"Trend journalism"

You heard about "the wingman"? Maybe we should get some "wingmans," eh? You know, "the guy who accompanies his buddy to a bar to help him pick up babes." Sure do like "babes"!

CRAP: Catherine "Maverick" Zunta beat me to it. Guess that makes me Goose, again.

If I had known the death of one human would hurt you so, Kal-El, I would have killed more

CP article on drag kings n' genderfuck massages is here.

Beaches and Cream

Nothing but nothing beats Fountains of Wayne's Welcome Interstate Managers for awesome power-pop driving music. I don't think I want to mess with one of those iTrips, or buy a car in which to use it, but I have to hear that "Hey Julie" song while I'm cruising down the seaboard this weekend. I'm sad that we don't have all the same crew lined up for this year's beach weekend, but perhaps worse is the fact that the prevalence of iPods have antiquated my great beach mix CDs.

Downloading MF Doom, Atmosphere, Gnarls Barkley, and Dr. Doom/Dr. Octagon to complete my might-be-badguys playlist—anything else? If I do much more than grill, DJ, read, and bust my ass again on the wakeboard, I'm going to be extremely upset.

The Urban Coyote will see, well, almost all of you this weekend. Doesn't mean he'll miss you any less here.

We Are All Witnesses

Game 7 action yesterday reminded me that during the Cavs/Wiz game Ygglz and I attended, we ended up on the dance-cam. I don't know why they'd pick two young professionals with beards, blazers, plastic glasses, and rally towels on their heads, or really why we were dancing in the first place when we should have been Witnessing. I'd estimate by crowd response that our dance-cam playoff performance was respectable, but in the end we got iced by the adorable little black boy who took home the win.

Reviewing our tapes and thinking strategy for next year, I'm not sure our squad has the personnel to make it to the big game. The grim final rankings:

1. Adorable little black boy with big eyes and toothy grin
   
2. Tottering old couple who barely move, aren't aware of dance-cam/basketball game
   
3. Fat guy
   
4. Aww-inspiring little girl with pigtails and/or toothless grin
   
5. Any kid doing the robot and/or gyrating hysterically
   
6. Women who do not discriminate between dance moves for the club and for family night
   
7. Person(s) in your section
   
8. Twenty-something professionals with towels on their heads

The roommate's going to have to learn how to do the Hustle in the offseason.

My Boss Is a German Power Forward

What's that? I haven't told you about my Mavs bumper sticker design: "My Boss Is a German Power Forward"? I gotta get that message out there.

Portrait of the artist from the freethrow line:

After helping Dallas win two straight playoff games by sinking clutch free throws, Dirk Nowitzki divulged Tuesday the secret to his success.

"You just try to relax," he said. "There are a lot of things going through your mind. I try to sing sometimes to kind of take the pressure off."

[. . .]

Smiling wide and laughing loud, he said the song was David Hasselhoff's "Looking For Freedom," a big hit when he was a kid in Germany.

Now that's sick, but I think he's just preening for the camera. I would have guessed that Nowitzki's inner musical monologue was provided by Einstürzende Neubauten, which might explain why he despises peace, light, and all his teammates.

But he ought to be listening to the Official Playlist of the Dallas Mavericks®!, your on-line streamable source for a variety of Mavs-minded contemporary stadium imitation acts, from The Prodigy "Lazer" to Outkast "P.P.T." These are all songs about the Dallas Mavericks, and yet they have musical appeal to fans beyond the Dallas fanbase! ("Dirk is automatic, German money in the bank/ Howard's like Picasso, a force in the paint!")

He gets it

Enrique Fernandez of the Miami Herald on new media:

Newspapers are going online and we who work in them are being urged to take this medium seriously. The debate over the correctness of such a move has focused on whether the high standards of print journalism will be carried on to the web, or will we allow an unfcoused sloppiness that print journalists see not just online but in all other media.

That typo is crucial.

My other blog is broken.

That's why I have this one. This is like the Chucks blog, for when the Steve Maddens won't do.

The use of "My other car is . . ." as a lede to any anecdote about anything is DEPRECATED.

it's a bird, it's a plane, yo i'm hungry

No one is happier than Mack Brown about Ramonce Taylor's arrest for possession. Marijuana, you understand, is yellow-sun radiation for Texas runningbacks. We don't yet know whether we're in for a Silver or Gold Age season—Taylor was arrested with somewhere between 4 ounces and 5 pounds of MJ. Doing his best Clark Kent, Taylor was minding his own business on a pecan farm outside Austin, when a fight with more than 100 people broke out. Mindful of Justice and the American Way and so forth, Taylor called the police, who for whatever reason searched his Tahoe and found a .40-caliber round (No I race them, officer) and "four 1-gallon Ziploc bags containing marijuana in a black backpack with 'Big 12 Conference' stitched on it." Fit a cape on the Heisman.



Actually, I guess it's not good news.

we wish to inform me and you and everyone we know

Salman Rushdie, aided and abetted by Philip Gourevitch and (I think) Miranda July, has taken up with the Hungry March Band. The shareef don't like it.

even thetans get the blues

Twice MELANIE BOYER writes about the time being "1:43 EST and 10:43 p.m. where I am," using repetition to emphasize the spatial and emotional distance separating her from her man. Ah, unless she's trying to tell us something else. It's all very sickly-sweet until the third time she uses the device, when she reveals her hand:

But right now, at 1:43 EST and 10:45 p.m. where I am. . . .

How great must one's emotional terror grow, how overpowering one's fear of being alone, until it manifests as something dark enough to override the laws of time and space?

Or is it all a ruse, M ALIEN ORB EYE?