the sticking point

Pointcast One: Dry Mouth, Lip Smack and More!

Amtrak / en route to Providence.
Smile, you're traveling! It's Friday, it's the Fourth of July, and that could mean only one thing: the first of the Pointcast things I've been promising since March is here.

What goes up, must come down. I’m proving it today, heading up the eastern seaboard and back down again without so much as time for meal in between.

When I came home from the Yankees game last night I worked on the Pointcast and some other projects, hammering away until past 0300 hrs this morning. I finally got in bed and read the Dean Wareham book for a while, before lights out around 0400. I knew I could sleep in today, maybe as late as 0930, because all I had on the itinerary for this July 4 was to wrap up the last pieces of writing for the song list below, drink some coffee, get a good workout, and then wait for Mrs Sticking Point and the boys to arrive home from their week on Cape Cod. My comet of non-stop work and to-dos and errands would flame out, and I could relax today; well-rested and work completed.

Ha! My feeble "itinerary" is a mere yarn-ball between the giant paws of fate: toyed with, and ultimately swatted under a couch.

The phone woke me up at 0727. It was my wife. Feeling ill and feverish, the 5-hour-plus drive from the Cape (with our two Subaru-monkeys in the backseat) looked unmanageable in the least, unsafe at the worst. She asked, could I at least meet her and the boys in Providence to get them the rest of the way home?

I could, at least, so here I am. Sweaty, tired, and somewhere between Stamford and Bridgeport.

I bought a ticket on the Internets, packed stuff into a bag and hurried out to catch the subway to Penn Station. I had 70 minutes before the ticket, waiting for me somewhere in the cyber kingdom, became non-negotiable and utterly useless. My intensity and nervous froth eased up when I finally sat down on the E train.

It was short-lived comfort. At one stop, still in Queens, a creature boarded my train car. It would take a while before I could discern the lumped, hunched figure as female; what I knew immediately was fear.

It was dressed in a bright white shirt and bright white pants, the cuffs of which bunched up atop a pair of very new, very bright white shoes. Industrial white shoes like ER nurses wear. And, as I said, brand new. On its head was some sort of white cloth, a piece of apparel difficult to identify because the human-like entity was covered entirely with a plastic raincoat. Clear plastic, of course; and thin as Saran Wrap.

It had arrived on the train with two large and over-packed Duane Reade shopping bags that seemed quite heavy, and it stood in the center of the car. Nearly everyone stared warily at this stranger and I was relieved that even a pack of jaded New Yorkers might be as nervous and hyper-vigilant as I.

Nervous. Hyper-vigilant. Because… while this odd passenger stood, hunched over and incessantly adjusting and readjusting its head cloth and plastic hood, I patched together the details and wondered if maybe somebody woke up with Sarin gas attack on his itinerary for this holiday of American independence. The train crawled nearer to the underwater tunnel linking Queens and Manhattan, and I wondered if there were others; what if I looked through the doors and saw cellophane-covered creatures in the train cars ahead and behind? I decided, well -- that would make it time for some go get ‘em. Maybe I could stop something tragic, or diminish the horrendous aftermath, even a little. I conjured the inevitable press conference on the steps of City Hall. “No, no, no; I just did what anyone else would do. But my wife, she’s a hero. If she hadn’t been ill enough to suggest I meet her in Providence… Ha! It was providence! Does anyone else find that ironic? Hel-lo?! Is this on?!”

Idiot funboy can laugh now, but as we left the last subway station before the tunnel, and the featureless figure in white took down her hood to tie the white headscarf more firmly, I got about as fight-or-flight nervous as I’d been since September ’01.

The cult group that carried out the attack in the Tokyo subway was clad all in white and transported the Sarin in bags. They used the tips of umbrellas to puncture the bags and release the poison. There was something about the brand new white shoes keyed me up. They seemed more than just part of a uniform. The white headscarf up top and new white shoes down below lent a ritualized look to the wardrobe.

But. You already know the punch line to all this is that there is no punch line. No soap – radio, as they say. Without incident, the abominable terrorist and I both detrained at 34th Street/Penn and went separate ways.

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Before we cue the music, here's one quick note to the struggling couple:
I think it is a parental felony to leave your children (one of whom is about 90 days old) in Florida while mommy's in Paris going forth with the Lance Armstrong of Rock and daddy's in the Bronx batting fourth for the New York Mediocritees. But I'm sure you've got it under control.

