See, this really isn’t that complicated. If you told me your life story and I responded that you really didn’t understand what you were talking about as well as I did, you would (rightly) think I was an idiot. But for some reason, sportswriters are eager to exhibit exactly this idiocy whenever some black athlete speaks candidly of his life story. Consistent with the claims of dozens of black athletes before him, Donovan McNabb* has said that he has experienced... Read more
It happens every spring. And every summer, fall and winter. Some black athlete accidentally gives an honest and accurate answer to The Question, and then it’s off to the races. The Question in question, which gets asked on an almost daily basis, is some variation of “How is your experience different from that of a white quarterback/coach/hockey player/golfer? Ninety nine times out of 100, the athlete dodges, ignores or jokes away The Question. Every black athlete in America has gotten... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 332-337 When last we saw Buck Williams, he was rushing off to the airport to meet Hattie Durham even though he doesn’t really even remember what she looks like. He remembers that she is “drop dead gorgeous,” but nothing more specific. It’s hard to fault Buck for this fuzzy mental image, since that three-word cliche is nearly all we readers were told about what Hattie looks like. We’ve also been told she is “attractive” and “beautiful,” but... Read more
When I worked in the bookstore, we played this long-running game with book titles. The game, which was shamefully juvenile but endlessly amusing, was simply to add the phrase “in my pants” to the title of any book. (Similar to Demetri Martin’s observation that anything you say sounds sleazy if you just add the word ladies.) Once a year, the chain would conduct an inventory of its stores. The staff from the various locations would gather at each store in... Read more
O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! … Hey, wait, isn’t there a war going on? … O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! … A war that can never end, because ending it would supposedly mean losing or “surrendering” … O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.! O.J.!... Read more
Some of us live in a complex and some of us live in a development. Neither of those words really sounds like home to me. I have enough complexes already, thank you. And “development” always strikes me as a medical euphemism (“I’m afraid there’s been a development in your grandmother’s condition”). Development-living is inexplicably popular. A lot of people don’t seem to mind living in a neighborhood where they’re older than any of the trees or buildings, and where the... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 328-332 Rayford and Chloe arrived in New York just after noon on Wednesday … It’s only eight and a half days after The Event and everything is back to normal. Rayford and Chloe, air traffic and airports, and New York CIty itself. And it’s not a post-traumatic “normal” — people aren’t soldiering on, forcing themselves to rebuild a new normal out of the ashes, unmanageable emotions still roiling just below the surface in a world forever changed,... Read more
Syria has so far accepted (at least) 1.5 million Iraqi refugees. Beginning today, that country is placing limits on the number and type of future refugees it will accept. As CBS News reports: With the massive influx of refugees, Syria is starting to feel the strain. “There’s a huge impact for a country of 20 million people to receive a million and half within a few months. There is a huge burden on our services: medical, school, infrastructure — everything,”... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 326-328 Buck Williams and Steve Plank have been watching the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11 on CNN. They don’t wear sackcloth and they don’t shoot fire out of their mouths, but two guys who tried to kill them tripped, fell over and died, then one of them claimed to be the Messiah before they both settled back into chanting that Jesus was the Messiah. CNN’s Dan Bennett, bored already with the chanting, signs off, promising to record... Read more
If you call your dad he could stop it all … (The idea here, generally, is an alphabetical list of songs from my iTunes collection. Feel free to compare and contrast with your own list from the same alphabetical range and to let me know, in comments, what’s missing. The list below, for example, does not include “Complicated,” by Avril Lavigne. You might point out this omission, suggesting that my utter lack of anything by Ms. Lavigne represents a serious... Read more
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