Paul Lo Duca: Professional Jackass

Lo Duca, running from his problems.

You may or may not be able to tell from this picture, but Paul Lo Duca is a troublemaker and all around jackass. He has been misquoted in several New York newspapers such as the Post, Newsday, and the Daily News. Now, these papers may be the literary equivalent of a Mo Vaughn diarrhea dump, but the words hurt all the same.

Lo Duca gets upset that the media gloms go after him and no one else for interviews, but it's not because they like to pick on him, it's that he's one of the few honest guys in the clubhouse who isn't going to give you cliched answers. Recently, when expressing that he didn't want to do an interview he said "There's plenty of other guys here...They speak English, believe me." Now some people interpreted this as racist, which I think is a stupid thing to say; not everything has to be a race issue. I feel like it's more Lo Duca ("Shorty Gangsta") being a jackass and calling out his teammates because they don't wanna talk to the reporters.

Who can blame the Joses, Beltran, Gomez or Delgado for not wanting to talk to the media? Those guys are animals and demand that the players speak to them at the end of every game. If it was me, I know I wouldn't want to be bothered like that all the time. And yeah, you can use the "They get paid to play a game, they should make time for the media to get a quote," but I think that today mainstream media just has too much news and they've over saturated the market.

The fault with Lo Duca is not that he talks to the media members all the time, I think that for the most part that's a good thing. But to call out your teammates for not being the first in line to talk to the press is being a bad teammate and yes, selfish.

Lo Duca Rant Rains on Mets
--Record Online--

Thanks to Papa Ishkabibble for the insight.

Isiah Thomas's To-Do List

We here on Long Island have suffered through the misery that is Isiah Thomas for several years now. I feel like we've been through a lot together, from the Marbury trade to the Jerome James signing. This, however, is the year that everything changes. Isiah Thomas is ready to get OUT there, man, and boy-o does he have a plan.

-Trade $1.00 for 75c
-Trade an XBox 360 for an XBox.
-Give the previously mentioned Jerome James a contract extension, it just might motivate him to get in shape.
-Sign that Johan Santana fella, he really seems to know what he's doing out there. Oh, let's also trade for Todd Bertuzzi, we really need an enforcer.
-Paint the game floor green in order to confuse opponents.
-Make the baskets 11-feet high.
-Try to get that Yao Ming guy from Milwaukee. Or is it Wang Zhi Zhi? Yi?
-Hire Rickey Ledee as a motivational speaker.
-Play to win the game!
-Buy Eddy Curry a dictionary, tell him to look up "defense" and "rebound."
-Convert David Lee to point guard.

Chien-Ming Wang: Taiwan's Glory

Wow, ESPN is right. He really has accomplished more than he could ever imagine:

- July 27, 2006: Staten Island Yankees Retire his number 41
- He only played for two seasons.

- August 5, 2006: First time mistaken for Hideki Irabu
- Haha, Fat Toad.

- April 12, 2007: Learns first words in English
- What were they? "No, it is not true what they say. It is average size."

- May 5, 2007: Takes a perfect game into the 8th inning
- After the game, Jorge Posada had to stop him from committing Seppuku. Seppuku? Sudoku? Bukkake?

- May 14, 2007: Listed as one of Time Magazine's "Top 100 Most Influential People"
- In the "Heroes and Pioneers" section, you know, right next to Oprah, and Tony Dungy

- January 15, 2022: Elected to hall of Fame.
- Thus becoming the very first, ever, Hall-of-Famer whose last name is a slang for genitalia. Well him, and Homer Bush.

Blowing It

Up-until-this-point fantastic Rockies closer has blown 3 straight saves, allowing 9 earned runs in his last 1 and 1/3 innings pitched. When asked to comment, Fuentes began sobbing lightly into his glove.

Andrew Bogut, Is That You?

"WTF, mate?"

Isiah Is Not Completely Stupid!

Last night the Knicks managed to trade the King of Bad Contracts Mr. Steve Franics (formerly "Franchise") and soft forward Channing Frye to Portland for Zach Randolph and Fred Jones.

