sorry guys

but clearly the wrong warren buffett related article is getting all the attention today. think of the ladies, mr. buffett:

Dear Mr. Buffett,
The women of America need you. Badly. Have you ever been in the changing room of the lingerie section at a major department store? O.K., don't answer that. But I've been there, and I'll tell you, it ain't pretty. There's desperation. There's misery, fatigue and wild-eyed panic. Every single day across this great nation of ours, women have to force themselves into cruelly lit cubicles with ill-closing curtains to try to find a bra that fits. But only a pitiful few do. Warren, must this agony go on?

Ever since you bought Fruit of the Loom and its plus-size offspring Vanity Fair back in 2002, extending your empire to the firmament of the foundation garment universe, I have been waiting patiently, hoping that you'll turn out to be a revolutionary of the order of Herminie Cadolle. About 120 years ago, Mme. Cadolle figured out that it made more sense for women's breasts to be suspended from above than cantilevered from beneath. That is, she invented bra straps. So instead of walking around wearing the lingerie equivalent of the London Bridge, women could slide themselves into a Golden Gate. This was a huge relief—as anyone who has worn a strapless bra can tell you—because the London Bridge pretty much always falls down.

Or you could be like Ida Rosenthal. She invented cup sizes back in the 1920s. Warners picked up her idea and decided that most women would fall somewhere between an A and a D. At the time it was a breakthrough. But Mr. Buffett, please, this is such old tech. Are you wearing 80-year-old underwear? Again, no need to answer. But how can it be that in the past eight decades we've gone from measuring by furlongs and pinches to microns and nanoseconds and gigabytes, but we're still sizing bras according to the first few letters of the alphabet? And I'm not discounting the seminal work of the Swiss anthropologist Rudolf Martin, who classified breasts into four types: flat, hemispheric, conical and goat-udder-shaped. It's just that, inexplicably, his nomenclature system failed to catch on.

The crazy thing is, we already have the technology. Only this year a bunch of Hong Kong researchers published a paper in the International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics—a publication that I imagine is on your bedside table right now—that used 3-D anthropometric measuring equipment to take a very close look at 456 young Chinese women's breasts. (I know, can you imagine writing the grant proposal for that?) Their conclusions make for some tough reading. They note that 70% of British women are wearing the wrong size bra, and that among bigger-breasted women the sizing is particularly inappropriate.

Instead of taking two measurements (under the bust and over the bust) to find a bra size, the Hong Kong researchers took 98. The key to building a better bra, they concluded, is to use a depth-width ratio rather than just volume to figure out the cup size. Warren, can you see what's happening here? Are you going to let Chinese women have better-fitting bras than we do? Where is your sense of patriotism? First it's superior bras, then it's superior weapons, and before long the fat lady in her too-snug undergarment has sung, and it's over.

As you know, W.B., bras carry a lot more freight than just the bosomy kind. When women stand in front of the mirror, they don't see a bra that doesn't fit. They see a woman who doesn't fit—whose cup runneth over, who is insufficiently endowed, who is goat-shaped.

About half the adult population wears bras. The other half strategizes about them. Building a better-fitting one is not just good for female self-esteem, it's good for business. And you are the guy to do it. Can't you see the ad campaigns? "The Buffett Bustier: because one size does not fit all." Or "Get yourself into a neBRAska. We've got room for everyone."

Warren, I beseech you, just spare one moment today to think about breasts. I know you can.

[belinda luscombe]

Labels: i don't even know, what it feels like for a girl

sing it sista

alyssa milano:

... even if all the rumors about my MLB love life were true (which they're not) –- we should really examine the double standard that is in full effect here. I know for a fact, that there are many MLB players (plural) or athletes in general for that matter who have dated many Screen Actors Guild members. I won't name names (cough Derek Jeter cough). And yet, these guys are considered cool and we give them props for getting their high profile starlets. On the other hand, women who have dated more than one guy in any profession are easy targets for ridicule. I am speaking personally of course, but I am sure any woman that reads this entry can relate to this double standard and how it may pertain to their lives relative to their own experience.

Labels: what it feels like for a girl

of course you were kidding, mex.

