Some Will Kill, Some Will Be Killed: Obama Lays It Down, TRI Slurps It Up

A TRI Staff Analysis

TRI staff gathered last night to wait for updates in the Tiger Woods saga, because we find the news that a man in position of power would cheat on his wife to be one of the most earth-shattering revelations of the last 1,000 years.
Sadly, there were few new developments, the only update we received coming from TRI sports correspondent Barret Strong, who reported that his girlfriend was once brought to orgasm by playing "Tiger Woods Golf 2007" on Xbox and repeatedly hitting the ball into the water while holding the vibrating controller between her legs.
So instead, we watched President Obama accept his Nobel Peace Prize.

We were expecting just to beatbox along like we usually do when the Bammer is laying down his floetry, but when Bamdog laid down the line, "Some will kill. Some will be killed," the beatboxing stopped and a TRI staff roundtable began.
Say what you will about Obama’s performance in office so far. But…wait, actually, let’s take a second to do that.

Say what you will about:
The health care debate: Is it possible for an entire Democratic caucus to bend over so far backwards to please Republicans that they end up licking their own assholes—then have the Republicans criticize their "unrealistic" rimming technique? Why, yes. Yes it is.

Wall Street bailouts: It’s actually hard to "say what you will" about the bailouts because, like all taxpayers, we have a ball gag in our mouth and a line of downtown New York financial douchebags waiting in line behind us to pummel away while reaching into our pockets, all with President Obama looking on approvingly and Timothy Geithner jacking off in the corner.

The Afghanistan strategy: "Er, um, hold on, give me a minute here…dither, dither, dither…Did Sarah Palin just accuse me of dithering?! That bitch!…dither, dither…Hold on, just a minute, er, um, well, jeez.…Okay! We’ll send more troops, but not as many as the general asked for! And THEN we’ll get the fuck out of there!" *wipes sweat from brow*

Cash for Clunkers: Might as well have been Gold for Bowlcuts: go to your local salon for a bowlcut and get a gold bar straight from Fort Knox! After all, barbers are hurting, too. We guess it’s understandable that Obama would shovel money onto the auto industry…We would expect him to do the same for any other American industry that is essential to the fabric of our nation and in danger of going under…*cough* Newspapers! *cough*

Bowing to the Japanese emperor: The only way it’s cool for an American president to bow to non-elected royalty in Japan would be if he followed it by saying in an exaggerated Chinaman voice, "OOooooh, pwease ta meechuu Mista Empowaaaaa…." then threw little karate chops at him.

Calling out a white police officer for acting "stupidly" when he arrested Obama’s Harvard professor buddy, who is black: Uh, Barack? You weren’t there. And your professor buddy seems like an asshole. Saying what you said…well, it was just "stupidly."

Anyway, say what you will about ALL of that. But the president’s speech in Norway reminded us of at least one thing: This is a man who cares, and who understands the gravity of his decisions. Of our troops, he said, "Some will kill. Some will be killed."
Remember how Bush talked about war? "Bring ‘em on." "We’ll smoke ‘em out of their holes." Meanwhile, he wouldn’t even let us see PICTURES of all the American caskets coming back from overseas.
Obama walked into one of the toughest situations in presidential history--and he’s made it look pretty fucking tough. But with that one line–"Some will kill. Some will be killed."–he reminded us that he really is a unique motherfucker in the history of the presidency. He cares and he’s not afraid to show it.
So TRI is here to say that while 2009 may have been a year of strikes and gutters, ups and downs, we stand behind our president going into the new decade.
Obama, the Bammer, the Bamdog, the Head President in Charge: We’re with you, dog. Let’s go get ‘em again. This time it’s for the money.

