Announcement

Veredicto Final recaps soon join the Divorce Court blog. On now: Priest/exorcist instead falls in love with a stripper and a family argument about either moving out or illicit relations, rudimentary Spanish tells me.

Why USAir is the dregs of the earth

Fellow passengers/friends on our cancelled flight to Rome sum it up perfectly:

And, an addendum to said TV segment:

Rather than ranting about it, I’d just like to share with y’all the chronological specifics of what happened before, during and after me and my pregnant wife’s flight to Rome was cancelled for a wee-bit of snow.

This is a fitting end-post to a fucked-up decade.

Ok, I mean it this time ...

It, being this.

Untitled II, 13 December 09

Untitled, 12 Dec 09

The Hickey Endorsement: Better Off Ted is a damn funny show.

The Inquirer also apologizes for saying Pol Pot won the Nobel Peace Prize, and Sarah Palin won a Pulitzer

Corrections. Getcha front-page corrections heeeeere:

This is one sentence

One I met in SOBE years ago who I took back to my hotel room that I was sharing with Papa Kade because we were down for “Biz”, but it was so awkward that we went back to her suite and we “Played” out in the living room while her girlfriend was miserable in the bedroom, and when I offered for the other one to join, she said, “I don’t think my boyfriend would like that”, and I replied, “Trust me, after this he will be happy with what you’ve learned”, but she didn’t go for the bait and I almost missed my flight the next morning home until Papa Kade called me at 6AM).

Two thousand more, in conclusion.

"Oh fucking c*nt," is what I screamed when this came on 2 minutes after I wrote this ...
"I never understood the psychic shift that leads to cutting oneself. Until I saw the Hollywood Christmas Parade."

Four-thousand words

Gone till '010 -- and will return with a new site

Merry Christmas.
Happy New Year.
Et cetera.
I'll be taking a little bit of a respite from the Life Online (aside from periodic Divorce Court and otherwise too-important to miss Life Tidbits).
When I get back, I'll be migrating all the blogging and whatnot over on BrianPHickey.com, so bookmark it now for that's where all the action'll be.

In the meantime, enjoy this video ...

This week's Metro column... UPDATED

... is about this ...

... and this ...

Comes out on the 'morrow. Check it.

UPDATE: Here 'tis.

I'm off to the A.I. show ...

... but today wouldn't be complete without sharing a photo of the Best Catch in Football History. Ta-da ...

Correcting the record

From the Washington Post, via Rick "Hawkeyed" V ...

correction
Thursday, December 3, 2009
A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number.

Get up. Ah get get down. Late 911 wears the late crown.

Weekend Reading Roundup (Eh, Whatever Edition)

You know that when a story about Wendy Williams in a fashion insert mag is probably the most interesting thing you've read over the weekend, it wasn't a good journalistic weekend. That's not to say there aren't OK stories out there, because there are, like those about the animated Mr. and Mrs. Woods car chase, the blow-by-blow of the Afghan war room, the state of Dutch liberalism and a tale about Sarah Palin that includes the paragraph ...

Palin’s discomfort is easy to understand. Race is often the subtext of populist campaigns; their most potent appeal is to whites who are feeling under siege by changing economic and cultural conditions. Palin’s strength with this constituency can only have grown since the last election. It’s the reason that her bus tour is passing through the small cities and towns (Fort Wayne, Indiana; Washington, Pennsylvania) where the 2008 election might have been won.

But since the reading fare was so light, here are some Saturday photos to startcha week up right.






'Ish: (1) 3 p.m. Snow begins to fall in the 215. (2) 9:15 p.m. Jon and the Ukulele Orchestra stage-strum at the North Star. Bobby G.'s life-time ban lifted to permit his one-night viewing and listening pleasure. (3) Wee hours. Brad tends to defaced mirror at work in Ridgemont.

What to do this weekend

Well, if you're me, you're going to the North Star tomorrow night to check out the Ukulele Orchestra (not the ones in the video; they don't even have a website, that's how f'in cool they are). Small stage, lotta ukes, good times to be had by all. Eight bucks. Not bad. Not bad at all.

