Thanks to the graciousness of host Tom Scharpling, I was able to visit the WFMU studios in beautiful downtown Jersey City during the second Best Show marathon program this Tuesday. To say this was a thrill would be a vast understatement. To say that it made me one with the cosmos and eternity itself...that's probably an overstatement. So let's say the experience was somewhere in the middle.

It was amazing to see the sheer amount of work that goes into the marathon, from all of the Phone Slaves taking pledges to wrangling all the premiums to feeding the assembled host (which was amazingly done by WFMU's own Terre T, one of the coolest people in existence). It felt a lot like being backstage at a Broadway production or a live TV show circa 1957, with folks coming and going at breakneck speed in confined quarters to make sure everything ran as smoothly as possible. Except that not a single person involved received a dime for their work. It was all, literally, a labor of love.

And as if witnessing The Best Show raise an unbelievable $80K+ for WFMU wasn't enough, I got to see funnymen Patton Oswalt and John Hodgman lend their talents to the cause. I also captured some of these moments on video, thanks to my lil' iPod. The picture quality is not stellar, but the audio is pretty good, and their historic import compels me to share them with you. (You can hear the actual show here.)

Let this post serve as another friendly reminder that the WFMU Marathon is spinning along, and the station still needs your help!

The goal for this year's marathon is $1.2 million. As of this writing, they stand at about $500K. So there's still a tough road to hoe. Anything you can contribute will be greatly appreciated.

How much do I believe in this cause? I've actually altered my site to include an Insta-Pledge widget over there to your right. Now, you don't even have to leave this fabulous webbed site to show your support! (If you want to alter your own site in such fashion, go here.)

The mere fact that you can aid such a fabulous cause should be reason enough to do so. But a pledge of $75 or more entitles you to at least one DJ premium, which are all amazing, full of stuff you can't get anywhere else, and will bring you hours of amusement.

Case in point: I just rediscovered an unbelievable CD that Terre T gave out as her DJ premium way back in 2003. It features live performances from a plethora of bands who played on her show: The Dirtbombs, Corba Verde, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Electric Eel Shock...there is nothing not awesome on this collection, and none of it can be found anywhere else.

Where can you find this CD now? YOU CAN'T. Unless you have a time machine and can travel back in time and pledge to her show, which would be an excellent use of a time machine (right after you killed Hitler, of course).

What I'm saying is, do you want to look back on your life without regret? Pledge now, get these premiums, and lord it over your less savvy friends in the years to come.

I heartily recommend you tune in to tonight's installment of The Best Show, because--well, I'd recommend doing that every Tuesday night. But on this Tuesday, if you pledge, you won't just receive this year's Chump Steamroller Fun Pack, which includes a bumper sticker, Best Show trading cards, and a DVD whose participants and contents are far too awesome to recount here.

No, as if all of that weren't enough, a pledge tonight puts you in the running for a number of fabulous additional prizes. Like what? Oh, how about the entire Monty Python Complete Series DVD set AUTOGRAPHED BY TERRY GILLIAM?! Seriously, how about that, nerds? I can actually hear 12-year-old me getting a boner over the very thought of such a thing.

And if Monty Python ain't your bag, there's also a fabulous set of rare, rare, super rare stuff from Boston Spaceships (Robert Pollard of Guided by Voice's current deal), which includes (among many other things) a 7" test pressing. How rare are those? That rare. (I'm holding my arms out very far.) You can't get a test pressing of anything unless you're in the band, produce the band, or sleep with the band. Pledging is a much easier means of acquiring this thing.

Oh, and there will be fabulous celebrity guests in studio, of course: Patton Oswalt and John Hodgman, who will contribute live hilarity to the festivities (Patton's peformance as The Famous Flamer during the 2008 is one of the funniest pledge drive come-ons you will ever hear).

If you don't tune in, you will miss awesome stuff such as what happened last week, when Ted Leo played a few songs from his brand new album The Brutalist Bricks (out today!). He also sang a duet with frequent Best Show caller/Newbridge's biggest cannabis enthusiast, Bryce, on "We Built this City on Rock and Roll".



Your country needs you. Your airwaves need you. So don't think about it, DO IT!!!!!!

