Pride

Bravo, boys. Even though you lost a heartbreaker to Brazil this weekend, you've earned a tremendous amount of respect and admiration. The world has taken notice: the US of A will come to play.

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The King

SHAMON

MJ, through my life:

-My sister taped the "Thriller" video and would love watching it, if only to scare the bajesus out of me. I would hide behind the couch in the den when he turned into the werewolf. But the image that would haunt my nightmares for years of my youth was zombie-Michael creep-walking. I still shudder.

-My sister and I stayed up late one night to watch the premiere of the "Remember the Time" video with Pharaoh Eddie Murphy (talk about big budget!). We also taped that. I wished I could MJ-spin and turn into ash for days.

-I would re-enact the "Bad" video. While watching the "Bad" video. That stare-down in the beginning was way uncomfortable. And in hindsight, that was probably the least "bad" gang fight, like, ever. The Sharks and Jets were less fabulous than these fruits.

-I would also try to Smooth Criminal lean. And would fall.

-The "Free Willy" video for "Will You Be There?" I've cried with Michael at the end.

-I was absolutely tickled by the "Jam" video ("BOTH of their initials are MJ!")

-I always thought he said the word "fucking" in the chorus of "Beat It." Turns out he's saying "funky." Oooooh.

-I could also never figure out what the hell he says before he sings "don't stop til you get enough." (Apparently it's "Keep on with the force, don't stop." I always just faked it.)

-My imitation of the crotch grab would crack up my parents.

-I can, and always do, repeat the dialogue between the rebellious kid and the dad in the beginning of "Black Or White" when I listen to it ("Too late? EAT THIS.")

Name's Macaulay Culkin. Bitch.

-I thought a lot about how cool it would be if everything I stepped on lit up.

-Mamasay mamasaa maa maa coo sa.

-I freaking love the guitar solo in "They Don't Really Care About Us." My cousin Kevin would always say the guitar got "struck by lightning."

-I want to sing "Rock With You" to a girl.

-"Man In the Mirror" was my favorite MJ song as a kid.

-Today, it's "Stranger in Moscow."

In our darkest hour, in my deepest despair,

Will you still care? Will you be there?

In my trials and my tripulations,

Through our doubts and frustrations,

In my violence, in my turbulence,

Through my fear and my confessions,

In my anguish and my pain,

Through my joy and my sorrow,

In the promise of another tomorrow, I'll never let you part.

For you're always in my heart.

Michael Joseph Jackson

1958-2009

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Don't Cry For Me, Argentina

"I spent the last five days crying in Argentina."

First Ensign, now the Guv? Is this the 2012 curse? Of course, contender Newt Jailbait has already come clean. Next they'll find Sarah You Betcha stumbling out of the Travelodge Wasila with Todd's snowmachine racing partner. Wink.


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Win Cups or Die Trying

And check this out, starting at 2:06 in. Don't be fooled though. When the interviewer asked him if he's a Devils fan, 50 said he only wore the hat because it "matched the outfit," and if he were to pick a team, it'd be the Rangers.

Fuck you.

This reminds me, I made a promise a while back to expose why Whoopi Golderg is egregious (see "The Benefits of Chalk") but I never followed up. I know how upset alllll of my readers must have been. Well I'm a man of my word, and when I call rain, I'm NEVER wrong.

Whoopi Goldberg said in an interview with NHL.com in April that being from the NY/NJ metro region somehow allows her to defy the will of the gods and be both a Rangers fan AND a Devils fan simultaneously. "I love the Devils and the Rangers,' said Whoopi, "Scott Gomez is one of my guys." Heinous.

Goldberg had honorably entered Devils lore after she narrated the Devils' 2003 championship DVD. But now she's dead to me.

Gomez. Fucking Judas.

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A Summer of Anticipation

The fourth studio album. In stores August 18.

These guys have officially entered the 21st century of the rock band.

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Tehran, Red

Getty Images

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Rocks Await

Let me go, boys, let me go.
Push my boat from the highest cliff to the sea below.
Rocks are waiting, boys, rocks await.
Swoop down from the sky and catch me like a bird of prey.

Now my feet won't touch the ground.
Now my head won't stop.
You wait a lifetime to be found.
Now my feet won't touch the ground.

Now my feet won't touch the ground.

-Coldplay-

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Yup

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Democracy

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Are You Watching, Osama?

You're next.




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A Family Thing

Can anyone explain why the Republican National Committee thought the song "Barack the Magic Negro" was knee-slapping hilarity and anyone who cried racism was just a "hypersensitive" PC-obsessed pansy, but that same committee's esteemed chairman, who himself enjoyed the parody, joined Governor Palin in eviscerating a comedian for telling a crude sex joke (one that everyone would have laughed at had they watched the original clip and not seen the rerun of it over and over again in the context of "offensive" "tasteless" or "degrading" on Good Morning America) about a legal (don't believe for a second he made the joke about the 14 year old) adult? And how is it acceptable for Governor Palin to suggest that her daughter may not be safe around Mr. Letterman, implying the 62 year old man just might harbor the same sick pedophilic statutory rape fantasy that he (didn't) joke about?