Les Paul: A Great White Swims On

A Letter From the Editor





TRI would like to take time today to remember a true Great White shark: Les Paul. He invented the solid-body electric guitar, or as we call it now, "the guitar." He invented multi-track recording, or as we call it now, "recording."
I will now recount, in the self-indulgent fashion of our times, my personal journey with this man, from the day I first got one of his guitars to the night I spent in his sharky presence in a jazz club in New York.
I first went crazy for the Les Paul guitar in high school. I didn’t play then, but I was a devout member of the Church of Social Distortion, and our pastor, Mike Ness, always played a beautiful gold-top Les Paul. I would have ran through fire for Mike Ness in those days, but I’ll never forget the one thing I was willing to criticize him over – the RF sticker he had plastered on that guitar. I remember thinking, How could he slap that thing on that beautiful golden guitar? I vowed that if I ever got one of my own, it would be completely unadorned.
When I started playing myself, I would go over to my dad’s place and fuck around with the many guitars in his quiver. He had Les Pauls, but long ago devoted himself to the Fender Stratocaster (hey, if it’s good enough for Jimi Hendrix, I guess).
But I always preferred the Paul. Not so much because of the sound, since I didn’t know shit from shinola sound-wise in those days, but the look. It just looked beefier, stronger and more substantial. I looked at it and imagined clubbing someone over the head with it, killing them instantly.
Anyway! When I picked my first guitar out of the Musician’s Friend catalog, I went with the Epiphone Les Paul Special II. It was the very cheapest entry-level Paul in existence and when it stopped working, as $150 guitars tend to do, I took it to my dad to fix.
He called me over to his house one day and said, "Your guitar is fixed." He handed me my case, and I immediately felt it was heavier than when I left it. I opened it up and my Epiphone Paul was nowhere to be seen – in its place was my dad’s authentic Gibson "The Paul" 1979 solid walnut Les Paul. He was giving it to me. He said something like, "You’re ready for a real guitar," and it was one of the best days of my life.
When I started looking into the man himself, the first thing that struck me was the story about how he broke his left arm at some point, and the doctor said he was going to have to set it in a fixed position. Paul chose to have it fixed at a 90-degree angle, so he could still play guitar. I tried finding a picture of it, but I swear, there’s pictures where he’s standing there with his left arm sticking out. It looks hilarious – unless he’s playing, in which case it looks totally natural.
Anyway, several years ago I was surprised to find the man was still alive…he was approaching 90. Then I was AMAZED to find that he was still playing shows, every Monday night at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City.
I became fixated on the idea of going there to see him. Well…partly I was fixated on that, and partly fixated on a woman I loved who had bailed on me and moved to New York, and partly fixated on going to New York and watching the b-ballers at Rucker Park, but anyway! This came to represent what was so fucking cool about New York to me. LES PAUL PLAYS THERE EVERY FUCKING MONDAY NIGHT!
So years later, I got that woman back, and we went to New York together and went to the show. Again, one of the best nights of my life. It was so damned fun….I really don’t have the words for it. Some editor, huh?
First of all, his band SHREDDED. Bluesy-jazzy-rock, just straight up, good-time, have-five-or-six-martinis, good ol American music.
And Les Paul the man, just shy of 94 years old, was one of the most engaging, charismatic frontmen I had ever seen. Just full of jokes and good vibes…I remember at one point he was talking about some encounter he had just had with a beautiful woman, and he said, "I felt like a condemned building with a new flagpole." HAHA! This was a 93-year-old man making boner jokes! The crowd loved it.
His Iridium Jazz Club residency was famous for HUGE guest appearances: Jimmy Page, Springsteen and other huge names had popped in for unannounced appearances before.
On our night, Les announced that he was going to welcome to the stage, "One of the first men around the world."
I was sitting there thinking, who the fuck’s he bringing up, Magellan? But it turns out what Les meant to say was, "One of the first men to orbit the planet Earth." It was astronaut Scott Carpenter.
I was a little disappointed at first, but Carpenter turned out to be an awesome guest. He took the mic and talked a little bit about space, boasted like a real old bastard about beating the Russians in the space race, then left us with a really foreboding warning, as only a true old bastard could: "China…LURKS…" he said, then left the stage.
The crowd didn’t know whether to applaud or cry. Me, I almost spit up my martini before busting up laughing.
On the way out of the club that night I walked right by Carpenter. As I mentioned, I had had a few martinis. I said to him, "Before this week, I had never even been to New York. And you’ve been to space!"
Carpenter smiled and shook my hand and said, "Well, they’re both great places!"
I laughed my fucking ass off. It was a magical night, and I’d like to thank Les Paul for it. Oh, and for inventing the greatest musical instrument in human history.
Sincerely,
Travis Lee Hunter
Editor and Publisher

U.S. Soccer Team Shits the Bed in Mexico

By Travis Lee Hunter
TRI Editor and Publisher
And
Colombo Crue
TRI Sports Correspondent
　
Reporting from La Cita in downtown Los Angeles: A giant Mexican flag greeted us at the entrance so it was no surprise to find a big pro-Mexico crowd inside. Most of these men were intensely focused on the game and their $2 Budweisers and had very little to say, other than the occasional "la madre" or "a la chingada" when things looked risky for their beloved Tricolor. Once in a while someone would crank some disco through the system for five or ten seconds to pump up the crowd and everyone would cheer.
Of the four USA supporters in the bar besides your faithful TRI correspondents, two were loud-mouthed suit-wearing assholes who were hoping the game would go to a shootout (which was impossible since World Cup qualifiers can end in ties, and in fact a tie might have been what the U.S. was aiming for, strategically speaking). Another guy was so pessimistic about the U.S. team’s chances he was actually rooting against them harder than any of the dozens of Mex fans in the house. Another guy didn’t say anything the whole game other than a sarcastic "there you go Ching!" everytime U.S. forward Brian Ching blew it. And we thought we were the only ones who hated Ching! We actually had a gay little bonding thing with the guy, like, You hate Ching too?! Wow, cool man, us too! Smile. Wink.
The service at the bar was excellent. The bartendress spoke little English but certainly understood "Budweiser." When we asked her if they served food, she said no. Then a couple minutes later she asked, "You want shrimp tostada?" We had no idea where the fuck she was getting a shrimp tostada from all of a sudden but we were sure it was going to take some sort of unusual effort, given that they didn’t have a menu or even so much as chips and salsa. We didn’t want to impose.
The room was very dark, with three flatties over the bar and a big sheet with the game projected nice and clear over the dancefloor.
On to the game.
The U.S. team had trouble a) getting the ball, and, on the rare occasion when they did achieve a), b) keeping the ball.
These are both important facets of the game of soccer.
The Mexicans just like to kick the biscuit around, passing for the sake of passing. The entire crowd shouts "Ole!" for every pass and they have fun with it, just biscuiting it around. The U.S. team…well, we don’t know biscuiting from bed-shitting, apparently.
What we had here was a pretty comprehensive bed-shitting, excepting Goalkeeper Tim Howard, who stopped all the shots that were stoppable. But once you move up from there, to the defenders, is where the grass starts getting poopy.
DeMerit, as usual, filled the role of tattoo-haver for the team, and played pretty well. Onyewu was his big bad self, but neither he nor DeMerit seem to be aware that they have options once they have the ball at their feet other than "blast it the fuck upfield." Granted, they were probably feeling a little ragged because of the constant pressure they were under the entire game thanks to the midfield, which might as well have brought toilets onto the field and sat on them and watched from there. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
At least Onyewu and DeMerit actually stopped people, which is more than you can say for Cherundolo and Bocanegra, whose defensive mindset appeared for a while to go something like, "Do not get too close to the offensive player. Keep your distance and funnel him into the penalty area." They had me waiting all day for the classic Meh-Hee-Can flop in the area for the penalty kick. The long-range "golazo" (magnificent goal) that tied the game for Mexico wouldn’t have happened if Bocanegra had rushed the shooter instead of covering his balls and flinching away from the shot like…well, like we would have done if we were out there.
As for the midfielders….ay ay ay. We wouldn’t go near Ricardo Clark or Michael Bradley’s positions for about 35 or 45 minutes. Let them air out. Clint Dempsey, supposedly one of our cornerstone ballers, must have gone and dug a hole to shit in, because we didn’t even see him.
Landon Donovan’s pass on Davies’ goal was one of the best and biggest plays he has ever made in his soccer career. It was perfect: the power, the placement, the vision. Unfortunately, he should have spent the other 80 minutes of the game in the bathroom. Have we mentioned that?
On to the forwards, and Davies. He got a look at the goal with just the ‘keeper to beat and he punched it, bent it and buried it. He made it look easy. He made it look easier than it was. It reminded us of when the U.S. had…um…wait, we’ve never had anyone who just made it look easy like that. Wynalda was as spazz who battled and scrapped for every goal he got. McBride was a spazz who battled and spazzed for every goal he got. Donovan is…fuck it, you get the picture.
Then there’s Ching, as we mentioned, sucks so bad we got a new boyfriend out of it. We wanted to see the Connor "Shiny Marshmallow" Casey or that young bad brotha Jozy Altidore on the field, but U.S. Coach Bob Bradley chose to go with slightly more experienced players.
Unfortunately, their main experience is in the field of bed-shitting.
So the U.S. was denied, unable to get either its first win or second tie in more than 25 qualifiers in Mexico. We deserved zero points and we got them. Our World Cup qualification hopes are still on solid ground (next game Sept. 5 vs. El Salvador in Utah) but we still have the look of a team that would be lucky to get out of the first round if we did make it to South Africa. Fortunately we are a young team with the potential to improve greatly between now and the tournament.
So wipe your butts, boys, and think about what you’ve done.

