of all time

and it’s not by me + did bush cheat in the last debate? + let me finish

October 08, 2002

jay asks: Tony, great post yesterday. But what’s with the loathing of Bob Costas?

Seriously.

Fair question, Jay. I despise Costas because i worry about the kids.

I don’t want children to see and hear Bob Costas and think that it’s okay to simultaneously nostalgize and sterilize popular sports and culture in such a way that you never want to look at it again for what it is:

a child’s game played by immigrants who wouldn’t get a job wiping puke off of porcelain if it wasn’t for an abnormal pituitary gland, or in the case of baseball, defection.

Bob Costas has taken the lively art of calling a ball game and dragged it into the drab dens of middle america mediocrity. He’s as exciting as an acorn, as spontaneous as a tug boat, as lively as a hang nail. if he were a fish he’d be a white fish. a dead, odorless, forgetable one.

In a world of 31 flavors Costas asks for vanilla yogurt in a cup.

He makes Vin Scully sound like John Madden, Oprah sound like Ozzy, he gives milquetoast a bad name, he neither wears boxers or briefs for underneath his clothes are simply wires and switches and tube amps.

The French laugh at Jerry Lewis and Jerry Lewis laughs at whoever the idiot was who put Costas on tv.

I’d call him a demon from hades but evil is usually interesting.

he’s an antedote to insomnia and the only cure for the flu because not even a virus can stand to listen to more than a hour of Costas droning on about “The Mick” or Stan “The Man”, they wince like children do when their uncles talk about the war or how Hilburn writes about Bob Dylan.

you’ll never see Costas sitting in a dunk tank at a fair because real baseball fans would fake throw and bum rush the tank and ruthlessly drown this ill like a frothing dog.

Bob Costas was raised in the Ozzie and Harriet world of baby booming brooklyn and embodies every sad stereotype therein. My spite only intensifies when I realize that he grew up blessed to listen to the rickety calls of red barber broadcasting for the dodgers.

I bristle because the Good Lord sent down angels when He gave us all Red and Harry (left), a man who could drink beer and broadcast a game and it sounded like a real man drinking a beer and calling a game.

When in St. Louis, Harry was hired by Auggie Busch who owned the local brewery famous for Budweiser. Mr. Busch told Harry that he admired his work, that he knew that he was the best baseball announcer in the game, and that all of St. Louis was his and he could work for the Cardinals for as long as he lived as long as he didn’t marry any of his daughters.

Harry shook the man’s hand and promptly married the youngest and prettiest of Mr. Busch’s three daughters and was immediately fired.

Would Bob Costas marry anyone’s daughter like that? Don’t hold your breath.

Harry went on to broadcast all over the midwest, making a home for himself on the South Side of Chicago. Known as the Mayor of Rush Street because he was often spotted drinking with the locals on the popular street known for its taverns.

“Booze, broads and bullshit. If you got all that, what else do you need?” Harry was once quoted. He lived his word. He was not only the keeper of the flame he was the reason for the fire.

If the White Sox were playing and Harry was broadcasting for them and the fans were drunk and the game was nearly over and one of the weak hitting infielders popped up to end the inning, you could hear it in his voice. Like a wind-up toy that needed a few turns. “Ahhh, that wouldn’t a been a home run in a telephone booth,” he’d say, uttlerly depressed. A fan at the mic! What a concept.

Harry Caray is the reason that we sing the 7th Inning stretch at Wrigley Field with the enthusiasm that we do. In the ’80s, in order to garner more revenue, new owner Jerry Reinsdorf told Harry that they were going to put a bunch of Sox games on Pay-Per-View only. Harry said that baseball was meant for the average fan and most average fans couldn’t afford pay per view for everyday baseball games, so he quit and joined the Cubs.

Would Costas make such a stand? If he did would anyone see him?

Once I saw a Cubs game where Harry broadcasted the game from the left field bleachers. He brought two ice chests with him. One full of beer and the other full of more beer. He had a paper scorecard and two pencils. Where’s Bob Costas’s two chests of beer?

