Class of 2010

Patti Smith
RF
Wears a New York (NL) hat.

There's a story in Legs McNeil's indispensible Please Kill Me where some punk icon is talking about Patty Smith and says something to the effect of "you couldn't tell, because she always wore masculine clothing and baggy shirts, but Patty had really big tits" which stuck with me, for some reason. I guess because it's such a contradictory story about a woman who looks kind of like Susan Sontag and carries herself like a dude, and I like to imagine that Patti would laugh about it.

In any case, Patti Smith is a bad bitch.






William Murderface
SS/3B
Wears a Kansas City hat.

William Murderface is the bassist for Dethklok, fictional band featured in Adult Swim's "Metalocalypse". This show is, unsurprisingly, popular among the young, stoned and unemployable. Murderface has one of those Lou Holtz lisps, is really violent and pisses in inappropriate locations. If you don't think that description can sustain one of the main characters in a cartoon sitcom over 26 (and counting) episodes, you've never seen Adult Swim.


Ben Matlock
SP
Wears a Washington hat.

Andy Griffith is all grown up, and now he's got a law degree and is asleep on the couch in front of "Wheel of Fortune" by 8:00 every night! Despite running for 24 seasons, from 1972 to 1995, and spawning the hit catch-phrase "That's my monkey!", centerpiece of Steve Garvey's successful 1988 Presidential bid, "Matlock" is still probably best-known as the series that spun off hit television show "Jake and the Fatman".


Lily Munster
SP
Wears a Washington hat.

The Munsters seems like the classic example of pitch-as-premise (they're living in suburbia, but they're monsters!) As far as I can tell (and I've never watched this stupid show, so I could be wrong) they pretty much go through all the sitcom motions: weird new jobs, long-lost cousins, double-entendre misunderstandings. Yvonne DeCarlo also played Moses' chaste cipher of a wife in The Ten Commandments - alongside uber-hams like Chuck Heston, Anne Baxter and Yul Brenner, the character she played might as well have been played by a two-by-four with a smiley face painted on it.

Class of 2005

Bernie Brewer
3B
Wears a Cleveland hat.

Normally, I'm pretty ambivalent about mascots that involve a dude dressing in a foam rubber imitation of a person. And by ambivalent, I think they're fucking retarded. I mean, isn't this way cooler and less creepy than, say, this? This goes for Halloween costumes too - when you buy a Halloween mask you've basically said to the world, I refuse to put any thought into this costume at all. But I'll give Bernie Brewer a pass because he used to go down his little slide into a mug of beer, and anything that encourages children between the ages of 4 and 11 to consume alcohol is alright in my book.


Fear, Itself
OF
Wears a Kansas City hat.

Franklin Roosevelt once said that the only thing that we have to fear is fear itself. And I guess that's mostly true, unless it turns out that there's a maniac with a knife camped out in your closet, waiting for you to go to sleep so he can eat your eyeballs. In that case, you're probably justified in feeling that there are more immediate problems in your life than fear.


Max, King of the Wild Things
Catcher
Wears a St. Louis hat.

Maurice Sendak's scholarly dissertation on inducing hallucinations in children by temporarily starving them was picked up on by the mainstream media and ultimately made the rounds as the partially dumbed down novel version, "Where the Wild Things Are". Sendak's follow-up, "The Wild Things Experiment with LSD and Peyote", was less successful.


Senator Benjamin Wade
SP
Wears a Detroit hat.

How big of an asshole was Benjamin Wade? When Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868, he was acquitted by one vote. Now, Johnson was a total asshole. But Wade was an even bigger asshole, and it is said that, were anyone but Senator Wade to take Johnson's place as President (since he was President pro tempore of the Senate, Wade was the first in the line of succession at the time, since Johnson didn't have a VP), Johnson would very probably have been chucked from office. The Senate, ultimately, decided to stick with Johnson's everyday assholery rather than deal with the gargantuan, monumental assholery of Senator Wade. Just look at his picture. You can tell, immediately, that this is an asshole. And he always looks like that in pictures. Like an asshole.

Class of 1998

Nike, Inc.
SP
Wears a Kansas City hat.

Nike was incorporated in 1971 with the express goal of branding everything in existence, and turning that marketing power into a company that is a global icon. But Nike isn't about brands or profits or corporate hegemony. It's about people. Like Jesus Carrilo, 12, in Guadalajara:

"I have been working at Nike for 8 years and in that time I have made almost 10% of the money that I need to ransom my sister from the Cartel. Thinking of the look on her face when I rescue her makes the 18 hours fly by."

Or how about Kaliyanei Meang, 15, of Sisophon:

"They gave the girls at the orphanage two options - become sex slaves, or work at the Nike factory. And whenever I find myself having envious thoughts of those other girls, I just remember that death comes the same for all of us, whether your life is the living hell of the workshop or not."

Or, last but not least Ramelan Swie, 13, of Jakarta:

"They say the left side is the weak, or feminine, side. I am thankful to the cutting machine for removing my left arm, because it has left me with only the masculine arm, and that will ultimately make me stronger."

It is people that Nike serves, and people that are its greatest asset. As Nike pitchman Michael Jordan might say, "Get that fucking camera away from me, I don't know where the fucking shoes were made."

Just do it.