No Platform

Five Crappy Jokes Based on TV On the Radio's "Wolf Like Me"

Sat, 11 May 2013 19:43:11 -0400

Tunde Adebimpe is ghostwriting Michael Dorn’s autobiography. It’s called “Worf Like Me.”
Tunde Adebimpe is teaching a monthly seminar on how dog owners can impress their pets. The promise: “When the moon is round and full, gonna teach you tricks that will blow your mongrel’s mind.”
Tunde Adebimpe hides copies of his second album, Return to Cookie Mountain, around the Sesame Street studio in the hopes of inciting riots among the Muppets.
Tunde Adebimpe announces that he’s going to start naming his internal organs. He calls his heart “Curtis Glencross” and explains by saying “My heart’s a Flame.”
Tunde Adebimpe refuses to help you move your sofa and instead sits in the corner and yells “Motherfucker!” over and over. By way of explanation, he says only: “Gotta curse. I cannot lift.”

This is the greatest joke of my (or anyone else's) life.

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:57:00 -0400

Setup.

Punchline.

Top 10 The National Songs

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 23:05:52 -0400

Fashion Coat
Runaway
90-Mile Water Wall
Fake Empire
Mr. November
The Geese of Beverly Road
Daughters of the Soho Riots
Apartment Story
Secret Meeting
It Never Happened

Just because Paul’s doing it.

Jurickson Profar the Philanthropist

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:17:08 -0400

I was kind of surprised when the Rangers called up No. 1 prospect Jurickson Profar late last season, but apparently manager Ron Washington insisted after hearing a story from Profar’s minor league days that led Wash to believe Profar to be the kind of good-natured, kind-hearted soul that would have a positive clubhouse impact down the stretch.

You see, there was a youth baseball academy not far from the Rangers’ AA team in Frisco, and the minor leaguers would often stop by to sign autographs for the young kids, many of them in their early teens or younger, and offer informal coaching advice. Profar, being only a teenager himself, took a particular liking to the kids and was disturbed to hear that funding shortfalls had caused the camp’s dormitories to fall into a state of disrepair. It wasn’t unsafe, but the air conditioning was intermittent and the camp had been unable to buy new beds for some years. In fact, the boys at the camp had begun to suffer fatigue and on-field injuries more easily as a result of not sleeping well.

Profar, when made aware of the camp’s plight, ordered new, softer, more comfortable bedding at the cost of several thousand dollars of his own money.

When word got back to Washington, the Rangers’ manager was touched by Profar’s generosity and insisted that he be called up if for no other reason than to reward him for being a good guy.

In other words, Profar got his cup of coffee when he proffered puffy cots.

The Turko-Belgian Hockey Fan

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:16:26 -0400

When I was in college, I spent a summer studying European politics in Brussels. Brussels gets a bad name because it’s between Paris and Amsterdam, but isn’t either of those cities, and because it’s not full of drugs and whores on the one hand or snotty wastrels on the other, nobody ever visits it.

Which is a shame, because I can think of no better city for me than the capital of a multilingual country with superb public transportation whose culture is built on French fries, beer and multinational bureaucracy.

But for all the beer and the friendly natives and discussion of codecision and lionization of Javier Solana, perhaps my favorite thing about Brussels was not actually Belgian—it was the Turkish food. Brussels is home to many Turkish immigrants, most of whom, it seems, have gone into the restaurant business. Which is great, because Turko-Belgian food is 1) delicious 2) ubiquitous 3) sold in large quantities 4) dirt cheap.

There was one doner kebab shop near my school that I was fond of, and I befriended the owner’s son, Hakan, who ran the store on weeknights. Hakan had recently returned from four years studying physics at Concordia University in Montreal, where he’d fallen immediately and desperately in love with ice hockey. So when I came in after class to pick up an early dinner, before the evening rush, he’d often pour a cup of coffee, pull up a chair at my table and talk with me about the NHL. Hockey fans, particularly Turko-Belgian Montreal Canadiens fans, are rare in that part of Europe.

Hakan, despite being relatively new to the game, had studied its history and often as not would tell me things I didn’t know.

For instance, he told me about the first NHL game he ever saw in person, which was, in fact, a Canadiens-Flyers tilt back in 2002. The game, he said, was marked by a particularly vicious fight in which Flyers defenseman Chris Therien bloodied Habs forward Joe Juneau.

“That’s strange,” I said. “I don’t remember either of them being particularly eager fighters.”