Hanging Fake Testicles from the Back of Your Vehicle

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Republicans Make Pledge, Take It in the Butt; Abel Maldonado Wins Badass of the Week Award

From the State News Desk

State lawmakers got all the headlines this week as they struggled to figure out California’s budget, which was, as TRI has previously reported, “fucked.” After a long week that included late-night power struggles and senatorial sleep-overs that surely brought secret thrills to many of the chamber-members who oppose gay marriage, our fearful leaders came thiiiiiiis close to leaving the budget “fucked, murdered, and buried in the woods.”
Facing a $40-billion-plus deficit, state Democrats came forward a plan that was basically, “We’re gonna have to make some tough cuts and we’re gonna have to raise some taxes,” and the Republicans came back with, “No tax increases! And NO, we do NOT have a better idea! So don’t bother asking!”
Now, anyone who thinks they’re going to close a $40 billion budget hole without increasing revenue (through taxes) has a “math problem,” as our eloquent Austrian immigrant (and Republican) governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put it. But math wasn’t the Republicans’ problem — it was a “pledge” that almost all of them had signed, promising to never raise taxes.
The Republicans’ unwavering commitment to this pledge reminded us of their ideas on sex education, and their “abstinence pledges,” which was probably on our minds because of the recent interview given by Sarah Palin’s lovely daughter Bristol. Then we remembered that a lot of kids who sign those things circumvent by having anal sex. Then we almost got completely off track.
Anyway, we have no idea why our leaders can’t simply pledge to do the right thing for the state in each situation….guess that’s not as catchy as “I’ll never raise taxes.”
The budget was fucked and the Republicans couldn’t budge without risking having their constituencies crucify them for sacrificing their rigid ideology in favor of pragmatic crisis resolution. Instead, they chose to stall, and if they had stalled for just a few more days, the government would have run out of money and basically shut down. Which sounds kind of cool, except if you care about small things like roads, schools, cops, fire departments and healthcare. Small things.
But one guy finally did something about it, and we at the Raw Intelligence are proud to present this guy with our “badass of the week” award: State Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria)!



Now this guy was already somewhat of an outsider within his own party. Last year, when our budget deficit was a paltry $2 billion (and they considered that big at the time), he petitioned hard against closing it through any cuts to education, which seriously rankled his Republican counterparts, who love nothing more than stealing money from schools. (Their kids go to private school.) He’s also pissed them off on issues like gun control, and by being Latino (he’s the only Rebublican Latino in the Capitol).
So Maldonado sat there in the State Senate knowing that his one vote could end the budget crisis, and he decided to play that chip HARD.
In exchange for his vote, he forced onto the ballot a measure that would institute an open primary system in California. This would allow Californians to vote for any candidate they want for state government, regardless of party affiliation. The thinking right now (which could of course prove to be pretty simple thinking) is that this opens the door for more moderate candidates and will make for interesting races in places where the electorate skews so heavily to one party that the primaries have basically been the real elections.
To illustrate why this is a good thing for California, let’s go back to what got us in this fucked budget situation in the first place:
“Governors and legislatures, in good (economic) times, overspent and over-cut taxes and didn't have the courage to make their pandering generosity just temporary.” – George Skelton, LA Times Capitol Journal.
That’s putting it simply enough.
When you put rigid Democratic spenders and stiff Republican cutters together in the same room, here’s what does NOT happen: They negotiate through difficult decisions, deciding where spending is most essential and how much of the cost burden can rightfully be placed on the taxpayer. No. What happens is, these stiffs just cut AND spend, and push the huge fucking problems inherent in that logic into the future — which finally came.
So anyway, we at The Raw Intelligence think having some more moderates like Maldonado in the room will be a great thing, and the open primary system should help make it happen. Both parties HATE the idea; they’d rather just sit on safe seats, keep their party talking points on the straight and narrow, and roll out some standard factory model D’s and R’s for battles in a handful of contested areas.
But somehow this Maldonado guy managed to sneak in and seize his one moment of opportunity to unleash this whole other crazy animal that nobody else from either party wanted to fuck with at all.
Despite the small brown stains on the trousers of some lawmakers, the taxpayers, of course, are the immediate “biggest losers” (in the traditional, negative sense of that phrase). They are going to be paying more taxes for fewer services, all thanks to past dumbfuckery in the state capitol. (Though you can’t say we don’t deserve it a little bit. After all, we lapped up those “pandering” tax cuts and new expenditures that Skelton was talking about.)
But at least we got to see all the politicians, dumb-fuck Democrats and remedial Republicans alike, get it good from Abel Maldonado. They signed their little pledge, and now they’ve got Abel’s dick in their butt.
Hahahahahahahahaha.

Death of News

Gary Kamiya of Salon has displayed extreme sharkiness on many occasions...but he's probably at his most eloquent in this piece about the death of newspapers. He argues that newspapers, and the true brand of objective reporting they provide, are a social necessity — one that is quickly being strangled by the invisible hand of a free market that gives people what they want, but not always what they need.
He suggests they should be subsidized, either through endowments or government financing. That sounds creepy as fuck to any trained journalist...but as a former newspaperman who hopes to be one again, I say fuck it! Give us that guv'mint money!!

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/02/17/newspapers/index.html

Spending Money to Get Out of Debt — TRI Staff Roundtable

The Big Man, the 'Bammer, the Big O, the Head President In Charge got up and laid it down tonight. We at the Raw Intelligence really enjoyed his press conference. It's still such a bizarre experience watching Obama speak. The long pauses he sometimes takes, especially... It's like he's stopping to think or something. Weird.
Anyway, we're sure you've noticed that we really haven't had a damned thing to say about the economy, the Wall Street bailout, the proposed stimulus package, any of that awful bullshit. Well, what is there to say really? Rich fucks in New York and Washington fucking fucked us, and now we’re all fucked. And since the rich fucks are the only ones in the country with savings accounts anymore, they’re the only ones who will ride through this crisis without sustaining any major wounds…in fact, they’re probably having a great time with all the low prices out there right now on everything from real estate to airfare to hookers.
Anyway, we don’t have any economists on staff here at TRI, but we do have a couple folks (whoa…latent Bushism) who have dealt with debt. And in our staff roundtable, we found the Republicans’ recent claim that “you don’t spend money to get out of debt” to be patently ridiculous.

-- Kerwin Skill, TRI sports editor, noted that when he was facing mounting credit card debt, he called a consolidation company to get the monthly payments under control. This company charged Mr. Skil a fee.
-- Lazlo Krew, TRI entertainment editor, remembers owing a substantial amount of money to his local bookie. Mr. Krew hired a local street tough to kill the bookie, costing him several hundred dollars.
-- Artemis Crowntree, TRI training editor, once found himself nearly destitute after a “can’t-miss” stock went bottoms-up. He got back on his feet by starting a business in which he took groups on tours of beer breweries. He first had to incur the startup costs of purchasing a van and paying local police to ignore the underage drinking that took place on the tours.
-- Destiny Winterfrosty, TRI news editor, fell thousands of dollars in debt as a result of a failed business venture. She rebounded by selling cocaine at the bar down the street from her house. This enterprise required that she first purchase a large quantity of cocaine at a discounted bulk price.

So there you have it. The Raw Intelligence staff has spoken — you CAN get out of debt by spending money. Many other staffers, including the Editor and Publisher, had similar stories, but they were edited out due to questionable content.

Get Ready, San Diego — The Chargers Are Going to Drunk-Drive Themselves Right Outta Town

A Letter from the Editor

I would like to send two very urgent warnings to all my friends and fellow Chargers fans back in San Diego.
First: If you are driving down the road and notice your favorite Charger driving beside you, watch out! He is probably drunk or high as shit!
The arrest this week of Jamal Williams on drunk-driving charges is just the latest is a long line of alcohol- and drug- related arrests for the team, so if that hasn’t been enough to convince you that the Chargers are one of the most fucked-up party teams in the league, let me add some personal insight.
I spent a lot of time in San Diego and I got pretty close to some Chargers and was very close with some people who were very close with them. Here’s what I can tell you: The linebackers party HARD, with cocaine and vodka near the top of their menu. The offensive linemen are a bunch of beer-swilling alcoholics. I could tell you exactly where to find a couple of Bolts linemen right now, right down to the exact barstool. The wide receivers are fucking drunks. The secondary is by all appearances a group of upstanding guys, the only problem being they suck at football. As for the Holy Trinity, Rivers and LT are squeaky-clean and Gates, while he does hit the town with the fellas, seems to keep himself under control.
One of the funniest things to come out of the Jamal Williams DUI story is that he had apparently chosen not to utilize a special program set up by the Chargers to provide players with safe rides home.
This program was founded by former Charger Lorenzo Neal, and was called Safe Ride Solutions. The funny thing is the city of San Diego already had such a program, called Call a Fucking Cab.
Call a Fucking Cab actually was a network of several smaller programs, and most were open to all San Diegans, Chargers included.
If you were drunk on the town, had a few extra bucks and wanted to get home, you could just Call a Fucking Cab.
It’s really funny that Neal was the one who decided Call a Fucking Cab was insufficient, then started his own program. On three separate occasions in San Diego, I jumped into a cab wearing Chargers gear only to have the cabbie go out of his way to tell me what a degenerate drunk Lorenzo Neal was.

