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Bill McCormick

Chatting With Your Kids

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Biologically, they’re sisters. Just saying.
Around the turn of the century a buddy of mine decided to get married and do the whole family thing. Considering that he, much to the surprise of the gene pool, had actually found someone to procreate with, we – his friends – all gave our support. Long story short, he now has a 10 year old daughter, a 9 year old son and a vasectomy. All good calls. What that means is that for the last decade his view of pop culture has been Sesame Street and, now, Nickelodeon. Nothing wrong with that. However he has missed a memo or two. In his case he missed the memo that the DC universe released a cartoon called Justice League Unlimited from 2001 to 2006. The series was geared towards more mature viewers with a slant to keep it acceptable for those 12 and above. My smart readers may have noted that my buddy’s kids are younger than that. That is now a salient point.

Now is the time I must disclose that I am a fan of the series and have the DVD collection. It is reason #127 why I am not allowed to procreate.

Now is also the point where I note that my buddy, like millions of others, stopped thinking about Batman when Adam West stopped portraying him. This is also very important here today.

In that TV series everyone spoke in HERO VOICES. When the cartoon Superfriends, also a collection of HERO VOICES, came out in the 70’s a lot of people, including my buddy, equated it with The Justice League. They were wrong.

That was a extremely homogenized, acceptable to 6 year olds, version of what was going on. The Wonder Twins were not that family friendly in the comic book universe.

Anyway, the latest version of Justice League Unlimited, sans Wonder Twins, has recently started to be re-broadcast on WGN here in Chicago.

Thus doth our story begin.

My buddy figured that Batman, et al, was safe TV and used the time-slot to baby sit his kids while he did important stuff like make breakfast.

First off the new cartoon, unlike the old TV show, introduced the world to a character called “The Question.” Unlike the goody two shoes mythos that permeated the TV when you were a kid, he would kill people. A great example is when he handed a group of villains their grenades and then, after a wonderful pause, tossed the pins to them. People who know what hand grenades can do can figure out the rest.

In other words, screw incarceration or rehabilitation, just kill the SOB’s.

In the series he ends up dating The Huntress who was kicked out of the Justice League for killing a mafia don. Her explanation? “He deserved it.”

In other words, she kills too.

Their love story is a second string plot in the series.

The third string plot, that covers multiple episodes, is the fact that Green Arrow is banging Black Canary (a white woman in fishnets for you 3 Tea Party fans who read this blog).

In other words this is a much darker, but not as explicit, cartoon than you might expect.

We can even ignore the whole Wonder Woman + mind control episode that immortalized the greatest chick fight in history. As to why a muscular woman who likes to hang out with other muscular women and likes to run her fingers across the skin of young muscular girls (episode 10, Paradise Lost, where she is exiled for working with men) wants to have sex with Batman all you really get is …

Well, jeez, he’s the freaking Batman.

Anyway, I bring all this up to mention to parents that they should not make assumptions based on their childhood. If they do they will end up calling me in a panic asking why the hell Green Arrow is a horn dog and there’s there is a nutcase named The Question on their TV who is willing to kill and wants to get in the leather panties of the hot chick who has issues and …..

Oh, and no, I don’t do house-calls.

You can figure it out with five minutes of research all on your own.

And, if you have kids, that research is worth your time.

Justice League Hex Girls from Samoyeds7

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

You Memorized the Wrong Document

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Pucker up America, you've earned a wet one!
Every year we send our kids off to school to learn about the history of this great land of ours and every year teachers lie to our treasured genetic spawn. So, last year, in an effort to curtail the abuse, I wrote a definitive history of the Declaration of Independence. It is one of the most important documents in the history of our country and absolutely no one knows anything about it. The document you do know isn’t it. Call it “close, but no cigar.” Here is the original article.

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On July 2nd, every year, I celebrate the Declaration of Independence. The seminal document that officially severed ties between England and the American colonies. You’re probably reading that and laughing. How could a smart man like me get the damn date wrong? Easy, I didn’t. You did. In fact almost everything you claim to know about the holiday and its history is horribly wrong. When John Adams wrote his wife Abagail stating that America would celebrate this day throughout history, he was talking about July 2nd, not July 4th. Nor was he talking about the document Jefferson had authored. That document, the one you’re thinking of, was not the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s had the clunky title of “A Declaration by the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in General Congress assembled.”

Nope, the actual Declaration of Independence was written by an aristocrat named Richard Henry Lee in June of 1776 and was delivered officially to British authorities on July 2nd of the same year. Unlike the document you learned in school, Lee’s letter, such as it was, was a simple one sentence resolution. Two more sentences were added later in the year. Of the 13 colonies at the time, only New York abstained from signing it. Even back then it was a useless state with too many people.

