You are currently browsing the daily archive for February 17, 2009.
I wonder if there are any high school kids on the opposite spectrum of the college-competitiveness scale who have to weigh gang options with the same intensity as school choices.
Like instead of weeding through the US News and World Reports for months before they graduate, they have to see where they get the best scholarship opportunities from each gang before dropping out. The Crips and Bloods are probably the Ivies.
I never kiss and tell. But I do fuck and brag.
Everything going on with the election results in Zimbabwe makes me wonder about the picking process for location reporters at larger newspapers.
Think that’s a tense meeting in the Editors’ room of the New York Times, when they have to decide who to send to Zimbabwe versus other world crisis?
“We’re gonna need someone to cover the impending riots over disputed election results leading to a civil war in Africa. Also, someone needs to head to the Australian beaches and chat with hot women who survived the forest fires. So…who’s off to Zimbabwe? Anyone? Hello?”
Whenever two teams are going to face off in the playoffs, the newspapers and broadcasters inexplicably offer the historical records between the teams.
It makes no sense to me when the paper explains that, say, the Orioles are 8-4 against the White Sox in playoff series since 1912 coming into the upcoming matchups.
Is the result of a 1928 best-of-nineteen series really going to play a factor in the performance of how nine Venezuelan 20-somethings do against nine other Venezuelan 20-somethings?
“We got them beat. Our pitching’s solid, our bats are alive and we’ve got home turf.”
“Yeah, we’ll get our team’s revenge from that 1911 Honus Wagner homerun through the four wickets.”
Last week I went over to pub quiz with a couple people and fortunately got there early because a huge turnout ensued. We snagged a table but had room for one person to pick up from the group of strangers and we committed some severe nerd profiling.
It was weird because we did at pub quiz exactly what a group of guys do when they have to pick teams of strangers at pickup basketball. Except in hoops when everyone goes for the tall black guy or solid country boy, we were profiling who looked like the biggest geeks.
We’re trying to size of this group that lacked considerable size by traditional nerd stereotypes. Anyone without glasses or looked like they had any potential to speak with someone of the opposite sex was immediately cut. Non-whites were unspokenly unconsidered as well, but I’m arguing that it was done in the vein that the same white guy gets snubbed at the pickup game too.
There was a squirrelly guy holding a book who looked like he was dressed by his mother and hadn’t showered in a week. Everyone else ignored him. We had our center.
I don’t like that they put the Crossword Puzzle in the Arts section. Nothing against the Arts, I’m just extremely insecure about the image I project to my fellow subway riders who are surely watching me with intense curiosity about which newspaper section I read first.
The arts section is fine. It has great TV and movie news, reviews are crucial and it’s a superb source to learn of upcoming shows. But because of the influence from US Weekly and People changing the Arts Section to skew much more feminine, it’s no where close to my prime interest in the Times.
The crossword puzzle, however, can completely be my prime interest some days. Mondays through Wednesdays I only buy the paper for the crossword puzzle (Fridays I buy the Times for movie reviews, Sundays because the newspaper itself gives me a purpose in life, Thursday and Saturday I take off). But because they stick that crossword puzzle in the Arts Section it appears to subway riders that I’m buying the New York Times so that I can find out insider info on American Idol.
And don’t say that I could just take it out and fold it over to only show the crossword puzzle. Then people would think I’m buying the newspaper simply to do show off with the puzzle. As true as this may be, I don’t want anyone to know.
Granted it could be worse. They could put it in the Home & Garden section or the Styles Section or in the Comics Section. But maybe a compromise? Like two days a week we get it in the Metro Section or Business Day. Hell, put it in the Sports Section and you’d have the whole important parts of the newspaper right there.
It’s been noted before that old people suck at new technology. I get frightening e-mails in response when I send an attached file to my grandma. These responses tend to include about a hundred exclamation and question marks requesting detailed instructions as to how the story I was sharing managed to crash her computer.
But I shouldn’t make fun because I am certain that I will indeed someday fill the old grandpa role with the new technology that comes out in about fifty years.
My grandson will try and visit by using the teleporter that was recently bought for me, and I’ll be the stodgy old guy insisting he drive like we did in the old days. “But I can’t drive, you live on Saturn,” he’ll insist. “Oh you’ll find any excuse to not visit your ole grandpa,” I’ll lay on the guilt.
So he’ll break down the usage of the teleporter to bare-boned instructions: 1) Press the green power button. 2) Type in the address. 3) click the accept button, and so on in the way you would describe Microsoft Outlook to a fresh college grad temp.
And yet I’d still manage to screw up his teleportation visit. He’d arrive as an elbow, or just show up in the neighbor’s teleporter, or send myself to Jupiter. To which I’d quickly boot up my e-mail and send him a rapid help request. One with a plethora of exclamation and question marks.
I went to a Los Angeles Galaxy Major League Soccer game over the weekend, which I think has the widest spectrum of sports fandom in all sports. You get the full range on the fan hardcore spectrum in the same 20,000-seat arena. It’s the libertarianism of sports.
On one side you have die-hard soccer fans who need a local outlet. Europeans who’ve emigrated to L.A., a strong Mexican contingent that roots for their local team and South Americans combine to take the games way too seriously. Not to mention the pompous white kids like myself who wax poetic about catching soccer games overseas where the fans stand the whole game and come up with clever songs and go crazy throughout the match.
But on the other hand, you have a majority of fans who approach MLS games with the same enthusiasm as a AA-level Minor League Baseball team. After all it is American soccer, so why shouldn’t most of the fans be in attendance because the star player was that guy who starred in Bend it Like Beckham or something?
So on one side of the stadium you have riotous, swearing, singing drunk hooligans who are looking to surround and bludgeon a fan of the opposition. On the other side is the dad who just didn’t want to shell out for a Dodger game and his kids don’t know the difference.
I’ve always had a problem with the word Priceless. I don’t feel it should be the word to describe something of extraordinary value, but rather should be a synonym for worthless.
Take the word tasteless, for example. When you say that a joke is tasteless, you’re saying it’s bad. You’re not saying that it’s so funny that it’s beyond even quantifying with a value of humor. Every time you use the suffix -less, it means it lacks something, and does so in a bad way, not in a phenomenally incredible way. Try calling your girlfriend attractiveless and see how she takes it, for example.
The word expensive should really replace the word priceless. Or just tell them it’s not for sale and quit being so pompous about it.
I find it ironic that the people who are most adamant about a timetable for Iraq seem to be the most lazy about a timetable for their own personal lives.
It’s always something like, “We want a 14.2% incremental troop reduction exponentially imposed beginning on April 3rd at 4:15 P.M….And maybe I’ll get lunch in the future and probably get high later. I’d like to get a job eventually, and if I put my mind to it maybe I’ll move out of my parent’s house.”
If we can organize these legalization of marijuana protests better, then we’ll have struck the perfect balance between vigor of protesting and vigor that people believe in the cause they’re fighting for.
Max Lance - The Modern Jew Blog 