tell us something we didn't know

of course he is.


of course he did.

in other "news", liberace comes out of the closet and jose canseco admits steroid use.

p.s. now this is what you call news.

espn gets even worse

harold reynolds got shitcanned from ESPN's baseball tonight. reynolds, in my estimation is easily the most affable guy on that show. not afraid to disagree with someone but doesn't do it for the sake of just disagreeing, jokes around just enough, and will dish out criticism appropriately. he was still a little bit of a player's guy, but i always got the sense that he understood that some ex-players (hi john kruk!) take it too far. with gammons out indefinitely while recovering from a brain aneurysm, there's really no reason to watch this show anymore. tino matinez, steve phillips, and buck martinez all suck. kruk is all right but he's dense and doesn't add much insight.

anyways, there's no word on why reynolds was let go, but we'll keep an eye out for you. seriously, is there even a question as to who is the best guy on that show is? why does espn do everything in my power to make me stop watching them. and why do i keep watching?

UPDATE 10:05PM - according to deadspin and a bunch of other sources, harold got the boot for sexual harassment. is it harassment when you're as handsome as this?

i don't know about you guys, but that's a handsome black man if i ever saw one.

sports quick hits

apologies for the lack of posting...i'm just busy dammit.

1) another american wins the tour de france. 1) like soccer, you still can't make me care. and 2) like lance armstrong's urine tests, the field was much diluted. seriously, if all of the top stars get suspended for roids, how am i supposed to take the tour seriously?

2) tiger wins the british open. this is really not that big a deal, since tiger appears to be keeping on course of going down as the greatest golfer of all time. but what i liked about this win was that he used a video game strategy to help him win. if you hadn't heard, tiger basically eschewed his driver this week, essentially trading off power for accuracy. in other words, he knew that he was still as long as the average PGA player with his 3W, so why use the club that gives him the most trouble. this is something i do when i play tiger woods PGA tour on my computer. which is easy to do since i'm just clicking my mouse to hit the ball, but to do this in real life...that's just dominance. by the way, what is sergio garcia's problem? you can't tell me that this is acceptable golfwear in europe.


3) espn.com's e-ticket did a great piece on pat tillman. although this was nothing a certain flummoxed-pacific-rim-heritaged blogger hasn't already addressed. seriously, if stephen a. smith can have a job in sports journalism, why can't i?

4) so even though espn.com fiinally does something worth tuning into the site for, it still doesn't make up for the latest bane of my exisitence, espn.com's espn motion. it's that thing on the right of the page that let's you watch video with sound of sports highlights and what not. in theory a great idea, however, in practice, espn has completely effed up the website in the process. some of you who are regular readers of espn.com already know what i'm talking about but for those of you aren't, espn has decided that rather than let you decide whether or not you're going to watch, it has decided that it will just have the player start randomly while you're reading something. in terms of annoying things on the web, it is on par with pop-ups for tranny porn (unless you're into that kind of thing, which by all means, who am i to judge?). i've been annoyed with things from espn.com before like when they basically started charging for every single baseball columnist, but i HATE this thing. it makes me want to shoot out my monitor every time it starts up. i may even have to fire off the proverbial "nasty letter to management".

5) jockey headbutts his own horse. i couldn't make that up if i tried. insert your own zidane joke here.

6) any day now, vegas should post the season over/unders for NFL teams. expect a full breakdown as soon as this happens.

britney spears reminds everyone that she's losing it

so here's the latest on britney's website (don't ask why i check her website...i can't give you a good answer). anyways, i'm reproducing it here since her site is flash enabled and you have to fish around to find this, her latest diary/poetry entry (if you must, you have to click on the "love b" section, which is the large green bubble). apropros, it's called "stream of consiousness, and you will find it accompanied a translation, by noted professor of critical pop tart studies, dr. bob ngo. britney's words in italics, my translation in normal font.

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What Immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
- William Blake

translation: i was watching animal planet last night and saw something on tigers. since i don't know shit about tigers, i googled them and found this poem by some guy with a hot sounding name. doesn't this make me look smart?

In some ways, people are a lot like animals. We all hunger for the same things. Love, lust, danger, warmth and adventure.

translation: hey remember the video for "slave," and how hot i looked back then, and how every male in america wanted to commit statutory rape with me? that's still me on the inside. i know that i looked like a mess on the outside on that matt lauer thing, but i promise inside, i'm still a little lolita that is worth shelling out 19 bucks a CD, just to look at the outfits i'm wearing in the liner notes. just because i've had a kid doesn't make me any less desirable. despite my pleas for privacy, please still pay attention to me!

Like people, animals all have their own rhythm to life.

translation: ok check it, i had absolutely nothing to do with po po zao. kevvie claims that it's a brazilian beat, but i'm not sure what beats have to do with waxing. i don't know why he just couldn't hire pharrell like i told him to.

I'm mesmerized by tigers. Their eyes, their stripes, their constant quest for survival. They almost have a sense of mysteriousness about them. They pull you in and make it difficult to look away. They make you wonder what is behind their gaze. A sense of eerie awe comes over you in their presence.

translation: look, i know you're tired about hearing about me and especially tired of having to put up with that leech of a husband i have, but you have to admit, it's pretty entertaining. i mean have you ever seen such an assclown? making fun of him is like shooting fish in a barrel. has there ever been a bigger waste of a human life since fred durst? oh crap wait, i banged him too...never mind.

The fear they give you when you pass them is stunning.

translation: don't worry, i'm leaving his sorry ass. soon. as soon as i have his other baby. after all that was the smart move in this troubled relationship.

Behold the beauty of the tiger.

translation: next stop playboy magazine!


to quote joe namath, "s-t-r-uggling"

handsome baseball players

here's a list of the most handsome guys in baseball. always good fun for us hetero manly sports fans. anyways, i just thought i'd take this opportunity to say that even though he's not playing anymore and even though he's completely guilty of steroids, no one on the list even holds a candle to this:



right now, joe mauer and david wright are tied for first in the fan polling.

come on! neither of these guys even has a moustache...it's no contest.

link via deadspin

roberto begnini rejoices, while gerard depardieu weeps

by now, we've all seen the replay a million times, zidane head butts random italian defender, gets red carded, italians win world's third largest sporting event (behind the olympics and the super bowl....look it up). lots of talk about double z disgracing his country, but i say, the french could have used a zidane's attitude in WWII.

anyways, dr. z from SI.com summarizes my feelings nicely about the whole deal. did he lose it? sure, do we kick him out of the game for possibly the lamest alley fight move in the world. why the chest? why not head butt him in the face like the rest of the world does? someone please explain this to me. anyways, i know i'm going to be in the minority here, but it just seems like one of those deals where you hand out warnings and give the ball to italy and viola! water under the bridge. perhaps as a violence hungry american, i just don't understand these things (more on this later). could you imagine if they tossed an NBA player for every shoving match that he got in? me neither.

although there have been whispers that what provoked the head-buttin' frenchman were racist remarks by the italian defender. if that were the case...holy cow, racism might have decided the outcome of the world cup! i mean i get pretty mad about the east coast bias in sports media, no telling how mad i would be if the NBA's MVP was handed out to someone just because he was white...oh wait. never mind. anyways, soccer's recent history is peppered with all sorts of incidents involving racism. i really haven't taken the time to examine what's up, but from what i can tell, it seems that things are actually worse in terms of racism in sports in europe than they are here, which if you think about our history, that's just mind blowing. i can't quite get my head around it right now, but i do just want to point out that america is often accused of being less progressive than the rest of the world. and while that's probably true on several accounts, i still stand by the idea that the whole world is just full of assholes, so any attempt to call the US is simply the whole kettle black thing.

anyways, there's my 2 cents on the world cup. i was thinking about writing a series of posts on why soccer is not more popular in america, but it turns out, now that world cup is over with, i don't care about soccer anymore. my final evaluation is that there is no one single reason, but rather a plethora of reasons why soccer is never ever going to catch on as a professional spectator sport. but here's my new thing...why do we even care? why do americans have to like soccer just like the rest of the world? we don't go around asking other countries why they don't like baseball, do we? i fully admit, baseball can be just as boring as any sport, but i have my reasons for liking it. soccer is exciting, we know, but i just can't get into it, unless nation-states or my friends are involved. isn't this ok? actually, isn't this good since it makes our cultures different? the idea that soccer is not popular in the united states as a metaphor for the ugly american, is a reach. we don't like soccer in the same way that the french don't like to fight (except the alliteratively named arab soccer players). i'd write more, but i just don't care about soccer enough to expend anymore energy on this topic. only three weeks left to football training camp opens and i need to work on my fantasy squad.

there is no justice

ken lay died before he could get sent to a federal-pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

according to the SF chronicle story, he died of "coronary artery disease" in of all places, aspen colorado. this after no record of serious illness. so far the reportage of this case has been pretty muted. a sad ending to the enron saga, etc. however, call me crazy, but i think we ought to look more closely. it just doesn't add up. obviously, someone of lay's stature just wasn't going to make in the big house. my guess is that he committed suicide and paid off enough people like the coroner to say that his death was natural.

now here comes the crappy part. according to the story:

Lay's death all but ensures that defense lawyers will seek to throw out his criminal conviction -- and it casts doubt on the ability of the government and investors to recover money from the Lay estate, legal experts said.

come on people! is there any question as to whether he committed suicide? this one is too easy, so it seems strange to me that the press is just accepting this coronary artery disease nonsense.

it's amazing. ken lay is still ripping off enron investors from the grave. it is truly galling the lengths to which these people will go to avoid any kind of accountability for their actions.

pan-ethnic peeps keepin' it real in the war against terror

just a shout out to a different kind of ragin' asian. US army 1st lt. ehren watada is going to trial for refusing to deploy to iraq because he believes the war is illegal. obviously, this is inviting all kinds of chaos into the system, but it seems clear that the usual channels of reasoned discourse or civil consent are not working out. as chuck d says, we gotta fight the powers that be!

p.s. in related pan-ethnic peeps kickin' ass news, that japanese kid that weighs a buck sixty breaks another hot dog eating record. then proceeds to take the most disgusting dump in the history of mankind.


what do elton john, michael stipe, and this guy have in common?

the last posting on performance enhancing drugs...

i can't stand this subject anymore. it's the equivalent of the branjelina baby or tomkat, where there's really nothing left to be said, except that everyone in major athletics is somehow linked to performance enhancing drugs. anyways, i'm gonna do one last commentary on jose canseco. as some of you may know, he's back in baseball playing for a independent minor league team. the san diego surf dawgs. anyways, in addition to returning as a pitcher/outfielder, he's also dropped a couple of more interesting nuggets (the brown kind of course) of wisdom on the world of baseball. they're listed as a sidebar on the espn story, but i'll go through them with you with some ragin' commentary. anyways, nugget #1

Canseco accused baseball of cutting Rafael Palmeiro a deal to testify against him in March 2005, saying MLB then went ahead and leaked Palmeiro's positive test out of fear that Congress would find out anyway. "I know what I know" is all Canseco would say.

very interesting conspiracy theory. but in light of raffy's finger waving debaucle, one that isn't completely implausible. we like to scoff at these crazy conspiracy theories a lot, but just cuz they're crazy, doesn't mean they might not be true. lone gunman? i don't think so. canseco was right about palmeiro before, why should we not believe him now. nugget #2

Canseco said he will meet in the coming weeks with former Sen. George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader appointed in March by Selig to head the sport's investigation into steroids.

this is actually good news. who better to help out than someone who was basically at the cutting edge of the steroid culture in baseball. this is the equivalent of getting john gotti to turn states' evidence. let me put it this way, there are some baseball players out there who are extremely fearful of getting caught right now. nugget #3

He said that Alex Rodriguez told him about six years ago that Canseco was being "blackballed" by baseball.

while it may seem that a-rod is doing the right thing here, he's actually being his usual sorry self. what's the difference between what canseco is doing and what a-rod is doing...well, i'm not sure but i can tell you that jose canseco at least tried to be a team player while he was with the rangers, unlike some other person that i could name. nugget #4

He noted that years of steroids use has helped slow the aging process for him.

that and getting botox injections from janet dickinson while living in the surreal world house. nugget #5

Canseco is working on a movie and two more books, saying he intends to "rectify" his tarnished image.

what i'm interested in is who he thinks that he has a "tarnished" image. i think that the only people that don't like him right now are baseball people. as far as fans are concerned, i don't think they give two shits either way. he was the first 40/40 guy, he hit a hell of a lot of home runs with the A's, he's the guy who had the ball bounce of the top of his head for a homer, and he was just as roided out as any of those guys back in the day, no more, no less. i'm not sure he can undo history. as far as the players are concerned, i'm pretty sure that writing two more tell all books is not a step in the right direction. which leads us to nugget #6

"I feel one person can make a difference. I feel one person can change the world. I want Major League Baseball to know I'm not going away that easy."

i think we're all a little confused as to what kind of change jose is trying to bring about here. in his book, he advocates for the safe and regulated use of performance enhancers and then he famously backed down during the congresssional hearings. and this is the prime example of canseco's dilemma. he wants to be loved by players and fans, and that's not just going to happen. the fans, he can do something about, and to be honest, most of the fans that i know don't think that canseco is that bad a guy. but the players, and the baseball establishment who have gone on a full scale campaign against canseco for no other reason than being honest...that train has sailed. in the players eyes, he sold them out, and that's that. the other day on baseball tonight, one of the anchors mentioned that canseco was playing independent ball, and jeff brantley, the sparest of spare players and media people, shook his head in disgust. now if things were fair, we'd all realize that jose canseco's accomplishments on the field dwarf those of brantley's. and we would give respect accordingly. however, sports is a good old boys network and that's just never going to happen. which is actually a sociological point in that one of sport's main ideological function is to preserve existing hierachies of power. and like in regular society, that hierarchy is all effed up.

this is what happens when you don't have any black people go to your school

hi alfredo.



via deadspin

i got mad blogger skillz

hello faithful blog reader!

as you've have already figured out, i've finally gotten around to giving the blog a long overdue facelift. it took a while, but because my innate asian nerdiness (as depicted in the extremely racist picture to the left), i was able to figure out the basics of CSS. let me take you on a guided tour of some of the new features and a review of some of the old ones that you may have not been aware of. i'm doing this to help maximize your surfing time, and for posterity, so when i do this again, i can remember what exactly i did.

1) first you'll notice that the color scheme matches that of america's team, the one and only dallas cowboys. silver and blue, it's a nice winning combo dontcha think?

2) you'll also notice that i've figured out the holy grail of blog design and went with the three column layout. this blog was aped from some person who goes by the web handle of isnaini, who lives in indonesia, so don't bothering clicking on this person's link, unless of course, you speak indonesian, which if this is the case, Pergi mengambilnya! the name of the layout is called "lonely" and i found it here. i've made several modifications of course to make it look like it does now.

3) i've changed the search engine from freefind to google. free find worked fine, but i think that you'll find the google interface a little more elegant and user friendly. also, it may not be working fully right now, as it will probably take a couple of days for google to fully index my blog.

4) i've also added a link to my official website, bobngo.com, in my profile. just click on my name if you want to see it. however, i must warn you now, it thiroughly sucks and is terribly out of date. i doubt that i'll ever really get around to getting that to what it should be.

5) my browser of choice is firefox, and consequently, this blog is best viewed using firefox. if you aren't using firefox instead of ie or mozilla by now, why don't you just go ahead and start now. while you're at it, go ahead and get rid of your sony walkman and shell out the 20 bucks for a generic MP3 player as well.

6) if you're into newsreaders or aggregators, you can subscribe to my feed by clicking on the RSS button ().

7) one of the handy dandy features of firefox is that you can bookmark this blog as a live bookmark. look up in the address bar and you'll see this little icon: . just click on it and save the blog as a bookmark. now instead of checking every 15 minutes to see if i've updated the blog (which i know many of you do), you can just click on your bookmarks and any new posts will be listed when you hover the cursor over the bookmark. again, i'm keeping you in mind blog reader as this will cut down on your loadtimes, and more importantly, since i'm storing several elements of the blog on my webspace, it will reduce the amount of bandwidth that i use to maintain the blog. everyone wins with live bookmarks!

8) seriously, start using firefox. it's not even close as to what the best browser out there is.

9) i've reorgazined the blogroll and the list of links, which you will see in the right hand column. i've gotten rid of the links that i don't read anymore and i've organized blogs by subject. the most notable addition is the link-o-rama set of blogs. if you're looking to kill time, these are the places to go. but please note that several of these blogs are targeted to college males. as a result, many of them contain ads that are directed to this demographic and are Not Safe For Work (NSFW). some of the links in the lists are also for porn. in other words, nudity galore. i don't condone nor condemn these things, but know that they are there. don't click on them if you are at work or if you don't want to see that kind of thing.

10) this is a work in progress, as there are a few quirks that i have yet to figure out. i.e. i've also seem to have lost the blogger nav bar at the top of the page. i dunno, i kinda like it, so hopefully that'll be up soon again as well. if anything doesn't work, please be patient, and feel free to send me any feedback about things that aren't working correctly, ways i can improve the layout, if the font is readable, etc.

anyways, there you go. it's almost like a brand new blog, huh? anyways, i hope you appreciate the amount of effort i put into this redesign. cuz none of you ungrateful bastards sure as hell would ever take some of your precious time out of your life to spend five seconds leaving me a comment (except for you ian, H8R, fred, and erik).