“They weren’t,” Hakan said as he brought me a bowl of spiced rice. “But Juneau had been purposely annoying Therien all night, hooking and tripping. He picked that fight on purpose.”

“Interesting. Therien’s much bigger than he is. Do you remember if Juneau said there was a good reason for it after?”

Hakan shook his head. “No. Juneau regrets Therien.” He pointed at the bowl. “Eat this pilaf.”

Shoot the Manager

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 16:57:40 -0500

Baseball in the mid-19th Century was more like the Wild West than the modern-day major leagues in terms of playing conditions, attitudes and, surprisingly, the amount of violence surrounding the game.

It’s a little-known story that, in 1882, Chicago White Stockings (the team that would become the Cubs) owner Albert Spalding, once considered having his manager killed.

Spalding, who had just taken over the team, was looking to slash his payroll and Cap Anson, the team’s manager and star first baseman, made up almost a quarter of Chicago’s wage bill. Spalding had begun to look into trading Anson, but when Anson, who was happy in Chicago, got wind of the news, he threatened to hold out and conduct his contract dispute in the press, where he was immensely popular at the time.

Spalding, losing money and unable to offload his team’s biggest star, began to look into other means of getting Anson off the team.

His first call was to the Market Street Gang, the precursor to Bugsy Moran’s North Side Gang. The Market Street Gang wasn’t particularly steeped in assassinations, so they directed Spalding to David Dillahunt, a hitman who’d worked in northern Illinois for five years. Dillahunt met Spalding and heard him out.

“Any way you want me to do it?” he asked.

“Well, he stays at the stadium well into the night. You’d have no trouble sneaking up on him with the poor lighting. Then you could shoot him and make your escape.”

“Seems like kind of a small-time job. Shooting one guy in the back. Not a real challenge.”

“So will you do it?” Spalding asked. “I’ll give you seven hundred dollars.”

Dillahunt nodded. “This gun’s for hire,” he said. “Even if it’s just Anson in the dark.”

Noel Gallagher, Violence and the Manchester Derby

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:41:39 -0500

Back in the late 1990s, when Oasis was at the peak of its popularity, the Gallagher brothers found themselves at a club in downtown Manchester.

Even though Manchester is a pretty big city, there are only so many places young men with more money and ego than they know what to do with can go, so the Gallaghers soon found themselves in a room with David Beckham, Ryan Giggs and Roy Keane—in short, the bulk of the Manchester United midfield.

Now, in most situations like this, when world-famous athletes and world-famous musicians come together, one group might say hi to the other, drinks might be bought, pleasantries exchanged and photographs taken.

Not in this case. Not only had Liam and Noel Gallagher ingested more pills and alcohol than is usually considered wise, they were enormous Manchester City fans, and seeing their hated rival’s biggest stars invade their bar like conquering heroes did not sit well.

“Let’s kick their asses,” Liam said.

Noel considered for a moment, then tossed back the last of his drink. “Alright.”

So the Gallagher brothers ran over to the soccer players and started throwing punches.

Or at least Liam tried to. Because Keane—the kind of violent psychopath who’d occasionally stop in the middle of a game to punch Patrick Vieira—saw them coming and dropped Liam with an elbow to the nose.

Noel, however, got through and managed to tackle Beckham to the ground before Giggs tore the musician off of his teammate, who was aghast: “What was that?” Beckham asked no one in particular. “Did he kiss me?”

Before Beckham got his answer, the Gallaghers were hauled off to the Manchester constabulary.

About an hour later, the Gallaghers were in the drunk tank, waiting for their manager to come along and bail them out, when Liam remembered something he’d overhead.

“Did you kiss David Beckham?”

Noel shook his head. “No, I had my mouth open and tongue hanging out when I tackled him and I guess my tongue caught him on the head.”

Liam arched an eyebrow. “Why’d you do that? That’s really weird.”

“I couldn’t tell you. I was just so mad.”

Liam shook his head disapprovingly. “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times.”

“Said what?”

“Don’t lick Becks in anger.”

Going Over Hadrian's Wall

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:37:38 -0500

When the Roman Empire conquered a country, the centurions would often conscript locals into the army as a way of recovering from personnel losses before moving on to conquer the next tribe.

Circumstances in the Roman-occupied British Isles were no different. Roman legionnaires would, from time to time, hop over Hadrian’s Wall, capture local men and train them to fight. Now, when you’re picking soldiers, you’d want to take tall, lean, muscular fellows, but after a time, the natives of what is now Scotland ran out of physically imposing conscripts to give.

