balls-out ran out of the office today

and ran and ran.

sound barriers being broken everywhere.

every hot chick at the xbi said nice things to me today.

and the hottest of all looked at me a few times.

and i may have even looked back.

there was a plane crash in la today pretty close to where i was at the moment.

kept running.

got on the bus there was a traffic jam. we crept along. i read my new favorite magazine, the week. passed a man on the corner, firetruck, stretcher, looked dead.

there are kids on the bus suddenly because schools out. the kids are loud. they have a lot of hair. i don’t envy their youth i envy their hair.

all you kids who read this. dye your hair more.

two fat punk rock girls got to the top of the escalator and said to the first person they saw, which way is wilshire. free. loud. stinky fresh.

hot dog man now wears safety goggles because theres nothing that fucker does wrong.

if i had a cable access talk show called bloggers with raymi as my sidekick i would have lisa marie presley on every single time as a guest. im watching her on howard stern. again. tell me whats better.

there is no finer interviewer than howard stern. he’s fearless.

fuck the media for not acknowledging his dominance, influence, talent, and on-going success.

when rush limbaugh was hot everyone talked about him and referenced him and there were features after features about him.

they actually wanted us to admire an obese, narrow minded, one sided, bald headed, wrong ass playa hata.

you know why nobody listens to rush limbaugh anymore?

because he told us that clinton was bad and bush was good.

ran a block as fast as i could.

then stopped and didn’t move an inch

red. green.

then ran as fast as i could down the next block.

hauled ass down the sidewalk because its friday and you cant get me

unless you catch me

but my shadow wont even get me tonight.

madpony on vacation + i can blog + red sugar muse + ev

Sosa suspended for using corked bat

Associated Press

CHICAGO — Sammy Sosa was suspended for eight games by Major League Baseball on Friday for using a corked bat.

The Cubs slugger will appeal the suspension, said Jim Hendry, the team’s general manager. The appeal will make Sosa available for a four-game series against the New York Yankees.

“We support him in his appeal,” Hendry said. “We have no reason to believe it was anything more than a one-time incident. We will support him and his right to exercise and appeal.”

The appeal had to be filed before Friday’s game so Sosa could play.

A piece of cork was found just above the handle in Sosa’s bat Tuesday night when it shattered after he grounded out in the first inning of the Cubs’ 3-2 victory. Sosa didn’t deny the corked bat was his, but he said it was a batting practice bat he had grabbed by accident.

“Some punishment is in order. Hopefully, it can be reduced,” Hendry said.

He noted that Sosa “has been shattering bats his whole career” and no other corked bats had been found.

Bob Watson, baseball’s vice president in charge of discipline, met with Cubs manager Dusty Baker and Hendry at Wrigley Field on Thursday, then returned to New York. Watson did not talk to Sosa.

Other players who have used corked bats have been suspended for up to 10 games. The Cubs had hoped that Sosa’s cooperation, as well as the fact that no cork was found in any of his 81 bats that were checked, would work in his favor.

The Hall of Fame said Thursday that X-rays or CT scans of its five Sosa bats showed no cork or anything else that would violate baseball rules. Baseball officials didn’t find anything in 76 bats confiscated from Sosa’s locker after he was ejected from Tuesday night’s game, either.

“The sad part about the whole thing is that he had 70-some bats and it’s like you still don’t believe it. That’s what’s unfair,” Baker said. “He was wrong with that one bat. It was a bad decision.”

Boston Red Sox ace Boston pitching ace Pedro Martinez came to his Dominican countryman’s defense, saying the incident was being blown out of proportion because of racial bias by the media.

“If it was (Mark) McGwire, it would still be a big deal, but not like this,” Martinez said. “We might be Latin and minorities, but we’re not dumb. We see everything that happens.”

Several other players have been caught or have admitted using a corked bat. But none has had the gaudy resum� of Sosa.

In a five-year stretch from 1998-02, Sosa hit 292 home runs. He’s the only player to hit 60 or more homers in three seasons, hitting 66 in 1998, 63 in 1999 and 64 in 2001.

He’s No. 17 on the career list with 505 homers. And at just 34, many believe he’ll have a chance at Hank Aaron’s record of 755 homers.

Sosa insists he’s never done anything illegal.

“I feel very bad for having used that bat, but my conscience is clean,” Sosa said Thursday. “I’m not a criminal nor someone who intended to deceive or take advantage of others.”

Watson spent about two hours at Wrigley, meeting with Baker, Hendry, Cubs president Andy MacPhail and clubhouse manager Tom Hellmann, then went back to New York.

Baker said his meeting with Watson wasn’t an interview so much as an explanation of what Watson was doing.

“I called him Judge Dread. He thought it was pretty funny,” Baker said. “He just wanted to let me know that they’re going to try to come up with a quick decision, a fair decision. Whatever happens after that it’s up to Sammy and the organization, if we want to appeal it.”

Not only is this weekend the teams’ first meeting at Wrigley since the 1938 World Series, but Roger Clemens goes for his 300th career win Saturday against fellow Texan Kerry Wood. The games Saturday and Sunday will be broadcast nationally, with 90 percent of the country seeing the Clemens-Wood matchup on Fox.

espn + cubs.com

today is michele’s birthday

michele was my first california girlfriend. we were together for three years. best friends. i did a lot of things with her for the first time.

she called me a year and a half ago and asked me to remove her last name from the stories that ive written about her because she is a famous childrens book author and a mommy now, so i said ok.

without michele i would have not been interested in poetry or journalism or the cure or u2. she taught me to appreciate all of those things.

her family was and is wonderful, and incredibly loving and free. the parents let the kids do anything they want including letting fools like me spend the night on many occasions. i love them all very much and sometimes when im in malibu i will stop by and say hi – even if i have a different girlfriend to introduce to them.

michele lives in washington now, or oregon, or somewhere beautiful and natural. for a punk rocker she had many hippie qualities about her. she would weep at the sight of a whale or a dolphin, she would weep at the news story that would talk about global warming, she would weep at the newspaper articles about womens rights issues.

all of this was very eye-opening to me, who was from the suburbs of illinois and never thought twice about enviornmental affairs, or gender roles, or sylvia plath.

and fuck if i ever considered free verse valid.

michele allowed me to take lots of pictures of her, and for that i am indebted. in many ways i owe her big time. in many many many ways.

she was my buddy and my first real friend here in the golden state and if it wasnt for that begining guitar class in santa monica college my whole life, as dramatic as that sounds, would have been completely different, and its hard for me to think it would have been different in a better way.

i was eighteen when i met michele and im 109 now, and yet somehow today is only her 23rd birthday.

apparently she still has many more lessons to teach me.

jason + je_apostrophe + jason

my buddy welch and i had a nice mexican dinner tonight

i have the greatest friends.

have i told you?

we had the shrimp special at casita del campo. i had baileys, he had a marguerita, i think.

we had been drinking, talking about baseball, nick cave, prauge, cuba, newspapers, blogging, and of course, miss universe.

he was supposed to take me to the laundromat but i got lazy after we had our first beer and we watched tv – like i make everyone do – and then we ate.

matt welch doesnt like conan o’brien. how can this be?

over tortillas we agree that since the longest suspension for a corked bat was a week (only to be negotiated down to four days) by the pouty albert belle, sammy should have to be suspended for thirty games.

my arguement was more than even that because sammy is on pace to be the home run king, and he’s not a young man any more. and if he were suspended for say most of the season and when he gets to be 41, 42 he finds himself 30-35 homers short of 755, everyone will know that the suspension in ’03 sparked by the corked bat stopped him from breaking the record.

fine. its the most precious record in baseball.

a sport that loves its records more than any other sport.

not only should sammy get a long suspension, but he should instigate it, and while he’s serving his term he needs to go back to the dominican, set up a bench press in the center of town and work out on those dusty streets with the kids looking on and bench all morning.

then he needs to run all around town until its lunch time.

then he needs to eat grapes and melons and then go to the batting cage. the fucked up dominican batting cage.

then he needs to run a little more. then he needs to go back to that town square and apologize to his people.

it wouldnt hurt him if he cried some.

and then he needs to say that he brought shame to his mother and that brings him his deepest shame.

i dont ask you to forgive me, sammy should say in spanish, i only ask that you continue to pray for me.

and then run a few more miles around the town. and then go home and sleep and do it all again the next day.

and after thirty days or more of this sammy should come back to the cubs, my favorite team, leaner, meaner, refreshed, renewed, and ready to win a damn pennant.

thats what sammy sosa needs to do to get this shit forgotten.

and then we ate the plantains, finished off the beans and rice, and then we didnt gossip once about our friends.

splink + jennyyeah + alecia