STILL HERE

Hi.

I kinda forgot about this thing for a while. Remember when I got laid off? Did I even tell you about that? Well, anyway, I got laid off two days before the World Cup started and decided that I'd pretend I was 19 all over again, wait tables part time and have summer vacation. So that's what I did.

I hung out all summer, went camping, took a few trips, generally just enjoyed life outside. Now that it's like 20 degrees around Salt Lake I'm getting back on the blogging train. I actually had a few posts written and ready to go up last week, but then the thing with Brad happened and I wanted to keep that post at the top for a little while.

Things are still moving along in a few different areas, but nothing incredibly exciting has happened lately.

So on that note, let's get to the posts! Up first (below) is a little thing about Andre the Giant. It's the first of three wrestling posts I have queued up (including the tale of how Hulk Hogan is an asshole in real life), so stay tuned for those.

And for other stuff. I may be getting back into the groove here. Or I may just put these two up and forget about it again. We'll just have to find out together, I guess.

THEY'RE REALLY DOING IT

Well that escalated quickly.

Back in January (which is like 6 posts ago, I know, and I'm sorry. I've been busy) I wrote about the Satanic Temple and their plans to erect a giant Baphomet statue in front of the Oklahoma state capitol. The reasoning is that since Oklahoma is kind of violating that whole "separation of church and state" thing by having a 10 Commandments monument, the other side of the coin should be represented as well.

The Satanic Temple launched an Indie GoGo fund to raise money, and hit their goal fairly easily. I pretty much assumed that would be the last we heard of it, but that's thankfully not the case and they've been hard at work actually making the damn thing.

It turns out that Oklahoma state representative Mike Ritze paid for the 10 Commandments statue with his own money and donated it to the state house. Since it was a gift, it was deemed okay to place it on state grounds. Following that explanation, the Satanic Temple has submitted the proper forms and applications and is waiting to hear back. All the while, they've hired a New York-based artist trained in classic sculptures to start making a bust that they'll be able to cast in bronze and place as soon as they get the word.

As noted before, The Church of Satan (probably pissed that they didn't think of it first) had a few issues with the proposed statue, and it looks like some of those issues have been addressed. Vice followed up on the project and got a nice little behind the scenes look at the progress of the 7-foot statue and some great comments from Lucien Greaves—who used to be listed as the leader of the group, but is now just listed as a spokesman. I could probably find out one way or the other, but I've got other things to get back to.

Most notably, Greaves spoke about what might happen to the statue once it's placed. There are bound to be a lot of unhappy people in Oklahoma if the statue is put up and vandalism is highly likely. Greaves said he "wouldn’t expect these outraged and nearly insensible reactionaries to actually know how to assault a bronze monument without severely hurting themselves in the process."

Still, they're not taking any chances and instead building a mold so that if one is damaged, they can just pop out another. "Depending on our insurance policy, we may be able to cast two from the destruction of one, expediting our arrival to the next battleground."

Oklahoma's been staging some great battles in newspaper headlines and inside execution chambers this week, so I'm sure shedding blood on the steps of their statehouse over a statue wouldn't be outside their wheelhouse.

So yeah, the Satanic Temple isn't fucking around here. You should head over to Vice to read their whole piece. I lifted a couple of quotes and these photos from them, so the least you can do is actually go check out their article. And you'll probably get lost in their archives like I do every time. It's fun though. They've got good stuff.

ALL MY EXES LIVE IN TEXTS

I hate this article.

Well, let me rephrase that. I hate this article because of how accurate it is.

Remember the good old days when you stopped hanging out with or broke up with someone and it was fairly easy to avoid them? Those days are long gone, my friend.

It's especially hard when you're as good at the Internet as I am. The social media generation never really breaks up, they just sit on the opposite side of one big room. Even if you're not trying to see them, you still see them. Maureen O'Connor dives in and wades through all the things that go along with "dating" in the 2000's. It's a good article that's also kind of depressing.

I've posted the first little bit below, but you should really follow the link and read the whole thing.

NY Mag -- All My Exes Live In Texts -- I have 700 friends on Facebook, 36 of whom I consider exes. Not all are ex-boyfriends—in the eleven years that “boyfriend” has been a name for men in my life, I have referred to nine as “boyfriends.” The rest are men I dated casually, guys I dated disastrously, make-out buddies, one-night stands, vacation flings, and a few boys I never touched but flirted with so heavily they can no longer be categorized as “just friends.” These people aren’t ex-boyfriends but they’re ex-something, weighted with enough personal history to make my stomach drop when they message me or pop up in social-media feeds. Which is pretty often.

There was a time, I am told, when exes lived in Texas and you could avoid them by moving to Tennessee. Cutting ties is no longer so easy—nor, I guess, do we really want it to be. We gorge ourselves on information about the lives of our exes. We can’t help ourselves. There’s the ex who “likes” everything you post. The ex who appears in automated birthday reminders. The ex who appears in your OkCupid matches. The ex whose musical taste you heed on Spotify. The ex whose new girlfriend sent a friend request. The ex you follow so you know how to win him back. The ex you follow so you know how to avoid her in person. The ex you watched deteriorate after the breakup. (Are you guilty or proud?) The ex who finally took your advice, after the breakup. (Are you frustrated or proud?) The ex whose new partner is exactly like you. (Are you flattered or creeped out?) The ex whose name appears as an autocorrection in your phone. (Are you sure you don’t talk about him incessantly? Word recognition suggests otherwise.) The ex whose new partner blogs about their sex life. The ex who still has your naked pictures. The ex who untagged every picture from your relationship. The ex you suspect is reading your e-mail. The ex you watch lead the life you’d dreamed of having together, but seeing it now, you’re so glad you didn't.