World Cup draw (U.S. opens vs England, Slovenia and Algeria in group. Not bad at all.)

Even though Ireland got totally, wholly screwed by those soulless cheating French, here you go with the tourney layout. US group looks promising; Brazil's group looks most entertaining:

Group A: South Africa, Mexico, Uruguay, France.

Group B: Argentina, Nigeria, Korean Republic (South), Greece.

Group C: England, USA, Algeria, Slovenia.

Group D: Germany, Australia, Serbia, Ghana.

Group E: Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, Cameroon.

Group F: Italy, Paraguay, New Zealand, Slovakia.

Group G: Brazil, Korea DPR (North), Ivory Coast, Portugal.

Group H: Spain, Switzerland, Honduras, Chile.

24 random thoughts during the last hour and a half of the Jersey Shore premiere

1. Ironic that these chicks in the house are calling the other chicks who came up from the Boardwalk "whore bags" in a black-pot-and-kettle sense. Especially since they base their non-whorebagishness on the fact that they've lived in the house two days and haven't acceded to a gangbang yet.

2. "The Situation" is a great friggin' guido nickname. "Don't bring dirty girls back" is a great friggin' guidette-roommate slogan. "This is the Jersey shore. What do you expect us to do, play with each other the whole time?" is a great friggin' gueed retort.

3. White trash comes in all shapes, sizes and hair styles. Case in point: Pauly D.


4. I need to make it perfectly clear that very few of these dirtbags and dirtbagettes are actually from Jersey. This is an important point to me.

5. First, Mussolini gave Italians a bad name. But, Mussolini didn't have shit on these "people." I can only imagine the Seaside Heights tourism bureau will hold them in the same esteem that Germany's tourism bureau felt about some dead guy named Adolf in, say, 1946.

6. "Snooki," the one who stripped down to skivvies, hammered to the lovehandles, the first weekend, is kind of hot, in a very weird way. The rest of them are dime-a-dozen Wildwood-quality jaundice-souled silicone-breastuses-hanging-out skanks (pictured). That includes "I'm a bartender. I do great things" Angelina and whichever one "JWOWW" is.


7. If I'm not mistaken, the answer to Pauly D's "Who has a T-shirt on the Boardwalk in the rain?" answer is "Every last person in the summer, you m'f'ing moron."

8. POSITIVE NOTE: The house itself is exactly as I picture the old-school shore houses, before the soulless rich folks came in and knocked them all down, forsaking positive vibes for profit.

9. I wonder what kind of "protein" "The Situation" has in his diet.

10. If I don't get an "I can kick your baby's ass" T-shirt for Christmas, Santa is dead-to-me. I already have an "I Bleed Jersey" one on the inside.

11. "Everybody loves me. Babies. Dogs. You know, hot girls. Cougars. I just have unbelievable mass appeal," says The Situation. I don't question the veracity of that statement.

12. I think Arthur Kade would blow The Situation. I meant that capitalized. Physically blow him. Sorry if that crosses the line. But, so does this show. And so does Kade.

13. One of the sluts just said her ideal man is a "Juicehead." If THAT doesn't sum it all up, I don't know what does.

14. I would recommend anybody who even said the word "Seaside" this summer get checked for syphilis.

15. SEMINAL MOMENT: It took one hour and 21 minutes for one of the juicefreak paisans to say, "the party's in Pauly D's pants tonight." It took an additional two seconds for this to happen:


16. It took two minutes for me to start feeling a lot better about the partying I did when I lived down in Sea Isle year-round. A LOT better.

17. Pink eye broke out the first weekend. To be followed by crabs, non-gonococcal urethritis, herpes, syphilis and bacterial vaginosis. I thought these things only happened in Baltimore.

18. I don't know what to make of this Ronnie guy. He seems, I don't know, like a not-entirely-bad-and-delusional-and-roidy guy. I'll get back to you about this issue.

19. Fist-pumping brawl at the bar? Check. Someone telling one of the chicks "to lose 5 or 10 pounds and we can talk"? Double check.

20. Oh, now I know which one JWOWW is: The one who flaunts the mammoth juggz every second of every day and leaves the bar early so she can eat ham. Good people. On-the-pole people.

