He completes us

The fine folks at The Daily Show are at it again. This week's Democratic National Convention coverage peaked with this take on the obligatory biographical video of Barack Obama:



Can't wait to see what they have on tap for McCain next week.

Kobe...Comic Geek???

Be careful ladies, an encounter with Kobe Bryant in the past might have ended with non consensual anal sex, but today you might just have to listen to him talk comics.

Who saw this coming?

From our friends at Comic Book Resources.com:

"For the past two weeks, people from around the world have been watching with intense interest the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the ultimate sports competition. One group of athletes that have been watched with particular excitement not just in the U.S. but across the globe has been America’s men’s basketball team. Dubbed the “Redeem Team,” the players are hoping to capture the gold after a disappointing and embarrassing bronze medal finish in the 2004 Olympics games in Athens. Featuring NBA stars like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Jason Kidd, the team remains unbeaten thus far.

Preparing for Olympic competition requires ceaseless practice and training, and for one Team USA member, that preparation included passing the time on the 13-hour flight to Beijing with a handful of graphic novels.

Taio Iwado was closing up shop at Lee’s Comics a couple of weeks back -- his last day on the job at the San Mateo, California store -- when a knock came at the door. We’ll let Iwado tell the story from there.

"I looked up and saw a man in a suit with a silver mustache and military cut tapping at the glass. I continued to count dimes as I politely said, "I'm sorry, sir, we closed at 8:00pm and it's already 8:30."

He then smiled back at me and stepped aside to say, "Well... Would you open up for him?"
There he was, standing in all of his 81-Points-in-one-game glory, wearing his blue and red NBA-approved sweat suit. The dimes fell from my hand onto the counter like copper and tin rain as I gasped out a meager, "Kobe!"

Kobe, his one-man entourage and bodyguard all snickered unsurprised at my reaction as I fumbled around the counter to open the door. As I took out my keys I heard Kobe's friend say, "That's one way to get them to open up."

I opened the door and shook the hands of the three men as they entered the store and said, "Welcome to Lee's Comics, how can I help you?" I must have been working on some sort of autonomous shock setting as I spoke with Kobe, stunned that he was in San Mateo and in Lee's Comics asking him, "So what kind of stuff are you into?"

Kobe happily replied, "I'm into that dark shit. I've got a 13-hour flight to China and need something good to read." Immediately I recommended my favorite author Garth Ennis and “Preacher” to him, explaining the intricacies of the faithless Reverend Custer, his assassin girlfriend Tulip, best-friend/Irish Vampire Cassidy, and his quest to make God pay for abandoning humanity. Kobe's eyes lit up as I told him the tale of Jesse and the reasons why Preacher would change his view on comics forever.

He chuckled, saying, "My Man!" and giving me a high-five and taking the first two "Preacher" volumes. I also helped him track down the latest volume of “100 Bullets,” of which he is an avid fan, as well as “The Dark Knight Strikes Again,” “Across the Universe: DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore,” “Batman vs. Two-Face” and “Batman: The Joker's Last Laugh.” Quite the list of well-written stories (all of which can be found at Lee's Comics).

Kobe was nothing but a gentleman and was completely down-to-earth with this simple clerk as we joked about checking for his ID as he paid with his credit card. I once again shook hands with Kobe and his compatriots as they left the store, asking to pose for a picture before he left for Olympic glory. Kobe shook my hand again giving me a pat on the back saying, "Thanks again, my man." As he got into his black Escalade with his bodyguard and NBA cohort, I felt I had accomplished all I could for the world of comics by turning Kobe Bryant onto the works of Garth Ennis and keeping him entertained as he flew into the maw of the Great Red Dragon to represent our country.

Special thanks to Taio Iwado and Lee Hester for allowing CBR to share this story with Kobe Bryant fans, Olympics fans, DC Comics fans and Garth Ennis fans all around the world.

Gotta love the Cincinnaughty Bungles!

From Deadspin.com:

" When complaining on the message boards isn't enough: The fans of the Cincinnati Bengals have spoken...with signage. This billboard was spotted just off of I-75, perhaps so Henry could see it himself as he drives away by in a stolen/borrowed rental car. "




And there is really not much more that I can add. Seriously. Carson "White Bread" Palmer has got to be steamed right now. And poor Marvin Lewis! Didn't anyone explain the ineptitude of the Brown family and their management "skills" before you took the head coaching job???

The Rule of 3

If you've known me long enough, you have most assuredly heard me espouse on the rule of three, especially when it comes to celebrity deaths. When we lost Bernie Mac and Issac Hayes in the same weekend, I was simply waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sadly, it has. LeRoi Moore, saxophone player extraordinaire and member of the Dave Matthews Band, has passed away.

