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Thanks to everyone who came out to the Hexagon 2010 Writers' Meeting Last night! We have a ton of great ideas and we're off to a great start.

Anyway, the hits just keep on coming. We unearthed this 3rd Billy Karate Commercial from that Public Access station in Southwest DC...we didn't know he had this in him. Enjoy!

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If you are funny and/or interested in being part of something funny, come to the first Writer's Meeting for Hexagon 2010. It's going down tomorrow, 8/26, at 7:30 in the PM in the Lab School, buried up in Georgetown at the corner of MacArthur Blvd and Reservoir Rd. If you need a ride from the Metro, drop a line to hexagon2010 at gmail dot com.

I finally got around to uploading a couple clips from Hexagon 2009, which we're all particularly proud of. At least it'll give new writer's some sort of idea of what the show's about. But, the material goes all over the place. Bring your ideas and we'll throw some around. Should be a good time and the show should only be getting better this year.





And this has been up for a while, but it's amazing, so enjoy.

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Here is the second Billy Karate Commercial! Vote for it on Funny or Die, too.

KROTTY!

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Famous lies throughout history:
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman: Miss Lewinsky.” – Pres. Bill Clinton

“Well, looks like we LOST THE WAR. Better leave this gigantic empty horse around so the Trojans can drag it into their city." - The Greeks

“I don’t like Andrew W.K.” – Everyone who has ever said that.

I’m serious. If you don’t like Andrew W.K. you probably have him confused with Owen Wilson or somebody else who a lot of people don’t like. His music is so ridiculous that there’s no point in disliking it, and it hits that sensibility we all have that enjoys enjoying things for no deep reason whatsoever. Here is brief list of the greatest things ever.

1. The moon landing.
2. The invention of fire.
3. An Andrew W.K. live performance.
4. Christmas.
5. That episode of "The Fresh Prince" where will loses Uncle Phil’s Benz at the pool hall and Uncle Phil gets it back by tricking the original hustlers.

Yes. If you are the kind of person who would scowl at a thirty year old man-boy jumping around onstage and yelling positive party happy good time jams, then you may want to prepare yourself for a future of starring as the “lame adult” in kids’ cereal commercials. If you think Andrew W.K. doesn’t have any talent, then you can take it to the bank, right along with your donation to Rick Santorum’s PAC. Get it? Because you’re wrong and probably have a stick up your ass. He’s got a new album coming out that’s all classical piano improvisations, based on his ’55 Cadillac. The man, who grew up in Michigan, drives an American classic. So, what, do you hate America, too? I rest my case.

Just to prove a point, I’m going to rank all 12 tracks on his major-label debut I Get Wet and explain for you all what his subtle songs are really about. Here we go:

1. I GET WET (Track 11) - Poetry
   Despite the fact that you think you’re going to get somewhere, Andrew makes it clear that you’re going to go nowhere with a negative attitude. In fact, he gets so upset when the party is dying, that he gets wet. I think “wet” is a metaphor for crying because Andy’s tears are made of fists.
2. SHE IS BEAUTIFUL (Track 7) - Poetry
   Make love the Andrew W.K. way. That involves going back to his place and observing the following:
   
