26 REDS, 26 WEEKS, 260 POSTS
by J.R. Knight
Geez am I pooped.
That draws to an end 26 Reds, version 1. After 26 weeks, 26 Reds is going on a four month hiatus, returning in February.
Contact us at BottleOfWine@26RedsMag.com
Fair well,
26 Reds
THE HISTORY OF BOSTON
by Dean Borok
Archeological remains recently discovered in Boston harbor show that it was a place where prehistoric whales used to beach themselves and puke their guts out after eating diseased seagulls. The Indian name for Boston was Wattahump, or "Place Where Lepers Relieve Shit". The original penises and limbs that fell off these unfortunate people while they were in the process of doing this have been lovingly preserved in jars of formaldehyde and put on display in Faneuil Hall, where they can be seen by unfortunate travelers who have had the bad luck to be diverted there when their flights to Montreal were turned back due to bad weather conditions.
The site of modern Boston was originally a collections of primitive outhouses built by European settlers as a rest stop where the ancestors of Senator Larry B. Craig first perfected the art of tap-dancing while sitting on the john.
MONDO SPORTSO
by Dean Borok
Joe Torre's return to LA as manager of the Dodgers was celebrated at a star-studded banquet held at the Taco Bell in Encino this weekend. In attendance were David and Victoria Beckham, who took time off from doing nothing at all; Barry Bonds, who is starring on Broadway in "Young Frankenstein"; Governor Arnold Schwartznegger, who flew into town without an airplane; Oscar de la Hoya, who modeled his line of transvestite panties called "Make Believe Ballroom"; and OJ, who sang a heart-rending version of "Mack The Knife".
The Bush administration has promised to stop the practice of torturing terror suspects by waterboarding. It announced plans to extract information from them by forcing them to watch reruns of last week's Jets-Patriots game until they crack. Osama Bin Ladin, reacting from his cave (grave) in Afghanistan, protested the announcement, calling it "barbaric".
The Nets' Antoine Wright has just returned from Las Vegas, where he attended the Abunassar Impact Basketball School, which is a metal basket rim attached to the garage of the Mustang Ranch bordello. Abdominal exercises at the training camp consist of doing crunches with a hooker sitting on your face. He revealed that he had played a game of pickup against Knicks former vice-president Anucha Browne-Sanders and Jason Kidd's ex-wife, and lost.
In China preparations continue for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where nearing completion is the world's first sports stadium constructed entirely of lo mein. Olympic officials declare that rumors of shortages of backscratchers and rubber sandals are completely without foundation, and that the hot dogs sold there will contain only the finest dogs.
Brazil, meanwhile, has won the rights to host the 2014 World Cup of Soccer. In order to avoid the kind of headbutting incidents that marred last year's tournament in Germany, Brazilian officials will require all the players to play wearing Green Bay Packers foam cheeseheads.
Read more of Dean Borok at 200 Motels
CANNED GOURMET
by Blythe Miller
I returned hungrily not long ago from a few days out of town to discover an intense lack of food in my fridge. I had spent the entire day traveling and what I'd ingested up to that point went something like: coffee, weird and alarmingly sweet protein bar of some sort, ginger ale, pretzels and a cashew. My deprived body was crying out for nutrients and sustenance. I promptly investigated the fridge situation and, much to my dismay, found half a hunk of mozzarella cheese, some very tired looking rosemary, and yogurt. Trying to keep panic in check and horrified by the idea of having to go out to purchase anything, I gingerly opened the pantry door, as if being gentle would somehow put me in the good graces of said pantry and I would find a wealth of yummy things on its shelves. Turned out that wasn't quite the case, but I did have a can of black bean chili and that did the trick. The incident got me thinking about those dreaded moments when you have no groceries, no motivation, and there's no way in hell you're going to skip a meal. There is a reason we have freezers and pantries, and here are some things that you should always keep in them.
1. Canned soups like lentil, black bean, or chili (Hearty and filling, these are great and require no preparation.)
2. Frozen veggie burgers (They have a leg up on regular burgers for time-saving purposes because they actually taste good pre-cooked. And I mean real ones made with veggies and grains, not soy protein texturized ickiness.)
3. Canned chickpeas (Staple.)
4. Peanut butter (Duh.)
5. Frozen pita bread (Again, duh.)
6. Frozen broccoli (Very useful.)
7. Frozen pre-cooked chicken breasts (Not as bad as you might think.)
8. Couscous ("Cooks" in five minutes by itself with lid on pan. Love it.)
9. Tomato sauce (Always handy.)
10. Angel hair pasta (Long shelf life/short cooking time.)
Combinations of them have bailed me out of the situation I described above more than once. Mix and match, like socks. I'll start you off.
1+2. Thaw veggie burger and put in bottom of soup bowl. It'll absorb some of the liquid and get all mushy.
4+6+7. Steam broccoli in a skillet while microwaving chicken breast. Slice chicken into strips, add to cooked broccoli, then throw in a heaping tablespoon of peanut butter. Let it dissolve and you have a nice little – albeit somewhat primitive – stir-fry in peanut sauce.
4+5. DUH.
3+7+8. Put chickpeas and sliced chicken into couscous pan when you take it off the heat.
7+9+10. You'll be surprised how quickly this comes together.
6+7+9+10. Even better.
3+5+8+9. Heat chickpeas in some tomato sauce while the couscous cooks and you pop some pita in the toaster. Not quite a mezze spread, but not bad either.
As I said, like socks.
POOR STEINBRENNER
by Dean Borok
Let's all shed a tear for George Steinbrenner. For thirty years he's been making everybody's life miserable and now he's getting his own butt handed to him by a Latin love machine, el A-ROD!
I say go for it, A-ROD! Last year, when he was in a slump, New York hounded him unmercifully. Sports writers treated him like nuclear waste and fans booed him all day long. You think a guy forgets a thing like that? I wouldn't. So he had Scott Boras telling him, "Don't worry, we'll straighten them out going forward." They filed it away with a post-it reading, "Pay these pricks back when the time is right."
This season A-ROD had the greatest year of his life, which happened to coincide with his free agent status coming up. Now he's going for the money. What would you do? The dollar is not what it used to be. Steinbrenner's friends the Republicans (Steinbrenner actually served time in federal prison for making illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon's reelection committee, CREEP. You didn't know that, did you?) have done such a thorough job of destroying the American economy that the dollar is worth roughly half what it was relative to the euro when Clinton was the incumbent. Why should A-ROD, who is at the top of his game, be devalued along with the rest of us suckers?
THE THREE STOOGES
by Dean Borok
It’s impossible to keep track of all the self-destructive behavior taking place in the business world, just as it’s impossible to keep recalculating the consequences. The investment banks and the currency markets are in a state of freefall that is so rapid that the figures are a blur. Incidentally the World Bank just released a statement that the dollar is still overvalued. When will it reach its level, when a bottle of beer costs ten thousand bucks?
Don’t laugh. The ruling classes are in over their heads and it’s distinctly due to a lack of culture, or maybe it has its roots in chromosome breakage. Scott Boras, A-Rod’s agent, waited for the seventh and deciding game of the World Series to announce that A-Rod would not be returning to the Yankees. Great timing, screwing up the most important game of the year with an announcement that could have waited a couple more hours. What do these bozos think, that they don’t need the good will of Major League Baseball, which made them rich?
Gambling magnate Steve Wynn gives a speech in Macao, where he has billions of dollars of investments at stake, calling China’s Chairman Mao an “imbecile.” Why didn’t he call him a schmuck too? “Nyah, that Chairman Mao! Whatta schmucko! Look what he did to China, da schmuck! He took a beautiful country and turned it into a fuckin’ shithouse!” Steve Wynn, the historian.
DAILY SPORTS REPORT
by Dean Borok
Now that the Red Sox won the World Series Rudolph Giuliani must be in heaven. His excuse for switching from the Yanks to the Red Sox was that they are both in the American League, but I know the real reason. The real reason that Giuliani likes the Sox is that they both like to go out wearing ladies' dresses.
Knicks owner James Dolan says that to improve the Knicks' shooting accuracy he is going to line the basket rim with hair.
A-Rod told the Dodgers that if he agrees to sign with them he wants them to build him a miniature New York like the one in Las Vegas, complete with a pop-up dummy of George Steinbrenner that he can run over with his own subway train. Former Dodgers manager Grady Little said he left the team for personal reasons. He woke up and found Dodgers owner Frank McCourt standing over his bed holding a knife.
Sometimes people's pets come to exactly resemble them. Is that why Don Mattingly looks exactly like Joe Torre? Now that Mattingly is going out to LA he should feel right at home, since Steinbrenner passed him off to Torre like one of Ellen Degeneres' dogs. It's the biggest migration of New Yorkers to LA since Walter O'Malley brought The Brooklyn Dodgers to Chavez Ravine (until I was 25 years old I thought Chavez Ravine was a Mexican Jew).
Las Vegas is scheduled to get its own NBA franchise, called the Las Vegas Crooked Refs. They're going to use hookers from The Mustang Ranch for cheerleaders and during half-time OJ is going to come out with a pistol and rob the fans. They say that everything that happens in Las Vegas stays in Vegas. They must be referring to OJ, because he is going to be staying there for a long, long time. They already have a nice jail all prepared for him in the secret underground dumps where they test the bombs.
Read more of Dean Borok at 200 Motels
L’Après-midi d’un Quarterback
by Dean Borok
When Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev first presented his Russian ballet and opera troupe in Paris in 1910 it was as though a thunderbolt had struck the European art world. At a time when the performing arts in Europe was stuck in a stagnant trough of moribund mediocrity, a spontaneous combustion had exploded in remote St. Petersburg, where the classically trained dancers of the Mariinsky Theater, ignited by the revolutionary didacticism of Isadora Duncan, had erupted in an atonal, countermeasured reaction to the conventions of classical ballet.
Sweeping into France like a Winged Victory, Diaghilev brought in his wake the innovative choreographic concepts of Michel Fokine; the set and costume design of Léon Bakst; the incomparable ballerinas Pavlova and Karsavina who inflamed the imagination of Europe and married royalty; and the centerpiece of the troupe, Vaslav Nijinski, a leaping, slithering faun whose sex act with a wood nymph’s scarf scandalized society and nearly provoked the collapse of the French government.
This is what the critic from The London Daily Mail had to say about Les Ballets Russes production of “Le Pavillion d’Armide,” presented in London in 1911: “One of the most enchanting creations ever seen on any stage.” Le Figaro described Bakst’s set and costume design for “Le Dieu Bleu” as “the zenith of decorative art.” No less an authority than Frances greatest living artist, the sculptor Auguste Rodin, wrote in Le Matin, “I would wish that…The Théâtre du Châtelet would arrange other [performances] to which all our artists might come for inspiration and to communicate in beauty.”
12" HEROES: mucky sailor
by Walter Anka
The other night I was playing the mighty Fantastic Fall’s “Reformation!” during my local gig. Some bloke came up to me and asked, “What sort of music is this?”…I thought to myself, “you’ve got to be kidding!” and then I thought “fair enough – you can’t know everything in life, and good to find out what things are if you don’t know”. I wondered whether it was because he didn’t like it – I asked and he said that he did like it…so I told him, “I don’t know what sort of music it is, but it’s the Legendry Fall and you should go and buy everything they have made…!” “You could call it dance music if you like” I added.
I might also add that, the same night, I played Múm’s new single “They made frogs smoke til they exploded”. I mistakenly played it at 33rpm; rather than stop it and adjust the speed accordingly, I slowed it down even more – it sounded really good – I liked it. And so did some girl. She came up and asked, “who is this?” – I told her, and she made a note and went away happy. I neglected to tell her that it was playing at the wrong speed. I played a few more songs and thought that I’d play “They made frogs smoke til they exploded” again at the required 45rpms. The same girl came up and enquired once more, “Who is this?” “The same band as before…Múm” I said…once again I neglected to add that it was the same song just played at a different speed…I might do that a lot more.
And so it comes to Mucky Sailor. I heard them for the first time a week or so ago – looked them up and ordered their single directly from Gus, the Roland piano playing roaring whining father of the duo. Steven plays the drums and backs up with the vocalisationing and whingeing of an overzealous son.
GEE WIZ
by Jessica Dawson
Is it a coincidence that three or four days after I
shave it itches like a bitch?
-Gina
Dear Ginatastic,
There comes a time in a girl's life when she has to make a very important decision. Should I go brave and bald or hip and hairy? There also comes a time when we have to focus on the aftermath. Smooth as a baby's bottom or prickly as a cactus pear? It appears to me that you have chosen e, none of the above. Could I be speaking from experience? Most likely, but quite frankly, I'm probably relating to most of you at this point. There are three possible scenarios I am going to state that may or may not be suitable for young children.
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