first marilyn chambers, now mark “the bird” fidrych has bitten the big one
although i doubt they’ll do it – because today is opening day for a lot of clubs, including the Cubs who one hit the Rockies – ESPN should really do an extended Obit on The Bird, because he brought a lot of love to baseball.
this was a guy who would talk to the ball, and wave at the outfielders after a great catch, and of course smooth out the mound with his hand – obsessively.
i was lucky enough to see him play once and he got shelled and he whipped his glove into the 7th row of the seats behind the Tigers’ dugout.
like you should.
i hope whoever got that glove isnt auctioning it off today on ebay.
but he will always be the inventor of the wall of sound to me
and better than that, the producer of one of my favorite Ramones albums “End of the Century” which included such classics as
1. “Do You Remember Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio?” (Ramones) – 3:50 4. “Chinese Rock” (Dee Dee Ramone, Richard Hell) – 2:28 5. “The Return of Jackie and Judy” (Ramones) – 3:12 7. “Baby, I Love You” (Phil Spector, Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich) – 3:47 8. “I Can’t Make It on Time” (Ramones) – 2:32 10. “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” (Ramones) – 2:38
but yeah, a jury said he’s a killer, which just adds another page to rock’s rich tapestry of tragedy
i realize some of you have boyfriends or xboyfriends who have gotten into yr heads and thats the real reason why yr not blogging any more.
all i have to say to that is, thank god Emily Dickinson didnt care what her boyfriend or xboyfriend thought.
thank god Sylvia Plath and Courtney Love and Dooce never cared what people thought. they just wrote.
can you imagine if Raymi the Minx was all “omg i have xbfs, i have to now stop writing about my life, i have to stop being creative, i have to close this window to my world – because of someone i love/hate.”
men cause enough problems on this planet, please, ladies, dont let them effect the narrative of your development.
know that any devil voice in your head that is telling you to stop, is the same devil voice that whispers in the ears of anyone with an interesting tale to tell.
make it anonymous, make a new url, make something new. do something that will protect your identity, and for god sake if you are cutting off the rest of the world because of some d-bag – give me that dudes name and information and i will solve the problem posthaste.
seven years ago i presented this photo essay celebrating and melding the life and times of ac/dc with the holiest day in the Christian calender.
although it hasn’t gotten as many hits as the anna kournikova photo essay, or as many awards as the how to blog post, it’s probably my favorite thing thats appeared on the busblog.
when i was 20 i found myself in lausanne, switzerland with a korean girl from iowa city named ae. i said ae i want to buy a swatch here. so we bought swatches. then she said tony i wanna buy some white chocolate and then eat it. so we bought white chocolate in switzerland and i can say honestly that white chocolate may be pretty and unique but it has no soul and theres a reason why brown chocolate is so much more popular.
Fascinating piece that I totally disagree with as it confuses cowardess, ignorance and laziness with honesty. I agree with his Wilde quote but that doesn’t mean that people cannot be civil about their biases. We allow “masks” in that commentors aren’t required to use their real names but if they still can’t enunciate themeselves without vulgar language and ad hominem attacks they should still be heard because they are “keeping it real”? The Brits seem to have zero problem in Parliment’s Question Time grilling their leaders with no masks in an educated, civil, and on-topic manner. Although that’s an ideal, there are endless forums where anonymous commentors can act like fools (reddit being the funniest) but that doesn’t mean that newspaper forums should go down that path because it hasn’t been proven that that freedom leads to higher truths. Indeed rarely do brilliant insights get surfaced in free-for-all threads because Smart people usually see that mess and wisely step away from it. Either way it’s shocking to see this guy come to this conclusion. I thank you for the link and I look forward to hearing him talk about it more.
i embrace my sweet tooth but peeps are something i can eat one or two of a year and be perfectly happy to move on. cadbury eggs however dont have a very long shelf life in my home.
this is what happens when your lead singer songwriting genius gets married – he loses his edge. once people are satisfied, rarely do they make creative art any more, especially if they originally started out using their art as a bird call of “here i am, here i am”. sadness, loneliness, horniness are the best motivators for the creation of great rock music which is why the only people who have been able to age creatively and still put out great music are the exceptions of other trueisms too: tom waits, neil young, bob dylan. weezer’s last single “The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived” is one of the best Weezer songs ever but because of the musicality not because of its passion. the deeper well is in the blues, not in prog rock.
