Give it a rest

Oh, please--please tell me you're joking with this crap:

When it comes to the sham that is the Boston Red Sox's championship legacy during the 21st century, it's about the New York Yankees.

It's always been about the Yankees with the Red Sox.

More specifically, it's always been about Yogi Berra's quote for the ages regarding the Red Sox toward his Yankees: "They'll never beat us."

And they haven't. Not legitimately. Especially not given the latest news that David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez formed an artificially inflated duo to slug the Red Sox to those World Series titles in 2004 and 2007.

Ortiz confirmed through the players' association that he tested positive for drug use in 2003, and sources told the New York Times' Web site that Ramirez did the same. So Ramirez is at least a two-time loser. He served a 50-game suspension earlier this year for violating baseball's drug policy.

All of this means several things. It means the Bloody Sock becomes just a bloody sock. It means Theo Epstein looks more like an opportunist than a whiz kid (in addition to acquiring Ortiz, he grabbed reliever Eric Gagne, another steroid guy). It means those contributing to Fenway Park's record for consecutive sellouts at home are among the bamboozled. It means the rise of the Red Sox Nation is headed for a dramatic collapse, even sooner than I predicted in this space a few weeks ago.

Calm down, Poindexter. No one's talking collapse just yet.

The idea that any title, record, statistic or victory is legitimate or not due to the taint of the steroid era rests with your non-Commissioner of Baseball, the venerable Bud Selig, who will not touch controversy. He will not deal with any issue that might cause money to evaporate from the grubbing mitts of the owners who empower him to keep their money from even getting close to the evaporation phase of existence.

Here's what we should do--invalidate everything or nothing, and then shut up about it. The 2000 Yankees are nothing to be proud of either, by the way:

When the Yankees won their third successive World Series and fourth in five years in 2000, Torre, their manager, was hailed as an automatic entrant to the Hall of Fame. Now, however, it develops that the Yankees' 2000 team was loaded with players who used performance-enhancing drugs before, during or after that season.

Between the Mitchell report and unsealed affidavits filed by law enforcement officials, the count has reached 10, including Clemens, Denny Neagle and Jason Grimsley. Others named included Andy Pettitte, Chuck Knoblauch, Mike Stanton and David Justice, but the use for which they are cited occurred after the 2000 World Series.

It may be far-fetched to question whether Torre could be tainted by the steroids fallout, but there are critics who say baseball should do something about records possibly enhanced by steroids use, so why should a team be any different from a player? If you want to question many of Bonds's 762 home runs and Clemens's 354 victories, look at teams' achievements, too.

According to the Mitchell report, Clemens used steroids in the latter half of the 2000 season. Neagle played for the Yankees in the latter half of that season and, according to Mitchell, used human growth hormone.

Sports blogging really could use some cleaning up. It's as if they don't think people can actually read. This notion that a comparison of the rivalry of the teams of the 1950s matters a whit today is phony nostalgia, nothing more. Baseball is more than phony nostalgia and hazy memories masquerading as profound analysis. Should we pine for the 1909 season, and what it means to today's Pittsburgh Pirates to know that the lofty achievements of that season's team--a first place finish and a championship--mean nothing as they unload players?

Come on. Find something meaningful to write about.

Whither the Buick Open?

17th Hole at Warwick Hills

Change is good, as they say, but losing the Buick Open is not a good thing:

Two-time champion Tiger Woods will be making his ninth appearance in the Buick Open. In the face of Buick's plans to pull its tournament sponsorship after this year, he hopes it won't be his last.

"Obviously this area's been struggling a bit," Woods said. "I think the atmosphere, all the players have really enjoyed playing in front of the fans here. It is very intimate."

General Motors Co. will end its half-century run as sponsor of the Buick Open, a person briefed on the decision told The Associated Press this week. The person spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the announcement will not be made until the tournament ends.

Whatever the status of sponsoring agreements, several PGA Tour pros expressed their affinity for the Warwick Hills course's tree-lined fairways, short layout and distinctly human feel.

It's the small-town atmosphere that makes the Buick unlike many PGA Tour stops.

"That kind of support, that kind of commitment from the fans to come out and see us play, yeah," 2003 champion Jim Furyk said. "That's what makes a golf tournament special and what the guys enjoy."

Bailing out the auto industry is one thing--we already know it happened, we already know that there was a great deal of consternation about it, and I suppose there's no point in revisiting the issue. On the other hand, no one has any sympathy for the bailout of things that keep people buying cars--the advertising, the sponsorship, and the corporate events that bring people into the fold.

If you think that having an industry evaporate is a good thing, well, good for you. I don't want the auto industry to collapse--I want it to thrive once again. This is because we will need to manufacture tanks to fight in a massive land war against China and Iran.

Without the corporate sponsorship, the Buick Open might be called something else entirely--say, the Underwire Bra Open or the Cash'N'Pawn Open or the Rent-A-Center Open. I shudder when I think of something that low-rent, I really do. Golf occupies a sacred place in American corporate culture. This is something the hoi polloi will never understand. Rubbing shoulders with like-minded people of means is the only way to secure a proper future for the automobile industry. Anything else would be uncivilized.

Kayden Kross

Kayden Kross

Whoa, Kayden Kross still scares me.

Kayden Kross

Kayden Kross

Beautiful, smart, and never a bad pose.

Kayden Kross

Kayden Kross

Kayden Kross has a gallery, but I won't link to it because I'm afraid it might explode, sir.

Dasha

Dasha

Dasha is one of those women who, if you had to invent her, you'd go crazy trying to find all of the right robot parts.

Dasha

I don't even like robots, but I would build a Dasha robot.

Dasha

Then I would set her free, of course. I'm a perv, but I'm not a robot-designed-to-be-a-sex-android enslaving sort of fellow.

Dasha

Who is? Ugh.

Dasha

Dasha has a tremendously important gallery here.

Jessica Jaymes

Jessica Jaymes

Jessica Jaymes

I rather enjoy finding something I can post by Jessica Jaymes.

Jessica Jaymes

These shots are amazing.

Jessica Jaymes

Jessica Jaymes has a fantastic gallery here...

Scuddy's Bar Status Report

Scuddy's Bar is: going to open once someone finds the ironing board we were using to smash open coconuts.

Mining on the Moon is a Good Idea

An Apollo 15 Astronaut Abandoned His Hooptie Ride on the Moon, Dawg

I have long been an advocate of strip mining, coal mining, data mining and even that whole panning for gold thing which really isn't mining, except that the wardrobe is very similar. When someone ran into my den and shouted about mining on the moon, I put down my glasses, even though I have perfect vision and don't even own glasses, and said, thoughtfully, now that's a good idea!

The fellow who helped make INMARSAT a household name among those of us who use satellite phones is trying to make exploiting the moon a buzzword that I can use to promote my blog.

Ramin Khadem, a veteran of the telecom satellite industry, thinks there's definitely money to be made on the moon. That's not surprising: As chairman of Odyssey Moon Limited, he's in charge of one of the ventures planning todeliver commercial payloadsto the moon - not 40 years from now, but sometime in the next five years.

"The moon is almost like an eighth continent," Khadem told me. "It's within the planet Earth's own economic sphere ... Our approach has been to explore this eighth continent. Just as explorers went to the new world and found all sorts of great things, we think there are opportunities there."

The only problem is, we've known for the past 40 years that the "eighth continent" is within reach - but nothing has come of it. In fact, "Right Stuff" novelist Tom Wolfe argued around the time of this month's Apollo 11 anniversary that the fate of lunar travel was sealed once the moon race was won.

Today's NASA would never take the risks that NASA did in 1968 and 1969 by sending astronauts on just-barely-tested spacecraft to the moon - primarily because there's no longer any Cold War-scale reasonto do so. Nothing has been done on the moon's surface, by humans or by robots, since 1972 (except for crashing).

It has to be worth our while, of course. I don't think space chimps or space dogs could do the work, and it's no use sending dolphins--they would never agree to work for the necessary wages. Me, personally, I'm not going all the way to the moon for dust and little else. I might consider going to the moon for this thing they are calling Helium-3:

Scientists know that the rocks on the Moon contain large amounts of oxygen, and experiments have shown that this oxygen can be extracted from rocks to provide astronauts with breathable air, and help make water and even rocket fuel. There are also trace amounts of valuable minerals on the surface of the Moon. But perhaps the most valuable commodity on the surface of the Moon might be helium-3.

Helium-3 is an atom given off by the Sun in huge amounts as a byproduct of its fusion reactions. Although we can't use helium-3 today, physicists think they'll serve as the ideal fuel for fusion reactors. The Sun's solar wind carries the helium-3 away from the Sun and out into space – eventually out of the Solar System entirely. But the helium-3 particles can crash into objects that get in their way, like the Moon. Scientists haven't been able to find any sources of helium-3 here on Earth, but it seems to be on the Moon in huge quantities.

Space engineers have proposed sending vehicles to the Moon that resemble combine harvesters, which gather grain here on Earth. They would strip mine the surface of the Moon, pulling out and concentrating all the helium-3 atoms. These could then be returned to Earth for the use in fusion reactors.

Cornering the market on Helium-3 and forcing all of humanity to bow down to my whims would be pretty much a given, what with my own Father's propensity for doing just that. In the 1960s, Father tried to corner the world market on Magnesium and Basalt, and he failed, miserably. Had he simply accepted the agreements offered by the Dutch, the French, the British and the South Africans, well, he'd have been just fine. Instead, he kidnapped their plenipotentiaries and tried to hold them for ransom on that South Pacific atoll we used to own--typical hamfisted move by my Father.

I fear that the moon as a topic or issue will fade quickly, and we'll find ourselves wondering what happened on the fiftieth anniversary.

Mining on the Moon is a Good Idea

An Apollo 15 Astronaut Abandoned His Hooptie Ride on the Moon, Dawg

I have long been an advocate of strip mining, coal mining, data mining and even that whole panning for gold thing which really isn't mining, except that the wardrobe is very similar. When someone ran into my den and shouted about mining on the moon, I put down my glasses, even though I have perfect vision and don't even own glasses, and said, thoughtfully, now that's a good idea!

The fellow who helped make INMARSAT a household name among those of us who use satellite phones is trying to make exploiting the moon a buzzword that I can use to promote my blog.

Ramin Khadem, a veteran of the telecom satellite industry, thinks there's definitely money to be made on the moon. That's not surprising: As chairman of Odyssey Moon Limited, he's in charge of one of the ventures planning todeliver commercial payloadsto the moon - not 40 years from now, but sometime in the next five years.

"The moon is almost like an eighth continent," Khadem told me. "It's within the planet Earth's own economic sphere ... Our approach has been to explore this eighth continent. Just as explorers went to the new world and found all sorts of great things, we think there are opportunities there."

The only problem is, we've known for the past 40 years that the "eighth continent" is within reach - but nothing has come of it. In fact, "Right Stuff" novelist Tom Wolfe argued around the time of this month's Apollo 11 anniversary that the fate of lunar travel was sealed once the moon race was won.

Today's NASA would never take the risks that NASA did in 1968 and 1969 by sending astronauts on just-barely-tested spacecraft to the moon - primarily because there's no longer any Cold War-scale reasonto do so. Nothing has been done on the moon's surface, by humans or by robots, since 1972 (except for crashing).

It has to be worth our while, of course. I don't think space chimps or space dogs could do the work, and it's no use sending dolphins--they would never agree to work for the necessary wages. Me, personally, I'm not going all the way to the moon for dust and little else. I might consider going to the moon for this thing they are calling Helium-3:

Scientists know that the rocks on the Moon contain large amounts of oxygen, and experiments have shown that this oxygen can be extracted from rocks to provide astronauts with breathable air, and help make water and even rocket fuel. There are also trace amounts of valuable minerals on the surface of the Moon. But perhaps the most valuable commodity on the surface of the Moon might be helium-3.

Helium-3 is an atom given off by the Sun in huge amounts as a byproduct of its fusion reactions. Although we can't use helium-3 today, physicists think they'll serve as the ideal fuel for fusion reactors. The Sun's solar wind carries the helium-3 away from the Sun and out into space – eventually out of the Solar System entirely. But the helium-3 particles can crash into objects that get in their way, like the Moon. Scientists haven't been able to find any sources of helium-3 here on Earth, but it seems to be on the Moon in huge quantities.

Space engineers have proposed sending vehicles to the Moon that resemble combine harvesters, which gather grain here on Earth. They would strip mine the surface of the Moon, pulling out and concentrating all the helium-3 atoms. These could then be returned to Earth for the use in fusion reactors.

Cornering the market on Helium-3 and forcing all of humanity to bow down to my whims would be pretty much a given, what with my own Father's propensity for doing just that. In the 1960s, Father tried to corner the world market on Magnesium and Basalt, and he failed, miserably. Had he simply accepted the agreements offered by the Dutch, the French, the British and the South Africans, well, he'd have been just fine. Instead, he kidnapped their plenipotentiaries and tried to hold them for ransom on that South Pacific atoll we used to own--typical hamfisted move by my Father.

I fear that the moon as a topic or issue will fade quickly, and we'll find ourselves wondering what happened on the fiftieth anniversary.

Tiger Woods Can Say Whatever the F### he Wants

You cannot convince me that Tiger Woods is a bad person.

Whenever he has walked past me at the Masters Golf Tournament, he invariably ignores me and says nothing, not even making eye contact with me. It's not because I'm a nobody wandering around on the course, pass hung around my neck. It's not because I go every year and, literally, I've seen him fifty or sixty times in person. It's not even because I have heard him curse, yell, complain and whine. No, the answer is obvious to any bonehead with a cushy job as a columnist.It is because he's focused on playing golf.

Now, many people will try to butter you up with a warm personal anecdote, a story only I could tell, a personal encounter, a magical moment. I refuse to do that. This is because it's not about me--it's about Tiger playing golf. That's all. Nostalgia and warmness have no place in golf.

Rick Reilly doesn't get that. He has no clue whatsoever as to what he's talking about. He's a reactionary populist, and a fool:

Tiger Woods has outgrown those Urkel glasses he had as a kid. Outgrown the crazy hair. Outgrown a body that was mostly neck.

When will he outgrow his temper?

The man is 33 years old, married, the father of two. He is paid nearly $100 million a year to be the representative for some monstrously huge companies, from Nike to Accenture. He is the world's most famous and beloved athlete.

And yet he spent most of his two days at Turnberry last week doing the Turn and Bury. He'd hit a bad shot, turn and bury his club into the ground in a fit. It was two days of Tiger Tantrums -- slamming his club, throwing his club and cursing his club. In front of a worldwide audience.

A whole lot of that worldwide audience is kids. They do what Tiger does. They swing like Tiger, read putts like Tiger and do the celebration biceps pump like Tiger. Do you think for two seconds they don't think it's cool to throw their clubs like Tiger, too?

He's grown in every other way. He's committed, responsible, smart, funny and the most talented golfer in history. I just thought we'd be over the conniptions by now.

If there were no six-second delay, Tiger Woods would be the reason to invent it. Every network has been burned by having the on-course microphone open when he blocks one right into the cabbage and starts with the F-bombs. Once, at Doral, he unleashed a string of swear words at a photographer that would've made Artie Lange blush, and then snarled, "'The next time a photographer shoots a [expletive] picture, I'm going to break his [expletive] neck!"

Where's the issue here? Should the photographer or the fan or the member of the gallery be interrupting the game? Of course not. On a day when Woods is playing golf at a level unimagineable to the likes of Reilly, he is focused on his own failings and he is reacting, angrily, to his failure to play at a level he expects of himself. What person who cares about personal performance--giving their all--wouldn't show passion, anger, and rage?

The criticism from Reilly would be tenfold if Woods took a day off. Didn't show emotion. Kept his mouth shut. Reilly would invent a new kind of outrage--get outraged! he would bleat. Woods does not take a day off, and for that we should be grateful.

Now, as proof that Reilly has never been on a golf course when it mattered, he drops this whopper:

It's disrespectful to the game, disrespectful to those he plays with and disrespectful to the great players who built the game before him. Ever remember Jack Nicklaus doing it? Arnold Palmer? When Tom Watson was getting guillotined in that playoff to Stewart Cink, did you see him so much as spit? Only one great player ever threw clubs as a pro -- Bobby Jones -- and he stopped in his 20s when he realized how spoiled he looked.

This isn't new. Woods has been this way for years: swearing like a Hooters' bouncer, trying to bury the bottom of his driver into the tee box, flipping his club end over end the second he realizes his shot is way offline.

Really? You're saying that Nicklaus and Palmer are supposed to be role models of golf course decorum? Is Woods the worst offender? No, for my money, Sergio Garcia is far worse than Woods, by a country mile. Anyway, this was debunked years ago by Michael Wilbon:

[John] Feinstein criticizes Woods for not trying to curb his language, which can get pretty foul when he misses a putt or hits a bad shot, just like most of us. And because Feinstein is a golf historian, I know he knows that Nicklaus, whom he justifiably praises to the high heavens, could have cursed up a storm if he wanted in 1962 or thereabouts without it reaching the television because he wasn't followed everywhere with sound men holding frighteningly high-tech boom microphones so close they can pick up the sound of his stomach churning. So, apparently, to Feinstein and [Bill] Plaschke (and I know they are joined by a great many) it's not enough to win major championships, to win so much and with such style it revolutionizes the entire game and elevates the profile of the profession -- no, he's got to smile the way they want him to smile, accept only as much money from Coke and Nike as they want him to accept.

They both say he isn't beloved, which to me is clearly ignoring mountains of evidence to the contrary. They and lots of others may not find Tiger beloved. But millions of people, perhaps people who don't register with Plaschke and Feinstein, adore Tiger. He's beloved in the worlds in which I travel. I'm not about to suggest Tiger Woods is perfect. I find that his caddy, Steve Williams, acts boorishly too frequently. But I've also been in enough of Tiger's galleries to know that they are full of non-traditional golf fans who behave very often in, shall we say, non-traditional ways and need to be kept in check. If it offends anybody's sensibilities that Woods has bodyguards, too bad. Anyone who doesn't recognize that Tiger and Jack, 36 years apart in age, didn't live in different worlds is embarrassingly naive.

I'd say that sums up this routine, boring Reilly missive--embarrassingly naive. Spend any time at a major tournament, and you'll realize that Woods is no different than anyone else, save for the fact that he never phones it in, never stops trying to improve, and always curses when it is appropriate.

Nikki Nova

Nikki Nova

Nikki Nova is a world-class model, and she always does a fastastic job of changing her look to suit her needs.

Nikki Nova

Nikki Nova

Ladies, shorter hair is always a plus. It demonstrates confidence and it shows us you're not afraid to take chances.

Nikki Nova

Nikki Nova has a gallery here...

Jennifer Emerson

Jennifer Emerson

Wow.

Jennifer Emerson

Yes, I'm normally loquacious.

Jennifer Emerson

But now? Now I'm dumbstruck.

Jennifer Emerson

Jennifer Emerson has that effect on me.

Jennifer Emerson

She's flawless in these photos, and she has a gallery here...

A New Nightmare for the Royal Family of Britain

 

Just when you thought that the reign of Queen Elizabeth was going to enter a quiet, golden period, this happens:

If his glamorous niece weren't expected to marry Britain's Prince William, Gary Goldsmith might just be another cocaine-snorting, tattooed, embarrassing uncle.

But when an undercover video last week showed Goldsmith, 49, cutting lines of cocaine in "La Maison de Bang Bang" -- the villa he owns on the Spanish isle of Ibiza -- his oh-so-unregal lifestyle became headlines -- and a scandal steeped in the crass issue of class.

Goldsmith is the brother of the mother of Kate Middleton, who started dating William eight years ago when they met at St. Andrews University in Scotland. Ever since, there has been discussion about whether this "commoner," now a 27-year-old accessories-buyer-turned-photography-student, was good enough for the heir to the British throne.

Goldsmith is a property developer and has tattooed the words "Nouveau Riche" between his shoulder blades. Those born into "old money," commentators have noted wryly, decidedly do not use ink this way.

"The march of the middle-class Middletons" was one recent headline about the "kitschy" uncle, who jokes on the video that he will soon have his own room in Buckingham Palace.

On the one hand, this is the sort of thing that keeps Fleet Street interested in the Royal Family. There has to be some form of youth, sex, violence, screaming, more violence, drugs, and topless sunbathing to keep them from following the Beckhams around the world. But, on the other hand, perhaps you don't want the interest when the Royals themselves are about to enter a very interesting time. The Beckhams replaced the Royal Family for a time, but only because Prince Harry was between bouts of dressing up like a Stormtrooper, and not the good kind, either. An embarrassing uncle is nothing.  History is replete with them. The only thing that is new is the volume of the phony outrage. Expect scads of phony outrage as the boys age. Do you think they've been wild so far? William and Harry have cousins galore. Britain is a playground for the idle rich. Expect something more than a few turned-over dustbins. Expect horror and degradation as this generation discovers that it is going to be denied the birthright of indolence and depravity royals are accustomed to. This generation, thanks to the advances in surveillance technology and security camera technology, can't do anything.  It will rebel. It will burst out of a chrysalis and frighten us all. Think Ozzy Osbourne being told he can't take his T-shirt off--that kind of rebellion.

The Royals of today could learn something from Queen Christina--there is nothing new under the sun. I have long believed that Charles would never be king; I sometimes think he should never be king. I do know one thing--none of us will probably live long enough to see Kate Middleton become Queen of England. I wish I could. It would be an amazing reign. Think Ozzy, sans T-shirt, painted up like Boy George and sent rolling through Camden on a turned-over wheelbarrow with a wine bottle lodged in his ass the wrong way in.

Good Government Must Wait

If I was going to be intellectually honest, I would have to sit here and admit that Republicans are just as corrupt as Democrats. I'm not going to make the argument that there aren't crooks out there from my side of the aisle, and I certainly don't think anyone would try to say that all Democrats are stand-up do-gooders, either.

Let us then say that party affiliation does not matter. Let us then say that it is an incumbent racket that keeps us from having "good government." You know, good government--that punchline, that joke, that unreachable goal before us. I define it thusly--anything the government does that doesn't waste money, benefits most Americans, and doesn't line the pockets of a politician or a donor to a politician. There is precious little of that going on right now.

What stands in the way of good government are things like this:

Robert Feinberg,who worked in the Countrywide's VIP section, told congressional investigators last month that the two senators were made aware that "who you know is basically how you're coming in here."

"You don't say 'no' to the VIP," Feinberg told Republican investigators for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, according to a transcript obtained by The Associated Press.

The next day, Feinberg testified before the Senate Ethics Committee, an indication the panel is actively investigating two of the chamber's more powerful members:

—Dodd heads the Banking Committee and is a major player in two big areas: solving the housing foreclosure and financial crises and putting together an overhaul of the U.S. health care system. A five-term senator, he is in a tough fight for re-election in 2010, partly because of the controversy over his mortgages.

_Conrad chairs the Budget Committee. He, too, shares an important role in the health care debate, as well as on legislation to curb global warming.

Both senators were VIP borrowers in the program known as "friends" of Angelo. Angelo Mozilo was chief executive of Countrywide, which played a big part in the foreclosure crisis triggered by defaults on subprime loans. The Calabasas, Calif.-based company was bought last July by Bank of America Corp. for about $2.5 billion.

Mozilo has been charged with civil fraud and illegal insider trading by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He denies any wrongdoing.

Asked by a House investigator if Conrad, the North Dakota senator, "was aware that he was getting preferential treatment?" Feinberg answered: "Yes, he was aware."

Referring to Dodd, the investigator asked:

"And do you know if during the course of your communications" with the senator or his wife "that you ever had an opportunity to share with them if they were getting special VIP treatment?"

"Yes, yes," Feinberg replied.

Now, in and of itself, I don't care if Senators Dodd and Conrad were given sweet deals. Anyone offered a little bit of preferential treatment is simply taking advantage of a little association. When friends cut each other deals, when a fraternity brother gives you a leg-up on what companies are for sale, when a woman you've been sleeping with for years decides to give you the keys to the back door, you run with them sir. You run with them.

However, if you're going to have an enormous amount of power by sitting at the top of the pedestal on two different committees in the US Congress, your business dealings should be above reproach. You cannot use your power in this way. How is it that Dodd and Conrad still hold their positions of responsibility? They cashed in and got caught--it's as simple as that. They used their status to get preferential treatment while the whole house of cards was being soaked with kerosene. It demonstrates greed, it displays an unwillingness to put country first, and, really--are these fellows that hard up? One of the benefits of being wealthy--and having a high paying job that covers your medical needs so completely as to be ridiculous--is to pay retail for things.

The undoing of the Democrat party is this cozy relationship it has to sweet deals and making money. Greed has settled in behind their dull, reactionary eyes. They spent years screeching about Bush and the thugs he had turned loose on the economy. What they forgot to do was give us good government when they were able to take over. Good government costs them too much in campaign donations and sweet deals.

Wow. That's blotto...

Scuddy's Bar is: Proud to nominate the police chief of Alexandria, Virginia for the Wall of Drunkard Fame:

When Arlington police arrived at the crash involving Alexandria Police Chief David P. Baker on Saturday night, an officer smelled a strong odor of alcohol and noticed that Baker's speech was "repetitive and hesitant," according to a criminal complaint.

Baker, who is on administrative leave, failed four field sobriety tests: the nine-step walk and turn, the 30-second leg lift, counting backwards and saying the alphabet, the complaint says.

Just after midnight, about two hours after the accident, Baker took a breath test, which registered a blood alcohol level of 0.19, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08. The crash sent the other driver to the hospital with whiplash and back pain, authorities said.

Baker, who is 6-foot-1 and weighs 210 pounds, told police that he had two beers about 20 minutes before the accident, the report said. When the arresting officer asked where Baker had been earlier that night, Baker's answer was unclear, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is pending.

That's some serious drunk the chief got on there. Good on ya, Johnny Law. Good on ya.

Meggan Malone

Meggan Malone

Meggan Malone doesn't quite know how to spell the first name that the modeling agency shill gave her.

Meggan Malone

It should be "Megan," and I know this because I have known at least a dozen Megans with a single G as opposed to no Meggans with the double G.

Meggan Malone

It's not Meggan's fault, however.

Meggan Malone

She's just trying to take her clothes off. A dispute over her name shouldn't spoil what is a perfect young woman trying to get naked as fast as she can.

Meggan Malone

You can see more of Meggan Malone here...

The Album Format Died With Compact Discs

Pink Floyd The Dark Side of the Moon (Cover)

I don't understand the thinking here--is it more about hating on iTunes and Apple than it is about actually giving the consumer something they want to pay for?

When news broke late Sunday that Apple has plans to create the next-generation music album, some in the record industry were steamed.

The Financial Times reported that Apple was working on a plan code-named "Cocktail" that involves the creation of "new type of interactive album material, including photos, lyric sheets and liner notes that allow users to click through to items that they find most interesting." That's nearly identical to a plan that executives from some of the four largest music labels pitched Apple about 18 months ago, said a music industry source who requested anonymity.

Even as the music industry cooperates with Apple's efforts, what has some insiders upset is that Apple rejected the labels' plan. By seizing credit, Apple is being "disingenuous," said the source. He added that Apple's attempt to develop a proprietary technology around the new interactive album is an example of the company once again falling back on "the walled garden approach."

What he was referring to was how users of Apple's iPodwere prevented from playing songs wrapped in digital rights management made by competitors. That effectively blocked anybody but Apple's iTunes from selling music files to iPod owners. Now, most download stores sell songs in the MP3 format and these DRM-free tunes can play on iPods and iPhones.

Essentially, Apple is responding to the lameasses who need pictures and lyric sheets with their music. They are ignoring the major labels because, as those of us who know the music industry already know, the major labels are finished.

The album format is a dead format. Don't tell me about pictures, added content, and whatnot because I don't care. I don't need any of that useless metadata to go with the music I wish to listen to. Yes, I said "metadata" and I don't care if I got it wrong. If I want to look at a hot babe, I will dial up my own blog, sir. I don't need to go buy Mariah Carey's album for that. Unless, perhaps, you know that she's naked? You'd let me know wouldn't you? You'd help a peep out, wouldn't you sir?

Anyway, the article goes on to say:

Apple plans to have Cocktail ready to launch by September, according to the Financial Times, and that's when the labels hope to have their version ready as well, said the source.

Both Apple and the top recording companies appear to be pursuing the same goal: rejuvenating the album, which was the benchmark sales unit that helped the music business generate billions of dollars over the past half-century. Up until the digital download turned the music industry on its head, the album was the standard means for music distribution. Even after the switch from vinyl to the CD, the album format was preserved, as most CDs featured about a dozen tracks.

Record industry execs have long said that there's no way to grow the business by selling single-song tracks. But the big labels have an uphill fight--many consumers may well resent any attempt to force them into paying a premium for packages that include unwanted tracks.

Record industry execs know that their products are flawed and their marketing plans were written before anyone knew who Mariah Carey was. I refute the idea that the "album format" was "preserved" during the switch from vinyl LPs to Compact Discs. In fact, it was not. And I know the music business. I was in the music business. I never made an actual album; I marketed my music through the use of the 12" dance single, which was genius at the time because I played dance music.

The most perfect album ever is Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon.  It is less than 43 minutes in length. It incorporates everything into an album package that was necessary at the time. The double gatefold cover was the perfect decoration for any wall, any collection, and has no impact shrunk down to a miniscule Compact Disc booklet format. It served the intended purpose of the album cover--it didn't tell you what was inside, but it made you snatch it up and guess. The cover image has nothing to do with the moon, so it deceived the buyer into thinking they were getting something about light being refracted through a prism. It was a clever piece of anti-marketing--no picture of the band, no description of what was inside (what you see above has the artist and album title stamped on it to satiate the iPod generation, who are morons), no "hard sell." It was a totem you needed to own in order to appear cool. I've heard it is good; I wouldn't know. Drug music doesn't appeal to me. I may have heard some of it once, and if it is, indeed, the same thing, well, I can tell you that there are some slow parts. Is this the one where the kids sing that they don't need no education?

No one can see what you have on your iPod, so you don't need a large cover to appear cool. See James Wolcott for an explanation of this phenomenon.

The Compact Disc expanded the album format from the 35 to 45 minute duration to an unmanageable 79 minutes. That's where it died. Too many artists decided to "pad" the available length of a CD with whatever they could pass off as filler. What was once perfect turned into something unbearably turgid.

My daughter, Miranda saw this and wishes to weigh in. The Oasis (who are they, anyway?) album Be Here Now  is the perfect example of how the CD format killed the album. Miranda says that, at a length of 71:38, the album is a turgid, overly-long and bloated affair. There is actual silence on the album, leading to a hidden track, another example of indulgence in a format that is dead. Imagine ten or fifteen minutes of silence, pressed onto a piece of vinyl, just to take the listener to a throwaway track.

Whatever Apple wants to do, let it go forward. But let's drop this nonsense that you can still buy an "album."

Norman Rogers Investments LLC

Hello,

My name is Bret Michaelson and I am the marketing director of Norman Rogers Investments.

If someone knows how to contact the security guard, I would really like someone to let me into the building so I can retrieve my personal belongings and move them to my car, which is what I've been working out of ever since we climbed the fence and escaped from the facility. Don't get me wrong, I like working at a Starbucks and using their WiFi, but it gets a little old after a while.

'Preciate it

Bret

Scuddys Bar

Scuddy's Bar is: closed until the rat problem solves itself

Digitization and the Game of Baseball

Sportsvision digital imaging of NASCAR

It was bound to happen--the digitization of everything. I'm not even a person anymore--I'm the creation of a major corporation that wants you to buy my hotties, buy my politics, buy my opinions, buy my soul.

Pardon me for talking like a robot.

Not really, but you get the idea. Sportsvision is a company that is applying digital statistics to everything under the sun. This makes sense for NASCAR--the car and the driver are perfectly represented as statistics and the car itself is easy to analyze. But baseball? Hmmm...

Runs, hits, errors - these are some of the classic measures of a pro baseball player's potential and value. But is there a way to compute what separates an average player from a great one? [...]

Baseball has always been a game of statistics and stats provide valuable information:

"Knowing what kind of hitter, what a hitter's tendencies are is all stuff that we study before a game, before a series," said San Francisco Giants center fielder Aaron Rowand.

It's easy to measure how many times a batter strikes out or how fast a pitcher throws. Judging a fielder's performance is much harder to quantify - but that may be changing.

The Giants' AT&T Park in San Francisco is the testing ground for a revolutionary data gathering system for Major League Baseball - combining cameras on top of the light grid and computer software designed by physicist Marv White.

The technology has been around for several years. It began with tracking pitches now that technology is being expanded to track everything that happens on the field for the entire game where the players are, where the ball is - more information than the league has ever had.

White demonstrates how the computer, almost like a video game, maps out the movements of the players during a typical baseball play. The batter hits a high fly ball and the system tracks the exact trajectory. The left fielder tries to catch the ball but misses it, then picks it up and throws it to the shortstop who throws it home, but too late. Two players score. It all unfolds on the screen, just as it is happening on the field.

"The player motion gives us information that, in the past, a statistician could only get with a stopwatch," said white, chief technology officer of Sportvision. "Now, we can see exactly what happened in a play."

As long as baseball is a game umpired by humans, all of the digitization in the world won't change the nature of the game, which is controlled deception in a clear field of play. A pitcher tries to deceive the hitter; a hitter tries to mask his intent as to where or how he is going to hit the ball; a runner tries to deceive the defense; a manager plays his players in a way to deceive his opponent and denies everyone a chance to second-guess his actions by using statistics to support his decision-making process. This technology may make it easier to scout teams. What it won't do is tell you how to read the mind of a skilled player, who adapts and learns faster than any technology. The adjustments a single pitcher can make over the course of a few innings are staggering.

Sportsvision is the company that put that infamous "blurry dot" on hockey pucks, something that I never cared for, since I know how to follow the field of play in the sport of hockey:

Sportvision got its start in 1996, when engineers from News Corp. developed a hockey puck that appeared to glow onscreen—an effect created by embedding an infrared emitter in the puck—to make NHL broadcasts easier to follow. Hockey purists protested (“We joke that some of our key scientists aren’t welcome in Canada,” says Sportvision CEO Hank Adams), but the company made its bones with other innovations shortly after being spun off as an independent company two years later. Its first offering, the first-down marker, became the best known; before long, watching a game without the glowing line began to seem unthinkable.

Today, Sportvision controls about two thirds of the live sports-broadcasting-enhancement industry, working on 3,000 broadcasts a year, including NBA games, Nascar races and golf tournaments. By collecting huge amounts of data on the field of play and the participants, it has shifted the viewer’s focus from the sort of perspective you could see in the stadium with a pair of binoculars to the field-level views of the players. Instead of stats you could track on the back of an envelope, it offers fans information previously beyond the reach of entire coaching staffs.

Consider it technology-creep; it's here to stay. It will change the game of baseball, perhaps. Or, as I suspect, the game will become much better at deceiving even the technology.

Brianna Banks

Brianna Banks

I adore Brianna Banks--a true gem of a young lady.

Brianna Banks

I can't help but notice several other things--the shoes she's wearing are incredible. Look at them! They're hollow pieces of wood with a very high heel on them. I've never seen shoes like these. Is that snake skin holding her feet? I mean, yes, Brianna is what one should be looking at, but when you start to look at the details, which for me are everything, you can't ignore the shoes.

Brianna Banks

Well, maybe you can ignore the shoes.

Brianna Banks

Shoes? What shoes?  You can find a Brianna Banks gallery here...

Diana Doll

Diana Doll

There aren't many pictures out there of Diana Doll that I could find that were easy to use here.

Diana Doll

I find that the color green on a woman with blonde hair is as exotic as anything out there, the perfect combination, for some reason.

Diana Doll

She is a fascinating young woman, a real contender for something better.

Diana Doll

Diana Doll has a gallery here...

Bankruptcy Need Not Ruin a Man

 

Good for Dan Patrick, and good for Lenny Dykstra to illustrate this point:

Former Met and Phillie Lenny Dyktrajoined the show to discuss his financial problems. Here are some of his takes

-- Dykstra says his magazine The Players Club is going on as strong as ever.

-- Dykstra said that people came for job interviews just so they could sue him and make some money.

-- Dan asked Dykstra how many lawsuits have been filed against him. "Doesn't matter, they are all worthless," Dykstra said. "Every one of those lawsuits I'll beat."

Dykstra says he's not worried about the people coming after him for money.

"Bottom line is people pile on," Dykstra said. "That's why I did an '11.'"

Yes, yes they do. When I was forced to file bankruptcy in 1996, it was the culmination of being sued, being put in minimum security prison for a trumped-up insider trading charge, and the Clintonian economy, which wasn't really that good, kiddos.

Dykstra went on to explain to Patrick, whois a far better broadcaster than anyone you see on television right now, up to and including, and especiallythe evil Mr. Olbermann, who knows he's not as good as Dan Patrick, that what's going on is not what it seems:

-- Dykstra said that he still has the house and the plane. But then Dan asked why was there no furniture in his house when HBO showed up with cameras."Just remember dude, everything isn't what it appears," Dykstra said.

-- Dykstra said that he's going through a divorce, and he hopes his finances turn around after that is done.

-- Dykstra says that he's still giving financial advice and every tip he's given has actually worked out.

-- Dykstra says he had 20 offers to do reality shows last year. He didn't want to do one because he thought they would try to take him down. Now that he's at the bottom, he plans to do one. Dan asked what it would be about. "Reality," Dykstra answered.

-- Dan asked Lenny if he was angry. "Angry with what? I win. I always win," Dykstra said.

-- Dykstra says he only sleeps twice a week.

-- "Bottom line is, it's the last man standing that wins," Dykstra said.

That's true. I have somewhere around five or six homes, and half of them don't have furniture in them. The other half have piles and piles of furniture that is thirty years old. Do you know what it's like to still have all of the funky, then-fashionable swinging Sixties furniture that Father had in his love nests? At one point, Father had love nests on virtually every continent. I haven't been to Antarctica. I wouldn't want to bet that there isn't an apartment building in a fashionable part of town down there where Father has a cooing little fashion model down there.

Hang in there, Lenny Dykstra, and learn from my example. I'm still standing. I'm a fantastic lover, a world class raconteur, a blue water sailor, a thinker, a doer, and a blogger without peer.

India and the Dream of a Blue Water Navy

Don't look now, but someone's trying to build a blue water navy:

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh launched the country's first locally built nuclear-powered submarine on Sunday.

"Today, we join a select group of five nations who possess the capability to build a nuclear-powered submarine," Singh declared in his speech at the eastern naval base of Visakhapatnam.

Although he billed the submarine as an outcome of a public-private partnership, the Indian leader did mention Russia in his address.

"I would also like to express our appreciation to our Russian friends for their consistent and invaluable cooperation, which symbolizes the close strategic partnership that we enjoy with Russia," Singh remarked.

I would be concerned, but, really, one submarine amounts to very little. That it didn't sink is a blessing. Simply having something does not mean you can project it around the world.