Recently in Pointless Nostalgia Category

Yesterday, The Wife and I were debating where to seek out a certain piece of electronic equipment for the house (if you must know, we want to get one of those jacuzzi tanning beds--we work hard, we deserve it!). I jokingly said she should look for it at Consumers, which I thought would be a sure-fire laugh getter, but I was only greeted with silence. It dawned on me that there must be some people out there unfamiliar with the infuriating world of Consumers.

In case you are one of those blighted few, I'll fill you in. Consumers was a big, boxy store that inexplicably sprang up all over the northeast corridor in the 1980s, despite having one of the counterintuitive business models ever.

The idea behind Consumers: the store could save overhead by not having a big showroom for all its wares, and pass those savings along to you. The stores were extremely minimalist, with only a few items on display, and sometimes a jewelry counter.



But if they had no showroom, how did you get your stuff? I'm glad you asked! Consumers had huge catalogs full of all the items they sold. It was sort of a Sears Wish Book, except it contained more than kids stuff. VCRs, jewelry, lawnmowers, you name it.

The catalog was enormous, and enticing. I remember being very impressed by them as a kid, especially the toy/video game section. They even had a teaser for Super Mario Brother 2 several months before it was released. Of course, it was just a screenshot of Super Mario Brothers 1 blown up really big, a ruse even eight-year-old me was able to suss out. But I appreciated the effort they went through to trick me.

If you wanted something at Consumers, you filled out a slip with the item's info, then got on a Space Mountain-sized line that snaked through rows of metal corrals. Eventually, you came face to face with an actual clerk manning one of the many counter stations that lined the length of the store. You handed your slip to a clerk and waited for them to retrieve your item from the warehouse. And waited. And waited. And waited. And also waited.

And after all of this waiting, there was no guarantee the store would actually have the item in question. Consumers lacked either the ability or the willingness to implement a computerized database to track such things (even though this technology existed by the mid-80s), so the only way to determine if the store had something in stock was to actually go in the back and check.

Disappointment can happen to you at any store, of course. You go to the mall, hoping to find a certain thing, and it turns out no one has it. But there is something especially exasperating about jumping through all these bureaucratic steps, and waiting on line, and waiting for a clerk to emerge from the back, and then finding out you're screwed. Kafka himself could not have designed a more Kafka-esque shopping experience.

This was torturous when I was a kid. We didn't get toys too often, but when we did, it was often at Consumers, because it was cheap and we didn't have a Toys R Us nearby. Children have no patience to begin with, but asking them to endure this rigamarole is impossible. I would hear other kids cry and scream and throw fits as they found out the toys they wanted were out of stock, and just pray they didn't want the same thing I wanted.

This shows just how far things have advanced in the last 25 years. The modern shopping experience is all pitched toward empowering the consumer, giving them as many choices as possible and extensive previews of the product they're considering buying. Can you imagine a store that not only required such waiting, but didn't guarantee they'd have what you wanted? There'd be riots in the streets.

What's even more amazing is that Consumers was simply the most austere of the catalog stores of the 80s. There were a few others, like Service Merchandise, but these other stores also had a lot of goods on display. You could actually buy things off the rack at Service Merchandise. You could not do that at Consumers.

In a weird way, Consumers was a predecessor of sites like Amazon, which also have no physical displays, which cuts down on costs. And you can think of a catalog as a low-tech site showcasing a store's wares. The big difference, of course, is that you don't have to leave your house to window-shop at Amazon. And if what they have is out of stock, you go to another site, or shrug your shoulders, rather than leave a store completely defeated and hating life.

Continuing my pointless quest to digitize every 80s ad I possess, I present this latest collection of commercials from The Vast and Dusty Scratchbomb VHS Archives. The latest batch comes from a tape with material recorded right around Halloween, 1985. Why am I presenting Halloween materials when we're so close to Christmas? Because many of these ads have holiday relevance. And because I lump Halloween into that Drive To XMas Season. And because SHUT UP IT'S MY STUPID SITE OKAY?!

This first ad definitely has Christmas significance. In it, Alex Karras (aka Webster's dad) informs parents that they better rush down to their local toy store NOW if they want to get some decent Transformers for the kiddies come December 25. This ad aired very close to Halloween, meaning there were at least seven weeks left until The Big Day. Just in case you thought retailers jumping the gun was a recent phenomenon.

It also features Webster's dad lip syncing to "robots in disguise", thus putting it in my top 10 favoritest ads ever.

The first thing I think of when I think of Thanksgiving is the annual Macy's Parade, that weird marriage of huge balloons, showtunes, and Willard Scott. In the magical world of the Macy's Parade, there is nothing so bizarre that it can't be shoehorned into something else.

The greatest thing, in retrospect, is that "artists" who appear in it are only rarely well known. They've been placed into the festivities either because they're on a new NBC show, starring in a new Broadway musical, or have an agent who knows a guy who knows a guy. When viewed through the lens of time, it makes for a great review of has-beens and never-wases.

Sadly, I don't have any old parades in the Vast and Dusty Scratchbomb VHS Archives. But we're all in luck, because the site X-Entertainment.com has a veritable cornucopia of video from many years, ranging from the mid 80s to the early 90s. Just go there, search for "thanksgiving", and you can't go wrong.

I'm partial to the 1989 entry, which is heavy on ALF content and features a truly horrifying Marvel Comics float/musical sequence, among other atrocities. The 1985/1986 page has a terrifying appearance by Phyllis Diller as an inebriated Mother Goose. Both pages have addenda with many classic ads, as do most of the other Thanksgiving reviews. Go there and get lost for hours. It's a lot better than talking to your family!

The second thing that Thanksgiving invokes in my mind is the Turkey Day Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Marathon that used to air each year on Comedy Central (back when they invested in non-racist puppet shows). MST3K used to air 'round midnight most evenings, so it was great to get a chance to watch it in the middle of a lazy holiday. Or attempt to sneak a few viewings of it while not alienating the rest of the family.

Almost as good as the endless string of episodes: The special Turkey Day bumpers produced for it, which were always hysterical. Here's a collection of some of the better ones, although I personally would have included the turkey fact given by Crow "Turkeys have enough tryptophan to knock you on your sorry turkey-eating ass."

As I explained in a recent, similar post, I love commercials. There, I said it. Oh, that felt so liberating.

This latest bout of Pointless Ad Nostalgia comes courtesy of the episode of 120 Minutes from 1991 that contained a lengthy, uncomfortable interview with The Pixies. What's different about these ads vis a vis the Steampipe Alley-era ads I just posted? Well, there's the three years difference, a small eternity in ad-time.