Read the rest of the article here.

BENEVOLENCE AND EMPATHY

The Satanic Temple is kind of awesome.

I've never really been a fan of Satanism because of the (majority of) idiots that preach it. To me, preaching Satanism is just as annoying as preaching Christianity, which I don't believe in either.

But The Satanic Temple is doing things just a bit differently. A few months ago, they tried to adopt a highway in New York. Now they've got their sights set on something bigger.

Oklahoma state representative Mike Ritze (R - Broken Arrow) recently allowed a Christian group to erect a statue of the Ten Commandments on the statehouse grounds. This didn't go over well with a whole bunch of people and a slew of different groups - including PETA and The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - demanded that they be represented on the grounds of the statehouse as well. The ACLU immediately filed a lawsuit because of the Ten Commandments statue and the influx of requests, so a moratorium was placed on putting anything else up, but that didn't stop The Satanic Temple from going forward with plans.

They started an IndieGoGo fund to raise money to erect a 7-foot statue of Baphomet seated on a throne with happy children by his side. According to spokesman Lucien Greaves (that made-up name right there is one of my many annoyances with Satanism as a whole) "The statue will also have a functional purpose as a chair where people of all ages may sit on the lap of Satan for inspiration and contemplation."

They were attempting to raise $20,000 and as of this writing, they've surpassed that amount.

While The Satanic Temple is the one spearheading this project, The Church of Satan isn't nearly as enthusiastic. Magus Peter H. Gilmore, the High Priest of that organization said "The statue is crudely designed and ugly to me and seems pedophilic, since the caduceus between the goat’s legs is a phallic symbol. Having children reaching towards a being with an exposed symbolic penis seems to imply that Satanism represents the same situation which has plagued the Roman Catholic and other Christian churches for some time: child abuse. The image appears to show the goat’s left hand possibly caressing the male child. Revolting."

"It occurs to me," Gilmore says, "that the efforts by the perpetrators of this proposal may be intended as a means for making Satanism appear foolish and just as dysfunctional and irrational as we secularists view most other religions to be."

That two groups of Satanists are arguing over the merits of Satanism kind of says it all, I think.

But whatever. I think it's a great idea. I'm all for a Baphomet statue in a city that I don't live in - mostly because I want to see people in Oklahoma freak out if it happens. If this thing does get made, I'll be stopping in Oklahoma on my way to Detroit. I'm all about cool statues.

A sampling of The Satanic Temple's beliefs are below. I've gotta say, they make a pretty strong point. But like all religions, it's probably overrun with bat-shit crazy people that ruin it for everyone else and make it impossible for me to even consider.

The picture up top is what the statue will (*fingers crossed*) look like and below is a brief sample of The Satanic Temple's beliefs.

"To embrace the name “Satan” is to avow skepticism in the face of all things, even — especially — that which is held sacred. To stand forth as a “Satanist” is to rend from the persecutory, affrighted mob a convenient out-group label, demanding that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations.

Satanism is not mindless abandon and depravity, but a philosophy that drives us to lead fruitful and dignified, epicurean lives. Satan, the symbolic force of design that would urge humanity toward refined pleasures of the Arts and Sciences. Satan, who first brought the fruit of knowledge to Humankind that thereafter we might live not as naked brutes in the wild, but develop our cultural splendor into ever more aesthetically and technologically advanced heights. Ours is the Humanistic Satan who would sacrifice His own Heavenly residence so that Humanity might learn to understand and enjoy the physical world they inhabit.

Satanists are often natural aestheticians who revel in the grandeur of human artistic, architectural achievements while also often drawn to the idiosyncratic and bizarre that are all too typically misunderstood, feared, and discarded.

With compassion, the Satanic Temple accepts all who are just and compassionate."

NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

Another day, another story about how Greg Ginn just gets worse and worse.

The Black Flag saga has been going for about a year now, and I've been keeping up with it pretty much since the beginning. Go here and then here if you aren't aware of what's going on, but by now you probably know.

Quick rundown - two different versions of Black Flag have been touring this year. One, simply called Flag has Keith Morris, Dez Cadena, Chuck Dukowski, Stephen Egerton and Bill Stevenson. The other, called Black Flag, has Greg Ginn and some other people. For a while, Ron Reyes was the singer of this new version. He was the vocalist of Black Flack for a hot minute between Keith Morris and Henry Rollins, but that was it.

Flag has been playing shows and getting good reviews because they're trying to play solid music. Black Flag is just trying to make money and show up Flag. They're not doing a very good job. In this open letter (which, by the way, I hate open letters but this is necessary) to Greg Ginn and the Ring-Ins, it seems pretty clear that Ginn's version isn't very good.

