THE STAR TREK CALENDAR PICTURE OF THE MONTH IS...



...Mr. Sulu!

So I was bitching last month about how June's calendar shot from "I, Mudd" included pretty much everybody but this month's calendar boy. Charlie in comments pointed out how Sulu actor George Takei was busy shooting The Green Berets with John Wayne and couldn't be there--my personal Star Trek guru Shane seconds this assertion.

Okay, that's cool, but what's cooler is that it's almost as though the calendar makers understood Star Trek fans' sense of Sulu deprivation and gave him his own shot this month!

Everybody loves Sulu.

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LANFORD WILSON'S FIFTH OF JULY

From Wikipedia:

Fifth of July is a 1979 play by American playwright Lanford Wilson. Set in rural Missouri in 1977, it revolves around the Talley family and their friends, and focuses on the disillusionment with America in the wake of the Vietnam War.

More here.

I'm not ordinarily one, these days anyway, to wallow in cultural instances of Baby Boomer navel contemplation, but I've done this play twice, once way back in high school, with my buddy Matt who is a regular Real Art reader and sometimes commenter, and again during my ill-fated attempt at grad school back in 1991 at the University of Houston--both times I played the asshole, John Landis. So I've got a personal connection to it.

And when I say "Baby Boomer navel contemplation," I'm actually kind of halfway joking. This isn't an anti-liberal pseudo-feminist hatchet job like Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles is: Fifth of July, despite its strong doses of "everything the Boomers did was more important than anything you'll ever do," stays pretty close to a celebration of 1960s progressive ideals, while examining what it all may mean for the upcoming conservative era, which, I must admit, was pretty prophetic considering that it wasn't yet entirely clear when the play was written that American liberalism was fated to collapse in the 80s.

Obviously, I'm posting this because today is, you know, the fifth of July.

It's a good script. Unfortunately, being a copyrighted work and all, it's not freely available online. But Amazon's got a good deal on it. You should check it out.



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MY INDEPENDENCE DAY TRADITION FOR A COUPLE OF DECADES NOW...



...has been to watch the hyper-patriotic episode of Star Trek "The Omega Glory." You should join me in my tradition. This is the one with Kirk dramatically reciting the preamble to the Constitution, which, by itself, makes it well worth the watch, but it's a lot of fun otherwise, totally over the top in places.

Happy Independence Day!!!

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Reine and Dash



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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A Message from the Average Black Person

From AlterNet:

I can't possibly express to you the different types of Black people that exist. We neither move as an entity, nor do we move as three or four entities. For every Sharpton, there's a Steele. And for every Sharpton and Steele there are a hundred folks in the middle. What we share is a past, which on occasion helps shape our view on things. Also? Obama is not a unicorn. Please stop acting like Obama and his family are magical in the Black community. Just because some of you may not have seen a Negro like this doesn't mean they don't exist. Lots of smart black folk living with their smart mates and their cute smart kids. So please remember. Obama? Not a unicorn. Black people? Not one voice: I don't care what the supposed Black leaders try to claim.

And

After reading this, the next time you talk to a Black person you can feel comfortable in now knowing with every fiber of your being that you have no clue what they think or feel based on their skin color.

More here.

Indeed.

This is so utterly obvious to anybody who thinks about it for like five seconds, that it seems barely worth mentioning. Everyone is, after all, an individual. Everyone is a product of the circumstances from which they spring, their geographic location, their socioeconomic status, their gender, their sexual orientation, the era in which they came up, the kind of family into which they were born, their education, and on and on and on. This mix, when coupled with one's own personal perspective, makes everyone see the world and their place in it a bit differently from everybody else. Years ago when I was teaching, I once had my nose rubbed deeply into one particular Pentecostal preacher's own sense of black individuality: like the above linked essay asserts, never assume that you understand where somebody is coming from simply because you know his skin color.

However, there are differences between black people and white people, culturally speaking, and, even though there are myriad opinions and views within both the black and white communities, it would be psychotic to avoid discussing such differences for fear of offending contrarians who dare to part with the conventional wisdoms of their respective cultures. I mean, the whole "color blind" philosophy, which is positive enough for the purposes of judging people "by the content of their character," has otherwise gotten us into trouble by making us all try to pretend that there are no differences between white and black hopes, fears, dreams, and values.

If we're ever going to achieve any realistic sense of racial harmony, we've got to figure out how to really do diversity, rather than paying it lip service. And we just can't do diversity if we keep telling ourselves that we're all the same. That means recognizing and discussing ethnic difference in the United States. Surely there must be some kind of rhetorical approach allowing for broad discussion of ethnicity and culture while recognizing that everybody's an individual.

It's probably not much more difficult than changing, for instance, the phrase "African Americans are like..." to something along the lines of "African American culture tends to value..." But then, white people are pretty crazy on the topic of race, so maybe that's too much to expect.

Sorry. What I meant to say is that white American culture tends to be pretty crazy on the topic of race, so...

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STAR TREK
COURT MARTIAL

From Wikipedia:

"Court Martial" is an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It is a first season episode, #20, production #15, and was aired on February 2, 1967. It was written by Don M. Mankiewicz, and Stephen W. Carabatsos, and directed by Marc Daniels.

Overview: Captain Kirk stands trial on charges of negligence.

More here.

The Wikipedia article goes on to observe that this episode is the first time the words "Star Fleet" and "Star Fleet Command" are used in Star Trek. And that's entirely appropriate because "Court Martial" is a free-for-all in terms of exploring the organization for which Kirk and crew work.

I mean, this ain't no "City on the Edge of Forever." It won't blow you away or mist your eyes or anything like that. But it does give you some idea as to what Star Fleet is all about. You get to see Kirk interacting with former Academy classmates. You get to see the Star Fleet dress uniform, which I love, for the first time. You get some insight into how officers advance in rank, as well as how they don't advance in rank. You get to see admirals and commodores; you get to see a Star Base.

In a lot of ways, this one is like "The Corbomite Maneuver" in that it's all about fleshing out details of the Trek universe, making the overall story richer and deeper. Like I said, it's not brilliant or anything, but it is a fun mystery, a solid episode.

Check it out:



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FACTS DON'T MATTER

From the New York Times, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman on Republican opposition to the recently passed global warming bill:

Betraying the Planet

But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn’t see people who’ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it — and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.

Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday’s debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community.” I’d call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists — a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.

Yet Mr. Broun’s declaration was met with applause.

More here.

You know, it isn't at all unreasonable to say that dealing with global warming stands to gravely damage the economy, and therefore we ought to find ways of minimizing that damage as much as possible. It's never been unreasonable to say that. But that's not what conservatives did. Instead, they just straight-up denied that global warming is happening, or asserted that it will actually benefit the planet, or that it's a naturally occurring phenomenon, meaning we can't do anything about it. Needless to say, climate change denial and its goofy variants are entirely unreasonable. And, because conservatives have greatly warped public discourse with their non-stop global warming bullshit, it's extraordinarily dangerous, to boot.

This is doubly maddening because, beneath all the paranoid lies, conservatives have a point. Dealing with global warming will hurt industry and cost a lot of money. I mean, it's something we absolutely have to do, but there will definitely be costs. If the right wing had been honest with their concerns from the get-go, they would have earned a seat at the negotiating table. Instead, they shot their credibility, and have to watch from the sidelines. Nobody trusts them on this issue now.

Indeed, speaking more generally, this is one of the major problems facing conservatives right now. From sex education to evolution to weapons of mass destruction to magic markets to pollution and on and on, conservatives have long been content to ignore hard data in favor of the imagined realities that they desire. This actually worked well for them for many years, rhetorically pounding their opponents on the head with conservative "reality," confusing an already confused corporate news media which was all too happy to provide megaphones for the broadcasting of fiction. But it's all falling apart now. Reality, in the end, doesn't really give a shit what you say about it. That is, you can't argue for very long with the ground about whether you're falling toward it from a cliff before you become a splotch.

And even some Republicans are starting to understand this. I sincerely hope that if and when conservatives decide to embrace the notion that reality is actually real, we can return to some semblance of normal debate about issues. I mean, what we've got right now is just silly.

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Transformers sequel may be most-panned film to top $400M

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

After just five days, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is halfway to $400 million in the U.S., a box-office milestone only eight other movies have reached. If it climbs that high, the "Transformers" sequel will be by far the worst-reviewed movie ever to make the $400 million club.

Critics and mainstream crowds often disagree, but "Revenge of the Fallen" sets a new standard for the gulf between what reviewers and mass audiences like.

The movie pulled in $201.2 million since opening Wednesday, the second-best result for a movie in its first five days, just behind "The Dark Knight" with $203.8 million. Even after its whopping $60.6 million opening day, "Revenge of the Fallen" was packing theaters, a sign that unlike critics, who mostly hated the movie, audiences felt they were getting their money's worth and were giving the flick good word of mouth.

Critics "forget what the goal of the movie was. The goal of the movie is to entertain and have fun," said Rob Moore, vice chairman of Paramount, which is distributing "Transformers" for DreamWorks. "What the audience tells us is, 'We couldn't be more entertained and having more fun.' They kind of roll their eyes at the critics and say, 'You have no idea what you're talking about.'"

According to Paramount's exit polls, 91 percent of the audience thought the sequel was as good as or better than the first "Transformers," which received far better reviews.

More here.

Well, as the pollsters say, if you ask the right questions you'll get the answers you're looking for. That is, saying that Transformers II is "as good or better" than Transformers I is like saying that vomit is "as good or better" than shit: they're both awful, but that's not what the question's about. Really, my overall take, as far as moviegoers' taste is concerned, is that audience standards have fallen in tandem with the quality of Hollywood movies over the years--to return to my metaphor, when all you have on the menu is vomit and shit, vomit and shit don't look half bad.

But there's more to it than that.

It is in no way surprising that a shitty movie can get a massive first week take in this day and age, especially when said shitty movie is a high budget action craptacular. Remember, Hollywood is a business, and since the 80s, it's been big business. Big blockbusters, then, are massive corporate investments in hot pursuit of massive returns. When you've got hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, failure simply cannot be tolerated. That's why these huge investments are always accompanied by huge marketing campaigns virtually guaranteed to get some decent audiences during the first week.

That is, people show up without any understanding that the movie is any good; they're checking it out based on the hype. Later, after a couple of weeks, when it becomes achingly clear that Hollywood's latest Stallone or Schwarzenegger or Willis project sucks donkey cock, and ticket sales consequently plunge dramatically, it matters little to the corporations that own the studios. That's because the real money doesn't come from the box office: most movies make their profits later on down the distribution chain. But first week box office sales are important in that a good opening strongly bolsters foreign market, DVD, and television sales. In other words, even though the movie theater market generates a pittance for a given film relative to later venues, a killer opening week is a vital sales point in generating massive profits after the given film's theatrical run has ended.

So a multi-million dollar action film simply has to succeed in its first week. Otherwise, it's guaranteed to be a financial failure, whether it's good or not. I mean, what cable company wants to pay-per-view a movie that nobody showed up to watch in the theaters? Opening week numbers are what Hollywood uses to push its products in these post-release markets. Consequently, massive marketing campaigns always accompany massive budget pictures. Sometimes this doesn't work, but it's a good business model, and it usually succeeds.

I think that's what's happening with this Transformers sequel. If ticket sales continue to be strong over the next few weeks, then I have no idea what I'm talking about. But I'm betting that as the hype fades, so too will audiences. Of course, in many ways that doesn't matter one way or the other. Transformers II got its big opening week. Hollywood will make its money. And we'll have some more crap to surf through on cable in about six months or so.