More importantly, since these ads aired on MTV late at night, they're pitched at a much older audience. A fashion-conscious audience that would be receptive to a commercial like this one for Cavaricci. That brand has all but disappeared, but when I was in junior high, everyone had to wear Cavaricci. If you had enough money to buy it, that is. If you were me, you wore generic jeans and whatever was on sale at Caldor's that season.

Why was Cavaricci so popular? Why is anything so popular at any give time? But if this ad is to be believed, they made you very limber and a snazzy dancer.

As I eluded to last week, when I found the bounty of Steampipe Alley tapes, I was looking for something else. That something else was an episode of MTV's 120 Minutes from 1991 that featured an episode-long appearance by The Pixies, mere months before they broke up.

When this show aired, I did not actually have cable in my house. But my grandparents, who lived next door, did. So I would monopolize their VCR in the wee hours, taping either Mystery Science Theater 3000 or 120 Minutes. Despite being an MTV product, 120 Minutes was a pretty decent window into the amorphous world of "alternative" music back then, and also the only way that I could hear about new-ish stuff in the pre-internet days, since I lived nowhere near a cool records store.

This particular episode is an odd time capsule piece, because it comes from one of those in between periods of music. The indie music scene that launched The Pixies was largely dead. The Nirvana phenomenon had yet to begin, although it was just about to (the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" aired during this episode, and had just debuted a few weeks previous). So in most cases, alternative = British. By my rough estimate, 75 percent of all the videos that air in this episode come from English bands, most of them being shoegazer types like Ride, Curve, Lush, etc.

But my main reason in presenting these clips to you is not to highlight this very brief era. I've digitized them because they're some of the most uncomfortable video you'll ever see.

For one thing, The Pixies were already well immersed in the tensions that would doom the band. But rather than exercise that misery on each other, they aim it squarely at the show's host, Dave Kendall. The poor man has to dig and scrape to get the most mundane answers out of them.

This first clip is benign enough. The band is introduced, and Frank Black talks briefly about the inspiration behind the "Here Come Your Man" video. But the fact that he's wearing a panama hat and sunglasses for this interview should have thrown up some huge red flags. As should have Joey Santiago's weird fuzzy hat.

One fringe benefit of discovering the Steampipe Alley tapes (other than being able to expose the world to the genius of Mario Cantone): they were also full of some "classic" ads from yesteryear. Anyone who reads this site with any regularity will know that I have a thing for old commercials. Because I think commercials say a lot more about their respective eras than other media do. After all, art wants to be timeless, but ads are aimed at The Now.

These ads are even more special to me. Why? Because they ran on WWOR, an independent station. So the spots are a little cheaper and a little more home grown.

I realize that many of the ads you'll see below only resonate with me because I remember them from being a kid. I'll cop to that. Because if you can't indulge yourself once in a while, you can you indulge, really?

For instance, this spot for Young People's Day Camp. This ad ran, virtually unchanged, for my entire childhood. The narration, music, and footage stayed the same for at least ten years. I imagine their PR/marketing department was run by one tyrannical, crusty, cigar-chomping veteran who refused to acknowledge that times change. "Look, the ad worked in 1979, it'll work in 1995. Why shouldn't it?!"

While searching through the Vast and Dusty Scratchbomb VHS Archives, looking for something I hope to digitize and post to the site very soon (shh! it's a secret!), I ran across not one, not two, but three full episodes of Steampipe Alley. They're like the Dead Sea Scrolls of kids' show camp!

Once I made this discovery, I did a quick tour of the interwebs and discovered--TO MY HORROR--that there is virtually no online record of Steampipe Alley's existence. THIS ENDS HERE!

If you didn't grow up in the Tri-State Area and/or you aren't of a certain age, you may have never heard of Steampipe Alley. It aired on WWOR, channel 9. Nowadays, it's a "My" station whatever the hell that means, but back then, it was an independent station with Superstation aspirations that broadcast out of Seacaucus, NJ.

Once upon a time, every local TV channel had its own self-produced kids' show with a goofy host, contests, sketches, and cartoons. By the 1980s, almost none of them did. In fact, by that time, there were very few independent stations left at all. Channel 9 was a rare outpost for ultra-local programming (and a budget to match), wedged in between Cosby Show reruns, old movies, and other syndicated fare.

In 1988, for some anachronistic reason, WWOR decided to produce its own kids' show called Steampipe Alley. Info on the interwebs about the program's origins (or anything else about it) is spotty at best. Here's all you really need to know: it was hosted by Mario Cantone.

You may know Mr. Cantone from Sex and the City, or you may have seen him on a Comedy Central Roast or two, or you may have seen him do his standup act. But if you've seen him in any form, you know that he's high energy, to say the least. And he loves campy, old timey references that he's way too young to namecheck. He's equal parts Robin Williams, Rip Taylor, and Charles Nelson Reilly.

Did he tone it down a bit when he hosted a kids' show? I think you know the answer to that question already.

I spent a good chunk of my youth as a Jehovah's Witness. I don't talk or write about very often, because I don't get into personal stuff on the site, at least not anymore (mocking sportswriters leaves me little time for navel gazing). I honestly don't think about it too often, until I have to tell someone that I didn't "do" certain things as a kid, and explain why. Only in those moments does it occur to me, "Oh yeah, that was really weird, wasn't it?" Like I'm remembering that one year I was really into INXS.

But this time of year, it's nearly impossible to not think of my more pious youth. Because Witnesses really do believe in ghosts and demons and pure, Satanic evil in a way that few other people do outside of the Black Metal community. I wrote all about this in a Halloween post from way back in 2006, which you can peep after the jump. Original post here.

For several years in my feckless post-collegiate youth, I had the same plans every Fourth of July. Two friends of mine shared an East Village apartment with roof access. So every Independence Day, we'd go up there, grill up some grub, drink some beers, and watch the fireworks. The festivities were occasionally enhanced by a live band, or a roving hitman with a squirt gun full of vodka. It was like something out of a Smirnoff Ice commercial, but with more body fat and fewer douchebags.

The fireworks were the highlight of the evening. Partly this was because the roof gave us an awesome vantage point to view them. But mostly, it was because of a weird, dorky tradition amongst my friends. I have no idea how this started, but before long it became just as much a part of the holiday as blowing off your pinky with an M-80.

Basically the game was, as each rocket's red glare burst in the air, at the exact moment when a normal person would say 'oooh', you had to yell out an obscure American history reference. Preferably, one with negative connotations. And you had to scream it out in the same kind of voice heard in that timeless patriotic anthem "America! Fuck Yeah!"

Obscure scandals of yesteryear were the most popular choices. Nothing can make a whole bunch of dorks laugh harder than suddenly screaming out TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL! or XYZ AFFAIR!

