“Klotz” As In “Blood”

On this site you’ll find an interesting video of a Japanese world champion competitive eater (I assume this is a closely followed sport) taking on a hungry 1,000 pound Alaskan Kodiak bear in a hot dog eating contest.

This reminds me of story about a teevee show host in Cleveland many years ago.

His name was “Mush Mouth Mario,” and he hosted a cornball 2-hour Saturday afternoon show which featured horrid old Japanese monster movies, bad B horror flicks, and the like. He’d interrupt throughout the show to make insulting remarks, poking fun at the movies and the actors and the like. Lots of cities had shows with hosts like this, and Mystery Science Theater 3000 epitomized them.

Anyway, Mario – “the Pride of Parma” – had a standing contest on his show: he challenged all comers to a pizza-eating contest. Not quantity, but speed. He claimed he could eat a 16” pizza faster than anyone on earth, and throughout his tenure, he proved it over and over, live, on the air.

He had a technique where he practically inhaled slices one after the other, and nobody ever came close.

Then one day he found himself suckered into a contest with a German Shepherd.

Not one to back down, Mush Mouth took on the dog, only to lose for the first time in his career. “Nobody beats Mush Mouth Mario!” he raged afterwards, and while conceding defeat, he demanded a rematch, vowed to “go into training,” and promised victory. Several months later he pronounced himself ready, and the dog returned to the show.

Well, it was no contest. Mario redeemed himself. He beat the dog. Like he said, Nobody beats Mush Mouth Mario, least of all some fucking dog.

Our champion!! And, it turns out, a man ‘way ahead of his time. There wasn’t any such thing as “competitive eating” back then, let alone a 24 hour sports channel to promote and broadcast it.

Rumor has it that he folded up, then swallowed the entire pizza in one unchewed gulp, scalding his mouth and throat badly, and that within seconds of going off camera, he horked up the entire works — garlic, anchovies, and peppers covered in mucous (and presumably parts of his esophagus lining) — all over the studio floor.

The rumor goes on to claim that the dog ate that, too. Now, that’s a good dog. Gracious in defeat. “Win-Win for Everybody,” as they say.

Thanks to Attu Sees All for the heads-up on the video, and blogfart for the graphic. Visit both!

Here are two vivid examples, worlds apart, illustrating how the 21st century is off on the wrong hoof. First, dateline: Fatherland Uber Alles:

Berlin’s Deutsche Oper has removed the provocative staging of a Mozart opera from its schedule for fear of enraging Muslims. One of three opera houses in the German capital, it cancelled director Hans Neuenfels’s production of “Idomeneo”, a 1781 drama set in ancient Crete, because authorities warned it could present an “incalculable security risk”.

In the staging, King Idomeneo presents the lopped-off heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha, and the Prophet Mohammed, and displays them on four chairs.

German critics saw the show at the time as a radical attack on religion and religious wars. — brietbart.com

Ach de Liber! Germans appeasers backing down? Cutting and running? Caving to fanatical religionistas? No wonder their right wing is rattling their chains, dusting off their black boots, and brandishing their swastikas!

And they’re not alone. Coming less than a week after Pope BendaDick apologized (for the fifth time) to Muslims for quoting in his address an ancient text critical of Islam, infuriating Muslims around the world, many Germans are outraged over the ankle-grabbing posture their leaders have assumed.

“That is crazy,” Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told reporters in Washington, where he was holding meetings with U.S. officials. “This is unacceptable.”

The leader of Germany’s Islamic Council welcomed the decision, saying a depiction of Muhammad with a severed head “could certainly offend Muslims.. ……….Nevertheless, of course I think it is horrible that one has to be afraid,” Ali Kizilkaya told Berlin’s Radio Multikulti. “That is not the right way to open dialogue.” — MSNBC.com

Wolfgang Börnsen, a culture spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc in Parliament, accused the opera house of “falling on its knees before the terrorists…..It is a signal to other stages in Germany, or even elsewhere in Europe, to put no works on their programs that criticize Islam,” he said. — NY Times

One might expect to find in the land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms a certain respect for aesthetic courage, but evidently today’s Germans have less conviction regarding such matters as the Danes, for example, who published political cartoons that pissed off certain Islamic elements. Since when does the fear of offense trump the glory of freedom of expression? When did the Germans become politically correct Americans?