Okay, so now that you’re good and pissed at the Chargers, let me deliver my second warning: The Chargers are leaving town.
Now a lot of people are saying “they might leave town,” or “I hope they don’t leave town,” or “what will we do if they leave town,” or “I don’t even want to think about them leaving town.”
We’re not fucking with any of that. We’re telling you: The Chargers are leaving town.
They will play their 2011 season representing the City of Industry, east of Los Angeles. Now I know this is an emotional issue for everyone, including me. Even though I’m in LA at the moment, I want the Bolts to stay exactly where they are, in Mission Valley, in the heart of San Diego.
So I’m just gonna lay these facts out there bullet-style, cold-blooded. There’s no other way to get bad news.

• The Chargers need a new stadium.
Yeah, the new one is perfectly functional for the game and for the average fan, but this isn’t about football. It’s about money. Chargers executives look at the potential revenue streams a new stadium could open (seat licenses, luxury boxes, marketing partnerships, etc.) and they get sweaty in the private area. The NFL has already declared that the current stadium will never host another Super Bowl, which is really a kiss of death for the building, especially considering that San Diego is otherwise a first-class host city. The Chargers rent the building from the city, and have been involved in several lawsuits over said rent. Have you ever been in a dispute with a landlord? Did you find yourself thinking, “I hope we can work this out?” No. You thought, “I can’t wait to get out of here so I can come back and throw a brick through the window.”

• The Chargers’ “last option” in San Diego is not an option.
So after spending tens of millions of dollars trying to work out a new stadium site in San Diego County and being rebuffed by the city of SD and Oceanside, the Chargers have declared Chula Vista their “last option.” Only problem is, Chula Vista is not interested. The mayor of Chula just blasted the team with some weird news release that didn’t make much sense other than reiterating her long-held opposition to hosting the team. But hey, big deal right — it’s just the mayor. The real problem is the city ALREADY HAS PLANS for the site the Chargers are looking at. The retail-entertainment development that was scheduled to inhabit the bay-front site the Chargers want is hitting its own snags in these rough times, but it should work out and it would bring a lot more dough to the city than the Chargers would (because the Chargers would keep most stadium profits and leave the city to deal with the headaches).

• The Chargers can no longer afford to build their own stadium.
When the Chargers first approached the city about a new stadium a few years ago, the deal they offered was, “You give us the land, and we’ll build the stadium.” The city said no, and in the ensuing years, escalating costs of building materials have driven the estimated cost of a new stadium from $500 million to $1 billion. When those estimates started shooting up, the Chargers went looking for financing partners to help shoulder the costs. They couldn’t find any.

• Ed Roski has the land, the money and the design for a new stadium in his pocket.
Ed Roski is a part owner of Staples Center, the LA Kings and the LA Lakers. Ever heard of them?
He also owns this big patch of land out in the City of Industry, an overlooked little burgh east of LA. He has finished architectural designs for a football stadium at the site. He has completed the environmental impact report, which is the single biggest hurdle to any major development. He has the $1 billion to build a new stadium in his pocket.
No looking for financing help, no leveraging, no bullshit. The money is in his pocket.
Roski has indicated that he will not put a team in the site unless he is a part-owner. The Spanos family, which currently owns the team, has shown no interest in selling any part of it, but we’re sure a man with pockets as deep as Roski’s could work something out with them. Especially considering that Roski and the Spanos’s are close personal friends. Oh, had I forgotten to mention that? Yeah. Close personal friends.

• The Chargers can get out of their lease in 2011 for a relatively low sum.
The Chargers lease with San Diego allows them to leave whenever they goddamn well please, but they’ll have to pay a penalty. This year, it’s about $56 million. Next year, about $54 and a half mil. The year after that, in 2011, it drops to about $26 million.

• The Chargers just hired an LA marketing firm.
And there’s a lot of fucking people to market to up here.

Sorry for the colossal Friday bum-out. Fuck it. Go Lakers.

