Barnes wises up
Former Ames (IA) high school basketball standout Harrison Barnes, the most heavily recruited prep player in state history, declared himself eligible for the NBA draft today after two years of collegiate competition at the University of North Carolina. Good for him. That's two years too late, if you ask me. A player with his ability is a dope to play for free, risking injury besides, while untalented, older, fatter, whiter men become millionaires off his talent. Observers rave about Barnes' maturity and intellect. I was starting to doubt it.
People always say-- yeah, but by going to school, he got a free education. (Suppressing giggle.) Yeah, sure he did. What about this? How about if every high school or college undergrad player that jumps "early" to the professional ranks signs his multi-million dollar contract and gets it in writing that his employer will also pay for a four-year Bachelors Degree upon retirement? See, that's a free education too-- and actually a guaranteed one since scholarships can be revoked at any time, and no travel hassles during school or necessary tutors to worry about. College gets more and more cost-prohibitive for most of us, but there are pro players that have statistical and trophy incentives in their contracts larger than the cost of a four-year degree. End of hypocrisy. Next problem.
Love live the king
Morning TV is so bad, but when my alarm goes off in the morning, I have to watch it for at least a few minutes. It helps me wake up and I have an addiction. Usually I just get the weather forecast and then I hang around for the traffic because that woman that does the reports on Channel 8 has got it going on. Then-- because I don't want to get up yet-- I start flipping around and the pickings are slim, but lately I find myself stopping on this Animal Planet program about the big jungle cats-- tigers, lions, jaguars. For a couple minutes, I watch these bad boys-- and girls-- stalk a gazelle or just the big ones chasing the smaller ones, whatever. It's a good, fast pick-me-up struggle between life and death, and then it's off to the shower to prepare for much of the same at work.
But I find these big powerful cats kind of terrifying. A friend informed me of the stories she's read about how wild tigers come down from the mountains in parts of Asia and maul to death entire villages. I've started having bad dreams about it. I had one last week where I was laying on my back on the floor up against a pair of propped up pillows (as I'm wont to do in real life!), but then my friend says to me, "Those aren't pillows. That's the belly of a sleeping jungle cat!" Then I'm like, "Don't wake it up. I'm going to try to gently lift my head and move slowly away. I have to do a stomach crunch, which I hate to do, and I try to be as careful as I can getting away. Does the tiger wake up? No, I do. I'm terrified.
So today comes the story that Cha Cha, a long-time resident lion at the Blank Park Zoo,
has been euthanized. The 16-year-old king of the jungle for Des Moines proper was diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer and was put down. Reading about Cha Cha helps to humanize the big cats, as it were. But that's what we do right? It's called anthropomorphism-- assigning human characteristics to animals, or even inanimate objects. In our imaginations, animals learn to speak the King's English, chomp on carrots while digging tunnels underground to Albuquerque, New Mexico, or play poker with their pals in "man caves." They come "alive" in literature, movies and television, or just as stuffed animals
Cha Cha was trained to be an entertainer. Details are not immediate online, and I never witnessed his act, but I imagine his talents include going up on his hind legs while avoiding being poked by the legs of a chair, maybe walking through a ring of fire, or nuzzling his face against that of his trainer and planting a kiss on him or her while not ripping out his larnyx. Maybe that's just circus lions ("showbiz lions") that do that stuff, but hey, it sounds like a hell of a show.
It seems that when Cha Cha was 10, he participated in a study by the Field Museum in Chicago to determine whether thicker manes in male lions heighten sexual attraction in females. Yes, you know if you clicked on the story linked above that Cha Cha was "packin'" when it comes to manes. Cha Cha loved the ladies. And the ladies loved Cha Cha.
On their Facebook page, the zoo is inviting you to share your favorite "stories, pictures, and videos" of Cha Cha. I'm not sure what a good story of Cha Cha would be. Maybe the time you watched him sleep in the sun for hours on end, or the time you thought you heard his roar when you were all the way downtown, which it's been rumored you could do, or maybe it was that time you thought you saw him give you a knowing head nod as you approached his cage.
Rest in peace, Cha Cha. See you around the way. Probably while I'm sleeping.