So one day, a Roman raiding party came back over the wall with a fat kid. In spite of his girth, the legion’s commander was very pleased to have him in the unit.

After all, it’s hard not to get excited about your first round drafted Pict.

How NASA and the Sports World Avoided Disaster

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 08:53:46 -0500

In 1986, Rice University sponsored a sports business conference in Houston, Texas. One of the first of its kind, it featured a laundry list of big names in coaching and upper management—it was one of the last big appearances for Dodgers GM Al Campanis before the Nightline interview that forced him to leave baseball in disgrace. Red Auerbach spoke, as did Glen Sather, the management of the Cincinnati Reds, Toronto Blue Jays and the commissioners of the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball.

Now, at the conclusion of this trip, the Reds were supposed to play the Mets and the Blue Jays were supposed to play the Yankees, so the managers and GMs of both teams split a charter with the bigwigs at the NBA so they could all get to New York more quickly and cheaply.

That charter flight took off from Houston and five minutes later, mechanical debris began raining down on a neighborhood not far from the Johnson Space Center. Part of what looked like a jet engine landed on a house on the block where legendary NASA Flight Director lived, and the local news was ready to run with a story about the crashed charter flight.

But in a few minutes, it was established that it was a different plane that had exploded in midair and that no one on the ground had been hurt.

This saved the Houston Chronicle from running the headline:

“Rose and Kranz and Gillick and Stern are Dead.”

My Top 10 Favorite TV Episodes of All Time

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 22:02:00 -0500

“Middle Ground”—The Wire, S3E11
“Shut the Door. Have a Seat”—Mad Men, S3E13
“Unfinished Business”—Battlestar Galactica, S3E9
“20 Hours in America”—The West Wing, S4E1
“Commissions and Fees”—Mad Men, S5E12
“Modern Warfare”—Community, S1E23
“In the Pale Moonlight”—Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, S6E19
“Can We Do This?”—From the Earth to the Moon, S1E1
“Mud Bowl”—Friday Night Lights, S1E20
“Twenty Five”—The West Wing, S4E23

Ten Artists Whose Work I Admire Immensely, but I'd Sooner Kill Myself Than Hang Out With Them Socially

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 23:24:47 -0500

Jonathan Franzen
Aaron Sorkin
Win Butler
Brian May
Russell Crowe
David Byrne
Ridley Scott
Dan Harmon
Ronald D. Moore
Bruce Springsteen

My Ten Greatest Writing Influences

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 23:14:13 -0500

Jonathan Franzen
Robert A. Heinlein
Dylan Thomas
Simon Kuper
David Foster Wallace
Graham Greene
Joe Posnanski
Bill Simmons
Drew Magary
Aaron Sorkin

Ten Most Impressive Athletic Performances I've Ever Seen in Person

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:41:23 -0500

Tim Tebow, football, University of Florida vs. University of South Carolina, 2007 (It’s really this, a huge gap, then the rest of the list)
Ryan Roushandel, men’s soccer, University of Central Florida vs. University of South Carolina, 2008
Candace Parker, women’s basketball, University of Tennessee vs. University of Arkansas, 2006
Josh Johnson, baseball Florida Marlins vs. Philadelphia Phillies, 2010
Eric Berry, football, University of Tennesee vs. University of South Carolina, 2008
Patrick Kane, hockey, Chicago Blackhawks vs. Columbus Blue Jackets, 2010
Jimmy Rollins, baseball, Philadelphia Phillies vs. Cincinnati Reds, 2011
Knowshon Moreno, football, University of Georgia vs. University of South Carolina, 2007
Jahre Cheeseman, football, Eastern High School vs. Timber Creek High School, 2003
Justin Smoak, baseball, University of South Carolina vs. Elon College, 2006

My Ten Favorite Musical Compositions

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:28:55 -0500

I’m going to start making top-10 lists based on my own personal feelings and experiences, and only explain them as much as I want to and no more.

My ten favorite pieces of music.

“Piano Sonata No. 8 (Pathetique)”-Ludwig van Beethoven
“Your Hand in Mine”-Explosions in the Sky
“Neighborhood No. 1 (Tunnels)”-Arcade Fire
“First Suite in Eb for Military Band”-Gustav Holst
“Behold the Hurricane”-The Horrible Crowes
“Make Our Garden Grow”-Leonard Bernstein
“You Know You’re Right”-Nirvana
“Transformations”-Robert Longfield
“Gimme Shelter”-The Rolling Stones
“Runaway”-The National

How to Mail a Bird of Prey

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:48:02 -0500

One summer in college, I volunteered at an animal hospital in the Pine Barrens. We’d take in injured or sick wildlife, for the most part, nurse them back to health, and release them after a while. We mostly took care of raccoons, small birds, maybe the odd deer. I remember a few baby ducks that came in around mid-June that I got to see released the week I went back to school. Really hard work, but one of the few truly positive things I’ve done with my life.

