"I make you humble"

 

Sacre Bleu, I'm wide awake in the middle of the night! I can't even blame Cocaine for this, as the heaviest thing I got into last night was a Pepsi. I was still in bed at 9;30.

Part of it is the no-work thing. I'm used to being a full-time student with at least one job, often two or three. I tend to wake up feeling behind, just long enough that I can't get back to sleep once I realize I'm retired.

As high-stakes as Mothering is, I actually don't view it as a job. I totally enjoy hanging out with the girls, and I'll miss Gabrielle once she starts school. Even my two year old is fun, which gets me a lot of raised eyebrows when I say it among other moms. The downside is that they wear me out, I go to bed at 9, and wake up at 3 AM.

May as well get some work done... some mid-week video fun for you all.

YouTube - WC Crip Walk

I'm not sure that he does it right, but French housewives don't overrule rappers when How To Crip Walk is being discussed, regardless of how long she taught at whatever ghetto. Things are best left that way.

Walter? Please get back in your seat... you can practice the Crip Walk later. We're just warming up, here.

********************************************** 

Hopping fom culture to culture.... we've had mention here at CCToday concerning our lack of Gyro Ball media. That will not be allowed to continue. For those of you not in the know, the Gyro Ball is the ace-in-the-hole pitch that our new Japanese hurler uses, a sort of mystical converse breaking slider that looks sort of like this:

YouTube - DICE-K GYRO-BALL

Oooops... wrong one. I meant... THIS: YouTube - Matsuzaka Famous Gyro Ball in Japan

Dice looked good the other night, but I'm sort of hoping that he rounds into form when the weather gets more Japanese as summer nears. I'm thinking that he requires mid-summer humidity to make the Gyro work, and may not even be aware of this fact himself. I'm rooting for a 6-0 July with 54 strikeouts.

My sources tell me that Clemens was balls-out in his first pitching session, so we'll need the little SOB to get it together.

******************************************* 

Working our way west from Japan, here's a bit of female professional wrestling from Israel.

 YouTube - Makkat Medina: Israeli Satiric Wrestling

Now. my Yiddish isn't that sharp, but I speak the international language of Wrestling well enough that I can explain what's happening here. You have your basic evil Schoolteacher character fighting what seems to be a combination of a Farmer's Daughter and a Cheerleader character. 'Happens all the time.

Cheerleader Inga from the kibbutz is a regular Jill of all trades... but Master of none, because she got her ass handed to her. She takes a nice leg sweep (Israeli girls all serve time in the IDF, and even schoolmarms pick up such tactics) and absorbs a finishing move that seems to knock her out by slamming her on her own keister.

Here's what I learned watching this:

- I'm not sure what the teacher said before the fight, but I know it wasn't good.

- Never go for the flying elbow if your opponent is still conscious enough to be fixing her hair as she lays before you.

- Kibbutz farm girls usually have cheerleader outfits on under their work clothes.

- It's not anti-Semitic if I root against the Israeli Cheerleader, because I'm rooting for the Israeli Schoolteacher. We teachers stick together, you see... like slightly less dangerous cops. Besides, the Israeli cheerleader seems to lapse into English here and there when she's making her speech.

- "Za onish" means "It's over." If it doesn't, it should.

But that's not the best central Asian professional wrestling action we have.

YouTube - Iron Sheik goes nuts

The Iron Sheik- who is actually really from Iran, and competed for their Olympic team- does a shoot interview for a Boston wrestling show.

Some background.... the Sheik left Iran when the Shah fell, but was able to parlay his heritage into a good Villain role for the WWF during the hostage crisis. An actual wrestler, and generally regarded as one of the stronger men in wrestling, the Iron Sheik was the man Hulk Hogan had to beat to become famous.

The Sheik also coached our team in Munich, and the Black September people would have just knocked on the next door had only the Sheik been visiting the Israeli team that fateful morning.

None of that really matters here, though. This is a drunken guy with a taste for cocaine, bad-mouthing his former co-workers on a cable TV show in heavily-Persian-accented English. There will be some Profanity issues for some of our nicer readers if they watch this clip. The Sheik threatens to break people's backs and sodomize them, though he doesn't phrase it as delicately as I do.

Drunken Iron Sheik interviews are a You Tube staple, but I'd be amazed if there's one out there as awful as this one... although this one is close... YouTube - Iron Sheik praises intelligent Jews.

Old timers will appreciate the Classy Freddie Blassie cameo, and wrestling scholars will note that the Iron Sheik may have been the one to invent the term "Jabroni."