Speaking of whom, here’s the depressing news from New York:

The New York City Board of Health voted unanimously yesterday to move forward with plans to prohibit the city’s 20,000 restaurants from serving food that contains more than a minute amount of artificial trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients considered by doctors and nutritionists to increase the risk of heart disease……If approved, the proposal would make New York the first large city in the country to strictly limit such fats in restaurants. — NY Times

Not content to make the lives of smokers miserable by banning tobacco from bars, restaurants, and public places, New York’s leaders now want to make tasty food illegal. We Americans are too stupid and lazy to be careful about what we eat, see, so Big Brother’s sphincter police will push their way into our kitchens and restaurants to save us from ourselves.

Personally, I don’t have a pony in this race. No refined sugar has crossed my lips since Billy Beer was the official White House beverage. I’ve eaten two hamburgers in the last 35 years (one good, one ghastly). To me, “Trans-Fats” might as well mean “Frankford Area Transit System.”

But I sure as hell don’t see a role for the gubmint declaring food illegal just because it’s unhealthy. Anybody ever read Aristotle on the Golden Mean? “All things in moderation?” Three cigarettes a day — one after each meal — won’t kill you, and neither will the Sunday buttered sticky bun if that’s your dirty little secret pleasure. Either way, leave it to us to decide for ourselves! And if we wanna kill ourselves with kindness, that’s our business, too.

Free the Fats! Bring Home the Bacon! Sod off and let us live!

The story won’t quit. Now comes a report out of salon.com that Sen. George Allen of Virginia, recently “emerged from the ark” (that’s the Jewish equivalent of a gay person “coming out of the closet”), freely referred to Blacks as “niggers” all through his preppy college career.

“Allen said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where ‘blacks knew their place,’” said Dr. Ken Shelton, a white radiologist in North Carolina who played tight end for the University of Virginia football team when Allen was quarterback. “He used the N-word on a regular basis back then.”

Allen denies everything, of course. “They’re only making this shit up now because I’m Jewish,” he tearfully told reporters early this morning over a breakfast of lox and bagels. “It’s anti-Semitism, is what it is. Besides, Jews don’t use the ‘n-word;’ they, I mean, We, We say schwartzes.”

Allen also denies the amusing report of his stuffing the severed head of a deer into the mailbox of a Black household as a prank. What a kidder! The incident, reminiscent of the horse’s head scene from The Godfather, allegedly occurred in a town called Bumpass, VA. (You remember “Bumpass” — it’s where “Bareback Mountain” was filmed. For more news of Bumpass, VA, visit here.)

“That never happened, either,” he snapped. “And before it goes any further, that deer was a female, and it wasn’t my idea to….oh, never mind.”

Later in the day, Larry J. Sabato, one of Virginia’s most-quoted political science professors and Allen’s classmate in the early 1970s, told the New York Times that he knew the senator used the racial slur. “No doubt about it,” he told reporters. “But I hadn’t ever heard him use the word ‘macaca’ until last month.”

When it rains it pours, as my old friend Morton observed. Reports of previous racial insensitivities are popping up like a teenager’s woody; there’s Allen wearing a Confederate flag lapel pin for a year book portrait, here he is opposing the state’s declaration of Martin Luther King’s birthday as a holiday, and most recently displaying a Confederate flag in his living room (”Big deal! It matched the drapes,” he squawked).

Incapable of resisting the opportunity to stomp on an exposed neck, any exposed neck, even normally sympathetic observers have taken their shots:

“His mishandling of a name-calling incident, and his ham-handed denial and subsequent revelation that his mother was raised Jewish, have almost eliminated him from the field of serious presidential candidates and even jeopardized his Senate seat,” Matthew Continetti of the conservative Weekly Standard wrote in the magazine’s current cover story, “George Allen Monkeys Around.” - NY Times

The Allen camp, reeling from the persistent pounding waves of bad publicity, remains resolute. “This character assassination going on is just a distraction from the real issues on which my campaign is based, and on which my record and candidacy should be judged,” insisted the candidate late in the day. “We need to get past this and down to the things that matter to the people of Virginia. Oy, vey is mir!”

Holy Burning Cross! What the hell is happening in the World of Political Pander?

In the heat of his campaign for governor, Attorney General Charlie Crist announced that his office had solved the 55-year-old murders of a major civil-rights activist and his wife — identifying four dead Ku Klux Klansmen as the perpetrators at a press conference right next to the crime scene.

But two scholars who have done extensive research on the case say Crist’s mid-August announcement in the small Central Florida town of Mims couldn’t be further from the truth.

‘’They got it wrong,'’ said Florida State University’s Ben Green, author of Before His Time: The Untold Story of Harry T. Moore, America’s First Civil-Rights Martyr.

Green, who has reviewed thousands of pages of decades-old FBI documents on the bombing murders of Moore and his wife, Harriette, said that despite the conclusions of Crist’s 20-month investigation, “we don’t know any more about it today than we did back then.'’ — Miami Hurled

So what gives? Why is this half-century investigation a hot potato all at once? Reached for comment, a Crist campaign staffer dismissed doubters as “politically motivated…..They’re just stooges for the Jim Davis campaign,” she sniffed. “They think because they put a Negro on the ticket, they’ve got the swarth vote locked in.

“Well, wrong-o, bucko. Now that Charlie has cemented his right wing nut credentials with Jeff “Shove the tube back down the brain-dead woman’s throat” Kottcamp for his running mate, it’s full-court press pandering to all sorts of un-white Florida voters!”

[Asked if there were any plans to update the campaign website any time soon to actually mention Kottcamp, a spokesperson expressed doubt. “Better to keep Jeb! on there as long as possible.”]

The Davis — or is it Smith? — campaign offered a different perspective. “The Attorney General is a very sincere individual,” suggested a campaign volunteer. “I’m sure that in his own mind, Charlie Crist certainly believes his office has solved the case, just as he’s quite certain, and maintains steadfastly, that he’s straight. Ha ha ha!”

Meanwhile, the Moores, Florida’s two civil rights martyrs killed by a bomb under their house on Christmas night 1951 — it was their wedding anniversary as well — remain mercifully dead, oblivious to the nauseating turn of events now transforming their deaths into a political football.

“I like the Jews ‘cause they blow the shofar.” — Otis the Chauffeur

Just in time to celebrate the Jewish New Year, Senator George Allen of Virginia, running for reelection, learns from his mother that she’s Jewish, rendering the good ole white shoe/gin and tonic country club Republican half a Hebe, much to his fury and chagrin.

At a campaign debate with Democratic challenger James Webb on Monday, a reporter asked Allen whether his mother’s father, Felix Lumbroso, was Jewish. He became visibly upset, saying his mother’s religion was not relevant to the campaign and chiding the reporter for “making aspersions about people because of their religious beliefs.” Washington Post

“How dare these people call me a Jew,” Allen fumed afterwards. “You know how many votes that kinda shit could lose me in this state?”

Completely flummoxed, Allen reportedly placed a call to Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman asking for advice. A sympathetic Lieberman, who just discovered that he’s actually half Republican, suggested Allen not only “embrace” his new found ethnicity, but use it to his political advantage.

“I understand you’re upset,” Lieberman told him. “In my own case, coming out as a Republican was devastating. But forget the high moral ground or personal shame. Just use it to steal more votes!”

Within hours, Allen released a statement that he “was proud of his Jewish ancestry,” and suggesting that his opponent’s focus on religion was “anti-Semitic.” He also revealed that he was descended from the Macaca tribe.

Skeptical reporters pointed out that in over 20 years of public life, Allen, the son of famed NFL head coach George Allen, had never once alluded to his Jewish heritage. “I guess Mom didn’t want to upset me,” he remarked. “She knew I didn’t like people who are, you know, different. Like Jews, Negroes, Red Injuns. But that’s all changed now!”

Asked if it could now be said that “Some of his best friends are Jewish,” Allen thought for a moment before replying, “No.”

Other embarrassing Jews in the News: Kinky Freidman, running for Governor of Texas as an Independent, has been asked to apologize for allegedly racist remarks he made as part of his nightclub routine 25 years ago.

NAACP President Gary Bledsoe said in a letter that Friedman’s remarks “invoke the worst racial stereotypes about people of color.”…….Earlier this month, Friedman referred to Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston, most of whom are black, as “crackheads and thugs.” He later criticized ethnic politicking by saying, “I don’t eat tamales in the barrio, I don’t eat fried chicken in the ghetto, and I don’t eat bagels with the Jews.” CBS news.com

Happy Jew Year, everybody!

It’s hard to say who started it, but it’s certainly going on with a vengeance.

The stingray kills the Croc- fucker, so a pack of crazed Aussies hit the beaches and start mutilating their fishy brethren.

A hungry duck attacks some Broward fishermen’s bait, so they beat the crap out of its feathered ass with a stick.

A scuba diver encounters a goliath grouper in Key West, and both end up dead.

In China, a drunken migrant worker bites a sleeping Panda on its back in the Beijing zoo, pissing it off enough that it bites him back, ripping open his leg.

And locally, upstart, ragged bloggers tease a nest of ink stained, thin-skinned invertebrates at Miami New Times, some of whom apparently not yet fully descended from the trees of which their newspaper is composed, and get wee-wee’d on for their audacity.

When will it end, oh lord? Send us a sign!

Haven’t heard much from Vera Lu Senz, my faithful baseball correspondent, and here we are at the end of the regular season! So, in the spirit of cross-blogination, I asked her to share a few stories of interest, and here’s what she has:

Win Back Fans and Fill the Stands!

Remember Vince Coleman? Property of the St Louis Cardinals, he was this amazing speedster who stole major league bases more easily than Leonardo DeCrappio snatched teenaged girls’ hearts. But one year during a rainstorm he manages to stumble his ass in front of a gigantic tarp-rolling machine, bangs up his leg, and misses the rest of the season, blowing the post-season series for the Cardinals…..who trade his astonishing dumb ass the very next year.

The Cincinnati Reds stumbled and fell on their collective asses about that fast this season. All of a sudden they’re out of it, and the team fromerly known as the Big Red Machine is in Wait ‘Til Next Year mode. Their suffering fans are mightily grieved. Again. They stay away from the Great American Ballpark in droves.

Responding to market forces, Reds management swings into action. Big weekend series with the Padres comes up, so they offer half-price tickets, $1 beers. Two-fer-one hot dogs, including the 2-alarm chili (it’s a ‘Nnati thing). Even free lap dances in the club-level seats for season ticket holders! But all for naught. Nobody shows up. The ballyard looks like JRS in a summer thunderstorm, except for the rain.

Then the word comes down: on September 30, Reds management wants fans to arrive at the stadium an hour early so the feds and local fuzz can “rehearse civil defense reaction in a simulated terroristic attack.”

Well, shit. That should pack ‘em in like sardines.

The specific nature of the “attack” is top secret, of course, but local wags have weighed in. My favorite is the idea of bringing back Marge Schott to make a motivational speech. Another is putting super-flatulated sauerkraut on the hot dogs, filling the stands with poison gas. A third is substituting the wretched Tampa Bay Bucs to play a game — nobody outside of the Dicktip State could endure 9 innings of that!

Should be the biggest hoot in the “Nnati since the Who concert 25 hears ago when 11 kids got trampled to death in a panic-stricken flight to escape the concert hall. Lest we forget.

Know Thyself

Rob Reiner is the voice of a baseball named “Screwy” in an animated baseball movie called “Everyone’s A Hero” that opened Friday. Reiner, the son of famous Hollywood comedy writer Carl Reiner, is a Hollywood director whose credits include “When Harry Met Sally,” “Godzilla Loves Gidget,” and “Citizen Kane Meets Dracula.” He achieved widespread recognition for his part as Archie Bunker’s naive but committed liberal son-in-law on “All In the Family,” back in the days when he actually outweighed his on-camera spouse, Sally Struthers.

Asked if he thought that providing the voice for a baseball in an animated madcap movie would “redefine his career,” the 52 year old replied, “No, I could win the Nobel Prize, and the headline would read, ‘Meathead Wins Nobel.’!”

Yesterday’s cross-blogination experiment was a lot of fun. Got to go up close and personal — within internet limitations, of course — with a lot of kindred spirits. Great job, Rebecca!

And Paula — as far as your guest-post on this blog is concerned, I suspect most readers would happily read and comment about female breasts, whether plastic or protoplasmic, all day and all night long! Hell, I know I would!

It had a certain karmic poignancy, too, because the story line is so close to home: following Guido’s cancer surgery, this is very much what we’re going through. Its formal name is “reconstructive surgery,” but for us congregants in the pews of the Church of the Roseate Nipple, it’s known as a boob job. Rolled the hard way, for certain, with a lot of agony and heartache, but ultimately a boob job nevertheless.

Better yet: later in the day Paula e-mailed me a related story.

Anyway, let’s let a day go by before we get to business. For today, I just wanna retell a joke that went around my office and made a lot of people laugh:

The Boss has a tough choice. Business is bad, so so he needs to lay somebody off. It’s down to Jack or Lourdes, both good workers, and no good reason to let either one go. He agonizes over the choice, and decides that whoever walks up to the water cooler first the next day is the one who gets cut.

Well, Lourdes spends the whole night drinking and partying, so she’s hung over bad next morning. Arriving early at the office, she grabs a pair of Tylenol Extra Strengths and staggers over to the water cooler.

Out pops the Boss, distraught but determined. “Lourdes,” he says, unhappily, “I’ve never had to do this before, but it’s gotta happen. I need to lay you or Jack off.”

Lourdes shakes her head. “Do me a favor and jack off,” she says. “I really feel like shit this morning.”

Yeah. Happy Day After.

Plastic Surgery Update:  Even the Hurled is keeping abreast of this one. 

Today’s the big day! The following post, admirably composed and 100% within the spirit of the blog on which it appears, is written and designed by Paula of MangoandLime. Welcome Paula, and Have At It!!

A Texas doctor is taking a new approach… to give women more control over their new shape. San Antonio plastic surgeon Thomas Jeneby says nine out of ten women who get breast augmentation say later they wished they’d gone bigger…….So his solution is an adjustable breast implant. ~ CBS news

Mammiferous Floridians, be proud. The adjustable breast enhancements were invented right here in Florida in the mid-1980s to help indecisive or insecure women everywhere, although few doctors practice it.

Booborific Sally explains. “There’s, like, this little rubber thingy with a tube attached to the implant, like, so you can add more liquid; it’s like a water balloon, you know?”

Imagine the consequences… Ogling Omar in Hialeah was recently caught in drama worthy of a telenovela when two of his exes went into a “who’s-got-bigger-boobs” battle for his love. “It was tough, man. Just when I thought I had made up my mind, bigger beauties came my way. That’s no way to treat a man’s heart.” The ladies are still going at it to see who can go bigger before the six-month inflate-deflate period runs out.

There’ll be women running to their surgeon when they start dating a new man so they can increase or decrease cup size to please him. Because they love him.

It’s already been reported that designer stores in “augmentation capitals” - Southern California, Texas and Florida – carry larger sizes to accommodate bigger bosoms. And they can certainly capitalize on women’s indecision when it comes to breast size. They’ll have them coming back to shell out more on their credit card after each saline solution content change.

Then there’s the shrinking Miami minority whose upper bodies don’t resemble Barbie’s. Poor them. They might soon have to hit specialty stores to dress their God-given breasts. It’s been announced that the first “No Plastic Parts” store is set to open in 2007 for the au naturals — as if having boyfriends and husbands drool over almost bare spheres while you walk down Lincoln Road wasn’t enough.

As more Miami doctors start to embrace this Florida invention, the Miami Plastic Surgery Tourism Board estimates a sharp increase in boob-enhancement travel to Miami. If you’re among those who’s planning on it, here’s a good guide on what to ask for, because after all, “having breast augmentation in Miami only to find out that’s not what you really wanted is not a very bright idea.”

If this has at all convinced you that you need to switch over from natural to plastic, be glad that to keep your size options open, you need just add $100 and five to ten minutes more under the knife.

Following the e-coli outbreak attributed to tainted fresh spinach, the popular green has become rarer than good manners in stores across the country:

E. coli cases linked to tainted spinach have been reported in 19 states, with a majority of cases in Wisconsin.…Other states reporting cases were California, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming, according to the CDC.

The Food and Drug Administration continued to warn consumers not to eat fresh spinach or fresh spinach-containing products until further notice. — Forbes.com

At this writing, 109 people have been sickened, and one woman has died. Among the missing: Popeye the Sailor, whose promotion of spinach goes back to 1929.

“We fear the wurst, I mean, worst,” an agent for the cartoon character grimly told news reporters early Sunday morning. “Until we hear from him directly, we’re assuming he’s laid up somewhere and in need of help — and for once in his life, reaching for the spinach isn’t the panacea.”

It is estimated that in the course of a 75 year career, the lymphedema-limbed sailor has consumed enough spinach to fertilize Iowa.

Reached at home, long-time companion Ms. Olive Oyl appeared visibly shaken and teary. “I feel so bad,” she said. “It was my idea years ago to move him off canned and processed spinach to fresh. We even worked out a gimmick where he could continue to find innovative ways to open the can under stress: we rigged up props that allowed us to replace their contents. I’m so upset. I’m so worried.”

For once in his life, Bluto (a/k/a “Brutus”) is not a suspect in the sailor’s dilemma. “Poison? Not my style,” he sneered. “I’m a two-fisted sorta guy. You want poisoning, go talk to the deMedicis.”

Anybody with information is urged to contact www.I-Yam-What-I-Yam.com.