Ron Reyes agreed. Then Ron Reyes was fired in the middle of a set and replaced by Mike Vallely.

Reyes ranted about the situation through his Facebook, but then promptly deleted it. But, since this is the Internet, lots of people were smart enough to grab it while it was up. Nothing ever goes away once it's been on the Internet. You should know that by now.

Here's a little snippet:

“So many things went wrong from the start. I was into things like having a good drummer, rehearsing and spending time on things like beginnings and endings of songs, being a little less distracted with tour life and a little more on the ball. You know things that would make our efforts worthy of the name Black Flag… Yes it is my opinion that we fell very short indeed and the diminishing ticket sales and crowds are a testament to that.”

Like I said, it was deleted pretty quickly, but you can read the whole thing over at Consequence of Sound.

We may never know who will win this epic battle, but...

Actually. We probably do. And it's not Greg Ginn.

THE GOD VOICE HAS ITS WORK CUT OUT

The buzz for Tulip is getting louder.

We officially sold out of the first print about two weeks ago, but people are still talking about it.

Jay Meehan, a columnist for The Park Record, wrote a piece about Mike Farfel and his debut novel yesterday. It's great. I'm a little jealous that Mike got dropped in the same sentence as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett because those guys are a couple of my literary inspirations, but I'm also proud as hell.

Here's a little preview, but if you want to read the whole thing, head over to The Park Record and check it out for yourself.

We're working hard to get a second printing together and back in the shop and this thing kind of gave me that extra push. That's really the only thing that I regret about this piece - that he's giving press to a book that I don't have any more of at the moment. Total first world problem, I know, but it's still a problem.

Oh well. Soon. I promise.

The Park Record -- When I first met Mike Farfel, I heard a voice in my head telling me to focus, to pay attention, to remain in the moment. I was sporting the glazed look I usually wear to a Dylan show but I knew immediately there were some layers to this Wasatch High School freshman that might elude me if I spaced out in my normal fashion.

Although he didn't flaunt it at all, you had the sense that there was this intellectuality lounging just out of camera range awaiting its cue. His Dylan-IQ, of course, was off the charts but, no matter what the topic, he appeared to be well ahead of the curve. He was obviously on the lam from the ordinary.

Read the rest.

JEALOUS AGAIN

Back in January, I wrote a little thing about the two different versions of Black Flag that were gearing up to go to battle. Then in May, I updated the story after Greg Ginn's Black Flag posted a new song and the Keith Morris version, just called Flag, posted a video of one of their shows.

Well, after a long hot summer, there's another update to fill you in on.

In August, Greg Ginn - who was already losing the battle because Keith Morris' group had all the cool people in in - decided to file a lawsuit. He was basically trying to bar Morris from using the Black Flag logo, make it hard for his group to tour and play the Black Flag songs and named Henry Rollins in the suit claiming that he and Morris went behind his back to try and copyright the logo or something. Things were said, papers were served and everyone's been fighting behind the scenes ever since.

Yesterday, it ended. For a while, at least.

A U.S. District Court judge in California determined that Ginn's lawsuit was bullshit, that people could tell the difference between the two bands and that Ginn couldn't prove that he alone owned the Black Flag name and/or logo. Bootleg merch had been on the market since 2008 and in 2009 a Japanese company registered the band name. Morris and his lawyers argued that since neither of those things prompted any legal action from Ginn or his label, SST, both had fallen into "generic use."

The judge also stated that no one could clearly determine who the last remaining member of Black Flag actually was and that since they'd filed taxes under the title "Black Flag Partnership," Morris and Rollins had every right to try and trademark the name and logo under that banner.

That last part stemmed from this little gem: "the defendants’ claim that the Black Flag assets were owned by a statutory partnership comprised of various former band members – even if these members only consisted of Henry and Ginn, based on (a) accepting Ginn’s argument that he never quit and given that there is no evidence or allegation that Henry ever quit – has merit;"

The judge basically ruled that Rollins never quit the band, so he was still technically allowed to do whatever he wanted with the name and logo - even if he's not actually in either of the new incarnations.

Here's the rest of the judge's ruling that I got from SPIN.com, who obtained it through Keith Morris' camp.

(1) the court found that SST had no rights in the trademarks;
(2) Ginn seemed to have no individual rights in the Black Flag trademarks;
(3) even if either had had any rights in those marks, they had abandoned those rights through a failure to police the mark for nearly 30 years;
(4) the defendants’ claim that the Black Flag assets were owned by a statutory partnership comprised of various former band members – even if these members only consisted of Henry and Ginn, based on (a) accepting Ginn’s argument that he never quit and given that there is no evidence or allegation that Henry ever quit – has merit;
(5) that even if the plaintiffs had some trademark claim in the marks, there was no likelihood of consumer confusion between Black Flag and Flag given the ample press coverage over the dispute; and
(6) the trademark application and registration that Henry and Keith made was done in good faith (e.g. not fraudulently) – and is thus not necessarily subject to cancellation – given that they understood their actions to have been done on the part of the Black Flag partnership (see No. 4, above).

The battle rages on.

