“There is nothing metaphysical about getting punched in the face.”

Great, strange Chuck Klosterman essay in this month’s Esquire about Norman Mailer, the demise of boxing, fight or flight and, to my great delight, my pet theory that people are rude (and have been getting ruder for decades) because they’re sure you won’t punch them.

From the piece:

“It is impossible to deny that the culture is coarsening. Everyone concedes this — even the people who are happy about it. It is now acceptable to say almost anything, about almost anyone, in a public space, and for no reason whatsoever. There is no line to step over, because such lines no longer exist. And I think those boundaries disappeared the moment people really, truly lost the fear of getting punched in the face. Americans have understood this intellectually for decades, but I don’t think we accepted it in totality until now. Adults are now so insulated by technology (and so protected by modernity) that the possibility of a physical consequence for any action is a psychological nonfactor. We have removed interpersonal fear from day-to-day behavior. Today, boxers are the only people who get hit for fucking up.”

People always think I’m crazy when I say this, but it has always seemed wrong to me that all sorts of behaviors that once would have been thought to be incalculably rude have become almost commonplace in the society but it has become almost unthinkable that you would hit someone for any reason. As someone once said, civilized men are coarser than barbarians because they know they can be rude without having their heads split open, as a general thing.

Even recreational boxing — when I used to box, it was like telling people I enjoyed rape and murder as hobbies. Boxing (and maybe wrestling) are the human sport urge to physically excel and dominate stripped of its dressings - no balls, no goals, no pretty uniforms. Just two people deciding which is physically superior. And for some reason the very idea of that scares the hell out of a lot of people these days.

Coming up on the weight-loss finish line.

Nine weeks ago Amanda and I began the Get Healthy Guilford Challenge to eat more fruits and vegetables, exercise more and, hopefully, lose ten pounds in ten weeks.

We began a blog called Cheesefry Nation to share our progress (or lack thereof). It’s been excerpted in the News & Record’s Life section, which has added print readers to the online folks who’ve been giving us tips, encouragement and the occasional scolding.

With one week to go I’m one pound from my goal - ten pounds lighter. I’ve lost about two inches off of my waist and am back in the pants and suits that were fitting too snugly before. I’m feeling better, sleeping better and looking better.

But I’ve decided that when the ten weeks is up, whether I’m ten pounds down or not, I’m going to keep it going. I’m going to try to lose another ten pounds in ten weeks. Because I can, I should and what made this ten pounds hard (to the degree it was hard) was trying to change bad habits I’d accumulated over the course of many years (too much fast food, soda instead of juice or water, eating too much meat and not enough everything else, eating in front of the TV). I haven’t completely licked all of those - though I do have the soda monkey off my back at long last. But I’ve licked enough of them that I think the next ten pounds would come much easier. That would put me down to what I think was my best all time weight — around 200 lbs, much of it muscle. Getting that muscle back will be a major part of my next ten pound leg of this thing — and I think it can be done.

Some good news at work (no, really)

So I found out yesterday that I won the Walter Spearman Award for writing by young journalists, which is given each year by the N.C. Associated Press to one writer in the state.

I’m told I’m the first writer at the N&R to win the award — and it’s nice to have done it my first year out. I looked back on my work over the last year recently for a different awards submission and realized how much really good stuff I’d done. Some of it feels like a long time ago now. Some of it — like the gangs piece that won me this award — seems like it was just yesterday. We’re still at the beginning of this year — but I already feel like I need to catch up and knock out some even better stuff this year.

Amanda just found out she won first place for Environmental Reporting from the New England Press Association for a series she did last year. I predict this time next year she’ll be picking up some North Carolina awards too.

All right — now back to fighting off the flu.

Nevermind the Bollocks

Greensboro blogger Ed Cone points to a story about a Virginia legislator trying to outlaw truck ornamants that resemble…well, bull testicles.

No, really.

I’ve yet to see these things on the road, but apparently a lot of guys (and gals, potentially) with pickup trucks like to hang them from their trailer hitches.

The offending pair:

The legislator says he doesn’t want to have to explain to his granddaughter what these things are supposed to be. To which I say — hope she doesn’t have a dog at home, pal.

Absolutely in bad taste — but if Virginia’s going to begin outlawing that, the legislature is going to be mighty busy…

“Witchblade” on IFC

Yesterday Jeri Rowe dropped a package on my desk from the Independent Film Channel.

