At a certain age, that rage seeps from your system and you’re mostly left with a vague Ghost O’Marley sense of indigestion and a minor ocular muscle sprain from the eyerolling at the dumbass drama queen of a boy carrying on about the woman who found her good taste in men a bit late but not too much so.

At that point (or right around the time you see Elvis Costello whip through a 90-minute set with no encores to hurry to the next gig), you have a bit more trouble tapping into whatever drew you into a teenage riot lo those many years ago.

Fiona Apple helped revive the song awhile back when VH1 (remember when they appealed to old people?) hooked Fiona up with Elvis (much to Diana Krall’s consternation; she’s seen this film from the other side of the camera) to recall Sinead O’Connor’s service to Prince on “Nothing Compares 2 U”.

She finds a second reading of the song that, frankly, the song doesn’t deserve and chills you to those now-numb toes.  You’re pretty sure that you should, you know, call into VH1 and get someone to take that nice Apple girl home to make sure nothing felonious happens and everyone’s rabbits stay unboiled.

But we’re not here to laud the song or the singer.  We’re here to talk about the little boy who’s fucked.

‘Round halfway through, the director finds a raven-haired beauty entranced by the scene, leaning into her burly boyfriend and set them in the camera frame all artsy’n’shi’.  However, stage right, there’s a few young girls and the 21st century version of “Brady Bunch”’s Oliver obviously foisted on the girls to take with to the concert so Mommy and Daddy could spring clean the liquor cabinet.

Take one look at that kid.  He’s so fucked.  Fuckity fuck fuck fucked.  He now holds a passport from the great nation of Fuckedtonia.  He hails from Fuckedtonia.  Uses the Fuckedtonia stamps to mail his gas bill.  Bemoans the taxes in Fuckedtonia but always pays them on time.  Sings the last two lines of the Fuckedtonia National Anthem just before a sporting event and glares at the asshole that shouts, “WOO!” just before the end of the song.

The substantial and potent powers of Fiona Apple set before a moody stage racked with one of your better sets of musicians are telling Oliver, the boy dragged around by the older kids begrudgingly to keep ratings up, that he is wanted in all dimensions posited through string theory if he would only somehow crawl into the flowing robes of the haunting woman that brings all light through her eyes and all night through her lips.

SO fucked.

That kid is doomed to date a succession of domineering goth girls and stabby Kathys (because no self-respecting goth will touch Baby William Katt now) and agree to sell his car at a discount to an ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend and never get the full payment and listen to 3 am crying jags from jangled girls who treat him like their gay friend before making out with him and then weeping again until the tab wears off.

Why?  Because Mommy and Daddy sent him to play in Viacom’s den of polished iniquity so they could blow enough coke up their noseholes that Mommy sneezed and Juan Valdez’s burro flew out.

And that’s why we need a national health plan: afforable drug treatment centers.

I did it again.

Highlights include a 33-year-old high school cheerleader, a philandering minor-leaguer, and a cheating primer.  We also completed our own little bit of journalism wherein we listen to Jessica Simpson sing.

As always, our SPORTSbyBROOKS content appears on the right.  Look for a very special podcast next weekend and perhaps a bit of blogfoolery.

UPDATE: Hells yeah.

We were busy last weekend.

We really enjoyed talking to Lindsey Dolich, even though we had to speak ill of her employer in the same breath.  We marked the scourge of Barry Bonds, enjoyed a basketball game greatly, and wondered aloud about Jessica Simpson.  We also indulged ourselves more than a bit.  

In the interest of full disclosure, we also were kind of an idiot.

Then we closed out with Allan Sherman, which all good weekends should.

Thanks to all of you that checked in with tips, comments, and encouraging words.  We’ll take that every weekend and twice on Sundays.  We’ll check in later this week with news about our next liveblog.  Excelsior!

We just dropped a four-spot on SPORTSbyBROOKS and will return tomorrow for more tasty tidbits about Beijing bound to give you the revenge of Confucius.  Also, we did a drop (radio term!) for the Treehouse Fort last week and snuggled a piece or two into the Big Tilde family of posts during our absence. All of this can be spotted on the right, as per the norm.

We may try to post a few items during the next week, but that’s to be determined.  We’re a fair blogger, but this fucking heat is making us absolutely crazy.

Finally, we don’t think we’re giving too much away at this point to note that next weekend will involve posting for our new gig.  You may have heard something about it.

Thanks to all for your patience; we’ll get this fridge chilled to the appropriate extremity-threatening temperature shortly.

Sorry about the Ice Machine’s disappearance; we had to take it back to the store.  Apparently, you have to feed it water to make the ice.  That seems an awful lot like work to us.

Also, we’re undergoing a few changes around these parts.  For example, these aren’t going to be our parts for long.  We’re taking a new job and moving across the country in the next few days.  Therefore, we’ve taken a bit of a hiatus from blogging.  However, we’ll be back soon enough.  (After all, we’ve got Deadspin duty in August.)  

What will this mean for your friendly neighborhood blog-slinger?  More weekends, probably, and fewer weekday gigs.  It also probably means a different focus for this here blog.  The Ice Machine came about from leftover links from daily SPORTSbyBROOKS searches.  We won’t have as many of those anymore, so no more Ice Machine.  (Told you it sounded like work.)

That’s all TBD, though.  We’re still sorting all of this out (not to mention the cross-country caravan et al).  Until then, you can still find us in a few watering holes.  We’ll be posting to The Big Tilde soon enough.  We’ve been doing podcasts; there’s one more tonight before we take a couple weeks off from that as well.  We also did another Voodoo Sabermetrics for Babes Love Baseball today.  (Please check this out; this feature is one of our favorite writing tasks.)  Our Twitter gets the occasional quick hit as well.

Thank you for your patience; we’ll be back up and snarking soon enough.  Stay tuned, true believers!

P.S. We love videos.

Ice Machine’s busted.  (Not the site, just the feature.)  Moose out front should’ve told ya.

No word on when it will return.  Until then, we posted a lot on SPORTSbyBROOKS over the weekend (and did two very silly pieces today) and will have a very special treat or two tomorrow, including actually showing up for a podcast.

Here’s a clear shot from the daily Ice Machine, with crystal blue linkage of stories that will refresh you during your lunch break (where the heat lamp is on):

• We can’t wait to see what The Blowtorch does with this.
• Hanley Ramirez probably doesn’t need to work on a second career, but there he is.
• SHHHHHHHHHHHH.
• Oh, THOSE steroids!
• Sad panda.
• We won’t miss the parkland soon; we’ll play all our sports indoors.
• And we used this video elsewhere today, but we couldn’t resist playing it again:

Here’s a clear shot from the daily Ice Machine, with crystal blue linkage of stories that will refresh you during your lunch break (wherein you share a corned beef sammich with the dog):

• We hate when Greg Wyshynski makes sense.  We’re coming ’round on this Sean Avery thing, slowly but slowly.
• We’re not here to mock Vin Baker for his latest foreclosure.  Instead, we’re just glad to hear there is still a Vin Baker.
• Nerd salute.
• We believe this article about the Pixar spin machine is entirely accurate and yet don’t hold it against them.  That’s how good the Pixar spin machine is.  (We’re off to write this down in our new Wall-E journal.)
• And here we have a point/counterpoint.  First, the original: