Category: No Politics Friday

Mike (who's now a columnist for the Atlantic Fuckin' Monthly, and is really starting to make me look like a great big loser in comparison) brought something legitimately life-changing to my attention. Hulk Hogan, erstwhile star of Santa With Muscles, Suburban Commando, and whatever else a person holding a paycheck offers him, is now Teabaggin'. As the spokesretard for GuaranteedLowerPropertyTax.com (sweet site, dudes) the alpha-Hulkamaniac is making appearances at events like this Orlando Teabagging on August 22. Be careful – this video is really painful. Prepare to watch a grown man who was already the punchline to a bad joke lure dignity behind a barn and finger it.

It may not be possible to ascribe a shark-jumping moment to a "movement" which from its very inception has so closely resembled Dadaist performance art, but this is the point at which even the teabaggers realize that everyone's laughing at them, right? Right?

It has to be difficult to deal with being washed up as a celebrity, but there is a way to do it gracefully. Musicians can just retire rather than accepting the gigs in Branson and at state fairs. Actors can quit the business rather than doing Lifetime movies and infomercials. Athletes can walk away from the game before they get carted off on a stretcher or kicked off the team. In light of this reality, I struggle to think of a less dignified post-fame outcome for Hogan. Just about anything would be better. Getting a facial tattoo and going Muslim. Getting arrested for luring 11 year-old sex partners via AOL chat rooms. Joining the 9/11 Truth Movement. Accidentally choking to death during autoerotic asphyxiation. Starring in a Tyler Perry movie. Cutting a rap album. Anything.

As a final insult, please note that "GuaranteedLowerPropertyTax.com" is far from an advocacy group for tax bitchers. It is a for-profit enterprise sending forth The Hulkster to drum up business. I realize that Joe the Unlicensed Plumber already covered this ground when he attempted to parlay his "fame" into a website which asked readers to pay a fee to "help vote the IRS out of business," but somehow Hogan gives decency a suplex off the top turnbuckle and manages to sink lower than a man who made Sarah Palin sound like Bertrand Russell.

Baseball fans can usually be found in heated debate over matters of dire importance such as the relative merits of Jimmie Foxx and Ralph Kiner as underappreciated power hitters or if the Big Red Machine could take down the 2004 Red Sox in a 7-game series. Here at ginandtacos.com we debate only the most important points of politics, baseball, or any other subject. Accordingly I decided to put together a list of the ugliest sons of bitches ever to play the game of baseball at the Major League level. Why? Because I like making fun of things. You should understand this by now.

In the process of assembling this Dream Team I learned a very important lesson: there have been a lot, and I mean a lot, of ugly baseball players over the years. I don't mean ugly like some guy you know who can never find a date. We're talking scare-the-children ugly. Monstrously ugly. Possibly deformed ugly. And the hardest part of this exercise was narrowing down the list to a manageable number. I didn't pay too much attention to positions here; instead I nominated nine position players/designated hitters and then an assortment of pitchers. Godalmighty are there a lot of ugly pitchers. Without further ado:

Starting Pitchers

1. Don Mossi

What the fuck. He looks like someone microwaved John Kerry. His eyes are in the wrong place(s) and point in different directions. His ears generate their own weather. At first glance I thought this was Jar-Jar Binks.

2. Zane Smith

Half Napoleon Dynamite, half enormous retarded guy. His mom had to safety-pin his mittens to his coat every day before he left the house. She also huffed Scotchgard for most of the second trimester.

3. Randy Johnson

The Big Unit once lost a bar bet in Juarez, Mexico and had his face doused in acid by Carlos the Jackal. That's when he figured, "Fuck it. I'm growing a mullet." If he couldn't play baseball we'd be watching him shirtless and getting cuffed on COPS as his 500-pound live-in girlfriend explained the source of her black eye to the Wichita Police.

4. Bartolo Colon

At this point in his career he is in no way distinguishable from the Hamburglar.

5. Eziquel Astacio

You know how on House it's never lupus? Right here, right now, it's lupus.

BULLPEN

1. Pascual Perez

It amazes me that PP never comes up in these all-time ugly discussions. Look at this fucking guy. Like early 90s Deion Sanders after a four-day crack binge inside a blast furnace.

2. Kent Tekulve

He looks like a barback at Studio 54 circa 1976. Most fans remember that his career was tragically derailed when he was arrested for murdering a vagrant to steal his Blu-Blockers.

3. Jason Isringhausen

He recorded 47 saves in 2004, one for every chromosome he has.