Menace to society
As part of their effort to prove that they haven't conducted a racist investigation, the Sanford, Florida Police Department has leaked details about Trayvon Martin being on a 10-day suspension from school during the time his exchange with George Zimmerman took place. Not racist. Loud and clear. Well done.
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I reckon Martin come after him first, pardner. I seen it with my own eyes. This here George is only keepin' these dusty streets safe fer the rest of us God-feerin' rustlers. Yeehah!
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On Monday, Al Sharpton warned the Sanford mayor and its city commissioners that, with their pending decision on the culpability of George Zimmerman, they "risk (Sanford) going down as the Selma and Montgomery of the 21st century." Sanford is already the Selma and Montgomery of the 20th century. Read
this Dave Zirin piece on Sanford's ugly opposition to the ascent of Jackie Robinson in 1946.
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Damn hoodies. Everybody's wearing them, even the law-abiding. How dare you people make it more difficult for me to stereotype you.
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Obama separates himself again from his rhetoric,
this time on energy and the Keystone XL pipeline.
"Mad Men" is back
"Mad Men" has been gone for almost 18 months. During that time, I lost sight of just how much better it is than any other drama on television. Maybe the show feels different because, like "The Sopranos" before it, it's the most deliberately and interestingly paced. Maybe it's because its major preoccupation is with sex, when violence serves as the major preoccupation for each of "The Sopranos," "The Wire," "Breaking Bad," "Justified," and "Boardwalk Empire." Maybe it's because its the series, of this group, that has the most female writers and directors.
My favorite character has long been Roger Sterling, whose boozy insouciance calls to mind a combination of Dean Martin and your favorite politically-incorrect uncle, who was probably deeply influenced by Dean Martin. Writing for the Roger character, who is increasingly irrelevant to the firm but still as lewd, shrewd, and poorly-behaved as ever, must be like living Christmas every day of the year. In the case of life imitating art, "Roger Sterling's" musings have been published in reality under the title "Sterling's Gold."
You'll recall that I also
deeply adore Sally Draper, she of the endearing-- but not enduring-- lisp, the intuitive child of divorce, now 11 years old as season five begins. Sally is one of television's great non-conformists, its most frequent and targeting questioner of rule and authority, and generally-speaking, its biggest badass.
To this short list of favorites now comes Megan (Calvet) Draper, Don's new bride. The radiant French-Canadian secretary turned copy writer turned partner's wife (played by future star Jessica Pare) seems to have a squarer head on her shoulders than anybody else at the firm. She's certainly less adrift emotionally than any of her co-workers, more liberated and likely less personally prejudiced, though Don's impetuous marriage proposal to her at the end of season four, and her acceptance, was deeply controversial among both "Mad Men" fans and Sterling Cooper Draper Price female employees. As a potential mate for Don, the aspiring model and actress, Megan, was cast as a sort-of less mentally challenging alternative to Dr. Faye Miller, the market research consultant and professional woman to whom Don disclosed his deepest secret, but I'll be damned if I wouldn't have made the same choice Don did, if for no other reason than that Megan was a happier, more confident person. She has him wrapped around her finger precisely the way all men wish to be wrapped.
I wouldn't be surprised at all to read that creator Matt Weiner had the Frank Sinatra/Mia Farrow marriage (also of 1966) on his mind when he drew Megan to Don in the narrative. Like the true-life pairing, the groom is of an older generation and an older tradition in man-woman relationships, but he's also not as worldly or as sexually sophisticated, if you pardon that bizarre phrase. I could see Megan becoming lifelong pals with Don's daughter Sally in much the same way Farrow did with Nancy and Tina Sinatra in real-life. She's the best influence on young Sally's life, to be sure, if you don't count John, Paul, George, and Ringo. But like the Sinatra-Farrow union, I fear the Draper one is ultimately doomed. My fingers are crossed however. Count me among the Don and Megan
"shippers", if only to get more scenes like the apartment-cleaning scene we got last night.
Megan is just what "Mad Men" needs to refresh what was already a series with a far-off "sell-by" date-- a woman who confounds both her male and female co-workers with her combination of poise, intelligence, assertiveness, and sexuality. Either she will be another symbol of the emerging Cultural Revolution, or will be beaten down by the "cynical" and "smirking" forces she's feeling against her in the office. Regardless, it should be a rich area for writers to mine, and one hell of a season to come.
