Another Lost Weekend

LET'S DELVE RIGHT IN, shall we ... Joe Torre sure seems to be going out of his way this year to make it easy for all the armchair critics who insist he just doesn't know how to handle a pitching staff. Despite all the ammunition we could detonate on behalf of that argument, we (sometimes) like to take the high road here on Warden's World, so let's just say Torre suddenly seems to have lost his once-infallible touch. But how to explain why on Saturday, in a game against the Giants that agonizingly stretched to 10 ... 11 ... 12 ... 13 innings, Joe somehow used six pitchers in relief, none of whom was named Mariano Rivera, who sat idly by in the visitors bullpen at San Francisco's AT&T Park. After the game, Joe calmly explained that he wasn't gonna bring in Mariano without the lead, and that Roger asked to come in the game. To which we respond, no longer going down that high road, one, what the hell and, two, what the fuck.

The next day, with the Yanks trailing 3-1, Torre brings in Roger Clemens to pitch the 7th inning, his first relief appearance in 23 years. Okay, it was cool to see him face off against Barry Bonds, but it would've probably been a lot cooler 10 years ago when both of them were nearer their primes.

C'mon, Joe, the only time you should use a starter out of the pen is either against the Red Sox late in the year or of course an elimination game in the playoffs. But this is the third time Torre's pulled this (he used Andy Pettitte twice already), and it's probably not the last. Either Joe truly doesn't care what other people think or he's taken so much heat already that in his mind he's gonna do it his way from here on in, maybe they're one and the same... But maybe it's just that Joe no longer has Don Zimmer riding shotgun talking him out of his more boneheaded moves. Guess we'll have to wait for the inevitable Lifetime Original Movie to get the lowdown...

In any case, this long lost 1-5 West Coast weekend took the life out of Yankees fans and, in all likelihood, may have expunged the last sign of playoff life, without trying to sound too maudlin or too defeatist, or maybe they're also one and the same...

You just knew the Yankees weren't gonna pull out that extra inning game vs. the hapless Giants on Saturday. It wasn't so much that they gave back a 4-1 lead, wasted a very good effort by Chin Miang-Wang, or that the shaky bullpen would stay true to form. It was Derek Jeter leaving the game with a tweaked hip; it seemed like a bad omen, pure and simple...

Now it's just a matter of rooting against the Mets from here on in, to the point where you pull for two teams every night, your Yanks and whoever's playing the Flushing Less-Than-Amazins. Speaking of which, it was wrong for me to assert last week that the Mets would struggle against the Twins and A's. I think I said that these were "complete, well rounded teams, not feeble NL teams with two or three legit hitters scattered throughout the lineup." How wrong I proved to be, because neither team is exactly stocked with fearsome sluggers. Sure, the Twins have three good ones in Joe "By The Hour" Mauer (.319), Justin "Case" Morneau (20 HRs, 57 RBI) and Torii "Big Game" Hunter (.306, 57 RBIs), but the rest of the lineup is virtually bereft of real threats, such that you can "pitch around" the rest of the supporting cast, more so in an NL park where the pitcher is forced to hit. And the A's ... This team makes the present day punchless Atlanta Braves seem like the old Yankees Murderers' Row and Pittsburgh Lumber Company combined and maybe even squared in comparison. The A's best hitter is Nick Swisher, who's a solid player with a perfect name for the Bay Area, nudge nudge wink wink, but he's hitting a less than robust .284 with 41 RBIs to lead the club in both categories. Their big bopper is 3B Eric Chavez with 12 HRs, but he's hitting a mere .243. And the A's scored 3 fucking runs in 3 games against the Mets, while displaying a lifelessness to match the meager numbers.

Somehow Tuesday seems like a month ago, because I remember settling down to watch the Yankees take on the Rockies and noting that the Mets, fresh off their loss in the Subway Series, were down 9-0 to the Twinkies as the first pitch was being thrown in Colorado. Of course the Yankees went on to lose that night's game 3-1 and then drop the next two for an ignominious sweep at the hands of the Rockheads, scoring an A's-like 5 runs in 3 games at the best hitters' ballpark in MLB, then off to San Fran to drop another 2 of 3, wasting all the momentum they had built in the first weeks of June... That's the kind of season it's been already, with enough unlikely twists and turns to make soap opera buffs shake their heads in disbelief...

Historic season in terms of sluggers hitting landmark homers ... Sammy Sosa just hit #600 ... Ken Griffey is on pace to reach the same mark shortly after the All-Star Game, after jacking his 583rd and 584th in a return trip to Seattle. All those lost games due to injury or he'd be the one passing Ruth and Aaron... At 499 career bombs, Frank Thomas stands at the precipice of guaranteed baseball immortality, looking 500 in the eye as his Blue Jays begin a 3-game set in Minny ... A-Rod stands at 492 A-bombs, 8 blasts short of a Half-Thousand HRs ... As much as it pains me to point it out, Manny Ramirez is gonna get there too, with 482 HRs, he's a lock to get hot in the second half and will undoubtedly hit number 500 against the Yankees, probably in Yankee Stadium to win a game for the Sox ... that's the kinda year it's been. Ya think Boston would've lost that extra-inning game to the Giants like the Yankees did? To a team mired in the midst of an 8-game losing streak? Getouttahere ... Jim Thome's inclusion on this list probably comes as a surprise to many with his 481 lifetime dingers; a big second half would also give him a good chance to reach 500 HRs this season ... and of course everybody's favorite role model Barry Bonds is likewise a lock to get to 756 any week now, passing Hammerin' Hank and embarrassing baseball in the process...

