ben Johnson was caught at the Olympics using a drug called “steroids.”

In 1965 the Voting Rights Act passed leading to riots in Selma Alabama, Watts, Detroit and Newark. Nine years later Ruth’s record was history. Nine years ago two students entered Columbine High School and killed 13; John Kennedy Jr. crashed his plane and died; and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was published.

In 1968 Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated causing riots in several cities. Six years later Aaron hit 714. Six years ago was 2001.

We are a country still haunted by 9-11 and Columbine; still in sorrow over JFK Jr’s death; still fighting a war on terror that began 19 years ago in the air over Lockerbee; and our country is at war because of the actions of a tyrant 27 years ago, and fondly remembers a hockey team.

As Aaron dug in the box to face Al Downing in 1974 all the race related drama that faced the country for the past 27 years was as fresh as the day Robinson stepped on to the field. There were some who had always supported the rights of black men, some who had changed, and a lot who hated them, and the focal point of that hatred was the black man who was about the break the record of the country’s most famed athlete, Babe Ruth.

It was only 13 years earlier that the country turned on a white man, in a Yankee uniform, Roger Maris, when he broke Ruth’s single season record, but that was partly because, if someone had to break it, and it came down to Maris or Mickey Mantle the popular choice was Mantle.

As the 70’s began the country seemed to come to terms that the record would falter, and like Mantle v. Maris there was Aaron v. Mays, with the graceful, exuberant “Say Hey Kid,” being the popular choice. But his knees crumbled and old age crept in, leaving Aaron alone climbing towards the summit.

Aaron chased the record throughout the 1973 season, but fell one short of tying, and then had to literally survive the winter (he had told friends he was afraid he wouldn’t live to see 1974) while being besieged by racist hate mail and death threats.

It was a winter of discontent for Aaron and the nation, embroiled in Watergate, the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, and the cancellation of the Brady Bunch.

Mark McGwire’s pursuit of Maris’ record was a carnival with his plump son acting as batboy and family in the stands. Aaron’s children were no where to be found, one in college, two in private schools being guarded. Security at the ballpark wasn’t what it is today, and each time Aaron walked to the plate, six years after the deaths of King and RFK, he had to wonder if someone was on the upper deck with a rifle looking down at him.

Even after 714 was safely in the bullpen, between second and third, there was one last threat, as he heard footsteps behind him, and looked to see two white men next to him, who reached up, and patted him on the back as the crowd cheered.

If people think that Bonds is facing pressure now, he had no idea the pressure Aaron was under, because Aaron was hated for what he was, not the decisions he had made.

Sportswriters look back on Aaron now and mention the threats he received but never look at the overall mood of the country at the time he broke the record, never really capture the hatred, the fear, the common use of the names he was called.

Hank Aaron may not hold the homerun record, but now, years past, we realize what he went through, and what he accomplished, and when he walks down the street people say: “There goes a man.”

Barry Bonds, not for the color of his skin, but because of his choices, may never hear those words.

Gore Hopes Sons Arrest Start of Pattern

2007-07-31T08:50:00.000-07:00

First published and edited by http://www.pugbus.net

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Former Vice President Al Gore announced today that he believes the guilty plea entered by his son, Al III, on Monday is the kick-start the Gore family needs to become an American political dynasty like the Bushes and the Kennedys.

Mr. Gore's son, 24, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of drug possession, two misdemeanor counts of drug possession without a prescription, and one misdemeanor count of marijuana possession. The charges stemmed from his early July arrest in Orange County, California, where he allegedly was driving one hundred miles per hour in a Prius.

“In today’s political climate you can’t hope to be the country’s first family without a number of arrests and deaths,” said the elder Gore. “The Kennedys have a huge head start, and the Bushes a healthy advantage. All I’ve got so far is an elder sister who died of lung cancer in 1984, but with this guilty plea, which sounds pretty darn impressive to me, we have thrown our family’s hat into the ring.”

A source close to the Gore family said the vice president hopes his three daughters—Karenna, 33, Kristin, 20, and Sarah, 28—will put their shoulders to the wheel. Indeed, said the source, Gore family strategists have already met with Kristen to encourage her to have an affair and subsequently a child, preferably with a reality show star “of questionable ethnicity.”

The Gores have also been putting pressure on newlywed daughter, Sarah.

“Whenever I talk to my parents, it’s always ‘why can’t you be more like Lindsay, why can’t you dress like Britney?’” she said. “Every time I go to our family’s vacation home, I get up in the morning and my underwear is missing.”

A Gore family spokesperson said that Sarah is “just being rebellious,” but the Gores fully expect her to be photo-
graphed naked in an alley with a needle in her arm by Christmas.

“Nothing could make a dad happier,” the former vice president sai

The Death of Michael Vick

2007-07-30T11:01:00.001-07:00

Notes from an Alternative Universe

It was Christmas Eve 2006, and Atlanta Falcons Head Coach Jim Mora had seen enough. His Falcons had lost, at home, to the Carolina Panthers, 10-3.

His franchise player, Michael Vick, did pass the 1,000 yard rushing mark during the game, but there was nothing else noteworthy about his performance.

He had been unable to move the offense. With 3:40 left to play they got the ball back and Vick led them to the Panthers 34 yard line. On 4^th and four he dropped back to pass, found a man, but didn’t elevate the pass, and it was slapped to the ground. They got the ball back with 14 seconds left and Vick promptly threw an interception. He finished the game 9-20 for 109 yards and two interceptions and Mora, whose job was on the line, had seen enough of his “star” quarterback.

He gathered his staff in his office and shut the door. “I think we have to do something about Vick,” he said tossing a ball in the air.

“Do you want to bench him?’ asked Quarterback coach Bill Musgrave.

Mora shook his head. “No, if we do that we are just going to create a quarterback controversy, I was thinking of something more drastic.”

“You can’t mean cutting him?” asked offensive coordinator Greg Knapp.

“I was thinking something a little more permanent,” Mora said. “What do you think about killing him?”

The two other coaches looked at each other stunned. “You can’t mean it Jim?” Knapp said. “You can’t kill a man over a football game.”

“Why not?” Mora asked putting down the football, leaning forward, and crossing his hands. “We own him, we have a contract saying it. He’s our property and we can do whatever we want with him.”

Musgrave rubbed his chin. “It’s crazy Jim, but it just might be brilliant too.”

“How do we do it?” Knapp asked.

“He’s in the hot tub now,” Mora whispered. “Maybe Bill could sneak in, grab a hold of his feet and hold them until he drowns.”

“All right,” Musgrave said. “But remember, we’re all in this together.” The other men agreed.

Mora and Knapp waited in the office, then they heard a splash, and could hear Musgrave yelling and grunting, and then heard a huge splash, and the sound of wet feet on the floor. Musgrave entered the office and tried shutting the door but Vick was right behind him. “What the hell you trying to do, kill me?” he screamed.

“Relax Michael,” Mora said. “We were just testing your reflexes, it’s an ancient Chinese method of gauging strength and agility and you passed.”

“Danm fool was trying to kill me!” Vick said.

“Ridiculous,” Mora said. “You’re our entire franchise Michael, we’ve known you since you were a little rookie pup, you think we would be so heartless that we would kill you after one bad outing?”

“I suppose not,” Vick said. “But no more of these Chinese tests, just keep your hands to yourselves before my agent brings you all up on charges.”

Vick stormed out of the office. “He’s stronger than he looks,” Musgrave said. “He almost kicked my teeth out. Well, at least that’s over with.”

“Nothings over,” Mora said. “Enjoy the holidays men, I’ll see you the 26^th.”

After practice on the 26^th the coach hatched another plan. They would get Vick alone in the Mora’s office, lift him over their heads, and slam him to the ground.

“Isn’t that kind of what happens to him every game?’ Musgrave asked.

“Yeah, but never by three middle aged men,” Mora said.

Mora called Vick into his office to say he wanted to apologize again about the near drowning incident when Knapp grabbed him around the waist and Musgrave tried to get a hold of his feet and lift him. Vick kicked Musgrave in the face knocking out three teeth and then slammed Knapp against a wall causing him to slump down and turned with a cocked fist to Mora.

‘Excellent Michael,” Mora said as his two coaches lay lifeless on the floor. “This kind of intensity, this fighting for your life, this is what you need to bring to the field. You fight like this every Sunday next year no one will be able to deny you an MVP award.”

“You people keep your paws off me!” Vick said and stormed from the room.

Musgrave gathered his teeth from the floor. “This is only a set back,” Mora said.

“Forget it Jim, I’m out,” Musgrave said. “And I am pretty sure that I heard Greg’s spine snap so I ’m going to take him to the emergency room.”

“Fine,” Mora said. “You want something done, you get it done yourself.” He then sat behind his desk as Musgrave struggled to carry Knapp out of the office.

The next day, after practice, Mora told Vick he needed to speak with him. He apologized for his assistants’ actions, and said they would both be fired. Then they spent the next two hours drawing up plays for an offense that would feature the quarterback’s skills.

By the time they were done the locker room was cleared out. “Why don’t you grab a shower,” Mora said.

Vick left the office, stripped, and grabbed his shower essentials. Mora watched him, then reached into his bottom drawer and pulled out an electrical cord. He then went to the quarterback’s locker and took the huge boom box that had annoyed Mora all year. He plugged in the extension cord, and slowly crept to the shower. When he got near he plugged in the boom box and The Baha Men began to play.

“What’cha doing with my music?” a naked, lathered Vick said as Mora appeared at the shower opening.

Mora smiled. “I can’t tolerate losers Mike, nothing personal, but if you don’t win, I’m not wasting my time training you, feeding you, or providing for you.”

“Wait!” a panicked Vick said. “How about keeping me around for breeding purposes. I’m a great specimen. I could give you hundreds of winners.”

“Losers don’t breed winners Michael, sorry.”

“But wait I got a rape stick at home…” and then he screamed. Mora had tossed the radio in, electrocuting the star quarterback.

As he lay dead in the shower Mora placed a call to Musgrave who returned. They wrapped Vick in towels and put him in the trunk of Mora’s car.

They drove to Mora’s house and dug a hole in the back yard. There was another skeleton already there.

“Who is that?” Musgrave asked.

“Bobby Herbert,” Mora said. “Now keep digging, and remember, we did nothing wrong, he was just a piece of property that didn’t work, like a vacuum cleaner, he’s wasn’t anything useful, like a dog.”

A sweating Musgrave nodded in agreement.

The Last Wrestler

2007-07-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

Between innings of the Mets game Monday I switched to the USA Network to check out what was happening on “Monday Night Raw.”

For most of my life I had been a wrestling fan, starting as a boy, watching syndicated wrestling programs on Saturday mornings, and occasionally making my poor father take me to the Roseland Ballroom to see a live show. After one match my cousin and I both were able to give Chief Jay Strongbow a pat on his sweaty back as he walked from the ring, and excitedly held our palms up to show our fathers, swearing we would never wash them again, and then were promptly marched to the Men’s Room to wash our hands.

In my teen years I kept in touch with wrestling like it was an old neighbor who had moved away, bits of contact here and there, nothing sustained.

In my early twenties I was working for a local newspaper when my friend Ron got me hooked on wrestling again before the first Wrestlemania. Over the next two decades wrestling was always the first topic of conversation with us. We attended the first King of Ring event at Sullivan Stadium, becoming so intoxicated we lost the car in the vast parking area and barely made it home; we saw the second Wrestlemania at the old Providence Civic Center on a wide screen where the largest black man either of us had ever seen was seated behind us, and when his kids wanted refreshment he hunted down the vendor, dragged him to his kids, and asked us “You guys want anything?” “No sir!” we said. The second King of the Ring was held there as well and we watched the secretary at the radio station where we were working scream and yell like she was at the 7^th game of the World Series. “Does she know?” I asked. “Oh no she thinks it’s real,” Ron answered. The last event we attended was with my son, a Royal Rumble, where, when Bret Hart was declared the winner, I came out of my seat and cheered, having momentarily turned into that disillusioned radio station secretary.

We rarely missed a pay-per-view, even after I was married, but slowly I stopped ordering them except if I could convince my wife that she would be entertained, which, she rarely was.

But still we watched “Monday Night Raw.” Most of the memories I have of that time were the comedy bits. Mick Foley bringing out Mr. Socko to visit Vince McMahon at the hospital; anything Foley and The Rock did; any Rock or Austin promo. The matches could be exciting as well but for me it was everything surrounding the matches.

We knew, and accepted, that it wasn’t real. The majority of entertainment wasn’t real, so we saw no problem. What we also knew, but accepted less truthfully, was that these people who entertained us, were dying.

The first was David Von Erich, a wrestler for World Class Championship Wrestling in Dallas, a hot promotion in the early 80’s owned by David’s father Fritz, who had five wrestling sons. When David died, they played a song called: “Heaven needed a champion.” Three years later when his brother Mike committed suicide we said: “Heaven needs a tag-team.” By the time brothers Chris and Kerry committed suicide it was no longer funny.

We were watching the pay-per-view in my living room when Owen Hart, a member of another famous wrestling family, fell to his death when a wire that was to lower him to the ring from the rafters snapped, making his heart explode when he landed. As they rushed him from the ring Ron and I expressed optimism that he was alive, but my wife, a former medical professional, said if they removed him that quickly he was dead. It had only been a few months earlier that Ron had come over for another pay-per-view to state that Brian Pillman wouldn’t be wrestling, dead in his hotel room.

These first deaths were the beginning gusts of a foul wind that was about to blow.

When I was a boy wrestlers worked in one of dozens of regional territories across the country staying in one multi-state area for months, and then moving to another territory. Today, with their only being two major wrestling promotions, one dominant, wrestlers travel throughout the world, with no off season to spend with family or heal injuries.

When I was a boy there were wrestlers and there were body builders, but Vince McMahon, owner of the WWE, built his empire around Hulk Hogan, with his huge arms, legs, and steroid supply. Without the impressive body you could no longer survive in the business, unless you wanted to take insane risks diving from twelve-foot ladders or twenty-foot cages through tables. Under McMahon you either needed the steroids to build your body, or other drugs to heal the wounds incurred because you had to compensate for not taking steroids. Add that to endless travel, little family time, lots of available wine, women, and drugs, and the results became predictable.

Ron and I both stopped closely watching wrestling when we turned 40. Maybe it was maturity; maybe the product had grown stale. We both still followed the sport through internet sites and newsletters, and during that time we saw the number of wrestlers who worked for Vince McMahon during the Wrestlemania Era who died grow to include: Louie Spiccoli, Crash Holly, Chris Candido, Adrian Adonis, Yokozuna, Leroy Brown, Eddie Guerrero, Davey Boy Smith, Vivian Vachon, Terry Gordy, Rick Rude, Miss Elizabeth, The Big Boss Man, Earthquake, Dino Bravo, Curt Henning, Bam Bam Bigelow, Junkyard Dog, Hercules, Andre the Giant, Big John Studd, Hawk, Dick Murdoch, Mike Awesome, Sherri Martel, Uncle Elmer, who, along with Pillman, Hart, Kerry Von Erich, and the recently departed Chris Benoit means heaven needed a 30 man royal rumble.

It was Benoit’s face, along with his wife Nancy and son Daniel that I saw in the left hand bottom corner of the screen as a repeat of one of his matches played on Monday night. I soon learned that the three were dead, and the show would be a tribute to his career. And I thought of writing this, about Chris Benoit being “The Last Wrestler,” because he was the last wrestler I wanted to watch, the last I cared about, and the last I would have thought would kill his wife and child.

The logical side of my brain was whispering: “How did all three die?” The WWE had a pay-per-view the night before where Benoit was scheduled to win a championship, so if it were a car accident the news would have broken then. Home invasion? Carbon monoxide leak? Fire?

Before the end of the night I had what I already knew confirmed, the only scenario that made sense was a murder-suicide, which was as impossible to believe as if Derek Jeter had done the same, some other guys, sure, but Benoit?

He killed his wife on Friday, his son on Saturday, and himself on Sunday, living with rotting corpses for 48 hours. It is the sickest, saddest, most despicable of crimes, and we have to ask, what could drive a man to do such a thing?

My answer: The job. The steroids to keep the body up, the pain pills to be able to move, the constant travel, the available drugs, the impossible strain on a marriage, the violence performed every night, it may have been more than all this that put their lives in his hands, but I have to believe the job was the weighing factor.

Vince McMahon is a brilliant promoter. Two weeks earlier he had crafted a storyline around his own demise, and had wrestlers pretend to give him tributes as they did for real to Benoit on Monday night. They did the ten-bell salute for McMahon, something, both Ron and I, ironically having gotten together alone for the first time in a year, in between the staged and real deaths, agreed was in bad taste.

Vince McMahon knows how to make money. He also knows how to issue denials, as his WWE website quickly did when it was surmised that steroids could have played a role in Benoit’s murdering his wife and child. What he doesn’t know, or refuses to admit, is that no one who is not a leader of a fire department, police force, or commander and chief of the armed forces, should lose 30 employees before they are 65, and claim their hands are clean.

McMahon’s most brilliant move was to announce that wrestling is entertainment and not a sport, thereby taking the state athletic commissions sanctioning rights away. He can trot anyone out in any physical condition on a multitude of controlled substances and no one can do anything about it.

Well maybe the deaths of the Benoits can change that. It’s time for athletic commissions to work with licensing boards so someone other than the guy with the most to gain is testing to see if his performers are capable of doing the matches they are paid to do. Maybe USA Network should institute its own drug testing for the WWE or walk away from their contract. It can get a 3.9 rating somewhere else. It can’t claim its hands are clean if they continue to fill McMahon’s coffers while his employees and now their families die around them. As should the cable companies who broadcast the Pay-Per-Views. Someone not named McMahon needs to keep these men and their families safe.

I am not waiting for any of this to happen. But I do believe that wrestling, unlike Benoit’s wife and child, will die a natural death, due to the rise of UFC, people’s disgust with McMahon’s practices, or just the stale and boring product that the WWE keeps forcing down its fans throat.

This is still titled “The Last Wrestler,” not for the original purposes, as a tribute to Benoit, but for my hopes and prayers that someone will step in to see that he is the last wrestler to harm his family, to harm himself, to be taken away by those he loved, and to take away those who are loved, way too soon. Just let him be the last.

Rest in Peace Chris Benoit.

Burn in Hell Chris Benoit.

I don’t know which. But I do know which I wish on Mr. McMahon; that is easy.

Between innings of the Mets game Monday I switched to the USA Network to check out what was happening on “Monday Night Raw.”

In my teen years I kept in touch with wrestling like it was an old neighbor who had moved away, bits of contact here and there, nothing sustained.

We rarely missed a pay-per-view, even after I was married, but slowly I stopped ordering them except if I could convince my wife that she would be entertained, which, she rarely was.

These first deaths were the beginning gusts of a foul wind that was about to blow.

Rest in Peace Chris Benoit.

Burn in Hell Chris Benoit.

I don’t know which. But I do know which I wish on Mr. McMahon; that is easy.

Stuck at 754

2007-07-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

First posted at Big Dave on sports

The aged batter took one more practice swing and tried to ignore the lightning bolt of pain cracking down his spine and the constant ache in his knees. He held the bat by the knob, and pressed the top into the dirt, using it like a cane, as he started to walk to the plate, his right leg, nothing but bone on bone, dragging behind him, the dust settled by a persistent rain that had begun the second he peeked his head out of the dugout.

“You suck Bonds!” a man shouted. There were boos. Always boos. He wondered if they knew how much effort it took just to make it to the plate if they would still boo.

They would.

Because they knew it was their last chance, and his. Word had been “leaked” from the Commissioners Office before the game that he had tested positive for illegal substances a third time. A lifetime ban was awaiting, and this at bat, this final at bat, in the Bronx, on a cold, rainy September evening, would be his last chance.

He made it to the box, and looked down at the uniform, Kansas City written across his chest. Kansas City. He had once been a God.

He tried to dig in as much as his tired old bones would allow. Kansas City. The only team desperate enough to sign him hoping fans would come out to see him hit one more dinger. Few had, and those that did hated him, for being old, for being hurt, for being him.

He didn’t know the Yankee pitcher, he didn’t know anyone anymore, but his pitch came in flat and steady, and he said a quick prayer that just one more time the swing would be back, and he began to turn his large body, and there was no pain, no stiffness, he was 39 again, and when the wood hit the ball he felt it, felt it into his shoulders, and he knew, as the ball rose into the dark sky, knew that somehow he had finally done it.

They say at certain moments in a man’s existence his entire life flashes before his eyes. But as Bonds slowly began to jog to first base, looking up into the starless sky as the ball disappeared into the darkness, not his entire life, but the last three years, flashed before his eyes.

He had once been the Greatest Show on Earth. His every at bat scrutinized, as he sat at 754, on the cusp of Aaron. The first two homerless weeks the stories were about a slump, but when it passed into a month, the word was no longer slump. It was Curse. The Curse of Hammerin’ Hank. Every game, every at bat, it grew worse.

He fought with his teammates, flattening Matt Morris. Bruce Bochy threatened to suspend him. He laughed. “I’m the only reason they’re coming out,” he boasted. But they were no longer coming out to cheer; now they were coming to boo. He could barely move in the outfield, and with the Giants fading in the West the only answer was a trade to the American League, to the Yankees. Barry Bonds would wipe Aaron’s name from the record books in the house Ruth built.

He killed the ball his first two weeks in the Bronx. But he couldn’t get the damn thing out of the park. Until that day in Fenway, with the Yankees chasing down the Sox, picking up five games in the last eight days, and Schilling, oh how he hated Schilling, threw a fat pitch, and Bonds, sent it to right field, high, towards that Pesky Pole, named after another Red Sox choker. He lifted his arms in the air, he had caught Aaron, had shut up Schilling, shut up the obnoxious Sox fans. The ball hooked around the pole, twenty rows back. He slapped his hands and headed towards first where an Umpire, turning towards those hick fans, yelled: “Foul!”

Foul! Gods do not hit foul balls! And the Idiot was grinning at him, as if to say he knew it was fair. Bonds stopped, hands spread out. “What the hell was that!” he screamed. “Get your ass back to the plate!” a high-pitched voice to his left whined. He turned. Schilling, jawing at him. Schilling. He began walking towards him, the fat lying bastard. The Umpire got in the way and Bonds’ hands came up, on to the Ump’s shoulders, on to his neck, and he felt his hands squeezing, all the rage, the frustration, put into his powerful hands, squeezing. He heard voices, felt hands on him, even Papi, grabbing him around the waist, pulling back like a bull. He let go, the lazy Ump slumped down. Torre grabbed him. “What are you doing?” he screamed. “That bastard took my homerun!” Bonds said. “I don’t give a damn about your homerun we need this game!” Torre said. Guys like him.

Two cops came to take him from the field. He peeled off his arm protector and chucked it into the stands. Hit some kid. Shouldn’t be sitting there. Can’t get away from a piece of plastic how is he going to get away from a screaming foul ball? Foul ball. That was no goddamn foul ball. Cashman was waiting for him. Told him to take his stuff with him. Yeah, whatever. He left before the game was over. Got outside. Some of the hicks were leaving the park early. Staring at him like he had three heads. “What you lookin’ at?” he asked. He stopped a cab. He, Barry Bonds. In a cab! He climbed in. He said the name of the hotel. “The Yankees are staying there,” the hick cabdriver said. “Did you hear what happened at the game?”

When he got home there was a message from his agent. The Commissioner had suspended him for 75 games, into the 2008 season. Yeah, I bet he’s been dying to do that.

But then he realized he was free to work out the way he wanted. He called his trainer, told him they were going to start a new regimen; all he needed was one team, one at bat. He could come back in June like Clemens. No spring training, no cold weather. He smiled to himself. This couldn’t have worked out better.

He trained daily, ducked the media, and posted on his web site that he was getting stronger and looking to come back. In February there was a message from his agent. He needed to get drug tested. “I’m not on any team. How they going to test me?” He was told the Yankees had never relinquished his rights.

BONDS TESTS POSITIVE FOR STEROIDS: The headline as big as if he shot the President. The Yankees released him. No team would touch him. All his money was going out, to lawyers, child support, ex-wives.

He kept working out, until he was picked up by the St. Paul Saints, where he was the perfect teammate, helping the young players, hitting a homerun every nine times up. They started talking about The Comeback. And soon he had offers, for real money. That Epstein kid from the Sox had come to see him, said the right things. He would hit the homerun that swept away Aaron in the city where Ruth had first gone yard. And he would stick it to those Yankees.

He played left field his first game. He pulled a muscle going after a ball. But he didn’t say anything. It left him with no power, he was soon 0-16, and the media and fans were all over him. He grounded out to first to end a game and never left the box. The fans let him have it over that one. He smirked, shook his head. Yeah, like running would have made a difference. In the locker room Schilling was doing what he always did: talking, when he said they would be a better team if certain guys could check their ego and run out grounders. Barry was up, walking towards him, asking him what did he say. “Did I mumble?” Schilling asked. No, but he would be. Bonds hit him with a right in the jaw and down went Schilling. Cameras filmed it, him standing over Schilling. That was sweet. Of course he was suspended, and then released.

In January the Pirates contacted him. They had hired Jim Leyland to manage. Dusty Baker and Felipe Alou were coaches. They wanted to bring him back home. Yeah, to hit his last where he hit his first in a city that loved him. In spring training he was polite, funny, telling everyone he just wanted to contribute. They had sold out the park for opening day. They would retire his number while he wore it. He would finally get the respect he deserved. And when they asked him to fill a cup he was more than happy. They would find no steroids in him.

“Human Growth Hormone?” he asked his agent. “When did that become illegal?”

“The last bargaining agreement,” his agent said. “I told you what they would be testing for.”

The Pirates cut him. No team wanted him. Everyone said this was the end of Barry Bonds.

What he needed was a team more desperate than he was, and he found it, in Kansas City. The Royals weren’t likely to win 40 games, barely drawing half a million fans. On September 3 he was signed by the Royals but asked for one week back home before he played.

And then he took everything he could find, steroids, HGH, medicine to dope his blood. He was going to get his homerun. For the first nine days his hardest hit ball was to the warning track in front of those funky fountains. When they tested him he knew his time was limited: two games, one game, one at bat, one swing.

But all it took was one swing, and he had shown it, slowly running towards first base, watching the magical sight of the white ball against the dark sky sailing so high, and then to accent his accomplishment a lightning bolt, cracking out of the sky, then seemingly exploding into a fire ball falling quickly back to the field.

A fireball. A fireball! A ball on fire! His baseball: on fire, falling back to the field. Three years ago he would have stopped, to curse the fates, to kick the dirt, but this man, who once thought himself a God, now sought the last refuge of all scoundrels, to run!

His one leg trailed as he lifted the other and then threw himself forward. He looked toward the outfield where two guys he didn’t recognize stood over the ball. One reached down to pick it up then dropped it, waving his hand. The ball was on fire. Hot! Too hot to handle. Bonds continued to drag his tired body around the bases, across second base, when he saw Number 2, Derek Jeter, running towards the ball. At first Bonds thought he just wanted to see it, but then he realized, Jeter didn’t want to see it, Jeter wanted to get it and tag him out.

The spotlight hog! This was his moment! Barry Bonds! How many moments did Jeter need!

Jeter reached the ball as Bonds was approaching third gasping for air. Jeter kicked the ball into his glove. He would have to cover four times the area Bonds needed to cover if he was going to beat him home.

Bonds didn’t look at the third base coach. He was gasping for breath. He tried to dig in with his left leg and felt a pop, then burning pain. He began to stumble forward, and then ten feet from the plate he fell.

Jeter saw him go down. He was now at the edge of the outfield grass. Bonds was pulling himself forward with his massive forearms. Jeter saw the catcher at the plate but wasn’t surrendering the horsehide and he dove as Bonds, like a wounded bear, gasping, and growling, reached for the plate. His hand slapped down on it a split second before Jeter’s glove, the ball half out, melted into the leather, touched Bonds’ cheek, burning the signature on the ball into his skin. As he heard his skin sizzling, and just before the pain from his legs, and from his face, caused him to black out, he looked up into the Umpire’s face, who was jerking his thumb in the air, and yelling “Out” for all to hear, preserving the Aaron’s mark of 755.

He was in the hospital for a week. His legs were destroyed, his only hope artificial knees, plus his EKG was that of an 80-year-old man, and there were those spots on his lungs. But none of that bothered him as much as his face. There were two signatures on the ball. One Bonds’ own, which had been on the side burned into Jeter’s glove, the other, now, branded on to his face in perfect script, writ backwards, Hank Aaron, writ forwards, when Bonds looked in the mirror.

Bonds squeezed the pump for more morphine. On the TV they reported that Albert Pujols had hit his 74^th homerun forever erasing Barry Bonds from the record books. So they took that away too. They took everything away except one, he thought as he drifted off.

He was still the guy who broke Schilling’s face.

Astronauts Allowed to Fly Drunk

2007-07-27T10:08:00.000-07:00

First published in http://www.pugbus.net

NASA officials are investigating reports that astronauts were allowed to fly shortly after drinking alcohol and after officials were warned that they were inebriated and were flight risks.

Says one astronaut who would not be identified: “Of course we’re shit faced. You think anybody’s going up in one of those thinks without being cocked to the gills? Duh! They blow up!”

Investigators are looking into reports that NASA recruiting has been reduced to hanging out in bars and waiting for someone to get fall down drunk, then putting them in a suit and locking them in the cabin just before take off.

“We have to find either drunks or retards,” said one official. “And retards give lousy post flight interviews.”

Another unnamed NASA source said: “We can’t even figure out how to keep foam on the side of the shuttle, how are we going to find anyone dumb enough to go up in one of those things?”

This has been a problem for NASA since the 1950’s. In the words of renowned test pilot Jose Jiminez: “My favorite part of the trip is the blast off. Before I take off I like to have a blast!”

Hilary Clinton Riled by Phony Campaign Song

2007-07-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

First appeared in, and vastly improved by http://www.pugbus.net

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton became visibly upset during the candidates’ debate last night when a YouTube video containing an anti-Clinton message was aired briefly midway through the session.

Expecting to field a question submitted via YouTube video, Ms. Clinton grew distressed when she heard the following instead, sung by a young man in a Ricky Martin mask to the tune of "Livin' la Vida Loca":

“She's known for being compromised by bad boys and Iraqi wars. I feel for Al Gore; that girl made him fall. She let Vince Foster into her pants before he off’d himself. She's alienating supporters left and right.”

Debate moderator, Anderson Cooper, quickly replaced the offending video with one that contained a question about health care. After regaining her composure, Ms. Clinton answered the question.

Following the debate, Clinton campaigners blamed the staff of their closest competitor, Barack Obama, for the incident. Obama declined to make any comment.

Although CNN and YouTube, which co-sponsored the debate, claimed to have destroyed their copy of the offending video, an MP3 version of "Livin' la Vida Clinton" appeared on Hey!Tunes!, the Spanish version of iTunes, early this afternoon.

Below is the song in its entirety.

She's known for being compromised by bad boys and Iraqi wars. I feel for Al Gore; that girl made him fall.

She let Vince Foster into her pants before he off’d himself. She's alienating supporters left and right.

She'll make you leave your clothes on and stand waiting in the rain. She'll make you hate all women and leave your nuts in pain, like an ice bucket to your balls. Come On!

Uptown, downtown, midtown, she's no real New Yorka. She’s trying to keep the religious right down; she's no real New Yorka.

Her lips are devil red, her husband likes head from a porka. She will bring the country down. She's no New Yorka. Come On! She's no real New Yorka. Come on! She's no real New Yorka.

Woke up in New York City in a funky voting booth. She broke my heart after she got my vote. Now I know the truth.

She raised my taxes, and left my brother in Iraq. While he begs for water, she only drinks French Champagne. After she becomes President the country’ll never be the same. Yeah, she'll make us go insane.

Uptown, downtown, midtown, she's no real New Yorka. She’s trying to keep the religious right down; she's no real New Yorka.

Her lips are devil red her husband likes head from a Porka. She will bring the country down. She's no New Yorka. Come On! She's no real New Yorka. Come on! She's no real New Yorka.

I Celebrate Myself and Gay Athletes

2007-07-24T10:35:00.000-07:00

First posted at Big Dave on sports

Tyson Gay’s amazing weekend at Indianapolis, which ended with him breaking Michael Johnson’s meet record in the 200 meters at the U.S. track and field championships, was a victory just not for Gay athletes, but for Gay men everywhere.

Oh I don’t mean homosexual gay. Like most U.S. heterosexual males I couldn’t care less about track and field and had no idea Tyson Gay existed before this weekend, never mind his sexual preference. No, there are no homosexual athletes, only retired homosexual athletes; although, when I go to a Red Sox game and see an 8 year old wearing a “Jeter sucks, A-Rod swallows” shirt, along with me having to explain to a child that A-Rod swallows to keep from dying, it does make me question if there aren’t in fact homosexual athletes.

But I digress. Why I am here is to celebrate Gay men like Tyson and myself, men who were teased, harrassed and even beaten in school because their name has been adopted by the homosexual community, although I must applaud Tyson’s parents because if you have saddled your son with the last name Gay the least you can do is give him a bad ass first name like Tyson.

My parents did not name me Tyson, which I must give them credit for, because I was born in 1963, and if they had named me Tyson my name would have been interpreted as “Chicken Gay,” which may have got me the lead in the Broadway production of Roots, but not through the third grade.

My parents did not have many options in 1963: Clay Gay wouldn’t have helped. Even Liston Gay seemed more of an adjective than a moniker. So, you think, they settled on Ted, which is pretty non-offensive.

But no, no, no, dear reader, you see Ted is a nickname, and as nickname goes it’s not exactly Hurricane or The Big Hurt, but better than Broadway Gay. No my given first name is Edgar.

So my name is Edgar Gay.

Actually Edgar Amos Gay.

Actually Edgar Amos Gay III.

God blessed Tyson Gay with speed. He blessed me with nothing more than the ability to absorb an amazing amount of punishment.

Now, since I am the third, that means that there was an Edgar Amos Gay Jr, who was my father, and you would think that, having lugged this name through his life, he would not pass it on to his son, but during my mother’s pregnancy with me, in the 60’s, when couples did not go to therapy (they just didn’t speak) on the night my mother was to give birth to me, when she was drugged up and barely conscious, much like at conception, she called out to my father, what do you want to name him, and my father said: “Anything but Edgar,” and in her state all she heard was Edgar and here I be.

In the first five years of school my parents insisted I be called Edgar because, apparently, they hated me. But in sixth grade when I went to middle school I declared I would be called Ted, and when the teacher said is Ted Gay here I proudly said I was and all the kids laughed and said “What are you Gay?” and having lived a sheltered life I said I was, and then became aware that the homosexual community had hijacked my name. If your last name is Gay you need to be a runner, a fighter, or a great lover. I took those three pitches for strikes like Julio Lugo with the bases loaded and spent the next seven years being tormented.

What I hoped and prayed for was a Gay athlete, again, not sexual preference, but someone named Gay that I could point to and say: “See, he’s named Gay and he’s not a homosexual so why do you think I am?”

It wasn’t until I was 42 years old when the Patriots drafted Randall Gay out of LSU that I finally had a Gay athlete to look up to. As the season progressed, due to injuries, he moved into the starting lineup. When the Patriots defeated the Steelers to go to the Super Bowl I decided it was time to get myself a Randall Gay jersey.

I drove to the Patriots team shop in Foxboro and asked for a Gay jersey. “Don’t have one,” the man said. I then asked to order one. “Can’t do it, the NFL won’t allow it.”

In what is most assuredly a true story, I could not buy a NFL jersey with the name of a starting cornerback in the Superbowl on it because the NFL did not issue jersey with any “profane or offensive names” on them.

42 year of outrage could not be contained. I argued, I fumed, I wrote letters, but to no avail, a Randall Gay jersey was not to be had, although my sister did order a jersey with his number and got an underground sewing shop to put “Gay” on the back, but still the prejudice inflamed me.

The Patriots won that day, and Gay led the team with 11 solo tackles, although, I believe, the announcers could, according to NFL policy, refer to him only as “Unknown Patriots Cornerback.”

Although Gay had scored a victory for Gays everywhere I still was not satisfied and tried to get his jersey to be sanctioned by the NFL. I even went so far as to offer Reggie Bush $1,000 to change his name to Reggie Douchebag so I could hear Al Michaels say: “The punt goes to Douchebag at the 50, Douchebag cuts right at the 45, Douchebag has some room, Douchebag is in the clear, Douchebag is going to take it all the way! Look at that Douchebag go!” And John Madden would say: “I said at the top of the broadcast the Rams had to contain Douchebag. When you have an open Douchebag on the field that’s a big problem for a defense.”

I figured coming out of USC Reggie Douchebag’s jersey would be a big seller, but apparently even as a struggling college student he did not need my $1,000. He must have had income elsewhere. So my fantasy went unfulfilled.

I had hope with Rudy Gay when it looked like he would either lead U Conn to the NCAA title or be the first player drafted, but neither of those happened, and now he plays for the Memphis Grizzlies, and even someone as desperate as I will not wear a Grizzlies jersey.

But now Randall is back from two years of injuries to be a factor in the Patriots’ defensive backfield, and hopefully Rudy is improving in Memphis so he can sign for a team that actually plays in the NBA, and now with Tyson making headlines in track and field, young Gay children will have someone to point to and say they’re not gay and neither am I.

And maybe someday the kids of the Smith’s and Jones’ who harrassed me will come home one day and say, “Daddy when I grow up I want to be just like that Gay guy!”

Then revenge shall be mine.

Barry Bonds Comes to Fenway

2007-07-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

First posted at Big Dave on sports

It was a redemptive weekend for anyone north of Flushing after last weekend’s less than satisfactory ending of the Northeast’s favorite show, “The Sopranos.” First, with the reported news that David Chase, was lying in a Flatbush massage parlor, having his genitalia manipulated and brought to the edge of climax, when lights were shut off and he was left in the dark, leaving him to complain how unfair is to be “led to believe that there is going to be some big final payoff, to have dozens of hints dropped that you are going to get the ending that you deserve, and then boom! The lights go out and you’re left with nothing but disappointment.” Secondly, with the Yankees dominating the Mets, and thirdly, with Barry Bonds coming to Fenway with less magic than Shoeless Joe brought to Iowa.

It being Father’s Day, in between the Red Sox thumping of the Giants and seeing Bonds get his first Fenway homerun (oh the thrill!), the Yankees schooling the Mets, and quickly trying to speed through S.I.’s glowing tribute to Omar Minaya before he gets booted like a football off of Letterman’s roof, I spent the afternoon on the computer with my granddaughters Mackenzie and Emily (whose picture accompanies my blog), while Mackenzie searched Webkinz and Disney.com, Emily spun in the chair and then reminded me just how much a three year old’s stomach can hold as she projectile vomited over me like one of those spinning fountains in “The Girls Next Door.” Cost of the Father’s Day gift from your grandchild $8.99, wearing their lunch all over you, priceless.

I don’t think it was the spinning in the chair that caused her vomiting but the play of the Mets who got smacked, thumped and abused Saturday and Sunday by the streaking Bombers. As of Monday morning the only divisions the Mets would be leading are their own, the NL Central, and the NBA East.

The only black mark for the Yankees was that they lost the one game they couldn’t afford to lose. Roger Clemens is only worth the money and aggravation is if he wins, and he can’t win if you don’t get runs, especially against Oliver Perez, a guy the Pirates happily set adrift last season. Granted Perez has been reborn in Flushing, but your offense can’t put up a goose egg while Clemens is pitching. Still, Bronx-dwellers have little to complain about. A quick measure of people’s baseball IQ? If they told you in the last two months that the Bombers were done, their IQ is at the Paris Hilton level.

As for the Mets? Pray for Pedro, for the Braves and Phils to stumble just a little bit more, and for the Indians to win the AL.

And in Beantown, home of my alma-mater Emerson College, where Sam Presti, named general manager of the Seattle Supersonics, played basketball, making only the second time in my experience that Emerson, a communications and performing arts college, and sports were used in the same sentence; the first being when I went to school there and Denis Leary, a recent graduate, was contacted to play in an alma-mater softball game and was told “rehearsal will be Sunday in the park,” (don’t worry Sonic fans you will have the best uniforms and beautifully choreographed cheerleaders) the great Barry Bonds arrived.

This event let the largely Irish-Catholic print media in Boston do what they do best, rip apart a black guy. If you think this claim is unwarranted I suggest you pick up a copy of Howard Bryant’s “Shut Out” which chronicled the Boston media’s objection to the Red Sox being integrated, with Football Hall Of Fame writer Will McDonough being chief among the offenders. Athletes like Will Cordero, Mo Vaughn, Jim Rice, Ferguson Jenkins, Carl Everett, and George Scott were scorched daily during their stays in Boston. In the last ten years this venom has almost completely disappeared, but those raised at McDonough’s knee, like Dan Shaugnessey, who readers of Curt Schilling’s 38 Pitches will recognize as the “Curly Haired Boyfriend” can still rip apart a black athlete for supposedly cheating at baseball while giving a big pat on the back to white hockey coach Craig MacTavish for turning his life around after being convicted for getting drunk and killing a 26 year old woman. Somehow if MacTavish was a 6’2 black point guard from Georgetown, that story doesn’t get written.

Of course race isn’t the only reason this story gets written. While regular Americans watched McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds saying, “They have to be on something” the media hopped on the bandwagon. Their job was to find the truth, not dance in glee with each bomb. Now the media is backing off their culpability in the duping of America faster than Senators are backing off their voting for the war in Iraq.

In all Shoeless Barry coming to Fenway was less an event than centerfielder Dave Roberts, who, in 2004, did something no Red Sox player had ever done before. He stole a base. Since then he has had a golden ticket in Boston and the force of his cheers were ten times stronger than the boos received by Bonds.

Friday Bonds maybe hit one out, it went so high over the Pesky pole that one could only guess, and, since it was a road game, and he was Barry, it was foul.

On Saturday, in the eighth, with two on and no one out, Barry proved why he is not a Yankee by getting frozen on a third strike by Hideki Okajima with men on first and second and no one out. That moment wasn’t about Bonds but about the Sox wiggling out of a 1-0 game with the game’s best hitter at the plate keeping them from doing to Dice-K what the Yanks did to Clemens the night before, letting him die from lack of support.

Bonds finally christened Fenway on Sunday, sending a fat Tim Wakefield (who played with a much thinner Bonds in Pittsburgh, and for some reason has not put on the weight Barry has) knuckleball in the right field pen. But it was for naught as the Sox clearly have Matt Morris’ number, which is unfortunate because he pitches in another league, swept the series, and somehow gained a game over the weekend on the charging Yankees.

So Barry picked up and left Fenway making no more impact than Pedro Feliz, the Mets stumbled out of the Bronx wasted and wounded, and like millions of Americans at 9:00 at night my wife and I sat in front of a black TV screen hoping it would come to life and tell us how the Sopranos really ended.

Cheney to Perform Bush colonoscopy

2007-07-21T14:39:00.000-07:00

White House Spokesperson Tony Snow announced today that Vice President Dick Cheney would be in charge during President George Bush’s routine colonoscopy.

Cheney says he has it on good authority that there are biological bombs in Bush’s lower intestine.

He is hoping the colonoscopy will give him good aerial footage of the President’s intestines so they can remove any growths with pinpoint precision. The Vice President said that he is looking forward to shocking and awing the President’s anus, by penetrating his open Southern boarder, and ramming Special Forces through the hole until the region is clear of unfriendliness.

Reportedly the Vice President is as excited about cramming a tube up the President’s rectum as he was about cramming the Iraqi war down his throat.

When told of Cheney’s plans the President said “I meant I wanted to leave him in charge of something unimportant, like the country, not vitally important, like my ass.”

The President’s ass refused to comment.

Dodd Rules Out VP Seat

2007-07-21T14:38:00.000-07:00

Dodd Rules Out VP Seat

By Ted Gay

Chris Dodd, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he would not accept an offer to become vice president on another contender’s ticket.

Democratic front-runner Hilary Clinton, when informed of Dodd’s statement, said: “Who?”

Clinton’s closest competitor, Illinois Congressman Barak Obama, said that Dodd was on his vice presidential list, one space below Scooter Libby and two spaces above Osama Bin Laden.

Democratic Chairman Howard Dean said that Dodd might be a viable vice presidential candidate if everything west of Pennsylvania and south of Maryland was sucked into a giant sinkhole.

At the end of the interview Dodd told Blitzer that he anticipated being the parties’ nominee. Unaware that his mike was on Blitzer chastised Dodd for appearing on his show while drunk.

As Green as it Gets: Al Gore's daughter weds

2007-07-16T09:27:00.001-07:00

Al Gore’s daughter Sarah was married on July 14 in Beverly Hills to Bill Lee. “I admire a man who conserves letters in his own name,” the beaming father of the bride said.

The Gore family is looking to Sarah as their next political star. “I think she has a huge future,” her father said. “Nobody doesn’t like Sarah Lee.”

Dedicated environmentalists, the Gores sought to make the wedding as Green as possible, holding the ceremony on the hotel grounds and abstaining from electricity. Instead of a limousine the bride arrived in a horse-drawn carriage. “It was absolutely stunning,” said one guest. “Of course the girl smelled like horseshit all day.”

An embarrassing moment happened when Gore, walking his daughter down the aisle, mistakenly walked across the lily pond leaving Sarah knee deep in the muck.

The bride was quickly dried off. She was resplendent in a white chiffon dress reportedly made by Fairies in a magical forest near the Gore homestead. (Replicas can be purchased at Barney’s for $12,000; second day cross country air delivery an extra $1,000.) The groom wore traditional tie, tails, and an enormous hard-on.

As the sun set parties reveled under gas lit lanterns and listened to a string quartet with no amplification while eating free-range chicken cooked over an open pit. Said a Gore family representative: “It was just like John and Abigail Adams’ wedding, 40 people contracted small pox.”

The only two misfortunes occurred when An Inconvenient Truth producer Laurie David, who was not invited, kept buzzing the ceremony in her Cessna, and when Tipper lived up to her name and passed out in the lily pond leaving a hapless Al standing on the water unable to get to her and cursing his divinity.

Pope Names McCain Patron Saint of Lost Causes

2007-07-11T08:54:00.001-07:00

Pope Benedict XVI has named Arizona Senator John McCain the patron saint of lost causes.

The appointment came after McCain left the Senate floor where he gave a speech supporting President Bush’s hopeless plan in Iraq; and then expressed confidence that his campaign was still viable.

McCain said he expected his candidacy to rebound, but pundits compared it to the Robert Rodrigues/Quintin Tarantino film Grindhouse, which bombed like a Volvo outside an Iraqi café.

In hopes of reviving his campaign McCain fired many top advisors and is looking to replace them with cheap illegal aliens with passable English skills.

McCain questioned many staffers on missing campaign funds, which led to the exit of his top advisors. Aides claim that much of the money was spent on equipping the candidate’s “Straight Talk Express” for a planned jump over the Grand Canyon on the 4^th of July. McCain aborted the stunt when advisors convinced him there were Viet Cong down there.

Subsequently the Straight Talk Express has been renamed the “Get the f**k off the Bus Express.”

Staffers still say they believe McCain can win the Presidency and fulfill hiss optimistic view of America; a country filled with Mexicans and no Arabs.

