Shuntaro Tanikawa.
2 hours ago
Thursday, June 22, 2006
The Sports Draught
Gone. All gone.
And Wimbledon doesn't count.
We have reached the nadir of the sports broadcasting cycle. ESPN has nothing better to show during the day than bowling. Sure, I can watch the rest of the World Cup and pull for Italy (and Ghana! as Jon Stewart said, "not the most malnourished country in southwestern Africa."). And there's maybe one major league lacrosse game somewhere on some channel at least once a week, if I'm lucky enough to find it.
And then there's baseball. It's June. Who gives a damn until September and the Braves suck this year anyway. I like Ozzie Guillen, though, and I like him even more for calling Jay Mariotti a fag. "Pompous, bloated toad" might have been more appropriate and less offensive, but I can't quibble with the sentiment.
And after watching Esera Tuaolo tonight on Big Idea with Whatshisname I thought, you know, if gay men in pro sports want to be able to come out to their teammates, they're going to have to win a few locker romm fistfights in the process, and wearing a lime green shirt and whining about acceptance won't get them there. A lot of noses, mostly black ones, but a few white ones, too, got bloodied during the Civil Rights movement, so I think these guys have to be willing to pick a few fights. I mean, Tuaolo played fucking nose tackle. I'm sure during his nine-year career, playing on one NFC Championship team, he had occassion to hear some 5'10" 175-lb cornerback crack a gay joke. Then he should have kicked the guy's ass and said, "You just got beat up by a fag. How's that feel?"
Strength respects strength, and two weeks later they'll all be singing Kumbaya and Tualo will STILL be enduring gay jokes, but they'll be told much, much more respectfully.
That wasn't even what I wanted to blog about but now the connection, she flickers.
And Wimbledon doesn't count.
We have reached the nadir of the sports broadcasting cycle. ESPN has nothing better to show during the day than bowling. Sure, I can watch the rest of the World Cup and pull for Italy (and Ghana! as Jon Stewart said, "not the most malnourished country in southwestern Africa."). And there's maybe one major league lacrosse game somewhere on some channel at least once a week, if I'm lucky enough to find it.
And then there's baseball. It's June. Who gives a damn until September and the Braves suck this year anyway. I like Ozzie Guillen, though, and I like him even more for calling Jay Mariotti a fag. "Pompous, bloated toad" might have been more appropriate and less offensive, but I can't quibble with the sentiment.
And after watching Esera Tuaolo tonight on Big Idea with Whatshisname I thought, you know, if gay men in pro sports want to be able to come out to their teammates, they're going to have to win a few locker romm fistfights in the process, and wearing a lime green shirt and whining about acceptance won't get them there. A lot of noses, mostly black ones, but a few white ones, too, got bloodied during the Civil Rights movement, so I think these guys have to be willing to pick a few fights. I mean, Tuaolo played fucking nose tackle. I'm sure during his nine-year career, playing on one NFC Championship team, he had occassion to hear some 5'10" 175-lb cornerback crack a gay joke. Then he should have kicked the guy's ass and said, "You just got beat up by a fag. How's that feel?"
Strength respects strength, and two weeks later they'll all be singing Kumbaya and Tualo will STILL be enduring gay jokes, but they'll be told much, much more respectfully.
That wasn't even what I wanted to blog about but now the connection, she flickers.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
On Clothes
Aesthetic decisions rise from the urge to individuate.
One of the first such impulses I remember having happened to me in the Skee-Ball pavilion at Six Flags Over Georgia in 1977, when I was eleven. I'm still confident in my Skee-Ball skillz, but at eleven I was untouchable. I had accumulated an unweildy pile of tickets, and I was intent on winning a CB radio, but Mom and Dad came to collect us and I had to cash in my tickets. At the booth, a T-shirt caught my eye. It was canary yellow, and had one of those heavy puffy sparkly rubbery 70s iron-on decals on the front that had a picture of a Basil-Wolverton-style green-furred, popeyed drooling monstrosity motoring down the road in a Corvette convertible. Swooshing around the beast were the words, "Corvette: Wrap Your Ass In Fiberglas". I fell in love with it. I had enough tickets. It would be mine. I pointed and handed over the tickets.
"Oh no. Pick something else." Mom.
"Why?" Me.
"It's ugly. You don't want to waste your winnings on that ugly shirt."
Then I made my first aesthetic individuating announcement. "It's not ugly. It's cool."
"It's not polite. You can't wear it outside."
"Can I wear it home?" God, what a wuss I was! I'd already CONCEDED the terms of use!
"No."
"Why?"
A sigh, an eyebrow.
"It's because it says ay ess ess, right?"
"Right. That's just dumb. You don't want a dumb, ugly shirt."
Aha. Her mistake. She'd already conceded possession of thew shirt, and had moved on to terms of use. I pressed the issue.
"You let me buy those Car-toons magazines with all the monsters in it and stuff." This was true. (It was also true that my parents had a handsome Al Capp volume that featured Basil Wolverton's contest-winning drawing of Lena the Hyena, perhaps explaining their tolerance of the work of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, but I didn't put all that together until years later.)
Connection flickers. I'll post now.
Anyway, I got to keep the shirt, I only wore it at home, my friend Wallace laughewd at me when he saw me in it and I don't think I ever wore it again.
But I still rule at Skee-Ball, and there are many ugly things I find quite beautiful.
One of the first such impulses I remember having happened to me in the Skee-Ball pavilion at Six Flags Over Georgia in 1977, when I was eleven. I'm still confident in my Skee-Ball skillz, but at eleven I was untouchable. I had accumulated an unweildy pile of tickets, and I was intent on winning a CB radio, but Mom and Dad came to collect us and I had to cash in my tickets. At the booth, a T-shirt caught my eye. It was canary yellow, and had one of those heavy puffy sparkly rubbery 70s iron-on decals on the front that had a picture of a Basil-Wolverton-style green-furred, popeyed drooling monstrosity motoring down the road in a Corvette convertible. Swooshing around the beast were the words, "Corvette: Wrap Your Ass In Fiberglas". I fell in love with it. I had enough tickets. It would be mine. I pointed and handed over the tickets.
"Oh no. Pick something else." Mom.
"Why?" Me.
"It's ugly. You don't want to waste your winnings on that ugly shirt."
Then I made my first aesthetic individuating announcement. "It's not ugly. It's cool."
"It's not polite. You can't wear it outside."
"Can I wear it home?" God, what a wuss I was! I'd already CONCEDED the terms of use!
"No."
"Why?"
A sigh, an eyebrow.
"It's because it says ay ess ess, right?"
"Right. That's just dumb. You don't want a dumb, ugly shirt."
Aha. Her mistake. She'd already conceded possession of thew shirt, and had moved on to terms of use. I pressed the issue.
"You let me buy those Car-toons magazines with all the monsters in it and stuff." This was true. (It was also true that my parents had a handsome Al Capp volume that featured Basil Wolverton's contest-winning drawing of Lena the Hyena, perhaps explaining their tolerance of the work of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, but I didn't put all that together until years later.)
Connection flickers. I'll post now.
Anyway, I got to keep the shirt, I only wore it at home, my friend Wallace laughewd at me when he saw me in it and I don't think I ever wore it again.
But I still rule at Skee-Ball, and there are many ugly things I find quite beautiful.
Friday, June 02, 2006
A Miracle Signal
I am not dead or imprisoned, merely Internet-impaired and inconstant.
Here's a tad of what got written but not posted in the past weeks (a month), and I've yet to check my e-mail. I shudder to think of it. The perfunctory followed by the increasingly indignant.
Mormons That Make Even Mormoms Look Sane
Why is Warren Jeffs an obsession of CNN yet the Reverend Moon is not? Oh yeah, I forgot. But CNN is painting this as an imminent Waco-type debacle. At least Anderson Cooper is. OK, so keeping women and children as chattel is reprehensible and the Welfare fraud is mind-boggling, but it poses an interesting question: how far are we willing to go to preserve "religious freedom"? Where is the intersection of God's law and man's? Polygamy is a fascinating issue, because it has both political parties bending themselves into pretzels to accomodate their distaste. Liberals are left arguing that these poor women are brainwashed and coerced, not exactly a ringing endorsement of gender equality.
*snip*
Anyway.
I'm off to check e-mail.
Here's a tad of what got written but not posted in the past weeks (a month), and I've yet to check my e-mail. I shudder to think of it. The perfunctory followed by the increasingly indignant.
Mormons That Make Even Mormoms Look Sane
Why is Warren Jeffs an obsession of CNN yet the Reverend Moon is not? Oh yeah, I forgot. But CNN is painting this as an imminent Waco-type debacle. At least Anderson Cooper is. OK, so keeping women and children as chattel is reprehensible and the Welfare fraud is mind-boggling, but it poses an interesting question: how far are we willing to go to preserve "religious freedom"? Where is the intersection of God's law and man's? Polygamy is a fascinating issue, because it has both political parties bending themselves into pretzels to accomodate their distaste. Liberals are left arguing that these poor women are brainwashed and coerced, not exactly a ringing endorsement of gender equality.
*snip*
Anyway.
I'm off to check e-mail.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
