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I tripped across an old video for one of my favorite songs today. It brought me straight back to high school and some formative outtings with my buddy Ben. I’m roughly 60 days short of 40-years-old and fighting hard to heed Billy Bragg’s warning that “nostalgiafree video poker how to play backgammon no deposit bonus online casino 888 no download casino play roulette craps game black jack download american roulette play video poker baccarat free casino game no download online casino free money on line casino wagering roulette online online casino betting free online casino slots free craps best casino roulette gambling internet casino gambling uk best casino online full pay video poker no deposit casino code best craps game black jack tournament best online casino site craps online game newest online casino free slots no download play blackjack online free dueces wild video poker black jack gambling online video poker game free casino cash no deposit video poker tutorial play free video poker how to win at black jack mach-zehnder modulatorcasino roulette casino guide how to win at roulette rules of craps casino game online real money backgammon baccarat casino online free video poker game play free video poker video poker odds video poker tournaments is the opium of the age,” but there’s just no denying Elvis Costello’s “Watch Your Step” forкомпютриonline casino me:

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I want to just say–I’ve wanted desperately to say for almost an entire year–”It’s a fricking horse!” and leave it at that.  But when the headline, along with a picture of the animal in action, makes the front page of the online New York Times, it’s not so easy to dismiss the story.  Astounding as it is to believe, many, many people (and not just the industry types) truly loved last year’s Kentucky Derby Winner horse.  More than that, they were riveted to every twist and turn of fate following the broken leg at Preakness.  Barbaro is fine–the surgery went well, was the word early on, and fans everywhere breathed a sigh of relief.  Then, for the next several months came the updates, none of which I read in any detail.  It was enough to know that they were there, though, not buried on a backpage or confined to the sports section.  Over the past several months, the state of Barbaro’s precarious health became–off and on–a major news story.  And now, as I glance at the front page of the Times, I read the news of Barbaro’s demise.  Right on top, front and center.  Below, a little to the left, there’s news of a suicide bombing in Israel.  I realize that at the time I checked the newspaper site, the report of the tragedy in the Middle East had been filed 25 minutes earlier, while the news of Barbaro’s demise was only a few minutes old.  Still, was or was not Barbaro a fricking horse?  If he were a cow, we would have eaten him and uttered a resounding “ummmm.”

Today, more human beings are dead.  Where were you a half hour ago?  Eating lunch?  Having a coffee break?  These three people in Israel were busy being blown up.  No doubt their blood still flows across the floor of the bakery at which they worked.  They’re in good company too because, across the world, people have been getting blown up everyday.  It happens with such hideous regularity that we don’t even read the articles.  Ten dead here, twenty three there.  Day after day after day…..just part of the pseudo tumultuousness of our overly mediated lives.

Today, though, is different.  Something has touched our hearts.  Today the Great Barbaro is dead. 

We should be ashamed that we care. 

Gilbert Arenas–or Agent Zero, or The Hibachi–is not only one of the best and most exciting scorers in the game. He is also a hubristic (and, okay, a humorous) chatterbox. On his blog the other day, he boasted about how he could score 85 points against Duke. It is important to realize that Duke’s coach, the legendary Mike Krzyzewski, cut Arenas from the U.S. national team last summer.

This past holiday, I was home in Cleveland, the magical place that only I think about as such, and I listened to my friend Crunch talk with great excitement about the fourth grade basketball team he coaches. He was especially delighted that his team had the night before pulled out a victory with a last minute shot. I’ve never seen these St. Mary’s of the Falls Whatevers play a single game, but I know Crunch’s son is on the team. The boy is four foot something. He wears glasses. He’s a nice, polite kid with the gentle name of Nicholas. Without knowing a single thing about any other member of the team, I am going to make a bold, Arenasian proclamation. No, I’m going to go the Hibachi one flame higher. I’m going to say right here and now that if I played against the fourth graders of St. Mary’s of the Falls, I’d score at will. I’d light them up for 100. Crunch could even hire Coach K to run the show, and it would do no good.

