The Personal Guarantee

I am a little surprised that in almost two years of blogging (our second anniversary is right around the corner!) there is virtually no mention of The Personal Guarantee. The Personal Guarantee (capitalized and italicized here for no particular reason, other than to add some gravitas) is a concept that we came up with probably more than 15 years ago. And by "we" I mean the four contributors to this blog plus winit and Diesel. And I think gettobob might have been in on The Personal Guarantee as well. (btw - gettobob - are you out there? You should be reading and commenting on this blog way more often. Can someone look into this?)

The Personal Guarantee, as the name implies, was and is invoked when the guarantor wants to communicate total certainty to the rest of the group.

Example:

Side Bar (to Open Bar): Dude - can you pick me up at the airport next Tuesday? I am totally stuck for a ride.

Open Bar: Sure, no problem.

Side Bar: Listen - you can't forget, ok? I have to be in court on Tuesday afternoon, so I need you to be there on time to get me back to the city. And you are a degenerate lowlife who I can't depend on for anything. I don't even like you that much, let alone trust you. And the only reason I am even asking you is because every car service in the tri-state area is booked that day, and every other friend we have has turned me down.

Open Bar: Dude, I personally guarantee I will pick you up at the airport on Tuesday, and I will be on time.

Side Bar: Oh. Great, thanks.

That's the beauty of The Personal Guarantee. Once issued, it leaves absolutely no doubt whatsoever. And, to maintain its seriousness, it is only used in situations where it is warranted ("I personally guarantee that I will get you a beer when I come back from the kitchen," would be considered a violation of the sanctity and significance of The Personal Guarantee). Because the thing is, once you issue your own personal guarantee, you have to follow through on it.

In the history of The Personal Guarantee there has only been, to my knowledge, one violation. *Someone else can fill in the details here if they can remember them.* I know that Diesel personally guaranteed something, it didn't come to pass, and there was a lengthy trial in my driveway, resulting in his guarantee privileges being revoked for some period of time. He may still be on probation.

The Personal Guarantee has been a useful device for settling debate, and giving reliable assurances on important and quasi-important matters. But it has only stood the test of time because we have all honored the rule that it be used sparingly. When The Personal Guarantee is thrown down, a hush falls over the room, and people take notice (well, we do anyway). Even amidst our many years of drinking and general debauchery, there have been few - if any - instances of casual use of The Personal Guarantee. Its sanctity has been respected by all.

Until today.


Chuck - locked in a bitter dispute with Open Bar regarding the order in which tags appear on the left side of your screen (alpha or numeric, with Chuck advocating forcefully for the latter) - has issued invoked The Personal Guarantee that his name will always appear at the top of the list. In other words, he will post with enough frequency, and include his tag in a sufficient number of posts so as to ensure that no tag has a higher number associated with it than his own.

As I commented earlier, this is an irresponsible use of The Personal Guarantee. Setting aside the obvious risk that Open Bar can just put up like 50 posts some night when you are in bed (he stays up late, you know), take a screen shot, and invalidate your guarantee solely as a matter of spite (and no, he is not above that), there is the distinct possibility that you will have other things to do, and someone will occasionally go in front of you.

I accept the possibility that Chuck fully intended The Personal Guarantee that was issued today to be taken with the level of seriousness that I have described. Perhaps he knows what he has promised, and will stand by it. But this is a dangerous game.

And that is why The Personal Guarantee ought not be used for a promise of such extended duration, nor on such an insignificant matter. It flies in the face of everything that The Personal Guarantee was meant to - and, to this day, does - accomplish. For shame.

Passive Aggression

To recap, we've been discussing the best way to sort the tags on the blog. I feel they should be sorted alphabetically, while Open Bar feels they should be sorted numerically. Anyhow, I've decided to let the whole thing go...sort of.

I decided early on in the blog that I wouldn't put my name in the tags of the posts I made. I felt like it was easy enough to find the posts that I wrote. Anyway, this is unimportant except that now things have changed, biotches.

