Harvard decided not to renew their coach after a 12-16 season. At, say, Duke, that would be a disastrous season. Coach K would be roasted alive and the Cameron Crazies would become the Cameron Cannibals. But Frank Sullivan, the coach, had an overall record of 178-245 in 16 seasons at Cambridge Community College. So, in fact, this year's .428 percentage was .8 percent *better* than his career .420 winning record.
How mercurial, dear Ivy League Bastion. Perhaps the Ivory Tower wants to get in on the game? Recruit noted intellectual players like J, Ph.D.? You get down with your bad self, Stanford of the East.
So how long has it been since they made the big dance? Will next year's seniors be able to gather round the campfire and tell the freshmen stories of NCAA tournament shenanigans? Maybe the red-shirted seniors? Let me get on my reading glasses, and peruse this article... It says that the last time the Crimson made the bracket was.. two thousand and-- Where is that?
"Harvard last made the NCAA Tournament in 1946."
1946?!
That's right. People who saw the Harvard team last ball it up weren't grindin', they were jitterbuggin'. Diplomats from the LEAGUE OF NATIONS watched the game (possibly). India was part of Britain. Bobby Bonds, father of today's elder statesmen of steroid question dodging, Barry Bonds was born. But hey, at least maybe some of the players were scouted for the League? Y'know, go pro?
Oh, wait, no. The NBA wasn't founded for another couple months.
So Harvard, here's my suggestion: Don't form a search committee for a new coach. Why bother? Instead, just let the intramural basketball team currently leading in the standings play for you at the Div I level. That way, you save some money, more kids get to experience the rush of competition, and it's not like you'll do much worse.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Maureen Dowd's Career And Other Cunning Stunts
Sports analogies are illuminating in a piece of writing when they recast complex phenomena--like the Democratic Primary--in the more immediately recognizable terms of positions and objectives, raw talent and charisma, the value of teamwork versus individual achievement, , underdogs and favorites, triumph over adversity, et cetera.
Maureen Dowd's latest op-ed gem, "Where Is His Right Hook?" manages to take a fairly common and straightforward species of sports analogy--'politics is like a prize fight' (or a wrestling match, or a dogfight...)--and make it almost completely incoherent.
A good rule of thumb in journalism (even op-eds) is that the headline, the lede, and the pull-quote should give the reader a fairly good idea what the article is about. In this case, the aforementioned headline set up the following lede:
"If Hillary is in touch with her masculine side, Obama is in touch with his feminine side."
and the pull-quote was....Well, I don't know exactly what the pull-quote was, because I threw away my copy and nytimes.com wants me to pay to read it again.* I'm fairly sure the pull quote said something like "he rolls over while she takes another shot", which is not only ambiguous across about a thousand contexts that the Times would no doubt find "unfit to print", but also brings the pronoun-to-noun ratio in the headline, lede and pull-quote up to 5:2.
Like I said, I can't be sure this was the exact wording of the pull-quote. It might have been a reference to Sex and the City--one can never be sure.
Her writing (and I use that term charitably) invariably seems like it comes straight from her adorable little diary in which she confides her deepest, darkest secrets along with notes about super-hottie Centrists, Third-Wave feminism, and bulk makeup orders.
*though, becoming a member of "Times Select" would allow me to root through their Op-Ed archives and reconstruct just how John Tierney managed to make Libertarianism fit on a postage stamp
Maureen Dowd's latest op-ed gem, "Where Is His Right Hook?" manages to take a fairly common and straightforward species of sports analogy--'politics is like a prize fight' (or a wrestling match, or a dogfight...)--and make it almost completely incoherent.
A good rule of thumb in journalism (even op-eds) is that the headline, the lede, and the pull-quote should give the reader a fairly good idea what the article is about. In this case, the aforementioned headline set up the following lede:
"If Hillary is in touch with her masculine side, Obama is in touch with his feminine side."
and the pull-quote was....Well, I don't know exactly what the pull-quote was, because I threw away my copy and nytimes.com wants me to pay to read it again.* I'm fairly sure the pull quote said something like "he rolls over while she takes another shot", which is not only ambiguous across about a thousand contexts that the Times would no doubt find "unfit to print", but also brings the pronoun-to-noun ratio in the headline, lede and pull-quote up to 5:2.
Like I said, I can't be sure this was the exact wording of the pull-quote. It might have been a reference to Sex and the City--one can never be sure.
Her writing (and I use that term charitably) invariably seems like it comes straight from her adorable little diary in which she confides her deepest, darkest secrets along with notes about super-hottie Centrists, Third-Wave feminism, and bulk makeup orders.
*though, becoming a member of "Times Select" would allow me to root through their Op-Ed archives and reconstruct just how John Tierney managed to make Libertarianism fit on a postage stamp
Monday, March 05, 2007
March Madness
Stereotypes are idioms, and idioms sure can be useful. For instance, this weekend when I met a women's rugby player, I filed away that fact and all its connotations. And so when she mentioned she was Dutch, I was able to say with nary a pause, "ah, then it makes sense that you want to stick fingers in dikes."
Speaking of, it's March. To some of my friends who are interested in walking a mile in the other guy's shoes (and pants), that means it's March Manness[sic]. But for us here at The Enfranchised, it means it's time for basketball.
(For those of you a bit confused about my introduction and segue, allow me to quote Aristotle. In Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, Ch. 7 Eth.1098a23-24, we find, "What is the difference between cunnilingus and dunking? You don't have to dunk to play woman's basketball." A bit awkward phrasing, yes. But remember that comedic timing was discovered at the same time as perspective in 2-D art, only in the Renaissance.)
And so, this month, we're getting into it. Sports sports sports here at the 'Franchised. College, Pro, PAL, men's, women's unisex, hot horse-on-horse action (if we find horses that play polo, y'know, on other horses. Come to think of it, that's Foster's assignment). You name it, we'll consider considering it.
Speaking of, it's March. To some of my friends who are interested in walking a mile in the other guy's shoes (and pants), that means it's March Manness[sic]. But for us here at The Enfranchised, it means it's time for basketball.
(For those of you a bit confused about my introduction and segue, allow me to quote Aristotle. In Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, Ch. 7 Eth.1098a23-24, we find, "What is the difference between cunnilingus and dunking? You don't have to dunk to play woman's basketball." A bit awkward phrasing, yes. But remember that comedic timing was discovered at the same time as perspective in 2-D art, only in the Renaissance.)
