A Very Special Blogpost

Sitcoms in the 1980's would occasionally do a "very special episode" which was code for "serious," like when Father Mulcahey did a tracheotomy, or when Tom Hanks played Alex P. Keaton's alcoholic uncle, or when Jessie Spano was so excited.

This post is along those lines.  My apologies in advance.

Almost eight years ago I opined that "we stand at the precipice of what's shaping up to be the most transparently corrupt four year stretch of our federal government's history."  We're now at a newer precipice that is simultaneously more transparent and more corrupt.  I could write at length about how crooked it will be when a major government contractor decides how the government will spend money but I have bigger concerns.

One of the key concepts that makes the oldest democracy in the world so great (despite some people saying it needs to be made great again, I think it's great and always has been) is the separation of powers.  Click on that link to the Library of Congress website, they have a nice short summary of the doctrine.  I'll wait for you.

You're back!  You now know that the Founders separated government powers to avoid a monarchy and preserve individual liberty.  You also now know that one of the key separated powers is the appointment of federal officers--the president picks them but the Senate approves them.  This prevents the president from putting unqualified cronies and lickspittles in positions of power.

President-elect Trump recently twat from his fugazi Twitter platform that he wants to avoid Senate approval for his cabinet picks, and that the next Senate majority leader must agree.  Predictably, the three clowns senators vying to be the Senate leader practically tripped over themselves in a rush to acquiesce to Trump's demand.

This is really bad.  It's so bad that National Review's Ed Whelan says it's bad.  We are watching Trump aggregate a separated power of the Senate unto the Presidency before he's even sworn in, and no one plans to stop him.  It's only going to get worse once he's back in the Oval Office.

The worst way it gets worse is Trump's pick of Matt Gaetz for Attorney General.  All of Trump's picks so far are stars of the MAGA extended cinematic universe.  I don't know if this is because Trump's Diet-Coke-and-Big-Mac addled brain can only come up with people he sees on Fox News, or if it's red meat for his cult base, or both.  They're all bad in their own unique ways but Gaetz terrifies me.

Gaetz was not selected for his legal experience or acumen.  He apparently practiced for nine or ten years, and six of those years coincided with his time in the Florida House so I doubt he was billing 2000 hours a year.  Wikipedia says that after graduating from Marshall-Wythe he was at AnchorsGordon, a nine person shop in northwestern Florida.  I am not being an elitist when I say this is not the right resume for the person tasked with leading 10,000 lawyers, the FBI, DEA, OIG, ATF, INTERPOL, and lots of other important stuff.

Gaetz got this job because he'll do whatever Trump wants--he's one of the aforementioned unqualified cronies and lickspittles.  And what Trump wants is to use the police power of the federal government to harass and maybe even imprison people who opposed him.  Once that becomes the new norm there will be no opposition because all dissenters will be gagged or too scared to say anything.  Can you think of any reason why Gaetz wouldn't do this?  Why he wouldn't do this gleefully?  You don't think that if all the AUSAs of good conscience resign when asked to corruptly investigate or indict Trump's enemies, a glut of mini-Gaetzes won't rise up to take those jobs?

I can deal with the head of hair at DoD, the doge assassin at DHS and Pat Summerall's kid as CoS.  But I fear that Gaetz as AG is the beginning of the end of the world's oldest democracy.

And now back to your regularly scheduled dipshittery.

Utter Dipshittery, and Brilliant

This amuses me.

Happy Stupid Saturday

Life at the Cracker Factory has been downright draining over the past several weeks. I'm on the horns of a personnel dilemma that feels a lot like a no-win situation. I'm hoping to drink a lot this weekend and by doing so experience so sort of epiphany.

I did get a bit of a stress release from watching something so profoundly stupid and silly that it made my sides hurt from laughter. So I thought it would share it to lower the level of discourse here. [Not entirely sure that's possible.] It's a TikTok thing called the Ceiling Fan Water Bottle Challenge. Even the name is stupid.

Returning soon with an actual thoughtful post that's been a long time coming. But for now, dipshittery!

