Live blogging . . . life, I guess

So I'm sitting on the couch with my roommate, because it's the only seat in the whole apartment. No other seats. No bed. No dresser. No plates. No cups. No forks. No knives. No food. I just bought some Elio's pizza, Cape Cod chips, and a Hostess fruit pie from 7-11. That's dinner and breakfast. Except I don't have a plate, or a knife to cut up the pizza, or an oven mitt to take the baking sheet out of the oven. Labor Day weekend! Woo hoo!

Zelda warriors

I think this is a cool batch of links, but they're kinda old because I've been busy and unable to post for a bit. Soorry, pals.

# Awesome bit in the Boston Globe Magazine about innovative ideas in pedestrian/driver relations. It really does make you think: pedestrians have to press a button to cross the street. Why shouldn't drivers have to press a button? The indignity!

# Here's a top-15 countdown of real, actual, non-photoshopped photographs. It's not often that Cracked list can lead you to a philosophical meditation on the nature of authenticity in the Intertubes age, but here we are.

# Two Simpsons-related links: first, some superheros, Simpsonized. (Sandman? Cmon. Why not Galactus? Or the Anti-Monitor?) Second, an interactive map of Springfield. I haven't gone through it all to check for veracity, since it kinda makes me nauseous. But it's a fun kind of nauseous!

# Finally, why isn't the whole world made of this stuff?

Quick question

In the Lord of the Rings movies, how come they never show any lady Orks?

DD&U Friends in the News

Official Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun buddy Joe Mondry won the "First Person to Appear in Billboard Magazine" pool among my group of friends by, well, appearing in this month's Billboard Magazine. He's a part of the fourth annual Top 30 Under 30 music executives list. Unfortunately, you have to have a subscription to read it online, but I encourage you, my precious reader, to go out and buy your copy today!

My only beef is his lack of mention of Wait for Summer, the emocore-iest North Jersey emocore band in the history of the scene (the debut EP The History of an Error is dropping soon!) What gives? Otherwise, congratulations Joe!

Niche blogging is teh best

I'll never have an idea as good as Cake Wrecks, so instead I just write gibberish about nonsense. Anyway, enjoy.

Some Olympic notes

Sorry, dearest readers. I haven't been watching that much. What started as a silent, self-indulgent protest of China's authoritarian regime became an "eh, I have other things to do" thing. That doesn't stop me from having a few things to say, though!

# Slate ran a takedown of world record breaking performances here. I found the stuff about the size of the pool to be very interesting. I don't revel in debunkings like this, and I don't think it matters that much, since gold medals is the only measure that people even remotely care about. It's fun to watch the green line chase Michael Phelps, but I think the viewing public is savvy enough to know that these records fall all the time. Meh!

# I was prepared to write a self-righteously indignant bit about how these idiots on NBC and ESPN are mispronouncing the name of the host city (duh, guys, it's Bay-zhing). So after running "beijing pronunciation" through teh Google, I came across this piece from my hometown Boston Globe.

# They're doing a lot of talking, but is anyone going to do something about this? There are any of a number of stories to read, but I like how this one describes the discrepancy as between online reports and newspaper accounts, and the gymnasts' China-issued passports. It's like that Simpsons episode where Bart has to deliver himself from Knoxville to Springfield. "Well, you sure don't look 25, but your unlaminated, out-of-state driver's license is proof enough for me."

Zelda warriors

# Men's Vogue has a dynamite profile of Elisha Nelson Manning, the greatest hero in all of sports. Hat-tip to New York magazine's Daily Intelligencer blog, which put the Eli profile side-by-side with Esquire's verbose hagiography of Tom Brady. I could go on and on about how gross the Brady interview is, but I think the subhead speaks for itself: "New England Patriots Quarterback Tom Brady will go down in history as the greatest football player never to go down in history. And he's still smiling." Huh?

# This is a video of Summer Streets, a program that New York is trying out on three weekends in August. They basically shut down seven miles worth of Park Avenue and Lafayette Street to cars, and host a ton of programs, vendors, and activities. Based on the unadulterated joy in this video, and this glowing editorial in the Times, I'd say that people are really into this thing. Are you reading, Boston? Maybe shutting down Boylston Street from Mass Ave. to Charles Street? Eh?

# LOL Bush. 'Nuff said.

# And finally, a no-brainer. The Olympics have handball and not bowling? Cmon!

Crazy pills 2

The latest soupy dreck from John McCain:


Really? Whatever happened to Straight Talk? Whatever happened to a civil campaign based on the issues? I mean, the only substantive thing this ad even tries to say (ooooooooh...Obama will raise taxes on everyone making $42,000 a year...scary!) is demonstrably false. It's a good thing the rest of the video isn't burdened by, you know, facts.

Rock star? Taco Bell? Huh? This whole "celebrity" meme is absurd to the point of causing migraines in people with even a shred of good sense. And I'd like to see a logical explanation of what "ready to lead" actually means. What does it mean? Assuming John McCain actually is "ready to lead," what's the point? He's a ruthless warmonger! This guy shouldn't be leading tours of the Grand Canyon, let alone the United States.

All in all, this is just an insult. Anybody who thinks this drivel is persuasive, or worse, true, is an idiot. Yeah, I said it.

The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems

Salon checks in with a pair of neat articles on the state of American swill beer in the wake of Anheuser Busch's sale to Belgian-Brazilian beer superconglomerate InBev. The main gist is the question of what beer will assume Budweiser's mantle of the Great American Beer. Being a beer guy, I'm delighted to read anything on the subject, but I'm impelled to tackle of a few of the points made by Mr. McClelland and the Salon staff.

First is the idea that Budweiser is going anywhere. It's not. Just because A-B is no longer American-owned won't change the price of Bud, or the hegemony that it has in every bar, liquor store, and sports venue in the country. Will people make a spite-choice when it comes to their favorite beer? I suppose. But can you imagine a lifelong Bud drinker being so principled? Meh. I drink Bud Light when I'm out because it's cheap, it's always around, and almost any given bartender has the ability to lip-read the words in a loud barroom. It's as simple as that.

Are Americans actually looking for an all-American beer? I certainly hope so. Is domestic swill the answer? Meh again, although a can of Blatz is better than a bottle of Heineken any day, in my opinion. I wrote a column a few years ago that touched briefly on the Pabst phenomenon, and I remember being amazed, and a little perplexed, that they had swallowed up so many defunct regional beers (check out their lineup. It's actually funny. [And on a related note, check out this AMAZING half of an ad for Ballantine from none other than all-American man's man and Nobel Prize–winner John Steinbeck. Tremendous!]) The problem, at the end of the day, is that, as much as I love Ballantine and Naragansett (I actually do!), the one thing all of these old-time regional beers have in common is that they're not good. And since I'm too young to have grown up on Schaefer, the nostalgia factor doesn't make up for the lack of flavor.

I had a real problem with craft beers being dismissed as "twee." Cmon! Craft breweries are at the forefront of the battle to crack open the stranglehold that the big three brewers have on beer in America. I'm a firm believer in the idea of drinking locally, and there's no getting around the fact that craft breweries are today what the Pabsts and Blatzes and Pielses were 100 years ago. Out west, they've got Anchor and Sierra Nevada and Stone; down south they've got Terrapin and Sweetwater; the east coast has Brooklyn and Victory and Dogfish Head; and up here in New England, a hotbed of craft brewing, there's Sam Adams (still a craft beer!) and Harpoon and Magic Hat and Smuttynose. Those were all off the top of my head. The local brewery used to be a fixture in this country; there's no reason it can't be again. Drink up!

Crazy pills

So a military tribunal sentenced Salim Hamdan (he of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld fame) to 66 months, a large chunk of which may get lopped off due to time served. Way to go, Military Commissions Act.

I'm not so concerned with the conduct of the trial, or even the results. Everyone knew the Guantanamo military tribunals were going to be a joke. I'm extremely concerned with what could happen to Mr. Hamdan after he completes his 66 months. Money quote:

"It was not immediately clear how the Pentagon would handle Mr. Hamdan after the sentence. For years administration officials have maintained that, because detainees facing war crimes charges here are all classified as unlawful enemy combatants, they could continue to hold an accused even if he had completed a sentence or were acquitted by a military commission panel."

Pardon? The man will have finished his sentence (or paid his debt to society, as we say about less...touchy...ex-cons), and he can still be held indefinitely? What the hell was the point! Didn't the English fight a civil war about stuff like this? I would call Mr. Hamdan's situation Kafka-esque, but honestly, I don't think Kafka would have sold a book if he had written a story so ludicrous.

I was going to title this post "The day the Constitution died," but honestly, I've had that sentiment dozens of times in the past, and I'll have it dozens of times in the not so distant future. Crazy pills.

T villains

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun know that I'm a regular rider of the T, and it's my firm belief that the Green Line is like a rolling crucible of the soul. I've dedicated a number of posts to exposing particularly heinous violators of what I believe to be the unwritten code of not just T-riding, but of existing in our society in general.

Add stroller pushers to the list of offenders.

I love little kids. Everybody knows that. This isn't about babies, infants, toddlers, or youngsters of any stripe. This is about the people responsible for looking out for our tiny little friends. I was just at Government Center, in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, and the station was packed. I got on an empty B train, and no less than three strollers got on. I'm not talking tiny ones, either. I'm talking the huge, Galactic Empire starship–sized ones. One of them had a giant helium balloon tied to it! Suffice it to say, these things took up a TON of space. One of them was parked in the aisle, forcing people that wanted to get off to contort their arms and legs into ridiculous and unnatural positions in order to navigate around this monstrosity.

The most offensive thing was, these strollers weren't carrying around one-month olds. All of these kids were perfectly capable of walking, or at the very least standing on their own two feet. The most offensive thing was, the only woman that actually had the decency to fold up her stroller into a more compact state had the smallest kid!

They don't allow bikes on the Green Line. A giant stroller is AT LEAST as obtrusive as a bicycle, if not moreso. So where's the restriction? I understand that you need a stroller to push your kid around. But is it too much to ask that these things get folded up before the train starts moving? Of course not. Make room for everybody, Stroller Pushers! Riding the T is bad enough. We don't need to be pinched up against the wall by some huge, AT-AT–esque tank.

Amazing fact

Guys still walk around with popped collars. Unironically.