[C]oncerned that Mickey has become more of a corporate symbol than a beloved character for recent generations of young people, Disney is taking the risky step of re-imagining him for the future.

The first glimmer of this will be the introduction next year of a new video game, Epic Mickey, in which the formerly squeaky clean character can be cantankerous and cunning, as well as heroic, as he traverses a forbidding wasteland. — NYTimes

This might be Disney’s most radical image revision since Annette Funicello grew tits.

I can tell already this is the wrong direction, but it might be worse.  Imagine the lobotmized creative geniuses in the Disney Corporation, fearful for their jobs, the financial health of the corporation, and of course their own medical health insurance.  The eye up the nation’s cultural trends and remake Steamboat Willie into Joe the Plumber, a movement conservative.  Glen Beck with round ears.  Sean Hammity plus one octave.

“Socialized health care,” squeaks the New Mickey, angrily.  “Who needs it?  What kind of Mickey Mouse system are we talking about, anyway? ”

The perfect spokesmouse.  Macho Mickey toting a handgun, patrolling the San Diego border on the hunt for Joe Carioca-style Mexican illegals.  Christian Mickey condemning abortion, pointing out that his pal Donald Duck’s illegitimate nephews Huey Dewey and Louie wouldn’t be here in a pro-choice society.  Scrooge McDuck as the Ayn Rand ideal, a capitalistic success embodying the virtues of selfishness and ethical egoism.

And remember — Mickey is Black!  A dusky rodent as a post-racial wingnut!

The Polyester Booboisie would embrace their revitalized icon anew.  Tea party animals in mouse ears, screaming epithets against un-American socialists who condemn our freedom and way of life.  Mickey Mouse as country music hero.  Is this perfect?

The best news is, if it catches on, Florida is sure to be Ground Zero.

Look, I’m the first to admit (actually, “admission” used this way is rhetorically reserved for first party declaimers) I’ve been obsessive about the Phillies this post-season.  What I want you to grasp is, (a) I’m absolutely typical of most Philadelphians who filled their Citizens Bank park to 103% of capacity this season (how’s that taste, Marlins asshats?), and (2) I earned it because I WAS THERE in 1964.

So were bloggers Cousin Glenn and CLJ, across the river and down by the beach.  So were commenters Ya’Gotta’Guess’It, Guido, and Sharpshooter.  And Lu Senz and Duck Diamonds from the Liquor and Rubber Balls Sports Bar and Fresh-Sushi-to-Go.  I could go on.  (And I will, dammit!  I will!)

The Phillies were in first place at the All-Star Break.  Richie Allen — he later became “Dick Allen” but Phillies fans remember– was destined for Rookie of the Year, beating out Jim Ray Hart of the Giants, and Rico Carty of the Braves.  The future Senator Jim Bunning pitched a perfect game on Fathers Day in Shea Stadium, the first Perfect Game in NL history since 1880 — 84 freaking years! — and Johnny Callison (#6, same as Ryan Howard today) blasted a dramatic 3-run HR to win the All-Star game.  Oh, it was a lock.

Mid-September they were 61/2 games up.  The City of Bodily Harm was humming: World Series tickets were printed, and the futuristic IBM vacuum-tube computer in the basement of the Franklin Institute calculated that the odds of taking the pennant were 95%.  Holy rancid cheese whiz, even science was on their side!  “Go Phillies GO!”

In the first game against the Cincinnati Redlegs, on a freak play in the late innings, Chico Ruiz stole home.  Phillies fans remember this like it happened Sunday night.  Art Mahaffey, on the mound, unfurled a wild pitch, inexplicably delaminating the entire season.

Why?  Because Manager Gene Mauch panicked.  Gene F. Mauch.  I won’t tell you what the F stands for, but here’s a hint: his unmarried mutant parents didn’t name him that.  I did.  Mauch irrationally decided he’d start nobody else but his best two arms, Bunning and Chris Short.  That was the rotation: Bunning Short Bunning Short Bunning Short…..  Behind those two overworked, overused, tired arms, the Phillies dropped 3 straight to the Reds, 3 to the Milwaukee Braves, and then 3 to the Cardinals.  It was the Cardinals who ultimately prevailed, and advanced to the Series.

It was the greatest collapse of a professional sports team of all time.  The Phillies didn’t get to the  World Series again until 1980, when they beat Kansas City — their first WS title in their (then) 90+ year history.  My great-uncle Sam Green, sports enthusiast, just about survived from the 19^th century to witness it.

