Oh noze!

Big Papi, no!

Some New York rag, no doubt still smarting from the hurt the Red Sox put on the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS, says David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez are on the 2003 list of players who took performance enhancing drugs.

Most important, I think, is the byline on the story, which broke yesterday:


No doubt that former Phillie Mike Schmidt is angry that dopers are closing in on his hard-earned records from baseball's clean era.

Boozehound!

President Obama and some friends are going to have beers tonight at the White House. The friends are actually enemies -- Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge police officer who arrested him at his house, Jim Crowley.

The idea here is a well-worn one: that alcohol solves all our problems.

The exact beer list is a closely guarded secret, though there's talk of Bud Light, Blue Moon, and maybe Amstel.

If the president invited me to his house for a beer, I'd go with a Sam Adams Utopia. Sam Adams because it's distinctly American. Utopia because it's freaking expensive.

Dead or Alive: Mona

I write an entry in the NaturalBlog's "Where are they now" series like clockwork, every six months. Today's Dead or Alive contestant: Mona from Who's the Boss.

The actresses name is Katherine Helmond and she's still alive. Or at least she was when I hit publish.

She celebrated her 81st birthday this month, though she has lost some of the luster of her lusty character. She's faded a bit from public view after her recurring role on Everybody Loves Raymond (14 episodes between 1996-2004). Most recently, she was the voice of the Model T in the Disney hit "Cars."

This makes me think of a new potential series on the NaturalBlog -- Which is older? Mona or the Model T. It's the Model T by a hair.

Stalker hall of fame

I've put together this certainly incomplete list of the best stalker songs of all time. A "Stalker Hall of Fame," if you will.

Naturally, we must first give a nod to Sting and the Police for 1983's "Every Breath You Take." Hidden behind the upbeat chord progression is, in Sting's own words, a "very, very sinister and ugly" song.

But Sting isn't the only one to encapsulate a threatening message in pop music. How about Hall & Oates' "Private Eyes," where the smooth music duo promise, "You can't escape my private eyes/They're watching you."

And who can forget Blondie, who promises in 1978's "One Way or Another:" "I will drive past your house and if the lights are all down, I'll see who's around.... I'll follow your bus downtown. See who's hangin' out."

My favorite is the sweet-sounding "Hey There, Delilah," by the Plain White T's. With lyrics like "I'm a thousand miles away/But girl, tonight you look so pretty," you'd think it was a beautiful love song to a long-distance girlfriend. That is, until you realize that this song was written by Tom Higgenson after he met a girl named Delilah who told him she already had a boyfriend.

It's one thing write a stalker song, it's another to write it about a specific person and use her real name.

Off!

The blog is on vacation until Tuesday. In the meantime, enjoy Georges Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte," which is an obscure reference to where I'm going.

Space Station toilet needs a mercy flush

Since the dawn of time, man has dreamt of possessing the heavens. And now our domination of space is complete.

On the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, members of the International Space Station high above Earth were dealing with a clogged toilet. Could anything better demonstrate that humans now feel at home in space? And wouldn't you hate to be the guy who clogged the space toilet?

There's a lot of talk about space this week, thanks to that moon landing anniversary. This is the logical place for me to say that I think the moon landing was a hoax (How could they lose the tape!?!?!), but apparently it really happened, according to this interesting and exhaustively researched web site.

Mouse in the house

Over the course of the weekend, I saw three different people wearing Mickey Mouse shirts. Average age 35. Average weight 210. What gives here? Are these making a comeback, or was everybody scrounging the depths of their closet this weekend?

If you wore a Mickey shirt this weekend, or if you own one, you should make a defense of yourself in the comments.

The mish-mash of my mind

Hers's a few thoughts that came to me while doing whatever it is that I do.

A Harvard economics professor moonlights as a strongman -- y'know, one of those fellas who pulls 18-wheelers with his teeth. The Boston Globe has a story and some video. Worth watching. Funny thing is, this guy's name is Lauren. A dude named Lauren, which explains why he took up weightlifting.

I was folding some laundry this week when what to my wandering ears did appear but a pitch for Mighty Putty Steel. Was the late pitchman Billy Mays speaking to me from beyond the mortal coil? No. Turns out companies are still running ads with him. In fact, they say their sales are up since his death.

And finally, if you're looking for something to do this weekend, beat Sunday's deadline for submitting awesome ideas to the Awesome Foundation, in the hopes of winning a $1,000 grant. "The only criteria being that the person thinks it’s awesome, we think it’s awesome, and it’s an awesome thing to do," organizer Tim Hwang told the Boston Herald.

Palin Update

It appears America's voters weren't the only ones scarred by Sarah Palin's run for vice president -- Palin herself has a scar to show.

She tells Runner's World that before her televised debate, she went for a run on John McCain's ranch, took a tumble, and bloodied up her hands. She declined stitches, and says you could see a Band-Aid on her hand when she took on Joe Biden.

The Q-and-A isn't that bad, actually, and will probably earn her some votes when she runs for the Republican nomination in 2012. Take a read, if you have some time.

Jessica available (again)

The Internets are abuzz that actress Jessica Simpson and Cowboys quaterback Tony Romo have broken up. This is good news because it makes Romo less distracted and therefore more valuable in fantasy football.

