how i thought we resolved this

but it seems that the national do-not-call list doesn't apply to a 202 number you can find here. i've been getting three calls a day from these jackasses - with no response on the other end from them - and it seems like i'm not alone nationwide. i called verizon, and unfortunately there's no way i can block their calls to my phone, which seems like an essential option that should be automatic.

anyways, if you've been getting calls from these assholes, continue to ignore them.

how you can't beat the humor of local television

the first lady of steveohville and i have a weekend vacation in monterey at our cousin's house. unfortunately it doesn't come with cable tv, so we're left watching the local news. as you would expect, hilarity ensued.

seems their anchor has a weird name. you just don't find many lead anchors named olga. at least she doesn't look anything like she sounds. at the beginning of their pieces, their correspondents have these poorly-edited long awkward poses before they begin speaking, which usually end up in garbled words and loud run-on sentences. and the dude who handles the chryon graphics was either having a bad day or was the ballsiest comedian ever (63 degrees in salinas and 05 degrees in carmel? anne thompson from vaniety fair has a beard and an adam's apple? the weatherman motioning to a graphic that just left the screen?) classic comedy.

my point? just great stuff from fox 35 central coast. highly recommended.

how i miss many things about home

namely, my family, my friends, pizza, shea stadium and the close proximity to the greatest city on earth. when i'm gone for too long, i feel it. it's a pull that will never go away.

but what i don't miss is greased-up douchebags like this. not at all. and since these don't exist out here, i can say how happy i am to be a californian.

whooaaah!

how i met the rooster and upgraded my feet

that is, danilo "the rooster" gallinari, the newest of the new york knickerbockers.



suck it, isiah.

also, i'm now the proud owner of a pair of hyperdunks, the flyest and most revolutionary basketball kicks in the entire universe, only sold in this country at the niketown in las vegas, and now currently wrapping my ankles. here's my colorway:



suck it, sneakerheads.

how "mad men" left me amazed and disillusioned

the first lady of steveohville and i just sped through all thirteen episodes of the first season of "mad men" and it is completely deserving of being the most awarded drama in the emmys this year. i mean, my god it's amazing, the characters are so rich, the storylines are gradual and compelling, the art direction is gorgeous, the writing dead-on, the acting sublime and each episode leaves you wanting for the next. you know you're hitting on something special when a show becomes an experience.

and season two starts in two weeks. sweet.

the only thing that did disappoint me was, well, the final episode. not the whole thing, but the completely ridiculous storyline involving...shit, you probably haven't seen this.

okay, look, if you haven't seen it, go do it. you can find it on on-demand on comcast and it's available on dvd.

if you have seen it, highlight the section below and read on:

c'mon now. this entire show was built on plausible storylines built on character studies that are smart, believable and fitting of the times. each detail of each character is demandingly well-stitched.

with all that being said, how did peggie not know she was pregnant?
and how did she not know that she was nine months?
she works with all women, and nobody picked up?
she lives with a female roommate, and nothing?

i have no issue with her being pregnant. i just have a BIG issue with her being nine months pregnant and rushing a baby through at the end. makes no sense to me whatsoever. and wouldn't it have been better just to have the impending birth hang in the balance between the seasons?

i really don't get it. and it left a foul taste in my mouth.

still, i can't wait until july 28th.

and now back to your regularly scheduled sarcasm.

how i like to read behind the brand packaging

hello. we are kashi. we make high fiber cereals. and we're calling it "good friends". because we believe that this is a meal that good friends would enjoy together in a healthy lifestyle.

and by good friends, we want to make sure that we, kashi, think that good friends can come in any shape, size of color. especially color. and we can prove it. see? we have a white woman and a man who could be either polynesian or asian and they are together because they are good friends. because they see past color, just like we do. in fact, when we look at that box, we see two friends. that's all. what do you see?

and on our other box, we have another white woman, and her good friend is a black woman. and they are right next to each other. yes, we stand for that. that's what we stand for. because, when it comes to our boxes and our brand, this is okay. we don't believe in segregation. good friends can be anyone. they could be lesbians. anything can be possible when friendships are born.

we mean, they are not lesbians. they are not. (but they could be).

what they are, are interracial.

this is what we believe in.

and we put it on our box.

of course, if you have friends who are the same color as you are, then that's cool too. feel free to invite them over and share our high fiber cereals. we would have put that on our boxes, but again, we don't see color, so it didn't occur to us. maybe next time we can have two black men on our boxes.

or two white men.

probably two white men.

eat our cereal.

how all chicks want to do is dance and watch dance shows

the first part of that is a quote from my friend will. the second part is a human truth.

seriously, the first lady of steveohville and her friends can't get enough of "so you think you can dance?" and, unfortunately, with the lack of good shows on during the summer months, i've been sucked into it.

it's a bizarre show. i don't get dance, but i do get storytelling and athleticism. and when they actually tell a story with their bodies, the two of them moving at one in concert with the music, it can be truly beautiful and emotional at the highest levels. i really dig when that happens.

anything can be art when it's done at the highest levels.

once a show, it'll be just like that.

the rest, however, is just an endless compilation of cliched seizures. jumping for no reason. contortions for contortion's sake. complete detachment from logic, storytelling or emotion. no connection to the music whatsoever. there's just no point to it and no reason for me to care. there's nothing to answer to.

