Did you notice this site-owner explanation in comments (what is wrong with me?): "Literally, we don't want to sex Mutombo. We're male, he's male, and none of us are gay (not that there's anything wrong with being a gay basketball player. We love Larry Bird.).
A little something for our Brahman Bostonian, Brother baa....
Half-serious: isn't baa Jewish? I don't think Jews can be Brahmins, can they? (When Ex's WASP mom married a Jew, she was stricken--literally had her name taken out--from the social register.)
Dude, is it lame to bust on you for going to debate camp?
Jews certainly can't be Brahmins in the original sense.
No, in fact calling it "camp" was meant to provoke just such a response. At the time we called it something else--"debate institute" I think.
You mean in the Hindu sense, Ben? I should tell you that answering yes will make you a little bitch.
Not to indulge in harmful stereotypes, but isn't Bird way too ugly to be gay?
Gay and celibate. Maybe he wants to blog here?
it's lame to bust on him for going to debate camp, but completely acceptable -if not obligatory- to bust on him for calling it a "debate institute". if it's anything like the dork camps i went to, the only "research" being done was on how far you could get with the girl from the california magnet school.
Jews cannot be Brahmins, Boston or otherwise.
There are, of course, stealth Jews who appear to be WASPs.
He blocked a shot off the backboard! Like .0001% of all debate camp attendees could make that claim.
I think we have to recongize the sad truth that ogged was, in fact, cool in high school and thus is not a true Nerd Brother.
Seems a shame to have used up all one's cool so young.
I think we have to recongize the sad truth that ogged was, in fact, cool in high school and thus is not a true Nerd Brother.
I promise I was not sufficiently socially adept to be anything close to cool.
What happens when WASP and JAP collide?
in special hangers in Missouri
Darien, but close enough.
1. I promise I was not sufficiently socially adept to be anything close to cool. There's a real shocker.
2. Is Brahmin the plural of Brahman? (Welcome to what w-lfs-n has wrought.)
Is Brahmin the plural of Brahman?
Alternate spelling.
"Brahman" and "Brahmin" are alternate spellings; the former is more correct but the latter is more popular:
Forms: 5-7 bragman, 6 bramane, 7-9 brachman(e, -min, 7 brackman, braman, -men, -mine, -miny, 8-9 bramin, 8- brahmin, 9 brahman. [ad. Skr. br{amac}hmana, f. brahman praise, worship; some of the older Eng. forms were derived from or influenced by the Greek spelling {beta}{rho}{alpha}{chi}{mu}{gafrown}{nu}{epsilon}{fsigma} (pl.), L. brachm{amac}ni, -es, and med.L. corruptions; the form Brahmin, a corruption of the Indian vernacular pronunciation, is still all but universal in popular use; during the present century Orientalists have adopted the more correct Brahman, which (often written Brâhman or Bráhman) is employed by most writers on India.]
What happens when WASP and JAP collide?
I've got nothing. Apostropher, are you reading? God I hope so. That is just a big, fat, juicy softball sitting on a tee and begging you to smack it out of the park. Please, please be reading...
Is the bit about ex's mom true? WTF? Is there some sort of due process/Inquisition process? However silly the institution of the SR is, that's appalling? Also, did you date a Lowell - wow!
Yeah, it's true. I'm not sure what the particular process is, but the result is: marry a Jew, name is taken off the books. (I don't know if this is still true. We're talking over 30 years ago, of course.)
What happens when WASP and JAP collide?
JAP: So that's who buys retail. Huh.
The process of admission into the SR remains a mystery.
Recent advertising materials suggest that only 400 of the 25,000 "exceptional" families in the SR own yachts. Paupers.