THE FLIGHT FROM DALLAS

I've always been pretty fascinated with the JFK assassination and, really, the U.S. as a whole during the 1950's and 60's.

James Ellroy wrote a couple of books about that era that I count as some of my favorites (L.A. Confidential, American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, etc.). Lately there have been a few really good long-form articles popping up that become a bit of an obsession for a few days.

Earlier this year, The Memphis Commercial Appeal published a story called Six : 01 - The Last 32 Hours of Martin Luther King, Jr. and it was just fantastic. It was the 45th anniversary of his assassination and it's just a really well written, well-researched article.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Chris Jones - a writer that I've always admired and loved - has a great story in this month's Esquire. It's about the 6 hours inside Air Force One from the time the shooting happened to when the plane touched down in Washington, D.C. with Lyndon B. Johnson as the new President.

I hadn't really paid much attention to LBJ, so I didn't really understand how much the Kennedy inner circle disliked him. It's pretty much consumed my entire morning. I'm beginning to understand how there are so many people still obsessed with this story 50 years later. There was a lot going on back then and a lot of it seemed pretty shady.

But those are the things that make a great story, which is why it's still a prime candidate for use across all different forms of media.

Anyway, Chris Jones does a great job connecting a lot of what's been collected before into a single narrative. I didn't know that Jackie refused to change her clothes or clean herself up because she wanted the world "to see what they did" and no idea how desperate LBJ was to be sworn in before he left Dallas so that no one could change their mind about how it should go.

Also, LBJ was so powerless in the Kennedy administration that he and his wife lived in a house that only had a commercial phone line. That was replaced with something more secure as the plane was in the air bound for Washington. Johnson didn't want to sleep in the White House that night because it would seem disrespectful.

You should read it. It's online now, but Esquire sometimes only makes things available to look at for a certain amount of time before they put it behind a pay wall. Read it online now, or pick up the new issue when it hits stands.

Here's a little snippet:

2:34 P.M.

Marie Fehmer palms the typewritten oath to Judge Hughes. But they still need a Bible. Larry O'Brien, excusing himself to Jackie, finds a Catholic missal in the bedroom's nightstand drawer. It is in a small box, still wrapped in cellophane. It is possibly a gift, something that somebody, somewhere, had thrust into Kennedy's hands, perhaps even on this last trip to Texas. Now O'Brien tears open the box and hands the book to Judge Hughes.

Ken O'Donnell follows O'Brien into the stateroom. Johnson sees him: "Would you ask Mrs. Kennedy to come stand here?" He wants her to stand beside him.

"You can't do that!" O'Donnell shouts. "The poor little kid has had enough for one day, to sit here and hear that oath that she heard a few years ago! You just can't do that, Mr. President!"

"Well," Johnson says, "she said she wanted to do it."

"I just don't believe that," O'Donnell says, even as he heads toward the bedroom. He paces in the hallway, his hands on his head—hysterical is the word he later uses to describe himself. Finally he walks into the bedroom. Jackie is combing her hair.

"Do you want to go out there?" O'Donnell asks.

"Yes," Jackie says. "I think I ought to. At least I owe that much to the country."

2:37 P.M.

Jackie Kennedy comes out of the bedroom. The room falls silent. She has taken off her single bloody glove, but she has not changed her clothes or made use of the blue towels.

Read the rest at Esquire.com

WELCOME TO OAKLAND - FOX NEWS STYLE!

Remember the plane that crashed in San Francisco a little while back?

Well, during the subsequent mad scramble to report on the incident and in the continuing quest to beat out other networks for "scoops," Oakland Fox affiliate KTVU-TV thought they had something no one else did - the names of the pilots responsible for the crash.

Unfortunately, it was just someone playing a joke and the TV anchors were dumb enough to run with it. They claim that an NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigator in Washington confirmed the names, but let's get real. No. Way.

KTVU listed the names as:

Captain Sum Ting Wong (something wrong)
Wi Tu Lo (we too low)
Ho Lee Fuk (Holy Fuck)
Bang Ding Ow (Bang! Ding! Ow!)

The kicker? The news anchor READ THESE NAMES ALOUD and didn't think there was anything fishy about them.

Hat tip to Matthew Keys (@matthewkeyslive, MatthewKeys.com)  for pointing it out and documenting it for the rest of us.

Here's the video of it. For now anyway. Until it gets taken down because they probably feel like complete morons as they rightfully should.



And here's video of her kind of apologizing after a bunch of people probably called the station to say: "Are you serious? What's wrong with you morons? You couldn't see those were obviously fake names? How dumb can you be?"



*UPDATE* - Asiana Airlines is now suing the station because of this. They're suing because it was the made up names—not crashing into a wall while trying to land—that has left the reputation of the airline "badly damaged."

THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA

Did NO ONE learn anything from PIRANHA 3D? No good can come from this. Things like this that remind me of something Patton Oswalt said once, and I'm paraphrasing here: "Sometimes science is fucking wrong and gives us shit we don't need... they might as well go, 'Hey, we made cancer airborne and contagious! You're welcome! We're science: we're all about coulda, not shoulda.'"

Wired Science -- Lake Vostok, which has been sealed off from the world for 14 million years, is about to be penetrated by a Russian drill bit.

