pretty damned important

the original

"I knew all along he was pretty damned important. I was naive, an innocent abroad. He corrupted me in a very special way. I took his gleeful, demonic spirit on board and took out of it what I needed for my own work. But he was the original." -Ralph Steadman

hands down, the best thing to come out of this is getting to hear/read hunter's nearest and dearest reflect on their experiences with the man himself. below is a link to the guardian, where ralph steadman, the man who illustrated many of hunter's stories and articles, talks about his partnership with the late, great hst.

steadman talks to the guardian

random things i am currently unhappy about

things that have ticked me off as of late:

1. the fact that i am still reading the same book i was reading a month and a half ago. my attention span is nonexistent right now. at this rate, with all the countless books i want to read/plan on reading, i'm basically fucked.

2. over the summer, i learned of the rock and roll holiday escape from a little blurb posted on slatch dot com...this is what got me to click the link:

"The site immediately bombards you with photos of a gigantic luxury cruise-liner and the live version of "Any Way You Want It." It got me so worked up into hysteria, I immediately whipped out my credit card and tried to reserve the most expensive suite on the boat. Oddly enough, half of the ship is already sold out. There are still a few spots left though - for a little over a grand, you can spend the week cruising the Caribbean with Journey, REO Speedwagon and Styx."

by god, i thought to myself, (after i had called my sister into the room and we had sufficiently worked ourselves into a fit over the whole concept) it would be awesome to write a story on this; to go on this cruise and report back on what, exactly, transpired. of course, i'm lazy and lack focus and...what's that stuff called? oh yeah, self confidence. so i didn't pitch it to anyone.

lo and behold, now it's february and chuck klosterman publishes an article in spin about the rock and roll holiday escape, having gone on the cruise with the intention of reporting back on what transpired. and although i like chuck's writing, and would think he'd be the go-to guy for the most entertaining account of this event, like, ever, his article fell well short of my expectations.

i mean, he was on a boat for seven days with styx, reo speedwagon, journey and a legion of their most rabid fans, and his article didn't have a singular anecdote that made me so much as crack a smile. in fact, the whole article, both in its descriptions of said event and in its failure to achieve a sufficent level of comedy, was pretty depressing. the low self-esteem nonwithstanding, i think if i had taken my sister and gone on this cruise, i might have produced a specimen of prize-worthy comic journalism. if i had taken my sister and my brother brain... jesus... maybe i'm overestimating myself, but i don't think i'm overestimating the material. i was on a regular carnival cruise a few years ago and there was enough wacky shit happening on that boat to fill at least a few hundred words.

i'm disappointed. all the way around.

3. peter jennings filed a special report the other night on...UFO's. enough said, i think.

I promised some Thompson, some Thompson you shall have

(From Hey Rube, HST's espn column)

"The Curse of Musburger"


I have old scores to even with all manner of people: Brent Musburger, Lyle Lovett, Lawyers, foriegners, Pit bulls, Russian Pimps, and the whole Los Angeles Police Department. There are rotten people everywhere.

My grudge against Brent Musburger has been smoking on a personal back burner for many years- since the early 1980's, in fact, when Brent was covering the NBA finals for CBS-TV, and it involves the word "downtown."

That is when Musburger changed the language of sportswriting forever when he came up with the ignorant notion that any basketball player firing off a long three-point shot is shooting from "downtown" (Celtics announcer Johnny Most might have coined the "downtown" trademark in the 1960's, but it was Musburger who beat it to death.)

I still hear in my dreams the wild stupid gibberish coming out of that yo-yo's mouth every time Nate McMillan or Dennis Johnson drilled one of those long flat three-pointers.

"All the way from downtown," Brent would scream, "another one from Downtown!"

It drove me mad then, and it still does every time one of those fools blurts it out. It was quickly picked up and adopted by a whole generation of half-bright TV commentators every night of the bloody season. It has become part of the Lexicon now, and it will not be easy to correct...In gyms and Coliseums all over America (even in Greece or Korea), wherever basketball as we know it is played, there will be some howling Jackass braying "From downtown! Another three-pointer! Is this a great country, or what?"

It is the Curse of Musburger, another dumb and relentless squawk from the world of baseball writers.

"Going downtown" has more than one meaning- from going to work at 66 Wall Street in New York to anal rape in Alcatraz- but it always means going to a busy place, for good or ill. The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang says it's "where the action is"- a noisy, crowded place with many intersections and tall buildings and freaky looking strangers.

Indeed we all know that place. We see it every night on ESPN and on the hardwood at the Boston Garden...it's that violent little place just under the glass on a big-time Basketball court where tall brutes slam each other around like crazed fish. They call it "Rebounding."

Downtown is where you score- not somewhere out in the wilderness, where people are far apart and not much happens. You don't fire a long jump shot from Downtown, you fire it into Downtown. The real definition of "Taking it downtown" is to suddenly drive to the basket and into a cluster of 7-footers who seem to have you sealed out- like Allen Iverson launching himself at Robinson and Duncan and dunking it over them. To think Otherwise would be to think like a Baseball Writer, or like Brent Musburger.

Hunter S. Thompson, January 1, 2001

guidos guidos guidos

i keep getting spam emails from a site called njguido.com, advertising the goings on in "new jersey nightlife". really, you should go check this out just for kicks. the pictures alone make it worthwhile; it's all you'd expect from something called nj guido, and more. as for the emails, which my spam filter seems incapable of blocking, i must say that even the herbal viagra and breast enhancement people aren't barking up as wrong a tree as the good folks at nj guido. i would link it here, but i'm afraid that would give them the wrong idea.

hunter thompson is dead, and we have killed him

no we haven't. i just like the way that sounds.

it's been three days of mulling this one over, round and round in my head; it's been an interesting three days in there. when i first saw the headline on yahoo news, late sunday night after a few drinks, i was completely floored. for the first few moments, and the next few hours, i felt as if i were a table and someone had just ripped off one of the legs. i was still standing, i could still function relatively the same, but i had been undermined in some fundamental way.

i didn't get it. it made no sense to me. i kept trying to find something in any one of the countless news reports that were published in the next twenty four hours that would give me some sort of insight into how and why this happened. i felt like there was just a critical sentance or two missing from the accounts, which seemed the same at every news source, and that the discovery of this missing information would make this whole thing compute. didn't happen. at least not in the way i thought it would.

i called my friend pat, who is a fellow thompson admirer. we have always passed our thompson books back and forth. on a trip from new york to florida a few years ago, we traded off driving and reading aloud, and our book of choice was dr. thompson's generation of swine. we went to see the cinematic adaption of fear and loathing in las vegas together; we smoked cigarettes in the theatre, sunk down in our seats in an attempt to remain covert. he was the person who ferreted out where the buffalo roam at our local video store, to further our goal of soaking up all things thompson. he was the person i needed to speak to on monday. he was the person who's take i wanted to hear most. and i found him, as i suspected i would, in the same boat; set adrift without a paddle.

we pooled information, commiserated on how absolutely perplexing an idea it was that hunter thompson would take his own life. eventually we agreed to settle on the notion that hunter was still alive, and had faked his own death and gone underground with the help of his family and closest comrades. it seemed the only explanation that could stand against the idea of hunter thompson that we had formulated in our minds over the years that we'd been reading him.

i thought about that for a while, and it made me feel some relief from the confusion and loss i was experiencing. and it was fun, in the way that imagining hunter doing any of the things that hunter did or may have done was fun. he was always an enormous spectacle, and it was an amazing thing to behold, even in print. i can only imagine what it must have been like to witness in person.

then, a some point yesterday i had a thought. and once i'd had it, the confusion went away and i don't expect it will return. the thought was this: it isn't any of my fucking business why he did it. i am a fool to think that I can assign my own notions of what makes "sense" to things that other people do. we all get taught this lesson every day, yet it is impossibly hard to retain. for a brief moment, i had started to feel as if the fact that i didn't see hunter as the "type" who would off himself somehow called his entire incarnation in my heart and mind into question. but the truth is, the way he lives in my heart and mind is because of the way his work connects with my own sensibilities and makes itself a part of me. it doesn't necessarily work the other way around. hunter's choices regarding his manner of death had nothing to do with me, and to attach my own meaning to an action that was so purely private and personal is not valid. this is what i've come to. i thought about this: if hunter had merely passed away, i would have felt sad, i would have felt a loss, but it wouldn't have rattled me the way this did. and that's me. i'm responsible for the differences between those reactions.

