I find watching amateur sports on TV kind of amusing. In the past month or two, Hippo and I have braved incredibly boring commentary and awful team names as we watched the girls' college softball championships and the UCA high school cheerleading competitions on ESPN2. All the cheerleading teams had names with either "super" or "elite" in the title, and they were all based in obscure areas of Pennsylvia, New York, Florida and Kentucky. You know, if everyone is super than no one is not super. Sounds like American logic to me. I thought of this when I came home to find a link to this amazing, coordinated dance by Samsung-sponsored dancers in my inbox, which puts all those high schoolers to super shame. Gizmodo suggests that Americans aren't capable of this level of cooperation. Probably not!
Sunday, July 8, 2007
cheerleading, dance, america
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
america wins
From the article:
Not since Joe Frazier defeated Muhammed Ali in the 1971 bout coined the "Fight of the Century" have two contestants battled so hard. Perhaps.
At one point, Kobayashi expelled some of his half-mashed hot dogs from his mouth; those did not count in his total.
(full article)
happy fourth of july
A September 1991 coup in Haiti led thousands of Haitians to flee to the United States as refugees, braving horrible conditions in overcrowded ships often rife with disease to escape deteriorating conditions in their home country. The United States, under Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton, turned them away. The refugees were turned away, sent to other countries, or held in crowded camps in Guantanamo Bay.
Civil rights lawyer Hongju Koh took on the United States Department of Justice all the way up to the Supreme Court level on the behalf of these Haitians. The ending words of a speech of his at a dinner held by the Asian Law Conference of San Francisco in his honor:
"As I prepared for the oral argument, I realized that this is a case about We and They. And that the reason the government has been so successful so far is because they've been able to convince all of us that the Haitians are they, not us. Because after all, if the Haitians, those sick people on Guantanamo... are somebody else, then they are not our problem, and after all, don't we have enough problems?
If you've ever been a refugee, or if your parents have ever been refugees, then you're a Haitian. If you've ever been in an internment camp or know anyone who's ever been in an internment camp, then you're a Haitian. If you've ever been discriminated against or know someone who has been discriminated against because they have HIV, then you're a Haitian. If you've ever believed for a second that what it says on the Statue of Liberty is not just words, but as my father said, a sacred promise, then you're a Haitian. If you've ever believed that this is a nation of laws, and not individuals, then you're a Haitian."
--as reported in Yellow, by Frank Wu.
The Yale alumni magazine has a fascinating article about this case, by Brandt Goldstein. Goldstein also wrote this book about the process.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
women and cities
Suffragist Parade in Honeoye Falls, New York. Village of Honeoye Falls Collection, via http://www.winningthevote.org
I've been thinking about women and cities since your last post, Gator. I've been Googling around, trying to figure out the relationship between the urbanity and the enfranchisement of women.
Most of what I've come up with is some awesome pictures. This is Ontario County suffragist Anne Fitzhugh Miller, from the same website as above.
I'm not going to take on this blather about women being good at hugs and men at smashing things, but I do think cities do enable people who have been excluded from political and business life to participate in social and cultural life. After one of my drunken book-buying expeditions, I ended up with the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), who wrote poems and essays, argued furiously with Pope, invested in the South Sea Company, and fought to begin a campaign of public inoculation.
A book I was reading recently argues that restrictions on education for women left anti-misogynist writers having to start from scratch in their writing, rather than building on the ideas of their forebears. Being part of an urban community resolves part of that..
driving me backwards
PETER: This might be a very male point of view, but I have the idea that, even though friendship is often defined as a leisure activity, it’s really about alliance — people who believe in the same things and therefore want to talk to each other.I don't know about gender "make up," but in terms of how men and women sometimes behave, er, hm okay? What to do about these gender generalizations? He might be on to something. It's interesting. Eno is a brilliant musician, producer and visual artist. His newest project, which I learned about via Very Short List, is a DVD called 77 Million Paintings. It turns your computer screen into a slowly-transforming art work of hand-painted images, which are accompanied by a dreamy soundscape. I'm excited about this. Reminds me of Brakhage bits, minus the possibility of epileptic shock.
BRIAN: I think that’s a very good definition. But it actually seems like quite a female idea of friendship.
PETER: How so?
BRIAN: When I watch my two little girls play, the thing that interests me about their games is the very laborious sets of relationships they’ll construct between the characters. You know, “You’re the auntie, but the mother doesn’t like you because you did this.” It’s terribly complicated, and there’s never any game at the end of it. The building of the network of relationships is just about all that ever happens.
PETER: That’s said to be a skill that’s prominent in women.
BRIAN: Yes. It led me to my theory that cities are places built for women.
PETER: Wow.
BRIAN: In cities, you have the opportunity to do all the things that women are really specialized at: intense social relationships and interactions, attention to lots of simultaneous details. And of course in cities you can do very few of the things that men are good at.
PETER: Like what?
BRIAN: You can’t break anything in a city. Everything is valuable, so you’re limited in how much you can test the physical nature of things — which I think is a big part of a man’s make up.
PETER: Many urbanists say that public life in the eighteenth century — which is when the modern city began to take shape — was available only to men. Do you think a female city was always there under the surface?
BRIAN: I do. One of the peaks of civilization in the west was the salon. They were nearly always the invention and ongoing project of women.
--Brian Eno with Peter Halley, Index Magazine, 2002
Monday, July 2, 2007
nancy drew
Alice quoted this same bit earlier, but really, this article made me laugh. I loved Nancy Drew. Remember when she first smooched Ned Nickerson? Here's an excerpt from Anthony Lane's piece last week:
“It was splendid,” replied Emma, pausing to adjust the headband on her fine reddish hair. “The story begins in River Heights, a town full of delightful white people. I am motherless and my father is a lawyer, so both of us are rather sad! For a treat we move to Los Angeles, where the girls at my new school say I remind them of Martha Stewart. They are so ‘right on,’ it really is a joy!”
“And what happens next?” asked Emma’s aunt, her excitement mounting.
“Well, the house the Drews are renting once belonged to a movie star—you know, one of the super-old ones.”
“Like Lana Turner?”
“Who?”
“Skip it. Who plays the part of the actress?”
“The beautiful Miss Laura Elena Harring. After some ace detective work, I discovered that she was in a film called ‘Mulholland Drive,’ which dealt with similar material. Isn’t that coincidence just a little too suspicious? And the plot leads Nancy to a resort by the name of Twin Palms. Another clue! To sum up, a friend of mine said the film was like Lynch without the lesbians or the dwarves. What are lesbians, Aunt? Are they friends of Snow White’s, too?”
“More than you will ever know, dear."
Sunday, July 1, 2007
the best place on the Internet
Is here. Mark Peters defines various neologisms, coinings, and other made-up words. Most recently: beta-goon, emasculicious, nutsopath.