"Women are not part of the team," [Keith Hernandez] said. "A ball team is twenty-five guys with one thing on their minds, which is baseball. Then there are twenty-five wives and girlfriends who have nothing in common. It takes a very special woman to be married to an athlete. She has to be enormously secure within herself, and not many women are. I've been called a misogynist for this but it's what I believe." [from roger angell's a pitcher's story: innings with david cone]

for any enterprising youtubers out there, the following conversation takes place during the bottom of the second immediately after piazza's home run.

keith hernandez [watching the padres congratulate piazza on his home run]: who's the GIRL in the dugout? with the long hair? what's going on here?! you've gotta be kidding me!
gary cohen: she's excited!
hernandez: only... only player personnel in the dugout!
cohen: ...got a fistbump and everything!
hernandez: hanging slider! ...we'll get back to her, i'm not through with her... hanging slider over the middle, and you just can't do that to mike, and that's just a bomb. [more talk about piazza, camera wanders back to woman in the dugout] i thought she was morganna for a minute, but she wasn't blonde.
cohen: i wonder if she's something in connection with military night here?
hernandez: she's with the training staff, we understand. uhhhmm.
cohen: i did not know that there was a woman trainer in the major leagues.
hernandez: [disapproving noise] certain...
cohen: [hastily interrupting] that's a pretty progressive step if it's true.
hernandez: that's...well... i won't say that women belong in the kitchen but they don't belong in the dugout!
cohen: i don't think you should say that. [laughing] there's only trouble brewing if you say that, you know.
hernandez: i'm only teasing!
cohen: he's kidding!
hernandez: i love you gals out there! always have!
cohen: i'm telling your wife!
[more laughter]
cohen: her name is kelly calabrese, she is a massage therapist for the san diego padres, so there you go.
hernandez: only in california! i... i just. i can't believe it. i..i.. you think you've seen everything... and, you know, there's always something new.
cohen: the world keeps changing, my friend.
hernandez: [pauses and sighs]

[bottom of the fifth ]

cohen: and there's another shot of kelly calabrese, massage therapist for the padres who we were talking about earlier....
hernandez: i know i made some strong statements, that she doesn't belong in the dugout, and i stand by those statements... i think this is a man's game, and it just gets in the way, and i feel very strongly about it. and if anybody out there thinks that when i made the comment about women being in the kitchen,* takes it seriously... get a sense of humor.

*actually keith, it wasn't that, it was EVERYTHING ELSE.

Labels: boys behaving badly, what it feels like for a girl

love it when mlb.tv doesn't go to commercials

because then you get to hear michael kay say things like

"that's an attractive girl there in the white dress!"

"the mcdonalds around the corner from the hotel? it's open 24 hours a day. OH YEAH, THEY CHANGED IT."

***

edited to add more, because the between inning banter is more enjoyable than half the games have been this year.

michael kay: i had [one flew over the cuckoo's nest] in the dvd! and.. and i, actually.. something...
dr hibbert ken singleton: and something came up, right!
kay: something DID come up!
singleton: yeah right!
kay: it's gonna happen --
singleton: you shoulda told her to go home!

***

and so, girls, i've learned that not only are we not safe from players, umpires, base coaches, and that drunk guy two rows back, but broadcasters as well:

kay: WHOAAA! there's a winner! -- there's two winners that just entered the booth! oh my god! lee, you have to stand up. lee, you MUST stand up. oh my goodness...
kay and singleton in unison: no more calls!
kay: oh ho! no visible means of upper support
singleton : and bouncin! likin' the music!
kay: oh my good--- did you see?!
singleton: let me outta here!
kay: we've lost kenny. earth to kenny...
singleton: is there a game tonight?
[long silence]
kay: god, that's...smokin......
singleton: hey, that's michael jackson, on the scoreboard.. he's at the game..
kay: [in obvious distress that the cameraman has panned elsewhere] what are you DOING, lee?

***

singleton [watching aaron small, who bears an eerie resemblance to jim kaat, in the dugout] YOUNG KITTY! on his way to 283 career victories!

***

singleton [on embree relieving small]: this guy's still pitching for the red sox.

