I am guessing I bought this during my time at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library Booktique. Maybe “bought” is a strong word: the Booktique was a storefront in a dying mall that served as the release valve for all the donations TSCPL received throughout the year. It was mainly staffed by volunteers, and as one of them this was the situation I was put into:

• I would sift through boxes of books donated to the Booktique
• I would decide what was or was not “salable”
• I would decide what a “fair” price for the “salable” books
• I would get first pick of the books, at a volunteer discount off of what I determined was a fair price
• I would then be trusted to ring myself up and place the proper amount of money in the cash box

It was an expressway to free or effectively books. I took full advantage of it, and ended up shipping box upon box of mostly worthless books back to my parents’ house when I went to college. Many of them have since been donated to some New Jersey public library, but a distressing number of them still fill up my Brooklyn apartment, Terry the Friendly Dragon Helps You to Be AIDS Smart but one of them. Its heart is certainly in the right place, with a tale of children ready to exclude an HIV positive child from their baseball game before a knowledge-bearing dragon swoops in.

Except… Terry doesn’t really tell the kids anything about AIDS. He repeats the familiar advice that you can’t get AIDS from shaking hands or playing with an HIV positive person, but then veers into a series of weird activity pages advising kids about healthy practices that have nothing to do with AIDS: wash your hands, take daily baths, put bandages on cuts and scrapes, get immunized against measles, never talk to strangers. It implicitly undermines the whole “you can’t get AIDS from normal contact” by packing the book full of tips more suited to keep you from getting a cold.

And why a Friendly Dragon? He doesn’t do anything very dragonlike. He flies, I guess.

You can read the whole book here, as it seems to be long out of print. If whoever owns Terry would prefer the book not be available online, please let me know.

101 years ago today Hank “The Hebrew Hammer” Greenberg was born. Mark Kurlansky wrote a book about his life last year, something I only learned today. The combination of author and subject puts it high on my 2012 reading list, but in the meanwhile let’s run down some of Greenberg’s remarkable achievements:

• - Debuted with the Detroit Tigers in 1930 at the age of 19, becoming the youngest person to play in the majors at that time
• - Played only nine full seasons due to injury and a forty-five month enlistment in the Air Force, the longest WWII military tenure of any ballplayer. Despite missing most of five prime seasons due to the war, he was a two-time MVP and four time All-Star
• - As the first real Jewish baseball star, was the subject of all manner of unkind words, which he mostly took in stride, though he admitted in his memoir that he sometimes “wanted to go  and beat the shit out of” the hecklers, on and off the field. His restraint — a few notable exceptions aside — was said to be something Branch Rickey pointed to when counseling Jackie Robinson on how to handle himself in the majors. Robinson cited Greenberg as supportive and “a class act” in their interactions in 1947, but at Robinson’s 1972 funeral Greenberg lamented that he felt guilty about not doing enough to help black players as “people” rather than “ballplayers”
• - Just two years earlier, Greenberg had testified alongside Robinson in support of Curt Flood, helping to create Free Agency as it is today
• - Apparently Greenberg recorded a song with Bing Crosby and Groucho Marx!

You can watch a feature length documentary about Greenberg’s life here.

Thirteen years ago today, R.E.M. released Up, their eleventh album. A little over a month ago, R.E.M. announced their break-up after three decades of making music. About twenty years ago, R.E.M. were my first favorite band.

They weren’t the first band I really liked — I loved lots of parts of my parents’ record collection, and there were plenty of radio hits I dug — but R.E.M. was my favorite band: the first one whose album I bought with my own money, the first concert I went to on my own, the first band whose back catalog I obsessively tracked down. I posted on the R.E.M. message boards on Prodigy, and when I got Internet access in 1994 one of the first things I did was join #REM on IRC. The first people I met off the internet were from #REM, and embarassing photos of said encounter popped up on Facebook a couple of years ago.

