Selection 2010 - Nick Ayler

Selection 2010 - Novak Djokovic

Classement 2009 - 8°

Selection 2010 - Chris Rockway

Classement 2009 - 85°

The World's Best Cheesecake Recipe!

My girlfriend and I played miniature golf recently. We have a bit of a "spirited" rivalry (read: bitter) going, and neither of us likes to lose. We were tied, about halfway through the round, when she mentioned that she was making a cheesecake for an upcoming party.


"You know, my dad used to make the world's best cheesecake," I said.  "It was his own special recipe.  I remember busing tables at his diners as a kid and hearing customers beg him for the secret.  Really, they begged.  He would charge $100 for a typewritten copy of the recipe -- and he had a fair number of takers.  And this was in the 1970s, when $100 was a lot of money."

"Oh my God, you have to get me that recipe, I have to have it! Is it still in the family?" she asked.

"Not that I'm aware, although there are a bunch of old boxes at my sister's house, it might be in one of them. I'm not really sure."

I wouldn't say that the cheesecake distraction was 100% responsible, but I won the match by five strokes. My girlfriend was not happy.  She doesn't like to lose.

She also loves to cook and bake, and she became obsessed with me finding that recipe. "Did you look? Have you checked your sister's house yet?" she asked repeatedly. "Is there anywhere else it might be?"

Last week, I e-mailed her with an attachment labeled "Cheesecake Recipe." My cover note simply said, "Guess what I found?!"

Later, she told me that she could hardly contain her excitement in her rush to open the attachment.

This is what she saw (you'll have to scroll down a bit, great cheesecake recipes are worth it):

It was the mini-golf scorecard showing my 5-stroke victory. Cruel, I know.  That's just the way I roll sometimes.  I thought it was funny anyway...

PS I still haven't found the recipe, so don't bother asking.

The Mysteries of the 2010 No-Hitters Conclusively Revealed!!

Some of you don't follow baseball, we know.  Bear with us though, this post is not really all about baseball. In 2010 Major League Baseball (MLB) has seen four, count 'em four (4) (iv) (IIII) (f-o-u-r, for those of you who are dumb-in-the-head), no-hitters. And two of those were perfect games (where nobody even reaches base, never mind doesn't get a hit).  There have only been 20 perfect games in the entire history of Major League Baseball since 1876 and two of them came this year. That's pretty crazy folks.

So why is this?  What accounts for all of the recent no-hitters? [Also called "no-no's" by some commentators who like to annoy us...]

One theory is that MLB is now testing for steroids another performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) so much more vigorously, that players aren't taking them anymore.  Thus, hitters don't have their former advantage.  Interesting theory, but not really compelling given that hitters in the 1940s and 1950s, etc. didn't take PEDs and there weren't that many no-hitters in those days. 

So what's the reason for this recent surge in no-no's?  Here are the Top Ten Theories for all the recent no-hitters posited by The LG Report.  Feel free to spread them around with the gang at the water cooler (or in the machine-gun-guard-supervised rec yard, for those of you who are temporarily guests of the state...)

The LG Report Top Ten Reasons For All The No Hitters in 2010 and Not So Many Previously

10.  Batters today are preoccupied with the ending of "Lost" and trying to figure out what happened, which hampers their ability to hit a curve;

9.  2010's pitchers have the benefit of using a Sham Wow to comprehensively wipe the sweat from their brows and hands during their mound time, thus making them more effective;

8.  Batters today are constantly trying to dope out their Sudoku puzzles in their minds, which was not a factor in the 1950s;

7.  Previous generations of hitters didn't have to worry about the Deep Water Horizon oil spill seeping into their gloves or bats;

6.  Batters in earlier years didn't have to constantly scan the VIP seats to see if Lady Gaga was parading around in her underwear, always a significant distraction;

5.  Pitchers in the old days didn't consume as many Flintstone Chewable vitamins as they do  now;

4.  Batters have only recently been afflicted with "Fibromyalgia" because big pharmaceutical companies hadn't yet invented it in the old days;



3.    Oprah Winfrey, just this year, decided that no-hitters were good;

2.   Hitters are in a rush to get their swings in so that they can get back to the dugout to watch the live Justin Bieber concert; and...

THE NUMBER ONE REASON THAT PITCHERS ARE THROWING MORE NO-HITTERS....



1.  Batters just arent aren't getting hits.

Pretty obvious, we know, but you can take that one to the bank.  See you soon....

The World At War: AFRICOM vs. Ghana in the Round of 16

We Are The World, and even as I write, we are preparing for another battle, the next in a month-long series of short, controlled skirmishes which will draw the attention of billions of people, although neither the individual skirmishes nor the entire series have any actual significance. Such is the power of modern marketing.

