Favorite dunk of all time?

I think it was Neill or Jefe that showed me the Shawn Kemp highlight reel, but I happened to see this one again. Shawn fucking Kemp Alton Lister!

Quick Question

Is it still a "shocker" when Andy Roddick crashes out in the early stages of a major tournament?

It must be magnets?

Has anyone in the history of MLB ever touched their nuts as much as Carlos Zambrano does?

Fer Steve & Neill

engage

LULEELURAH

Hits when I turned 18

Intrepid Flame has "tagged me with a meme," which sounds like something one would normally take penicillin for. But apparently, it means that I should take the top hits from the year I turned 18, which in my case was 1995, and write a bit about them.

Let's see: 1995...I turned 18 at the very end of my senior year, so most of the year was spent in the haze of a "lost summer" or the beginnings of my first year in college, which itself was pretty fucking hazy too. Actually, that's when I first started really branching out into music (thanks Kim!), so these hits have little relevance in my life, but I'll do what I can with them. With accompanying YouTube goodness, of course.

1. Cotton Eye Joe - Rednex
Wow. This song pretty makes me want to kill myself, and others around me. The throbbing in my temple increases as the song progresses. It juxtaposes so much nausea and disturbing trends in music for its time, that it does function as sort of a time capsule. The horrible female waif; the shitty techno; the yelping; the fucking fiddle. Abject failure.


2.One Sweet Day - Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men
You know, I used to really like Boys II Men back in the day. "Boyz II Men, ABC, BBD, the East Coast Family." Mariah's still sorta in the cute "Someday" era of fashion, which may be the only redeeming quality of the video. It's just so saccharine, the plodding, heaviness of it all is a little too much.



3. I'll Be There For You - Rembrandts
I fucking love this power ballad!


4. Take Your Time (Do It Right) - Max-A-Million
I can find no record on this song on YouTube. So it obviously never existed. Next!

5. We've Got It Goin' On - Backstreet Boys
Isn't this beat from "This is How We Do It?" A Shitstorm Tornado of Crap is my take.



6. This Is How We Do It - Montell Jordan
Fuck yeah. Now we are actually talking. I'm okay with this song. Actually, the lyrics kind of suck though. Sort of a perverted cross between smoove R&B and shitty Puff Daddy crap. "You gotta get your groove on before you get paid." Shouldn't this be the other way around? "Let's flip the track from the old school back." I also have a hard time seeing Montell chilling in South Central, but what do I know? Oh, and Montell, don't rap ever again, thanks.

(Is that guy eating a Sausage McMuffin in the first few seconds?)

7. Boombastic - Shaggy
Shaggy and me are cool. I got nothing against Shaggy.


8. Run Away - Real McCoy
Ah, so this is the song that beat is from. Not my fave. Heard it enough though.


9. I Could Fall In Love - Selena
Hey man. She's the Queen of Tejano music. 'Nuff said.


10. You Gotta Be - Des'ree
Let's just move on.

For stuff I actually liked, try these on for size:
blur

pavement

tricky

smashing pumpkins

radiohead

mobb fucking deep

Ants.

I think if I was part of a million-ant colony that was blazing a trail across the floor of a Brazilian jungle, I wouldn't automatically just follow the ant in front of me because, who the fuck is this guy.

That is all.

The Knife

I recently got "silent shout" by The Knife (finally!), and it has been really blowing my mind. I don't know exactly what they're doing, but whatever it is, it has no current equal. Which is all pretty exciting. Check out some vids...

"Heartbeats"


"silent shout"


"we share our mother's health"

Will you please come down off that ledge and eat your dinner?

Shirley wants me to please come down off this ledge and eat my dinner. But I won’t. Not this time.

Sure, I have said that before. Twelve times. I’ve come down off this ledge twelve times to eat my dinner. Not this time. I’m staying here forever.

I like sitting on this ledge. I watch the cars between my feet and smoke my cigarettes and stroke my moustache. It’s 43 stories to that little black car down there, and I’m not afraid of that. He’s just waiting for the light to turn green, and I can see his little turn signal blinking. He’s going Uptown, and I’m waiting for that light to turn green.

When you drop something from this height you can’t help but think about yourself dropping. There is no wind today and it surprises me how quickly my cigarette butt falls. I lose sight of it at about the thirtieth floor but I imagine it falling still, and it reminds me of how, as a child, I would climb onto the roof of our house and drop marbles. On the ledge of the 43rd floor of the Ambrose Building I close my eyes and I imagine those marbles are falling still, never quite reaching the earth.

Oh, dear. I’ve fallen. I have slipped off my ledge.

Even as I see my ledge getting smaller now I am aware of the cigarettes pack in my robe pocket and think what a shame to have wasted those four cigarettes. Shirley, must be in her chair by now, a temple with one hand, the TV remote in the other. She has given up asking me to please come down off that ledge at eat my dinner.

And I wonder about those marbles, if anyone ever found them after our family moved away from that house. I wonder if some boy found them one hot afternoon when there was no school, and I wonder if he thought about who they had belonged to; if it was a boy like him, someone he might have played with, a ten-year-old who liked to play marbles and shoot cap pistols and sleep outside.

My ride is about over now. I wonder if when I get there, if someone will tell me what ever happened to those marbles, which I can see so clearly now: An azure one swirled with white like clouds; the steel one that looks back at you; the yellow-and-green cat’s eye, the red and white one that looked like candy. And the black one, that looks like a car waiting to turn left to go Uptown.

FBI men.

After thinking about it, Mary realized the FBI men who visited her home were imposters. Although they had proper identification, they didn’t look or act like federal agents, and the United States Office of Federal Boob Inspectors had been dissolved by an act of Congress in 1975.

Things I Don't Care About

In a very particular order:

1. the Kentucky Derby / horse racing in general
1A. Mayweather / de la Hoya
1B. Roger Clemens

"An elegant weapon... for a more civilized time."

I was primed to think more about Cold War politics last week when Yeltsin died, but it just occurred to me that yesterday was May Day, and I sort of miss it.

Or, since I was 10 in 1991, what I really miss is the idea of it. The world's a lot simpler when you can divide everybody into two teams. Sure, it's a step backwards--to a time before the environment and labor rights were prominent diplomatic topics--but it's also quite a bit more elegant. It's a step back to a time when your hockey video game was Red vs. Blue, and the Red guys were fat and had moustaches and skated out to the Soviet national anthem.

Anyone know the next time Rocky IV is going to be on TV?

Mind Over Matter

Trying to do a good turn for my cat after being out of town all weekend, I decided to give his litter box a thorough, soap-and-water cleaning. Unfortunately, he had shredded big chunks of the box liner, making it much harder to dump out the old litter without spilling it all over the place. It wasn't until I returned to the kitchen that I realized that my garbage bags are much smaller than the box liners.

That left me with a difficult and impolitic question: can you fit 10 pounds of shit into a 5 pound bag?