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All aboard the kundalini express, here's the all-new Friday 10 Pointcast -- five songs at random, and five songs chosen. Every Friday that I can capably accomplish it, I'll record a podcast with all ten tracks and commentary. You can download it by clicking the link provided. Each 'cast will be available for one week. If you miss one, or discover the site weeks later, write me at TheStickingPoint@gmail.com and I'll get it to you.

Your feedback means a lot, so even if you don't share your own Friday 10 in the comments section, let me know you were here and what you think of the music.

Download this week's complete file (which will open in iTunes)
CLICK HERE:
TSP Pointcast 070408

01 Media Blitz - The Germs: From the must-have complete Germs anthology. What a cool place to start these Pointcast things, with "Media Blitz."
By the way, could Pat Smear be the Forrest Gump of punk rock? Befriended Darby Crash and formed the Germs (with original drummer Dottie Danger a.k.a. Belinda Carlisle). Joan Jett produces first album. Crash commits suicide. Smear joins the Adolescents. Leaves Adolescents, is asked to join Red Hot Chili Peppers (1992). Turns down offer. Befriends Courtney Love. Kurt Cobain asks Smear to join Nirvana. First gig with Nirvana is SNL (09.25.93). Cobain commits suicide. Smear joins Foo Fighters. Quits Foo Fighters (1997). Serves as Creative Consultant on the Germs film What We Do Is Secret. Rejoins Foo Fighters as touring guitarist.

02 Ghost Rider - Suicide: Track one, side one from the "oh-you-don't-have-it -- what's-your-problem" debut album. Suicide was part of that great New York No Wave scene in the 70s that included Lydia Lunch, Mars, James Chance, Theoretical Girls, and DNA. Rollins Band once throttled this song; find it on Do It.

03 Freddie Freeloader - Miles Davis. (Kind of Blue): Recorded at Columbia Studio on West 30th in Manhattan. If you look up all the lineups Miles assembled over the decades, it's like a who's who of top-shelf, mind-boggling jazz legends. People write volumes about albums like this, jams like this. They are experts, and I'm just the unwashed zoomtard from Podunk who knows nothing but I sure like them sawngs.
Brief Wynton Kelly writeup here.

04 Dirty Water - Jesus and Mary Chain. (Stoned and Dethroned): I have loved this group from day one, the first time I heard the "Never Understand" single, in 1984. I went certifiably over-the-top apeshit for it, and the unimpeachable Psychocandy album that followed. That year, my friend Liz and I saw them play the Ritz -- the best 30-minute concert I've ever witnessed. And where is that long-rumored JMC box set?

05 Illumination - Rollins Band: From Get Some Go Again, criminally overlooked and underappreciated. (GSGA is right near the very top of my LastFM charts.) Features "On The Day," which I've now listened to a few times a week for several years.

06 Shout Bamalama - Otis Redding with the Pinetoppers: From the Definitive Otis Redding collection, the sound of a man singing his pain away. On "Shout Bamalama" though, his 19-year old voice has twenty-five years of thuggin' in it. A great one from the great one.

The George Carlin piece is from a 1986 HBO special called "Playin' With Your Head." My brother-from-another-mother Neil and I used to watch it several times a month; it was on a well-worn VHS tape that had Animal House on it, too. With my caveman audio gear, I was able to take it from TV to CDR to The Sticking Point.

07 You Want The Candy - The Raveonettes. (Lust Lust Lust): I have three of their disks, but never really paid close attention. A few tracks from this new one put the hooks in me, so maybe I have something to gain by giving their back catalog the time of day.

08 Son - 5'nizza: Pronounced "pyat NITsa." And guess what? Their name means "Friday" in Ukrainian. It's a duo that played together for nearly eight years, broke up in 2007, and of course I only discovered them this past February while trolling mp3 blogs for new sounds. It's about the most fun Eastern European music I've ever heard. The layered vocals are amazing and that guitar... are you kidding me?!
Paying it forward: I bumped into this band on the redoubtable Aurgasm weblog. If you go to this well-informed site, you'll leave with a few new favorite songs.

09 Dethbryte - Dax Riggs. (We Sing of Only Blood or Love): "The fragile wave of days / They break against the shore / Of all these years." I'm going to play a lot of Riggs on these Pointcasts, because you have to hear it. Mrs Sticking Point gave it to me. A great album... but you knew I was going to say that.

• Check out the "Dethbryte" video here.
• Dax performs a swamp-ified version of the Misfits' "Skulls" here.

10 Plastika - Idoli: Belgrade Rock City! It's been hard to find info on this band, but I sometimes see their name published as "VIS Idoli." One thing I did learn, is that we all missed out on quite a scene in the former constituent republics of Yugolslavia. I mean it. The Killed By 7 Inch collection is on Redrum Records, the label that releases the endless, rewarding Killed By Death series of obscure punk. You can download the KB7I collection for your own self HERE.

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Now, do it yourself. Put your digital jukebox or mp3 player on "shuffle all songs," and let me know the first 10 tracks out the chute.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Constant Pain from the album Corpse Love - The First Year by Pussy Galore

"I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn, and cross it deliberately."

Shit.

Piss.

Fuck.

Cunt.

Cocksucker.

Motherfucker.

Tits.

School Tase

We've all seen video of 21-year old Andrew Meyer getting Tasered by campus police at a John Kerry event in Florida this week. Everyone's got an opinion on this one, obviously. To be fair, Meyer cut the line then refused to get off the mic. He's possessed of a damn annoying voice and comes off more cheeky than serious. Really, he seems the kind of irritating asscock we all avoided in college. He did have a legitimate question, though, even if it was delivered in a manner more reminiscent of Gus, the unhinged vagrant living under the FDR Drive.

Then the police on that campus did what panicked, angry, poorly trained cops do all the time: they violently overreacted.

(Does anyone else find it ironic that he demanded to know why Kerry didn't stand up and question the results of the 2004 election, only to painfully learn what happens when you stand up and ask uncomfortable questions?)

As I watch the video, which is on YouTube in a variety of angles and running lengths, the most appalling thing of all is the audience of college students which does nothing to stop the cops or help Meyer in any way. In all the versions I’ve seen, I've heard only one voice of dissent: that of an off-camera woman asking, “Hey, what did he do?” A few audience members actually laugh at what they’re watching and, of course, there's the obligatory handful of ignorant fuckmonkeys who get out of their seats to get a better shot on their camera phones.

This is unbelievable to me. What was wrong with those kids down there? Have they been so brainwashed, so mind-fucked by the slow erosion of their rights in the last six years that they’ve got no sense when they’re being abused? Probably.

College students are pathetic. Apathetic. They're feeding like suckbirds on cynicism's bloated carcass. What does it take for a little righteous indignation to stir their Myspace-deadened hearts into action? Maybe their wireless connectivity needs to be embargoed first. Tom Hayden was quoted somewhere saying that if this had happened in his SDS days, it would have sparked an all-out riot. My own college days weren’t nearly as incendiary as his, but I sincerely believe -- even in the Reagan 80s -- there'd have been an angry scrum in my lecture hall if a fellow student took 300kV to the central nervous system just for being an outspoken douchebag.

Stupid fucking kids. I saw that the next day they held a “protest” on campus. Ah, good... lip service. Protests are so fucking easy. You can yell a little, stand around a lot, and then shoot a lot of video of each other yelling and standing around. Protests even fit conveniently into your already frantic collegiate schedule. You can fit one in between cramming for the Sociology exam and updating your blog. You might even leave early to beat the lines for custom Wiimote faceplates. Protesting is easy. Getting off your ass to intercede is hard. It requires getting… off… your… ass.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Shake a Leg from the album Back In Black by AC/DC

Seedy Gonzales

Alberto Gonzales wrote the 1/25/02 memo to the President stating that prisoners and detainees in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't protected by the rights of the Geneva Convention (even outlining many reasons why this was so), a decision that led directly to the physical abuses in Abu Ghraib and Constitutional abuses in Guantanamo, and indirectly fueled the insurgency. Every American military death since the so-called "Mission Accomplished" has been a result of the insurgency.

He lied to Congress about the Bush Administration's secret policy of eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without warrants.

Alberto Gonzales authorized the firing of nine U.S. Attorneys whose actions were perceived as damaging to the Republican Party, so they may be replaced with "loyal Bushies."

He has stated that "there is no express grant of habeas [corpus] in the Constitution."

Yesterday, he resigned.

Here's Bush's response:
"After months of unfair treatment that has created a harmful distraction at the Justice Department, Judge Gonzales decided to resign his position, and I accept his decision. It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeding [sic] from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons."

