Blurbex

Well, I had to go a couple of weeks without my beloved pay cable shows, but last night Weeds kicked back in (10 p.m., Showtime) , so the world is getting back to normal.

I also got a nice surprise from Secret Diary of a Call Girl, a half-hour import from England that follows. I expected Call Girl to be little more than a set-up for a plethora of star Billie Piper’s sex scenes — not altogether a bad thing — but instead I discovered an intriguing character study about a high-price whore with two discreet personae: call girl and regular girl.

Piper routinely breaks the third wall to tell her story. And the sex scenes are far less explicit than I expected. In the first episode, Piper does not so much as shed her top. (Although she does ride on the back of a horse-loving john with a small saddle).

The first episode of Weeds finds Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) and her clan on the lam, landing in a beach town where her late husband Judah’s grandmother lived. As it turns out, Grandma is shriveling away, comatose in a bed in her living room. In walks Judah’s (and brother Andy’s) father — played by Albert Brooks in a hilariously snarky turn. (He can’t stand Nancy, essentially because she’s a gentile.

Nancy has not been chastened by the infernal disaster of last season, and plans to start over in the drug trade along the Mexican border.
If anything, Weeds looks like it might be even better this season.

Have you noticed that during the three NBA Finals games in Los Angeles ABC showed the player introductions, went to commercial and, when they returned, the players were still on the court warming up? WTF? After player introductions, ballers strip off their sweats, come out to the center jump circle and the game begins — that’s just the way it’s done.

Did the NBA configure it that way in L.A. so the announcers could do some more pre-game gabbing? Is that really necessary? Isn’t there enough chatter during the pre-game show? Keep a watch out and see if they do the same thing in Boston.

That said, I think that the announcing team of Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy is doing a particularly good job. The color guys aren’t shy about criticizing players, even superstars, and play-by-play man Breen doesn’t mind challenging his cohorts. The arguments the trio have on the air are playful and fun, not annoying.

• The Tampa Bay Rays went 3-6 on a road trip before returning home and taking a series (2-1) against the Florida Marlins over the weekend. I wondered how a losing road trip might hurt attendance when the Rays returned home.

Turns out, not so much. The Marlins series drew 79,393 fans to the Trop. That’s pretty respectable for a Major League baseball club, damn near remarkable for the Rays (there wasn’t even a post-game concert).

Has attendance at Rays games crossed over the tipping point? Let’s hope so. The Chicago Cubs — who’ve never played at the Trop — come in for a three-game set starting Tuesday, so that should help keep folks coming through the turnstiles. If the Rays can sweep out the best team in the majors, or win the series, the momentum picks up even further.

…The Ray are getting a lot more love from national media, but in today’s New York Times, in a complimentary story about the Tampa Bay club, the writer referred to pitcher “Scott Shields.” It’s James Shields.

• I don’t watch a lot of golf but tend to tune in during the major tournaments, just to see if it’s close and might end up in a playoff (which is what happened yesterday at the U.S. Open, when Tiger Woods hit a putt on the 18th hole to force a showdown today with 45-year-old Rocco Mediate. [Go Rocco.)

Watching golf on TV, I’ve noticed that certain members of the crowd —gallery, in golf-ese — tend toward strange behavior. (more…)

Pearl Jam killed. After this long in the biz, I don’t often use the word “great” to describe a show, but it fits here. My esteeemed colleague Wade Tatangelo will be writing more about the concert, but let me make a coment on two on on Eddie Vedder. Except for PJ’s transcendent Bay area debut at Jannus in the early ’90s, this is the best I’ve ever seen him — committed, in great voice and, most of all, having fun. Ed seems to have gotten past the rock star angst and is just enjoying it. No longer head-fucked about being the voice of a generation, he seems free to just do what he does: be the best singer/frontman in rock. Like he sings: “I’ve tasted, I life wasted,” and he’s never going back again.

