Today, Tuesday February 19, 2008 will go down in history as the day when a dynamic leader left the job he has held for years. This man was revered among his followers for his incisive thinking, his intuitive reactions, and his diligent, hard working attitude. Despite some dubious elements of his personal life -- betrayal and violence -- he is respected by many of his peers. Largely through his own talents and force of personality, he took a people who had been dominated by a more famous and powerful neighbor for as long as can be remembered and made them proud of themselves. He took a small group of no-names to the top of the world and kept them there for much longer than anyone expected.
Who is he?
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Superdelegates
Increasingly it looks like the dead-lock in the Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will not be settled by the rank-and-file members of the party who vote and argue in the parties primaries and caucuses. Instead, it seems likely that the Democratic nominee for the presidential campaign of '08 will be decided by the almost 800 Superdelegates. Having the deciding votes cast for the Democratic nominee by a select group of party leaders seems extremely undemocratic, but should we be upset by this?
There's really nothing to be up-in-arms about. No age-old democratic principles are being violated -- the Superdelegates are not perverting the instructions of our Founding Fathers on the subject of political parties. In fact, most of our Founding Fathers considered political parties second only to tyranny (okay, if we dismiss "fuck," "damn," "fhit," and all of the 'normal' curse words) as far as obscenities go. The Democratic party is under no obligation to the principles of democracy at all -- they are a private organization. They could choose a nominee by lottery or brawling (neither of which would necessarily be a bad idea.) After all, what is a nominee other than a citizen who is going to try to run for an elected position?
Would it really be better if the nominee were chosen by the sum of all of the assorted state primaries and caucuses? If the voting ended today, Barack Obama would be the party's nominee, because he is leading the pledged delegate race 971 to 915. That's 51% to 49%. It seems to me that neither candidate has been able to convince a clear majority of democrats that he or she would be better than the other guy or doll. So I really don't see what the problem is with having party leaders decide who will be the best candidate to beat the Republicans and best President.
That said, there are two situations that I think could cause a real problem. If Clinton wins on the strength of her appeal to superdelegates it would be extremely easy for someone (almost anyone) to claim that it was not because of her experience, long service to the democratic party, etc., but because of her race. This could spell trouble. The other situation that could could blow up in a big way would be if one of the candidate's payment to a superdelegate became public. Regardless of whether that payment is a past favor, a future favor, a pledged vote in the senate, or cold hard cash, it would be very bad and very entertaining, but mostly very bad.
I'm still hoping that we will go into the convention still unclear about who will be the nominee and that there will be a back-room deal that would have Hillary Clinton running for President with Barack Obama as her Vice-Presidential candidate on the condition that Bill Clinton takes a long vacation to Tahiti until they win. Really, I think that would be the best for everyone involved.
There's really nothing to be up-in-arms about. No age-old democratic principles are being violated -- the Superdelegates are not perverting the instructions of our Founding Fathers on the subject of political parties. In fact, most of our Founding Fathers considered political parties second only to tyranny (okay, if we dismiss "fuck," "damn," "fhit," and all of the 'normal' curse words) as far as obscenities go. The Democratic party is under no obligation to the principles of democracy at all -- they are a private organization. They could choose a nominee by lottery or brawling (neither of which would necessarily be a bad idea.) After all, what is a nominee other than a citizen who is going to try to run for an elected position?
Would it really be better if the nominee were chosen by the sum of all of the assorted state primaries and caucuses? If the voting ended today, Barack Obama would be the party's nominee, because he is leading the pledged delegate race 971 to 915. That's 51% to 49%. It seems to me that neither candidate has been able to convince a clear majority of democrats that he or she would be better than the other guy or doll. So I really don't see what the problem is with having party leaders decide who will be the best candidate to beat the Republicans and best President.
That said, there are two situations that I think could cause a real problem. If Clinton wins on the strength of her appeal to superdelegates it would be extremely easy for someone (almost anyone) to claim that it was not because of her experience, long service to the democratic party, etc., but because of her race. This could spell trouble. The other situation that could could blow up in a big way would be if one of the candidate's payment to a superdelegate became public. Regardless of whether that payment is a past favor, a future favor, a pledged vote in the senate, or cold hard cash, it would be very bad and very entertaining, but mostly very bad.
I'm still hoping that we will go into the convention still unclear about who will be the nominee and that there will be a back-room deal that would have Hillary Clinton running for President with Barack Obama as her Vice-Presidential candidate on the condition that Bill Clinton takes a long vacation to Tahiti until they win. Really, I think that would be the best for everyone involved.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Iowa and New Hampshire -- Race and Process
To preface this blog, I feel it necessary to remind you that I don't know shit about shit. But, of course, if you're reading my drivel, you probably know that already. Not to worry -- the following political analysis will be highly speculative.
Much ado has been made over the results of the Democratic party's Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. Theories explaining first why Barack Obama won in Iowa and now why Hillary Clinton won in New Hampshire have been so plentiful that it would be meaningless for me to even link to a few of them. I am nothing if not a slave to popular fads (plus, I'm right and everyone else is wrong...) so, here's my theory.
The results of Iowa and New Hampshire tell us nothing other than that people pretty much like Obama and Clinton equally and (thankfully) that they like Edwards a little less, at least in the Northeast. I am convinced and a little bit afraid that the winning margins in Iowa and New Hampshire can be explained by examining the voting processes of the two contests and thinking about race and racism.
In New Hampshire, the primary contest is an election, a process which is fairly familiar to most of us. The Iowa caucus, on the other hand, is a funny thing. People who are about to vote gather publicly in groups of their families and neighbors, friends and enemies, and then through a process involving debate and attempts and verbal persuasion, they more or less cast their votes. I believe that this would aid a Black candidate in Iowa and hurt him or her in New Hampshire.
As I believe pointed out by Malcolm Gladwell in one of his books, people tend to represent themselves in public as making choices less dependent on race as they actually do. He used the example of people on online dating sites declaring that the race of their date matters very little, but then almost always choosing to "approach" people of their own race. In Iowa -- voting in public, I believe people (basically everyone voting in both of these contests were white) were less likely to NOT vote for Obama because of his race, even if at the last second they felt unsure or uneasy because of it. Conversely, I am afraid that in New Hampshire, in the privacy of a curtained voting booth, people may have allowed their racial prejudices or simply their doubts about the racism of the rest of the country sway their votes from Obama. This would explain why polls (a public statement of your voting plan) would have shown Obama roughly 15% ahead of where he ended up placing in the actual, (and private on an individual level,) vote.
Since most of the rest of the contests are primaries and not caucuses, I still think Obama will have an uphill battle to climb (how's that for a mixed metaphor?) I know that Clinton is a woman (this Clinton) and that there are still tons of people who don't think a woman should be president, but I would argue that these people are less likely to lie to pollsters about this feeling. Either way, I am glad that the results in New Hampshire and Iowa have been so inconclusive. Extending the race for another month and another 20 states at least will get us more experienced candidate, chosen by a more educated and representative group of voters.
After I wrote this, I came across this article which explains my gut theory in possibly more eloquent languege. Apparently this isn't a new idea, and even has a name, the "Bradley/Wilder/Dinkins effect."
Much ado has been made over the results of the Democratic party's Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. Theories explaining first why Barack Obama won in Iowa and now why Hillary Clinton won in New Hampshire have been so plentiful that it would be meaningless for me to even link to a few of them. I am nothing if not a slave to popular fads (plus, I'm right and everyone else is wrong...) so, here's my theory.
The results of Iowa and New Hampshire tell us nothing other than that people pretty much like Obama and Clinton equally and (thankfully) that they like Edwards a little less, at least in the Northeast. I am convinced and a little bit afraid that the winning margins in Iowa and New Hampshire can be explained by examining the voting processes of the two contests and thinking about race and racism.
In New Hampshire, the primary contest is an election, a process which is fairly familiar to most of us. The Iowa caucus, on the other hand, is a funny thing. People who are about to vote gather publicly in groups of their families and neighbors, friends and enemies, and then through a process involving debate and attempts and verbal persuasion, they more or less cast their votes. I believe that this would aid a Black candidate in Iowa and hurt him or her in New Hampshire.
As I believe pointed out by Malcolm Gladwell in one of his books, people tend to represent themselves in public as making choices less dependent on race as they actually do. He used the example of people on online dating sites declaring that the race of their date matters very little, but then almost always choosing to "approach" people of their own race. In Iowa -- voting in public, I believe people (basically everyone voting in both of these contests were white) were less likely to NOT vote for Obama because of his race, even if at the last second they felt unsure or uneasy because of it. Conversely, I am afraid that in New Hampshire, in the privacy of a curtained voting booth, people may have allowed their racial prejudices or simply their doubts about the racism of the rest of the country sway their votes from Obama. This would explain why polls (a public statement of your voting plan) would have shown Obama roughly 15% ahead of where he ended up placing in the actual, (and private on an individual level,) vote.
Since most of the rest of the contests are primaries and not caucuses, I still think Obama will have an uphill battle to climb (how's that for a mixed metaphor?) I know that Clinton is a woman (this Clinton) and that there are still tons of people who don't think a woman should be president, but I would argue that these people are less likely to lie to pollsters about this feeling. Either way, I am glad that the results in New Hampshire and Iowa have been so inconclusive. Extending the race for another month and another 20 states at least will get us more experienced candidate, chosen by a more educated and representative group of voters.
After I wrote this, I came across this article which explains my gut theory in possibly more eloquent languege. Apparently this isn't a new idea, and even has a name, the "Bradley/Wilder/Dinkins effect."
Sunday, January 06, 2008
The (First?) Ten Commandments of Ezism
1. Don't watch the weather.
2. Don't buy water.
3. Don't trade in currency.
4. Don't ever write ten commandments without an elastic clause like "Don't do stuff you shouldn't do."
5. Don't do stuff you shouldn't do.
6. Deodorant and electric razors are scams and should be treated as such.
7. Shake your ass, but watch yourself.
8.
9. An apple a day keeps the doctor away, two, the dentist, three the psychiatrist.
10. Sleep well.
They're really more like guidelines...
2. Don't buy water.
3. Don't trade in currency.
4. Don't ever write ten commandments without an elastic clause like "Don't do stuff you shouldn't do."
5. Don't do stuff you shouldn't do.
6. Deodorant and electric razors are scams and should be treated as such.
7. Shake your ass, but watch yourself.
8.
9. An apple a day keeps the doctor away, two, the dentist, three the psychiatrist.
10. Sleep well.
They're really more like guidelines...
Monday, December 10, 2007
Dogfighting, Hypocrisy, and Why the NFL Won't be Around in 10 Years
Football star Michael Vick was sentenced to 23 months in a federal jail today for his "involvement in a dogfighting ring." This is an unfair conviction because of who Michael Vick is. Now, I could be saying that because Vick is a celebrity, he and his co-defendants were treated in an unfairly harsh way to send a message, but I'm not. I could be saying that because Vick grew up in Virginia, he should be judged by the prevailing morals of the southern culture, which seems to be fairly permissive of dogfighting at least according to Whoopi Goldberg (go to around the 1:45 mark of the video,) but, I'm not. I could argue that Vick has been targeted unfairly because of his status as a popular Black figure in Atlanta -- an argument that was explored in "A History of Mistrust" by Wright Thompson, but I'm not. It is hypocritical to sentence Michael Vick to almost two years of jail time for acting as an owner, financier, and profiteer involved in dogfighting while lauding, supporting, and idolizing him as a participant in very similar activities throughout his life as a football player.
The first time I saw Vick play football was on September 23, 1999 when he was a red-shirt freshman (otherwise known as a Sophomore who didn't play football his first year at college... I tried to claim that I was one in my second year at Rutgers, but it didn't get me very far...) at Virginia Tech University. This was the third game of the season. Vick had missed the second game after being carried off the field in his first game. Running towards the end zone, Vick had shown such speed, agility, courage, fearlessness, elusiveness, cleverness, and yes, aggression that he refused to stop until an opponent managed to flip Vick completely. Vick still made it into the end zone for a touchdown, but he sprained his ankle when he hit the ground. If you never saw Vick play, check out this video (musical accompaniment by Ludacris, flips around 0:44 mark.)
Why is this relevant? The same qualities that made Vick successful in football are the ones that I imagine would make a pit-bull successful in dogfighting. Yes, you say, but dogfighting is a horrible, violent, and often fatal activity, where the dogs get no reward out of it, whereas football is a sport whose participants are rewarded beyond reason.
I'm not sure this is true. Dogfighting is clearly violent, and football players who do not train well enough to make the NFL are not taken out and shot or electrocuted and killed (although encouraging college kids to concentrate solely on football and to ignore academics and then to set them loose with no support after they don't make the NFL is a violation itself, but that's another story...) but, football itself is no less violent then dogfighting.
In the past year, a Buffalo Bill, Kevin Everett suffered a life threatening spinal cord injury during a game. More and more information has been coming out about the effects of the repeated concussions that many football players have had and continue to have. Retired players have suffered from severe depression, early onset dementia and Alzheimer's (and we're talking about mid-forties early,) leading to suicide and death. Even if your brain manages to make it through, your body most likely will not. Bo Jackson a legendary athlete had his career ended when he tore his hip. The great quarterback John Elway recently had knee replacement surgery at the age of 47. Linemen in the NFL (and increasingly at younger ages) are usually 300+ pounds, which puts an incredible toll on their bodies.
Quite simply, playing football at a high enough level for a long enough time will kill you. But football stars like Michael Vick are fawned over by fans, paid millions of dollars by team owners. Yet Vick is thrown into jail for lavishing the same twisted funding and adoration (remember, little to no mercy is shown to football players who don't perform either, see Ryan Leaf, see the NFL's bizarre refusal to fairly compensate retired players, see team's abilities to cut a player at any time) onto fighting dogs.
I actually saw Vick in an airport once. He was reading a magazine, waiting for a flight to Atlanta when a man approached him:
"Hey, are you Mike Vick? I love playing you in Madden!"
I think Mike Vick just got played in real life.
The first time I saw Vick play football was on September 23, 1999 when he was a red-shirt freshman (otherwise known as a Sophomore who didn't play football his first year at college... I tried to claim that I was one in my second year at Rutgers, but it didn't get me very far...) at Virginia Tech University. This was the third game of the season. Vick had missed the second game after being carried off the field in his first game. Running towards the end zone, Vick had shown such speed, agility, courage, fearlessness, elusiveness, cleverness, and yes, aggression that he refused to stop until an opponent managed to flip Vick completely. Vick still made it into the end zone for a touchdown, but he sprained his ankle when he hit the ground. If you never saw Vick play, check out this video (musical accompaniment by Ludacris, flips around 0:44 mark.)
Why is this relevant? The same qualities that made Vick successful in football are the ones that I imagine would make a pit-bull successful in dogfighting. Yes, you say, but dogfighting is a horrible, violent, and often fatal activity, where the dogs get no reward out of it, whereas football is a sport whose participants are rewarded beyond reason.
I'm not sure this is true. Dogfighting is clearly violent, and football players who do not train well enough to make the NFL are not taken out and shot or electrocuted and killed (although encouraging college kids to concentrate solely on football and to ignore academics and then to set them loose with no support after they don't make the NFL is a violation itself, but that's another story...) but, football itself is no less violent then dogfighting.
In the past year, a Buffalo Bill, Kevin Everett suffered a life threatening spinal cord injury during a game. More and more information has been coming out about the effects of the repeated concussions that many football players have had and continue to have. Retired players have suffered from severe depression, early onset dementia and Alzheimer's (and we're talking about mid-forties early,) leading to suicide and death. Even if your brain manages to make it through, your body most likely will not. Bo Jackson a legendary athlete had his career ended when he tore his hip. The great quarterback John Elway recently had knee replacement surgery at the age of 47. Linemen in the NFL (and increasingly at younger ages) are usually 300+ pounds, which puts an incredible toll on their bodies.
Quite simply, playing football at a high enough level for a long enough time will kill you. But football stars like Michael Vick are fawned over by fans, paid millions of dollars by team owners. Yet Vick is thrown into jail for lavishing the same twisted funding and adoration (remember, little to no mercy is shown to football players who don't perform either, see Ryan Leaf, see the NFL's bizarre refusal to fairly compensate retired players, see team's abilities to cut a player at any time) onto fighting dogs.
I actually saw Vick in an airport once. He was reading a magazine, waiting for a flight to Atlanta when a man approached him:
"Hey, are you Mike Vick? I love playing you in Madden!"
I think Mike Vick just got played in real life.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Birthday Party 2007
Thanks to everyone who came out to my birthday party! Without further ado, check out this slide show of photos taken by YOU, the party-goers... (god, that trope is getting played out!)
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Recalling New Orleans, Part One
To continue my theme of being absurdly remiss in my blogging duties, I am only now, almost two weeks after I got beck from spending a week in Louisiana, going to write about it.
I went down with a group from my company, Return Path, to a Habitat for Humanity build near Mandeville, Covington, and Abita Springs, three small towns on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain. As you might remember, the day after Hurricane Katrina hit, everyone was relieved at how little damage it had done. Then, the levees which held Lake Pontchartrain in its basin burst and the lake flooded South, towards New Orleans. The neighborhoods on the South Shore of the lake were among the hardest hit areas and many of them have not been rebuilt -- some probably never will be.
Instead, the neighborhoods on the North Shore of the lake have seen their populations triple in the last year and a half. Needless to say, this has been a bit of a strain on the infrastructure (the traffic (almost) rivals New Jersey!) Also similar to parts of New Jersey, the North Shore neighborhoods are home to many who commute into the big city for work everyday. Instead of the being the Bridge & Tunnel crowd, these folks could accurately be called the Causeway crowd, because to get to New Orleans they drive across the lake on a 23 mile bridge! Check out this google map to see this wonder.
I left New York a couple of days early with my friend and colleague, Russ, with plans to enjoy the various delights of New Orleans before we got down to work. Unfortunately, we had chosen to fly AirTran, so we spent a lot of time waiting around in La Guardia airport with a group of people, who like us, were fated to spend an unwanted night in Atlanta due to various plane and customer service malfunctions. Luckily, we were stuck with some nice people, some of whom were from New Orleans, so we heard a few interesting stories.
The most remarkable of them came from Amanda, a young woman whose extended family are almost all firemen in New Orleans. Apparently, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, firemen were forced into all sorts of first-responder duties, and among the various responsibilities of the job was the issuing, by the FBI of "drop guns." A "drop gun," we found out, is an untraceable gun with no serial number which, when given out, went along with instructions to -- if you ended up needing to use it -- drop it.
In more light-hearted news, we were (supposed to be) flying on the same day as the NFL draft and the Atlanta Falcon's star quarterback, Michael Vick, happened to be flying from the same gate as us. Despite being distracted by the blingiest chain I've ever seen, I caught a snippet of conversation between him and a white male admirer in his mid thirties, "You're great, man! I love playing you in Madden!"
When we finally made it to New Orleans, it was a real pleasure. Canal Street and Bourbon Street are busy, bustling, and unbelievably smelly. At night the bars feature cover bands or, worse, karaoke. On the upside you can buy funny T-shirts (the best we saw bore the message, "FEMA emergency plan, 'Run bitches, run!'") and get colorful alcoholic beverages in large plastic cups to go. We had more fun on Frenchman street several blocks away where there are several great jazz and blues clubs (try the Apple Barrel) and a great restaurant where I had one of the most exquisitely wonderful meals in recent memory. My guess is that everything is amazing, but I can personally vouch for the Fried Chicken, Mac 'n Cheese, and Mustard Greens.
Thank you for making it through part one, and please tune in to part two, when our intrepid heroes discover the joys of stuffed ices, the omnipotence of the word "baby" in Louisiana vernacular, and get our hand dirty with some building.
I went down with a group from my company, Return Path, to a Habitat for Humanity build near Mandeville, Covington, and Abita Springs, three small towns on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain. As you might remember, the day after Hurricane Katrina hit, everyone was relieved at how little damage it had done. Then, the levees which held Lake Pontchartrain in its basin burst and the lake flooded South, towards New Orleans. The neighborhoods on the South Shore of the lake were among the hardest hit areas and many of them have not been rebuilt -- some probably never will be.
Instead, the neighborhoods on the North Shore of the lake have seen their populations triple in the last year and a half. Needless to say, this has been a bit of a strain on the infrastructure (the traffic (almost) rivals New Jersey!) Also similar to parts of New Jersey, the North Shore neighborhoods are home to many who commute into the big city for work everyday. Instead of the being the Bridge & Tunnel crowd, these folks could accurately be called the Causeway crowd, because to get to New Orleans they drive across the lake on a 23 mile bridge! Check out this google map to see this wonder.
I left New York a couple of days early with my friend and colleague, Russ, with plans to enjoy the various delights of New Orleans before we got down to work. Unfortunately, we had chosen to fly AirTran, so we spent a lot of time waiting around in La Guardia airport with a group of people, who like us, were fated to spend an unwanted night in Atlanta due to various plane and customer service malfunctions. Luckily, we were stuck with some nice people, some of whom were from New Orleans, so we heard a few interesting stories.
The most remarkable of them came from Amanda, a young woman whose extended family are almost all firemen in New Orleans. Apparently, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, firemen were forced into all sorts of first-responder duties, and among the various responsibilities of the job was the issuing, by the FBI of "drop guns." A "drop gun," we found out, is an untraceable gun with no serial number which, when given out, went along with instructions to -- if you ended up needing to use it -- drop it.
In more light-hearted news, we were (supposed to be) flying on the same day as the NFL draft and the Atlanta Falcon's star quarterback, Michael Vick, happened to be flying from the same gate as us. Despite being distracted by the blingiest chain I've ever seen, I caught a snippet of conversation between him and a white male admirer in his mid thirties, "You're great, man! I love playing you in Madden!"
When we finally made it to New Orleans, it was a real pleasure. Canal Street and Bourbon Street are busy, bustling, and unbelievably smelly. At night the bars feature cover bands or, worse, karaoke. On the upside you can buy funny T-shirts (the best we saw bore the message, "FEMA emergency plan, 'Run bitches, run!'") and get colorful alcoholic beverages in large plastic cups to go. We had more fun on Frenchman street several blocks away where there are several great jazz and blues clubs (try the Apple Barrel) and a great restaurant where I had one of the most exquisitely wonderful meals in recent memory. My guess is that everything is amazing, but I can personally vouch for the Fried Chicken, Mac 'n Cheese, and Mustard Greens.
Thank you for making it through part one, and please tune in to part two, when our intrepid heroes discover the joys of stuffed ices, the omnipotence of the word "baby" in Louisiana vernacular, and get our hand dirty with some building.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
More Dribs and Drabs
Whoa. So much has happened since my last entry. Lots of things that can be referred to by a single phrase: Imus, Virginia Tech, Spring, a few big sporting events: the NBA playoffs have begun, the NFL draft (also known as American Christmas) is right around the corner, and my beloved Penguins have been ceremoniously booted from the best postseason in all of sports, the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I will deal with each of these events in reverse order and uneven depth. For those of my readers (I know, by all appearances, I only have one, but she's schizophrenic) who really want to skip the sports stuff, move on to paragraph 5.
First, the Penguins. I guess you shouldn't complain too much when the four best players on your favorite team are all under 21. They'll be back next year for another shot at the cup. Also, it turns out that Sidney Crosby, the best player on the team (and probably the world) was playing the last few weeks of the season with a broken foot. Also, it might have been unhealthy for me if they had gotten any farther in the playoffs. During the four games that I was able to watch, I would estimate that I breathed about 18 times. Total.
The NFL draft is this Saturday and Sunday in New York, and I would really be tempted to go if I weren't going to be flying to New Orleans to work on a Habitat for Humanity build with a group from my company, Return Path, which generously encourages its employees to do community service. You might ask why I would want to attend an event that consists entirely of a man marching up to a podium, reciting a name, and then walking off, only to be repeated more than 250 times over the period of two days? Why? Events that attract WAY more interest then one would imagine, like the announcement of a paternity test or a fairly simple talent show, are fascinating, and that ESPN and the NFL have somehow managed to
bottle this magic and make it appear each year towards the end of April.
I'm going to skip the NBA playoffs. They were basically just filler in my opening paragraph, although I am watching a particularly entertaining game right now between the number 1 seeded Dallas Mavericks and the number 8 seeded Golden State Warriors (are there any other sports teams that use a euphemism to refer to their geographic location? The Big Apple Knickerbockers? The Lone Star State Stars? The Armpit-of-America Devils?)
Spring finally seems to have arrived, and not a moment too soon. It has sparked several SNOD days, and for me several SAC days -- days of Sneezing Almost Constantly.
About Virginia Tech, a few things jump out at me. First of all, I was surprised at how quickly people started joking about it. Usually after any horrible thing, there are at least a few days during which that subject is out of bounds for humor, but it seemed to me that the Virginia Tech shootings became fodder for jokes pretty quickly. Also, while I think that we might want to make it a little harder to get a gun legally in this country, I'm a bit hesitant to blame violence in movies, the chosen cultural scapegoat for this act. Listen, as someone who sat through 3 and quarter hours of almost constant violence in the movie Grindhouse earlier this week, I am all for less violence in movies. Or at least less gross, gratuitous violence. Or, at least more sex... it doesn't make sense to wait to decide which pieces of our culture inspire horrible acts until after they happen. And after all, millions of people who have watched violent movies have turned into non-serial killers, so actually, watching violent movies must have a calming effect, right, right... (how's my math, did I carry the 3?)
Talking about bizarre cultural scapegoats, how did the Don Imus witch-hunt (not to say he didn't have it coming) turn into a referendum on the state of hip-hop? Or, as this article points out, the assumed state of him-hop, since it doesn't seem like anyone is actually paying attention to the actual state of hip-hop, which is currently more bubble-gummed out then blinged-out, and more prankster than gangsta.
I was actually watching the game in question, (it was hard to find a bar near Union Square that was showing a women's basketball game, but Russ and I persisted, despite being told by a less than helpful bartender to "try a butch bar on second Avenue") and like Imus, I was struck by the contrast between the teams. Tennessee's women's basketball program is by far the best program in the country and basically can have it's choice of all the best players. And, it seems like whoever is casting has a predilection not just for the most talented players, but also for very pretty, nicely made up white girls. Meanwhile, Rutgers is a state school in New Jersey, and our team was almost all black girls from places like Newark, Camden, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. I'm not making a judgement, I'm just saying that, especially if you've read a little sports history and know that sports has often been a proxy for racial tension/warfare, it was glaringly obvious that something interesting was going on.
For an interesting perspective on Imus, check out my old boss, Richard Rein's column on the subject. Rein dug out some old notes from 1975 when he was assigned by a Cleveland area publication to profile Don Imus, who had just broken out into the national radio scene a few years before, after spending time as as a railroad brakeman, a country & western singer, and a small-town DJ!
First, the Penguins. I guess you shouldn't complain too much when the four best players on your favorite team are all under 21. They'll be back next year for another shot at the cup. Also, it turns out that Sidney Crosby, the best player on the team (and probably the world) was playing the last few weeks of the season with a broken foot. Also, it might have been unhealthy for me if they had gotten any farther in the playoffs. During the four games that I was able to watch, I would estimate that I breathed about 18 times. Total.
The NFL draft is this Saturday and Sunday in New York, and I would really be tempted to go if I weren't going to be flying to New Orleans to work on a Habitat for Humanity build with a group from my company, Return Path, which generously encourages its employees to do community service. You might ask why I would want to attend an event that consists entirely of a man marching up to a podium, reciting a name, and then walking off, only to be repeated more than 250 times over the period of two days? Why? Events that attract WAY more interest then one would imagine, like the announcement of a paternity test or a fairly simple talent show, are fascinating, and that ESPN and the NFL have somehow managed to
bottle this magic and make it appear each year towards the end of April.
I'm going to skip the NBA playoffs. They were basically just filler in my opening paragraph, although I am watching a particularly entertaining game right now between the number 1 seeded Dallas Mavericks and the number 8 seeded Golden State Warriors (are there any other sports teams that use a euphemism to refer to their geographic location? The Big Apple Knickerbockers? The Lone Star State Stars? The Armpit-of-America Devils?)
Spring finally seems to have arrived, and not a moment too soon. It has sparked several SNOD days, and for me several SAC days -- days of Sneezing Almost Constantly.
About Virginia Tech, a few things jump out at me. First of all, I was surprised at how quickly people started joking about it. Usually after any horrible thing, there are at least a few days during which that subject is out of bounds for humor, but it seemed to me that the Virginia Tech shootings became fodder for jokes pretty quickly. Also, while I think that we might want to make it a little harder to get a gun legally in this country, I'm a bit hesitant to blame violence in movies, the chosen cultural scapegoat for this act. Listen, as someone who sat through 3 and quarter hours of almost constant violence in the movie Grindhouse earlier this week, I am all for less violence in movies. Or at least less gross, gratuitous violence. Or, at least more sex... it doesn't make sense to wait to decide which pieces of our culture inspire horrible acts until after they happen. And after all, millions of people who have watched violent movies have turned into non-serial killers, so actually, watching violent movies must have a calming effect, right, right... (how's my math, did I carry the 3?)
Talking about bizarre cultural scapegoats, how did the Don Imus witch-hunt (not to say he didn't have it coming) turn into a referendum on the state of hip-hop? Or, as this article points out, the assumed state of him-hop, since it doesn't seem like anyone is actually paying attention to the actual state of hip-hop, which is currently more bubble-gummed out then blinged-out, and more prankster than gangsta.
I was actually watching the game in question, (it was hard to find a bar near Union Square that was showing a women's basketball game, but Russ and I persisted, despite being told by a less than helpful bartender to "try a butch bar on second Avenue") and like Imus, I was struck by the contrast between the teams. Tennessee's women's basketball program is by far the best program in the country and basically can have it's choice of all the best players. And, it seems like whoever is casting has a predilection not just for the most talented players, but also for very pretty, nicely made up white girls. Meanwhile, Rutgers is a state school in New Jersey, and our team was almost all black girls from places like Newark, Camden, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. I'm not making a judgement, I'm just saying that, especially if you've read a little sports history and know that sports has often been a proxy for racial tension/warfare, it was glaringly obvious that something interesting was going on.
For an interesting perspective on Imus, check out my old boss, Richard Rein's column on the subject. Rein dug out some old notes from 1975 when he was assigned by a Cleveland area publication to profile Don Imus, who had just broken out into the national radio scene a few years before, after spending time as as a railroad brakeman, a country & western singer, and a small-town DJ!
Friday, April 06, 2007
In a New Jersey State of Mind
This Sunday the sixth and a halfth season of The Sopranos will begin. I was a Sopranos doubter to begin with -- not only because I have a built-in suspicion of anything that popular, but also because I couldn't get past the fact that Soprano is a silly last name. Luckily for me, I got over that a couple of years ago and beginning with episode one, season one, I watched every single episode of the first five seasons to prepare for season six, which aired last spring. I have to admit that my nervousness about these last nine episodes almost outweighs my excitement. The first half of this last season was sub-par at best and I really hope that they blow us all away (and some of the characters) this spring.
New Jersey, homeland to myself and the Sopranos, is a strange place with strange inhabitants, real and fictitious. There is a lot of petty crime -- let's see if you can pick out the fact from the fiction (Sopranos style):
For the answer, click on this link.
Another theme seems to be driving in dubious circumstances:
For the answer, click on this link.
So, call your goomah, start cooking some pasta, buy some capicola, and tune in to HBO this Sunday at 9:00 p.m!
New Jersey, homeland to myself and the Sopranos, is a strange place with strange inhabitants, real and fictitious. There is a lot of petty crime -- let's see if you can pick out the fact from the fiction (Sopranos style):
Two successful business men with questionable pasts are on their way home from a country house, but can't resist stealing crates of expensive wine that are being loaded into the back of the restaurant that they stop to eat at.
A man wedges a coin into the fish scale at the supermarket in Newark so that he doesn't have to pay full price for his seafood.
Three people steal $12,000 dollars worth of underwear from Victoria's Secret in a mall in Jersey City.
For the answer, click on this link.
Another theme seems to be driving in dubious circumstances:
A man crashes his car into a deer (of course, for insurance purposes, the deer hit him,) while driving with his colleague's girlfriend -- rumors fly.
A man wins his appeal after being convicted of driving an industrial vehicle under the influence of alcohol because drunk driving laws don't apply if the vehicle doesn't go on highways and doesn't carry passengers.
A doctor specializing in erectile dysfunction suffers an embarrassing episode of his own when the guests at his daughter's wedding are the victims of a large-scale car thieving operation.
A doctor specializing in erectile dysfunction suffers an embarrassing episode of his own when the guests at his daughter's wedding are the victims of a large-scale car thieving operation.
For the answer, click on this link.
So, call your goomah, start cooking some pasta, buy some capicola, and tune in to HBO this Sunday at 9:00 p.m!
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Notes from the Animal World
Hello faithful reader. Once again, I must apologize for the vast swaths of time between blog posts. Soon you will be so used to the pauses that I will be able to stop apologizing or, conversely, perhaps I should start just posting the apologies and nothing else. Now, apologies, that's something that I could probably write more frequently.
A few nights ago I played with a little white cat, which reminded me of the endless amusement that animals can provide. But can they experience amusement? According to an article on livescience.com, "studies by various groups suggest monkeys, dogs and even rats love a good laugh." The article is a fairly hum-drum affair, mostly trying to convince the reader that animals have a sense of humor because they look and sound to humans like they are laughing. Having lived with a couple of cats for a while, I know that people love to attribute human emotion to animals by seeing human-like reactions and emotions exhibited by their pets. I am convinced that one of my cats, Calypso, was self-conscious about playing in front of people, so whenever I played with her, I would look in the other direction. Obviously absurd, but I still think I'm right. Anyway the article was worth reading just for this gem, "Although no one has investigated the possibility of rat humor, if it exists, it is likely to be heavily laced with slapstick!"
Later, I read an article on cnn.com about an elephant in Sri Lanka who was playing in a game of polo and ended up rushing off the field and crushing the opposing team's bus. Geoffrey Dobbs, the dope who organized the game was stunned. "I've been playing for seven years and it has never happened before," he said. "Elephants are quite short-sighted, and if there are sudden movements in front of them, they can sometimes be unpredictable." Really? I might think about not trying to get them to play a game where balls fly suddenly back and forth in front of their faces, huh?
Unfortunately, elephants aren't the most deadly animals in the world. It's probably the mosquito, which, by carrying and spreading viruses, kills millions of people every year. The AIDS problem in Africa? My friend Julia might yell at me for saying this, but I don't think a disease that kills as slowly as AIDS will ever get addressed until the disease that kills more, younger people at a faster rate gets solved. Luckily, there is some good news as these two articles show. Uhh, this one and this one.
As for the human animal? Well, now that you're done reading this blog, I would seriously consider reading the New York Times review of Robert's Steakhouse in the Penthouse Executive Club. I will leave you with this excerpt:
"In the end, though, the steaks are the thing. The steaks and the conversation.
A few nights ago I played with a little white cat, which reminded me of the endless amusement that animals can provide. But can they experience amusement? According to an article on livescience.com, "studies by various groups suggest monkeys, dogs and even rats love a good laugh." The article is a fairly hum-drum affair, mostly trying to convince the reader that animals have a sense of humor because they look and sound to humans like they are laughing. Having lived with a couple of cats for a while, I know that people love to attribute human emotion to animals by seeing human-like reactions and emotions exhibited by their pets. I am convinced that one of my cats, Calypso, was self-conscious about playing in front of people, so whenever I played with her, I would look in the other direction. Obviously absurd, but I still think I'm right. Anyway the article was worth reading just for this gem, "Although no one has investigated the possibility of rat humor, if it exists, it is likely to be heavily laced with slapstick!"
Later, I read an article on cnn.com about an elephant in Sri Lanka who was playing in a game of polo and ended up rushing off the field and crushing the opposing team's bus. Geoffrey Dobbs, the dope who organized the game was stunned. "I've been playing for seven years and it has never happened before," he said. "Elephants are quite short-sighted, and if there are sudden movements in front of them, they can sometimes be unpredictable." Really? I might think about not trying to get them to play a game where balls fly suddenly back and forth in front of their faces, huh?
Unfortunately, elephants aren't the most deadly animals in the world. It's probably the mosquito, which, by carrying and spreading viruses, kills millions of people every year. The AIDS problem in Africa? My friend Julia might yell at me for saying this, but I don't think a disease that kills as slowly as AIDS will ever get addressed until the disease that kills more, younger people at a faster rate gets solved. Luckily, there is some good news as these two articles show. Uhh, this one and this one.
As for the human animal? Well, now that you're done reading this blog, I would seriously consider reading the New York Times review of Robert's Steakhouse in the Penthouse Executive Club. I will leave you with this excerpt:
"In the end, though, the steaks are the thing. The steaks and the conversation.
Meet Foxy. When I visited Robert’s on Valentine’s Day in a mixed-gender group (not all that unusual at the restaurant), she approached our table to hawk neck and shoulder massages, also $20 apiece.
“Foxy,” I began, then stopped myself, wondering if I was being too familiar. “Are you and I on a first-name basis, or should I address you as Ms. Foxy?”
“You can call me Dr. Foxy,” she said.
“Is that an M.D. or a Ph.D.?”
“Yes,” she answered."
Monday, February 12, 2007
Dribs and Drabs
Although I have been advised against it, I can't resist putting together another potpourri of interesting stuff I've run across on the Internet recently. Plus, it's not like I've done a comprehensive survey about whether my readers like this type of entry -- the conclusion was conclusive, but the sample size was one.
My last blog left of with some commentary about Barak Obama, race, and politics. So, while I will include this New York Times article on the subject, and mention that I had the great pleasure of watching the original Shaft on a (the?) big screen at the MOMA the other night, and that it is actually quite a good movie which makes some interesting social and racial points, and which towards the end of the movie actually allows some black nationalist/pan-africanist characters turn a fire-hose onto some white people (as Dave Chapelle might say, "If I had my way, we'd do this in every episode!), I will start this blog with a more fanciful political issue: George Bush and the cheeseburger.
Apparently there is a war of words and petty government officials (should that be "petty petty government officials) over the birthplace of the hamburger. Both Athens, Texas and New Haven, Connecticut are claiming they their thriving communities incubated and produced the first hamburger on earth. There is a resolution in the Texas legislature right now that would declare Athens the winner of this beefy contest. Mayor John DeStefano Jr., of New Haven had this to say, "We are even the birthplace of George Bush who wants people to think he's from Texas. So yes, the hamburger is as much a New Haven original as President Bush. Get over it, Texas." The mayor of Hamburg has no comment on the situation, except to insist that he may or may not be a jelly-donut.
In other news, government spends a lot of time doing some very silly things. There is a proposal in the New York state senate to ban the use of iPods, Blackberries, and other such handheld electronica while crossing the street. This reminds me of a story I once heard about a man who was pulled over for DWPTF or Driving While Playing The Fiddle. He got off with a warning.
Finally and I hesitate to even include this, because really it's far more sad than it is funny, we end up in Florida where an appeal court upheld the conviction of a 16 year old girl and a 17 year old boy who "violated child pornography laws" after they photographed THEMSELVES naked and also "engaged in unspecified sexual behavior." Far from following the lead of such possible role models like: Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee, or Dustin Diamond of 'Screech' fame, these two kids kept the photos to themselves. But, somehow, and to me, the parental hand looms in this situation as clearly as if it were visible, the police found out about the situation and decided to prosecute. This is totally sick. I understand laws intended to protect children, but how can anyone possibly think that these two kids or any others will have their lives improved by this ridiculous misuse of the Judaical system.
Well, I don't want to keep you (or me for that matter, I'm getting sleepy!) any longer, but suffice it to say that video games make your eyes better, cell-phones can burn, and a pro-basketball player is involved in a hit-and-run birthday caking incident. Lucky for him he wasn't in Florida.
My last blog left of with some commentary about Barak Obama, race, and politics. So, while I will include this New York Times article on the subject, and mention that I had the great pleasure of watching the original Shaft on a (the?) big screen at the MOMA the other night, and that it is actually quite a good movie which makes some interesting social and racial points, and which towards the end of the movie actually allows some black nationalist/pan-africanist characters turn a fire-hose onto some white people (as Dave Chapelle might say, "If I had my way, we'd do this in every episode!), I will start this blog with a more fanciful political issue: George Bush and the cheeseburger.
Apparently there is a war of words and petty government officials (should that be "petty petty government officials) over the birthplace of the hamburger. Both Athens, Texas and New Haven, Connecticut are claiming they their thriving communities incubated and produced the first hamburger on earth. There is a resolution in the Texas legislature right now that would declare Athens the winner of this beefy contest. Mayor John DeStefano Jr., of New Haven had this to say, "We are even the birthplace of George Bush who wants people to think he's from Texas. So yes, the hamburger is as much a New Haven original as President Bush. Get over it, Texas." The mayor of Hamburg has no comment on the situation, except to insist that he may or may not be a jelly-donut.
In other news, government spends a lot of time doing some very silly things. There is a proposal in the New York state senate to ban the use of iPods, Blackberries, and other such handheld electronica while crossing the street. This reminds me of a story I once heard about a man who was pulled over for DWPTF or Driving While Playing The Fiddle. He got off with a warning.
Finally and I hesitate to even include this, because really it's far more sad than it is funny, we end up in Florida where an appeal court upheld the conviction of a 16 year old girl and a 17 year old boy who "violated child pornography laws" after they photographed THEMSELVES naked and also "engaged in unspecified sexual behavior." Far from following the lead of such possible role models like: Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee, or Dustin Diamond of 'Screech' fame, these two kids kept the photos to themselves. But, somehow, and to me, the parental hand looms in this situation as clearly as if it were visible, the police found out about the situation and decided to prosecute. This is totally sick. I understand laws intended to protect children, but how can anyone possibly think that these two kids or any others will have their lives improved by this ridiculous misuse of the Judaical system.
Well, I don't want to keep you (or me for that matter, I'm getting sleepy!) any longer, but suffice it to say that video games make your eyes better, cell-phones can burn, and a pro-basketball player is involved in a hit-and-run birthday caking incident. Lucky for him he wasn't in Florida.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Common Sense
One of my favorite columnists, Bill Simmons, thinks that sports teams should employ common-sense assistant coaches. These people, whose expertise might only have been formerly employed playing countless hours of sports video games would be on hand to point out the obvious. A couple of items in the news recently have had me feeling like people should pay me to common-sense-advise. Unfortunately, I haven't received any offers, so I guess I will just vent my common sense here.
As you may have noticed, the 2008 Presidential race has unofficially begun, with a plethora of candidates beginning their undignified scramble to Washington via New Hampshire, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, yeehaaawww! Perhaps the biggest splash so far has been made by the Democratic Senator, Joe Biden, who, on the day he declared himself a candidate, also made an inopportune comment about fellow Democratic candidate, Barak Obama. What Biden said, was that Obama was the "first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."
Of course, he immediately issued apologies left and right, calling Obama, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson to try to diffuse the backlash that threatened to destroy his campaign before it even began. There a couple things that are wrong about this story. First the specific and then the general:
How can Biden play this off by saying something like, "Oh, I called, Al and Jesse, and we had a good talk, they understand what I was trying to say." What Biden was trying to say is that Obama is young enough (and not of African-American heritage) to campaign, unencumbered by the racially divisive politics of the civil rights era. Lets see, who, if not Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson (Carol Moseley Braun or whatever her name was) could Biden have been thinking of when he said what he said? That he had to tag on Obama's aesthetic advantages over those two could not have made his apologies any easier to take.
The link above in the parenthesis is to a New York Times article whose grand thesis was that Barack Obama actually seems to be getting less support from Black people than Hilary Clinton is -- the tone -- shock. I really don't understand how this is a shock. It's an unfortunate catch 22 that any black candidate with a realistic chance of winning a major political contest (Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice (sounds like a mexican dish,) Barack Obama, that guy from Pennsylvania, etc.) must be people who appeal greatly to the 90% or so of the population that isn't black. Not to say that it is impossible for a black politician who appeals to white people appeal to black people, but... I think it's a lot easier for a white politician to have that type of cross-over appeal. And after all, Hilary Clinton's husband is in the African American Hall of Fame (whoever wrote the article felt the need to include this gem, "this is not in any way an effort to say that Clinton is an African American") while Obama's boyfriend is not even out of the closet... no, I mean, Obama's wife isn't a celebrity.
But the general problem with this whole thing is that the campaign creeping earlier and earlier is really quite damaging. Biden is just the first of the candidates to have to weather the storm of political scandal. I can't see any of the candidates making it through the year and a few months before the primaries actually begin to be held without some seriously damaging comment, story, photograph, etc. -- not unless they are incredibly boring people who are totally uninspiring to the hordes of bored news reporters (and I guess bloggers,) who are now being forced to cover this nonsense for longer than ever before. We're going to end up scaring off most of the good candidates (to be candidates) and then eliminating or damaging the rest of them during the marathon primary season, so by the time it's time to have a "meaningful debate between the two parties" the two candidates are going to be so scandal ridden and exhausted that our chance of actually having that debate will be even less above zero than it usually it.
My second common sense story has to do with Michael Vick, a football player being caught in an airport with a water bottle that had a secret compartment in it. The whole world went nuts until it was discovered that there wasn't actually any marijuana in it. Since then everyone has been falling over their own lack of cojones to apologize to Vick and to point out that they and everyone else were to fast to jump to conclusions. No one, no where has even paused to pose the question: if Vick wasn't smuggling weed, what was the secret compartment for? Hmmm, here's a FREAKISHLY quick athlete who is being paid millions and millions of dollars that are contingent on his remaining FREAKISHLY fast. Gee, what else, other than weed, might he be smuggling?
As you may have noticed, the 2008 Presidential race has unofficially begun, with a plethora of candidates beginning their undignified scramble to Washington via New Hampshire, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, yeehaaawww! Perhaps the biggest splash so far has been made by the Democratic Senator, Joe Biden, who, on the day he declared himself a candidate, also made an inopportune comment about fellow Democratic candidate, Barak Obama. What Biden said, was that Obama was the "first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."
Of course, he immediately issued apologies left and right, calling Obama, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson to try to diffuse the backlash that threatened to destroy his campaign before it even began. There a couple things that are wrong about this story. First the specific and then the general:
How can Biden play this off by saying something like, "Oh, I called, Al and Jesse, and we had a good talk, they understand what I was trying to say." What Biden was trying to say is that Obama is young enough (and not of African-American heritage) to campaign, unencumbered by the racially divisive politics of the civil rights era. Lets see, who, if not Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson (Carol Moseley Braun or whatever her name was) could Biden have been thinking of when he said what he said? That he had to tag on Obama's aesthetic advantages over those two could not have made his apologies any easier to take.
The link above in the parenthesis is to a New York Times article whose grand thesis was that Barack Obama actually seems to be getting less support from Black people than Hilary Clinton is -- the tone -- shock. I really don't understand how this is a shock. It's an unfortunate catch 22 that any black candidate with a realistic chance of winning a major political contest (Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice (sounds like a mexican dish,) Barack Obama, that guy from Pennsylvania, etc.) must be people who appeal greatly to the 90% or so of the population that isn't black. Not to say that it is impossible for a black politician who appeals to white people appeal to black people, but... I think it's a lot easier for a white politician to have that type of cross-over appeal. And after all, Hilary Clinton's husband is in the African American Hall of Fame (whoever wrote the article felt the need to include this gem, "this is not in any way an effort to say that Clinton is an African American") while Obama's boyfriend is not even out of the closet... no, I mean, Obama's wife isn't a celebrity.
But the general problem with this whole thing is that the campaign creeping earlier and earlier is really quite damaging. Biden is just the first of the candidates to have to weather the storm of political scandal. I can't see any of the candidates making it through the year and a few months before the primaries actually begin to be held without some seriously damaging comment, story, photograph, etc. -- not unless they are incredibly boring people who are totally uninspiring to the hordes of bored news reporters (and I guess bloggers,) who are now being forced to cover this nonsense for longer than ever before. We're going to end up scaring off most of the good candidates (to be candidates) and then eliminating or damaging the rest of them during the marathon primary season, so by the time it's time to have a "meaningful debate between the two parties" the two candidates are going to be so scandal ridden and exhausted that our chance of actually having that debate will be even less above zero than it usually it.
My second common sense story has to do with Michael Vick, a football player being caught in an airport with a water bottle that had a secret compartment in it. The whole world went nuts until it was discovered that there wasn't actually any marijuana in it. Since then everyone has been falling over their own lack of cojones to apologize to Vick and to point out that they and everyone else were to fast to jump to conclusions. No one, no where has even paused to pose the question: if Vick wasn't smuggling weed, what was the secret compartment for? Hmmm, here's a FREAKISHLY quick athlete who is being paid millions and millions of dollars that are contingent on his remaining FREAKISHLY fast. Gee, what else, other than weed, might he be smuggling?
Friday, January 19, 2007
The Subway and the Soviet Union
Riding the subway home from work today, my eye rested on a whole bunch of other eyes. No, don't worry dad, I wasn't making eye contact in the New York subway system, these eyes were on an advertisement put out by the MTA.
The ad, part of the MTA's continuing campaign to prevent potential terrorist attacks features a resolutely multi-racial set of eyes, which we are supposed to believe represent the population of the five boroughs. Although they are on average, less bloodshot, sleepy, and suspicious than what I would expect from a random sampling, I am willing to suspend my disbelief, and take them for what they are meant to be.
As for what they are meant to be doing, I am not so sure. The text below the eyes reads, "There are 16 million eyes in the city. We're counting on all of them." The message I believe, is that if we are to prevent another attack in New York, we (New York residents, commuters, and visitors,) must all remain constantly vigilant -- keeping our eyes open for suspicious behavior at all times.
I have a couple of issues with this message. The first one is simply that I'm not sure if it will work. One of the most interesting things about the September 11 hijackers is that on September 11, up until the moment they rose from their seats and announced that they were terrorists, they hadn't done anything that was illegal certainly, or even all that suspicious. It wasn't illegal to book one-way tickets for a group travelling together. It wasn't illegal to have box-cutters, not even in your carry-on. Of course there have been other examples of people doing highly suspicious things and then trying to do something violent. A prime example would have to be that ten foot tall dude who was caught trying to set his shoe on fire! But, my point is just that you don't necessarily have to be suspicious to blow something up, and even less so if you were trying to do something even creepier, involving a chemical or biological weapon. Even if we assume that someone attacking New York City is going to be acting a little bit funny before he or she attacks, the question remains... how is that any different from a normal New York commuter?
My second issue with the ad is less tangible. It just feels a little creepy to me. As I looked at the eyes in the subway today, a name came into my mind: Pavlik Morozov. I took a Russian history course taught by Greg Hand in high school, and along with the former Soviet Republics (you can remember these by the easy mnemonic device, "ELBUM GAA TUTKK R") was the story of Pavlik Morozov. Little Pavlik, as the story goes, did his duty as a loyal citizen of the Soviet Union, and at the age of 12, denounced his father to the authorities for some type of traitorous behavior. His father was tried and convicted, and sent to Siberia, or Gulag, or Gaol, or whatever the Russians called the pokey back then (1930s I believe.) Angry members of the family killed Pavlik, who was then held up as a martyred exemplar of the ideal Soviet youth all over the country. School-children learned his story, and operas were written and performed, but I'm afraid -- not listened to (even Soviets are human.)
Okay, so, there is clearly a difference between one government teaching children to betray their families and another asking commuters to keep their eyes open and report what they see. But, what can I say, Morozov was the name that flew into my mind on my way home today. I don't want to keep my eyes open on my commute home and I don't want other people keeping their eyes open at me. I just don't think it's worth it. I'm not sure how much it will improve our chances of not being attacked by a foreigner and I'm pretty sure that creating an heightened atmosphere of distrust (and let's not forget that people would not actually be looking at me, they would be looking at light-brown skinned people...) can only inspire more violent acts between Americans. Maybe this would get filed as violent crime and not terrorism, but I don't think that's a trade that I would like to make.
The ad, part of the MTA's continuing campaign to prevent potential terrorist attacks features a resolutely multi-racial set of eyes, which we are supposed to believe represent the population of the five boroughs. Although they are on average, less bloodshot, sleepy, and suspicious than what I would expect from a random sampling, I am willing to suspend my disbelief, and take them for what they are meant to be.
As for what they are meant to be doing, I am not so sure. The text below the eyes reads, "There are 16 million eyes in the city. We're counting on all of them." The message I believe, is that if we are to prevent another attack in New York, we (New York residents, commuters, and visitors,) must all remain constantly vigilant -- keeping our eyes open for suspicious behavior at all times.
I have a couple of issues with this message. The first one is simply that I'm not sure if it will work. One of the most interesting things about the September 11 hijackers is that on September 11, up until the moment they rose from their seats and announced that they were terrorists, they hadn't done anything that was illegal certainly, or even all that suspicious. It wasn't illegal to book one-way tickets for a group travelling together. It wasn't illegal to have box-cutters, not even in your carry-on. Of course there have been other examples of people doing highly suspicious things and then trying to do something violent. A prime example would have to be that ten foot tall dude who was caught trying to set his shoe on fire! But, my point is just that you don't necessarily have to be suspicious to blow something up, and even less so if you were trying to do something even creepier, involving a chemical or biological weapon. Even if we assume that someone attacking New York City is going to be acting a little bit funny before he or she attacks, the question remains... how is that any different from a normal New York commuter?
My second issue with the ad is less tangible. It just feels a little creepy to me. As I looked at the eyes in the subway today, a name came into my mind: Pavlik Morozov. I took a Russian history course taught by Greg Hand in high school, and along with the former Soviet Republics (you can remember these by the easy mnemonic device, "ELBUM GAA TUTKK R") was the story of Pavlik Morozov. Little Pavlik, as the story goes, did his duty as a loyal citizen of the Soviet Union, and at the age of 12, denounced his father to the authorities for some type of traitorous behavior. His father was tried and convicted, and sent to Siberia, or Gulag, or Gaol, or whatever the Russians called the pokey back then (1930s I believe.) Angry members of the family killed Pavlik, who was then held up as a martyred exemplar of the ideal Soviet youth all over the country. School-children learned his story, and operas were written and performed, but I'm afraid -- not listened to (even Soviets are human.)
Okay, so, there is clearly a difference between one government teaching children to betray their families and another asking commuters to keep their eyes open and report what they see. But, what can I say, Morozov was the name that flew into my mind on my way home today. I don't want to keep my eyes open on my commute home and I don't want other people keeping their eyes open at me. I just don't think it's worth it. I'm not sure how much it will improve our chances of not being attacked by a foreigner and I'm pretty sure that creating an heightened atmosphere of distrust (and let's not forget that people would not actually be looking at me, they would be looking at light-brown skinned people...) can only inspire more violent acts between Americans. Maybe this would get filed as violent crime and not terrorism, but I don't think that's a trade that I would like to make.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
This is a blog. A what? A blog. Oh, a blog...
Most of my blog entries are not really appropriate for a blog. The conclusion I reached in an earlier entry (also, not really a true blog entry...) is that an authentic blog should be a survey of the websites that the author has been visiting lately -- a compendium if I will. And, it looks like today, finally, I will.
Recently a big news story in the New York metropolitan was the mysterious "natural gas" smell that covered the city and its neighbors a few days ago. As almost always happens when a funny smell occurs, people immediately blame New Jersey. We New Jerseyans get a little bit prickly about this. I particularly enjoyed a quote from Stan H. Eason, a spokesperson for Jersey City, who said, "'We’re going to get some industrial fans out and blow the smell back over to New York,'"
In other news from my home state, the state legislation is seriously considering making some important changes to the constitution. Nope, not gay marriage. No, not the death penalty. No... it was a five letter word!
Aside from horrid smells, and word choice, some of you might have noticed Bush's national announcement of the "troop surge" in Iraq. My first instinct was to question whether or not our Commander in Chief needed to make such a public display of increasing our troop numbers by a paltry ~12 percent? Having been convinced by one of my trusted advisers that this was, indeed, appropriate, I've distilled my objection to this: seeing as basically no one believes that 20,000 troops is going to make a significant change in the military situation in Iraq, then Bush' motivation must have been to make a significant change in the political situation in the United States, and I'm not really sure he should be trying to make political hay while the kids die. On this subject (and this is where the link comes in...) I read a New York Times column by Maureen Dowd (which is "reprinted" on someone else's blog, because you have to pay to read certain Times articles on-line these days.) In it she tries to psychoanalyze President Bush by making an elaborate allegory to his college days. She describes Bush in the following way:
"Junior was known as an extremely aggressive player in the venerable Parker Brothers board game, a brutal contest that requires bluster and bluffing as you invade countries, all the while betraying alliances. Notably, it’s almost impossible to win Risk and conquer the world if you start the game in the Middle East, because you’re surrounded by enemies."
Here's my beef. All psychological or military accuracy aside, if you are going to waste almost 24 column inches of the New York Times with a board game allegory, you should really get your facts about the game straight. You cannot bluff while playing Risk. I've never seen anyone attempt to bluster their way into a better position. Nor are there usually any alliances to betray. Risk is actually a game that is skewed to the defensive (when two players role equal numbers on the dice, the defender wins,) and rewards good positioning and overwhelming numerical superiority.
Sorry about that... it's just something I'm passionate about, and I hate when someone sullies such an important topic with politics.
I went to an art show in SOHO that my friend and ex-housemate Amanda Thackray was exhibiting at. The show was fairly political, intermittently sophomoric, and to my unrefined mind, over-priced. But, it did provoke the following conversational gem, which I wish someone had overheard and reported on this nifty website:
Ezra: What is that terrible noise?
Noise: WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Amanda (with no hesitation): I think it's either a fire alarm or art.
The curse of the yellow piece: a woman was hospitalized after playing poorly in a game of Trivial Pursuit. Which would suggest that perhaps it isn't such a trivial game after all. I love the fact that the person who reported on the incident felt the need to report that the woman in question was, in fact, playing as the yellow piece. I especially enjoyed that because I ALWAYS play as the yellow piece. I think it's because yellow is the color of the history questions or maybe because Nero Wolfe's pajamas are yellow.
My motivations are sometimes less than clear. But if you are interested in history, especially if you have ancestors who immigrated to this continent from England, then you might be interested in this little history thing, which doubles as my last link of the day. Enjoy!
Recently a big news story in the New York metropolitan was the mysterious "natural gas" smell that covered the city and its neighbors a few days ago. As almost always happens when a funny smell occurs, people immediately blame New Jersey. We New Jerseyans get a little bit prickly about this. I particularly enjoyed a quote from Stan H. Eason, a spokesperson for Jersey City, who said, "'We’re going to get some industrial fans out and blow the smell back over to New York,'"
In other news from my home state, the state legislation is seriously considering making some important changes to the constitution. Nope, not gay marriage. No, not the death penalty. No... it was a five letter word!
Aside from horrid smells, and word choice, some of you might have noticed Bush's national announcement of the "troop surge" in Iraq. My first instinct was to question whether or not our Commander in Chief needed to make such a public display of increasing our troop numbers by a paltry ~12 percent? Having been convinced by one of my trusted advisers that this was, indeed, appropriate, I've distilled my objection to this: seeing as basically no one believes that 20,000 troops is going to make a significant change in the military situation in Iraq, then Bush' motivation must have been to make a significant change in the political situation in the United States, and I'm not really sure he should be trying to make political hay while the kids die. On this subject (and this is where the link comes in...) I read a New York Times column by Maureen Dowd (which is "reprinted" on someone else's blog, because you have to pay to read certain Times articles on-line these days.) In it she tries to psychoanalyze President Bush by making an elaborate allegory to his college days. She describes Bush in the following way:
"Junior was known as an extremely aggressive player in the venerable Parker Brothers board game, a brutal contest that requires bluster and bluffing as you invade countries, all the while betraying alliances. Notably, it’s almost impossible to win Risk and conquer the world if you start the game in the Middle East, because you’re surrounded by enemies."
Here's my beef. All psychological or military accuracy aside, if you are going to waste almost 24 column inches of the New York Times with a board game allegory, you should really get your facts about the game straight. You cannot bluff while playing Risk. I've never seen anyone attempt to bluster their way into a better position. Nor are there usually any alliances to betray. Risk is actually a game that is skewed to the defensive (when two players role equal numbers on the dice, the defender wins,) and rewards good positioning and overwhelming numerical superiority.
Sorry about that... it's just something I'm passionate about, and I hate when someone sullies such an important topic with politics.
I went to an art show in SOHO that my friend and ex-housemate Amanda Thackray was exhibiting at. The show was fairly political, intermittently sophomoric, and to my unrefined mind, over-priced. But, it did provoke the following conversational gem, which I wish someone had overheard and reported on this nifty website:
Ezra: What is that terrible noise?
Noise: WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Amanda (with no hesitation): I think it's either a fire alarm or art.
The curse of the yellow piece: a woman was hospitalized after playing poorly in a game of Trivial Pursuit. Which would suggest that perhaps it isn't such a trivial game after all. I love the fact that the person who reported on the incident felt the need to report that the woman in question was, in fact, playing as the yellow piece. I especially enjoyed that because I ALWAYS play as the yellow piece. I think it's because yellow is the color of the history questions or maybe because Nero Wolfe's pajamas are yellow.
My motivations are sometimes less than clear. But if you are interested in history, especially if you have ancestors who immigrated to this continent from England, then you might be interested in this little history thing, which doubles as my last link of the day. Enjoy!
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
References Volume 2
And I'm back... sorry, this whole "working for a living" thing really constrains my "life work" of blogging. Without any further ado: the continuation of my serial work on references.
As a history student, I was trained to surround myself with references. One of my less inspired professors actually told his class that their final papers would be graded partly on their gross number of references. He also had a tendency to literally (and when I say literally, I don't mean figuratively) froth at the mouth while yelling about the "namby-pamby" liberals who voted for Nader and lost the 2000 election for Gore! He was a nice man, but very intense.
"Fine," I thought to myself. A footnote is just a simple way of showing the reader where you learned whatever you are writing and is "required" unless you are stating something that is "common knowledge." When writing a history paper, you can footnote almost every sentence. After all, most of the time, I had very little knowledge of the subject before I began to learn about it, so all I had to do was pay attention to where I learned each piece of information, and I could cite it. I averaged around ten footnotes per page... by far the most in the class... and, surprise, surprise, that was quite enough for me to earn a top grade from my reference obsessed professor.
That Freshman year effort of mine was not quite as good as my old chess tutor who claimed that he wrote a senior thesis which consisted of one sentence of body text and footnotes for the remainder of the paper. Irreverent, yes, but I think there is some inkling of a point behind the smart-assness. My guess is that my tutor was trying to make the point that any thesis paper is really just a single statement with TONS of time spent trying to show your reader how you came to believe in the truth of that statement. I'm pretty sure that my point was just that number of footnotes was a silly game to play, but that I could play it to extremes if need be.
Later, when I was writing my senior thesis, I found myself constantly troubled by footnotes. My problem was that I was writing about an obscure (although it was once as well-known as the OJ affair) murder case from the 1920s. Before I discovered it on Google, I had never heard of the Hall-Mills case and I had lived and studied history in the town where it took place for 4 years! So, clearly, I couldn't assume that ANY of the details of the case were "commonly known." And the twenties? Well, all I really knew was that the market crashed in '29, that Hoover was president then, and that Wilson had started the decade; that prohibition was on and that Marilyn Monroe walked like "Jello on springs!" (although come to think of it, surely that's an anachronistic line... wasn't Jello a product of the '50s?) I want everyone to enjoy reading my writing, so I certainly wasn't going to assume more general knowledge than that.
