Hey, Eddie Munster eats kids too (i.e. can this thing work twice)
Big shouts to Deadspin for bringing in about 5,000 readers to this site in 2 days last week. All this love for a picture I found of Coach K biting the head off of a small child. The Coach K love was so great that Syracuse.com picked up on the story and brought in about another 4,000 readers.
Before I get any hate mail, I do not believe that Coach K actually bites the heads off of small children, that is just insane. Who would actually bite off the head of a child? It is much more likely that he simply orally decapitates rodents or other small mamals such as bats, in the mode of a young Ozzy Osbourne, but probably not children.
You might think that Coach K devouring our young is some crazy theory for the interwebs only, and wouldnt get any attention by the traditional print media. You would be wrong. Just this morning I learned that the Minneapolis Star Tribune sports section today featured a link to this site, and coach K’s kid-eating predilictions. So now that a newspaper in a major market has cited our reporting (check the bottom right of the page), it must be true that Coack K eats kids.
****************************************************************** Coach K eating kids has become so accepted that it was not the #1 basketball story this weekend. That was George Mason. As everyone knows by now, a bunch of kids from Baltimore and PG County Maryland who were not heavily recruited, if at all, have knocked off three former National Champions on their way to the Final Four.
Since the child eating picture was so successful in helping to defeat Duke\, I figured that I would help Mason by trying to determine if that deranged Eddie Munster clone who coaches Florida does the same.
Eddie, I mean Billy Donovan's response was as follws: I’m Eddie freaking Munster I will eat whoever I want
And guess, what its true....go Mason (let’s hope this thing works twice)
********************************************************************** In just one more sign that Deadspin has the best tourney coverage anywhere, last week they linked to Mighty MJD Sports Blog which found a Wichita State Shockers cheerleader actually throwin’ up the shocker.
******************************************************************* Another amazing blog if you like going overboard with insane photoshop and gif.s (also the first blog I know to host the Coach-K-kid-chomping) has now outdone themselves by finding this link to the the 5 stages of grief with Adam Morrison (via Losanjealous), with the final stage of grief being acceptance (who knew Morrison had a cameo in Happy Gilmore)
******************************************************************* The only link I’ve seen in the last few days that was funnier than coach K chomping on children was the hubbub surrounding a community sighting of a diminutive leprechaun -- somewhere in the South. Be sure to watch for the artists rendering of the leprechaun and the in car interview. Here is the movie presented without comment. JUST WATCH IT
******************************************************************* In religious news, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is once again poised to rule the universe as he has a book hitting the streets this week and a large feature story in USA Today. Maybe Fairfax has a universal church of the FSM and that is the secret to Mason's success. ***************************************************** Finally, according to Double Viking, Jessica Alba wants more challenging roles. I've heard that a "lesbian stripper" is among the most complex and ultra-challenging portrayals on the big screen, maybe she should take on that monumental challenge.
At least it was a party for me until 11:30 when I decided to take a break from the madness and hang out between two dumpsters for a little while. Thus leading to my first, and hopefully last ever, two day hangover.
Apparently, and according to Spoony's paparazzi footage this, is, my, favorite move, the reverse attack with back slap seems to have been employed many times, who knew. But it cant compete with their favorite move. ********************************************************************** SPORTS
How great was the On Demand March Madness from CBS Sportsline last week. I was able to watch almost all of the tournament games from my desk and the On Demand program even had a “Boss Button” which minimized the game, muted the sound, and brought a spreadsheet up onto the screen. Good times.
The hated Duke, however, took out my Colonials in the second round of the tourney. Coach K is evil and, get this, Coach K eats pieces of shit like you, and kids, for breakfeast, just watch his eyes closely in this picture.
Also if you notice during this week’s Duke games, there will be multiple coach K recruiting violations…I mean commercials starring coach, which should be recruiting violations. Check out this video of some of the lost commercials (Also check out the napolean dynamite cartoon starring NC State football coach Chuck Amato, called "Chuck Dynamite" at the bottom - its freaking high-larious)
The rest of the tourney should be great, as long as we don’t have to endure anymore Aplebees freaking shrimp sensations commercials about a three hour tour, a three hour teewwwer. The repetition of that commercial alone is reason enough to get tivo and learn how to fast forward. ********************************************************************** ARTS - music, movies
I was a huge fan of Clipse first album, and I need to pick up their underground mix-tape, despite the fact that all they rap about is slinging coke. The amazing title of this review perfectly sums up the Clipse: "Two cold-blooded rappers who insist they deal drugs. A lot." - what a great title. They really do want you understand that they sell drugs, a ton of drugs, for a lot of money, no really they insist, it is what they do, believe it.
I was weary of the Dave Chappelle block party movie as it seems to be mostly concert footage and those types of movies can get pretty tedious. But after reading these reviews I may have to pick up the DVD when it comes out.
