Leftovers: Breakfast With No Food, And Questions

• There was another mayoral debate this morning, on KYW 1060, called “Breakfast with the Candidates.” It appears they didn’t eat breakfast, though, so perhaps we can sue KYW. Sez the station: “One local political analyst believes this is the critical week in Philadelphia’s primary campaign for mayor, and that the ‘Breakfast With The Candidates’ debate on KYW Newsradio will set the tone for the week.” Gee, and you guys quoted him? Shocking. [KYW 1060]

• A New York bill would ban teams playing in New Jersey from calling themselves “New York.” This means the Giants and Jets. How a New York bill will prevent teams in New Jersey from using the word “New York” is beyond me. I call ‘em Jersey anyway. [AP/Camden Courier-Post]

• Woohoo! The Sands is holding a giant garage sale of junk it wants to sell before it’s demolished in the fall. [Press of Atlantic City]

• The Philies have racist methods of hiring ball girls, or something. Oh, and calling them “ball girls” is sexist, too, I assume. [Philly Future]

Road To 10,000 Losses: Ups And Downs

Road to 10,000 Losses is a countdown to the Phillies’ 10,000th loss, coming sometime later this year. With a 2-1 series victory over the Marlins, the Phillies stand at 9968 losses, only 32 away from 10,000.

Today, I’m going to recap the Phillies weekend — a series win over the Marlins — by charting the ups and downs of it.

Up: The Phillies won the series against the Marlins. They’ve won 7 of 9, improving from 4-11 to 11-13.

Down: The Phillies 7-2 stretch came against the Astros (1-0), Reds (2-0; lost first game of series), Nationals (2-1) and Marlins (2-1), not exactly the powers of the National League. The Phillies are still 0-3 against the Braves and 1-3 against the Mets.

Up: The Phillies’ two best pitchers, stats-wise, are 3-1 with a 2.65 ERA and 2-1 with a 3.24 ERA.

Down: These two men are 44-year-old Jamie Moyer and 23-year-old Cole Hamels. One needs Geritol and the other needs a date for the prom.

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Eagles Upgrade At Linebacker, Downgrade At Dancer

As it turns out, the Saturday Daily News cover was eerily prophetic, since the Eagles really ended up having no clue at the NFL draft on Saturday. Pretty much everybody predicted the Eagles would take Miami safety Brandon Merriweather, famous for stomping a player on the ground during a brawl last season, but he was drafted a few picks before the Birds drafted.

Stymied, the Eagles decided to trade down with Dallas into the second round in order to pick up an extra third-round pick (essentially). But, with their early second-round pick, the Eagles took… ah, yeah. By now you’ve probably heard the Eagles took quarterback Kevin Kolb — pronounced “Cobb” for some reason — a move that pretty much confused everyone anywhere, ever.

The Eagles said he was their top available athlete on the board, but the main problem with the pick is the Birds could have had him later. Oh, and the still have that other dude, Donovan McNabb, one of the top quarterbacks in the game. Yes, it’s very confusing, but it’s the Eagles, so that’s what they usually do. They drafted a couple of other guys, but nobody who will contribute in year #1 other than possibly Penn State running back Tony Hunt.

It wasn’t all bad, though. Today, the Eagles cut linebacker Dhani Jones. You probably remember Dhani Jones from when he was arrested for dancing in the streets. (Really.)

I really can’t do any more to poke fun at Jones then just quote the Inquirer:

Jones had 55 tackles in 16 games last season and had a total of one sack in three years.

Eagles cut Dhani Jones, sign 11 free agents [Inquirer]
New QB can handle boos [Daily News]
March 27, 2006: Let’s Hear It For The Boy

Bob Brady’s Website Is A Treasure Trove

For a while, the Bob Brady website was pretty barren. It didn’t even have that fancy soul tune on Chaka Fattah’s site. But as we inch closer to election day, his website’s photo section is becoming ridiculously awesome.

The photo at right is one with his wife, Debra. Yes, that’s Brady’s wife. (It’s his second.) And, yes, if you didn’t know, she used to be an Eagles cheerleader. I don’t know why the campaign doesn’t tout that. “Bob Brady: The only candidate married to an ex-Eagles cheerleader!” I bet it’d play well in the Northeast.