Inside were two DVDs of Japanese Anime.

Not usually my thing — I think anime is an acquired taste that requires a very specific sensibility or a lot of acid (or both) — but these caught my eye.

One of them is an anime version of the Top Cow comic Witchblade, which was already a failed live action series with talk of a movie in the works.

No surprise — the Witchblade (a sentient alien artifact that bonds with human women making them into superheroes) of the anime also makes the female wielder dress like a stripper from space.

Some things remain, whatever the genre.

Am going to have to put this on and try not to have a seizure as the strangeness of the original witchblade concept melds with the weirdness of anime. I guess in way the two are made for each other — the Japanese have a strange fetish for scantily clad women being persecuted by monsters and that’s sort of what Witchblade is all about.

No limit to online betting’s strangeness

I’ve been looking at more online gambling sites — and it’s a strange, strange world.

There’s basketball betting, baseball betting and football betting, sure — but did you realize you can bet on Snooker? Also handball and darts, apparently.

I’ve never even seen “Hurling” — but apparently you can bet on this, online.

I guess there are some people who will bet on anything.

When I was a kid, I spent some summers with my father — which is to say, I spent a lot of time in my grandmother’s bar in New York. There was a guy there who would bet on coin tosses, spinning bottle caps - anything you could put money on. And it wasn’t about the money — he’d bet quarters and he seemed to be well enough off. There’s just some visceral thrill in games of chance, particularly if you’re risking something, however small.

Add that tot he Internet and it certainly gets weird.

RIP Sir Edmund Hillary

(CNN) — Sir Edmund Hillary, who gained worldwide fame after he and guide Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, has died, according to New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark.
art.hillary.gi.jpg

Hillary took his fame in stride and considered himself just an ordinary beekeeper.
Click to view previous image
1 of 2
Click to view next image

He was 88.

—-

Full story here.

Online gaming — almost as profitable as drugs

I just read that the online gaming business apparently makes $5.2 billion annually, in the U.S. alone.

How is that possible?

What am I missing?

This is mostly World of Warcraft and massively multiplayer online games, right?

Or does this also include subscriptions for console games like Halo and war games online?

How is it possible that a an industry worth billions of dollars could be thriving and growing in this country and I know like two people actively doing it?

The online gaming business is crazy to me — but I guess it shouldn’t be. Second Life is sociologically interesting, but add an actual…you know, game element to it and you’ve got a license to print money.

The only video game that I was ever really sucked into was Pirates!, a historical strategy roleplaying game that could easily have made a great massively multiplayer online game. So I get the appeal.

Those who can play games like that without turning into trolls have my admiration. But like my friend Chris, who is a recovering Dungeons and Dragons/roleplaying game addict, I think it’s best to steer clear so that I can be human.

What VH1 does best

It does sometimes seem to me that VH1 is playing “Best Week Ever” or “I Love New York” 24-hours a day.

But right now they’re playing this great documentary (Rock Docs: Drug Years - Teenage Wasteland, The 70s) where Wayne Kramer of the MC5 just said the following thing about heroin, Vietnam and crime in the 1960s/1970s:

“When I was in jail there were a lot of my fellow inmates who were Vietnam veterans. They got hooked over there but when they came back, they found they couldn’t support their habit as easily. So they reverted to what they knew — weapons and tactics. They became bank robbers.”

People participating in the documentary include famous drug smuggler Allen Long, Lou Reed, Henry Rollins, Richard Belzer, Country Joe McDonald, various famous photographers, DEA and former CIA agents. Fascinating. Among the fun facts I learned: apparently High Times magazine, which is now sort of quirky and quaint, was founded because drug smuggling friends of the publisher had tons of high grade golden marijuana and people didn’t yet know what it was or how good it was. They decided to start a magazine to educate the market.

Like the Hip-Hop, Punk and Metal docs they did recently, this is what this channel does best.

High Speed Broadband

Living in Greensboro, I feel like I’m getting screwed on wireless Internet.

Time Warner Cable seems to be the only real option if you want high speed cable Internet and you live in the city — and I feel like they’re gouging me.

I want high speeds, I want it to be reliable, and I don’t feel like I should be paying more for it than any of my other utilities.

Apparently, if you’re a business, you’re getting a better deal - or at least more options.

You can get broadband from BT Total Broadband that comes ready for broadband digital TV, 24/7 customer support and gigs of free online storage.
There’s even a broadband speed test to test how fast you can go using your telephone number or zip code as indicators.

“Care” and “Home” aren’t supposed to be dirty words

People in my family don’t generally live long enough to need rest homes.

Cigarettes, alcohol, genetic predispositions to diseases that kill them fairly young — it’s just never been something we’ve had to deal with.

The few people in my family who I can remember living to very ripe old ages continued living by themselves or with a family member who was as much companion in old age as caretaker. But I know a number of people whose families are now in a position where grandparents or great-grandparents can no longer care for themselves — and a number are so far gone or in need of such great and constant care that the family can’t handle it alone.

But when you say: “Have you thought about a rest/retirement home or caretaker?” it seems so…cold.

I guess we’re still programmed, deep down, to think that we should care for those in our families as long as we can, whether or not we’re really able to give them the care they need.

I watched my mom care for my grandmother as she died very slowly — and I know that it meant a lot to both of them. But she was still all there mentally, though her body was failing. When it gets to the point where the elderly aren’t sure where they are, who’s living and dead, what year it is — at that point I don’t think it’s so bad to admit you need something and someone to help you with them.

There are websites like Bettercaring.com to help you find a care home, learn about the kind of care their loved ones might need, find it and get care questions answered.

That’s half the battle, I suppose.

How you make the decision ultimately, I have no idea.

Better than Fleetwood Mac, maybe…

John Edwards has come in third in New Hampshire.

His wife Elizabeth just came out to talk to the crowd in Manchester. The song she came out to? “Firecracker” by North Carolina’s own Ryan Adams.

Contains the great (and maybe eerily appropriate) line: “Everybody wants to go forever/I just want to burn up hard and bright”

Then Edwards came out to say “Two races down — 48 states left to go!” The song he came out to? “Our Country” by John Mellencamp.

Yeah, the truck commercial song.

Contains no great lines.

Well played, Mrs. Edwards.

Come on, John.

Campaign 2008 observations

Bill Richardson: It’s kind of like watching my high school social studies teacher run.

Hillary Clinton: While I have no real affection for her or her politics, I can’t help but reflect sadly on the fact that she put thoughts of her own political career on hold for decades to help Bill run unsuccessfully for congress, win as Attorney General and then Arkansas’ governor, put it back together after he lost that office, win and hold it again and then run for president. She was then his First Lady for eight years, advising and defending him and trying to be every inch the active First Lady that her hero, Eleanor Roosevelt, was. I think you’d have to be a moron to argue (as Dick Morris apparently has) that all of this doesn’t mean she doesn’t have plenty of political experience — but I agree that it’s hard to run on that when your actual elected experience is limited to being a senator from a state you moved to specifically to gain the office.

But the sad irony is that it’s now come to this: now that she’s embarked on her own political career and is advancing herself as a candidate for the presidency, she is exactly what the Democrats don’t want to elect: a 60-year-old white candidate who can only run on her (hard to quantify) half a life of professional political experience when “change” is the thing and both sides seem to want younger, inspiring outsiders.

Barack Obama: There’s no doubt he’s inspiring to hear, but I’m wondering if he doesn’t need a vice presidential choice that will bulk him up a bit. Choosing Edwards would, as was once said of Al Gore and Bill Clinton, put an exclamation point on what he has to offer instead of balancing it out.

Also, it’s got to be a little bittersweet to be doing well in the presidential race while Kenya’s going nuts and members of your family are still there.

John Edwards: What, exactly, does he mean when he keeps saying he will “take the power” from interest groups and corporations, and that “we have a fight on our hands.”

I heard him differentiate himself from Obama on CNN yesterday by saying that Obama wants to sit down and negotiate with drug companies and corporations, and he thinks “we’re in a fight” and “they won’t give up their power.”

It sounds like rev-em-up flamethrower language and I get that you’ve got to do that at this stage, especially if you’re Edwards — but won’t you eventually have to sit down and negotiate and work with entrenched interests and large corporations? It’s not like you can become president, meet with their representatives and kick them in the nuts. I’d like to hear more of what he has in mind with all this.