Where are the pictures of him getting some sugar from the former first lady?

Harry had glasses as thick as a steak. He had a tongue the size of texas. His lips were big and he was shorter than you think, and the first time I saw him he had on a checkboard suit with a red dressshirt, white tie, white pants, and white shoes.

i said are you heading out anywhere after the game all dressed up like that? he said, “son, i’m heading out everywhere all dressed up like this. might even make it to your house if the light’s on.”

and he laughed and everyone around him laughed and his breath didn’t smell like booze it smelled of life.

i bet you a million bucks that bob costas’s breath smells like bologna.

harry handed me back my baseball and it said Holy Cow Harry Caray on it.

know what it says if you get NBC’s golden boy autograph on your lucky day?

it says bob.

but the worst thing that Costas has done, jay, is mess up the bell curve. he has made it okay for announcers to be soulless and bland and average and background filler. fakers like jack buck’s son, and harry’s grandson, step children of milo hamilton have polluted the airwaves with a lust for attention and a fear of life.

corporations would never hire a man like Harry Caray when they could put their money on dull and hire a Bob Costas who would never get caught closing down a tavern buying a beer for a cop and chasing it down with a redhead.

People say that baseball has lost its edge because of spoiled players and high salaries and greedy owners, but i say it’s because the storytellers only want to read from the children’s library and live the lives of elves.

Rot in peas little man with all the potential in the world but sits on it like so many telephone books used for your pampered ass so you can see over the mic.

All the vocabulary in the world but with no backbone to bring the game to life the way one would if chatting about it over a twelve pack in a basement.

That’s what Harry did.

In fact when Harry realized that he had accumulated a ton of cash from being the best there ever was, he and his wife Dutchie (they never divorced) decided that no one would be a better saloon owner than Harry, and they were right.

What would Costas open if he could? A candy store, I bet.

Filled with one flavor of bubblegum.

busblog 10/8/2002

aaron’s baseball blog + bambino’s curse + bob mould

it was nice. shes a good girl. some people you just click with perfectly.

first time danielle and i talked was at the xbi. but you dont care about that. what do you care about.

two fuckers go into a bar.

ones named danielle ones named tony.

danielles the flower girl at the stand in the corner of the office building on wilshire in la.

tonys the undercover superhero fed up with saving a place that doesnt want to be saved.

they both just want to go to mexico with antis six foot bong and drink until they become distant memories in the footnotes of a failed experiment that some called the xbi.

i do cuz im old school and respectful.

i dont even want to tell you what the youngins call it.

danielle asked me when my birthday is and i told her and she said whats the hollywood bungalows address and i said its on the side of my blog. she said good. i said include some nude pics. she said i can do that. i said i was kidding, but she, im thinking, just may include some nude pics. how did that happen.

i dont get a lot of nude pics cuz of the blog any more, im noticing. i think thats because im writing about politics, although it might be a coincidence.

danielle usually doesnt read this far down in the entry so let me tell you something that she hates reading or talking about, hits. in a few days im going to pass a million pageviews for the second year in a row.

what makes me happy about doing it this year is this year i didnt really have one huge day. i had one day when atrios linked me and i got like 7,000 hits. when the ny times linked me i got 5,000 hits, but thats it. all year has been relatively steady from lots of blogs around the web.

theres a freedom when youre not betrothen to any one person for your readership. when you are free you can make more breakthroughs, grow faster, and stay fresher.

anna wants to get married. one of her friends is britney spears. all these girls who keep saying they want to be free run around getting married/not really married and you want to shake em and say i thought you wanted to be free.

but you cant shake em cuz theyre laced up to your bedpost

saying mmmmggghhhh mgggghhh mggghhhh

so you de-gag the one who speaks english and she says

are you tivoing the apprentice

and you kiss her, put the gag back on, check the tv in the big room

and come back ready

refreshed

and ready to redefine spectacular.

spit circle + bukkake, kitty + george bush takes the global test

on yahoo fantasy hoops?

