Enemies List: NAACP

NAACP official on Michael Vick, August 21st, 2007: "As a society, we should aid in his rehabilitation and welcome a new Michael Vick back into the community without a permanent loss of his career in football."

NAACP press release on Don Imus, April 13th, 2007: "The NAACP was part of a coalition of organizations that participated in the CBS meeting that led to Imus' termination. [...] The NAACP also wrote to management of XM and Sirrius [sic] satellite radio asking them not to become a "safe haven" for racist commentary by picking up the Imus show or others."

What can we learn from these two statements? Well, torturing and executing animals is obviously nowhere near as bad as telling one slightly insensitive joke while trying to entertain people for a living. It seems like the NAACP has no problem applying a different standard of behavior based on race. So much for their stated objective of "ensur[ing] the political, educational, social, and economic equality of all citizens."

Congratulations, NAACP, you've earned a permanent link in my sidebar. Too bad it had to be as part of the Enemies List.

Resolute

The appearance of my blog on my monitors has been bothering me for a while now, particularly the amount of unused space that I always see on the left and right sides of the screen. Apparently the default templates on Blogger.com are optimized for dinosaur computers that are only capable of 800 x 600 screen resolution. Well, even my tiny iBook runs at 1024 x 768, and most of my computers are at 1280 pixel width or higher, and I'm a selfish bastard who thinks only of myself, so the mediocre content of this blog now covers much more of the screen. Sorry if you end up with a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of your browser, but that's just the way it has to be. I'm thinking of changing the template completely to get some color in here, but I haven't made up my mind yet. Somehow that seems just a little too Queer Eye for me.

We Don't Swim In Your Toilet

We can all agree that in most cases, age discrimination is a bad thing. But there are exceptions. Mandatory testing for elderly drivers is one good example. And this is another.

Do you want to swim in a pool filled with other people's bodily excretions? I sure don't. Even as a kid, I was creeped out by diapered babies splashing around in the shallow end of the swimming pool. And everybody knew that the baby-sized wading pool was the place you went to fill your squirt gun when you were going after someone you really had it out for because everybody knew that pool was filled with tinkle-water. Is it discriminatory not to want to swim in fecal water that might as well have been piped in from the Third World? If it is, then put a cowboy hat on my head and call me Don Imus, because when I go swimming, I want to be sure that the brown thing floating in the pool really is a Baby Ruth.

In Memoriam: Bill Robinson 1943-2007

Baseball has lost one of its classiest individuals over the weekend, as former player and coach Bill Robinson passed away suddenly at 64. His playing days, of course, were before my time, but I had the privilege of getting to know him during my teenage years working for the Phillies' AA club in Reading, PA. "Robby" was the batting coach for the 1995 Eastern League champion team, and became the manager the following season. I worked there both of those seasons, and even roomed with him on a road trip to New Britain, CT in 1996, and can honestly say that Bill Robinson is one of the kindest men--and most talented teachers--ever to grace the sport of baseball. He will be missed, and I extend my condolences to his family. Godspeed, skipper.

Barr-oid Bonds

As I write this entry, Barry Bonds is one single, solitary home run away from tying Hank Aaron's all-time home run record, and two away from having it all to himself, and at this point, there's little I can do but resign myself to the fact that it's most definitely going to happen. His knee is simply not going to explode like a firecracker stuffed with tendons and ligaments before he puts two more on the board (and if that should somehow happen, I'll begin prognosticating atrocious fates for the likes of Bin Laden, Chavez, and Ahmadinejad.)

There's all sorts of debate going on, of course, about whether or not Bonds did steroids, and whether or not he's tainted the record books if he did. In answer to the former, I present the picture above of Bonds playing for the Pirates in the early part of his career contrasted with his current freakish appearance. Sure, he might have gotten that big by saying his prayers, taking his vitamins, and believing in the Hulkster....but it seems far more likely that those vitamins are the same ones Hogan himself admitted to taking. And I don't buy for a second the comparison between steroids in baseball and other drugs in music and literature. Chances are you have that friend (or relative)...the one who says things like, "Dude, (the Doors/Fear and Loathing/Baby Beluga) would have sucked if (Morrison/Hunter S. Thompson/Raffi) hadn't been on drugs", possibly in between bong hits, and implies that this somehow excuses the conduct of baseball's steroid abusers. Wrong--art doesn't have rules and quantifiers to decide who's the best--that's a matter of personal choice. Sports have definitive rules (although steroids weren't officially a violation until recently) and cut-and-dried statistics to make questions of "who's the best" more objective than in other forms of entertainment. It's just an invalid analogy all around.

That said, Bud Selig is doing the right thing attending the home run chase. He's the commissioner, Bonds hasn't been caught or confessed to breaking any rules, so as the commissioner, he needs to be there. It's too bad the only he's going to see is a freak show leaving a warm, steroid-positive urine sample all over baseball's most coveted record.

Three Dog Night

I couldn't believe it myself when it happened, but for once in my life, I actually agree with kooky senior U.S. Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) on something. If you've seen any of the dogfighting footage they've shown on the TV news, then you know just how disgusting it is, and just how much Michael Vick deserves to be suspended from the NFL if he's convicted of the charges for which he's currently under federal indictment.

Of course, Byrd couldn't possibly have any other, unspoken motive for coming out against one of the NFL's highest-profile black quarterbacks, could he?

Genocide In Darfur: Brought To You By The Yankees?

I'm sure that I have more than one regular reader here who believes that the Yankees are pure evil and that rooting for them is akin to cheering for the Empire in the Star Wars movies (although if Emperor Palpatine were our head of state, I guaran-damn-tee you that the Iraq situation would have long since been resolved by now). But in case you don't read the comments I sometimes receive, here's a link from my Boston-born friend Pat that's a bit of a reach even for him.

I actually wanted to smash the author of the article for jumping to such an absurd conclusion, but I checked out some of the other things he's written, and they're actually not half bad. And he actually makes some conciliatory points in the article itself, rather than ranting and raving like a delusional moonbat with a single, narrow-minded agenda. The author himself concedes that "[t]he Yili Group, to be fair, has a good corporate reputation: by Chinese standards they treat their workers well, and aren't having Sudanese merchants slaughtered to make way for their line of snack crackers." And let's face it, we've got a much better recent history of bringing about civil change through economic partnership than military force. George Steinbrenner (who is becoming ever-more well known for his charitable works and contributions) now has influence with a powerful player....and that can only be a good thing.

New photos

"Quarter Mile to Nowhere", an original photo.


I finally retrieved my camera after leaving it in Reading, PA after a Memorial Day fishing weekend in Potter County. I got some great shots of this beautiful area, which you can view, as always, on my Flickr site.

My All-Stars 2007

Here's my picks for this year's MLB all-star game (I definitely have a slight Yankees/Phillies bias):

American League
1B: Kevin Youklis, BOS (write-in)
2B: Placido Polanco, DET
SS: Derek Jeter, NYY
3B: Alex Rodriguez, NYY
C: Jorge Posada, NYY
OF: Torii Hunter, MIN
OF: Maglio Ordonez, DET
OF: Ichiro Suzuki, SEA

National League
1B: Derrek Lee, CHC
2B: Chase Utley, PHI
SS: J.J. Hardy, MIL
3B: Miguel Cabrera, FLA
C: Brian McCann, ATL
OF: Matt Holliday, COL
OF: Shane Victorino, PHI
OF: Eric Byrnes, ARI

Whattaya Say, Al?

NBC weatherman Al Roker, writing about Don Imus on his blog, 10 April 2007:

"I, for one, am really tired of the diatribes, the 'humor' at others expense, the cruelty that passes for 'funny'[...]The "I'm a good person who said a bad thing" apology doesn't cut it[...]a two week suspension doesn't cut it. It is, at best a slap on the wrist. A vacation. Nothing."

The same Al Roker, on NBC's Today Show, 7 June 2007:

"Remember that controversial Olympic logo for the 2012 Olympics in London? Some folks have complained that the campaign actually sent them into epileptic seizures. Well, we asked you to weigh in on our Web site in an informal poll; those of you who could get up off the floor after shaking around were able to actually log in . . . "

Seems to me that if Al practiced what he preached, he'd have the stones to resign. Oh, that's right, he didn't follow through; he just issued a mealy-mouthed almost-apology. Pretty hypocritical of you, Al.

I don't want him to resign because of a joke he made--I believe in free speech for everyone. I wish he'd quit because then I could have titled this post with a better Caddyshack quote:

"How would you like to mow my lawn?"

Value-Priced Pearl Jam

With Opie and Anthony finishing out their XM suspension and Ron and Fez gone once more from the public airwaves, I've had a bit more time than usual to check out some new tunes, so maybe that explains why the music entry in my Recent Experiences sidebar has been getting updated a bit more than usual. And this week, my nostalgia trip back to my high school years continued (God only knows why, my life sucked until I was about 21) with Pearl Jam's greatest hits collection Rearviewmirror. (In the interest of full disclosure, I enjoyed their first three albums (Ten, Vs., Vitalogy) very much as they were being released, No Code sucked hard, and the last Pearl Jam album I bought was Yield, which was so-so compared to the aforementioned Big Three.) Also, I have no problem differentiating an artist's work from their political views, so if you're going to post "PERL JAM SUXXX GEORGE BUSHH ROX" in my comments, then skip the rest of this post, go back to threshing the hayfields, and come back next week when I make fun of Hilary or Obama or something.

Rearviewmirror is a 2-CD set with all of their "big" songs, cleverly divided into a disc of hard rock and a disc of mellower stuff. As a "fan dropout", there were quite a few songs on here that were new to me, but nothing on here to change the opinions I'd already formed about their first five albums. I did enjoy a couple of the post-1998 tracks on the hard rock disc, but was reminded of how much I despised their cover of "Last Kiss" and how overplayed "Wishlist" was back in its day. The saving grace of this CD is its low price tag--$11 on Amazon.com for a double CD isn't too bad. It's worth picking up if you've skipped a couple of their albums (it's far cheaper than iTunes on a per-song basis), or if you lack the capability to rip your CDs (or work your way onto the RIAA's "naughty" list) and burn your own compilation album.

Lil' Jimmy Norton

I saw a great show in Washington, D.C. on Saturday night--I was fortunate enough to be in the audiences for a taping of comedian and Opie and Anthony Show member Jim Norton's upcoming hour-long HBO comedy special. Jim absolutely killed, with an hour-plus of great material. My only disappointment is that he closed with a story about Ron Jeremy that was his closer last year too. The rest of his material was completely new; my only concern is that some of it may even be too edgy for HBO in a post-Imus world; I'll be very interested to see the final cut. According to the man himself on yesterday's O&A show, the special is currently scheduled to air sometime in October; it gets my highest recommendation (unless you're an easily offended politically correct scumbag).

After the show, we had some great chili dogs and cheese fries next door to the theater at the famous Ben's Chili Bowl restaurant, and we even got a chance to say hi to Opie in between Jimmy's two shows--he actually stopped himself from being hustled inside and came back around a corner to give me a wave and a "hello", which I thought was really cool. He certainly would have been more than justified to have simply disappeared without ever acknowledging my existence.