“I’m tired of hearing about money, money, money, money, money. I just want to play the game, drink Pepsi, wear Reebok.”
Shaquille O’Neal a few years ago. O’Neal yesterday announced his retirement from playing in the NBA (via Twitter).
Category: Best Line of the Day
Clever turns of phrase, special splashes of wit, provocative insight — all in a sentence or two.
Best line of the day, so far
“Snooki from ‘Jersey Shore’ was in a car accident in Italy. She appeared disoriented and dazed, so she’s fine.”
Too bad Snooki was in Europe. Trump and Palin should have included her at their dinner.
Best line of the day
“When we arrived at camp this morning, The Bandit bounded from the car all a quiver with excitement. Three of his best friends from day care will be with him again at the new school. Yes, God help us (the God of time-outs and visits to the principal’s office) the Four Toddlers of the Apocalypse are back together again.”
Your nose is growing line of the day
“It’s not about a publicity-seeking tour.”
Best line of the day
“For more than a decade, Ohioans have viewed Tressel as a pillar of rectitude, and have disregarded or made excuses for the allegations and scandal that have quietly followed him throughout his career. His integrity was one of the great myths of college football. Like a disgraced politician who preaches probity but is caught in lies, the Senator was not the person he purported to be.”
Sports Illustrated investigation on Jim Tressel, Ohio State
“Says the former colleague, who asked not to be identified because he still has ties to the Ohio State community, ‘In the morning he would read the Bible with another coach. Then, in the afternoon, he would go out and cheat kids who had probably saved up money from mowing lawns to buy those raffle tickets. That’s Jim Tressel.’ “
Best line of the day
“Presenting what he called a revolutionary plan to slash the nation’s mountain of debt, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) today proposed eliminating the Social Security program in its entirety and replacing it with Groupons.”
‘Morons, we are surrounded by ignorant morons’ line of the day
“U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian.”
[There are no reliable figures, but less than 5% is probably correct.]
Best line of the day
“We train, hire, and pay doctors to be cowboys. But it’s pit crews people need.”
Dr. Atul Gawande in his commencement speech today at Harvard Medical School.
The speech is a very worthwhile read. I love what he tells about cowboys.
Best sports line of the day
“Major American pro sports leagues don’t have anything like the English Premier League’s relegation system, which is why the Pittsburgh Pirates remain in Major League Baseball.”
[Relegation means that the worst-performing EPL teams are demoted to a lesser league.]
Still just in it for themselves line of the day
“Suppose, he wrote, your trusted real estate agent persuaded you to sell your house for $1 million. Then, the next day, the same agent sold the same house for the new owner for $2 million. ‘How would you feel if your agent did that?’ he asked. That, he concluded, is what Merrill and Morgan did to LinkedIn.”
Henry Blodgett as reported by Joe Nocera
Read Nocera’s column for a better understanding of how Wall Street keeps f**king everybody — “in reality, LinkedIn was scammed by its bankers.”
Best juxtaposed lines of the day
“Twinkie diet! Does it work? Is it safe? Who cares?! It’s a Twinkie diet!
. . .
. . .
“Fashion update! Midriff shirts are making a comeback! So everyone will know exactly how your Twinkie diet is going. Twinkie diet!”
Best line of the day — no really this is the best line of the day
“A Gallup poll released today found that 53 percent of respondents believed ‘marriages between same-sex couples’ should be legal, ‘with the same rights as traditional marriages.’ It’s an all-time high–that question has never gotten more than 50 percent support in Gallup poll.”
The article has a number of other interesting tidbits, including this:
“In the past year, 13 percent more Democrats said that gay marriage should be legal, compared with 10 percent more independents. Meanwhile, Republicans had a zero percent change in opinion–according to Gallup, they don’t support gay marriage any more now than they did a year ago.”
Best line of the day
“I hate when an actor I admire turns out to be a crappy person. That’s the one consolation of the Schwarzenegger thing.”
Best line of the day, but it’s early
“The homepage on my web browser is Yahoo, which I’m told it shouldn’t be, but I’ve just been too lazy to change it. From time to time I’ll read some of the comments under stories on it to get a sense of what it must be like at a Klan meeting.”
Aaron Sorkin in The Atlantic series “What I Read.” He reads the New York and Los Angeles Times.
Sorkin also has some interesting thoughts on the difference between the Wall Street Journal — where reporters “have cleared a very high bar to get the jobs they have” — and, say, BobsThoughts.com. “Bob could be the most qualified guy in the world but I have no way of knowing that because all he had to do to get his job was set up a website–something my 10-year-old daughter has been doing for 3 years.”
Least surprising line of the day
“The Bishop of Buckingham — who reads his Bible on an iPad — explained to me the similarities between Apple and a religion. And when a team of neuroscientists with an MRI scanner took a look inside the brain of an Apple fanatic it seemed the bishop was on to something. The results suggested that Apple was actually stimulating the same parts of the brain as religious imagery does in people of faith.”
TUAW reporting on a BBC 3 program, “Secrets of the Superbrands.”
Best line of the day about l’affaire D.S.K.
“(On Monday his lawyer said, ‘this is a very, very defensible case.’) Was the woman suggesting her willingness to be charged at, naked, by a sixty-two-year-old man, by wearing a maid’s outfit?”
Best line of the day about gas prices
“Seven out of 10 Americans say gas prices have hurt them. Which means a shocking three out of 10 Americans are oil company executives.”
Best line of the day, so far
“Doesn’t asking if Trump was serious about his presidential bid beg the question of what, exactly, he has ever been serious about before? Have you looked directly at him at all?”
Even better best line of the day
“These guys would sew rubber pockets in their Armanis so they could steal soup.”
Charles Pierce, referring to Goldman Sachs and a report that the concessionaire at Yankee Stadium, partly owned by GS, is pocketing the 20% “service fee” tacked onto the $10.50 beer, not the vendors.
Best line of the day
“It turns out that the worst mismatch in the Bronx over the weekend was not the Red Sox vs. the Yankees, it was Sarah Silverman vs. Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, both of whom reacted to Ms. Silverman’s presence in Their Booth — to say nothing of her suggestion that, while steroids are bad, perhaps pitchers should draw on the example of Dock Ellis and take LSD before every start — rather like two elderly nuns who have been asked to lap-dance.”
Best line of the day
“Gingrich on his chronic philandering: ‘I’ve clearly received God’s forgiveness.’ Gonna have to see your God Forgiveness Certificate, Sir”
Best line of the day
“For this fan, one of the compelling traits about baseball at its top level is its insatiable difficulty, which shows itself most ferociously to arriving rookies and to older players, no matter how celebrated, on their way out. The rest of us, coming or going, need not face six-foot-seven pitchers throwing ninety-five-mile-an-hour heat and diving two-seamers, or the din of crowds or the terrifying silence of R.I.S.P. statistics while we try to separate who we are from who we think we are. Pride and status matter to ballplayers more than money, which makes them more like us than perhaps we’re ready to admit.”
90-year-old Roger Angell, The Sporting Scene: Time Out: The New Yorker, discussing Jorge Posada.
Growing old is a bitch, whatever age you are.
Best line of the day
“The world would be a safer place if al-Qaeda shared some of its porn with the IMF.”
Dr. Seuss Commencement Poem
Best line of the day
“Purely from a political-theater standpoint, Gingrich brings several really outstanding qualities to this race. For one thing, he’s a legit threat to win the nomination. He wouldn’t be in any normal year, but when the field is Donald Trump, Michelle Bachman and Rick Santorum, anyone who can successfully lick a postage stamp without an instruction booklet is going to be a contender.”