Hand of God
The War Report: Storch versus Timbaland, Chimps versus Humans, Dick Cheney versus Iran.
Thumbs up to the Giants’ Amani Toomer and his annulment-divorce fiasco. The details make Jason and Joumana Kidd look like the Cleavers (if the Beav wobbled around with an abnormally large head). Yola Dabrowski, Amani’s soon-to-be-ex, says he urinated on her clothes when she wouldn’t have sex with him. He counters by accusing his wife of callously laughing when he fell down untouched during a football game. Amani apparently hopes the judge will consider the precedent set by the Charles Brown v. Lucy van Pelt case.
Thumbs down to the steady drumbeat for war in Iran. We don’t need Seymour Hirsh’s army of Pentagon squealers to inform us that Cheney and Co. have a throbbing erection for starting a third Persian front. What’s really intolerable is the series of announcements about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, their logistical support of insurgents and their destabilizing influence on the fledging puppet government in Iran – all designed to sway public support towards an outrageously foolhardy and unnecessary conflict. Can we kill the flirtation already? Dick is that creepy guy at a bar who keeps buying a girl shots of Stoli in hopes that she’ll get liquored up and go back to his cold, damp underground bunker. She has no intention of letting Cheney put his clammy, eel-like fingers anywhere near her reproductive organs, but, as the evening continues, she finds herself progressively twisting in a maelstrom of blurry vision, hot-breathed come-ons and, eventually, darkness. Then she wakes up in the morning hog-tied on a metal gurney with reptilian bite-marks all over her abdomen and covered in a thin, slippery sheen of Iraqi oil.
Thumbs up to Scott Storch’s dis song against fellow producer Timbaland. For those yet to hear “Built Like Dat”, it primarily consists of Scott spouting insults and claiming that Timbo doesn’t have street credibility. On a musical level, it’s just a footnote we can chuckle about forever -- but more importantly, it’s the final morsel of proof that Scott is eventually going to call a press conference and say, “You know this ridiculous cartoon of a persona I’ve created with the opaque sunglasses, the weird hair, the cigars, the cocaine, the Paris Hilton friendship, the mansions, the posing in robes in front of hot tubes, the dating Lil Kim and the wearing of huge clumps of jewelry? It was all a big, fantastic hoax. I’m just a nerdy Jewish guy from Philly. Joke’s on you, jack!” And we’ll be like, “No shit! We knew it!”
Thumbs up to Adam “Pacman” Jones’ wild night at the NBA All-Star Game in Las Vegas. There’s nothing chuckle-worthy about the bouncer getting paralyzed, but we’re still in shock and awe at the manic lunacy of the entire episode. Bringing garbage bags filled with $81,000 cash to the titty bar? Slamming strippers’ heads into things? Shooting bouncers? That’s like the best video game ever.
Thumbs up to Dave Zirin for figuratively slapping the fire out of Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock. Following the NBA All-Star Game, Whitlock scribed a filthy little piece for AOL in which he described the atmosphere on the Strip as similar to “the yard in a maximum security prison” and fearfully warned the NBA to distance itself from the unsavory element of young black people (which, not coincidentally, include most of the league’s players). Whitlock, a pudgy windbag, wrote a different column for the Kansas City rag, one in which he mentioned that and his cronies were in Vegas getting drunk and spending entire evenings in strip clubs. So besides doing the devil’s work, he’s also a pudgy, windbag hypocrite. Anyway, Zirin aired him out and we just wanted to point and laugh.
Thumbs down to reports that chimps have learned to use spears for hunting bushbabies. Sure, the news may seem a fascinating glimpse into humanoid development and provide clues as to how learned behavior is passed through animal populations, but it also means monkeys are that much closer to harnessing fire. And no one wants that. The jungle can’t handle several thousand years of flaming orangutans tumbling out of trees while they struggle to learn how to construct matchbooks.