Ken Goldstein of the Week – Page 6

Posted on July 23, 2002 by mwhybark

your KEN GOLDSTEIN of the week

Ken, in his really outstanding, can’t-emphasize-the-excellence-of-it-enough blog, The Illuminated Donkey, today covers skee-ball, in general, as a topic. He opens with an idle boast concerning his skee-ball prowess, which, via the comments section, quickly escalates to shut-em-down style knowledgeable commentary in which he offhandedy notes both a recent high-score (a shut yer trap 540) and the fack that he’s been kicked out of skee-ball tourneys as a ringer.

Inspired, even rejuvenated by this manly braggadoccio, he waxes grizzled for the benefit of the peanut gallery, with helpful skee-balling tips for the skeeballerati, takes a pit stop by the bingo hall, and then commences to keyboard episode 11 from the well-beloved (but well-nigh-forgot) boy’s juvelilia Guy Sterling, Skee-Ball Champion, originally serialized in Happy Boy magazine in the late 1940s.

Astonishingly, I was able to locate, via a subscription-only sports memorabilia auction site (to which I was able to trade dot-com stock-options for membership a couple years ago), an image of “Guy Sterling” supporting character (and actual professional skee-baller) “Spats” Murphy’s rookie card!

Sadly, no detail was provided on this licensing and crossover pioneer – I trust that New Jersey’s finest will dig up the requisite detail. Inquiring minds want to know!

UPDATE: Since we went to press, Mr. Goldstein has declared it to be Skee Ball Week chez The Illuminated Donkey, and added Episode 12 of the Guy Sterling saga. No word yet on the Skee Ball Week Theme Song.

Episode 12 sheds light on the troubled character of “Spats” Murphy, seen here in a rare rookie tobacco card. History records his astounding reign over the early league days of pro Skee-Ball, and officially, when he retired in 1921 it was due to health concerns. However, in an astounding act of courage, the author of the Happy Boy Guy Sterling serial took on the dirty secret of pro skee ball: gambling. In point of fact, they claim directly that Murphy threw the championship that fateful year.

Finally, I was mistaken above when I referred to the serial as having been originally serialzed in the late 1940’s. Of course (silly me), it was originally serialized in the late 1930’s.

Posted on July 22, 2002 by mwhybark

.. and a bonus KG

The Ken Goldstein

I’d been meaning to post this for AEONS. But alas, I kep’ fergttin’.

Courtesy this place, well known earlier this year in the blogocracy.

Posted on July 16, 2002 by mwhybark

KG, at sea

Well, this week I’d intended to introduce a new, exciting concept to the blogosphere, which would take the world by storm and yield articles in the Economist (I said I’m SORRY! Geez!) and the NYT, but instead, since I’m too busy (writing assignments, a trip next week) I’ll share with you the very first fan-submitted Ken Goldstein of the Week!

Mr. Goldstein is seen here appropriately modeling what I (a baseball ignoramus) believe to be a Seattle Pilots cap, as he demonstrates mastery of the tiller upon the bounding main. Accompanying him is the source of the charming photo, the lovely and talented Jahna D’Lish, a long-time friend of Mr. Goldstein.

Friends, acquaintances, and relatives of Mr. Goldstein are very strongly encouraged to send your KG-related imagery and memorabilia to me at my email address, mike@whybark.com; if I can sort it out from the spam, I’ll get back to you, promptly!

Thank you all for your support. Together, we can bemuse Ken into a sort of tizzy.

Posted on July 13, 2002 by mwhybark

A mailbox in my neighborhood.

Click to enlarge.

um, I suppose I should crosslink to here.

Posted on July 10, 2002 by mwhybark

Ihr Ken Goldstein der Woche

All I can say is, I’m sorry it took so long. I don’t know what I was thinking. Click the pic and a larger image which will be perfect for printing as a sticker will appear.

Let’s all do our part!

UPDATE: Just to make things easy for you, here’s a 337k .gif which you can simply print off and run down to Kinko’s with.

And a nod to the originator of the “giant” stickers seems in order.

Posted on July 8, 2002 by mwhybark

Ken et some croc

Good pal and inexplicable focus of my weekly “Ken Goldstein of the Week” feature Ken Goldstein did the only sensible thing a single man of 30 summers can do when presented with a four day weekend in the United States: he took a road trip.

He drove east to near Nashville, and then southwest into Georgia and South Carolina. Why, if I’d known, I could have had my parents feed him when he drove north through North Carolina!

Day One: Gatlinburg, Tennessee concludes a long, hard day of minor league baseball and Pigeon Forge, TN.

Day Two: The wonders of Pigeon Forge roll on and on, and so does Ken, down to Georgia, in search of a hotel room.

Day Three: What better way to spend the fourth in Appalachia than at the 7th Annual Redneck Games! This is one hilarious anecdote, yessuh.

Day Four: Mecca: Ken arrives at world-famous South of the Border, where instead of actual Mexican culture and Mexicans, you can see a peculiar, mid-century American imitation! Trivia question: which came first, Seattle’s Space Needle, or S.O.B’s Space Sombrero?

