Green Cars

Do they have to make hybrid cars so dumb looking?

I recently attended a rally against global warming.

Now, it should be noted that global warming was not on hand to address the accusations against it, which were many. And I should mention that I was there because the Topeka Capital-Journal was paying me to write about it.

Moving on, the rally included some hybrid vehicles on display. You could look at them. You could sit inside. You could read the sticker price. You could not, however, drive one of the hybrids. See, the actual mechanical abilities of a car are more or less moot, as long as it has a sunroof and puts out low levels of CO2.

Nonetheless, I scoped 'em out. There was a Honda Element, a Mercury Mariner and a Toyota Prius. The Prius advertized 55 miles per gallon city/highway, which is borderline orgasmic. Except that the price of this particular model was north of $25,000. You can buy a Corola for about $14,000 and get 40 miles per gallon, meaning if you drive 12,000 miles per year, you'd have to drive your Prius for 55 years before it paid for the difference in cost.

Of course, if you happen to be well off and environmentally conscious, and all you want to do is reduce your own emissions, by all means, buy a Prius.

I suspect someday in the not-so-distant future, the market will adjust to the point that buying a conventional, internal combustion-only vehicle just won't make sense at all. But we ain't there yet. Not even close.

Jason Whitlock for President

In case anybody missed it, from out of the Don Imus storm has emerged America's newest media star.

Jason Whitlock.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I know Jason personally, and like him. Also, though I don't think he's even the best writer at his own newspaper (the Kansas City Star), his takes on sports and society are almost always original, fearless and best of all, not politically correct. Criticisms that he seeks out opportunities to play the race card are made of ignorance. He talks about race a lot, but he doesn't play the race card. He analyzes racial issues honestly. In fact, the more I write about this, the more I realize that Jason Whitlock and Charles Barkley are probably the same person.

Anyway, Jason is about to become a mega star. He's been on Oprah. He's interviewed to replace Imus on the radio. He has blasted Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton publicly, something every other black voice has been afraid to do.

I don't know what plans Jason has for his career. He could have left The Star long ago and, indeed, he has worked for ESPN.com and, now, AOL.com, where he has more freedom. He has said that he's a sports writer at heart, and doesn't feel the need to live on a coast to have a voice, which is why he's still in Kansas City.

But if he wants it, I think he can be about as big as he wants to be. He'd need to spend a few years in a more politicized arena (perhaps as a radio show) to build some cred. But from my perch in the middle of white America, I get the sense that black America is ready to follow someone other than Jackson and Sharpton who, as Whitlock said, are living in 1965, trying to scare black people with the idea of an imaginary white guy in the sky who's trying to squash them.

Perhaps black America has been reluctant to give that up, which is understandable, because giving it up means taking on more personal responsibility.

Whatever. I don't expect Whitlock to make a run for public office. In fact, I sort of expect him to stay where he is and maybe just write some more non-sports columns and do a few extra interviews.

I just hope people will listen.

Why Old People Like Bad Movies

I went to the theater the other day hoping to see "Blades of Glory." I would have settled for seing generic blades of glory, which would have been pretty impressive, although I don't know exactly what they would be (knives? skates? vampire movies?).

Anyway, while in line, a 60ish woman starts chatting up my girlfriend and me. She recommends "Wild Hogs," which if you don't know, is a movie about middle-aged men who start riding Harleys, but aren't very good at it. It stars Travolta (yeah, he gets the single-name treatment), Lawrence (Martin, doesn't get the treatment), Allen (Tim, ditto) and H. Macy (William). This movie, the woman assured us, was funny.

You should know, Blades of Glory was sold out

"Wild Hogs" is not funny. Not intentionally, anyway. The plot is basically this: The Wild Hogs gang gets into some trouble at a biker bar with real bikers. Travolta sabotages their bikes, causing a battle that ends with a ludicrous standoff in some quiet town. Travolta, Allen, H. Macy and Lawrence hold off about 60 bikers. Along the way, we get a series of gags about how middle aged men have to pee a lot, aren't exciting, and are whipped by their wives. I think I laughed audibly one time during the movie, although the scene was so good, I cannot recall what I laughed at.

I should have known. Old people, especially old women, have terrible taste in movies. For some reason, movie cliches don't bother them*. They actually embrace them.

For old people, cliches are a symbol that nothing is changing, that the world isn't passing them by, after all. Old people hate it when things change. They've resisted computers and cell phones for decades now, insisting that things were better in their day, before all the technology, despite the obvious truth that these things have made life exponentially easier, particularly for people who are disinclined to physically exert themselves.

But beyond that, I think this shows a fundamental difference in the way our generations use media. Someone in their 60s grew up in a world with three television channels, the local newspaper and movies in theaters only. When it came to media, they just took what they could get, and because there was not much competition, what they got was minimal and not necessarily good. But is was there, and that was enough.