Presidents were okay, but not the really big ones, obviously. Thomas Jefferson? No. But Franklin Pierce? Solid!

And since the Fourth of July is about America, anything American was fair game. Whether it be YELLOW NUMBER 5! or RIP TAYLOR! or CASSINGLES! These were initially frowned upon, but permitted once we'd burned through more strictly-history-oriented references like GEORGE WALLACE! and THE BULL MOOSE PARTY!

So what would you yell out during the fireworks this Fourth of July? Let's hear some suggestions, fellow patriots.

Since I spent several hours yesterday writing totally insensitive tweets about Michael Jackson's death (like this one), I thought it would be a good idea if I spent five minutes not speaking ill of the dead.

I "liked" Michael Jackson when I was a little kid. I put "liked" in quotation marks because in the early 80s, saying you liked Michael Jackson was equivalent to saying you liked food and water. It wasn't an expression of taste so much as an admission of being alive.

One Christmas, I received my first non-kiddie albums ever: Thriller, Off the Wall, and a Jackson 5 greatest hits collection. This last one contained several infuriating "medley" tracks that compressed four or five classic tunes into one ungodly super-mix, thus introducing me to the effed-up world of endless album repackaging. This might have also been the Christmas when I got both Atari and the Castle Grayskull playset, thus making it The Greatest Christmas Ever.

It's hard to comprehend now just how big Michael Jackson was back then. And there probably will never be anyone that huge again, because the media has grown so enormous and ghettoized. Michael Jackson conquered pretty much Everything in the 80s, but nowadays there's a lot more Everything to conquer, and all of it is so compartmentalized. During the height of his fame, there was one music-related channel. Now there's dozens, and the one that made him famous spread itself so thin with reality nonsense and game shows that it doesn't even feature music anymore.

When I heard Michael Jackson died, I felt a vague sadness, if for no other reason than it made me feel horribly old. But I also felt something else that I couldn't really articulate, until The Wife said it for me: "I'm kinda glad he's dead."

She didn't mean it like "good riddance!" She meant that this was possibly the best thing that could have happened to him. Because let's face it: Was anything good going to ever happen to Michael Jackson ever again?

He'd become a walking punchline long ago, so much so that Neverland Ranch Sleepover jokes became the touchstone of cheap hack comics (as Tom Scharpling and Drew Magary tweeted separately, Jay Leno just lost a huge amount of material for his new show). Once joking about you has become cliche, you really only have one choice: Go along with the gag. Poke fun at yourself. You might as well, because no one will ever take you seriously ever again. This is called The William Shatner Principle (or the Gary Coleman Corollary, if you prefer).

The problem with Michael Jackson is, he wasn't a joke because he was a bad actor or because he pissed away all his money. He was a joke because he was a suspected pedophile. What could he do? Guest-host Saturday Night Live and play Father O'Hallihan, the Boy-Touching Priest? Appear in a fake viral video for NAMBLA? Get a sitcom role as the elementary school principal with the wandering eye? That would've been horrifying.

Everyone loves a comeback story. America is the birthplace of the comeback story. We love to tear down heroes just so they can rise again and make us feel warm and fuzzy. But you don't come back from something that awful. You just don't. Even if Michael Jackson was somehow "cured". Even if it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he never molested any child ever, how could that stain ever go away? How could you ever feel good about him ever again?

As horrible as Michael Jackson's alleged crimes might be, the man never stood a chance. The poor guy was doomed the minute his crazy father forced his brood into show business. He had to sing insanely passionate love songs at age eight. Even the kids on Toddlers and Tiaras aren't destined to be warped the way he was.

Listen to this Jackson 5 cover of Stevie Wonder's "I Don't Know Why I Love You". It's great and creeptacular all at the same time. The kid singing this song is throwing his whole heart and soul into it--but what kind of heart and soul do you have when you're ten years old? How did he have any idea of the heartbreak and longing contained in this song when he sang it?

Of course someone who grew up like this would regress into a twisted, Peter Pan-esque perpetual childhood full of llamas and caroussels and Elephant Man bones. As nuts as he was, we're probably all lucky he didn't grab a sniper rifle, climb a bell tower, and start picking people off (while moonwalking).

The way it ended for Michael Jackson is the only good way it could have ended. He dies young. We remember that he had some great songs. We forget the bad stuff for a while. Hopefully, he's at peace now, free of whatever demons plagued him in life.

Plus, a million lousy standups have to retire their lazy, unfunny, outdated material. All in all, a win-win proposition for the human race.

Oh, and Off the Wall was the best Michael Jackson album. I will not debate this.

A tweet by mr_met alerted me to this post over at the No Mas Scorecard--which I should have alerted myself to much sooner, as I'm a big fan of No Mas, their t-shirts, and their general outlook on The Sporting World. No matter; I shall endeavor to make up for lost time.

No Mas, Paul Lukas (Uniwatch guru), and The Reverend Vince Anderson have teamed to campaign the Mets to rename their new ballpark after their old one. Or, more importantly, to name it after the man without whom the Mets wouldn't exist: Bill Shea.

I am totally on board with this movement. For one thing, it would remove the association with corporate cockfucks Citibank, which will continue to dog the team until they change the ballpark's name. For another, it acknowledges that yes, the Mets do indeed have some history they should be proud of and celebrate.

I have very few complaints about CitiField as a place to watch a ballgame--and as noted elswhere, I think a lot of the criticism of the place is nitpicky and way out of line--but the Wilpons' lack of acknowledgment of this history within it really bugs me. Supposedly, they're working on some sort of Mets Museum, but quite tellingly, they didn't make any formal announcements about it until fan outcry about the lack of Mets material in the stadium.

I get the impression that, in the absence of such an outcry, management would be totally happy with the current memorabilia-free state, which is a real shame. Go to any new ballpark, and it has some kind of feature on either the team, or the town, or both. The Nationals have been in DC all of 5 seasons and their new stadium has such a display. If they can do it, the Mets sure as hell can.

The Calling It Shea Project's platform is a little murky, but part of it involves the sale of the t-shirt pictured here. Ten percent of the proceeds go to Food Bank NYC. Your dough could go to far worse places, so if you think Shea should be celebrated for his efforts in perpetuity, express it in t-shirt form.

I just read Nathan Rabin's Year of Flops retrospective on Brain Candy, the 1996 Kids in the Hall film. Reading it brought back a whole slew of memories of a movie I used to quote on a nigh-daily basis. I actually saw the movie in the theatres, making me one of several dozen people to do so. It's not a perfect flick by any means, but I think Rabin draws an apt comparison between it and far-reaching Monty Python features like The Life of Brian.