Got home and clicked on the NBA finals and saw that Boston had come back from a 24-point lead. They held on to win and go up 3-1 in the series. I never thought I’d be this enthusiastic about the fellas in green — I was a definite hater growing up, a Knicks fan and then a Sixers fan — but here I am pulling for them. Yes, a lot of my passion comes from a virulent hatred for the Laker and Bryant, but I’m geniunely enjoying the Boston run for the ring.

 Most of all, I’m pulling for Ray Allen. If you grew up a sports fan, you’ve had this feeling: there are some guys you just like, you don’t know why, but you’re a fan. That’s Ray Allen for me. He’s never played on one of my fave teams, but there’s something about the way he handles himself on the court — that sweet release on his jump shot, his straight-faced way of going about his business, just the classy way he carries himself — that makes me glad he’s in a good spot to get a ring. I admire the way he went through a terrible shooting slump in the Cleveland series, got his head straight and started knocking ‘em down against L.A. Plus, he’s playing better D than I thought he could, a lot of the time on Bryant, of all things.

 Three superstars coming together as a team: You gotta love that. Celtics in 5?

In a blog post 10 days ago, I referred to the Tampa Bay Rays’ nine-game road trip (just-completed) as maybe the most crucial in the team’s history. Come back 7-2 or 6-3, I reasoned, and they could anticipate a sold-out Tropicana Field. Lay a 1-9 or 2-7 egg, and “the air’s out of the balloon,” the fickle crowd will have figured that the team had reverted to its old losing ways.

Neither scenario happened, although the team’s 3-6 road jaunt was more of the egg-laying variety. But here’s my spin on keeping fan interest up.

• The Rays got swept by Boston 3-0, but Boston is the defending champs, and, plus, there was that cool brawl.

• Then they went into Texas to play the Rangers and took the series 2-1.

• They went 1-2 against the Anaheim Angels, but routed the team in one game, and besides, the Angels are one of the top teams in the American League. (On the rather bleak side, James Shields and Scott Kazmir took back-to-back losses).

So at risk of being a rah-rah guy, despite the 3-6 road swing, I didn’t see anything from the Rays that suggested they were reverting to their macabre history. Sure would be nice to see the Trop rockin’ when the Florida Marlins come in for a three-game stand starting Friday.

The July issue of Esquire has a funny and insightful series of stories on epithets, with an intro by Roy Blount Jr. pining for the return of “son of a bitch” over “asshole.”

The package’s last feature is a hilarious flow chart called “A Taxonomy of Epithets,” and runs on a continuum from More Respectable to Less Respectable, giving examples of each. Here’s a taste, starting with the Most Respectable. After a consulting with my asshole colleagues, I’ve added a local name (in bold) to each category. Of course, we welcome any and all nominations to the list — local or otherwise.

Son of a Bitch: Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Bob Dylan, Bill Parcels, Vladimir Putin. Jon Gruden.

Prick: Rudy Giuliani, Bill Maher, New York Yankees. Steve Duemig.

Asshole: Bill Belichick, Barry Bonds, Mitt Romney. Hulk Hogan.

Nutjob: Larry King, Ty Pennington. Bill Keller.

Jamoke: Matthew McConaughey, Jimmy Kimmel, Charlie Sheen. Schnitt

Jackass: Carlos Mencia, Kid Rock, Brett Michaels. Buddy Johnson.

Windbag: Bill O’Reilly, Tim Robbins, Hannity. Omali Yeshitela.

Twit: Ryan Seacrest, Ira Glass. Don Germaise.

Putz: Wesley Snipes, Eliot Spitzer. Paul Tash.

Knob: Dane Cook, Rob Schneider, Dr. Phil. Brian Blair.

The Rays just went 8-2 during their most recent 10-game home stand. The local buzz is getting louder. The national media is on the bandwagon. (A bottom-feeder rising to the top is the kind of uplifting story ESPN likes to get behind.)

And maybe, just maybe, the tide turned on the attendance issue over the weekend. Saturday night’s contest was sold out, but mostly due to an after-game concert by country clown Trace Adkins. Sunday’s game drew more than 24,000 — on its own merits. That’s about double what the Rays had been pulling previously. Definitely an encouraging sign.

