Let's Not Overstate the Case

Like most Americans, particularly the non-communist ones, I watched the Super Bowl last night.

I've fallen out of love with football (of the American sort) in recent years. Mostly, I just don't want to spend that much time watching sports. And as my six readers well know, I'm a baseball man.

Still, I have to admit that it was a damn fine game. I wasn't terribly invested in the outcome but had a slight leaning toward the Saints, so that felt satisfying.

And oh, the trickery! The Saints led off the second half with an onside kick, which was exciting and unexpected and momentum-shifting. A great play call.

One announcer described it as "courageous." A headline I saw this morning called it "valiant."

Okay, look... I'm all for adding juice to headlines to suck in a reader, but really? Courageous? Valiant? I can get behind bold, gutsy, even ballsy, but I'm not sure that it takes courage to call for an unexpected onside kick. I could get behind imaginative, creative, or exhilarating. But no, that play call was not valiant.

Anyway, somehow I missed the Tim Tebow ad. I don't know when it aired, but I plum missed it. And no, it doesn't take courage for Tim to be publicly pro-life (thanks again, David Zirin).

Back in September, Zirin wrote about homophobia in the NFL. Kudos, David, for using the word gutsy to describe a couple of players' stance in favor of gay marriage, rather than courageous or valiant.

Things are Fishy on Staten Island

And I don't just mean the stench of the Fresh Kills Landfill!

Today is Groundhog Day (insert movie reference here). I watched the live coverage of Staten Island Chuck on NY1 this morning. Long-time B&E readers may remember previous mentions of Staten Island Chuck. He's New York's answer to Punxsutawney Phil, the notorious weather-predicting groundhog of Pennsylvania.

NY1 reports that in the past 29 February 2nds, Staten Island Chuck has been right 22 times, giving Chuck a better record than Phil over the same period.

Well, I had some observations of today's live coverage that makes me think the whole thing is rigged somehow.

First of all, on a separate but related matter, Staten Island Chuck might be a real dick. Last year he took a chunk out of Mayor Bloomberg's finger. This year Mayor Mike wore super-thick work gloves that I think were made of dragon hide.

Anyway, they tried to lure Chuck out, and we (the TV audience) waited. We waited quite some time. That groundhog wouldn't fucking come out. Finally, some brave mayoral aide (without gloves) reached into Chuck's little hut and yanked him out, handing him to the mayor, who nearly dropped him.

Chuck got fat.

And I'm sorry, but Mayor Mike didn't confer with Staten Island Chuck at all before announcing that Chuck didn't see his shadow.

Anyone watching could tell you that Chuck didn't want to come out of his hovel because he saw nothing BUT shadow. He was freaked the fuck out. And fat.

Meanwhile, in Punxsutawney, Phil saw his shadow. I didn't watch any live coverage, but Phil looked svelte (possibly starved, if you believe PETA, who would prefer that Phil be a robot), and a dude with a funny hat and Rollie Fingers mustache listened carefully to what Phil had to say.

I think I figured out what's going on. In Punxsutawney, they genuinely listen to what Phil has to say about the weather. He sees his shadow; he doesn't see his shadow. They trust Phil.

Staten Island is the most suspect of the five boroughs of New York City. Even people who live there don't really know what goes on there. I don't know if the whole Staten Island Chuck experience is bankrolled by the mob or what, but I have a feeling that the weather prediction is more about the number-runners and money-changers than the goddamned weather.

And it wouldn't surprise me one bit if somehow Mayor Mike is in on the fix. I don't know if he's consulting Poor Richard's Almanack or what, but I do know that he didn't bother to consult with that fat, angry groundhog.

It's suspect, B&E readers. It's fucking suspect.

This Is the State of the Union, Bitches

No, I didn't watch the State of the Union address this week. Sure, I would've liked it more than the SOTU addresses of the past decade, but I just couldn't muster up the enthusiasm. Like anyone who follows politics, I've heard a thing or two about the speech - some positive, some negative.

I can tell you this, though... I'm very impressed by this transcript:

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation; The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.