Once again, I felt like I should really footnote almost everything. But, when writing a hundred and something page paper, there's no way I could possibly do that. Nor would I have wanted to, because even at their most interesting footnotes break up the narrative flow of the paper; the story in the history. But as a result I spent most of my time while writing, feeling like I was making shit up. I don't think I really was, but without a footnote to point to, who's to say I wasn't?
As a history student, I was trained to surround myself with references. One of my less inspired professors actually told his class that their final papers would be graded partly on their gross number of references. He also had a tendency to literally (and when I say literally, I don't mean figuratively) froth at the mouth while yelling about the "namby-pamby" liberals who voted for Nader and lost the 2000 election for Gore! He was a nice man, but very intense.
"Fine," I thought to myself. A footnote is just a simple way of showing the reader where you learned whatever you are writing and is "required" unless you are stating something that is "common knowledge." When writing a history paper, you can footnote almost every sentence. After all, most of the time, I had very little knowledge of the subject before I began to learn about it, so all I had to do was pay attention to where I learned each piece of information, and I could cite it. I averaged around ten footnotes per page... by far the most in the class... and, surprise, surprise, that was quite enough for me to earn a top grade from my reference obsessed professor.
That Freshman year effort of mine was not quite as good as my old chess tutor who claimed that he wrote a senior thesis which consisted of one sentence of body text and footnotes for the remainder of the paper. Irreverent, yes, but I think there is some inkling of a point behind the smart-assness. My guess is that my tutor was trying to make the point that any thesis paper is really just a single statement with TONS of time spent trying to show your reader how you came to believe in the truth of that statement. I'm pretty sure that my point was just that number of footnotes was a silly game to play, but that I could play it to extremes if need be.
Later, when I was writing my senior thesis, I found myself constantly troubled by footnotes. My problem was that I was writing about an obscure (although it was once as well-known as the OJ affair) murder case from the 1920s. Before I discovered it on Google, I had never heard of the Hall-Mills case and I had lived and studied history in the town where it took place for 4 years! So, clearly, I couldn't assume that ANY of the details of the case were "commonly known." And the twenties? Well, all I really knew was that the market crashed in '29, that Hoover was president then, and that Wilson had started the decade; that prohibition was on and that Marilyn Monroe walked like "Jello on springs!" (although come to think of it, surely that's an anachronistic line... wasn't Jello a product of the '50s?) I want everyone to enjoy reading my writing, so I certainly wasn't going to assume more general knowledge than that.
Once again, I felt like I should really footnote almost everything. But, when writing a hundred and something page paper, there's no way I could possibly do that. Nor would I have wanted to, because even at their most interesting footnotes break up the narrative flow of the paper; the story in the history. But as a result I spent most of my time while writing, feeling like I was making shit up. I don't think I really was, but without a footnote to point to, who's to say I wasn't?
Friday, December 08, 2006
Top Ten Hip-Hop Albums
Low End Theory, A Tribe Called Quest, 1991.
This was the album that got me into hip-hop. The two rappers, Phife and Q-Tip, interact more seamlessly then any other duo I've ever heard.
"If your hair and eyes were real, I wouldn't have dissed you, but since it was bought, I had to dismiss you. So if you can't achieve it, they why not try and leave it, if you can't extend it then you might as well suspend it, if you can't braid it, next thing to do is fade it, I asked who did your hair and you told me Diane made it."
Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, Pharcyde, 1992.
The first album that I turned off when my parents got home, this California classic is a mixture of pot-head humor, perverted posturing, and posse hip-hop.
"If I were President, I would not carry no spare change, I would just re-arrange the whole government structure, cause there seems to be something that's messing with the flucture of the money, it's not coming to me."
The Score, Fugees, 1996.
Best enjoyed during the summer months, this album features Lauren Hill (yes, she of Sister Act II) bringing by far the hardest and best female rapping ever. Add in a little bit of Jamaican feel and a reference to Rutgers, and you've got a classic.
"Even after all my logic and my theories, I adds a motherfucker so you ignorant niggas hear me." and "While you imitating Al Capone, I be Nina Simone, defecating on your microphone."
Black Star, Black Star, 1998.
I got a copy of this collaboration between Brooklyn MCs Mos Def and Talib Kweli on an audio tape in High School, and it was going strong until a year and a half ago when I got a car sans-tape player. A measure of how much I like this album; I bought the cd.
"Thoughts that people put in the air, places where you can get murdered over a glare, but everything's fair, it's a paradox we call reality, so keeping it real will make you a casualty of abnormal normality, killers born naturally like Mikey and Mallory, not knowing the way will get you capped like a NBA salary.
The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem, 2000.
After racistly resisting Eminem for years, I found myself in South Africa, where I perceived that racism is not always a good thing. I made a copy of my housemates Marshall Mathers LP, and it became almost my constant companion for five months. Dr. Dre's simple but addictive beats keep your head nodding in time while you proverbially shake it at Eminem's surprisingly nuanced twisted humor.
"I murder a rhyme, one word at a time, you never, heard of a mind as perverted as mine, you better, get rid of that nine, it ain't gonna help, what good's it gonna do against a man that strangles himself?"
Stillmatic, Nas, 2001.
Nas' true talent is in street-story telling. That said, Stillmatic contains a diss song, Ether. In it, he destroys Jay-Z with the second most devastating line in beefing history,* "I rock hos, Y'all rock fellas." (Jay-Z's record label was called Roc-a-fella records at that point.)
*The most devastating single line is of course when Eminem completely ruined Will Smith forever with, "Will Smith don't gotta cuss to sell records, well I do. So fuck him and fuck you too."
Chicken and Beer, Ludacris, 2003.
Beyond the sheer genius of the title, beyond the intermingling of simplicity and wit, beyond everything else that could be said about this album, remains the sweet fact that Snoop Dogg, as a guest rapper on the track, "Who Let These Hos in my Room?" describes Bill O'Reilly as a "white-bread, chicken shit, nigger." I don't know what that means, but it can't be good.
I'm not going to put a quote here, because I have plans to annotate my favorite song from Chicken and Beer, "Hip-Hop Quotables."
Late Registration, Kanye West, 2005.
From track three to track eleven, this album is seamlessly great. Not a bad song, not a song out of place, it all works perfectly together. Admittedly, it is the music that makes this album so great -- but, whatever else can be said about Kanye as a rapper, he is extremely accessible; I find myself knowing every word to entire songs.
"The pressure's on but guess who ain't gonna crack, pardon me I had to laugh at that, how could you falter, when you the rock of Gibraltar, I had to get off the boat so I can walk on water, this ain't no tall order this is nothing to me, difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week, I do this in my sleep, I sold kilos of coke, I'm guessing I can sell cds, I'm not a business man, I'm a business, man... let me handle my business, damn."*
* of course, this, the best bit on the album is not Kanye, but guest rapper Jay-Z.
Lord Willin', The Clipse, 2002.
These guys' whole schtick is that they're primarily drug dealers who only rap as a hobby... and for some reason (probably that the Neptunes did the beats for their whole album,) it works.
"What I look like spending my nights in jail, I could never be a thug - they don't dress this well. Ride in VA, reside in VA, mostly likely when I die, I'm gonna die in VA. Virginia's for lovers, but trust there's hate here, for out-of-towners who think they gonna move weight here. Ironic the place that I'm making figures at, that was the same land they used to hang niggers at."
Ready to Die, The Notorious B.I.G., 1994.
Clearly, I'm a little bit behind the times on this one, having bought the album six years after Biggie's death. That said, it really stands the test of time pretty well. Which just plays into a blog which I won't write (now at least,) that the reason New York and California hip-hop has lost out to all the other regions, is that they can't move on from the styles of their martyred leaders.
"So low, Caviar, shark bar, uh uhn, strictly sex that's sweaty and left-over spaghetti, I know you're used to slow cd's and Dom P's, but tonight it's eight-tracks and six-packs while I hit that."
The albums are listed in the order that I discovered them.
The rules:
1. These albums all had to be albums that I owned (legally or illegally) and listened to obsessively at one point. (Excluding: The Chronic, Doggystyle, all of Tupac, and lots of other all time greats.)
2. They had to be albums whose lyrical content was primarily rap. (Excluding: The Miseducation of Lauren Hill, Baduism, Get Lifted, etc.)
3. The memorable quotes had to be ones that I could quote from memory... but I did check on a few of them, just so I didn't make any unbelievably embarrassing mistakes.
This was the album that got me into hip-hop. The two rappers, Phife and Q-Tip, interact more seamlessly then any other duo I've ever heard.
"If your hair and eyes were real, I wouldn't have dissed you, but since it was bought, I had to dismiss you. So if you can't achieve it, they why not try and leave it, if you can't extend it then you might as well suspend it, if you can't braid it, next thing to do is fade it, I asked who did your hair and you told me Diane made it."
Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, Pharcyde, 1992.
The first album that I turned off when my parents got home, this California classic is a mixture of pot-head humor, perverted posturing, and posse hip-hop.
"If I were President, I would not carry no spare change, I would just re-arrange the whole government structure, cause there seems to be something that's messing with the flucture of the money, it's not coming to me."
The Score, Fugees, 1996.
Best enjoyed during the summer months, this album features Lauren Hill (yes, she of Sister Act II) bringing by far the hardest and best female rapping ever. Add in a little bit of Jamaican feel and a reference to Rutgers, and you've got a classic.
"Even after all my logic and my theories, I adds a motherfucker so you ignorant niggas hear me." and "While you imitating Al Capone, I be Nina Simone, defecating on your microphone."
Black Star, Black Star, 1998.
I got a copy of this collaboration between Brooklyn MCs Mos Def and Talib Kweli on an audio tape in High School, and it was going strong until a year and a half ago when I got a car sans-tape player. A measure of how much I like this album; I bought the cd.
"Thoughts that people put in the air, places where you can get murdered over a glare, but everything's fair, it's a paradox we call reality, so keeping it real will make you a casualty of abnormal normality, killers born naturally like Mikey and Mallory, not knowing the way will get you capped like a NBA salary.
The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem, 2000.
After racistly resisting Eminem for years, I found myself in South Africa, where I perceived that racism is not always a good thing. I made a copy of my housemates Marshall Mathers LP, and it became almost my constant companion for five months. Dr. Dre's simple but addictive beats keep your head nodding in time while you proverbially shake it at Eminem's surprisingly nuanced twisted humor.
"I murder a rhyme, one word at a time, you never, heard of a mind as perverted as mine, you better, get rid of that nine, it ain't gonna help, what good's it gonna do against a man that strangles himself?"
Stillmatic, Nas, 2001.
Nas' true talent is in street-story telling. That said, Stillmatic contains a diss song, Ether. In it, he destroys Jay-Z with the second most devastating line in beefing history,* "I rock hos, Y'all rock fellas." (Jay-Z's record label was called Roc-a-fella records at that point.)
*The most devastating single line is of course when Eminem completely ruined Will Smith forever with, "Will Smith don't gotta cuss to sell records, well I do. So fuck him and fuck you too."
Chicken and Beer, Ludacris, 2003.
Beyond the sheer genius of the title, beyond the intermingling of simplicity and wit, beyond everything else that could be said about this album, remains the sweet fact that Snoop Dogg, as a guest rapper on the track, "Who Let These Hos in my Room?" describes Bill O'Reilly as a "white-bread, chicken shit, nigger." I don't know what that means, but it can't be good.
I'm not going to put a quote here, because I have plans to annotate my favorite song from Chicken and Beer, "Hip-Hop Quotables."
Late Registration, Kanye West, 2005.
From track three to track eleven, this album is seamlessly great. Not a bad song, not a song out of place, it all works perfectly together. Admittedly, it is the music that makes this album so great -- but, whatever else can be said about Kanye as a rapper, he is extremely accessible; I find myself knowing every word to entire songs.
"The pressure's on but guess who ain't gonna crack, pardon me I had to laugh at that, how could you falter, when you the rock of Gibraltar, I had to get off the boat so I can walk on water, this ain't no tall order this is nothing to me, difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week, I do this in my sleep, I sold kilos of coke, I'm guessing I can sell cds, I'm not a business man, I'm a business, man... let me handle my business, damn."*
* of course, this, the best bit on the album is not Kanye, but guest rapper Jay-Z.
Lord Willin', The Clipse, 2002.
These guys' whole schtick is that they're primarily drug dealers who only rap as a hobby... and for some reason (probably that the Neptunes did the beats for their whole album,) it works.