But like a lot of things from youth, I stopped caring about R.E.M. at some point. It didn’t happen overnight. I picked up all of their albums, even the ones I listened to maybe twice. But when I saw the news that they were breaking up, I didn’t feel much. It felt like an old restaurant you’d gone to as a child finally closed up, or when you find out some 1950s actor passed away and you’re a little surprised they were still alive. But it reminded me of how important R.E.M. were to me for a sizable chunk of my life, and the anniversary of their albums’ releases seem like as good a time as any to reflect on that.

Up – Released October 26, 1998
Peak Chart Position - #3 on the Billboard Top 200, certified Gold in 1999, has sold approximately 664,000 copies as of 2007
My Age at Time of Release: A few weeks shy of my 20th birthday
How I Got The Album: I went to a midnight record release sale in downtown Lawrence KS, possibly at 7th Heaven. I purchased Up on compact disc.
My Memory of This Album in 2011: I tried to reconstruct the track listing. Here’s what I came up with:

1. Airport Man
2. Lotus
3. ???
4. Hope
5. At My Most Beautiful
6. ???
7. ???
8. Why Not Smile?
9. Sad Professor
10. ???
11. Walk Unafraid

I could remember the titles of seven out of eleven songs. Except there were actually fourteen songs. Up came out at a time when Napster was blowing up, and while we were still a few years away from effective MP3 players, I certainly made judicious use of CD burners by late 1998. I had also started working at KJHK and had thirty years of college radio pretension to dig through, never mind a steady barrage of new music. This made it harder and harder to get excited about middling records from bands I had loved in high school, but I made the extra effort for R.E.M. Still, it’s telling how little i remember from this. Tonight was probably the first time since 1998 I sat down to listen to Up start to finish. Here is a ramble about that.

1. Airportman: It was 1998, so everyone was jumping on board the electronica bandwagon. Other bands would jump more shamelessly (U2, I am looking at you in your ridiculous sunglasses and muscle shirts) but at least R.E.M. had a good excuse for it: this was their first album without founding member and drummer Bill Berry. I remember most of the reviews of the time talking about this being a bold shot across the bow, proving that they are no longer a “rock band” and new textures and blahblahblahblahblah. I like this song. It’s on my iPod. It’s woozy and evokes being in airports (or any sort of terrible industrial space) and being unsure and unstuck. That’s a feeling I spent a lot of college experiencing, but might not have been the best opening shot for the New R.E.M.

2. Lotus: This was a single, presumably because it came closest to sounding like their last couple of albums. Unfortunately that’s exactly what this sounds like, a lesser outtake from Monster or the more rocking songs from New Adventures in Hi-Fi that came out of the Monster tour. I don’t hate this, but I skipped it a lot when listening to the album.

3. Suspicion: I had totally forgotten about this song. It’s a perfectly acceptable midtempo adult contemporary pop song.

4. Hope: This song totally bites the vocal line from Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne“. At first I thought it bit the vocal line from Pulp’s “Glory Days” (released earlier in 1998, and later retooled into “Cocaine Socialism“) before realizing that both (all three?) songs were “influenced” by Cohen. Years later, Suzanne popped up in one of my favorite Achewood strips. Oh right, “Hope”. I like this song a lot. In all its forms it’s a nice vocal line, and the lyrics hit the same meaningful nonsense buttons that old R.E.M. did. I am pretty sure I put this on some Invisibles themed mixtapes I made at the time. This is another song that is still on my iPod and pops up on shuffle sometimes.

5. At My Most Beautiful: This was also a single, and was widely described as “The Beach Boys single”. I guess I can see that. It was also one of like five songs Michael Stipe claimed was his first “love song”, a weird tendency that journalists seemed to indulge for over a decade. I get that “The One I Love” isn’t really a love song, and some other songs are subject to interpretation, but come on. It’s one of the few songs on Up with any significant harmonies from Mike Mills, which was always a big selling point for me. But this is still a middle of the road song.

6. The Apologist: This is The Dirge Song, seemingly a staple of every late period R.E.M. album from at least Green onwards. I’m never a huge fan of them. I remember thinking The Apologist would be a good tragic supervillain concept, though.

