Thursday, September 30, 2010

Amaze-Balls Old Baseball photos via Uniwatch; also, "Man, those shoes are amazing." And I said, "Yes, they are. I'm Kanye West."

Absolutely amazing old wire service photos posted on Uniwatch yesterday:
 The O.G. Big Mac Attacc. aka Andy Richter.
 Bing's Got 5 on it. Get Lifted, Bob.

 Mr. Burns kindly asks that you fire one in there.
Ah 1-2-1-2--Where Crooklyn at?
 Rudy Giuliani does not like that call. 
 Interesting shot of Madison Square Garden from when it opened. Note the upper parts above the 400s, the lack of the post-1989 renovation luxury boxes. Looks kinda empty. Also note how impossibly smoof young Clyde is.
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Worth popping into your local Barnes & Noble to peep the latest XXL magazine on that free tip to read the rest of Kanye West's beautifully insane essay. 

"How many times have people taunted me because of a color that I had on or how tight my pants were? It's nothing. I'm at the point now where I can go to ABC Carpet and spend five hours picking out sheets, 'cause I love colors, like teal and taupe and salmon ... When I visited Wayne at Rikers Island, I had a suit on with some slippers, and the guard said, 'Man, those shoes are amazing.' And I said, 'Yes, they are. I'm Kanye West.'"

"The only person that came to visit me the night it happened (storming the stage during Taylor Swift's MTV award acceptance) was Mos Def. He came to my house right afterward and said, “Move. You’re not going to be able to make it out here. You can’t make it in America right now. You have to move.” And that’s what I did. I went to Japan for three weeks, then moved to Rome for the rest of the year. I worked as an intern at Fendi. On weekends, I would fly to Paris and sometimes take off four days just to be in Stockholm, Sweden, just to meet with Johnny who runs Acne, or the Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair, to find the perfect pair of jeans."

His twitter is also bananas blaze:
"Yo, being nice is my whole shit right now."
"Man ... ninjas are kind of cool ... I just don't know any personally"

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

In What Universe Do the Knicks Have the Assets to Get Carmelo Anthony?; Also, unappealing Spam commercial; and Dreary Looking Public Plaza for Brooklyn Nets' Barclays Center

Take a look at the Knick present and future. Exciting, eh? I think they've got that 8th seed ON LOCK.

Peter Vescey keeps regulating shop with his blistering column on Melo's future in Tuesday's Post.
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The Knicks simply don't have the required assets. The nerve of those Nuggets (and other concerned parties) to exact something of value in return!
"If the Knicks had their first-round draft picks, Carmelo already would be at camp scrimmaging with them," a rival team executive said.
Donnie Walsh's reckless decision last February to turn over the team's 2012 prime real estate (protected 1-5 through 2015; if not conveyed by then to the Rockets, it translates into two seconds) optimistically to amass enough cap space to entice two mega free agents unexpectedly has come back to haunt the Knicks before the team president could finish his first term of office. What was the rush? Rod Thorn waited until late June to accrue more space for the Nets -- the dumping of Yi Jianlian, for instance.
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 This proposed plaza in front of the future Barclays Center in Brooklyn looks like a lovely spot in which to contemplate life's meaningless and nothingness. But hey, as long as it gets built and opens.
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No doubt, Spam's a hard product to advertise, at the very least this commercial shies away from unappealing close-ups. Spam Up!

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

White Wizzard The Latest....(and Greatest?) Savious of Metal? Met-al.



Most Excellent tunes, even more excellent videos. White Wizzard is the band, they talk a big game that's f'sure, but "Over the Top," is required viewing.

Apple Juice+Honda Civic+Jazz=The Ultimate Wackness.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Tarnation, It's A Tarnadah!







Last Thursday, a "macroburst" tornado hit the Killa Hillz. Ish was NO JOKE. Nobody smiling.






Damn. Meanwhile, the jerks who already razed their trees to create monstrous concrete yards were sitting pretty. Well, still ugly, actually, but you see what I mean.