My generation is a media-saturated one. We have hundreds of TV channels, movies on demand, videos on the internet and access to news media from all over the world. As a result, we don't give anything the benefit of the doubt because we know there is always something better at our findertips. Example: I rented "Saw," hated the first 20 minutes, shut it off and returned it. And that's a movie most people liked. When I got back from the video store, I watched a video of a lion attack on ebaumsworld.com. I knew, without the movie, I would still be able to entertain myself.

Now, if somebody could just figure out old people's obsession with pecan pie ...

I Like Extreme Makeover Home Edition

Extreme Makeover Home Edition is the show with Ty Pennington, a total wacko who goes around trying to inspire people with his enthusiasm.

Anyway, the premise of the show is this: A) Find family with crappy house, B) Rebuild this family's house, C) Have lots of quotes from friends and neighbors saying what a good and deserving family it was.

But that's not why I like the show.

I like the show because of the economic and political statement it makes, which I'm sure is purely accidental, but nonetheless cogent. That statement is this: The Welfare State is unnecessary.

On EMHE, the families in need first send in an embarrassing video of their living conditions. Then a TV crew comes in and films it for itself. The family then talks about how bad off they are and how they cannot make it on their own. The EMHE team picks up the story, and sets about rebuilding a house. The team solicits help from the community, and invariably gets more help than it asked for.
There are two main points here:

1. Neighbors, churches, local businesses all get in on it. And this is the important part. The help is coming from familiar faces, people they're going to see on a regular basis. It is much more difficult to blow something a friend gave you than something that fell from the cosmos and into your lap.
2. It's real help. Building someone a house and paying off their mortgage (which happened on the last episode) is a real fix to a real problem, rather than a $1200 check once a month. That's where community charity (and I'm using that term in the general sense) provides what government welfare never can on an individual basis -- the identification of a specific need, and the satisfaction of it.

After that, it's over. There is no milking the system, no having babies for extra money, no half-hearted job searches. Welfare subsidizes irresponsibility. Community charity does the opposite, and does it efficiently.

Now, if we could just do something about Pennington's hair.

P. Diddy is Underrated (Why Sean Combs is like Jimmy Johnson)

No, seriously.

I know is sounds ludicrous to call a relentless self-promoter like Sean Combs underrated. It's almost offensive to even suggest that to rational people, especially rational people who are music fans.

But I think Diddy has ironically created a career-obscuring backlash against himself by doing things like constantly changing his name, starring in outrageously contrived reality TV shows and pimping acne medication. His quest to become a worldwide business mogul has distracted the world from one of the best hip hop careers of all time.

Consider the following accomplishments:
-- Discovered and signed the Notorious B.I.G.
-- Produced Notorious B.I.G.'s "Ready to Die," which is almost universally regarded as one of the top 10-15 rap albums of all time. Many, myself included, say it is No. 1.
-- Produced Notorious B.I.G.'s Life After Death, which completed the creepiest progression of album titles ever, considering that Biggie was dead before Life After Death was released.
-- Jay-Z made one of his first appearances on Life After Death

Diddy has had a couple of major problems, 1) he kept trying to be a rapper. And he's a terrible rapper. "I'll be missin' you" is indisputably his best solo rap song and doubles as one of The Police's best songs, which brings up Puffy's other big problem, 2) virtually every song he ever produced was sampled from another popular song. Ostensibly, this looks cheap and lazy. But if you know anything about hip hop, you know that sampling music is the very root of the genre. The first MCs were just dudes at parties spinning funk records and rhyming over them. It is only within the last few years that sampling really took a nose dive in rap, with the proliferation of southern crunk rap, which relies mainly on a canned beat and clapping, and the productions of Pharrell, who uses music sparingly like Mrs. Dash. The best work of Dr. Dre, Tupac and Snoop Dogg is all sampled. The only difference was, for those guys, the sampling was mostly from semi-obscure funk or soul records, instead of top 40 songs from the 80s, so they didn't take as much crap for it.

P. Diddy hasn't done anything that every other producer didn't do. He just did it more openly. And it created much more radio-friendly music.

His career reminds me a lot of Jimmy Johnson's in this sense: When he had the talent (Biggie/Aikman, Irvin, Smith), he was a genius. He knows how to make a greatness out of really goodness, and he happened to strike gold early in his career (Landing Biggie at the beginning of his A&R career/Getting the perfect storm of the Big Three in the early 90s), but once that fell apart, he's really just been kind of OK ever since, and now is in related fields, but isn't completely ingrained in what made him famous (going from rap to clothing, etc./going from football to broadcasting). Plus, this all happened at about the same time for both men. Johnson won his first Super Bowl in 1992 and his last in 1996. Biggie released Ready to Die in 1993 died in 1997.

Puffy is virtually irrelevant to rap music now. His last few attempts at either releasing his own albums or signing new talent have flopped spectacularly. He's now more or less famous for being famous, which is why, before it's too late, he deserves some recognition for what he once was, and what he did for hip hop.

Baseball Fanatics

I'm hoping somebody out there -- assuming there are people out there -- can help me out here. I don't understand baseball fans. I don't understand their obsession with baseball. I don't get that some people like baseball, but not any other sport. I really don't totally get what people like so much about baseball.

And let's be straight here: I'm a sports guy. I watch sports all the time. I grew up playing. In fact, baseball was my favorite sport to play, though that was mainly because I was better at it than any other sport. The game has some charm. It has its slowly-unfolding drama and it has a lot of tradition. I understand why people like baseball.

But Baseball Fanatics take it way beyond that. Baseball Fanatics root for certain teams, sure. But more than that they root for baseball itself, they just love that someone, somewhere is playing baseball. That fact alone validates a Baseball Fanatic's entire worldview. Often, that is a Baseball Fanatic's worldview -- baseball exists. Baseball Fanatics don't really care about anything that doesn't directly relate to baseball. They didn't really know how Congress worked until the steroids hearings and couldn't imagine what Congressmen would talk about anyway.

It's terrifying.

Most sports fans have 1 or 2 teams we follow. We watch our teams play, keep up a cursory knowledge of out team's game -- its league, its rivals, the national scene. Take an average Kansas Fan. He can name all the players on KU's men's basketball team, can probably name the stars of the football team and could speak with respectable knowledge of college football and college basketball nationally. He also probably follows the Chiefs and may or may not know more about them than the KU football team. And there's a good chance he enjoys Major League Baseball to the degree that he watches the Royals when he's not busy, and has an opinion on Manny Ramirez. He's similarly versed in the NBA, and likes the teams that feature former KU athletes.

Baseball Fanatic isn't like this. Baseball Fanatic learns about sports other than baseball only so he can fluidly divert non-baseball conversations into basball conversations. Baseball Fanatic has read a whole bunch of immensely breathy and immensely analytical books about baseball and is pretty sure he has a baseball book of his own in him. Baseball Fanatic uses his fandom as a primary means of identification, thinking that doing so will keep him from associating with those who are different from him. Crazy thing is, he's right. As long as you hang out with Baseball Fanatics, you'll never discuss anything of substance, unless the designated hitter rule qualifies.

Writing Your Local Paper

Got a problem with your local newspaper? Look no further. A four-year veteran of the Capital-Journal, I’ve seen countless emails and taken countless phone calls with reader complaints.
Here’s how you do it:

Email Phase – Start off with a fire-touched email that makes absolutely no sense. If you can ignore most of the basics of English grammar, all the better. Take this email from jgriffith19@cox.net, with the subject line “Entertainment mag”: “Why is it that one week you put the names of teams playing in "This Week's Sports Action", and the next week all you have there is College Basketball, or NBA basketball, but nothing to tell which teams are playing?”
This is brilliant. She starts off with a subject line that automatically makes the email look like spam, so the odds of someone actually reading it are reduced by about 70 percent. Plus, it has nothing to do with the actual subject of the email. Then she cites something called “This Week’s Sports Action” which nobody at the Capital-Journal has ever heard of. Our best guess is that she’s referring to “Radio/TV watch” which, in her defense, sounds pretty much the same as “This Week’s Sports Action.” I don’t even know where to go from there. Actually, I can’t even tell what her complaint is. All I know is that it involves scheduling, the NBA, and/or college sports. At least she narrowed it down.

Phone Call Phase – As with any interpersonal communication, make sure to sound angry and use accusatory language in the initial greeting. You want to put the person on the other end of the line on the defensive as soon as possible, preferably before he even knows what the issue is and before you even know who you’re talking to. Just like in the email phase, you want to confuse them and make sure there is no way they can tell exactly what you’re talking about. And don’t call during normal business hours when all the editors are around. You won’t get nearly frustrated enough that way. You want to call at about 10:30 p.m., when the only people there are copy editors scrambling to make deadline. That way, they’ll be irritated they had to take a call, and it will also assure you that the person who can address your complaint won’t be back until the next morning. If all goes as planned, they’ll transfer you so you can leave a profane voicemail on an editor’s machine.

The Reply Phase – If in your voicemail you didn’t sound like you were on Day 3 of a four-day bender with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, you’ll probably be getting a response from an editor the next day. Usually, it will be a short, emotionless email explaining as concisely as possible why the newspaper did what it did. Something like this: “Larry, thank you for your feedback. We ran KU on the front page and K-State on page 6 because KU won the Big 12 basketball championship and K-State won an equestrian race. Thanks for reading.”
No doubt, the explanation will make no sense to you. No matter your perspective, whichever team you root for is the team the paper is always downplaying. The paper is a “(rival team’s primary color)-colored rag.” The curt response will only make you angrier, which is the perfect excuse for …

The Race Card Phase – When in doubt, play the race card. It makes everyone defensive and puts the whole conversation outside the realm of reality, which is where newspapers thrive and you flounder. When you play the race card, you can say whatever you want, but the newspaper can’t.
Email something like this: “How come you wrote a article about the black guy’s rape conviction when the white guy at (rival school) got a PARKING TICKET!!!!!!!!!!! Is the paper trying to protect WHITE playes and always dragging blacks and there mistaks thru the mud???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??!?!?!!? I bet you wont have a anser!!!!!” You’re so angry, you don’t have time to hit the spell check button, which will really come through. Your email is probably going to be a hit in the newsroom at this point. It may even get taped to a wall or stuck on a cork board somewhere. Also, your inability to spell and lack of a cogent point will guarantee that you won’t get any more replies.

