Author: Gil

It’s my last night of bachelorhood, dear reader! The official VM fiancee is moving in tomorrow, and I’ve been living it up in style tonight!

That’s right: Now that I’ve gotten over my ass-whomping case of the avian head-cold, I did laundry, cleaned the bathroom AND the kitchen, and also had a long phone conversation with my mom! I live a playboy’s life!

Seriously, that was about it for this evening, along with searching for a new company to host some MySQL databases, since Network Solutions isn’t doing a great job handling my DB needs (which has kept me from moving this blog into a neat new format).

So them’s the thrills at Chez VM. Bathroom and kitchen floors are nice and clean, laundry’s folded, and Mom and I were able to talk about some of our family history. Turns out she found some good resources at Yad Vashem about the branch of our family that was wiped out in Poland in 1941. I’ll post some links to that when she sends them over.

She came across all these records from other, distant family members, posted since the 1950s. We talked about all the generations and stories that were lost. She told me that her rabbi had some interesting comments recently about the undying nature of the soul, but both of us thought they were bordering on Kaballah mysticism.

I told her I think stories are how we live after we die. It reminded me of the line from Unforgiven where Clint Eastwood says, “Hell of a thing, killin’ a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.”

She told me that one of the massacred was supposed to have been named Rachel, and Mom couldn’t understand why another name showed up for that person in the records. I told her that there was probably a really easy explanation for it, but that it was just a day-to-day story that was lost. Stories are how we keep living.

Got socked with the office head-cold. Grr.

Amy & I are about to head down to Philadelphia for a friend’s wedding, so I’ll suck it up, take some Airborne, and leave you with this quote from Latrell Sprewell’s agent, Bob Gist:

Anyone who thinks he should play [$1.1 million], that’s absurd. […] He might as well retire. Latrell doesn’t need the money that badly. To go from being offered $7 million to taking $1 million, that would be a slap in the face.

Oh, and here’s a neat article about the abuses of eminent domain, if that sorta thing interests you.

And here’s a moment of zen. Enjoy:

I don’t know why I get worked up about this stuff, but there’s a boneheaded editor at the NYTimes who today decided that Tamiflu is a flu vaccine. It’s not. It’s a drug that treats the flu. There’s a world of difference. The writers of the article, Andrew Pollack and Tom Wright, got this correct, referring to Tamiflu as a drug throughout the entire piece.

Given the huge debate going on about how to improve the vaccine infrastructure to prevent a flu pandemic, a headline like this is only going to give more people a wrong impression about the issues.

Neat interview at BusinessWeek about innovative retail achitecture with New Retail author Raul Barraneche:

[W]hat interests both the company and the architects involved is the fact that retail spaces are, by nature, building types that allow for innovation. Stores offer quick turnaround times, as opposed to, say, a residence or a museum. […]To paraphrase [architect] Zaha Hadid, shopping is an effective way to see a city; these days, to see what’s new in architecture, the most efficient thing to do is to go and look at stores.

Make sure you check out the accompanying slideshow.

It’s nice to see that baseball’s trying to get some illegal substances banned, with the new steroid penalties. Sure, it was fun to see mega-juiced players belt cartoon-level home runs for the past decade or so, and older players show unprecedented power, endurance and recovery time, but the carnival had to come to an end at some point.

(Of course, maybe that point should’ve been after Brady Anderson socked 50 home runs one season, and then tore the muscles off his rib cage the next year. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t mind performance-enhancing products. After all, I’m kicking back with a Tanq-10 & tonic right now. But it’s legal, and it makes me virtually invulnerable to criticism.)

Anyway, what’s good about the new penalties is that it whomped the MLB Players Association square in its testosterone-shrunken nuts. Reading over ESPN’s recent “expose” about steroids in baseball, it seems pretty clear that the players’ union was the main obstacle to any sort of testing for steroids.

Sure, the owners were happy that home run numbers were up, because it brought in more fans and got more TV revenue, but that added money was likely offset by the increased number of players getting injured, spending more time on the disabled list than ever.

What is amazing about the new policy is that it also involves testing for amphetamines. What the heck were they thinking, adding speed to the banned substance list? Are they planning to cut the season down to 100 games and give them July and August off?

I don’t care how much these guys are being paid; it’s boring to play 162 games of baseball. Cal Ripken, who couldn’t find anything else to do for more than 16 seasons, has to be the dullest man in existence. Or he had to be totally hopped up on goofballs.

Trying to get players off of speed would be like trying to get me to quit drinking during trade shows; it’d be tough to implement, and the final result wouldn’t make anyone happy.

A lot of companies talk about “sales force synergies” when they merge, but they’re usually full of crap.

On the other hand, it makes perfect sense for Allergan (makers of Botox) to acquire Inamed (makes of boob implants)!

(Since I was hanging up Playboy centerfolds when I was at the tender age of three, I like to think that I have “the leading breast aesthetics portfolio”, but hey.)

Eddie Guerrero–a wrestler I enjoyed watching when I got back into rasslin’ from 1999-2002 (or thereabouts)–died yesterday in his hotel room. He was 38, and my immediate guess is that he had a heart attack probably related to his steroid-fueled massivity.

Eddie used to do a great frog splash from the top of the ropes. This move unfortunately led to his dislocating his elbow one time, which was awfully grotesque. He came back from that injury with an absolutely massive physique.

I tuned into the beginning of WWE Raw tonight to see how they’d pay tribute to him (it’s a live show). I felt like I was in Crisis on Infinite Earths, as massive men in vinyl masks stood crying on stage. Ric Flair, in a purple-and-silver feathered robe, tries to look stoic, but lip quivering. A 7-foot-tall (?) monster walks to the ring trying to smile, but his eyes are red and puffy. Vince McMahon stutters at the beginning, about to cry, but recovers.

They’re trying to perform, but the crowd’s completely quiet. Time for Monday Night Football…

If only a Representative from the West Coast proposed this legislation. Oh, well.

Alternate joke: Maybe this Record Collection Act means that they’ll stop putting out new Tupac CDs!

Of course, you’d have a hard time proving that if you read this page.

The official VM fiancee found this page while researching her OTHER fiancee, NFL referee Ed Hochuli. Seriously, we click through all the games each Sunday on League Pass just to see which one he’s reffing. She’s obsessed. SIGH…

Sometimes this blog writes itself. Othertimes, the official VM brother and the official VM fiancee team up and take care of it for me. To wit: