A Healthy Alternative to Work

For the few readers who still remain, I've posted the upcoming Turret Sports Commentary over at Smokin' News. Check it out... if you dare.

Selah.

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So I’ve borrowed a copy of "The Proud Highway," a collection of essays and letters written by a very much younger Hunter S. Thompson, beginning in 1956.

What’s immediately striking about the initial sections of the book is Thompson’s first-ever writing assignment - his introduction to journalism, on which he’d have so great an impact.

After enlisting in the Air Force, Thompson completed training as a radio electrician of some kind, and was assigned to the commo shop at Eglin Air Force Base near Pensacola, Fla. He felt ill-suited to the line of work, and after two weeks in the radio shop landed himself a job at the Command-Courier, Eglin’s weekly newspaper. He became the paper’s sports editor.

Thompson had been identified as a gifted and "unpredictable" writer during high school in Louisville, but, in his own words, he hadn’t a clue as to how to write sports:

"I guess it all comes under the heading of responsibility in a way. But truthfully – I don’t do any of this for the Air Force – I do it because I don’t want anybody to get the idea that I’m incapable of doing the job. Even though there is no damn reason why I should be capable of putting out a sports section each week – without having the slightest idea of what I’m doing – I’m just too much of an egotist to admit that I can’t do it. So, the only thing left to do, is to go ahead and fight the damn thing and hope that it gets easier as it gets more familiar... and it’s bound to."
– A letter to Hunter’s brother Jack, dated Oct. 24, 1956.

I guess I find some hope in what I’m doing now, knowing that Thompson would go on to an insanely successful career in journalism, becoming one of the standard-bearers in Tom Wolfe’s titular "New Journalism."

It can be tough at times, thinking ahead to what’s next after these three remaining rotten years are over, but knowing that someone from such humble beginnings could make it so big, there’s always a glimmer of hope...

I guess I’ll just have to take the Doctor’s advice and "fight the damn thing." Who knows what’s next?

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We've made it to Thanksgiving, and four blessed days of vacation from the office, from the Army, and from doing anything productive before noon. It's a wonderful feeling, I've got to say.

I do have an assignment this weekend, though. I'll be covering the University of Louisville vs. Cincinnati game on Saturday. The forecast is 52 degrees and rainy, with the Cardinals beating the Bearcats by at least 18 points. The Finch predicts the spread will be more like 30, particularly after the Cards' 65-27 win over Houston last week.

ESPN2 will be there, and I will be safely esconced in the Papa John's Stadium press skybox, eating sandwiches and rubbing elbows with the regional sporting press.

Also in attendance will be around a thousand Basic Trainees, who will probably be thrilled to get a chance to get away from the ranges and obstacle courses of the 1st Armored Training Brigade. A hospitality party is planned for them at Louisville's Parrish House, which will be hosted, I hear, by cheerleaders and Hooters girls. These guys aren't going to know what to do with themselves.

At any rate, Happy Thanksgiving from Fort Knox and A Healthy Alternative to Work. Hope it's great.

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I'm sitting here in my room on a Saturday afternoon, and I'm thinking about the stories I should have gone out and covered today. Three members of the U.S. Women's Olympic softball team visited Louisville's Slugger Museum this morning, and a local 11-year-old girl, who can run a 10-minute two-mile, competed at a track meet today. But I don't really care.

I went with some friends last night to Louisville's Fourth Street. I've written about the place before; it's one part meat-market and one part bar district.

We get into places like Red Cheetah for free, since most bouncers are willing to offer a military discount.

It was, for the most part, unremarkable. I reestablished my hatred of country music, and we looked at a lot of pretty girls. At Saddle Ridge, they have gorgeous bartenders who wear as little as is socially acceptable in public, and take it upon themselves to gyrate on the bar to songs like "Redneck Woman."

Jeff Foxworthy once said something to the effect of "Redneck is nothing more than the glorious lack of sophistication." Well, people around here are taking a little too much pride in being classless.

And my heart's not in it, anyway. I can't stand going to places where you have to scream to be heard just to see if there are any available women around.  I normally just get drunk.

I also find myself standing around wondering how I'd describe the scene in writing, and fall short when I realize that description would imply significance.

We came home around 5 a.m. after stopping at Dodge's Chicken for some chicken strips and egg rolls.

Waiter, may I have a change of venue, please? Hold the redneck women.

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I posted this over at Smokin' News, and it'll run in the upcoming Turret. But I thought I'd share it with you all, too. It's about this ridiculous noise being generated over the Monday Night Football skit starring the Philadelphia Eagles' Terrell Owens and ABC's "Deperate Housewives" star Nicollette Sheridan. See what you think.

Terrell Owens is in trouble again.

And now, everyone from T.O to the Philadelphia Eagles to ABC is apologizing on national media for his "steamy" introductory skit to last week’s episode of "Monday Night Football."

Everyone else is weighing in on the skit, which featured Owens talking with "Desperate Housewives" costar Nicollette Sheridan, who wore only a towel, which she eventually dropped before jumping into T.O.’s arms.

Was it the partial nudity (viewers saw Sheridan from the back) that raised so many hackles across the nation? Was it the fact that the segment aired at 9 p.m. on the east coast, but 6 p.m. on the west? Was it the "suggestive" nature of the segment?

That’s not what Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy thinks. He’s gone on the record saying he found the segment "racially offensive."

So the problem is the fact that Owens is black and Sheridan is white, then?

Well, Dungy seemed to think that the skit was "stereotypical" toward black athletes.

I’d be interested to know what Dungy thought about last season’s Super Bowl halftime show performance by Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson.

Conservative radio motormouth Rush Limbaugh also had to say his piece on the steamy skit. According to a transcript of his show, it’s "too close to this whole Kobe Bryant situation for comfort," echoing sentiments already expressed by Dungy.

I’m sorry, what? I fail to see the correlation between the Bryant case and this latest stunt of Terrell Owens’.

Bryant was accused of a felony – statutory rape. Terrell Owens was in a racy skit on network television. I don’t see what the two instances have in common.

Except, of course, that they both involve a black man and a white woman.

Seems to me that this is what’s causing the most uproar, whether the agitators will admit it or not. It isn’t the partial nudity – why, Sheridan’s ABC show has that kind of stuff on all the time, I’m led to believe, and they’re getting big ratings, not angry phone calls from the Federal Communications Commission.

We broke the nudity barrier on cable TV ten years ago, with "NYPD Blue."

I suppose I had naively been under the impression that we were past this kind of nonsense. Are we still closed-minded enough to be drawing lines in the sand over which members of other races "shall not cross"? The answer, apparently, is yes.

Dungy is one of five black coaches in the National Football League, another being the Chicago Bears' Lovie Smith.

According to ESPN, Smith took exception with the skit’s risque content, but that was it.

"I saw a naked lady with an athlete, period," he said. "Black, white, that doesn’t really matter an awful lot to me."

It’s fine to be outraged over the content of national television. There’s plenty to be outraged over. But let’s make sure we’re all clear on why we’re outraged.

If the bile starts rising at the implication of an interracial relationship, it might be time to reevaluate your sense of moral propriety.

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Check out my new all-politics blog, "Smokin' News."

This one won't be going away, but the politics are going to head on over there.

While some folks are appealing to reason throughout this whole miasma we call an election year, there are plenty of others whose actions are a clear indication that the country is going BAT SHIT INSANE.

I don't normally mess with my established font-size. It's this thing in newspaper layout - a principle that says you must keep your fonts the same for all your body copy, all your cutlines (captions, to the uninitiated), your bylines, and your standing heads.

Well, take a gander at these life-altering links:

First! This is old, but if you haven't seen it, you need to. Jon Stewart appeared on CNN's Crossfire before the election, and lambasted the hosts for being "partisan hacks." It's quite an episode:
Jon Stewart's brutal exchange with CNN host

Be sure to watch his post-game "spin" on the following episode of Comedy Central's The Daily Show. The link's right there on iFilm.

Next up, we've got Georgia. Now, I've been saying for the past few posts that it's wrong for Democrats to write off the "red" states as a bunch of morons, because that's disingenuous and elitist. But this isn't helping:

Some worry evolution dispute hurts image

Good lord. In Georgia, it's going to be harder for 16-year-olds to learn about Charles Darwin than to download porn on their school comput-- wait, I suppose that's probably not an issue. Computers, silly me. We couldn't have a free exchange of ideas going on, now, could we?

And of course, our friends on the left aren't lying down on the job when it comes to producing nonsense:

Do we still have a Democracy?
This one had to come up, right? "It wasn't me... it was the one-armed voting machine!"

And this from the Boca Raton News: Kerry supporters seek therapy in South Florida. This proves, once again, that this election was really just one more Reality TV/Soap Opera for people to get emotionally involved in. Don't worry though, there are some hypnotherapists who are going to make money off it!

I've just about had all I can stand, and it's 2:45 a.m. Good night.

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Okay, so with my newfound Powers of the Internet, I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of browsing over the past couple days. If I bitch about being in the Army a lot, I will say this: Federal holidays are great.

But speaking of Federal, there’s all kinds of secessionist garbage making the rounds. I guess it’s this whole red state/blue state thing. People from the blue states are dreaming of moving to Canada and in the meantime, they’re posting pictures of themselves holding signs apologizing to the rest of the world for the re-election of President Bush on the Internet.

It would seem, if one were to get all their news from The Nation and democraticunderground.com, that this nation of ours is definitely going to collapse into some kind of militant Amish anarchy if the progressives don’t stand up and fight this rising tide of stupidity and redneckism that seems to be the prevalent mentality from Florida to Idaho.

Of course, the mischaracterizations go both ways, as usual. Some conservatives are having a hard time not gloating about Bush’s victory (which is, despite a few conspiracy theory-type threads in Ohio, pretty certain this time around), and are referring to the liberals who find themselves crammed into the West Coast and New England as elitist bastards who don’t give a whit about God, values, or our soldiers in the middle east.

I said before the election that I was concerned that the level of discussion was being brought down by blind partisanship, and that’s certainly borne out in the post-election gum-flapping.

Whatever side you find yourself on, we’ve got to remember that this is, when all is said and done, one country, and it’s the ability to hold and support diametrically-opposed viewpoints within the same set of borders that makes this place what it is. I’m not sure I’m completely behind everything that makes America what it is today - in fact, I’m pretty certain I’m not - but I do like the idea of America; i.e., the pluralism we supposedly embrace as a nation.

This point has been done to death, but we’ve got a serious issue at hand here, and that is this self-inflicted "divide" we’ve found ourselves in. We really still are all United States of America, red or blue, right?

So what’s going to happen over the next four years? Bush gave mixed messages after the election. On one hand, he said he was going to do everything he could to reach out to the other side, or something. "Reaching across the aisle" is the phrase, I think. But the next day he said he’d "earned his political capital," and that he intended to spend it.

In general, I’m a pretty conservative guy, and I like to think I’m not a complete moron. But even if I am, well, there are plenty of intelligent conservatives out there. The same can be said of the Democratic party and liberal ideology - there are lots of very sharp folks on the left side, too (many of you have been gracious enough to stop by and leave your thoughts here). These sneer asides of "everyone who doesn’t live on the coast is an inbred idiot" and "everyone who lives in New England is communist" are only exacerbating the problem of a "divided America."

This is a big issue, and it deserves a lot more detail than it’s getting in this post. But I’ve rambled on enough here, and I’d just like to point out that name-calling isn’t getting anyone anywhere. Well, unless it’s funny.

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CNN.com says that as many as 1,000 insurgents have been killed in the ongoing battle for Fallujah.

A lot of writers are putting pen to paper to come up with fitting eulogies for the late Yasser Arafat. Shimon Peres writes ""With the death of a father, Palestinians must grow up." Yes, he was guilty of heinous acts and never really moved beyond terrorism as a means of furthering the Palestinian cause, but they loved him! Awwww... give the poor old Egyptian a break.

Cal Thomas, over at TownHall.com, writes about "Arafat’s real legacy." Thomas isn’t quite as impressed with the Arafat Cult of Personality: "Arafat led a long reign of terror, the purpose of which was to kill Jews and eliminate the state of Israel."

Well, let’s get back to business, shall we?

Today’s the big day, folks. Remember to go vote – but only if you know what you’re voting for. Otherwise, stay inside, watch TV, and don’t trouble yourself with standing around in lines. You’ll be doing us all a favor.

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