Is there any reason my IPOD tells me that I have listened to the Josh Rouse song "Givin' it up" 20 times in the past week. The new album is not his best but that song has been stuck in my head for days and I can't stop playing it.
Why don’t the judges in any of my cases ever quote Billy Madison ****************************************************************** FRONT PAGE
The first questioner at a recent and rare Bush press conference aksed
"Author Kevin Phillips... makes the point that members of your administration have reached out to prophetic Christians who see the war in Iraq and the rise of terrorism as signs of the apocalypse. Do you believe this, that the war in Iraq and the rise of terrorism are signs of the apocalypse? And if not, why not?"
Here is the ABC news account of his response “Bush was taken aback.”
"Hmm," he started. "The answer is I haven't really thought of it that way," he continued, to laughter from the audience. "Here's how I think of it. The first I've heard of that, by the way. I guess I'm more of a practical fellow."
Then he goes into his standard war blah blah blah talk.
Now watch the question and watch Bush weekly try to form a response. You can cut it off after his first sentence unless you wanna hear more rambling on ...terror...iraq...al quaida..evil...etc...etc.
Anyways, why is this the first time Bush has ever thought of this... it would be the first time that “I” have ever thought of this but I am not a born-again fundamentalist who really believes in this nonsense and Bush is supposed to be one of those people, and yet he laughs at the question.
I know my first response would be... “Are you crazy? NO, I don’t believe it is a sign of the apocalypse, I don’t even believe that the “end of days” is around the corner or that a biblical storm will envelop the globe. I don’t believe the bible literally.” It looks like Bush wants to say that too, he certainly laughs at the question, but it is nervous laughter so who knows what hes thinking. Either Bush knows that being a fake born again christian warrior is the way to win supporters to his side, so he has to lie and say “I havent thought of that,” OR what...what is the other option?
This was a huge weekend for sports, especially with NCAA selection sunday
The GW Colonials got screwed. In the three years I attended law school at GW we never even got a sniff of the big dance, but after making the tourney last year (only to be ousted by eventual final four team, GeorgiaTech) I thought this might be the year they make some noise. GW had a great regular season compiling the best record in all of college basketball. Yes, Gdub had a soft schedule but you would think that only two losses (and one without star center Pops) would earn them higher seed than the dreaded 8 v. 9 matchup against a solid team – and possible second round matchup with the hated Duke. So thanks to one lousy loss to Cheney’s gimmicky Temple team, GW drops from a probably #4 seed all the way into the 8-9 game and will have a killer time even making it into the sweet sixteen
Now to the other big local teams. You can easily make an argument that Maryland did not “deserve” to make the tournament, but they surely deserved it over some of the other teams that got in. Maryland had one of the most difficult schedules in the nation, they beat tournament teams in BC and Arkansas, and they finished .500 in the ACC, after having to play the stud teams Duke, BC, and UNC twice.
I would argue that Maryland clearly has a better resume than another local favorite, George Mason. Mason lost to Hofstra TWICE in the past two weeks and plays in the CAA. I will still root for Mason though, because they start five guys from Maryland including John Vaughan, from my alma mater - Laurel High School.
*********************************************************** The other big local sports news was the start of free agency and the annual domination of free agency by the Skins. Just a couple days in and the Skins have already signed Randle El, Brandon Lloyd, and Adam Archuletta. If the Skins had a legit quarterback, I would be totally on the bandwagon and predicting Super Bowl. Gibbs has handed over the offense to Al Saunders from Kansas City, and now with two highly paid coordinators on each side of the ball, Gibbs just needs to sit back and pray to the spaghetti monster (or whoever it is he prays to) and let the high priced coaches and players do all the work. Gibbs seemed over his head in his first year back in the league but now he can just pull a Bobby Bowden and let the assistants do all the work. Maybe Saunders will even have Randle El quarterback the team a few plays per game, every time I saw that guy throw in Pittsburgh it was a TD. While Randle El is getting all of the hype this week, I think the Lloyd signing is huge. Watch these videos and you can see that the guy may have the best hands in football
First one amazing catch and then a full highlight reel:
**************************************************************** Finally the Wizards spanked the best team in basketball again and Im hoping that the win over the Pistons gives the team plenty of momentum goin into the final 25 or so games. ***************************************************************** FRONT PAGE - POLITICS
As I predicted two weeks ago, the Dubai ports deal has worked to hurt Bush in the only area where he had any shred of credibility left - national security. Now the republicans have turned on Bush and shot down his deal. Bush is a lame duck, and his redonkulously bad policies are hurting him in every single area of government and public confidence.
