Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Round One: Owned



First off, I would like to thank Mark Followill and Bob Ortegel for outing and shaming the Wood Block Guy on TV last night. I also want to thank Bob Ortegel for saying the phrase, “Mark, you can steal my thunder any time!” It made me giggle.

The Mavs beat the Spurs in five games which was one less than I had even allowed myself to dream they could do it in. More amazing to me was the fact that ESPN’s humourously named Accuscore prediction widget, up until game time yesterday, still had the odds of San Antonio winning the series at something like 72%. The lesson? Do NOT take ESPN’s Accuscore to Vegas with you. But it kind of amazes me how “meh” the rest of the country still is about the Mavs. Don’t get me wrong. I prefer it that way. I like being the team no one cares about. I like having low expectations.

But aren’t we and the Lakers now the two Western Conference teams that got it done in five games? And didn’t the Lakers get it done against the #8 seed Jazz while we took down the San Antonio Spurs, the #3 seed? And didn’t we do it without a huge showing (until Game 5 and even then I would argue that “huge” would not be totally accurate) from our star players? Don’t we have the Sixth Man of the Year? Haven’t the Mavs gone on a 10-3 streak here at the end of the season which puts them alongside the Lakers and Cavs for that same time period? I’m just trying to figure out why the Mavs shouldn’t get a smidge more respect than they are getting. Again, I’m not complaining. I like it when the Mavs have to prove stuff.

To finally break the cycle of getting bounced from the playoffs in the first round in flagrantly embarrassing fashion seems like reward enough for me. But now I have a little bit of bloodlust and I want more. I’m not gonna lie. Denver scares the beejesus out of me. Let me rephrase that. This year and with Chauncey Billups, Denver terrifies me. In the previous two seasons, I remember going to Mavs-Nuggets games and the most entertaining things I could hope for would be a Dirk-Najera handshake or someone holding Boykins’ car keys over his head after the game was over. But now the Nuggets are good and that scares me. Which should make for good, albeit tough, basketball.

I was also astonished at how sportsmanlike and gracious both teams were after the final buzzer last night. And how very little taunting and “Suck it, Spurs!” I did last night. Even Mark and Bob commented on how friendly the atmosphere between the two teams was after the game. Which can only mean one thing. Manu Ginobli is the troublemaker. He’s the bad seed. I knew it.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Lee Greenwood Was Right. I Am Proud to Be An American.



I have been accused from time to time of being an anglophile. That’s wholly inaccurate. It’s true that a lot of things that I like originate from the United Kingdom. Stephen Fry is my leader. I am pretty sure the list of things I would do to James May if allowed ten minutes in a darkened room with him would violate any and all Terms of Use of Blogspot. My entire sense of humor was formed by Black Adder and Fawlty Towers as a kid. I still find the best “Awwwwwwww, snaps!” ever uttered forth to be this exchange from QI on the subject of how beetles (sorry, bugs) were discovered to have the ability to dye food red:

Alan Davies: “Yeah, but how did they find this out. Did someone just start crushing up bugs in their food one day and….”

Stephen Fry: “I think one only has to imagine that one day one of these bugs or beetles crawls in with the maize they are pounding and suddenly they go, ‘Oh, good lord, I love this pink polenta!’”

Alan Davies: (in a Speedy Gonzales accent) “You mean, ‘I love this peeeeenk poleeeeeenta’?”

Stephen Fry: “So you’re assuming this happened after the Spanish colonization of Mexico then, are you?”


Seriously, THAT’S a zinger! But outside of Stephen Fry and James May and lunches consisting of Pimm’s Cups and those sandwiches with corn in them (I don’t know why but they’re good), I’ve been to the UK a lot and it’s not that great. The weather is fun for a day or two then it becomes a total kick to the junk. Everything is expensive. It’s actually a pretty grim place. After only a few days, I find myself missing things like sunshine and reasonably priced anything and non-chicken or kebab storefronts. Here’s what cracks me up though. The smugness of Britons about how trashy, sensationalist and tabloid-y Americans and American culture is. Pot, kettle, you’ve got a lot of mutual darkness to discuss.

Sure, America can lay claim to things like TMZ, Perez Hilton and (though we’ll split the credit/blame for this one with Australia) Fox News. And yes, American press laws allow photos of children, including the children of celebrities, to be published which only encourages ass-monkey paparazzi to chase down and scare kids to get pictures of them which they will then sell to websites who will use the pictures to evaluate whether or not that particular child is hot or not. I will give Britain credit for banning the publication or sale of photos of a celebrity’s child (or any child who is involved in a crime or trial).

But where Britain takes the high road in avoiding some celebrity trash journalism (and one might even argue that’s just down to a much smaller number of celebrities residents in Britain which, in turn, leads them to cover the WAGs of footballers), they have a sub-genre of trashy journalism that never fails to blow my mind. It’s the most manipulative, incendiary and cynical kind of journalism I know of and it happens every day in Britain. It’s the LOOK AT THESE FAT PEOPLE AND OR/IMMIGRANTS AND/OR GENERALLY LAZY PEOPLE ON BENEFITS beast and it rears its head daily in the UK papers. I suppose a comparable issue would be the illegal immigration debate here in the States but the more nationalized health care and public aid becomes in a country, the bigger the font and the larger the target of hatred becomes at those on the receiving end of such benefits.

Here’s just a few recent examples of some clearly un-sensationalized stories about families on benefits.

The one about the mother of triplets

The always restrained Daily Mail called this one “The Real Telly Tubbies”. Classy.

It’s always fun to watch the four horsemen of the trashy UK news apocalypse (The Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Sun and the News of the World) quickly look for any ties between any relevant and perhaps truthful story about suspected terrorists who bent rules or overstayed their visas (which doesn’t get the public too worked up any longer) to the much more sexy “UK TERROR SUSPECT WAS LIVING ON BENEFITS AND PLAYED NINTENDO ALL DAY WHILE YOU WERE OUT WORKING HARD TO PAY FOR HIM TO SIT BACK AND EVENTUALLY TRY TO KILL YOU WITH A BOMB!” story. Now that the boogety-boo of “war on terror” and “extremists” and all those other buzz words that will be to the 2000’s like “dial-up” and “cappuccino” was in the 90’s have lost their edge, the UK press has had to find another way to MAKE EVERYONE REALLY MAD ABOUT THIS BENEFITS THING!

