I break bones and laugh.

My favorite Best of Craigslist post is "How To Be A Man 101," in which the anonymous author explains how in lieu of his abusive father, Muhammad Ali taught the author how to be. The author grew up in rural America and he didn't know anything about the Nation of Islam or where Ali was coming from. But he knew his father hated Ali and as he explains, "...I hated my dad. So I decided I loved Muhammad Ali."

The author followed Ali's career through the many highs and through the low point when he was banned from boxing for dodging the draft. In 1970, he was allowed to fight again and a year later, the Supreme Court overturned Ali's conviction for refusing induction. By 1974, he'd fought his way back to a title shot. That shot was against someone whom you likely think of as the friendly guy trying to sell you small kitchen appliances. But that wasn't the case back in '74, as the author explains:

"In 1974, Muhammad Ali fought a real-life, living, breathing boogey man: George Foreman. A giant of a man that had actually crippled other fighters in the ring. He'd decimated both Frazier and Norton in previous fights. He'd hit Frazier so hard he lifted him four feet off the mat. He'd knocked Kenny Norton asleep. He beat him like a rug the year earlier and Norton didn't wake up until he was in his dressing room. As often as the movies may portray that sort of thing, the truth is in professional fighting it's nearly unheard of."

And Ali was at 32, over-the-hill in the world of boxing. From ye olde Wiki: Almost no one, not even Ali's long-time supporter Howard Cosell, gave the former champion a chance of winning. Analysts pointed out that Joe Frazier and Ken Norton had given Ali four tough battles in the ring and won two of them, while Foreman had knocked out both of them in the second round. As a matter of fact, so total was the domination that, in their bout, Foreman had knocked down Frazier an incredible six times in only four minutes and 25 seconds.

None of that seemed to affect him, though, as the anonymous author remembers:

"Foreman could barely put a sentence together back then - he usually just glared at people if he didn't feel like acknowledging him. Ali, on the other hand, had done the impossible over the past 10 years: he had gone from Most Hated Athlete in America to Most Adored HUMAN on the Face of the Earth. And, of course, he reveled in it. He talked about EVERYthing - tooth decay, racism, boxing, music, magic tricks...anything that caught his fancy. Smiling, laughing, giggling, chortling, merry-making his way through the sweltering pre-rainy season of Kinsasha. Not a care in the world.

Of course, that wasn't true, though. Ali was worried."

Since Ali could not possibly overpower Foreman, he planned to employ the Rope-a-dope, a style in which basically, he leaned on the ropes of the ring and hoped he could withstand Foreman's punches until the giant was worn out. "Years later he acknowledged his fear in an interview with George Plimpton. 'I was afraid for my children,' he said, 'I was afraid if maybe Big George broke my spinal column or something, how would I feed my children?' My God, it's astonishing to think of the fear that must have enveloped him for those three months prior to the fight."

Ali withstood nearly eight rounds of pummeling, fighting mostly defensively until there were about thirty seconds left in the round. This is the last minute and change of the eighth round:



!!! G.O.A.T. !!! I highly recommend reading the post, if only to find out what happened when the author finally got to tell Ali what he had meant.

You were. You are.

I was passing through a room when I noticed something in a set of photos I've yet to scan.

( Some things are genetic. )

More of this later after I've been properly breakfasted.

When I was driving home from The Dark Knight, I was thinking about songs that feature a mysterious man, usually dressed in black, who travels around and either metes out justice or wreaks havoc. Sometimes he does both. Sometimes it seems as if the man is Death, sometimes he may be God or Jesus, and sometimes he is Mephistopheles. Sometimes it's explicit who the man is and sometimes it's left hidden. In addition, many times these songs are full of literary references, like "When The Man Comes Around," which begins and ends with Bible verses. I read an excellent piece a few days ago on Dylan's "Man in the Long Black Coat" (covered below by Joan Osborne) that draws parallels between the lyrics and Nathaniel Hawthorne's novels.

I think there's a long list of songs that can be categorized like this. "Sympathy For The Devil" would be one, I suppose, but I think as a song from the point of view of the mysterious stranger, it's outnumbered by songs that are about him. It's hard to google for this sort of thing, because "man in black" just brings up Cash, whom as you'll see below was no stranger to this type of song himself. Googling "men in black" just brings up crap. Then I get distracted thinking about this kind of character in say, literature and I start thinking about "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" and then "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" And that's before I start thinking about black hats in westerns and before I start debating with myself over whether Patti Scialfa's "Stumbling To Bethlehem" fits, because of the line, "Now there’s this man on the corner in a long black sweater saying 'sinners they will burn forever.'" (Either way, it's a great song and I recommend it.)

So here are a few songs featuring men in black, none of which are done by Will Smith:

Johnny Cash--When The Man Comes Around (Lyrics)

Johnny Cash--God's Gonna Cut You Down (Lyrics)

Nick Cave--Red Right Hand (Lyrics)

Joan Osbourne--Man in the Long Black Coat (Lyrics)

And one for Heath:

Tom Petty--Wildflowers (Lyrics)

I'd also be interested in any songs you can think of that fit.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?! Maybe it's the blast of ozone I just took to the face (and thanks to whichever employee left it on the 'on' switch, by the dubs) but I don't think I'm hallucinating this. Why was I not informed?

And I thought the biggest kerfluffle in his tenure as AG was going to be when 41 out of 42 district attorneys in the state approved a statement criticizing what he did to Robby Owens. The 42nd has a brother working in King's office. But hey! Maybe King could have gotten him a job at one of the community colleges, like he did for another employee's mother, leading King to have to recuse the whole AG's office from the current investigation into the community college system. Or maybe he could have taken him to see the Braves, like that time he took his friends and family on Alabama Power's dime. Hey, AG King, aren't you supposed to represent Alabama Power customers? Whoops!

It's so hard to choose. Thankfully, Daily Dixie was kind enough to post a list of his greatest hits earlier this year. In addition, the Wayback Machine has the editorials he wrote for the Crimson White when he was a law student. They are hilarious now. "If homosexuals on this campus are not ashamed of their lifestyle, then I challenge any of you to step out from behind the cowardice of the written word." You first!