There are no answers. Just the deafening silence left in the wake of indefensible hypocrisy borne from an attempt to capitalize politically by dusting off the old, tarnished shield of Family Values and conceiving Jokegate not as the story of a brilliant, beloved comedian making (another) off-color quip, but as the saga of an outraged and indignant mother fighting not only for her daughters' but for America's daughters' dignity and self-respect in the face of corrosive and degrading male chauvinism.

It's surely the same sort of hypocritical righteous "lay-off-my-family" crusade to protect one's own that led to this, this, this, this, and this.

If you want your family off-limits, establishing a barrier between them and the rest of the world begins, and stays, in the home.

For those of you keeping score (so, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CBS, Newseek, Yahoo!, HuffPost, NY Daily News, People, The Hill, Politico, Perez Hilton, and probably, though not confirmed, The Juneau Empire), Mr. Letterman has now apologized, again, without qualifiers of any sort, for his joke, making him, paradoxically, the bigger person in this whole drama.

Just for fun, imagine me as a well-known celebrity and father of a beautiful and bright 18 year old girl named Tootsie. Now imagine that a late night jokester known for making crude jokes for giggles on his little show made a funny about sweet Tootsie getting "knocked up" by Sean Avery at a Rangers-Capitals game in Washington. The following would be the appropriate way for me, as a father, to respond:

Riiing.
[Chump-Ass Late Night Host]: Hello?
[Me]: Hi, [Chump-Ass Late Night Host]?
[CLNH]: Yes this is he.
[Me]: Hi, it's [Me], I just wanted to let you know that I heard your joke about young Tootsie during last night's Celebrity Kid Pregnancies segment and was horribly offended that you would drag my young daughter into the spotlight to make a crude and tasteless joke about her being impregnated by a mediocre asswipe of a hockey player.
[CLNH]: Oh...yeah...you heard that, eh?
[Me]: Yes, I did, and I did not in the least appreciate it. As a father, it's my duty to protect my little Tootsie from words like yours, and I most certainly expect an apology to me and my daughter for your insensitivity. Now, as star of the hit television sitcom "The Weatherman," (Thursdays at 8 on NBC) I could easily use my celebrity and starshine to publicly deride you for your lack of consideration for my family and its privacy, not to mention for my daughter's self-respect.
[CLNH]: Uh huh.
[Me]: But that sort of stunt would only serve to grant your senseless words more airtime, a greater audience, and give this whole story more legs and lead to more teasing of my pretty Tootsie, and that is something that, as a father who values his family's well-being over my petty and pathetic need to grab the media's attention for my own personal gain because I may or may not be considering a serious career move in 2012, I simply cannot allow.
[CLNH]: Of course.
[Me]: So Mr. [CLNH] I would greatly appreciate a sincere apology for the harm you have caused my daughter and my family, and I would hope we could then put this behind us so we might maintain a healthy relationship in the future that would be beneficial to your and my career, especially if one of us were to say be considering a serious career move in 2012.
[CLNH]: Well, Mr. [Me], I have to say I appreciate your phone call and I want to let you know that after speaking with you I do feel immense shame in my telling of that thoughtless joke, and I do offer my sincerest apologies to you and your family, including joyous Tootsie. I assure you I will try to do better in the future.
[Me]: I appreciate that Mr. [CLNH].
[CLNH]: I'm glad we could settle this. And I would love to have you on the show sometime to discuss your work, and maybe even to talk about a potential seriously serious possible career move in 2012.
[Me]: I would like that very much. I gotta say though, that line about Rudy Guliani wearing the cherry red lipstick and Carrot Top riding naked on a Vespa was comedic gold.
[CLNH]: (Laughs). Thank you, I thought it was pretty good too.
[Me]: Gold.

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Serenity

I could fall asleep to this, or just sit down and rest my head in a shaded, cool room with a fan softly whirring overheard. The first time I played Wii, I heard this accompany the main menu and all my excitement was subdued and supplanted with hushed tranquility. Ahhhhh. If the world's moving too fast, slow it down.

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PengWINS

Don't doubt my hockey allegiance for a second, but I was damn pleased to see the Pittsburgh Penguins raise the greatest, and most difficult to earn, chalice in all of professional sports. Maxime Talbot sniped two pretty goals to put the Pens over the Wings 2-1 in Game 7 in Detroit. A toast to the Red Wings for a great series and a great season. And big props to Evgeni Malkin for winning a most deserved Conn Smythe. It's been a good year for Pittsburgh (might I accept some credit?), but lest Pittsburghites get too high in the clouds, they've still got this to contend with.


Congrats Sid, you're a champ. Maybe you can buy your own house now.