TR is Getting a Tesla

Autoblow is real. I think it's also a real bad idea.



You'll clearly be too distracted to avoid an accident. If you get in an accident will you have a "World According to Garp" situation?

Doesn't this make a mess? How do you clean it? How do you get out of it without soiling your car?

Doesn't everyone know what's going on when they see you carrying it in and out of the car? You obviously can't keep it in the car for everyone to see.

This explains TR's sudden interest in getting a Tesla though. Also in TR's wheelhouse, the same company sells prostate massagers.

The only way to make this more on-brand would be to add muppets

Life. Celebrated Daily.

I was ready to simply comment this on the latest "Sentence" of Dave, the one where he concludes:

I remain optimistic that people are not as stupid and narrow-minded as the folks representing them in our government right now.

Here's what I typed in reply:

People ARE that stupid. And somehow the right has decided to capitalize completely on their ignorance.

I credit the shrewdness of the plan to convince millions of simple Americans to flush their better interests away in the name of egregious hypocrisy, hubris, and hatred. It's clever, and it's working. I just can't stomach the hideous lack of human decency.

And because of that, I instinctively avoid these articles and podcasts. Can't do 'em. They make my neck and back ache almost immediately when I read them. Stomach acid starts bubbling. Instant hypertension, and it's not these scholars' and crusaders' faults, but that's what happens.

I'm sorry to put my head in the sand when civic atrocities are occurring daily, but it's a survival mechanism. I need to go to the Outer Banks, hit our favorite spot, and watch surf videos while listening to reggae and eating fish tacos.

And there it is.  More and more I am involved in civic leadership groups and roles in my hometown, but more and more I have to put national, international, and sometime state issues on a mental shelf.  That's a challenge when even around my town, or in any pocket of the parachute pants known as social media, I quietly bear witness to daily, logic-dashing emanations attacking intelligence and factual integrity in contemporary revivals of The Emperor's New Clothes all because of America's version of Brewmeister Smith and his skating minions.

I get frustrated with people's fixed alignment with patently faulty logic.  That's an enormous understatement, I'd say.  I've had major relationships crumble because of this scenario.  If people want to quietly hold opinions dear that make no sense and serve as self-sodomy, that's fine.  I will, sometimes very unfairly, quietly judge them to be morons.

When people make grand proclamations of ass-backwards, stupefyingly stupid nonsense and then look at me like I'm the asshole, though, that's more than I can bear.  And I'm aggressively non-confrontational -- not only am I a pacifistic "can't we all just get along" wiener who couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag, but also when I know I won't have the slightest opinion-altering impact on sputtering nitwits, I arrogantly won't deign to speak to such people about a topic of which they just demonstrated a grasp that's equivalent to mine on greased trigonometry in marriage -- so I won't do anything at all, instead turning my attention to lighter fare and more easily achieved smiles. (Dave, that "sentence" was for you.)

My city's slogan is "Life. Celebrated Daily."  Doesn't get much lighter fare than that, but that's about perfect for me.  I am so painfully obviously ill-equipped to process and deal with a world where logic gets stuffed in the glove box and puffed-up insecurity posing as patriotism is behind the wheel, I'm guilty of being a quitter.  A non-participant.  An ostrich among eagles, condors, and vultures.

You could do worse than to have your worldview imbued by the teachings of His Holiness the Gheorghe Carlin.  One of the bits that always sticks with me is his take on the disparity in license plate messages between New Hampshire and Idaho.  Check out the first 2 minutes of this segment:

Yep.  That's about right.  But in a way I'm both; I'm gonna live free; I'm gonna revel in silly stuff like goofy slogans, stand-up comedy, blogging like a clown, and eating some famous potatoes; and then I'm gonna die.  Hopefully as happy as I am right now, not blissfully ignorant but removed enough from the fray that my glass stays half-full.  (At intervals before my man Tortuga's Sean fills it back up.)

I will close with my favorite slogan 'round these parts:

Now back to your regularly scheduled dipshittery.