There’s also this photo of him and State Sen. Mike Stack where they appear to have been photographed in front of a green screen and inserted in front of a blurry background. (Obviously, why would anyone do that, but it’s still awesome.) Here’s another one. Somebody just blew out the background with Photoshop, I guess?

Then there’s a photo of Brady handing out pretzels at Franklin Mills. And another of him on 610 WIP. And the aforementioned one of him holding pretzels that say “Bob Brady.” In case you’re wondering, yes, this photo is taped on the front window of the Democratic City Committee.

But the photo on the front of the website proves that Brady even has the Internet meme vote covered.

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Sign You’re Taking Your Football Game Too Seriously

Police in Rehoboth Beach say officers were called in to break up a bench-clearing brawl between two flag football teams Friday afternoon. [...] The altercation drew three Rehoboth police officers, three state troopers and an officer from Dewey Beach. No arrests appeared to be made at the time.

Police Called for Flag Football Brawl [6 ABC]

Negs And Closers And Pick-Up Artists, Oh My!

If you remember way… actually, wait, there’s no way you’re going to remember. So way back when this blog wasn’t even a month old (and was even worse than it is now), September 2005, Metro entertainment editor Dorothy Robinson interviewed Neil Strauss, who wrote The Game.

I sorta called bullshit on it at the time, because it used terms like “sarge” to talk about picking up women. Later, I actually read his book — I had a free copy, I swear — and apparently all these things were true. Strauss figured out how to get any woman he wanted and was dating the guitarist from Hole or something by the end of the book. (Who knew?)

Naturally, suddenly — and by “suddenly,” I mean “a year and a half ago” — “pick-up artists” are the hottest rage around, and so today the Inquirer’s Faye Flam writes about the new book by The Game’s sidekick character, Mystery, with the definitely non-sexist title of The Mystery Method: The Foolproof Way To Get Any Woman You Want Into Bed. (Or maybe The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed, as an Inquirer photo shows. Apparently this book is so amazing it has two different titles.)

Students pay $2,150 for a three-day seminar taught by one of Mystery’s disciples, which is way more expensive than Match.com. Apparently, getting a girl includes such tips as having good body language, telling girls they suck (in a friendly way) and coming up with some sort of stupid story to tell a girl so she immediately takes your pants off. Or, y’know, something like that.

Flam talks about research — this is the Inquirer, after all — on similar subjects by scientists, including one who says playing hard to get activates dopamine circuits — also activated by, say, cocaine — in the brain on the person who’s been rejected. Wow! I didn’t know I was a cokehead!

But this article is only the beginning (I hope).

This story got even more interesting when I met Mystery himself. Maybe I’ll write about that in my next column. I’d give it about 50-50 odds.

Oh, playing hard to get, eh, Flam? Just write the damn article before I overdose.

Carnal Knowledge | Play hard to get, single guys [Inquirer]
Sept. 29, 2005: Also, “sarge” means “to pick up women.” I call bullshit.
Archives: Faye Flam

Is Barbaro The Best? Boy I Guess!

Neigh! Yesterday was Zombie Barbaro’s fourth birthday, and about 500 fans crowded Delaware Park — where Barbaro won its first race — for an emotional tribute to the late horse.

How big was the day? One person came from South Africa to celebrate Barbaro! The News Journal has a photo of Barbaro co-owner Gretchen Jackson “kneeling as if in prayer,” which must mean she’s… I dunno. Why would she pantomime a prayer?

The best anecdote of the day, though, comes from the Inquirer’s Mike Jensen, who probably thought his days of covering Barbaro were over — but, no, he’s going to be writing about this damn horse for the rest of his life.

The passion at Delaware Park was real. The most graphic example: One woman had a tattoo of Barbaro across her back.

Can all the Barbaro fans get this tattoo? ‘Cuz then I’d be able to make sure any girl I meet in a bar isn’t a Barbaro fan. “Excuse me, before we begin talking, can I see your back?”