**************************************

My favorite Christian Children's Heavy Metal Band.. YouTube - Trampled Underfoot Practice Session. They need a drummer, but God Shall Provide.

They're not named after YouTube - Trampled Under Foot by Led Zeppelin (Page rules, incidentally). While I didn't ask, I'm assuming that they are named after "Jerusalem shall be trampled under foot by the Gentiles," which is Jesus speaking in Luke 21-24b. Many Christians see this as Jesus calling the re-taking of Jerusalem by the Israeli Satiric Wrestling League in the Six Day War of 1967.

Either that, or it's Orwell... referring to the Oceania/Eastasia throwdown. "There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot." They spell their band like the Orwell line.

I was gonna ask, in the band's comment section... but I had to know about the lack of a drummer, first.

Bull In The Woods

One of the good things about keeping a web page is that you can use it to trap those silly thoughts that float through your mind. The thought process is nothing without articulation... sheer abstract waste. The blog allows one the ability to capture those thoughts for posterity.

Some generally-a-moron-type may bring about world peace with an offhand statement in her blog that suddenly becomes a culture-crossing catch phrase. F*ck, a person could set themselves up as Jesus II if the right people linked to it and all the cards fell into place.

Of course, Jesus was crucified... and however heroic His sufferings on our behalf were, that's a good-God-a'mighty big price to pay. I'd rather just help out the NFL a bit, and maybe just have someone call me a schmuck.

I love football, and instinctively resist ideas regarding fundamental changes in the game. I inevitably say to myself, "If it was good enough for Bronco Nagurski or Gayle Sayers, it's good enough for today's kids." Chuck Bednarik played both Offense and Defense, was a thoroughly brutal man, and should be the kind of guy the NFL runs new ideas by... perhaps even with Veto power.

The NFL should be run like that. Applying a Chuck Bednarik litmus test to any idea thus becomes my final means on judging it. "What would Chuck Bednarik think of ______?" If I were much older and more powerful in NFL-related matters, they'd still be playing witthout helmets today.

Either way... Chuck might not like the idea of selling our game to the Asians. While I don't feel like opening the Wikipedia right now, I'd bet that part of Chuck's youth was spent fighting either Koreans or Japanese, quite possibly both... and he only beat up hippies in the 1960/70s because he couldn't get his hands on any more Asians.

But there's about 3 billion Asians on this planet, and they need more football in their lives. If Pol Pot had been a Chicago Bears fan, Cambodia would probably be a thriving democracy right now. I bet Mr. Bednarik didn't like seeing all those automaking jobs go to Japan... what better way to get some of that money back than by hooking them on football?

I have a way to:

A) take a really lame part of the game and make it kick-ass

B) bring in immense Asian interest to the NFL

C) do A+B without changing an iota of actual on-field play.

Here's the sitch:

Two teams play for 60 brutal minutes, and the game ends in a tie. They go to sudden death overtime, and somebody kicks a field goal after a few short passes. Whoopie!

Whoever gets the ball first is either 1) going to win or 2) deserves to lose. Thus, the coin flip is ascribed far too much power in deciding the outcome of games. People who get pissed at a scrawny kicker deciding a contest of 300 pound men must want to kill when their season is shot to hell due to the spin of a nickel. This takes the potentially game-altering moment in a physical game, and resolves it with a 50/50 lark bet that a P-Town sissy could beat Sean Taylor at.

It's very fair as a basic concept, and Americans love a Square Deal. Most of us wish  we got 50/50 odds on our big life events. Still... so much more could be done with this truly pivotal moment in a game.

This is why I propose that:

The NFL should ban the coin toss in favor of having two fat guys on the roster who are there solely to Sumo in the center of the field (the star at Texas Stadium, for instance... may as well get some use out of all that painted sod) for control of the ball in sudden-death ovetime situations. 

Stand them on either side of the circle, then let them play Bull In The Woods until someone is shoved out of the circle. The winner's team then gets the ball. Simple and plain.

Inevitably, teams will find room on their rosters for one really big guy who knows how to Sumo. The best Sumo wretlers come from Asia, and the introduction of an Asian onto each NFL squad would bring, oh, 6 billion new sets of eyes to the game.

That's like 3 billion purses, and purses hold money.The NFL just cancelled games in Asia for next season, die to "marketing voids"... which is a French term for "Asians don't care about football."

They'll care about football if two Rising Sons are fighting it out in Texas Stadium with millions on the line.... and, as an aside, it'd be nice to see American kids get a new Asian hero. Lord knows they must get stuck watching enough MTV for us to retain a Favorable Trade Balance in this area.