League ID#: 23370

League Name: busblog league

Password: bloggy

Draft Type: Live Draft

Draft Time: Sun Oct 24 10:45am PDT

im the commish.

i think i won last year.

i am determined to win again this year.

stupid dumbass trading will be vetoed.

this is the third year the busblog has hosted fantasy hoops.

probably the best fantasy league you’ll ever be part of since its competitive, and i win.

good luck.

about howard stern being forced off FM radio and shunned to Sirus satelite radio.

on one hand it’s great for huge stern fans like myself. as an adult, i can handle swear words and the descriptions of sexual practices.

but what if im in a car that doesnt have sirius sat radio? no stern for me.

meanwhile, what sort of free country are we living in where a guy has to run away from the fcc to ensure that he isnt fined millions of dollars because of the loose lips of a guest or the slowness of a slacking engineer who is tardy hitting the “dump” button?

and why should the fcc be rid of their biggest enemy after they have not been held accountable in fining stern and not oprah for the same thing (a discussion of anal/oral sex).

not only have the fcc been given a free ride from the press and the government, but they havent even had to clearly define what is fineable and what isnt.

nor have they had to explain themselves for going backwards in time to fine stern, or their flip/flop regarding Bono’s exhuberant f-bomb at the golden globes.

to me its sad that under those circumstances a man who has prospered and remained popular over 20 years in radio must, in a sense, admit defeat and run for the hills, or in this case, space.

a bluer stern show though makes me wonder the future of his relationship with E! who currently broadcasts his tv show which is taped using segments from the radio program.

if i was stern i would consider moving off the cable station to and even lesser-restrictive HBO or Showtime so that both his radio and tv shows can be fully uncensored.

if i was Showtime, a channel that has completely been left in the dust by HBO, i would run Stern in its entirety, uncut and broadcast from 7p-11p each night.

but thats me, mr. vegas.

kate sullivan + new wave oake + sk smith

ive been so mean about enrigay. im sorry that ive wished him ill will. im sorry that i said that i hoped his plane crashed and that his luggage would get lost. im sorry i rubbed your ass real good as you were giving me a hug the other day. but your ass is sweet. and you know i love it. still, im sorry. i promise i wont do it again as long as youre with him.

it’ll be hard cuz we do have that magnetism. and you know we never had any real problems. i dont know why ive been so noncommital lately but i wasnt with ashley or clipper girl or her cousin or even miss montreal who i was going to ask to be my girlfriend memorial day weekend at big sur but she canceled the weekend. and even though i was eighty percent sad i was twenty percent relieved, and thats not cool.

im sorry what happened the other day. ive totally erased it from my head as youve advised. a double reverse-psychology seduction. ive never seen such a thing. now arent you glad i always have a lot of condoms?

anyway. im really sorry. i do want to be friends. its hard though. last night you looked good. my hands are just attracted to your hips. i want to lean into you and see whats going on. i cant help it. you russian voodooed my ass.

in the good book, maybe exodus, god hardens pharoahs heart so he can bust with some sweet plagues. first moses says let my people go and pharoah says fine then his heart gets hardened and right when theyre going to split hes all i change my mind. and then god rains frogs from the sky. its awesome.

well, you softened my heart.

and its fucked up now.

we had a good thing going and you left me for a pretty boy singer who face it isnt so great a singer. which hurts more.

i know i suck but enrique?

and you say things like he and i would be friends but no i wouldnt. if i even ran into him at the coin laundry if he said anything to me i would say in a million years you couldnt even touch her the way i can. and then id change his dryer settings to delicate when he wasnt looking.

ive never been possessive of any girl before. but to be honest right now i still dont recognize your union. its like a gay marriage to bush.