Ironically, Bonds may have been considered the greatest player of all time if he had not come close to the all-time HR mark. Let me 'splain myself. Without the Aaron record, his career would have been discussed in terms of his 7 MVP awards, 11 Gold Glove awards, his base stealing, all the walks he took ... The record complicated things and magnified all the negatives, to the point where the accomplishments are obscured by a haze of emotion and controversy.

Speaking of amazing numbers, during the Mets-Twins game won by young Johann Santana last week, Dwight Gooden's name came up, and someone related the fact that before he was 25 years old, he had 100 wins against only 37 losses, while 28-year-old Santana, who everyone rightly considers one of the two or three best pitchers in baseball the last five or so years, had a stellar record of 85-37 -- that's how absolutely dominant Gooden was. He might have had the best stuff of any right hander when you consider his blazing fastball and sick, nasty hook ... His 194-112 record, with 3.51 ERA and 2,293 K's falls short of Hall of Fame consideration, but the wasted years and missed seasons cost him a legit shot at 300 wins and a lock Hall of Fame enshrinement. Unfortunately, even the feel-good story of his resurrected career with the '90s Yanks is marred with the stain of a recent incarceration (Gooden was released from a Florida prison at the end of 2006 after serving a 7-month sentence in violating parole).

Going to Shea Stadium in the '80s with my Met fan friends to see Dwight pitch was exciting even for this Yankees fanatic, who will admit to getting swept up in the emotion of the crowd and maybe even rooting for a strikeout or two ... the K banners being hung on the railing ... the electrifying anticipation when the count reached 2 strikes ... Gooden's contribution went beyond the personal stats, the gaudy numbers he was putting up in those first five years, even beyond the economic numbers represented by an extra 10 or 15,000 fannies in the seats when he was pitching ... the very definition of a hot New York sports ticket, like Jordan coming to the Garden, only Gooden took the mound every five days.

Disconcerting to hear Mike "Buzz Kill" Mussina's postgame comments about how he didn't know the pitcher was on deck when he gave up a home run to the Rockies 8th place batter ... Again, what the fuck ... he said he would've pitched differently if he remembered or thought to look over to the on deck circle ... said he is so focused in on the batter, blah blah blah ... is there any Yankees fan not tired of this guy's whining this year? That was the last straw, not knowing who's coming up next. Jeez, the fucking fans know who's on deck, but Mr. Crossword can't process such esoteric data because he's so locked in to the moment!

The NL All-Star voting is a disgrace and a joke. I have no problem with Jose Reyes starting at SS over a very good J.J. Hardy (18 HRs, 50 RBIs) of the Brew Crew, but David Wright is having a down year and it looks like he's gonna start at 3B over the Marlins' Miguel Cabrera. Wright is hitting a pedestrian .286 with 12 HRs and 40 RBIs, numbers that are dwarfed by Cabrera's .330, 17 & 54. Unfair, as is Carlos Beltran starting at CF with a .272 average, 10 HRs & 43 RBIs, stats that are even less than pedestrian, bordering on downright lousy, while C Paul Lo Duca has over a million total votes and is in second place behind the Dodgers young Russell Martin; for the record, Lo Duca is batting .282, with 3 HRs & just 20 RBIs, while Martin is hitting .293, with strong power numbers of 8 & 49. Thankfully, it looks like Martin's current 200,000-vote lead is safe from the craven ballot-stuffing efforts of Mets fans and the embarrassing machinations of the Mets' PR staff, at least for now.

Now, you can make a case for Lo Duca being the second or third best catcher in the NL, but what makes it offensive is the all-out and apparently shameless promotional assault the Mets front office is waging on his behalf, as if it would constitute a major injustice if this guy doesn't start the All-Star game behind the plate. Let it happen naturally, for crissakes, without the Shea Stadium PA announcer reminding the home crowd every half-inning to cast a vote for Lo Duca. And how the hell does Beltran not only lead all outfielders in votes, but have the most votes period in the NL, albeit barely over Junior Griffey. It shows the so-called sophisticated big-city Mets and their fans can be as bush-league as any remote minor league outpost, although I'm sure this whole All-Star game scenario is a big turnoff to baseball purists who happen to be Mets fans. Then again, the Braves' Andruw Jones inexplicably is currently polling 5th among outfielders, which proves that either Atlanta fans are equally provincial when it comes to their own or that Karl Rove himself is counting the votes, because the once-formidable Jones brother is hitting a scant .197 without the usual power numbers needed to offset residing below the dreaded Mendoza line.

The Braves' other Jones brother, Chipper, is embroiled in an unseemly war of words with one of Atlanta's pitchers, the reliably voluble John Smoltz. Chipper, in his own words, rushed himself back to the lineup because he felt Smoltz called him out in front of teammates, questioning the severity of his injury while the rest of the team was "on the field busting it." Larry took this as a diss and fired back, saying, "Somebody I know better not miss a start." Even before this public dustup, I didn't like the Braves' chances to challenge the Mets for the division, seeing as they can't hit a fucking lick and their pitching really ain't all that good either. Little things like that. They were shut out in four out of five games last week, and in the other game, which they also lost, they exploded for a single run. That has to be some sort of all-time record for futility on the major league level.

