I just wanna propose a toast. To my wife: forty five eleven years ago today May Yum and I got married. Some of you were there, some of you weren't born yet, some of you are now dead. But we both said, "I do" and we haven't agreed on a single thing since. But, I'm glad I married you, May Yum, 'cause...it could have been worse...and besides...I still love you.
Over a week has passed since the Paul Shandor Memorial Golf Tournament, or as my partners have aptly named it. “Drunken Hillbilly Golf Weekend.” My recap post was delayed because of family vacation (which may merit its own post).
At one time, Nanty Glo was a hopping spot. We’d start at the Bench, where you could get deep fried wings, deep fried potatoes, deep fried chicken shaped differently, or a burger. Eventually, we would walk a couple blocks, past the stop light (notice I said THE , not A, stoplight) to Al’s. You could even go to a bar with music. Once there, it would be ugly, but it was still a different set of walls. Sometimes, I’d run into people I went to high school with. Sometimes I’d run into the mothers of the people I went to high school with dating other people I went to high school with. The town earned its reputation as Glo Vegas. Sadly, like the Rat Pack days in the desert, Glo Vegas is gone. Some other high spots and observations:
I find myself in frequent disagreement with the alleged forgotten status of your "Lost Hits," but I concede not everyone may possess my encyclopedic knowledge of Kajagoogoo B-sides. That said, "Straight Up" by Paula Abdul is not, by any stretch of the imagination, obscure.
Please make changes accordingly.
Sentence I read recently:
A traditionalist approach would consider the contextualized history of Pauline interpretation in the Latin world in the late fourth and early fifth century.
George Carlin is dead, and I don't give a shit.
From Political Wire:
Before the election year began, McCain and his fellow Vietnam War hero, Democratic War Hero Bob Kerrey, told me in separate interviews that they had made a private pact. If they won their party's 2000 nomination, they would fulfill the promise that John F Kennedy and Barry Goldwater had made to each in the expectation of contending the 1964 election. That is, they would campaign daily together across the United States engaging in extensive, freewheeling Lincoln-Douglas-type debates.
Now, "Lincoln-Douglas-type" could mean two different things. The eponymous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas went like this: first guy speaks for 60 minutes; second guy speaks for 90 minutes; first guy gets 30 minutes for rebuttal. There's also a Lincoln-Douglas debate format, which is a particular style of forensic debating. The specifics are eyeglazing, but feature pretty long speech times, and plenty of cross-examination.
I am going to go so far to say that there is no way in hell a modern presidential candidate is going to do either of those things. John McCain is not-not-going to speak uninterrupted for an hour and a half. And do you really think a candidate will let himself be extensively cross-examined by an opponent?
For good or ill, politicians aren't Daniel Webster-style orators anymore. Less structured debates are all well and good, but stop calling them Lincoln-Douglas when they clearly aren't.
I went to a bra fitting party last night. Yep, you read that correctly - BRA FITTING PARTY. (And, yes, this is Yum, not Buzz or FS -- though if they went to a bra fitting party, that would be hilarious.)
Eight women, one little lingerie boutique, two Jewish grandmothers running the shop. I learned several things:
- What I thought were "padded" bras - are actually "molded" bras and are AWESOME!
- They don't "measure" you for a bra any more -- bras are so different these days brand to brand and even style to style, it's all about trying them on.
- It is a fabulous sales technique to tell your clients that they should be bra models. They will buy anything.
Here's the scene: Eight of us standing around awkwardly looking at bras. Bra lady yells out "OK Ladies, one of you has to be first, yell out your size." I decide to throw my hat in the ring. I tell her what I'm wearing now - she gives me the up and down and predicts I'm really a 34, not a 36, grabs three bras and ushers me to the dressing room -- which is really just a curtained stall in the little boutique. I try it on. Bra lady comes in to check the size -- she pokes, she adjusts, she has me raise my arms, sit down, jump around. Then declares that the bra fits fabulously (which it does). That's where the usual turns into the bizarre -- she yells out for the other sales lady to come and take a look at how good this looks. She comes in, pokes around -- and has me put on a cami to parade around the store for everyone.
