I would like to begin by apologizing for the delay in posting this week's Definitive Guide, thus allowing the present to drift ever closer to the future of the past, a phenomenon perfectly exemplified by a shot of elevator doors opening to reveal an empty shaft and a descending car slowly creating a greater distance between her, who once was a bridge to your youth and a representation of your rebirth into the modern era, and you, suddenly and shockingly removed and virtually powerless in the empire you created so casually, leaving you to wonder if she ever really loved you or if she was just another Dick Whitman, drifting along until some poor sap steps too close to a landmine and unwillingly leaves behind a sense of normalcy and comfort that always seemed out of reach.
Also, PIZZA HOUSE.
On to this week's oracle predictions for next week's historical fictions:
00:05 - Completing their fairy-tale story, Don leans in to kiss Megan gently on the lips to find that the evil curse of time has been lifted and poor Gene has turned from a helpless infant into a hoodie-wearing 3 year old in a span of just six months!
00:08 - It's after hours, and after a long, hard day, Don walks down the hallway to discover that...wait, is that even Don? It kind of looks like a bulkier Ken Cosgrove, but he's leaving Don's office. It's hard to tell because it's all in silhouette, but also it still looks like it's light outside? Did everyone else in the office leave? Are they throwing Don a surprise party? They've already done that this year. What's going on? Why the hell would they include that shot of a shadowy figure walking down an empty hallway for two seconds? Did AMC find out that I'm writing this column and now they're just screwing with me? God damn, this show is good.
00:09 - In a surprising turn of comic relief, Betty responds to Henry's unkind remarks about her weight gain by supergluing his fanny--his FANNY--to his driver's seat and his toe to the steering wheel. Betty thinks she has the last laugh until she discovers that Super Glue is an SCDP client, and she realizes that she can never escape the specter of Don Draper.
00:11 - Megan lands a big audition for a revival of The Night of the Iguana in front of Tennessee Williams himself! After flubbing her lines for the third time and sensing that she may be blowing her chances, she tries to play up her domineering sexual politics for the acclaimed playwright. Needless to say, this fails miserably.
00:12 - Just after accepting his role as a lion in winter, sitting back to collect checks while the young guns handle the day-in-day-out work of advertising, Roger Sterling find himself pulled back in. In spite of his attempts to assert himself as a power player in the accounts game, Pete Campbell just can't give the Cool Whip people a decent handjob without crying. Roger thought that he had given that life up long ago, but when God blesses you with such finesse, it's no longer an option--it's a responsibility.
00:14 - Nobody showed up to Harry Crane's office to play charades! Not one person! Ginsberg had planned on attending, but he got caught up in a broadcast of "Dark Shadows" and couldn't figure out where Jonathan Frid got all of those fancy clothes.
00:16 - Even Don knows that Tennessee Williams is a homosexual, and he's, like, way old.
00:17 - Though he knows exactly how the night will end up, Roger still invites the Cool Whip people out for dinner before their orgiastic business consummation. Not out of love, but out of respect, dammit, because that's how he was raised to give business handjobs. This is the Roger Sterling finesse.
00:19 - Having conquered the automobile and the skis, Pete Campbell daydreams about all of the other forms of transportation that await him. Could he see himself riding one of those fancy Italian scooters to the office? Not all the way from Cos Cob, of course, but he could probably find a park and ride situation. And what about a bicycle--maybe a beach cruiser for the weekends in the suburbs. He never learned to ride a bicycle because he grew up in Manhattan, you know? The one in New York City?
Why won't she just call?
00:20 - Joan explains the concept of small talk to Ginsberg, who is probably on the autism spectrum, but as a result of the period is diagnosed with "a case of the gives-me-the-Heebs," because the doctor was in the middle of saying "heebie-jeebies" but then remembered how anti-Semitic he was.
00:22 - Pete informs his wife Trudy of that new law that just passed that said suburban wives weren't allowed in the city. Really, they just passed it! It's a real law!
00:23 - Don and Ginsberg admit that playing paintball in the office these last few days has probably been a little bit reckless, but it's done wonders for the designs on Ginsberg's sport jackets.
There you have it, folks! See you next week, and remember: Don's playing a very funny, elaborate joke on you.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
A Definitive Guide to Next Week on Mad Men: Episode 508
Welcome back to the future, everybody. I know that I had guaranteed 100% accuracy in my predictions for "At the Codfish Ball," but my teaser tea leaves failed me. Instead, we got an episode all about parents behaving badly, with the introduction of Megan's parents, Martha and George, Don allowing Sally to go on a date with an LSD-tripping Silver Fox, and Matthew Weiner having his real-life kid act out all of his real-life Portnoy-esque childhood neuroses as Glenn "Creepy Glenn" Bishop. I'm going to take a mulligan on last week and assume that this week's "Next On" will return to being a clear guide to the future of the rascals at SCDP. Onward!
00:05 - Megan thanks Don for having such luscious chest meat to sleep on and curls into him in an act of loving trust. Don expects her forehead to smell like lilacs. Confirmed: it's lilacs. Don likes lilacs. But what about Dick Whitman? Better drive to California for a quick smoke break to think about it.
00:08 - While at dinner with the CFO for Mohawk Airlines, Pete forgets whether or not he's the king. He sneaks off to call his mentor on such matters: a prostitute in a leopard bikini. She assures him that, yes, he's the king. As he hangs up the phone, his pen leaks all over his nice new shirt. This is all Roger's fault.
00:10 - Roger has acquired a box of kittens. Choose wisely, Cosgrove.
00:12 - Don asks Megan to check her wedding vows to him that he made up because he is a man who makes things to see if there's anything in there about her being required to parade around in his office wearing a silk teddy at 2:30 every day. There isn't. He forgot that part. Shit.
00:14 - Trudy tells Pete that she loves him. Not even he can believe that anyone could ever have the capacity of loving someone as awful as himself.
00:15 - In a panic after punching Rizzo in the face, Joan throws herself at Don and kisses him in her office. Ever the classy lady, Don gets up and silently closes the door to spare her feelings.
00:17 - Ginsberg reveals to Peggy that, in addition to being born in a concentration camp, his adopted mother was abducted and turned into a human suit by Ed Gein. It doesn't seem like she's even listening.
00:19 - Lost in his own piercing eyes while looking into a mirror, Don realizes that he may be the last remaining human on Earth. Unable to turn his head, lest he be forced to break his gaze with himself, he has only himself to ask where his wife is. "Don, where's Megan?!" he asks. "Sneaking out the door because she's terrified of you sometimes," answers Dawn, his secretary. "Oh, Don and Dawn jokes will never run out of steam," says a chuckling Roger Sterling, who enters, takes his pants off and pours himself another glass of Don's scotch.
00:21 - Pete says the only true thing he has ever said in his life.
00:22 - The phone rings in Peggy's office. It's probably Abe, calling to ask for some money or to see if she can pick up some gefilte fish on the way home from work. Her mother was so, so right.
There you have it, folks! No need to watch next Sunday, because you heard it here first.
NON-"NEXT ON"-PREDICTION: Harry Crane will want something, anything, to go his way. It won't.
00:05 - Megan thanks Don for having such luscious chest meat to sleep on and curls into him in an act of loving trust. Don expects her forehead to smell like lilacs. Confirmed: it's lilacs. Don likes lilacs. But what about Dick Whitman? Better drive to California for a quick smoke break to think about it.
00:08 - While at dinner with the CFO for Mohawk Airlines, Pete forgets whether or not he's the king. He sneaks off to call his mentor on such matters: a prostitute in a leopard bikini. She assures him that, yes, he's the king. As he hangs up the phone, his pen leaks all over his nice new shirt. This is all Roger's fault.
00:10 - Roger has acquired a box of kittens. Choose wisely, Cosgrove.
00:12 - Don asks Megan to check her wedding vows to him that he made up because he is a man who makes things to see if there's anything in there about her being required to parade around in his office wearing a silk teddy at 2:30 every day. There isn't. He forgot that part. Shit.
00:14 - Trudy tells Pete that she loves him. Not even he can believe that anyone could ever have the capacity of loving someone as awful as himself.
00:15 - In a panic after punching Rizzo in the face, Joan throws herself at Don and kisses him in her office. Ever the classy lady, Don gets up and silently closes the door to spare her feelings.
00:17 - Ginsberg reveals to Peggy that, in addition to being born in a concentration camp, his adopted mother was abducted and turned into a human suit by Ed Gein. It doesn't seem like she's even listening.
00:19 - Lost in his own piercing eyes while looking into a mirror, Don realizes that he may be the last remaining human on Earth. Unable to turn his head, lest he be forced to break his gaze with himself, he has only himself to ask where his wife is. "Don, where's Megan?!" he asks. "Sneaking out the door because she's terrified of you sometimes," answers Dawn, his secretary. "Oh, Don and Dawn jokes will never run out of steam," says a chuckling Roger Sterling, who enters, takes his pants off and pours himself another glass of Don's scotch.
00:21 - Pete says the only true thing he has ever said in his life.
00:22 - The phone rings in Peggy's office. It's probably Abe, calling to ask for some money or to see if she can pick up some gefilte fish on the way home from work. Her mother was so, so right.
There you have it, folks! No need to watch next Sunday, because you heard it here first.
NON-"NEXT ON"-PREDICTION: Harry Crane will want something, anything, to go his way. It won't.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Justice May Be Blind, but She's Also Racist
This is a story the other Bros already know, but I thought I'd share it with our enormous readership.
For those thousands of you that don't know me personally, I am currently working construction without a contract. This means I get paid the day of my labor in cash without tax. Normally, the work I do involves digging ditches, jackhammering, sanding, painting, stacking lumber, lifting up a very heavy house (using jacks), scraping, and/or picking up and putting down assorted heavy things. A couple months ago, however, I was assigned a different sort of task: go out to Gretna and try and get Kyron George out of jail.
Gretna, for those of you unfamiliar with the suburbs surrounding New Orleans, is on the West Bank, which means that it is across the Mississippi River from New Orleans proper. All you need to know about the West Bank is that it's free to go over there but you have to pay a dollar to get back. Kyron is a fellow laborer of mine. He is a 23 year old African-American man with a one year old son, a Graduate Equivalency Diploma, and hypertension. In the past two years he has been arrested for Grand Theft Auto (a car he was picked up in by a friend), and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute (it was an ounce of weed. He was going to smoke, not sell. Drug laws are colossally stupid because they were made by people who didn't do drugs on the advice of people who had no idea what they were talking about). Kyron doesn't always make great decisions, but he's a good guy and Matt (my employer and friend) and I wanted to help him out of a jam if we could. Matt told me to go to the courthouse and tell them that Kyron was employed part time and that Matt was willing to withhold some of Kyron's payment to go towards bail. Simple enough.
I put on a suit and went out to the West Bank, where Kyron was being held in connection with the drug arrest, first thing on a Wednesday morning to make the 9:00 hearing. By the time I got into the courtroom the defendants were seated. The defendents consisted of sixteen men on the left side of the room, Kyron included, and three women on the right side. The sixteen men were put into two rows, eight apiece. All of the men were in handcuffs, and the handcuffs of the men in each row were attached to a linked steel chain that bound them all together. So, for those readers that were under the impression that our justice system no longer used chain gangs, you were mistaken. Demographically, the sixteen men consisted of fourteen black men, one latino man, and one white man. All three women were white. They had no chain.
This hearing, probably better referred to as an arraignment, was conducted in a cattle call fashion. It went like this: the judge, a dark complected white woman in early middle age, would call out a defendant's name and tell him/her to rise. They would do so, and she would ask if they had a lawyer. The defendants invariably said no. The judge then asked if they had the money to afford a lawyer. Again, universal nos. The judge then assigned the defendants to the public defender's office and a young blonde woman who appeared to be in her early 30's sitting to the right of the judge and in front of the male defendants would pipe up and say "Karen Johnson representing the public defender's office and temporarily representing the defendant." The judge would then ask for a plea and Ms. Johnson would say "not guilty." The judge would set a price for bail, then look at the defendant and say "You'll be meeting with your attorney shortly" or something to that affect. Both women seemed like decent people, but this point in the proceeding was the only time when either of them would actually look at the defendants.
Here's the thing, though: Kyron's turn didn't go exactly that way. When it came time to assign his bond, the judge said "Now, you missed your last court date so you'll be held without bail until your trial on April 4th." It was March 4th. This came as a surprise. I was sitting next to Kyron's mother, DeAndra (aka Dee), and she hissed into my ear that he had appeared in court and that this was a load of crap. I assured her that as soon as the arraignment was over we'd figure out what all this was about. We were in the middle of this conversation and the last person was being told they'd be meeting their lawyer soon when Kyron collapsed.
As I sort of alluded to earlier, Kyron is an enormous, obese young man. He's probably 6'3", 320 pounds, so when he fell out of his chair, the seven other defendants he was chained to fell with him. The reaction of the room was strikingly subdued. Neither the judge nor the public defender said anything nor did they respond physically. The families of the other defendants shifted uncomfortably as if we were suddenly at a cocktail party and someone had made an off-color joke. Not even the defendants dragged to the ground had much to say, except the one white guy, a hick from south Louisiana who complained loudly about how uncomfortable this made his wrists. All this uncomfortable silence made Dee's screams of "My baby!" and "He's stroking!" more jarring.
After that initial reaction, Dee hustled out of the courtroom and I was left in a tough position: go console the mother who's just seen her child collapse or stay and see to my friend? I opted for the latter, at least for the moment. Kyron was helped back into his chair by his fellow inmates as the two guard looked on. I went as close to his side as the barrier would allow to ask if he was okay. I instinctively reached out to him but was told not to touch him by the guards, who made their way between the two of us. Kyron's head was sort of lolling back and forth, but he grunted when I asked if he wanted me to fetch his mother, so off I went.
I didn't have to go far. Dee was just outside the courtroom collecting herself with the assistance of Kyron's girlfriend, who'd left the scene with her. I gave Dee a hug and she stopped crying. We all three went back into the courtroom to find that the guards had released Kyron from his handcuffs and were talking to one another about what to do next very casually. With additional give, the inmates had scooted a bit further apart, causing the swamp rat to complain ever more. He became the centerpiece of a din that also consisted of Dee telling anyone who'd listen that Kyron had hypertension and that she thought he was having a stroke, me telling the guards they ought to do something, and the guards bouncing ideas off each other ("Should we call the medic? Should we get a wheelchair?") with all the urgency of tossing stones into a lake on a summer's evening. This whole time, the young Hispanic inmate, whose arms were involuntarily crossed by the taut chain, kept patting the non-verbal Kyron on the shoulder and telling him he'd be alright. It was a painfully beautiful human gesture, and I might have been the only one who noticed
This lasted about twenty minutes until the guards, a sort of goofy looking white woman and a young black man, finally decided to make the effort to reach for their walkie-talkies and call for a wheelchair. Ten minutes later a still semi-conscious Kyron was being wheeled out of the room and we were told he was being taken to the jail about a block away. We rushed over and Kyron's mother insisted he be taken to the nearby hospital for care. The guard, another tall dark-haired bespectacled goofy looking white woman (there appear to be a lot of these working in the Louisiana penal system), made a phone call and informed us this was not possible but that we needn't worry because they had two registered nurses and one person who was "the same as a doctor." I tried to stress to her that "the same as a doctor" is not, in fact, the same thing as a doctor and that if indeed Kyron was having a stroke they would be criminally liable. The guard asked me if I was Mr. George's lawyer, a question I'd also been asked in the courtroom. I said no and she went back to her Sudoku.
What seemed like hours but was probably only twenty minutes went by. During that time I met Kyron's former lawyer from the public defender's office. At least, he thought he had been. He had no real memory of the case, nor did he seem very interested. Dee called all of her relatives and sent them into a panic. She made clear that she intended to call the news if anything happened to her son. This prompted me to think how good an episode of This American Life this might make when someone came out and told us that Kyron had come to and that, while they intended to keep him under observation for another 24 hours, he appeared to be fine and that he had just fainted. Relieved, we returned to the courthouse to sort out the matter which had caused Kyron to faint in the first place: the surprise bonus month he'd been given in the lovely and exotic Jefferson Parish Prison.
Dee, Kyron's girlfriend and I bounced around a few offices and courtrooms until we landed in the waiting room of the judge who had actually rescinded Kyron's eligibility for bail. During the non-screaming segments of the recent drama, Dee had explained to me why she'd left the courtroom after Kyron collapsed and why his being held without bail was unfounded:
1. Hysterical black women make bad impressions in courtrooms.
2. Kyron and his mother had showed up to the court date in question and found he wasn't on the docket. They were told that he wouldn't be able to appear in front of the judge that day and that they'd send a notice regarding his new court date. They never received any such notice.
Anyway, the waiting room we were in was a lot like a dentist's office. There were four chairs, a stand with magazines on it, and a cubicle which contained two clerks of the court, chipper white women in their thirties. As soon as we walked in, Dee excused herself for the bathroom, so I decided to get the ball rolling. I approached the window and told the women I was there regarding Kyron George's case.
"Oh, are you his lawyer?" the older of the two women asked.
"I'm a representative of his employer," I responded.
"Oh, he's working?" the same woman asked.
"Yes ma'am," I said.
"Full time?" she inquired.
"No ma'am. He's working about 25 hours a week at ten dollars an hour doing construction in the Irish Channel which he'd be happy to put towards bail, but his probation appears to have been withdrawn because he missed a court date. His mother claims that they never received a notice of that court date."
"Oh, okay," she said. "We'll go ahead and let him out, then. Brittany," she said, addressing the other clerk, "could you go ahead and draw up a release form for Kyron George effective immediately?"
That was it! Bear in mind, astonished readers, I had produced no proof of employment, no identification, I HADN'T EVEN TOLD HER MY NAME! Just then, Dee came back into the waiting room and I told her they were letting Kyron out. She looked a little dazed, and asked if I was serious. I told her I was, and that she should probably work out how to best pay bail installments with the clerk. She told the clerk that she could bring in $300 two days later, and the clerk said that was fine and she just needed to sign the paper Brittany had just printed out. An hour later, Kyron was released, and Dee insisted on buying me lunch some time, which she later did.
At first glance, these appear to be two largely unrelated stories, one about a morbidly obese man collapsing in a courtroom, and one about an untrained legal wunderkind and they are only tied together by the fact that they happened to me concurrently on the same morning. But it's better to think of it in terms of how two young men of around the same age are treated based on appearances. Kyron was being held in prison for holding an amount of marijuana I have held before, as have many of my white friends, and when he collapsed, he was treated with indifference and given terrible medical attention. I was an anonymous white guy in a suit who was given a prisoner just because I asked. These stories are best told in tandem to anyone who thinks race isn't an issue in the judicial system.
For those thousands of you that don't know me personally, I am currently working construction without a contract. This means I get paid the day of my labor in cash without tax. Normally, the work I do involves digging ditches, jackhammering, sanding, painting, stacking lumber, lifting up a very heavy house (using jacks), scraping, and/or picking up and putting down assorted heavy things. A couple months ago, however, I was assigned a different sort of task: go out to Gretna and try and get Kyron George out of jail.
Gretna, for those of you unfamiliar with the suburbs surrounding New Orleans, is on the West Bank, which means that it is across the Mississippi River from New Orleans proper. All you need to know about the West Bank is that it's free to go over there but you have to pay a dollar to get back. Kyron is a fellow laborer of mine. He is a 23 year old African-American man with a one year old son, a Graduate Equivalency Diploma, and hypertension. In the past two years he has been arrested for Grand Theft Auto (a car he was picked up in by a friend), and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute (it was an ounce of weed. He was going to smoke, not sell. Drug laws are colossally stupid because they were made by people who didn't do drugs on the advice of people who had no idea what they were talking about). Kyron doesn't always make great decisions, but he's a good guy and Matt (my employer and friend) and I wanted to help him out of a jam if we could. Matt told me to go to the courthouse and tell them that Kyron was employed part time and that Matt was willing to withhold some of Kyron's payment to go towards bail. Simple enough.
I put on a suit and went out to the West Bank, where Kyron was being held in connection with the drug arrest, first thing on a Wednesday morning to make the 9:00 hearing. By the time I got into the courtroom the defendants were seated. The defendents consisted of sixteen men on the left side of the room, Kyron included, and three women on the right side. The sixteen men were put into two rows, eight apiece. All of the men were in handcuffs, and the handcuffs of the men in each row were attached to a linked steel chain that bound them all together. So, for those readers that were under the impression that our justice system no longer used chain gangs, you were mistaken. Demographically, the sixteen men consisted of fourteen black men, one latino man, and one white man. All three women were white. They had no chain.
This hearing, probably better referred to as an arraignment, was conducted in a cattle call fashion. It went like this: the judge, a dark complected white woman in early middle age, would call out a defendant's name and tell him/her to rise. They would do so, and she would ask if they had a lawyer. The defendants invariably said no. The judge then asked if they had the money to afford a lawyer. Again, universal nos. The judge then assigned the defendants to the public defender's office and a young blonde woman who appeared to be in her early 30's sitting to the right of the judge and in front of the male defendants would pipe up and say "Karen Johnson representing the public defender's office and temporarily representing the defendant." The judge would then ask for a plea and Ms. Johnson would say "not guilty." The judge would set a price for bail, then look at the defendant and say "You'll be meeting with your attorney shortly" or something to that affect. Both women seemed like decent people, but this point in the proceeding was the only time when either of them would actually look at the defendants.
Here's the thing, though: Kyron's turn didn't go exactly that way. When it came time to assign his bond, the judge said "Now, you missed your last court date so you'll be held without bail until your trial on April 4th." It was March 4th. This came as a surprise. I was sitting next to Kyron's mother, DeAndra (aka Dee), and she hissed into my ear that he had appeared in court and that this was a load of crap. I assured her that as soon as the arraignment was over we'd figure out what all this was about. We were in the middle of this conversation and the last person was being told they'd be meeting their lawyer soon when Kyron collapsed.
As I sort of alluded to earlier, Kyron is an enormous, obese young man. He's probably 6'3", 320 pounds, so when he fell out of his chair, the seven other defendants he was chained to fell with him. The reaction of the room was strikingly subdued. Neither the judge nor the public defender said anything nor did they respond physically. The families of the other defendants shifted uncomfortably as if we were suddenly at a cocktail party and someone had made an off-color joke. Not even the defendants dragged to the ground had much to say, except the one white guy, a hick from south Louisiana who complained loudly about how uncomfortable this made his wrists. All this uncomfortable silence made Dee's screams of "My baby!" and "He's stroking!" more jarring.
After that initial reaction, Dee hustled out of the courtroom and I was left in a tough position: go console the mother who's just seen her child collapse or stay and see to my friend? I opted for the latter, at least for the moment. Kyron was helped back into his chair by his fellow inmates as the two guard looked on. I went as close to his side as the barrier would allow to ask if he was okay. I instinctively reached out to him but was told not to touch him by the guards, who made their way between the two of us. Kyron's head was sort of lolling back and forth, but he grunted when I asked if he wanted me to fetch his mother, so off I went.
I didn't have to go far. Dee was just outside the courtroom collecting herself with the assistance of Kyron's girlfriend, who'd left the scene with her. I gave Dee a hug and she stopped crying. We all three went back into the courtroom to find that the guards had released Kyron from his handcuffs and were talking to one another about what to do next very casually. With additional give, the inmates had scooted a bit further apart, causing the swamp rat to complain ever more. He became the centerpiece of a din that also consisted of Dee telling anyone who'd listen that Kyron had hypertension and that she thought he was having a stroke, me telling the guards they ought to do something, and the guards bouncing ideas off each other ("Should we call the medic? Should we get a wheelchair?") with all the urgency of tossing stones into a lake on a summer's evening. This whole time, the young Hispanic inmate, whose arms were involuntarily crossed by the taut chain, kept patting the non-verbal Kyron on the shoulder and telling him he'd be alright. It was a painfully beautiful human gesture, and I might have been the only one who noticed
This lasted about twenty minutes until the guards, a sort of goofy looking white woman and a young black man, finally decided to make the effort to reach for their walkie-talkies and call for a wheelchair. Ten minutes later a still semi-conscious Kyron was being wheeled out of the room and we were told he was being taken to the jail about a block away. We rushed over and Kyron's mother insisted he be taken to the nearby hospital for care. The guard, another tall dark-haired bespectacled goofy looking white woman (there appear to be a lot of these working in the Louisiana penal system), made a phone call and informed us this was not possible but that we needn't worry because they had two registered nurses and one person who was "the same as a doctor." I tried to stress to her that "the same as a doctor" is not, in fact, the same thing as a doctor and that if indeed Kyron was having a stroke they would be criminally liable. The guard asked me if I was Mr. George's lawyer, a question I'd also been asked in the courtroom. I said no and she went back to her Sudoku.
What seemed like hours but was probably only twenty minutes went by. During that time I met Kyron's former lawyer from the public defender's office. At least, he thought he had been. He had no real memory of the case, nor did he seem very interested. Dee called all of her relatives and sent them into a panic. She made clear that she intended to call the news if anything happened to her son. This prompted me to think how good an episode of This American Life this might make when someone came out and told us that Kyron had come to and that, while they intended to keep him under observation for another 24 hours, he appeared to be fine and that he had just fainted. Relieved, we returned to the courthouse to sort out the matter which had caused Kyron to faint in the first place: the surprise bonus month he'd been given in the lovely and exotic Jefferson Parish Prison.
Dee, Kyron's girlfriend and I bounced around a few offices and courtrooms until we landed in the waiting room of the judge who had actually rescinded Kyron's eligibility for bail. During the non-screaming segments of the recent drama, Dee had explained to me why she'd left the courtroom after Kyron collapsed and why his being held without bail was unfounded:
1. Hysterical black women make bad impressions in courtrooms.
2. Kyron and his mother had showed up to the court date in question and found he wasn't on the docket. They were told that he wouldn't be able to appear in front of the judge that day and that they'd send a notice regarding his new court date. They never received any such notice.
Anyway, the waiting room we were in was a lot like a dentist's office. There were four chairs, a stand with magazines on it, and a cubicle which contained two clerks of the court, chipper white women in their thirties. As soon as we walked in, Dee excused herself for the bathroom, so I decided to get the ball rolling. I approached the window and told the women I was there regarding Kyron George's case.
"Oh, are you his lawyer?" the older of the two women asked.
"I'm a representative of his employer," I responded.
"Oh, he's working?" the same woman asked.
"Yes ma'am," I said.
"Full time?" she inquired.
"No ma'am. He's working about 25 hours a week at ten dollars an hour doing construction in the Irish Channel which he'd be happy to put towards bail, but his probation appears to have been withdrawn because he missed a court date. His mother claims that they never received a notice of that court date."
