New feature alert: Inaugural edition featuring major league malarkey

New feature: “What does Jessica Fletcher think?” in which, at the end of an account of events, we ask, “…but what does Jessica Fletcher [of Murder, She Wrote] think?” and she tells us.

I was recently at the Giants ballpark in San Francisco (mad heyos to Panda for making that happen) and had been cruising for a garlic fries vendor who would take a card so I didn’t have to hike down to the ATM. Lingering near a promising concession stand, I nearly bumped in to this man carrying garlic fries. I had noticed him earlier because he was sitting near our section, and I had thought he was attractive. We did the whole “almost ran in to each other, whoops” thing and he smiled.

“Cool. Your glasses are the Giants colors,” he said.

This was where a normal woman, one adept in communication skills with the unfair sex, would take the opportunity to introduce herself, but I wasn’t switching gears fast enough, so I pointed at his fries and said, “Did you buy those here?”

He said, “Yes,” with friendly, expectant body language, but I then blurted out, “Did you use your ATM card?” He gave me a very strange look and said, “Yeah…?” slowly.

I realized that was an oddly specific, even nosy question out of the context of my last five minutes. I tried to scramble for a way to explain, but his friend came up and they walked back to their seats.

I blew the save.

Or did I? Sure, cute boy, but — garlic fries. It was urgent.

…But what does Jessica Fletcher think?

Facepalm. Never good.

Batter uuup!: Joan Jett redux

Guess what I’m doing today? Going to see Joan mother-effing Jett, that’s what! For free.

Will we play baseball? A girl can dream.

My daughter wants nothing in the world but Joan Jett’s autograph on her Blackearts album liner. Kidlet conceals tiny black hearts in all her drawings to demonstrate her adoration: she’s a superfan. She goes way beyond knowing the words to “I Love Rock and Roll” or humming “Cherry Bomb.” She can discourse freely on which versions of particular singles she prefers.

She watches youtube footage of old Joan Jett concerts. We walk through Guitar Center so she can show me which guitars she is going to use when she forms her all-kid Joan Jett/Garbage/Runaways/No Doubt/Hole cover band, which she has named the Bad Apples*. She sings “Bad Reputation” in the bathtub.

She’s seven.

I’m hoping Joan is charmed by a child’s request and we get a chance to get that autograph, but hopefully just being in her vicinity will satisfy my little rock star’s heart. And thrill me, too.

This is what Joan Jett wore to her performance in 2008 at Artscape in Baltimore. If this is what she wears today, you guys can draw straws or arm wrestle to sort out who takes over the blog and raises my kid, because I will leave you all behind without a second glance.

*Once when the Go-Gos’ “Head Over Heels” was on the radio, kidlet seemed interested, so I said, “Would the Bad Apples cover this?” She looked at me like I was Grimace from Ronald Macdonaldland and said slowly, “It’s a rock band.”

Knock-knock: Who’s there? Still alive and quick explanation with bonus preview of coming attractions

via.

Don’t tell anyone I did this but … unannounced hiatus has been due to Lent: wanted to see if I could give up something that was actually hard not to do this year. It is way tougher than diet coke or dessert, from which I’ve also been abstaining. But I didn’t give up smoking or bloody beer — I’m not completely crazy.

In the meantime, a preview of coming attractions:

La Maschera del Demonio/The Mask of Satan/Black Sunday/The Black Mask (Mario Bava, 1960).

Some actual in-depth Mario Bava Movie Moments. It’s a scandal that I only did, like, one. I’m such a hack. Super-sorry. Feel free to browse the complete Movie Moments or Movie Milliseconds category while I’m gone and take a stroll down memory lane.

Even more Men Aren’t Attracted to a Girl In Glasses, Sk8 or Die, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys, and Hot Men Bein’ Hot of the Day.

May Flowers — E’s favorite Miss Mays of yore. Pictured below is the lovely and talented Cindy Fuller, Miss May 1959. Other May Flowers will include Dolly Read and Anna Nicole Smith (posing as “Vickie”). Like, are you simply all kinds of psyched?

In the meantime, remember that all the past spotlighted Playmates in the journal’s various projects have now been placed in their own Playboy category for your streamlined browsing pleasure, as well as to make it even more convenient for Hef to one day sue the everloving crap out of me.

Liberated Negative Space is a given.