It goes downhill from there. A bunch of suburban moms drunk on sexy bras parading around the store. Before I know it I'm wearing this number ...
I am an avid golfer, have had surgeries on both knees (and still have bad knees afterwards), and apparently had nothing better to do on Tuesday morning. So four or five different people asked me if Tiger Woods was really as bad off as he seemed during the U.S. Open, or was he embellishing/being a pussy?
I answered that he probably was hurting. I had my left (same as Tiger) ACL replaced the beginning of December in 2002. I played golf that May (or so). I wore my big, NFL lineman-like knee brace for the first couple of rounds that I played. I remember being glad that I did, because the knee takes a bunch of twisting and awkward moves. Even now, when I play more than one round in a couple day span, my knees hurt. And since Tiger swings roughly twice as hard as I do, I assume it puts twice the pressure on his knee. Of course, my replaced ACL should have been a lot worse than his "cartlidge removal." The ACL is the one piece of meat that is supposed to stabilize the knee in the face of exactly the kind of torque that a golf swing puts on it. Still, at the end of the day, I figured he was really hurting.
Turns out that Tiger has great big balls. And I Ain't talking Titleists, either. In addition to his cartlidge problems, he has been playing with a torn ACL, and more recently, stress fractures in his leg. From Golf.com:
Woods said he tore the ACL while jogging at home after the British Open last July. He chose not to have surgery and went on a run that included seven consecutive victories, including the Dubai Desert Classic in Europe and his Target World Challenge, an unofficial event.
He did not play overseas late last year for the first time since 2003, hopeful that rest could allow him to play more this year. But the pain intensified through the Masters, where he finished second, and Woods said the cartilage damage developed from the ACL injury.
What he didn't anticipate were the stress fractures, discovered as he tried to get ready to play in the Memorial.
Let's get one thing straight -- if your ACL is torn just a little, it greatly affects the stability of your knee. There are two derees of ACL injury: just t tiny tear and totally fucked. Not much middle ground. I walked around with a completely gone ACL, and sometimes I'd just fall down because my knee gave way. How did Tiger play the amazing golf he did this year (remember talking about him going all year undefeated?)?
I am beyond impressed.
So is this acceptable now at ESPN?:
I'm just telling you, what would have been the worst collapse in Finals history nearly happened as I sat next to two drunken douche bags in Kobe jerseys, one with a man purse (the exact same color of my mother's Louis Vuitton purse, by the way), the other with a Crockett beard. I feel like you need to know these things.
Bill Simmons has started his own personal blog, and has taken swipes at ESPN editors there and on Deadspin (I won't link, because no one cares). So it is possible that he's writing "douche bags" and the editors are afraid to edit it out.
I'd just like to know what the standards are, in case Ben is watching SportsCenter and asks "Dad, why did they just call Terrell Owens an asshat?" "I don't know, Ben. He's more of a douchenozzle."
Hilary is officially out, and backing Obama. Not all of her supporters have gotten the memo:
Mrs. Stone, who works at Coffeewood Correctional Center in central Virginia, said she would rather vote for Republican John McCain than Mr. Obama, whom she called "an elitist. And I'm not alone. I work in a men's prison with blacks and Latinos who feel the same way I do."
Hey, newsflash here, you're an idiot, quite aside from your viewing inmates of a medium security prison as a good source for political commentary. Clinton and Obama are basically peas in a pod in terms of policy. There are some nuances, but, for all intents and purposes, they're the same candidate. McCain is very, very different. If Clinton is A, Obama is B, and McCain is around Q or R. A Hilary backer voting for McCain over Obama is spite, pure and simple.
If nothing else, the next president is probably going to name two Supreme Court justices. Here's the McCain website on that:
John
McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be
overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand
that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the
bench.
I'm willing to bet, Mrs. Stone, that's not your view of that particular case.
In short, Clinton backers: don't be stupid.
I know that Gen X is starting to get up there a bit, but I still find it a bit...incongruous to arrive at a party where kids are running around and playing on a swingset, and the stereo is blasting "How Soon is Now?"
In my pursuit of bad TV watching, I watched the new show Swingtown last night. Holy crap was that the worst show I have ever watched, or what? And, yep, I watched every last moment of it.
Also, in case you missed it THIS IS THE 70S! Every frame of the show was dripping with 70s references -- musical interludes every 5 seconds (James Taylor – Fire and Rain; Stealers Wheel –
Stuck in the Middle With You; Johnny Nash – I Can See Clearly Now; Free – All Right Now; Lynyrd Skynyrd – Sweet Home Alabama; Van Morrison – Moondance; Commodores – Machine Gun; Redbone – Come and Get Your Love; T-Connection – Do What You Wanna Do; Rita Coolidge – (Your Love Has
Lifted Me) Higher And Higher; to name a few), it's 4th of July 1976 (hello Bicentennial!), and of course, the clothes, the swingers, the drugs, the orange appliances ...
And, really, can you have a show about swinging couples on network TV without nudity? Weird. It's like a bizarrely cleaned up version of Boogie Nights. Perhaps because I was all of 4 when that decade ended, I also have a hard time believing that this shit really happened in such a widespread manner in middle America.
Unrelated announcement: FS and I are having a party next weekend. Please bring your keys ...
I was watching Sports Center yesterday morning with my son, when they show Mariners manager John McLaren going off. They did a good job bleeping him out, and even pixelated his mouth for all of the lip readers out there. Still, Ben was all kind of "hey, what is this?" Nice way to start the day.
Now excuse me while I buckle it the fuck up and get after it.
A little love for Bo Diddley?
I have three separate speeds in my professional writing style: (1) casual, for when I want to write a a normal human being; (2) normal, which is a little more formal, but still a lot less stuffy than most attorneys write; and (3) full blown asshole, which is what most people think of as typical lawyer writing.
Usually, I write in style (2). This is still in short, subject-verb sentences. I define terms and stick to them rigidly. I try to write short, structured paragraphs. But I do not use a lot of meaningless fluff, endless thesaurus milking, sprinkling "moreovers" or "thereins" all over the place, and things like that. I try to make my normal professional writing understandable by the non-attorneys that usually read it.
I use #3 only when I have to. This is almost always when I am adverse with another lawyer. It hurts me to write that way.
I use #1 much more frequently. One of the scenerios when I write casually is when I ghost write for a client. I have lots of these, especially when it's a leter from a condo board to a resident. My casual writing is supposed to make it look like it did not come from an attorney. This is a good way to outline issues without bringing attorneys into the picture. So I say things like "you have to do this" instead of "you are required to do this." I am a little looser on defining terms (the "Terms"), because most people write this way, too.
Well, there are lots of attorneys who only write with style #3. For the millionth time, I just got a letter back from one of these guys, with red ink all over it. It was supposed to be from our developer client to another developer. All of the changes are stylistic. Where I think a builder says "this and/or that", the other attorney thinks it should be "this, either together with or in the alternative, that." Instead of saying we may reserve rights "as permitted by the Agreement of Sale" he says "in accordance with those reserved in the Agreement of Sale." And so on.
This guy is always like that. My problem are: (1) why should anyone write like this; and (2) even if this is appropriate in some cases, it is not right here, from a client. Sure, my causal writing is not as precise (there is actually a slight difference in both examples that I gave), but the slight falloff is not significant at all. Plus, it just looks like something a lawyer would write, which is specifically not the purpose.
Finally, please know that I swear a lot less in all of my professional writing styles than I do here.
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