The race is wide open for his Republican successor in 2008, and the early favorite has to be McCain. McCain is heralded by the press as a maverick, renegade, and a whole bunch of other stupid ass macho terms that have very little to do with the current Republican government in Washington. In actuality, McCain is not a moderate who has gone against Bush on many issues, but instead a by-the-books Republican who will toe the party line whenever it is to his advantage, but who plays well in the media.
For an expression of this non-renegade-ness Paul Krugman of the New York Times directs his readers to voteview which ranks McCain "as the Senate's third most conservative member." That is conservative as 80 muggs.
Now that we know he is conservative, here is Mcain last week at Southern Republican Leadership Conference completing his non-maverick status by kissing up to King Bush:
Senator John McCain of Arizona offered a full embrace of a president he has quarreled with over the years--Mr. Bush defeated him for the presidential nomination in an acrid campaign in 2000--as he urged Republicans to rally around Mr. Bush in a difficult time and to focus on the midterm elections ahead....
The session culminated with a straw poll of delegates.... McCain [requested] that his supporters cast write-in votes for President Bush, as a show of support for the president....
The extent of McCain's embrace of Mr. Bush was striking.... McCain went so far as to condemn the collapse of the port deal, saying that Congress had served Mr. Bush poorly by not permitting a 45-day review of security concerns, though he did not mention that the deal was sunk by fellow Republicans.
"The president deserved better," Mr. McCain said.
So McCain is a Bush-loving ultra-conservative Republican hack, some maverick. Oh well, at least if he wins we will have a President who I have at least one ounce of respect for.
Via fimoculous, this is the slickest Ipod-car integration I have seen yet.
Also in car-gadget universe may not be long before we have google earth in the car...double true
**************************************************************************** ARTS SECTION
COMEDY So David Cross is in a war of words with Larry the Cable guy. Larry the Cable guy can write actual words? Isnt that like getting in a war of words with that guy from Life Goes On.
MUSIC Just got the new Drive-By Truckers album and it is very very good. More on this later.
BOOKS I plan to start reading Freakonomics soon. In the meantime my new favorite author-blog gets into a online debate with the writers of Freaknomics.
In another article on Gladwell’s website, he examines yet another book I am interested in reading.
In "Everything Bad Is Good for You", Steven Johnson proposes that all of the television, movies, internet websites, and other crap that I talk about on this site actually make us smarter than those who simply study and read books all the time. It is actually a fascinating concept.
Gladwell on the Johnson book, and the smartening up of some of today’s pop culture:
To watch an episode of "Dallas" today is to be stunned by its glacial pace--by the arduous attempts to establish social relationships, by the excruciating simplicity of the plotline, by how obvious it was. A single episode of "The Sopranos," by contrast, might follow five narrative threads, involving a dozen characters who weave in and out of the plot. Modern television also requires the viewer to do a lot of what Johnson calls "filling in," as in a "Seinfeld" episode that subtly parodies the Kennedy assassination conspiracists, or a typical "Simpsons" episode, which may contain numerous allusions to politics or cinema or pop culture. The extraordinary amount of money now being made in the television aftermarket--DVD sales and syndication--means that the creators of television shows now have an incentive to make programming that can sustain two or three or four viewings. Even reality shows like "Survivor," Johnson argues, engage the viewer in a way that television rarely has in the past
Or you could forgo all of this complicated and interesting television and watch "According to Jim" with Evan.
I did not intend for the post to reach such a large audience, but evidently it has. In fact, the post is now the number 8 google hit for Tahj Holden, the number ONE google hit for the apparently-common misspelling Taj Holden, and every week a number of people stumble across the post in a search for your name. Therefore, given the amazing frequency that all guys “google themselves” (girls often google themselves too, they are just too embarrased to talk about it publicly) the chances are very high that you have also come across this post at some time or another.
This open letter is merely an attempt to state that it was all written in good fun. If you are offended by the post, don’t be. If you think that people on the internets are simply mocking your pickup style, then you are right, but hey ask these internet people if they even have a pick-up style (I don't know how you would track these readers down in order to survey them on their pick-up style, but as I've said in the past I'm not that money with internet skills). Also, remember the age old maxim - any publicity is good publicity (See - Hilton, Paris). Seriously, everyone mocks Tom Cruise’s style and look how many hot ass chicks that crazy mutherfucker picks up. It just so happens that you are seven feet tall and he is five, so it is much easier to spot your moves in action. If you feel that the post mocks you for no good reason, just relish in the fact that people are actually still writing about you, and this may bring you ever closer to DC-Baltimore-area celebrity status and lead to a whole bunch more of the pictures that you seem to enjoy so much.
In other words don’t send any of your Seven foot tall friends, who may still live in the College Park/DC area, to hunt me down. In fact, tell those friends of yours who are still on the UMD team to forget about me and concentrate on beating Boston College tonight, so that the Terps can make it back into the NCAA tournament once again. Any anger at the Redonkulous Linker should be taken out tonight on the Boston College Eagles.