Haven’t forgotten about the Bond Girls project. Name will be “Naughty Girls Need Love, Too,” because the best Bond Girls are the bad ones. Ow! (Please do not talk to me about Miss Moneypenny. I will clap my hands over my ears and sing the Goldfinger song, and you don’t want to hear that, believe me.)

via.

Milton May: a month of quotes and insights on the antiheroic nature of Satan from that uniquely dogmatic, blind, old-timey charmer, John Milton (Paradise Lost).

And finally, in Teevee Time news, the Simpsons will get their own category, along with screencapped scandalous moments from a mystery shuck-and-jive sitcom of days gone by at which you will just have to guess.

via.

…. And at which you have now guessed, correctly, unless you did a lot of tranqs in the last fifteen to twenty years. Don’t do drugs, kids. Don’t be like Carol Brady. Not ever.

All in all, I’ve been storming along, barbituate-free, like a Lent-observing bat outta hell and I got a lot of dogs in the fire — I’m looking forward to a strong return as soon as Easter has passed. As you can see, I will be back with a bang in a few weeks. This has just been a “can I even do it?” excercise to flex my muscles of restraint.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to see a man about a Giants’ game.

via.

Don’t you dare.

Catch you all on the upcoming flip side!

Daily Batman: Teevee Time — How I Met Your Mother edition

How I Met Your Mother.

If you know how HIMYM turns out, please don’t tell me. I like surprises. Anyway, Robin has been my favorite character on this show (which I admit I only sporadically catch) since the time that, in a green and white button-up baseball jersey, she talked the character Lily in to ordering Chinese and smoking cigars in Marsh’s car. That is just exactly my kinda gal. And she “suited up” for Laser Tag? Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: E’s notes from the All-Star Game

So I try not to bring it up here because I am such a baseball psycho and if I were to start, I fear the whole blog would be in quick order given over entirely to ball, but I actually watched on television the MLB All-Star Game and fell in to my old habit of taking notes during. I will bore you only with the page where I passed my Tipping Point — which is to say I enjoyed too much beer during commercials to do after a certain time anything other than yell at the ‘casters and any players who incurred my wrath through sloth, gluttony, or other Deadly Sins. The following is my 3rd page of notes, which occurred somewhere around the 5th-6th inning.

By me, of me, for me. Click to enlarge.

In case you need transcription of my dreadful scrawl which makes even the hastiest of doctors wrinkle their brows, it runs like this:

“Sprint Commercial EVO 4G ‘firsts'” (started strong showing great inventions through mankind’s history but then depressed me with how much fucking garbage the 20th century with its built in obsolescence and rapid shedding of outmoded technology has wrought upon the earth — fields of smashed crt televisions and busted hi-fi systems)

“Eyebrow guy — name?” to which I later appended “BRAUN” (dude is cute)

“hole in defense by 2nd, wtf?!?” (this in reference to balls getting past the AL infield and inexcusably eluding my boys, the normally slick-as-shinola Robinson Cano and you-may’ve-heard-of-him-No-Big-Deal Derek Jeter; clearly the only explanation is a gypsy curse.)

“David Wright is still g.d. adorable as hell” (hate the Mets —sorry Jon Stewart— but I love tiny-but-mighty Wright)

“does our radar gun go to 100?” “um — yes.” (conversation between idiotic commentators; of course the gun goes to 100 and up, you fucking idiot and as an aside, just because you are paid to comment does not obligate you to talk incessantly)

“The Things We Make Make Us, Jeep with robots really?!?” (this in reference to a particularly heinous Jeep commercial featuring assembly line robot arms that I think was intended to uplift the ingenuity of man and our sovereign genius or something but inadvertently took the opposite effect for me.)

He may be metal and small and not judge you at all but to me your robot friend is merely the harbinger of the Terminator apocalypse. You can’t fool This Guy!

Batter uuup!: Joan Jett edition

via sapphoscloset, very cool queer style blog, check ’em out!

Vintage Joan Jett lookin’ all kinds of pimp and ready to hit that shit right out of the park.

Please remember that Joan still looks THIS GOOD:

That right there? Is what a motherfucking rock star looks like. Hell yes! I said goddamn, Joan Jett. Haters to the left.

So few words in this entry, so many king-size cusses.