So that makes the team’s current road trip perhaps the most crucial in its history. The Rays play a troika of three-games series against good teams — the Angels, the Rangers and, most important, the Red Sox (which starts tomorrow). Come back from the trip, say, 7-2, even 6-3, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Tropicana Field greeted the Rays with a sell-out.

Skid to a 2-7, and the air’s out of the balloon. They’ll return to a quiet, canyon-like Trop. The new crop of fans will figure that the Rays have finally reverted back to their old selves. A .500 record on this trip is paramount. That should at least keep the interest and energy high.

• Last week, the St. Petersburg Times ran a story about how second-year defensive end Gaines Adams has improved his diet, which was heavy on the junk food. After a largely disappointing rookie season, the fourth overall pick in the draft is humpin’ it in the weight room and layin’ off the Mickey D’s. Instead, “I go to Subway and get me a nice sub and go home and take a nap and get ready for the next day,” he told the paper.

Note to Gaines: Uh, Subway is not health food. It’s better than McDonald’s, yeah, but don’t fall for the Jared bit. You underachieved as a high-paid rookie, and you’re trying to get on track. You want to be a great player? Invest in your future. Use some of the $18.56-million guaranteed in your contract and hire a chef!

• Thank God the Celtics took out the Pistons, because if it had been a Detroit/L.A. NBA final, I might not have tuned in. (OK, I probably would have, but not enthusiastically, and with an itchy finger on the remote.)

I look back fondly on those epic Celtics/Lakers battles of the ’80s, even though I loathed both teams. (I was a Sixers fan back then, a Magic fan now.)

I still hate the Lakers more than any other team in sports, and hate Kobe Bryant more than the Lakers.

I have managed to locate a little love for Boston, mostly because I like the way their newly added stars — Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen — have meshed with Paul Pierce to play team ball. Three veterans setting aside me-first attitudes and plugging for a title deserves my admiration. Not my love, really, but admiration.

So, go Celtics! (Never thought I’d say or write that).

But I’m predicting the Lakers in six.

Today’s topic: coitus vs. fellatio. Fucking vs. blowjobs.

I’m coming (sorry) at this from a specific (heterosexual) angle; let me lay it out:

When I was in high school in the ’70s, getting sex from a girl was hard to come (sorry) by. Perhaps I just wasn’t a very good closer, or maybe I preferred the company of “good girls,” but in order to, in our lexicon, “ball a chick,” you pretty much had to date a girl for awhile, have said the L-word and perhaps even hinted that you were considering a long-term future with her.

Then the girl might let you “make love” to her — usually in pretty uptight, unimaginative ways. (Not that we complained.) Let me stress that these were the experiences of me and most of my friends — rarely, in high school, did a guy come rollin’ up with a story about how he scored with some chick he just met. It may have been different elsewhere, but I get the sense that this is a pretty fair depiction of the sexual mores of teenagers during my late adolescence.

So with enough diligence, you could get laid. Blowjobs, on the other hand, were a different matter. That was a major leap, and a young man would be very proud indeed if he was able to procure such a service (from his girlfriend, of course). By and large, the high school girls we knew and dated were of the I’m-not-putting-that-nasty-thing-in-my-mouth mindset. Blowjobs were dirty.

That script seems to have flipped. From anecdotal data I’ve picked up from some of my younger friends and colleagues, blowjobs have become a sort of social currency. No big deal. One friend of mind, who’s now 30, remembers having first dates with girls in high school whose stance was, more or less: I won’t fuck you, but I’ll give you a blowjob.

I’m a little envious, I guess. I’m pretty sure I’ve never been the beneficiary of a casual blowjob; even later in my life — after the whole blowjobs-are-nasty thing went by the boards — it was always part of the foreplay. Thinking back to the never-ending horniness of my high school days, casual blowjobs would have done the trick most of the time. That said, I’d never want to trade blowjobs for fucking. Given one or the other, I’ll take fucking almost every time.

What interests me now is more or less when this worm turned. When did high school girls get over the not-in-my-mouth attitude? I’ve heard that they work on technique — they want to give good blowjobs. (Ok, now I’m definitely envious.) When did blowjobs get easier to come (sorry) by than getting laid? The ’90s? I can’t say — although I think it’s, at least in part, fallout from the AIDS era — because I’ve been out of the game for a long time. But if anyone has any thoughts, regarding a time frame for this script flip, or any other aspect of the fucking/blowjob continuum, I’d love to head, I mean hear, it.

I’m so happy this morning …

The Today Show was on the TV while I was making my lunch, and I happened to see two women, editors from Cosmopolitan magazine, sit with Ann Curry and talk about “Happiness Myths.”

I quickly grabbed a legal pad to take notes. I didn’t get it all, but check out some of these tips for finding happiness that flashed on the bottom of the screen while the women were talking:

• Money and possessions don’t necessarily make you happy.

• Money problems can lead to divorce.

• Focus on all moments of your life.

• Acting upbeat doesn’t mean happiness.

• If you have a serious issue, deal with it.

• A lack of goals can cause pressure and anxiety.

• Never, never be inauthentic.

There were others but I couldn’t take notes fast enough. I went to the Today Show website, but they didn’t have anything on “Happiness Myths” so that I could read the rest of them. That doesn’t make me so happy.

But — Wow! — am I’m so happy I saw that segment.

I’m so happy this morning.

There’s an obscenity brouhaha brewing in Australia over a prominent photographer’s use of 12- and 13-year-old models for a series of nude pictures that were hanging in a Sydney gallery until police seized them last week. Authorities are considering initiating an obscenity prosecution against photographer Bill Henson.

The Australian arts community has rallied to his defense. Among others, Cate Blanchett signed an open letter that said, in part, “The work itself is not pornographic, even though it included depictions of naked human beings …”

Here’s a link to the only online image that I could find.

Some of Henson’s backers have claimed that the photos are not sexual. I’m not buying that one. The pic I viewed didn’t do anything for me, but to my eyes it’s clearly sexual.

Is it obscene? I believe in the adage that you know obscene when you see it, and in this case, I do not see obscene. I don’t think Henson, who has shot a lot of stuff other than minors in the buff, should be hauled into court. As far as whether the 20 nudes should be hanging in a Sydney art gallery, I’m not so sure about that one.

But one of my colleagues did make an interesting point: That by seizing the artworks and condemning them, Australian authorities have sensationalized these photos. In effect, they’ve turned them into kiddie porn.

I think I crossed a tipping point over the weekend. It’s exciting, and a little scary.
As recently as a few weeks ago, I would sort of stumble across Rays games on TV, watch a few innings until I lost interest. Kept up with ’em in the papers. It was about last week that I started checking out page 2 of the sports section to see who they were playing and when/where the game was on. If I thought of it, I’d tune in for the beginning of the game, watch a few frames. Hang around if the game was good, but hardly ever catch the whole contest.

That’s changed. (more…)

I’ve now read all of Jon Krakauer’s books — all three: Into the Wild, Into Thin Air and (the one I just finished), Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, an in-depth examination of the Mormonism. If you haven’t read Krakauer, you must start. Immediately. He’s among the best long-form non-fiction writers out there.

Krakauer fans, his next book, titled The Hero, is about Pat Tillman, the NFL football player who walked away from the game, joined the Army and was killed under suspicious circumstances in Afghanistan. It’s due out in October. Can’t wait.

I was watching the Spurs/Lakers game a couple nights ago and during a commercial I clicked over to Ramones: End of the Century. I ended up watching the whole film, switched back to the game in the fourth quarter in time to watch the Satanic Lakers beat the Slightly-Less-Satanic Spurs in a big comeback. But that’s another story.

End of the Century is basically one big airing of dirty laundry. It tells the story of some truly fucked-up people who made important music. I was never a big Ramones fan, but their tale is fascinating. These dudes are so unflinchingly honest (in their streetwise New York accents) that you can’t turn away. The concert footage, some of it very crude, is OK, but it’s the interview stuff that carries the film.

