Absolut did an ad campaign for its Mexican consumers (why its english i dont know) and it caused Drudge to link to it, and the righty bloggers and a good portion of the 1000+ commentors of our blog La Plaza to lose their minds.

here are some of the many comments on La Plaza:

– I am seeing a lot of HATE going on this blog. Ya’ll need to relax and have a martini, shaken not stirred.

– I’ll never ever buy Absolute again, and I’m telling everyone I know to do the same. I’m not a redneck racist, I just love my country, The United States of America, all 50 of them. This is the most ignorant advertising campaign i’ve ever seen. They have no idea how badly they’ve stepped in it.

Nobody needs Absolute anyway? It’s overpriced for what it is, there are plenty of better choices available, many of them American made!

– One more reason not to drink the over-pushed and over-advertised “Absolut waste of time.” Stolichnaya is real Vodka and what I drink anyway.

– A boycott is too good for Absolut. They need to be investigated for promoting and supporting the violent takeover of the United States by foreign persons.

– I drank only Absolut all my life. Never again.
I find it unfathomably stupid for Absolut to advertise for the Mexican “reconquista” movement sponsored by the racist LaRaza organization. Congratulations, guys: abslolut-ly stupid. You are in there for this year’s Darwin Awards.

If a similar ad ran in England where in an ABSOLUTE world the 13 colonies would still be British THAT would be even funnier. I think the haters on this posting are the same ones driving around with confederate flags attached to their chevy trucks.

– It’s a simple message, really: If you drink, don’t draw maps.

– Wow! How many of you have the extra WEALTH to pour good liquor out because of an advertisement? What INSECURITY you suffer. I’ll bet a trillion dollars that ya’ll are the same KNEEJERKS who believed the WMD Iraq lie.

wonkette and its readers were funny about it.

needless to say, the post, the blog, and the comment threads are en fuego. as are the kids on digg

Update: Absolut Aplogizes!

usually on Fridays you ask me questions and most would agree i answer honestly and openly

for tonight and tomorrow you are the star and your answers are amazingly important,

plus it will only take you 2-3 minutes tops to answer them all so lets go:

1. what city do you live in
2. how old are you
3. approximately how long have you been reading the busblog
4. how did you first make your way to the busblog
5. what do you most like about this blog
6. what do you dislike about this blog
7. what improvements would you like to see here
8. how many days a week do you come here
9. other than this blog, name one or two others that you frequent
10. if the busblog ended on monday would it make much of a difference to you

thats it, knock yourself out

and thank you!

after being in africa for two point five years working for the peace corps. i call her my true love because soul mate is overused.

the best part about having a true love is you know that somewhere on the planet there is someone who truly connects with you as close to 100% as you could ever imagine. you know that there is meaning to life. you know that youre not alone. you know that you have really been loved for the right reasons by someone who you loved for the right reasons too.

does that mean that i still am very interested in others, of course. does that mean that shes still interested in exploring the globe, mais oui. does that mean that we might ever be back together again, maybe even in the same hot tub? no. does that make me sad? no. does any of this make any sense? yes and no.

sometimes when you have found your spiritual and physical counterpart things can get really dull. i know i was dull when we were together at the end. it was almost as if the game was over. usually thats the part when people have kids and make their lives about anything other than their dull dough. and i suppose that makes sense for some. but for me and my love we sorta looked at the planet as something that was already doing ok as far as population goes.

in fact if theres one thing that this blue green marble has plenty of its eating shitting yapping creatures. dont get me wrong, i love people. i probably love them more than anyone. same for her. i could go all day shitting eating and yapping with all the creatures. but that doesnt mean that i felt any need to create any.

as i have gotten older that desire has dwindled even further and as much as i would do anything in the world for my truest, including letting her grow on her own, alone if necessary, the only way i could imagine creating a creature with her would be if she convinced me or said it was something that she really wanted. otherwise i would just suggest that we raise an orphan, as there are several gazillion of those sitting around waiting for a miracle to come their way.

my truest eyes are everything like the sun. her heart is the reason for global warming. and africa is better today than it was several years ago. everything about her makes me happy even, oddly, when she talks about her plans for the future, most of which doesnt involve me or LA or blogging or getting naked with me.

maybe its because sense of self gets removed in a good way when youve found your truest and the other simply becomes a part of you thats somewhere else, doing other things, with other people.

perhaps its all just beautiful rationalization or maybe its something else. would i like for her to say oh tony i wanna live with you in hollywood and dress like a school girl and bake for you and organize your closets and take weekend trips up the 1? maybe. but id rather her say something like

the world is ours. i could rock it with you or without you but even without you we are always together. so lets just play it by ear and in the meantime get wasted and bang like everyday is spring break. since it secretly is.

– The Dirty tells LAT blog Web Scout how it got hold of the pics of Matt Leinart having a hot tub beer bong party with underaged ASU coeds

– Google’s fixin to buy not just Skype but Expedia? Google can’t just make their own Expedia?

– Danielle is channeling Eddie Murphy circa his SNL days

– Hall & Oates fixin to play the Troubadour for the low low price of $200 a ticket

– Today is Good People Day? When can we celebrate Bitchy Blogger Day?

– Now this i can get behind: “The Incredible Power of Contentment”

– Frisco fixin to name a sewage plant after the current president of the usa

– the Pants returned the other day. tell her to keep up the good work.

– cherry blossoms in brooklyn already? does this mean six less weeks of winter?

– Leah takes such beautiful photographs. Truly.

– hey when did Moxie get a black pussy?

– and finally, the missing apostrophe has been added to the Ernie Banks statue at Wrigley Field

busblog yahoo fantasy baseball league #4

League ID#: 279139
Password: blogger
Season Type: Full
Draft Type: Live Draft
Draft Time: Sat Apr 5 Noon PDT
Max Teams: 18
Scoring Type: Head-to-Head

USC QB and now Phoenix Cardinal phenom Matt Leinart and his backyard underage pool and hot tub party – and photos in The Dirty

why is it the biggest story?

because our readers are emailing it to their friends.

and because some think that until Lienart or Leinert or however you spell it actually starts winning he shouldnt be having any fun with 19 yr old girls doing beer bongs and Nick Lachey

i also think the girl on the far right looks like a cuban girl i know, but whatevers

i voted for ramiele. because she was great and i love dolly parton, who made her nervous.

speaking of Idol, right now for the next hour, we at the Times are doing a live chat with Richard Rushfield who writes about Idol. he goes to all of the tapings and if hes not writing a book about the show he damn well should cuz hes a wealth of knowledge and very funny.

so go here and chat it up with bro. now!

update: the chat is over and man it was so fun. so since its over tell me who is your Idol for this season. or tell me something interesting. or just lurk, who cares really.

you mighta seen him on 60 minutes on sunday.

my buddy matt welch has the hots for him. or maybe he just has the hots for his mind. who knows and who am i to judge?

anyways the libertarian news cycle must be outta control because im the one who has to let people know that mr sabermetrics answered a shitton of questions over on the freakanomics blog at the NYT.

here were some of my favorite questions and answers. voici:

Q: Are there any baseball rules either in the game itself or for the leagues that you think ought to be changed, removed, or added to increase the entertainment value of the sport?

A: Many, actually. My pet project is a rule to limit pitching changes in the late innings. My rule, specifically, would be this:

1) Each team is entitled to one unrestricted pitching change per game.

2) With the exception of that one unrestricted change, no pitcher may be removed from the game in mid-inning unless he has been charged with allowing a run in that inning. With an exception for injuries, of course.

When you propose a rules change like that, people say, “Oh, you’re changing the way the game has always been.” That’s nonsense. In 1970 major league teams used 1.75 relievers per game. In 1990 they used 2.02 relievers per game, and in 2007 they used 2.97 per game — and the rate of increase in this area is still accelerating.

I’m not trying to change the game with this rule; I’m trying to stop a change in the game that is running amok. There are actually many rule changes like that which I would favor — rules designed to control changes in the game that are occurring, uncontrolled, at a breakneck pace.

Q: Can you tell us a time when you did an analysis and expected one thing, but the numbers told you something radically different?

A: Well, it happens every day. My “debunking” of the importance of stolen bases came from extended efforts to prove the importance of stolen bases, all of which failed. I remember I used to think that players from California were over-scouted and over-drafted, because the amateurs out there play baseball year around and mature early. It’s not true; the state fully justifies — and more than justifies — the draft picks invested out there.

Q: Will we see a woman player in the majors in my lifetime? (I’m in my 30’s. And when I say woman player I’m thinking regular contributor as opposed to a one-time gimmick.)