Walking While Black
The Trayvon Martin case is a real mirror on America. If you've been away from media or tuned to Fox News, Martin is the African-American teen that was shot by a self-appointed neighborhood watch commander while returning to his home from the convenience store in Sanford, Florida. He was killed by a gunshot wound to the chest from 28-year-old George Zimmerman while Martin was armed with only a bottle of iced tea and a pack of Skittles. Syndicated radio host Michael Baisden, who has dedicated a week of programs to the case, today called the shooting "worse than that of Emmitt Till" in 1955, and that's a hard charge to argue when you consider it from a law enforcement standpoint.
In the Martin case, police know definitively who did the shooting. There's a phone clip of Martin calling a girlfriend immediately prior to the shooting, telling her that he's being followed and that he will try to hide from his pursuer. They have a phone clip of Zimmerman calling 9-1-1-- reporting suspicious activity in his neighborhood for almost the fiftieth time in the last year-- saying to the dispatcher "Those assholes. They always get away with it." Then being told by the dispatcher not to pursue the individual he believes is suspicious. He left his truck and stalked his prey anyway.
We have a police department in Sanford that has still not filed charges against Zimmerman, even a full month after the slaying. We have the local police first stating that Zimmerman has no criminal record when, in fact, he was arrested in 2005 for pushing a state alcohol official that was arresting one of his friends. He was also once accused, though not convicted, of domestic violence by a female acquaintance. We have a department that lost their previous police chief to resignation last year following a scandal in which a lieutenant's son was captured on video beating a black homeless man. We have the deceased victim, Martin, being tested for drugs and alcohol after the shooting, but not the perpetrator Zimmerman. The cellphone records were not examined during the initial investigation, and witnesses are claiming that the police have not returned their phone calls, and in other cases, have twisted their testimony to fit Zimmerman's claim of "self-defense."
This is the institutional racism of the nation that African-Americans often point to, and that too many white Americans frequently deny. They accuse figures like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton of race-baiting when the public protests then erupt. But it's entirely one story when a paranoid gun nut in a "right-to-carry" state shoots an unarmed child for the offense of going out for candy during half-time of the NBA All-Star Game, it's another when a police department conspires to clear the killer's culpability.
The lack of progress on race and violence in this nation over six decades is discouraging to say the least. People who believe in an Obama-inspired post-racial America overestimate their fellow Americans about as much as they do their president. This story is about more than young black men being unsafe on their own streets and scapegoats for all that ails us. It's about more than our lunatic gun laws that allow a firearm easily into the hands of virtually anybody that wants one. It's even about more than our national police state, one which has grown beyond police corruption to include stupid self-defense laws, widespread citizen profiling and vigilantism. It's also about people who espouse that popular political idea that basically amounts to "I've got mine, now screw you" and they lock themselves up in gated communities and in neighborhoods that keep out the "other." Afraid of their own shadow, they then guard it against anybody they decide in a blink wants to take it away.
3/26/12: I originally had Trayvon's last name wrong. It is corrected.
Gene and Roger
The first issue of The Chicagoan is available for download (I'm sure you can find it) and Slate has an excerpt from the 25,000 word oral history therein of "Siskel & Ebert." And by "Siskel & Ebert," I mean "At the Movies" or "Sneak Previews." You know-- the old movie show with the bald guy and the fat guy that argue all the time. Great show.
That reminds me of a classic Dave Foley monologue on "Newsradio." Jimmy James has fallen into a coma, and Dave is talking to him as he sleeps, to lift the patient's spirits and to get some fatherly advice:
I sure wish you were awake right now because I.. because I'm thoroughly confused, and usually when I'm confused, you're the one I go to. Generally speaking, you manage to confuse me even further. But somehow it always helps me to figure out what I should do.
Um, well, here's the situation as I understand it.. Lisa has decided she wants to have a baby, but she doesn't want to get married. Now I know if you were awake, you would probably say something like 'Well son, why milk the cow when you've got a fridge full of steaks?' And I would probably say, 'That makes absolutely no sense, sir.' And then I'm sure you would say, 'Well, it sure sounded like it made sense when that guy Chuck Connors said it in that movie Chinatown.' And I would be forced to say, 'Sir, Chuck Connors was not in the movie Chinatown.' And I'm sure you would come back with 'Well Dave, if I wanted to have this conversation, I would have hired that guy Siskel Ebert to do your job.' And I would say, 'Sir, Siskel and Ebert are two guys.' And I'm sure you would then come back with, 'Dave, just because the man is fat is no reason to make fun of him.'
