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Sports Pundits Wax Epically Over Sosa's Corked BatJune 9, 2003 |
Chicago, Illinois Whit Pistol The "bat cracking heard 'round the news room," launching hour after aural hour of blithering repetitive "insights" on the future and past of baseball. he fallout from Tuesday night's corked bat incident involving Sammy Sosa has been fast and harsh. When the Cubs player was found to have taken a corked bat into the game, he was ejected from the game; Friday the Major League Baseball Commission handed down an eight-game suspension to the home-run hitter, who in 1998 was neck-in-neck with Mark McGwire to set a new home-run record. But the more unbearable fallout is continuing with no break in sight: Sports columnists and reporters and their never-ending assessment of the situation.
"What a shame," said Denver Post Sports Editor Thad Griswald. "This guy, he's a player. He's a good player, and before this there was no doubt he was a Hall of Famer. Now, even if he goes into the Hall of Fame, there's going to be an asterisk by his...
he fallout from Tuesday night's corked bat incident involving Sammy Sosa has been fast and harsh. When the Cubs player was found to have taken a corked bat into the game, he was ejected from the game; Friday the Major League Baseball Commission handed down an eight-game suspension to the home-run hitter, who in 1998 was neck-in-neck with Mark McGwire to set a new home-run record. But the more unbearable fallout is continuing with no break in sight: Sports columnists and reporters and their never-ending assessment of the situation.
"What a shame," said Denver Post Sports Editor Thad Griswald. "This guy, he's a player. He's a good player, and before this there was no doubt he was a Hall of Famer. Now, even if he goes into the Hall of Fame, there's going to be an asterisk by his name. The next time he hits a homer… nobody may say anything, but everybody's going to wonder."
Statements very much to the same effect and with equally melodramatic tones have echoed throughout the week. Sosa's intention to cheat, or his innocence of the charge, have given the fading sport's many pundits an opportunity to talk with misguided passion about something other than salary caps and free agency.
ESPN 2 late-night commentator Art Biederbeck: "The sad thing is that at this point it doesn't matter if Sammy meant to cheat or not. He will always be remembered for this as much as his race with McGwire for the record—did he or didn't he? It will always accompany the name of Sammy Sosa. He may not even make the Hall of Fame now. And if he does, mark my words, folks, there will be an asterisk there."
Mortals everywhere who had been only vaguely following the sport of baseball as national interest in the sport wanes for more clock-oriented, fast-paced sports like football and basketball, now find themselves driven away from even catching box scores out of fear they'll catch another diatribe about Sosa and his mystery bat.
"It's criminal that everyone leaps to conclusions about Sammy Sosa's entire career on the basis of one bat," complained D.C.-area WRBI sportscaster Cory Alvin. "They checked 76 of his bats, all in perfect condition, but this one is going to haunt him. Out there, someone's always going to wonder if every homerun in his career was from an illegal bat. And that's the real tragedy of all this."
As the story snowballs, with Sosa planning to appeal his 8-game suspension next week, no end is in sight to the over-dramatization of the story. Sports shows on network and basic cable, as well as 24-hour sports channels, are expected to roll out sports authorities one after the other, including broadcasters, former Hall of Famers, and current players to deliver the same basic positions over and over again, rather than conclude Major League Baseball will make a decision and allow it to stand as the official position. The best hope for relief from the continual coverage of the story is the death of a Major League player, like Reggie Jackson or something, especially from a horrible disease or even murder.
"It's a real problem with sports commentators," said baseball fan and author Max J. Hartley. "Nothing new has been said about the sport in at least 20 years, maybe more, and a lot of these guys aren't well versed on other issues, so a lot of passion gets channeled into these seeming non-issues. But what they don't realize when they go on television all hangdog or write a real melancholy column with this Sosa bat story, it's going to stick in people's craw. They may make a good observation down the road, something really original about the state of baseball's popularity or the real free agency problem, but people will always think of this in the back of their minds, this pretentious posturing about an incident that was in all likelihood an accident, or at worst an attempt by a player past his prime to cheat a few runs. It will dog them for their careers. If they ever get a shot at the Sports Broadcasters Hall of Fame, even if they get in, there will be an asterisk by their names." the commune news is not guilty of corking its bat, but we do like to bat a cork around the room on occasion. Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown is our resident baseball expert as well as our expert on all-things afterlife.