Please to enjoy the tag list with "chuckjerry" as the number one most used tag. You're asking yourself, "ChuckJerry, did you really go through the whole archive and edit every post that you wrote by putting your name in the tag list?" The answer is yes. Now you're asking yourself, "ChuckJerry, was it worth it?" Again, undoubtedly yes.

You have my personal guarantee that my name will be on the top of that list for as long as the tags are sorted numerically. That's not a threat. I'm not suggesting that anyone change it. It's simply a statement of fact.

Dude, You Know What 31 Means?

It means we're too fucking old for you to have your birthday party start at 10pm. Doesn't anybody meet at the bar at 8 o'clock any more?

Happy birthday, homes.

A Fundamental Difference of Opinion On a Matter of Epic Importance

I have discussed this with him him in person, but I now realize that this is clearly the more appropriate forum for this debate. Open Bar and I have a fundamental disagreement on the nature of the blog. More specifically the way the tags are sorted.

Open Bar has sorted them in numerical order. Thus, the tags that are most frequently used are at the top of the list. His feeling, as he relayed it to me, and which I've undoubtedly skewed to suit my disagreement, is that it's better to see which tags are used most frequently and then you get an idea of what we blog about most often.

My feeling is that the tags whould be sorted alphabetically. I find myself sometimes with nothing to do searching through the archives of the blog and I'll want to read a particularly witty post, typically written by me, the captain of wit. Or I'll just feel like reading all the posts that have the "music" tag or some such thing. The problem is that I can't just look on the list for the "music" tag. I have to essentially read every line in order to find the tag because I don't have any idea how many posts have the "music" tag.

My feeling is that if it were alphabetical, then it would be easy to find any particular tag I was looking for. Also if they were sorted alphabetically, it would be pretty easy to find the most popular tags, given that the number of posts is right next to the tag. It's much easier to spot bigger numbers next to an alphabetical list than to spot specific tags in a numberical list. I had at one point resorted the tags alphabetically, figuring i was just a default setting and no one would notice or care, but within a couple days it had been resorted numerically.

Open Bar, I believe I'm characterizing his opinion correctly, agrees that the tags are harder to find in the numerical list, but suggests using the "ctrl-f" search feature to find a specific tag or simply the search blog feature at the top of the page. I feel this kidof defeats the purpose of the tag list, but hey, maybe I'm wrong.

Good day, sir. I said good day.

Rupert, You Poor Son Of A Bitch

I can buy the idea that the original intent of this idea was to simply mock the stimulus bill and that the guy who drew it didn't intend for it to be a thinly veiled racist statement. But how many people saw this thing before it hit the fucking paper? Because when I say that it's a "thinly veiled" statement, that's the understatement of the year. Is there no one in the editing room at the Post who was thinking about this offending people?



And I have to admit, the intent of this cartoon was originally lost on me. I had to think for a moment why someone was shooting monkeys in the street before remembering about the chimp that went crazy. For me that made it simply a racist type statement with absolutely no irony whatsoever. What bothers me most is that this just lends another forum to Al Sharpton to get up and grandstand with his bad hair weave.

Here's an apology from Rupert himself printed in the Post yesterday:

As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me.

Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.

Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you - without a doubt - that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such.

We all hold the readers of the New York Post in high regard and I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.

The notion that the Post holds its readers in high regard is pretty funny to me. And why did it take a couple of days of discussion to understand why this might offend people? And I like how the apology still mocks the legislation, thus implicitly endorsing the cartoon.

Not bad, dude, but you're no Matt

Here's a video by this guy named Ely Kim, who apparently is a Yale MFA student. I'm a sucker for this kind of random-geek-dancing thing, and this one is done very well. On Ely's Vimeo site, he explains that this is the product of "100 days, 100 songs, 100 locations, 100 dances." So if you've got a minute or so, take a look. (And definitely check the stuff below, too.)



But I feel that Ely is a bit remiss in not even mentioning his forbears. Like, for example, the number 2 most viewed video in YouTube history, Judson Laipply's "The Evolution of Dance":



Perhaps you also remember what I think is maybe the best online video ever. Keep the sound on, and prepare to feel good about things. Unless, of course, a chimpanzee just gouged out your eye and bit off your mouth, nose, fingers and genitals, in which case, uh, nice job finding our site. You can use a mouse? I guess you got that going for you. (Which is nice.)

