Wingin' it With Dickie V

About 2 weeks ago Sportscenter did this 5 part story bit on Sex and Sports. The gist of the story was to investigate the ways the sports media intertwines sex with its reporting about entirely diverse subjects. Tony Kornheiser pretty much nailed what was going on with this bit, since for the most part it ripped on ESPN as much as it did newspaper coverage or Fox Sports, CBS, etc. First of all, the reporters had a very "well they do it too!" attitude towards the things they seemed to admit were more than a bit sketchy. The most memorable argument in this section was discussing the "cute-sideline" reporter genre made famous by Bonnie Bernstein, Melissa Stark, and Jillian Barberie, among others. I can't remember who started this trend, my guess is that it was Fox, but I don't know that for sure. Everyone does it at this point, not just for football coverage notably, though the relative paucity of games, length of contest, demand for the sport, and intensity of coverage does result in more reporters in general and as a consequence more of the women in question. While some of these ladies (Melissa Stark most obviously) have significant experience and qualification in sports journalism some (Jillian Barberie) are pretty much Coors Light ads in the making. While no one else wanted to emphasize this particular point, I think it is worth noting that not all the women in sports broadcasting are there just for their looks. Even though I think Linda Cohn is pretty hot in a very CJ Craig sort of way, the woman knows her shit. Put her on with Steve Berthiaume and I am pretty psyched for My Sportscenter. Regardless, ESPN made it a very explicit point that everyone else has hot sideline reporters too and that female sports journalists are increasingly popular despite the few who are qualified. While I recognize that the reason there are not nearly as many women who are qualified as sports reporters is influenced by a number of patriarchal constraints (society directs sports coverage mainly at heterosexual men 18-34, men don't believe women can cover sports, etc.) the fact is that those societal factors remain functional and in existence for the time being. Chure. Not an interesting story, but chure.

Secondly, and I think Tony pretty much phrased this one as accurately as humanly possible, this was ESPN's very mild equivalent of an occassional self-flagellation. Basically they opened up on Sportscenter with a "oh we are so bad, so bad, we exploit these poor gorgeous women, and show the pictures of them in their scampy tennis outfits, bad us, bad ESPN" and then were free to go back to shooting Anna Kornikova from a curious angle which does little for her foreHAND, but gives a little summin summin to her backSIDE if you know what I'm saying. They spent 5 minutes scolding themselves on Sportscenter one day, pretty much just so they wouldn't have to feel guilty.

Finally, and most humorously, immediately after the conclusion of this segment, we go to commercial. The first advertisment that follows this powerful piece: Dick Vitale flying Hooters Air for an NCAA promotion entitled, quite wonderfully, Wingin' It With Dickie V. Not that you would expect any differently from Hooters, but there are more than a couple moments in the commercial when Dick's gigantic bald head is framed by several other hair-less mellons, and very few times when those "Hooter girls" were connected with their "faces." Funny stuff.

So I am the first to admit that my extemp questions from this morning are not the greatest I have ever come up with. I mean, there are some I am particularly fond of, but I will let ya'll pick your personal faves. I don't know that any of them can stand up to "Have you seen this boy" or whatever, but they ain't bad. If I had an extemp tournament these would be the questions. Notably, if I ran a speech tournament I would also tell the debate people to stay home then lock the doors and start the building on fire, but thats another story. Actually, its sort of another story, but its related to this one. Whereby Reuter and I determined that the best way possible to murder someone was to send them an invitation to the Ole Piper Inn, then get a machine gun, light the pocorn ablaze, stand one person at either door, and just cut them down on their single file exit. Fuckers.

So the West Wing was pretty fucking good last night, fairly comparable to an old school episode. Now, don't get me wrong. You can tell that the show is no longer written by Aaron Sorkin, his voice for and understanding of these characters was so far and above everyone else's that it is quite obvious when he is no longer there controlling where they go and what they do. Nonetheless, while I am not 100% certain that I agree with Josh's argument from last night, I know that it was promoted in the same fashion it would have been in season 3. Glenn Close was fantastic as the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and there were some moments that really reflected the ethics of democratic politics the show used to push for. While I don't know that I can still argue that the West Wing is the best show on the air (The O.C. is fucking good and Angel has been in-fucking-croyable this season) this episode convinced me that it is still in contention. We'll see if they are able to keep everyone on track once they've had more than one congressional session under their belts.

Well, we have reached the conclusion of my first week back after Spring Break. I have gotten a fair amount of work done, I think the rest will get taken care of in the next couple days. There is the potential for good times and some quality shiz too. I am reading a book called JR by William Gaddis which is, I shit you not, 800 pages of virtually continuous dialogue. There are no chapter breaks, no starred or dashed off sections, no consistent narration. It takes forever, I believe I finished just over 35 pages in an hour and a half this afternoon. Even a novel like The Public Burning which read somewhat slowly would have easily been an eighth of the way done in a sitting like that. I feel that it is very unlikely that I will finish this book before Tuesday, but fairly possible that I will get through half. Getting that, paper grading, and maybe 5-10 pages of writing done would be considered an unqualified success.

So I was getting ready to come home from la casa de mi padres I was digging around in the cupboards to find stuff to bring home when I noticed my mom's multiplicity of sprinkles. I mean, this woman has alot of fucking sprinkles. 15+ bottles by my count. Katie, the intuitive, beautiful, insightful, and observent young woman that she is, has remarked to me that my mom goes grocery shopping without any regard to what groceries she has at home. She buys the same things at about the same time independent of her need for them. For instance, since the whole divorce situation and the kids not being there situation, my mother cooks about never. So while they have cut back on their grocery purcahsing significantly (ie: there is nothing to eat in the house ever) the things that they do buy are absolutely useless. Enough sprinkles to fill a butthole, 4 boxes of corn starch, like 20 packs of Crisco Sticks. I also think my parents have a very pronounced obsession with purchasing things they believe to be neat, useful, or simply contemporary developments which they thing they shouldn't go without. Sort of the way I think people in the 50's felt about TV dinners: "its SPACE AGE crappy meatloaf." I doubt anyone in that house besides me has made a tuna sandwich in like 2 years and while I am sure part of that is due to the fact that I repeatedly burglarize all the tuna from the house, the point is that my parents have no business purchasing the new vaccuum sealed pouches of StarKist. If you are going to select an arbitrary product like this one, however, tuna is a pretty rocking one, because this tuna tastes leagues and balls above its canned brethren and sistren. I mean, I don't know if the vaccuum sealing is better for freshness or if the water drains away flavor or what, but I suggest that you at least try the pouches. If, for some reason which not even my mildly creative mind can fathom, you are serving tuna sandwiches at a fancy party, you should splurge for Charlie's hermetically sealed body-bag. If you are a rich bastard and can justify paying 2 bucks for a fucking serving of tuna, rock on, but at that price you St. Paul folk should probably just head to Cecil's for a tuna-melt whenever you get the mood. The ambiance is worth it if nothing else.

So I know people have always thought that tunnels are stongly vaginal, both because you insert long pointy things, like trains, into them, and because, well, they are both holes, I don't know how else to explain that one. Nonetheless, I am thinking that, were I a tunnel, I am not sure I would want to be necessarily identified as a vagina. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against it, but what human-made structure is represented by the body's other orifices. Natural phenomena sure, you've got the urethra-like geyser and a very nostril-ish cave formation, but human made, I am not sure. At the same time, I am not sure if the association of tunnels with the vagina, and hence a fairly strong identification of the vagina as the privileged bodily opening, is indicative of a patrairchal stance wherein heterosexual males traditionally saw female genitalia in everything, or if it is a fortuitous recognition of the glory of the female body. Even the latter has its dangerous tensions, since "glorifying the female form" has been used as an excuse to "check out naked chicks" by more than just horny art students.

I don't think topography is a very good name for the science of maps. I mean, what is wrong with "map-ology". When you think about it, the folks at the NCAA have really nailed down this naming stuff. "We need a name for the round of sixteen, something catchy, then the same for the rounds of 8 and 4. Maybe we should make sure that the first letter of the descriptive word is the same as that of the first letter of the number. Brilliant!!" (by the way, I know this sounds like a Guinness commercial, and it should, and even though I think those commercials are hilarious, I don't think they are innovative as I am quite sure the whole stupid sarcastic question ended by a complimentary phrase (Brilliant!!) is an old trick, I know for a fact we used to do it with "OUTSTANDING!!") They followed up that one by: "People really seem to like brackets, what should we call the science of filling out your bracket. Bracket-ism...brackety-stuff..." you got the deal. Nonetheless, I think it would be cool if we just all agreed that if something wants to be a science it has to end with -ology. Now, I think we should make it a necessary but not sufficient condition, you shouldn't get to be a science just because you call yourself "peanut-butterology", but if the study of peanut butter is ever going to be taken seriously it has two important priorities:

1) Call itself "peanut-butterology"

2) Stop the violent Chunky-Smoothy conflict which has torn apart the people who should be most committed to the same goals

What about pillows. Would you rather take advice from a dude who has looked at alot of pillows or some chick who studied pillowology. Notably, I think pillow advice should always be taken from cats, who univerally select the softest cooshiest pillow available. In a way you could say that cats are the grandparents of pillowology, but if the study of pillows is ever going to be taken seriously it has three important priorities:

1) Call itself "pillowology"

2) Stop admitting that it is fundamentally a field of study already mastered by the everyday housecat

3) Stop haning out with peanut-butterologists, because sticky pillows blow

My guess is that if this blog were contained on google, this entry would be among the only websites to pop-up in response to the search "sticky pillows blow". I was just about to check and see if that were true, but I realized that this isn't on the internet yet, so it wouldn't even work. Nonetheless, I will indicate later if this is the case. Maybe one of you more internet literate folk could tell me a little about how I go about getting it so the google search for "sticky pillows blow" will turn up this site.

Finally, Katie and I made turkey-enchiladas last night with some of the multitiudes of t-bird we have remaining from that late-winter-early-spring and they rock. I may have slightly over-turkeyed them, since I think we had like twice as much as recommended. This was not a bad thing, notably, since extra turkey just made them more and more turkeylicious. I think I am going to make some biscuit donuts a little later to satisfy the Katie-saurus, who is not pleased about the prospect of spending all weekend engrossed in basketball. Alright, enough.

Peace,

MB-K