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 April 28, 2003
Lord of The Lord of the RingsWho knew such fantastic fun existed on the silver screen? I didn't, that's for sure. Yes, Rok Finger enjoys the occasional movie like any good working-class drone, but movies are usually just boring things that could happen to me at any time, with more attractive people and well-edited endings. This movie was completely different, more magic and swords, less face-on-face kissing. It comes from the most unlikely source of entertainment, too: A book.
That's right, books. Before seeing the movie I believed books were only delivery systems for cult manifestos or dangerous statistics. Turns out there are whole other worlds in some books, and some of those worlds are worth reading about. I can't say that is the case for this Lord of the Rings world, Ringworld, but it was certainly worth a good three hours of my life. I only wish there were another three hours of the film, and possibly another three after that. But for now I'm happy such a strange fantasy was put on the screen.
I've never been too big a fan of independent films, even having starred in one (Piglet: When is that getting released, by the way?) but this was top-notch. My understanding, courtesy of Griswald Dreck, is that they filmed the movie entirely in New Zimbabwe, where smallish African workers will act as props for mere pennies a day, which really kept the cost of the film down. Beautiful country, too, besides the ever-present mountain of death.
The story is the...
º Last Column: Camembert is No Good º more columns
Who knew such fantastic fun existed on the silver screen? I didn't, that's for sure. Yes, Rok Finger enjoys the occasional movie like any good working-class drone, but movies are usually just boring things that could happen to me at any time, with more attractive people and well-edited endings. This movie was completely different, more magic and swords, less face-on-face kissing. It comes from the most unlikely source of entertainment, too: A book.
That's right, books. Before seeing the movie I believed books were only delivery systems for cult manifestos or dangerous statistics. Turns out there are whole other worlds in some books, and some of those worlds are worth reading about. I can't say that is the case for this Lord of the Rings world, Ringworld, but it was certainly worth a good three hours of my life. I only wish there were another three hours of the film, and possibly another three after that. But for now I'm happy such a strange fantasy was put on the screen.
I've never been too big a fan of independent films, even having starred in one (Piglet: When is that getting released, by the way?) but this was top-notch. My understanding, courtesy of Griswald Dreck, is that they filmed the movie entirely in New Zimbabwe, where smallish African workers will act as props for mere pennies a day, which really kept the cost of the film down. Beautiful country, too, besides the ever-present mountain of death.
The story is the greatest ever told, besides anything with Jesus in it. It's about four brave height-challenged men who leave their normal egalitarian existence behind so that they can get rid of a gaudy piece of jewelry, a big fat ring-slash-bracelet with some kind of Esperanto on the side. At first their only comrade is a senile old wizard with a narcotics problem, but he is quickly outwitted by another dope-smoking old wizard, and the undertall men are on their way again all by their lonesome.
At this point it gets a little boring, with some hulking tall guy barging his way into the picture. Then he and the four mid-size heroes join up with a motley crew of Dungeons & Dragons fans: An extremely tall, probably gay elf; a stout and brave dwarf, hearty like the mountain rock he was forged from; and another hairy tall loaf of muscle. Besides becoming another height-oriented film at this point, there's still plenty of genuine moments of great action.
Occasionally the movie gets bogged down in special effects, Ringworld lingo, and prosthetic snouts, but the overall message comes through loud and clear: Virtuous men of any size will triumph over ambiguous dark entities that seek to take over the world. It just requires being able to dispose of tacky pimp jewelry before pig-men and ghosts can destroy you.