And so, this month, we're getting into it. Sports sports sports here at the 'Franchised. College, Pro, PAL, men's, women's unisex, hot horse-on-horse action (if we find horses that play polo, y'know, on other horses. Come to think of it, that's Foster's assignment). You name it, we'll consider considering it.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
In the Beginning Was the Nerd...Redux
Some extraneous thoughts that will not be running in my coverage of New York ComicCon in The Onion - A.V. Club this week:
-I moved out of my comic book phase about 10 years ago, but I must admit, spending time at this convention made me all kinds of nostalgic. The writing seems to be much better, and much more thematically diverse than it was even in '96, when I followed more mutant storylines than an episode of The Surreal Life.
-From the looks of it, these nerds are getting laid.
-In my story, I mentioned Eli Roth, the Lynchean auteur behind such masterpieces as Hostel, Cabin Fever, and Hostel 2. Here's something else I learned about him during his appearance at ComicCon: Roth takes a good deal of pride in being a young man of Jewish descent who has managed to crack his way into the tough world of Hollyood.
-Jon Landis, director of An American Werewolf in London, Animal House, Blues Brothers, Three Amigos! and Coming to America, was one of a panel of six legendary horror directors that drew about a tenth as many fanboys as Roth and the chick from Sorority Boys.
-Peter Mayhew, aka Chewbacca, turned me away when I asked for a quick interview. "No press," he said. Actually, his publicist said it. Mayhew himself shook his head and said, "GrrrrrrrreeerhrrWhrrrhrhrBuhhhhrrhrahGaaaaaaaaaaauaua"
-I moved out of my comic book phase about 10 years ago, but I must admit, spending time at this convention made me all kinds of nostalgic. The writing seems to be much better, and much more thematically diverse than it was even in '96, when I followed more mutant storylines than an episode of The Surreal Life.
-From the looks of it, these nerds are getting laid.
-In my story, I mentioned Eli Roth, the Lynchean auteur behind such masterpieces as Hostel, Cabin Fever, and Hostel 2. Here's something else I learned about him during his appearance at ComicCon: Roth takes a good deal of pride in being a young man of Jewish descent who has managed to crack his way into the tough world of Hollyood.
-Jon Landis, director of An American Werewolf in London, Animal House, Blues Brothers, Three Amigos! and Coming to America, was one of a panel of six legendary horror directors that drew about a tenth as many fanboys as Roth and the chick from Sorority Boys.
-Peter Mayhew, aka Chewbacca, turned me away when I asked for a quick interview. "No press," he said. Actually, his publicist said it. Mayhew himself shook his head and said, "GrrrrrrrreeerhrrWhrrrhrhrBuhhhhrrhrahGaaaaaaaaaaauaua"
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
That mother(superior)frocker!
Have you heard of the unlucky abbot
with a cock that was shaped like a rabbit?
It fit in no one,
till one day a nun
with a cunt like a hutch dropped her habit.
-D"vagina like a warren? No, that's not it..."an
Breaking News: Hampshiregate
The Democratic Party headquarters in New Hampshire were broken into!
Even the staid New York Times couldn't resist saying "Burglars have broken into Democratic Party headquarters. No, you're not having a flashback to 1972 and the infamous event [boring New York Times recounting of "facts" "sensically"]". So I'm just going to take this as a warm-up, a practice: write a few jokes, and then dissect them. Your (better) jokes in comments.
Like I said, your (funnier) jokes in the comments.
Even the staid New York Times couldn't resist saying "Burglars have broken into Democratic Party headquarters. No, you're not having a flashback to 1972 and the infamous event [boring New York Times recounting of "facts" "sensically"]". So I'm just going to take this as a warm-up, a practice: write a few jokes, and then dissect them. Your (better) jokes in comments.
- "Will this lead to John Lynch's downfall?" (he's the governor of New Hampshire; yes I looked it up)
- "It was probably Candians." Look, I don't think it's funny, but The Leviathan will. Not because of NH's proximity to Canadians, but because some nationalities send him all a-stitches. E.g., "Luxembourgians". I can hear him laughing already.
- "Maybe it's Zombie Nixon!" Wait, is there any other kind of Nixon?
- "New Hampshire? Isn't that in Vermont?" Look, it's late. Here at The Enfranchised, it's timely, funny, sensical: pick 1.
- "Maybe it was the Libertarians." That's not a joke; it's a warning. Those libertarians are fucking fierce, and they're coming for you. Consider yourself alerted.
Like I said, your (funnier) jokes in the comments.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The Great State of New Jersey
Pride sometimes comes late.
So often politicians refer to the Great State of, when I was pretty sure they couldn't possibly mean it. Really? Ohio? I mean, I'm down with Dayton, but any state that has both Cleveland *and* Cincinnati? As a teenager, I filtered out "The Great State of" as propaganda.
Today, I found my faith.
Never again will I make fun of my home state. At least not until we do something stupid, funny, stupidly funny, or funnelly stupid (funnelly stupid is like the traffic flows around Garden State Parkway toll plazas).
Or this.
So often politicians refer to the Great State of
Today, I found my faith.
- From wikipedia's Hackettstown, NJ article: "It is believed that Hackettstown was named after Samuel Hackett, a prominent landowner who allegedly "contributed liberally to the liquid refreshments on the christening of a new hotel, in order to secure the name which, before this, had been Helms' Mills or Musconetcong".
Long before all sorts of complex trips for Congressmen, New Jerseyans appealed to the common man by enabling his debilitating alcoholism. Bribery of the people, for the people, by our town's namesake. - Of course, no Wikipedia article would be complete without a droll recounting of statistics. So, let's learn about Teterboro, New Jersey: "As of April 1, 2006, out of a 2004 Census estimated population of 18 in Teterboro, there were 39 registered voters (216.7% of the population, vs. 55.4% in all of Bergen County)." This section is, I fear, written with tongue wholly unassociated with cheek. The only proviso is a caveat in the introduction of the article: "It is worth noting that the 2000 census failed to count any of the residents of the Vincent Place housing units who had moved into the newly built homes in 1999. The uncounted residents, including the Mayor and all four Council members, would help make up a projected tripling of the population enumerated by the census."
