bringing it all back home

now that i have my computer desk all set up and i can comfortably surf the vast reaches of the internet whilst listening to my i-tunes and sipping a triple skim decaf macchiato(ok, not that last one), i have been doing just that. catching up on all my usual haunts: the sports guy, all the music blogs, etc. etc.

here's a little wrap-up of some of the funnier things i have read this week online.

the sports guy, on the kenny rogers/pine tar/cheating business:

• Back to Rogers: Does anyone else believe that he planted that brown stuff on his left hand to deflect attention away from the fact that he fits every possible profile of a steroids/greenies guy? I mean, let's say you just returned from a three-week safari in Africa and I told you, "Yo, there's this veteran pitcher in his early 40s with a storied track record for choking in big games, only now he's working on a 22-inning scoreless streak in October and punctuating each start by screaming after every out and stomping around like a crazy homeless guy trying to clear out a bus stop?" Wouldn't your first thought be, "What's he taking?" Instead, we're worried about some mud on his hand? Somebody make this guy pee in a cup, please.

this is an excellent theory. leave it to the sports guy and his theories.

now, on to this thought-provoking piece, from jules, usually of the bruni digest, but since bruni is in italy hiding from his new editor at the times, jules is posting to her other(equally noteworthy) blog.

celebrities and starbucks

and just in case you don't see fit to peruse the whole post, which i think you should if only for the great picture montage she has worked up at the outset, here's one of my favorite excerpts:

"And a related question: can Mary Kate's tiny heart, already working overtime to carry her enormous shawls, handle 800 fluid ounces of caffeine per day?"

in other non-web-related news, we headed out to brooklyn last night(we chose to think of it as an epic journey over the sea of trendiness to the land of the trendites, where we, inhabitants of the promised land, would save our friends from the armies of hipsters and their tireless pursuit of looking exactly the same as all the other hipsters) to check out barcade, which is what it sounds like: a bar and an arcade fused perfectly into one. after making kelli promise to never sport a she-mullet, charles filled his pockets with quarters and disappeared, microbrew in hand, into the sea of video games. it was actually a really great place: nice and big, good crowd, good tunes, reasonable prices, and all those video games...brooklyn isn't so bad after all. it has it's moments, at least.

anyhow, inspired by hours surrounded by the honor roll of vintage video games, i went a-googling this morning to find my first favorite video game ever: montezuma's revenge. i bet my sister's head will explode when she sees this:

leave it to yahoo! news

i always find the yahoo! headlines amusing, mainly because there are always about six of them, and the top one will read something like "october death toll soars in iraq" or something equally serious, and by the last one it's "duran duran guitarist andy taylor leaves band". it never fails. if you need something to lighten your mood, i recommend checking out the yahoo! headlines at least once a day.

that duran duran one was really on there today. duran fucking duran! i mean, i wasn't aware that they were even still a band, let alone that it would be headline news if one of the members decided to leave. i mean, i love rio as much as the next person, but i think this is a bit of a stretch.

semi-related story: i also love randomly flipping to VH1 classic, simply because there is, without fail, some video playing that makes your head want to explode. a few months ago, it was "we don't have to take our clothes off(to have a good time)" by whoever the fuck did that song, who was trying to look like prince, i think, but about 45 pounds skinnier(yes, you read that right.) either way, besides freezing charles and i in horror for the entire 3 and a half minute spectacle, it was also responsible for me walking around singing "come on baby, won't you show some class, why you wanna move so fast?" repeatedly for the next few days. which was cool. but i digress.

the other night i flipped to it, in the middle of watching football or something, and it was duran duran playing. i think it might have been "girls on film" or something, whichever one involves a lot of weirdos in formalwear parading around a boxing ring while duran duran plays in short-shorts behind them. regardless. the look on charles' face was worth a trillion dollars. i'm sure the look on my face was pretty valuable as well, but his took the cake. viva la VH1 classic.

also in headlines, the Richmond Times-Dispatch is reporting that Virginia has banned smoking in all state buildings. way to be twenty five years behind the times, VA! what's next?? a ban on smoking in shopping malls and movie theatres? it's madness!

pork chop sandwiches!

you know, just when i was thinking to myself "you tube? what's the big frickin' deal? forty gazillion dollars for wha..." kels posts these on her blog. the public service that these people have done with their overdubbing greatly outweighs whatever public service g.i.joe did with the originals. and you tube, i get it now. i really, really do. i'll never doubt you again.

edit: ok, this one in particular is fucking great. do you have any idea how long we laughed over this one? any idea? craziness.

random info you probably don't want to know about me, because i'm not famous.

lets face it. the onion a.v. club ain't gonna come knockin' anytime soon to ask me nicely if i will shuffle my ipod and then discuss it with them. who cares what i listen to? and further, who cares what i have to say about it? i understand.

but this is my dumb old blog, and i have my own frickin' a.v. club, and i got way bored tonight watching the fucking cardinals walk all over those cheatin' detroit tigers, so i decided to shuffle my ipod and write about it. it's a segment i made up myself and i'm gonna call it 'random rules'. naw, just kidding.

but seriously. if anyone else wants to get bored watching stupid baseball and shuffle their ipod, i'll print what you come up with. i don't know if the onion is gonna want it, though.

here goes.

bob marley-soon come(livey up yourself)
i don't know of any music that is consistently more feel-good. interesting that ol' bob was working from one of the greatest social conciousnesses of modern times. awareness feels good! (apparently...)

the polecats-john, i'm only dancing(bowie cover)
you might remember the polecats from that 'make a circuit with me' song they had in the 80's? yeah, you'd know it if you heard it. anyhow, this is a logical cover for them, but it doesn't really do much for me...this is one of my favorite bowie songs, and i'd rather hear him do it any day of the week.

john vanderslice-me and my 424(life and death of an american 4-tracker)
i love john vanderslice. an intriguing lyricist, and a wizard with the audio recording-type stuff, his songs are always full of great beats and riffs and crazy sounds and clever little phrases and whatnot. this is one of my first favorite jv songs...a love song to his 4-track, or perhaps a hate-song, or a not-so-love song to everything less reliable and less awesome than his 4-track. or a splendid combination of both. if all else fails, jv can always head to the basement with a box of fucking tdk's.

modest mouse-black cadillacs(good news for people who love bad news)
this is such a great album. i think it arrived just in time to soundtrack a particular sliver of my life pretty accurately- a little anger, a little fear, a little hope, and a lot of sarcasm rolled into a song cycle that felt like it would kick your ass if it met you in a dark alley under the wrong circumstances.

m. ward-rollercoaster(postwar)
this one is off his latest album, which i just got(thanks kels) and haven't really had a chance to listen to yet. the songs i have heard have led me to believe i should expect nothing less than the greatness of his previous outings...m. ward is one of those rare artists who is almost instantly a classic. maybe because his songs conjure a sense of having great history and his voice is so distiguished and defiant of chronology. his songs sound as if they are coming out of a really old radio that you've found buried in a shed somewhere, lost relics from decades past. yet completely new. i think i may have stolen that whole description from an article i read on him once, but i can't remember, so fuck it. i can always use the 'i don't recall' defense. works for everyone else.

sade-lover's rock(lover's rock)
sade has the power to create an atmosphere with her music, so it doesn't matter if you hear it while in line at the coffee place, taking a bath, lying on a beach in the tropics or driving the long island expressway with the love of your life in the passenger seat, it all seems exactly right and wonderfully sensual and relaxed and romantic.(all of the sade-song-hearing-scenarios above are ones i have actually experienced. they are not actors.)

so there it is. i even used every color in the visible spectrum to highlight the songs and artists. the onion doesn't do that. this is my a.v. club. mine.

peanut butter, puffy vest and jelly time, y'all.

ok, so for anyone who hasn't already been apprised of the situation: there will be no yankee talk on this blog for the forseeable future. no questions. no answers. no ruminating on what could have been. i'm taking the fucking fall and winter off and in the spring i will see if i feel up to it. i have to tell you, it really hurts looking at the sidebar and seeing 'yankee baseball', in all caps mind you, sitting there under 'looking forward to'. not so much.

supposedly it's cold, at least that's what charles tells me, but i'm afraid i can't take his word for it. is it the kind of cold where your bodily fluids flow from and then freeze to your face? does your face then burn and feel as if it might peel off? have you considered lying down in the gutter and going to sleep to make the suffering end? then i'm not so sure it's cold. puffy vest time? definitely. am i concerned that what i just described is looming just around the corner? yup. can i do anything but buy more things to layer with? no.

speaking of charles, here's a quote from this morning. "my free-cell game is fucking impeccable." he's something like 322 and 2. baby, i think you need a more challenging job. or no job at all??? that's what we should be shooting for. both of us.

i am so late for work. it's terrible, but i can't bring myself to get in the shower any more than twenty minutes before i'm supposed to be on the subway...it's like being in high school again, except without all the angst.