A prison shower should humble Joseph Genovese a bit.
Sign of the Apocalypse:
This man:
was arrested when he showed up at a house to meet a 14-year old for sex.
Irony, thy name is Daniel Everett.
WTF Award Nominee: A guy named Rampage was arrested for going on a… well, Rampage.
I wonder how they would have identified him if he had gotten away?!?
Did you know that U.S. Customs prohibits HIV positive people from entering the U.S.? I did not. But apaprently that could end soon.
Bush Lifts Offshore Drilling Ban…the Onion’s take.
Some follow-up thoughts on the Obama New Yorker cover…from an e-mail i wrote to Nole:
The beauty of this — i think — is that The New Yorker assumed, rightfully, that their readers are smart, intelligent and aware people that would understand satire when it was presented to them (major clues include the obvious overstatement, overt mockery AND THE FACT THAT IT’S A FUCKING CARTOON!) but where this went wrong is that The New Yorker thought they were publishing in a vacuum. They thought that only their readers would see it. As soon as some moron walks by the newsstand on his way to buy a pack of smokes and this month’s copy of Juggs, he’s going to be like “See? I told ya’ll that he was a towelhead.”
They were talking about it on talk radio last night while i was on the way to see Wall-E (have you seen it? it’s awesome) and the guy was saying how he feels like the cover is OK because he wants to believe that people are smart enough to realize a joke when they see one, that we don’t have to protect readers from themselves. But then he quotes the statistic that 12% of voters in this country still think Obama is actually Muslim (and by extension, that Muslim = terrorist) and it totally disproves his argument. Americans are not smart enough to separate it or understand the difference.
Beyond that, Obama screwed this up completely by pretending to be appalled by it. Why couldn’t he endear himself to the intelligentsia in this country by saying “Hey, idiots. Relax. Read the article. It’s satire. They actually have my back and were just showing how dumb you all are by getting caught up in rumors and mudslinging and believing dumb email forwards. I appreciate that New Yorker for starting an intelligent debate on these beliefs which i’ve been fighting my whole life.” That would have been a huge moment. Instead, he just fell back on the stock press conference BS statement, “I’m disappointed that this is published…blah blah.” Want to know why he did that? Because he’s playing for the middle now and he needs the dumb people to vote for him. He already convinced us when we bought his book and actually read it 2 years ago (because, you know, we learned how to read.). We’re on board. Now he has to pander to the idiots. It’s really disappointing.
Filed under: WTF
Actually, this should be called the NFS (No Fucking Shit) Award:
Blocking Sun Not Feasible, Say Scientists
Filed under: WTF
Filed under: WTF
It’s a baby related day today as seventeen Gloucester, Mass. high school girls make “pregnancy pact” and then, shockingly, get pregnant.
Officials predictably blame Jamie Lynn Spears, who became a mother today. Congratulations whore.
**Memo to fox news: Jamie Lynn did not “decide to start a family” as you say in your story. She got knocked up, on accident. The only decision she made about a family was thwarted when the Nickelodeon marketing team kept her from sneaking into a back alley with a coat hanger…)**
Update: Random thought…how much of this isn’t because of Jamie Lynn, but because of Juno?? I’ve never been one to blame media for things like violence amongst children but how many of these little girls saw that movie and said “Wow, i’ll be cute and hilarious about it like Ellen Paige and get the attention in my school that i’ve been trying to get for so long?” It actually seems plausible, especially when you think about just how few long-term consequences the Juno character faced in the movie…
I’m going to lead with the stupid shit and get progressively more intelligent as we go on, so stick around.
Mariah Carey apparently married Nick Cannon (despite nobody even knowing that they were dating or even friends. Good for Nick Cannon though…a really hot older chick that is cerifiably insane and has piles of cash…maybe he’s smarter than i originally thought.)
Remember when gas was like $2 a gallon and we thought it was expensive? Well these guys are never, ever going to let it get that cheap again.
Some racy pictures of a few ASU cheerleaders surfaced (kinda NSFW) a few days back and apparently ASU is responding rationally by disbanding the team… Listen, Michael Crow and Lisa Love, I know you’re trying to build the “new American University” and i’ve always taken your cute little plan with a grain of salt because you’re both asshats. But you hired Dennis Erickson to be the football coach, be glad a picture of girls in the underwear is the only thing that got released. With Dennis involved, you’re lucky you didn’t get the entire football and cheer teams in a 75-way bukkake fest with Erickson viewing above on a boom lift, mapping out the X’s and O’s. In fact, if the two of you knew anything about marketing, you’d release a sex tape together. If ASU doesn’t have cheerleaders, i’m burning my diploma…although it’s not worth a ton anyway when it’s from the 124th ranked school out of, yup, you guessed it, 124. (it is probably important to point out that the only news organization reporting this is Fox, so it’s probably inaccurate. I will update as more info comes available.) Update: As i suspected, the Fox report was unverified drivel and the team isn’t being disbanded.
Airlines save gas by slowing down. Hmm, interesting thought. I bet it won’t make ticket prices any cheaper though.
Mainstream Media vs. Blogs
Earlier this week, one of my favorite blogs/bloggers (Deadspin.com and it’s editor Will Lietch) went on Costas Now to discuss the role of blogs in the world of sports. He was, as you can see in the video below, attacked pretty vociferously by Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights, and Bob Costas over the content and tone of his blog. Bissinger, acting like the old man screaming at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn, basically blamed Lietch for the downfall of American society.
Video Here (language NSFW)
Much has been made of it, with some eloquent pieces being written here, here, here and here. And maybe it’s because i’m not a popular sports blogger (or even popular for that matter) but i feel like some of these guys have missed the point a bit. Sure, Bissinger attacks Will and blogs in general because he feels threatened by a new medium. Sure, Bissinger is correct in saying that blogs have a vindictive tone. Sure, Bissinger is correct in saying that bloggers post reactions to things without thought, research or repercussions. But guess what? That’s the frigging point!
What i love about blogging, what got me into it in the first place was that i was a frustrated writer. I went to college, got my journalism degree and wanted to write in sports. But i didn’t feel like spending my 20s following the Toledo Mud Hens around for 12k a year before i got a chance to follow a team i loved or write an opinion column about how the manager should have pulled the pitcher a few innings earlier. I didn’t want to wait and i didn’t want to put up with bullshit from the old guard to earn the right to express my opinion. So i found that i could read a story or watch a game on TV and then share on my blog, instantly, my feelings about it. A few people read it and that was satisfying to a frustrated wannabe journalist. Bill Simmons parlayed this idea into a mainstream job and insane popularity as one of the biggest attractions on ESPN.com. It was in the opening chapter of his book…i’m paraphrasing but he basically said, “Working my way up the ladder to write about Boston sports sucked. So i started my own web site and people liked it.” (read his brilliant and heartbreaking piece on The Suns here.) Deadspin’s motto is Sports Without Access, Favor or Discretion…a genius idea that holds a lot more meaning than it first appears. To me, after that elipse (…) it should say, “because professional sports won’t let us have any.”
Let’s face it, mainstream sports could give a shit about the everyday fan. The teams, the players, the media — owners and members, the gatekeepers to our fandom, are mostly insanely rich people who live in a dream world of $10 beers and constantly rising ticket prices who will move your favorite team without warning or cut your favorite player two weeks after you spend $75 on his jersey. To get access to that which us sports fans love, we used to have to be either extremely talented (play on the team), extremely rich (own the team) or a thick-skinned sadist (write about the team), or listen to what the MSM dictated to us about it. Being a talented writer didn’t get you there because the guys holding the keys don’t always give a shit about writing talent when it comes to sports (and i would include movies and music at this point as well) because there’s a ton more that goes into it. So blogs come about as a chance for us to write about what we love and find an audience and a community and take a little bit of the power back. Lietch’s book, God Save the Fan, is about exactly this. We love sports and we want to hang out and talk with other people who love sports without having to listen to talking heads yelling at each other all day (ie Around The Horn).
So forgive us Buzz…we’re really not trying to take away jobs from newspapers or magazines (you’re doing a good enough job of that yourselves), we’re not trying to hurt you and we’re certainly not trying to get Matt Leinart or Dan Majerle in trouble when they take pictures of themselves canoodling with underage girls. We just want to enjoy sports again because you guys, you mainstream media guys, have kinda ruined it for us. We don’t want access or favor or discretion…we just want our sports back.
Well, that’s one way to punch a hole in the wall…
(I hate to joke about that story, because it’s pretty sad…but i’m a heartless bastard, so i’ll go with it. Thanks to Kelli for the link.)
Oregon Man Claims to be Character from bad Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie
$70,000 a year is not enough to raise the daughter of a Beatle
Demi Moore Enjoys Leaches…and no, she’s not referring to Ashton Kutcher
Filed under: WTF
I’m all about positive vibes and personal gratification but this seems a little ridiculous to me: Global Orgasm Day!