A: Well, there is nothing happening now at lower levels that would tend to cause that as a higher-level outcome. You will certainly see many women General Managers in baseball (and basketball) within a few decades, because there are large numbers of capable women filling lower-level baseball operations positions. You will see women scouts and probably umpires.

But colleges don’t have women’s baseball teams, and high schools don’t. Ninety-nine percent of girls who like to play baseball have been driven to other sports by age 12. It’s hard to see how a woman can wind up in the major leagues under those conditions.

Q: How important are good-hitting pitchers to the success of an offense in the N.L.?

A: Exactly as important as good-fitting underwear on a long drive.

Q: Has looking at the numbers prevented you from actually just enjoying a summer day at the ballpark? Have we all forgotten the randomness of human ballplayers? By reducing players to just their numbers can we lose sight of the intangibles such as teamwork, friendships, and desire.

A: Does looking at pretty women prevent one from experiencing love? Life is complicated. Your efforts to compartmentalize it are lame and useless.

Q: Why can’t the Chicago Cubs get into the World Series? Is it the small park? Low salaries? The curse of the billy goat? Does sabermetrics provide any insights?

A: Talking about the origins of it — the Cubs fell into a trench in history in the late 1930’s, when almost all baseball teams built farm systems, but the Cubs for several years refused to do so. This put them behind the curve, crippled them for the 1950’s, and really the organization did not fully overcome that until about 1980.

Since 1980 they have had several teams that could have wandered into a World Series, with better luck. They haven’t had any one overpowering team — like the 1984 Tigers, or the 1992 Blue Jays, or the 1998 Yankees — that was so good that it demanded a seat at the Last Banquet of Fall. And, unless you have a team that good, you’re at the mercy of the fates.

Q: Is clutch hitting a repeatable/retain-able skill?

A: I don’t know.

and not so hard days seem impossible

i have the pleasure of sharing an office with a wonderful, beautiful, highly intelligent young lady. tragically for her, shes cursed sharing an office with me.

even though she has no ambition to replace me if something horrible happens to me, several times a week i will spin my chair around and say, “if i ever get eaten by sharks or smacked in the head by a falling safe, you really should probably know how to do this…” and i will try to teach her part of my job.

usually she will look up from whatever document im pointing at and say, “why dont you just stay out of the ocean or away from safes because i never want to have to do what youre about to do.”

told you she was highly intelligent.

most nights i leave the office around 8 or 9 o’clock and i go to the subway and i ride home. on that ride i think about my day so that i wont have to run through the day when i eat my dinner.

tonight on my walk i was pretty happy until i got to the subway and started going over the day and i was all, damn dude, that was sorta a really hard day. and it made me think if someone had put acid in my cheerios this morning because none of how hard the day was sank in. i just kept going from meeting to meeting, answered email after email, and did whatever task was ahead of me.

sometimes when i see the picture of the dude standing in front of that tank in china i think, that dude just really wanted to get to his next task. that tank just happened to get in the way,

poor tank.

on one hand we were usually breaking records, so that was great, and it was right to celebrate. on the other hand i was usually like, omg how are we gonna do *better* than that.

and because of that fear i was reluctant to post our numbers on the busblog… cuz what would happen if the next month we didnt continue to grow…

now that i no longer work for LAist im happy to post their numbers as they are unreal. and i promise you this is no april fools joke. but for the month of march, 2008, LAist did over 2.2 million pageviews, about 6 times better than what we did just a year ago.

basically LAist had more pageviews than pretty much all of their so-called competition combined.

i am very proud of them, i am very happy for them, and most of all – as a fan – i cant wait to see what they are able to do with momentum.

momentum means so much. it doesnt matter if youre talking about a sporting event, or a relationship, or traffic on a blog – when you are rocking you continue to rock and magic shit happens. when youre floundering and continue to floundering horrible shit happens.

LAist has been on a bit of a roll for a while now as the chart shows. could they be able to get 12 million pageviews a year from now?

as someone who was deep inside that magical beast, and is now removed from it i can honestly say this – anything is possible with LAist. anything. it is free of so many things that slow down corporate sites and blogs, and it has the ability to shift on a dime. meanwhile it has the momentum and the staff and the street cred to do things that solo blogs would never be able to do.

this weekend i stopped by the LAist monthly bbq to congratulate them and have some of their mojo rub off on me. it was very nice and i wish them the best.