7. Sad Professor: I remembered nothing of this song other than that it came up in my English 205 class. One of my professors in the English department was not a Sad Professor, but he was a wonderfully world-weary and grumpy man of a certain age, who had some of the most baffling pop culture radars in the world. He would argue with students over the relative merits of Fugazi’s DIY ethos and dismiss the legacy of GG Allin, he’d be familiar with obscure indie bands, but stare completely blankly when I made a stupid comparison between Ben Franklin and the production style of Sean “Puffy” Combs. He once grilled me for five minutes after class because I couldn’t identify the name of a power-pop trio he’d seen on Letterman, three guys with vaguely British haircuts who were doing sort of a turned down Flamin’ Groovies style with some R.E.M. thrown in. It turned out to be Semisonic. Someone other than me brought up this song when he asked the class to identify other pieces of media that echo the themes of Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House. I think I suggested Pulp’s “The Professional”. Turns out I really loved Pulp in 1998 too.

This song is actually pretty solid, but has the same general feeling as several other songs struggling with ennui and depression on the album. And I like those songs more. “Sad Professor” isn’t quite sad enough, and isn’t quite hard enough, though it’s one of the few times you can really hear a guitar on the album.

8. You’re In the Air: This is a pretty nothing song, a moody thing with strings that sounds like an Automatic for the People outtake. I suppose I’m grading on a curve, the chorus is a catchy enough melody that were this from some new band I’d be kind of interested. But there are literally hundreds of better R.E.M. songs.

9. Walk Unafraid: Right before my third year of college started, I piled into a caravan with maybe a dozen fellow Scholarship Hallers and roadtripped to Denver to see R.E.M. play Red Rocks. Maybe it was the altitude. Maybe it was the long trip and dicey floor-sleeping arrangement that was struck up with someone’s sister, or cousin, or cousin’s friend. Maybe it was the fact that there was some screwy general admission situation that left me stranded twenty rows away from nearly everyone else on the roadtrip. Whatever the reason, I was not having a good time at the show. I noticed how much the show had, perhaps by neccesity, turned into a Greatest Hits cabaret. I noticed how even though I was annoyed by the Greatest Hits factor, I still found myself wandering off to get another beer almost every time they played something off Up. I got over myself (or got drunk) enough to start enjoying the latter part of the show, and when “Walk Unafraid” came up as the second to last song of the first set, I found myself loving it. Why hadn’t I given this song a chance? This is the big inspirational thing U2 made their Golden Lemon Spaceship money off of! In the downtime before the encore I ended up befriending a Canadian couple sitting nearby, who were sound engineers that had very funny and rude stories to tell about Michael Flatley. By the end of the show, I was ready to go see R.E.M. again, though I never did.

The studio version doesn’t capture that majesty very well. It’s entirely possible the live version didn’t either, but I’ll always remember it fondly.

10. Why Not Smile?: As an R.E.M. superfan in 1997, I tracked down the issue of The Oxford American dedicated to Southern Music because it had an exclusive R.E.M. track. That song was an acoustic demo of “Why Not Smile?” As a demo, it was a promising hint at the next album. It was spare, and I figured that Stipe would actually come up with more lyrics by the time the album came out. He didn’t. Here are all of the lyrics

The concrete broke your fall
To hear you speak of it
I’d have done anything
I would do anything
I feel like a cartoon brick wall
To hear you speak of it
You’ve been so sad, it makes me worry
Why not smile?
You’ve been sad for a while
Why not smile?
I would do anything
To hear you speak of it
Why not smile?

In truth, all they did to the song in the coming months was add some electronica bloops to it and replace the guitar part with what I assume is a harpsichord. I remember thinking this was dumb as hell, and going on the same puritanical rant I would alternately go on regarding Blur’s Blur, most of Pavement’s discography, N.E.R.D.’s In Search Of, Radiohead’s “Motion Picture Soundtrack”, and probably countless other songs: why did they gild the lily? Why add a bunch of studio junk on top of a perfectly nice pop song? And for the first minute or two of relistening to the album version of “Why Not Smile?” I was ready to eat my words: all the electronica bloops and bells and harpsichord bits are actually delicate and pretty. Then I hit the minute-plus buzzing outro. I may have been forced to eat my words on several of the other songs mentioned, but not this one! Lily gilding: CONFIRMED.