DEVILS 2010

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The Quiet Redemption of Shepard Smith

He's been the face of a news [sic] network which I have reviled for years. I have always associated Shepard Smith with Fox News and vice versa. To me, Smith has been synonymous with the kind of biased, smug, cynical reporting (read: editorializing) veiled under the banner of "fair and balanced" from a conglomerate network which has turned truth-seeking into a fetishized rampage to expose their Mainstream Media (MSM) competitors as the ubiquitous and far reaching (yet paradoxically insignificant and irrelevant) lefty elitist drive-by noise machine it truly is.

But I may have been wrong about Mr. S. "Blow Job" Smith.

In light of yesterday's horrible shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Museum here in DC by a hate-filled, troubled, and confused man, Smith brought up with a guest the amount of hateful e-mails he has received full of "scary" and "out-there" opinions about the President, paranoid rants from delusional and sadly misinformed citizens with whom I have quite some experience (see: A Rush to the Head). Shepard offered a voice of reason and concern on a subject which his own network has dismissed and has gone so far as to attack the Department of Homeland Security for drafting a report on the recent rise of "right-wing extremism" in the country following the election, claiming it was aimed at snuffing out the rights of ordinary conservative Americans (watch Shepard deconstruct those criticisms). Here's what Smith had to say about the frightening contents of his e-mail inbox:



Even after offering a platform for J. Lo's neighbors' er, oral arguments and apologizing, Smithy boy just can't get his mind out of the gutter. He's a depraved pervert. I like it:



Watch Shep take Joe "I'm In Way Over My Head" Wurzelbacher, our friendly neighborhood plumber/esteemed foreign policy expert, for a swim in the deep-end, where you can only float with facts. At the very end of the segment, you can see Shep is just exacerbated with the constant barrage of bullshit he must steep through on a daily basis on the job:



Next watch Smithy mock (or "begrudge" as perpetual crusty underwear Chris Wallace puts it) Glenn "No Clever Moniker Needed Because I'm Just Straight Up Douchewash" Beck. Shep's biting sarcasm is hilarious, especially when he spoofs Beck's tendency to cry like a little bitch:



One thing I've come to notice about Sheppy is he takes shit from no one, NO ONE, as evidenced by this clip. 28 seconds in, priceless (try not to be too distracted by the hilarious pop-up captions):



Now watch him destroy comedidouche Nick DiPaulo, who was clearly comfortable in the misconception that while he was on so-called friendly turf he could spit around whatever half-baked conspiracy bullshit he could think of. Let this be a reminder to all comedians to STFU and just be funny:



And finally, the moment I truly came to admire Shepard Smith, flaws and all, right here:



"Oops..." Hahaha. Right on, Smith. Even though you've got a bit of a temper, you've earned my respect. Now that I think about it, your redemption may not be so quiet after all.

Step into the rain: secondrain.blogspot.com

fml

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A New Look

Like a deep and brooding amateur artist, I'm "experimenting with colors." I'm not yet satisfied and am contemplating a format change, but rest assured the rain will still fall the same.

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Citizen

"Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen - a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world."

Senator Barack Obama, Berlin, July 24 2008

"Like [President] Reagan, I am for first principles...Let me be clear, I am not a citizen of the world. I think the entire concept is intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous."

Newt Gingrich, Washington, June 8 2009

"I speak today as both a citizen of the United States and of the world. I come with the heartfelt wishes of my people for peace..."

President Ronald Reagan, New York, June 17 1982

"Ich bin ein Berliner."

President John F. Kennedy, Berlin, June 26 1963

"Nous sommes tous Américains."

Le Monde, Paris, September 13 2001

"[I am] a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world."

"I speak...as both a citizen of the United States and of the world."

"I am a Berliner."

"Let me be clear, I am not a citizen of the world."

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June 4, 1989

We live in a country in which we can view, without censorship or denial, a picture of this moment:

And we can honor those who sparked it, who dared to defy power in the name of freedom, near a square in Beijing twenty years ago. Let these young, hopeful, and incredibly brave (some would say reckless) kids remind us--a month before we celebrate 233 years of freedom--to defend this freedom, keep its burning torch lit, and pass it to the next generation.

Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1989

On This Day...

...In 2008, a "hip," "cool," and, as some might say, "jihadist" trend was (re)set by a intriguing, charismatic, hope-bleeding politician who had risen from obscurity and subdued-famedom to challenge and upend the establishment frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

Happy National Fist Bump Day to you all! Celebrate by fisting your best friends, closest family members, garbage collectors, toll booth operators, Starbucks employees, coworkers (especially superiors), pets, and U.S. Postal Service deliverymen.

In honor of this great traditional American holiday, I present:

Great Moments In Presidential Fisting

*bump*

And just so I might relive this moment of great pride, relief, excitement, and a sense of profound unity I experienced a year ago today and would feel again on the night of November 4, 2008: