Bad day for Donald Sterling, et al
Rich, doughy white men everywhere are really the victims in this Donald Sterling ordeal. If you can't trust your millennial-aged mistress to keep your racist opinions between the two of you, there's no telling how dark the future might be. These men are now cast into a more tenuous position than having to pay one's fair share of taxes.
The young paramours, often one-third the age of their wealthy benefactors, hold a frightening sway over some of our nation's most important job creators. They're more tech-savvy and attuned to the power of social media. The people they choose to be seen with on social media often reflects poorly back on the sugar daddy.
Donald Trump, at least for one, recognizes the vulnerable position Sterling's mistress has put all of them in.
It was a terrible Tuesday for Sterling. The former Donald Tokowitz was banned for life from the NBA (he can now only appear with the Clippers on Instagram), fined $2.5 million for his leaked comments, and endured a public promise by the league commissioner-- one of his employees-- that he will now attempt to compel the other team owners to try to force the owner to sell the Los Angeles Clippers. When the team is ultimately sold, Sterling will pocket better than half a billion dollars from an original investment of $12.5 million back in 1981. (Important point at this time: The players made Sterling rich, not the other way around.) But without the team and the court side seats to help him score prime gold digger tail, Sterling will likely be spending his time again trying to keep black and brown people out of his housing units and lording over his slums full-time.
Showing their horns
Can we finally agree now that racism is still rampant in the United States and ingrained with persons of influence? This past week gave us both Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy. In the past, reactionaries could pass these incidents off as isolated, but this is getting harder to do.
Sterling has been tolerated in professional basketball for so long that his example this week is one in which the comments and circumstances were so extreme that the toleration appears to have reached its limit. We're so used to giving rich folks a pass in this country that Sterling was even scheduled to receive the NAACP Presidents Award in June.
The Bundy case is the most instructive of the two, for me. The anti-government criminal rancher from Nevada was an inspired hero of the Tea Party until Thursday when he clued reporters to his opinion that the "Negro people" were better off as the property of white people because, according to his logic, they had gardens and chickens then rather than dependence on the government. Bundy's greatest sin, politically, was being too unsophisticated to speak in the accepted racist code of the modern Right. When he did, even his most breathless champions in Washington, like Sean Hannity, were forced to distance themselves.
Too late for them, though. The anti-government, pro-gun agenda of the reactionaries can't shake the racist label so easily. When the Black Panther Party championed gun ownership and self-defense against the government in the 1960's and 70's, that group enjoyed zero support from the Right, and there's zero retroactive support from the same groups today. Hannity and Co. jumped in immediately behind Bundy several weeks ago when the trespassing rancher and his neighbors started arming themselves against federal agents, not bothering to vet Bundy's position on the Second Amendment against his position on the Thirteenth Amendment. How could they be so foolish? Because of the color of Bundy's skin.
One hundred years of suckitude
(Pictured: a sorrowful-looking bear)
It was an extraordinary day at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The Cubs celebrated the 100th birthday of the venerable stadium you might still know as Weeghman Park. The ballpark has hosted many memorable games, enduring moments, and interestingly, the same number of Cubs World Series championships as the Office Depot on Merle Hay Road in Des Moines. The now-century-old Wrigley
hosted its last World Series game several months before its 32nd birthday.
Today, the all-time great Cubs gathered to participate in the pregame pomp and ceremony, except for Sammy Sosa, the team's all-time home run leader, who is apparently unwelcome there until he apologizes for several different offenses. Also noticeably missing: fans that left nine thousand seats unsold. As for the action on the diamond, the Cubs blew a three-run lead-- and the game-- in the ninth against a team with a 5-18 record. For the Cubs on the young season, it was their 13th loss in 20 tries. Activity in the last inning made
this boy cry.
On a somewhat brighter note, the two teams wore stylish throwback uniforms and no concrete fell from the concourse ceiling onto a patron-- or at all. As they have for ten sturdy decades, the trough-style urinals in the men's restrooms welcomed the pee of the clientele that do their business upright, and the chance to see Darwin Barney play before he decides to call it a career was a highlight for some.
Tomorrow afternoon, at 1:20 Chicago time-- weather permitting-- the first pitch of century #2.
Get your souvenirs here
My annual pilgrimage to New Orleans is a week away. (Both Chaka Khan and Al Jarreau at this year's JazzFest, everyone!) Indisputably, part of the New Orleans and Vieux Carre experience is the T-shirt and souvenir shops. They number many in the Quarter, but are actually limited almost entirely to two streets, Bourbon and Decatur, and stay safely separated from the expensive shotgun-style, courtyard-ed and gardened homes, the city's most elegant hotels, and the plentiful number of art galleries that populate Royal Street. Now some
neighborhood groups want them out.
Some of these stores' proprietors are pushy as hell, I will say that (it's a cultural thing), but I accept them as part of the fabric of the neighborhood I so enjoy visiting. Apparently some have been in business for almost as long as Louis Armstrong's professional music career lasted. But why indeed does "this beautiful historic gem (the French Quarter)
allow the proliferation of T-shirt shops"? Probably because it's the same neighborhood that tolerates two different Larry Flynt Hustler clubs and lets shitty techno music blare out onto Bourbon from frozen daiquiri shops so that even on warm, unimprovable evenings, Maison Bourbon has to close its doors and windows if the patrons are to be able to hear Jamil Sharif play his horn.
Yeah, these shops are tacky, but if the neighborhood groups are this uncomfortable with the idea of the sacred mixing with the profane-- so opposed to "tacky"-- then maybe the shop proprietors are operating more in line with the essence of the Quarter than are their critics. Besides, I
need a new T-shirt this year. And something for my wife. And a Fleur-de-lis necklace. And maybe a pirate hat for next year's Carnival.
Public school wisdom
When I was in high school, I was sitting in a health class and the topic of homosexuality came up in the text. This was in the early '90s, and times were quite different then. (I only assume this. I haven't been to my hometown recently.) Nobody was "out" in this school, and I'm not aware of any of my classmates even coming out in the two decades subsequent. In this particular class, I remember being vocally supportive of the concept of gay equality. A friend of mine was as well, but this was definitely the minority opinion in the room, and was a topic to be mostly snickered at among the 20 or so people in the room. My active participation in that day's class has been a point of pride for me for years. I have enlightened parents and good television shows to thank for an early education in tolerance.
This teacher meant well, I guess, generally, but health was a course taught by the phys ed instructors, most of which, including this guy, were coaches first and foremost. When the debate grew heated between my friend and I and a half-dozen or so of the others, the teacher was quickly out of his depth. As his more opinionated students took over the debate, he started cracking jokes in the front of the room with a pocket of disinterested students. It's the vision of that that stays with me most vividly from that day.
I thought of that teacher and coach last week when I read
this story about Northwestern University head football coach Pat Fitzgerald. He's also in over his head as he exercises his National Labor Relations Board-protected rights as an employer in an $11 billion dollar-a-year "non-profit" industry to speak his mind against unions.
Stick to run formations and safety blitzes, Coach.
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My alma mater, Iowa State University, cancelled its student-run spring festival, VEISHEA, this weekend after student rioting was touched off in an adjoining campus neighborhood on Tuesday night. I think this was a wise move to cancel the "Stars Over VEISHEA" musical and drama performances, the parade, and all the student club functions, just like the way the Universities of Connecticut and Florida dropped their varsity basketball programs last week after the campus riots on their campuses that followed the national basketball championship game.
Wait a minute. I'm told that Connecticut and Florida didn't do that, nor did the University of Minnesota disband it's intercollegiate hockey squad today, two days after the riot in Minneapolis that followed the national hockey championship. I guess that's just Iowa State that chooses to penalize its active and engaged students for the sins of its disruptive and disinterested ones. Or maybe theater and club activities aren't as financially-lucrative as sporting events.
Instead, ISU students-- along with their unaffiliated and often uninvited guests-- had nothing else to do in Ames on Friday and Saturday night but still drink and act unruly, leading to 80 arrests despite the absence of VEISHEA.