Fans of Barbaro gather to celebrate his birthday [Inquirer]
Remembering Barbaro [The News Journal]
Archives: Barbaro

Shocking News: Pro Wrestler Violent

On Friday, Metro interviewed “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, pro wrestler and star of The Condemned, which nobody went to see when it opened this past weekend. (Steve Austin, apparently, believes in global warming because “it seems like it just keeps getting warmer and warmer.”) The interview opened with this:

The White House has been searching for a new war czar in Iraq. If you were war czar, what would your strategy be?

Hell, I’d say — you want me to take a hard stand on this thing?

Sure.
I’d say, bomb ‘em. I’d just bomb the hell out of them, that’s my take on it. The long story short, just drop the bomb on ‘em.

With talk like that, you’d think Stone Cold would actually be named new war czar in a day or two. But all this interview did, apparently, was enrage an emailer, who wants more diplomacy from our nation’s pro wrestlers.

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Fortune Teller Crackdown Spells Doom For Us All

Acting on a tip from the police department last week, the city’s Department of Licensing & Inspections (aka the dreaded L&I) decided to take care of the one problem all city residents could agree needed fixing: Those stupid signs all over town that say “I BUY TRAINS” or “LOSE WEIGHT IN 30 DAYS” or “I BUY HOUSES.”

Ha ha, of course not! What L&I actually did was shut down the city’s fortune tellers. The state technically has a decades-old law preventing fortune tellers from, ah, predicting the future “for gain or lucre.” (Lucre? This law was clearly written in approximately 1789.)

It seems odd that the state has a ban on fortune telling when it also has a legalized lottery and casino gambling, but “making sense” is not something government does, ever. Cops haven’t arrested anyone and nobody’s been fined, but if these people attempt to return to their livelihoods, they will be. Deputy L&I commish Dominic Verdi tried to make it sound as if he was doing the city a great favor.

Most so-called psychics, he said, “are not little old ladies with kerchiefs on their heads” but clever con artists capable of stealing large sums - even life savings - from grieving or otherwise vulnerable people.

As opposed to casinos and the lottery, which…. well, whatever.

The Inquirer interviewed the owner of Psychic, the fortune teller on Walnut Street — naturally, near the head shop Wonderland — who said he had a license from the city and paid taxes. He also said he was raided by the Major Crimes Unit, because, you know, he’s really a danger to the community. (You would think the police would use the fortune tellers to predict where the next murder was going to be!)

“Shouldn’t they be cracking down on rapes and murders, not palm readers?” he asked. He also demanded to know whether tea-leaf readers in Chinatown were also being shut down. He doubted it.

“They’re discriminating against Gypsies,” he said, although he said he was born and raised in Philadelphia.

Finally, he noted that critics “considered that Jesus was a psychic, a fortune-teller, and they crucified him.” He saw a certain parallel. “Look what they want to do with the fortune-tellers,” the man said. “We might be coming to the end of the world.”

Gee, thanks a lot, L&I. Because of you, the fucking world is going to end. I hope you’re happy.

Who knew? An old law shuts psychics [Inquirer]

Knox: All Who Oppose Me Shall Be Crushed

Over the weekend, a few anti-Tom Knox ads began airing on local television. One was from candidate Bob Brady and used the word “fake” to describe Tom Knox. Another was from a group called Working People for Truth, which concluded its ad with “Tom Knox - fake, fake, fake.”

Clearly, the use of the word “fake” in both ads is concrete evidence the two groups are most certainly colluding to attempt to stop Tom Knox and help Bob Brady get elected. Or something. The city’s Board of Ethics — remember them? — will issue subpoenas to figure out if groups are breaking the city’s campaign finance laws.

Meanwhile, Tom Knox’s camp is considering a lawsuit against Working People for Truth — Not all 527s need to have “for Truth” at the end of their names, people! You know the Swift Boat people lied, right? — as well as hoping to send people to prison.

“This is illegal, illegal, illegal,” [Knox campaign manager Josh] Morrow said. “If the federal law was broken, someone should go to jail for this.”

Yes, that’s it. Someone should go to jail. Hey, it’s not like our prisons aren’t overcrowded or anything!

Campaign ad inquiry plans to subpoena [Inquirer]