From Where the Hell Is Matt?:

The Oscars are Fucking Terrible

I am an "average" movie fan. I do not see every movie that is nominated for an Academy Award, but I do usually see all of the best picture nominees, and occasionally a handful more (even if I do not get around to seeing them all until after the Academy Awards, as this year).

This weekend, Mrs. Side Bar and I saw Slumdog Millionaire on Saturday and Doubt on Sunday. Both were excellent (side note: I have a bit of a, er, reputation, for bringing less than the most critical eye to movies. But whatever. Both of these were legitimately good movies). Slumdog was a funny and uplifting story (with very harsh realities mixed in throughout), and Doubt was simply phenomenal stage acting captured on camera (it was a play before it was a movie, which makes total sense). If you wonder why Viola Davis was nominated for an Oscar after only appearing on the screen for 12 minutes, then you haven't seen the movie yet. And Phillip Seymour Hoffman's scenes with Meryl Streep were incredibly engaging. The movie felt like it was 20 minutes long.

So having seen two of the more well-known movies of the year, and committed to seeing Milk, The Reader, and Revolutionary Road at some point in the next few months (side note: I have no interest in Frost/Nixon. Absolutely none. It is 2009. Stop it. Just get the fuck over it and move on. He was an asshole, he had some guys break into a hotel like 180 years ago, and he got caught. No more movies, no more books, no more awards. Please just stop), I sat down with some measure of interest to watch the Oscars (I am using "Oscars" and "Academy Awards" interchangeably. Ok?).

What a fucking nightmare.

I do not even know where to start. First of all, they load the show up with so many fucking montages and musical numbers that it is impossible to keep track of the six things anyone cares about: best supporting actor, best supporting actress, best director, best actor, best actress, and best picture. That is it. No one cares about cinematography, let alone best animated short. But at 9:08 p.m. eastern on a Sunday night - right smack in the middle of prime time - I am listenting to the producer of La Maison en Petits Cubes (loosely translated: "I am a French d-bag and I have little cubes in my stupid French house") talk about how much this 8-minute cartoon can change your life.

Where the fuck do you even go to watch an animated short?

I will give $50 to every reader of this blog who can prove to me that they saw La Maison en Petits Cubes before last night. And I am sure you were all relieved to see that Smile Pinki beat out The Conscience of Nhem En for Documentary Short Subject. We were actually going to go see that one, but it has been sold out for the past few weeks. Je. Sus. Christ.

But the stupid awards are not even the worst part. The show just drags on and on and on. Finally, at like five minutes to eleven, when I am sure they will get to the stuff I care about, the announcer says, very dramatically, "coming up . . . a tribute to Jerry Lewis!" Are you fucking kidding me? That was enough for me, so I shut it off and went to bed, catching the last hour this morning on DVR.

After Queen Latifah (who can freaking sing, by the way) did a five-minute montage to all the dead people, they finally got to the actual awards. But by then they were more than 30 minutes behind schedule, and they have to rush through everything. So the stuff you have been waiting hours to see is compressed and hurried, all because the guy who won for best costume design hogged the mic for fifteen minutes.

Even the length of the show pales in comparison to how impressed all of the Hollywood people are with each other. I mean, I am sure there are some actors and movie-types who do a lot of good, but for the most part these are pretty people living in a fantasy world. I vascillate between laughing my ass off and screaming my head off when one of these people starts talking about the "gifts" that they bring to our world, and how "transcendant" their art can be. Shut up. Let's keep our eye on the ball here, ok folks? Teachers, nurses and guys who work three jobs to keep their kids in a good school are worthy of a bit more praise than Anne Fucking Hathaway.

And I am not even going to bring up the fact that they all spent kajillions of dollars on dresses, and jewelry and parties and limos, etc., all while we are in the midst of a depression (yep, that's right). I do think there should have been a more candid acknowledgment of the financial crisis, and the canyon of difference between the haves and have-nots in our country, but I am not one of these people who thinks that you have to just cancel every public event because of the economy. So I will not talk about the fact there were probably tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars spent last night in connection with the Academy Awards. Money that no doubt could have been put to better use. Nope, not bringing it up.

