The Electric Dock Ellis Acid Test

A.J. Daulerio of Deadspin tried to recreate Dock Ellis’ famous no-hitter, albeit on a video game, but the LSD was real.

“Can we get some pizza now?”

But in order to get that type of nourishment one must go

Outside!!

I had been instructed not to go outside by people who were more accustomed to these types of activities than I was. The cozy confines of the apartment were the only place for a 37-year-old first-timer like me, they said. It only took a few brisk steps to realize what they had been talking about. The normally straight sidewalk on Court Street between Union and Sackett started to tilt to the left in a comical, funhouse way. The storefront signs were more vivid than usual; the swooping cursive letters on Italian bakeries were now a menacing Satan font. Couples pushing strollers passed by me and I looked the other way because I was ashamed and too paranoid that they’d see my eyes bouncing or that I’d stare too long at their kicking babies and they’d call the cops.

By the time we arrived at the pizza parlor things were threatening to go haywire. That ricotta pie was clearly agitated by my presence. Toder relayed my order for me and handled the money transaction with the counterperson, because I could not possibly participate in such activities with the dickhead pizza being all mouthy and with the fearsome heat of that big oven so close by. Toder handed me my large cup of Dr Pepper and we were soon outside again on the crooked sidewalk, headed back to the ballpark inside my TV to accomplish greatness. The Dr Pepper was so good. So, so good. Why this was not the beverage of choice for all when life goes awry was unfathomable. Hey, look, the sidewalk is back to normal. Everything’s coming up me. I needed to hug something.

(click here to continue reading The Electric Dock Ellis Acid Test: An Attempt To Recreate His Drug-Addled No-Hitter, On Xbox.)

Amusing, though A.J. Daulerio doesn’t actually succeed in throwing a no-hitter, but you should read his explanation of the experience.

Actual footage of Dock Ellis on LSD don’t seem to be available, but this YouTube creation by James Blagden and No Mas is pretty good. Excellent, in fact.

In celebration of the greatest athletic achievement by a man on a psychedelic journey, No Mas and artist James Blagden proudly present the animated tale of Dock Ellis’ legendary LSD no-hitter. In the past few years we’ve heard all too much about performance enhancing drugs from greenies to tetrahydrogestrinone, and not enough about performance inhibiting drugs. If our evaluation of the records of athletes like Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds needs to be revised downwards with an asterisk, we submit that that Dock Ellis record deserves a giant exclamation point. Of the 263 no-hitters ever thrown in the Big Leagues, we can only guess how many were aided by steroids, but we can say without question that only one was ever thrown on acid.

Sadly, the great Dock Ellis died last December at 63. A year before, radio producers Donnell Alexander and Neille Ilel, had recorded an interview with Ellis in which the former Pirate right hander gave a moment by moment account of June 12, 1970, the day he no-hit the San Diego Padres. Alexander and Ilels original four minute piece appeared March 29, 2008 on NPRs Weekend America. When we stumbled across that piece this past June, Blagden and Isenberg were inspired to create a short animated film around the original audio.

Bad LSD trip: Who’s to blame

Under cover

What a great headline…

All stranded motorists have now been rescued from Lake Shore Drive – but they probably shouldn’t have attempted to travel on the major thoroughfare in the first place, city officials said.

Hundreds of motorists and CTA passengers were trapped on the drive for six hours or more Tuesday night. Many were not rescued until early this morning, as rescue workers battled white-out conditions, 70 mph wind gusts and waist-high drifts to provide help.

City officials, however, said they had cautioned people in news conferences earlier Tuesday to avoid using the drive and had repeatedly warned that massive waves along the shoreline could cause extremely icy conditions. Authorities, however, did not officially close the road until 8 p.m., nearly an hour after a series of accidents caused motorists and several CTA buses to become stuck.

