GIN AND TACOS

I know what you are thinking:

—
As a loyal ginandtacos.com reader, I'm always up to date on the links you keep on the right side of your webpage. And while checking gapserblock, I saw a post related to something lame involving Star Trek, that when followed through, cites an email address mike@trekunited.com.

Mike I know your email is usually mike@whateverwebpage.com: is this you? If this is true mike, this is lame, even for you.
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This is lame, even for the internet.
—

Harsh, but true. As it stands I am the Number One officer (that's second in charge for you neophytes) for the Illinois chapter of trekunited.com. Long story short I pointed out the webpage to my roommate as a random site (I'm not a fan of the show, but he is), who immediately got in touch with the people in charge, and became a ranking member of their site.

He asked me "are you in?" It was the tone that close friends use when things are going to get a bit intense (the last time I used it, I believe, was showing up to a hungover friend's apartment saying nothing but "we have a red convertable and we are driving to Kentucky to drink Maker's Mark. Are you in?") – and as such I realized I had no choice in the matter.

My first fundraising idea was to have a bake sale where we would be from the future, having traveled through time bringing fresh cookies from the 23rd century to help Scott Bakula. But I realized that this didn't go far enough.
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We had to do something dramatic.
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So we rented out Logan Square auditorium and decided to throw:

We contacted the internet all this weekend, telling people of the plans through various message boards. You could imagine my surprise when I opened my trekunited.com email address this morning and, instead of seeing hundreds of Star Trek fans rallying at my digital horn of gondor, finding a single email, from France. Babelfish could not determine whether or not the writer loved or hated the Bakula (the first person to comment an accurate translation will get an inappropriate belated internet v-day card from me).

As such, I'm getting a bit worried about this party – and I've gone to Red Alert.
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Have I mislead the female singer-songwriter pianist into thinking she is going to be "playing a normal party we are just throwing for a random group of people" so that she'd think "it would be a great place to invite all your [female] friends"? Have I had to write an email explaining why I'd make a good addition to the Gay Enterprise Fans Yahoo Group, in the hope of getting word to a possible cluster of guys living in Boystown who are a little too much into Quantum Leap? Have I outright bribed close friends into showing? Yes to all of these things, and to more.

And now I appeal to you. If you've always wanted to hang out/meet/get back in contact with me, but (or only) wanted to see me in a humble [read: wearing Starfleet jumpsuit] situation, now is your chance. You would all get a major favor back out of me; if you buy raffle tickets the favor can be of the "it's 2am and I'm covered in blood and I need you to come over and put your fingerprints on this gun/knife/candlestick" variety.

Do it for me. No wait; do it for Scott.

see you there. mike out.

It is no secret that I am a huge fan of your television series "COPS", and it's offspring, "World's Wildest Police Chases." COPS is perfectly situation in the 7pm time slot on Saturday Night so that I can enjoy a light drink or take-out food while preparing for the later evening plans.

And If we are to define "prayer" as the act of observing a highly repetitious event over a length of time in the attempt to find spiritual peace, then the act of watching World's Wildest Police Chases' endless cycle of:

a) Car is pulled over.
b) Car takes off while officer is walking towards it.
c) Car drives for a long time while being chased and "tapped." Car then crosses the median and is headed towards oncoming traffic.
d) Narrator Sheriff John Bunnell observes that the Driver "is showing complete disregard for innoncent bystanders."
e) Spikes are thrown, blowing out the tires. Car drives on the rims, shooting off a hypnotizing fireworks display of sparks.
f) Driver gets to home/abandoned factory/end of the road, gets out of car and makes a run for it. Driver is then beaten senselessly by attending officers.

Is like the Our Father and Hail Mary rolled into one (if a helicopter or Macomb County is involved, then it's like the Act of Contrition).
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nobody shows complete disregard for innocent bystanders on his watch

But back to the matter at hand Fox Network. Last year you aired a Cops special that could never be topped: you ran two hours of domestic abuse calls, entitled the special "Love Hurts", and ran it Valentine's Day Night. This really happened; scroll down to Sat.

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on this site, which gives it the accurate though misdirected description of "Even for 'COPS' this is tasteless."

I was able to watch the first two segments and they became my new favorite COPS moments. One featured cops appearing at a trailer home where a middle-aged guy was beaten up by his wife's secret boyfriend who had fled.

The cops, god bless them, tried to counsel the situation, informing the wife that she would have to choose between the two men. After giving it a fair amount of thought, the wife tells the officer "I have decided." Cop: "Good to hear it." Wife: "I'm going to keep dating both of them."

The other segment involved cops appearing at a scene of reported abuse where the women was yelling out the second story window for them to go away. They informed her that the had to get inside by law, and that a battering ram was going to arrive at the scene and they were going to break her door unless she opened it. She closed her window and disappeared into the house – and sure enough 5 minutes later there's a broken door and everyone is being dragged outside in cuffs.

When the cops asked the women why she didn't let them in, her answer described that perfect american thought: "I figured if I stopped talking to you then you would just go away." This is Homer Simpson's "I'll hide under some coats, and hope that somehow everything will work out" in action.

So as you can see, I was hoping to see this special aired again this Valentine's Day where I could harness the power of Tivo to watch it endlessly for the better part of forever. Imagine my surprise then when I learned that you will be airing the Budweiser Shootout Nascar Race instead of any COPS. Perhaps people who watch COPS overlap with Nascar fans. Perhaps not (I don't). Either way, this special needed to air again, and I'm worried that it is lost forever.

Congratulations – you've broken my heart this Valentine's Day. I hope you are happy. This was your one chance to make even for the Fox News Network in my mind and you wasted it. You suck.

Sincerely,

mike

What with the recent Super Bowl and all, we in the United States are at risk of feeling that we have a monopoly on obsessive, ridiculous sports fandom.

Americans are known to engage in such absurd actions as painting their chests and going shirtless in subzero weather, rushing the field for no apparent reason (landing themselves in jail), engaging in fistacuffs with the opposing team members, and eating dangerously fattening snack foods and sausages.

Yet, through it all, have they ever…..REMOVED THEIR OWN TESTICLES?

You can obviously see the connection

So, this is apparently how it went down. This complete lunatic told his drinking buddies that in the event of a Welsh victory over England in the Six Nations Cup, he would in fact sever his own testicles. This comes as virtually no surprise considering the fact that:

a. I am sure similar amazingly stupid statements have been uttered at a wide variety of sporting events.

b. The man is Welsh…

The shocking part of this story is the simple fact that upon Wales ending up victorious the man apparently took some sharp implement to his balls, removed them, and returned to the bar to boast to his friends. I am sure the conversation went something like this.

Severed-balls man: Hey bitches, bet you think you're a fan of the Welsh national team but are any of you cocksuckers willing to remove your own testicles to prove your love of the sport?!?

severed-balls man extends his hand to reveal two freshly cut bits of manhood

Random Rugby fan: But you are aware that despite your pure love of rugby, you will now never be able to properly love a woman – or most likely a man in your case.

Severed-balls man: Oh fuck, you're right. Someone call an ambulance.

There is no word as of right now whether the hospital attempted to reattach the testicles or not.

According to the Daily Mirror: "He came back later wearing a kilt with his testicles in a bag," a fellow fan who was with Mr Huish at the social club told the Daily Mirror.

"He lifted the kilt up to show everyone what he had done. There was blood everywhere, it was terrible. That's when he collapsed."

Updates: According to The Scotsman Online: "Staff phoned the emergency services and put the testicles in a pint glass filled with ice cubes. "

And finally the mirror.co.uk: "He will need cosmetic surgery and may be given a prosthetic scrotum."

Side story for a second. My favorite movie moment from last year was the dinner between Jason Schwartzman, Mark Wahlberg and a family headed by a strangely bearded Richard Jenkins (the dad from Six Feet Under) in I Heart Huckabee's. I won't give too much of it away, but Schwartzman plays an activist, and Jenkins an electrical engineer, and within minutes of first meeting they are at each others throats.

Both are coming at issues from such completely different starting points that it is impossible to imagine them being able to talk about anything – sprawl means waste to Schwartzman; fighting it means communism and no jobs to Jenkins.

A few minutes later they are thrown out of the house, and that little side-mini drama captures the high level of discourse this past year over everything.

A vote for or against Bush wasn't a vote for or against supple-side economics or interventionist foriegn policy; it was a vote for or against a complete way of seeing the world through faith-based lens.

As such, everybody on both sides spent a good part of 2004 yelling at each other. This award could go to any single one of them, but your Rush Limbaughs were convincing us that liberal are destroying everything for a decade now. So instead I'm naming it the best liberal breakdown and giving it to the person whose change for this year stands out the most: Lawrence O'Donnell.

I'm a "The McLaughlin Group" junkie since high school, and he's been my favorite guy on it for the past few years. He's a nice, polite, smart and clever democrat. His resume has all the things you'd expect in the defender of the democratic party: Senior Advisor to Senator Moynihan, Democratic Chief of Staff of the United States Senate Committee on Finance in the early-to-mid 90s, prodcuer of the West Wing (where he won a few awards for co-writing an episode about the death penalty).

Being on a show with Pat Buchanan, you'd expect him to match his level, but instead he would contain himself. Until this past year. Here are two instances of his year-long meltdown.

First off, the first Mclaughlin Group after the Kerry loss (airdate nov. 5th):

MR. O'DONNELL: But the big problem the country now has, which is going to produce a serious discussion of secession over the next 20 years, is that the segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don't pay for the federal government.
MR. BLANKLEY: Did you say secession?
MR. BUCHANAN: (Laughs.)
MR. O'DONNELL: Yes, yes.
MR. BLANKLEY: Are you calling for civil war?
MR. O'DONNELL: Ninety — not war; you can secede without firing a shot.
MR. BLANKLEY: Not if you have a Lincoln in the White House.

MR. O'DONNELL: Ninety percent of the red states are welfare client states of the federal government. They collect more from the federal government than they send in. New York and California, Connecticut, the states that are blue are all the states that are paying for the bulk of everything this government does, from the ward of Social Security to everything else, and the people in those states don't like what this government is doing.
MR. BUCHANAN: (Off mike.)
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Let him finish!
MR. O'DONNELL: That cannot hold.

Going to one of my favorite commentators days after the Kerry loss (remember how sad of a day that was?) and having him call for a civil war did not cheer me up one bit. The rest of the commentators were a bit stunned. But I should have known that he was going to be intense that day, because I had seen over the internet him tear apart the head of the Swift Boat Vets on Scarborough Country (with guest host Pat Buchanan). Trust me – watch this video. Keep in mind that this man writes and produces The West Wing – 99% of the time he is smiling politely while discussing poltics. Not this time (follow the image link through to the media file):

Although Buchanan issued an apology, I cheered after seeing that clip, but that was before the election. After the secession talk, I was a little worried about Mr. O'Donnell, and he wasn't on the Mclaughlin Group for about two months – thankfully he was there for the Year End special, in which his resolution for 2005 was to not call people liars, unless they deserve it.

Good to have the man back.