Hair of the Dog that Bit Me, Lloyd

Moving right along, people.  This is your regularly scheduled dipshittery.

So I went to a work luncheon the other day, and one of the sponsors was a construction company.  Among other marketing tactics, the company appeals to prospective buyers through a lovable looking animal, presumably to soften the image of an industry not known for lovability.  (See Poltergiest or Lethal Weapon 3, among others.)  So they have a retriever named Linus who wears a construction hat and poses for photos.  Cute.  Harmless.

Except this was the picture they had on enormous display at the event.

What do you think of when you think of "Overlook"?  Does anyone else instantly think of the Overlook Hotel?

If you do, you know there isn't much lovable about it.  Family murders, elevators filled with blood, a hotel coming to grisly life and creating gory death.  I couldn't stop thinking that this was a terrible choice, especially written in what could pass for blood.  It's one backwards R from being intentional.

Just glad it wasn't Lot 237.



Just me???  Probably.  All work and no play makes Clarence a dull boy.

Boston Keg Party

As a non-partisan and deeply unserious blog, we have no interest in a discussion of the various causes of the ongoing shutdown of the Federal Government. So you won't find any commentary on the abject lunacy of the wingnut rump of the GOP here. (Though, if we think about it, dipshittery is a subject with which we have some expertise.) In fact, we would've been perfectly content to ignore the entire moronic freakshow.

But then they came for our beer.

As a result of the shutdown, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Board (TTB), a small agency within the Treasury Department, has seen its staffing significantly reduced. Among other things, the TTB processes applications for new breweries, recipes and labels. And now, it can't do any of that.

Swill-drinking mouth-breathers (this is definitely NOT a place for a parenthetical joke about correlation between Budweiser consumption and Tea Party leanings, and I wouldn't think of implying such a thing), will be unaffected by the TTB's effective closure, as mass-market brewers will still produce and distribute their standard products. But America's craft brewers, who routinely bring new seasonal and one-off products to market, are unable to do so without the TTB's approval.

Lagunitas Chief Operating Officer Todd Stevenson was quoted by the Boston Globe in a story on the issue. Per the Globe, "He said the company was planning to submit an application to package its autumn seasonal Hairy Eyeball in 22-ounce bottles instead of 12-ounce bottles but can’t move forward."

I hope you'll all join me this weekend in stocking up on your favorite craft brew and then depleting said stock. It's the least you can do for America.

Copenhagen: It's More than Just Danish and Dip

If you paid close attention to the comments last week you might recall that I went to Copenhagen for a few days. At rob's insistence I've posted up this post in which I conclude that Copenhagen gets it done.

The flight from the eastern US to Copenhagen is painfully long and expensive. My pain was partially assuaged by the beautiful stewardesses on my Scandinavian Airlines flight. If you go be sure to fly SAS. Sure, one of the plane's landing sensors broke on the way there, necessitating a landing in sunny Gotesburg Sweden to get it fixed before we could land in foggy Copenhagen, and the plane that was supposed to take me home broke so thoroughly that I had to wait 2 hours for a replacement plane to arrive from China ... but the women of SAS make the risk worthwhile.

Beautiful women are a theme in Copenhagen. Even with my detour through Sweden I arrived at my hotel 5 hours before my room was ready, which gave me time to roam the streets and absorb the sights. Everyone gets around on bicycle in Copenhagen, so everyone no one is fat and all the women have toned legs. The locals are genetically blessed with flawless skin, blond hair, long legs, and straight teeth. The time spent biking in the sun gives them all a uniform tawny sheen. Remarkably, none freckles or moles, just evenly bronzed dermis all around. I got a leisurely lunch of steak and fries at an outdoor café, drinking beer in the sun and watching relentless streams of perfect blond girls pedal by. They were so abundant that you could start a Tumblr as specific as "pretty blonds with braided ponytails and blue skirts on bicycles" or "pretty girls with platinum blond hair wearing green adidas on bicycles" or "pretty girls with sandy blond hair carrying a guitar on a Cannondale" and get three entries every two minutes.