11. Daysleeper: I cannot believe I forgot about this song. It was the lead single, and is still a standout. Like “You’re in the Air” it sounds like something from AFTP, except it would’ve held its own among the rest of the songs. I loved this song, probably because I was pretty much nocturnal at this point in my life. I spent a big part of my college life staying up all night. My radio shift the semester this was released was from 3-6am and I was eager enough to pick up other graveyard swing shifts. The summer before Up came out I worked 10:30pm-7:00am shifts as a night stocker at Target. An ill-advised decision to take an 8am Chinese class the spring semester of my freshman year meant that it was easier to stay up all night in order to show up to class on time, go to a couple other morning classes and then sleep at noon, getting up for dinner. My hallmates only half-jokingly believed I was running a meth lab in my cluttered warren of a dorm room, bolstered by the fact that they never saw me sleeping. This song spoke to me. There is something very disconnecting to being so out of sync with the rest of society, and even now I’m enough of a night owl that I feel that disconnect from everyone else from time to time. I really can’t believe I forgot about this song.

12. Diminished
13. Parakeet
14. Falls to Climb: When listening to Up on CD I probably rarely bothered listening past “Daysleeper”. I assume that’s why I thought the album was eleven songs long, and why none of these song titles rang a bell, or jogged any memories as to what they sounded like. “Diminished” is another semi-dirge song, which is forgettable save for the painful lyric “smallpox blankets? No way!” That Michael Stipe, always making bold political statements! The borderline twee-helium coda of “I’m not over you” deserves better than the rest of the song.

“Parakeet” is another slow song that doesn’t really go anywhere. Maybe I’m just getting impatient, but some of these lyrics are ridiculous. “Mean cats chew on licorice / and cannot climb the trees”?

At least “Falls to Climb” sounds somewhat familiar when it came on. It continues the string of goofy-ass lyrics: “I’ll be pounce pony / phony maroney / pony before the cart” but as far as the lowlights of this album go, it’s at least got a clear and kind of evocative chorus and the electronica boops have a nice half-assed synthpop swell to them, bolstered by a military drumfill for the last act. This is not the sound of a band I would love, but it’s at least one I can admire.

In summation, Up was pretty much the end of R.E.M. as a commercial force, so clearly I wasn’t alone in my lukewarm response. That it sold half a million copies is probably down to intertia more than any overriding passion for the music. Outside of “Hope” and “Daysleeper”, I could probably delete the album from my iTunes and not miss it. But for at least one night thirteen years ago, it was very important to me. I mean, I could’ve downloaded it from Napster.

Last year the world of irresponsible drinking was rocked by Four Loko, a beverage containing both alcohol and caffeine! This deadly combination was labelled “blackout in a can”, “cocaine in a can”, “a legalized speedball”, “The Human Suplex Machine”, “The Dog-Faced Gremlin”, and other scary monikers by the press, leading to several state-level bans and a suspension of production in late 2010. Clearly, this was a threat of cosmic proportions!

Don’t misunderstand, I am not making light of the many documented cases of alcohol poisoning and hospitalizations that stemmed from Four Loko. But college students drinking themselves sick is a problem that neither began nor ended with Four Loko, and some of the media coverage was hilariously fear-mongering. Having had consumed up to Eight Loko (two cans) in an evening, I can attest to its intoxicating powers, but “cocaine in a can”? Really?

The talking points regarding Four Loko claim it has as much alcohol as anywhere between three and six beers, and multiple cups of coffee/energy drinks/sodas. A can of pre-Prohibition Four Loko allegedly contained 135mg of caffeine, which may sound like a lot, but let’s put that into perspective:

Granted, Four Loko comes in a size considerably larger than many of those beverages, but a 20 oz bottle of any Mountain Dew variety contains over 90mg of caffeine – roughly 2/3 of a Four Loko. Sixteen ounce cans of popular energy drinks like Monster, Red Bull or Rockstar contain more caffeine than a can of Four Loko. A tall Starbucks coffee out-caffeines a can of Four Loko, never mind a Venti Starbucks, which is the equivalent of three Four Lokos. And if you want to mainline caffeine, one Five Hour Energy Shot contains 138mg of caffeine, and a tablet of No-Doz has 200mg. Clearly, the caffeine in Four Loko is significant, but it’s hardly a heroic dose in the modern landscape. Many “cups of coffee” figures cite a six ounce cup of coffee, which I don’t think is a standard serving size. A standard coffee mug holds about eight ounces, though admittedly many people add sugar or dairy, or do not fill the mug all the way up. Regardless, many coffee conveyances in modern society encourage serving sizes significantly over six ounces, which may be a Public Health Threat for another day, but skews many of the figures regarding Four Loko.