Rabin's article also reminded me that there was a period in which I watched Kids in the Hall constantly. When I was in high school, CBS showed a late night hour-long block of KITH on Fridays (two episodes stitched together with extremely weird bumpers). CBS knew their audience: late Friday nights were perfect for the comedy dorks like yours truly who were right in the KITH wheelhouse, and unlikely to be doing anything else with their weekend.

I first heard about Kids in the Hall from a high school friend, back when the show first aired in the States on HBO. I didn't have cable, so he paid me back for years of reciting Monty Python by singing the "These Are the Daves I Know" and imitating The Head Crusher Guy.

The first time I got to actually see the show was during a trip across the border. My two younger brothers were on traveling soccer teams and playing in some weekend tournament in Montreal. One of my goals for this trip was to try and see Kids in the Hall, since I'd heard so much about it (I vaguely remember reading of its hilarity in several music magazines I read) and I realized this would be my only real chance to see it, unless my mom finally caved and got cable (which she wouldn't until I was away at college; cable was the last luxury to fall in our house, left over from the days when we was Dirt Poor).

Needless to say, it was love at first sight. It was a direct descendant of Monty Python, with all its non-sequiturs, envelope-pushing, and cross dressing. They did sketches that would be virtually impossible in America (for instance, suggesting that gay people actually exist while also not making them the butt of every joke), in accents I could understand. Plus, KITH was being made right then, not 30 years earlier, so I didn't need to ask my dad to explain jokes about Edward Heath and decimalization.

When KITH wound up on CBS, I taped it religiously and watched it after school pretty much every day. I remember it being The Hotness among dork circles in the early 90s. A college friend of mine told me he even dressed up as the Head Crusher guy for Halloween one year (complete with folding chair), despite the fact that not a single candy dispenser knew who he was. I laughed, but only because it was exactly the weird/obsessive kind of thing that I would have done.

So my question is, How come nobody talks about them anymore? Granted, it's hard to talk about something that doesn't exist. But you will still hear lotsa love extended to other 90s comedy pioneers like The Simpsons, Mr. Show, or even the ultimate Dork-Fest, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (I say that as a fellow dork). But references to these shows are far more likely to elicit knowing chuckles than, say, The Chicken Lady, even among Dork Circles.

Somehow Kids in the Hall slipped under the cult radar, even for me. By all rights, I should own all of the shows, which trickled out on DVD a few years ago. And yet I don't. Shame on me!

As punishment, I shall watch this video of what might be my favorite sketch from the show. This bit is a lot funnier if you had a daddy who drank. Or is it sadder? I get those two confused a lot.

First off, kudos to those who joined Scratchbomb's official fantasy baseball league, The League of Calamitous Intent, and drafted with us this past weekend. I thank you for choosing The League of Calamitous Intent as the instrument of your demise.

Round this time of year, I always read two books: the newest edition of Baseball Prospectus, and the 1994 edition of The Official Rule Book and Draft-Day Guide for Rotisserie League Baseball.

I was not into fantasy baseball in 1994. Back then, it was still referred to as "rotisserie baseball" and it seemed to be fading as a pop culture relic of the 80s, like Family Ties and the omnipresent threat of nuclear holocaust. Even at its height, rotisserie baseball was a niche hobby amongst dedicated nerds, sort of a slightly more athletic Dungeons and Dragons. But it's virtually indistinguishable with the brand of fantasy baseball that went mainstream with the rise of the intertubes in the late 90s.

I found this book at my in-laws' house, which is weird because they're not really into baseball. But I don't look gift horses like these in the mouth. It's an awesome time capsule of the waning days of the first fantasy baseball explosion. It also has a bittersweet tone if you remember that the 1994 baseball season didn't end with a World Series, but with a strike.

This book is clearly a spiritual godfather to Baseball Prospectus.  it doesn't have any predictive stats like PECOTA, merely hunches as to what various players will do and what you should pay for them in keeper leagues. But its pithy descriptions of players will ring familiar to any BP reader.

The Guide gives praise where praise is due, of course, but its most entertaining assessment are its bitchiest.

WALT WEISS: Eureka! He played a full season without spending a minute on the DL! Alert the media!

SAMMY SOSA: Ninety percent of Sosa's production came in spectacular but brief bursts followed by long, yawning chasms of nothing. His outfield play can charitably be described as inconsistent. He is constitutionally incapable of hitting  cutoff man. And his teammates consider him a selfish, mindless player. Hey, nobody's perfect.

MARK WHITEN: He had a big season one night last September.

KEVIN McREYNOLDS: Someone wake him up and tell him his career is over.

HAROLD BAINES: Your grandmother has nimbler knees, but as long as he can stand, the man will be able to hit

PAUL O'NEILL: Watch him enough and you realize sitting him against the tough left-handers makes sense. O'Neill gives new meaning to the word intensity. When he runs into a bad streak, the look on his face causes small children in the stands to burst into tears.

FRANK TANANA: About one of every four outings, this master craftsman gives a clinic on pitching. The other three, watch out.

But some of their funniest assessments are extremely brief dismissals:

DAN PASQUA: Pass.

KEVIN MAAS: No Maas.

JOE HESHKETH: Smeshketh

And there are also some prescient reviews of up-and-coming prospects:

CHIPPER JONES: Long regarded as the best minor league prospect in baseball....The early line has him sticking with the big team this spring, playing a little backup infield, then moving over to third if Pendleton continues to show signs of slowing down. Another scenario has Jones pushing Blauser  over to second. Still another has the Chipster going straight to Cooperstown without bothering to play major league ball.

MANNY RAMIREZ: Not a bad major league debut in his hometown, was it? Kid from New York shows up in a Cleveland uniform to play in Yankee Stadium for the first time, packs the stands with friends from the old neighborhood, and proceeds to hit two home runs and a double and drive in five runs. That's the way we want to break in. At the plate, he resembles Juan Gonzalez, with his front-leg kick and solid 190-pound frame. His numbers also remind us of Gonzalez. We're pretty excited.

CARLOS DELGADO: Not just a powerful bat, but a powerful left-handed bat. The only thing holding him back is his defense, and he's learning.

JIM THOME: The old Indians never would have let this guy languish long enough to lead the International League in batting average and RBI. Come to think of it, the Indians didn't leave him down in 1992. Now AL pitchers will be suffering from (dare we say it?) Thomaine.

Okay, St. Patrick's Day, I call a truce. I've spent way too much time being angry at you for reasons I don't even fully understand. So I'm not going to write any more angry anti-St. Patty's Day screeds. In return, if you could make sure that my stoop doesn't have puke on it when I get home from work, then we're cool.

I inherited my resentment against the holiday from my father, who had wildly schizophrenic views on his homeland. He lived the first 10 years of his life in an Ireland that was extremely poor, extremely repressive, and just overall depressing. I think he blamed Ireland for the misery of his early years, and the issues of his later ones.

