From the "
now it can be told" department. "I" am actually a team of eight. It's just not humanly possible to write 17,000 nodes (yes,
jessica, I counted each and every one) as "I" have without it being a
team effort. I give you...
team pingouin
Pookie Yevenez: former shortstop in the
Cleveland Indians farm system, now living back in his native
Venezuela, where he does the occasional bit of coaching. Yes, he wore #
13, just like Davey Concepcion. He handles many of "my"
sports nodes.
Ignacio Peralta: former aesthetician for the Medellin cartel, now a music video storyboard artist in Madrid. Many of the drug nodes and video nodes are his.
Nestor Thomas: from Panama, an insurance salesman and day trader, now living in Paramus, New Jersey. He makes fishcakes almost as exquisite as Dad's, and he has done a lot of nodes related to food and James Brown.
Geraldo Rivera: I think you may have heard of him. Note that he's not the one who wrote the Geraldo Rivera node - that was (with the help of his dad)...
Oscar Gesualdo: the token "yoot" on team pingouin. Born and raised in Tampa, he writes about the stuff we old folk have never heard of. Good kid.
Ulacio Padovani: from
"AR-GEN-TI-NA!"
I met him as he was blowing out my eardrums during a closed-circuit broadcast of the 1978 World Cup final (I was there rooting for the Netherlands, so this loud guy wasn't especially endearing). He's much nicer and quieter when the subject isn't football. Currently serving time on Riker's Island for armed robbery.
Irina: "just Irina", she likes to say. She's the token chick on team pingouin. Or, if you want to be technical, a drag queen who arrived on yanqui shores with Fidel's Marielitos, way back when. She taught me how to vogue. Irina handles the writing of the sensitive crap that makes "me" look somewhat human.
Noddy Garcia: "Noddy" is not his real name. He's a bartender in San Juan, and a big Arsenal (and Patrick Vieira) fan. Our resident anglophile.
There you have it. The team members turn in their writeups, by e-mail, snail mail, and occasional sneakernet. (Noddy, if you're reading this: no more MS Word docs, please!) Since they all write these things in Spanish (even Geraldo, for some perverse reason - I guess he just needs the practice), I have to translate them; faithful manservant Jeeves then corrects my many mistakes. Good man, that Jeeves.
With apologies to Team Jet-Poop.