We were discussing the (then-)upcoming Daytona 500 last week, when one of my friends (not really a NASCAR fan) said that there hadn't been a fatal accident since Dale Earnhardt t-boned the wall at Daytona in 2001. Another friend (also not a NASCAR fan) replied:
Of course not. He caused all of them!
In hour 2 of Friday's Bob & Tom show, Paul and Storm had just finished playing Your Love Is, a sendup of sappy love songs. Let's pick up the action...
TOM GRISWOLD: That's just beautiful. That just takes the piss out of every love song. "Butterflies in the summer..." BOOM!
KRISTI LEE: Come on, don't you have one romantic bone in your body?
TOM: Yeah, you want it?
One of the weirdnesses about the whole Barry Bonds saga is that BALCO founder Victor Conte used to be the bassist for soul band Tower of Power.
On Bob & Tom yesterday, Bill Scheft (head writer for Letterman) said
...but when he first joined the group, they were known as 'Tower of Singles Hitters.'
Last year, I wrote about Ted Nugent's appearance on Bob & Tom, where he discussed his USO trip to Fallujah with Toby Keith. Well, Uncle Ted's back in the news again; this time, he did an interview for (London's) The Independent. Why is this significant? Here's one reason:
He rarely gives interviews to the British press; the last time he did, some years ago, he managed what is possibly the most extraordinary achievement of his remarkable career - proving too right-wing for the Daily Telegraph.
Ted is quotable as always, as evidenced by
"And I visited Saddam Hussein's master war room. It was a glorious moment. It looked like something out of Star Wars. I saw his gold toilet. I shit in his bidet."and
This was the night, Nugent recalls, when he received "the pivotal confirmation of my musical touch and my life overall. The mighty funk brother God of Thunder [Benny Benjamin, drummer for Motown house band The Funk Brothers] told me: 'Boy, keep playing like that and you'z gonna be a [deleted - starts with 'n'] when ya grows up.'"and
"GOD SENT ME HERE TO MAKE SURE THESE LICKS CAME OFF OF A GUITAR. THEY ARE PERFECT. THEY ARE FUCKING PHENOMENAL."and
He mounts an interesting defence of English foxhunting. "So, they're pompous little prima donnas. So what? I say, go wild. Fox hunting may not be weird enough. Get the kings and the princes. Abolish royalty, rather than criticise some broker from Surrey who likes dressing up like a prick."and
"You wrote a song called 'Dog Eat Dog'. You see the world like that. But we're not dogs - that's the trouble."but the remark that caused me to snarf on my beer was this one:
"Remember the movie Old Yeller? Everybody loved him. He brought us our slippers. We gave him cookies. But when Old Yeller gets rabies, you shoot him in the fucking head. It's that simple."
"What do these deer think when they see you coming?" I ask him. "Here comes the nice guy who puts out our dinner? Or, there's the man that shot my brother?"
"I don't think they're capable of either of those thoughts, you Limey asshole. They're only interested in three things: the best place to eat, having sex and how quickly they can run away. Much like the French."
So after the Freedom game (about which more later, sadly), we had Rico and several of his friends over (including Clay Aiken and Keri Russell, or at least their stand-ins) for a low-key garage gathering. Along the way, not all the introductions had been made, as evidenced by the fact that eventually one of his friends asked me if I knew where the bathroom was.
I wish I had a picture of the look on her face when I replied, "I sure hope so; it's my house."
Comedian Brian Posehn (you may know him from such roles as creepy mailguy Kevin on Just Shoot Me or Cousin Larry on Kim Possible) scores Remark of the Day for last Thursday's Bob & Tom show with this one:
I know how to make nerds mad, because I'm a nerd, and it's by getting their obsession wrong. So these guys are waiting for the Star Wars movie, and I would pull up and go "Star Trek sucks!"
And then I realize that I automatically correct anyone who erroneously refers to one of my favorite hobbies as "frisbee golf:"
"No, it's disc golf. 'Frisbee' is just a brand name. It'd be like calling that little game you play with the ball and the sticks 'Titleist golf.'"But I always knew I was a nerd anyway, so it's all good.
