Headline change: Self-serving asshole gets new gig

Rosie O'Donnell to join 'The View'

By JOHN SMYNTEK

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

The TV show "Extra" and People magazine were reporting Friday that comic/actress Rosie O’Donnell will be named as the newest co-host of ABC's "The View," (11 a.m. weekdays WXYZ-TV, Channel 7) replacing the exiting Meredith Vieira.
ABC is expected to make the official announcement on Friday's show.
O'Donnell reportedly beat out Connie Chung, Patricia Heaton and Soledad O’Brien for the job.
A lesbian in a committed relationship and known for being outspoken, O'Donnell's addition will provide a challenge to the show's ego mix. Vieira, who was a mediating influence, is leaving to replace Katie Couric on NBC's "Today" show.
O'Donnell's outspoken presence now joins the equally outspoken Star Jones, Joy Behar and Barbara Walters, who works the show part-time. Elizabeth Hasselbeck, a former "Survivor" contestant, is the other regular.

As if there weren't countless other reasons to avoid this TV show like it was a glistening pile of hospital waste. Who, in their right mind, watches this shit? And who forms their opinions of subjects based on this show's banter? You would have to be a back alley-lobotomized dope. And you know the whole thing is rooted in marketing. "Look! We have a big, fat dyke on the show now! See? See how DIVERSE we are?"

Classless jerk motherfucker

Marc Crawford, assholehead that he is, was fired by the Vancouver Canucks yesterday. This could not have happened to a more appropriate jerk.

Here is a picture of that little shithead in action against the Red Wings, jawing at Scotty Bowman. Crawford, the quintessential classless prick, made a spectacle of himself in 1997, during Game Four of the Western Conference Finals. We shut out the hated Avalanche, 6-0, that game, en route to the Stanley Cup. We won. They did not. That guy can fuck off now and forever.

Good

From today’s Free Press online edition

Foreign nationals in state prisons could be deported to save money

April 26, 2006

By DAWSON BELL

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

More than 700 foreign nationals are confined in Michigan prisons, including 138 who could be deported in short order at substantial savings to state taxpayers, according to a report released Wednesday by a prison watchdog group.

The Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending report, using Department of Corrections data, found 731 foreign nationals in Michigan prisons as of Feb. 3.

Of those, 138 have served their minimum terms and most of them could be turned over to immigration authorities and deported if granted parole.

Some who are not parole eligible also could be deported to countries that have treaty agreements with the U.S., the report said. At an average annual cost of about $30,000 for Michigan prisoners, the savings to taxpayers could be substantial, said Barbara Levine, CAPPS executive director.

“We need to ask ourselves whether Michigan taxpayers have anything to gain by continuing to imprison non-citizens who might just as easily, and far more cheaply, be returned to their countries of origin,” Levine said.

Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan said state officials regularly review prison rosters for deportable foreign nationals.

But deportation is not an option for many because Michigan’s sentencing rules are often at odds with those of a convict’s home country, he said.

Marlan said some prisoners, deported to their home countries to complete a sentence, have been released and found their way back to Michigan.

Let there be light

We took a part of the weekend to do a little work around the house.

While a lot of this stuff is, for me and my skill level, some monumental shit, it’s nothing compared to the greater, more salient jobs I hope to complete on this house. I can change all of the fucking light fixtures I want, but those are small beans jobs. Try hanging a door, or knocking out a floor. I know people who have done massive, massive fucking jobs on their cribs. Frank for one, but Vince also immediately comes to mind by not only building a big-ass garage with some extra hands, but the complete remodel of his kitchen. He did everything — knocked out part of the kitchen wall, put in all new countertops, drawers, cupboards, rewired the whole deal, added outlets and probably a bunch of other shit I’m forgetting. But he does all of that himself, and that is something I truly admire because a.) I can’t do it, and b.) I’m trying to aspire to do it.

So, when we moved in, the kitchen light setup here was kind of weird. There was black track lighting laid out around a center, ceiling-mounted light that had a bunch of exposed elements to it. It looked like shit. I don’t have a very good “before” picture, but this is what it looked like when Kerry and I replaced the fixture.

We decided a while ago that the track lighting was kind of ugly,

but it was useful because we there was no light above the stove. While Kerry was gone, I ripped that shit out, went to Home Depot and bought a self-contained Halogen lamp thing that installs under the cabinet and above the stove. The whole thing ended up looking like this, which is much better.

Back when Kerry first bought the house, one of the first purchases was a new porch light. That was about four months ago. With this newly inspired acumen in entry-level electrical work, I decided to replace that also. I popped off the old one

And then installed the housing for the new lamp. I actually had to drill some holes into the siding to get this mounting bracket up.

Again, I know this is really remedial shit to some people, but I was fucking giddy with myself. The end product looks like this.

While considerably small in scope, I was kind of happy with the work we accomplished. We have a lot more to go, but that’s more of a cosmetic nature, and not so much a need-based situation. We need to paint inside, I’d like to replace the screen door (it’s white aluminum and looks kind of lame, we have some furniture and spacing issues to settle, one wall in our living room needs a major art space renovation. I’ll keep you posted.

Candy coated

Hope everyone had a good Easter weekend, I know I did. We started Friday night with dinner at a new place for us, the Oak City Grille on Sixth Avenue in downtown Royal Oak. Excellent food, I recommend it highly. We were then invited to visit Heate later in the evening for a backyard fire at their house, which, as usual, was divine.

Part of the plan Friday night was to start and finish a mass Easter basket production on which we’d embarked. The plan was to make 50 Easter baskets for the ladies at the St. Mary’s Residence in Detroit, a home for mentally disabled adult women. It’s an interesting and very humbling place, actually. These six nuns, none of them seemingly under the age of 70, run the entire facility, which provides the day-to-day care for approximately 39 adult women with ailments ranging from retardation to schizophrenia to a general state of “slowness.” These nuns do all of this on a volunteer basis, with no state funding, relying entirely on the charity of others for everything from preparing daily meals to maintenance around the building and everything in between. Many of the residents have no family, or at least no family members with any time or interest to come visit them. One of the nuns told us that a good amount of them are simply written-off or disowned by family members because of their illness. Kerry took me there a few months ago. We dropped off a TV set and DVD player for a couple of their little TV-viewing rooms. The place looks like a four-story dormitory building. They have laundry, a small cafeteria, an industrial-type kitchen and, of course, a church service room in there. Most of the women receive Social Security, which pays for their room and board and their medications. Some residents take as many as 9 pills a day, so after their SS loot pays for the necessities, they have, like, $8 left for themselves for the month. Now granted, most of the women stay inside and it’s not like they need a lot of spending cash, but money is money and irrespective of your mental state, it’s still good to have. The sisters invited Kerry and I for lunch for dropping off the TV equipment and in the middle of my Hungarian goulash, I had the idea to do something for them for Easter.

Hence, the basket project was born. I went to Michael’s and bought small, plastic baskets, roughly 50 of them. I didn’t want to do anything too garish, plus I thought expenses could add up quickly here. So I got the baskets, Kerry bought some candy, we scored some hollow plastic eggs that we filled with jelly beans, bought some more candy (if I’m not mistaken, each basket had one of the following: a mini pack of Starburst, an egg filled with jelly beans, a couple of Dove mini-chocolate eggs and some mini-Cadburys. I think that’s everything). This is what the production line looked like in the end.

There were actually more baskets in the living room. We packaged them up and dropped them off at St. Mary’s on Saturday morning. We then hit Eastern Market. We went mainly for flowers.

I would later go into Rocky Peanut Co. for some bulk chocolate treats. We like their sugar-free selections, but they do have quite an amazing array of goodies there.

Kerry’s folks and Ri-Ri came over for Easter dinner Sunday, one that Kerry absolutely blew out in the kitchen. It was an amazing meal and a really long day, but totally worth it.

Take a look at this bad bitch

Kerry and I bought this bad boy last week.

Got it hella cheap, too. She bought patio furniture this weekend and we're picking it up tonight.Going to set up the fire pit soon, get some chairs out there and that back deck is going to The Place To Be. Come on by anytime.

Welcome back, Tigers

Despite losing, 5-3, to the 2005 World Champion Chicago White Sox, Monday’s home opener was just short of epic. Last year was pretty much the best ever, with game time temps of about 68 degrees and Dmitri Young hitting three homers, but this year was a certain amount of fun. Drawbacks to Opening Day? Too many drunken idiots, fucking unbearably long lines at both the concession stands and the rest rooms, and the drunken idiots. The upshot? A general sense of mirth and enthusiasm and the optimism that comes with a fresh start to the season, a new general manager and eager, young players. I picked up Corbett just after 9 and he gave to me my half of the mini-season ticket package, which is always exciting. We drove to Greektown, parked and hit a restaurant called The Ham Place for breakfast. Corbett definitely digs this place and I’d never before been. I got hooked up with some scrambled eggs, turkey sausage, hash browns and wheat toast, while he threw down a huge bowl of split pea soup. The food was solid and the place itself, well, was aptly named.

While we sat and chowed, the cook started making what, at first glimpse, began to look like the trappings of an impressive-looking sandwich. Of course, my chest started to hurt just watching the contents of this thing, but it was quite a process. It started out looking like this

before they added the egg …

and then, of course, the stack of bacon.

It looked both nasty and delicious, if that’s even possible.

We met up with some of Brian’s friends at the Old Shillelagh. There we had some Stella Artois before heading to the Cock and Bull for more beer. We stopped by this new place called Steel before heading toward the park. En route, I saw a car with this front plate.

I surmise the driver to be either a full-figured gal, or a lady who prefers male lovers with generous endowments, or quite possibly both.

One nice tradition about Opening Day is the masses as you get closer to the park.

I saw something kind of interesting from on high. Heading to our seats — which Brian upgraded us about 20 rows in the upper deck, with two seats right on the aisle — we could hear the haunting and charming sound of bagpipers. Here is the concourse before they came through

And here it is after. I like how you can see the space people made for these fellas

We settled in for the game, the announcement of the lineup,

… the ceremonial first pitch from Detroit’s favorite son, Jerome Bettis

It was a lovely day within a very festive environment. The Tigers home opener is very nearly a holiday in Detroit, with a lot of reverie and a ton of boozing it up. Corbett and I made sure we contributed to tradition. Some people, however, tend to overindulge. This woman, for example.

She started nodding off like a junkie right after the first pitch. I should’ve known when she wobbled the 10 feet from the entranceway to her seat, in our row, in a blinding 10 minutes. And this poor girl also felt it necessary to sleep off the morning’s Jagermeister.

That, or the gangbang ran late the night before.

We left our seats in the second inning to check out the merchandise store, grab a pretzel and some more beer. We later made our way to the lower level of the park while he smoked and I watched him smoke. Speaking of smoking, Corbett gets the Gear of The Year Award with this smokin’ sweatshirt.

It’s an original from 1984 and once belonged to his now late father. For Brian and his siblings, I’m sure they wish he was still around. And I do too, because I’ll bet the guy was pretty fucking cool. I know his son is. He’s a good man, a solid journalist and a great friend, and I’m humbled to be able to say that about him. Some dude offered to take our picture.

I have no idea why I’m doing the “Number 1” thing. Well, the club is in first place for now, so I guess it applies, but man, I think that looks really stupid. Number 1. Number 1 of what? Speaking of looking silly and numbers. I felt like taking a fiery Number 2 when I got a load of this guy. There are some things best left at home when you come to the park. If you’re a grown man, those items include your baseball glove (unless, you know, you really think the manager might summon you to the playing surface to help out in right field), anything work-related and, of course, your fucking shee-shee club shirt. Hi. I’m pretty.

The game was pretty uneventful, as the Tigers played rather uninspired baseball. Craig Monroe had a serious two-run jack to go with a stunning catch in the outfield. But in the end, starter Jeremy Bonderman gave up some dumb pitches. Tiger-killer Jim Thome took Zumaya deep. I look forward to racking up many more. Yesterday marked my seventh home opener, and the second with Corbett. I look forward to many more and hopefully with more friends involved, too.

Telltale sign

It's 9:03 p.m. right now and I'm at my desk in the office ... AT HOME. I'm doing right now one of the truly blissful things I do every year that seems to make things really, really right. I'm getting ready to head downtown for the Tigers home opening. This marks my 7th Opening Day in Detroit, and my third with Corbett. I took the day off and in about four hours, I'll be watching some live baseball. Today's forecast? Sunny and a high of 64.

Toronto '06

I can’t speak for Kerry, but I know that I’m still riding very high from the last weekend’s (and a long one at that) visit to Toronto. It was both relaxing and fun, with a lot of self-pampering and equal parts indulgence. We got into town around 6 p.m. on Thursday, after making hella good time. We checked in, chilled for a spell and admired the view from the room before taking off.

We stayed at the Sheraton Centre, where the room was nice and the indoor/outdoor pool was a welcomed luxury. After check-in and chill-out, we paid a visit to Queen Street, kind of tooling up and down looking for a place to grab a drink and some dinner. We stopped at the Horseshoe for a beer. We left after the beer because the bartender was clearly uninterested in serving us drinks. We hauled ass out of there and back to this Indian place Kerry suggested, this fantastic little joint called Trimurti. We started with samosas and a couple of beers. They brought us these things. I have no idea what they’re called, but to our delight, they tasted exactly like Munchos, but they were about four times the size.

Kerry ordered the lamb marsala and I the murgh zaphrani, a boneless chicken kebob marinated in yogurt, spices and saffron, and covered in tandoori.

The dinner was near perfect, save for this young Asian couple at the table next to us who could not stop playing with their camera, constantly taking pictures of one another from across the table. Seriously, the dude must’ve shot about 35 pictures of this woman. They kept goofing and clowning with it and it really was getting obnoxious. They set the timer on the camera and started taking pictures of themselves. That’s when Kerry took it upon herself to lean into the frame of one of their shots and make a face. When they checked the screen on the back of the camera to admire their handiwork, and saw her goofing in the background, I think they got the point. Aside from that, dinner was sublime.

We headed down the street to The Rivoli, which was actually kind of nice. It’s a live music venue and apparently a popular one, but it was Thursday and not a lot of people were out, so we headed upstairs for drinks.

It was an enjoyable visit until about 30 minutes into it and the “music guys” up at the bar (read: the dork with the $150 Stanton headphones and the laptop programming the night’s playlist of bullshit electronic music) started with some sounds that were just gross. It was this weepy, wannabe-obscure, pussy techno that seems to be so popular with the “lounge set.” Judging by our mutual “let’s get the fuck out of here” expressions, Kerry and I had enough and bolted back toward the hotel. I had a couple of nightcaps at the hotel bar and we crashed hard and soundly in our big, comfy bed.

We got up Friday, sleeping in until 9 and had to head downstairs to talk some hotel personnel because the valet guys fucked up Kerry’s car. Just a couple of scratches, but still not very cool at all. I mean, come on, it’s a Ford Focus my little Portuguese friend. Small body, tight wheelbase, very easy to turn and negotiate. We took care of that, before heading here for massages, courtesy of Kerry. I was a massage virgin before this and now I think I might be corrupted. Wow. That was 60 minutes of bliss. We came out of there recharged, loosey goosey and ready to go. We figured that 1 in the afternoon on a Friday would be the best time to go to Ikea, as opposed to say, 2 on a Saturday afternoon. So to the Scandinavian retailer we went. We didn’t do much damage though, roughly 50 bucks on some shelves, a pasta canister, some picture frames. We split Islington and went to the Hockey Hall of Fame for T-shirts and hats for me. Kerry scored huge for her brothers, but I don’t know if they’ll read this before they get the goods, so I won’t spoil here. After that it was back to the hotel for a swim in the pool and a little relaxing before heading to what would be one of the best dining experiences she and I have had in quite some time.
We kind of freestyled it Friday night for dinner. We didn’t know what we wanted or where to go, so we started looking at options in a couple of dining guides. We settled on this place, a quaint Italian dining room just north of Little Italy, near the University district.

Kerry ordered one of the daily specials, the spag and meatballs. I took somewhat of a chance and ordered the broiled grouper. I call it a chance because I’ve never before had that type of fish and I was rather hungry, so I wasn’t in the mood to experiment. I’m glad I did. It turned to be some of the best fish I’ve ever had. It was little “meaty,” but it was seasoned perfectly. Our meal looked like this and I killed everything on my plate.

Plus, the place was just kind of sharp and charming.

We walked to Little Italy, passing this place. Sometimes getting to the point of your signage eliminates any questions about your goods and services.

We had some more pints of Stella at Marlowe’s before walking around College Avenue a bit. Kerry ducked into a store for some gum.

Further examination of the window revealed some really cool, old-timey, wind-up tin toys. These things were really bomb.

We stopped at Beba Lounge, which was a total waste. Fifteen bucks for two bottles of beer. And it’s kind of hard because I order a beer and Kerry orders a beer and they serve them to us and then announce the price. I swear, I would’ve gleaned great pleasure from shoving both of them, fat-end first, clear up someone’s ass in that place. Fuckheads. We crossed the street to window shop when I caught a glimpse of this comic book place.

Ever watch “The Simpsons”? I swear, in Toronto, I found the living, breathing equivalent of the pretentious comic book guy from the popular animated TV program. Tell me there isn’t a resemblance, striking or otherwise.

We took a cab to some place way, way east on Queen that was recommended to Kerry by a friend, some place called The Drake. There was a line, so we walked down the street to The Social, where we had more Stella. We took a cab out there and luckily had a pretty smart, older cabbie. I just wanted to get away from the pretty boys, the low-fi/retro, hipster posturing, and the cancer-causing agents of that whole “scene.” I basically tried to convey to the hack, despite my inebriation, that we just wanted a place to get a shot and a beer and be around some “real” people. He took us here
And, believe it or not, it wasn’t that bad. It was nice and clean in there.

The crowd was normal and kind of friendly and by the end of the night, I got to see some absurd shit. This woman fell from her bar stool and flat on the floor. She then got up and five minutes later, was playing the spoons. Strange. At that point, we should’ve gone home. You know, we’re drinking more Stella and now shots of Bushmills. It’s about 1 in the morning. These things spell disaster. We left that place and headed around the corner to this bar called The Irish Embassy, which was also very nice.

We had a long, drunken conversation over some late-night fish before taking a cab back to the room, where Kerry would later hiccup herself to sleep and I would stay up, short of catatonic, watching “Family Guy” reruns until 3 a.m. I could not, for the life of me, recall what those episodes were about.
Enter Saturday and a couple of vicious hangovers. Kerry was a little more wrecked than I, but I was in bad shape. We got room service breakfast and that cost us only $487. We went back to bed, woke up, back to bed, peeled ourselves from the sheets, took showers and finally made it out of the hotel at a bright and chipper 1 p.m. We had more lunch and kind of tooled around before heading to a part of town called The Annex, thanks to the suggestion from SCREETUS

I liked it there and had we not been so incredibly beat-up from the night before, it probably would be been even more enjoyable. We checked out some shops around there, even trying a little hair o’ the dog at a little pub, but that didn’t do much for either one of us. We took the subway back to the hotel, took a nap and then made plans for our last night in TO.
It was more like a date night than anything else. We had dinner at the Green Mango (excellent Thai food) and then went to a 9:20 showing this Canadian indie film, “Six Figures.” It was OK. With indie films sometimes comes “indie acting,” and this movie certainly showcased a lot of it. Still though, it was a good, slow night. We got out of the movie house at around 11:30 and hightailed it back to the hotel. We were done drinking for the weekend and the rest of the day was catching up to us. We crashed, got up, had some crepes on Queen Street and drove back to Royal Oak.

We have a thing for Toronto. It’s a clean, friendly, seemingly very efficiently run city. It has exciting nightlife, a throbbing arts and culture community, effective public transportation, a rich history, proud sports franchises, and a general sense of tolerance unseen in these United States. People aren’t going around Canada blowing each other’s fucking brains out with the frequency we see here. I’m not complaining, don’t get me wrong, but it’s, I don’t know, refreshing to exist somewhere, even temporarily, where you’re not surrounded by people who have this global sense of entitlement. And you know what? Canadians know more about our current events and the history of our country then we do of theirs, so you really can’t knock a damn thing. That, and the people are just so nice. These were the two toughest customers we encountered all weekend.

And we also ran into another member of their clique, but Kerry wasn’t backing down.

It’s a bicycle-friendly city. They seem to be everywhere, especially a great amount of places to park and lock them.

Toronto has some kickass graffiti, too. These is just a micron of the work I noticed around town.

Thanks TO, looking forward to seeing you soon.