All in でしょう.

Not that I like to kick a guy in the junk when he's down, but....

Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigned from his post in Congress, which included being chairman of the "House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children" after being caught asking a teenage male page for his picture and birthdate, and sending sexually explicit instant messages to others, reports ABC. Now, it's clearly time to play devil's advocate in Foloey's defense. Since congressional Republicans never call any bill or committee by an honest name, there's no chance that Foley was seeking any position on an exploited child. Right? Of course not....

Imitation is the sincerest form

of identity theft.

Perhaps I should be flattered that Jesus Angelo Glez, "the Bitacle Thief" as Shel Israel of Naked Conversations calls him, decided to scrape and rape All in Deshou. I am not. I'm about as flattered as I would be if a drunken masturbator on the subway called me pretty.

Glez, which I believe is the term for the stuff encrusted under that hypothetical subway wanker's fingernails,
saw fit in the last 24 hours to delete the comment I left on his site replying to my most recent post. I had notified him that he did not have permission to mirror this blog, and that the Creative Commons non-commerical attribution license did not allow him to rip an entire body of work (meagre as this seems sometimes) for the purpose of sellng his own advertising. Nor does he give attribution.

So, if he rips off this post, then all may know that J.A. Glez is a scoundrel and a moron. Can ya digg it?

Someone at CNN needs to be hit with the clue bat

Stop! Grammar time!

I just saw an ad for Larry King Live: "James McGreevey, Ex-gay gov. takes your calls." That's as opposed to "gay ex-gov," which should have been the on-screen tag. McGreevey has definitely not stopped being gay, and is now out about it, though he is no longer governor of New Jersey.

Now, if John "Candy" Paulk becomes governor of Colorado, then he can be the "ex-gay gov." And he can also get hounded out of office just like McGreevey if he gets caught putting a boyfriend on the state payroll.

Yesterday passed without words.

The picture of the beams of light which have replaced the Twin Towers for the last five years was worth, not a thousand given the quality of the picture I too with my phone, but enough.

Today, I'll borrow from Keith Olbermann.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people....

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

...History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.

New York Minute: 御念の五年

New York Minute: Tiger Rampant

For months, I've been eagerly awaiting the reopening of the Blind Tiger Ale House. The bar lost its lease at its original space on Hudson Street at the changing of the year. That space, catty-corner from the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, has been boarded up since, but is about to become a Starbucks.

The new Blind Tiger, on the corner of Bleecker and Jones (right around the corner from Cornelia Street Cafe, my favorite poetry joint) is quite a bit different than the old one. For one thing, it's not just a bar anymore. For another, it's not a bar at all yet.

Good Beat Stories

A hundred forty-one men could draw faster than he,
and Irving was looking for one-forty-three.
--Frank Gallop, "The Ballad of Irving"

Narrative is a magical thing, plain and simple. Even highway patrol cops love a good story. That's why my latest book purchase, Jay Greenspan's Hunting Fish: A Cross-Country Search for America's Worst Poker Players, managed to push itself to the front of my queue, even though I was already trading off between Harrington on Hold'Em and Gulliver's Travels. Greenspan deftly blends poker history and strategy, personal life, good beat stories, and some very entertaining  table chatter.

I have to confess that I was compelled to buy the book in the basement of the Strand when I saw that chapter two was a trip to Philadelphia. Simply put, even if I were to wear nothing but Brooklyn Cyclones caps for a year, the Philly's still never coming out of this girl.  I read Greenspan's quick tale running over a couple Mummers in a tiny Restaurant Row club while standing in the bookstore. The book left with me, and I planned to read it as soon as I was done with Harrington and Swift.

But as I was reading Harrington's tournament theory and exercises, the recent memory of Greenspan's sly storytelling kept calling to me. And as for Gulliver's Travels, well, I can be as much a whore to the contemporary as any other ESPN viewer. Is it any wonder why I'd identify more with a guy who left technical writing (which is still my bread'n'butter gig) to become a poker journalist than an 18th-century ship's surgeon? Greenspan had me at yo.