Now first off…I must tell you that I do not give a good goddamn who wins any big time American hypnomedia-sponsored sports event. Not in terms of being a “fan”, anyway. It don’t mean shit to me which group of overpaid, coddled-from-puberty motherfuckers wins a game of this sort on a purely sports or competition-based level. Two or three weeks from now no one except people who have nothing better to occupy their minds will even be able to remember which two teams played the game.
But still…the universe works in strange and mysterious ways, and anything that receives as much hype as the Stupor Bowl has a function in the grand scheme of things on this planet.
OK.
That said?
Here goes….
Read on.
So…like I said, I don’t really give a shit who wins.
And I have better things to do with my time as well.
To wit…I’ve got to get ready for two weeks of rehearsals and recording with a bunch of stone Nuyrorican motherfuckers presently known as “The Mambo Legends”. A band formerly known as “The Latin Giants” until business disputes transferred the name to some less-than-heavy people and left the real band…comprised mostly of people who have deep, deep roots in the Tito Puente/Machito/Tito Rodriquez tradition of rigororously played, Afro-Cuban/NYC-style, clavé-based dance/art music… high and dry with four years of wasted effort and not a pot to piss in.
So it goes and nothing new about it. The music has been preyed upon by wave after wave of no-playing hustlers and I am quite used to it. Immune to the hype, I simply take care of the music and let the chips fall where they may. The music always seems to take care of me in return.
Balance in all things…
To be up to the coming challenge I am in a sort of training camp…an extra several hours of careful practice every day so that I can play parts that have been written expressly for my own particular talents by the greatest writer of that music still active, José Madera.
Challenging stuff.
Plus I have some…socio-familial…obligations to take care of today. My 22 year old working scientist son and his wonderful female friend are in town for a day or two and we must celebrate by eating some good food and telling some tall tales.
And…I am in the midst of editing a book I wrote about the art of playing a certain musical instrument into editions that will work for a couple of other instruments.
Every day full of work, one way or another.
So that goes as well.
Thus the day passes.
And…I am hard at work from 5AM until time to get on the subway and go hang with my son.
Which I do.
Good times had by all, several hours later I arrive back home with the spectre of several hours of necessary practice ahead of me before I can start to kick back and relax into a good night’s sleep to prepare for the next day’s challenges.
I neglected to mention that I had put a Cuban-style pork roast into the oven at slow-cook temperature before I left to go hang. A 7+ hour cook time at the end of which I will have the basis for good sustenance throughout the rest of the week no matter how short my time might be on any given day.
Gotta eat, right…???
And I arrrve back home in da Bronx at about 5PM. A few hours of practice and the roast will be done.
Oh!!!
It’s Super Bowl Sunday, too!!!
I’ll drop into the proceedings and take the temperature of the culture once I am done with my practice.
(Work work work…hours pass…)
Hmmm…the roast calls and now I am fairly well cooked as well.
OK.
Finish up the preparation…rice, beans I made yesterday, a salad, a quasi-Mexicano tomatillo salsa…and here it it. Time to eat and have a couple of glasses of wine.
I turn on the TV to check out the Stupor Bowl and…what’s this!!!?? It’s halftime already and a bunch of superannuated, no-playing motherfuckers are prancing around on stage to the accompaniment of a bunch of many lights and frequent jiveass commercials.
Why…it’s those rich old fakers, “The Who”!!! Daltrey, Townshend et al, still unable to find a good note in a carload. One look at Townshend galumphing about on the stage making believe that he is a guitarist is all I need to see to know where Lindsey Lohan got her start. (Count Basie said that after 30 years of leading great bands he no longer needed to hear people play to know if they had their act together…he just had to see them carry their instrument case. Yup. I can dig it. With the TV sound off I can tell who can really play and who can’t just by the way that they stand and move while playing. Bet on it.)
I immediately click away from CBS (the CIA Broadcasting System…you could look it up) to see what else is on.
And run smack dab into an OVTV documentary…a great small network, along with Link TV one of the few that are presenting real cultural sustenance for the huddled masses…honoring the fine, workmanlike jazz tenor sax player Teddy Edwards. Just about the same age as the “Who” gang…maybe a few years older…only SO much more accomplished!!! He was still playing his ass off in small clubs after 40 or 50 years in the life and on the scene until his death in 2003. He played with Miles, Dizzy, Bird, Dexter Gordon,..you could look that up, too. But he was black, intelligent, uncompromisinng and thus relatively unknown while “The Who” is white, almost totally untalented, perfectly willing to compromise their cocaine-skinny asses off and thus being paid lots of money to sell useless gadgetry to a televsion-sodden hypnopublic.
So it goes.
Go get ‘em, Teddy, wherever you are.
You’ve got my vote.
And so it continues.
Just as it’s always been.
The roast pork is delicious as is the salsa and salad and a little wind-down wine, and eventually the football competition begins again.
The 2nd half starts. The Ratpublicans are ahead by a little.
Oh…did I mention that I consider the Stupor Bowl to be a very reliable predictor of socio-political moves?
Yup.
Joe Namath taught me that one in 1969.
Anyway…
The Indianapolis Colts…a team of Ratpublicans if I ever saw one, running their lockstep game out of a city that has over the last 30 years become a clomp-clomp-clomping Atlanta-style mini-megalopolis based on nasty, polluting industry and equally nasty financial hustle…vs. the Dems. The New Orleans Saints, representing a town that fucking refused to roll over and die after George Butch II gave it the big finger during Katrina.
Saaay…he stands a lot like Townshend!!!
Hmmmmm…
Anyway…back to the game.
What do I see?
I see the Dems/Saints throw a sucker punch at the opening kickoff. Onside kick. And it works !!!
And the Rats?
They go all pouty.
Saaay!!! That’s not fair!!!
Especially Manning. Like his brother, only more powerful. A nasty, nasty spirit.
And…miribile dictu!!!
It continues to work!!!
You can see the Colts start to wilt.
They’re old, they’re small, they’re tired and they are total mercenaries.
Just like the Republican Party.
And…the Saints eventually win.
Hmmmm…
My faith is renewed.
Maybe the Obamas can beat the Cheneys.
My Excellent Super Bowl Adventure.
All’s once again right with world.
To sleep, perchance to burn…
Got good work to do tomorrow.
Ain’t life a bitch!!!???
Later…
AG
I got yer “onside kick”!!!
Right here!!!
Later…
AG
No tip for you today, Gilroy. There is no excuse for pure unadulterated snobbery. You have to be more subtle to get respect.
And then there is this tidbit: “Tito Puente/Machito/Tito Rodriquez tradition of rigororously played, Afro-Cuban/NYC-style.”
It is likely that I will forget this crap as quickly as you forgot the Saints or the right wing Colts,” as quickly as I click off your diary. Now isn’t it better for ordinary people to get their aggressions off on fantasy football, than to go out in your Bronx neighborhood and shoot a few dudes for fun?
Bad man, bad man.
And a culturalist/racist piece of work as well.
Hmmmmm…
And you have the nerve to use the slogan “Peace Not Apartheid” on your posts?
I’ll tell you something, shergald.
I am almost unalterably opposed to banning people from blogs for anything short of spam, repeated trollery or the unwanted disclosure of personal information with an eye toward injury. I run a music-related discussion forum and have held to those principles without exception for 7 years or so. But if this was my blog and you said that kind of shit you’d be gone so fast you wouldn’t even be able to remember your blog name.
Bet on it.
AG
P.S. Anyone whose body doesn’t respond by producing massive doses of pleasure-producing substances upon hearing a deep Afro-Cuban latin groove is dead from the neck down and hardly worth the effort of attempted communication on any level.
So I am personally banning you from my notice as of now.
So it goes.
Bye bye…
What is wrong with you!!!???
oh, relax and lighten up.
BtW, the owner of the Colts is different from his Republican alcoholic dad.
Bet on it.
AG
P.S. “Lighten up?”
Regarding a racist/culturalist statement like that?
Ain’t happening.
How’s about someone says the same thing regarding black people in south Chicago who listen to urban blues or rap?
Please.
Heavy up.
That shit is right out of the scaremonger mainstream media playbook.
In racist America, “the Bronx” means rampaging Po’ Ricans wid guns an’ knives an’ such cuttin’ down all the non-hermanos an’ sellin’ crack.
Ludicrous on the face of it.
Please.
Learn all the codes, Booman.
You’ll recognize freaks like shergald better if you do.
Sure he’s not writing Palin’s stuff too?
What the hell racist/cultural statement are talking about? You are just reading a lot of nonsense out of my gripe about your suggesting that the superbowl was a forgetable experience, compared to your own egocentric preferences. For your information, the superbowl win by the Saints meant a lot to the NO community given the Katrina catastrophe of four years ago.
Comparatively, your musical gig was miniscule. So I suggest that you ban yourself for being so, shall we say, snobbish about the meaning of culture and sports. The music quoted was not at issue, it was your self involved use of it to claim some kind of superiority.
Bah. Bet on it.
You hit a nerve.
The Bronx has a reputation in the white suburbs for being a puerto-rican hellhole of non-stop violence. “Those people” are always shooting each other up.
You just stepped on a claymore…
Based on what AG wrote, in the context of Caribbean music, and based on the shit he hears about his neighborhood every time he steps out it…you hit a nerve.
I get what you meant. You meant that sports allow people sublimate less constructive competitive and violent impulses. Lord, that’s true. I can’t tell you how much better you feel after you get up on Sunday morning and go pound on other grown men for three hours. All that anger and frustration from the workweek is gone. Muscles are sore in a good way. And you’re a better citizen all around. I quit playing football when I turned 30, but I miss it.
Well, that might be true but if so, it was not intentional. NYC has a lot of crime. But I don’t know who lives in the Bronx or the Queens or elsewhere in NYC, frankly, and my comment was certainly not directed at anyone. Don’t white people also commit crimes in NYC? Maybe AG has stereotypes in his head that turn associations like crime into references to minority groups when no such reference were implied.
In fact, thinking back many years, the father of an Israeli friend of mine, now long disappeared into the past, whose family lived in the Bronx, was killed in a mugging incident when he refused to hand over his pay.
So it hit a nerve, did it. Why? Is AG something of a civil rights activist? I would read more of his stuff if he just did some civil or human rights writing, but I just haven’t seen it.
I also have a football past that did not go beyond high school, but it brings back memories on occasion. Vicarious experience is what’s left.
NYC has a lot of crime?
The crime rate is even lower now than it was in 2006, and in 2006 it was just a little more than half as great per 100,000 people than was the crime rate for the whole country. About 56% as much, to be precise.
New York City has a lot of people.
It was a dangerous place at one time.
No more.
Where’ve you been?
Watching TV and fanatasizing about massive groups of savage people of color comin’ to GETCHU???
Get real. shergald.
AG
Arthur, your pretense to knowledge and a superior intellect appears to have its holes. Crime is high in all large cities in the country because the large numbers of people in them living in poverty. Crime is down and up in the cities, but still high.
“strike a nerve?” What nerve is that, Arthur. If you were at all interested in minority prejudice, you would, like many others whose diaries I read every week, about Black and Native American prejudice, be blogging about it. So do tell, with those nerves of yours, just what organizations do you run or work for or belong to that fight prejudice? It is said you have a “nerve.” How about prejudice towards Arabs and Muslims? Have you written about it, as opposed to writing about yourself or your own opinions about anything else but…? Where did you get this “nerve” that makes you so upset, you do nothing about it in the way of at least blogging a little on it. Looks like you have a hypnoTV lilly white ass like the rest of us.
Sorry, but I don’t think your mind is especially special.
Not really.
It is about the hypnomedia’s impact on the minds of Americans.
And the “nerve” that was hit is the one that sees this country going straight down the toilet because of…among many other things…white racism.
Unconscious white racism.
Like lil’ shergald’s here.
Sure….the leftinesses were all for Obama.
He’s “a safe one”, after all.
I see the fat white middle class tourists from the ‘burbs here in NYC every day, all full of Katie Couric-driven horror stories and lame Late Show one-liners, fearfully looking at the dangerous denizens of color from the safety of their tour busses and police-patrolled Theater District streets, getting their little frissons of shiver thrill while they blow their money on stupid B’way shows and tourist trap hotels, restaurants and tchotchke shops.
Like it’s just another episode of “Law and Order.”
And then they go back home and vote for crypto-facist rascists like Sarah Palin.
And down we go, one flush at a time.
Shergald’s little…what do the hypno-hustlers call those “mistakes” that ol’ Joe Biden seems always to be committing? Like some kind of Ed McMahon second banana to Obama’s little whiff of off-white Johnny Carson? (Sacré bleu!!! Le frisson!!! La nostalgie de la boue!!!)
Oh yes.
“Gaffes.”
Shergald’s little “gaffe” here.
Just another flush down the toilet.
Hit a nerve?
You bet your lily white ass it hit a nerve.
And if you didn’t feel it…?
Well then, said lily white ass has probably spent too much fucking time sitting in front of a hypno-TV to see the racists for the trees.
American mainstream television.
Novocaine for the feel nerves.
Nice.
AG
Gilroy, maybe you could have used that education you snubbed afterall. At least it might have helped you to become more self reflective, and better understand the racial stereotypes that you live with, that infest your own mind.
Crime is associated with poverty, not ethnicity.
This post according to you is “white racism.”
“There is no excuse for pure unadulterated snobbery. You have to be more subtle to get respect. And then there is this tidbit: “Tito Puente/Machito/Tito Rodriquez tradition of rigororously played, Afro-Cuban/NYC-style.”
It is likely that I will forget this crap as quickly as you forgot the Saints or the right wing Colts,” as quickly as I click off your diary. Now isn’t it better for ordinary people to get their aggressions off on fantasy football, than to go out in your Bronx neighborhood and shoot a few dudes for fun?”
So you associate crime in NYC with minorities, is that right? Ergo, dropping the word “crime” is racist, “white racism,” at least in your mind. That is the most rediculous inference I have ever heard. It was not a nerve that was hit, but your own prejudicial mind that was unraveled. Do tell, in your mind, what inference does “crime” bring up in relation to Miami FL: anti-Cuban bigotry?
You’re really beginning to sound pretty fucking ignorant, Arthur. And people with “lilly white asses” are not necessarily prejudiced as you would contend; some are, most aren’t. We have a Black president today for that reason. Still, many may carry the same ethnic stereotypes that exist in your own mind. The association of crime with ethnicity rather than poverty.
We are still waiting for you, for years now, to post an anti-bigotry diary.
And PS: “strike a nerve?” You must be awfully sensitive to bigotry and prejudice, right?
I have put up many diaries about Isrlmophobia, prejudice toward Arabs or people of the Islamic faith. When, once, did you ever comment let alone rec a diary bearing such topics? So shall I conclude that you have no problem with Islamophobia?
“Strike a nerve,” my white ass, and yours as well.
Eh, you overreacted.
I know the Bronx fairly well. I know Times Square. I know the reality that you’re describing.
I just don’t see the gaffe that you see.
I see why you see it. I think you’re wrong.
And shergald’s lovely:
I see the connection.
Palin as day. (Ooops!! I mean “Plain as day.” Don’t I? Hmmmm….)
AG
Give everyone a break, arthur. You know as well as I that you selected your present abode outside of high crime areas in the city. And isn’t it in the Queens where you actually live?
Recylcing old stereotypes about white people is not exactly responding to the issue of crime and poverty, which you apparently know little about. And who actually believes that there’s a NYC bus company that runs bus tours through its high crime areas for lilly whites?
PS: No one said anything about Black or Hispanic people or made any reference except to crime on the streets of ol’ NYC and the use of sports to channel aggression.
Furthermore, if you knew anything about my blogging history, when I was known for a time, years ago, as “Blackman” on a site called Right Wing News, just to remind the Reps of their racist past ala Reagan, you’d of enjoyed the give and take, that is, before I was banned. So don’t tell me about racism, since before focusing on the IP conflict, I was writing about civil and human rights activism with a past going back to the 60s, a lot older than your own smart ass.
Still, ban yourself. And I say that not because of your absence and disregard or lack of interest of the plight of the Palestinians, but because your inability to recognize the value of sports in society, going back to the Greeks.
One Voice Tees Valley (UK) – http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/OVTV
Oviedo TV (OVTV) – http://www.cityofoviedo.net/index.php?q=node/605
probably not http://www.youtube.com/user/OVTV
so… what’s OVTV?
Ovation TV
Good!!!
AG.