Pissing on Andre's Parade

I feel like 2 or 3 people are going to wonder if I still think that the Blazers should trade Andre Miller after he scored 52 last night, in the same way that they wonder if I've seen the pictures of Greg Oden's huge schlong. (I haven't seen the pictures yet, but I know that I probably will at some point.) And yes, I still think that they should trade Miller. In scoring 52 points, he played like exactly what he should be--a veteran who can do a lot to help a crappy offense win against a confused opponent. Now that Miller has proved that he still belongs on the court, rather than the bench or the in the broadcast booth, maybe the Blazers can get something for him. There should not be shots left for Miller when Roy and Outlaw come back, and the Blazers should not plan around a team that's missing them.

Fuck You Republicans, Media: Part 967

I don't know how the health care debate reached this point without it being pretty widely known that the health insurance industry has an antitrust exemption, and that this is a large reason for our broken health care system. OK, I do know how this happened. It's an issue that includes not only the word "insurance," but also the word "antitrust." After hearing both of these words together, most journalists' eyes glaze over, because they know that these words bore people, and because they know that these words signal a real, substantive political issue that involves no baby killing or photos of middle aged women with short hair kissing each other and it might require some work to simplify it and explain it to people. (It's not like it's their job to do that, or anything.)

Republicans, Ben Nelson, and Lieberman crying socialism at the prospect of allowing capitalist market competition in the insurance industry is the absolute height of cynicism. Congress is totally fucked with industry lobbyists. The "serious news" media is totally fucked with a celebrity-stalking ratings frenzy and self-fulfilling assumptions about this country's illiteracy and retardation. This country is basically fucked.

Goodlifereport

Check out the brand spanking new web magazine www.goodlifereport.com and sign up for the newsletter. Also check out two reviews I have on the site. Do it.

Corporate Citizenship

Good op-ed:

The text of the Constitution nowhere suggests that corporations, having no commitment to the public good and no moral accountability, should be treated as if they were citizens having political rights equivalent to those of citizens. It should be deeply troubling to all citizens that Supreme Court justices disclaiming "judicial activism" would seriously consider extending constitutional political rights to abstract entities.

The Finale

Conan Says Goodbye with Will Ferrell & Freebird - watch more funny videos

Downtown?

On court at Tufts, he was known for taking risky, outside jump shots. Around campus, he was known as "Downtown Scotty Brown" . . . .

As Erik points out, there was no college 3-pointer until 1982, one year after he graduated.

I would say that I'm shocked that he went to Tufts, but, meh, not really. At 6'2," he would have been at least 7 inches taller than the rest of the entire student body.

Chili v. Chalupa

I had the opportunity to eat a free Wendy's chili yesterday, courtesy of the New York Islanders. I went to their game Tuesday, and it turns out that they have a deal that every fan can get free chili the day after any game when they score three goals, just by presenting a ticket stub at Wendy's. The Islanders won 5-0 Tuesday and secured chili for the crowd in the first period. Toward the end of the game, I even heard excited murmurs about "double chili" if the Islanders scored six goals, which caused the man behind me to wisely explain to his son, "I don't think there is such a thing as double chili." Because, let's face it, the kid had to learn sooner or later that, should the Islanders ever be so motherfucking lucky that they score six goals in one game, it will be kind of anticlimactic, just like the rest of life.

The Islanders' free chili reminded me of a giveaway the NBA has had for a little over a decade. Any time an NBA team scores more than 100 points, all fans present receive coupons for free Taco Bell Chalupas. This giveaway was made famous a year ago, when Cleveland fans booed LeBron James for selfishly dribbling out the clock at the end of a 99-93 Cavs victory and denying them their rightful Chalupas.

I have been a part of many Chalupa-hungry crowds of Trailblazers fans (even as I wrote this yesterday, I was watching a Portland crowd greedily chant "Chalupa! Chalupa!," as the Blazers spent 5 minutes hovering around 98 points), and having now tasted free hockey chili, I can say that the Islanders have a much better promotion than the NBA. (Apparently the only NHL team that shares the chili promotion is Columbus. I have no idea why Columbus has a professional sports franchise or why they named it after the Civil War.)

Taco Bell's NBA Chalupa promotion started about ten years ago, when the Chalupa was first introduced to America. This coincided with a TV advertising blitz that all but guaranteed to any sane viewer that Chalupas are disgusting, whatever the fuck they are. The first time I ate one for free confirmed this. They are weird and are often filled with unearthly spicy pink creamy sauces. I have long suspected that the NBA promotion is the only reason that Taco Bell can even continue to sell Chalupas. Do people really pay money for them? (Although, I admit that I have similar thoughts about most of the stuff Taco Bell advertises. How anyone drunk or stoned enough to eat at Taco Bell orders anything other than their run of the mill tacos and burritos has always been beyond me.)

Wendy's chili, on the other hand, is something that I have at times paid real American money for. Sure, it is made from the remnants of the grey-purple mad cow-e coli-ammonia-MSG chunks of beef that were not fit to become actual Wendy's burgers, and sure it is completely bland until you squeeze in their little packets of Wendy's hot sauce, but it is chili goddamn it.

It is easy for non sports fans and people who have never eaten crappy prize food to, like LeBron, wonder why the fuck people will bother to go to Wendy's to redeem a coupon for a free $1 cup of chili or $1 Chalupa (I actually stopped redeeming my Chalupa coupons years ago, and it is impossible to even give the coupons away, Portland's street punk kids being the precious bastards that they are). Well, the best way I can explain it is this: to eat the free junk food from a sports victory coupon involves a sort of transubstantiation. To eat to food you got for free from your team's game is to eat your team's victory.

Unfortunately, Chalupas are so disgusting that it is impossible to think about anything while eating them other than those urban legends about the human feces in Taco Bell's beef. It was never possible to think of a Chalupa as the food incarnation of an ill-advised Rasheed Wallace game-clinching three-pointer. But I could see how an Islanders fan could feel like he was eating a winning goal with each bite of chili. Because Wendy's chili is not that bad. After all, it is chili.

Stay Off the Hell City Bus

I've been meaning to post this for awhile. This is, honest-to-god, a stop on the N15 from Hempstead to Long Beach.

Terrorball

This is an excellent op-ed by a law prof who unfortunately is probably an unabashed libertarian. He's right: grow up, America.

Everyone should read this article.

Flying the Inconsiderate, Ulcer-Causing Skies

United Airlines must be in a heap of shit. I flew on United last week, and it seems that they have concluded that they cannot possibly make enough money to keep their planes in the air without tricking and frustrating passengers.

By now I am more or less inured to the era of paying for in-flight food and checked bags. And, hell, even though charging for blankets does seem a little miserly, I understand that it costs money to clean them, so making people purchase them does make some sense to me.

United shows endless ads for these things--which used to be free and are still not very good--while in flight. I find this pretty tasteless and annoying, because most other airlines at least still seem mildly ashamed to charge money for their food. But the in-flight ads for dry sandwiches do not come close to inspiring the kind of homicidal rage that is the natural reaction to United's check-in kiosks.

The objective for travelers using a check-in kiosk is to check-in quickly without holding up the line of people behind them. This is especially true for those of us who are never ever at the airport 2 hours before boarding. But the objective of United's kiosk is to get you to accidentally buy shit you did not intend to buy because you are trying to get out of check-in and to the security line as soon as possible.

Instead of having a single small ad on one screen of the check-in asking if you would like to purchase an upgraded seat, every single step of the check-in is interrupted by pop-up ads for first class or extended legroom seats--and in each ad, the larger, default button is to say, "Yes, I would like to purchase this." The effect, which seems intended, is that people trying to check in fast will accidentally buy upgrades they did not want.

This makes checking into a United flight extraordinarily reminiscent of trying to cancel a subscription to a hardcore pornography site which was having a "one-day free trial" last night when you came home drunk. Except you are also trying to catch a plane.

If you hear of any homicides at Chicago O'Hare, it won't be terrorists. It will be kiosk rage.

This Ad Age guy breaks it down in a less angry fashion.

Was this a case or an episode of Perfect Strangers?

Papadopoulos v. Gardner's Village, Inc., 604 N.Y.S.2d 570 (N.Y.App.Div.2.Dept.,1993)

In suit against petting zoo for injuries suffered by elderly woman when goat struck her from behind with its horns, woman was required to prove that goat had vicious propensities and that owner of zoo had knowledge of such propensities or that they existed for such period of time that reasonably prudent person would have discovered them.

The Pootie Tang Commission

It's hard to figure out who ruined Pootie Tang, or whether it was even possible for it to be good. Louie CK wrote and directed it, and he's always good in shorter formats. But he may also have been a horrible director. Based on this screentest, I'm going to say that the studio must have ruined it.