As for the alcohol content, sure, Four Loko is 12% ABV, which is a lot. But many people seem to think that all beers are 3.2-4% alcohol. If we accept the 3.2 beer comparison, one can of Four Loko contains 2.82oz of alcohol, versus .38 ounces in a twelve ounce can of 3.2 beer. A can of Four Loko is equivalent to 7.4 cans of 3.2 beer, but how many people are really drinking 3.2 beer?

Of course, the risk with something like Four Loko is that the perceived serving of “one” Four Loko is as much as several servings of these other drinks. By way of another comparison, a can of Four Loko contains the same amount of alcohol as a little over seven ounces of your average 80 proof liquor, or 4.7 shots worth. It’s possible that this skews inexperienced drinkers’ concepts of “how much” they had to drink, whereas having several empty cans (or trips to a keg or bottle) are a more noticeable yardstick of how much you’ve had to drink. But “one can” of Four Loko is a larger standard unit than anything discussed above. One can of Four Loko has less alcohol than most forty ounce bottles of beer/malt liquor on the market, but there’s little outcry as to how “one forty is equivalent to several beers”.

Regardless, it’s understandable why drinkers, particularly inexperienced teens, will fall prey to not judging their safe levels of Lokoness. But I am not here to address these vulnerable youth: I want to talk to people who can handle their liquor, and for whatever demented reason are nostalgic for their halcyon Four Loko experiences of mid-to-late 2010. I wish to offer an alternative: The Gentleman’s Cocktail.

The Gentleman’s Cocktail was a staple of my college days, and couldn’t be a simpler drink: simply mix fortified wine and a citrus soft drink in equal quantities. Despite the elegant name, this is a Brute Force drink, but in recent taste tests is far more palatable to the general public than Four Loko. Granted, it doesn’t quite pack the wallop of a Four Loko — assuming that you’re using 18% ABV wine and Mountain Dew, it’s only going to contain 75% of the alcohol and 40% of the caffeine. If you’re really looking for the exact content of Four Loko, feel free to mix and match ingredients and concentrations, but the Gentleman’s Cocktail is significantly less gag-inducing, so why not just enjoy a slightly diluted beverage?

[[Full disclosure: for the GC I consumed while composing this post, I used the new-to-me "Bling Bling Blue Raspberry" MD 20/20, kindly provided by my brother. Like some fortified wines, it's a mere 13% ABV, meaning that I am essentially drinking Two Loko, not a full Four Loko. I'm fine with that. But read those labels!]]

The Gentleman’s Cocktail is economical, too. Assuming that a can of Four Loko would cost you around $3, that’s a little over a dollar per ounce of pure alcohol. By comparison, a 750mL bottle of fortified wine is likely to also run $3, but provides over four and a half ounces of alcohol, providing you pure booze at less than sixty-seven cents an ounce. That gives you some walking-around money to use to buy the mixer, some caffeine pills, a cup of coffee, or some self-respect.

And despite what Ian and Jessica may argue, the Gentleman’s Cocktail is a more fitting name for this drink than “Quantity MD^2″. That name is needlessly limiting: by no means should you feel obligated to use the brand names it implies (Mountain Dew and MD 20/20) as many fine Gentleman’s Cocktails have been made using Night Train, Wild Irish Rose, Cisco, Citrus Drop, Moon Mist, Mountain Lightning, even “Little Hugs” or other “quarter waters” if you’re not looking for further stimulation. I long assumed that the general populace wasn’t frugal/desperate enough to embrace the GC, but given the outpouring of support for caffeinated Four Loko, it appears I was mistaken.

Suggested pairings for a Gentleman’s Cocktail include illegally obtained Gumby’s Pizza, off-season fireworks, playing a Tony Hawk Pro Skater game, listening to Ladytron’s Commodore Rock EP, and playing with butterfly knives. Please enjoy responsibly, if such a thing is truly possible.

Tim Stoddard
Mustache Rating: 3.5 Fingerses
Years Active: 1975, 1978-1989
Teams Played For: Chicago White Sox, Baltimore Orioles, Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres, New York Yankees, Cleveland Indians
Career Stats: 41-35, 3.95 ERA, 76 saves
Was He Ever a Diamond King?: No
Claims to Fame:

-While only scoring a 3.5f for his mustache, he receives 5.0 Walruses.

-The only person in history to have a World Series ring (1983) and an NCAA Championship ring (1974). Kenny Lofton made it to the World Series and Final Four, but is ringless.

-Was also part of championship high school and college baseball teams

-Is a member of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame and Indiana Baseball Hall of Fame

-One team short of joining MPo80s brother Dick Tidrow in the NYY/NYM/CHW/CHC club. Stoddard pitched one inning for the White Sox in 1975.

-Immortalized in Rookie of the Year as the pitcher with the big butt

-Has served as a coach for Northwestern University‘s baseball team since 1995

-Kept the mustache as late as 2001, but is currently mustachless. Has kept the big butt.

Mike Jones
Mustache Rating: 2.2 Fingerses
Years Active: 1980-1981, 1984-1985
Teams Played For: Kansas City Royals
Career Stats: 11-10, 4.43 ERA
Was He Ever a Diamond King?: No
Claims to Fame:

-Who? MIKE JONES!

-Though eighteen other Mike Joneses have made it to the minors, Michael Carl Jones is the only one to make it into the bigs.

-There was a Mike Jones who pitched for the American Association champions Louisville Colonels in 1890. He was a Mustachioed Pitcher of the 1890s.

-A first-round draft pick for the Royals, Jones had a promising rookie season in 1981 (6-3/3.21 ERA), coming in fourth in the AL Rookie of the Year voting.

-Was poised to join the reigning AL champions’ starting rotation before severely injuring himself in an off-season car accident. Local authorities charged him with drunk driving – I guess all Mike Joneses enjoy Tippin‘.

-After two years of rehab, made it back to the majors and pitched an impressive eight inning one hitter in his second game back. Sadly he could not keep that performance up, and picked up only four wins in his remaining eleven major league starts.

-Jones kicked around in the minors until 1990, but never made it back to the majors. Today, Mike Jones coaches the varsity baseball team at the Episcopal High School of Jacksonville, and does additional work with Pro-Motion Sports USA. However, if this photo is any indication, he’s lost the mustache.

Moose Haas
Mustache Rating: 3.0 Fingerses
Years Active: 1976-1987
Teams Played For: Milwaukee Brewers, Oakland Athletics
Career Stats: 100-83, 4.01 ERA
Was He Ever a Diamond King?: No
Claims to Fame:

-Had a career year in 1983 with a 13-3 season, leading the majors in won/loss percentage

-Was a premiere Baseball Manchild of the early 1980s, with his love of magic tricks and martial arts!

-”They should handcuff me to my locker some time when I’m supposed to pitch. Doesn’t matter what kind of cuffs they use. I can pick them.”

-”Moose Haas has somebody to work with in the martial arts, now that Randy Lerch has joined the Milwaukee Brewers. Haas and Lerch were showing their routines to each other behind the Brewer clubhouse after Saturday’s practice. “You feel kind of goofy going out there and doing it by yourself,” Haas said. “It’s better to have somebody else to do it with. That way you don’t feel so strange.”

-Elected into the Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame in 1992. This Hall of Fame now has a physical location in the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards. Is Moose in it? Someone check!

-The colorful story of his “Moose” nickname on Wikipedia is apparently A LIE. Straight from the Moose’s mouth: “People have been kidding me about my nickname all my life. My dad gave me that almost the day I was born. He thought I would grow up to be a real big guy. It just never happened.”