Cool, thanks baa. There's this.
he does point out that it's pretty easy to get kicked out. There were 38,000 families in the 1984 book but a great purge the following year reduced that number by 3,500 and more have hit the road since. Sad evidence of this comes from H. M., an SR listee from Chicago. H. (who according to his listing is actually H. the third) got in because his mother's side married into a Mayflower family. But his four sisters were de-listed because they married members of the steerage crowd, thereby diluting the gene pool. H.'s mom think he'll get the boot too once he marries his sweetie, whom H. cheerfully describes as NOKD--"not our kind, dear."
Kind of like with the Catholic Church, I do admire an institution with standards, but, well...
You know, I wonder if ex's mom hadn't been kicked out already and we'd gotten married, whether I would have been thereby included, or she would have been thereby kicked out. Probably the latter, eh?
Yeah, don't you have, like, brown skin?
(Hazily rememebered) quote from ex's grandmother: "I have no problem with blacks and Puerto Ricans, they cheat and steal just as much as real Americans."
In which I get labeled on the Interweb as an anti-Semite and a real 'merican -
1. I've never heard the term Stealth Jew before, and I'm wondering if it references unintentional passing (presuming Jewish names and Jewish physiognomy: anti-Semetic) or intentional passing. I admit to a certain cloistered-ness to my life, but I can't imagine that being thought not Jewish yields the sorts of benefits being not African-American might in, say, the last 15 years.
2. I always thought a JAP paid retail, to the chagrin of parents, in a sort of Rockefeller/Rockefeller's son way.
3. whether I would have been thereby included, or she would have been thereby kicked out Letting in Shi'a is precisely the situation for which "there goes the neighborhood" was properly invented. (real 'merican).
I can't imagine that being thought not Jewish yields the sorts of benefits
I'm not the world's expert, but my impression was that plenty of places (clubs and such) around Boston still included very few Jews--whether that's a result of actual policy or unwritten policy, or slow changes in the social strata, I don't know.
Michael: Jewish-American Princess (or Prince, I suppose).
the only "research" being done was on how far you could get with the girl from the california magnet school
Ah, mine was from Georgia. Such a sweetie, and a big basketball fan, so we went to games in a tournament they were having there; saw Walt "the Wizard" Williams and George Lynch, among others, before they turned pro. Then, as now, I didn't get any.
So, uh, no one has an interesting ran-into-a-pro-athlete story?
thanks, Ben.
No stories. I've never ran into a celebrity of any sort. Once I was in a room next-door to a former senator. And the door was open.
And I showed John Sallis to the bathroom, once.
All this by way of saying, "my life is boring."
No pro-athlete stories. I've got a supermodel story, but that probably doesn't qualify.
Sure it does!
I have a friend who's a cabbie in Pittsburgh, and he has lots of pro athlete stories. Unfortunately, my "playing with Juliette Binoche when she was 6 and I was 1" story turns out to be sourced to Ahmed Chalabi.
My wife and I met Jim Marshall (Defensive Lineman for the Minnesota Vikings during their Purple People Eater glory years). He got a real big kick out of the fact that my 6'1" wife was as tall as him.
Football players used to be a lot smaller.
I was once on the same plane from LGA to ORD as Mike Ditka. As I walked by him during boarding I said, "Hey, coach!" He grunted at me in reply.
I also was at movie which Bill Cartwright was watching. He is very tall.
Ok. Here's how Canadian I am:
Mike Palmateer, SuperGoalie (at a press conference)
Eddie Shack, Drunk (same press conference)
Michael Smith, Decathlete (super nice/sexy customer at my record shop)
But the highlight has to be... Steve Bauer. First Canadian to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France.
Saw D Coleman on a deserted NYC street late on night; really tall.
So a high-school friend of Mr. Breath's (call him A) got married when Mr. Breath and I had been dating not all that long, and Mr. B. was asked to be an usher in the wedding party. While I was invited to the wedding, Mr. Breath was sort of expected to pair off with his corresponding bridesmaid, who in this case was the bride's (call her B) boss (call her Paulina Poriskova). Wedding-party business took up most of the wedding, leaving me pretty much on my own.
Nothing like spending a wedding where you don't know anyone skulking around in corners as your date hobnobs with a supermodel. The fact that I'd shown up in a really spectacularly unfortunate outfit only made things worse. Not a good evening.
LB-- one of the many hilarious things about that anecdote is that "A" and "B" are introduced as shorthand but never used.
I was pretty much just setting up the "(call her Paulina Poriskova)" line. Who is, in fact, who it was. Very attractive woman.
LB, a fantastic story.
Was not PP married at the time to Ric Ocasek? That would be a load off of my mind...
If you hang around Durham/Chapel Hill, you'll see most of the Duke and UNC guys who went on to the NBA eventually, which adds up to a whopping lot of players. Hang in front of Granville Towers at UNC and if you're lucky, you'll get to see them play pick-up games. I've seen enough of them that it no longer seems like a big deal.
When I saw George Clinton in the RDU airport, though, THAT was big. Couldn't think of a word to say and, in retrospect, I'm happy that I couldn't because I was so starstruck I doubt I could have gotten it out coherently. I also shook Bill Clinton's hand on campus during his '92 campaign. The guy is much bigger than he looks on TV. He's built like a football player and his hands are gigantic.
She was indeed. He showed up for an hour or so, hug around looking surly, and left.
Generally, I'm a terrible celebrity spotter. I've always lived in NYC, so by the law of averages and most people's experience, I should see famous people all the time. If I do, though, I don't notice them -- the above is my only celebrity story. (Unless Julie Eisenberg qualifies.)
That's even funnier. I had no idea there is such a person, and, for some reason, I decided you must be referring to an actual person by using a name that had been intentionally altered in an inept way (e.g., fictional former president Dill Dinton, or something), so I spent several minutes trying to think of an actual supermodel with a name such that it could be altered to "Paulina Poriskova." With limited success.
I also was at movie which Bill Cartwright was watching. He is very tall.
Wait, were we together? I forgot to include Cartwright, who I also saw at a movie. It was after a recent Bulls championship, and the whole crowd applauded when he walked in. Cool.
Oh, and Horace Grant came to our high school for some reason or another.
A friend of mine was propositioned by a member of the Chicago Bulls in a hotel lobby. I want to say it was Scotty Pippen but I could be making that up.
If I could have found a decent picture of Granville Waiters, I might have been able to make a joke here.
I was at a reading in LA some years ago. Dave Eggers read some stories, then a rocket scientist (no lie) talked about rocket science, and then David Byrne gave a powerpoint presentation and talked about The New Sins, which had just been published.
That's not really a random celebrity encounter, though, since I knew those people would be there.
However! There was a Q&A session, and Salman Rushdie asked the rocket scientist about launching a satellite into low-earth orbit. I think I was the only one there who didn't know that it was him.
Why were those three people at the same event? Was there a theme?
I'm not a regular here, but I can contribute a little something. I saw Scottie Pippen get out of his gaudy ride and walk into Andy & Bax, a local survivalist/outdoor store in Portland. The shop features an interesting mix of rafting/hiking gear and "How to Survive a Nuclear Holocaust by Starting Your Own Militia"-type books and equipment.
Perhaps he anticipated the TrailBlazers decline into paranoid chaos a bit earlier than the rest of us? I didn't see what he bought, but it was curious nonetheless. Oh, and he's just as odd-looking in person.
Pippen *is* kind of odd-looking. He's the only one on my list I said anything to: his car was parked behind mine, and we were both getting in at about the same time and made eye contact--I didn't have anything to say, so I just said, "good luck." Celebrity just warps everything around it, no?
Eggers was putting it on (as is his wont). I believe that The New Sins was published by McSweeney's, or something like that, and that's why Eggers and Byrne were goin' on the road and giving readings.
The rocket scientist was just there because Eggers is that kind of wacky guy!
Oh, there was a fourth presenter, too, who had been the FBI's head investigator for bank robberies in the LA area, or something like that, and had written a novel about, yes, a bank robber. And an investigator of bank robberies. He read from his book and talked about robbing banks. Most of the questions in the Q&A session were actually for him.
