TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

In the original ad campaign for this show, it appeared to be about a vampire who came to Manhattan in the 1600s and stayed in the city through the present day. He was currently filling the role of “immortal detective with oblivious partner solving crimes in City X” once taken by Nick Knight.

Anyway, I don’t know if I misinterpreted the original ad campaign or if it was changed because of Moonlight but the premise is actually not “vampire cop show.” Instead, it’s “immortal cop show.” Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays John Amsterdam; a man who came to New Amsterdam in the 1600s and takes a sword for a Native woman. The Natives heal him and magically imbue him with immortality. He will not age or die until he finds his one true love and their souls become intertwined. Then he will age normally and finally die. Playing the role of sassy-but-clueless Latina partner is Indian/English actress Zuleikha Robinson. Alexie Gilmore fills in as potential love-of-Amsterdam’s-life-and-thus-harbinger-of-death. Stephen Henderson plays his 65-year-old son. I was also happy to see that Law & Order superstar Robert Clohess (who’s played about 15 different bad guys on all flavors of Law & Order) get some steady work.

The gimmick is that Amsterdam was blessed with immortality until he finds his one true soul-mate.

The Good

- The character not being a vampire in a sub-world of vampires brings a little bit of different flavor the show. It’s the first show of this kind to raise the question “what if you were the only immortal person in the world?” When you think about it, the guy can never really get close to anyone and has to watch everyone he ever knows die. It could get old - something which Coster-Waldau’s character communicates well. He names his dogs after number (his current one is 36). He refers to his ex-wives by number. In fact, he’s kind of obsessed with numbers

- Having his son on the show (who is visually older than he is) adds an interesting dynamic. The sad part is that you know this guy is on the show just to die at some point.

- I’m a New York history buff, so I like the old shots of and the various historic things they throw in about Manhattan. He’s also the ultimate New Yorker. When he bitches about the neighborhood changing he actually knows what he’s talking about.

The Bad

- For every bit that Moonlight is Angel, this show is Forever Knight. Some crime happens, it reminds the main character of something from his long past, we flashback to that episode of his life, and it parallels what’s going on in the present day. The only difference is that he’s not a vampire.

- This is another show where the main character really seems to hate his life when his life really doesn’t seem like all that bad a gig. I mean, he’s immortal in Manhattan. If you had to be immortal somewhere in the world, wouldn’t the lifespan of Manhattan be the place you picked? I mean, it’s gone from farming community, to war zone, to port/railroad/farming community, to financial center of the universe. Not only that, but you’d probably to be able to see one neighborhood go through roughly 100 different upheavals. How many people have gone through Manhattan in 400 years? On top of all that, you can’t die. How does that suck?

- The whole gimmick of the show is that he’s trying to find a soul mate so he can die. Isn’t that kind of a morose premise for a show? It doesn’t help that he’s morose as well.

- Is a new rule on television shows that all police bosses must be female? Was the last male to make captain on a TV Show Barney Miller? The Detective Sergeant on this show is a cute blonde who in no way ever went in to the police academy in any real world ever. If she did, she didn’t stick it out this long.

- The writers are somewhat heavy-handed with their “this guy’s been alive forever so he’s known everyone that’s lived in Manhattan ever.” So far, we’ve discovered that he knew e.e. cummings, had a relationship with Emily Dickenson, chased down John Wilkes Booth, was in the Civil War at Antietam with Walt Whitman, he was at Normandy, and had a fight with John Coltraine (who died still mad at him). All shows that feature immortal characters do this… they just tend to not do it every single episode

- At the end of the day, the immortal thing doesn’t add much. Think about it… when you’re watching a cop show you pretty much know the main character’s not going to die. The only difference between this show and those shows is that the writers can mortally injure the guy every once in a while.

The Summary

Not a fan. There’s nothing new here. It could be an episode of Criminal Intent (complete with weird savant detective that knows everything) or any other of the countless New York Cop shows. At best, it’s a ripoff of Forever Knight. At worst, it comes across of a ripoff of Moonlight which is itself a shameless ripoff of Angel.

The ratings seem to agree with me. Of course, I also decided to wait until 5 of the 7 episodes had aired before finishing the review. East Coast Bias: On The Cutting Edge.

I missed the meeting when communist dictator Hugo Chavez became the crazy left’s favorite world leader. I guess, somewhere along the line, they gave up pretending they just want to be super-liberal like Europe and just put their socialist cards on the table and they were all RED!!

As such, you’ve begun to find praises of Hugo Chavez’s awesomeness in the most random of articles, like This One from Z-Net. I hadn’t happened upon Z-Net before, but their tag line is “The Spirit of Resistence Lives On”. I assume this means “middle class white people with guilt blog about the injustices of the world from their Iowa McMansions”.

You’ll recognize the format

Can’t Knock the Hassle: Chavez Challenges Baseball

Communist dictator who has celebrating the impending doom of the United States and who is trying to destabilize other countries in Central America to serve his own agenda: hero. Major League Baseball: baddies.

Owners love Latin America for the same reason Disney can’t get enough of Haiti: they, can sign children for pennies, treat them like trash when they’re finished, and face contact lens-thin regulations for their troubles.

So…. basically…. just like they do in the US? You think bottom-of-the-barrel college kids are treated any better? We’re attacking the Mouse, too? Well… maybe we can get along.

The impact on the athletes can be devastating. “Super Mario” Encarnación, once the most prized prospect of the Oakland As, was found dead in a Taipei motel room in October 2006, after an apparent drug overdose. He had been playing at the margins of the semi-pro baseball circuit desperate to not return home a failure to the DR. He returned, only when his friend former AL MVP Miguel Tejada, paid to have his body shipped back to their village from Japan.

Again: waiting to hear the difference between how Latin players are treated vs. how every other baseball player in the league is treated. If some random minor league player from the US ODed on horse steroids in a hotel room, how quickly do you think the team and baseball would distance itself from that player? Do you think they’d pay any funeral costs? The answer: not unless he left baseball to join the military after September 11th.

Encarnación did do better than Lino Ortiz. The nineteen-year-old pitcher was about to be called up to the Majors when he died from taking an animal steroid in the DR looking for an edge. Steroids are actually legal and available over the counter, but their cost makes them prohibitive. Lino bought his from the pet store and met an all-too-early-death.

Not sure what this paragraph is supposed to evoke. Am I supposed to feel bad because some random Venezuelan pitcher saw dollar signs, tried to take a shortcut, and paid with his life? Am I supposed to be outraged because steroids are too expensive in Venezuela? Am I supposed to feel different emotions than I do for Len Bias - a guy who had everything ahead of him and stupidly killed himself before hitting the big time? Am I supposed to feel happy that American teenagers have been able to figure out how to safely use steroids and Venezuelans have not? I’m not sure.

These two examples are retarded. In one sentence, it tells us how much we should care for these sovereign nation and the sanctity of their people. In the other, it tells us that we Americans should apply our moral values to them and insist they live by it. We think steroids are bad - so should they. We think cockfighting is bad - so should they. This always works out well. Remember when we thought Iraqis should be free whether they like it or not? That’s worked out smashingly.

After the DR, the country that supplies the most talent in Latin America is Venezuela. There are now more than fifty players from Venezuela in Major League Baseball, including superstars like Johan Santana, Magglio Ordoñez and Miguel Cabrera. In the last twenty years, 200 Venezuelans have played in the Major Leagues with more than 1,000 in the minors. And yet despite this bounty of talent, the idiots are starting to scamper from Venezuela because Hugo Chávez is demanding that owners pay for the privilege of their pillage.

Just so we have this straight: “privilege of their pillage” is “scouting the country for talent and offering the best of the best $350k/year.” Some might also call this “college” or “high school”. The “idiots” might also realize that doing business in a country with socialized business is a defeatist proposition. You idiot.

Lou Meléndez, MLB’s vice president for international operations, was more than miffed to receive documents that called for instituting employee and player protections and requiring teams to pay out 10 percent of players’ signing bonuses to the government.