If Isiah can get Randolph to control his problems off the court and on, he could make the team a legitimate 5-seed in the weak East. In the East Randolph is good for 25 and 10 every night. His strong rebounding ability means the fact that Eddy Curry can't rebound isn't such a big deal. Fred Jones is really just a throw him, with very unimpressive statistics while playing roughly 21 minutes a night.

As a Knicks fan, I'm thrilled with this trade despite the obvious risks associated with Randolph. I'm figuring that the Knicks were already screwed, and Randolph's behavior problems couldn't be much worse than what they've experienced during the Layden-Thomas regime. If they could somehow add a good perimeter defender, they could be a top-tier team in the East.

Anyway....fire Isiah!

Baseball Milestone

Frank Thomas hit his 500th career homerun today and Craig Biggio collected (why collected for hits?) his 3,000th career hit. My question is: Has this ever happened before, and if so, when? My thoughts are that it's incredible unlikely, maybe the good ole folks over at Elias will mention it in their ESPN report.

UPDATE!

From Jayson Stark, of ESPN.com

Never in the history of baseball had we seen one man hit his 500th home run and another man get his 3,000th hit on the same day.

Heck, only twice before (Ernie Banks-Hank Aaron in 1970, Tony Gwynn-Wade Boggs-Mark McGwire in 1999) had we witnessed both of those magic numbers arrive in the same week.

My questions are silenced, for now.

Something that Sounds Like It Should Be on the Sports Ticker...

But actually happened!

Everyone's favorite mindless ESPN talking head (sorry, Skip Bayless) Woody Paige has been accused of sexual harassment by a former makeup artist of the always useless "Cold Pizza." Details? So glad you asked:

A woman who worked on the set of the ESPN talk show "Cold Pizza" is suing the sports network, claiming she was fired after complaining about sexual harassment by the show's host and one of its regular panelists. In the lawsuit, which also names ESPN host Jay Crawford and sports commentator Woody Paige, Rita Ragone claims that Paige pinched and fondled her and she was subjected to crude sexual comments from Crawford.

Ragone, a makeup artist and hair stylist from the Bronx, claimed Paige once grabbed her backside so forcefully, she was "propelled forward and into the air."

We over here at...(need a clever nickname) are fairly amused by the fact that Paige still has a job while Harold Reynolds was fired immediately upon accusal of sexual harassment.

Quote courtesy of http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--espn-sexualharass0628jun28,0,3810487.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork

Story courtesy of Deadspin.com

Eric Chavez

"How does it feel when I fuck your fantasy team in the ass?"

What happened to Eric Chavez? An excellent defensive player and former superstar, his numbers have been diminishing since 2005. Chavez's numbers, 2001-2004

2001: .288/.338/.540
2002: .275/.348/.513
2003: .282/.350/.514
2004: .276/.397.501

2004 was an absolute stud year and brought promises of many similar years to come, with a WARP3 of 8.9 and an EQA of an even .300. Starting in 2005, however...

2005: .269/ .329/ .466
2006: .241 /.351 /.435
2007: .239/ .301 /.442

...with a very poor .254 EQA so far for 2007. For any of you fantasy players dumb enough to draft him fairly early, thinking he could regain pre-2005 form... count me among your stupid. What happened to your Eric Chavez? You could have BEEN somebody!

Anectdotal Nonsense

Last season I was watching a Mets-Rockies affair when non other than Byung-Hyun Kim came to bat. Well there happened to be a runner on second, Clint Barmes. (You may remember Barmes as the fellow who got badly injured last year carrying Todd Helton's deer meat.) Well as Kim is not really a fantastical hitter, he was called upon by manager Clint Hurdle to bunt over Barmes. Kim lays down a bunt right in front of the plate, unlikely to move over the runner. As you may have guessed by now, this is not the exciting part of our story. Instead of running down to first base, as is customary in baseball, Kim just stands there. He does not move, he simply waits to be tagged out by our hero, the catcher. Barmes has no idea whether to run or to stay at second. This leads to my all time favorite statement by an announcer, exclaimed by Keith Hernandez:

"What the hell is Kim doing?!"

Absolute brilliance on Keith's part.
(This story has been largely helped out by Christopher Leap, I thank you for it)

The Old Switch-a-Roo

NASCAR

Now I would never want to a do a post praising the Sport of Kings Rednecks, but this is an awesome story.

Apparently this guy Denny Hamlin (wow what a southerner, this guy is named after Denny's), is a driver. But because he was busy beating his wife or something, I don't know what these rednecks do, he was late, and missed the start. Now, before I go farther, how hard is your job as a NASCAR driver. All you do is turn left, that's it, no need for a tomtom here. This idiot just could not be there for the green flag.

So, his team decides to throw in some asshole named Aric Almirola instead (again, look at this guys first name, yes it's spelled right, I guess its how they pronounce Eric down there in Dixieland).

Then, when our man Denny shows up via is helicopter, he waits for his teammate to make a pit stop, and kicks his ass out of the car. I imagine it to be like in Grand Theft Auto, you know just open the door and hop in, no argument whatsoever. So now Denny is driving, and he wins the fucking race. That's right, checkered flag for Mr. Tardy.

Now I don't know how this is allowed, and apparently it's the first time in NASCAR history (haha there's a history of NASCAR). But I fully encourage this to take place more. And not only should they change drivers, but vehicles as well. One lap in the Stock Car, one in a Motorcyle, one in a monster truck, one on a razor scooter, one just in Heely's, and for one lap you gotta moonwalk the track. Now strategy would really come into play here when deciding which lap to use what, because you do not want to be the one moonwalking in front of an angry Tony Stewart in a monster truck. Maybe, just maybe, if NASCAR does all this stuff, I'll watch some races. But only during commercials of the real sports on ESPN Classic. Like Women's Nine-ball.

The Occasional Sports Ticker

-Jon Kitna says the Lions will win more than ten games this year. After the interview Kitna was taken to Sunnyside Mental Health Facility for some "rest and relaxation."
*Upon hearing Kitna's guarantee Bill Simmons immediately leaped on to the Lions bandwagon.
-RIP Vince McMahon.
-New studies show Jason Schmidt's vagin-ish goatee is keeping his ERA above 4.00.
-Ozzie Guillen still convinced small ball is "the way to go, definitely."
-16 year old girl marries her 40 year old track coach. There's no joke to make or anything like that, that's just dumb-fucking-founding.
-A-rod not clutch for only hitting one ninth inning homerun.
-Cox ties ejection record without umpire stabbage!
-Isiah Thomas attempts to trade Jerome James to Portland for the Blazers first round pick, fails.
-John Amaechi is still gay.

In All Seriousness, Reasons You Suck at Poker AND Are a Poker Douche

-You show your cards after every hand, regardless of whether you won, lost, or even called the Big Blind.
*Your rationale for this is probably something along the lines of "Now they'll never be able to tell when I'm bluffing!" I assure you, they will know.
-You didn't spot the sucker within the first half hour at the table. In the words of the great Amarillo Slim, this means the sucker is you.
-You look at your cards the second you get them. Slow down there, Johnny Anxious, why not have a look around the table and see what else is going on?
-When the blinds are $20/$40, you try to raise $10.
*Bonus points if you don't know what a Blind is.
-You line up your chips in their stacks so that all the little markings match perfectly.
-You try to do the "Take two stacks of chips and put them together into one" and fail miserably.
-You bet $2 on a side pot instead of checking it down.
-You insist on seeing the entire community even when you fold before the flop.
*Bonus points if, when the river card comes out, you go "Ahhhhhh of course" like some kind of lame sage.
-Your favorite professional player is Chris Moneymaker or Jamie Gold.
-You take cell phone calls at the table and insist to whomever you're speaking with that you're "just taking all these suckers' money."

Jamie Gold is proud that I wrote the whole
column in the second person.

Tim Wakefield's Thought Process During the June 23 Sox - Padres Game

Ok so, yeah, I think I'm going to go ahead and throw a knuckle ball to Mike Cameron here. Ok here it goes... still going... aw shit he hit the ball. Yeah that's definitely a double. No big deal, I can work around this.

Josh Bard up now, this bitch is not ready for the power of a knuckleball! Fear the wrath of the mighty and powerful pitch that is this knuckleball. Here I go and... ha, foul ball motherfu-- aw fuck that's a homerun.

Let's just try to get out of the inning without any further damage from Mr. Greene. Any advice, Timmy Wakefield?

Tim's inner child: Blaze a fastball right by him!
Present day Tim: But I've made my career on throwing knuckleballs and slow curves...
TIC: OH MY GOD I grew up to be a pussy!
PDT: Shutup, here comes the knuckler!

Yeah I probably should have seen that coming, he really wailed on that one. Aw come on, don't take me out of the... all right fine, but I'm telling you, only the knuckler can save us now.

What with the Kims and All That Nonsense...

In response to the Kim update from Mr. Buster, I would like to further inform you on how some of the world famous Kims are doing today.

First and foremost we have Anthony Kim, yet another Kim golfer. He may or may not be related to any or all previously mentioned Kims. He was seen earlier in his London castle eating Fruit Loops.

I was able to contact retired Belgian tennis player Kim Clijsters as she was preparing to cover Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" with Anna Kournikova.

North Korea's Kim Jong Il has fallen on hard times, as he tried to sell me cleaning supplies when I reached him via my cellular telephone.

Finally, Byung Hyung Kim answered our calls and it turns out that the score of nearly all his games is "Other team many, Kim few." Better luck next time Mr. Kim!

We hope you have enjoyed this brief Kim update. Join us next week as we follow the Curry's in the celebrity world.

Pedro and his little friend.

Wait, Wait, Wait

For all of you readers who are fans of have heard of the LPGA, you must already be aware of this phenomenon.
The two ladies pictured above, are both female golfers, are both playing in the Wegmans Tournament, are both very, very asian, are both at -7 after 2 rounds, are both tied for first, and are both named Kim!
That's right, the leaders, as posted on the Official LPGA Website, are Mi Hyun Kim, and In-Kyung Kim.
Um, I don't know which one is which, by the way.


MISSING UPDATE: No word yet on Byung-Hyun Kim's Current Score.

However, it is confirmed that Snakes On a Plane villain Eddie Kim is currently tied for 54th at just 3 over par.

Huh?

The man you see above you is Matt Cain. Earlier tonight, he walked Kei Igawa. Oh yes, you heard it hear first, ladies and gents, WALKED Kei Igawa. Pound in some fastballs? Not for you, Mr. Cain! You show Kei what nibbling the corners is all about.

When the San Francisco fans saw the Lo Pan-looking character that had been walked...


They immediately began hunting down Cain like Robert Duvall in "Falling Down."

The lesson is, as always: Never let a foreign pitcher making his first career National League start get on base!

Inside the Mind of a Savior

Kanye West discovers his fellow acts at the New York site of Live Earth


Hello, yes I am very proud to be part of Liver Earth this year. Yes, yes, I know, thank you, I just try to do what I can to help people. So let's see who else will be joining me in my quest to save the planet...

Ahh shit, Luda, yea that's my man






Oh yea, my baby Alicia keys, you just know I'm gonna be tappin' that again


John Mayer? Um, nah I mean that's cool. We can have some whiteys there, as long as he cares about black people.




AFI? Is this a real band? Ain't that the American Film Institute, oh damn I get it, they making a movie of all my humanitarianism and shit.



FALL OUT BOY? Oh goddammit, I've seen these bitches taking up my spots on TRL, do they really want a bunch of screaming little girls at this concert event?




Kelly Clarkson!! Wow, I guess they do. This, this, this is definitely not how you save the planet.




Bon Jovi!? These old-ass crackers gonna be on my stage! These grandpas couldn't save the dinosaurs could they? What makes them think they can stop global warming?


