20 year old Trevor Bayne, a nobody in the truest sense, won the Daytona 500 on Sunday. Even mainstream snobs like myself who can name only the Gordons and Jarrets and Earnhardts of Nascar can safely marvel over such a sporting feat. A win like Bayne's raises such a staggering profusion of how's and why's and who the hell is Trevor Bayne's that it would be unwise to address them all in a single post.
It seemed like poetry for just a brief moment: 10 years after his father's tragic death on the race course, Dale Jr. was cruising near the head of the pack--even taking the lead at one point. Then, as is apt to happen in auto racing , everthing went to shit.
Michael Waltrip, a driver I know only from the back of my mini-wheats, rammed his front end into the back end of another driver who has never graced the back of any of my delicious cereals (I'm told its called "push-drafting" when done right, and "what the hell is wrong with you?" when done wrong). It probably came as a surprise to Waltrip that such a minor nudge at 200+ miles per hour could cause a 14 car pile-up and instantaneously turn the Daytona 500 into the greatest filler item in the history of daily news, but that's exactly what it did.
By the time the smoke had cleared and Nascar officials had forcibly removed Mel Gibson's career reboot and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the racetrack, Trevor Bayne was already leading the pack and tittering into his earpiece like a coked-up jackal.
Sources close to Nascar ( high school friends) tell me that race ruining stupidity is Waltrip's trademark. Jordan had his dunk from the free throw line, Babe Ruth had the called shot, and Waltrip can turn a race from boring to clown show in 4 minutes or less.
Normally a wreck is something to celebrate, but leave it to Waltrip to betray even the most hallowed of Nascar traditions. Thanks to him, there's no news to be found on the television or the internet for the second straight week since that jeopardy winning toaster mercilessly clogged the AP wire with scientific drivel. Sports have invaded the news again, and I'm not at all thrilled.
If you should happen to see a baboon on rollerskates rescuing a family of five from a house fire this afternoon, do me a solid and just keep walking. News reporters have caught enough breaks this week, and I'd really like to read about the mass protests in Wisconsin instead.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Valentine's Day
Today I'm going to write a poem because Valentine's Day and poems go together like a hook and an eye,
A fish hook and a human eye.
If each day is a dream why is it that we sleep and wake,
If each day is a dream why do we fill it with hands that take
away what we hold so close so dear in all our days and ways.
If each day is a dream why fill it with bones that sweat and hearts that ache.
If each day is a test why does falling not count against me?
If each day is not a test why should it be that we
struggle and strain for joy that doesn't pay?
if each day is a test why would he test me?
If each day is an accident why do I always find myself on the same street
if each day is not an accident then why do we find ourselves the same defeat
and the quiet retreats into nothing important.
If each day is an accident why does my heart still beat?
If each. If each day. If each day is.
If each day is a quest what is it that we're not finding?
A fish hook and a human eye.
If each day is a dream why is it that we sleep and wake,
If each day is a dream why do we fill it with hands that take
away what we hold so close so dear in all our days and ways.
If each day is a dream why fill it with bones that sweat and hearts that ache.
If each day is a test why does falling not count against me?
If each day is not a test why should it be that we
struggle and strain for joy that doesn't pay?
if each day is a test why would he test me?
If each day is an accident why do I always find myself on the same street
if each day is not an accident then why do we find ourselves the same defeat
and the quiet retreats into nothing important.
If each day is an accident why does my heart still beat?
If each. If each day. If each day is.
If each day is a quest what is it that we're not finding?
Friday, February 11, 2011
This Isn't Short.Try Very Hard to Cope With That.
Cuts on a national level can be a little tough to accuratley interpret, so I'm going to try something a little different.
I've had a lot of fun pretending to be a writer over the last three years, but sometimes even pretending can be troublesome and emotional and generally prickly to the point where the idea of running around with a pencil in my hand and a notepad stuffed in my jacket becomes far less sexy than I'd like it to be.
