Starving

Slow news day. And it's Saturday. And since it's so close to football season, I just can't be angry. But I can be hawngry.

Florida Update: Still Scary

So this exists: 

no cameras, dude

And it exists because this exist: 

Where there are not only prehistoric looking bugs that attack you, but also outdoor activities: 

I realize I'm from Alabama, but sweet Sam Elliott's eyebrows, Florida, you're terrifying. I can deal with your leathery locals and your awful public education and your absolute refusal to see a meat and three as a profitable lunch option (fucking idiots) and your 80's sports teams relevance and their still tacky uniforms. I really love your beaches, and Miami Vice, and the adorable claim that you're "diff'rent from you other southerners." 

But you are not safe, my friend. Not by a long shot. Wolf spiders and black widows and recluses and gators and snakes that are native and other snakes that you bought at an exotic pet store then released into the wild and now they're all breeding and making SUPER ULTRA MEGA MEGA SNAKES! Not to mention hurricanes and tornados and thunderstorms that often feel like hurricanes and tornados and now this bug. 

THIS BUG THAT CHASED ME INSIDE WITH ITS MANDIBLES OF RAGE.  

NBC is getting its Costas all over America

Remember NBC? It's where we were all really American for a couple of weeks during the Olympics. You were there. I saw you at the bar and you said, "Who's winning?" And since I couldn't have comprehended the rules if NASA was sitting at my fucking table I told you I didn't know. Par for the course (golf reference! NBC LOVES GOLF!), considering Americans don't know a whole hell of a lot. 

But we know one thing: NBC was once relevant and awesome and must see t.v.: Cosby, Cheers, Night Court, 227, Miami Vice, A Different World, Family Ties, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, L.A. Law, Hill Street Blues, and E.R., at least until Clooney bounced. Even with all of these gems NBC's greatest accomplishment was that iconic slice of Americana---Saturday Night's Main Event. 

It was the 80's, and a couple years in the 90's, and it was wrasslin', and it was cage matches and scaffold matches, and open steroid use, and outrageous managers, and Koko B. Ware, and Fuck. The. World. It was the best. Total spectacle. 

Saturday Night's Main Event didn't happen every Saturday. Sometimes it was once a month. Sometimes three months would pass until another aired. Once, there were two in one month and I thought my 10 year old brain would explode into Capri Sun pouches and dirty playing cards. A glorious time, truly. 

Twenty years and a treasure trove of bad decisions later (Notre Dame football, anyone?) NBC is peddling a new sports network. They're calling it NBCSN. The SN stands for ShitNoodle. Just kidding. It's SailorNookie. What will NBCSN give us? How about Major League Soccer? Intrigued? Well hold on to your binky! They'll also cover motor racing*, cycling, boxing**, horse racing***, and hunting and fishing****. Still not blown away? There's also a sports talk show hosted by Bob Costas! Get the towel, Betty! I seem to have  made a mess!

The one good part of NBCSN is their coverage of the NHL, which thanks to my friends from the Northeast, I've grown to love. Hockey is badass. Don't worry, loyal NBC viewers, they're still covering Notre Dame football. Only now their couching it in the phrase "college football." IT'S NOT. It's Notre Dame playing the Service Academies where all the players on both squads weigh 95 lbs and then they'll play USC and ten people will show up because their kids play for Notre Dame or USC and USC will monkey-stomp the living shit out of Touchdown Jesus and NBC's announcers will say, "This USC team is FOR REAL!" No, they're not. They just beat the dormitory from Cider House Rules. Fuck you, Notre Dame. 

I'm all for someone challenging ESPN. But not Costas and the Private School Peonies. In fact, hockey deserves better. I'm looking at you, CBS. Could there be a tougher network than the one responsible for SEC football and the NHL? You couldn't even watch commercials on that channel without getting two black eyes. Make it happen. Don't get Costas all over the ice. PLEASE. 

*Motor racing? Motors on what? Motorcycles? Motorized Costas dolls? 

**Just stop with boxing. Suspend it until it's cleaned up. Did you watch the Olympics? Boxing is dirtier than a Raiders fan at HOOTERS. 

***Maybe the Prince and Princess will show up, just like the Olympics! Then we can talk about what designer she's wearing! Then Ralph Lauren will ride in with a broadsword and behead children of the lower classes!

****Unless you're hunting Costas and using meat from his torso as shark bait NO ONE WILL CARE. 

Nice Work, Australia

Warning Label

I'm a smoker. Not proud of it. Not ashamed of it, either. I just am. Like people are L.A.R.P.ers or listen to Katy Perry or love the Cowboys. 

Just like those people I'd really like to quit. Smoking. I have tried to quit a time or six. Usually my smoking is replaced with something--I exercise more, or try to write something each time I get the urge to light up, or I picture someone from Arkansas. So far nothing has worked. But this might. It's called "plain-packaging," and it's a graphic warning of tobacco's long-term effects. Turns out when Australians aren't using other Australians to chum the water for great white sharks, they're passing cool legislation. Who knew? 

Granted, I wasn't turned on to cigarettes because of any label or magazine ad or television commercial or movie star. Nope. I was at the bottom of a Wild Irish Rose bottle in high school and thought, "nothing can be worse than this." Of course I was wrong. But I liked the taste of a cigarette, the ritual of it. At no time did I see a pack of cigarettes and say, "those look harmless" or "what gorgeous packaging!" 

Don't think I mean to defend Big Tobacco. Tobacco companies and their supporters are full of shit. "It'll mean more non-plain packaged smokes on the black market," they say, "more children will be smoking!" Horsedicks. If they could drop a CAMEL down every pregnant woman's throat just to get that fetal demographic they'd do it. I'd be much happier if cigarettes just didn't exist. Same goes for cockroaches, Tim Burton, country clubs, Miller 64, True Blood, and the Dallas Cowboys. 

Another badass Australian thing.

Do I want to see a suffering infant on my pack of Ultra Lights? Of course not. I don't want to see a car crinkled to an unrecognizable heap on my bourbon label either. But them's the facts, right? That's why I think this kind of legislation would work. FOR EVERYTHING. 

1. NFL---Instead of the shield, lay the letters on a backdrop of brain scans revealing multiple concussions.

2. Junk food---Don't give me a smooth talking cheetah in sunglasses. How about 80's Roseanne Barr?

3. Ralph Lauren---Mitt Romney*

4. Gun shops---Just a digital sign with an up to the minute death tally. 

5. Australian flag---Dude jumping into a shark's mouth.

Not that all of these would work. I would still watch NFL football. And truth be told, you'd have a better chance getting me to quit if you cover a pack of cigarettes in an Auburn University logo. Don't worry about Australia. There isn't enough money on the planet to get me there. 

"In a report last year, the CDC found in a 14-nation study that graphic health warnings on cigarette packages have led a 'substantial' number of smokers to consider quitting."

Good enough for me, world! Imagine what we could do with guns, or vodka, or Tony Romo! 


* I realize Ralph Lauren isn't technically bad for you. But c'mon.

Gone With The Windbag

So good to be back!

Great Gabe Kaplan's mustache, that was a long hiatus! I finally saw Seattle, attended Iron Maiden Day, wrote two papers and an annotated bibliography, taught six weeks of freshman comp., finished coursework, and turned 35.

What did I not do? Let's see...

For starters, I didn't shoot a water moccasin and hang it up in a tree to make it rain. I don't "believe snakes hold mystical powers" or that "they will charm you if you look into their eyes." Why? Because this isn't Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and I haven't been smoking PCP behind the Arby's.

Maybe it's because mom never fed me Coca Cola from a baby bottle. But apparently that was someone's experience, and his name is Rick Bragg, and he authored this drivel. And since I'm from the South (Tuscaloosa, AL, stand up!), and since I love college football, I suppose I'm implicated in the universal "We" Mr. Bragg insists on using.

Well fuck you very much.

See, it's this type of tired, fetishized bullshit that forces me to listen to the same southern jokes at the same lame ass academic parties I attend on occasion.

