Dogs are not eligible to draw welfare, apparently. But black people are! Hence the firing of the chair of the Virginia Beach Republican Party, thanks to his extremely poor choices in the use of his AOL address.

by Elmo Keep

Do you know that when you join the KISS Army they still give you a dog tag? Yes they do.

People still join the KISS Army, all the time. I know that because I receive regular email newsletter updates that tell me all about it. The newsletter came free with the dog tag, which is a pretty sweet deal. I find all sorts of things out in the newsletter, like how Paul Stanley’s latest art show went, or when a new episode of Gene Simmons’ sadly still functioning reality sitcom “Family Jewels” is screening. Also things like when Gene Simmons is threatening to expose the hackers who took down his site, as he did this week. I didn’t used to be this way. I used to coast along in ignorance of these sorts of things. I used to not be in the KISS Army. I used to be just fine. And then I had to talk to Gene Simmons.

I used to not own the set of KISS babushka dolls on my desk which were given to me on my birthday by some friends who found them in a tiny junk shop in the New South Wales countryside one weekend. Or the freakishly life-like Gene Simmons action figure I bought one night on eBay. Or my KISS pyjama pants I enjoy not only for their comfort but for their eye-defying yellow-orange-red colour scheme. I used to not know that the bassline for ‘Deuce’ was just ‘Bitch’ by the Rolling Stones, but played backwards. I used to not know that Gene Simmons has patents on all the iterations of KISS make-up, even the Anhk Warrior one, which no one remembers who wore.

I used to work at a streetpress music weekly in Sydney called The Brag. My reputation preceded me there because I liked U2. I liked lots of things that were totally not in line at all the with kind of hip-to-the-minute things one is normally required to like at a magazine like that. For example, I once had to interview the Black Kids, and for my life, Googling them could not turn up one piece of information that would make them forcibly interesting to me.

To put it another way, Empire of the Sun recorded parts of their album in the basement studios under our offices. It was that kind of place. So whenever I commandeered the stereo and put on something like “Tonight’s The Night,” or “Born To Run,” it would sometimes elicit the kind of eye-rolling that made me a shoe-in for any “old people” stories that might have to be covered. Which was great! That meant reviewing Elton John (twice!) and interviewing Patti Smith unimpeded, while everyone else fought over access to Of Montreal and Clap Your Hands Say Whatever and I tried desperately to palm off a cover story on Rise Against to someone, anyone, who knew who they were.

How I came to be in the KISS Army was tied directly to my covering the Old People beat. In the office on deadline one day, I fielded a call from my editor at another publication to which I contributed. It was four in the afternoon when she rang.

“Hey. Do you want to interview Gene Simmons?”

I was semi-distracted with deep-etching the head of some wasted kid in Photoshop for the magazine’s social pages (like everywhere, there was little money at the magazine, and so everyone had to multi-task.) I did a quick inventory of the few facts I knew about Gene Simmons: fire-breathing, blood spitting, enormous tongue, check.

“Sure, ok.” It sounded like it could be fun. “When?”

“9 a.m. tomorrow.”

“Um. Great!”

I was not the kind of music writer who understood a detailed knowledge of the entire history of music. I had a passing knowledge of KISS at best. I remembered fondly their cover of “God Gave Rock and Roll To You (II)” from Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey and in particular its painfully 90s music video which featured a lot of swooping aerial shots of the band playing in a concrete-floored warehouse which was covered in large parts with puddles of water. This was during their ill-advised no make-up phase, but I didn’t know that at the time I was watching the video-I was ten and I had no idea who KISS were then either. I just loved the movie I recognised the song from and noted that the guys in the video had really huge hair.

So I spent a couple of hours on the web learning the Gene Simmons CliffsNotes. I was briefed on the phone by KISS’ publicist who told me, hapless writer (for no doubt the thousandth time ever) explicitly not to ask any questions of Gene Simmons about his tongue. OK, great! That’s it! Covered it! The tongue thing is all there is to Gene Simmons, yes? I got this!

My “research” did not bring me across the notorious NPR interview he did with Terry Gross in 2002 until after we’d spoken, an unfortunate error, as it would have greatly helped my chances if I had heard it. Listening later, it evidently was an already somewhat hostile exchange which quickly devolved into a slanging match about which of them was smarter than the other, peppered throughout with increasingly awful attacks from Gene Simmons, like, “You’d have to put the book down and confront life. The notion is that if you want to welcome me with open arms, I’m afraid you’re also going to have to welcome me with open legs.”

Gene Simmons: Don’t you love this interview? Tell me the truth.

Terry Gross: Well, I think it’s kind of a drag, because you’re making speeches.

Gene Simmons: That’s right.

Terry Gross: And you’re being intentionally obnoxious. [laughs]

Gene Simmons: No, I’m not. I’m being a man.

On that afternoon though, I did not find or read this interview. Instead I skimmed the KISS greatest hits. Noted that they were once a pretty great rock band in their 70s heyday, had enjoyed several missteps creative and otherwise for most of the 80s and 90s (including Gene Simmons’ brief but memorable acting career), and at the time of writing, were determinedly on another comeback tour where they only played the certified hits and none of that weird stuff from the 90s. Or, as was most recently and astutely summarised by the wonderful @Discographies Twitter feed:

Kiss: 1–6 successful product introduction; 7–10 overexposure kills brand; 11–17 relaunch w/”edgy” imaging; 18–19 “the old package is back!”less than a minute ago via web

Discographies
Discographies

So rather than do the professional thing and knuckle down to an all-night KISS cram session, I instead went out to review The National, because I often made concessions to new music I liked which reminded me of old music I liked.

It was high summer in Sydney at the time, which meant it was blindingly hot during the day, with the only respite coming late in the evening, when everyone descended on the city’s bars where the hot mix of cold beer and people wearing very little is hard to tear yourself away from.

We’d tumbled out of the Recital Hall just before midnight, where the band had played just about every song from “Alligator” so I was feeling particularly buoyed. And also a little weird, because lead singer Matt Beringer had a habit then of getting down into the crowd and clambering the front rows, planting his legs either side of someone in their seat and singing the last song of the night, “Mr November,” into their face quite ferociously, and that night he’d done it to me.

It was late February and that’s when you’re acutely aware that the summer is ending and you want to make the most of it and I had that line from “The Geese of Beverly Road,” “Serve me the sky with a big slice of lemon” freshly stuck in my head, so when in Rome! By the time I got home it was somewhere around 4 a.m., with my friend calling, “Good luck with Gene!” as I got out of the taxi and I was thinking, Oh yeah, don’t forget that in the morning.

* * *

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

“A guy called for you,” our receptionist said as I sped by into the interview room.

“He’s calling back in ten minutes,” she yelled after me, and I was thinking, OK, it’s just the person connecting the call, I’ve got time, he’s calling back and I was trying to untangle the cables and plug in my laptop and set the recorder on the phone right and all I wanted was a tall glass of water, I thought I was maybe dying, and halfway through all that the phone started ringing.

“Yes!” I barked, “Hello?”

“Is this Elmo?”

“Yes it is. Who’s this?”

“This is Gene Simmons,” Gene Simmons said, pausing for maximum effect and leaving a gaping hole large enough for me to fall into before continuing in his low, deliberate tone: “You were expecting someone else? Who do you think you’re talking to?”

Who does that? No one does that. Unless they are some young up-and-comer you’ve never heard of hoping someone will write about their demo, in which case they call all the time. But no one of Gene Simmons’ stature ever calls direct; their call is connected to you through some complex re-route via the subcontinent handled by someone you’ll never speak to again in your life. Except when it’s Gene Simmons, who is instead calling you straight from inside his spacious Los Angeles lair.

“Uh, hello!” I said at the exact moment my mind was scrubbed clean of coherent thoughts. Or thoughts of any kind apart from oh shit.

Gene Simmons wanted to talk. He wanted to talk, pretty much interrupted, for almost and hour and a half. He wanted to elucidate on the great conversational touchstones of our time. Such as: what women want from men, and how kids should stop using the Internet to steal music; and why marriage was a terrible institution and something else about how he thought of himself as a lion in his familial role of the father. And at some point he wanted even to talk about KISS! It was almost as though he was bored, and had nothing better to do with his time than talk to me on the phone.

In fact he’d started by saying, “We can talk as long as you want. I’m not going anywhere,” when I’d asked how much time he’d set aside for the interview. In any other scenario-particularly one in which I was prepared properly and didn’t feel like the fluid around my brain had evaporated, leaving it to clang against my skull whenever I blinked-that would have been terrific.

As it was, however, in my fanciful attempt at getting myself organized, I had, among other errors, set the call to speakerphone, something I was afraid to rectify in case I accidentally hung up altogether. So Gene Simmons’ voice was booming like God’s, bouncing off the white walls and hardwood floor, reverberating around the enormous conference room where I sat in white vinyl chair at the enormous white round table (where a single person was always an aberration of its symmetry), and the sun was steadily rising at the windows, filling the room with horrible, horrible light and I felt as though I were inside a giant microwave, being roasted, being roasted by Gene Simmons; and the disembodied, booming voice carried up through the atrium drew curious people from upstairs in the office who came to gawk quizzically at me, caged animal, through the glass, making Who the fuck are you talking to? gestures while I gestured back with wide eyes, shaking my head: I have no idea what is happening!

“I’m asking you a question,” Gene Simmons said, now waiting.

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked. “Could you say that again please?”

“I said: If you are going to walk a tightrope, which is going to help you; having blind faith in your abilities? Or fear?”

“Um, does there have to be a tightrope? I’d rather just not walk the tightrope, it seems kind of showy and stupid. I would never walk a tightrope.”

“That’s because you’re a woman!”

This is the part where I get my comeuppance for not being prepared.

* * *

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w4opXi2yzo

“Sure, but a woman doesn’t need a man, after you’ve ejaculated,” I said, after Gene Simmons had told me that my one overriding goal in life as a woman was to find and keep a man. “In the equation, it’s women who have all the power,” I argued, “because women choose. Women choose which man will pass on his genetic code. Men however, will just stick it in whatever moves, from an evolutionary perspective.”

How was this happening? How was Gene Simmons not just regaling me with hilarious war stories from the road? Or trying to explain why KISS ever took their make-up off? Or how Lou Reed was once cajoled into being a co-songwriter on “Music From The Elder”? Why didn’t someone just bring me some water?

“From a biological perspective,” I went on, “in evolutionary terms, your job is done. Your job is to pass on your genes”-zing!-”and once you’ve done that, you can jump off a cliff and you’ve still done your job.”

So I went on like this at some length, because if there’s one thing you should always, always do, it’s talk over your interview subject. It’s all about you, and not them, don’t forget. For the most part anyway, I was distracted by the fact that this was a conversation that was taking place, in the first place, in my life. If I was rambling on in an incoherent fashion, I thought I was doing pretty well to hold up my end of the interview at all.

Gene Simmons was not buying this evolutionary biology idea.

“Good luck with that,” he said.

He spoke in a slow, lecturing tone to me throughout all this. But it was also peppered throughout with something more playful. Like if you ever had those kinds of adversarial conversations with your parents over dinner when you were much too young to properly articulate what you were arguing for, but you knew absolutely that you were right? I was reminded of that feeling often when talking, or fighting, with Gene Simmons. He gave me the impression that he was enjoying this, quite a lot.

The ‘why do we have sex’ argument dissipated with no obvious victor emerging and he wanted to move on to the death of the music industry at the hands of merciless, greedy pirates.

“The people who say they love music the most, have killed the music business!” he said. “It’s too late now, once you’ve let the fox into the henhouse-the chickens are gone. Once something has been made available for free, how are you going to convince anyone that they should pay for it? You can’t. It’s too late now. It’s not going to matter for us, for bands like KISS. But it will matter for the next KISS who are out there somewhere waiting to be signed to a label. They won’t be. There won’t be any money left.”

As one of those merciless, greedy pirates, I wanted to spout our most recent cause celebre in our defence. Something to prove that the dire state of the music industry was not connected to the fact that no one thought they should pay for music anymore. I was going to assuage my own guilt, and dazzle Gene Simmons with a sparkling vision of the future of music distribution at the same time!

Radiohead had then recently decided to give their album “In Rainbows” away on the Internet, for free. Or free if you wanted it to be. The idea was to let people pay what they “thought it was worth.” It turned out that this was often actually “a lot”. After the ensuing ruckus about the death of the music industry had subsided a little, it happened that the experiment had worked out well for the band; they ended up shifting 1.2 million downloads at an average of U.S. $6 a pop. At the time, however, this was a way off in the future and it looked instead as though perhaps Radiohead had just made a giant, career-and-industry-killing mistake.

Gene Simmons thought it was the single most stupid idea he had ever heard in his life. His entire worldview revolved around the making of money, and then, how to make more money from that money; his outlook was once eloquently described as “a subtle blend of Ayn Rand and Ron Jeremy.” The notion of an artistic experiment which spoke of an utter distain for the very structures which had made its creation possible in the first place did not interest him in the slightest, and he summed up his feelings on it with a rhetorical question/analogy combo, as was his favoured mode of communication:

“What happens when a miner strikes gold?” he asked.

“I’m not sure, but I think you want to tell me.”

“Every other guy is going to pitch and dig in right next to him. And that isn’t happening, and it’s never going to happen.”

“You don’t know that-”

“You aren’t qualified to make that statement.”

“-but shouldn’t we wait at least longer than a few months to gauge its effect before saying it will never work?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“But it just happened!”

“Is that your opinion? Because if it’s your opinion, then that’s fine.”

“Is what my opinion? That it could work?”

“Yes, you’re entitled to that opinion. But as a statement of fact, you are not qualified to make that statement. You’re reading Rolling Stone and throwing these figures around, and you have no idea what you’re talking about. You sound very nice though, I like you.”

“You’ve never met me! What if I’m awful?”

“You sound really wonderful and very creative, but if I want financial advice, I’ll go to my banker. If I’m sick, I’ll go to a doctor. I won’t ask my neighbour what I should do about my health! I’ll ask a professional. And you’re not a professional, and that’s all I’m saying.”

I was, really, completely out of my depth on this one. Anyone who thinks piracy hasn’t impacted record sales is an idiot. I was that idiot, trying to defend that position. And who was I to do that in this situation? Of the two of us, Gene Simmons was about three million times more qualified than me to talk about this with authority. He was certain that the music industry was over. He did not want to hear about ringtone sales and the iTunes Store. There wouldn’t be another KISS album, he said. Not when there wasn’t a sure-fire way to distribute it for proven profit. (That would turn out not to be true, when KISS released the incredibly so-so “Sonic Boom” in 2009 and distributed it exclusively through WalMart, selling around 500,000 copies.)

Chastened, I tried for an elegant segue.

“So, do you ever call up the other guys for a barbeque, to catch up on old times?”

“Not really, no.”

Ok, great.

“I mean, Peter and Ace, I wish them very well. But when people ask, ‘Hey, when are you putting the team back together that made football great?,’ it’s not going to happen.”

With that he was alluding to the fact that the original members of KISS who are no longer in the band-Ace Frehley and Peter Criss-are essentially in his eyes, fuck ups. Ironically, rockstar behaviour was not tolerated in KISS, “the hottest band in the world!” It was in effect a duopoly run by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. Playing with them in the band was a big ticket gig, but if you wanted in, you had to treat it like the job that it was: that is, seriously. No drugs, no alcohol. As much philandering as you liked, but no partying. Otherwise, you’re out.

“You don’t get to where we are, having been around as long as we have, and being as big as we are, without losing a few people along the way. It’s just not possible. There’s no one who’s done it.”

“Sure there is.”

“No there’s not!”

“There is.”

“What? Who? You mean AC/DC?”

“No, Bon Scott died some time ago. I mean U2,” I said. “They’ve been together since 1976. Same line-up. So, that’s only what, three years less than you guys?”

“What?”

“Yeah. So all I’m saying, is that it can be done. Someone did it.” Point!

We then enjoyed a further small skirmish about the particulars of when a band’s career starts proper, and that was, apparently: only when you put out your first record. Not your first EP, not your first gig under your band name with your original line-up. And so by this logic, KISS were safely older than U2 by seven years, and Gene Simmons could rest.

“I’ve got to get going now,” he said rather suddenly, before imploring me to go along to the show when KISS toured Australia the following month. He did this by making a particularly crass allusion to the experience being tantamount to sleeping with a man of incredible sexual prowess for the first time in my life.

“Come say ‘hi’ to me. It’s been great talking to you. I wish you well.”

“Thanks for your time. It’s been,” — uh, a mind fuck? — “interesting.”

* * *

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FiUvNvpzYY

How else to account for the fact I soon found myself standing on my own among the KISS Army by the side of a Grand Prix raceway where, soon after the cars finished screaming by like low flying jets, the band took to the stage, all confetti canons and pin-wheeling fireworks and 40-foot stacks and taking flight, winched over the heads of the crowd on a highwire? I told myself it was for background. But it wasn’t really, the story was done.

I certainly didn’t have to see them twice, in two different cities, in the same week. But I did.

It was, I realized, down to two things: the fact that KISS wrote at least a handful of the most perfect hard rock songs in the history of the form (and two eminently danceable other tracks) and the way the KISS fans were losing their collective minds all around me at the shows. Particularly at the Grand Prix, were I spent the night standing behind a KISS family, the face-painted little kids up on their parent’s shoulders throughout, belting all the words out together, the kids no doubt having their tiny minds blown by the spectacle of it all.

It was all so refreshingly lacking in cynicism, so steadfastly about nothing but having the greatest possible time, being nowhere but where you were for two hours. “If you wanna be lectured to by someone at a rock and roll show,” Paul Stanley shrieked from the stage at one point, “you’re in the wrong fucking place tonight!”

And so even though it turned out the one song I knew at the start of it all wasn’t even theirs, that was how KISS gave rock and roll to us, putting it in the soul of everyone there. No one more so than me, and it was good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByCIsHtFAj0

“First Woman to Direct a Pixar Film Is Instead First to Be Replaced.”

by Andrew Piccone

Tell me about your job.
I do stilt walking in various capacities. I have a series of different costumes, and I decide which one I want to do that day. One is a mime, juggling, interacting while silent, then one is like a mythical woodland spirit character. I basically put it on, with the makeup in my apartment in Flatbush, and I pack up the stilts and schlep into usually Central Park or Union Square. I’ve had some trouble in Times Square, but I like it there too. I have to sit on something kind of tall because the stilts are about three feet tall, and I strap in. I consider it to be a really creative form of begging. It’s not the most marketable skill, but it’s unique. I learned it while working with a street theatre company in Paris. While learning I had a lot of trial and error with home-made stilts while going to college at University of Vermont, a couple bad falls and slips on the ice. The way I got good, though, was wearing them every day, to class, everywhere, all the time. I was making around $50–75 an hour when I moved to New York on an average day. There’s not a lot of variety in the street performers of New York City, and besides the Pride parade I’ve never seen another stilt walker.

Have you ever been mugged?
When I first moved to New York, within the first month of being in Brooklyn, I got mugged within a block of my house. It was more of an attempted mugging, because I was on my way back from a catering job, and I had my heavy, steel-toed boots in my hands, and I hit the guy in the head with my shoes, and then a car came around the corner and he skidded off. I live in kind of a rough neighborhood in Brooklyn, and I’ve had a couple other situations where I’ve run away, and avoided having to use my shoes.

Do you exercise regularly?
I go through phases. I like to run around Prospect Park, its almost 4 miles around the whole thing! I try to do that every third day or so, depending on my schedule, because I can’t afford a gym membership, and I have a pull up bar in my apartment, but that only gets you so far.

What is your quintessential New York food?
One dollar giant slices of New York pizza. I have a Google map on my phone that I add a pin to every time I find a place that sells the big, huge, one dollar slices of New York pizza. The thing is, just because you see the sign, it might be a Papa John’s or something that has a tiny little nothing slice. I’m talking big, hunking, classic New York Slices for a dollar. You can’t beat that.

What’s the best thing about Fall?
I like getting to layer my clothes again. I don’t know if that’s my favorite thing. Fall is the time when you’re most comfortable outside. You dress warm enough, it’s the perfect temperature. Growing up in Connecticut and going to school in Vermont, the outdoors just became the most beauitful thing I’ve ever seen. When I cross the Manhattan bridge from Brooklyn every day I love looking out and seeing some of that Fall foliage.

Are you religious?
I don’t know. I consider myself to be a free-thinking Christian, by which I mean that the vast majority of the religion will let me take away words to live by. Because the vast majority of it is just a moral code that hardly anyone could disagree with, things like loving thy neighbor, and honesty and truth, and the kinds of things that anyone can agree with. I guess I consider myself to be a Christian with a grain of salt, in that I reserve the right to not listen when I think it’s stupid. I used to go to church, but I don’t as an adult. There are ways of being a moral person, and if no one is reminding you, then you kind of forget. That’s what I really like about church.

Does Staten Island get a bad rap?
I think they do. I think the biggest reason is that for most New Yorkers the only way to get to Staten Island is getting on a boat. And I think that is just a little too much planning, a little bit too involved for most people. I’m sure there are some lovely places down there, I’ve never been. But y’know I don’t feel particularly encouraged to go there. But my brother actually might be moving there, so that could change my perspective.

Last day on Earth: What do you do?
I think I’d try to make a sprinting whirlwind tour of the most important people in my life, family, friends, and just reconnect and spend my last few moments with them. That would be pretty special.

What’s your favorite Tom Cruise movie?
Magnolia. I saw it when I was 11 in theaters, and I was way too young to handle it. Tom Cruise’s character in that movie, not only does he do a damn good acting job, but the character is just so amazing and ridiculous. Especially because Tom Cruise has gone a little bit off the reservation, it kind of now just reminds me of him in real life. It was the perfect role for him.

Andrew Piccone is a photographer in New York.

Okay, Science: you got us into this mess. (Well, not really. You just made the discoveries. But what was Industrialism gonna do? Not exploit them to the detriment of the planet?) It’s up to you to get us out of it. Make us some of those carbon-eating plants.

A new analysis published in the October issue of Bioscience suggests that by 2050 humans could offset between five and eight gigatons of the carbon emitted annually by growing plants and trees optimized via genetic engineering both for fuel production and carbon sequestration… Plants take up CO2 and store carbon in their biomasses. Carbon can stay for decades or centuries in leaves, stems, branches, seeds and flowers aboveground, whereas carbon allocated to underground root systems is more apt to be transferred into the soil, where it can stay sequestered for millennia. Therefore, an ideal bioenergy plant would produce lots of aboveground biomass for fuel as well as have an extensive root system. Preliminary research indicates that genetic engineering approaches could be employed to enhance both these traits.

Climate change expert Allison Thompson stresses caution in making predictions, saying, “You can’t really say how much bioenergy we are going use if you’re not also considering…” Yes, yes, yes. Fine, fine. Just please start making the plants that will save the world now. And also make it so they grow flowers that taste like bacon and are rich in the HDL “good” cholesterol and produce alcohol that doesn’t give you a hangover. Thanks.

by Jeff Johnson and David Roth

A charming series of digressions in which two gentlemen of leisure reflect on the game of football and its surrounding culture.

Jeff: Why does Parcells want to quit the Dolphins now? I read that he is slowly extracting himself. Are things too normal for him there?

David: His work is done there. I think he just wants to get back to coaching, to the fun part. You know, calling younger dudes faggots in the press. Does Parcells actually want to quit? I imagine him just stalking around some instant mansion in Alpine, New Jersey, screaming at paintings.

Jeff: “Goddamn this fucking Rothko pussy. Can I not get an oil portrait of a stoic 81 year-old virgin next to a loaf of semolina”… OH CHRIST HE WANTS TO GO BACK TO COACH THE COWBOYS, DOESNT HE???

David: I’m sure of that. Only he can save them, etc. I am now really afraid that he’s going to coach Dallas.

Jeff: Press conference Parcells: “I have no idea what you are talking about but I wish you’d shut the fuck up.” Private Parcells: “…While we wait for this lesser man named Wade to naturally fail.”

David: Him and Jerry Jones taking a secret meeting at a Macaroni Grill in Plano.

Jeff: “I’m requesting you take your top off for Bill’s and my enjoyment,” Jerry said smiling. “But this is Macaroni Grill, sir.” “I don’t know if you’re aware but I commissioned the biggest TV set in North America.” “But I’m just the parking attendant.” “Then there shouldn’t be any problems.” If Parcells goes to Dallas, he will bleach his hair blonde again. 3 to 1.

David: Break out the old coaching shorts. “Still fit…To the extent that they ever fit.”

Jeff: Maybe now that the JETS are doing great he wants to go back there and disrupt it somehow.

David: He’s calling Rex Ryan with (unsolicited) advice. “Question Sanchez’s sexuality IMMEDIATELY and then cut the punter. JUST DO IT! Do you want to win or not?”

Jeff: Calls a press conference just to declare he is not interested in the JETS job and Steve Serby starts bawling.

David:Francesa threatens suicide on air if Parcells doesn’t coach the Jets. People have to call in and tell him there’s too much to live for.

Jeff: “Aww, Gott. He doesn’t come back an’ coach Da Jettsss, dere’s sometin’ wrong with football. No disrespect to what Rex Ryan has done. But when we’re talkin’ ovah-weight and obnoxious dere’s Pah-cells. Me. Den dere’s Rex Ryan. No one has da FUPA dat Pah-cells does. I’m sorry. No one.”

David: Johnny from Long Island is like “Mike, I just think you need to think about the simple joys. A sunny day. A veal chop covered in a pound of fontina cheese. A 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke.” And Francesa’s like “The Diet Coke… it doesn’t taste like anything anymawh.”

Jeff: “Da moooves Bill made in ’99, set da ball in motion for de ahh Jettts success a decade late-ah.” You know he is itching to move to some other team, though. It has to be Dallas.

David: Yeah. And honestly it probably makes some sense, there. I just don’t want to see his snarling weissewurst face anymore.

Jeff: Here’s an NBC Sunday Night game promo: Tony Romo waking up and Parcells is in bed next to him. In a nightgown and sleeping cap…

David: He would cut Romo for wearing his hat backwards. Flannel nightgown is classic Parcells. He has a custom-made Zubaz one from when he coached in Dallas last. I know he needs to be, but I feel bad about Wade Phillips getting fired. He seems like a likable enough guy.

Jeff: He looks like the adult Casper the friendly ghost, if ghosts aged and also liked Papa John’s pizza maybe too much. He looks like the spokesperson for a new over the counter nighttime cold medication I want to invent.

David: It’s a sliding scale, obviously, with football coaches. But he looks like the sort of guy who’d make an ineloquent but emotional and heartfelt toast at some niece’s wedding.

Jeff: …called Pillows

David: Dewar’s and tears spilling all over the place.

Jeff: Pillows is basically a cold medicine like NyQuil, in marshmallow form. You chew it and blue stuff comes out that is so powerful it instantly numbs your tongue, and helps you sleep.

David: Like a Chewels full of medicine.

Jeff: When you are very sick. Yes, except the marshmallow is very addictive. I’d eat a SACK of ‘em.

David: I’m glad he’s got something to fall back on. I am wanting one of these.

Jeff: Was he coach in Buffalo once? Wasn’t everyone?

David: If you’re the 103rd caller on Buffalo’s home of classic rock, you get to coach the team for a week.

Jeff: 3 QBS/ 3 Head Coaches a season, and nine running backs and zero receivers.

David: Chan Gailey called in and was like “Did I win? Great. Also can you play ‘Twilight Zone’ by Golden Earring?” Poor Bills. I don’t know that they traded Marshawn Lynch so much as they just noticed that he was showing up at the facility less and less frequently.

Jeff: Are the Patriots now playing their season FOR Junior Seau?Will the Chargers? “We are all Junior Seau.”

David: So tell me what actually happened, there? He allegedly assaulted his girlfriend, got out of jail, and then drove off a cliff?”

Jeff: Yep. That is the NFL’s new anti-concussion campaign, which is this week’s texting dong pix, BTW. We are all trapped in a sedan going off a cliff by a confused and sad driver. “Junior’s actions were due to sustained, repeated cranial impact.” I wouldn’t laugh at this, but you know going off a cliff was never going to kill Junior Seau. He’s indestructible. He’s just going to drink a liter of Malibu and chew up a handful of Pillows and see what happens. And that’s a whole lot cheaper than a shrink.

David: Yeah, I’m sure that dude toughed out any number of concussions. Just to show his teammates that he would put winning ahead of his own short-term memory.

Jeff: Most comment sections of NFL fans this week are like “GET OUT OF AMERICA,” if you don’t appreciate full contact sports.

David: Yeah, really. “Liberals need to stop gaying around with our NATIONAL PASTIME!”

David: It’s going to be tough to have a real conversation.

Jeff: You are a man of bravery and valor if you can hit a defenseless player helmet to helmet.

David: I don’t know where you go from there. Suspensions are better than BS fines, obviously. Every year or so there’s some contrarian piece that comes out about how you could eliminate this problem by banning helmets. Because players think they’re more protected than they are when they’re wearing one. But obviously that’s not going to happen, however many pieces Slate runs on it.

This is such a tough topic. Everything that’s fun about the game just goes out the window (like so many anvils) and we’re left trying to figure out how to get guys who get trained to hurt other people to be a little less egregious in their attempts to hurt people. Got to love Rodney Harrison, who I think of as just the dirtiest dude I ever saw play, being the voice of reason on TV, though. It’s like those interviews in FEDS where some old drug dealer dude is like “I don’t want the youth to go down the same route as me, because there’s no way they’d be able to run the streets like I did.”

Jeff: What’s crazy is that we don’t know what Rodney Harrison will be like in a decade, ’cause the effects take a while to kick in, so he might be all foggy, and just telling people about Junior Seau.

Here’s an open question: Are there New Yorkers who are big fans of Ryan Fitzpatrick who also have a bus company, who want to take me down to Baltimore, provide free game tickets, and watch the Bills vs. Ravens game?

David: This would be the venue to put that out there. I’m sure there’s some van full of his old Harvard ultimate pals going down. They’re going to leave really early and tailgate for seven hours. Get your hacky-sack game tight so as not to play yourself. Can I tell you my Ryan Fitzpatrick story?

Jeff: PLEASE DO.

David: So when I was at Topps, I edited a really great Ryan Fitzpatrick card. It recounted a story from his rookie year, when he was backing up Bulger in St. Louis.

His teammates knew he went to Harvard, so they came up to him after practice and were like “Ryan we were hoping you could help us with this, we’ve been discussing it for hours.” He says okay.

“So, what would hurt more, getting slapped by an elephant’s trunk or kicked by a donkey?”

So Fitzpatrick told them it was getting kicked by a donkey.

And they were all “Thanks for settling that.”

That’s basically the story, except with the addendum that he emailed me after I wrote about it in my story about working at Topps for Slate. So he also reads Slate, although I don’t know his position on playing-without-a-helmet or whatever.

Jeff: WAIT HE SENT YOU AN EMAIL FOR REAL?

David: Yeah, let me see if I can find it. It was brief.

Jeff: Did he use a harvard.alumni.edu address

David: I think he was busy. Teammates being like “Okay, how about this one, getting stung on the nuts by a bee, or you get the camel clutch?”

Jeff: or was he brainiacbackupQB@stlrams.com

David: I’m still trying to find the email. Now I’m really intent on re-reading it. His address was FrisbeeFanatik@Harvard.edu. CC’ed to his work address at Midnight_Toker@nfl.com.

Jeff: Do you like how Seattle came alive? That’s what getting insulted in this column can do for you.

David: Kind of. I mean, I like the Bears losing. I want Mike Martz to keep his job, of course, because he’s a genius. But the Bears are irritating to me.

Jeff: Do you think any of the members of Queensryche have Seahawks season tickets?

David: I can only hope. They’re sitting in the same section as the Mother Love Bone dudes. So did you actually watch the Bears/Seahawks game? You had an amazing stat on Martz’s play-calling from that one the other day. Like the Bears have run the ball 15 times over the first 6 weeks or whatever.

Jeff: Did not watch. Is it an indignity to Martz that he is not a head coach?

David: He is really working hard to remind everyone that he is still around. It’s really easy to tell what team he’s coaching. Lot of 11-step drops. Lot of triple-reverses.

Jeff: He’d only want to be a head coach to undermine his assistants.

David: Snatching the dude’s headphones off on TV.

Jeff: The Bears have no receivers.

David: The Seahawks receivers all seem like names generated by a video game that doesn’t have a NFL Players Association license. So you get “Deon Butler” and “Mike Williams” and “Receiver Jones.”

Jeff: WR 82. And the Bears guys you think might have Willie Gault characteristics But he is really Brian Baschnagel. Or Tom Waddle.

David: Poor Waddle. Talk about concussion prone. So I found Fitzpatrick’s email. And you’ll be happy to know that he was an early adopter of Gmail.

Jeff: IrishguyQBbetatester@gmail.com

David: Fitzpatrick was probably the fourth person on Facebook.

Jeff: WHOA. I wonder if he has any stories about Zuckerberg.

David: A moment in which Fitzpatrick was moderately dismissive of Zuckerberg was the genesis for Facebook, I think. Isn’t that where Sorkin went with the screenplay?

Jeff: “We’re not bros. I’m a star athlete and a genius and I have a beard and I am the reason Thom Yorke is into American football now.”

David: “Here, watch me try to run over a linebacker while my teammates wander aimlessly about the field sending text messages and snacking.”

Jeff: Did you know Thom Yorke and Sammy Hagar are really only 2 degrees of separation apart? It looks like the Chiefs will be 8–8,

David: I like those guys. I’m officially on board with the Chiefs, Even though their coach looks like a less-likable-than-average pro golfer.

Jeff: Mike Vrabel and Kansas City. What are two things Jim Jarmusch almost certainly, defiantly knows nothing about?

David: Vrabel needs to stop. If he keeps playing, some announcer is going to die of exuberance during a game talking about Vrabel’s leadership. “You want to talk about bearded excellence. I mean that’s just a man, right there. Oh shit, my heart, I need an aspirin.”

Jeff: And I don’t know what the Broncos problem is.

David: They’re pretty lousy, I think. Another not-likable Belichick protege coaching there.

Jeff: Oh God. That coach always looks like he just got hom from a slumber party, with that too-soft, inside out throwback sweatshirt. Barf. He looks like a nine year old who just got done with hockey practice.

David: “I didn’t play well enough to deserve ice cream today.”

Jeff: “Ready to watch Home Alone, Josh? Can you please change for your sister’s recital? “

Jeff: At least Shaun Hill is fueling the revival in Detroit. Kitna 2.0.

David: But so much more likeable! Kitna’s little stuffed-animal eyes are no match for Hill’s flinty near-competence. So, is there anything in your heart, at all, for Cowboys fans? Do you feel for them even a little bit?

Jeff: I have nothing for those people. When things are good for them they piss on everyone as fast as they can. The only reason they want their team to be good is so that someone else might be emotionally hurt by them winning.

David: I agree. I’m sorry their team is not going to make the playoffs, but I am REALLY sorry that they’re tweeting more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger shit about “Phillips must step down. He has dishonored the franchise.” What Cowboys fans miss most about winning is being able to get up in other peoples’ faces with their bleu cheese wing-sauce breath and be like “SCOREBOARD, MY FRIEND.”

Jeff: I do think the Cowboys are more fun to hate when they and their fans think they have something left to play for.

David: Yeah, I’m not looking forward to three months of self-important moping. They also can be fun to watch. They’re a good team, and they play the WWF Heel thing up pretty well. Elaborate first down celebrations after meaningless plays, etc. If they were the exact same team, but played in Buffalo, I’d be a big fan. I’d be writing a column about hope and pride every week.

David: Next question: For all the buttheads moaning about the imminent and tragic pussification of the NFL once attempted decapitation becomes officially frowned-upon, would you be sad if the NFL got less brutal?

Jeff: I like the NFL being tough and painful but, in a word, “no.” You don’t need to hit a person in the chin at full blast with your helmet. What is hard is that it’s so subjective, but we all seem to know cheap shots when we see them.

David: Yeah, I think they really stand out. The Meriweather one last weekend was super egregious. The second Harrison murder attempt. I’d be fine with taunting and TD dances more or less allowed and with a sterner and more consistent approach to regulating attempted homicide. The idea that Chad Johnson got fined more for his full-dress post-TD stagings of HMS Pinafore a few years back than Meriweather will be for trying to kill Todd Heap isn’t right.

I did meet someone once who only watched the NFL for brutal hits. He was kind of a tangential friend of my parents and I remember when I was in high school, him watching a game with me and just chuckling with glee after every tackle.

Like actual middle schooler shit — a grown-ass man with a beard and a big glass of Seagrams 7 going “ha ha GOOOZHE you see that?” after every tackle.

I asked him if he cared about the Eagles, which was his local team, and he said, “No, I just like watching guys get hit.” I don’t know that you need to pander to that guy if you’re the NFL, though. He’s already got, like, the whole rest of the culture doing that.

Jeff: I like to see a guy get crushed, but not a guy who can’t “help” being crushed.

David: My rule is basically that I do not want to see obvious brain trauma in my entertainment. I wish that peer pressure could somehow alleviate it. Like players actually being “that’s not cool, man.” Ritual shaming rituals, like in those Miller Lite commercials where a guy refuses to order Miller Lite even though some foxy bartendress suggests he should? And then she calls him gay, basically. And he goes back to his table and his friends (?) call him gay? And then you buy Miller Lite because you don’t want to be, um, misunderstood. QED like a motherfucker!

Jeff: Yes, because demanding a beer with more flavor and less calories, served in a bottle with the swirly neck technology is more way more manly.

David: I should say that I actually have chugged a bottle of Miller Lite with the swirly neck. Not proud of that. But the engineering delivers.

Jeff: Does the swirl top work? Have we really made it to 2010 without that existing in bottle tech before?

David: I mean, it delivered as pleasant a chugging-Miller-Lite experience as possible, probably. It does not remove the shame, but it does reduce the foam-effect somewhat. I love the engineering race in corny macro-brews at this point. Like Coors finding new ways to make its bottle a Freezy Freakie mitten with beer inside. “If the penguin on the mountain starts waving, your beer will be excellent. But if the polar bear is giving you the finger, put it back in the fridge.”

Jeff: I think if you started calling Miller Lite drinkers Swirl Tops, they would pull the ads immediately.

David: When Bud Light finally goes negative, that’s obviously the way to do it. Or Coors could have Sam Elliott say it. “Are you a Swirl Top? Or are you a patriot?”

Jeff Johnson has long complained and cheered about sports, while making little sense. Follow him here. David Roth co-writes the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Fix, contributes to the sports blog Can’t Stop the Bleeding and has his own little website.

In defense of Betty Hofstadt Draper Francis: “We all said we wanted Betty to get in touch with her anger, but we expected that anger to look admirable and positive and feminist. We didn’t consider that it might just be anger.”

by Llewellyn Hinkes-Jones

According to this convoluted Miami Herald article that macerates its own opening, the recently arrested Francisco Chávez Abarca, who is accused of terrorist attacks in Cuba in the 90s, is actually a double-agent mystery man in a thriller of international suspense and intrigue. He admits to planting bombs in hotels and colluding with others on the bombing of Cubana Flight 455, but maybe he’s just a patsy in a game of cloak and dagger and disinformation to tarnish the good name of admitted terrorist Posada Carriles?

Actually, no, none of that makes any sense. Some back-story might be helpful.

Although most Americans don’t know it, Cuba’s actually been inundated with terrorist attacks in the 50+ years following the Cuban revolution. Everybody knows about the Bay of Pigs Invasion, but there’s been many others that most people don’t know about: hotel bombings, agricultural sabotage, attacks on Cuban diplomats, and the downing of a commercial flight headed to Barbados killing all 73 passengers aboard — including the whole Cuban fencing team. Most of it was perpetrated by Cuban ex-pats living in Florida.

There’s a lot of speculation about how much of it is CIA financed or planned, and for that you really need to dig into details and paper trails. For many years, Miami was home to the CIA’s second-largest base of operations. But the people who orchestrated the attacks — everybody knows who they are. They freely admit their role in the attacks. They consider it retaliation for the “crimes of the Revolution.” Or something like that. They hate Fidel with a passion, either because he took, or was about to take, their land, wealth, casinos and/or rum factories and spread it amongst the people. Fidel also had a tendency to throw people in jail at the drop of a hat. That certainly didn’t help the situation.

Still, the result is that there are literally terrorist training camps in South Florida, as crazy as that seems. These are terrorist training facilities, as in “training facilities for attacks on civilians.” Orlando Bosch, who is implicated in the Cubana Flight 455 bombing and lives freely in the U.S., has previously stated that all Cuban planes, commercial or otherwise, are available for attack.

This would all be shocking information for anybody caught up in the American idea of a war on terror, but really, nobody in America cares, except for people in Miami and in certain parts of New Jersey. It’s all a battle between Cuba and ex-Cubans. Some of it just happens to be planned out on American soil.

One of those terrorists is Luis “Bambi” Posada Carilles. Posada, who also lives freely in Miami, admits to helping bomb a series of Havana hotels in the late 90s (bombings that injured 11 people and killed an Italian tourist), to running guns to the Nicaraguan rebels for Oliver North and the CIA, and to attempting to assassinate Castro with a gym bag full of C4 in Panama. But he denies having anything to do with the flight bombing. That would just be crazy.

So when Venezuela arrests an accused terrorist and car thief named Francisco Chávez Abarca, and he implicates Posada in the flight bombing, the obvious conclusion that the Miami Herald jumps to is that all of this is fake. It’s all diplomatic theater. Rather than an admitted terrorist being guilty of other crimes of terrorism, it’s really that these other countries have hired actors to falsify confessions. They gave him a script to read with all the intimate details of planting a bomb in a Havana hotel in the 70s, set him up in front of a video camera and let him chew some scenery.

The Herald doesn’t really get into why they would think Abarca is a double agent of mystery. They quote Posada’s attorney, who thinks Abarca should look more gaunt from his time in prison — and meanwhile, Abarca’s wife freely admits to his role in the attacks. “’You have to remember the role Cuba played in El Salvador: they trained guerrillas in explosives and bombs,’ she said in a telephone call from El Salvador. ‘So what is the issue: who planted more bombs?’”

That’s the odd situation that the Herald is in. Because their bread and butter is the ex-pat community in South Florida, they can’t just print any accusation that comes out of Cuba or Venezuela. And they certainly can’t admit that we’re harboring a wanton international terrorist in the heart of War on Terror-land. So they threw together something confusing about mystery and spies and subterfuge in the hopes that afterwards nobody would remember what all the fuss was about.

Llewellyn Hinkes-Jones is a Washington, D.C.-based writer whose work has appeared in The Toronto Star, The Atlantic and The Morning News.

Is the white iPhone 4 going to appear today? Maybe! Is there a reason that you need one? No, not at all. Apple’s announcements today are thought to include a new OS (Lion!) and maybe a Verizon iPhone. But not only is Apple HQ apparently swimming in white iPhone 4s, and not only is the $8-million bedazzled iPhone 4 available to one lucky (stupid) buyer, then there’s this, over at the house of Ben Baller, JEWELER to the STARS™. Why does he have one and you don’t?

Finally, a solution for our old people problem! Inventors are creating new and exciting robots that we can use to keep our elderly occupied during their slow limp towards death. No longer will we be forced to bear the financial burdens of in-home nurses or, God forbid, actually have to spend time with them ourselves. Now we can give them a tic-tac-toe-playing machine and go live our young, exciting lives! This truly is a blessing of technology. (This is mostly unrelated, but while I have you: You ever notice how when you’re forced to talk to an old person they always try to touch your hand and shit? How annoying is that?) Anyway, if Science does this right you will never have to hear the story about the time Aunt Ruthie scammed your grandma out of some penny candy her father had brought home from the war again. She can tell it to the robot. Everybody wins!