Hilarious License Plate Spotted

West Side Highway, NYC

God Sends Warning Shot At Area Capitalist

Baseball superagent Scott Boras was rewarded today with the ultimate compliment a capitalist can receive — a plague of insects, presumably for excellence in the field of greed.

The New York Times reports that Boras’ suite at Angels Stadium was overrun by a swarm of bees during this afternoon’s Angels-Athletics game. The Bees were ultimately removed with the help of a vacuum. Boras’ clients, ranging from Alex Rodriguez to Rodrigo Lopez, have been awarded over a billion dollars in contracts over the past decade, making Boras an obvious contender to receive plagues.

Seriously though, Scott Boras rules. It would be sweet as shit if God actually launched a coup against him and failed because Boras is so good at making money that he can just have whatever The Almighty throws at him vacuumed up at his convenience. Of course, there is no God, so I wouldn’t worry about it.

A man with a cool haircut photographs God's feeble attempt to punish the mighty Boras.

Taco Bell Offers Possibility Of Free Soda, People Excited

Late August Baseball Factazoid Frenzy!

The last 33 appearances of Orioles relief pitcher Cla Meredith (pronounced “Clay” for some reason) have come in games in which his team ultimately lost.

Nelson Cruz hits the ball very hard.

Nelson Cruz and Mark Reynolds top Hit Tracker’s 2009 Golden Sledgehammer List thus far into the season. The Golden Sledgehammer list ranks hitters by farthest average distance their home runs have traveled. Through Monday’s games, Cruz’s HR’s went an average of 419 feet, which is obviously awesome, especially for a player finally getting his first opportunity to play every day at the age of 28.

Back to Reynolds; the 25-year-old is currently rocking an isolated power of .312 with 38 home runs and 170 strikeouts. What a freak.

Ted Berg’s find of the day, presumably discovered during his daily Google search for “Dickshot.”

Ratio of Indians batters struck out by Zack Greinke to thousands of fans in attendance at Kauffman Stadium on Tuesday night: 1:1.56

Cliff Lee has been impossibly dominant since joining the Phillies last month, going 5-0 with a K:BB of 6.5 and an ERA of 0.68. Two of his five starts have been complete games and he has yet to allow a home run in the sucky National League.

After an 0-4 start to open the season, Twins’ starter Scott Baker has been excellent, striking out 109 against 25 walks in 132 innings en route to a 12-3 record in decisions.

It’s time to pay attention to Brandon Snyder again, as the 13th overall pick in the 2005 draft now finds himself in AAA as a 22-year-old following a .343/.421/.597 showing in AA this season. I imagine he will spend all of next season in AAA and if all goes well could find himself starting at first base for the Orioles on opening day 2011, about seven months shy of his 24th birthday. What a beast.

In more Orioles first base news, the team has ensured that the period beginning in 2007 and lasting until Snyder takes over will never be without an Aubrey, as the team swapped Aubrey Huff for Mike Aubrey last week.

Last but whatever the opposite of least is in this context (most?), Albert Pujols has somehow elevated his game over the past two seasons. After hitting like Jimmie Foxx over his first seven seasons with an adjusted OPS+ of 167, Pujols has now maintained an adjusted OPS+ of 190 over his past 1186 plate appearances, or roughly the level of production of Ted Williams. Jesus.

Them Crooked Vultures Exist!

Pete Rose Sucks And So Do The People Who Write About Him*

It’s apparently that time of year again, when ESPN trots out one of their “Senior” writers, in this case Jayson “The ‘Y’ is for ‘Yes it is necessary’” Stark, to enlighten the world with yet another discussion about the relationship between Pete Rose and Major League Baseball and whether Rose will ever find himself enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The topic is has already been discussed up the yin yang, having outlasted the Berlin Wall, two Wayne’s Worlds, three Austin Powerses, three Shreks, two Bush Presidencies, SARS, Bird Flu, the entire career of Jeffrey Hammonds, Elian Gonzalez’s brief celebrity, the rise and fall of Orbitz beverages and Michael Jackson’s transformation from talented black guy to dead white woman. However, what I find most boring about the Pete Rose saga is not its hackneyed longevity — my problem with the whole ordeal is that it seems to be going overlooked that Pete Rose probably doesn’t deserve to be in the Hall of Fame even without the accusations of gambling.

Continue…

* I know.

I Wonder Where That Last Name Comes From…

Baseball-Reference’s list of major leaguers born in Jamaica contains but four entries:

Rolando Roomes

Devon White

Chili Davis

Justin Masterson

Today’s Least Interesting Headlines

Bethel, NY Boasts America’s Most-Hirsute Broads

Sweet find by Brooklyn's own Queen Estar, Eban Singer

Jake Rake: Patron Saint of Ask Harriet

I have yet to father a child, but I imagine the pride I feel resulting from the evolution of the Wikipedia entry for Ask Harriet must be similar. I first conceived the page back in October of 2008 when I was shocked to learn that the television series, in which Anthony Tyler Quinn (of Boy Meets World fame) was faced with the unlikely task of pretending to be a woman named Sylvia Coco in order to retain his job as a newspaper advice columnist, had somehow gone overlooked by Wikipedia over the course of its existence. 

The entry initially consisted solely of a few brief sentences acknowledging the show’s existence:

Ask Harriet was an American television [[sitcom]] that ran for one season in [[1998]]. The premise of the show, which ran on Thursday night on [[FOX]], revolved around a sports journalist named Jack Cody who loses his job at a newspaper and then dresses in drag in order to be rehired as an advice columnist. Cody was played by [[Anthony Tyler Quinn]].