I am, if nothing else, confident in my abilities. Just call me Agent (1)00.

I often ponder how folks come to choose their research or occupational pursuits. What motivated Bill to pursue a career in proctology? At what age did Sam decide he wanted to spend the rest of his working days filtering raw sewage? Did Rebecca’s ancestors also show a predisposition for stuying the optic nerves of Lebanese cows? Don’t get me wrong… I think it’s great that there are people in the world who are willing, or excited, to do research or hold jobs in fields that I don’t personally find desirable. But that doesn’t keep me from wondering how they came to love (or at least tolerate) what they do.

To illustrate my point, I offer Dr. Charles Roselli, a researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University. Dr. Roselli has taken a lot of unwarranted heat over his research into why some sheep are homosexual. I encourage you to read that article as it’s far more interesting than this absurd blog post and raises interesting questions about the worth of the “global news cycle,” the same news cycle that I believe is willfully misused by political parties to spread misinformation about their opponents.

But aside from all the controversy, I just can’t help but ask myself, can Dr. Roselli point to the exact moment in his past when it became painfully obvious that studying the sexual preferences of goats was his calling?

It doesn’t take much to get me upset. I pick up a paper (that is, if I’m feeling old fashioned) scan a story almost at random, and just like that I am whining or seething or formulating a counterargument faster than my brain can move. More often than not, I am firmly convinced that I have quite a bit more that the slightest idea I know what I am talking about. Usually–sometimes it takes a half a day or so–I realize that whatever thoughts I had formulated or, God forbid, spoken aloud, were off base or stupid or nothing different than anyone randomly selected from the general population could have come up with.

But there are those rare occasions when I read something and experience that visceral feeling, when I rant and rave and what I say is true–it’s just got to be. Case in point: In today’s New York Times, there is an article about entrepreneural kids called “Barons Before Bedtime” (January 25, 2007). Penelope Greene, the writer of the article, reports that

“For some time now, teenagers have been looking to entrepreneurs as pop icons — whether Gates or Trump — as much as they have to rock stars and athletes. Having your own business has become very cool; having your own business before your 20th birthday indescribably so.”

I do not have kids of my own, but when I read that I began to seethe. Words, phrases, objections–everything crowded into my cramped head. Some of this stuff was platitudinous–there’s more to life than money. Okay, all of it was platitudinous. That said, isn’t there more to life than money? Isn’t there more to repsect in another human being than his/her ability to make money? What are you going to do, you young go getter kids, when you get your money? How many vehicles will you need? How big will that TV screen need to be? How many gadgets will you have to have? It is a truism in America that everything is worth having for the sole reason that it is produced and effectively marketed. It is also true that, to paraphrase Aristotle, the unmediated life is not worth living. What kind of lives have we created for ourselves? With these screen savvy, business obsessed kids, how worse will it be ten or twenty years from now? I don’t think it will be “very cool,” but then again, I’m about twenty years too old for even fitting into the general demographic of those Americans who have the greatest possibility of being “cool.”

So, you can see that this article really made me cook. And then, I read this:

“’These kids want to make money,’ said Atoosa Rubenstein, 35, the former editor in chief of CosmoGirl, which she founded when she was 26, and Seventeen magazine. ‘They are being marketed to all the time, and they get what marketing is all about.’”

Rubenstein finds nothing troubling about this phenomenon. She seems to applaud young kids for their initiative, their ability to recongnize just how a consumer society works. The kids get what marketing is about. They have to because in America marketing is the meaning of life. Sell, sell, sell. Buy, buy, buy. And when you need a little quiet time away from the dog-eat-dog world, there’s always your 52 inch plasma screen, with surround sound, for a little piece of mind.

I’m not off base or stupid. Not on this one, I’m not. I may, however, be guilty of being derivative in my analysis. But that doesn’t mean what I say is untrue.

Indianapolis is all aflutter with pride because their beloved Colts are finally going to the Super Bowl. I will preface this post with a declaration of my hatred for the Indy Colts — when I was 14 my family moved to York, PA (45 minutes from Baltimore) the same year the elder Ursey moved the Colts out of Baltimore under cover of night. All those years ago I swore that I would never root for the Colts until all the Urseys were cold in the ground. If there’s one thing I can do it’s hold a grudge. Fate delivered me to Indiana 15 years ago and I’ve had to endure the god damn Colts and their johnny-come-lately fans ever since.

So last night after the game ended I switched to a different network to avoid the inevitable dopey celebrations and interviews. But while watching an unrelated program, every commercial break consisted of Colts updates, first of fan reaction to the win, then footage of fans pouring out of the dome, then the press conference, then more fans on the street. OK, I get it, the Colts won. How many times do you need to break in to tell me?

Then I wondered… who is paying off the advertisers who had their commercials bumped so we can watch more blue numbnuts dance in the streets as if they personally picked off that final Tom Brady pass? I’m guessing there’s an agreement that the local news can preempt advertising for “breaking news” but at what point does a sports victory stop being breaking news?

Now I’ll have to endure a couple more weeks of Colts cheerleading disguised as the nightly news. “Our breaking story tonight, Peyton Manning had spaghetti for dinner!” “Let’s check the weather… it should be warm in Miami next week when the Colts…” “Now for sports… the Colts blah, blah, blah.”

Of course if Peyton throws three interceptions and the Colts lose to the Bears, I’ll relish every weeping minute of Colts coverage.

On my worst days–and maybe yours too (or your best)–I am little more than a pair of eyes staring into and manipulating the screen of the moment. This is a significant part of my job, which is a good one, which is not back breaking or knee bruising or (to my knowledge) cancer causing. Besides eye strain and carpel tunnel, there’s very little in my job that brings me physical pain.

If there is an occupational hazard, however, it is that, as a full time screen watcher and mainpulator, I tend to take in the world around me in a very second hand way. Day after day, like a well paid coach potato (imagine a Yukon Gold, with a silvering goatee), I watch and watch and watch. On the weekends, when sports deign to grace my cableless TV, I watch even more. Basketball is my sport of choice, but right now, football takes precedence because the season is winding down and I, like millions of other gridiron fans, am curious about who will be this year’s Super Bowl champion. In my seven hours of football watching this Sunday, I will witness all kinds of exciting and memorable plays. And, of course, I will see tackles–a shove out of bounds, a trip up, a pile on, a late hit that makes its victim slow to rise, maybe even a helmet to helmet which causes a good long commercial break. I’ll try not to think of the late Andre Waters, the hard hitting defensive back for the Philadelphia Eagles of the late 80s and early 90s who committed suicide a few months ago. A fierce hitter, he too was a victim in the end. It seems that all of his bone jarring and brain jarring hits, however much havoc they wreaked on his opponents, did considerable damage to himself. According to one doctor, at the time of Waters’s death, he had the brain of an 85 year old man–an eighty five year old man with Alzheimers.  Age and senility–it happens to the best of us.  But Waters was only forty four years old!  When I watch the games this weekend, I’ll try (and maybe you will too?) not to think about how many years of brain life each player is losing simply by playing the game. On the one hand, I’m sure that this will not be too difficult to do. After all, I am used to taking in the world at a distance–taking things in, in other words, through the mediating a screen. I’ll see an arm hanging limp. I’ll see dazed eyes or the pinched face of excruciating pain. I’ll see (and you will too) some damn good TV.

On the other hand, I’m sure that the hits, as mediated as they are, will manage to make me uneasy. I’ll have to try very hard not to think about my own concussions–kid’s stuff in comparison, but brain truama nonethless. I’ll wonder how much damage my own brain has sustained scrambling around the basketball court in order to win a measly pickup game. I’ll wonder if my own brain is now fifty five or sixty, inching up perhaps upon retirement age, which will give me (and you, depending on the number and severity of the hits your own brain has absorbed in the games you love to play) just one more reason to sit down and to stare, and the next day struggle to remember.