During the Mets' recent delightful downturn, the Braves failed to take advantage, gaining no ground while losing 14 of their first 23 games in June. So it looks like a Met-hater's best bet this year is the Philadelphia Phillies, currently in second place at 39-36, 3 games behind the Mets. I know the Phillies just lost starter Jon Lieber for the year, but he was only 3-6 with an ERA near 5.00. Led by Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins, this is a team that does have some big-time punch in the lineup, with four Phillies hitting at least 10 HRs. We'll know a lot more about their chances of challenging for the division lead beginning this weekend with a 4-game set vs. the Mets at the Vet or wherever the Phils now play their home games. My Phils, your Phils, our Phils, indeed the whole nation's beloved Phils...

Better Team Wins Again

LET'S GET RIGHT TO THE POINT HERE on this hot & sticky New York Monday morning: How sweet it was for Yankees fans to watch their Bombers win this coveted Subway Series rubber game, crushing ther bitter crosstown rivals 8-2! For me it was made that much sweeter after picking up the Sunday Daily News and seeing Mets shill Mike Lupica fire off his usual tiresome barbs at the Yankees in his Shooting from the Lip column, which at this point really should be called Mailing It In From Home, because Lupica no longer has anything original to say. When a writer becomes that predictable and formulaic, he ceases to be worth reading. But just in case you don't want to take my word for it, here's a sampling of what stuck in my craw, as our country cousins might say.

Lupica led off with another embarrassingly amateurish pro-Met sentiment, absurdly proclaiming, "Oh man, do I hope Carlos Gomez can hit. Because even when he's not hitting, he sure is fun to watch play baseball." Little Mike would never root for any Yankee to excel, but here he's all over the jock of a guy who has 1 HR and 17 strike-outs in 71 at-bats. Yeah Mike, we're looking at the next Miguel Cabrera here.

Then the diminutive suck-up takes his usual weekly shot at Jason Giambi, no surprise there, followed by his requisite homo-erotic salivating over Jose Reyes: "You know who the Knicks need at point guard? Somebody like the Mets' point guard: Reyes." Doesn't that come off as just a little too forced a sentiment, slightly too effusive? Writer Richard Price had a word for when seemingly heterosexual men cross over into the realm of overly gushy or breathless language: he called it "using faggotese," as in "Sorry, but I don't speak faggotese." It seems Lupica and other area sportswriters just can't help expressing their sad man-love for either Reyes or David Wright, to the point where you wanna vomit in their general direction.

Then Tiny Mike tries to put a damper on the Yankees recent hot streak. See if you can follow this logic: "On May 14, the Red Sox were seven games ahead of the Yankees in the standings. On May 29, they were 14 1/2 games ahead. So they picked up 7 1/2 games in basically two weeks. Between May 29 and June 14, the Yankees got seven games back. It's just all much more monumental when it happens in pinstripes." Real objective, isn't it? I guess the Yankees should apologize for not giving up on the division! The front-running Lupica will be the first guy trying to climb back on the pinstriped bandwagon when it picks up steam again. You know what you will never hear from these anti-Yankee weasels: the fact that the Mets have the highest payroll (by far) in the entire National League. That fact is always conveniently omitted when discussing the savvy genius that is GM Omar Minaya.

By my count, the Mets have developed precisely two impact players from their highly overrated farm system, both of whom preceded Minaya in terms of when they were signed: Wright and Reyes. That's it, folks. Everyone else the Mets either signed as free agents or traded for in deals that were little more than fire sales: Carlos Delgado, Paul Lo Duca, Carlos Beltran, Tom Glavine, Pedro Martinez, Billy Wagner, Shawn Green, Orlando Hernandez. Pitcher John Maine was a throw-in when they traded Kris Benson to Baltimore; they got lucky, pure and simple. The jury is out on Maine, as he has pitched poorly after his unexpected 5-0 start. Minaya also got lucky on Oliver Perez, admittedly a solid pitcher, but most of the credit for Maine and Perez goes to pitching guru Rick Peterson, the man responsible for developing the Big Three of Zito, Hudson and Mulder while he worked in the same position for Oakland a decade ago.

Now, I know nobody in their right mind goes to the Village Voice for sports or really for much of anything anymore except maybe Nat Hentoff, a political cartoon or two, and the classifieds (that's why they give it away these days), but every once in a while for some unknown reason the excremental Allen Barra pens a sports-related column, such as the laughably ill-timed "Bandwagon, Anyone? It's time New York got more excited about the Mets" from last week's typically forgettable edition. It's more Met shilling and Yank bashing from a lame-ass who co-authored a couple of unreadable sports books with mental-case Chris Russo, who comes across as so verbally challenged, so prone is he to butchering the language, that he has no business being in the book writing biz at all. In fact, listening to him constantly mutter & stutter his way through the on-air ad copy on WFAN, Russo seems to have his hands full just reading the English language. Russo is just lending his name to the enterprise, the same way a retired ballplayer lends his name to a restaurant, with about as much credibility. There's something inherently wrong with the whole practice to me, although to delineate why and how is for another post & time. Nuff said for now.

Here are a few lowlights from Barra's typically way-off-base ravings: "We'll see if the Yankees' momentum continues. Meanwhile, we have no doubt that the Mets we saw in the first two months of the season are the real ones." Just like Chris Russo, his opinions are inseparable from the facts, don't you see! Such arrogance from a fan of a team that hasn't even won a measly pennant in a watered-down league yet.

Then Barra writes that, "It's worth noting that the Mets have gone through their recent slump with a sub-par Carlos Beltran and Jose Valentin and entirely without Shawn Green, Moises Alou, and, of course, Pedro Martinez." Where does one begin parsing or debunking such a stinking pile of crapola? Uh, do we have to point out to Barra that even casual fans know that teams go into slumps in the first place if enough key players go into slumps, and vice versa. What is his point here? That the Mets slump is somehow different? First off, I didn't know that Jose Valentin was capable of carrying the team on his shoulders, such that a prolonged slump by the journeyman second baseman would send the powerhouse Mets spiraling downward. Second, they've played many more games without Martinez than with him for most of the past two or three seasons, so now you're missing him in the starting rotation? What disingenuous bullshit! And Moises Alou? Are you fucking kidding me? You sign an injury-prone 41-year-old outfielder and then make excuses for the team when he goes on the disabled list! How about noting all the Yankees injuries this year, you whining shill? What's worth noting, Barra, is what a sub-par writer you are, or should we say you've been slumping your entire sorry career?




















Next, the always-reliably clueless Barra laments the fact that no Mets have appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated this year! I hope Barra's not paid for having such good industry sources, because on the cover of the recent SI is Mets GM Minaya surrounded by some of his big "finds" -- guys like Carlos Beltran, John Maine, El Duque and Endy Chavez. Now, I actually like Omar, a (fellow?) Queens boy made good, and he's done a solid job resurrecting a dormant franchise, and I know the story goes into Minaya's being the first Hispanic GM in baseball, which is great, but can't the Mets win something before they're celebrated in this fashion! They have a scant one-and-a-half-game lead in their own division! Maybe Barra wants the Mets featured next on the cover of Time and Newsweek in the same week, like Springsteen in '75, so much have they captured the cultural zeitgeist of the entire nation. Mets fans are a real piece of work these days. It is good to know, however, that the SI cover jinx is alive and well! Let's hope the Boston Red Sox are next to adorn the cover of an upcoming issue (and soon).

Then Barra wonders out loud why the Mets are only sixth in National League road attendance. It's not enough that after years of sucking the Mets are finally competitive; this total schmuck has to worry why people would rather pay to watch Barry Bonds' Giants or Ken Griffey's Reds! Get a life, Barra, you fucking nerd; I guess Carloses Beltran, Delgado and Gomez just don't put the fannies in the seats around the NL, or else a Jose Reyes steal of second is not all it's jacked up to be outside the self-absorbed baseball confines of NYC.

Another Barra clunker ends the pathetic puff piece: "When Pedro Martinez returns, they just might have the best starting rotation in the NL. But—and this is what Mets fans have to remember—even without Pedro having thrown a pitch this season, the Mets would still be odds-on favorites to win the National League pennant if the playoffs started tomorrow." Now, correct me if I'm wrong, and I hate for reality to intercede in Barra's fantasy world, but weren't the Mets a big favorite in last year's playoffs against a very ordinary St. Louis Cardinals team -- one with a much, much lower payroll than the Mets, and one of the worst teams in recent memory to win the World Series? How'd that series work out? I guess I must've missed the parade held in the Mets honor, unless you count beating a mediocre L.A. Dodgers squad in the division round. Maybe Barra has a ring he wears commemorating that great accomplishment. Ah, why bother with a scrub like Barra when he's so easy to ignore? The next time you're in the sports section of a bookstore, find one of his books, take it into the bathroom, find his picture on the book jacket and then wipe your ass with it. That's really the only proper response, although experience tells me it's likely that large swaths of society usually frown upon such a proactive critical approach.
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When Roger Clemens (44) faced Julio Franco (48) in Friday night's Subway Series opener, the combined age of the two was an eye-opening 92 years! ... Jose Reyes showed off his baseball IQ last night, getting caught stealing in the 4th inning with the Mets down 5-0 ... Looks like Carlos Beltran has reverted to 2005 form; let's see him play through the boos another season like A-Rod did last year ... Paul Lo Duca has become my least favorite Met. What a hypocritical scumbag this guy is. First, with a wife & kid at home, he hits on and dates a fucking teenager, now he is the ultimate decider of proper baseball etiquette -- letting everyone know when it's okay to showboat after a HR (when he does it) and when it's not (when anyone who's not a Met does it). All of which makes him a douche-bag and a big-time butthole, not that I'm gonna resort to name calling here on the World Wide Web; wouldn't wanna start a trend or anything ... It was cool to see Lo Duca have to leave the game last night after taking a 95-plus MPH Chien-Ming Wang fastball to his forearm last night. There's more where that came from, boy-eee! ... Of course it's okay for Jose Reyes to shake his ass and act like a salsa dancer in the Puerto Rican Day Parade after scoring a meaningless run; I hope someone plants a heater in his cabeza next (and soon); that's right, I said it...

