Rusc.n Returns (With Kickball Photos) / The LC's Guide to Summer Reading

The LC has recently been criticized by various readers as "boring" (Keith) and "severely lacking in titty" (Dr. X), but nonetheless we proceed onward, pursuing local news and hipsterism and other such items as tickle our fancy. To our critics, we say: Go write your own blogs which are perpetually interesting and full of titty, and we will gladly enjoy them.

Kickball season in Larryville kicked off on May 23, at least for most teams. Free State and AstroKitty Comics opted to shift their game to the next Thursday so they could stay home and watch the Lost series finale, which created a bit of havoc in the rankings, as we see here from the official Kaw Valley Kickball blog: "Alright, our first week of kickball is in the books…almost. I would have picked at least one, and maybe both of the teams playing Thursday night for the Top 15, but they will not be considered for Week 1. Only teams that choose kickball over television are eligible for the rankings!"

A. Rusc.n was on hand to cover opening night of the season, and she has just now posted her photos to Lawrence.com (why does it take so fucking long?). We'll consider two representative photos.

In the first, a lady player showcases her beer belly, which is a badge of honor in the kickball world and is thought to contribute greatly to kicking prowess:















The next is merely a player enjoying an ice-cold Hamm's and looking like a candidate for the popular site "Hipsters Have to Pee." We believe that the hippest of kickball hipsters prefer Hamm's to PBR. And the hippest of all kickball hipsters prefer cans of Modelo. (Chip: "I wonder if her nose ring ever gets caught on the pulltab of her beer can?").




















A free PBR or Hamm's or Modelo can goes to the first reader who names any of today's featured hipsters and the teams they play on.


---

Throughout most of the year the boys are immersed in profound and heavyweight reading material (Richard: "One of these days I'll finish Bolano's 2066!"), but in the summer they enjoy taking a break and reading books that are full of vampires, zombies, and girls with dragon tattoos.

Our current preferred poolside reading is Christopher Farnsworth's Blood Oath, the tale of "Nathaniel Cade, the president's vampire, [who] swore to fight on the side of President Andrew Jackson and all his successors. In the present day, Zach Barrows, a rising political star caught canoodling with the president's daughter, suddenly finds himself training to be Cade's handler after tough, wise special agent William Griffin retires. As they try to stop Cade's old nemesis, Dr. Johann Konrad, from creating an army of Frankensteinian monster soldiers, they uncover a deeper government conspiracy."

Chip: "The canoodling parts give me a boner."

Here's one of our favorite lines of dialogue:

"Forget the War on Terror, Zach. This is the War on Horror. And you’ve just been drafted.”

Richard: "There's coming a day, and it may be soon, when I abandon this blog entirely and begin work in earnest on one of these kinds of preposterous novels, simply in order to make a shocking amount of money. I'm thinking of a contemporary piece in which the president joins forces with Godzilla and perhaps a horde of benevolent zombies to combat an environmental catastrophe modeled on the Gulf oil spill."

Pick up Blood Oath at a bookstore near you (it's soon to be rocketing up the bestseller lists).