   
3. PARTY HARD (Track 2) - Poetry
   It’s important to know that when the time creates an appropriate window for such actions, Andrew W.K. and his cadre of friends adopt a festive attitude. Quite festive, actually, which overshadows the fact that the second person here apparently “feels alright” when they’re working. Tssk Tssk.
4. IT'S TIME TO PARTY (Track 1) - Poetry
   See exhibit #3. Also, get ready for some foreign substances to splatter all over your face. I don't get it, either.
5. READY TO DIE (Track 4) - Poetry
   In order to enjoy life at its fullest, you have to be prepared for certain consequences, many of which can lead to death if you are careless with that life of yours.
6. I LOVE NYC (Track 6) - Poetry
   I love New York City. Oh, yeah, New York City. The saddest part is that this has more artistic merit than Kid Rock’s “We were trying crazy things, we were smoking funny things” song. I am 100% serious. Also, corporations don’t necessarily have our best interests in mind, or something in these lyrics.
7. GIRLS OWN LOVE (Track 3) - Poetry
   WOMEN! Am I right? They get what they want, and sometimes what they need.
8. DON'T STOP LIVING IN THE RED (Track 12) - Poetry
   Don’t… seriously, don’t! You’ve been living in the red too long to just put a halt to said actions.
9. FUN NIGHT (Track 9) - Poetry
   Whatever, we do what we want. Especially if we desire to leave our domestic dispositions behind for an evening of what many would consider joyous activity. So, suck it.
10. GOT TO DO IT (Track 10) - Poetry
    Even when you’re down on your luck, you’ve gotta do it. Remember when you were kids, and things seemed so much cooler? Just think about that before you do whatever is the opposite of the “it” described in this song.
11. PARTY TIL YOU PUKE (Track 8) - Poetry
    I find Andrew’s lack of sensitivity towards bulimics offensive. Also, according to Andy, We dent, We rob, We choke, We gun, We kill, We stab, We rob, We steal. I don’t understand why denting someone’s fender and choking them to death are on the same page, but when your wardrobe consists of white jeans and undershirts, the sky is the limit!!!!
12. TAKE IT OFF (Track 5) - Poetry
    He's talking about clothes. Just so you know, person who enjoys promiscuous sexual activity, Andrew and his crew know what you're up to, and they think you should cool it a bit and be more respectful towards the opposite sex.

There you go. I'm eagerly awaiting the day when Andy goes on tour with Bonnie "Prince" Billy (he plays piano for Will Oldham) so I can go and laugh as a hundreds of folky hipsters in skinny jeans get crushed. Come back this Thursday for a brand new video! Also, the SLAM! music project is coming. More details soon!!

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Like the new site setup? I trimmed the fat and changed the color scheme. Still working on it.

Now, for your viewing pleasure, Billy Karate's first unearthed TV commercial! Here is the description from the YouTube Page...

"This is from a tape found in the cellar of a public access station in Southwest DC. It never made it to the air. Only two of the people in this video were identified. The person who paid for the ad (in food stamps), William Karate, left DC a few years ago and has not been reached for comment. The other is an unidentified former employee of author/entrepreneur Matthew Lesko"

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Who knew that Tom Waits was going to star in Heath Ledger's final movie? Righteous. It opens October 16th; who's coming with me?

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Happy Thursday, Website Readers. I'm glad that Twitter's massive cosmic stutter this morning led you sheep to other places on the WWW. Perhaps you may have gone over to Cracked and seen one of the best pictures I've seen of anything in quite some time. Photoshopping? Nope! That dude on the left's beard is indeed real!



Or you could have finally taken the time to listen to Passion Pit, as I did recently, and get rewarded with songs like "Little Secrets" and "To Kingdom Come." For your viewing pleasure, a video for the latter that features singer Michael Angelakos with a huge beard:



Too bad our internet age had made tons of bands like Passion Pit instantly disposible, because they're actually pretty talented and have some pretty quality jams. Hopefully they'll at least get to keep making music somehow after the bottom falls out.

In artistic news that doesn't even have a bottom foundation yet to fall out from underneath it, I'll be performing Friday Night in New Haven at Joker's Wild Club on Wooster St. Steve White is the headliner. Tix and info here. There might be someone in the audience with a huge beard.

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I have a couple of thoughts I want to share. I like baseball. Who doesn’t? Millions, maybe even billions do, right? I grew up a Boston Red Sox fan, which is something that stays with you more or less for your entire life. However, given my distaste for DC’s transient nature and all of the obnoxious Mets/Yanks/Sox/Cubs/Whatever fans that pack the Green Line every summer, I’ve grown a big soft spot for the Nationals. Despite their being a horrible team and (until now, fingers crossed) an awful organization that wasn’t really doing anything about it, I still try to see past it and root for them. I’m not an expert or ESPN analyst or even someone who aspires to be the next little thing, but I do know about 1,298 things that aggravate me about our culture, and sports tie into about a hundred of them.

