I first became aware of the beauty of boxing in the mid-fifties. The “Friday Night Fights” sponsored by Gillette “Blue-Blades”. My father and great-uncle made it a ritual: Dad chain smoking Luckies and drinking bourbon (straight, if you nancy boys were wondering) and my uncle smoking his pipe (Granger Rough-Cut) and sipping blackberry brandy. I was supposed to be in bed but would sneak downstairs and watch/hide from the doorway. What an exotic scene: a room full of smoke and the two grown men in my life watching a snowy black and white TV screen and yelling as the two men on the TV tried to fucking beat the shit out of each other.
It was a religious moment.
Back in those days of black white and shades of gray, the fighters were in the “light” or “dark” trunks that usually had their names in bold letters on the waistbands. It was the south then, when it was “did you see that nigger hit that white boy? Man, them niggers can box” Ingmar Johannsen was the hero but Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston came along and the white boys had to admit that those coons could pack a punch. And then came a guy named Clay who beat Liston and I was amazed that these white trash – I – hate – niggers types were actually upset. Maybe that was the beginning of the realization that niggers weren’t all that bad; well, some of them – “not the uppity ones”. Ah, those were the halcyon days of my youth.
I was watching the HBO fights tonight and remembered the professors early bit about the “fighter in the blue trunks with the whitish golden tassles and the fighter in the blue trunks with…” (or something like that) and the advent of color hit me over the head. My! How things used to be easier before color. Maybe TV should go back to black and white. Blood is just a really a really dark color. “Raging Bull” is a great work of art – the slo-mo of liquid squirting out of pummeled noses is just like the Friday Night Fights of my childhood.
What to do now? The boxers are from everywhere and every “race” but we have to be PC and not notice that one is a square-headed-retarded looking former commie russkie and the other is a cauliflower-eared, puffy eyed, white double-wide trailer trash from northern Maine. Now did you notice that I didn’t mention the gook in the red corner and the mick in the blue corner?

Thanks to a recent Sopranos episode, I can’t even take a dump now without thinking about Johnny Sac sitting on the pot, smoking a cigarrette and bitching to Tony about shit. Here I am with my pants down around my ankles — where’s my goddamn cigarette? And I don’t even smoke.
How can a person in so undignified a posture be so self-righteous? The sheer chutzpah of Johnny Sac is stunning.

Today is Monday. The Sopranos will be back on our vegboxes Sunday.
As Christopher Moltestanti might say:
thank fucking god!

Janet Jackson’s breast – which I am ashamed to say I missed. Yes, I did watch the super bowl but skipped the intermission because I am an intellectual snob. Watching a bunch of huge steroid enhanced men slam into each other over and over again does have a certain charm, though.
So the media and everyone, it seems, are all in a tizzy about seeing a nipple. Women have nipples? The local news just referred to it as an X-rated show. I have heard “pornographic” also. It isn’t about her breast and I wish someone would point that out. You can see breasts exposed all the time on TV; sometimes completely, except for the nipple. TLC (my apologies to non-tv types – “The Learning Channel”) has a wonderful show about emergency rooms and what goes on. It is very graphic and very interesting if you aren’t bothered by lots of blood. Often the accident victim has his/her clothes cut off by the doctors and TLC fuzzes out 1. Nipples on women (the rest of the breast is exposed) and 2. Dicks, penises, schlongs, units, baby-makers, johnsons, peckers, etc. (Hey!! Lets see how many terms we can come up with). Interestingly though, men’s nipples are OK to show. They tend to look like women’s nipples, in case you haven’t noticed. It’s dangerous to show women’s nipples. X-rated and pornographic.
How silly. Nobody has said anything about the streaker. What’s with that? You know – if god had meant us to go around naked, we would have been born that way. Sometimes I think that it is all a joke or there is vast conspiracy and the entire US is pulling my leg. Bush. Bush. How many definitions can you come up with? See! you all have dirty filthy minds and he is our president.
I was in the National Gallery in London and a boy of about 6 or 7 was running from painting to painting and in a loud voice exclaiming “Ooh, mummy, look at the boobies on this one”! and the “mummy” said “Yes dear, they’re very nice but lets speak quietly”