Signed,
Travis Lee Hunter
Editor and Publisher

Media Misidentifies Phelps Bong as "Pipe"; Man Smokes Pot, Cereal Disappears

Raw Intelligence Staff Reports

Media Misidentifies Phelps Bong as “Pipe”
The staff here at The Raw Intelligence has been traumatized, as has most of America, by the recent events surrounding Michael Phelps’ cannabis usage.
In a nation where our president (Barack Obama), greatest athlete (Phelps), greatest musician (78-way tie involving Bob Dylan and others), greatest movie character (Jeff Lebowski) and most trusted neighbor (Canada) are all acknowledged cannabis users, it seems the mainstream media does not know the difference between a bong and a pipe.
At a time when the media should be working to regain our trust after eight years of ignoring its essential role as a critical and skeptical watchdog, most mainstream news outlets continue to spread misinformation and take things out of context.
Almost all of the news headlines on the Phelps photo have referred to him holding a marijuana pipe.
Now, in the context of a head shop, where the owner is legally operating his business under the pretense that his goods are for tobacco use and calling something a “bong” could get him in trouble, that thing in Phelps’ hands is called a pipe.
Under aaaaany other context, that’s a bong.
As for a water pipe, well, that’s something that runs under your house.

Man Smokes Pot, Cereal Disappears
The other amazing development in this story is the news that, of all Phelps’ sponsors, only Kellog’s cereal company will be severing ties with him as a result of the photo.
The cereal company is dropping him because he smoked pot.
This is basically like a peanut butter sponsor dropping someone because they were caught holding jelly or a surfboard sponsor dropping someone for using sunscreen.
We’re going to break this down for the folks at Kellog’s, who are obviously too high to understand it: People eat cereal because they are hungry and lazy. Pot makes a lot of people hungry and lazy.
Put it together.

At The Hat

A Letter from the Editor

I was at The Hat in Pasadena today and some punk highschooler was chuckling with his friends about Circuit City going out of business. He was talking about how it would be real easy to go in there and steal something since they needed to get rid of everything anyway and everybody was losing their jobs anyway so nobody would really care. Then one of his buddies said a third-party liquidation company now was handling the sales and security would probably be pretty tight. Then they both decided that stealing a TV would be pretty damn hard no matter how lax the security was, and decided not to do it.
And I thought to myself, Kids today are pretty smart.
Then one of these rascals said, “I can’t really imagine life without Circuit City,” and even though he was laughing and was obviously stoned, I knew there was truth to what he said and I related to it. This is fucking crazy! I mean, yeah, times are tough, yeah, we’re in a bad spot and it’s the worst this and lowest that and biggest the other since the Depression. But this is America: Our ATMs still work, I can still go purchase bread at the store and be home in five minutes, I will still watch the Super Bowl over a satellite signal on a television set powered by electricity while companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for each second of my attention. Things are bad, yeah — but they ain’t that bad, and I know things will eventually cycle around and get better. But now you’re telling me Circuit City isn’t going to be there when come out the other side?
That’s weird and a little hard. I mean, this is Circuit City we’re talking here. When I was little and my dad convinced my mom it was time for an upgrade to a big-screen and my mom was so on-board with the idea she said “Have it here by the time I get home tonight” on her way out the door (I remember it like it was yesterday), the first place we headed was that place with the big red entrance. When I first got a truck that was worth putting a system into, the second place I ever took the fucking vehicle was to Circuit City. (The first was El Asadero at Oceanside Blvd. and Temple Heights Rd.) And when I moved out of my college dorm room and finally got a place that was truly mine, and my roommate said we needed at least a 50-incher for the living room and that we’d only have to steal and sell about 5 mountain bikes to pull it off…I said no, of course. (But if I had said yes, and we had taken four bikes and turned them into $1500, we would have gone to Circuit City. And we would have bought a 50-inch Hitachi Ultravision.)
And the kids I overheard today at The Hat, when their schemes develop beyond walking into a store and stealing a TV, to more sophisticated two-part plans, where will they take their money? Where will they go?
Oh, yeah — Best Buy.

Signed,
Travis Lee Hunter
Editor and Publisher