but she can jump really high.

currently one of the top high jumpers in the world, she is also one of the flashiest.

back in ’99 instead of wearing the typical spandex outfit, amy sported a gray, furry tube top and black briefs trimmed with faux-fur.

the 6’2″ texan got her BS in Biology at UCLA, and now finds herself on her third US olympic team aiming at winning olympic gold for the first time in her career.

not since the 1988 Seoul Games when Louise Ritter did it, has a US woman won gold in the high jump, which is odd since in ’93 acuff was awarded the national High School Athlete of the Year in track and field during her senior year.

america expected more from her than four measly US outdoor championships (’95, ’97, ’01, ’03).

all we care about is gold, which seemed out of reach when amy got in a car accident right before the olympic trials in 2000 – but she still made the team after a dramatic jump-off.

thank god she made that team though, as you might remember the controversy of April 1999, when acuff, a Cancer, gathered 11 other female track athletes for a hollywood photographer where they posed nude or in body paint for the Omni Lite Millennium Calendar.

when not jumping 6 feet, 4 3/4 inches on average, or making high jumping DVDs amy studies Oriental Medicine in Austin where she hopes to be a doctor of oriental medicine.

if she does bring home the gold, dont look for her parents in the stands. because of security fears, acuff, a distant relative of country singer Roy Acuff, has asked her folks to stay at home.

Amy Acuff is sponsored by Asics and has been seen modeling in Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, Maxim, & Vogue.

but sorry fellas, amy is engaged to pole vaulter Tye Harvey, the 2001 World Indoor silver medalist.

they translated my How To Blog into Spanish + Washington > Lincoln > FDR > Kerry? + danielle

or the yankees vs the dodgers or even the dodgers vs the giants

but the cardinals + cubs rivarly is a nice one

maybe a little too nice

and this year hopefully the cubs can break a few hearts (other than the man in the picture to the left who flew for some reason bought airline tickets from boston to minnesota to try to get nomar’s autograph despite the fact that the all star shortstop played for years in boston… until yesterday).

the cubs as you might know are in second place behind st louis in the national league central, ten and a half games out.

the cardinals have the best record in baseball at 67-37.

only one other team in baseball has over 60 wins and its a team with arod jeter sheff matsui rivera mussina v�zquez rivera and now olerud, and even they havent won as many as the redbirds.

and so when i declared this weekend on this very blog that it would not be the cardinals who would end this season in first place in the central, that instead it would be the cubs, i got a little flack from one particular JJ who left not one but four comments (rightfully) questioning my sanity.

“Ok, I did some math. AS I type, The Cards are 67-37, with 58 games remaing. Now, if they merely play .500 ball the rest of the way, 29-29, that puts them at 96-66, a pretty nice record probably good enough for the NL central title. By the same token, if the Cubs were to catch St. Lou, they need to go 39-18 the rest of the way which would be a lofty .684 clip. Possible? I suppose. Probable? Hell no.

Those 39 wins (which they won’t get anyway) are only good, remember, if the Cards play .500 the rest of the way, and they way they’ve been playing, I don’t forsee that happening. The fact is, Nomar is a nice addition, but the Cubs didn’t address their most pressing need, bullpen help. They’re not going to win the 39-45 of the last 57 games they need to win it with this team.”

– JJ

which made me do a little math.

the last time the cubs ended their season near 39-18 was a year when they finished their last 60 games 37-23.

that year happened to be last year.

a stretch in which they didnt have derrick lee, greg maddux, corey patterson, or nomah.

are those four guys the difference between two wins from last years finish? i would believe so.

are the cardinals going to continue this scorching hot streak, outpacing everyone in baseball including the yankees who somehow dont even need jason giambi?

i would believe not.

unlike the first two thirds of the season, the cubs are now relatively healthy. for the exception of mark prior who, when healthy, is virtually unhitable, this last third of the season finds the cubs at almost full strength with a favorable schedule including lots of games versus the mets, pirates, expos, and marlins.

of course the cubs dont have to make up ten games over ten weeks.

but they could.

and if they would do it to anyone, it wouldnt be sweeter than doing it to the cardinals.

who never did really anything bad to the cubs. and sorta, indirectly, gave us harry caray, who i would easilly give lou brock up for.

24 hour revenge therapy + virginia anne + aaron’s baseball blog

from blogging from the dnc convention. hes buying this crud that u2’s beautiful day was a bad choice for kerry to end his speech with.

hey, i don’t care if welch was ten feet from the podium, i was on my couch like most of america and it played better on tv than 98% of his sweaty speech.

welch claims that it’s sometime-pessimistic lyrics contradict what you’d expect for a theme song of sorts.

to which i want to say “what lyrics?”

here’s the lyrics to Beautiful Day, and i am someone who watched a LOT of tv, including mtv and vh1, i saw u2 twice on that tour, the first being the first time me and karisa ever hung out.