In fairness… if the people were American they’d be paying a third of the signing bonuses to the government. This does seem like a good deal.

Chávez wants to tax MLB for what they take from the country. “We don’t pay federations money for signing players anywhere in the world, and we don’t expect to do so. It’s certainly not a way to conduct business,” huffed Meléndez. “When you see certain industries that are being nationalized, you begin to wonder if they are going to nationalize the baseball industry in Venezuela.”

Y’see, when you pay a foreign government to scout their players, that’s kind of like supporting a style of government you may not agree with. If you fund it, you start to run into the whole problem of “paying for death camps” and “paying to imprison people who speak out against the government.” But, I know, Mr. Chavez does no wrong. Only our government does. Mr. Chavez has certainly never participated in torturing of protesters or anything like that. He’s perfect. Only the US Government would stoop so low as torture. LA RESISTANCE!!!

Major league baseball pays players who then pay their government taxes. Why is this a problem? Could it be, maybe, that once the players can get out of the country they no longer want to fund their government? Basically, Toolface is arguing that baseball should pay a posting fee to Hugo Chavez to look at a player. Remember when everyone made fun of the Red Sox for paying $50 million to have a conversation with Dice-K? This is that… but for every player that comes out of Venezuela.

As ESPN wrote, “There has been speculation, more internal than public so far, that Chávez, a socialist and self-proclaimed revolutionary who took office in 1999, will turn Venezuela into the next Cuba. In other words, some worry that baseball in Venezuela will serve to illustrate (once again) how politics spills over into sport.”

The hypocrisy is stunning.

Just because you use a forceful single line paragraph doesn’t make it true. Especially when there was no hypocrisy in the previous two sentences AS THEY WERE THOUGHTS FROM TWO DIFFERENT ENTITIES.

Heaven forfend, there is nothing “political” about a multibillion-dollar business running roughshod over an entire nation with no accountability for the dashed dreams of the 99 percent who don’t make it stateside. And there is surely nothing political about shutting down your baseball academy for fear that the natives might demand business practices that might approximate the humane.

The 2007 baseball draft featured 1,453 picks. Of those 1,453 young men, maybe 1,400 will ever make it to the big leagues. Of those 53 that make it to the big league, maybe… MAYBE… 25 will some day make a very good living at the sport. Of those 25, 2 may get one of THOSE contracts. Where is your worthless diatribe against Bobby Joe Smith whose dream of leaving the cornfields of Iowa to stand at the plate of Yankee Stadium so he doesn’t have to work in a textile factory for minimum wage until his back gives out? Are those people beneath your notice? Could it be the gentle form of liberal racism that decides “those people are too stupid to make their own decisions. We have to make it for them.” There is nothing humane about making to big league baseball no matter what country you’re from. Guys in the minor league would kill your mother if it meant opening up a roster spot while you’re at the funeral. It’s competitive, unforgiving, and only the best even have a chance to make it out. Do you think anybody cares about your country of origin?

Already, the Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox, and San Diego Padres have cut and run. “We just figured we might as well do it [then] to avoid some of the hassle of having to deal with some of the legislation that Chávez passes down there in hiring coaches, worrying about severance pay, and just getting in and out of the country,” Juan Lara of the Padres told the media.

“This country is making it hard for us to do our job. Cuba has been doing this for years. Yet, Cuban players that want to play in the US always find their way here. You know what… do what you gotta, Hugo; we’ll be over here.” Also: where is the problem with this? You’re expressing your complete disdain with baseball interfering in the hopes and dreams of the baseball players in this country. The three teams you’ve mentioned have decided not to do that. No hopes and dreams will be crushed with the support of the Red Sox. Oh wait, it’s probably only OK if they do it on your terms, because that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it? You want business to do things on your terms, because that’s RESISTANCE, BABY.

This tension exposes the rot at the heart of this relationship. Chávez dares demand regulation and the first instinct of the owners is to flee toward more exploitable ground. Not only is Chávez right to pressure baseball to actually give something back, other countries-the Dominican Republic, in particular-should follow his lead.