This, to quote a local editor, is how your complaint will die: “Just another wacko.”

Meeting the Parents

I just met the parents.

And I just realized that anyone who has read my blog over the past six months is probably surprised to find out that I have convinced a girl that I am not, technically, a barbarian. Alas, using chicanery and two forms of calculus, I have done just that.

Well, a few months passed, and over the weekend, I met the people who spawned my girlfriend, which is sort of like a first date your girlfriend all over again, except that you aren't going to be opening your wallet and there will (hopefully) be no goodnight kissing, unless they're italian. And this is the most indisputably awesome thing about meeting parents: You are not expected to kiss them.

Even with that obligation absolved, I was still a little aprehensive about the whole thing. Once again, it's like a first date, only it's two first dates in one. You have to make good impressions on both mom and dad, which requires you to summon two diametrically opposed parts of the brain -- like watching "Animal House" and reading Hemmingway at the same time.

Knowing that I am a) an idiot, and b) a giver of bad first impressions (it seems I'm too reserved causing people to infer that I do not like them), I decided that my best strategy would be to talk about benign things like my job and my family, make only the easiest, safest jokes and otherwise keep my mouth shut, much like Jay Leno. After all, moms are easy. You can win over a mom in no time because they want to like you. You just have to not give them an obvious reason not to, which is harder than it sounds. It would be horrifyingly easy for me to mess this up. So keeping it simple, I thought, would at least get me mom's approval, which generally goes a long way in getting dad's approval. Dads want to dislike you, or are at least looking for any reason to dislike you. But they get lazy, and don't spend nearly as much time thinking about it as moms do. So they usually end up just grunting and trusting mom's opinion (I have two younger sisters, mind you).

Anyway, I was playing it fairly well. Made it through one entire evening with no major screwups. And the second evening went almost as well, except for a harmless remark I made about myself showing a little leg to get something. Well, this rapidly devolved into Mom and Girlfriend talking about showing cleavage while I tried to pretend I didn't know the first thing about cleavage and Dad tried to pretend he wasn't hearing his wife and daughter talking about showing cleavage to gain favor with men.

Fortunately, that situation ended with neither me nor Dad uttering the words "boobs," "cleavage," or any of their derivitives.

Cs and Degrees

It is (painfully) obvious to most who know me that I do not necessarily put forth painstaking effort in my academic endeavors.

It is simply a matter of priorities*, and school is not at the top of the list, instead ranking somewhere below rooting# (definition to come later. For now, let's just say "rooting" is what young men do on weekends) and somewhere above plucking nose hairs. Plus, I have always worked during school, and that has always come first.

Anyway, this is what I've learned through six years of college. This is how you make it through (Oviously, I have not always followed my own advice):

1. Attend class
2. Turn in assignments

That is all. If you want a B average, I suggest turning in assignments on time and attending at least 90 percent of the time. If you want an A average, well, I cannot help you. I've never done that.

But if you're merely interested in cruising through college, getting a degree in something innocuous like Communications, History, English, Sociology, Journalism, the main thing to do is show up. You don't necessarily show up to learn anything. If you're like most people, the last relevant thing you learned was in about 9th grade**. My boss, a successful sports columnist and editor, said everything he needed to know about life, he learned by watching "Rockford Files."^ You show up for two reasons: 1) This is how you retrieve assignments, and 2) To avoid getting slammed with non-attendance penalties. As recently as five years ago, college classes didn't necessarily require attendance. But they've gotten all uppity these days, and I suspect their motives have little to do with concern for the student's well being. Anyway, check out the syllabus^^ and find out how many classes you can miss and what the excused absence policy is. Don't screw this up and you're golden.

Secondly, just turn in stuff. I promise you, if you merely turn in every assignment, you will not get worse than a C. This doesn't mean you have to do every assignment correctly, or necessarily even complete all the requirements of it. You're just trying to get a few points here so you don't have to ace the final to get to 70 percent overall.

Most classes are structured to allow stupid people and bad test-takers to get good grades. Classes aren't so much about teaching as they are about getting people through. The best example of this was a spanish class I took at KU in which 70 percent of the grade was determined by homework assignments, half of which were on-line "quizzes" that allowed you to go back as many times as you wanted and re-do answers until you got a perfect score. But you had to do this every day. I got no worse than an 82 percent on all four of the tests, including the final, and registered a D in the class. Meanwhile, the D-bag who sat behind me who could barely say his name in spanish, got a B because he took all of the daily quizzes. My point is, most classes are structured this way. There are lots of built-in points that soften the effects of tests and hide your inability to master the material.