I guess I should have learned my lesson by now, but I can't get over it. Because they should have learned their lesson by now, too. The Oscars should start at 9 and end at 11. Ten-minute intro by the host (the musical number that Hugh Jackman did was kind of funny), 30 minutes of miscellaneous stupid awards and other bs (with commercials, that gets you to the halfway point). And then spend an hour on the shit people care about. And then be done with it.

I can't be the only one who feels this way.

I Don't Need To See The Other Movies

It's simply not possible that any of these other Oscar nominated movies could be better than Slumdog Millionaire. I'll keep it breave (and bouvee), this movie was awe-dash-some. Period.

Things that are overrated: Chimpanzees

Worst part is, he's aiming at a puppy.

There have been a few news items lately regarding what "scientists" call "chimpanzees." Many people, it seems, still suffer the delusion that these wild beasts are "cute." (See above pic.)

I can understand older folks' problem with this. After all, way the hell back in 1980 those dumbasses elected some formerly shitty actor as President because of "films" like "Bedtime for Bonzo" and "conservatism" and the like. Back in 1951, people thought of those movies like I think of Harry Potter: non-fiction. To the elderly, chimpanzees are clearly loveable, harmless creatures. I get it. Not long before the current elderly, accepted facts included the world being flat, the appendix being useful, and burning witches being effective. (As we Potter-philes know, burning doesn't hurt, it tickles!) So anyway, point is: Don't make fun of old people.

But getting back to what's been going on lately with these chimpanzees, you've probably heard by now about the recent incident in Connecticut:

Travis the chimpanzee, a veteran of TV commercials, was the constant companion of a lonely Connecticut widow who fed him steak, lobster and ice cream. He could eat at the table, drink wine from a stemmed glass, use the toilet, and dress and bathe himself.

He brushed his teeth with a Water Pik, logged on to a computer to look at photos and channel-surfed television with the remote control.

But on Monday, the wild animal in him came out with a vengeance.

The 200-pound animal viciously mauled a friend of his owner before being shot to death by police.

Here's my favorite part:

Investigators are trying to figure out why — whether it was a bout of Lyme disease, a reaction to drugs, or a case of instinct taking over.

HE'S A WILD FUCKING ANIMAL, THAT'S WHY.

Call it "instinct taking over" or whatever, just like you can call a chimp "Travis" or "Bonzo" or "Gesundheit," sooner or later that thing is gonna snap.

Travis attacked 55-year-old Charla Nash as Sandra Herold frantically stabbed her beloved pet with a butcher knife and pounded him with a shovel. Nash was in critical condition Tuesday with "life-changing, if not life-threatening," injuries to her face and hands, Mayor Dannel Malloy said.

She survived, which I guess is the not-silver-at-all lining. This Nash woman pretty much doesn't have a face anymore, and we're all somehow supposed to sympathize with Sandra Herold because she had to stab her "beloved pet"?

What Sandra should've done is what I do all the time: watch the National Geographic channel. She might've seen this:

Anyway. All this is really just a lead-in. If you think that Travis ripping that woman's face off was bad...you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Read this article. It's titled, "The Worst Story I Ever Heard."

Once you're done, have fun sleeping. A while back, I tried to explain the simple notion of sharks eating people, but every summer not only do dumbasses go back into the ocean, they keep getting eaten by sharks. Dumbasses.

There's only so much a blogger can do. But as I said, read that article. If you need a visual that will disturb the fuck out of you, then look below. I'm putting it down a bit because it is pure nightmare fuel, so only look if you've got a strong stomach. What you'll see is what happens when human beings -- the sole species of reason, the only creatures on Earth who are aware that they will eventually die -- fuck with nature.

My Two New Favorite Things

First of all, the best nickname of the last decade.

KryptoNate. It's just so clever. Whoever thought of Nate Robinson dressing in the green Knicks uniform and using the green ball and shoes and such to counteract Dwight Howard's Superman was just inspired. Great idea, great dunk. Big ups to Dwight Howard for allowing himself to be jumped over. All around great moment. And even better nickname.

