Snowperbole and D. D. Lewis

OK, so maybe Brooklyn didn't get 27 inches of snow, as was
reported in Central Park. And maybe Central Park didn't get
27 inches, cus its the Central Park Zoo security guards who
are reporting the figure, not Al Roper and the God Grothar
from their Almighty Big Apple Weather Center. For the record.

Random observation: Watched 'Gangs of New York' for the first
time the other night. Flawed movie in a number of respects, but
one of film's most egregious offenses was pairing Daniel Day
Lewis with Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz in the leading
roles. Lewis's performance utterly blew DiCaprio and Diaz
out of the water. DiCaprio looked like a dazed Jack White, who
had stumbled onto the set from shooting his last Michel Gondry
video, delivering lines with an ability that ranged from confusion
to disinterest. Diaz proved why her range should keep her
confined to the likes of, 'Something About Mary' and 'Charlies
Angels.' A big smile and a lot of raw enthusiasm has its utility,
but not necessarily in a gruesome trying-to-be-serious period piece.
This raises an interesting question, for me (though perhaps
I've just answered it)... why in the hell isn't Daniel Day Lewis
in more movies? What was wrong with My Left Foot or Last of
the Mohicans or the Bill Cutting character? I would pay $10 to
see Lewis in a starring role as Abraham Lincoln or a LeCarre or
Grisham protagonist or the newly anointed captain of some version
of the Starship Enterprise. Someone please explain this to me.
Instead Hollywood gives us Steve Martin as a recycled Pink Panther,
Harrison Ford as a computer geek, Martin Lawrence an obese
elderly woman and Tim Allen as a g** damn dog. Thank you for
enriching our lives and our imaginations, Hollywood.



Why have you gone so underutilized, Dan DiMaggio?

27 Inches Baby!!! (Blizzard of 06' Report)

The Winter that Wasn't ended in dramatic fashion over
the weekend, with NYC getting belted with a record 27
inches of snow. Good times. J and I hit Prospect
Park yesterday... I tell ya, you can't have much more
fun in life than playing Ultimate Frisbee in two feet
of snow, laying out for nearly every catch and block in
dramatic fashion. I normally gripe about winter, but this
felt good. Now, as long as I don't get ticketed for
not moving the totally buried Honda for Alternate Side
Parking tomorrow.....



Anyone down for a little backyard BBQ???



View of the block.



Shot of the action from Ultimate Snowbowl 06'

NFL Update

I'm reading on espn.com this morning that the refs who
worked the Superbowl were in some way graded, 'best at
their position during the regular season.' Well, that's
encouraging that they're trying to get the A talent to
the big game. I guess the challenge now is overhauling
the whole ref core and finding some dudes who don't suck
at the job.

On the "24" Phenom and a Disappointing Superbowl XL

On the "24" Phenomenon: I just don't get it. Count me out.
I find it hokey, contrived, and uncompelling. At the same time
slot, I have more fun watching "Vegas" or even "Mad Money"
I've done my part for cable television in pledging allegiance
to some epic shows... down with X-Files, Law & Order, ST:TNG,
Seinfeld, Cosby Show, etc., I just don't see it with Jack
Bauer & Co. What gives, people?

On Superbowl XL: OK, absent Willie Parker's 75-yard mad
dash and the TD throw from Randel El, this was a fairly sloppy effort
from both sides and therefore not a great game.. though better than
the occasional 45-10 SB blowout. HOWEVER, my story line is that the
absolutely, positively, unabashedly TERRIBLE officiating really
diminished my appreciation of the event. OK, that's a polite way of
putting it. Pretty much ruined it.

I have only been a fan of the NFL in a big way for the past three
seasons, but now I'm fairly locked in, with only Pro-hoops captivating
more of my sports-enthusiast attention. I'm used to crappy
officiating in the NBA, and disdain it with equal passion, but at
least in that league it has some consistency in terms of bias: the
home team will get a slight edge in the calls, the big-market
favorite-son of the league (the Bulls in the 90's, the Lakers in the
early 00's) will get a moderate-to-infuriating edge in the calls.
What made the 2005/2006 NFL playoffs so deeply disappointing is
that the same damn team was given opposite treatments. In the
P-Burgh vs. Indy game, the calls went disproportionately against
the Steelers, and affected the outcome of the game. In the
Superbowl, the Steelers got all the calls, and this had a significant
outcome on the game. I read this to mean either, (1) the league
is so rotten, they will capriciously send a lousy ref crew to
call a game to the benefit of any given team on any given Sunday,
or (2) the refs are so inconsistent and incompetent, you, the fan,
are rolling the dice every weekend with whether you'll get a fair
shake. In the NBA/MLB/NHL 7-Game series, this isn't as much
of a problem. In the one-and-done NFL, its a huge problem.