Hate coursed through the Ramones inner circle. One tidbit: Johnny Ramone (who’s an arch-conservative, controlling asshole and doesn’t mind admitting it) stole Joey Ramone’s girlfriend (and later married her). Joey never gave an inch toward forgiving Johnny — then again Johnny never made any effort toward a reconciliation. Johnny admits that he “was depressed the whole week” when Joey died of cancer in 2001, but wonders why, musing that it might be a character weakness. Pretty ruthless shit.

I just ran across a bit of vernacular that I was previously unfamiliar with. Maybe I’ll sound like a rube, but I’d never heard of C.E. For you fellow rubes, C.E. means “Common Era,” and is a substitute for A.D. — as in, it’s currently the year 2008 C.E. Common Era’s counterpart to B.C. is B.C.E. (Before the Common Era).

At first I figured that C.E. was a fairly recent term developed by secularists and non-Christians in the interests of political correctness. But then I did a little research and found out that Common Era dates as early as 1615 by European Christians. How does that square? Still, C.E. as used in contemporary culture still has the whiff of overly conscious political correctness.

Just in case you’ve forgotten, B.C. stands for “Before Christ,” and A.D. means “Anno Domini” (In the Year of Our Lord).

I’m all for a pliable lexicon, but C.E. doesn’t seem to have taken off. It’s been 400 years, after all. Then again, maybe I’m just a myopic American. Anyway, I’m not switching to C.E. any time soon.

There’s also an issue that nags at me. Why, if de-Christianizing the calendar is at least part of the rationale for C.E., does it use the exact same dates on the Christian-based Gregorian calendar?
Why not go further and designate the Common Era as after The Great Plague, or after the Buick?

C.E. is just swapping acronyms, which sound to me like unnecessary P.C.

I always figured sitting a few seats down from Jack at a Lakers game was a pricey proposition. Courtside seats. Los Angeles. Big bucks, huh? I found out last night just how pricey.

If someone had asked me prior to last night’s telecast (when they flashed the courtside ducats on the screen) what they cost, I’d probably have said about a grand. I was wrong.

Courtside seats for 2008 L.A. Lakers Western Conference Final playoff games cost
(more…)

A couple of busted up cars and emergency vehicles were arrayed on the side of the 4th Street on-ramp to I-275 in St. Pete this morning. It was bound to happen — actually, it’s probably happened a bunch, I just happened to witness this particular wreck. I take that on-ramp most every morning, and from now on I’m calling it Maniac’s Curve. (more…)

I bounced between the Spurs/Hornets game 7 and the Rays/A’s game last night. After the dreaded Spurs won, I switched off the TV and went to bed. Didn’t even check the Rays score. They’d been down 3-0, Shields looked shaky and I just really wasn’t up for any more bad news.

It was just a few minutes ago that I had time to check the Rays final and, of course, was stoked to see the team came back for a 7-6 win in 13 innings. If they had lost, I might have started to get that “uh oh” feeling, as in “uh oh, three consecutive losses, maybe the wheels are starting to come off, maybe that fabulous start was nothing more than that.”

I’m trying to become a Rays fan, I really am. Which is hard, because I’m not really a baseball fan. I’ll never be like my friend’s fathers when I was a kid; they’d sit their asses in lumpy easy chairs and watch every inning of every Mets game. I can’t even watch every inning of one game, but it is fun toggling back to the Rays telecast during the night and watching a few at-bats, maybe even a full inning or two.

I became a temporary hockey fan when the Lightning won the Stanley Cup a few years ago, and I’m hoping I can stay more than a temporary Rays fan.

I was listening to Steve Deumig on 620 The Sports Animal the other day when a Yankees fan called in. Steve started needling the guy, and it got onto the topic of which team is better, the Yankees or the Rays. Steve’s take: The Rays (of course). He even threw in a choice “the Yankees suck,” “they’re old,” etc.