"You're from Alabama? 'Y'all', amiright?"

Rick Bragg

Sure, ass-hat, you're right. I have a master's degree and just finished coursework in a PhD program because I ran around hanging snakes and chanting "y'all" with my voodoo beads wrapped around a white-tale deer dick passed down from my daddy. If you're not careful I'll turn your Volvo into a stock car! Why? On fucking instinct, brother! Can't help myself. Hellfire man, all I have to do is hear the word CAR and I start jonesin' for Daytona so hard my left eye shuts and I piss myself.

Bragg's stories have already been told a thousand times. Old southern men talking about the good ol' days of SEC football? Check. Old southern white men still upset about the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil War? A big ol' racist check. College football fandom, the most cliched side of it, made to define an entire region? Well, face palm, and then check.

"The point is, we talk real slow down here, so it may take a while to get to it, that we believe some things regardless of science and sometimes common sense."

You mean dipshits? You're talking about dipshits. They have those everywhere. I've been a dipshit before. One of my best friends thought it was "bold faced liar." See? Dipshit. He's from Boston.

You say Nick Saban smiling after his second national title in three years "scared" you, "as if Billy Graham had done a handstand."

Congratulations. You've squeezed halfwit ritual, catfish, and Billy Graham into an article about the South. It's a wonder ESPN didn't just have you recite it from bourbon-soaked memory under a swamp cypress with a straw hat on and a grass blade between your teeth. Oh wait! Fuck me, you even mention hay and cotton!

"Those young men drew on a long history of not being afraid, of the hottest days or endless rows of cotton or a million bales of hay." So the football team was made up of a bunch of farmers who dropped their pitchforks and picked up helmets? You're confusing myths.

"In the winter of 1993, in an attic apartment in Cambridge, Mass., I watched Alabama beat the trash-talkin' Hurricanes--I mean beat them like they stole somethin'."

What Bragg saw in the 1993 Sugar Bowl.

Why is "stole somethin'" in italics? You already dropped the "g" from "talking." Why attribute "stole somethin'" to some southern ghost? THAT was too much? And why attribute all this old shit to me? To some "We" you presume to speak for?

I watched the same game in 1993 sitting on the floor of my family's living room. Lots of southerners were there. No one had a snake or fed their baby Coke or played the banjo or sang about God and cotton. My grandmother was there, too. "It makes a difference," she said, because she always said that. It worked as a non-sequitur, a post-script, a preface. Regardless, it was always the crux of her message.

And that's my message to you. It makes a difference.

My "we" wants to find the positive aspects of our home, not be a cliche. We want to be different from the people who give it a hayseed name, not that hick gleefully reflecting on a time when the team consisted of whites only because they were the only ones allowed to play. We revel in rivalry Saturdays. It's the end of the week and we drink before noon and we believe in the restorative power of hate. But we are far more than an ESPN 30 for 30 that gives carte blanche to six kooks from Jasper for an hour and calls it a day.

We are not the same, you and I.

What you've done, Gump, is disregard southern football fans who weren't born from a bag of pork rinds or don't dislike a team just because they're north of the Mason-Dixon (we despise ALL opponents) or don't adhere to the belief that "God prefers our teams." We love college football. We grew up with it, or graduated from there, or moved there and thought it was strange at first but now we love it. Do we follow it religiously? Sure. Shit. That term always gets thrown around when describing the southern football fan. Never Bowie fans or squash players or vegans. "My, you follow that carrot juice religiously! You're CRAZY!"

No. Because of rubes like Bragg every Saturday is a Sunday and every football stadium down south is a fucking church and that's not rib sauce on my fingers it's Jesus syrup! Well okay, Bubba, I follow it religiously.

Know what else people follow religiously? Religion. I'll let you decide which is more logical. Scientifically speaking, of course.

An Open Reply To Brilliant Panda

You sure do talk a lot, World.