David: why do some people still think it’s acceptable to wear crocs? if the hottest female you know was rocking them, would it be a dealbreaker?
one of the hottest females ive known actually left her crocs over at my house and theyre still here at the foot of my bed. theyre clearly not sexy, but for some reason people find them “easier” to work with than sneakers. i can understand this mindset in climates where theres mud, rain, or snow, but here in southern california when it doesnt rain even when its predicted, theres not really any excuse unless youre still in elementary school, and even then its sending the wrong message to the children.
Mike: it’s not a sin as long as you pull out right?
it’s only a sin if one of you is married to someone else. the sin is not in the action, but in the broken commitment.
zona: Five earned runs in 5 innings. Four of them went yard. Do you think my nephew Ted might be tipping his pitches? And does he owe the rest of the boys dinner table dances for bailing his ass out for the win?
yes and yes. my fear with the Cubs’ aquisition of Rich Harden last season was that your boy was going to feel like he could coast because he was no longer so valueable. with a rotation of carlos zambrano, the suprisingly consistent rich dempsey, and harden, ted is perhaps better suited as the #4 starter. in 12 starts with the cubs last year, harden pitched 71 innings, had 89 strikeouts, only walked 30 batters and had an era of 1.77. arent those the numbers of a #2 starter as opposed to your brethren? i say with less pressure and easier competition, lefty would probably give up less runs and win more games.
Basart: What’s your take on the LAT front page ad “scandal”?
my take is i never really understood how hard of a job being a publisher or an editor of a major U.S. newspaper in 2009 was until this week. you’re surrounded with unprecedented and scary options that are guaranteed to upset people no matter which way you go. what was most interesting was the literal calling onto the carpet of management by the workers who had to answer for their actions, and did so. i really dont think i could be in a more fascinating place than in that newsroom right now, and when the stories are written about how this industry navigated through these unforgiving waters, i hope great care is taken in showing all sides, because it is a complicated and emotional and strangely delicate happenstance.
maeko: What will Miley Cyrus’ next racial insensitivity be? Hmm. I’m dying to know.
miley is a little hillbilly girl raised by a guy named billy ray. history has shown that child stars in positions like hers rarely turn out whole and healthy. so im willing to give her a break on this one because her future is probably bleak. ps thanks for the shout out!
adriel: why the hell don’t kids listen to their parents?
the replacements suggest it could be because children have physical deformities.
“kids wont follow” the replacements stink
Kids don’t need that Kids don’t want that Kids don’t need nothing of the kind
I need some attention From the house of detention
Kids don’t follow What you’re doin In my face out my ear
Kids won’t stand still Kids won’t shut up Kids won’t do it You talk to ’em now
Kids don’t follow What you’re doin In my face and out my ear Kids won’t follow What you’re saying We can’t hear
Kids won’t follow What you’re saying In my face out my ear Kids don’t follow What you’re sayin We can’t hear What you say Not tomorrow Not today
matt: I know it’s not friday anymore, but I still have a question: Is it a bad idea to run off to another city&state with a girl? seems like that might be a possibility for me soon.
life is short and true love is rare. so if you love someone and you want to move somewhere funner, do it and expect others to resist, but know they could be resisiting out of jealousy, because true freedom is rarer than even love.