Why, I feel as though I’ve just spent four days peeling my skin off the broiling vinyl of my family’s 1973 Dodge Dart, reading, sweating, and bickering with my sister.

Posted on July 4, 2002 by mwhybark

Li'l Kay-Gee

Click will open a 1200 pixel-wide version.

Here are sketches.

It seems that Mr. Goldstein was once featured in a series of long-forgotten Gold Key comics.

Happy Fourth!

Posted on June 19, 2002 by mwhybark

Sources reveal KG-DT defense in the works

NEWS FLASH!!!

An anonymous source high within the executive hierarchy of the “least grating” of the NYC/NJ blogs, Ken Goldstein’s Illuminated Donkey, has revealed to mike.whybark.com that Mr. Goldstein (or “Kenny-Boy” as he would be known to President Bush if they ever meet) is hard at work defending his claim to be Deep Throat as covered here yesterday.

Our source, while requesting anonymity, is of the highest caliber, and, indeed, one might even say that the source is unimpeachable.

When pressed to explain the shocking role that fellatio appears to have played in both the serious and troubling events of Watergate and the frenzy of sexual condemnation that nearly wrecked the Republican party before it was saved by a judical coup, our source looked up at the concrete beams of the parking garage and ignored the question.

Former President Clinton, probably somewhere in New York State, did not answer questions asked concerning this matter by your faithful correspondent at mike.whybark.com.

Former Nixonian Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, wanted for questioning by human rights tribunals for his role in the murderous 1973 Chilean coup led by General Augusto Pinochet, also did not respond, no matter how loudly we repeated our queries.

Also emerging at press time were ties between Robert Redford, featured as a news reporter in the events that brought down President Nixon, and fictional bandits Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Further developments in this line of investigation include the heretofore unexplained role of Mark Twain in the publication and promulgation of the original Watergate investigations.

Worthy of note in this line of thought is Twain’s “Mysterious Stranger”, in which a Deep-Throat-like figure provides Twain with information concerning the world’s ills, and in the end is strongly implied to be the Prince of Darkness.

Mr. Goldstein’s curious agelessness remains unexplained.

UPDATE: the briefly-rumored public statement has been released, including Mr Goldstein’s revelation that he may also be Joe Friday and that he has an “upcoming e-book, available exclusively through Salon’s Deep Throat imprint” – which validates rumors we’ve been hearing at mike.whybark.com for months concerning Salon.com’s imminent move into web porn.

Mr. Goldstein, in a private email again, also pointed out that if we’re looking into the Robert Redford-Mark Twain connection to Watergate, we’d be remiss in not noting the admitted involvement of WNYX lovable bigshot Jimmy James, who has repeatedly admitted to being Deep Throat, as well as having been D. B. Cooper.

Does this then indicate that Mr Goldstein may also come under suspicion of in fact being Stephen Root or perhaps Milton from Office Space?

Only time will tell. Guzzizah, my brothers.

P.S. the site “NewsRadio and the Comedic Art” is, well, pretty dense.

Posted on June 18, 2002 by mwhybark

DT: KG – NJ blogger comes clean, admits all

In a startling development to the evergreen “Who was Deep Throat” mystery, veteran blogger and beloved trencherman Ken Goldstein, of Jersey City, New Jersey, admitted to this writer in a personal email that he was in fact Deep Throat, the secret inside source that catapulted cub reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Redford to national prominence in the mid-seventies Hal Holbrook vehicle, “All the President’s Men”.

“Okay! Enough already! It was me, I admit it, ME! GOD, it feels good to get that off my chest!” typed the possibly intoxicated 30-year-old copywriter and technical writer in an email exchange concerning the various candidates-du-saison that are currently being flacked in such moneygrubbing endeavors as the University of Illinois three-year journalism class project which fingered Pat Buchanan, or John Dean’s latest impeccably objective investigation in to the who, what, where, when, and why of Watergate.

The perpetually 30-year-old blogger, seen here in an undated file photo on Nixon’s epochal China visit, refused to comment upon speculations that his agelessness is the result of either bathing in the blood of virgins or his preference for Air Jordans on the court.

A random youth, accosted in the street near my apartment, characterized “All the President’s Men” as “boring” and wanted to know why the character of the President had not at least pursued personal sexual gratification instead of shredding the constitution in the name of national security. He then speculated on what sort of “action” President Bush might be “getting”, assuring me that he had great faith in the current President’s ability to learn from his predecessors.

It is of interest to note that fellatio, in name or in deed, appears to have had a profound effect on the course of late 20th-century United States Presidental politics.

Mr. Throat could not be reached for comment.

Posted on June 13, 2002 by mwhybark

Bobblehead 2

Uh, I really didn’t mean to spend more time on this.

But I did. Nets fans, think of this as a consolation prize.

Here’s a way, way too-dark quicktime movie of the object in action. I don’t know why it’s so dark. Maybe the horse I brought in to work on the soundtrack was blocking the light or something.

Update: I figured out how to lighten the movie and adjusted the soundtrack.