My Very Favorite Panda,

Indeed. You are Brilliant. I’ve scaled the tiny mountains of this Hassee province often to listen to your musings on all things science, music, literature, porn, and football. It’s that last one that rouses me this particular morning, the dream that happens every summer—pigskin soaring in slow motion through a stadium-lit sky, repetitive crunch of tackle after blindside sack, a one-handed snag, a kick return for touchdown. We’ve all had the dream. We love it. We miss it. We wake up only to realize it isn’t real, that our morning paper is merely an A-Rod article, or some Red(neck) Sox kid complains to his crotch on ESPN, or 3-4 games a day on television for what feels like 10 years. The worst—a “sport” that occasionally speeds up to a crawl in the hottest season of the year. Can you imagine sitting in a microwave and counting to 600 in Mississippi’s? That’s a Red Sox/Yankees game, only the microwave is filled with assholes.

Your open letter raises some interesting points. I am, in fact, hilarious. But this morning I woke from my dream and turned on the television to see “Breakfast at Wimbledon” and thought—Is this the world Brilliant Panda wants for us? Say it ain’t so!

Now, tennis is a helluva sport. It’s fun and fast and tough. I enjoy watching, and there was a time when I enjoyed playing. But “Breakfast at” anything is not a pre-game show I’m okay with, especially since Roger Goodell seems determined to put the NFL in Europe. THE NFL! Can you imagine “Crumpets With Eli” on BBC? This would be a disaster. I care nothing about watching the London Kettles versus the Edinburgh Sads. You’re an Eagles fan, for fuck’s sake! At halftime you want 3 beers and a shouting match with your cousin Sully. The Edinburgh Sads hold a halftime funeral for Balgaire’s Ma who croaked at kick-off. Tough old broad fought with William Wallace, you know.

I mention Europe because of your concern over what the world thinks of America, and when one makes this argument they usually mean what Europe thinks of America. So please allow me, Worried Panda, to sooth your ruffled and wooly coat.

1  1.  Americans can get anything. We just got healthcare. Just now. But alas, I understand you mean the little things, those we take for granted—cats, blue jeans, and Hollywood memorabilia. Well, I may acquire a kitty that looks eerily similar to Robert De Niro, and I may acquire said feline with the quickness. Know what I can’t get right up the street? A Union Jack scrotum beanie for those frigid Florida winters. We all make sacrifices.

   

We'll backpack anywhere we please. 

    2. Political Idiocy—I don’t know which side of the pond you're claiming this idiocy falls on. First off, if you’re an American travelling the world and pinning anything other than a RATT patch to your backpack, well, sir or ma’am, you’re dead inside already. Why would we, a Panda and a Mink, have to defend anything? Governments make terrible decisions, and ours may be the worst, but I can’t remember ever receiving a text that reads—“Yo Mink. Prez here. You got a thought on this Iraq bizz-nass? Holla if you go out later. #opentosuggestions.” This European demand is the equivalent of me blaming all of Italy each time Mario fails to save the Princess.

     3. Canada is better. John Candy, Ryan Gosling, and hockey vs Me, You, Wu-Tang, Bear Bryant, muscle cars, and snack packs? 'Merika. 

     4. It's Not "America". Maybe, but "BossOfAllBosses" wouldn't fit on the bandana I like to tie around my Levi's. LOL Europe!

    

     5. We’re Wasteful. Yes. Yes we are. I am a terrible offender here. No defense. HOWEVER, whence I’ve scaled those heights to gnaw bamboo with you we’ve chowed down to the melodious sounds of Dick Wolf. Were we actually watching the television? No, Hypocritical Panda, we were not. We just felt better because it was on, because there was justice in this crazy world, because the lone noise of conversation puts us in a panic. And this is okay! We have toys and we play with them. I understand America has a waste problem, but Elizabeth Vargas? She has a lot of money and four kids and a huge house. Her carbon footprint is the T-Rex to my Emmanuel Lewis. According to her "report" we should piss in the streets and never shower. If I wanted that I’d just live in Ohio.

