3: That was my first thought. He's proportioned like someone 5-10.
That guy is 6'10" ? Good god.
6' 8.5" without shoes.
As somebody commented on the linked post, "He's proportioned like a soccer player but a full foot taller."
But so much sportswriting, especially by the newer, more "personal" "voices" cough Bill Simmons cough, is transparently, ridiculously homoerotic (where it isn't lost-little-boy-looking-for-father)
Looking at the picture again I'm amazed by how strong his ankles look. The one on the forward leg is almost absurd.
men like looking at really fit men doing really incredible things with their bodies. It's not all about the battle, the fight, or the war. The enjoyment that comes from physical beauty is integral.
I only figured this out as an adult. I never much liked sports as a kid, and sports fandom generally sort of perplexed me. But at some point I realized the attraction wasn't really about which colored uniforms would win some frivolous game*, it was about witnessing incredible athletic performances. And I've enjoyed watching sports much more since. What good athletes can do is amazing. (Although I tihnk the post is intentionally needling a bit--it's not really about the physical beauty of their bodies. It's the things they can do with them.)
*Playoff games obviously exempted, because they're non-frivolous.
7: It'd have to be -- goodness knows what a 6'8" guy with those proportions weighs.
Pictures take head-on show that he's not as wide as I expected, which is how he only(!) weighs 250.
goodness knows what a 6'8" guy with those proportions weighs
251 lbs.
Based on my own experience, I just assumed that's what all men look like under their pants.
Or I could have clicked through the link and found out for myself. Look, the point is that he needs strong ankles.
I assume it's a mirror neuron thing. You watch someone pull off an magnificent feat, and you're totally tuned in with your whole brain, and you can feel that feat in a way you'd never otherwise get. (I bet this whole thread can be read with "porn" substituted in for "sports".)
I like the mental image of NickS as a Jim Rome fan, calling in as the thoughtful, measured clone with a taste for classic folk songs.
13: Now that's what a basketball player is supposed to look like.
This pic was making the rounds among my super jocko former high school classmates on FB. They were completely unabashed in their expressions of how "awesome" and "amazing" and "fantastic" he is.
"But so much sportswriting, especially by the newer, more "personal" "voices" cough Bill Simmons cough, is transparently, ridiculously homoerotic (where it isn't lost-little-boy-looking-for-father)"
I don't think homoerotic is the right word. Bill Simmons doesn't actually want to have sex with Tom Brady.
Right, professional sports has beauty, incredible feats of strength, and drama. What's not to like? It does take a bit of effort to get oneself into the narrative of any particular sport, though.
There is a lot of really excellent sportswriting, but bad "literary" sportswriting (e.g., 90% of Grantland) is the worst. The guy who writes my favorite Dodgers blog is, though, I think one of the better writers on the internet.
22: Isn't that what 'homoerotic' is specificially supposed to mean -- stuff that's not explicitly about a desire to have sex with members of your own sex, but that has a component of erotic interest?
re: 13
A friend of mine teaches at his former school. Apparently, the other teachers don't have nice things to say about him.
You figure anyone obsessed enough to be a pro athlete is likely to be an annoying student.
As I've remarked before, when looking for somebody to split the cost of a UFC pay-per-view event with me, I call my gay friends first.
28 -- OK, but UFC leapfrogs over homoerotic into "holy shit did I rent Man Sex Bootcamp #43 by accident at the video store."
Because that series really went downhill after the mid thirties. I think Man Sex Bootcamp #34: Drilling the Sergeant, was the last really solid episode.
re: 27
I don't know. I knew a few kids at school who were on the fringes of turning pro [they had youth contracts with major teams, but didn't make it into the first team], and I used to know a couple of ex-footballers who'd actually played professionally [one for a bona fide top division team], and a guy who played rugby for Scotland up to under-21s level. None of them seemed particularly dickish, tbh. Not a massive sample set, I suppose.
Maybe if they were bigger assholes, they'd have managed to turn pro.
29: http://mmafix.com/homoerotic-photo-of-the-week/
As I said, one of them did play pro. For a team in the top division [but not one of the big money teams]. Blew his knee out or something after about 2 years, and went to university. He was our ringer on our work football team. 'Give the ball to Davie' was a very successful tactic.
30: the moment where they really jumped the shark was the crossover with the Fox's Holes series. Talk about misjudging your audience.
35 was me, though maybe I shouldn't take credit.
It was not up to your usual standards.
34: I didn't read the whole thing.
Re: sportswriting, I just thank God that the Boys of Summer/"boo-hoo-hoo Jim Bouton told the truth" ruined everything" types have pretty much died off. The shame of a generation.
To the OP, it's really kinda surprising to me, at this point, that there is not a single out player in any of the big US sports. The reaction to Welts coming out from almost everyone was "good for him." The time is clearly ripe. I predict someone from the NBA goes first.
And I agree with 39. Although, otoh, The Boys of Summer itself is a good book. Although, otooh, the "everything important in baseball happened between 1947 and 1960 among one of the three teams that played in New York" was one of the all time most annoying tropes in sports coverage, and one that has finally started to decisively fade away.
re: 41
Amaechi, but he didn't come out until he'd stopped playing. And is British, and therefore suspect anyway.
Yes, there are some former baseball players who are now out, too. But to have the impact you'd need to come out while currently playing.
Was it online, or at a meetup, or perhaps talking to someone I know other than from the Internet, that someone brought up Dennis Rodman in response to 'no out athletes'? Not that I recall in detail, but didn't he at least claim to be bi, although in a way that could have been dismissed as just trying to get a rise out of people? I admittedly don't have any idea what his actual orientation is.
It's very rare in British sport, too. A fairly high profile rugby player came out a year or two ago, while still playing. There's an out cricketer. But I'm not aware of many. None at all in football (soccer), which would, I think, be the big game changer.
Dennis Rodman certainly would evoke every bit of homophobia as someone who was more straightforwardly out. So I think he counts as breaking new territory.
Where have you gone Greg Louganis? A nation turns it's lonely eyes to you.
His sport doesn't involve touching.
But so much sportswriting, especially by the newer, more "personal" "voices" cough Bill Simmons cough, is transparently, ridiculously homoerotic
That may be true, though I'm not completely convinced, but I'll still repeat what I said in the final paragraph of the post -- I find it surprising and positive to see a photograph of an executive from a major sports franchise appearing at a GLSEN event. In the linked article it notes:
From the outset of the evening, you could sense Welts' presence was different.
He doesn't hail from the entertainment industry and isn't a fixture in charitable gay circles.
This is all new to him -- and, in turn, he is new to the community.
It's easy to believe that, looking at the photograph from the event. Perhaps because of the homoerotic element in sports fandom I feel like pro sports have been very wary about being linked with any discussion about homosexuality. They've also been careful to say the right things, when there are stories like John Amaechi coming out but, still, I feel like it's something that they've tried to stay away from.
Also there are kabillions of out female athletes, but they don't attract the attention/controversey.
48: Apparently on to become the best-looking 51-year-old man in America.
52: Samoa produces some very appealing looking men.
The time is clearly ripe.
There as a good article in New York Magazine about that. Among other things it notes:
"The first thing to understand about the lack of openly gay professional athletes is that there are openly gay professional athletes. They just don't feel obliged to tell you. Many of their teammates know. Buzinski says he's been told that "one NFL player took his partner to a teammate's wedding in Florida and nobody cared.""
I really don't think Rodman counts. He was (is) a serious alcoholic given to weird behavior, and I guess wore a dress once, but was married to various women and there are really no indications that he was actively bisexual. The one time I saw him in person, FWIW, he was making out with some chick in his nightclub in Newport Beach. I don't think he really pushed any boundaries other than being a self-promoter, though I kind of like him.
53: In this case apparently Samoan/Swedish.
Also there are kabillions of out female athletes, but they don't attract the attention/controversey.
In fact that's one of the cliche's about the WNBA -- that the players and the fanbase are both disproportionately lesbian.
I don't know what type of sportswriting Roger Angell did, but I do know that back when I was really interested in baseball and read a lot about it his writing put me to sleep immediately.
58 -- agreed. One of those New Yorker baseball articles must have been really good, at some point. I guess, right?
I'm pretty sure that my not liking the WNBA or women's basketball is pretty much driven by straight up sexism, but I just can't get into it at all.
I just can't get into [the WNBA] at all.
The WNBA has made me conscious of the threshold effects involved in following a sport.
When I see an article about it, I'm not that interested because I don't know who any of the player or teams are or what their history is, so I have no emotional investment. So, I skip the article and then I never learn anything about the league.
I may be a little bit unusual in that I spend much more time reading about sports than I do watching them, but I image the same dynamic still exists in watching the game -- it isn't that interesting unless you have some sense of context.
61: I'm not a sports fan really at all, so I'm reporting conversations rather than having an opinion of my own, but my late uncle was a college ball player back in the fifties, and a huge women's basketball fan up till his death two years ago, for stated reasons that suggest your not liking women's basketball isn't necessarily about sexism. Uncle Harry talked about the current women's game as more like the ball he'd played than the current men's game; more passing, less dunking, that kind of thing. If what you're watching for is the opposite of what Harry liked, a more individually physically spectacular game, it makes perfect sense that you'd see more of it in men's basketball than in women's.
Yes, it just looks like a more boring form of basketball to me. Plus a lot of what NickS says about the up-front costs of getting into a sport. Still, I'm pretty sure that with enough cultural oomph behind it, I would devote the time to get into, and enjoy, the WNBA, and that a failure to do so is basically driven by sexism.
Also, this has a pretty fun video of a WNBA player matching up against Sebastian Telfair in a pickup game.