William Blake Month: Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: “The Tigers of Wrath”

Berlin, Germany

The quote comes from “Proverbs of Hell,” a chapter in William Blake’s gnostic text The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

The book has been interpreted as an anticipation of Freudian and Jungian models of the mind, illustrating a struggle between a repressive superego and an amoral id. It has also been interpreted as an anticipation of Nietzsche’s theories* about the difference between slave morality and master morality.

(the wiki)

*cf: in particular Nietzsche’s camel – lion – child model of human thought and behavior as outlined in Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen / Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (1883-1885).

Portions of this post appeared originally on December 5, 2009.

The Girls of Summer: Elaine Morton, Miss June 1970

The lovely and talented Elaine Morton was Miss June 1970.

Photographed by William and Mel Figge. You have seen Bill’s billing on here before, but usually partnered with Ed DeLong. This time he worked with his wife, whose full name is Melba.

Ms. Morton got in a little late on the original Summer of Love action (barely missed it), but she was still feeling the reverbations of the first flower children and was all for being a free spirit.

People would profit from a bit more “live-and-let-live” logic, says blonde Elaine Morton, who wishes that “everybody would just butt out of everybody else’s business — as long as that business isn’t harming anyone.” Following her own recommendation, our June Playmate recently abandoned the comfortable confines of the family home in Burbank, California, and moved into her own bachelorette apartment across town.

(“Tuned-in Dropout.” Playboy, June 1970.)

Just a year ago, she was working part time as a salesgirl in a Glendale flower shop and full time as a home-economics major at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. “I was all hung up in establishment modes of living,” she says. “Then I decided to stop striving for those goals and find my own.”

(Ibid.)

Totally the best shot. Holy geez, what brain-asplodin’ cuteness.

Since that decision, Miss June has dropped out of Southern California’s “straight” life and, with her boyfriend’s help, converted a milk truck into a mobile pad and made the west coast of Baja California her home away from home. Traveling on her savings, she simply drives onto any unoccupied stretch of Baja beach facing the Pacific Ocean and camps there until the scenery gets “predictable,” then drives on to a new location.

(Ibid.)

That sounds pretty all right to me. I was just telling the infinitely great Mr. Salisbury last week in the comments that I would quit the rat race but they don’t let you camp on the beach anymore. I also love the idea that she was in a converted milk truck. It’s cool because by the 70’s milk delivery was archaic in the wake of supermarkets, so it was kind of a renaissance for the vehicle itself. I like the idea of a thing outliving one sort of usefulness and being repurposed in a fun way.

TURN-ONS: Crazy-looking clothes, things that are different.
IN MY SPARE TIME: I study, shop, swim — anything at all but be bored.
AMBITIONS: To work as an airline stewardess, and have a happy and interesting life.

(Official Playmate data sheet.)

According to Marxz on the vintage erotica forums, who I consider an infallible authority on Playmates past, Ms. Morton did not become an air hostess but rather returned to college and pursued a baccalaureate, followed by a teaching credential. She became an educator right here in California, which we all know is the noblest, sexiest, most thoughtful career anyone can ever take up, and that only the most very attractive and magnetic people choose this great state for it. Well done, Ms. M! Such a head on this one’s sweet shoulders!

Dig that grooving cover. Such great hip art, all slick with a smoky black backdrop and purple neon, etc, yes? Love it. The PMOY for 1970 was my beloved, super-duper-darlingest-dearest-departed Claudia Jennings, so now I’m bummed just thinking about her and all that.

Final much more upbeat note. Elaine’s cousin Karen Elaine Morton (not pictured above, that is still Elaine herself) was Miss July 1978, and, like the lovely and talented baseball wife and present-day reality star Jeana Tomasino Keough (Miss November 1980), Karen played a Vestal Virgin in Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I. Pretty cool, yes?

O frabjous day of twenty-two-ness: batshit-bananas numerology, and baseball spring fever

“O, frabjous day! Calloo, callay!” (Carroll, Jabberwocky.)

Computer is fixed!, day off with the littl’un!, Spring Training has begun! and it’s my favorite day of the year — 2/22! Historically, this is my lucky day. I’ve always liked this date best out of the rest of the calendar. Twenty-two is my lucky number from very, very far back, followed closely by two itself (twenty-two trumps just-two because what’s better than one two? two twos. three twos, as in two-hundred-twenty-two, are okay but still inferior because they are three and not two in number. do not attempt to unravel this logic) and this was also the birthday of my first friend, Alex; feeding ducks with her by the little pond at Noble Library in San Jose is one of my first memories of laughing just from being happy. I wish it stopped there with the whyness of twenty-two-ness, but I get kind of …. into numbers.