A timeless piece of comedy.
Anyway, check out the S&E excerpt
here. It's written, in essence, by friends and colleagues from the show. Says executive producer Joe Antelo of the two hosts, "Do you know how long it initially took us to produce At the Movies? Six hours! They would argue incessantly. If Roger talked for four minutes of a six-minute segment, Gene would holler, “That’s not right!” The same thing happened whenever Gene would talk longer than Roger. They demanded that the other didn’t get one more second of screentime."
But of course, they genuinely loved each other, and that love is in full bloom in this glorious, uncensored video of Siskel and Ebert
recording a promo for their show in 1987. "Siskel & Ebert" has been off the air since Gene Siskel's death in 1999. Today, movies are shit. Coincidence?
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The Cardinals sent me a promotional email this morning advertising something called Bloomberg Sports Front Office. It's a statistical program designed for all of my fantasy baseball needs. First of all, I don't degrade my life's baseball experience by playing "fantasy" baseball. I concern myself with real baseball. My fantasy team is called the St. Louis Cardinals. I play fantasy football, but that's different. Football is already degraded. The "fantasy" aspect of football delivers a better product than the real thing. Secondly, I thought the sales pitch was a joke. It said, "(In Front Office 2012), David Freese is projected to hit 13 home runs with 64 RBIs... Only $19.99 for the season." Um, guess again, Mayor Bloomberg. Those numbers are only slightly off. Freese is going to hit 35 dingers and drive in 110.
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Gene Simmons of KISS is dissing Rihanna in advance of his band's summer tour with Motley Crue: "We're sick and tired of girls getting up there with dancers and karaoke tapes in back of them. No fake bullshit. Leave that to Rihanna, Shmianna, and anyone else that ends their name with an 'a.'"
Motley Crue's Tommy Lee added even more peppery speech: "No disrespect to Rihanna, she's a great singer, but we're in a slump for some shit that has some personality and appeal beyond a bunch of pop stuff that's floating around out there. I'm glad (Simmons) said that actually because I don't think I can bear watching another fucking award show that is just a little bit better than 'American Idol.' It's fucking pathetic to watch people go out and fucking karaoke with a bunch of lights and video. It's all completely watered down."
Hell yeah. Fuckin' A, fellas. That's called sarcasm.
A wise man named Fred Flintstone once said, "There are three types of songs-- happy songs, sad songs, and songs for teenagers who like things like 'Tweedle-Dee-Dee.'" Under which category do Simmons and Lee think their bands' songs belong?
Say goodbye, Fred Wilpon
It's ridiculous that Fred Wilpon still has a grip on a Major League Baseball team. An owner of the New York Mets since 1980, and his partners, currently have debts running in excess of $1.5 billion. Wilpon is currently being sued by the investment victims of Bernie Madoff, and if a jury sides with their trustee, could end up owing the victims' fund $83 million to $386 million. What did Wilpon know about the Madoff Ponzi scheme that was making him even richer by the day, and when did he know it? That's the question being asked in court.
The Mets are likely worth a billion dollars as asset, but not if Wilpon owns them.
The owners, through their top ranking employee, Commissioner Bud Selig, began forcing the sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers when owners Frank and Jamie McCourt began divorce proceedings in 2009. Selig has fought the McCourts every step of the way, challenging Frank McCourt's bid to auction off media rights as a way to finance retention of the team. He fought his attempts to sell naming rights to Dodger Stadium, and now his bid to maintain control of the potentially profitable land surrounding Dodger Stadium even as the team has gone up for bid.
While the financial insolvencies of the two National League clubs on opposite coasts would seem to be vastly similar, the big difference between the two, seemingly, is that Fred Wilpon is a three-decade member of the baseball owners "fraternity" and McCourt has only been in the game since 2004. McCourt has not asked for an emergency loan from Major League Baseball, but Wilpon and the Mets took one of $25 million in 2010, and then failed to repay it on time. MLB has a rule, established by the new labor agreement, that debt of a club cannot be more than 12 times its cash flow, but nine teams, including both the Mets and the Dodgers, are said to have been out of compliance with that in 2011.