My point here is that I grew up a big Red Sox fan, so watching them win the World Series, ending an 86 year drought and pummeling the Yankees and their entire industry on the way, was unforgettable for me. My friend Brian and I were at Chuck’s in Syracuse when Keith Foulke snagged the bounce back and tossed it to Doug Mientkiewicz at first for the series-clinching out, and the massive Red Sox Nation contingency went insane and partied on Marshall Street that night. In 2007, I practically ignored a solo performance by one of the indie music world’s most innovative figures to watch the Red Sox complete a sweep of the Colorado Rockies at Galaxy Hut in Arlington. It wasn’t breaking some media-bred “curse” or silencing a million cantankerous New Yorkers, but it was still momentous. More on that later.

Last week, reports surfaced that two of the Red Sox’ biggest stars and the heart of their oh-so-deadly order, Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003. Let me repeat these specs. Ramirez and Ortiz tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003, which was well after 1996 NL MVP Ken Caminiti ignited the “OMG STEROIDZ” panic among fans delusional enough to think that the “great American pastime” was doing fine and dandy. Ramirez and Ortiz were outed in 2009, for some reason. Clearly, MLB kept putting off admitting to this for six years. In their defense, I’m sure they had a bunch of stuff going on, you know the kids, and they had to get the house renovated, and dad got sick for a little while so they had to take care of that, and basically they’re full of shit. It took a leak from a few reporters to bring this into the spotlight.

I’m not writing this to argue that Ramirez’ slate should be wiped clean, nor Big Papi’s. What I do believe is that their accomplishments shouldn’t be considered illegitimate. If the Yankees had managed to win a world series while dumping $87 billion into the Alex Rodriguez pit every year, I wouldn’t call that illegitimate. You win the World Series, your team wins the world series. David Ortiz had a couple of great home runs. Manny Ramirez hit what I still think is the greatest home run I’ve ever seen, off of Francisco Rodriguez in the bottom of the 9th in game 2 of the ALDS in 2007 (and I think that ball still hasn’t landed). But nobody is going to accuse Pedro Martinez of being pumped full of juice, and there’s no way the Red Sox would have gotten as far as they did without pitchers like him and other relatively scrawny guys. The same goes for any team that wins a championship with cheating members. You can’t go back and erase the record books, as much as many purists want.

So how much blame should we place on the players themselves? Are we so naïve to think that this was all driven purely by fevered egos that have spent years tainting our collective unconscious and forcing us to pay a bigger moral price? (Tip of the Hat to you, sir). Or is the collective of owners, general managers, and top brass at Major League Baseball that are successfully managing to pull one over on the fans? As much as I’ll always hate locker room poison like Ramirez, Terrell Owens, Dany Heatley, and a solid 82% of the NBA, I think we need to point more fingers away from the field and into the diamond encrusted luxury boxes.



We can’t scapegoat an entire generation of athletes for a trend that ultimately doesn’t hurt anyone but themselves, physically and in terms of legacy. There’s no magical drug that instantly makes people insanely good at baseball. If you take steroids and suck at hitting a baseball, you’re always going to suck at hitting a baseball. You’ll just hit it harder the one out of every twenty pitches you actually connect on. So, skill isn’t really the question here. It’s the environment that facilitates such normality of breaking the rules, and in a lot of cases a necessity. It’s strikingly similar to a career in the federal government in that respect. For every Tom (Delay), Dick (Cheney), and Harry (Reid) who get nabbed or called out for corruption, there are dozens of others getting away with it. And imagine the amount of piddling crap that all of our corrupt “leaders” got away with before the media were willing to siphon out enough octomom coverage to call them into account.

