The Vig

There were conflicting stories over the weekend as to whether Carly Simon revealed the subject of her 1973 hit You’re So Vain. The list of possibilities was endless as evidently back in the day, Carly’s lady parts were as popular as Storm’s (you probably shouldn’t click on that link at the office).

I’ve always assumed it was about Mick Jagger, mostly because I thought it was double-funny that she got him to sing on the record.

The Sun newspaper postulated on Friday that she was singing about David Geffen, which is weird because, you know, Geffen is gay. The lyrics, they say, weren’t so much about love gone wrong as they were about getting screwed, so to speak, by Geffen who preferred Joni Mitchell.

Whatever. The song isn’t about David Geffen. How do I know? Because Carly told us it wasn’t six years ago.

Regis : Isnt’ it time for you to tell the world – who’s the guy you’re singing about? Is it Warren Beatty? Is it Mick Jagger? Or is it me? Tell us!Carly: If I tell it, it’s going to come out in dribs and drabs. And I’ve given out two letters already, and “A” and an “E”. But I’m going to add one to it. I’m going to add an “R”, in honor of you.

D-A-V-I-D G-E-F-F-E-N.

Do you see an “R” in there? Me neither. You know who’s name does have an “A”, an “E”, and an “R”? Well, besides Mick Jagger? And James Taylor?

Warren Beatty.

Fun fact: Beatty was famously gelded a number of years later by Madonna. The moment was captured on film during the 1990 Blond Ambition Tour, but it was left out of the final cut of Truth or Dare. The scene in question was spliced into a print of the Stones’ 1969 concert film C*cksucker Blues, which I screened at a Rick Emerson listener party after-after-show gathering in 2006. Watching Warren get emasculated as Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger worked out an early version of “Bitch” was…weird. What became of Beatty’s balls after that has been a source of mystery for a number of years. The story I heard at the after-after-party was Annette Bening had found them at a yard sale Madonna held sometime in mid-’91, as The Material Girl was getting rid of Warren’s stuff because Vanilla Ice was starting to get jealous. Who knows. It’s all Hollywood legend.

A couple years ago, Dick Ebersol, the guy who just finished ruining the Winter Olympics here in the states, paid $50,000 for the privilege of finding out who the song is really about. He would only say the name contained an “E”. I wonder if he’ll confirm the rumor. Maybe…maybe not.

Look, Simon was what…24? 25? when she wrote that tune. As talented as the 25-year-old Ms Simon was, I doubt she could come up with something this clever to just bitch about a record executive. That’s just my hunch. I’m gonna go on believing the tune is about Jagger, because it remains the most fun answer.

A few weeks back, Dylan B. and I snuck in to the Rose Garden club level to see how the other half lived. We did it solely for research purposes and certainly don’t condone crashing others parties.

I believe it was during the second period of that night, as the attendant delivered Dylan and me our third helping of leg of lamb, MC Hammer’s “2 Legit 2 Quit” came over the PA system.

“I wonder what it would cost,” I mused, “to bring Hammer up for a performance.”

Dylan didn’t take the bait. He was busy with the wine list.

“I bet he could be had for somewhere in the low five-figures.”

“That’s five-figures more than I’d pay for him,” he replied as he settled on a 2006 Quivira red zin.

“But think of it, we could fly him up a couple times during the playoffs. You know, when the team needed an extra oomph! He could be our Kate Smith!”

Dylan was not amused.

“Fine then. Who should be our Kate Smith?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“I’ve got it!” I said. “Storm Large!”

With that, Dylan bolted upright. His eyes alight.

“Good God!” he exclaimed, spitting asparagus tips into the 100 level, “that’s genius! Imagine Storm coming out and singing God Bless America before a big game. THAT would be huge!”

Indeed it would be. And likely for a fraction of what it would cost to bring Hammer up just one time. Kids, I’m telling you, this must happen. At least once. Just show Storm this and let her take it from there.

A few years ago, I worked for a local company who made computer products for various military and government-types. Every now and then they would dispatch me to a tradeshow to meet our customers face-to-face. Probably 95% of the folks I encountered were garden variety government desk jockeys.

Every now and then though, I would encounter someone outside the norm. When I asked who they worked for, they’d reply they couldn’t tell me.

“Ah!”, I’d say, “just the guy I’m looking for!”

We’d talk for a fes minutes about encryption and security and such. When we were done, we’d exchange cards and go our separate ways. Every one of their cards showed either a Yahoo or AOL email address. These were relatively anonymous ways of keeping in touch with people they wanted to keep at arm’s length. Did they transact actual secret business on those accounts? Who knows.

Either way, imagine their surprise last week when some of these folks opened their gmail accounts and discovered The Googles were broadcasting their contact list to anyone and everyone through Google Buzz. It could be time to find another email provider.

With the exception of the Betty White/Abe Vigoda ad for Snickers, this year’s Super Bowl ads sucked.  All of them.   Well maybe the Tebow ad, which was much better and much less political than anyone expected, shouldn’t be lumped in there, but the rest of them?  Yuck.

The Letterman ad goes into it’s own category.  First, it wasn’t a corporate ad.  It was a CBS house ad, not something created by corporate nitwits.  Second, it was Dave.  Third, it featured Dave’s longtime late-night nemesis Jay Leno.  Their feud, for lack of a better term, goes back almost 20 years now.  Is it all over?  Just like that?  Dave absolutely killed Leno last month during the whole Conan debacle.  And he did so gleefully, I might add.  What in the hell happened?

I sat stunned for a few seconds after the thing aired.  I seriously couldn’t believe everyone was in one room.  I originally thought it had been done as a split-screen thing, like Michael and LaToya at the “We Are the World” sessions.  Not true.

The spot was shot last Tuesday afternoon, under the strictest of secrecy which involved both Mr. Leno and Ms. Winfrey flying in surreptitiously to New York, and arriving incognito at the theater, while Mr. Letterman was in the midst of taping his show for that night. It also involved Jay wearing a disguise: hooded sweatshirt, glasses and faux mustache. If you happened to be on Broadway between 53rd and 54th street last Tuesday about 4:15, you might have seen a man fitting that description slip into the theater by a small entrance under the marquee.

This could only happen because Dave made it happen.  From the outside it almost looks like a Michael-Fredo reunion with Dave as Michael and Jay as Fredo.  Only Leno never got clipped for betraying the family.

The family, you say?  I just finished reading I’m Dying Up Here by William Knoedelseder.  It’s the story of the 1979 comedians strike against the Comedy Store.  ESPN’s Bill Simmons mentioned the book on his Sports Guy podcast last month while talking Conan with the San Francisco Chronicle’s Tim Goodman.  Long story short, in the mid-to-late-seventies, the path to comic stardom went through Johnny Carson and the path to Carson went through the Comedy Store.  While at first comics were happy to work for free in exchange for the opportunity to be seen by entertainment executives, they eventually saw themselves as cheap labor for an establishment which was making loads of money.  They wanted a cut…the Store’s owner Mitzi Shore didn’t want to give it to them…so they struck.

As the story builds, you see names of folks who got their start at the Comedy Store and went on to bigger things.  Names like Robin Williams, Richard Lewis, Andy Kaufman, Elayne Boosler, and Gallagher.  You read about how Kaufman negotiated his Taxi contract so he would only have to be on the set one day a week.  How comics would watch Mork and Mindy in horror as Robin Williams stole borrowed bits from them.  And how Dave transitioned from comic to emcee, the role he was born to play.

For the most part, these folks were all blood brothers and sisters, particularly coming out of the strike experience of 1979.  They’ve all been tremendous boosters of one another’s work.  That’s why, for example, you’ll see Jimmie Walker still pop-up on Letterman a few times a year.  Tom Dreesen too.  And that’s why the Leno-Letterman schism hurt so much in ‘93.  They’d all spent so much time scratching and clawing their way to the top while still looking out for one-another, it was shocking to see Leno come in and take the job Dave had been groomed for for so long.

According to Knoedelseder, prior to last Tuesday, there was one previous moment when Leno and Letterman could have been in the same room.  It was 2003 when  their mutual friend and Comedy Store veteran George Miller passed away.  Leno showed up for the memorial service but Letterman, who was battling shingles at the time, did not.  It was only because he was so ill that he didn’t show.

So is it over?  My initial reaction says probably not.  But there’s a little bit of a thaw there.  It’s nice to see.  It would be an awful thing if they took this thing all the way to their graves.

The O says Luca Sbisa will be in uniform for the Hawks next Friday.  That means he’ll be in the line-up next Saturday against Seattle in the Rose Garden.  Here I thought we wouldn’t see him until after the Olympics.

Get your tickets now, kids.  The Winterhawks season just got really interesting.

I attended my first Winterhawks game in months tonight.  As Dylan B pointed out many times, there’s been a lot of changes while I was gone.  Wish I still had my media packet so I could go through all of them real quick.  Needless to say, there were some guys on the ice tonight that I don’t think I’d ever seen.  Guys with names like Doyle and Swenson and Pouliot(!).  And…well…that’s about it, isn’t it?

I told Dylan seeing the guys in white play so well was taking some getting used to.  The passing was especially noticeable.  No longer are guys panicking while trying to get the puck out of the defensive zone.  Passes leave sticks now with purpose and end up on the tape of teammates instead of flying into space.  And those teammates are found at full speed, charging up-ice.  I tell you, it’s a thing of beauty.  A distracting thing of beauty.  There were only a few players I really noticed on the ice tonight, and really not for any particular reason.  I’ll get to that in a moment.

The only real down note of the whole evening was attendance.  The official number was 1807.  I would guess there were half that.  As Dylan and I pondered the fate of the 50-50 game, he mentioned perhaps the Hawks were making up the difference to the player education fund.  I then mentioned Gallacher wasn’t running a charity out there.  Then, pondering the attendance, I said maybe he is.  Maybe they’re making it up on Fridays and Saturdays, but wow.  Dylan remarked he remembered when midweek games like this would have twice the attendance.  I do too.

Thoughts:

Carruth: The goaltenders each earned two of tonight’s three stars of the game.  An inspired choice, if you ask me.  Inspired by what, I don’t know.  But that’s one man’s opinion.  Carruth, I believe, is the kid they brought up to spell Curtis when he went down and Mucha wasn’t in town?  Or maybe it was Hamilton?  Like I said, I’ve been away too long.  The point is, he looked fine and stayed out of trouble.  But the #2 star?  I dunno about that.

Gabriel: “Quit picking on my Ollie!” exclaimed the lady in front of me during the second period.  Indeed.  With goals in three of the last four games, the guy is on fire.  I’m probably the only one who still thinks of him as Scott’s younger brother.  Unfair?  Absolutely.  I need to move on.

Pouliot: With the number 51 on his back, he’s going to get noticed when he hits the ice.  You know who he is.  And his play backs it up.  He’s gonna be fun to watch.

Jordan: I was waaaay too distracted with my iPhone tonight to be paying that close of attention.  Either that or Jordan has suddenly gone into stealth mode on the ice.  I used to notice him every shift he was out there.  Perhaps there’s too much other stuff happening now that I’m not always looking to be entertained by Employee 19 21 55.  He delivered a hit in the second period that had me scrambling to email his sister, a regular visitor to this site.  He remains both of our favorite player.

I watched almost all of the McGwire interview on the MLB Network yesterday.  He had me right up until he said he used “small doses” of steroids.  I don’t believe that for a moment.  I do, however, buy most of the rest of his story.  That is to say, I do believe he believes he could have accomplished everything he did without the juice.  That he believes he was using simply for therapeutic purposes.  I’ll have to go back and look, but I don’t think he was doing his therapy under any sort of medical supervision, but whatever.  I take vitamins every morning in the belief they make my body perform better.  Does it?  Who knows.  McGwire probably thought of steroids in the same way.

What annoys me about this whole thing is we’re leaving entry into the Hall of Fame up to the Baseball Writers Association of America.  Basically once you’re in the association for ten years, you get a ballot.  And you keep getting one whether you still cover games or not.  This is how Canzano stays on their mailing list despite my suspicion that you can count the number of actual games he’s attended in the last twelve months on one hand.  Still he gets to vote and then preen on his radio show, as he did yesterday, that he’ll “never, ever, ever, ever, ever vote for McGwire”.  Why?  Not because of anything he did on the field.  And not even because McGwire admitted he did steroids.  But because McGwire still stands behind the fig leaf that he was only doing it for therapeutic purposes.  For this, Canzano holds back his vote.

Same holds true for Chicago’s Jay Marrioti, who famously turned in a blank ballot this year.  The main subject of any Marrioti column or television appearance is Jay Marrioti.  Nothing else.  He turned in a blank ballot in a transparent “look at me!” ploy for publicity.  Nothing else.  ”I can’t judge any of these guys!” he claims.  Yet there’s no doubt he’s signed off on plenty of guys in the past who’ve done amphetamines or worse.  Why do they get a pass from Jay?  Who knows.

Look.  Jackassery is a long and proud tradition within the ranks of sportswriters.  Writers have held grudges against players for years and vice-versa.  And McGwire is hardly the first player to fall victim to some writers’ self-serving crap.  That said, times have changed.  We no longer only suffer jackass writers in the silence of our morning coffee.  Now they’re on our TVs, in our radios, and clogging up the Intertron.  And as they’ve branched out, their bravado has increased.  And the bravado is starting to spill over into institutions like the Hall of Fame.  It’s got to end.

The Football Hall of Fame, I think, has it close to right.  They have a panel of very serious people who meet and debate various nominees, then they come down annually with their stone tablets and announce that year’s class of inductees.  These are guys who study and know the game inside and out.  And guys who take their responsibilities seriously.  Yes, even Peter King takes his vote seriously.  What’s more, those guys see their positions as an honor, not as a soapbox.  It’s time the Baseball Hall of Fame divorces itself from the BBWAA and gets serious about who they allow to vote.

Imagine for a moment you’re Blazer GM Kevin Pritchard.  The phone rings.  It’s Spurs GM RC Buford and has he got a deal for you.  He’ll send you the retiring Tim Duncan (remember…we’re imagining) in exchange for Batum, Fernandez, and Bayless.  AND, because he’s in such a good mood, Buford will even swap first round picks with you, giving the Blazers a chance to get into the next draft’s lottery.

The downside of this scenario is you’re only renting Duncan for a half a season and you’re giving up a couple of “future” prospects to get the deal done.  On the plus-side, you’re getting a future hall-of-famer who can still play and who might be able to lead this team to a championship this season.  If you’re Kevin Pritchard, what do you do?

I know what the real Kevin Pritchard would do.  He’d crap his pants.  And then say no.  He loves his guys and he (along with his owner) doesn’t want to make another mistake along the lines of the Jermaine O’Neal deal.  So he stands pat.

Winterhawks (one word) GM Mike Johnston has a lot of the same problems Pritchard has.  He’s got some serious young talent that a lot of folks would no doubt like to have.  After years of neglect under previous ownership, the Hawks are revitalized and once again a force in the Western Hockey League.  It seems strange to say it, but I think it’s true.  The Hawks are on the move.  And they’ll only be better next season.

So after declaring last week that he’d likely stand-pat at this weekends trade deadline, Johnston went out and made a move that even got Dylan B. excited.   The Winterhawks traded 17-year-old defenseman Daniel Johnston, 18-year-old forward Jacob Berglund and their first round pick in the 2010 Import Draft to Lethbridge for 19-year-old defenseman Luca Sbisa, Lethbridge’s first round pick in the 2010 CHL Import Draft and a fifth round pick in the 2011 WHL Bantam Draft.  Ummm….wow.

Why wow?  Try this on for size.  In the WHL, youth is king.  A team’s roster is made-up of mainly 17-to-19-year-olds, with a few 16s thrown in.  A team may have no more than three 20-year-olds.  So in general, you don’t give up younger players for older ones, unless you’re making a playoff run.  So there’s that.

What makes this even more daring is the fact that Sbisa will only be available to play in six regular season games for the Hawks.  That’s it.  Why?  Because he’s on the Swiss Olympic team and he’ll be playing with them in Vancouver next month.  There’s a chance he could be back as a 20 next season, but given the fact hes a first-round pick of the Philadelphia Flyers, he’ll likely be playing there next season and not here.

So the Hawks get six games and the playoffs in exchange for some of its youth.  Ballsy.  This is the sort of stuff we were promised under the previous regime but never came to pass.  It’s also the sort of move we keep waiting for Pritchard to make, but he hasn’t yet.

I’ve been away from the Hawks for far too long this season.  As you’ve read, I’ve had some other stuff going on.  This ends when they return home on the 20th.  You might want to wander down to the Rose Quarter and check them out yourself.  I’m telling you.  Something big is coming.