Gimme a holy beer

Apparently, beer vendors have limits. They will sell cases upon cases of a drug designed to get people wasted, but when it comes to packaging, that's where the line is drawn. Hedonism Beer, based out of Reading, PA, is drawing some ire in nearby Lancaster County for its packaging. One beer distributor even sent back the beer. While it's certainly their right, seems it backfired, because the bottles are FLYING off the shelves. Morals, or money? I'll take money, personally, especially if my entire business is already selling hallucinogenic drugs.

On a Sunday?!

You goddamn right on a Sunday. Rick Santorum, my glorious Senator in Congress, has been an avid supporter of the 'K Street Project', which intended(and succeeded) in Republicanizing the infamous lobby-laden K Street in Washington D.C. That is, he WAS an avid supporter, when he acknowledged his ties to the movement. Now, he seems to be wanting to 'do an extreme makeover, in broad daylight', as this Sunday's Inky editorial put it. Thanks to the Abramoff explosion down in D.C., Santorum has been forced to disavow himself of his K Street Project ties, while also trying to rewrite history itself by not acknowledging his past ties with it.

It's like that guy we all know who cheats on his girl several times, tries to reform, and then finally his girl leaves him and he asks his buddies why she would leave him. Well, because you cheated on her, dumbass!!! Santorum has cheated on Pennsylvania by trying to push a hard-line right wing agenda in Congress, instead of remembering that he was elected in a wave of 'reform', not a wave of conservatism in Pennsylvania. He had great timing, essentially, and ran in on the Newt Gingrich bandwagon, and then proceeded to commit the same deeds that the Democrats previously, namely creating a culture of partisanship and outside influences in D.C. His influences have been his arcane views on the American family, the K Street Project and all its partisan lobbying and dealings, and his blatant disregard for the Pennsylvanian voter. The senior Senator from PA, Mr. Arlen Specter, has NOT disregarded the Pennsylvanian voter, and while he's certainly not been a Democrat or progressive in his voting record, he's strayed from the party when he felt he needed to, and he's connected with the voters. Santorum's screwups are going to cost him, and they're going to cost him big.

For better representation in Congress, my PA friends, look towards Bob Casey Jr. Chuck Pennacchio seems like a great option, but I think he may have run into a wall here going for the same seat as Casey. Hopefully he'll be able to run in four years, because I don't think he'll win this time around.

The world collapses in on itself

Bill Simmons interviewed Curt Schilling recently, and the collaboration of two of the most overexposed sports personalities in recent memory was a fun one to read. Deadspin pretty much sums it up. You have to really be a Red Sox fan or a Bill Simmons fan(there are no Curt Schilling 'fans') to enjoy this piece, in my view. It's kind of weird to read Schilling as describing the "Sox Nation" as 'we', considering he WAS the face of the Phillies for several years.

A highlight for Phillies fans, though: "Bill Conlin had (not sure if he still does) a Hall of Fame vote the year Nolan Ryan was up. Bill wrote a column the day after the voting on why he DIDN'T vote for Nolan Ryan on the first ballot. At best, it was repulsive. Bill used his Hall of Fame vote to promote his agenda, which was that if Don Sutton didn't get voted in first ballot, then Nolan Ryan didn't deserve to get voted in, either. As if the HOF ballots were his personal right to make statements. So he took 26 years of Nolan's career and used his vote to make a statement about his opinions on Don Sutton. Sad, really. But in a nutshell, that's Bill Conlin now anyway -- bitter and sad. [Editor's note: Conlin did explain in print why he did not vote for Ryan, but he did not mention Don Sutton.]"

Conlin IS bitter and sad, but it also shows how people remember things the way they want to remember them, since Conlin never actually used this line of reasoning at all. AND, Conlin was right to leave Ryan off the 1st ballot, since he was highly overrated.

tough crowd

Aaron Rowand blamed his poor performance at last night's Sixers game (0 made in the foul shooting contest) on his button-down shirt and not being a basketball player, but "at least I didn't shoot 2 airballs and get booed like Ryan [Howard] did"

Trump planning ugly tower

Trump's magic company will no doubt propose some shit that will have to be severely changed to be respectable, but at least he's proposing something, after years and years of ignoring Philly. A 45 story condo tower along the Delaware Riverfront is OK, but I wonder why the riverfront is becoming so popular when condos farther inland would be worth more and would be closer to urbanity.

Oh well.

Mac Attack

Grizzly Adams, A.K.A Todd MacCulloch, was on Daily News Live today. He was looking quite festive in a bright red beard. Kudos to anyone that sports a bright read beard, it's a hard look to pull off, but the rare person that does ends up being the coolest person in the room. Todd looked like he rolled right out of bed with that mop that was on his head, but the beard just finished everything off nicely. He's doing fine as a color man on Sixers radio broadcasts, sprinkling in some one or two sentence blurbs every minute or so. Color commentary on a basketball radio broadcast is difficult because of the non-stop action, but he does an admirable job. He was an OK backup for the Sixers, too.

It won't die

Last Hack Standing is back and better than ever!!! All the Jay Mohr goodness. All the hacks you could stomach. And, best of all, NO ONE WATCHES. It got a 3.7 share in the summer when every other show is in reruns. Ha! The first one was pretty good, with good comics like Dave Mordal and Rich Vos, but since then it's simply been shit on a stick. John Heffron? Come on, I liked it better when Jerry Seinfeld did it.

Please, no!

No, I didn't ask for it, no, I didn't want it, and no I didn't want GLOBS of it. Come on guys, who the heck puts MAYO on a friggin hoagie? Salami, capicola, ham, tomatoes, provolone cheese, lettuce, oil, sweet peppers, and maybe some onions or vinegar if you're into that. Who the heck decided to put mayo on a friggin roll?

I just had a hoagie where the place(Three Star Pizza at 59th and Lebanon) put a TON of friggin mayo on the roll, for no reason at all. I've had previous ones from there that were otherwise good, but the guy making them today decided he didn't only want me to have a heart attack, he wanted it to burn too.

We cannot be stopped

John Corzine has just officially become the governor of New Jersey today. A big win for the Democrats!!!!! They have taken another governorship from....another Democrat.

Oh well.

I'm No Superman

Scrubs is one of the best comedies on TV, and it's back. It also always plays a great song at the end of each show, and this site contains every single song played on the show. It's a great way to find that song one is looking for.

Overrated Bullshit

A hearing at Temple on college liberal bias didn't meet up to expectations...because NO ONE CARED! One student showed up, a leader of the College Republicans, to talk about how his professors liked bashing Bush. Wow, so now they're as biased as standup comics. Bashing Bush is lame, but it isn't biased, everyone does it. Dana Surra (D, Elk), summed the entire ordeal up well, as a: ""colossal waste of time and taxpayer money."

Ha.

What's in a number?

There were 25 murders in Reading this year, and a handful more in the rest of the county. A lot for a city of 85K, and a county of 400K. However, there were 79 traffic deaths in Berks County, 33 of them in Reading!!! The threat of cars is higher than the threat of people. Consider how many times one sees people out eating, shopping, working, etc. Compare that to the amount of cars we see on a daily basis, and I'd damn near say that everyone but homebodies see more people than cars on a daily basis. I'd be more surprised with these numbers if I didn't already know they had occurred in every previous year, with little to no play in the media. People don't CARE that traffic deaths are likely a result of simply too many cars, and bad drivers. Instead, they just want to see highways and roads 'get safer' by widening and expanding them, and laying down new roads. What I truly believe would bring REAL change to the roadways would be harsher testing and harsher penalties for running red lights, speeding, etc. Actual community service for first-time offenders, plus fines, and actual real testing. My testing was incredibly easy, and I don't even drive that much!
We can worry all we want about murders, and yes, they're a tragedy largely people's own fault. However, so are traffic deaths! Underinformed, undertested drivers going out on busier and busier roads, sometimes in an intoxicated state, make for a baaaaad experience. Possibly death.

Yellow Submarine would play here

Save the Bluths!!! From the last episode of Arrested Development, this is the website that purports to save the show. There isn't much info on the site yet, but there will be, and it's no doubt going to be pretty good stuff. Let's hope that the show gets picked up by ABC or Showtime or somewhere. Too bad HBO(Home Builders Organization).

Identity Politics

Well, some people are worried that if political entities end that identity ends there as well. Tom Gajewski Sr., county commissioner of Berks County, is worried that marketing of Reading and its suburbs as 'Greater Reading' could hurt the identity of the surrounding areas. I wonder why he believes this when there is NO identity of Berks County outside of its borders that doesn't involved the city itself. People know about the outlets, Daniel Boone Homestead, and the city itself. That's about it. The Pagoda is the most recognizable landmark, from what I've gathered. Gajewski's complaint comes right around the same time that the Reading Eagle editorial board continues its mantra about municipality cooperation/amalgamation. It's nothing but a good idea, to save duplicating (or triplicating) services, which would make them more efficient and also less costly. Pooling tax bases would also allow government to run smoother. I would even go as far as to recommend that West Reading and Wyomissing merge with Reading itself to help boost its tax base and also create a Penn Street/Penn Ave corridor that could be developed by one single entity. This, however, is very VERY unlikely.

Taking em to the Super Bowl

Clinton Portis, running back for the playoff-bound Washington Redskins, and his Thursday press conferences have become some hilarious stuff, with him dressing up in various ways, usually in flashy costumes. Today's was a little different, as he dressed up as a defensive coach who scribbled blitz packages on a clipboard and talked about his fake gut and other things. It's a great little video. Portis is a pretty cool guy to be doing this stuff, IMO. I kinda wish a good Eagles player would do this stuff. And no, Dhani Jones, subpar linebacker, doesn't count, though he's a cool guy as well.

Everything changes but everything stays the same

Welcome to Franklin Town. The Phillies just acquired the likes of Ryan Franklin, a 32 yr old pitcher with no fastball, who gives up a ton of homers, and just plain sucks. He's also a steroid-user, testing positive last year. According to the Good Phight, there is nothing worthwhile about the guy at all. His strikeouts per 9 has been dropping, he's been giving up more baserunners, and has always given up home runs(in Safeco!). All this goodness for only 2.6 million (after the Phils traded Vicente Padilla, a better pitcher in every aspect, for almost nothing because they felt his 4 million dollar contract was going to be too much). This just reeks of something, I just don't know what yet.

This means that our rotation is likely to be Myers, Lieber, Lidle, Franklin, Madson. Myers is good, Lieber can be if he's more consistent, and Lidle is average at best. Madson could be good, but no one knows. However, the Franklin signing bumps Robinson Tejeda, who pitched well in his 13 starts last year, and started to settle in nicely, out of hte rotation and maybe even off the roster. This move is just insane!

Bears: You Know You're Scared

Perhaps my favorite show though is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart which breaks down the current events and political happenings of the day and exposes a light onto different problems in our nation. It usually deals with federal dealings, but pieces by ‘correspondents’ are the funniest parts, as they make fun of situations that many can relate to and also highlight everyday people who may or may not be in on the joke. The humor is both subtle and in your face, and the multiple layers are a welcome change to a formerly stale atmosphere. It's also spun off The Colbert Report, which is basically a mockery of everything Bill O'Reilly and other in-your-face 'news' guys. Stephen Colbert stays in character for interviews he conducts and even off the show. It just makes for good television.

Gotta stay positive

• Hit and Run Homicide |
• Delaware Honors First 2006 Baby
• NW New Jersey Gets 8 " of Snow
• Teens Charged with Stealing Jesus
• Elderly Man Found in Willow Grove Lake
• Suspect Arrested in Local New Year's Rape
• Philly's 2nd 2006 Murder in Tioga

Yeah, those are top stories of WPVI's local news. Similar stories daily front the headlines for the site. There is no reporting on community fairs, developments, or other unnecessary positive things. If it bleeds, it leads. BTW, the 'big stories' of the day were about a murder at a future daycare, hitting 4 murders on the year, weather(newsflash, it's crappy out), the PSU-FSU game tonight at 8. At least the PSU game can be considered positive, if you're a Lions fan.

It's not just local. Here's the top stories from the CNN.com local news section for the Northeast:

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA:
Woman dies after fall from window (WTAE)

PLATTSBURGH, NEW YORK:
Body of missing woman found in warehouse (WPTZ)

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA:
Student killed in street fight after party (WTAE)

ROCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE:
Man fights off attackers in home invasion (WMUR)

A death, a missing body, a murder, and an attack. Lovely. Nothing good happened yesterday, folks. Nothing.

Go death! Go murder!

You're doing a heck of a job

President Bush said to Michael Brown, former head of FEMA, : "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job". Man, that was a gaff...and it was called the most memorable quote of the year. And yet people still love Bush, by the millions. Sometimes I just don't get it.