But how about this hypothetical? If someone gave you 10 grand and said you had to bet it on whether the Yankees or Rays would have a better record at the end of the season, where would you put your money? I’m guessing that Deumig would say the Rays, but he’s an experienced gambler, and I wonder if he had the opportunity to win some free money, whether he’d put it down on the Yankees. Yeah … he would.

This little musing does not come from a Yankee fan, not by any means. Inasmuch as I’m a baseball fan at all, I like the Rays. And I think that, right now, the Rays are indeed a better team than the Yanks. As far as putting money down, though, the pin-stripers from the Big Apple have too much history and experience. I’d have to bet on New York to have a better record at season’s end.

The press box was full for the Tampa Bay Rays home opener — full, I presume, of baseball scribes familiar with the micro-strategies that seem to happen in slow motion during a baseball game. And then there was me, sitting in the press box’s back row.

My knowledge is pretty shallow — I don’t, for instance, know the best situations for a hit-and-run — but nevertheless I’m often fascinated by the cerebral nature of it all. I can listen to the Rays’ very fine TV announcers — Dewayne Staats and Joe Magrane — break it all down, explain stuff like why you don’t throw a slider after a change-up (although I can only hang for two or three innings).

That caveat established, I’m gonna weigh in on what I considered a strategic blunder by manager Joe Maddon last night. (Sure, you can read the sports columnists and get their expert takes, but this kind of neophyte analysis? Priceless.)

It was the top of the third inning with the Rays leading the Seattle Mariners 1-0. Young pitcher Matt Garza was on the mound. He gave up two singles, and then quickly registered two outs. With runners on second and third, Mariners clean-up hitter Raul Ibanez walked to the plate. Maddon called for Garza to intentionally walk Ibanez, presumably because first base was open. Bases loaded.

This seems to be a fairly common strategy in baseball, and I don’t get it. If it were a steady old veteran control pitcher on the mound, I’d say, sure, walk him and pitch to the supposedly easier guy. But this was Matt Garza, first-year starter, and he seemed to be struggling a bit. Next up for Seattle was No. 5 hitter Richie Sexson. Garza took the count to 3-2 and then … threw ball four. Walked in a run.

OK, so a 1-1 score early in the game is not that big a deal, but why not let Garza pitch to Ibanez instead of intentionally walking him? If he gets the guy out, he goes into the dugout with confidence, up 1-0. Instead, Garza got the yips and walked in a run.

It got worse. The next Mariners batter, Wilkerson, hit a sharp single and drove in two more runs. Seattle 3, Tampa Bay 1.

Garza walked off the mound one batter later with a nerve injury in his arm. This figures into the equation, I suppose, but it doesn’t change the notion that Joe Maddon set up his inexperienced pitcher to fail.

And it gets weirder. In the top of the 6th, Rays up 5-4, with two outs and men on second and third (first base open), Maddon instructed pitcher Gary Glover to intentionally walk Ibanez — again. Sexson came up, hit a bloop single to right and two runs scored. Mariners 6, Rays 5, which turned out to be the final score.

None of this is to suggest that Joe Maddon is a bad manager. I kind of like how he handles the team. But I think this time he relied too much on conventional wisdom. Both intentional walks clearly backfired. I especially think Maddon needed to consider Garza’s psyche in the first instance. Those types of small failures can really have an impact on a young pitcher’s confidence.

Garza will have plenty of time to mull it over. He was put on the 15-day disabled list, and could possibly be out of the rotation until June.

I hate:

• that rumors of Stevie Wonder playing Tampa Bay are unfounded.

• when someone says “print is dead.”

• that Omar on The Wire is dead.

• that I only get to the beach three or four times a year.

• Ben Affleck less than I used to.

• fruit in my beer.

• Donald Trump.

• that my colleague Sal won’t accept my challenge to Indian wrestle.

• that almost everyone uses “forever” to mark the past: “Oh, I haven’t seen you in forever.”

• that when you get to a certain age, hairs starts to sprout on your ears.