Blackbird

Last week HERE I mentioned The Beatles refusing to play Jacksonville if the concert was segregated, and apparently the good people at BBC News are big Xmastime fans (duh!) since now they've come out with an article re: the same thing happening in California:

The Beatles had previously taken a public stand on civil rights in 1964, when they refused to perform at a segregated concert at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida. 

City officials relented, allowing the stadium to be integrated, and the band took to the stage.
"We never play to segregated audiences and we aren't going to start now," said John Lennon. "I'd sooner lose our appearance money."

The struggle for racial equality in America later inspired Paul McCartney to write Blackbird.

Ironically, when I went to high school in 8th grade I discovered that white girls who dated black guys were called blackbirds, so.  Hmm.  Big Beatles fans, I guess.

Ray's & NYC

Also - don't read Whitman til you've been in NYC for awhile (even if only a coupla weeks.) I remember that hitting me in the noggin back in 1998. - sexy, sexy XMASTIME

It looks like The Original Ray's Pizza is closing down.  Or not closing down.  Nobody seems to fucking know.

But I do know that Ray's is one of those things about NYC you'd never "get" unless you lived here, and is included of about a million things about Seinfeld I never got until I lived here.

JERRY: What's around you?
KRAMER: I'm lookin' at Ray's Pizza. You know where that is?
JERRY: Is it Famous Ray's?
KRAMER: No. It's Original Ray's.
JERRY: Famous Original Ray's?
KRAMER: It's just Original, Jerry!
JERRY: Well, what street are you on?
KRAMER: Hey, I'm on first and first. How can the same street intersect with itself? I must be at the nexus of the universe.

On a side note, what the fuck is up with those pigeons?  How lucky are these fuckers - an entire fucking pizza? Where do these fuckers live?

Wendy's: MORE Awesome?

As you already  couldn't possibly give less of a shit  Wendy's is my favorite fast food burger, and now they've kicked things up with the oddly unless-you're-turned-on-by-chubby-dead-men (guilty) named Dave's Hot 'n Juicy Burger.  I'm more fucking jazzed about the buns being buttered and grilled than anything else.  Much like a girl  drinking the roofie I've slipped into her Zima  wearing the right fuck-me shoes, that can take a burger from a 6 to a 9 pretty quick.

Also, sad to see that John Edwards is now a food critic.  How the mighty have fallen - wasn't it just yesterday he was   burying that beautiful head of hair next to a fetus  running for president?  That makes me sad  :(

Dear Facebook Friend:

I'm not saying you're a racist.  I'm not saying all Tea Party people are racist.  But if you giddily pass along this quote:

Just heard the speaker of the house say the first sensible thing Ive heard on the news in a while,he said giving the fed govt more money in taxes is like giving a cocaine addict more cocaine!!Now thats the straight truth there!! And thats how the HNIC runs the govt,like a crack head with some ones credit card!!

and "like" it etc, this MIGHT not help your "it has nothing to do with Obama's skin, I'm purely angry at what I see as his troubling misunderstanding of macroeconomics and Keynesian thoughts as to production and employment" case.  I mean, I'm just saying.

Building: LOCKDOWN!

There was a big thing of mixed nuts in the office this morning, and just now I went to get some ad they've disappeared.  What the fuck?  And so, once again, I say this.

But It Does Hurt Jesus and His Scrappy, Lovable Sidekick Baby Jesus, So Go Back To Kenya Chairman Mao Tse Dung

Yahoo is a Bunch of, Say It With Me, Yahoos

Yahoo doesn't seem to mind me getting emails trying to link me to a site wherein I might enjoy a teen girl being worked over by barnyard animals, but won't allow me to receive and email about the Wall Street protests.  Interesting.  And by "interesting", I mean "wow, thank you for still letting me get the teen girl worked over by barnyard animals" ones!

This is Sad

Because how miffed do you think Rick Perry is that he's not the one who gets to pull the trigger?  I mean, he's already depressed as it is, and now this?  Damn.  Sorry, guv  :(

Obama Might Be Smarter Than We Think

Apparently his plan to raise taxes on rich people will make Bill O'Reilly quit his job.

Now THAT's some eleventy-level chess playing.

Israel and Irrationality, Which May or May Not Be a Word

A coupla years ago HERE I wondered why we're so automatically lock-step re: our slavish commitment to claiming allegiance to Israel, for which we're punished for merely questioning.  After that the rest of the world slowly said "yeah...why DO we do that?" because I pretty much run the world with my influence.  Today Matt Yglesias makes the same point, including the absurd notion that one of the check-off for politicians is saying stupid shit about Israel, using Chile as contrast:

We can be friends with Chile, shake hands with Chilean leaders, enjoy their wines, etc. without saying that we need to take Chile’s side in every regional diplomatic dispute, subsidize the Chilean military, or have our politician run around the world making absurd claims about the centrality of Chilean security to our own security.

Speaking of being nuts, this is still fucking killing me.

Whitney Cummings (Heh Heh Heh)

You can watch the pilot of Whitney OnDemand, even though it debuts on Thursday.  So I did. And, just like I've written before about her, it was painful. I was trying to put how bad it is into words, but this sums it up more succinctly than I could; in fact, I've now written more about how I wish I could be that succinct than the quote itself.  Look, I'm still going! (Still going!)

Overflowing with outdated observational humor about the differences between men and women, relationships, dating, and marriage, Whitney goes for cheap and obvious laughs and comes up empty-handed.

How Much Can We Really Suspend Belief?

Apparently Two and a Half Men made it's debut with Ashton Kutcher last night.  I have no interest in ever watching it, but I have picked up that his character is a billionaire.  So first I'm like...why is a billionaire moving into a house with two other dudes?  Oh, turns out because he's "heartbroken."  That explains it, since of course I'm sure if there's one problem with being a billionaire, it's getting women. Of course.  We remember this from The Millionaire Matchmaker, after all.

One Day We'll Tell Our Grandchildren We Witnessed the Great Rivera

There isn't anything to be said about Mariano that hasn't been said by those who can say it a lot better than me, but I will say my favorite part of his breaking the saves record yesterday was that after the final strike he just started calmly walking toward home plate, exactly like he did after save 1, 188, 422 and 511 etc.  If it had been me I would've pulled out a confetti gun and sprayed it all over myself while shouting through a bullhorn I paid a batboy to throw to me "WARNING: THIS IS EMERGENCY. EVERYBODY REPORT TO THEIR PARTY STATIONS." and then assaulted the crowd with 45 minutes of my doing The Robot.  Maybe that's why Mo is Mo and I'm me; for fuck's sake, I'm still patting myself on the back for "report to their party stations."

The Beatles. Still the Most Exciting Thing That Ever Happened to Us?

I feel like they do a Beatles Top 10 every other week, but this list by Rolling Stone isn't terrible, with a few exceptions:

- There's a foreword by Elvis Costello, who repeats why The Beatles were the greatest: 

Lennon, McCartney and Harrison had stunningly high standards as writers. Imagine releasing a song like "Ask Me Why" or "Things We Said Today" as a B side. They made such fantastic records as "Paperback Writer" b/w "Rain" or "Penny Lane" b/w "Strawberry Fields Forever" and only put them out as singles. These records were events, and not just advance notice of an album. Then they started to really grow up: simple love lyrics to adult stories like "Norwegian Wood," which spoke of the sour side of love, and on to bigger ideas than you would expect to find in catchy pop lyrics.

First of all yes, Elvis is obviously parroting what I said 3 years ago:

Meanwhile, from 1963 – mid 1966 the Beatles, while completely changing modern culture as we know it, put out 7 full-length albums, several EPs, 13 singles (6 of which the A side (and plenty of time both sides, actually) wasn't on albums at all) and, just for kicks, were in two movies (one of which is an actual classic.) I will not even bore you with blatherings about the amazing quality of all of this material. All that work in just about 3 years…and yet when several months passed after Revolver with no music coming out from the fellas, the public was ready to pack it in. “Oh well, they had their day, they’re over.” While there are many people that still would still love the old records, the general mood was “time to move on.” Of course the public was soon hit with Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane and then Sgt Pepper, and that was it for any “they’re done” talk.

- Two George songs is one too many.  Something belongs on it, but While My Guitar Gently Weeps doesn't.  And I love the song, but camon.

- Come Together remains the one Beatles classic I still don't understand why it's a "classic"; it's a shitty, shitty gobbled together piece of nonsense that makes one wonder what steaming piles of shit John Lennon would have assaulted us with had he ever been privy to ProTools.  Ugh.