Before we write off possibility (1), which tilts heavily in the
direction of the conspiracy-theory and corruption, I'd like to
write that I've thought a lot (way too much, obviously) about
this, and think its a viable explanation for the following
reason: To me, for the admittedly tough job of head-ref in a
football game, I see in the NFL head-ref ranks a clear
bell-curve distribution in terms of talent, skill, and ability
for the position. I.e., not a lot of parity, but rather guys
who are clearly capable in knowing the rulebook, making good
calls, and running the show, and those who are not. Two head-refs
I'll use as an example for high-percentile winners are Ed Hochlui
and Mike Carey. So... might make sense to assess the competency
of your head refs and assign them to the real marquis matchups,
including the SB. But rather, in the Colts vs. P-Burgh game and
SB we have a 45 year old white guy who looks like he played
high school lacrosse and was pulled out of Ponderosa an hour before
the game and handed a striped shirt and a whistle. They were
terrible. Awful. Inspired 0 confidence. Almost looked
disingenuous after trotting back onto the field from a review.

So... NFL... clean up your act. Get better head refs all-around,
or make sure you are sending the good apples to the big games.
Absent this, and the sport risks taking up the same level of
intrigue as the WWE. And a last word of warning for you Steelers
fans: serious Karma deficit ahead. I'll say it: Kemo Van
Ohfen doesn't take out Carson Palmer's knees on the second play
of that game, and you don't make it out of the first round.

Prediction... Superbowl XLI MVP: Ricky Williams

6 More Weeks of Winter? (& music, music, MUU-sak!)

We've had about 2 weeks of winter, total. A few of those
wintry days were during the transit strike, but I still can't
complain. It has been m-i-l-d. Another factoid about J & I's
excellent snowboarding adventure: it felt like Bali out there
on Hunter Mountain. We're not out of the woods yet. In 2003
it snowed 20 inches on President's Day (and was cool and rainy
until late June... damn you 2003!), but I have a feeling the
Long Island Groundhog that didn't see its shadow got it right.

Some music updates:

Got my first issue of Relix magazine yesterday. Super-cool
feature of this mag is that it comes with a mix-CD of the
artists in the issue... very nice. Some tracks I'm really
getting into: songs by Brothers Past, the New Mastersound,
and the Derek Trucks band with this new gospel guy
leading the vocals. Add to this my recent, and extremely
belated, warming up to The Flaming Lips, and I am very satisfied
with recent discoveries and enjoyment in music land.

Trends I'm not getting into (too much): the Bluegrass trend.
Nothing personal here. Keep up the good work y'all. Just
not my thing.

Trends I'm really not getting into (at all): Indie rock.
Which 98% of NYC music critics have pledged a blood allegiance
too. I'm tryin' folks... downloaded the Bravery, the Kills,
Brian Jonestown, the New Pornographers... its just not sinking
in. And the aesthetic overlap of some of these groups is
kinda funny. Take that Franz Ferdinand song, "Take Me Out."
Snappy, lively piece, but the first 60 seconds sound like a
pretty heavy lift from the Strokes, the latter 2 minutes an
Vanilla-Iceesque sampling of Modest Mouse.

Anyway.. getting back to the greener pastures of jammy-land..
I'd really like to hit this Langerado Music Festival in early
March. Killer lineup. My little bro went last year and had
a ball. Only hangup is that it is 1270 miles away from
Brooklyn, NY. We'll see...

www.langerado.com

Arendt and Snowboarding

This is a post on Hannah Arendt and Snowboarding.

I'm not trying to draw a witty parallel between the two; if one
should serendipitously present itself, well, shucks, we'll run
with it. Board with it. Whatever.

Chapter 1: Arendt

I would like to send a big thank you out to the Detroit Pistons
and the New Jersey Nets for providing sucha satisfying media
alternative to the State of the Union last night.. and for my
favored Nets showing some life and toughness and handing the Stones
big L #6. Not that I would have watched the SOTU anyhow. I
find W to be completely unbearable to watch/listen to. Beyond the
3rd grade level vocabulary conveying a far right agenda, if I
thought one scintilla of what he was saying was original thought
I might feel differently... knowing that he takes his cues and
direction from a small circle of insiders whom former White House
associates have aptly labeled a "cabal" I'm just as happy to
read about the thing in the news. I am aware of the many fun
drinking games one can play during these things, but I had an early
hour conference call this morning, so that was not an option.

