Daily Archives: February 11, 2010
As far as I’m concerned, this nation’s Golden Age came from 1861-1913.
Now I recognize that the Civil War and plenty of other terrible, horrible things happened in that span, but I also know that, across those years, nine of the 11 presidents had facial hair. Never before and never since has this great country seen such an explosion of glorious whiskers.
And though he may not have been the greatest Presidentially of the mustachioed and bearded Presidents, one man stands head and shoulders — nay, neckbeard and sideburns — above the rest in terms of facial-hair magnificence: Chester A. Arthur.
I’m convinced that Chester A. Arthur was born with his muttonchops. Seriously. Probably this has something to do with how few likenesses there are available online of Chester A. Arthur as a boy, but even the youngest available portraits of the man feature the impressive chops.
At times in life, and indeed, during his presidency, they would grow so wild as to constitute truly freakish facial hair, like something you’d see at a Korn concert in 1998. The dude had shoulder-length mutton chops. Unreal.
Another fun fact about Chester A. Arthur — which is decidedly not a fun fact for James Garfield — is that Garfield’s assassin shot him specifically so that Arthur, his vice president, could take over. That’s the only time that’s happened. The Wikipedia says this has something to do with rival factions within the Republican party at the time, but I’m unwilling to rule out the idea that assassin Charles Guiteau was just showing some horribly misguided and overzealous respect for Arthur’s awesome muttonchops.
Anyway, here are various likenesses depicting Chester A. Arthur’s muttonchops:
I actually just spent my last 10 minutes making a terrible photoshop rendering of what it might look like if Barack Obama brought back awesome Chester A. Arthur muttonchops, but then I grew concerned that there might be some sort of law in place about drawing facial hair on pictures of sitting Presidents or something. But he should do it, believe me. It’d make politics so much more interesting.
Look: I’ve made plenty of fat jokes at Rex Ryan’s expense. Scores of them.
But I’m not going to beat the guy up for what happened Tuesday night, when he accidentally exposed his gut to the crowd while changing jerseys at a Carolina Hurricanes game, inspiring a New York post news story in the process.
Because it’s not like he pulled up his shirt and did the truffle shuffle for the crowd. Cheerleaders came and brought Rex a new jersey, and I’m guessing he was up on the Jumbotron, under all sorts of pressure to change jerseys immediately, plus he was wearing an undershirt, so he made the switch.
Revealing himself like he did, that’s embarrassing. And unlike devouring tons and tons of food every day, it wasn’t something he was doing consciously. So I just kind of feel bad for the guy.
And in sympathy, I’ll share a story:
I’m no stranger to gut ownership. The size fluctuates depending on the season, how active I’ve been and how much Taco Bell I’ve been eating, but it gets pretty damn impressive at times. Not quite Rex Ryan impressive, but sizy nonetheless.
And it was probably at its largest during my junior year of high school, when my friends first got cars so we first had near-unlimited access to Taco Bell.
That same year, a ski mountain my family used to frequent added something called “tree skiing,” a bizarre and, in retrospect, terrible idea that was exactly what it sounded like; basically they just cleared out the brush from the mountain’s off-slope forest and let people ski among the trees. Awesome.
I was sixteen and so, despite my girth, eager to try all of the dumbest and most dangerous activities available to me, so tree skiing was about the most intriguing thing imaginable.
The place, presumably to minimize lawsuits, didn’t allow skiers to tree-ski from the summit, so you didn’t use the regular chairlift. Instead, you had to take a J-Bar — an antiquated type of lift normally reserved for bunny slopes — which sort of hooks under your ass and shoves you up the mountain while you stand there like a goon.
I’m a decent skier, but I’ve always sucked at negotiating ski lifts. Don’t know why. Maybe I don’t have the patience for it, or I have some sort of mental block.
Regardless, something happened on the J-Bar that day about halfway up the slope. I slipped a little, I guess, and the hook part of the J-Bar — the curl of the J — lost its grip on my ass and started sliding up my back.
Thanks to gravity, I began sliding backwards down the mountain while the J-Bar was still driving forward.
The hook snagged my jacket, pulling me to the ground and somehow yanking my coat, shirt and undershirt up over my head, exposing my pasty gut to the world as it dragged me up the mountain with my bare back against the snow.
It sucked.
And it would be embarrassing enough just knowing that it happened, and that it was happening, and that the person behind me on the J-Bar might see it all go down. But of course, there was a regular chairlift overhead, and so everyone on there was clapping and laughing and having the time of their damn lives.
I’ll fully admit that if I were in their place I’d have been doing exactly the same thing, because fat people falling makes for some of the world’s strongest comedy. It’s basically the driving force behind the movie The Great Outdoors, which is hilarious.
And so I can’t really fault people for laughing at Ryan’s expense. But I’ll say that inadvertent public gut exposure, when yours is the exposed gut, is not fun at all, and so excuse me for taking it easy on Rex just this once.
For the life of me, I can’t remember how I got up from that precarious position. Maybe whatever happened was so scarring and humiliating that I’ve blocked it. It’s a shame, because if it was that terrible, it was probably also something that would be pretty hilarious to remember now.
The fun thing about Daniel Murphy — or maybe the frustrating about Daniel Murphy, depending on whom you’re talking with — is that you can make about 100 different arguments about what role he should play for the 2010 Mets and not really be wrong.
You can use Sabermetrics 101, point to his .266/.313/.427 line from 2009 and say that’s unacceptable for a Major League first baseman. And you could add that he really only had one good partial season in the Minors — in Double-A Binghamton as a 23-year-old in 2008.
Or you can dive a little deeper into his Fangraphs page, as Sam Page has, to show that, despite all his reputation, some hiccups and a tiny sample size, Murphy demonstrated enough range at first base to indicate he might be a good enough defender to make up for any offensive shortcomings.
And you can claim — as I have — that we haven’t seen enough of Murphy to know how good he’ll be moving forward, and that 707 Major League plate appearances are not enough to judge a 24-year-old hitter.
A less convincing argument, I think, is the one that says Mike Jacobs deserves to start over Murphy on the strength of his 99 Major League home runs and 308 RBIs. Sam does a pretty good job tearing that apart in the Amazin’ Avenue piece linked above, and Patrick Flood goes to town on Jacobs’ defense here.
As I wrote yesterday, I don’t even know that it’s worth the time because I can’t imagine the Mets really would consider starting Jacobs at first base. But the Mets have blown my mind plenty of times before, so here’s this:
We don’t know yet that Daniel Murphy is not good. We certainly don’t know that he is good, but we don’t know that he’s not good either. He has yet to fully embarrass or distinguish himself at the Major League level.
We do know that Mike Jacobs is not good. I’m sorry. I know he hits home runs. He also plays terrible defense and never gets on base. And he’s 29, so he’s probably not getting any better.
Murphy, opening the season at 25, could be. As hard as it may be to believe considering how long it seems like we’ve been watching him play, he is the devil we don’t know, which, as far as I’m concerned, is better than the devil we know isn’t very good.
John Harper got to catch Johan Santana yesterday. Color me jealous.
The Mets have not contacted Gary Sheffield this winter. It makes sense, since they don’t need him, but maybe it’d be nice if they just called to check in and say hello, you know? Just to see how he’s doing, maybe try to meet up for coffee or something.
Here are some pictures of carnivorous plants.
Stupid UConn couldn’t pull out a win over stupid Syracuse at the stupid Carrier Dome last night, thanks mostly to the stupid Big East refs.
