The Debate Worth Having

Earlier this week, George Zimmerman was acquitted for murdering Trayvon Martin in Florida.  In the time between then and now I've run the gamut of emotional responses, starting with anger and outrage, and coming to a point of depression and disappointment.  I realized that I could not be a reporter in this case, as the very personal nature of it would color my writing.  So a week's gone by and now I'm in a clearer head space.  While it may not be as newsworthy as it was a week ago, it's time to weigh in on this subject.

The question, however, is which take is the right way to go?

I could rant on (and on and on) about the fact every argument in the American judicial system is based on precedent, and the fact that Mr. Zimmerman decided to profile an unarmed Black kid, initiate a confrontation, pick a fight, lose the fight and shoot the kid makes that sequence of events okay legally.  When this happens again (and make no mistake, as Americans we are nothing if not repetitive of our mistakes), defense can now point to this as legal precedent.  There has been somewhat paranoid talk of it being open season on young Black males, but with this legal precedent the argument seems a bit less irrational.  This is concerning to me because, well, I'm told I'm huge and there seems to be an overabundance of dark alleyways in this country.

But that's not the tack I'm taking.

I can comment on how unevenly the "Stand Your Ground" law has been applied in Florida as a Black woman fending off her abusive husband and didn't hurt or kill anyone in the act has been sentenced to 20 years in prison while Mr. Zimmerman goes free.  The best case scenario in any personal defense legislation is that the conflict is defused with minimal injury and no loss of life, and yet Marissa Thompson is going to spend the next 20 years in prison.  George Zimmerman will not see another day behind bars.

But I'm not going there either.

In the week since the Trayvon Martin verdict, protests and rallies have sparked bot pro and anti George Zimmerman.  The thing I'm going to say is that George Zimmerman is not a cause.  Neither is Trayvon Martin.  They are people.  One a terribly misguided individual who felt empowered by a stupid law, another a terribly unfortunate young man who died for what amounted to a questionable wardrobe choice in a strange neighborhood.  They are not causes.  They are not to be supported or decried.  They are the obvious representation of a very broken system in which we categorize and classify based solely on preconceived notions on what a criminal looks like.  The real debate worth having is about the concept of a fair and impartial jury, especially when jury for a big case has been inundated with media information by the time they are called that they have opinions already formed.  The debate worth having is  in how we grant the 15 minutes of fame on someone who has to remain anonymous for talking about why she made a decision on the value of one man's life over another.

But like you, I'm tired.  This whole thing has been exhausting.  And all I want to do is turn the page, change the channel and get some rest.

Better Things To Do.

We've all been there before, when we're faced with that daunting difficult, sometimes unpleasant task that has to be done.  It's staring you in the face and waiting to be tackled.  The sheer enormity of the thing is enough to keep you busy for an entire weekend, or leave you sore for a couple of days.

And then you just remembered that load of laundry that needed to be done, because there's no way you can do this without your favorite green boxers.

So you do six loads of laundry, your green boxers are among the last to be cleaned and dried.  You take a shower so that you can be clean when you change into your boxers and when you're done your bathroom routine, your task is still there, waiting for you, demanding its due.

Oh crud, is that the time?  I gotta get to the Post Office before it closes!

You hop in your car, take the freeway the one exit to the Post Office, wait in line for twenty minutes to get to the counter and ask for a book of stamps.  Because, you know, the stamp dispenser won't take your debit card.  You get your stamps, drive back the way you came, park your car and get ready to do your task.  You roll up your sleeves and as you're about to jump in, you realize that you forgot to stop at Walmart to get Peanut Butter M &M's.  It's essential; not having Peanut Butter M & M's damns this task to failure, and the notion that you were about to get started without them is sheer lunacy in and of itself.

So you get in your car, drive to Walmart and grab a bag of Peanut Butter M &M's, and while you're at it, some tortilla chips and salsa.  You stop at the electronics section and stare mindlessly at the Hi-def TV's that are infinitely better than the brand new one you got last Friday.  You drag yourself away from the continually running loop of Finding Nemo and head toward the register, picking up a box of Raisin Bran on the way.