Enter my absolute favorite way to kill two birds with one stone. There’s an underlying issue here which is a completely valid one. There has been an Americanization of the United Kingdom (and the world, for that matter) even in the almost 15 years since I first went to London. A huge part of that has been the explosion of McDonald’s and KFCs (Holy Baby Jesus, they love their KFCs in Britain!) and any other chain that was big enough to take a risk on expanding overseas to provide cheap, deep fried food to the jagged-toothed English masses. This is such a hot button issue with a lot of people in Britain. And it goes beyond the Super Size Me argument here in America. Let’s put it this way: I can destroy a Big Mac with my mouth. But generally I think that fast food is a horrible food option unless it’s eaten as a rare treat or a “eat or die” sort of choice. In England, it goes beyond that. It’s not just an issue of health v. convenience. It’s seen as choosing the evil, awful fat American death burger over your dependable, loving old English grandmother’s home cooking just because it’s cheap and easy. It’s the reverse Benedict Arnold. That sounds dirty. And to them, it is.

So if terrorists/immigrants are not getting the traction they used to, why not use fat people who eat at McDonald’s as the next target of benefits abuse hatred? Doesn’t that make you ANGRY, good upstanding Britons? That’s your money being spent on health costs and housing benefits for these obese people who, on top of it all, got that way not by eating the always healthy staples of the British diet such as scotch eggs and bacon butties but by eating American fast food. Doesn’t that make you livid? Come on, get that xenophobia going! Start getting that mixture of smug superiority and righteous indignation to a rolling boil! It’s these tacky, Burberry-wearing chavs who are too lazy to work and are squandering YOUR hard earned tax pounds! I mean, it was okay when they were spending it at chip shops because that’s good British lard-based fried sustenance.

It kind of makes me proud to be an American when I read these articles because it reminds me that as much as Britain may claim to have finally completed the task of shaking off the shackles of the rigid class system they clung to for so long, they have come nowhere near close to doing so. The implied meaning behind all these articles is not “we’re worried about abuses in the benefits system” but “look at these lower class people and how stupid/gross/poorly-educated/nutritionally retarded/obese/unattractive/lazy they are!” On a weekly basis, I see someone purchasing food with a Lone Star/WIC card at the grocery store and a lot of the time, it’s not the soundest of nutritional choices. It’s white bread or juice boxes or something else containing the words “high fructose” or “hydrogenated” or “enriched”. Do I get morally enraged that, not only am I helping pay for their food but that my money is going towards nutritionally unwise foods? Nope. Because I am from Georgia and there are three foods that I never went more than a day or two without eating during my childhood there: butter sandwiches on white bread, bologna sandwiches on white bread and biscuits in a bowl of buttermilk.


So keep aiming for that whole “transcending classism” thing, Great Britain. Baby steps. Tiny, obese, overfed, benefits-abusing toddler steps.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

MAVS WIN!!!!! 3-1 SERIES LEAD!!!! NOW'S THE PART WHERE I START GETTING ALL CAPS-Y!!!!



MAVS WIN 99-90. LEAD THE SERIES 3-1. RYAN HOLLINS TAUNTS THE SPURS. WHAT? YEAH, THAT HAPPENED. TONY PARKER SCORES 4.6 MILLION POINTS AND THE SPURS STILL LOSE. DIRK NEVER GOT HOT AND THE SPURS STILL LOSE.

Suck it, decorum.

Game 4 - Bea Arthur Tribute Game




I was a little bit worried about this 3pm Saturday game business. Because it's not like football or even Sunday basketball, where 3pm sounds like a perfectly reasonable time for a sporting match to happen. Maybe this is why I have never been able to get into college football too much. Here's the thing: I got shit to do, man. There is a narrow window in the seven days that occur in one week in which I actually get things done. That window tends to be the hours between 11am and 6pm on Saturday. I'm a machine in that small window. I'm a coupon-cutting, grocery-shopping, food-cooking, car-washing, laundry-doing beast from mid afternoon to sundown on Saturday.

So a 3pm Saturday Mavs-Spurs playoff game really knocks the cool outta my walk. I would like to add that I was at Cafe Brazil until 4:45am this morning. No, I wasn't drunk. Just one of those nights where we all ended up at Cafe Brazil after last call and before you know it, you're eating a turkey sandwich at 4am. I say all of this because I officially handed today it's ass on a plate.

Still managing to be up and out of the house before noon despite my late night carb load, I cleaned out my car, did all my grocery shopping, changed a broken taillight, made a loaf of bread and homemade tortilla soup and sewed a new curtain all before the first quarter was over.

It's the start of the fourth quarter and the Mavs are up by 9. I would love to see the shooting percentage for both teams. It really seems like neither team is able to make anything go. But I have also realized that I love Ryan Hollins more than I realized. I don't even mind that Dirk is colder and deader than Charlton Heston's hands.

As I mentioned in the title, Bea Arthur passed away this morning so I would like to think of this game as being like when Paul Simon played "The Boxer" on Saturday Night Live right after 9/11 to heal a grieving nation. With the Mavs being Paul Simon. I really loved "Golden Girls" when I was kid. I even liked the spin-off when one of them left and the remaining ones opened a hotel in South Beach (the internet is telling me it was called "The Golden Palace"). If you get a drink or two in me, I will even recall a semi-dirty joke from "The Golden Palace" that I still remember from one episode that was almost Bill Hick-sian to my 7 year-old self.

Also, Matthew Stafford went to Detroit Suck City (duh) in the NFL draft. More importantly, my favorite Georgia player since Herschel "I'm Sad" Walker, Knowshon Moreno, is going to be a Bronco. Michael Crabtree is going to San Francisco and well, frankly, those are the only people that I know anything about or care about until I hear what the Cowboys are going to do.

I wonder if I can Swiffer with a noisemaker in each hand?

Friday, April 24, 2009

Game 3: Wood Block Guy Was There



I have insider information (reports from someone who was a the game) that Wood Block Guy (or someone who also had a wood block and was supporting the Spurs) was in attendance at the AAC last night. The good news for him is that, if he has asked nice enough, Popovich might have put him in the game by the third quarter. You know, because San Antonio has so much heart and fighting spirit that they benched their entire starting lineup in the third quarter. Also, it has got to sting that JJ Fucking Barea (that’s his middle name, look it up) outscored Tony Parker last night. Sacre bleu!

Which leads me to where exactly this burst of determination on the Mavs part came from and what bled the will to live out of the Spurs. And I think I know what it was. It wasn’t Damp’s comments. It wasn’t losing by 21 in San Antonio for the Mavs. Here’s what I firmly believe caused the game to go down as it did. Some guy had the raddest sign ever (eva?) and all credit should go to him. It talked trash, it didn’t use vulgar potty language and it was just plain funny. No elaborate pictures. No puns. Just this:

“Tell Eva to stop calling me”

To the guy who made that sign: I love you. You’re my new boyfriend.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Blogging about Commenting on a Blog Where Comments are Not Allowed and the Blogs Where We Can Comment About That



I need to confess something to all 8 (that’s a very generous estimate) of you that read my blog. I don’t know how an RSS feed works. Otherwise, I would use it. Because apparently it will consolidate and email you all the stuff that you want to read but forget to read. And maybe if it did, I would have known about the Great Commenting-Gate of 2009. Here’s the thing: there’s too many blogs and I can’t keep up with them. Mine included. Hell, I am not even reading what I am typing right now. Please don’t mistake this as a “aren’t I so cool and busy and important?” kind of thing because there are times when I get home after work and spend a solid hour catching up on what Perez Hilton drew dicks on today. I’m not that highbrow. I know I should be checking to see what new slings and arrows have been tossed in the convention center hotel debate. But Miss California doesn’t like gays! And a 12 year old got arrested for drunk driving! But I digress.

HUGE EFFING DISCLAIMER: I love you, Bethany and Trey Garrison and Daniel and RayRay and Grampa Walton and Tupac and the Sultan of Brunei and whomever else is involved in this and has a blog. And I try to keep up. I do. But here’s the thing: I forget. So yesterday I got a link to a posting on the Dallas Morning News in which the DMN rolled out the welcome mat to regular commenters from D Magazine’s FrontBurner to Team DMN. Why? Well, I backtracked a little more. FrontBurner was no longer going to allow comments. Someone sat on the comment button and turned them off. Then I backtracked a little more and read that there was some conspiracy theorists who found it suspect that this move came the day after Tim Rogers posted a particularly vitriolic post aimed at a PR person. Ok, now I’m caught up. Now let’s all be Nero and play “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” as Commenting Rome burns.

I’m not trying to be Jordan Catalano about this but I can only muster up three opinions about this whole thing. Part of that is probably down to the recreational Xanax habit I’ve decided to develop.

1. Considering that any time I am around friends who have lives outside the dorkbox and I mention something D Magazine-related, they stare at me with a morphine drip stare, let me give you a synopsis of the Tim Rogers thing. Some PR person for a sunglasses shop that is opening in NorthPark soon sends two promo packages via FedEx to Tim Rogers at D Magazine. Tim does not write about retail and shopping but knows the appropriate person at the magazine who does. Tim posted something on FrontBurner that was pretty mean-spirited about “Hey PR guy, maybe next time do some research and don’t send a) the same thing twice and b) send it to the right person. Since you didn’t, your promo shit is in the trash now.” I’m paraphrasing. The two sentiments there are admirable. Removing doubles from a mailing list? Green and cost-effective and generally easy as shit to do. By the way, “easy as shit” is profesh verbiage. Also, hiring a local PR company who knows local publications and can get your kit to the right person in town is the best money you can spend.

All that being said, I don’t know what the point was of spanking the guy so publicly. If you really HAD to put him in the stocks and hurl your rotten veggies at him, why not say “Open Letter to PR Companies: Don’t send the same thing twice. Also, send it to the right person. Also, very basic research will tell you who that person is. Try a little harder.” The whole putting the stuff in the trash, whether it was merely symbolism for 'this shit gets old’ or not, had a “my wang is bigger than yours” sort of vibe to it.

2. Now that is out of the way, is it so bad that FrontBurner doesn’t allow comments anymore? Does it really make D Magazine an evil, filthy and clearly corrupt empire? Just like that dirty oily whore Belo? I don’t, for a moment, buy D’s cover of “the comments were always just supposed to be a conversation between editors” because I figure if you’re smart enough to have gotten a job at D Magazine, you’re smart enough to have heard of and be able to install some sort of instant messaging program on your computer on which you can communicate with your fellow employees and editors.

But if online media is ever going to be the Coca-Cola and not the Dr. Thunder of journalism, don’t you have to have some authority? You couldn’t go buy the newspaper, disagree with the columns and fire up a pocket Guttenburg press to amend or fire back a retort to what you just read right there in Woolworth’s. You could yell at the newspaper but then you were just a crazy person. So you just wrote a letter to the newspaper or you sat on your porch with your friends and family and you talked about why you thought the newspaper was wrong and maybe if enough of you thought someone at the paper had really gotten it wrong, they would print a retraction or someone would print your letter or write a counterpoint to whatever made you mad originally.

A camel is a horse by committee and FrontBurner was journalism by committee. Which is kind of like journalism only with 45 different people all writing their own articles at the same time. And my mom made me ride a camel at Scarborough Fair when I was a kid and they smell like manure and feet and old egg salad sandwiches.Yes, there were discussions but when were magazines (even the online versions) supposed to be a place for discussions? That’s like going to the dentist to get measured for a new pair of shoes. They just don’t seem particularly congruent to me. I guess people then respond with, “But who’s going to keep them in check and discuss the topic at hand and call people (editors?) out?” to that point. No one. That’s how you know FrontBurner is a big boy and can go potty all by themselves now and are taking a leap to being kind of like a real media kind of thing. Now everyone gets to form their Wick Allison conspiracy theories or their D Magazine agendas or their obvious FrontBurner pro-indoor dog park bias grinding axes. Just like the Dallas Morning News!

3. But we want to talk! We need to discuss things! - Yes, I agree. I couldn’t agree more. I love talking about things like feeding midget Polynesian transvestite hookers into woodchippers as to better fit them into the small trunks of luxury rental cars. I like respectfully disagreeing about politics and guns and whatever else I ever respectfully disagreed with people about on FrontBurner. But there’s too many places, too many blogs, too many comment threads, too many logins, too many URLs, too many bookmarks. And I’m the asshole who’s only adding to the problem with this blog.

Maybe I’m not particularly bright and everyone else has these things scrolling across the ticker that is projected inside the lenses of their reflective Oakley sunglasses (ask Tim Rogers about where one would be able to purchase such a pair of sunglasses) and they don’t get flustered by all of it. I don’t see any point in trying to hunger strike page views from D Magazine as some sort of “take that!” to them for disabling comments. I don’t feel personally rejected about the fact that I can no longer coin phrases like “Pontiac of Justice” on that particular website. If someone just puts everything in one place and spins me around and points my dizzy body in the right direction, I will gladly offer up whatever semi-useless pithy commentary I can muster up. And I kindly thank thee.

Now to see who peed themselves onstage recently…

Monday, April 20, 2009

Wood Block Guy: ID'ed

Hey Wood Block Guy, I know who you are. You are that douchebag that wears the crazy troll doll wig and zany Hawaiian basketball shirt and paints your face like Batman, none of which has anything to do with San Antonio or a spur. I ridiculed you on Saturday. But now this is war.

If no one ever hears from me again and one day you see me wandering the streets, sunburned and wearing sunglasses with no lenses or one shoe, all blame can be laid squarely at the feet of Wood Block Guy.

Crazy Ray is making fun of you from heaven.

Game 2: Woody the Woodpecker Edition

I really can't concentrate on this game. Which seems appropriate since the Mavs can't either. But seriously, this wood block stuff is murdering my soul. On top of just the sheer annoyingness of it, they don't actually hit it at any particular "wood block" worthy moment of the game. Sure, there's the frantic hitting during Mavs free throws. But then there's the three hits in a row followed by a five second pause and then one hit during a time out. I pray this person is the victim of electroshock therapy either currently or sometime in the very near future.

Also the Mavs can't hit the broad side of a barn with a basketball.

GET THE GUY WITH THE WOODEN BLOCK OUT OF THE AT&T CENTER NOW!



WHO BROUGHT A WOOD BLOCK TO PLAY RIGHT BEHIND MARK AND BOB? PLEASE GET THE THE FUCK OUT OF THE ARENA. SERIOUSLY.

It's like someone with some minor form of muscular dystrophy is playing the intro to War's "Lowrider" during the entire game commentary. I'm blaming all these bad Mavs air balls on that asshole with the wood block.

I can't liveblog this first quarter because I am too busy trying to not turn green and double in size over my anger about Wood Block Person. You won't like me when I'm angry (and blogging).

One Down…(x) to Go….



Yes, Saturday night was un-fucking-awesome-believable. But it was Game 1. Yes, Saturday night was beating the Spurs on their home court. But it was Game 1. Yes, Saturday night showed that even when Mason is hitting threes from the parking lot, the Mavs can maintain a 10 point lead. But it was Game 1.

See what this is? This is called “cautious optimism” folks. And I’ve got lots more of it where this came from. Therefore, I am re-christening tonight’s Game 2 as “Game 1” because I don’t even want to get too excited until I basically see two Game 1-esque results. I threatened to flip a car Saturday night. If the Mavs win again tonight, I will start doing stretches and find my car flippin’ gloves.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Nostalgia and Using Syncretic Carribean Religious Hexes in Conjuction with Arts and Crafts (AKA GO MAVS!)



1n 2006....

George W. Bush was president. I couldn’t legally rent a car. Nicole Richie was not a mother. A gallon of gas cost anywhere between $2.50 and $2.75. The Patriot Act was renewed for the first time. Barbaro won the Kentucky Derby (ouch) and the Steelers won the Super Bowl. “Crash” won Best Picture at the Oscars, U2 won a Grammy for Best Album for some album that probably sounded like the one before it and kind of like the one that came after it too. Steve Irwin, Gerald Ford, Ann Richards, Sadaam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic all left this plane of existence. And the Mavericks and Spurs played each other in the playoffs. Of course, the Mavericks beat the Spurs in 7 games (seven bowel tightening games, I might add) to advance to the Western Conference finals where they would beat the Suns in 6 games and make it to Finals. Then I don’t know what happened after that. I fell into a deep diabetic coma and woke up and assumed that I missed the victory parade and carried on with my life as usual.

So here’s the part where you crucify me. Here’s the part where you remind me that this is NOT the same Mavericks team nor is it the same Spurs team and that nostalgia should not supersede the reality of this playoff series. And then here’s the part where I tell you to suck it. I went from not even having the hope to blog about the Mavs in the playoffs when it was looking like a Mavs-Lakers first round or a Mavs-Nuggets first round to watching them leap from #8 to #6 and seeing them defeat the Rockets in the final game of the season. Then I heard the Spurs-Hornets game went into overtime. Then I started getting the texts and IMs on my Blackberry. We were #6 and we were going to face the Spurs in the first round.

And so to all of you basketball nerds with your abacuses (I don’t know how to make the word “abacus” plural) and stat sheets and number crunching and logic, you say that I am reacting to this in a very childish and emotional way. You say that I just think that it’s about rivalries and 2006 and my schadenfreude at the Spurs not having Ginobli this time around and Tim Duncan not being 100% and the fact that the Mavs are trending up while the Spurs are on a downward trajectory. And you’re right. I do think it’s about that. Because wouldn’t numbers and percentages and stats surely lead one to believe that the 2007 Mavericks, with a 69-19 record and that year’s MVP, would beat the lowly Golden State Warriors in the first round of the playoffs. Can’t we just rely on the knowledge that while, yes, Baron Davis is pretty good, the Mavericks were better and this player could match up to that player and the Mavs could play small (note: THAT WORKED!) to counter the Warriors and everything would work out. There’s no way that the psychology of the Mavs meeting up against a team (or in this case, a coach) with a direct emotional and psychological connection that was still open and raw could affect the outcome of the series. Oh wait….

I guess this is where my basketball fandom gets irritated. I don’t care who can match up who to who. I don’t sit here and think how Barea can be quick like Harris was and who is going to slow him down on the Spurs and what we are going to do to stop Parker. And maybe that is what makes me a bad basketball fan. I want rivalry. I want stupid Spurs fans to complain about officiating at the American Airlines Center. I want Tim Duncan to get a technical for laughing from the bench. I want to see Eric Dampier and Michael Finley shake hands before the game then tear at each other like rabid dogs with gravy-covered pork chops tied to each other for four quarters. I want this series to go to 8 games even though it’s not possible. I want quintuple overtime in Game 7. I want this first round of the playoffs to still be going on as I am giving birth to my fourth child (current child count: 0). Because the headline on ESPN.com today is “Unavoidable Conclusion” under a picture of LeBron and Kobe standing side by side. So, you see, it’s been pre-determined that the Mavs will not make it to Finals. Or maybe even out of the first round. This might be the Finals.

That’s not to say that I don’t have hope for this team. I like these scrappy Mavs. I like the fact that Jason Terry has said that they might not even deserve to get out of the first round if they play like they have some nights (see also: nearly losing, if not for Terry’s shot with mere seconds left in the game, to the Timberwolves) recently. I like that better than Entitled (But Ironically Title-less) Mavs. I have eaten crow over my wrongness about Jason Kidd (Jason Kidd, I owe you one pizza pie. Sorry.) so many times this season that I might have to buy a rotisserie oven soon. I like these Mavs. I haven’t liked the Mavs this much since six years ago when I made buttons for the playoffs with Van Excel’s face on it that said “Van Sexel” and one with Steve Nash’s face on it that said “The Jordan Catalano of Basketball”. Because other than being my favorite basketball team and being something fun to do crafts about, I didn’t expect much out of them. Playoffs? Those are neat. Let’s go to those. Just being there is fun!

And I feel like that again. If I had a button maker, I would be making buttons right now. So all you real basketball fans can type into your graphic calculators all you want and laminate your shot charts but I’ll be the girl making voodoo dolls for my Santeria hexes out of the exquisite locks of Fabricio Oberto. Also, I took a lot of cold medicine before I wrote this.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Morrissey and Me



I don’t know if I have mentioned this but Morrissey played in Dallas this Friday night. And I attended this concert. Before I get to the Meat is Murder of the matter, I want to address some more peripheral elements of the concert and the concert going experience. I don’t mean to sound like a brat but I know I will regardless so I will just go ahead and say it. I have had too many years of free drinks and comfy chairs to have been thrown so harshly back into the world of General Admission show cattle. Not that I think I am above it. I actually loved the freedom of being able to determine how close or far I wanted to be from the stage. But I do miss chairs.

Also, if you had surveyed me prior to the show about my level of awareness, research and advance prep leading up to the event, I would have given myself very high marks. I looked up set lists from shows on the tour so far. I looked up the time that the doors opened at the venue, the time the show was scheduled to start and checked out the general layout of the venue. So I was pretty proud of myself when I saw that we had arrived right as doors were opening and people were calmly filing in. Should be about 30 minutes until show time. Enough time to maybe grab a drink and find a decent place to stand. Then we noticed a drum kit set up in front of the makeshift white curtain. The Freemasons and Dan Brown put together have nothing on the organizers and promoters of this show in terms of keeping something a well-hidden secret. In this case, it was the fact that there was an opening band. So we decided to seek out the bar and grill that I had read tales of in my pre-show research.

And find it, we did. I once spent about three hours at the Cleveland (Most Likely Not International) Airport. The bar and grill at the Palladium made all those memories flood back to me. It’s not to say that the place was bad. In fact, it was kind of cute. Instead of some garish House of Blues leather and lace and distressed denim faux roadhouse, there was something kind of sweet about sitting on vinyl chairs at formica tables, drinking a half full plastic cup of Miller Lite (they pour it from the can) looking out of a plate glass window, wondering if the sight of a plane being de-iced will suddenly appear if you squint or drink hard enough. My other favorite part of the Skylounge is their not-quite-Big-Buck-Hunter machine. I think it was called International Trophy Hunter.

But after two hours of conversations and concessions, it was time for Morrissey. And I was able to get pretty close but yet at a safe enough distance that when I finally abandoned my poorly-chosen heels halfway through the show, I knew I was in very little danger of losing a toe or three. He started the show with a somewhat odd version of “This Charming Man” but frankly, it was Morrissey so I’ll take it. In short, he did five Smiths songs. Some worked out well (“Ask”, “Some Girls are Bigger Than Others”) and some didn’t do it for me (I am the lone dissenting voice on this one but “Death of a Disco Dancer” left me cold). But songs that I didn’t think I would be that excited to hear surprised me (“Black Cloud” and “Something is Squeezing My Head”) with how much I liked them. But, as trad and unimaginative as it may sound, “How Soon Is Now?” was quite possibly the highlight of the show.

And of course for every positive thing that I write, I have to bitch about something. Actually, I really did have very few complaints. I know there were some complaints about the sound but I am the first person to admit that “audiophile” has never been a word used to describe me. I could hear Morrissey. I could hear the band. I could hear the massive gong. So I was fine. Could I hear the tremolo on the whatever on the reverb on the high hat? Since I made that up and that’s not a thing, no I couldn’t. I am just not a good person to talk to about that kind of stuff. If Morrissey’s microphone had gone out two songs into the show and the entire concert was without vocals, I probably would have noticed. Other than that, I am hopeless when it comes to picking apart aural flaws. The only real nitpick I have is the song selection, a flaw I was well-prepared for but one about which I can still bitch and whine.

The makeup of the crowd was 85% people my age or older. And when I say older, I mean that I was shocked by how many people my parents age were at the show. Meaning that the majority of the people at the show got into Morrissey via The Smiths and his solo material pre-1995 or so. Now I understand why Morrissey does not want to turn his show into an Monkees at the KLUV Oldies Fest kind of nostalgia set and wants to represent his 25 year career without such a heavy focus on the past. However, I don’t understand why his selection of solo material not from his new album was so You are the Quarry to present. Alright, your “Irish Blood, English Heart”s and “First of the Gang to Die”s may have roped in a younger generation of fans but there’s a vast sea of fans who were desperately hoping for a “Suedehead” or “Every Day is Like Sunday” or “November Spawned a Monster” or “The Last of the Famous International Playboys” or “Boy Racer” and they never got it. Seriously, the encore being “First of the Gang to Die” seemed like camping out overnight to be first in line to see “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” or something.

Other than that small gripe, I had an amazing time. I danced with my shoes off and I saw Morrissey deny his Morrissey hand to a rude dreadlocked body surfer. And in the traffic jam to get out of the parking lot after the show, I got to see a shirtless man with a full NIN back piece tattoo scream “MORRISSEYYYYYY! FUCKIN’ MORRISSEYYYYYYY!” into stranger’s car windows before hopping into what I pray was an accomplice’s car. The alternate wrap-up I have for this story is that I ended the night with seeing the friendliest, least dramatic car-jacking in the traffic jam after the Morrissey show.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Wildfires, Pollen, Jennifer Tilly, the Mavs, Bryan Street Tavern and Morrissey



I’ve been meaning to blog about all of those things. Let’s see how this works out.

1. F you, pollen – For the past two weeks, I have become a cripple. My eyes have been constantly red and watery. My nose has been alternately stuffy and runny. I lost my voice completely. I was coughing and waking up wheezing in the middle of the night. Now I will concede that the more I find out about my new apartment the less surprised I would be to find out that it is constructed solely of asbestos and gum wrappers. But it’s not the lead paint that I’ve been eating that’s got me feeling this way. It’s the pollen that apparently has come to kill us all or at least me. Seriously, cut the shit pollen. I have a black car. I walk out to my car each morning which is parked under a pollen tree (I’m not good with “nature”) and see my car coated in a solid layer of yellow itch powder and sigh and realize that I will spend yet another day wandering around my office with tissues hanging out of my ratty office sweater like someone’s tuberculosis-ridden grandmother. In short, I would like to summarize with another hearty “fuck you, pollen.”

2. F you, wildfires – Yeah, the pollen isn’t helping my lungs a lot. So imagine my delight when I looked out my office window yesterday afternoon and saw the Observer building across the street (hi Merritt and Noah!) partly obscured by a yellow orangey fog. I kind of hoped it would be like the gas in Planet Terror that turns everyone into flesh hungry zombies and I could sneak out and run to Walgreen’s for more nasal sinus spray (editor’s note: I am terribly sexy right now). But no, it was smoke from fires in counties I couldn’t point to on a map. And I don’t mean that in a Jay-walking, “Gee, aren’t Americans stupid and bad at geography?” way because I am amazing at geography. I just have never really needed to know where Montague County was. That was until yesterday when shit there started to burn and that caused my lungs to nearly grind to a halt and my voice to take on an even more delicate and dulcet tone than usual.

3. F you, Jennifer Tilly voice – Heyyyyy, guess what? When my allergies are so bad that I lose my voice completely and then it starts to come back gradually, it turns out that what happens is that I sound like Jennifer Tilly for what has now been almost a week. And don’t think for a second that people have let it go unnoticed. That has now extended to people noticing that I “kind of look like a blonde Jennifer Tilly” which is probably not true at all. But if you see me anytime soon and I still have my Tilly voice, please do not feel compelled to point out that I do, in fact, sound kind of like Jennifer Tilly. And for the love of all that is holy, please don’t tell me that there’s even a touch of Fran Drescher in there as well. I will throw used tissues at you.


4. F yeah, Mavs – I haven’t blogged about the Mavs because I am a one trick pony and my one trick is to bag on the Mavs and point out ways that they are screwing up and how they suck and how they are going to blow it. But I can’t do that right now. The potential to leap as high as perhaps the #5 seed? Happy dance. The fact that the Suns massacred New Orleans and Portland killed San Antonio two nights ago? More happy dancing. The fact that Ginobli is done and Tim Duncan is a game time decision and not even remotely close to being healthy? So much happy dancing. I’m not saying we’ve got the perfect team. I’m not saying that we don’t still have all that choke potential we’ve displayed so majestically for what seems like going on a decade (quick fact check: 9 years of making the playoffs with 0 titles) in us. But we’ve never been able to get hot at the right time. We’ve won an unfathomable amount of regular season games only to get booted in the first round by Golden State. You know, stupid shit like that. But it looks like we might be getting hot at just the right time. If that is true, all the credit should surely be given to JJ Barea. Barea for president of everything. Ever.

5. F yeah, Bryan Street Tavern – The owners of the Barley House have opened a new bar called Bryan Street Tavern at Bryan and Peak. Which is great news for me because a) that’s my neighborhood and b) they serve amazing gourmet pizzas and c) the drinks are cheap and d) throw in the fact that Taco Joint is also just a few blocks from my house and it all adds up to the fact that my neighborhood is on a mission to make me constantly fat and happy. But last night I split the 12” Chicken Pesto pizza and sank a few $2 well drinks. And when the night was over, I went from the front door of Bryan Street Tavern to my bed in under five minutes. I win. Also, one side of Bryan Street Tavern looks like a swanky living room complete with chandeliers and I have a semi-secret desire to, since I never went to prom, take some sort of drunken prom pictures in said area sometime soon. Consider yourselves warned.


6. F yeah, Morrissey – I don’t care if you’re tired of reading about how excited I am about tonight’s Morrissey concert because I am not yet tired of typing about it. I keep looking at set lists from this tour (looks like there’s a good chance that someone’s gonna be opening his show tonight with “This Charming Man….) and trying to go back and listen to solo stuff that I wrote off a long time ago. That’s been met with varying degrees of success. But even when Morrissey annoys me, he’s still Morrissey. And I love the little fucker. Even when he does things like this I still love him. Even when Chrissy pointed out when I bought Alma Matters on vinyl brand new from Bills that there appeared to be some sort of devil’s claw marks down the crotch area of his jeans in the front cover photo, I still love him. Even when my favorite band ever, Sparks, writes a song called “Lighten Up, Morrissey”, I still love him. Even more so because apparently Morrissey loves the song and is a huge Sparks fan and picked them for the Meltdown Festival when he was the curator. In fact, nothing is more blissful to me than Sparks and Morrissey intertwined. So please enjoy the lyrics to “Lighten Up, Morrissey” by Sparks:

She won't go out with me, no, she won't go out
'Cause my intellect's paper thin
She won't go out with me, no, she won't go out
Since my intellect's not like him

So, lighten up, Morrissey

She won't hang out with me, no, she won't hang out
'Til my biting wit bites like his
She won't hang out with me, no, she won't hang out
'Til my quick retort's quick as his

So, lighten up, Morrissey Lighten up, lighten up
Lighten up, lighten up
Lighten up, Morrissey
Lighten up, lighten up
Lighten up, Morrissey

She won't have sex with me, no, she won't have sex
'Less it's done with a pseudonym
She won't do sport with me, no, she won't do sport
Says it's way, way too masculine, look at him

So, lighten up, Morrissey Lighten up, lighten up
Lighten up, lighten up
Lighten up, Morrissey
Lighten up, lighten up
Lighten up, Morrissey

I got comparisons coming out my ears
And she never can hit the pause
If only Morrissey weren't so Morrisseyesque
She might overlook all my flaws

So, lighten up, Morrissey
Lighten up, lighten up
So, lighten up, Morrissey
Lighten up, lighten up
Lighten up, lighten up
Lighten up, Morrissey
Lighten up, lighten up
Lighten up, Morrissey
She won't dine out with me, no, she won't dine out
Says my t-bone steak is at fault
She won't dine out with me, no, she won't dine out
With a murderer, pass the salt

Lighten up, lighten up
Lighten up, lighten up
Lighten up, Morrissey
Lighten up, lighten up

Lighten up, lighten up
Lighten up, Morrissey
Lighten up, lighten up
Lighten up, Morrissey

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

I LOVE YOU, OBAMA AND I AM SO GLAD THAT WE MADE YOU OUR PRESIDENT



Seriously, I jumped up and down and did a little Irish jig when I read about the fact that Obama has appointed the Human Rights Campaign's Religion and Faith Director Harry Knox to his Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. That's the progress and change that I voted for in November. Knox is from Georgia like me. Harry Knox is a badass. I would give you a laundry list of reasons why but you should Google him for yourself and see. He studied to be an ordained Methodist minister but was denied the right by the Methodist church because he is gay. The Human Rights Campaign is also something admirable that I am really glad to see Obama include in his Faith-Based council.

A fellow Georgian I am not happy to be associated with? This douche.

I heart you, Obama.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

What the World Needs Now is One More Blog About The Smiths



I blogged a few weeks ago about how I was excited then apathetic about going to see Morrissey. Then I went to see Bruce Springsteen in Austin on Sunday night. And it was great. Seriously, it was fan-fucking-tastic. I’m not a music journalist anymore so I don’t have to use flowery adjectives to describe the show. Trust me when I say it was an amazing show. And I love Bruce. And I was lucky enough to go in the company of the wonderful Mr. Alan Levy. This was Alan’s 26th Springsteen show. He loves Bruce. A lot. Bruce Springsteen is Alan’s favorite artist. And that made me start to think while we were watching Springsteen….

Why the fuck am I not going to see Morrissey? Regardless of how bad some of his recent stuff has been, it would not be a hyperbole to say that Morrissey saved me and many other teenagers from an adolescence of monosyllabic words and probably liking ska bands or something awful like that. Morrissey and The Smiths literally bleed into every memory I have of high school. I mean I can look at pictures of myself in high school and see the Smithsness just radiating off me. I oozed Smiths fandom. I looked at Alan during the Springsteen show and though he did take a bathroom break during “Outlaw Pete”, there he was for his 26th Bruce show because he loves Bruce. And I decided I had to see Morrissey.

Of course the music journalist, Chuck Klosterman lite in me started thinking about how different but similar Springsteen and Morrissey are. They are both messiahs to their fans. And both terminally depressing. Seriously, “We went down to the courthouse and the judge put it all to rest. No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle. No flowers, no wedding dress.” Jesus. I watched when Bruce went to the edge of the stage and how everyone grasped his legs and how creepy that would be in ANY situation other than this show or maybe a Morrissey show. Then it made me giggle thinking about skipping out of gym class to sit with my friend Isaac under the bleachers and listening to Rank and seeing the picture in the fold-out of Morrissey’s shirt being ripped apart like an endless basket of breadsticks at a table full of menopausal secretaries at the Olive Garden.

But then I remembered that Bruce sings a lot about parking in cars with girls and making out and knocking girls up and proving it all night and stuff. Again, I love Bruce Springsteen but that kind of stuff was very foreign to me in high school. First off, I drove my mom’s Dodge Caravan with headlights that didn’t work so nighttime activities in my car were out. I would like to think that the whole “busted headlights” thing was a brilliant ploy on my mom’s part to keep me out of trouble but you really have no idea how square I was in high school. She could have just told me there was a Mystery Science Theater 3000 marathon on to keep me inside and safe. So as much as Bruce fans can pump their fist in the air and think about the glory days they had in the back of a shaggin’ wagon or whatever, my high school days were much more accurately portrayed by lyrics such as “Send me the pillow, the one that you dream on… And I’ll send you mine.” Yeah, again I was not very cool.

This does however give me a chance to tell the story of the three people I encountered on the road to becoming a Smiths fan. I don’t know that all of them know their places exactly in my road to Smiths fan so I would like to tell the story. My first year of high school, I managed to not only become a writer for my high school paper but somehow become the “Entertainment Editor” for it. I think mostly because I made up the position of “Entertainment Editor” then volunteered to fill said position. For my first big piece, I wanted to write a profile of my favorite local DJ, Josh Venable from the Adventure Club.

I kind of worked my way backwards into the Smiths, you see. I loved the Adventure Club and would call and request whatever I considered an obscure Britpop gem (“And God Created Brixton” by Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine). This lead to a few telephone and face to face conversations with Josh. One night while Josh was doing his graveyard shift on the Edge, I called to ask him if I could do an interview with him for my school’s paper. He agreed and then somehow in a dramatic shift of topic, he asked me what my favorite Smiths album was. I shamefully admitted that though I knew who they were and that they were important, I didn’t own any or know any songs. Josh played “How Soon is Now?” for me on the air and told me to go to Bills as soon as I could to pick up Meat is Murder. I promised I would. In the meantime, he told me to meet him and his buddy at a Denny’s in North Dallas after his shift was over to do the interview for the paper.

Not wanting to admit that I wasn’t old enough to drive, I had my mom drop me off around the corner from Denny’s that Saturday morning at 6:45am for my first interview with anyone for anything ever. I don’t even remember where I got a recorder. For comedy’s sake, let’s pretend I brought a Teddy Ruxpin with me to record the interview. Josh and his buddy showed up. He introduced his buddy as Zac. I started to nervously ask my questions. When I say “nervously ask my questions” I actually mean “ask questions to the general direction of the empty carafe because I was terrified to make eye contact”. I may still have the tape (inside Teddy Ruxpin) somewhere because I do remember coming across it in a move five or six years ago and it’s so funny to listen to both how cool I am trying to sound and how many angry references Josh made to Kula Shaker throughout the interview. I also remember that towards the end of the interview, I saw my mom’s minivan circling the restaurant and praying that she would not come in and blow my cover.

The interview ended and Josh’s buddy, who didn’t say much throughout the interview, asked me if I had been a writer for long or something like that. I told him, with the looming specter of my mom’s Dodge Caravan closing in, that I had always loved writing and that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up and I wanted to write about music and art and how great that sounded and gee, wasn’t writing the bee’s knees! He kind of mumbled something about that being cool and said he was a writer. So it took me a few years to finally figure out that guy was Zac Crain. So now when I see Zac, I always think about staring at empty orange juice carafes nervously and hoping that my mom doesn’t come in and tell everyone that I’m not old enough to drive yet.

Later that day, I went into Bills to buy Meat Is Murder as I was instructed to do by my leader. I went to The Smiths vinyl section and found a water damaged copy of Meat is Murder, figuring that would be the cheapest one in light of the no-price-tags policy at Bills. But “How Soon Is Now?” wasn’t listed. Shit. Did I forget the name of the song? Did I forget the name of the album? Is there another The Smiths? How could I have messed this up already? I got the sweaty palmed, staring-at-an-empty-carafe feeling all over again. Then Mark Crowder came over. I knew who Mark Crowder was because he was the cool guy at Bills who liked Liverpool and Britpop and smoked cigarettes and wore trainers. Mark Crowder did not know who I was because I was one of the many kids who came in, bought whatever import single he proclaimed was cool from the top of the stairs while he was on the phone then I would shuffle out like a teenaged Britpop-loving Gollum. Crowder asked me if I needed help finding anything. I am amazed that my mouth retained the ability to form words. I meekly said, “Ummm, I was looking for this song….that I thought was called….ummm…well….I know it goes…..”I am human and I nee…..” At which point Crowder rolled his eyes, pulled the copy of Meat is Murder that I had just been looking at out of a box and tossed it to me, saying with extreme exasperation, “It’s an unlisted track on Meat is Murder. Pfffft!” And then he turned around and walked away.

I scurried to the counter to pay $30 for a water damaged, torn and partially scratched copy of Meat is Murder and then hurried out before my uncoolness started seeping into the upstairs dance records area and caused the turntables to rust. The good news is that Mark Crowder has been a dear friend of mine for years now. He lives in San Francisco but when he comes to town, I like to tell him that story. He apologizes every time. I think it’s funny.

And that is why I am excited to see Morrissey on Friday night.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Bossin' It Up on Twitter

I don't know if I am using Twitter correctly. But what better time to find out than on the three hour drive to Austin to see Bruce Sprinsteen? So if you've got nothing better to do, follow me. I am Twittering like Lindsay Lohan on a meth binge.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

The Dallas Morning News Comments Section or Where The Milk of Human Kindness Goes to Turn into Yellowcake Uranium



I was talking with a friend yesterday about the internet. This person and I have talked about the internet before. The internet is big so there’s lots to talk about. His quandary was whether people are actually getting meaner or if the anonymity of internet has just brought out the worst in people. The newfound ability to spew forth the stuff that they used to have to valiantly hold back behind a smokescreen of decorum and general kindness. I think people probably always had nasty thoughts lurking in the back of their head or some sort of inner Tourette’s that they wanted to unleash as a pressure valve to blow off some steam on strangers and acquaintances alike but now they have the internet as a medium upon which they can do it. I think that had the internet been around in the time of the Civil War, you would have seen Blue v. Gray flame wars on message boards wherein Ulysses S. Grant’s virility was questioned and conspiracy theories would have abounded about Sherman’s March to the Sea being completely concocted by the notoriously tabloidly Confederate media. I dare speculate that we would have gotten to see the first good candid beach shots of THE hot couple of their day, Abraham and Mary Todd, or AbeTodd as they would probably have been known. And Mary Todd probably would have looked too fat in her long-sleeved bathing costume and been a beach DON’T for the summer of 1862.

In general, because I am no one of any particular fame or notoriety and therefore not often the target of such cyber-vitriol, I am usually able to block out most of the trollery of the internet. Yes, the internet has become one big open mic night at the Improv. No, I am no better than any of these Bobcat Goldthwait wannabes because I have a blog so I am technically just adding to the white noise. I guess I have gotten over my hopes or expectations for insightful, spirited and entertaining discourse in the comments section after an article on a news site. If it’s a story with the words “President Obama” somewhere in there, no matter what the story was actually about, I immediately know that we will be thrust back 6 months into the past. Everyone will defend their stance on supporting or not supporting Obama and then “socialism” will come up then someone will counter that with “war criminal” until the server upon which that particular site is hosted grows legs, stands up, unplugs itself and does itself in, Michael Hutchence-style on the closest doorknob. Because we all know that servers have that perv-y kind of side to them. I just don’t think that comments sections on the internet are places where good discussions are found these days.

And this is where elitism comes in handy. Elitism is supposed to be bad, right? That’s what people keep telling me. Now, “Pretty Woman” elitism where snobby shopkeepers don’t let hookers with a heart of gold try on nice dresses? That’s wrong. But an intellectual or decorum velvet rope erected every now and again never hurt anyone. Take Gawker, for instance. I will tell my grandchildren one day that, long ago, I had to actually try out to be a commenter on Jezebel. Because Gawker Media believed that velvet ropes were not a bad thing and were not ashamed to admit it or enforce it. So I gathered all my wittiness together and submitted my hobo bundle of observations and lo and behold, I was granted commenter status. I felt kind of honored. But then the plebs stormed the gates, mostly via Facebook. And now, despite valiant attempts at things like disemvoweling, the unwashed and uninteresting masses have taken over.

But no corner of the internet is more terrifying to me than the comments on the Dallas Morning News site. And it’s never just on one or two hot topic news stories. The (former) Officer Robert Powell story clearly hit a raw nerve across the country. But over at the Dallas Morning News, the lynch mob is always ready to go whether it be over school finance, Jenny the elephant or illegal aliens so you can imagine the Mardi Gras of mental unbalance that went on over there. Bear in mind, I think Powell is a dick of the highest order. But that doesn’t make the creeps who populate the Dallas Morning News comments section any less psychotic in their discussions of the whole Powell situation. Or make them better spellers. Let’s put the Powell incident aside since it’s an easy target as it involves race and cops and football which are very easy topics to get people riled up about. What else is going on over in the DMN comments section today? I’m just going to give you a few headlines and some comments that followed those headlines. Seriously, these are fairly innocuous headlines that wouldn’t seem to be things that would provoke hatred and name calling but you just wait and see how we can DMN-ify them.

Wylie High student accused of bringing gun on school bus

COMMENT:
The parents need to do a better job with their kids. God only knows what the true intent was

COMMENT:
Too bad the kid wasn't a starter on the basketball team, the school would have washed it under the table like A***** did back in '02. The felon came back to school after a short stay in D***** then was back on the squad that went to state. The coach was awarded Coach of the Year then fired. At least one of the bums got what they deserved.

COMMENT:
it was probally your kid that brought the gun.

Juárez crime plummets after troops pour in

COMMENT:
Well, Bush and Obama gave Mexico billions in bribe money, equipment, and expertise. It was MY money, given without permission. And, of course, it all filters down to the cartels and the corrupt officials, police, and army. When Mexico runs out of the current bribe money, what wil the soldiers do? Guess.

COMMENT:
Nuke the f---ers.

Dallas-Fort Worth apartment occupancy drops in the first quarter

COMMENT:
Decline in demand? Don't worry, they'll make up for it by raising rental prices. Wouldn't expect apartment owners to take a hit now, would ya?

COMMENT:
Now, just give us a hint on how many apartment units you own?

Not one?

Do you own the roof over your head or are you Pist Poor?

Start working, investing and getting rich instead of this jealousy....




You hear that, folks? Become a better person by getting rich and belittling total strangers in the comments section of the Dallas Morning News website over a story about APARTMENT OCCUPANCY RATES DROPPING FOR THE FIRST QUARTER OF 2009. Don’t stop to think that the person who may (gasp) rent the roof over their head might be an EMT who is first to respond to the scene of an accident you have been involved in or a teacher responsible for educating your kids or the 20 year old kid who corrals carts in the grocery store parking lot who finds your dropped wallet and catches up to you to return it. Nope, they’re probably just a total dick. Call them “queer as William Tecumseh Sherman” while you’re at it. Serves them right for being on the internet.