Vitter Elected GOP Perv of the Week

2007-07-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

July 10, 2007 – Louisiana Senator David Vitter acknowledged today that his name is linked to phone records of Deborah Jean Palfrey: “The D.C. Madam,”

Vitter admitted he committed a “serious sin. I mean tossed salad serious, stuff that would make The Aristocrats blush.”

Vitter said that he has discussed the matter with his family and the Lord and has been granted forgiveness. God issued a statement from eternity asking not to be dragged into the matter.

Vitter said that Palfrey ran an “erotic fantasy service.” He also admitted to being part of the “erotic slide in head first fantasy baseball camp,” and the “erotic slide trombone band camp.”

Montgomery Blair Sibley, Palfrey’s lawyer said he was surprised at Vitter’s statement because the phone records were never made public. A spokesman for Vitter’s office said the Senator: “Is basically a moron.”

In a further blow to Vitter, despite his claiming many erotic episodes with Palfrey, the Madam does not recall him. “Tell her I was the one who liked to burn the Constitution and lick the ashes off her chest,” Vitter said.

In an interview in 2004 Vitter’s wife Wendy said that she was more the Lorena Bobbit type than the Hilary Clinton type when it came to infidelity. On being reminded of this Vitter immediately entered the PPP, the Penis Protection Program.

Geriatic Performers Drain Live Earth

2007-07-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

The amount of good that the Live Earth concerts achieved has been offset by the amount of non-renewable energy used to keep the geratic performers satisfied.

Problems began in London when promoters could not keep the Rascal scooter used to get Phil Collins to the stage charged. Auxiliary generators had to be acquired to start the elderly transporter. Once on stage Collins had to stop several times for oxygen, then demanded a case of Lipitor be flown in for the after party.

In New Jersey Roger Waters body had to be flown in a special air-conditioned plane from the cryogenics lab where it has been kept frozen. Despite hot July temperatures Waters’ body did not thaw and extra heaters needed to be rushed in. Waters was revived minutes before taking the stage.

Waters showed his age by changing the lyrics to “Brian Damage:”

“Get those f***ing kids off my grass

Get those f***ing kids off my grass

I’ll call the police unless someone gets those kids off my grass

Got to keep the f***ing kids off my grass”

In America extra water needed to be piped in making people in upper New Jersey suffer from low water pressure and causing a sprinkler ban; because Sting’s hair needs to be watered every 15 minutes or it turns brown and falls out. Also many in London lost power as Madonna insisted her vibrator needed more juice before taking stage yelling at her manager: “I need more power Scotty,” while Scotty yelled back “I am doing everything I can be she’s breaking up down here.”

Organizer Al Gore still claimed the concert was a success saying the public learned just how much energy it takes to keep a few pampered, sexually indulgent, balding rock stars satisfied.

Bush confuses commuting with conjugal and frees Libby

2007-07-03T12:04:00.001-07:00

While many people across the country are outraged at President Bush’s commuting the sentence of Scooter Libby those in Washington blame Vice President Dick Cheney for fooling the gullible President.

According to sources imbedded in the White House the President confused commuting a sentence with conjugal visit, and reportedly made his decision based on Chaney convincing him that Libby’s wife Harriet “had to have it.” This confusion also led to the President not commuting Paris Hilton’s sentence, as he reportedly said: “That girl done enough commuting I saw it on the TV machine.”

As the Presidency collapses more former aides are speaking out of the Vice President’s trickery: including convincing the President that invading Iraq was the way you eat Texas barbeque ribs at Chili’s and domestic spying was needed because Laura was banging her Secret Service guard.

Although his sentence has been commuted Libby must still perform community service. This morning Libby was seen entering Cheney’s office wearing kneepads. Reportedly he was to work on Cheney’s limo which needed a rim job. For the remainder of Cheney’s term Libby will live in his man-sized safe where he can care for Harry Whittington who slipped into a vegetative state shortly after Cheney shot him in the face.

Cheney has maintained Libby is innocent because he acted under his authority, and he is neither a member of the legislative or executive branch, and since he works in D.C., which is not a state, did not commit a crime on U.S. soil.

Cheney met with the President this morning to try to explain how that Brownie guy who messed up New Orleans so badly could be in charge of England. “The guy who screwed up New Orleans is still in charge here,” Chaney said. “It keeps us on equal footing.”

Washington to Replace Farfour on Hamas TV

2007-07-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

Actor Isaiah Washington, fired from “Grey Anatomy for making homosexual slurs, has been hired by Hamas run Aqsa TV to replace recently martyred mouse character Farfour on “Pioneer of Tomorrow.”

“Thank God I can finally work for a network that is not intolerant of bigotry,” Washington said. “I know I have been typecast as faggot hating, but I can expand my range to Jew hating as well.

“It’s great to work at a place where, instead of faggots getting contract extensions, they get beheaded,” Washington said.

The show will be built around Washington’s character, a bomb maker, currently named Dr. Chemical Ali Boom-Boom Washington. Talent scouts are currently peeking under burbkas in the West Bank looking for a love interest to be named Dr Christina Bang. “She’s has commitment issues,” Washington said. “I strap her in a bomb and have her meet me at the Synagogue but then I realize she can’t go through with the detonation. It’s very moving.”

Hamas is trying to lure Mel Gibson to play Washington’s bitter grandfather who still holds the papers to the family land in Tel Aviv. One stumbling block is that Gibson wants the show to be filmed in Yiddish, and he would like Israel cleared of all Jews before shooting begins. Producer Ali Hamin Spielberg stated, “If all the Jews left Israel it kind of takes the oomph out of the show.”

The show will still have children’s characters including Sheik Goofy, who keeps blowing up cars in the wrong spot, Minnie Farfour, who is bent on martyring herself after the death of her husband, and Pluto, a militant dog filled with hatred because he is no longer a planet.

Washington expects the show to be a big hit with kids who want to die.

I Phone No One Answers

2007-07-02T12:58:00.000-07:00

The I-Phone has quickly become a hot selling item among consumers this weekend with its multiple functions and uses. Tony Duarte of Pittsburgh said: “I don’t know how to make a phone call with the thing.”

Apple’s new geek toy has proven to be a popular instrument in the field of self-pleasure. “It has several vibrating attachments,” said Apple creative director Arthur Anderson. “Say that you have always dreamed of having Brad Pitt somewhere in your body. You could choose his picture, and his sex voice tone, and then put it in the orifice of your choice, and he could vibrate and talk to you at the same time. It is very stimulating, although it is recommended you wipe it off afterwards.”

“I was stuck in a flood,” said Margaret Jones of Texas, “and I tried to call for help and the thing didn’t work.”

“If Ms. Jones had read the 25,000 page instructional manual she would have found on page 12,620 that by pushing FLO12 the I-Pod becomes a flotation device,” Anderson said.

“Someone broke into my house and I dialed 911 and it began buzzing,” said Leonard Smith after he received a beating during a home invasion. “I dropped it and it stuck to my chest hair and when it was ripped off half my hair went with it.”

“Dialing 911 activates the bikini waxing feature,” Anderson said. “It’s great for sudden hair growth at the beach.”

Pushing MYPETSP1214 will let you spade your pet. Simply dial the code and place the phone under the pet’s genitalia and wait for your pet to cry out then listen for Bob Barker saying “Thank you for spading your pet.” “It may walk funny for about a week,” Anderson cautioned.

“I can’t get a phone call,” said Bob Smith of Londonderry. “Every time someone calls me I get an erection.”

“The I-Phone is currently the world ‘s leader in curing impotence,” Anderson said. “Just have a friend call you and you’re ready to rumble. It will completely replace Viagra.”

When asked when the phone will actually be able to send or receive calls Anderson said he does not expect that to happen this decade.

Al-Qaeda Fires Bin Laden, Courts Chaney

2007-07-02T12:55:00.000-07:00

The terrorist group Al-Qaeda announced today that after several-failed attacks in the United Kingdom it had fired Osama Bin Laden as its manager.

“We are looking to take things in a different direction,” an Al-Qaeda spokesperson said. “We haven’t had much success lately and we think bringing in a new manager might shake things up.”

Reached at his secret location in the autonomous region between Afghanistan and Pakistan Bin Laden said: “I cannot believe that this has happened, look at the success we’ve had in the past, the USS Cole, September 11, Bali. We are just in a slump, that’s all, I fully believe we can shake ourselves out of this.”

“What we have to look at,” said one terrorist chief, “is that our last few attempts have been unsuccessful, and unfortunately, in international terrorism, it is: What have you done for us lately.”

Bin Laden counted with: “I manage good but boy did they blow up bad. I tell them, get parking sticker before you leave car, they no listen; I tell them make sure car do not fill up with smoke; they no listen, I tell them drive car into airport then blow it up; they do opposite. I can only plan. I cannot execute.”

Rumored to be the front-runner to replace Bin-Laden as leader of Al-Qaeda is US Vice President Dick Chaney. “He has that cut throat, ruthless streak we are looking for in a manager,” said the Al-Qaeda spokesman. “Also in the last two years he has done more damage to the United States then Bin-Laden could ever dream of.” Cheney is said to be currently mulling the offer in his secret location in the autonomous region between Washington DC and Virginia.

Although it is often common courtesy to let a number two man move in to the number one slot when it becomes available sources say President Bush will do everything possible to retain the Vice President including giving him free reign to torture people who illegally park or jay walk in the Washington metropolitan area.

As for Bin-Laden there are already rumors that MSNBC has offered him the 8:00 PM time slot, but he is more likely to take the offer of Chief CEO of Haliburton.

Cheney's Man Safe Falls, Kills Two, Reveals Secrets

2007-06-28T09:36:00.000-07:00

Two White House aides were killed today when Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, reacting to a subpoena from the Senate Judiciary Committee, tried to remove several man-sized safes from his office to a secure bunker in the basement. Movers lost control of the safes crushing the aides in the stairway.

Of more concern to the White House is that, on impact, the safes opened and their contents were revealed for several people, including reporters, to see. Reportedly among the items spilled from the safe was a life-sized Condoleezza Rice doll, which the Vice President referred to as his Condi-Ho doll. Although the doll was anatomically correct the Vice President insisted he only used it to learn her weaknesses.
White House staffers were also shocked to find L. Scooter Libby hiding in the safe. Libby admitted he had been there since he was indicted sending his little known twin, I Skippy Libby, in his place. “That is why he couldn’t remember anything,” Libby said. “Skippy works at a Jiffy Lube in Tuscaloosa.” Also found near Libby was brain matter, rumored to belong to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, and to be from the part of the brain that controls memory.
The President, again being stumped by Sudoku, wandered out of his office, looked down, and found an old crumpled document. “Well look it’s the Constitution,” the President said. “Now there’s no need to be looking at that!” Cheney said ripping it from his hands and telling him to go back to his room.
Seconds later Harry Whittington and Heather Poe stumbled out arm in arm looking like two survivors of Oceanic Flight 815. Both verbally attacked the Vice President who admitted to locking up Whittington for becoming “pissy” about being shot in the face once the drugs wore off, and locking up Poe for gaying up his grandson.
Later in the day janitors reported finding a torn, stained, poorly folded document, which was identified as the President’s Road Map to Middle East Peace. When hearing of its existence the Vice President demanded that it be immediately shredded.

Overabundance of Beaver May Lead to More Gay Marriage In MA

2007-06-28T09:34:00.000-07:00

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is reporting that a recent influx of beaver in the state has caused hardships for many residents.

The beaver population, once near extinction in Massachusetts in the 80’s and 90’s is now thriving. Legislature Jane Thomas said the lack of good beaver in the late 20^th century led to the passage of the gay marriage bill. “Without beaver, men seeking companionship had to find comfort with one another.”

But now, with the beaver explosion, it is many of the beavers themselves that are suffering. As many as two out of three beavers were unable to find dates for the dam prom. Thousands of parents had to stay home and comfort they’re little broken hearted beavers. “No one wants to go out with the ones with big teeth,” Thomas said.

The opponents of gay marriage in the state are concerned that the influx of beavers could make the institution more popular. “You put a bunch of lonely beavers together and the next thing you know they’re building dykes. Too many dykes and your state becomes flooded with gay marriages.”