See also: my lucky time (10:22 PM, or 22:22); the pages of Treasure Island and Wuthering Heights on which I hide money (222 and 22, respectively); the exact uniform number of Robinson Cano and less auspiciously Roger Clemens.

Julie Newmar: “Batterrrr uuup!”

Ask me someday about my theory that he is two people, one the familiar Texan do-gooder and all-around nice fellow Roger Clemens we came to love, and the other an evil, lying, cauldron of seething rage named Rogero Clemenzetti. A wicked and long-dormant personality who will stop at nothing to satisfy his creepy id-like aims, Clemenzetti emerged after a rat bit Clemens in an otherwise empty subway car between Long Island and New York, and he has never been successfully suppressed ever since — it is a very sad case of Jekyll-and-Hyde and I’m surprised no one else has caught it.

Picture from Star Trek Movie Night at the Giants’ AT&T park via Trek Movie.com, taken 4/27/09. I did not attend, as I was at the zoo with my kidlet for her 5th birthday — but we went to the movie later that week and we both cried at the beginning; we are diehard fans of Treks TOSand TNG (not so much the soapier others), but we looooved the reboot and did not find it sacrilegious at all (hot boys don’t hurt neither, and it’s about time we got some girl fan service up in this piece!).

In other thrilling baseball connections, 22 is half of the jersey number of Hank Aaron and Reggie Jackson (4’s and 44 are goodish numbers because of their relationship with 2, being both the square of it and divisible by it, but 8, despite being not just a multiple but its cube is not as good, I feel less comfortable around 8 because it’s just getting too far from 2); 20 (an also-very-very good number because 2 + 0 = 2) less than the number of one of the sport’s greatest heroes, Jackie Robinson (being 42 which is a super-very good number because of DA); and, best of all, it is 20 + 2, 20 being Jorge Posada’s jersey number, though he wore 22 for a few weeks in 1997, before the re-acquisition of Mike Stanley (meh), when Posada switched to 20 so Stanley could once more wear 22 (again, MEH).

Gwen Stefani: “Batterrrr uuup!”

As you can see, 22 is the best number there is, 20 and 2 being close seconds, and therefore 2/22 is the best day of the year. Period. Also: baseball.

Baseball players always have bubble butts. I do not know what repetitive motion it is they do that gives them woman hips, but they’ve all got ’em, except for lanky pitchers, who just have bad knees.

Sorry for the long and pointless diversion but if nothing else, I hope this has proven to you the depths of my numerical mania, and the next time I scoff at the zodiac, feel free to remind me that I have insanely detailed schools of superstition of my own and would do well not to throw stones.

via Michael Leget on the photobucket.

If you think all that was bad, you should talk to my husband, who is medicated for obsessive compulsive disorder, some time about the Importance of Doing Things By Three. He will make a believer of you or die trying. It’s a passion that probably frightened away other, wiser girls, but actually endeared him to me.

NSFW November: Lindsay Wagner, Miss November 2007

Do not confuse Miss November 2007, Lindsay Wagner, with the 1970’s-era Bionic Woman star and mattress spokesmodel of the same name. This one hails from Nebraska and was a ring girl for the Omaha Fight Club (she’s not in it, so it’s okay for her to talk about it, I guess).

Photographed by Stephen Wayda

I think this may be the first Miss November we’ve seen with a total and complete lack of hair, you know, Down There. Gosh. Pubic alopecia in one so young (barely legal at the time of this shoot) is a tragic thing to see. Breaks the heart. Maybe next time you get a haircut, you could sweep it up and send her a little merkin? Just to keep her warm. Hardwood floors get cold in the winter, y’all.

This Lindsay can’t bend steel, but she’s got a straight right that will have you seeing stars. “We have an Omaha Fight Club,” she says, “and I’m a ring girl when my brothers compete. I don’t fight, but I train in self-defense and practice with a lot of guys.” (“Nebraksa Knockout,” Playboy, November 2007)

“I thought I’d never make Playboy in a million years,” Lindsay says. “I’m confident in the way I look, but you know how girls sometimes have the feeling they’re not good enough to accomplish something?”