So that’s why we Fluffya Fullies fans get a little obsessive/compulsive about the game and the Series.

Gene F. Mauch is responsible for 3 generations of bitter, nasty, cynical, pessimistic sports fans for which the city is notorious.  Read Joe Queenan’s insightful book, True Believers, for the inside story.  A good number of us are dead now — as is Mauch — and the current crop of fans is blissfully innocent of the scarring that rat bastard inflicted.  Here’s just one story:

Mauch saunters over to pitcher Art Mahaffey, warming up.  “Art,” he says, “this team is going all the way.  We’re heading for our first title.  I’m gonna need everybody on this team to pull together, give it a little extra, put us over the top.”  Mahaffey nods, caught up in the pep talk.

“Except you, Art,” Mauch goes on.  “I don’t want any part of you any more.  You’re never gonna pitch for me or this team again.  You’re done.”

Way to go, right?  And look how well it worked out.  He might as well have been speaking to the legions of fans, across the ages, who sank into the hole of his negativity and profound ignorance, which, not coincidentally, he spread in subsequent years around the league.  I refer you to his tenure as manager of the Angels, especially his move in 1986 in the ALCS against Boston when he pulled pitcher Donnie Moore, who went on to commit suicide.

Yes, we Phillies fans still bleed on our crosses.  But we can party.  Join us after Game 7 when we bury the Yanks.

Halloween has come and gone.  Guido and I weren’t home: we visited friends to watch the World Series.  We wore Phillies paraphernalia, they dressed as Yankees, and we were appropriately humiliated along with the Phillies.  I compensated by drinking too much and Guido drove home.  When I awoke Sunday morning it was still early thanks to turning the clock back and we had sex.  Happy Halloweenie.

We had left a basket of candy on the front step with a sign: “Happy Halloween Help Yourself.”  Evidently some celebrants did just that rather than vandalize the house, car, or sour orange tree on the front lawn.  I despise children but Guido insisted we not leave rat poison or fresh fruit with inserted razor blades.  She never lets me have any fun unless it involves orgasms.  Put like that I guess I can’t complain.

Here are some remarkably tasteless costumes:

..

(Steve Irwin and the Stingray.)

This one got Target into a lot of trouble.

Anyway, life goes back to normal today.  How dull.

A lifelong Phillies fan, I’m entirely psyched for the World Series, of course, as are millions who long to see them repeat as champions for the first time in their 127 year history.  Like this one:

Bensalem police said they arrested a Philadelphia woman Tuesday after she offered to perform various sex acts to an undercover officer in exchange for tickets.

According to police, Susan Finkelstein, 43, posted an ad on Craigslist that read:

“DESPERATE BLONDE NEEDS WS TIX (Philadelphia)  “Diehard Phillies fan—gorgeous tall buxom blonde— in desperate need of two World Series Tickets. Price negotiable— I’m the creative type! Maybe we can help each other!”

An undercover officer responded to the ad, police said, and arrested Finkelstein after she made her offer.  Philly.com

The “various” sex acts are not provided, dammit.  I’m thinking something to do with a baseball bat or a bouncing ball up the middle, through the hole.  To the tune of, “Take it out at the ball game…..“

Doesn’t matter.  She didn’t score.

UPDATE!! To The Rescue!!

Wired 96.5’s Chio in the Morning and auto dealer Gary Barbera plan to give a pair of Game 3 tickets to Susan Finkelstein, the Bucks County woman accused of trying to trade the promise of sex for Series tickets on Craigslist.

Chio, who got the woman on the air this morning to extend the offer, plans to give the tickets on Friday afternoon at Barbera’s car lot on Roosevelt Boulevard — no strings attached. — philly.com

Such gallantry, especially for the City of Bodily Harm.  “No strings attached,” too — so I guess bondage wasn’t part of the deal.

If there’s one thing many conservatives solemnly agree on, it’s that “socialized medicine,” which hands life and death power to dumb-as-drool bureaucrats whose un-American lust for power and control stands for everything this country was founded to prevent, must be stopped or we open the door to a communistic takeover from within.

Yeah!  Holy Red Meat!  But Hello!  What’s this?

In May, Oklahoma state lawmakers approved a …..law requiring that abortion providers fill out a 10-page questionnaire for each procedure, and that details of abortions be posted on a public Web site.  Among other things, the intrusive questionnaire asks three dozen questions about the woman’s reasons for having an abortion, including details about her relationship with the father that the government has no business probing.

The law’s purpose is political. Its real aim is to persuade doctors to stop performing abortions by placing new burdens on their practice, to intimidate and shame women, and to stigmatize a legal medical procedure that one in three women have at some point in their lives. — NYTimes.com

Sounds like the lawmakers of this sublimely red state must have misplaced their tinfoil hats: they’re passing laws that shove government face first so far up into a patient’s body, all you see is rubber soled shoes protruding.  Fighting like true liberals, too, by ladling layers of government paperwork into the mix to build their bulwark.

Like the part about posting details on a website?  Why not photos or video clips?  I can see it now, some poor pregnant 14 year old Okie raped by her mutant HIV positive uncle explaining her reasons on camera for wanting to terminate the pregnancy.  Don’t forget to add a section for viewer comments.  Now, that’s entertainment!

So what happened to the conservative anthem of  smaller government, less intrusive government, government off our backs?  That flimsy foundation is blithely pushed aside by their overriding ideology, the deformed principle that controlling citizens’ morals — and this all about precisely that, with out-of-wedlock sex at its root — is the higher civic calling.  Like a stuffed toilet, the bible belt overflows with rotten with sanctimonious sacks of shit whose fetus-fondling fetish disguises their contempt for human beings, and goo-goo worship of Moral Order and Unthinking Obedience.

Ultimate irony: conservatives worry about government “death panels” established by so-called socialized medicine.  Yet here’s government ostensibly intruding to prevent killing and death, by their own warped understanding of abortion.  Damn fools can’t get anything right, not even their own lunacy.

Hmmm.  Perhaps conservatives in government is the reason conservatives distrust government.  By gum, they have a point.

Soupy Sales died (died) this week.

His whacko comedy and slapstick shtick influenced many who followed, including Pee Wee Herman, Chevy Chase, and Joe Biden, as illustrated by the following anecdote:

But he almost blew it on New Year’s Day in 1965 when he had to vamp for a minute while producing a show for a New York affiliate. Sales told the kids watching to find their parents’ wallets and “get some of those funny green pieces of paper with all those nice pictures of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Alexander Hamilton” and mail them to him. He promised a postcard from Puerto Rico in return. When he repeated the gag in Los Angeles and Detroit, it led to a complaint from a viewer to the FCC that got Sales’ show suspended. After a flood of complaints about the cancellation, though, many of them from teenage fans of the program, the show was back on the air within a week. — mtv.com

The other great Soupy Sales story (which may not have actually happened) concerns a gag he ran teaching his big dog White Fang to read.  He draws a capital F on the blackboard and asks White Fang what it is.  “K” says White Fang.  Sales erases the letter and tries again.  “K,” repeats White Fang.  They do this for another round, and Sales asks in exasperation, “How come every time I draw F, you see K?”

Again, that got him run for a while until his fans forced a comeback.

I don’t think a comback will happen this time, and not just because most his fans are old, dead, and senile.

R.I.P., Soupy, and that doesn’t spell “fuck.”

Wow.  Quite a week.  And according to my hourglass, it ain’t over.

The highlight for me: my 126 year-old Phillies franchise evolved into their best incarnation ever.  Seems like only yesterday I was watching their very first game in an open field in Fairmount Park.  They lost.   But this week, the city and Phillyfan responded as only the City of Bodily Harm could:

The number of fans out Wednesday night has been nearly matched by the number of officers on patrol downtown after the Phillies’ 10-4 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers. A dozen mounted police and dozens of officers in riot gear lined Broad Street downtown, and cross-street traffic has been closed on Broad Street.

Though last year’s celebrations following the National League Championship Series were mostly harmless, the city took extra precautions this year, going so far as to grease utility and light poles to dissuade would-be climbers.  The city also removed expensive new solar-powered trash cans from downtown sidewalks, and Mayor Michael Nutter urged fans to celebrate responsibly. The city asked some bars to serve drinks in plastic cups instead of glass.– philly.com

In South Philly, home to the ballpark and the birthplace of the cheese steak, there was no trouble obtaining ample supplies of grease.

So, you know, it is what it is, but Americans are totally annoyed by the use of “whatever” in conversations.  The popular slacker term of indifference was found “most annoying in conversation” by 47 percent of Americans surveyed in a Marist College poll released Wednesday.

“Whatever” easily beat out “you know,” which especially grated a quarter of respondents. The other annoying contenders were “anyway” (at 7 percent), “it is what it is” (11 percent) and “at the end of the day” (2 percent)  – Discovery News

My colleagues use these expressions, and worse.  Most of the time I misunderstand what in hell they think they’re saying.  Lots of time and energy are wasted as a result, but even when I point out that I (a) begged for clarification I never got, and (b) conducted affairs precisely in line with what was specifically stated, the caravan of miscommunication keeps rolling.  Management Speak.  Empty expressions, vacuous verbiage.

There’s no cure for this.  The plague will spread, and conditions will worsen.  “When it’s your time, it’s your time.”  “Work smarter, not harder.”  “Stay within yourself.”  Thanks, Wise Oracle.  How about “Big toe in first,” and “Shit first wipe last”?  At least they’re practical.

Back in the day this was known as “psychobabble.”  Entire textbooks were devoted to and composed of it, preparing a new generation of slippered academics and vapid professional counselors to pillage the pockets of a new class of gullible clients and patients.  It became as fashionable as it was infuriating, and suffering young men found themselves obliged to master its grammar, peeling if off glibly and sincerely if they wanted to get laid.  What a waste of tongue.  Damn I hated the 70s.

Set a good example to people whose  English is painful to your ears.

The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.

There even are places where English completely  disappears.

In America, they haven’t used it for years! –(My Fair Lady)

I know whatcha mean.  Canya get into it?  Farm Out!  Powder to the People!  * Gag *

(This is an updated post from a previous blog.)

The first thing I notice when I awaken Sunday morning is  my suntan, which has cracked in 20 places and now rests in pieces next to me.  This happens every autumn when the temperature abruptly drops overnight.  It’s my body’s version of falling leaves.  I hate it.

Here’s a complete list of reasons to like cold weather:

Wanna see it again?

I hate cold weather. Passionately.

Inevitably, when the first cold snap strikes south Florida, people will beam with pleasure. “Isn’t this terrific?” they’ll say. “Finally, a break from the heat!”

I respectfully suggest they go the hell back where they came from and pound icicles up their asses. There’s weather like this all the time up north in New Wingland and Minneysoda and Walla Walla Washington. It’s called spring.

The #1 reason people cite for relocating to Florida is the weather. This is bullshit. They HATE Florida weather. They spend 10 months of the year huddled behind hermetically sealed windows and doors blasting their air conditioning. They keep their houses, offices, and cars so frigid they could hang meat. They hate the heat. They fear the sun. They hate to sweat.

My house doesn’t even have a single air conditioner. I LIKE heat and humidity. I LIKE it when my whole house is over 90 degrees. I LIKE to sweat in my sleep. Me, I LIKE Florida weather. You don’t, do you. You just say you do.

When everybody else in the region opens their windows, we’re cranking ours shut.  The blankets will come out tonight.   The tequila bottle will rest undisturbed  in the freezer, replaced by warming amber Jack Daniels.  The cold bitch winter has announced herself.

So I’m miserable today and tomorrow; in fact, I’m miserable all damn winter. Whenever it drops below 80, I’m cold. And I fucking hate being cold. The next person who asks me how I like this terrific refreshing weather gets a lunger in the face. “Have a nice day,” I’ll say, cordially.

Global warming? Bring it on. It can’t happen soon enough.

LOS ANGELES – Residents of a Southern California apartment complex say they saw a lifeless body slumped on a neighbor’s patio, but didn’t call police because they thought it was part of a Halloween display.

Mostafa Mahmoud Zayed had apparently been dead since Monday.

Cameraman Austin Raishbrook, owner of RMG News, told the Los Angeles Times he was at the scene in Marina del Rey Thursday when authorities arrived. The 75-year-old Zayed was slumped over a chair on the third-floor balcony of his apartment with a single gunshot wound to the eye.

A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigator says the case is an “apparent suicide.”

Raishbrook says neighbors told him they noticed the body Monday “but didn’t bother calling authorities because it looked like a Halloween dummy.”  — philly.com

Great costume — dressed as a dirt nap.  Wonder what he was planning to give out in the way of trick or treats.