Best day ever

IT’S MUTHERFUCKING OPENING DAY!!! If you can’t tell, I’m a little bit excited about the start of the baseball season. Yes, technically, my team opened the season last week against the Red Sox in Japan, but that doesn’t count because I don’t like Asians. This is the real opening day. Already the Giants are getting killed and the Yankees were rained out, so things are going well. I myself paid $40 for an upper-deck ticket to go see (alone, mind you) Roy Oswalt and Jake Peavy face off to start the season. I bought my scorebook Saturday. I am excited.

I like sports. A lot. I’ll watch most of them, and March Madness, though overall pretty predictable, has had its moments this year (thanks to West Kentucky, Davidson, and Duke (fuck you, Duke)). But I didn’t even write about the NCAA tournament, because I’ve been so excited for baseball to start. Baseball, regardless of any loss in popularity or steroid scandals or what have you, is truly our nation’s game. It’s steeped in tradition and lore, and it’s impossible not to speak of Babe Ruth or Ted Williams or Sandy Koufax without a certain reverence in your voice. Baseball is our history, and these players are our national heroes.

Baseball, for all the problems inherent to today’s game (beginning with, but not limited to, the designated hitter, interleague play, Bud Selig, no salary caps, the Players’ Union, the owners, and prices), is that which can bind a nation through nostalgia and good, clean fun. When taken at its most elementary level, it is still a game. It’s meant to be enjoyed, no strings attached. And as the season starts up again, and we make our predictions and talk serious shop about who’s got a shot at what, we’re reconnected with the times our dads took us to see our favorite player and the times that guy hit that home run when we were six and it was awesome. And that’s just not something you get out of football.

So get amped. Get pumped. Cheer loud. It’ll be gone way too soon.

80k seems like a lot of money for poon

So we all know about (now former) New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's resignation for (allegedly!) spending eighty thousand dollars on hookers. Awesome. Totally awesome. Wonkette has a link to show you what eighty g's will get you in (I'm assuming golden) vagina. Also the specific girl from the specific rendezvous that broke the whole story. To be honest, after studying and studying and studying the pictures, as well as all the research into the sex trade I must undertake to truly call myself a semi-monthly blogger, I'm just not sure it's worth the money. Of course, I have never visited a prostitute, so maybe there's some big secret I don't know about how paying for sex is totally a good idea. And I certainly have never visited a $4,300 prostitute, so I can only imagine what luxury awaits inside those assumed-majestic halls, to use a vaguely sexual metaphor (assumed-majestic = expensive; halls = pootietang). I feel like, to someone like me, a really really expensive hooker holds a lot of the mystery and intrigue that the women's restroom has. Seriously, ladies. We imagine gold toilets, paper made of the finest silk linens, big-screen televisions, the works. At least less urine on the floor than we have. I'm sorry. We were talking about hookers.

But I was wondering what I might spend $80,000 on, if I weren't inclined to sample the finest whores the East Coast has to offer. I made a list. I also had help from a friend.

• 3,750 copies of Fugazi’s Instrument DVD with 2,000 copies of the soundtrack online
• 65,128 boxes of Annie’s mac and cheese at Target, not on sale
• A MacBook Air, 50 of the 160GB iPods (enough to store 2 million songs), 50 dock stations that plug each iPod into a speaker/alarm clock setup, a Louis Vuitton luggage set to carry it all in, and enough money to buy 67,129 songs off of iTunes to fill up all that stuff
• 400 autographed “Bo Knows” posters
• A subscription to Newsweek for the next 4,102 and a half years
• Just a whole bunch of blow
• Full season ticket package (all games) for a field level seat for the Oakland A’s for the next 33 year
• A 3 bedroom, 1 bath, 1088 Sq. Ft. home in Shelby, Indiana
• 150,000 Oh Boy! Oberto spicy beef jerky sticks
• A hit out on Bono
• 3200 hair cuts
• A hysterectomy
• 533,333 "American Idol" votes (standard text messaging rates apply)
• 8000 hand jobs at Penn Station
• 53 Miada M’s from 1994 in Valencia off craigslist
• 612,000 gallons of Tang (the drink, perverts)

Join in on the fun! What else would you spend $80,000 on instead of getting your knob polished?

Thom Yorke gets too specific

I like Radiohead quite a bit. I have at least one Radiohead bootleg, and at least one import EP. I bought that new album, In Rainbows, in that online download deal, as well as the hard copy. I know there are plenty of detractors out there (scroll down to The Arts), but I find their music gorgeous. Especially as the albums kept getting slightly more experimental, I found myself more and more drawn to the band.

I like Radiohead either in spite of, or because of, the fact I have no idea what Thom Yorke is ever talking about. In fact, I heard a rumor that the lyrics for at least one of the songs off Kid A (I want to say "Morning Bell" after doing some quick Wikipedia research) was written by pulling phrases out of a hat. There's something about chickens in "Paranoid Android," and I don't have a fucking clue what it has to do with anything. But Yorke's vocals are often more important when viewed as wonderfully beautiful accompaniments to the music, almost as if used as another instrument (cf: "Let Down" and "How to Disappear Completely").

When In Rainbows came out, I wasn't drawn to it immediately. Everyone, or at least the three people I heard talk about it, said that the album was a return to the more "rocking" Radiohead. Which I have very little use for. I rarely listen to the earlier albums, and I actually don't care for "Just." Sorry. But after a half dozen or so listens, the album finally clicked for me, and I realized its awesomeness. I didn't even mind that the lyrics are less vague and more immediately accessible than the more recent albums, thus placing more emphasis on the words spoken as opposed to the melody produced.

Except for one song. "House of Cards." Big Problems with "House of Cards." From listening to the lyrics, the song's about Yorke trying to sleep with his friend's wife at a key party. You know, like they had in the 70's. Good times. Anyway, the lyrics are a little unsettling for a few reasons. Here's a snippet:

I don't want to be your friend
I just want to be your lover
No matter how it ends
No matter how it starts
...
Throw your keys in the bowl
Kiss your husband goodnight
Forget about your house of cards
And I'll do mine

I don't care for songs that that are quite so blatant. Lyrics such as "I wanna lube you up and sex you down," or something to that effect, always make me feel uncomfortable when I hear them, regardless of the source. And coming from someone who often has lyrics as esoteric as, "Ice age coming, Let me hear both sides, Ice age coming, Throw them in the fire," the intimacy he forces on us is all the more jarring.

And let's not forget this is Thom Yorke. In case you have no idea, here he is:


That's right. The man singing about how he wants to fuck you, even though you're married, is the retarded man's Clay Aiken. The imagery alone we all just experienced made you jealous of Helen Keller, didn't it. So please, Thom, let's go back to the lyrics where we're creeped out by you because you're singing in a way that makes us existentially scared, and not because you're singing about what would most likely be the most awkward sex ever. Kthxbye!