I suppose this was inevitable

When you spend every match constantly picking the wedge out of your ass, you're bound to injure it:

Nadal said after the match he nearly didn't play because an MRI scan Saturday showed a strained buttock muscle.

New York Magazine is trying to kill me

I don't usually post stuff like this, but I'm sorry, I am powerless.

This doesn't seem to fit the prevailing narrative

Ten bucks says the person who made this threat is a regular commenter at Deadspin and KSK.

Spike Lee is confused

This is the outfit he wore to Game 4 of the NBA Finals:


Wrong sport? Check. Wrong city? Check. Although he is wearing the visitor's uniform, so at least he sort of got that part right, which is nice.

Anyway, I'm hardly much of an NBA fan, but that game was pretty awesome.

An observation from Tuesday night's Red Sox game

Balfour is a really unfortunate last name for a pitcher.

Shocking revelation from Patriots video scandal

Men like to look at scantily-clad women:

In addition to signals shown on the tape of the Chargers game, the video shot by the Patriots also includes up-close shots of San Diego Charger cheerleaders.

If Roger Goodell were to penalize the Patriots cheerleaders for stealing routines, maybe even suspend them, it wouldn't be a tragedy. I'm just saying.

Yay, baseball!

As great as it was to see the Red Sox get their World Series rings yesterday, I think the coolest picture from the day has to be this picture of the hawk (or one of its friends - apparently there are three) that made the news the other day for attacking a girl at Fenway*. Seriously, how cool is that? It's got a freakin' rat in it's mouth!



*Confidential to the Boston Globe - the fact that the hawk attacked a girl named Alexa Rodriguez is not irony. Irony would have been if it had attacked a girl named Manuela Ramirez. God.

Mark your calendars

I don't care if you love or hate the Red Sox, or if you love or hate Jay Leno (for the record, I love the former, hate the latter) - you really should watch the Tonight Show on Friday, because Manny Ramirez is going to be a guest. No matter where you stand, I think we can all agree that high comedy will be in the offing.

(Also making appearances - Papelbon on Letterman tonight, which should be entertaining, because Papelbon is insane, and Big Papi on Conan Friday.)

UPDATE: Geez, kind of disappointing. Papelbon was good, but not as crazy as he could have been. Papi was okay. But Manny totally did not live up to expectations. For a guy whose every interview is a comedy routine, it had so much potential, and yet fell so flat. I blame Leno - god, he has shitty interviewing skills. Oh well.

Apparently she's never noticed that I can sometimes be sarcastic

Earlier this evening, by telephone, on the first night of the baseball playoffs.

My mom: So are you going to watch the Red Sox game tonight?

Me: I don't know, probably not. It's not really that important.

My mom: Oh really? Wow, I would have thought...

Me: Mom, that was a joke.

My mom: Oh. Haha, right!

Things you didn't know about Chris Berman

Not only does he have an inexplicable ability to pick up leather-clad ladies, he also, apparently, has won a Nobel Prize:

Also receiving honorary degrees were Brown medical school founding dean Stanley Aronson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power, and three Brown alums: sportscaster Chris Berman, actress Kate Burton and Craig Mello, who shared the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine.

Dan Koppen likes Playboy, apparently

So I suppose this is really not so surprising, in light of this (sort of NSFW).

Fuck you, Easterbrook

I don't know why I still bother reading his stupid column. Although I suppose "read" is being generous - mostly I skim to find the one or two paragraphs about the Patriots and don't bother with the rest. But anyway, sometime way back when (I'm too lazy to find the link to it right now), I wrote about his penchant for being a bully and his mocking of science.

Well, he's doing it again (scroll down to the section entitled "Coming Soon -- Drive-Through DNA"). He spends an entire paragraph saying, essentially (I'm paraphasing, of course), oh, aren't science nerds and their silly tools just precious? So biotech companies advertise their products just like any other industry. So the fuck what? God, it makes my blood boil.

You know how Landru wants us all to punch Tucker Carlson in the gob? Well, if you ever see this fucking fuck Easterbrook fellow, I would like you do the same to him. And after you do that, point to his bloody nose and say, there's some science for you, asshole!

Some thoughts

Have you ever noticed how common it is in movies and TV shows to have one character make another character dig their own grave, after which the grave-digger is murdered and buried in said grave? First of all, do you think that really happens much? I doubt it. But more importantly, if you were the person made to dig, why would you do it? You know you're going to get killed anyway, so why not just tell the murderer to fuck off? So they'll just kill you sooner. Big deal. And actually, probably preferable, if you ask me. Plus you've made more work for them. I mean, if someone's going to murder you, they might as well have to work for it, right?

*****

It's not a new idea to notice that Corey Dillon looks like Ludacris. But I don't think I've ever seen it pointed out that Rodney Harrison is almost a dead-ringer for LL Cool J. I think it's a fair bet to say the Patriots have cornered the market on rapper look-alikes.

*****

I was poking around some political websites yesterday, and somehow ended up at The Volokh Conspiracy. This is not a blog I have ever read before, so I was surprised to see that someone I went to high school with is one of the contributors there. (I won't name names, the better to keep anyone from finding this post, but it may or may not rhyme with Willya Bowman.) He was in a different grade, so I didn't really know him. But his locker was right next to mine, and despite that fact, I don't think I ever spoke more than two words to him in the (three?) years we overlapped. Because, seriously, dude was weird. The one thing I remember about him was that he used to spread his books and papers all over the floor in front of his (and thus, my) locker and do his homework right there on the floor.

Anyway, it's always strange to see someone you "knew" way back when become, well, I suppose "famous" isn't the right word, but at least marginally prominent, I suppose, if you can call being a law professor and posting at a big-name (it is, right?) blog prominent.

*****

Oh, and Landru's most recent post reminds me that I need to do a whole lot of linkage updating. But I don't feel like doing it now. I know you always appreciate it when I tell you what I didn't do. So, you're welcome.

One of these things is not like the other

So I'm watching The Girls Next Door, which is, as you may or may not know, a reality show on E! about Hugh Hefner's three girlfriends and their life living at the Playboy mansion. Now, normally, I wouldn't have much interest in Playboy, but there is something incredibly fascinating about this show, in that trainwreck sort of way.

Anyway, the episode I saw today had the three girls doing photo shoots for the magazine. One of the girls, the profoundly vapid and stupid Kendra (seriously, I think she is probably the dumbest person I've ever seen on reality TV, and I'm not exaggerating), is apparently a big sports fan. So her photos often have a sports theme.

In this episode, she was posing in front of a bunch of football jerseys that were hung up behind her. There's LaDainian Tomlinson, Terrell Owens, Donovan McNabb, and...Dan Koppen? What?? Sure, he's a great player and all, and he seems like a good guy, but who has heard of him outside of New England? Even in New England, it's not like many people own O-line jerseys (and if they do, I'd suspect they'd be Matt Light). You can't even buy them off the rack - you'd have to special order them.

Weird.

The store was probably out of Duke stickers at the time

Seen on the back window of a car today: A Raiders decal, a Lakers decal, and a Yankees decal. Not present, but implied, was the one reading "I am a complete douchebag."

A sign that you might be spending too much time reading Deadspin*

When you're reading a political blog, and they mention New Mexico, and you think, why are they talking about Marcus Vick on a political blog?

*Hypothetically, anyway. Not sure it's actually possible.

Things I have done in the past six days, in no particular order

1. Found a fabulous new apartment in The O.C.

2. Bought a fabulous new car. First car I have ever owned, ever.

3. Drove a car for the first time in about seven or eight years. On the freeway, even.

4. Bought a fabulous new Tempurpedic bed.

5. Had my credit card rejected for the first time in my life. Had to call them up and say, no, nothing's been stolen. It's just me, hemorrhaging money.

6. Learned that O.P.I. makes nail polish for dogs. Looks exactly like regular O.P.I. for people, except it's for dogs.

7. Saw a little girl who was the spitting image of Dick Cheney. Had the sneer and everything. It was uncanny. And also, very, very disturbing.

8. Was diagnosed with asthma. Kind of always suspected I might have it, but I'm something of a reverse-hypochondriac - I always think I'm imagining what turn out to be real health problems, so I never mention them to the doctor. Until I end up at the doctor for a regular checkup and I start having symptoms in the middle of talking to her, and she says, yeah, that's not normal.

9. Saw former Patriot Willie McGinest while waiting at the gate for my flight home from LAX. Wasn't sure whether to be giddy about seeing him or cry after remembering the whole "former" part. Anyway, not that I didn't know this, but seriously, dude is HUGE. Also, according to the guy next to us at the check-in counter, "the kid who just got kicked off American Idol" was spotted nearby, although I did not see him myself (then again, it's not like I know who he is, so it's entirely possible I could have seen him and not realized it).

My cat has dreadlocks

No really, he does. Although that may be just a polite way of saying he has, um, a grooming problem. I really don't know what's brought this on. I know long-haired cats often have issues with their fur, but I've had him for over five years, and only once in that time can I ever remember noticing any mats. At first I thought maybe he'd somehow managed to knock something sticky on himself, but I can't find anything spilled anywhere, so I don't think that's it.

Brushing isn't helping, at least not after the fact. So I tried to cut the mats off with scissors, but I only managed to get a few of them before he decided he'd rather claw my face off instead. He quickly learned to disappear as soon as the scissors appeared. But seriously, what the fuck, cat? It's just fur, for god's sake. He reacted like I was trying to cut off his leg or something. This, from the same cat who allows me to regularly clip his claws without registering anything more than mild annoyance.

Whatever.

(See, Dweeze, when you demand that I write more, this is what you get. A story about my cat. Be careful what you wish for, is what they always say, right? And I don't know why Gothmog wants to live vicariously through me. Dood. My life is more boring than just about anything. I'm not joking.)

But anyway, not that this is much of an excuse for going as long as I did without posting, but I did at least spend a substantial part of that time devoting my creative energies to a written piece at...some other site that I decline to name because I have this stupid neurotic obsession with keeping my identities in different spheres of the world and the internet separate, even though everyone knows and no one really cares and it's not like it's a big state secret or anything. Yeah.

So. I've been watching some TV lately. That's exciting, right? Right? Actually, I've been watching less now that baseball is over. What's that you say, it's not over yet? Okay, fine, it's over for my team. But as I've mentioned many, many times before, I'm quite provincial, and I don't have much of an interest in watching once my team is out. Especially not if it means having to subject myself to more of the wretched Fox coverage and the rage-inducing play-by-play stylings of Buck and McCarver.

One thing I have been watching, among other things, is Lost. Apparently a lot of people really, really like Lost. And okay, it's a pretty good show, and I've watched it from the beginning, so I'm not saying it's bad or anything. But I have some complaints.

First of all, I feel like they pulled a bait-and-switch. The show was originally billed as a plane-crash-on-a-deserted-island-castaway-type show. And then they go and pull all this sci-fi shit on us. As I may have stated before, I hate science fiction. I can tolerate a little bit if the show is good enough and it doesn't overwhelm things (see: Alias), but as a general rule, I prefer my entertainment science fiction-free. I know that without all the supernatural stuff, there'd be no show, because there's only so much people stranded on an island can do, but still, I'm just saying.

I hate the fact that there's a character named Charlie and it's not Matthew Fox. It's confusing to me. He will always be Charlie Salinger to me (oh yes, I just admitted to watching Party of Five. Wanna make something of it?), so it bugs me when someone says "Charlie" and they're not talking about him.

They're on a flight from Australia to the U.S. But there's only one Australian person on the plane? (Or, if you want to quibble, only one Australian person among all the survivors?) Yeah, that makes sense.

And here is my biggest problem: haven't any of these people ever read the book Alive? And no, I'm not suggesting that Lost needs an infusion of cannibalism. While that might certainly be dramatic, I'm not sure ABC would go for it. What I am saying is why don't these people get off their asses and explore the fuck out of every inch of that island? If you remember the story in Alive, after many weeks (months? I can't remember), they finally realized no one was ever going to rescue them, and a few of them set off to find help, and they found civilization not very far away. The whole time they were eating their friends, they could have been rescued if they'd just gone looking sooner.

So why haven't the characters on Lost devoted any real energy towards looking for help or civilization or something, anything? Sure, there have been bits and pieces here and there, but nothing major. Obviously the island is worth exploring because they keep discovering things like hatches and crazy French women and boats full of dynamite and planes full of heroin. How do they really know what really is or isn't on the island, or if it's even really an island, if they don't go poking around in some sort of organized fashion?

Or at least, why don't the writers pay the idea some basic lip service, and at least have the characters sit around and discuss it, just so they can say why it's not possible, or at the very least, not desirable. (I am willing to grant that they may have done this at some point, because I don't tend to pay attention to things very closely, since I rarely watch TV without also doing something else at the same time, but even if they did, they still haven't taken the idea seriously at all.)

I just don't get it. If I'm stranded on an island, the first thing I'm doing is wandering around as much as is physically possible to see what I've got there. I can't tell you how much this irritates me.

Finally, does anyone else besides me think that the father from the Schroeder family on The Amazing Race looks just like Jim Mora, Jr.?

Unbelievable!

I fell asleep while reading my email and watching the Pats-Raiders game last night, and I dreamed that Al Michaels was sending me spam.

Maybe this will be the cure for blogger's block

Normally, I hate the whole meme phenomenon. But this one Badger has posted is fairly non-threatening, and I really, really need something to jog my brain. Seriously, people, the well? It is dry.

1. What is your first name?

None of your business.

2. Were you named after anyone?

Not that I know of.

3. Do you wish on stars?

No.

4. When did you last cry?

A few weeks ago.

5. Do you like your handwriting?

When I put effort into it, yes. But if I'm writing quickly, or tired, it looks like chicken scratches.

6. What is your favorite lunch meat?

Paper-thin, super-lean corned beef. Preferably incorporated into a reuben sandwich (on light rye, with spicy mustard, not russian dressing).

7. What is your most embarrassing CD?

Maybe the Rod Stewart. And also the Ace of Base. But my excuse for that one is that, for some reason, it was really good studying music when I was in college. So, you see, it had educational value. Yeah. And the first Wham! album (Fantastic), which is possibly the cheesiest group of songs ever assembled, but which I absolutely adore.