One of my colleagues noted that if he wasn't married he wouldn't leave. And I think he was serious. Another colleague immediately agreed and I guarantee that guy wasn't joking. If you know any young guys who are deciding what to do after they graduate from college, you're doing them a disservice if you don't tell them to backpack through Denmark. You have to see it to believe it. All 7's and above, and based solely on the sounds coming from the room next to mine they engage in robust and vocally demonstrative coitus. And no, I didn't take any pictures of ladies, despite rob's insistence. I'm not that creepy. Our distaff readers will also like to hear that the men in Denmark are similarly blond, tall, fit, tanned, and plentiful. I just didn't pay as much attention to them.

After the shock of the transition from the women in Newark to the women in Denmark wore off, I realized that Copenhagen felt like home. The cobblestones and bicyclists remind me of Nantucket and I wound up in a touristy area much like Downtown Crossing. Also quite Bostonian was the juxtaposition of old and new architecture with the ocean as an omnipresent backdrop:

Then I saw this:

That's right, Copenhagen has a Dubliner! I fit right in. I also fit right in because I visited in the middle of a schmuck-fest. Seriously, here's what I got with my lunch menu:

I think Copenhagen would be a better venue for a schmuck-off than a schmuck-fest, especially given the quality of the women and this "slutspurt" store:

But I'll let the Danes sort that out. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many men carry dip and the breakfast pastries were outstanding. I sampled many and here's my favorite, an apricot confection coated with previously unencountered delicious seeds:

Also excellent was the smoked salmon, which I ate on multiple occasions and which was always impressive. All other foods were made out of cow and they were not as impressive.

Copenhagen was a bit lacking musically. I should have done this, at a minimum for purposes of this post, but I didn't. Instead I went to a record store where they sold actual records. The first one I saw was, natch, this:

You can take the boy out of Teaneck ... anyway, the track listing on this set is impressive:

Less impressive was the rest of the store and its inordinate focus on metal:

In case you're curious, here's the #1 album in Denmark as of last week:

I did my due diligence on Denmark in Denmark and learned that the most famous Danish musical act is ... Aqua! "Who the fuck is Aqua?" you ask! This is Aqua:



Probably not up your alley. Also from Denmark and just as unbearable: Volbeat!



I'd wager that some of you enjoyed that jam; it might even be TR's ringtone. Somewhere in the middle is up-and-comer Carpark North:



Not exactly my kind of thing but it could have some mass appeal in the bland hinterlands of northern Virginia.

If you need one more reason to go to Denmark ... they love cosplay.

So there you have it, a ringing endorsement of all things Danish from the grumpiest guy you know.

A belated birthday to the zman

Now back to our regularly scheduled dipshittery...

It appears we failed to celebrate the birthday of my (faux) radio partner in crime. Luckily, even off the air, the zman and his crazy zantics never end, so we have this celebration footage to share with you, our loyal readers:

Too Much Time On My Hands (Not the Styx song)

Now that the Oscars have come and gone, it's time to saddle up and watch some movie trailers for what's coming next.  We've assembled some previews -- some you've seen, some you haven't.  Enjoy.

I don't want to frighten you folks early in the morning, but this trailer looks really, really scary.  Hollyfeld is a bad man.



Okay, stupid fun.  



And then there's this:

When Harry Met Sally 2 with Billy Crystal & Helen Mirren from Billy Crystal

This one's for Geoff:



Really only good for the NSFW last line:


And the mother of them all:


Okay, so the Real Genius one started it all, and let's face it, this is a glorified comment link, but . . .

Postcount!!

GheorgheFest: A Story in Pictures

Gheorghe Muresan is 7'7" and 340 pounds. It's hard to imagine what that means until you actually see the man in person. And thanks to the Washington Wizards' dismal season and a well-placed FoG:TB, we got to do just that this weekend.

Worlds collided in a most improbably excellent way, as the far-flung G:TB community came together in the presence of Gheorghe: The Man for an evening of hilarity and unabashed fanboy glee. The sad sack Wizards recently offered deep discounts on luxury suites, kicking in a hefty food and beverage credit, free hats, and a visit from team ambassador Gheorghe Muresan. Our Doofus Overlord's pending nuptials gave us ample excuse for a gathering, and our friend and contributor Shlara reached out to her connections with the Wizards' management to nail the final details.

I confess to a degree of nervousness about the whole affair. I wasn't worried about anything we would do - despite our frequent bluster, we're a generally harmless bunch (the bouncer at Iron Horse may dispute this in the case of Marls). More to the point, though, I didn't want to ruin the image of Gheorghe I'd built up in my head over the years. The entire point of this blog has been to celebrate the joy and silliness in sports and life, based on our perception of a guy we'd seen on television. Shlara's known the big man for a long time, and I trusted her when she told us that he's a prince, but what if we got him on an off night? What if he disappointed us? What if Gheorghe was a standoffish dick? I really didn't want to rename this space Bryce: The Blog, or come up with a new slogan.

In the end, though, those worries were more than unfounded; they were absurd. From the moment Gheorghe entered our suite (and Oh. My. God. He is a mountainous human, broad in addition to tall, as the pictures in this post attest.) he was gracious, funny, kind, and generous. He patiently answered our questions about things serious and goofy, he cracked wise about his skill and grace, he talked about the game, his children, and all manner of other things. He seemed genuinely amused by our fondness for him (and took pictures of both the "GheorgheFest" banner Shlara made for the occasion and the cupcakes emblazoned with '77' that Teejay's fiance baked for us). He's a massive, enormous, prince of a guy.

As a result of combination of our age and the volumes of alcohol we consumed over an evening that didn't end for some of us until 3:30 in the morning, there are a few parts of the evening that we won't likely remember all that well. The 30 some-odd minutes we spent with Gheorghe are something we won't likely ever forget.

"No, Dave, you can't try to post me up."

Stairsteps

Yes, that shirt does read "now back to your regularly scheduled dipshittery"

 

Shlara and Ghita

Can't wait for GheorgheFest II.

Special Bonus Dipshittery:

Gheorghe wasn't the only celebrity we hung out with last night. To wit:

Welcome to the Neighborhood

Taking a break from all our worries about what to get Rob for his birthday today (Teej has some Skymall selections for us), I thought I'd add to the anticipation . . .

In less than an hour, Bill Simmons (née Boston Sports Guy, suivi de Sports Guy) unveils his heavily – but perhaps appropriately – hyped new endeavor Grantland. It’s a website independent of, or at least adjacent to ESPN, but one ostensibly still steeped in sportswriting, as evidenced by the moniker; Grantland refers to Grantland Rice, the hallowed sportswriter of three generations ago. The press release indicates a broader scope, however, a “sports and pop culture web site” “with a mix of original columns, long-form features, blog posts, and podcasts.” Huh . . . sounds like a little website I know.

Okay, so it sounds like what 10,000 homegrown blogs and sites aspire to be, a forum for high-minded thought veiled in tongue-in-cheek humor that transcends sportswriting into limitless topics of interest. Somehow, though, the internet has become littered with pseudo-literati waxing indignant at the trifles within their reality (or in a reality show), tilting at windbags, and splashing together liberal arts alliteration and juvenile toilet humor like they were vinegar and water in mad railings against pop culture giants that reek of day-old hypocrisy doughnuts. Case in frickin’ point.

In truth, the only time you’ll find something truly original amid the html-ting pot these days is when some lunatic transcribes the insane, idle ideas that ricochet through his grey matter like Benoit balls in your mother’s attic, and we get Tourette’s-style renditions of chronicles of taco eating, updates on quests for salamanders, Cliffs Notes on acid, hilarious inside jokes from a NJ English department, cute tales of two precocious little boys, and recorded songs fixated on the anal sex scene from Deliverance. “Unique” is misapplied nearly often enough these days to warrant some blowhard dedicating a blog post to expressions like it, but there are still one-of-a-kind places out there in the ‘sphere. Grantland, however, is probably not one.

What it may possibly be, however, is the apex of its ilk. Some of you know by now that my obnoxious bloggings have tended to take the piss out of Bill Simmons and his online works (unbeknownst to him, of course); most of you can figure out that’s predominantly because I am thoroughly jealous of him and the job he has earned the right to do every day. I will probably continue to put too fine a point on it, calling him SportGuy for his limited breadth of interest and understanding in certain pockets of the sporting universe. I will probably continue to hear Wyatt from Weird Science every time he speaks. And I will probably continue to casually dismiss most of his new projects, even as I tout the 30 for 30 series as one of the most enthralling recurring segments on TV, the Know Your Minor League Mascot of cable television, if you will.

Not this time, Biff. Not this time. ESPN’s fondness for doling out enormous amounts of melodramatic pre-event build-up on a regular basis usually evokes my ambivalence; truly, they sound like the radio spots for my local furniture outlet before the Memorial Day sale, and they garner the same amount of enthusiasm from me. This time, however, it’s been a little bit different.

For one, there’s the name. No, it’s not an amalgam of where the Keaton kids went to college. When I first read about Grantland, I thought, “Grantland Rice?” Really, it’s true. As much as I’d like to claim a vast knowledge of the late Mr. Rice’s journalistic or literary accomplishments, I don’t think I’ve ever read a piece of his in its entirety. I don’t know very much about him. I only know one quote:

"For when the One Great Scorer comes
To write against your name,
He marks - not that you won or lost -
But how you played the Game."

I know this because I spent every summer from 1980-1989 deep in the Shenandoah Valley at a place called Camp Virginia. It’s an awesome boys’ camp steeped in tradition, and it’s where I learned everything from how to throw a curveball to how to get shot down by girls at the dance. In my time there I ate rattlesnake, I won the Malcolm U. Pitt Baseball Award (my proud mention of this flies directly in the face of the quote), and I learned that navigating the winding roads through the Goshen Pass after visiting a handful of Lexington bars is a terrible, terrible idea. More than just about anything else, I learned that Grantland Rice passage. It was (still is) painted on an old piece of wood hanging on the wall in the mess hall; our three squares were always accompanied by its message. A quick visit to the Camp VA website today reminded me that it’s still a big part of the lessons of gratitude, humility, and sportsmanship that permeate the summer. This graphic is from the main page (see the top right corner).


Grantland.com has chosen not only to borrow its name from the man who gave us the quote, but – at least thus far, in “Coming Soon” status – to embed the quote in its main page logo. It will be interesting to see whether, and how, its message remains imbued in the offerings from Grantland. In a venture like this, there’s not a lot of winning and losing inherently incorporated. Seems like a different tagline might have been more appropriate . . . maybe . . . maybe, with the sports media world so aggressively self-important and non-ironic these days, something about taking ourselves less seriously would fit the bill?

The masthead impresses, with names like Klosterman and Gladwell, among many others, and with priors like the WSJ, NYT, GQ, and J’sW all over the staff’s collective curriculum vitae. How they play the game will dictate whether this is an instance of “we didn’t invent it, we just perfected it” or simply yet another road stop on the information superhighway where we can find insights and insults on SEC football, Mayer Hawthorne, news of the weird, Monty Python, feats of eating, LeBron James, vajazzling, Live Aid, political gaffes, baseball card collections, cereal mascots, crystal meth, Andre Agassi, Mike Love, state fairs, the Fighting Wrens, Alfonso Ribeiro shirtless, Gheorghe Muresan, and rapping muppets. Here’s looking forward to their regularly scheduled dipshittery.

Best of luck, Grantland, and don’t steal our stuff.

And now back to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress...

We have a "Fashion is dumb" reader submission for your viewing pleasure today.  Im not even sure where to begin wtih this one...

And here's a bonus entry I uncovered this morning. It was screaming to be included/mocked: