if there’s one thing that web 2.0 has made it much easier to do, it’s gaze at your own navel.  anyways, i’m now officially a part of the twitter mob.  if you look at the far right sidebar, you’ll see that i’ve added a widget that displays my latest twitter.  it’s a flash widget so you can even scroll older twitters if you want.  i feel extremely nerdy using “twitter” more than once.  i won’t go into too much detail, but if you don’t know what it is, you can consult the all knowing wikipedia to find out more.  i know i’m like a year and half late to this party, but it turns out that twitter, or as i like to call it, lame blogging for lazy people, is kinda fun.  let’s hope i can keep this thing updated better than i do this blog.  besides, my wiki is not working right now.

for my more nerdy friends, here’s my twitter page and here is where you can subscribe to the feed.

get it?  because he’s a blowhard

you know, as long as there are black people in sports, i’m always going to have something to blog about.

recently, there have been two incidents involving high profile media personalities and their comments being construed as offensive by a racial/ethnic group.  but what i think is instructive is their reaction to the public outcry of racism/anti-semitism.

to catch you up, jemele hill, an espn.com columnist recently caught fire for comparing boston celtics’ fans to hitler.  the actual wording was “Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim.” ¹  obivously, not the most culturally sensitive thing someone could write.  espn.com ended up suspending her, and yesterday, her first column back was a mea culpa.  i’ve read the column a couple of times and it is actually a pretty good apology.  it’s not some backhanded apology that we usually see from media types who simply complain about being misunderstood or taken out of context.  instead, she owns up completely to her mistake, acknowledging that the mistake is even more egregious because she recently took golf channel reporter, kelly tilghman to task in a column for making racially insensitive remarks about tiger woods.

In the Tilghman column, I wrote, “While I don’t believe [Tilghman] is a racist, I certainly wouldn’t classify what she said as a ’slip.’ A cussword is a slip. This was a constructed, racial scenario that is a frightening reminder for some people in this country.”

The moment I put “Hitler” and “victim” in the same sentence, I did the exact same thing. It doesn’t matter that my intent was to use hyperbole to bolster the humor. I hammered a flash point.

she doesn’t defend her actions at all.  she simply acknowledges that she was wrong and that she hopes that her past record will allow readers to believe that she has learned a lesson and will apply this lesson to her future writing.  now i for one, think that this is a completely refreshing thing to see since the masculine ethos of sports often prevents people involved from ever admitting a mistake.  is it a coincidence that hill is a female?  i think not.  good for hill, i say.

now let’s contrast don imus’ recent comments about the rainmaker formerly known as pacman.  imus of “nappy headed hos” fame said this a couple of days ago on his radio show.  per the phoenix business journal:

During a segment on Monday about troubled Dallas Cowboys cornerback Adam Jones, Imus asked, “What color is he?” Sports announcer Warner Wolf said Jones, who is appealing his suspension by the National Football League after six arrests, is African-American. Imus responded, “There you go. Now we know.”²

i’ve listened to this thing several times and from what i can tell, his quote is not being taken out of context and he is, albeitly very un-cleverly, pointing out that black people are the ones causing trouble in this world.  although not as racist as the nappy comment, still racist nonetheless.  imus’ response to the criticism was to issue this statement:

I meant that he was being picked on because he’s black

un-effing-believeable.  imus is actually using a ploy frequently used by athletes and sports franchises, and that is to treat people like idiots.  it amazes me that he actually believe that people will think that he was trying to illuminate racial injustice.  he actually thinks that he can retract a racist statement by claiming he’s trying to be anti-racist.  i’m sure people will be rationalizing all day that we can’t know what was in his head and heart when he asked “what color is he?”, but those people are assholes.  it’s pretty clear that he’s being a racist.  compound that with his already checkered past, and it really isn’t hard to figure out what he was trying to say.  and it sure as hell wasn’t “i love black people”.

if there’s one thing that i can’t stand is people who are racist pretending not to be.  i actually don’t have that big of a problem with imus being racist.  if that is what he is, then that’s what he is.  if he was up front about it, at least it would be easier to have a dialogue about why his comments were racist.  but by hoping that we’re idiots and that we’ll buy his bs reasoning, he’s only trying to give a reason as to why he should be allowed to continue to make racist statements on the radio without being labelled a racist.  or, he’s saying “what about me?”  go eff yourself don imus.

in any case, i thought the fact that these two things happened within a day of each other provided a good contrast in how media personalities accept responsibility for their content, or in imus’ case, they don’t.  it is also a good illustration of an old white guy being a dickhead and female of color being professional.

a couple of more points.

