Hope Solo brings the awesome.

"It was the wrong decision, and I think anybody that knows anything about the game knows that... There's no doubt in my mind I would have made those saves... You have to live in the present. And you can't live by big names. You can't live in the past."

- Hope Solo, who hasn't lost a game in goal for the U.S. since 2002, on her being replaced in the semifinal against Brazil. The U.S. lost, 4-0.

I get tired of the mealy-mouth response so many athletes give when asked about something when they should obviously have a strong opinion. Not Hope Solo! She let the coach have it with both barrels, and it was well deserved. True, without a real pro league for women in the U.S. she might be done playing in her home country for a while. But damn! Awesome! Tell it like it is, sister!

Bull Ice

From Deadspin's Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo:

Bull Ice. Holy shit, you do not fuck with Bull Ice. Take Bull Ice lightly and you will end up lying on the floor of a bread truck covered in blood and sawdust. According to the label, this is "high gravity ice brewed malt liquor." And that "high gravity" claim is no joke. One sip of Bull Ice increases gravity threefold. Your natural attraction to the ground will never be stronger.

Bonus Coolness: Rocked By Rape. The best of the worst news Dan Rather has ever had to deliver, set to a sludgy AC/DC sample. "Disgruntled conspirator attack killed, U.S. warplane went down in flames, crash, gunned down, shooting death, blood drops, murderer, desperate tragedy, isn't he dead?"

Call it "I Married A Derby Girl"

Tips for Newlyweds

"To have a truly successful marriage, both people should share common interests."

Name the celebrity couple to get public kudos from me!

Hint: There was a true-crime movie made about them, starring Laura Prepon.

Update: No more guesses! Smackie Chan comes through with the I.D. on Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, a couple of fresh-faced Canadian pranksters.

Ding!

John has lots of bathtub toys. Some of his favorites include three rubber ducks and a plastic fish.

[The slightly bigger duck is the daddy duck, the one with the crown is the mommy duck, and the slightly smaller one is the baby duck. You better keep it straight, too, or John will correct you pretty damned quick.)

So he's playing in the tub tonight, and he's got the duck family on the side of the tub, along with the fish. And John is providing the dialogue.

"Look family, I caught a fish. Let's cook it. Then we can eat it."

And then he starts humming, and I'm like, "what's the humming?" And I can't figure it out until he says "ding! Fish is ready! I cooked it. Let's eat."

The boy was impersonating a microwave oven. Because that's where dinner comes from.

Worst. Parents. Ever.

Ode to the hostess at El Porton

Oh, ebon hair done just like Farrah's!

Oh, chica with the bod so tight!

For you I wear my guayabera!

Tell me, does your papi treat you right?

Re.: I've Never Been To Me

Dear Charlene,

Yes, I love your inexplicable 1982 hit song. And yes, I sing my fucking heart out when it pops up on the iPod in my car. But I must raise one issue with your lyrics.

You sing:

I've spent my life exploring the subtle whoring that costs too much to be free...

Okay. Say you have a bushel of subtle whoring. Or a truckload. A lot of subtle whoring, at any rate. And say you sell that truckload of subtle whoring for two cents. That's a pretty good deal on subtle whoring, right? But even at that low a rate, it's not free. Any price (no matter how low) attached to any amount (no matter how large) of subtle whoring makes it cost too much to be free.

In conclusion: if it (no matter what it is, including subtle whoring) costs anything at all, then it costs too much to be free. By stating that something has cost, you are also implicitly stating that the thing is not free.

I don't know exactly how you want to fix this whenever you get around to re-recording this song. That's for you musical types to figure out. Maybe you could talk a little bit more. Or start rapping! Bring in Ludacris to do a verse! Or maybe a harp solo.

Regardless, you can only make a great song better by addressing the nonsense I've mentioned here. Keep up the great work. Can't wait for your next album!

Sincerely,
H

The Cori Heartless Story

The Wife needs a name and a backstory for the roller derby. The name is Cori Heartless. And the backstory? That was my department.

http://www.coriheartlessfanclub.com

Soon to have pictures, news, commentary, t-shirts for sale, all that shit.

The Atlanta Falcons: Moving Forward!

Falcons again turn to veteran kicker Morten Andersen

Their next target for acquisition: Bobby Hebert!

And has anyone signed that Heyward kid yet?

"Space herpes."

Suspected meteorite causes sickness

"LIMA, Peru (AP) -- Officials are investigating unconfirmed reports that a meteorite crashed in southern Peru over the weekend and caused dozens of people to become sick..."