- And then, there's my hometown, New Providence, whence we learn "In 1759, the balcony of the Presbyterian Church in the town collapsed. The lack of serious injuries was declared by Divine Providence, and the town was renamed to New Providence." Which is a crappy name for a town. But considering the original name was Turkeytown, even historical theological architectual failures are a great excuse to pick a new name. Just imagine if that name had survived until high school sports had been invented. "Well, the Turkeytown High Turkeys sure are turkeying it up today, those turkeys. Oh, and they're ugly."
Never again will I make fun of my home state. At least not until we do something stupid, funny, stupidly funny, or funnelly stupid (funnelly stupid is like the traffic flows around Garden State Parkway toll plazas).
Or this.
Monday, February 26, 2007
The Academy Is...
The Oscars happened. And it turns out that all Martin Scorsese had to do to win one was show Leo in the missionary position and hurl Martin Sheen off a building.
The Departed was as good as a movie gets without being a great movie. (Interestingly, As Good As It Gets is also probably as good as it gets without being great.) Its relative dominance confirms what everybody already knows about the Academy: popularity contest.
But it's not as bad as the rest of pop media. If the E! Channel is the House of Representatives, the Academy is the Senate. It's still about a layer of symbolic bullshit draped awkwardly over the concerns of a small group of moneyed special interests (in this case the studios and their PR teams, who lobby every bit as hard as Abramoff), but whereas the House is tethered to its constituency tightly enough that they have to hop-to with every fickle shift in the polling data, the Senate operates at just a bit of a remove. So the Senators (the Academy members, hear me out on this analogy) become less concerned with earning constituents' pats on the back as they are with earning their own pats on the back.
To wit:
Babel, yet further proof of Alejandro González Iñárritu's ability to convert three half-finished screenplays into an overlong "socially conscious" yarn via arbitrary (and usually implausible) connections. See also: Syriana
The Queen: Another opportunity for the Academy to remind everybody how much they loved Princess Di.
Little Miss Sunshine: Indie filmmaking by numbers. Somebody should tell these guys that if merely mentioning the names Proust and Nietzsche in a piece of writing were enough to make it intellectually stimulating, The Enfranchised would be bigger than The Huffington Post.
Letters from Iwo Jima: I haven't seen this one, but I'm pretty sure we won that battle, planted a big ass flag, and everybody involved went back to their business with much merriment. Truly inspirational.
and of course The Departed. Great source material, a taut adaptation, top-notch performances (including Alec Baldwin whose 'type' seems to have become 'playing against type') and slick direction. Only problem is that it's about a third as good as Goodfellas, Casino, Raging Bull, or Taxi Driver (or Brick, or Children of Men, or Pan's Labyrinth for that matter).
Hey, at least people will stop saying things like, "Scorsese doesn't hold a candle to Academy Award (R) winner Paul Haggis. I mean, did you see Haggis on Entourage?" and "Screw Scorcese, how about Academy Award winner (R) James Cameron. I mean, did you see Cameron on Entourage?)
The Departed was as good as a movie gets without being a great movie. (Interestingly, As Good As It Gets is also probably as good as it gets without being great.) Its relative dominance confirms what everybody already knows about the Academy: popularity contest.
But it's not as bad as the rest of pop media. If the E! Channel is the House of Representatives, the Academy is the Senate. It's still about a layer of symbolic bullshit draped awkwardly over the concerns of a small group of moneyed special interests (in this case the studios and their PR teams, who lobby every bit as hard as Abramoff), but whereas the House is tethered to its constituency tightly enough that they have to hop-to with every fickle shift in the polling data, the Senate operates at just a bit of a remove. So the Senators (the Academy members, hear me out on this analogy) become less concerned with earning constituents' pats on the back as they are with earning their own pats on the back.
To wit:
Babel, yet further proof of Alejandro González Iñárritu's ability to convert three half-finished screenplays into an overlong "socially conscious" yarn via arbitrary (and usually implausible) connections. See also: Syriana
The Queen: Another opportunity for the Academy to remind everybody how much they loved Princess Di.
Little Miss Sunshine: Indie filmmaking by numbers. Somebody should tell these guys that if merely mentioning the names Proust and Nietzsche in a piece of writing were enough to make it intellectually stimulating, The Enfranchised would be bigger than The Huffington Post.
Letters from Iwo Jima: I haven't seen this one, but I'm pretty sure we won that battle, planted a big ass flag, and everybody involved went back to their business with much merriment. Truly inspirational.
and of course The Departed. Great source material, a taut adaptation, top-notch performances (including Alec Baldwin whose 'type' seems to have become 'playing against type') and slick direction. Only problem is that it's about a third as good as Goodfellas, Casino, Raging Bull, or Taxi Driver (or Brick, or Children of Men, or Pan's Labyrinth for that matter).
Hey, at least people will stop saying things like, "Scorsese doesn't hold a candle to Academy Award (R) winner Paul Haggis. I mean, did you see Haggis on Entourage?" and "Screw Scorcese, how about Academy Award winner (R) James Cameron. I mean, did you see Cameron on Entourage?)
Friday, February 23, 2007
The Enfranchised Moratorium: Britney Bashing
I propose a moratorium on making fun of Britney Spears.
It feels a bit like Johnny Lawrence continuing to pile up the roundhouse kicks on Daniel-san even after the rest of his skeleton-clad Cobra Kai compatriots think he's had enough.
As much as it begrudges me to admit, Chuck Klosterman was exactly right about Spears when he profiled her for Esquire all those years ago. She is (or at least was) the least self-reflective person in the history of the world. And now you are witnessing the end of that, the shitty consequences of living a decade as a product of your handlers and nothing more.
One doesn't have to be a consumer of tabloid stories to know that there is a difference between criticizing celebrity excess and kicking a 26-year-old girl from Arkansas when she's down. It's the celebrity fanboy equivalent of the madonna-whore complex that got us here. There are other options besides unalloyed reverence and no-holds-barred hatred.
Let's leave the poor girl alone, she has no fucking clue what's happening to her.
It feels a bit like Johnny Lawrence continuing to pile up the roundhouse kicks on Daniel-san even after the rest of his skeleton-clad Cobra Kai compatriots think he's had enough.
As much as it begrudges me to admit, Chuck Klosterman was exactly right about Spears when he profiled her for Esquire all those years ago. She is (or at least was) the least self-reflective person in the history of the world. And now you are witnessing the end of that, the shitty consequences of living a decade as a product of your handlers and nothing more.
One doesn't have to be a consumer of tabloid stories to know that there is a difference between criticizing celebrity excess and kicking a 26-year-old girl from Arkansas when she's down. It's the celebrity fanboy equivalent of the madonna-whore complex that got us here. There are other options besides unalloyed reverence and no-holds-barred hatred.
Let's leave the poor girl alone, she has no fucking clue what's happening to her.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Feel free to let the door hit you
Apparently some coach I've never heard of (Ritchie McKay) at some school I don't care about (UNM:UArizona::UArizona:Cal Berkeley, and I bearly[sic] care about Berkeley) is on the way out. Fine, happens all the time. But look at the good-bye he's getting:
"I still think Ritchie McKay is a great man and a great coach," University of New Mexico Board of Regents member Jack Fortner told the Albuquerque Journal. "Somewhere, he's going to do great things in a program. And apparently, it's not going to be here at UNM. I haven't had a chance to talk to Ritchie and I will. He's got a great staff, and it's unfortunate that they won't be here either."
I can only imagine that Mr. Fortner was holding himself back. "And he's got a cute family. They'll go great on some university's christmas cards, unfortunately not ours."
"He has a great car, unfortunately he won't be driving it after we impounded it."
"And he has a great house, shame that it was recently rustled by goons."
C'mon, are you a Regent of a University or a Sopranos recurring character wanna-be?
And while we're at it, why do sports have to have so many layers of duplicity? Grow a pair, pull a Streinbrenner, and say, "he sure did suck here." Don't be a passive aggressive dick and go, "Well, he had a cute Scottish Terrier." 1) It's not germane, 2) have you seen an ugly Scottish Terrier? And why does every coach have to pledge allegiance to their current job? We see every coach pull a Nick Saban and say "I would absolutely, positively not leave my current-- Oh, that much?" and then Benedict Arnold himself (always himself) over to a more lucrative or prestigious position. Which is fine! It's what we all would do. It's what athletes do.
We put capitalism on a pedestal, alright that it keeps most of the population in coal mines because it puts a few of us on 20" spinners. So let's stop expecting professional coaches to be holier-than-y'all and instead realize that a coaching job in the SEC is going to be arousing and that coaches who get such offers will get Ayn Randy.
"I still think Ritchie McKay is a great man and a great coach," University of New Mexico Board of Regents member Jack Fortner told the Albuquerque Journal. "Somewhere, he's going to do great things in a program. And apparently, it's not going to be here at UNM. I haven't had a chance to talk to Ritchie and I will. He's got a great staff, and it's unfortunate that they won't be here either."
I can only imagine that Mr. Fortner was holding himself back. "And he's got a cute family. They'll go great on some university's christmas cards, unfortunately not ours."
"He has a great car, unfortunately he won't be driving it after we impounded it."
"And he has a great house, shame that it was recently rustled by goons."
C'mon, are you a Regent of a University or a Sopranos recurring character wanna-be?
And while we're at it, why do sports have to have so many layers of duplicity? Grow a pair, pull a Streinbrenner, and say, "he sure did suck here." Don't be a passive aggressive dick and go, "Well, he had a cute Scottish Terrier." 1) It's not germane, 2) have you seen an ugly Scottish Terrier? And why does every coach have to pledge allegiance to their current job? We see every coach pull a Nick Saban and say "I would absolutely, positively not leave my current-- Oh, that much?" and then Benedict Arnold himself (always himself) over to a more lucrative or prestigious position. Which is fine! It's what we all would do. It's what athletes do.
We put capitalism on a pedestal, alright that it keeps most of the population in coal mines because it puts a few of us on 20" spinners. So let's stop expecting professional coaches to be holier-than-y'all and instead realize that a coaching job in the SEC is going to be arousing and that coaches who get such offers will get Ayn Randy.
Every Man Is An Anachronism By Tomorrow's Standards
In her brilliant, insightful, terrifying, loathsome piece on the "Say Everything" generation, Emily Nussbaum explores the means and ends of the kids' penchant for internet self-exposure. She argues that my peers and I see LiveJournal, MySpace, etc, etc, as skin-thickeneing, interactive archives of our adolescence.
I bandied about vaguely similar arguments in my response to the Facebook Feed a few months ago (though, because I did so on a blog and as a registered facebook user, my invectives were gleefully hypocritical). Nussbaum shouldn't fret; she joins a long and distinguished list of scientists, philosophers, poets and critics who have blatantly plagiarized my work. Here is just a small sampling of the political and social trends and phenomena about which I was ahead of the curve:
-The Wire
-Scientology
-The fact that Dane Cook sucks
-Poker
-The fact that Dane Cook sucks at Poker
-Enthusiasm over Barack Obama
-Dissapointment over Barack Obama's
-The dire consequences of living the life designed for you by your handlers, sans even the most primitive self-awareness.
-To wit: Britney Spears
-Globalization
-Puggles
-Thai food
-Parker Lewis Can't Lose
-blogs
-lists
-the backlash against string theory
-the second, third, and eighth backlashes against Family Guy
-anal is the new vaginal
-Pixies reunion
-Colbert outdoing Stewart
-Meth
-the death of irony
-the death of work
-the death of privacy
-the death of Anna Nicole Smith
-the four-minute mile
-facebook girls who are obviously fine with you masturbating to their pictures
-bourbon is the new scotch
-the concept of a "Wiki"
-the concept of a "Wookiee"
-the concept of a Wookiee via the concept of a Wiki
-using the Snoop Dogg "izzle" patois in casual conversation
-this halloween costume (seriously)
-The coming apocalypse
I bandied about vaguely similar arguments in my response to the Facebook Feed a few months ago (though, because I did so on a blog and as a registered facebook user, my invectives were gleefully hypocritical). Nussbaum shouldn't fret; she joins a long and distinguished list of scientists, philosophers, poets and critics who have blatantly plagiarized my work. Here is just a small sampling of the political and social trends and phenomena about which I was ahead of the curve:
-The Wire
-Scientology
-The fact that Dane Cook sucks
-Poker
-The fact that Dane Cook sucks at Poker
-Enthusiasm over Barack Obama
-Dissapointment over Barack Obama's
-The dire consequences of living the life designed for you by your handlers, sans even the most primitive self-awareness.