the esteem in which i hold the good doctor is nearly unparalleled among people i do not personally know; there is but a handful of these persons who have been both a friend and teacher to me through their written words, and even in death, hunter thompson is teaching me something . i have never thought to imitate, to aspire to be, hunter in my own writing, for one simple reason; it is impossible. hunter did not get to be hunter by imitating anyone. he simply was, from moment one to moment last. and there isn't any way to imitate that. the only thing of any consequence that anyone can hope to glean from someone like hunter, someone so utterly, unfailingly originial, is a simple concept that is exceedingly rare, most likely because it cannot be practiced or learned. you must be only, absolutely, yourself. in this way, hunter can be emulated, but never imitated. here, henry miller says it far better than i can:

"understanding is nothing. the eyes must be kept open, you must relax, not strain. don't be afraid of falling backwards into the bottomless pit. there is nothing to fall into. you are in it, and of it, and if you persist, someday you will be it. i don't say you will have it, please notice, because there is nothing to possess. neither are you to be possessed. remember that! you are to liberate yourself. there are no exercises, physical or spiritual, to practice. all such things are like incense, they awaken a feeling of holiness. we must be holy without holiness. we must be whole. complete. that's being holy. any other kind of holiness is false, a snare and a delusion."

i have decided that i will post some of my favorite thompson excerpts over the next few days, if only because it will be nice to see them, to read them again. and also for the sake of sharing with those who might not be familiar with his work. he is one of the few people who inspire in me a feeling of great satisfaction, and comfort, in knowing that he merely exists out there somewhere. i think that is the root of why i was so affected by his passing. for a moment it scared me to think that hunter was no longer physically present in the world. but i think hunter knew, and somewhere i do too, that physicality is really incidental. especially for someone like him.

for starters, i am including links to two written eulogies, one by tom wolfe and one by christopher hitchens, both of whom have done a terribly difficult thing extraordinarily well.

hitchens

wolfe

hst

hst

i came home this evening and discovered that someone who means a great deal to me has died. hunter s. thompson was one of the few people i consider a true icon, and his passing fills me with feelings i'm uncertain i've ever had before regarding the death of another human being. actually, just to read back over that first sentance; to call him "someone who means a great deal to me" is vastly understated.

i want so badly to write more about this, but now is not the time. i am overrun, absolutely stupefied by this, and i cannot possibly express my feelings in the way that i would want to.

can i kick it?(yes you can)

taking a break from providing unsolicited commentary on various subjects( i have an interest in many things, am an expert on nothing), i have turned to working on some fiction again... i have posted a bit of a new piece on the works in progress page. i must warn that this one is very much in progress. i feel my usual sense of extreme discomfort in letting anything that i haven't revised to death see the light of day(or the internet, as the case may be), but i'm trying to break myself of this obsessive behaviour.

this is only the beginning of this particular story, and i will post the progress as i agree to let go of it. and so there it is. over there. go have a look, if you'd like. anyone with anything relevant to say is more than welcome to shoot an email to me at lolan27@yahoo.com i welcome your thoughts, criticisms, points of contention, recipes, etc...

talkin' smack

it's that time of year again, the weather is getting warmer, pitchers and catchers have reported, and the yankee-red sox shit-talking train has pulled out of the station, where it momentarily paused to refuel. from here on out it will be picking up speed till april, when the sox and yanks meet in the bronx to open the season.

opening day is what i am most looking forward to; the put up or shut up. but for now, the verbal barbs, especially the ones coming out of boston, are good for a bit of entertainment. the red sox have always been willing to make themselves look like a bunch of whining tools for a little press and i, for one, find it hilarious.

there's the a-rod/trot nixon fued, although the a-rod/varitek on-field fued is much more exciting...trot nixon has appointed himself the resident red sox windbag, and likes to run his mouth about everything, regardless of whether it concerns him directly or not. i must express a certain degree of smug satisfaction at the fact that my side, the "evil empire" , does a hell of a lot less in the way of spewing ridiculous public statements deriding the sox. we leave that to the fans, people like me; loud-mouthed elitists, drunk on my own sense of fan superiority. the yanks themselves run a tight p.r. ship, and i think it drives the red sox crazy. especially red sox like trot nixon.

then we have david wells, who will be playing in boston this season. he wasted no time in slagging the yankees, taking shots at everyone from a-rod to joe torre, pausing to mention that mel stottlemyre was "probably the best pitching coach i ever had"*. he also took a moment to reflect that he perhaps "wore out his welcome"* in new york. couldn't have said it better myself. wells has always been all over the map, constantly pissed off over implications that he is fat, which he is, and don't forget lazy...i won't forgive him for his "freak" back injury that took him out of the 2003 world series in the first inning of game five. by "freak" we mean out of shape and hungover. by "david wells" we mean mercenary, willing to play for any old team that doesn't mind him being sidelined by an occasional case of gout. there's a great quote on espn.com today from wells, who apparently called brian cashman in the offseason and offered his services to new york yet again, before he slithered off to boston. "i told him(brian cashman) that if there was any interest i'd love to come back and play, and brian told me that 'we'd love to have you, but the boss (steinbrenner) is looking in another direction. we're going to go with youth this year.' and then they turn around and sign randy."*

yes, boomer, but i'm willing to bet that randy has logged considerably less time at krispy kreme than you have. in the interest of historical accuracy, i was all about boomski when he played in new york circa 97/98, but when he came back in 2002 he had lost the chemistry that is essential to the yanks. i realize that there were problems between him and upper management, but that's the kind of stuff that shouldn't be seeping on to the field, and in his case, it did. in fact, i happen to believe that his shoddy play was less about injury and more about sticking it to the people in the yankee organization that he was unhappy with, although i'll stand alone on that theory if i have to. either way, in true mercenary fashion, he's taken his fat ass to boston, where he gets to share a pitching rotation with curt schilling and curt schilling's ego, which takes up about four lockers and has its own jersey. have fun, boomer. i'm just hoping for a little side action, a la pedro/schill last year, where wells comes in especially hurtin' one morning and gets into it with curt. i don't think that's remotely beyond the realm of possiblity. either way, wells claims he's dead-set on proving his pitching and yankee-beating abilities at fenway. we shall see, ol' boy, we shall see.

like i said, the real showdown will begin in the bronx on april 3rd, and hopefully, for the sake of good baseball, continue all the way through to the 2005 alcs. oh, how i do love the rivalry; the good, the bad, the ugly. go yanks.

*all quotes from www.espn.com

how drunk is too drunk?

i'm not kidding when i tell you that the virginia general assembly has moved on from pants and traditional marriage license plates to...drunk hunters. yes. that's the term that the local news employed, by the way, to describe this issue, and the anchorwoman actually said something to the effect of "how drunk is too drunk?" i'm not sure i even need to touch this.

the last two times i commented on the agenda of the virginia general assembly, i raised questions about their use of time; how they seemed to be preempting important state business with ridiculous meanderings on the modern phenomenon of low-riding pants. i take all that back. there apparently is no important state business; or rather, this is the important state business. hunters in virginia need to know how shitfaced they can be when they go out in the woods to blow things away.(they do go out into the woods, right? hello?) and the general assembly is going to put their heads together, hash it out, and come up with an answer to this burning question.

remember a while back when i was talking about getting some nerf and a helmet to protect myself against my southern neighbors? scratch that. i'm upgrading to body armor. i hear they sell it on ebay.

in a semi-related story, dr. hunter s. thompson has invented a new sport. and i quote: "So there it is. Shotgun Golf will soon take America by storm. I see it as the first truly violent leisure sport. Millions will crave it." i'm pretty sure he's on to something. read about it here:

shotgun golf

as for the productivity i engaged in yesterday, i am happy to report that the only thing i didn't do was number 3, which involved going outside and shooting some pictures. it started to rain, so instead i increased number 2(sleep) and filled in the rest by developing a plan via email for a multi-million dollar business and world domination scheme with my sister, who was hung over at work. you're gonna want what we've come up with. i'm sure of it. also, this emailing frenzy provided the forum for my sister to write what may go down in history as one of the most brilliant sentances ever constructed. check it out here.