Anyway, getting to Arendt. Last night's speech was interesting
insofar as the buzz about what the man would say suggested that
an honest description of the above mentioned far right agenda
(i.e., 2005: the state should dismantle its most successful
social program at alleviating poverty, see, SOCIAL SECURITY, while
cutting taxes for the uber-rich and exploding the deficit such that
paying for such entitlement programs down the road will be a big
hassle) would be replaced in favor of an Orwellian program of
double-speak. Not to be confused with the deception-speak of
2003, which relied heavily upon the ol' boldface lie (WMDs in
Iraq, Uranium in Africa, etc.,).. but rather the embrace of
principles and maxims that are, in fact, antithetical to the
current actions of the state. The crux of the sermon seemed to
rest heavily upon two premises or ideas:

1) The US is overly dependent on foreign oil, and
2) The US should be weary of pursuing policies of isolationism

Hrm.....

Call me crazy, but this strikes me as akin to Jessica Simpson
talking up not-being-image-conscious to a classroom of middle
school females, or Jerome Bettis addressing a Jenny Craig class
on the finer points of staying fit and trim, or a certain unnamed
20th Century European leader... say, around the year 1939...
telling a country, maybe Poland, to pick one out of thin air,
that non-aggression is the way to go.

Lets see here.. US overly dependent on foreign oil.. US should
be weary of isolationism.. the correct course is that the US
should be a world leader.. embrace principles of multilateralism
and cooperation.. not drag itself into a bloody prolonged conflict
based on false premises with no exit strategy in an oil-rich
country while in the process burning numerous diplomatic bridges
and earning the US worldwide enmity.

WHOA. Whoa buddy. I was loosing the script there for a second.
I don't think that was the value lesson W was trying to impart
last night. Maybe I should have actually watched the thing instead
of watching basketball. My bad people. My bad.

Anyway.. I am, frankly, fairly glad that W chose.. err.. was directed..
to go the way of HYPOCRISY last night, because it allows me to evoke
one of my favorite quotes that I will now attribute directly to the
Bush Administration. Its by Arendt, and it goes, ahem, a little
something like this:

The hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself.
What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of
vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other
vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true,
confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite
is really rotten to the core. ~Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, 1963

Deep breath

OK.. moving on..

No, wait!.. jus one.. err.. two more comments here on the political
scene. (1) I watched enough of the SOTU last night to catch some
good shots of Roberts and Alito and, I must say, going on the facial
expressions alone, I'm 'flip-flopping' and beginning to worry alot
more about Roberts. Alito looked like a guy who couldn't believe
he was actually in the room wearing the robe, etc., thinking to
himself, "holy crap, I'm the son of an Italian immigrant, I'm on the
Supreme Court!" Roberts, on the other hand, had this Norman
Rockwell look painted on his face, conveying a crusading spirit that
will not rest until the indignities and injustice born of liberal
precedent are laid to rest. I'm not going to use the "A" word here,
but you can use your imagination. (2) Democrats. Man. The Loyal
Opposition. Making a statement by having the guy who lost the
Presidential Election by 3 million votes dialing up from Davos to
orchestrate a feeble filibuster attempt. I'm feeling confident
about the November elections. Yes, that's the word, confident.

Right. Now we're done. Really.

Chapter 2: Snowboarding

The monkey is off the back. I finally did it. Hopped in the
car, drove up to the lovely Catskill Park in Upstate New York,
snapped? into the snowboard, and snowboarded. Yee-haw...

...and that's about as much of a positive spin I can put on the
occasion. Ben Folds has that, "Rocking the Suburbs" tune. My
theme song for the day was, "Rocking the Bunnyhill. Well, sort
of rocking the bunny hill. Mainly lucking out with the bunny
hill from time to time, mainly just falling on my ass."

Don't think I have the jist of it quite yet. But that's OK.
It ain't easy. There's a saying with these activites, "you
aren't having fun until the third day." So be it. I want to
go back, but the second day will have to wait until all the
swelling goes down somewhat, but there will be a second day.
And a third. And then we'll be thick in the fun.

I have to say.. some folks told me that the basics of
snowboarding are easier to learn than skiing. I think that
is, more or less, completely inaccurate. There were two year
old kids effortlessly skiing the single diamond slopes at Hunter
Mountain.. I think there's something to be said for being
able to move both legs separately and stopping fairly
easily. But I haven't skiied yet, so what do I know.

What I do know if that I can tell the world that I have rocked
the board. Good stuff. Below is proof of fact.



10 4. The test is over.