Posts Tagged ‘Philly’


Man, I love this town!

October 12th, 2005 by Oskar Kennedy

Deli worker dies after being thrown through a window during a dispute over food.

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Why I Love Local News

December 15th, 2005 by Oskar Kennedy

  ”Mysterious pink spots” on area lawns turn out to be bird poop. W/ pic of bare hand holding newly demystified droppings.

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Going Out Smells Nicer

June 15th, 2006 by Oskar Kennedy

  Philadelphia City Council has finally passed a smoking ban for bars and restaurants. Pending the Mayor’s signature, it could go into effect by January.

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Phucking Phillies

August 8th, 2006 by Oskar Kennedy

  If there’s a “guy” gene that drives men to memorize stats, root for the local team and talk trash about the skills of overpaid players, I didn’t inherit it. I find the social and economic influence of professional sports to be disappointing at best, and offensive at worst. With the exception of the occasional football game, I avoid televised sports like the mutant, radioactive, heart-exploding plague.
  It’s not like I can escape at least a background knowledge of sports. I listen to news radio and NPR, and they waste precious seconds every hour talking about the outcome of games, the results of trades and the gossip about what drug which player is injecting into his shriveled testicles. Hell, if they took out all of the sports coverage and lumped that time together, I bet they’d have room for another valuable perspective on how Mel Gibson’s batshit insanity is confounding Hollywood.
  However, I’m still culturally aware enough that I can be affected by the undercurrent of excitement when the Philly home teams are doing well. When the Eagles made the Superbowl two years ago, I was hopeful; I didn’t exactly climb onto the bandwagon waving a flag and drooling, but I stopped in the electronics section of Target to watch the last few minutes of the NFC championship on the gigantic TVs. It was heartening to see the city pull together, even if it was obvious to the rest of the nation that their hopes were doomed from the start. And kudos to us for not burning anything down when the team lost.
  Because this is the level of my involvement with sports, I loathe the end of the baseball season. From my (admittedly detached) perspective, it seems like regular season baseball always follows the same script. The Phillies will struggle most of the season. Sometime around early August, the stats-minders will notice that the Phils, who’ve been out of contention for a division title since May, are nonetheless only a few games behind in the Wild Card race. They’ll slowly inch up in the standings, sometimes getting to within a half game of the leader, and then they’ll suddenly collapse. By the last week in September, the starting lineup will be wandering through the final games of season, while their wives air out their Florida vacation homes in preparation for another relaxing October at the beach.
  Even for a guy who equates televised baseball with growing mold on the “really boring stuff” scale, it’s infuriating. I can feel the fans getting their collective hopes up, only to have them shattered like a trick picture window in a cheesy action movie. Seriously, if you’re going to suck, just suck. Don’t pretend that you might have some talent, and then revert back to your usual suckitude when it actually matters. I appreciate consistency, but consistent disappointment is just cruel.
  Maybe the city should repossess your fancy new ballpark, and make you play in an overgrown field next to I-95. You can have some hilarious and heartwarming adventures trying to get your ball back from the big, nasty dog who lives on the other side of the outfield fence, and learn a valuable lesson about how baseball is all about heart, passion and love of the game. Oh, and metric craploads of money, especially if you’re the Yankees. You can get your stadium back for your next playoff game.

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Tales from The Blue Line

March 26th, 2007 by Oskar Kennedy

  Spotted on the Blue Line on Friday afternoon: Blow-dried, hair-gelled preppy douchebag. Reading The Secret. With a highlighter.

  In case you’ve missed the latest bee in Oprah’s metaphysical bonnet, The Secret is a new self-help book/DVD that purports to contain a “secret” that successful people have been keeping for years. Apparently, you can influence the Universe to give you literally anything you want, as long as you want it hard enough. This proposition is supported by a sprinkling of quotes from famously successful people, such as successful anti-semite Henry Ford, and the guy who “wrote” the Chicken Soup for The Soul books. Also, the pages have been weathered with highly sophisticated dyes, for that “ancient tome” look. Nothing says authenticity like artificially yellowed paper.

  A typical scene from the DVD shows a little boy drawing a picture of a bike over and over again. This illustrates just how hard the boy wants that particular bike. Then, he opens his front door, and a smiling old man is standing there with the same exact bike the little boy drew, minus the shaky grasp of proportion and perspective in the crayon doodles. Curiously enough, the toothy gentleman (grandpa, molester, or both?) is absent from the drawings. I hope that doesn’t mean that every wish the Universe grants also comes with a complimentary smiling septuagenarian. You’d think there’d be a disclaimer about that.

  The real secret, of course, is this. In addition to being another spoonful of the pseudo-inspirational pablum that Oprah force-feeds her viewers, The Secret is an absolutely perfect scam. Think about it. Tell the preppy douchebag that he can have anything his heart desires, as long as he just wants it fervently enough. If he gets what he wants, then it worked! High five! If his wish doesn’t come true, then it’s his fault. He obviously didn’t want it hard enough.

  It’s classic. If you win, they win. If you lose, they still win, because they can blame you for your failure. You didn’t get that promotion? Your husband is still seeing that Brazilian hooker? Grandma’s still in that wheelchair, wearing those diapers? You didn’t get your crudely drawn crayon bike? Too bad! The system works. You just didn’t do it right.

  Guess what? Life sometimes sucks, and no one every gets everything they want. The real secret is that there’s no psycho-babble trick to wring tasty treats out of the Universe. The Universe is not Domino’s Pizza; it doesn’t deliver. You’ll get what you want (or not) like the rest of us, through varying proportions of work and luck. If wishing super-hard for something really made it happen, your daughter’s room would be full of unicorn shit.

  By the way, The Secret obviously isn’t working for Mr. Blow-dried, hair-gelled preppy douchebag. Under all that shellac, his hair is still thinning.

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