Category Archives: Sports

Cheerleaders

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Saturday, September 07, 2002

Thelwell gazelleBrowsing through the archives today, from back when I actually got outside, got me thinking about the reactions people have when they see me running. Now, don't get the idea I am a magnificent gazelle when I run; I am more of a magnificent Thelwell pony. I've seen those gazelle-people and they are truly beautiful to watch; I even fell in love with a guy because of the way he looked while running. God knows it wasn't his personality. Anyway, I don't look like that. I lumber, I trot, I mosey, I toddle. So when I get a reaction it generally isn't inspired by the magnificence of my athleticism or any of that rot.

But I will always remember the reaction I got one afternoon down in South Van. By mischance and mischoice I'd decided that it would be nice to run along South-East Marine Drive, which it certainly was not. It was like chewing through truck exhaust under a sunlamp while someone poured over my head the nameless liquid in which weiners loll and bob at the 7-11.

As I toddle/waddled past the old Sikh temple a couple of Indian grannies and their granddaughters came out onto the dirt path, the sidewalk having vanished blocks ago. Both grannies were resplendant (and very few people can really resplend well) resplendant in sophisticated silks, brilliant monochromes of peacock and pink, with a subtle layering of textures between the sari, skirt, top, and headscarf. Really stunning; they were obviously SOMEbodies.

The granddaughters were both about three years old, and at that age the standard thing for doting parents to do is to ruffle them up to the gills; if they cannot put their arms down because of all the lace-trimmed petticoats you've stuffed them into, you've got the look about right. Then you put ribbons on top of that, and attach them with pink silk roses. They looked like those dolls that used to sit in the middle of your older sister's bed, the show dolls, the not-for-playing-with dolls.

As I trotted past them they laughed and broke into a jog, too. The grannies applauded heartily and cheered us on for the rest of the block.

Now THAT made the running worthwhile.

Thelwell Bum

The Preakness: Barbaro injury

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Updated to add report on the surgery:

RuffianBarbaro broke three bones in his right hind leg, and dislocated what was left of his fetlock to boot. One of the bones that fractured was the sesamoid bone; this is the bone that Ruffian broke in 1975, causing her to be put down. She's buried at the finish line in Belmont Park. When people ask for my sports heros, I always say "Ruffian, and they shot her." It's a little Thelma and Louise, but it's also quite true.

But meanwhile, back on topic, the sesamoid bone is particularly difficult to treat because it works like a pulley with the tendons sliding over it. Any disruption to the sesamoid means that the ankle essentially flops without control, allowing the leg to touch the ground, and loose bone shards can sever the tendons, which is an even more difficult injury to come back from. As well, the sesamoid bears several times the horse's body weight in pressure with each step, so it must be strong enough to stand up to pressure of several tons. The long healing period that could make this possible is the very thing that is impossible. Probably the best thing at this point would be to replace, rather than attempt to repair, the bone.

BarbaroUpdate: They've attempted to fuse the joint, which means he'll be able to walk but his racing days, of course, are over. It's as if his right rear leg will be wearing a high-heeled shoe for the rest of his life, while the others wear Nike Air. The entire pastern functions as a shock absorber, which you can see in dressage or in slow-motion replays of racing. Now all the shock will be directed to his hock and his hip, putting them at risk for future injuries, but a life at comfortable stud should be perfectly possible for him, provided he doesn't mess up his recovery.

Note that the actual reason Ruffian had to be put down was Hoof and leg bonesnot the sesamoid injury per se, but rather the damage she did to herself when she came out of anesthesia. Equine medicine has become much more sophisticated since then, but it remains to be seen what will happen with Barbaro. He is already walking. So far he's calm, and he appears to be very people-oriented, which helps him during convalescence. If they ultimately have to put him down, he's a stallion and they will undoubtably take the semen for AI purposes. In this diagram, the bones Barbaro broke are F, E, and D.

Barbaro at 2:1

Barbaro emerged from seven hours of surgery Sunday night to repair life-threatening injuries and "practically jogged back to the stall,'' said Dr. Dean Richardson, who performed the procedure a day after the colt broke his right rear leg in three places at the Preakness.

But Richardsonsays it's "a coin toss'' whether the Kentucky Derby winner will survive, even though surgery went well…

"You do not see this severe injury frequently because the fact is most horses that suffer this typically are put down on the race track," said Richardson, the chief of surgery for the center. "This is rare."

"It's about as bad as it could be," he added. "The main thing going for the horse is a report that his skin was not broken at the time of injury. It's a testament to the care given to the team of doctors on the track and [jockey] Mr. Prado on the racetrack."

Richardson outlined Barbaro's medical problems: a broken cannon bone above the ankle, a broken sesamoid bone behind the ankle and a broken long pastern bone below the ankle. The fetlock joint — the ankle — was dislocated.

"The aspects of the surgery will be dictated slightly by what we find," Richardson said. "But the bottom line is we will attempt to perform a fusion of that joint and to stabilize it and make it comfortable enough for him to walk on."

The Shebeen Club: Edgar Allan Poe’s 170th Wedding Anniversary Afterparty notes

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Mentioned at tonight’s Shebeen Club:

re: Gabriel Byrne has the sexiest voice in the known universe

re: Project Runway

re: Homer’s Odyssey

re: Narnia Raps from NYC, LA, CAM

re: Narnia Rap from Ramadi

re: The Shoeblog of the Manolo

re: Go Fug Yourself on Lindsay Lohan and Sharon Stone at the Oscars

re: Edgar Allan Poe’s Wedding and sorry-ass life (note that when you google “Edgar Allan Poe’s Wedding” our announcement is #1! My hit-whoredom is momentarily satisfied)

Beardsley The Black Cat

re: Christopher Walken is So Fucking Cool

and is even more fucking cool as the Archangel Gabriel in The Prophesy

re: Cthulhu sits out an election: the voters’ loss

re: General Zod for President

re: cowbell

Books brought:

As door prizes:

I Shudder at Your Touch gothic horror erotica

I Shudder Again more of that old gothic horror erotica. Same old same old.

Black Thorn, White Rose erotic retellings of fairy tales, although if you’d read the original French ones you wouldn’t need retellings, baby!

As references:

The Castle of Otranto, by Hugh Walpole. the first Gothic Novella (at least the first one not in German). Gets so caught up in the atmospheric effects of the flapping of raven’s wings in the graveyard and the eerie forboding of shadows in the candlelight that nothing actually ever happens. Like a great-looking date that can’t talk, a restaurant where the vibe is perfect and the food awful. Its chief virtue is that it’s just barely over 100 pages.

The House on the Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson, essentially the first supernatural horror novel in English, The Castle of Otranto being religious rather than supernatural in overtone and this divorcing the horror of the beings from their evil…ie they’re creepy, they’re deadly, but they’re not neccessarily from hell. Far better than TCOO anyway, and a quicker read.

The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake. Great books, I’m sure, if I could ever get through them. Like chewing through a glacier made of Turkish Delight. Historically important, great works of art, exquisitely overwraught, and virtually indigestible. A beach read…if you’re headed to Gitmo.

The Loved Dead and Other Revisions (and other works) by HPPoe Caricature Lovecraft. Cthulhu mythos stuff was discussed, EAP envy (which Lovecraft had in spades)…and the fact that this book contains the single most vivid and compelling tale of necrophilia I’ve ever encountered, and that’s saying something. No, I didn’t read it out over dinner.

Damn, forgot to tell my tale of the old boyfriend of mine who heard about how I was such a fan of “Lovecraft books” and asked to borrow them. A week later he returned them, with a puzzled expression. I asked if he hadn’t liked them and he replied: I thought they were gonna be how-to’s.

