Pic(s) of the Day 06.05.09

Some weeks you come across so many great photos it’s hard to decide which one is most worthy of ‘Pic of the Day.’ Do you go with a pair of exquisite breasts -- always a good look? Or maybe the one with the deranged former crackhead -- there’s bound to be a good story there. Or better yet, how about a baby race? But the simplest answer is all three.


In a memorable scene from “Superbad,” Jonah Hill berates a well-endowed female classmate of his for deciding to have breast reduction surgery, saying, “It’s like slapping God in the face.” Maybe Romanian tennis phenom Simona Halep (above) should heed that call. The 17-year-old with DD’s told a Romanian website that she plans on having her biggest assets (aside from her tennis skills, of course) reduced because she feels they impede her performance on the court.

That makes sense, but let me use this opportunity to beg Halep not to. First, she’s ranked 317th in the world, how much of that could be her breasts fault? Second, and I say this apologetically because I realize how misogynist it is, she’s probably a huge draw on the tennis circuit if only because people (mostly men) want to see those beauties bounce up and down – I mean, look at the picture above, I could live in the crevice between her breasts and be the most content man in the world. Third, a professional volleyball player named Alena Schurkova recently came out against Halep’s proposed mammary mutiny, saying, "If she does this it sends out the message that girls with big boobs can't play sports and that is just wrong. I am 32E and I have never found them to be a problem." I couldn’t agree more. Please Simona, don’t this this, and if you do, at least do a Playboy shoot before hand – it’s not fair to keep all that beauty to yourself.

Meet Larry Hogue (above), better known by his tabloid name, “The Wild Man of West 96th St.” Last Thursday, Larry, a delusional (I hope) former crackhead who terrorized the Upper West Side in the 1990’s, strolled away from the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center.

Normally, I try to avoid words like “terrorize” (I’ll leave that to the NY Post), but the utterance seems a perfect fit for Hogue. With cocaine addiction fueling his untreated psychosis, and with $3,000 a month from his veteran's pension keeping him afloat, Larry routinely set fires under cars, heaved rocks through stained glass church windows, masturbated in front of kids, stalked seniors, and threatened children with nail-studded clubs. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the time he punched a 16-year-old schoolgirl and then pushed her into the path of a moving truck.

On most occasions, cops would arrest Hogue and take him to the psychiatric ward, where he’d be cut off from his crack supply. There, he’d get the proper treatment for his psychosis, but eventually he’d be freed and return to his old tricks.

Now 65, Hogue was arrested "without incident" in his old stomping grounds Saturday morning after being spotted on 96th St. between Broadway and Amsterdam. He was returned to Creedmoor Psychiatric Center.


So, what the fuck is a baby race? Until yesterday, I’d never heard of their existence, but YW affiliate Schwartz pointed me in the direction of a deadspin.com post about the fast-growing Lithuanian sport. The premise is pretty simple: Line up a bunch of babies on one end of a mat, then have their parents on the other end holding toys and stuffed animals to entice them to crawl over. The first baby to the other side wins. Do you notice how one of the parents is holding a laptop? What the fuck? Theses kids can’t even walk, but they know how use a laptop? I don’t know if that’s crazy Lithuanian breeding, or a sign of the technocratic times in which we live. Either way, who cares, because the kid going after the laptop won this particular race.

Interesting side note, rapper and friend of the site, Dash Speaks, was ranked No. 1 Lithuanian baby racer in 1986, before the league (yes, there’s a league) disqualified him because the weight of his head unfairly propelled him towards the finish line.