1. it’s stupid that espn.com doesn’t seem to be accepting any responsibility.  somewhere in bristol, there is an editor who really sucks at his job.
2. i kinda resent even having to talk about don imus.  is he really relevant anymore other than spouting racist comments?  does anyone know of anyone who actually listens to imus on the radio?  can i even get his show out here in socal?

BONUS RACE RELATED STORY: this wall street journal headline cracks me up.³

1. you can read the whole column here, but espn.com has since redacted the hitler reference. [↩]
2. you can listen to the whole thing here. [↩]
3. link via poplicks [↩]

the short version

i’ve installed a new widget in the far left sidebar.  it’s a streaming playlist of songs that are currently in heavy rotation on my ipod¹.  feel free to listen away and comment on any music you like or don’t like.

the long version

i’ve long debated the merits of writing music reviews for this blog.  way back in the last century when i first attempted to get a website up and running, one of first sections i wrote were music reviews of any new cds that i had gotten.  i suppose the idea was that i would become proficient at this particular style of writing and inevitably rolling stone or spin would find my website and appreciate my unique voice so much that they’d start paying me to do music reviews for them.

well ok, so that wasn’t the only reason.  you see i’m what they call an audiophile.  currently itunes tells me that i have 13,141 songs, or 56.89 gb, or 72.3 days worth of music in my library.  i actually devour music constantly and i’m one of those people that pretty much has music playing at all times.  and being the pretentious academic that i am, i also like to think and talk about popular music.  and i spend probably a little too much time doing so.

in any case, i was always a little conflicted about actually writing music reviews.  it’s not that i have any problem with people reviewing music.  in fact, i love cd reviews.  when i get my spin magazine, i inevitably immediately flip to the back of the magazine and read the cd reviews before i read anything else.  the favorite part of my new favorite podcast “sound opinions” is the two music critics presenting their opinions on any new music.  no, the problem i had was that for me, who at this point is not wanting to seriously write about music for a living, evaluating the merits of popular music seemed little arbitrary.  you see, i hate music snobs.  people who say this music sucks, or this genre sucks, or this artist sucks, as if there is any objective definition to what is good music.  as a sociologist, i’m inclined to believe that your musical tastes in music have less to do with music than with the social world which you inhabit.  or example, take david hasselhoff.  now every song i’ve ever heard from him is like hearing someone scratch a chalkboard with their fingernails.  yet he’s sold millions upon millions of records in germany.  now who am i to tell 82 million german people that they’re full of crap?  and who’s to say if i weren’t german, i’d be equally as rabid about the hoff as they are?

no what really makes me suspicious of music snobs is that usually, when they say that they hate a certain kind of music, they’re actually saying something else.  it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that when some people say “i hate rap music.  all they do is steal other people’s music,” what they’re really saying is “i hate black people and i really hate that puff daddy guy.”²  when people say that they hate jazz, they’re actually just anti-intellectuals.  if you want to get sociological about it, this is what pierre bordieu refers to as distinction.  that is, our cultural tastes are actually representative of what we want to say about ourselves to distinguish ourselves in the socioeconomic hierarchy.  in any case, i get uncomfortable criticizing music or people for liking certain kinds of music because i don’t know what unique cultural, historical, and social conditions have led to people liking nickelback.

the other thing is that i don’t know if i’m hip enough to really be a good music critic.  i kinda hate indie music, i like hooks, and bono is my hero.  very uncool and not what a good music critic should be.

on the other hand, i really enjoy turning people on to music.  people are more passionate about music than most any other cultural medium, so when you share musical tastes, that usually means that you share some kind of emotional connection with that person, and you can get all kinds of street cred.  i also like to listen to a wide variety of music.  i know everyone always says that, but i actually do.  i had the good fortune of living in an undergraduate dorm with music students and that really opened my eyes up to music, so i feel that i am actually in a good position to introduce some of you to some good music.

which makes me an omnivore, which is almost cliche because everyone always says that they’re an omnivore and sharing music becomes this pointless exercise in who can out-obscure each other.  and i definitely don’t want to be that person.  it also makes me kinduva wussy because i’m the kind of person who likes most kinds of music.

but i don’t want to write music reviews because for all the reasons i listed above, that’s just me trying to say, “what about me?”  besides there are other people on the web who are much more adept at this art form than me.  in any case, it took me forever to find some kind of reasonable technology that would allow me to stream music.  you see i do this thing that i aped from cameron crowe.  i read somewhere that he makes a mixtape every month.  he says that it’s interesting because when he listens to old tapes because it’s not so much about his general music as it is about what was going on in his life at the time.  and to be honest, sharing these playlists have me conflicted too.  it’s just so personal, you know?  and although i’m into disclosing anything about my personal life that would be relevant to whatever i’m writing about, i just didn’t want to review albums for the sake of saying, “i’m pretty pissed off about the bush administration so i’m really diggin’ on rage against the machine.”  but at the same time, music is a big part of my life.

whatever the case, i think the little widget in the far right sidebar is the best way for me to share that part of me, but not do it in such “hey everyone, check out the cool music that i listen to that makes me cool” way.  i’ll change it up whenever i finalize a playlist, usually once every couple of months, so it won’t even be like it’s what is currently in the rotation.  i’m still not completely happy with the way it looks as i wish i could list the whole playlist, but for right now, this is the best i can do.  i’ve set it so that it doesn’t start automatically when you visit the blog because i hate it when other websites do that, so you’ll have to move the mouse over to the little flash player and press play.³

see, i feel super douchey for having even written this much about music.  anyways, here is the current playlist.

1. Supernatural Superserious - R.E.M.
2. I Just Want to Celebrate - Rare Earth
3. Oxford Comma - Vampire Weekend
4. Follow Me Upstairs - Artichoke Heart Soufflé
5. Consoler of the Lonely - The Raconteurs
6. Burn Your Life Down - Tegan & Sara
7. The Nature (feat. Justin Timberlake) - Talib Kweli
8. Air and Kilometers - Kaki King
9. Kilo (Feat. Raekwon) - Ghostface Killah
10. Bowie - Flight Of The Conchords
11. Just For Me - Al Green
12. Beef - Mos Def
13. Missed The Boat - Modest Mouse
14. The One - Old 97s
15. Chonkyfire - Outkast
16. You! Me! Dancing! - Los Campesinos!

from now on, i’ll make a post like this whenever i change the songs.  in any case, please enjoy the music and please let me know in the comments if there are any songs that you particularly like or even better, songs you don’t like.

1. although right now, my ipod is theoretical because some a-hole stole it from me [↩]
2. i’m talking to you pavement. [↩]
3. by the way, in case you are from the RIAA, i’ve acquired all of these files via extremely legal means [↩]

so rick reilly’s column made its much anticipated debut for espn this week. i’m sure that i don’t have to tell you, it’s terrible. and when i say terrible, i don’t mean in that conventional way that 95% of sports columnists are terrible. i mean terrible in the way that showgirls was terrible. terrible in the way that ryan leaf was terrible. terrible in the way that karl rove is terrible. this column is so historically bad that it makes skip bayless look like david effing halberstram. anyways, let’s go over some of the highlights.

Since this is my first column for The Magazine, I figure I should introduce myself.

in the very first sentence, reilly establishes himself as a first rate douchebag. there is nothing douchier than fake modesty. i should know, i use it all the time to be funny. as if espn magazine¹ readers don’t know who reilly is. as if espn hasn’t plastered his face all over the website. as if espn magazine readers live in a complete vacuum and think that before his defection to espn he didn’t spend the last friggin’ two decades writing for what had been the premier national sports magazine. don’t be fooled kids, fake modesty is a cheap attempt at trying to establish yourself as a common person. and rick reilly is quite uncommon in that his douchebag quotient is higher than most.

And maybe the best way to tell you who I am is to tell you about my dad, Jack. He was an Irish tenor, a yarn spinner, a songwriter, a father of four, a crack golfer and a first-class drunk.

not that he had been turning out top notch sports commentary in the last ten years or anything, but this is a clear sign to espn readers that reilly has completely given up trying. in the second sentence for chrissakes! there is NOTHING, repeat NOTHING more cliche, more banal, and more ridiculous in sports journalism than the whole “my father and i have a special relationship” angle. if you ever read reilly’s column about tiger’s woods dad, you know that he’s written this thing a million times. no, reilly is now just collecting a paycheck. next column: how sports saved an inner city kid.

In alcoholic families, the youngest kid becomes the mascot. That was me. I became the funny one, comic relief, third-grade vaudeville—anything to keep the furniture where it was.

augghhh! more fake modesty. what reilly is really trying to say is “i don’t work at what i do. there is no contrivance to the things i write. i’m just naturally funny! because my dad was an alkie!” douche to the bag!

And I was happy to find out it wasn’t the Titleist clubs that made him so mean, it was the Canadian Clubs. It was the whiskey. Golf was this green-and-blue launching pad for little white rockets. Golf taught me the lessons my dad never did, including the best one: You play life where it lies. You hit it there. You play it from there. Nobody threw you a nasty curve or forgot to block the defensive end. I learned that my mistakes were mine alone, not my boss’, not the cop’s and, as much as I hated to admit it, not my dad’s.

this paragraph hits the bad sports writing trifecta: puns, cheesy metaphors, and unabashed sentimentality. just by reading that paragraph, your writing skill has decreased substantially.

And then one day, out of the blue, maybe 25 years ago, my dad went to one AA meeting and quit. Never had a drop after that.

It was five more years before I finally believed it. Then I invited him to the Masters. He was 70, I was 30. And it was on that two-and-a-half-hour ride from Atlanta to Augusta that we finally met.

of all the major sports and sporting events to use in his first column, reilly picks the whitest, most elitist, most unathletic one of them all: golf. this may actually be a shrewd move because middle aged white people are the ones most likely to eat this BS up. and my contention is that in doing so, he’s telling all us non-white people to go eff ourselves.

It took a lot of guts and a lot of courage, and the only lousy part was that it came so late. By the time I saw him for who he was—a strong man who took most of a lifetime to understand his crushing weakness—I was ears deep into my own family and career. So we didn’t play much golf together before the warranty on his heart started to expire. I never got to really see the swing that won all those trophies. By then, the only time he used his putter was as a cane.

hey rick, mitch albom called. he wants his “sports-teaches-me-about-life’s-lessons” shtick back.

I’m a man with more flaws than a 1986 Yugo, but I try to own up to them, because a very good Irish tenor showed me how.

And that’s what I call a very good save.

kill. me. now.

now i feel a little bad picking on reilly. he’s just doing the thing that he’s really good at, and making a lot of money doing it, so i can’t begrudge him for that. but i can begrudge espn for yet again, dumbing down sports a little bit more for the rest of us. and people want to know why blogs are so popular…

1. i refuse to call it the “the magazine”…almost as douchey as the false modesty [↩]

here is the text of an email that was sent out to the UCSB community:

June 3, 2008

To: The Campus Community

Fr: Vice Chancellor Donna Carpenter

Re: Bear Spotted on Campus

As reported on KEYT News and in the Santa Barbara News Press, a bear has been spotted several times on campus the past four days. The bear is a California small, black bear weighing approximately 200 pounds. It has been spotted near the Santa Barbara Airport fence line along Mesa Road and near Harder Stadium.

UCSB Police officers and State Fish and Game agents are searching for the bear. If spotted, please do not approach the bear but call UCSB Police at 911.

Thank you.

no, thank you mr. bear.

roger clemens is really starting to piss me off.  even after the whole mindy mccready thing came down, he’s still going ahead with his defamation lawsuit against brian mcnamee.  in a crazy legal filing, he is trying to sue him mcnamee in texas state court.  here is his lawyer’s rationale:

When a person who is not a resident of the state of Texas intentionally defames a Texas resident, it is fair and should be expected that they have to defend their conduct in a Texas court before a Texas jury

seriously, roger clemens is an idiot.  it’s bad enough that he basically got caught lying about PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING.  now he seems intent on going down a road he can’t possibly come out looking good.  what’s he gonna get in a lawsuit if he wins, money?  being able to claim that the court has cleared his name?  only a-holes who think they can get away with lying and cheating think that way.

1) eff you east coast - you know how everyone likes to bag on california as being phony and full of hippies who are out of touch with reality.  well, how many east coast states can say this?  i’m proud to be an adopted californian these days.

2)  mattel is suing another toy company over the rights to dolls of pre-teens dressed up like whores.  between this and all the toy guns, i don’t know about you, but my kids are just going to have to make do with mr. potato head.  i don’t know how the makers of these dolls can think that they’re not going to hell.  and that goes double for you people who hold kid beauty pageants.  quit freaking everyone out!

3) as echoed by other blogs, i think slate is doing a bang up job of covering the r. kelly trial.  like you, i was wondering when all this bs would go down.  can you believe that it took this long for this thing to go to trial?  think about it, since we first heard about this, r kelly has released at least three albums and filmed parts 1-284 of trapped in the closet.  the wheels of justice are slow for the rich and famous.

that’s all i got….baby steps….