A Warning to the Curious by MR James. I put forth my theory that ghost stories are definitively English, while Gothic supernatural horror is particularly American…it was not well-received. Fools! again I say Fools! Ia! Shub Ni-ohfugedaboudit.

The Secret History, by Donna Tartt. I state unequivocally that this, combined with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, are the two novels which define my generation; this is not good news to anyone who’s read both books. I test my theory that I can recite the first line…The snow was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. I get about 70% right.

The New Gothic which includes such authors as Jeannette Winterston, whom we all agree is a genius. I quote her: Why have we submitted to a society which makes imagination a privilege when to each of us it comes as a birthright? Unfortunately, the book also includes Joyce Carol Oates, who is obviously paid by the word…and we descend into the crude, embittered remarks of literati who are not paid by the word at JCO’s rates.

Poetoon

Music for this evening:

Lou Reed: The Raven, his rock opera based on Poe

Closed on Account of Rabies, articulating a theory that Poe died not of alcoholism but of rabies. The album is produced by the Genius Hal Willner and featuring Christopher Walken, Gabriel Byrne, Marianne Faithfull, Iggy Pop, Deborah Harry, and Diamanda Galas reading Poe’s works

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Murder Ballads, which is a collection of songs about murder, either from the point of view of the victim or the point of view of the perpetrator. This plays while we are eating. Bon appetit!

Diamanda Galas: Defixiones/Will and Testament; you either love her or you don’t even recognize it’s music. I, personally, loved the part where she synched up the throbs in her screams with the flashing of the strobes, but that’s just me.

And the menu was: a glass of wine (amontillado was unfortunately not Irish enough for the Shebeen) and The Tell-Tale Artichoke Heart Pasta. Now aren’t you sorry you missed it?

Adventures in Yaletown: From the Archive

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Monday, September 09, 2002

For this I must thank my friend Dale, who, as a former Beagle owner and hunter, came up with this brilliant get-rich-slowly-but-amusingly scheme.

Yaletown mosaic view

CoyoteCoyotes; heard of them? Fine critters, no doubt, just right for wandering the arid prarielands, rustlin' groundhogs and chasin' rats, but somewhat out of place in the Wired World of Yaletown.

Yaletown; heard of it? fine neighborhood. Full of rich, beautiful people who have the most amazing manners and who are really, really nice. Really. You want to send cards to their parents or something, they all turned out so well. Nothing bad ever happens there; I think it's a bylaw. All the buildings are either spankin' new fiberoptic wonders or reconditioned SOHO style lofts in old brick lowrises with professionally tended flowerboxes above and Starbucks below.

Yaletown is infested with coyotes.

How can this be? you ask. Easy. Easy peasy. The fact is that Yaletown is built right next to, or even on, the old Expo 86 grounds, most of which still remains barren. Sure, there are glossy highrises, but most of the area is still either a twenty-year-old deconstruction ground of broken paving and scrub grass, or it's Indy track, which is about as close to a desert plain as you are going to get in a temperate rainforest. So really, all you need are a couple of coyote singles getting together over a sixpack of Smirnoff Ice down by False Creek and next thing you know it is a Playboy Mansion for four-footed 'uns. The whole place is ringed with a fence that keeps people out, leaving it free day and night for coyote goin's-on. Gawd only knows whut them critters gits up ta.

So now when the sleek Iranian princesses go out in the mornings to walk Fifi the Maltese they must keep a keen eye out or Fifi may be dejeuner pour un petit loup. Merde!

Yaletown, the Mild West

Alors, my friend Dale put that whole grim tragedy together with the tourist trade and the money in being a hunting guide and came up with this:

The British are slowly losing the legal right run around with a pack of dogs and chase things to their deaths, and are missing the whole hound-hunting experience. Dale suggests that we get a pack of de-accessioned hounds and some old horses that don't mind tourists and one of those cool horns and we conduct a hunt through Yaletown and the old Expo lands. This would have to be done at night, as that is peak coyote-huntin' time.

Happy Coyote Hunters, perhaps with their Mount Pleasant kills?

