Basic Instinct II: Not Popular at the NY Times

The NY Times movie reviewer, Manohla Dargis, despised the new Basic Instinct movie so much there are now two links to the drubbing, one in the movies section and one on the sidebar. Dargis must really hate this movie.

Tavarez Round 1

Julian Tavarez got in the first totally unnecessary brawl of the season in a spring training game today against the Devil Rays. When he was covering home on a play at the plate, he stepped on Joey Gathright arm as Gathright slid into homeplate. Gathright hit Tavarez with his left forearm and while Gathright was still on the ground Tavarez cracked him in the jaw. Players congregated. Combatants got booted. Sox eventually beat the D-Rays 12-11.

Sit versus Squat : A False Dichotomy?

When it comes to crapping, I am now a squatter with his sitting past cast into the crap heap of cultural bias right next to country music is for hicks (country is for all--download five Jason Boland tunes and I defy you to disagree). That's right folks. I'm changing sides.

Let me explain. In Asia toilets don't look like chairs with holes. They're small holes in the floor with foot rest such that a man can squat, like a baseball catcher, while getting down to business. The advantages: less paper work, less red tape and something about it being more natural on the muscles of the nether regions leaves one with the sense that every dump was the biggest of their life.

But how can this traditional way exist in a world increasing dominated by western style crappers? I'll tell you folks: the perch. Oh ya, I strip down and hop on the edge of the bowel for a good old squat crap.

The Dogg

Nate the Dogg Sanderson will be interviewed on the podcast. Hold on to your hats.

Nature's Freaks Part V: The Frogfish

The Oscellated Frogfish (Antennarius ocellatus) is a fish that through eons of selective pressures has evolved to look like a frog. Thus the frogfish is perfectly camouflaged when it’s surrounded by deformed frogs. You see, the predators are color blind so it all works out…

The frogfish uses its long thin dorsal fin like a fishing pole to tempt smaller fish which the frogfish catches.

Another Schachterle Please

As many of you may know the Smoked Salmon and I have recently gotten engaged. As part of this life changing venture I've been thinking more seriously about my future and legacy. I've become very concerned that I may not have a male heir to carry on the family name, Schachterle. To hedge my bets against this chilling possibility I've been trying to coin a drink called The Schachterle. It's a gin and tonic with grapefruit juice. I've gotten a few friends to order it and local bartenders to serve it. If the moment strikes you, or you are in fact searching for a way to extend a piece of immortality to me, I say order up a Schachterle.

asdfas v

Smoking pot = no decent blog today.

dzUSA

Oh, my God. There’s been a DraculazombieUSA blog around all this time and I didn’t know about it. I really should have assumed it, but in my defense I’m new to the Internet. How do I double click? Where is the Internet anyway?

To atone for the oversight I’ve added the word “DraculazombieUSA” to my Microsoft Word Dictionary. I’ve never even added a peculiar consonant heavy constellation of letters known as “Schachterle” to that.

Bluefish Canoe Midterm Election Guide ‘06

I plan to vote for candidates whose accents most closely resemble my own. Just to give you some idea of this profile: my mother was a Berber and my Papa a Cossack, but I was raised amongst the Saami reindeer herders of artic Finland (your people might call my people “Lapps” but that term causes us great offense after centuries of persecution by the barbaric Swedes who used that word). So typically it’s quite obvious who will get my vote. In the event two candidates have accents equally similar to my own, I just vote for the tallest male. I encourage you to do the same.

Tee Shirt

When I first started the blog I toyed with the idea of not telling any friends. I wanted to thwart the temptation to try impress friends and girls with my razor sharp satire and earth-shattering observations. Biasing blog content by their plebeian tastes would be totally uncool.

The other day I saw the Smoked Salmon trying to buy a tee shirt on-line that said “I don’t care about your blog.” I submit that's a success for the blog on some level.

The Coming of the Podcast

The Podcast: Episode I is almost up. We're working on business cards.

Bill Wasik and the Flash Mob

The inventor of the Flash Mob, Bill Wasik, recently revealed his identity. Wasik is a senior editor at Harpers Magazine. The flash mobs were gatherings of hip, strangers via high tech means (text message, email, etc.) to do something pointless, but quirky and cute like hold a tissue in the air and drop it or gather around an expensive rug at Macy’s. They started off in Manhattan in the summer of 2003 and spread all around the world according to their entry in wikipedia. When Wasik claimed credit for starting the micro-craze, he announced that his intention was to mock the youth hipster culture as nothing more than a race to the next trend. He purportedly intended to draw attention to the hipster’s blind faith in anything with a whiff of irony, despite the stench of confusion, creative want, and conformity.

Unfortunately for Wasik, smug mockery, especially mockery followed by denial of ones own hip-itude, is the cornerstone of all things hip, and by mocking the mockers Wasik may have made himself into the biggest hipster of all. Did Wasik not simply apply the hipster formula of irony and cuteness above reason, and then take that formula to its logical conclusion? Could the meta-mocker be the smuggest and most nauseating of all hipsters?

The answer is obvious: probably, but who cares? I care because like making mocumentaries about mocumentaries or adding razor blades to disposable razor heads, this could easily spiral out of control. What if someone tries to mock Wasik for mocking hipsters and then someone mocks the guy who mocked Wasik for mocking hipsters and someone mocks that final guy too and then on and on… I could meet the meta-meta-meta-meta-mocker at a party and feel socially pressured to laugh like a Senator forced to applaud at the State of the Union. Oh, I can say I won’t fake laugh now, but if it gets me out of the conversation I’m sure I’ll fake laugh, escape for more drink, and then be left feeling like a washed up, broke whore. What will be left of me then?

Oscars

I have no time for a real blogging today because I've been busy with the podcast and work. (A pod cast is coming soon.) However I would like to open up a question to the readership: why is the Oscars statue a depiction of a nude warrior knight? I guess the gold part kind of makes sense.

Funk-a-delic

Looking for a funk infusion but too young and white to know where to start? Check out the recent posting on Corn Chips and Pie for what can only be described as a Rosseta stone of funk.

You Have to Believe in Something

There’s been a lot happening in my personal life so I haven’t managed to write about one recent surprise. I visited Burlington, Vermont two weeks ago and I spent the evening playing pool in a bar called the Three Needs with some friends. We were playing doubles and this annoying hippie dude came up to challenge us for a game. He wasn’t the crunchy gutter punk type—more a clean shiny Phish kid. My partner, a girl I know, and I went down early with this hippie having a little streak after my crappy break. After a few shots by both teams I realized the hippie didn’t have a partner and was trying to play two on one. That’s totally against the rules of course. We had just won the previous game; hence it’s our call to play doubles. I pointed out his mistake. He refused to take a partner and insisted he should be able to play alone. Thus a typical endless pool table dispute broke out with my lady partner in no mood to take this shit from the hippie asshole. I believe in doubles pool because it gets more people involved and reduces a certain annoying, ESPN, pool hall mindset that doesn’t belong at a bar (you have to believe in something). The hippie evidentially felt otherwise. After a long debate, I grabbed one of his friends, declared the friend the hippie’s new partner and made him play. The new partner sucked, I sunk the eight ball, and the hippie undoubtedly blamed my choice of his partner for their poor showing. So the hippie threw down his stick, and turned to this girl announcing that “we lost, but he [me] is a dick!” I got in his face and the hippie challenged me to “take it outside”.

He walked out to smoke a cigarette and ostensibly wait for my now called-out person. My friends had gotten word of what had happened and were crowding around to prevent fisticuffs. I kept quite until things returned to normal and snuck outside while no one was looking so my crew couldn’t prevent the whooping that need to come down.

I found the hippie right near the bar smoking and blabbing Phish kid dribble to some girl. I pushed him and the rumble ensued. A few body blows were thrown, a bit of wrestling, but all and all it was a very wimpy showing on both sides. Then the bouncer from the bar came out and broke it up. The hippie went off in another direction and I tried to go back in the bar assuming the bouncer wouldn’t let me after my mighty bout, but he did. Apparently the fight was so incredibly lame that it didn’t even register in the bouncers mind as a fight. Alternatively, after seeing my best attempt to mess someone up, the bouncer may have concluded that I was harmless and can safely be granted re-admittance.

Later that night I noticed the hippie had returned. I avoided eye contact with him due to embarrassment still surrounding the failure of our fight. I also avoided the bouncer after it occurred to me he may have mistaken the battle for a make out session.

Tavarez

I just had lunch with a friend at a favorite dinner and briefly discussed the recent free agent signings in Major League Baseball. I pointed out my beloved Red Sox had acquired the pugnacious loon Julian Tavarez. This friend of mine is a San Francisco sports fan where Tavarez is something less than beloved after spending three years on the Giants where he 1) sucked and 2) was an asshole. I defended Tavarez by quoting what may be one of the most insane monologues ever by a professional athlete who was not Oil Can Boyd. In 2003 while playing with the Pirates, umpires caught Tavarez clearly scuffing a ball with pine tar hidden on the brim of his hat. Tavarez responded:

I used to let things like that bother me. That's why they used to call me Yo-Yo Head earlier in my career. Now, I don't care what people say or write in the newspapers. I'm not putting anything on the ball. I could see if I had 20 wins that people might say something. I have two wins. Would I only have two wins if I were cheating?[my italics].

Tavarez then out does himself:

Everyone has their own preferences. Some people like skinny women, I like fat women. Some people like young women, I like old women. Some people like poor women, I like rich women. Some people like clean caps, I like dirty caps.

Housewives of Newton, Nahant, and Newbury Street with no particular inclination for the gym, you are in luck.

Baseball in March: What's the Deal?

To follow up the last posting with an opinion piece: I’m not so sure about baseball in March. I mean, I’ll watch team USA. I’ll even get drunk watching team USA—I’m not a some sicko terrorist or anything. But there is something unnatural about going right from the Winter Olympics to baseball. This may seem odd coming from a man who lives in a country where it’s perfectly normal to eat a strawberry in February. However baseball in March to me is like those 40 year old dudes who wear down jackets with fake fur hoods, or dudes in yellow sneakers who are neither gay nor German—it’s just a little weird.

I heard an interesting idea on the ESPN podcast the other day. Someone suggested eliminating the All Star game, which no one would miss, and breaking in the middle of summer for the international tournament. My total ignorance of anything non-American prohibits me from guessing how that might affect non-American leagues, but I like the idea. Other leagues may be willing to rearrange their schedules around America if it means promptly kicking Team USA’s ass. And personally, I picture myself spitting on Derek Jeter in his Yankee uniform on one day and the next cheering for him in his Team USA uniform. I could get into that.

On an unrelated note, check out my friends remix of a Strokes song.