The Vig

For me it was getting a phone call from my dad yesterday that he had another infection in his leg.  I don’t understand all the ins and outs of diabetes.  When you get to be a boy my size though, it’s something you really need to keep on top of.  And I’ll be honest, I really haven’t.  So getting the call, then going to the hospital today and, for the first time in my life, seeing Dad the patient really struck me.

My uncle, Dad’s brother, was in the room within two hours visiting and offering comfort.  My uncle lost his left leg to diabetes over a decade ago.  So he knows the path my dad and I could be on.  It ain’t pretty.

I have an advantage though in that I have a two-plus decade head-start on both of them.  Choices I make today could/should make for a better quality of life down the road.  It just takes strength.

It would seem Brother Jaynes has taken a couple of recent events to heart and pitched his day job, preferring to go smell the roses, Ferdinand the Bull-style.  I don’t have any inside information (in fact, I only learned the news listening to the Blazer Courtside Show driving home from the hospital tonight), but I suspect Jaynes has one more run in him.  In the meantime, he’s got some baseball to play and a houseboat on which to enjoy the rest of the summer.

As for me, I hope you’ll indulge me while I take a few days to tend to that which is most important in my life.

Have you heard about this couple up here in The Couv who had their car keyed in response to displaying an Obama sign on their front lawn?  I must confess, I missed it.  Shame on me.  It’s never occurred to me to take action against anyone displaying a sign, or bumper sticker, espousing a view different than my own.  Not even conversation.  The closest I came was at a Winter Hawks game a few seasons back when they held an Army induction between periods.  I made a quip about how inappropriate I thought it was and was immediately set upon by a veteran who questioned my patriotism.  I simply told him I didn’t think a break in a hockey game provided the dignity and solemnity required for such a ceremony.  I’m all for greater public participation in such events, but I don’t believe they should be immediately followed by t-shirt cannons and prize blimps.  After a moment’s pause, the guy saw my point and we left it at that.

Anyway, the keying incident reminds me of an incident at our house when I was growing up.  I didnt think much of it at the time, but over the years, I’ve occassionally stopped to wonder who did it and why.  It was sometime during one summer in the late-80s.  The Oregon Citizens Alliance was just starting to get going.  This was before the Internet and Rush Limbaugh, so the only way to get their stuff out was through mailings and the hated news media.  Anyway, one day I walked across the road to get the mail when I found in the mailbox a little cartoon flyer.  It depicted a Jewish gay puppet master controlling everything from politicians to the media to whatever.  I can’t remember the exact verbiage, I just remember the cartoon and the message.  Gays were bad.

Like I said, I didn’t think much of it at the time.  I mean, yeah, it was some pretty scarry stuff, but to me it was no different than any other advertising.  Just a guy (I guess) trying to get his message out.  It was dumb and obviously he’d picked the wrong house to drop off that piece of filth.  I round filed it.

At the time, I figured whoever it was who’d placed that leaflet in our mailbox had leafletted the entire neighborhood.  And he might well have.  But looking back, I wonder if it was a specific message aimed at our house.  At our family.  I mean none of us were/are gay or Jewish, but that doesn’t stop someone from believeing we were.  A fascinating thought, for a young Butterbean.

I’ve never quite resolved to my satisfaction whether those were delivered to everyone or just us.  Whether there was someone in the neighborhood with a printing press and an undying hatred for a group of people.  That was what scared me the most.  Even more than the guy who moved in up the street and set up a firing range in his back yard for his cache of automatic weapons.  And wasn’t he a special neighbor for a few months.

Dunno.

I do know that the way to end this crap is to stand up to it.  To wit, Horse’s Ass has a link to a Pay Pal account where you can donate to get the vehicle in question fixed and help make our corner of the world just a little brighter.

Someone has gone through an awful lot of work and dug up some course materials from classes he taught at the University of Chicago a decade ago.

This is what Obama was doing in his mid-thirties.  Me?  I’m signed up for Econ 201 at PCC this Fall.  I have some catching up to do.

Sam Brownback is all for privacy rights in China.  Here?  Not so much.

Fun reading in The O this morning as the CEO of the company which operates the Amphitheater at Clark County bemoaned the state of his building.  It all goes back to that very first Jimmy Buffett show five years ago, which was a disaster.  Not that he didn’t have a bunch of neighbors and such warning him about the traffic problems which would be created when you try and jam 10,000 vehicles through a two-lane road at rush hour.  The parking situation hasn’t improved much since.

Now as part of the agreement to lower the rent on the building, the operators are going to construct a floding partition which will seal in the covered part of the building, allowing them to stage shows during the fall and winter months.  Given how absolutely crappy the parking is now, I can’t wait to see how they handle shepherding folks around the fairgrounds when its 40-degrees and raining sideways in November.  As it is, it’s at least a ten minute walk, and frequently longer than that, to get from your car to the gates of the theater, and another five minutes (at least) to get from the gate to your seat.  Why on Earth would you want to subject your customers to this in the rain?

Sorry for the dearth of posts for the last several days.  And I have a feeling it’s going to stay this way for a few more.  The weather is just too nice.

Here’s some fun I’ve been having with my surprisingly good camera phone whilst out running with the foxes.

Back in the day, one could enter I-84 eastbound from the Coliseum via that stub to the right.  It was whacked when they built the Rose Quarter.  A shame.

Here we look back toward the Convention Center and the first half of the Run with the Foxes.

I had the neatest run-in with a co-worker in the elevator yesterday.  We’d both changed out of our work clothes and into our walking attire.

“I’ve seen you out walking on the Esplanade every day,” she said, “good for you.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’ve been trying to get after it.”

She told me she was in training for the Portland to Coast walk.

“It’s 4.57 miles from here, around the Esplanade, and back,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Huh,” I said, “good to know.”

Here I thought I was only walking like 3 miles.  No wonder my knee hurts.  Not as much today as it did last week though.  That’s a good thing, right?

The Pritch-head dream of the week is seeing Luol Deng in a Blazer uniform.  A big dream, no doubt.  Am I the only one though who wonders if Deng might go the Josh Childress route?  He’s a British citizen who’s also spent time in Russia, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he might feel more comfortable over there, particularly if the money is as good or better.  Remember, for most NBA players, this is a job, not a passion.  And if someone comes along and offers 13% more for less work and less travel, most would be fools not to take a serious look.  For the record, the euro is up 13% on the dollar in the last 12 months.  And that won’t be changing.

This Deng thing just sounds too much like the Chris Paul and Deron Williams dreams of last off-season.  Much ado about nothing.

Speaking of Europe:  I believe Martell’s contract is up after this season.  His agent would be a fool not to take a serious look at how things work out for Childress in Greece, wouldn’t he?

Here’s how out of touch I am.  One of the biggest things happening in music today, Girl Talk, is in town at the Roseland tonight.  What makes Girl Talk interesting?  He does it all with a computer and other peoples’ music.  He’s a mash-up artist and might just be a genius.

As for me, I’m saving my money for The Hold Steady, who play the Crystal tomorrow.

That’s what they’re thinking about up here in The Couv.  I wrote about some of my experience seeing The Police up there.  I forgot to mention the awful traffic and long concession lines.  I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to find people willing to work 10 nights a year in the middle of nowhere.  And don’t get me started on the parking.

The whole thing was poorly and hastily planned from the beginning.  But the region needed one and now we have it.

This Josh Childress to Europe story is the first of what will be many stories of American players heading off to Europe.  Why?  Because the Euro is worth way more than the dollar right now.  Players would be foolish not to take a serious look at this option.

I got a good chuckle listening to one of the sports yahoos this morning on the radio.  He asked some expert whether this was a good career move for Childress.  What kind of a question is that?  Of course it’s a good career move for him.  He will make more playing in Europe than he will here and he’ll be making his money in a stronger currency.  It’s a no-brainer!

Is this a good move?

Please.