Those pretty words belong to Franklin Delano Roosevelt (he's the president in a wheelchair in the musical Annie), who delivered them as part of his State of the Union address in 1944.

It's generally referred to as the Economic Bill of Rights.

When he was campaigning for the presidency, Barack Obama did not seem like just another feckless weenie from the ranks of the Democratic Party. But when he uses his State of the Union address to discuss a spending freeze, well...

BHO is no FDR.

Putting the Dick in Dicktionary

Pretty much everyone has, at one time or another, enjoyed the pastime of looking up dirty words in the dictionary.

One of my favorite discoveries in the 2nd grade (word was getting around the whole school, I'm pretty sure) was that the definition for fart in the library's dictionary read, "An explosion between the legs." Even at age seven, this sounded like an outlandish and ridiculous definition for fart. I wasn't literate enough in those days to know what the definition would be, but that just didn't seem right to me.

So like any good student, I looked it up. Sure enough, under fart: "An explosion between the legs." It was simultaneously hilarious and worrying, because even though it was in a book, it just didn't seem right.

Here it is thirty years later, and when I look up fart in my American Heritage Dictionary, the definition reads as follows:

fart (färt) Vulgar Slang intr.v. fart•ed, fart•ing, farts To expel intestinal gas through the anus; break wind. • n. 1. An often audible discharge of intestinal gas. 2. An annoying or fooling person.

There's still plenty in there to cause giggling, and it seems like a pretty accurate definition of fart.

So yes, I suppose I still enjoy looking up irreverent (maybe even dirty) words in the dictionary. It has a long history. When Samuel Johnson wrote the first dictionary and asked for royal patronage, he discovered that silly Prince George was only interested in looking up the rude words. (Black Adder is historically accurate, right?)

Still, some parents would rather that children look up nothing, rather than have the option to look up dirty words. A California school district has removed the Merriam-Webster dictionary from public school classrooms because one child looked up oral sex. Merriam-Webster's online dictionary has the definition as, "Oral stimulation of the genitals." My American Heritage Dictionary reads, "Sexual activity involving oral stimulation of one's partner's sex organs."

Those seem like perfectly good, accurate, to-the-point, if somewhat clinical, definitions of oral sex to me. But I guess accuracy doesn't necessarily keep something from being banned.

I am rather fond of one particular quote from the article linked above. A spokeswoman for the school district says, "It's hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we'll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature."

That is a job for which I'm truly qualified. Indeed, I'm probably over-qualified.

In researching this posting, I read definitions for fart and oral sex (of course), and also fellatio, and cunnilingus, just because. While in the C's, I was thrilled to find that my dictionary also has crack baby as an entry.

Gosh, dictionaries are fun.

Hey, Look Over There!

While you, my six readers, wait for me to update B&E, I offer you a worthy distraction: Hedgehogs!

And if you want a look back at other hedgehogs, enjoy the hedgehogs of B&E old, dear readers.

Sure, I Have Thoughts

Since you were wondering, and as long as everyone else is talking about it, I'll share a few thoughts about yesterday's vote in Massachusetts. I know why the Democratic candidate, Martha Coakley, lost to Republican Scott Brown.

The Democrats are feckless weenies. I don't care who you blame for the loss: Coakley, the Massachusetts Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee, or the White House. Nothing but feckless weeniedom from top to bottom.

Headlines about "Upset of the Century" and "Stunning Defeat" only garner a "Really?" response from me. Who's surprised? What about the Democratic Party in the past 30 years (or more) has demonstrated anything other than a reliable ability to fuck up?

There are books to be written (and probably will be written) about why the Democratic Party has failed. Or is failing. Or continues to fail. Or continually fails. Maybe it's a loss of core values. Maybe it's the shift to the right. Maybe it's the vast quantity of cash taken from business interests. Maybe it's the constant compromise that makes people think the party doesn't actually stand for anything. Maybe it's simple weakness.

Ultimately, though, all of those reasons for its ongoing failure come down to the same thing: the Democrats are feckless weenies.

And if you need further proof of feckless weeniedom, just check out how they're responding to the loss: finger-pointing, steps back, further compromise, and total defeat.

Feckless weenies.

But if you want to cheer up, I was introduced to this blog today. I never know if I'm really late in discovering these things, but it's fun anyway. Oh, and look! The puppy cam is back!

Accents Have to Make Sense

I have a love/hate relationship with the TV show 24. I keep giving it another chance, and it keeps letting me down. But hey, this season's in New York! So I've gotta see what that's all about.

But let me just say a word or two about accents as a dramatic choice.

I'm sure most of you have seen Schindler's List. The Nazis speak English with a German accent; the Poles speak English with a Polish accent. I remember when the movie came out, it took me some time getting used to that. I couldn't help but wonder why all of these people were speaking English with accents. But look, I get it: I mean, Spielberg wanted to get asses in seats too. So it's not like he was going to have all of the actors speaking German or Polish. He was already asking a lot of us by making us sit through a black and white movie.

Anyway, after a while, I slipped into the overall atmosphere of the film, and the accents were all a part of it. I got over my initial hangup and went with it.

In other movies or TV shows, there are characters for whom English isn't a first language. Let's take the current season of 24, a whole two episodes in. The president of an unnamed Islamic republic speaks to the US president in his accented English. But then when the foreign president speaks to his chief of staff, in this case his brother, they still speak English. I would think it might be a lot easier and, dare I say, more realistic if they spoke in their native tongue to each other.

But okay, it's TV. And let's face it: the typical viewer of 24 is lazy and meatheaded. So I get why they have the characters speak in accented English to each other. Fine. I can go with that too.

Then there are times that accents are used dramatically and it flies in the face of any sort of logic. This use of accents by writers or producers or directors or whomever makes this choice is stupid and dishonest.

Remember Die Hard? I think Die Hard is a total blast. Alan Rickman's performance of Hans Gruber as the German baddie is just terrific. Alan speaks the entire movie in a German accent. Except for one pivotal scene in which he comes face to face with Bruce Willis's John McClane. Pretending to be someone else, Hans Gruber puts on a perfect American accent. If this guy can speak English without an accent, why on earth does he have a German accent normally? It doesn't make sense, and it's a ridiculous flaw in an otherwise totally great movie.

They pulled that shit again in the first two episodes of 24. There's a bad guy speaking with a Russian accent throughout most of the first couple of hours. Then he meets up with a friend in Queens. (Queens!) And suddenly he's speaking in an American accent (with a hint of Queens even). But when he reveals himself to his "friends" as the baddie he really is, he goes back to the Russian accent. If he can speak perfectly fine English, why the fuck wouldn't he always speak perfectly fine English? It doesn't make any fucking sense! And it's stupid.

Dear Hollywood Accents Committee,
Stop being stupid.
Love,
Dan

It's a Giant Toy Train Set! Made of Plants!

The missus and I took a trip to the New York Botanical Garden last weekend. Somehow we'd never been. I've been wanting to go see the annual Holiday Train Show for years, and we finally got our act together and got tickets for the final weekend.

There are a lot of families at the Botanical Garden. Especially unhappy ones, it seems. On a tram tour of the garden, we were joined in our row by a man with an empty stroller. He spent a whole lot of time yelling at his wife and kids, who were in another tram car. He was ordering them to sit down, commanding his wife to get control. He was a seriously miserable bastard. But that's okay because he was making up for it by causing misery in the whole family.

Even so, it was worth the crowds and the misery to check out the cityscape and toy trains. The cityscape is made completely of vegetation. It's wacky. And awesome.

And I bet you know what that means for you, B&E readers! That's right: PHOTOS!

This is a real train! In Queens!

Pretty, right?

This is a toy train! In the Bronx!

Cute, right?

Here are some skyscrapers! Based on the ones in midtown!

Cool, right?

This is a mini Yankee Stadium! Like the one in the Bronx!

Where the fuck are the Mets, right?

This is the Brooklyn Bridge! Brooklyn Bridge! Brooklyn Bridge!

Brooklyn Bridge, right?

This is the Guggenheim! From Men in Black! And The International!

Frank Lloyd, Wright?

Gosh, it was all very impressive! We may even go back again next year! Good idea, right?

The Hope of a New Season

The thing that's just terrific about baseball is that hope springs eternal. So your team failed (as usual) this year. It doesn't matter. February rolls around, you hear the magical words, "pitchers & catchers," and your team has the potential to be the best in the league, just like every other team.

Oh, unless you're the 2010 New York Metropolitans. Nope. They don't have that potential.

We're still a month from the kickoff of spring training, and the team's superstar centerfielder, Carlos Beltran -- who gets paid a whopping $119 million, who has decided without the team's agreement to have knee surgery, and who (apropos of nothing) has always had some sort of weird growth on the side of his head -- won't even be in the Mets lineup until May.

Yes, indeed. The Mets will once again be terrible. Yay.

Since it was first announced a couple of years ago, I've been rather annoyed by the Mets' partnership with Citigroup, which resulted in the naming rights to the new stadium. Citi Field. Blech. I mean, why would a such a stellar baseball organization want to be associated with an insolvent financial institution that's been so eager to keep sucking at the teat of the federal government?

But now the Mets seem determined to live up to the stunningly high standards of Citigroup itself. I sincerely wish it didn't make so much sense.

Let's go, Mets! Let's go, Mets! Let's go, Mets!

Oy.

Anyway, here's the second of the tasty Egyptian footballers, a fella called Gomaa, also courtesy of blondandeffective, for you non-baseball fans. Enjoy!

Harold Ford Can Suck It

Like most New Yorkers I don't have much of an opinion of Kirsten Gillibrand, our appointed Senator. But after reading this interview with Harold Ford, who's making strange noises about running against her in the primary, I'm starting to like her a lot more.

Seriously, dude. There are so many things wrong with your pompous answers to these questions, I'm not sure you should hold any job in New York...

You've been to all five boroughs by fucking helicopter?
You're like totally best friends with the Giants owner?
You totally scored a lunch with the Jets owner?
You're buying into a corporate box at Yankee Stadium?
You take a fucking cab to work every day?
Oh, except for most days, when NBC sends a car to get you?
Is there an issue you haven't flipped on since coming to NYC?
And...
You don't shoot children??

Harold, dude... What the fuck is wrong with you?

Okay, I'll Bite

Part of me wants to let it go, but apparently I can't resist...

Mark McGwire admitted steroid use. And man, former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer earned the shit out of his crisis management fee.

Yes, it was a good strategy well-executed by all parties involved, even tears and (perhaps) genuine emotion from McGwire himself, all orchestrated to repair his image and give him a shot at becoming a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, after yet another year of receiving "yes" votes on only 25% of the ballots, when 75% is needed.

Anyway, the whole theater of the mea culpa makes me want to fucking puke.

Still, I'm giving Mark McGwire a pass on steroid use. Not only that, but I'm also giving a pass to anyone who used steroids before 2003. Shit, baseball didn't even ban them until 2003, so no one was breaking rules.

Laws are a different matter, I suppose, and if there are prosecutors who want to waste time tracking down steroid users and their dealers, go ahead. It seems like a fucking waste of resources, but whatever. I don't care.

No, I'm dropping the steroid problem onto the heads of Major League Baseball executives and team owners and management. Fuck those guys. They were the true beneficiaries of steroid use throughout baseball. At best, they looked away. But they were lining their pockets with oodles of cash as baseball hit new heights of popularity, thanks to the very steroid users/home run hitters who saved baseball after the '94 players' strike. That the players are now the fall guys for this steroid "scandal" is fucking bullshit, B&E readers.

I have less sympathy for the players who used steroids in 2003 or later. They were officially breaking the rules then.

Anyway, baseball... Ain't it great?

And for my non-baseball readers, I offer this image of one of Egypt's hunkiest soccer (that's football in Egypt) players, courtesy of blondandeffective, who describes him as a "halal beefcake specimen." Who can't agree with that?

Kansas Is Wacky

The Kansas Legislature is debating a possible death penalty repeal. In recent years, Kansas has not been famous for its progressiveness, even though it's the historical birthplace of Progressivism.

My family moved to Kansas when I was nine years old. At the time, the Kansas governor was John Carlin, a Democrat (and Lutheran! my dad liked to point out), and he vetoed several death penalty bills that came across his desk. Mike Hayden, a Republican, followed him into office, saying he would sign a death penalty bill (at least that's how I remember it). But then the legislature got cold feet and didn't pass a bill.

The legislature finally passed a bill in 1994, under Democratic Governor Joan Finney. According to the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Finney neither vetoed nor signed the bill. So that's weird. And it became law. No one has actually been put to death in Kansas, and seven people are currently on death row.

The New York Times recently reported that the American Law Institute had given up its death penalty work. That's the group that provided the original legal rationale the Supreme Court of the United States cited in its decision that allowed capital punishment again. That they've declared their project to be a failure seems like it must be a huge deal, that maybe it's an acknowledgment that sentiment against the death penalty is rising again. But hey, I'm no legal expert.

Naturally, the primary argument that states seem to be making against sentencing people to death row is that it costs too damned much, not that, say, state-sanctioned murder is immoral. Still, I suppose if high costs and tight budgets are what it takes...

But I don't have my finger on the pulse of Kansas politics at all anymore. Do any of my Kansas-dwelling readers (both of you) have any sense about how this debate will go? Could the death penalty in Kansas actually be overturned?

I'm telling you: Kansas is a totally wacky place.

It's Like a Made-for-TV Movie

I tell you what: New York Magazine puts together one helluva yarn.

Some of you may recall that back in 2004, John Kerry ran for president. It was a terrible campaign. Just terrible. The campaign did exactly two things right, in my opinion: 1) they chose an unknown state senator Barack Obama to be the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention; and 2) they named John Edwards as Kerry's running mate.

I thought that Edwards was a bit smarmy, truth be told, but I rather appreciated that he was the only candidate who talked at all about poverty. But, you know, this was in 2004, and we didn't really have a poverty problem in this country until Hurricane Katrina. If you don't see it, what's the problem?

We all knew Edwards would return. And I was rather looking forward to his campaign in 2008. Especially since I wasn't the biggest Hillary fan. Edwards was positioning himself to the left of the other viable candidates. So yeah, I had hoped he'd do well. He didn't. By the time New York got its primary vote, he was well off the ballot. And we all know about his downfall since.

But holy shit! The inside story linked above in New York Magazine is riveting stuff. There are some real revelations there. I encourage you to read it. Start to finish, it's a page-turner (or, indeed, a page-click-forwarder). Yes, there's sex; yes, there's ego; yes, there are attempted backroom deals; yes, there's an embattled wife with a chasm between her public and private personae. It's seriously tasty.

Keep Warm, In-Laws

This post from Titivil led me to this picture from Boing-Boing. If that doesn't make you say some semblance of "Holy shit!" I don't know what will.

Chilly and wet the Scots are used to. Arctic, not so much. We're talking lows in the zero-degrees Fahrenheit realm. And most of the buildings are old and drafty. So I hope the in-laws in Edinburgh have durable central heating and properly double-glazed windows. And I hope the in-laws in the Highlands are burning toasty peat fires and huddling together over some delicious soup.

Probably the person doing best in this whole scenario is the missus' father, who has MS and rarely leaves his home. His flat is in a relatively new building with good heating and decent windows. Plus he has a stash of meals-on-wheels in his freezer. But that's the evils of a governmental safety net for you. Fucking socialists.

This kind of cold in Scotland is fucked up, B&E readers. And in case you don't already know, the UK is one of the places that will become decidedly colder due to global warming, as those warm North Atlantic currents that keep the islands relatively temperate become flooded by the ice cap runoff. So how long is it before this type of winter is the norm?