Last March, Chet Culver--ex-governor and the first democrat I've ever voted against--hopped onto TVs across the state just to let everybody know that education as we knew it was about to end. Culver requested a 10% reduction of the state budget, and the majority of Iowa's state budget is appropriated to health and education services.At the time, this portioning of the budget was a major contributor to Iowa's reputation as the education state, but that was before things got ugly for the Big House.
These cuts had two direct effects, they terrified just about everybody in the state of Iowa, and they forced education administrators into a mad program-cutting scramble to save their local budgets and their jobs. It was as a loyal and ethical observer of this scramble that I came away with one of my favorite off-the-record stories of the misery and stupidity of politics.
My school district held two special meetings to discuss the cuts, one to announce their specific budget reduction plan, and another to let the community have their say. Our share of the cut was 5.3 million dollars, and the bulk of it had to come out of teacher jobs and school programs.
I had nothing better to do those days, so I showed up at both meetings as a scruffy teenage reporter. The first meeting terrified me, I can't say how the district's teachers felt about it specifically, but I can raise the farily responsible conjecture that a proposal to loose a bag of rattlesnakes in each school, allowing them to make the cuts fairly and equitaby, probably would've received rounds of applause if set in comparison to the district plan that unfolded in course of that two-hour meeting.
Among the bright ideas discussed were heavy general staff cuts (including 20 jobs from my school's English and History programs respectively), cuts to fine-arts, athletics, and the closing of Dubuque's alternative high school--a decision that would strand 160 students between two schools (and a crock, but we won't get into that). There were 3 levels to the cuts corresponding to increases in general nastiness, A, B, and C. A seemed like it might be the end of education in Iowa, C seemed like a brilliant plan to raise revenue for the district by making it the ideal choice for the filming of Mad Max IV.
The first meeting may have been terrifying, but the second meeting set a new standard in depression. The meeting sold itself as a chance for the community to speak out, and it was, but before the meeting even began a district official had already made it entirely clear to me that nobody would be listening.
Cuts are tough to make, but they're even tougher to plan out in the long term, and he made it clear to me that if Thomas Jefferson, Clarence Darrow and the Kingfish were to barge into the meeting and mount a passionate appeal on behalf of the 4th grade woodwinds, it would make about as much difference as Old Lady #1's geriatric ramblings about the school bus route.
After nearly 100 minutes of reasonable, articulate, passionate pleas from reasonable, articulate, passionate people, the only unreasonable, inarticulate, dispassionate spectators approved the A level cuts unanimously as if a strong wind had impeded their disscusion for an hour and a half.
I've described the cuts lightly to this point, but I want to make it clear that they weren't at all funny.
More of my teachers and friends lost their jobs than I care to mention, our alternative high school closed and many of our poor students--sorry, I meant students faced with socio-economic barriers--lost another of their admittedly marginal chances of graduating. My school will never be the happy place packed with highly effective people that it once was, and now there are almost certainly more cuts on the way.
I've been long and boring and I'm sorry, I'll wrap it up.
If a person who lives 2 miles away from me can't respectfully hear the opinions of his friends and neighbors and make the right choices with respect to their values, how is John Boehner going to pull it off when he's never even met us before? How are enivronmental protection and education and public broadcast examples of rampant government spending when they benefit so many so directly?
How am I really going to do this job for the rest of my life if I don't even believe in it now?
When the meeting was over, I went home and I poured my righteous fury onto paper and I did it right, I kept my opinion out of it. I covered the cuts extensively and I even pulled out the parts people weren't talking about and explained them too. I really did put my heart into the process of reporting the story from start to finish
and nearly a year later I'm waiting patiently for the next round of horrendously stupid cuts to begin
"Alphonse Karr was Right."--Hunter S. Thompson.
I've had a lot of fun pretending to be a writer over the last three years, but sometimes even pretending can be troublesome and emotional and generally prickly to the point where the idea of running around with a pencil in my hand and a notepad stuffed in my jacket becomes far less sexy than I'd like it to be.
Last March, Chet Culver--ex-governor and the first democrat I've ever voted against--hopped onto TVs across the state just to let everybody know that education as we knew it was about to end. Culver requested a 10% reduction of the state budget, and the majority of Iowa's state budget is appropriated to health and education services.At the time, this portioning of the budget was a major contributor to Iowa's reputation as the education state, but that was before things got ugly for the Big House.
These cuts had two direct effects, they terrified just about everybody in the state of Iowa, and they forced education administrators into a mad program-cutting scramble to save their local budgets and their jobs. It was as a loyal and ethical observer of this scramble that I came away with one of my favorite off-the-record stories of the misery and stupidity of politics.
My school district held two special meetings to discuss the cuts, one to announce their specific budget reduction plan, and another to let the community have their say. Our share of the cut was 5.3 million dollars, and the bulk of it had to come out of teacher jobs and school programs.
I had nothing better to do those days, so I showed up at both meetings as a scruffy teenage reporter. The first meeting terrified me, I can't say how the district's teachers felt about it specifically, but I can raise the farily responsible conjecture that a proposal to loose a bag of rattlesnakes in each school, allowing them to make the cuts fairly and equitaby, probably would've received rounds of applause if set in comparison to the district plan that unfolded in course of that two-hour meeting.
Among the bright ideas discussed were heavy general staff cuts (including 20 jobs from my school's English and History programs respectively), cuts to fine-arts, athletics, and the closing of Dubuque's alternative high school--a decision that would strand 160 students between two schools (and a crock, but we won't get into that). There were 3 levels to the cuts corresponding to increases in general nastiness, A, B, and C. A seemed like it might be the end of education in Iowa, C seemed like a brilliant plan to raise revenue for the district by making it the ideal choice for the filming of Mad Max IV.
The first meeting may have been terrifying, but the second meeting set a new standard in depression. The meeting sold itself as a chance for the community to speak out, and it was, but before the meeting even began a district official had already made it entirely clear to me that nobody would be listening.
Cuts are tough to make, but they're even tougher to plan out in the long term, and he made it clear to me that if Thomas Jefferson, Clarence Darrow and the Kingfish were to barge into the meeting and mount a passionate appeal on behalf of the 4th grade woodwinds, it would make about as much difference as Old Lady #1's geriatric ramblings about the school bus route.
After nearly 100 minutes of reasonable, articulate, passionate pleas from reasonable, articulate, passionate people, the only unreasonable, inarticulate, dispassionate spectators approved the A level cuts unanimously as if a strong wind had impeded their disscusion for an hour and a half.
I've described the cuts lightly to this point, but I want to make it clear that they weren't at all funny.
More of my teachers and friends lost their jobs than I care to mention, our alternative high school closed and many of our poor students--sorry, I meant students faced with socio-economic barriers--lost another of their admittedly marginal chances of graduating. My school will never be the happy place packed with highly effective people that it once was, and now there are almost certainly more cuts on the way.
I've been long and boring and I'm sorry, I'll wrap it up.
If a person who lives 2 miles away from me can't respectfully hear the opinions of his friends and neighbors and make the right choices with respect to their values, how is John Boehner going to pull it off when he's never even met us before? How are enivronmental protection and education and public broadcast examples of rampant government spending when they benefit so many so directly?
How am I really going to do this job for the rest of my life if I don't even believe in it now?
When the meeting was over, I went home and I poured my righteous fury onto paper and I did it right, I kept my opinion out of it. I covered the cuts extensively and I even pulled out the parts people weren't talking about and explained them too. I really did put my heart into the process of reporting the story from start to finish
and nearly a year later I'm waiting patiently for the next round of horrendously stupid cuts to begin
"Alphonse Karr was Right."--Hunter S. Thompson.
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