Category Archives: Items of note

Twitter Q&A, pt. 3: The randos

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https://twitter.com/jeffpaternostro/status/236462847528411137

Samuel L. Jackson and it’s not even close. People read this site and assume I’m a pretty mild-mannered guy, but that’s only because I’m terrible at conveying my moods in print. Every single word written on this site is rife with unadulterated rage, and I don’t know anyone who could better capture that for an audiobook than a shouting Sam Jackson.

“THIS SANDWICH IS TOO SALTY! IT’S ALL CARLOS BELTRAN’S FAULT! YOU AND EVERYONE YOU KNOW SOMEDAY WILL DIE!” etc.

https://twitter.com/Devon2012/status/236462884358602752

Yeah, actually I do: Walk places. Everything’s pretty spread out in the suburbs, and you grow accustomed to getting in your car whenever you need to go anywhere. And I know plenty of people who do the same thing with the subway in the city: Charged with going someplace a mile away, they’ll consider the best subway to take, then walk a half mile to get to that train and a quarter mile on the other side.

You can cover so much ground on your feet. Manhattan, especially, is so much smaller than it seems. Walking is cheaper than the subway and typically more interesting, plus you get some exercise.

And to me, there’s almost no better feeling than when neighborhoods I’m already familiar with connect in my internal map. Does that make sense? I’ll be walking someplace downtown, south of the grid, trying to generally make my way east on the way home from a restaurant or something, and I’ll come upon a park or a building or a music venue I’ve been to plenty of times before and generally knew how to get to by subway but had never really bothered to situate in relation to other stuff in the city. Then it feels like the whole city is collapsing and I have a much better handle on the area. I like knowing where things are and how to get places.

I’ve been riding my bike a bunch lately. I’m not sure I want to recommend it because it comes with some risk, but it’s definitely the fastest way to get around. Very liberating. Shaves 15 minutes off my commute.

https://twitter.com/abadlani91/status/236463059672133633

There are plenty, but they’re all probably too weird to detail here. I do still want to ask Cole Hamels if he’s seen the embarrassing photos of Cole Hamels. I kind of suspect he has by now.

Depends on the distance of the fence, I guess. But if you’re swinging for a home run you probably won’t. I generally suck at softball and hitting slow pitching in general, but I think I made a breakthrough about a month ago when the only working batting cage at the place I went was the slow one. I swung so wildly and so far in front of the first pitch that I realized why the junkballer guy in Brooklyn baseball owns me: I get excited and don’t wait nearly as long as I need to. I’ve started trying to drive slow pitches to center field to correct the timing issue; I still end up pulling them a bit but at least I make good contact sometimes.

https://twitter.com/KevinTracey1/status/236471627255271425

If that’s what it takes to get people to Mars, then hell yes I’d watch it. Would I rather humankind’s first visit to another planet come from statelier designs? Sure. But it turns out we kind of suck at space travel. Maybe with the type of budget you could expect for what would inevitably become a worldwide television phenomenon we could make some progress.

It takes almost a year to get even unmanned craft to Mars, so it’d be funny if they launched but the show sucked and it got canceled after a few weeks. Now you’re stuck on this spaceship and you don’t get to be on TV! Sorry bub, you’ll have to settle instead for this all-expense paid vacation to Mars.

In case I haven’t been clear

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If you somehow missed it, Tim Tebow was the subject of this week’s GQ cover story, featuring some pictures he apparently posed for several years ago.

They’re kind of mesmerizing, but as far as this site is concerned it’s Mark Sanchez or GTFO. I’m fine with Tebow looking handsome and smiling earnestly and hypnotizing beat writers if the Jets use him appropriately, but he’s yet to make clear his stance on Taco Bell and I don’t think he even owns a boat phone.

Central Park carriage horse breaks reins, hearts

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The mayhem started at around 4:20 p.m., when the horse’s driver tried to make a sharp turn into the park at the north side of Columbus Circle, witnesses said. The horse lost its balance and went into a frenzy, according to Sidiki Tapsoba, who arranges pedicab rides in the park.

“The horse lost control,” said Tapsoba. “The horse ran, trying to go back to the place it lives.”…

An officer at the scene said the horse ran to Ninth Avenue, where it made a left turn and then waited at the red light. A female pedestrian was able to grab hold of the horse’s reigns briefly, and a police officer reportedly tied it up to a nearby pole.

– Marc Beja, amNY.

Y’all know I eat meat with abandon and am in general no hardcore animal-rights activist or anything. But everything about this story seems so sad to me, including but not limited to the photos of the tranquilized horse prostrate on Ninth Avenue in front of Burrito Box.

“The place it lives” is a stable on 52nd and 12th, but… you know. Also, how depressing is it that the horse is institutionalized enough to wait at a red light? Seems like this is no life for a horse. It still had its blinders on when it woke up and was ushered into a police van.

Sorry if I have less sympathy for the injured-but-generally OK driver and passengers of the carriage. Certainly it sucked for them too, but probably not as much as a life of dragging a massive carriage around the same route every day, punctuated by one fleeting moment of terrifying freedom that ended in a drugged heap in Hell’s Kitchen.

Today in Finnish stuff

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Yesterday’s post about Finnish baseball will be pushed off the homepage by this one, so I don’t have to break my rule about not being too Finn-heavy on this blog. And thank heaven for that, because everyone who has ever been to the Internet needs to drop what he or she is doing and take a look at what Meredith passed along.

Apparently, a) From the 1920s through the 1960s in Finland, wrestling matches were typically accompanied by accordion music, and accordion players often received top billing alongside the wrestlers; b) Kimmo Pohjonen, the man known as “the Jimi Hendrix of accordion,” is working to revive this tradition by teaming up with a group of 10 Finnish wrestlers and a choreographer; and c) he’s coming to Lincoln Center next week.

Most importantly, just watch this:

Potential chupacabra surfaces from East River

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The apparent ‘monster’ was found and pictured by an amateur photographer who was walking under the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan on Sunday…

On first glance it appears that the animal is simply a bloated pig – a theory the New York Parks Department insist is correct – but closer inspection reveals that the animal appears to have toes rather than hooves.

Online theorists speculated it may be a dog or, even more worrying, a giant rat. Other online comments suggest it could be an aardvark, a raccoon or something related to a possum.

– Mark Hughes, Telegraph.co.uk.

So what is this thing?

 

As Hughes notes, the Parks Department claims it’s a pig leftover from a cookout, but it appears to have toes. And the vehemence with which the Parks Department is insisting it’s a pig sounds hilariously suspicious. Someone even suggested it washed up from an offshore animal-disease center.

Via the ever-vigilant Rob V.