It also reminds me of this posting from the early days of the NaturalBlog, back before I was totally mailing it in. Enjoy a walk down memory lane with me.

Jessica, please stop calling
(Nov. 24, 2005)

Well, here we go again. Phone calls at all hours of the night. Love letters left on my doorstep, their I's dotted with little hearts. Oblique references to our relationship in songs that sniff the Top 40.

Jessica Simpson is available again. And she's after me.

We've been down this road before. Jennifer, Lindsay, Angelina -- they've all sought sweet solace in my arms. But Jessica, she's in a class by herself. Tenacious with a capital T.

Don't get me wrong. She's great, really, but I just can't keep up with her. All she wants to do is play chess, visit art museums, read policy papers. That girl has needs, and they're all the intellectual kind. Not that I condone it, but no wonder Nick turned to strippers.

Rifleman prefers OJ

Here's a picture of former Boston mobster Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi testifying in federal court in Boston.


Check out what he's drinking -- that looks like OJ from Au Bon Pain. From a straw!

I really would've thought he was more of a Dunkin' Donuts guy. I guess his tastes got more refined in prison.

Half of what you see, none of what you hear

The Boston Herald does a poll on its web site each week on a political question. Last week, the paper wanted to know "Would you vote for Sarah Palin if she runs for president in 2012?"

In perhaps the best indication of why self-selected polling is a bad idea, the results in the most liberal state in the nation were a shocking 43% yes, 57% no.

Well, ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.

This post is the first time I've written about the 2012 election. There are about 40 months until we go to the polls.

Your move, ladies

British scientists dealt a major blow in the gender wars this week, reporting that they had created human sperm in a lab. Upon hearing the news my first thought was, "Well, I'm irrelevant." My second thought was, "But can lab sperm make you laugh?"

This news comes the same week that a Massachusetts medical device company got initial approval from the FDA on a permanent contraceptive for women. The name of the company is HoLogic, which I find titillating.

A sign of the season

As most of my readers know, it has rained pretty much non-stop for six weeks in Boston. This has put umbrellas at a premium, so I've started to breed them.


If all goes well, I'll have a new litter of baby umbrellas in about 10 weeks.

Is there anything this guy can't do?

Master of all entertainment Justin Timberlake wants to write a book about golf. The New York Observer says JT would recount "of stories of rounds he has played and people he has played with."

Apparently the guy's handicap is just six, which is equal parts bragable and maddening. He's already got so much going for him, why does he have to be good at golf, too?

Say what you will about his supermegastardom in music. I say his true medium is Saturday Night Live.

I gladly accepted

A week ago, I said I was disappointed in the results of this year's World's Ugliest Dog contest, because the dog who "won" is actually kind of cute. I can reiterate my claim now that we're friends on facebook and I've perused his profile pics.

There's a simple explanation as to how I came to connect with this dog on a social networking website, but I think it's funnier if I don't get into it.

And to think I thought women's tennis was dead

I am in love with the shirt Serena Williams won after winning Wimbledon this weekend.


That is all.

Two for the road

1. A Tufts University scientist studying mating and reproduction found that females in a study group were very picky. According to a New York Times write-up, the females would "start dialogues with up to 10 males in a single evening and can keep several conversations going at once. But a female mates with only one male, typically the one she has responded to the most." The researcher was studying fireflies.

2. The Prime Minister of Italy and NaturalBlog fav Silvio Berlusconi is defending himself against charges that he paid prostitutes to attend his parties. The 72-year-old Berlusconi said the suggestion is laughable because he's never paid for sex. "I never understood where the satisfaction is when you're missing the pleasure of conquest," he said.

WTF is up with women's tennis?

I'm a fan of the big tennis tournaments, especially the French Open and Wimbledon because they play their matches before my bedtime.

But there's something troubling going on in women's tennis these days, and I'm not talking about grunt-gate. Let's start at the top. First, we learn that women get matches on Wimbledon's Centre Court based on looks not seeds; or, as The Daily Mail puts it, "Babe, set and match."

So womanliness is a plus, except when it's not -- as was the case when former world No. 1 Jelena Jankovic lost to an unknown American teenager. Jankovic said afterward that her game was off because of "woman problems," as she put it. "It’s not easy being a woman, you know sometimes," she told the Reuters news agency.

Womanliness is also a minus if you're 17-year-old Simona Halep of Romania, who will have her 34DD breasts reduced this fall to improve her game. ""It's the weight that troubles me," she said. "My ability to react quickly." The good news is, if tennis doesn't work out, she's the perfect spokesmodel for the Kush.

Where's the outrage?

This is what passes for ugly these days? Are you kidding me?


Behold Pabst, a boxer-mix shelter dog and the 2009 winner of the World's Ugliest Dog Contest, held each year at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, Calif.

Pabst belongs to Miles Egstad, 25, of Citrus Heights, Calif., who said after the win "I don’t think he’s that ugly," begging the question of why he entered him in a contest called the World's Ugliest Dog Contest.

My feelings on this "contest" are clear -- once Sam the Chinese Crested died in 2005, there was no point in continuing the event's once proud pageantry. I mean, just look into Sam's vacant stare, at right. Just a glance would scare Pabst into an overbite.