OVER THE LINE!

This morning i learned, the hard way, that the weekday price of the post is now 50¢, up from 25¢.

houston, we have a problem.

see, i just realized that the post was worth 33¢ to me every morning.

because at a quarter i felt it was a bargain; at a half dollar, i feel like im being robbed. a quarter, along with page six and tabloid-style local news, more than justified the paper's horribly right-wing bent and generally shoddy and low-brow journalism.

and it's fun to be able to buy something for a single coin--that was part of it all. (although, i suppose i could stock up on half dollars.) (not.)

so, in the final analysis, goodbye new york post. it's like king jaffe joffer says in coming to america, after the queen tells the story of having felt sick at the prospect of her arranged marriage with the king, then coming to grow to love him.

There is a very fine line between love and nausea.

good for her.

this morning, mike & the mad dog called my attention to this story. ironically, id say it takes balls to write a column like that. (could not resist)

1,300,860,000 minutes.

How do you measure 2,475 years?

apropos of my post about the duke scandal and how innocent people are routinely punished by the judicial system in this country, rsj just brought my attention to the story of a chicago man who was just exonerated, via dna, after spending twenty years in prison for a rape he did not commit. he's the 200th person in the u.s. to be exonerated by dna.

from the cnn.com article: The first exonerations based on DNA testing were in 1989, and in all, the 200 defendants served about 2,475 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit, according to the group's Web site [The Innocence Project].

why is it that the older i get, the more frightening this country becomes?

meanwhile, i can resist saying this: cant we de-exonerate o.j. with dna?

tooth in advertising.

I love ads for products that have such substantial brand recognition that the ads themselves have been allowed to have little to do with the product itself (trust me, that makes sense). needless to say, they are more creative and compelling that your average ad. to me, geico is the preeminent leader in this field, what with the brilliant tiny house, and the transcendent caveman series (see the crowning caveman achievement here).
(thanks be to slack for originally turning me on to that last link.)

but before i fell for geico, my favorite ads were actually radio spots -- bud light's real men of genius series, replete with the movie preview voiceman and a steve perry impersonator/parodier (imparodonator?). (unbeknownst to me for a long time, at least some of these are also television ads, but i think they work better on the radio.)

anyway, there is a site where you can hear countless real men of genius ads. two of my faves: mr. paranoid of the ocean guy (even the title is lol) and mr. dishonest cable tv hooker upper.
(thanks be to a reader of the sports guy for this site.)

open your eyes.

This past sunday, i was talking with rsj (visit his erstwhile blog here) about the duke lacrosse scandal, and how horrible it was that these three dudes were subjected to over a year of anguish for a crime they didnt commit, when rsj said something illuminating. it was something to the effect of: 'please. that type of thing happens to black people all the time, and no one gives a @#$%. one year of persecution? hell, it's been proven that this country has executed innocent people before. one year is small potatoes.'

having been put in my place, as it were, i replied honestly: 'well, i guess im more affected by the duke thing b/c i can relate to it more. it's something that could as easily have happened to me.'

and that's true, but what rsj said is also true and in this case more significant, in that it opened my eyes to something i wouldnt (necessarily) have thought about. unless i want to be a hypocrite, i cant be exasperated by the duke events without trying to fully appreciate how such events are not extraordinary for minorities.

and in turn, i cant help but think about the va-tech massacre in much the same way.

i dont want/mean to belittle how tragic this week's shooting was, but at the same time, id be remiss not to illuminate some cold hard facts about the iraq war, in the context of va-tech:

32 innocents were killed at va-tech on monday; there have been periods during the iraq war in which over 100 innocents per day have perished.

32 innocents died at va-tech on monday; around 60,000 innocents have been killed in iraq since our invasion.

26 kids were killed at va-tech on monday for no reason; over 3,000 american kids have been killed fighting a war that has been all but proven to have no reason behind it.

it's like d told me in an email this morning:

the top headlines on my yahoomail this morning were (In this order) 1.the bomb threat at v tech and 2. the four bombs that killed 115 people in baghdad.

people should be at least JUST AS AGHAST at what's going on/has happened in iraq as they are at what's transpired at va-tech.

end of story.

papa, dont preach.

Check this out.

because i cant not...

Weigh in on the imus chozerai.

first of all, in today's times, harvey fierstein, in a great op-ed about the totality of of this country's prejudice, makes a great (im pressed for adjectives) pt for which i can actually reference an earlier post of mine (YES!); namely, "if a Pentagon general [peter pace], his salary paid with my tax dollars, can label homosexual acts as 'immoral' without a call for his dismissal, who are the moral high and mighty kidding?"

indeed, as a country, proven by the imus ordeal, we have displayed a disturbing penchant for misprioritizing who we call out and who we dont. for most intents and purposes (btw, i think that's how that expression should be worded, with 'most' instead of 'all,' because 'most' is usually more accurate), imus is a pion compared to the highest ranking official in the military, whose salary, like fierstein says, is paid for by everyone's taxes. fierstein, a gay man, has to foot pace's bill by law. no one is forced to chip in for imus.

along those lines of misprioritization, jason whitlock -- a black man who's one of my favorite sportswriters and is an always good go-to for insights on race and culture -- makes excellent (if not original) pts in his imus column (im actually just copying most of the piece, since i think it's the most articulate, smartly-written one ive read on the subject so far--maybe cuz i agree with it, but so what? it's my blog!):

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.

I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.

...Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.

...I’m no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.

But, in my view, he didn’t do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should’ve been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it’s only the beginning. It’s an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.

I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.

Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.

But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.

In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?

I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.

i couldnt agree more.

here's my bottom line: im not saying imus should not have been canned. he's a hateable SOB who seemed to regard having a morning radio show as a right, not a privilege, and he's legitimately crossed the line too many times for anyone to wholeheartedly defend him as an individual who should be allowed to keep his job.

but the firestorm that has erupted over this? when there are so many other race issues of much more significance--many of which fed imus? it's INSANE. it's misplaced. it's disingenuous.

if this incident becomes a launching pad for real race discussions and in turn, more mutual understanding and tolerance, then the firestorm will have been worth it.

if not, it will only serve to burn away the sanctimonious facade of our society, revealing a hypocritical core.

or, as fierstein deftly puts it: America, I tell you that it doesn’t matter how many times you brush your teeth. If your insides are rotting your breath will stink.

btw, obv i cant resist: look to the cookie.

word 1 & wikichain 1.

Retronym, which i discovered in the wikipedia entry for the retronym real tennis, which i discovered in the entry for henry viii, whom i was looking up b/c last night i talked myself into watching a bit of showtime's hammy miniseries (hamiseries?) the tudors.

texting that works. period.

Lina brought us email that works.

now, jph brings us texting that works:

when you want to text someone to find out where they are, what they're doing, and/or what their immediate plans are - surely the most common text we all send - just send them a single period (.).

it's terribly efficient. even makes the heretofore concise 'whatup' seem long-winded.

if you want to text someone to ask them if they know where to get good thai food in a given locale, send them a percent sign followed by the area's zip code (% 11205). that's my contribution.

older women are the hottest.

notable april 6 birthdays:
the master.
the discoverer.
the director.
the face.
the separated at birth?
the artiste.

news.

Bene was named one of mr. magazine's top 30 launches of 2006!

in other news:

there are some stories that are tailor-made for the new york tabs. this morning when i went into my local bodega to pick up the post, the daily news's lead headline, positioned next to a photo of keith richards, caught my eye: I SNORTED MY DAD. i didnt need to examine further to know that keith must have ground up his dad's ashes with some blow and snorted them, and i quickly decided that the news's simple, tell-it-like-it-is headline was the best way to capture the story.

i should have known better than to count out the post.

glancing below the news's rack, i saw what was actually the perfect treatment of this story: FATHER NOSE BEST.

i mean, that's pure gold.

the post's front page teaser is also perfection: It's enough to make an old man cry. Rolling Stones rocker Keith Richards admits he got satisfaction out of combining his dead dad's ashes with cocaine and snorting the mix.

the references are practically joycean.

my favorite quote from the piece: "He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. It went pretty well, and I'm still alive."

i like how keith says grinding him up, rather than grinding his ashes up. anthropomorphizing the dad like that makes the whole thing that much funnier.

god grudge monday.

Last night, at a seder chez mama, while reading the haggadah, i couldnt help but feel desencantada with the whole passover plotta. (desencantada loosely, if not firmly, translates to disenchanted, although it's possible i should have used desencantado, depending - i think - on whether passover is a masculine or feminine noun. then again, the masculine wouldnt have rhymed, so eff that!).

anyhoo, as you may or may not know: Passover commemorates the Exodus and freedom of the Israelites from ancient Egypt. As described in the Book of Exodus, Passover marks the "birth" of the Children of Israel who become the Jewish nation, as the Jews' ancestors were freed from being slaves of Pharaoh and allowed simply to become followers of God instead. (from wikipedia)

i dont want to come across as trite, but dredging up this tale of jews vs. arabs, age-old though it may be, just doesnt sit well with me at this time.

do we really need to give young jewish kids another reason to feel contentious towards a group of arabs? talking about ancient populations like the corinthians and the assyrians is one thing; they dont exist anymore, at least not with those labels. but you can look at a map of the world and find egypt quite easily. and it's way too close to countries like iraq and syria for me to feel totally great about reminding myself that the egyptians used to enslave us.

i mean, whenever the haggadah mentioned how bad pharaoh was to us, i kept thinking, 'enough already. have you seen the state that egypt's in today? people there dont have a pot to piss in, or the proverbial window to throw it out of. we won. it's over. in today's cairo, pharaoh's decendants are standing outside mcdonald's, hocking miniature polyurethane replicas of the sphinx to american tourists just so they can earn enough dough to feed their kids stale scraps of pita at night.'

but we're telling little david and sarah that this country was the primary source for our millennia of misery? the seder is specifically geared towards teaching young children about passover, and i dont take it for granted that most little kids are gonna be able to differentiate between 'egypt was the source of our misery,' and 'egypt is the source of our misery.' not with things the way they are today in the middle east.

now, you might be reading this and thinking 'by your logic, blacks should never teach their children that they were ever slaves; women should never acknowledge that there was a time when they couldnt vote, etc etc. by your logic, we should all indiscriminately let historical bygones be bygones.'

not quite.

the thing that irks me about the passover teachings is the very fact that it's a holiday (read: holy day). as jews, we are led to believe that god was complicit in the entire passover saga; that he was controlling it every step of the way (he gave egypt the plagues, he helped moses lead the jews into the dessert, etc etc).

i believe tying god into the story gives it a timeless quality that grants tacit license to those who want to keep hating on arabs. god is forever, so wouldn't his consternation with the egyptians be forever? if little sarah thinks arabs are evil, well, why shouldnt she? last night we were kinda celebrating that very fact.

see, as an example, blacks dont celebrate martin luther king jr.'s birthday as a holy day. they, and we, remember the birthday b/c it symbolizes a great man, who fought the good fight against many flawed men. and now he's dead, as are most of the men he fought against, and we can say that as the human race, we've moved forward, bettered ourselves since then (at least to some degree).

but if blacks specifically told their children that god gave them civil rights, and that he did so b/c they were the "chosen ones," wouldn't that just give more fuel to racial tensions than there already is? it's always inflammatory to say god's on your side.

it's fine to say god is with you. no doubt a large percentage of african slaves, and civil rights leaders, and women looking for suffrage believed god supported them. but in those cases, it's more like god was helping one side, rather than effing with the other. it's a nuanced difference, but to me it means a great deal.

to me, by teaching jewish children that god was not only with us, but against the egyptians, we're just recycling that age-old hatred.

passover should be about acknowledging our painful past, and celebrating our freedom. it should not be about differentiating between who god was down with, and who he smote.

honestly, somewhere in there, the haggadah should acknowledge that the average jew reading it is prolly about ten times more well off than the average egyptian is right now. to not do so is kind of negligent.

ps - yes, much of this is specious reasoning, but i think ive got something here.