I would recommend that you only shit-talk your friends to your other friends in person for the next few weeks until you have gotten the hang of The Way We Send Gmail Now. It will save you a lot of apologizing in the long run.

Two British comedy legends turn 70 today, but we’ll focus on celebrating the birth of Eric Idle rather than the other guy. You will have your own favorite moments, of course, but this is pretty close to perfect to me.

I was fairly sure that the worst advice in the world is to marry someone who went to Princeton. But nope, turns out the worst advice in the world is to “Find a husband on campus before you graduate.” At Princeton. So you can be married to a hideous moron for the rest of your life, or at least a couple of years. Thanks for sharing, class of ‘77.

“Actor Richard Griffiths, who starred in the Harry Potter movies and Withnail and I, has died at the age of 65 after complications following heart surgery. Griffiths enjoyed a long career of success on film and on TV, but also on the stage where he was a Tony-winning character actor.” You can listen to him discuss his greatest role here.

Our events calendar for this weekend looks like it was written in 1994. The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black? Nick Cave? The Breeders? Robocop? What’s not to love! Plus the weather: the weather forecast is “terrific.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj_myXdOLV0

In news that will surely anger some people, Lana Del Rey has recorded a cover version of Leonard Cohen’s classic song about Janis Joplin, “Chelsea Hotel #2.” She made a video to accompany it, too, all dark and moody and full of close-ups of matchbooks and cigarettes and her plump, sculpted lips. Hahaha. You really do get the sense that she’s taunting us, don’t you? Well, despite myself, I really like it! (*ducks*) Here’s to the quiver in that deep husky voice, here’s to make-believe!

Of course, Lana Del Rey is far from the first artist to cover this song. So let’s try to figure out: Where does her version stand compared to the others? Who did it best?

Boston fairy singer Marissa Nadler sings it too much like a fairy. As if the unmade bed that Janis Joplin was giving her head on was one made of tulips and daffodils. That’s not New York. Lana’s is better.

With her roots in the East Village folk scene, Regina Spektor would seem to be a better interpreter of this ode to NYC louche. Instead, she turns it into a half-sung, half-spoken musical comedy routine. Too cute by half. Lana’s is better than this, too.

Martha Wainwright’s voice often rubs me the wrong way, for similar reasons. I don’t think we should be able to hear how hard she’s straining to sound coquettish. But here, at the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2006, as she performed the song before the premiere of the Cohen tribute movie I’m Your Man, her keening sounds straight-ahead and honestly passionate. Better than Lana’s winking artifice.

This is my favorite of any version I’ve ever heard. It’s from I’m Your Man. Martha’s brother Rufus Wainwright captures the sadness but also the prideful beauty in the lyrics. Swooning and sneering at the same time, his voice is just perfect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQv445O3FgM

I love Lloyd Cole. I would like to have Rattlesnakes and Easy Pieces to be buried with me when I die. (That way, if any greedy grave robbers tried to dig me up to steal my jewelry, rattlesnakes would leap out of my coffin and bite their eyes!) But this was not a song for him to sing. At least not so jauntily.

Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner emits exactly the right self-deprecating charm for the song. But he seems like he’s just kinda fooling around with it. La-di-la-la-la. I want more from him. I’ll call this a tie with Lana.

Now we come to Leonard Cohen himself. It’s hard to top the story he tells to introduce this performance. And it’s Leonard Cohen, it’s his song, it’s awesome. It’s not really fair to Lana to make the comparison.

I think I actually prefer this original version of the song (called “Chelsea Hotel #1,” and never recorded for any album) to the one that became more famous. It’s dirtier, more sensual, and when he breaks it down into a gospel reverie with his back-up singers in the middle, he finds a new line of melody that I’ll miss forever. And at the end, my God, when he goes back into it, and sings about watching Janis racing the midnight train, nude, without any cape to cover her, tearing up her feet on the gravel, and he can’t catch up with her? It’s a eulogy, this song, isn’t it?

★★★★ Sun and returning sun lit parked cars front and rear. A lumpy oval of shadow stood alone on the ground between two vehicles, touching neither, the Venn diagram of nearly invisible eastbound and westbound penumbras. In a Bowery crosswalk, raised letters on a dark steel plate spelled out HALCYON in silver. Where shade held out, in the middle of blocks running uptown-downtown, it was chilly. Late in the day, over Broadway, the sky simultaneously reflected off of and shone through the all-glass corner of an apartment tower.

What the hell was that about, yesterday? Suddenly everybody (except your racist uncle in the Midwest) had changed their profile pictures and avatars to some little parallel lines symbol. It was as if millions of people tried to make a pink ribbon icon and failed, utterly, because they could not do the curve thing. But it was actually about the Supreme Court deciding who we can marry and then later divorce — the justices are not looking at the usual arguments against marriage such as “bad idea,” “everybody else was doing it,” “I want a baby” and “I was drunk that year.” Instead, they are focusing only on the gender of the person or persons getting married. In order to make John Roberts and the rest of those cretins make the right decision on whether it’s okay for multiple-penis couples or no-penis couples to go twenty grand in debt for a bullshit wedding, everybody on the Internet put some “equal sign” image buddies on their social media accounts.

But as generally happens when important issues are being discussed and everybody is supposed to put the same avatar on Twitter, some of you decided to be creative, and these are the unfortunate results.

If you see two bloody claw marks on a telephone pole, run first and change your profile pic later.

EXTERMINATE INEQUALITY … AND ALSO HUMANITY.

50-year-old “punks” thought this tribute to South Bay band Black Flag was “awesome.”

“That gum you like is going to come back into style.”

People don’t even make hobbit-related Web graphics these days. The Web has been self-generating topical hobbit graphics since 2007.

Is this even … who knows? Maybe it’s just two pink Jar Jars sideways, the way they sometimes are?

by Sarah Marshall

In honor of Opening Day on Sunday, the second of two pieces today on the history of the game.

From my extensive research, I’ve learned that baseball is a sport people watch sometimes. I could blame my lack of appreciation for America’s greatest sport on many factors — my father being Australian, and therefore interested only in cricket; the fact that when I played softball in school I always ended up in right field; the fact that my entire heart belongs to Patrick Chan — but I’ve decided instead to scapegoat the names, specifically their terrible decline in quality in recent years.

Having already fallen in love with the names and nicknames of individual players (Noodles Hahn! Butts Wagner! Cannonball Titcomb!), I had no choice but to confirm that team names were once far greater as well. To wit: the Atlanta Braves, originally based in Boston, were known variously as the Beaneaters, the Doves, the Rustlers, and the Bees before adopting their current, boring name (they also lose points for racism). The Chicago Cubs were once the Orphans (which might be a better name, considering their losing streak — see? I know things!). The Cleveland Indians were once the Bluebirds, and before that (inexplicably) the Naps. The Dodgers were once the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, and the Pittsburgh Pirates were once the Innocents.

What these names lack in rugged masculinity they more than make up for in… well, I don’t know what it is, but it’s something. A certain “who the hell cares, this sport is still becoming a sport” quality? Joie de vivre — as much as joie de vivre can be said to have existed in Pittsburgh of a hundred years ago? Some other French phrase pertaining more directly to baseball names, but which I don’t know about because I quit French before the baseball unit? In any case, they’ve got it.

And so herewith, a list of the most strange, priceless, unfortunate baseball team names in the history of the game — most of them at least 75 years old. (Categories inspired by Caity Weaver’s “Sometimes State Flags” wonderfulness.) Here we go!

Some teams don’t belong in our dirty-minded world.

• The Seattle Hustlers
• The Butte Miners
• The Columbia Comers
• The Milwaukee Creams

Some teams aren’t too concerned about proving their masculinity.

• The Augusta Dollies
• The La Crosse Pinks
• The Hamilton Primrose
• The Middletown Orange Blossoms
• The Portland Rosebuds
• The Tacoma Daisies
• The Norfolk Mary Janes
• The Cedar Rapids Bunnies
• The Tacoma Rabbits
• The Cleveland Infants
• The Albany Babies
• The Victoria Chappies
• The Baltimore Canaries
• The Columbus Blue Birds
• The Oakland Larks
• The Philadelphia Pearls
• The Springfield Ponies
• The Montgomery Lambs

Some team names are deeply perplexing.

• The Spokane Bunchgrassers
• The Hartford Wooden Nutmegs
• The Reading Coal Heavers
• The Fairbury Jeffs

Some team names are deeply perplexing and vaguely terrifying.

• The St. Joseph Clay Eaters
• The Regina Bone Pilers

Some team names are unnecessarily specific.

• The Amsterdam Carpet Tacks
• The Vancouver Horse Doctors
• The Paterson Silk Weavers
• The Grand Rapids Furniture Makers
• The Memphis Fever Germs

Some teams are trying just a little too hard.

• The Genuine Cuban Giants
• The Atlantic City Bacharach Giants
• The Nashua Millionaires
• The Chicago Uniques
• The Baltimore Lord Baltimores
• The Buffalo Bisons
• The Rutland Sheiks

Some teams aren’t trying hard enough.

• The Rome Romans
• The Troy Trojans
• The Reading Pretzels
• The Allentown Peanuts
• The Hamilton Hams
• The Medicine Hat Hatters
• The Wilson Bugs
• The Petersburg Goobers

Some teams want you to know they went to college.

• The Lawrence Barristers
• The Nashville Seraphs
• The Victoria Legislators
• The Stratford Poets
• The York White Roses
• The Lancaster Red Roses
• The Amsterdam-Gloversville-Johnstown Hyphens

Some teams want you to know they didn’t.

• The Asheville Moonshiners
• The Morristown Jobbers

Some teams just picked the first animal they could think of.

• The San Francisco Sea Lions
• The Baltimore Terrapins
• The Chicago Whales
• The Taunton Herrings
• The Montpelier Goldfish

Some teams are on a mission from God.

• The Salt Lake City Elders
• The Des Moines Prohibitionists
• The St. Paul Apostles

Some teams aren’t.

• The Salem Witches
• The Hazleton Pugilists
• The Moose Jaw Robin Hoods
• The Paris Parasites

Some teams just want you to feel sorry for them.

The Dayton Old Soldiers
The Davenport Onion Weeders
The Kalamazoo Celery Pickers
The Zanesville Flood Sufferers
The Fall River Adopted Sons

Related: How Much More Do Baseball Players Make Today?

Sarah Marshall lives in Portland but went to college in Vermont, and is therefore a fan of both the Rosebuds and the Sheiks.

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Neversink

I am going to tell you who you are. That your voice, claimed as mine, will drown. I wonder about the weight of your voice versus mine. I wonder what it would feel like in my hands. Would it be a suitcase of mirrors or a glass box full of lead? Would it be a sheet on which you painted all of your wrong thoughts — the ones you had candidly in the night, behind your eyes, unuttered as your limbs twitched? It was a dreamless night. All the houses went black. Words are something that can be applied after the fact: the fact of two people crossing the street. The fact of you weaving your hands around my waist. You push your fingers through button holes. Holes sometimes signify the fact that a thing can be lifted and moved. You move me. I speak for you. This is a kind of collaboration. I’ll never know the exact weight of this movement, but I do understand its gravity. Like a grave, it is safe from worms. Like your hair, it looks like a wispy, meaningless alphabet. Like the person crossing the street, I am assigning you and it castaway roles. I am happy with metaphors — I am heavy with them. I am happy to be the drawer in which all of your hard-earned things fit.

after Carlos Reyes, Matt Mullican, and John Smith

Jessica Baran co-curates the fort gondo poetry series in St. Louis. Her second poetry collection, Equivalents, won the inaugural Besmilr Brigham Women Writers Prize by Lost Roads Press.

When you’re ready for more poems, more poems are ready for you. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.