Coming Soon - Summer 2008

On November 15, 1990, music producer Frank Ferian confessed to a group of reporters that Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus, the duo known as Milli Vanilli, had not sung a single note on their Grammy Award-winning debut album. Public backlash was immediate. Their Grammy Award was revoked; jokes at their expense were omnipresent on the late night talk show circuit; Arista Records dropped them like a hot potato; lawsuits were filed; and, somewhere in the drab, cultureless reaches of suburban South Florida, the worst fears of a lonely 13-year old boy were confirmed - "being mainstream sucks out loud."

Roughly one month before, my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates - a team I had religiously followed for years via yellowed Pittsburgh Post-Gazette clippings sent by my grandmother - lost the National League Divisional Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The Pirates had the better record of the two teams (95-67) and featured a trio of childhood heroes: centerfielder and prankster Andy Van Slyke, blue collar third baseman Bobby Bonilla, and a leftfielder still more than a decade away from steroid allegations named Barry Bonds. I tore their posters off my wall in a rage.

My family had only recently relocated to South Florida from a small town on the North Fork of Long Island. But I wasn't from New York. I wasn't from anywhere, really. Pittsburgh had long been my ideological hometown despite my having never actually lived there. I was born in Pennsylvania, though, and that was good enough for me. Pittsburgh was aligned in my teenage mind with Christmas, snow, family and Pirates baseball. I remember thinking to myself, "someday, when I can choose for myself where I am to live, I will move to the big city of Pittsburgh, get season tickets to Pirates games and ride the incline to Fort Pitt daily." I was just a kid who hated humidity.

As a Pirates fan, I suffered through three years on Long Island inundated with the New York Mets - the Pirates then-rivals for the National League East. I loathed the Mets at that time, or more accurately, I could not stand growing up surrounded by fans of my arch rivals. To make matters worse, I moved to that small town as the new kid and left it three years later with the same label. Classmates had never left the Island in their lives. I was rambunctious, arrogant and prone to emotional outbursts. Displaced, I took solace in championing the Buccos. I chose to go against the grain. I chose this path.

This period of my life served to define who I would become as an adult, who many other Pirates fans would become - and it is the launching-off point for analysis that I postulate defines the very essence of Americans in 2007.

More soon…

Shit, I've lost any passion for this that I used to have. I'll leave it up, to remind me that once upon a time, I cared. But I don't anymore.

People, I write copy ALL DAY LONG. I'm a writer. It's my job. At one point, this blog helped me feel better about myself; it helped my feel creative. But I've hit some sort of wall like I've never experienced. Getting up in the morning...

Thank you. Thank you to anyone who has followed my crappy meandering posts. Looking back, I'm glad to have given this a go.

Nope, not the Matthew Fox piece of crap from this past Saturday. At 3AM, NBC runs classic SNL's from years past. Recently, they've been dwelling in the 1998-2000 years, and there have been some choice nuggets in there. Never a full show, though.

This past weekend, we were treated to the Christmas 1990 episode hosted by Tom Hanks. Man, that was one of the best epsiodes of my own childhood. You got the 'Five Timers Club,' 'Mr. Short Term Memory' with a special guest appearance by Tony Randall, Weekend Update 'Jingle Bells' in an All-Dennis Miller 3-part harmony, 'The Global Warming Christmas Special' hosted by Mike Myers as Carl Sagan and Tom Hanks as Dean Martin, Sabra Shopping Network... and a special Christmas Story by A. Whitney Brown.

I still remember being 13 years old, thinking Saturday Night Live was the coolest thing ever. This episode reminds me that it wasn't just childhood innocence. It really was brilliant once upon a time.

"Hey, what the hell's a 'bob-tail,' cha-chaaaaa?"

It's been one full month since my last post, and even then I was blogging less frequently. What happened exactly? Your guess is as good as mine. I simply lost interest. Unfortuantely, simple as that.

I've contemplated blowing the whole site up, deleting it... or replacing it with pictures of sad clowns. Sure, I spent a statistically significant amount of time this year thinking up topics to investigate, composing articles infused with my own special take on life. I think I fell a little bit in love with the exercise.

But not unlike the love of a beautiful woman in Tijuana, the feeling was fleeting. I'm not completely finished with 'Wag. Heck, this might be the swift kick in the arse that I need to get going again. Or maybe not.

Thanks for continuing to visit. You just never know.

Every year during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the Krewe of Bacchus puts on a lavish parade where one celebrity appears as Bacchus himself, dressed up in a fancy, ornate costume. Ahhh, leggings on men. Nothing says masculine quite like leggings... or queen size pantyhose.

And, yes, a photo gallery of these celebrities exists… here.

The Devo Fishbowl has nominated Nicholas Cage as the Official Celebrity Bacchus for the Wall of the Weird. Honorable mention goes to Dennis Quaid for looking incredibly wasted... as he should. It is Mardi Gras after all.