4. Julian Tavarez.

Tavarez is legally obligated under Megan's Law to register as a sex offender with all of the fans seated near the bullpen. He is one of the many players whose appearance is not helped by his staunch refusal to wear a uniform that fits. Looks like a burn victim and not entirely unlike Freddy Krueger.

5. Charlie Hough

I remember going to Sox games with my dad in the early 90s and watching this fossil chain-smoke in the dugout between innings. Nothing like watching a 47 year-old guy throwing 63 mph fastballs hammering down Pall Malls on the bench.

BATTERS

1. Ron Karkovice

It's amazing how fat he was given how often the villagers chased him around with pitchforks and torches. "Karko" looked like he shaved with a belt sander and ate a shipping pallet of butter every morning.

2. George Foster

If Pete Rose was the guy who gave the Big Red Machine its spark and Joe Morgan was the guy who kept it going, George Foster was lurking in the parking deck, patiently waiting to rape you.

3. Marquis Grissom

Circus ugly. Like, people would pay to stare at him ugly. His eyes look like he is forever being bonked on the head with a cartoon mallet. A fatter Gollum.

4. Bill "Moose" Skowron

Never a handsome man to begin with, Skowron took a turn for the worse in 1965 when he was hit in the face by Apollo 8 as it plummeted back to Earth. Then he lost a bar fight to the Yeti.

5. Gates Brown

What in the fuck happened to this guy's head??? Here is a second shot to prove that the photo above is not a fluke. It looks like a grape. He is what I always pictured "The Laughing Man" to look like in the Salinger story.

6. Willie McGee

A legitimate chore to look at. The only baseball player who can come close to earning the title "Scottie Pippen Ugly." McGee looked like he had just woken up for his entire 15 year career and killed time during pitching changes by drinking Thunderbird wine out of a paper bag in the outfield.

7. Otis Nixon

It looks like the Atlanta Braves found a homeless crackhead behind the bus station and stuck him in center field. Here, let me fix that sentence: It looks like The Atlanta Braves found a homeless crackhead behind the bus station and stuck him in center field. (edit: I apologize for insinuating that Mr. Nixon used crack cocaine. In fact, as noted in the comments, he was a heroic consumer of powdered cocaine. Ginandtacos.com apologizes for the error)

8. Don Lock

Don played in an era before the five-man rotation, interleague play, and mirrors. You could set your watch by a uni-brow like that.

9. John Kruk

There literally could not be anything else wrong with his appearance unless we started removing eyes, ears, or patches of skin. From his bouffant New Kids on the Block bangs to his greasy-ass mullet to his "Aw, fuck it" facial hair, Kruk is a certified trainwreck. This photo also represents Kruk at his thinnest. By the end of his career (and today as an on-air personality) he looked like Orson Welles in his waning years.

I'm moving. Like, right now. The amount of time I have available to blog is minimal, so for today I'm going to do a dramatic, FJM-style reading / interpretation / English translation of the side effects listed on the GlaxoSmithKline website for the weight loss drug Alli. Perhaps you've seen the commercials. The company left a few things out of them.

1. what are the side effects of alli?
Most side effects are related to the way you take the product and how much fat you consume when taking alli. Not everyone experiences GI side effects (or "treatment effects"), but they can be manageable when you follow a reduced-calorie, low-fat diet.

We are eager to avoid answering that question. So "What are the side effects?" is answered with, "Well, most of the side effects come from eating fat.
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" We have also euphemistically labeled them "treatment effects" to take away some of the sting.

2. will alli affect my sleeping pattern?
No. alli is non-systemic acting and won't affect the central nervous system. You will not feel the same jitteriness or palpitations from the drug.

This isn't really your first concern when taking a digestive/metabolic drug, but we answered it first because it's the only question we get that doesn't involve a terrifying answer.

3. does taking fiber with your diet help to reduce treatment effects?
There is no conclusive scientific evidence that fiber will reduce the treatment effects of alli, although fiber has many benefits to your body. However, eating a reduced-calorie, low-fat diet will help to manage treatment effects.

Boy, I bet you're really wondering what the "treatment effects" are by now.

4. what about treatment effects?

Alright, we've tapdanced around this for as long as humanly possible.

Treatment effects are bowel changes that are most commonly caused by eating meals with too much fat while using alli capsules.
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That doesn't sound so bad! "Bowel changes" could mean having to go more often or perhaps less often.

Such effects may include oily spotting

Yeah.

