I sure wish I had time to write about some of these stories, dear reader. Maybe you can offer up some commentary about them!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Jan. 26, 2007”
Leavin’ on a jet plane
There’s neat article in BusinessWeek this morning about the design of airports, accompanied by a gorgeous slideshow.
[Ron Steinert, principal at aviation architectural design specialist, Gensler, said,] “There has been a real sea-change towards this. In the old days, the airlines thought of airports as a service industry that provided space to them and their passengers. Now, airports see airlines as providing a service to their customers. It’s a total change in the way airports are looking at themselves. They’re realizing that they have to run themselves as businesses, to make money and provide a high level of service, or passengers will go elsewhere. Take the East Coast of the U.S.: There’s an airport virtually every 10 miles. If you don’t like one, you’ll go to another.”
Duke it out, bitch
A few months ago, I wrote about how Gilbert Arenas is one of my favorite NBA players. Subsequently, he started keeping a blog on NBA.com, which I dutifully added to my blogroll.
I’ve come to enjoy Arenas more this year, because he’s a throwback to an era of absolutely crazy players. That he can back this up by scoring tons of points for a moderately successful team makes him even more entertaining to me.
A while back, he declared that he was better than Kobe Bryant at the same point (5+ years in the NBA) in their careers. Then he detailed the process of dropping 51 and a buzzer-beating game-winner on Utah.
But that was only a prelude to today’s “it can’t get any better than this, even if it’s from a player who nicknamed himself Hibachi when he gets on a hot streak” post.
See, Gil got dumped by USA basketball during the tryouts for the team that would compete at the World Championships last summer. He’s held a grudge against the pro coaches who cut him: Phoenix’s Mike D’Antoni (Gil dropped 54 on them in December) and Portland’s Nate McMillan (circle February 11 and March 20 in your calendars, hoops fans. Or as Gil puts it, “I think ESPN or TNT needs to pick that game up.”).
Still, the head coach of Team USA, and presumably one of the key decision-makers who kept Arenas off the squad, was Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski. How can our hero ever get revenge on Coach K? As he tells us today:
D’Antoni said that after I scored 54 on them and made my prediction to score 50 on the Blazers that he’d like to see what I’m going to do against Duke.
I thought it was funny because if I have the chance to go back to college, I’ll give up one NBA season to play against Duke.
One college game . . . that’s five fouls, right? . . . 40-minute game . . . at Duke, they got soft rims . . . I’d probably score 84 or 85.
I wouldn’t pass the ball.
I wouldn’t even think about passing it. It would be like a NBA Live or an NBA 2K7 game, you just shoot with one person.
What boggles my mind is that there’s an NBA player who actually thinks this way and still makes his team better.
The City and a Man
The links are going to go dead in a few days, so if you’re interested in Robert Moses, historical revisionism and crypto-Oedipal conflicts, and the landscape of New York (and who isn’t?), you need to check out these two articles from the NYObserver and the NYTimes.
First, though, you should read the Atlantic Yards Report post on this revisionism (which led me to the articles), and how it’s being used (sorta) to justify Ratner’s plans for Brooklyn.
Oh, and read The Power Broker
If I could be like Schlomo!
Official VM buddy and new dad Craig S. writes, “Admit it; this is you, isn’t it?”
I retain plausible deniability, because I never had much athleticism when I looked like that guy.
2006-2007 NFL Playoff Challenge, round 3: the post-mortem
Funnily enough, when I was posting that Montaigne quote earlier, I didn’t even think about how it relates to my near-complete inability to get anything right with football picks. But 0-for-2 I went, dear readers! And now I’ve dragged Thane Rosenbaum into my web of crappy picks!
It’s tough when the point-spread is off by an order of magnitude, but that’s how badly we (including my challenger) blew the Saints/Bears game. The Saints picked a heck of a time to pull a stinker, with turnovers galore and intentional grounding in the end zone. I give plenty of credit to Chicago’s defense and running game, and virtually none to its QB, who demonstrated yet again that he has no idea when pressure is coming.
But that’s the end of the line for New Orleans, who did a great job getting this far. I even cheered when Reggie Bush hot-dogged his way into the end zone. Sure, showboating isn’t sportsmanlike, but with Joe Horn out, someone had to step up for the Saints!
I was sad to see the Saints get whupped, especially when it felt like they were victims of their own mistakes. That’s taking credit away from the Bears, who forced a ton of turnovers and were able to play with far fewer mistakes.
However, I’ve never been so happy to lose another pick as I was when the Colts knocked off the Patriots! Amy & I tuned out when it got to 21-3, figuring we’d watch the remainder of our latest Netflix movie, Living in Oblivion. We checked the game out after the movie and found that it was 28-21. Amy wasn’t convinced, but I figured that at least we’d see an amazing finish for Tom Brady (while hoping that we’d see the Colts finally pull out the big win).
I actually believed the Colts would pull it off when they scored their last TD. I also laughed about how Peyton would not put the ball in the air for the last few plays and risk an INT. And I cheered when Indy intercepted Brady with 20 seconds left, icing the win. It was one of those finishes like in a horror movie, where you don’t believe the killer is really dead.
Anyway, this weekend drops me to 2-8 for the playoffs, which is godawful embarrassing. Ron is 5-5, which isn’t exactly lighting the world on fire, but beats my ass.
We’ll try to come up with some entertaining side-bets for the Super Bowl (party at my house!).
Monday Morning Montaigne
Montaigne, on prognostications:
True, there remain among us some means of divination by the stars, by spirits, bodily dreams, and the like — a notable example of the frenzied curiosity of our nature, which wastes its time anticipating future things, as if it did not have enough to do digesting the present.
Good night, sweet Officer Leavitt
Good night, sweet Bam Bam
The wrestler’s cruel fate.
Getting oriented
Last night, Amy & I reminded ourselves why Kung Fu Hustle is the most entertaining movie of the decade (at least, until the sequel comes out next year).
It was an Asian sorta day for us, since we started out the morning at the Chinese market down in Parsippany on Rt. 46. Amy was searching for some stuff, including some kimchi (she held up the jar and said, “‘Sealed for your protection’: no kidding!”), which was part of the evening’s curry stew dinner. Much to her chagrin, she forgot to use her impulse purchase: mustard root.
Anyway, I bring all this up solely so I can post a picture of something I found on the shelf at the market:
Fortunately, they’re “Japanese style”.