-To wit: Britney Spears
-Globalization
-Puggles
-Thai food
-Parker Lewis Can't Lose
-blogs
-lists
-the backlash against string theory
-the second, third, and eighth backlashes against Family Guy
-anal is the new vaginal
-Pixies reunion
-Colbert outdoing Stewart
-Meth
-the death of irony
-the death of work
-the death of privacy
-the death of Anna Nicole Smith
-the four-minute mile
-facebook girls who are obviously fine with you masturbating to their pictures
-bourbon is the new scotch
-the concept of a "Wiki"
-the concept of a "Wookiee"
-the concept of a Wookiee via the concept of a Wiki
-using the Snoop Dogg "izzle" patois in casual conversation
-this halloween costume (seriously)
-The coming apocalypse
Monday, September 11, 2006
Hypothesis Arrived At After Excessive Late Night Beverage Consumption
1) Diet Coke should grow on trees.
2) If Diet Coke did grow on trees, each can would be a fruit. Diet Coke the nectar. And that tab you use to open it the seed. The plant convinces you to carry the fruit. Then wherever you are when you do consume, the tab is discarded, left to form another plant.
3) This post constitutes prior art for any bioengineering start-up attempting to make my life's dream reality.
4) On second thought, Diet Coke should not grow on trees. Instead, it is more a bush or a shrub. Its plant takes the form of mini-fridges. A hardy oak of a full size refrigerator with attached freezer takes upwards of 35 years to mature.
2) If Diet Coke did grow on trees, each can would be a fruit. Diet Coke the nectar. And that tab you use to open it the seed. The plant convinces you to carry the fruit. Then wherever you are when you do consume, the tab is discarded, left to form another plant.
3) This post constitutes prior art for any bioengineering start-up attempting to make my life's dream reality.
4) On second thought, Diet Coke should not grow on trees. Instead, it is more a bush or a shrub. Its plant takes the form of mini-fridges. A hardy oak of a full size refrigerator with attached freezer takes upwards of 35 years to mature.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Dr. Foster's Dictionary, September 8, 2006
Today's entry in Dr. Foster's Dictionary comes from the section on slang usage, under "R".
ran-dom [ran-duhm]
adj.
1. occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern.
"Since they still rely on fixed inputs for their algorithms, computers remain unable to generate truly random numbers.
2. [slang] irrelevent, disconnected, lost, apropos of nothing:
"Most of the Phi Kappa Alpha guys love Seth MacFarlane's random humor."
3. [slang] distasteful, tacky, or otherwise unaesthetic:
"Jane noted on her MySpace profile that her taste in music was 'really random'. She liked everything from Panic! At the Disco to Ashlee Simpson."
4. [slang] signifying choices made for the wrong reasons (usually because of inebriation and/or low self-esteem):
"Tori was not really looking for a relationship because of her recent success with random hookups."
5. [slang] as a beat, or placeholder, in the hipster patois.
"I was at some random bodega in this random part of Park Slope with these random people trying to find directions to this random gallery opening at random in random."
ran-dom [ran-duhm]
adj.
1. occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern.
"Since they still rely on fixed inputs for their algorithms, computers remain unable to generate truly random numbers.
2. [slang] irrelevent, disconnected, lost, apropos of nothing:
"Most of the Phi Kappa Alpha guys love Seth MacFarlane's random humor."
3. [slang] distasteful, tacky, or otherwise unaesthetic:
"Jane noted on her MySpace profile that her taste in music was 'really random'. She liked everything from Panic! At the Disco to Ashlee Simpson."
4. [slang] signifying choices made for the wrong reasons (usually because of inebriation and/or low self-esteem):
"Tori was not really looking for a relationship because of her recent success with random hookups."
5. [slang] as a beat, or placeholder, in the hipster patois.
"I was at some random bodega in this random part of Park Slope with these random people trying to find directions to this random gallery opening at random in random."
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Parallelism isn't necessary, and necessary.
My father always used to say "Consistency over Accuracy." This means that if you aren't sure how to, use commas, you're supposed not to, use them the same way. That way, when people realize that you don't know how to, speak English or, make yourself understood, they can filter your idiocies. This is much better than guessing at, how to use commas. Incidentally, this means that once I started listening to crappy Pop Punk/Emo as a teenager, I had to keep listening to it.
I believe in Consistentcy over Accuracy. And so I hate Shuffle. Don't give me snippets, give me the whole album. If they have a good single, goes my reasoning, the rest of the album must be decent, right? Christina Aguilera's video for Ain't No Other Man is good, therefore her new album is on my portable digital music device. Like I said, I'm devoted to this principle. Instead of per-song Shuffle, I use per-album Shuffle. Great.
Except it menas when I'm not in the mood for a song, I'm not in the mood for the next 15 songs. Please oh Please Apple, won't you let me fast forward an *ALBUM* instead of per song?
I know, I know, this is ugly. It would require a new button. You have those 4 buttons arrayed so elegantly around a slide wheel that also controls volume! And 1 in the middle! Beeeeeeeeutiful.
But worthless. I spend my life click-click-clicking past B-side albums purchased in a wake of fanboidom that are best listened ot at night; when demo tapes were meant to be reverently passed around to and listened to in the same hushed tones with which they were produced. Add a new button I can customize. Y'know what? Fuck other people who don't care about this. Add a button that fast-forwards to the next album. It must not be able to do anything else. And it only works if your name is Dan. And if you don't like Indie (the taller/smarter/more handsom/better older sibling of Pop Punk/Emo) and press it accidentally, it electrocutes you. Then throws you in a pool of Stingrays to be Irwin-ed.
Please Apple, give up your fanatical devotion to Metal/Lucite aesthetics and Turtleneck/Jean wardrobes and give me this ability. I will pay $100 for it.
Signed,
A Concerned Customer
P.S. Alternatively, make it quick again to fast forward without the lag as you spin up your disk to find the album art for this song that WAS THE SAME ALBUM ART AS THE LAST 8 SONGS. I have a hint for how you could speed up this embarrassingly linear access pattern. I can't just come out and say it, but it starts with a p, ends with an h, and has a refetc in the middle.
I believe in Consistentcy over Accuracy. And so I hate Shuffle. Don't give me snippets, give me the whole album. If they have a good single, goes my reasoning, the rest of the album must be decent, right? Christina Aguilera's video for Ain't No Other Man is good, therefore her new album is on my portable digital music device. Like I said, I'm devoted to this principle. Instead of per-song Shuffle, I use per-album Shuffle. Great.
Except it menas when I'm not in the mood for a song, I'm not in the mood for the next 15 songs. Please oh Please Apple, won't you let me fast forward an *ALBUM* instead of per song?
I know, I know, this is ugly. It would require a new button. You have those 4 buttons arrayed so elegantly around a slide wheel that also controls volume! And 1 in the middle! Beeeeeeeeutiful.
But worthless. I spend my life click-click-clicking past B-side albums purchased in a wake of fanboidom that are best listened ot at night; when demo tapes were meant to be reverently passed around to and listened to in the same hushed tones with which they were produced. Add a new button I can customize. Y'know what? Fuck other people who don't care about this. Add a button that fast-forwards to the next album. It must not be able to do anything else. And it only works if your name is Dan. And if you don't like Indie (the taller/smarter/more handsom/better older sibling of Pop Punk/Emo) and press it accidentally, it electrocutes you. Then throws you in a pool of Stingrays to be Irwin-ed.
Please Apple, give up your fanatical devotion to Metal/Lucite aesthetics and Turtleneck/Jean wardrobes and give me this ability. I will pay $100 for it.
Signed,
A Concerned Customer
P.S. Alternatively, make it quick again to fast forward without the lag as you spin up your disk to find the album art for this song that WAS THE SAME ALBUM ART AS THE LAST 8 SONGS. I have a hint for how you could speed up this embarrassingly linear access pattern. I can't just come out and say it, but it starts with a p, ends with an h, and has a refetc in the middle.
Facebook's Folly
Warning: Among our small but sophisticated readership there will no doubt be some for whom this post is just so much nonsense. Perhaps these people have the best of it.
What has it been--all of 72 hours since Facebook.com introduced its new Orwell-meets-People Magazine "feed" format? And how long will it be before it's gone, or at least swept under some e-rug? I give it weeks, or less. In a delicious example of the twisted, ultra-reflexive physics of virtual space, the most prominent news(?) items on my facebook feed--and I supppose on many others'--are all about how much the feed sucks. Just a few examples of Facebook groups started or joined by "friends" of mine in the past 48 hours:
FACEBOOK FEED SUCKS
BRING THE OLD FACEBOOK BACK
FACEBOOK MASS EXODUS
STUDENTS AGAINST FACEBOOK NEWS FEED
THE NEW FACEBOOK LOOKS LIKE IT WAS DESIGNED BY A HYPERACTIVE FIVE-YEAR-OLD
I'm especially fond of this last one, created very early on by my buddy Neil and apropos of precisely nothing.
In any event, the lessons here are as many and varied as they are trivial and trite. For one thing, this display of hyperirony goes to the dubiousity and double-edgedness of the "democratizing of information" brought on by the internet and blogosphere revolutions. It used to be that things like laziness, lack of ambition, poverty, and death-squads kept the mouth-breathing masses from opining at the top of their lungs about whatever was grinding their gears on a given day. But the price of opening your mouth has gone down drastically in terms of dollars, elbow grease, and blood. And even this band of anonymous troglodytes that calls itself the American public can point and click.
Behold the era of the Blog Montaigne, the Message Board Martin Luther and the Forum Oscar Wilde. But 92% of it is still tripe, and there is no democracy of taste.
The other thing--and here I borrow again from Chuck Klosterman's stuff on Snakes on a Plane--is that people don't know what they've got til they've got way too fucking much of it. The secret demographic of Facebook, MySpace and their ilk has always been the Peeping Tom, the voyeur, the stalker in all of us. We worshipped the deus ex machina that told us where our exes had last logged-on; we relished in secret the infidelities implied by Joe's girlfriend's claim to be "single" and interested in "anything [she] can get", and we imposed ourselves upon the ever-abiding trust of 19-year old party girls as we scrolled through their photo albums. All of this under a greasy skin of anonymity, safe from reproach in our dormroom lairs.
Let's get down to brass tacks: Facebook and MySpace are gloryholes for the young bourgeoisie.
always have been, always will be. All the feed amounts to is a sign reading "PLACE GENITALS HERE". It reveals to you nothing that you wouldn't have found out yourself on a lonely enough night. But the danger of gonzo-marketing to people's basest desires is that you remind them just how base those desires are.
Mason Malmuth, a guy who was taking down Hold Em pots when your Friday night game was "Shit in the Diaper", is on to much the same thing when he talks about winning at tables full of terrible players. The worse thing you can do, Malmuth says, is put on too many plays. As long as it seems like you're all just having a little fun with your paycheck, your straightforward, correct play will be rewarded. But start getting cute, check-raising, over-punishing bluffs, pushing your position too hard, and you'll actually bully your "amiable gambler" opponents into playing correctly. You'll remind them that this is a poker game, and that your objective is to take their money, and the result will be that you get less of it. Mutatis Mutandis for the Facebook feed. All it has done is bully its perverted base into virtue.
Oh, and forget the fact that I write these words on these topics using the software of the biggest blogging host in the world--bask in the sheer postmodernity of it, be comforted by the fact that string theory does indeed predict this result, and rest assured that present company is excluded.
Feedback: What has been your favorite Facebook Feed so far? I would have to say that mine is "J.D. Removed Star Trek: TNG from his Favorite TV Shows" (name repressed to protect the innocent)
What has it been--all of 72 hours since Facebook.com introduced its new Orwell-meets-People Magazine "feed" format? And how long will it be before it's gone, or at least swept under some e-rug? I give it weeks, or less. In a delicious example of the twisted, ultra-reflexive physics of virtual space, the most prominent news(?) items on my facebook feed--and I supppose on many others'--are all about how much the feed sucks. Just a few examples of Facebook groups started or joined by "friends" of mine in the past 48 hours:
FACEBOOK FEED SUCKS
BRING THE OLD FACEBOOK BACK
FACEBOOK MASS EXODUS
STUDENTS AGAINST FACEBOOK NEWS FEED
THE NEW FACEBOOK LOOKS LIKE IT WAS DESIGNED BY A HYPERACTIVE FIVE-YEAR-OLD
I'm especially fond of this last one, created very early on by my buddy Neil and apropos of precisely nothing.
In any event, the lessons here are as many and varied as they are trivial and trite. For one thing, this display of hyperirony goes to the dubiousity and double-edgedness of the "democratizing of information" brought on by the internet and blogosphere revolutions. It used to be that things like laziness, lack of ambition, poverty, and death-squads kept the mouth-breathing masses from opining at the top of their lungs about whatever was grinding their gears on a given day. But the price of opening your mouth has gone down drastically in terms of dollars, elbow grease, and blood. And even this band of anonymous troglodytes that calls itself the American public can point and click.
Behold the era of the Blog Montaigne, the Message Board Martin Luther and the Forum Oscar Wilde. But 92% of it is still tripe, and there is no democracy of taste.
The other thing--and here I borrow again from Chuck Klosterman's stuff on Snakes on a Plane--is that people don't know what they've got til they've got way too fucking much of it. The secret demographic of Facebook, MySpace and their ilk has always been the Peeping Tom, the voyeur, the stalker in all of us. We worshipped the deus ex machina that told us where our exes had last logged-on; we relished in secret the infidelities implied by Joe's girlfriend's claim to be "single" and interested in "anything [she] can get", and we imposed ourselves upon the ever-abiding trust of 19-year old party girls as we scrolled through their photo albums. All of this under a greasy skin of anonymity, safe from reproach in our dormroom lairs.
Let's get down to brass tacks: Facebook and MySpace are gloryholes for the young bourgeoisie.
always have been, always will be. All the feed amounts to is a sign reading "PLACE GENITALS HERE". It reveals to you nothing that you wouldn't have found out yourself on a lonely enough night. But the danger of gonzo-marketing to people's basest desires is that you remind them just how base those desires are.
Mason Malmuth, a guy who was taking down Hold Em pots when your Friday night game was "Shit in the Diaper", is on to much the same thing when he talks about winning at tables full of terrible players. The worse thing you can do, Malmuth says, is put on too many plays. As long as it seems like you're all just having a little fun with your paycheck, your straightforward, correct play will be rewarded. But start getting cute, check-raising, over-punishing bluffs, pushing your position too hard, and you'll actually bully your "amiable gambler" opponents into playing correctly. You'll remind them that this is a poker game, and that your objective is to take their money, and the result will be that you get less of it. Mutatis Mutandis for the Facebook feed. All it has done is bully its perverted base into virtue.
Oh, and forget the fact that I write these words on these topics using the software of the biggest blogging host in the world--bask in the sheer postmodernity of it, be comforted by the fact that string theory does indeed predict this result, and rest assured that present company is excluded.
Feedback: What has been your favorite Facebook Feed so far? I would have to say that mine is "J.D. Removed Star Trek: TNG from his Favorite TV Shows" (name repressed to protect the innocent)
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
An Elegy for Irwin
I'm a philosophy student, so sure, I'll buy that "every death is a tragedy"--even the deaths of minor celebrities. But the news of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin's passing hit me a little harder than I expected. A lot of people saw Irwin as novelty act, a slightly crazed and comically earnest punchline to be filed next to William Hung. But would some East Asian Premier weep on national TV at the death of Hung, as the Australian PM did today? I don't think so. Maybe it's because Steve Irwin, as a compelling, entertaining spokesman for conservation, made Al Gore 2006 look like Al Gore 2000.
More likely it's that Steve Irwin's unselfconscious enthusiasm and almost (almost) naive wonderment were a breath of fresh air in a culture too crusty in our cynicism and shadenfreude to ever risk such ingenuousness.
Suffice it to say that the world was a bit more interesting with him in it.
More likely it's that Steve Irwin's unselfconscious enthusiasm and almost (almost) naive wonderment were a breath of fresh air in a culture too crusty in our cynicism and shadenfreude to ever risk such ingenuousness.
Suffice it to say that the world was a bit more interesting with him in it.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Rants on a Blog
This is likely the last Snakes on a Plane blog post you'll ever read, but it won't be the last X on a Y post. That's because, like this guy's tattoo, the novelty of SoaP took about a week to wear off but its effects will be felt for quite some time. This much Chuck Klosterman notes, along with just about everything else there is to say about why this movie is bad for your soul, in his Esquire piece.
Among my generation, irony is a language, hyperirony a currency, and hyperirony-for-its-own-sake a narcotic. In other words, to get by a healthy amount of the first is essential, a bit of the second is useful, and too much of the last is dangerous. Call me old-fashioned, but I usually look for films, TV, music and other bits of culture that I enjoy. In any other century that last sentence would be unambiguous, but allow me to clarify: to 'enjoy' something in my sense is to enjoy it intrinsically, and not as an irony delivery mechanism or as fodder for the sneering, self-satisfied, sarcastic nuggets of your fellow hirsute hipsters.
Life is too short to continuously blast Raffi's "Banana Phone" or The B-52's "Rock Lobster" just for grins like my ex-roommate did (unless, of course, you actually like Raffi or the B-52s, in which case God bless). That's why when my buddies sent me a canned voicemail of Samuel L. Jackson demanding that I get off my ass and see Snakes on a Plane, I politely informed them that I'd just as soon be on a trans-Pacific flight stocked with a surfeit of venomous serpents.
Oh, and as for the supposed brilliance of the film's title, file it under Ecclesiastes' dictum: There is NOTHING new under the sun. For one thing, nearly every sitcom ever aired followed the same formula of the using the title to spell out the concept, we just never got excited about it because the concepts themselves were usually less absurd (mental exercise: figure out why it is that That 80's Show is a title conceptually closer to Snakes on a Plane than either is to That 70's Show). Then of course there is that other bastion of the upfront title: porn. Now, I know what you're thinking, porn titles at least go so far as to give us some assonance or a second-rate pun (e.g. Butt Fuck Sluts Go Nuts, and Weapons of Ass Destruction, respectively). But lowest-common-denominator literalism gets even lower and more literal than that. To wit: I am apartment-sitting for my buddy and his girlfriend in Jersey City, and one day I took a ganders through their DVD collection in search of amusement. To my delight I found the 1999 gem Hookers in a Haunted House, which was Snakes on a Plane 8 years before Snakes on a Plane was Snakes on a Plane.
And it's got tits.
Among my generation, irony is a language, hyperirony a currency, and hyperirony-for-its-own-sake a narcotic. In other words, to get by a healthy amount of the first is essential, a bit of the second is useful, and too much of the last is dangerous. Call me old-fashioned, but I usually look for films, TV, music and other bits of culture that I enjoy. In any other century that last sentence would be unambiguous, but allow me to clarify: to 'enjoy' something in my sense is to enjoy it intrinsically, and not as an irony delivery mechanism or as fodder for the sneering, self-satisfied, sarcastic nuggets of your fellow hirsute hipsters.