John McCain: I never thought we should count him out and now I’m just enjoying watching him fight the urge to actually punch Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney: Seems like if you’re going to dish it out like that, you’ve got to be able to take it. Isn’t he a little worried about turning off supporters with this “hey — don’t be mean…” stuff every time anyone says anything about him?

Mike Huckabee: Clearly the most charming of the Republican candidates — but are hardcore conservatives actually going to get behind this guy? And does he want them to?

Sleeper sell

Landmark, the company that owns the News & Record, may be sold.

If it happens, and it isn’t certain, it will likely be a ways down the road — still, I got an awful sinking feeling in my stomach when I read the headline this morning, which is how most of the staff found out about it.

It’s not as though it’s a huge shock. As former N&R reporter Jonathan Jones points out at his blog, the company has been doing things that looked conspicuously like polishing up for a sale for some time now. The culmination — we had layoffs for the first time last year.

Still, I somehow wasn’t expecting it.

After the layoffs, in a pretty hostile meeting with the publisher, several of us asked point blank if the paper or the company was going to be sold. We were told that’s not what the layoffs were about — nothing can ever be ruled out completely, but a sale was highly unlikely.

After the meeting several people told me: “Unlikely my ass.”

These were smart people, and several of them went into other industries shortly thereafter.

Those of us who were not laid off and did not go elsewhere are doing the only thing we really can today: we’re writing for tomorrow’s paper.

I have friends who work on papers that have been sold — to giant chains, to venture capitalists, to the owners of direct competitors. It’s something that happens in this industry — and with greater frequency all the time. Viewers of HBO’s crime drama The Wire will get a look at sales, buyouts and layoffs in the show’s thinly fictionalized Baltimore Sun newsroom. The show’s creator and head writer used to be a cop reporter at the Sun — and from what I’ve seen the show’s treatment is dead accurate.

The McClathcy chain bought the News & Observer, one of the last great family-owned newspapers in the South, more than a decade ago. There’s a pride (and there used to be a feeling of security) in working for a private, family owned paper. But like a lot of things many of us loved about the business, those have been disappearing for a while.

Like the layoffs, which were sad news for a lot of people who lost their jobs, their health insurance, their stability and that of their families, the news has been greeted by a number of bloggers on the N&R site with .

I’ve had a nasty cold for a few days now, so I keep telling myself it’s that that’s making me feel ill and not the fact that so many people seem to get so much pleasure from the possible suffering of people they’ve never met.

“..take this nation back for Christ.”

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Mike Huckabee, a Republican relying on support from religious conservatives in Thursday’s hard-fought presidential caucuses, on Sunday stood by a decade-old comment in which he said, “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.”

In a television interview, the ordained Southern Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor made no apologies for the 1998 comment made at a Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Salt Lake City.

“It was a speech made to a Christian gathering, and, and certainly that would be appropriate to be said to a gathering of Southern Baptists,” Huckabee said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

He gave the speech the same year he endorsed the Baptist convention’s statement of beliefs on marriage that “a wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.” Huckabee and his wife, Janet, signed a full-page ad in USA Today in support of the statement with 129 other evangelical leaders.

—-

A little over a month ago my mom called me and said: “Write it down. I’m saying it now. Mike Huckabee is going to take the Republican nomination.”

Every time she reads a story like this she’s more and not less sure she was right.

A reporter friend just told me he’s a big fan of Billy Graham — and he’d expect to hear “take this nation back from Christ” from him, but not from a presidential candidate. From a presidential candidate it’s kind of creepy.

A second reporter friend said that it’s not creepy in the context he said it — as an ordained minister speaking to Southern Baptists. If he brings that thinking to the presidency rather that regarding the job as a separate thing, that’ll be a problem, she said. She’s a committed Christian, she said — but she doesn’t go to work thinking “I have to take the media back for Christ.”

This story makes me realize I know almost nothing about Mrs. Huckabee — but I’d be interested to hear more about and from a woman who would sign a statement saying she thinks God wants her to submit to her husband’s servant leadership. If only because I’m not sure I’ve ever met a woman who’d agree with that statement.

UPDATE: A Baptist female friend of mine just told me that she believes this — but that if you actually look at the Bible verses from which the “servant leadership” thing is taken you would come to the conclusion that men are also supposed to be subject to their women and that ideally you won’t end up with a guy who would use this line to tell you that he’s your leader and you are to follow him.