Secondly, my favorite American Idol contestant in the history of American Idol is this guy

Anoop Desai is a big fat freaking nerd with a great voice and I love him.

PS - American Idol is just on the verge of unwatchable. If I didn't have DVR and if I didn't watch most of the show in fast forward, I would have stopped watching this garbage heap years ago. The singing is interesting, and I feel it's my duty to stay on top of my pop culture responsibilities, but in the two hour show yesterday there was literally 90 minutes of wasted time.

Viva Anoop!!!

Dear Bud Selig, You Dirty Two-Faced Motherfucker

This motherfucker Bug Selig is talking about how A-Rod brought shame to the game of baseball and about how he is contemplating some sort of disciplinary action against him and how he's thinking about reinstating Hank Aaron's home run record when we all know that the worst person in this whole affair is not A-Rod, not Barry Bonds, not Roger Clemens, not even Don Fehr (oh you're next motherfucker), but Bud Selig himself.

I cannot believe the nerve of this fucking ass clown who oversaw the expansion of the drug culture in baseball, did nothing about it, fought Congress to keep them from holding hearings, worked with the union to find the easiest way to cover up their transgressions, and tacitly approved of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa shooting each other up at home plate during the 7th inning stretch at Wrigley Field while Harry Caray sang his heart out. This simple minded motherfucker has known since 2003 that Alex Rodriguez had tested positive for steroids. Six years those test results sat on his desk and he was giving out awards and watching games, saying nothing when A-Rod won 3 MVP awards since then, and then because some overzealous reporter and whichever government agency continues to leak like a sieve plucked one name from the list now he wants to threaten some kind of repercussions. What about those other hundred odd gies who's names are still sitting sealed on your desk you combover Skeletor looking cocksucker?

In summary, Bud Selig is an asshole, a liar, a pawn for the players' union, has no real power in baseball, a poor excuse even for a figurehead, a dirty motherfucker, and a pretentious cock. Why he is still the commissioner is beyond me.

PS - What the fuck was Buck Showalter doing in Texas at the turn of the millenium? He was the manager/GM and oversaw the careers of A-Rod, I-Rod, Juan Gonzalez, Rafael Palmeiro, and Ken Caminiti (in 2001). And those are just the guys who I'm 99% certain were using steroids at the time. Who knows about guys like Ruben Sierra and Kenny Rogers?

The Doctor is Out

All the talk about illegal substances and baseball players got me thinking . . . wasn't Dwight Gooden the coolest? The answer, beyond all doubt, is no.



This guy makes Blizzard Man look hard.

In which I defend Alex Rodriguez, once again

(Click to enlarge.)

Not too long ago, I found myself the unlikely defender of Alex Rodriguez. Alas, I must now selflessly shame my good name by doing it again. I'm a goddamn saint. (Oxymoron points! New tag.)

Very recently, as you may have heard, Chuck broke the news that A-Rod had used steroids. In the comments, I expressed my apparently stunning lack of exhilaration at A-Rod's misfortune. In the ensuing days, I've gotten a better grasp of my feelings.

As a die-hard Mets fan and die-hard yankee hater, it feels odd having to get someone like A-Rod's back. By all logic, I should hate him and, thus, be disinclined to defend him. But the sheer number of holier-than-thou pieces from the Daily News and Post (not to mention countless yankee-haters in the blogosphere and elsewhere online) brought to mind another thought: Why won't many of these Guardians of the Sacred Game ever offer the same vitriol toward players like notorious greenie freak Mike Schmidt? Or admitted spit-baller Gaylord Perry? Those guys are Hall of Famers. So amphetamines and illegal pitches are okay while steroids are the mark of the devil?

Part of me is also just tired of the whole steroids thing. Not that it's not a legitimate issue, but over the past several years we've heard about Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and countless other not-as-significant players in the steroids controversy. Those five players would be first-ballot Hall of Famers if not for the devil juice A-Rod injected. I'm not sure exactly how to judge Bonds and Clemens, who have vigorously fought steroid accusations, against A-Rod's confession, but as I said, I'm not sure if I want to devote much energy in the attempt.

What strikes me as maybe more outrageous and deceitful than A-Rod's using steroids is the disclosure of his test results. Where's Luke's hometown New York Times columnist Doug Glanville (whose mom, the esteemed Mrs. Glanville, did give LJT a D in Geometry in high school) had a particularly thoughtful article on this issue, made especially prevalent by his playing with A-Rod in Texas during the 2001-03 seasons when A-Rod has admitted using. Read that article, it's damn good. His point of view helped clear up my initial hesitation to jump on the fuck-A-Rod bandwagon.

To me, the fact that he used steroids was one thing; but the illegal and secretive leaking of (only) A-Rod's 2003 test was a major violation of privacy. When Major League Baseball and the Players Union agreed to those tests, it was based on the condition that the tests would be anonymous. It was a "survey" to find out if steroid usage was in fact rampant enough to warrant the proposed annual (public) testing and subsequent penalties. This was before the embarrassing McGwire ("I'm not here to talk about the past.") / Sosa ("I don't speak English.") / Palmeiro (finger-pointing, "I have never used steroids, period.") Congressional hearing. It was before the Mitchell Report, which outed Clemens. Point being, as Glanville wrote:

"If the tested players had known up front that the results were going to be made public (or that there was even a chance that they might be), not a single one would have agreed to cooperate, and it has very little to do with hiding anything. It has everything to do with privacy."

My next point may sound counterintuitive, having claimed that A-Rod's privacy breach is paramount. But now that his test has been (illegally) made public, I think that the remaining 103 players who (anonymously?) tested positive should be revealed. Here's why:

1. Alex Rodriguez, though a douchebag/cheater/liar, shouldn't be forced to bear all the scrutiny alone.
2. Now that the supposed privacy of those 2003 tests has been breached, it is not fair to the other 1,100 players who tested clean.
3. As more big names trickle out (which seems inevitable), all 1,200 or so players who were tested will be suspected.
4. Those 1,100 innocent players deserve to have their name publicly cleared just as A-Rod's has been soiled.

On top of that, far too many people -- especially those who hate the yankees or maybe A-Rod personally -- are loving this whole situation far more than they would were their favorite team's best player(s) caught. If you're a Red Sox fan, you are very likely enjoying this whole A-Rod situation. But what if -- just what if -- your team's hero was revealed as a juicer? Let's be honest, the Minnesota Twins didn't think all that highly of David Ortiz before they let him go after the 2002 season. Why would they? He was an average hitter during his 1997-2002 years with the Twins. His best year, 2002, he had this line:

.272 AVG/.339 OBP/.500 SLG, 32 2B, 1 3B, 20 HR, 75 RBI, 120 OPS+

That's pretty good, and maybe Theo Epstein saw something the Twins didn't, and he knew that Ortiz was about to blow up. The very next year, Ortiz -- now on the Red Sox -- became a genuine superstar. His performance post-2002 absolutely exploded. He was astronomically better from 2003-2007 than he was 1997-2002.

Was Big Papi juicing? If you look at his production following his trade to Boston compared to his performance in Minnesota, it's not unreasonable to raise an eyebrow, at least.

I'm not claiming that Ortiz did steroids. I'm simply making the point that -- regardless of your feelings toward A-Rod -- steroid use was rampant in baseball for a long time, and we don't know the facts of who actually did or didn't use. But Red Sox fans might lose a bit of smugness upon finding out that Papi was a juicer. Just the same, if I found out David Wright tested positive, I would have to rethink my opinion of him. But either way, I'd rather know.

Schadenfreude is a lot of fun, but it shouldn't outweigh the truth.

