Weird Wednesday

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Welcome to WW. I should make this a new category, because really, as difficult as it may be for you to believe…people are awfully strange sometimes.

Today’s weirdness: Jose Canseco.

Why was Jose smuggling fertility drugs across the Mexican border into the US? Gee, I wonder. How about just because he’s a nice guy and wanted to help doctors in San Ysidro dispense the medicine to childless couples? Or maybe his wife wants to conceive and he’s short on cash for a fertility clinic visit. Yeah, that’s probably it.

Because it most certainly wouldn’t be because the drug “helps restore production of testosterone lost in steroid users,” now would it? Actually, it would. And the man’s not ashamed to admit it. He loves what steroids have done to his body and his life. In this disturbing 2005 review of his book, Juiced, Bryan Curtis pretty much sums it up: the guy is bizarre. In fact, the more I read about him, the more my creepy meter jumps.

Can’t put my finger on why, exactly, other than quotes like this, perhaps:

Certain steroids, used in proper combinations, can cure certain diseases. Steroids will give you a better quality of life and also drastically slow down the aging process. I’m forty years old, but I look much younger.”

Well, rock on. I’m sure the WWE was happy to hear that. And Lyle Alzado might agree, too (but you know, we can’t ask him now).

Maybe it’s just that Jose doesn’t have a healthy self-image. He wants to make sure he retains his girlish figure. So, you know, he might someday look like the picture of natural beauty.

Yeah. Love me some weirdos.

Fink out.

PS – This just in. More weirdness, but not of the gross-out kind. Check out Math Chuckleheads from Forbes magazine. Heh.

Well, whaddya know…

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That was worth staying up late for, and dragging it out of bed with even less sleep than normal.

When all hope was just about lost, and when the season was on the line in game 5, the Brownies pulled it off. They beat the undefeated Super Bowl champion New York Giants. I collapsed on the floor and sobbed.

Whether or not the season falls to crap from here on out, or if we’re relegated (once again) to saying, “Meh, maybe next year” come December, this one will still have been fun. The Browns have stunk up the joint on national TV for several years running now; it was nice to see something positive for a change.

So shines a good deed in a weary world.

FO

Photo credit: clevelandbrowns.com

Jim Brown’s Smackdown

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This was a great article. To me, the man summed up the whole professional sports attitude from the 1980s to the present.

Somebody made the mistake of asking legendary Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown to expound on a comment he’d recently made about flamboyant (and in the case of this particular interview, African American) NFL players. Said Jim:

“They don’t study and read. If they understood history, they would never shake their butts in the end zone.”

Yikes. But what he said next might make even the most jaded cynic wince:

“To shake your butt is to regress. It’s buffoonery. It’s me-ism. There’s no getting around it–it’s putting gasoline on the fire of stereotypes. When we were growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, we spent every day of our lives fighting stereotypes, all the shucking and jiving and cartoon dancing routines that black people were forced to do.”

He went on to name (some really big) names, and said his piece about them as well.

By all means, ridiculous behavior on the part of professional athletes is not limited to one particular racial sector. Indeed, there are all kinds of schmuckery in pro sports, just like in real life. It was interesting to read about a true sports legend taking a hard-line stance on what the profession has become.

The article is here if you want to read it.

Photo credit: profootballhof.com

Various & Sundry V

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  1. Have you heard about this? Or is the commenter correct in suggesting the Boston.com writer take an early retirement? (Me no likey Boston anyhow, for myriad reasons.)
  2. If I lost $3 million from my NBA contract and was suspended for 30 games for this reason, I’d consider lying about it, too.
  3. I have a friend who swears that monogamy is a misguided and unnatural convention. Now I read this in the Times book review. Hmmmm.
  4. This is an opera I’d like to see.
  5. In a Reuters story, the question was asked: What are you doing to deal with the financial crisis? Some guy wrote, “We are eating out less, delaying capital purchasing, planning less [sic] and shorter vacations, reducing gifts at holiday time, wearing older cloths [sic] and not replenishing wardrobe, washing my own car, cutting our own lawn, raking our own leaves, cleaning our own gutters, painting ourselves instead of hiring a painter, consuming more leftovers…” Gee. Wonder if he’ll be able to handle slumming in its most insipid form. You know, taking 4-day weekenders instead of 2-week vacations, mowing his own lawn, doing his own leaf-raking ‘n stuff…man, life can be brutal.

Sheesh. Now I’m just making myself mad. Gotta get to the Power Pointing. If anyone is an Excel wizard, I need to analyze some data on a Likert scale. Any takers? But first, I have to leap off this skyscraper…

Ugh.

The finish line

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I can see it from here.

On 2 January 2007, I began my doctoral program in music education. On this day next week, I will have officially completed eleven courses (44 credit hours) and twenty months of nonstop study — roughly 35 hours per week in addition to my full time job.

I have learned much. For instance, in addition to helping me cultivate a whole new thought system on the philosophy, history and cultural context of music education in America, this experience has taught me to:

  1. Operate on 4-5 hours of sleep per night
  2. Balance a daytime teaching job, nighttime rehearsal schedules for four mainstage musical productions, concerts, family gatherings, a wedding, the birth of a grandchild, web clients and other commitments with 30+ hours of homework per week
  3. Truly appreciate the Thriller for basically living on his own (and doing all my jobs around the house) for the last 20 months
  4. Love and appreciate my family more (the Thriller, #1 Son, Jakey’s Mom, Lars, Helen, Mavis, Simone and Johanna) for always being there for me and remaining patient and supportive
  5. Keeping up with it all without sacrificing my important personal commitment to write every day

Yikes — big list. But the heck of it is, this little party’s nowhere near over with. In April, I will take the dreaded exams, which many people (including some brilliant folks whose ideas and accomplishments I admire) have failed. No joy in Mudville till that’s done and in the books — one way or the other.

Still, it feels good to have come this far. If you’d asked me three years ago what I’d be doing today, I wouldn’t have said “finishing up my DMA coursework.”

Life is goofy, eh?

Fink out.