I have been getting so viciously spammed as of late that I haven’t been checking email as much as I usually do (read: I check now once a day instead of now…now…now…now).  

But I wanted to share two emails with you.  Here’s the first:

Hey i really like reading your blog.  You have some great stuff there.

Was curious about one post where you said you saw Sarah Michelle Gellar while waiting for her car.  Do you know what she was wearing or whether she was smoking?  I heard she does smoke but is pretty self conscious about it.  Also wondering whether she had blonde hair when you saw her or her new brunette style.

I get one or two emails a month asking me specific questions about when I waited in a valet line next to Sarah Michelle Gellar once in LA – and they never fail to creep me the fuck out.  They all ask questions like this: what she looked like, what she was wearing, what kind of car she drives, was she with anyone, etc.  I have no real comment on this except "Ew, gross."  Hey, if I have to feel creeped out, then you have to, too.

[I should add that this email, like the rest of the emails I've gotten asking for information about her, are not coming from 12 year old girls who like Buffy, but by men, probably men who live in basements of the houses in which they grew up.]

The second email made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside and even made me cry a little.  It comes from Justin in NYC:

I love your shit; seriously, I love it. Thanks for all of the laughs.

Side note: Muslim Ron and the Juggernauts is under your copyright being that it is featured content on your site. I have a brief query. I am in the process of forming a band; rather, I have formed a band. We gave a brief performance at Juilliard last year and are confirming details for another performance next year. In jest we referred to our ensemble as Muslim Ron and the Juggernauts, the result of further consideration and contemplation has created the desire in my heart to officially christen our musical endeavor with the title listed above.

Might I receive your gracious permission to name my band using your copyrighted text?

Wow.  I feel like a father giving his daughter away on her wedding day.  I’ve been in love with the band name Muslim Ron and the Juggernauts for years, but I always knew I’m too lazy to form my own band and use this name.  Since I can’t marry my own daughter, I have to give her to a good man, or, in this case, some guy named Justin who emailed me.

Yes, Justin, you can use the band name – consider this "express written consent."  I wish you and the rest of Muslim Ron and the Juggernauts success and stardom and I expected some serious returns in the groupie department should you hit it big. 

(And not cast-off groupies – sexy ones.  Dig?)

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The Allen Iverson trade…makes me sad.

Look, I know that he had to go.  I’m not mad about that.  Hell, if I were as talented as he is, I wouldn’t want to play for the Sixers either. 

And I’m thankful for everything he gave the city.  Through thick and thin, the city loved him because he had balls.  Philadelphians love balls.

This is why I’m sad to see him go.  The greatest Philadelphia sports moment of my lifetime was not when the Eagles beat Atlanta to advance to the Super Bowl in 2005, but when the Iverson-led Sixers beat Shaq and Kobe in Game One of the 2001 NBA Finals.  Iverson scored a whopping 48 points in that game and the Sixers won in overtime – in Los Angeles.  It was a stunner, since even Philly experts were predicting not just a Lakers victory, but a sweep.  And here comes Allen, bouncing around the room, freaking brothers every way like MJ…he was incredible.  I watched the game down the shore with my girlfriend at the time and I actually teared up a little bit, so close was I, was the city of Philadelphia, to a championship.  It was one of the best nights of my life, and then my girl and I had sex 1.5 times.  Shortly afterward, the Sixers lost the next four and the girl and I broke up.  Strikes and gutters.   

As for the trade itself, I’d like to point out something about those two first-round draft picks that people in Philly seem to be overlooking: THOSE PICKS ARE IN THE 20′S.  Yeah, everyone says it’s the deepest draft in years, but drafts are such a crapshoot that I saying this year is deep is not comforting to me at all.  And yet all my Philly friends are pointing to those picks like we’re going to land the next Tim Duncan and Steve Nash, when the odds of even one of those two 20-something picks working out are less than 10%.  Justifying the Iverson trade by saying that we got two first-round picks is like bragging to your friends that you’re dating a cheerleader who actually only has one eye.  Yeah, she’s a cheerleader and yeah, that’s kinda hot, but dude – she’s got one eye.  It’s important to keep things in perspective here, something Philly fans (myself included) often have trouble doing.

So how it stands now is that Allen Iverson, a stalwart of Philly sports and for years one of (if not the) best shows in town, is gone.  The Sixers are either the worst of second-to-worst team in the NBA.  The Flyers are either the worst or second-to-worst team in the NHL.  Pat Gillick’s big offseason additions to the Phillies have been Freddy Garcia (ok) and Adam Eaton (a fly ball pitcher going to Citizens Bank should work out really well) on the pitching side and Wes Helms (?) and Rod Barajas (???) for offense.  And of course, on Christmas Day, I’m going to get the worst gift of all: a 34-16 beating of the Birds by the hated Cowboys.

…

Can I switch allegiances?  I know it’s frowned about, but I think I can make a pretty good case for becoming a fan of another city’s teams.  I’m not asking you to answer now – just think about it.

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A belated, public thanks to the good folks at the Letter D, 1-2-3 I Love You, and Slack Lalane for holding down the fort while I was on vacation.  I thanked them privately already, but wanted to do so here once again.  Terrific job.

Also, some notes about emails I’ve gotten about the pictures from my vacation (Set One and Set Two):

- Yes, I know my friend Annie is hot.  Please stop MySpace messaging her, you lonely perverts.
- That applies to all of my MySpace friends.  It’s ok to be creepy to me, but leave my friends alone, please.
- I do not look like a lumberjack in some of the pictures.
- I’m sorry that you think my beard is gross.
- I like my hat.