Judging by the number and intensity of panicking Mets fans calling up the sports talk shows after Saturday's Yankees win, you know they wanted to win the rubber game bad. I couldn't help but hear the guy who lives downstairs from me carrying on again during Friday's Mets win. I say "couldn't help" because, after all, he was screaming at the top of his lungs after any& every positive Mets development. He pours it on thick because he knows I'm a Yankees fan, but I gotta tell ya: the silence the last two games was indeed golden ... Another rabid Mets fan and long-time friend saw fit to e-mail me Friday night right after the 2-0 Mets win, declaring that the Mets "owned" Clemens now ... My buddy titled his e-mail "That's 1," and he turned out to be right on: one was indeed all the Mets would get this weekend! ... And call me cynical, but scoring two runs off a 44-year-old making just his second start of the season is hardly enough to take ownership of anything, much less a living, breathing human being ... I mean, if that was the case, then Orlando Hernandez is now the Yankees bitch after getting butchered last night by the Bombers! 7 hits, 6 runs, 2 homers, knocked out in the 5th ... I got another e-mail Saturday after the Mets took an early 2-0 lead off Tyler Clippard, which I ignored of course, but I did get a classy congrats! message after the wild 11-8 Yankees win ... Someone tell me why Joe Torre is bringing in Mariano Rivera with a 5-run lead in the 9th; give the guy the day off, willya! How do ya know you won't need him for an inning-plus on Sunday night? C'mon Joe! Maybe it's all the Bigelow Green Tea going to his head ... El Duque is listed as 39 years old but for all we know he may be even older than The Rocket! If Mets fans are counting on this guy to deliver, then maybe they're in bigger trouble than we thought.

I think 6 games a year is 3 too many for the Subway Series. They should rotate between Shea and Yankee Stadium each year, with each team playing a series in the other's ballpark ... As much as I enjoy it, if you play an even number of games and the teams split, it prevents one team from claiming dominance ... When I grew up there was something called the Mayor's Trophy Game, one exhibition game per year between the clubs from 1963 to 1981, and we still managed to work ourselves into a frenzy over a game played for charity that didn't count in the standings and one in which the respective managers rarely tried to actually win the damn thing, instead stocking the lineup with minor leaguers and second stringers...

Mets fans who complain that their team is not getting its due in NYC relative to the Yankees come off as even more pathetic than hockey fans wondering why the NHL is a distant, faraway fourth among big league sports (don't make me go get the ratings) ... that's just the way it is, and wishing otherwise shan't make it so ... either accept reality or make up your own ... Next up for the Mets, the Minnesota Twins and Oakland Athletics: complete, well rounded teams, not feeble NL teams with two or three legit hitters scattered throughout the lineup ... I won't get greedy, but another nice stretch where the Mets lose 4 out of 6 would go a long way toward warming the cockles of my heart, if I can still say "cockles" on the Internet ... Fucking Giants couldn't have sucked more versus Boston over the weekend, dropping three games in the process; thanks for absolutely nada ... Melkie Cabrera was dreadful at the plate versus the Mets, going 1-12 and killing rallies left and right; he's also now 2 for his last 19 ... One last thing for Mets fans: those objects in your rear-view mirror may be closer than they appear: Braves now a game a half back, Phillies two back! ... WFAN's Steve Sommers, one of the more gratingly insufferable Met shills on the airwaves in a city seemingly full of them, said he absolutely loved the pitching match-ups in the Subway Series: Clemens vs. Perez, Clippard vs. Glavine, Wang vs. Hernandez. And now, after the Mets dropped 2 of 3 and looked awful in the process, with Mets pitchers getting scorched for 19 runs in the Yankees victories? Probably not so much. Can you say Mets Rehab? Priceless!

New & Notable

DO Y'ALL KNOW about Audiofile, Salon.com's music page? It's a damn fine keeper, because in addition to some good music writing and interviews, they have a big selection of MP3 files that y'all can download for the sum of absolutely nothin' as in free (just right-click on Save Link As...). There are hundreds of songs offered here, with a new one added daily, although most of them tend to be on the obscure side. But as we all know, today's abstract obscurities are tomorrow's overplayed annoyances. I found songs by Spoon, the Wedding Present, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Patti Smith... It takes a while to go through it all alphabetically, but there's worthwhile stuff by artists like James Chance (Contort Yourself), New Pornographers, Cowboy Junkies, the Damned (Neat Neat Neat), John Doe, Albert Hammond Jr. ... It just takes patience, little grasshoppers, time and patience...

Audiofile also has links to what they call Great Literary Podcasts, including readings by Charles Bukowski, Kurt Vonnegut, Dylan Thomas ... Steven Van Zandt touches on the final days of The Sopranos, the future of rock & roll, and of course Bruuuuuuuuce ... and a brief but enticing Q&A with Joe Strummer biographer Chris Salewicz.that's gonna make y'all wanna read the book ... All adds up to a fine way to spend a morning or afternoon at work, no? Let it be our little secret ... we're just passing time before the afterlife here, at best...

Speaking of Spoon, the recent New Yorker has a nice little piece on the new album from the underrated Austin-based band, who I believe will be playing a free show somewhere in New York next month ... I wanna say July 11th...

The New Yorker also published a chapter from Falling Man, the new Don DeLillo novel; read it here...