Smashing...Pumpkins...Okay who's been messing with my list. Because I don't think this is funny. I think this concert's gonna be a damn clusterfuck after I finish my set. Y'all just lucky I am so powerful, I don't need no one's help in saving the world.




The Police!?!? Oh shit no one told me the 5-0 was gonna be there. You know how I feel about the NYPD. That's it, I'm out, good luck Earth.

Mike, With or Without the Mad Dog

"I sure would love me some Diet Coke!"

Ever since the firing of one Mr. Don Imus, my morning commute to school (all 12 minutes of it) just hasn't been the same. Though I never really fell in love with that morning program, it was something different than I usually listened to and offered a nice change of pace. When the show went down because of the enormous controversy surrounding his comments made about the Rutgers basketball team, I was at a loss for what to listen to in the morning. The pompous douche Boomer Esiason and professionally irritated Jason Whitlock simply did not get the job done, and it seemed as if WFAN would not find a host good enough to replace Imus. Then they took Mike Francessa and Chris Russo and moved them to the morning slot temporarily, and it wasn't bad, just Mike and the Dog, morning style. But when they split them up and put Francessa primarily in the morning, I realized what an awesome solo host he was.

Now I feel that Francessa's general speaking talents and overall knowledge are really dragged down by the whiny Christopher Russo, the Mad Dog. My proposal is this: Keep Mike in the Imus slot and have him also host Mike and the Mad Dog twice a week. When Russo is going solo, extend Benigno and Roberts' show until 2 and have Russo go on from 2:00 - 5:30 PM. Short of getting Imus back, Francessa is the only host talented enough to keep the morning show's ratings up.

Edit: Excuse me for going a bit too far on the Francessa love affair.

The Occasional Sports Ticker

-Sammy Sosa hits 600 home runs, soul immediately repossessed by Satan as per their contract.
-If Jean-Sebastien Giguere signs a 4-year, $24 million dollar contract and no one cares, does he still get the money?
-Chinese draft prospect Yi Jianlian's stock drops dramatically following his inability to play basketball.
-Fantastic Four commercials during NBA Finals fail to inspire Cavaliers to play four men at a time in order to beat the Spurs.
-Bill Simmons' tears over loss of draft lottery beginning to flood the Manhattan Island.
-Jason Giambi's injection of (Apple) juice fails to make him anything more than delicious.
-Kevin Garnett turns agent to stone with steely gaze for even suggesting a trade to the Celtics.
-Mike Brown still trying to figure out how to score on those darned Spurs.

It's 10:00 PM...

Does Pacman Jones know where your children are?

Things to Do as an Asshole on June 22: Kobe Bryant

Hey guys it's Kobe. Due to my recent dick behavior, many of my admirers have asked me how it is that I wake up every day and find new ways to be an asshole. Well in response I've created a short list on how to be a better asshole on a day to day basis.

1. Demand to be traded from a team that chose you over a 9-time champion coach and a top-5 all time center.
2. Put battery acid in a child's birthday cake.
3. Demand to be traded from a team that stood by you as you underwent a rape trial.
4. Steal Doyle Brunson's crutch
5. Call Rudy Tomjanovich in a Kermit Washington voice asking to get together.
6. Scream at Curtis Pride because he won't pay attention to your voice.
7. Write an article about Darin Erstad's grittyness factor.
8. Tell an 8 year old orphan that Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, and Shrek all died.


These are things anyone can do to become a better asshole before noon on a Tuesday. If people don't hate you by dinner, then you just haven't done your job.

...Kobe!

Only Slightly Shorter Fantastic Four

Weird shit is happening we're getting married johnny get the surfer guy "i'm good looking and turn into fire" lol johnny general says reed is a bitch reed calls general asshole DR DOOM IS BACK WHAT THE FUCK somehow catch surfer realize he's super fly help surfer defeat incredible cloud vortex that makes no sense surfer dead alba alive yay we're REALLY married now surfer alive!

This is roughly how compressed the actual movie was.