Category: Culture

Losing Weight

 

This is the first time in my life when I’ve used a scale on a regular basis. It’s become a tangible measure of success and failure for me. I can already begin seeing why some folks become obsessed with weighing. Every day you get a chance to win something! (Or lose something but I’m a half-full person so I pay much more attention to the victories than the defeats.)

 

I weigh less now than I have at any time since my first term in college. It’s hard to believe now but during the stretch from about Labor Day to Thanksgiving that year I gained 40+ lbs. My whole life seemed to change in those 12 weeks including this radical physical shift. I went from a thin person to a chubby person in one autumn. (I just wrote ‘chubby’. What an odd word. Chubby.) 

 

While I’ve lost weight recently, I haven’t exactly gone from chubby to thin. In the past few months I’ve lost around 25# and it’s peculiar to notice how perceptions of me have changed so quickly. Look, I’m a big guy so it’s not as though I appear sick, drugged or destitute. Still, there’s no question that things are different.

 

Sometimes the differences are about other people- I get more smiles; people flirt with me more often; people seem to think I’m taller than I am (I’m just above 6’ but I’ve had a couple tell me that they thought I was 6’ 3“ in the past few weeks. Weird.) and I’ve had a couple clerks express surprise at my age when they see my photo ID.

 

Other times, the differences are about me- I actually do feel better physically with less knee and back pain; I spend less money and time at restaurants and I don’t have as high a tolerance for alcohol. I suppose those changes are all positive but I wonder what it means that I’m writing this only after having lost some weight. If I gain weight, will I spend this time and energy writing about it? If so, would I make that writing available for anyone to see?  

 

I started writing this post in early November and held off from finishing and posting it because I wondered if the holiday season and cold weather would become my excuses for eating more and exercising less. So far, that hasn’t been the case.  I’d also been worried that I’d begin obsessing over the scale. I think I’ve satisfied myself that the scale is a tool only. My refusal to give it any more power feels like a very good choice.

 

 

FDO

 

PS- Since I started on this post, I’ve had a great new weight loss connection. I am no longer a diabetic! That’s a clinical distinction based on long term blood sugar levels and it doesn't mean I'm planning to change my diet or exercise habits.  I am fortunate enough to have responded well to medicine and I can afford spending the time and money to give myself a better chance at healthfulness. Ultimately, weight loss is not the only important factor in this shift away from diabetes but it is an important one.

 

And a happy one. 

 


 

Some Bonds Can’t Be Cashed In

 

Barry Bonds was convicted of obstruction of justice in the BALCO case. Apparently our government has spent something like $50 million on this effort. It’s stunning on multiple fronts. Bonds won’t have to serve any jail time and isn’t banned from working Major League Baseball. Typically, a player with his pedigree would have his pick of jobs but that won’t happen for Bonds.

 

ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian says that the taint of steroids is too strong for baseball teams to take a chance by hiring a player who is associated with the drugs. That’s why Barry Bonds won’t be employed by a major league team again. I disagree strongly with his reasoning.

 

Mark McGwire's job as the hitting coach in St. Louis is evidence that it's not about steroids; it's about personality. If you're beloved, you're more easily forgiven. In ‘98 McGwire lied repeatedly about his use of PEDs but he's been given a chance to work in MLB again. He never demonstrated any attempt to give back any gains he made from his drug use. He never donated the money he made or asked to be removed from the record books. Nope. He just apologized.

 

And that was enough apparently to gain a high level of forgiveness. There were virtually no fans who were abusive to him as the Cardinals traveled this season and his history only came up a couple times during the teams unlikely run to a World Series championship. Big Mac is back!

 

The contrast could not be clearer when it comes to Barry Bonds. As much as some people would like to see Bonds back in the game, it won't happen simply because he won't a) put on the cape of public contrition or b) have the fan support to allow a team to hire him without issue. The Giants know that he (and they) would be publicly vilified as soon as he wore their uniform again, even as a hitting coach just like McGwire. 

 

Ultimately, Kurkjian is right and Bonds is likely done with MLB.  (Rather, MLB is likely done with Bonds.)  But don’t believe that it’s because of what he did. After all, we now know that scores of players knowingly, willingly and deliberately took PEDs. It’s not the what; it’s the who. And that’s the last sad chapter of this entirely sad story.   

 

 

FDO

 

 

One Thing I Really Like Is…Replacement Names

 

NBA Nicknames that Replace Given Names


Here’s the corollary to the original post about nicknames.


The NBA has had a vast number of players whose given names have been virtually replaced by their nicknames. Replaced to the point it would seem more peculiar to use their given name. These are the ones I can think of right now although there are probably many others. I’m not even counting the guys who often have their nicknames used but not always. That means there’s no Bones Barry, no Cat Mobley and no Clyde Frazier here. Even without them, this is an awesome list.


 

Magic Johnson

Pearl Washington

Tree Rollins

Tiny Archibald

Moochie Norris

Bimbo Coles

Muggsy Bogues

Doc Rivers

Spud Webb

Boobie Gibson

Slick Watts

Buck Williams

Mookie Blaylock

Pooh Richardson

Sleepy Floyd

Fat Lever

Cornbread Maxwell

Flip Murray

Rip Hamilton

Speedy Claxton

Truck Robinson

 

Yep, this is quite a list. I repeat myself. I love nicknames.

 

FDO

 

Late Additions:


Fly Williams

Smush Parker

 

One Thing I Really Like Is… Nicknames

 

Nicknames.

 

I love ‘em. It’s probably because I like both pro basketball and pro wrestling but I’m not sure. Nicknames are just fun to me. I have had lots in my own life and there a couple I still hang on to.


I also enjoy giving people nicknames. Now, I’m not like George W. ‘Shrub’ Bush who apparently gives nicknames to everybody. To me, that cheapens the gift. Nicknames are reserved for people I love or at least love spending time with. Nicknames like ‘Nuprin’, ‘Mijo’, ‘Big Daddy’ Kane, ‘Duchess’ and ‘Mr. Incredible’ need to come from a place of love.

 

It’s great when nicknames become so commonly used that they virtually replace given names. Magic Johnson is the most famous example but the NBA is chock full of this phenomenon. This deserves a separate post actually.  

 

Some nicknames are funny even when there’s no context. I mean, I know why Darryl Dawkins is called ‘Chocolate Thunder’ but realistically does it even matter? Isn’t ‘Chocolate Thunder’ always gonna be funny? That could be the name of a movie, breakfast cereal, band, video game or bodily function and it’s still gonna work. Perfect.

 

There are also lots of nicknames that aren’t in common use that really should be. My friend, ABC, calls Eli Manning ‘Baby E’ and it’s perfect. Just look at him. The Anaheim Angels’ Torii Hunter should obviously be nicknamed ‘Big Game’. Obviously!

 

If Mitt Romney wins the GOP Presidential nomination I certainly expect folks on the left to start calling him ‘Glove’. Why wouldn’t they?  

 

Boston Celtics coach Glenn ‘Doc’ Rivers’ son, Austin is a perfect candidate to be ‘Baby Doc’ but no one’s willing to go there. C’mon, they don’t look Haitian so it’s ok, right? 

 

Right?!?

 

FDO

 

 

 

Average Obama

 

I liked President Obama’s Osawatomie speech and recognize the obvious resonances it has with Teddy Roosevelt’s  New Nationalism  speech. That connection has been made in multiple places and is well worth reading and reading about. I think Obama's speech was the start of something else too. Something with great potential for Obama’s re-election campaign against Mitt Romney in 2012*. I mean the re-branding of the President as “Barack Obama, regular American.”

 

I believe that in this campaign Obama will try to present himself as a typical American with a very American story. Even though he has often been defined as an outsider, I don’t think that Obama has ever believed that to be true. Obama considers himself to be quintessentially American. That belief will be easier to spread to the public at large if Obama is running against Willard Mitt Romney.

(Much in the way that Obama’s middle name became a campaign issue, I’m convinced that Romney’s first name will be tossed about and made the subject of jokes. I assume the story about Mitt being named after George Romney’s best friend Willard Marriott is true. That’s not gonna be helpful.)

 

Obama’s campaign will work hard to present Romney as the embodiment of America’s elite. Romney is, after all, the son of a governor and was born into a highly affluent family. His own professional career has placed him squarely in the 1% as defined by Occupy Wall Street. In 2000, those would have been helpful characteristics but in the midst of our Great Recession, economic privilege is no longer perceived as indicative of inherent merit. Instead, his extraordinary level of privilege is probably a major detriment to Romney’s candidacy.

 

Obama’s own American story is well known and his recent speech cleverly emphasized his rootedness via his family of regular folks from Kansas. His single mom spent time on public assistance rolls and Obama only became an elite himself through educational attainment. He legitimately is a contemporary Horatio Alger. Even as an adult, his South Side of Chicago bona fides are clearly intact. Describing his career as working for the people of his community as opposed to having the people work for him will be a winning presentation.

 

And while folks often describe Obama’s rise to national prominence as meteoric, he will be able to define himself as a political plugger compared to Romney. Obama’s political career began in the Illinois State Senate before moving on to the US Senate and then the White House. He has been an elected official since 1997. Obama can reasonably describe himself as having climbed the political ladder, albeit with tremendous speed. Romney’s sole electoral victory was his one term as Massachusetts governor. In just those four years, Romney made many choices he has since disavowed. While I personally believe Romney’s Olympic experience is very impressive, I doubt that he’ll be able to use that time as a proxy for holding office.

 

There will likely be one other interesting area in which Obama can define himself as average and Romney as exceptional: religion. Obama’s Chicago church experience was a problem for him in 2008 but in 2012 it’ll be a big advantage. Jeremiah Wright is old news and the President has so comfortably and consistently invoked God that his religiosity seems safe, normal and generically American. Romney’s Mormonism makes him suspect in the eyes of many and makes him an outsider in the eyes of many more.  I don’t want to link to some of the vicious portrayals of Mormonism in the world of mainstream punditry but it’s very easy to find scary talk about Romney’s church. The ham handed “I’m a Mormon” campaign might have helped had it begun several years ago but in the short term it will likely make Romney (and Jon Huntsman) seem even more suspicious to non-Mormon conservative Christians.

 

In terms of family, work and faith, Obama can claim common cause with ‘the American people’ in ways that Romney simply can’t. It’s a strange world wherein the half-Black guy with the Arabic name can present himself as more authentically American than the White guy who looks like middle age Superman but I think that’s what we will begin to see in the next few months. Perhaps even more strangely, I think it’s gonna work.

 

 

FDO

 

*- I've been asked if any of this applies to the President if Newt Gingrich were the GOP nominee.

2 responses- 1- If Newt's the guy, Obama won't have much to worry about anyway. 2- Yes! Obama's team will paint a picture of the President, First Lady and their two young daughters compared to Newt's 3 marriages, adulterous affairs, Clinton era sexual hypocrisy, the cancer-ridden wife divorce story and late in life conversion to Catholicism. That's a lotta grist for the campaign mill.

 

Combine that with the difference between making lots of money by writing books about your family and making lots of money by using your government contacts to (almost) lobby for corporations and it's game over. 

 

 

 

Driving with Blinders

 

A few days ago I had an interesting reminder of how economically privileged I am. See, I couldn’t quite figure out the gas pump.

 

 

I drive lots of miles and buy gas at least twice a week. What I usually do is simply swipe my credit or debit card, pump my gas and leave.  Well, on this particular Saturday, I wanted to buy a couple extra items inside the store connected to the gas station.  So, I thought to myself, how about I pay for my gas along with the other purchases?

 

 

That was my trouble; I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I pressed the button to pay inside but the machine wanted me to pay inside then come back out and pump the gas. But how would I know how much the gas would cost?

 

 

I wasn’t interested enough to see if there were some other option so I just paid at the pump then went inside and bought the other items separately.

 

 

It was only then that I realized how long it’s been since I’ve had to decide to buy gas based on how much it was going to cost instead of how much I needed for my car.  There’s a big difference between those two thought processes.