but im gonna try. not because i should. fuck should. i should be taller. the cubs should be in the playoffs. i should have a job where i could spend a few minutes blogging during work. my clothes should be better. my dick should be at least a foot longer. should.

in 2004 a girl Should be able to tell her new dude that she still wants to get it on with her xdude. id let you get it on with him. what do i care? enrique. have as much fucking enrique as you want.

but seriously im seriously sorry that ive been acting like such a douche. youve always been nothing but totally nice to me. always there for me. in fact whenever i was with you i always felt handsomer and smarter than i know i am. i dont know how you did that but you did.

im sorry i still want you. and will think about you tonight. and tomorrow. and the next time i get to dip my head next to yours and check out whats going on.

but i do promise to make a concerted effort to be better. cuz i can be better and i want to be better. and you only deserve the best.

yours in lust,

tony

amy + cmonks + what the fukc

i wouldnta said anything about the debates today either.

and i sure as shit wouldnt have said a peep about the top U.S. arms inspector’s 1,000 page report stating that not only weren’t there any wmd in iraq, but their capabilities for producing them were deteriorating, not advancing, and they hadn’t made any since 1991.

you didn’t see me write about the cubs the day that we knew it was all over this year.

i didn’t even want to think about it.

you didn’t see me write about how sammy bailed out of the last game, pissing everyone off, and probably sealing his fate of never being a cub any more.

hell, i was so emotionally depressed that the cubs who had a pitching staff of clement, wood, prior, zambrano, and maddux

and a line up of four guys who hit over 30 home runs this year, a lead off hitter who smacked 24, and a new shortstop whose last name rhymed with goingallthewayia

completely imploded like bitchesia.

so its no surprise to me that the worlds most popular political blogger wouldn’t have mentioned the fact that the vice president ruined his best zinger with the boldface lie that turned out to be a double-lie.

Now, in my capacity as Vice President I am the President of the Senate, the presiding officer. I’m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they’re in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.

not only did glenn wake up in the morning and see at least three videos of cheney standing or sitting right next to the pretty boy from carolina.

but then it became known that the vice president was only the presiding officer of the senate not most tuesdays, not some tuesdays, but only two tuesdays over the last four years, the last being jan ’03.

and to top things off, despite how miraculously talented, seriously, as truly talented as the gop has been with spinning things, how do you spin the pathetic ignorance of the veep leading people to factcheck.com,

when factcheck.org, the intended destination the second most powerful man in the world wanted undecided voters to click to, was an even worse website for the republicans because it was a non-profit ivy league site who was far more critical towards the president than toward kerry/edwards.

hi can of worms.

how do you say, oh the vice president meant factcheck.org when the very first sentence on the non-partisan site dedicated to “holding politicians accountable” today says, “Cheney wrongly implied that FactCheck had defended his tenure as CEO of Halliburton Co., and the vice president even got our name wrong.”

you dont say it.

you say nothing.

you put pictures of giggling co-eds and volleyball playing fratboys on your blog and pretend it never happened.

you hide out at a symposium and pretend that the biggest blogger of all time would have been perceived as “discourteous” if he had blogged from the event.

it’s been established that im crazy but i’d think that most authors with new books would be ecstatic to have a guy who gets a quarter million hits a day liveblog from their symposium.

especially if i was hustling a book that was going for $35 on amazon.

but really, who wants to blog when the jig is finally up?

and who wants to go on the web when there’s nothing but bad news on there with worse news on the way thanks to the next two debates being with the lesser of the two leaders, bush, and his never-a-dull-moment slamdances with the spoken word.

not the instapundit, who has gotten 67 million page views so far this year.

he’d rather just go on a nice long walk for a little while.

maybe whittle a spell

“Strolling around campus always reminds me that there’s more to life than surfing the Internet and thinking about politics and the war,” professor reynolds typed today in his last post of the day at 8:27pm. “I should do it more often.

“If looking at these pictures makes you feel that you should get away from the computer and enjoy some fresh air and sunshine, well, maybe you should take the hint.”

oh i got the hint. by not typing “bush” “cheney” “kerry” or “edwards” today in any of his nine posts, i got the hint.

i got the hint that he didn’t want to talk about chunks of iraq bad news like this:

Weapons hunter Charles Duelfer had access to information from U.S. interrogations of Saddam over several months. The former Iraqi dictator apparently talked not because he wanted to help the United States, but because he was concerned with his legacy, the report says.

Much of his motivation in the quest for weapons of mass destruction came from neighboring Iran and the two countries’ “long-standing rivalry over the centuries,” including the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

“From Saddam’s viewpoint, the Persian menace loomed large and was a challenge to his place in history,” the report says.

“This was an important motivation in his views on WMD _ especially as it became obvious that Iran was pursuing the very capabilities he was denied,” said the report, which found no evidence that Iraq had produced any such weapons after 1991.

i got the hint that he didn’t want to talk about chunks of last nights debate:

IFILL: Senator Edwards, it’s your turn to use 30 seconds for a complicated response…

EDWARDS: That was a complete distortion of my record. I know that won’t come as a shock.

The vice president, I’m surprised to hear him talk about records. When he was one of 435 members of the United States House, he was one of 10 to vote against Head Start, one of four to vote against banning plastic weapons that can pass through metal detectors.

He voted against the Department of Education. He voted against funding for Meals on Wheels for seniors. He voted against a holiday for Martin Luther King. He voted against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

It’s amazing to hear him criticize either my record or John Kerry’s.

IFILL: Thirty seconds.

CHENEY: Oh, I think his record speaks for itself. And frankly, it’s not very distinguished.

and i got the hint that he didn’t want to talk about this:

LANSING, Mich. – Michael Moore shot back at Republicans on Wednesday after they requested that the filmmaker be prosecuted for offering underwear and food to college students in exchange for their promise to vote.

“It’s ironic that Republicans have no problem with allowing assault weapons out on our streets, yet they don’t want to put clean underwear in the hands of our slacker youth,” Moore said. “The Republicans seem more interested in locking me up for trying to encourage people to participate in our democracy than locking up bin Laden for his attacks on our democracy.”

three ways you know that the ship is going down for the republicans four weeks before the elections.

1. when the president holds a sudden “important” speech and nobody pays attention

2. when instapundit hides out all day despite a huge news day in politics, giving us the hint that he’s throwing in the towel.

3. when the busblog links andrew sullivan.

rush didn’t have a good day either + <3 raymi <3 + bluecad + iron mouth

memorable quotes

from Back to School as thornton melon

Trendy Man : Mr. Melon, your wife was just showing us her Klimt.

Thornton Melon : You too, huh? She’s shown it to everybody.

Trendy Man : Well, she’s very proud of it.

Thornton Melon : I’m proud of mine too. I don’t go waving it around at parties, though.

Trendy Man : It’s an exceptional painting.

Thornton Melon : Oh, the painting.

[after Thornton Melon’s run-in with a showering sorority girl]

Security Guard: Perfectly understandable, Mr. Melon. It was an honest mistake. Let’s just call it a a bad day…

Thornton Melon : – but a great view! You’re all right, officer. Here, a little something for the kids.

[hands officer cash]

Security Guard: I don’t have any kids.

Thornton Melon : No kids? Well, get yourself some kids. Take it all.

[hands officer more cash]

Thornton Melon : And just remember, the best thing about kids… is making them!

Thornton Melon : What’s your favorite subject?

Bubbles: Poetry.

Thornton Melon : Really? Well, maybe you can help me straighten out my Longfellow.

from Caddyshack where he played Al Czervik

Al Czervik : Last time I saw a mouth like that, it had a hook in it.

Al Czervik : Oh, this is the worst-looking hat I ever saw. What, when you buy a hat like this I bet you get a free bowl of soup, huh? Oh, it looks good on you though.

