Ballin' Outta Control

The luck of the Irish failed miserably yesterday after Thierry Henry's handball assist to French teammate William Gallas allowed for the go ahead goal. The French now advance to the World Cup final qualifiers and the Irish stew over poor officiating and the reality that soccer needs to enable reviewing. I don't care if it interrupts the beauty of "the beautiful game": there's nothing beautiful about an undeserved loss based on one blown call. Especially when it's as blatant as yesterday's mistake.

On a more positive note, Lakers star Pau "Goofy" Gasol made his 2009-10 season debut after a few weeks fighting a hamstring injury. Looks like Christmas has come early for the Lakeshow, as Pau went for 24 points and 13 rebounds while Kobe struggled the first couple quarters.

As Chuck said in the TNT Postgame Report, if you put in a lineup with Kobe at the point, Artest at the two and Lamar playing "small" the shortest player in the lineup is 6'6" (that being Artest). Without a doubt this is the biggest and most powerful lineup the NBA has to offer. While I agree with the TNT postgame squad that this Laker team can win a couple more championships, the only question mark remains at the point position and the consistency of the bench.

Now that Lamar is sixth man Laker nation feels at ease with a definitive leader driving and popping during the cool down stretches, but this still leaves plenty of pressure on Farmar, Shannon Brown, and Josh Powell to step up big as they have so far this season. I'd like to see more incremental substitutions from the coaching staff (keeping Artest in as a defensive anchor when turnovers are ripe for the picking) rather than sweeping overhauls that have the tendency of throwing momentum as we've seen early on this season.

The Colts and Saints remain 9-0 and are due for a loss: the Colts play a vengeful Ravens team that needs to prove itself without star OLB Terrell Suggs in a very tough AFC East division while the Saints go to Tampa Bay where the Packers lost a couple weeks ago against a breakout performance by rookie stud Josh Freeman. The Tampa Bay secondary is still very talented, and if New Orleans can't get their off-and-on running game going, I expect this to be a defensive battle and a possible upset. The Vikings are now 8-1 and play the struggling Seahawks this weekend.

Upset alerts for Pac-10 football: Oregon at Arizona, Cal at Stanford (Go Bears).

And no one cares about college basketball this early in the season.

Back In This...

Songs Of Summer 2009

The recession hasn't just affected our wallets. The music landscape's been pretty barren in 2009, but on the bright side we still have a little less than half the year to make up for it...

Here are some songs heating up the summer so far:


"Stillness Is The Move"
Artist: The Dirty Projectors
Album: Bitte Orca





"Kinda Like A Big Deal"
Artist: Clipse featuring Kanye West
Album: Til The Casket Drops
Clipse feat. Kanye West - Kinda Like A Big Deal



"Southern Point"
Artist: Grizzly Bear
Album: Veckatimest

Some GREAT footage of their performance in SF. The track finds a new center in rhythm.



"The Reeling"
Artist: Passion Pit
Album: Manners

It was a great pleasure hanging out with these guys in Berkeley my last semester of college. I saw them rock San Francisco's Mezzanine the night after.



"The Fixer"
Artist: Pearl Jam
Album: Backspacer





"Best I Ever Had"
Artist: Drake

Drake - "Best I Ever Had" (EXPLICIT)

Terrible raunchy lyrics but killer delivery from the beat to the schizophrenic vocals.



And for anyone looking for a solid, cheap yet filling taco joint check out Casita Taco al Carbon on Cahuenga in Studio City (so glad I live down the street!). My only caveat is that they close at 8PM so unfortunately no late night runs.

Extreme Makeover: Aquaman

Aquaman is the lamest superhero ever. His powers consist of breathing underwater and talking to sea animals while donning tasteless leather bodysuits. Since his birth in 1941, the character's only solid development occurred in 1994 when Arthur Curry lost his hand to piranhas and attached a prosthetic harpoon launcher to his wrist (Badass, right?).

He then proceeded to grow long hair and a beard. With his edgy yet eternally skintight Kris Kristofferson look, Curry finds Atlantis and starts to kick some ass. The franchise returned to basic shitty Aquaman soon after the turn of the twenty first century.

Oh yeah, did I mention that of all the animals Aquaman could have kicked it with in his sixty odd years underwater, he chose a seal for a pet sidekick?

Anyway, I've provided you fine people with some ideas for how to make this miserably flamboyant seaman superhero worthy.


Lemme Lemme Upgrade Ya


The Crystal Sword could collapse into a spinning propeller so that Aquaman 2.0 could jet around the reefs in style.

And when I say jellyfish cannon, I really mean a jelly-school launcher. Remember that crazy scene in "Sphere" when Queen Latifah gets owned?

Just in case you forgot:


Her best work, I must say.

The Big Suck

El mundo hasn't changed much since last week, but there's plenty to update in the entertainment world.

Before we enter the suck, let's take a moment to appreciate a wonderful new remix of those catchy boys from Berklee.

And down we go. Two of the major disappointments of the summer hit theaters and teles this past week:

1) "Bruno" sucked, and sucked, and then sucked some more. Yes, I laughed a few times, but we should seriously consider drawing a line at talking penises. There are simply some things that you will never be able to cleanse your mind of (especially after seeing it on the big screen), and this movie contained more of those moments than "Attack of the Clones."

Borat won audiences because his presence lived as such an obscure and harmless referential parody that we could healthily rejoice in our endless list of Kazakhstani-Fried Quotables. Bruno is such an extreme that it becomes uncomfortable to watch on multiple levels, as if we had to watch the nude wrestling scene from Borat for an hour and a half.

Borat was built out of a strange sort of foreign innocence that can still deliver upon repeat viewings by virtue of his disturbing revelations of American society. Bruno, on the other hand, spawns out of the opposite, and watching the latter for more than fifteen minutes is disturbing in and of itself. Whereas Borat forced us to come to terms with an ugly underbelly of American society, there is a sense that Bruno reverses the camera, revealing less about any segment of society than the willing patrons in attendance.

2) The premiere of the sixth season of "Entourage" was so bad it was like watching a summary of last season sans the shrooming scene (just in case you missed season five, nothing happened). Ari has officially transformed from slightly sympathetic to straight up sadistic, Lloyd isn't funny, and Turtle's smoking-pot-in-the-bathtub relationship with Meadow Soprano is just about as believable as my Sunday strip poker sessions with Megan Fox.

Perhaps the only redeeming quality of the show at this point is Emmanuelle Chriqui, a.k.a. Sloan, who is so hot that we forget she can't act, or that she finds Kevin Connolly's prepubescence worth babysitting. Note: we will never see them in action because the TV might just explode out of confusion. Same goes for Turtle-Meadow.

My favorite part of the premiere had to be the conclusion, because the show actually tried to make us feel sorry for Vince, who had just nailed Sloan's steamy blonde friend in his Escalade and had no one to talk about it with...

Will someone just Gatsby him already? And I'm not talking about Scorcese.

3) HBO's new series "Hung" is actually pretty interesting though unbelievable for a couple of reasons:

A) Lenore, played by Rebecca Creskoff, wonders if she could have her ass licked by the Punisher, which is fine, but she actually says, "Will he lick my ass?" at speaking volume in front of a full salon.

B) Look at this family. The parents, played by The Punisher a.k.a. Thomas Jane and Anne Heche are in the center, the kids are surrounding them. How do these two sex symbols (in different ways) produce such hideous offspring? It's just plain uncomfortable to watch these brats when they enter the screen.

C) Why does he hook up with her?

Dem Blues of Disloyalty

The Democrats must be feeling a little uneasy about their future these days...

Okay, maybe that's a stretch seeing as how Stuart Smalley's recount win in Minnesota busted any hopes of a Republican fillibuster("Doggone it, people like him!"), MC Sanford disappeared to pay an international tribute to John Edwards (Chapurowned!), not to mention the simple truth that there is no current "head of the Republican Party" since that fat fuck resigned to pursue a blossoming music career.

