RIP, the King of Pop

I'm sure everyone is weighing in on the death of Michael Jackson, who passed earlier today of cardiac arrest in Los Angeles at the age of 50. Here are my thoughts.

As a kid, I was in a band. We called it Sookin Sinn, Russian for "son of a bitch," so said our awesome guitarist Jake, who would later play on Duran Duran and Collective Soul records, never mind being in a respectably successful funk-power-pop band of his own, Two Ton Shoe. They are loved in Korea. I'm not joking. Look it up. Our drummer Jason went on to play in the modifierS, the best god damned garage band this side of the Replacements, period. They played Lollapalooza at RFK Stadium in '95 and they rock. The rest of us went on to lives of passionate music appreciation. Pete (keys) is a doctor with a lovely wife and baby. Seth (vocals) owns and operates a high-end grocery in D.C. and also has a beautiful family. Me, I bitch a lot but my life is somewhere north of marvelous. The Sookin Sinn Alumni Club is a distinguished group of gentlemen, indeed. At our sixth grade graduation, we played "Beat It" which had been at the top of the charts for a few weeks and was absolutely the most enormous, galvanizing, if-you-live-on-Earth-you-hear-this-song-every-day-and-it's-your-favorite song of our short lifetime. Since then, I'll give you all the "Hey Ya"s and "Crazy"s you want, those songs are great and they were huge. But they were not Michael Jackson 1983 huge.

Say what you may about Michael Jackson. Certainly, he was a WEIRD guy. Fame causes ANYONE to either freak out or become a freak. Even the stars we think are normal, are not - they just have the right people around them managing their public image and protecting their privacy. Was he a pedophile? How can we know? He was never convicted, but then, as we've seen (refer to previous entry below) money can buy a guy outta anything. In this, the information age, if he was guilty, I'd suspect plenty of evidence would have leaked long ago. In the absence of anything tangible, I can't factor the notion into MJ's legacy. And so we turn to his artistic contribution, which has influenced not only popular music but also the cultural landscape of the world in which we live. As a pre-pubescent five year-old, he sang like an r&b journeyman. As an adult, he sang like a barely pubescent newcomer. As a singer and performer, Michael Jackson's musical catalog and cultural influence will go down alongside those of Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. Rest Well, you King of Pop.

Watch these now.

Jackson 5 - Ed Sullivan Show, 1970:


"Billie Jean" at the Motown 25th Anniversary Celebration:


Best Moonwalk Clip Ever:

American Justice v. 7.1

Chicago cop Anthony Abbate beat the crap out of a female bartender when she refused to serve him more alcohol, the whole thing was caught on tape, he pleaded self-defense, got 2 years probation and is appealing on the grounds that his sentence is unjust.

Cleveland Browns WR Donte' Stallworth killed a guy while driving drunk at 7am in his Bentley (he blew a .126 BAC, well above the legal limit of .08) and was sentenced to 30 days in jail (after writing a check with two commas to the victim's family).

A prostitute/junkie was hired by a john for sex and smack. She shot him up, he overdosed and died, she got sixteen years.

The guy who stole Lance Armstrong's bike was sentenced to 3 years in prison.

Mohr Hangover

No, I didn't drink a bunch of booze last night. I was sick, canceled my bi-weekly DJ gig because of it, took a late afternoon nap, got a pay-per-view movie (Taken - good flick) and stayed up late reading half of Jay Mohr's interesting and good book, Gasping For Airtime. I banged out the second half today at the dog park while Champ enjoyed a 2-hour game of "chase the other dogs." I'm admittedly a fan of both Jay Mohr and Saturday Night Live. If you know me, you know me as a stand-up fan. I won't issue a Top Ten here and now, but let's assume that Carlin, Pryor and Murphy are among The Ten. So is Jay Mohr - he's got great stuff, relevant, timely, real, open, no-holds-barred stuff. If you're even casually interested in Jay, SNL, or stand-up comedy, his book is a must-read. It's not simply a tell-all, absolutely not a tabloid bag of dirt, it's just one guy's account of two years as a Not Ready For Prime Time Player. And, my childhood friend Steve Lookner, who was a writer on the show for a couple years and was nice enough to bring me to an episode and after-party in February '94, gets some sweet ink.

The Hangover is currently in theaters and YOU BETTER GO SEE IT. I'd like to call this a Top Ten All-Time Comedy. As my cousin Paul (asshat) has previously dubbed me the King Of Hyperbole, I'll instead declare it The Best Comedy Since Wedding Crashers. This movie is unbelievably funny. I went alone and I suspect I'll go again once or twice more while it's still in theaters. The official website, chock full of trailers and info, can be found right here. Not sure where and when it's playing in your area? Visit your new friend, Mr. Movie Time and find out. Now you have no excuse. And, You're Welcome for both the movie tip and for the Mr. Movie Time link. Don't mention it. It's what I do, baby.

Golf is an impressive and demanding game of skill, concentration, focus, determination, and a host of other things. But it is not a sport. It just isn't physical enough - you only sweat because it's hot out and you're outdoors in sunny weather for a few hours. There just isn't enough injury risk - you can pull a muscle but only with the same risk associated with walking down the stairs or taking out the garbage. It doesn't require any reflex reaction - nothing is coming at you. There is no athletic interaction with your opponent - your opponent isn't forcing anything into your personal space. In order for me to consider it a sport, at least some of these items must be in place. Look, there's a reason only a handful of people are truly great at golf, and I respect the hell out of that. I could say the same of many other non-sport physical activities, like table tennis or power walking. The fact that ESPN gives it a lot of airtime is only a reflection of viewership demographics. After all, that network also gives airtime to poker. In my estimation, synchronized swimming and figure skating are closer to being sports than golf will ever be. Unless they add some kind of Terry Tate, Office Linebacker into the mix.

Caddyshack and
Happy Gilmore are awesome movies.


Rounders is also an awesome movie, but also not about sports.

Alaska is Retarded and the Supreme Court is Okay with That

In a New York Times article, it was announced today that the Supreme Court voted in favor of allowing Alaska to deny convicts the right to DNA testing to prove their innocence during the appeals process, even if the technology didn't exist during the original trial and even if the testing applies to new evidence post-trial. While the decision states “DNA testing has an unparalleled ability both to exonerate the wrongly convicted and to identify the guilty,” it also maintains that it is not so much up to the Federal courts as it is to the state legislatures to establish rules “to harness DNA’s power to prove innocence without unnecessarily overthrowing the established criminal justice system.”

Of course! Why on earth would we want to rely on scientific evidence with an infinitesimally small margin of error when we can keep more justice in the hands of how good a show the attorneys put on for the jury? [/sarcasm]

In related news, in an effort to not unnecessarily overthrow the previously established communications system, all phone lines, cell phone satellites, and electronic channels such as the Internet will be taken down to let the Pony Express do its thing.

Quoting the Times, Since 1992, 238 people in the United States, some who were sitting on death row, have been exonerated of crimes through DNA testing. In many of those cases, the DNA testing used to clear them was not available at the time of the crime.

The decision seems to have been made without much gravity, with the High Court figuring as Alaska is one of only four states denying convicts access to DNA testing - the other three being Alabama, Oklahoma, and Massachusetts - on a nationwide scale, not too many innocent convicts will rot in their cells while cheap, simple, accessible and uniquely precise evidence is out there to possibly exonerate or confirm guilt. With 46 states doing the right thing, maybe the Court wanted to level the playing field so the state-to-state balance between Fairness and Douchebaggery wouldn't be so slanted?

Here are the five a**holes who decided convicts should not have access to DNA testing in their appeals: Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence "okay, who put the pube in my coke?" Thomas, and Samuel A. Alito Jr. In shocking news, all five of these jerks are conservatives who were appointed to the Court by Reagan and the Bushes.

The four dissenters, who figured access to the most reliable, cheap and accessible scientific evidence might be a good thing, are: John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter. These four are known as the liberal wing of the Court.

I don't want to get all good guys / bad guys on you here, but I'm confidence you can do the math.

It can't be a coincidence that the Alaskan convict whose appeal inspired this decision is a scumbag who has heard the words "may the defendant please rise" before, or that the victim was a prostitute. If justice is in fact blind, none of that should matter, but I'm placing my chip on It Did Here. I guess if you're going to be wrongfully convicted, try and make sure you don't not do the crime in Alaska, 'bama, Massachusetts or the Sooner State.

Reading the Times article, as Bob Dylan once sang about another pig-circus, "Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game."

This one speaks for itself

Nostalgia, Baseball, etc.

A text-only edition of what's kickin' around between my ears:

Reminiscing... I've been DJing for 13-14 years now. In the beginning, we'd rent space in a Chicago high-rise. "We" means my brother Ed and cousin Paul, our buddy Fran and our buddy Seth. We called these occasions "Party in the Penthouse Suite" which was half of the top floor at 2800 N. Lakeshore Drive, the other half being the home of Hugh Hefner's daughter, Christine. We always invited her but she never stopped by. We'd stock the bar, make and pass out flyers, and charge no cover. Ed would get all the House of Blues people out and he'd tend the bar, sometimes walking across the bartop, pouring a bottle of pre-mixed shots down the throats of anyone who tilted their head back and opened wide. As a resident of the building, Seth got the room cheap and as a sports broadcast agent he knew a lot of people. Paul worked the room as a sort of party catalyst, and he knew all the smart kids from Northwestern through his job. Fran was Fran and no occasion is the same without him. He wandered around like Cosmo Kramer. And I'd play the music, which at the time meant toggling between two CD players with a regular hi-fi system and my cousin Tricia's huge speakers which she'd handed down to Paul - ah, the days when speakers were heavy furniture... These parties were packed, even in 40-below January weather, the kinds of parties people talked about for weeks after the fact. I'm happy now and I'm not interested in playing Monday Morning Quarterback with my life, as are Ed, Paul, Fran and Seth, but to coin a phrase... Those Were The Days. Nostalgia is a delicacy, best enjoyed in small doses, absolutely delightful when properly applied.

What else is on my mind? I've always loathed the "dear diary" style blogs but as I normally post when something is figuratively up my ass, every so often I'll post some random notes just to remind the Internet I'm still tickin'.

Prince - one of my favorite recording artists for enough reasons to justify another post on another day. But, I've got a bone to pick with one one of his most celebrated lyrics: "Electric word, Life, It means forever and that's a mighty long time." Look, Prince... I trust Webster - not the little kid from the t.v. show in the 80s, but the dictionary - and while they offer twenty definitions of the word, none of them come close to "forever."
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/life
Sorry, Prince, you done been schooled.

80s Nostalgia has lasted longer than the 80s did. I was 9-19 years old during that decade, i.e. my formative and young adolescent years, so I'm cool with it. Revisiting the popular culture of your youth is fun, but the real value here (for me, anyway) is that this trend has afforded me the benefit of discovering and enjoying many things I missed at the time, particularly music and film.

Best Buy commercials - the ones with the store employees in the foreground - why do they all have Jazz Hands? Annoying. I still like Best Buy, though. I just wonder, with Circuit City out of business, do these guys need to spend the dough on advertising? I mean, if Pepsi went under, wouldn't Coke roll back its ad budget? Best Buy - save your money, you're the only show in town now, it's all good.

Law & Order is an awesome show. I know I'm very late to this party, but to quote my brother after many shots at a Shane MacGowan show at the Metro in '95, "I'm not the smartest guy in the tree, but f**k you!" We know what it means, but we don't, and we digress... I prefer the Criminal Intent series with the delightfully bizarre Vincent D'Onofrio, but I also dig the series with Ice-T and The Belz. I can even stomach the series with Chris Noth, whose Mr. Big character in the most annoying show of all time raised the bar pretty high for me on a personal level. The current incarnation with the great Chris Meloni and Mariska Hargitay is about to end, unless the show will re-up with its lead actors, but it's unlikely. What a great franchise of television, and these shows are on several times every night on various channels. If you find yourself bored, this is the cure.

The Stanley Cup is the greatest and most meaningful championship award for its sport. Period. Same trophy, all these years. Every player on every winning team has his name engraved on it. May they never run out of room for the players' names.

Jonathon Papelbon was fined by the continually misguided Major League Baseball for "slow play" which would be called "delay of game" in other sports. Among the funnies here are:
1. Papelbon is among the few relief pitchers who actually RUNS from the bullpen to the infield, and his set-up is not long.
2. $1g? Pro ballplayers wipe their nuggets with thousand dollar bills. You want to change behavior? Do what the cops did to me last month and charge the equivalent of the average American's paycheck for driving 12 mph above the almighty speed limit. (not to WA State Patrol: I HATE YOU)
3. If MLB wants to start issuing these fines, they better start looking at the batters as well. I love Ichiro, but the dude takes longer than a commercial break to execute his ritual before every... single... pitch. Until some time in the 50s, there was a shot clock for hitters and pitchers like the one we know in basketball. If game length is important to you (it isn't to me), then bring that back.

I like the unpredictable nature of a ballgame's length. It's one of the things that makes the game what it is. It's chess and athletics with dashes of explosive heroics, impressive feats of physical skill, strategies and tactics. The game needs so much work in areas related to performance-enhancing chemicals, it kills me that a pitcher taking a couple seconds too long to throw a ball is accounting for any MLB attention. I'm sure the variable game length presents challenges to MLB's ad sales, but without delving into the matter I will assume on the record that figuring it out is an activity whose degree of complication resides far south of second-degree mathematics. So for cryin' out loud, guys, stop fining pitchers for taking too long, start defining your substance abuse policies and regulatory practices, because this nation of extraordinarily patient baseball fans just wants to start respecting the game again.

I'd similarly rant about the lack of a shot clock in golf, but as golf is not a sport, I don't give a s**t.

Honoring my text-only promise, get your (Fitzy's) Red Sox update here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTu-yDsuMhM

Aaaaaaaaaaaand... GFY.

Go, Favre, Away

Why won't football relic Brett Favre go away? He is one of the best ever, a thrilling, sandlot-style quarterback who has provided ESPN's SportsCenter with a seemingly endless reel of highlights. At 39, he can still be a serviceable, starting quarterback. Can he maintain a level of play long enough to lead a team into January? I say No, at least as much as his team would rely heavily on him after Turkey Day. Should a team pay the multi-million dollar, single-season fee for his services? I say No, but I guess it depends on what that team wants. If you estimate the incremental spike in box office and concessions revenue on your eight home games, plus whatever merchandising revenue comes with the #4 jersey sales will make Mr. Favre's salary a good investment, then I say go to town. I especially say "go to town" if you're convinced that the NFL is a "one-year league" as some sports journalists claim. Those claims are not without merit, as coaches and players in recent years have been fired, released, and traded at a record clip.

The Jets made the right choice by releasing Favre and drafting Mark Sanchez as their future QB. The odds of a #1 pick at QB becoming the future of the franchise are a well-documented long shot, but the odds of Favre being the future is a no-shot. This was not a particularly strong QB year in the draft, but the Jets had to do something and there weren't any young free agent quarterbacks available when they had to make their move.

So what's my point?

If you're Brett Favre, all you want to do is play, right? If it were that simple, I'd buy it. But it seems that at the end of each season, he intends to retire, then chooses to return, well after his team has made draft choices and trades (and the millions of bucks associated with those things) on the idea that he won't be there, well after his teammates have participated in team-organized off-season workouts, practices, pre-season activities and games. Essentially, he shows up just in time to glance at the playbook and walk onto the field for the season's first Prime Time Sunday.

Is yet ANOTHER Brett Favre return good for football? I say No, mostly because I like football and if football needs another late-coming, half-assed return from #4, then the game in a sordid state. And I watch enough football to know that is not the case.

Favre's return is said to be with the Minnesota Vikings. This turns my thoughts.

I AM SO GLAD THE BEARS GOT JAY CUTLER FROM THE BRONCOS - HE'S A FEROCIOUSLY TALENTED GAMER WHO GREW UP A BEAR FAN IN SOUTHERN INDIANA, A PROVEN COMMODITY AT THE AGE OF 25 - BEARS FANS, GET READY TO BE WATCHING THE MONSTERS OF THE MIDWAY WELL INTO JANUARY OF 2010...

As a Bears fan, I encourage his return. In the NFC North, as the Vikings QB he'll split with the Packers, sweep the Lions, and split with the Bears. The Bears will win the division by doing the same but sweeping the Packers. The NFC is stacked, and unless the Vikings can win the Division (they can't), their wildcard hopes are a pipedream.

Welcome back, Brett, you indecisive mother f***er!