"What I look like spending my nights in jail, I could never be a thug - they don't dress this well. Ride in VA, reside in VA, mostly likely when I die, I'm gonna die in VA. Virginia's for lovers, but trust there's hate here, for out-of-towners who think they gonna move weight here. Ironic the place that I'm making figures at, that was the same land they used to hang niggers at."
Ready to Die, The Notorious B.I.G., 1994.
Clearly, I'm a little bit behind the times on this one, having bought the album six years after Biggie's death. That said, it really stands the test of time pretty well. Which just plays into a blog which I won't write (now at least,) that the reason New York and California hip-hop has lost out to all the other regions, is that they can't move on from the styles of their martyred leaders.
"So low, Caviar, shark bar, uh uhn, strictly sex that's sweaty and left-over spaghetti, I know you're used to slow cd's and Dom P's, but tonight it's eight-tracks and six-packs while I hit that."
The albums are listed in the order that I discovered them.
The rules:
1. These albums all had to be albums that I owned (legally or illegally) and listened to obsessively at one point. (Excluding: The Chronic, Doggystyle, all of Tupac, and lots of other all time greats.)
2. They had to be albums whose lyrical content was primarily rap. (Excluding: The Miseducation of Lauren Hill, Baduism, Get Lifted, etc.)
3. The memorable quotes had to be ones that I could quote from memory... but I did check on a few of them, just so I didn't make any unbelievably embarrassing mistakes.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Thoughts on Thanksgiving and the Latest Bond Flick
According to the New York Times, "For thousands of years communal meals have been a key to building cultures," and Thanksgiving is our chance to relive an older time; a simpler time. A time when people could celebrate the coming of winter with a show of overabundance. A time when Turkeys grew with ducks and chickens inside of them, and cranberries grew in cans.
With this in mind, shortly after my family's Soul Food Thanksgiving, I set off to the movie theater with two of my oldest friends to watch the latest offering in the James Bond series; Casino Royale.
Casino Royale is the Ian Fleming James Bond novel, and this movie is faithful to that concept. Which is admittedly a little weird, since, not only are we supposed to be introduced to a character who we all know so well already, but also one whose movies are so intertwined with the technology of the day and the near future. Since nobody wants to see a 'period' Bond film -- one made today, but set in the 60's, we have to deal with the fact that Bond of Casino Royale, a prequel to Dr. No (the first Bond Movie made,) drives a WAY more modern car than the Bond of Dr. No... even though... well, you get it.
Casino Royale also introduces the newest actor to take on the mantle of James Bond. I had only ever seen Daniel Craig in Munich, a movie that I disliked, so I wasn't so hot on him to start out. Plus, he's blond. And Bond shouldn't really be blond, should he?
The jury is still out on Craig as Bond. And here's why: he didn't actually play James Bond in this movie -- not a fully formed Bond, anyway. The movie intentionally set out to create an arc (I'm not sure what the hell that term means, but I've heard people (Christopher Moltisanti, I'm afraid) use it, so why can't I) wherein only at the last moment of the movie would James Bond become The James Bond. This was signified by only foreshadowing the famous Bond theme song until the ending credits. Which, by the way, was infuriating... like going to a ball game and not singing the national anthem until the game was over. There were several other lines that seemed to be in the movie just to hammer across the point that we weren't watching the real James Bond, not yet, anyway. For example, at one point, a waiter asks Bond if he would like his martini shaken or stirred and instead of the classic, "Shaken... not stirred," Craig does a single take at the camera and replies, "Does it look like I give a damn."
Even more unBondlike, perhaps, is that throughout the first two thirds of the movie, he also seems to be having trouble getting laid. He actually leaves a woman in his apartment to pursue her boyfriend to Miami. Early in the movie -- this was the first sign that Bond wasn't quite himself -- the old Bond would have (and often did) made love to someone else's woman and then chase after him. This unformed Bond was also much more temperamental, showing both more anger and more insecurity than the veteran Bond.
The New York Times review claims that "this new Bond marks a decisive break with the contemporary iterations." For my part, I hope that this is not the case. And I think it won't be. With the final line of the movie, "Bond, James Bond," and the playing of the theme song, I think the movie makers were telling us Bond lovers (don't take that the wrong way) that with the next edition in the series, Bond will return, more or less as he always has been. Which is good. More than anything, Bond symbolizes immortality. And for there to be a beginning to Bond hints that there might, one day, be an end to Bond. Which (unless they film it soon with Sean Connery,) I would never, never want to see.
For supplementary reading, check out this cool review in the Hindustan Times! Also note that in the original book, the featured high stakes game was Baccarat, not Poker. But, given the current poker craze, I think the directors made a smart decision... but did they really have to explain what a tell is?
With this in mind, shortly after my family's Soul Food Thanksgiving, I set off to the movie theater with two of my oldest friends to watch the latest offering in the James Bond series; Casino Royale.
Casino Royale is the Ian Fleming James Bond novel, and this movie is faithful to that concept. Which is admittedly a little weird, since, not only are we supposed to be introduced to a character who we all know so well already, but also one whose movies are so intertwined with the technology of the day and the near future. Since nobody wants to see a 'period' Bond film -- one made today, but set in the 60's, we have to deal with the fact that Bond of Casino Royale, a prequel to Dr. No (the first Bond Movie made,) drives a WAY more modern car than the Bond of Dr. No... even though... well, you get it.
Casino Royale also introduces the newest actor to take on the mantle of James Bond. I had only ever seen Daniel Craig in Munich, a movie that I disliked, so I wasn't so hot on him to start out. Plus, he's blond. And Bond shouldn't really be blond, should he?
The jury is still out on Craig as Bond. And here's why: he didn't actually play James Bond in this movie -- not a fully formed Bond, anyway. The movie intentionally set out to create an arc (I'm not sure what the hell that term means, but I've heard people (Christopher Moltisanti, I'm afraid) use it, so why can't I) wherein only at the last moment of the movie would James Bond become The James Bond. This was signified by only foreshadowing the famous Bond theme song until the ending credits. Which, by the way, was infuriating... like going to a ball game and not singing the national anthem until the game was over. There were several other lines that seemed to be in the movie just to hammer across the point that we weren't watching the real James Bond, not yet, anyway. For example, at one point, a waiter asks Bond if he would like his martini shaken or stirred and instead of the classic, "Shaken... not stirred," Craig does a single take at the camera and replies, "Does it look like I give a damn."
Even more unBondlike, perhaps, is that throughout the first two thirds of the movie, he also seems to be having trouble getting laid. He actually leaves a woman in his apartment to pursue her boyfriend to Miami. Early in the movie -- this was the first sign that Bond wasn't quite himself -- the old Bond would have (and often did) made love to someone else's woman and then chase after him. This unformed Bond was also much more temperamental, showing both more anger and more insecurity than the veteran Bond.
The New York Times review claims that "this new Bond marks a decisive break with the contemporary iterations." For my part, I hope that this is not the case. And I think it won't be. With the final line of the movie, "Bond, James Bond," and the playing of the theme song, I think the movie makers were telling us Bond lovers (don't take that the wrong way) that with the next edition in the series, Bond will return, more or less as he always has been. Which is good. More than anything, Bond symbolizes immortality. And for there to be a beginning to Bond hints that there might, one day, be an end to Bond. Which (unless they film it soon with Sean Connery,) I would never, never want to see.
For supplementary reading, check out this cool review in the Hindustan Times! Also note that in the original book, the featured high stakes game was Baccarat, not Poker. But, given the current poker craze, I think the directors made a smart decision... but did they really have to explain what a tell is?
Monday, November 20, 2006
References Volume 1
Even before my last, far too lengthy entry about the no-longer-undefeated Rutgers Scarlet Knights football team, I had begun an entry about a pervasive theme in my life: references. After a few weeks of jotting down ideas, I now have enough to swing a cat. So, for all of our sakes, I will explore the role of references in my life in an episodic manner reminiscent of Dickens (although he was getting paid by the word) or Tarantino (although he must have been getting paid by the ounce of blood.)
Since I moved to Brooklyn I've been meeting a lot of new people and getting a chance to hang out with some old friends who I haven't seen in a while. One thing I've noticed is that when I speak to almost all of my oldest and closest friends, we speak in a language specific to our friendship. It is a language riddled with references to past conversations, events, arguments, and movies we've seen together. Of the people who I meet, the ones who stick, tend to be the ones who manage to build a shared referential language in the shortest amount of time. Sometimes it only takes a single conversation!
Here are just a few of the most common movie references that have entered my vernacular and they're suggested uses, enjoy:
After realizing that I've just explained something that really didn't need the elucidation, "That's more or less the thing."
To excuse inexcusably predictable behavior, "Don't give me a gun, you know what I'mon do." and "What happened? They put me in a room with Joey Zazza. What do you think happened? I bit the guy's ear off."
After I put my foot in my mouth, "Street slang is an increasingly accepted form of expression. Most of the feminine pronouns to contain mocking, but not necessarily with misogynistic undertones."
To express disagreement, "I do not think that means what you think it means."
Or confusion, "I can only express puzzlement, bordering on alarm."
Impatience is actually expressed most clearly through quoting, not a movie, but an anonymous audience member at one viewing of a movie, "Lose the shoes lady."
When confronted with a frustratingly badly designed mechanism, I tend to fall back on, "You mean, you can recall it, like a defective pinto."
In the car, "Four lefts is a circle, you idiot."
If someone asks how much I want of something, I may respond, "Not a whole lot, just a little lot with nothing on it."
When asked to do something that I should have no problem doing, but for some reason am unwilling to do, I lower my voice into almost subsonic levels, and rumble, "We are the United States Government, we do not do that sort of thing."
From The Scottish Movie comes, "I told you it was my island."
At the dinner table, "It's got scallions."
For when you're in a tight spot, the simple answer is: "We're in a tight spot," but if you have a companion who you want to scare a little, try, "The lord says he can get me out of this one... but he's pretty sure, you're fucked."
Other movie quotes have managed to stick in the vernacular without actually having a discernible meaning. Prime among these is the highly dubious, "I'm your Huckleberry" and "Don't eat the penis. It's just garnish..." you'd be surprised how often that one gets used.
Finally, there's the always useful, "We didn't do that, did we?"
Please leave a comment with a movie quote that you use in everyday conversation or one that I do, but forgot to include!
Since I moved to Brooklyn I've been meeting a lot of new people and getting a chance to hang out with some old friends who I haven't seen in a while. One thing I've noticed is that when I speak to almost all of my oldest and closest friends, we speak in a language specific to our friendship. It is a language riddled with references to past conversations, events, arguments, and movies we've seen together. Of the people who I meet, the ones who stick, tend to be the ones who manage to build a shared referential language in the shortest amount of time. Sometimes it only takes a single conversation!
Here are just a few of the most common movie references that have entered my vernacular and they're suggested uses, enjoy:
After realizing that I've just explained something that really didn't need the elucidation, "That's more or less the thing."
To excuse inexcusably predictable behavior, "Don't give me a gun, you know what I'mon do." and "What happened? They put me in a room with Joey Zazza. What do you think happened? I bit the guy's ear off."
After I put my foot in my mouth, "Street slang is an increasingly accepted form of expression. Most of the feminine pronouns to contain mocking, but not necessarily with misogynistic undertones."
To express disagreement, "I do not think that means what you think it means."
Or confusion, "I can only express puzzlement, bordering on alarm."
Impatience is actually expressed most clearly through quoting, not a movie, but an anonymous audience member at one viewing of a movie, "Lose the shoes lady."
When confronted with a frustratingly badly designed mechanism, I tend to fall back on, "You mean, you can recall it, like a defective pinto."
In the car, "Four lefts is a circle, you idiot."
If someone asks how much I want of something, I may respond, "Not a whole lot, just a little lot with nothing on it."
When asked to do something that I should have no problem doing, but for some reason am unwilling to do, I lower my voice into almost subsonic levels, and rumble, "We are the United States Government, we do not do that sort of thing."
From The Scottish Movie comes, "I told you it was my island."
At the dinner table, "It's got scallions."
For when you're in a tight spot, the simple answer is: "We're in a tight spot," but if you have a companion who you want to scare a little, try, "The lord says he can get me out of this one... but he's pretty sure, you're fucked."
Other movie quotes have managed to stick in the vernacular without actually having a discernible meaning. Prime among these is the highly dubious, "I'm your Huckleberry" and "Don't eat the penis. It's just garnish..." you'd be surprised how often that one gets used.
Finally, there's the always useful, "We didn't do that, did we?"
Please leave a comment with a movie quote that you use in everyday conversation or one that I do, but forgot to include!
Friday, November 10, 2006
The Banks Ain't Never Shook Like That
I suppose literally everything is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. You never had breakfast this morning before nor will you ever have it again. Reading this entry is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. That said, I think we all intuitively know what a once-in-a-lifetime experience really is, and I have to report that being in New Brunswick last night to watch Rutgers beat Louisville was exactly that.