The lake, which lies 2.5 miles below the icy surface of Antarctica, is unique in that it’s been completely isolated from the other 150 subglacial lakes on the continent for such a long time. It’s also oligotropic, meaning that it’s supersaturated with oxygen: Levels of the element are 50 times higher than those found in most typical freshwater lakes.

Since 1990, the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg in Russia has been drilling through the ice to reach the lake, but fears of contamination of the ecosystem in the lake have stopped the process multiple times, most notably in 1998 when the drills were turned off for almost eight years.

Now, the team has satisfied the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, which safeguards the continent’s environment, that it’s come up with a technique to sample the lake without contaminating it. Valery Lukin told New Scientist: “Once the lake is reached, the water pressure will push the working body and the drilling fluid upwards in the borehole, and then freeze again.” The next season, the team will bore into that frozen water to recover a sample whose contents can then be analysed.

The drill bit currently sits less than 328 feet above the lake. Once it reaches 65 to 98 feet, the mechanical drill bit will be replaced with a thermal lance that’s equipped with a camera.

Time is short, however. It’s possible that the drillers won’t be able to reach the water before the end of the current Antarctic summer, and they’ll need to wait another year before the process can continue.

When the sample can be recovered, however, it’s hoped that it’ll shed light on extremophiles — lifeforms that survive in extreme environments. Life in Lake Vostok would need adaptions to the oxygen-rich environment, which could include high concentrations of protective enzymes. The conditions in Lake Vostok are very similar to the conditions on Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, so the new data could also strengthen the case for extraterrestrial life.

Finally, anything living in the lake will have evolved in relative isolation for about 14 million years, so it could offer a snapshot of conditions on Earth long before humans evolved.

SLCFF IN SLUG

The SLCFF is still rolling along and we've got a pretty good article in SLUG this month. Check it out.

SLUG -- While most people’s attention will be turned towards the stuffy old celebrities, pantiless pseudo-celebrities and the handful of serious independent filmmakers inhabiting the streets of Park City this January, the organizers of the Salt Lake City Film Festival will be hard at work putting together the third installment of their annual event. Taking place every August, the SLCFF has featured a wide variety of independent films, from critical favorites like Best Worst Movie to local documentaries like Cleanflix and a number of obscure features and shorts that live and die in the film festival circuit. Even though this year’s festival doesn’t take place until the end of August, the organizers have been busy expanding their brand and planning for the future. On December 16, the SLCFF celebrated the launch of their new website and the opening of submissions for the 2011 festival at their monthly HEFFE’FILM’IN film screening at Brewvies. SLUG spoke with the Salt Lake City Film Festival’s organizers about what happens behind the scenes during the film festival’s off season and how the festival has evolved over the past few years.

The second annual Salt Lake City Film Festival concluded on August 15, 2010. However, the event’s organizers kept working. “After the first year we ended the festival and we were stoked about it, so we decided to take three months off, and that was a mistake,” says Matt Whittaker, one of the festival’s co-directors. Now that the film festival is entering its third year, the organizers are applying the lessons they’ve learned from past years to make organizing and running the film festival easier and more efficient. “We try to figure out new ways to organize ourselves every year. The first year we didn’t have online ticket sales, which was pretty nuts. Then we got online ticket sales for the second year, and it was even crazier to deal with that monster,” Whittaker says. “We’re slowly becoming nerdier and nerdier when it comes to organizing this thing, which is good.”

Read the rest...

AN UNSPEAKABLE TRAGEDY

30 years ago yesterday, John Lennon was shot in front of his apartment building and rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Mark David Chapman became one of the most hated men of all time that night and the world was shattered.

The thing I found most surprising about all of this, was that a great deal of people found out about the shooting during a close Monday Night Football game on ABC. The New England Patriots and the Miami Dolphins were tied with time running down when Howard Cosell broke the news.



Now, since he wasn't the president, they didn't break away to a tearful Walter Cronkite like they did when JFK was shot. They had the information, they shared it and went back to the game. And had the game not gone in to overtime, I'm sure that they would have cut to the local news for updates almost immediately.

What I didn't know until yesterday though, was that Cosell wasn't sure if he should even make the announcement during the game. Things were getting down to the wire and Frank Gifford had to basically force him to share the information.

(There's a quick ad at the front of this, by the way. Sorry.)


That is stunning to me. Cosell couldn't see the game situation allowing for the announcement that one of the most revered musicians of an entire generation had been murdered? Cosell had information to break one of the biggest stories of all time and he had to be talked into doing it! That seems like the type of information that every man or woman that's ever sat behind a microphone on live television had dreamed of delivering. And he didn't want to do it because the Pats were about to attempt a field goal!

He must have hated the White Album or something.

ALL CLASS

I always have the TV on in the background while I'm at the computer. Usually it's tuned to ESPN and a lot of the times it's on mute. The one half hour a day that I usually sit down on the couch and watch an ESPN show from start to finish is 3:30PM when Pardon The Interruption comes on.

