Broken Flowers

July 18, 2005


A new Bill Murray movie?

Sign me up.

Broken Flowers, in theatres August 5th.

Tags: Movies |

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Sports Dakota?

July 17, 2005


I’m proud of my state. I have no qualms in saying I’m from South Dakota, home of Mount Rushmore, the Black Hills, and cheap real estate. I’ve enjoyed being raised here, and I look forward to a future here in Sioux Falls, the only city I’ve ever really called “home.”

Being a sports fan in South Dakota, however, can be hell. I’ve never followed college football or basketball enough to care about any Division II teams, which rules out my interest in any South Dakota state or private school, and I’m not the biggest hockey fan so the Sioux Falls Stampede are out as well. In fact, the only thing I’ve ever really followed is the Skyforce, and that’s only because as a huge NBA fan I’ve had no choice but to cheer for the local near-NBA team.

There’s an obvious reason that most South Dakotans call Minnesota teams their favorites – we’ve nothing to call our own.

This was illustrated recently by ESPN. The all-sports network has begun a series called “50 States in 50 Days,” a tribute to sports across the country. It’s a pretty cool idea – they’ve chosen one state per day and have scheduled a short feature on each state for the day’s SportsCenter. It begins in Massachusetts with the Yankees vs. Red Sox and continues on through the country – Iowa’s “Field of Dreams,” Kansas’ Trego County Fair, and Oregon’s U.S. Windsurfing National Championships, just to name a few.

Included for each state is a poll: “Vote for the best of (YOUR STATE)!”

Here’s where the differences are shown.

The questions are pretty basic: the first is “What is the most memorable sports moment?”

New York’s got a few (including the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” Joe Namath’s Super Bowl guarantee, the Miracle Mets in 1969, Willis Reed’s return to help the Knicks win the Finals in 1970, and The Miracle on Ice). Even some of sports best blunders are added in – Bill Buckner’s cursed miss that helped the Mets win the World Series over the Red Sox, and Scott Norwood’s missed field goal in the 1991 Super Bowl, sending the Buffalo Bills to the first of four straight Super Bowl losses.

California has so many that it has to be separated into specific sports: Most memorable baseball moment (Kirk Gibson’s World Series home run, Barry Bonds’ 71st home run), football moment (“The Catch,” “The Play“), and basketball moment (UCLA or the Lakers, take your pick.) Texas is filled with college football, five NBA championships in the past 15 years, and the Cowboys. Florida’s resume includes three undefeated seasons (Dolphins in 1972, University of Miami in 1991 and 2001). Illinois has the Bears, the Cubs, and the Bulls.

South Dakota? Here is what we can choose from:
- Univ. of South Dakota wins NCAA Div. II basketball title (1958)
- Carrol Hardy pinch hits for Ted Williams, only player ever to do so (1960)
- South Dakota State wins NCAA Div. II basketball title on Sid Bostic’s 40-foot shot (1963)
- Billy Mills wins gold in 10,000-meter race at Olympics (1964)
- Orlando Magic select Mike Miller with fifth overall pick in NBA draft (2000)
- Josh Heupel leads Oklahoma Univ. to win in Orange Bowl and national title (2001)
- Adam Vinatieri kicks game-winning field goal vs. Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI (2002)
- Adam Vinatieri kicks game-winning field goal vs. Panthers in Super Bowl XXXVIII (2004)

A kicker (twice) and two state schools winning Division II titles. Even South Dakota’s NBA selection has nothing to do with his legacy or contributions to the game – it’s just that he was chosen at all!

I mean, come on! Even Alaska (the Iditarod), North Dakota (Roger Maris’ home state), and Wyoming (a NCAA basketball title) have something of worth to choose from. South Dakota? We’ve got Mike Miller.

Favorite state team? You can choose from the basketball and football programs from both South Dakota State University (SDSU) and University of South Dakota (USD) or the Skyforce. Biggest rivalry? Forget Yankees/Red Sox or Lakers/Celtics – we’ve got USD/SDSU football, SDSU/North Dakota State University (NDSU) football, or the CBA’s Sioux Falls Skyforce/Dakota Wizards.

Voting on other categories has been relegated to “which of these Minnesota teams is your favorite?” and “Which celebrity do you identify with the most – Mary Hart or George McGovern.”