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Fewer clean-air violations found in states that spent more

From the Houston Chronicle:

Researcher Victor Flatt, a University of North Carolina professor of environmental law, said that while the findings may seem obvious, some states prefer to give industries more leeway to police themselves rather than spend more on regulatory efforts. This so-called cooperative approach became popular in the 1980s, as some states looked to save money.

The researchers don’t rule out that lower-cost, business-friendly carrots can work in some cases, or in tandem with regulatory sticks. But states can’t protect the environment on the cheap, they found.

And

Of the 17 states in the study, Texas ranked ahead of only Connecticut in per capita spending on environmental programs in 2003, the most recent data used.

More here.

That last little bit, if it wasn't entirely clear to you, means that out of the fifty states, Texas ranked forty ninth in enforcement spending, which is no surprise at all. Well, maybe a bit of a surprise: how is it that Texas got beat out for last by a Yankee state? We may never know.

But this story about enforcement spending delicately tip-toes around a fact almost never mentioned in corporate news sources such as the Chronicle. Private industry can only be trusted to maximize profit. That's the same thing as saying that private industry cannot ever be trusted to do the right thing. Unless there's some profit in it. Of course, there's no profit in ensuring that people aren't poisoned by toxic emissions, so why would they bother?

No, private industry must be forced to do the right thing. And such enforcement must be real, with actual results, not the bullshit window dressing "voluntary" compliance they've had in Texas since Bush was governor in the 90s. It's amusing that the "cooperative approach" is attributed in the excerpt above to states' desire to save money. I mean, lowering government costs may very well have played a role here, but show me a state with a Republican legislature and I'll show you a state falling over itself to allow industry to pollute more--that is, deregulation-as-philosophy is no doubt a much bigger drive for the "cooperative approach" than a desire to save money, despite the fact that such anti-pollution regulations save tens of thousands of lives a year.

You know, this isn't rocket science: if you don't watch the fox, he'll eat the fucking hens.

Or, if you prefer, if you don't watch the rooster, he'll fuck the hens. Either way.

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Stonewall Riots 40th Anniversary: A Look Back at the
Uprising that Launched the Modern Gay Rights Movement

From Democracy Now:

AMY GOODMAN: And how did attitudes change afterwards towards the gay community?

DAVID CARTER: Well, I think, you know, there was a lot of immediate admiration on the part of straight people watching it. They thought, “Wow, you know, we thought you guys would never fight back. Good for you.” Of course, many straight people mocked it. They thought, you know—there was one person said, “Oh, my god, now the fairies are revolting!” It’s like, you know, “Oh, my god, first, you know, black people were acting up, and women are acting up. My god, now even homosexuals are acting up!” So, you know, there were many disparate reactions, both immediately and in the longer run.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re now making a film about this. And how does Stonewall forty years ago relate to what we’re talking about today? I mean, in our next segment we’ll be speaking with a writer about how, at this point, it’s marriage and the military that are the flashpoint issues for the gay community.

DAVID CARTER: You know, what frustrates me—look, I’m all for those issues being addressed, believe me, but what frustrates me is I feel that so often people forget we have the same civil rights protections on a federal level as we had at the time of Stonewall: zero. Congress has not passed one law that gives us any federal protection. In 2005, four years ago, 90 percent of the American public, according to the Gallup poll, said that the—you know, it should not be possible to fire a person because they’re gay. We’re not at this point asking Congress or the Obama administration to lead; we’re asking them to follow at this point. We’re asking them to follow. Can’t they even do that?

Click here to watch, read, or listen to the rest.

As I've probably mentioned here before, Stonewall is my favorite people's uprising. I mean, never mind the entertainment value from dozens of drag queens kicking the shit out of asshole NYPD officers with their high heels: even though I'm not gay, the movement started back in 1969 is almost as meaningful to me as it is to the Queer community. And most likely to you too.