“As reported in (Tuesday’s) press conference we knew that the lakefront and Lake Shore Drive would be hit especially hard,” said Ray Orozco, Mayor Richard Daley’s chief of staff. “Nonetheless, it was clear that people leaving the Loop were relying on it as a major artery to get home that night.”

While acknowledging the Lake Shore Drive standstill was “particularly troublesome,” officials said they would not apologize for keeping the road open as the storm intensified. Without a series of accidents shortly after 7 p.m., the ordeal might not have happened, they said.

(click here to continue reading Bad LSD trip: Who’s to blame? – Chicago Breaking News.)

Being on LSD for eight hours probably not the best way to spend the Blizzard of 2011 though

The Meal that Ended My Career as a Restaurant Critic

Waddle

Funny tale from a former professional food critic, Steve Silberman, which begins:

It’s easy to imagine that being a restaurant critic would be one of the best jobs on Earth — particularly when millions of people are eager to churn out lengthy reviews for free on sites like Yelp and Chowhound.

As someone who was the food critic for a glossy magazine in San Francisco in the 1980s and quit, however, I can tell you that being a roving palate-for-hire is a mixed blessing. While dining out is one of life’s most enduring pleasures (and is certainly a rare privilege on a planet where one in six people are starving), having to eat in restaurants several nights a week, while manufacturing an opinion about every bite, can get to be a drag.

Of course at first, being a critic in one of the great restaurant cities on Earth felt like getting paid to have sex with someone you love.

That's Medium Rare?

takes a detour through some well told anecdotes, and leads to a moment I can relate to:

I returned just as the chirpy waiter brought the coup de grâce, which looked like evidence from a crime scene: a dish of angry red flesh with a knob of pale bone jutting out of it. This, apparently, was my “grilled veal chop with wild forest mushrooms.”

I had ordered the chop medium-rare, but it arrived bleu, as the French say; ultra-rare, chilly in the center (calf sashimi, if you will), with crimson blood pooling on top, drowning the chanterelles, porcini, Hen O’ The Woods or whatever they were in the unmistakable taste of pennies: copper-laden hemoglobin. This was like veal à la Dexter.

Having only recently re-embraced meat-eating, it was as if all the gluttonous karma of the West took its revenge on a lapsed vegetarian in a single meal. I feared that if I tried to choke down all that raw meat, I’d end up strangling — spewing bloody chunks of calf, clots of cream, and skeins of raw fettucine across the starched tablecloth as a horrified busboy tried to administer the Heimlich maneuver.

Enough! Check, please.

(you should certainly click to continue reading The Meal that Ended My Career as a Restaurant Critic | NeuroTribes.)

 

links for 2011-01-19

  • In 1964, Lyndon Johnson needed pants, so he called the Haggar clothing company and asked for some. The call was recorded (like all White House calls at the time), and has since become the stuff of legend. Johnson’s anatomically specific directions to Mr. Haggar are some of the most intimate words we’ve ever heard from the mouth of a President.

    We at Put This On took the historic original audio and gave it to animator Tawd Dorenfeld, who created this majestic fantasia of bungholiana.

    (tags: youtube LBJ humor)
    artofjazz.jpg
  • In “The Soul of A Man,” director Wim Wenders looks at the dramatic tension in the blues between the sacred and the profane by exploring the music and lives of three of his favorite blues artists: Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir. Part history, part personal pilgrimage, the film tells the story of these lives in music through an extended fictional film sequence (recreations of ’20s and ’30s events – shot in silent-film, hand-crank style), rare archival footage, present-day documentary scenes and covers of their songs by contemporary musicians such as Shemekia Copeland, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Garland Jeffreys, Chris Thomas King, Cassandra Wilson, Nick Cave, Los Lobos, Eagle Eye Cherry, Vernon Reid, James “Blood” Ulmer, Lou Reed, Bonnie Raitt, Marc Ribot, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lucinda Williams and T-Bone Burnett.
  • Former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr tweeted on Thursday that he is planning to write an autobiography. According to Marr, no deal has been made but he has been approached with a serious offer to pen a tell-all about his time in the Smiths.
    (tags: music_history)
    79640354.jpg
  • How’s this for true grit? Famously combative, alcoholic, and drug-addled filmmaker Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs) is, as Chevy Chase might joke, “still dead” (he passed away in 1984 at the age of 59) — but that doesn’t mean Bloody Sam can’t make a comeback. Vulture has learned exclusively that producer Al Ruddy (The Godfather, Million Dollar Baby) recently unearthed a script for a Western called The Texans that Peckinpah wrote in 1980 but never got around to making.
    (tags: film)
  • Antonio McDyess is the chillest chill bro in the Association. He’s Serge Gainsbourg, stubbled, disheveled, and in love. McDyess is the serpentine rise of smoke from Tom Waits’ cigarette. He’s Chet Baker’s My Funny Valentine—the especially long version that forgets you’re listening. Antonio McDyess is all these things and a Quitman smile.
    5223333073_b966bb92fd_z.jpg
    Inky Lautman of the Philadelphia SPHAs, circa 1939-40
  • Orson Welles and I were talking one time about the relative merits of John Ford and Howard Hawks at their best, and finally Welles summed it up: “Hawks is great prose; Ford is poetry.” There haven’t really been very many poets in pictures, but the one pretty much everybody agrees about now is the Frenchman Jean Renoir. He was also Orson’s favorite director—as he is mine—and Ford was so impressed by Renoir’s Grand Illusion (l937) that he wanted to remake it in English. Luckily, studio-head Darryl Zanuck told him to forget it; he would “just fuck it up.”
    (tags: film_history film)
    box-thumb-305x409-54278.jpg

Caboodle Ranch – Colbert Show

Stephen Colbert had a funny exposé on Craig Grant’s Caboodle Ranch, in Lee, Florida

In Lee, Florida, Craig Grant trains his 650 cats to take over America’s government, law enforcement and failing schools. (05:32)

 

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Enemy Within – Caboodle Ranch
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> Video Archive

If the video won’t load, go to the Colbert Show’s website directly, it might work better there

Craig Grant tells how he started the Caboodle Ranch

I was renting a two bedroom condo by the beach with my son. It had all the comforts and conveniences of home. Nice furniture, a short walk to the beach and close to work. Then my son moved out on his own for the first time. He left his cat, Pepper, with me because he couldn’t take it with him. I didn’t like cats but I agreed to keep him. I wasn’t used to being alone and I guess Pepper wasn’t either.

We slowly began to get along. A couple months went by and I found out Pepper was pregnant. Oh great, now what? She had five kittens. I wanted to give them away because I didn’t want my beautiful home destroyed, but my son told me they had to stay with their mother for 8 weeks. Over that time I learned that every cat had his own unique personality and it wasn’t long before the kittens were swinging from my curtains. I didn’t care. Something had changed… I didn’t want to give them up.

But with six cats, complaints started from the condo owner and the neighbors. I knew I had to look for other places to go. They weren’t safe in the neighborhood. I found a B.B. lodged in the side of one of my cats and another was bitten by a pitbull that I know was set loose on purpose. Something had to be done. I wasn’t sure what to do at first, so I built a shed in my son’s yard and lived in it for a while. Then I found an advertisement in the paper from a realtor offering five acre partials on a tree farm; owner financing, low money down and low monthly payments… the problem was that it was 100 miles west of Jacksonville. I drove out to see it and I loved it.

Over the next months I bought five more partials. I now have 25 acres. I cleared a small area and bought an office trailer as a shelter for my cats. I put in a pet door and padded shelves for them. We moved out there in November of 2003, the day after Thanksgiving. By that time I had 11 cats. I had taken in abandoned and stray cats from the neighborhood and areas that I work as a contractor. I had 22 cats by the spring of 2004. I moved the shed out to the property and made a little cabin out of it. I thought it would be for me, but many of my cats wanted to sleep next to me… so I moved back into the office trailer where we had more room.

