Karen And The Baseball Of Doom

Hunt Continues For Elusive Phillies Karen; Movie Already In The Making

Philadelphia (AP) The better part of a month has now passed, and the mysterious Phillie Karen has yet to be identified. In an incident that went viral during a Phillies-Marlins game in Florida on the 5th of September, a father recovered a foul ball hit by Harrison Bader, and was about to give it to his son when a woman rushed in and demanded it as hers. Instead of making an argument about it, he handed it over to her, de-escalating the situation. The woman looked like a stereotypical Karen, ready to demand to speak to your manager, and proceeded to gloat and give the finger to others in the stands around her.

To their credit, both teams did some fast public relations. The Marlins gave the boy a goodie bag of team merchandise, and Bader himself met with the boy, giving him a signed baseball bat. Phillie Karen, as she has come to be known, left the stadium, became a meme, and the hunt for her true identity has been on ever since.

It's been a summer of poor behaviour by some adults in public settings. From the Coldplay concert that exposed an affair, largely thanks to the overreaction of the couple in question on a kiss cam, to a Polish executive stealing a hat from a child at a tennis game, a hat that a player had given to the boy. This incident has added to the record of adults behaving badly.

In the weeks since, while internet sleuths continue to try to figure out who she is, multiple memes have gone up with Phillie Karen, who even has the stereotypical Karen haircut, trying to grab things that don't belong to her from across pop culture and everyday life. There have been instances where women have been identified as the Karen in question, only to insist that they were nowhere near Florida, or have a rock solid alibi.

"It's exasperating sometimes," Karen Weston, a clinical psychologist in Philadelphia admitted this week. "I don't know where the Karen stereotype originated, and while I can admittedly laugh about the bad behaviour of certain women with that haircut, it's kind of bothersome to have my name attached to the stereotype. Please don't paint all Karens with the same brush."

For the record, Doctor Weston does not have a Karen haircut, and is known to this writer to be a soft spoken and unusually kind person who would never demand to speak to your manager.

This week, the hunt ramped up when a woman called in to Howard Stern's radio show, claiming to be Phillie Karen, while refusing to identify herself.  She rambled on and on in the shrill kind of tone that one would associate with a Karen. "It's a dog eat dog world out there, and this kid needs to grow up knowing you've gotta take what's yours, even if it means taking it from another kid. No regrets, believe me. I did the right thing."

Stern challenged her on that. "You know, that kid came out the winner in this whole thing, going home with a lot of swag and good memories because of both teams. You, on the other hand, if you are who you say you are, came across looking like a selfish ****ing idiot."

Karen sounded aggrieved. "I take what I want! Nobody tells me what to do! I want to speak to your manager!"

At this point, Stern cut her off.

Even though no positive identification has been made, Hollywood has already been ramping up pre-production on a film about the debacle. A Karen In The Outfield is the working title of a film to star Meg Ryan as Phillie Karen. Paramount has greenlit the film, to be directed by Rob Reiner, as a caper comedy. "Oh, it'll be fun," Reiner said. "I can't pass on a comedy, and really, with a story like this, the jokes really do write themselves."

Ryan has already started preparing for the role, meeting a group of Karens Anonymous, women who have had public meltdowns and are trying to better themselves and not be such a Karen ever again. She's asked them questions, heard their experiences, and their dismay at being filmed during their worst moments. "Everyone has regrets," Ryan told reporters. "Especially when your mistakes get played up for laughs. Which we'll be doing with this film. But that's beside the point."

Whoever Phillie Karen really is, she's been successful in evading being positively identified. But time will tell. A Karen of this magnitude in attitude will sooner or later blow her cover and have another Karen moment. Or someone she knows will just rat her out. Either way, it's just a matter of time. "Your average Karen either gets help or continues to be the way they are," psychologist Annabelle Cahill remarked. "But this one, she's Level Ten Karen. We're talking nuclear bomb level."