However, in the 10 months since its inception, the Ask Harriet Wikipedia entry has ballooned into a full-fledged source of information about the show, including the juicy factoid that David Cassidy of The Partridge Family served as executive producer. Good For him! The page also features not one, but two infoboxes, an episode list, a detailed synopsis of the show’s premise and information about the cast and crew.

You’re welcome.

Baby, Don’t Tease Me…

Accompanying the 14 seconds of badass rock music linked above is a button on the Them Crooked Vultures website marked “X,” which directs users to a view of the north Atlantic Ocean in Google Earth, a single black and white Jpeg of the band and like the true rockstars these guys are, a $30 tee-shirt they have kindly made available for purchase.

What cool guys.

Things That Are Sadder Than The Trailer For The New Jon Favreau-Vince Vaughn Movie, Couples Retreat

• A dog notices that it’s favorite chew toy has rolled beneath a chair or sofa. The dog can see the toy but cannot reach it so dog whimpers in hope that a proximal human will come to its aid, using their flexible human limbs to grab the toy. Said human does not immediately understand what the dog is attempting to communicate with its primitive canine whimpering and several blank stares later, the dog remains unfulfilled and whimpering.
• The scene in Schindler’s List where the Jewish children are revealed to be hiding in latrines, covered in shit and piss, in order to avoid capture by SS officers.
• The dual title holders for the distinction of being the saddest songs of all-time, Neil Young’s “The Needle & The Damage Done” and “Philadelphia.”
• The unfortunate sight of a retarded person eating, particularly something complicated like a large sub sandwich or a stew in which everything has been overcooked a little bit and the vegetables are difficult to spear.

And that’s all. It is the editorial position of this publication that the trailer for the new Jon Favreau-Vince Vaughan film, Couples Retreat — with it’s sappy acoustic guitar soundtrack, depiction of earnest discussion of emotions between middle-aged men, Vaughn demonstrating his ability to avoid playing characters other than the Vince Vaughn character, hackneyed character-gathers-the-other-characters-to-explain-the-plot-of-the-film device, revelation that the film features that Asian guy from Knocked Up who is in every comedy film all of a sudden, homophobic panic, footage of Vince Vaughn playing Guitar Hero and the inclusion of Malin Akerman — is the fifth saddest thing in the history of Earth.

New Norm On The Horizon

Adding to the list of Rake Blog heroes with new projects due in the immediate future, Norm MacDonald is apparently at work on a new television show that he appears to be thrilled about. Excerpted from an interview with America’s #1 news source, ExpressMilwaukee.com:

Oh yeah, speaking of things that I’m not actually good at, I’m doing a television show on the channel FX, which will actually be funny, or it might be. I wrote it. Have you ever seen “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia?” I like that show, and I think that’s FX’s only comedy, so they wanted a companion. I really like FX a lot; they don’t give you very many notes or anything. So they’re finally going to let me do something I want to do. It’s called “The Norm MacDonald Reality Show.” The premise is my career has fizzled into oblivion, so they give me a reality show, which I reluctantly take. So I have to date the Barbie twins and do all this weird, retarded stuff. Now I don’t know how to drive in real life-my actual life-so in the show they teach me to get a license, but maybe they get Lee Ermey to teach me; you know, some twist. Anyway, so during the driving lesson, I accidentally kill the teacher. And then all hell breaks lose. I start to become famous again, and the show becomes a hit, and the trial starts. I get my fame that I didn’t want in the first place. But there’s a lot of funny stuff in it. I guess I’m telling it like it’s not funny.

90′s Throwback

Sure, it’s great that THE_REAL_CLINTON went over to North Korea and convinced Dear Leader to free the American journalists he was holding in a forced labor camp, but the real prize of the whole ordeal was the reunion of President Clinton with his former sidekick.

Look at that picture. Even though Al Gore, the Robin of 1990′s presidential politics, has spent the past decade attempting upward mobility, pocketing an Oscar, getting animated on Futurama and briefly winning the presidency of the United States, you can clearly see that the spark in his eyes when he’s around his former boss hasn’t waned over the years. It brings a tear of joy to this old twentysomething’s heart.

PS: How far into the journey home from North Korea do we think they got before Clinton banged one or both of the journalists? Over California? Hawaii? North Korea?

Topps Presents: C-3PO & His Huge Robot Cock

In an interview with Power 97 in Winnipeg last week, Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse “The Devil” Hughes dropped two bombs of explosive interest to Rake Blog and its readers. First off, the name of the

The Devil himself

aforementioned Josh Homme-Dave-Grohl-J.P. Jones superduper group is Them Crooked Vultures. Hughes revealed the band’s name for the first time and mentioned that there are plans for the band to tour in 2009 before seemingly biting his tongue and mentioning that he may not have been at liberty to divulge such epic details.

A close second to word of the Queens of the Zep-vana tour, was Hughes’ revelation of what he considers to be his most-prized possession: A 1978 Topps Star Wars trading card featuring lovable co-dependent C-3PO sporting a massive robot erection. A bit of research revealed that the card is fairly well-known and the boner is 100% there for the laughin’ at. This isn’t some Lion King bullshit where you have to look at just the right time and it’s open to interpretation; this is nothing but hilarious robot boner.