It comes down to the same issue that it always comes down to in Major League Baseball-- the league's ridiculous argument that the commissioner is a figure of benign independence, acting in the best interests of the league-- for all parties involved, including the players and the fans. Ask Mets fans how that one's going? Because of Wilpon's profit-and-loss sheet, the team's player payroll for 2012 is dropping, in the course of just one season, from $142 million to $90 million. Carlos Beltran, Francisco Rodriguez, and Jose Reyes are all gone since this time last year, with the Mets not even making a bid in free agency for Reyes, the reigning league batting champion. That's a gutting of $52 million in player talent even as they play their home games in brand-new Bailout Field... er, Citi Field, which was constructed with major taxpayer input.
Selig supposedly has his reasons for the double-standard in treatment-- the two ownerships' differing attempts at refinancing, the way the McCourts' messy divorce proceedings have supposedly embarrassed baseball-- which is not an easy thing to do, by the way. (It's difficult to ponder how employing Bernie Madoff to handle your team's finances for a time, as Wilpon did, doesn't qualify as embarrassing the league also. It's been revealed that Madoff helped develop the Mets' strategy in which they negotiate long-term player deals with a high percentage of deferred money so that Wilpon and his partners could invest the money with Madoff and get paid before the players do.)
As far as news reports reveal, the difference in the cases is personal. Selig and Wilpon are long-time pals, going back as colleagues to even before the 1981 strike by the Players Association and the days when Marvin Miller still headed the union. In deference, Selig is probably waiting for the banks to tell Wilpon he has to sell. This is the shitty part of Selig's job. He was, of course, a long-time club owner himself, and only moved into the commissioner's chair when the clubs grew lax with the 70-plus year charade that the commissioner is not a puppet of the owners, finally just putting one of their own in the position in 1992. Now, Selig has to pretend he's neutral on the issue of Mets ownership when Wilpon, a long-time ally, helped place him where he is.
Wilpon needs to go. He's representative of today's economic system in the U.S. that more closely resembles a Banana Republic-- that is, the debt socialized and the profit privatized. The reason we have characters like Bernie Madoff and Fred Wilpon on the scene is because too many of the major players in high-finance have lost their fear of going out of business. This is because, typically, they aren't allowed to go out of business. But the New York Mets are not "too big to fail" under Wilpon's watch. They're lucky if they're in third place in the National League East.
The cat or the painting?
A house is on fire, and courageously you run into the house and have time to save only one item-- a cat or a priceless painting. Which do you save?
I asked a friend of mine this question, and his answer was hilarious. Here's my recall of this conversation:
Him: "Well, what size is the painting? Could I easily carry it?"
Me: "I think you're missing the essence of the question. Let's assume the likelihood of you getting the item out of the house successfully is the same for each. It's an ethical question."
Him: "Would anyone know that I didn't save the cat?"
Me: "Interesting. So, in other words, you would save the painting, but you're concerned about how people would judge you for it? What if it were a human?"
Him: "I would save the human. The cat would have no knowledge that I saved its life. The human would be grateful."
Me: "So you would base your decision on what you think people would think of you, or how potentially grateful somebody would be to you? Classic selfishness."
These are my friends.
I first came across this question once, I think, on a TV show. I no longer remember from where, but it crosses my mind from time to time. A work of art can be enjoyed by millions of people. It can have terrific emotional meaning to millions. But, of course, a cat is a living thing. I go back and forth myself. Others are so adamant one way or another in their particular value system that the other position even offends them. Here, I'm speaking primarily of the animal advocates.
I thought of the question most recently only yesterday when I read a related true-life story-- that HBO stopped production on the second season of a terrific TV show by David Milch called "Luck," about the culture of horse racing. In recent days, a third horse accidentally died on set (two during production of the first season, and now another). What has resulted from this, besides the fact that HBO has prematurely cancelled another Milch series (see: the 2006 tragedy of "Deadwood") is that I think I now have my answer to the first question I posed. I feel a sense of frustration with the series' producers, but to be perfectly frank, I find my overwhelming feeling upon the news, right or wrong, is approximately this-- Really? You're going to cancel this engaging, poetic story with important things to say (about redemption, failure, addiction, and coincidentally, life and death) because of the death of a few horses?
Yes, these are tragedies. Yes, it sounds like there was negligence, at least in the first two cases. But do the lives of three horses ever really mean that much when a majority of us consume parts of other farm animals at almost every meal? In many non-English speaking countries, horse is served on the table with the others. It's largely cultural. We would be eating them here too if we hadn't found better way to engage them in the economic system. It's the action of horse racing being depicted that's dangerous. Thoroughbreds are becoming bigger and stronger, even as their legs become thinner. It's a dangerous industry for the human riders, too, but both of these issues are dealt with substantively on the show. The even greater irony is that, arguably, no filmed piece of art has ever loved horses quite the way this show does. At moments during the first season (which is still airing over two more Sundays on the pay cable channel), the images of the equine, either in action on the track or in repose, could almost be described as "masturbatory." This is a show about horse lovers for horse lovers.
Online, the comment about "Luck's" cancellation that most got my dander up was this one from "Lemonadechee" on
the Atlantic site...
I really wanted to like the show, based on the cast and it seemed to have an interesting story line. I found it to be disjointed at times and while I will watch almost anything with horses in it, I couldn't bring myself to like it. It's really sad that they lost three horses just to make a TV show, so whatever their real motivation for canceling the show at least more animals won't die for the sake of entertainment.
That's what it comes down to. We're all selfish like my friend, even when we're selflessly pulling items from a burning building. I love this particular show. Lemonadechee thinks the loss of three horses is much more important than just "the sake of entertainment," but then it's worth pointing out that he also doesn't like the show. I wonder if would be feeling differently today if he had been drawn more emotionally into the program. I think there's a hell of a lot of art that's potentially worth that price. Our lives would have very little worth at all without art.
So what would I save, the cat or the painting? I know there's no way of predicting. The question can't be answered in the abstract. In the moment, I would choose selfishly-- the one that had more emotional meaning for me. So would you. The only other thing I can be sure of before this event actually occurs is that, cosmically, it might not be the best idea to name your series "Luck."
The Nixon letters
On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pat Nixon, the Richard M. Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California is putting on public display love letters written by Former President Nixon to the woman he called his "Irish Gypsy." Here's a sampling of one of his sonnets, from an undated letter penned sometime during their two-year courtship in 1938 and 1939:
"Every day and every night I want to see you and be with you. Yet I have no feeling of selfish ownership or jealousy. Let's go for a long ride Sunday; let's go to the mountains weekends; let's read books in front of fires; most of all, let's really grow together and find the happiness we know is ours."
In a worldwide exclusive, t
he CM Blog has also uncovered one of the love letters written by Nixon to his wife during the White House years. The text follows. The year is likely 1972...
My Dearest Pat,
My love for you knows no bounds. Those poor dumb bastards that think they've got a love like ours misread the depth of what we have. They've got media clout, that's for sure, but it's sour grapes, I tell you. They're radicals. I'll be damned if I'll let them get between us. They're finished. We can't prosecute each one of them, but my view is we can prosecute the goddamned asshole that gave this idea to them. We have to destroy his public image and credibility.
Ours is a love that was meant to be. It fits the way a love is supposed to fit. I don't love you with the purpose of making a political statement, like when you have a white and a black. Maybe that day will come for them eventually. The blacks are coming along. They're physically strong and some of them are smart, but there's a naivety there with some Americans as far as mixing goes. Only inbreeding, with time, will free the blacks. We're already there. My loyalty to you is unmatched. Jews are incapable of a loyalty like this. I'm not being anti-Semitic, you understand. If any President ever had a reason to be anti-Semitic, it would be me. And I'm not.
It's important that we commit ourselves again to each other even as our enemies try to destroy us. We couldn't get some of these people on board with us even if we tried. We just can't gamble on that. It would paralyze us. We can't go on saying, well, we're doing this and that. We've got to fight it just like hell.
It's my goal during this very brief time in the White House to do something good every day, and that includes demonstrating my love for you. We've had tough times before and this is perhaps what we were made for-- to carry the greatest personal burdens. Dearest Pat, the love of my life, you deserve it all. If I could, I would pull the moon down from the heavens and give it to you as a gift. And this would not be illegal. When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.