While the gay rights movement has done an extraordinarily good job of emulating the various civil rights movements preceding it, likening the plight of homosexuals to similar struggles for women's and African-Americans' rights, the reality is that gays and straights are so similar, literally living together within the same socioeconomic groups, that, in the end, there is no real difference between gay rights and straight rights. That is, the gay rights movement is ultimately a human rights movement.

Seriously. This is about the freedom to love whoever you want to love. This is about control over one's own body, about physical and biological autonomy. This is about access to health care. This is about the freedom to not conform; this is about being the person you want to be.

And the gay rights movement isn't simply about identity and gay sex. It's also about sex defined more generally. The movement was way out in front on the concept of safe sex and STD awareness, even while public schools were being pushed into dangerous and absurd "abstinence based" sex ed programs. While the overall sexual revolution collapsed into the meaningless bipolarity of Christian anti-sex Puritanism versus capitalist exploitation back in the 80s, the Queer community continued to celebrate human sexuality as a wonderful aspect of ourselves, while mixing in messages of sexual health and pragmatism. That is, the only intelligent voice out there on sexuality for the last twenty years has been the gay rights movement.

So that's why I always like to celebrate a bit for Pride weekend. Not only do I stand in solidarity with my Queer brothers and sisters, but I also understand that my own personal fate, and yours, is permanently intertwined with the fates of gays and lesbians. In many ways, it's our fight.



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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Frankie and Sammy



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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Thanks for all the wonderful couples' skates.

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
ONE OF MY TWO COLLEGES JUST WON THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP!!!

Unfortunately, it wasn't the one I preferred.

From the AP via ESPN:

Mitchell, Ochinko homer as LSU wins CWS championship

OMAHA, Neb. -- LSU's down cycle is over.

A program that two years ago wasn't good enough to qualify for its conference tournament is the best team in college baseball again.

The Tigers won their sixth national title Wednesday night, breaking open Game 3 of the College World Series finals with a five-run sixth inning that carried them to an 11-4 victory over Texas.

More here.

Okay, I was really really really happy when LSU won the national championship in college football a couple of years back. Because, you know, I got my master's degree from LSU, and I now count myself as a citizen in good standing of the Tiger nation. Geaux Tigers, and all that! But last night, even though the Tigers won a national championship, this time in baseball, I was a bit bummed.

Texas lost the national championship. And that's where my primary loyalty lies.

This was never supposed to happen. Texas plays in the Big 12; LSU plays in the SEC. They almost never face one another. Except under extraordinary circumstances. Like national championships. I mean, when I entered LSU back in '04, I had it all figured out: if Texas ever plays LSU, I'll have to support Texas, my first school, no problem.

But this was harsh. As with the first two games in the series, I was at work, and had to watch in bits and pieces at the bar when I could pull myself away from my tables. Here in NOLA, everybody was rooting for the Tigers, and I'm usually part of that rowdy mass. But not this time. And because I was one of only three Texans on the waitstaff, I had a target on my chest. People were giving me a lot of shit, even before the Tigers put it away in the sixth. I mean, friendly shit, but shit nonetheless. I kept saying, "I'm a Tiger, too," but nobody cared. And why would they?

You know, I would have been pissed if OU had beaten us. Same with A&M. But this is just a drag. I feel like I should be celebrating, but I also feel like we lost. At least when somebody around here tries to lord it over me I can always come back with "Hey, I fucking have a degree from LSU."

Geaux Tigers!


Mark Saltz/The Advocate

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STAR TREK
THE GALILEO SEVEN

From Wikipedia:

"The Galileo Seven" is an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It is a first season episode #16, production #14, written by Oliver Crawford and directed by Robert Gist. It was broadcast by NBC on January 5, 1967.

Overview: Mr. Spock leads a scientific team aboard the Enterprise shuttlecraft Galileo on an ill-fated mission.