Anyway, here’s the text of the entire document, including the later addenda.

  • Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
  • That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.
  • That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.

Lee was an interesting cat. He was a hard-line believer in individual and state rights and thought there should be little or no federal oversight. He felt that any such move would be a move in the wrong direction. Or, as he famously said, “The first maxim of a man who loves liberty, should be never to grant to rulers an atom of power that is not most clearly and indispensably necessary for the safety and well being of society.”

In fact, on October 16, 1787 he wrote a letter fundamentally objecting to the whole idea of a U.S. Constitution. Given that Lee fostered a near paranoiac belief that all government was out to harm or oppress the individual, it’s not surprising that he firmly believed in the right of each individual to carry a weapon.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution – A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed – was clearly written to appease Lee and his followers since many representatives wanted to limit the use and ownership of firearms.

The document you were erroneously taught was the Declaration was actually an explanation for why Lee’s July 2nd document needed to exist.

The whole “When in the course of human events ….” language that you were forced to memorize as a child was a detailed, and severely edited, document explaining why Americans could no longer suffer British rule.

The parts that were edited out included granting slaves rights and freedom, anything that censured the people of England (since many colonists had English friends) and the idea of “sacred and undeniable truths” became “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”

In other words, the Declaration of Independence that you think you know and love was actually a political compromise that started a war but could have just as easily allowed for negotiations for reconciliation.

Had the latter happened we’d all be sipping tea and watching cricket on ESPN.

And while I know that I’m facing a Sisyphean task in attempting to set the record straight it just wouldn’t be America if someone didn’t try.

Whole Day Nude from Paradise Studios Hollywood on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

Bible Study, Hippo Style

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I would beg to differ.
The Bible is, if I may use this word, an evolving text. Discoveries have been made that have forced scholars and lay people alike to reconsider what it all means. If we ignore the many politicized revisions of the King James Bible we have a pretty good starting point to base any discoveries on. The same holds true for the Talmud, which was edited and revised to become the Old Testament in the Christian Bible. The Holy Qu’Ran is a different animal. It was, according to Islamic tradition, dictated directly to the Prophet Muhammad by the angel Jibril (Gabriel in western cultures) and was formalized by Caliph Uthman barely twenty years after Muhammad ascended into heaven. Also, unlike the Talmud or the Bible, Caliph Uthman had thousands of copies made at the same time so there would be no historical discrepancies. But the other two books have constantly been challenged by one finding or another through the years. Some, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, enhanced our view of the history of the two earliest western religions but didn’t challenge much in the way of beliefs. Others, such as Nag Hammadi Library challenge the most closely held beliefs and seem to fly in the face of historical record.

What gets lost in the tumult is that all three books are historical records as well as religious texts. Kings, which underpins all three western religions, tells the story of how Israel became a reality and how the Jews finally found a home. The fact that it depicts some incredibly violent moments and some of the most duplicitous behavior in history doesn’t make it any less valid. Quite honestly, if you were to modernize the characters in Kings and keep the plot it would read more like the Godfather than any spiritual journey. But you have to keep in mind the times when it occurred. If everyone wants you dead you either kill them first or fade from view.

However, as I noted, these are historical texts. So, when evidence comes along that says history might have missed something it needs to be addressed. The Gospel of Mark in the New Testament is one example of scholarly dispute. According to a letter, which may or may not have been a forgery, there is a Secret Gospel of Mark.

The “Secret” gospel depicts a moment wherein Jesus befriends a young man and teaches him the wonders and secrets of his ministry. A marvel he shared with only a select few. Many scholars believe that young man was Mark himself. That would make sense since we know that Mark didn’t write his gospel until he was commanded to do so so that Romans could understand the teachings of Peter. Since Mark was barely 40 when he did that one can easily assume that he was around 9 or 10 when he was a disciple of Jesus’. Certainly he refers to himself as a boy, which would mean he had not attained 13 years of age and become a man in accordance with Jewish tradition.

Of course the yahoo brigade read this new text and immediately claimed Jesus was a homosexual. Having never belonged to a club they would be woefully ignorant about the rites of initiation. If their claim had any validity then everyone from Rotarions to Boy Scouts would be involved in homosexual rituals.

In other words, feel free to dismiss them and move on with your life.