In probably 20-30 percent of classes, doing these things will get you a B. You'll remember enough by sitting in class and doing assignments to perform well on tests. In the other 70-80 percent, you'll have to study a little. But that's only if you want to.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some pesky nose hairs to pluck.
* -- Or abject irresponsibility.
# -- There is a breed of pig called the "Pineywood Rooter," which has a long snout it uses to dig up delights from the earth. This is what young males do when they are out and about. We go "rooting" for women, or another manner of good time, but mostly women.
** -- Unless you went to public school, in which case you probably never learned anything.
^ -- This is a man who also says Tom Jones was the best concert he's ever seen. You be the judge.
^^ -- Nothign about the syllabus, but that's enough footnotes, I think.

The Ultimate Mid-Life Crisis

I don't want to make anybody feel bad about their wheels, but a car just sold for $5.5 million.

It was Carrol Shelby's 1966 Shelby Cobra "Super Snake". It has twin superchargers on a 427, giving it over 800 horsepower, meaning it can go from 0-60 mph in about three seconds. For perspective's sake, your Cavalier goes from 0-20 in about four seconds.

Anyway, since it was the personal car of perhaps the greatest (certainly the most famous) muscle car guy ever, the personal Shelby Cobra of Shelby himself, the vehicle is literally a one-of-a-kind collector's piece. One other Cobra "Super Snake" (meaning it had twin super chargers) was built for Bill Cosby, but it was wrecked --not by Cosby -- years ago.

Cobras of any kind, by the way, are exceedingly rare. You've probably never even seen a real one -- most are fiberglass kit cars. Accordingly, most Cobras go for somewhere in the $300,000 range and up, depending mostly on what the car was used for.

My point is, if you're gonna drop $5.5 million on a car, this would be the car. And I'm not going to get off on a rant about how much money $5.5 million is, about how many Toyota Camrys you could buy with that (301), how many tickets to paradise you could buy with that (100,000, if we're counting Eddie Money concert tickets) or how many years' supplies of penis enlargement pills you could buy with that (22,921 years' worth of "Endowmax"). I don't want to get into all that.

I am curious whether the buyer, one Ron Pratt of Chandler, Ariz., who also owns a $4.32 million Futureliner van, will ever, ever, even after a thousand Endowmaxes, drive his Cobra. I'm guessing Ron, Jr. isn't taking this to prom. Senior probably has a $350,000 Bentley for that. Will he seal it in an air tight container? Put it on a spinning pedestal? Hire a full-time model to stand next to it wearing only the bill of sale?

Yeah, think of that next time the Neon blows a gasket.

Committment, Part Deaux

So, Regina brings up some important counter points to my committment blog from Tuesday.

And I've decided, in the interest of covering the topic thoroughly and fulfilling the assigned blogs, to turn this blog into a mini discussion.

Regina, you first:
"I know many women who have changed their hair, clothes, their physical sizes in extreme cases and worry constantly that he's interested in another women."
My response: Don't change superficial things about yourself for a guy -- I say this not because I'm worried about female self-image. I say this because guys don't care about the same things girls care about. Your clothes, hairstyle, finger nails, makeup and such -- as long as they do not fall into extremes -- have almost no bearing on our opinions of girls. We're pretty simple, really. Shower, take care of yourself in the most basic ways and smell good. That's about it. Most guys I know, in fact, prefer girls who do not go to great lengths trying to gussy themselves up. A sloppy pony tail and a sweatshirt will do on most occasions*. I'm telling you.

REGINA: "I have seen them excuse away truly unexcusable behavior from any human being, let alone the one who "loves" them."

This is why men become jerks: It's incredibly effective in getting women. Back when we were young -- I'm talking junior high, the underclasses in high school -- most guys assumed the way to get chicks was to shower them with compliments, hold doors for them, leave cute messages under their windshield wipers. Stuff like that. Well, that never, ever works**. All that does is make you "such a nice guy". And we all know where nice guys finish. It gets you in the "friend zone," which means she'll be dating a guy she cannot stand and calling you to complain about him, which is a form of ancient Chinese torture. But she sticks with him because she wants to change him in to you, who, of course, is somebody she would never go out with.

REGINA:
"And, for the record, there are some women out there who are willing to be themselves and accept the man for who he is, too. But, you cannot have any relationship without some give and take."

This reminds me of a former girlfriend# -- I'd give her, say, a back massage. She'd take away the TV, unplugging it in hopes that I'd think it was broken and stop watching football.
She was unsuccessful.

*This does not apply to Greeks. What happens among fraternities and sororities is a whole different world. These people are basically droids.
**I speak from experience, having employed both strategies.
# The smelly pirate hooker.

Homophobia

I'll just put this right out there. I don't like being around gay people. It makes me extremely uncomfortable.