I love Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. They have such great chemistry, they're funny and more than that, they seem to know what they're talking about. Which is more than I can say for probably 75% of the staff at ESPN. Most of them just like to hear themselves talk (I'm looking at you Skip Bayless and Jim Rome) and want to say the most outrageous things they can to get viewers.

Kornheiser and Wilbon were both writers for the Washington Post before (and for the most part during) the show, but more than that, they're likable, charismatic guys. I've read a lot of their early stuff and really enjoyed it. They both have a sarcastic, cleverness about them (Kornheiser more so) that comes across so well on TV and they're just fun to listen to.

And Wilbon is the subject of one of my favorite things I've ever seen on TV. During one episode they cut back to the set in the middle of a commercial, as they often do, and during a wide shot of the desk Michael Wilbon was visible wearing a suit jacket, dress shirt and tie but underneath the desk, he had on gym shorts and sneakers. I had always heard the joke about newscasters not wearing pants, but in this instance, I knew it was true. Maybe not all the time, but I caught it once and it makes me laugh every time I think about it.

But anyway, Wilbon left his job at the Washington Post to go to ESPN full time recently and his last column ran yesterday. If you're a fan of sports writing or just good writing in general, I suggest you check it out. I pasted it below, but you should really head over to the Washington Post site for the full effect. He links back to other articles that he mentions, and most of them are great reads.

Washington Post -- This is the first column I ever dreaded writing, the only time I can recall experiencing that thing known as writer's block. It's my last column for The Washington Post, 20-some years after my first one and 311/2 years after I walked in the door as a summer intern. It's not Shirley Povich's 75 years but I hung around long enough to think it might last forever.

Sadly and of my own doing, I've come to that part in the program where it's time to say goodbye, where I need to tell readers, editors, colleagues, even some of the people I've covered over the years just how enormously grateful I am for their helping me have the greatest adventure imaginable.

I remember thinking in the summer of 1980, after graduating from college and coming back to Washington for a second summer, that it would be a successful career if I got to have a byline from each of the major sporting events once in my life. It never dawned on me I'd wind up covering nine Olympic Games for The Post, or more than 20 Super Bowls, more than 20 Final Fours, more than 20 NBA Finals, or more importantly evolve to the point where the editors of this newspaper would trust me to lead the daily discussion about the news of the day and the changing cultural landscape as it all related to sports.

I never woke up a single day in those 30 years hesitant to go to work, whether I was reporting on something as surprising as Virginia's top-ranked basketball team losing to Chaminade in Honolulu; as terrifying as Mike Tyson biting off a piece of Evander Holyfield's ear 30 feet in front of me; as historically significant as John Thompson navigating a Georgetown basketball program through the hostility of a sports world not yet comfortable with a black coach; as locally galvanizing as the Redskins winning a Super Bowl; as personally rewarding as being front and center to see David Robinson and Grant Hill and Byron Leftwich grow from boys to men; as selfless as Gary Williams leaving a perfectly good basketball program at Ohio State to come and save his alma mater; or as tragic as the death of young Len Bias.

There's no "favorite" or "best" interview, no "greatest" game because there were simply too many, thousands of each, over the years. But there is a favorite moment: Aboriginal hero Cathy Freeman winning track and field gold in the Sydney Olympics in 2000, leaving me to write through tears the only time in my career.

There is a favorite athlete: Michael Jordan, because he had and continues to have the greatest impact on the culture of sports since Ali and because, as Scott Turow wrote, "Michael Jordan played basketball better than anyone else in the world does anything else."

There is a biggest influence outside the profession: Coach John Thompson, whose 2 a.m. return phone calls would often begin with, "You want to sleep or you want a scoop?" and evolve into 90-minute conversations that usually had nothing to do with the Hoyas but everything to do with what was right or wrong with the world.

And most definitely there was and is a most important story in my career: the death of Bias, a young man with godly physical talents who was so much more than a headline to me because I covered just about every game he played his first two years at the University of Maryland. My friend Jay Bilas observed a few years ago that those of us of a certain age mark time with Bias's death the way the generation older than us does with the death of John F. Kennedy - and Bilas wasn't exaggerating.

The vast majority of my time at The Post has been anything but sad. I arrived at the paper close enough to the end of Watergate that Robert Redford was still occasionally popping into the newsroom to visit Bob Woodward, the man he portrayed in "All The President's Men." As difficult as it is for me to accept the notion that I became a colleague of the world's best reporter, it's nothing compared with the complete awe, even 30 years later, I still feel whenever I'm in the company of Ben Bradlee, even if it's just seeing him in the elevator.

Everything I have now professionally I owe to The Washington Post, specifically to George Solomon, my sports editor of a quarter century, for taking a chance on a 20-year-old kid, to Don Graham and Len Downie for allowing me the freedom to go anywhere and write about anything and anybody, especially for giving me the green light to do television at a time when TV and the Internet had newspapers pinned on the ropes while landing one haymaker after another.

I can only hope, as I leave for my own personal gain with a full-time career with ESPN, that the men who shepherded my career don't regret granting all those opportunities over the years. So many of us used The Post sports department as a launching pad to fame and (in some cases) fortune. Long before ESPN unleashed "Pardon the Interruption" on the world, Tony Kornheiser and I did pretty much the same thing on the fifth floor of the newsroom.

