A handful of great moments from NBC’s Olympics announcers:
“Oh, the air came out of the balloon and with those mighty lungs from America’s Midwest, Paul Hamm filled it up and gave himself belief that this was possible, and it was. And it is.”— Al Trautwig, on Paul Hamm’s comeback in the gymnastics all-around.
“Despite the beauty of the marathon, some unfortunate continuing squalor elsewhere.”— Jim Lampley juxtaposes the sublime with the nefarious, commenting on Olympic doping cases.“For them, the Olympics have been an up and down rollercoaster ride.”— Ted Robinson, on the up and down rollercoaster that is men’s beach volleyball.“This is one of those overwhelming moments of sheer participation.”— Marathon commentator as last of women runners neared the finish line.
“The Japanese men will climb to the podium and hear the national anthem of their nation.”— Trautwig on which national anthem is the national anthem of Japan.
“It almost defies believability to think that when Blaine Wilson crashed to the mat at Madison Square Garden in New York in late February with a torn bicep that he would be in this position for his team in these Olympics.”— Trautwig defies logic to underline a gymnast’s drama.
Get Thee Behind Me, Wal-Mart
A good long story in The New York Times Magazine today (registration required, etc., and it goes into archives in a week, so read it free while you can) on Rev. Billy Talen and his Church of Stop Shopping:
“In the Church of Stop Shopping we believe that buying is not nearly as interesting as not-buying. When you back away from the purchase, the product may look up at you with wanton eyes but the product dies quickly back onto the shelf and sits there, trying to get a life. The product needs you worse than you need it, remember that.”
The guy’s a righteous pain in the ass (here’s the S.F. Chronicle’s version of his story), which I mean as a compliment. It is odd to read about him though, in the midst of all the mag’s Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Armani, and other fashion and financial services porn.
(Disclosure: I am one of the fallen: I actively seek out Starbucks for solace whenever I’m outside the realm of Peet’s.)
The Kook Bandwagon
Pigeon Welfare Notes
In the Chronicle today:
Probe at plant finds no proof of pigeon abuse:
An internal investigation at Contra Costa’s largest sewage treatment plant found no evidence to support a whistle-blower’s allegation that employees killed pigeons by driving nails through the birds’ chests, officials said Thursday.
I don’t know. The sewage plant. The whistleblower. The nails. The investigation. What more could you want in a news story? News, maybe, I guess.
Carnage ‘in Poor Taste”
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has decided that an ad that adds up the cost of the Iraq war in coldly quantitative terms — number of killed, number of orphans created, quarts of blood shed, and on and on — is in poor taste and not fit for its apparently easily upset readers. Well, the ad is confrontational and disturbing. But more disturbing is the apparent need of major media to filter views of the conflict that get to the horrible essence of the violence unleashed there.
By way of Austin Mayor.
Historic Find
I have a front section of the Wall Street Journal that I’ve been hanging onto for a long time because I took notes on something in the margins and I thought that someday I’d be getting back to whatever it was I’d been writing. So today I had a burst of initiative and picked up the paper to transcribe these important jottings, if I could figure out what they were.
The section’s dated August 31, 2001, and I remember reading one story on the front page, about Wal-Mart’s success in Mexico. So I’ve had this thing sitting around for three years.
Trying to decipher the notes scrawled in the margins, I had no recollection what they were about at first. Some quasi-poetic musings mentioning Mount Tamalpais. Something like a prayer, too. Then a key phrase: “Over Oregon.” OK, so I was flying somewhere, looking out the window and indulging my penchant for scribbling notes on the landscape. But where was I flying? North someplace, Seattle or Portland. Haven’t been to Portland since when, January 2000. Seattle then. Maybe. Then I remembered a trip I took up to TechTV’s Seattle bureau, in a building across from the Space Needle. Yep, that was at the end of August. Flew on Southwest from Oakland, bumped into a Berkeley acquaintance who was on his way to Spokane, and I flew back the same day. What I wrote sounds like it comes from the trip north.
So what, exactly, did I scrawl? It’s quasi-poetic, remember? Maybe some other time.
More Bouquets for the Liberators
Our semi-elected president, bless his heart, has released a campaign ad that pats us all on the back for ridding Iraq and Afghanistan of their resident evildoers and making it possible for both nations to send teams to Iraq. Well, the surprisingly successul Iraqi soccer team’s got a message for Mr. Flight Suit: Take your ad and shove it. As reported it by Sports Illustrated online:
[Midfielder Salih] Sadir had a message for U.S. president George W. Bush, who is using the Iraqi Olympic team in his latest re-election campaign advertisements.
In those spots, the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan appear as a narrator says, “At this Olympics there will be two more free nations — and two fewer terrorist regimes.”
“Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign,” Sadir told SI.com through a translator, speaking calmly and directly. “He can find another way to advertise himself.”
Ahmed Manajid, who played as a midfielder on Wednesday, had an even stronger response when asked about Bush’s TV advertisement. “How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?” Manajid told me. “He has committed so many crimes.”
Iraq: blue state or red state?
Meanwhile, in Nebraska
Retiring Rep. Doug Bereuter, a Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, comes out with a stunner: A letter to constituents announcing he now believes the war in Iraq was unjustified and he wouldn’t vote again to support the war.
From the Lincoln Journal Star:
Bereuter pointed to a list of negative consequences arising from the war.
“The cost in casualties is already large and growing,” he said, “and the immediate and long-term financial costs are incredible.
“From the beginning of the conflict, it was doubtful that we for long would be seen as liberators, but instead increasingly as an occupying force.
“Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess, and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region and, in general, in the Muslim world.”
This guy’s showing a lot more guts on the issue than Mr. Vietnam Valor Guy, John Kerry. Meantime, GOP damage control kicks in: Fellow House Republicans are saying Bereuter’s just getting even for not getting better committee assignments.
Getting Keyes
I admit I failed in my civic duty earlier in Alan Keyes’s career and never paid attention to who he was or what he was saying when he ran for the Republican presidential nomination. But now that I am reading about what he says and does, I think I finally get where he’s coming from: He’s nuts. The latest exhibit: His unhinged revelation, explicated Tuesday on CNN’s “Crossfire,” that the September 11th terrorist attacks were God’s way of telling us we’d better end abortion.
A couple of blogs are wholly or mostly devoted right now to chasing Keyes and keeping track of his latest certifiable utterances. I commend to your attention:
Good stuff. Funny stuff. Which makes me wonder whether Keyes’s master plan is something everybody has missed: To put The Onion out of business by disintermediating absurdity.
Oh-oh
My LiveStrong bracelet broke. I guess it couldn’t stand the strain of me putting it on and taking it off my meaty wrists every day. Of course, from here I could go off the deep end interpreting this as some kind of omen. Such as: Perhaps I won’t win the Tour de France someday as I had hoped.