 

 

I look for the lowest priced gas and when I find it, I simply fill up the tank. Until I finished grad school I always bought gas based on how much I was able to spend.  Often that $5 or $10 but sometimes it was $3.50 or even $2 on a couple occasions. Now that’s never the way I make decisions about gas. Really, I don’t even think about what I’m doing enough to describe it as decision making.

 

 

Many of the folks I saw in line Saturday had a very specific amount of money to spend on gas and make decisions based on that reality.  I had to have a reminder that there are even those decisions to be made.

 

 

How fortunate am I?

 

 

 

FDO

 

 

Say It Loud!*

*- I've linked to a great article at the bottom of the page. It helpfully amplifies some of what is already here. 

 

 

Occupy Wall Street is an interesting manifestation of a new recognition of increased people power. Part of what excites me most about it is that I believe OWS is just one indication of how (many) things are changing in American life.


Two examples: Last month, Netflix announced that it was shelving the revolutionary new business model they’d been trumpeting. Not because the business model made too little sense but because the backlash against it was so strong. People didn’t care how much sense it made; they balked. Similarly, Bank of America has ended its proposed debit card usage fee. Bank of America could have weathered the storm of negative feedback better than Netflix but it recognized that the brand damage the fee generated was coming to dominate every story about the bank. Had these same changes been instituted five years ago, I’m convinced that the public response would have been a brief gasp of distress followed by a long, boring sigh.

 

Now that sigh does not seem to be enough for us. I don’t want to make any grandiose statements but I do believe that there’s a quickly increasing sense of agency among regular people. While most would probably trace this change to the Arab Spring movements, I think that it goes back a bit further. I am convinced that the 2008 Presidential election was a critical turning point in developing populism for the 21st century. After all, much of the early work of the Arab Spring seemed to take important cues from Barack Obama’s campaign.

 

Most critically, each of these populist movements created a broad enough range of connection points to transform individual interests into a perceived network of shared values.  Social media was widely credited with the successes of both the Obama campaign and Arab Spring. What I believe to be more true is that both movements used social media as a formation tool. Eventually, the networks grew large enough and loud enough to be perceived as an authentic voice of the people and achieved enough momentum to become virtually self-sustaining.

 

As much as they’d hate to acknowledge it, the TEA Party has used much of the same style to launch itself as a viable national brand. Much like Obama, the TEA Party presents itself as the representative of the regular person fighting against ‘The System’. They’ve made good use of some pre-existing networks but have built their own communities too as they continue to work outside the existing infrastructure. Preserving their independence provides them autonomy and credibility with their base.  

 

All these movements have rooted themselves in the belief that individuals and small groups of people can make the behemoths of the world yield power. At least in America, we’d forgotten about the ultimate source of that power. For too long, we’d neglected our own strength. I’m excited to be living in a time when we’re beginning to reclaim our voices and use them.

 

I’m determined to be one of those voices.

 

 

FDO

 

Here’s an intriguing article that addresses some of the issues I wrote about in this post, namely, some of the ways social media is changing the organizational possibilities of broad based movements. The author also suggests some of the ways groups like Wikileaks make information sharing more dangerous.

http://www.capitaljewishforum.org/jeffrey-bleich-from-obama-rsquo08-to-the-arab-spring-ndash-the-political-impact-of-social-media.html

 

Lead Us (to Ill Repute)

 

Today I saw a feature on ESPN’s College Football Live show called the Urban Meyer Leadership Series. I had just turned to ESPN so my initial response was to wait for the punchline… I mean, Urban Meyer? Really, Urban Meyer? This guy has clearly succeeded as a coach and just as clearly failed as a leader. His program has been riddled with arrests. How is it that this guy gets to be perceived as a credible source for leadership? This is part of the pattern of college coaching that saddens me.

 

Jim Tressel is finally forced to resign at Ohio State and Ohio high school coaches decide to honor him by planning to dress like Tressel in their first game.  What example does this set for the athletes and communities of Ohio? Since you won, it doesn’t matter that you lack basic integrity? What other message could there be?

