Wednesday, November 30, 2005

"He's Unbelievable"

Sports Illustrated's article on Carroll legend Tyler Emmert and the quest for title number four.

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Tuesday, November 29, 2005

BT Titans: Hellbound

I used to go to a small Catholic middle school in Great Falls, Montana called Blessed Trinity. We had about 14 students in our graduating class, so we're talking like Class C equivalent if it were a high school.

Anyway, I played basketball there in a small parochial league that included a couple other Christian schools, academies, a team from the Air Force base, and a few small surrounding community schools in the area. At least once every year, though, we'd have to play the Montana School for the Deaf and Blind.

We had our first game against MSDB when I was in the sixth grade. I don't know why, but I was pretty much expecting it to be a silent game. Instead, there was lots of grunting and incoherent yelling and what not...even at each other, which I found kind of odd.

And they weren't very good. We knew going in that MSDB was a perennial cellar dweller in our league, so the first half of the game was pretty rough. We'd be intercepting passes, stealing from the forward who apparently couldn't dribble, etc. But that was the weird part. Every few plays, the guard would come down the right side of the court and yelp really loudly. The forward, who never moved, would throw his hands up in the air as the guard then lightly toss the ball toward him. Our center at the time was James Hackethorn, a six-foot seventh grader who would easily step in front of him, grab the ball and send it down the other way. It was way too simple.

At half time, our coach told us we were doing a great job, playing solid defense, and hitting our shots well. "Oh, by the way, no more stealing passes from their forward. I talked to the other coach and it turns out he's totally blind. So from now on, if you could just step back, let him try to catch the ball and find the hoop, that'd be great."

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Monday, November 28, 2005

Trade Bud Selig for George W. Bush

Here's the idea:

The United States government trades:

  • President George W. Bush
  • Chief Policy Adviser Karl Rove
  • Vice President Dick Cheney

to Major League Baseball in exchange for:

  • Commissioner Bud Selig
  • Yankees owner George Steinbrenner
  • Former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda
  • $100 million and a player to be named later

Bud Selig becomes President. He expands the United States to Mexico City and Monterey in 2007 and then threatens to contract the nation by two states. Rumor has it they'll be Delaware and Vermont. That, and the City of Toronto is moved to St. Petersburg, Florida.

George Steinbrenner becomes Vice President. He wins the war in Iraq by buying up the best players in the insurgency just so that Al Qaeda can't have them.

Tommy Lasorda becomes Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Under his management, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez hits an economic home run in the bottom of the fourth fiscal quarter to win year one of Globalism Series.

The $100 million goes to help pay down the enormous budget deficit left by the Bush administration.

George W. Bush becomes Commissioner of Baseball. Americans are surprised to find that he's actually somewhat qualified for this job.

Dick Cheney becomes owner of the Yankees. He manages to win a World Series with the best talent in the world, unlike previous ownership.

Karl Rove becomes GM of the Chicago Cubs. He catches fire for leaking to the Chicago Tribune that Mia Hamm is the best baseball player in Nomar Garciaparra's household. In his defense, he claims to have learned the information from the Tribune and not the other way around. Scooter Libby gets indicted.

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Monday, November 21, 2005

Week in review

1. No trip to New York on the St. Thomas dime. Jeff, Jeremy and I made our way into quarters before getting knocked out by Drake. It's a bit of a bummer since we all thought that we could have done better, but at least we made a decent showing. Damn you, Drake...

2. I'm in Minnesota. And it's cold, windy, and humid. I'm used to cold and windy, but humid's another story.

3. I'm becoming concerned that cellular hands-free devices are making it difficult to tell the really busy people from the crazy people downtown. It used to be that folks walking around with a hands-free would still have to hold the microphone in front of their mouths so that the person on the other end of the line can actually hear them, thus ironically eliminating the only benefit that a "hands-free" device has in the first place. Now they've got those mikes that extend from the earpiece. If you're not on their right side, you can't even tell that they have one. Add in the Blue Tooth tech and you don't even have a wire hanging down as an indicator. The real kicker is that business people in nice suits are no longer the only people who use them anymore. Therefore, I can no longer tell if the person in front of me talking on a cell phone or talking to himself. This is very troubling to me. And the problem is only going to get worse.

But the public deserves to know which people they should avoid on the streets, right? I propose Idaho's waterskiing law. Whenever you have a skier in the water, someone in the boat has to hold up an orange flag to indicate to other boaters that a person is floating around in that area. It would make things much easier for the rest of us if people using hands-free devices would do the same.

4. The University of Montana lost to Montana State this weekend 16-6. This will likely have a very negative effect on my mood until Cat-Griz comes around again one year from now, unless the Griz happen to pull out a Division I-AA championship. Not likely.

5. The Carroll College Fighting Saints drew Montana Tech for the NAIA quarterfinals. They've played Tech twice this year and have beaten them both times, but that means Tech has gotten two good looks at Carroll's offense. Plus, those Butte bastards would love to end Carroll's streak. It'll be war. Fuch Tech.

6. The Golden Gophers choked in true Minnesota fashion Saturday against the Hawkeyes. They'll probably end up in Boise at the Humanitarian Bowl or the Music City Bowl or something like that.

7. I have no idea how St. Thomas' football team is doing. Probably poorly. Their entire athletic program could fold and I would be none the wiser.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Number 8. The Vikings beat up the Packers on Lambeau Field last night, much to the dismay of a certain nurse. Stick a fork in number 4. He's done.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Rename everything in the NBA.

Lakers in LA, where there are no lakes. Grizzlies in Memphis, where there are no Grizzlies. Jazz in Utah where they only allow Lawrence Welk.

The NBA has been contorted by roving teams with no allegiances over the last few decades. Teams are somehow allowed to keep localized names when they thumb their noses at the cities that supported them and move to new homes. How absurd is it that the Minneapolis Lakers were allowed to retain their mascot when they moved to the coast? This disaster should have been remedied decades ago.

So here's what I propose. The Lakers get to become the LA Lattes. Their colors will be orange and white this year (because orange is the new pink) but will change every subsequent year in accordance with whatever fashion trends happen to come along.

The Utah Jazz retain their musical flavor when they change to the Utah Tabernacle. Colors are unimportant, but team members will be required to wear long sleeved shirts and pants on the court. A little modesty is in order, gentlemen.

And I know it's not their fault, but Seattle no longer holds legitimate claim to the Super Sonics name. Boeing left a few years ago for Chicago. I'd suggest the Drizzle or Courtney Loves. Yeah, Courtney Loves. That would give Seattle the most intimidating mascot in the entire league hands down.

Then the Grizzlies can become the Memphis Mafia (after Elvis' entourage) and change their logo to the TCB, the Kings can become the Governators (we only have primogenitor monarchies in Washington), and just for good measure, Golden State loses the Warriors. The folks who brought us Ralph Nader and Cindy Sheehan have no right to that moniker. And quite frankly, I don't know what I'd replace that name with. Go chain yourself to the White House fence until sometime strikes your fancy, California.

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Sunday, November 13, 2005

The Subway Saga

What the hell happened to Subway? About a month ago I roll into the one downtown on Hennepin with a guy named Ian. Now usually I rock the Spicy Italian but I saw something advertized on a sign right above the sandwich artist's head that looked good.

"I'll get that."

She responds in the most disinterested voice possible, "Discontinued."

"But you still have the big ass ad up for it. It's right there."

No dice. "No. It's discontinued."

Whatever. I let Ian order while I tried to figure out what my second string choice would be. Over by the door they have another sign for a chicken parmesan sandwich that looked pretty good. I try to order that. The gal stares at me for a sec and announces, "We don't actually have that. The sign says it's 'coming soon.'" Not sure why Subway is running previews of upcoming sandwiches or why I can't order anything that they post big pictures of. They're just taunting me with all this stuff that they don't plan to let me order.

So now I have to put together a tertiary order for this ass clown...trying to guess what items that they've listed on the menu they might actually be capable of preparing. So finally I resort to the meatball sandwich, by far, the simplest sandwich known to man. Subway's willing to comply, but even then they didn't have any provolone. Matter of fact, they didn't have anything but cheddar and American. Oppression.

At this point, I'm severely depressed over my Subway experience. Here I was expecting this grand new sandwich and instead end up with a couple luke-warm clumps of meat and some mystery sauce plopped into a bun with the wrong kind of cheese. So I go to the register to pay and hand her my check card. She runs it through and sits there staring at the screen. "It says it's been reported stolen."

K, didn't see that one coming. I've occasionally gotten the "declined" bit because the system was down or something, but "stolen" is new. She let that hang there for about six or seven seconds while I start into the "Are you sure? Run it again" line before she says out of nowhere, "Naw, just kidding" and hands my card back.

The audacity of this chick. She denies two orders then thinks it'll be funny to tell me my card is showing up stolen? Totally uncalled for. I grab my sandwich that I didn't even friggin want and get the hell out.

But the chicken parmesan haunted me. I had to try this sum bitch. About a week later I went to another Subway in the building across from Highland Bank on my lunch break. I order the chicken parmesan and to my delight, this sandwich artist sees fit to actually put the sucker together. But not before the Subway Stasi figured out what's going on. I kid you not: another woman runs up, grabs the sandwich out of her hands and literally throws it into the trash can. They start yelling at each other in another language. The manager comes up to me and starts explaining to me in broken English that they can't make this sandwich for some reason. To this day I don't know why. But when the manager stopped berating this gal, I ordered something else. And I felt bad for this gal. All she did was try to make a damn sandwich. She started making this one, but then stopped, took off her hat and apron and stomped out.

I don't know why, but Doctors Associates, Inc. is determined to prevent me from eating the chicken parmesan. Who knows how far up the ladder this conspiracy reaches? What does Jared have to hide? To be continued.

Monday, November 07, 2005

Cecil Rhodes High

Saw this on Drudge today (Chicago plans high school for black males). Is anyone else bothered by this trend? In high school, the hot fad was "girls only" math classes. Educators began to notice over time a growing gap between the number of males and females in math-related occupations. Female interest in mathematics courses apparently begins to drop off around age ten. Why? "In the classroom, females prefer to use a conversational style that fosters group consensus and builds ideas on top of each other; the interrelationship of thoughts and actions is paramount. Males, conversely, learn through argument and individual activity--behaviors fostered early. Most classroom discourse is organized to accommodate male learning patterns (Ong, 1981)." (Summary quoted from ERIC/CUE Digest, No. 78, Feb 1992.)

I have no problem with that. It makes enough sense to me. I think it somewhat ironic that many scholars in the field of psychology will advance the above theory but will then show little hesitation to publicly batter the President of Harvard University for advancing the radical hypothesis that men and women might think differently. But whatever. The idea of all-female math classes makes sense in principal.

Here's the risk though. Even if it is taken as true that males and females learn differently, in order for both to have the same prospects for personal achievement, they're going to have to mingle at some point. If young women are not learning alongside males at a young age when they might actually learn to deal with whatever adverse effects males bring with them, then how will women be affected later on in life when they are thrown into competition with them? Furthermore, is the impact of having a male around in sixth grade math so detrimental to young females that they will truly be benefitted by segregating them into their own math classes? And does this not just reinforce the already harmful notion that women can't compete?

Mayor Bloomberg in New York took the whole idea a step further when he helped start Harvey Milk High School, the first all-gay public high school (First public gay high school to open in New York). Here the motivation is similar. Openly gay students in New York high schools suffer from discrimination. In order to remedy the situation, Bloomberg gives them their own high school. That way, the bigots at the regular high school get fewer gay kids around and the gays and bisexuals get their own stomping grounds. No errant societal mores are remedied; rather, closed-minded individuals can continue on without having their faulty stereotypes challenged and gay students can go to school without having to learn how to deal with said individuals. These apparently are problems better dealt with after high school, when it's no longer the school district's problem. The school has been challenged from both the Right and the Left: the Right because they see it as preferential treatment and the Left because it's friggin segregation. Last I heard, the school was still operating though a lawsuit is pending.

This latest school in Chicago, though, brings the entire laughable comedy full circle. This is unabashed segregation and it is no more virtuous today than it would have been 70 years ago. This school will only reinforce (if not outright create, in some cases) the impression amongst students--black or otherwise--that African American males cannot compete in an open society. Do not mistake this for the standard talking points frontline argument against affirmative action. Affirmative action results in nothing more than a slight nudge for one candidate over another over, say, a university slot. This proposal is much different and the stakes are infinitely higher. It reminds me of reservation boarding schools. Go ask a Native American how well that idea turned out.

And here is what it comes down to. I don't presume that these effects are intended and imagine that the proponents of this high school would probably take issue with my predictions. But ultimately the risk is there. The only difference between this new segregation and the segregation of old is the motivation driving it. This is not Ku Klux Klan racism. This is Cecil B. Rhodes-style "White Man's Burden." And honestly, that doesn't make it any better.

A brief comparison

I've been kinda busy lately. I have just one brief comparison before I head off to bed.

I'm a bit fuzzy on anything that hasn't happened in the last fifteen minutes, but I do seem to remember promises in the 2000 presidential campaign to "restore honor and dignity to the White House," the oft-repeated mantra of George W. Bush. It really aggravated the right that the White House's previous occupant was not forthcoming about an indiscretion that could have destroyed his entire family. So how's he done?

Bang up job, boys. Bill supposedly lied about fooling around with an intern. And I say "supposedly" because Ken Starr made sure to not to ask him if he'd engaged in oral sex with Monica Lewinsky. After all, you can't impeach the man if you give him the chance to tell the truth.

Don't know about other Republicans out there, but it sounds to me like we've done a lot worse than the previous administration in the "honesty and integrity" department. Makes Clinton's White House look like a friggin boy scout meeting.

I'm out.