When Slick and I (along with our ladies) caught DMB a couple of weeks back, Moore was hospitalized and had been replaced on the tour by Bella Fleck's sax man. While he did a more than adequate job, Slick and I were both saddened by the fact that we missed out on a LeRoi performance. Little did we know that Moore would die some days later from the injuries he received in his ATV accident.

The tragedy here is that both Moore and Mac were still at the peak of their games. To compound matters, Slick and I never got to catch Bernie Mac doing his stand-up show - something we will always regret. Hayes, though older and having slowed down just a bit, still had much to offer as well.




We'll miss you guys.

Robots in Disguise

So, my three year old has discovered the Transformers courtesy of going through my old toys in our garage. He found my old Shockwave toy which transforms into a purple gun who, surprisingly after 20 years, still works. (Side Note: After checking the prices this thing fetches on eBay, my son will only get to play with this thing until the auction closes. Then he will be "lost". Bwahahahahahaha!!!)

Anyhow, after trying to explain what Transformers were and why I liked them so much, I finally turned to You Tube to show the little fella the bad animation goodness that we all grew up on. To my pleasant surprise, I found this little gem.

Hooooo-boy. This...this is bad. You can thank me later.

Unsolved Mysteries

One of our favorite authors around here in the Outfield is Brad Meltzer. The trailer for The Book of Lies, Meltzer's highly anticipated new novel has arrived and is making noise around the web because of its guest spots by Joss Whedon ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer", Serenity) and Damon Lindleoff ("LOST"). The book examines two great unsolved murder cases: Cain's murder of Abel in the Bible and the 1932 killing of Mitchell Siegel, a man whose son went on to create the world's greatest hero: Superman

Needless to say, I am pumped. The book arrives September 2, but you should check out the trailer right now.

Do-Over

As those who read my Bonnaroo coverage are aware, Louisville's own My Morning Jacket turned in a legendary performance on the Friday night of the festival, and Joker and I missed a large chunk of it, creating really our only real regret of the weekend.

Well, that's been bugging me for two months, so I decided to take a do-over. The band's homecoming show at Louisville's Waterfront Park (which, by all accounts, was stellar) coincided with Saturday's STP concert to which we already had tickets, so I decided to get bold, and I went to the band's Friday-night show in Nashville (hometown of guitarist Carl Broemel), at their Riverfront Park. I could not be happier with that choice.

Frankly, I enjoyed the show so much I'm not sure Louisville would have been better. Due to the layout of the park, I had an ideal vantage point, not too far (near the soundboard) and with no obstruction of my view, thanks to the park's stair-stepped plateau formation. The music was incredible, the light show was fantastic, and the environment provided some of the best moments of all. The General Jackson riverboat cruised by behind the stage a couple of times, and the Tennessee Titans preseason NFL game right across the river offered up occasional touchdown-celebrating fireworks, and eventually, a long game-ending fireworks extravaganza, serendipitously exploding during the band's encore performance of "War Begun." On top of that, there was more brief excitement during that song as some obnoxious jackass decided to climb the scaffolding of the stage. Not a moment I'm soon to forget.

Wanna see it? Unsurprisingly, someone got it on YouTube by the next morning:



Crazy.

Hittin' the Wayback Machine...

So, we here at the Outfield have been spending the summer enjoying lots of live music, as you know. But the month of August has been almost entirely dedicated to revisiting the music we loved in college (oh, those bygone years). On August 1, Joker and I (along with Mrs. Joker and my girlfriend) saw Dave Matthews Band (with Willie Nelson) at Louisville Slugger Field. It was a massive show with a huge crowd, possibly the event of the summer for Louisville, and we were down on the grass for the show--in the literal outfield.

This was the first Dave Matthews Band appearance in Louisville since 1995 (and that had been only a 45-minute set at Farm Aid), so it seemed ripe for a real rock-out with loads of memories. But it didn't really turn out that way. The show opened with long jams, the first three songs taking about a half-hour, and high energy really only kicked in (for me, at least) when the band performed a cover of Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House." Things were up and down for a while, with a performance of "Gravedigger" featuring Willie Nelson as a definite highlight, but the regular set ended strongly with late appearances by "#41," "Dancing Nancies" and "Ants Marching," plus a scorching cover of Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer." Still, I thought the show was lacking in the older, bigger hits, and went a little too strong on the jamming.