But the one book that has had scholars and anyone else who’s read it completely baffled is the Book of Revelations. According to Catholic tradition it was written by St. John the Divine. Most likely while he was in prison. The problem with Revelations, besides it’s use of epic allegory, is the fact that it makes the teachings of Jesus insanely violent. Far from “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” it’s more akin to “do unto others BEFORE they do unto you.” Almost all the violent Christian sects cite it as proof of their beliefs.

But – and you knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you? – the document used in the Bible has long been known to be a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy and so on. Archaeologists have recently unearthed a much older version of Revelations and realized quickly that there may have been some tiny errors in the multiple translations.

Take the Number of the Beast, they now know it to be 616 and not 666. It has prompted some interesting articles, such as this one from Religion News.

Satanists, apocalypse watchers and heavy metal guitarists may have to adjust their demonic numerology after a recently deciphered ancient biblical text revealed that 666 is not the fabled Number of the Beast after all.

A fragment from the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, dating to the Third century, gives the more mundane 616 as the mark of the Antichrist.

Ellen Aitken, a professor of early Christian history at McGill University, said the discovery appears to spell the end of 666 as the devil’s prime number.

“This is a very nice piece to find,” Dr. Aitken said. “Scholars have argued for a long time over this, and it now seems that 616 was the original number of the beast.”

The tiny fragment of 1,500-year-old papyrus is written in Greek, the original language of the New Testament, and contains a key passage from the Book of Revelation.

Where more conventional versions of the Bible give 666 as the “number of the beast,” or the sign of the anti-Christ whose coming is predicted in the book’s apocalyptic verses, the older version uses the Greek letters signifying 616.

“This is very early confirmation of that number, earlier than any other text we’ve found of that passage,” Dr. Aitken said. “It’s probably about 100 years before any other version.”

The fragment was part of a hoard of previously illegible manuscripts discovered in an ancient garbage dump outside the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus. Although the papyrus was first excavated in 1895, it was badly discoloured and damaged. Classics scholars at Oxford University were only recently able to read it using new advanced imaging techniques.

Elijah Dann, a professor of philosophy and religion at the University of Toronto, said the new number is unlikely to make a dent in the popularity of 666.

“Otherwise, a lot of sermons would have to be changed and a lot of movies rewritten,” he said with a laugh. “There’s always someone with an active imagination who can put another interpretation on it.

“It just shows you that when you study something as cryptic and mystic as the Book of Revelation there’s an almost unlimited number of interpretations.”

The book is thought to have been written by the disciple John and according to the King James Bible, the traditional translation of the passage reads: “Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”

But Dr. Aitken said that translation was drawn from much later versions of the New Testament than the fragment found in Oxyrhynchus. “When we’re talking about the early biblical texts, we’re always talking about copies and they are copies made, at best, 150 to 200 years after [the original] was written,” she said.

“They can have mistakes in the copying, changes for political or theological reasons … it’s like a detective story piecing it all together.”

Dr. Aitken said, however, that scholars now believe the number in question has very little to do the devil. It was actually a complicated numerical riddle in Greek, meant to represent someone’s name, she said.

“It’s a number puzzle — the majority opinion seems to be that it refers to [the Roman emperor] Nero.”

Revelation was actually a thinly disguised political tract, with the names of those being criticized changed to numbers to protect the authors and early Christians from reprisals. “It’s a very political document,” Dr. Aitken said. “It’s a critique of the politics and society of the Roman empire, but it’s written in coded language and riddles.”

Of course that last little tid bit also means that Revelations is no more prophecy than I am a ballet dancer.

Ooops.

Nevertheless, I’m sure, as time progresses, other documents will surface to help us understand more fully what everyone was thinking at the time.


Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Thank God for Men and Beer!

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The solution, and cause, of all life's problems.
The solution, and cause, of all life's problems.
When the Bible talks about Jesus drinking wine, it conveniently leaves out that it’s not talking about some wimpy Chablis or pinot noir. 2,000 years ago wine was just fermented fruit and not processed. If you try to make it at home you’ll come up with a drink that’s closer to grain alcohol than anything you’ll get on shelves today. Not that I’m claiming Jesus was a drunkard, far from it, I’m just pointing out that there was strong drink available back then and, at least at the wedding at Cana, people weren’t afraid to pour it. Ancient Egypt had those huge granaries. After making all the breads and cakes you could possibly eat, you needed something with which to wash them down. As they quickly discovered, excess grains make great booze. Mostly beers, but they had a nice variety going after a while.

Great wonders of science have come from men and beer. In 1796 Dr. Edward Jenner discovered a cure for smallpox. Was this done in a lab? Of course not. He figured it out by kicking back and watching milk maids.

“No, really honey, it’s science. Grab me another beer on your way back to the laundry, will you?”

That wonderfully healthy pasteurized milk you drink? Happy accident. Louis Pasteur was looking for a way to keep beer from spoiling. I can imagine no nobler quest.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Thanks to men and beer civilization has flourished and gotten healthier. Oh sure, the more picayune among you may point out that the Third Reich got started in a bar, but I feel safe in pointing out that history shows that was an aberration and not the norm.

Now, Ben Muessig of AOL News reports that the greatest idea in the history of history is headed to a bar near you.

California entrepreneur Sam Sparks has created a sport dubbed “Knokkers” — but he insists it’s not a whole new ballgame.

“Everyone has seen pool and everyone has seen bowling — and everyone has probably played both,” Sparks told AOL News. “There is a familiarity that is inviting. People don’t have much of an aversion to it, even though it’s new.”

For the most part, Knokkers is just like billiards, only bigger. Much bigger.

Players don’t hit the cue ball with a stick. They use their hands. And they don’t eye their next shot while walking around the table. They pick their angles while walking on it.

It’s a merger between pool and bowling, and in a single word, it’s massive.

The game is played on a 15-foot by 30-foot table with bowling ball-sized projectiles. Unlike pool, players don’t “scratch” if they move the cue ball before taking a shot.

“The rule in the game of Knokkers is that once you touch the cue ball you have to keep at least one of your feet stationary — like a pivot foot in basketball,” he said. “You can stretch and totally change the geometry of your shot. It makes for fewer difficult shots.”

That leads to an easier, faster game that Sparks believes will appeal to both children and adults.

Plans for large-scale billiard games aren’t exactly new — in fact, one inventor in the 1970s even patented a game that would mix pool, bowling and disco aesthetics by allowing players to walk on the table but forcing them to wear tall platform shoes “for safety purposes.”

According to Knokkers lore, this massive pool iteration is the brainchild of Steve Wienecke, Sparks’ cousin, who says he dreamed up a big pool game in the 1980s. He didn’t get around to building a table until three years ago when he finally managed to lay a concrete slab in his Missouri backyard. Since then the game has taken off.

“We had a party, and we couldn’t get the kids off of it — so I thought, ‘Let’s commercialize this thing — let’s build this for real,’ ” Sparks told AOL News.

Sparks and his cousin began building table prototypes from construction materials, such as railroad ties, indoor/outdoor carpet and recycled tires, and painting bowling balls so they looked like billiards balls.

Through trial and error they say they eventually came out with a table that has the same responsiveness as a standard pool table.

“It has the exact action as a pool table — you can make a three- or a four-rail shot.”

They also realized that normal bowling balls can’t withstand the wear and tear of the game, so Sparks used his background in the plastics industry to design 6-pound Knokkers balls from polyurethane.

Standing on a table and dodging those ricocheting balls isn’t as dangerous as it sounds, according to Sparks.

“We haven’t had anybody hit with a ball,” he said. “Because the balls are only 6 pounds, if you were to be hit with one it would be more of a nuisance. It might hurt, but it wouldn’t injure you.”

Sparks is ready to manufacture tables for interested buyers, and in the next few weeks, he hopes to open the first public Knokkers court at a bowling center in Southern California.

In the next 10 years, Sparks hopes to construct 1,000 tables worldwide. His business is starting out offering two kinds of tables — permanent fixtures intended for bowling alleys, sports bars and the backyards of the most dedicated players (starting at $39,000), and portable tables that can be quickly installed at fairs, festivals and sporting events.

By showing off Knokkers in public places, he hopes the game will win fans.

“It has a real captivating presence. It pulls people in, kind of like moths to light.”

Though he says the game is popular with his kids as well as his mother, Sparks plans to market the game to a demographic between the ages of 21 and 35 — particularly bar and bowling alley patrons.

That’s not very surprising considering the not-so-subtle double entendre in the game’s name and logo.

In fact, Knokkers can serve as an icebreaker for singles looking to hook up at bars and bowling alleys, according to Sparks.

“A girl can say, ‘Hey, look at my Knokkers!’ and get away with it,” he explained.

Beyond the risque jokes, Sparks sees Knokkers as liberating.

“When you’re standing on the felt, it’s kind of taboo. You feel like you’re getting away with something when you’re playing a game.”

“Hey, look at my Knokkers!” is the kind of command that can make a grown man weep with joy.

I know I’m a bit misty.

If you want to see just how much fun it can be for consenting adults to play with their Knokkers, just watch the video.