The director, whatever his name is, has laid out the heart and mind of the next century before us. The movie has found resonance in the post-September 11 th era, where vague black clouds of villains known as terrorism can send fear through the hearts of even the shortest of men. But like the heroes of the movie, the what do you call, Hobnots, we shall find the strength to endure. º Last Column: Camembert is No Goodº more columns
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|  September 12, 2005
Hurricanes are Nature's DoucheJust now the question may be dawning in your Pre-Cambrian brain: Wait a minute, what happened in New Orleans? Last time I was down there, it was a drunk, titty-flashing good time. I don't remember all these poor people smashing windows at the Piggly Wiggly to get at some Doritos, or floating around on air mattresses through a soup of toxic dogshit. And since when have they had canals instead of streets? You think you'd remember something like that, even while lying drunk on the sidewalk with your fly open.
Don't worry, gentle idiot, your brain's not playing tricks on you. It didn't come with such fancy features. No, something did happen to New Orleans this month, and it wasn't just an incompetent government run by a man with a sixth-grade understanding of adult reality and all the savvy of a small child lost at an astrophysics convention. Hurricane happened, readers, and it happened but good.
I'm sure you've heard of hurricanes before. After all, it's what killed JFK. But do you really understand how they work and why they always strike in threes? I didn't think so.
Hurricanes are nature's douche, a natural remedy for when Mother Nature's got that "not so fresh" feeling downstairs and needs to clean house. Regardless of what you may have read in irresponsible academic journals growing up, hurricanes are not "Nature's Fart." In fact, they're not a fart at all. That would be silly. "Hurricanes are Nature's Fart" was a rumor started over 30...
º Last Column: First Griswald Dreck Chat Transcript º more columns
Just now the question may be dawning in your Pre-Cambrian brain: Wait a minute, what happened in New Orleans? Last time I was down there, it was a drunk, titty-flashing good time. I don't remember all these poor people smashing windows at the Piggly Wiggly to get at some Doritos, or floating around on air mattresses through a soup of toxic dogshit. And since when have they had canals instead of streets? You think you'd remember something like that, even while lying drunk on the sidewalk with your fly open. Don't worry, gentle idiot, your brain's not playing tricks on you. It didn't come with such fancy features. No, something did happen to New Orleans this month, and it wasn't just an incompetent government run by a man with a sixth-grade understanding of adult reality and all the savvy of a small child lost at an astrophysics convention. Hurricane happened, readers, and it happened but good. I'm sure you've heard of hurricanes before. After all, it's what killed JFK. But do you really understand how they work and why they always strike in threes? I didn't think so. Hurricanes are nature's douche, a natural remedy for when Mother Nature's got that "not so fresh" feeling downstairs and needs to clean house. Regardless of what you may have read in irresponsible academic journals growing up, hurricanes are not "Nature's Fart." In fact, they're not a fart at all. That would be silly. "Hurricanes are Nature's Fart" was a rumor started over 30 years ago by Airologist Walter Zoloft, who though that the wind smelled like beef during Hurricane Yolanda in 1972. In scientific terms, hurricanes are caused by heat energy from evaporating water. Confused? Think of it this way: When you get out of the shower, you feel cold because the water evaporating off your naked ass is taking your body heat with it. This heat energy does not disappear, it has to go somewhere. And it goes into hurricanes. The first hurricane in Earth's history happened in 1964. You've likely heard of "Hurricanes" previous to this date, but all such references were to the nicknames of boxers or hookers with grossly oversized egos. The first actual hurricane hit the town of Papa Old Money on the coast of Papa New Guinea in August of 1964, and it scared the living daylights out of the town's seventeen residents, who thought God was whistling at them. No one was sure how to interpret such behavior from the universal creator, and this frightened them. The world's first hurricane was, as you may already have guessed, the direct result of the invention of the shower in 1963. Previously, nature had been held at bay thanks to the prominence of the bathtub on the world's body-cleansing scene, though the balance had already been somewhat upset by the invention of the "European shower" in 1960, which consisted of standing over the bathroom sink of a gas station and splashing water near your armpits while rubbing an automobile air freshener on your chest. But the invention of the shower and its catastrophic convenience changed all this in less than a year's time, as the residents of Papa Old Money and their demolished straw huts could attest. It took the town's residents seventeen months to find all the straw again, which had been distributed evenly over the surface of the island, and rebuild their huts in time for the Great Catastrophic Hut Fire of 1966. The devastation would only grow worse over the next forty years, as millions of people turned to showering to ease overcrowding in the world's gas station restrooms. Hurricanes would grown in strength and number every year, except for a brief respite in 1969 when the hippies took over and it briefly became uncool to rinse off your butt musk and most Americans received all their needed hygiene from police water cannons at protest rallies. Many famous hurricanes would ruin kite-flying contests and destroy property in nations that had not learned from the legend of the three little pigs during the 1970's, including the famous Hurricane Harry in 1973, the legendary Hurricane Delmon in 1976, and the altogether disappointing Hurricane Pip in 1978. Government officials were able to placate the devastated masses by holding fun write-in contests to decide the name of the latest hurricane, which remained popular until some smartass ruined the fun by naming a hurricane Hurricane Hurricane in 1985, and the federal government had to step in and start naming hurricanes after ex-girlfriends in 1986. So what can we do to cause the scourge of hurricanes to abate before the entire globe is as flat as a wet T-shirt contest in North Dakota? Besides granting every child's wish by outlawing all bathing, our only real hope is to figure some way to take a break from humanity's true passion: finding new and exciting ways to fuck up the planet with the most noxious chemicals possible. Instead of dumping thousands of gallons of DDT into rivers and streams, why not dump wildflowers, honey and mint? Or whatever they put in douches, I'm no expert on their contents. I only bought one that once because I thought it was a cocktail mix. You look me in the eye and tell me summer's eve doesn't sound like a good name for a cocktail, that's misleading advertising plain and simple. If they didn't want guys to buy douches, they shouldn't put a woman on the box, that's Advertising 101. You put a vagina on the box and accidental guy purchases will hit zero in a hurry, I guarantee you. Unless the wording on the package is vague enough to leave open the possibility there could actually be a vagina in the box, then all bets are off. But now we're detouring far from my original point. The fact of the matter is, if we don't like the effects that nature's douche has on our country's barbecues, straw homes, tents and brothel-heavy southern cities, we need to stop making them necessary by continually inundating the entire American South with battery acid, asbestos and Agent Orange like we have been for the last 100 years. We need to clean up the South, or better yet, cover it in several feet of fresh, clean saran wrap and never speak of it again. Only then will we be able to shower with a clean conscience, knowing that the big, tidy nothing the hurricanes are blowing over down there isn't going anywhere any time soon. º Last Column: First Griswald Dreck Chat Transcriptº more columns
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Quote of the Day“Ask not what your country can do for you; cuz trust me, you ain't gonna get shit that way.”
-John Fitzpatrick KentuckyFortune 500 CookieOrganization is the key to surviving life's travails. Try sorting your problems large to small, then run like hell. Nobody can stand your face, voice or odor, but on the upside, everyone likes your car. This week's lucky ways to die: hanging plus drowning, three-year diarrhea, shop 'til you drop, the summertime blues.
Try again later.Top Eric Rudolph Hiding Places| 1. | Rabbit's house. | | 2. | Worked at an Arby's for a while. | | 3. | Inside Laura Bush's vagina. | | 4. | Star of an ABC sitcom. | | 5. | North Carolina. Nobody ever looks there. | |
|   North Korea Pissed Their Real-Life Hunger Games Nowhere Near as Popular as Movie BY Roland McShyster 5/30/2005 G'day, America, we're phoning in this week's edition of Entertainment Police from an Aussie state of mind, and by that I mean I'm stuck in an airport in Austria. Word to the wise: don't accept an invitation to the Greater Chinese Film Festival, because there ain't one. It's all a clever white slavery ring that was apparently looking to get its hooks into one of Omar Bricks' neighbors, but lucky for her Omar's been collecting the neighborhood's mail as part of an experimental attempt to teach dogs to deliver mail, as a way to make his a two-income household without the downsides of getting married or going gay.