“it’s a beautiful day,

la la la la la its a beautiful day

blah blah blah

touch me!

blah blah blah blah

its a beautiful day,

lala lalala…”

i think it’s a great song because it’s ridiculously uplifting. bono has no business writing another classic anthem that will be played forever.

and although springsteen’s “no surrender” is a great tune with some real songwriting, Beautiful Day brings that message of hope to this new century. not only is No Surrender twenty years old, it feels 50 years old compared to u2.

i understand that after the speech, kerry and edwards went to a democrat fundraiser where ll cool j performed.

mamma said knock you out would be a cd i’d rock if i was in charge of the music at the next dozen kerry rallies.

matt is secretly a terrific singer songwriter + twenty-something + bob mould

i know it’s hard to believe. but it’s true.

ive kissed sisters. i’ve had three way kisses. lots of new years eve kisses.

ive kissed some people i probably shouldta, since they had boyfriends, etc. but that goes with the territory… i think.

some of the kisses have been drunken sloppy ones where hands started grabbing all over here-n-there.

some were rolling on the ground dunken ones. some were hey we’re in an elevator lets kiss ones.

a few years ago i was on a weird little streak of trying to only kiss girls in their teens. they ended up kissing a lot like girls who were no longer in their teens.

you cant really predict how good or bad someone is going to kiss. pretty girls arent always pretty kissers, and normal lookin girls sometimes kiss beautifully.

i once fell asleep while kissing a girl, and she wont kiss me any more for unrelated reasons.

sometimes a nice long kiss on the cheek, if you can believe it, is hotter than any other sort of kiss. i dont know how thats possible, but it is. trust me, it is.

with that said i dont know where the best kiss i ever got was or who it was with.

but one time i was skatingboarding in isla vista coming home from a burrito place.

i saw three young women sitting on the curb giggling.

hey tony! they yelled.

yes they were on the popular recreational drug at the time, ecstasy.

they wanted to kiss me. one at a time.

i had a girlfriend at the time so i had to say no.

my girlfriend at the time, however, they reminded me, was cheating on me.

plus it was only a kiss they said.

so i sat on my skateboard and watched them put on some lip gloss

and i kissed the first girl

and i slid down a foot to the next

and then i slid down to the next

and i nearly fell over

and they laughed and laughed until i asked for a do over.

no do overs! they yelled and laughed and i skated home forgetting to make them kiss each other.

ken layne + paige + low culture

they say they’re not trying to but they are. im not paranoid, im flattered.

got into the office today and there was chopper one being worked on.

the mechanics were all, “hope you have a good book.”

i was all, “i have a great book.”

they went, “hope it’s long.”

apparently the suits showed up over the weekend and tried out some new pilots.

behind my back.

and they not only failed, but the brainiacs fucked up the priceless helicopter that has had its problems over the years, but nothing that has grounded it for a week, like the mechanics are predicting.

“why dont you take a little vay-kay?” they asked me while on a little smoke break.

why should i burn vacation days just because they damaged my fucking vehicle? i asked them and pulled up a little beach chair and flipped open my laptop and shaved the stubble off the top of my head.

what i dont understand is im not getting paid very much, i havent been sick in years, i get along with pretty much every one. i have zero aspirations in going into management.

and yet at every turn it appears that theyre trying to squeeze me out. out of what? out of a crappy ass dangerous job where almost any day i could literally die on the job.

so the good news is, maybe this week i can blog the way that i’d like to blog: a shitload.

today we begin our Olympic pre-write coverage. Above you see Logan Tom, outside hitter for the US womens vollyball team.

the 23 year old will be competing in her second olympiad. The four time American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) All-American was a NCAA Final Four All-Tournament team selection while at Stanford.

In her final two years at school, the Long Beach resident was the AVCA National Player of the Year and the 2002 Pac-10 Player of the Year.

Tom was a highschool phenom at Salt Lake City’s Highland High where she led her Rams to two state championships and was crowned the 1998-99 Gatorade Circle of Champions National High School Volleyball Player of the Year.

The hottie was also a straight A student and the homecoming queen.

Tom, 6’0″, then went to Stanford which in her freshman year became only the fourth freshman to make the AVCA All-America first-team, and helped lead the Cardinal to the 1999 NCAA Championship match.

She made the jump to the US Olympic Team in 2000 while taking her sophomore year off. At 19 she was the youngest player on the team and the only collegiate player, earning the nickname Doogie, as in Doogie Howser.

If Tom can lead the US team to victory, it will be the first time the US women’s team has ever won gold. They are currently ranked #2 in the world behind China.

over the last two years logan has played professionally in brazil and in italy.

vodka pundit + flagrant never bores me + sk smith

some of what i missed throughout the week

c monks was at the dem convention and blogged a ton, and noticed a lot of the same things that i would have. although we disagree with miss new mexico’s national anthem rendition.

that c-net scrooge tried to say that the bloggers didn’t add to the dialogue of the convention, but did c-net tell us that there was an unsuccessful wave attempt at the fleet center? not that i recall. and you know what, thats the sort of details that i like in my blogreading.

Google continues to remind the youngsters what the dot com boom felt like. it felt exciting, fresh, and new. As they continue to drag out the most anticipated IPO since Netscape they launched ipo.google.com this week so that people could literally take a number to have the chance to buy the first shares of the stock which is projected to sell for $108-$135.

holy crap, the time to re-open the shuttered monocle and top hat store in sunnyvale has come.

kitty bukkake nominated me to run with barack obama in 2028. apparenlty i am vice president on the ticket because she predicts the future alphabetically.

sk smith’s uterus fell for that story the kerry daughter gave about licorice the hamster. after watching the sunday roundtables, most of the other women got soft and fuzzy with the heroics of sen. kerry giving cpr to the half-drowned pet.

on the mclaughlin group, tony blankley wasn’t buying it. “how do you even do that?” he scoffed.

speaking of the mclaughlin group, what’s going on with pat buchanan? in the last three weeks on my favorite pbs show, buchanan has done nothing but defend kerry, bash bush, and crow over the dnc convention which he graded an A to and predicted that it would give kerry a 7 point bounce (yesterday Newsweek polled a bounce of half that).

is the instapundit more conservative than the former advisor to nixon and ford, and director of communications to reagan? this month he certainly is, and it has only helped him get more hits.

interesting.

the increase of political posts this summer hasnt hurt my stats either, even without any help from professor reynolds, who usually doesnt link opposing views.

the post-convention zogby poll is what you’d pretty much expect from a well-received week of hype.

mark circa 1977 points out that the new van halen double cd greatest hits when bought through the apple itunes store is just fifty cents a song. and i would agree with him that there are very few tracks that will remain unchecked. just the sammy hagar ones.

bunny mcintosh (pictured) saw the cure. raymi saw the killers. chelle saw kiss and met gene simmons and took pictures of the moment.

anti ran out of weed.

doc searls turned 57.

buzznet got a nice write up in the wall street journal.

in lessor news in the wsj, apparently sandy berger really was just happy to see us. the journal reported that the national archives is clearing sandy berger of all charges. the much missed ken layne asks where is the liberal media’s coverage of this reversal?

unfazed, reynolds goes back to hammering on joe wilson and calling michael moore unamerican.

steph will be in LA in a week, and of course now she has fallen in love. that means bad news for the bachelors planning to meet her at the playboy mansion this coming saturday.

seacrest out.

amy‘s brother don has a new band called Squatcho, and it actually does sound like AC/DC meets T-Rex as pure volume describes them. listen to two tracks for free here.

Tsar provides the music behind the new Xterra commerical. i heard it last night on VH1, tivoed it, recorded it with my camera and will post it soon.

the designer of lick, raspil iverson has a new layout and a nice photo shoot up. expect a new issue of lick before the end of the summer.

someone other than the homoerotic four horsemen won head of household on my favorite summer reality series, big brother, when jase literally freaked out while trying to keep his finger pushed on a doorbell-type button for 9.5 hours.

today nay turns 18.

Corey Patterson CF

Nomar Garciaparra SS

Mois�s Alou LF

Sammy Sosa RF

Derek Lee 1B

Aramis Ramirez 3B

Mark Grudzielanek 2B

Paul Bako C

Greg Maddux P

Dusty Baker, Manager

am i crazy to get excited about this team?

am i crazy to think that harry is looking down from above and raising his eternally frosty mug of Old Style down at us all?

best sign i saw in the wrigley crowd

We

Got

Nomar

what a difference three years makes.

cubs lineup 8/01/01

Eric Young 2B

Michael Tucker CF

Sammy Sosa RF

Fred McGriff 1B

Matt Stairs LF

Ron Coomer 3B

Todd Hundly C

Ricky Guiterrez SS

Kevin Tapani P

Don Baylor, Manager

once again, thank you God.

thank you.

cardinals, here we come

off wing opinion + jason sutter + obey pedro + boston dirt dogs