A close friend of mine has been family friends with a successful Major League 3rd baseman for a long time now. He has had the fortune of earning a World Series ring in his accomplished career, but the misfortune of having to care for his late brother’s family in addition to his own. He has never taken steroids or performance enhancing drugs (at least illegal ones) as far as I know, and I am not assuming that he ever would. Here’s the thing. He left a franchise he’d been with for a long time to move far away and play with a franchise that offered him a lot more money and security. Nobody wants it to be that way, but he’s a professional athlete and he has a job to do. He has more than one family to take care of, and even on the salary of a Major Leaguer (not named Alex Rodriguez), it’s not a cakewalk.

Now, take for example, the myriad of ballplayers that have turned to PEDs, steroids, or whatever scientific jargon names that are too long or mentally demanding to fit into a column in the New York “FART” Post. A lot of athletes get married somewhat young, which is no surprise. If you are a 24-year old-outfielder who’s got a good bat and can deliver about 10 home runs per season and hit .260, then you’re possibly guaranteed a job on a small-market team. Now, let’s say you’re a 24-year-old outfielder with a wife and a pair of twin girls on the way. If you can up that home run count to 20 and increase the slugging percentage about 100 points, the word “possibly” is eliminated from the previous sentence, and the word “small” can easily be “big” or “world championship.” You can accept a two-year, $1.5 million contract from Peter Angelos to play with the Baltimore Orioles, or you can take a 1-year, $5 million contract with your hometown club. All you need to do is sneak various chemicals into your training regimen, and you have an obscene amount of more money per year. Your entire family will be living easy because of you, and even if you get a horrific injury that ends your career, you can probably invest enough of your money so that you don’t need to work as a motivational speaker for 25 years to pay off your debt. The world is clearly a much more complicated place than the “drugth are bayud / athletes are spoiled bratz” mind police would want you to believe.

I understand that a lot of professional athletes are spoiled pieces of shit. (Barry Bonds should have his records retraced because he’s an irrepressible asshole, not even relating to the drugs thing, but that’s just my opinion). But no matter how much the organization that drafted you practically breasts feeds you until you’re a whiny, screaming tool to your teammates and fans alike, nobody is above the fold of temptation to be a star no matter what it takes. $10 million and endorsements versus $2 million and a much less security. What wins? And more importantly, whose fault is that? Who forged an environment in professional sports so fickle that there’s no point in buying a jersey with your favorite player’s name on it anymore?

I would say George Steinbrenner, but that’s too easy. It’s also misleading. Steinbrenner’s willingness to spend billions to make his team win (it worked, at least for a little while) is admirable to some, but he didn’t invent the idea of greed in professional sports.

When Alex Rodriguez used the seemingly paper-thin explanation that he used PEDs because he felt immense pressure to perform after signing a $120 trillion dollar contract at the turn of the century, it made sense… sort of. The day that the contract became public, my physics teacher at the time (an avid Yankees fan whose attitude didn’t change when A-Rod went to New York), yelled over my gossiping class, “Seriously, have a kid, force him to bust his ass in Little League, because if he gets drafted, by the time he’s grown up he’ll make $10 million just to sit on the bench.”

For those familiar with Catalan architecture, greed in sports is like the Sagrada Familia of socioeconomic trends. It’s a monolithic eyesore that’s been getting bigger, built brick by brick over the last hundred or so years and is a pretty nice place to visit but it’ll still be a while before anyone can comfortably worship there. Okay, I’m reaching a bit, but I couldn’t think of another structure that’s been a work in progress since the 1800’s and keeps getting bigger and shinier. What I mean is that so few people have even tried to stem the tide of big business swallowing any semblance of respectability to professional sports. And it seems like nobody even wants to.

I find it strange that the idea of baseball being our “national pastime” emerged on the dawn of World War II, when baseball was suffering due to the depression. so MLB concocted the idea that the game was invented by a Civil War hero one hundred years previous, opened a hall of fame far from the sinful ravages of any major city (unless you consider Utica a major city), and basically let the highly susceptible public run with it. MLB did a hell of a job revitalizing baseball after the collective bargaining disagreement in 1994 with the whole McGwire-Sosa thing in 1998. But even that, in retrospect, we learned was based on half-truths.

