Oh hello, fun here. I’m posting because there are various calumnies in this this thread – fake news – that need addressing.
First of all and foremost, I was never banned from this or any other site for that matter. The people love me and site owners know that I drive traffic, this thread being a case in point. I'm the golden goose. Why slay me?
(Not that certain moderators didn’t try. My favorite attempt was after Lavin's father died. I got so sick of him dragging poor Cap’s corpse into every conversation as an excuse for his pathetic performance, as if he were the only creature in God’s green earth that had ever lost a parent (see also histrionic personality disorder), that I wrote a spoof, the gist of which was that I’d like to find out where Cap was buried so that I could dig up his body, reanimate his corpse and murder him. Hilarious. Which spoof I posted on my own personal blog, which post was not linked in this august forum, where I no longer posted. Well, one of the mods from here went there, read the post in question and was so appalled that he initiated a vote to have me banned from here. I know this because I got a number of blog hits from a referring page in a hidden moderators forum called “Vote – to ban - fun” which page contained a link to the offensive post. Got that? A mod from here voluntarily read my blog and was so upset by what he saw that he tried to get me banned from a site where I no longer posted and in the process invited any number of other readers – and let’s face it this place has nearly as many moderators as it does posters (ed note: I was once asked if I’d consider being a moderator here) - to read the offensive post in question. Long story short I was not banned and neither did I disinter Lavin the elder.)
What really happened re my absence was that I was being stalked by a pompous gasbag who posted here because I was continually taking the piss out of him to the delight of my many fans. I’m not going to name him but suffice it to say that all his posts read like they were being declaimed by a featured after dinner speaker at the Racoon Lodge, complete with witticisms from the Bennett Cerf joke book: and then Sir Launcelot said I wouldn’t send a knight out on a dog like this. Lol. Unable to hang this poster first started using a picture of my mail box as his forum avatar. Creepy,right? Around the same time I began getting hang up calls from numbers in the 516 area code; Floral Park I think or maybe Valley Stream. Finally this gray haired church goer sent me a DM saying that he knew where my wife worked. Which it turned out he did. Which I took as a bit of a threat, to do what I don’t know, but I wasn’t looking to find out. I mean sure, Missus fun has a brown belt and carry permit, but still. When I complained to Paul about this dragging of my saintly wife into it Paul postulated moral equivalence between me sticking a pin in an online gasbag and threats against my family – the gist of his response was something like you two kids cut it out – at which point I asked Paul to delete my account, which he graciously agreed to do. That’s why I don’t post here anymore.
The remaining fake news in no particular order.
Class of 72 didn’t plagiarize my posts to “smoke me out” or whatever he said. He plagiarized them because he’s a petty thief. He went to my blog, copied what I wrote, rearranged a few words and posted it here under his own by line. The only reason I found out – again I no longer posted here – was become someone told me. And he never knew my father, that was the stalker. Poster ctstorm knew pater as well, well enough to call him Vinnie, which even my dopey mother didn’t call him.
To the poster who referenced my game recaps, thanks. I went back and read a bunch of them yesterday and I can say with all humility that it's some of the finest sports writing to come out of NYC since Damon Runyon. It totals ~ a quarter million words and some of it – particularly the notes sections – is gold Jerry, gold. Today of course every nitwit with a mouth uses it to offer hot takes on their very important podcast where they often interview other very important podcasters about their very important podcasts; and every moron with opposable thumbs has a blog replete with every hack cliché in the book: games are tilts and contests; successful players have coming out parties. It’s nauseating: Steve Serby wouldn’t climb out of a puddle of his own puke to edit garbage copy like that. But back then there was just me - unless you count hacks like Brazziler and Vacarro and why would you - which is why I’m a national treasure. Or was anyway.
Regarding which my boon companion Monte notes that I’m just as acerbic as ever and that maybe I’ve gotten better with age. Agree to disagree. If by acerbic Monte meant bitter, then yes: as my favorite serial killer Carl Panzram said, I wish that the whole human race had one neck and I had my hands around it. OTOH I’ve certainly lost a few MPH off my fast ball. We’re not yet in Willie Mays territory – Mays, who’d be universally acknowledged as the greatest baseball who ever lived, if only he’d been born white – getting ignominiously conked on the head with a fly ball in Shea Stadium circa 1973, but we’re getting there.
Which despite all of that I still have some detractors, like the philistine who “can’t understand why fun is getting so much support.” All I can say is: pearls before swine. I’m smart and I’m funny and I can write the balls off a squirrel at thirty yards. If you can’t see that – as distasteful as you might find me otherwise - you’re dreary and a dullard. And consider: if you remember something hilarious I tossed off off the cuff ten years ago, whereas I couldn’t pick you out of a line-up, what does that say about you. As the French say, de gustibus non disputandum est.
Three slaps with a wet noodle to Austour, who when mentioning a band I play in called The Weasels, posted a link to a different band called the Weasels, the latter being an atrocious 80’s punk band from LA, where the former has been - according to Wikipedia, so you know it must be true – “compared ... to Frank Zappa and Steely Dan.” For those of you wondering we’re still wasting our time making records and still sell six or eight a year to our fan base, which comprises mainly acne scarred neo-anarchists in the former East Germany.
Speaking of music, to the poster who said that “Carmine from the other board” had bad taste in trumpet players, I’m sure he does, he has bad taste in nearly everything, but that particular exchange had to do with saxophone players. What happened was that I had in one of my BEB monkeyshines mentioned my admiration for the late great tenor player Michael Brecker, opining that a case could be made that he was the greatest tenor sax player ever. Wait, what about Charlie Parker Carmine said. Charlie Parker, I replied, was an alto saxophone player, he practically invented the modern alto saxophone. To prove me wrong Carmine posted a picture of Charlie Parker holding an alto sax,