Life is too short to continuously blast Raffi's "Banana Phone" or The B-52's "Rock Lobster" just for grins like my ex-roommate did (unless, of course, you actually like Raffi or the B-52s, in which case God bless). That's why when my buddies sent me a canned voicemail of Samuel L. Jackson demanding that I get off my ass and see Snakes on a Plane, I politely informed them that I'd just as soon be on a trans-Pacific flight stocked with a surfeit of venomous serpents.
Oh, and as for the supposed brilliance of the film's title, file it under Ecclesiastes' dictum: There is NOTHING new under the sun. For one thing, nearly every sitcom ever aired followed the same formula of the using the title to spell out the concept, we just never got excited about it because the concepts themselves were usually less absurd (mental exercise: figure out why it is that That 80's Show is a title conceptually closer to Snakes on a Plane than either is to That 70's Show). Then of course there is that other bastion of the upfront title: porn. Now, I know what you're thinking, porn titles at least go so far as to give us some assonance or a second-rate pun (e.g. Butt Fuck Sluts Go Nuts, and Weapons of Ass Destruction, respectively). But lowest-common-denominator literalism gets even lower and more literal than that. To wit: I am apartment-sitting for my buddy and his girlfriend in Jersey City, and one day I took a ganders through their DVD collection in search of amusement. To my delight I found the 1999 gem Hookers in a Haunted House, which was Snakes on a Plane 8 years before Snakes on a Plane was Snakes on a Plane.
And it's got tits.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
The Top 25 Revenge Movies of All Time
The situation in southern Lebanon has me ruminating quite a bit on that dish best served cold--not seviche, but vengeance. And so, the best of it on film:
25. Office Space
24. Red Dawn*
23. Robocop
22. Heathers
21. The Punisher (1989)
20. Gladiator
19. The Bourne Supremacy
18. Diabolique (1955)
17. Friday the 13th
16. The Count of Montecristo (2002)
15. Batman (1989)
14. Rocky IV
13. The Karate Kid
12. Star Wars, Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
11. Unforgiven
10. Kill Bill (vo1.1-2)
9. For a Few Dollars More
8. Conan the Barbarian*
7. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
6. Get Carter (1971)
5. Carrie
4. Death Wish
3. Man on Fire
2. The Crow
1. The Godfather
Honorable Mentions: The Toxic Avenger, Revenge of the Dragon, Payback, Revenge of the Nerds, Ocean's Eleven, First Blood I-III (Rambo), Clear and Present Danger*, Commando, Flight of the Intruder.*
*denotes the involvement of John Milius, American cinema's master of vengeance, as writer and/or director.
This list is nought but convtroversial. I suspect many will be confused and upset by how films such as Star Trek II and Conan the Barbarian made it into the top ten while films like Gladiator is ranked comparatively lower. I know there'll be contingents who think Revenge of the Nerds belongs on the list, or another Eastwood movie, or some Bruce Lee movies, or that the Godfather isn't really a revenge movie (it is), or that older films are under-represented in general. Perhaps most fearsome is the cadre of raving children of the 80s who will demand Rocky IV be promoted to #1 or higher (I include it at #14 only as a begrudging compromise. In my mind, anything after Rocky II is barely canonical). In any event, feel free to disagree and state your case.
25. Office Space
24. Red Dawn*
23. Robocop
22. Heathers
21. The Punisher (1989)
20. Gladiator
19. The Bourne Supremacy
18. Diabolique (1955)
17. Friday the 13th
16. The Count of Montecristo (2002)
15. Batman (1989)
14. Rocky IV
13. The Karate Kid
12. Star Wars, Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
11. Unforgiven
10. Kill Bill (vo1.1-2)
9. For a Few Dollars More
8. Conan the Barbarian*
7. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
6. Get Carter (1971)
5. Carrie
4. Death Wish
3. Man on Fire
2. The Crow
1. The Godfather
Honorable Mentions: The Toxic Avenger, Revenge of the Dragon, Payback, Revenge of the Nerds, Ocean's Eleven, First Blood I-III (Rambo), Clear and Present Danger*, Commando, Flight of the Intruder.*
*denotes the involvement of John Milius, American cinema's master of vengeance, as writer and/or director.
This list is nought but convtroversial. I suspect many will be confused and upset by how films such as Star Trek II and Conan the Barbarian made it into the top ten while films like Gladiator is ranked comparatively lower. I know there'll be contingents who think Revenge of the Nerds belongs on the list, or another Eastwood movie, or some Bruce Lee movies, or that the Godfather isn't really a revenge movie (it is), or that older films are under-represented in general. Perhaps most fearsome is the cadre of raving children of the 80s who will demand Rocky IV be promoted to #1 or higher (I include it at #14 only as a begrudging compromise. In my mind, anything after Rocky II is barely canonical). In any event, feel free to disagree and state your case.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Long John Schill-ver
Wise was aloof Mr. Depp,
when,impressed by Walt Disney's rep,
after years spent ensconced
in the hills of Provence
he did finally get back in lockstep.
when,impressed by Walt Disney's rep,
after years spent ensconced
in the hills of Provence
he did finally get back in lockstep.
Monday, July 10, 2006
NB: I'm selling my television
Copy of a letter I just sent to Wolf Blitzer's CNN beardfest "The Situation Room":
I wanted to thank Mr. Blitzer and his "Situation Room" correspondent for their piece on the World Cup headbutting incident.
As if to visually underscore the unpleasentness of Zidane's maneuver, the report included a collage of other headbuttings captured on tape and amassed, no doubt, from the computer desktop of an early adolescent of middling intelligence.
Years from now I'm sure I'll tell my grandchildren it was on July 10, 2006 that the world's premiere cable news network first had the courage and rectitude to show me a video of a grown man's head engulfed by an elephant's anus.
I trust Mr. Blitzer is at this very moment working on his Peabody Award acceptance speech.
In Earnest,
DRF
I wanted to thank Mr. Blitzer and his "Situation Room" correspondent for their piece on the World Cup headbutting incident.
As if to visually underscore the unpleasentness of Zidane's maneuver, the report included a collage of other headbuttings captured on tape and amassed, no doubt, from the computer desktop of an early adolescent of middling intelligence.
Years from now I'm sure I'll tell my grandchildren it was on July 10, 2006 that the world's premiere cable news network first had the courage and rectitude to show me a video of a grown man's head engulfed by an elephant's anus.
I trust Mr. Blitzer is at this very moment working on his Peabody Award acceptance speech.
In Earnest,
DRF
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