Team USA Is Back, Baby

After losing in the last Olympics in embarrassing fashion, Team USA Basketball has rebounded and is wuppin’ it up in the World Championship. The idea behind the latest incarnation of Team USA is to get a core group of professionals together and keep them together for a few years so they’re ready for the next Olympics. The problem with the last Olympic team was thought to be lack of team cohesion due to not enough games together. This new formula of a team accustom to playing together is working tremendously well and we’ve had to bring in a Team USA Team B to keep from running up the score against the other teams. Team USA B lacks seasoned NBAers and is comprised mainly of recent college grads. The only problem is Team USA B is still blowing out all the international competition. Thus I suggest we bring in a Team USA C composed of Americans guaranteed to falter against any competition on the court. I for one volunteer to join, if not lead, Team USA C. I’m whiling to play in the Olympics for my country. I’m whiling to take on fame, riches, and endless endorsements when my country calls.

Zany Google Hi Jinx

Do a Google search for the word “Failure”. It’s pretty funny.

4:45

Yesterday the Red Sox started playing baseball at 1:00 PM and didn’t get through until 12:52 AM. During this great expanse of time they played 2 games, one of which broke the record for longest 9 inning game ever played at 4 and 45 minutes. The Red Sox managed to lose both games to the Yankees. I watched the entire second game. By around midnight Fenway had gotten so empty you could hear on TV individuals heckling Yankee players over the muted and decimated crowd. I haven’t heard that happen at Fenway since the early 90s. Moreover, the game was covered in NY by the Yankee announcers, so I didn’t have to soothing cadence and salty wit of Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy to lull me through the evening (Yes I do believe Jerry Remy to be down right salinous*). I would recommend to no one watching the Red Sox lose to the Yankees for 4 hours and 45 minutes alone on a Friday night. Maybe a long work meeting or a bad movie comes close to this poor choice, but somehow not quite.

* Note: Microsoft spell checker does not believe “salinous” is a word. I feel the very institution which is Jerry Remy provides ample ground for a resurgence of this fine adjective.

Late August Baseball

The Sox are losing the first game of a double header right now. 8-3. We have John Lester on the hill for the second game and… well we’ll just say he’s due for a strong outing. It’s the point in the season were I don’t care if we win the World Series, I don’t even care if we’re swept in 3 games in round one of the playoffs. I just don’t want the Yankees to get to the post season. What I fear most is both the Sox and Yankees playing each other again in October because 1) history suggests we’ll lose, and 2) I can’t take the endless rivalry montages made saccharine by the imbeciles at Fox who cover the playoffs. The Red Sox highlights and lowlights of last 20 years are the highlights and lowlights of my life. It’s just too emotional to watch the Aaron Boone homer 50 times a day while Tim McCarver reminds us this “might be the fiercest rivalry since the Homo Sapiens finally crushed the Neanderthals.” How many times did we have to watch the Buckner error during the 04 playoffs? I don’t come to McCarver’s house and play footage of his wife and Joe Buck going at it 50 times a day, do I? (Note to self: find some way to do that; it'll be nasty but worth it.)

Blue Fish Canoe's final days in NYC

I'm movin' again. Fellas, get you drinkin shoes. We got celebratin to do.

Pandora

This dude at work told me about something called pandora.com. It’s a website which customizes a radio station for you based on a suggested band and then a series of up or down votes. It plays pretty good music and it is fun to see if a computer can grasp the subtle nuances and sophistication of my musical taste. I can test to see if the computer can find music I like as fast as I can. It’s like Kasparov versus Deep Blue or John Henry versus whatever it was that John Henry was hammerin’ against.

Ahmadinejad's comment section

I found the flags on Ahmadinejad's blog. It turns out he's got a comment section and a Q&A. I don't recommend leaving any comments on his blog if you're going to leave any trace to this blog.

Fortunately his sever doesn’t seem to be able to handle the increased workload posed by the comments.

Ahmadinejad Are You Out There?

As you may have noticed this site lacks the substantial iCrew that many of the cooler blogs role with. Today, I reach out to a new blogger and invite him into my web social scene. Today, I unveil my link to the blog of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, started a blog recently and I’m hopeful that once he sees how many hits he’s getting from bluefishcanoe, he’ll reciprocate my offer and link to this site, thus cementing our virtual relations like the Friendship Bracelets of my youth. Supposedly there is some way to look at this blog in English by clicking on the American flag. I haven’t found it yet.

Review

Listen to our podcast at Kylesjob, I beg you. Please. Mr. Geography may be among the coolest people on the planet. And if you listen, or even if you don’t listen, please right a review of the show. You can do that by going to the link above, clicking on “Add to iTunes” in the right corner, then from iTunes click on write a review also in the right corner.

Also we will be contacting Mr. Geography again so if you have question that you think can stump him then email us at questions@kylesjob.net

Oil Can Update: Really bad outing in 87

Oil Can Boyd’s hopes of returning to a baseball diamond as a pro player were dashed earlier this year when ongoing legal problems resulting from threats he made to a former business partner that the “authorities” deemed “highly credible” voided a contract he had signed with the Nashua, NH, Pride. Evidently, Pride ownership insisted on a special Can clause in Oil Can’s contract which stipulated the Can must remain out of jail for lengthy stretches of the season. Once again the lawyers ruin all our fun with senseless detail and frivolity.

However, amazingly, The Can managed to get in the August 3 addition of the Boston Glob in an interview with a man named John Orrico. Orrico was the bat boy for the visiting teams in the Kingdom from 1986-1987. Why the Orrico interview was published the August 3, 2006 addition of the Globe remains unclear. However Orrico does recount the following incident:

“He [Oil Can Boyd] was a piece of work," according to Orrico. "He was this wiry, crazy guy, and he's out tossing the ball. Then he came in, and there was these wood lockers and he started biting them. I don't know why, but if the Kingdome was still there, you'd see a full impression of his teeth in those mahogany-stained lockers. You could have taken dental records off them."

Twenty years later, The Can instantly remembers the incident. "Yeah, it happened," he said on a recent visit to Fenway Park. "Bad outing. Really bad outing."

Pennyyya

The Red Sox just lost 5 straight to two of the worst teams in baseball, the Devil Rays and the Royals due mainly to terrible pitching. When you’re a fan of a game like baseball that has such a strong chance or luck component you have to expect this type of thing from time to time. Bad teams will beat good teams. Unfortunately for the Sox, this slump has coincided with a Yankee surge and the Sox have gone from first to 3 games back. The only solace in all of this is that Willy Mo Peña homered last night and the man the Sox traded for Willy Mo, Bronson Arroyo, has now dropped to 9-8 after going 9-3 to start the season; and thus the sting of a trade of dubious wisdom is not so sharp.

This brings me to another point. Why does it always take me 5 minutes to find non-standard letters in Microsoft Word? How many Peeanyyas do we need in this country before we get a decent way to type the “ñ”. My personal feeling is that it should have become standard after Tony Peña. I use the “^” once every five years and I’m not even really sure what the “ ` ” or the “ } ” are supposed to indicate, but I can’t get a decent way to put an “~” over an “n”. I’m sure the right wingers will quake over the symbolic implications of the “ñ” on their keyboards, no doubt ruffling their mullets and smudging their camouflage face paint as they sit hunkered down along the southern boarder with big nets or automatic weapons. But for normal people it’s just a matter of convenience.

Smoking Study

A study done by the NYC Department of Health on teenage girl's smoking habits found that every girl who smoked said that the show “Sex in the City” helped inspire them to smoke. It’s a truly influential work.

Hitting Slump Ends

I know there may be many things going on in the world now. However, you’ll be happy to hear that my long standing slump at the plate (softball hitting) has ended. I went 2 for 4 yesterday in our win against the Department of Finance. Unfortunately, after hitting my second hit of the day at my second at bat, I went 0 for 2, kicking off a new slump.

Jedi Squirrles

Things have been a little busy here in the big pond (fish metaphors, the people love the fish metaphors, hit them relentlessly with fish metaphors). But on another note check this out:

New Shirt

At my most earnest behest, the Smoked Salmon got a new shirt yesterday. It simply reads, "Hummers are for dicks."

Episode 5

We've got a new podcast out. Czech it out.