Afterwards Eggers gave haircuts and an Afro-Cuban band marched in and played.
This would have been in 2001.
I'm not a regular here,
Not to speak for the management, but don't let that stop you. I don't know anyone here IRL, and just started commenting a lot a few months ago, and not with any particular justification. Barriers to entry here don't seem to be high.
Barriers to entry here don't seem to be high.
Indeed and double. People need to understand this. (But if I put it in a post, we'll never get rid of the riff-raff.)
Following up, now that my attempt to get my response next to oggeds question failed. (Damn you, FunkyDuck!)
I went to a reading with Dave Eggers and his cohort Jeff Johnson (who writes for McSweeney's, and, somewhat weirdly, Jane magazine). They had a special guest speaker, a dermatologist (neurologiust?) speaking the nature of itching (why people itch, the itching mechanism, etc.).
The reason Dave Eggers has interesting but somewhat disconcerting people at his readings is the same reason he has a store devoted to piratical accessories, and the same reason Tiny Tim wore shorts and played the ukulele: weird-ass.
Ok, thanks Ben, understood. Glad to see you're still hatin' on Eggers.
"Barriers to entry here don't seem to be high"
Thank goodness. As a boss of mine once said, "My low expectations are still too high for your low standards." I'm sure she stole that from someone, but it sounded good anyway.
Oops, that last one was from me. See what I mean about low standards?
Barriers to entry
Most of the folks commenting here these days are relatively new arrivals.
Why, when I was your age, we had to write out comments longhand (black ink only!) and mail them in a #9 envelope to Ogged - and guessing an anonymous blogger's mailing address was no mean feat. Sometimes it took *months* to set up that perfect cock joke.
But those were the days, eh, apostropher?
I do wish we could get Magik back, but he doesn't even answer my emails...
Ever since the regulars started hanging out at the Mineshaft, there's been a concerted effort to remove barriers to entry.
George Stephin...Stepah...Snuffalufagus used to work out at my old gym. Unattractive dwarf. (That might be jealousy talking).
Well, he's definitely not tall and handsome, so it's probably not just you.
I used to work out at the same gym as Paul Wellstone.
A nicer, more patient man you've never met. I could never bring myself to bother him, but I watched plenty of other people do so--he always had the time to engage.
But it was weird seeing the Senior Senator from Minnesota's wang in the shower.
When I was in junior high I was on a swim team that practiced at a pool that Matt Biondi used to use (this was around the time he was an Olympian). I seem to remember being one of the few kids on my team who never got an autograph from him. I don't remember why I didn't ask for one; I guess I've just never been interested in autographs.
Also, my family was in Colorado once watching the time trial stage of a professional bike race and one of the riders, upon seeing our Siberian Husky sitting on the side of the road, yelled out "I like your dog" as he rode by.
Speaking of Olympian swimmers, I've been taking swimming lessons for the past few months from a former member of the Swedish women's swim team. No lie.
Very funny. I haven't seen her in over a month, but will tonight.
he's definitely not tall and handsome
Yeah, but this is back in the day, when he'd purportedly just turned down a place in People's "50 most beautiful people" issue. The WP was awash in "he's so cute," stories. (NB: I have never fully trusted any woman's ability to identify physically attractive men since that time.)
I was Rick Fox at a Yankee game. Seeing an athlete at a sporting event which he was attending as a spectator counts, right?
I saw Jeff Van Gundy a couple of times while he was coaching the Knicks.
I saw a player for the Suns, fairly certain it was Kevin Johnson, in a mall in the early 90's. He signed something or other.
Dikembe Mutombo at a restaurant in DC.
I'm sure I have non-basketball ones, but can't think of any right now.
NB: I have never fully trusted any woman's ability to identify physically attractive men since that time.
OK, probably you're doing this on purpose, but isn't "attractive" an adjective formed from the verb "attract"?