It's clearly casual basketball, but they're having fun and she looks good.
That really is about all I've got on the WNBA.
63: That makes a lot of sense. I think I enjoy equally men's and women's soccer, but what I liked most about basketball, when I watched it, was those individual moments of amazing athleticism.
66: The only soccer I watch has mixed gender teams.
When I watched a lot - as in almost everything ESPN and the networks broadcast - of college basketball, I started watching women's college basketball, albeit only the competitive games and the tournament. So I started watching the ABL when it came out. For various reasons I never got into the WNBA* and then when I cut back on sports watching I stopped watching women's basketball altogether.
*Because I'm a feminist. Actually there were serious arguments for why the ABL was the better league. But only the WNBA had a viable business model.
I enjoy equally men's and women's soccer
Me too, but that's because 0=0.
63: Yes. I hack at tennis for fun, and I really like watching men's professional tennis - Djok, Nadal, Fed et al. But it's on another planet from what I play - pace, accuracy, reflexes, endurance, angles, everything but the court dimensions. So is women's professional tennis - but I can identify just a little bit more with how the women play, especially if they're on slower (clay or Har-Tru) courts. A bad day by a middling woman player on a slow court is just barely relatable (but still far superior) to the absolute best I ever played in my life on a fast court.
I've followed the WNBA a bit, generally with regard to players I've noticed (like Swin Cash who was from the Pittsburgh area). But per Nick's threshold, I have never internalized enough of the "story lines" to make it generally compelling (I have the same deal with MLS soccer, unfortunately). Major League Baseball has pretty much fallen below that level for me as well, although I will watch the last few innings of playoff/World Series.
A bad day by a middling woman player on a slow court is just barely relatable (but still far superior) to the absolute best I ever played in my life on a fast court a woman with great legs and a really short skirt.
I strongly prefer watching women's basketball because I'm very judge-y about selfishness vs. teamwork in sports rather than (just) because I'm a lesbian. Lee, though, was an excellent college basketball player and doesn't want to watch the WNBA or even women's college bball on tv unless the only alternative is something worse than golf. She finds the women's game slow-paced and thus dull, again this from a person who will watch golf.
There's only one out lesbian coach in women's college basketball, which is ridiculous. Also ridiculous is that there aren't more women coaching men's teams at the college level; there are many of them who are clearly smarter and more athletic than the old men who end up doing the job. This really, really bothers me for some reason.
I thought I had more to say than this, but maybe I don't.
re: 73
Hope Powell has had a successful (and long) run with the English women's football team. The question of why she hasn't been offered a shot at managing a professional men's team has come up a few times. She certainly has the sort of record that'd justify it. She is, fwiw, out, herself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Powell
Also ridiculous is that there aren't more women coaching men's teams at the college level; there are many of them who are clearly smarter and more athletic than the old men who end up doing the job.
I'm not saying that first-order sexism doesn't have something to do with this -- although did you see the New Yorker article on Nancy Lieberman, who is now a d-league men's coach? -- but at the top level of collegiate coaching in the money sports, a ridiculous amount of the job coaches do is recruiting rather than game-day coaching, and "Coach Sarah Smith can't turn me into a lottery pick as credibly as Coach Jeff Jones" seems like a legitimate concern. Are there any women coaches for men's basketball in Division III?
snarkout, I believe there are and I think even div II, but I don't know the stats because I care enough to whine but not to actually inform myself.
To the original topic, it was apparently a big deal to have a straight black pro athlete on the cover of Out recently, although I didn't remember his name, his team, and even which of the magazines it had been. (After we moved, something went awry when the post office was putting change-of-address stickers on our mail and the sealed pack of Out + The Advocate came addressed to Mara, who was deeply disappointed.)
The aforementioned article on Nancy Lieberman.
There's only one out lesbian coach in women's college basketball, which is ridiculous.
It is ridiculous. I remember hearing somewhere that this one one of the unintended consequences of Title IX -- it increased the funding for women's sports which ended up resulting in more of coaching positions going to men.
In fact that might have been in this documentary which I can recommend. Not great, but interesting and solidly good.
I strongly prefer watching women's basketball because I'm very judge-y about selfishness vs. teamwork in sports
I do think that NBA teams can play with amazing teamwork -- particularly in the playoffs. It's just that the part of the game which depends most on teamwork is defense which is harder to follow as a viewer.
74: Pia Sundhage, coach of the USWNT in soccer, is out. More to the point, she's the best coach we've had since Tony Dicicco in the late 1990s, as seen by the Olympic gold in 2008 and second place in the World Cup this year. She also was one of the top 20 international women's soccer players ever (played for Sweden).
Also, I really should take this opportunity to recommend Heart Of The Game again. One of the best documentaries, on any subject, that I've seen.
Seconding 80. Lee wasn't willing to watch the documentary in 78 because it struck her as being too close to her own experience, though I've wanted to watch it for a while.
I should really have a caveat here that I'm not particularly a sports watcher. I have preferences about what's on while I'm knitting or reading or commenting here, but those last things are what I'd rather be doing than watching spots ever. I've just been living in a house where either sports or HGTV or horrible Kardashians-level reality shows are on at all times and I've developed my hierarchy of what I wish we weren't watching based on that.
I had no idea the Sonics had left Seattle.
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For Parsimon: Danny Goldberg stands up for the hippies.
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They're now in Oklahoma City, which makes the name a delightful reference to Okhlahoma's finest purveyor of drive-through milkshakes.
I had no idea the Sonics had left Seattle.
There's a documentary about that as well. But I haven't watched it yet so I can't tell you how good it is.
I'm surprised that I don't feel more bitter about that move than I do, but it's turned out that I really am more of the NBA generally than I was of the Sonics specifically.
Lots of people around here are cheering on the lockout, and enjoying watching NBA fans suffer. I understand that reaction, but don't share it.
but it's turned out that I really am more of the NBA generally than I was of the Sonics specifically.
I'm almost certain this would not hold true for me. In contravention, I think, to most modern fandom, I am a team guy, not a league/individual player/statistics guy. I need the excitement of the team to root for to make it fun, and I don't really care all that much about individual player performance or stats, except as a guide to understanding the game. I'm also not into fantasy leagues.
82 and 86 are good reasons why the NBA should resolve its labor dispute.
I'm more of a general NBA fan out of necessity. Goddamn Warriors.
Although lately I haven't been paying attention at all since it's really hard to follow anything but the playoffs on tv up here. And even then, hockey pre-empted many non-Lebron playoff games. I didn't even notice there was a lockout until a few weeks ago.
The first month of the season has already been cancelled.
Well, getting my attention probably isn't a good reason for starting pro basketball.
John Oliver's version of 83. (If you don't want to watch the whole thing, you can skip ahead to around 3:30 to get the gist.)
I strongly prefer watching women's basketball because I'm very judge-y about selfishness vs. teamwork in sports rather than (just) because I'm a lesbian.
Seconding what Nick said in 78. There is unbelievable teamwork in men's ball if you look at the defensive end, particularly in the playoffs but also in the regular season. The defensive teamwork should also affect how you look at the offensive end. A lot of old-style "teamwork" play would be close to impossible in NBA men's ball because you literally couldn't get the shots off against the kind of intense defense that gets played. There is also plenty of teamwork at the offensive end (check out the Spurs sometime), but it is necessarily athleticism-dependent.
Also, some of the 'lazy selfish' thing about the NBA (when it isn't driven by straight-up racism) is due to the incredible length of the season, which is much longer than the women's game. The men play 82 regular season games followed by up to five rounds of playoff matchups, with each round lasting a maximum of 7 games. The women play 34 regular season games followed by up to three rounds of playoffs, with each round lasting I think a maximum of 3 games. Plus each men's game is 20 percent longer (48 minutes vs. 40). There is no way to sustain maximum effort through all that, and particularly in the regular season you actually should not be trying to in order to preserve your body for the playoffs. It's amazing to me that the men manage to play all of that. The record of someone like Lebron James is unbelievable -- he has missed hardly any games for 8 years while going deep into the playoffs and averaging around 40 minutes per game most seasons.
"Isn't that what 'homoerotic' is specificially supposed to mean -- stuff that's not explicitly about a desire to have sex with members of your own sex, but that has a component of erotic interest? "
That photo of the basketball player is homoerotic, because it is likely to induce same sex arousal or desire in men who are attracted to men. Someone else can admire the photo without being sexually attracted to the man in the photo (or the admirer may be sexually attracted but not be a man). That wouldn't make the photo not homoerotic.
But, is anything Simmons writes erotic in anyway to anybody? How can it be homoerotic?
94: I don't know his writing at all, but what I understood Flip to be saying in comment 6 is that Simmons' writing expresses feelings about male athletes that are reasonably described as erotic, despite the fact that Simmons doesn't actually want to literally have sex with men, he just thinks about them in a sexually charged kind of way.
And that's how I've generally seen 'homoerotic' used -- to identify sexually charged feelings held by a man toward other men, particularly a straight or nominally straight man. I'd understand your usage in 94, where it just means 'likely to to be erotically appealing to gay men', from context, but I'd thik you were using the word idiosyncratically.
A lot of old-style "teamwork" play would be close to impossible in NBA men's ball because you literally couldn't get the shots off against the kind of intense defense that gets played.
Here's a story to give some sense of how quickly the defenses adjust, and how decisive offensive players have to be in the NBA:
I was reading about a exercise that one of the new superstar trainers was using to "simulate game conditions." One-on-one with no rebounds (so the ball changes possession after each shot). The offensive player gets the ball at the three point line and has a maximum of two dribbles before they shoot.
Reading that gave me a different sense of what it means to have an NBA-caliber first step and pull-up jump shot.
CAN WE PLEASE KEEP BILL SIMMONS AND SEX COMPLETELY SEPARATE PLEASE? I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR THOSE TWO THINGS MENTIONED TOGETHER EVER AGAIN.
Do we really have to debate whether or not blow jobs are "completely separate" from sex?
93: Lee doesn't watch men's pro ball either, though I forget the reason. She watches and follows men's college basketball extensively but then when they graduate and play elsewhere, they basically drop of her and thus my radar. I'm sure she still pays some attention, but I only find out if they somehow end up overlapping gay news, Joakim Noah.
I don't think my definition is idiosyncratic. Here is what
Merriam-Webster says:
Definition of HOMOEROTIC
: homosexual; specifically : marked by, revealing, or portraying homosexual desire
Also at any given time there's one or two NBA teams whose teamwork and timing on the offensive end is just unbelievable and higher quality than anything you're going to see played with less talented athletes. Obvious recent examples include the Nash-era Suns and the Divac/Webber-era Kings.
101: I'm not wedded to the idea that your usage was wrong. But I've seen the word used the way I described, and I'm pretty sure that's how Flip meant it, and how it is at least sometimes used by other people.
What's really bizarre to me is that the anti-woman sexism in pro sports coaching goes so far that Bill Laimbeer couldn't get an NBA job because people discount his stellar WNBA coaching resume.s
The psycho from the Pistons was a WNBA coach? I had no idea.
There was one English footballer who came out, Justin Fashanu, but the circus, backlash, and later tragedy surrounding it has probably kept many others from doing the same (it was, however, back in 1990, which was a completely different climate for these things).
He won 3 championships in a very short time in the WNBA.
96: where you can really see this is when really good college 3-point shooters go to the NBA. They can look like can't-miss shooters in college, but totally lost and incompetent in the NBA, because the defensive players close so much faster in the NBA. They might have 3 seconds open to shoot in college, but less than a second in the NBA. To see how fast prepared defensive teams close out, watch the tape of stops 5 and 6 in this article about the Spurs-Grizzlies series last year. (The 5th and 6th clips on the page). That is really good defense but still.
So here's something that baffles me about discussions of gay male professional athletes and when one will come out... Why does everyone forget about Dennis Rodman? Dude wore dresses in public, liked hanging out at gay clubs, regularly made out with gay men at said clubs, and described himself multiple times in public as bisexual. All the while winning 5 championships, multiple defensive players of the year, more rebounding titles than he knew what to do with, and being a valued teammate of Michael Jordan. Why doesn't he count?
109: See 45 -- I think that must have been you I was talking to about Rodman.
See above. Rodman was crazy, was not out, and was not affirmatively bisexual.
Yes, that must have been me in a meet up. Self-pwned.
He said he was bisexual in his autobiography (the one he wore a dress to promote).
Ian Roberts, Manly-Warringah RLFC* and Australia, 1995?
Not that I think he ever needed to worry about homophobia. Being able to rip your head off and run away with it helps! Also, Rugby League is traditionally full of weirdos who don't fit in any other sport, and it's what we stand for, fuck it. First black man to play for Great Britain? Yeah, 1947. South African Jewish top-scoring hero? Yeah. Last GB side to win the world cup, and last in any sport between '72 and '03, with first black captain? Yeah. French commie protestant resistants? Yeah. French collaborators declared the game illegal? Yeah. South Africans dissolved the league rather than accept apartheid? Yeah.
*yes, the club and the district of Sydney really are called that.
IIRC, he said he had "bisexual thoughts" and liked to wear women's clothes sometimes. He also denied actually wanting to ever be in a physical relationship with a man, has vehemently denied being gay (and is not gay) and as far as I know, has never acknowledged being in an actual same-sex relationship.
When I looked into this what I found was that he said he wasn't interested in having sex with men, but liked making out with them.
"He" is "Rodman" there, obviously. In addition, I believe (but I can't remember, and am not going to look up) that even the "bisexual thoughts" claim was after his playing days were over. The overall message was "Dennis Rodman is a big weirdo" not "gay guys can be pro athletes."
The dress that Rodman was wearing in promotion of his autobiography was a wedding dress -- IIRC, he said he must be bisexual because he wanted to marry himself. I think his whole hanging out at gay clubs thing was a public performance of his affair with Madonna.
He still hangs out in gay clubs (you can find blog posts of people being "hey last night I saw Rodman pole dancing at a gay club in Miami"), he met Madonna in a gay club (so your causality is backwards), and his only NBA friend from the Spurs was the one person he could convince to go to a gay club with him.
It's ambiguous whether he's actually bisexual (as pointed out he claims not to want to have actual sex with men), but his affection for gay clubs is indisputable.
115: Is there an accepted technical term for Katy-Perry-I-Kissed-A-Girl-level bisexual? In, I think, the same conversation where Upetgi was talking about Rodman, I brought up David Bowie as bi, and was corrected. And he's certainly more publically self-described as bi than Rodman, but also (once I looked up his relationship history on wikipedia) clearly the mostly-straight kind of bi.
I guess I'm wondering (a) is Rodman in a different category than David Bowie straightness-wise, and (b) would people think of a pro male athlete that was as queer and out as David Bowie as out for the purposes of this discussion.
Bi-curious? Or, more disparagingly, GUG?
13: Crouch was asked in an interview what he would have been if he hadn't become a football player. His answer? A virgin.
So the most public description of a lot of this stuff is Chapter 9 of Rodman's autobiography, which came out between the 2nd and 3rd seasons of the second Chicago 3-peat. It's a little less clear than I thought (in particular, his descriptions of kissing men are rather different than the second-hand descriptions I found googling around). So maybe bisexual isn't the right label.
Rodman is sort of roughly like Bowie, in that the gender-bending is mostly performance art/self promotion, not (as far as we can tell) an expression of a strong actual preference for same sex relationships. Which is admirable in the sense that gender-bending can be sort of admirable, but is also in Rodman's case kind of like the alcoholic NBA weirdo version of two sorority girls making out.
In any case, there's a reason why people don't claim him as the first openly gay active player in the major American sports, because he wasn't.
Can we compromise to openly queer?
FYI, it is Phoenix and Cleveland that are the apparent leaders and most intransigent negotiators in the current NBA owner lockout and the probable loss of a full season of pro basketball. It would be hard to believe that the Phoenix owner would have as team president someone in strong opposition to his own position. I guess I could go look for quotes, but Stern keeps everybody pretty quiet.
Am I still required to get all misty about Rick Welts, as he beats the union into submission?
So Welts has left Phoenix and gone to Oakland.
Big diff. I still don't like bosses.
Except Cuban, who is a saint.
Except Cuban, who is a saint.
And Lucifer was an angel.
Cuban actually has been very good in the negotiations. He proposed either lifting (or creating significant exceptions to) the salary cap, and seems generally more aligned with the players than the small market owners, as he should be.
125 -- I'm not sure I'm up on what the term means these days.
Has the Herman Cain "yellow flowers" campaign video been posted here? Holy shit it makes the smoking man ad look completely normal: "He Carried Yellow Flowers".
130: Having a sexual identity that deviates in some significant way from normative heterosexuality? I mean, I just made that up, but it's pretty close.
The video in 131 is mind-blowing. I think I may now be sold on Cain.
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Interesting (via Futility Closet)
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Where did you find that video? I'm not finding any mainstream reporting on it (including blogs my definition of "mainstream"). Is it even legitimate?
Crap. That commercial is going to ruin Justified for me. Please no one tell me that Tim Olyphant or Walt Goggins are Republicans.
There's also a post from Jonah Goldberg about it at The Corner.
You beat me to it, tulip. And I liked Searcy's character, too.
There has got to be some kind of interesting backstory to this ad. I just can't take it at face.
The commenters on boingboing get it right: are we sure this isn't a Colbert SuperPAC ad? I know there are holes in that theory (it doesn't say anywhere that it's from Colbert), but I'm finding any other potential explanation waaaaay more implausible.
The video is on his web-site:
Look under "Watch Cain TV"
Digby, LGM and other have been running the videos. Nobody can believe it.
142: okay, fair enough. Are we sure Cain's media staffers aren't from Colbert?
re: 114
Pretty sure the first black guy to play at national level for Scotland was 1880s [checked, and yes]. That was football, though. Not Rugby. It's one of those oft-forgotten things. Looking back at the late 19th century in Britain it can seem a very strange place in terms of attitudes to race that can seem, sometimes, less nakedly discriminatory than 50 or 60 years alter.
LB is fairly correct about my use of the word "homoerotic" with respect to Bill Simmons' writing. If I had to, I'd probably say that Bill Simmons wants actually to have sex with professional athletes significantly less (which is not to say not at all) than Joss Whedon wants to be beaten up by a cute little slip of a girl or Alfred Hitchcock wanted to watch chilly blondes change into sheer peignoirs.
The lines pinpricking Obama about teleprompters and community organizing have the wannabe-witty belabored awkwardness of a College Republican, and don't sound like they'd come from a satirist.
He's no Mike Gravel.
Missed these in 2008. Definite Antonioni vibe.
The lines pinpricking Obama about teleprompters and community organizing have the wannabe-witty belabored awkwardness of a College Republican, and don't sound like they'd come from a satirist.
To my ears, the lines pinpricking Obama about teleprompters and community organizing have the obviously over-the-top wannabe-witty belabored awkwardness that you'd expect from someone trying to satirize a College Republican. Especially when combined with the general nonsensical absurdity of the rest of the clip.
Not that I actually honestly think it's satire, at least not from satirists plants in the Cain campaign. Really, I don't. But at the same time, that seems less unlikely than any alternative, so I have no idea what to think.
145. On the other hand, the first black player to sign for Celtic (One of the two Scottish football clubs that matter, ttaM will fill you in on the politics) was Gil Scott Heron's father.
That particular revolution was not televised.
Those quads are amazing.
In hot yoga the other day, there was a relatively skinny woman who had the most amazing booty muscles. Two of the most defined, rounded glutes I have ever seen!
Mr. Blake Griffin is indeed a marvel. Who is he now?
Who is he now?
Right now, he's an intern for Funny or Die, but if the NBA resolves it's labor issues then he's the reigning rookie-of-the-year, former #1 pick, and the most exciting player the Clippers have had in as long as I can remember (Elton Brand was good in LA, but was he exciting?).
To my ears, the lines pinpricking Obama about teleprompters and community organizing have the obviously over-the-top wannabe-witty belabored awkwardness that you'd expect from someone trying to satirize a College Republican. Especially when combined with the general nonsensical absurdity of the rest of the clip.
No, because that part isn't over-the-top (although much of the rest is) - it's just vanilla bad.
I do very much like photos like that -- the black and white is terrific. He looks like a dancer. I'm reminded of this.
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I need suggestions for a book of the genre "historical novel" appropriate for a fourth grader's book report. Extra bonus points for anything set in Asia.
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Ok, so IMDB tells me that Nick Searcy is a real actor best known for a movie that most everyone remembers as a one-man show for Tom Hanks. But what's with the yellow flowers? Is there a cowboy movie with Searcy in it that is being referenced here?
Can a character actor really say "Hi, I'm X, but you already knew that." I thought the job of guys like that was to be "that guy," you know that guy who was in that thing.
Mr. Blake Griffin is indeed a marvel. Who is he now?
Knecht, see if any of Geoffrey Trease's stuff is still available. Certainly dated, but as I remember totally gripping stories.
161: "Boobs Uplifted, Groped By A Pirate"
I care enough to whine but not to actually inform myself.
I love you, thorn.
163: Heh. Whatever that is, I'll confine myself to admiring the photograph in the OP, and musing about the world of the unbelievably fit. And generally feeling stupid that I don't try harder.
Extra bonus points for anything set in Asia.
Asia's a big place. To avoid the obvious, try Barbara Bartos Hoeppner's adventures of Siberian/Mongolian kids on the steppe.
161: Almost all of Rosemary Sutcliff's output would be good, but none of that is in Asia. There's always "Yung Fu of the Upper Yang-Tze" but the politics are hella sketch. Scott Westerberg's "Behemouth" takes place almost entirely in Istanbul, but it would probably be stretching a point to call it "historical", and it's kinda long. "Kim"?
Knecht:
Lloyd Alexander, Time Cat (parts in Asia)
Rosemary Sutcliff. The Eagle of the Ninth (not Asia)
Ronald Welch, Knight Crusader (west Asia, probably racist but I recall stuff about Arab civilization being more advanced)
Diane L. Wilson, I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade (1998), about a girl in fourteenth-century Mongolia whose greatest wish is to win a horse race. Recommended for grades 6-10. Review
Dori Jones Yang, Daughter of Xanadu (2011), about a thirteenth-century Mongol princess who meets Marco Polo during his visit to the court of Khubilai Khan. Review
From: http://www.historicalnovels.info/Medieval-YA.html#YAAsia
161: If the fourth grader is a fairly sophisticated reader (and if not I think "historical novel" is an impossible circle to square): The Sign of the Chrysanthemum by Katharine Patterson. I do vaguely remember there being something that approaches a sex scene -- nothing that actually depicts sex, but perhaps some sitting on a rug and kissing on necks and an implication that sex is about to happen. Don't know if that's objectionable. Also The Bronze Bow, by Elizabeth George Speare, if the Middle East circa the life of Jesus counts as Asia. Each of those authors wrote several other historical novels, but I mentioned the most Asian ones.
Natilo, Kim is one of the greatest novels ever written, but 4th grade is about 10 years old, n'est-ce-pas? It isn't just that it would be potentially over-ambitious, but it would risk the inadvertent aversion therapy that I got from being made to read Dickens at that age. I haven't yet gone back to him.
(Oh, consulting Wikipedia, I realize KP wrote several novels set in Japan, and I probably read all of them, so I don't know which the rug kissing belonged to. I think it may have actually been Of Nightingales That Weep.)
173: Yeah, I was not really being serious -- I think I might have read an abridged version when I was 10? It had really big illustrations in any case.
Kim is one of the greatest novels ever written, but 4th grade is about 10 years old, n'est-ce-pas? It isn't just that it would be potentially over-ambitious, but it would risk the inadvertent aversion therapy that I got from being made to read Dickens at that age.
I thought of Kim straight away, but rejected it on those same grounds.
Thanks for all the suggestions. You guys are much better than read gives you credit for.
Also: Tia!
161: Rory says _Dragon's Gate_ (not set in Asia, but about the Chinese contribution to the transcontinental railroad) or anything else by Lawrence Yep. She says it's 4th grade appropriate for a high 4th grade reading level.
I had a copy, probably abridged, of Michael Strogoff, Courier of the Czar at about that age, maybe a touch older Such a great book, and set in Asia.
for a high 4th grade reading level.
Yeah, about that... The child in question is probably about average for grade level.
174: I loved ONTW and found SotC pretty boring. (it might be about a boy on a quest? Wasn't my thing.)
I dug that Chrysanthemum book as a kid. I remember nothing else about it.
Hugo Cabret might qualify as historical fiction, but not set in Asia.
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BTW has anybody called a halt to the hordes of you who were abusing yourselves to the image of John McCarthy. A long life well lived.
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Hi Knecht.
The Sign of the Beaver, also by Elizabeth George Speare, gets assigned to fourth graders a lot. So does Where the Red Fern Grows. So I guess historical fiction for fourth graders isn't so impossible. They're not set in Asia, though.
It looks like googling "fourth grade historical fiction" gets you decent discussion among teachers. Here's one that I don't remember reading, although the title sounds familiar.
except I'm a doof, because that Thousand Cranes book is non-fiction.
184: I liked The Sign of the Beaver when I finally read it, but it took me awhile to get into it. [LHF]
I want to recommend Johnny Tremain but I've never read it.
I think Rory's book club read The Green Glass Sea around 4th grade. May have been later. I emailed my friend who teaches 4th grade.
129
Cuban actually has been very good in the negotiations. He proposed either lifting (or creating significant exceptions to) the salary cap, and seems generally more aligned with the players than the small market owners, as he should be.
The NYT reports otherwise .
Micky Arison, whose Miami Heat play in the N.B.A.'s 14th-largest market, is among the owners most eager to settle, according to people close to the talks. Mark Cuban, whose Dallas Mavericks play in the league's fifth-largest market and have one of its highest payrolls, is one of the most intractable. Both rank in the top 200 on Forbes's billionaire listings.
161: I was searching for something half-remembered but did not find it. But I did land on this site of historical fiction for children/YA arranged by country/area, which might have something useful (although most show as 5th grade +).
A friend of mine linked to this site of historical fiction the other day.
I want to recommend Johnny Tremain but I've never read it.
Nor have I, but the movie was fantastic when I was about that age.
I remember the book as excellent. Can't remember if my kids liked it. They both came up dry on historical fiction about Asia, sorry.
No, no Johnny Tremain unless she really likes being haunted for the rest of her life by memories of a hand withered by a boiling-silver accident! I'm blanking on middle-grade Asian historical fiction, though. If she's okay with central Asia she might like the Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind books or whatever they're called, which I think aren't too terribly Orientalist but probably a little.
No, no Johnny Tremain unless she really likes being haunted for the rest of her life by memories of a hand withered by a boiling-silver accident! I'm blanking on middle-grade Asian historical fiction, though. If she's okay with central Asia she might like the Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind books or whatever they're called, which I think aren't too terribly Orientalist but probably a little.
195: Oh, Sally read Shabanu in school last year. I don't remember her reacting to it.
The silver accident in Johnny Tremaine was upsetting, but not terribly so for me.
Rosemary Sutcliff. The Eagle of the Ninth (not Asia)
The recent movie "of" this is hilariously terrible.
199 -- you know, despite that being a favorite book as a kid and reading Variety most days, I had no idea that movie had been released. I guess I have to see it.
Johnny Tremaine is great. I'm surprised they released the film in Britain.
I read Shogun around that time. It ain't YA, but it's a fun read.
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Statswatch!
Now that we're through the midterm (and have blown through way more material than we were supposed to cover in the course) anybody want to guess what the next step is? We're learning R! I'm sure people have tons of programming experience and this'll go great.
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Kids' books set in Asia:
Cynthia Kadohata: Cracker -- about the Vietnam War
Eleanor Coerr - Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes - about the bombing of Hiroshima
Bette Bao Lord - The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson (only the first sliver is set in China, but I recall loving this book to death when I was a kid)
203.3 was my first thought because I loved it so much at that age. 202.2 is probably better for the assignment and so sad!
200: It really is pretty awful. They tried to make the politics more obviously anti-colonial/anti-slavery, and wound up making them incomprehensible. Also, bizarrely for a Hollywood film, they excised the love interest! So now it reads waaaaay more homoerotic/homosocial than the book.
Sorry, talking about The Eagle/The Eagle of the Ninth there, not Johnny Tremaine.
Johnny Tremaine is great. I'm surprised they released the film in Britain.
Why not. It was a fine movie and this is North Korea. Most people in Britain are strongly supportive of the American revolution and a historical "good thing". Come to that, 50% of the population was supportive in 1776.
this is North Korea
I'm glad people are finally coming around to admitting this.