(click to continue reading Caboodle Ranch: About Us.)

links for 2010-12-20

  • How many of these cables, rather than being the unvarnished facts which reveal the public lies are actually another layer of lies from bureaucrats trying to appease their bosses? It’s funny how transparency can reveal all sorts of unexpected things isn’t it? If only there were professional people who gather facts and research issues and interview subjects who could be called upon to investigate such things.
    (tags: media wikileaks)
    Facts_are_fulsome_Vegas.jpg

Why I’m An Atheist

European Totem

Ricky Gervais consistently delights me with the turns and twists of his logic. For instance, a comedic bit that begins thus is brilliant:

Why don’t you believe in God? I get that question all the time. I always try to give a sensitive, reasoned answer. This is usually awkward, time consuming and pointless. People who believe in God don’t need proof of his existence, and they certainly don’t want evidence to the contrary. They are happy with their belief. They even say things like “it’s true to me” and “it’s faith”. I still give my logical answer because I feel that not being honest would be patronizing and impolite. It is ironic therefore that “I don’t believe in God because there is absolutely no scientific evidence for his existence and from what I’ve heard the very definition is a logical impossibility in this known universe”, comes across as both patronizing and impolite.

Arrogance is another accusation. Which seems particularly unfair. Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence – ‐ evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition. If it did, you wouldn’t get a shot of penicillin, you’d pop a leach down your trousers and pray. Whatever you “believe”, this is not as effective as medicine. Again you can say, “It works for me”, but so do placebos. My point being, I’m saying God doesn’t exist. I’m not saying faith doesn’t exist. I know faith exists. I see it all the time. But believing in something doesn’t make it true. Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true. The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.

Why don’t I believe in God? No, no no, why do YOU believe in God? Surely the burden of proof is on the believer. You started all this. If I came up to you and said, “Why don’t you believe I can fly?” You’d say, “Why would I?” I’d reply, “Because it’s a matter of faith”. If I then said, “Prove I can’t fly. Prove I can’t fly see, see, you can’t prove it can you?” You’d probably either walk away, call security or throw me out of the window and shout, ‘’Fucking fly then you lunatic.”

(click to continue reading A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais: Why I’m An Atheist – Speakeasy – WSJ.)

I want to copy the whole rant for your amusement, but I’m restraining myself. I’ve heard part of this bit before, maybe it will be part of his live act that’s currently running on HBO?

Conclusion, with a sentiment I can believe in:

So what does the question “Why don’t you believe in God?” really mean. I think when someone asks that; they are really questioning their own belief. In a way they are asking “what makes you so special? “How come you weren’t brainwashed with the rest of us?” “How dare you say I’m a fool and I’m not going to heaven, fuck you!” Let’s be honest, if one person believed in God he would be considered pretty strange. But because it’s a very popular view it’s accepted. And why is it such a popular view? That’s obvious. It’s an attractive proposition. Believe in me and live forever. Again if it was just a case of spirituality this would be fine. “Do unto others…” is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. Buts that’s exactly what it is – ‐ a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now. It’s knowing that I try to do the right thing. That I lived a good life. And that’s where spirituality really lost its way. When it became a stick to beat people with. “Do this or you’ll burn in hell.”

You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.

Feral Pigs in Dallas

Cleaning UpCleaning Up Swine…

SOUTHLAKE, Texas—Police officer Ric Salas is mounting a sting operation to catch a gang of vandals terrorizing this affluent Dallas suburb.

His plan: lure them with corn, trap them in a pen—and avoid their pointy tusks.

The police officer is on feral-pig patrol, charged with fighting back the stout, smart, snouted invaders that are tearing up flower beds and street medians in search of roots and grubs. One evening recently, they dined at—and trashed—the parking lot of a Verizon office building.