Picture this: a dead-black night, with a cold, hard rain driving down relentlessly. A bitter wind sweeps the historic streets of Yaletown, setting the lofts to shivering on their firm parkade foundations. A lone creature stalks the night, skulking from Dumpster to Dumpster, gliding like the shadow of a ghost. It pads wetly on its four miserable paws, water pours like slowly waving icicles off its hollow belly. A flare of headlights, and two eyes glow in the darkness, pinpoints of seeking, of hunger.

Suddenly, a sound! Faint trumpeting in the distance, a gaggle of indecipherable noises. The coyote pricks its ears. The cacophonous music comes closer, invisibly, sourceless in the darkness, as if the Great Hunt of the Celts had descended to spread terror through modernity itself. As the mists part and the rain relents, for just a moment the coyote sees.

Hounds, dozens of them! Tall, strong, and hungry, a pack of foxhounds tears down Hamilton Street in a berzerker blood-rage! Behind, as many as twenty fat, rich tourists on horseback, wearing scarlet coats and bowlers and yelling "Tally Ho!" at the top of their lungs, with a guide and hunter tootling on a tiny horn that somebody used to use as a Christmas ornament. The coyote runs, past the Nygard showroom, past the Home Shop, past the yuppie brew pub and Beautymark Cosmetics, past Seattle's Best Coffee and Bar None, past Rodney's Oyster Bar and the neogothic building with the twirling letterblocks that must be art, they're so palpably useless. Can he make it across Pacific Avenue to the wastelands?

No! He has forgotten to push the button for the pedestrian light!

They bring him to ground just outside the Jugo Juice.
 Yaletown, primo huntin' territory!

Bush: Achievement and Entitlement

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Bush's Great Moment

There have been many memorable moments in George Bush's career – invading Iraq, declaring the war "accomplished", Hurricane Katrina. But the US president recalled that his greatest moment in office had come not on the field of battle but while out fishing.

Asked by Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper what he considered to be his greatest triumph, President Bush replied: "I've experienced many great moments. It's hard for me to name the greatest." He went on: "I would say that the best moment of all came when I caught a seven-and-a-half pound perch while fishing on my lake."

From The Guardian. And you know, I don't doubt for a second that it was the high point of his life so far. Failed oilman, failed businessman, cokehead and alcoholic, a man who nearly lost the battle for his life to a pretzel, George W. Bush is indeed the worst, most embarassing leader that the United States has ever had to endure.

On May 1, International Worker's Day, May Day, Sploid published a tender retrospective of the man the world has come to know as "that dumbass."

It remains one of the proudest moments in American history, and it was only three years ago today. On May 1, 2003, the president piloted a military jet onto an aircraft carrier and told a cheering crowd that we had won the war in Iraq.

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," President George W. Bush said to wild applause.

But in this crazy world we live in where "victory" so often means "pathetic failure," winning the war in Iraq somehow ended up meaning losing the war in Iraq.

On May 1 of 2003, America had lost 139 troops to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Today that number stands at 2,400. In the three years since we won the war, 17,000 more soldiers have been wounded — many of them mangled beyond recognition and doomed to live their remaining days without arms or legs.

The victory pushed "insurgent attacks" up from eight per day back in 2003 to 75 per day in 2006.

Three years after the war was won, the American price tag has risen from about $80 billion to more than $320 billion, and the commander in chief has dropped from a 70% approval rate to disapproval ratings unseen since the last criminal days of Richard Nixon's presidency.

Almost all Americans now believe the president intentionally lied about every aspect of the Iraq invasion and occupation. And a dismal 9% believes the mission was accomplished, according to a new CNN poll.

But there's some good news for the president on this third anniversary of the victory in Iraq: Despite everything that's happened and everything that's known, he remains a free man and still occupies the White House. Amazingly, Bush and his team have yet to be removed from office, prosecuted, convicted of treason, imprisoned or executed.

And that's a victory, too.