Blog
VIEW ALL TEDDYVEGAS' BLOG ENTRIES
AUTUMNAL PIC OF THE DAY:
POLITICAL COMMENT OF THE DAY:
Just when Kerry seemed to be hitting his stride as a re-invented "I won't be swift boated again" candidate, just when he seems to be "bravely" riding the wave of national anti-Bush momentum, just when he decides, after years of hemming and hawing, to go in for the kill, he makes a bonehead rhetorical move and gives the Bushies a political opening. The comment, in question: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." Bush jumped on it as a shameless criticsim of the troops. Kerry claimed, at first indignantly, that it was a botched joke...and he was referring to the mendacious, hack cowards in the administration. He said, he would not apologize.
Then, of course, this morning, he apologized.
He won't be swift boated again, but he will be flip flopping again.
In truth, he only apologized in a carefully limited, conditional, partial manner --apologizing for the bad joke and not for the intended message. "I said it was a botched joke. Of course, I'm sorry about a botched joke."
But still.
Oy. And just when I thought he might be shaping up as the most formidable 2008 candidate out there.
It's amazing he survived in Vietnam--without stepping on any mines in the minefields.
OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:
A man as wooden and as clumsily cautious (even in the mode of righteous attack) as Kerry, should not be telling jokes. Humor with Kerry is a faith based initiative. You have to take it on faith that he is trying to be funny--cause there's no verifiable evidence that he is. Here's what I want to say to him: "Senator Kerry, put that joke-like utterance down and slowly step away." Oy. He simply doesn't have the sensibility (or, frankly, the subtle intelligence) to gage the boundary where humor ends and unvarnished, unfunny hostility begins. Damn. And just when I thought nothing could stop the Democratic surge in momentum!
INVITATION OF THE DAY:
Please reserve this Saturday at 7:30 PM to celebrate my birthday. That will still give you time later in the evening to actually enjoy yourself.
Best regards,
L.
REALIZATION OF THE DAY:
In this era, being famously humiliated is considered less shameful than maintaining your dignity in obscurity.
CAUTIONARY TALE OF THE DAY: aka The Dennis Koslowski story
One minute you can be fete-ing your beloved young trophy wife with a $30 million dollar birthday party on a private Island in the Caribbean and the next you're staggering to your prison visitation window--still sore from last night's uninvited intrusions-to hear the erstwhile object of your amorous expenditures telling you she's retained legal counsel for a divorce and that she intends to take most of your remaining money. Keep this story in mind the next time you're throwing a multi-million dollar party for your trophy spouse or the next time you consider straying from the path of proper conduct--whichever comes first.
REVIEW OF THE DAY:
People have been asking me for ages to check out one of the films outlining the case that the World Trade Towers weren't knocked down by planes, but rather by a well-planned and sinisterly executed demolition. Anyhow, after much categorical a priori rejection of the hypothesis, I relented and agreed to see the evidence. I watched a film--available online at the link listed below--and here was my response, as written to one of the people who'd encouraged me to watch it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMWn-bQYfSc
"Checked it out. First off, full disclosure: I'm really anti-conspiratorial by nature. I just don't believe in grand diabolical conspiracies for 2 main reasons. 1) I have a very low opinion of human competence. 2) I have a very low opinion of human reticence...which is to say of the human ability not to blabber. So I come to this kind of a presentation with A LOT of skepticism. That said, I did find some of the physical evidence intriguing--particularly the apparent sonic booms below the buildings that preceded the collapse from above--and the associated smoke appearing at the base of the builidngs before they fell. The skeptic in me suspects that there are perfectly rational alternative explanations for these acoustic and visual phenomena, but I have to admit to finding this presentation more interesting that I thought I would. For me, the biggest problem with the whole idea however is the question of motive. I simply cannot believe that someone would wire the building for demolition in anticipation of some terrorist attack...and then have the cold bloodedness to detonate it after the planes struck... (knowingly condemning hundreds or even thousands of people to death...who might otherwise have been rescued.) I also ask myself, if the motive was purely financial, why wouldn't they just detonate the buildings on a weekend when no one was in them and blame the attack on al qaeda? I also ask myself: If the motive was purely financial, why did they even need to detonate them after the planes struck? After all: The buildings were sufficiently damaged that they'd have to be taken down anyhow and rebuilt anyhow--allowing the developers to reap the windfall of their recently re-doubled anti-terrorist insurance policy. I also ask myself: Why in the world did they use that simperingly grating Mia Farrow-esque voiceover??? It made me want to detonate a bulding myself!"
In any event, while I have a general aversion to dismissably conspiratorial luncacy that undermines the credibility of the more legitimate, fact-based critics of the administration (and, if I were conspiratorially inclined, would suggest that these conspiracy theorists are sponsored by Karl Rove for precisely this reason), I suppose I encourage you to watch the video to be apprised of what is being contested about the offical explanation (or, as the documentary authors smugly assert "the official myth") of the 9/11 attacks and on what basis it is being constested. The only caveat I would offer is this: Be warned that it contains repeated (and repeated and repeated and repeated...like Jamal Crawford's buzzer-beating rim-clangers) exposure to footage of the collapsing towers--a repetition which threatens to anaesthetize the viewer to the horror of the event.
CONSPIRACY THEORY OF THE DAY: (If I were inclined towards that sort of a thing):
Comedian Kerry is on Rove's payroll. Or at least the ole stone face cyborg clone that's been programmed for impeccably bad "comedic" timing.
AMUSINGLY SHAMELESS ACT OF THE DAY:
In order to try to capitalize on the political opening provided by John Kerry's willfully misinterpreted "botched joke", the White House sent out its official Veteran's Day statement in praise of the troops--two weeks ahead of Veteran's Day!!
QUESTION OF THE DAY:
Where in the word did this "Yo Yo Yo" salutation come from? I have been accosted in this manner about 5 times in the last few days from disparate sources and in both written and spoken form. It is spreading in the way the Avian flu threatened to but, fortunately, never did.
MYSTERY/DESCRIPTION OF THE DAY:
On Route 78S: Dead deer along the roadside at regular intervals like mile markers.
PHENOMENON IN NEED OF A NAME OF THE DAY:
Waving at someone and realizing, mid-wave, that they’re not who you think they are…then trying to play off the wave as some other kind of a gesture by repeating it...like it's some kind of strange arm stretch.
CONFESSION OF THE DAY:
I am underwhelmed by the response to my "Phenomenon in Need of a Name of the Day" challenges and am contemplating picking up my conceptual jacks and taking them to play elsewhere.
EPIPHANY OF THE DAY:
Unlikeliness should not be the main thing going for a relationship.
E-MAIL EXCHANGE OF THE DAY:
-To lose to St. Louis in the World Series of baseball was unfortunate. But to be beaten out by St. Louis in the world series of crime is simply shameful. What has happened to your great city?!?!? Get out there and swipe some Huggies or get arrested for public urination or something to help pad the stats!
-It IS shamefull. I know we can do better. Someday we will again proudly fly the murder capital pennant over the fair gray skies of Detroit. ps. does jaywalking count?
ANOTHER QUOTE OF THE DAY:
"I object to thousands of innocent people being murdered in the name of keeping me alive which in the end increases the chances of me being killed." -Something I saw photo-copied without attribution and left on the common table in the office kitchen.
HALLOWEEN COSTUME OF THE DAY:
A regular black T-shirt with the words. "This is my fucking Halloween costume."
DANGLING PHRASE OF THE DAY:
Another Jewish marriage saved by German automotive engineering.
QUESTION OF THE DAY:
Are the Germans making reparations to the Jews through their Audis, Mercedes and BMWs? I mean seriously, how often do you see an upper middle class (professional class) Jew in the suburbs without a BMW or mercedes? And how often do you see one who is not kvelling over it? "Yes, the Germans, they killed my grandparents...but they make a wonderful sedan."
MORE QUOTES OF THE DAY:
a)
"Hezbollah is very organized. But you just have to follow their 2 rules. No photos of Hezbollah members and no photos of missiles in suburban neighborhood."
-Dutch photo journalist Tuen Voeten as told to my friend Harris Silver--just after returning from Lebanon.
b)
"I'm sick and tired of a bunch of despicable Republicans who will not debate real policy, who won't take responsibility for their own mistakes, standing up and trying to make other people the butt of those mistakes," he said. "It disgusts me that a bunch of these Republican hacks who've never worn the uniform of our country are willing to lie about those who did."
-John Kerry, in a righteous moment, before the faith-based joke and the joke-based flip-flop.
SPORTS-BASED SELF-ESTEEM RORSCHACH TEST OF THE DAY:
One of the guys in my hallowed Wednesday night basketball game (the Commish, in fact... fine, young fellow), posed a couple of interesting post-game questions. The first" "What do you think your career winning percentage is...of all the games--formal, informal, H-O-R-S-E, 21 etc.-- you've ever been involved in?" The second: "What percentage of all the shots you've ever taken--in games, in practice, from the field, from the foul line etc.--have gone in?" Obviously, in the absence of any official evidence (and, no, sadly--ego wound of ego wounds-- my career has not been so carefully and objectively chronicled!), one must rely on an internal estimate of these percentages and, arguably this estimate is a compelling indicator of one's level of self-esteem (or, of course, self-deception). Anyhow, I thought they were interesting questions. My instinctive response was to say that I'd won about 55% of the games I've ever been involved in. And made about 40% of the shots. But who knows. It would be fascinating to have some way of gaging the reliability of such an estimate. Perhaps one day Google will reveal that (in the spirit of Google Maps) their ubiquitous agents have been video-taping all of our athletic endeavors all along and we can access these archived video documents for objective confirmation. How cool (or humblingly horrible) would that be?!?!? Show me the man who estimates his lifetime winning percentage as under 50% and I will show you a man with either very low self-esteem or remarkable candor. Or, of course, both. I have always been fascinated by how some guys leave the Wednesday night game tormented by the few bad plays they made among many excellent ones while other guys who may not have played as well put themselves to sleep at night with a kinesthetic/visual lullaby of their personal highlights. There are perfectionists and there are imperfectionists. There are the self-punishing and the self-gratifying. And there's room for all of them in the glorious game.
TEDDY VEGAS SELF-ESTEEM MOMENT OF THE DAY:
Having run not one but two suicide sprints after basketball last night--and going through the day with the exquisitely agonizing muscular reminder of said exertion.
KNICKS OPENING NIGHT IMPRESSIONS:
To root for the Knicks or against them? I like, many Knicks fans I know, was vacillating throughout the game--waveriing as wildly as a moderate midwesterner in the middle of a political attack ad blitz. I was sort of rooting for the them to blow it, once they collapsed in the 4th and were threatening to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But then I was reminded of how much I love David Lee and decided to root for them to win. Actually, I was really just rooting for the game to go to as many overtimes as possible so that my fantasy guy (fantasy league roster player, not object of amorous interest) Jamal Crawford could continue his Starksian display of consummate innaccuracy. Actually, his three failed attempts to win it at 3 consecutive buzzers (end of regulation, 1st OT, 2nd OT) reminded me of nothing so much as a time-expanded replay of Charles Smith's famous futlilty at the buzzer against Chicago. Oh, well, it did remind me of one thing as much as that: "Groundhog's Day." Wait, Crawford is going one and one and attempting to heave up a winner at the buzzer again? Again? Again? Anyhow, love the guy and was happy that he got some redemption in the form of a critical steal towards the end of the 3rd OT and it all ended as happily for him as it did for Bill Murray in the movie.
Stevie Franchise made Crawford's shooting look Ray Allen-esque. A basketball friend reminded me while we were watching of my comment when the KNcks acquired Stevie Francis. Ahh, now we have Stevie Franchise and Stephon DisenFranchise. I
David Lee really is, arguably, l the best all around player on the team. Incredible all around athleticism, effort and court awareness. And I'm not just saying it cause he's white. :) Again, have to give the villainous Isaiah credit for an amazing draft in 2005.
Eddie Curry should be the name of a dish on E. 6th Street in NYC.
Q-Rich looked great.
And speaking of looks: What's with Mike Miller's hair do? It looks like he's going for a Scarlett Johanson kind of a thing. But in fact, he looks a lot more like Charlize Theron playing Eileen Wournos in Monster.
But hey, looking like Charlize Theron in any role isn't so bad. Even if you are a man.
KNICKS WHO LIKED THE NEW NBA BALL:
Q-Rich 10-13
Nate Robinson 5-7
Eddie Curry 8-13
David Lee 5-9.
KNICKS WHO DID NOT LIKE THE NEW NBA BALL:
Jamal Crawford 4-22 (!)
Channning Frye 2-10
Stevie Francis 0-6.
KNICKS WHO NEVER TOUCHED THE NEW NBA BALL:
Kelvin Cato
Mardy Collins
(Maybe it had something to do with their first names. Although Channing doesn't exactly have NBA virility written all over it either. )
IRAQ GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY:
There were no reports of any public figure calling anyone "Macaca."
Tags:
None
© All rights reserved.
Posted on 11/2/2006
(
Permanent Link
)
Read 489 Times
 Send to Friend
|
 |
|
Comments (0 total)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|