and for that i thank him mucho.

TSAR LIVE SHOWS

Thursday, October 31st in Sacramento, CA /// Friday, November 1st in Oakland, CA @ Stork Club. /// Saturday, November 2nd in San Jose, CA @ Plant 51. /// Sunday, November 3rd in San Francisco, CA @ Cafe du Nord. /// Saturday, November 9th in Bakersfield, CA @ Lucky’s Bar & Grill.

makes me think a weekend trip to frisco on the the first of next month might sound like a fun idea. and to see Tsar at that swanky jazz club on market street on sunday might be too irrisistable to pass up.

www.dawnolsen.com is on the air. first she was on blogspot. then she moved over temporarilly to somewhere else. now she has her own domain.

welcome to the big leagues, slugger.

what’s her first order of business? to begin with a few lines about dildoes.

you know why i love dawn?

i love her because it is my fondest wish that many midwest wives are like her. i know its not true, but i can dream cant i?

shes definately the way that i would want my midwestern wife to be like.

and just think, if dawn lived in another part of the world, they’d throw a burka over her head and take away her laptop.

thank you founding fathers for having the foresight to see the possibilites of free speech and equal rights.

true, having the freedom to type about dildoes might not be exactly what they had in mind, but then again it, it might be exactly what they had in mind.

big difference between dawn and bob costas? costas would never have the guts to write about his dildo.

first time emailer “Jason” writes in to say that he agrees with me on costas except he loved what bob said during the sydney olympics closing ceremonies, “every famous Australian is on that stage right now,” costas chortled in his snide lil way.

Jason hits it right on the head. Costas is perfect for warm fuzzy little events of nothingness like the olympics where most moments of sap couldnt possibly be overshadowed with even more sap, or when blocks of time need to be filled with fluff. i would be very satisfied if i only was forced to see costas, ahmad, and peekaboo street bundled in their parkas from the base of a long jumping competition at the winter olympics every four years. but please then never again. better yet, put him on the Today show to ensure that i wouldnt have to be bothered with him.

anna and enrique engaged? over his dead body. i dont even like to think of such blasphemy. it was bad enough when gwen stefani got hitched to that dude from Bush but this would be a slap in the face to all that would be decent in the world. i’ll make a deal with you anna. you cant get engaged to anyone but me unless you win wimbeldon. i will consider your silence an acceptance of this agreement.

and finally today, we all know about my little crush on christina aguilera. we all know that i think it’s perfectly okay for a young woman to express her sensuality and desires in song. but must she wear a crucifix to a press conference held to hype her single “Dirrty”?

i’m gonna sound so old, but here goes: in my day, when madonna wore her crusifix(es) and grinded around singing “Lucky Star” it was in defiance to the Catholic church. it was just as political as it was shocking (to catholic boys like me.) but it really did mean something.

so whats girlfriend thinking sporting her necklace like it aint no thing?

oh if only she would return my calls so we could get to the bottom of this pressing matter.

wouldnt wanna make me cross.

[rimshot]

calling colin powell a house nigger.

he didnt bust with the n-bomb, but he did. belafonte equated the secretary of state to a slave who lived in the master’s house.

“There’s an old saying, in the days of slavery, there were those slaves who lived on the plantation and were those slaves that lived in the house,” Belafonte said in a radio interview on a San Diego talk show. “You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master … exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him.

“Colin Powell’s committed to come into the house of the master,” Belafonte continued. “When Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture.”

typically i don’t like to talk about news or rumor or gossip or troubles surrounding Black people because i like to live with my head in the sand sometimes, and i certainly don’t like to give racists or semi-racists any fodder to stoke their hatred. i also dont bad mouth my boss to outsiders, or my workplace, or the girls who get naked with me. i think life is tough enough without being part of the problem.

but fuckit, Powell and Belafonte are both big boys at the end of their lives, so let’s do this.

firstly, i dont know where belafonte gets off. his middle of the road crooning was hardly gangsta. born in harlem, but bred in jamacia, his version of keeping it real was putting real sugar into his ice tea while on the lido deck of the cruise ship instead of Equal.

and i will say this of Powell. he knew this day would come.

a Black man cannot work for a white republican president and think that one day someone isnt going to shout sellout from across the street. Especially when Blacks have gone nearly 50 years without a strong political leader of color, especially one as popular as Powell who has unprecidented support cross-culturely (read: whites like him too), especially since the majority of Blacks would have loved to have seen Powell run against Bush in the Republican primary and were sorely disappointed when he didnt.

add that to the fact that he, with all his military experience and hype, has not found Osama, secretary powell should not be shocked when he gets tomatoes thrown at the back of his head by a guy known to sing about banana boats.

does General Powell speak up and shut up when Bush tells him he’s talking over his head? doubt it.

but none of it matters. Powell is part of a losing team right now and Blacks do not want this on our record. how easy would it be for those who do not want Blacks in high levels of power to point to Powell and Rice and say, “what did those two do when they were given a chance? not much. one lied about 9/11 and the other couldn’t find osama.”

so my advice to the secretary of state, since he is short, im sure, of unsolicited counseling, is to just find osama and bring him back to america on a platter.

my advice: bet jesse jackson a million bucks that he can’t find osama. my money’s on the reverand.

that i am the inventor of the modern day web based photo essay. those people are probably wrong. even if they aren’t, im happy whenever i see a photo essay and i wonder why Mr. Know It All, a fellow LA blogger, a friend of Meesh, and a talented photographer, did not let me know that he has busted with a pretty sweet photo essay?

it made me wonder how many of you are out there secretly making funny little narratives with accompanying photographs.

my first photo essay was created march 15, 2001. it was the day that i signed the lease of the apartment that i now live in.

due to overwhelmingly huge success (three people emailed me nice letters) it encouraged me to do about two dozen other ones since. the most popular one was “dear kids of afghanistan” which i put together a few weeks after 9/11. it’s still so popular that if you simply type “dear kids” into Google and it’s the number one result.