You pull into your driveway, get inside and put your stuff away, leaving out the delectable sweets you went out specifically to purchase.  As you nosh on the smooth peanut butter and chocolate candy and prepare to finally begin that arduous task, your cell phone rings.  It's your buddy, dying to recount the details of the date he went on with that buxom, triple-jointed hot-dog vendor girl he met while drunk three Saturdays ago.  You listen intently, absorbing every sordid detail and making the appropriate insensitive commentary about his new object of affection, and congratulating him on meeting the future mother of his children.

You hang up and no sooner do you head toward the vicinity of this daunting task, your phone rings again.  It's your girlfriend, offering an evening of... well you don't know what because you're in the car again before she has a chance to finish.  And as you drive to your uncertain fate, you debate whether or not you tell this story to the people this task would have mattered to.

Or.

Do you say "I'm sorry I haven't written in my blog lately. I've been busy.   I promise, I'll make time to write in it more. "

'Tis the Season

I'm a die-hard fan.

I love baseball, football and basketball, and more than I love the sports I love my
hometown teams -- the Yankees, the Knicks, the Giants, and the Jets.  Hell, the Nets
even snuck in this year with the novelty of being from Brooklyn.  But as the NBA season
winds to a close and my New York Knicks yet again robbed unjustly of a chance to hoist
a championship banner to the rafters at Madison Square Garden, I turn my attention to
my equally beloved Yankees.  The Knicks did better this year than they have in almost
15, so I've only been peripherally paying attention to baseball.  I heard the Yanks
were dealing with some injuries, and there was this while A-Rod steroid thing
happening, but it was April and May.  I mean baseball in April and May might as well be
Spring Training.  Nothing interesting happens in baseball in April and May, right?

Holy crap.

The Yankees started out the season missing Mark Teixiera, Curtis Granderson, Derek
Jeter and Alex Rodriguez?  What the... that's the two through six hitters in our
lineup!  Kevin Youkilis got hurt?  Wait... you mean the Red Sox guy?!  When did we get
the Red Sox guy?  Who the hell is Reid Brignac?  Why is Jayson Nix playing?  And didn't
Vernon Wells retire?  You step away from the game for one minute and all hell breaks
loose!

More bizarre?  With everything I just said, the Yankees are only a game and a half out
in the East.

It's going to be one hell of a summer.

Review: Coyote Blue

Over the last seven years, Christopher Moore has become one of my favorite authors.  To
date, he has published 13 novels and counting.  I own every one, and it's his second,
Coyote Blue, that ranks among my favorites.  Equal parts love story and supernatural
comedy, Moore shows off his unique talent for putting the ordinary guy through an
extraordinary paranormal wringer.

Coyote Blue follows Sam Hunter, a California insurance salesman who has all the
trappings of the good life as well as a closely guarded secret: he's really Samson
Hunts Alone, a member of the Crow tribe who ran away from home after accidentally
killing a cop.  his life is turned completely inside out when he meets the stunning
flower-child, Calliope Kincaid and -- immediately after -- the Native-American
trickster god Coyote.  The chance encounter with Calliope leads Sam on an unlikely road
trip across the American West with the trickster at his side as he chases his newfound
love back toward his childhood home and the past he ran away from.

Right away, you see that Moore has a much tighter grasp on his characters than he did
in his debut.  Whereas Practical Demonkeeping's Augustus Brine (who is mentioned in a
cameo) acted as a lens through which we observed the inhabitants of Pine Cove, Sam
Hunter is undoubtedly the star of the show.  This is his journey and it makes for a
much more intimate story as we watch him grow as a person over the course of his
adventure.  We watch his priorities shift and we watch him accept a part of himself
long thought buried.  The secondary characters, Coyote -- an immature immortal god --
and Calliope -- who starts out as the free-loving counterpart to Sam's very grounded
life -- both go through journeys of their own, but neither one is as compelling as that
of the lead character.  His growth is fantastic and quite relateable.

Coyote Blue is Christopher Moore refining the very distinct voice we saw flashes of in
Practical Demonkeeping.  It's alternatively funny and heartwarming and always fun.
Highly recommended.

Rating: 9 of 10.

"Urban Legend" Research Blog, Part I: So You Want To Be A Hero...

So I've decided to write about a vigilante hero.

An idea popped into my head borne of my lifelong love of comic books.  You see, when I was sixteen, me and a group of like-minded friends formed Fallout Studios and Magic Pencil Comics.  If you've never heard of either of those, you're excused.  It was a year-long creative project that frequently devolved into marathon video game sessions (Damn you, Virtua Fighter!).  But there were good ideas in that collaboration, several good ideas in fact, and if our sixteen year-old selves lived in the digital age of now, I firmly believe our ideas and digital distribution would make us wealthy teenagers.  Oh well.

Back to the point.  I decided to research how you could practically be a superhero.  This is part one of those results, which is looking the part and being protected.  Seattle has Phoenix Jones, and if you look at his getup, well, Bruce Wayne he's not.  Shockingly, you can play dress-up as a hero for cheaper than you would expect, and the protective gear you would need is pretty common.  Several sports -- major ones at that -- have protective equipment that has evolved from the need to protect the wearer from the impact of abnormally large men moving nearly at freeway speeds, while still being able to maintain mobility and range of motion.  The drawback?  Play hero in the winter or you'll likely die of heat stroke.

First thing's first... the underlayer.

This Nike Padded shirt is obviously football gear.  Dense foam around the rib area helps cushion the compound impact of a 260+ pound man wearing pads and a steel helmet launching himself into your own pads.  The padding makes it less likely to break your ribs in that event.  It's probably a little less useful for stabbing and small arms fire, but there's a solution for that I'll be getting to.  Anyway, this shirt goes for about $80

The Combat Hyper String Girdle, also by Nike ($80), seamlessly adds padding to the all-important kidney area, and when combined with the shirt, extends protective padding through most of your important soft bits.  It also protects the thighs, home of wonderful things like your femoral artery.  While it may not be so good against knives and small arms fire, (a) it's better than nothing and (b) most people trying to kill you will be aiming for your exposed and unprotected chest.

Which brings us to the next logical thing: how to stop bullets.  The Executive Travel Vest ($899) is a Kevlar suit vest, designed for bodyguards and VIPs, designed to stop small arms fire.  Lightweight, breathable, flexible, it allows the wearer to walk around as if he's not wearing a bullet-resistant vest.  It doesn't offer much against knives or assault weapons, but how many criminals have access to AR-15's anyway.  Yes, that was sarcasm.

Football also provides us with Stainless Steel Shoulder Pads ($300), which in this combination, theoretically should take care of the stabbing, shooting problem.  On top of that, it adds an imposing, bad ass figure to said vigilante hero. They don't need to be spiked -- this isn't a Raiders game after all -- but if they can stop prevent a linebacker who runs a 4.6-40 from crushing you with an impact equivalent to being hit by an SUV, they can stop a bullet or a knife.  They naturally have a chest protection element, and allow athletes to move around, so this is of course a natural fit.

You're going to want to protect your joints and Reebok makes elbow and knee pads for hockey that fit the bill.  Lightweight and sturdy plastic protect your elbows and knees from bone jarring impact with the ground... or some punk's face.





Now the one element in a crime fighter's protective gear that is absolutely indispensable is that it has to look cool and menacing at the same time.  To round out the gear and add the cool, menacing factor, we turn to motorcycle equipment.  The Icon Chapter 1000 jacket ($699) is heavy duty leather designed to protect the upper body from road rash in the event of a crash.  Motorcycle jackets also have protective padding in the elbows for the same reason.   And that brings us to the final element in this experiment...

Now what better way to conceal your identity and protect your head than a motorcycle helmet?


There are drawbacks to this get up, of course.  I'll get into that next time, as well as how I'd modify the gear to help mitigate the drawbacks.

Review: Rage Is Back

Take one part teen angst, one part drugged-out mysticism, and one part ode to old-school B-Boy culture, mix well, and you have "Rage Is Back," the latest from Adam Mansbach.  If the name sounds familiar, it's because he created a surge of controversy with a children's book for adults called "Go The Fuck To Sleep."