Alyson: I know it’s not Friday but I have a question/need advice: If someone has been making many, many blatant advances on you (me) for a while which have been clearly declined, when/is is ever okay to tell the girlfriend of the person in question if they just won’t take no for an answer?
once again i defer to the good book and the golden rule. if youre the type of girl who would want to know if your guy is hitting on others, then tell this young lady the way youd like to be told. if youd rather not know that your dude is a douche, then keep it to yourself but tell the suitor that his ways are not at all those of gentleman.
by you i mean of course Jesus. for dying for our sins today.
i love a lot of people. probably more than i should.
but when it comes to suffering for them, i dont do a very good job of that. i would have made a pretty rotten Jesus.
one thing i love about the bible is Jesus, and God before Him, wasnt the peace lovin hippie that people paint him out as being. there was a lot of ass kicking in the old testament and the new testament shows an often gruff Jesus snapping at people and talking in circles and showing a bunch of “tough love” as opposed to flowery Deep Thoughts.
thats a Messiah i can get behind because when you think about it, He was here for some serious ass business, so when people didnt automatically believe in Him it made sense that he got pissed off and irritated and angry and vengeful – despite himself.
to me that brings credence to the difficult idea of man being made in God’s image.
we get pissed off and irritated and angry when people dont “get it”. Effers im God – quit making clay “gods” and burning incense to them when you get scared – im RIGHT EFFING HERE! peter denied him three times before the cock crowed, phillip asked him to show him the Father – and these were disciples!
good friday was good because He didn’t have to slum around with us any more. He did his time as a man and he was out. in fact he couldnt leave fast enough. when He was on the cross and He hadn’t died yet He yelled to the sky “why has thou forsaken me!”
or as Rancid sings “waitin for the busses but the busses wont come.”
its good friday but im working because the news has gotta come out. im working because God has blessed me with exactly what i asked for, and you really should be careful for what you ask for because sometimes God will answer yr prayers, and often He will chuckle as He does it.
i go to the dry cleaner once a week. that was not something that i felt id be doing. it is as odd to me as if i had a beemer in my driveway. but the tradeoff is i get the job of my dreams.
not an easy job neither.
yesterday i fell asleep at 8:30pm while watching the cubs game. for some reason my body was all, yeah thats all folks. when i woke up i had an email from my good buddy bob who ive known since kindergarten: “So I open up the Drudge Report this morning like I do every morning after stopping by the world famous busblog and behold what do I see screaming at me in 48 pt font? An article about Fidel Castro written by Tony Pierce for the L.A. Times! Congrats!”
so i clicked over to drudge and it was huge. this sickly pic of fidel and the crazy quote that i had put in the headline that drudge seemed to like also, Fidel: “What can we do to help Obama?”
the story was about members of the black congressional congress flying to havana to see what could be done about the bad relationship between the us and cuba. because andy malcolm is on a much needed vacation, i promised i’d help the Ticket, one of the most popular blogs we have. #75 in the world. actually a joy to write for. but typepad had an upgrade recently so people are asking me all these questions, and we’re changing some blogs and working on others, and launching new ones (like Angels Unplugged), i barely had time to get the castro post up, but before i left it was there and i guess an hour later it was on drudge, where it stayed till this morning.
the interesting thing about drudge is reading the comments from his readers. interesting because since he has no comments, they really dont get to say anything on his page, you pretty much have to go somewhere like the comments, for example, of the castro piece, of which there are now 317.
my friend amy tweeted me today. she told me that because im a full time journalist i could go visit there, no problems. and since my grampa, we think, was cuban, and since one of the funnest girlfriends i ever had is cuban, and since i would love to see what its like before the inevitable happens once “normalization” happens… i’ll say this, it certainly would make for an intersting new years eve blockstock.
now the trade off is: read the rest of this anthony keidis book, or hit the hay before 2am.
because if it can, it looks like a 1980s version – or a rough draft version
right now howard stern is trying to figure out what his new phone will be, but hes not even considering an iphone because it doesnt have a Real key board, and even though thats the #1 reason people dont buy iphones, its also the #1 most ridiculous reason because anyone with an iphone can tell you that you really dont do ALL THAT MUCH typing on your phone, and when you do, you totally get used to iphones virtual keyboard, and unless youre filling out some wacky form, the spell checker figures out what you shootin for the majority of the time.
and then theres the endless amounts of apps that just keep streaming through…
not to mention the complete ease of getting music from itunes, and texting is a breeze, and everything looks pretty when you look at it, etc.
today was a good day because of lots of reasons, but then it was over, just like that.
by you i mean of course Jesus. for dying for our sins today.