Gone Fishin — For Justice!

I got a fistful of beads and I’m getting ready to toss them to girls in hopes of seeing some skin. Maybe I’ll even get a cute judge and start and uproar in the court room!

Yep, today I’ll be celebrating Fat Tuesday by doing my civic duty — spending a full day reading books while I complain about doing my civic duty. Yep, I have Jury Duty, and hopefully it’ll just be a one-day thing, since I have a story due tomorrow.

Either way, there will be no blogging until this whole thing is done. Enjoy your day. I’m sure it will be better than mine. As long as I don’t get held in contempt for tossing aforementioned beads around, I should be back tomorrow to celebrate to start of Lent with youse.

Leftovers: Is the Pizza Pope Catholic?

• Hey kids! Want the opportunity to (1) make more money than I do and (2) get poked fun at on this website at least once a week? Metro is hiring! [JournalismJobs.com]

• Kevin Smith is coming to speak at Penn! And what he is known for, according to the campus paper: “His films are also known for for sexual references and graphic displays of bodily functions.” Indeed! [Daily Pennsylvanian]

• Fearing the success of Marley & Me will put America’s CQ (Cuteness Quotient) at levels that the Chinese could not ever match, the nation opens a panda kindergarten. [Reuters]

• Ahh, but America returns the cuteness volley: Red pandas doing online dating! That means that, despite having both tried online dating, the red panda Fagan is leading me, 1-0, in number of dates. But how can I be mad when the little buggers are so cute! [6 ABC]

• The official mascot of the NCAA, J.J. Jumper, caused $6,500 worth of damage to the Columbia student TV station’s equipment when he accidentally backflipped into it. Sadly, this is probably the highlight of the year for the Columbia athletic department. [Columbia Daily Spectator]

• Earlier today I admired Bode Miller’s use of the Olympics as simply a two-week party. Now it’s time to admire the rich. Mark Cuban is offering a million dollars for charity if Donald Trump blows up a rubber glove with his nose on For Love or Money tonight. Make it $2 million for Trump to put on the J.J. Jumper costume and you could probably get elected president, Mark. [Blog Maverick via Deadspin]

• Will the day soon be coming when bloggers accept oral sex for linking new products? I’m a little easier than that. Really, all you have to do is laugh at my jokes and I’ll write whatever you want. [Jeremy Zawodny]

• The founder of Domino’s Pizza — the “Pizza Pope” — is planning the first “Catholics only” town in the U.S. No abortion, no fornication, no contraception, &c. And, on Tuesdays, Jesus’ blood is three goblets for $7 and comes with a free side of consecrated cheesy bread! [The Sunday Times]

But joy is wisdom, Time an endless song

Today’s Inquirer sex column by Faye Flam must have inspired some editorial meeting discussion before it ran. It’s, essentially, a movie review of a set of sex instruction tapes called Better Sex Video Series, which is actually a remake of a 1991 series of the same name. (Truly, not since they remade House of Wax has there been such an important update on film.)

It’s, eh, fairly graphic for something in the Inquirer — though tamer than anything we have in the back of PW. (And thank God for that.) It’s also funny and entertaining and, really, totally unlike the Inquirer that I wasn’t really sure I was reading the Inquirer until I got to the last paragraphs:

“Better Sex” did give a realistic and comprehensive overview of the mechanics of sex and its most popular variations. It just didn’t capture much passion. [...] Perhaps it’s related to what W.B. Yeats was getting at when he said the tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul. But to remedy that could take more than a $49.85 set of videos.

Ahh, a Yeats reference. That’s the Inquirer I know and love. I believe that puts both Paper Doll and Steve and Mia in check. Your move, guys.

‘Better Sex’ tapes: True education or porn? [Inky]
Feb. 23: I Am Curious (Yellow)
Feb. 24: I’d just be happy she had insurance

Blogicized: God bless the Internet

• Hmm. If you get rid of 75 staffers and apparently have a commitment to annoying, boring writing, you might come up with an annoying, boring, incorrect editorial. But think of the profit margins! [Suburban Guerilla]

• In the grand tradition of “All Your Base” and “Bubb Rubb” comes the newest Internet fad, remixing subway maps with anagrams. How else would we have known that “Fairmount” can be rearrange to spell “I Mourn Fat”? [Philebrity]

• The number and percentage of blacks at Temple has gone down since 1999. Is this a problem? Eh, I dunno. But God help Holy Family if this guy ever finds out the stats on its female-to-male ratio. (It’s 3-to-1. Why I didn’t go to Holy Family, I’ll never know.) [Marc Stier at Large]

• Who would possibly be enough of a loser to hack some blog in Delco? [I Live In Delaware County]

• The Art Museum has a new website. And it appears to be Rocky VI free. But just wait. [JMG Artblog]

Liberals don’t plant trees

I don’t want to go overboard on this whole Good Day Philadelphia is the greatest show in the universe kick, but I have another video. No, it doesn’t involve dancing or mascots (sigh). This morning, Good Day interviewed Ted Nugent:

You know, I don’t even know if the show even needed a rebuttal. Nugent’s theme of “Damn those liberals and their anti-tree planting agenda!” pretty much sums it all up.

PWD Archives: Good Day Philadelphia

A motley collection

When I was little, I used to collect everything: rocks, bottle caps, baseball cards, pogs, video games, whatever. If this little kid in Northeast Philly could get his hand on it, he was collecting it.

Over the years, I’ve tried to cool my collecting habit, since, uhm, I have like one closet in my apartment and I have no idea where I would put anything if I kept collecting. (Plus, all my old collected crap is in my parents’ house.)

I’m sure I’ll end up collecting something trivial eventually, but I doubt I’ll come up with a collection as cool as Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky, who the Wall Street Journal interviews today:

Some collectors now accept that younger people don’t want their stuff. Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky, 64, has collected the last editions of 79 daily newspapers that closed down since 1963. His adult children don’t want the old newspapers, which fill a closet. “The only kind of paper my family wants is greenbacks and stock certificates,” he says.

He hasn’t been able to find a university to take his collection, either. And now he’s under the gun to get rid of it. He is about to marry his third wife, who is 27 years old, and in the prenuptial agreement, there’s a clause that he must dispose of the collection by Dec. 31. She wants to store her shoes in that closet.

“At least I can wear my shoes,” says his fiancée, Jennifer Graham. “He never reads those papers, and besides, he likes how I look in my shoes.”

Collecting a bunch of final editions of newspapers that have folded. Now that’s a real newspaperman. Let’s hope the Poynter Institute has some extra space.

Who’s Going to Want Grandma’s Hoard Of Antique Gnomes? [WSJ]

Bode Miller is totally awesome

Some people don’t like outspoken athletes, especially when they don’t back up their outspokenness with winning. Not me. Give me a team with Terrell Owens, Latrell Sprewell, Ty Cobb, Barry Bonds, Vijay Singh, Ron Artest, Kobe Bryant, John Daly, Ron Artest, Freddie Mitchell, &c.

Wouldn’t that be an awesome team, no matter what they played? Sure, they might bicker and fight and lose every game, but that’s the fun of it! I’d buy season tickets.

Another person I’d want on my hypothetical team — I think they’d play Arena Football — is drunk skier Bode Miller, who Metro interviewed on the final day of the Olympics:

Don’t you feel like you lost a great chance?

Not at all. I wasn’t the one who had great expectations of results. I’m very satisfied of what I did here — I did my best. Sure, I didn’t win a medal, but I’m still proud of what I accomplished.

C’mon, any regret?
None. I came here to have fun and to live the Olympics at my best. Quality of life is the most important thing to me. I didn’t want to come here, shut myself in my hotel room for two weeks and then come back with no medals.

Are you talking of your friend Daron Rahlves?
Exactly. At the end, we got the same results. But, thanks to many parties, I was very “Olympically active.” And that’s good.

Bode Miller totally just went to the Olympics to drink and get laid. And then he turned Olympics into an adverb. This guy is awesome. Do they sell Bode Miller jerseys? I bet they’re cheap after that stinker of a performance he turned in.

Bode just wants to have fun [Metro]
Join Bode [Nike.com]

For whom the (David) Bell tolls

For good? Please?

Bad elbow keeps Bell on bench [Inky]

Quickies: Get off my lawn!

• The Inquirer goes all Hey, you kids, get off my lawn! Oh, and skateboarding is “antisocial behavior.” And newspapers wonder why nobody under the age of 21 reads. [Inky]

• Sorry, Ben: Franklin Field is too “narrow” to host Olympic track and field. That track has nine lanes. How much bigger could it be? [Bucks County Courier Times]

• Drugs in the water have turned male bass into female bass in the Potomac. See, that transgender teacher in South Jersey didn’t need to get a sex change operation — she just needed to go for a swim in the Schuylkill. [Inky]

• Metro interviews an author with a big Internet following, and runs the following quote: “I was like, ‘Holy f-king sh-t!’” You know, if you’re going to censor his quote like that you might as just well run the fucking curse words. [Metro]

It Continues: Mascot Monday on ‘Good Day’

Indeed! Last week we all saw the Good Day Philadelphia crew dancing with the mascot of the University of Delaware. It seemed to be pretty popular. (One of you even emailed me that he’d be watching today’s edition of Good Day in order to see the dancing.)

And, today, the Good Day team danced with Griffy the Griffon, the mascot of the Church Farm School in Exton, Pa. And there are new graphics, a strobe effect and discussion about the rising popularity of “Mascot Monday.” Without further ado:

Anytime I’m down, I just need to watch videos like this. They make me realize how good it is to be alive. It’s like Video Wellbutrin!

Feb. 21: Video: ‘Good Day’ Mascot Monday