Did Barack Obama Blow His All-Star Game First Pitch?
Tonight Barack Obama threw out the first pitch at the 2009 Major League Baseball All-Star game. Gambling websites have been taking bets on whether or not he would bounce the pitch to home plate! So how did he do? Obama, dressed in jeans and Chicago White Sox jacket, certainly looked smooth with his delivery, but the camera angle broadcast by Fox was simply horrendous and didn't really give viewers any indication of whether or not it was a good or a bad pitch, so we're basically incapable of rendering a verdict on our own. However, some members of the media who were in attendance saw the pitch and have already weighed in. From the New York Times: Once Obama made it to the mound, he eased into his motion and softly floated a pitch to Albert Pujols. Pujols, the current Cardinals icon, reached in front of home plate to catch Obama's wobbly pitch. The fans cheered for Obama, who then hugged Pujols halfway between the mound and the plate. From the AP: Obama's ceremonial first pitch at the All-Star game barely reached the plate Tuesday night. St. Louis Cardinals star Albert Pujols helped the president, moving up on the plate and reaching out to scoop the toss. From the Chicago Tribune: As you would expect, President Barack Obama leaned to the left while making the ceremonial first pitch at Tuesday's All-Star game in St. Louis. While he was lacking in style points on his short southpaw lob to home plate, he certainly made a striking fashion statement — not to mention showing his South Side sentiment — to the worldwide television audience. From the Weekly Standard: He may have thrown out the first pitch wearing a Chicago White Sox jacket ("My wife thinks I look cute in it"), but there was nothing in his cool aspect or his broadcast-booth blarney to suggest a true love for the game, like that of, say, our 43rd president. This guy should stick to golfing, or, better yet, to kicking a soccer ball around the White House lawn. It suits him: more Europeanish, less Americanish. Finally, we text-messaged Deadspin Emeritus Will Leitch, who is actually at the game in St. Louis, for his assessment. Here's what he said: He isn't as good at throwing a first pitch as Bush. THANK GOD! So the verdict seems to be that Barack Obama throws like a girl, which probably shouldn't be all that surprising considering that he's a latte-sipping communist. But here's a clip of the first pitch from Fox, not that you'll be able to really glean anything from it, so you can at least try to render your own verdict. pic via AP MORE >>
Shark! Shark! Shark!
Would the Summer of Death truly be complete without a giant shark washing up on the shores of Long Island, New York? We think not! A 20 foot long shark, which in case you're not steeped in shark knowledge is freaking huge, washed up on a Long Island beach this afternoon. Oh, but don't worry—This shark was a "harmless" plankton eater. Turns out there's nothing to fear here. This was a basking shark which, though big, is not considered dangerous. "He's a plankton feeder. You can see inside there's no teeth inside his mouth," said marine biologist Tracy Marcus. "He's a relatively harmless kind of shark, but large." "It's the second largest fish in the world, second to the whale shark," Marcus said. Marcus works with the Cornell Cooperative Extension and examined the giant fish. "I don't see any major scarring, I mean there is a little bit of a boat hit, it looks like, a little bit of rawness near the tail, but nothing that would kill a shark," Marcus said. "Basking shark?" What the hell is a "basking shark?" We read every shark book ever published during our shark-obsessed youth and we never heard of anything called a Goddamn "basking shark!" Plankton-eater or not, we're canceling all plans to go to the beach for the immediate future. 'Harmless' 20-Foot Shark Washes Up on NYC Beach [CBS] MORE >>
Is Twitter Handing Over Private Data to the Feds?
The Twitterati are only too happy to take their private moments public. But Silicon Valley's technical wizards are whispering to one another over lunch that the the federal intelligence apparatus wants more, and is taking it. (Update: Twitter denies) Whoever is seeding the restaurant gossip is being fairly specific. A source tells us that a loose-lipped Twitter staffer recently dished at a lunch that the company has allowed a federal agency to set up a tap to monitor a "firehose" of its data, including private details on users, presumably including private "direct messages," IP addresses and account information. The Feds — the NSA would seem the most logical agency —then analyze the data to mine for information they deem of interest. Twitter, it is said, is one of only a handful of internet companies large enough for the Feds to bother setting up such monitoring. We called and emailed Twitter's PR department and the company's director of operations, and have not yet heard back. (Update: See below.) But it's hard to imagine the microblogging company would be happy about such an arrangement. The San Francisco company's top two executives, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, live in SF and Berkeley, respectively, and show every sign of having absorbed the Bay Area's left-field, anti-establishment culture. Of course, the men are also capitalists with a startup to get rich off. But federal monitoring looks no better from that vantage: Twitter has trouble enough running its servers without worrying about maintaining some kind of firehose tap; the company's techno-elite and Hollywood users, meanwhile, would surely lash back hard at cooperation with the NSA, a risky proposition for a young company that has yet to turn a profit. Whether the Valley lunch chatter is accurate or not, Twitter is bound to interact more and more with law enforcement as the volume of direct messages goes up and as public Twitter streams are woven deeper into people's sometimes tumultuous lives. The takeaway for users is even more straightforward: If the NSA or your local police department might get the wrong idea about you message, don't put it anywhere on Twitter. The only truly direct message goes from one person's mouth to another's ear. And even that can end up on the internet. (Speaking of which: If you've heard anything about this, we'd love to hear from you.) UPDATE: Twitter co-founder Biz Stone writes: There is absolutely no element of truth to this allegation whatsoever. (Pic: EFF via hughelectronic) MORE >>
The Devil Reps Prada: A Lizzie Grubman Tell-All
Lizzie Grubman, lobster-faced PR woman and runner-over-of regular people, once had an assistant named Robert Rave. That since-disillusioned young man has now published a roman à clef about a boy working for a fearsome PR dragon. We've got a manuscript! Spin is big and thick and getting a roll out from St. Martin's next month, but really the first few pages of the prologue tell it all. A blowed-out, little-black-dress-clad, ogre-handed orange menace named Jennie blowing lines at 6am while complaining about black people. Seriously! Take a look for yourself! The fictional Robert wakes up one morning to the following scene: Click on each image to make larger Um, brutal! Be afraid Mr. Rave, be very, very afraid. We can't wait to get to the part about some sort of horrible "accident" outside a Hamptons nightclub. See you at the book party, Rob. If you make it that long. MORE >>
CEO Carol Bartz Would Like You to Work Harder While She Goes on Leave
Carol Bartz is going to be out for two weeks. The surly Yahoo CEO is having her leg surgically enhanced so she can kick ass even harder; why are the rest of you peons just sitting around, on your butts?? Bartz would certainly like to know. In her weekly all-company email, sent out early, she asked why her workers "seem they're waiting for something," and demanded that "we stop waiting and get moving." Uh, OK, but doing what? Shouldn't Bartz be, like, more specific? As out tipster put it: ' Q: Why are people "waiting for something"? A: Because there's no freaking direction from managment to the troops. Isn't that *her* job? Most of the email: Surprise! You're getting my Friday message a bit early this week - I'll be out for two weeks or so starting today for knee replacement surgery. :( I've got lots to cover before I go under the knife, so let's dive right in: we're going to take a new approach to my weekly emails. You'll now hear from me every few weeks, but in-between will hear more from my staff. I'm not the only person with interesting things to say, and it's important that you hear from others that are running the business. And when I say my staff, I mean all my staff. Even Judy. I'm sure she can't wait to tell you what it's like working for me day-in and day-out. One last thing before I go. I've noticed that since the reorg, people seem like they're waiting for something. I'm not sure if it's a sugar-low or what, but we need to stop waiting and get moving. Good things do not come to those who wait, they come to those who make things happen. Oh, goodie: We can't wait for Eric Brown's turn as Bartz's email guest host! (Pic: Via All Things D) MORE >>
Dash Snow, Downtown Artist, Said to Be Dead of Overdose
Multiple sources tell us that Dash Snow—photographer, semen artist, graffiti writer, and embodiment of the downtown NYC scene—has apparently died of a heroin overdose, two years shy of his 30th birthday. We got a tip this morning that Dash had overdosed last night. Earsnot, a.k.a. Kunle Irak, a fellow downtown artist and one of Dash's best friends, posted this on his Twitter page this morning: A separate source close to Dash confirmed to us this morning through an intermediary that Dash has died. It's already popping up on Twitter, as well. We'll let you know more details as we learn them. (Snow's gallery, Peres Projects in Berlin, isn't releasing a comment). Dash Snow was most memorably profiled by Ariel Levy in New York magazine two years ago. He and his friends came up in the downtown graffiti scene, and branched out to find success in the art world, without ever losing their bizarre, drug-addled edge. What makes the legend richer is that Dash Snow could very easily have lived a different kind of life, been a different kind of artist. Snow's maternal grandmother is a De Menil, which is to say art-world royalty, the closest thing to the Medicis in the United States. His mother made headlines a few years ago for charging what was then the highest rent ever asked on a house in the Hamptons: $750,000 a season. And his brother, Maxwell Snow, is a budding member of New York society who has dated Mary-Kate Olsen. But Snow has concocted something else for himself. He has been living as hard as a person can-in and out of jail, doing drugs, running from the police-for a decade. He's unschooled, self-taught. The Irak crew, which Dash helped found, is now world famous. You can still see his "SACER" tags around the city. His fine art was somewhat less conventional: Snow has been working with his own ejaculate a lot lately; his contribution to the Saatchi show was a piece called Fuck the Police, which featured sprays of his sperm on a collagelike installation of tabloid cutouts, headlines about corrupt cops. Dash's other items for sale included T-shirts and his coke, sold on Ebay. Whether you liked his art or not, you have to admire the fact that he was a unique dude. R.I.P. [Pics: TheWorldsBestEver, BLean's Flickr. More on Dash at Blogue.] MORE >>
Sarah Palin, Washington Post Op-Ed Writer
In what is possibly the most bizarre coupling since Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley married, Sarah Palin and the Washington Post have come together as one and given birth to a Sarah Palin Washington Post op-ed piece. Yeah. What better way for two beleaguered entities to divert attention away all of their imbecilic misdeeds than by coming together to form an odd coupling? Hey, it works for celebrities! But seriously, Palin's piece for the Post on "Cap-and-Trade," an issue we, nor anyone else it seems, have any true understanding of, beyond the fact that it's something hated by the energy conglomerates that Obama says will help save the earth from environmental destruction, which naturally leads us to lean toward being in favor of it. The whole piece reads like it was written by Sarah Palin pulling quotes from a brochure sent to her by an energy lobbyist. The sentences and paragraphs are short, filled with vague generalities and conservative buzzwords and catchphrases without providing a shred of evidence to support her central assertion, which is that Obama's energy plan will wreck the American economy. The only thing that comes close to resembling any form of "evidence" is her noting that the energy bill includes money to fund the re-training of energy industry employees who lose their jobs because of the plan. Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs. Yep. That's it. Everything else is just Sarah being Sarah. Take Palin's closing flurry for example, which we just love because she manages to work in references to God, Alaska, the need to drill for oil in Alaska's nature preserves, the prospect of having to depend on commies and terrorists for oil, while also managing to mock Obama's 2008 campaign slogan: We must move in a new direction. We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. Just as important, we have more desire and ability to protect the environment than any foreign nation from which we purchase energy today. In Alaska, we are progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history. Our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats. Of course, Alaska is not the sole source of American energy. Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy. We have an important choice to make. Do we want to... MORE >>
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