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CURIOUS DISCOVERY/SOCIO-ECONOMIC OBSERVATION/THEORY OF THE DAY
I am in Cabo San Lucas (strictly for business reasons) and am staying in a gated community (again, strictly for business reasons). While walking to the beach from my Villa and smoking a Cuban cigar (again, strictly for business reasons), I noticed that the speed limit in this gated community is 19 MPH. Curiously, I have only seen a 19 MPH speed limit one other time in my life and that was in the only other gated community in which I ever stayed (albeit not strictly for business reasons.) It occurs to me that 19 MPH might be the official speed limit of gated communities and, as such, a powerful, stealth signifier of wealth, privilege and exclusivity. And with that I proudly announce my exciting new...
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF THE DAY:
I just bought the 19MPH.com url! It's certainly a more auspicious business idea than my No Hair Day baseball caps for bald people.
PLEASANT SURPRISE OF THE DAY:
http://news.aol.com/elections/article/clinton-nixed-values-advice-on-obama/128678?icid=100214839x1207594259x1200397334
According to the article above, HIllary's chief campaign strategist had strongly recommended her attacking Obama's American-ness during the primaries and--again, according to the article above--she refused to embrace this negative tactic. Of course, it is possible that she declined to go that route for reasons of efficacy rather than ethics (and of course it is possible that she is floating this story in an attempt to rehabilitate her image as a highly principled rather than ruthlessly pragmatic public servant after the bitterly fought campaign), but I am in a non cycnical mode these days and am inclined to accord her the benefit of the doubt(s).
LFAQ OF THE DAY:
What percentage of the medalists sing along to their national anthems? What percentage of them actually know all the words?
BRIEF LUXURY REVIEW EXCERPT OF THE DAY:
The bathrooms here are so artfully appointed, exquisitely spacious and delightfully aromatic that it is conceivable that the experience of (heaven forbid!) dysentery in one of them would be more dignified than the experience of perfect regularity in your average hotel bathroom.
SIGN OFF OF THE DAY:
OK, that's really all I have for you guys at the moment. Gotta get back to the patio beside our private pool (for strictly business purposes.)
AN END OF WEEK POST CABOS POST
OLYMPIC TERMS OF THE DAY:
Start Value and Balance Check. Start value is the initial level of difficulty of a gymnastic routine. Balance check is a little stumble on the balance beam and the subsequent inelegant effort required to maintain equilibrium.
MODIFIED OLYMPIC TERMS OF THE DAY:
Genetic Start Value.
Cognitive Balance Check.
Be part of the great linguistic dissemination! Get these terms into circulation! Take part in a movement greater than yourself!
OLYMPIC COMMENTARY/OBSERVATIONS OF THE DAY:
Best performance of the night: Watching Bela Karosi watch the American gymnasts perform. Amazed the old nut job didn't pop a gasket or otherwise injure himself.
Other riveting spectacles:
Phelps' miraculous come from behind 1/100th of a second victory for his 7th Gold Medal. I think I could hear Mark Spitz screaming "Nooooooooooo!" from somewhere in the Mid-West. (Not to take anything away from Phelps' mind-blowing achievement in the games, but it is worth remembering that he has now been the beneficiary of two miraculous last fraction of a second out-touching victories and that less that 1/10th of a second separates him from having 7 gold medals instead of 5.)
The footage of Michael Phelps' daily food intake.
Usain (Not Qusay!) Bolt lollygagging his way to a 9.92 first place finish in his 100 meter heat. In the second half of the race, he sort of jogged and kept looking left to right as if to say, with genuine dismay rather than arrogance "Why are you making me run with the 4th graders?? I'm in high school now!" The guy is a super freakazoid. And great as Tyson Gay and Astafa Powell are, I can't see anyone beating this guy in the finals.
Pedophilia alert: Nastia Liukin is insanely gorgeous (not to mention incredibly graceful, preternaturally poised, ridiculously limber and spectacularly talented.) Nasty-ah. She sure as hell stuck the genetic landing!
Aaron Piersol and Ryan Lochte in the 100 Butterfly Suggests a new sport: Comparative laid backness. These crazy calm Californians look like they might just fall asleep at top speed.
Rowdy Gaines is so jazzed he makes Dick Vitale seem like Aaron Piersol. He is almost incoherent with enthusiasm.
Call me crazy, but I'm not convinced those Spanish hoopsters were being racist when they slanted their eyes in that Olympic photo. It wasn't a cultural stereotype. It was an inarguable physical reality. And they were merely gesturing towards it as a tribute to the Beijing games. OK, maybe it wasn't the most enlightened gesture in the world, but do we really need to get our knickers in a knot over it? Do we really need to make it more than it was? What's next: Are retarded people gonna start complaining about the way they're represented in movies? Oh, wait...
All the hullabaloo about how Tropical Thunder is insensitive to people with Down's syndrome: I mean, c'mon: Can't those retards take a joke! On a more serious note, it is striking how no black people are protesting the movie despite the Black Face theme--and it is probably an eloquent tribute to how far racial relations have come and how fully black Americans have been culturally assimilated. Let's hope that in 20 years, the mentally challenged will feel sufficiently well integrated into this silly society not to go goofy over a little joke!
Mark Spitz not being invited to the Olympics to pass the torch on to Michael Phelps. I know he has taken a lot of criticism for complaining about the snub, but I have to tell you it does strike me as a glaring omission. Aren't the reigning record holders usually embraced by the relevant sporting establishment to witness (and give their blessing to), the individual by whom they are to be eclipsed? I'm thinking of the family of Roger Maris being there to see Mark McGuire break his record. And Henry Aaron being enlisted to officially congratulate Barry Bonds. Seven Gold Medals is an august, time-honored mark and you'd have to think the International Olympic Committee or even the American Olympic team would want to have Spitz on hand officially or unofficially for the festivities. Spitz got a lot of heat for what was perceived as egotistical whining, but it strikes me as a reasonable complaint. Is it because Spitz is a Jew? Did someone say anti-semitism? (Or am I just a similarly whiny Jew?). I mean, the Chinese complaining about the Spanish hoops team and the mentally challenged organization boycotting "Tropical Thunder" are both pretty silly. But, I don't know: This anti-semitism thing is different. It just feels more legitimate somehow! :)
REASON TO HATE SPORTS OF THE DAY:
The fact that sports team owners (unsurprisingly) overwhelmingly support McCain.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080815/pl_politico/12548
UNNATURAL SHOCKS OF THE DAY::
I was actually surprised to discover that Gertrude Stein was Jewish. Hello, Stein? The Unnatural shock is not the fact that she is Jewish but the fact that I was somehow--inexplicably--surprised.
SIGN OF THE DAY:
"No Standing on Sink" message in Bryant Park bathroom. That, in conjunction with the Vivaldi they were piping in, really suggests that they're classing up the joint.
LFAQ:
Which is less insulting: calling someone a dumbass or calling them by the proper name Dumbass?
OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:
The double power of flight at the transitional hour.
BAND NAME IN SEARCH OF A BAND OF THE DAY:
The Usual.
MEDITATION OF THE DAY: (Poolside in Cabo)
Sucking on the breast of this cigar in the late afternoon of my life, i miss everyone i ever loved and everyone who ever loved me. It is overwhelming. I have nothing to give back to those who are no longer here but my gratitude. For the abundance of their presence. For the unnegotiable reality of their absence. For the truths that make sacred and define. Their absence is the final lesson they were here to teach me. My tears are gratitude for that most difficult gift.
RANDOM SINGLE SENTENCE PORTRAIT OF THE DAY:
He was a closet admirer of Kim Jung Il.
OLYMPIC TRIBUTES OF THE DAY:
To Usain Bolt. Hot DAMN!. Haven't seen anyone blow away the field like that in the Olympics 100M since Ben Johnson. I hope Bolt doesn't make me regret my awe and hyperbole by testing positive, but OMG!!!!! That boy can FLY!!! Definitely the fastest a man has ever run. If he hadn't decelerated and pre-celebrated, he'd definitely have broken 9.6. Freakazoidal is the only word that comes to mind. Like Lebron or something. A man whose completely unprecedented combination of size, speed and power makes a mockery of all the time honored assumptions of the sport. No matter how he ends up testing (and his goofy showmanship and boyish enthusiasm would really seem to make doping unlikely), right now I am testing positive for amazement. It's not every day that you see a man win the 100 by a mile.
To Michael Phelps. Yes, his achievement was truly extraordinary. And he is possibly the greatest Olympian ever (though given my landlubber bias, my precedent bias and, perhaps my reverese racial bias, i'd still be inclined to keep Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis as at least his equals.) Yes, an absolutely amazing performance. However, having said that: I wasn' t that impressed with the competition. Sure, they were pretty great for humans. But next time, I'd like to see him race against fish. Could you see him, getting out-touched in the 100M Butterfly by a middle-aged, out-of-shape flounder? Or lapped in the 400 Individual Medley by an impish porpoise?