Despite being jaded and cynical about The Ways of the World, I still manage to surprise myself with my naive ability to be appalled. This happened on Sunday as I read Mike Lupica's rambling, borderline slanderous column in the Daily News about Jose Reyes. In it, he puts a bunch of dots on the same page as "Reyes", "hyperthyroid issue", and "HGH", expecting you to connect the three without ever explicitly saying so.

It was a Fox News-ian tactic: say an extremely controversial thing that will play well with your core audience, but say it in such a way that allows you to deny (technically) saying it when the other side gets its feathers ruffled. Except that in the world of sports "journalism", you can write such things and not face any consequences for actions that would result in censure in virtually any other arm of the fourth estate.

Here's a few choice quotes designed to sow doubt in readers' minds:

Reyes says he told the feds he didn't get human growth hormone from a Canadian doctor named Tony Galea, often regarded as a patron saint of HGH.

Yes, I remember when the Pope officially canonized him as such last year. Galea is under investigation for HGH distribution, but I don't think that makes him the "patron saint" of the shadowy substance any more than I'm the patron saint of Cheez-Its because I can't stop eating them. (Though I would totally accept the position were it offered to me, or existed.)

[J]ust because Reyes now has a problem with his thyroid gland, and is in New York City for sophisticated testing on it, does not mean those problems were caused by any kind of synthetic drug in his system.

Although the tone of my article, and this snotty sentence, indicates I totally believe they were.

Nobody should be surprised that people are looking to draw a line from Galea to what showed up in Reyes' blood tests.

I'm not surprised that people make such assumptions in blog comment sections or on sports radio. This morning, I heard the douchetacular Craig Carton scream at a doctor who dared suggest there wasn't enough evidence to make this logical leap. But I am surprised that such accusations--which have no shred of evidence to support them--are given credence in a major newspaper like the Daily News. 

Is there a way human growth hormone could have contributed to Reyes' thyroid problems? There are doctors who think so. Would they ever say HGH definitely caused Reyes' problems? No, they would not.

No, they would not say that because diagnosing a person you've never treated and revealing that diagnosis publicly would be a total violation of everything you learn from day one in medical school.

"Good medicine is about eliminating possible causes," Dr. Lewis Maharam - a doctor of sports medicine who has made sense about performance-enhancing drugs for years - said yesterday. "It's about differentials, making a list of possibilities and then eliminating them one by one. But there is a possibility that human growth hormone could cause a spike of thyroid hormone levels."

There's also a possibility that it could give you the ability to fly or learn ancient Sanskrit or grow  an extra set of arms. These things are all highly unlikely, but there's no reason to think they're impossible, right?

The negative side effects of HGH use aren't well known, because HGH isn't legitimately prescribed often, and most of its use is confined to the murky underworld of performance enhancing drugs, where users are reluctant to participate in clinical trials. So hell, why not say it could cause your hands to turn into saltines? You can't definitively say it doesn't do that, can you? I rest my case.

Also, Dr. Maharam "has made sense about performance-enhancing drugs for years"--I didn't know you could specialize in Making Sense. Is that a lucrative practice? Is it any more lucrative than badgering Tiger Woods, which he also seems to specialize in?

Lupica closes out his piece by unfavorably comparing Reyes to Jimmy Rollins and Derek Jeter. He notes that Reyes played only 36 games last year and Jeter has never played fewer than 119. He fails to mention that Rollins had a terrible year last season. He also doesn't mention that from 2005 through 2008, Reyes played at least 153 games every year, and played 160 games twice (something Captain Intangibles has never done). Because all of these facts would not jive with the well-established narrative of Jose Reyes as malingerer and malcontent and--now added to the pile--drug cheater.

I don't think Lupica has anything against Reyes, necessarily. This is not an attempt to railroad him so much as it is an attempt to stir up controversy and sell some more papers/get some more page hits (which I am indirectly contributing to, I suppose). And in the grand scheme of things, writing a shitty, wildly speculative column on Reyes is pretty low on Lupica's list of offenses.

For instance, he was directly responsible for driving Mark Kriegel and Lisa Olson away from the Daily News, all of them for petty personal reasons. He loves to insert himself into the news as much as possible, as he did during last year's U.S. Open. He is, by multiple accounts, a miserable prick who lives to throw his weight around.

He's risen to the heights of the sportswriting world, yet is still apparently haunted by jealousy and a fear of being outshone. What could possibly cause a man to behave in such a manner? I have no idea what personal demons Lupica may have within him, but I don't think you can eliminate HGH use from the equation.

I have absolutely no evidence that Lupica has used HGH. And I also have absolutely no idea if HGH could even cause such emotional neediness. But I don't have any evidence to refute these things either, do I? Lupica painted Reyes guilty by association on evidence just as flimsy, so I see no reason why I can't do the same.

Today, Sean from Massapequa graces us with his presence to discuss Jose Reyes' sudden medical woes. He told me he preferred to address the audience directly, unlike previous posts where we had a dialogue. So without further delay, here's Sean.

They say Jose Reyes has got a thyroid problem. Yeah, and I'm the mayor of Five Towns.

I'm not, just so you know. There is no mayor of Five Towns, cuz it ain't an actual town. Just like Reyes ain't actually hurt. We all know this guy fakes injuries, like he did last year so's he could take more salsa lessons.

How do I know that? Ask yourself this: Has he ever denied it? I rest my case.

There ain't no such thing as a thyroid. You ever seen one? I didn't think so. A thyroid is one a them things doctors make up so's they can prescribe you expensive medication. Like ADD, or your appendix. It's all just a scam. They say you got some disease, charge your insurance for the pills or cream or whatever, and you get some workman's comp cuz you got sick on the job somehow. That's what they call The Circle of Scam.

You get to be my age, you see the shit I seen, you realize everything's a scam. Congress. Santa Claus. The Pope. Cold fusion. The Post Office. All scams. Makes me sick just thinkin about it.

Listen: you go to the right doctor, you can get him to say you got anything. Anything. And if you go to the really right doctor, you can get him to write you a scrip for anything. Speakin a which, if you need that type a doctor, lemme know. I might know a guy. Just sayin.

Take my buddy Joe, f'rinstance. Works for the Parks Department supervising landscaping work. Easiest job in the world. Guy works like 15 hours a week, and half that time is replacing the string in the weedwhackers. Of course, Joe had to get greedy and try and get disability. So he goes to this one doctor I know in Fresh Meadows, doctor "diagnoses" him with "lawnmower lung".

The City said there was no such thing, but Joe threatened to squeal about the no-bid Soilmaster contract, so they gave him what he wanted. Now the guy collects a paycheck while sittin in a hammock all year. Even in the winter, two feet a snow on the ground. Guy loves his hammock.

I bet that's where Reyes is right now, swingin in his hammock, sippin a lemonade. I bust my hump on the job three days a week, and all I wanna do is watch some spring training baseball in the middle of my five day weekend. Now that's all ruined cuz Reyes don't wanna do spring training drills. Life ain't fair.

Look, Reyes, just get your ass on the field and all is forgiven. I need you back on the diamond so's I can scream horrible things atcha every time you don't hit a triple.

Friday's normally the day for YouTubery Friday (because, duh), but this week I haven't stumbled across anything overtly awesome in the moving picture vein. I did, however, find a couple of items that put the "crazy" in *that weird index-finger-flapping-your-lips crazy noise*.

One of my brothers works in the fabulous world of film production. There are awesome, glamorous aspects of this job, of course. Like any other job, there are also bad things about it. In the latter category: the sheer amount of kookadooks who seek you out because their Crazy Voice must be heard. It may be hard to believe, but the prospect of fame occasionally attracts unhinged persons. The kind who write pitches that start out THE MAGIC JESUS SPACESHIP IN MY BRAIN HAS THE BEST IDEA FOR A SCRIPT EVAR!!1! I'VE WRITTEN IT ON THIS KNIFE I'M HOLDING AGAINST YOUR THROAT!

Earlier this week, my brother told me he received a movie pitch via fax (always a good sign; 99 percent of all faxes are sent by robots or the criminally insane). He sent me a link for this movie pitch for something called Doll Warrior, without comment. Because really, what else can you say? Other than several variations on WTF?!!!, which is what we did for the next hour.

Finally, I received this email from an email address at "This American Life". Something tells me it's not actually from the fabled NPR show. Keep in mind, this is just a small chunk of a very, very long rant that doesn't even begin to make sense. Brevity and crazy-ity don't often go hand in hand.

A tweet by Onion scribe/artiste Maria Schneider (aka @writtennoise, auteur of Pathetic Geek Stories) pointed me to this hideous cover of a recent issue of Life and Style. As you can see, it's a "before-and-after" shot of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's daughter, Shiloh. In the before pic, she looks like a typical little girl. In the after shot, she has short hair and is wearing a cardigan. The cover screams WHY IS ANGELINA TURNING SHILOH INTO A BOY? and laments the fact that Shiloh has "No girlie things"! "IS IT HARMING THE 3-YEAR-OLD?" ZOMG!

Despite being a magazine aimed at a largely female audience, this publication has forgotten one very important thing: You can't force a three-year-old girl what to wear anything she doesn't want to. Trust me. I am legally required to clothe a three-year-old girl, and I know that they have no qualms about letting you know when they're unhappy with your choice of outfit for the day (or anything else, for that matter).

At this young age, kids simply like what they like. It has very little to do with the peer pressures that emerge later. For whatever reason, Shiloh likes dressing this way now. The chances of her wanting to dress this way for the rest of her life are about as slim as her watching Dora the Explorer when she's in college. How many things do you do/like now that you liked/did when you were three? And if she does grow up to wear "boy" clothing, it's because she wants to, not because Crazy Angelina Jolie "made" her that way.

When I found The Wife and I were having a daughter, one of the first things I thought (other than PANIC) was, "I'm not gonna have any of that princess crap in my house!" Because I associated the whole Princess Phenomenon with a mindless philosophy of entitlement and passivity that's resolutely anti-feminist.

But somewhere along the line, she got exposed to Princess Stuff, and she likes it. She's not super into it, like she wears a tiara to day care, but she does like it. So she has some princess-y toys and some princess-y outfits, and the world has continued spinning on its axis. Hopefully, if I raise her right, she won't turn out to be a Kardashian.

She also likes some non-girly stuff, too. She often makes me play Spider-Man--of course, I always have to be Venom and get wrapped up in her webs and carted off to jail (which greatly resembles our bathroom). As I type this, she's watching an X-Men cartoon, which she asked to see (screamed, actually). Her love of these things has nothing to do with me. I have never forced her to watch any of them. I learned very early on that when you force a kid to watch something, 99 times out of 100 they will hate it.

Even so, every now and then, she will say of something--even if it's something she likes, like Spider-Man--"that's for boys!" As if she shouldn't watch/play with it. I have no idea where she gets this idea from. She certainly doesn't get it in our house.

But she has to leave our house sometime. And when I see things like the garbage linked above, I realize she must just get it from the air, living in a world that tells her from infancy that there are certain things she can't like or do or think or be. I could have kept every item of princess-iana out her hands and sight, and she'd still be exposed to caveman attitudes like this.

Thanks, world.

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Senator Jim Bunning saw his impressive streak of heartless bastardry end at just over five days, a new legislative record, late Tuesday night. Since last Thursday, the Republican from Kentucky had single-handedly held up legislation that would extend unemployment benefits to millions of Americans. The streak was made even more remarkable by Bunning's age, and the fact that he did it for no obvious reason other than to be a colossal prick.

The exhausted congressman told reporters in the Senate locker room, "I think I even surprised myself for a while there," shortly before flipping the bird to each one of them individually.

"I think some of us questioned his stamina," said House Minority Leader John Boehner. "After all, Jim's no spring chicken. But to be that much of a cruel, insensitive jerkoff for that long...wow, I think I'd have trouble doing that."

The previous record of consecutive prickitude was held by President William Howard Taft, who refused to let relatives of victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire bury their family members for four full days. "I shall not reward these insolent whelps for leaving their appointed posts before nine hours of work, fire or no fire," Taft said.

While Bunning's streak did not cause quite as much misery, it did last for a longer period of time and show a similarly callous disregard for human life. For the purposes of legislative records, a stretch of dickery can't simply be waged for mere personal reasons, such as greed or ambition. The pure assholery must have no seeming purpose except to promote suffering.

Before his career in public service, Bunning was a major league pitcher whose exploits on the mound earned him a plaque in Cooperstown. He was best known for pitching a perfect game in 1964, which he later credited to a lucky glove made of orphan skin and the tears of Vietnamese refugees.

The annual WFMU Marathon is upon us! Huzzah!

Every year, The Freeform Station of the Nation asks you, the listener, to kindly lend some change to keep their doors open for another year. To which I say, in word of Henry Rollins (via The Pink Fairies), DON'T THINK ABOUT IT, DO IT!!!!!!!!!!! !

Look, I know things are tough all over. I know that we've had a few horrible things happen in the world recently that definitely deserve our time and attention and cash. But if you have any dough to spare for the only radio station worth listening to in the tri-state area, please consider doing so. Got five bucks? Send 'em five bucks. Every little bit helps.

But if you can send more than five bucks, you will get quite a bang for those bucks. For instance, if you were to pledge to, say, The Best Show on WFMU with Tom Scharpling, which airs tonight from 8 to 11pm EST. Tune in and hear Ted Leo play songs by request. and Tom's partner in crime Jon Wurster do his magic live in studio. And if you pledge $75 or more, you will receive The Chump Steamroller Fun Pack. That includes a set of Best Show trading cards, a bumper sticker, and the first ever Best Show DVD, which I'm told will contain all sorts of celebrity contributions, bits by frequent callers, and much much much much more.

If you can spare even more change, you can pick multiple DJ premiums, and there is no shortage of awesome DJ premiums. Terre T, Evan "Funk" Davies, Rex, Dave the Spazz, Night People--a cornucopia of a smorgasbord of an orgy of awesome. Pick any one of them and you can't go wrong.

Click here to pledge or call 1-800-989-9368 during the show of your choice. Do your part! YOUR AIRWAVES NEED YOU!

Welcome bu-HACK to The Mike Francesa Program, New York's Number 1, coming to you live from Port St. Lucie, where spring training has begin. The period called spring training is upon us. The time of year generally referred to by most baseball fans as spring training is here. Something has started to occur down here in Florida, and that thing I'm referring to is spring training. I'm at Mets camp, where apparently they're preparing for the upcoming season, rather than throwing in the towel by Opening Day as I suggested. My first guest on the program is a fifth starter candidate and a promising young pitcher, Jon Niese.
Thanks for having me on the show, Mike.
Let me ask you a question, Jon. Didn't you have some sort of injury or something last year?
Um, yeah, I did. Tore a hamstring pretty bad. Couldn't you have just looked that up before the interview?
Where would I have looked it up, the internet? I don't trust those calculator things. They got viruses and cookies in 'em. Now, let me ask you something else: Are you a lefty or a righty?
I'm a lefty. Any other questions you want to ask me that could've been answered by the back of my baseball card?
Yes, as a matter of fact. With Damon and Matsui gone, do you think the Yankee lineup will be as explosive as it was last year? How do you think Granderson's gonna do in his first year in pinstripes?
To be honest, I haven't given the Yankees' question marks much thought, since they won the World Series last year and I don't play for them. I've been concentrating on breaking into the starting rotation and recovering from a horrific injury.
Don't get testy with me, young man. This is how it works, son. I'm the number one host on the Mets' flagship radio station, and I'm here in Port St. Lucie visiting your team. Of course I have to talk about the Yankees!
You do that. I gotta go stand over here for a while
/leaves

Haven't you always dreamed of hearing Dolph Lundgren sing Elvis Presley? Of course you have. Don't even try to pretend you haven't. Guess what? YOU'RE IN LUCK! In fact, the whole human race is in luck, thanks to this video of Ivan Drago crooning "A Little Less Conversation".

Actually, "crooning" is not the correct word. "Bellowing" is more accurate. His voice is kinda like Ted Cassidy's, only not so vibrant and warm. I've heard very few things more bone chilling than Mr. Lundgren croaking "close your mouth and open up your heart." It makes me think he wants to literally open up my heart, with a box cutter.

So no, Mr. Lundgren is not the interpreter of song that Elvis was. But could The King blast through five huge blocks of ice at once? Maybe, if he was really, really high.



As I'm sure you know, Jay Leno is the worst human being on the planet. So he thoroughly deserves this re-soundtracking of his reprehensible new ads for his return to The Tonight Show.



Finally, we've gotten a lot of snow lately 'round Scratchbomb HQ. While driving in the snow is no picnic, I find nothing funnier than watching cars slide and careen under such conditions (as long as no one gets hurt, of course). I like to consider myself a connoisseur of Snow Crash videos. As such, I present to you this sample as the pinnacle of the art form.