The Boys Play "Townball" / Hipster Video of the Week From Motorboater

Existing quietly in the shadow of Larryville's hipster-kickball culture, with its PBR-fueled antics and occasional streakers, is a polite group of dorks who meet each Tuesday at Water Tower Park to play "townball," the 19th-century precursor of baseball. We didn't know of the local townball players until last week, when @townball began following us on Twitter, but the group receives an excellent profile piece in today's KC-Star (yet still no local press? come on Lawrence.com! we'd rather read about this than more recipes).

Here's an excerpt from the article:

"Two at-bats later, a ball skims the infield near another “stake-runner” who can’t avoid a flying “plug” from a nearby fielder, even with a “wild weasel” way off the stake-path."

And this:

"In Lawrence, regulars vary from ages 2 to 50 and every level of athletic ability. But while the players don’t take athleticism, or winning, seriously, they do sportsmanship. They emphasize “gentlemen” and “gentlewomen” conduct, which means they prohibit profanity and even face a fine of 25 cents — fitting for the town ball era — for slipping."

We don't know about you, readers, but this seems like a delightful antidote to the crudeness and competitiveness of the kickballers, who somehow believe themselves to be real athletes. See you at Water Tower Park.

Check out the full article here:

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/08/16/2153963/history-buffs-bring-back-town.html

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We like to think of ourselves as tastemakers here at the LC, but why are we just now discovering Motorboater, which won raves for a mix-up of rap artist Uffie and country superstar Taylor Swift that's been described as a "hybrid of slow-oozing pop mastery" and "something of a prototype of what's certainly going to come in the next eon, as styles and language and culture smash and clash and marry together into a sludge that's either tremendously engrossing or just plain gross." (interweb).

You can check it out here:

http://www.myspace.com/drmotorboater

But what we're currently digging is their video for "Je Mange Titties," which (sadly) contains no titties (we assumed that it would feature someone "motorboating" some titties, a term most of us learned from The Wedding Crashers). What it does contain, however, is two minutes of a dude drinking a gallon of chocolate milk in a field. We love it. See it here:

http://thecultureofme.com/2010/08/video-motorboater-je-mange-titties.html