i am also happy to report that fabolous is the proud owner of a much cleaner fishbowl. this has rendered him not only cleaner, but fitter, happier, more productive...you know the rest. i took a picture for the occasion, and fabolous was hamming it up, so psyched is he about his sparkling digs. however, the camera batteries died, so you're just going to have to take my word for it. perhaps you don't really care, and feel that this paragraph has gone on far too long to sustain your interest. fair enough.

condemned...to freedom

the restaurant i work in was shut down by the board of health last night, and although i am still uncertain as to whether i should feel a sense of personal shame about that, it does mean i don't have to work today. i've spent the past few days feeling pretty crappy, and since i've been granted such an unexpected and welcome reprieve from my normal routine, and since it seems that today will be another pleasantly sunny and mild day, i have decided to suspend my february tailspin and have a day that might be considered "enjoyable" and perhaps even "productive". can i do that? i guess we'll see.

lists are good. i like making lists.

things i will do with the day off granted to me by the board of health task force:

1. change the water in my fish, fabolous', fishbowl. this is something i should have done about four days ago, and i feel really bad about it. fabolous is the smartest fish alive, and he's not terribly amused by having to deal with substandard living conditions. especially when his actual pad is so pimpin'. check it out:


stop taking my goddamn picture and clean my bowl, bitch.


2. sleep. i'm not gonna lie.

3. actually breathe some fresh air. it really is nice outside. i mean, this is february, and it's warm enough to wear flip-flops. i should be taking full advantage. perhaps i'll go out and take some pictures, and post a photo essay. or an essay, with photos. or something.

4. attempt a pass at the dish biohazard that has taken over my sink. i don't want to tangle with the b.o.h. task force. they've got labcoats and those paper hair-covering things that surgeons wear. what the hell are they called? is there an actual name for them? i feel like there is, but nothing's coming to me. well, whatever. the paper hair covering things. and the clipboards. they've got clipboards.

february is the cruelest month

new week. we are halfway through february, and the meltdown is in full effect, though as per usual it has not taken the form i had anticipated. it never does. i'm determined, however. march is not unreachable, and i must repeat that, over and over in my head, until it gets here.

i was in the dmv with my brother at 8:45 this morning, and we had quite a bit of time to reflect on the dmv scene, while we waited for D414 to be called. conclusions? the more bizarre you appear to the information desk lady, the more likely you are to be fast tracked to a window, and henceforth, the more likely you are to leave the building before others who appear less threatening. i understand this reasoning, it just failed to benefit me in any way. the young man who's hair could only be described as a post-electrocution halo, however, was in and out in ten minutes. in addition, i realized that if i were to take a job at the dmv, i too would derive a great deal of pleasure from stretching the time it takes to ring the bell that signals the next customer to its absolute maximum. in fact, i believe i would probably make a show of not ringing the bell, and engaging in entirely self-serving activities instead, such as looking at myself in the mirror, or text messaging on my cell phone. this kind of behavior has the potential to drive the average dmv patron absolutely bananas. hell, my brother was about to start taking hostages.

can i talk for a minute about the grammys? thanks.

it's been many years since i caught a grammy broadcast, which might account for why it seemed that last evening's 47th annual grammy awards sucked so much harder than i remember them sucking. that they are ridiculously irrelevant to modern music is a given. that aside, the whole thing seemed painfully awkward, no? some participants seemed embarassed(understandably), but others inexplicably seemed as if they had never appeared in front of a large group of people before. it was bizarre, like watching a junior high talent show or something, where no one knows exactly how to conduct themselves. and that performance of "across the universe" was absolutely wretched.

i must say, giving ray charles' producer the 'wrap it up' music in the middle of the acceptance speech he was giving on behalf of a dead man was extremely classy. i'm assuming that someone, perhaps many people, got fired after this broadcast. it was just too ridiculously sloppy and disorganized; it's 2005, for christ's sake. anyone with half a braincell and a reality show concept can produce a television program. ashton kutcher does it. events like the grammy awards shouldn't appear as if they were produced by a high school a.v. class, or the kids from the apprentice. (did anyone see those commercials they made? good lawd.)

anyhoo, i believe my brother summed it up the best with this comment, which he made after the late ray charles won 'album of the year': "i hope ray charles is gathering his zombie powers, and will rise from the dead and lay waste to that whole auditorium." i couldn't have agreed more. unfortunately, the program ended directly, without ray charles visiting from beyond the grave.

as i lay dying...

i have the flu(which sucks. don't get it.) so i've been pretty much out of commission for the past few days, due in large part to the spike in my otc("over the counter", as per web.md) medication intake. i am doped the hell up, y'all. and my ability to form coherent sentances has suffered.

however, i, for one, am sick of opening this page and reading about my birthday, so i figured i'd throw out a bone.

va gets tough on...pants

here's va kickin' it bobo style again...apparently they moved right from the important business of license plates on to the staggering problem of underwear visibility. luckily, this debate only lasted a few days before someone finally realized we were quickly becoming the laughing stock of the nation, and decided to drop the whole thing. time to make it look like we're actually doing something in the general assembly, right boys and girls? what will they debate on next? peanut butter or chocolate? coke or pepsi? britney or christina? pick any irrelevant topic. any one at all.


in other news, jason giambi says he's sorry...sorry that the parasites couldn't pull together and help him win a world series ring, that is. oh, and he's also sorry that jose canseco's a bitch. and apparently a broke-ass one at that.

what else? oh yeah...i found a really awesome blog, written by none other than our eighth pres, the honorable martin van buren. he's very witty, which is something i didn't know. to be honest, i didn't really know shit about mart, but now that i can read his blog, i think i'm on my way to a better understanding of the man.

check it out here:

http://8thpresindahouse.blogspot.com

allright, well, that's all for now. i'm gonna go take some more drugs. god, i love drugs. also, i must recommend breathe-right strips, which are those things you always see wide receivers sportin' in the nfl. they work wonders, i'm telling you.

'time keeps creepin', through the neighborhood...'

'killing old folks, waking up babies, just like we knew it would.'

i'm turning twenty-nine tomorrow, which at some moments can seem weird to me, but only at the moments that i choose to think about it as seeming weird. i guess the weirdness might come from thinking back over the twenty-nine years that i've been kicking around on earth, and the fact that it can sometimes seem like a really long time, and then sometimes it can seem quite a bit shorter than that. it is strange to think about what it might be like to live without measuring time. it would be entirely different, it would change everything about the way i think. the structure of my memories would be without chronology, and what happened yesterday would be the same as what happened five years ago, or fifteen years ago. there would be no seperating the two. it seems like it might be a bit like the sensation i get when i recall something from a dream, and i wonder if it is something i dreamed the night before, or on a night years ago. i can acknowledge the sensation that it is a memory from a dream i had in the past, but there really isn't any way to know. unless i've written it down, or told it to someone who remembers, i am unable to say for certain if it is a concoction of my brain from now or previous, because my brain could just as easily be concocting the sensation of time having passed. it's pretty interesting, at least to me. does the fact that everyone is born, lives, and then dies make it automatic that our brains chronologize the experiences that we have? would this happen even if we had never assigned the concept of "time" to them, or would it in fact be more like what i described above?

i should look into this. i assume that there are many volumes written on this sort of thing. and yeah...i know, i sound a bit like i'm off floating in the ether this entry, but don't make fun of me. it's my birthday... you heartless, cynical bastards.

turning the tables in boston

the sports guy over at www.espn.com is doing a super blog for the superbowl for the next few days, which is always a good time. also known as bill simmons, he is one of my favorite writers, and hands-down my favorite sports writer. he trancends boundaries, however; you really don't have to know much about sports to enjoy what he writes.

as for the superbowl itself, i have only a passing interest in it, mainly due to the fact that i once again have money on the numbers(though not as much as last year, when my friend sarah and i staked a large sum on winning the superbowl pool at our job, "in the name of all that was right and good". apparently that wasn't enough. we got no love; thanks, universe) and because i am always interested to witness whatever surreal spectacle will comprise the half-time show.

i do want the patriots to win, as it will be a large step in the long, perhaps impossible journey of boston fans toward understanding the other side of the yankee-hating coin. ah, fuck understanding...it will just show them up as hypocrites, which is even better. i'm talking about the fact that the patriots, if they win again this year, will have crossed that line into the realm of "dynasty", and will likely start to recieve the sort of backlash that has followed the yanks since the late nineties. it's a peculiar paradox, eliciting derision as a result of doing something consistently well and reaping the benefits, but it is alive and well, especially in sports. the sports guy has recently begun dropping hints that this epiphany is in motion, at least for him, although he will still try and explain eight ways to sunday how it is not exactly the same thing. but it is. very much so.