Eating fats leads directly to "oily" "spotting." So, in essence you will be a car with no muffler. The fats will bypass your digestive tract entirely and dribble out your ass like a leaky faucet. It will be like Chinese Water Torture for your underwear. In fact we can guarantee that the fat will go from your fork to your boxers in less than 5 minutes.

loose stools

Remember taking solid craps? Yeah, forget about that. With Alli at your side and in your system, it's nothing but mudbutt from now on.

and more frequent stools that may be hard to control.

We want to emphasize that you won't just have to go more often. You literally won't be able to stop it. No pinching-it-for-a-minute-until-I-find-a-bathroom. Just pure, raw power. Your ass will be like Buckingham Fountain. We're trying to downplay this, but I think you get the picture: the first time you take Alli and have a tablespoon of alfredo sauce, the structural integrity of your o-ring is going to be tested and most likely compromised.
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alli works by blocking the absorption of a quarter of the fat in the foods you eat.

You're taking this to keep your body from digesting so much fat. That is your motivation, tubby. Remember that when you are in a public bathroom stall at a Greyhound station cursing a merciless god and re-enacting the Air Battle of Britain with your ass.

This undigested fat passes through the body naturally, and it is not harmful.

"Not harmful." In that it will not cripple you. Because, you know, explosive and intermittent diarrhea isn't technically harmful.
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It just really blows. A lot.

In fact, you may recognize it in the toilet as something that looks like the oil on top of a pizza.

This is getting really fucking gross, isn't it? Are you sure you want to take this? We're telling you – explicitly telling you – that you are going to make oil and vinegar dressing with your ass. And if you remember back a few sentences, you're going to be doing it frequently and without warning. So when you make an ill-advised decision to study the contents of the bowl after one of your 15 daily thunderbutt sessions, don't be surprised to see some floating oil. Yep.

You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it's probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work.

OK, so, you're an adult. And you just explosively shat yourself in public. But, uh, if you wear dark pants no one will notice. Never mind the fact that you will smell like a rendering plant. Your friends and co-workers will say "Hmm. It sure does sound and smell like Barb just shit her pants, but looking at her dark slacks I see no visual evidence." You'll be off the hook.

Also, if you end up needing to use your "backup clothes" at work, GlaxoSmithKline accepts no responsibility for, and makes no suggestions regarding, how you are supposed to get the shit-doused clothes home.

You may not usually get gassy, but it's a possibility when you take alli. The bathroom is really the best place to go when that happens.

Holy balls, you are going to fart like a motherfucker. If you can make it to the bathroom it may spare whoever sits next to you at work the wrath of your Ass Chernobyl. Come to think of it, if you take Alli it might be wise to work, eat, and sleep in the bathroom. It's just easier that way.

Eating a low-fat diet that consists of 15 grams of fat per meal on average can lower the chance of experiencing these treatment effects. Additionally, the alli program can help you reduce the likelihood of having treatment effects.

Look, this stuff is going to fuck you up but good. That said, you stand a half-decent chance – something like 30% – of reducing your need to have bathroom carpet-bombing missions if you eat right. 15 grams per meal isn't a lot. But it's what you can have. 16 grams and you will shit like a geyser. 15 grams. No more.

In closing, Alli forces you to eat less fat with vicious negative reinforcement. As a pharmaceutical it doesn't really make you thinner. It just makes you have violent assplosions every time you eat something that isn't good for you. It is the guardian angel on your shoulder. By "angel" we mean "bastard" and by "shoulder" we mean Lower GI tract. Because really, who wants to waste time eating good food and enjoying life when you could be power-shitting your way into a smaller dress size?

When was the last time you wrote a letter?
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I don't mean an email or a Microsoft Word document; I mean sitting down with a pen and paper to write someone a letter. In my case it has been at least fifteen years, and probably more. It's just not necessary anymore with the internet now omnipresent in the developed world and increasingly pervasive in the developing.
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What is faster and more convenient is not always better (i.e., frozen fish sticks vs. fresh salmon) and it's becoming popular to appreciate the DIY aspect of antiquated technology, but writing letters lacks the homespun allure of making your own soap or knitting a sweater rather than buying either at Wal-Mart. Count me among those who laments but contributes to the death of letter writing. Between my indecipherable handwriting and the advantages of the electronic medium, I am not about to start communicating with a quill and inkpot to preserve the romance of a bygone era.

The decline of letter writing may be hurting us and our communication skills, but it's definitely killing the Post Office. The fact that we've replaced letters with emails is only the tip of the iceberg; cards have become eCards, bills have become electronic statements, checks have become PayPal and direct deposits, and…well, you get the picture. Combined with the fact that the US Postal Service has never been able to ship larger items as cheaply as competitors like UPS or FedEx, the Norman Rockwell-era mailman has been reduced to delivering, well, shit. Coupons for the elderly, pre-approved credit card offers for the gullible or desperate, and assorted other types of printed detritus that my rats will eventually poop on.

I get the feeling that in another decade or two we'll be telling our kids about how we used to get mail every day and bills used to be printed on paper, and they will listen to tales of the I get the feeling that in another decade or two we'll be telling our kids about how we used to get mail every day and bills used to be printed on paper, and they will listen to tales of the $0..
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22 stamp (I'm showing my age a little) in the same way that we listened to our grandparents talk of 10 cent gasoline and the mechanics of making a long-distance call in the 1930s. I suppose it's for the best, in the name of progress and all, but that doesn't mean it's without cost. Some people miss telegrams, after all.

After suffering through the new Black-Eyed Peas song (which may in fact be the worst song ever written, although we will never know for certain because the council of learned men responsible for awarding such titles all shot themselves upon hearing it) and engaging in an it's-OK-I-want-to-die-anyway game of chicken with my friends over this Brokencyde video (it shows terrific musical growth over their earlier work) I have an important message for the world's shitty, talentless musicians. Gather all ye F-list rappers, Top 40 knock-offs, and aspiring TV talent show rejectees, for I have news. RE: AutoTune. Enough. Just fucking stop it. If the final stage of the decline of a civilization is grotesque self-parody, we are the Roman Empire circa 400 A.D. The use of AutoTune has long since leapt the chasm from novel to moderately cute to is-this-a-joke?. Today's musicians are engaged in a battle, one which has long since spiraled out of control, to make the album or the song which will sound the most dated in five years and serve as the stock punchline for future generations looking to make fun of 2008.

No one in this world listens to the kind of crap that gets airplay on the radio and thinks, "Gee, I'd like this song better if Stephen Hawking sang it." Unless and until that thought crosses someone's mind, AutoTune is the answer to an unasked question. It was invented to fix tracks from talentless models who can't sing. Now its sole purpose is to take ass-rapingly awful music and somehow, in violation of the laws of thermodynamics, make it worse. It is bad enough that the Black-Eyed Peas are so creatively bankrupt that they've taken to writing event-specific "songs" (like the geniuses who realized that they could write a song called "Closing Time" and every bar on Earth would play it to the great delight of sodden, Abercrombie-shirted assholes eating street vendor burritos at 3 AM and power-barfing Jagermeister on a 24 year-old mother of four in an ill-fitting halter top). What purpose other than shepherding mankind closer to complete intellectual collapse is served by AutoTuning the inane vocals?

We know you can't sing. We know you have no talent. We know that highly-paid sycophants are hired to try heroically to make you sound decent, stretching to the limit the deceptive abilities of AutoTune, ProTools, and self-aware Cray supercomputers hidden safely away in the craters of extinct volcanoes. We know you have the integrity of a long-expired Chinese vending machine condom. We know that you would bang your own mother for a plug on TRL. We know you are not terribly bright. Despite these many handicaps you are still Making It in the music industry. Isn't that enough? Aren't you satisfied with being plain, ordinary, run-of-the-mill terrible? When I was your age, pop music horrorshows and one-hit wonders had some self respect. Billy Ray Cyrus. 4 Non-Blondes. Snow. Joan Osborne. Skee-Lo. Lou Bega. They sucked, and the whole world knew it. They didn't resort to cheap signal processors during post-production work to try to make themselves sound better. You fool no one and the effort insults our collective intelligence, or whatever remains thereof.

The next time you reach for the AutoTune controls, ask yourself "Why am I doing this?" The answer, most likely, is that you are a pretty but tone-deaf pile of crap who but for the grace of God and that A&R guy from Columbia you blew in the bathroom at Lit would be getting fired for poor performance from your night job cleaning the grease traps at a Long John Silver's. That is not sufficient cause to start doing robot vocals. We've established that it isn't clever anymore and it doesn't fool anyone into thinking you can sing. You have nothing to gain. You are already successful irrespective of your utter lack of ability. Is that not enough for you? Must you forever be looking for ways to twist the knife in the backs of people with a shred of decency and taste? Must you high-five one another between gulps of Cristal while double-teaming our souls, rejoicing in how lavishly your lack of taste is rewarded?

In closing, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to kill yourself.

Regards,
Ed

The pharmaceutical industry, like the larger healthcare industry, goes out of its way to address problems which are profitable but of dubious urgency. Coincidentally, I'm sure, they seem a little more concerned about one gender than the other. We have dozens of male pattern baldness treatments and an unceasing parade of magic dick pills, yet the side effects of contraception aren't getting any less severe and some insurers still won't cover it. I've always hoped that we might even the playing field by having drugmakers devote less R&D to Rogaines and Viagras and more to life-threatening diseases and conditions regardless of who is affected by them. Instead, it looks like we're going to begin leveling the playing field by developing equally stupid drugs for women.

