Top 5 Will Do

Okay, let’s plow through this one; I’ve got sweet, sweet Phillies Budweiser to drink.

1. A Philadelphia Eagles starter has a run-in with the law; of course, he’s only arrested for dancing in the street. All you need is music. Sweet, sweet music. They’re dancin’ in Chicago! And down in New Orleans!
2. The Inquirer’s go-to guy for all things Italian-American: Joe Bubbles.
3. Rick Mariano is free, and he wears olive-colored shirts.
4. The Philadelphia police department is well on its way to the largest bong in world history. $11.5 million worth!
5. And, finally, the smoking ban rises again, Jason-like. Much like Jason, expect it to die soon, too.

Enjoy your weekend! If you need something to drink, be sure to support the lemonade stand that supports Lil’ Kim.

Leftovers: The Hunt Is On

• The new Daily News blog is from MSNBC commentator Flavia Colgan (right), who lives in Wynnewood, and it’s called Citizen Hunter. I was kind of hoping for some kind of place you could register your complaints about other citizens and then hunt them down, but apparently it’s some sort of liberal online activism blog. Eh, that works, too. That leaves only one question: How is she not up for voting on this list? [Citizen Hunter]

• USA Today has declared that no team fits the surprising mold of a surprising World Series champ like the Philadelphia Phillies. But now that someone’s saying it could happen, are they a surprise anymore? Why did you jinx us? [USA Today]

• Apparently, since I’ve left Penn, students are now not taking Friday classes. (This story comes from the same reporters who will one day churn out stories like the one about Justice Scalia possibly giving an obscene gesture.) This, though, is better than my collegiate plan, which was to schedule Friday classes and then not go to them. [Daily Pennsylvanian]

• Rumor alert: Prep grad and former ‘It’ indie music writer Nick Sylvester may have finally been fired from the Village Voice.

• Okay, weird alert: Scranton’s old high school sports columnist apparently had a tying-young-girls-up fetish. But he says he never acted on it until the one time he got caught by the popo. [Delaware County Times via Deadspin]

Where The Wild (Liberal) Things Are

There’s a story in the Evening Bulletin today about Hillary Clunkton, a fictional cartoon character who is the villain of a series of conservative children’s books. (Don’t worry, it gets better.)

The third book in the Help! Mom! series — which had previous titles of Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! and Help! Mom! Hollywood’s in My Hamper! — will feature Hillary being arrested, and you can even bid on an eBay auction to get to be the one who apprehends her.

I don’t really know why childrens’ books are the appropriate audience to bash Hillary Clinton, since kids (1) don’t vote and (2) don’t care. But, apparently, liberals have been polluting our kids’ minds for ages:

“Liberals have been targeting children in their war on traditional values for years,” says DeBrecht, a mother of three. “Since they can’t persuade adult voters to abandon personal responsibility and embrace the welfare state, they have instead chosen to flood our classrooms and libraries with books about gay kings, socialist fish, and even marijuana use. It’s time to put a stop to it - and ironically Hillary is going to help us do just that!”

Holy shit. There are kids books about that? Where’s my Choose Your Own Adventure where if I go to page 46, I get to smoke a bowl, and if I go to page 72, I get to chill with a sweet socialist fish? And don’t you think a gay king would be a blast to read about? Just think how nice his castle would be!

I feel so cheated.

Hillary’s Going To Jail; Charity To Benefit [The Evening Bulletin]

New Budweiser Team Specific Packaging To Root, Root, Root For The Home Team As Well As Cure Cancer

Press releases are usually wrought with overwritten comments about, say, a new fabric softener, but I think we have a new winner.

Today, I got a press release from Budweiser saying that “Budweiser and Bud Light hit homerun with custom local packaging for MLB teams.” (Frankly, I think my headline is better.) And here’s how the release begins:

Budweiser and Bud Light, the “official beer sponsors” of Major League Baseball and 26 MLB teams, will introduce team-specific packaging in team markets nationwide, allowing baseball fans to celebrate the 2006 season while showing support for their favorite team.

Now, I usually choose my beer based on taste, and not whether it’s a sponsor of my favorite group of nine strangers I root for since they play in my city. If I want to cheer on the Phillies, I’ll buy a Phils’ hat, or, you know, actually root for them. I don’t think a box with a Phillies logo on it is going to change my opinion that Bud Light tastes like dishwater. (Not that I don’t drink it.)

That’s pretty normal PR speak there. But then it gets better:

“Major League Baseball has been an important element in our overall marketing mix for more than 25 years, and we continually work to enhance our relationship with the teams, fans and networks throughout each season,” said Tony Ponturo, vice president, Global Media and Sports Marketing, Anheuser-Busch Inc. “We have stepped up our activities around baseball in 2006 to create excitement for our teams and their fans, and to strengthen the bond between America’s favorite pastime and America’s favorite beers.” [...]

“Our investment in team-specific packaging demonstrates our commitment to the dedicated fans and teams of Major League Baseball,” Ponturo said. “Baseball fans are passionate about their team. Our custom packaging with individual team logos helps us tap into the excitement of the upcoming season and reinforce to the fans our support of their team.”

You’ve heard of a straw man argument? Well, this is a straw man press release. Anheuser-Busch doesn’t care if the Phillies go 0-162 as long as it sells beer to Phillies fans. And there are no such people who do this, anywhere, ever: “Hey, I’m headin’ to the game to tailgate and need to pick up some beer. Let’s see, Coors, Miller, Budweiser — hey, that Budweiser is supporting my Phillies! I’m going to buy me some delicious Bud and lead the Phillies to victory!”