I think a shade of that concern shows, but only a shade. I don’t know what these girls think that Playboy is, that they get so nervous. Unless it’s the money that freaks them out — I mean it is a big shot at some pretty good cash if you don’t blow it. I guess that could be spooky. Still, it’s not like a firing squad: it’s just a camera.

The only shot that I think in this spread has any merit, composition-wise, is the centerfold up top. It’s pretty hackneyed at this point to have the girl in men’s clothing like she has just come from raiding your closet, but it’s still cute. And she manages to make it look fresh. The best thing about all these pictures is that she has a nice smile and good eye contact. She doesn’t look frozen or fearful or dramatic. Just friendly and fun-loving. That’s appropriate for her age and how she’s been styled and sold in the interview. Good stuff all around, just not, like “great,” which is totally outside of her control. Her end of the quality is solid. And that is me being really strong and not crazy, because the truth is, she looks to me like my dear friendoh the Cappy’s ex, who you need to know is a no-good slack-cunted slagwhore cumdumpster, and I am battling to keep the strong association I have with her appearance out of my opinion of this nice girl, here, and be fair and not let my head get hot and melt my brain. (I get really, really protective of my friends, to the point that if I find someone has injured them in some way I can turn on that person on a dime *snap* and try to set them on fire with my thoughts.)

You can hit Ms. Wagner up on the myspace (current mood: “sad :(” — that is no good at all, maybe you could send her a glittery graphic or something, okay?), but I cannot, as she breaks my Movie Dating Rule: she was born after the release of Mannequin (1987). She can throw me a wink in a couple years, when I’ve once more lowered my standards! I’m thinking next stop, The Sandlot (1993).

Ugh, thanks Playboy cover, for reminding me that, besides being a cheating fuckface in his sporting life, Barry Bonds is also a cheating fuckface off the diamond. He even bought That Woman a house in Scottsdale so he could boff her during spring training while his wife was home with their daughter. Meanwhile, he drug his first wife through a humiliating series of court battles to keep her from getting his earnings, which she wanted to continue to sock away in savings for the education of their two sons. Gar, what a dishonorable goddamned waste of a human being all around he is. Such potential, so many opportunities handed to him, and such terrible choices he has made. Terrible choices. That is so weak. Ugh! Now I’m in a bad mood.

NSFW November: Jeana Tomasino Keough, Miss November 1980

Keeping up with the lovely and talented Jeana Keough (nee Tomasino), Miss November 1980, is purely exhausting. I will try to give you the highlights and just link to more in-depth explanations, because, holy heck, this woman has been one busy bee in the past few decades.

Photographed by Richard Fegley

Okay, first things first. She was married to Matt Keough, former All-Star pitcher for the Oakland A’s and, until four years ago, Billy Beane’s righthand man (read Moneyball. read Moneyball. read Moneyball.). After he was involved in a near-fatal drunk-driving hit-and-run accident in 2005, wherein he struck a pedestrian and fled the scene in a drunken daze, Keough was incarcerated for three months down in the sunny OC.

He and Ms. Tomasino parted ways not too long after that; in fact, according to this article (which calls her “Jenna” and quotes him as saying they are “fine”), it was a big “family fight” that lead him to leave the house after heavy drinking to begin with.

I actually didn’t know that about Keough, or forgot if I did hear about it. What I always think about with him is how he almost got killed in Arizona during Spring Training in the early 90’s. He got hit in the head by a ball. He survived, but it was really lucky. And thinking of that, despite that he was the pitcher and the batter almost struck him, always makes me think of the time in the early years of ball, when a spitball thrown by Carl Mays hit Earl (edit 7/17: Ray, not Earl) Chapman in the head and killed him outright, making him the only player in the history of ball to get killed by a pitch, and how the spitball is now outlawed because of that and some other stuff … Keough’s situation was totally different, though — in fact, I actually am embarassed and wish I hadn’t run off on that tangent, but I got a shitload of pictures so at least there’s that.

Okay, so what has she done for us lately? Ms. Tomasino has continued to act — oh did I forget to mention she was in Mel Brooks’ History of the fucking World: Part I? because she WAS! amazing! She played the Vestal Virgin. Pretty rad, huh?!— but she is now playing a role more suited to her than that of a virgin: herself.

She was until last summer one of the women featured on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Orange County. Here is her official site as a realtor, including a blog which is mainly just updates from her account on the twitter.

She is also an official co-spokesperson for Düzoxin, a duty she shares along with fitness model and infomercial poser Ali Sonoma; mixed-martial-artist and athletic products spokesmodel Jessica Pene (what the what?! HECK, YEAH! She sounds awesome! I am following up on her or my name is not Sportsy McViolentpants); and homemaker and makeup developer Ramona Singer, who stars on Real Housewives of New York.

Disclaimer: This post and the links I threw up just now to the spokespersons’ sites do not translate to an endorsement of the weight-loss product Düzoxin. First of all, never trust a product with an umlaut in it. I’m a big anti-umlaut guy from way back. Second, I think we all know crazy crash diets and pills are not a safe, sane, or lasting way to get fit.

The only healthy way to lose weight is diet and exercise, and the best way to get started is with the help of a qualified nutritionist or professional trainer. Orrrr you can do like I did and eat lots of Funyons and ready-cooked bacon straight out of the fridge, sit on your ass drinking Newcastle and watching ball all day, head out to pick up some teriyaki chicken bowl between games, hit a gypsy child with your car, get cursed by his grandma, and suddenly find the pounds are literally melting off.

Gypsy curse/diet and exercise. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Though she has quit the Real Housewives, people who care about her show have hinted that she will be coming back, so don’t go breaking out the noose just yet if you’re a big fan.

“I have to work and the summer is the best time for selling real estate.

“After four years of doing this, I really needed to focus on work and doing college searching with Colton and flying off to see Shane’s games. I needed to focus on me.”

She added: “I’ve been really busy working on a book and possibly doing another show because I am kind of missing it a little bit!” (“Housewives‘ Keough hints at new show.” Martin, Lara. DigitalSpy, 27 November 2009.)

I just bet. I have a feeling that as long as she has breath in that lovely body, Ms. Tomasino will be using it to her advantage. You keep on keepin’ on, girl!

NSFW November: Lorraine Olivia, Miss November 1990

I never thought I’d say this, but I am getting pretty well sick of these Playboy posts.

But a commitment is a commitment. I told myself I’d do all the Miss Novembers this November, and I am damned well going to. The fact that I’ve found my energy is flagging is all part of the experiment, and I need to see it as a challenge to my creativity to keep it poppin’ fresh for myself as I finish the month. I have only a few days left and something like ten or eleven more ladies to do, so let’s blow this up. Lovely and talented Ms. Lorraine Olivia, Playboy‘s Miss November 1990, won’t you please take it away for us?

You may guess what her day job was (flight attendant), but her hobby is sports. Besides being an avid athlete herself, she passionately avowed her love for the teams in Chicago, her home base.

In fact, in her Playmate interview, Ms. Olivia says that she used to ditch her high school jobs so frequently to go down to Wrigley to catch a Cubs game that she had to try and keep track of which excuses she had already used.

She started rooting for them during their big 1984 season; they were the cause of frequent no-shows at the car dealership and the pharmacy where she held jobs: “I always had to ask myself, Did I use that excuse last week?” (Note to future employers: Lorraine’s favorite excuse was that she had to “check out colleges.”) (“High Flier,” Playboy, November 1990.)

I can get behind that: quit your job and go on tour! Though I generally used to say this only in reference to what any musician with a day job ought to do, I have recently begun to apply it across the board in the general spirit of “follow your dreams.” As my brother-in-law says that my husband taught him, “Don’t follow the money and look for the love: do what you love and the money will follow.” This is interesting to me because, presently, my husband has not returned to finish his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in painting despite our separation meaning that he has more free time, money, and less obligation than during our marriage and that there is therefore literally no time like the present to pursue his dreams — instead, he still works for the heartless banking corporation he got a job with after we got married and he deferred enrollment at his art school. I’m not sure why. I do not ask him difficult things until I think he is ready to talk about it.

In addition to modeling and appearing in Playboy videos (notably their “Women of Color” collections — oh, that PC prince of porn, Hugh Hefner; lord love him!), she has had one other acting part. She appeared in an episode of Fresh PRince of Bel-Air as “Playmate.” She clearly has a stunning range, and I hope you consider her for your next big part. Speaking of flicks:

FAVORITE IN-FLIGHT MOVIE:
Fabulous Baker Boys.

WHAT THEY DON’T TEACH YOU IN STEWARDESS SCHOOL:
How to deal with five unaccompanied children who like to play with the call button.

CUTEST CHICAGO CUB:
Mike Bielecki.

Really, Bielecki? Was he super-cute back then? Hmm, let’s find an old card and take a little look-see, shall we?

Yes. Bielecki cuteness affirmative. I approve. Love me some cornfed baseball-boy hotness. Speaking of which, Ms. Olivia, if you are ever giving yourself the ol’ googly-moogly and run across my blog, please give me a holler in re: current Cubby Mike Fontenot, because, just personally? I believe him to be the beginning and end of all tiny but mighty strawberry-towheaded heat and possibly an alternate source of energy whose adorableness could power the nation’s ballpark lights well in to the 2020s. Your thoughts?

Please, Mike Fontenot, don’t hurt ’em. They call him Little Big Man. He is the BOMB!

And your man Ryan Thierot is nothing to sneeze at, either! On the other hand, you may keep Alfonso Soriano, and may you have better luck with him than my team did. He still holds the Yankee record for most strikeouts in a season evah (157) — a dubious honor if I ever heard one.

NSFW November: Sarah Elizabeth, Miss November 2006

The lovely and talented Sarah Elizabeth, aka Sarah Elizabeth Bowers, was first the Cyber Girl of the Week on Playboy‘s website in December of 2005, then April 2006’s Cyber Girl of the Month, before finally making it to the magazine’s hard copy as Playmate of the Month in November 2006. Most of the playmates from the last ten years or so are kind of ho-hum for me, but she actually seems like a real person who you can have a beer and a conversation with, so I’m down.

Photographed by Stephen Wayda

After a day in the surf Sarah heads to her favorite beach dive. “I walk in and I don’t have to tell them what I’m ordering,” she says. A cold beer lands in front of her in seconds. “There’s never more than 10 people in there. I walk in wearing jeans and flip-flops, with my hair in a ponytail, and put $5 in the jukebox. Then I’m good to go.”

And when she’s not working or lovingly releasing Moby Dick from a lure? Sarah would like to go to a game. “It’s a five-hour drive to Atlanta,” she says. “Maybe when the Braves play the Diamondbacks, my team from Arizona, I’ll drive up there in my Diamondbacks attire and get booed.” (“Southern Comfort,” Playboy, November 2006.)

This is another one of those situations where the issue was so recent that you could easily find all these pictures with a simple google images search, so I’m not going to break my neck putting up shots from the photoshoot. The whole shoot is kind of mediocre anyway, the only thing that saves it is she has a nice smile and doesn’t make the poses too porny. I don’t know what’s up with Stephen Wayda and his shitty photoshoots, but look at that shot up there. Ridiculous. Totally not up to centerfold pictorial par in my book. Well, maybe I’m being hasty. These two shots down below are somewhat interesting and kind of okay, I guess.

Anyway, that’s Sarah Elizabeth, Miss November 2006. Google her if you wish to know more, she’s all over the place.

This is me listening to Joe Buck (now with 80% more concentrated vitriol)

Listening to Joe Buck, actually listening to the words he says and attempting to string them together, is like staring into the Ark of the goddamned Covenant. Face all melting, eyes all exploding, regret the last thing you ever have time to feel …

Ugh. Even with the Yanks up, I am still turning that twat OFF and following the game from the slow but silent safety of Gameday on mlb.com, away from his inaccurate facts and banal, inane comments like, “I don’t like Kazmir’s pace.” Guess what, Joe Buck? He doesn’t like you. Not even Conan’s charity challenge can make this man’s incessant patter palatable to me.

Thanks for going with your usual shitty announcers who know nothing about the AL for its goddamned Championship Series, Fox. (two finger-pop) PEACE.

Apologies for the hateration. I try to be nice. But I simply think that, when you look at the empirical evidence, and consider all the facts together with a cool and reasonable head, it becomes apparent that Joe Buck is a total cockring.

edit: I turned off the game, ate, and turned the TV back on just in time to hear A-Rod called “Posada.” BLARGHGHGHGHGHGH (flesh bubbling, eyes dangling before being consumed in flame) ….

Friends make it all better

Playboy: Isn’t there an old show-business rule about not acting with children or animals?
Tina Fey: That’s right. They will upstage you because they’re adorable. The same can be said of Amy Poehler. I shouldn’t have acted with Poehler. She climbs everything and curls up in your lap, and she’s cuter than babies.
Playboy: That’s a pretty bold statement.
Tina Fey: Amy Poehler is cuter than a baby and a monkey combined.

I did not much care for the movie Baby Mama; maybe my expectations of it were too high. Trouble is, my husband and I watched it on television a few days before we separated (come to think of it, it may have been only hours), so I can’t say anything for sure about my opinions of what I viewed during that time period. Except that Forgetting Sarah Marshall is NOT a good movie to watch when you’re waiting for the right moment to ask for a split — I am pretty sure that is a unilateral truth that we were merely unlucky enough to stumble upon the actual experience of but that everyone can agree is nonetheless for-sure-solid in terms of epiphanies, without having to personally go through it.

In the past few weeks, I’ve started talking to some of my friends — specifically Miss D and Jonohs because they are tricksie and ask the tough questions in mild and genuinely curious and empathetic enough ways that I don’t get startled and run screaming down to Mexico to avoid admitting that I actually feel Ways about Things — more about the separation, more about our time together, and even have talked more to my husband, and I’d pushed aside all those things for so long that I guess I must have started to fool myself that everything was okay.

It is not.

The horrible is beginning to set in as an all new breed of horrible, and congruently the panic is a different and infinitely deeper kind of panic. And I am afraid, and sometimes lonely, though it is self-induced isolation because it’s more like a desperate last-ditch effort at avoidance than loneliness. I can’t talk to my family about it because they are involved, and also frankly very pushy and aggressive people, and I tend to approach a problem far more tentatively than they do. To them, you just snap your fingers and you should know what you think and what to do next. I’m not that way, I need time before I am able to come to any conclusions about things. My feelings freak me out and I spook easily. I need a peaceful solo drive in the country or else a boisterous day of booze and ball to work through my emotions. Thank god a) it’s Autumn and my car is running. b) that the World Series is coming up. c) for my friends and their literally ’round the clock support of me.

I first wrote this looking back over my weekend and thinking of the time I spent with Paolo, Miss D, Geo, Corinnette, and Jonohs, and right then I was checking facebook for the first time in a day and was reminded that Panda Eraser put up a Batman on my wall for me, and Milo and Cinder keep inviting me over, and then I got a message from the Gentleman saying that if we change our minds and want soup, let him know, because kidlet and I are having a Sick Day. I am so ridiculously lucky to have such wonderful friends. If I’ve been avoiding anyone reading this or you haven’t heard from me in a bit, it’s probably because I was afraid if I talked to you I’d start crying and babbling about feelings, but if you don’t like getting avoided, then remind me I can suck it and better stop it! Make me talk, people, I’m a frigging powder keg over here.

Per mi amico: Jonohs edition

Rooney: What’s the score?
Pizza Joint Owner: Nothin’, nothin’.
Rooney: Who’s winning?
Pizza Joint Owner: The Bears.
— Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

(this is the 100th post. balloons and confetti just fell on all of us!)

Take yourself out to the ballgame: Baseball words o’ wisdom from a faraway friendoh

Master Beatie just phoned the house out of nowhere to drop some awesome baseball revelations of the night on me. He was having an extremely well-planned and, from all appearances, enjoyable evening down at the D’backs game in that there old Phoenix, AZ which began with happy hour specials at Applebees (always smart to inexpensively pre-party before hitting the pricey concessions at a major league stadium — attaboy!) and ended in $6 seats with strategically planned backup beers at the game. The boy is a planner, and you can do naught but learn from his skills. He laid the following hard-won wisdom on my none-too-perky but mood-improving-with-time ears:

“Admiration > Envy. Always.”

“Doesn’t matter who’s playing; as long as it’s baseball, it’s awesome!”

(Mikey Beatie photo credit, Location: Estadio Revolucion Torreon, Coahuila, Mexico)

Support whatever local ball is around you, whether you are lucky enough to live in a town in the US with a major league stadium, or have some good old peanuts and crackerjack at a strictly AAA or AA team, or find yourself privy to an unexpected pickup game in the corner of a park or the back lot of a restaurant in South America or Japan.

The crack of the bat, the golden sunset, the ads for local businesses — take yourself out to the ballgame. It is good for the soul.

Hugs and kisses, Miguelito! Your wife will be there before you know it! I know you miss her and I hope a joshing conversation about beer prices at games in the Bay vs. the Gret Southernlywesternly is passin’ the time.

(I have now written two journal entries in one day about couples I know named Mike and S/Cindy.)