I’ll defend the paranoia of the Customs agents here. This does sound a wee bit sketch.

According to the AP, 1000 Obama bobbleheads have been held at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection warehouse since May 20. The dolls were en route to Charleston, West Virginia – home of Minor League baseball team the West Virginia Power, Single-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates who were planning to give them out at their game this Saturday. The Bobblehead is an Obama-likeness in his High School basketball uniform sporting the Punahou High blue and gold.

Power team spokesperson, Kristen Call, told the Associated Press it’s unlikely that the dolls will be released in time for the game, and the fans in attendance on Saturday will be given a voucher to receive their bobble head. While you wait for it to get mailed, I suggest you all open EBAY accounts in the meantime.

Saturday would have marked the first ever bobblehead night for the Power. It also probably marks the largest import operation of a Single-A baseball team not involving kraut for the concession stand.

Not saying we should start lighting these bobbles on fire and see if they blow, it’s just that we’re at Code Red here! (are we?)

Obama Bobbleheads Stalled In US Customs (4029tv.com)
West Virginia Power: website

Kudos Hulu. I thought I was going to spend the entire Inauguration asking CNN.com to bark like a dog for me, but you did the damn thing. And now I can move on to poppin’ champagne like we won a Championship game! (Later on actually, right now I’m celebrating with a chicken cutlet heroe with fresh mozzarella, prosciutto, basil, olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette – a sandwich that you cannot defeat, nor outlast).

Enjoy everybody. I believe it was Motley Crue who put it best when they said Little bit better than I used to be, ’cause I’m alive!

…And I believe it was Puffy who said, ‘Before you change the World, you gotta change yo’self.’ (Man, NOTORIOUS was terrible, and awesome, and ridiculous, and tragic all at the same time. See it.)

Now check out the audio and transcript of the inauguration speech courtesy of The Random Forest.

Just when I thought it had reached its peak…

According to Washington City Paper, “The Greatest Kickball Lawsuit of All Time” has come to end.

“In 2006, the World Adult Kickball Association (WAKA) sued upstart DC Kickball, claiming that founder and former WAKA officer Carter Rabasa had stolen the association’s proprietary rules and then defamed WAKA by calling it “the Microsoft of kickball.” Offended and pouting, WAKA demanded $356,000 in damages. Had the legal recourse existed for it, they likely would have forced Rabasa to play bocce for the rest of his life.” (DCist)

A motion filed in April by both sides to dismiss the case was just passed. (i.e. everyone woke up)

There is absurdity abound here, clearly.

• The WAKA, LLC. A limited liability company (for kickball!). Sounds official, I know. You probably pay your rent to an LLC. Apparently, there is clout to be had in the kickball market, but the “Microsoft of Kickball?” The conglomerate empire…of kickball! Where am I? Even the Initech of kickball shouldn’t exist!

• $356,000 in damages! That’s like somebody’s pension, if they have decent mob ties. A lawyer – in the unaccredited and strip mall sense of the profession – screed that on some documentation at one point while this suit was going on. Apparently, they were a little off, and calling somebody the Microsoft of is not actually defamation.

Forget the legal precedent set here, Let’s see if we can get a few of the same cuckoo puff law-types back involved, and reopen these proceedings with Frank Zappa suing for copyright infringement – citing the tampering of his song Waka Zawaka.

For the record, copyright infringement, tampering – I don’t know if any of this is proper terminology. If this wasn’t such fantasy camp stuff, I’d be more concerned.

I will conclude my expose of the kickball universe whenever the hell folks stop feeding me gold…

Since first posting about the gals of the Tampa Bay kickball league, I’ve received multiple emails and comments from kickball enthusiasts in D.C., Memphis and Quebec; I’m now subscribing to like ten RSS feeds for kickball blogs.

Please keep sending! I assure you that info about kickball glory and prowess will be given as much consideration (at least half the time) as the details about on-field violence and degenerate off-field behavior.

Now get a load of these monkeys…

I first learned about this site from the Gothamist post on the kickballer who was arrested wielding a sword in Macys. Amongst all the potshot comments, a link to a website with an overtly inimical message stuck out – dieyuppiekickball.com.

The site serves as an organizational hub for the Anti Yuppie Kickball Guerilla Front, whose credo reads:

We, the Anti Yuppie Kickball Guerilla Front, do advocate all ridiculous direct action and pranks persuant to the collapse of kickball for Young Professionals in the greater Washington, DC area. For too long have we sat idle while all the chumps, douche-bags, yuppies, and stripey-shirt imported assholes of this town coalesced their power under this banner.

Here’s the conspiracy chart… because when it comes to militant action, there is such as fine line between the rational and the delusional:

Here’s a diagram that details ball-napping, one of the AYKGF’s guerilla tactics… sadly, there are no examples of this on YouTube, and no wikipedia page has been created yet.

…

A recent news item from the site reports that Agent T-Bone has been stripped of rank and privilege and declared excommunicate after admitting joining a Brooklyn kickball league.

A post from October 2007, details the arrest of Agent Inquisitor K, who was later arraigned on several charges including advocating terrorism.

After several google searches for Inquisitor K (…and “terrorism”;…and “U.S. Marshals”;…and “aggravated assault” + “ball-napping”), nothing came up to corroborate the post…shocking. From what I can tell, the title of Inquisitor implies a high-level in the chain or command, more so than both Agent and Conscript.

If you think this might be for you, I’d encourage you to visit the site and check out the Join the Front page. They’ve posted some of their “most righteous application statements”, like:

“Crusaders against banal conformity, accept my service! This plague of idiots must know the stink of a shit bomb; they WILL learn that the ball they enslave exists to smite them in a dodgeball frenzy!”

…personally, I’m trying to envision what would happen to somebody lest they were actually put in jail for some of this.