 

Sadly, the situation is probably worse in men’s college basketball. Kelvin Sampson and Jim Calipari left town just ahead of the NCAA posse in multiple locations. Both these guys had programs with major violation stacked on major violation. Distressingly, they continue to fall up, instead of down. Calipari has one of the very best jobs in his profession and Sampson is now the lead assistant for the NBA’s Houston Rockets and is perceived as a likely NBA head coach starting next summer. No penance has to be paid if you get to bowl games or the Sweet Sixteen. Conference championships and rivalry dominance absolve a multitude of sins.

 

Fans of college athletics are so accustomed to this sad situation that today there’s very little outrage about the ways college coaches abuse the system, their universities and their players. Or even the taxpayers who fund their million dollar salaries. It seems that Al Davis bespoke the future of college sports decades ago. Davis’ magic phrase? “Just win, baby.”

 

 

FDO

 

Discovering Rambo

 

“They drew first blood, not me.”  -John Rambo  

 

Tonight I’m watching First Blood for the first time. Even though I grew up in the 80s, I never watched this or any other Rambo flick. Rocky yes, Rambo no. At some point, I’m sure I knew a few things about Rambo but nearly 30 years on, I have no idea what those things were.

 

Rambo is a Vietnam vet who walks to find his last remaining friend. A loooong walk it seems clear. The friend died the previous summer which is news to Rambo. Whoops. What a great way to indicate how disconnected this guy is.

 

David Caruso? Ok. So peculiar to see him here. Especially since he’s so young and innocent in this role. Verrrry Howdy Doody.  

 

The sheriff’s car tumbles down an embankment and flips, landing top down. The sheriff gathers himself then pushes his way out of the door, stumbling out. This is 1982. Had it been 1987, the car would have immediately exploded into a massive fireball.

 

So, Rambo is an innocent until the sheriff gives him unwarranted grief. The belligerence of Rambo combined with the callow brutality of two police officers sparks a frightening combination of chase and escape. Okay. After 20 minutes of exposition, let the fireworks begin!

 

Except that there aren’t fireworks… I thought these were high body count movies but apparently that comes later. Update: He gets a gun then throws it down. He doesn’t keep a gun until the very end of the movie.

 

Early on there is some amazing scenery and stunt work. It’s hard to imagine superstars doing stunts like this. Wow. Cliff dives onto giant trees. Nice.

 

He spares the life of the sheriff who precipitated the whole situation. Rambo~Batman?

 

“Don’t push it or I’ll give you a war you won’t believe. Let it go. Let it go.” 

 

Richard Crenna’s Col. Trautman character is hilarious to me. He’s basically Yoda with a stack of joke books.

 

A rocket launcher!?!  Well, at least the yokels that use it are appropriately impressed by it. Is it sad that I immediately thought about the S-A-M that took down the Rwandan Presidential plane in 1994, sparking the genocide in that country? (Yes. Yes it is.)

 

The unfolding of the tale is thoughtful and well done. We get some nice revelations as the movie proceeds.

 

There’s a second violent car crash. Rambo puts a police car (they’re shooting at him) into a parked car. The parked car explodes but the cops’ doesn’t and they’re presumably fine. He doesn’t kill them. It takes a very deliberate action to set the commandeered Army vehicle on fire.

 

What a weird movie?!? This is really not the ‘shoot em up’ movie I expected. Rambo blows up lots of stuff but not people. The only guy Rambo tries to kill is Sheriff Teasle (the clear villain) and even he gets spared.

 

The soliloquy at the end is incredibly powerful. I can only imagine what it might have been like to watch that as someone who lived through Vietnam. Wow.

 

John Rambo is a compelling character in part because I knew so little about him at the start of the movie. Like everyone watching in the theatre! Smartly done.

 

This is a 90 minute movie. It’s very tightly made. There’s basically nothing extraneous. I can absolutely understand why sequels were made to this. So many possibilities for next steps. Hmm.

 

Although I’m guessing the sequels lose most of the important psychological elements and political subtexts in exchange for massive firepower. Hey, lightning rarely strikes the same movie franchise twice.

 

I’ll have to think about the Batman parallels too. There’s probably a deeper connection between the two than I initially noticed. Good stuff.

 

 

FDO