Wild pigs, descendants of animals brought by the Spanish conquistadors, have foraged in Texas for centuries and have long been a pest on ranches. But as cities and suburbs swallow up more land, they are becoming an urban nuisance as well.

Eradication methods common in rural Texas, such as shooting feral pigs from helicopters, don’t lend themselves to a more urban setting. So police departments and animal-control officers are trying new ways to stymie the wily wild swine, methodically tracking the marauders’ hoofprints and setting up night-vision cameras to monitor their movements.

(click to continue reading Texas Calls in the Law in Its Beef With Feral Porkers – WSJ.com.)

There’s a joke to be made here, but I’ll leave to you, the humble reader…

Doonesbury Isn’t On Vacation Today

Doonesbury isn’t on vacation today

Despite what the Chicago Tribune claims (click to embiggen).

 

Here’s a link to today’s seemingly innocuous Doonesbury. Weird. If the comic editors wanted to replace Doonesbury (or some other, lesser comic, like Prickly CIty), why not just do it?

 

links for 2010-10-01

  • used TaintDroid to test 30 popular free Android applications selected at random from the Android market and found that half were sending private information to advertising servers, including the user’s location and phone number. In some cases, they found that applications were relaying GPS coordinates to remote advertising network servers as frequently as every 30 seconds, even when not displaying advertisements.
    McCain_Phone.jpg
    (tags: google privacy)
  • “I gather he came straight from Grand Central to Shubert Alley,” Matthau told me. “I walked out of the theater after a performance and there’s this guy shouting at me from across the street: Walter! Walter! It’s me — Bernie! I fucked Yvonne De Carlo!
    (tags: film_history)

Still a Virgin

Still a Virgin
Still a Virgin, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

I know it is an ad for a probably inane film, but I still laughed.

Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: John S
Flash: Off
Film: Pistil

From IMDb:
Four guys, one camera, and their experience chronicling the exhilarating and terrifying rite of passage: losing your virginity. As these guys help their buddy get laid, they’ll have to survive friends with benefits, Internet hookups, even porn stars during an adventure that proves why you will always remember your first

Like I said, utterly and irredeemingly lame.

French vaudeville star specialized in trained flatulence

 


“Le Petomane” (Jean Nohain, F. Caradec)

For your Friday history lesson, via the incomparable Cecil Adams:

I think it’s poetically appropriate that Joseph Pujol, better known as Le Petomane (which we may loosely translate as “the fartiste”) should emanate from France, without doubt the most pretentious nation on the face of the earth. Le Petomane performed his unique act from 1887 to 1914, and became one of his country’s best-known vaudevillians. At one point he was earning 20,000 francs a week, compared to 8,000 for his contemporary Sarah Bernhardt. The true artistic priorities of the French public are thus admirably revealed.

Joseph Pujol, born in Marseilles in 1857, owed his remarkable career to an extraordinary ability to control the muscles of his abdomen and anus. As a youth he discovered he could take in via the rectum as much as two liters of water, which he could then expel at will. Later he found he could do the same thing with air. At first he employed this talent solely for the entertainment of his friends, obviously a very refined and intelligent bunch, but after working quietly for some years as a baker, he was encouraged to give public performances. The first of these, in Marseilles in 1887, met with some initial skepticism, petomanie (“fartistry”) being something of a novelty even for the French, but within a few days Le Petomane’s winning manner and solidly professional performance had won audiences over. From then on it was one triumph after another.

(click to continue reading The Straight Dope: Did a French vaudeville star once specialize in trained flatulence?.)

Alrighty then. Viva la France!

Shocking video shows Brietbart’s true allegiance: Al-Qaeda

As a follow up to conservative Brietbart and his nearly amusing dustup regarding Shirley Sherrod, I give you Andrew Breitbart and his undeniable and deep love for terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda and Fox News:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHN_IZ7WjSU

Nearly amusing because while the whole thing was such a farce, Ms. Sherrod’s life was disrupted in an unpleasant manner, and that isn’t funny.

PBR 1844

PBR_1844.jpg

Ok, if you’re doing the math at home, 300 RMB is about $44 US, or looking at this from another angle, about $43 dollars more than a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon should cost, no matter where you are.

1844 was the year that the Pabst Brewing Company was established in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In the US, the beer’s lack of pretension led to a recent upswing in popularity among hipsters.

With 1844, the brand seems to be targeting a different demographic in the Chinese market.

The ad copy (on the facing page) begins with comparisons to the finest of alcohols:

It’s not just Scotch that’s put into wooden casks. There’s also Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer 1844

Many world-famous spirits Are matured in precious wooden casks Scotch whisky, French brandy, Bordeaux wine… They all spend long days inside wooden casks

It goes on to describe how the premium wood and craftsmanship of the casks creates the beer’s wondrous color and flavor, and ends by calling Pabst “truly a treasure among beers.”

Does Pabst Blue Ribbon 1844 truly merit such comparisons? It’ll cost you around 300 RMB to try a bottle for yourself, according to a Beijing Youth Daily article from last November, when the product was launched.

The article quoted Ni Chunlin, head of Blue Ribbon Beer, which produced Pabst in China:

“China’s beer market has an annual sales volume of 40 million tons. So why is the price of beer always around 5 or 10 yuan?” … Ni Chunlin said that the release of Blue Ribbon 1844 is aimed at changing consumers’ ideas about beer. “The high-end market is occupied by baijiu and wine. Chinese people can afford to drink baijiu that costs tens of thousands, and I believe that a 300-yuan beer won’t be a problem either.”

(click to continue reading A blue-collar beer goes upmarket.)

Pabst Theater

Arrested Development Movie Is Definitely Happening

Awesome. Coincidentally, we’ve been watching Arrested Development on DVD, and we have been rolling on the floor with guffaws of laughter. Such a funny show, holds up to a second viewing even though Iraq is not in the news as much as it was in 2003.

Arrested Development

According to GQ, both star Will Arnett and Mitch Hurwitz, creator of the beloved cult Fox sitcom, have verified that their highly anticipated film adaptation is finally in the works after years of rumors. Of course, there are still some details to be worked out, such as trying to co-ordinate the filming around the schedules of a dozen in-demand stars like Jason Bateman and David Cross, but considering the trials and tribulations the film has faced to get to this point over the last four years, that’s barely a minor hurdle.

So what do we know about the movie? Well, not much, other than these two vital facts: Everyone from the original series, which went off the air in 2006 after three critically acclaimed seasons, has agreed to return for the movie

(click to continue reading ‘Arrested Development’ Movie Is Definitely Happening, Say Will Arnett and Mitch Hurwitz | Inside Movies.)

and from GQ:

we were talking to Will Arnett. And this is what he said: “Yes, it’s happening.” He went on, but here’s the upshot: there is a script—!!!—but it is not finished; all of the principle cast members are on board, but there is no timetable to actually make the movie. So then we called Mitch Hurwitz to make sure that our ears did not deceive us and that Arnett wasn’t just pulling our leg. They didn’t, and he wasn’t.

“Believe it or not, we have started the script,” Hurwitz told GQ. (And by “we,” he means himself and “Arrested” co-executive producer Jim Vallely.) “We’re taking a little abeyance while we get [‘Running Wilde’] up and running. But it is our absolute next priority and we can’t wait to do it.” So, rejoice! Hurwitz also had a bit more to say: “We’re changing some of the Bush references to Obama because we started it awhile ago. And the Bluths may not be vacationing in the Gulf of Mexico anymore. We also might have to recast the part of Uncle Mel, the former action movie star. But other than that we have a clear path.”

(click to continue reading GQ Exclusive: Arnett, Hurwitz Say “Arrested Development” Movie Is On Like Donkey Kong: The Q: GQ.)

Can’t wait, and even though I’d prefer Arrested Development came back and did another three year stretch on television, a movie would be the next best thing.