I know that's DMB's thing, and normally I wouldn't have a problem with it--if this were a concert at one of the venues they hit every summer. But this was a city were they hadn't played a full-length headlining show since becoming famous, so I'd think it would be expected that a large portion of the huge audience was fans who'd never seen the band before, not the traveling Daveheads that love setlist variety and long, trippy jams. So maybe it would have been a good idea to cater to the casual fans on this particular night. Just a thought from me.

Props, by the way, to my cousin CoCo and his crew (including his lovely wife, Ash) for navigating their way to the front rail, slightly to the side, just as DMB was starting to play. The girlfriend and I spent a little up-close time with the band thanks to them, and it was another great perspective on the show. All in all, we had a great time, but I wish the band had taken circumstances into account and thought about the many casual fans in attendance (some of whom I heard many complaints from in the subsequent week).

Eleven days later, the girlfriend and I checked out Smashing Pumpkins at the Louisville Palace, a much smaller venue for a much louder band. They're on a small-scale tour (few dates, tiny venues), and seemed to gear it for the diehard fans, with a setlist long on rarities and short on radio hits. Like Dave Matthews Band, they hadn't been to Louisville since their mid-nineties MTV heyday (1996, in fact--an arena show both Joker and I attended), so I think a lot of the attendees were expecting more classic material than they got, but I can kind of let this one slide where I didn't with DMB: since there were so many fewer available tickets, and publicity was pretty low (I ran into guys four days later wondering when the Smashing Pumpkins show was going to finally go on sale) outside the band's own website, there was probably a higher percentage of deep-catalogue fans at the theater show than at DMB's stadium gig. And the rarities they played rocked.

The only other real complaint here was the sound, which was mixed a little too heavy to the bass and drums, burying Billy Corgan's vocals at times, and almost eliminating the details of the guitar solos. It was loud, which was appropriate, but it wasn't quite clear. And my only real setlist complaint was the extended rendition of Pink Floyd's "Set Your Controls for the Heart of the Sun" (no, I'd never heard of it, either), which was about fifteen minutes of repetitive grinding, coming in wave after wave (which I'm sure would be ideal entertainment on certain controlled substances, but was exceedingly boring to the sober), followed by an interesting but not exciting feedback freakout conducted by Corgan and guitarist Jeff Schroeder. Beyond that, though? Excellent renditions of "Siva," "Today," "Tonight, Tonight," "Bullet With Butterfly Wings," "Mayonaise," and "The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning" (the song made more famous recently by the Watchmen trailer), and a host of lesser-known songs like "Heavy Metal Machine" and "United States of America" that were blisteringly entertaining. And the encore was a kazoo jamboree of "We Only Come Out at Night" and Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime!" On top of all that, ZZ Top (in town to play the state fair two days later) was in the house, and Billy Gibbons popped onstage for a quick wave as Corgan took his final bow. Weird.

Four days later, Joker and I reconvened, along with CoCo and Ash, to see Stone Temple Pilots across the river at Southern Indiana's Horseshoe Casino. There had been some concern lately, amid reports (and widely circulated video footage) of a late-July show in Phoenix where notorious relapser Scott Weiland was, uh, less than crisp onstage, that maybe the shows were going downhill and the tour was wiping out. But I'm happy to say that on Saturday night in Indiana, nothing could be further from the truth. Halfway through the first song, "Big Empty," it was clear we were getting Good Scott that night.

The band, without a new record to promote ("Yet," teased Weiland), ran through their history, with most of the biggest hits (really, only "Unglued" and "Pretty Penny" were missing, as far as radio/MTV hits go) and a few surprising rarities ("Lounge Fly," "Too Cool Queenie," "Silvergun Superman"). All four members--Weiland, Eric Kretz, and the Brothers DeLeo--were in top form, rocking out and even smiling from time to time. The stage was outfitted with a stellar light show and a stage-wide video wall, used not for band closeups, but for animation and film footage, often casting the band in silhouette as they played. We got to see Weiland's signature dance moves, his liberal usage of a bullhorn, and even a low-level climb of the stage scaffold during "Sex Type Thing." All told, it was a monster show.

In less than two weeks, we'll be taking in our beloved Counting Crows in Cincinnati, thus closing out College Retro Month here at the Outfield. Can't wait!

Say it Ain't so Joey Chestnut!

You all know that I have an insatiable and overwhelmingly unhealthy love of the Krystal. For the uneducated masses out there, a Krystal is the southern version of the White Castle slider but not as greasy and with mustard. What sets Krystal above Whitey's in my opinion are the fries and the Krystal Chik (chicken) sandwiches. But I digress.

My hero, competitive eater extraordinaire and reigning two time Nathan's Famous Coney Island hot dog champion, Joey Chestnut is also the competitive Krystal eating champion. Not only did he dethrone the once impervious Kobyashi, but he loves some Krystal sliders. So how crestfallen was I when I came across this video? Oh my...






Still, you've got to hand it to this guy. I wouldn't have guessed he had the talent at first glance.

Links

It is time for a bucket load of links, folks. Things have slowed down a little around here at the Outfield, but Slick and I promise to get back up on this horse and ride her hard now that the summer is beginning to dwindle down. Lots of things have gone down over the course of the last couple of weeks, but nothing has gotten more publicity than the all-might Michael Phelps.

Impressive? Yes? Bludgeoned to death by the media? You bet. That said, I promise to make this a Phelps free zone.

Today's links are brought to you today with a soundtrack. Or at least one song. Let's call it a soundtrack for the iTunes generation. One of my new favorite things to watch has been The Sundance Channel's "Live from Abbey Road" series that has taken a tremendous wealth of musical talent, given them the keys to perhaps the most legendary recording studio in the history of modern music, and produced intimate looks at these artists as they record. It's CD quality sound and is available in bee-you-ti-ful HD.

A treat for me is coming across a new band - usually British and where I might have been aware of their existence but not familiar with their sound or body of work – and walking away with a new appreciation for them or a couple of their songs. Today's sound track comes from one of my new finds, the British band Elbow. This is "Grounds for Divorce". Go ahead and give it a click and listen to it as you read the rest of this entry.

Now on to the links...

• Kanye West might have earned some major wrath from Slick and I with his Bonnaroo antics, but from all accounts he redeemed himself with his set at Lollapalooza. And now this – Kanye is bringing Fatburger to Chicago. Hot Damn! Too bad it's still an 8-9 hour drive from where we live, but it's a start.
  
  
• Cool news, good news, and bad news out of the Weezer camp. The cool news is that the boys have sent out an open casting call for fans to be in their next video for "Troublemaker". Too bad it's for LA area residents only. The good news is that they have FINALLY announced plans for their tour following months of patience and anticipation by us here at the Outfield. The bad news? They are - ONCE AGAIN – coming nowhere close to middle America. Oh there is a Chicago show on 10/02 and an Atlanta show on 10/25, but that's still a haul for Slick, E, and I who have still yet to catch the Weez live and in person. Of course, if any of you out there are feeling generous, I should point out that my and E's shared birthday just happens to be October 2^nd. I'm just saying. You know, tickets and hotel packages aren't too extravagant for a birthday gift and all.
  
  
• Please tell me that you have been keeping up with the whole Rainn Wilson and Jenna Fischer kidnapping "story". As if I needed more incentive to go see Wilson's new movie The Rocker when it comes out this month (or to watch "The Office" when it returns this fall), Wilson takes a fresh new approach to word of mouth marketing and makes me happy. Long story short: Wilson has kidnapped Fischer, bound and stuffed her in the back of his Firebird, and will not release her until the movie grosses $18.7 million. Nice. Check out Free Jenna Now for all of the hilarious up to the minute developments as they happen.
  
  
• Don't look now but our Cubbies have the best record in the National League and are only a win away from tying the Angels for the best record in baseball. Once again, no carts will be put before horses here at the Outfield, but c'mon boys – just once in my lifetime! Don't cement my loser-dom in the minds of my children! Don't make me ruin their lives with this century long beast as well!
  
  
• Idolator has a wonderful entry about the horrible 1980's choices made by some of rock and roll's best musicians. Oh, the agony! For the record, even though I hate the video, I love "The Girl is Mine".
  
  
• While you over there at Idolator, make sure you check out this discussion of the Alt-Rock classics that you secretly loathe or can't understand the appeal of to save your life. Me? I'll offer up most Radiohead after "The Bends", "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden, and the entire Sublime catalog.
  
  
• ESPN.com offered up a report yesterday about PETA's favorite quarterback, Michael Vick, and his vanishing fortune. It appears that the money was going faster than MC Hammer's long before the term "rape stand" entered into our vernacular.
  
  
• Looks like the Republican party is getting desperate. As Obama's lead in the polls surges, it looks like the GOP is willing to alienate the evangelical voters whom old Bushy rode twice to victory by toying with the idea of having a pro abortion rights VP candidate. But, as Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi so eloquently pointed out, McCain is doing a great job of that himself.

Pookie Haunts My Dreams

Okay, first I have to admit that I found this link through the "Hater" blog at The Onion AV Club, so I claim no points on originality. But I had to share this with the Outfield Nation. No further intro necessary, just...just check
this out. Trust me.