And having said that, I have just identified myself as a "homophobe" which, if I'm reading the societal barometer correctly, is one of the worst things you can be, a notch below "capitalist" and a notch above "child molester."

I don't really care about all this. I find it ironic that the only thing that we don't tolerate in this country is an intolerance for certain behaviors, but now I'm getting off point.

What I don't like is the term "homophobe." It's not that I'm afraid of homosexuals. I don't fear that they'll sodomize me or something. I'm not scared of anything. I just don't like being around gay people, and I'm not going to apologize for that. And I shouldn't have to defend it. But telling someone that in a social setting often bounds you into a confrontational discussion which ends with you being painted as a bad person.

Calling someone a homophobe is too strong in most cases. It's inaccurate, implying some kind of sickness or mental disorder. And I'll stop now, before I write something really offensive.

Fearing Committment

Among my handful of fears -- snakes, snakes on a plane, "Snakes on a Plane," Hilary Clinton and ferrets -- is committment.

This is not uncommon. I am a man, which means that I have outward genitalia. It also means that entering committed relationships is completely terrifying to me.

Here's why: Every guy has seen one of his buddies meet a girl who seems really cool. She's upbeat, easy-going, and smiles a lot. Guys really like girls who smile a lot. And who laugh at our jokes. There is no quicker way to score points with a man than by thinking he is funny, or at least pretending to think so.

Anyway, the two start spending a lot of time together, after a tug of war and a barrage of insults hurled at the man from his buddies, Man and Woman enter something called a "relationship" which is an old Cherokee word meaning, "castration." It's as if the guy has lost a piece of his soul. The buddies will call to request his presence for certain manly rituals like going to football games or, perhaps, shooting cars with paintball guns. But the guy starts bringing his girlfriend along, which totally kills the vibe every time. I've covered this before, but guys are not the same people when girls are around.

Invariably, the girl starts finding little things she'd like to change about her boyfriend. He resists and, eventually, she's completely non-pleasable, complaining about everything thing he wants to do and accusing him of not caring about her, which at the core, is usually not true. He's just given her an inch, seen her take a mile and isn't going to give her the second inch.

So this is bothersome. And I'll leave it at that.

Yeeeeeeaaaaah booooyyyyyyy!

So my dad has been asking me about Flavor Flav. Apparently, pops is mesmerized by Flav's show, which is a little disconcerting for me, but also helps explain why I call this particular form of entertainment a modern minstrel show.

But before I get into all that, we need to understant eachother.

First (a history lesson for the kids), a "minstrel show" was an early American (particularly Civil War era) stage show which (this is Wikipedia speaking) "portrayed and lampooned blacks in stereotypical and often disparaging ways: as ignorant, lazy, bufoonish, superstitious, joyous, and musical." Blacks were usually used in their own disparagement as they performed in front of strictly white crowds.

Second, my dad is a 48-year-old, white, former farm kid, born and raised in southern Kansas. Don't misinterpret this to suggest my father is a racist. He certainly is not. I am merely saying that he has not been exposed to much black culture. In the 1970s in Burrton, Kansas, there was no BET. In fact, I'm not even sure there were black people in Burrton until the early 90s.

My dad watches Flavor Flav the same way he would watch a clown. He views him like some kind of societal side show, which is how most people watch Flavor Flav, I think. That's basically what Flav has become.

This is ironic because Flavor Flav was a member of Public Enemy, which might be the most influencial rap act this side of Tupac. This was a group that transcended rap music, taking it from the party music of the early 80s to a legitimate cultural influence. Chuck D was of course the driving force behind Public Enemy -- even he is a little embarrassed of Flav at this point -- but Flavor Flav was in it. Now, he has devolved into self parody.

My dad would never listen to a Public Enemy record. Until he asked, "where the Flavor Flav guy comes from" he'd never even heard of Public Enemy. But he'll watch Flavor Flav bounce around with a viking helmet on his head, trying to get into Bridget Nielsen's pants. Yeeeeeeah, boooyyyyyyy!

So obviously I'm not black. But I have to wonder what black people think about all this. I'm not sure Flavor Flav, Lil John and the Ying, Yang Twins are as representative of black people as they'd like us to believe.

Babies

PICTURED: The baby I recently held (Madeline Tanksley) and her uncle James.

I recently held a baby, which is significant because scholars believe it to be the first time I cradled an infant since 1992. And in 1992, I was virtually a baby myself.

Anyway, I'm not against the concept of babies. I hope to generate a couple myself one day (just not today, or tomorrow, or next year). I don't mind babies, necessarily, although the constant crapping is bothersome. But here's the deal:

Holding a baby terrifies me. What if I fumble it? What if I don't hold it right and deform its head or something? Babies have very maleable heads, you know. And, God forbid, what if I drop it? How would I feel then, having just killed someone's child?

Sometimes, a buddy will hand you his car keys. The last thing you want to do is wreck someone else's car. And the frightening thing is that it could happen and not even be your fault. You could easily ruin somebody's month with one slip up.
Holding a baby is like that, only 1,000 times worse.