For enjoyable summer reading in the often unintentionally comedic realm of Washington politics, peruse the various "character" letters penned by supporters of Scooter Libby pleading for leniency, clemency and mercy for the convicted perjurer, who was sentenced to 30 months for his part in the Valerie Plame scandal. Among those writing the federal judge on behalf of Dick Cheney's right-hand hit-man are disgraced politicians like Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz and Henry Kissinger, bringing to mind the hackneyed phrase, With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies ... In letters authored by the aforementioned maniacs, as well as in misguided missives written by other equally toxic creeps like Mary Matlin, Doug Feith and James Woolsey, Libby is brazenly portrayed as a statesmanlike cross between the Dalai Lama, Winston Churchill and Jesus Christ himself, instead of the vengeful party hack and Bush party line enforcer he has always been. Further evidence that more than six years into Bush's disastrous reign of error, administration supporters still function in a parallel universe completely cut off from our reality-based world, increasingly incapable or uninterested in separating fact from fiction. Wolfowitz in particular contributes 4 pages of blatant falsehoods, resorting to pitiful platitudes like "Mr. Libby is one of the least partisan individuals you will find in Washington" and the even more ridiculous "He never seems to take any pleasure in the misfortunes of others, even those with whom he strongly disagrees." When you stop laughing uncontrollably from those well-honed one-liners, by all means read the rest of Wolfie's stand-up routine as well as the other desperately deceitful letters on the always-rewarding smokinggun.com website and make your own mocking Waaaa-waaa!! noises as you revel in another neocon scumbag's fall from grace. I know I will!






















In a related note, Robert Zoellick, the new World Bank president tapped by Bush to replace the outgoing Wolfowitz, appears to be cut from the same mendacious mold as his prevaricating predecessor: a fellow signatory of the noxiously injudicious Project for a New American Century, pledging to do all he can do help the world's poor, etc. No big surprise, because catching these corrupt neocon Bushmen is like an endless game of whack-a-mole: as soon as one conservative boogeyman is disgraced and pushed out the door a la Tom DeLay, Dennis Hastert, et al, another one rises out of his stink hole like a prairie rat, ready to feed from the public trough and make as much money as possible for themselves and enriching their supporters while plying their trade in government service. That's really all they're about; everything else is window dressing, more of the old bait and switch. And why not? It's not like Americans are catching on to the whole mess...

Monday Madness

DIDJA HEAR Mike Francesa's typically shallow take on the Paris Hilton incarceration: "Leave her alone! Ya gonna put people like her in jail? She could help the economy more by shopping!" ... I couldn't disagree more with the overbearing blowhard on this one ... The problem is that people like Francesa pass their feeble-minded "values" on to their little darlings, and that's one of the main reasons the world is now full of spoiled young brats ... How can it be otherwise when there are whole generations of self-centered Boomer types whose idea of parenting consists of constantly telling their oh-so-gifted kids that they literally can do no wrong...

As Bob Raissman rightly put it in yesterday's Daily News: "Francesa droning on about the final episode of The Sopranos, or engaging in stale repartee with Chris (Mr. Chow) Carlin, had the cumulative effect of putting listeners who had just awakened back to sleep." And here's Raissman's equally correct take on WFAN management's ongoing and increasingly embarrassing attempt to replace the I-Man in the important 6-10am hole: "Their search has been a disaster. A mish-mosh of miscast talent has paraded into the FAN Cave, failing to produce compelling morning radio. Or give any inkling it has enough potential to capture even a minor share of the audience in this highly competitive time slot." Where I strongly disagree with Raissman is his call for the station to bring back Don Imus. That horse has left the barn, and it's time for all concerned (including listeners) to move on...

Of course Charles McCord, who is fast turning into radio's version of Ed McMahon, could reliably be heard laughing heartily at Francesa's inane utterances all morning long, making for some truly god-awful, cringe-worthy moments on WFAN last week ... It's the listeners who are suffering as the fruitless search to replace Don Imus in the A.M. unmerrily spins back around to the insufferable know-it-all that is Mike Francesa... I'm with Phil Mushnick and Raissman: Francesa is a first-class jerk, inasmuch as someone that mediocre can ever be considered "first class" anything... What can you expect from someone who publicly admits his favorite "artist" is Billy Joel ... As a rule, smug suburban people do not contribute anything original to a culture; they merely consume. Period...

The fact that the last episode of The Sopranos was evidently such a huge disappointment to viewers has to take some luster off what some people call the best show in the history of television. Nothing can be expected to live up to that amount of hype, but the fade-to-black ending came across as something of a cop-out to an awful lot of fans ... Over the years the final tune playing over the closing credits of each Sopranos episode was often something entirely out of left field, such as Johnny Thunders' classic You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory and, earlier this season, Conditional Discharge by punk poet John Cooper Clarke ... What a shame that they used such a played-out song like Don't Stop Believing by a hideous band like Journey to close out the series finale ... Those obscure musical choices (the good ones) had to be the handiwork of Little Steven Van Zandt, who has put out a few neglected classic solo albums of his own, including 1984's overlooked Voice of America...

Favorite baseball name heard over the weekend: Pitcher Tom Gorzelanny of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Gorzelanny sounds like an imported Italian cheese ... Pirates' outfielder Xavier Nady has 10 HRs this year, always liked his bat when he played for the Mets ... Don't look now Yankee haters, but after three-game sweep of Bucs, record now stands at 30-31, just one game under .500 with a mere 101 games remaining on the 2007 schedule ... Former scapegoat Bobby Abreu's average up to respectable .272 after going 19-38 so far this month, with power slowly starting to return ... Yanks playing best ball of season with Melky Cabrera in starting lineup the last 11 games, with the Melk-Man batting .390 during that stretch and providing solid defense in center, just like he did last season before Joe Torre foolishly sat him down for stretch run and playoffs, in the process ruining the team's chemistry, in order to make room for veterans returning from injuries...

Curse of the Sheff? After some commentators wanted to stick a fork in him earlier this year, Gary Sheffield has rebounded and is really heating it up lately. I think most Yankees fans will admit they were rooting against this guy after he acrimoniously left the club, but he now stands at 17 HRs and 43 RBIs, plus last time I looked he was leading the AL in runs scored with 57 and has 7 stolen bases ... After taking two of three from the NL-leading Mets this weekend, my pick to win it all this year is looking better than ever right about now: your defending AL champion Detroit Tigers...

Al Leiter somehow seems much less annoying lately on Yankees broadcasts, although he still has a tendency to talk way too much when making a point ... Great to hear Bobby Murcer back in the booth, he never sounded better or more sharp ... It occurs to me that there are young baseball fans who have never watched a game on TV without almost half the screen taken up with needless stat boxes or lines of graphics giving you the score, the inning, the count, the station logo, the weather, the time ... Somehow 20 years ago fans could keep all that information in their heads without being reminded of it every second...

Remember when silly game shows were considered a cheap, crude form of "entertainment" that was rightly consigned to the ghetto of daytime TV? These shows used to be designed for shut-ins, cooped-up housewives, the terminally unemployable and those who are, ahem, easily amused. Well, what does it say about our culture when these complete wastes of time are plastered all over network prime-time TV? Is there anything more depressing than seeing these shrill, self-centered contestants jumping up & down and shouting the dreaded "Woooo!" word? Why does anyone care if someone else wins or doesn't win money? I never got that ... On a related note, I can't wish enough bad things to happen to dick-headed Howie Mandel...

Retro sports jerseys seen on the streets of New York, worn by actual people, the last few weeks: a #2 Alex English Denver Nuggets ... #32 Julius Erving New York Nets ... #75 Howie Long Oakland Raiders ... #75 Mean Joe Greene Pittsburgh Steelers ... #3 Babe Ruth New York Yanks ... #33 Pat Ewing Georgetown ... #2 Moses Malone Houston Rockets ... #11 Isiah Thomas Detroit Pistons ... and my favorite, a gold #42 Nate Thurmond, The City (San Francisco) Warriors ... Thurmond was a very underrated player, even for a Hall of Famer; he was overshadowed for much of his career by Wilt and Russell ... I wouldn't buy or wear one, but I like to spot 'em! ... I do have a vintage #8 Aaron McKie 76ers jersey that I impulsively purchased after getting caught up in the euphoria that was Philly's 2001 Finals run. Sure to be a collector's item...
Terrible decision last night by Cavs' coach Mike Brown to take out LeBron James after two quick early fouls in first quarter of Game 2. You have to call the refs' bluff in that situation and leave him in. Are they gonna foul out the game's biggest superstar in one half? Doubtful ... ABC's Jeff Van Gundy and Marc Jackson were all over Brown for benching James as soon as he did ... Cleveland's Larry Hughes is just a dumb basketball player who is killing his team with his horrible brand of play. He went 0-5 from the floor in 20 minutes last night; now 1-10 in over 40 minutes for the series, he never met a bad shot he won't take ... Always hated his game ... Give steady Eric Snow and hot-shooting Daniel Gibson (20-30 last three playoff games, including blistering 9-13 from 3-point land) all his minutes instead ... But why play the hot hand, it's only the playoffs...

Spurs' Tony Parker has been the best player on the court both games, shooting 25-43 from the floor, followed by sweet-shooting Manu Ginobili, 7-11 from beyond the arc, 14-15 from the line, then Tim Duncan, a workmanlike 19-33 from the field ... All three main Spurs are outplaying anyone/everyone on the Cavs' side... That said, all it takes is one monster game by LeBron and it can still turn into a series. But that monster game has to be tomorrow night's Game 3 in Cleveland, or it's turn out the lights, the party's over, they say that all good things must end...

El Clash Combo @ Bonds

Can it really be 26 years ago this month already that The Clash played their almost two-week residency at Times Square club Bond's? Back in 1981 we took down this poster (or one just like it) from wherever it was hanging in the area and hung it back up in the hallway of Tony's pre-gentrified Flatbush, Brooklyn apartment ... 158 1/2 Nevin Street, if I'm not mistaken. Went to at least two of the Bond's shows and probably a third. Recall opening acts included Bush Tetras, Grandmaster Flash and Joe Ely, a landmark event in Punk Rock History...

Post-Imus Discharge

Have you been listening to the pitiful replacement hosts WFAN has been trotting out to try to take Don Imus' place? If you thought those two weeks with Mike & the Mad Dog filling in were a disaster, it's only gotten progressively worse. But perhaps "progressively" is the wrong choice of word, because it's mostly been a series of right-leaning guest-hosts spewing the same tired crap morning after morning, only the names are changed.

Not that I'm listening regularly. I just tune in every couple days to see what new direction the clueless station manager will take what was once their flagship program. (Can't wait to see the post-Imus ratings for WFAN.) I guess it's still Program Director Mark Chernoff calling the shots, although I couldn't confirm that with a cursory glance at their Wikipedia page. It did, however, list the fill-ins for the 6-10am slot, and folks it ain't pretty. Check out this roster of "talent" tapped to replace the One-&-Only I-Man, all paired with the increasingly pathetic Charles McCord, who you get the feeling is to the right of David Duke but just hides it a lot better than the more outwardly deranged Bernard McGuirk. After Mike & the Mad Dog's mercifully brief run, for no discernible reason the station gave ex-jock Boomer Esiason a shot, whose sole qualification for broadcasting seems to be a nice clear voice, the sound of which he is hopelessly infatuated with; followed by the lesser tennis-playing McEnroe, Patrick, and then his brother John, selected in all likelihood because they're friends of Chris Russo. Then listeners were callously subjected to a few days too many with has-been windbag Geraldo Rivera(!); followed by the sonorous tones of anti-immigration-obsessed Lou Dobbs, then one or days each of newsman David Gregory, financial guru Jim Cramer, some sports guy from Chicago appropriately named Mike North, and this week the wheel of misfortune stopped at Joe Scarborough, former Congressman and right wing cable show blowhard.

Now comes word that Mike Francesa will be doing mornings solo on WFAN starting next week. This is what passes for innovation at this radio station. Exactly what this guy is supposed to bring to the table as a morning host is anybody's guess.

Through it all McCord forges on. You get the feeling if they paired him with Pat Robertson or his old high school classmate (and soulmate?) John Ashcroft, he still wouldn't bat an eye. Bernie thought he had a morning gig tryout lined up at a Boston station, but that fell through at the last minute after the station received complaints about McGuirk's history of racist insults. Karma's a bitch these days.

This very morning, in the less than 5 minutes I tuned into WFAN, I heard some right-wing legal scholar trying to convince everyone that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is actually the possessor of a great judicial mind. She went on and on about how The New York Times is borderline racist because they portray Thomas as voting in lockstep with his mentor Antonin Scalia and the other conservatives on the court when in fact he often is the one convincing them and leading the way on legal issues before the Court. That would all be well and good except for one little fact: it has no basis in the truth, because according to a recent account, it turns out that Thomas quite literally has uttered nary a word or viewpoint of his own throughout hours and hours of recent Supreme Court records. Scarborough swallowed her bullshit whole, as did McCord, chiming in with their own allegations of New York Times pro-liberal/anti-conservative bias.

You've also heard the same tiresome carousel of conservative commentators like Monica Crowley parading through WFAN and offering their patented brand of mock outrage at time-tested targets like Hillary Clinton, the New York Times, immigrants, Nancy Pelosi et al. Somehow listening for five minutes the other day to Jim Cramer proved most offensive. He looks and acts like a madman. The other day Media Matters ran a clip of him lambasting Jimmy Carter for his recent anti-Bush remarks. That's okay, he's entitled to his own lame opinions, of course, but what made it beyond the pale even for cable TV standards of irresponsible commentary is that Cramer all but accused Carter of treason. That makes him a gutless Bush toady and a fat, bald, ass-kissing right wing suckup. In my own opinion, of course.

Cramer unfortunately resembles a cousin of mine who also happens to be a total nutjob. Sometimes you can judge a complete headcase by his looks. We do it all the time here in New York City. It's called mental profiling, and it works. My cousin lives in Huntington but we grew up together in Astoria. When he came to my mom's wake three years ago he shows up wearing tight black leather pants, and I'm still pissed off about that. When my sister mentioned how me and him were always playing Batman & Robin together as kids, he rudely blew it off and instead kept changing the subject back to all the weight he lost recently. He came off as a total self-centered asshole. Never once did he think to put his arm around me and say something like, Sorry for your loss, She was a great lady, or the good old She's in a better place ... Nothing. Maybe he's still mad that I always made him be my sidekick Robin while I naturally took the lead role as the Crime-Fighting Caped Crusader. Too bad. In any case, if I ever run into him again I plan on snubbing him. Big Time.

Anyway, 'FAN suits appear clueless and are no closer to finding a full-time replacement than when they fired the I-Man two almost months ago. At the very end there, Imus was consistently playing stuff by some of my all-time favorite artists, including cuts from the new Lucinda Williams record almost every day; the Band and Levon Helm; and I heard him play Uncle Tupelo's Give Back the Key to my Heart on more than one occasion ... the whole song, not just a fade-out to commercial. Where the hell else are you gonna hear this stuff? Try nowhere. Such songs contain more "truth" and "wisdom" than all the rest of the radio dial's depressingly similar morning shows, most of which are really nothing more than bad imitations of the Howard Stern show -- by now you know the Morning Zoo format where the host or co-hosts crack vulgar, tasteless jokes or engage in mindless celebrity gossip and everyone yucks it up in the background with fake-sounding laughter. These types of shows give me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

What's left to choose from most mornings? There's ESPN-Radio if you wanna hear sports; and Mike Golic and Mike Greenberg can be entertaining. Air America still has Armstrong Williams and Sam Greenfield talking politics, but I can't take that for more than a few segments. By 9:00am most of us are already out the door and at our jobs or in the car, so we're missing the most original voice in contemporary radio, Lionel of the Lionel Show, who just recently made the switch from nights (9-11pm) on WOR to mornings (9am-12pm) on Air America. Unfortunately, who listens to the radio at that time? I guess we'll find out, but most radio is just better at night somehow. If you feel like music then there's always WFUV-90.7, playing an intelligent blend of rock, folk, blues & country. Meanwhile as time goes on, it's become evident that even a declining Imus in the Morning, warts and all, is still casting a long shadow over what's left out there in non-satellite radioland.