I also have plenty of embarrassing single tracks. Marky Mark, Lou Bega, Rick Astley, Bon Jovi all come to mind. Oh, and there's even a Backstreet Boys song in there too, but only because I was trying to test whether you can email iTunes files, and I asked my friend to email me something she knew I wouldn't own. Hence, the Backstreet Boys. Of course, this doesn't explain why I haven't deleted it.

8. If you were another person, would you be friends with you?

Probably not.

9. Do you have a journal?

I suppose, if this qualifies.

10. Do you use sarcasm a lot?

Of course not.

11. What are your nicknames?

Just a shortened form of my first name. Which, as you will recall, is still none of your business.

12. Would you bungee jump?

If I were a contestant on The Amazing Race, yes. Under any other circumstances, probably not. But strangely, I'm not sure I'd say no to skydiving.

13. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?

No. As I've said numerous times before, I'm very lazy.

14. Do you think that you are strong?

Physically, I know I'm not. Mentally, emotionally...I don't know. I don't think so.

15. What is your favorite ice cream flavor?

Generally, pumpkin or blackberry. Best when eaten during the summer, from a roadside ice cream place in Maine.

With respect to brands, Haagen-Dazs makes the best chocolate, Dove and Breyer's make the best vanilla, and Brigham's makes the best chocolate-chip.

16. Shoe Size?

Too damn large. Every shoe-shopping trip goes exactly the same way: see cute shoes on display, usually in something like a size 5, ask for my size, recoil in horror at giant, no-longer-cute clown shoes, spend several days trying to repair self-esteem.

17. Red or pink?

Red. No contest.

18. What is your least favorite thing about yourself?

It's really too hard to choose just one thing.

19. Who do you miss most?

My Nana.

20. Do you want everyone you send this to, to send it back?

Um...clearly this was intended to be emailed. So, whatever.

21. What color pants and shoes are you wearing?

Currently wearing: Dark blue Adidas shorts, green t-shirt that says "System Design and Management" on the front, no shoes. So sexy.

22. What are you listening to right now?

Wham! - Fantastic.

23. Last thing you ate?

Small beef-and-bean burrito with green beans and roasted corn. And a cup of pickled celery.

24. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

Periwinkle. It was always my favorite, not necessarily because of the color, but because of the name.

25. What is the weather like right now?

Hot. Humid. What else is new?

26. Last person you talked to on the phone?

My mother.

27. The first thing you notice about the opposite sex?

Ick, I always hate this kind of question. I don't know. It depends.

28. Do you like the person who sent this to you?

Well, I stole it from Badger, so yes.

29. Favorite Drink?

Pretty much any fruity, girly drink.

30. Favorite Sport?

To play: Lacrosse, tennis, running, skiing. (In theory, anyway. It's been ages since I've skied or played tennis, and playing lacrosse is pretty much impossible now for a million different reasons.)

To watch: Football, baseball.

31. Hair Color?

Dark brown.

32. Eye Color?

Brown.

33. Do you wear contacts?

I used to. Had to stop when I started a job that required me to stare at a computer for most of the day.

34. Favorite Food?

Eh, can't really pick just one. Favorite cuisine is probably Korean.

35. Last Movie You Watched?

In the theater: Hotel Rwanda.

On DVD: Kinsey. With my parents, my brother, and my brother's fiancee. Awkward.

36. Favorite Day Of The Year?

I don't know. Don't really have one.

37. Scary Movies or Happy Endings?

Scary movies, I guess. Not gory-scary, though.

38. Summer or Winter?

During summer, I want winter. During winter, I want summer.

39. Hugs or Kisses?

Depends.

40. What Is Your Favorite Dessert?

Ice cream.

41. Who Is Most Likely To do this Meme?

I don't know. This type of question is one part of the meme thing that I really hate.

42. Who Is Least Likely To do this Meme and comment?

See #41.

43. What Books Are You Reading?

At the moment, none. I have a bad habit of buying books and then never getting around to reading them.

44. What's On Your Mouse Pad?

Don't have one.

45. What Did You Watch Last night on TV?

The baseball game, without sound, reflected in the mirror in front of the treadmill (it's like bizarro baseball - most of the players are left-handed, and the batters run to third base).

46. Favorite Smells?

Lilacs, vine-ripened tomatoes, cigars, baby shampoo.

47. Favorite Sounds?

The water gently lapping at the edge of a lake, loons (the birds, not the crazy people).

48. Rolling Stones or Beatles?

Beatles.

49. What's the furthest you've been from home?

Berlin.

50. Do you have a special talent?

Self-deprecation.

51. What is your ring tone?

Normal, boring, regular ring tone. Like a phone should sound.