Mind you, he had a healthy amount of pride about being Irish. But he also couldn't stand a lot of phonus balonus that goes along with Oirish-American celebrations. He loved to cite historical instances of the Irish getting the shaft from world, but he also hated when Irish people would insist on the MOPE Syndrome (that they, and only they, were the Most Oppressed People Ever).

He loved to point out famous/accomplished Irishmen, and also loved to point out that a large number of them had leave Ireland to get any measure of success (or at least not be stoned to death). Conversely, he was a huge fan of English comedy in general, but when he was offered a job at Reuters, he scoffed, "I can't work for them--they're an English company." This statement was notable for its lack of sarcasm, as my father rarely said anything not sarcastic.

I've spent much of my life mimicking his stances on Ireland, St. Patty's Day, etc. But I now realize it's more of a burden than anything else. I've been to Ireland a few times, and it's nothing like what it was in his youth. In other words, I've been carrying around his resentments so they can live on somehow, even though they're resentments for a place that doesn't exist anymore.

So you wanna get shitfaced on St. Patrick's Day even if your last name is Lewandowski? Knock yourself out. I shan't take part, but who am I to keep you from destroying your liver?

I should be grateful that I'm part of an ethnic group that is so assimilated into American culture that it can totally revel in all of its unsavory stereotypes. When people joke about how the Irish are drunks and fight all the time, what do Irish people do? Laugh, usually. They know it's true, and they don't have to waste any time defending themselves, because they no longer have to fight true, institutionalized discrimination.

That's my wish for every ethnic group: That one day you shall be able to freely give vent to the worst aspects of your character, and everyone will think it's hilarious.

If you're in the mood for some green-tinted Haterade, peep these two posts from years past:

The Calvinball of the Emerald Isle, 03.16.07

The Quare Fellows, 03.17.06

Meanwhile, as part of my peace offering to St. Patrick's Day, I offer some tunes from Hibernophile rocker Ted Leo.

"Biomusicology", The Tyrrany of Distance

"Dirty Old Town", Tell Balgeary Balgury Is Dead EP

"A Bottle of Buckie", Living for the Living

"Fairytale of New York", live on WFMU, 2007

Hello, Americans. This is Paul Harvey. Stand by for news from the hoary nether-regions of the afterlife!

Did you know: many of the best Americans are dead Americans? It's true! George Washington, Henry Ford, Van Johnson--all dead! Sure, most of them weren't dead their whole lives. In fact, most spent the vast majority of their existences being not dead! They only turned out dead at the very end of their lives. Food for thought, isn't it?

Speaking of food, are you not as regular as used to be regular? Try Old Grandpa's Fiber Tablets. One a day and your colon will be whistlin' "Dixie" once again! And now, back to the show.

It's been pretty busy in the afterlife. I was one of several thousand new arrivals when I got here, and it seems like every minute there's another several thousand shuffling through the gates. At first, I had to fill out a lot of paperwork and so forth. I thought I'd died and gone to the DMV!

But after that, things cooled down a bit. When you have until the end of time to do things, you tend not to rush anymore. Things are nice and simple here, like in the old days.

I'm up in cloud 7.657.34-09, in between a former insurance salesman from Missoula and a former housewife from Topeka. Right across the hall, though, I have a bona fide celebrity. None other than Aldo Ray, co-star of a little film you may remember called The Green Berets. So if you're in the neighborhood and you're dead, stop in and say hi! We'd be glad to see you!

Dateline, the far side of eternity: Apparently there are more clouds over there. Big, fluffy clouds.

Dateline, a piece of eternity slightly closer, although the word 'closer' has little meaning within the context of something endless like 'eternity': More clouds.

Once, there was a little boy who dreamed of being on the radio. He loved to hear announcers on his favorite shows like Jack Armstrong and Little Orphan Annie, and he said to himself, "I want to do that when I grow up!" And so he grew up, and he worked his way onto the radio. And then one day he died.

And that little boy who grew up and died was...Scott Muni. Let that be a lesson to you!

This is Dead Paul Harvey, bidding you...good day!

A few weeks back, I relayed the sad news about the passing of Stefan Lutak, the proprietor of The Holiday Cocktail Lounge, one of my favorite joints of all time. Now another one has been taken away from us--Antoinette K Doe, proprietress of The Mother-in-Law Lounge in New Orleans.

Antoinette was the widow of Ernie K Doe, who had a big R&B hit back in the 1960s called (wait for it) "Mother-in-Law". She rescued Ernie from a decades-long alcoholic funk and helped him open the aforementioned bar on Claiborne Avenue, where Ernie entertained into the wee hours and performed with himself (via jukebox).

The Mother-in-Law Lounge was a little like the Holiday Cocktail Lounge, in that its operating hours were determined by the whims of its owners, and it seemed to exist for the enjoyment of its patrons and its proprietors, rather than to make money. But it was even more of a cottage business because The Lounge was literally Ernie's living room. And when you were there, you totally felt like you were just having some drinks in a friend's living room.

I never got to see Ernie there, sadly, but I did go a few times in the years after his death, when Antoinette carried on his legacy via The Lounge. The ceiling hung with cardboard cutouts of stars, each containing the name of a star who'd passed into the great beyond--everyone from Buddy Holly to Frank Zappa.

One time I went to The Lounge, I was completely beat from a combination of lingering jet lag and New Orleans-induced party exhaustion. I didn't want to chump out on hanging out with pals, but another drink would've totally leveled me. Antoinette--who always manned the bar--seemed to sense this without me saying a word (maybe it was the enormous bags under my eyes).

So she offered me some coffee, then refused to let me pay for it. "I got it on anyway," she said. I left a generous tip on the bar.

I hope someone keeps The Lounge open, but even if they do, it won't be the same without her.

Pour some criminally overpriced Bud Lite on the curb tonight for Shea Stadium, which officially ceased to exist earlier this morning.

I'll miss the dump, don't get me wrong. I saw my first baseball game there, and saw some incredible games there (both in the good and bad senses of the word), but I am more than ready to see games at Bernie Madoff Field.

My only fear is that the fan experience won't be enhanced at all. Because the aesthetic deficiencies of Shea were only part of the reason why it was not a great place to watch a game. You judged your game-going experience by how few things went wrong. It was a successful day if your beer wasn't 90% foam, or if you didn't watch a vendor sigh and huff because you asked them for a pretzel.

Sure, the new ballpark is supposed to have spiffy restaurants, games for the kiddies, and other neat amenities. But that won't mean much if said amenities are run by the same incompetent, apathetic morons who ran Shea's concessions.

It's not that I need extra bells and whistles to enjoy a game. I'd watch the Mets in the middle of an active volcano if that's where they played. However, I don't think it's too much to ask that, when you pay a lot of money to enter a ballpark, your customer service experience should never be described by words like "insane," "frustrating," and "ordeal."

If you want a glimpse as to how the Mets treat their fans, look no further than Jason of Faith and Fear and Flushing, and the condition of the genuine Shea seats he ordered. That's how the team treats treasured memorabilia bought by loyal fans at $869 a pop. You can extrapolate from there how they treat folks who spend a mere $15-20 dollars for a hot dog and a beer.

I love people who go on insane quests. I'm not talking quite at the Don Quixote level. More like completely pointless obsessions whose realization won't accomplish anything for the dreamer. They just wanna see if they can do it. After a while, they don't really know why they're doing it anymore. But to stop doing it would mean that all that work they've done already would be totally wasted.

Want an example? How about a man whose goal is to acquire an autographed version of every single 1983 Fleer baseball card? Omar the Scrivener's twittering alerted me to the presence of this monomaniacal blog, which I find completely fascinating.

For those who never collected baseball cards, Fleer was the line that ran a distant third in popularity behind Topps and Donruss. And as a cursory view of this site will indicate, their 1983 set was designed with an aggressive lack of imagination, even by the standards of the day. (Compare Topps' snazzier look from the same year.)

On top of all of this, the pictures on the cards don't exactly give Ansel Adams a run for his money. Like this card, where Reds pitcher Eddie Milner is caught mid-grimace. Or this one, where the Astros' Harry Spillman looks kinda President George H.W. Bush. Or this one, where Seattle's Bryan Clark flashes a nice smile but forgot to push his cap down on his head. Or this one, where Yankee John Mayberry looks like he just awoke from a pleasant nap.

So why has this man settled on Fleer 1983, of all brands/years?

Growing up, I collected baseball cards. For whatever reason, I ended up with many 1983 Fleer cards. Now I'm writing to players asking to autograph their card.

That's it. Then again, do you need any more reason than this? I think not.

As of this writing, he's gotten 458 signed cards out of a total of 674., just a little over 2/3 of the way home. Godspeed, good sir. May your quest conclude happily.

Understand: I am not mocking this man in any way. I completely understand where he's coming from, because I have done things just as complicated and pointless in my life. And am probably doing some now. And will undoubtedly continue to do them in the future.

Like when I was a kid, I wanted to get a complete set of Topps baseball cards from the year I was born. But since I didn't have enough dough to buy the set outright, I would by them individually. Or in those terrible sets that guys at card shows put together that are completely full of garbage, hoping that gullible idiots like 10-year-old-me will blow 5-10 bucks on. Which we always do, of course, because we are morons.

This is how now I have a baseball card album with 17 Oscar Gambles, 23 Kent Tukulves, and too many Jose Cardenals to count.

I don't get tunes stuck in my head. They burrow into my brain like ticks, and it takes some serious countermeasures to lodge them loose, like extreme zen-like concentration, or dynamite.

But even worse is when I get a tune stuck in my head that I associate with a particular visual memory. 99 percent of the time, that visual memory is an old TV show or commercial. It's a bizarre sensory memory, almost Proustian--in that it makes me want to lock myself in a cork-lined room and never come out again.

Since I seem to be the only idiot who remembers the bygone TV fare of yesteryear, there's usually no point in explaining the whole Madison Avenue spectacle going on in my head. All it does is make me appear more insane than usual, like I'm starring in my own private version of Gaslight. Except I'm not being tortured by a sadistic husband, but my own steel-trap memory (if steel traps only clamped down on pointless garbage).

Why, for instance, can't I simply get "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang stuck in my head? No, it has to be accompanied by an endless loop of Kool and the Gang dancing with Wendy's Chicken Nuggets.

Regardless, I want to give you a glimpse of the hell that has been my brain for the last few days. Over the holidays, I heard "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" more than once. So it got stuck in my head, right? Oh, if only t'were so simple!

* Dock Ellis, 63, of cirrhosis of the liver. Twelve-year veteran of the major leagues, with most of those seasons spent as a starting pitcher for Pittsburgh. Went 19-9 for the 1971 world champion Pirates. Went to the Yankees in the same deal that brought Willie Randolph to NY, and notched a 17-8 record for the 1976 AL pennant winners. Also pitched for the Rangers, A's, and Mets.

Oh, and he pitched a no-hitter while out of his gourd on LSD.

Or so he claimed 14 years after the fact. I tend to be suspicious of people who add sexy backstory a decade-and-half later, especially when that backstory involves narcotics. Ex-drug users don't have the most reliable memories. But Ellis' story is so good that I want it to be true.

The story goes that during a West Coast trip in 1970, Ellis thought the Pirates had an off day. So he decided to spend it relaxing in his hometown of LA. And what could be more relaxing than mimicking the effects of schizophrenia with lysergic assitance?

Unfortunately, about an hour into his trip, Ellis' female companion read the newspaper and discovered that the Pirates didn't have a day off. In fact, they were playing a doubleheader. In San Diego. Oh, and he was supposed to start game 1. Oops! I wonder what on earth could have made Ellis so forgetful?

You will warp your children. It's an inevitable byproduct of the parenting process, just like how you can't make a hot dog without two or three rat turds finding their way into the mix.

Some warping is a good thing, in the long run. A completely unwarped, innocent child would grow up to be one of those scary, infantile grown ups who's way too into Harry Potter. If you're lucky, you warp your child so that they have a healthy skepticism about The Ways of the World. If you're unlucky, they grow up to collect other people's skin. But in all likelihood, you won't know how you've warped your child for good.

I can trace my own warping--positive and negative--to a lot of things. But I know that parental TV viewing played a major part. Particularly, my dad's fondness for Monty Python. He never forced me to watch it, but it was on in the house often, back in the days when Python was a PBS staple.

I remember liking it a lot when I was way too young to know what I was watching. I had to ask my dad to translate certain Britishisms like pram and lorry and explain allusions to historic events I hadn't learned about yet. But I liked the really weird cartoons, and the fact that in any given episode you'd probably see some boobs (PBS was the best friend to a kid without cable in the 80s).

Was I destined to be a nerd anyway, and annoy the shit out of my friends by repeating sketches they'd never see? Yeah, probably. But the fact that I could recite "The Lumberjack Song" at age 7 definitely sped up the process. Was it my father's intention to bruise my fragile psyche with anagrams and cross dressing? I doubt it. Still, it happened.

New Site Update: Them YouTube clips below will totally not work. Not sure who's to blame, MLB or the Rocket. In either case, this post is provided for historical purposes only.

When I was an MFA student, one of my workshop leaders, a writer of some renown (brag), told me that villains must be understood. Our class was wondering out loud if there could ever be a Great Bush Era Novel. He said that if such a novel were ever written, it couldn't be an angry screed or political tract.

Even if you were no fan of George W. Bush (which I doubt anyone in the room was), your book couldn't succeed on blind hatred. You could not portray Bush as a mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash-type, or an incurious dolt. For such a book to work, he said, you would have to find some way to sympathize with him. Anything less would both fail as fiction and trivialize an entire administration.

That doesn't mean pardoning or condoning The Evil That Men Do. But villains in black hats are boring. Gray is much better, if scarier, because it makes us realize that given the right circumstances, virtually anyone can find themselves doing unspeakable things.

I dredge this up in the wake of the Roger Clemens debacle. Anyone who reads this site should know my feelings on the Rocket. I've poked him with a stick once or twice. Several times, in fact. In my mental Hall of Infamy, he's one of a very select group of people I'd like to go away and never see again. If he became a hermit and lived out the rest of his days in a cave somewhere, I wouldn't shed a tear.

I find it very troubling that Senator Obama would heap praise on Ronald Reagan, considering how devastating his policies were for our country's neediest citizens.
Senator Clinton, that accusation is patently untrue. If you look at my remarks in their full context, you'll see that I did not praise Ronald Reagan. I merely said that I'd had a layover at Ronald Reagan Airport on my way to North Carolina.
Well, I find it disturbing that you would fly into Ronald Reagan Airport when Dulles is still a more than serviceable alternative.
The record will show that I purchased a direct flight from Detroit to Raleigh, but excessive turbulence forced the pilot to make an unscheduled stopover in Washington. I admit that I purchased a copy of Fantasy Baseball Preview at a newsstand to pass the time while we waited for the weather to clear up. I have been considering taking Joba Chamberlain as high as the third round this year, a decision that I'm sure many of my fellow Americans are wrestling with at this time.
I believe you've displayed a tacit approval for his presidency by your unwillingness to parachute out of the plane before it touched down.
Nothing could be further from the truth. I assure the American people that if I'm elected president, I will constantly refer to Ronald Reagan as history's greatest monster.

Thanks to The Interweb and roughly eight billion cable channels, even the niche-iest of shows has a chance to find its audience. This was not the case even 10 years ago, when there was very little hope for an offbeat show, unless you expand your definition of "offbeat" to include "Bill Cosby verbally torturing his children". If a show couldn't succeed in the strictly middlebrow world of network TV, it had no future.

Every now and then, a show with a cockeyed view of the world and a bold spirit would sneak onto a network lineup. Such a show would inevitably be either retooled or shuttled around the schedule until it suffered death by underexposure. These kinds of shows were, inevitably, the kinds of shows that I loved as a kid. I was attracted to complete lost causes--the television equivalent of a dog at the pound with one eye, half a tail, and the mange.

Some of the shows I've loved and lost were later lamented, rediscovered, and given a proper DVD release. Thanks in part to the success of The 40-Year-Old Virgin , Judd Apatow's Freaks and Geeks has received the belated acclaim it deserves. There was a great series on the now-defunct Trio network, Brilliant But Cancelled, that highlighted awesome shows like EZ Streets (aka The Sopranos Before The Sopranos ).

There is one show I loved as a kid that has yet to get its day in the sun. I mean, I absolutely worshipped this show. This show should never have been made in the first place, because it had every odd stacked against it from day one. But if it had been come out more recently, I'm convinced that it could have run for 15 seasons or more.

The show was a The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley , a Saturday morning cartoon that ran for only one season (1988-89). It starred an animated version of the titular character, voiced by Martin Short. It also featured the voice talents of a few of his fellow SCTV alums Joe Flaherty, Catherine O'Hara, and Andrea Martin. And for an extra dollop of crazy on top, it also featured Jonathan Winters.

The use of popular songs in commercials has been much maligned, and rightly so. I don't mean when a relatively new tune by a relatively unknown band is used in an ad. The landscape of the music industry has changed so dramatically that I realize an up-and-coming group has to find new ways to get exposure. This would have once raised the hackles of my Punk Rock Sensibilities, but I've mellowed with age. I still wanna strangle whichever Chevy exec greenlighted the "This Is Our Country" ads, though.

What I'm really referring to is commercials that use very popular songs of the past. Songs that were huge hits, are still played constantly on the radio, but are nonetheless co-opted for ad campaigns. There's a whole generation of kids who probably think Who's Next was penned as an album-length homage to Nissan. But hey, I'm sure Pete Townshend really needed the cash.

However, at the same time that I hate Robert Plant transforming into a Cadillac spokesman, I'm not 100 percent sure this is any worse than the commercials of my youth. Back then, music was generally used in commercials in one of three ways:

1) A new, snazzy jingle about your wonderful product. Usually sung by a full-throated man or woman, or in the most hateful example, a chorus of screaming kids. *shudder*
2) An old standard that commented on the action in the commercial, however vaguely. This would almost never be the original version of the song, but performed by a Generic Commercial Crooner, invariably off screen.
3) A popular song with rewritten lyrics.

And this last example haunts me to this day. Because I watched a bajillion hours of TV as a kid, I have tattooed on my brain alternate versions of famous songs. And when I hear these particular songs, I immediately think of the ad-altered versions.

My favorite example was by Wendy's. This commercial features Kool and the Gang reworking their hit "Celebration" to laud the arrival of Crispy Chicken Nuggets. I have no idea what it was about this commercial that made such a huge subliminal impression on me. As you'll see below, there's nothing particular outstanding about it. Unless you consider a guy juggling chicken nugget boxes outstanding.

Regardless, this commercial became imprinted on my psyche. It's inexplicably famous in my household. To this day, whenever me or any of my brothers hear this song, we sing along There's a party goin on right here/Crispy Chicken Nuggets are new and here this year...

I am equal parts delighted and disappointed that I was able to find this ad on YouTube. Because in my memory, this ad was like one of those borderline racist McDonalds commercials, with lots of black folk shufflin' and jivin', double dutchin' and eatin' fast food. Which is pretty much what The Media told us all black people did in the 1980s. That, and live in beautiful Brooklyn brownstones with broods of preternaturally witty children.

This video will prove that my memory was inaccurate. In fact, you'll see it's mostly white people dancing like idiots. You will, however, see some preteen popping and locking, because it was impossible to show a black kid in a commercial in the 1980s and have him not breakdance.

I don't expect you, the reader, to see anything special in this ad. But if for some reason you do, please let me know what it is so I can finally find out why it haunts my dreams.

Around this time last year,I wrote a more compact version of this tale for MSN Sports Filter. But since that site has passed into the Interweb Graveyard, I hope you'll indulge me in recycling seasonal material.

My grandfather--my father's father--died when I was 8 years old. So my memories of him are vague and littered with the weird, stupid things that little kids think are important. It takes a lot of mental power to pull out what I actually remember of him after I sift through all the Transformers and Thundercats and Mad Magazines.

I remember that I thought my grandfather had a funny voice, which I now realize was an Irish accent lathered with tar from decades of smoking Winstons. I remember that he always smiled, a smile with his teeth half-parted, as if he was about ready to laugh, though I don't remember ever hearing him laugh. I remember that he had glasses with thick, gauzy lenses that made it hard to see even the faintest traces of his eyes. I probably couldn't have seen his eyes anyway, because he seemed about 10 feet tall to me.

I remember that his fridge was always stocked with this strange slightly carbonated red lemonade that he brought back with him from his frequent trips to Ireland. I searched in vain for it both times I was in Dublin, but I couldn't find it because I didn't quite know what I was looking for. No one else in my family remembers it, leading me to believe it was just some weird beverage my mind concocted while I was puzzling out adventures for Optimus Prime.

He was born just before Ireland gained its independence, became an adult just as the Depression hit, and fled to America on his own after World War II. So he didn't have the good fortune of living in easy times. Post-war Ireland was a pretty brutal time and place, even by the low standards that Ireland had for an acceptable economy. He left his wife and children behind and worked in New York for three years before he had enough money to send for them. He was a baggage handler at JFK's TWA terminal for almost thirty years. My mom still has his retirement gift in our basement: a wooden plaque with a barometer and thermometer mounted on it, neither of which ever worked.

New Site Update: Don't bother clicking on any of them YouTube links below, 'cuz they ain't gonna work. This post is here for historic purposes only. I'm hoping to get the non-baseball stuff reposted at some point, but there's so much stuff to do here that I would not hold my breath.

Update 02.16.07: Deadspin gave a shoutout to this post, which was quite awesome of them. Unfortunately, I think that attention attracted the decidedly unawesome attention of MLB Advanced Media, who sent me a copyright infringement notice via YouTube. I totally understand that we have to respect MLB's intellectual rights. After all, I wouldn't want to interfere with the inevitable theatrical release and DVD transfer of a spring training preview from 19-friggin-88. *sigh*

The Wife wants it on record that she said MLB would crack the whip on me. I doubted her. "Why the eff would MLB give two shits about a spring training preview from 19 years ago?" She is less naïve than I, I suppose. Mea culpa.

Long story short, I'm afraid I had to remove said video clips. I've left the rest of the post as is so you can imagine the anachronistic hilarity. Also, the old ads are still viewable, as long as no one rats on me to the Gibraltar singer with the White Afro.

* * *

I find the days following a big snowstorm to be worse than the actually event. The roads are a mess and they're filled with angry, dirty piles of plowed snow. You need a canoe to cross most intersections thanks to the enormous lakes of smashed melted snow that ebb at every street corner. And everyone in the city is really pissed off. Usually, you think a sweaty day is the kind that gets folks all hot and bothered. But climes like this can be just as bad for the collective mood. After you've been smashed against a thousand other dripping, angry commuters on the bus and/or train, you're just as ready to start a fistfight as you'd be during an August heat wave.

No matter. My thoughts are warm, because pitchers and catchers have started to report to Florida. I'm also told that there are some insane teams that train in Arizona. I can neither confirm nor deny this.

On Friday, the Mets will be in Port St. Lucie (at least the ones that pitch and catch) and we will be that much closer to Opening Day. An Opening Day when the team will have to watch the 83-win Cardinals get their World Series rings. Hopefully, that will get their blood boiling to set up an '86-like rampage through the National League. I don't ask for much from the universe, but can Jose Reyes' first hit of the year be a line drive off of Albert Pujols' knee? Or at least Scott Spiezio's chin-snatch? I thank you in advance, unseen powers.

Before I was a parent, I always wanted to call bullshit on those fretful moms and dads whose reactions to upsetting World News always boils down to "What will we tell the children?!" It seemed such a narcissistic and narrow view of the universe, that all human endeavors should be slotted into one of two categories: Good/Bad For The Stupid Fruit Of My Loins.

F'rinstance, during the Great Clinton Blowjob Scandal, supposedly the biggest problem our nation faced was how to explain the whole sordid episode to the kiddies. Of less importance, apparently, was the fact that the nation was thrown into a Constitutional crisis because our Commander-in-Chief wanted a hummer. Or that the same Guardians of Decency who wanted to punish him for said "offense" had no problem discussing the intimate details of The Presidential Schlong on TV.

But I also used to think that, as a non-parent, it wasn't really my place to tell folks with children how to feel. Maybe I would become just as prudish as Helen Lovejoy once I reproduced.

Now, I have reproduced. And I return to call bullshit on those fretful moms and dads.

Paul Schrader (director/screenwriter, mastermind behind Taxi Driver and buncha other awesome movies) grew up in an extremely strict Calvinist household, one in which any form of idleness was an expressway to damnation. He wrote about going to see a film in a theatre, sweating, panicked, absolutely convinced that this simple act would send him to hell. But he was so transfixed by the experience--obviously realizing that this was his calling--that he couldn't tear himself out of his seat.

I still get that doomed but defiant feeling whenever Halloween comes around, at once resisting its trappings and wanting to dive head first into it. Growing up, my mother was a Jehovah's Witness. As I'm sure you know, they celebrate very few holidays for various reasons. In the case of Halloween, the reason is: They think it's evil.

Ironically, I bet very few people who "celebrate" Halloween truly believe in demons and witches and whatnot. Witnesses do. This is odd, because they don't believe in Hell, and they don't have same idea of the Soul that you find in most Christian sects (it's due to their unique interpretation of the Bible, which would take way too much time to get into). But they do believe in Satan, that he has minions at his beck and call, and that he could sic his cronies on you if you took him too lightly. "Taking him too lightly" includes dressing up as a sexy nurse, somehow.

The Return of the Son of the Creature's Ghost

Wow, I knew I hadn't update this space for quite some time, but I hadn't the slightest idea it was six months' worth of neglect. Shameful, considering, you know, I pay for the real estate.

I'll be writing a lot more on this space in the future, as my other paid gig is coming to a halt. I'll probably continue to do snotty sports-related writing here, particularly when the baseball season returns, and proceed to make highly unreliable NFL picks. But there will be my usual complaints about Life and The Human Condition. And of course, there will be lots of potty mouth.

But now, because Halloween is almost upon us, I share with you a terrifying artifact from my youth (although I think the majority of childhood is terrifying, but that's a topic for a different post):

The Phantom Diner.