My point, Understanding Panda, is that I don’t need Europe to tell me we have issues. The only America that Europe knows is New York and L.A. anyway. I’ve enough problems trying to convince people in my own country that I’m capable of holding an intellectual conversation after they find out I’m from Alabama. Europe doesn’t even know Alabama exists. To them there’s only “The South” and it’s shaped like a klan hood. Fuck those people, too. We gave Europe an American and you know what happened?

Mmmmm.... privilege and gelato 

So yes. You’re right. I should conserve far more than I do. And I will admit that while your open letter was well received, it cut a little. When I am cut, Kind Panda, I bleed. And when I bleed, I bleed fucking Springsteen guitar strings because AMERICA! WOOHOO! LOL EUROPE!

A Whale Of A Time

I do not conserve. I will leave every light in my apartment on, the water running, and fall asleep comfortably on the couch to the sounds of District Attorney McCoy magically panting the city of New York to another conviction. If I left the oven on, all the better.

this is an actual whale

But you know what I like? Whales. Love a whale. I don’t actually work toward educating anyone on the habits of whales. I don’t donate money to whale conservation and, honestly, I’ve only ever seen a whale in captivity at a museum I snuck into illegally because the line was too long and I had a flight to catch. LOL, Shedd Aquarium, I saw your belugas for free!

Point is, asked if I dig on whales, the answer is yes. YES. They’re smahht. Not dumb, like everybody says. When I say “everybody” I mean—people from Wakulla County, FL and the Japanese.

This morning I read that a bid to create a whale sanctuary in the Southern Atlantic Ocean was voted down at the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) annual meeting. I know, right? I want to be on the International Whaling Commission. Although the bid gained more than half the votes, it needed a three-quarters majority. Boo.

Granted, these do-gooders wanted a nice chunk of salt—“The proposal covered almost the entire Atlantic Ocean south of the Equator, from the west coast of Africa to the east coast of South America.” Wow.

An actual invitation from the above whale.

Whale #1—party at my crib!

Whale #2—where’s your crib?

Whale #1—everywhere!

I don’t mind that it was voted down with the promise of more talks. Part of the problem was shear area. Countries/continents can control their own shorelines, and so, rather than mark off a portion of planet, those who voted against suggested the closer policing of these shorelines. Word up, haters.

But who were one of the biggest opponents of the plan? The Japanese. Mother. Fucker. No and no. I have a problem with Japan getting a say. The IWC tried to nix commercial whaling in order to increase whale populations back in 1986. The Japanese, always happy to help a whale, found a scientific research loophole within the legislation, and continued right on killing. I suppose they needed to make sure the meat still tasted the same? Yep, tastes right. Just to make sure, though, lets capture and kill about 70 more. Nothing like consistency!

Here’s what has never happened in warfare:

General #1—Hey, guy, Gen here, I’m gonna need you to stop this little coup or whatevs. I mean, you’re massacring a lot of innocents.

General #2—For reals? I didn’t even realize. But, seriously, we’re just conducting a little resea….

General #1—No, dawg.

Don’t get it twisted. This is warfare. The whales haven’t had many warriors, per say. There was Moby Dick and this little guy. And why shouldn’t he attack a diver. Do we not try to kill bugs that fly around our face? I went diving once, in the Bahamas. The only things in that water are tiny little fish that look like bouquets of flowers. It was like swimming in everyone’s anniversary.

But those big ol’ so and so’s need help. I’d like to arm them with lasers, but sharks have kind of cornered that one. Sheesh…sharks.

See, the whole “hey, kid, stop being a jackass” hasn’t worked with the Japanese whalers. Now it’s time to stop letting these fools vote. And before you go screaming about how I’m lumping all Japanese people and Wakulla people together under a negative light of righteousness, let me correct you.

Yes. Yes I am. This morning. Because this is bullshit. This is King Bullshit. You seen The Cove? Those are dolphins. Seems like if it’s an intelligent sea creature, there are men in Japan who will ice it. No questions asked.

You will eat the fast food!

Just as America should have nothing to do with any international dietary legislation, Japan should be left out of any vote regarding whales. If you’re doing everything you can to wipe out a species (human or whale) you’re done. DONE.