I've just had far too many experiences with young children in which I thought I was being the good older person and harmlessly playing with a little kid until, without warning, something I've done causes the kid to bust into tears and ruin the next 25 minutes for everyone involved. People are looking at me like, "What it holy hell did you just do? All you had to do was play peek-a-boo. How do you screw that up?" And all I can do is make the Peyton Manning Face and turn my palms upward in befuddlement.

Gloriously, my last infant episode ended without tears (or crap). I think I've reached my quota for the next 14 years.

The End of the Road for Damon Huard

This is probably it for Damon Huard. And I wouldn't normally do this, wouldn't normally write this, but I think it's too bad.
At age 34, with all of 13 starts in 10 NFL seasons, Huard still believes he's a starter.
That's what you have to understand about quarterbacks. They all believe, the ones that last, anyway. These guys were the shortstops in little league. These guys were your homecoming kings, the captains of your basketball team, the guys who could have any girl. Stars. College coaches camped out on their lawns. The letters came in from everywhere -- Florida, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Southern Cal.
Nothing changed in college. They made SportsCenter. When they went to parties, people whispered about them and called to tell their friends they partied with the quarterback. They broke records.
Then, for guys like Huard, they lived their dream. An NFL roster. Made it.
So what you went undrafted and you sign as a No. 3 quarterback. You know you can play. Two years later, it's your turn. You're not throwing up video game numbers, but you're winning. You win five of your six starts.
And, somehow, that's it. The regular starter comes back and you sit down, thinking you'll get your shot. You've been playing behind Dan Marino, for crying out loud. But you don't get your shot. For five years, you sit. You hold the clipboard. You're what's called the "emergency quarterback," which is just what it sounds like.
You stay in the league because everybody wants a veteran backup. But nobody thinks you can play. Then the starter gets hurt again and you light it up. You're playing better than everybody but Peyton Manning and you're winning. Five of six. On the road. Coming from behind. The city is buzzing.
And now, at 34, with a 10-4 career record as a starter, it's over.
Huard's time has passed. He'll sign a two-year deal this offseason with some team looking to stabilize its quarterback situation. But he'll never be a star in the NFL. It's too late.
You don't get many chances in the NFL. One or two, usually. Maybe three if you're really talented. You have to perform.
And that's the sad part of Huard's story. Every time he's gotten a chance, he's performed. And now, with one more payday coming, it's too late. There are 10 years' worth of homecoming kings to compete with, all of whom think they're stars.

Muzak: Up with Head, Down with J. Johnson

RIGHT: The cerebral Common



I finally got around to the music suggestions y'all dropped on me (For the record: Common, Hit The Lights, Head Automatica, Thursday). And by "got around to" I mean "really wanted an excuse to not do research for my Media Effects term paper."
Anyway, without further procrastination and pithiness, The Review:
Common -- This guy is a beat poet, not a rapper. He belongs in some dark, brick-walled basement, doing slam poetry in between yazz flute performances. He's not bad, just not much of a rapper. He's not a wordsmith, has no edge whatsoever and isn't funny. He did a song with Mary J. Blige called "Come Close" which, while having a lovely melody, sounds like a perfect fit for the Love & Basketball soundtrack. Suffice it to say that, if this was 1998 and people still actually paid for music, I would not be paying for it.
Head Automatica -- I'm assigning two (2) bonus points to Head Automatica for writing songs called "Tara Reid is a Whore" and "Zack Morris is My Hero." I always hate the cheap "all this band's songs sound the same" criticism (of course they sound the same, it's the same band), but Head Automatica's sound is rather dynamic. "Tara Reid is a Whore" sounds little like "Graduation Day." And these guys are willing to use instruments other than drums, guitar and bass. These qualities, if not their specific sound, remind me of Queen, which has long been one of my favorites.
Which brings us to ...
Houston Calls -- These guys are the spokesmen for the "kids who intentionally alienate all their classmates then complain about being ostracized, and also show up for family reunions wearing eyeliner and black lipstick and and refusing to talk to anybody, then wonder why their fathers are embarrassed of them." I can't stand these kids. And this band reminds me of all those mainstream punk bands that are as contrived as O-Town.
With that rant over, I move on to ...
Kanye West doing a song with John Mayer -- I couldn't find a full-length download of the song, just some goofy bit with Mayer and Kanye talking about black people liking John Mayer while a clip of the song plays in the background. But while we're on this topic, I would like to point out that John Mayer is so much better than Jack Johnson, that Jack Johnson should just go back to watching the Cartoon Network and waxing surfboards in his underwear, or whatever it is he did before he started writing anti-climactic songs about pancakes. What a sham. Talk about a guy whose music all sounds the same. Jack Johnson has one song. Why hasn't anybody else figured this out yet? Just put "Situations" on a loop for 55 minutes and you have a Jack Johnson album.
Tech N9ne -- A work acquaintance suggested I listen to Tech N9ne, a Kansas City-based rapper whose style is totally unclassifiable. I think Tech can rap. I also think he desperately needs a producer to grab him by the throwback-jersey neckline and tell him to stop using that dumb demonic-sounding voice in his songs. With a decent producer and someone to redo his image, he could be a star.