Ah, yes. The sad, unfair treatment of checks and balances. The trauma of due process.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: It Was Cold from the album The Crack by Ruts, The

3,720

The Department of Defense has identified 3,720 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:

Edgar E. Cardenas, 34; Lilburn, Ga.; Pfc., Army; First Cavalry Division.

Adrian M. Elizalde, 30; North Bend, In.; Sgt. First Class, Army; Second Battalion, First Special Forces Group.

David A. Heringues, 36; Tampa, Fl.; Sgt. First Class, Army; 82nd Airborne Division.

Michael J. Tully, 33; Falls Creek, Pa.; Sgt. First Class, Army; Second Battalion, First Special Forces Group.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Pink Steam from the album Rather Ripped [UK] by Sonic Youth

The Grid

I did this a while back, thought I'd give it another whirl...

Stuff I'm not supposed to like, but do...
The Sounds, uncomfortable shoes, Staples (and all stationery stores), Grey Goose & Red Bull, "It's Goin' Down" (), Countdown's substitute anchors Alison Stewart and Amy Robach, Major League Baseball's wild card system, kale, HotChicksWithDouchebags, the bus to Barnstable, the whole idea of Corey Feldman

Stuff I'm supposed to like, and do...
Yukio Mishima, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Gore Vidal, Soupman's turkey chili, Flight of the Conchords, Van Halen's next tour, my 3-year-old climbing into our bed at 3AM, Mary-Louise Parker

Stuff I'm not supposed to like, and don't...
Televised talent competitions, Bob Murray, Dora the Explorer, U.S. military stop-loss policy, flip-flops, Perez Hilton, "the surge," evil clowns

Stuff I'm supposed to like, but don't...
Paste magazine, Talking Heads, high-waisted jeans (and the women who wear them), telephone conversations, The Corrections, sports talk radio, punctuation, iPhone, concerts at Roseland Ballroom, Ethan Hawke, selectively bred hybrid dogs, myspace, Big Love

Stuff I like the idea of, but don't really like...
Yoga, picnics, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, Colbert Report, Jay-Z, "massage" parlors, You Tube Presidential Debates

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Here's this week's Friday 10. Made from the best stuff I like.

01 Tomorrow Belongs To Us - Discharge: All the early Discharge singles are perfection. I was a big fan of theirs in the early 80s, then forgot all about them for a long time, until last year when I started putting the vinyl on CDR and gathering up the CD comps. It's great stuff. This track is on the "Decontrol" EP and the Why comp.

02 You Got Too Many Boyfriends - The Equals: I'm ashamed to say that until a few months ago, all I knew about the Equals was: Eddy Grant was in the group, and they were responsible for "Police On My Back." Then my pal SO'C shared the Viva Equals! comp with me and set my head right in regard to this great, great band. I am a fan now, only three decades after the Equals stopped recording. Song after song after song, Viva delivers. I can't believe that "You Got Too Many Boyfriends" was a B-side.

03 Stretcher Case Baby - The Damned: Another great B-side ("Sick of Being Sick" is the A). It was on their second album, Music For Pleasure. I got this version from Skip Off School To See The Damned (The Stiff Singles A's & B's) on Demon.

04 Lose My Freedom - Go Home Productions: I've written it before; I am not a fan of mash-ups. I say, if the songs are great to begin with, who needs DJ Wicki Wicki making a novelty song out of them? But I make two exceptions to the rule. I really like what Eric Kleptone did with all the Queen tracks on Night at the Hip Hopera, and I always check out the Go Home Productions site for new material. Mark Vidler (who is GHP, I guess), created this track, which combines Devo's great "Freedom of Choice" with something by Destiny's Child.

05 Anyone Else But You - The Moldy Peaches: I bet you don't know who is the Moldy Peaches' biggest fan. I'll give you one guess. Go ahead. Wrong! It's this dude Matt, with whom I once shared an office. Strange guy. Nice guy. Matt was entirely into his own thing and that was that. But oh, the memories! The room we shared was larger than most offices, and there were lots of us in there, too. Sometimes as many as six people. It was a quote-Writer's Room-unquote. Which meant that the Powers That Be threw us all in there together, hoping we'd "bounce ideas off each other" and all the ridiculous stuff people who don't write think writers do when they sit shoulder to shoulder. Anyway, Matt, for as well as any of the rest of us could get to know him, had three main interests. First, there was (were) the Moldy Peaches. Twice a week he'd ask the room, "Do you guys want to listen to the Moldy Peaches?" And one of us would invariably say, "No, because they suck." (We liked him, but sometimes treated him as if he was Donny from Big Lebowski. Because he sort of was.) The second of his life's loves was yoga. Not regular yoga. Matt was into the Bikram type, where you go and do your moves and poses in a hellish Saharan hotbox while every liquid in your system exudes from your pores. Sweat? Of course. Salts? Sure. Plus possibly blood, butter, baking grease, K-Y, Gravy Master, crotch jam, old eggnog, and other multiphasic compounds, all settling back onto the skin and into the fibers of one's clothing. Like Matt's. I knew this (we all knew it), because he'd abstain from a post-Bikram shower in order to get back to our writer's room. He'd stride in, his body shining, with a towel hung rakishly from his neck and a hot breeze of moldy ass trailing his steps. By late afternoon, our shared workspace smelled like someone had shit out a book on how to throw up.
The third thing that seemed to make Matt happy was eating smelly lunches. Which he indulged in as soon as he got back from yoga.
But anyway, now there's an actual Moldies song I like. It's this one, from the Murderball soundtrack. Cheers, Matt.

06 Sonny's Burning - The Birthday Party: My favorite Birthday Party song. I can say, without fear of hyperbole, that the first six syllables of this track comprise the best opening lyric in the history of music, in this or any other universe. If you read this site regularly, you're familiar with the Birthday Party -- ancestors of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I come back to their music often, and I usually hear things differently each time. I have to guess that bands like Jesus and Mary Chain and Dino Jr probably bumped into their share of BP records during their formative years. "Sonny's Burning" is from the Mutiny EP.

07 Hiromi - Squatweiler: If you've never heard this song, I hope it blows you away when you hear it. This is a great, great North Carolina band that deserves a lot more attention. I hope you track down every last morsel they've ever recorded. Maybe you'll start with New Motherstamper, which contains "Hiromi." Motherstamper is the band's third record, but their first after bassist Stacey Matarrese took over the vocals. Throttled the vocals.

08 Give Up The Funk - Parliament: It was just this past Tuesday when Burning Dervish told us "Give Up The Funk" would be his entrance music as he stepped into the batter's box at Yankee Stadium. And here it is on the very next F10.
How cool it was to grow up hearing Parliament, Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire, and Rufus on the radio all the time. I didn't realize how blessed I was. "Give Up The Funk" aka "Tear the Roof Off The Sucker" is from the classic Mothership Connection record. The Parliament/Funkadelic collective released 19 or 20 albums -- high-quality albums -- between 1970 and 1981. Think about that for a second. You think Ryan Adams is prolific? You think Steven Tyler did a lot of coke? In the 70s, George Clinton could fuel a 747 with a cup of his urine.

09 What Makes You Happy (L) - Liz Phair: I burned this off television program I'd recorded called Sessions at West 54th Street. I've forgotten most of the details about the series, but I copped some good performances from the show onto CDR. I have Phair, Sinéad O'Connor, Ben Folds Five, Beck, and a couple others. I like this song a lot. The version on whitechocolatespaceegg is one of my favorites of hers. It's got the great lines "I feel the sun on my neck / I smell the earth in my skin / I see the sky above me like a full recovery."

10 King's Lead Hat - Eno: The title is an anagram for "Talking Heads." The story that gets passed down through generations of Eno fans and scholars is that he hoped to record it with DByrne and the rest, but it never came to be. Soon after this album, Before and After Science, was released, the Man Himself collaborated with Talking Heads on a few albums. I don't know all of them, but the one TH album I actually like is among them. Getting back to Eno -- the Man Himself -- for a second, I think his reputation as an experimentalist might turn some people away. I'm sure plenty of folks hear "art rock" or "ambient music" and think, "Fuck that! Where are my Stooges records?!" Luckily, TMH's recorded output is as varied as the day is long, the summer is hot, and Dick Cheney is evil. There's plenty in his rewarding canon for everybody; dig in! October is just around the corner, and for me that means lots of Here Come The Warm Jets. His music is good for anytime, but there's something carried on a crisp fall breeze that tells me it's time listen to more Eno. (I have "October music;" I'll explain another time.)

