Good-Ass Blog: Uni Watch

I've long been a fan of Paul Lukas's writing, beginning with his killer Beer Frame 'zine, for which I swapped copies of my Heinous 'zine back in the pre-blog '90s. Lukas called the Heinous cassette-tape binding method "truly brilliant," which, coming from him, was a huge compliment.

In Beer Frame (subtitled The Journal of Inconspicuous Consumption), Lukas dissected all sorts of oddball consumer products in an intelligent, often hilarious manner -- the Brannock Device, kraut juice, 666 Cold Preparation, pork brains, Cock Soup and the like. He'd also review amusing Japanese products like Pocari Sweat and Nippless, and shed light on such intriguing services as the Pig Improvement Company. And, while promoting his best-of-BF book, he busted out a canned whole chicken on the Conan O'Brien show, much to the host's disgust.

As Beer Frame was one of my top-five favorite 'zines, Paul's current Uni Watch project is one of my fave blogs. Here he's focused his trademark detail-obsessed critiques on the more specific area of sports uniforms, with generous daily posts each prompting hundreds of comments. Yeah, I love sports too, but I'm often more interested in logos, mascots, stadiums and other sidebar stuff than actual competition, which is why I find Uni Watch such a gas.

About the above graphic: Uni Watch has a membership program to help keep the thing afloat, so I recently signed up at the $25 "Wool Flannel" level. One of the benefits is getting a custom-designed membership card -- the 51 on my card is fairly obvious ("Ichiro is my favorite"), and since I saw that nobody else had a Harlem Globetrotters uni, I chose that one. Unfortunately, as Lukas pointed out on Wednesday's post, some other guy also picked a 'Trotters design on the same damn day...jerk. Still, I've secured a spot on the Uni Watch active roster, so I can't complain.

Besides his ESPN uni column, the Brooklyn-based Lukas does lots of other cool freelance writing, covering such pop-culture subjects as Moxie soda and White Castle. However, I have one beef with the guy -- he loathes purple uniforms, which happens to be color of my beloved alma mater, the Washington Huskies.