The highlight of the summer, however, was Richard. Richard was a red-tailed hawk who’d been on the losing end of a fight with a passing motorist and came to us with several broken bones. I say “us,” but he’d actually been nursed most of the way back to health by the time I showed up in May.

Anyway, he was ready to be released by the end of the summer, but we didn’t want to just turn him loose so he could get hit by another car. So we made arrangements for him to be sent to an animal sanctuary in Kentucky. The problem was that the undermanned and mostly volunteer staff couldn’t spare someone to drive a day there and a day back—probably two people, considering the complications of taking a bird of prey in a cage. And neither could the Kentucky folks spare someone to pick him up.

So my boss worked out a plan to ship Richard to Kentucky. He called around to a few places, expecting to pay a couple grand, tops, to get this bird somewhere safe.

The first company he called gave him a quote—I don’t remember the figure, but it was in excess of fifty thousand dollars. My boss would have been livid if he hadn’t been so confused. So he called the folks, and the conversation went something like this.

Shipping Company Guy: Oh, you’re the guy who called us about mailing the bird.

My boss: That’s right. Richard, the Red-Tailed Hawk. Why is it so expensive?

SCG: You want to put a raptor in the mail, you’ve got to send him the whole way by S-76.

Boss: What’s that?

SCG: Helicopter, man.

Boss: Helicopter? You can’t send him by rail or truck? That’d make more sense.

SCG: Sorry, man. Post hawk? Ergo ‘copter hawk.

Some Belated Thoughts on Jovan Belcher

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:22:35 -0500

I bring this up not because I have anything original to say, but because I want to highlight a particularly insightful comment.

On Monday’s Hang Up and Listen podcast, Slate magazine’s Josh Levin called Belcher’s story “a Rorschach test.” It’s been a while since I’ve encountered a comment in sports analysis that is simultaneously so uncommon and so entirely accurate.

Belcher’s murder/suicide this weekend is a (thankfully) rare sports news story that has literally nothing to feel good about from any angle. And what you react to first about this story, or what you react to most strongly, I’m discovering, is instructive.

My first thought was that a this was the product of a total abdication of mental healthcare by the sports community. Because that’s my personal hobbyhorse, and the events of Belcher’s last hours echo eerily the Donnie Moore incident that has haunted my imagination for years and (in part) inspired my original post.

I was disgusted with myself later for not jumping immediately to the issue of violence against women, that we were turning someone who committed horrific acts on par with those of Rae Carruth into a tragic hero.

You could, as Bob Costas did on Sunday Night Football, call for stricter gun control in the wake of an act of violence for which firearms were necessary, but not sufficient. You could bemoan the NFL’s negligence in helping to prevent brain damage, or substance abuse, or its callous treatment of Chiefs players in making them take the field the day after one of their own committed a bizarre and unthinkable act of violence. You could bemoan the culture of stoic paleo-masculinity that forces athletes at all levels to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of personal or professional tragedy.

You could take this event and spin it to fit whatever cause you like, because there’s more than enough bad feeling to go around. But I don’t know what the causal element to Belcher’s murder-suicide was, and neither do I know what the most awful part of the story is.

I hope some change occurs, either in sports or society, as a result of this thoroughly awful event. But it’s hard to hope for something concretely good in the wake of something so senselessly awful.

College Stories

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 14:12:19 -0500

When I was a high school sophomore or so, I started looking at colleges. I wanted a certain size of school, with a certain major, in a certain environment, but one of the kind of off-beat things I looked at was the gender ratio.

You see, I wasn’t particularly popular in high school, and my dad had told me once that I would probably meet my future wife in college. So in the interest of not dying alone, I sought out universities that had more women students than men, figuring that I’d do better with a numerical advantage. I looked at a couple: UNC-Greensboro still stands out in my mind, as did York College of Pennsylvania, which, my sophomore year of high school, had a near 2-to-1 ratio of women to men. But something fluky happened with the next class. York made a particular effort to attract male undergrads, and I noticed a trend that would make the gender ratio almost even by the time I would have enrolled. So I crossed it off my list.

This got my dad’s attention, and when he asked why I’d soured so quickly on York College, I could only say:

“Alas, poor York. A new him/her ratio.”

On Cooking During the Blitz

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 13:53:51 -0500

During World War II, even as The U.K. was being bombed into the Stone Age by Luftwaffe bombers, the English aristocracy still functioning as normal.

King George VI, recently immortalized in Colin Firthiness, was famously particular about his eating habits. He was very fond of cuisine from Southeast Asia, often eschewing traditional English food for some spicy seafood he’d encountered first on a state visit to French Indochina.

But he had to eat three times a day: breakfast at 6:30 a.m., lunch at noon and dinner at 7 p.m., with afternoon tea and a late-night snack often sprinkled in. The staff at Buckingham Palace was given strict instructions to serve His Majesty at those particular times.

But one evening, the king’s chef was in the middle of preparing such a spicy seafood dish when the air raid sirens sounded. The chef went immediately to cut off the gas to avoid an explosion if thy were hit, but the king’s steward, mindful of the particular dining schedule they had to obey, stopped him.

“No!” the steward ordered. “Keep clam and curry on!”

On Massages in Las Vegas

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 00:14:17 -0500

On the day the 2012 NHL season ended, Toronto Maple Leafs captain Dion Phaneuf, his team eliminated from playoff contention, took off on vacation. Through his well-publicized relationship with actress Elisha Cuthbert, Phaneuf has developed friendships with several Hollywood celebrities, among them Alan Tudyk of Firefly and Dodgeball fame.

Upon the conclusion of Toronto’s season, Phaneuf and Tudyk made plans to take a weekend in Las Vegas to enjoy some time away from the grind. Tudyk showed up a few hours late to find a note at the front desk of their hotel indicating that Phaneuf was on the roof.

Puzzled, Tudyk dropped his personal effects off at his room, then made his way to the roof, where he found Phaneuf stark naked and face-down on a massage table, being attended to by a professional masseuse. That’s when they had this exchange:

Tudyk: What the hell are you doing?
Phaneuf: It’s been a long season, eh? My muscles are tired and I’m all banged up.
Tudyk: Yeah, but do you really need to get a massage on the roof of a casino?
Phaneuf: I’m a Leaf on the Wynn. Watch how I’m sore.
Tudyk: Oh, motherf—-

On Francisco Franco, Exotic Pets and Eating While Riding in Cars

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 13:42:00 -0500

I’m not sure how many of you know this, but Generalissimo Francisco Franco kept a large menagerie at his private residence outside of Madrid. He was particularly fond of a pair of black bear cubs he’d adopted after a vacation in the Canadian Rockies. He and his staff of trainers did a remarkable job of taming the two bears, named Baloo and Mowgli (the Generalissimo was fond of the work of Rudyard Kipling). They were more like housecats than anything else, often wandering around the mansion on their own and eating from Franco’s table.

Franco himself was very fond of French-Canadian cuisine, another taste he picked up on his visit to Canada, and he insisted that his personal chef learn to cook in that style. After all, man does not live on paella alone. Unfortunately, the cheese curds didn’t sit as well with the baby bears, and after eating some leftovers, Mowgli took ill and died. Without his lifelong companion, Baloo was heartbroken and began to follow Franco around everywhere, often making trips into the capital with the fascist dictator. However, one particularly eventful trip caused Baloo to accidentally damage the upholstery in Franco’s favorite Grosser Mercedes, putting the official presidential limousine out of service until the damage could be repaired.

That night, however, an emergency arose, demanding Franco’s presence before the cabinet in the middle of the night. Franco’s personal adjutant, not having had time to arrange for a new car, had to drive him into the capital in his personal vehicle, a small four-door Yugo. For the road, Franco ordered a plate of poutine to eat on the way, and all looked to be under control until Franco’s pet bear realized his owner was leaving. Still mourning for his brother, Baloo bounded out of the house, climbed into the car next to Franco and, in his excitement, knocked the plate out of Franco’s hand, spilling the food all over Franco’s hands and arms. Baloo himself was hungry, it being the middle of the night, and tried to hold Franco’s arm down so he could lick the gravy off, but in so doing, he cut the generalissimo’s arm quite badly.

National emergency or no, Franco had to be taken to the hospital so his wound could be cleaned and sutured, so the valet drove there first. When the admitting nurse asked how Franco had cut his arm, the breathless valet could only say the following:

“If you’re Baloo and you don’t know where to go to
Ride in Yugos where Fascists sit,
Poutine on the wrist.”