greatness is hard to swallow in the present tense, especially for people looking in on it from outside, or worse, looking at it from the losing side. more often than not, the response is to downplay the real reasons why the "dynasty" exists and pin it on less desireable and sometimes downright derogatory factors. in the case of the yankees over the past nine years, they have been one of the most humble, hardworking and talented group of athletes to ever play pro sports, and this is something that is not in dispute, even from those outside the yankee camp. bill simmons will admit it; he has acknowledged this in one way or another many times. as for yankee fans, who are loathed universally for their perceived obnoxiousness and elitism, well...it is hard to back up a sweeping indictment of thousands of people, not to say that there aren't yankee fans that fit that description. but i think in most cases, especially with our boston redsox fan counterparts, we are no more obnoxious than anyone else dedicated to the success of their team. either way, the fans are another issue entirely. when you're talking about teams that win, teams that become "dynasties", you aren't going to find yourself talking about teams that don't deserve to be there. tom brady and the pats are going to the superbowl again because they have been traveling a sure and steady course for an extended period of time. they are in the zone, they have their shit together, and when those factors are on full thrust, they become unstoppable. it's not because they are a bunch of assholes being shepherded by satan. i suppose it's unfortunate that not everyone can appreciate something like this in real time, but that's sports. competition. rivalry. whatever. in the future, when the pats are no longer in their present position, people can watch the nfl films footage and wax nostalgic about the greatness of this team, if they so desire.

as for me, and as for the patriots fans who are loving every second of this, we don't give a shit what everyone else thinks. when your team is kicking ass and taking names and steamrolling over the opposition with the greatest of ease, it feels good. and we won't be making any apologies for it, either. go pats.

*shout out to my sister, aimee l. agnes ball...i have written this to keep her amused at work, so she doesn't feel the need to eat poison.*

oh, virginia...

oh, virginia. there are so many things i like about you, but sometimes you really suck.

i could go on and on about va's license plate disorder, whether it be the maddening abundance of vanity plates(they apparently don't cost extra, so any nitwit who bothers to make the trip to d.m.v. can make up a snappy message to display on his license plate. incidentally, he will hardly ever see his handiwork, but i will inevitably be stuck staring at it in traffic, wanting desperately to rear-end him on principle.) or the ridiculous number of plate variations offered(180. you can also make your own if you can't find one that suits your needs) including a "fight terrorism" motif, a jimmy buffet-inspired "parrotheads" design, an inexplicable "virginia credit unions" plate and the ever popular "wild turkey". i was under the impression that the purpose of having a state-issued license plate was to be able to easily identify them as being from a particular state, but apparently i have been misled. license plates are about creativity, and seeing how garish and ridiculous people can be when left to their own license plate devices. i am currently planning to just make my own at home and slap it on there. they won't know the difference.

anyhow, the virginians have now taken this whole thing to the next level, using their general assembly session to discuss whether it is completely fucking ridiculously wrong to issue a license plate espousing "traditional marriage". and guess what? so far, they think it's a splendid idea! personally, i can't understand why they don't just go for the gusto and move for "fags not welcome" or "we hate homos". why beat around the bush? if they're going to sideline what i would imagine must be actual important state business to debate whether it is a good idea to encourage the persecution of american citizens using a license plate slogan, they may as well do it up.

va: fighting gay marriage, one license plate at a time

margaritaville, alive and well in va.


credit unions!?


my personal fave...the turkey.

corporate america: stupidity on parade

j.lo doll clone: just as lame as real thing

so, the american girl company, in their attempt to take their schtick to the streets and capitalize on the 'jenny from the block' theme that j.lo has bestowed upon the world, ends up making a racist-toned faux pas and pissing off an entire chicago neighborhood. awesome. gotta love the suggestion: white flight for the urban minority masses. screw a sense of community, you'll get yo ass shot out there. i suppose american girl thought they were being gracious, letting their hispanic character move to the 'burbs? uh...not so much.