I can pretty much guarantee that the next NFL jersey I bought would be that of the Patriot who was handling Sumo duties for us, should the NFL adopt my rule change. I bet 3 billion Asians would say the same thing.

Tags: NFL, Sumo, Coin Toss, Monponsett, Chuck Bednarik

I ate the lobster, and then I ate his tail

Behold... the classic Cape Cod clam shack.

Welcome to Barlow's Clam Shack.

Known among the local culinary elite as Barlow's Of Bournedale, it is a favorite haunt of my good friend the Bournedale Phantom.

Normally, you don't want to eat at a decrepit shanty on an industrial canal a quarter mile from a power plant (and about 10 miles from a nuclear plant)... but clam shacks are to Cape Cod Cuisine what shotgun shacks are to Soul Food, or maybe what greasy-spoon diners are to truckers.

Besides... they fry everything... and any bacteria that survives a fat fryer was probably going to get you anyhow.

Note the ground covering. Those are smashed up clam shells. While a trifle sharp, they are actually an aesthetically-pleasing enough Look. The olfactory benefits can be muted by boiling the shells before paving your place with them, although New Englanders are usually far too enured to the smell of decaying mollusk to waste time on that kind of stuff.

Before you call the Home Depot.... Your average clam is about 2-3 inches long, and clam shell driveways are only economically viable if you have access to thousands of clams... like if you ran a seafood place, maybe...

I was just here for ice cream, and often aim my daily walks towards this Mecca of mine. Why, just this week I had Maine Blueberry ice cream (which was superb) and Lobster Tails (which was an artery-clogging vanilla/chocolate swirl/almond concoction with little halved peanut butter cups- red, of course- that looked like lobster tails)... the latter being so good that I almost had to have sex with the cone.

 

As I became more well-travelled earlier in my life, there were three things I was shocked to learn about the way the rest of the country speaks.

One... what everyone else calls a "milkshake, we call a "frappe." The rest of the USA has no term for a whipped milk/syrup drink.

Two... you only have to get as far as Connecticut before the practice of calling a split-loaf sandwich a "sub" is obsolete. By the time you get to NYC, "hoagie" is useless. "Hero," however good it is as a term, doesn't even make it to Philly. The rest of the country, I've determined, lacks imagination or a large Jewish/Italian population.

Three... no one outside of New England uses "wicked" as an adverb/modifier of an adjective. "Wicked" means "evil" everywhere in the United States... except New England, where it means "very."

The use of "wicked good" on Barlow's sign looks like an oxymoron to 99.1% of the country, but it clearly speaks to me that it this a local place run by local people. I was drawn to it immediately... or "wicked fast."

 

This is my man Hoss The Booty Filler from Grazing Fields Farm, in Bounedale.

 

You may have trouble finding the carved-cod window box at the local hardware store if you live in, say, everywhere but Cape Cod.... but we have plenty.

Tags: Clam Shacks, Bournedale, Cape Cod, Monponsett, Ice Cream, Lobster Tails, Blogplugs, the use of wicked as an adverb

'like George the animal, kick ass on the annual...

"Never forbid what you lack the power to prevent."

I'll be hard to find this week/end, but I wouldn't leave you without quality entertainment.

Here's a guy who Gluttony probably should have polished off in 1986 or so, performing what I feel should be the Cape's official Regional Anthem.

YouTube - Mountain - Leslie West & Corky Laing - Nantucket Sleighride

 Duxbury High School used to wax the gym floors in the spring, for some reason. Ideally, this would be conducted when gym classes could be held outdoors. Mother Nature is no idealist, though... and when it was too rainy to run us around outside, we'd get stuffed in the mini-gym to watch Coach Dellorco's video collection.

I can recall the Miracle on Ice tape, the 1972 gold medal basketball game, and 1978 one-game Sox-Yankees playoff nightmare. The gem of his collection has made it onto You Tube, though

YouTube - Marvin Hagler VS Thomas Hearns

 While watching this Masterpiece Of Mayhem, take note of the ref work of Richard Steele, the microphone pwnage of Al Micheals, and the crowd of Romans howling like mad.

But the stars here are the terrifying Detroit Hitman and the Marvelous Brockton home slice who knocks him smooth the uck fout.

This, and maybe Iran Barkley/Roberto Duran, is about the best I've seen. Ali/Frazier was third, although You Tube does Ali no justice.

Finally...

I hate when this happens, and it's 100% why I don't go on boats:

YouTube - Hammerhead ate my Tarpon

My style broke mother lovin' backs like Ken Patera

Back in the saddle, beating other bloggers like I had a paddle....