We also owe - let me speak for myself: I certainly owe - the people who indulged us over the years: our readers. No big city daily newspaper in America has an audience as educated, as diverse and as literate as The Post. And for those of us who care less about who was moving from guard to tackle and more about the significant issues of the day, whether it pertained to eligibility or race or performance enhancing drugs, it opened up grand possibilities for assignments, for pursuing fascinating stories that appealed to the widest audiences. Few newspapers had the means or the interest in sending a young columnist to Shoal Creek, Alabama, for several days to write about the difference between an exclusive country club and the local municipal track where the descendants of slaves and slave owners found themselves, willingly, to play in the same foursome.

I don't recall ever being told "no" if I wanted to write about something, even when it had little to do with sports. Probably my favorite enterprise assignment, one I viewed skeptically in the beginning, was going with Dave Sheinin to Los Angeles during the riots in the aftermath of the Rodney King drama in 1992 to try to find out whether there was any correlation between the decrease in funding for community programs related to sports and recreation and the increase in gang-related activity in the city.

Oh, yes there was a correlation. Kids who wanted to be running backs, center fielders, sweepers and shooting guards had become, largely through civic neglect, gang leaders. There was nothing quite like being invited one night to the Hollywood Hills home of the one and only Jim Brown to join members of the Crips and Bloods who had accepted his invitation to stop the violence for at least one night to talk about their differences.

Don't get me wrong; I loved covering some of the greatest events of the end of the 20th century, like the game where Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's streak for consecutive games played. But the stories like the one in Los Angeles were the ones that separated The Washington Post from 99 percent of daily newspapers, and those issues were the ones that began to reshape the discussion of sports in America, the ones that led people to look to columnists essentially as discussion leaders. The complex stories, the ones that made people examine their own values and beliefs, were so far removed from box scores and game analysis, but they now drive viewership and readership.

George Solomon, Len Shapiro and Sandy Bailey were the most influential editors in my life and could see so much of this coming. That they allowed me to be the junior member of a columnist lineup featuring Tom Boswell, Andy Beyer and Tony Kornheiser starting in 1990 was beyond my dreams. My very first "audition" column came before that in 1988 and was about Jimmy "The Greek" and some controversial remarks he'd made after lunch in downtown D.C. (at Duke Zeibert's for those of you of a certain age) that got him fired and truly kicked off the discussion of language, stereotypes and race in sports. Sally Jenkins, Tracee Hamilton, Mike Wise and Boswell will write, as they always do, with such passion and insight and grace that many of you might not have noticed for months I was gone. Still, knowing that I'll no longer have those kinds of discussions in this newspaper, from the frivolous to the serious, will be far more traumatic to me, I suspect, than to you.

The past 20 years, I've had the best job in America. My only regrets are that my father, who taught me the art of making a good case from the time I was 7 or 8 years old, died just before I became a columnist, and that my son Matthew, 21/2 years old, will never truly know what his old man did for a living most of his adult life. Everything else - all 30 years of it, thank you - was candy sweet.

THE SIMPSON'S. BY BANKSY.

If you didn't see it for yourself the other night, you've no doubt at least heard about it. Al Jean, longtime showrunner of The Simpson's talked to the NY Times yesterday and explains how he did it without getting fired and the lengths they had to go to finding the artist.

NY Times ArtsBeat -- How did “The Simpsons” manage to track down Banksy, the pseudonymous British artist, and get him to create the powerful opening-credit sequence from Sunday’s episode, which seems to reveal the torturous sweatshop responsible for the show’s creation? And how, after all that mockery, have the producers behind that Fox animated series been able to retain their jobs? Al Jean, an executive producer and the longtime show runner of “The Simpsons,” pulled back another layer of the curtain and explained the stunt to ArtsBeat on Monday afternoon.

Q. How did you find Banksy to do this, and now that it’s done, how much trouble are you in?

A. Well, I haven’t been fired yet, so that’s a good sign. I saw the film Banksy directed, “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” and I thought, oh, we should see if he would do a main title for the show, a couch gag. So I asked Bonnie Pietila, our casting director, if she could locate him, because she had previously located people like Thomas Pynchon. And she did it through the producers of that film. We didn’t have any agenda. We said, “We’d like to see if you would do a couch gag.” So he sent back boards for pretty much what you saw.

Q. Were you concerned that what he sent you could get the show into hot water?

A. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it for a little bit. Certainly, Fox has been very gracious about us biting the hand that feeds us, but I showed it to Matt Groening, and he said, no, we should go for it and try to do it pretty much as close as we can to his original intention. So we did. Like we always do, every show is submitted to broadcast standards, and they had a couple of [changes] which I agreed with, for taste. But 95 percent of it is just the way he wanted.

Q. Can you say what got cut out?

A. I’ll just say, it was even a little sadder. But I would have to say almost all of it stayed in. We were thrilled. It was funny, I watched “Mad Men” last night and I wondered if this was my Don Draper letter to The New York Times. I knew just how he felt. But it was great to have a secret.

Q. One of the things Banksy is known for is disguising his identity. How can you be sure that you were dealing with the real him?