And here's a final exercise. Following are Alex Rodriguez's career statistics (full seasons only). I have shuffled the years randomly. If you can point out which three years he used steroids, then you win the grand prize. And yes, this is granting the admitted cheater his claim that he only used during the 2001-03 seasons, but giving that, please try to pick them out:

2B  3B HR  RBI   AVG   OBP   SLG  OPS+
40  3  23   84  .300  .350  .496  120
33  0  35  103  .302  .392  .573  150
29  1  48  130  .321  .421  .610  173
34  1  52  135  .318  .399  .622  160
34  2  41  132  .316  .420  .606  162
24  2  36  106  .286  .375  .512  131
54  1  36  123  .358  .414  .631  160
30  6  47  118  .298  .396  .600  147
27  2  57  142  .300  .392  .623  158
26  1  35  121  .290  .392  .523  134
31  0  54  156  .314  .422  .645  177
25  0  42  111  .285  .357  .586  134

To view Alex Rodriguez's year-by-year stats, go here. If you got it right, you're either very lucky or you knew his stats beforehand or you're a liar. There is no blatant "steroids-induced" peak in A-Rod's performance. He was, and still is, one of the best players in the game. Perhaps the steroids taint will keep him from the Hall of Fame, but either way, if he stays healthy he's going to hit 800 home runs. And unless we know the truth about everything and everyone during the "steroids era," we really won't know how to judge A-Rod.

Or Clemens. Or Bonds. Or anyone else who played baseball from 1995-2004. So before demonizing A-Rod, let's try for a bit of perspective.

Also, Ty Cobb was a racist, Babe Ruth was an adulterous alcoholic, and Ted Williams was pretty much an all-around asshole. Just, you know, for the record.

Joe's Wedding

Our buddy, Joe, married this girl called Lilah a few months back last year. There's been some clamor to post pictures from the wedding, so here are a few.


ChuckJerry, Diesal, WinIt, LJT, Open Bar, and Side Bar looking resplendent.


Here's Lilah walking down the aisle. She looks great.


There's still time, Joe. Run. jk jk.


Some girl was wearing awesome shoes.


Some strange lady kept trying to dance with me.


WinIt and Open Bar enjoying dinner


Diesal and ChuckJerry posing for the ladies.
You may recognize this photo from Diesal's elf dance.


Pamela was there. It was nice to see her. Ioana, too.


Move on, please. Move on.


That's some serious dance face.


Open Bar and Side Bar keepin' it real.


And the band was great too. From Rihanna to Journey.

A Modicum Of Decency, Please, Rupert

Here's today's New York Post front cover. Let's take a couple of things as a given. One, I'm sure we can all agree that Alex Rodriguez is an asshole. I don't know if you'll even find a Yankee fan who says he's a nice guy. Maybe you would, but let's just be honest. A-Rod is an asshole. And probably a motherfucker, too.

If we take as a given that A-Rod is, in fact, an A-hole, then it would seem reasonable to put this on the front cover of your newspaper. It is not. I mean, do I really have to explain why it is inappropriate to call someone an A-hole on the front cover of your newspaper? Obviously I don't. You're not clever just because A-Rod and A-Hole both start with "A dash". The New York Post has basically just become the equivalent of that "slam book" we all got in trouble for in 7th grade. I expect to open it up to Page Six and just see reports like "Jenn and Monica are both super-bitches".

On a related note, I was hopeful that for all of his assholian qualities, at least A-Rod would be someone who wouldn't use steroids, but I can't say I was 100% shocked when that story came out. I would bet any amount of money that Open Bar was reveling in his good fortune this weekend walking around Manhattan in a drunken stupor. Of course, this isn't unlike any other weekend for Open Bar, except that he was yelling extra loudly at Yankee fans.

Seriously Though, Why February?

The irony is just astounding. A whole month of the year is dedicated to the contributions of black people to society and American history and I suppose world history and that month happens to be February. It's just so easy. You could build an entire stand up comedy career based on February being the shortest month and that being the designated black history month. That begs the question, then, why February?

I guess I could tell you, but if you're content enough in your ignorance to the extent that you can't even click on a link, then I'll just let you wallow in it.


the culmination of hundreds of years of struggle.

Daschle Withdraws in Disgrace

Tom Daschle resigned today from consideration to head up the Department of Health and Human Services.

President Obama confided to friends that he accepted the resignation not because of Senator Daschle's poor judgement in improperly filing his taxes but due to his absolutely horrendous choice in eyewear.

According to sources that have requested anonymity, President Obama remarked "Can I trust his vision for the future when he's viewing it through those glasses? No, I can't."