The imminent clash pits the huge and mighty USA -- which just recently admitted running overt and covert "clandestine operations" in at least 75 "sovereign" nations -- against the small and mostly impoverished African nation of Ghana. Despite the disparity in resources, USA is not considered a "prohibitive favorite". Such is the nature of modern football (which Americans insist on calling "soccer").

Recently, at a family gathering, one of the older women -- a mother of three boys, two of whom joined the Marines as teenagers -- was talking about the Vietnam-era anti-war demonstrators. Many people believe that the anti-war movement forced an end to the war. I wouldn't go quite that far, but at the very least the anti-war movement proved to me that some Americans still had functioning brains and hearts.

I don't see that very much anymore; the brains appear to have turned to mush, and the hearts to stone. I was hoping the old woman was about to say something of a similar nature, but instead, looking back on the protests, she said, "That was so difficult for the parents!"

Given the circumstances, there was little I could say. I certainly couldn't say what I was thinking: "The parents!? It was difficult for the parents?? How do you think it was for the children???"

First we had to throw off all the propaganda we'd been fed by our schools, by our parents, by the teevee and the radio, the movies and the newspapers and all the rest of our so-called "culture"; then we had to bring ourselves face-to-face with the fact that our government had adopted a policy of killing millions of innocent people, who had no means to harm us and no intention of doing so, for fun and profit. It was a most repulsive revelation, especially in the midst of all the Disney-crap we'd been "brought up" on.

But even that wasn't enough, because having learned what we had learned, having taken the stands we had taken, we then had to endure the rejection of our parents: and we saw with our own eyes how the people who had brought us into this world, fed us and held us, taught us and loved us, turned against us when we brought to light the most vital truth of their lives, preferring the deadly fiction to which they were accustomed, and with which they were so much more comfortable. And now, "it was so difficult for the parents". Such is the power of modern American stupidity.

None of this makes any difference, of course, to the billions preparing to tune in to the match between USA and Ghana. Very few of the world's sporting fans seem to know or care whether Ghana is seen by USA as nothing but a tiny component of AFRICOM, which in itself is simply one cog in the Pentagon's plan to rule the world by force. I know people who will be standing and cheering and yelling "USA!! USA!!" all afternoon, but I cannot share -- or understand -- their sentiment.

I want to see the whole world screaming for Ghana. I want to see the whole world waking up and aligning itself against the USA, not only in world football but also -- much more significantly -- against the American plan to rule the world.

I want ordinary, "decent", "intelligent" Americans to see the unprovoked murder of even one innocent person as an intolerable outrage; then I want them to understand that their country has murdered millions upon millions of innocent people, not just at one time and in one place but repeatedly, all over the world, for decades. And I want them to realize that their chant of "USA!! USA!!" is -- for the rest of the world -- the most obscene of non-violent gestures.

Not that it matters in the slightest to anyone, but it breaks my heart to realize that the country of my birth is a serial mass murderer, and that even despite the horror that is USA, many of the allegedly most intelligent people I know, including elderly and supposedly wise members of my extended family, still support it, while seeing any prospect of facing the truth about it as "difficult for the parents".

I want the so-called "Family of Man" to take a stand. I want to hear millions and millions -- billions -- of voices, jeering and whistling every time an American player touches the ball. I want to hear billions of voices jeering and whistling every time an American president tells another outrageous lie, every time the American military launches another unprovoked attack against innocent people, every time ... every time ...

I know none of this will happen. But then again this is football, where everything is artificial and nothing matters. Surely a battered old man with a broken heart can have a dream now and then, can't he? Isn't that what the beautiful game is all about?

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Selection 2010 - Raoul Bova

Selection 2010 - Zac Efron

Classement 2009 - 10°

Selection 2010 - Caio Cesar

Guest Blog: Mr. Peevey Weighs In On Hotel Sinks

Today we have a guest blog posting from a "Mr. Peevey" who will be checking in periodically with his pet peeves (and believe us folks, he has many...) 

Mr. Peevey was recently in a hotel room that didn't have a stopper on the sink.  Here's his rant:

Pet Peeve #1675


Dear Hotel Manager:

I realize that one time, some salesman from Topeka passed out on his bed while filling up the sink in his hotel bathroom and, as a result, the sink overflowed, causing hundreds of dollars of damages.

However, I can assure you that I am not that guy. I can be trusted with the simple act of
filling the sink for shaving and washing my face. Seriously, I can responsibly use your precious sink stopper -- no need to take it from me like guards take a belt from a despondent inmate.

I can handle the "fill-up the sink" thing all on my own, without causing colleteral damage. The "don't clog the toilet" thing?

Well, that's a whole different story.....

- Mr. Peevey
____________________________________________

Programming note: Illinois and California are coming soon on The LG Report 50-State Interview Series, so please stay tuned....

Also, we're aiming for more frequent -- and shorter -- postings.  We haven't gotten there yet, but we hope to soon.  Thanks for stopping by!

Selection 2010 - Chad Pinther