To Dara Torres. OK, your body scares me a little. And I really feel bad for any older brother you might have had and might have beaten the crap out of on a daily basis throughout your childhood. And, yeah. from what I've heard, you're not exactly the most doting and attentive mother. In fact, I suspect that you forgot you had a 2 year old child back home until the interviewer asked you about her right after the race. But as a matter of principle, I've gotta give it up to anyone who brings athletic glory to the over 40 demographic. So big ups to ya! And I apologize for the gratuitous semi-misogynistic double standards I just applied to you. Please don't beat the crap out of me. I'm just an insecure, threatened male and I promise I won't do it again.
Here's to the people who came in fourth by .01 seconds. As Cavic and Torres and others know, coming in second by .01 seconds totally totally blows. But coming in fourth by that cruelest of margins and hence not getting any medal at all: That mega totally totally blows. Sure nobody remembers who comes in second. But at least you have a medal to remind them. You come in fourth and are every bit as much a part of the historical record as one of those small towns that were erased from the map under Stalin.
TEDDY VEGAS OLYMPIC ACHIEVEMENT OF THE DAY:
Thanks to the ridiculously delicious and abundant food preparations of gourmet grillmaster and friend of blog SJ, I approximated the daily caloric intake of Michael Phelps yesterday...without any of the associated physical exertions.
LFAQ of the DAY:
Is Usain Bolt the most sport-appropriate name since Junior Seau (Say-ow!)?
How did anyone discover this guy? How do you stumble uon the fact that this ungainly 6'5" goofy guy can run like a blur? Was he running from the law? From a cheetah (Ok, I know: No cheetahs in Kingston)? From an angry father Bolt? But you really have to wonder how this shocking and unexpected skill was discovered.
OLYMPIC COMMENTS OF THE DAY:
My Nastia Liukin crush notwithstanding, I have a hard time watching the women’s gymnastics--much as I have a hard time watching women’s figure skating. I find it really painful and anxiety producing to watch sports that posit a notion of perfection and then conceive of every routine as a series of minor failures relative to that essentially unattainable ideal. Events that are graded from perfection on down and that carry within them the perpetual possibility (nay likelihood) of heartbreaking failures and humiliating falls.
It’s a sport in which accomplishment is defined merely in terms of the relative minimization of error and it is oppressiv to watch—especially if you have a modicum of empathy. Although, that said: some of the lithe young bodies are just delightful.
Speaking of Nastia Liukin. Crush over. She couldn’t even beat a 12 year old last night!
Really tiring of Bob Costas’s squeaky clean teacher's pet cheesiness. I want to see someone pop him in his brown-nosing little larynx. It's a bad sign when you actually look forward to hearing Chris Collingsworth.
OLYMPICS-INSPIRED REFLECTION OF THE DAY:
What is the start value of my nighttime dental and periodontal care routine? I think it’s up there—as it involves full toothbrush, micro brush, dental floss and gum pic. Granted, while the start value is high, I don’t always nail the execution. That said, it would be really sweet if there were a pretty Russian judge in my shower to give me a generous score from time to time.
NON OLYMPIC SPECTACLE OF THE DAY:
Charlie Rose. Just trying so hard (SO HARD!!!!) to understand funny, to understand powerful, to understand smart, to understand creative, to undertand all of these fascinating, fascinating things via his fascinating fascinating guests.
The most riveting regularly scheduled televised spectacle since seeing James Lipton perform amazing feats of ingratiation nightly on Bravo.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“Listen, if i can find a patch of time when i'm not depressed and not really busy, you'll be the third to know.”
PHILOSOPHY AND ADVERTISING REFLECTION OF THE DAY:
After working all these years in advertising, I am forced to ask: During my college years as a Philosophy major, were Freud, Holderlin, Nietszche, Stevens, Hegel, Heidegger, Kant, Derrida etc. brands for me? Trusted signifiers of social exclusivity and personal identity? Names to which I was attached out of extreme snob appeal? Clearly, they were not entirely that. Nor were Godard, Shakespeare of Lacan (to drop a few more). They were profoundly heartfelt experiences that resonated with my innermost sense of self. But were they not also in some small way functioning as brands? As statements? As social differentiators in the marketplace of ideas? Ah...whatever. F*ck branding.
WISH I HAD A CAMERA MOMENT OF THE DAY:
A subway poster with a photo of Jimmy Smits reads: "I am a New Yorker who cares." A clever graffiti artist, modified it memorably with the addition of two punctuation marks: "I am a New Yorker. Who cares?"
MOMENT OF TRUE FEELING OF THE DAY:
Poignance of this end-of-day, end-of-weekend, end-of-summer light in the mid-to-late afternoon of my life.
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Posted on 8/19/2008
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