This brings me to the Latisse commercial you've probably seen as part of a summer marketing blitz. You know, the one starring Brooke Shields touting a drug which promises to bring an end to the global menace of insufficiently long eyelashes (hypotrichosis).

Yes, this is a real thing.

Now, I suppose that having no eyelashes would be a serious medical problem, but no amount of bullshitting can make the pitch used in this commercial sound legitimate. Yes, Latisse was developed as a glaucoma treatment many years ago, but someone still spent a lot of R&D money figuring out a cosmetic use which would let the manufacturer extend its patent.

It's good that big pharma has given all of the serious diseases such a vigorous thrashing that it can turn its attention to gender-based body hair insufficiencies on equal terms.

You all know I like horrible, mean reviews, even if by bitter and possibly alcoholic critics. In fact that might even improve the final product. Two excellent examples came to my attention this week. First, Joe Galloway has a fantastically mean obituary for Robert McNamara – and a well deserved one to boot. McNamara's disgusting 40-year quest to fabricate history and absolve himself of Vietnam couldn't end quickly enough for me.

Second, if you read one thing today, read Harry Siegel's "Extremely Cloying & Incredibly False: Why the author of Everything Is Illuminated is a fraud and a hack." A friend in the publishing industry used to send me free books, and many years ago I received a copy of Everything is Illuminated. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, I hated, hated, HATED that book. Well, the book itself I merely hated. The soccer-riot-like rush of critics fighting one another to suck his cock the hardest was what I truly hated. I can honestly say that some measurable portion of my incredible cynicism about American society is attributable to the public and critical reaction to Everything is Illuminated, and from what I have read (I dare not pick it up) his follow-up is even worse. But now that he has milked the Holocaust and 9/11 for two novels (or "novels") I suppose the world may be spared more writing from this shallow, talentless regurgitator of co-opted and affected styles until some other suitably obvious tragedy befalls us.

Unless, unbeknownst to any of us, he is currently hard at work on a novel about a sick orphaned puppy during the Holodomor. He is the literary (or "literary") equivalent of Tarantino, ham-fistedly pasting together bits and pieces of things he stole from other, better authors, with one notable difference: Tarantino made a couple of good movies amongst the insufferable ones.

WARNING: BASEBALL POST. Neither read nor comment if you don't care.
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I had a bar debate last evening about whether Ken Griffey Jr. or Frank Thomas was the best AL player of the 1990s. Griffey, ever the choice of the uninformed, led the league in media darlingship and gee-whiz outfield catches, but offensively the picture isn't quite as flattering. Note the year-by-year comparison ("Bwin" is batting win shares, i.e. how many additional games a team wins on account of the player's hitting).

Some comments. First of all, holy shit look at Thomas in 1994. Second, Griffey was injured in 1995 and Thomas in 1999, so discount those years.
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In 1990, Thomas played a mere 60 games – yet still almost equaled Junior (155 games) in Batting Wins (!!!). Thomas also had one truly lousy season (1998) in which Griffey was far superior.

Other than that…Griffey hit more homers and had more RBI. Homers and RBI are exactly the kind of statistics for stupids which lead people to make stupid arguments about who was the better ballplayer. RBI is a measure of how good the batter in front of you is at getting on base. And HR are a poor measure of anything other than home runs. Note the many years in which Griffey hit more HR but actually slugged lower than Thomas.

So, essentially Junior was a better home run hitter. That was never in dispute. Big Hurt was a better…oh, I don't know…everything else. Excepting the players' injured seasons (95, 99) and Thomas's terrible 1998, Griffey posted fewer Batting Wins, a lower OBP/batting average, and a lower OPS in every season throughout the decade.

This is where the Griffey fans start whining about his defense. I'll quote a Bill James colleague here:

As for fielding, Griffey was always overrated. He was a very good fielder in his prime, but was not deserving of 10 Gold Gloves. According to Bill James' Win Shares formula, Griffey ranked among the top three fielders in the AL in only two seasons.

My theory is that, in his prime, Griffey became enamored with making homer-robbing catches and landing on SportsCenter. Because of that, he played very deep and didn't cover as much ground as other elite center fielders. But those highlights landed him plenty of Gold Gloves.

And if you want things to get really ugly, we can take a look at what happened to Junior after 2000.

So, are we done here? Good.