Full release after the jump.

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Rizzomon: Gotta catch ‘em all!

The back of the Frank Rizzo trading card, with his lifetime stats, after the jump.

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Philadelphia’s Green Monster

In case you didn’t know, the Comcast Center is supposed to be a certified “green” building, which means it will release oxygen or something. In fact, it will be the tallest green building in the United States, something we Philadelphians can, I suppose, be mighty proud of. Perhaps people will come from all over to see our tall building!

That being said, the plumbers’ union is against one of the cornerstones of the green building, waterless urinals. They’re against them because, obviously, they cost less money to maintain and less money to install. That means, uh, less money for plumbers.

And now, as noted earlier, John Street and Vince Fumo are both making a push to pretty much tell the plumbers’ union to, uhh, flush it. And, Sunday, there’s even a protest at Love Park at 1 p.m. that will also be telling the plumbers’ union the same thing.

Presumably, the protesters on Sunday will be there because they want to highlight the fact that the waterless urinals in the Comcast Center will save 1.6 million gallons of water a year. You might think that Vince Fumo is hoping to broker a deal with the plumbers’ union for the same reason. You also might have the brain of a gerbil.

While Fumo may love the water savings, he’s also in it for this reason:

Without the code change, it might be harder for Liberty to win a certificate from the Green Building Council. In that case, New York and its 945-foot-tall Bank of America tower would capture the title of America’s tallest green building.

Fumo “would love to see us beat New York on something like this,” Tuma said. “It’s all about the city’s image. The more good press we get, the more construction the city is going to get.”

And they say we don’t have an inferiority complex!

Fumo, Street join the push for waterless urinals [Inky]

Full protest info after the jump.

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Kids Nowadays Can’t Scuffle Without Making Front-Page News

It was a slow news week for gays. And why not? Now that the Republicans — well, some of them, anyway — have decided that demonizing illegal immigrants, not gays, is the way to shore up the base, there just really wasn’t much gay political news this week. And the Mass. ruling on not allowing out-of-state gay couples to marry didn’t break until yesterday, seemingly too late for this week’s paper.

That slow news week led to this article, on the front page of the new edition of the Philadelphia Gay News today:

A disturbance occurred the evening of March 23 outside of The Attic Youth Center, 255 S. 16th St. According to police reports, an 18-year-old female claimed that a male bumped into her at 6:52 p.m while she was tying her sneaker. The incident was coded as a disturbance. No charges were filed.

In response to being pushed, the female punched the male and his friends began fighting with her friend, police said. During the scuffle, pepper spray was released. The male and his acquaintances fled before the police arrived. Complainants and witnesses said they knew the other youths.

Police later found the suspects at the corner of Broad and Spruce streets.

The victim and her friends could not identify the person who released the spray. Though no formal charges were filed, the 18-year-old can file a private criminal complaint with the District Attorney’s office.

So, basically, a kid bumped into another kid and they fought. That’s front page material!

Altercation at the Attic [Philadelphia Gay News]

In Their Next Bit Of Cross-Promotion, Marty Moss-Coane Will Execute The Stone Cold Stunner On Brutus ‘The Barber’ Beefcake

A tipster has just notified us of the sponsor that was just on the traffic report on WHYY 91 FM:

Wrestlemania 22, this weekend on pay-per-view.

You know, I’m for all the sponsorship WHYY can get, but I’m not quite sure there’s too much of a professional wrestling/public radio crossover audience. Just sayin’.

Phillies A Real Cock To Some Fans

The Phillies sent out a promotional DVD to season ticketholders who had not renewed their tickets. They were hoping that highlights of Chase Utley and Ryan Howard would lead the season ticketholders to re-up.

Instead, a few people got cockfighting DVDs emblazened with the Phillies logo. The company pressing the DVDs, it turns out, left a bit of a previous run on the first few discs, which led to the error.

What I want to know is: Who was the other customer? Like, seriously. Cockfighting DVDs? I sort of guess how you could want to go to a cockfight — okay, not really — but to watch it on DVD? Ick.

Then again, who’d want to watch Phillies highlights, either?

New meaning for “Fightin’ Phillies.” [Inky]
Photo by SteveFE

Meet Joe Bubbles

There’s been a bit of a recent brouhaha over Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s possibly obscene gesture he flipped to a reporter in Church.

Scalia was asked what he’d say to those who think his Catholicism influences his decisions, and he did the Italian under-the-chin thing while also possibly saying “Fuck you” (or something) in Italian. (The article, naturally, appears to be written before the news of the foreign language obscenity broke.)

This is one of those non-scandals that, uhm, reporters just love to keep going, and so today’s Philadelphia Inquirer interviews South Philadelphia Italians and asks them what they think:

“The gesture means, ‘I don’t care, fuhgeddaboutit,’ ” said Joe “Bubbles” Scavola, 70, a longtime employee at Esposito’s. “Ninety-nine percent of Italian people talk with their hands, and they’d be deaf and dumb without them.”

Then, expressing contempt for the media in general and the Herald reporter who wrote the story in particular, Joe Bubbles added: “Tell that reporter I’ll show her a few nice gestures.” [...]

A disgusted Joe Bubbles concluded: “These reporters, they don’t know what else to pick on. Leave the Italians alone.”

Of course, ol’ Joey Bubbles, expert on everything Italian!

South Philly’s verdict on Scalia [Inky]
Another Fingergate Update: The Ocular Proof [Wonkette]