Music Update

I'm pleased with the response to my rap music obituary. I promised to do this, so in the next week or so, I will listen to and blog about the following, based on your suggestions:
Common, Hit the Lights, Houston Calls, Thursday, Head Automatica. Jimi also suggested Kanye West, who I have listened to, though I don't own any of his albums. He is creative, which is good. He's a fine producer, but I don't think he's much of a lyricist, nor am I taken by his raw rapping ability (flow, I guess we could say). I understand his appeal.

Rice Burners

Those Hondas with the 4-foot spoilers and the huge mufflers and the stickers all over? Hate 'em.
And I know that was a fragment. I don't care.
This has been welling up inside of me for some time, now. Actually, it's been so long that I almost forgot how angry it makes me.
First off, can someone tell these clowns that a Honda Civic is not a sports car, not a muscle car, not a luxury car, not really a cool car in any way? It's a Honda Civic. It's a fine car -- very durable, great gas mileage, high resale value. But it's not a race car.
A Charger is a muscle car. A Chevelle, a Camaro, a Challenger. A Fairlane, for crying out loud. You can work with these cars. They have 8-cylinders and are simply constructed. You can run a 13-second quarter mile for about $3,000. And you won't look like a toolshed or have a car that sounds like a leaky vacuum cleaner.
But let's say you drive a Civic and you've poured $11,000 into it and you're running in the high 14s. You're a sucker, but at least you've actually improved your car's performance. I respect that.
If you're driving around in a Geo Prism with a 4-foot spoiler, a carbon-fiber hood, tachometer, alloy wheels, a keg-sized muffler and some NOS stickers in the windows, you're a douchebag. You just are. You're delusional, a sucker, a waster of money and probably play lots of Halo in your parents' basement. You spend your weekends loitering in abandoned gas station parking lots wearing fake diamond earrings and wife beaters, smoking Black & Milds and lying about how much action you get.

A Sports Blog

I'm somewhat proud of myself and somewhat disturbed at the same time, because I'm writing my 20th blog entry, and none of them have been about sports. Not really, anyway. I had the cross country post, but that wasn't really about cross country.

I'm proud of myself because I don't want to be That Guy that relates to everyone he meets through sports. On the other hand, I'm a sportswriter -- it seems like I should have some sports columns welling up within me.

Anyway, I'm writing about college basketball this time, because it is time.

In case you didn't notice, the Kansas-Kansas State got roughly 48 times more interesting over the offseason when K-State hired Bob Huggins, a man who was fired at Cincinnati because "character counts" according to the university president. I don't feel like running down the reasons Cincinnati's prez would say that, but it involves, among many things, both DUI convictions and the punching of a police horse.

I'm not a K-State guy, but I like Huggins. As my friend and boss, Kurt Caywood put it, "He doesn't care. He's as bored with life as I am."

Huggins has been burned enough times by media that he has basically said, "Eff it. I get ripped no matter what I say, so I'm just gonna start firing my unfiltered thoughts on everybody, consequences be damned."

He's a sportwriter's dream.

Without him, this whole thing would be about Kansas, because until this season (and part of the last), KU has been the only relevant basketball program in the state. But now, I present the 5 big questions.

1. How long will it take for K-State's Jason Bennett to break Shawn Bradley's career dunked-on record?
The early line has it at 2.7 seasons for the 7-fot-3 Bennett, whose most famous picture is one in which Tyler Hansbrough (now at North Carolina) is teabagging Bennett during a high school game. Furthermore, there are some big dunkers in the Big 12 now -- KU's Julian Wright and Sasha Kaun, Texas' Kevin Durant, KU's Darrell Arthur to name a few.
2. How many times before Christmas will Kansas freshman Sherron Collins be called for a carry?
I'm putting this one at about 11. Kansas has 13 games before the break and Collins, whose main weapon is his crossover, is entirely capable of drawing one call per game.
3. Is this the year Bill Self's toupe falls off?
Doubt it. The way he massages that thing during games, I don't see him losing track of it.
4. How long will it take for K-State fans to start calling their school a "basketball school?"
This should have happened months ago. K-State historically has a much better basketball program than anything else and was even with KU right up until Kansas built Allen Fieldhouse. KSU was not far behind in the 80s. But Wildcat fans are still so delusional about their football "dynasty," -- this includes one conference title in the history of the program -- it may take some time.
5. How many McDonald's All-Americans does it take to win a first-round tournament game?
KU had two (three if you count Brandon Rush) last year and lost. It had three in 2005 and lost. This year the Jayhawks have five (again, if you count Rush, and you should). They'd better hope they don't play Belmont in the first round.