...for the Beavers. If you can't stop simple run plays then you don't deserve to win. It does hurt, but it's almost better that they lost big and not on some last-second field goal. It really seemed like I was watching a different team out there; the offense was fine, even though having Quizz would have given us a run game and might have changed things, just like a couple blown calls could have changed things. But it wasn't close enough for those kinds of excuses to register much validity. You don't give up 700 yards and win a game.
Plus, we've won the last two against the Ducks, so they were kind of due. It looked like the extra week to prepare really helped, given the way they picked apart our defense. And that was no coincidence. The Ducks did not want to lose to us three straight years.
So no Rose Bowl. It was a good season, though, and once again Riley's team over-performed. At the beginning of this season I thought it would be a rebuilding year. I'm just hoping that one of these years we'll be able to put it altogether and make a more dominant run for the Roses, in a year when the Pac-10 is a bit stronger.
Alas, I'll end with a philosophical question. Is there anything else in life comparable to sports, in that it matters so much (to some people at least), but over which you have no control whatsoever? It doesn't matter how hard you cheer or how much your care, what happens on the field will happen regardless of the intensity of your fanhood. I would love not to be a sports fan, but I'm beyond having the luxury of choice in that matter; it sure would save me a lot of time and heartache, especially given the fact that basically all my teams suck, and probably always will.
And I still hate the Ducks. But what fun is sports without an enemy to loathe?
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
I. HATE. THE. DUCKS.
My friend from the KFO (that is, Klamath Falls, Oregon for my non-Oregonian readers) came down over the weekend to watch the Beavers play the Wildcats. It was a great game, and best of all, we won on a last second field goal.
Now it's Beavers/Ducks, in Corvallis, for the Rose Bowl. I have talked a lot of smack in my lifetime to Ducks fans, and being an Oregonian, there's literally no way that if you're either a Duck or a Beaver, that you can avoid having friends and/or family in the other camp. Usually, I can still get along with them as long as we don't talk football. But this week, those people are not my friends or family: they are simply my enemy.
There are three teams I hate in sports, and which deserve nothing but scorn:
3) the Pittsburgh Steelers (for robbing the Seahawks of a Super Bowl victory)
2) the New York Yankees
1) the Oregon Ducks
I hate the Ducks uniforms and their faux-trendiness, I hate the fact that they think they're god's gift to college football, despite having accomplished very little, I hate the fact that they're not the Beavers. I hate their yuppie fans, and their wannabe yuppie fans.
I. HATE. THE. DUCKS.
Have fun in the Las Vegas Bowl, you pieces of crap.
Now it's Beavers/Ducks, in Corvallis, for the Rose Bowl. I have talked a lot of smack in my lifetime to Ducks fans, and being an Oregonian, there's literally no way that if you're either a Duck or a Beaver, that you can avoid having friends and/or family in the other camp. Usually, I can still get along with them as long as we don't talk football. But this week, those people are not my friends or family: they are simply my enemy.
There are three teams I hate in sports, and which deserve nothing but scorn:
3) the Pittsburgh Steelers (for robbing the Seahawks of a Super Bowl victory)
2) the New York Yankees
1) the Oregon Ducks
I hate the Ducks uniforms and their faux-trendiness, I hate the fact that they think they're god's gift to college football, despite having accomplished very little, I hate the fact that they're not the Beavers. I hate their yuppie fans, and their wannabe yuppie fans.
I. HATE. THE. DUCKS.
Have fun in the Las Vegas Bowl, you pieces of crap.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
A few short film reviews
A few films old and new that I've seen recently.
The Candidate (1972)
(I had my class watch this one). Worth seeing for how little politics has changed, if in fact the film's portrayal of campaigning is accurate. And Robert Redford must be Brad Pitt's father. Like George Costanza, I have a staunch record of heterosexuality, but he is a good looking man.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Capra's best? A film that is great for more than it's idealism--it's very well told, and the acting is thoroughly professional.
Transamerica (2005)
Surprisingly good. Felicity Huffman's Best Actress nod is well deserved.
The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)
Natalie Portman. Check. Scarlett Johannson. Check. Then why was this possibly the worst movie ever made? Previews that promised a sexy historical drama, and delivered on none of its promises. Any director who could take these two women, who are thoroughly capable of very solid acting, on top of their uniquely seductive qualities, and create such utterly bland, sexless characters (despite the fact that this story is essentially about sex), needs to find a new job.