Is it just me...

...or does it make everyone else feel kind of weird that Helen Mirren is so damn sexy? I mean, shit. She's, what? Fifty-five? Sixty? Seventy? Eighty? I've got no fucking clue. But she's well into grandma-hood and that woman is fine.

(Defamer is concerned about this too. And they've been worried about it longer than we have. But I saw the pictures from the Emmys the other day and it reminded me of it all over again.)

Marietta!

James and I went to Alex's Saturday night to drink a beer and watch some football. It was a good time. And we made friends!

We'd been there a while when a cute blonde, about our age, comes in and watches a bit of the Ole Miss/Vanderbilt game. Whatever. She walks out.

She comes back in a few minutes later with a huge weightlifter/bouncer type. He knows some people at the bar and they all start to talk. Again, whatever. We keep watching the games.

And then after while she plops down in the booth next to me.

"Hey y'all! Do you mind if I sit down with y'all? I'm just trying to watch this game and that conversation over there is not fun. I went to Ole Miss and my daddy's at the game in Nashville right now. I'm surprised he hadn't sent me some text messages saying 'hotty toddy!' or whatever but we're losing, so he's probably mad. Do y'all want to come to a game in Oxford sometimes? My daddy's got a suite, with catered food and liquor! We've got our own booze locker and he'll call me before the game and say 'Marietta, do you need me to put something special in the booze locker?' And I'll say 'how about a fifth of Maker's Mark?' And the next day at the game there'll be a fifth of Maker's Mark in there!"

"Who are you?" I managed to work in.

"I'm Marietta! Like in Georgia. I'm a court reporter. I've got a big case starting next week and I'm so worried and it's gonna suck!"

"With the headphones and everything? Anything we'd be familiar with?"

"No, well, I don't use the headphones. I did the Winkler case, and some other ones, yeah, if it's big I probably worked it!"

I went to light a cigarette.

"Oh, now you're gonna have to give me a drag or two off that cigarette...no, no, I don't want a whole one. My boyfriend hates for me to smoke. He used to bounce at the Blue Monkey and he saw me come in there for years before we started going out and he saw me do God knows what in that place and now he doesn't like for me to smoke. Can you believe that? I'm thirty-four years old and I can't have a smoke when we're out on a Saturday night."

"Is he gonna kill me if I give you a drag?"

"Aw, no! He's a good guy. See, thing is we went to Cooper-Young today and usually I'm the one who gets all drunk and he has to get me home but today he had a big ol' margarita and nothing to eat so he got all sloppy drunk and I'm like 'ha, ha, I'm sober.' So do you guys like girls? Boys? What?"

James and I look at each other balefully.

"We both like girls," I say decisively, "but we do worry about people making that mistake when we're out together."

"Aw, hell, I don't mean nothing. Hell, I like girls and boys both. I'm 50/50! Now where are your women? Uh-huh? And you got kids? Little boys? Tell me, are they momma's boys or daddy's boys? I knew it! My sister's kids hate her. They just want to be with their daddy."

And then the boyfriend came over. He sat in the booth behind us and just sort of loomed over our whole table, like a big drunk brick wall.

"I know you from somewhere," he said, squinting at me, "you look familiar."

Actually, he did, too. Neither one of us could figure out from where, though.

"So how do y'all know Marietta?"

"She just came and sat with us."

He nodded his vast head slowly. "Yep, that sounds just like her."

And after a little while they slipped away. I can't wait to go to the game!

Is it possible...

...that the Cooper-Young Festival has gotten too big for the Cooper-Young neighborhood?

We went Saturday. Of course, parking was a nightmare. But I can remember having a hard time finding a parking place in that neighborhood ten years ago on any given Saturday night. The crowd was positively Mardi Gras-esque, and as I corralled John across Young Avenue to use the ATM at the Deli all I could think was "this is like Bourbon Street the Saturday before Fat Tuesday." More kids, less tits, and not quite as drunk, true, but the comparison still works.

But it's not like they can move the damned thing. Where would it go? The Pyramid? The (soon to be majorly overhauled) fairgrounds? It wouldn't be the neat thing that it is if they did that. But maybe a shuttle bus to some reasonable parking would be a start. And hell, extend the festivities on down to Central. I don't know. But we had fun. John jumped in the moon bounce. Later, he had a corndog. I drank lemonade. Sonya got recruited to work the MRD booth. I got some sun!

Dare

John gets in the car this afternoon and says, "I want to hear 'it's comin' up, it's comin' up, it's dare'!"