Love,
Dick
Taking on sleep
It turns out that humans are sleeping entirely all wrong. Thomas Edison eff'd us up good with that little incandescent lamp of his. He took us out of our primitive state.
A study from the '90s found that people taken out of their normal pattern and placed under regulated sleep, slept first for four hours, then awakened for one to two hours before going back to sleep for four more. There are more than 500 known references to "first sleep" and "second sleep" in historical text, including "The Odyssey." Alternet's Lynn Parramore
elaborates on what is known about the "waking period" between the two.
Many of you probably have difficulty sleeping for eight hours at a time. Not me. I sleep like a baby. But if you do, this may be the reason why. The "eight hour" standard is very much a product of the 20th century. As best I can tell, this news article linked above is a tacit endorsement for midnight house calls on your friends and neighbors, and it probably wouldn't hurt if we let people out of work at 3 in the afternoon also, instead of 5. Better to get a head start on the first sleep. We don't want to be up all night.
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A group of exiled Iranian women living in Europe are posing nude for International Women's Day to protest sexual discrimination and repression in the Islamic religion. Their video is here. It's fascinating to read the reactions of outrage from nearly every all sides on an American (liberal) news site. These women are taking a political stand. They're not selling a product, "being exploited," or "selling themselves out." They're risking their lives in fact. They're of all ages and sizes being presented on black and white video without sexy clothes and in front of a plain blackdrop. Can the female human body ever be shown without the presenter being accused of attempting to "sexualize" it? That's a thin (and thinning) line between Iran and here.
The NFL's moral integrity
The St. Louis Rams' new defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams, is meeting with NFL officials today, discussing reports that he put "bounties" on opposing players, offering his own money as reward for injuring offensive players ("knockout hits") when he led the defenses in New Orleans, Washington, and Tennessee.
Since the Rams' new head coach Jeff Fisher isn't likely to fire him regardless of the meeting's outcome, a season-long suspension is probably the best we can hope for as Rams fans. Perhaps that would force the organization to cut ties.
Somehow I find the "time-honored" "everybody is doing it" defense entirely unremarkable. If true, that's just a larger indictment of the culture of the NFL, Commissioner Goodell included. Neither the coaches, nor the commissioner, nor the owners, are risking life and limb on the field, the players are doing that. The violence of the game, inherent to a point, but also magnified by this culture, already makes the average Sunday at the stadium look like a cockfighting match, some of the roosters writhing on the ground in agony while others stand preening over their laid out bodies.
It's political action by retired players that have finally forced this issue into the spotlight. The commissioner, as recently as his last appearance before Congress, denied the link between his business and early-onset Alzheimer's and suicidal depression, but many players testified before Congress, and have been publicly outspoken, even blended authoritarian figures like Mike Ditka. Former Bears standout Dave Duerson committed suicide because of constant and unmanageable head pain, choosing to shoot himself in the chest so that doctors could study what football did to his brain.
I'm pissed at the behavior of modern-day players. On one hand, I recognize that this is the system they are forced into, a particularly insidious one in which the most brutal violence operates purposefully off-the-grid so that league officials can wag their fingers if and when the details are uncovered, even as they reap the financial benefits of marketing the violence. Yet individually, the players' ignorance of-- or inability to internalize-- a story like Duerson's is mind-boggling to me. That failure of the rank-and-file to grasp the economic realities of an enterprise that makes their bosses billionaires, but refuses to even guarantee their service contracts says all the wrong things about the "education" they supposedly received when they were enrolled in that taxpayer-subsidized developmental league called "college football."
Where is the camaraderie among the players? I know their union is for shit compared to Major League Baseball's, and this is likely part of the reason it is, but there has been notable collective action, earned successes by standing together as men. That professional equality and commitment to fair play and sportsmanship gets undercut every time one of them tries to supplement their Sunday salary with their coach's pocket change in return for a "cart-off" hit against one of their brothers.
Goodell has terrific culpability in this, but he's also the man with the power and position to send the message that player safety is more than just a public relations concept that the NFL needs to manage. If I had my way, I would have him ax the egomaniacal Williams for good, take away his livelihood just the way Williams has preached it inside the locker room, where your opponent is your mortal enemy, "squealers" are considered traitors, and cameras are not allowed. I'll start the ball rolling by contributing $10 to the cause.
