Yup, that's right, folks: a new and improved Townie News! Click HERE to check out my new online stomping grounds. And while you're at it, change your bookmark, will ya?

GFY,
Fitzy

You gotta admit, The Goosebump-o-Meter was turned up to 11 when Ted Kennedy came out the other night. I'm already voting Obama (SPOILER!), and am a Masshole through and through, but this was PFI: Pretty Fahkin' Inspiring!

It's 4th and Inches. TFK says to fahkin' GO FOR IT!

Around Your Mom's Horn...

Hear ye! Hear ye! Townienews.com relaunches this week, and it's gonna kick serious ass (kinda like the Sox did tonight). That's right - your #1 source for Fitzy-related madness and Wicked Pissah Webcastery is relaunching, and we'll be offering everything you want (and THEN some). In addition to videos and blog posts, we'll be offering a new STORE, FORUMS (so you can start conversations, mouth off, chime in and bust plenty of footballs), new BLOGS (with some fine writing talent we've recruited for your extra webtastic reading pleasure), a SOUND gallery (did someone ask for a Fitzy burp mp3/ringtone center?), and much more. Look for it to debut this Friday, along with a new FANalsyt video.

Looks like the Sox might be grabbing a new 4th/5th outfielder, and if the price is right then it's a great call. Since he'll br bringing his LEGENDARILY HOT WIFE with him! (Sports by Brooks with the assist). Sure, some Sox have some hot wives, and some are the catcher who's hitting a little better now that he's getting dovorced and might be dating Heidi Watney (too soon?) But still, WOW. Get it done, Sox. For the "wife in the stands when her husband comes in as a 7th inning defensive replacement" shots alone it's worth trading Charlie Double-A or Hump Pawtucket or whoever!

New Videos on the horizon? Try a new FANalyst video this and every week. PLUS "Fitzy's Wicked Pissah Patriots Preview of Power 2008", a visit to Yankee Stadium on the day of the final Sox/Yanks game at the Skank (trust me, it WILL be the final game between them there), video of my roast of George Takei at the Friars Club in NYC on August 19th (holy broken ballls that was fun), weekly Patriots webcasts and previews, more movie reviews, and a helluva lot more. So stay tuned, spread the word and GFY!

Cheers,

Fitzy

PS - That's right - I'll be outside doing itnerviews and talking misty water colored memories of the way Yankee Stadium was with fans and friends this Thursday. If you're in the area then give a shout. I should be easy to find, loitering about, the guy in the GFY shirt, cameraman and nicrophone, yapping up a troublestorm. Come on, I gotta go there; the stadium's not gonna burn itself down, right?

PPS - Special thanks to everyone who came out to the Dave Attell show at Showcase Live in Foxboro on August 23rd, as welll as the good people at 211me.com who made it happen, Showcase Live (which is a PIMP place if I ever saw one), the people who voted for me, Dave Attell and crew, and the people who make beer. Damn fine time had by all.

Also from this week...

Fitzy's Wicked Pissah "Favre & Manny Can GFY" Webcast

And...

Fitzy's "Rhymes With Pedroia" Challenge

Homers by Chase Utley and Pat Burrell provided the fireworks as the Phillies rallied to win the NLCS opener in Philadelphia.

The Carl Edwards-Kevin Harvick feud escalated Thursday, as push came to shove in the garage. Lee Spencer has the ringside report.

Can rookie Joe Flacco keep up with Peyton Manning? This week's NFL Blitz declares Ravens-Colts one of this weekend's big tilts.

A process server with a formidable appetite for marijuana, Dale Denton (Seth Rogan) loves his job, his high school girlfriend (Amber Heard), and his pot dealer, Saul (James Franco). After picking up some of Saul's finest product, the infamous Pineapple Express, Dale heads off to his last legal target of the day, arriving only to accidentally witness a mob hit. Fearing the discarded roach will be traced back to his dealer, Dale and Saul hit the road, trying to evade the murderous wrath of a criminal kingpin (Gary Cole), his pocket policewoman (Rosie Perez), and two lackeys ordered to carry out the hits (Kevin Corrigan and Craig Robinson).

Healing magic was the first subject Lila Downs planned to research for her thesis in anthropology at the University of Minnesota. But the brujo (medicine man) that the Mexican American hoped to study in her mother's native region of Oaxaca could not be found. So she wrote about textiles instead.

On Tuesday, the folksinger offers an alternative thesis on witchcraft with her latest album, Shake Away (Manhattan Records).

She was looking to heal herself. "I wanted to have a baby and I couldn't," she reveals over the phone from Califas. For a time, she wondered why she came into the world, if not to give birth to a child in turn. "My last album was a big party, to take away the pain. This time I was looking for a cure in the magic of my people."

Downs returned to Oaxaca to seek out 70-year-old Doña Queta, a woman known for her healing powers. Doña Queta intuited Downs's fear: She knew that not being able to have a child had shaken the confidence Downs always felt as a singer. "She told me to talk to my body, to caress my breasts," Downs relates. "Sometimes we forget to love ourselves."

The singer also revisited the sacred symbol of the serpent that has held special meaning not only in her culture, but for her own family. Her grandmother used to say that her father, an American, was a wind serpent, who entangled with her mother, a water serpent.

Downs herself used to have a terrifying recurring dream about a snake biting her.

Making Shake Away, Downs decided to embrace her fears and surrender herself to the serpent. In the process, she says, she discovered the source of her power: "Even though I can't have children, I'm a she-wolf."

The clearest declaration of power on the album is Downs's cover of "Black Magic Woman," where she revels in the role of the mysterious witch in the Santana classic. Growling deep at the bottom of her register, there is no doubt that the singer is a she-wolf. But just to emphasize the point, she switches from English to the indigenous tongue of Oaxaca to close the song with a magical chant.

As always with Downs's work, Shake Away ranges widely across themes, genres, and vocal styles. In addition to magic-drenched tracks like "Ojo de Culebra" (Eye of the Serpent), there are protest anthems such as "Minimum Wage" (a country tune in English in the voice of a migrant laborer) and "Justicia" (Justice), a simmering rock duet with Spanish pop star Enrique Bunbury. There are two beautiful covers, in English and Spanish, of Lucinda Williams's gorgeous love ballad "I Envy the Wind."

Then there's "Los Pollos" (The Chickens), my favorite track on the album, a very silly duet with Gilberto Gutierrez, of the Vera Cruz folk outfit Grupo Mayo Blanco, that warns all roosters and hens in the neighborhood to run because someone's going to be stewing chicken and rice that afternoon.

Co-produced by Downs and her husband and long-time collaborator Paul Cohen, Shake Away is more proof that, with the music they've made together, the couple has bequeathed a lasting and inspiring legacy to the rest of the world.

Celeste Fraser Delgado writes about Latin music and the American Dream for MOLI.

When I first discovered Delta Spirit, a group from San Diego known for their soulful Americana rock and energetic live shows, I thought of another of my favorite bands-Kings of Leon. But thanks to lead singer Matt Vasquez's emotion-filled voice and passionate, spiritually-themed lyrics there's really no confusing the two-or mistaking Delta Spirit for any other band of the moment for that matter.

Fitting their distinct, jamboree-style sound (a recent audience member ripped the fender off their trailer and used it to play along) is a back story that reads like music world urban legend. Back in 2005 Jonathan Jameson, (bass) Brandon Young (drums) and Sean Walker (guitar) decided they wanted to start a band. Young was walking through a park late one night when he noticed a guy singing on a bench (Vasquez) and got his contact info. When he told Jameson about the talented busker, it turned out that he had already approached that same guy, too. Obviously a higher power was at work.

Whenever we do a post about bike helmets, we get a controversy in comments that often includes statements like "Nowhere that has introduced a helmet law or considerable helmet promotion has been able to demonstrate any reduction in risk to cyclists."

Well, now they have. A new study released in the Journal of Pediatrics looked at the death rate in Ontario, Canada for kids on bikes before and after the mandatory helmet law was passed in 1995 and found that it cut the death rate in half.

In a monologue that became the film Gray's Anatomy, Spalding Gray asserted that a "35 miles-per-hour consciousness" dominates life in Los Angeles.  He was right. Things go by fast here, but not terrifyingly so. Too fast to get to know much intimately, too slow to move you emotionally. For the best of all worlds, to really see and feel L.A., you gotta get on a bike. Call it consciousness at 20 mph.

Because I'm a broke-ass writer, my commute to South Pasadena and Lincoln Heights, where my children live, is sometimes done by a combination of bicycle and public transit. It's one dope workout, riding through Los Angeles on both crowded thoroughfares and sleepy side streets and winding my way up to Pasadena. Los Angeles is one of the most complex and beautiful cities I've ever experienced. And, yes, I've been to Paris.

These days I decline to wear a helmet, which is not to say that's what you necessarily should do. I defy drivers to not notice me; and that shit's mad scary, yo.  Southern California drivers have little sense that anyone else belongs on the road. They vaguely recognize pedestrians ... from television. But cars in my neck of the woods really do seem to go at it with cyclists. It's like they don't think bikes are supposed to be here or something. I'm not really feeling cars these days. I'm behind the wheel maybe 90 minutes a week.

Mostly I'm just knockin' back that kickstand and stomping on the pedal. Liquor stores. Intersections. Subway stations.

On Wednesday, a guy at Union Station stepped inside a Gold Line train to Pasadena, reached into a plastic shopping bag and pulled out a Kobe Bryant U.S.A. jersey, number 10. And people went nuts. It was amazing. Like, I've read a lot of deep shit about Kobe's fame, but nothing from Asia has approached the feeling of that moment. I'm sorry, it can't. He's ours. L.A.'s got love for all of its flawed West Coast legends, great and small.

(One last thing on the Olympics, because I have a dirty