I’m not sure what I was expecting, though. I live in a state that ranks in the bottom five in total population, and we’ve nothing to offer on the metropolitan platter aside from sleepy little Sioux Falls and Black Hills anchor Rapid City. I’m happy with my state, even if its sports are horrible and its stars are negligible, and I really shouldn’t whine about not having any professional sports teams to call my own.

Still – this lack of hometown teams is exactly the reason my fealty lies with the Indiana Pacers, the Miami Dolphins, and the Minnesota Twins. I’m free from the burden of rooting for my state’s sports powers, mainly because we don’t have any.

Anyway, as long as I have access to cable, who cares what state I’m in?

Tags: Sports |

4 Comments

Retraction and publication

July 16, 2005


Maybe I was a little harsh before. When I was verbally browbeating a few days ago in “Disgusted,” I mentioned that I would never forgive him. For that I apologize — it is silly to say that I’d never forgive someone at all. But what he did was pretty stupid and very bad, and it was the type of thing that I will have a hard time forgiving. Regardless of the intent, and despite all of the sucking up that has come since his return, I still feel little to no remorse in saying that I’ll never forgive his actions.

Summing up: the actions — unforgivable. The person — as a good person with a clear conscience, I will someday be able to forgive him, whether it’s weeks or years. I hope this clears some things up.

I’m still mad about it though, and I still don’t like the idea of them getting back together.

————————————–

On a lighter note, Harry Potter was released today. The unfortunate thing is that we’ll have to buy it at Barnes and Noble since we’ve already reserved it and Kerrie has a gift certificate burning a hole in her pocket. The fortunate thing is that we have the gift card. I love birthdays. They mean free books, even if they aren’t techincally mine (it’s Kerrie’s gift.)

My mother should be receiving shortly her British edition of the book. We brought back the first four from England when Goblet of Fire was released (I just happened to be visiting Kerrie in Alnwick when it hit the shelves) and now she has managed to get the last two with the same cover scheme and “Briticisms” inside.

I’d like to read them and search for the differences, but she had a hard time just taking them out of the plastic, let alone actually read them.

I kid, mom. I kid.

They’ve been read, but only in humidity-controlled safes with white gloves and an anti-bacterial jumpsuit.

Boy, I wonder if I’ll be invited for Thanksgiving this year.

Tags: Annoyances, Books, Friends |

1 Comment

Chute Roosters

July 14, 2005


With all the turmoil, stress, and mortgage signing floating around our group of friends lately, I nearly forgot about our weekend vacation.

Well, by “vacation” I really mean “family reunion.”

I should preface this by saying that seven hours is a long ways to drive in a car with three people and two dogs, especially if one of the people is already sick. I could take my fair share of snorting and coughing, but after a while I’ll admit that my nerves were a little frayed.

The main thing, however, is that we delighted ourselves with a little area south of Rapid City called Hill City. Hill City is one of the many small towns that masquerade daily as some sort of tourist Mecca, and in this case it did a fine job.

I always find it humorous that small towns like this can pretend they are bigger than their population would otherwise reveal. Hill City has its own brewery, its own winery, and its own lengthy downtown shopping district. It’s filled with a mix of clothing, outdoors, and recreation shops, and generally looks like the type of place one might retire to after years in the big city. I enjoyed the town immensely, regardless of the frayed nerves.

The highlight of the weekend, however, was a bar called Chute Roosters. It was karaoke night, and we were lured away from Deadwood to spend a night watching my great-uncle-in-law Byron sing obscure country songs.

Upon first look, it’s just a bar with a deck – no different from any other bar with a deck that I’ve experienced. But once we got into the karaoke mode, we found that Chute Roosters was not necessarily content with being another dive bar in the Black Hills.

First, our karaoke ringmaster was intermingling the standard American karaoke songs with Mexican dance music. Half the time we would watch someone butcher Patsy Cline, and the other half we would watch a handful of locals dance to their music, a rare display of diversity in what had always seemed to me as “cowboy country.”

The other great piece was the owner herself – Burt. Burt was an older woman with a deeper voice who came up to the front, near the end of the night, and thanked all of us for being there. She then was coerced into singing one of her favorite country songs. Can you believe this? When was the last time you were at a restaurant, or a bar, or anyplace really, and the owner of the place came up and thanked you for your business, for the patronage?

That was great.

So as we winded our way the few blocks back to our car, I had promised myself that I would give Chute Roosters a little bit of recognition, not only for playing host to a very fun night (I finally nailed “Born to Run,” I’d say) but for reaffirming my faith in the “friendly neighborhood bar.”

Tags: Travel |

1 Comment

Fantasy football

July 13, 2005


Thanks to Todd Epp over at S.D.Watch I’m currently entered into what seems like a giant “political/blogosphere” Fantasy Football League.

Since I’ve never finished any higher than 6th place (in an eight team league) this should hopefully be a reversal of fortune. Unfortunately, I know it will not be.

My team is here, so far. I designed the helmet myself.

Tags: Football, Sports |

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Disgusted

July 12, 2005


Sometimes, without warning, friends can do some incredible things. They can suddenly show traits that were never visible to anyone on the outside. They can turn from quiet and unassuming to pig-headed and ridiculous in the span of days, and they can turn close friends away in the process.

There are a lot of things that are important when trying to cultivate a relationship: communication, trust, respect. We on the outside may not see any contrary ideals, but inside the relationship, when these three things break down, the bonds between can also break.

So it’s safe to say that when you leave home in secret, not revealing your details until the next day and never face to face (or via phone) and nefarious wrongs are credited to you, you face the prospect of coming home to an empty house, or at least a hostile one. You have broken some golden rules. You have not been truthful. You have not relayed any sort of communication, about this trip or about any important subject. You have not even bothered to respect the feelings of the other party.

I don’t usually like to direct attention to one person, but this is a case that has disgusted me since I learned. I know that the person to whom this is meant may never read this. That’s fine.

You, my friend, have done something that will end up being unforgivable in my mind. You have hurt and lied to a friend of mine, and while you also are a friend there are things that take precedence. I know you’ll have a pocket of friends who will forgive you, but I’m not sure that I’ll ever be part of that group.

Instead, I’ll have trouble talking to you when we see each other. All that I’ll see is what you’ve done, which is to take leave of a great thing and gallivant off to something superficial. I’ll see that you didn’t have the heart to tell anyone what you were really doing. I’ll see that you don’t have any respect for how that person waiting for you back home feels. I’ll see that you are so full of yourself that it’s a wonder you could even live with someone else at all.

I’ll see that, with this one trip, you have alienated yourself from the majority of your friends. We were here consoling, discussing and coaching while you were sending messages back about how much fun you were having. Without her. That’s unbelievable to me. I thought you were an honest person. I thought you had a thread of integrity.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to turn over to an empty bed for five days while you tramped around Chicago like some sort of clueless moron. I don’t know what I would have thought. I do know, however, that it’ll be a long time before I, before many of us, forgive you.

You’ve taken something that I thought was an institution and thrown it away. You’ve hurt a friend of mine, someone that we’ve felt protective of, someone who you brought to us in the first place and someone that we’ve embraced as one of our own. You’ve done all of this with no thread of respect, with no clue about communication.

Without an ounce of truth.

You’ve fucked up, and we’re not helping you out of it.

Tags: Annoyances, Friends |

3 Comments

A sensational story

July 8, 2005


Sometimes the tragedy of terror cannot be explained in words, or by choosing sides and fighting it out through media clips and the blogosphere.

Sometimes the only way to convey the horror that takes place in our world is by just keeping silent and remembering that no matter what, regardless of how righteous or self-serving we can be, regardless of how open to change, open to charity, open to living life in the pursuit of freedom or reform, we are all human.

No matter what, humans can be hurt. Humanity can be hurt. None of us are really safe, and the peace that comes with realizing that is actually quite refreshing.

I’m not afraid of terrorist attacks anymore. I’m not afraid to go to London someday, or to fly in a plane, or to have a war spill over onto our country’s grounds.

What I am afraid of is living my life being too afraid, too spooked by sensationalism and doom to actually enjoy my life.

I don’t care who you are – you’re only on this earth for a short time. Live it. Argue, laugh, cry, shout – do these things when they’re necessary. But don’t cloud my time on this earth with your apocalyptic messages. This type of thing happens in every generation, and it will certainly happen again.

It’s horrible. But we are slowly learning to live with the horrible.

Tags: On... |

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