sports

Let's saddle up the wayback machine, kids, and travel to the year 1866. It was this very year, when baseball was deemed too difficult and violent a sport for ladies to play, when the Vassar Resolutes hiked up their giant, heavy skirts to run the base paths anyway. I found this photo of the Resolutes (and, OMG—can you believe they were called the Resolutes?) in an advance copy of Jennifer Ring's Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don't Play Baseball, which will be available from the University of Illinois Press in March 2009...

Hear ye, hear ye! It is hereby declared that:

1) If you have been known to refer to yourself as "A-dog";

2) If you are such a jerk that even hockey players are embarrassed by your behavior;

3) If you spent the off-season interning at Vogue;

4) And, most importantly, if you publicly refer to your ex-girlfriend as "sloppy seconds"...

Not a good week for the ladies, sports-wise. First up, in order of horrifying: The Chicago White Sox haven't been doing so hot, so they initiated a little "slumpbuster" that involved taking two female blow-up dolls and arranging them in the team clubhouse with baseball bats jammed into various orifices. Surrounding the dolls with players' bats, the team also stuck a sign on one encouraging players and clubhouse visitors to "push."

The title of this post is the song title of another provocatively-titled entity (or problematically-titled entity, depending on whom you ask), 3 Leg Torso, a band I saw perform tonight. I've never been good at describing genres, but I'll call it a mashup of Klezmer/Chamber/Gypsy/Circus/Carnival/(see, this is why I don't write music reviews). The point is, it was one of the best shows I've seen in years. My mouth hurt afterwards because I had a perpetual smile through almost the whole show. Equally impressive was the opener, Fish Tank Ensemble. Please check them both out.   

Earlier in the day, I let my friend Ben convince me to accompany him to a professional basketball game between the Portland Trailblazers and the San Antonio Spurs.

Allow me to set the stage (even though really, you had to be there to understand)...