"Okay," I said.

Turn on the shuffle. Good deal! Groove Armada! I put in on playlist and start scooting backwards. Groove Armada. Greek Buck. The Gossip. Gorillaz vs. Styx (Feel Good Roboto, possibly the best mash-up ever. "Secret secret, I've got a secret/feel good...") And the Gorillaz, Dare.

We sang all the way home. It's good to take requests!

Beer-o!

After tonight, I will have had solo kid duties three nights this week.

Enough!

I'm going to get a beer tomorrow night. Who's with me?

James says he's up for it. Something I love - and haven't done in years - is to go to Alex's on a Saturday night during football season and watch the scores come in. That may be a possibility!

This sounds like...

...the ultimate reality show. They can stop making them now!

And for Memphis Comcast customers: it's on InDemand!

About the weather

I know it the most banal and cliched subject on the planet, but how about this Memphis weather?

Last Monday, Labor Day, was hot and sunny just like August had been. But then! The next morning dawns cloudy and a good bit cooler, and that kind of thing has just kept on since then. Except for yesterday, which was one of those warm-sunny-feel-good fall days that are usually all too rare in Memphis.

And rain! We've had rain, after having almost none all summer. You should see my yard; so lush, so green. Must mow soon.

Must mow while avoiding the fire ant hills, that is. The horrible, horrible little bastards have been around all summer, and I found three new hills yesterday while I was out picking weeds. I need some more "bait" for them (and by "bait" I mean "deadly poison") and I'm all out.

When I was a kid living in Texas and Louisiana we had fire ants. My dad never used poison. My dad used gasoline and a match.

Then again, this is the man who once measured the distance between Memphis and Baton Rouge in six-packs.

Today's poll

Razor burn:

Awesome
Not cool
Both
Don't know
Don't understand the question

That's what clippers are for.

So one night last week I'm up late, cruising along on the phentermine, and I decide to cut my hair.

So I'm sitting on the bathroom floor, clip-clip-clippering away, and I'm looking down at my chest hair.

"Nope," I say, "this won't do at all. Too many gray curly hairs. Way too many."

And with a few swift swoops of the clippers it was gone.

That shit itched like crazy for a few days, brother, but now it doesn't bother me at all. And it's not like I'm a freakish hairless Ken doll or anything. It's just very short hair as opposed to the ridiculous thatch of disco medallion padding that I had before.

Professor Mumblepants

When a roller derby girl pinches your nipple (your pierced nipple!) (several times!) and says "you need to blog more" then you fucking well do it, buddy. With that in mind: Smackie Chan, this one's for you.

The aforementioned nipple-tweaking took place on the patio at the Buccaneer, a hipster watering hole-in the wall that I'd driven past God knows how many times but never actually been in before. It was the afterparty for the MRD playoffs, which had occurred earlier in the evening.

[Scheduling note: The MRD championship, starring the Women of Mass Destruction taking on the undefeated Angels of Death, happens Saturday, September 22. Tickets on sale now.]

Actually, with John staying at his aunt's house, Saturday night went playoffs - Huey's - Buccaneer - CK's. A perfect night of Memphis out-and-aboutness that ended very, very late.

Some highlights:

• Sonya's boss brought her teenage son to the bout. I'm not sure what he thought of it ("It's a different crowd," he said when asked). I sat with her and her son and James and Andy and his new man-friend on the floor for a while. "If they'd had this when I was in high school," I told James and Sonya's boss, "you wouldn't have been able to keep me away."
  
• Andy and his date were both enthused about the whole affair, and were coming up with names and things they could do by the end of the night. Andy wants to be a cheerleader; the date (who I believe is now officially a boyfriend and is named Chad, but don't quote me) wants to be a referee.
  
• Sitting at Huey's was hard for me. I'm on the diet drugs (see below) and they make me just a touch jittery. I must have looked like a hummingbird, scanning the crowd, the TVs, the people at the table with me, the crowd, the TVs, etc. Sonya shared her burger and onion rings with me, and that helped to calm me down a bit.
  
• I found out Andy has been designated by Sonya to come to our house in the event that Sonya and I are eaten by sharks or something equally life-ending and take away the briefcase under the bed. There's nothing illegal in said briefcase, but it's nothing our families would want to deal with either, if you catch my drift. This was a very thoughtful thing for Sonya to arrange. Way to go, Wifey!
  
• The Buccaneer was satisfyingly grotty. The MRD party was on the patio out front, where for the most part the general hipsters were on one side while the MRD-affiliated were on the other side. "Segregation," I observed to another derby husband, "it's so ugly."
  
• James said he needed to use the bathroom, which led us to wonder about the state of the Buccaneer's toilet. "It'll probably be like Trainspotting," I said, "you'll just want to open the door and piss inside." James reported back that this was indeed the case, but it was still good enough for him. Like me, James believes that there is no bathroom so filthy that he can't piss in it.
  
• At the last derby afterparty that both James and I attended, we were delighted by a tall, skinny, white-haired, Ichabod Crane-like character who showed up wearing leather pants. We promptly dubbed him Professor Mumblepants and did a great deal of speculating about where he came from, what were his habits, how did he talk (I was hoping for a Vincent Price-like accent), etc. He showed up again Saturday, wearing some unfortunately shiny denim, and I was once again thrilled. (Balanced reporting: I understand he's some derby girl's friend, and supposedly a very nice guy. But he'll always be Professor Mumblepants to me.)
  
• Post-Buccaneer, James, Jen, Smackie, Sonya and I went to the IHOP. ("Pancakes!" Sonya declared drunkenly, "Pancakes would be gooooooood!") This was also the night of the Southern Heritage Classic, a big football game here in Memphis between two historically black colleges (Jackson State and Tennessee State, I believe) and the game attracts a lot of people and is a big, big party. Some of the party had gone to IHOP at three on Sunday morning, and there was a twenty minute wait. Now, yes, IHOP makes a fine pancake, but a twenty minute wait at IHOP is like a twenty minute wait at Taco Bell. Or McDonald's. It's not going to happen. So we went to CK's, a local chain of greasy spoons, for a round of waffles and hash browns and whatnot. Many of The Gays showed up while we were there, and it was very festive. (Of course Jen knew one of them. With her track record, I'm surprised she hadn't dated him. Zing! Gay boyfriend burn! Love you, Jen!) I also expressed my devotion to the adult film Pirates (again, see below).
  

So Sonya and I crash into bed at four-thirty or so. John woke up at eight-thirty. Yesterday was kind of hazy around the edges.

[Music note: I'm listening to New Wave City from Labor Day weekend at DNA Lounge. Theme: Siouxsie and the Banshees. Now Playing: Siouxsie - Melt. Have I ever mentioned how ridiculously sexy this song is? 'Cause it is.]

I do recall that my brother in-law (Kind of; he and my sister have been together for years, and they own a house together, but they're not married, and yet he is Uncle Mike to John. So brother in-law he is) made some very good steaks on the grill yesterday. As mentioned previously, I'm on the speedy-speedy-speed right now so I haven't been eating much. Yesterday I skipped the pills which led to me being zombie-fied most of the day but it also meant I got to eat the fuck out of some steak.

Which has played hell with my stomach since then. But steak! Such good steak!

So I've taken the Phentermine here and there over the years when someone gave me a spare. They do stomp the hell out of your appetite and give you a nice little boost. I came back from vacation (orgy of fried food that it was) disgusted with myself. So I found a reputable doctor (translation: advertises in RSVP) and got my very own prescription. It's working, too. In fact, the benefits (weight loss, extra energy, improved efficiency at work) far outweigh the negatives (horrible sleep, dry mouth, speed-freak jitters if I don't eat enough). True, sometimes I want to climb up to a high place and hoot at everyone who goes by, and occasionally I have to do a couple of wind-sprints just to burn off the extra energy, but I'm fine. Fine, I tell you. I don't have a problem.

Saturday was the first day the pills really got on top of me. I didn't eat regularly, and several times I had to stop and breathe deep just to keep from gagging with baseless nerves and excitement. That said, I was really excited about having an adult night (adult in the sense of out with grown-ups, not in the sense of Fantasy Warehouse). And I was singing along with the iPod like a maniac in the car on the way to the bouts. And James said I was kind of vibrating.

But I stayed up late! No problem! And I was a good deal more social than I usually am, too. I had fun! I was just kind of high the whole time.

And now, Pirates: I got this movie back in May, but I never watched it until a couple of weeks ago. I didn't get to watch it all, because Sonya came in from the Rick Springfield concert where she'd had a few drinks and I'm more interested in Drunk Sonya then I am in just about anything else. Still, it's beautiful! It's a gorgeous B-movie, with good effects, awesome costumes and nice, moody lighting. And graphic sex. The acting, unfortunately, reminds you that the people involved possibly weren't selected for their acting skills. Except for the pirate-hunting captain. He was funny, with kind of a Bruce Campbell thing going on. I recommend it!