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Tag, you're it. Set your mp3 player, digital jukebox, or Roomba to "shuffle all songs." Hear 10 songs randomly selected for you by the machine. Share them with us in the comments section below.

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Hear it for yourself. CLINK THIS LINK to download this week's Sticking Point Friday 10.

[posted with ecto]

Paging Tommy Himself

I can't remember when it was, but a long time ago I started keeping a separate journal of books I've read. To start it off, I scanned all my shelves and wracked my brain to get down the titles and authors of everything I'd finished to that point. From that day forward, I kept it up religiously. By the early 90s, the entries grew to include one paragraph reviews of each book, plus personal info like why I chose each book or who recommended it, what was going on in my life at the time, as well as the date it was finished and where I was at the time.

Why? I don't know. I like lists. I like archives. I like compiling things into neat histories. I might have some trace strands of OCD in my genetics. One thing I like to do is occasionally look back through the thing and see what I was reading on this date in... whatever year.

I did this today. I went back as far as when I started noting the dates of when I finished the books, and jotted down my reading material on the fifteen previous August 14ths. Peaks and valleys, for sure. I'd like to say that some of the throwaway books are there because they merely summer reading, but I never really did kind of thing. Here they are, no pride and no shame.

Today The Defining Moment - Jonathan Alter.

Last year Passion is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash - Pat Gilbert.

2005 We Got the Neutron Bomb - Marc Spitz & Brendan Mullen.

2004 Plan of Attack - Bob Woodward.

2003 Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder - Samuel Wilson Fussell.

2002 The Ruined Map - Kobo Abe.

2001 Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris.

2000 Dynasty - Peter Golenbock.

1999 The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky.

1998 Dubliners - James Joyce.

1997 The Waves - Virginia Woolf.

1996 Nexus - Henry Miller.

1995 Inferno - Dante Alighieri.

1994 World of Wonders - Robertson Davies.

1993 On Liberty - John Stuart Mill.

1992 The Journals of John Cheever.

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And, because you've been kind enough to read this down to the bottom, here's a snack: From Ashland, Kentucky, the birthplace of Chuck Woolery, Abu Ghraib beauty Lynndie England, and Charles Manson's mom & dad... comes the story of the "duct tape bandit." He didn't steal the tape. It was his disguise.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Start To Move from the album Pink Flag by Wire

Welcome to the Show

Jason Giambi is getting so much heat from the gutless wonder, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig. That’s bullshit. Here is the only player who came forward to make any kind of admission of chemical enhancement use, he paid for it with his health, he made apologies, worked his ass off hard enough to be named comeback player of the year, and has recently said that the Game (players, owners, and league management) owed fans an admission that things have been fucked up. All right.

So now Selig wants to make Giambi crawl.

Giambi stepped up and did the right thing. Now, by Selig's order, if he won't give full cooperation to the Mitchell investigation – which I assume means naming names and pointing fingers – Giambi will be suspended. Selig has even said that the level of his participation will be used to determine the severity of Giambi’s punishment.

This smells awful. It’s a lose-lose situation for Giambi, who doesn’t deserve to be in that position (for all the reasons I wrote in the first paragraph). My hunch is that the investigators already have suspicions about certain players, but with little evidence or testimony there is little that can be done. Using a marquee insider like Giambi to play star witness is just a big show.

If Giambi complies (and I don’t think he will), he'll be vilified on the field and in the stands. If he does not, the Mitchell investigation will simply report allegations as facts, while Selig gives Giambi a light enough punishment to make it appear as though he chirped. It’s a classic NYPD Blue Sipowicz move.

I think Selig, being the ball-less turd that he is, would like to see Giambi deliver names in a gift-wrapped box before Bonds gets to #714. Hell, I’d like to see the truth about Bonds come to light, and I personally don’t want to see him break Aaron's record, but putting the squeeze on Jason Giambi because the commissioner won't take a stand for himself, is dirty blackmail.

Postscript: Bud Selig announced last December that he'll be retiring from his post as MLB Commissioner, and floated the name of his choice for next commish. Guess who. Really.

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[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Moons of Jupiter from the album Moons of Jupiter by Scruffy The Cat

One Reporter's Opinion

Cho Seung Hui - the worst writer in the history of the written word?

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[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Cut from the album Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat by Minutemen

Speechless

Even if you don't believe in heaven, a story like this will make you pray there's a hell.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: The Punch Line from the album The Punch Line by Minutemen