Former Governor and now Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has come under fire for admitting that during a trip from Boston to Ontario in 1983 he only had room in the car for his five boys so he tied his beaver to the roof for the long ride. The former Governor could be facing charges of cruelty to his beaver if he returns to the state. The beaver lost control of its bodily functions on the trip and was later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, although no connection has been made between the two.

Besides an increase in beavers the Massachusetts Fish and Game commission also says they have seen record numbers of: pussies, coochs, poontangs, quim, bearded clams, cooters, minges, muffs, bajingos, hoo hoos, cunnies, roast beef curtains, loose meat sandwiches, poonany, whisker biscuits, and twats.

Authorities were able to catch many of these critters during the annual Filene’s Basement bridal dress sale. Thousands of beavers streamed into the basement after the bait of cheap dresses. Once they were there the doors were sealed and the beavers were trapped.

“It is something we debated about,” said a member of the Fish and Game commission, “but if you have to bash the beaver, at least bash it in a wedding dress.”

Jesus Frustated With Supreme Court ruling

2007-06-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

The United States Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, declared that Bong hits for Jesus were illegal.

Jesus Fuentes, an unemployed roofer from Corpus Christi was outraged at the decision. “My brothers Pedro and Enrique do bong hits all day long and I have to sit there sucking on my little joint trying to keep up, it’s not fair,” he said.

Members of the ACLU were shocked at the decision. “To deny a person the right to occasionally take a bong hit because of their first name is a clear violation of their civil rights,” Jesus’ attorney Maureen Goodwin said.

Members of the Christian Right expect to see more white American children named Jesus. Mary McCarthy, a pregnant member of the St. Jude’s parish in Pittsburgh said, “It’s good to know that if I have a boy and he’s named Jesus he won’t be able to do bong hits. I will sleep peacefully at night knowing that when he becomes a teenager he’ll just be drinking and whoring like all the other good Christian boys.”

Manuel Ortega of the Mexican Council called the ruling prejudicial against his people. “We have to crawl under fences, swim the Rio Grande, hide from boarder security, enter the country in the trunk of a car, and when we get here, and it’s time to unwind, we have to ask if any of them are named Jesus, and if so, break the news: No bong hits for you.”

Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior to a dwindling amount of the population, was reportedly outraged at the decision, claiming hypocrisy. “You’re going to tell me my father never did bong hits?” he asked. “Look at the world, you would have to be stoned out of your mind to create what he did. I mean come on, putting wings on rats to make bats, definitely the act of a stoned man.”

Jesus said that he is under a tremendous amount of pressure: “People pray to me for their health, to get a job, that their children are safe, that their freaking baseball team wins, I mean My Name Almighty, sometimes a guy has to unwind. But I guess I’ll just have to stick to the Manischewitz.”

Buddha held a press conference saying, while holding his breath that he felt “terrible for Jesus, its rough man,” than exhaled a large amount of smoke and retreated to his temple.

Mastubating Melbourne Man Gets Stabbed, Keeps it Up

2007-06-26T06:48:00.000-07:00

A Melbourne man who was caught by his girl friend masturbating in front of her two young children was stabbed twice by the woman, but refused to relinquish his grip on his mighty sword.

“I came home from my spinning class,” said Carley Nelson, “and found him in the shower naked, and treating his body like an amusement park in front of my son and daughter. I yelled at him to stop but he said he would not until Paris was free. I told him the Nazi’s had vacated the city 60 years earlier, but he was not satisfied. He then demanded I leave the area because I was making him lose concentration.

“When I tried to remove my two children he said I couldn’t because his arms were tired and he needed someone to hold the pictures.”

Said Jimmy Nelson, 8, “It was either hold the pictures or the swanker, and we decided to hold the pictures.”

Ms. Nelson then entered the kitchen, grabbed a carving knife and stabbed the man, Donny Peter, twice in the thigh. Although Peter lost his rhythm he continued with the act of self-flagellation.

Peter, President of the “Pump off to Paris” fan club, had tried to organize a world wide circle jerk until Paris Hilton was freed from her Los Angeles prison, called “Jerking off until She’s Off,” but, he couldn’t get their members up for the project.

Peter then decided to do the protest individually, in his girlfriend’s shower after she left him baby sitting, but he became distracted by the children watching the “Backyarddigans,” calling Uniqua a “stiff dick remedy;” and he found it to difficult to hold the pictures of Paris and perform the sexual act which is how the children became involved.

When the stabbing proved unsuccessful the mother of two got a brick and whacked it against Peter’s head, but the determined monkey spanker, while stunned, maintained a firm grip on his giant knob.

She then got a baseball bat and slammed it into his knees, but still, the man who came to be known as the Rasputin of chicken chokers valiantly held on to his own cock.

By then the police arrived and removed the children, but then took up a position in the hall because they knew his loaded pistol was about to go off.

A Brisbane Masturbation Negotiator was able to work with Los Angela county officials to end the crises, and, in an amazing coincidence, both Paris and Peter got off simultaneously.

Said Ms. Nelson, “If he and I could get off simultaneously I wouldn’t have to spend as much time alone in the shower either.”

Post Blames Cheney's Time Machine for Five Year old Story

2007-06-25T12:56:00.000-07:00

Amidst criticism that the Washington Post’s “Bleak House” length expose on Vice-President Dick Cheney’s abuse of power has come five years too late, Post Chief Executive Officer Caroline Little announced today that the reporters Barton Gellman and Jo Becker had been ready to file the story in 2002 but were put into, what she termed, a Vice-Presidential time machine.

According to Post insiders Gellman has told his editors that he and Becker left a parking garage in the metropolitan DC area in late 2002, with enough information to bring down the Office of the Vice President, when they got into a cab.

They were shocked to see the driver was the Vice President, who kept driving faster and faster. The next thing they knew they were dropped off at the Post’s offices.

Except now it was five years later.

Little said that they debated running a story about the Vice-President’s time machine but decided to hold it until 2012.

She also stressed that the important thing to remember is not that it took five years to print the story, but that the Post was on the story the entire time.

Arthur O. Sulzberger, Chairman of the New York Times has called Little’s claims that the Vice President has a time machine ridiculous and just another Post excuse on why they were late with the story.

When asked why the Times did not run the story at all, never mind five year late like the Post, Sulzberger stated that the Vice-President has a mind control machine that stopped reporters from filing the story.

White House spokesperson Tony Snow scoffed at the idea, saying that the viral, sexy, stud of a Vice-President, who Snow just signed his Lexus over to, is at Appomattox seeing if he can get the Union a better deal on the Civil War.

Voting Dog Has Issues

2007-06-25T07:35:00.001-07:00

A Washington state woman recently admitted that she registered her dog Duncan as a voter and allowed him to cast absentee ballots in several elections.

With America’s voter registration regulations second only to pre-invasion Iraq in abuses, chances are high that more dogs will be registering to vote before the 2008 Presidential election. Duncan has put the following on IamadogandIgottovote.com to gear candidates towards issues that could secure what may be the swing dog vote.

“Shut that Bob Barker the hell up!” Duncan demanded. “Spade and neuter means no sex. People get to have sex all the time, we know we sleep on the bed and keep rolling over on the wet spot. Daddy got’s to have some! You people can make birth control pills for yourselves, how about for us? Just mush it up in the food or stick it in a Snausage, we will eat anything if we can get laid.

“ Stop feeding us food made in China. There is a big difference between food made in China and Chinese food. Eggfuyoung may be good for you, wheat glutton sucks for us. What is wheat glutton anyway? If you won’t eat it don’t be feeding it to us. And for heaven’s sake if you can’t stand the smell of it don’t serve it. And just let the whole eating our own feces thing go. It’s something we do but don’t talk about.

“Stop dressing us up like we’re your dolls Sally! God gave us fur to cover our nasty parts we don’t need a sweater saying Mommy’s little girl. We got pulled away from Mommy while sucking her nipple, you’re not our mommy, get over it. And no bows in the hair either. Buy yourselves American Girl dolls if you need to dress something.

“Give us a break when we relieve ourselves on the rug. We live with you people and we know what you do on the rug.

“Just give us five minutes with that ‘Dog Whisperer’ guy. Pack leader? Calm and assertive? My ass. The guy’s got a cameraman and soundman with him wherever he goes. You ever been whacked in the head with a boom mike? Put him in that cage with us without backup, he’ll be submitting faster than a Poodle at the pound.

“Anyone who, while playing fetch with a tennis ball, does the fake throw thing so we go chasing after nothing, is put to death immediately.”

Duncan is planning to meet with both Hilary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani in the coming weeks. When asked how he will decide whom to vote for he said a good whiff of the ass will be the determining factor.

13 year old Hugging Virginia Student Suspended by Howie Mandel

2007-06-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

A thirteen-year-old Virginia boy has been suspended from school for hugging his girl friend in the school cafeteria, a violation of the school’s no touching rule.

“We absolutely forbid any physical contact between students,” said Howie Mandel, Principal of the Obsessive Compulsive Junior High School.

“We encourage self-touching if you desire physical contact,” Mandel said. “Instead of hugging his girl friend, the young man, in accordance with school policies, should have whipped it out and began masturbating. Nothing garners a young lady’s interest faster than masturbating in her general direction.”

The no touching rule covers all activity on school ground including athletic events, which explains why their football team was winless and gave up an average of 61 touchdowns a game.

To accommodate the no touching policy the school was modified in the past year so the corridors are now 50 yards wide and there are 160 separate single stall bathrooms.

PTA chairperson Hermonia Hughes said that she supports the school’s no touching rule. “Touching leads to petting, and petting leads to kissing, and kissing leads to intercourse and that leads to name calling like: ‘There goes Hermonia, the town pump with her mixed race child’; and Daddy disowns you and you end up living in a trailer park on the infield of the racetrack and the welfare people snicker at you until you go to Africa and pass the kid off as an orphan so some pop star pays you a million dollars for it and you move to a new town and start over.” After hyperventilating into a bag Hughes finished by saying: “Of course, this is an extreme case I only heard about.”

Mandel said that the policy discourages fighting. “We don’t want any physical contact, but we know there are going to be conflicts, so when the children enter school in the morning we give them handguns. At first we passed out knives but there was still too much touching. With guns they can settle their differences while maintaining several feet between them.”

Twelve students at OCJH have been shot to death in the last year but only one student has been suspended when they tried to perform CPR on a dying classmate.

Seniors complained when their prom was held at the Pocahontas State Correctional Center with male students on one side of the glass and females on the other. When songs played students put their hands on the glass and swayed back and forth. Poor planning put the females on the prisoner’s side of the glass leading to some very illegal touching when the male prisoners wandered into the prom area. “I got dumped at the prom for a guy doing 5-10 for armed robbery,” Todd Smith lamented.

Graduates will have their diplomas mailed to them: “To avoid all that icky post-graduate hugging,” Mandel said.

Beware of Killer Sand Holes at Beach

2007-06-21T07:29:00.000-07:00

According a recent report in the “New England Journal of Medicine” more people have been killed at beaches by sand holes than by sharks.

In the latest incident a young Australian boy was killed, when, while playing in the sand, he was sat on by a 300-pound woman wearing a thong and was smothered between her cheeks.

“The number of children we have to revive after being carelessly sat on by thong wearing fatties is staggering,” said one Melbourne lifeguard. “Just last month it took three of us to free a lad from this lady’s ass, and a half hour to revive him.”

It’s not just overweight thong wearing female sand holes that are a threat either. “My young daughter saw a 450 pound man in a Speedo coming towards her and she became so frightened she ran straight into the ocean,” said a woman living in Nantucket. “We were barely able to rescue her in time. Now, when she sees an elephant on TV she gets the vapors.”

According to the report it’s not just overweight sand holes we need to be concerned about. A young child in Venice Beach had to be rushed to the hospital when drunken frat boys playing beach volleyball trampled him. “It’s almost impossible to go to the beach without encountering a sand hole,” his father said.

Margaret Thompson of Miami Beach lost her 76–year-old husband to a sand hole. “We were sitting on the beach minding our own business when these two little hot twenty year old girls walked by with their thongs barely covering their sand holes, and I heard Joe make a gasping sound and then his heart just stopped.”

Dorsal Fin Jones, a spokesman for the National Shark Association, said that sharks have been trying to keep up to the number of deaths caused by sand holes but have been futile in their efforts. “They have the advantage,” Jones said. “They are on land, we have to just snap at limbs and maybe get a torso, now if we could figure out how to get on land, we could even the score, but stuck in the ocean, we’re swimming against the tide.”

Occasionally, a death can be caused by both sand holes and sharks. Polly Swenson of London said that while on a trip to Bermuda her husband Andy took Viagra before going to the beach, and then, when seeing the young hot sand holes, got an erection, which he tried to hide by going into the ocean. “Then a tiger shark came by and bit his swanker clean off,” Polly said. “You know he always dreamed of getting head from a shark, but his dream turned into a bloody nightmare.”

According the Dorsal Fin Jones the swanker tasted like chicken.

Why am I Still Surprised When I touch a Burning Bush

2007-06-21T07:27:00.000-07:00

I’ve become the child who is continually told not to put his hand on the hot stove, knows it will be painful, but is still surprised when he’s scorched after touching it.

My own personal stove is the Bush administration and today I got burned again when the President vetoed the stem-cell research bill.

I knew he was going to veto it. He told me: “Don’t stand too close, gonna veto that bill today heh-heh-heh,” and still, when he did it, I was angry.

Why do I get up in the morning after the evening forecast called for snow and am mad that I have to shovel? Why am I continually upset I can’t win at three card-monte? Is there something wrong with me?

I picture our President, his eyes glassy with tears, discussing Terri Schiavo, explaining to us like we were third graders, that when it is a choice between life and death, he always sides with life. I think of the 35 people who were executed in Texas during his last year as Governor. He sides with life, except when he decides that life isn’t worth living.

But isn’t stem cell research a no-brainer (sorry, poor word choice) for someone who sides with life? The amazing discoveries in this area could help cure Parkinsons, Alzheimers, certain types of cancer, and even bring, to those told they could never walk again, the ability to do so. Is there anything more pro-life than that?

Oh, but we would have to take the stem cells from excess embryos created for invitro fertilization, and, to the Bushies, being for human life means being anti-abortion. Even though these excess embryos would be discarded, it would resemble abortion like a duck resembles an elephant. We are pro-life unless you’re alive, then you’re on your own.

So why do I keep getting angry? Because we can never stop getting angry. Each time this excuse for a President does something that harms us, even when we see it coming like a pink L-Train, we need to get angry; if we become compliant the idiots win.

If I had one wish for President W it would be that his life be extended through the stem cell research for a hundred years, so he can see those history books he is counting on don’t remember him as Give Em Hell George but remember him as the President who nearly ended America’s reign as a great and prosperous nation.

That is what I hope for, what I fear is that the history books will say that he was the President who did end America’s reign as a great and prosperous nation.

Bloomberg Withdrawl Leaves Republcains With No Satisfaction

2007-06-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg withdrew from the Republican Party yesterday causing the unsatisfied Party to slam its palm on the headboard, fumble in the nightstand for batteries, and disappear into the bathroom.

The sudden withdrawal left several political pundits facing a dilemma. Tim Russert of NBC news stated: “We have a map with blue states and red states, if Bloomberg runs what color will his states be? They can’t be white; everyone wants to live in a white state. Can’t be black, no one wants to live in a black state. Purple, orange, yellow? All too gay. We are saving green if Gore runs. Plus, that white board I use to calculate electrical college votes is only big enough for two candidates.” NBC has announced it has commissioned a 400 million dollar study to answer these questions.

“How we react to Bloomberg is a topic of discussion,” said one Democratic candidate’s advisor. “We hate everything about the Republicans, but do we hate Bloomberg? Do we embrace him? Which of these?”

Reached at his office in Gracie Mansion Bloomberg said: “It’s not a problem for me, I’m a New Yorker, we hate everybody.”

An advisor to a Republican candidate said: “The last thing we need in this election is a Jew. We got a woman, a black guy, a Mormon, if Bloomberg joins we’ll be one Hindu away from a Jackie Mason bit.”

There is also speculation that the three nominated candidates will be from New York: Hilary Clinton is leading the Democratic field and Rudolph Giuliani is leading the Republicans. Said one New Yorker: “If its three of our guys they oughta just let us decide the thing, it’s not like we give a crap what the rest of the country thinks anyway.”

Some suggest that Giuliani, Clinton and Bloomberg could join forces to run as a Presidential law firm.

Proponents of this idea picture a commercial with William Shatner saying: “Lose a family member to a terrorist attack? Worried about unfriendly nations having atomic weapons? Do you want someone to pay? Here at Giuliani, Clinton and Bloomberg we will make them pay and get you the satisfaction you deserve.” Cut to a cave at the Pakistan Afghanistan boarder: A young man enters. “Sheik Osama, we are being sued over our last terrorist attack.” “Who is representing the infidels?” Osama asks. “Giuliani, Clinton and Bloomberg,” he answers. “Oy-vay, better settle.”

Circumcisions Suddenly Cut Off, Numbers Fall to the Floor

2007-06-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

The number of circumcisions in the United States have been sharply clipped away and now their length is shorter than at previous levels.

Moyer Benjamin Weinstein, President of Synagouges Needing Israeli Penises (SNIP) has stated that the trend has driven many in his profession to work in restaurants cutting the ends off of stalks of celery. “And that doesn’t pay like a good dick whacking,” Weinstein said.

Timmy Deitlzer, born to a Sacramento family, is credited with starting the movement when, at three days of age, in the hospital, as the procedure began, he spoke his first words, stating: “Holy shit get the guy with the knife away from my johnson!”

“We were really impressed,” said his mother Beverly Deitlzer, “but also embarrassed when he grabbed the knife and shoved it into the doctor’s groin.”

Upon his release from the hospital, and a two-month stay in the Sacramento Baby Penitentiary, Timmy began acting strangely in Day Care. “He would build a wall with his blocks then begin meeting other boys behind them, we could not understand what was happening,” said one of the workers.

Soon after these meetings “Boys Against Less Long Swankers” or “BALLS” was born.

The baby boys began picketing outside local hospitals, chanting “Hell no let our Peepies Grow!” but soon the lines broke into disarray as the children began coloring their signs with crayons, wandering off in look of their mommies, or soiling themselves and playing with it. Local police had to break up the picket line with rattles, pacifiers, and in extreme cases, actual lactating nipples. “Lunch!” the boys cried.

Many Los Angels professionals who Support Circumcision, and call themselves LAX, blame Mexican immigrants, who do not perform circumcision, as leading to the change. “Of course we don’t perform circumcision,” Miguel Jiminez, a recent émigré from Mexico said. “How do you tell your little boy, OK bad news, we live in Mexico, and worse news: we cut your dick off, now go out in the street and play?”

“It was so hard for me to tell my Timmy why we cut half his wee-wee off,” Rebecca Ewing of Orange County said. “I swear if our gardener doesn’t stop dropping his pants in front of the boy I don’t care how cheap illegal immigration workers are I am sending him back.”

Confused Soprano Fans Prefer Blank Screen to "John From Cincinnatti"

2007-06-18T06:31:00.000-07:00

Hundreds of television critics and millions of Americans sat in front of black television screens at 9:00 on Sunday to follow the continuing saga of “The Sopranos.”

“I think David Chase is brilliant to stay with the dark screen,” Missa T. Point of the Washington Post wrote. “You sit transfixed in front of the TV, waiting to see if something will happen. Will there be more clues? Will the darkness dissipate? It is brilliant television.”

“I can’t stop watching,” said Harrison L Sympleton of Lynchburg Virginia. “Plus, since I watch it with the television turned off, I save on my electric and cable bill.”

“Soprano’s” creator David Chase said: “The show is over. I did the black screen as an end to the show. If your television is off, and you see the black screen, it’s not a continuation of ‘The Sopranos.’ For God sakes turn on the TV!”

James Gandolfini, who portrays mob boss Tony Soprano, when learning of the millions of people watching blank screens thinking they were watching his program, immediately demanded a raise from HBO.

Entertainment Weekly’s television critic Red Toomutch Inntwoit credits the new season as ground breaking. “Chase is presenting the inside of Tony’s soul, the darkness, the stillness, the quiet, and you sit transfixed, waiting for that burst of light, the rapid gunfire. It is simply the most transfixing hour of television ever.”

E! Online’s Miss Unda Standit has a different take. “Tony has died, and this is his afterlife, week after week, lying in the ground, with everything black. Just like Bobby Bacalana said.” When informed that the character of Bobby Bacalana never said that everything goes black when you die Miss Standit said: “Well, I never really watched the show before, but I won’t miss an episode now.”

Steven Van Zandt, who plays Silvio Dante, told reporters that the show is actually a spin off, called “What’s Going On In Silvio’s Mind.” “He’s in one of those irreversible coma things you know, so he’s just lying there, and you see what he’s thinking.” Van Zandt told HBO that if they are going to continue to show his characters brain activity at 9:00 every Sunday he wants “Gandolfini money.”

David Milch, whose new show “John From Cincinnati” had it’s second episode broadcast at 9:00 on Sunday on HBO expressed his frustration at the scarcity of viewers for the program stating: “Those fucking hooples sitting at home watching their cocksucking televisions without the fucking things even plugged in blows the fucking mind don’t it?”

The blank screen showing of “The Sopranos” won it’s time slot on Monday beating the nearest competition by 4 million viewers.

Milch said: “What do you expect from a country that voted a blank screen President for two terms?”

No Price is Right Ending Angers Viewers

2007-06-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

Millions of Americans called their cable companies Friday morning to complain that just before Bob Barker declared the winner of the Showcase Showdown their screens went to black and ten seconds later the credits rolled to a black backdrop.

Producer Roger Dobkowitz said: “Bob is an 83 year old man. All season long we have been building tension. Can Bob keep going? Is the skinny microphone going to slip from his hand as he drops dead just before signing off? We left that for the viewers to decide.”

The producers also left open the following question: “Is Bob dead, and if so who is responsible?”

Many fans were unsatisfied with the finale considering the dramatic punch delivered in previous episodes culminating during Wednesday’s show when model Rachel Reynolds was garroted during Plinko and announcer Rod Roddy was shot to death as he yelled: “Fred Pepitone come on down!” (gunshot) “and call 911 because someone fricking shot me!”

On Thursday’s show, during a sit down with associate producer Fingers Greco and members from Goodman-Todman, Fingers pointed towards “Jeopardy” host Alex Trebeck as the man who ordered the hits. Trebeck, a foreigner, is known as a greedy, selfish man who wanted to make sure he won best game show host at the following nights’ Emmy ceremony and attempted to decimate the “Price is Right” team so Barker could not finish the show’s run.

Trebeck, the host of America’s second favorite game show, was in the studio shooting Thursday’s episode when he read the Final Jeopardy answer “Bob Barker.” Seconds later when Trebeck asked the first contestant, a tall, elderly woman, what her question was she revealed: “Who Shot Me?” and as Trebeck began to state that this was incorrect the woman peeled off her costume to reveal it was Barker himself, who then shot the troubled Canadian three times instantly killing him. Unfortunately he had not bet enough to win the game.

Barker and Greco escaped into a waiting limo while Johnny Gilbert chased them with a shotgun.

In the limo Fingers asked him why Gilbert was shooting at him. “Trebeck was a pimp,” Barker said. “My enemy was Merv Griffen all along.”

Griffen and Barker interests conflicted because every morning Griffen awakens, goes outside, catches a rabbit, skins it to make mittens, and then eats its flesh. Following this he lets his 100 un-spade cats wreck havoc on the neighborhood.

Before Friday’s episode Barker and Griffen had a sit down and seemingly made their peace where Griffen agreed to spade his cats and stop wearing furry mittens and Barker agreed to let Trebeck win the Emmy posthumously and gave Griffen the rights to “Hi-Lo.”

So with the hostilities ended viewers expected a dignified send off to the series.

“But everyone knows Griffen is a snake,” Dobkowitz said. “He could have double crossed Bob, it’s all in the mind of the viewer.”

At this time CBS was still taking calls from angry viewers while Griffen denied any culpability, but, it was noted, despite the 90-degree heat, he was still wearing his furry mittens.

Paris Hilton States She Found God: God Issues Denial

2007-06-18T06:24:00.000-07:00

Shortly after Paris Hilton announced that she found God at the medical facility of the Twin Towers detention center God has issued the following statement:

“I have in no time either been found by, or spoken to Ms. Hilton. My mother told me never to associate with women of her ilk since I received some bad press over that Mary Magdalene thing.”

A Hispanic janitor at the facility, Jesus Rodriguez, stated that when he went to her room to mop the floor Ms. Hilton asked him his name, and when he told her, she dropped to her knees, and Mr. Rodriguez, familiar with her film career, unzipped his fly.

But Ms. Hilton only wrapped her hands around his waist and said, “Thank God I found you.”

According to Jesus he replied, “Thank God I found you too but we got about two minutes before my supervisor gets here so lets do this thing.”

Jesus further recounted the meeting: “She then asked me for my forgiveness and I said hey lady I’d forgive Bin Laden if he’d toot my wanker, then she began to sob at my feet, which, for me, man, is a total turn off, usually women cry after performing fellatio on me, not before, and she asked for my protection, and I said sure, you know, I got the mop and all I could fight off somebody, I mean the worst thing that happens here is when Tom Sizemore goes off his meds, this ain’t exactly Riker's Island, and then she asked if it would be forever and I said lady I’ll do what I can but I got kids at home ya know? But if she wants to give me a room at the mansion and you know, finish the deal we began before she was crying then sure I would protect her forever.

“She then climbed into the bed and asked me to bless her and I said sure, I mean I never heard it quite referred to by that euphemism but I can bless with the best of them, but then my supervisor came by so I put my hand on her head and told her as soon as the supervisor was gone I would bless her three, four times, hell all night long if she wanted it, and she told me she did, badly.

“I went back later that night to, you know, bless her, but man, she’s got this rash, and I wasn’t going anywhere near that thing, you know? So I left her, but she seemed happy.”

When Hilton was asked if she might have mistaken Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for a Hispanic janitor she asked: “What a Hispanic?”

Pretentious Articles About Sgt Pepper Pass Album Sales

2007-06-18T06:19:00.000-07:00

As of this morning the number of pretentious articles written in the last month about “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” has surpassed the amount of units the classic album has sold in the past 40 years.

In the article that pushed the written word past the sung word, Hugh Fallutin, of the Pompous Daily wrote, “Sgt. Pepper’s was the affirmation of the confluence of generational dissent inspired by an architectural revolution with ties to Keats and Shakespeare.”

Reached at his home at the corporate office of Starbucks where he is currently living with his girlfriend, Bethany Hamilton, the 16 year old girl who lost her arm to a shark in 2003, the limbless lover Paul McCartney said of Fallutin’s comment: “What the bloody hell does that mean?

“It was just a pop record,” McCartney, who last wrote a song that did not make ears bleed 34 years ago, said. “We needed money, we all had big drug habits, as is reflected in the music. Really, I mean, what a drag.”
Richard Buzzkill of “The Overly Indulgent Moderator” wrote: “Sgt. Pepper, the name itself, showed England’s lust for taste, not bland salt, but pepper, representing lust, the juices of life, but, still lonely, with all our technology, still in our flats, alone, disconnected, with hearts, still able to love, hoping for a band to join us.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake it was just a frickin name John came up with when he was high on peyote,” McCartney said.

Precious Onion of the “Overly Written Monthly” stated that the songs were “a frozen moment of a country reawakening from the dark night of war, with help from their friends, who make them better, fix holes in the yard, go kite flying, leave home, get a parking ticket, and in the ultimate irony, get killed in a car accident pushing that awakening back into darkness, it is the life of the butterfly, so beautiful, until it is swatted from the sky.”

McCartney, returning to the interview after getting a long desired good stubbing said: “Look, ‘Little Help From My Friends’ it was about drugs, we needed drugs to make the record because none of us could stand one another; ‘Lucy in the Sky?’ John’s song. None of us knew what the hell John was talking about. ‘Fixing a Hole’ I had drainage problems and writer’s block, I wrote about correcting it; next door a girl left home, her parents were bitching about it, I wrote down what they said. Walked to the studio, saw a sign about a benefit for Mr. Kite, said good morning to Rita the Meter Maid Ringo was shagging, and then John sang ‘A Day in the Life’ for us. I said great at least this turkey will have one good song. Oh, and ‘When I’m 64?’ was actually some notes I had made on my retirement plan which we mistakenly recorded while we were stoned. God, if I knew we would still be talking about that fricking record when I was 64 I never would have wrote it.”

When told of McCartney’s comments Flemish Pekingese of the Manchester Drone said: “So like Sir Paul to minimize the poetic episodic nave’s tail that enchanted us for generations as a touchstone to our collective Rubber Soul’s.”

When contacted at his home in London Ringo Starr said. “Oh yes, Rubber Soul, good album that.”

Iran Vows to Kill Porn Stars: Screech in hiding

2007-06-18T06:16:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday Iran’s parliament voted in favor of a bill that calls for the execution of all persons convicted of working in the production of pornographic movies.

Later that day Screech announced he would be spending the rest of the summer in Mr. Belding’s basement.

Other prominent entertainers and politicos commented on the Iranian parliament’s action.

President Bush was outraged at the vote: “This takes away our fundamental freedom to jerk off while looking at two sorority sisters seduce the cable man. Freedom of masturbation is protected under our Constitution and I will not rest until a young boy in Tehran can whip it out and satisfy himself on the sidewalk outside the movie theater just like a young boy growing up in Midland could after seeing ‘The Last Picture Show.’”

Domino’s Pizza announced today that the hopes and dreams of thousands of their deliverymen were crushed by the Iranian parliament’s decision.

Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Barney Frank arranged a meeting with the Iranian ambassador to discuss if this ban was only on heterosexual porn and his office said he would issue a statement after the meeting.

Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator Hilary Clinton seemed to support the bill’s passage saying it would cut down on her husband’s hotel room bill while he was on the campaign trail.

Contacted in her cell at the Lynnwood facility in Los Angeles Paris Hilton said; “Oh man, this is the worst month evuh!”

Well known porn industry star Ron Jeremy told reporters that he would stick it out as long as possible while on the lamb. The lamb refused to comment.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said that he would need a clarification from the Iranian court if it was “still cool to own that shit.” Thomas also personally asked Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to pardon Long Dong Silver.

Republican Presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani could not be reached for comment as he and staff members were destroying all his home movies and photo albums.

Popular Porn director Wally Balls said: “This is why we don’t let the baggy black trousers make all the decisions. I’d gladly die before I changed my views on high class porn.”

David Chase Sues Flatbush Massage Parlor Over Lack of Happy Ending

2007-06-18T06:11:00.001-07:00

A frustrated Soprano’s creator David Chase is suing a Flatbush Massage Parlor because he did not receive the happy ending he was promised.

Chase reported being harassed throughout the day, having his breakfast removed from the table before he had finished eating and having only half his hair cut before the barber announced he was through.

“This is how I envisioned his head,” Vito Spatforle, the barber said. “Everyone expects me to cut his hair all the way around, I prefer just to stop, bang, right in the middle.”

Chase then went to the Flatbush establishment to get a massage to help him relax after the less than stellar reviews of the final episode of his show “The Sopranos.”

“She used her oils on me, rubbed me, got rid of the tension, and then she began to manipulate my genitals in a way that I am accustomed to, and then she had me roll on my back and she straddled, me and then the lights went out and she was gone and I was left on the table extremely unsatisfied at the massage’s ending,” Chase said

“I don’t think the owners of this establishment understand how frustrating it is to be led to believe that there is going to be some big final payoff, to have dozens of hints dropped that you are going to get the ending that you deserve, and then boom! The lights go out and you’re left with nothing but disappointment,” he continued.

When reached at his home “Soprano’s” star James Gandolfini said “Hey what’cha gonna do?”

Jericho Supporter Asks CBS for Nuts Back

2007-06-18T06:07:00.000-07:00

A Wisconsin man, who is the self-described world’s biggest “Jericho” fan was excited, but confused, when informed of people sending nuts to CBS to encourage the show’s renewal.

Wilbert P. Hayes has provided for us a copy of the letter he sent to CBS regarding the incident.

“Dear Sir or Madam:

“I would first like to first thank you for renewing Jericho. It is my finest program. In my excitement to keep the show on the TV, I did not pay attention to what folks were sending, so, I cut my balls off with my Uncle Junior’s fishing knife.

“Ouch!

“I then put them in his cooler, and filled it with ice, and sent it via the overnight express man to CBS. While they were on route I discovered that (a) you had decided to renew the “Jericho” which made me very happy and (b) that people were sending you peanuts which was very upsetting to me, especially considering that I misunderstood when people, in their attempts to keep “The Barefoot Contessa” on the Food Network, were sending in angus meat, and not anus meat. They could not send that back to me.

“But my Uncle Junior has this real good doctor, well, he’s a veterinarian actually, but when his Bull Tuscaloosa got his testicles caught in the barb-wire fence he helped re-attach them, and he’s willing to give it a whirl with me.

“So, if you receive a small blue cooler that contain two testicles, and they are white, and partially distended, then I would be so happy if you could put them in your own ice, you can use the same cooler, and send them back to me. I will pay the postage. And again, thank you for putting Jericho back on the air. Now if I could just have my balls back that would be great.”

CBS spokesman Grant Underworth stated that no one at the Tiffany network either possesses or has seen a pair of balls and would not recognize them if the saw them.

Tough luck for Ball-less Wilbert P. Hayes, but happy viewing.

Of Bush, Hamas and John Lennon

2007-06-17T20:00:00.000-07:00

Is the reason the world is in such a mess is because President W spent (a) too much time listening to John Lennon, and (b) not getting any of the words right. Reports from the East Wing of the White House are that the President sings "All You Need is Democracy / Everybody!/ All You Need is Democracy" while in the shower.

Bush did decree this on the Palestinians when he brought democracy to them at gunpoint. Then he forgot to tell them who to vote for. Imagine if his Governor Brother had done that in 2000?

President W thought if he brought power to the people they would give give peace a chance and it would be just like starting over for the Middle East, The hard times are over he thought. Instead Palestinians gave their support to a militant terrorist organization leaving President W feeling crippled inside.

Fifteen months later Hamas is in control of the President’s office in Gaza, but instead of by vote it was done by gunpoint.

Meanwhile what is left of Mahmoud Abbas’ government has fled to the West Bank, trying to reform, as did Jefferson Davis when he fled to Mississippi. One has to believe that they are the mice allowed to stay alive while the cat attends to other business, living breath to breath, until suddenly: pounce!

Meanwhile our President searches for Palestine on a map, and asks how a civil war can break out in a country that does not exist, like a baseball team having a fight in the visitor’s dugout.

President W. who, as a boy told his Dad I don't want to be a soldier looked for others to help him clean his mess. He demanded that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert arm the Fatah government to stop the terrorists before we had to fight them here.

Olmert told the President such a move would be foolish. If we arm our enemy’s enemy, then, if they are over run, those arms will be used against us, and, since Fatah is still our enemy, even if they are victorious, what is to stop them from still using those weapons on us?

President W, who has authorized the supplying of weapons to the Sunnis, who, supposedly, would help quell the Shiite militias, felt instant karma hit him right in the face. The man who could not imagine planes flying into the World Trade Center (after he had been told it possible) or the levees breaking (when he was told it was probable) had never seen the danger in arming our enemies.

President W stays in the White House living in the same isolation as Abbas on the West Bank. W is left wondering how it all went so wrong, when all he ever did was listen to God.

The question the world has for President W is how do you sleep?