 I done did a little travelling recently, mostly related to our house in Maine. Never hire French-Canadian roofers. If Moses had hired francais labor, there'd be an 11th Commandment... and if you actually read the Code Of Hammurabi, there are sections devoted to shoddy construction, punishable by death.

The Code Of Hammurabi was carved into rock, so you know they were only taking serious applicants for admission. The eye-for-an-eye here was that the carpenter was to have the dwelling collapsed upon him- no mean feat when everything was made of stone.

 While I don't want anyone Collapsed, I have missed my little friend Miss Blog here, and we have two important matters to discuss 'fore I head off to get some ice cream.

 A) Randy Moss

B) Roger Clemens

Randy Moss is a 6'5" burner who can match a cheetah stride for stride for 50 yards. He's gathered scores of touchdowns in his career, which featured the Patriots refusing to move up to get him in the draft so they could stay where they were and select Tebucky Jones.

Randy- who played with Troy Brown at Marshall- had an entourage following him when he was 19 years old. When asked to state something positive about Moss, his college coach says "Let me tell you what a nice boy Troy Brown is." I'm not making that up.

Randy also smokes enough weed that his arrival in Massachusetts drove down Cape Cod marijuana prices. He's left the field before the game was over. He's mooned a crowd of 75,000. He has an afro you could hide a child in. He went to Oakland last year and dogged it to the point where they gave him to us for a 4th round pick.

Time heals all wounds, though... and there aren't 5 guys on the planet with his particular combination of speed and height... and we have the one with the best hands.

The QB throwing to Moss last year wasn't that more effective than sending out a short French girl who sort of pushes the ball at him because she can't get her fingers around the laces. I could get more than 5 touchdowns throwing to Moss, and I'm sure Randy has already ejaculated over the thought of playing with Tom Brady. If all works out, they may be each other's favorite person by October, 2007.

As for least favorite people, the Spankees managed to ink Roger Clemens to an abominable contract for this summer and beyond. Roger comes to the AL East with the express purpose of saving the league's big ticket franchise. NY could afford the man, and money makes the world go 'round, kids...

 Roger is 45, but that's only like 32 in Texan years. You know he's throwing smoke, and you know the Yankees are going to mount a furious charge right around the time we figure out that our zillion dollar Jap fireballer isn't up to snuff. I've seen it too many times already not to see it coming now.

I'm already preparing myself mentally for this inevitability, although I may have to get a night job if things are really, really ugly in early September. Children shouldn't see their parents cry.

Of course... I was present the last time the Sox bats went after Rocket Rog.... the 2004 All Star Game... and both Big Papi and Super Manny beat his ass bad enough to be able to command Newports for it in prison. Right in his hometown, too... in one of his previous retirement tours. I loved it.

You know that burned his ass, and he'll be screaming for vengeance off that mound like Nolan Ryan Jr. this summer.

No worries. It's not as much fun winning the pennant against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, or whatever the hell they call themselves these days. I want Yankee blood on my hands while i enjoy my World Series victory beer. Eff them. Go sign Mo Vaughn, too... it doesn't matta.

We will sail in the Bay of their Misery.

 

Tags: Monponsett, Randy Moss, New England Patriots, Red Sox, Yankees, Roger Clemens

Onward Through The Fog

 

I was at Choco-Latte in Sagamore the other day, just as the Sox and Yankees were firing up a three game series at Fenway. As I was trying to enjoy my gelato, someone came up to me and asked for directions to Falmouth.

Tourist season is just beginning, and I began to go instantly into that giving-directions mode all Cape residents operate in at times... when I saw that Yankees hat her husband was wearing. This flipped the script.

"You're almost there. Go back over that bridge (the Sagamore) up Route Three, get off at Exit Ten, take a right, then go about a mile." While fronting like I lived in Falmouth (not easy with my accent), I gave them directions which, if followed properly, took them to The Milepost Restararunt in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Of course I wrote it down for them.

For those of you not from Massachusetts, Duxbury is nowhere near Cape Cod... I probably took an hour- maybe two- out of their vacation. I'm glad I did.

Eff them. They should know better than to go out in public dressed like that. I certainly wouldn't walk through Hell's Kitchen in a Big Papi shirt.. and if I did, I'd deserve whatever happened to me. Maybe they got a nice lunch out of it, maybe not... I don't care.

Here's some Sox-related video for you to enjoy:

First, ESPN was nice enough to post video of us hitting not-two-not-three-but-four homers in a row off the Yankers Sunday. Check the steady long ballin'

ESPN.com - MLB - Recap

But wait...there's more. Watch someone interfere with a Fenway foul ball and get a pizza to the face for it. It's a few minutes into this video here:

Blog Show No. 5: 'No Gluing of Pubes Onto the Face'

Enjoy and remember this three game sweep of the Evil Empire that we just witnessed. Look back on it fondly when the September Swoon hits, about mid-August. Time has shown that the Yankees will prevail generally, so sit down and absolutely savor us whipping them like a government mule on a warm April weekend when hope seemed to seep out of the tree branches.

As for the family I saw at Choco-Latte.... I hope that they enjoyed Duxbury.

Since we have the topic out there....

- I don't deliberately mislead Rhode Islanders, NH, VT, Maine or western Mass people. I'd invite a fellow New Englander into my house to use MapQuest if I saw a B hat on them.

- When a car pulls up with Connecticut plates, I can tell just by looking at them if they root for the Sox or the Yankees. Connecticut Sox fans go to Falmouth, Connecticut Yankees go to Duxbury. Sox fans call this ability "Hatedar," and it is born-not-taught.

- No other state/team (except the Los Anglese Lakers, and Californians specifically have to be wearing Laker gear) elicits this response from me. Bulls, Bears, Bucks, Bengals, Brewers, Browns... I do the best I can for all of them.

- It's quite possible that they asked for directions in Duxbury, only to be answered by someone of like-me-mindedness (I grew up in Duxbury), who then sent them even further off into the hinterland. This could set them on a Bridgewater-Quincy-Maine-Alabama pattern that might even involve a "ferry" trip that ends in Le Havre (provided the marks run into an Ascended Master of my trade).

- If you're going to try to send Yankee fans to Canada.... remember to send them AROUND the state of New York. They might catch on, otherwise. I like to think that the ride through Maine will make them enjoy Quebec that much more.

I don't dislike tourists. I dislike Yankee fans. Sometimes, the Yankee fan is the tourist, and that's just how the cookie crumbles, folks. At worst, they learn a valuable life lesson... and knowledge is the gift that keeps on giving.

That's the pattern, and I'm sticking with it for the forseeable future.  The Red Sox go to Yankee Stadium this weekend.... and I really could use some more Gelato.

 

Sick hockey goal... the kid looks like a lacrosse player

 

YouTube - Robbie Schremp - Amazing Shootout Goal

 

 

Tags: Red Sox/Yankees, Cape Cod, Gelato, Falmouth, Duxbury, Duxbury is too part of Cape Cod and why are you disputing this if you asked me for directions?, three game sweep of the Evil Empire

The Hood Done Took Me Under

 

Duxbury Beach, MA... several more storm tides to come.

 

 That's not supposed to be a dirt road with a salt water lake at the end... but Mother Nature cares very little for oceanfront development. That flooded meadow in the background is where some charlatan is trying to pitch a condo development.

 

 No, that's not a stone driveway, either... or at least, it WASN'T a stone driveway. That's a front porch and a lawn. This used to be my house, btw...

 

My old house, again... with the new stone lawn. Duxbury Beach veterans will notice the rupture in the seawall. Once that happens, the flooding of the neighborhood (and especially the new condo development) begins in earnest.

In 1991, the ocean was level with the seawall... which meant that there was nothing to stop waves from rolling in from the mid-Atlantic and smashing directly into my house. Every time one hits, it sounds like you hid in John Bonham's drum kit.

 

Stairs generally work best when they make it down to the ground, but we'll give them some style points for Location.While I like this family too much to actually wish for it to happen... it'd be funny if one of them (preferably the uncle or the son) tried to go down to the beach in the dark and didn't watch that doozy of a last step!

Something that always stabs at my sympathy when storms hit this neighborhood... the guy who lives at that house landscapes one of the local golf courses. Every year, he comes home from work and tends that lawn to a degree that one could roll a smooth 60 foot putt across it. Then, almost every winter, it gets wrecked.

Yes, I know that- during times of War and Hunger- sympathy isn't meant to be spent on a guy who can't putt on his Atlantic-facing lawn this morning until he shovels a few rocks away.... but people who own oceanfont property have feelings, too. Godspeed, Double R.

 

In what should probably be a blog entry of its own.... the guy who used to own that house was known for doing naked Tai Chi outside at 4 AM. 

 

The storm didn't bring down that basketball goal... that came down when some sucka gave me the lane, and I sh***ed on him.

Tags: Duxbury Beach, April 2007 Nor'easter, Blogplugs, Monponsett, Indoor Pool