Redacted (2008)
Brian de Palma's humble, yet very effective story, based on real events, of a group of American soldiers in Iraq who revenge a buddy being killed in a roadside bomb by arbitrarily raping a young Iraqi girl and killing her family. The film does not pretend to make this a metaphor for the entire war, which is why other Iraq War films have failed to attract much attention (they're ambitious without delivering on their ambition, or offer far too simple answers). This one sets out to tell a very limited story, and its humility ends up being very powerful. The two soldiers who commit the crime are vile, but there are other soldiers in the film, who, while they do not prevent the crime from happening, are haunted by their complicity. Their regret becomes the metaphor through which this film is capable of making larger arguments about the war.
Ed Wood (1994)
Pretty much the kind of fun weirdness one expects from Tim Burton. And Johnny Depp is the best actor in Hollywood. Period.
An American Crime (2007)
Very disturbing and very good. Katherine Keener and a pre-Juno Ellen Page. Another film based on true events. A type of modern day Scarlet Letter, in which a young girl becomes the neighborhood scapegoat, locked in a basement, and tortured by her siblings, neighborhood kids, and her adopted mother, until she dies. Fun for the whole family!
Still waiting to see Oliver Stone's W.
The Candidate (1972)
(I had my class watch this one). Worth seeing for how little politics has changed, if in fact the film's portrayal of campaigning is accurate. And Robert Redford must be Brad Pitt's father. Like George Costanza, I have a staunch record of heterosexuality, but he is a good looking man.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Capra's best? A film that is great for more than it's idealism--it's very well told, and the acting is thoroughly professional.
Transamerica (2005)
Surprisingly good. Felicity Huffman's Best Actress nod is well deserved.
The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)
Natalie Portman. Check. Scarlett Johannson. Check. Then why was this possibly the worst movie ever made? Previews that promised a sexy historical drama, and delivered on none of its promises. Any director who could take these two women, who are thoroughly capable of very solid acting, on top of their uniquely seductive qualities, and create such utterly bland, sexless characters (despite the fact that this story is essentially about sex), needs to find a new job.
Redacted (2008)
Brian de Palma's humble, yet very effective story, based on real events, of a group of American soldiers in Iraq who revenge a buddy being killed in a roadside bomb by arbitrarily raping a young Iraqi girl and killing her family. The film does not pretend to make this a metaphor for the entire war, which is why other Iraq War films have failed to attract much attention (they're ambitious without delivering on their ambition, or offer far too simple answers). This one sets out to tell a very limited story, and its humility ends up being very powerful. The two soldiers who commit the crime are vile, but there are other soldiers in the film, who, while they do not prevent the crime from happening, are haunted by their complicity. Their regret becomes the metaphor through which this film is capable of making larger arguments about the war.
Ed Wood (1994)
Pretty much the kind of fun weirdness one expects from Tim Burton. And Johnny Depp is the best actor in Hollywood. Period.
An American Crime (2007)
Very disturbing and very good. Katherine Keener and a pre-Juno Ellen Page. Another film based on true events. A type of modern day Scarlet Letter, in which a young girl becomes the neighborhood scapegoat, locked in a basement, and tortured by her siblings, neighborhood kids, and her adopted mother, until she dies. Fun for the whole family!
Still waiting to see Oliver Stone's W.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
New Day, New Design
I'm feeling a bit more chipper than usual, so I've decided to replace the rather gloomy picture of me taken on a small coastal Maine island, and replaced it with another at the Grand Canyon. There is some continuity, in that I'm gazing outward, which I wanted to preserve. It's brighter, and I've lightened the gray of my page background color so the text is a bit more readable.
Tuesday
The closest thing I've experienced to last Tuesday was when the Beavers played the Ducks in 2001. I was writing for the OSU student newspaper, The Daily Barometer, and had been covering the football team all year. One of the biggest thrills of my life is covering that team--the best team OSU has ever put on the football field--and watching them go nearly undefeated and beat Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl. The Ducks, however, were very good that year. It was Joey Harrington's junior year, and they'd go on to win the Fiesta Bowl the following season. But they had a chance to knock us out of a BCS game that year, and I was very nervous even though I knew we had the superior team. It was a bright, cold day, and I recall walking over, through campus, with my fellow sports writers and absorbing the excitement as fans, alumni, and students swarmed campus, barbecued, tailgated, played touch football, and heckled Ducks fans.