Labels: boys behaving badly, things that are funny, what it feels like for a girl, yes men

what it feels like for a girl.

no, really.

from salon.com:

Baseball is the sexiest sport

Manhood is not about muscles, penis size or aggression, but about those softer things: Silence, anticipation, humility and loyalty.

By Harriet Archer
- - - - - - - - - -

October 23, 2000 | NEW YORK -- It's World Series time here, and the reality of a Subway Series has transformed the city and its citizens. The city is no longer about Downtown or Uptown, West Side or East Side, outer boroughs or suburbs, Beekman Places or Adam Clayton Powell Boulevards. Because when the Yankees won the American League Championship Series on Tuesday, a day after the Mets clinched the National League Championship Series, New York was reduced to two distinct points, an axis buttressed by Yankee Stadium on one side and Shea Stadium on the other. Everyone has, quite simply, gone batty.

But despite the hoopla, or perhaps because of it, there is a distinct atmosphere of melancholia and loss in the city, particularly among its female baseball fans. Subway Series or no Subway Series, mid-to-late October means the end of baseball season, when Derek and Tino and Mike and Robin pack up their stuff and head back to Florida or California or Texas or whatever warm place it is that they live during the off-season. These men -- hardworking, loyal, humble -- provide the sort of excitement during the months of April to October that the women of this city find hard to come by in the males who saunter down its streets. And so, as the season ends and the baseball boys step off and ship out, many a woman's heart finds itself alone again.

I fell in love with the New York Yankees in 1996, after watching a playoff game at a friend's house over beer and chips. As the daughter of a football fanatic and girlfriend to a hockey nut, I was aware of the existence of the game but completely ignorant of its reality and the men who play it. The Yankees changed all that.

There was Chuck Knoblauch, the softspoken infielder and leadoff hitter blessed with a handsome, open face and gentle, long-lashed eyes. He was followed, of course, by Derek Jeter: 6-foot-3 and 185 pounds of sinewy muscle wrapped in smooth cappuccino skin and finished off by a pair of ripe buttocks like a voluptuous bow on a Christmas present. There was Paul O'Neill, the square-jawed, curly-haired Irish lad with the never-ending legs and a penchant for tantrums and the physical abuse of water bottles. And who could forget Tino Martinez, the smoldering, dark-eyed Cuban with the sort of sturdy lower body that makes a woman like myself want to fall to her knees and pray?

All of these fine young men still play for the Yankees, but I speak about them in the past tense as a way to distance myself from them during these last few days of the season. They have wives and girlfriends and children to attend to and I, like other New York baseball gals, have learned to repress my desires on cue, at least until the next season rolls around and the guys -- conditioned, well-fed and well-rested -- are back in town. The winter will be lonely for us. There will be barren, cold nights characterized by too many glasses of wine for too much money when, just months earlier, we shrugged off the same drink dates and after-work parties in order to be home in front of the TV with our boys. It will be -- as it always is -- a difficult winter without them.

When women speak of baseball players, we tend to talk of tight pants, of bats and balls, of butts and backs and biceps. We marvel at the curves of their Achilles tendons, the slope of their calves, the tautness of their hamstrings and the swell of their forearms. We giggle when the guys rearrange their testicles, dirty their uniforms or lean bat handles up against their groins while they readjust their gloves. We salivate and fantasize, even fetishize. When announcers like Bob Costas or Tim McCarver or Joe Buck speak of "slapping it to center field," or "a fastball high, tight and inside," or "barehanding" or "getting a piece of it," we bat our eyelashes and blush. But for all the preening, posturing and sexual innuendo that accompany the game of baseball, women, I believe, have come to love the sport because it is about men and their manhood. And manhood is not about muscles or penis size or aggression, but about those softer things: silence, anticipation, humility and loyalty.

This is the secret: For all our crowing over Derek's derriere or Andy's eyes, we are more attracted to the game of baseball and the men who play it because of what it says about their values. Unlike football, hockey or boxing, baseball says nothing about the primal, untamed, innate beastliness of man. Women are made aware of such things not only in organized sport but in such things as rape and murder, the lyrics of Eminem and the propensity for civilization's leaders to engage in war. Baseball shows, instead, that men are as capable of control as they are of creating chaos. For baseball players are required to sublimate the sort of primitive desires encouraged in other male athletes -- aggression, rage, dominance -- in favor of something approaching grace: a grace that can be found in the lift of a long, well-hit home run, or the efficiency of a perfectly executed double play, or the determination of a batter who fouls off one nasty slider after another. Or the grace in not throwing a bat after being struck out, of not challenging an umpire's call. A true baseball hero sucks it up and thinks about his next chance to contribute.