-Moose’s dad really missed out on calling his son Hoss Haas.

Last week Jeff Rosenthal of ItsTheReal did a guest “listicle” for The Awl featuring a topic near and dear to my heart: BET Uncut.

Back in college — in the dark days before DVRs, TV on DVD, Hulu, streaming video, and all of the other things that keep me from actually watching live television — my default late night background channel was BET’s after-midnight trifecta: Hits from the Street, Comic View, and Uncut. I’m not saying it was the best thing you could find on television: it was frequently terrible. Comic View in particular was infamous as an exploitative sweatshop of stand-up, and consequently seemed to attract only the most desperate dregs of the comedy circuit. And as Rosenthal spotlighted in his list, the vast majority of videos shown on Uncut were essentially home movies shot at strip clubs to promote dubiously talented MCs. Sometimes those reached the bizarre, giddy heights of “What That Thing Smell Like” by Black Jesus or “Time For Freakin’” by the panderingly-named Team Uncut.

But Uncut was also about the only place that a rapper without an established chart presence got any meaningful national exposure before everyone had blogs and Youtubes. Sometimes these were terrible too, but it was a refreshing change of pace. I hope to fill in some of the gaps in Rosenthal’s listicle, and I’m starting out with this video. It’s got all sorts of Uncut Hallmarks:
- A superfluous intro where someone’s talking on a cell phone
- A performer I can’t find any information about online
- Guest verse by someone you’ve actually heard of
- Gratuitous cameo by Comic View host Bruce Bruce

It’s not a great video, but hey! Bun B!

Dick Tidrow
Mustache Rating: 4.9 Fingerses
Years Active: 1974-1984
Teams Played For: Cleveland Indians, New York Yankees, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, New York Mets
Career Stats: 100-94, 3.68 ERA
Was He Ever a Diamond King?: No
Claims to Fame:

- Nicknamed “Dirt”, played a variety of roles throughout his career, including being an early iteration of the “setup” man for future Hall of Famers (and fellow MPo1980s) Bruce Sutter and Goose Gossage.
- Member of two World Series Champion teams, the 1977 and 1978 New York Yankees
- Is only one of three players to ever play for both modern New York and Chicago teams, alongside journeymen Charley Smith and Lance Johnson (Xavier Nady and Octavio Dotel are the only two active players to be one team short of this feat)
- Since retiring in 1985, has worked in the front office for the New York Yankees (1985-1993) and since then for his hometeam San Franciso Giants, even though according to this 1984 Fleer card (and his own Giants bio) has been living and raising a family in the Kansas City area for at least twenty-seven years, but has respectfully declined to adopt the Royals as his “hometown” team, I guess.
- And yeah, he’s still got a mustache. You do not give up a mustache that amazing.

Steve Rogers
Mustache Rating: 4 Fingerses
Years Active: 1973-1985
Teams Played For: Montreal Expos
Career Stats: 158-152, 3.17 ERA
Was He Ever a Diamond King?: Yes!
Claims to Fame:

- Steve Rogers, denied a chance to serve his country until a unique military experiment maximized his physical structure, turning him into a super-soldier. Frozen in suspended animation at war’s end, he awoke in the modern world, a man out of time but — [[checks Wikipedia disambiguation page]]

- WAS NOT Captain America
- Played his entire career for Montreal Expos, a decidedly un-American team, despite their deceptive color scheme
- Hold franchise records for wins, innings pitched and strikeouts, and with the team’s2004 demise, is assured to be their top pitcher for all eternity
- With three post-season wins in 1981, pitched in 60% of all Expos post-season victories, 1969-2004
- Got the decision in the Expos’ 1,000th franchise victory, a total that took them fourteen years to reach. “The second thousand will come much quicker,” Rogers assured the press in 1982. He was correct; it only took them twelve.
- Denied even a single Hall of Fame vote in 1991 (and questioned why not even Montreal journalists denied him the hometown vote), but was later inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Expos Hall of Fame
- Currently living in New Jersey working for the Major League Baseball Players Association, but still reps the Expos (and Mustachioed Pitchers) in Old Timers’ games