Last week I had another friend tell me that she doesn’t think that there’s anything supernatural about Christianity - because God created everything and nothing he created can be outside of nature.

Which leads me to believe I’m not having enough religious conversations with the people I know — and that when I do, it’s fascinating.

It’s Smart

People keep laughing at me when I tell them I may make my next car a Smart car.

But I test drove one a few months back for the paper and actually liked it. GQ gave it a spin this month and came away impressed as well.

The fact that they get an estimated 40/city and 45/highway is a huge draw — but they’re also attractive (and attractively priced — the convertible model is $16K), comfortable (believe it or not) and fun to drive.

I got mine up to 60 mph on the test drive — but the GQ writer got on the highway and went up to 80 for over an hour. I don’t remember the last time I needed to go faster than 90 mph, which is the Smart’s top speed — so I’m not sure what the downside of owning one of these would be.

Instant Karma

For the last 48 hours I’ve been struggling with some sort of super bug that can only be beat back with large doses of over-the-counter cold medicine that makes me loopy and prone to passing out for hours and waking startled.

Not that I don’t always wake up startled.

Also, the cat is vomiting.

Again.

Outside it was raining this cold, angry, get-off-the-road-damn-you rain most of the day.

And I was working in it.

I bragged a little too much about it not really feeling like winter, didn’t I?

I’m sorry.

Culture Shock: The Dark Knight

Yes, I’m a little obsessed with the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight.

But who can blame me? You all saw Batman Begins, right?

If you’ve been following my Batman posts over at Culture Shock, you’ve seen some pictures of Heath Ledger as the Joker and of the new Bat suit.

I’ve just posted some links to the Trailer and a bootleg of the longer preview shown with I Am Legend in IMAX theaters. Go check them out.

“I knew in my bones…” (one of them, at least)

In a CNN story about a recent Bill Clinton interview on PBS, it’s mentioned that the former president compared himself to Obama, saying he chose not to run for president in 1988 because he knew he wasn’t ready.

From the story:

Also in the PBS interview, Clinton compared Obama to himself in 1988, when he was a young governor of Arkansas who decided not to run for president yet.

“Even when I was a governor, and young, and thought I was the best politician in the Democratic Party, I didn’t run the first time I could have. I had lots of Democratic governors encouraging me to, but I knew in my bones I shouldn’t run, that I was a good enough politician to win, but I didn’t think I was ready to be president.”

That would be an interesting little observation, were it true.

But anyone who’s read Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss’ excellent Clinton biography First In His Class or his subsequent The Clinton Enigma has heard a different story from Clinton’s former Arkansas Chief of Staff (and later head of Arkansas’ Democratic Party), Betsey Wright.

Wright, the political consultant who served as inspiration for the Libby Holden character in Joe Klien’s Primary Colors, told Maraniss that Clinton’s main incentive not to run was a list she confronted him with — a list of women he was rumored to have been involved with, potential “bimbo eruptions” as she famously called them.

According to Wright Clinton had already told friends he was running, flown in buddies and supporters and rented a hotel conference room for the announcement when she told him the list was a deal breaker. He quietly bowed out of contention, becoming one of the legions of politicians who needs more “family time.”

Avoiding the fever.

Oh.

Oh God.

I’m trying so hard not to get sucked into the campaigns and end up in full blown political junkie mode.

Having cable now isn’t helping.

But newspapers, magazines, NPR — they’re all gearing up now and making it so hard to keep interested but not obsessed. Even without cable, what chance would I have?

My mom and I are talking politics every few days — and I marvel at the political change that’s come over her in the last decade or so. We’ve been more or less on the same page since I was old enough to vote — but I think she may actually be a bit to the left of me, now. Part of that’s the special mix of military and gay that is my family — when you have loved ones actually fighting the wars abroad and loved ones unable to marry their lovers at home it does strange things to you. But it’s actually really interesting to listen to how she reacts to things and use her as a sounding board myself.

She’s now predicting Mike Huckabee will win the Republican nomination. The Democratic nomination she’s more on the fence about — though she’s no Hillary fan. Like many women her age she adores Oprah, but I’m not sure she’s completely on board with Obama yet. We talked briefly the other day about the potential strengths of an Obama/Edwards ticket — but I’m not sure what to think of any of it myself, yet.

I’m attempting not to think too much about it at all.

And failing.