- We've all heard Yesterday so many times we can't stand it and wanna puke every time we hear it, but when you watch an orchestra play it via McCartney's doc you're reminded of it's incredible, otherworldness melody.  Also, it  rather ironically offers one of rock's greatest "fuck you" moments, via:

Iris Caldwell remembered an interesting incident in connection with the song. She had broken up with Paul in March 1963 after a silly argument over her dogs and, when he later called up to speak to Iris, her mother told Paul that her daughter didn't want to speak to him because he had no feelings. Two and a half years later, on Sunday August 1, 1965, Paul was scheduled to sing 'Yesterday' on a live television programme, Blackpool Night Out. During that week, he phoned Mrs Caldwell and said: "You know that you said that I had no feelings? Watch the telly on Sunday and then tell me that I've got no feelings."

Zing! See that tv performance HERE.

Nerds Finally Win One

The Short Bus Meets One of My Idols!

Poppity-Pop

 You can’t fucking win when it comes to microwave popcorn. Wait to pull it out one nanosecond too late and everything gets burned to a crisp. Pull out too early, you’re left with a million uncooked kernels at the bottom of the bowl. Then you wonder for a second about trying to re-cook those kernels, but decide that maybe not having a job and sneezing into old socks instead of buying paper towels is white trash enough, thank you very much. Before you know it you’re desperately trying to time it, like in “Apollo 13” when they gotta try to perfectly line up with a star and shut the engines off at the exact perfect moment. Gimble-lock. Fuck it up, you skid off the top of the atmosphere and good-bye forever. It’s popcorn; do I need that much fucking pressure? Life’s not hard enough, now I gotta be Alan Shepard? - XMASTIME

If the popcorn turns into a heap of ashes because you've left it in the microwave for a nanosecond too long, how come the very first kernel that pops isn't incinerated after sitting in there for another minute while the rest pops? - XMASTIME

Back up off my nuts - THIS SQUIRREL

Without fail, every single time I hit the START button on the microwave after having put in a bag of popcorn, I realize I hafta piss, and in a panic "sprint" to the bathroom, praying I make it back before it's too late.  Now, not once have I come close, but it's an exciting 60-75 seconds.  Maybe...maybe too exciting.

Life.  It's really happening, isn't it?

Oh, Goody - MORE Good News for Tom Brady!

I think one way of gauging how ridiculous of a season Tom Brady has had is here's a guy that dumped his actress girlfriend when she was 3 months pregnant, started dating a supermodel, and we haven't really heard shit about it since the season started. Now that's impressive. I believe Le Barber said it best a few minutes ago with "Brady's leading Iowa by 9 points."

 - XMASTIME

That was 2007, and this season after 2 games Brady is off to an even better start, so much so that his receivers are fucking star-struck and slobbering all over him.  Fucking christ.  I really wanna punch that shithead, just like his shithead kid.  And then he gets to go home to this.

Click HERE for more Brady h8n'.

This Surprises The Shit Out of Me

CAREER BASE HITS:
George Brett  3,154
Tony Gwynn 3,141
Derek Jeter 3,077

Except during his march to 3,000 hits this season, nobody really spoke about Jeter as a numbers guy, other than 5 rings; to speak of Jeter was to speak of things like intangibles, winning, and leadership.  So it's pretty amazing that he's actually this close in hits to guys like George Brett and Tony Gwynn, who were both number-accumulating hitting MACHINES, and Jeter has a few more seasons left in him.  Here's how many hits Gwynn and Brett had at the end of the season they turned 37:

Brett:  2,707
Gwynn: 2,780

And here's Jeter, at 3,077 with about a dozen games to go. I cannot say I woulda guessed this in a hundred years.

Reege

5) I’m starting a “Dudes Whose Lives I’d Like to Have” list. So far I got Hef, Jimmy Buffet and Derek Jeter. As great as it’d be they each have their drawbacks, I suppose. Hef’s old. Buffett, you’d hafta sing ‘Margaritaville' every day. Jeter’s not 100% white. I guess it’s true, nobody’s perfect. - XMASTIME

I might hafta put Regis Philbin on this list.  Do you ever see anyone having more fun than that motherfucker?  He gets a gazillion dollars to sit around in the morning talking to a hot chick for about 45 minutes, and just now he did an inning in the booth at the Yankees game and then announced A-Rod at the plate a lá Bob Sheppard. I mean, for fuck's sake already.