But that popularity was dwarfed when i put up my only risque photo essay, one about tennis star anna kournikova‘s lawsuit against Penthouse magazine this april. i got several million hits in a matter of days. type “anna kournikova nude” into Google and this is 6th result you will find. god bless anarchy.

i have no problem with the human body. but i have noticed that most people who look at my web site and my blog do so between the hours of 9-5. in fact by far the most popular time that people read what i have to type is at noon eastern time. my belief is that that’s when the people of the west coast turn on their computers at work and join the people around the country in starting their day. and it’s also my belief that they’re not interested in seeing boobies with their breakfast.

of course, i understand i might be completely wrong.

as usual.

anyway i love photo essays and if any of you have one or have seen one, please let me know through the comments section below. if the comments are down, feel free to drop me an email.

which, of course is what people from Massachusetts lovingly refer to themselves.

when i was doing the baseball blog, my favorite blog was “the bambino’s curse”, not just for the beautiful design and heartbreakingly true title, but because of the sharp writing and indepth daily coverage of home team, the red sox, who haven’t won a world series since it traded babe ruth nearly 100 years ago.

only my beloved Cubs have experienced a longer drought of futility.

regardless, i was thrilled to ever get recognized on such a classy blog and today i was honored once again with a mention. thanks, bro.

to close out the trilogy of posts about harry caray and bob costas, let me pull this recent comment posted by a reader of my blog which i present to you in it’s entirety. for the record, i love comments, not because they stroke my ego, but also for when they add to the discussion. like so:

Harry Caray, (born Carabina) actually was from the south side of STL, near the brewery. Used to take the streetcar to old sportsman’s park (pre Busch stadium) to watch the birds play. As I heard the story, one day he walked into the office of the KMOX radio GM and said he was a sportscaster and could announce the games better than the current guy, was hired on the spot, and the rest is history. KMOX was heard from the rockies to the Atlantic. He loved the game and didn’t mind ragging on the players when they were dogging it. I’ve heard stories of when Harry and Jack Buck [pictured] (who Harry trained) were doing the games, they would go into a tavern after the game, Harry would pour down the Budweisers and have a great time while Jack would sip a scotch and soda quietly.

The greatest interview I remember was the day after he got fired from doing the games he appeared on KSD (now KSDK) TV for an interview, obviously feeling no pain and holding in plain sight of the camera a can of Falstaff (then AB’s biggest competitor) . He later said he regretted that incident, but I loved it.

On the story of him boffing Auggie’s wife, he said “Me a fat balding middle aged man accused of sleeping with the beautiful young wife of a millionaire, I was flattered, but it didn’t happen.” Harry always was a gentleman, died while taking his wife out to eat on Valentine’s day.

Costas, on the other hand is a wannabe tool.

jim

we lost on the last out when the big fat thirdbaseman sent a ball so high and deep that even the eucalyptus behind the fence couldn’t stop it.

the fat guy always wins the softball game, i consoled my team.

ashley had driven up from newport to see me play and i didn’t get a hit but she didn’t care. i dove for a ball, i scored after getting on from a fielder’s choice, and i almost got kicked out of the game after a controversial 6-3 triple play where the batter was safe at first.

the tie at first does not go to the triple play, i whispered to the ump as i walked by him to go into the dugout.

what’s that? he snapped.

even on a crisp misty night playing softball on a field infested with moles, a triple play must be earned, blue.

it was bases loaded, hard shot to the shortstop who tagged the runner on second, stepped on second base and threw it to first. very close play at first. since i was coaching first i had a pretty good view. with the excitement, the ump called him out. triple play.

it’s hard to yell at a guy who is making $10 a game and is probably a social worker in the daytime. but for some of us it’s not that hard. and i didn’t yell.

the week before a guy in our league got thrown out of the game and then kicked out of the league after getting in the face of an ump, but for the most part our team is extremely civil. which might be why our record is 2-4. some argue it’s our spotty defense.

ashley took notes because when she’s bored she likes to critique people. she called a few of the people very rude, and funny names, describing them in unattractive ways. she didn’t like any of the women on the field, especially the opposing catcher who said that she liked my haircut.

i didn’t even know that girl even knew me.

what was she doing flirting with you during the game? ashley asked.

its all strategy in xbi softball, i told her. she was trying to get into my head, i explained.

ashley sneered. i thought it was cute. she was freezing on the metal grandstands and it was nice to look over and see that someone was rooting for me. especially when that person had a super short miniskirt, heels, and long hair tied up in a cute ponytail.

you, she said, were the cutest and skinniest guy on the field.

i told her it was my pinstriped baseball pants.

she said, no. you looked 21. no one would believe that you’re as old as you are.

the girl does know how to make a loser feel better. so afterwards, just like if it was a little league game, we went to mcdonalds and got a mcflurry.

and then went home and banged like newlyweds.