The last word comes from a statement made online from someone calling themselves Karenapocalypse3000. Writing in a Reddit forum, she said, "she is one of us. And we are her. And our time is near. The Karens will soon rise up and achieve our goal of universal domination."

In this reporter's view, that can't be good.

Take Me Out To A Bad Ballgame

Baseball looks forward to World Series; one team's fans lament a horrid season

Chicago (AP) This week sees the beginning of professional baseball's fall classic, the World Series. The New York Yankees face off with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Yankees fans are ecstatic about seeing their team in the final round. Fans of most other teams just want to see the Yankees lose. But in the mid-west, fans of one team are still trying to come to grips with what went so horribly wrong for their team over the last season, and what to do next.

That team, of course, is the Chicago White Sox.

In what is now regarded as the worst season in modern day Major League baseball history, they had a 41 wins, 121 losses season of losing streaks, disasters, blunders, and excuses. They were the first team eliminated from playoff contention on August 17th, deep into a season full of heartbreak. The fans started leaving in droves, making White Sox home games a fairly empty affair. The team was so bad that they elevated the rest of their division by the sheer amount of beat-downs the Sox had coming- perhaps all of Major League baseball as a whole.

At this point, with the season dead and finished in Chicago, it's time for soul searching and rebuilding. Local pundits note that it could take years or decades for the White Sox to become a contender. Others note that at least in September, when they had little to play for, they ended the season going five wins to one loss in their last six games.

"This year just hurt," longtime fan Stu McNeil told this reporter. "I mean, what did we do to deserve this? Does God hate us? Is he a Cubs fan? Don't know. All I know, it's painful. It's like my cousin up in Toronto feels like with the Leafs every April. If Jerry ever reads this, sorry about makin' fun of your boys so much."

A reckoning is at hand. Some heads with the team have already rolled. Many of the players are doubtful that any other team will want them in a trade. "Don't use my name, okay?" one of the team players told this reporter. "We had a cruddy season. It happens. It hurts. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. Some of the guys, well... we've been careful with our money. If this is the end of the line and we have to retire, well... okay, we'll be fine. Some of the boys aren't good with their money, and between you and me.... some of them are screwed big time if they don't get picked up for next season."

Fans are calling for change across the board. The manager was already replaced during the season from hell. Some are demanding the coaching staff all be fired. Others are saying the owner should sell, or be sent adrift in a leaking boat. Some have asked if a season this catastrophic might be enough reason for documentary filmmaker Ken Burns to add another chapter to his Baseball saga. 

This reporter spoke with Burns. The director is no stranger to catastrophes, having had directed films on diverse calamities like the Civil War, World War Two, the Vietnam War, the Dust Bowl, and country music. "Yes, I did do a follow up several years ago on the game, as the main series had been done in the 90s. But I don't think enough time has passed for an additional follow up. Who knows? A few years down the line, and I might be inclined to. Even including such a record breaking- in a bad way- season for the fans of the White Sox. I'm a Red Sox fan, after all, and we're used to heartaches."

There's always next year, they say. But prospects are bleak. Rebuilding will take a long time, and it will have to be across the organization as a whole. How long will fans wait? Time can only tell. But this has clearly been the lowest of seasons. Or has it? Could the 2025 season be even worse? 

"I hope not," longtime fan Joe Carruthers admitted. "I've been a season ticket holder since 1974. Seen a lot of bad years, but this was the worst. I don't know if we can sustain ourselves like this. There were times it got like.... well, I could personally recognize everyone sitting in the stands while our boys were losin'. How do we come back from that?"

"We're going to get everyone good and drunk," White Sox spokesperson Allie MacPherson admitted. "November 5th, the booze is on us. A good boozefest will make the pain go away. We've already set it up with the bars all across town."

This reporter reminded MacPherson that was the same date as the elections. MacPherson was silent for a moment, and then said, "it is?" And then she ran off in a panic.

To borrow a sentimental line from a poem about baseball, there is no joy in Chicago- the mighty White Sox have struck out.

