1. Electric – Reliable standby, well supported by existing infrastructure. Invented by Ben Franklin when he was struck on the biscuits by thunder atop America Mountain in Texas. Can be used to cook unopened can of frank-and-beans on a hot plate while sobbing.

2. Solar – Sourced from giant, fiery, unblinking eye of Quetzalcoatl that looms above us. Uninterrupted service requires quarterly sacrifice of virginal wet nurse. Can be brought down from the sky in glorious immolation by repeated musket fire.

3. Dirty coal – Clean coal gets most of the attention these days, but don’t sleep on dirty coal. Ideally, you’ll use religious texts as kindling — the texts of the objectively incorrect religions not your own, natch. Dirty coal reads the Kama Sutra and eats Crab Rangoon on the toilet, largely as a consequence of being dirty. Black lung can be cured with prescription frank-and-beans.

4. Hydroelectric – Pleasing mix of high voltage levels and water. If there’s not a New Deal-era dam near you, bear-hug a space heater and have a friend lower you into the municipal sewer. When sinewy gondolier asks for password, say “password1.” Not case-sensitive. Take to drinking cognac while using public transit and loudly referring to yourself as “The Hennessy Valley Authority.”

5. Battery – Purchase vinyl press of Mel Torme’s album of American-songbook standards, “Shake Your Shitty Fists at the 9-Volt.” Back-mask side two. Follow instructions on switching North American power grid to battery standby mode. Whisper “Hail Satan” to the children of strangers.

Back in May of 1998, when this unassailable act of prophecy was likely being written, The Orioles and Yankees decided that soup-bones and not bats, balls and gloves would be the determinative instruments of most glorious abandon for God and Country.

First, Armando Benitez, gentleman wildcat, presents us with the casus belli …

Read the rest of this entry »

Within these very dog-eared pages, David G. Temple, freelance sexecutioner, noted that baseball as a social phenomenon lends itself to culminating hubba hubba.

Among the instances of such was this:

The sexual enthusiast will be pleased to know that the obliging Mr. Met, whose dirty protuberance is at all times veiny, boing-boing and purpled, consented to the madame’s wishes.

On the shores of Far Rockaway, amid the medical-waste flotsam, love was made …

You must change your life.

In which Pete Rose translates towering works of poetry.

In today’s episode, Pete Rose will translate T.S. Eliot’s towering modernist opus “The Waste Land” from the original English into Pete Rose American.

Mr. Eliot’s original:

Read the rest of this entry »

Does anyone on Twitter have any questions about Cubs second baseman Darwin Barney? You? Yes, go ahead, sir.

Despite appearances, Darwin Barney will not ravish the help or drunkenly crash one of his motorcars into the hedgerow. Sometimes a gentlemanly appearance veils an actual gentleman. So it is in the case of Actual Gentleman Darwin Barney.

I would like to see a collage of smiling baseballs right about now.

I would like rounded edges and a background hue that suggests an institutional sense of calm. I would like for whoever assembles the collage to be as undaunted by clip-art watermarks as Cartier before the St. Lawrence. The glimpse of a wee penguin might help, too.

I would like to see a collage of smiling baseballs right about now.

That was disappointing.

“April 15 approaches,” I said. “That is Jackie Robinson Day!”

“It is no such thing,” sniffed Cistulli. “It is Tax Day. Tax Day is when monies are seized for purposes of providing Al Qaeda with fresh breast milk and access to Head Start Programs. It is good that this is done because I prefer Al Qaeda to Jackie Robinson. Hail Satan. Praise be to Al Qaeda.”

“But, Cistulli,” I implored. “Jackie Robinson was a man of immense courage, dignity and historical import. How can you say such things?!”

“He was not,” Cistulli sniffed. “He was scarcely a man. I am a man. Look at this enemy-combatant chest hair ‘neath my radical’s tunic. Quislings unite! Jackie Robinson is someone I actively disrespect!”

“Cistulli, I must object–”

Then he ravished me.

But I — I! — created a NotGraphs category called “Cistulli. F__k that guy.”

Happy Jackie Robinson Day, everyone but Cistulli.

In this, the latest episode of Men Surrounded By Things, we present nine-year major-league first baseman and outfielder Pete LaCock surrounded by (as you have surely imagined and feared) …

Le Coq Sportif athletic footwear! Look at Pete LaCock, happy to be surrounded by Le Coq Sportif athletic footwear.

This has been Pete LaCock surrounded By Le Coq Sportif athletic footwear. This has been Men Surrounded By Things.

English rock-and-or-roll supergroup Bad Company, who combined with Foreigner to encourage sex in hallways and multi-purpose arenas across Christendom, once queried: “Are you ready for love?” The aria is a tale — a necessary tale — of the everyman who is rendered urgent, turgid and veiny for immediate and driving coitus.

As it turns out, “Ready for Love” was inspired by right-hander Claude Raymond, who pitched to middling effect in the major leagues from 1959-1971. Bear nubile witness:

As implied by his 1966 and 1967 baseball cards, Mr. Raymond walked around for two full years in a state of partial and suggestive undress. This is because he was ready for love.

Chroniclers of Raymond’s day took to calling him “The Un-Bezippered Corsican Rogue.” While such a sobriquet misstated Raymond’s origins, the prevailing incrimination — that of a pecker lurking in wait — could not plausibly be denied.

Just two years after Raymond retired from baseball, he served as a session bassist for Bad Company’s self-titled debut album. It was during those boozy marathon studio conclaves that Raymond’s story was told and subsequently put to vinyl.

While modern society has forced Raymond to leash his organ, he remains ready for the possibilities — love among them.

As noted in this space, Banknotes Harper is about business, except on those occasions when he is not about business, and even at those times he is about business.

It follows, then, that Banknotes Harper’s unrelenting business travel schedule requires him to spend every spare moment in the high-level business skies and then arguing forcefully in Tokyo boardrooms, arbitraging on Abu Dhabi trading floors, and — while wearing an Oleg Cassini hardhat — pointing rolled-up architectural documents to indicate various cost-saving-but-against-code structural changes he’d like to see inside a Shanghai factory (“Take that load-bearing beam and have one of your boys make me a cigar-store Indian out of it,” for instance).

As Banknotes Harper will be quick to tell you, there’s no better way to let business know you mean business than by pounding a conference table. “The time for talking has passed,” such a gesture communicates. “Let us now transfer redeemable currencies and deeds of ownership.”

“While I’m interested in having Maroon 5 play the company retreat in Palm Beach, I’m not interested in the rates you just quoted me,” is something else it says.

Dropping a fleshy money hammer on the conference table has been known to send ripples through all market indices in all parts of the world that matter, especially when Banknotes Harper does it.

The problem for the high-ranking global executive is that when he — not she — is, say, attending a groundbreaking ceremony in Seoul or chit-chatting at a $128.6-million-per-plate super-pac fundraiser in international waters, there’s often no pounding-grade conference table to be found. The solution? The Banknotes Harper Portable Conference Table, For Pounding!

Yes, pictured above at its actual size is the Banknotes Harper Portable Conference Table, For Pounding. “Need to cow a recalcitrant regulator while pausing momentarily on the heli-pad?” Endorses Banknotes Harper himself. “This Banknotes Harper Portable Conference Table, For Pounding, which folds out to accommodate no fewer than one Business Soup-Bone, will seal the deal. Folded up, it fits in a tailored suit pocket or cigarette case. Fuckers.”

Available through SkyMall.