Sweet Uncle Lou’s Friday Roundup: The “Old-Timey Baseball Magorium” Edition
Good day, fine gentlemen, from the fantabulous confines of the baseballmagorium! First, I would like to thank Poon for the picture that sits before you. The citizen did a terrificous job of capturing his screen during yesterday’s baseball match. It is your Sweet Uncle Lou speaking to you once again on this glorious day! I have gathered a magnabulous compendium of links for you on this Fri of the day. Read them quickly, or read them at your leisure, but however you read them, read them while smoking a Kool menthol cigarette. Kool. Good to the last puff.
- Banning maple bats is not the answer, according to pen man Hal Bodley. “Why?” say you? Why, because the baseball lads do not want to stop using maple bats, of course. You shan’t argue with that sort of reasoning!
- Saying, “Huzzah!” for Jim Edmonds was difficult enough for the guys and dolls who root for the Chicago National League Ballclub. I pray of you that you not make us “Huzzah” for Scott Podsednik.
- The dames with the gams are ga-ga over me!
- Remember the olden days of the Desipio Daily Dose? Let me take you back to yesteryear and remind you why you missed those days so very much.
- Fear not, o supporters of the National League Baby Bears. I know that you lamented the loss of your own Superman (keep your eyes on the skies for SuperBOY, to be released next year), but the loss to the Birds of Red has even their most faithful supporters crying in their Ovaltine.
- This Spaniard hearkens back to the days of bareknuckled boxing. Two competitors entered the ring until one of them had to be carried out. Sometimes, punches were thrown and landed. How the crowd would rise as one in a frenzy of jubilation and bloodlust!
- Jay “Snidely” Mariotti is abhorred by most, and disliked by the rest. Hawk Harrelson even had the audacity to call Snidely a “hiney bird.” That is the most odious of odious statements!
- This story came hot off the press! It seems that the cooling machinery used in Addison is to be blacklisted in an effort to “improve” the town’s “aesthetics”? Sometime in the next fortnight, take a streetcar to Addison. It’s about as aesthetic as John McGraw getting out of a steam shower.
- Those of you who hoped to wipe Mike North from the microwaves and your talk boxes, may soon get your wish.
- Today is the long-awaited release of The Happening. “Long-awaited by whom?” you ask. Why, by Bad Kermit and RV! Those two have been giggling over the absurd premise of this talking picture film like a couple of schoolgirls playing cat’s eye under the bleachers during the winter sock hop. If you enjoy disasters, fill your automobile with petrol and head down to your picturemagorium!
- Finally, as you may have noticed in this newspaper column your Hire Jim Essian has become the object of affection of the attorneys-at-law for WGN Radio. Here is the telegram received by Bad Kermit:
I am legal counsel for WGN Radio. Your blog, at http://hirejimessian.com/index.php/author/admin/, uses WGN Radio’s logo, as well as the Cubs logo. It is by no means necessary to the commentary in your blog, and its use violates WGN’s rights under federal and state trademark law and other applicable statutes. We demand that you take the WGN logo down immediately, and recommend that you do the same for the Cubs logo. If the logos are not removed by Friday, June 13, we will refer this to Major League Baseball, which acts on behalf of the Cubs in trademark and internet matters, and will take any other action we consider appropriate.
WGN on its own behalf, and on behalf of the Cubs, reserves all of its legal rights and remedies. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.
The telegram was received at 10:30 p.m., which may explain the over-complicated web address used by the champion of the trademark. Kermit’s response? “Slow day at the office, huh?” If this web location has been turned over to Major League Baseball, then good day to you, Future Commissioner Selig! Based on your prompt handling of the problems with performance-enhancing tonics and the exploding maple bats, I suspect it is the year 2011 when you are reading this. How fares the future? Must we wear deep-sea diving suits to protect us from the harmful rays of the sun? Have the polar ice caps melted, flooding the world and causing humanity to retreat to undersea domes, or do you travel to work each day in a rocket car driven by a super-intelligent monkey? Have they come up with a cure for your purple lips yet?
Good weekend to you, fine readers! Even if our ballteam finds itself in a tussle north of the border, keep a stiff upper lip and a stout chin. Our fighting squadron will come out on top!
-Sweet Uncle Lou
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Comments
BigFlax As an aside, while I’m not a lawyer, I’m extremely curious as to how simply putting the WGN logo on one’s website “violates WGN’s rights.”
Poon Edmonds will have to be on the DL for them to go after Podsednik. While Mr. James E. Hollywood IV isn’t all star worthy, I highly doubt they’d want to replace him with someone with the outstanding stats at the plate of Scott Dergan-Podsenik.
TDubbs Gams is under-used in this day and age. I’m bringing it back. Gams will be the next HOGANS, the next BONERTIME. You heard it here first. DOLAN WILL NOT STEAL THIS ONE FROM ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bad Kermit Not to get all lawyery on you, but the fair use doctrine doesn’t apply as liberally to trademark law as it does to copyright law. Basically, I’d need to show a real legitimate reason to use the logo to argue fair use. I could conceivably make an argument that it’s necessary, but I just don’t care enough about having the picture up to do so.
WGN is, however, now on my list of things to mock at every single opportunity.
Bad Kermit Nah, but I took one copyrights and trademarks class, so I pretend to know what I’m talking about and pray no one calls me on it.
Cap'n Obvious Hey Kerm…why not try this experiment? Write a soupy 3000 word post about the unbelievably great coverage that WGN provides its viewers and listeners on television and (ahem) radio. Talk up the storied history of the network, etc…really prop them up. Use thier logo, and see if they feel their rights are being violated at that point.
I say WGN is violating your right to free speech by threatening you for having a little fun at their expense. Commies.
Or just refer to any coverage by them as on “The unnamed network of the Cubs and 21 hours a day of other garbage programming.” I bet they don’t have that trademarked.
Charles I was wondering if you were going to use that article from the Cardinals blog BK… I particularly like the one a few weeks where the blogger acknowledges the Cubs as the better team and is scared of us… much to the chagrin of all the Cards fans posting comments after that post…
BigFlax As I once wrote in my blog (I think the last time this awful rumor reared its head), you can’t spell Podsednik without “P.O.S.”
CactusMcHarris Dear Kerm,
Back when I lived in San Diego and had cable with WGN as a channel, I always thought that the programming there sucked, with the exception of the Cubs. WGN should be proud to be mentioned on your blog. I’d think it would at least bump up their stock price.
And a fine, fine entry today, too, sir - congratulations and salutations.
Section 242 Kermit–
As you know, I was alive in 1948 and we did not speak in Elizabethan English. More like Jimmy Cagney and Jimmy Stewart.
Congrats on pissing off a Trib lawyer. Take next week off.
CT
Bocaj
BigFlax
StPatrick
TDubbs
Scott Podsednik? Are you fucking kidding me? If you’re going to fill that OF vacancy with “mostly washed-up players I never liked,” at least Edmonds has some power.