and that's the majority of the show. it's, at the same time, both horrible, hilarious and impossible not to make fun of. which i do. constantly. and without limits.

and the judges are uninspiring. nigel (the executive producer) knows what he's talking about. they usually have a choreographer on who refuses to say anything critical. and then they have a blowhard named mary murphy who just repeats whatever nigel says but louder and with an annoying southern accent while making sure she throws in her meaningless catchphrases.

how many more weeks of this?

how i think mustaches are...wait, i don't think i can even say the word

last night, when the first lady of steveohville and i went to kaiser for a baby checkup, i noticed that the large majority of men in the hospital were sporting mustaches. they were thick and thin, long and short. they hid their upper lips. these were men young and old, hip and out-of-date.

why were all these mustached men there? were they there for mustache impants? were their mustaches carrying some sort of infection? do you need a mustache for proper service?

i felt naked.

it might have been a coincidence. but with jason giambi's 'stache inspired resurgence and john oates' career revitalization through mustache and animation, i think the inevitable has happened:

the mustache is back.

how did this happen? was there a vote on this? because if there was, and this was passed, it might be time to move to canada.

but then i'd have to grow one of these.

can't win.

how here's a bunch of items i owe you

here's some links that i dug recently:

when the first lady of steveohville and i were making wedding plans, i half jokingly mentioned that i wanted chick fil a for our wedding meal. and the first lady half jokingly told me she would leave me if we did. that being said, and not joking at all, i can't believe this wedding passed muster - by either party.

can you guess which which olympian is the adidas guy?

this is the best first round you'll barely see this year.

to all the high school graduates for next year, i ask you to play it safe. and if you don't heed my advice, take it from them.

thank god for sasha baron cohen. i can't wait for "bruno".

and, in case you haven't heard this yet, and while we're giving thanks to god for the best stuff on earth, here's the perfect marriage of some douche named dmitri and voicemail.

how this is the most important correction of all

i saw this originally on deadspin, but it's too great just to leave there, mostly because it speaks so deeply to the inner reaches of my soul.

newsday, a long island based newspaper, was forced to print this story correction, and trust me, you couldn't find a more important topic to new yorkers to get this right.

that poor guy could have been stained forever.

how if you're ever in chicago

check out my friend JQ's new shakespearean hip-hop play called "funk it up about nothin", which is hot of the heels of his last critically acclaimed shakespearean hip hop play, "the bombitty of errors".

as someone who's worked closely with JQ (he composed all the music for my nike "my game is made outside" campaign) and as someone who really digs his creativity, i can be pretty damn sure this'll be a blast.

after all, he is the guy who brought you this.

how i couldn't even imagine how deeply this hurts

i remember when the mets let darryl strawberry go. i was distraught. and the day lawrence taylor retired? heartbreaking. when the knicks traded patrick ewing, i understood why, but it still sucked.

however, i never lost the mets, giants or rangers. i still had the rest of the team to root on, still had the home games to attend, still had the emotional chains that pulled harder when the season drew on.

i can't imagine how a sonics fan feels right now.

after 40 years of allegiance, of fathers and sons and grandsons going to see wilkens and chambers and payton, of living and suffering with almost great teams and hopeful rebuilding stories, of arguments between fans and high-fives with strangers, suddenly it's all gone - and neither side who argued the case cared at all about the people who cared most about the team.

one on side, there's the utterly detestable clay bennett, the dick dastardly of this two-bit organization, who lied from his first day as owner and continued to act in poor faith throughout any sort of faux negotiation and never cared to keep his customers happy - and seemed to mock the city and their citizens at every moment.

and with him there's david stern, who as j.a. adande wrote should never be allowed to run another hypocritical "NBA cares" commercial, who decided to make the implausible business decision to move one of his franchises from a global city to one most americans will never think of visiting. and he did this by endlessly belittling the home that cherished it for forty solid years.

and then there's the city of seattle, who honorably never gave in to david stern's blackmail for a new arena, but then decided that although there was no money amount that was acceptable for losing a civic treasure, still settled for $45 million.

nobody gave a shit about the people who buy the merchandise, wear the jersies, lose their voices while chanting and spend their free time and money obsessing over the one thing that, no matter where their lives might lead them, would always stay constant.

nobody cared about the family stories and arguments or the conversations in local pubs. or the hopes and dreams neighborhoods had for the kevin durant era. or the way a basketball team can pull a city together, no matter how many consecutive rainy days it might have.

and now, all of it is gone, buried underneath the scars of legal documents, empty lies and bitter insults.

you know, i understand fully that sports is business. i get that totally. no denying. but i never thought it was bad business.

but i never thought that an NBA franchise with 40 years of equity in a global city would be moved simply to repay a favor to a friend.

i never thought that an NBA arena in the middle of the city that was renovated just ten years prior would be seen as "antiquated" and "unable to house a professional franchise" and would be the cause of a team leaving their city.

i never thought that seattle could actually lose a team to oklahoma city. and that david stern and the NBA would actively encourage it.

i never thought that the NBA would let it happen.

i never thought it would come to this.

but it did, no matter how incredibly bad for business it is.

the NBA is a weaker league today. seattle is less of a city. clay bennett is the new art modell. david stern is a hypocrite who is losing his fan base through an endless series of arrogant decisions.

and oklahoma city is still irrelevant, no matter what the NBA will have you believe.

and it's a shame that the shameless should have the day.