Here's another idea. Allow legal adults into private drinking establishments and let legal adults enjoy a legal drink. Stop passing laws that defy both human nature and common sense. People might stop acting like criminals when you stop treating them like criminals.
I can get behind this
Stephen Colbert is a fine choice by CBS to succeed David Letterman. I cannot imagine a scenario where this show does not become my new late night loyalty. Colbert's ability to sustain his Comedy Central Colbert "character" for so many years is one of the most impressive achievements in comedy. When he started that show, I didn't think he could keep it up.
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Admit it. Part of you always thought that maybe you would one day be a guest on the Letterman show. And now...
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#CancelColbert apparently worked.
Hahahah. A win for satire.
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Quote of the day: David Letterman, telling
Playboy in 1984 about the stupid pet tricks performed by his own dogs,
"Bob sounds exactly the way I do when he eats potato chips. And if you give Stan the names of three early television comediennes-- Bea Benaderet, Vivian Vance and Lucille Ball-- the one he always chooses as his favorite is Lucille Ball. That comes, of course, not from watching Fifties television but from his association with the word ball with endless hours of fun. Nevertheless, it's a wonderfully stupid pet trick to sit Stan down and say, 'OK, Stan, who do you like best? Did you like Bea Benaderet?' And, of course, there will be no response from Stan. So then you say, 'How about Vivian Vance?' Again, nothing from Stan. 'Stan, one more name: Lucille Ball.' And suddenly he's up, running and jumping and making whelping noises. Now you tell me: If that's not a network-quality stupid pet trick, what is?"
Our heroes
Men's Division I college basketball has it's first openly-gay competitor. He's Derrick Gordon of the UMass Minutemen. Jason Collins was the first in the NBA, and Michael Sam stands to be the first in the NFL. Notice what the three men have in common? They're all African-American. Pretty cool.
Give these guys tremendous props, but give yourself some credit as well. The national reaction to these public coming-outs-- the standing ovation Collins got in his first game after his announcement, the overwhelming internet support for Sam-- this is what allows the door to swing wide. Affirmation from the culture at large is what the religious conservatives always feared the most. And here it is.
Now it's your turn, Major League Baseball. First, some African-Americans. Then some out players.
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And if you're "tired of having it shoved in your face," blame the people who stood in the doorway.
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Mark my words: Within two years, Barry Bonds will be the hottest thing going. His Hall of Fame candidacy will be the most celebrated and fashionable cause in sports. He'll be the new Pete Rose rebel exemplar. Barry has seemingly chilled out in retirement, and people of common sense are beginning to shake their heads at the moral arbiters that have kept him out of the Hall now two winters running.
On Deadspin, America's favorite internet website, the man's image makeover is straining not to show. "Ryan" from Wisconsin today shared a favorite story about heckling Bonds. I swear the man is starting to cross over into that "mythical old-timer" stage as the greatest baseball players always do...
April 14, 2001- Milwaukee WI.
(Before we go on, it's important to remind everyone that this was "the season" for Bonds. In retrospect, I wish we had known how Bonds' season would eventually end up, because that makes this story all the more crazy about how locked-in he was, even less than 2 weeks into the season)
It's the Saturday night of Easter weekend and my family (mom, dad, 2 younger brothers) make the trip to Miller Park to check out the Brewers vs Giants. We arrive at our seats down the left field line about 20 rows up. Before the game we notice another family that we're very close with is also attending the same game, and they have seats in the front row of our section, about 50 feet from where Barry Bonds will play left field. The parents all decide, "Hey, let the boys sit together, the parents will sit in the seats further back." So you end up with 7 boys in the front row (no parents), ages 20, 18, 17, 16, 16, 13, 12.
The Brewers strike early and are stomping SF after a few innings, and with each run, we taunt Bonds a little more (nothing quite "bad," since we were simple small-town WI kids, but may be some steroid stuff, etc), but we get louder and a little more direct as the game goes on. In the bottom of the 4th, Ron Belliard (RON BELLIARD) hits a home run just over the wall in right, and one of the brothers in our group yells at Bonds something like (very liberal paraphrasing), "Top that, Bonds."
I kid you not, and swear on any family member's life, this is what happened:
Bonds looks directly at us, gives a slight nod, shrugs, and then shakes his non-glove hand to gesture, "eh, that HR was so-so." The very next half-inning he comes up with 2 runners on, and destroys a pitch for a 3-run homer. The ball traveled the EXACT SAME path as Belliard's an inning before, but must have traveled 100 feet farther. Immediately we all start jumping around like 8-year-olds on Christmas: "OH MY GOD, HE CALLED THAT!"
When the half-inning ended, Bonds made his way out to left field. When he caught our attention, he pointed at the spot and shrugged again, as if gesturing, "That better?" We gave him a golf clap, did a short "We're not worthy" bow and he laughed. We didn't heckle him the rest of the night.
I've always hated Barry Bonds, but goddamn if that wasn't the most "No way that just happened" sports moment of my entire life.
(Boxscore: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIL/MIL2...)
Yesterday, upon the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth's all-time home run record (Bonds passed Aaron in 2006, in case you didn't know), a number of national baseball observers published pieces pushing the theory that Aaron is somehow still the all-time home run leader-- "the people's champion," to quote Reggie Jackson in one of the articles.
This is crap, of course. Bonds used PEDs, but so did both Aaron and Jackson, who popped amphetamines like M&M's during the '60s and '70s. (They were literally found in bowls on clubhouse food tables.)
What we have here is a hijacking. I love me some Baby Boomers. They produced some horrible-ass politicians, but as young'uns, they stopped a war and injected the West with a moral conscience. They changed the world in a way that put their parents-- the so-called "Greatest Generation"-- to utter shame. But they've hijacked Major League Baseball. Nobody great can ever play the game as well as their heroes played it, and that mentality of theirs isn't doing Major League Baseball any favors. Baseball men invented the very concept of a "hall of fame"-- not just a sports hall of fame, but a hall of fame
for anything. Now their hall is a joke. A team of players that have been blackballed could probably beat an all-time team of inducted players. And I blame this on sportswriters and baseball men of a certain age.
Who
is the true King of the Dingers? Deadspin loyalist "Bloodgames" typed it best yesterday: "Bonds' 762 should have an asterisk beside it, and that asterisk should reference a note at the very bottom of the list, and that note should read '762 is greater than 755.' "
Would they have let us have Gossip Girl?
The Emmy-winning HBO series
Girls sought permission to film on the campus of the University of Iowa during 2014, as the fictional main character was accepted to the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop in the narrative of the series’ third season. The university, in its infinite wisdom, turned the show’s producers down cold.
The school claimed it would be "a potential distraction" and was reportedly unhappy with the storyline. Fortunately, the show still plans to bring the production to Iowa City later in the year and will shoot at locations peripheral to the school. This is an incredibly lucky break for the university, better than it deserves after turning up its nose at free publicity and prestige for the workshop.
The director of the program, Samantha Chang, was excited about
Girls all along. "Since we're just now recruiting our new students for next fall, I am in the process of talking with a few of them about the issue of leaving New York (or San Francisco, or Seattle) and moving to the Midwest for two years,” she said. “When I heard that Hannah had been accepted to the program, I experienced a powerful imaginative flash into the head of this new perspective student with relocation issues.
“I mentally added her the list of people to call,” she added. “This is probably the only time I’ll ever experience such a surreal pop culture reflection of my actual life. It’s hilarious — or, it would be, if I had the time to stop and laugh.” Spoken like the director of a collegiate writer's workship.
Des Moines T-shirt manufacturer and Zeitgeist-capturer, Raygun LLC, is peddling a related tee with the phrase “Iowa City: No ‘Girls’ Allowed” emblazoned on it. Below that, in smaller print: “Vodka Samm's cool, but not naked Lena." The two references are contrasting examples of female empowerment. Vodka Samm is
the university’s most internet-famous alcoholic co-ed, and Lena is
Girls creator and star Lena Dunham, a self-proclaimed "chubby girl" who isn't afraid to show her bare chest on her show.
As I mentioned,
Girls and HBO are really throwing Iowa a second chance here. We're fortunate that the show is tied into an established story. Otherwise, if I were the producers, I would just switch the school to another reputable institution for creative writing, such as Emory University in Atlanta or Washington University in St. Louis. In the narrative, the only requirement seems to have been that the school is outside of the New York metropolitan area so that the writers could physically separate Hannah from her boyfriend Adam. You're caught up through season three
, right?
It doesn’t seem to matter the position or title, there are still entirely too many decision-makers around here that cling exhaustively to a vision of Iowa that resembles a commercial for Pioneer Hi-Bred. The corn around here's not the only thing loaded with syrup. We’re the Major League Baseball of states. The “voice” of Lena Dunham’s show is arguably the most distinctive and provocative on television. Rejecting this show in particular, for such vague reasons, seems too coincidental to be anything other than a knee-jerk rejection of whatever seems to be culturally “cool” at the moment and even moderately "controversial."
But the university guideline has now been very well-publicized, and I'm going to be paying close attention to my television. If I see an episode of, let's say,
Antiques Roadshow taped in the main hall of the UI Memorial Union, I’m going to be pissed.
Dave is leaving
David Letterman announced his pending 2015 retirement today on his program
The Late Show. Dave's
Late Night show on NBC ran from 1982 to 1993. It was the first network talk show for the generation that was raised on television, and I was a little tyke mesmerized by it. In '93, I went off to college, and the very same week that fall, Dave made his celebrated debut on CBS after the corporate pinheads at the Peacock made their bed with Jay Leno. They made plenty of money off their decision, but CBS made plenty of money too, and Jay Leno and the pinheads will be forgotten in relatively short order. Letterman will go, not just into the Pantheon of late night TV with Johnny Carson, but to the top tier of all-time television personalities, period. Top 5, at least. Every comedy program you see on your television today mimics Dave's absurdist post-ironic bent, or has gone purposefully sweet and saccharine to counteract the prevailing sarcastic tone of the medium that was established by Dave (God, I can't stand Jimmy Fallon).
This is going to be a wonderful last year (and change) as Dave takes a victory lap. I'm a guy who still has Johnny's last week and a half of shows on VHS (but now no VCR player on which to play them), and has celebrated ever since in television's greatest exit. That's what I want for Dave. And here's how I would like to specifically see it.
I want last lap appearances by Norm MacDonald, Howard Stern, Oprah Winfrey, Richard Simmons, Tom Hanks, Drew Barrymore, Jerry Seinfeld, Sandra Bernhard, Teri Garr (if she's up to it), Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Alec Baldwin, Betty White, Don Rickles, Regis Philbin, Chris Rock, Nathan Lane, Jack Hanna, Amy Sedaris, and Ray Romano.
I want Conan and I want Jimmy Kimmel.
I'd like to see Lyle the Intern.
I don't want big-name movie stars that are only that. If you are humorless and uninteresting, and you know who you are, don't even call your agent. You're not going to crash this party just to heighten your status.
I want one solid week of nothing but Dave's oldest friends and collaborators, ratings be damned. That would be Jimmy (J.J.) Walker, Jeff Altman, John Witherspoon, George Wallace, Tom Dreesen, Mary Tyler Moore, Merrill Markoe, and Gerard Mulligan.
Then, the last week, we drop the hammer: Robin Williams and Bette Midler, who were Johnny's last two guests; Tina Fey, to represent the children of "Dave,"; Steve Martin, so good; Michael Keaton, who worked with Dave on MTM's
Mary, and would provide one more opportunity to see the clip of Dave singing; Chris Elliott, Dave's clown prince; Cher, who is the Cher of Dave's long career; and then on the last one, Bill Murray, the cosmic brother; and Martin Short, who "brought it" better than anybody else as a guest.
Who am I leaving out? Can we fit it all in as it is? I say yes. The exact end date is still undetermined, right? We'll run long if we have to.
Take a bow, David. Enjoy the the last hurrah. And then I'm going to miss the shit out of you.