Never dis a bald Frenchman

What did Marco Materazzi, the Italian soccer player, say to French great, Zinedine Zidane, to instigate the infamous assault on the Italian defenseman? Who knows, but the blogosphere is brimming with apocryphal speculation. Did Materazzi call the French son of Algerian immigrants a terrorist? Materazzi denies using such slander claiming he is too ignorant to come up with the word: terrorist. (On the other hand, one might argue that ignorance might be a perfect avenue for racially charged name calling.) Did Materazzi call Zidane’s mother a whore? Did Materazzi call Zidane’s whore his mother (an even more head butt-able offense)? Did Materazzi insult Zidane’s favorite blog: www.bluefishcanoe.blogspot.com? Don’t worry my friend; no FIFA investigation can pry your secret from me…

On World Cup Sterotyping

It seems too easy to describe a national team’s style in the World Cup as similar to the stereotype of that nation as a whole. But after watching Germany v. Italy the other day it's hard to comment on either team without acknowledging Germany played a highly controlled match with each player working in a well defined role, and Italy took a more risky approach exhibiting both flare and passion. Why haven't those who try endlessly to market this game (call it whatever you like: I don't intend to weigh in on the soccer v. football debate) in the United States picked up on this adherence to national rep as a gimmick? I'd watch EU delegates discuss French farm subsidies if I could be guaranteed a drunk Irishman or a sexy but unattainable Spanish chick. Throw in a Frenchman with a burette and a Russian mobster and we have and HBO original series.

Pedro v. Sox

Ahh, Pedro. It's sappy but I don't care. Jerry Remy said it best, "I don't care if he [Pedro] is throwing 20 miles per hour. I still want him on my team."

Note: Jerry Remy went to the Mets booth to be interviewed by the Mets announcers and Remy started commenting on the Mets v. Sox game. Remy is an announcer among announcers.

Bluefish Canoe Goes Shopping

As part of the pre-pre-ceremony for the wedding we’re having a second engagement party this Monday (in fact it so precedes the event it’s happening over a year prior). I set out four days ago to buy a new suit for the occasion to bring my total number of suits to a sum that allows me to refer to them as suits as opposed to the sole suit I know own. I am 5 feet 8 inches tall and 140 pounds. I’m not a large man by any means, but I felt, after taking a quick survey of men on the street this afternoon, that I’m not freakishly small either. I like to think of myself as comfortably resting on the western, leftward slope of the height bell curve with most of my fellow Euro-Americans east/right of me, but plenty of our newest Americans from regions of the world fraught with malnutrition to keep me company on the western slope. Yet a thorough search of men’s clothing stores north of canal street turned up not one suit under $1,000 that would fit me, and not one suit that I would pay more than $10 to own. Every single coat-pant combo that I could buy was too big. Evidentially, if you’re my size you have to have suits made for you driving the price into quadruple digits. I started off going to small cheap chains like H&M or Banana Republic and they had nothing. I moved up to Macy’s, Brooks Brothers, and Bloomingdale’s, stores with several floors of men’s formal wear, and they had not one suit I could buy.

I believe this suit-less-ness could be no clearer indication that the Corporate Bastard is not just trying to homogenize us in look and thought but also in body shape. If you’re not 6 feet tall then you have to try and get married in jeans resulting in a jilting at the alter for your slovenliness so your lady can go procreate with someone who can produce kids that fit into mass produced clothing. Friends suggested that it was probably a supply and demand thing with the actual cause having to do with the prevalence of 6 foot men with money and the effect being the big suits, until I relayed this exchange: I go into Barney’s and ask the suit guy if he has any 36-short sized suits. He asked what I’d like to spend. I say $400 (a little bit of an overestimation). He tells me they have nothing in the store at that price. They have literally 2 floors of suits. I grab the first price tag I see and it reads: SALE $348. I bring this to the suit guy’s attention and he says, “well, I meant, we have nothing in your price range in your size”. I ask why not, and he says, “we simply don’t carry clothing that small, maybe you could go to the gym and bulk up a little.” Judging by the tenor of his voice, I estimate he was 20 percent joking and 80 percent giving sincere advice. That translates to 80 percent of his head so lost in exploring the cavernous folds of his own arse that it seems reasonable to him to suggest that I might alter my entire body shape to buy his clothing.

In the end I found a shop near where I work. It’s the last store going south on Broadway far past where most people look. Every shopper there other than myself was a Latino man over the age of 70. And I bought a funky, pimpin’, cigar smoking, salsa drumming, badass suit. Price = not $400.