If we’ve learned anything since Ken Caminiti unlocked Pandora’s suspiciously muscular Box at the beginning of this decade, it’s that pro athletes make excellent scapegoats if you really believe your own bullshit. It works both ways, since athletes are essentially the guilty ones here, but it’s not their fault that their employers have created a workplace where being exceptionally talented doesn’t cut it. Steroids are kind of like terrorists within the world of professional sports. People don’t really understand them or know how they operate (or why they’re there, for starters), but it’s really easy to rally the masses behind this guise of “they’ll force you to change your way of life” (read: change the nature of this sport they love so dearly) and go running scared.

There was a brief, completely unfounded claim that some guy in Florida had sold some ‘Roids to members of the Washington Capitals. I didn’t write about it here because that would be as ridiculous as the mainstream news media paying attention and giving credence to the Obama Birther people. (But we know the mainstream media would never stoop to that level…hehhehe… hehe…sigh). It may has well have been some schlub calling the Washington Post anonymously and saying that there was Anthrax in the National Press Club. If there were Anthrax, I think the people who work there would know it before some random dude. If the Caps (or any hockey team, for that matter) were on steroids then the NHL would catch it early per the whole collective bargaining agreement that followed the near-fatal lockout of ’04-05. Also, given the amount of tiny details that go into playing hockey I don’t think PEDs would really help anyone enough to make it worth it. If there is a major unveiling in a few years that shows Alexander Ovechkin injecting Alexander Semin with some syringe, or Patrick Kane suddenly starts looking like a professional athlete, then I’ll have a lot of thinking to do. But so far I hold fast in my overarching argument that the general public is docile, stupid, and constantly looking for people to demonize.


This picture of Pat Kane with Snoop Dogg doesn't have much to do with the article, but I found it doing a google image search and it was too awesome to not include it.

Holding public figures more accountable is fine, but we need to make sure that the owners and wealthy check-writers can’t slide behind the public eye, especially since they’re the ones with the power to make things even worse. I always think twice before casting stones now, and I felt that way even before the “shocking” news about Ortiz and Ramirez came to light. Ramirez’ attitude was one thing, but the Red Sox would have been the Red Sox without David Ortiz. The character that he brought to the clubhouse and the Red Sox Nation was inimitable, and even without his offensive contributions, the team and all of their long-time suffering fans benefited from having him there. (Just a note to the people who “suddenly realized” their love of the Red Sox in 2004, you don’t get a piece of this pie. Go sit in the corner).

Which is what reminds me of a conversation I had the night the Red Sox beat the Rockies to win the World Series in 2007 with Kyp Malone, the hirsute guitarist of TV on the Radio. He was doing a solo gig at Galaxy Hut and I spent most of his set distracted by the game, which ran late, network television being the way it is. I told him I liked his music, and apologized for sitting at the bar watching the game instead of him. He laughed it off and said he understood. He told me how he didn’t really sports, but he could see the positive effect that the Steelers had on his economically depressed hometown of Pittsburgh. And I’m sure the same could be said for the Penguins now. Crosby is still a bitch, though.

Do you think that, if a massive NFL doping test came out tomorrow that revealed that Troy Polamalu was jacked up on all sorts of crap during Super Bowls 35 and 38, the Pittsburgh fans would care? They still had their glory and would continue to celebrate it. Which is why Red Sox fans deep down will never care about Ortiz and Ramirez, why Yankees fans will defend A-Rod for years, and even Giants fans (perfectly nice people some of them!) will defend Barry Bonds. They may be, for lack of a better way to describe it, cheaters, but they’re our cheaters. Nobody gives a crap about the owners at the end of the day. Until the people who write the checks start accepting responsibility, that won’t change.