They should… and then we won’t get players from there, either.

Every year, millions of Latin American children are shredded as they reach to escape poverty with a bat and a ball. It’s long past time MLB gave something back to the nations they so blithely upend. Even an idiot can see that.

Major League Baseball is responsible for Johan Santana making $200 million. Magglio Ordonez, because of Major League Baseball, is making about $100 million. Wouldn’t one think that the players being paid the money should take care of their country of origin? I’m failing to see why it’s baseball’s responsibility to happily donate money to possibly corrupt governments. Baseball’s unfair. Life’s unfair. Get over it. Not everyone gets to play baseball.

I love when writers make a point and then insist that you’d be an idiot not to agree with them. It’s a very convincing argument. As a matter of fact, I insist that Drillbit Taylor should be nominated for Best Picture next year and you’d be an idiot to disagree with me. Idiot.

VIVE LA RESISTANCE!!!

Back in days of yore when I was in college, we had something called the Twenty Dollar Supernight on Fridays. Back before New York State decided that residents needed protection from ourselves and banned all-you-can-drink Happy Hours, we had something called “Drinkin with Lincoln”. Bars would have a $5 cover charge followed by penny pitchers (both Lincoln… get it?) for a set amount of time. The cab from Siena to the Bar X (name with held to protect under-age drinking) would cost $2/head. Bar X charged $5 for free beer from 4-7 pm. At 7pm, we would then hike the six blocks from Bar X to the Lamp Post. On the way to the Post, we’d buy a slice of pizza ($1) and eventually get to the post for $5 all you could drink from 8pm - 11pm. After that, slice of pizza number 2 would be purchased ($1) and a $2/head cab ride home. A few bucks here and there for tipping to encourage the bartenders to fill your pitcher first and you came in just around $20 for all the Natty Light, Red Dog, and High Life you’d ever care to drink…….. weekly.

Anyway, the Post was split up into two bars. The upstairs was generally a pretty crappy bar with picnic tables and free popcorn and a jukebox full of drinking songs. The downstairs was called “The Oasis” and was widely known as the I-was-jail-bait-as-recently-as-last-week meat market. You got yourself a bar full of free beer, a bunch of Albany kids with nothing to do for the 11 months a year it’s cold, and… well… you have The Post/Oasis.

I stopped going there in about 1999. The time I went there after I legitimately turned 21, I went to the Post like every other Friday. The bouncer looked at my ID and started to give me crap about the ID not being mine. Mind you, I had been going to the Post approximately every Friday night for three years and giving the guys IDs that ranged from “bad chalk job” to “not mine” to “dated February 30th”. This night, I actually handed him my ID, I was really 21, and I was getting shit. It was a few weeks after that I determined that I had officially become “too old for the Post” but stuck it out until I wasn’t the only person who was 21.

About five years ago, I saw the bar’s name had changed. Someone must have eventually stopped paying bribe money to the cops and it got shut down. A few years after that, it became “Professor M Barley’s” which is what it is today. During the football playoffs, a few of my friends went there to watch the Giant games. After a bit of resistance (it is the Post, after all) they went and discovered that the inside had been completely overhauled, repainted, and made into a decently nice sports bar.

So, when we were trying to decide on somewhere to watch the Siena game, we figured it would be wholly appropriate to watch the game at The Post. After the game (we’d been talking a bit to either the manager or the owner… could go either way) my old Siena roommate and I went into the small lobby that the Post/Oasis used to share and discovered that the Oasis was still open… now named The Coliseum… and is, in fact, still the underage meat market of Quail and Madison. This made me feel, for a moment, that all was right in the world again.

Since there wasn’t anyone there yet (what self-respecting kid is drinking at only 8pm) they let us walk downstairs and look around. Disturbingly enough, 10 years later and the downstairs has not changed a bit. It still has the crappy mirrored walls, the weird little DJ booth, and the hanging stench of stale beer, sweat, and desperation. The two bars down there are still in exactly the same spot. Random couches (used for polite conversation) are lined along the side. Your feet still somehow stick to the floor even though it’s carpeted. There is still a random phone booth that does not have a phone… but says “Phone Booth” in neon lights. It was a trip.

The owner let us walk around a bit and overheard us discussing the random shot-girl shots that we used to buy there for a dollar (culminating with me actually seeing one of the shot girls in a mall one day and hitting on her… which still rates in my top two random pick-ups: “Are you a shot girl at the Post?” “Yes.” “I love your work and wish I could see more.”) and poured one for us for old time sake. My roommate and I did the shot and laughed. I was happy to see the place still there and even though it actually kinda caused physical pain when the guy asked us when the last time we were down there was… and I actually had to say, out loud, about 10 years… I was glad to see it again.

Upstairs, everything is nice, sterile, and overhauled. The crappy old bar is gone with a brand new wooden one placed on the entire opposite side. The green felt pool table, covered with stains of puke and beer has been replaced with a nice red one. Where the old bar was is elevated and they put in tables and a big-screen TV. You wouldn’t even recognize it as the same place. But when you go in the bathroom, something’s a little bit out of place. There’s a little machine on the wall. For a quarter, it’ll give you a spray of Drakkar, Armani, or Polo cologne. Back in the day, there used to be a condom dispenser right next to it. It isn’t something you’d normally see in a sports bar, but it is something you’d see in the kind of place it used to be. It’s still there now, and it’s a little wink-and-nudge reminder of the shenanigans that used to go on. If you’d never spent a day in the Post before it changed over, you’d probably never even notice it.

And that made me smile.

It’s good to know that my luck when it comes to selecting a seat also extends on to the Chinatown bus.

Do you know what’s worse than loud-cell-phone-guy on the train? Loud everyone-needs-to-hear-our-conversation couple. I knew that somewhere out there was the soulmate of loud-cell-phone guy. Now I have seen it with my own eyes.

Also, the bus stopped at a Burger King somewhere in Connecticut. I was in line behind a guy who had never been in a BK before. He asked the cashier “what’s the size difference between a Whopper and a regular burger?”

I’ve added a new type of person who needs to be erased from the planet. Two, maybe. The first is “guy who is old enough to drive who hasn’t been to BK.”. The second is “guy who discusses portion size with the cashier to try and get maximum value for his dollar at BK when there are a bus full of people in line.”. Perchance he could ask for a sample, too.

BEWARE SPOILERS!!

I tentatively planned to write a review for each of the Harry Potter books as I finished them, save them in the queue until I finished all seven, and then post them individually so I could see how my opinions changed as I went through the series. After I had gotten through the 2nd book, I made the mistake of reading the review I’d written for the first one and realized it wasn’t going to work. A lot of the dangling plot threads and unanswered questions I complained about in the first book’s review had already been answered by the time I finished the second. I realized then that the books are more meant to be taken as a single, massive 5,000 page volume instead of seven individual pieces. I was right to wait until all seven were out before bothering with any of them. It would have been annoying reading them one at a time and waiting for the next one to come out. It’s the same reason I eventually gave up on The Dark Tower series by Stephen King until all seven came out.

When I started reading it, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to like it. I chalked it up to reading a book written for people 15 - 20 years younger than me. The story was very simple and Rowling has an annoying habit of using alliterative character names for EVERY CHARACTER. Colin Creevey, Godric Griffindor, Dudley Dursley, Salazar Slytherin, Severus Snape, Cho Chang. You wouldn’t think such a little thing would grate on you but it does and it eventually made me wonder if every child in Britain was named that way.

When it started out, it was a good, simple story. It was about a boy who discovered he was something extraordinary and was taken out of an abusive home (inexplicably normal considering the way he was raised) and discovers he’s famous in this unknown world. The story was about this other world that exists right under all our noses. And in the first four books that’s all it was. A fun story.

For the first four books, the smack-you-over-the-head parallels to real world problems are mostly kept to a minimum. It begins with veiled references to where the entire series is going. Wizards see themselves as a superior race to non-magic using Muggles. Pureblood wizards see themselves as superior to half-blood wizards (the offspring of a Wizard and a Muggle) and both see themselves as superior to Mudbloods (magic users whose parents are both Muggles). Later on, we’re introduced to the Ministry of Magic - a quite powerful version of a wizarding goverment that’s seemingly unelected. There are registries for people who can turn into animals or werewolves. It is illegal for people to own dragons. The government runs werewolf support groups. It is illegal for a young wizard to use magic outside of school and they can somehow track this use. A wizard must have a license to teleport. Any of these rules are subject to a fine, expulsion from school (because that somehow makes sense), or imprisonment in Azkaban, the wizard’s prison.

In the first four books, the Ministry mostly appears as a deus ex machina “hey there’s a ruling authority overlooking everything”. The author needs some way to explain why wizards have not just taken over the world and why they live in secret. I found the explanation a bit unsatisfying; there’s really no given reason why wizards aren’t in control of the world other than they’re all really nice people. While she was writing Goblet of Fire, though, it appears Rowling realized that she could really turn the books into a pulpit to preach about anything and everything she wanted. In Order of the Phoenix the Ministry of Magic makes a conscious shift from deus ex machina to primary character. The Ministry denies Harry’s claim that Voldemort is still alive and uses the press to undermine his credibility. In this book, the government takes over everything. The government takes over the school to ensure that the students aren’t being trained as an army to overthrow the Ministry. The press becomes a magic-user version of Al-Jazeera, reporting what the government wants. Order of the Phoenix is where the books go from being a fun, creative story to a heavy-handed allegory on an oppressive government racially divided by bloodline.

Fortunately, Order of the Phoenix is primarily the only book where this silly sub-plot is front and center. Half-Blood Prince returns us to the decent story: a young wizard learning his craft and figuring out what he wants to be when he grows up. The sixth book pretty much exists to alley-oop into the seventh. There are about 100 pages of plot progression in 800 pages of book culminating with the famous spoiler that I heard on Opie & Anthony a day before the book’s release (and that I still haven’t really forgiven them for). When Deathly Hallows starts, the government has taken over the school. Voldemort is using the ministry to round up Mudbloods and put them in prison and has Harry and his friends declared as enemies of the state.

Sound familiar?

Fortunately, it splits this time with Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s quest to kill Voldemort while avoiding the Ministry backed death squads. The final resolution to the book is well done. I think it was wrapped up as satisfyingly as any long series I’ve ever read. Annoyingly, Rowling has seen fit to make attention-whorey comments regarding Dumbledore* before the books and what happened to the characters in the interim between the end of the book and the epilogue. I hate when authors do this. Readers should fill in their own gaps with what happens to their favorite characters after the book.

I am torn on my final thoughts of this series. On one hand, I enjoyed most of the (bloated) story. On the other hand, it is loathsome for the series to get the critical acclaim it does. Save Quidditch, there is not one original thing in ANY of the seven books. The witches and wizards supplied in the book are stereotypical magic-users, down to their clothes, hats, and choice of transportation. Horcruxes exist in Dungeons & Dragons as phylacteries. Veelas are Sirines. The Prophesized Child Who Will Save The World has been done in every video game since… well… ever.

I realize that these characters are written for people who are certainly younger than I am but the characters are horribly one-dimensional. The Dursleys, for instance, appear in the first few pages of each volume only to outline how cruel and terrible they are. It’s never rightly explained how they never get in trouble for LOCKING A CHILD IN A CUPBOARD AND FEEDING HIM TABLE SCRAPS. Severus Snape hates Harry Potter with all his soul until DUSTY FINISH~! he was in love with Harry’s mother and has been defending him all along. If he loves Harry’s mother and wanted to protect Harry, why not treat him like a human being? Why continually try to get him expelled? Draco Malfoy encompasses every one-dimensional stereotype of every kid you’ve ever hated.

And, speaking of random plot-holes to question, I could fill a book with questions about Rowling’s imagining of the world of wizardry. In the Potter universe, people are either born with magical powers or they aren’t. All children born with these abilities are whisked off to their local wizarding school where they learn to cast spells and make potions. If a normal person put on Harry’s cloak, would it work? How has no normal person in hundreds of years discovered a wand? Or a magic item? Would either of them work? Can normal people make potions? I mean, it’s just mixing ingredients, right? Why do wizards need a wand? How are wizards so far removed from normal society that some of them don’t even know how to dress like regular people? And how have they managed to hide their existence for all these hundreds of years? Obviously some normal people know about the wizard’s world. Harry’s adoptive family knew of it before he came along. Hermione’s parents certainly do. The Prime Minister of Britain is in on it… and it’s never come up? No one realizes what’s going on? That is one enormous version of the Sunnydale Syndrome (normal people ignoring the inexplicable or rationalizing it to fit their world).

In the sum total, I did enjoy the books but I really, really, really hate when they are called wonderfully original or something of the sort. There is not one single thing in any of the Harry Potter books that hasn’t been done elsewhere… either in a book, video game, or RPG. This is what makes it tremendously frustrating to see Rowling suddenly begin wielding the court system to stop people from deriving from her work. HER ENTIRE WORK IS DERIVATIVE OF OTHER THINGS. As someone who spent years and years reading different types of fantasy/wizardry/sci-fi books, there is nothing here original. The fact that she would sue someone for making a book about her books when her entire storyline is something out of a 1985 NES video game is asinine. Could you see a video game with the following plot: “A young boy discovers he has fantastic powers. It turns out he is the chosen one who must save the world from the Great Evil.” He could be Link.

I’m glad I read them. But, as someone who has lived, breathed, played, and read a ton of fantasy/sci-fi over the last 20 years… you can do better. There are a ton of other, better, fantasy authors out there who don’t need to cause controversy to sell books in their niche.

* - I say this was attention-whorey because there was no reason for it. Characters in books SHOULD designed so the reader can make their own interpretation of them. Dumbledore, in 4,000 pages never made one single sexual reference. There was not one sexual reference in the entirety of the seven books. Now, two years after the final book’s release, the author needs to meddle in the archetypes that fans have made for this character in their own minds. It’s selfish and fully designed to be another heavy-handed tactic to get her name back in the paper. “I’ve always thought of him as gay.” No, you f*cking didn’t. You thought of Dumbledore as every other stereotypical “wise old wizard” - right down to the long white hair, cloak, hat, and beard. Dumbledore is no different than Merlin, Elminster from the Forgotten Realms, Mordekainen, Gandalf, Sarumon, or Fizban from Dragonlance. Do you know what all those wizards have in common? They are bearded, wise, gentle, and single. She is making absurd, press-gathering statements like this because she will never write another book. She caught lightning in a bottle by re-imagining the work of a lot of other people and collecting in to one series. The young readers she created are now young-adult readers who’ve read other things. If they’ve read ANY other fantasy books, they’ve discovered their favorite characters in other places. She knows this. “JK Rowling’s next book” will be the Chinese Democracy of the literary world.

Hillary Clinton won Ohio and some other states last night. I saw her on the Daily Show on Monday and heard some of the campaign lines she was feeding to the people of Ohio. I had a moment of deja vu. She’s with the blue-collar people of Ohio, you know. She told them that she’s their candidate and she supports the blue collar worker since they’re the backbone of the country. Hillary Clinton cares about the areas being decimated by lack of blue-collar jobs and she’ll work to restore those areas.

If i could just remember where I’d heard all that before.

Y’see, I heard this entire campaign strategy in 2000. I was still living upstate at the time and someone had decided that she wanted to get in to politics. She then proceeded to descend on a foolish state who had a weak Republican candidate running for senate. She bought a million dollar home in Chappaqua and was suddenly New York through and through. She was a Yankee fan. She was a Giant fan. She was just one of us. To solidify her position, she went on a “listening tour” through Upstate New York. She went through Albany, Syracuse, Schenectady, Troy, Buffalo, and Rochester and told everyone who would listen that she’d help to revitalize upstate. She’d create jobs! She’d revitalize the region! Jobs would return! Forget New York State’s absurd business taxes… I can do it! I feel your pain!!