We've been raffling off the leftover mail here at the commune's offices to raise money for sick kids who are faking cancer, so I ended up with the film festival invite,...
G'day, America, we're phoning in this week's edition of Entertainment Police from an Aussie state of mind, and by that I mean I'm stuck in an airport in Austria. Word to the wise: don't accept an invitation to the Greater Chinese Film Festival, because there ain't one. It's all a clever white slavery ring that was apparently looking to get its hooks into one of Omar Bricks' neighbors, but lucky for her Omar's been collecting the neighborhood's mail as part of an experimental attempt to teach dogs to deliver mail, as a way to make his a two-income household without the downsides of getting married or going gay. We've been raffling off the leftover mail here at the commune's offices to raise money for sick kids who are faking cancer, so I ended up with the film festival invite, to the great disappointment of my would-be Chinese captors, believe me. There's a three-to-one male-female ratio over there, so they were happy to see me show up to that sausage-fest like I was a turkey baster full of the bird flu. But enough about my airline-gone-out-business limbo. Thanks to the magic of Wifi, I'm here as usual to offer another weekly glance at the magic of Hollywood, your portal to disinterest. In Theaters Now:Cinderella ManFinally, that Aussie meathead whose name I can't remember is a big enough star to make the film he's been dreaming about since he was a child: a serious dramatic retelling of the Cinderella legend with a man cross-dressing as a woman in the title role. Sure, we've all had that idea before, but who thought they could really pull it off? Only this guy, whatever his name is. Don't tell me, I swear it's on the tip of my tongue. Anyway, the resulting film is surreal as a Tupperware party at David Lynch's house, with the hairy and deep-voiced Cinderella going to great lengths to hide his manliness from his wicked stepsisters, his fairy godmother, several unperceptive mice, and the charming prince from the ball who's going around town trying to see whose foot fits into Cinderella's size-13 glass slipper. The results will jerk tears and several other body parts. The Gaylords of DogtownFinally somebody is giving the Weird Al treatment to that awful Nichole Kidman movie Dogtown, which itself was a cheap knockoff of Cats, except with more-loveable dogs played by unlovable big Hollywood stars. As anyone who actually saw Dogtown could tell you, what that movie needed was a whole lot more skateboarding, and this parody doesn't disappoint. But the real masterstroke was casting the entire movie only with real dogs, who, to a dog, easily trounce the performances of their human imitators in Dogtown. Watching real dogs skateboard is also pretty hilarious, especially if they're being pulled behind Jeeps and Ferraris and things and they put them in funny crash helmets and sunglasses. The Longest TurdHollywood's been going through a serious toilet-humor streak lately, which I can only think is a result of the "Go Young!" philosophy that has left us with a median age of thirteen for Hollywood studio execs. This mentality suits Adam Sandler just fine, however, and he's back from a recent detour into unfunny roles with this decidedly no-brow tale of a prison shitting contest and a little guy who could lay cable like nobody's business. Sandler really sinks his teeth into the role, if you can read that figure of speech without conjuring some disgusting mental image of Happy Gilmore biting a turd, and shines as the virtuoso ass-dropper. Burt Reynolds isn't nearly as funny in his cameo, but hey, fuck you, he's Burt Reynolds. MadagastroNever before has $90 million bought so little at the Hollywood rummage sale as in the case of this computer-animated film about a crazy scientist with the shits. Ben Stiller is back in his usual role as a lion with itchy balls, and other famous people use cartoon animal totems to spout the kind of hateful anti-diarrhea rhetoric that would get them blacklisted if it came out of their non-animated mouths. I think I heard Will Smith in there somewhere, and of course Bela Lugosi. As for the animation itself, it looks like a Special Ed class's homage to South Park, but I mean that in the nicest way possible for not hurting the feelings of retards. And that's all that we've got the time or life force to review this week, friends and neighbors, but be sure to check back in another two when we'll have an in-depth look at the amoeba and finally answer the hot-button question "Microscopes: real magic or phony bullshit?"   |