21. "Don't let the spiked hair fool you. I'm not a bitch," says Pauly D. Oh Pauly D, you so cray-zee.

22. I shudder to think what the end result of a 24/7 camera around the Princeton in the summer of '98 would have been. I mean, I know what some episodes would entail. Fuzzy memories. But would America latch on to the "No cover here girls," declaration coming from an apartment window across the street from a Sea Isle bar? Yes, America would. No cover here, girls.

23. "If a girl's a slut, she should be abused," says abuse-fetishist slut Angelina.

24. It's totally awesome that a two-day hook-up relationship can leave someone who calls himself The Situation shattered.

Pat O'Brien back on TV!!!!!!!

Ok, fine, it was just for a day. On Extra, A.C. Slater's show, but seeing an apparently de-coked P.O'B. is the only thing that could take that sulfur taste out of my mouth from watching Jersey Shore. I took a picture of him for you ...



... and transcribed the conversation as well. It was about Tiger Woods who, I can only hope, was trying to line up a waitress for him and Betsy to get some hookers, get some coke and go f'in crazy with ...

POB: Well it's crazy. I guess they're finding out now what happens in Vegas does NOT stay in Vegas. Oops.
He'll lose no endorsements. He'll repair his image but it'll be a lot harder than winning the Masters, I'll tell you that.
Tiger's image has been nuked.
ACS Voice-Over: TV personality Pat O'Brien knows what it takes for Tiger to bounce back.
POB: Everybody bounces back. When you're walking through hell, you got to keep walking. Winning helps, a lot. There's a human part to this, too. The biggest problem he's got is his family. (He has) to man up to his family and put that back together and I hope he does that.

(Thank you, thank you, thank you, Tina, for sending the instant "Alert! Alert! POB on Extra" text last night!)

To answer your four questions...

1. Yes, I've delved into the pit that's aka MTV's "Jersey Shore" last night.

2. Yes, I will be blogging about episodes once I can wrap my frigging head around what I'm watching.

3. Yes, I'm as insulted as those Dago Pride groups that made a stink before whatever her name is could climb into a hot tub and grind up on every gueed in sight. But for different reasons than woe is Italiano-ism. I worry about a bum rap landing upon the Jersey Shore where Charlie Dawg spent her formative years, 91st Street in Sea Isle

(No, those aren't her cases of Corona, neither, though, after seeing the Seaside debacle, I'd be shocked if pets don't drink). Well, technically Townsend's Inlet, but I don't want to get all "I know a fuckload more about the shore than you do, shoobies."
At least not yet.

4. And finally yes, even Chico Resch is ashamed.

If you have a DVR

I'd set it for the 4 a.m. Extra on NBC.
Topic: What Tiger Woods should do to repair his image.
Keynote Speaker: This guy.

A sad day for Bobby G...

... for his hero will reside in prison in perpetuity.

Richard Casey, 50, who became known as "the foot fetish bandit," was sentenced to serve a minimum of 57 years by Common Pleas Court Judge Joan A. Brown.
Two of Casey's victims were in the courtroom when Brown said she was going to give him a sentence that "will insure that he will no longer be a danger to society."

And now, something kinda safe for work (don't blame me; blame Youtube) ...

The Fightin' 42nd (and Atlantis Mayor Snuffleupagus) finally gets its due!

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Better Know a Made-Up District - Connecticut's 42nd
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

(Gets good around 2:30 in.)

Welcome home, Allen

I have missed you.

Transcript for Allen Iverson's "Practice" Press Conference
00:01 → 00:08 If Coach tells you that I missed practice, then that's that.

00:08 → 00:13 I may have missed one practice this year

00:13 → 00:21 but if somebody says he missed one practice of all the practices this year,

00:21 → 00:23 then that's enough to get a whole lot started.

00:23 → 00:24 (Clip Jumps)

00:24 → 00:27 But I'm tired and I'm hurt too.

00:27 → 00:32 Reporter: "Could you clear about your practicing habits since we can't see you practice?"

00:32 → 00:38 If I can't practice, I can't practice.

00:38 → 00:41 It is as simple as that. It ain't about that at all.

