The Hits Just Keep On Coming...

I'm stuck here at work waiting for the shooting crew to get back to the office so I can help load in, and I've been trying to get some writing done in my downtime. I have music going from my iTunes pretty much all day, but at night when there's no distractions I try to pick stuff that's extra awesome. Plus, when there's a zillion people here during the day, I normally try not to be obnoxious and blast Citizens Arrest.

So at first I popped on Judge-Bringin' It Down, because...fuck that, there should never need to be an explanation or justification for listening to Judge.
After that, I was in a solid late 80's NYHC mood, so I put on Leeway-Born To Expire.
After that, I kind of zoned out writing and just let iTunes keep going, and it went right into Left For Dead-Splitting Heads, which got me embarrassingly amped up. I'm going to attribute that to coinciding with all the coffee kicking in.
And after Left For Dead comes Lemonheads, of course. Hate Your Friends is the first record on my computer, and while their later stuff is good and all, HYF is probably in my top 50 records of all time, with "Rabbit" being in my top 50 songs, easy.
There's no point to this post other than to revel in how nicely my accidental playlist worked out, and maybe there's some imaginary person reading this who hasn't checked out one of those four records, and they will after this. Not that any of them are exactly buried gems, but still.

Manny Being Manny Being A Surprisingly Sane Person
or
Morons Being Morons With No Perspective

So yesterday Manny Ramirez was quoted in the Boston Globe as saying:

"We're just going to go have fun and play the game," he said. "That's it. If we go play hard and the thing doesn't come like it's supposed to come, we'll move on. We'll come next year. Why should we panic? We've got a great team. If it doesn't happen, good. We'll come next year and try to do it again.

"We're confident every day. It doesn't matter how things go for you. We're not going to give up. We're just going to go and play the game, like I've said, and move on. If it doesn't happen, so who cares? There's always next year. It's not like the end of the world or something."

That's the full quote. But if you listen to sports radio/watch sports commentary on tv/read sports blogs, all you'll hear about is the last two sentences. "If it doesn't happen, so who cares? There's always next year. It's not like the end of the world or something."

Not only is this all of a sudden the number one story in the sports world, people are LOSING THEIR MINDS over it. Talking about how Derek Jeter would never say that, how Manny only cares about himself and not about his team and its fans, how it's another example of modern athletes being no good money grubbing jerks, and on, and on.

That reaction, to me, is the real story. It magnifies and highlights how completely, pathetically out of touch people are. Because when it comes down to it, he's 100% right. And I'm not a huge Manny supporter by any means. I'm also the furthest thing from a jock-basher, or the type of person to look down my nose at peoples devotion to sports. I spend a ridiculous amount of time every day reading about and watching/listening to sports, not to mention all the hours agonizing over upcoming games to decide who to bet on and who to put in on my various fantasy teams. But if I step back for a second, it's all just a pastime, a distraction, something entertaining to help me get through the day. Sure, I get bent out of shape when my teams lose, and overexcited when they win. But if I were to list out my priorities in life, the win/loss record of a team of professional strangers is pretty far from the top.

I think sports are totally awesome, and I'm generally wary of people who have absolutely zero interest in sports (as they might be some kind of pod-people body snatchers), but, and I mean this in the least condescending way possible, I have a life. You know, my own life, that goes on regardless of what happens on the field/court/rink/croquet lawn.

I can promise you Derek Jeter isn't still sitting shiva in the Yankee clubhouse, single tear after single tear rolling down his cheek. And I doubt Posada has locked himself in his room listening to his Bauhaus records while cutting himself. "A drop of blood for every loss..."
And especially motherfuck sportscasters who condemn Manny for a) being honest and b) having a balanced head about the whole thing. Bunch of loser wannabe athletes that couldn't hack it so they bitch about meaningless shit like this. To people like me...who tune in every day...and who would kill to be paid to bitch about sports...

I'm not trying to say I'm above all this, but it's so lame that when a ballplayer finally really says what's up, everyone crucifies him for it.
Get a fucking life, yeesh.

Oh and go Tribe.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NORM!!!!

Motherfuck Edge Day, today is National Norm Day.

There really aren't words for what a great day this is. Norm turns 44, and the world continues to enjoy the gift of laughter, and prison rape jokes.

Steve and I put a birthday present in the mail to him this afternoon, consisting of a card and a handful of scratch off tickets. If he hits the "win for life" thing, hopefully he'll appreciate it enough to attach himself to "Slumpbuster", the movie Steve and I are writing. Or just blow it on more gambling, whatever.

A handful of Norm links since I'm kind of lazy today.

This audio clip is pretty recent, and Artie's right, it's awesome how Norm always seems annoyed and surprised that anyone tries to talk to him about anything showbiz related, despite the fact that it's his, you know, job.
Audio Interview from the Stern Show

The next link is probably the best single place for downloads, every single episode of both The Norm Show and A Minute With Stan Hooper, as well as miscellaneous stuff. You can only download three things a day, apparently, but if you just search YouTube you can find all the episodes of The Norm Show, albeit chopped into 10 min segments.

Norm Media

Two Fan Pages, the first is written by the Fat Chick in THIS picture, and while it's kind of informative, she writes like a Jr. High yearbook editor (read: not well) and thats kind of annoying after awhile. The second is slightly less retarded sounding, but not as updated either.

Number One
Number Two

And go down a few posts and watch the clips I put up from his appearance on The View a couple years ago, if you haven't already.

(Oh and something's fucked up with blogger where it won't let me post pictures. Once that gets fixed I'll have a bunch of sweet ones to throw in.)

Celebrate!

Knock knock...

The teamster captain on the show I'm currently working on is probably one of the sweetest dudes I've ever met. He's in his seventies now, but he was one of the top boxers in the country years ago before a stray punch ruined his one eye. He remains one of the most effortlessly funny people I've ever met though, due in large part to the fact that he's got an even sleazier sense of humor than I do, and he's much more apt to display it in the middle of the office, regardless of the age, gender, or sexual orientation of anyone around.

Before I started here he came into the office one day and somehow got into a story of how a girl he dated when he was younger wanted him to bring home some kind of "toy." So he stopped at the butchers shop and got a "big fuckin salami", and after having some trouble getting a condom on it ("you ever try gettin a scumbag on a fuckin salami???") he went to town on her with it, and apparently she LOVED it. I say apparently because he decided to get down on the ground and act the scene out for everyone in the office, playing the role of his ladyfriend. This is a seventy year old man, lying on his back, kicking his legs around in the air and doing his best impression of a woman getting railed with a giant salami and absolutely loving it.

He later lost her to the one and only Peter Bogdonovich, which was especially hard because "I loved that girl! I kissed her asshole! That's fuckin love!" To this day, if you say the word "Bogdonovich" within a hundred yards of him, it's over. We got the intern to start talking about how he'd worked on some Peter Bogdonovich movie, and from the back of the office, no short distance thats also obstructed by various smaller offices we hear "PETER BOGDONOVICH?? THAT SONOFABITCH STOLE MY GIRL!" There's dozens of other awesome stories, including accidentally getting industrial strength cleaner with acid in it on his dick, and announcing the fact over the radio on set, but I couldn't possibly do them all justice.

The reason I started writing all this was that after telling me how a young teamster he knows is "balling" a well known actress ("he's laying some pipe there boy, let me tell you. He gets his oil changed REGULAR") and how Jim Brown speaks much less masculinely than one might think ("not sayin he's a fag or nothin, just sayin") he was on his way to the elevator when he stopped and yelled back:

"Hey-- what part of Popeye never gets rusty?"
"I dunno, what?"
"THE PART HE PUTS IN OLIVE OIL!"

Best dude.

Andy Samberg: batting 1000.

I didn't see Hot Rod, but heard it was pretty good from fairly reliable sources, and I haven't actually watched Saturday Night Live in forever, but all the digital shorts I've seen so far have been pretty awesome. Well the most famous one, the Lazy Sunday one, kind of blows, but that's only when put up against the ridiculous amount of hype it picked up, and most of it was from people who probably like shitty comedy anyway. There's a new one up on the good old internet now, or at least new to me. If it's old news, write me about it saying what a big fat jerk I am and we can have a nice exchange where I think of new ways to suggest you stick your head up your ass.

Oh and my roommate Zach is somehow loosely-boyz with the dude from Maroon 5, who's in this video. He got to hang out backstage at a Maroon 5 concert (I know, I didn't realize they were still a band either) and get fucked up on champagne and whatnot. That's where the story ends, but I'm sure he ended up trying to have some kind of relations with one of the band members, only to be denied. While Zach was crying into his white wine spritzer, one of the roadies came by and picked up the pieces. If you know what I mean. I'm sure Zach will deny that but he'll be all "NOOOOOOO..." and not just "No", which is a dead give away. And if he gets too sassy about it, my other roommate Steve and I will bully him back into his room with the boxing gloves we're buying for exactly that purpose.

I guess I could have just said "awsum new video lolz" but somehow the above paragraph makes me feel like this post was slightly more valid. One.

Well now I know what it's really like to be a Mets fan.

Not that I was short on excuses to drink heavily already, here's another. Historic collapse, Glavine somehow transforming himself into a human tee for the Marlins to hit off of, and a team I forgot even existed (The Colorado Rockies? Seriously?) at least having a shot of getting in, with the Mets sitting home with their thumbs alternating between their collective mouths and asses. The only good that can come of this is hopefully Lastings Milledge is inspired to put out another album, full of examples of why the Phillies are all homosexuals in none-too-subtle terms.

On top of the Mets eating shit, I went 4-9 in both my NFL pools and got blown out in the head-to-head fantasy league. And, shockingly, after opening the pre-season with a win, the Bruins dropped all of the rest of their last 5 games, giving me further hope for new lows in awful seasons. But Cam was named VP, so at least that much went right.

To cheer myself up, I re-watched the following clips of Norm on The View. Highlight include "I'd have sex with YOU while you're awake!" I don't know if theres ever been someone I'm this dangerously close to wanting to abduct and force into my body through some kind of unproven scientific method involving skin stretching and full body transplanting. Cause, you know, he's funny.

Part 1





Part 2


Lastly, I've more or less given up on doing my comics blog as a freestanding thing. Trying to review every stupid comic I read every week, on top of the dozens of other little projects I make for myself, was just getting to be too much. Not in the sense that it's such a massive undertaking, but that if I'm going to cut something out in order to actually accomplish the others, this is going to be it. I'm not totally abandoning it, but instead of every issue every week, I'll just do a write up if I read something exceptionally awesome or exceptionally shitty, and I'll just post it here, rather than on a separate blog.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, the old posts from my comics blog are located HERE.

My only advice for the day is this: listen to "Pissed Jeans-Boring Girls", and realize how awesome a song can be with just one riff over and over again.