More here.

One of the all time greats. To me, anyway. I don't think that I've heard many Star Trek fans going on about this one the way they do about "Mirror, Mirror" or "City on the Edge of Forever," but if you really are a fan, this one has a lot to sink your teeth into. Most notably, it's a Spock episode, relegating Kirk to only a few brief scenes on the bridge while his first officer leads the away team. While I love Kirk, Spock definitely deserves his day as commander. And this one doesn't disappoint in that department. Spock becomes increasingly frustrated with the logical but ineffective decisions he makes, all the while hounded by his team for his lack of emotion--indeed, the friction between Doctor McCoy and Spock, always fun to watch, gets as hot as ever in this one. In the end, Spock resorts to a wild and irrational gamble, which he absolutely and wrongly insists is utterly logical, to save his team.

He is half human, after all.

Beyond the Spock showcase, "The Galileo Seven" has some generally fun Trek stuff. Red shirts get offed by science fiction caveman monsters. An African-American officer besides Uhura is prominently featured. I'm not one hundred percent sure, but this may be the first episode to feature a Star Fleet shuttle craft. And we can't forget the usage of a favorite Star Trek plot device, the meddling, arrogant presence on the bridge of a Star Fleet official who wants to fuck everything up.

Yep, this one's fucking great. Check it out:



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"Suck on Our Yachts"

Matt Taibbi uses his razor wit to slice up Goldman Sach's non-apology apology for destroying the finance and credit markets, from AlterNet:

Let's be clear about what that meant. These crap/sham mortgages, a lot of them adjustable-rate deals with teaser rates that featured sudden rate hikes two or three years after closing, they would never have been possible had not someone devised a method for selling them off to secondary buyers. No local bank is going to keep millions of dollars worth of Alt-A mortgages on its books, because no sensible company lends out money to very risky customers and actually keeps those loans on its balance sheet.

So this system depended almost entirely on banks like Goldman finding ways to securitize these instruments, ie chop the mortgages up into little bits, repackage them as mortgage-backed securities like CDOs and CMOs, and sell them to unsuspecting customers on the secondary market, most of them large institutional buyers like pensions and insurance companies and workers' unions, many of them foreigners.

And

This isn't really commerce, but much more like organized crime: it was a gigantic fraud perpetrated on the economy that wouldn't have been possible without accomplices in the ratings agencies and regulators willing to turn a blind eye. Imagine a meat company that bred ten billion rats, fattened them on trash and sewage, ground their bodies into chuck, and then sold it all as grade-A ground beef to McDonald's and Burger King, right under the noses of the USDA: this is exactly the same thing, only with debt instead of food. We're eating it, they're counting the money.

More here.

So, as you may know, I really dig Taibbi because of his ability to make me laugh self-righteously while he skewers the powerful entities that fuck us over on a daily basis. But to type him as simply a funny guy is to miss the fact that his analysis is always dead on. I've compared him to Hunter S. Thompson, but in the most important ways he's more like I. F. Stone with a black sense of humor.

Case in point: Taibbi's assertion that the subprime mortgage crisis is less of a systemic failure of the banking and finance industries than it is the result of straight up fraud. That is, the crash resulted from what amounts to a criminal enterprise.

I mean, c'mon. I'm willing to believe that many of the players involved were innocent dupes, but some of these people had to know exactly what was going on. How can one make "mistakes" that result in triple-A security ratings for loans made to people who can't possibly pay them back? The way that Goldman Sachs is coming out of this smelling like roses, the way that so many of GS's alumni have managed the crisis from insider positions within both the Bush and Obama administrations, the way the Fed bailed out AIG, who owed GS hundreds of billions in insurance payouts for subprime losses, but not GS rival Lehmann Brothers, well, they call New Orleans corrupt, but the Big Easy's got nothing on these guys.

As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently said of the relationship between bankers and Congress, "Frankly, they own the place." Meanwhile, President Obama offers financial "reform" that by and large allows to remain intact the same regulatory structure that was incapable of stopping this grand scale Mafia work in the first place.

Personally, I think we'd all be better off if John Gotti was running the country.

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
LSU rallies to topple Texas in 11th in Game 1 of CWS finals

From the AP via ESPN:

OMAHA, Neb. -- Mikie Mahtook singled in the winning run in the top of the 11th inning after DJ LeMahieu tied the game in the ninth, and LSU survived Texas' five home runs to beat the Longhorns 7-6 in Game 1 of the College World Series finals Monday night.

LSU (55-16) would win its sixth national title with a victory over the Longhorns (49-15-1) on Tuesday night.

And

Texas is the first team since LSU in 1998 to homer three times in an inning at the CWS.

More here.

So, as you may know, I hold alumnus status with both Texas and LSU, which means that either way, my team wins. Of course, the flip side to that is that either way my team loses. But who am I kidding? I spent much more time in Austin than I did in Baton Rouge. I've got burnt orange blood. Tonight, it felt like my team lost.

I didn't really get to sit down and enjoy the game because I had to work, but it was slow, so I spent a lot of time in the bar checking the score, watching a few at bats here and there. From what I could tell, I really would have enjoyed the game, at least until the eleventh inning. I mean, one thing is pretty clear: both the Tigers and the Longhorns deserve to be in the CWS finals. There was some kickass shit out there on the diamond tonight. And for a moment or two there in the top of the ninth, it looked like the 'Horns were going to pull it off. But no. The Tigers managed to be just a little bit better in the eleventh. Harsh.

Ordinarily, I'd say "geaux Tigers" at this point, but it just doesn't seem right, all things considered. Instead, I'll say "hook 'em 'Horns!" We can still pull it off.

UPDATE: Texas wins to force game three!


Longhorn Connor Rowe is out at first as LSU Tigers Ryan Schimpf celebrates.
Ricardo B. Brazziell AMERICAN-STATESMAN

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IRAN

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Struggle among Iran's clerics bursts into the open

TEHRAN, Iran — A backstage struggle among Iran's ruling clerics burst into the open Sunday when the government said it had arrested the daughter and other relatives of an ayatollah who is one of the country's most powerful men.

State media said the daughter and four other relatives of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani were later released but their arrests appeared to be a clear warning from the hard-line establishment to a cleric who may be aligning himself with the opposition.

Tehran's streets fell mostly quiet for the first time since a bitterly disputed June 12 presidential election, but cries of "God is great!" echoed again from rooftops after dark, a sign of seething anger at a government crackdown that peaked with at least 10 protesters' deaths Saturday.

The killings drove the official death toll to at least 17 after a week of massive street demonstrations by protesters who say hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole his re-election win. But searing images posted online — including gruesome video purporting to show the fatal shooting of a teenage girl — hinted the true toll may be higher.

Police and the feared Basij militia swarmed the streets of Tehran to prevent more protests and the government intensified a crackdown on independent media — expelling a BBC correspondent, suspending the Dubai-based network Al-Arabiya and detaining at least two local journalists for U.S. magazines.

More here.

Here's my take: this is really difficult to understand.

Admittedly, it's all very exciting. I mean, ostensibly, it looks like the people have risen up to demand their freedom, like when the Berlin Wall fell, or when protesters faced off against tanks in Tienanmen Square, or like the great Civil Rights era march on Washington here in the US. It's hard for me, as a rebel-rousing freedom-loving American, to not side with the people of Iran as they do their thing in the streets.

I do support the demonstrations. But I'm not really sure if I'm necessarily on the same side as these Iranians. That is, as far as I can tell, these protests are aimed at forcing the Iranian government to follow the laws they're supposed to execute. In other words, it seems to me that, in the face of what appears to be a massively rigged election, the people of Iran are are protesting in favor of the theocratic governmental system they've had since the revolution of 1979, the one their leaders no longer seem interested maintaining.