00:41 → 00:47 It's easy to sum it up if you're just talking about practice.

00:47 → 00:50 We're sitting here, and I'm supposed to be the franchise player,

00:50 → 00:52 and we're talking about practice.

00:52 → 00:57 I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about practice, not a game,

00:57 → 01:01 not a game, not a game, but we're talking about practice.

01:01 → 01:07 Not the game that I go out there and die for

01:07 → 01:10 and play every game like it's my last

01:10 → 01:13 but we're talking about practice man.

01:13 → 01:15 How silly is that?

01:15 → 01:20 Now I know that I'm supposed to lead by example and all that

01:20 → 01:25 but I'm not shoving that aside like it don't mean anything.

01:25 → 01:28 I know it's important, I honestly do

01:28 → 01:30 but we're talking about practice.

01:32 → 01:35 We're talking about practice man.

01:35 → 01:38 (laughter from the media crowd)

01:38 → 01:40 We're talking about practice.

01:40 → 01:42 We're talking about practice.

01:42 → 01:44 We're not talking about the game.

01:44 → 01:46 We're talking about practice.

01:46 → 01:49 When you come to the arena, and you see me play,

01:49 → 01:51 you've seen me play right,

01:51 → 01:53 you've seen me give everything I've got,

01:53 → 01:56 but we're talking about practice right now.

01:56 → 01:58 We're talking about prac... (stops talking)

01:58 → 02:00 (more laughter)

02:00 → 02:04 Hey I hear you, it's funny to me to, hey it's strange to me too

02:04 → 02:07 but we're talking about practice man,

02:07 → 02:11 we're not even talking about the game, when it actually matters,

02:11 → 02:16 we're talking about practice.

02:16 → 02:20 Reporter: "Is it possible that if you practiced, not you but you would make your teammates better?"

02:20 → 02:22 Iverson: "How in the hell can I make my teammates better by practicing?

This Week's Metro Column

So, a couple weeks back, I wrote about how the trial of cop-killer John Lewis' trial would be a seminal moment in establishing new D.A. Seth Williams' rep in the cap-punishment world. Well, then, Lewis pleaded guilty. And, the outgoing D.A. Lynn Abraham still pursued the death penalty.
Sitting in that room when the jury sentenced him to death, though, altered my thinking not on the death penalty itself -- I'm for it. Obviously. -- but whether this case -- which I harped about for years as being prime for a death-squad -- was the proper use in the long run.

With that, Lynne Abraham’s final Pennsylvania death-row cell was filled by John “Jordan” Lewis, who’d accepted responsibility for being evil incarnate one very tragic 2007 day when he stole Officer Chuck Cassidy’s life. But what exactly was served last week: Justice or vengeance?

Read it here and let me know what you think.

Oh, Huck

Here's why the guy who got hit by an automobile sides with cars in their battle vs bicycles

Pedestrian: Get the hell off the sidewalk, bicyclist.

Bicyclist: It's not safe in the street. Cars don't treat bicycles with traffic-law respect.

Pedestrian: That doesn't give you the right to swerve among people who also took the green-friendly approach of walking rather than burning oil to drive. Bikes and cars go in the street; pedestrians go on the sidewalk. Never the twain should meet.

Bicyclist: Fuck you and the toes you rode in on. Get it? I made a funny! We own the streets and sidewalks and everywhere else. Maybe you should just get a bike rather than investing in new sneakers once a year. I'll ride on the sidewalk all I want, and try to fashion it as an anti-car message when all it is is a means to prove I haven't ethically and morally developed beyond a 10-year-old.

Pedestrian: I wish they had training wheels that taught both respect and proper soap-application techniques.

Translation: Bicyclists put their own safety before that of pedestrians and then pretend they're fighting for the common man. Their sense of holier-than-thou entitlement is astounding and ass-backward. You can't play "good for the environment" if you're bad for a pedestrians' environment and peace of mind. The last time I saw a car drive on a sidewalk was Jake and Elwood Blues' ride.
Ergo, even though I hate cars and the hell they can rain down upon lives, I hate bike pedalers that don't stay in the street, where they belong, even more.
And now, for your entertainment...