Minutes before giving a speech on a campaign stop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Theodore Roosevelt is shot in an assassination attempt.
The would-be assassin’s bullet is slowed down after travelling through a steel eyeglass case and the folded, fifty page speech he intended to give, stopping in his chest. Realizing that he wasn’t coughing up blood, Roosevelt figured he was well enough to go ahead and deliver his speech rather than rush to the hospital.
He spoke for the next 90 minutes, opening with the words: 'Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.'
Doctors deemed it too risky to remove the bullet, and Roosevelt carried it with him inside his body for the rest of his life."
This post was shamelessly stolen from my man Destin over at Steady Clappin'. Make sure you head over there at some point and check it out. He does good work and makes way better mix tapes than I could, which is why I never started. Well, that and not enough people want a mix tape full of Life of Agony, Into Another, Only Living Witness and Helmet. But I digress....
"Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it." —Maurice Sendak
This has been floating around the Internet for years but I just came across it via Badass Digest. Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins were required to fill out a customs form declaring what they brought back to the U.S. after Apollo 11 touched down off the coast of Hawaii.
This show just gets better and better. This is the first season I was able to keep up with as it aired and that's basically because I spend too much time on the Internet and didn't want anything spoiled for me.
That said, after watching the Season 4 finale this past Sunday, I can safely say that I haven't wanted been this excited for the next season in a long time—probably since the end of LOST season 3. (You know, the first flash forward episode.)
I spent the morning reading the show's creator, Vince Gilligan, break down this season episode by episode and the more I read, the more brilliant I think he is. Everything about this show is great, the writing, the casting, the direction, the music, and my God, the acting. Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul and especially Giancarlo Esposito are all fantastic.
I can't wait for it all to come crashing down next season. Too bad we have to wait until July 2012 for it to start again.
Two more things:
1) Don't click this link unless you're 100% caught up. But for the rest of you that are, this is "that shot." You know, the one (or at least one of them) that made us all go 'You've got to be fucking kidding me!' and then 'Holy shit!'
2) I haven't been able to stop listening to this song since Sunday night.
For the past few weeks I've been hitting a bunch of haunted houses around the city for an article I was writing for City Weekly. I actually enjoyed myself a lot more than I expected. Once the article goes into the archives I'll have the whole thing up on here. But until then, head over to their site and check it out or grab this week's issue.
City Weekly -- You might think that if you’ve seen one haunted house, you’ve seen them all—but that’s not entirely true. Though there are common themes, no two haunts are exactly the same. Each has its own distinct vision of providing a good, old-fashioned scare.
The trailer hit earlier this week and now I have no desire at all to see it. Ever. It just looks incredibly boring and not at all what I hoped, but exactly what I expected, if that makes any sense.
Halloween started off as something much different than what it's become, but it's still way too evil for some people.
And by some people, I mean Evangelical Christians.
The origins of the holiday aren't exact, with some people attributing it to Romans and others saying it evolved from an and old Celtic festival. Either way, it's become basically one day a year (that gets stretched out an entire month) for people to celebrate scary things, dress up in costumes and eat candy. No one uses it as an excuse to raise the dead or hold sacrifices.
But Christians are getting upset (like they always do) about the fact that it's a holiday that doesn't celebrate Jesus. So they're taking it back.
Not only that, they're giving it an awesome new name: Jesus' Ween.
Okay, I'll admit that I added the apostrophe at the end of Jesus, but that doesn't make it any less silly.
I think this means that Christians will be handing out bibles and facts about God on October 31, largely as a promotional stunt for the first two weeks in November which is some sort of festival called "Jesus Win!"
But still, JesusWeen? That's just ridiculous.
I have plenty of Christian friends and I like seeing them and talking to them. We just can't talk about Christianity or God. I can't listen to them talking about a man in the sky watching over us, or how God placed dinosaur bones on the earth to test our faith. I can't keep a straight face listening to that, so it's just better to avoid it.
And for what it's worth, I don't go out of my way to talk about NOT being Christian or anything like that. Fair is fair.
What are the chances of Jesus' Ween actually replacing Halloween? I bet the odds are pretty slim—mostly because of the name.
If you're a Jazz fan like I am, there are definitely a few players on the current roster you're just not sure about.
For every one fantastic game that Kirilenko played, he gave you five borderline terrible ones. Okur (prior to injury) was either 100% on or 100% off. Millsap, as much as I love him, completely disappears for like 20 minutes each game.
Then we have C.J. Miles. For years, (literally years) beat writers, bloggers, announcers, talk show hosts and everyone else keep reminding me of his potential, that he's still young and once it all clicks for him, the rest of the NBA better watch out.
The problem with that is that C.J. has been in the league for six years. If it hasn't clicked yet, I don't think it's going to. He's an effective player from time to time, but he's killed the Jazz far more times than he's saved them.
When we matched OKC's offer sheet to keep him around, I wasn't upset because it wasn't a lot of money. But it was a 4-year deal, which meant that I was going to have to suffer through his erratic play for another four seasons.
I don't really know how the lockout works, but I'm pretty sure the 11-12 season would be Miles' last under his current contract, but since it's becoming increasingly clear that there's not going to be an 11-12 NBA season, I kind of think we're through with him, which would be okay with me.
I'm sick of him. I don't trust him. I want to, but I don't. I want him to be the player that everyone has been telling me he'll be, but he's not and I don't want to keep waiting for him to become that player.
All of that was a super long-winded segue into the fact that thanks to my old boss Rachel Piper, I found out that C.J. Miles has some hip-hop tracks floating around.
I knew he rapped, because my friends in the band Reviver have been trying to get a guest spot from him on one of their new tracks for a year. They've exchanged Tweets, but I don't think anything ever came of it. But even if it did, Reviver/C.J. wouldn't have shit on Foekus and Cherem.
I don't know a lot about hip-hop, but I know that this isn't terrible. There are definitely far worse NBA star-turned rapper tracks out there (Kobe Bryant feat. Tyra Banks, anyone?) but at least he's spending the lockout doing something productive. God forbid he'd be working on his shooting.