I think Americans see the turmoil in the streets of Tehran and can't help but understand it in terms of our own revolutionary history. We see Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry; we see love for Western democracy and Western freedom because this is what it looks like to us. But Persians aren't from the West. There was no Enlightenment in the Middle East. There is no democratic tradition in Iran in the way we understand it. These people want democracy, yes, but how many of them understand the concept in terms of the severely limited sense of democracy afforded them by their ayatollahs? My guess is that this is what the majority of these demonstrators want. That is, they want a restoration of the status quo, a restoration of Muslim Shia theocracy as they've understood it for forty years.

Do we really want to support that? President Obama is right to be cautious.


Tehran, from Twitter, courtesy of the Daily Kos.

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HAPPY JUNETEENTH

From Wikipedia:

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery in the U.S. State of Texas in 1865. Celebrated on June 19, the term is a portmanteau of June and nineteenth, and is recognized as a state holiday in 31 of the United States.

More here.

Juneteenth was yesterday, but as far as I can tell most of the celebrations across the country are taking place today, so happy Juneteenth. Being from Texas, I've known about this ostensibly African-American holiday most of my life, but more recently I've started wondering why white Americans don't celebrate the holiday as well. I mean, as I've asserted here before, we're all in agreement that slavery was an awful, horrible, dehumanizing institution that stands as a bloody stain on the reputation of the United States, aren't we? Aren't we also in agreement that getting rid of slavery was an historic watershed for our nation, making us all live up to our stated democratic values a bit better? That ending slavery made us a much more civilized people, a better country?

Why the fuck aren't white people raising beverage-filled glasses toasting this radical step in our continuing evolution towards freedom and democracy? I mean, ending slavery was at least as big of a step for America as establishing our democratic republic was. This is a big fucking deal. So why all the white silence? At least the Senate finally got around to issuing an apology for slavery, albeit an apology with anti-reparation strings attached.

I guess that's a start.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Dash



Reine



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
Texas holds on to defeat Louisiana in Bayou Bowl

From the Houston Chronicle:

Defense dominated and the offense built Texas’ biggest lead in a Bayou Bowl en route to a 17-14 victory in the annual showdown with Louisiana’s all-stars Saturday night at Stallworth Stadium.

It was Texas’ fourth win in the 7-year-old series.

Harwell, from Elkins, had four catches in the first half, including a 28-yard TD from Cypress Creek’s Pugliese.

Harwell finished with Bayou Bowl records for receptions (eight) and yards (82).

More here.

Heh. They played it out in Baytown, where I sat on the field with the rest of the faculty through several excruciating graduation ceremonies back in the day.

Anyway, I had no idea this game even existed, but since moving to Louisiana, I'm glad it does. That is, in the five years I've been in the land of swamps and crawfish, I've learned that people here are arguably more crazed about high school football than people in my home state. I mean, Louisiana is smaller than Texas, which is probably why there's only one big time college football program, LSU's in Baton Rouge, but trust me, smaller doesn't mean less devoted.

That's why it's only natural to pit the best Texas has to offer on the gridiron against its nextdoor neighbor. Sounds like it was a damned good game. Of course, I'm glad that Texas won--indeed, whenever Texas faces Louisiana in football, I must necessarily always root for Texas, and be happy when Texas wins. But that doesn't mean I don't like Louisiana football.

You know, there's a high school behind the apartments where I live in Metairie: I really ought to go see them play this fall. It'll probably be as fun as watching high school football in Texas. Probably.


Texas lineman Austin Riley (71) of Baytown Lee hoists the
championship trophy as players celebrate following a 17-14
Texas victory in the Bayou Bowl Texas-Louisiana All-Star
Football Game at Stallworth Stadium on Saturday.
Photo by Smiley N. Pool for the Chronicle.

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