Al Czervik : Oh, this your wife, huh? A lovely lady. Hey baby, you must’ve been something before electricity.

Al Czervik : Your a lot of woman, you know that? Yeah, wanna make 14 dollars the hard way?

Al Czervik : [to his Asian companion] I hear this place is restricted, Wang, so don’t tell ’em you’re Jewish, okay?

Al Czervik : Hey, doll. Could you scare up another round for our table over here? And tell the cook this is low grade dogfood. I’ve had better food at the ballgame, you know? This steak still has marks from where the jockey was hitting it.

as Mallory’s dad in Natural Born Killers:

[after sending Mallory to her room]

Ed Wilson : I’ll show her a little tenderness, after I eat. When I get up there, she won’t see my face for an hour.

“I tell ya I get no respect from anyone. I bought a cemetery plot. The guy said, ‘There goes the neighborhood!'”

“When I was born, I was so ugly that the doctor slapped my mother.”

“When I started in show business, I played one club that was so far out, my act was reviewed in Field and Stream.”

“Every time I get in an elevator, the operator says the same thing to me: `Basement?'”

“When my parents got divorced, there was a custody fight over me. … and no one showed up.”

“I never got girls when I was a kid. One girl told me, `Come on over, there’s nobody home.’ I went over. There was nobody home.”

“When I was 3 years old, my parents got a dog. I was jealous of the dog, so they got rid of me.”

“When we got married, the first thing my wife did was put everything under both names — hers and her mother’s.”

“With my wife, I don’t get no respect. The other night there was a knock on the front door. My wife told me to hide in the closet.”

“With my wife, I get no respect. I fell asleep with a cigarette in my hand. She lit it.”

howard stern will go to sirius radio in 2005 + bush’s “important” speech today + rodney.com + starbody

to the left of my blog.

yes, the busblog has partnered up with sbc’s new RSS newsreader “Project DU”. i did it for a few reasons:

– it was easy

– they asked

– they asked me not to change a thing that i typically would write or say on here

– it’s a way to reach more people without selling out.

– they flowed the busblog a few bones

– they have zero editorial control of the busblog

– i can still say fuck.

– the world is a better place with good RSS readers, especially ones that are pre-packed with my blog 🙂

sbc is a huge company. i am a satisfied long-time user of their dsl service, their long distance, and their web based email.

our buddy steve on adrants wrote the following:

SBC Launches Blog-Powered Desktop RSS Newsreader

Capitalizing on the explosion of weblogs and the rapid growth of RSS, SBC has launched Project D.U. (digital universe), a desktop RSS reader populated by feeds from weblogs in six categories. Believed to be the first branded RSS reader that comes complete with pre-loaded content, Project D.U. was developed to bring unique and different voices, along with SBC’s brand of course, to a wider audience. With Yahoo’s recent embrace of RSS in its new My Yahoo, RSS is fast becoming the preferred mode of information dissemination on the Internet.

Project D.U. was conceived by Dallas-based TracyLocke Director of Digital Initiatives Todd Copelvitz. Prominent bloggers in the six categories were approached and recruited by yours truly (to whom money was paid) along with others at TracyLocke. We tried to identify blogs with strong personal voice like Tony Pierce’s Busblog and blogs with focused subject matter like David Hauslaib’s Jossip or Jessi and Tom’s Big Bad Boat Blog. Project D.U. users can add their favorite rss feeds as well.

Obviously, SBC intends to garner broad brand recognition and sell some product from this effort and there’s no shame in that. What’s unique is the project’s win-win position providing long term branding for SBC, unique and different information for consumers and increased notoriety for those bloggers participating in the project. Participating bloggers are paid a small fee in exchange for Project D.U. pulling their RSS feed and adhering to minor guidelines. TracyLocke expects about 500,000 downloads of the reader by early 2005.

so if youre interested in having your favorite blogs sent to one place for easy-to-use reading, this might be for you. give it a try and let me know what you think about it.

project d.u. + adrants + nyc metblogs