And the morons in this state drank it up. Twice.

Surprisingly enough, she did nothing of the sort. Upstate’s still dead or dying depending on the region. Albany is run by the same corrupt forces that were running it before I left. Clinton’s suddenly no longer a Yankee fan. The mythical “50,000 jobs” that were going to be created upstate were quickly forgotten. Albany to Buffalo is still full of empty factory. And we were so impressed by this as a state that we re-elected her in 2006.

The only thing that will save Upstate, at this point, is to split into a separate state from downstate. Of the 60 state senators, 40 of them are from the city. How much of a majority is an economic revitalization plan for Buffalo going to grab? Or Albany, for that matter. Upstate has been fighting a losing battle for years and the shrew played on all those fears and hopes… won an election in a weak race… and is now bailing out on the state faster than she came here. The worst thing of all of this: SHE WON THIS STATE IN THE PRIMARY. Not only did she lie to our faces twice but we voted for her again!

What is it about lying politicians that make people forget? I mean… she all but said “vote for me and the streets of upstate will be paved with gold.” She’s not done one thing for Upstate New York. She just sold exactly the same bill of goods to Ohio. Of all the ways to fight her in the known universe, can’t they just play clips of her promising to revitalize upstate New York… and then pan through the empty iron shells of factories in Rochester, Troy, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Utica? Show some speech of her riding through Albany followed by the hell-hole that is the public housing there?

With all the media that we have now, why is there not one news channel that lay into the candidates for things they deserve to laid into for? Why does EVERYTHING have to be us vs. them partisan? Why does NO STATION take Clinton’s/Obama’s tax plan and put numbers up? If you make X to Y, you are currently in this bracket… the proposed tax plans would put you in this one. Why do no stations mention that the only thing Clinton has really successfully pushed for in the senate is getting post offices named for certain people? Why are we OK with candidates picking and choosing their own questions in interviews? Why does no one ask her “you said you were going to do this in New York and it didn’t happen… why?” Why is no one asking the Democratic candidates how they are planning to pay for their health care plans?

If anything, this election is depressing me more than any of the previous elections. Because, now, we’ve reached a point where even good ideas are destroyed and knocked down on the basis of partisan politics. Bush has not been the greatest president of all time (obviously) but he was right in that we needed torte reform and social security overhaul. Both good ideas that were brought down by politics. I hate this country’s political process and the media, instead of doing what they can to make it better and call out hypocrisy and lies to keep them honest, choose a side and are willing lap dogs to their chosen candidate. It’s sickening.

And we’ll be left with the government the majority deserves. Good luck with that.

I really wanted to watch the Nuggets/Rockets game on ESPN Sunday Night Basketball. The Nuggets are a half-game behind Golden State, they’re facing a crippled Rockets team who just lost their starting center and replaced him with 41-year-old Dikembe “Who Wants To Sex” Mutumbo. I’m not a commentary snob. I’m not the guy who hates every commentator on Earth. Fun game: next time someone says “X and Y are the worst commentators in the world” ask them who’s the best team they can name. Almost without fail, they won’t have an answer.

I rarely notice commentary. During the Nuggets/Rockets game, I did. I only did because Doris Burke was on color commentary. I believe that she’s the only female color commentator (other than Suzyn Waldman, who I hate… but I hate her for different reasons… only some of which are her fault). I ignored her for about the first few minutes of the first quarter until the following line:

“The best way for them to prevent transition scoring is to make their jump shots.”

Really? The way to stop a team from scoring in transition is to stop the opportunity to score in transition, thus allowing your team to get back on defense? The worst part: if this woman is a color commentator in men’s sports - she’s the absolute best they have to offer. The absolute best they have to offer STILL offers senseless observations and the same cliches. I was treated to “he’s a lunch-pail type player” and “Iverson’s the type of guy who never wants to leave the court.”

I have no real point or finish to this so I’ll leave you with a quote I heard: “I don’t really want a woman in the booth unless she looks and sounds like John Madden.”