This Week in crazy
Two fun stories about crazy people today. In celebrity crazy, David Hasselhoff lost visitation privileges of his children "for two weeks after the public leak of a videotape showing an apparently drunken Hasselhoff struggling to eat a cheeseburger while on the floor of his Las Vegas home."

And in sports crazy, Devil Rays rookie Elijah Dukes served up a
delightful pile of unrelenting nonsense crazy on a Tampa radio station. Among the gems:
"Ni'Shea Dukes, who you also called ... featuring as a good wife and a stand-up type of person, is not so stand-up after all," Dukes said. "First of all you need to get a little bit of her background. She was not born as a Paris Hilton or nothing like that to be trying to talk all proper. ... You all need to go to the house and see what I've done for my kids. ... If she wouldn't have been trying to steal my money the whole time we've been trying to talk, we would probably still be together right now. Everything is about money."
On Gilbert's claim that Duke told her his mom had a crack problem, Dukes said: "First of all, I never said nothing about crack because I don't know nothing about crack. ... I never told anyone my mom smoked crack."
On the alleged report that he impregnated a 17-year-old: "Me and her did something one time, and it was not even close to the time she conceived this baby. I know for a fact it's not mine."
Thanks to Danny for the tip on this one.
Labels: baseball, celebrities, crap, danabramson
Permalink • 0 comments •Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Longing for the days of Alex's MVP and R&L Galleries
I cleaned my room at my parents' apartment this weekend (more on that in a future post), throwing away thousands of my baseball cards. Good ones, too, not just "commons." Even 10 years ago, this would have been unfathomable to me, let alone 15 years ago, when my collection probably could have been sold to a dealer for at least a few thousand dollars. Now the market for the cards is a fraction of what it once was, and the few cards I chose to keep were those that I saved more for sentimentality than any value that they might have once possessed.
Mark McGwire's once sought-after 1985 Topps rookie card (the '84 Olympic team card) is being listed on eBay for around $10. I was collecting baseball cards at exactly the time that their market reached unprecedented heights, and I remember when a PSA 10 of that McGwire card alone (and I had 2) could fetch upwards of $1,000. That card wasn't even the gem of my collection. At one point, I had the '87 Classic Bo Jackson, the '83 Topps Traded Darryl Strawberry, and the '90 Leaf Frank Thomas. Actually, Danny had that one, and I wanted it so bad. I've got a '78 Eddie Murray, a '79 Ozzie Smith, and even an '89 Upper Deck Ken Griffey, Jr, the card that some say created the baseball card industry's feeding frenzy of the early 1990's. But man I wanted that Frank Thomas card.
There's a legion of kids about my age who believed that they'd one day become price guide-authoring, pre-blogger-era media superstars like their hero, the inimitable Dr. James Beckett. We never learned what the Dr. was for anyway.
For those dorky enough to remember it all, here's a trip down memory lane with some of my favorite cards:





Darryl Strawberry '83 Topps Traded rookie card. I got the '83 Strawberry in that same binder that my uncle bought for three bucks. Topps Traded was always an awesome series because while the regular Topps set was issued in advance of the season (usually around spring training), the "traded" set would come out toward the end of the season and would include cards of the players who had been traded to new teams, as well as any hot rookies. Strawberry was the big winner in '83, Kevin Maas was the guy in '90. Kevin Maas was awesome.

Labels: baseball, blakestuchin, celebrities, danabramson, sports
Permalink • 2 comments •
While I am honored to be the cause of such jealousy...it's poorly directed. Very.
If my memory serves me, not only did I NOT have that card, but a certain friend of mine did. Blake Stuchin. He owned such a card, and what a glorious card it was.
AND
If my memory serves me even more, my foolhardy friend, Blake Stuchin, traded the Frank Thomas 1990 Leaf for an Ernie Banks card. The trading partner in this swap? My brother. David Abramson.
Months later, Blake would realize his mistake. So silly was this was move that he would choose to block it out of his memory completely. He did learn one thing from this traumatizing ordeal....
When it comes to trading baseball cards, don't fuck with David Abramson.
By Dan Abramson, at Tuesday, March 20, 2007 12:11:00 AM
Wow, really? I honestly don't remember that at all. I guess there are some memories so traumatic that they merit being bottled up forever.
I wonder if Dave will trade me the Frank Thomas now for a Tony Gwynn '87 Topps O-Pee-Chee, an bucket filled with Vanilla Wafers. I know I'd make that deal.
Pete Rose is an idiot
According to this ESPN story, Pete Rose admitted not only that he bet on baseball, but also that he bet on the Reds to win every night. Appearing on the Dan Patrick/Keith Olbermann ESPN Radio show, he said that he hopes to be reinstated in baseball so that he can manage again. Says Rose, "[It's] all about dollars, Dan and Keith. If I was ever reinstated. If an owner don't want to win and draw people, don't call my number," Rose said.Pete Rose is a lying, cheating, greedy man. I'm not sure what book he's promoting this time that he's coming forward and coming clean, but I'm sure that he has some kind of ulterior motive in doing so. At least he could have the decency to do something really crazy to merit falling into that "wacky ex-athlete" category of celebs that we love or love to hate, like Mike Tyson and Charles Barkley.
Labels: celebrities, crap, sports
Permalink • 0 comments •Thursday, March 08, 2007
Reasons to Watch Television
I love reality television. Hell, I support reality television. Surreal Life Fame Games is a joy. Sure, watching it makes me feel a little bit worse about myself as a person and about how I choose to spend my time with my expensive education. But I also learned that I thankfully do not have the low self esteem of CeCe Deville, the rage of Vanilla Ice, or the complete bitchiness of Verne Troyer. Surreal Life Fame Games has taught me that minor celebrities have no sense of irony, unless they get naked for a living and apparently appeared on the cover of a Girls Gone Wild music collection. I know what you're thinking... Joe Francis has a record label? Is it better than MusicSpace.com? (Answer: No. Nothing is better than Save the 90's except maybe the newly released Monster Ballads Platinum Edition.
Tonight I watched the Surreal Life Fame Games celebrity phone bank challenge, where the B list cast was asked to call their B list friends and get them to call them back. Among the "stars" who called back... Frank Stallone. Joey Buttafuco. And big-time star, Carrot Top. No word on whether Carrot Top's crazy muscles called back, too. Do you think you can book Ron Jeremy just to name drop people for an hour? Because I'd pay $12 for that.
Labels: blakestuchin, celebrities, crap, reality, tv
Permalink • 0 comments •