Monday on Bob & Tom, there was a report of a Baby Jessica sighting. Guess what? Girl's all growed up now and done got herself hitched:
KRISTI LEE: Do you remember the dramatic rescue of Baby Jessica when she fell down the well, remember, she was eighteen months old?She's nineteen; he's 32. Today is White Trash Wednesday. Total coincidence, I assure you. But here's the line that knocked me off the elliptical machine (the timing was good; had it happened ten minutes earlier, I would have dropped a barbell on my head):
BOB KEVOIAN: Yeah.
KRISTI LEE: Believe it or not, Baby Jessica is a baby no longer; she was married over the weekend.
BOB KEVOIAN: No kidding?
KRISTI LEE: She is now nineteen years old, and she apparently tied the knot Saturday at a rural church outside Midland, Texas. She's nineteen; her husband, 32-year-old Daniel Morales.
CHICK MCGEE: I bet they're on city water.
Of course, this being Bob & Tom, they proceeded to beat all the funny out of that line over the next hour and a half.
Dymphna of Gates of Vienna (a most excellently-named blog) scores Remark of the Day in this post about a Malaysian woman being denied in her attempt to change her name to reflect her renunciation of Islam. Here's the setup:
The court based its decision on the fact that Ms. Joy’s renunciation of Islam for Christianity had no bearing on the matter of identity. Furthermore, according to the same justices, she had no permission from the Shari’a court to make such a decision about who she is. This particular part of their fine print is most pointedly a farce, considering that any appeal to a Shari'a court to remove herself from the rolls of Islam is sufficient cause to have her killed as an apostate.And here's the punch line:
These folks were dreamed up by Kafka and bequeathed to us when he died.
Last week on Bob & Tom, they had the story of the world's largest chicken egg, something like 8 inches in circumference and 6 ounces in weight. Somebody asked how they could find which chicken laid that egg.
Tom said "You go to the coop and you look for the chicken that's walking like Catherine the Great on Derby Day."
Unremembered fellow partier at New Year's Eve party: "Why is Regis doing the New Year's Eve show?"
Me: "Because 'Dick Clark's Droolin' New Year's Eve' would be a ratings disaster."
Convicted child rapist Mary Kay Letourneau got released from jail yesterday after serving her sentence (she did 7 1/2 years for doing a 12-year-old). As part of her post-release processing, she had to register as a convicted sex offender. As a result (and among other restrictions), Inside Edition announced, Letourneau would have a curfew.
Without even looking up from her crossword puzzle, flower_goddess said "Shouldn't affect her any; the guys she wants all have earlier curfews."
I was all set to post a detailed entry on just how cool Oak Island was and how envious you all must be since I just spent two weeks there and you didn't. Then I read Steve's (of The Sporting Life) description of his recent trip to Alaska:
I almost didn't write about my trip to Alaska because, well, it's tough to keep vacation stories from putting people to sleep or sounding as if there's one underlying theme: "I went to this cool place and you didn't. And, even if you've been there before, I assure you it wasn't as good as my experience."Boy, am I glad I read that first.
Anyway, I think I'll settle for short vignettes like this one: SmokeEater and I were sitting on the deck, just watching the ocean and enjoying adult beverages (it's amazing how much time you can spend just doing that). After a while, a woman came along, walking her little rat-dog along the water's edge.
SmokeEater says: "Well, she's using live bait, but I don't think she's working deep enough."
A rare double entry today--Bill Hobbs scores a Remark Of The Day for summing up the situation in the Tour de France after today's stage (where Armstrong won despite crashing, leaving him and Jan Ullrich as the only riders with a real chance to win):
"Hmm. An American and a German are the only two people with a chance to win in France. Yeah. That's normal! :-)"
2001.04.02 Dammit, Swabbie, I Said TanquerAY On The Rocks!
Historically speaking, this has been a big week for environmental disasters. First, Three Mile Island, now the 12th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. How much have we learned in the intervening twelve years? Apparently not a whole lot, if you believe the Environmental News Network. But check out the last paragraph, where a London tanker broker says "I'm sure Exxon is aware that there are arguments both for and against double hulls, but you would have thought they'd pay a few thousand dollars per day more just to look good [emphasis mine]. That's what double hulls are all about." Style over substance among the environmentalistas? Marx forbid!
Remark Of The Day, courtesy of P.J. O'Rourke, on forbes.com's FYI: "Prepubescent girls are in command of such large amounts of discretionary spending that the introduction of a popular new boy band can cause the Fed to raise rates in an attempt to curb demand-side inflation."