But even though the Democrats are sitting pretty for now and can basically pass whatever legislation President Obama wants, the future looks a bit more challenging for the blues due to two major resignations that have been announced over the past couple weeks.

Firstly, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villairagosa dropped out of the upcoming gubernatorial race, possibly due to his own adulterous past. Villairagosa would have certainly been the man to beat in the upcoming race as his popularity among minorities, especially the state's huge Hispanic voting body, is unprecedented in California history. His announcement, however, leaves the Democrats two remaining candidates: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Jerry Brown. Both of these choices may be too liberal for a California in the financial dumps. Neither of these candidates can really boast fiscal credibility or economic savvy. Though both men can show off various accomplishments in the trendy green sector, these blue bureaucrats might not be that attractive to the general public that has proven more conservative than most would have predicted. Given the economic times, the people just might put their faith in Her Bidness Meg Whitman. Her relatively centrist platform and business leadership, along with the clear opportunity for California to elect its first female governor ever could prove a feasible victory for the GOP.

Secondly, Sarah Palin quit as governor of Alaska, inspiring a national chorus of Gosh Darnits. The Republican Party had not been forewarned of her resignation, and when the announcement became public they responded with their own "Gee-Whiz!" Her resignation could mean that she's focusing all of her time on her potential 2012 candidacy, but it could also mean that she might not run for president. Either way, the Democrats lose their easiest target to date, for now if not forever, and will have to locate some new red fodder to replace her.

One final note: in light of the recent tragic death of quarterback and all-around badass Steve McNair, Villairagosa and Sanford should count their blessings that their mistresses have never been armed and dangerous.

!Mundo Monday!

After celebrating a long, finger-lickin' good weekend commemorating our nation's independence, it seems appropriate to return to the world at large as it spins in the ongoing summer scoop...




Ginger Ail

FYI: There is an ethnic group known as the Uyghurs (pronounced Whee-gurs).

FYI: Uyghurs typically stand out among other Chinese as many have blue eyes and red hair, and live in the Xinjiang Province (an autonomous region formerly known as the Islamic East Turkestan Republic).

I repeat, there are ginger kids in China.

Ever since Mao occupied Uyghur territory tensions have remained high between the Chinese government and this Muslim minority eastern province. Immigration policies and incentives for ethnic Han (majority Chinese) have continued to challenge Uyghur majority in the region, and today these people occupy 50 percent of the region. Since September 11, 2001 and China's vocal support of the War on Terror Uyghur nationalists have been dubbed terrorists by the Chinese national government, and violent clashes between the majority Han Chinese military and Uyghur separatists have often been fatal occurrences.

Things have escalated further in the weeks following Obama's liberation of two Uyghurs formerly detained at Gitmo under terrorist charges by the Chinese government. Protests over two Uyghur factory workers erupted into turmoil that apparently led to the PLA to fire indiscriminately into a crowd of protestors, leaving 156 dead. At least 800 people have been labeled "injured" in what the Chinese government call the Xinjiang riots. Nominally autonomous regions continue to plague the Chinese state with its lifelong legacy of a disunified and diverse internal empire. Brutal crackdowns in Tibet and Xinjiang stand as living testament to China's domestic nature of insecurity and hark back to the tanks of Tiananmen.



From Russia, With Love

Obama has met with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to achieve a new nuclear arms reduction agreement as apart of his START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) initiative that will cut each country's current nuclear stockpile by thirty percent. These two countries alone account for 95 percent of the world's total nuclear weapons arsenal.

The governments hope to achieve military cooperation in Afghanistan, even if it just means Russia supplies some weapons. The issue of missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic will surely be discussed this week. The erection of new missile defense systems would support international relations' Offense-Defense theory which suggests that as offensive capability gives way to defensive strategy states can increase defense so as to sustain a period of relative peace. Way to go O-Ders...This Scud's for you.