I've often found myself disagreeing with most women about the attractiveness of men, but I figure they're right and I'm wrong.
Only teenage girls and very superficial gay men can be trusted on the question of the attractiveness of men.
Everyone else factors too many other variables into the equation.
Weiner:
Sadly, I'm not doing on purpose. (Usually there's a w-lfs-n reference in those circs.). Worse yet, I don't know what you're talking about.
Weiner is noting that a woman (or person in general) can't be wrong about who is attractive, since the person they're describing with that word attracts them.
So should the word be "attractious" so that the quality of attractiveness is in the person-in-him/herself?
I got curried goat one time at negril in silver spring md and Patrick Ewing was there. he's tall, dark, and not handsome at all, possessing, as he does, the world's most flared nostrils. but as a stalwart knicks fan I was pretty psyched. this was back in their...well, if I said "winning" days it would be sort of a lie, so this was back in the days when the knicks would often come agonizingly close to winning crucial games, and then either Michael Jackson or Scottie Pippen would fuck them up somehow. or Ewing would miss an easy layup, or whatever.
Wait, the Knicks had a Mark Jackson, and the Bulls had a Michael Jordan, but was there a Michael Jackson I'm not remembering, or are you just mesmerized by the trial?
Yeah, but if you truncate it to "and then either Michael Jackson or Scottie Pippen would fuck them," it kinda makes sense.
Actually, I'm saying more specifically that men who aren't attracted to men aren't better judges of when particular men are attractive than women who are attracted to men, since whether a particular man is attractive depends on whether people who are in general attracted to men are attracted to this particular man, ceterus paribus.
Of course, that doesn't disqualify men who are attracted to men from commenting.
ps I do realize that the first paragraph/sentence doesn't actually clarify anything.
But men who aren't attracted to men are able to view a particular man dispassionately! We can say, in general, based on our observations of the kind of men we have observed women who are attracted to men to be attracted to, this man is, or is not, to be deemed attractive. A man or woman who is attracted to men is likely to let his or her attraction to a man get in the way of a correct evaluation of his attractiveness.
men who aren't attracted to men are able to view a particular man dispassionately
But couldn't I be saying that there are men women find attractive for reasons other than their looks, but that women are untrustworthy in making that distinction? That is, given a roster of male faces and bodies and nothing else, women would pick X as the most attractive. In the real world, women have more information (specific knowledge or reasonable inferences from clothes, etc.) and pick Y. Heterosexual men, having honed their objectifying models for generations, would still pick X as most physically attractive to women, even given the extra information.
Mmm, I think that might be the point behind ac's 88 and 89, that it's only those groups that are free of other considerations.
I don't think there's any reason to think hetero men are in general more able to block out non-superficial factors than hetero women. (Unless by "honed their objectifying models" you mean that we've had generations of practice at evaluating women by looks alone; still, I don't think the skills transfer over.)
I'm vaguely thinking of posting on this back on my own blog.
My question is really whether you were saying that my comment was non-sensical, rather than that it is inaccurate. I'm really curious. As I've said before, the blogosphere has given me a pretty healthy respect for philosophers, and I'll happily admit that what I said was non-sensical; I just want to know why.
And yeah, I meant it, jokily, in the "we've objectified women for a long time" way.
Hm, I don't think I'd say it's nonsensical--there are probably theories of "attractive" on which it comes out true. But I think that on the correct analysis "attractive" what you say is necessarily false--that is, it doesn't happen to be false because women are better judges than men.
I might try and work this out on my blog, to see if I can come up with an analysis of "attractive." You should know that I don't really know that much about dispositional concepts ("Y is attractive to X" means, sort of, "X would be attracted to Y under the right circumstances"), so your respect for philosophers might be misplaced here.
But I haven't given you a theory why what you said might be wrong. OK, here's the dispositional theory of "attractive":
"X is attractive" means "X is generally attractive to members of some appropriate group." (That Steph isn't attractive to straight men doesn't mean he's not attractive.)