Thank you for your time and consideration, and if you have any questions please do not heisitate to contact me.
Sincerely, The Redonkulous Lnker
******************************************************************** P.S. If Tahj sends his gigantic peeps after me I wil call my personal bodygaurd....the Juggernaut, bitch
Cant think of a title...Oh well, Snakes on a Plane
I hope You Tube sticks around but I fear, as do others, that it may soon go the way of napster.
First they cracked down on Lazy Sunday, next they took away the autistic bball movie, damn those copyright laws. They better not crackdown on the Krazee-Eyez Killah episode
Thats right You Tube has the entire Krazee-Eyez Killah episode from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Probably the greatest sitcom episode in cable history.
Catch it now before HBO pulls the plug.
Like every other you tube video, open the browser, pause the movie, minimize browser, wait a while for it to buffer then WATCH AWAY.
You Tube is really user friendly and has left Google Video in the dust. Only good movie I’ve seen linked to on GV lately is this student film detailing the dangers of actually obeying the law and going 55 or under
Speaking of Lazy Sunday, I'm not sure why they pulled Lazy Sunday from YouTube when it looks like they are going to start doing an almost identical rap parody every week in hopes it gets passed around the internets. This week it was Natalie Portman gangsta rapping and screaming "fuck all night" *************************************************************************** Ok so now Guardian is going to start charging for the Ricky Gervais podcast. This is bullshit. What a great podcast it was. If you saw me sitting alone with headphones and laughing like an idiot on the metro or at lunch now you'll know what I’m listening too.
I Guess I will have to find some other podcasts to replace it. Since I have told you about the Music, tv shows, movies, and books that I am down with, here are some of my favorite podcasts, like you care: Gervais (brilliant), Lost official podcast (geeky I know), Morning Sedition (sadly cancelled now that Maron is gone), Penn Gillete show (one amusing libertarian/atheist), Peter Rosenberg show (great mix of hip hop & liberal politics), the Junkies (idiots are very funny), ************************************************************************* Deadspin lovingly mocks adult kickball and asks if there is an adult league for Smear the Queer. I don’t know if there is such a league, but if there was the Donkies would dominate. ************************************************************************* One of the best political writers on the internets, Matthew Yglesias, has a personal blog in addition to his political blogs, where he often discusses sports from an intelligent perspective.
This week the great political writer links to a two part email exchange between a great sportswriter Bill Simmons and a great writer in any genre, Malcolm Gladwell.
Gladwell a writer for the New Yorker addresses a number of interesting sports topics including Isiah Thomas and the Knicks, Moneyball, Jake Plummer, Kwame Brown and his baseball meltdown, in his two part discussion with Simmons.
I especially liked his description of the “baseball meltdown”is where he describes how a sport he once loved became shattered when he realized his Blue Jays are competing in the same division with the super-rich Yankees and Red Sox and therefore not competing at all. I had a simlar baseball meltdown in 1996 or 1997 after my orioles lost in the playoffs and then decided to stop spending, and I realized that the sport is all about those who spend a lot vs. those who don’t. Thats not a sport its shopping
Gladwell on the meltdown:
"It came after the Blue Jays (my team) won the second of their World Series titles. Economic reality hit, and they basically stopped trying to compete at the top level, and I wondered to myself: Why do I care so much about a sport where some teams have $200 million to spend and some teams have $20 million to spend? I know, I know -- as Rob Neyer and others point out -- that there is no necessary correlation between payroll and success. It is possible, as "Moneyball" reminds us, to win with less by being smarter. But the point is not that if you have more money than someone else you automatically win more games. The point is that if you have more money that someone else you're playing a different game than they are. Wal-mart is not competing against mom-and-pop corner stores. They're in a different business. And it isn't fun, at the end of the day, to watch a mom-and-pop compete against Wal-mart. It's painful and pointless. I loved "Moneyball." I thought it was one of the best books of the past decade. I think it should be taught in psychology classes and business schools as a treatise on the subtle effects of bias on expert decision-making. But do you think that Billy Beane, for a moment, wouldn't trade his situation with Theo Epstein or Cashman? To me, the hard cap in football -- and, to a lesser extent, the soft cap in basketball -- are what makes those sports so interesting. It's what makes them sports. Contests where one player has significantly more resources than another are not sports. They are marketplaces. To root for the Yankees or the Red Sox is the functional equivalent of rooting for Microsoft or General Electric. No thanks."
Agreed. 100%. **************************************************************************** The previous conversation caused me to do some more research on Gladwell and I found that he has a new brilliant blog - which I instantly added to my google reader and google customized homepage ***************************************************************************** Be sure to check the comments if you wanna see my stream of consciousness live blogging of the Oscars...it is long rambling and incoherent...but it is in the comments, so dont complain