A. The original boards that we got from him were in his style and were certainly by an extremely proficient artist. We were dealing with the person that represented him making the movie. I haven’t met him, I don’t even know what he looks like, except what the Internet suggests. And he’s taken credit for it now so I’m pretty sure it’s him. We went through the people that made the movie so I assume they would know how to get to the real him.

Q. Even compared to how “The Simpsons” has mocked Fox in the past, this seemed to push things to a different level. Are you sure there’s no one higher up than you on the corporate ladder who’s displeased with this?

A. I think that we should always be able to say the holes in our DVDs are poked by unhappy unicorns.

Q. Has Banksy’s criticism made you reconsider any of the ways you do things at “The Simpsons” in terms of producing the show or its merchandise?

A. I have to say, it’s very fanciful, far-fetched. None of the things he depicts are true. That statement should be self-evident, but I will emphatically state it.

Q. A lot of the show’s animation is produced in South Korea, but not under those conditions.

A. No, absolutely not.

Q. And even that closing shot of the 20th Century Fox logo surrounded in barbed wire?

A. Approved by them. Obviously, the animation to do this was pricey. I couldn’t have just snuck it by Fox. I’ll just say it’s a place where edgy comedy can really thrive, as long as it’s funny, which I think this was. None of it’s personal. This is what made “The Simpsons” what it is.

YELLOW ROSE & CATHEDRAL TATTOO

If you live in Salt Lake you probably at least know about 11th Street Tattoo (if not get work done there). But as of September 30, 11th Street will become two separate shops. I have lots of good friends working at that shop (now both shops) and despite what you may have heard, there is no ill will between the guys going different ways.

My man Jake Miller gives the lowdown over at his blog, Victory Come Death, but since a lot of people are too lazy to click links, I'm reposting it below:

"We are moving the shop this month, Luis, Jon, and Gailon will be moving to Yellow Rose Tattoo on 2040 s. 900 e. and Myself, CJ , and Troy will be moving to Cathedral Tattoo on 400 s. 249 e. So, to put down any weird rumors or trash talking right out of the gate, I am going to give you the whole sleazy story. Our landlord, Larry McColm of McColm Commercial Investments is a total butt pie and threw a scare tactic our way a couple of months back, saying he had another tattoo shop ready to move in when our lease is up- unless we wanted to renew it. So we decided to call his bluff and told him we would be out of the space by “blah blah” date. He promptly gave us the “Ohh, yeah about that…” reply. Although Eleventh Street is easy on the eyes and in a great location we decided that we pay entirely too much money for the amount of bullshit he throws at us (no hot water, leaking roof, broken furnace). And, so began the search for a new location. We had some dispute over the area we wanted to move the shop. Some people wanted to move closer to Downtown and some people wanted to stay in the Sugarhouse area. As the weeks passed we exhausted pretty much every available prospect of a new location. During this time we all went through a number of changes in mindset as well as perspective and we ultimately decided to be in separate locations for no other reason than we felt like it was the right way to go. There is no drama, no bullshit and no crazy talk. The amount of mutual respect and love that I have from working with these people for the last ten years is so big that, your heads would explode if you tried to comprehend it. We are continuing to work together, only under separate roofs. I’m continuing to learn from my peers even though I won’t see them everyday and I can assure you that I’ll continue to be on their side no matter where I end up. This split is a step forward, not a step backward and I can assure you that it’s only the next chapter and not the final chapter. The 11th Street shop information will remain intact for the next 12 months. We will be doing our best to keep everybody informed. Please check www.eleventhstreettattoo.com or call 801.467.4418 with any questions. Yellow Rose Tattoo is now open and accepting walk-ins/ appointments. Cathedral Tattoo will open officially on September 24th, but we should be tattooing in there by September 15th. Thank you for your support."

So there you have it. Head over to both shops and get some work done by someone. And check out the new Ad they're running. Make it bigger. It's totally worth it.

LEADERS AND INNOVATORS

"Changes in the industry have forced some newspapers to fade or even close," said Clark Gilbert, Deseret News CEO and president. "At the Deseret News, we choose to lead and innovate."


I guess leading and innovating means firing nearly 50% of the staff. I hope all newspapers don't take the Deseret News route into the next generation.

Such a bummer, even if I didn't care much for the D-News anyway. I know a lot of people from my time at the Chrony went on to work there, and the movie critic, Jeff Vice, has always been a solid guy and a great supporter of things in this community, like local comics and the Salt Lake City Film Festival. Sad to see some of them are getting the axe and I wish them all the best.

Deseret News -- SALT LAKE CITY — The Deseret News announced today work force reductions and unveiled a plan to refocus the quality and reach of its product.

"Changes in the industry have forced some newspapers to fade or even close," said Clark Gilbert, Deseret News CEO and president. "At the Deseret News, we choose to lead and innovate."

Part of that leadership, he added, is the willingness to make hard choices.

"Today we have announced the reduction in our print work force by 57 full-time and 28 part-time employees, which reflects just over 43 percent of our work force," Gilbert said.

Gilbert called the decision to reduce staff "enormously difficult."

"We honor all the outstanding contributions that have added to the great heritage of the Deseret News," he said. "This makes these decisions even more difficult."

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