"X is generally attractive to members of group Y" means that--other things being equal--a member of group Y will be attracted to X. A lot is packed into "other things being equal."
So--if members of group Y in general know who they're attracted to (not always true!) members of group Y on the whole will be in a better position to judge whether X is attractive than non-members, unless we're talking about a non-member who's done an extremely accurate survey of members of group Y to find out who they're attracted to.
Now, "physically attractive" is another thing, which I think was at issue somewhat here.
"X is physically attractive to group Y" means, other things being equal, members of group Y will be attracted to someone with X's physical characteristics (whatever those are!)
If non-members of group Y are better at ignoring the non-physical and good enough at figuring out what members of group Y are/would be attracted to, then they might be better judges of physical attractiveness than members of group Y.
(Again, I don't do work on dispositional concepts; those who do would probably chuckle diabolically before blowing the above analysis to flinders.)
I had to look it up after Matt's post, he says shamefully.
103 results for "blown to flinders".
Straight men are terrible judges of male hotness, all the ways they relate to other men and what they like about them get in the way.
See, teenage girls and the dancer-from-the-dance sort of gay man can achieve something other groups can't - uniformity. If you take, say, a high school yearbook, or a college facebook, and ask groups of teenage girls and gay men to evaluate who is hottest, they will all pick the same people, because hot is the biggest concern for them. Nothing dilutes it. Other types of people will have a more idiosyncratic approach, which will produce results all over the map.
Straight men are terrible judges of male hotness, all the ways they relate to other men and what they like about them get in the way.
Completely untrue. Straight men are often at least as good at determining hotness as gay men; they are often just unwilling to admit it. (Similarly, if you can't find an attractive woman willing to be sufficiently bitchy, she can usually point out every possible physical flaw in all other attractive women in the room).
Like there's any such thing as the 100% gay or straight individual anyway.
Like there's any such thing as the 100% attractive or unattractive individual anyway.
I don't seem to be doing a very good job of not commenting.
Maggie Cheung is 100% attractive. Yowza.
You really think straight guys can meet that standard? That they'd all pick the same people? I highly highly doubt it.
I've tried this experiment many a time. Believe me.
In this picture we see Cheung along with Tony Leung as Jean-Paul Belmondo as Humphrey Bogart.
She is gorgeous in that movie, but not the person I'd pick as 100% attractive, obviously.
ac, insofar as Tim speaks in that comment as if he's interacted with women, it's suspect.
When I say anything about her, I'm basically just thinking of that movie.
113, 118, and now my 120(?), also disagreeing with w-lfs-n suggest that ac at 116 is right.
Yeah, but that's because we're discussing women. Plus you have to take into account my 120.
No need to speculate. Go here a,b,c... across; 1,2,3... down. Come back with your three most attractive.
I thought ac was referring the ability of straight guys to agree on the attractiveness of men or men, but now I see her 109 and stand corrected.
Damn, mainly they just look like goons. A3 is a good-looking guy though.
Couldn't you have at least left safesearch on?
I did mean guys' ability to evaluate the hotness of other guys. On women, I think they can achieve uniformity, more or less.
I was joking. But I suspected that just like some of the more attractive women may not show up on the first page of an unfiltered search, the same may be true of men. But I just searched female models with both settings, as well as male models with the filter on, and saw that I'm pretty much wrong.
Note that A5 on Ogged's search is the same as A1 for the same search for female models.
I have certain objections, and I'm not ranking them (some of the pics suck, etc.), but ..c2,a3, and d4 are the top 3.
No I didn't, I meant C1. Holy shit, I'm bad at this. I can't read a map, no.
Wierd. I just went back to check on the picks, and they reordered them. Strange, and sux for the test.
I think you need to copy them to something like Flickr - really not worth it.
Well, you're a big gay anyway for playing.
Come see the gayness inherent in Unfogged!
That's my pick for the page generated for me by Ogged's search.