"Oh, okay," she said. "We'll go ahead and let him out, then. Brittany," she said, addressing the other clerk, "could you go ahead and draw up a release form for Kyron George effective immediately?"
That was it! Bear in mind, astonished readers, I had produced no proof of employment, no identification, I HADN'T EVEN TOLD HER MY NAME! Just then, Dee came back into the waiting room and I told her they were letting Kyron out. She looked a little dazed, and asked if I was serious. I told her I was, and that she should probably work out how to best pay bail installments with the clerk. She told the clerk that she could bring in $300 two days later, and the clerk said that was fine and she just needed to sign the paper Brittany had just printed out. An hour later, Kyron was released, and Dee insisted on buying me lunch some time, which she later did.
At first glance, these appear to be two largely unrelated stories, one about a morbidly obese man collapsing in a courtroom, and one about an untrained legal wunderkind and they are only tied together by the fact that they happened to me concurrently on the same morning. But it's better to think of it in terms of how two young men of around the same age are treated based on appearances. Kyron was being held in prison for holding an amount of marijuana I have held before, as have many of my white friends, and when he collapsed, he was treated with indifference and given terrible medical attention. I was an anonymous white guy in a suit who was given a prisoner just because I asked. These stories are best told in tandem to anyone who thinks race isn't an issue in the judicial system.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
A Definitive Guide to Next Week on Mad Men
We here at BrOzone Lair have a confession to make: Season 6 of Mad Men is really cooking. So far we've seen Pete Campbell get his turkey basted, Don and Megan playing "A History of Violence," and Stan Rizzo go on a date with the same girl who stood up Mac and Dennis in Season 5 of "It's Always Sunny." Unlike seasons past, things are actually happening, which implies that the big mid-season meltdown could be epic, with the most thrilling incorporation of a '60's historical event to date (Will Sally Draper lose her virginity on the day of Botswana's admittance into the U.N.? Will Harry Crane talk to a girl without stammering during the announcement of the NFL-AFL merger? Will Kevin Holloway drown in his mother's bosom while Toyota rolls out the first Corrolla???).
The only way to know these things for sure is to look into the not-at-all-vague, completely helpful "Next Week on Mad Men" teasers that AMC provides for us. Though it should be completely obvious from this clip, I've broken down for you exactly what will go down in next week's "At The Codfish Ball."
00:07 - Don refuses to let Megan leave their pad until she admits that he kind of looks like Sean Connery
00:10 - Don mumbles something unintelligible in bed while touching that spot on Megan's back that's still sensitive from the eczema outbreak that she told him about five times. You can't just touch her like that--She's not like Betty!
00:12 - Bobby Draper runs frantically into the living room upon realizing that he has shapeshifted into a different boy for the fourth time in five years.
00:13 - Roger Sterling tells "Shoeless" Joe Jackson about the life-altering experience he had when he got accepted into the Stolichnaya Symphony Orchestra. His LSD has not worn off.
00:14 - Peggy learns that her Safari Movie Handjob Dream Date was actually her boyfriend Abe in disguise. He really does care about her!
00:16 - Sally immediately regrets saying something horribly insensitive to her father's new secretary.
00:18 - Megan reads from her notebook of rap poetry to Don, who disgustedly throws it in the trash. It is discovered by street tough and future hologram Tupac Shakur in 1988.
00:20 - Joan invites Lane into her office to give him a second chance to do what every one in the office has always wanted to do: make out with Joan while kicking Pete Campbell in the throat repeatedly.
There you have it, folks. If, by some strange twist, these things do not occur next week as Matthew Weiner has so clearly laid out above, then I will be back next week with corrections. And remember: Howard Johnson's has 28 more flavors in case you don't like orange; of course they have chocolate.
The only way to know these things for sure is to look into the not-at-all-vague, completely helpful "Next Week on Mad Men" teasers that AMC provides for us. Though it should be completely obvious from this clip, I've broken down for you exactly what will go down in next week's "At The Codfish Ball."
00:07 - Don refuses to let Megan leave their pad until she admits that he kind of looks like Sean Connery
00:10 - Don mumbles something unintelligible in bed while touching that spot on Megan's back that's still sensitive from the eczema outbreak that she told him about five times. You can't just touch her like that--She's not like Betty!
00:12 - Bobby Draper runs frantically into the living room upon realizing that he has shapeshifted into a different boy for the fourth time in five years.
00:13 - Roger Sterling tells "Shoeless" Joe Jackson about the life-altering experience he had when he got accepted into the Stolichnaya Symphony Orchestra. His LSD has not worn off.
00:14 - Peggy learns that her Safari Movie Handjob Dream Date was actually her boyfriend Abe in disguise. He really does care about her!
00:16 - Sally immediately regrets saying something horribly insensitive to her father's new secretary.
00:18 - Megan reads from her notebook of rap poetry to Don, who disgustedly throws it in the trash. It is discovered by street tough and future hologram Tupac Shakur in 1988.
00:20 - Joan invites Lane into her office to give him a second chance to do what every one in the office has always wanted to do: make out with Joan while kicking Pete Campbell in the throat repeatedly.
There you have it, folks. If, by some strange twist, these things do not occur next week as Matthew Weiner has so clearly laid out above, then I will be back next week with corrections. And remember: Howard Johnson's has 28 more flavors in case you don't like orange; of course they have chocolate.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Free Agency Can Be Funny
Time was that a pro athlete played for one team, essentially throughout his career. Players were grossly underpaid compared to the amount of money they made for their leagues and franchises, but due to baseball's reserve system (and similar systems implemented by other major leagues), they were essentially indentured servants to whichever franchise initially signed them. The only way a player could change teams was if he were traded, like property, or cut--meaning it wasn't super likely another team would jump at the opportunity to sign him. Even as salaries rose slowly through the 1960s and 70s, players' ability to actually exert any leverage in contract negotiations continued to be severely limited by the reserve system. As Curt Flood famously put it, "a well paid slave is a slave nonetheless." (or something like that)
I'm not here to defend that system. It was terrible, exploitative, and from a labor and fairness perspective the current system of free agency and frequent player movement is much better. Pro sports now strike a balance--long-term contracts and initial waiting periods prior to free agency eligibility mean teams aren't in constant, chaotic flux despite the fact that every player who lasts long enough does eventually have the right to test the market waters. The one thing the old world had going for it, though, was from the perspective of fans. Imagine if Yankee fans had to sit on pins and needles wondering whether Mantle would choose to come back to them in the prime of his career. As notoriously cheap as the franchise was back then, the likelihood is that Mantle would've finished his career elsewhere. His entire legacy would be different. (He also would have been paid more fairly, but that's not the point for now). Albert Pujols, on the other hand, turned down a ridiculously huge offer in 2011 to finish his career in St. Louis in order to accept a way more ridiculously huge offer to play for the Angels. We Cards fans had to watch the face of the team walk away from us.
That's life in today's pro sports. It's a business, and as much as we would like the players to care about the teams as much as we do, we know deep down that they just can't. Don't get me wrong--I think they want to win more than we want them to win. It's just that they want to win because winning is cool and losing sucks; in most cases they don't want to win "for St. Louis" or "for New Orleans." They want to win for the sake of winning, no matter what their jerseys say. I'm sure the guys on the 2004 Red Sox thought it was cool to be the team that broke the Curse, and I'm sure the 2187 Cubs will feel the same way. But in general I think the point holds.
However, there is one entertaining, maybe even funny, unintended result of free player movement in pro sports: when guys who are connected by a single play when they opposed each other on a big stage end up sharing a locker room. This past offseason happens to have brought together two different pairs of dudes who were part of two of my favorite plays in sports history. Let's start with football.
Peyton Manning and Tracy Porter are now teammates. The interesting thing about this is that they now play for a team that was not involved in the Play That Connects Them:
As quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts, driving to try and tie the Super Bowl in the fourth quarter, Peyton Manning threw a quick slant to a cutting Reggie Wayne. Except Reggie Wayne didn't cut, Tracy Porter picked it off, and Hell froze over (i.e. the Saints won the Super Bowl). It. Was. Amazing. Like most Saints fans, I can't think of Porter or Manning without reliving this glorious moment in my head.
Now they're both in Denver, both of their own accord through free agent signings. How did that first day as teammates go? How will every day as teammates go? As mentioned above, while these guys probably lack the passion of fans, clearly they are competitive as all get-out. How is Peyton going to enjoy being reminded of the biggest interception of his career every time he looks up from his locker and sees Porter putting on the same uniform? How much crap is it ok for porter to give him about that play? Locker rooms are notorious for their pranks--will Porter force a rookie to play the above YouTube clip on the locker room flat screen every time Manning walks into the room? Wear his Super Bowl t-shirt to work every day? The possibilities are endless.
A similar phenomenon has taken place in baseball. My beloved Cardinals picked up Carlos Beltran in the offseason. I couldn't find good video of it, but his new teammate Adam Wainwright--after years of being an ace starter--is still The Guy Who Struck Out Beltran. In Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS, with Wainwright in the closer's role, Beltran came to the plate in the bottom of the 9th with a chance to extend the game or even win it for the Mets. This was the same guy who, in a Houston uniform, had destroyed the Cardinals two years earlier. But Wainwright made Beltran's knees buckle with an absolutely sick curveball. Now they're both wearing Cardinal Red.
I DID find this video from 2012 spring training:
I really, really hope Wainy threw a 12-to-6 dropper to start the practice session. And then winked. And then elaborately took off his 2006 World Series ring before continuing to pitch.
A guy can hope.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Connected at the Follicles
Since he first emerged as a solo artist in 2002, my sole exposure to Ben Kweller was relegated to backseats of cars in high school and the rare occasion when my girlfriend would put on a song of his on a long road trip. From what I could tell, his songs were tight, charming, and catchier than Ozzie Smith in 1994, which would seem like a perfect match for my love of toothache pop and shaggy roustabouts. I just never really paid much attention to him personally because his first album featured a precocious-looking boy (Kweller at 20 years old) with chipmunk cheeks brushing his teeth, and that sight threatened to blow my cute fuse.
This past Saturday, I watched that same precocious ragamuffin put down the toothbrush and pick up a six string for a concert at Lincoln Hall. After a brief pandering to the delighted Chicago audience, Kweller and his bandmates kicked things off with the crunchy, Fountains of Wayne-aping "Mean to Me," and though the lighting was dim (possibly to hide any signs of aging on the forever-boy-rocker's face), I could see that Kweller's new longer, wavy locks bore a stunning resemblance to those of another young, prodigiously talented singer of a much more aggressive variety: the late, brilliant, punk goliath Jay Reatard.
I s
aw Reatard at his last Austin, TX show in 2009 while he was promoting what would be his final album, "Watch Me Fall." That show was certainly a different beast from Kweller's intimate, inviting set on Saturday night. Whereas Kweller performed at the new Lincoln Hall in all its perfect-sounding glory, Reatard's show was at Emo's, the legendary punk club with legendarily awful sound. Kweller's hour-long set was interspersed with charming anecdotes about his attempts to quit smoking and how much he missed his wife and children; Reatard broke the sound barrier by playing nearly twenty songs in his forty-minute performance, saying nary a word during breaks. Kweller proved himself to be the ultimate good sport, having friendly back-and-forth banter with his fans and returning promptly for an encore during which he played one of his biggest hits, "Wasted and Ready;" Reatard's set ended with two fans throwing firecrackers on the ground, running onstage, and trying to punch Reatard in the face while he fought them off with the mike stand and eventually left the stage with his middle fingers raised. It was the very coolest.
You may wonder what, aside from their hair, the two guys in these pictures have in common. Quick answer: gnarly Gibson guitars. Real answer: they represent a fascinating case study in the "Nature vs. Nurture" debate. Kweller and Reatard were born within a year of each other ('80 and '81, respectively) and grew up in Southern towns with exposure to music at very early ages. They both released their first albums when they were fifteen years old and both tinkered around with several bands and side projects before achieving great acclaim with solo debuts that each had iconic covers.
If those covers weren't clear enough evidence, Reatard has a much darker worldview than Kweller (Sample Kweller lyric: "I'm in love with someone who's as pretty as a flower;" Sample Reatard lyric: "To me, you see, you always were a cunt.") Both singers have world-class ears for melodies and hooks, but they're utilized in entirely different ways. Kweller surrounds his quirky observations of teenage angst and young adulthood with either sparse guitars and pianos or crisply arranged rock and roll. Reatard, however, sings almost exclusively about the failures of society or the human body to the accompaniment of crashing cymbals and mega-fuzzed guitar or in-the-red new wave synths and disembodying reverb. While Ben Kweller is constantly inviting his audience into his wonderful world through clean vocals and lyrics rife with details from his personal life, Reatard seems to be searching for a way to alienate himself from his audience by hiding behind a goofy voice and sedimentary layers of distortion. And by punching them in the face.
It's entirely possible that these discrepancies in style can be attributed simply to the fact that people have different tastes, but I think this has more to do with their respective upbringings and lifestyles. Kweller was born in San Francisco, but grew up in the sleepy town of Greenville, TX, of which he is a "Notable resident and native," according to Wikipedia. Kweller's father, the first doctor in the history of Greenville, taught him how to drum and play guitar at age three . Kweller then began to write songs of his own and pursue them professionally from the time that he was eight. By fifteen, Kweller and his friends from school formed a nationally recognized buzz band, Radish, whose first album was recorded and released by Mercury Records. By twenty he had moved to Brooklyn and gotten married. He has two kids who are both unsettlingly precious, and all-in-all seems to be a pretty together guy.
Reatard (Born James Lindsey) grew up in North Memphis, which is the setting of the recent documentary tour de force Undefeated and is notable for being a tourist destination for those who can't afford to visit Haiti but would like to see a place of equal societal disarray. In the film Better than Something, Reatard describes falling asleep to the sound of police sirens and gunshots. He gets his unfortunate nom de plume from the fact that his grandmother ran a home for adults with intellectual disabilities and his only friends growing up were the 40-year-old women who lived there. By the age of fifteen, Reatard had also recorded his first album, but not before dropping out of school. Also, that album was recorded in his bedroom and the drums consisted of Reatard banging on a bucket by himself [full disclosure: this is not a very good album].
I'm not saying necessarily that privilege automatically makes you sweet and sunny, nor that a childhood in poverty makes you into a bitter, cynical punk rock misanthrope. However, there is a sort of confidence that comes from growing up comfortably. To wit, The Strokes won our hearts back in 2001 because of their cockiness and brash nonchalance about success; this nonchalance and high self-evaluation came from growing up with guys like fashion mogul John Casablancas as your father. Initially, that charm wore off as The Strokes took years off at a time and then released records that appeared to be written and recorded in a week's time because The Strokes never needed to be work hard to be successful.
Fortunately, Kweller doesn't seem to be going that route. Since his critically acclaimed debut in 2001, he's been diligently putting out workmanlike albums of the exact same quality every couple of years, touring behind them, and then spending the rest of his time with his family. While he may change up the instrumentation from time to time (adding a pedal steel on Changing Horses, adding the occasional strings on Ben Kweller), he doesn't seem to be interested in putting out anything dramatically different than what he's done before. But that's ok; he doesn't need to. Kweller writes a specific type of song that very few others can pull off with sincerity, so he’s made a career of doing just that. However, it seems that spending time with his family is now much more important than breaking barriers artistically, which probably was never one of his goals in the first place.
Reatard, on the other hand, left behind an impenetrably large discography for such a short career. In interviews he claimed to write songs every day and record them every week. In 2010, he put out a new single for Matador every month, and was constantly changing his style, eventually even experimenting with psychedelia, folk, and calypso. This kind of drive can only come from a man who has little else going in his life, who needed with every fiber in his being to be constantly creating new music. He talks in Better than Something about wanting to be able to buy his mother a new house--not a big one, just something in a neighborhood with fewer gangs. It was unlikely that Reatard would ever have been a huge success commercially, but the fact that he had to think that way was clearly what drove him to create such angry, vital work.
Ben Kweller probably won't ever write anything as visceral as Reatard's "My Shadow," or as epic as his "Always Wanting More," but he'll always be able to cook up a fresh batch of perfect pop, and it seems like he's got a pretty fantastic life. For that, I respect the hell out of the guy, and not just because he has fantastic, flowing rock-star locks.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
And the Best White Player Is...
Plenty of people complain about the Heisman trophy, and they’re right to. The award claims to recognize the “most outstanding player” in the sport, but what they don’t acknowledge is that that player must also come from a successful team in a power conference and play offense (I’m aware of the existence of Charles Woodson, but he was a kickreturner so shut up). Aside from having unstated and unfair requirements, the award’s parameters are non-existent. “Outstanding” is a colossally vague adjective so Heisman voters are forced to come up with their own criteria. The resulting vote has the objectivity and value of the election of prom queen. Here’s the thing, though: the college basketball awards are much worse.
Not as much fuss is made because college basketball isn’t as big a deal as college football and the awards don’t have a big primetime presentation ceremony. The biggest problem of all is that it’s not agreed upon which of the individual awards in college basketball is the most important: the Naismith award or the Wooden award. Regardless of which you want to refer to, in recent years, the awards have become an embarrassing glimpse into the racism of the awards’ presenters. For the purposes of this article I’m going to focus on the Naismith award since it’s been treated with greater reverence in recent years, but know that the Wooden Award (as well as the Oscar Robertson award and Adolph Rupp Trophy) is totally in step with the Naismith in terms of who has received the award since 1995.
Racism is everywhere in basketball coverage and leadership, from David Stern's denunciation of "hip-hop culture" to the frequent and patronizing descriptions of educated black men as "articulate." Basketball is the American team sport that, more than any other, is dominated by minorities, specifically black Americans. This might have something to do with the fact that it is third in popularity among the three major sports, and it certainly has something to do with the relative disdain with which its athletes are treated by the media and people of authority.
The Naismith Award, however, long stood as an independent. largely accurate arbiter of who the best player in college basketball was in a given year. The award was first granted in 1969 to Lew Alcindor (nee Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), arguably the greatest college player of all time. In the following decades, the award was granted to the likes of Michael Jordan, Danny Manning, Tim Duncan, and other legends of the game. It was an unbiased recognition of great college careers and a reward for hard work and brilliant talent. That's the way it was. Recently, however, things have taken a turn for the worst.
Racism is everywhere in basketball coverage and leadership, from David Stern's denunciation of "hip-hop culture" to the frequent and patronizing descriptions of educated black men as "articulate." Basketball is the American team sport that, more than any other, is dominated by minorities, specifically black Americans. This might have something to do with the fact that it is third in popularity among the three major sports, and it certainly has something to do with the relative disdain with which its athletes are treated by the media and people of authority.
The Naismith Award, however, long stood as an independent. largely accurate arbiter of who the best player in college basketball was in a given year. The award was first granted in 1969 to Lew Alcindor (nee Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), arguably the greatest college player of all time. In the following decades, the award was granted to the likes of Michael Jordan, Danny Manning, Tim Duncan, and other legends of the game. It was an unbiased recognition of great college careers and a reward for hard work and brilliant talent. That's the way it was. Recently, however, things have taken a turn for the worst.
Let me hit you with a statistic that, the more you think about it, the more ridiculous it should sound: four of the last seven Naismith award winners have been white: Andrew Bogut (2005), JJ Redick (2006), Tyler Hansbrough (2008), and Jimmer Fredette (2011). From 1969-2004, that is,the previous 35 years, there were a total of five white recipients of the award: Pete Maravich (1970), Bill Walton (1972-’74), Larry Bird (1979), Danny Ferry (1989), and Christian Laettner (1992). As you can see,it’s not that the quality of white play has improved.
Of the four that have won recently, Redick has the best argument. While a one dimensional player, he was the second leading scorer in the country for a team that won its conference and was a popular pick to win the tournament that year (although they were defeated by LSU in the Sweet Sixteen and Redick was shut down). Lamarcus Aldridge, Paul Millsap, and Brandon Roy have all proven to be much better players in the pros, but none distinguished themselves that year statistically. The other three are egregious.
The silliest of them all is Tyler Hansbrough’s winning the award in 2008. That year, Michael Beasley was third in the country in points per game with 26.2 and first in the country in rebounds per game with 12.4. Hansbrough was not in the top ten in either stat. Beasley put up those numbers in a major conference that included that year’s national champion. You could argue that Beasley didn’t play for as good a team as Hansbrough, but Kevin Durant had just won the award the year before with worse stats (25.8PPG/11.1 RPG) for a comparable Texas team, and I’m about to rip apart the whole “it matters what team they play for when it comes to white players winning the award” thing in a couple paragraphs anyway. Hansbrough winning the Naismith Award in 2008 was an embarrassment and it happened because he was the most high profile white player that season.
Bogut and Fredette should be lumped together because they’re both products of the same issue. Andrew Bogut had a tremendous year for Utah in 2004-2005, putting up 20.4 points per game and collecting 12.2 rebounds (although, as I’m sure you noticed, neither statistic is better than Beasley’s ‘07-‘08 numbers). Jimmer Fredette led the nation in scoring in the 2010-2011 season with 28.5 points per game. Based on these statistics alone, it appears that these young men were deserving of their awards until you remember something: both come from mid-major conferences.
Of the 42 winners of the award, 36 have come from major conferences. Aside from Bogut and Fredette, the list of mid-major winners consists only of Marcus Camby (1996), Larry Johnson (1991), David Robinson (1987) and Bird. The fact that Bogut and Fredette are not the game-changing talents that the other three are is obvious, but the main thing to think of in this case is not that all five of these players came from mid-major teams, but that only Bogut and Fredette came from mediocre mid-major teams. Camby’s UMass team, Johnson’s UNLV squad, and Bird’s Sycamores all made the Final Four and were all one seeds in their tournaments. Bogut’s Utah squad made it to the Sweet Sixteen after getting an at-large six seed, and Fredette’s BYU team made it to the round of sixteen also as an at-large three seed. Robinson's Navy team was an eight seed which lost in the first round, but he's one of the fifteen or twenty greatest players ever and had one of the strangest and most compelling paths to stardom of any college great ever. If either Andrew Bogut or Jimmer Fredette want to look me in the eye and tell me they belong in the same sentence as David Robinson, then either Andrew Bogut or Jimmer Fredette is going to get laughed at. Aggressively.
The Naismith Award functions like the Heisman in that if you don’t play for a national title contender you’re going to have to do something really remarkable statistically and there’s got to be a serious talent vacuum among the contenders for you to have a shot at contention. That was not the case Bogut’s year, when either Deron Williams (12.5 PPG, top five nationally in assists), the undisputed leader of an Illinois team that lost in the national championship game, or, better yet, Sean May (17.5 PPG, 10.7 RPG), who led UNC to the title that season fit the common mold of a Naismith winner.
In Fredette’s case, Kemba Walker clearly should have won the award because he averaged 23.5 points per game for the team that won the national championship, but let’s say for a minute that people took Fredette’s stats more seriously because people have started looking at mid-majors in a new light and because UConn caught fire at the end of the year. I don’t really buy this argument, because if that were the case then Kenneth Faried would have been a finalist for the award last year. He averaged 17.3 PPG and a nation-leading 14.5 RPG for a very good Morehead State team. Not only that, he broke Duncan’s record for most career rebounds with a month left in the season! But Faried received no attention for that accomplishment and no recognition for the award. It’s possible that you think that happened because rebounds aren’t as sexy as points, but consider this: Reggie Hamilton, a black player for a very good Oakland team, led the country in points per game this year with 26.2. But you haven’t heard of him. You’ve heard of the guy who’s third in the nation in scoring: Doug McDermott.
McDermott is this year’s offender when it comes to over-hyped white players getting a ridiculous amount of media attention even though they play for mediocre mid-major teams that never get talked about under other circumstances. He’s a First Team All-American and one of four finalists for the prestigious Naismith Award, beating out the likes of Jared Sullinger, Terrence Jones, Kevin Jones, and Scott Machado (all clearly superior players) for the spot in that final four. He likely won’t win the award, but his presence as a finalist shows that this new tradition of glorifying good white players at the expense of great black players is going strong.
I wondered why this trend started so recently, why the Naismith Award has gone from a strong (if major-program heavy) indicator of who the best college basketball player is in a given year to a racially biased embarrassment, so I started researching how the award is given. It turns out that fan voting constitutes 25 percent of the total voting. I called up Eric Oberman, an administrator at the Atlanta Tipoff Club, which oversees the Naismith award and asked him when fan voting began. Here’s the kicker: 2005, right when this trend began. So while the mainstream media and sportswriters are largely to blame, they’re the ones framing the conversation, it appears that college basketball fans themselves are the x-factor that changed things for the worse. So congratulations, folks, it appears you’ve gotten what you wanted: a forum to present the Best White Player Award year after year. You must be so proud.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Welcome to BrOzone Lair!
Hello Internet,
If you're reading this, then you're lucky enough to have found your way into the BrOzone Lair, the number one source on the internet for the thoughts and musings of the brothers Orlansky. Did you notice that the first "O" in the title is capitalized? It's not a typo--it's because the last name Orlansky starts with the letter "O." This is just one example of the wit and witticism that you can expect from Abram, Jonny, and Benji O.
Other staples of this site will include sportswriting, pop culture analysis, essays, comedy pieces, crossword puzzles, magazine clippings, toenail clippings, thinkpieces, pink theses, podcasts, short fiction, digital videos, and miscellany. We're looking to provide you, the humble internet, with thought-provoking, entertaining pieces that will go up frequently throughout the week. Be happy that you got in on the ground floor, because your friends will all be very impressed in a few months.
Look for our first piece from Jonny to be up soon. It'll be about the role race plays in Naismith Award voting. Should be a doozer.
Take it sleazy,
BO
If you're reading this, then you're lucky enough to have found your way into the BrOzone Lair, the number one source on the internet for the thoughts and musings of the brothers Orlansky. Did you notice that the first "O" in the title is capitalized? It's not a typo--it's because the last name Orlansky starts with the letter "O." This is just one example of the wit and witticism that you can expect from Abram, Jonny, and Benji O.
Other staples of this site will include sportswriting, pop culture analysis, essays, comedy pieces, crossword puzzles, magazine clippings, toenail clippings, thinkpieces, pink theses, podcasts, short fiction, digital videos, and miscellany. We're looking to provide you, the humble internet, with thought-provoking, entertaining pieces that will go up frequently throughout the week. Be happy that you got in on the ground floor, because your friends will all be very impressed in a few months.
Look for our first piece from Jonny to be up soon. It'll be about the role race plays in Naismith Award voting. Should be a doozer.
Take it sleazy,
BO
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