Archive for Wisdom

For reasons that needn’t be explored now or ever, the author of this post found himself watching in bed this morning, via informationPhone, the video embedded here of retired footballer Zinedine Zidane’s performance in the quarterfinal of the 2006 World Cup against Brazil.

As the panoply of Zidane compilation videos on the internet suggests, Zidane was both (a) very talented and (b) widely hailed. What one can’t help from observing — from this video specifically, and his career generally — is how Zidane, whenever he touched the ball, almost always improved his team’s fortunes. In baseball, we can derive from a player’s line the number of runs he’s created relative to a replacement player. Were such a thing possible in soccer, Zidane would likely have been among his respective league’s leaders every season — despite never scoring many goals himself.

A large part of Zidane’s excellence, of course, owes to the rare combination and volume of skills in his possession: a deft touch, physical strength, and seemingly preternatural understanding of the pitch and location of all the players on it. What’s also notable, however — at least for the purposes of this very brief post — is what I’ll call Zidane’s capacity for wit.

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Click, with a view to embiggening.

According to Wikipedia, Wikipedia is “a free, collaboratively edited, and multilingual Internet encyclopedia.”

Also according to Wikipedia, Wins Above Replacement (or, WAR) is — among other things — both “a bunch of crap” and “differnet [sic] from source to source.”

Truth is what has been spoken here, America.

Credit to He of the Terrific Cheekbones, the internet’s Matt Hunter.

Young Charlie Manuel fills his shotgun shells with dried black-eyed peas. That way it just stings a little.

Young Charlie Manuel once benched all of West Virginia for not hustling.

While Loretta Lynn is rightly known as the “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Young Charlie Manuel is just as rightly known as “Damn Good Buddy to the Shenandoah Valley.”

Thanks to Young Charlie Manuel’s soothing presence and weather-predictive hinge joints, he remains to this day the world’s only certified Tornado Whisperer.

Young Charlie Manuel walked into one of Tokyo’s finest restaurants, and the staff knew immediately to prepare him an off-menu dish of squirrel meat and dumplings. He said upon sopping up the last swaths of gravy with a flaky buttermilk biscuit, “では、神を恐れるチャウチャウ、小さい相棒をありがとうございました。 y’すべての右である、知っているya’llですか?”

When Young Charlie Manuel needs to clear his head, he takes his black, street-illegal 1955 Olds 88 — the one with the aftermarket Piper J-3 Cub engine, which he and Rebel Dabney towed out of the junkyard with a battleship chain — out on the rural route and opens her up just a bit.

Young Charlie Manuel would probably be able to relax a bit more if he didn’t have a vast haul of corn liquor in the trunk and strap-bolted to the undercarriage of that black, street-illegal 1955 Olds 88.

Prolly be okay, though, since Young Charlie Manuel is deputized in every county that the creek runs through.

Did you see that shit? Young Charlie Manuel gunned her at the crest of that hill and easily cleared that doe and that opossum crossing the road. Woo-wee shit.

Young Charlie Manuel has, for several years running, been voted Meanest Sumbitch and Nicest Sumbitch in the Valley. Which one he presents you with pretty much depends on you.

Young Charlie Manuel would punch his way out of this dead-end town, ‘cept Young Charlie Manuel has always had thing for dead-end towns.

The next time someone in authority doesn’t survey a mounting disaster and mutter, “God Almighty Damn. Better call Charlie,” will be the first.

Ideally, he knows that the only way to get aholt of Young Charlie Manuel is by CB radio.

Evangelical patriot Jack Chick has admonished us against, among other things, Halloween and dirty Catholics. That much we know. What you may not realize is that Mr. Chick has of late undertaken the necessary business of warning the world about the wicked and iniquitous Carson Cistulli, who roams this earth spreading clap and bad ideas.

What, according to Mr. Chick, do you have to fear from this epicene waif who prefers fever-dreams of privilege to honest toil? Much, it turns out. For soul-thieving instance …

Carson Cistulli, upon threat of discipline from a dark force, encourages drug use among at-risk youths.

Carson Cistulli gives syphilis and AIDS to pregnant innocents.

Carson Cistulli, sub-rosa product of public schools, had a Wiccan teacher and from her he learned black arts and the finer points of animal torture.

Carson Cistulli, besides advocating a weak and mewling foreign policy, once murdered his own brother. This was the only act of anything resembling physical courage in Carson Cistulli’s foul-smelling life.

Go and tell others what Jack Chick has taught you about Carson Cistulli.

Q. Who has two thumbs and likes watching Trevor Rosenthal pitch? A. Cardinals fans who’ve avoided farming accidents.

— Carson Cistulli (@cistulli) September 22, 2012

Q. Who has two thumbs and likes watching Trevor Rosenthal pitch?
A. Cardinals fans who’ve avoided farming accidents.

Q. Who reads at a college level and likes watching Trevor Rosenthal pitch?
A. Not a plurality of Cardinals fans, one assumes.

Q. Who has two thumbs and harbors largely unfounded notions regarding the intelligence of the Cardinals’ fanbase relative to other fanbases.
A. The author of this post.

Q. Who might suggest, were he alive, that the author’s motivation for harboring such notions about Cardinals fans is a product of his (i.e the author’s) attempts to make a display of whatever he has in the way of “social capital.”
A. French sociologist, and author of Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Pierre Bourdieu.

Q. And what are we to learn from this brief examination?
A. That human frailty is ubiquitous, grotesque.

Voltaire: no stranger to the knocking of public boots.

Here are three literary genres, and the parts of each most vital to their success:

A Poem
The first line, probably.

A Novel
The first line, probably.

A Daily News Story About a Couple Using a Yankee Stadium Bathroom Stall to the End of a Spirited and Innings-Long Spell of Urgent Lovemaking
Every word, one realizes almost immediately.

During a recent conversation with the very baritone Drew Fairservice on his podcast that is the sort of podcast that would have someone like me as a guest, Fairservice invoked the term post-fandom. Readers who are unacquainted with the term, as I was, will nevertheless have little problem unpacking it: the post is the same one that appears in — and greatly problematizes — terms like post-modernism, post-punk, and post-structuralism.

If pressed to supply a concise definition of post-fandom, I would refuse — not only because mine would be inadequate, but also because the people who demand such things do so less in the spirit of real inquiry and more as a sort of shitty, ad hoc quiz.

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The most thing ever is probably a rainbow shooting off a tough guy’s face, maybe in the rain. After the near-fight Wednesday night, the most mostest thing ever is obviously a double rainbow shooting off of Pablo Sandoval’s face in the wet salmon-pink San Francisco sunset sky.

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* Oakland scoreboard gives the strangest info. Currently showing: Seth smith July (career totals) 6hr/26rbi. that’s it.

* Derek Norris is batting .364 in the 7th inning in 2012. more highly predictive info from the oak scoreboard.

* Remember how 1Bs used to be plated on first when receiving a throw? Now it almost seems theyre stepping towards the throw.

* Looks like 1bs are gettin away with pulling their plant foot off the bag before the catch is made.

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Award-worthy genius from Ted Berg that, for some reason, I didn’t share here earlier: