Lucy the Blog

In honor of today’s holiday, I thought I’d post “I am a Big and Strong Patriot” by Coach Football (pictured, right).

This classic piece of prose was originally published on August 21, 2001 in Dude.  The essay would be honored later that year with a Pulitzer Prize for its searing insights and subtle eroticism.

So please enjoy and have a Happy Patriots Day.  And to all those marathoners out there, don’t forget to grease your nips!

“I am a Big and Strong Patriot” by Coach Football

As every American must, I embarked on a fine excursion to our nation’s home capital last weekend.  And let me tell you, I’m a different man.  For serious.

I started my weekend by taking the big bus down there.  What a great trip!  They showed some movie with Big American Stars, including Harr Ford.  It was some kind of thriller, with drama and murder and sexual in-you-endo. What a way to start it all!

So I get in, take the cab across the streets to my destination site, near the circle.  Get out, go in, the tall boys are ready, crack ‘em open, and sit out on the porch.  People walking down the street, moving to the traffic beats.  Americans!  All of them! 
 
That night I slept on the cold concrete floor.  Waking up, showering, talking.  Taking the subway line down to the place.  Look at the tourists crowding in and panicking and arguing and looking at maps.  On the contrary, I’m prepared!  I know where I’m going!

All of a suddenly, I’m standing in the Art Gallery.  What a place!  Art all around, by Italians, Germans, the Dutch, even Americans.  Many different artsy stylings, techniques, and colors.  The American stuff is not highly regarded though.  So they keep it hidden to the right side.  

They have this whole ‘nother building that was built in the late 1970s by Jimmy Carter.  That gave me pause.  My understanding of the facts goes something along the lines that Carter was made fun of so much that nothing got done during his Term.  During the Energy Nightmare, Americans became increasingly disillusioned with the Southerner.  Then Reagan freed the hostages, sold the arms to Central America, and defined the mid-1980s. Continue reading Patriot’s Day Rerun…

I don’t know if it was forced upon them. But the once-independent and now Boston Globe-owned Boston Dirt Dogs website just got fuglier than Kevin Youkilis’ taint.

Message to Dirt Dogs: There is no shame in failure. You tried. But your shit looks terrible. Please return to the old design.

A couple weeks ago I considered writing about the Iraq war’s five-year anniversary.

But then I decided not to because it seems futile. I have nothing to say. Even a doped-up grad student who spent most of his time on campus gazing lovingly at the exposed thong-tops of freshmen coeds could’ve predicted this clusterfuck. If you think the war has benefited or will benefit America in any way, shape, or form, then you are a retard. Leave this blog now.

However, while performing a Google image search for Arianna Huffington (SafeSearch set emphatically to OFF), I stumbled upon The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree, a nifty site recently linked to by The Huffington Post, which Lucy the Dog sometimes contributes to under the pen name of “Deepak Chopra”.

The shopping spree gives you a chance to fritter away $3 trill and damn near two hours, filling a shopping cart with the money our president invested in “occupying Iraq and killing over a million people.”

You’d be surprised how far $3 trillion goes. I could only spend $2,239,298,606,460.96 before I ran out of steam. I mean, I could’ve thrown in some debt relief for Liberia or treatment for malaria, but fuck that. I’m not one to spend just because the money’s there. The remainder will do just fine in my ING Orange savings account, thank you kindly.

So here’s the list of what I bought. I encourage you to make your own list and then feel totally annoyed by this colossal waste of dough over the last five years.

B-2 Bomber - 1 purchased for $2,200,000,000

Just because I oppose the Iraq War doesn’t mean I’m some yellow peacenick. Far from it.

With this B-2 bomber, I intend to make Lowell a leading power here in the Merrimack Valley. We will not rule with recklessness. But as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, we will hold the rest of the Valley “as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.”

So be on notice, Merrimack Valley. Lucy the Dog has a B-2 bomber, and she will bomb the shit out of you. Continue reading Keep the Change…

Lucy the Dog apologizes for the last couple weeks’ meager output.  It is shameful.  And we’ll try harder starting Monday.  Maybe.

Until then, here’s The Band to help push you through another week’s finish line.

Dear Nerd and/or Smart Shopper:

Thanks for reading Lucy the Blog.  I know it has given you so much.  And now it’s time for you to give back.

Recently my iPod died.  I really liked that iPod.  My dad gave it to me for Christmas in 2003.  I named it iSis after my favorite Bob Dylan song.  Don’t you think I’m clever?

Now I have to buy a new iPod because I really enjoyed having an iPod.  But I don’t have very much money.  So what should I do?  Should I buy my iPod at the Apple store?  Are there cheaper ways to get an iPod?  Can you buy an iPod on eBay?  Or through non-Apple vendors?  How much should I plan to spend on a new iPod? 

I see lots of the degenerate youths carrying around iPods.  They don’t seem to have much money, so I’m thinking I should also be able to secure one.  I want one that holds like 1,000 songs.  Or maybe 2,000.  And not that lame Shuffle thing where you can’t even pick what song plays.  I don’t want my iPod making decisions about how I should run my life.

Thank you in advance for your expertise.  I don’t understand technology or how to get good deals.  But I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night.  Seriously!

Love,

Lucy the Dog

PS: If any nerds and/or smart shoppers are reading this from WordPress headquarters, can you just leave the software alone?  I can’t figure out how the hell to position a picture anymore and it just put me in a foul mood. Enough tinkering around.  Let it be.  It works fine.  Fuck.

Lucy the Dog is by no means immune to celebrity worship. 

And we welcome any exposure or economic and cultural gains brought to our beloved Lowell by the filming of This Side of the Truth.

However, the first frame has yet to be shot and the city is already swooning like starstruck schoolgirls. 

I love Ricky Gervais’s humor as much as anyone.  And if I stumble upon Tina Fey, I will have no choice but to cop a feel of her adorable buttocks.  But we’re not talking about Ridge Forrester or Sanjaya Malakar.  Get it together, people.

Yesterday, a Boston Globe headline proclaimed, “As Lowell prepares for its close-up, locals have stars in their eyes.”

“Merrimack Valley, don your shades:  Lowell is soon to be the location of a film shoot for a major motion picture with a star-studded cast, including Jennifer Garner.

‘Jennifer Garner coming into Lowell - that’s a 10!’ said Mayor Edward “Bud” Caulfield.  ‘We’re really excited about it.  It will certainly put Lowell on the map.’”

Continue reading Act Like You’ve Been There, Lowell…

Today Lucy the Blog wishes alles Gute zum Geburstag to Eric Braeden, the finest gift Germany has ever bestowed upon these United States of America.

For 28 years, Braeden has carried “The Young and the Restless” as the legendary Victor Newman, a cuthroat tycoon who wears out heavy bags, rides horses, builds empires, and bangs mad bitches.  

In addition to liasons with strippers, blind farmers, and his son’s wife, Victor’s nailed Amanda Bynes, Jennie Garth, Jane Goodall, Tony Orlando, and Doris Day, all of whom, coincidentally also celebrate birthdays today.  

Newman runs Genoa City, Wisconsin, and if you don’t believe me, ask Boston Celtics shooting guard Sam Cassell, who cut classes at FSU to catch Y&R and once told Sports Illustrated he loves nothing more than lying in bed naked, watching The Black Knight in action.  

“He’s the man. The Victor Newman. Victor is cold.”

Amen, brother.  Victor Newman will fuck you up.

In 1984, at the tender age of 8, Lucy the Dog relocated from Massachusetts to New Jersey.

Fifteen years later, I returned to the Commonwealth and was shocked to power up the television machine and find Bob Lobel right where I’d left him.

I have no idea why the memory of Lobel stuck with me for all those years.  But before the ESPN-ification of sports media, Bob was The Man here in Boston.  Or at least he was in my feeble, developing mind.

When I came back, it was comforting to find a familiar face in a landscape that I scarcely remembered. 

In 2005, Lobel told Boston Magazine:

“They call it ’sunsetting’ in this industry:  They ’sunset’ their talent.  I don’t know how they’re going to sunset Lobel.  But I hope we all know ahead of time, because there really aren’t that many happy endings in this business.”  

As it turns out, they were going to sunset Bob in April 2008.  On Monday, WBZ announced it will cut 10 percent of its workforce including Lobel, ending the longest tenure for a sports anchor in the Boston market.  (Lobel started at WBZ in 1979.)

To borrow a phrase from Hillary Clinton’s borrowed phrase from John Edwards, Bob will probably be fine.  But his departure marks a sad loss.  Even though I barely watch the guy anymore, it’s reassuring to know such connections to youth and ’the good ol’ days’ still exist.  With all due respect to whoever will replace him, it’s like watching Ruby Tuesdays replace your local bar.

But all things must come to an end.  And surely Perk is a Beast will soon remind me of why Lobel is a turd-sucking douche who should burn in a flaming bag of dicks with Peter May, Bob Ryan, Dwight Howard, and John Mayer.

Until then, please enjoy this clip of another voice from my childhood, the brilliant Lloyd Lindsay Young.  I couldn’t find any interesting Lobel clips.

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Barack Obama is currently on a weeklong bus tour bowling for Pennsylvania voters.

I spent four years in Pennsylvania and learned two things.  One is Hoss’s steakhouse makes a mean, cheap ribeye.  And another is Pennsylvania ain’t votin’ for no brother.  Take that bus to Indiana and North Carolina, Barack.  Trust me.

This will be a stretch.  But on a snowy Do What You Feel Friday, Lucy the Dog would like to draw your attention to three not-quite-related-but-we’ll-try items: Chris Webber, Herb Patterson, and your light switch.

Firstly, we wish a Happy Retirement to Chris Webber, who turned the lights out on his basketball career this week.

Like any good suburban whiteboy, Lucy the Dog idolized Michael Jordan as a young pup.  It was MJ that inspired me to beg Mom and Dad for an adjustable hoop. 

Little did I know that you can’t recreate The Lean or a foul line dunk without Jordan’s hangtime - even on an 8 1/2-foot rim in $120 sneakers.  However, you can hang on that rim and throw your legs around in a violent rage like Chris Webber.  And I did.  During Webber’s two years at Michigan, I rode the Fab Five bandwagon hard.  The shorts, the sneakers, the attidude, the joy, the failures.  I ate that shit up. 

Though I was more of a Jalen Rose guy, this shot of C-Webb hanging above a bewildered Lawrence Funderburke is one of my favorite photos of all time.  It hung on my bedroom wall for years, inspiring me to think that if I could experience just one pure, top-of-the-world, badass moment like that in my life, I would die happy.  (It violates the Lucy the Blog style specs to run a picture this large, but I can’t bring myself to shrink it down.)

He will never be mentioned with the all-time greats, but as J.D. Adande wrote beautifully on ESPN.com, “To watch Webber’s failures was endlessly more fascinating than to see most people’s successes.”  Another piece tangentially related to Webber recently appeared in Sports Illustrated, exploring our fascination with slam dunks.  Writer Chris Ballard notes that just as some of us will never stop gawking at boobs, we’ll never outgrow our obsession with dunks.  “It’s part instinct, part the lure of the unattainable and part the hope that we’ll see something spectacular.” 

So while Webber’s retirement saddened me as yet another sign that I’m getting old, it made me feel like a kid again to waste 20 minutes YouTubing through his dunks and finding that picture in the SI Vault.  Thanks, Chris.

Which brings us, naturally, to the Egg McMuffin.  Because also this week, it was lights out for McMuffin creator Herb Peterson, who on Tuesday set out for those golden arches in the sky.  As we say in the newspaper business: He was 89.

Continue reading Do What You Feel Friday!: Lights Out…