That is all.

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I few weeks ago, I posted the video to Eric Prydz’s "Call on Me" and mentioned that it got me all riled up.  Then one of you jerks emailed me to say that all the girls in the video are actually transsexuals, that this was Eric’s like joke on the world.

Thus began the most confusing several minutes of my life.  I googled this like a mother fucker, searching just about every incarnation of "Prydz", "transsexual", "video", "call on me", and "is jason mulgrew gay", and couldn’t find any evidence to back this up.

(I even showed the clip to my friend Nicole, who exclaimed, "They have hips!")

So for now, we’re operating under the assumption that all the girls in the video are actually girls.  If they are, in fact, transsexuals, all I ask is that you not tell my dad that I enjoy(ed) this video.  It’s just too close to the holidays.  Thank you for your cooperation.

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Similar to Six Songs, I’ll occasionally be recommending a Book Pick to you all.  Perhaps it will be one I’ve read recently or an old favorite, fiction or non-fiction, but I’ll try to switch it up.

Book Pick

Road Work by Mark Bowden
An eminently readable book by the author of Black Hawk Down, Road Work is a collection of twenty stories written through the course of the journalist’s career, covering topics ranging from a day in the life of Saddam Hussein to crooked Philadelphia cops to Al Sharpton’s presidential run.  Despite its length (460 pages), I read this book on one cross-country flight and two days.  This is not a testament to my speed-reading ability, but to Bowden’s way of presenting a story.  A great fucking read, and one of the best non-fiction works I’ve read not just this year, but in a long time. 

Lazy reader’s bonus: The stories cover such a variety of topics that if you’re not interested, you can skip to the next one.  For example, I don’t give a fuck about Al Sharpton – I think he’s a major asshole – but I was so entranced by the way Bowden presented his stories that I read the piece anyway (which only strengthened my belief that Sharpton really is an asshole).

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Six Songs

"Sexy Sadie"  The Beatles
This is my favorite song.  It is absolutely perfect.  It is without flaw.  When I first listened to it, it was the most magical thing I’ve ever heard.  When I last listened to it, it was the most magical thing I’ve ever heard.  That is all there is to say, really.

"Poison Lovers"  Steve Earle and Siobhan Kennedy
Do any ladies out there want to sing with me?  We’ll put on cowboy hats, smoke a shit-ton of weed, do our music thing, then lay around eating pancakes.  Please don’t reply all at once. 

(Oh, it’s a really sweet song, too.  But sad sweet, not happy sweet.)

"Soul and Fire"  Sebadoh
My buddy Eric, who knows so much about music that it kind of scares me, recommended this song to me while I was out in LA.  It’s tremendous…it has this incredible sadness juxtaposed with these dirty guitars and power chords that leaves a feeling of, "You know what – it sucks now but it’ll be alright" taste in your mouth.  Or maybe that’s just hoagie.  Whatever.  

"Dead Funny"  Archie Bronson Outfit
The song was recently recommended to me by the girl with whom I had the worst sex of my life (and believe me, I’ve had a LOT of bad sex in my life, but this was the worst).  This is really her fault and not mine.  Not so much because she was bad, but because she didn’t give me the proper heads up.  If she had said early in the night of the copulation, "Hey, I think we should do it later," I probably would have tempered my drinking a little bit.  Instead, when she decided to make her move at the end of the night, I had already smoked a bunch of times; drank countless beers, a half bottle of vodka, some vanilla extract, and a liter of kerosene; and ate at least two whole chickens in the form of boneless buffalo wings.  So really, what was she expecting?  Antonio Fucking Banderas?

She and I were (and still are) friends and I’ve been begging her for ages for another chance to prove that while I’m bad, I’m not "caveman sex" bad (read: strictly to get the job finished, featuring lots of hair and gross noises, and maybe a stray punch of two before eating something undercooked), but she has resisted.  However, she recently sent me an email saying she might consider it if I were to perform a choreographed dance to this song.  For some reason, she finds this hysterical.

The point: if any readers in the NYC area are dancers, please contact me.  I need some help.

(I can’t have no one going around talking about how bad of a lover I am.  It’s ok when I do it – hell, it’s even charming – but not when anyone else does.)

"Une Annee Sans Lumiere"  The Arcade Fire
I hated this album when it came out.  Now I love it.  It’s so ambient it’s a little frightening (and I don’t mean that like "I’m frightened how much ambience this album exudes"; I mean "I’m frightened when I listen to this album").  This is probably my favorite track.  It’s dark, sexy, and desperate, just like me.

"Big River"  Johnny Cash
While on vacation, I listened to Johnny Cash’s "Complete Live at San Quentin" quite a lot and decided that I was going to learn the guitar parts for every song on the album when I got home.  Then I got back to NYC and my guitar and learned that I am the worst country guitarist in America today, and possibly in American history.  It’s frustrating because it sounds pretty easy but the timing is so weird…it’s really kind of infuriating that I can’t figure it out.  Not only is this track (probably) my favorite on the album but it’s also the first track, and is as great as an opening track on any live album there is – a real romper with a guitar line that gets you out of your seat and your fist in the air.  And there is absolutely no fucking way I can play it.  Crap.

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Once again, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.  Have a wonderful (and safe) weekend.  Remember, I both love and am in love with you. 

(We’ll be back next week.)