Kansas Will Want To Murder Me For This

I have an image blog for you today. Enjoy!

From Billy Goats To Dread Dark Monsters

Breaking Of Decades Old Curse Inadvertently Unleashes Elder Being Monster Upon World

Chicago (Reuters) The Chicago Cubs won the World Series this year, successfully breaking a streak of no wins in Major League Baseball’s championship that dated back over a century. They also broke the traditional curse dating back to the end of the Second World War, in which a fan and his billy goat apparently hexed the team to never again win a World Series after being ejected out of a game at Wrigley Field. And they broke a more recent bad streak that dated back to 2003, and the infamous Steve Bartman incident that had fans for years toting voodoo dolls of the unlucky fan who inadvertently screwed up their chances in the National League Championship Series. Following the win, many of those same fans finally gave up those Bartman voodoo dolls and forgave him.

The fans were ecstatic by the victory, in a dramatic Game Seven against Cleveland that’s been touted by some as one of the best World Series games ever played. Chicago has been overjoyed ever since, with celebrations of their team, signs everywhere toasting the success of the Cubs. It’s even given hope to other fans of hard luck teams under proverbial curses. Fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs are gleefully expecting that after fifty years of failure in hockey playoffs, this might well be their year as well.

And yet breaking the curse might have had a horrible consequence.

No, not the election- though that’s bad enough.

It was first reported emerging off the South American coast on Wednesday, a monstrous presence rising up out of the Atlantic Ocean and laying waste to the Argentine coast, working its way north. Witnesses described the monster as a bizarre combination of dragon, octopus, and humanoid, with two legs, two arms, massive wings, and tentacles around its mouth. Its body was dark and scaly, and massive- hundreds of meters tall, seemingly beyond the capability of a body to sustain life, and yet it was alive, gigantic, and incredibly dangerous. The clawed creature continued to carve a path of destruction as it moved north, horrifying onlookers, shrugging off missile attacks by national military air forces.

“It’s called Cthulhu,” Professor Frederick Van Helsing told reporters at an emergency services dispatch center in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The professor, who describes himself as an expert in occult studies and metaphysical philosophy, lectures at Oxford, has a reputation for being eccentric but brilliant, and comes from a long line of academics with a particular interest in the supernatural. Curious, since he shares a surname with a character from Bram Stoker’s novel about that blood sucking vampire terrorizing London. “Yes, well, it turns out Stoker knew my great-great-great grandfather Abraham and decided to weave a vampire story around him as a vampire hunter. What Stoker didn’t know was that the whole family has a centuries long tradition of vampire hunting and putting down monsters. We still do it today, though these days we seem to be encountering way too many sparkly vampires. Lot less dangerous than the classic version, let me assure you.”

Cthulhu, as it turns out, is far more than the soul consuming beast in fictional H.P. Lovecraft stories. The creature, Van Helsing explained, has been imprisoned deep beneath the ocean for millennia, and is one of the Great Old Ones of ancient pantheons. He’s the subject of worship by cultists, and is said to drive onlookers insane. “The last time he came close to escaping was 1909,” Van Helsing added. “My great grandfather Curtis Van Helsing arranged with a coven of witches to reinforce the magical bindings with a hex. As it turns out Curtis was a baseball fan, and hated the Cubs, so he figured putting a curse on the Cubs that would simultaneously keep Cthulhu imprisoned was a win-win both ways. Except of course for Cubs fans, who had to put up with more than a century of failure, but you know, sometimes those are the breaks.”

At least until the Cubs broke the curse by actually defying the odds and winning the World Series. Doing that also shattered the bindings of Cthulhu. The creature stirred from its imprisonment, breaking free of the mystic spells binding it in the deep, and returned to the surface. Multiple reports of missing ships in the South Atlantic seem to have been the first indication that something was wrong. The beast worked his- or its- way up the coast, wrecking havoc across South American seaboards, seemingly unstoppable.

Millions fled from the coastlines as the creature passed through, all the while heading in a general northerly direction across the Caribbean. He reached shore in Florida, crossing the state from west to east and making a particular point of destroying the Disney World Resort. “We can confirm that the park is shut down due to an unforeseen difficulty,” Disney World spokesperson Chelsea Rae Stephens told reporters while the ruins of the theme park smouldered behind her. “But we’ll be right back up and running as soon as possible, just as fast as we can get Tinkerbell to rebuild the place. And by Tinkerbell, I mean the Tinkerbell Construction Company who do all our infrastructure repairs. The guys in the team hate the name, but hey, that’s what you get living in Orlando.”

Cthulhu continued up the coast, coming ashore periodically to devour souls and kick sand in the faces of onlookers. He paused near New York as if wondering if he should come on in and obliterate it- it’s practically expected in disaster films, after all- but for reasons of his own kept moving forward up the seaboard, unstoppable despite everything the Navy and Air Force threw at him.

Unstoppable, that is, until he met his match.

The creature crossed into Canadian waters off the southwest Nova Scotia coast, and headed straight for shore. The Canadian government, having had seen the futility of previous military attacks by other national forces on the creature, instead were able to bring a single man into the area in advance. As it turns out, the only person on earth capable of teaching Cthulhu some manners.

It was the legendary Mountie, Inspector Lars Ulrich.

Ulrich was dropped on a beach near Yarmouth when it became apparent the monster was headed in that direction. Witnesses saw him staring resolutely out over the waters. This was, after all, the same man who’d saved the world on multiple occasions from dark cabals, mad scientists, and megalomaniacs. This was the gruff Mountie who had made Godzilla cry and run away. This was the fierce bane of existence for many an entertainment reporter.

Cthulhu emerged from the sea to the sight of the lone Mountie on the beach. The Mountie stared back. There was a long moment of silence as the two simply stared each other down. And then Cthulhu broke the silence by speaking, in a loud, booming voice, in a garbled language native to the Great Old Ones. Linguists were later able to translate the creature’s words into a sentence, though one word stood out as, well, relative English. The translation came out to “hey, aren’t you the guy who plays the drums for Metallica?”

The last word of the sentence seemed to irritate the Inspector, who called out, “I am not that Lars Ulrich.”

Cthulhu appeared to be puzzled, and linguists later translated his reply from video feeds from the area as he asked, “Are you sure?”

Ulrich charged in and struck the beast, launching a vicious attack that went on and on and on. Cthulhu, despite being hundreds of times bigger, couldn’t even get in one blow as the Mountie unleashed a storm of punches and kicks, bringing the Dread Cthulhu crashing down into the sea. The creature lost consciousness promptly thereafter, bloodied, battered, and broken by a seriously annoyed Mountie.

In the aftermath, Van Helsing and his associates were brought in. A coven of witches first cast a teleportation spell sending Cthulhu back to his prison quarters deep beneath the sea, and the mystic spells were reinforced to keep him locked away. For good measure, a curse was placed on another sports team to ensure that the creature would not be able to escape. “We put a hex on the Maple Leafs,” Van Helsing admitted. “It’s not as if they’ll ever be able to win a Stanley Cup again, right?”

The last word belongs to Roy Stieb, the self described “Greatest Leafs Fan Ever”, a Toronto resident who’s been waiting all his forty eight years for a Leafs Cup win. “I was born too late for the last one, but that doesn’t matter,” Stieb said. “Cubs win the World Series, that’s a great sign for us. We’re gonna win the Stanley Cup this year, no doubt at all. And the year after that, and the year after that, and the year after that. Who cares about some curse? Who cares if that big nasty guy breaks out when our boys win the Cup? I don’t care. My buddy Joe doesn’t care. Do you care? Come on, we’ll invite Cthulhu to come up and join the big Stanley Cup victory parade when our boys win big time. Leafs forever, baby! Wooooooo!!!!!!!!!”

In the professional opinion of this reporter... Leafs fans are nuts.