And baseball players come to play. A month ago, my new boyfriend and I -- both Yankees fans -- planned to watch a division playoff game together on my 27-inch television. He was scheduled to arrive at 8 o'clock, so at 7 p.m. I set about cleaning my apartment and shuffled down the street to the store, where I bought a six-pack of beer, two bags of chips, salsa and a box of Tastykakes. By 8:30, he hadn't arrived and the Yankees were in the midst of a second-inning rally. Nine-thirty came and went; still no sign of my boyfriend. Yankees up 4-2. By 10 I began to worry. By 11, I was livid, and I called his apartment to see where the hell he was. There was no answer and, as I slammed the phone down in disgust, Tino Martinez hit a double to right field and drove in a run. I sighed and settled back onto the couch, smiling. At least there were some guys in the world a girl could count on.

It takes purpose to play a game like baseball, and the type of man who plays the game is the type of man a woman wants both in her home and her bed. These are men who pay attention to how details fit into the larger picture, men capable of anticipation, men who move with swiftness and economy, men who appreciate the beauty of routine. If we are to believe the cultural anthropologists of both present and past, the human female wants a hunter, a provider -- and such men can appear in everything from bearskin to Jil Sander to athletic cups. The best hunters, like the best ballplayers, are those who know how to wait and when to make their move.

There are female fans of those "other" sports, to be sure, women who roar in the bleachers of Giants Stadium or throw towels and obscenities from the shaking seats of Madison Square Garden. But the athletes they root for are caricatures for the most part: padded, helmeted and masked beyond recognition, as unable to connect with their audience as they are with their own physical pain. Do these fans recognize the grimace that accompanies a miscalculated throw, or the humiliation in the eyes of a man who has missed yet another opportunity to score for his team? No. All they see are bodies tumbling, crashing, contorting, merging; all they hear are yells and grunts, obscenities and yelps; directions given, directions taken.

Baseball players do speak, although not in the classic definition of the word. Rather than speech, they communicate through actions, movements and gestures, through glances exchanged and avoided. Some, like O'Neill, aforementioned water-bottle thrower, wear their emotions on their sleeves; others, such as Knoblauch, transfer theirs to seemingly neurotic adjustments in gear; still others, like David Cone or Martinez, exhibit theirs in slumps and strikes, in balls dropped and misthrown.

Nowhere is pure baseball personality more on display than in the batter's box. It's been said that sport is like the theater, in that there are stars and bit players and, off to the sidelines, the watchful eyes of the directors, designers and architects of what we see onstage. The batter's box is baseball's stage, and it is in this box that we come to know the participants of baseball as individuals and not as the bit players or the members of a cleanup crew. Some players enter the box tentatively, with shuffles and awkward glances between the third-base coach and the pitcher looming before them on the mound 60 feet away. Some come charging in, chewing the scenery with a few well-placed practice swings and glares thrown from under the brim of their batting helmet. Some avoid acknowledging anybody altogether, seemingly more entranced with the details of glove-tightening and foot placement than the thousands of pairs of eyes following their every move, or the fact that a ball will soon come hurtling toward them at 90-plus mph. When we get to know a player's idiosyncrasies, we feel we've made a friend.

I'm losing my friends soon. It's the beginning of the end of the season for the Yankees and I'll be watching each player closely, soaking in their faces and their bodies; all those details will be memorized and memorialized in an effort to keep me company during the long winter months ahead, when life will be characterized by cold nights, too many carbohydrates and dysfunctional family get-togethers. During those times when a date goes horribly wrong, when the nightly news reports that another war has broken out in the Middle East or when the 300-thread count of my sheets is not enough to compensate for the lack of another warm body in my bed, I will think of Tino and Derek, of Chuck and Paul, of Bernie and Clay, and dream of spring training.

Labels: quote of, what it feels like for a girl