Tainted Love!

Here's a little history lesson on one of my favorite songs, "Tainted Love."

There's the smash version made famous by Soft Cell in 1981. Here's a link to a weird music video, but embedded below is the amazing nine-minute extended version that segues into their cover of the Supremes' "Where Did Our Love Go":




But did you know that "Tainted Love" itself was also a remake? Here's the fabylla original by Gloria Jones from 1965:



Among other covers are those by Marilyn Manson and...if you must...the Pussycat Dolls.

The Hot Word And The Cold Phils

Thanks to the "word verification" procedure to cut down on spam on blog comments, I now have an entry in the Urban Dictionary. When I was replying to a blog post by my friend Walt the generated word I had to enter in order to reply was "fabylla." So I claimed it as my own and gave it a definition...

fabylla (adj.) Fabulous to the extreme; more wonderful than even chocolate chip cookies: "That party was so off the hook, it was fabylla!"

It's the hot new word, darlings! I don't care if two miscreants on UrbanDictionary.com gave it "thumbs down." They are clearly not fabylla like the rest of us.

Also not fabylla, not remotely fabylla: the Phillies. They've been swept by the Atlanta Braves, they finished the road trip 2-7, they've lost seven of their last 9 and 11 of their last 15. With today's 2-1 loss they've scored a grand total of 14 runs in the last 11 games...although they finally got a home run last night, from Ryan Howard, for the first time in a week. The Braves now lead the Phils by 2 1/2 games in the NL East. It's early June, it's hardly an insurmountable gap, they haven't had Placido Polanco the last few games, they're still missing Jimmy Rollins, there's clearly no reason to panic just yet, but it's still incredibly annoying. The Phillies are unwatchable right now, unless Roy Halladay is pitching, and for a team with this much talent that is unfathomable.