The first sign that New Brunswick was going to be a little different last night came in the form of a "mobile precinct" set up directly outside Stuff Yer Face, the beer and Stromboli joint where Mario Batali got his start. Cops were everywhere; on the corners and outside every bar. Surprisingly, at twenty minutes till game time there were only lines at a few of the bars. Maybe this was because Rutgers had added bleachers in the open part of the horseshoe shaped stadium to accommodate the overflowing crowd. Or maybe I've forgotten what it is like to live within five minutes walk of all of the bars. Nonetheless, it filled up quickly.
It was nuts. Crazy. Insane. Unbelievable. Brendan and I watched the game inside the packed to capacity Golden Rail, a bar that we have happily been the only customers in to watch some previous games. People were so attentive to the game that the bathroom lines were only full during commercials. The crowd in the bar was chanting Rutgers cheers... although I do have to report that the school's fight song (a very simple chant "R U Rah Rah, R U Rah Rah, Hoo Rah, Hoo Rah, Rutgers Rah. Upstream Red Team, Red Team Upstream. Rah (hoo) Rah (hoo) Rutgers Rah) seemed to have become to sophisticated for the current football fans, so we were reduced to screaming ARRRRRR!!!! YOUUUUUUU!!!! over and over again.
Before the game there was a really special moment. William Seward a 110 year old Rutgers alum and former water boy for the Rutgers football team (he was there when Paul Robeson played!) was interviewed and sang the Rutgers alma mater. In the bar, we couldn't tell that he was singing the alma mater, but when he pumped his fist holding a Rutgers pennant at the end of the song, I thought the windows were going to blow out we cheered so loudly!
The first half it seemed like everything was going wrong. The only solace was found in a shot of James Gandolfini on the sideline. With Tony Soprano on our side, how could we lose? The second half, things started going our way. In the last few minutes of the game I was jumping up and down screaming at the top of my lungs, and hi-fiving strangers like there was no tomorrow. When we won, the jumping continued, but the hi-fiving turned into bear hugs and comradely punches. I wanted to jump through the ceiling (and felt like I could) and at the same time I wanted to fall to the floor (which I definitely could have, but refrained from doing.)
An hour later, the scene outside was bizarre. The intersection of Easton Avenue and Somerset Street was jammed full of hoarse, screaming fans, triumphantly honking cars, and -- in case you were wondering what all of those policemen from earlier in the night were doing -- cops standing around with goofy grins on their faces watching over the celebrations with benevolence.
Classic Rutgers: Watching the game in a male dominated, dingy, dimly lit bar, drinking Yeungling for a dollar.
Classic Rutgers: We start the game out trying to do something that we don't do very well on offense (throw the ball) while neglecting the thing that we do really really well (run the ball) and end our first two drives with a punt and an interception. On defense we give up a couple of big pass plays and seem to be unable to get pressure on the quarterback. On special teams, we give up an enormous 100 yard kick return for a touchdown and then somehow manage to block an extra point attempt... and snatching a negative from the jaws of a good play... let a Louisville player pick up the ball
and run it into the end zone for two points. All of a sudden its the second quarter and we're down 25-7.
Old Rutgers: The television coverage repeatedly shows scenes from New York; the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State building (lit up Scarlet Nights Red,) and does a series of interviews on the streets of New York. We in the bar respond
by giving the television screen the finger and cursing at the network.
I suppose many of you might be thinking, "So what? Team wins big game. We get it." I think there are two reasons why this means so much. The first reason is personal. I never had a sports team to root for growing up. Not only did I not inherit allegiances to sports teams in the way that many people do (except of course for the sadly defunct Brooklyn Dodgers) but also, in Central Jersey, there is no clear geographic solution. You can root for Philadelphia teams or you can root for New York teams (many actually play in New Jersey.) You could root for the Devils (woefully bad until they got to be very, very good by playing the most boring style of hockey in the universe) and you can root for the Nets (which I do) but they're now moving to Brooklyn. When I got to Rutgers, I decided, the hell with it, they're terrible, but they are now MY terrible team. So, I became a fan.
I went to many home games. They were actually quite fun. There is nothing quite like being in an empty stadium, screaming with the other 500 people crazy enough to be out there. What were we screaming about? Usually we were cursing the ineptitude of our own players and coaches. I'll never forget the game when my section spent the first quarter and a half cursing at our starting quarterback, until we realized that he wasn't even playing. That must have been a real trip for him. After losing the starting job he has to sit on the bench and listen to us insult him anyway! Watching Rutgers football for 6 years has been an exercise in controlled pessimism. No lead can ever be big enough to be safe. No play can be safe enough that Rutgers hasn't managed to give up the ball, give up the first down, give up the big play, get called for a big penalty, somehow blow the game. Even at 8-0, until we won last night, I didn't feel secure. It wasn't real. We hadn't played anyone really good. Louisville and West Virginia were still looming. We could still blow it somehow. Under all those layers of New Rutgers, Old Rutgers was still lurking. Today, I don't feel that way anymore.
The second reason that last night was a big deal is that it is actually really important for New Jersey. I know a lot of people view big intercollegiate sports as something that detracts from the real purpose of the University. I have a bunch of arguments against that proposition in general and maybe I will blab about those at another time. But, specifically for Rutgers? Rutgers has always had an image problem. Where I went to high school, the reaction to someone matriculating at Rutgers was akin to there being a death in the family. Even within the Rutgers community, there is more talk of "the RU Screw" than there is of anything positive. We have never been able to either attract good students from out-of-state or get the good students from New Jersey to stay in state and go to Rutgers. This will help. I promise. It isn't necessarily rational and it might not be a good thing that football has this power, but I promise that in the next few years, brilliant students from afar will start showing up and those from New Jersey will look around and decide to stay in state and go to Rutgers.
And remember, what's good for Rutgers is good for New Jersey, and as goes New Jersey, so goes the nation. So, 9 down, 3 to go! Go RU.
The first sign that New Brunswick was going to be a little different last night came in the form of a "mobile precinct" set up directly outside Stuff Yer Face, the beer and Stromboli joint where Mario Batali got his start. Cops were everywhere; on the corners and outside every bar. Surprisingly, at twenty minutes till game time there were only lines at a few of the bars. Maybe this was because Rutgers had added bleachers in the open part of the horseshoe shaped stadium to accommodate the overflowing crowd. Or maybe I've forgotten what it is like to live within five minutes walk of all of the bars. Nonetheless, it filled up quickly.
It was nuts. Crazy. Insane. Unbelievable. Brendan and I watched the game inside the packed to capacity Golden Rail, a bar that we have happily been the only customers in to watch some previous games. People were so attentive to the game that the bathroom lines were only full during commercials. The crowd in the bar was chanting Rutgers cheers... although I do have to report that the school's fight song (a very simple chant "R U Rah Rah, R U Rah Rah, Hoo Rah, Hoo Rah, Rutgers Rah. Upstream Red Team, Red Team Upstream. Rah (hoo) Rah (hoo) Rutgers Rah) seemed to have become to sophisticated for the current football fans, so we were reduced to screaming ARRRRRR!!!! YOUUUUUUU!!!! over and over again.
Before the game there was a really special moment. William Seward a 110 year old Rutgers alum and former water boy for the Rutgers football team (he was there when Paul Robeson played!) was interviewed and sang the Rutgers alma mater. In the bar, we couldn't tell that he was singing the alma mater, but when he pumped his fist holding a Rutgers pennant at the end of the song, I thought the windows were going to blow out we cheered so loudly!
The first half it seemed like everything was going wrong. The only solace was found in a shot of James Gandolfini on the sideline. With Tony Soprano on our side, how could we lose? The second half, things started going our way. In the last few minutes of the game I was jumping up and down screaming at the top of my lungs, and hi-fiving strangers like there was no tomorrow. When we won, the jumping continued, but the hi-fiving turned into bear hugs and comradely punches. I wanted to jump through the ceiling (and felt like I could) and at the same time I wanted to fall to the floor (which I definitely could have, but refrained from doing.)
An hour later, the scene outside was bizarre. The intersection of Easton Avenue and Somerset Street was jammed full of hoarse, screaming fans, triumphantly honking cars, and -- in case you were wondering what all of those policemen from earlier in the night were doing -- cops standing around with goofy grins on their faces watching over the celebrations with benevolence.
The game was a perfect mix of Classic Rutgers and New Rutgers.
Classic Rutgers: Watching the game in a male dominated, dingy, dimly lit bar, drinking Yeungling for a dollar.
New Rutgers: It was packed to the gills, standing room only, and it stayed that way throughout the game.
Classic Rutgers: We start the game out trying to do something that we don't do very well on offense (throw the ball) while neglecting the thing that we do really really well (run the ball) and end our first two drives with a punt and an interception. On defense we give up a couple of big pass plays and seem to be unable to get pressure on the quarterback. On special teams, we give up an enormous 100 yard kick return for a touchdown and then somehow manage to block an extra point attempt... and snatching a negative from the jaws of a good play... let a Louisville player pick up the ball
and run it into the end zone for two points. All of a sudden its the second quarter and we're down 25-7.
New Rutgers: We didn't panic. Our offense started making some plays, and our defense decided it had seen enough. In the second half Louisville had 6 possessions. They didn't score once. On five out of those six times Louisville had the ball, they went "three and out"-- they weren't able to advance the ball ten yards in three plays, so they punted the ball and gave it to our offense.
All the little things that used to kill Rutgers started going our way. The fumbles, the bad calls, the tipped balls. But the funny thing was that instead of disappearing, they kept happening, but with different results. For instance, Freshman Kenny Britt catches a pass and runs 67 yards down the sideline until he is inevitably stripped of the ball (Old Rutgers,) but recovers his own fumble (New Rutgers.) Jeremy Ito misses a field goal with less than half a minute left in the game (Old Rutgers,) but a Louisville defender jumped offsides on the play, giving us another chance and making the field goal five yards closer -- Result? Rutgers (New) wins the game on a 28 yard Ito kick that flies right through the middle of the uprights.
Old Rutgers: The television coverage repeatedly shows scenes from New York; the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State building (lit up Scarlet Nights Red,) and does a series of interviews on the streets of New York. We in the bar respond
by giving the television screen the finger and cursing at the network.
New Rutgers: The final call of the game, "... and it's Pandemonium in Piscataway!" as the crowd rushed the field will probably be remembered for a long time.
I suppose many of you might be thinking, "So what? Team wins big game. We get it." I think there are two reasons why this means so much. The first reason is personal. I never had a sports team to root for growing up. Not only did I not inherit allegiances to sports teams in the way that many people do (except of course for the sadly defunct Brooklyn Dodgers) but also, in Central Jersey, there is no clear geographic solution. You can root for Philadelphia teams or you can root for New York teams (many actually play in New Jersey.) You could root for the Devils (woefully bad until they got to be very, very good by playing the most boring style of hockey in the universe) and you can root for the Nets (which I do) but they're now moving to Brooklyn. When I got to Rutgers, I decided, the hell with it, they're terrible, but they are now MY terrible team. So, I became a fan.
I went to many home games. They were actually quite fun. There is nothing quite like being in an empty stadium, screaming with the other 500 people crazy enough to be out there. What were we screaming about? Usually we were cursing the ineptitude of our own players and coaches. I'll never forget the game when my section spent the first quarter and a half cursing at our starting quarterback, until we realized that he wasn't even playing. That must have been a real trip for him. After losing the starting job he has to sit on the bench and listen to us insult him anyway! Watching Rutgers football for 6 years has been an exercise in controlled pessimism. No lead can ever be big enough to be safe. No play can be safe enough that Rutgers hasn't managed to give up the ball, give up the first down, give up the big play, get called for a big penalty, somehow blow the game. Even at 8-0, until we won last night, I didn't feel secure. It wasn't real. We hadn't played anyone really good. Louisville and West Virginia were still looming. We could still blow it somehow. Under all those layers of New Rutgers, Old Rutgers was still lurking. Today, I don't feel that way anymore.
The second reason that last night was a big deal is that it is actually really important for New Jersey. I know a lot of people view big intercollegiate sports as something that detracts from the real purpose of the University. I have a bunch of arguments against that proposition in general and maybe I will blab about those at another time. But, specifically for Rutgers? Rutgers has always had an image problem. Where I went to high school, the reaction to someone matriculating at Rutgers was akin to there being a death in the family. Even within the Rutgers community, there is more talk of "the RU Screw" than there is of anything positive. We have never been able to either attract good students from out-of-state or get the good students from New Jersey to stay in state and go to Rutgers. This will help. I promise. It isn't necessarily rational and it might not be a good thing that football has this power, but I promise that in the next few years, brilliant students from afar will start showing up and those from New Jersey will look around and decide to stay in state and go to Rutgers.
And remember, what's good for Rutgers is good for New Jersey, and as goes New Jersey, so goes the nation. So, 9 down, 3 to go! Go RU.
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