King Felix for Cy Young and Johan Can'tana for 2nd in 2008! Also, Kenny Loggins Will Heat Your Home This Winter for Free


The only drama in the A.L. this season seems to be over whether the Cy Young should go to C.C. Sabathia or Felix Hernandez. C.C.'s got 20 wins for a team that slept-walked through this season while Felix has only got 12 for a team almost 40 games under .500. It seems like it should be widely accepted, for many reasons, that wins are a terrible stat to judge a pitcher by. But I guess it's not since C.C.'s got a lot of support, despite Felix' lower E.R.A., higher innings pitched, more complete games, lower W.H.I.P., and well, let's just say Felix is better in every pitching category save wins and pinstripes worn (which could be rectified soon I suppose).
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 In 2008, Johan Santana went sported a 2.53 E.R.A. and finished third, third, in the National League Cy Young voting. Brandon Webb won 22 games that year, the only category he bested Johan in. Santana was a beast that year, highlighted by his complete game shutout on the penultimate day of that pitiful Met season. He should have been neck-and-neck with my boy Tim Lincecum for the award itself that year not staring up at Brandon fucking Webb. Sure it's bitter of me, but it'd be nice to see a Met win an award once in awhile.
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Winter is nearly upon us, if you're worried about your heating bill fret no more. Simply place this Kenny Loggins album in the center of the room you wish heated and feeeeeeeeeel the glow.

Frownie Always Wanted to Open a Fish Restaurant Called Just for the Halibut; Also, Satchel Paige Pitching for the Kansas City A's Alongside Segui and Tartabull; also Berba first man to score hat-trick for Man United against L'pool in many a moon.

Puns+Shitty Food=Rispekt.
F.C.K.F. stands for Fried Chicken Kebabs Fish. Fuck.
Here's an interview with a brilliant graphic designer who has made a career out of making dozens of iterations of cartoon chickens, the subject of a new book called "Chicken: Low Art, High Calorie."
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Via Uniwatch, this amazing photo of Satchel Paige from 1965. At the supposed age of 58, Paige signed on with Charlie O. Finley's Kansas City Athletics. He started and pitched three innings on September 25, 1965 in an eventual loss to the Boston Red Sox. As part of the fanfare, Finley arranged for Paige to rest in a rocking chair in the bullpen before the game attended to by a nurse. In his three innings, Paige only surrendered a hit against a decent Sox lineup that included Carl Yastrzemski and Tony Conigliaro.
 Of further note, the A's that game featured the fathers of two semi-prominent future New York baseball players, Jose Tartabull, daddy of Danny and Diego Segui, pop dukes of David. Weird, eh? Biggupp props to baseball-reference.com for their box score database.
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Finally, my latest for epltalk.com, a historical nugg on the last Man United player to score a hat-trick against L'pool.

Friday, September 17, 2010

The 1970's: The Golden Age of Every Pop Culture Genre

It's Friday, you've reached the end of the internet. You're out of pieces to read, your go-to rotation of sites is as exhausted as Big Pelf. Panic sets in. It's only mid-morning, and the balance of the day yawns before you.
 We've all been there. Here's a fantastic piece by Todd Van Der Weff of the A.V. Club that will occupy minutes-upon-minutes of fun, a tour of the great sitcoms of the 1970s. All in the Family, Taxi, Barney Miller, Good Times, and Sanford & Son just some of the jewels that emerged from funky times. For me, Barney Miller stands out as a lost and underrated classic. Abe Vigoda slays, and the opening theme song features and impossibly funky bass-line. The video excerpts chosen for the piece are killer, I highly recommend the WKRP in Cincinnati scene where Loni Anderson (Burt always had good taste) and Herman Hesseman almost get down.

The twin beauties of growing up in pre-internet age were syndication and a handful of channels on the teevee. Thus, a young coachie had no choice but to peep all these classics on channels 5, 9 and 11. Today, in the internet age, we have access to everything yet nothing unites us, pop-culturally. These great shows already lived on far beyond their time, but the time when they are remembered is already drawing to a close. Inevitable.

The piece also covers a couple of lost gems, like Bridget Loves Bernie, about an Irish Catholic who falls for a Jewish cab driver. Freddie Coups should keep an eye out for his alma mater P.S. 6 in the intro where the Bridget character works. In this clip, wait for the 1:44 mark for the "Zoinks! Sitcom Premise" moment.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Rafael Nadal Completes Career Grand Slam; Es El Rey de Reinas; El Maestro del Melbourne, El Centro del Corte de Centro, y Popa del Paris

 Rafael Nadal, at only 24 years young, completed a career Grand Slam by winning the 2010 U.S. Open over a game but frail Novak Djokavic last night. Fred Perry, Don Budge, Rod Lever, Roy Emerson, Andre Agassi, and Roger Federer are the only other men to have won all four Grand Slam Tournaments in their career.

A major asterisk, though, for my main man Jimmy Connors. In 1974, Jimbo won the Aussie, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, but was barred from entering the French Open because he had signed up with the fledgling World Team Tennis League. Moreover, Connors is the only man to win the U.S. Open on all three surfaces that it has used; grass and later clay in Forest Hills and then hardcourt in Flushing Meadows.

Does Nadal's achievement cheapen R-Fedz' same Career Slam, achieved last summer at Roland Garros?To quote John Starks, "No question." But for my lucci, I'd take Federer at his height and in his pomp. To paraphrase my man S-Boomz' thought on R-Fedz from Saturday night, his game is too beautiful to live. It's remarkable that Fedz reign was as long as it was, what with his one-handed backhands and exquisite netplay. Modern tennis, with its increased speed, power and insane world travel eats its stars. In doing so it robs us of marquee match-ups. Without longevity, tennis must constantly produce new stars as the current ones flame out by 25, and because that is impossible its popularity suffers.

 I watched last night's match online through the U.S. Open web site. They used a different camera angle than the tradish 3/4 angle on CBS. The stream was much lower to the ground, almost putting us at eye level with the players and made for much more exciting viewing. For all the changes to teevee technology there have been almost none with the camera angles with which sports are televised.
 That's Rafa Nadal's sister. Que Bonita.
I went to the Open on Friday with Pop Dukes and Coups, got to see Rafa, Fedz and Bryman's gurrl Venus practice up close as they all practiced side-by-side outside Arthur Ashe. They're all metronomes.
My main man Jimmy Connors, I still own his replica metal-framed racket. In 2005 I attempted a Connors-esque haircut, which is pretty much the same haircut John Ritter rocked on Three's Company, but for me, it was bad company.
 On the Billie Jean King United States Tennis Association National Tennis Center grounds (that's a mouthful!), there's a bizarre statute of a tenny-playing dad with his kids. The dad looks a lot like George H.W. Bush, no?
 When they reminisce over you. Or, Killa Hills, 11375.

Finally a note on  Arthur Ashe Stadium. I heard gasbag Dick Enberg repeatedly refer to this dump as a "grand arena." It is a high-school football stadium expanded to 23,000 seats. From the outside it's horrific, what with the grotesquely exposed seats of the upper tier and the watered-down Camden-Yards motif on the halfway built facade except it's not even brick but tile. What is it with the modern trend of exposing the backs of the seats rather than have the facade reach the top? And, of course, there is no roof. Tradition-bound Wimbledon has a roof at Centre Court. Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne has a roof. The French are installing a roof at Roland Garros. What's the holdup? The Open is a cash cow. This is the third year in a row that the Men's Final was postponed to a Monday. On the broadcast we heard that, once again, the Open was not prepared for a postponed final and so most services were lacking. Big Dood was there all day and reported that nary a drop of beer was to be found. That's no way to enjoy the tennis.

If Arthur Ashe had a roof from day one the Nets could have been balling it up all these years in front of full houses. The Isles could be skating there, avoiding bankruptcy or worse at the Coliseum. Billy Joel would have someplace to warble in the winter. Helen Marshall could give a series of speeches where she'd explain what exactly her job is and why she is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for it.