The excitement was tangible that day. As Beavers fans, this was a benighted group who had endured many years of futility, but who also knew, I think, that their team was going to win--not only that, but we were going to beat the Ducks. We finally did, but my heart was in my throat the entire game, and I wasn't allowed to release any of my emotions because I had to sit in the press box the entire game. By the time I had written my story after the game, it was late and I walked home through that beautiful campus, and my roommates and I celebrated.
It wasn't a crazy celebration like I thought it would be, though. We mostly just sat there with smiles and drank some beers. It was one of the best days of my life.
Tuesday was eerily similar. I've known with quite a bit of certainty that Obama was going to win (I also predicted the relatively early call, which meant landslide). One thing the primary campaign taught me was that poll numbers, taken as a whole, are a very good indication of trends, and the poll numbers were very clear. Nevertheless, we hadn't won yet and it was a very nervous day. I was able to reach home by about 2 p.m., and flipped between CNN and MSNBC basically until about 10 p.m. When he won Pennsylvania, Obama's prospects were good, but when he won Ohio, I knew it was over, grabbed a bottle of champagne, popped it open, and toasted myself to victory. It was sweet. For some reason the networks didn't call the race after Ohio went Obama, even though they should have because the math was literally impossible for McCain after that. So, I stuck around with Michele, Ada, and my mother-in-law until the official announcement. Watching the celebration in Chicago made me want to be there in the worst way.
One of my favorite images of the night was when NBC showed Jesse Jackson in the audience. I'm not a huge fan of his--mostly because I think he's a shameless grandstander--but to see him so obviously emotional, with tears streaming down his face, almost as if he could not believe what he was seeing, that really affected me. It affected me mostly because there's so many people out there for whom history is a memory, whereas for me it is only something I've read about in books. I'm truly happiest for people like Jackson, and others like John Lewis, who was being interviewed throughout the night, because they lived the civil rights movement, they were there when King was shot, they've experienced the heartache of discrimination and prejudice. To see them rejoice was my favorite part of the night. I don't know how anyone cannot be affected by that. No matter what you think about Obama, the fact that a black man is president is truly astonishing and worthy of at least a few moments of respect for his accomplishment, and for all the folks who paid the hefty price for that accomplishment.
I felt celebratory, and since Michele had company, she encouraged me to go down and meet some friends at Club Congress, in downtown Tucson. Actually, they were her co-workers and ex-co-workers whom I have become good friends with. I didn't want to miss Obama's acceptance speech, so I hopped in the car and rushed down to Congress after McCain's very gracious concession. I got there just in time to see a group of about a few hundred people watching Obama on the bigscreen, and listening to his voice over the loudspeaker.
The crowd assembled was truly joyous--and I immediately remembered that day in Corvallis when the spirit of goodwill and community was so strong--and I watched President Obama deliver his last speech of the campaign. I stood on a chair in the back of the crowd and looked around at people's faces. I felt proud to be there among them--the type of crowd that put Obama in office--a truly diverse crowd: all colors, all ages...a microcosm of America. I am overwhelmed with pride this week, and I wish Mr. Obama luck in what will be a challenging four, and hopefully, eight years.
Great presidents aren't made in easy times, and these are no easy times.
The excitement was tangible that day. As Beavers fans, this was a benighted group who had endured many years of futility, but who also knew, I think, that their team was going to win--not only that, but we were going to beat the Ducks. We finally did, but my heart was in my throat the entire game, and I wasn't allowed to release any of my emotions because I had to sit in the press box the entire game. By the time I had written my story after the game, it was late and I walked home through that beautiful campus, and my roommates and I celebrated.
It wasn't a crazy celebration like I thought it would be, though. We mostly just sat there with smiles and drank some beers. It was one of the best days of my life.
Tuesday was eerily similar. I've known with quite a bit of certainty that Obama was going to win (I also predicted the relatively early call, which meant landslide). One thing the primary campaign taught me was that poll numbers, taken as a whole, are a very good indication of trends, and the poll numbers were very clear. Nevertheless, we hadn't won yet and it was a very nervous day. I was able to reach home by about 2 p.m., and flipped between CNN and MSNBC basically until about 10 p.m. When he won Pennsylvania, Obama's prospects were good, but when he won Ohio, I knew it was over, grabbed a bottle of champagne, popped it open, and toasted myself to victory. It was sweet. For some reason the networks didn't call the race after Ohio went Obama, even though they should have because the math was literally impossible for McCain after that. So, I stuck around with Michele, Ada, and my mother-in-law until the official announcement. Watching the celebration in Chicago made me want to be there in the worst way.
One of my favorite images of the night was when NBC showed Jesse Jackson in the audience. I'm not a huge fan of his--mostly because I think he's a shameless grandstander--but to see him so obviously emotional, with tears streaming down his face, almost as if he could not believe what he was seeing, that really affected me. It affected me mostly because there's so many people out there for whom history is a memory, whereas for me it is only something I've read about in books. I'm truly happiest for people like Jackson, and others like John Lewis, who was being interviewed throughout the night, because they lived the civil rights movement, they were there when King was shot, they've experienced the heartache of discrimination and prejudice. To see them rejoice was my favorite part of the night. I don't know how anyone cannot be affected by that. No matter what you think about Obama, the fact that a black man is president is truly astonishing and worthy of at least a few moments of respect for his accomplishment, and for all the folks who paid the hefty price for that accomplishment.
I felt celebratory, and since Michele had company, she encouraged me to go down and meet some friends at Club Congress, in downtown Tucson. Actually, they were her co-workers and ex-co-workers whom I have become good friends with. I didn't want to miss Obama's acceptance speech, so I hopped in the car and rushed down to Congress after McCain's very gracious concession. I got there just in time to see a group of about a few hundred people watching Obama on the bigscreen, and listening to his voice over the loudspeaker.
The crowd assembled was truly joyous--and I immediately remembered that day in Corvallis when the spirit of goodwill and community was so strong--and I watched President Obama deliver his last speech of the campaign. I stood on a chair in the back of the crowd and looked around at people's faces. I felt proud to be there among them--the type of crowd that put Obama in office--a truly diverse crowd: all colors, all ages...a microcosm of America. I am overwhelmed with pride this week, and I wish Mr. Obama luck in what will be a challenging four, and hopefully, eight years.
Great presidents aren't made in easy times, and these are no easy times.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
A boy's dream
I was reading this today and thought I'd share:
This is from an old essay by Leslie Fiedler, a prominent literary critic from the 60's and 70's. His Love and Death in the American Novel is one of my favorite pieces of literary criticism, even if its approach is a bit outdated (unfortunately, literary critics often take themselves too seriously, and as a result disqualify themselves from this type of off-the-cuff, if careless, commentary--commentary I find refreshing and permissible since, after all, we are not scientists).
I offer up this excerpt on the eve of another election because it contains a humor that is always dangerous to politics. Put under this light, viewed from this perspective, the mythic image of American history recedes back into a more chaotic reality, in which countries are born on whims and chance, and not necessarily fate or providence.
Whatever happens tomorrow, may we all retain our senses of humor, the most powerful weapon we have to fight off (or point out?) the absurdity of politics, and life.
...the late entry of America into Western history meant that out national existence began at precisely the same moment as the novel itself, and that we have no prehistory (except as we attach ourselves to a larger Anglo-Saxon tradition) of Epic or Poetic Tragedy. Even our underlying national mythos is a Pop Myth and our Revolution consequently a Pop Revolution, as compared, for instance, with either the French or Russian Revolutions, which began with ideological disputes and the formulation of high-level manifestoes. Our own War of Independence, on the contrary, began not with abstract ideas at all (though later we composed idological documents to justify a fait accompli), but with a group of quite grown-up men dressing up like Indians and dumping into Boston Harbor that supreme symbol of effete European civilization, British tea. It is an event cued by a boy's dream, only later translated into the Declaration of Independence under the auspices of Thomas Jefferson, himself a small boy in love with gadgets, though he fancied himself a displaced philosophe.
This is from an old essay by Leslie Fiedler, a prominent literary critic from the 60's and 70's. His Love and Death in the American Novel is one of my favorite pieces of literary criticism, even if its approach is a bit outdated (unfortunately, literary critics often take themselves too seriously, and as a result disqualify themselves from this type of off-the-cuff, if careless, commentary--commentary I find refreshing and permissible since, after all, we are not scientists).
I offer up this excerpt on the eve of another election because it contains a humor that is always dangerous to politics. Put under this light, viewed from this perspective, the mythic image of American history recedes back into a more chaotic reality, in which countries are born on whims and chance, and not necessarily fate or providence.
Whatever happens tomorrow, may we all retain our senses of humor, the most powerful weapon we have to fight off (or point out?) the absurdity of politics, and life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