"Rage Is Back" follows 18 year-old Kilroy Dondi Vance, son of 80's graffiti icon Billy Rage.  Dondi is a relbellious, disillusioned smart-ass from the outset as he whines about the events that led him to couch-surf with several friends, and change is set in motion when a member of Billy Rage's old crew informs Dondi that his father has returned to New York.  It seems that on the night that Dondi was born, Billy witnessed a delusional police officer, which sends a grief-stricken Rage on a one-man graffiti campaign against the officer.  And when the city responds by threatening jail time and a $2 million fine, Billy skips town, heading to Mexico without his wife or his infant son.  Rage's return coincides  with the mayoral campaign of the same cop that murdered his friend, so Dondi, Rage, and every graffiti artist they can find devise a plan to bring this cop down.

I found the narrative a bit stunted, filtered mainly through Dondi's eyes, leaving a healthy dose of annoying teen smugness to much of the first act.  This is cleaned up by the middle of the book as Dondi deals with his daddy issues and starts to grow up, aided by a vision quest brought about by a mystical, South American hallucinogen.  This does make the early parts of the story drag as Dondi is the self-righteous snot we all want to slap across the face.  He's initially not a very likable narrator, and is self aware enough to mention as  much.

Thematically, Mansbach touches on quite a few things that we can all relate to, such as the realization that once upon a time, our parents were "cool," or that once we focus our -- well, rage -- we can accomplish great things.  He did his homework here as he frequently references mid-to-late 80's hip-hop culture as well as the graffiti phenomenon from the time.  I personally found the mystic, hippie-ish, drugged out portions to be a bit unnecessary, but overall the story works.

By no means is Rage Is Back perfect.  The lack of a likable narrator nearly torpedoes the story in the first 50 pages.  The story, if you stick with it, is thoroughly enjoyable, and easily recommended as a way to pass a summer day.

Rating: 6 of 10.

Sound and Fury

The news that NBA center Jason Collins is gay is about six hours old at this point.

This is of course a major deal in professional sports, as he is the first active male professional athlete in a major sport to come out.  There has been talk of NFL players coming out in the near future, and now that Collins has done so the way has been paved for other athletes in pro sports to do so.  The resounding outpouring of support he's gotten from the NBA community at-large is impressive and shows that the league has come a long way since the insensitive commentary of Tim Hardaway some years ago.  Collins is a widely respected player in the league, and is viewed as a locker room leader and all-around great teammate.  And you know what?  Good for him.  I can't imagine what it was like for him living a lie, having to behave like he thought professional athletes should to maintain some image.  From a human standpoint, I'm happy for the brother to have finally publicly acknowledged who he is.

And yet...

Before the Jason Collins news broke, odds are if you were asked who Jason Collins was, unless you were a hardcore hoop-head, the answer would have been "Who?"  I'm a hardcore hoop-head, and my response was, "He's still playing?"  He's been described by his own GM, right after the announcement, as a "utility big," someone who is somewhere between 11th and 15th on the depth chart.  His career averages of 3.6 points and 3.8 rebounds doesn't scream "upper-echelon player."  He's played 12 years for six teams and is a free agent this year.  He's 34 years old, which in NBA terms is like 65.  To be blunt, his recent career has seen him be a bench player for a bad team.  As much of an important step as this announcement is for that community, Jason Collins has unfortunately branded himself as a "gay ballplayer" as opposed to a "ballplayer who's gay."

When Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier decades ago, the concern was whether he was the "right guy--" talented enough, humble enough, respectable enough -- to legitimize the black athlete.  Jason Collins is not Jackie Robinson, at least not in the respect that he's an elite player.  He's on the downswing of a long but unremarkable career.  Collins is a Stamford educated man.  That is to say, he's not an idiot.  I'm sure as an athlete and as a businessman, he has to have come to grips with what this could mean for his career going into his free agent year.  And while I agree with Charles Barkley in that it's nobody's business who he sleeps with, putting this into the public eye makes it a public conversation, and unfortunately part of the talks in terms of continuing his career.  Big picture: it's a blip, and not because it should be a blip, but because Jason Collins isn't Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, or Dwyane Wade.

Now, I sincerely hope that this is the first step to this FINALLY not being a big deal anymore, the way being a black athlete, entertainer or executive is not a big deal anymore.  I hope that this announcement inspires an athlete of more clout to step up and embrace who he is, which in turn inspires more people to embrace who they are, and finally encourages the rest of us -- forces the rest of us -- to accept who they are.