Jen is back in town for yet one more week. ???? Anyway, it gave us a chance to preview the upcoming football season, especially an impartial breakdown of the U of L/ UK game. Check it out:
The Jenster is back from Nashville — for a short stay — to taunt the Culture Maven once again. She did not return the missing computer, much to the Big Boss’s chagrin. Check out all the shenanigans:
The media was out in full force the day Steve Kragthorpe was introduced as U of L’s new football coach. Half a hundred strong, they were encamped at Press Level of Papa John’s. Cameras whirred, flashbulbs popped and microphones clicked on as the elevator doors opened and the new mentor emerged with an entourage led by Tom Jurich.
The group strode as royalty toward the fourth estate. Suddenly, Kragthorpe hung a quick, sharp left into the Mens Room for a pit spot. “There’s the money shot,” chirped one wag.
A year ago Louisville coulda been a contenda. The Cards were defending Orange Bowl and Big East champs. Now the program is up on jacks. No pit stop, this is a major overhaul.
What a difference a season makes! Read the rest of this entry »
Louisville’s flavor of the month — He’s everywhere, he’s everywhere — William Mapother, has returned to his home town to star at Actor’s Theater in “Glengarry Glen Ross.” He sat down for a one on one. You decided who came out more bloodied.
If Grantland Rice — the doyen of football scribes — had been on the scene, he might have rendered poesy from the dripping, leaden skies. The air was thick and brown as hummus, and only the gray pall kept the heat index below triple digits.
Yet the day marked the Season of the Switch, from matters of lesser importance to football. It’s the brutal endeavor America has embraced as its paramount sporting pastime.
And so they came, as witness, as a pledge of allegiance, as confirmation they still believe, despite the travails that befell their beloved last season. Disregarding flies and Fahrenheit, the red-and-black faithful arrived in droves to the opening of Louisville Cardinal pigskin practice last Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »
And now for the rest of the story.
Of the brouhahas thus far in Election 2008 — there will be more — few have been as intense as the firestorm over the cover of the July 21 issue of The New Yorker magazine. Unless you’ve been hibernating in the Black Forest, on vacation to Vista Palms Glen Shores, Alabama or have set a permanent firewall against all matters political, you know the situation.
Barack Obama is on the cover, fist-bumping his spouse Michelle in the Oval Office. He’s dressed like Osama (whose photo hangs over the fireplace). She’s incarnated as Angela Davis circa the 60’s, complete with full sista ‘fro and rifle across her back held in place by a bullet strap. The exclamation point in Barry Blitt’s satirical rendering — titled “The Politics of Fear” — is the stars & stripes aflame in the fireplace.
Despite my preternatural astuteness, I missed the irony. When I first saw the magazine, I immediately stopped all activities to fire off an email advising the editors of the ‘zine to “be ashamed, very very ashamed.” And then, after pondering my vapid knee-jerk reaction, owned my stupidity but contemplated the larger meaning of that whole affair in a piece posted here, “Whither Political Irony.” Read the rest of this entry »
