Dave Shenin of the Post gives euphemy a good name:

"It doesn't matter how good I'm throwing right now," said Ponson, who allowed nine hits and four earned runs in 5 2/3 innings. "I [bleeping stink], bottom line…. I don't know what to say. I go out there and prepare myself, and it's not working out. I'm running out of things to say."

The St. Petersburg Times examines what makes a good ice cream sandwich. The photo is mouth-watering.

The Post reviews the latest Uncle Kracker, the man who ruined Drift Away for a generation: "Kracker's voice — marinated in Old Grand-Dad and then dragged through an ashtray — is ideally suited for chronicling the regrets that nag a shaggy, hung-over head."

A note to myself I just found in my bedroom, likely a blog post gone astray: "Don't stick the fork in the boiling water and then in the sauce and then in your mouth."

ElvisNews.com reports on two items of interest. First, "a Belgian couple whose 15 children's names are linked to Elvis Presley say they cannot think of a name for their 16th child." Second, SIRIUS Satellite Radio is launching a 24-hour Elvis radio channel.

Says 'scilla: "Elvis was a great fan of all new technologies in entertainment and communication. He was always the first person to get the latest gadgetry. I'm sure Elvis would have been SIRIUS Satellite Radio's first subscriber and would have had their rock, gospel and country programming going non-stop at home and on the road."

And then there's the sidebar-riffic AJC. About President Clinton sleeping on the couch, the paper asks, was that really so bad?

The opiate of the bargaining masses has come to Milwaukee. Only one item so far mentions cheese. Eight items so far mention beer (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

Harper's Weekly: "Happy married women have healthier hearts than lonely unhappy women, and an Iranian mother claimed to have given birth to a frog."

Brookstone's mailings, after barely failing to sell me a portable hammock, tries to sell me a Segway. But the price is still $4,000. Which is too bad because I've been a sucker for chairs recently. Uncommon Goods is selling an amazing one — the seat and the back of the Road Tested Chair are both working NYC walk/don't-walk signs, controllable by remote control. The price? $2,700.

Ellen, who's just redesigned, this week reviews Mike's Light, the low-carb cousin of Mike's Hard. As a fan of the Hard Lemonade, I've gotta say I'm disappointed with Mike. His product plus my own Half-Naked Grits recipe are what got me through the Iraq war. Monday's with Mike. The best Monday still stands as when the Mike's and Grits were joined from the television by Pauly Shore's In the Army Now. God bless you, 1994.

But in Shore's defense — if one could be mustard (as likely as one being mustered) — he is the creator of the upcoming Pauly Shore Is Dead, a documentary that looks funny to me but will probably deeply disappoint Christopher Hitchens and Casey. "For all his discussion of juice, what Shore never makes clear is whether he is for or against its wiezing…."

The last time I really thought about Shore was back in the winter, after watching the LOTR finale. I started an entry here that combined dialogue from Sean Astin's three greatest movies (Encino Man, Rudy and LOTR), but I soon gave up. The entry was Ishtar. A sample of what remains in a text file on my desktop:

Samwise Gamgee: What I wouldn't give for some nice big taters.Gollum: What's taters, precious?

Stoney: I think he means your cones.

Link: Betty. Betty nugs.

Samwise Gamgee: Po-ta-toes. Boil 'em, mash 'em, put 'em in a stew. Nice big golden chips with a piece of fried fish. Even you couldn't say no to that.

Gollum: Oh yes we could! Spoilin' nice fish. Give it to us raw and wigglin'. You keep nasty chips!

Stoney: If you're edged cuz I'm weezin' all your grindage, just chill … cuz if i had the whole Brady Bunch thing goin on over at my pad, I'd go grind over there, so don't tax my gig so hardcore, Cruster.

You see? Ishtar.

Last on the list this afternoon, we return to the subject of spam. While it was sport for a while, now it's work and no fun. But every sparse once in a while, a spam of note still rises from the fickle crowd. Take the one last Thursday. "Long time no see…" says a subject line. The sender's name is Bacteria.

Related past entries:

-April 28, 2004: Hammacher Schlammacher, ma

-Dec. 28, 2003: Where you've seen all of ROTR's endings before

-May 15, 2003: The freaky UncommonGoods birdfeeder

-April 26, 2003: Lobster spam

Marah gets 7.5 from Pitchfork, tops Wilco's 6.6.

In other news, Pitchfork is now too cool for 800 by 600.

Because people make things like this.

To celebrate the recent Post expletive binge, as well as the demise of the cicada season of love, chronicled in hot and bothered fashion by the Post, my unsubmitted entry to the paper's cicada poetry contest, the winners of which are here and runners-up of which are here.

CONCERNING CICADAS, TO THE WASHINGTON POST,

A FAMILY NEWSPAPER

Nothing's dirtier

than a cicada of 17.

No jailbait, quite mature,

nymphs inexperienced

but eager for adult affairs–

squirming to expose themselves

everywhere shedding layers,

spreading see-through cover,

singing songs of sultry

cicadan

seduction.

Putting the X in Brood X,

more than one trillion with spring fever,

desiring to mate

just once in their lives.

Explains why they're all over you?

Oh yes, family newspaper–

the heat turns them on.

No, not just Dan Neil — my days are a veritable potpourri of making. And by potpourri, I mean full of semi-random questions about life that I can't answer quickly. That's why I'm all me and no part Ken Jennings, the new Jeopardy record-holder, "a software engineer and an editor of literature and mythology questions for the National Academic Quiz Tournament who lives in Utah and looks like the male version of a Stepford wife."

The Salt Lake Tribune provides a Jennings photo.

But back to Neil. He goes and brushes his shoulder off:

–"To say the GT is faithful to the decades-old GT40 is to damn with faint praise. The GT design has the kind of mimetic accuracy one associates with Flemish paintings of hinds and hounds."

–"This car is less necromancy than necrophilia."

–"The launch sequence goes like this: Raise the revs to about 4,000 rpm, slot the shifter into first gear and slip your left foot off the clutch pedal. The foot-wide rear tires squall briefly and then hook up. The carbon-fiber seat mule kicks you in the backside. The supercharger trills like a teakettle. One second or so later, the landscape goes all spin-art and you start looking like Keir Dullea at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Cue Thus Spake Zarathustra."

–"Think of it this way: If the Corvette is whiskey, the GT is a turkey baster full of heroin with a rubber-hammer chaser."

And much more. Thanks to Ellen for the link.

The cover story of the Washington Post Magazine this week looks at the life and career of Blyss, a D.C. rapper hoping to break go-go's stronghold and become the metro area's first rap superstar.

Asks the Post deck: "Can a rapper whose street cred is complicated by a college degree become the next big thing in hip-hop?"

Who is Blyss? Blyss is Ralph Chambliss, Gonzaga class of '96. His partner in music is Broadway, also known as Chris Singh, Gonzaga '95. Read all about their guns, strip club visits and musical trials in the magazine story.

You can hear Blyss' tracks on the Capitol Gainz site, and see Broadway's 1310 SAT score on his resume.

I turn on the radio yesterday afternoon to hear the final two notes of Born to Run and to hear the DJ say Bruce wrote that song when he was just 23 years old. And I thought, "Damn, I'm falling behind!"

But then I looked this morning and found he actually wrote the song when he was 24. So, plenty of time.

Music lists, like the cicadas of yore month, are bursting out all over. As usual, some selections make more sense than others. Let's tackle LAT today and move on to AFI and Pitchfork later this week.

L.A. Times car critic of a different color Dan Neil looks at the decline of the road song, and paper music critic Robert Hilburn provides a list of his top 25 such picks. (The list's available at the bottom of the story page.) Hilburn rightly ranks his top four: Born to Run at number one, then Highway 61 Revisited, Me and Bobby McGee, and Thunder Road. He also digs out CCR's Sweet Hitch-Hiker at number 18. Very impressive.

What I don't understand is why the only Beach Boys' song to make the list is In My Car, off the 1989 Still Cruisin' album. Brian Wilson is a genius, but the Boys barely get the cars started on this one. The album has 10 tracks, but three are old songs, one is from the Troop Beverly Hills soundtrack and one is a duet of Wipeout with the Fat Boys. Yes, the formerly instrumental Wipeout. And, yes, the Fat Boys.

In My Car just comes across as lyrically cliched ("feelin' like we're still sixteen, being a part of the great American scene") and musically overreved. The only bright spots are the underrated Somewhere Near Japan and the well-rated Kokomo. If you don't like the latter, you must have issues with sand.

But '89 album aside, where's I Get Around?

I think there's also an argument to be made against Neil's article premise, that the road song is dying, but I don't have the '90s-'00s base of knowledge needed to refute. Tracy Chapman's Fast Car would seem to top the list, with Tom Cochrane's Life is a Highway and Coolio's Fantastic Voyage possibly following somewheres.

More suggestions?

Related link:

-What would Rilke have thought of car songs?